THEN JERICO
THEN JERICO AREN’T THE
MOST OBVIOUS NAME FOR
AN EXPLOSIVE TALE OF
SELF-DESTRUCTIVE ANGER,
WINDING UP IGGY POP, REHAB,
SHOCKING DISABILITY AND
HEARTWARMING REDEMPTION.
BUT SINGER MARK SHAW HAS
LIVED ONE OF THE MOST
REMARKABLE STORIES IN ALL
OF POP... JOHN EARLSGEMINI
MAN
W
hen Then Jerico appear in arenas soon
as part of the Let’s Rock Retro Winter
Tour, singer Mark Shaw and headliner
Tony Hadley are guaranteed to talk
about working together but never get
around to it. “We’re both Geminis,”
explains Mark. “It means we both
jabber away, so we cancel each other
out.” Shaw, it should be noted, can jabber away
like very few pop stars Classic Pop has ever met. If
the Looney Toons cartoons had ever created a pop
star, he’d have been a lot like Then Jerico’s
impossible all-action technicolour frontman.An absolute hurricane and wonderful company,
Mark talks about coming out of rehab before he’s
even sat down for lunch at Pizza Express Dean
Street, the Soho branch of the pizza chain which
has recently begun hosting shows by Classic
Pop-approved singers. Mark soon explains that,
now he’s sober, he’s learned to channel the anger
that once made him a volatile person to be around.
“I was never violent,” he emphasises, before
admitting: “Well, except with the police. I didn’t like
getting arrested.” He was arrested for... well, it’s a
long story, involving a lost train ticket. And actually,
the fact one of the most successful singers of the
late 1980s got arrested proves one of the least
interesting parts of Mark Shaw’s wild ride.
Most importantly, Mark’s doing great now, which
hadn’t been the case for a while. Since 2004,
Shaw has been registered disabled after shattering
both his heels in a horrible accident while
performing at famed cabaret club Café de Paris in
nearby Piccadilly. A wealthy punter in the club’s VIP
section was throwing Champagne bottles around so
Mark climbed up the speaker stacks to confront him.
As the hooligan went to punch the singer, the
speakers began to collapse. Jumping out of the way,
Mark landed with his feet impaled on the steel ring
of the sprung dancefl oor. “I was drunk that night
and it was typical of my stupid anger that I wanted
to sort things out,” he says. “I hated the idea of
being disabled, it made me really bitter. But it’s
done me a lot of good – it made me give up
drinking, and now I channel my anger. I’m a more
positive person.”
Since February, 15 years later, Mark has been
able to walk without a stick and has also given up
the painkillers that he’d become addicted to. “I was
off my face on those painkillers,” Shaw admits. “It
was very dangerous. I’ll walk with a limp for the rest
of my life, and if you’re as vain as I am that’s hard!
But I know now I’m very lucky to be a functioning
human being.”HANDSOME DEVIL
Mark has cause to be vain: if he wasn’t such a
good guy, it’d be easy to hate him for how well he’s
aged. At 58, he looks a decade younger, retaining
the good looks that made him a pin-up during Then
Jerico’s heyday when Big Area, The Motive and
Sugar Box made them chart staples. But Mark was
troubled throughout their success, stemming from an
unsettled childhood. Born in Chesterfi eld, his father
worked for Swan Hunter and Esso as the family
moved to Nottingham, Newcastle and Sussex until,
after his parents divorced, Mark lived with his mum
in Croydon. “I consider myself a Geordie,” he
ponders, his voice retaining a slight Newcastle
twang. “But I went to 10 different schools, so I didn’t
make many friends. I’ve always been a bit of a
loner. My anger has always been in me, mainly
being bitter that I didn’t get a better education.”
Before becoming a singer, Mark wanted to be a
stuntman and missed a total of two years of school
after twice “getting smashed up on my bike – I was
always breaking my arms.”
A face on the New Romantic scene as a regular
at its clubs Billy’s and Blitz, Shaw eventually started
Then Jerico while working in the advertising
department of music mag ZigZag. He was a fan of
Bauhaus, Gang Of Four and The Stooges. “Then
Jerico weren’t that kind of band,” he admits. “When
I was a kid, I thought that if you were successful,
everybody would like you and it’d mean you’d
proved something. The reality is, success exposed
my shortcomings, because you always have