Before the misery set it ... Radiohead in their early days
Thinking about my childhood gigs the other day, I found myself remembering an early audience with U2. Bono (or Bono Vox as he called himself in those days) sported a spectacularly unflattering mullet. Adam Clayton had a curly perm. But the most striking thing about seeing U2 live in circa 1980 wasn't the exuberance of songs like I Will Follow (which was so exuberant that Bono kept falling over) but that the band's name was written behind them in plastic plumbing components - just like you'd get at B&Q. How was I to know that this motley bunch of nutters from across the water would go on to become one of the biggest names in popular music history, get more-or-less sensible haircuts, and one day walk onstage out of a giant lemon (which, last time I checked, was unavailable at B&Q)?
Which got me thinking. How many of us have seen rock legends when they didn't look or sound very legendary at all? I am - unfortunately or fortunately, depending on how you look at it - young enough not to have seen David Bowie when he sported a curly perm, or Kraftwerk when they had long hair and played guitars. But I did see a formative Radiohead play the Duchess of York in Leeds and thought they were average indie crap. I quite liked Creep, but only because it sounded a bit like the The Air That I Breathe by the Hollies. And Thom Yorke had a preposterous American rock blonde barnet. The rest, of course, is history.
Oh dear. I also remember being distinctly unimpressed by a fledgling Manic Street Preachers, not least because they arrived in a half-full pub in a blaze of music press hype about revolution and yet after they played, Barclays Bank was still standing.
The trouble with being a journalist is that your pronouncements - and howlers - are recorded for posterity, festering on websites and taunting you cruelly for years to come. Which I guess is the price you pay for the privilege of seeing more "future legends" than people who are in socially acceptable jobs, such as undertakers.
Sometimes, it is obvious an act will become a big deal. I remember seeing a wonderful Jeff Buckley at London's tiny Borderline and a jawdropping, Vesuvius-like Stone Roses in a club in Leeds in 1989, after my mate had suggested: "Let's give 'em 10 minutes, see if they're any good." But after having to give a vomit-encrusted alcoholic a lift to the off licence in return for slurred directions to an obscure pub in Ashton where I was seeing Snow Patrol in 2003, I'd have joined the alcoholic if anyone had told me the band would end up playing stadiums.
When Coldplay played Leeds Cockpit early in their career they were as they are now, with hardly radical, but universally whistleable, songs. But when the Libertines played the same venue their leather jackets squeaked audibly in the absence of an audience. Although I did write that Pete Doherty "begins shaking violently", which seems rather prescient, under the circumstances.
So come on. Did anyone see the Rolling Stones as a Kingston blues band, Katie Melua before she was discovered, or Liam Gallagher in his pre-Oasis combo Rain? And let's be honest, were any of them any good then?
