Chapter 6. Stag and Mike Mansfield
Chris D. has already written at length about this extraordinary episode, which he understatedly sums up as a “near-miss”, but I thought I might add a few words from my own perspective.
Mike was a pioneering record and music producer, who developed with his ITV pop programme 'Supersonic' a genuinely innovative way of shooting and presenting pop music, which was much more in keeping with the spirit of the times and which anticipated the whole MTV pop video culture that followed. In one notorious episode of 'Supersonic', which would cut between the bands in the studio and Mike directing operations from the control booth with his famous catch-phrase “Cue the music”, fans of the Bay City Rollers* got completely out of control and there was practically a riot in the studio. It looked genuinely out of control and scary, but fortunately no-one was hurt and it made for great television.
(*This reminds me of a time when I was writing my Peterloo thesis in Central Reference Library on St Peter's Square in Manchester. I emerged from a day deep in the library stacks at around 6pm only to be engulfed in what felt like a huge swarm of locusts, as thousands upon thousands of tartan-clad fans of The Rollers invaded Manchester's city centre ahead of a gig the band were playing there that evening. I hastily retreated back to the tranquillity of the great domed library Reading Room. Even in 1974 there was a huge gulf between commercial and indie tastes in contemporary music...)
Mike Mansfield was introduced to us by our friend Andy Parkinson. I had known Andy since he was 16 when he lived round the corner from me in Flixton. He was already at that young age a brilliant photographer with a precocious and prodigious talent. When we were rehearsing 'The Tall Tree' in 1973, Andy took hundreds of photographs of the process, which were absolutely stunning, and demonstrated even then what a great eye he had for capturing exactly the right moment. Andy also did the lighting design for that production and in December 1976, when Amanda and I got married he recorded the day with a great series of (largely) unposed shots that really caught the mood of the day.
Around this time Andy was working (I think) in a photographer's studio in Rochdale but was feeling very constrained by its limitations and so he applied for, and got, a traineeship as a camera operator at London Weekend Television (LWT), which of course he took to like a duck to water and has since never looked back. You still frequently see his name as Director of Photography on a whole range of TV and film productions. It was while Andy was still working at LWT that he met Mike Mansfield, and pretty soon after that he began working very closely for Mike's company, Mike Mansfield Enterprises (MME).
Although Andy was by this time based in London, we kept in frequent, almost constant, contact, seeing each other as often as we could, and during that period were the closest of friends. Very loyally, and without ever being asked, he encouraged Mike Mansfield to take an interest in what we were doing at Genesis, and it was through Andy's influence that Mike came up north to see our performance of 'Stag' at The Grange Arts Centre in Oldham. Meeting Mike afterwards was exciting and I remember his amusement when Chris Hawley came up to him in the bar saying, “Cue the introduction!”
Mike said over and over how much he had liked the show and he then proceeded to back up his words with actions by paying for a selection of songs from the show to be professionally recorded, so that he could then use the resulting tape to help him promote the show to potential future backers. This was an incredibly generous gesture and led to an extraordinary few months when Chris D. and I, together with the cast and musicians from 'Stag', spent several exciting and wonderful days (and nights) recording some of the music at Pennine Studios.
These were heady days indeed. The manager and engineer at Pennine were wonderfully supportive, going way beyond their remit in advising us how to get the best sound that we could, and they genuinely “produced” the tape, always on hand to make pertinent observations, suggestions and, if necessary, changes, always prepared to go that extra mile. I learned an enormous amount during this process, and my long stints at the mixing desk – on one occasion we were there for 36 hours straight – were among the most creatively stimulating and fulfilling moments I have ever experienced. They had real expertise and they made the songs sound better than we could have dared hope*
(*One example of how committed they were to supporting us came with the recording of the title song, 'Stag'. At the very end of the song, after its final climax, there is a pause, followed by the sudden dramatic sound of a heavy cell door slamming shut – symbolising how, after she has committed the murder of her boyfriend in a dream-inspired frenzy, Sally is then suddenly made aware of what she has done and then shuts herself away deep inside her head. Although we had a sound effect of the cell door that we provided them with at Pennine, ever the perfectionists, they felt they could improve on its quality, and so, at four o'clock in the morning, Paul, the engineer, took himself to the nearby police station and re-recorded for himself the sound of the cell door slamming shut, which he then inserted at the end of the track. Paul was a great guy and I really enjoyed working with him. He was quite brilliant and seemed to survive on a diet of coca cola and polo mints. It was his birthday during the sessions and Amanda bought him an extra large packet. Arising as a by-product from these sessions a few of us got together one afternoon to record a version of a Christmas song that Chris and I had written for 'The Tall Tree called 'Follow The Star', which Louis sang, accompanied by various sessions musicians that Paul brought in. It was a real blast. On another occasion, in a period of down time while we were waiting for something, Chris and I began work on a new song that would later find its way into 'Marilyn' called 'Who Am I?' I found the whole experience at Pennine utterly addictive and could quite see how Paul had become so wrapped up in it that he looked as though he rarely, if ever, saw daylight! We said it at the time, but I'll say it again now: “Thank you, Pennine! You were amazing!”)
Shortly after this first session was completed, Amanda and I spent an extraordinary weekend in London, when we were guests at Mike Mansfield's luxury house in Wimbledon. The house had formerly belonged to Oliver Reed and in the basement there was a large sauna where, it was rumoured, Oliver Reed used to throw big parties, dousing the hot coals, not with water, but with gin! You ascended to the living room by a spiral staircase passing signed, framed photographs of some of the recording artists Mike had worked with – Diana Ross, Elton John, Dusty Springfield – emerging into an enormous completely white room: white walls, ceiling, curtains; white carpet, and even a white grand piano in one corner. It was night when we arrived and Mike, using a remote, dimmed the lights, drew back the curtains and floodlit the garden, all electronically, just as a silver fox strolled nonchalantly across the lawn and away into Wimbledon Common, which abutted the garden. (Had I not written 'Stag' already, I would have certainly based the figure of Maestro on Mike, and later, when I wrote a novelisation of 'Stag', I used this white room as the inspiration for the description of Maestro's studio in Rome).
Shortly after arriving there, Mike needed to get back to his office on Carnaby Street(!), so we drove back into town in his trademark white Rolls Royce with Andy at the wheel. As we sank into the luxurious leather seats, Mike switched on the car stereo, and instantly the car was filled with the sound of 'Happy Ever After' from those first Pennine recording sessions. I can honestly say that as we headed towards the bright lights of the West End that song never sounded better, before or since, and it seemed as though the future was opening up in front of us like a neon flower.
At Mike's office we met some of his staff, including the gloriously named Betty Valentino (Mike's secretary) who only ever wore black, right down to her fingernails, plus a pillar-box cloche hat and veil, looking like one of those 80's girls from The Human league in their wonderfully arty-camp video of 'Don't You Want Me Baby'. From there we drove on to 'Legends', an extremely chic night club where there were various minor celebrities; I ate snails for the first (and last) time; Amanda announced she was pregnant, and Mike asked if he could touch her breasts! Was it shallow? Yes. But was it also exciting? Again, yes.
When we arrived back at Wimbledon, there was a message on Mike's answerphone from Robert Stigwood, declaring that he “couldn't get 'Stag' out of his head” and that he and Mike must talk. Stigwood was at that time an internationally renowned music, theatre and film producer, who had been responsible for, among other things, 'Evita' and 'Saturday Night Fever'. It was indeed a giddy time.
As a result of whatever conversations may have ensued between them afterwards, Mike paid for yet more songs from the show to be recorded at Pennine, this time using 32 track machines, instead of the 8 tracks used on the first sessions, and he came up north to Oldham with Andy to supervise the recordings himself. That in itself is a measure of the commitment he showed to the whole project, and I shall always be so very grateful for that belief he demonstrated in us for those weeks and months.
But, as Chris's entry points out, our hopes from that time were not to be realised. Robert Stigwood's company was part of the Polydor group, which in turn was owned by Phonogram, and Phonogram were sued by The Bee Gees for a staggering amount of money, and while the case was pending, Stigwood was forced to cease much of his activities. 'Stag', and the contract Chris and I had signed with MME, were one of the minor casualties, and as time passed by and there was still no resolution, Mike became less interested, (understandably, with hindsight, given the unlikelihood of a major production ever taking place in London and/or New York, which had appeared to be on the cards at one time) and the whole affair just petered out.
So – Chris and I did not find our fame and fortune; the streets of London were not paved with gold after all; and I continued as a lecturer at South Trafford College, and Chris continued in Credit Control with Carborundum – each of us poorer, but wiser...
But what remains is the memory of that excitement and the frisson of possibility that accompanied it – that and the wonderful recordings we now all have from Pennine Studios of most of the songs from 'Stag', which could not have happened without the generosity of Mike Mansfield or the loyal friendship of Andy Parkinson*.
(*I saw Andy a few times afterwards but we increasingly inhabited different worlds and our paths rarely crossed. I stayed up north, while he obtained his pilot's licence and regularly jetted down to the south of France for glamorous weekends. He loyally came to see 'Marilyn' in 1982, and then the last time Amanda and I saw him was some years after that, when he happened to be in the Manchester area visiting his sister and his parents. He was with a new girl friend, called Petrina, and we had a really nice couple of hours catch-up, and that was that. But the act of writing this memoir has rekindled the hope that we might yet see each other again, and so I have googled and, since, emailed him, so fingers crossed...)