Transvision Vamp: how we made Baby I Don't Care
I was taking piano and clarinet lessons at school when I saw the Clash at Brighton Centre on the Combat Rock tour. I looked at Joe Strummer and thought: “Whatever he’s doing, I’m going to do that.” Three years later, in 1985, I went into a Brighton city centre bar called the Electric Grape, where I was approached by a person with David Bowie cheekbones, Johnny Thunders hair and wearing a leather jacket, carrying the first Suicide album. That was [guitarist/songwriter] Nick Sayer. My friend Zoe said: “I think we should go home”, but Nick took us to a party and told me: “Stick your head in the bass bin and to listen to [Suicide’s] Martin Rev’s keyboards.” And that was the start of Transvision Vamp.
We met Dave Parsons [bass] over table football in the Earl of Lonsdale in Notting Hill, London, and Tex Axile [drums then keyboards] in the Warwick Castle on Portobello Road. He was wearing a skirt with dinosaur-like spines down its back, and auditioned by drumming on his cushions. I derived my “blonde bad girl” look from Blondie’s Debbie Harry.
We stomped into EMI Records and demanded to see Dave Ambrose, who had signed the Sex Pistols. We told the receptionist that we were going to be the biggest band in the world. She said: “I’d better put you through then.”
Everything happened quickly. We skipped the Transit van stage and went straight to the uni tour. By the time we got to London, I Want Your Love was in the Top 5 and the queue to see us at the Marquee went right down Wardour Street.
Nick wrote Baby I Don’t Care about my best friend who he was rather taken with. I think it was his way of telling her that she didn’t have to love him in return because he loved her anyway. Verse two – “You can tell me all your stories but spare me the plays” – is a reference to her aspirations to be an actor. Some years later, she took her life: the song is particularly moving now.
I just remember screaming my lungs out in the studio. The song got to
Number 3. Four years later Kurt Cobain wore a Transvision Vamp T-shirt on MTV’s Live and Loud, but I don’t think I realised how famous we had become. By then, Joe Strummer was my mate, [Clash guitarist] Mick Jones became my boyfriend and we were always touring, but I was still drinking in the Warwick Castle. Otherwise my life hadn’t really changed.
Zeus B Held, producer
Transvision Vamp’s first single – 1987’s Revolution Baby – hadn’t really connected so the record company brought me in and told me: “Just make sure they’re played on the radio.”
My approach was basically to record