In November 2011, Jon Arne Madso, the Norwegian proprietor of the Freeze Frame Website, was in Liverpool with his friends Erik and Paal for a social visit to the city. Jon Arne has been in touch with Steve Byrne, the singer with Freeze Frame for 5 years now and they have met on three previous occasions. As interest has continued to grow in the band, Jon Arne proposed another meeting to catch up. Also, it was an opportunity to complete a more comprehensive history of their work, as well as to try and settle on a running order for the elusive album that never was.
The interview took place in the Hanover Hotel, on the evening of 6th November, in the company of a couple of excellent pints of Guinness.
01 Touch (Crackin’Up)
02 Your Voice
03 Conversation Piece
04 Foxhole
05 Furnished Heart
06 At Your Scenario
07 Seeking Professional Advice
08 My 10,000 Mile Home
09 Brother Brother
10 Touch (RCA/Inevitable)
11 Personal Touch
12 Where’s The Girl
13 Keep In Touch
14 Today Tomorrow
15 Only A Boy
16 It Makes Me Cry
17 Culture Won’t Wait
18 Someone
Q. Steve, it is great to see you again and to get a chance to talk through your memories of those early 80’s days.
How do you remember it all starting ?
Ronnie Stone and myself first met in 1980/81. I was singing in a little punk/new wave band called ‘The Posers’, doing a lot of gigs around the North-West of England in pubs, bars and clubs. Our claim to fame was playing Erics’ Club in Liverpool at Christmas time, on a bill organised by Skeleton Records, owned and run by a guy called John Weaver from Birkenhead. John ran a record shop as a front to some of his other ‘businesses’.
Ronnie did some production work for Skeleton and was booked to run a session for ‘The Posers’. We were a group of friends with jobs and living with our folks, but it was a buzz. We did some great gigs and built up a strong local following, helping to lend some hope to our futures. Don’t forget, this was at the time of Thatcherism and the devastating impact it had for working class communities in the UK.
Ronnie proved to be different class; With firstly ‘Next’, then ‘Afraid of Mice’ and ‘The Blank Tapes’, amongst other successes already under his belt, he was that something that we/I needed. He joined us for some gigs on guitar and we soon hit it off and became friends. He was a couple of years older than me, which is a lot when you are 19/20yrs, but he was a diamond. Brought up on the 50’s and 60’s tunes of his older sisters he really knew his stuff. A good self publicist, but a diamond all the same. I learned so much from him, mainly his approach to writing and his quiet way of getting things done. He has a sharp mind and doesn’t suffer fools easily….. Probably why I haven’t seen him in about 15yrs……… ha ha…. Seriously, he would make an ideal Manager or Impresario as his ability to big up the important stuff and not even mention the dubious stuff was fantastic. Particularily on the radio…. he was a fortified natural….
His philosophy on writing was…. Just do it, it will get better…. We started writing together immediately, me sending him lyrics and he in turn furnishing me with cassettes of ideas and demos. He was very encouraging towards my early efforts and he helped me enormously.
Q. Was Ronnie studio based at that time ?
He had a cellar in the house he rented in Oxton, Birkenhead…. no really he did…. and we worked there for months sorting through songs and ideas. We had a Fostex 4 Track cassette machine, an old Revox and a Teac. Each in turn got used for recordings but the Fostex got hammered. I moved up to Birkenhead from Ellesmere Port with my girlfriend Lorraine, who became my first wife a little while later and we got a first floor flat in the same house as Dave Hughes, from Dalek i and OMD. The flat had previously belonged to Keith Hartley, the lead singer with Godot and much more, and I see Keiths name crop up occasionally. He engineered one of my favourite albums, Bandwagonesque by Teenage Fanclub.
There was a definite feeling that we were gathering momentum and getting some shape to our ideas.
We finally agreed on the name Freeze Frame, in respect of our ‘Godley and Creme’ fascination and we were off.
Q. The momentum quickly realised itself with the vinyl release of ‘Touch’. That must have been exciting.
This was our first single, on Crackin’ Up. A guy called Dave Owens, also from Birkenhead, operated this short-lived but important little label from Temple Street in Liverpool City Centre. There were only 3 releases on the label all told – this single, the compilation cassette ‘Crackin’ Up at The Pyramid’ and another single from a band called ‘The Frantic Elevators’. The lead singer was the soon to be famous Mick Hucknall from ‘Simply Red’.
The Crackin’ Up ‘office’ was one of a number of rooms upstairs in an old grain warehouse, at different times used by Tim Whittaker the drummer from Deaf School, (he was a painter by this time), Steve Grace from ‘Nasty Pop’ (making a living as a carpenter) and the later to be ‘cult hero’ Craig Charles, from the TV series Red Dwarf, plying his trade then as a Poet. Craig compered a lot of shows at The Pyramid Club and usually did a stint between band changeovers.
The track sounds a little naive now of course but the re-recorded version that we released later, highlighted its qualities as a song.
Q. Looking at the contemporary history, you made a lot of progress quickly. Did it feel that way…. were you conscious of that ?
The time between the first and second singles was a real buzz. We had got to know Jerry Lewis, the owner and co-founder of Erics’ Club in Liverpool. He was busy pouring resources into his new adventure, Amazon Studios, as a way of maintaining his development of Inevitable Records. They already had singles by Wah Heat, Dead or Alive, Dalek i Love You and China Crisis. Amazon was in Kirkby on the outskirts of Liverpool and we got mixed up with a rare bunch including the ‘Glass Torpedoes’, ‘Building 44’ and ‘China Crisis’ themselves.
We also met Gil Norton at this point learning his trade as an engineer, with an 8 track and later a 16 track machine. He would phone us with ‘down time’ hours at Amazon and we would head over from The Wirral. A perfect arrangement. He became a vital cog in our own ‘Crucial Three’….
We had worked previously with a little company called ‘Cloud Nine Productions’, run by two guys, Dave Roylance and Mike Glasspole. They were based in Amazon and produced a lot of jingle work for radio. Dave had been developing an idea for a concept album built around the ideas of ‘Atlantis’. He went on to co-write the theme music for the popular soap opera Brookside and completed a concept album based around the stories of ‘The Tall Ships’. Sadly, I heard recently that he had passed away.
Before we settled on the name Freeze Frame, we did a few shows under the band name ‘In a Glass Darkly’, supported by China Crisis. I seem to recall, but you would have to check it out with Gary and Eddie, that these were amongst China’s first shows. The gigs were in a club in Ellesmere Port called ‘The Waverley’, renowned for it’s red light clientele.
We continued to write and build up the body of work that would give us a real head start. We did a tour during this period as Godot, with Dave Hughes and Martin Cooper from OMD, almost incestuously supporting Dalek i Love You, with Alan Gill from Teardrop Explodes. We got involved in the building of a studio in Birkenhead with them at that time and were given some free studio time. It all helped to cement the ‘Oxton Scene’, a different animal than pure Liverpudlians. We also had Lizzie Johnson from The Passage, a Manchester band, working with us as a backing vocalist. Another Oxtonite.
Q. The arrangement with RCA Records seemed to come at a perfect time. Was it a big shift in terms of your focus and your plans ?
The whole thing suddenly ratcheted up. Jerry did a deal with RCA to lease the Inevitable label…. invested in a 24 Track, Solid State Logic Studio, and we managed to secure a publishing deal with Hit and Run/April Music, the company who run ‘Genesis’. There was a bit more money around and we paid for some decent photos to be done by a guy called Tom Wood for the Foxhole sleeve and had a bit more cash to pay Steve ‘Jacuzzi’ Hardstaffe, another of the Birkenhead set who did all of our sleeves. Clive G joined us at that point from ‘Afraid of Mice’. I remember his audition at Ronnies place and he got the job as much for his flexibility and genuineness as a person, as he did for his musical ability. He fitted in and he was a big asset in terms of technique and ideas.
We started getting some airplay and did a John Peel session for the BBC. That was a real highlight for me. We had also started to work with Dave Bascombe who had had some success with ‘Tears for Fears’. He was a really decent guy and again, someone I learned an awful lot from. We went down to his place at Livingstone Studios in Wood Green in London and he came up to Amazon.
REM were working at Livingstone Studios on ‘Fables of the Reconstruction’, at the time. I would love to say we got along real fine but we never even met them. Gutted. I do remember meeting an Irish band there, called ‘The Blades’, and meeting Billy J. Kramer in the kitchen over a cup of tea.
Q. How was the recording schedule delegated ? Was it a continual process ?
A lot of the work for Seeking Professional Advice was done at Livingstone but, the bulk of the session overdubs and all of the extra tracks for the 12″ were done at Amazon. We contemplated a ‘Cultural’ idea for the songs but this work in progress was temporarily shelved, when the A-side -SPA- started to become obvious. Our old friends ‘The Posers’ got due recognition on the sleeve for past times, as the original version of SPA was recorded at that first session, overseen by Ronnie.
In the gaps between releases Ronnie was doing a range of musical jobs, including working with the Irish band Auto da Fe and filling in for China Crisis. He was also demoing transistorised Vox AC 30 amps and wangled himself a beauty. He was also doing casual work for a friend of his, Cliff, who owned a dry cleaning business. What a guy.
I was busy making whatever cash I could on labouring jobs and factory work. I had three kids already and on the way to having five in all. There was a little money from the publishing but not enough for us to live on.
We also managed to continue to do some gigs and at various times played at The ICA for a Capital Radio Session, The Marquee and The Venue, all in London, as well as some shows supporting ‘Fat Larrys’ Band’. That was a great mix. Their orange flares and our punky tight leathers…. mmm
Our trips to RCA at the time were legendary when it came to helping ourselves to the new releases in the Press room. We also did another BBC Session, with Kid Jensen, a Canadian DJ who was popular for his eclectic approach to his playlists. His show segued into Peels Radio One show on weekday evenings.
Q. For the next release, you returned to your first single. Why was that ?
It was a great song and deserved another chance to be recorded. We were becoming predominantly studio based as Freeze Frame, despite the occasional shows. We fleshed out the new wave of sounds of Oberheim drum machines and Ensonic keyboards, as the undertow to the next batch of songs. Mixed with real session players the songs found a natural rhythm, based around the concept of Touch.
Ironically, we were supposed to be the ‘album’ artists when Inevitable was leased over to RCA. One of the other bands signed at the same time, ‘A Box of Toys’, were single focussed. Our material just kept getting the nod for release. Their track, ‘Precious is the Pearl’, is glorious though I must say.
We also recorded a version of ‘Life is Just a Game’, the original Touch B-Side at the same time, as well as other tracks for a hoped for album. Ronnie had been on holiday to Turkey where his ‘brother in law’ taught with his Turkish wife. While he was there he bought a ‘saz’ guitar and quietly wrote some musical pieces for it. It is one of those that you can hear on ‘Where’s The Girl’.
Q. Did the label arrangements continue to be satisfactory ?
There was a part of us that felt a little unhappy here and there, with regard to the role of the record company and advertising and distribution, as well as the changing relationship with Inevitable as Jerry became more embroiled in the politics of his job.
Effectively, he owned the studio where his artists did their recording and he got paid for releasing the records on the company he owned. Nice work if you can get it.
He didn’t break our balls though, he allowed us full artistic freedom with cover design and rarely questioned the choice of material. Where we failed if at all, was to not take advantage of delivering it to the next level. An album. That was a big desire. A big hope.
Q. He continued to have some musical input though didn’t he ?
Jerry himself oversaw the final 12″ release, ‘Today Tomorrow’. I really enjoyed those recordings, using some horn players on ‘Only a Boy’ who were fantastic and the incredible Linda Wright singing a duet on ‘It Makes Me Cry’. I’d love to say I made a real day of it with Linda but, to my loss we did our vocals at different times. My singing voice had relaxed a little and I was feeling more confident in myself. We did another bunch of gigs, attracted some airplay as always but it was getting to decision time. RCA didn’t pick up the option, we managed to squeeze out of our publishing arrangements and despite not being able to fulfil all of our goals, we were relatively unscathed in the great scheme of things.
Q. That wasn’t the end though was it ?
We continued on for another year or two as ‘Push Button Pony’, teaming up with some old friends from Liverpool, Andy Redhead and Jon Corner from ‘A Select Committee’ and ‘3D A Fish in C’ respectively. We did a bunch more gigs and recorded an album worth of demos for a little French label called Carrere. The tunes were excellent and we did some more radio but Carrere didn’t bite and we had to make some decisions ourselves.
I applied for college to do my degree in Youth and Community Studies and Ronnie continued on in whatever role he could pick up, either as a producer, engineer or guitarist. He originally came through art school and had lots of options. He is still doing it now.
Q. Our ‘imaginary’ album concludes with the final two tracks. How did they come about ?
The missing tune ‘Culture Won’t Wait’ had become available on ‘The Inevitable Sampler Vol 1’.
It was great to see an album full of artists we had grown together with, finally get an overdue label release in LP form.
Ronnie and I only saw each other occasionally from that point on. After qualifying from college, I moved into my current work and used to pop around to Ronnies to drop off a bagful of condoms that I used to get free through work. He was sure keeping himself busy in whatever way he could.
The final track on the CD came out under the eponymous name ‘Someone’, in case of any hangovers from previous publishing arrangements and was released on ‘The Inevitable Sampler Vol 2’.
Ronnie was working out of a studio near Chester, belonging to Bobby from the 70’s Cabaret outfit, ‘The Black Abbots’, (The band that spawned Russ Abbot).
I am not sure whether this ever got an official release but it does exist, ‘INEV 19’, as I have a copy myself. We shot a video in the studio to accompany the track but I don’t remember ever seeing it. I would love to.
It was predominantly artists that Ronnie was producing or otherwise working with and is well worth listening to. Jack Roberts, an artist we had both worked with, ‘The Tidemarks’, ‘The Orphans’ ‘The Fade’ all come to mind.
I haven’t seen him now for about 15 years, like I say, although I hear mention of him here and there and smile with satisfaction when I see him credited with some new release or other. I was working in a little studio in Wrexham, run by a guy called Nino, and he knew Ronnie well and our history. I was able to pass on my regards. I don’t know whether he got them.
The final track on the CD came out under the name ‘Someone’ in case of any hangovers
Q. Did you continue to be involved with music ?
I played on intermittently throughout the early ’90s with a band called ‘Slaves Again’, writing another batch of tunes and playing a lot of local gigs but never looking to release anything with serious intent. I moved up to North Wales in 1998.
I set about writing and recording a whole new set of material, as a somewhat cathartic approach to my first marriage going under. It was certainly that. Some of that material is due to be made available under the name, ‘More Songs About Kitchens and Stairs…. The Llay Tapes 1998 – 2003’. A selection of noisy home demos that I was always threatening to record again. Free the music I say.
It is a flurry of material, made during a series of congregations with musical friends and family. Usually involving a good helping of red wine. It is due to be released in early 2012, under the name ‘The Jazz Cigarettes’.
Q. And since the ‘Millenium’ ?
From 2000, I began doing some gigs with some other friends who were well established in the literary field as ‘The Chester Poets’. They had had a lot of their work published and had developed a musical sideline as ‘Celtic Spirit’. They wrote a ‘Celtic Opera’ over a period of years and I was proud to have been involved. I was also delighted to have taken the role as ‘The Dark Power’, when it was performed a number of times in Chester.
So there you have it. I got married again in 2006 and have barely written a song since…. Ha Ha…. That’s not quite true actually, I have written a couple of dozen or more but have only just recently started to draw them together for finishing and recording.
I met up with my friend Rob Riley, a co-survivor of ‘The Llay Tapes’ only last week and we got two tracks down during an afternoon when I was off work. One is called ‘Motown Stranger’ and the other is a gospel piece, written as a replacement for the Old Rugged Cross…. Ha Ha.
Seriously, I seem to go to a lot of funerals as I get older and its about time we had a new funereal option. It’s called ‘Please Go On’. Both songs will get an early airing through the ‘MasterBakers’ Facebook page as soon as they are ready.
Watch this space.
Q. Thanks for your time Steve, it has been very revealing for me. Will we see you soon ?
Well Jon Arne, seeing as you have informed me of your wedding to Gunnhild next May, then I am hoping that it will be very soon.
Put another log on the fire.
Well?? When will we be able to buy/download this compilation??
Dominik,
Thank you for your message and apologies for not getting back to you sooner. I have not submitted any new material to this Blogsite for some time ( as you may have noticed ). Therefore I rarely check for new messages.
I would be happy to send you a copy of the Freeze Frame Compilation if you still want it.
By all means use my e-mail address to make further contact.
sjb1606@aol.com
Hope to hear from you soon and make arrangements in due course.
Best Wishes, Steve.
hi I´d love a copy of this comp too if possible, great band I have a few of thoer singles but not all and I´d love to hear the track Someone, here´s keeping my fingers crossed 🙂 all the best Mike
Hi Mike,
Thanks for your comments. I sent you an email a while ago but didn’t hear back from you. If you still want a copy of the Freeze Frame material please contact me again. Best wishes Steve