Lookalikes part two: when the crimping stopped

As promised back in December 2008 ... not that anyone's requested it.

Bill Wyman - as before! I'd like to deny any similarity but there are far too many photographs out there that would undermine me. And when playing bass I do sometimes deliberately tilt my bass up so I've only got myself to blame!

John Lennon - in some ways a lazy comparison that was also thrown at me in my longer-haired days by 'straights' as a general statement of alleged hippiness. I guess I have unintentionally encouraged this since by having a vaguely Beatles-esque haircut and wearing glasses. I have also been known to point at photographs of him while with my 4-year old son and ask who it is. 'Daddy' will come the answer ... but if I was going to refer to a sixties lookalike (barring Bill flamin' Wyman) it would be ...

Roger McGuinn - much happier about this one, and I tend to only get it from musical aficionados!

Liam Gallagher - another Lennon-esque lazy comparison (thinking about it I also had Julian Lennon thrown at me a few times - not literally of course) that I used to get around Camden in the mid-late 90s, but ultimately usurped by the time I was actually mistaken for a semi-famous musician in ...

James Broad (Silver Sun) - Amusingly this happened at the Camden Falcon, and their bassist, Richard, was stood about two feet away. This may have been what caused the person to think I was James; but if they'd turned round they would have seen the man himself was also there! But perhaps not as ridiculous as the time I was mistaken for ...

Louis Theroux - just up the road at the Monarch. Now, there is a oft-repeated mantra that cameras, especially TV cameras can make people appear 10 pounds larger. Given that Theroux is 6ft 2in and I'm, well, not, I can only assume the person in question once mis-heard 10 pounds as 10 inches. I told them I was his brother; the fact that they then walked off without saying anything suggests they were very disappointed.

Gypsy Queen & Tigertailz - London Astoria 10/06/88

Gypsy Queen ... hmmm. To be fair the real reason we trooped along to this 22 years ago was to see Tigertailz, who by this time had replaced Steevi Jaimz with Kim Hooker and released their third recording of 'Living Without You'. Our first attempt to see the Welsh glamsters was met with mild humiliation a year or so before when we were refused entry into Swindon's Brunel Rooms for being underage (if memory serves me well we went to a late-night showing of The Blues Brothers instead, so all was not lost).

Despite seeing them live three times in all (and even taking the time to get their autographs), Tigertailz were always too Americanised for my tastes, although I have to accept an appreciation for the afore-mentioned 'Living Without You'. And if truth be told, had they been in the US at the right time rather than holding court at Bogiez in Cardiff things could have worked out very differently for them.  

The Only Ones - Shepherds Bush Empire 09/06/2007

Comparatively recent anniversary here ... and along with the Hanoi Rocks 2002 tour and the New York Dolls appearances at Meltdown in 2004, this was one of those bands I thought I'd never see. And with the full classic line-up to boot! I saw 'The One' back in 1994 and figured that was going to be as good as it got - after all, they'd played a hefty number of Only Ones tunes, and you had to wonder whether Perrett was ever going to make it back onto a stage after that brief mid-90s re-emergence. And lo and behold it happened.

One of the most immediate thing to jump out seemed almost impossible; while the rest of the band were showing the scars of time (Perrett could almost hide behind his microphone stand, such was the slightness of his frame) Mike Kellie, a drummer who back in 60s played in Spooky Tooth and was one of the more unlikely new wave musicians, looked as though he had frozen in time circa 1979.

The Only Ones always stood apart from their contemporaries; as Perrett notes in the Faster Than Lightning collection (recently issued on DVD via the band’s website), they were the band that aspiring musicians looked to and directly influenced the subsequent forming of bands. The House Of Love are a prime, almost plagiaristic example. Their musical superiority over, say, Eddie & The Hot Rods led to 2-and-a-bit great albums (their swansong, Baby’s Got A Gun, contains without question the band’s lowpoint in Fools but also at least one of their finest in Big Sleep). Their performance of the latter was one of those stand out moments, where the hairs on your neck stand up; Perrett’s higher pitched and more fragile voice providing the epic song with even greater resonance.

And of course there was ‘Another Girl, Another Planet’ … a few days before this show I heard Andy McCluskey from OMD on the radio, dismissing the return of the Only Ones and suggesting it had only happened due to the use of their most famous song in a recent Vodafone ad. This is the same Andy McCluskey that gave the world Atomic Kitten – surely enough of a reason to keep your opinions to yourself.

Much to our amusement the first encore was ‘Me And My Shadow’, complete with an unnecessarily extended intro. We were so thrown by this that the only thing to do was to pile down the front, which at least put us in the right place for ‘Lovers Of Today’.

For a while afterwards there was talk of new material, and recordings did surface both online and during a performance on Later With Jools Holland. There was a national tour but some dates were cancelled. Their website hasn't been updated for a while and the best source of info, John Perry's MySpace page has been silent for some time too. On balance I'm quite happy for things to be left as they are.