Then we cruised up to the Hammy Odeon and had the night of our lives. There was Vim Fuego, the original Horseman Of The Apocalypse, waving his axe guitar around and generally rockin' out like a good 'un. And Den Dennis - cor, he was a laugh! Especially that big where he got stuck in the bog, complete with sound effects. And Spider Webb, the drummer, whacking those skins like nobody's business.
It would have been all right except for that poofter on bass, Colin 'Banker' Grigson, who just ponced around all night talking in his posh voice. At least Den pulled his wig off in the end! And it was great when the other lads beat the shit out of him and threw him off stage!
Oh yeah, and the best bit of all came at the end, when - get this - Brian May (yes, Brian May) came on to play along on 'Hey Hey Bad News'. F****** brilliant! Shame he wasn't around to hear them butcher 'Bohemian Rhapsody'. Thought there was going to be hassle at one stage when Vim downed a bottle of khazi cleaner and had to be rushed to the doctor. But he's well hard, is Vim, and he was soon back rockin'.
Also we had the shooting of the video for the Bad News Xmas single, which is a real stormer. Bound to be Number One. I think (though I'm not sure) that I even managed to get in the video, when I jumped up and stuck two fingers in the air. But as I say, I'm not sure.
Then the curtain came down and a message appeared on the curtain underneath. It said, 'That's It, Now F*** Off'. So we did. And got on our mean machines, with our birds behind us, took 'em into a nearby field, and...
Fast Eddie Giles
"F****** great one. F****** excellent!" (Paul, Denzil & Dennis)
"I expected it to be a bit more raucous, to be honest. They were actually quite a good rock band." (Laurie)
"I thought it was going to be like the Young Ones. It was good!" (Tania)
Colin Irwin describes part of the Hammersmith Odeon gig. Originally posted
to the alt.music.led-zeppelin newsgroup, used with permission.
I was at both of those gigs. The Hammersmith Odeon one had Bad News
supporting Iron Maiden on the last night of the Somewhere in Time tour.
Halfway through the set Vim starts playing an amazing guitar solo stage
centre, which quickly turns into the lead part from Queen's Brighton Rock
as Brian May wanders on from stage right.
The crowd goes wild & Vim shouts 'I gave you 10 fucking quid to stay back
there and play you bastard.. ..right then, if it's a guitar duel you
want..' and launches into another, heavily distorted, Rock&Roll/Black Dog
kinda thing. Then a fat, old, wasted bloke in a pair of old jeans and
massive T-shirt wanders on from stage left.
The crowd do not go wild until Vim recovers the situation by shouting -
'Bloody Hell JIMMY PAGE I'm not paying you either'. Thankfully Jimmy seems
to have got back to some of his former physique, but he was definitely
looking like a casualty that night.
I also saw the guitar duel thing done between Brian May, Jeff Beck & Vim
Fuego at the Marquee - now that was a good 'un!
Chris Russell remembers the Bad News gig at Leicester Polytechnic. Used without permission.
The 1500 capacity concert hall which is part of the Leicester Poly Students Union building was packed to capacity, a sea of denim and leather.
A very poor support band whom I seem to remember were called Hole dragged their feet through a luke-warm hour set composed of material that no-one had heard of and no-one was interested in. A volley of bottles and abuse assaulted the band towards the end - from what I remember it was the only interesting part of the whole affair.
Hole soon fell through one and the stage was cleared for the entrance of the world's greatest Rock n' Roll band.
What happened from the moment Vim hit the stage is a haze of booze and rock music - sex was made totally impossible by virtue of the fact that the mosh extended at least two dozen rows back and I was right in the middle of it.
A rousing chorus of the perennial favourite "Fuck off Bad News" sent the crowd into a raging fury of action as the wild men of rock did their level best to make themselves heard. I've seen gigs across the country from Iron Maiden to AC/DC, Bon Jovi etc but the crowd reception was never like this. Within minutes of the onset the injured were being carried joyfully to the sidelines before throwing themselves back into the heat of the action and fans were dancing on the tables at the back.
The stage set was a joke in itself. There must have been 70 or 80 amps in total, stacked five high to create an incredible Marshall stack. We never did find out how many of them were real. Much of the material was taken from the original Bad News album including the spoken parts but new stuff was added in for good measure.
Most memorable moments of the gig for me were Vim's fantastic impressions of rock stars including Jimmi Hendrix (which consisted of Vim laying on the floor shouting "I'm dead you know") and someone playing slide guitar (no prizes for guessing what the impression was ....)
The absolute highlight was Vim Fuego "eating" a packet of Vim chemical cleaner before dying on stage. He disappeared for ten minutes before bursting through the Marshall's after being reborn as an angel of the Lord - fabulous stuff.
Loud music, a loud audience, bad language, Bad News. I lost three pounds in weight as a result of the sweat after 90 minutes of screaming and shouting along with the other 1499 attendees that night.
What a gig...what a band.
Bad News, I salute you.
Chris Russell. March 1996.
Back to Bad News