Low key, but lovely, tribute from Joolz Denby to Chris Rea:
It was 1985. New Model Army appears on the BBC’s flagship pop music show, Top Of The Pops with the charting song ‘No Rest’, an event so unlikely as to be unbelievable yet it’s true. As the band - or rather myself and Justin Sullivan the songwriter and front man, were actively campaigning against the glamorisation of heroin by the music and fashion media - ‘heroin chic’ - we had created the slogan ‘Only Stupid Bastards Use Heroin’ in an attempt to counteract this propaganda and put younger people off the drug which was then rife. Naive, perhaps. But we had spoken to addicts and all of them to a person said they wished someone had at least tried to stop them and agreed with the slogan. Surely TOTP would be the perfect opportunity to push against the music establishment in this regard. For days I laboured hand painting four Tshirts with the design and slogan, no digital print-on-demand online T-shirts in those days. We went to London and encountered every possible resistance and snobbery the BBC could muster which trust me, was considerable. The band played live - unheard of. They didn’t want go-go dancers behind them onstage - unheard of. The T-shirt caused absolute horror and fury amongst the producers to the extent they were refusing to allow it anywhere near a camera. My solution was to duct tape across the slogan then as the day progressed, snip it narrower and narrower with my nail scissors banking on the BBC being too dim and too convinced of their absolute power over a jumped up bunch of Post Punks to register it until it was too late, and bingo. They never noticed.
But successful as it was for the band, it was an exhausting and horrible day for me. The stress of suddenly being ‘to blame’ for the T-shirt from certain band members, the utter contempt and distain shown me by the BBC who obviously considered me, as so many conservative men did and still do view Alternative women, as a repugnant freak, all got a bit much. I left the dressing room and sat in the floor outside in the corridor silently crying and trying not to smudge my eye makeup. As I sat huffing and sniffling a man approached, speaking with a strong Geordie accent, asking me with genuine concern if I was alright. I found my voice and replied in a rather wobbly tone I was, but it was just all a bit much and not what I’d dreamed it would be. Ah, he said, yeah, I get that, but remember, you’re the artiste, you have the power, they can never force you to play and they need you - chin up, give ‘em Hell, eh?
He was so kind, so thoughtful and his voice, husky and low, was so beautiful and reassuring after all that had happened. Most men within the music industry were awful to me but here was a thoroughly decent, compassionate man taking time to reassure a stranger, and a stranger most men regarded as trash. I have never, ever forgotten the simple, genuine kindness Chris Rea showed me on that day and it has remained in my heart as a treasured memory ever since. RIP.
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