Matt Goss - More Than You Know

Luke’s girlfriend at the time, Lorraine, had a nice big house and was quite wealthy. This was useful because her mum, Norma, was very cool and said we could use her living-room for band practice, which on reflection was very generous. She fed and watered us in this lovely house, which was very kind. My brother’s girlfriend was pretty tasty and had cute friends, her mum was tasty as well, so it was a good period of band practice, of which I have very fond memories.

Bass, drums and vocals was an unusual format for a band so young as us. We rehearsed very hard, working whenever we could. We were an odd blend of ska and soul; I was heavily into The Specials but also loved performers like Frankie Beverly and Maze – the song ‘Joy And Pain’ still sends me straight back in time to snogging girls at the school disco.

Things took a promising turn when we started rehearsing at the house of a man called Bob Herbert, who was the father of Luke’s latest girlfriend. He looked very young for his age, was cool, fun and full of ideas. He later went on to manage The Spice Girls for a while and his son Chris is also a very successful band manager. He was in the accountancy business and had had some dealings with the Three Degrees. At the time, however, he was just starting out in management, so we were the guys on whom he was testing his ideas – not in any manipulative way at all, he was always very gracious and genuinely enthusiastic about what we were doing. He had a summerhouse in the back of his garden by the pool and that’s where we used to rehearse.

We bought a Breville toaster and a large amount of cheese and bacon sandwich spread, the sort that comes in tubes with the most peculiar taste combinations imaginable. That was our ready-made sustenance for weeks while we rehearsed furiously, five hours a day and more. There was something about that time that felt safe to me, it was a secure environment. Pretty quickly we changed our name to Summerhouse.

I wrote one of my first songs in that summerhouse – it was called ‘Pyramids’. How incredibly Eighties to write a song about the pyramids! It was all about the mists of time and God knows what else, heaven knows why I chose to write about that. There was also a song called ‘Mystery Lady’ which actually wasn’t too bad, but unfortunately we brought that relatively promising track down a level or two in quality by recording what can only be described as probably the worst video of all time. It was just one shot of us in a big room, wearing really dodgy suits and long mullet haircuts, with plumes gushing out of a smoke machine that was being operated by Bob who, unbeknown to him at the time, was just about visible pushing the button on this contraption in the corner of the shot. It was just hilarious.

Our rehearsal space took a turn for the worse when Bob bought an old house for development and said we could have free rein to practise in there. On the surface this sounded great, but when we got there it was like something run by Norman Bates. The abandoned house had no windows in most rooms, was soaking with damp and was so cold we all huddled up in huge jackets and Lukie had to play the drum pedals in thick socks. My mum went mad when she learned we were spending a lot of time in there. Still, it was as close as we ever got to playing the working men’s club next door, which resolutely refused to book us. Maybe it was when we changed our name to Gloss, and they were worried about introducing ‘Matt from Gloss!’ So it was back to the summerhouse for more baconspread sandwiches.

It was actually a really lovely time and I have to say Bob was instrumental in that final stage of the band before we were discovered. If I am honest, in terms of feeling like you were making serious progress towards a record contract, there were undeniably times when you couldn’t help but feel we were just the band at the end of the garden. But Bob was vital, no doubt.

Perhaps the most significant thing Bob did was introduce us to Nicky Graham, a record producer who had worked with Barbara Dickson, The Nolans and Andy Williams. Nicky came down to see us play a show in April 1986 in Lightwater, just off the M3, liked us and thought there was something to work with. That was, essentially, the moment we started to go overground.

Unlike a lot of bands of that age, we were ‘discovered’ and that’s the way I think it should be done. We did not audition for the parts in front of a panel. We were a bona fide gigging band, albeit a little inexperienced and rough around the edges, writing songs and practising like crazy. A known producer came to see us play and it was in a live environment, raw as you like, and we impressed him. After a few conversations, Nicky asked us if we would like to meet a manager he knew of in London, a chap called Tom Watkins, who happened to manage the Pet Shop Boys. We were seventeen.

We left Bob Herbert’s management after about a year but not necessarily because it wasn’t happening fast enough – we didn’t know what ‘fast’ was. We just felt we needed to move on. Then when we were told we were going to meet Tom Watkins, it was such a culture shock. Literally, on the way to the meeting we were thinking, Fuck! This is the manager of the Pet Shop Boys! The first time we met him was at his own very lovely flat in Blackheath. That initial discussion went well and further meetings were arranged.

Even knowing what I know now, and however difficult the later days of Bros proved to be, I still maintain that going to meet Tom, talking about the band and possible record deals and all that flurry of activity that kicked off shortly after Nicky spotted us was a fantastic, exciting, unbelievable time. We were so young and here was one of the industry’s biggest managers talking to us across a desk in a swanky West End lawyer’s office. It was hard not to be dazzled.

I genuinely have amazing memories of those times, even though they happen to be the days that would mould certain future events. However, I can’t sit here and write my autobiography and feel negative and weird about experiences that, at the time, were nothing but exhilarating. Maybe I’m too philosophical. I don’t know, maybe I’m naive. Whatever the cause, that’s how I see those events, it was the stuff of dreams.

SIX

If I Was A Wishful Thinker . . .

Once Tom was involved, through his Massive Management company along with his partner Mick Newton, events moved very quickly indeed. It was December 1986 and within a very short space of time, our band would be all over the papers. For now, however, we didn’t even have a record deal, yet that seemed an insignificant obstacle. Suddenly, demo tapes were recorded – there had already been a false start when Arista pulled out of a deal at the last second. It was disappointing at the time, but with Tom on board anything seemed possible. We were having meetings to discuss which record company would be best, CBS/Sony or EMI, the people behind Michael Jackson or the ones who looked after The Beatles. A few weeks earlier we’d been wiping bacon spread off our guitars in the summerhouse.

Tom was a very big character, physically and in terms of his presence. He would bundle into meetings full of ideas and it sounded like the world was ours for the taking. And you know what? Tom was right.

The name Bros came about from one of these highly-charged meetings and it seemed to fit perfectly. Tom even had his designer Mark Farrow create that famous logo which all seemed very ambitious yet totally natural at the same time. The strategy worked and the music business was soon talking about Tom’s latest act.

Eventually, we signed to CBS/Sony for an advance of £260,000 for the debut album. What that actually equated to for us in hard cash terms was a wage of fifty pounds a week. In a way, I have to be honest, I was more excited by the fact that someone was going to pay for us to go into a studio to make a record and then, amazingly, it would get released. It was a period when even the air I breathed seemed to be rich with dreams. When I arrived home one day after yet another exciting meet, this fantasy life turned to a horrific nightmare when Mum broke the news that she had been diagnosed with cancer.