THE SAINT & PAINT & LONDON BEER:

We received a message through the network that our old bass player
Alex Burak wanted us to come & record at Point Studios up in London. 
This was massive deal for us so, without hesitating we said,
 
“Yes!”, 

rented a van & piled down to Victoria. In those days Point was more of 
a rehearsal space, a room with brown carpet walls, a large wall of 
mirrors so you could watch yourself & with a small control room tagged 
on to one side incase you wanted to make an inexpensive demo. From the 
street you wouldn’t know it existed, situated as it was behind the 
offices of ‘Y Records’, down a long & hazardous corridor at the back of 
a posh wine merchants. ‘Y Records’ at that time was home to The Pop Group 
& Wayne County, a proper indie label, serious about the music it put out 
& though everyone there greeted us with smiles & was nothing but amiable 
towards us I found their commitment intimidating. Their office smelled of 
cardboard & vinyl, this was a whole other league up from anything we had 
in Cardiff.

In the room above the studio the obligatory squat pool table crooked a 
finger beneath a tepid sky light, a contemporary version of Van Gogh’s 
‘Potato Eaters’. A giant canvas hung on the back wall, paints & brushes 
littered the floor beneath it as this room was also a painting studio, 
a smell of oil paint & turpentine. The artist lived in a tiny cold back 
room, her bed made up on the floor (but not on a Door). It turned out 
she was related to the owner, friendly, beautiful, driven & unattainable, 
wary of musicians, making her all the more attractive to these naive 
&  wide-eyed boys, that tumbled into her world. 

There was a band booked in to rehearse downstairs so we rolled out our 
sleeping bags & went round to the pub we found in a real London mews, 
like Roger Moore in the Saint. High on adrenaline & London beer, we 
retuned to find them still rehearsing so settled into the control room 
to watch & learn. To our amazement the band turned out to be The Slits, 
we were all fans of their album ‘Cut’, John Peel had been championing them 
for a while & we loved their zagged style.  They were teaching their new 
young drummer how to play the way they wanted, towering over him, powerful, 
intimidating. He looked small & fragile, but when he played this fantastic 
‘backwards groove’ emerged, a groove that we would bring up on recording 
sessions well into the 80’s. This lad would go on to leave the Slits & make 
that groove legendary with Siouxsie and the Banshees, his name was Budgie.

(K)