Rupert's guest post is an interview with musician Nick Battle that was undertaken as part of his research on christian rock. This research resulted in several interviews, reviews and articles that were published in Punk & Post-Punk journal, an academic publication, as well as feeding into a piece for Ship of Fools. Nick Battle has had a long and varied career in the music business, including spells in significant Post-Punk christian rock bands such as After The Fire (ATF) and Writz. Rupert's interview with Nick explores the moment when Contemporary Christian Music (CCM) and mainstream rock diverged, and bands like ATF and Writz headed into the latter, perhaps paving the way for U2 and others writing about faith and doubt. Rupert's work has also included writing about Larry Norman, Steve Scott and Revolutionary Army of the Infant Jesus.
Rupert Loydell is the editor of Stride magazine, contributing editor to International Times and a writer and abstract artist. He has many books of poetry and several collaborative publications in print, and has edited anthologies for Shearsman, KFS and Salt. His critical writing has appeared in Punk & Post-Punk (which he is on the editorial board of), Journal of Writing and Creative Practice, New Writing, English, Text, Axon, Short Fiction in Theory and Practice, Musicology Research, Revenant, The Quint: an interdisciplinary journal from the north and Journal of Visual Art Practice. He has also contributed chapters to Brian Eno. Oblique Music (Bloomsbury, 2016), Critical Essays on Twin Peaks: The Return (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), Music in Twin Peaks: Listen to the Sounds (Routledge, 2021) and Bodies, Noise and Power in Industrial Music (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022).
This short series will add to the material about Jesus Rock, CCM and spirituality in rock music which has been published here previously. See the first post in this series for a listing of previous posts on these themes - click here.
The only army who would shoot their own soldiers: An interview with Nick Battle
Nick Battle has been called a 'music industry mogul', having enjoyed a long and varied career in the music industry. He was in seventies rock bands After The Fire and Writz, worked at IRS records in the eighties as an A&R man, and was a record plugger from 1988-1993 with his clients including George Benson, Sir Cliff Richard, Ronnie Wood, Take That, Clannad, and Paul Hardcastle among many others.
In 1993 he helped start the music publisher Windswept Pacific Music Ltd and introduced Simon Fuller (his former client) and the Spice Girls to the company. At the height of the company's success they enjoyed 44 top 40 hits in one year with a team of just two creative staff.
He has had his songs recorded by the actress Jane Horrocks, Sir Cliff Richard and Phixx, has written with Gary Barlow, Tony Swain, Chris Eaton and David Grant, and as an Executive Producer in the noughties he made records with Russell Watson, Michael Ball (four albums) the Honeyriders and Engelbert Humperdinck. Michael and Engelbert also recorded Nick’s songs. He has also served on the Ivor Novello Awards committee as well as the MPA Pop Publishers committee.
Between 1993 and 2003 his first wife fought a ten year battle with cancer and this led to him founding the Gravel Road Trust, a registered charity for carers and patients dealing with long term illness and also the bereaved.
In 2008 he wrote his autobiography, Big Boys Don’t Cry and subsequently two more books. He is regularly featured on BBC local radio and has featured on The Jeremy Vine Show on Radio 2 talking about music, sex and celebrity. He has his own radio show, Men @ Work, on Premier Radio and currently runs a small music publishing company. He also manages the record producer Kipper, as well as the actress Elizabeth McGovern’s band, Sadie and The Hotheads.
I was interested in talking to Nick Battle because of his longevity in the music business, which might offer a different perspective on some of the Christian bands involved in punk and post-punk, and on how music has changed generally. Also because he has described himself as 'a shop-soiled Christian' and isn't afraid to speak his mind. I'd originally planned to follow up my previous articles on Christian music (Loydell 2019a, 2019b, 2021) with a piece focussed on the band After the Fire, but technical issues meant Battle's was the only interview completed.
After the Fire were formed by keyboard player Peter Banks in 1971. They were a trio from 1971-1972 and 1973-73 (when Andy Piercy, lead singer and guitarist joined), and a quartet from 1975-1977. Nick Battle (bass) and Ivor Twidell (drums) joined Banks and Piercy in 1977. This line-up released a prog rock album, Signs of Change in 1978, on their own label, and – following the exit of Battle – re-emerged playing punchy new wave songs as a short-lived trio (with Piercy now on doubleneck bass/guitar) before John Russell joined on guitar. Piercy continued on bass and the quartet signed to CBS, releasing a further three albums in 1979, 1980 and 1982 before disbanding.
Battle joined Writz, an arty postpunk pop band fronted by Bev Sage and Steve Fairnie, who recorded an album for Electric (1979), before he moved in to production, A & R, promotion and management. I started the interview by returning to those 1970s bands.
Rupert Loydell: Can you tell me how you ended up in After the Fire and then Writz? I have no knowledge of your previous musical engagements!
Nick Battle: I’d been to Greenbelt1 in 1976 as a punter and had weaved backstage with Pete ‘Willie’ Williams and met Bryn Haworth and he became my pen pal and a real source of encouragement. When Robin Childs left After The Fire it was in Sounds, a music paper of the time. I wrote to the band, sent a demo and a photo of me playing a gold top Antoria Les Paul and got the audition and subsequently the job. Within a relatively short space of time with the band I wanted to play pop songs and at the time Andy & Pete didn’t quite get it. I was hopelessly immature and a lot younger and impatient for success. I knew prog rock as it was then was over, and I was courted by Fish Co who became Writz and hooked up with them. They were a colourful group of misfits like myself and we became a pop group with a dash of punk.
Of course if I’d known what great pop songs Andy & Pete could write… Speaking of which I’d have to say ‘One Rule For You’ (After the Fire, 1979) is my absolute favourite. And as for Fairnie & Rowles and Fish Co. I loved, ‘Across The Table’ from the album, Beneath The Laughter (Fish Co., 1978).
RL: In either of those groups did you feel part of a group of likeminded bands who were somehow breaking away from the Christian subculture? I mean we’re used to U2 and others talking about spirituality, faith & doubt, politics and belief these days, but I remember a big backlash against After the Fire in the early days: reviewers, even supportive ones like John Gill, felt it necessary to make excuses for your beliefs, whilst there were always DJs like the one at The Marquee happy to play lots of Black Sabbath and other [at least seemingly] anti-Christian songs before you came on.
NB: So when I was with ATF at times you could feel a real sense of spiritual awareness when performing, especially on songs like, ‘Now That I’ve Found’ (on After the Fire, 1978), there was a point in the song when you became aware of something bigger than you being present. I was a very young just 19 and very open and the feeling of aligning with this power and playing… well I felt like I was exactly in synchronicity with this force.
RL: Writz had a very different attitude to After the Fire, more fun and flamboyant than ATF, less rock and more art – would that be a fair comment?
NB: Yes. We were colourful, party people who loved great pop music. Especially Blondie & my pal Steve Allen’s band Deaf School and Ian Dury & The Blockheads. Fairnie brought his whole art school take on things to the band.
RL: What did you make of the vitriol aimed at Fairnie when he used to talk about wanting to entertain and play music, not preach; his interview in Ship of Fools (1979), which was a fairly liberal Christian magazine, for instance, was a bit tense round the edges.
NB: It’s such a long time ago and by todays standards laughable. I will say this though, some of us were on a collision course… it doesn’t merit discussing. At the time it felt like Christians were the only army who would shoot their own soldiers. They did it out of fear without any understanding. When they did it hurt us all. In different ways. The late and lovely John Pac from Parchment was one of the few supportive voices in the wilderness.
RL: And what was your take on the Christian subculture at the time? There clearly wasn’t enough momentum or big enough marketplace for it to be like CCM (Contemporary Christian Music) in America, so what was it about?
NB: I didn’t care about it. I simply wanted to make music. I have always disliked all the nonsense and small-minded thinking. You don’t talk about Bill Gates operating in a Christian subculture yet he along with his wife Melinda have done more than most to try and make this earth a better place in which to live. I seem to remember someone else trying to do that a few thousand years ago.
RL: Bev Sage has talked about how devastating the break up of Writz and then Famous Names was for them, even though The Technos (and variations thereof) arose from the ashes. (Loydell, 2019b) What’s your take on it looking back.
NB: You know I wrote about this in my autobiography, Big Boys Don't Cry, back in 2007. For my part I had nothing left to give. I wasn’t singing or writing songs for the band, something which I’ve done ok with since, and I had a pretty rampant ego. There was no money, I was homeless and I left and went back home to Sheffield.
RL: I think the next time I saw you was at a Shock gig in London, where they were doing a photoshoot before the evening concert. Am I right in thinking you moved into A&R and management? How was that?
NB: I ended up tour managing Shock a lovely bunch of people that I’d met when Fairnie got me to dress up as a bear at the Famous Names show at The Venue in London. That was the night I was nearly taken out by two lady female wrestlers. Life with Fairnie was never dull!
RL: You also released some solo music at the time?
NB: Through the New Romantic Scene I met Richard Burgess and John L.Walters from Landscape. Both were really encouraging and John produced two tracks for me ‘Big Boys Don’t Cry’ (which is on youtube and I now think is visually comedy gold) and another I’d co-written called ‘On My Own Again’ with my pal Karel Fialka who I would later sign to Miles Copeland’s IRS Records and have a Top 10 hit with. Incidentally, the tracks feature Annie McCaig and Mo McCafferty as she was then (now Mo Turner) on backing vocals from Nutshell before they became Network 3 and signed to EMI.
RL: From the outside of the music biz it’s hard to tell whether record companies respond to what’s happening around them in the music scene, or actually try and mould bands into current trends (which may, of course, have evolved more naturally). I’m thinking of the way After the Fire ended up looking somewhat New Romantic, or the way Landscape reinvented themselves from jazz-rock into leather-clad new romantic funksters. Shock and The Technos were part of the slippage from post-punk to New Romantic weren’t they?
NB: If you’re smart you see a wave coming and catch it. Look at Geldof and The Boomtown Rats, Adam Ant, and The Police. Steve and Bev were always very aware of trends and stuff going on around them. When they came to me with the demo of ‘Falling In Love Again’ I was the in-house producer along with my pal Simon Humphrey at a tiny record company in Finchley. We went in and replicated exactly what Steve & Bev had done with Dave Hewson on the demo: he is an incredible arranger, and it was their most successful record. (Techno Twins, 1981) However no one ever saw a penny from it. Least of all Steve & Bev who had signed to the label. We had made other records like the Sporting Life album ( 1981) and also an album of poetry with Steve Turner but we never saw any money for those either.
We would get paid £50 per track as an advance to play and produce and if we wrote a song at all we had to assign that for Life Of Copyright for free and we’d end up with 15-20 pence in the pound each, once everybody had taken their slice. I have a record at home Simon Humphrey and I co-wrote and they haven’t even bothered to list us as the writers! And I sang backing vocals on it as well! Let’s just say it was a steep learning curve for us all. It's something which I have never repeated since.
RL: Nowadays, we’re all used to CD reissue campaigns: definitive, remastered, reimagined, repackaged etc, but there was a time when music seemed more linear, a musical genre or movement was abandoned as a new one emerged. I am aware that’s a simplification, and ignores the whole issue of MP3s and digital dissemination, not to mention ideas of postmodernism, where everything happens all the time, but is it even possible for anyone to know what’s going on know? Does it even matter?
NB: It doesn’t matter anymore. When I was kid we would invest in an artist and carry their album round with us as a symbol of cool. The digital age has destroyed that, now it’s all about that one song people will largely stream, even downloads are disappearing.
RL: It's been suggested that music superstars were a product of the 20th Century, and that the likes of Kylie, U2 and Madonna were the last of the megastars. Nowadays people perhaps have a few hit singles (with quite low sales compared to a few decades ago) and then fade away. Meanwhile, other bands hold down day jobs and quite happily home-record on their computers and distribute their music online. Is the music industry going to survive? Is it adapting fast enough?
NB: It has never adapted fast enough. Always slow, cumbersome, and arrogant. The gatekeepers of the music industry didn’t see the digital tsunami heading their way. What they failed to understand is that if they didn’t protect the artist and their art there would be nothing of any substance left. Which is for the most part what we’re left with. The upside though, is that now it’s a little like the 1960s, when new record labels sprang up like Island, A&M , Chrysalis: there will be a way forward eventually but it’s unlikely to happen for my generation of old farts!
RL: Will we ever see the likes of punk and post-punk again? Were they as life-changing as is sometimes suggested?
NB: No they weren’t. The only movement of any substance was from the Woodstock generation. They may have been stoned out of their gourd half the time but they espoused peace and love. Two things we see readily identified in the four gospels.
RL: Is music more disposable now? MP3s for a week, delete and move on… Perhaps other art forms, or digital games, have replaced music?
NB: Yes, gaming is the new rock and roll, but my son still loves to play the piano. He’s eleven and his favourite artists are The Beatles, Elton John & Queen.
I hope it will swing back. There’s always hope and a rich musical treasure chest for subsequent generations to dive into.
RL: Nowadays, spirituality, doubt and belief, are everywhere in song lyrics, yet Christianity is perhaps the least cool religion or belief system in contemporary music. Why do you think that is?
NB: It’s never been cool to be a Christian. I don’t why and I don’t give a toss. If faith was about being cool then as the song says, ‘Heaven Help Us All’.
RL: Do you think ATF and Writz helped pave the way for the likes of U2 to openly discuss faith issues in pop or rock music? Or was it going to happen anyway? What’s your take on the idea of a hidden history to be told, a subculture that emerged in the 1960s, had it’s moment and then stopped because the UK couldn’t support it. I guess some survivors moved to the States or into church music, but thankfully there’s no bands touring church halls as far as I can see!
NB: Not really. U2 were always going to be different. They came to see us as Writz at the Marquee by the way and I hear were not that impressed. I saw them very early on at Hemel Hempstead with The Comsat Angels and even then Bono had this authority about him.
A fight broke out in the crowd. The band stopped and Bono said something like this: ‘You ! You and your like are not welcome here. Those of you around him gently ease him out.’ To the best of my recollection that’s what happened and then the band kicked in exactly where they’d left off.
It was awesome but also like a God thing. Shit happened but it was dealt with firmly and no one else got hurt. Imagine if Jagger had succeeded like that at Altamont?
You see where music is at its best is with a sense of provenance. We operate at our best not when we think we’re great but where there is genuine humility and a desire to have the best fun imaginable. And when we are doing what we have been created to do well there is nothing better. It is the most fun you can have with your clothes on.
RL: Thanks for your time!
NB: A pleasure Rupert! I think a pint is in order…
NOTE
1. ‘Greenbelt is a festival of arts, faith and justice. The best you’ve never heard of. Greenbelt saw its first edition way back in 1974 and has hosted its annual festival every single year since’ (Greenbelt website 2019).
REFERENCES
After The Fire (1978), Signs of Change, vinyl album, London: Rapid Records.
—— (1979), 'One Rule For You', 7" single, London: CBS.
—— (1979), Laser Love, vinyl album, London: CBS.
—— (1980), 80-f, vinyl album, London: CBS.
—— (1982), Batteries Not Included, vinyl album, London: CBS.
Battle, Nick (1982), 'Big Boys Don't Cry', promo song and video, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0TUnetFN3M Accessed 28 Aug 2021. (Also collected on Various Artists (1983), Curious Collection, vinyl album, London: Street Tunes)
Battle, Nick (2007), Big Boys Don't Cry: The Autobiography of Nick Battle, Milton Keynes: Authentic Media.
Fairnie, Steve (1979), ‘Ship of Fools interview: 1979, Steve Fairnie of Writz’, in S. Jenkins and S. Goddard (eds.), Ship of Fools, vol. 2, London: Ship of Fools, pp. 24–37.
Fish Co. (1978), Beneath the Laughter, vinyl album, London: Grapevine.
Greenbelt Festival (n.d.), ‘What is Greenbelt?’, Greenbelt website, https://www.greenbelt.org.uk/greenbelt-festival/. Accessed 16 April 2019.
Loydell, Rupert (2019a), ‘Weird religious backgrounds: Larry Norman, Jesus rock and an interview with Gregory Alan Thornbury’, Punk & Post-Punk, 8:1, pp. 121-35
Loydell, Rupert (2019b), ‘Fun, fashion, faith and flamboyance: An interview with Bev Sage, Punk & Post-Punk, 8:3, pp. 449-460
Loydell, Rupert (2021), ‘We don’t hide from vague: An interview with the Revolutionary Army of the Infant Jesus’, Punk & Post-Punk, 10:1, pp. 141–148.
Techno Twins (1981), 'Falling in Love Again', 7" single, London: PRT.
This Sporting Life (1981), This Sporting Life, vinyl album, Munich: Jupiter
Writz (1979), Writz, vinyl album, London: Electric.
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NB: I ended up tour managing Shock a lovely bunch of people that I’d met when Fairnie got me to dress up as a bear at the Famous Names show at The Venue in London. That was the night I was nearly taken out by two lady female wrestlers. Life with Fairnie was never dull!
RL: You also released some solo music at the time?
NB: Through the New Romantic Scene I met Richard Burgess and John L.Walters from Landscape. Both were really encouraging and John produced two tracks for me ‘Big Boys Don’t Cry’ (which is on youtube and I now think is visually comedy gold) and another I’d co-written called ‘On My Own Again’ with my pal Karel Fialka who I would later sign to Miles Copeland’s IRS Records and have a Top 10 hit with. Incidentally, the tracks feature Annie McCaig and Mo McCafferty as she was then (now Mo Turner) on backing vocals from Nutshell before they became Network 3 and signed to EMI.
RL: From the outside of the music biz it’s hard to tell whether record companies respond to what’s happening around them in the music scene, or actually try and mould bands into current trends (which may, of course, have evolved more naturally). I’m thinking of the way After the Fire ended up looking somewhat New Romantic, or the way Landscape reinvented themselves from jazz-rock into leather-clad new romantic funksters. Shock and The Technos were part of the slippage from post-punk to New Romantic weren’t they?
NB: If you’re smart you see a wave coming and catch it. Look at Geldof and The Boomtown Rats, Adam Ant, and The Police. Steve and Bev were always very aware of trends and stuff going on around them. When they came to me with the demo of ‘Falling In Love Again’ I was the in-house producer along with my pal Simon Humphrey at a tiny record company in Finchley. We went in and replicated exactly what Steve & Bev had done with Dave Hewson on the demo: he is an incredible arranger, and it was their most successful record. (Techno Twins, 1981) However no one ever saw a penny from it. Least of all Steve & Bev who had signed to the label. We had made other records like the Sporting Life album ( 1981) and also an album of poetry with Steve Turner but we never saw any money for those either.
We would get paid £50 per track as an advance to play and produce and if we wrote a song at all we had to assign that for Life Of Copyright for free and we’d end up with 15-20 pence in the pound each, once everybody had taken their slice. I have a record at home Simon Humphrey and I co-wrote and they haven’t even bothered to list us as the writers! And I sang backing vocals on it as well! Let’s just say it was a steep learning curve for us all. It's something which I have never repeated since.
RL: Nowadays, we’re all used to CD reissue campaigns: definitive, remastered, reimagined, repackaged etc, but there was a time when music seemed more linear, a musical genre or movement was abandoned as a new one emerged. I am aware that’s a simplification, and ignores the whole issue of MP3s and digital dissemination, not to mention ideas of postmodernism, where everything happens all the time, but is it even possible for anyone to know what’s going on know? Does it even matter?
NB: It doesn’t matter anymore. When I was kid we would invest in an artist and carry their album round with us as a symbol of cool. The digital age has destroyed that, now it’s all about that one song people will largely stream, even downloads are disappearing.
RL: It's been suggested that music superstars were a product of the 20th Century, and that the likes of Kylie, U2 and Madonna were the last of the megastars. Nowadays people perhaps have a few hit singles (with quite low sales compared to a few decades ago) and then fade away. Meanwhile, other bands hold down day jobs and quite happily home-record on their computers and distribute their music online. Is the music industry going to survive? Is it adapting fast enough?
NB: It has never adapted fast enough. Always slow, cumbersome, and arrogant. The gatekeepers of the music industry didn’t see the digital tsunami heading their way. What they failed to understand is that if they didn’t protect the artist and their art there would be nothing of any substance left. Which is for the most part what we’re left with. The upside though, is that now it’s a little like the 1960s, when new record labels sprang up like Island, A&M , Chrysalis: there will be a way forward eventually but it’s unlikely to happen for my generation of old farts!
RL: Will we ever see the likes of punk and post-punk again? Were they as life-changing as is sometimes suggested?
NB: No they weren’t. The only movement of any substance was from the Woodstock generation. They may have been stoned out of their gourd half the time but they espoused peace and love. Two things we see readily identified in the four gospels.
RL: Is music more disposable now? MP3s for a week, delete and move on… Perhaps other art forms, or digital games, have replaced music?
NB: Yes, gaming is the new rock and roll, but my son still loves to play the piano. He’s eleven and his favourite artists are The Beatles, Elton John & Queen.
I hope it will swing back. There’s always hope and a rich musical treasure chest for subsequent generations to dive into.
RL: Nowadays, spirituality, doubt and belief, are everywhere in song lyrics, yet Christianity is perhaps the least cool religion or belief system in contemporary music. Why do you think that is?
NB: It’s never been cool to be a Christian. I don’t why and I don’t give a toss. If faith was about being cool then as the song says, ‘Heaven Help Us All’.
RL: Do you think ATF and Writz helped pave the way for the likes of U2 to openly discuss faith issues in pop or rock music? Or was it going to happen anyway? What’s your take on the idea of a hidden history to be told, a subculture that emerged in the 1960s, had it’s moment and then stopped because the UK couldn’t support it. I guess some survivors moved to the States or into church music, but thankfully there’s no bands touring church halls as far as I can see!
NB: Not really. U2 were always going to be different. They came to see us as Writz at the Marquee by the way and I hear were not that impressed. I saw them very early on at Hemel Hempstead with The Comsat Angels and even then Bono had this authority about him.
A fight broke out in the crowd. The band stopped and Bono said something like this: ‘You ! You and your like are not welcome here. Those of you around him gently ease him out.’ To the best of my recollection that’s what happened and then the band kicked in exactly where they’d left off.
It was awesome but also like a God thing. Shit happened but it was dealt with firmly and no one else got hurt. Imagine if Jagger had succeeded like that at Altamont?
You see where music is at its best is with a sense of provenance. We operate at our best not when we think we’re great but where there is genuine humility and a desire to have the best fun imaginable. And when we are doing what we have been created to do well there is nothing better. It is the most fun you can have with your clothes on.
RL: Thanks for your time!
NB: A pleasure Rupert! I think a pint is in order…
NOTE
1. ‘Greenbelt is a festival of arts, faith and justice. The best you’ve never heard of. Greenbelt saw its first edition way back in 1974 and has hosted its annual festival every single year since’ (Greenbelt website 2019).
REFERENCES
After The Fire (1978), Signs of Change, vinyl album, London: Rapid Records.
—— (1979), 'One Rule For You', 7" single, London: CBS.
—— (1979), Laser Love, vinyl album, London: CBS.
—— (1980), 80-f, vinyl album, London: CBS.
—— (1982), Batteries Not Included, vinyl album, London: CBS.
Battle, Nick (1982), 'Big Boys Don't Cry', promo song and video, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0TUnetFN3M Accessed 28 Aug 2021. (Also collected on Various Artists (1983), Curious Collection, vinyl album, London: Street Tunes)
Battle, Nick (2007), Big Boys Don't Cry: The Autobiography of Nick Battle, Milton Keynes: Authentic Media.
Fairnie, Steve (1979), ‘Ship of Fools interview: 1979, Steve Fairnie of Writz’, in S. Jenkins and S. Goddard (eds.), Ship of Fools, vol. 2, London: Ship of Fools, pp. 24–37.
Fish Co. (1978), Beneath the Laughter, vinyl album, London: Grapevine.
Greenbelt Festival (n.d.), ‘What is Greenbelt?’, Greenbelt website, https://www.greenbelt.org.uk/greenbelt-festival/. Accessed 16 April 2019.
Loydell, Rupert (2019a), ‘Weird religious backgrounds: Larry Norman, Jesus rock and an interview with Gregory Alan Thornbury’, Punk & Post-Punk, 8:1, pp. 121-35
Loydell, Rupert (2019b), ‘Fun, fashion, faith and flamboyance: An interview with Bev Sage, Punk & Post-Punk, 8:3, pp. 449-460
Loydell, Rupert (2021), ‘We don’t hide from vague: An interview with the Revolutionary Army of the Infant Jesus’, Punk & Post-Punk, 10:1, pp. 141–148.
Techno Twins (1981), 'Falling in Love Again', 7" single, London: PRT.
This Sporting Life (1981), This Sporting Life, vinyl album, Munich: Jupiter
Writz (1979), Writz, vinyl album, London: Electric.
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