Secret Affair – The Glory Boys

New Hearts

Ian Page, born June 1960 and David Cairns, born in Walthamstow November 1959, the creative force behind Secret Affair, met at Loughton College in Essex.  Ian Page recalls, “Well I was 16 and at college when I met Dave. Originally I am from Ilford. I couldn’t do ‘A’ levels there; because I come from an area if you have got an O level you are called a poof. So I used to catch the 167 bus, which was an hour and a half journey to Loughton College. The college hall had a wonderful Bechstein Piano, which I would sit there and play….a lot of Bowie, tunes like Changes and Life on Mars. Dave Cairns had recently become a member of a new wave punk band, and the story as I understand it, but Dave might remember it differently was their singer Adrian, had fallen in love with a girl and gone to Denmark in the middle of them working on a demo. So they had no one to finish this demo and because they knew I was a bloke who sat in the corner, played the piano and could sing, they asked me to sing on the demos and that was it”.

David Cairns confirms Ian’s recollection, “I was writing new wave stuff with a bass player, John Harty and a drummer Rob Milne, and we were looking for a front man/singer. There was a great deal of freedom at the college, you could wander in and play the grand piano while Mark Knopfler used to teach guitar on Wednesday afternoons - he actually advised me not to go professional, although soon after he left teaching and went pro himself. We met Ian; he used to play the piano in the main hall. He quickly became our lyricist and co-writer and we went off and cut a demo in London”.

Ian and Dave found they shared similar tastes in music, films and youth culture.  Dave Cairns explains, “Inspiration was really my brothers record collection; Stones, The Who, Hendrix, Beatles, Small Faces etc.  I loved any guitarist who could play it all without needing a ‘lead guitarist’ wailing away, Steve Marriott being one of the best.  Speaking personally I had been blown away seeing Bowie as Ziggy Stardust at The Rainbow and The Who at Charlton football ground.  I was a huge fan of Quadrophenia the album, in fact just about anything by The Who; but Ian would have come from an entirely different place.  You’d have to ask him”?  Ian Page; “My older brother was and is a big record collector.  He was collecting Motown and Soul first time around, in the mid-sixties while I was still at primary school. He and I used to go to judo every Sunday but we got bored of that so we used to bunk off and go to Petticoat Lane. Petticoat was heaving with record stalls, little wooden boxes with Trojan, Harry J and the All Stars, Upsetters and records like that. And the first record I nicked under his direction was Jimmy Cliff’s Love of the Common People. I got to hear it all – from Berry Gordy to The Jackson's.  Its music I’ll always love.  I love many kinds of music though, so the choice of direction has always been my own”.

Ian and Dave had gone to college to do ‘A’ levels, though such academic goals were quickly forgotten in the intoxicating onset of Punk. “I was really inspired by what was going on,” Dave Cairns recalls. “I didn’t like the idea of ripping clothes and the ridiculous hair, but we thought….great! Surely this was going to give young bands a chance. That’s why we left college – we felt that strongly about it. We put on the stuff that we wanted to wear – these blazers made out of deck chair material – and stormed out there and said, ‘OK, Punk revolution, give us a chance”! The New Hearts started to pick up a sizable following on the London gig circuit, and by early autumn 1977, with all the record companies wanting a piece of the Punk scene the mighty CBS Records signed the band to a five year contract.  As the average age of the band members was seventeen and a half years old, the contracts had to be witnessed by their parents. 

In October the band, now with Matt Macyntyre on drums, ventured into the studio to record the first of two singles for CBS.  Just Another Teenage Anthem c/w Blood on the Knife CBS5800 was released on 18^th November 1977 as their debut single.  Dave Cairns, “I wrote the early ‘New Hearts’ songs with John Harty.  They were basic new wave songs, but Ian quickly developed an attitude about what was happening in the music industry, which wasn’t my focus as a writer.  He came to dislike the punk scene too”.  Ian explains, “As seventeen year olds’ we felt that in London in particular the punk movement was proving to be a sham, it was not driven by the people we thought it was, and certainly didn’t have the meaning we thought it had.  I thought it was a working man’s revolution that was going to knock away the top essence of the Rock and Roll hierarchy. What I didn’t think was that it was a King’s Road monopoly manipulated by an entrepreneur who owned a clothes shop. I became quickly disillusioned. At the heart of the movement there was a rightful naivety; that all teenagers want their own revolution that they all want their own anthem and punk was just another phase of that.

This song (Just Another Teenage Anthem) was a way of saying; we know this has been done before but we’re doing it now and that’s what makes it new”.  The flip side of the single was Blood on the Knife, a title inspired by a 1966 John Mayall live album track called ‘Blood On The Night’. Ian explains, “Whenever I listen to it now it sounds more R&B than it does punk, except that it’s played too fast. A good example of Dave coming up with a whole array of fantastic guitar chops and imposing a set of melodies over the top.  We were trying to take the energy, commitment and passion of new wave, while still being melodic”.   

Dave explains how he developed his guitar playing style; “I’m actually left-handed, but found it impossible to learn anything from anyone or read the music for guitars.  The real problem was picking up tips from right-handed players and books.  I think I did start playing upside down but with the option of leaving the strings as they are or putting a new nut in and stringing it the other way around or whatever, I decided to tough it out which was pretty strange to start with; so I forced myself to change over to right-handed which was bloody difficult but led me to have quite an unusual style; I think, as it still feels quite normal to turn the guitar around and strum it leftie”. 

October 1977 saw New Hearts record their sole radio session for BBC’s John Peel Show.  On the 3^rd of October, the band recorded four tracks, Revolution, What Revolution? Love’s Just a Word, Here Comes The Ordinaries and Just Another Teenage Anthem.  The tracks were recorded in just a day in Studio 4 at the BBC’s Maiden Vale studio complex with producer Malcolm Brown and engineer Dave Dade.  The session was transmitted on the 14^th of October but failed to inspire the record buying public.

The New Hearts shared similar musical influences with another up and coming band, Paul Weller’s The Jam, who hailed from Woking, Surry. Ian Page continues, “The New Hearts were simultaneous with The Jam.  We often chased The Jam up and down the country trying to blag a gig, We had read in the music papers like the NME, what bands like the Sex Pistols had done was to turn up at other people’s gigs and say “We are your support bands, can we play” and that’s how they got gigs. Now I don’t believe that to be true, but at the time we did. So we turned up at the Dammed, The Stranglers and tried out this scam. The New Hearts got quite a few gigs like that. We all liked the Jam, and we went to see them at a gig in Croydon, The Greyhound I think, we wore our stage clothes and hung about their dressing room. As they rushed past we done our usual blag that we had done with bands like the Dammed, The Jam found it hilarious.

There were many similarities between The Jam and the New Hearts, with the sixties thing but we were much punkier than them to be honest. From that time onwards they offered us a lot of support and they helped us. John Weller helped us to get a couple of gigs, but we were up there learning the ropes.  We weren’t good enough. It was lack of musicianship in a lot of ways. The ideas we had were like high energy and very sixties but there was no dance beat. Nobody could dance to the New Hearts – it was bad musicianship in the rhythm section”.  New Hearts supported The Jam on their 25 date nationwide Modern World tour during November 1977 and continued a hectic live schedule into the next year, making their one and only TV appearance on actress Pauline Quirke’s teen magazine programme, ‘Pauline’s People‘.

By the time the bands follow up single Plain Jane c/w My Young Teacher CBS6381 was recorded at Konk studios in April 1978, Matt Macyntyre had vacated the drum stool to be replaced by Jamie Crompton.  The single was produced by Martin Gordon from the Radio Stars and was another proficient piece of power pop.  Ian explains; “Melodic new wave punk had evolved into this burgeoning concept of power pop.  We saw this as a real way ahead and came up with a much poppier record.  It was make or break for us”.  Unfortunately again the band failed to make an impact on the charts and soon afterwards imploded. Jamie Crompton left to join the Radio Stars only to rejoin after legal action by New Hearts Management.  He appeared on the Radio Stars LP, The Holiday Album, wearing a rubber Mickey Mouse head and a t-shirt saying ‘I am Jamie Crompton!’  Dave explains; “By the time we split, we were totally demoralised.  There had been a real division between us two (Ian and Dave) and the rhythm section (John Harty and Jamie Crompton).  We wanted to go less power pop and more sixties pop”. The New Hearts played their last ever gig at Reading Festival that year, and then John Harty briefly joined The Ordinary’s a band who took their name from a New Hearts song. CBS retained the contracts of Dave and Ian as songwriters enabling them to take advantage of unlimited access to CBS Studios, often working with in-house engineer Simon Humphrey, later a vital ally.  Dave Cairns; “We realised our punk credibility was shot to pieces and we just started experimenting”.  Ian elaborates, “Dave and I were forced to work together, just after the New Hearts split I went round to his house and we started writing some songs”.

Ambitious Youth

Ian Page explains how this experimentation led to a new direction, “The first song we ever wrote together was Glory Boys. I’d invented this Glory Boys concept, which was my reaction to being told that I wasn’t any good and if I am going to be honest the real idea was like a spiv; a black shirt and white tie, clothes being very important”.  The Glory Boy image had been inspired by Ian and Dave’s fascination with the 1970 film Performance, directed by Nicholas Roeg (who also directed Fahrenheit 451, The Man Who Fell To Earth starring David Bowie and Don’t Look Now starring Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland). Performance starred James Fox, the slick sharp dressed fixer working for a London gangster mob; who after the gangland killing of his former childhood friend needs to hide out.  Fox takes refuge from Mick Jagger, who plays the part of a reclusive rock star, becoming Fox’s unwitting landlord in a psychedelic styled house in Notting Hill.

Dave explains, “We couldn’t get the film Performance out of our minds. Gangsters James Fox and Anthony Valentine had a very modish 1970 look and that’s where we took the style”.  Ian continues, “We were both very movie-esque in our understanding of that we wanted to do and very conscious of how influenced the two of us were by music as a youth movement.  We believed that lyrics and album titles should be themed and that every teenage movement should have an anthem.  I began thinking about this story of a gang of aspirational London boys hanging out on Soho streets. A new kind of kid: walking up and down Wardour Street, taking the place over. And what they were was kids with suss – they knew about the inside of the music business which made them cynics, but it was because they knew so much that they could be optimistic. That’s why they could change things. – They became the Glory Boys.  After we’d written that song, we decided exactly what we were going to do, what we were going to sound like, everything.  We actually said then that we were going to be more like a sixties Mod band.  But we didn’t know then that this whole Mod thing was going to come about. No one believes this. But I swear to you we had the spiv thing, the smart dress thing, the soul music and the sixties thing. We put that all together, then we looked at each other and realised we were mods. It was just so natural. We knew our thing could never be bigger than a whole generation of British culture”.

Dave Cairns recalls “The whole East End sixties gangster look was what Ian and I wanted to emulate, it was not a deliberate attempt to be mod but it was a closely aligned look.” Dave explains how various people were moving in a similar direction but had not yet agreed a collective identity.  “The word Mod shouldn’t be used.  This lifestyle, this way of life, the Glory Boys was being nurtured.  You could see then that there were five or six kids into dressing smart and they were called something other then Mod”.  Ian Page elaborates, “As members of New Hearts, Dave and I supported The Jam many times from 1977 onwards.  There was no Mod movement active at the time.  No one called themselves Mods. Its funny ‘cos the New Hearts had always been very strictly a sixties based band, the clothes as well. I used to wear a red suit – that was a big mod thing- Dave used to wear ties and button downs, all the band used to wear stripped blazers but we never used to say we were mod ‘cos we weren’t conscious of that. Us and the Jam were the only two bands at the time who looked smart and interestingly enough when we first toured with them in ’77 the papers called it The March of the Mods. When our second single came out one reviewer said ‘this lot sound as if they could be riding Vespas and wearing parkas! But the mod thing crept up on us. Later around late 1978/79 when the Mod movement became active we were already involved, right at the start.  So we weren’t surprised at all.  I started off calling the Mod thing Glory Boys, which took away all the idea of it being a revival. The only thing wrong with the movement is the usage of the word mod. But we know that mod is only an abbreviation of modern, and our alternative is Glory Boys, anyway, and we can’t do more than that. We can’t help being called a mod band and we can’t help sharing a lot of the ideals of the old mod bands.” 

Left with a bitter resentment of an industry they held responsible for the destruction of their first band, Ian and Dave were determined to do things their own way. Dave Cairns; “Everything that could have gone wrong with our previous band New Hearts, went wrong from the day we signed to CBS records who had no idea how to market the group.  Ian and I simply wanted to continue working together and get it right; Secret Affair was the vehicle for that”. 

Ian Page states his case, “Let’s forget all this stuff about Keith Moon and artists being set to self destruct.  It’s the music business turning them in to do that, destroying its artists and thus forming itself into a tighter more concise industry.  Let’s look at it in harsh business terms.  A rapid turn over of artists can only exist if you have an artist; Wham! Bam! Bang! Number One, Number One, Dead!  So then you get another one that’s the only way you can keep things going.  Andy Warhol got it wrong when he said “in the future everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes”.  Really, business men will require fifteen minutes of fame from every artist”. 

Ian continues; “When we formed the band we were just so pissed off, so cynical that we decided that if we couldn’t make it on the strength of just being a good live band then we wouldn’t bother. The original idea; was that we’d go out and do so well live that we’d build up a really big following, so we literally had to be signed up - like the Banshees. We set ourselves a two-year plan to try and ensure that we never sell ourselves out. It began with finding our dream band, then setting up our own record label, through which we’d have complete control over our own records, the packaging and marketing of them and who we decided to record for the label. We all had a real no bullshit attitude to what we were gonna do. We weren’t gonna let anybody get their hooks in, y’ know. It was the old cliché, if it works or if it falls to pieces we’ve done exactly what we’ve wanted to do with no compromises – we don’t need them bastards. If anybody was interested they’re quite welcome to come along but then they’d be in on the secret”.

Ian and Dave placed an advert for ambitious youth who; “must have a grudge against the business”.  Ian Page admits though “To be honest, we didn’t get much response to that ad, apart from the odd call. ‘Yeah, I’ve got a grudge against the music business and can I join your band”. They first recruited drummer Chris Bennet formerly of Alternative TV and along with an old friend Rob Milne on bass they recorded their first demo in CBS studios.  These recording sessions over two days resulted in the following songs being laid down; Glory Boys, Seen That Movie Too, Don’t Look Down, Sunday Girls and My World. Ten days later Ian and Dave went on to recruit bassist Dennis Smith formerly of the band Advertising after they met up over a pint at the Crooked Billet in Walthamstow. 

Ian Page explains “I used to go to a lot of gigs, and in particular I loved The Young Bucks with Seb Shelton as their drummer. I used to see Advertising a lot, and from watching them I could see what a brilliant musician Dennis was. Advertising had a sixties essence about them and the Young Bucks were a Soul band. I was thinking this could work, we have the Soul thing here, and the Sixties thing there”. Although Chris Bennet played early gigs, the band weren’t happy with Bennet and finally managed to filch Seb Shelton from the Young Bucks in April to replace him. Ian Page reflects, “The secret of a good band or a good piece of music is the collaboration. You don’t have to like the same thing, but you do have to have the same references. So I could say to Dennis, you know the bass riff from Mustang Sally, and he knew what I was talking about. So in the end Dave and I hired the best two musicians we could get. Why they joined I do not know. I suppose that Dave and I are very persuasive and we had a backlog of songs, with record company support even though we wanted to get out of our record label. The other thing that separated Dave and I from most musicians is that we had a plan. We said we had a vision that we could move the Punk thing along, and recall the sixties influence. The kids are going to be called Glory Boys, and there is going to be a fashion movement. There won’t just be a bunch of songs; this was going to be the whole thing”.

Secret Affair

Ian Page explains how they arrived at the name Secret Affair; “We’ve always been into anything sixties based so we knew how we were going to look.  Even if there hadn’t been a Mod movement out there we would still have referred to that in any case.  We were keen to be as opposite to Punk as we could, in a way we looked and the way we came across.  There wasn’t much point of looking elsewhere, it was already happening, people were reacting against all those scruff bags, we wanted something that fitted.  The word Affair is from the band Love Affair, it was a kinda sixties term.  The Thomas Crown Affair, for example, a classic sixties thing, that kinda feel. A word for a gathering of people.  We needed something that would convey that feeling of being special, set apart from the mainstream.  Nothing better than being in on a secret that no one else knows about, so we put the two together.  It was something you’d see in the papers, especially the Sunday ones, just that extra essence of naughtiness, not too politically correct.  It was a kinda thing me and Dave were into.  A lot of detail went into what we were going to do”.

Secret Affair played their first gig supporting The Jam at a pre tour warm up show at Reading University on the 16^th February 1979.  Dave Cairns recalls, “At first John Weller was going to be our manager.  He paid for us to rehearse.  He managed to get the head of CBS down to see us, but the guy couldn’t see further then the nose on his face, told us we were wasting our time and that was that.  At this time all the music business people could see coming out of any interest in Mod was a situation where maybe old Who and Small Faces records would start selling again.  They couldn’t suss out that there was a whole new music scene starting.  Then of course a bit later on we got the front page of Sounds which made them finally prick up their ears and they (CBS) refused to release us from our (New Hearts) contract”. Although CBS had stopped paying retainers four months earlier Ian and Dave were not released from contract until May 1979 and had to live off savings and gig income. 

The first public appearance at Reading University was doubly important because Secret Affair discovered they weren’t alone in their embrace of sixties style.  Ian Page explains, “We did the gig and there were Mods there and they liked us. We were strolling about afterwards and they came up to us and said ‘F***in hell! What’s all this then?’ Because, don’t forget, The Jam don’t dress like this (he indicates his spotless tonic suit) offstage. They all came from Dagenham: Dave Lawrence, Ian Stratton, Grant Flemming. They said; ‘look, we’re Mods, there’s quite a lot of us, and what we’re really looking for – I mean we love ‘The Jam’ – but we’re looking for a band of our own, because they’ve already made it, they’re famous already.  What we want is a band that’s part of us’.  We said, ’Where do we play?’ ‘A pub called the Barge Aground in Barking, go down there any night, but Friday’s the best’.” Ian continues, “I walked in and there it was; a sea of suits, parkas and hairstyles! Fucking blew me out! I thought; they’re all Glory Boys! But too late, they were Mods.  They said ‘we chose Mods, we like what they did and now we’re going to make something of our own out of it’.  That’s how our following started.  The similarities between what we were writing and what was happening were so potent that the kids were automatically attracted to us.  Some people struggled with calling themselves Mods, especially The Jam.  The biggest scene at the time was at any Secret Affair gig”.

David Cairns answers critics who say he and Ian used Mod; “No more than anyone else. You’ve only got to look back to 1965 to see how The Who jumped on the Mod band wagon even then.  New Hearts had been playing, (like The Jam) to a mainly punk audience to start with, but we would wear second hand suit jackets, button down shirts and ties and we noticed more and more Mods turning up to gigs.  New Hearts had a great agent who stuck with us and began booking gigs for Secret Affair but didn’t charge commission so we could survive and develop the band.  We supported The Jam and had plenty of our own gigs, at which people from The Jam shows would turn up and that’s how it grew until we could fill The Bridge House, Canning Town and didn’t need support slots.  We also worked the whole country supporting acts like The Pretenders; it was just good old fashioned hard work on the road that broke the band, not band wagon jumping as a lot of people thought.  When we first got together record companies said; no way.  Mod is never going to happen.  Well we knew it was and wanted to become part of it”. Ian Page reiterates this point, “Secret Affair broke on the strength of a 3 week residency at The Marquee. In the third week we sold it out – all without management or record company support – just the help of our superb agency Cowbell and a very nice gentleman named Martin Hopewell”.

Mods Mayday 79

The Bridge House Tavern in Canning Town became the residency to Secret Affair and the focal point of the Mod scene in East London.  This mock Tudor pub situated right off the Canning Town flyover had been turned, by the proprietor Terry Murphy, into the most highly regarded live venue in East London.  The Murphy’s were a famous East End boxing family and Glen, Terry’s son, was involved in the Mod scene from the early days (Glen went on to become a star in the television series London’s Burning).  Secret Affair were the first Mod band to play at Bridge House and pulled in 400 people.  Terry Murphy recalls; “Secret Affair came in like millions of bands did.  They were nice and tidy in collars and ties – it was the way I used to dress when I was young.  I asked them what kind of music they played, and they said ‘a bit of soul, a bit of rhythm and blues’ so I knew straight away they were a Mod band.  I booked ‘em for the following week and billed it as Mods Monday.  I gave them a residency after that”.

So began the Mod Mondays and every week bands like The Scooters, Les Elite, The Little Roosters, Purple Heart’s, The Chords, The Mods, Back To Zero and The Small Hours would play, with their own set of fans making the trip and meeting up.  In this way the scene started to develop and reach out beyond each bands hard core local follower’s, but it was Terry Murphy’s idea to record six of the emerging Mod bands for a live album on his own Bridge House record label that would ultimately immortalise the name of the pub.  “The previous year I’d put out a live album called A Week at the Bridge, and I’d wanted to do another one.  I thought this Mod thing was great so I got the bands together – Secret Affair were the leaders, without a shadow of a doubt, and I was looking at other bands with the album in mind”.

 Neil Thompson singer of The Small Hours recalls, “The Bridge House gig was probably about our fifth or sixth gig, we hadn’t done many.  We’d only played the Brecknock residency about three times in Camden and loads of Mods started turning up, so obviously we were on the grapevine.  People used to hold us up as being the authentic ones because we had that big organ sound and because we used to do a lot of obscure old northern soul covers.  But I think we got invited to play at the Mods Mayday gig because Terry Murphy has seen us on a bill organised by John Weller.  Terry Murphy was quite paternal towards everyone.  He was a bit of an East End gangster but was a cool geezer and he used to be very supportive of bands.  The Bridge House was one of the best places to play in London really”.

Along with Secret Affair the other bands on the Mods Mayday bill were rhythm and blues band Beggar, North London’s The Mods, the soul stomping Small Hours and the Talbot brother’s Merton Parkas from South London’s Merton Park.  Simon Smith drummer with the Parkas recalls; “It was the first time that we met a lot of the people who were going to be part of this big Mod phenomenon.  We felt quite humble really because although we had a very hard core following in South London, we had no real following outside of there.  Everything happened so quickly.  We were playing at The Wellington and The Castle, there was a bit of a scene starting, but it was nothing more.  That one day – Mods Mayday – was probably the starting pistol really. 

I think all the bands on that day were a good contrast, because although they were part of a niche, they were all quite different.  I thought the Small Hour’s were great – they were a bit different and I thought the singer had an interesting voice.  I like the whole dynamics of the band.  I’d not seen Secret Affair before, although we did quite a few gigs with them afterwards, and I remember thinking how they were really going to do something.  I knew from that day, they were obviously going to be the major players because they had the confidence.  The first person I bumped into was Anthony Meynell of ‘Squire’ and I asked him where the stage was.  I thought ‘I kind of know you’, because they looked vaguely like the description they had at the time – a bunch  of Italian hairdressers”.

The Little Roosters has been booked to play but failed to show and by luck Squire having heard of a gig featuring numerous Mod bands turned up on the off chance of being allowed to play.  Anthony Meynell explains; “We knew having gigged with The Mods quite a few times, that there was a gig at the Bridge House that was to be recorded for an LP.  We wasn’t invited as we wasn’t well known, so we just got a van and went up there for the hell of it.  The Little Roosters hadn’t shown up so we were told we could go on first.  We had taken some people up, so we played our hearts out in front of the people who were already showing up.  There wasn’t a sea of green parkas in the crowd if you know what I mean.  They were wearing the Glory Boys stuff, much more suited up. After we played we watched the whole gig; after all, this was the competition.  This was where I could see it all in one hit; I was there to the bitter end because I wanted to see how Secret Affair did.  My experience with Secret Affair started earlier because we’d seen them play their first ever gig, supporting The Jam at Reading university in February.  When they were doing The Jam thing they were a little bit anonymous.  I mean, you can’t play your first gig supporting The Jam and think you’re going to make much of a dent, but at the Bridge House they were much more confident.  I watched them and thought ‘Jeeesus, these boys are going to be big”.

Terry Murphy; “The whole day was like a competition, every band had to top the last one.  Of course Secret Affair had the biggest audience but all the bands brought their own fans and they were all trying to show who had the noisiest crowd, it was a blinding night.  It was supposed to finish at 10:30pm but we were probably still recording until 11:30pm.  The idea was to record five or six songs by each of the bands then at nine o’clock at night Secret Affair would go on and we’d record all of their set”. Neil Thompson recalls; “Mod gigs always used to be mental.  Loads of people would be doing speed and were pissed up and you’d get the odd scuffle; gigs at that time did have an edge to them.  They used to be rammed too, they used to break every fire regulation going; you’d get people standing on furniture to see”.

Secret Affair were by far the most imaginative of the bands and headlined playing their full stage set which included ten original Cairns and Page songs, The Temptations Get Ready and Smokey Robinson’s Going To A Go Go. The latter song allowed Ian Page to show off his Herb Al impression on his trumpet, which had become an integral part of their act after Dave Cairns had persuaded Ian to bring it along to one of their practice sessions.  The highlight of their performance was one of Ian Page’s favourite songs. “I’m Not Free, But I’m Cheap is about the phoniness of fame”, explains Ian; “It had all the elements I liked.  A hard rhythm and blues sound, the horn work was good.  Dave and me with that trumpet guitar interplay.  I think we were much better live than studio recorded in any case”.  Looking back on the whole night Ian reflects, “It was very hot and the atmosphere was really special, but I’m not sure whether the crowd were aware that they were taking part in something particularly historical.  What was so good about that venue was that it had already established itself as the place to go in that part of London, so it was more like a party then anything else”.

The whole evening was recorded on Ronnie Lane’s (of the Small Faces) mobile studio and a selection of the performances, were featured on the live showcase Mods Maydays 79 album.  The album was cut at Trident studios and released on the 29^th June that year.  It captured the energy and excitement of the emerging Mod scene and in a favourable review in the Sounds magazine Gary Bushell did his best to set this new wave of Mod into some kind of context for those who did not understand.  “What’s going on ain’t so much a revival as a renewal”, he wrote.  “It’s not about trying to recreate the sixties, rather, it’s about taking the best of those former glories as a basis to build something new on”.

The album showcased fifteen new numbers by five of the bands; The Merton Parkas having signed their own record deal with Beggars Banquet were not featured on the album, the record label insisting The Parkas tracks were pulled at the last minute.  Simon Smith;  “I remember at the time thinking that it was a bit of a silly thing to do pull out of it, but we actually weren’t given a say.  In retrospect I wish we’d been on it in the first place – pulling out of the album caused a lot of negative feedback”.  Ian Page comments, “I think we were a bit more savvy, even to the extent that afterwards myself and Dave Cairns mixed our own tracks.  That’s because we were savvy enough to ask whether we could.  But our most positive contribution towards the album was that we went on to use our relationship with Aristra Records to ensure it was effectively distributed.  We also included an insert in the Glory Boys album, flagging up the fact that the Mods Mayday LP was out there and I’m sure the fact that Time For Action was a hit helped Mods Mayday into the charts.  We were pleased by that – we thought it was great that our little bit of success was able to expose all these other great bands”.

For the record Secret Affair had signed their contract with Arista at the time of recording Mods Mayday and Bryan Morrison their publisher helped create the opportunity for Bridge House records to have the album distributed by Arista for which Bridge House records received an advance. Arista therefore only acted as distributor for a limited period and did not own the rights to the recording. Regretfully for the bands Bridge House records went out of business in 1982 and left 4 years of missing royalties and accounts.

The first 500 copies of the album were emblazoned with the famous 15 new nunbers spelling mistake on the front cover, producing the Mod scene’s first rare record and in September the album peaked at number 75 in the album charts.  The album went on to gain cult status and over the years has been re-pressed, re-issued, bootlegged and sequeled. In 1995 the entire recorded set was sold to Trojan Records and Ian and Dave were invited into the studio to see what condition the tapes were in? Tragically the recordings had not been stored appropriately and several tracks literally disintegrated as they were being played. Gone for good! Trojan records were eventually bought by Sanctuary records who released what has to be the ultimate package; two compact discs containing all surviving tracks in their original set order.

Anthony Meynell sums up its importance, “It seems to be the must have record.  If you’re a Mod and you haven’t got a Mods Mayday in your collection, where were you?  Being on the album had a vital impact for us.  At the time we had direction but not a lot of contact.  Because we were on the album we had been heard.  More than that, the songs had been heard. Face of Youth Today, B.A.B.Y Baby Love and Walking Down Kings Road were all in the set already, they just hadn’t been recorded yet.  Being on Mods Mayday was really important for us”.

I Spy

A gig at The Music Machine on the 20^th May brought the kind of review that was beginning to make Secret Affair one of the hottest tickets in town.  James Parade of the Record Mirror wrote, “Secret Affair do not need to ride on the rejuvenation of a craze from the last decade.  Ian Page’s vocals and trumpet and Dave Cairns’ perfect 1967 rhythm and blues guitar were almost faultless.  If you like Mods, go and see Secret Affair and if you don’t like Mods, go and see Secret Affair”.  Secret Affair found themselves in the media spotlight and on the front page of Sounds music magazine, which featured a four page article on Mod – The Story So Far.  That week Secret Affair also appeared on the front page of the NME, becoming one of the few bands to achieve appearing on the front pages of Sounds and NME in the same week.  Secret Affair were approached by record companies and finally signed a licensing deal with Arista Records.  Arista agreed to market and to distribute products recorded for Secret Affair’s own label, ‘I Spy Records’.

Ian Page; “We turned down all sorts of ridiculous deals until we found one which would meet our conditions.  One company offered us a cheque with a £200,000 limit, we signed the label (I Spy) to Arista for a lot less but at least the money we get back will be our own.  We signed because they had a small labels approach though they were quite big. Me and Dave are in complete control of everything that happens.  There’s no managers or middlemen at the moment.  We’re trying to prove that we can do it exterior to the music business.  You can run things yourselves and do it your own way”.  Dave Cairns gives credit where it is due; “As I’ve said we had a great booking agent who worked us to death.  Our publisher Bryan Morrison handled some of the business management but essentially we were self-managed; we were never manipulated or pushed in any direction not of our own choice”.

Page and Cairns intention was to emulate the sixties labels such as Motown, Stax and Immediate which had their own style and sound.  The symbol for the label as for Secret Affair became a white keyhole on a black background.  Ian Page explains the special aura they created; “When we first put it together we knew we had Time For Action as a single.  We wanted to convey this feeling of being special, being in on a secret.  The first fly posters we put up – we didn’t post the gigs, just fly posted the single.  It was just a black poster with a white keyhole and Time For Action at the bottom, without mentioning the name of the band.  It was our way of putting a message across.  People seeing it may have thought it was a bizarre religious sect or weird political movement, something to spark a bit of interest.  I remember a lot of keyholes on the back of a lot of parkas at the time.  It was an association of belonging!

Having built up a large and dedicated following, of which a sizeable contingent were the East London Glory Boys, Secret Affair stated to stretch their wings, playing a prestigious gig with North England’s leading Mod band The Killermeters. However like many bands around that time, Secret Affair gigs seemed to attract probably more than their fair share of violence.  Ian Page comments; “I don’t know; the following of pop music at the time was very different to how it is now.  Gigs had more in common with being a football fan to be honest with you.  I’ll never forget we had our London following sorted out and it was all getting a bit much, a bit heavy, so we thoughts lets go up North where nobody knows us and hopefully none of that goes on.  Little did we know, we turned up, I think we were playing with The Killermeters and all the London lot turned up.  It was like instead of thinking here’s some people from another part of the country who think the same as me; they all wanted to fight each other.  Very little we could do about it; it was a problem for us for years.  You can’t dump on people who are after all willing to travel to see you play.  It was very similar to the problems football teams had.  They didn’t control it, they just put up with it.  Promoters were not willing to take on any special measures other than the usual; just a load of heavy bouncers who made it worse rather than better”.

Vic Vespa of The Killermeters remembers what happened well, “We did a gig with Secret Affair and there was a massive fight outside between northerners and southerners.  We had a lot of northern scooter clubs turning up and Secret Affair brought a couple of coach loads of Glory Boys with them.  It was a lovely summer night and the Great Hall of Huddersfield Polytechnic was lined with scooters outside.  Once the trouble started, the coaches that Secret Affair fans came in had their windows smashed.  It was horrendous.  We never played with Secret Affair again.  We were supposed to go on tour with them when our single came out, but we got dropped.  The thing is; we actually liked the other bands, even Secret Affair.  I wouldn’t begrudge their success, they were a great band”. 

Goffa Gladding of the Maximum Speed Fanzine explains this north/south divide; “You used to get some lively encounters with local scooter boys and particularly in, what was for me being a southerner, the more remote outposts if you like.  Not so much in the big cities like Liverpool and Manchester.  The scooter boys had their own scene going and I think they thought us ludicrous calling ourselves Mods, when a lot of us wouldn’t know one end of a scooter from the other.  That was their attitude, but our Mod was not that really, ours was more about the music.  When you got outside London you’d meet a lot of these guys and there’d be a ‘look at the state of his flares’ type of attitude, but that’s what they were into, stitching beer mats onto parkas and wearing big flares and very scooter based”.

Time for Action

Secret Affair’s debut single, Time for Action c/w Soho Strut (See 1) was a rousing anthem for the emerging Mod scene.  This single was recorded at Ad vision studios.  Dave Cairns explains; “I wrote it in about five minutes on a bass guitar.  Our publisher Bryan Morrison said ‘you guys have no time to loose; you’ve got to get that single recorded’.  While the deal with Arista was being negotiated, he lent us the money to go into the studio”.  Ian Page jokes: “On the understanding that if we didn’t return it within sixty days he’d sue us”.  Released on the 17^th August the single sold 198,000 copies.  It Stayed in the listed charts for ten weeks and peaked at number 13 in September.  However it might not have happened.  Looking back Page admits; “I never wanted to put it out, even though I knew it was a good pop song.  If felt it would have been wiser to hold on to it until we achieved some level of credibility – I was wrong, but that’s how I saw it at the time”.  Page preferred the single’s B-side Soho Strut.  “This was the kind of recording that I thought we should put out as a single, knowing it wouldn’t have been a hit.  If this had come out first it would have stamped our allegiance to a musical line rather than a fashion”.

Time For Action recreated the atmosphere of a live performance, Ian Page explained; “We got 20 of the Glory Boys who followed us around, got them all pissed, stood them in a room and left them to act the way they would at a gig.  We put it on a loop tape; it was the backing atmosphere for the whole track”.  Page and Cairns produced the single with the assistance of engineer Simon Humphrey, a combination which lasted until their third album.

Dave Cairns continues; “With New Hearts we had such duff producers that this time round we said to Arista ‘either you find a producer we’re happy with or we’ll do it ourselves’.  They didn’t so we did”. Ian Page; “We’ve got all the sounds we want on the single.  A really slapping solid rhythm, the rocky guitar and the melodic vocals and at the end, we’ve got the Glory Boys chanting and clapping”.  The song was augmented with the saxophone of Chris Gent from The Autographs, who had made guest appearances with Secret Affair in their live set. 

Mod fanzine Maximum Speed described their music as New Wave with Soul.  Cairns; “ What we’re trying to get is the rhythm, the dance parts of old soul and Tamla records and combine that with some of the anger and frustration of today through our more contemporary lyrics. We like the music of the sixties but you can’t talk about sixties things today. If you listen to the radio you can tell that disco is on the decline.  They play a low more Tamla Motown and a lot less disco.  And that’s what we are, dance music that isn’t disco”. Ian agrees “See…if there was a formula to what we do. It would be like – you listen to any old Tamla Motown tracks and if you take out the bass and drums and the feel of the bass and drums, then add an angry powerful guitar and lyrics that apply to today instead of silly love songs – that’s our sound. The bass and drums provide the dance, the guitar provides the energy and the lyrics provide the thought”.

To promote the single Secret Affair filmed a video featuring the band playing to their hard core followers the Glory Boys.  The video was filmed at the Acklam Hall, Ladbroke Grove and a clip was incorporated into the London Weekend Television series Soul, Sounds of Underground London, screened in 2003. It was directed by Steve Baron a film cameraman from A Bridge Too Far and Superman. Steve had just finished filming the Reading Festival as a documentary and the Acklam Hall was shot ‘as live’, with clips incorporated of the Glory Boys & Girls posing and riding scooters. Eddie Piller; who was in the audience, recalls that regrettably the word got out to the Notting Hill skinheads who came down and started a mini riot. The video is now available on the Sanctuary DVD Teenage Kicks.

If Mod ever had a manifesto then it was contained in Time for Action.  Ian Page; “The size of the movement is now in its thousands and its growing all the time.  We have the ability to change things.  That’s what the action is in Time for Action. You have the power to do something simply by being yourself. Basically I’m talking about the right of any one person to change that which directly affects their lives. If I have a political stance that is it; believing in the rights of an individual, and identity, and the rights to say – it can be something really unimportant to somebody else, but if it affects you, then you should have the right to do something about it. And without that being a socialist or communist belief, it does link.” Accused of being vague Page counters; “Exactly, that’s the whole point. It’s leaving the individual the choice to decide for themselves what they’re going to do and what they think of the world around them. All I do believe is – we didn’t have this with the previous fashion, but we could have it now – you don’t like something, you do something about it”.  

A reluctant mouthpiece for the mod movement Ian Page preferred to see himself as simply a mod who happened to be in a band, but Secret Affair were seen as The Mod band and a nineteen year old Ian Page soon found himself portrayed as the spokesperson for a generation by the music press, on the radio, and he even did an interview for BBC 1’s Nation-Wide looking very dapper in his tonic suit.  “A lot of the songs are about how we hate the music business.  But I also write about being a Mod and being conscious of the fact that you don’t like what’s gone before.  Every one of us and our followers hate what’s become of punk.  For me the full stop was the first Clash album.  I still love that record, but that’s where it stopped for me.  I believe the Punk elite is obscene, not the punks.  They’re two different things. Every punk should hate the punk elite, that inverted snobbery, that more–street–than thou pose, that PVC – trousered glam rock tart, and you see so many of them, who represent the complete death of something that could have been so good but just became more and more of what was bad about it. One night I was at the Speakeasy at five in the morning, with some of the Bromley contingent, (Punk faces) and I suddenly realised I don’t like these people, and they don’t like me. I felt that Punk ended up as a betrayal and I felt there was another way of doing it. But I liked the fundamental ideas of Punk. I was very sick of the business, and the lying of Punk. The real enemy were the A and R men in their shinning tour jackets, perm haircuts and medallions. These men were wankers and the people who could have done something about it, were turning into wankers themselves. If a punk came to one of our gigs, we wouldn’t tell him to f**k off. But we’d like him to listen to what we’ve got to say; it’s time for a change, it’s time for action.

The Mod thing now, is nothing like the old Mod thing in the sixties.  Then all the Mods had plenty of money.  But the Mod thing now is about a lot of working class kids without much money aspiring to be as good, as sharp as someone with money.  They’re suited subversives.  I think it’s quite subversive for kids who haven’t got a lot of money which is the case with most of the kids who follow this band, to dress up in a suit and look twice as good as someone who has three times as much money.  It’s a social comment, for someone to be badly off and instead of glorying like the Punks did in having no prospects, to do the complete opposite to make a positive statement. We’re just saying we’re better or we’re as good as any rich man. I believe everybody should have an equal opportunity. It’s a; ‘richness’ in spirit. The fact that you stand the two together (to illustrate he places two bottles of Perrier side by side) and you don’t know which of those bottles cost the most. You don’t know who has got the most money, and it dismisses the concept, or the ability of some guy - ‘in a Rolls’ - to snort at somebody who’s only got ten pence in his pocket.”

Ian Page explains; “I resented a lot of values and order forced on me when I didn’t have any control over them, I rejected them and insisted on making my own.  The working class background and all that entails the things you are meant to respect, I reject and resent.  You’re told that you are not very well off and this is your basic life pattern. Like comprehensive schools, why do they force you into manual work?  I’m articulate and I was forced into doing courses like brick-laying which was wrong.  Comprehensives don’t accommodate any artistic leanings at all”. 

Page continues; “There are reasons why these kids want to stress themselves, they’re rejecting previous values.  Individualism can be quite negative but I don’t think our form is, although kids have a basic framework or a fashion to work within, they work hard to prove themselves in their own right. The clothes express the idea. They are as much as we allow people to see; they are the bond. Let me put it this way…” Ian pulls out a Tom Wolfe book and flicks the pages. “Let’s call each page in this book a suit, no, better still, a mod. Each one is different from the other, each one is striving to be different and that’s what Mods are doing because they are doing it for themselves. They allow the outside world to see that much of them (he flicks the pages again), in fact they’re probably doing it at that speed as well! It’s a uniform, and behind it is a uniform thought – to be individual

We hate the interpretation everyone else puts on Mod. Yes we are mod but that’s completely different from calling something else punk or heavy rock. Mod is a way of thinking, whatever the year, whatever the situation, whatever the music. It’s a different approach to what is happening at the time. That’s what mod did then, that’s what we’re doing now. We’re Mods without parkas. It’s the fascination of looking perfect.  If you’re a Mod you’re sharp, neat, precise, and cool. It’s like the drugs – blues and uppers, people should be asking us why an unemployed kid with no prospects gets a really expensive looking suit so he can stand next to a rich a rich man and look better than him.  It’s a cry from the heart”.

March of the Mods

To promote Time for Action, Secret Affair embarked in August on a national much publicised March of the Mods tour along with The Purple Hearts from Romford and Enfield’s Back To Zero.  The grouping of the three bands came about through the initial idea of teaming up the scenes two top bands; Secret Affair and The Little Roosters.  However it was felt for a co-operative tour The Little Roosters wouldn’t have been compatible so the more amenable Purple Hearts replaced them at the last minute.  Chris Bohn journalist for the Melody Maker followed the bands to Torquay and wrote a three-page expose, which grudgingly praised Secret Affair, exceptionally strong live set and predicted success for the band. “They were very good indeed.  The key is a carefully calculated dance music which enslaves the feet, leaving the mind at the mercy of a succession of well written youth anthems”.

Goffa Gladding recalls the tour; “Yes that was a hoot!  We were playing at rock stars.  Maximum Speed became almost the official programme for the tour with a colour front cover.  Secret Affair where tied up with Bryan Morrison publishing company, who were quite influential, so they were taking it very serious indeed.  They had their road manager dropping their suits off at 9 o’clock in the morning to be dry cleaned and picking them up at 11 o’clock before we moved off to the next venue and they would look sharp every night”. 

A truly collaborative effort, Secret Affair and the Purple Hearts took turns to headline, with Back to Zero warming up. “Some nights Secret Affair would blow us off stage and some nights we’d blow them off,” laughs Bob Manton of the Hearts. “Usually it was them blowing us off –but they could play. I became a massive fan of Secret Affair and I even travelled with them for a while. I did read something about the Glory Boys album being a great British guitar album in the tradition of ‘Ziggy Stardust’ and ‘Never Mind The Bollocks’ and I thought that was spot on.”

It could sometimes be tough to win over the crowds on the tour, as the travelling Glory Boys could alienate the hometown fans. For example in Birmingham at Barbarellas the local Mods took umbrage at the aggressive insistence of   the London Glory Boys that they buy Glory Boy badges., resulting in copies of Maximum Speed being ripped up and glasses being thrown at Ian Page during the gig. “These gigs would be like real battles,” recalls Simon Stebbing of the Hearts. “Sometimes we won over the crowd because we were quite spunky and aggressive, but up North it was like Gunfight at the OK Corral, it could be an ordeal”

Brian Betteridge of Back To Zero has a fonder memory of up North; “Some of the March of the Mods gigs were great.  In Liverpool, at Eric’s, they had a policy that there was a matinee for under eighteen’s and then the main gig.  They had the support on last, so people could see the headline band and still get home, but they all stayed and treated us like the headline band and that was an amazing night”.

At the tail end of the tour and with Time for Action about to enter the charts, Secret Affair were last minute additions to the bill of Top of the Pops, prompting a Radio One appeal to help track down two missing band members.  Ian Page and Dennis Smith, last seen in a white transit van heading for a gig at the Barnsley Civic, were finally located in Doncaster arriving at the television studios by helicopter with only a minute to spare.  The show went out the next night and in the days when a Top of the Pops appearance really meant something, kids all over the nation got to see the charismatic Page and his New Dance vision.

The Purple Hearts and Back To Zero both went on to release debut singles in September on the Fiction label, set up by The Jam’s former producer Chris Parry.  The Purple Hearts; Millions Like Us c/w Beat That made an impression on the charts reaching 57, and fared better than Back To Zero; Your Side Of Heaven c/w Back To Back.  Brian Betteridge reflects philosophically; “We recorded the single at the end of July and it came out at the end of September.  It sold 5,000 the first day and sold 9,000 all together.  The fact is two minutes forty-one seconds of my life is still appreciated, so I’m proud of Your Side Of Heaven and I hope Sam and Mal are as well.  Andy Moore had left by the end of the March of the Mods tour.  We made number 96 in the trade top 200. Mal went up to Andy and said ‘You’re in the chart and number 96’ and Andy said ‘So What’.  So he wasn’t that proud of it then”. 

September also saw the debut by Squire released on the I Spy label, Walking Down The Kings Road (See 2) was co-produced by Ian Page and Dave Cairns. This ode to the shopping Mecca of swinging London combined a crispy simplistic finger snapping pop tune with an extravagant psychedelic fade out finale.  The idea was to mirror the sound of the street and music springing from shop door ways, and included the Blue Danube theme from the film 2001 and the sound of Pete Townsend’s footsteps. He’d been recording in the adjacent studio and as the band recorded the finger snaps in the corridor, he walked past looking bewildered at seeing a crowd of Mods in the building! Anthony Meynell explains the inspiration behind the song; “It was simply that I had spent a lot of time on the Kings Road.  It sounds corny, but it was that obvious.  The Kings Road and that late sixties thing are close to my heart, because originally I came from New Malden, it was easy to get to.  I’d been to Carnaby Street and Kings Road in the sixties as a kid, so I know what it was like.  In the seventies, I still went there because the boutiques were still there and the vibe, but it was disappointing with all the punks.  You wanted it to be the same although you knew it never would be, so Walking Down The Kings Road was sort of a time tunnel, wishing you could turn around and it would be the sixties”.

The song was recorded at Sarm West (Basing Street studios) in Notting Hill with Face of Youth Today as the planned B side. However when Ian and Dave heard Face of Youth Today, they declared it was too good for a B side and held it back as the second single release, leaving the band to search for an alternative. It’s A Mod Mod World had originally started as a middle eight section of Kings Road but had quickly been chopped out and then became a song in itself. Kevin Meynell explains “It’s a snap shot of my sister’s life. She went to Boxhill on a Sunday Afternoon, she was a hairdresser and all her money was for clothes.  It was just a mod, mod world.  The songs were written from inspiration and they became a bit anthemic, which is a bit worrying, because you think it’s a novelty song and not taken seriously, but it was pop and I love pop.  So it was everything I wanted it to be, three minutes with a beginning and an end and it punched the air with enthusiasm”.  The record received extensive radio air play being named as record of the week on the Kid Jenson show, but disappointingly scrapped into the top 75.

Ian Page signed the band on the strength of their twenty-five minute Bridge House performance.  “I always liked Squire because they were very musical.  We always felt that one of the interesting things that we brought to the sound of the time, was that we did introduce this soul element , and I know I get myself into all kinds of trouble when I say it, but a lot of the other bands were quite punky sounding.  Squire were different because they were a very melodic band, they were singing real tunes in a genuine sixties style”.

Squire, hailed from Woking in Surrey, and were named after the clothes shop above which they practised.  They had been school mates with Paul Weller and the original line up was guitarist Steve Baker, bassist Enzo Esposito, and drummer Ross Di Landa.  Anthony Meynell who lived in nearby Guildford first connected with the band after they’d heard his demo tape, but they weren’t so quick to pick up his songs so he’d left in frustration. Anthony later persuaded Esposito into letting him rejoin the band and squeezed into the Squire line up on lead guitar just in time for their prestigious support at Guildford Civic Hall to The Jam in May 1978.  The gig brought the band their first music press review.  Anthony Meynell explains, “When I joined Squire I had all songs. As many as you want.  There were the non-obvious Mod songs like Sandy.  Then we consciously said we were a Mod band.  We were already wearing the clothes; we just hadn’t said it.  We had been told by the press that we were directionless and we wanted a direction.  And I needed a direction for writing so we said Mod band.  We were well into the music.  I’d always been into the sixties so it was perfect for me.  I was writing that kind of thing anyway but I got a bit excited and started writing things like Its a Mod Mod World and The Youth Of Today Are Going To Make It (inspired by a Pete Townsend quote).

The first song on record by the band was Get Ready To Go’ a demo which had been sent to Rok records and was then released in February 1979 by them as one side of a single whose other side showcased another band.  Squire then went on to record B.A.B.Y. Baby Love at Pathway studios around July/August 1979, but recording sessions highlighted Ross Di Landa’s weakness as a drummer.  Anthony sums it up, “We went to record a record but it was not to be, somehow, it sounded totally wrong, too fast, too angry, and the producer said, “Your drummers shit” – out he went and in came my brother who was the nearest person”.  Steve Baker then quit, angry at what seemed to him to be a take over within the band.  Anthony explained; “he thought we’d miss him, but we didn’t.  So we did a gig in the afternoon as a four-piece, then at night, at the Wellington as a three-piece.  It was because we never adjusted to being a three-piece that some said our music sounded wimpy and because our old guitarist played a louder rhythm than I did.  We didn’t have time to get another guitarist so went on a Secret Affair tour as a three-piece”. B.A.B.Y. Baby Love had been recorded for Soho Records but Squires signing to I Spy prevented its release.

Secret Affairs second single Let Your Heart Dance c/w Sorry Wrong Number (See 3) was released on the 26^th October.  Let Your Heart Dance had a contagious swing dance beat, passionate vocals and hook line custom built for Radio One.  Ian Page; “I felt Time for Action got people punching the air, but I didn’t feel that it was a song to dance to.  Let Your Heart Dance is a dance anthem with lots of horns, but with the room for Dave to do that extraordinary thing he does with the guitar over the top.  It was a fantastic opportunity to test a studio to its limits; there are about three drum kits on it”.  However as a follow up to Time for Action it did not quite hold its own as a 45 and failed to climb the charts as quickly as most people thought it would.  Despite the picture sleeve the single sold disappointingly entering the charts on November 10^th, staying for six weeks and peaking at number 32.  In an interview with the Modzine Maximum Speed, Cairns later admitted there had been something missing in the production of the single. 

Let Your Heart Dance saw Dave Winthrop play tenor and baritone saxophones; although not credited as a band member or featured in the band photograph.  However after completing the recording sessions in the studio the band quickly realised they had to have Dave as a member and he went on tour becoming the fifth member on the band.  At 32, Dave was the oldest member of the band, and he had been involved in the Blues and Soul scene in the sixties, playing regularly at The Marquee, The Flamingo and 100 Club. Dave had played with Chicken Shack and Fleetwood Mac, he later joined Super tramp as vocalist and multi instrumentalist. Dave had been a member of The Young Bucks along with Seb Shelton and Archie Brown (who also helped out on sax for a couple of early gigs) and through that met Secret Affair.

Glory Boys

Secret Affairs debut album released on the 30^th November (I Spy 1) was entitled after the concept track Glory Boys which summed up Page and Cairns take on the burgeoning scene, and which had been adopted by Secret Affairs fans. The album was well received by the music press and critics, and went straight into the listed charts in its first week of release reaching number 41.  The five star review in the record mirror stated, “Do your self a favour.  No matter how trivial this year’s revival might seem, don’t let it cloud your judgement of a fine modern pop album”.  The album included eleven Page and Cairn original songs, together with a cover of Smokey Robinson’s Motown hit Going To A Go Go.  Maggie Ryder sang backing vocals and Dave Winthrop played tenor and baritone saxophones.  It reflected the bands musical sixties soul and rhythm and blues influences and as a singer Page demonstrated the full range of his vocal capabilities with a powerful passionate delivery. Ian explains his inspiration; “I just admire all the black singers from that time, particularly The Temps, melodious but hard, I liked the later stuff.  Norman Whitfield, Just My Imagination, The Sky’s The Limit, oh the Sgt. Pepper of Soul - very under rated.  I wouldn’t put it down to any particular one singer, though I idolised Otis Redding, but I’d never pretend I could sing like him.  I just knew he was phenomenal, he had his own sound, couldn’t be copied.  You learn his phrasing, his delivery and the way he turned notes, it was more an admiration thing”.

The album was lavishly produced with the opening title track introduced with the street sounds of Soho; the noise of late-night clubs, amusement arcades and coffee stands. Ian elaborates this theme in a poem City Of Dreams included on the album back cover.  Far from being a rehash of their stage set almost every song had a certain additional something to hold the listeners’ attention and make every song different to the rest.  The songs were complimented with piano, Hammond organ, trumpet, even tubular bells on One Way World a song with a revised lyric first recorded in demo as Sunday Girls.

Ian Page explains the process Dave and he went through to gather material for the album.  “Dave and I rarely wrote a song that we didn’t want!  And if we did!  We’d often find a way of going back to it.  When we were coming to write songs for Secret Affair, we knew that we had a great hook in Shake and Shout, but we needed a bridge section.  We like the ‘love me or leave me’ bit from Only a Fool so we cannibalised one of our own songs”.

Explaining their attitude to recording Page elaborates, “There’s a very strict division between what we sound like live and in the studio.  Live we concentrate on anything that makes people enjoy themselves, rocky guitar and plenty of raps with the audience.  In the studio we’re more interested in experimenting with sound.  We’re not interested in trying to get the same sound as on stage.  We use a lot more instruments in the studio.  I play a lot more trumped”.

Glory Boys the song and album had developed into a concept which had been embraced by Secret Affairs hard core followers, and a mutual inter-relationship and loyalty had grown between the group and their audience.  On stage Ian Page always demonstrates his respect for their followers; “Thanks, Cheers, Alright, this one’s for a mate of mine, John Lawrence, its called My World”.  Goffa Gladding explains who the Glory Boys were; “There were 20 or 30 guys who I knew reasonably well, who attached themselves to Secret Affair; The Glory Boys, and these were fairly rough characters and it would always go off at some point.  They’d have Glory Boys tattooed on the inside of their bottom lip and they were all West Ham fans”.

Eddie Piller elaborates, “I met my first real Mods at football.  There was a massive Mod presence at West Ham during the winter of ’78. It was Grant Flemming and basically the West side of West Ham in ’79.  Either the West side, or the South side.  I was always in the West side and that’s where I met Goffa and all that lot.  They were mod-football nutters”.

Grant Fleming; he had run the fan club for Sham 69 and was in a documentary in 1978 where he was a total Mod.  Grant was one of the first East-End faces, if you like, during the early transition from punk period.  Wore the first red Harrington I ever saw.  I was a couple of years younger than most of them and I was tolerated.  The Glory Boys being tough was handy though and you’ve got to remember what it was like in London back then. You’d go to a gig at Electric Ballroom and you’d come out to see 50 skinheads waiting to beat the crap out of any Mod they could get hold of.  So when we had this really hard football crew who travelled around in transit vans and on scooters, no one bothered us.  I had a few fights alongside Crank, but the thing about the Glory Boys was they were so tough that no one messed with them.

Secret Affair used to drink in my local pub, which is how I got to meet them.  So The Affair and the Purple Hearts were our bands from our part of town.  Ian Page is very focused, he knows exactly what he thinks and Dave Cairns is similar.  Ian would say ‘You don’t wear parkas or target t-shirts, you wear Tonic suits and Italian made gear and basket weave shoes’ and it worked.

Jim Watson from the Hornchurch recalls; “I started off really as a punk I guess, when I was about 14 or 15, I went to see The Jam, where I saw a lot of Mods at the gig.  I later found out that these fellows were the original Glory Boys.  They knew I was from Ilford and they told me, no you don’t want that punk rubbish, you wanna be a Mod!  Come down to our pub, The Barge Aground’. Their top man there was Danny Meakin and he was the organiser of everything they did.  I remember they all tended to have old Lambrettas and a tattoo inside their bottom lips.  They were a bit older than us about 18 or 19 and this was early 1979.  That was my initiation and how I got into it.  I began going down to their pub in Barking, The Barge Aground, but they were a bit too tasty for me, really.  They were well-hard blokes and because of that I didn’t see myself being a regular down there.  But it did get me switched onto Mod”.

Seb Shelton a trained teacher in remedial English who did not smoke or take drugs established an understanding with the tougher kids.  He knew it was no good preaching to anyone so instead ensured the kids saw the logic of what he was talking about.  Seb explained; “We have no right to be snotty to anybody, people are being genuine.  They actually want to meet you.  We want to see the whole mystique thing about stars blown apart; we have never refused to talk to anyone.  What I look forward to most at gigs is when the audience come to talk to us afterwards in the dressing room.  We always insist that this is made possible.  The idea that they shouldn’t come and see us is horrifying”.  This respect for their audience paid dividends at times, Seb continues; “It’s got to the point now that if anyone of them is out of order one of our lot will put them back in line and they accept it”.

However a cynical music press could not understand such mutual respect and a sleazy gossip column alleged that the Glory Boys were Secret Affair’s security men, mere unpaid employees of the band.  The story led to the original Glory Boys giving Ian Page the cold shoulder when he met them in a pub before a gig at the Music Machine.  The incident so upset Ian he felt he had to prove he had not betrayed the fans. To convince them otherwise Page handed out beer to the front row ranks during the concert, even jumping into them at one point to show allegiance.  “They’re my earliest followers.  They meant a lot to me, far more than those people standing in the balcony.  I didn’t care what I looked like to them. I was more concerned with convincing the people at the front that I hadn’t deserted them”.

Dancing In the Streets

To promote the album the band took to the road with Squire on the twenty-nine date, Dancing in the Streets tour which took them to the length and breadth of the country.  The release of Squire’s follow up single for I Spy coincided with the tour.   Face of Youth Today (See 4) had originally been recorded for the B-side of Kings Road but was then thought to be too good.  It was coupled with an equally good track I Know A Girl. The song could have been lifted from the sound track of the film A Hard Days Night, simple but infectious melodies and inviting vocals were bound together by a perfectly sparing Page / Cairns production. Anthony Meynell explains, “We returned to the recording studio Nova Sound in October to record the B side for the single, and I recall the session seemed to take as long as the other 3 previous songs together. Since the A side was Beatlesque, I chose I Know A Girl as the complimentary B side offering. I remember Dave Cairns explaining how to get a big guitar sound – turn every knob available up to 10 and let them deal with it! Unfortunately the single was beaten to record of the week by Joe Jackson’s It’s Different For Girls and the record company lost interest quite quickly!” 

Secret Affair were playing to packed houses around the country but before even getting halfway through the dates Kevin Meynell was injured in an on stage incident at Colchester University, and Squire were forced to withdraw from the tour leaving the single virtually un-promoted.  Anthony Meynell recalls; “I was singing in the front and noticed the light change, the crowd looked up.  Someone had pressed the button to shut the curtains and it brought the lighting down.  It smashed the drum kit. Kevin saw it coming and legged it but it hit him on the back and wiped out Squire in ten seconds flat.  This was to do with the manager we had who was a bit dodgy.  He introduced us to a road manager, who was going to look after us on the tour.  This new guy was nice enough, but an odd character and strange things started to happen.  We were staying in five star hotels and ‘Secret Affair’ where in three star hotels.  He was really into the band, but he would do things like buy a Rickenbacker and give it to me as a present.  He would go into studios and everyone seemed to know him.  Certainly all the roadies knew him, but we thought he was in the business.  We were getting Limo’s everywhere and we couldn’t figure out where the money was coming from.  We just thought we had made it and this is what happened.  Then at the Colchester gig the lighting gang-try came crashing down on the drum kit.  My brother was covered in lacerations and had to go to hospital.  Later the police showed up and asked us if we knew this guy.  We asked why, and they said he was a conman who hadn’t paid a single bill on the tour and had ripped everyone off blind.  The agency, the record company, the publisher, everyone and they thought the lighting accident was part of an insurance claim scam.  The police eventually caught up with the guy and he did six years in prison”. 

Secret Affair went on to finish the tour with support from Back To Zero.  Brian Betteridge recounts how he found out about Back To Zero joining the tour.  “The first gig we did was at The Rainbow a 3,000 seater, all sold out and we didn’t know about it until the night before.  I was with Long Tall Shorty in Nottingham at the Sandpiper Club.  One of the Maximum Speed lads phoned, but I wasn’t around and Keith of Long Tall Shorty took the call for me.  When I got back they were sitting in the dressing room saying; ‘You’re on the tour Brian, you’re playing The Rainbow tomorrow night’.  It was scary, but that Rainbow gig was the biggest crowd we ever had and it was a good one”.

My World

Secret Affair started 1980 playing a number of secret thank you gigs to their fans in small London venues at the end of January.  Then in February Secret Affair released what was to be perhaps the Mod scene’s most sophisticated moment.  My World (See 5) received critical acclaim, a powerful song with a soaring saxophone complimented perfectly by orchestral strings.  My World was written by Dave Cairns; “I think my best songs are when I’m feeling desperate.  I was going through a hard time when I wrote My World”.  Dave jokes; “I’ve been alright lately, although that will probably change again soon”.  In fact the song mirrored Dave’s occasional moodiness and outbursts of exuberance but also revealed a more reflective element to his character. 

Ian Page; “One of the big contributors to our early success was our publisher Bryan Morrison.  When he heard the initial song he poked his cigar in the air in triumph and said ‘Time for Action, that’s a hit, my son, but My World is a bigger record’.  There was pressure to go with it right away, but I felt that in production terms it was a song of more sophistication, so we held it back from the ‘Glory Boys’ album.  Apart from strings, I did pour everything into it.  There are Hammond organs, a classical style grand piano and multi-layered backing vocals”.  Dave Cairns; “Watching Ian score the orchestration was quite amazing to me because I’d never seen him do that”. 

The singles B-side So Cool was an equally strong song written by Ian Page.  With a finger clicking meandering bass line and soft jazz trumpet, the song created the atmosphere of a smoke filled night club, the type frequented by the scenes faces.  However, as Ian Page points out, “The whole song is completely ironic because the narrator of the story, who is me, is actually the guy that doesn’t get the girl and who isn’t very cool.  He looks at the cool guy from afar and wonders about his shallow existence”.  So Cool reflects Ian Page’s new interest in Jazz music, an interest kindled by Dave Winthrop.  “He got me into Jazz, he’s a real pro, you know and very funny”.  Page elaborates on their friendship; “It’s funny Winthrop is the guy I should feel most alienated from.  He’s older than me.  We’re worlds apart and yet I have a much deeper sense of communication with him than I do with everyone else.  His contribution is greater than anyone else’s”.  Page’s father was from a working class background, a taxi driver.  Winthrop’s family history on the other hand was distinctly upper class; with his grandfather owning a shipping line and Dave being educated in a private school.  However, when Dave chose to play the saxophone rather than go into the family business he was transformed into the black sheep of his family.  “Hanging out with Winthrop has really done me a lot of good.  He’s ‘younger’ than the other guys in the band, a lot ‘younger’ than I am.  Somebody said that I was a forty-four year old trapped in the body of a nineteen year old.  That’s horrible (laughs Ian) but I accept it totally”.

My World stormed up the charts peaking at number 16 and remained in the charts for nine weeks selling over 150,000 copies. Steve Baron again directed the promotional video which was mainly shot on top of Primrose Hill and other city locations with some stage shots filmed at The Venue, Victoria. The My World video made it onto Top of the Pops, and the single was well received in the United States. 

Secret Affair could do no wrong; the Mod scene was on the crest of its wave.  Late February, early March saw Secret Affair become Mod ambassadors taking the scene to Europe, playing gigs in a four-week tour of France, Belgium, Holland and Germany.  On their return from Europe Secret Affair then set out on the My World tour on the 6^th April.  The tour took in fourteen dates ending at the London Hammersmith Odeon.  Ian Page recalls; “My favourite gig was either The Rainbow or fourteen year old girls at Bristol, (The penultimate date of the My World tour)  It was the end of the tour, London at the time was difficult to get a good response.  When we did Time for Action we could almost see the balcony moving”.  Mike Lewis was in the audience for one of the tours shows “I well remember Secret Affair at Cardiff Top Rank in April 1980, one of the greatest – I can still remember Dave Cairns reflecting the lights off his gleaming fender caster straight into my eyes. That’s before he cropped up unexpectedly on the top deck of the venue, playing a manic solo in the middle of the crowd. All that was missing was the Jimmy jump into the audience below!” Following the tour Secret Affair entered the studio to record their second album.

Behind Closed Doors

Whilst on the surface things appeared to be going from strength to strength for Secret Affair, below undercurrents appeared to start to undermine all the positive energy the band were generating.  Mod bands were banned from The Marquee because Ian Page allegedly threw ‘Blues’ into the audience during a Secret Affair gig.  Dave Cairns admits; “Yes they were real ‘Blues’, why not?  We had a roadie who had a bag of home-made ‘Blues’.  He didn’t want them, so we threw them into the audience.  Seems outrageous now but quite normal then, it was a thank you for turning up to see us”.  Word soon spread and while the group where being filmed for a movie; Stepping Out, at Vespa's in Charing Cross, they spotted some unwanted guests.  “We got suspicious when all these silver-haired geezers in raincoats tried to dance like Mods, it was the police!”  Another bad omen was after My World rapidly charted and climbed to number 16 it then suddenly dropped to number 67 a week later. This was very unusual chart behaviour, and probably a distribution catastrophe of epic proportions. With Arista being taken over by the German company Ariola, the whole I Spy set-up looked increasingly insecure. Laurel Aitken had been lined up to tour with the band but due to some financial quibble with Ariola he was dropped from the package. Taking the advice of Dave Cairns Squire left I Spy in search of a deal elsewhere.

Anthony Meynell explains; “Dave came over to us at Newcastle and told us to look for another deal for various reasons; they knew that we were getting ripped off by management, somebody sussed him out at Arista.  Also Arista had been taken over and the A&R man who’d signed them had gone.  The Beat where now bigger then Secret Affair so they became the priority act.  They felt we wouldn’t get the push we deserved, although we had already done some demos for an album and the future had looked rosy”.  Squire’s association with Secret Affair however continued with Ian Page producing Squire’s next single My Mind Goes Round in Circles c/w Does Stephanie Know, which appeared in a picture sleeve on the Stage One label.

Meynell recalls “My Mind Goes Round in Circles was our first independent record. Written in summer 1979 along with Does Stephanie Know? It became a double A side record. Using the tried and tested team of Ian Page and his engineer Simon Humphrey to produce the record, we returned to Nova studios. However, desperate to hear other than my voice singing harmonies, I’d tracked down Kirsty MacColl after hearing the single They Don’t Know on Stiff records. Without a deal, she was free to perform and I visited her in Croydon to play the demos I had, and we settled on the song choices. I recall a memorable afternoon sitting cross legged on the floor listening to Beach Boy albums, where she declared an intention to release Still Believe In Me as a Christmas song (and did years later!). It was obvious when she showed up at the studio that her voice was so characterful, simple  backing harmonies would be a waste of opportunity and so the arrangement quickly became a showcase for our joint harmonies. Ian had already decided on an acoustic arrangement based on Bowies Ziggy period, but realising the change in direction of the song, left the proceedings to Simon to control. With 12 string Rickenbacker in hand; we forged a masterpiece of pop!”

However, things were falling apart for Squire, Meynell explains; “When it came to Christmas and we had pulled out of the Dancing In The Streets tour and that police business had gone down, Enzo was so disillusioned.  We did another single and a short tour but the single came out after the tour and it was all a bit hopeless.  So we ended up with nothing.  We couldn’t even use the name Squire, because every time we did a writ would turn up for an unpaid bill.  Only by looking at the worst, it was clear that Mod was not the flavour of the month and the new thing was New Romantic and if you were a Mod band, it wasn’t going to do you any favours in 1980 unless you had a lot of backing.  Enzo realised this and by the middle of 1980 he left”.

In effect this was the end of Squire Mk1 and Anthony Meynell’s association with I Spy Records. In August 1981 Anthony went on to release Hits From 3000 Years Ago an album which contained all the demos’ recorded for the aborted I Spy Squire debut album. The album was promoted as a solo album in Anthony’s name as the Squire name still attracted court writs. It was not until 1982 following the release of the ‘No Time Tomorrow’ single that as a result of the strong demand for more Squire material that it was decided to sticker the album as the Squire album. Squire Mk2 went on from strength to strength with new interest from the USA, but that’s another story. Although for the record; Anthony Meynell later renewed his association with Simon Humphrey who engineered Squire’s 1983 Get Smart album.

Follow the Leader

April proved a watershed for the Mod movement and Secret Affair.  Up until the Easter bank holiday Mod had been able to ride the stormy waters of a cynical press and hostile music business.  Mods self-belief and determination to do things regardless had so far overcome the obstacles placed in its way.  However, with the seaside disturbances of the Easter bank holiday splashed across the national headlines a frenzied media sponsored backlash developed.  The bank holiday violence had perhaps been inevitable with the release of The Who’s film Quadrophenia in the Autumn of 1979.  The film was based on ‘The Who’s’ 1973 homage album to the Goldhawk Mods of Shepherds Bush who first followed the band in 1965.  The film captured the hey days of sixties London; Carnaby Street, all night blues clubs, soul music, scooters, pills and the bank holiday Mod verses Rocker clashes in Brighton.  For a generation too young to remember, Quadrophenia seemed to romantically hark back to a golden era.  Predictably it attracted teenagers to Mod like moths to a flame and come the Easter bank holiday the young guns of Mod wanted to recreate the scenes of the film.  Quadrophenia changed the Mod scene from a community of individuals with a taste for smart clothes and dancing, centred upon a blossoming live music scene, to a herd of parka clad look a likes.  The complete antithesis of the Mod ethos.  Instead of striving to be individual the young guns of Mod sought the security of the crowd which cushioned them from their teenage angst.

Ian Page has his own point of view. “In 79/80 the record companies could see a ready made audience.  They wanted to shift units, target it.  They could see a tailor made market, they wanted to drive it.  The biggest example for me was Quadrophenia, which sort of, for me was the deaths knell.  I got invited to a fashion show organised by The Who’s company.  I was there with the guy who played Jimmy; Phil Daniels.  We were invited along to give it some token validity.  Phil was a great laugh; we were sat there bored out of our skulls.  We were half pissed, watching these long legged models with silver puffa parkas on, it was all wrong.  It was a blatant attempt to make some money out of it.  They were funny times but in a way interference by big business spoiled it”.

Goffa Gladding makes a similar point; “It’s always cited when you look back now, that Mod in 1979 was a result of Quadrophenia and that is nothing to do with the truth at all.  It was always there and it had all come about through innovative fashion minded people around the East End and into Essex, who were constantly looking for new trends or new interesting things and basically to set themselves apart from the crowd a bit.  These are the people who started it all off and this was at least a year before Quadrophenia came out.  We knew the film was in production, but the scene was absolutely nothing to do with Quadrophenia at all and in the same way that mass interest in punk in ’77 was the death knell for a lot of people who were quite involved in it in the early days.  The launch of Quadrophenia and what that turned into was the death knell for a lot of people who were the original innovators from 1978”.

Ian also recalls how relationships changed; “The association with us and The Jam first started when we were called New Hearts.  They stopped helping us when we got a bit close to them in the charts one week!  I think Time for Action was chasing Eton Rifles up the charts.  I think they forgot how big they were for a while and it got a bit unfriendly.  John Weller helped us to get started; he got us a couple of gigs. I think he was under the impression he was going to be our manager.  We never agreed to that and it turned a bit nasty for a while.  We always got on well with Rick and Bruce, just good lads actually.  Paul was always a bit removed”.  Brian Betteridge recalls; “Quadrophenia came out in August 1979.  We were all invited to see it at a special preview in Wardour Street two weeks before it came out.  That was quite amusing because The Jam where sitting in front of us and Secret Affair were there.  Ian Page and Paul Weller couldn’t stand each other and they were studiously trying to avoid each other around the sandwiches before the film”.

Eddie Piller saw all the Mod bands and claims the atmosphere was poisonous.  He has sympathy with Secret Affairs plight.  “They were very arrogant, they saw the other Mod bands as beneath them and that’s because Page had this philosophy about clothes and music.  Fundamentally he was right.  He was thinking like a sixties Mod.  The other bands were like target T-shirt, and bang, we’re off.  Page was right because Mod was about soul and jazz, not punk rock.  But we didn’t know that then because we were fifteen years old and seizing the iconography of Mod.  We got a lot of that wrong.  We picked up four bits; the target, the parka, the desert boots and The Who.  We must have horrified the original Mods”. Dave Cairns remembers it differently; “The press were never going to like it, just as they wouldn’t like a punk revival now.  We were the most visible targets because we were alone.  With due respect to the other bands in the Mod revival, they weren’t in the charts. Ska had The Specials, Madness, The Beat and The Selecter all enjoying chart success and that gave them protection in numbers.  Our Mod peers weren’t having real chart success.  Which of course is their problem, but Ian Page and myself felt very exposed out there all alone. I don’t want to sound patronising in any way but you have to remember we were probably ahead of the game experience wise compared to the rest of the bands, but yeah I liked a lot of what was happening – I liked the Purple Hearts and they’re decent blokes too – and of course Squire”. 

Ian Page in retrospect reflects, “I’d happily admit that I wasn’t as clever as Paul Weller. I should have been watching him much more closely. That’s where I was too self-centred and too self-preoccupied. I was going my own way, while someone who was more experienced than me, who was occupying a very similar musical space, was handling it with a lot more care and consideration. If someone wants to ask me about regrets, the biggest regret that I have is that I didn’t handle that situation in a more sophisticated manner. But what I  wouldn’t do even all these years later, is sit there and say that I was anything other than a mod in a button-down-shirt- I loved the look and I loved the music. ‘The Jam’, they played it very clever.  Respect to Weller, in effect he said we are a part of this but it doesn’t belong to us, it belongs to the people, the Glory Boys.  When we came into it, it was there, it belongs to itself.  Reggae, soul, white rhythm and blues; it’s wrong to try and own it”.

For a music press wanting blood, Ian Page was an easy target.  In interview he had always been open and honest, his youthful enthusiasm and self-confidence could easily be portrayed as arrogance.  “My role is the front man, the face.  If the guys don’t agree with me, and I don’t agree with myself a lot of the time, they’ve only got to tell me”.  Asked how he felt about Ian’s portrayal as a spokesman for a generation Dave Cairns admitted; “I’m not happy with it, none of the band agree with everything he says, but you can’t have four people at interviews, and you have to admit he is good at talking.  At that Sounds thing the other day (The Mod verses the world debate) he could probably have won out against Ian McCullough et all.  You’ve got to counter bullshit with an equal level of bullshit”.

However for a music press made up of predominantly middle class pseudo anti establishment radicals, journalists who had fostered the myths of Punk, Mods rejections of Punk could not be forgiven.  Ian Page had told NME in November 1979; “If Punk was a question, then Mod is the answer to the questions that were raised in punk ……Actually no! ‘Blowing up’ the houses of parliament isn’t in fact the way to change those things that are wrong, and in the end all anybody has or can rely on is themselves”. 

It turned out a lot of music journalists didn’t like his answers.  These journalists thought rebellion was about rejecting society’s materialist values, about dressing down and opting out of the rat race.  They could not understand Mods subversiveness and the wish of working class youth to better themselves and look smarter than a rich person.  Ian Page challenged Punk’s pretentiousness, “We don’t plan, not even subversively, to overthrow and change peoples ideals, because people’s ideals can’t be changed like that”.  Page continued; “I don’t feel any point in protesting about the world at large, when it’s been so acutely dissected before and it’s still all intact.  Anyway your first enemy as a musician is the new establishment, which is the music industry and all its disgusting grotesque perversity”.

With one hand the music press warmly caressed the ska revival of Two Tone; whose bands were not averse to writing social commentaries, with the other hand it crushed Mod.  Ian Page became portrayed as a firm believer in free enterprise, a conservative with a capital ‘C’.  In reality Ian Page in setting up I Spy Records did exactly the same as Jerry Dammers did with Two Tone Records.  Page’s sin was to openly state he wanted to make a profit.  Punk’s Jimmy Pursey made exactly the same mistake whilst being interviewed with Page on Ned Sherrin’s Friday Night, Saturday Morning.  Pursey allowed himself to be sucked into a John Wells trap by being drawn into admitting that his J.P. Productions brought him a profit, he was called a capitalist.  The conversation ended there with the rolling of credits.  Page had practically remained silent throughout wanting to avoid the inevitable Punk / Mod confrontation, but “I wanted to help Jimmy and put in my 2p’s worth for I Spy. Of course he took a profit, and why shouldn’t he?  And that’s what I wanted to say, you know, but when he called him a capitalist.  If that means he works for himself and makes money doing it then I’m a capitalist too.  But if a capitalist is something else, which is what I happen to believe then neither of us are”.  Finally, “You were right when you called me a self made man.  You can be socialist and be a self made man, but the trouble is that too many people are socialists until they’ve got enough to be capitalists.  I’m neither, I don’t believe in the concept of right or left, and I absolutely detest Thatcher”.

Sound Of Confusion

Secret Affair’s next single Sound Of Confusion c/w Take It or Leave It (See 8) did not come out unscathed from the media backlash.  Released on the 1^st August, the single aimed to showcase the developmental leap in style and ambition of the bands impending album, but received unjustified reviews from the cynical press.  With Secret Affair away in the States playing key American cities and an indifferent record company the single only managed a disappointing top chart position of 45.  Ian Page moaned during the single’s promotional campaign, “Since they (Ariola) took over we’ve not been promoted so well.  I really feel that the carpet has been pulled from under our feet”.

The single broke new ground and had a lavish technical studio sound with Page and Cairns experimenting with sound effects on top of a strong melody and harmonies.  The saxophone may have mellowed but its solos still soared.  In retrospect Ian Page reflects; “I was strongly opposed to releasing it.  Bryan Morrison, who had demonstrated such a fantastic ear for a hit, had pushed very hard for it.  Because of our terms of reference as a band, I felt I had to make it refer to the sixties, in production terms I threw in every trick I had learnt and introduced elements of that mid ‘Small Faces’ phase – there’s even an electric sitar on the thing”.  Dave Cairns offers his opinion, “The one problem I have with Sound Of Confusion is that it has no meaning.  It’s not about anything”. This vagueness seemed to be reflected in the promotional video again directed by Steve Baron. It was filmed in the grounds of Bryan Morrison’s mansion, Secret Affair’s publisher. In what appears to be a derelict house, it features Dave Cairns on horseback and Dave Winthrop is seen as a mysterious figure throughout the video. Quite un-mod like!

The songs sophisticated mature sound was repeated on the forthcoming second album, Behind Closed Doors (I Spy 2) which was released the first week of September to coincide with the bands’ return to the UK.  Secret Affair had been anxious how the new songs would be received.  In interview prior to release Page had stated, “There’s a distinct change of approach and I want to see how people like it.  We have been out of the public eye for a few months, a long time, and they have very short memories, so we won’t have any momentum from our past success.  The new record will be taken on face value and that could turn everything (pause) very low key very quickly”.  Dennis Smith admitted the band had been “very frightened; when they had finished the demos we thought it could come out bland, like too much of a musician’s indulgence though now we’ve put it together I don’t think it has”.  Dennis continued to explain the band had never wanted to take the easy options, “We could have written another five, Time for Actions and been enormous, but our music is changing and broadening all the time”.  However Page recognised ominously that “It’s quite possible the media will put us into a bracket where they won’t want to know us any more.  Already we’re not getting asked for so many interviews”.  The album had an audacious vision in which the band aimed to flex their musical muscle and show their versatility.

What Did You Expect

From the opening footsteps that introduce What Did You Expect to the string orchestrated guitar solo crescendo finale of Street Life Parade, Behind Close Doors has a theatrical grand production.  Ian Page explains the inspiration and thinking behind the albums opening tack; “The lyrics were more influenced by TS Eliot than anything else – you know ‘I the grey romantic’.  At the beginning, those are footsteps of someone shuffling around in a museum, because I was trying to suggest that the thinking of the time was a bit like people shuffling their feet in a museum; not being very creative.  Then, that enormous synthesiser note announces that something extraordinary is about to happen.  I look back on it now with intense pride and think that it’s one of the best things we ever did”.

Page’s exuberance in Street Life Parade was inspired by their visit to the United States, “I stood on 47^th and Columbus in New York and looked at the street signs and thought ‘I just love this’.  When you first step into New York properly, all of our cultural reference points make us think we are on a movie set.  I wanted to turn that into a piece of music”.  The musical diversity of Behind Closed Doors is matched by the diversity of mood from the outright optimism of Live for Today, the melancholy of Life’s A Movie Too to biting cynicism of I’m A Bullet.  The album saw Dave Winthrop stamp his identity on the bands sound with his exhilarating sax soaring over each song.

Of the ten songs featured on the album My World and Life’s A Movie Too were among the first batch of Secret Affair songs demoed in January 1979.  Ian Page; “The inclusion of Life’s A Movie Too on the second album was seen as very symptomatic of this allegedly dramatic change that the band had taken musically.  The truth of it is that I’d written it when I was seventeen.  The song is about b-movie melancholy, but even when I first finished it, I felt the chorus didn’t work.  (Previously entitled; Seen That Movie Too).  The word ‘Life’ has more emotional potency.  I redrafted the lyrics in New York just before we recorded Behind Closed Doors.  They went back further to their New Hearts past to blow the dust off Only Madmen Laugh.  Co written with John Harty, Only Madmen Laugh, along with the Cairns song I’m A Bullet, (a classic line from Dave’s favourite scene) were inspired by the film Performance.

 With only two co-written Page & Cairns songs the music press speculated that Page and Cairns were now at each others throats and the band about to split.  The band was forced onto the defensive, Page countered “Its nice for us to have had time for songs of our own, but we do work well together musically, even though we never got on very closely personally.  But even in our worst moments, we have been nowhere as bad as some groups, and there has never been any discussion at all about splitting”.  Cairns reinforced the point “There’s no hostility between Ian and myself, he’s not the easiest person in the world to get on with and neither am I. Most of the stuff about us two is a lot of rubbish and people just love jumping on anything like that. Anyway we get on OK, but we‘ve never been personal friends outside of the business. We‘ve just needed each other all the way along”. In retrospect Dave reflects on the co-written song When the Show is Over, “This is the one classic song that was written between the first and second albums. It’s a classic Page/Cairns composition and it’s how the whole album should have ended up sounding. It was Ian Page looking into the future and predicting ultimately how we were going to end”.

In truth the demand for a quick follow up album to the success of Glory Boys had been  sprung upon Page and Cairns as Dave admitted in an interview with Sounds, “Ian was in the States remixing the first album for the American market and I was over here. We were told out of the blue that we had to get a second album together right now as owing to touring commitments we wouldn’t have any other time. So in the end we worked independently; he presented his songs and I came up with mine”.

The album showed a mature and confident Secret Affair reaching out to a wider audience. “We’re proud of it” said Page, “We’d like to see it getting more attention.  The first priority was to make it different from the first, to show the wide range of styles and influences there are within the band”.  While Page saw this diversity as the strength of the album, it could also be viewed as a weakness and Behind Closed Doors lacked the cohesion of Glory Boys.

Furthermore as Page had predicted the pundits refused to accept anything but the label they had attached to Secret Affair and accused Ian Page of forgetting Mod and turning his back upon the scene.  Secret Affair had supposedly lost their conviction and direction.  Ian explains his frustration, “It was like people weren’t happy with our commercial success, they were happy for ‘The Jam’ but not for us”.  His bitterness towards the music critics could not be hidden; “I don’t think anybody has ears to hear what I have to say.  Rock and Roll is a very phoney, bullshit industry. We have created something we believed people could believe in as a dream.  The dream’s the only thing that keeps rock going.  I hate all that fantasising about the rock n roll tradition.   Rock and Roll is basically bullshit and I hate it passionately”.  Despite the hostility of the music critics and media Behind Closed Doors reached number 48 in the listed charts.

The band took to the road once more for a twenty-date Sound of Confusion Tour supported by The Step.  The tour was a travelling propaganda show to win over doubters with Ian Page even taking his grand piano.  Journalist Carol Clerk joined the band on the tour and found them in a reflective mood.  Ian Page admitted; “We’ve made a few mistakes, when we started out, we were desperately enthusiastic, but we became a little bit jaded and stopped getting involved.  We were always totally committed to our music but we started leaving too many of the other decisions to the record company”.  Page continued, “This is a crucial time for us.  We have to prove that we can do it again.  I think it was a mistake to put out Sound of Confusion as a single.  We have had a slap in the face from that and it’s done us good.  We’ll be taking more care with the next one”.  The tour failed to sell out, Seb Shelton speculated on the reasons for the low crowd attendance, “Firstly these are hard times, there is a limit to the number of the concerts people can afford to go to in a week and this is a time when everyone’s touring.  Then there’s the fact that we’re labelled as a Mod band.  A proportion of the population are therefore harder to reach.  Certain people will choose to be deaf to us.  We have a large Mod following, but Mod as a movement has peaked already.  The movement is not going to get any bigger”.

Whilst as Ian Page had foreseen things becoming low key for Secret Affair there were positives and high points for the Sound of Confusion tour.  Engineer Simon Humphrey was guest keyboards for the tour bringing a new dimension and depth to the live set.  “I’d like to keep on performing with them whenever possible” he said; “Up until now I’ve been their engineer and I’ve helped out on production.  Playing is extremely enjoyable”.  Journalist Carol Clerk reviewed the band when they played the Manchester Apollo and found them playing to their full potential.  Memorable songs included, When the Show Is Over, Only Madmen Laugh (especially vigorous version) and Street Life Parade.  Interspersed with these new songs were the old favourites like Glory Boys; and the singles which had the Apollo shaking with vitality.  The dressing room afterwards was justifiably high spirited about what the band considered their best performance of the tour so far.  There were celebrations into the early hours at the hotel disco with Dave Cairns consolidating his reputation as the Travolta of Mod and Dave Winthrop ever the jester.

The tour eventually ended at the Rainbow Theatre, London.  Ian Page recalls the mood of resignation, “The Rainbow was a great gig, someone in NME wrote about how difficult his train journey home was.  I had to be philosophical about it but they were never, never gonna be into what we were doing, it was like stop worrying about it, I focussed on that.  I think they, the press, were the death of us in the end.  To be honest you can only resist it for so long, it’s all been very hurtful.  It made me demoralised and it affected the whole band.  We felt that whatever we tried to do, we’d get slapped down for it.  It knocked the stuffing out of us.  I think it was decided that Mod as a movement was not going to be allowed to happen and I became a whipping post and then the whole band became a whipping post”.  And to make matters worse, drummer Seb Shelton rounded off the tour by calmly announcing to a stunned dressing room that he was leaving the band.  His decision to quit Secret Affair was a big shock, but the band tried to make light of it.  Seb went on to join Dexys Midnight Runners.  “He never drank or smoked and he was always very keen on keeping fit so I’m sure he’s very happy there”, commented Page.

Take It or Leave It

1980 should have been the year Mod cleaned up; instead it gradually faded from view and was eclipsed by the 2 Tone ska explosion with The Specials, Madness, The Selecter and The Beat overshadowing their Mod counterparts.  When the March of the Mods tour came to the London Lyceum in August 1979; Madness and The Selecter were way down the bill, but this situation had now reversed.  Ian Page expressed the injustice; “The Specials are much more stylised and revivalist than any of the Mod bands since they copy others songs and styles rather than coming up with their own.  I possess Prince Buster’s Greatest Hits and for me there’s no real point in listening to these other guys and it’s us they call revivalist.  At least we’re writing our own stuff.  I love that music but I’ve just heard it played better before”.

Following this philosophy that; “the originals are still the greatest”.  I Spy Records bought Prince Buster’s new single although “dark legal things”, prevented it ever being released.  More successful was the signing of 60’s Ska legend Laurel Aitken who first released Rudi Got Married c/w Honey Come Back to Me (See 6) reaching number 60 in the charts in May 1980. 

A second single later that year Big Fat Man c/w It’s Too Late (See 7) failed to have to the same impact. As the year rolled on Mod bands gradually lost their commercial muscle and as young Mod DJ’s discovered the dance floor delights of northern soul and rhythm and blues, the original Mod music, the scene shifted away from live bands towards night clubs.  Picking up on this interest in soul and rhythm and blues, I Spy Records signed up soul superstar Eddie Floyd.  A single The Beat Song c/w London (See 9) was released at the end of 1980.  Ian Page recalls, “Laurel Atkins was one of those artists, whose records I would steal from Petticoat Lane. I knew all his stuff, it was outrageous that he didn’t have a record deal. In regard to Eddie Floyd, what physically sickened me was that the guy who had sung Knock On Wood didn’t have a record deal. So what ever I could do I did. So I thought it was a moral obligation to have a record label that could serve our business end, and we could help other artists. But in the end we stopped selling record ourselves so we lost that power.”

December saw Seb’s vacancy as drummer filled by Paul Bultitude who had been helping fellow Advertising member Tot Taylor set up the compact organisation and Mari Wilson and the Imaginations.  Not entirely a stranger to the band Bultitude had not only played with Dennis Smith in power pop band Advertising, but as Smith’s cousin he had often travelled the country with Secret Affair.  And Mod? How did Ian Page view that by the end of 1980?  “We are the movement; we’re all that’s left of it.  We were the only band who could play and the only ones who stayed by the ideals, meant what we said and stayed with it”.

Such was the climate toward Mod and Secret Affair in late 1980 that the band felt they had no option but to get away for a while in an attempt to make headway elsewhere in the world.  Their releases in the United States had been running about a year behind.  In August 1980 Glory Boys was released on the Sire Label with a different sleeve, remixes of Time for Action, Let Your Heart Dance, One Way World and the addition of My World.  Ian Page; “Sire believed that American ears were different from English ears and wanted different mixes.  They booked me a highly experienced US engineer and he made some very subtle differences, but in the main, said “I can’t hear much reason for changing these mixes. They’re great”.  For anyone who owns the originals, they will hear subtle differences, particularly on things like One Way World.  Now I listen back to them I really like the fact that two versions exist and I think it’s a measure of how good the original production was that the changes were so subtle”.

Secret Affair had made flying promotional visits to the States. Liking their brief tastes of America; they decided to go back for more.  “I’ve got no prejudices against America, like some other bands.  The lines on a map are man-made and I don’t see them, just people”.  Secret Affair kicked off their biggest and longest tour ever on the 3^rd March 1981 with a gig at Cardies in Houston, Texas.  “We went over as a rhythm and blues band in shiny suits, it was really weird ….. No one knew what Mod was really.  Our first gig over there was supporting the Edgar Winter Band, their home town was Texas and we played to these cowboys.  They had the hats, the boots, the whole bit.  We went out in shiny ties and it was like; what the f**k is this all about.  Our first number ended and it was a very slow hand-clap.  Carnsey did a good solo and they nearly fell off their chairs when the saxophones came out, they didn’t get that either.  ‘Mahwah geetahs’ on the basis of solo’s and riffs they eventually got into it.  Unfortunately they were shouting ‘Yeehah’.  It was good because we proved we could play good rhythm and blues, though it was a bit like Blues Brothers, but with no chicken wire!  We almost had to do a few choruses of Rawhide to get them going”.

In the UK Secret Affair were deemed to be merely the product of a youth cult, a passing phase, but in America they could be taken at face value.  For two and a half months they could do just what they did best, entertain.  Driving all day everyday and playing every night, Secret Affair soon settled into the rhythm of the tour, taking in about thirty American States.  It was a hard and gruelling tour but it knocked the band into a tight functioning unit and reminded them of just how good they actually were.  It also gave them a reason for staying together.  “One thing America taught us was that we were able to walk onto a stage without one person in the auditorium knowing who we were and still get a reaction.  In Britain we’d been condition to believe that we were popular only because we were at the head of a new fashion movement”.  After the final American gig at the Peppermint Lounge in New York, Secret Affair then headed for Canada for the final stretch of the trip, before returning to the UK.

Business as Usual

Three months of solid gigging State side had not only made Secret Affair a rock solid, live act, but had also given them the confidence to go back into the recording studio.  Ian Page and Dave Cairns found themselves closer as a song writing partnership than at any time since the early days of the band.  Once again they had a sense of focus, locking them-selves away at Dave’s parents’ house they set about penning a set of Secret Affair’s strongest songs.  With the American experience still a unifying memory the band made their first attempt at recording the third album at Red Bus Studio’s in London with Colin Thurston as Producer.  Three Wise Monkeys, The Big Beat and Dance Master were recorded before the band relocated to a residential recording studio in Cornwall and remained for two months totally immersing themselves in the making of their next album.  Nick Tauber was brought in to work on the recordings and he took the decision to speed up the master tapes, a decision the band later came to regret when music reviewers complained the recordings left little space for the listeners’ involvement. 

When the band eventually reappeared in September to promote their fifth single, not only did they have a new sound, they also dabbled with a new image.  The Mod scene had started to fragment and in the West End of London a more glamorous New Psychedelic scene emerged.  Secret Affair now sported paisley shirts, velvet collared double breasted Regency suits and cravats.  Ian Page even grew a neat beard and embraced a new vocal style; “I loved David Bowie’s Anthony Newley phase!”  This new image was captured on a photo session in Cornwall at a place near St Austell, 8 miles from Bodmin where the band had been recording. In addition to a session shot in a clay mine the band where also pictured in the remains of a tiny chapel at Roche Rock, which can account for Dave Cairns wearing a Parsons hat. Their music however, returned to their soul routes and the dance credibility of their first album.  After the critics rejection of the vision, of Behind Closed Doors Page and Cairns wanted to put the record straight.  Going back to the basics; the fusion rock riffs with Motown beats they wanted to make people dance.  Do You Know c/w Dance Master (See 10) were rooted in this philosophy but while strong songs the single suffered from the bands long absence reaching a disappointing 57 and remaining in the charts for four weeks.  For the first time in their career there was not a queue of music journalists to interview Ian Page, but the strength of their name and reputation at least ensured the single was reviewed and that the band got on television to promote it.

Secret Affair had not played live since returning to the UK in May, but they finally embarked on a mini tour in December in preparation for the release of their next single the following month.  The band introduced their new set with a series of gigs that included The Electric Ballroom and The Marquee with Paul Bultitude’s protégés The Jet Set in support.  The gigs were fast and furious, crowded and sweaty, played at 100mph; everything seemed to be set up for the release of Lost in the Night c/w The Big Beat.  However on its release in early January 1982 it became their first single not to make any impression on the charts.  Lost in the Night was a well crafted three minute pop song with pristine jangly guitars and tight melodies.  Ian Page; “Mac the Knife is actually from Brecht.  Mac the Knife is Mac heath, arch villain in the world where mortality has no home …… ‘The ghastly fire in Soho, seven children at a go…’ It’s based on ‘The Three Penny Opera’.  I was trying to be cutely sinister and I had in my mind this kind of gothic scene that related to London streets and London music.  It was a way of revisiting the same Soho alleyways that inspired a lot of our early music”.  Perhaps the strongest of the new songs it had the potential to emulate the success of Time for Action and My World but with very little record company promotion the single failed to chart.

By the time Business As Usual, their third album was released in February the writing seemed to be on the wall for the band.  Carol Clerk hit the nail on the head in her Melody Maker review of the album; “I’m surprised that Secret Affair have stayed together long enough to record a third album after their systematic dismembering by the music press.  The last album, brimming as it was with exquisitely tuneful songs, fell by the wayside, a victim of criminal neglect”.  This album, she pleaded; “Deserves the attention of an all too apathetic public”.  As the album title suggested Secret Affair had dropped the Psychedelic pretences; putting their Mod suits and ties back on and Ian Page shaving his beard.  Giving it one last shot the band set out to promote the hell out of the album, kicking off with a gig at The Venue in Victoria.  Ian Page had a vision which he hoped might save the band, to create an all singing all dancing Motown style of soul review, with the introduction of ‘The Tasty Tarts’, female backing vocalists to add a touch of style to Somewhere In The City and I Could Be You.  Secret Affair tried to breathe some life into sales of the album, which reached an unjustified 84 in the listed charts.  Playing a mixture of college gigs and clubs, the live performances were hot, sharper than they ever had been, but their following was showing definite signs of diminishing.  Ian Page regretfully recalls; “The last tour we did was a f**king nightmare, worrying if enough people would turn up to cover costs.  My end memories are of limited demand.  My perspective was where the f**k was everybody.  I suppose to an extent we came out of fashion”.  John Opposition reviewing the tour in the Sounds Music magazine remarked, “What a waste of a great band.  The die-hards down the front are going as mad as ever, but the cavernous spaces behind, bear witness to the hard fact, that in this business, the image and fashion potential of a band, are often far more important in determining their success than the strength of the songs they write”.  John went on to conclude; “It’s good to see that Secret Affair still have a loyal following despite the ‘unfashionable’ tag they have acquired.  It is, however absolutely tragic that they haven’t on the whole got a wider audience since they manifestly deserve to”. 

On the 30^th April 1982 Secret Affair played their last London gig at City University, Islington.  There was an air of intimidation in the crowd and afterwards the mood of the band was not good, Page stalking through corridors cutting a slightly uneasy figure.  The band played one last gig, a private May Ball at Cambridge University and then effectively disintegrated.

When the Show Is Over

When the band decided to call it a day they went their separate ways, Ian Page went solo releasing two singles for EMI before leaving the music business all together.  “When I finally called it a day, I was then into my solo career, I was in this meeting with the record label, A&R were there, it was owned by an accountant.  There was this shopping list on how to move products.  First was the video, second my haircut, third the clothes and so on.  In fifth place was which song to release!  At the time I had this flat in Westbourne Park.  This woman knocked on the door, introducing herself as the Wardrobe Mistress.  She brought out all this nice stuff, Italian style.  There were these shoes which were really nice.  I said, ‘I’ll have these then’.  She told me I couldn’t as everything had to go back to the shop.  I thought; No! What am I, a clothes hanger? That was it, time to walk away.”

The other band members kept their hand in.  David Cairns formed the duo Flag with Archie Brown from Young Bucks and The Bureau, and then linked up with Dennis Smith in Walk on Fire.  Dennis went on to join Nick Kershaw while Paul Bultitude joined Mari Wilson’s Wilsations and continued to manage The Jet Set.  Seb Shelton eventually ended up managing bands such as The Wooden Tops and Julian Cope.  In 1999 Ian Page returned to live music to celebrate Mod Mayday.  Looking back he reflects “Dave’s out in Memphis now as a session musician.  It’s different for a singer; I had to prove to myself I could do a proper job in the real world.  Because I did Secret Affair from a young age, I didn’t know how to do it as a hobby.  I believe it has to be done professionally.  When we put Secret Affair together me and Dave wrote twelve sons, worked like f**k and believed in it, that what it’s all about; passion, that’s what I want to re-create on May 2^nd”.

Mods Mayday 99

The idea to mark the 20^th anniversary of the Bridge House gig came about after Paul Robinson had DJ’d at a gig by The Killermeters in early May 1998.  He had got into conversation with Dizzy and Tania for Detour Records and a few weeks after the gig Paul telephoned Vic Szczesnowicz AKA Vic Vespa to ask if the Killermeters wanted to play a small show in London to mark the anniversary.  Vic jumped at the chance and things mushroomed from there.

Initially all attempts to find Ian Page had drawn a blank, old acquaintances had not seen him for years.  The Paul struck lucky whilst on the telephone about other things related to the gig; the person mentioned they knew where the elusive Mr Page worked. Directory Enquiries supplied the company’s number and a telephone conversation resulted in Paul sending Ian some information about the project and arranging a rendezvous in Camden to discuss things in greater detail.  Dave Porter recalls; “Of course he did not show at the first meeting, to which Paul wanted to blow him out altogether.  I was having none of that!  I was straight on the phone Monday to Page”.  Ian Page explains; “Dave Porter had to slap me around the head with a fish many times before I’d believe him.  I’m a bit of a cynic these days you see”.  Thankfully Dave and Paul preserved even when finally they met up, Ian mentioned he did not have a band anymore.  Paul replied; “No problem, leave it to me and I’ll sort it out”.  Thus The Affair were born (initially Partners In Crime), the line up consisted of Ian Jones (ex Long Tall Shorty) on bass, Jel Lee on guitar, Gary Page on drums and Colin and Bruce on brass.

To promote Mods Mayday 99 Paul Robinson and Dave Porter arranged for Ian to be interviewed by   the Scootering magazine.  A photo shoot was held on a raw December Sunday morning outside The Merc featuring Ian, several Mod scooters and a distinctive Mini Cooper which the number plate A1 MOD.  Following the shoot everyone adjourned to a welcoming coffee bar at the entrance to Carnaby Street where the interview was held.  Published in the February/March edition of Scootering the interview declared New Chapter- New Page.  Then on March the 5^th, to warm up for Mods Mayday Ian and his new band played a gig at the Colchester Arts Centre.

Mods Mayday 99 was held on Sunday 2^nd May at The Forum, Kentish Town, North London.  It featured the cream of the 79 revival, Mick Walker’s, West Midlands The Circles, Huddersfield’s Killermeters the Barking based Small World, Ian Page, Deptford’s The Chords, Purple Hearts and Squire.  Dave Porter and Kevin Lock DJ’d and a new three piece band Rosko opened up the bill after Long Tall Shorty had to pull out at the last minute with one band member seriously ill.  It was around 6:30pm when Tony Clark did the introduction for Ian Page and his Partners in Crime.  In response the whole dance floor and raised section as well as the balcony erupted to welcome the spokesman for a generation back to the live arena.  Dressed entirely in black Ian launched into a bold and brassy version of My World followed by  soul and Motown favourites Going To A Go Go, Tracks Of My Tears, Get Ready, Togetherness, Ain’t To Proud To Beg and Road Runner.  Let Your Heart Dance precluded the one everyone had been waiting for; Time for Action, which practically had the whole building shaking.  Of course the audience would not let Ian leave without an encore, what else but Glory Boys.  Then a second encore was demanded and Ian announced “once more for old time’s sake” before launching into Time for Action again.  Then with the last chords resonating around The Forum, the audience raised their voices in one of the most intense chants of the day; “We are the Mods, we are the Mods, we are, we are, we are the Mods!”

Phil Culshaw

Jan 2010

<<BACK TO SECRET AFFAIR INDEX PAGE

©Detour Records