NB The sexually exclusive term SIDEMEN has been used throughout the below article, for the sake of convenience. Obviously this is wrong and the author wishes at the outset to apologise to all womankind with the exception of Margaret Thatcher, Ann Widdicombe, Joni Mitchell, and that woman out of Huggy Bear who hit him that time, who can all go piss up a rope.

The song "There’s No Business Like Show Business" has a lot to answer for.

For instance: you have almost certainly seen comedians on chat shows complaining about their miserable showbiz lives. "The trouble with being a comedian," they say, "Is that everyone expects you to be funny all the time." They continue their tragic tale: "Often I’m in a bar, and someone will come up and want me to be funny". This is no doubt true, but what strikes me as being somewhat peculiar about these observations is the inference that being asked to work, for nothing, in your own time, is a hazard that is somehow exceptional and peculiar to their particular occupation.

Not so.

For just over a decade, I had a job working in the stores for Welsh Water. Frequently, I’d be walking to the pub at dinnertime and some guy would pull up in a van and say, "Have you got any boots like these in the stores?"

I would say, "I’m at lunch. I demand my privacy. Fuck off". Like the aforementioned comedians, I was called a moody unsociable bastard as a consequence of not wanting to do my job when I was not being paid for it.

The only difference was that it was not considered usual for me to go on chatshows and complain about it afterwards.

I thus dispute that there is no business like show business, like no business we know. Show business is vastly similar to most other businesses. In my job, as in showbiz, people were cheated and lied to. They gained status via sexual favours, monetary bribes, physical attractiveness, and bum-kissing. What is peculiar about showbiz is that, as with the aforementioned example of the comedian in the pub, they think they are, or should be, some kind of exception.

They are, I put it to you, exceptional only in that participants in other businesses get to complain to work colleagues, friends, and family, and hardly anyone else. Participants in showbiz get to complain via the media. In recent years, and with more and more frequency, sidemen who took part in groundbreaking musical moments are complaining, at length, to the public at large, mainly via the media of books and/or documentaries.

Lets look at the word "sideman". It exists in the English language for a reason, and that is to denote a member of a band other than the leader. In everyday life, the people who tell others what to do are called "bosses" and often convey their wishes by a subtle mix of psychology and shouting. Some of them are complete and utter bastards, others are quite nice. Similarly, in music, the people who tell others what to do are called "bandleaders" and may similarly combine psychology and shouting to various degrees in getting the others, the "sidemen" to do their bidding.

The knack of bandleading is one that is oft-ignored in the world of contemporary music, with it’s lip-service obeisance to egalitarianism . However, there are those whose very presence somehow focuses and manipulates musicians, even though it cannot be said for certain what they are doing. Why, for instance, does "The Unutterable", the latest (and excellent) record by top student fave-raves The Fall (which contains only one long-time member, Mr Mark E Smith) sound more like The Fall than the works of Ark (which contains several long-time Fall members)? Especially when you consider that the members of Ark are all possessed of self-evident musical ability, whereas Mr. Smith’s musical talents are vague and indefinable……

This is because of that thing called Bandleading, which is itself vague and indefinable.

A story...

I saw Miles Davis once. Back in the eighties, at Cardiff St David’s Hall. He was dressed as a Venusian Pimp, playing that slick funky stuff he was doing back then, which doesn’t sound so great on record. Live, however, it was just fine. Then, a half-hour or so in, he buggered off. Just went offstage. Maybe he had to powder his nose. The band carried on playing, slowly disintegrating, sounding less like Miles Davis music and more like a bunch of session guys jamming funky fusion type stuff. For, oh, twenty or so minutes, they just chuntered away. Gradually and incrementally it began to sound shit-awful. And then, just as it was starting to sound really really a lot shit-awful, Miles came back. Put his horn to his lips, blew one note. Kor-whumph!….they went. As one, right back into gear. As if something physical happened to the music…

Now not you, nor I, nor anyone, can tell me exactly why that happened. It was just plain bandleading, eerily, spookily. (Later, he taught them a tune, right there in front of us, in that imperious little-emperor way he had. "I’m Miles motherfucking Davis and you’re motherfucking not and if I wanna teach these motherfuckers a tune you motherfucking watch and be grateful. Motherfuckers". And we were motherfucking grateful . Frustrating as it was, no one heckled, no one called out. This was Miles Motherfucking Davis. He’d probably have you killed or something. Some folk there are who can bandlead and some folk there are who cannot. No one knows why. Oh, and he waved to us. If you know anything about Miles you will know that was a somewhat exceptional occurrence).

Dave Datblygu’s dad Says

There is only one drummer

And that’s Ringo

When I was younger, more naive and possibly even better looking than I am nowadays, I joined a band. I ended up doing most things in this band, writing the words, the tunes, thinking up the name, making suggestions apropos the musical direction, etc.

This was not appreciated, as I had fallen amongst what Frank Zappa called "trendmongers" who just wanted to follow the musical fads of the day, whereas I wanted to actually do something worthwhile. I learned something about musicians back then: they will, as a species, noodle away impressing each other, showing off their abilities to go "widdlywiddlywiddlykablooieding" really fast up and down their instruments. This activity means nothing to anyone who isn’t a musician, but they don’t care. For it is all they can do. They have this ability, but they cannot apply it in any way.

And I learned something about myself:

I possess the Gift Of Bandleading. But I’m too nice.

It is no coincidence that the only people who don’t think Ringo is a good drummer are musicians, usually drummers.

Nowadays, with more and more frequency, Sidemen who were present at pivotal moments in the music of the Century we now call the Twentieth are turning up. Bellyaching like crazy, "I was there" they say. "I was not appreciated/was ripped off, while so-and-so got all of the glory and credit".

Take ex-Hendrix bassplayer Noel Redding. Every time there’s a documentary on the late great Mr Jimi on the TV, there he is, displaying his apparent befuddlement as to what the fuck was gwaaan back then. One particular programme, about the making of "Electric Ladyland", described how said album is a complex weave of overdubbed, multi-tracked multi-speeded guitars, tiny comb-and tissue paper noises etc, painstakingly assembled. A process which took a hell of a long time. Redding playing his disgruntled sideman role, is to be seen moaning about this. He couldn’t work out what Hendrix was doing. "I went over the pub".

Anyone familiar with "Electric Ladyland" will know of the track "Little Miss Strange" a refugee from a bad The Move B-side which turns up unbidden amidst the Martian voodoo blues and underwater tangos. If we can be bothered, we skip the track. If we can be especially bothered, we ask our mate with a CD burner to do us a copy of our "Electric Ladyland" with said track left off.

For….and this is a bit of a clue…it is called The Jimi Hendrix Experience, with no mention of Noel Redding’s name. Hendrix was a man of legendary proportions, in every sense. Redding was just a guy who got lucky because he had a similar haircut. When I had that shitty job working in the stores at Welsh Water I only met Cynthia Plastercaster once and the GTOs not at all. Redding complains he didn’t get the proper rate for his job….I didn’t get the proper rate for my job. You probably don’t get the proper rate for yours. Rock musicians think this kind of stuff only happens to them; it happens in all walks of life. Yet because rock music has this thin patina of Utopianism, these sidemen types come a-moaning to us. Tellingly, Redding’s appearances are invariably on programmes about the late great Jimi Hendrix, never about his later project Fat Mattress (tellingly named from a Hendrix stage ad-lib).

Bill Harkleroad, in his book "Lunar Notes", complains about the treatment meted out to him by the business called show. In 1969 he joined a band led by a man styling himself Captain Beefheart. As with the case of Redding the bandname should have been a bit of a clue, but no. Bill somehow expected an equal democratic input even though Beefy had led a cult praised by the likes of the Beatles, the Stones and Lulu and Harkleroad had been in some local blues bands.

He was, he claims, locked in a house in Woodland Hills LA for 6 months and forced by some kind of psychological terror to make "Trout Mask Replica". Six months? I went to Croesyceiliog School in Gwent, and had to endure 6 fucking years of psychological terror. Being made to wear a stupid uniform, perform ridiculous tasks such as algebra, brainwashing sessions known as "assembly", teachers would subject me to ritual humiliation in front of the rest of the class. Mrs Matthews looking at the book in which I drew my little cartoons, telling me I was wasting my time with this nonsense which would never get me anywhere, I should be concentrating on finding the meaning of X and Pythagoras’ Theorem (which only come up in later life in certain specialised occupations). For five of those six years I could not (unlike Mr ex-Rollo) piss off and do something else, and I stayed behind the extra year because I had been fool enough to swallow the dictum "schooldays are the happiest days of your life".

To be fair, Mr Harkleroad complains that he was lied to, cheated and ripped off by Mr Don "Beefy" Vliet, which would probably leave a bitter taste in anyone’s mouth. But to be extra specially fair, so was most everybody.

I’ve worked with musicians and some of them will stand round playing the lamest shit going if you leave them to it. A lot of them will even kid themselves that it’s any good. Stick Sun Ra, the Captain, Zappa (sometimes), Miles or Mark E Smith in the mix and hey presto. Something mysterious occurs. It is no accident that Phil Collins’ greatest contribution to music is the drumming on "Another Green World", when he had Brian "Interesting" Eno telling him what to do. Perhaps you’ve heard some of the Miles Davis guys when they strike out on their own? A few succeed… and how… McLaughlin, Coltrane… but for every one of these there are dozens, perhaps hundreds, who have plenty knowledge and absolutely no way to apply it. As in many walks of life. But we mostly don’t get to complain on TV.

(Memo to "Big Brother" producers running short of ideas for the second series…..Great Pop Things Enterprises retains ©,® and ™ on "Big Mother" in which contestants are set the task of making a benchmark avant-garde album, their only contact with the outside world being an animatronic Frank Zappa).

You can see more of Colin at his website where you can also download some of his tunes to help decide if he can do it any better than Fat Mattress.