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"In March
1976 a guy called Alan Forbes turned up at my door in Bruntsfield,
Edinburgh. He had heard I was a bassist, and did I want to join a fun rock
'n roll band he was founding? I disappeared for a moment, and re-emerged
wearing a teddy-boy fancy dress outfit, plus my guitar - You mean like this?
I said. I was in.
The original Rezillos line-up was:
Alan Forbes - drums, vocals
Dave Smythe - bass
Jo Callis - lead guitar, vocals
'Hi-fi' Harris - rhythm guitar, vocals
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Like me, Alan Forbes couldn't really sing and play an instrument
simultaneously, although he was a very good drummer. We drafted in Ali
(Alistair) Paterson as drummer instead, and Alan moved to the front to
concentrate on singing and general image. Ali and Alan, together with other
Edinburgh Art School students, played together in a rather serious heavy
rock band featuring two drummers. Now Alan was never really a great singer,
although I admired him for his creative ideas and business acumen. He turned
up at rehearsal one day with two female backing vocalists Sheila and Gayle.
They were fashion design students, and making and wearing authentic Mary
Quant mid 1960s stage costumes was really just part of their studies. After
we added a sax player, another Ali, we had the eight-piece Rezillos by
August 1976. |
David Smythe
aka Dr D K |
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Fay Fife aka Sheila
Hynde |
Stage names were adopted:
Eugene Reynolds (Alan Forbes), Fay Fife (Sheila Hynde), Gayle Warning - all
on vocals
William Mysterious (Ali Donaldson) - sax
Luke Warm (Jo Callis) - lead guitar
Hi-Fi (Mark) Harris - rhythm guitar
Dr D K (Dave) Smythe - bass
Angel (Ali) Paterson - drums
This line-up spent several months practising until we were ready to gig. In
contrast to the laid-back, casual, self-indulgent ethos of rock bands in
that era, we were slick, highly professional, well-rehearsed, and offered 60
minutes or so of frantic, non-stop fun rock looking back to the late 1950s.
The first venue was Edinburgh Teviot Row Student Union on 5 November 1976. |
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To our astonishment, the Friday night student audience of around 500
students loved us, and we had to do several encores before being allowed off
stage. Note that we had played no original material at this stage. Starred
numbers were played by the guitar/bass/drums line-up only, with Luke
singing, to give the front-line singers a break. All this was for a band
which was just supposed to be for fun - and it was. That was the secret of
its initial success.
In hindsight, the early success over the next seven or eight months
was due to hard work, brilliant art-school publicity, no drugs or groupies, and
good organisation. We had enthusiastic volunteers like Alpin Ross-Smith who ran
the sound system, and roadies who worked just for the free beer. As the only
wage-earner I suppose I subsidised the band indirectly, with the use of both my
Volvo saloon and my long-wheelbase Transit van for travel all around Scotland.
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The Rezillos, mid-1977: back (l-r) Luke, Hi-Fi, William, Angel, Dr DK; middle
Fay, front Eugene.
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1976 Gayle & Fay |
Jo Callis began to write some really excellent original songs. Sheila and Alan
became a couple (no surprise there), but Gayle was gradually edged out as being
superfluous. Even at this stage the band had two distinct factions - Sheila/Alan
versus Jo. We ploughed all the fees back into buying more gear.
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By the week of the Craigmillar Free Festival the following July we were gigging
practically every night - during that week we played 8 gigs in 7 days. The band
decided to go pro, and those interested obtained a year's sabbatical from their
Art School studies. I already had a promising career as a research geophysicist
and had turned thirty, so I decided to quit. Ali Donaldson took over from me
playing bass, Mark Harris also left, and the remaining five-piece band went
professional.
In the long run the factional conflict killed the band, but they had about 18
months of fame. This is about average for UK pop groups. Sheila and Alan went on
to form the successor Revillos, and Jo Callis later joined the Human League. "
Words David Smythe |
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This has been ripped almost
word for word from Dave Smythes web site
here.
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