Fire Engines were one of Edinburgh’s most influential post punk bands. As a definitive compilation, chrome dawns, is released, the Herald presents an exclusive extract from Neil Cooper’s accompanying essay, in which the group’s Davy Henderson talks about the band’s early days.
“Good evening. We’re from the 20th century…”
The life of Fire Engines as a band might have been over before it had barely begun, but the all too brief existence of Edinburgh’s punk sired provocateurs blazed with incident and colour. ‘Boredom or Fire Engines – You Cannot Have Both’ went the legend. The small and imperfectly formed back catalogue they left in their wake sounded like they had crawled out of a cellar and come blinking into the inner city light in a parallel universe somewhere between Leith Walk and C.B.G.B. Boredom wasn’t an option.
Fire Engines were in the thick of Edinburgh’s fertile post punk scene. Formed by the teenage quartet of vocalist and guitarist Davy Henderson, guitarist Murray Slade, bass player Graham Main and drummer Russell Burn, the band grew out of The Dirty Reds, featuring Tam Dean Burn – Russell’s big brother – on vocals. Once Tam opted to pursue an acting career, Fire Engines came kicking and screaming into the world with a sense of urgency that demanded attention.
Edinburgh’s incestuous inter-band family tree also included crossovers with The Flowers and Boots for Dancing, both of whom released singles on the Pop: Aural label, founded by Bob Last and Hilary Morrison following their previous adventures with the Fast Product imprint. After their debut single – ‘Get Up and Use Me’ / ‘Everything’s Roses’ – came out on the Codex Communications label – Fire Engines too found a home with Pop: Aural.
Beyond ‘Get Up and Use Me’, the beautiful if slightly scrappy corpse they left behind amounted to one 7” single, a high concept mini album, and a final 7” with ideas above its station enough to see it also released as a 12”.
The 7” inch – ‘Candyskin’ / ‘Meat Whiplash’ – is now regarded as a classic; the mini album – Lubricate Your Living Room – as a wilfully perverse objet d’art; and the 12” – ‘Big Gold Dream’ – best remembered by some for its sleeve.
If Fire Engines had had their way, they wouldn’t have released records at all. As it turned out, pretty much everything they did struck gold. For a young band living in each other’s pockets, and fizzing with energy and ideas, it was bliss.
“It was a golden, golden time,” says Henderson. “We were like this autonomous entity orbiting. It was so beautiful to be alive and be within that and be free. There were no restrictions. There was no backlog. There was no back data. There was no back-story. There was nothing, just what was there in the now, and it was beautiful.
“At that point we were thinking about not recording at all, and just being a live entity. If we'd done that, it would have been really exciting. The idea of putting out a record, that was just so alien. You would never have thought that you could have put a record out at all. But then somebody came up to us in the toilet in Valentino’s, and in the nicest possible way says, do you want to put a record out. We shook hands. Nothing else.”
The result saw Fire Engines recorded their entire set twice. Total cost, £46.
“We spent a whole day in a bungalow that was a studio in a suburban street in Fife,” Henderson remembers. “It was just a bungalow, then you went in and the whole place was a studio. The living room had a mixing desk. It was just bizarre, but it really fitted the whole thing.
“It was on a Saturday, and it was our first experience of recording, really. It was the first time I really heard my voice. I hated it. It was like, God! Is that it? But you weren't really aware of what you were doing at that point. You just wanted to do it. You wanted to make a sound, but you didn't know what it was going to be. And especially something like ‘Get Up and Use Me’ and ‘Everything’s Roses’.The way it was recorded, or the way it came out, it was like, wow, that sounds like something.”
Lyrically, Fire Engines songs were equally instinctive.
“For ages I never had a place to stay, and I used to hang about,” Henderson recalls. “I always got places to stay at night-time with pals, but I used to stroll about Edinburgh. I would go into Virgin Records and see Angus Groovy, who worked there with Dave Carson from Boots for Dancing, and just sit and listen to records, and walk about.
“For some reason, in my head - there's a place called Meuse Lane. If you flip that, it’s ‘use me’. And it’s like, ‘Get Up and Use Me’, because I was just walking about doing f*** all. I’d chosen to leave my job when I left home, so it comes from that time. ‘What am I doing? Get up and use me.’ Teenage poetry.”
When ‘Get Up and Use Me’ was released, as far as the then influential music press was concerned, the record was a hit.
“That was a disaster,” Henderson says now. “That's the worst thing that's ever happened to us. After that we felt we didn't need to try, because right away it was like you were the bee's knees. It was like, oh, right, that's all you have to do? F*****’ hell, John Peel’s playing it. It was unbelievable! Being on the radio, on something that we listened to religiously, every night, taping sessions and stuff like that, to actually get played on it, it was mind-blowingly explosive. It was unimaginable. It's not like now. You forget that there was just three TV stations, and just local radio and Radio 1, 2, 3 and 4. It was a massive, massive thing.
“We were in a flat that was a section of this massive old house, and I can totally remember it coming on John Peel. I could not believe it. ‘He’s just said our name, and then played ‘Get Up and Use Me’!’ It was jaw dropping. It was like a frozen moment. It was really incredibly important.”
chrome dawns by Fire Engines is released on Cherry Red Records on August 30th.
The Herald, September 6th 2024. An edited extract from 'Fire Engines or Boredom - You Cannot Have Both' - The Art of Splitting Together, the full length version of which can be found in the CD booklet for chrome dawns.
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