Simon Kelly

Simon Kelly : Eating For Two

“Music as DIY – a symphony of procrastination in 3 decades”

Words by Richard Eccles

Chords and words. Melody and harmony. Feel and reaction. Simon and me – not quite a double act.

The last couple of years have changed so much about what we have done so far, how we do what we do and the thoughts about where to next. I’m talking about Simon performing our songs at The Open Mic Surgery, Stubbing Wharf, Hebden Bridge… we met at school in a pre-Thatcherite Britain, messed about with guitars and had variously (un)fulfilling excursions in different bands and musical set-ups. Then after 2 or 3 wilderness years at the pointless end of jazz-funk (most of the records have since been banned for reasons of boredom) thank goodness Paddy McAloon (Prefab Sprout) released ‘Swoon’ and suddenly there was a way out for people who had no more stomach for guitar solos and untrimmed hair. ‘Steve McQueen’ confirmed that you were allowed to write intricate, wordy and unhurried music. Simon asked me to write him some lyrics. I did, in a bedsit in Pinner, North London, in November 1985.

Our first song was called ‘Nothing so sweet’. It was actually called something else before that but I really struggle getting the words to do what I want to well. In my memory it’s got words like ‘disdain’ and ‘statuesque’ in it (apparently it doesn’t) and the rhymes echo deliberately, pretentiously Cole Porter. We’ve got loads of copies of it left if you ever want one. The Smiths were getting by on wit, irony and perverseness and who could ever copy them? I wrote 3 or 4 sets of words in a month, confident that anyone had something to say. We talked about how these ideas should become the songs they have since become, endlessly. Simon wore out several pairs of brogues pacing around, brooding and piecing together intricate links and chord changes that maybe no-one had heard since Steely Dan out-take parties where Walter Brecker practised 7 fret stretches. Since his almost weekly performing at Stubbing Wharf he has been christened (by Josh) ‘The Chordmeister’, but it’s been a long apprenticeship.

We produced a whole 4 or 5 song tape about 2 years before the Berlin Wall was dismantled. We could flog it on our Saturday nights out and it was a great way of meeting girls. When I look back now, I knew I was still missing something, still waiting for someone else out there to speak with. Grant McLennan (half of the creative pair in The Go-Betweens) wrote songs that fitted around what we knew… ‘some people have no money/some people have no tact/well, if they invite us round/then they’re gonna get a double act’. Just came out after 6 pints, spontaneously in unison. If you ever want to raise a furrowed eyebrow quote Mark Eitzel of American Music Club, but avoid alcohol. Anyway, in those days it was a four-track in your bedroom in your parents’ house. You couldn’t keep it in your bedsit in whatever grotpit you really lived, ‘cos it’d get nicked. Simon is an electronics engineer and gathered within the next 6 or 7 years a small, well-equipped studio’s worth. When he moved into his own (i.e. non-grotpit) house and set it up, it had been nicked within two and a half weeks. They didn’t take our tapes though. In fact no-one took the tapes, no matter how hard we tried to make it big via recording companies. It had a great cover.

One night, just as Blair was warming up for another war, we got wonderfully drunk in a bar in Manchester but not without writing the liner notes for what turned out to be a large compilation of all the songs we had produced in 10, possibly more, years. I think there are 21 tracks on it (16 only) and the cover is fantastic. Inside the cover is a picture of the group, the people involved, Eddie’s Brother…me and Simon doing a Fred Pontin’s thumbs-up on the verandah of a hut in Norway. Who knows why? I had tried not to write love songs but now I wish I had and Simon tried not to use normal harmonic progressions but wishes now he had. Simple can be best, can’t it?

Notice what I am not telling you? The music emerged from the studio that was Si’s home. No-one, except the lucky few purchasers, had heard two notes of it, or even half a bar in a bar or a pub…not till October 2005, only 20 years after we started did it get a hearing amongst normal humans. Stubbing Wharf was our Glastonbury. It rescued us. We feel like monks released in to the world who’ve got 20 (musical) years of living to catch up on. We’ve written more songs and finished more songs in 18 months than in the last 6 years. More people have heard more of our music in (any) one night at The Open Mic Surgery than in the previous 156 years. That first night brought a tear to the eye.

So here it is: a grey-haired man sits in cafes around Europe writing all the time, and, in between, texts something appropriately like an idea for a song to a grey-haired man in Bradford. We bat ideas around via email, text and phone. The real magic happens in Si’s cellar. Well, the real, real magic happens when someone stops to listen to the words and the chords and we get the feeling right. It doesn’t take much of an audience to change your world.

September 2007

1967.mp3