NOT IF IT PLEASES ME, Hux Records 003, 3/30/1998, UK

The musicians who became The Rumour were known, for whatever reasons, as 'pub rockers', and as such, I must be one too. Never mind the fact that I had never heard these guys or any of the other doomed acts that suffered this crippling label and was in fact buried in the suburbs, copping half my riffs from Radio 1 and the other half from obscure records by black Americans. No, I am merely guilty by association.

Or am I?

Since BBC Radio Sessions were often conducted at the crack of dawn, all recollections of the proceedings have disappeared or more probably, failed entirely to become imprinted due to the variety of hangovers I invariably nursed during this period of time, and all I can conjure up as mental imagery of the events is a hint of nerves in the stomach and the metallic tang of warm McEwans reverberating across the frayed taste buds.

But do I now detect in these performances a certain down-home beer 'n chips flavour permeating and perhaps subverting the intended lyrical profundities?

Could there be a homey, good-time working-mans groove eviscerating what I strongly believed at the time to be unique and possibly ground-breaking melodic ideas and chord structures.

Do I now, twenty one years later, finally have to concede that the music we made was in fact the very essence of that most feared and hated (non) category; pub rock?

Ouch! The very idea makes me shudder. The very thought that I might have been doing what they (the press) continue to insist I was doing... (Here, the old pub rocker runs from the room, a handkerchief pressed to his heaving, bilious mouth.)

Whatever you call this stuff, there are plenty of clunkers in the performances for all to enjoy. Guffaw, if you will, at the Thin Lizzyesque harmony on Fool's Gold. Chortle at my dreadfully out of pitch vocal at the end of Silly Thing. Wince as Bob sings along with his keyboard solos. Belly-laugh at Brinsley's outrageous gaffe just before the bridge on New York Shuffle and Steve's fabulous cock-up at the end of that number. Gasp as I mispronounce the drummer's surname, after two years of working with the guy.

And if you were at the Hippodrome performance, you may remember the best part: Ron Wolfe, our pheasant-shooting, rabbithunting tour manager, threw his stinking pet ferret across the stage and I, like a fool, picked the beast up and was promptly urinated on. That, I remember. All else is a blur.

Still, that Telecaster I bought for a hundred and fifty quid from Nick Lowe sounds really good (if I could get hold of the bastard that stole it I'd ram my new Tele so far down his throat he'd need a vasectomy to remove it), and even the Beeb's engineer managed to make Questions echoey and ominous, like the original studio version. The horns are a lot of fun and Martin plays some stinging guitar on Lady Doctor; Steve rocks on Kansas City and Brinsley is as classy as ever; Andrew is still one of the most brilliant bass players on the planet and Bob's keyboard playing is more exciting than any player I've worked with since.

So call this music what you will - at least by the time we got to Squeezing Out Sparks we were doing a whole different thing, that only an idiot would describe as pub rock... I think.

G.P. October 1997

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