Alan Richmond – 26 April 2010

Written about the band’s early years through the mists of time during secret rehearsals in 2010 for a most unlikely comeback.

---

The Useful Shoes were a semi-legendary, under-rehearsed and over-hyped Scottish band that formed in Paisley in 1978. They split up after one gig then reformed in 1981 to play another gig before splitting again. Musical differences were cited as the reasons for both splits but apathy, chaotic organisation and not being any good were very much in the frame too.

Formation

The idea for The Useful Shoes was born out of the explosion of British and American punk and new wave music in 1976/1977. As a bored (just) teenager in Paisley and keen observer of this nascent music scene, Ken Macdonald could see it was about so much more than the music. Many bands would make the front cover of the NME on the strength of their name alone.

Even if they went on to record, this was the era of obscure one-off 7” vinyl singles in arty picture sleeves by bands who would be there one minute and, following a five star review for their debut waxing on some achingly hip independent label, be gone the next. The more ambiguous the band, the more collectable they were.

Ken’s collection of these singles grew and grew and his house became the place to go for young men like me to hear the band and the songs that mattered. Some like Wazmo Nariz (Tele-Tele-Telephone/Wacker Drive – Stiff BUY 33, 1978) are long forgotten, some like The Modern Lovers (Roadrunner/Pablo Picasso – Beserkley PA205, 1977) were odd, one-off chart hits and others like The Human League (Being Boiled /Circus Of Death FAST 4, 1978) went on to greater things, or at least different haircuts. As the months went by, Ken could be found within the blue walls of his attic conversion bedroom, avoiding studying for his law degree and attempting to whack out the bass lines to these tunes on his Macca-style Hofner bass.

Mucking about with his mates Jeff Rankine and Gordon Ross over several beers, Ken challenged them to come up with a band name that would top all the others flooding across the pages of the inky music papers – this was the late 70s, remember. In a previous discussion, Jeff had been arguing the merits of his new shoes, describing them (to much hilarity) as being “useful shoes” due to their versatility for every occasion. It was son of the (Paisley Abbey) manse Gordon Ross who hit upon the idea of a band named The Useful Shoes. In a moment of beer-addled genius, a legend was born.

The Useful Shoes Mk1

With the name in place, Ken Macdonald began seeking the opportunity to make flesh the idea and in 1978, the chance materialised. Kenneth was about to pass through that age which, in the late 20th century, still meant something. Turning twenty-one was intended to mark you the getting the key to the door of adulthood and was an excuse for a bloody good party. Ken seized the chance.

The function room of the Friar’s Hall pub in the south side of Paisley was booked and the plan to stage the first and last gig by The Useful Shoes swung into…. erm…action. The line-up was a flexible grouping of musicians and wannabe musicians which was never really nailed down until the night of the party. Ken recruited brothers Norrie and Derek Clark on guitar and drums respectively. A couple of years earlier, this pair had been at the cornerstone of the archetypal high school band – in this case known as Freebird, after the Lynyrd Skynyrd song. With Ken on the Hofner bass, Davie Ross took the vocal lead and there was a role for big George Droy but memories of what it was are dim. The aforementioned Messrs Rankine and Ross were also in the mix somewhere and I borrowed a saxophone from a mate of my dad’s and blew some notes into the middle of all this.

Details of the one rehearsal have been lost in the mists of time, but it was definitely held in the front room of Davie Ross’s parent’s house in Hunterhill –we were thrown out after half an hour. As the setlist comprised one short song – a cover of The Ramones version of Chris Montez’s Let’s Dance, as recorded by the New York punks on their seminal first record in 1976 – 30 mins practice was deemed enough and the gig went ahead.

Invites for the Macdonald 21st Birthday Party were issued on beautiful gilt-edged cards with embossed silver writing which looked for all the world like an invite to some posh, black tie dinner. That was until you saw, printed in small text on the bottom right hand corner, the words: Arrive Drunk.

There is no photographic record of this era-defining rock event and even those that took part are hazy on the details, presumably having carefully followed the instructions on the party invite. However, Let’s Dance was battered through by the assembled horde to a stunned audience. Ken carefully picked out his intricate runs on the bass only to find out when unplugging his axe that it had never been plugged in to start with. It was as chaotic a performance as he had hoped for and Ken went home happy that The Shoes had burned on the stage, brightly and quickly, in true rock’n’roll style.

The Useful Shoes Mk2

The events of 1978 quickly faded and became a thing of folklore to those who were lucky enough to be there, never mind take part. However, three years later it was my turn to get the key for that door as I turned twenty-one. In the years since that first gig, the pull of the stage lights had grown strong and I began planning another gig for The Shoes.

The same venue was booked for 1 May 1981 and the ever-fluid line-up changed again. Although Norrie Clark stayed on guitar, drumming duties were picked up by Davie Barbour who had previously replaced Norrie’s brother Derek in the by-now long defunct Freebird. Having been (painfully) taught a few chords by Norrie, Mark McKillop took on the second guitar and this time Ken Macdonald stepped back from bass playing leaving me to stumble through the bass lines, while also singing. There must have been others in the line-up but history is once again elusive on the detail.

The Mark 2 Shoes managed two rehearsals in my dad’s garage (truly we were, in Joe Strummer’s words, a garage band) and the following set list was prepared:

Boys Don’t Cry – the Cure’s second single from June 1979 before the gloom and the red lipstick arrived;

Mystery Dance – a song about sexual naivety from My Aim Is True, the first Elvis Costello record released in 1977; and

Heatwave – the Holland Dozier Holland classic from 1963 made famous on the Motown label by Martha Reeves and the Vandellas but done in the style of cover versions by The Who and The Jam, who recorded it for their fourth record Setting Sons in 1980.

To this day, Ken Macdonald claims he was ousted from the Mk2 Shoes as he insisted on playing the bass line from Puppy Love to Heatwave

The night came and the band played. Alcohol-induced fug notwithstanding, my memory suggests the gig went well with the only problem being the lyric sheet prompts laid on the stage lights to help me remember the words went on fire during the set.

Rock’n’roll – phew!

The Twilight Years

As with the first gig, the second appearance of the Shoes quickly faded into history and the world raced onwards. People grew up, people got married, people had kids and some just carried on as before. The Useful Shoes looked destined to be lost in the footnotes of rock’n’roll history, barely remembered by the few lucky enough to have seen them.

However, many years later in 2008, The Shoes Mk2 guitarist Mark McKillop found himself directing episodes of ITV’s long-running popular drama series Emmerdale. At a script meeting, the writers were planning for one of the younger characters to be going to a gig and telling his jealous mates about it. In the arcane world of TV, it is not possible to use real bands within the dialogue of a drama and so the writers were trawling about seeking a suitably hip and happening name for a band. The name of his old band, The Useful Shoes was offered up by the director and so it was that The Shoes got their first (and last!) break in prime-time television.

Unfortunately, the moment is not captured on YouTube but Norrie and I were lucky enough to receive copies of the laminated backstage pass for the Emmerdale gig at the Hotten Trade Hall from Mark as a souvenir of the event. No information on the setlist was available, though.

2010 Reunion

And so to the final but incomplete chapter of the story – the planned reunion of the band to mark my 50th birthday. A number of things have led to this moment but two things stand out for me.

In late 2009, I finally got round to finishing something that started with me buying a ticket for a gig in the late, lamented Glasgow Apollo at the end of 1974. At the tender age of 13, I had become a real fan of the music of Mott The Hoople. They were a legendary live act but I had not been able to negotiate my way to seeing them until the tour they planned for the winter of 1974.

I had my ticket stuck to the wall beside my bed and was really looking forward to finally seeing them play live. However, very early one morning as I was reading someone else’s paper before I delivered it through their letter box, I read that Mott had split up and would no longer be touring! I was devastated – completely gutted that they were gone and I would never see them. I went on listening to their records for the next 35 years and although I saw lead singer Ian Hunter play live as a solo act, I always felt that I had missed out on the full band experience.

The happy ending to this story came last summer when I took a call from my friend and fellow Mott fan Dave Heatley to say that the band were going to reform for a one-off series of gigs in London, an incredible 40 years after their first record was released. Did I want a ticket, he needlessly asked! And so I found myself at the Hammersmith Odeon (as was) on the night of 3 October 2009 when the original line-up of Mott The Hoople strutted on to the stage and the circle was duly closed. This showed me that it truly was a mighty long way down rock’n’roll……

On top of the Mott reunion, entering the year of my 50th birthday, Santa very kindly brought me the DVD box set of John Byrne’s classic 1987 TV series Tutti Frutti, which had finally been released after many years of languishing in the vaults of the BBC. This masterpiece in black comedy arguably launched the careers of Robbie Coltrane and Emma Thomson and featured Richard Wilson in his finest TV performance bar none as the legendary Eddie Clockerty. It is a fantastic piece of writing from the masterful Byrne (a good Paisley boy of course!) and is based around the Silver Jubilee Tour of legendary Scottish rock’n’roll band The Majestics.

So when I started thinking about how I would mark my fiftieth year on the planet, the themes of reunions and legendary Scottish rock bands took me straight to The Useful Shoes!

The line-up and setlist for the night of 1 May 2010 are closely guarded secrets but there will be a few of The Shoes from back in the day joining some new faces to stumble through some old tunes.

To be continued…