Rage Before Beauty -- 19 years in the womb


By Mark St John

Prologue
In 1980 I became involved in a funky little studio in London's Covent Garden called Freerange. The owner, Nick Abson, was a refugee from Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas -- a massive drug user, probably clinically insane, a technical genius and the first music video promo director in Europe. I already had some basic studio experience - I'd worked in Escape Studios on the first New York Dolls album and then had gone to work on the first Police album at Surrey Sound Studios, where I discovered Nick Smith, Norman Smith and The Pretty Things. I was not, however, anybody's "flavour of the month" as a producer. I was absolutely besotted by The Pretty Things and I managed, God knows how, to persuade Nick to let me produce them for the studio's own label, if I could find the band and persuade them to agree. I found them; they agreed. This was going to turn Freerange into the hub of record production for the next generation. Nick gave me a very generous budget -- and we got underway. Pretty Things starting line-up: Phil May, Dick Taylor, John Povey, Peter Tolson Wally Waller and Simon Fox (ex Be-Bop Deluxe, on drums). Production team: Producer: Mark St John, Engineer: Marc Francs.

Now read on...

London Town -- Spring 1981
The sun was already high by the time I was released from the cells at Bow Street Magistrates Court in Covent Garden. Phil and John had already disappeared.
"How the fuck did that happen?" I was asking myself, as I headed for the Globe to wait for the band. They never showed.
The night before, we had been working on keyboard overdubs for the new album and John (Povey) had been really flying, until he noticed that Rogie was missing. The next thing I knew he was running up the stairs, out of the studio and screaming like a maniac for Phil and Rogie. We (Marc the engineer and I) followed and saw him crash the door of Brahms & Liszt (the local 'pretty young things' watering hole) dragging Phil behind him by the hair. They took out a window or two on the way and were heavily involved in beating the shit out of each other by the time the police turned up. Both were bleeding badly and they were very, very pissed off. As I had made the mistake of trying to stop them and received a knee in the face for my troubles, I was pretty fucked up too, so I was invited to the party back in the cells.
The next time I saw John, it was to hand him a sizeable cheque more than ten years later.
That was the end of part one of the album.
Freerange went bust about three months later -- the best laid plans etc, etc.
Like a good little boy, I followed the absolute letter of our (very basic)
Freerange contract and returned the master tapes to Phil in Notting Hill Gate, three years to the day after our night in the cells. He acted as though I wasn't even there. That was about 1983 or '84. As I walked away from the house I thought, "Fuck him, and fuck his shithead band as well. We had a great album going and they just dumped on me. If I never see them again it'll be too soon."
He never dumped on me again
I saw him again in late '87. It was still too soon. He was drunk as a skunk and he fouled up a scene I had going with Lotte, the beautiful blonde Swedish Goddess from the Record Plant front office. It was my birthday and I was flying -- until Phil reeled up like we'd just been hanging out a week earlier. By the next day I had bought myself a new Pretty Things deal. By now I had a studio of my own in Soho and a collection of people working with me who shared the whole sleazy late night in London, Soho vibe. It was a cool place.

We started recording pretty quickly, but it wasn't right. The band was reduced to Phil and Dick with a variety of 'bolt-on' sidemen and idiots. I FUCKING HATED that band and line-up. Dick would be telling me how great this guy or that guy was as a guitar player or whatever, but none of them was a "Pretty Thing" -- you know what I mean, right? Whatever. We got almost a whole album done in a few months in '87 and '88. I wasn't producing; that was being done by a guy who engineered in the studio called Denny Bridges. He was working with this pick-up "Cloggies" band and he was just running down through the band's (then) songbook. I was hardly involved at all.


Mark St. John at the mixing desk, Soho, 1988.

I had arranged for -- Shannon O'Shea -- an American girl who wanted to use floor space at the studio to manage the band and I was just paying the bills (something I became real good at with the Pretties). Shannon was managing Jimmy Miller (the ex-Stones producer) too, and she was hungry to make a name for herself and the band. On paper, it looked like a pretty good marriage and I didn't want to get too involved anyway, especially since my first attempt had blown up in my face.
The band was working with lots of various 'name' people and musicians and during the initial activity they tried some stuff with Glen (from the Pistols) and Jo Jo Shaw from Doll by Doll. Other faces were jamming the stairway after dark too, and while they were in town the Ramones office called in, as did the Aerosmith team. Some guys from the (then) last gigging McCartney band got involved for a while and so did a few ex-Yardbirds and Procol Harum guys. It was generally London's longest running free party.
I was watching all this shit going down from a floor or two up and I wasn't getting the feeling that anything real was taking place. So eventually I decided to have a formal listen through to the stuff we already had down and called everybody in for a playback to evaluate where we were at. We all crammed into the control room -- me, the band, Shannon, the studio staff, and a few other suspects.

THE ALBUM WAS TOTAL SHIT.

It sounded like nothing: too produced, no "Pretties" vibe, no ATTITUDE and worst of all, no fucking balls. Re-think time.
By now it was late '88 and Shannon was fencing around the edges of the Pretties' legal shit -- EMI, Polygram, that stuff. Around the same time, Phil had been asked by David Gilmour to play at the Floyd's homecoming from the Momentary Lapse of Reason tour and in the absence of a formal band, he asked me to play drums and one of the studio guys to play bass. We added Frank Holland (he and I had been working together for ten years or so) and, together with Dick, we did the gig.
It sounded about 1000 percent more like a "Pretty Things" than anything I'd been hearing from the control room -- the gig was great, we played with George Harrison, Paul Rodgers, and the Monty Python crew. It was a very wild night and after the dust settled, we'd found a better way to work. Right after that I called everybody in again and told them the album was being canned. It was a piece of crap and wasn't fit to hear. It was an uncomfortable moment. Dick was very loyal to these invalids that the band were working with and he tried to make a case for the record, but Phil, well he just looked at me and said, "You're right, man. It's a piece of shit. We should never have let it get this far. What do you want to do?"


Dick Taylor in a pensive mood, 1988.

By now there was about £50,000 or £60,000 invested in the band in recording, support, office space (Shannon didn't pay for it) and general expenses. I took a deep breath and told them that I would carry on, but I would produce the record myself, and that I would put the band together to do it. Within a half an hour we had the next sessions mapped out: Phil, Dick, me (drums and in the chair), Frankie (guitar), Steve from the studio (bass) and we'd pick up keyboards wherever or Frank or me would play them. Next day I called our old friend Dave Garland and offered him a job as house engineer. He went for it and the team was complete. Now all we needed were some songs and this (by now) seven year project could really get underway.
We started out by having a writing session at my house down in the country at Mayfield, in Sussex. It was a huge old barn of a place with loads of ground and the Ronnie Lane Mobile studio (Houses of The Holy, etc) parked outside the barn. The sessions led to a couple of songs -- started on the mobile, finished (eventually) up in town. Neither one of them has made the album, funnily enough. Things began to move around '89 and we finally got some degree of direction into the proceedings with two key tracks (you can work out which for yourselves). Phil's marriage was breaking up about this time, and he was sleeping rough around the studio or at various low-life locations where you could get a (very) late drink. We began to get into a pattern: backtracks would be me, Frank and Phil, (Dick if he was around), with a bass player if we could find one -- Steve from the studio often stood in, but nothing was permanent. Throughout all of this time, Phil and Dick were operating a kind of semi-Pretties outside of the album and the basic direction. They were undertaking touring in Europe with a band that I hated and which, for me, stunk the fucking place out wherever it played. They were also still getting into various bullshit; fucked up little side deals to make various "no-brain" records, which continue to haunt them to this day. However, as I had continually (up to that point, anyway) refused to manage them or get any further into the picture, what could I say?
Almost without my realising it, I was gradually being moved further into the frame by Phil and Dick, as the managerial relationship began to break down with Shannon. She was making no progress with the legal stuff and was rapidly losing interest in the album. Eventually around '90/'91 things came to a head and she was gone … Another step forward towards the final team.
My own time was being spent more and more on the legal problems, so I was working on the legal shit by day and the album by night. About this time we contacted the original EMI band (Skip, Wally and Povey, the current Pretties line-up) and got them on board for the legal thing. I guess that was the start of the true re-building process.
In amongst this uphill struggle there were high spots too, like "Mony Mony."
We had asked Ronnie Spector over to record with us and it was like a dream come true for me and Dave. I am the world's BIGGEST Phil Spector fan, and no one, but NO ONE ever complemented Phil like Ronnie did. When she was laying down her vocals, there was just me and Dave in the studio. The lights were low, the track was loud, she was in profile on the mic. With one red spot on her the light was filtered through the haze of her cigarette and she threw her head back and let out her trademark "Whoa Oah Oah Ooooh…"
Shit, the years just peeled away and we were back in '63 with all the flush of innocence and first love-lust on us. She came in and threw us a grin and said:
"Gee, I love your studio, it reminds me of Phil's old place, Goldstar, so much. How did it sound?"
Just perfect, Ronnie. Just fucking perfect
Thank you, God. Thank you.
She gave me a picture with a personal message. I have it to this day.
Back to reality. There was still a long way to go. Phil was in a totally fucked-up state, and Dick was always wrecked, because he was working as a van driver and was totally wiped-out by the time we started working. I actually have a photograph of Dick at the back of the studio, taken when he fell asleep during the process of recording his own solo on a track -- again, you'll have to work out which song for yourself. It was weird. We were running the tape and there were a couple of guitar breaks, the first one was OK, but during the actual solo, there was a long held note, a strange scraping sound, and then… Nothing.
I looked around and Dick was flat out with his guitar on his lap and his mouth open. I'll try to find the photo for Mike and maybe he'll include it!
The early '90s had ground relentlessly on and on: recording, court, costs and endless internal disputes. Nevertheless, we had been working slowly towards something and, by the end of 1992, or thereabouts, we had a semi-finished album. Or so we thought. I wasn't happy and there was work to do, but we had enough tracks and, theoretically, it was done. Then a major turning point. Around late '93, EMI caved-in in the legal dispute and ownership of the catalogue and a well deserved settlement was the result for the band. I had supported all the legal costs out of my own pocket up to then and I was flat broke. I had lost my studio in June of that year ('93) financing the court cases, and the settlement couldn't have come at a better time for any of us. Even so, there was still no formal band line-up, and Phil and Dick were still often to be found working on their dodgy "extra-curricular" activities -- a constant source of friction between us. Frank was not as involved in the band anymore either, having lost a great deal of his original enthusiasm when the Shannon thing led nowhere. He had been around the studio until it folded, but usually working on other projects and not looking at all like a full-time Pretty Thing. Whatever. The EMI thing gave us the chance to really firm up the relationship between the old original band members, and also I finally accepted that I was going to have to manage the band as well as bankrolling, producing, legally advising and doing the odd bit of laundry, too. We started to rehearse with the old EMI line-up, initially with a view to "see what happens" and then, as things started to prove, to look at possibly a full re-formation of the old line-up plus Pete Tolson (who was rehearsing with the band as well). Rehearsals went on for a while and in fact, were still ongoing when we finally settled with Polygram and got those catalogue rights back, too. This was pretty groundbreaking shit. The whole music industry was looking at me and The Pretty Things as crusading leaders for a generation of unpaid bands and I was getting calls daily from old unpaid artists who had a story to tell. I went on to help quite a few of them, but that's a different story. By now it was the beginning of 1995 and I wanted to re-establish the band in the public eye, before releasing the new album. Truth to tell, I was still unhappy with the record -- the mixes, the feel, the material…

Phil May in the studio, 1989 (Balloon not burning)


Somewhere there was something wrong. So I set about persuading the band that we needed to shelve the album and I agreed to try to license-in the rest of the material we needed to cover all their history. Starting point was Peter Grant, for the Swan Song material -- and he just made it all happen in a heartbeat. He was the finest man I ever met, and I got to know him very, very well. The new album is dedicated to him and so would every other album be, if I got my way. heWithin a short space of time I had got hold of all the other stuff and we made a deal with a German company to release our stuff. We also made a deal with Creation Records in the UK but, after a couple of weeks, they pulled out because they said that the Pretties & I were "too fucking difficult to deal with" -- Ho, Ho, Ho -- so much for Oasis, pussycats compared with the true bad boys, eh? Eventually we ended up with a small UK label called Fragile. I wrote a million or so words of liner notes, mastered the whole thing, we found photos, old press and all the original mastering notes and Hey Presto! -- The Anthology, Unrepentant, was born. It was limited to a run of 5,000 in the UK and 5,000 in Europe with the German label. Along the way to this we had sadly lost Peter Tolson. One day he had arrived more than six hours late for a rehearsal, with his shoes in tatters. He had walked the 30 or so miles to the studio for the rehearsal. Clearly there was something badly wrong and he baled; best for all, I guess. Frank's other plans hadn't really worked out and he was hanging around the studio more and more while rehearsals were going down. When Tolson fell off the boat, he was there to slot right in and now he's pretty much family. Unrepentant sold out in minutes flat. The band did a massively successful 100 Club re-union gig at the end of November 1995, following a day's filming of the "Rosalyn" video with Peter Grant. This, incidentally, was the last gig Peter ever attended. He died, much to our great sorrow, only a few weeks later. But we were off and running again (or so we thought).
Typically, things did not go as planned. The German Record Company, SPV, fucked us up in the biggest way. They wouldn't answer our calls, wouldn't respond to faxes or letter and, despite having fought to sign it, made it impossible to release the new album. Thus, as a result of yet another fucking dispute, the much-postponed "new album" was postponed again -- this time indefinitely. We lost our UK label as a result and we lost the chance to release the album in Britain. We had established the band as real killers, with gas to spare in the tank, but we couldn't get our new record out. Goodbye 1995! In 1996 we carried on working and trying to settle the German company problems. They wouldn't even talk to us. In fact the problems still remain unsettled, and by the time you read this, we will have probably issued a major lawsuit against them. Oh, and if YOU EVER see a Pretty Things release on the German SPV label, DON'T FUCKING BUY IT. Tell your record store that they have no rights and they are pirating material by your old heroes. Anyway, I digress, sorry!
äEventually I met and immediately bonded with the guys at Snapper. They understood what we were trying to do and they were enthusiastic, interested and intelligent. The Pretties had found a spiritual home, at last. After a few months of (seemingly always necessary) dicking around, we made a deal, which gave Snapper rights to release everything by the band including (you guessed it) the new album. They were keen to re-master and entirely repackage some of the old records first, though and so I set about a labour of love which is still going on to this day. They also had very strong ideas about SF Sorrow, which led to the Abbey Road netcast (exclusive pictures here, too) and the Resurrection live album, with Dave Gilmour and Arthur Brown, but they came about after I had asked them for another postponement of the new album!
By now a mere 16 years had passed since we started on the "new" record the blink of an eye, really. But I was still not happy. The true cost of the recording and related support payments was more than £150,000 -- and that didn't take in to account the early "canned" album. So it was unlikely ever to make any money (particularly for me!) -- but I wanted it right, and, even with the passage of time, I felt I could get it right. I asked Snapper to postpone the release. They agreed. We concentrated on catalogue and SF Sorrow (see above). I went back to the studio. Dave and I re-mixed almost everything. We threw out lots of stuff and we scratched our heads for replacements. Then, during the summer of 1997 we set about recording another four cuts to complete the album and during the next year they were mixed, re-mixed, sequenced and -- finally -- finished. At the end of last year I remixed the two most intense cuts on the record at the studio where we had just mixed the Abbey Road gig. I then went to Tokyo for a week. The day I got back I remixed the two potential singles from the album and then left for a four day German trip with the band to play with Van Morrison on German TV before 20 million people. Upon my return I spent two solid days and a weekend trying sequences and trial orders with Dave. Eventually, between Christmas and the New Year, Dave and I mastered it and, finally, it was done. We still had a few problems -- no title, no cover art, no sleeve notes -- but, shit, no problem, right? Earlier, Phil had come up with a title, Cruel Britannia, but in the world's strangest co-incidence another Snapper band, The Selector, had come along and presented their own new album, complete with the title, Cruel Britannia. Weird or what?
I wrote a set of sleeve notes in early January and from that there came a title:
Rage Before Beauty, which we all love. Cover art came from the "Rosalyn" video with Peter Grant. By mid-February 1999 it was finished and produced and today, the 27th February, 1999, I have it in my hand and it's on the player as I write this. It will be released in less than two weeks from today, on March 8, 1999.
I hope that you enjoy it and that you will understand something about how much blood, sweat and tears have gone into making it for you, and for us.
I make no excuse for avoiding making specific comments about the actual tracks and the recording of them. This story is all about making the album and how we came to take such time -- the artistic story of specific tracks belongs elsewhere . Anyway, it would give the game away and I'm looking to you all to work out which tracks came first and which later. There's a big prize waiting for anyone who can work out the actual order of recording of the whole album. Mike and I will think of a suitable prize for such a smartass.
Rage Before Beauty -- 19 years in the making. Do you get it? Do you see what we mean? Whatever -- if you're reading this you know something about The Pretty Things, so, like they told Peter on the second Swan Song album, "If you lack the understanding of my actions, turn not on me the Savage Eye."
Mark St John, Soho, London. Late February 1999.