HELLO GOODBYE
HELLO SUMMER 1984 GOODBYE JUNE 26, 1987
Primal Scream’s mean tambourine, Martin ‘The Joogs’ St. John.
I first met Bobby Gillespie around autumn 1983 in Glasgow, through a pal. I was just drifting about waiting for something to happen. Through him I met up with his co-conspirator Jim Beattie, and into 1984, the other members of Primal Scream. We’d meet up at Jim Beattie’s house as none of us had left home by then. The chat mostly involved our different tastes in music – I was a total fanatic of The Cramps, Suicide, The Gun Club and Panther Burns, and it was around then that I also started to dig The Seeds and Pink Floyd’s The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn. Bob G and Beattie were already massive fans of The Byrds and Love. The main catalyst that sent the three of us on a psyched out garage trip was the Julian Cope article in the NME [Tales From The Drug Attic] which was a total mindsnapper for us young eager-to-learn garage cats.
“I WAS ALWAYS UP FOR HAVING HARD KICKS FOR FUN.”
I first moved to our flat Silverfoilcity on Byres Road [a crash pad decorated with tin foil à la Warhol’s Factory] in June 1985 around the same time that [Glasgow club night] Splash 1 started up. It became the major HQ then for all sorts of bohemian west end high jinks that usually involved LSD being ingested along with band rehearsals at full pelt. I was first invited along in summer 1984, and got in the groove with my set of maracas, tamby and mouthie. The reason I picked up the tambourine was ’cos all the great ’60s garage/pop groups seemed to have a full-time tamby basher who looked just as killer as the other members. Basically I practised along to all the early albums of The Seeds, The Byrds and the first Love album, and I dressed the part – bouffant hair, booted and buckled Seeds-style, plus I always had an upbeat attitude to life and was always up for having hard kicks for fun. I was also a major fan of Chas Smash from Madness, and the Clappers [backing singers] from Gene Vincent’s Blue Caps were also a major influence. The first gig I performed at was The Venue in Glasgow, in October 1984, with The Jesus And Mary Chain. It felt
AKA ‘The Joogs’, he banged his tambourine with the pre-Screamadelica garage band. Then it fell apart…
real good up on that stage. As we were packing our gear away, Jim Beattie came up and asked me, “Well, do you wanna join the band?” In September 1986 we signed to a major label, Elevation Records, c/o Warner Brothers, which was our kiss of death. Bad vibes had been simmering since the sackings of drummer Tam [McGurk] and Stewart the guitarist – who I took sides with – during the aborted first album [Sonic Flower Groove] debacle at Rockfield Studios. The original gang of Bob G, Beattie and Robert Young were all on songwriting publishing royalties and they got in hired hands to plod along for live gigs, but I received nothing in return for my band activities and I was skint. The major rift happened on the last mini-tour in June 1987. There had been some ructions in Silverfoilcity in the previous months, I’d started seeing a girl called Joyce X which made issues even more complex… petty arguments and bickering a go-go. My last gig was at ULU. I never told them I was leaving and I puked up before I went on-stage. It was strange to discover on YouTube that someone had filmed it – Bob G’s vocals are terrible but the rest of PS are on fire, as we blasted out [single] Imperial twice! After the gig, I just took my tambourine case and split pronto stage right, I don’t think I even made it to the dressing room. After I left I decided to put a false advert in the NME to put a rocket up their arse, quoting that I had the new tape of the forthcoming album for sale. Total lies, of course, but it didn’t stop a former member turning up at my doorstop ranting and raving about handing over the invisible tape. I must admit for about a year I was in total shock from the whole experience – we were thick as thieves, and then it just turned nasty. I went to see PS during their Screamadelica years and I definitely saw a blank spot on the stage for a tambourine basher-cum- maraca shaker, but it wasn’t to be.