Tingletangle
Bob, Teresa, Frank "Foo Foo" Lamarr
This is a transcript of a conversation recorded between me and an old friend, the visual artist, Fionna Murray, who recently travelled over from her current home in Galway, Ireland, to help me celebrate my 70th birthday. We wanted to talk about a club night, called Tingletangle, that we co-ran along with several other friends - Teresa, Ruth, Eva, and several others were involved - in Manchester, during the post-punk years of the late 70s and early 1980s. Fionna very kindly gave me permission to use some of the photographs we began the conversation by discussing. We made this recording at Manchester Art Gallery café, on Sunday, June 1st 2025.
Bob: Okay. Marvellous. So, those photos were taken, Fionna - when do you think they were taken?
Fionna: October, 1979.
Bob: Wow.
Fionna: I put the photos into a sort of sketchbook, an artist’s sketchbook and included the date. And, you know, with cameras then, it was 24 shots, and that was it. So, there weren't loads and loads of photos. You had your film and that was it and got it developed. It's such a pity we didn't get any photos with the posters. You know, that we didn't take any photos when we were putting the posters up?
Bob: Well, so the meeting was - when? Had we already started putting things on in Tingletangle?
Fionna: Yeah.
Bob: The show at Gaetanos?
Fionna: Yes. We had to find somewhere else after Gaetanos. And do you remember Foo Foo La Mar had had a punk night in his club? He had one night a week where he gave it over to punks to have a gig?
Bob: That was the Ranch Bar.
Fionna: The Ranch. Yes. So I think Buzzcocks and people like that played there.
Bob: Yes. They did. Yeah.
Fionna: So we thought why don't we go to Foo Foo? And when we went to see him at The Palace Club - he was up for letting us use his venue, wasn't he?
Bob: Yeah. He was a nice guy. He was part of what made that whole Canal Street area, the Gay Village, become very successful. It became part of the way Manchester redeveloped. Well, that is, because of his other club, Napoleon’s which was simply a gay club. And the Palace was his place where he performed, where he did his drag show.
Left image: Teresa, Bob, Eva. Right image: Teresa, Bob, Fionna
Fionna: I think we went to see his drag show one night, didn't we? And it says - it's funny, I wrote, you'll see it on the photo, “Success for Tingletangle”.
Bob: Yeah.
Fionna: We celebrated by taking photos because we thought that's where we were going to have the next Tingletangle gig. So, it was after the meeting with Foo Foo. It’s a pity we didn’t get to be there for more nights as Foo Foo was a decent guy, part of the alternative life in Manchester, not just a straight club owner. And then he must have come out side to us and said, did we want a lift?
Bob: Yeah. And we got in his Rolls Royce, and he took us somewhere.
Fionna: I just remember thinking we looked so small in the back of the car! Yeah. He took us back in a Rusholme direction because we went all the way up Oxford Road. Or, maybe he dropped us off at some point on the Oxford Road before it got to Rusholme.
Bob: So you've just been down to Rusholme?
Fionna: I walked over there this morning. It's so quiet, I just thought compared to Dublin, like the city centre on a Sunday here is so chilled. Dublin's frantic. Why? I don’t know. It's just got this different energy, and it's amazing how quiet it is here. Obviously, I suppose all the university and a lot of the exams will be over, and it's not a week day. And I was up around the university buildings. But then I went beyond the Whitworth and I thought, shall I keep going? Of course, Rusholme was only a little bit further and then I saw our old flat, number 155. I worked out which one it was because it was directly opposite the dole office! Which is now the Job Centre. And there was a garage next to it, that's now a sort of restaurant. You know, the forecourt of the garage is like this entrance into a restaurant. And there were lots of metal shutters all down before the restaurants opened.
Bob: Yeah.
Fionna: On all the shops. So you couldn't see the front door into the flat which may have even changed because that would have been going straight upstairs. But the windows up top looked pretty grim up above. Just as grim as it was when we were living there!
Bob: It’s changed a lot. It used to be purely, I would say, Pakistani, South Asian food shops and restaurants. Now it's more Middle East, know, Lebanese, Syrian, and Asian. Yeah.
Fionna: There must be some amazing restaurants. I love Middle Eastern food. Yeah. It's totally that. It's amazing because it was a mix.
Bob: Yeah.
Fionna: Funny thing is, was it a mix of English and Indian when we were there? Because all I remember is sari shops and Indian sweets in the windows of the cafes.
Bob: Sari shops. And was there was an old theatre that had become an Indian cinema, and that was pulled down.
Fionna: Right. But as I was walking around the centre as well, there's certain things I remember, but, you know, there are the old buildings around, amazing-looking edifices. But we were so busy with our own thing that it wasn't something I took in, particularly. They weren't on my radar to really look at, in the way I would now, but I think our surroundings all very much went into our consciousness in some way. I can appreciate it much more now in terms of looking at the built environment of the city .
Bob: It was very dark and gloomy. Because even when we were doing things, I mean, the buildings were still covered in soot. And they went through this whole phase of sandblasting the buildings. In the 1980s. It took ages.
Fionna: Yes. Because they’re much brighter now. You know (looking at photo) what's the name of that massive red brick building? It's just before the corner of Oxford Road. I think it's a hotel now with a restaurant and reminded me of the renovated Saint Pancras Hotel in Kings Cross … Refuge. It's an old insurance building.
Bob: Yeah. Yeah.
Fionna: I've got a memory of walking along that to turn the corner onto Oxford Road. It must have been summer and was really dry and hot. And I remember having this real feeling of oppressiveness in the air. I think that was the summer where we were trying to get jobs in Manchester. And we couldn't get anything. So, we were on the dole.
Bob: Yeah. Well, the Refuge Insurance company was a big company, and my Mum used to work there (in the late 1940s). But now it's like a top, really expensive hotel.
Fionna: Yes, and now there’s lots of hotels. Because it was very easy to get one for this weekend. You know, when I booked, there was no problem at all. I don't know if they've got too many now?
Bob: Depends what time of year it is. There's tourism now too, it's a tourist place. And Dublin's a tourist place. But the club, Tingletangle, where did we plan it? In your flat in Rusholme? Or where was I living? In Levenshulme, and later in Didsbury, with Ruth?
Fionna: I wondered if you were still in contact with Ruth at all?
Bob: I lost contact with her. She's in, I believe she's in Dundee. And she lives with a woman whom I don't know. But we used the flat I was in with Rennie -
Fionna: Rennie also lived with my brother for a while
Bob: What? When?
Fionna: He lived with him in Grandale Road which was a road opposite us in Rusholme. Ant got a room over there one of the years that we lived above the sari shop. He did a TV course, a course in TV production in the Polytechnic. I don't know how long it was, but he ended up living with Rennie in this tiny little terraced house. And the woman who had it, they had rooms upstairs in her house and she was called Mrs. Glynn - she was quite old, and she was a bit paranoid about them. Imagine two young lads upstairs in her house.
Bob: Pretty harmless young lads,
Fionna: Mind you, Rennie was chucking things out of the window upstairs into the garden!
There was an edge to him, wasn't there?
Bob: Definitely. Yeah. What was good about the Colours Out of Time was he channelled a bit of that into some of his performances and things like that.
Fionna: Because he was sort of a bit Mick Jagger-ish in his persona. Yeah, he was quite amazing on stage, wasn't he?
Bob: Yeah. He was.
Fionna: And now here's another thing, Bob. Do you remember Darryl Hunt?
Bob: Oh, yeah. That's a name from the past. Yes. What happened to him?
Fionna: Unfortunately Darryl died a few years ago..
Bob: Did he?
Fionna: Yeah, a few years ago now. I mean, there's a mad, amazing trail from Manchester - Nottingham people in Manchester who went to Kings Cross in London, because I knew the same people. Well, Darryl, I didn't know him in Manchester, but he did come over to play here with a band.
Bob: Who did he play with in Manchester?
Fionna: He was in a band, and we went to see them. (NOTE: they were probably called Plummet Airlines)
Bob: I think Andrew knew him, didn't he?
Fionna: Crewe. Yes. That would be the connection, I think. And what's-his-name? There was also the lad who I think is in one of the pictures I have? He went out with Teresa.
Bob: Ollie. He was from Nottingham as well.
Bob: Well, his brother, his brother was in - Oh, what was his brother’s name?
Fionna: Did we know his brother?
Bob: Yes. We did. Oh, his brother (Will) was in that that Oi band that was called Antipasti.
Fionna: Okay. I think Ollie was trying to get a band together.
Bob: Everybody was trying to be in a band. Or something.
Eva, Teresa, Fionna
Fionna: Something. But Daryl definitely came over and played, and it was somewhere off the Wilmslow Road. It was like a little place somewhere near the University. But I didn't know him at that time. I vaguely remember seeing him when they came off stage and thinking, oh, he's nice! And then we all went out to a party or something. And funny enough, have you been to the show in The Whitworth about the art of women’s protest?
Bob: No. Not yet.
Fionna: It's very good. It's really good. About women's activism in the seventies. Okay. There's some things in there that are just, really, you sort of think, my god, they were fighting some stuff then. Yes. And sure enough, there's a bit of a music section.
Bob: Is there?
Fionna: The Raincoats - there's one of the Raincoats doing this scream, a video of her (Gina?) just screaming. But then there was a little section with these fanzines and books and badges. And I saw one of the 7” singles was produced by such and such “D. Hunt”, in brackets, which made me think of Daryl. And it was Daryl. Oh, wow. Yeah, and there's one or two other single covers you'd recognize as well. So it's worth seeing.
Bob: I’ll go. I thought we could meet either here or there.
Fionna: Okay, ah Yeah I went in this morning. It’s called “Women in Revolt”. There's some really interesting things. I don't know if it's the full show because funnily enough, my brother’s partner, Joanne - she's a photographer, and she was active in some of those protests in the seventies, and she would have photographed loads of actions and things going on at the time. Some of her photos were in the exhibition in London. It was in Tate Britain but I didn't get to see it.. So I thought, oh, I'll go around and see Joanne's photos, but they're not there - they may have had limited space here. But, yes, to get back to Darryl. Then we met him in London through the social scene around the bands who were playing in Kings Cross.
Bob: And he was part of the Pogues?
Fionna: He was, but he was a roadie for the Pogues to start with. And, of course, he was in other bands, you know. He was a very good bassist and he was in a few different bands and he started helping out as a roadie for the Pogues, then Poguemahone, because crucially, he had a car!. When Cait left the band Darryl just stepped in. It was an opportunity, you know.
Bob: Of course.
Fionna: So he became a permanent member. And then, you know, it all fell apart when Shane left and they kept gigging for some years after. I met up with him in London some years ago now, maybe ten years ago. I thought I must catch up with Darryl. And he was living off Kentish Town Road. He had a daughter. She was about ten at that stage. She'd be, maybe in her thirties now. And then a few years ago I heard that Darryl had died and I think he had suffered with Alzheimer's.
Bob: That's really hard.
Fionna: Yeah. Isn't it? You know, Yeah. He was a bit older than us. He was actually probably ten years older than we were. Not that I knew that at the time because he was so youthful looking!
Bob: And I also remember that when Ollie and Andrew were here in fact, Andrew and Ollie lived with me, in Chorlton, and we got thrown out because they did band practices in the house. Oh. And so we all decamped to somewhere out in the middle of nowhere, sort of north of Stalybridge…
Fionna: I remember that.
Bob: Heyrod, it was called, and it was a nightmare.
Fionna: I remember you all going out. It seemed like you were out miles away.
Bob: Yes, it was miles away. It was horrible, and I couldn't stand it, and I left. And I came back into Manchester, and I moved to Central Road in West Didsbury. That was where I was for a long time. And things stabilized. And there was room to do things and there was room to store records.
Fionna: The first place I stayed in, Teresa had a room in a big old house in Didsbury, and I came up up from London and stayed with her. And funnily enough, that thing with playing music, we had a mono record player there, and we kept playing Anarchy in The UK over and over again. And then we were getting knocks on the door from other renters in this big house shouting “Shut up!” And you know how you have no conception of other people when you're that age? It's incredible.
Bob: So you were all at university together.
Fionna: Teresa was at the university doing History of Art. Is that the connection? Did she meet Ruth and then through Ruth, we met you? That must be it. Yes. Because I I was trying to think how we got to know you.
Bob: It was through Ruth. Were you at the University too?
Fionna: I did History of Design at the Poly but really wanted to be doing Art.
Bob: So you became friends with Teresa before you met Ruth?
Fionna: I was at school with Teresa. From eleven years of age.
Bob: Whereabouts?
Fionna: North London. And Eva was in the same class too. Yeah. So Teresa and I were the punks really, thinking we would be punks for ever ha ha! And then Eva came up to Manchester as well when we were there, and she worked in the Whitworth Art Gallery at some point.
Bob: So what's she doing now?
Fionna: She lives in Bridport in Dorset because her parents moved down to Dorset and then she moved down there. Her sisters live in the West Country. So she sold up in London and moved and she works as a medical secretary. She trained as a nurse in London but didn't continue working as a nurse, she went to Art school, St Martins, she's very creative but she didn't carry on as an artist. And then, you know, needs must. She had secretarial experience, so she got the job down in Bridport, and she's been doing that. I'm going to go and see her this summer. I'm planning a little tour with a friend Alan, who lives in Oxford. He was in Kings Cross as well. I will visit him and then we're gonna drive down to Bridport in his camper van, and he'll drop me off, and I'll stay with Eva for a few days. It will be good to catch up with old friends, as we are doing here Bob.
Bob: Will you give her my best wishes?
Fionna: I will. Yeah.
Bob: It’s good talking about all this stuff. Yes. Because it was very important. It was a very creative time.
Fionna: And it was all off our own backs. You know, it was totally do it yourself and having that sort of passion for doing something different. And the reason we wanted to do Tingletangle, Bob, was because the Factory was…. Well, obviously, we saw some great bands there, but the atmosphere was that sort of grey, industrial vibe. And we wanted something warmer. I think we wanted more of a cabaret feel to our club .
Bob: That's very much what it was about. And the Factory was also in quite a heavy part of town. Hulme was not what it is now. It was quite frightening.
Fionna: It was. It sure was. And we wanted our place to be in the centre of town. Yes. That was important. That's where we thought a club should be.
Bob: Well, in a way. I mean, there were gigs you could go to - gigs in places like student unions and things like that as well. But I think what we were trying to do had more of a kind of total atmosphere of, like, of yeah. Like a cabaret club. With other things apart from a band.
Fionna: Yes. And, actually, we continued that on with Heywire in King's Cross.
Bob: Yes. You did. Yeah.
Fionna: With two acts. You had a support act that could have been someone getting up and doing something unusual, and showing films and playing music we liked.
Bob: And I think Tingletangle was really, really perfect for the first gig, you know, at Gaetano’s.
Fionna: The perfect gig.
Bob: I mean, the photos Kevin Cummins took have been used and reused, and he's well aware of how important they were. Whose idea was it to have floor lights?
Fionna: The shadows they threw on to the roof… or the ceiling of the stage? I don’t think anyone really thought about it, actually. It was just whatever was there. The band didn’t know what they were coming to. They just turned up. The one pound entry with sausage and chips!
Bob: I know.
Fionna: And in Will Sargeant’s memoir, Bunnyman, he says that the sausage and chips was really welcome! And Paul Simpson mentions the Tingletangle gig as well, in his memoir Revolutionary Spirit. It’s so interesting that all these little scenes were going on in parallel in different cities across the UK and how they crossed over and influenced each other.
Bob: Going back to the relationship with Factory. Do you remember that they offered us work? They offered to employ us? And we refused. Because we were purists.
Fionna: Yes. And the thing was, we would just have been their employees.
Bob: And we didn’t want to be that. We were stupid! We could’ve got paid work! But by that time, we were at Deville’s. On Lloyd Street. Which was a different kind of vibe. I didn’t like it very much.
Fionna: Tony Wilson, we had a meeting with him. Somewhere in town. He picked up on the fact that we were doing the club and he had this radar for things. And he wanted to see us. Wasn’t that the connection with Factory? He wanted to take on the idea of our club. We were sitting around in his office as he was proposing his ideas but we were having none of it! ha ha - I think we knew that we would lose our independence. But he was amazing in some ways, how he had his finger on the pulse of Manchester and wanted things to happen.
Bob: I worked with him at Granada a lot and he was absolutely great. Very intelligent. And as you say, interested in all kinds of stuff. I think, because his generation was the 1968 generation, he was interested in counterculture and all kinds of strange French philosophical trends like situationism.
Fionna: And he was that bit older than us. He had the longer hair from the 68 generation and a proper job!
Bob: I’m quite friendly with his ex-wife Lindsay. She was there last night. She was at a table facing the stage.
Fionna: Near Danny?
Bob: Yes, near Danny. We all knew each other, Danny and Carmel, didn’t we?
Fionna: Yes, and the connection to Carmel is that my brother was at a Further Education College with Jim, (who played double bass) in London. Barnet College…And his friend Paul Ablett.
Bob: Oh, I remember him. And that’s how the Bee Vamp record happened. And it actually sold quite well. Only in London.
Fionna: Who was in Bee Vamp?
Bob: Jim, Jerry, his cousin, who was the drummer, I don’t know the other musicians, but I think Paul Ablett’s actually on the record. I contacted him a few years ago on Facebook, I tracked him down. It’s difficult to correlate the timeline of Tingletangle and the record label. But they were parallel. They were happening at the same time. The first record I think came out in 1981. We were doing Tingletangle then.
Fionna: Yeah… Because that's '79, those photos. And then do you remember it seemed to be such a long time between getting a new place because we couldn’t use Gaetanos again. It was very hard to get anywhere else. And then Deville's must have been, was after that, obviously, because we didn't get Foo Foo’s, right? And that was when Carmel played.
Bob: Carmel? Did she play Devilles? I don't remember.
Fionna: At Tingletangle. Yeah, in Devilles. Because it reminded me when I saw Carmel last night. My god, we did a gig with them, but did we do any others there?
Bob
Bob: At Devilles, we did a lot. Among others we booked Pink Military and Wah! Heat. That was extremely troubling because… We had problems with the money because in addition to the fee that we paid them, the band wanted a percentage of the door money. And, of course, there wasn't really much left over. No. And, of course, the only thing Deville's managers were interested in was in the bar money. They took all the bar money. So you had two demands being made of you…And those guys that ran Devilles were slightly dodgy.
Fionna: And mixed up in the poster business…
Bob: No, that was Tosh Ryan, who ran Rabid Records. Which was an early Manchester punk label. He then he ran Absurd Records a bit later on. And he was a jazz musician and he's got all kinds of connections going back to the beatniks.
Fionna: But didn't we get threatened after we put up our own Tingletangle posters? For Echo & the Bunnymen. Was that your first connection with him?
Bob: No. I knew him from the New Manchester Review because he used to come into the office. He's a very funny bloke. You know, he's got a great sense of humour. But, yeah, we had arguments about over-posting the posters that they put up. Yes. Then they over posted ours.
Fionna: Right. Yes.
Bob: And eventually, Tony Wilson called me up and said, come into Granada. I need to talk to you. So I rushed down there and he said, “Pay Tosh. Fucking pay him. I don't wanna see you again till you’ve paid him. Fuck off and pay him.”
Fionna: Was that around Tingletangle?
Bob: Yes. So I think we must have started paying him either after that or after the we got arrested. But you when you think, we must have been stubborn, as you know, incredibly stubborn and hard-headed in a way that I didn't realize.
Fionna: Yeah. Yeah. Because we were - it was purely for the love of it. There was no interest in it being a money-making venture!
Bob: We didn't make any money!
Fionna: Ha Ha No! And we lost money with Heywire in in London as well. We'd charge a pound on the door and there would be three acts, which we paid - we paid the support acts. I mean, crazy or what? They were happy to play and get, you know, some exposure. But I suppose there was a sense of fairness in us because we were all part of the same social scene. And then someone said to me, “oh, you're real entrepreneurs, aren't you?” And I didn't know what that meant! When I think, you know, some people had a totally different idea of what we were doing. We just wanted to create an exciting scene, bring creative people together and fuse ideas and music and friendships and make something happen as all those cool scenes have done before and after us.
Bob: Yes. Yeah.
Fionna: But when Poguemahone were playing Shane would come in with this long guest list, cos he was a real softie and couldn’t say no to people….. so no wonder we never made any money! People probably didn’t know that we actually had to pay to use the venue each time. If we were real business people we would have done a deal with the landlord once they could see how many punters were spending money at their bar on Tingletangle nights. But we were young and naive and making a profit for ourselves was not the priority.
Bob: Right. I remember seeing Pogue Mahone. And it was really good. What was it? The Pindar of Wakefield?
Fionna: Yeah. Amazing. I mean, it was perfect, wasn't it? Because there's a pub out front, and then there was a curtain through to the back room with a little stage and its own small bar.. And it had also been a punk place. It was called the Rat Club before that.
Bob: Yeah. Famous.
Fionna: I remember going to see Alternative TV play there. And then some people we knew started doing their own gigs or whatever, and then we could see the potential for a club night and hired it for Heywire. But, yeah, it was perfect because the back room had an intimacy about it and we could do what we wanted in terms of decorations. It would have been perfect for Tingletangle!! Also it had such a history because there was a theatre group there once, called the Water Rats. Now it’s called The Water Rats again but I think the little room at the back has changed quite a lot now.
Bob: Quite famous, I think.
Fionna: And Marx apparently had had a meeting upstairs in that pub.
Bob: Karl Marx?
Fionna: Yeah. So it's got lots of history. But anyway, yes. That is Heywire, not Tingletangle. But you know we got the name Tingletangle from that cabaret book.
Bob: I've still got that book by Lisa Appignanesi.
Fionna: Yes. And I've got a copy as well.
Bob: It's great.
Album page
Fionna: It is really good. And that's sort of what we were trying to do. And when you think of the political situation at the time – actually, that exhibition in the Whitworth is all about the seventies and the recession in the UK, Thatcherism, you know, and all the protests. And it was quite funny because in the exhibition there's a mock up poster and it's got Thatcher in the middle and then there's these images around the edge, about the economic cuts, cuts to this, cuts to that. As I was looking at it I thought - things haven't changed in many ways!
Bob: And racism and fascism were very big. I mean, I live in Levenshulme now. Nowadays the main Stockport Road is almost entirely Asian shops. Very, very colourful, really vibrant. It's becoming slightly bourgeois in parts of Levenshulme and not in others. So it's changing. But at that time, the buildings, most of them were derelict, lots of derelict buildings, lots of closed-down shops, and loads of National Front graffiti. And I took photos of that. At the time. I remember going into pubs with my brother and looking out for teddy boys because they would be very unpleasant towards you if you look you looked like a punk. Or a post-punk, or whatever it was. Quite an aggressive time.
Fionna: Yeah. I can't remember the teddy boys there at that time, and of course, as a guy, you would have had much more of a radar on that. It's funny, isn't it, how they were conservative and right wing.
Bob: Yeah. Because as well, they weren't kids. They were grown up men by that time. They just dressed like teds.
Fionna: Oh, right. They still dressed in that way. Yes.
Bob: But, yeah, it was a time politically quite fractured and it was a troubled period.
Fionna: And here we are. It's all going round in circles. And the one difference, I suppose, is how the centres of the cities have become sort of desirable places.
Bob: Yes. People now live in the middle of Manchester. Nobody lived here when we were here doing Tingletangle. It was just some shops. Academic buildings…offices…
Fionna: It closed down at night in a way.
Bob: It closed down. Was very sad at night. Yeah. It was quite scary at night sometimes. But cities like Manchester and Liverpool have now become kind of like super-cities. Skyscrapers. And we’ve got this tram system as well, which is amazing. It's all really good. But I'm sure, you know, it's kind of destroyed regionality. The most important thing that you want is your relationship to the city. And we don't think of ourselves as people in the Northwest of England so much.
Fionna: We're homogenized, don't you think?
Bob: Yeah. Yeah.
Fionna: Because I'm going to go and visit some friends in Liverpool at the end of June. They were going to come over last night, but other things came up. And Jason is a fantastic painter, he was at art college with me, and Penny, his partner is also a really good painter.. So, I went to see Jason a good few years ago. I remember we were going through the centre of town, and I noticed how clean the shopping area was. Jason told me that the reason it was so clean was because it was privately owned, not public space. I couldn’t believe it, that the centre of the city doesn’t really belong to the people! The only other time I've been to Liverpool was when we went over there one night from Manchester. I don't know if you were with us. Someone we knew from Liverpool said, come on, I'll take you there for the night. And so off we went. And we were in Sefton Park in the middle of the night. There were people with bonfires and these amazing old houses, all pretty run down around the edge of the park. Of course they will all be gentrified now. I think we went to Erics that night too.
Bob: I don't remember that, but I went to Erics quite a lot.
Fionna: I saw Orange Juice in Erics.
Bob: Oh, did you? That's pretty good. I saw Iggy Pop at Erics. I couldn't see actually anything apart from a stetson hat going up and down, which was the bass player (Glen Matlock). Anyway, I was with Andrew, and it was a matinee, they did matinees at Eric's. Great idea. And we I think we got on the train, went straight back to Manchester, and we saw Iggy Pop again the same night or the following night at the Factory.
Fionna: There's dedication. We were going to gigs all the time weren’t we. That was our social life. In that sketchbook where the photos are, I had stuck in tickets from concerts. And there's some from Manchester. Then there's two David Bowie tickets, one night after another I saw him at Earl's Court. How?? It just shows how you could get tickets at that time for a gig like that. And we must have got one and then said, we're gonna go again the next night.
Bob: And there would still be tickets.
Fionna: That was the freedom of that time. Wasn't it? It was all available to you, really, if you wanted it. Yeah. Whereas it's not now, really.
Bob: No. No. But as we were saying, it was something that we were making happen. And I don't know why - why did we stop? I can tell you why I think I didn't wanna do it anymore - because of the business thing.
Fionna: Yeah exactly.
Bob: It got it got too hard.
Fionna: Yes. It wasn't fun anymore. And it’s what happened with Heywire as well. It just became a drudge because it's all the stuff around the gig - it's hard work. And we started off doing it weekly. As well as everything else we were pasting leaflets up around King's Cross. And then, I mean, weekly!! By the time one gig is done you have to plan ahead for the next one… And then we went fortnightly, and then it went down to say once a month and once every so often. But we got fed up with dealing with all the things around it, really. By the time the gig was on you couldn’t fully enjoy it cos you were worrying about other things.
Bob: You needed a phone. And we didn’t have a phone!
Fionna: Yes, I remember people sending tapes to us. We got tapes from different bands wanting to play - and we had one edition of a fanzine - some lads from Poland wrote to us for a copy because it had our address, you know, as you said, the same with your record label. It's great those fanzines are in the archives now. There’s a Heywire fanzine in the British Library, fittingly in Kings Cross!
Bob: Have you saved your archives? I mean, I've saved my archives, including all my cassette tapes, including the cassette tape of the first Tingletangle, which I'm absolutely sure I can hear Teresa's voice on.
Fionna: Oh - ha ha !
Bob: Shouting in the background.
Fionna: Yeah. Yeah.
Bob: She had quite a loud voice.
Fionna: Yeah. Yeah. Quite a high voice.
Bob: I'm sure it's on there. I'll get I'll try and get a copy of it for you. It's all in the British Pop Archive, which is part of John Ryland's, which is University of Manchester.
Fionna: Oh, yes. Tell me about - you said there's a conference going to be happening?
Bob: That's at MMU, Manchester Metropolitan University. Next month. Where's my diary?
Fionna: I mean, it's amazing, isn't it? These things happening?
Bob: Well, there's this whole generation of people who weren't there at the time. And it's called Neither Factory Records nor Madchester. And it's on the 19th-20th of June.
Fionna: That was us, neither Factory Records… Is that what it's talking about? all the stuff that was going on in between the more well-known stuff?
Bob: Neither Factory Records nor Madchester.
Fionna: Ha, okay .
Image 1: Teresa, Bob, Fionna. Image 2: Teresa, Bob, Eva
Bob: So that takes in the nineties and the Madchester thing.
Fionna: And so you said that the Colours Out of Time are going to be talked about.
Bob: I got interviewed last week by this academic in Southampton. Who is doing a paper about the Colours Out of Time, and Rock Section in particular.
Fionna: So he had the record?
Bob: He's got hold of the record.
Fionna: Because I have the single, actually. But I haven't got a record player. So I can't quite remember what it was like, but it was a good single, wasn't it?
Bob: It was a good record. Yeah. It sold well. Became a bit of a cult thing. It got covered by Mazzy Star. The legendary stoner band from California. They covered it. You can track it down. But they slowed it down.
Fionna: Of course I can listen on You Tube now. And what about Stephen – I didn’t know he was called Steve – Rennie…
Bob: Steve Reynolds, yeah –
Fionna: So, you kept in touch with him?
Bob: Yes, I saw him last year. He came here with his wife. From Australia.
Fionna: What’s he like now?
Bob: He’s a very nice guy and his wife is very nice as well. She’s the daughter of a Vietnamese boat family. Australia took in lots of Vietnamese Boat People. I think he’s a grandfather. He’s got a big family. They seemed really happy. When I lived with him, he was all nervous and not quite sure what to do.
Fionna: I suppose he was so young.
Bob: He was into all kinds of interesting books. We used to sit in that flat and just talk about books and records. And listen to the John Peel show.
Fionna: Yeah, yeah, and I think that’s what he and Ant did as well. We were all spending our misspent youth sitting in flats listening to records and the John Peel Show! Ha ha. When I tell Ant “guess where I’ve been” … because he’s been recording us. He recorded my mum and dad. But he hasn’t got to the music bit yet! I think he’ll be fascinated. But talking of conferences, there was one on The Smiths, in Limerick University some years ago, and I didn’t go to it. But I wish I’d known about it. Someone wrote a book – someone who teaches there I think – he probably saw them when he was younger…
Bob: I was very late to take to the Smiths. I only saw them once and it was at a thing called the Festival of the Tenth Summer. Which was largely put on by Tony Wilson, in the old railway station here which used to be a music venue. Now it’s a conference centre. It was called G Mex for ages. That’s the only time I ever saw them.
Fionna: That’s one of my regrets, that I never saw The Smiths. They weren’t on our radar ‘cause they hadn’t really started at the time we were doing Tingletangle.
Bob: Do you remember the Gallery? There was a venue on Peter Street called the Gallery. Cause at one time, I was working on a fanzine called City Fun. And there were two young women on City Fun, Liz Naylor and Cath Carroll, and they were very into the early Smiths. And they were constantly telling me about this gig they’d seen of the Smiths at the Gallery, but I wasn’t there. That was a very strange period, as well. City Fun. Because we were in an office that we had rent-free because it was underneath the Fall’s rehearsal room. So we got this connection with the Fall. And it was north Manchester, so it felt really different. And that’s when the riots happened. The 1981 period.
Fionna: And City Fun.. Teresa and I did a review of Echo and the Bunnymen, and I wince now when I think we suggested that they were better than The Fall. And there was this kind of sneering response to what we said which was probably true in a way, because in retrospect, The Fall were so much more interesting. The Bunnymen were playing at the Factory and it must have been post- our Tingletangle gig and we were full of the joys of this new thing happening in Liverpool. Anyway, we reviewed it, I think it was City Fun. We were saying how wonderful they were and of course they were mesmerising!
Bob: So, going back to Tingletangle, do you remember the Pop Group?
Fionna: Yes. But not with Tingletangle??
Bob: Yes, under Tingletangle.
Fionna: I don’t remember that!
Bob: Do you remember the Distractions? That Manchester group?
Fionna: Yes. The name, yes.
Bob: They never made it, but –
Fionna: Because I remember seeing the Pop Group, the first time I saw them, it was at Manchester Poly. They were amazing. “Beyond Good and Evil”… powerful.
Bob: Yes.
Fionna: All these other gigs at Tingletangle have gone out of my head!
Bob: They’ve gone out of my head, actually. I’ll have to check my old day-to-day diaries. Girls at Our Best!
Fionna: I know that name, yes. (NOTE: We booked them under the name Jo & the Butterflies) It was an amazing time. I’ve got a photo of me outside Kelly’s club. The Fall played there. It was tiny and a brilliant gig. Where was Kelly’s?
Bob: I remember the name – I don’t remember where it was.
Fionna: The Frantic Elevators played there too I think.
Bob: Simply Red –
Fionna: Oh, Mick Hucknall was at the Poly when I was a student there. He was on the Painting course I think and his red hair was cropped short - I remember him in the students union wearing a bright yellow polo neck jumper!
Bob: Carmel was on that course too, I think. Along with Danny and Chris.
Fionna: That’s why I probably remember Danny’s face. Because, was he hanging out with Carmel?
Bob: Yeah. Last night was so intense, there were so many people. It was great though. I’m really pleased you came over. I was just amazed.
Fionna: And to actually be doing this now. It’s really good and feels important to put the memories of that time on record. It seems appropriate that we should be recording this conversation now ahead of the conference, about what was going on in Manchester that wasn’t The Factory.