Gigs

Strawberry Switchblade’s live appearances

Strawberry Switchblade live at the Warehouse, Leeds, supporting Orange Juice, 1 December 1982. Pic used by kind permission of Peter Anthony McArthur, who retains copyright.

This is a list of Strawberry Switchblade’s live conceert performances, with details and memorabilia.

The band went through a number of incarnations and played live in all of them. We’ve got recordings for download and a load of live reviews elsewhere on the fansite.

It’s hard to get a definitive list of Strawberry Switchblade’s gigs. This page does its best, but it is surely incomplete. Even the usual research methods don’t apply – we’ve found out that just because we see gigs repeatedly advertised and listed in the press it doesn’t mean they actually happened!

INDIE QUARTET, 1981-2

The band was founded by Rose McDowall and Jill Bryson in 1981, writing songs as they learned to play guitar.

Once they had a handful of songs they recruited Janis Goodlett on bass and Carole McGowan on drums.

On 22 November 1981, this indie quartet recorded three songs at Glasgow’s legendary four-track studio the Hellfire Club. This was released in 2017 as the 1982 4-Piece Demo EP.

They played their first gig at the Spaghetti Factory in Glasgow just before Christmas 1981.

Their second live performance was at Nite Club in Edinburgh on 19 February 1982, a John Peel roadshow night which brought the band to his attention and led to him giving them a session on his radio show later in the year.

There were at least three more gigs with this line-up, and they were still together to perform at The Venue in Glasgow on 16 June 1982.

By the time of the band’s first feature in the national music press six weeks later (New Musical Express, 7 August 1982) the rhythm section had left and it was back to being a duo of Rose and Jill.

They played at least two Glasgow gigs as a duo in August and September 1982.

BBC SESSION LOANS, 1982

Shortly after this they got two separate calls from the BBC to do radio sessions for John Peel and David Jensen, and they went to London to record them on consecutive days at the start of October 1982.

For these, they temporarily borrowed James Kirk from Orange Juice on bass, Shahid Sarwar from The Recognitions on drums, and Alex Fergusson from Psychic TV on piano and guitar.

ORANGE JUICE TOUR 1982

The following month, November 1982, after a hometown warm-up date at Maestro’s in Glasgow, they went out on tour supporting Orange Juice. The music press announcement says it was a 13 date tour, with Strawberry Switchblade joining after the first three gigs.

Jill remembers this as being done with backing tapes, but the (admittedly murky) live recording of the Keele University performance sounds like a live drummer.

They told the Nov/Dec 1984 issue of Debut:

Jill: ‘We love it, it’s brilliant. Britain’s such an interesting country. We went to big places in England that we’ve only heard of and have never been to in our lives, like Bristol, Colchester and Brighton.’

Rose: ‘Two weeks with Orange Juice, two years ago. We’re seasoned tourists! It was just the two of us, two guitars and a reel-to-reel tape machine. We didn’t even have amplifiers, we used Orange Juice’s. All we had was a car, two guitars, a tape deck and all our clothes piled up. It was fantastic.’

After that, there were at least two Glasgow gigs in the spring of 1983.

THE BUNNYMEN TOUR THAT NEVER WAS, 1983

In the summer of that year they recorded and released debut single, Trees and Flowers, and moved to London. The single was meant to be promoted by a support tour with Echo and the Bunnymen.

After Strawberry Switchblade’s BBC radio sessions in October 1982, the band were contacted by Bill Drummond and David Balfe from Liverpool indie label Zoo Records. The duo became the band’s managers and publishers.

Drummond also managed Echo & the Bunnymen, who’d started out on Zoo.

Around June 1983, the Trees and Flowers single was recorded. It was to be released on 92 Happy Customers, a label owned by Bunnymen guitarist Will Sergeant.

The Bunnymen had a tour lined up, which Drummond explains was geographically erratic because he’d plotted it to follow ley lines. It began in New York City, going to Reykjavik before coming to Scotland and England, ending up in London.

When the Scottish and English dates were announced in the music press, Strawberry Switchblade were listed as the support act. Local newspaper ‘what’s on’ listings mentioned them too. It would be ideal for them, being a couple of weeks before Trees and Flowers was released.

It’s not clear at what point Strawberry Switchblade were due to join the tour but it was certainly by Glasgow on 11 July, as the Daily Record ran an advert for that gig.

Adverts also appeared in the music press saying both bands would be playing at the culmination of the tour, the Royal Albert Hall on 18 and 19 July.

Strawberry Switchblade’s involvement was dropped at the last minute, seemingly at Ian McCulloch’s request.

INDIE QUINTET, 1983-4

Once ensconced in London, they recruited guitarist Simon Emmerson (aka Simon Booth), bassist John Cook and drummer Tom Morley. Morley was quickly replaced by Roy Dodds, and this quintet went out on the road.

Their inaugural performance was at the ICA in London as part of Pop Goes The Easel, ‘a week of art school bands’. They played at least seven gigs in November and December 1983.

They also recorded a BBC radio session for Janice Long on 23 January 1984, and two tracks with producer Robin Millar that were intended to be the start of an album.

It’s not clear when this line-up ended. There’s an advert for Strawberry Switchblade supporting Farmers Boys at Camden Electric Ballroom on 26 April 1984. Bassist John Cook has no memory of that and, as he lived locally and was very familiar with the venue, he feels he would remember if he’d played at it. This might mean they played it without him, or that his memory is faulty, or that it didn’t happen at all.

The Robin Millar tracks were abandoned and it was decided to record the album with electro wizard David Motion at the helm.

On 4 August 1984, well into the creation of the album, they played a one-day festival at Brockwell Park in London. The line-up was Rose and Jill with John Cook on bass, and a drum machine operated by Drew McDowall.

On 22 September, they recorded another session for BBC radio’s Janice Long. Jill and Rose were joined by manager David Balfe on synthesiser, and Drew McDowall (credited as Gunter Lemon) on drum machine.

In October, they played a one-off gig with backing tapes at the Shaw Theatre’s weekend of women musicians in London.

HOWARD JONES TOUR, 1984

Having missed out on the Albert Hall with the Bunnymen, they did get to play there 18 months later. In the run-up to Christmas 1984, Howard Jones played a 12 date British tour.

Jones was promoting The 12” Album, a compilation of extended mixes of his tracks that had been released on 12” singles. This was something a number of pop artists were doing at the time, and it was an idea that Strawberry Switchblade’s Japanese record label took to their hearts, releasing one also called The 12” Album in 1985. For that, the label gathered together the two existing extended mixes of Strawberry Switchblade tracks and added three more that it appears were specially made.

Asked about the Howard Jones tour, Jill told Scotland’s Sunday Post: ‘We met in the studio where he was recording. Howard wanted us on the tour because we’re vegetarian and so is he – and all his road crew!’

Rose and Jill performed with backing tapes taken from the recordings for the album. It’s not clear if they were scheduled to play all 12 dates. At one, in Brighton, Jill was unwell so Rose played solo.

We’ve got the contract they signed for the London dates of this tour. They were paid £200 for a one hour performance on four dates – 17th December at the Albert Hall, and then to the Hammersmith Odeon for a show on the 23rd and two more on the 24th.

The most interesting bit of any concert contract is the rider, specifying goodies that the band and their entourage require.

‘Upon the crew’s arrival the management shall provide, free of charge a selection of light refreshments to include:- a cold buffet 2 hours after get in consisting of cheese, salads, meats (not spam), French bread, white and brown bread and butter, sticky buns, 1 case lager, 1 case soft drinks (cokes, lemonades etc) and 2 litres orange juice.

‘The Artiste requires the above refreshments plus:- 2 bottles good quality white wine (Liebfraumilch or Blue Nun) and one bottle Remy Martin.’

Blue Nun actually is a liebfraumilch, and if that counts as ‘good quality white wine’ to wash down the sticky buns then one shudders to think what the bad quality stuff must be like.

Rose says although she didn’t like alcohol, as a lifelong connoisseur of Catholic icongraphy, she was enamored of the Blue Nun label. The meat’s an odd request, given that the band were vegetarians. Rose remembers Howard Jones, who was a fellow veggie, inviting Strawberry Switchblade aboard his vegetarian catering bus.

With Since Yesterday already released in October and the album pretty much finished, they had flexidiscs made with snippets of tracks introduced by Janice long and gave them away to punters at the Howard Jones support gigs.

1985

There were a couple of one-off London dates in the first half of 1985 – a City Roads Drug Crisis benefit gig in January, and the No 1 magazine 100th issue party in May.

Between the two, they also recorded a final BBC radio session for John Peel on 5 February with just Rose, Jill and David Balfe.

With Since Yesterday high in the charts and the album imminent, the natural thing was to record some of the tracks and prmote the upcoming release. Instead, they somewhat perversely chose to record a collection of entirely new songs; Cut With the Cake Knife, 60 Cowboys, Nothing Changes, and Life’s Full of Wonders.

These were new, keyboard-composed songs largely written by Rose or Jill on their own. It’s a world away from the duo strumming acoustic guitars that had been the basis of the earlier songs.

In the summer of 1985 they resurrected an idea from a 1984 Janice Long session, doing an electropop cover version of Jolene. After it was released in September there were a number of nightclub appearances, singing or miming to a backing track.

Notable among these are two on the same night, 12 miles apart – Smokeys in Arbroath and Jars in Brechin on 19 September – when they were billed alongside Vince Clarke.

Press advert for October 1986 apprearances at the Academy, Bournemouth, including Strawberry Switchblade on 10 October.

Although he was on the poster as ‘Vince Clark ex Yazoo’, it was actually Erasure playing. Their first single, Who Needs Love Like That, had been released a fortnight earlier on the same day as Jolene. It would be another year until their fourth single, Sometimes, gave them a breakthrough and established them as one of the most consistent and enduring pop artists of the 1980s.

Strawberry Switchblade were unfortunately headed the other way, and Jolene turned out to be their final single in the UK.

After this, they headlined Lochee Live Aid in Dundee on 7 October 1985, topping a bill of 22 bands to raise money for the Band Aid cause. Their set was reported in the local paper as being wholly mimed.

After all these Scottish dates, there was an appeance at the Academy, Bournemouth on 15 October 1985. This is the last UK date that we can find.

JAPANESE TOUR, 1986

Poster for Strawberry Switchblade’s Japanese tour, March 1986.

Strawberry Switchblade had visited Japan in 1985 on a promotional tour (although an Instagram post of assorted Japanese gig tickets does appear to show a Strawberry Switchblade concert dated 24 October 1985).

They went back in March 1986 where a new single, I Can Feel, had just been released, and did a tour of three cities: Tokyo, Nagoya and Osaka. They played indoor arena venues of around 2000 seats.

The line-up was Rose, Jill, Paul Heard (keyboards, bass), Frog (keyboards, guitar). Paul Heard later formed M People, while Frog – ex of Farmers Boys – went on to marry Jill.

The set was:

Go Away
Being Cold
Let Her Go
Who Knows What Love Is
Little River
I Can Feel
Sunday Morning
Trees and Flowers
Deep Water
Another Day
Poor Hearts
Michael Who Walks by Night
60 Cowboys
Cut With the Cake Knife
Ecstasy

Encore:
Since Yesterday
Jolene

A 12 page glossy programme was produced for the tour.

The band split up a few months later. Rose remembers it being on a Friday 13th which, if that’s accurate, was 13th June (the only Friday 13th in 1986).

Huge thanks to Kenny Baillie for his research in compiling this gigs list.