Songwriter,
musician and producer Alin Karna has had a long career in the music industry,
but he is known to Stock Aitken Waterman fans as the lead singer of Spelt Like This. I approached
Alin whilst researching my detailed article on Spelt Like This, and not only
was he kind enough to answer my questions, he actually wrote so much material
that I felt it would be a crime to only use it for quotes and additional
details for my article. So, Alin and I have reworked the Q&As into this
fascinating account - in Alin's own words -- which gives a real insight into
his career, the Spelt Like This saga, working with SAW and the record industry
in the mid-1980s…
Early days…
I was born during the 1960s in mid July in a
British military hospital in Old Delhi, the capital city of India. My parents
were on holiday visiting my Dad’s parents; my Mum and Dad met at the North
London Poly down in Kentish Town. I grew up and went to school in North London
and started playing guitar around the age of 8 or 9 years old. In the second
year of junior school, we had a really cool teacher who, I thought, looked and
sounded like Jesus who played the guitar and taught us folk songs with his
Jumbo steel-string acoustic. I became obsessed with the guitar, and soon
learned to play a few chords well enough to play and sing alongside the teacher
during the sing-song sessions with the children. Some years later, my parents
had divorced and I re-located to Cornwall with my mother. I was soon playing in
pubs and hotels with older musicians to earn a bit of pocket money!
When I left school at 16, I returned to London in
the summer to stay with my Dad temporarily, and by that Christmas I had joined
a professional band who had a record deal and a manager.
This was just after the new wave/punk thing. We
were rehearsing down in Pimlico and then we just went out and gigged all over
the shop at all the circuit venues in London like The Marquee, Dingwalls and
the Music Machine and the Hope & Anchor over in Islington, as well as colleges and that.
The band was called The News and was fronted by the shaven-headed lead singer,
Sal Solo. The News eventually broke up (with the members later forming Classix
Nouveaux), and I got into session work playing guitar, bass and singing
background vocals on jingles and television advertising music.
I was really very lucky; I was playing pool one
night in the local pub up in Muswell Hill and a Scottish bloke said to me ‘You
play the guitar, sonny and you’re left-handed aren’t yuz?’ because he‘d noticed
my fingernails. He invited me and my girlfriend round to his posh flat above
the shops on the Fortis Green Road to meet his wife, Maggie, and we all got
well plastered. This bloke was Billy Gray, a jingle producer working for the
Jeff Wayne Music organisation which was one of the main production companies
who were hired to create jingles for the top advertising agencies like Young
& Rubicam (where my mum worked during the 1970s). I impressed Billy by playing his Yamaha 6-string acoustic upside down
the way Jimi Hendrix would do!
As time went on, I was in and out of recording
studios and soon put together a band of session players; the singer Rick
Driscol was the front man, and Lindsay Elliott was on drums (Lindsay was
formerly in The News and before that in Cockney Rebel with his brother Stewart
Elliott who co-founded the group with Steve Harley). We recorded two A sides
and a B side with Steve Harley producing – me and the bass player, Graham
Culpin, had signed exclusive publishing with Elton John’s Rocket Music and
Billy got us a singles deal at Pye Records with Dick Leahy. However, the record
suffered due to publishing and copyright complications, which prevented its
release.
The start of Spelt Like This…
The Spelt Like This story starts when I met
Russell McKenzie through Johnny Timms (the keyboard player who later appeared in the
Stop This Rumour video) around the end of 1982. Being signed to Rocket meant I
had powerful backing, so to speak, and I wanted to put together a sort of
Motown/Soul band and call it The Motivations. Rocket agreed to pay for all
rehearsal and recording studio costs, so Russell and I started auditioning for
the rest of the line up at 414 Studios under the railway arches on the Holloway
Road in London. Very soon we had a 7-piece line up, including two girl backing
singers.
Russell had known Tom Watkins prior to this and he
invited Tom down to see the band in another rehearsal place we were using in
Camden. That’s when I first met Tom, and this must have been around Spring
1983, as I recall there was a general election going on at the time and
Margaret Thatcher won a second term. This showcase led to Tom, Russell and I
talking about working together.
In the following weeks and months, The Motivations
were rehearsing for live work and recording 24 track demos but it became clear
to me that Russell wanted to begin a new band project with the two of us being
equal partners. The first idea for a name for this band, I think by Tom, was
Danger Danger, which I wasn’t too keen on. Tom and Russell were suggesting a
Wham-type act and were strongly trying to persuade me to abandon the Motown
idea and do something fresh.
Another issue was to get me out of my Rocket
contract so a bit of a canny strategy was required for that too, so that I was
free (in contractual terms) to go in a new direction. Despite all that, I’d
requested that Rocket book me a 24 track studio to cut two or three tracks that
I had demoed on my Revox B77 at home. Those studio recordings were passed on to
Tom who then played them to Trevor Horn and Jill Sinclair at ZTT Records and a
meeting was set up. However, Trevor was booked up for the following year so
working with him any time soon had to be abandoned for the time being. I was
immensely impressed with Tom and how quickly he was able to ‘get things done’;
as a result, Russell and I were still discussing a new act (like a cross
between Wham and Hall & Oates) with the two of us as equal partners, both
in the band itself and with the song writing credits too.
During that summer of 1983, I’d also met Geno
Washington who quickly became a friend; he asked me to put together a new
backing band for him called The Mojo Kings, so in the autumn of 1983 Russell
and I started a long British tour with Gino that went on through to January
1984; Russell played bass and I played lead guitar. Both of us decided to quit
as we doubted that Geno was going to suddenly become a superstar and we decided
to go back to working on some fresh material.
By around January/February 1984, Tom had come up
with the name Spelt Like This. Russell had bought a Tascam 4 track and a Yamaha
DX7, so we started writing and recording our first demos. As far as I can
remember Russell had never actually written a song until he met me. He was a
reasonably accomplished bass player but his real skills were in engineering (he
was working as the resident live engineer at the Embassy Club in Mayfair when I
met him) and he wanted to be a record producer. I, on the other hand, had been
writing songs from the age of 9, became a
professional guitarist at 16 and signed my first exclusive publishing deal at
18 with Elton John’s Rocket Music.
I recall having to drive from North London down to Forest Hill in South London each day to work long hours with Russell. I also recall our first photo shoot -- at London Zoo of all places (LOL) -- arranged by Tom, who by this time had well established himself with his companies XL Design and Massive Management spread across two floors of offices in Poland Street W1.
It was around Spring 1984 that we signed a management agreement with Tom, and also drafted up a partnership contract for Spelt Like This. There were a few disagreements over the ownership of that name but in the end I agreed to Russell owning that potential brand name; I suppose, thinking back, that I was so driven and ambitious back then, I‘d do almost anything to be successful.
In that summer of 1984, Tom had secured us an exclusive publishing deal with Warner Brothers Music, then by September a major record contract with EMI; the latter followed a bidding war between EMI and MCA that Tom had handled quite masterfully; he was quite capable and formidable, and we were very fortunate to have such strong and creative management.
After all the hard work we had done writing and
recording enough songs for a debut album, and being groomed by Tom, we felt
proud that we had achieved being signed to Warners and EMI. At this point there
was talk about bringing in a third member of the group; I agreed a third member
would balance us out and very much strengthen our writing capability so while I
was learning dance, mime and stagecraft at the Pineapple and Covent Garden
Dance Centres, Russell and Tom began auditioning for a third member to join and
contribute to Spelt Like This; Alan
(Lima) Rawlings was appointed and was perfect for us in many ways.
The agreement between Russell and me then, when we
started writing the SLT songs, was that we would simply split all credits and
royalties 50/50. Once Rawlings joined we then agreed on an equal three-way
split as was set up by the limited company partnership agreement between us. I
have to add that the recruitment of Alan (Lima) Rawlings substantially improved
things and was extremely beneficial to the
project as he was, and I imagine, still is a hugely talented songwriter and
musician and a wonderful poet and lyricist who came up with fabulous song
ideas.
The next task was to find the right producer for
Spelt Like This; once we had signed and secured the EMI recording contract, I
think we felt as if we could pick anyone we wanted to work with. We felt on top
of the world and that our future was assured (of course) but the reality was
very different! We discussed a number of possibilities but so much was also
subject to availability and schedules as was with Trevor Horn, which was
mentioned above; he clearly had his hands full at the time including Frankie
Goes To Hollywood, Art Of Noise, Grace Jones, Yes and others -- it follows that
all the best ones are the busiest and hardest to book. I really liked Trevor
and would loved to have worked with him, I was always a big Yes fan when I was
a teenager.
Instead, our first proper recording sessions were
with the American producer Stuart Levine, who had big success with Womack &
Womack and later had even more success with Simply Red. He was what was
described as ‘old school’ with his recording production methods and somehow he
was suddenly flown over to work with us. These sessions took place at Townhouse
3 for what ended up being a fortnight to record Contract Of The Heart and Stop
This Rumour both as prospective A sides. I think, looking back, Russell in
particular was deeply unhappy with these sessions but actually all three of us
had soon decided that the direction it was taking was not what we were looking
for. Levine had the London Community Gospel Choir booked in for background vocal
parts and a live drummer playing a dance beat throughout (a bit like Levine's
production on Womack & Womack's Love Wars). No disrespect to these
musicians at all; in fact, we thought they were all truly wonderful but it was
simply not the style we were looking for.
Working with Stock Aitken Waterman…
At the time, the latest innovations (after drum
machines and MIDI sequencers) were samplers. I think the band preferred to go
with the latest technological wonders such as the AMS sampling effects on records
by Chaka Khan, Scritti Politti and Prince, as well as those used in what was
called hi-NRG dance music. Stewart Levine, the genius and very experienced
producer that he was, was not what we wanted so I suppose we were then in a
pickle and we needed to quickly find a
replacement. Stock Aitken Waterman happened to be available and around the
corner in Wardour Street at just at the right time; we immediately got on very
well with them and the next thing we knew was we were then booked into the
Marquee Studios to start recording the same two A side contenders, Contract of
the Heart and Stop This Rumour.
I had written Contract of the Heart in the summer
of 1983 and I can still vividly remember it because
the experience was almost a religious or ‘numinous’ one for me. It is so hard
to describe the magic of writing songs; sometimes they take 5 minutes to write
when other songs can take 10 years or more to complete. The only contribution
to that song that Russell made was a 1 bar rhythmic riff or mid bass keyboard
(DX7) figure throughout the track that was featured on the first two demos.
When we began recording and formatting the track with Matt Aitken and Mike
Stock, we realised we needed to write a third and final verse so this is where
Tom came in with a bit of poetry: a few lines of text written at the last
minute for the third verse. Russell may have helped him but I’m not so sure
about that.
I do vaguely remember some bickering over the
credits for the St Valentine’s Day Mascara track (which was the B-side of
Contract of the Heart). Typically the band would stay out of it and leave such
matters to the management. Russell and I did have a song in mind called
‘Bonkers’ which was one of our demo songs that was a bit of a tongue-in-cheek
throwaway tune but I suppose as the release date for Contract of the Heart was
set for St Valentine's Day (1985), someone came up with the Mascara idea; it
was probably Tom who came up with the title so it was agreed to record a B-side
with that theme. I’m just glad they didn’t play it when we appeared on the
Saturday Superstore kids’ show! It was a lot of fun to do and also a welcome
break from the intense days and days of studio time concentrating on the two
A-sides. I remember Matt and Mike had a backing track up within a few hours
ready for us to add sampled voices, machine guns and other noises. I think we
all had a go at the voice parts, it was a real laugh and we all looked forward
to then being creative on the rest of the album.
As well as Mascara, I recall beginning quite a few
structures for other tracks (Walking Not Falling, Double Dare and Emocean) at
the Marquee Studios before that Christmas, so as well as the two singles we
actually got a great deal of pre-production work done in the few weeks we were
at that initial studio.
In January 1985, EMI booked us in to the Ridge
Farm Studios near Dorking for a week for the specific task of beginning the
pre-production stage as described above of many of the songs for our debut
album that was later to be named Word Perfect; I think it was Tom who came up
with that after he’d got back from a brief trip to New York as I recall.
We resumed recording in SAW's new studio in
Sanctuary Street in South London; we were there for weeks and weeks and I
recall all the building work that was going on to install the new SSL (Solid
State Logic) fully automated huge mixing consoles.
We recorded the following tracks with SAW for the
projected Word Perfect album:
Contract Of The Heart;
Stop This Rumour;
Walking Not Falling;
Larger Than Lions;
Lovers Lost No Return;
Out Of Water;
Bonkers;
Centre Of Attention;
Double Dare;
Love Surrender & Devotion; and
Emocean;
We also recorded St Valentine's Mascara with SAW
for the B side to Contract of the Heart. In addition, there were other songs we
wrote as a band – including Stop This Rumour B-side The Alphabet - but these
are the ones we recorded with SAW.
I sang all the vocals on the album and one of good
things about working with SAW was my close working relationship with Mike Stock
who was the musical, piano player member of the production team (whereas Matt
Aitken primarily created the rhythms and bass lines). Mike was very good at
coming up with vocal parts that weaved in and out of my basic three-part
harmony blocks in the choruses and with counter parts. This very much added to
the texture of the backing vocals that were all quadruple tracked; I remember with Contract of the Heart there were so many backing vocal channels we had to
‘slave up’ to a second 24-track, 2 inch multitrack tape machine.
When it came to lead vocals, it was Russell who
produced and navigated those recording sessions, both at the demo stage and
then with Mike and Pete doing the masters. We used a very special microphone
called the Calrec Soundfield; I was told only a handful of singers and
vocalists had used it before, apparently including David Bowie and Stevie
Wonder. I can tell you that having worked for years with different microphones
and headphones, this microphone was like a quantum leap for me in recording
vocals; for the first time not having to remove part of one side of my
headphones, or ‘cans’ as we called them, in order to hear my own voice above
the level of the backing track. Singing with the Calrec and using the highest
quality studio cans was almost like hearing the full production of the record
as you performed live along with it (as opposed to having selected elements of
the backing track to sing to in a ‘headphone mix’).
Alan (Lima) Rawlings played the guitars,
particularly the lead guitar solos. There was a lot of sampling of guitars too,
a technique that was becoming a lot more popular at that time. Indeed the AMS
(Advanced Music Systems) sampler became a very useful tool to sample, for
example, a block of multi-tracked backing vocals. Then that sample of chorus
backing vocals could be ’spun in’ on all the choruses on the track; this way we
need only to record one main chorus block of harmonies instead of having to
record all the choruses sections in the song from ‘wall to wall’ or from
beginning to end.
Matt would start any recording with a Linn Drum
basic pattern, then some chords and a bass part were added with a rough guide
vocal and it went from there.
When you have the talent, experience and ability
that Mike Stock and Matt Aitken had, you don’t really need many more musicians
other than obviously singers and vocalists. Most of time, Rawlings and I kept
out of the control room but Russell was ever present with the recording
production process with SAW because he wanted to learn as much as he could to
fulfil his ambition to become a record
producer. Most of the bass was sampled but there may have been some real bass
guitar which would have been played by Russell. I remember doing some of the
pre-production piano parts and some pads as well as some bass sequencing at the
early stages as well; I knew the chords of course because I had written the
tunes. Often there were sessions with Mike and Matt to go over the basic chords
and key signatures of each song also referring to the demo version; I’d have an
acoustic guitar or we worked at the piano and Matt would develop a drum loop
and we would decide on the correct tempo for the track.
It was very much a joint effort but you cannot
take away the speed and efficiency Mike and Matt worked with when starting new
tracks right through to final mixes. Having top class engineers working on the
project helps too as their input was always being invaluable at that level;
Phil Harding was the main mix engineer; this was obviously earlier in his
career and he's obviously achieved many great things since then.
Other musicians and specialists were brought in
for the SAW sessions, particularly keyboard players and session technicians who
knew how to operate the gear they brought into the studios (like the Fairlight)
to come up with specific sounds like bass samples and other specific analogue
as well as digital textures.
I have heard that Tom Watkins, Phil Harding and
Pete Waterman have written about the Spelt Like This sessions, generally taking the view that they were
“difficult”; I’m not exactly sure what that means -- I think I do have an idea
but it comes from a perspective that was very much limited because I was kept
out of the politics, as it were, and the relationships between the band’s
manager, the record company and the record producers. I think Rawlings was too,
to a large extent. Throughout the SLT project it was Russell who very much had
Tom’s ear so to speak, and that was the way it worked. Russell was the band’s
key spokesperson and representative and that was quite correct because after
all he ultimately WAS Spelt Like This as was agreed within the partnership that
was set up for the three members of the group. In retrospect, I can see how
this makes a great deal of sense from a business point of view; you see so many
groups out there who, years and years later, have huge rows when they split up
over ownership and the right to use the name of the ‘act’. This issue was
clearly of importance and had to be agreed and settled from the onset. From my
point of view I felt I had a job to do, a part to play in the recording process
and that was frankly enough on my plate as well as writing new material,
studying dance and stagecraft for live work, doing photo shoots and personal
appearances and dealing with some of the petty bureaucratic details that come
hand in hand with working in the corporate world such as answering fan mail,
signing cheques and attending meetings with accountants and lawyers.
You simply cannot have too many people in a
recording studio control room during most of the recording process. Rawlings
and I knew and accepted this so we respectfully stayed out. As far as Watkins,
Waterman and the EMI bosses were concerned, we had very little idea what was
happening in their ongoing discussions and negotiations. I think Rawlings and I
were unaware of the rows going on between Russell and Tom as well; we just
didn’t know what was going on in the background, we were not kept up to date
properly as two members of the band, two co-songwriters and business partners
-- what should have been two key people in the whole episode. If there were any
difficulties during the recording process, it would have occurred between those
who were in the studio control room and certainly not with the two members of
the group who were treated as no more than session players on the project.
Contract of the Heart was scheduled for a February
release, and this was heralded by a brilliant marketing, publicity and
promotion campaign Tom and his design team had created for Spelt Like This;
this was based on the theme of anagrams and wordplay: for example, everyone who
was anyone in the music business at the time each received a personal
sweatshirt with an anagram of their name for Christmas (often quite witty as
with the playing around of letters on the Fawlty Towers title sequence). I had one but it was
lost, either borrowed or stolen, so I have no idea where it is like all the
tons of Spelt Like This promotional paraphernalia, some of it no doubt still
knocking around out there somewhere!
During and after the release of Contract of the
Heart (at which point we were still working with SAW), there was a great deal
of hard, 7-day a week work going on (including photo shoots, TV and public
appearances etc) and a massive sense of pressure for everyone involved but I
think the real moment when things rapidly began to go downhill for the whole
thing was when we stopped working with SAW and after that Russell took control
over the recording and mixing process.
Our time working with SAW at the Sanctuary Street
studios came to an end -- mainly because they had to move on to the very many
projects they had lined up and were booked for to do in the future. In other
words, they had commitments and the SLT debut album project was well behind
schedule and obviously threatening to disrupt schedules. As a result, we had an
album that was mostly completed but still needed additional work before final
mixes and mastering.
The end of Spelt Like This…
There was a post-SAW period when we worked at Sarm
West Studios with Nick Froome; Nick had worked with us at Marquee Studios and
PWL Studios. I think he was very much involved with the Stop This Rumour 12
inch and the B side to that record too (The Alphabet). We also worked with Blue
Weaver at his own recording studio over in West London; he had worked with The
Bee Gees amongst others.
I’m afraid I wasn’t happy with the way the final
tracks turned out! Not at all. I can only speak for myself but I can assure you
-- and I am confident of this -- that Rawlings was also deeply unhappy with the
way the songs turned out in the end as far as any final mixes were concerned.
Both of us were unhappy about lots of things...
It’s obvious to me, in retrospect, that because so
much money had been invested in the act with little to show for it, someone was
bound to point the finger of blame at someone else because the project ended up
being one monumental disaster and failure -- and to this day I am still trying
to figure it out. ‘It was not our best moment’ comes to mind, and I can only
just imagine what was said around certain boardrooms and offices at the time. I
was told lots of very nasty things were said, rumours were spread and so on
about the band being difficult to work with and worse things than that.
If that was true then it would have been
slanderous and very unjustified because I remember just working as hard as
possible, doing the best job I could do and as professionally as I could -- and
as far as I can recall I got on with most people fine; the only rows I had were
with Russell and Alan Rawlings from time to time as would be expected with
brothers-in-arms so to speak, being as close as we were at the time.
It is very typical when the so-called ‘powers that
be’ (wherever they happen to operate and in whatever circumstances) will always
close ranks and join together to point the finger and place the blame on other
entities when things go drastically wrong and when it suits them in order to
protect themselves from any culpability or accountability. Someone really
messed up with the SLT band project and to this day I don’t know why Contract
of the Heart didn’t chart high enough to get us on Top Of The Pops back in
1985. Perhaps it had to do with product distribution timing and the actual
availability of the records in the shops in time for that week during the
promotion. Maybe someone out there can explain to me what exactly happened.
(On this point, Rawlings and I went to see Dave
Ambrose (the EMI A&R who signed SLT) over at London Records in 1990/91.
We had some new demos we’d recorded in LA to play him. All he had to say about
the SLT project was that “there was a lot of bad blood” over it. I didn’t blame
him for not wanting to elaborate on that because I respected him very much when
others in our camp regarded him in unkind terms).
Perhaps the reader may be able to work it out but
for myself and Rawlings (who was dreadfully embarrassed and unhappy about it
all, particularly from when we did the Contract promo video), we still to this
day have trouble understanding what caused the catastrophic failure it turned
out to be.
The failure of Contract of the Heart -- and later
on, of Stop The Rumour -- was very hard indeed. It was very frustrating and
extremely disappointing. I can only speak for myself here because I lost
contact with the other two members and indeed with anyone at the management,
EMI, Warners or SAW from about the middle July 1985 onwards. During the period
between the release dates of the two singles and things starting to go out of
control behind the scenes, I was certainly becoming more and more unhappy and
jaded with the situation. I also felt that we’d spent far too much time with
the debut album and we should have been moving forward much faster given the
situation with the debut single.
I wanted to go out and perform live -- for the
band to prove itself as a live act -- and to this end, I had trained and
prepared myself as best as I could. However, I had been very much kept out of
the loop (as I said earlier), as far as the decision-making process was
concerned. To be honest, I was approached by a few highly placed individuals,
who I would prefer not name here, who asked me if I had considered getting
myself away from Tom Watkins and Russell and do a solo thing or another act
completely. I got the impression they were not particularly comfortable when
dealing with the people around me but they liked me and would have been happy
to work with me if I could get out of the situation. However, I have to admit
in hindsight that I was very naïve and blindly loyal to Russell and Alan in
particular, so I carried on during those weeks and days that led up to my
eventual resignation from the band partnership.
Things really came to a head following the video
shoot of the Stop This Rumour single at the Shaw Theatre. This was all happening
around the time of the Live Aid concerts and as a matter of fact the last time
I saw Russell was the Monday morning following that weekend. It wasn’t that the
band was calling it a day, but more of an uncontrolled demolition that happened
over a period of weeks as things were disintegrating in slow motion. After
Russell had taken over the album’s production process, the atmosphere had
become unpleasant and there was bullying, false accusations and threats. On one
or two occasions, there was even violence; I remember once, Russell and I had a
‘disagreement’ outside one of the control rooms at Sarm West Studios after
which I resumed the vocal recording session with a bloody nose. (You should
have seen Russell!). It was like two brothers having a little punch up but
things were getting more and more nasty with Russell feeling so under pressure
and everything and under those conditions, there was no option for me other
than to leave.
Later on I found out that there was an attempt to
replace me with another lead singer after the Stop This Rumour video had
actually already been released! I don’t know what was going on in Russell and
Tom’s minds but the whole video was re-shot and edited with one of the backing
singers instead of me as the front man. By this time, I was out of the picture
anyway so I really didn’t know what was happening between the band, the
management and the record company -- or I should say, I knew even less about
what was going on than I did when I was actually in the band. The outcome, as
predictable as it would have been then, was that Spelt Like This got dropped by
EMI Records as well as Warner Brothers Music Publishing when the options came
up for renewal later that year.
After Spelt Like This…
Despite all the disasters with Russell and Tom, the Spelt Like This project did not end my music career. On the contrary, it
drove my own personal ambition to succeed even harder. My song writing
continued to get better and better as well as my confidence in myself. Most
importantly, I had broken free from all contractual ties. Again, with the
benefit of hindsight, I think I had every intention of climbing right back to
the levels achieved earlier; I had been poised for great success by signing to
a major record company and so on, and with strong management I wanted to be in
that position again as soon as possible.
A couple of years later, I got in touch with Alan
Rawlings and we started writing and recording again together; for us at least,
the Spelt Like This / EMI / Massive Management era was very much behind us.
Looking back, although we both suffered from some form of
post-traumatic-stress-disorder by surviving a fall from a pretty substantial
height, we were still very ambitious and keen to move forward with fresh ideas
vowing not to repeat the same mistakes as before and remaining true to
ourselves in producing work that was of a very much higher quality and
authenticity; in other words the intention was to create an act that was quite
different from SLT in so many ways.
In 1988 I went out to California and by that
autumn, I was living in Venice Beach, L.A. One evening I received a very
unexpected call; it was Russell McKenzie. He was very polite, and explained to
me that he’d got my Los Angeles phone number from my sister in North London. We
hadn’t spoken since that fateful Monday in the middle of July 1985. He sounded
very different; I could barely understand him as his speech was slow and
slurred but straight away he told me why he was phoning me. He said he wanted
to tell me how sorry he was about all that had happened with Spelt Like This. I
was a little taken aback and I recall mumbling something along the lines that
we both knew what we were letting ourselves in for and we knew how tough the
music industry was and so on. He said Tom let us down, he had "taken the
money and run" and then Russell asked me would I forgive him? I didn’t
know what to say, I just hesitated but then heard my own voice replying; ‘Of
course I forgive you Russell, I didn’t write a song called Contract of the Heart
for nothing mate!’. I swear I heard him sobbing before we then ended that brief
transatlantic phone call in late 1988, the last time I ever heard from him. I
didn’t think much of it at the time, I was so busy focused on what I was doing
there in Hollywood, I just remember a slight bit of satisfaction and that I had
finally been vindicated.
Years and years later (around about 2002-2003) I
was again in touch with Alan Rawlings (or Lima, as I always called him).
Indeed, we’d stayed in touch on and off, and at one time he came out to stay
with me and my then girlfriend/partner in Los Angeles. We were working on new
material in our own project studio facility at our house in Burbank. However,
by the early naughties I had moved down to Devon and one day casually suggested
to Lima that we should try to get in touch with Russell. He agreed he would try
to get Russell’s contact details through his mother in Basildon, Essex. A few
days later I was extremely shocked to hear from Rawlings that he had indeed
contacted Russell’s mum and had found out that Russell had died years earlier
(I think it was either in late 1988 or 1989) apparently in a road traffic
accident.
It was truly devastating news to me and naturally,
I recalled our phone conversation in Venice Beach and wondered how long after
that call was it that he died. I was in shock and went into a period of
terrible grief and great sadness for weeks and weeks after hearing the dreadful
news and I have not spoken to Rawlings since either.
I loved Russell like a brother. I looked up to him
and respected him for his intelligence, strong will and tremendous talent. Like
two brother warriors, we vowed to make it big in the music business together
and to get to the very top. We were young, tough, hard-working, and completely
fearless and we had huge ambitions to reach the highest achievements; and were
prepared to work all the hours under the sun and to do whatever was necessary
to be successful. Our slogan and motto was ‘whatever it takes’ and no one and
nothing was ever going to be allowed to get in our way. It was precisely those
qualities that were required as well as having a genuine music talent but only
if you were absolutely determined and wanted it hard enough…
Looking back
I don’t think there is anything more than this I
can add. I think the reader can deduce for themselves from what I have written
here but this was part of my experience of the music business in the 1980s and
I have to admit that it has taken me many, many years to get over it all.
Today, I feel like an old veteran who is looking back, always
wondering ‘what if’?
I am grateful for this opportunity to have my say
and perhaps set some records straight (no pun intended!) even if it is more
than three decades since this all took place!
And if I may add; I learned many years ago that
you do not have to be famous, rich and powerful to be loved. All you need to do
is just be a good person. When we look at the state of the world today, I have
been asked a few times ‘What can we do?’. My answer is you can do your best because if everyone did their very best, the evil in this world would just simply dissolve.
© Alin Karna 2017
++++
Alin’s most
recent album Providence is available on CD, plus via download and streaming via iTunes, Amazon and Spotify. It's a
terrific album, very diverse and often very moving; I'd urge all readers to
check it out, but in particular, I'd like to draw your attention to one track
in particular "It's Your Heart".
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