I recorded the first two singles Shadow and  Freak Show and also Be My Prisoner for the Streets compilation. Shadow was recorded in 1 and a half hours. The engineer couldn't believe it. Rick Wakeman had just spent three weeks getting his keyboard sound just right! I thought it was a great touch adding the ding dong bell to Shadow on the album. The London Ramones was a fair description of The Lurkers but The Ramones could play better. We were very amateur but Pete Stride had a great ear for a tune. I was only with the Lurkers for 7 months before leaving to form my own band Pinpoint and play guitar. I didn't fall out with the Lurkers. I just wanted to go on and do something else.

They got Nigel back because he had a car. None of them drove apart from him! Such are rock'n roll dreams decided.

Howard did a gig with The New Guitars. He turned up pissed and hadn't bothered to learn the words. Because of that Pete Stride wanted no more to do with him. When the Lurkers reformed Howard was not asked to be singer again!

Pinpoint
Pinpoint were handled by The Stranglers management and were on the Albion label along with The Valves and Hazel O'Connor. We made three singles and one album. How would you describe it? Poppy punk stuff. Martin Rushent produced the album and it didn't sound anything like the band. The next project he worked on was The Human League and he used us for guinea pigs and the album shows him experimenting. The result of the band was three gigs later Pinpoint split up.

How did you get into punk? Before punk I was listening to rock, glam, blues Wishbone Ash and when I was a skinhead, ska. I moved to Wales in early 76 before returning to London in late 76. My mates were the first ever Strangler fans long before The Finchley Boys. There were four people one of whom was Kermit who ended up playing for Sham 69. My mates said come and see this band The Stranglers. So I went and ended up seeing them 36 times over the next four months. That's how I got into punk and the first band I saw  down the Roxy was Wire and Jayne County and that was absolutely fantastic. Then The Lurkers started playing down there with bands like Slaughter & The Dogs and Bethnal.

Gigs
The Roxy was a dirty little dive in the middle of Convent Garden. To tell you the truth we used to drink so much before we went on its hard to remember a lot of the gigs. It just seems like chaos!. I used to drink the least but I remember never going on without drinking at least 8 pints. I had never played before and I remember the first gig asking why the speakers were pointing towards us and being told about what monitors were. A true amateur punk band. I did about 50 gigs. First punk bands to play Scotland. We played three gigs on the Isle of Arran which was bizarre because they weren't allowed to take any alcohol into the church hall. It was full of kids with feather cuts high waistbands and flares and there was us in our old punky clothes. Not Seditionaries - we never used to like any of that shit - just blazers and thin ties. We did a gig in Paisley Silver Thread Hotel as punk was banned from Glasgow city limits! One gig in Falkirk and one in Edinburgh Tiffanies with The Cuban Heels and The Jolt. For us it was just fun. We had never been in bands before and didn't know what to expect. We were finding our way through a massive haze of booze.

The Lurkers and punk
We didn't make any effort to look ridiculously punky. We used to see bands who put safety pins through their ears and we thought these people had read too much of The Sun newspaper and thought this is what you were supposed to do to be a punk rocker. All that gobbing was just fucking moronic we thought. The Lurkers never ligged. We hated that showbiz shit. We just preferred our own boozers. We thought a lot of them (other punk bands) would sell their grannies just to get fame. Opportunists to become rock stars. We didn't have a lot of time for the Kings Road bullshit.

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