13. This HeatThis Heat

The punk thing had happened and all these bands were playing and every so often an oddity would come up and This Heat fitted in to that camp. I had a beard and had taken to smoking a pipe, too. We were trying to find the next trendy thing. Then my partner Helen got one. She didn’t know it was just an ornament and it exploded. We used to go down to watch these gigs with our pipes and our flat caps on.

We liked listening to anything that was difficult; This Heat weren’t. They were very entertaining. They were playing ‘Horizontal Hold’. There are three of them in the band. The guitarist was playing with his back to the audience. He was building up to this incredible cinematic sound and as he turns round, what he’s holding to the guitar to make that sound is a great big vibrator and we were all trying to keep a straight face and not spoil our cool!