My Pop Life #150 : Love Ain’t Just A Word – Rudimental

Love Ain’t Just A Word   –   Rudimental

And just like the air, you can’t see it there
But we know we need it

In the week that George Martin died it’s right to be talking about love.   As the expert hand that guided The Beatles to express their musical fantasies, memories and experiments over a nine-year period, he was in effect the fifth Beatle.  You only need to listen to Yesterday, Eleanor Rigby, Strawberry Fields Forever or Something to hear George’s graceful contributions.  And famously, Paul McCartney, when looking back at his own legacy as a Beatle, said :

“I’m really glad that most of our songs were about love, peace and understanding”

It has been suggested that Lennon’s “Nowhere Man” (1965) was the first Beatles song which wasn’t about love, but some of them were about dancing…and of course George Martin also produced many other great pieces, and was also a giant of the comedy song (see My Pop Life #35).

Since Jenny and I have chosen to live in New York City, any feelings of homesickness are entirely self-imposed.  But I have realised that there is a simple cure for the isolation of living in another continent with new friends.  Go home for a week.   When Charles Randolph-Wright (see My Pop Life #134) announced that Motown The Musical was opening in London on March 8th 2016 I promised that I would be there to support him.  That is for another blog.  But I built a week of love around that date – an Uncle returns, and catches up with all the next generation that he missed because he didn’t spend Christmas in England.  I saw my mum and my sister and her three before Christmas.  So this time it was the turn of the other side of the family.  And on the day I landed at Heathrow on Thursday March 3rd, Rudimental are playing at the O2.

RUDIMENTAL : Piers Aggers, Amir Amor, Leon Rolle, Kesi Dryden

Rudimental are three-quarters Hackney, and one-quarter Camden Town.  Piers Aggett, Kesi Dryden and Leon Rolle all grew up on the same street and went to the same school in Hackney.  Arsenal fans to a man.  Amir Amor came to the UK from Iran as a youngster and after winning a Princes Trust songwriting competition his musical proclivities led him to Tribal Tree, a community-based studio in Chalk Farm Road where he hooked up with Plan B for a beats LP Paint It Blacker : The Bootleg Album.  Next he convinces Nick Worthington to back a studio called Major Toms where Amor produces the likes of Sam Smith, MNEK, Charlie XCX and Angel Haze, and joins forces with Black Butter Records, which includes a band called Rudimental on their roster.  A track called Feel The Love is heard and signed by Asylum Records, produced by Amor and the two forces became Rudimental the band as we know them today.  Four men with a strong London identity who write, produce, run the label, and use guest vocalists and session singers for their records and live tour.  Their first LP Home was released in 2012 and they have gone on to conquer the world.

Rudimental’s 1st album ‘Home’

Feel The Love featured John Newman on lead vocals and gave Asylum their first number one hit single ever.  It was so successful that Newman was signed as a solo artist, as was Ella Eyre, another Rudimental album guest vocalist.  My nephew Thomas Jules, who has been around the grime scene for over a decade and the music scene for 20 years was asked to front the band’s live shows, a job he has been fulfilling for the last two plus years.  As a result I have seen Rudimental live a number of times, at Finsbury Park supporting a reformed Stone Roses, in New York City at Madison Square Garden on New Year’s Eve 2014, and now at the O2.

I got there early at Thomas’ suggestion.  Dear Scarlett, his partner, had a terrific throat and chest lurgy and didn’t accompany me.  I parked outside at 6pm.  The place was already buzzing, but guest list wouldn’t open until 6.30pm I was told.  they eventually opened, on a cold night, at 7pm.  And nothing happened.  Tom was in text contact and after a further 20 minutes of not a single person being sorted he came to get me, accompanied by his brother Jordan, now in dance college in Essex, for many years Jenny and my summer son, now 20 years old.  Tom walked us back to the Rudimental dressing room where Piers and Leon greeted us – I’d met them before.  I’m Uncle Ralph around these parts.   I met old friends and new from the team including trumpet player Mark Crown, drummer Beanie Bhebhe and saxophonist Taurean Antoine-Chagar, and Anne-Marie who until very recently sang back-up with Tom  in the band.  Now she’s on the bill as support and her and Tom have spent 18 months writing songs together for Anne Marie is signed to Black Butter, and an LP is imminent.   The tour manager is notable by his absence and only he can give me a pass, so in effect I am now trapped in the dressing room – I can’t even get into the auditorium to see Anne-Marie’s set.

Jordan, Unx, Tom, Dee, Piers

Tom opens his case – Rudimental are in Nottingham the following night, but driving straight down to Bournemouth after the O2 for a DJ slot in a club down there.  His big case is going to Notts, his small case to the south coast. The rigours of touring.  On the top of the large case is a Tottenham Hotspur shirt.  “I’ll wear this tonight”  Tom announces to the assembly, attracting jeers and threats, bantz and actual instruction from Leon that No, he will not.   It’s the North London derby on Saturday lunchtime, Spurs are 2nd, Arsenal 3rd, behind Leicester City (!)  Then Dee, Jenny’s older sister and Tom’s Mum gets in.  She looks great and we poses for pictures.  Tom is still trying to get me a pass.  Other friends & family are coming and going all the time – I am introduced to Leon’s mum, technicians and DJ Max.  Brother Jamie is outside getting tickets – and now he’s got them.  But not mine.   I’m Uncle Ralph and I’m already in after all…  At this point the tour manager arrives and I’m finally given a triple A pass to come and go as I please, although now I’m just going to go out to find Jamie and the rest, and come back and see the show.  After the show Tom and gang are riding straight to Bournemouth so there’s no after-gig activity.

Jordan, Kimberley, Louisa

Jordan, Dee and I walk out to Chiquitos and find Jamie and Claudette (his long-term partner), Jenny’s sister Mandy and Dipam and our niece Kimberley with her friend Louisa.  The others – Dominique and David and Courtnie are still en route and since Rudimental are due onstage in 15 minutes we abandon the concept of a full gang and go in .

Jamie and I

The O2 is a pretty giant venue.  The last time I was here was to see Stevie Wonder in 2008, we were in the 15th row and I was very very sick with a virus I’d caught in China.  I could scarcely stand up.  It was an amazing night.  Tonight the seats are only around the sides and up – the entire floor area is standing room only.  That means there are at least 16,000 people in here.  The stage is a football pitch away.   We decide to stay at the back rather than elbow through the sweaty mob.  Triple-A passes only get you so far – I could be onstage but I need to be with my family.  So Dee, Jamie, Claudette, Jordan, Kimberley, Louisa, Mandy, Dipam and I stood and watched Thomas, our uncle, son, brother, nephew, our FAM,  sing his heart out for the lads.

Tom, Anne-Marie, Bridgette

He swapped lead vocals with Will Heard and Bridgette Amofah, and they saved Feel The Love for the end, a song Tom has sung live now hundreds of times, a massive crowdpleaser where the call-and-response vocal gets the whole O2 singing along.   The visuals were still excellent even at the back.  The atmosphere was great.  The band are hot, honed from months and years on the road together.   Highlights were largely the first LP songs – Waiting All Night in particular, Spoons, Right Here, but some of the new songs from the new Rudimental LP We The Generation really stand out, in particular the Ed Sheeran collaboration Bloodstream and the songs Rumour Mill & Love Ain’t Just A Word, when Anne Marie comes onstage to join first Will, then Tom on vocals.

Love Ain’t Just A Word was written by Anne Marie and Tom for her new album, but the band liked it so much they put it on their new LP, and took a share of the publishing too.   I guess it’s ‘Drum & Bass’.   It’s a big step for Tom, and his publishing deal is up for grabs shortly, so it improves his negotiating position, especially if it’s a single.   The song is an admission of vulnerability and an acknowledgement of the power of love to heal, and it features a rap break by grime lord Dizzee Rascal.  The song’s visual component is backed with neon signs on the massive screens behind the band.  The pride that runs through our little gang of fam at the back is palpable.  Everyone is holding up the phone to take a picture of the stage.  And of each other.  Sixteen thousand people bopping to a song that Tom wrote.  Another song about love.  We can’t have too many of those can we ?

Chantelle, David, Unx, Dee, Dom, Courtnie, Dawn, Mandy, Dipam, Louisa, Kim

After the show we decamp back to Chiquitos and sit outside beneath the glowing heaters and umbrellas and the clan gathers.  Dominique and David hadn’t arrived with sister Courtnie until 40 minutes from the end of the show, and they’d sat upstairs.   Mollie’s kids.  Mollie’s friend Dawn was there with her daughter Chantelle and her son Corey in a serious disability chair.  Corey had a car accident about a month after Jenny and I flipped our Jeep outside Arundel but he wasn’t so lucky and had spinal and head injuries which have left him dependent on other people and his chair.  Tom had taken them round the O2 before the show, he was exhausted and was taken home before we’d all fully gathered, so he’s not in the picture.  All of Tom’s people were though – mum Dee, younger brothers Jamie (with Claudette) and Jordan.

some people bombing our picture

There’s a couple of pictures of the gang, swelled with pride at family achievement.  Lucy and Jenny are missing, Mollie and Pete too, but three of their kids are there : Dom, Kim and Courtnie.  Courtnie is next to me – second youngest, now at University studying criminology.  Next to her is Dom with David – they have two beautiful kids Tia and Kian who are bright as buttons and hugely entertaining.  Will they join the BIZ too ??  Stunning sister Kimberley is central in the pic above, but she is front right in the top pic – my god-daughter and an architecture graduate looking for a position.  A few days later I took her to the opening night of Motown The Musical in the West End – for another blog.   Youngest brother Robert (See My Pop Life #122) was working.  So was Jenny’s brother Jon.   Mandy – opposite me at the table – is Jenny’s sister, aka Natasha, Bad, Reggie or Ginelle.  She is my sister, and graduated in Law and now works in Compliance in the City of London.     Not everyone could manage the gig but it was a pretty good turnout.  Just happened to co-incide with my week in England.  Lucky me.  I miss all of these people and hadn’t seen some of them for well over two years.  And you know how kids shoot up.  I remember when they were born – suddenly they’re adults!!  They embody all our dreams.  And I love them all.  It’s unconditional love and it is reciprocated.  The best feeling in the world.

2nd LP ‘We The Generation’

live DJ set in Dubai (ie not live) :

My Pop Life #129 : Get Close To Me – Thomas Jules

Get Close To Me   –   Thomas Jules

I hope you don’t mind I’m gonna speak my mind

Not good at sensitivity but I’m the sensitive kind

A bit A.D.D. don’t interrupt me and thank you so much

Don’t get me wrong I know you ain’t blind

Ain’t gonna patronise

but it’s my duty as a mate to make you draw the line

Now would you hear me like Oprah Winfrey or Jeremy Kyle ?

Just wanna make you smile…

 I’ve been watching over my nephew Thomas Jules since he was 7 years old or thereabouts.  I had just started going out with his Aunty Jenny and when I visited the family home in Wembley there was this cheeky bright-eyed sweetheart to greet me alongside Jen’s sisters Dee (his mother), Mollie, Natasha and Lucy and her brother Jon as well as her amazing parents Esther and Thomas.  A very close-knit loving family group – in great contrast to my dysfunctional scattered clan, they were welcoming and kind and polite and gentle.

confident Thomas aged 7  with friend Danny

And they still are.  Except that now we all love each other.  Jenny and I used to look after Thomas particularly on summer holidays when we lived in Archway Road in the late 1980s/90s and he would visit Jackson’s Lane Summer School which was all singing, dancing, acting, performing – right up his street, and literally right up ours, about 400 yards in fact.   As the performing side of the family I’d like to think we gave him a little confidence and a few tricks to go with his natural talent and gifts, which are many and legion.  Of course Jenny’s sister Lucy Jules (who has sung with  Bryan Ferry, George Michael, Kylie, Sam Smith and David Gilmour) represents the musical side of the family and has obviously had a huge influence on the young man both in terms of techniques, voice protection and business advice, along with Uncle Jon who has been a DJ since he was a teenager, was also in a band Undercover and who has advised Tom consistently.

Tom in 3rd Edge around 2002

Thomas was signed when he was 14 years old, had a hit single in 1997 with That Kinda Guy which was on the Bean film soundtrack, formed garage-rap-pop-boy-band 3rd Edge on Parlaphone around the millenium and had several hit singles and TOTP appearances from 2002-3 before breaking out to write and sing with a huge variety of singers and rappers in the noughties such as Wiley, Mystro, Shandra D, 2Play (another hit single with a cover of Careless Whisper) Mark Radford, Crookers and Scorcher;  singing back-up with diverse acts like Lulu and Professor Green before settling in as lead vocalist with UK Dance act Rudimental where he was for over two years.

 I’m also happy to report that he co-wrote a song on the 2nd Rudimental LP We The Generation called Love Ain’t Just A Word (see My Pop Life #149), and had his another co-write released : Do It Right by Anne-Marie – his co-singer in Rudimental.  Thomas has always worked hard at his craft both as a singer and top-line writer, and in a shark-infested industry has remained a decent guy who knows a lot of people, has good representation and has a lot of respect from his peers, who include Ed Sheeran, Disclosure, Jessie J, Wiley, Dizzee Rascal and many many others.

When Jenny and I moved down to Brighton in 1996/7 we knew no one in the town.  Shortly thereafter Jenny’s schoolfriend Millie moved down from London, then when Thomas outgrew his family home in Harlow we offered him a bedroom in our house.  He lived there for two years or so, met his girlfriend and babymother Scarlett on August 9th 2005 whereupon within a year she had moved in too.

 

Thomas and Scarlett

We were a happy house but eventually they wanted their own space and lived first in St George’s Road (down the hill), then Waterloo Street on the Hove border and now reside in Portslade with their gorgeous funny beautiful daughter Skye.

Skye Phoenix Jules-Pugh

I wrote about Thomas and I in My Pop Life #57 and explained that I am a 57 mystic or UNX.  In Loco Paternis.  We are close.   Whenever I see Tom the first thing he does is pull out a device and play me the new demo he’s just cut that day with so-and-so.  I love this part of the relationship.  In 2009 Tom decided to take a pass at a Robert Smith song called Close To Me which was a hit single for The Cure in 1985.  The resulting song, called Get Close To Me was a re-imagining – an r&b-flavoured pop/garage tune.  I was never a huge fan of the Cure but I like Tom’s playful intimacy in the verses, and hook-line for the chorus.  Tom’s then-manager Jake wanted a video to accompany it.  I volunteered to shoot it on my handy 3-chip DV Camera which was loaned out to almost every theatre company, band and political group in Brighton over the 18 years that I lived there.  We were on the beach, the pier, drove round the Downs, took the fabulous Staffordshire Terrier Cassie into a laundrette on St George’s Road, mucked about in the twittens in The Lanes and with the graff kids at Black Rock and the end result is the video you can see below.  Some local friends and fam sneak in towards the end – I’ll mention Kerry, Louie Cresswell, Maddy McNicholas, Tanisha Flynn-Pugh, Scarlett and probably her sister Simone but the others will have to shout out below because a) I can’t see them, b) I can’t remember, and c) the video is a wee bit downgraded.  It’s the best one I’ve got I’m afraid.   It’s very much Brighton 2009.  Good times.

Thomas ripping it up live with Rudimental

Not having children ourselves means that all of our nephews nieces and god-children (quite a few) and of course our cats(!) are all very special to us.  I have always felt that the very worst part of parenting a child must be that moment when she leaves home to make a new home.  And you are left waiting for phone calls, text messages and emails.  After 20 years or so of sharing space, opinions, jokes, food, and small talk suddenly there is silence.  I think it must be unbearable.  But everyone bears it.  It’s natural, apparently.  I’m not so sure.  I do know that moving to New York has had serious implications for my relationships with my little ones (most of whom are now grown up big people in their twenties).  They feel further away from me.  This means I am still in touch with reality because they actually are further away from me.  Geography, the most real of all.  This morning at 6am Jenny’s phone rang downstairs and to my inchoate sleeping anger she got up and went down the spiral stairs to answer it.  It was Thomas, on tour with Rudimental in Australia, wanting to talk to someone because Nanny Bet had her funeral yesterday in Great Yarmouth (see My Pop Life #122) and Tom thought he’d had a ‘bad show’ in Melbourne and felt isolated and far away.  He is far away !!  Aunty Jenny managed to make him laugh and eventually she came back to bed.  My anger was mainly protective of her sleep because she has two shows today and two more tomorrow (Henry IV, all-women) and she gets very tired on the weekends.  But her selfless good fairy quality made her rise and twinkle, for she knew deep in her genius bones that someone needed her love.  She is a good Aunty.  Aunx perhaps.   I didn’t get up and answer the phone, but I did write a blog later.   Miss you Tom, and love you very much.

Skye, Thomas, Jackson, Cassie

In the clip beneath the “official video” Tom and Ed Sheeran  (his long time friend and brer) play an acoustic version of Get Close To Me.  Some people prefer it, but :  it doesn’t have Cassie…

Acoustic version with Ed Sheeran accompanying :