Jimmy Edwards speaks. The world listens.

Jimmy Edwards: "I got a phone call from Ray Simone who’d been in the original line-up of Masterswitch, but he left ages before we cut the single “Action Replay” and went to India for his own reasons". (Hmmm. I suppose it's marginally better than going to India for someone else's reasons, but still... I feel for the guy, honestly...). "Somewhere along the line, he had got to know Rick Buckler of The Jam. Although I knew Paul Weller, I had no connection with Rick apart from being on the same label. I knew Bruce Foxton a bit too, I’d played football with him, charity stuff, the new wave against the old wave. We won of course. I was in Flintlock and they counted as new wave.

I chatted with Bruce, then Ray rang me and said he was putting a group together with Rick. Then Dennis Mundy my A&R man phoned me and said are you interested in forming a new group with Rick Buckler? I said I’d already had a phone call about it and I was half interested but wanted to know what was happening with Bruce Foxton. Dennis said he didn’t think Bruce would be in Rick’s group and he didn’t know what it would be called". (Sorry about all this, do keep going, it's background, you see, scene-setting. I'm sure you'll like the next bit enormously, it's very good).

"I asked if we’d be on Polydor and he said probably not, because of conflicts with what Paul Weller was doing. Initially John Weller, Paul’s dad and manager, was friendly, but very quickly we all fell out. So we formed Time UK and rehearsed for a year. The first line up was Rick on drums, Ray Simone on guitar, Martin Gordon from Sparks and Radio Stars on bass, me singing as well as playing a bit of guitar, and Danny Kustow from Tom Robinson Band on guitar too.

We did a couple of gigs with that line-up then had a big argument with Martin Gordon over material. He wanted to do his songs, but that group was doing my songs. His songs weren’t right for the group and they wanted him out. He wasn’t that comfortable doing my songs, but I didn’t want him out of the group. Then Ray and Rick told me at a rehearsal Martin was out of the band. He’s on the first demos we did but none of the proper records. We re-recorded “Cabaret” as our first single and Nick South plays bass on the record. It came out in 1983. But Martin is on the snatches of stuff on “The Radio Show”, which is snippets of our demos. Nick South who replaced Martin had played for Steve Marriott and Yoko Ono, Danny Kustow knew him. He was a great bloke, he didn’t want to write songs, he was quite happy playing my songs".

(Clearly old Jimmy's criteria regarding what makes a bloke 'great' or not are somewhat subjective. But I do see now that many more people are actually much greater blokes than I ever realised, based upon these selfsame criteria. How encouraging. I mean, using this analysis, I see that reappraisal of Richard Nixon is long overdue. Stalin, Pol Pot, Attila the Hun, Reza Pahlavi, Jurgen Stroop, Adolf .... none of them wanted to write their own.... they were all quite happy playing my ... well, you see what I mean. It's got legs, it's definitely got legs).

The original, and more, is here.

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