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CHAPTER 4 Another Try Back at base... I don't know... 92/93 or something I saw Neal X and Degville and we were again itching to record some new Sputnik stuff... it just wouldn't go away... we still had the studio (SSS Experiment camp) downstairs at my mews house (now completely architecturally rebuilt as a post modern groovy minimalist palace thanks to those Sisters paychecks) and played around... the demos we recorded were to turn up on the Sci Fi Sex Stars CD in 2000 but it was all a little lame... I loved Razz Crazy but somehow the others didn't have the madness... It was hard for Neal and Martin,,... Neal was living in virtual poverty then, but always happy and positive and Degville too, although he had recorded his solo album, demo-ing it at my house while I was on tour... and at least Martin hadn't sold out... I mean who else could he be... he was Sputnik and carried the can in those days - he couldn't join another band... he waited, alone, for nearly ten years. Well we recorded about 6 tracks and mixed four with Neals friend Michael Zimmerling..... he was doing really well in Japan, mixing people like Hotei who was huge there and it was he who would help us again years later with the Piratespace album... we thought they were great and set out hoping to get gigs or some kind of deal..... but no one would help us... no one... it was torture... but maybe we hadn't suffered enough, maybe the time wasn't right... cyberspace was only just beginning and we hadn't found it yet... I had no idea it even existed...we wrote other tracks too, making live tapes onto Minidisc, and some of these found their way onto the Next Generation project later... we were still lost in space..... I went to a B.A.D concert at the Forum... they were really great and there was a party afterwards and I saw Bono again for the first time in years... the first time we met was when he was so young, he had just started a band and I was at a Lou Reed gig at Hammersmith Odeon with Billy (or was it a Brian Ferry gig, I forget), but anyway I was standing there with Billy Idol and This bunch of 4 young kids came up to us and said how much they loved Dancing with Myself... they were sweet Irish boys and they told us they had this little group called U2... .. I guess it was that echoey guitar part that made the impression!... anyway we'd met again when BAD toured France supporting the now fuckin massive U2 and I said to Mick I'd go as the sound mixer... anyway back at at the BAD party Bono said to me how great he thought Sputnik were and how they had loved all the television imagery and satellite stuff at our Albert Hall gig, how visionary it had been and how we had done it before them and the Zooropa tour... he was really generous with his enthusiasm and again it made me wonder how it had all gone wrong... how we had played that revolutionary gig at the Albert Hall, using video walls and feeding in live television from Russia... how had we done all that and not one paper even mentioned it... it was as if we didn't exist in their eyes...the industry buried our ideas and they had the power...any way it was cool to hear Bono and his publicist B.P.Fallon champion Sputnik... maybe I was right after all... maybe one day history would show that..... I was wondering what to do next...then Billy
Idol called out of the Blue and said did we
want to reform Generation X for a one off show that Chrysalis were gonna
film, after one of his solo gigs at the Astoria... wow... such fun and I so
yearned to play real live organic rock n roll again after the Sisters drum
machine hell, called Marc Laff and he said yes and he called Derwood
the guitarist and the day was set... I had to rehearse for weeks practicing bass
guitar again as I could not believe how fast the songs were! We then had a real
rehearsal together at Nomis studios and it was as if we had never been away, it
sounded great...Billy actually turned up to a rehearsal with a huge posse
of people like a superstar and with dreadlocks. it was his ill fated cyberpunk
period., but he was enthusiastic and great... and we did the gig which was such
fun of course there was a shitty review in a big newspaper slagging the whole
thing off, but worse they that said Mick Jones had arrived... taken one
look , laughed and left immediately - as if to say how pathetic we all were...not
realizing Mick was my friend, I'd invited him of course... see how these
people make this shit up... Well Mick was really upset and wrote to the paper
telling the truth. Mick one of my few friends who I know I can rely on to help
me, whatever the circumstances, and the Telegraph newspaper very sportingly
printed his letter... I'm still waiting to meet the journalist so I can look him
in his eyes.....any way I digress.....
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