Jimmy Nail – 24/10/2011

Nail Bytes

Not long ago, an old friend recommended that I should read Jimmy Nail’s autobiography suggesting that I may find some interesting stuff about local north east bands at the beginning of the book. I looked the book up on Amazon and saw that the title is ‘A Northern Soul’. As I’ve recently been playing baritone sax in a Northern Soul band, I decided, based solely on the title of the autobiography and the connection to my current passion, to go ahead and order.

A few days later the book arrived with a portrait of Jimmy Nail on the front looking very deep in thought. The front cover described the book as ‘riveting‘ so I set about reading it straight away.

And there it was on page 61. In a section about Jimmy’s visits to the Mayfair Ballroom, Newcastle in the early seventies and the local bands he used to watch, there was a reference to one of my bands: -

Talking about the bands he used to go and see, Jimmy says; “Sneeze with their cover of Spirit’s ‘I Got A Line On You, Babe’ and Rod Foggon on vocals – he sounded great and really looked the part”.

Of course, Sneeze isn’t the only local Newcastle band that attracted Jimmy’s attention. Others he mentions in the book are; Raw Spirit, Blondie (later to become Yellow) with Keith Fisher on drums, Brass Alley, the Sect and, of course, the Junco Partners.

Rod Foggon with Sneeze at the Mayfair, Newcastle around the time Jimmy Nail would have been in the audience

I remember that Sneeze did a pretty good version of ‘I’ve Got A Line On You’. It’s one of those songs with a distinctive catchy riff – surprisingly a riff that hasn’t found its way into any other rock hits over last four decades. Spirit did the original version but there have been quite a few cover versions by, amongst others, Alice Cooper and Jeff Healey.

The book itself was well worth reading – predictably about a rough diamond with no future who gets a lucky break and ends up not only as popular TV actor but also as pop star with a number one hit record under his belt.

A drummer I used to know in the seventies called Phil had spent some time with Jimmy Nail in London before he became famous so I had already heard stories about drunken brawls in London pubs. In the book Jimmy bares all about his alcohol fueled early life and the trouble it got him into, including a spell in prison for assault.

I’d always regarded Jimmy Nail as a musician who had found his way into acting. However, for most people, having first seen him in the TV series ‘Auf Wiedersehen, Pet’ in the eighties it’s probably the other way round. I only saw a few episodes of ‘Auf Wiedersehen, Pet’ and it wasn’t until the early nineties that I became a fan of Jimmy Nail in his role as the Newcastle detective, ‘Spender’.

A couple of years later and six years after his debut album as a singer, Jimmy released the single ‘Ain’t No Doubt’, which reached number 1 in the charts in July 1992. I always liked this song and the accompanying video which has some great choreographed performance shots in a posh London night club; light years from the Mayfair in Newcastle that Jimmy frequented in the early seventies.