HELLO GOODBYE
Lawrence and Felt
It started on the way to sign on the dole. And ended after 10 LPs and 10 45s in 10 years…
10 Commandments of Felt: (from left) Lawrence, Tony Race, Maurice Deebank and Nick Gilbert in Birmingham, December 16, 1980, doing “things that no one else had ever done.”
Paul Slattery/Camera Press, Paul Kelly
It started on the way to sign on the dole. And ended after 10 LPs and 10 45s in 10 years…
HELLO MARCH11, 1980
I made [1979 single] Index on my own, but I realised that having a tiny label and making 500 singles wasn’t going to give me what I wanted. So the idea was to form a new kind of rock band, and make it big.
I knew Maurice [Deebank, guitar] from the village [Water Orton, outside Birmingham]. He’d begun having classical guitar lessons when he was nine and was, like, a genius. He was easy to hang out with, an odd character, but in a good way. In 1980 we’d walk to the dole office in Chelmsley Wood. On this particular day, we stopped on this little bridge that goes over the river and I said, “I’m gonna do this group, do you want to be in it?” I plotted it out, and said, “We can be a big band of the ’80s.”