WENDY JAMES AND TRANSVISION VAMP
HELLO 1986 GOODBYE DECEMBER 1991
It started with pub larks and unshakeable belief. Road burn out and Elvis Costello helped end it.
The literal first day of the band, to my mind, was when I met Nick [Christian Sayer, guitar] in Brighton, at a groovy bar called the Electric Grape. It was a narrow room, dark, velvety. I’d gone there after school with a girlfriend called Zoe. I remember this skinny Johnny Thunders/Keith Richards lookalike wearing a leopard skin jacket, spiked up hair and leather jeans, carrying the first Suicide LP. He asked us if we wanted to go to a house party. We knew we had to get the last public transport home, but we went. We got a little bit stoned, and then he gave me amyl nitrate – haha! – and put on the Suicide album really loud, in the living room of this house party. I felt like my brain was coming out of my skull. He said, “I’m forming a band and I’m looking for a singer.” I was quite a good choirgirl and my response was, “Well, I can sing.” Zoe and I did manage to catch the last train home, but Nick and I had arranged that two days later I would come and meet him in Brighton and form a band. And that’s exactly what happened. It was just him and me, the writing and getting the record deal. When we moved to Ladbroke Grove we bumped into Dave [Parsons, bass] in the Earl Of Lonsdale. Tex [Axile, keyboards and drums] was more a frequenter of the Warwick Castle, our main pub. Our first gig was Leicester University, and we did a whole university tour ending at the Marquee. By that point we were definitely in the slipstream for success. We were signed to a major [MCA] intent on supporting us. And when you have so much energy, you live and breathe it, so it’s kind of impossible for it not to happen. Like any good pop band we got worked into the ground, which was great, you want ever increasing success. We’d toured the whole of the US twice that year, and around Europe… and there were two dynamics going on. One was our complete and utter fatigue, and the other thing was, we fell madly in love with Public Enemy and De La Soul, these groundbreaking things going on in America. Basically, a management figure should have said, “You guys are burnt, take a fucking year off.” We were in LA, and Nick and I just said to each other, “We’ve got to stop,” not with any acrimony. I can look back and know that I was growing out of it by that point, and I think Nick was too. We ended it with the most awesome gig ever in San Diego. At the airport, it was, All right, see you. It wasn’t like a death knell. Personally speaking, I didn’t feel any particular loss. Also, I was planning my little thing with Elvis [Costello]. I’d bumped into [Attractions drummer] Pete Thomas staying at the Sunset Marquis, and asked him, “Do you reckon Elvis would do anything with me?” He said, “Why don’t you write him a letter?” That night I did, and then carried on touring. When I got back to London there was a cassette on the doormat, and it was the demos for a whole album [1993’s Now Ain’t The Time For Your Tears]. Revisiting Transvision Vamp… definitely not. I don’t feel what I’d get out of it, creatively. Nothing in my life is planned, the one consistent is that I’m always trying to do music. On my new album [The Price Of The Ticket] I have a Stooge, a Patti Smith Group, a Sex Pistol and a Bad Seed. That’s super cool. As told to Ian Harrison
The Price Of The Ticket, featuring Lenny Kaye, Glen Matlock, James Sclavunos and James Williamson, is out now, via wendyjames.pmstores.co/. For tour dates see thewendyjames.com.