Talking With The Swag Man Part Three
The Legend Of The Sex Gods
The continuing adventures of Johnny Mellor. From post-punk 80’s Liverpool to the digital age of global mega-gigs, Johnny Mellor toured the world with some of the biggest and most influential names in music, including Stevie Wonder, Ice-T, Noel Gallagher and ZZ Top.
Wether facing down drug mutiny on a hip-hop tour bus or trading punches with an international footballer, Talking With The Swag Man is a hilarious Boys own adventure of an ex Sex God turned international merchandiser/smuggler/nightclub owner who lived to tell the tales.
I spent a few evenings with Johnny talking about his adventures on the road …
… so I went to America with the Bunnymen. I didn’t do that much if truth be told - carried the odd guitar case, tuned the odd drum. Generally I just smoked loads of weed and had a laugh. But when I got back I started telling everyone I was a roadie for the Bunnymen, which kinda evolved into me being the actual tour manager - in my head, anyway. I was a great believer in self-fulfilling prophecies. The way I looked at it, if you didn’t say you were a tour manager, then you wouldn’t get a go. Is right. My stock on the Liverpool scene rose accordingly and respect and offers of work soon followed. I roadied and tour-managed loads of local bands. I just blagged it.
Then came the biggest blag of all - The Sex Gods.
What you need to understand about Liverpool in the mid-eighties is that virtually everybody had a record deal. Having a Scouse accent or any kind of tenuous connection to the city would get you in. All you had to do as open your trap and these melts from London would offer you a suitcase full of money. The Sex Gods just started out as a joke. There was me, Pete from the Bunnymen, Eastie, Johnno, and Tim from Deaf School and we invented this mythical band. There were no songs, no music, no rehearsals or gigs. It was just one big blag. People would ask me if I was in a band and I’d say, yeah, I’m a Sex God. And word got down to the A&R departments in London. The Bunnymen were so hot at the time, the music business just went mental for it. They were tripping over themselves to sign us up. I was supposed to be the manager, mainly cos I had my own flat with a telephone. I’d conduct all these conversations with these music business heads about a band that didn’t really exist. It was all just a made-up farce.
It all got a bit out of control. People were offering us six figure sums and we were all signing on, getting £24 a fortnight. So we got our heads together and the lads who could play wrote four or five songs to give to Warner Brothers, or whoever, and this bidding war started. We got proper management and solicitors to do the deal and they landed us £120,000 from Island Records. We were on proper wages, a boss rehearsal room, brand new instruments, did a tour with the Ramones - the whole nine yards. I was the tour manager, driver, general local organiser.
But The Sex Gods were more or less over before they ever really began. Pete was getting really ill. I don’t think many people noticed at first. I certainly didn’t. I should have heeded the warning signs when he wanted me to paint his entire flat grey so that he could pretend he was in a black and white film. We all used to smoke industrial amounts of weed, so maybe it didn’t seem such an odd request at the time. Then Pete left the Sex Gods. By that point it was obvious he was having a breakdown. And just to complicate things further …
THIS PORTION OF THE INTERVIEW HAS BEEN REDACTED
It was all unravelling for The Sex Gods too. Island just couldn’t sell them in America - the Yanks were not having the words sex and god in the same sentence. We dug our heels in and Island refused to release the second half of the advance until the name was changed. So The Sex Gods became The Balcony Dogs. But by then, it was all over. The A&R man had been sacked, and the lads had lost interest. People were either in prison, or hospital, or on the run.
And, just to complicate matters further, The Sex Gods had got into House music. They’d brought these DJ’s in from Chicago and started playing this mad electronic stuff. Island didn’t have a clue what was going on. Hardly anybody had cottoned onto House at that point. When we delivered the next batch of tunes, none of The Sex Gods were actually on it, it was just this one relentless mad banging track. Island just thought we were taking the piss. By this point I was representing the band, because the manager had fucked off; he didn’t want The Sex Gods to sell weed or play House music, he just wanted us to be a normal band and make a normal album. Which none of us had much interest in by then.
So the writing was on the wall - we were dropped from the label. I went down there and they were like “you’re dropped” and I was like yeah, sound, no problem mate. Before we go, can you just give us that last bit of money you owe us? So they wrote a cheque for another shed load of money and we were offski. This may sound like utter madness now, but at the time the whole of Island Records were stoned out of their boxes, courtesy of us. The call would go up - the Scousers are here - and we used to go round all the departments laying on big bags of weed.
On the way out I took all these gold discs off the corridor wall - U2, Bob Marley, Toots and The Maytals. The girl on reception just grinned at us. She was mashed on skunk too. I got back to Liverpool and the word got out that we were flogging Bob Marley gold discs and all the dreads from Toxteth were queueing up. So if Chris Blackwell is reading this and is wondering were his gold records are, they’re in their spiritual home, Liverpool 8. Best place for them, really …
IN THE NEXT EPISODE - THE SWAG MAN COMETH …