New Page 4

I'm Gonna Rough My Girlfriend's Boyfriend Up Tonight / I'm Famous Now

Catalogue Number - KOW 6

Label - Korova Records

Year Of Release - 1980


Tony Lordan Bass	Vaughn Toulouse Vocals	John Hasler Drums	Mike Herbage Guitar

* Wilshy played Mouth Harp on the debut single

GFH were born of a blag. Arguably the only group to gain notoriety without actually existing. Tony Lordan, Vaughan Toulouse and Gary Crowley were gig going mates who decided to form a band, the only set back being that none of them could play an instrument. Such minor details didn't put the lads off and they proceeded to have badges printed and stickers made. Within a matter of 6 weeks the London Underground system was awash with GFH stickers and badges were appearing on lapels. The major catalyst leading up to the GFH single was an event at Friars Aylesbury. The lads were at a gig all proudly displaying GFH badges, when a punter came up to one of them claiming to have seen said non existent band live the week before and that 'they were great'!!!!! Crowley relayed this story to his boss, Clive Banks , who seeing an opportunity decided to bank roll a single by Guns For Hire. All fine and well, but what were the lads going to do about writing a song and then playing the bastard thing!? I was a friend of Tony's and he knew I played guitar so he asked me to help out. I went to a rehearsal with the lads, along with John Hasler on drums. John had been the original drummer with Madness. I came up with a tune and Vaughan came up with words and that is where 'I'm gonna rough my girlfriends boyfriend up tonight' was born.

It all got very amusing rolling with the 'blag'. Terry Hall paid for us to do some demos and Elvis Costello said he loved the single. It got to the stage where we had to play live so we came up with some more originals written by me and Toulouse. We also threw in some covers to the set, including 'Editions of You' by Roxy Music and 'Ejection' by Hawkwind off shoot Captain Lockheed and the Starfighters. We played our first gig at the Rock Garden which was attended by the likes of Cook and Jones, Shane McGowan and Bananarama and Shanne Bradley. It was 'A drunken Bloody Mess' but managed to get a decent review in NME. By this stage the band had decided that the 'joke' had been taken as far as it could but had enjoyed the Rock'n'Roll experience and decided to carry on as Department S.

Enter Eddie Roxy and Stuart Mizon, but that's another and very complicated story!

Mike Herbage