One Saturday in May 1979, I went with my then girlfriend to see The Tubes at Hammersmith Odeon in London. This was my second time seeing them after their mind-blowing show 18 months previous, which I wrote about here.
We had tickets about three rows from the front, to get the full effect. The support band was Squeeze, who had already had a few hit singles, so they were going to be worth checking out, we thought.
In fact, we got way more than we bargained for. As Squeeze took the stage, it was announced that their drummer Gilson Lavis had been taken ill and instead, the percussionist from The Tubes, James 'Mingo' Lewis, would deputise for him.
Well Mingo didn't just deputise, he stole the show with a display of latin percussive fireworks that pinned everyone to their seats. This was a man who had played in the classic early 1970s line-up of Santana. He composed songs on their 1972 album Caravanserai and also composed for and played with Al Di Meola on his first three solo albums.
Mingo with Santana
As well as that, Mingo appeared on Return
To Forever's 1973 album Hymn of the Seventh Galaxy and from the same year,Love, Devotion, Surrender by Carlos
Santana and John McLaughlin.
So his latin jazz credentials were impeccable. And he knew his way around a drum kit, in ways that Gilson wouldn't be able to emulate if he lived to be 100.
Squeeze's songs are good, catchy tunes, but they are all in standard 4/4 time and don't require much in the way of rhythmic embellishment. Clearly, nobody told Mingo that, because he played up a storm, adding latin rhythms and percussive flourishes that transformed the songs, or at least attempted to.
We were transfixed and the look of amusement, or perhaps bemusement, on Glenn Tilbrook's face showed how weird the whole thing must have been for Squeeze too.
Meeting Glenn Tilbrook before the show
If you want an idea of how Mingo looked and sounded playing along behind Squeeze, check out this clip. It's not from that time but it illustrates very well what he was playing over their straight-ahead pop songs.
In 2011, I saw Squeeze playing at Greenwich in London as part of an outdoor mid-summer festival. I saw Glenn hanging around in the crowd beforehand so I went and asked him if he remembered the show.
Of course he did. He told me it was "fucking amazing", one of the best live gigs he's ever done and "I just wish there was a recording of it."
Sadly there isn't, just a memory of how two musical worlds collided to produce an amazing and bizarre spectacle, for one night only.
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Without doubt, the most spell-binding rock show I have ever seen was
staged by The Tubes at the Hammersmith Odeon in November 1977. The
group were not all that well known in the UK, having never played there
before. But they caused a sensation by booking a run of shows over a week at the
famous London theatre and putting on an outrageous, hilarious and
sexually explicit show that blew everyone’s mind.
The review of the
show written by the NME’s Paul Rambali said, “If you saw them, you will
probably feel conned next time you hand over the notes to watch some
other group merely stand there and play. The Tubes are a spectacle
unlike any other. They present a relentless onslaught of humour,
outrage, parody, idiocy, music and costume – a feast for the senses.”
How
does a band that has never played in the UK, and doesn’t have a hit
record, create enough of a buzz to sell out in London? They had
also made plans to record a live album. They must have been damn sure of
themselves. The pre-show hype was a testament to the power of the NME
in the 1970s, because without any other publicity, save for a few plays
by Capital Radio's Nicky Horne, there was no other way for them to
spread the word in those days. The
NME was still the bible for rock fans and their coverage of the US scene had always been
first-rate.
Don’t Touch Me There
Here was a good example - the NME writer Mick Farren spent time with The Tubes at
their rehearsal studios in Los Angeles. He described their act as “satiric mania
choreographed with split-second timing".
"The Tubes may play for laughs
but the laughs are delivered according to a spot-on orchestration. They
don’t amble into a rehearsal studio, down a few beers, blow a joint and
then put down an hour and half of lackluster boogie and call it a day.
Both musicians and dancers work out under the uncompromising direction
of choreographer Kenny Ortega.”
On the Columbia Studios
soundstage, the show was going though its full dress run-through and
Farren observed: “It’s nothing short of magnificent. The only words you
can use are ones like sensory overkill. The act doesn’t leave you
alone. One moment it’s the band in white intern coats playing straight
techno-rock. Then it’s a dance troupe on the lam from Star Wars, and
then there’s the punk pastiche. Except, pastiche or not, The Tubes can
cut harder and deeper than 90%s of the new wave.”
The band’s
first two albums in the mid-70s established the template for satirical
pieces about show business, consumerism and sex, with titles like White
Punks On Dope, What Do You Want From Life, Don’t Touch Me There and
Mondo Bondage.
Good as those records were, the songs really came alive
on the stage, where The Tubes could put their creativity and art skills
to work. Not only that, they could really go to town on the outrage,
with bondage, simulated sex, exploding TVs, live chainsaws and a cascade
of semi-nude dancers. Naturally, they were banned from several of the
more conservative states of America.
And with a group that
contained eight musicians and several dancers, this was never going to
be a commercially viable operation unless they could take the show to the
big venues. So there was a lot riding on the European tour.
Lead singer Fee Waybill
acknowledged that The Tubes needed to make it as a headline rock act, to
cover the cost of their large touring group: “I think we’re
primarily a rock and roll band. We have to establish ourselves as that.
We have to convince these promoters that we are not just a visual act –
that we can kick ass.”
Fee Waybill as Quay Lewd
Well they did that alright. In common with everyone who saw it, the
NME’s Paul Rambali was blown away by the London show: “The stage exists
in a continual chorus of activity that veers from anarchic chaos to
precision orchestration with virtually no breathing space. The band
continually assail the senses with extremes of spectacle. After doing
their duet Don’t Touch Me There from a motorbike, Fee Waybill
strapped backing singer Re Styles between two video monitors for Mondo Bondage."
The finale was the appearance of Quay Lewd, Waybill’s obnoxious glammed-up rock star with ludicrously high platform shoes.
Rambali wrote: “Quay sang a song, fell over, insulted at least half the audience, fell over, did ‘Stand Up And Shout’, fell over, then told us, “this is the audience participation bit. When I say ‘stand up and shout’ you lot all shout…erh…’go down on me you bitch!
“Eventually he settled for having the whole audience shout 'you bleedin' wankers' on cue, fell over and finally was buried beneath a toppling 50-foot speaker column.”
Rambali concluded his review thus: “I have never witnessed anything remotely like The Tubes. Neither, to judge from the rapturous response and conversations afterwards, had anyone else. Amazing”
It really was, musically and visually remarkable. I saw them again in 1978, at the Knebworth Festival on the bill with Frank Zappa and Peter Gabriel. And again in 1979 at Hammersmith, on the ‘Remote Control’ tour, where they were supported by Squeeze (that’s another story…). But that first time in 1977 was shockingly good.
'White Punks On Dope' performed by The Tubes on the BBC 1977
The NME's review of the Tubes, published on 19th November 1977
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