(BEFORE STARTING, LET ME JUST SAY THANK YOU TO OUR FRIEND RObert POland FOR ALL THESE YEARS OF GREAT MUSIC. )
Here are Holly Johnson’s memories of the band:
‘At 17 I played in my first band, Big In Japan, which was already formed when I joined. Jayne
and Kevin Ward were both vocalists, although Kevin had been doubling as bass player. Bill Drummond played rhythm guitar, Ian Broudie lead guitar, and Phil Allen was on drums. (Phil's brother Steve, a.k.a. Enrico Cadillac Jr, was the lead singer of Deaf School.) Big In Japan had started by using Deaf School's equipment and rehearsing in Eric's. Anyway Kevin wanted to be free to sing, so the band had to find a new bass player.
I was approached by Jayne and Bill. Jayne knew that I wrote lyrics and poetry, and that I played the acoustic guitar and sang. Perhaps she also realised that I needed a distraction from my
situation in the Gambier Terrace bedsit, I told them that my lyrics were perhaps a bit whimsical for the kind of thing their band was doing, but the truth was I was really too shy to show them my work. I was familiar with only one song of theirs, the band's theme tune `Big In Japan', which actually I thought was dreadful, though I understood the tongue-in-cheek aspect of it.
Still, I felt that it might be fun. Also I knew it was a way of getting in to Eric's for free. Being a bass player in a New Wave band had never been part of my big plan; but it could be a kind of apprenticeship.
I went through a series of little auditions - one with Ian Broadie with my acoustic guitar. Ian checked out my playing ability, which compared to his was pretty minimal, but I did quite a good rendition of Jacques gel's 'Amsterdam' - Bowie had sung this song on a B-side in the early Seventies. The next audition was with Bill and Ian in Eric's. One day they gave me Kevin's bass
guitar, a blue Fender Music Man. It was hell to play, but somehow I managed to perform a piece they taught me. Bill and Kevin were ten years older than I - they seemed ancient - and Jayne was twenty one. I think the nearest in age to me was Ian who was about eighteen, and by far the most accomplished musician and arranger. My obvious advantage to the group was that I looked like a male mirror image of Jayne, with my shaved head dyed blonde and the black eye make up. It gave the band a strong visual identity without a doubt.
I learned the songs by rote, in the manner Kevin had played them, not really understanding the musical style or the function of the bass guitar that much. I did manage however to have an influence on the lyrics.
Jayne would say let's write some lyrics,' so I would dictate lines that I had already written back at the flat to her, adapting them to her personality, since she would be singing them. I often rewrote lyrics to existing tunes. 'Suicide A Go Go', 'SCUM' and `Nothing Special' were written in this manner. Looking back, I think they are some of my favourite lyrics.’
(A Bone In My Flute, 91-92)
‘So as in all groups politics started to rear its ugly head. The first target was Kevin, Jayne's on-and-off boyfriend. Bill Drummond and Jayne got together and somehow managed to get Kevin voted out of the group. I remember being quite shocked at the way Jayne helped engineer this. She claimed that Kevin tried to undermine her; maybe he did, I might have been too young to notice things like that. Bill had a theory that in matters like this, pop groups had to be ruthless. It was a bit like the popularity contests that I thought I'd left behind in school. Next it was Phil Allen's turn.
The Spitfire Boys' drummer `Budgie' was one of the best in town at that time, and somehow Phil was out and Budgie was in. I didn't mind that much as Budgie had been my friend. Budgie was nice and one of the least homophobic musicians. […’](ABIMF, 95)
‘Meanwhile, Big In Japan were getting a bit of a reputation. Paul Morley, a freelance journalist for the NME, came over from Manchester to interview us. It took place in Eric's club one afternoon. He asked his usual awkward questions. `What do you hope to achieve by all of this?' and `What will you do when it's all over?' I think Bill answered that he would like to take a trip down the Amazon. I replied flippantly that I would like to open a chippy.
This small article enabled us to get further bookings up and down the country. We played some polytechnic or other, supporting Penetration. […] We also supported The Buzzcocks when they played the Mountford Hall in Liverpool. We only did a few numbers as we were drenched in spittle from the audience. A similar incident happened at Preston Polytechnic. Cans of lager were hurtled at us on the stage by ignorant students: we ducked these for two numbers, and left the stage.
Our visual presentation depended on the contrasting characters in the band. Bill would wear his
kilt. Jayne would wear yellow nappies over a black leotard suit with a plunging neck Line. She had always had a heavy decolletage and used it to its best advantage. On her head she would wear a yellow terry- towelling nappy that she had transformed into an Arab headdress. She had her black eyes, black lips, and black toenails that showed through her open-toed platform `fuck me' pumps, worn to compensate for her small stature. Budgie had his shock of blonde hair behind the drums and Ian was just Ian in his John Lennon specs. I was wearing a tartan dinner jacket (Jayne found it for me in Layla's shop '69a'), and black footless tights or my tartan trousers. It was not really a punk look like all the other bands of the period, so we didn't really fit in. The music wasn't punk either, and we would often get in trouble with audiences who were there to spit and pogo.’ (abimf, 99-100)
‘My position in Big In Japan was shortly to end. I never knew exactly why. The band's politics had just swung in another direction. At the same time the music scene in Liverpool was moving on. Lots of the people who had been in the audience of Big In Japan shows stopped sneering at us for a moment and formed their own bands, thinking, 'We could do better than them'. Echo and The Bunnymen was one example. Their first show at Eric's was chaos - they only had one song and played it for twenty minutes. The drum machine was the only thing that could play. Another new band was The Teardrop Explodes - Julian Cope stopped just talking music and started playing it. Even Pete Burns eventually started to try and get in on the act. […]
I visited Jayne one day at her […] new basement flat in Grosvenor Terrace. She burst into tears and told me that the boys in the band didn't want to work with me any more. I was a bit stunned, but didn't think that it merited such histrionics. In fact I was disappointed that Jayne had allowed this to happen; her position in the band was quite important after all. It may have been due to my indifference to being a bass player, though years later Jayne claimed a bit of homophobia was involved. I didn't know, and couldn't care less. […]
The next incarnation of fig In Japan (with Dave Balfe as bass player) did not last long. They had started to rehearse in The Open Eye, a bookshop/cafe-cum-arts-centre near Mathew Street. After about three months they decided to split up and that was to be almost the end of fig In Japan. I was invited to play the bass for a few songs at the farewell concert, which I did.
A few months after this fill Drummond and Dave Balfe decided to start up their own independent record label and Zoo Records was born. The first release was an EP of Big In Japan demos, `From Y to Z and Never Again' (ABIMF, 107-108)
As to the earliest incarnation of the band Pete Burns (who also claims to have ‘rehearsed with Big in Japan for a while and we did a grat set’, Freak Unique, 71) remembers:
‘At the time, there were the Spitfire Boys - Paul Rutherford and Budgie - and there was Big in Japan. And on the stage with Big in Japan was this man wearing a gypsy bandana, with beaded hair and a tuxedo, with a fan, just standing to one side. He was older than the others, and it turned out to be Griff, the bass player in the Spitfire Boys. Big in Japan used to use him as a stage presence, and he seemed very sophisticated.’ (FU, 79)
Here is a couple of demo versions of BiJ’s songs:
- Don’t Bomb China
- Goodbye
Bij – some demos(pictures, copyrigth to the original authors [Hilary Steele])
Formed in 1984, the band included Greg Milton (guitar, bass, vocals), Roger Synek (drums) – both form A Formal Sigh – Ali Williams (keyboards, formerly with Flo & the Frets), Dave Surtees (guitars), who left some time later. Later they were joined by Dave Morgan (formerly with the Jactars) on bass, so that Milton could switch on second guitar and focus more on vocals.
1. House By The Airport
