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Here is a Couple of Chapters form JC's Book to get you interested
Nick Tesco
The first time I met Nicholas Lightowlers was on that train going from Waterloo to Camberley. I was commuting from Coutts & Co. in the Strand to Bagshot so it must have been 1975 or 1976. I remember it clearly: I was in a suit traveling from work and he was a student coming home for his holidays from Liverpool university. I don’t know how we got talking but I think we had a mutual friend friend called Virginia who did the commute. Nick is a very engaging guy and at the time he had this easy, welcoming smile that would draw you in. He would talk to anyone and everyone; he was open like a book and he had this rascally grin and mop of hair. He told me stories about how much fun it was at university and all the drinking and smoking they did and what a dissolute life he lived. It certainly made me feel like a dull and boring bank clerk which is what I was at the time. We had lots of friends in common around Camberley but weirdly I had never met him before, possibly because he had spent a lot of time at boarding school – from which he had been expelled – and had then gone onto university after a bit of travelling. He was dynamic and a dynamo, always with a pretty girl, always engineering himself into the best possible position. He was quite short but had that infectious effervescence. I remember being struck my him at our meeting and then not seeing him for two years.
The next time I heard from Nick he asked me to join The Members. I don’t know how this came about: I think he might have phoned me up. He told me he had a group with Gary Baker called The Members and he would like me to join. I have no idea why he asked me but perhaps it was because I lived in London and had a reputation around Camberley. Or maybe it was because I looked more punk then the rest of them.
Whatever it was it was inspired because to tell the truth I wasn’t really playing any music at the time. I was going to gigs but not playing. I knew
Gary Baker from jam sessions around Camberley. He was a great guitarist and I discovered that Nick and Gary had laid the foundations for a brilliant band. Nick had seen the Stranglers and that was it: he was sold on punk, he loved the darkness and poetry of The Doors and the rebelliousness of The Stones and when he heard The Stranglers he knew that is what he wanted to do.
It was 1977 and Nick and Gary already had a few shows under their belt – they had played The Roxy – when I joined. What made Nick and The Members special from the outset was that he had boundless energy and he was also a fantastic hustler. The story goes that he was at a party at a rehearsal studio and was writing lyrics on a piece of paper. He told a guy there that he was in a band and the guy was interested in managing them. He then went off and formed the band: they rehearsed in Tooley Street by London Bridge.
I don’t think Gary was exactly thrilled to have another guitarist in the band. I guess he didn’t like competition. I’m not sure if I did an audition: I remember going to the rehearsal studios in Tooley Street and then I was in the band. At the time they had a bass player called Steve Morley. Steve was
a good bass player but not really that well organised. Adrian Lillywhite the drummer was fantastic; he had an amazing feel and had learned some great chops playing with Egham progressive rock legends Z-Bendz. Gary was and still is a great guitarist and songwriter. His sometimes abrupt manner and economy with riffs made for a perfect punk guitarist: he had this white Strat with a Humbucker on the bridge that howled thru a Marshall amp. And as for Nick, what can I say? Nick had the vision and drive to make the band successful: he had an electric stage presence and women found him cute – he was like a Punk Rock Eric Burdon.
The core of Adrian, Gary, and Steve locked in solid and Nick had lots
of room to perform on top of it. At first I really didn’t know how I fitted into the equation. I think I was there because I didn’t look too hippy-ish:
I was hired for my looks! I also lived in London and the rest of the band lived around the A30 corridor in Surrey. They had management, the owners of the rehearsal studio in Tooley street, a couple of semi-gangsters called
Joe and Mike. I would head down to Tooley Street in my suit after work and we would rehearse. Wire rehearsed in the studio next store and we
met Ian Dury in the pub. He said to us he loved our look: we were kinda embarrassed because we were actually in our work suits – Nick was selling insurance at the time. My first show with The Members was at a place called The Red Deer in Croydon. We were playing with the UK Subs. The Members’ line-up was Adrian, Nick, Gary, Steve and me, and I remember Gary breaking a string and telling me to give him my guitar. I think I was expected to change his string. The UK Subs’ Charlie Harper was already
a legend on the scene: not only was he in the UK Subs, he was a busy
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hairdresser with a side project of a Blues and R&B band. We also though as he was about thirty that he was impossibly old. At the time Nick was calling himself Nicky Ritz, as Lightowlers did not exactly trip of the tounge. I was to christen him Tesco inspired by Nick Cash, Nick Tesco means to shoplift from the cheapest supermarket, Tesco was the cheapest at the time.
The Red Guitar
It was there at the rear of the shop, cheaper than the rest, retro, basic red sparkle paint-job, mother-of-pearl scratch plate... The guitar that I was going to buy. I’d already spent most of my budget on an amp. Blanks music store in Kilburn was the wrong end of the high road, across the street from the Shelley shoe shop near the Irish dance hall. The balding man working there looked bored out of his head, but at the back of the shop was this guitar. I knew it was the guitar for me; it would be the magic wand that would open a new world to me. It would become the guitar I would play in those early days; it would be my ticket out of the world of banking, shipping and insurance. It would be my Excalibur, my mystic rod... And it was there at the back of a music shop in Kilburn waiting for me to buy it. A Fender Music Master was the cheapest guitar that Fender made. It had two knobs and one pick up and I never touched either knob: both were permanently on full. I set the controls to maximum and that’s how they would remain until I finished the first Members’ album. I played nothing but that guitar until I bought a Jazzmaster because Elvis Costello had one: it had two pick-ups and lots of knobs which I didn’t touch either. There are not many pictures of me in ’77 and ’78 in The Members. But there is one of me playing that guitar in The Moonlight Club and one from The Hope & Anchor taken by my friend Ken. I will never forget the day I bought that guitar: it was something very special and life-changing.
It was really an entry level student guitar. But all I saw was the red sparkle finish and the mother of pearl scratchplate. When I plugged it into the Fender amp it produced this twangy clangy schlangy splashy sound that immediately reminded me of my favourite Surfaris record – ‘Wipe Out’. The Surfaris were a teenage version of The Ventures, resplendent in Bryl- creemed hair, acne and super-clean reverb-soaked guitar sound.
I decided straight away that this combination of guitar and amplifier would be my trademark sound. The next thing I did was to change the strings for the heaviest possible gauge. I used a top string that was a 13 and a bottom string that was a a 56: this made the guitar even twangier, like Duane Eddy on steroids. It was the perfect foil for Gary’s Humbuckered Stratocaster. To complete my look I went out and bought myself some pale blue Brinylon trousers and some sort of devore pink shirt. This was my post-punk pop outfit for the dives and pubs I would be playing on the London circuit. From The Vortex to The Moonlight Club to the Rochester Castle to The Red Cow.
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