THEN JERICOOLet’s Rock Retro Winter Tour runs
from 29 November to 13 December.
Visit letsrockwintertour.com for details.Other residents included the Thompson Twins and
Debbie Harry. Pink Floyd bassist Guy Pratt and ABC
drummer Dave Palmer also played on Almost.
“I’d found myself a bit lost before Andy came along,”
Mark admits. “EMI didn’t like the LP I’d produced
myself and I couldn’t take it to where they wanted to
go. Andy’s such a groover, and there’s a real energy
to how he plays guitar. He’d go, ‘Do it again!’ until
I was knackered. He’d been what I was looking for
for years. Made me wish I hadn’t slagged Duran off!”
Andy also worked on the long-delayed follow-up
Orgasmaphobia, released in 1998, though this time
he invited Mark to his new mansion in
Shropshire. “Andy’s wife wasn’t happy
that he was thinking of building a studio
there,” he recalls. “She told me,
‘Everywhere we fucking go, he turns it
into a studio. We’ve got three kids, but
Andy has to have his bloody studio!’ I went
back three months later and, sure
enough, Andy had divided the
building in half. We used the
ballroom as a studio – to be fair,
what an amazing sound.”
Mark is currently assembling
an acoustic album – “I’d love
suggestions for a title!” – and
his enthusiasm for the Let’s
Rock tour is palpable as he
fi nishes off his American
pizza. “I’ve got the perfect
performing mix, because I
love playing shows at small
venues, as it really trains your voice,”
he smiles. “It’s bare and it’s open playing in
clubs, and you have room to experiment. At arenas,
it’s so exacting that it’s exciting. If you get it wrong,
8,000 people see it. I’ve never sung at Wembley
before and I’m dreaming about it every night.”
If Mark’s dreams are as grand as his personality,
Wembley Arena might not be big enough to contain
Then Jerico after all. It’ll give him and Tony Hadley
plenty to talk about.PUT YOUR TRUSTIN BANKS
As well as working with
members of Duran Duran
and Simple Minds on
his second solo album,
1998’s Orgasmaphobia
has a spoken-word
cameo from late best-
selling novelist Iain Banks
on the song Walking On
Glass, named after one
of the author’s novels.
Mark’s introduction
to Iain came via mutual
friend Fish. “Me and Fish
never wrote together,”
Mark admits. “We just
drank a lot of wine,
while I listened to him
talk – he’s worse than
me! Fish told me Iain
couldn’t handle his drink,
which astonished me.
I thought drinking was
part of the deal of being
a writer.”
Having been warned
the novelist was shy
and rarely answered his
phone, Mark eventually
persuaded Iain to do
a reading from the
Walking On Glass
novel at Fish’s studio
in Scotland. “I told Iain
to pick a piece,” Mark
recalls. “He chose a
page at random, started
reading and bang, he
was done in two takes.
What a speaking voice
he had.”
The album was due to
feature another guest,
after The Associates
singer Billy Mackenzie
came to Fish’s studio, just
missing Mark the same
day. Billy died by suicide
less than a week later.
“Billy was such a lovely
man,” sighs Mark. “He
was so sweet and kind.
He told me, ‘Fuck what
everyone else thinks,
do what you want
to do in music.’”is, but he doesn’t have his glove up my fucking asshole
like I’m his puppet! Who are you? Are you the fucking
singer? What a wanker!’ And Iggy walked out
muttering to himself.” Iggy still had the grace to watch
Then Jerico on the tour every night, telling Mark at the
end-of-tour party: “You’re a crazy motherfucker. You’re
worse than I am!”
If Mark unintentionally insulted Iggy Pop, he was
deliberately offensive to other bands in interviews,
taking delight in mocking his 80s peers in Smash Hits.
“I was always really horrible about Duran Duran,” he
smiles. Hang on – didn’t Duran guitarist Andy Taylor
produce your fi rst solo album? “Yeah, he did,” laughs
Mark. “And that was a lesson to follow Neil Tennant’s
advice not to slag off other musicians in public,
because you might meet them afterwards and end up
liking them. When we met, Andy said, ‘Aren’t you that
fucking wanker from Then Jerico?’”
After the band’s second album The Big
Area reached No.4 in 1989, their record
label London decreed they should each
make solo albums.
Mark recounts how the rest of the
band soon gave up their solo projects
and began writing a new Then Jerico
album without him, with his blessing,
only for Mark to learn that London
were going to sack the rest of the
band and hire new musicians.
“I told London Records I couldn’t do
Then Jerico without them,” he says.
“They were my friends, we had a
good creative understanding and, live,
we really meshed.”
He engineered himself a new deal
with EMI instead – but the rest of the
band didn’t want to join him. “I found
them a new singer – Marcus Myers from
Hard Rain – and I thought everything was
fi ne,” he sighs. “But they started slagging
me off, saying I’d quit.” It wasn’t until 2013
that the original line-up reunited for a brief
tour. “The reunion was only ever going to be
short-lived,” says Mark. “I really like the guys, but
none of them are professional musicians anymore.”
ALMOST THERE
In the interim, the Andy Taylor-produced Almost
fl opped commercially in 1991, but was closer to how
Mark had envisaged his music. The singer and
producer had lived in the same apartment block in
Wandsworth, South London. “It was called The Royal
Victoria Patriotic Asylum,” says Mark. Well, of course
that’s what the converted children’s home was called.Then Jerico split in
1990, before Mark
Shaw revived the
group in 1998Above: Clockwise from top left – Jasper Stainthorpe (bass),
Scott Taylor (guitar), Mark Shaw and Steve Wren (drums)© Getty Images