Chapter 6: Cornish Pasties, replacement drummers, the necessity of thinness in rock’n’roll, and how bad feet led to the loss of a bass player

How Ginster was named and lost. On the Broken Record Inn jukebox: from the Ramones to Joe Cocker via U2 and Leonard Cohen.

You can listen to the text below, interspersed with all the records on the jukebox, on Mixcloud. The playlist is also available on Spotify without the muttering.

Mixcloud link: https://www.mixcloud.com/tom-morton2/at-the-broken-record-inn-chapter-6-socks-cornish-pasties-and-a-loss/

Ginster. Second name Bridie, which was one of those band in-jokes bred during long splitter bus traverses of the British landmass, surviving on garage food. Because if you are a regular on the highways and byways of the UK, you’ll know about Ginsters, who specialise in steak bakes and Cornish pasties, pastry cases filled with grey meat which, if blasted in a microwave, can burn a hole through titanium, or at the very least make your mouth feel like it’s been nuked. Yes, in other words, quite good.

Ramones — I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend

U2 — Vertigo

A Bridie is a kind of Scottish Cornish pastie, and as it was drummer Gordon’s second name, his affection for garage pastry led to him being nicknamed…well. You get the picture.

I knew him. I was party to the banter that produced his moniker. Because I was driver and sometime tour manager for Glamour Ghost, anointed as such after my drumming was weighed in the balance and found wanting. Though to be honest, it was partly my appearance, like Ian Stewart in the Stones, that saw me dumped into the world of vans and backline. Not conventionally, ah, good looking. Big, lantern jawed. All right, fat, if you insist. And many things are acceptable in a band lineup, but fat and ugly is not one of them. Two of them. Fat and ugly and not a very good hitter of things. Three.

Susanna Wallumrod — Lay All Your Love On Me

Al Green — Love and Happiness

I mean, you’d think that a fat, ugly drummer would be just about hidden away behind the kit, but there’s the whole question of image, and band photographs, and then there’s that unsteady speeding-up and slowing-down problem. Problems.

Frankly, I thought at first Finn was pushing it with his elongated, cadaverous appearance. Who knew it would become Nick-Cave-acceptable? Thin, you see. So I was consigned by my old school pal to a role of invisible, if bulky helpmeet, if I wanted it. “I’ll see you all right,” he’d said, and I was too possessed by the whole rock’n’roll demon culture by that time to say no. If I couldn’t have adulation, I’d at least get to hang out in the general vicinity. For a while. In came Drag Larsen. He was thin.

Mylo — Into My Arms

Kim Carnes — Bette Davis Eyes

Steve Winwood — Back in the High Life

The Creightons, Cry Town productions, weren’t in evidence at the time. I was the first sacrifice Finn made to fame and fortune, but not the last. Bill Porteous, initial manager, and the Independent label in Leeds that released the first two singles, Bricking It Baby Records, were also cast aside. And I had extricated myself from what seemed like a mess after that terrible US tour. Just in time to see the whole rocket ship take off for the stratosphere. Ballast jettisoned. By that time I was running a bar.

Black — Wonderful Life

Joe Cocker — First We Take Manhattan

Stevie Ray Vaughan — Pride and Joy

Anyway Ginster was indispensable, or Finn thought he was. And Finn was the bandleader, the original Glamour Ghost, the spirit of it. Ginster was a truly magnificent bassist, like Andy Fraser from Free, Mani from the Roses or Jack Bruce. Melodic, inventive, solid. Visually amazing, a kind of pocket McCartney, all doe-eyes and accessible charm, Finn’s perfect foil. A writer, a conscience too. Platonic wife to Finn’s errant lead singer craziness. Lovable.

But difficult. Annoying, petulant and, if on the wrong drugs, occasionally monstrous. Like that time we were far, far way from the garage forecourts of Ginsterland, somewhere in New Mexico on our way from one hardscrabble club gig to another, doing that Police thing of touring until you break the country, or the country breaks you. Heading for Albuquerque. Too unsuccessful, or not successful enough yet to have a proper tour bus with bunks, just a splitter van with gear in the back and burst airliner seats in front.

Leonard Cohen — Leaving the Table

Robert Palmer — Johnny and Mary

My replacement on drums, as I said, was Derek “Drag’ Larsen, emaciated John McGeoch lookalike who ran on bathtub speed and fried chicken. And whose personal hygiene was a bit hit or miss. He didn’t know how to operate a washing machine. Fourth day hotel laundry was his only hope for clean smalls. And socks. It was the socks that sent Ginster over the edge. The smell. There may have been bad trainers involved too. Drag Larsen was a good drummer, though it pains me to say it. Used to put out burning cigarettes on his calloused hands.

Luka Bloom — You Couldn’t Have come at a Better Time

Steve Earle — Jerusalem

We were stopped in some dirt road rest area when Ginster, screaming with rage, jumped on Derek (known as Drag, as in Dragon, as in Dragon Tattoo, Girl With, due to his second name) and began trying to rip his (admittedly horrible and very cheap Hi-Tecs off, simultaneously retching:

“The socks! The socks! Get them off this bus, man!”

Finn separated the two of them, after a lengthy and confused struggle when it became plain that Drag’s socks had been on his feet so long they had become integrated with his skin in a horrific mixture of sweat, athlete’s foot, cheap nylon and Lynx deodorant, haplessly applied. And sheer dirt.

A furious Ginster walked off into the scrubland, and when he didn’t return after half an hour, with darkness falling and everyone apocalyptically fed up, Finn called for a democratic vote on whether we should just leave him and get on to Albuquerque, where the allotted slot for our soundcheck was rapidly diminishing. US club managers are ruthless about that kind of thing.

I was the only person on board that bus (me, Finn, Drag, keyboard player Krankie (Giles Lobban) and guitar tech, roadie and general drug finder Lexie Dobber Anderson) who voted to stay until he returned.

Daniel Lanois — The Maker

Brian Eno — By this River

So we went to Albuquerque, Dobber Anderson revealed a not entirely unsuspected memory for Ginster’s basslines (all those soundchecks) , and next day the tour was cancelled and the band as it was broke up. Finn went back to the UK, picked a bunch of London sessioneers, called the result Glamour Ghost, enlisted the Creighton’s, and rode the controversy over a lost bass player (“he just walked into the desert. Like Licorice McKechnie from the Incredible String Band…like in Paris Texas…like Richie Edwards”) to stardom and beyond.

And here we were.

Roxy Music — In Every Dream Home a Heartache

On the Broken Record Inn Jukebox and available as a Spotify playlist as well as on Mixcloud with the full text above in audio

https://www.mixcloud.com/tom-morton2/at-the-broken-record-inn-chapter-6-socks-cornish-pasties-and-a-loss/