When my brother Baz died I was obviously devastated. Like many people who suffer a close loss, I wanted to do something in his memory that would keep him alive, keep his flag flying high. I recorded the album Frankenstein Monster as a tribute to all the musicality he taught me. All the songs were from his teenage band ‘Necromandus’. It was a daunting task. A lot of the songs were taken from cassette tape demos and live recordings in pubs. Some of them were recorded in a proper recording studio but were not finished properly. I had to create endings and beginnings, figure out all the guitar inversions and arrange and produce the tracks so they were more professional in their presentation. The end product is something I’m extremely proud of. Along with fellow musicians Paul Brown and Tony Beard, I think it’s one of the best pieces of work I have ever created. I even managed to get his son John and grandson Danny on guitar and my entire family clapping.
But even though i went to great lengths to improve the sounds, the arrangements, the production, the performances etc, still when I listen back, something is missing. There was something that I couldn’t replicate. It was the life they lived together and all the time they spent in each others company. They ‘lived’ that album. It wasn’t a project, it was their life. They ‘lived’ it. It’s a very subtle thing and has more to do with the overall essence of the music rather than the production or performances. For Paul, Tony and myself this was a 6 week project. To my brother and his band mates it was their life and you simply cannot replicate a life lived.
And when I put together my It Bites FD shows, I am always aware of this. On the last DVD ‘Live from the black country’ you can see how much work we put into making the music as close as we possibly could to the original albums. The guys did an amazing job. Luke, Quint, Bjorn, Pete, Paul and myself had only three days rehearsal to come up with all of that. I don’t think I’ll be able to come up with a better version of those particular songs, the band did the music justice. But no matter how perfect, no matter how good the singing is or how much better sonically the recordings are, still, you cannot replicate a life lived. John, Bob, Dick and I lived those albums. We were a team. It was our lives. from the early days in the Peckham squats to the later days at Harrow on the Hill, we lived the songs. We ate, drank and slept it Bites. That’s all we did. We had years to develop the songs, years to develop the live show. It was our life. Not a project, our life. And that ‘life lived’ is the difference between It Bites and It Bites FD, between Led Zeppelin with John Bonham and Led Zeppelin with Jason, Steve Hacketts Genesis and the original line up. Van Halen with Sammy and Van Halen with Dave Lee Roth. It’s the life lived. The Jimi Hendrix experience and Jimmy Hendrix solo. The life lived. Not the songs, not the playing, not the lights or the venues or the amplifiers, but the life lived. Both for the band AND the audience.
The life lived.