Conveniently airbrushed from the bigger Liverpool picture for too long, MIKE BADGER is all too often dismissed in dispatches as the man who came up with the name “The La’s” and very little else.
Yes, Badger was indeed the man who co-founded the legendary quartet THE LA’S with Lee Mavers in those dark days of 1984, but he deserves recognition for so much more: blazing a trail for what we now casually refer to as ‘Americana’ or ‘roots rock’ with his under-rated post La’s combo, THE ONSET; playing a vital role in co-founding magnificent Scouse record imprint The Viper Label with fellow ex-La’s émigré Paul Hemmings and pioneering the art of tin sculpting/recycling being merely three of the other notable entries on his remarkable CV.
However, while it’s undeniably been a long and fascinatingly strange trip for Mike Badger, the heartening part is that there’s clearly so much more to come. 2008 alone is due to play host to a brand new studio album featuring all-new music recorded by Badger and a talented cast of collaborators such as fellow Huyton native Martyn Campbell (also currently bassist with Scouse demi-Gods Shack) and a mooted 20-track career overview compilation, which should finally herald a long-overdue re-evaluation of this singular character’s work over the past two and a half decades.
So, after some fascinating discussions over the phone and via e-mail with Editor TIM PEACOCK, W&H is enormously proud to present a major, three-part, career-spanning interview. In parts two and three, we’ll be re-evaluating his work with The Onset, his virtually accidental first steps towards becoming the respected sculptor he is today and his solo work, all of which is ripe for re-discovery.
In Part One, though, we’ll be concentrating on Mike’s early days and the events leading to him co-founding The La’s with Lee Mavers.
So let's peel the decades back and start at the beginning: to be precise those heady days when Beatlemania was finally planting Liverpool’s post-war flag on the map.
As he accurately records at the beginning of The Onset’s strident “What Say You?”, Mike “arrived in Liverpool in 1962”: a little early to have absorbed Merseybeat culture first hand, admittedly, but a good time to get involved in the trends that would follow during the next decade.
“Luckily, I had a sister (Ros) who was in to good music,” muses Mike.
“She bought stuff like Neil Young’s ‘Harvest’, The Rolling Stones’ “High Tide And Green Grass” compilation, Dylan’s “Blood On The Tracks” and David Bowie, so that was all cool, although the two year age difference between us really meant a lot because I was that bit younger I eventually got into Punk and Reggae,” he remembers.
“I always loved “I Hear You Knocking” by Dave Edmunds – so I guess my R’n’B fascination was there from the start.”
As indeed it was when you consider Mike’s first gig as a paying punter.
“Yeah, that was Dr. Feelgood with Mink de Ville as support in 1977,” he recalls.
“It was astonishing. I also went to the Stiff Records tour (the round robin one, revolving headline tour that helped catapult both Elvis Costello and Ian Dury and to a lesser extent Wreckless Eric and Nick Lowe into the public consciousness – Ed) in the same year. These were my pre-Eric’s experiences. I also loved early Status Quo when they were doing stuff like ‘Paper Plane’, ‘Down Down’ and ‘Caroline’. That was unshackled music to me.”
Mike relates this without fear of reprisal from the 21st Century cool police as – rightly – he should. Certainly, this reconstructed post-punker spent more time listening to the Quo than he might have admitted to fifteen years back, as did many of us if we’re being honest.
And while we’re at it, Mike’s childhood holiday memories dredge up staple tunes many of us recall enjoying before Punk’s ‘Year Zero’ mentality ripped up the rule book.
“Going to France on holiday with the family, that brings Diana Ross’s seventies stuff quickly to mind,” says Mike.
“Plus I loved “I Am, I Said” by Neil Diamond too – first song I remember, though, has gotta be “Four Wheels on my Wagon, and I’m still rolling along – the Cherokees are after me, but I’m singing my happy song” – I loved that as a kid” he finishes with feeling.
However, as we already know, the coming of Punk in 1976/77 and its’ all-encompassing wave sweeping over Liverpool left its’ mark on celebrated protagonists such as Julian Cope, Ian McCulloch, Pete Burns and Pete Wylie as well as a whole host more deserving of greater posthumous evaluation. Not surprisingly, the city’s Punk and post-Punk scene – centred around the legendary Eric’s venue – more than fired the feverish imagination of the then 16-year old Mike Badger.
Mike’s detailed ‘Memories of Eric’s club are available in full in one of the Blog Entries on www.myspace.com/mikebadger, though a number of his insights are worthy of inclusion here too:
“The Cure – The Damned – Madness – Joy Division – The Pretenders – The Ruts – The Undertones – The Pop Group – Crass – Steel Pulse – Alexis Korner…all bands I saw at Eric’s and quite a roll call when you consider I only really caught the last eighteen months of its’ existence,” says Mike almost thirty years later.
“It’s hard to believe it was all there, now that our lovely dirty old town has turned into a haven for night time revellers of a very different kind. In the late 70s, this area (taking in Button Street, home of the Probe Records store, and Matthew Street, home of the original Cavern Club) was awash with characters and individuals who never followed the pack but formed their own – no-one looked the same, it was about freedom of expression, freedom of speech, freedom to have a good time, in fact just freedom.”
“In all the times I went to Eric’s I never saw any trouble – there was no real drugs scene down there of any significance either, it was people who were essentially into music that made this a safe environment. Doreen (manager, later also proprietor of excellent late 80s/early 90s night spot Planet X – Ed)) and the doormen were characters too and although they probably knew I wasn’t of a legal age to enter, they turned a blind eye.”
“I have some cherished memories of the bands I saw down there,” he notes.
“Steel Pulse stand out playing “Ku Klux Klan” in hooded white robes – scary,” he remembers of the influential Brummie reggae outfit.
“Ian Curtis falling into the drum kit during a possessed performance by Joy Division, Crass projecting Super-8 movies on to the back drop and playing “Screaming Babies”…The Cramps figure pretty high up on the list of occasions, their gig still stands as the dirtiest rock’n’roll show I have witnessed, with (guitarist) Bryan Gregory flipping cigarettes round his mouth and then spitting them into the crowd, (guitarist) Poison Ivy standing, twanging, a sultry New York statuette, Nick Knox pounding away on the drums the heart beat of rock-ability and Lux Interior (singer) gradually undressing down to a writhing, rolling mess on the floor in red underpants and winkle pickers. What a night – and then I met them later on and still own the piece of paper that Lux scrawled on, saying: ‘To Mike, who taught me everything I know, Lux Interior.”
Not surprisingly, this remarkable era of white-hot creativity galvanised the early efforts of an all-too willing artistic supplicant such as Mike Badger, and in the aftermath of Eric’s came his first musical venture, The Kindergarten Paint Set, existing roughly during 1981/82.
“It was my first real musical venture,” admits Mike. “3 guys and 3 girls doing a kind of Rip, Rig & Panic-style percussive, Doo-wop thing, mainly students, who decided to remain students and get proper work. I cried like a little whipped pup when it broke up and moved to London for 18 months in May 1983. During KPS’ lifetime, Roger Eagle got us some gigs at the Adams Club (Eagle’s post-Eric’s venue) with The Frantic Elevators (Mick Hucknall’s pre-Simply Red art-rock outfit – Ed). All in all, it was a case of youthful exuberance versus harsh reality!”
Which, of course, could be a wider description of rock’n’roll teeth cutting in general, but – unlike many of us who may well wish to forget their first time treading the boards – Mike recalls his first gig with some fondness.
“Yeah, first gig was in Brady’s (another well-known post-Eric’s Liverpool venue) with the Notsensibles from Bradford, I was performing as Badgeroo & The Badgerettes. I really enjoyed that, doing poems like “Parkas, Drainies and Trainies” and “Vogue, Vogue, Vogue” and generally venting my thoughts about scallies, Thatcher and Bowie and Ferry freaks.”
During this period, Mike would also experience a chance meeting that actually merits that over-used epithet ‘life-changing’.
“I actually met Captain Beefheart on 31st October 1980 in the foyer of Manchester City art gallery,” he reveals.
Whether the significance of this being Halloween is relevant or not, however, it certainly cast a long lasting spell on Mike, as he goes on to explain.
“This was a pivotal moment in my life,” he says, quite matter-of-factly.
“I saw this guy sitting in the foyer and he was wearing a hat and swearing at his sketch book as he worked, immersed in a personal struggle. I asked to see his sketch book and got talking to him…he said he was a musician – I said I am too and he said “I know”. I asked him how he knew and he said “I’m psychic.” It went from there…I spent about a half hour with him. Kevin Wright was with me too, who later recorded some of The La’s demos.”
As we’ll see shortly, this would not be the only time Beefheart would influence the story of The La’s, but immediately, this meeting made a crucial impression on Mike Badger.
“Three months later, I was in a junk shop in Tuebrook (area of Liverpool – Ed) and found a copy of ‘Clear Spot’ (Beefheart’s tremendous 1972 album) with no sleeve and thought…oh, that’s by that guy I met in Manchester. I went home after buying it for 30p and it was mind-blowing! To this day, it’s the best introduction to Beefheart - ‘Clear Spot’ – beautiful album.”
Following his initial Kindergarten Paint Set project, Mike’s artistic endeavours began to take the upper hand for a while, with his 18-month sojourn to London. However, his art college roots stretch back to a more local institution.
“Yeah, I went to St. Helens Art College on a two-year foundation course – just up the road from Roby – during the period 1979-1981,” he reveals.
“My sister had gone there along with (future Frankie Goes to Hollywood star) Paul Rutherford and Budgie (of Banshees, Creatures and Slits fame). I wanted to go to Liverpool Art College but never got in to do Fine Art. I could have gone to Manchester but I wanted to stay in Liverpool because of Jeanette, my girlfriend, and the local musicians I knew.”
In one of the many curious co-incidences haunting Mike Badger’s story, though, it turns out he would leave his imprint on the infamous Liverpool Art College.
“Jeanette went to the Liverpool Art College about eight years later and was shocked to see one of my paintings over the fireplace in the staff room,” recalls its’ still incredulous protagonist.
“It had been salvaged from a skip after I had left it behind when moving from Faulkner Street in 1986,” he laughs. “So I really did get in there in the end!”
“But anyway, my moving to London had its’ roots in both music and art,” he continues.
“Alan Wills (drummer with The Wild Swans, The Room and Shack and later founder of The Coral’s Deltasonic label) put me on to a studio owned by The Modernaires in Chester and I did some demos there myself with The Modernaires backing me. I sent the demos to Cherry Red and they really liked it, saying it sounded like The Beach Boys’ ‘Pet Sounds’. So that was another reason I moved to London.”
Sadly, though, Mike’s chance of rubbing shoulders with Cherry Red mainstays like Ben Watt, Tracy Thorn and The Nightingales was partially scotched by his first ‘official’ release round this time: a curious track called ‘The Time I Grew Forever’, from the ‘A Secret Liverpool’ compilation album. There again, perhaps a song described by its’ author as sounding like “a poem set to ‘The Syncopated Clock’ by Leroy Anderson played at 45rpm instead of 33rpm – Alice in Wonderland territory” might just do the job of putting off potential label suitors….
“Yeah, it baffled them, I think, so that was that,” admits Mike.
Then again, the ‘A Secret Liverpool’ compilation has since attained something akin to legendary status on Merseyside and was certainly way ahead of its’ time in terms of packaging, as Mike is keen to inform us.
“The ‘Secret Liverpool’ LP was released on Davies Records (actually Mike’s mate Carl Davies) and all the copies of the album were housed in sleeves cut from cardboard boxes we were re-cycling. I got mine from Soho for the Chinese writing,” Mike enthuses.
“In the tradition of Crass and John Cage, the opening track was “three minutes of silence, though that just confused people.”
“Sadly, Carl Davies died in 2002, aged only 40,” Mike continues. “A lot of people don’t know it was actually funded in part by Carl’s brother, the actor Ian Hart and it did actually remain very much a ‘secret’ until 1996 when a guy from Australia called Terry Banks contacted MOJO magazine because the first ever La’s release a song called ‘ I Don’t Like Hanging Around’ was on side two, this was one of the Chester recordings with myself being backed by the Modernaires, anyhow Terry Banks said it sounded like The Monochrome Set , he also ran a radio show in Australia called ‘The Time I grew Forever’ which was used as his theme music.”
This discovery of the first La’s release would ultimately prove rather embarrassing for the Go! Discs label, who previously had done a good job in convincing the wider public that The La’s did not exist prior to 1987: a ‘fact’ which is considerably economical where the real truth is concerned.
“Fred Dellar of MOJO wanted to find out more about this lost track, so he contacted Go! Discs,” Mike reveals.
“They said The La’s didn’t exist prior to 1986 – quite categorically, so Dellar said, “Well, I have an album here dating back to 1984 featuring them, so you’re wrong.”
Mike actually formed The La’s with Lee Mavers after an eventful 18 months in London, living in Camden Road and selling some of his early artwork / collages outside the Tate on the banks of the Thames.
This period wasn’t without its’ musical interludes either, but it was when Badger had a weekend in Liverpool in the spring of 1984 that he happened upon a chance meeting with a former acquaintance that – with the benefit of hindsight – can now be viewed as life-changing in rock’n’roll terms.
Simply because the acquaintance was none other than future La’s leader Lee Mavers.
“I knew Lee from Neuklon (Huyton punk band),” Mike explains. “He played bass with them later on; I thought he was a cool guy, not to mention a brilliant musician and dead funny. Plus he looked great.”
This being Liverpool, of course, it’s necessary at this point to mention a little of Neuklon’s history. In existence from roughly 1979 through to 1985, Mike got them a gig at Eric’s supporting OMD in 1980 with – according to the respected ‘Merseysound’ publication – “no knowledge of how to tune their instruments” and legend has it that they got through around 60 musicians during their half decade. Strangely, outside of nominal leader – synth player Mike Lloyd – Mavers is rumoured to be one of the more long-term figures in their story, though their only official release was a track called ‘The Phoenix’ on the long-deleted 1985 compilation ‘Jobs For The Boys’.
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“I decided to return to Liverpool to form a band called The La’s with Lee,” he explains.
“He didn’t know this, but I sensed its’ destiny and then he was the first person I saw at a bus stop in Huyton on the night I returned to Liverpool.”
As to Mike claiming the credit for the name ‘The La’s’, well it’s all true.
“The name had appeared to me in a dream during a trip back to Liverpool in 1984 whilst sleeping on Carl Davies’ couch,” he explains.
“The only way I can describe why ‘The La’s’ came to me before it all happened is- it’s like the pull of the wave on the water before it that is eventually incorporated into the wave itself – it all seemed so natural.”
Oh, and remember Mike’s key chance encounter with Captain Beefheart? Well, it also played a hand in his desire to work with Lee Mavers, too.
“One of the key things also with me wanting to work with Lee was that he told me he’d been getting into Captain Beefheart whilst I had been in London and I thought “wow – I could work with this guy!”
Bearing in mind the hard-line, 60s-obsessed attitude Mavers is reputed to have, Badger’s recollection of their first rehearsal is also extremely revealing.
“The first rehearsal we had was in Lee’s sister’s bedroom in Dinas Lane, Page Moss, Huyton,” he remembers with great clarity.
“I had some words written down like ‘My Girl Sits Like A Reindeer’ and just put them on the floor in front of Lee. I said I saw it as being rhythmic and discordant and he started playing this riff – Beefheart-style, I loved ‘How I Wrote Elastic Man’-era Fall too. Lee later dropped my words from the first co-written song and changed it into ‘Feeling’. At that time I wanted to make Northern pulsing rock’n’roll,” he finishes, still clearly enthusiastic about this period of his life.
“We also had a go at ‘Sweet 35’ (which, like ‘My Girl…’ features on Viper’s excellent ‘Breakloose (Lost La’s Recordings 1984-1986)’ album) – Lee had written this beautiful piece of music on the toilet,” laughs Mike.
“It was one of the first tunes he had come up with and I adapted my words to it. ‘Sweet 35’ was like saying people are beautiful at whatever age. Phew…seems young now!”
During late 1984 and 1985, the legend that is The La’s began in earnest with the fledgling band rehearsing and polishing both Mike and Lee’s songs and by the dawn of 1986 they were ready to have a crack at the masses. Mike still fondly remembers their first proper live show as well:
“It was at The Lamb in St.Helens, January 1986,” he divulges.
“The line-up was myself, Lee Mavers, Bernie Nolan (bass) and Tony Clark (drums), these latter being two guys I’d met who’d been in ‘The Russian Rockabillys’. It was a fantastic night and we went down really well. A guy called David Evans who I had known from art school days got us the gig.”
“I remember listening to ‘Nuclear War’ by Sun Ra in the van on the way there,” he continues.
“We were a northern rock’n’roll band with something very different going on. Just afterwards, on the night before my 24th birthday I put on John Peel and immediately on came ‘My Girl Sits Like A Reindeer’ which we’d recorded for the ‘Elegance Charm & Deadly Danger Compilation’ (The La’s second appearance on record) and me and Jeanette danced around the room. It was really exciting at this stage.”
Later on in the more ‘established’ La’s history, of course, bassists and drummers came and went at an alarming frequency around the more stable core of Mavers and John Power, but during the two years or so Badger co-helmed the band with Mavers the story was very similar indeed. Was this because Lee was as demanding and definite in his ideas as he’s been painted in the press ever since?
“Lee had very fixed ideas when it came to rhythm sections,” Mike reveals.
“He was also a great bass player himself, which people often forget. But it was only when I met John Power (mid way through 1986) on the Unemployed Musicians Resource Scam when the turnstile admitting and dismissing bass players finally stopped turning. John’s advantage was that he’d only just started playing at the time and so was very pliable…and besides, what great bass lines to learn from Lee! John seized the task and brought along a much bigger audience to boot. Things really started moving from then on, around June 1986.”
One of the things that may surprise many La’s fans who have been frustrated by the lack of material that would later emerge was just how prolific the original La’s were. In the sleeve notes to his 2005 compilation album ‘Lo-Fi Electric Excursions’, Badger himself speaks of the band often recording and mixing five songs in a day when they were recording on 4-track machines and – by chance as much as anything – happening on the raw, live sound Mavers would later so obsessively strive for.
“Yeah, it’s true we were prolific,” notes Mike.
“We recorded at The Attic, a cheap community studio a lot of the time and we would sometimes record as many as five songs a day – and they would sound great. In fact, it was the very sound Lee strove for later on, but then you can’t re-create a time, can you?”
I had also wondered whether record companies were sniffing around at this stage, but apparently not during Mike’s tenure with the band.
“No, that all started early in 1987, immediately after I left,” he admits.
“By then, the ripples had reached London, after an awful lot of the hard work had been done! By then, we had taken Liverpool – no mean achievement in the cold, dark days of Thatcherism. We’d done great gigs, had a residency at the Pen & Wig venue and had great demos recorded. It was all set, really.”
The songs featuring on The Viper Label’s release ‘Callin’ All’ (documenting The La’s recordings on 4-track machines and cassette recorders during 1986) demonstrate that the songs most of us know and love from the eventual 1990 eponymous debut were all finished and in place four years earlier. Crucially, though, most of these were Mavers’ songs and as 1986 drew to a close, his co-founder was ready to bail out of the band he’d played such an important hand in setting up over two years before.
“For a while, it was all hunky dory,” says Mike.
“But with the success came the friction. It became clear that Lee wanted it for himself he could be nasty at times too, he would provoke me and I would stand up to him until it got to the point when I thought “I didn’t start this for these reasons” and decided I shouldn’t be in a position where I had to fight to be in my own band.”
“The straw that broke the camel’s back was when we were setting up for a gig and Mike, a mate, was helping us and Lee picked up a speaker that banged him on the head and never apologised. So I confronted him about it and it all just kicked off.”
“This was just before Christmas 1986 and that was it for me. I cut out and there was no-one left to really confront him after that. I left them to it. John (Power) was still only a teenager and probably still couldn’t believe his luck in walking into Liverpool’s next big thing; Timmo (drummer John Timson) was Lee’s old mate, so I was going nowhere if it came to loyalty. Plus there were other things: I’d written a song called ‘Moonlight’ (a version of which features on the ‘Breakloose’ compilation) and was looking forward to it being introduced in to the set and Lee just scoffed at it and I thought this was wrong. Joey Davidson – another mate of Lee’s – had taken over a managerial role -of sorts, so it all weighted it against me.”
It says a lot about Mike Badger’s character that – despite all this – he harbours a notable lack of bitterness towards Lee and the band and, rightly, feels proud of his contribution to The La’s.
“I named the band and formed it with Lee,” he says today.
“Because the later incarnation got signed (by Go! Discs in 1987), it’s obviously this version of the band that most people think of. I wished them well, though and to this day I really think I had the best time that there was in The La’s. And yes, I can see the lost potential, but you have to be true to yourself. I do get a little perturbed though sometimes- like when I read in a big article that appeared in the Guardian about the La’s in 1999 (quote): ‘The La’s co-founder Mike Badger left in 1986- Lee’s leadership then taking immediate effect’ This sounded to me like the two years work I had done was holding them back- I will always give Lee credit for his truly outstanding musical abilities but his leadership started a steady descent that nose dived into the clay a year or so later and that’s where- to everyone’s frustrations- he’s mostly remained.”
With hindsight, Bernie Connor (the man responsible for many a tremendous sleeve note for Viper Records releases) summed it up most pertinently when he once said “what no one else realised at the time was that Lee always had his own agenda” “and he was right’ Mike continues – “The La’s had become a vehicle for Lee. The negative side’s all so unnecessary though- but there’s a huge difference between a victim and a survivor. I’ve always been a survivor – I got my head down and got on with new projects.”
As we mentioned earlier, Liverpool's excellent Viper Label have released two resolutely ‘lo-fi’ ‘Lost La’s’ albums, taken predominantly from the original band's legendary demo sessions circa 1984-86. Both of these releases go a good way of redressing the accepted idea of the band only existing on Lee Mavers’ terms from 1987 and from the Go! Discs signing onwards. The ‘blue’ album (‘Lost La’s 1985-86: Breakloose') especially shows just how much of an influence Mike Badger had on the band’s early direction, but how does the co-author of these songs now feel about the material these records contain after two decades?
“Some of them are fantastic and all of them are valid” says Mike with that notorious benefit of hindsight the La’s strange history requires to be put into some form of perspective.
“It’s important to point out that Lee helped to compile these two albums – some of the stuff on Breakloose I wouldn’t have thought as obvious choices but Lee was insistent on the earliest session going on because of the vibe-and he is very hard to please! I personally feel it was a brave move to release these albums considering the notoriety The La’s rightfully received after I left. But then I always refer to Joe Strummer’s stance and his idea of “I am proud of every record I have released – even the not so good ones.” And that’s how it should be.”
Absolutely. Besides, there really are two sides to every story and both must be allowed to flourish in the public eye.
“Artists should be brave enough to stand by who and what they are or have been,” says Mike firmly.
“Bands break up and that’s what happens, but the music is the music and should be held as being special seeing as it’s the reason you’re doing it in the first place.
“Lee has told me that ‘Open Your Heart’ (featured on ‘Breakloose’) inspired the writing of ‘Timeless Melody’ which I felt flattered me but you can hear the way the chorus comes in and at the end he says “open your mind” instead. I mean, ultimately I know my contribution to The La’s album and so does Lee, but for him to sign a publishing deal and not acknowledge my contribution to the song ‘Callin’ All’ was very hurtful. For a while, I felt like – God, all I did was start the band, get John (Power) in, and then give it to them…but, y’know…the fact that Lee helped put the Lost La’s albums together shows that there’s been a lot of water over the Mersey tunnel!”
“We wrote together which was great for quite some time, I came up with ‘Moonlight’, ‘Breakloose’, ‘What Do You Do?’ ‘Open your Heart’ and Lee made them in to finished articles…I stand by the songs we wrote –it was a special time and of course I remember the way they went down in the live set.”
(**In part two in our exclusive, we’ll be talking with Mike about how we formed The Onset, the making of their classic 'The Pool Of Life' album, several near brushes with stardom and how we almost accidentally became the well-respected sculptor he is today)
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