Fact #96959

On The Tube

Johnny Black, Smash Hits, 6 January 1983

"I ACTUALLY ENJOY Top Of The Pops very much but it lacks the excitement of a live programme. You can't cheat the kids. You've got to take a few risks. The Tube's more hassle and work for the team, but it pays dividends in the end."

Malcolm Gerrie speaking, and it can't be denied he has a point. At long last a programme has appeared that actually threatens to disrupt the TOTP monopoly and – more importantly – attempts to break away from the traditional BBC approach to pop music on television. It's a brave and mostly successful venture that, as I soon discovered, is as unpredictable behind the scenes as it often is on the screens.

Friday is transmission day and things start early. Very early.

9.00 am. Newcastle's bleak skylines are transformed by an inch of crisp snow as your reporter disembarks outside Tyne Tees, studio five, better known as The Tube. Entry to the studio is gained through a long, plastic and steel tube, from which the building and show took their name.

9.30 am. Although the show doesn't start until 5.15, Jools Holland, the irreverently impish presenter and ivory tickler for The Millionaires, is already on the set running through camera angles for an interview which will take place in The Tube's reception area. The show has a tendency to spill out of the studio into any available corridors or rooms which are instantly transformed into makeshift sets. "The truth about this show," he explains, with no trace of concern, "is that nobody knows what will happen until it happens. We have rehearsals, but once the studio floor is covered with 350 fans, it can be murder just getting from one place to another."

As Gerrie later explains: "We feel that the 'event' itself should be more important than the programme, and the venue should become almost like a club. So we made a membership and gave out 100 'Punter's Passes' which we handed out in local discos so we now have a regular audience coming in."

10.00 am. Malcolm Gerrie's headaches are just beginning. "After the first show Pete Townshend told me I must be insane, trying to cram three live bands, plus film and video clips, plus interviews, plus poetry into a live television show. He's probably right, but we like to run that risk."

Today's show is a heavy metal spectacular and, in addition to the usual problems, he has scheduled a jam session between Twisted Sister and Motorhead, a song from an acoustic folk singer, and an invisible-guitar-playing contest which has attracted over fifty entrants, sixteen of whom, incredibly, are girls. Because the show is live, if any of these uncontrollable events run too long, Malcolm has to find ways to bring the show to a satisfactory end before the seven o'clock news starts. "Sometimes we have to drop whole videos, or cut short an interview in the middle, because I'd rather do that than cut back on the live music."

On top of his timing problems, he has to think of the characters appearing on the show. Lemmy of Motorhead is unpredictable; Iggy Pop is rumoured to have gone through a plate glass window the night before and his erratic temperament is legendary; Twisted Sister, the American cult HM act, are rumoured to be difficult customers, and the combination of all three could lead to mayhem. Add to this the fact that the steadily falling snow might prevent half the acts, or the audience, from arriving, and Malcolm has reasons aplenty to be contemplating a career in something less nerve-wracking, like lion taming or industrial espionage.

11.00 am. At the mystic art of playing imaginary guitars, Jean Francois Gilbert Desdleds is a past master. He beat all-comers at London's Camden Palace with technique which included such refinements as tuning up in mid-solo after breaking an imaginary string, adjusting invisible amps, and playing behind his head, which is obviously much more difficult. "I was wearing the wrong shoes at rehearsal yesterday," he confides, "but I've got my plimsolls today, so I can move much better." I consider offering him the number of a respectable psychiatrist but, in the end, I simply wish him luck.

12.00 noon. We break for a bit of scran (food, according to them Geordies) and, in the canteen, I bump into Paula Yates, the show's other main presenter. How does she feel about the criticisum she's been getting for her flouncy-floozy non-interview technique? I find myself retreating under a hail of abuse which, as near as I can tell, means that Paula has nothing printable, or even particularly rational, to say on the subject.

This is just what Malcolm Gerrie needs to put him off his scran, but he manfully defends Paula's honour. "She's got a lot to live down, with the gossipy things she did before, but she's just a 22-year-old lass, and she's trying really hard."

Why did he choose Paula and Jools?

"Well, Dave 'Kid' Jensen was really keen to host the show, and I love his show, but I wanted to choose new personalities to avoid the standardised Radio One deejay image."

How's Jools taken to the difficult task of getting people to talk on TV?

"If they don't talk now I'll just shove them out of the way and tell a few jokes," he says. "And if I have to introduce anyone I don't like, I won't pretend that I like them. Whey should I? Really, I'm a pianist not a presenter. In fact my band The Millionaires are going to appear on the week after next. I had to bribe myself to get us on."

2.00 pm. Lemmy and Robbo of Motorhead have arrived and taken up residence in the hospitality room, which is beautifully bedecked with full-colour original Judge Dredd artwork. On hearing that Iggy is to be on the show, Robbo suggests that "It might be inadvisable for us to meet," and recounts an earlier encounter which ended with Iggy biting a lump out of Robbo's shoulder. "He's a maniac . . . and I respect maniacs," says Robbo, "but I don't wanna get too near him."

3.00 pm. By now, gentle reader, you might have deduced that the chaos emanating from The Tube on a Friday evening is as nothing compared to the chaos behind the scenes before it hits the air. Down on the studio floor Smash Hits candid camera operator Virginia Turbett is diligently snapping Twisted Sister in rehearsal when, in the midst of a powerchord rumoured to have triggered a major avalanche in the Himalayas, the music dies and a Yankee voice reverberates across the studio demanding that Virginia cease, desist and generally quit taking photographs.

After much HM breast-beating, it transpires that Twisted Sister don't want their fans to see them without their stage make-up on and unless Virginia gives them the film from her camera, they will not appear on the Tube. Oh, how we laughed. Hysteria does that to you sometimes.

4.00 pm. Back in the hospitality room, Motorhead have moved out, and Iggy has moved in. His face appears scratched and haggard. He runs his hands up and down the walls and across Virginia's back, singing a ditty called "I've got a Japanese fighting spider," in menacing tones. A companion suggests he might like to go to his dressing room and be alone. "Why be alone when you can be a parking lot?" he asks enigmatically. I begin to hope this is all some inexplicable hallucination which will soon pass, preferably without bloodshed.

4.30 pm. Twisted Sister still refuse to go on. As we argue loudly in the corridor, two white faced robots with metal spikes protruding from their heads pass between the feuding factions. I'm thinking that if Malcolm Gerrie would simply record life in the Tyne Tees corridors, he'd get better ratings than Coronation Street. I find it difficult to believe that Twisted Sister's manager is saying "Now look, we're trying to be perfectly reasonable . . ." I mentally summon up a curse which should transform him into a weird being, capable of giving grown men the heebie-jeebies, but he doesn't turn into Paula Yates.

4.45 pm. I meet the robots again. "I'm Tik," says one, "and this is Tok." It all smacks of Alice In Wonderland, but they turn out to be flesh and blood guys who used to be members of music and dance troupe Shock, but now specialise in robotic movements and make their own electronic music. What are they doing on a heavy metal special? "Well, we do have long hair, and we play imaginary synths. We're a bit like Mad Max 2 on ice," says Tik (or Tok). They make the valid point that "television has been getting too slick and this show is a good contrast. Bands can get on here without having a hit," and Tok (or Tik) adds "television should create hit records, not just give more exposure to things that are already in the charts."

5.00 pm. With the show only minutes away, Twisted Sister's participation is still in doubt, and Virginia is heroically refusing to surrender her films. Passing the make-up room, I almost fall over Michel Cremona, one of The Tube's part-time presenters, chosen from 3000 hopeful amateurs. This is her second show, and for much of the day The Tube's TV monitor screens have been lingering on close-ups of her legs "The thing that really makes me nervous is people asking me if I'm nervous." Luckily, she enjoys heavy metal, so she's looking forward to the show. "My mum and dad always video it but, I must admit, I've never actually seen the show the whole way through."

In order to enable the show to continue, a compromise is reached with Twisted Sister's "perfectly reasonable" manager. He doesn’t get the films but we agree not to use them.

5.07 pm. I ask Linda, a devoted HM fiend queueing outside, why she thinks music journalists are so cruel to heavy metal music. She has no doubts. "Because you've got absolutely no taste or culture whatsoever." Thus chastised, I retreat to the relative security of the control room as the countdown begins.

The control room sits high above the studio, with director Malcolm Dickinson supervising a bank of sixteen TV monitor screens on which he can see the view from any one of six cameras plus the opening shots from a number of film and video clips. As the opening sequence hits the air, Dickinson begins calling the shots, "Tight in on camera one . . . now wipe . . . pan out . . . come to camera two . . . hold it . . . come to four and wipe . . . mix through to two . . . zoom out and cue Michel . . ."

Miraculously, amid a blizzard of dandruff thrown up by the gyrating imaginary guitarists, Michel is there and the show is on the road. The next hour and three-quarters passes at light speed, and The Tube's backroom boys remain magnificently in control, even though the music is generally so loud that the cameramen downstairs can't hear the directions from the control box.

Even more miraculously, nothing goes seriously wrong, and Malcolm Gerrie brings his show in on time.

And this, he claims, he'll be doing for many weeks to come, despite persistent rumours – particularly form the extremely hostile Sun newspaper – that The Tube is nearing its end.

"We've known for a year we'll be coming off in April," he says, "but that's just the end of the present series. We'll be back in the autumn and there'll also be a five-hour special in June."

Wish him luck.

© Johnny Black, 1983




Postscript by Johnny Black...
What's not entirely evident from the Smash Hits feature above is that during the show, Iggy Pop bit Smash Hits photographer Virginia Turbett. Later, on the train back to London, he sat opposite me and drew a pentacle on the table to protect him from a demon which he believed was possessing my body. This may have been because, when Iggy challenged me to an arm-wrestling match on account of me being "a smart-ass" (his term), I beat him. So we went for best of three and he beat me the second time. I can't recall, but I may have thrown that second one out of fear of what he might do if I won twice in a row.

Also, during the show, when I was chatting to Motorhead in the green room, guitarist Brian Robertson was more angry than the feature suggests. His precise words about Iggy were, "If the wee f**ker comes anywhere near me, I'll f**ckin' kill him." I gathered that the Ig and Robbo had had an unpleasant encounter in The Marquee club some time previously.

All in all, a memorable day.