Fact #132120

THE FLOWERED UP STORY
As told to Johnny Black

Liam Maher (vocals) : Before Flowered Up started I was doing a lot of shady stuff and earning quite a lot of money, at least £2000 a week. I had a bootleg CD stall, and I had large parcels of drugs going round the country, fake clothing … just about anything. I was making enough that I’d bought a house in Gloucester Avenue with my partner before Flowered Up started

I’d made friends with the Happy Mondays and the Stone Roses before Flowered Up even started. I used to go up to Manchester and stay at Bez’s house. I used to go and see the Mondays all round the country.

How Flowered Up started was we were sitting there one night, me and Des our old manager, and we worked out that there was my brother, Joe, could play the guitar; one of my best friends at school was a bass guitarist, and him and Joe played together regularly, and there was a drummer John that they used to rehearse with, so we had the makings of a band but we didn’t have a singer. The idea at first was that me and Des would co-manage this band but one night Des said to me, ‘Well, why don’t you try to sing?’

I was deeply involved in the house scene and I loved the music but I’d never even contemplated singing before. I woke up the next day and thought, ‘Gawd, what have I let myself in for?’ but my pride wouldn’t let me back down from it. To be honest, I was fuckin’ awful at the beginning, really, really bad. Even now people either love or hate my voice, but at the beginning it was fucking hopeless, except that there was always something there, a little sparkle.

Jeff Barrett of Heavenly, the record label that signed us up, was also a press officer, so he had a lot of mates at the music papers, and it seemed like a lot of his mates gave us good reviews.

We had the front cover of NME and Melody Maker before we’d even released a single. It felt great at the time, but in retrospect it was a bad thing, it put a lot of pressure on the band. What people overlooked was that the band had only been together six or seven months, and we got our front covers right after we played our first show, the one at the ICA in the Mall. It was a sell out. We’d done un-announced gigs in clubs before, but that was the first offical gig.

So people were expecting this phenomenal band which I personally think we did grow into but, at that time, we were just in our beginning stages and we were getting compared to bands like the Happy Mondays and the Stone Roses who had been together ten years and were very tight and together most of the time.

So when the first single came out, it was a reasonable debut single but I think the expectancy was much higher. From there on in, I think … we was getting compared to the Manchester scene and the press was trying to create animosity between us and the Manchester bands when, in actual fact, we was friends with the Mondays and the Roses.

On our first tour, we weren’t sure what sort of reaction we was going to get up north because the press were trying to create this North-South war. But we had all this stage invasion malarkey, the first one happened in Manchester, which was the main one because it was the home of the Mondays and the Roses. After the gig me and our dancer, Barry Mooncult, was carried around the International 2 on people’s shoulders. It was brilliant.

As the crowd started to invade the stage they was just coming to dance, but everywhere we went, we would take about 25 people, our mates, on the road with us, and some of them thought the crowd was coming to attack the band so they’d come flying forward and start hitting people with cans and whatever, but then they realised they just wanted to dance so it was all right.

Everywhere we went we got kicked out of hotels, it was like a big travelling party. One of the reasons I wanted to be in a band was that I wanted to party 24-7, but I can’t do that now. Then, I could stay up three days in a row, but now I’m shagged if I try that sort of thing.

The build up from all of that led to us signing to London records which was another mistake, signing to a major label for our first album because it put a lot of pressure on us to get big record sales.

Tim Dorney (kybds) : Jeff Barrett was going to sign Heavenly Records as an imprint through London, so while that deal was going through we signed to London, but after we signed, Jeff’s deal fell through..

Liam Maher : We signed a six album deal with London, and they led us to believe that it was a building process, and we took it in, that we would get the first album out and they would build us from there. London gave us a quarter of a million, and about £150,000 was spent on the album.

Tim Dorney : Signing to London records could have been a good thing but we stuck ourselves in Eel Pie Studios to make an album for three months and we really didn’t know what we were doing. We were just learning as we went.

Liam Maher : We never made any money because we’d met the guy who produced the album, Nigel Gilroy, when we recorded our second single, Phobia, which was on Heavenly. He was just an engineer but we seemed to click with him. So, when we signed to London Records part of the deal was that Nigel would produce the album. London weren’t too happy about that and, in hindsight, it was a totally wrong decision. The guy was a good engineer but he had no experience in producing.

It was Nigel who decided to book us into Eel Pie, Pete Townshend’s studio in Richmond, which was £1000 a day. We just got carried away … it’s a lovely studio and he was there at the time and we stood around chatting and drinking tea with him, he’s one of me idols, but meanwhile my brother Joe was fucking about in the studio spending a day just on the guitar parts for one song and that would cost us £1000. We went along with it because the money would never end. We knew we had another advance of £280,000 to come.

Tim Dorney : I only noticed that the heroin had started while we were doing the first album, but I think it had been going on for a while. They’d disappear into this 120 foot Dutch barge moored outside Eel Pie as the recreation lounge, then come back three hours later pinned to high heaven. I didn’t know what I was looking for, so I didn’t realise what was going on.

As far as I know it was nothing to do with Townshend, because he’d been off the heroin for about five years by then. He was great. He’d come in every morning and stand around and chat about everything for an hour. Lovely bloke.

Liam Maher : After we’d done the first album the whole band was unhappy with how it sounded, we was unhappy with the mix which was terrible … the engineering, the production … totally wrong producer …. If you play that first album then play Weekender, the single that came afterwards, the difference in production is immediately apparent.

We was really unhappy. But if we’d been signed to an independent label, it would have been OK as a debut album, and it wouldn’t have put anything like as much pressure on us. But we were signed to a major label, and when it came out, the sales weren’t as big as London Records wanted.

But we were feeling the pressure, and when we started rehearsing new songs we felt we had to come up with these astronomical songs, huge hits, instead of just letting it flow and grow naturally.

Then, when we got to the next single, Weekender, London said it was too long and people wouldn’t get it. They wanted us to release another single from the album, which only had ten songs on, and they wanted to release track 5, but we thought that was just cheating people.

Tim Dorney : I think it threw London a bit that we hadn’t delivered any major hits and then we came up with a thirteen minute single, Weekender, and they started to raise eyebrows. There was a plan to release it as a limited edition fan record, a run of 2000, but even that would cost about fifteen or twenty grand to make.

Liam Maher : We left London at the beginning of 1992 I think. London’s next advance to us was supposed to be £280,000 but because of the sales of the first album they offered us a lower amount, so that gave us a get out. They didn’t know Jeff Barrett was already talking to Columbia, so as soon as we got the lower offer, basically we signed as a package, Heavenly and Flowered Up to Columbia Records. And I think London Records didn’t take that well, it caught them by surprise, and they was waiting for us to come back and negotiate but we just said ‘Arrividerci, we’ve got another deal.’

We got an advance from Columbia of about £90,000, and then we got our publishing deal on top, but the whole money situation was fucked up. Des, the manager … the accounts was fucked, it was totally amateurish the way the money was handled.

Des was managing at first, but then Terry, who used to work with The Clash, came along and they decided to work together because they’d been good friends for years.

But then Des and Terry had a big fall out and, rather than let Terry go, because he worked well with the band, he came aboard on a tour manager basis, and he looked after us on a day-to-day basis, making sure we’d get to press shoots and so on.

Joe Maher (guitar) : One of the major things that broke the band up was fights between us and the management about money from our account being used for personal purposes.

Liam Maher : Weekender was released through Columbia, we had that party in that mansion that we squatted, played a few more shows, the last show we played was Christmas 1992, two nights at the Mean Fiddler place up in Harlesden. It was all falling apart by then. I’d got lost in heroin addiction by then,

We split up maybe two months after that.

I think I knew it was over when Andy the bass player left in the beginning of 93, because when we was rehearsing new tunes, he’d be the one with the pen and paper, and he’d stop the band and create the form of the songs, but after he left there weren’t anybody there leading us musically. Tim’s a great musician and a lovely gentleman, but he didn’t organise us like Andy did.

Andy left because he felt he’d left the drummer John behind. The bass and drums have to work together, but he’d left John behind. I totally agreed with him. And it was proved when we were working on the second album because John just couldn’t come up with any different beats than we’d had on the first album, so he left as well. He had nothing original to offer us. He ended up in jail a couple of times.

Tim Dorney : As I remember it, Andy and John were both sacked. Andy got kicked out first for trying to play lead bass. It was really a problem with the whole rhythm section, and they left within a couple of months of each other, and we got in new guys. Andy was replaced by another old friend Mick Leader

Andy formed a band called Stadia but they never got a deal. Last I heard he was married and working in a hotel.

Tim Dorney : Last time I saw John, our drummer, probably 1997, he was driving a Fairfax Meadow meat van on Brewery Road in Islington. I’d just come out of rehearsal and he drew up alongside by coincidence. I heard he’d also done some tyre fitting for a firm on York Way.

Liam Maher : Like me, he got into the heroin.

Tim Dorney : Once the line-up changed that threw us off a bit, because it wasn’t the original band any more and you lose an element of the sound.

Joe Maher : Andy didn’t get as involved in the drugs as we did, and he went on and formed a band called Stadia, which he was actually happier with than he ever was in Flowered Up.

Liam Maher : Drug addiction was the real downfall of the band, but also mis-management of the money.

Tim Dorney : After Weekender, when we started writing the second album things were getting a bit hairy.

So when the option came up, they looked at the bottom line and it wasn’t working out so they offered us half the money for the next year. In the interim, Jeff had signed heavenly to Columbia, so we moved to there. They bought Weekender off of London and released it on Heavenly under Jeff Barrett’s deal with them.

Obviously by then the heroin was starting to have its effect on us. I never liked the idea of it, so I never did it. In fact, I didn’t even realise they were doing it at the start.

Liam Maher : Towards the end of Flowered Up my partner and me lost our house. I pulled out of the mortgage, which I’m getting loads of grief for. What annoyed me was that I had taken a huge drop in income to be in Flowered Up. My standard of living went down. I went from having a house and a brand new car and drinking champagne in night clubs every night, to being on a wage of £150 a week. We ended up skint.

Tim Dorney : By the end, everything was going absolutely tits up. There was no money in the bank, people would disappear for days on end, they wouldn’t turn up for rehearsals, all that stuff. I was living in Windsor so it would take me an hour and a half to get to Kentish Town where we rehearsed, and I’d be there at noon, but nobody else would show up until four o’clock. That’s how I learned to play drums.

The final gigs were at The Mean Fiddler in the week before New Year in 1992. They were quite good gigs. We were trying to get some new songs into the set. I think we were getting more diverse, and we were finding our feet musically, but it was no good if people didn’t turn up.

In about April or May of 1993 we decided we should sack the management, so Liam decided it was becoming too much hassle and decided just to pack it in. It was when Liam quit that it really ended. I went home, drank a bottle of Jack Daniels and decided, “Sod it, I’ll move on to something else.” That was the last time I saw any of them for about nine years.

There was a brief exchange of phone calls the next day, “Fuck you!You bastards!You cop-outs!” and that was it. They were all living in squats, or with their parents, and this was pre-mobile phones, so it was difficult to keep in touch.

Liam Maher : The worst thing is that, by then, I think we really was one of the best live bands in the country and with Weekender, and another single after it called Better Life which we recorded for Columbia but they didn’t release it … it didn’t come out til years later when Jeff Barrett put it out as one of the Heavenly Classic series of seven inchers. It was like a reggae tune and no-one was messing around with that sort of stuff at the time we was doing it. It was a move forward from Weekender and, if all the drugs and the other shit hadn’t come into play, we was progressing and we had got very tight and we could have got really big. I look back and sometimes I have regrets, because I think of what we might have become, if we could have held it together for another six months.

The other guy people remember was Barry Mooncult, but he was never part of the band as such. It was just that he always got up and danced with us, and whenever he came on tour we paid him the wage he’d have got if he’d been working. He also got a few grand from us when we signed to London. He always had a day job, he was a glazier but he’s gave that up. He works for a company, driving a van, delivering seriously hardcore porn magazines.

It was quite ironic because between six months and a year after we split up, all of a sudden Blur sort of re-created themselves as this Cockney band from Camden and I felt they kind of took over from where we was at. I don’t know if they done it consciously, but all of a sudden it was trendy and hip to be from Camden.

After the band split up, I spent the next five years fighting my heroin addiction. I’ve beaten it now and life seems a lot better place. I’ve been clean for a year and a half now.

Joe Maher : I didn’t get into heroin until near the end of the band and, as a result, after we split I started getting trouble with the law for theft and breach of bail and everything. I’ve been in and out of jail since 1994 (outlaw), and the heroin has cost me my relationship with my girl, my house and my career. Seeing Liam get himself clean has been an inspiration to me, though, and six months ago I started playing guitar again. I’m hoping to go into rehab soon, and then maybe I can work with Liam. I really need to get back to doing music.

Tim Dorney : I’d already met Toddy (Andrew Tod) before that point because while I was in Flowered Up I was also going out to work with Johnny Male who was doing an album with Mike Hedges, and Toddy was the engineer for Mike Hedges. I’d wanted him to come and do the second Flowered Up album as a sort of engineer/producer, but it all fell apart before that so we decided to make a couple of dance singles, make £500 and that was what turned into Republica. Me and Toddy started it, got one song together, played it to a few people, and then Saffron joined us to do the lyrics through a friend of a friend.

Republica is still sort of ongoing. It took us a year and a half and 25 grand in lawyer’s fees to get off BMG. Me and Johnny are still writing for Saffron, and she’s looking for a solo deal. So we’re taking a bit more of a back seat, and Johnny is sort of a Greedy Souls member.

I got a phone call from Alan McGee of Poptones some time in 2000. He’d heard Chris McCormack, Saffron’s boyfriend, doing an online chat or something, so Alan contacted Chris and got my phone number because he’d signed Liam and wanted someone to work with him. Initially it was only going to be two tracks and he’d work with other people, like Andy Bell and others, but Liam and I got on so well that we’ve just continued working.

Johnny and I are also working on some stuff that’s a bit more soul/dance orientated with another artist in mind.

Liam Maher : Last year (2000), while I was in rehab, I got a call from my manager, Terry, saying that Alan McGee of Poptones was interested in signing me if I could stay off the heroin, which gave me the incentive to stick with it. Alan actually signed us blind, without hearing any songs or anything, just because he liked what I’d done before. We didn’t even have a name for the band.

But that’s why we ended up leaving them because once we started writing and recording, we got up to about six demos, it just wasn’t in the direction Alan wanted us to go. We had a bit of swearing on the tracks, and lines like ‘Tony Blair can suck my cock and I reckon he smokes rocks.’ Know what I mean? It was amicable split from the label.

Now that I’m back to working again, I tend to sit out in the park, Gandhi Park in Tavistock Square, or Regent’s Park behind where my mum lives, and I bring my pen and my notepad with me and, if the moment inspires me, I pen a few lyrics. I find it relaxing just sitting around among the trees, especially if the sun’s out. I don’t force it, just let it come out. I might go a couple of weeks without writing, then all of a sudden, I’ll write three or four songs in a couple of days. They don’t all get used because … I used to screw things up and throw them away if I didn’t like them, but I’ve learned to keep everything now because something that I don’t like now I might look at it again in two months and think it’s really good. I’ve got a carrier bag with over a hundred ideas, verses and choruses for songs. I prefer to work on things I’m doing now, but if I ever get stuck I can go into the bag and maybe find something.

Sometimes all I’ve got is a verse and a chorus or a couple of verses, but I find that once the idea is there, if I’m pushed, I can actually pull out the rest.

I’m working with Tim again, in a band called The Greedy Souls and we’re really, really, really happy with it. We done our first gig at the Poptones Radio 4 club a few months back, with Johnny from Republica on guitar, and Ed Ball on bass. We only had two or three days rehearsal on songs we didn’t know too well, but it was well-received and I was quite pleased with it.

We’re working on the ninth song now. Basically it’s all demo’d but at a high standard so when we go in the studio to finish it off it won’t take too long.

The first time I went up to Windsor to work with Tim in his studio in the loft was just before Christmas, and to be honest, I hadn’t been in a studio for six years and I was really nervous but, because Tim and I have worked together before, it was just flowing. Every time we go up we get a track done. I let him lay down the basic tracks and then I add the vocals. I pull out what I’ve wrote of late, see what matches his music, and we can do a track every day.

We’ve got interest from Tommy Boy records over in New York, and East West have shown some interest, and a couple of others have phoned up because they’d heard something was going on, but I’m leaving all that side to Terry and I’m just concentrating on getting the album done. I’m confident we’ll get a deal.