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I can’t remember how I know that, but I know I know it!

It probably comes from a talk I went to by Dr Peter Mills from Leeds Met, who is/was working on a book about Jake. He’d done some digging and established quite a bit about Jake’s early life – eg that his dad was a policeman and had to move around with work. Which fits with the fact that he later lived on Old Oak Drive in Leeds as that’s just down the road from Lawnswood Police Station (the main one in north Leeds), and also the fact that the constabulary come off quite badly in a few of his songs!

If you think about the material, it does make sense that Jake grew up, or at least spent a significant part of his early life, in the countryside. There’s one song in his whole back-catalogue (Kirkstall Road Girl) that’s definitively about Leeds, and a whole lot more that are about village or country life. I seem to remember Peter Mills saying something about young Jake regularly being packed off to relatives in the country during school holidays too.

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Thanks Ian.

And speaking of name-dropping – I’ve just chanced upon the fact that Ivy Armitage (of Personal Column fame, she who thanked all their friends for kindnesses when times were hard) happens to share a name with Jake’s mother.

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No one has any idea on this?

I noticed recently that the 1968 TV performance of The Statues (from the Beryl Reid show), which I’d always assumed to be a mimed performance to the album version, is actually different. The vocal performance isn’t the same, and the backing track (while it seems to be the same performance) has a very different sound, much more dense and echoey. Could this be the mono version?

I might just have to buy the LP and find out…

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Mouth-watering stuff. There must be copies of stuff like that in existence somewhere… but where?

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Oh – and of course there’s the old alma mater St Michael’s Catholic College (now also closed, but still on Streetview). Some great photos and tales from people here, most of which could pretty much have come straight out of one of Jake’s songs.

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[quote=”Hayley” post=2890]Thanks for that, i will check out the interview (and blub). I can’t think of many tales to tell, i was quite young when he played with Jake. I will dig around for some and share anything that resurfaces.
Hayley[/quote]
Anything you wanted to share would be great! There seems to be very little information about Alan in the public domain – all I really know about him, apart from the story Jake tells in that interview, is that he played with Jake from the mid ’70s to sometime in the ’80s. As he was such a key collaborator during that time, it’d be great to know more.

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Hi Hayley, nice to hear from you. As I hope you know, your dad’s contribution to Jake’s music is thought of very highly amongst his fans – there’s been quite a bit of discussion on this forum of how well his superb playing complimented Jake’s songs.

If you feel you can share any memories or tales of Alan and Jake, I’m sure all of us here would love to hear them.

Have you heard the interview with Jake from 2000 on the website? He talks very warmly of his first meeting with your dad. He obviously thought very highly of him.

And yes I agree, another Jakefest would be wonderful!

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Ah yes, of course – there’s a playbill for one of his appearances at City Varieties here. I’d be staggered if it was his first gig though – it’s a big place, not the sort of establishment you start playing out of nowhere.

The sleevenotes to the first LP refer to him playing pubs and clubs, so I reckon he must have tread the boards of some of the boozers of North Leeds like those mentioned in my above. Why, the Cardigan Arms is on Kirkstall Road itself!

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Hello Paul

Thanks for the reply, that was really interesting. I can certainly see that in the heyday of punk, EMI might (misguidedly) have seen songs like On Again and To Do With You as old hat. Perhaps a case of the record business losing faith in Jake, and the man himself eventually following suit.

I didn’t know about Tortoise being recorded in the mid ’80s! Have tracked down a copy of that ‘Where Would You Rather Be Tonight’ album online though – downloading it now. Thanks for that.

The thought of a great lost late ’80s album is certainly tantalising. And even taking into account the relative likelihood that he made the whole thing up, not wholly implausible. He might not have had the support of a label at that point, but of course his act wasn’t the sort of thing that would have required a big studio budget to record. And he probably knew enough people in the biz to have access to a studio if he wanted one – eg doing Tortoise at Dave Pegg’s place. Maybe he even did other tracks at the same session as Tortoise?

Incidentally, I have your email address tucked away inside my copy of Live at the Unicorn which I bought off you when you played at the Chemic in Leeds a while back. I think I said I’d send over some venue contacts, but evidently I never got round to it. Sorry! Looks like I’ve got no excuse not to do it now…

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