Extract from New Sound Melody interview, 10th February 1991

 

Extract from New Sound Melody interview, 10th February 1991

Billy Fairhurst is in bullish mood. The warmth of the open fire in his local boozer provides stark contrast to the cold spring of 1987. Back then, Those Flamin’ Heifers were darlings of the indie scene. John Peel favourites, they were tipped for greater-than-greatness and their debut ‘Can’t See Camouflage’ led to a frenzy of major label courtship. Four years on, they’ve had a messy divorce with one label, seen another label go bust, and had not one but two band members in rehab. At the same time. Another addition to the long list of ‘difficult second albums’, ‘Balderdash and Bladderwrack’ has remained shelved. Until now. 

“It’s happened. It’s all happened. And there’s still stuff going to happen. What can I say?” Fairhurst slams down his half-empty glass with indignation. “But we’ve made a decent album. More than decent. There’s no songwriter around to rival me at the moment.”
A bold statement, which begs the question: so why is everyone slagging it off? Although I’m the one getting paid to do the interview, it seems one of the locals wants in on the act and beats me to asking it. Fortunately for him there’s a few tables, a bar and a generously-built barman between us. Fairhurst glowers, sups his pint, and proceeds. 

“Cos you’ve all gone soft,” he drawls across the pub in that inimitable Mancunian way, before turning back to reposition my dictaphone. “The trouble is, right, nobody wants decent songs any more. Nobody can be bothered with the art of songwriting. What was the biggest hit last year? The Righteous Brothers, with a song from the Sixties. Kylie, Jason, Craig McLachlan! If I ever hear another Sock, Apron and Waterbasin song it’ll be too soon. They don’t care about the art. It’s too much effort. They’re just after money. Easy money. And don’t get me started on Tina bloody Turner!”

It’s an unfortunate fact of life that an Ivor Novello won’t put food on the table, I suggest. “Well I’d rather starve and be credible. I couldn’t live with myself, living in a mansion paid for by songs like ‘Simply The Best’.”

This seems an unlikely target, and after I have taken a quick sip of Dutch courage I correct him on the title. There’s no ‘simply’, I mumble, edging closer to the door for a quick getaway should the need arise.

“Oh come on!” he explodes. “The whole thing’s simple. Simple music for simple minded people. You’re simply the best, better than all the rest, better than anyone… I mean, it’s just … banal! Banal, emotionless tosh. Anyone can write that - a kid in primary school could write that.”
With hatches almost battened down, I poke the beehive further: what about John Cage’s ‘3’44’? A kid in primary school could have written that, surely? Couldn’t the same be said for Fontana’s slashed canvass or Duchamp’s urinal? Anybody could do that. 

Fairhurst is having none of it, his face now set to explode. “You don’t get it!  That’s art - nobody had thought to do that before, and that’s what makes it so brilliant! Same as Dali … Da Vinci invented helicopters before we had electricity. Van Gogh - look how creative he was! And Cage … It’s imagination! It’s total imagination. So clever: every time you hear it, it sounds different. We can listen to it together and hear it differently. It’s musical art in its highest form. These songwriters now though, churning out generic rubbish. That’s not art. It’s just lazy. A lazy cash-grab. Where’s the imagination in Tina Turner? It’s like a race to the bottom of the barrel.”

That’s a matter of opinion, surely? ‘The Best’ has sold more copies than the entirety of Fairhurst’s entire back catalogue. “There’s no accounting for taste,” he sighs as he swirls the last half inch of ale around his glass. “Simple music for simple-minded people,” he reiterates. 

The arrival of another round of drinks brings a pause to the conversation. A couple of scallies walk past, perform a double-take, and then ask Billy Fairhurst when his new album is coming out. “Two weeks ago,” he says, his tone more bitter than the beer in his glass. At a risk of invoking further ire with my choice of words, I ask how Fairhurst proposes to change the, erm, status quo? How can he get more people to listen to Those Flamin’ Heifers than Tina Turner? 
“Oh, I don’t know … “ he sighs, swigs, and sighs again. “Maybe I’ll just cut my ear off.”  

He’ll definitely hear John Cage differently then.

****

This piece was written for a Watford Writers competition in February 2026, with the theme being 'inspired by a song lyric'. It won second place.

Text and image copyright John Hartley. All rights reserved.

Bookshelves

 

So, Christmas has been and gone, and you’re left with book tokens you don’t know what to buy with or, far, far worse, the dreaded One4All card that allows you to spend in hundreds of different stores but none of which seem to allow you to or have anything remotely worth buying.

This is where I come in.

Maybe.

You see, I’ve got books for sale. Not the ones in the photo above; technically they are mine, because I own them, but they’re not my books.

You can buy my books from any bookshop, online or physical, including Waterstones for whom the One4All card is acceptable. You may need to wait a week or so as they may not be in stock, but you can still buy them. 

But which to buy?

Well. 

‘The Broken Bottle’, ‘How Green Are Your Eyes’ and ‘This Is Not The End’ are a trilogy of books aimed at readers from 12 to adult. Indeed, most of the readers seem to be adults, so you’ll be in good company. They tell the story of Wilf, a teenager in Croalworth, near Manchester, as he goes to school, forms a band, falls in love, gets scammed, gets involved in gun and drug crime, goes to Ireland, searches for an awol alcoholic, stumbles across an arms dump, is befriended by a mysterious girl, meets the most drunk stop/go sign holder in the world, goes home, goes to university, makes some new friends, finds his flatmate is a bit weird and unhinged, finds his bag mistaken for an unattended package by the bomb squad, is the victim of mistaken identity and rings his sister to take him home. 

https://books2read.com/b/3nBzEP

https://books2read.com/b/bPGOPl

https://books2read.com/b/m00DAA

‘Capturing the Wry’ and ‘Welcome To The Underachievers’ are memoirs of my time in actual real bands writing and recording actual real music and playing actual real gigs. Across the two you can read the trails and tribulations of nearly being signed to record labels, the highs and lows of playing in youth clubs, restaurants and universities, and marvel at just how many venues I have played gigs in which have now closed down and become housing developments.

https://books2read.com/b/3LVWp1

https://books2read.com/b/b5JlqO

‘Seasonal Adjustments’ is a poetry anthology. I once wrote a poem that came in the top 0.17% of a national competition, and still didn’t win. But it shows the potential quality, even if it is up to you to decide the actuality of it. ‘Out of Tune’ meanwhile is the cleverly-titled collection of lyrics presented without their tune. Do you see what I did there?

https://books2read.com/b/49LEaw

https://books2read.com/b/b5W5wk

‘The View From Orlando Bridge’ is another memoir, this time about supporting Bolton Wanderers in the 1980s and 1990s. Yes, it’s that bleak.

https://www.lulu.com/shop/john-hartley/the-view-from-orlando-bridge/paperback/product-m5z964.html?srsltid=AfmBOopiLnNATy_RPJS1AEiE2eEbyl3Ghqjk84MvuYSWnweTsQmh8kgm&page=1&pageSize=4

You can get all of these anywhere, really, including Amazon. You can also get signed copies of most of the titles directly from me at www.brokendownrecords.bandcamp.com/merch

So come on, don’t be shy. Spend those vouchers, or just your hard earned cash, and you too can have my books on your bookshelves (but not the ones in the photograph for reasons already established).

A Christmas Message

 

A Christmas Message

She sends a message to me from above:

“The chair that you sit in is solely for hugs

The baby’s asleep, it won’t travel far

Be good to yourself. Love who you are.

You can’t do without the love that’s within.”

The kindness of strangers never grows thin

“You’re not alone; I’ve travelled this road,

The journey’s the story that never gets old.”

Taken from the album ‘A Johny Nocash Christmas’, which is free to download on Bandcamp, and available on most streaming platforms, ‘A Christmas Message’ was inspired by a true story told by a young, tired mother about a conversation she had with an elderly neighbour living in the flat above. I hope I have done it justice.

https://brokendownrecords.bandcamp.com/track/a-christmas-message

Text, lyrics, music and image all copyright the author.

The Making of ‘This Is Not The End’ (the soundtrack)

The first book I had published was ‘Capturing the Wry’, a musical memoir of my first band The Irony Board. It came with a free 15-song CD of our studio recordings. It seemed a logical idea, the reader being able to hear the songs that were being described in the story. They wouldn’t have any other way of hearing them, unless the reader had known me when I was 22 and bought the demo tapes.

However, for me the soundtrack idea maybe has its roots a bit further back in time. My family used to go camping in Alderney. It’s a small island, with very little to do. That was largely the joy of it, there being very little to do. Looking for some new musical ideas to keep me busy, I created a compilation CD of fictional artists, signed to a fictional record label based on the very real island. I posted copies to the various family addresses, with a fictional press release, anonymously. I waited for the copies to arrive, and then the ruse to be rumbled. For some it was rumbled sooner than others… And then I wrote the story of the search for the fictional record label and its fictional artists. And posted copies through their doors on Christmas Eve.

You might get to read it at some point.

The curation of songs to accompany stories is nothing new. Nick Hornby’s ‘31 songs’ had a CD with it. I’m sure that wasn’t the first, but it was the first time I’d considered it. Magnus Mills’ ‘The Forensic Records Society’ did similar, but again they were  other people’s songs.

I’m not naive enough to think I’m the only writer to have created a soundtrack to a novel, but it’s certainly not a routine thing. When ‘The Broken Bottle’ was published I enjoyed writing and recording the fictional demo tape from the story. For ‘This Is Not The End’ though I wanted to go further.

The soundtrack contains ten separate pieces of music. Two of these have lyrics, eight do not. I took inspiration from songs I wrote either at the time Wilf finds himself at University, or that I wrote about that time. The lead track ‘Scotswood Terrace’ is about any of the streets that lead down to the river Tyne from the old Roman Road in the west of Newcastle. I lived on one of them. An instrumental variation of the song appears later. The last song also has words; ‘This Is Not The End’ is an outlier, originally recorded in 2009ish and nothing to do with the time or location, but definitely in keeping with the narrative. Again, an instrumental variation appears elsewhere.

For the remaining instrumentals, some are based on the first song I wrote for The Irony Board, very much in keeping with the time and place. Indeed, one of the events in the story features in the lyrics. Another couple are based on the song ‘TLLS’, an early Broken Down Lorry recording whose initials stand for Tender Little Love Song. It’s a song Wilf could have written. One of the tracks meanwhile features the inimitable and much-loved voice of Mike Neville, local newsreader on both BBC and ITV regional broadcasts.

It’s very much the intention that the soundtrack adds to the reading experience of ‘This Is Not The End’, although I suppose that should go without saying…

You can get the soundtrack free with purchases of physical and digital copies of the book from www.brokendownrecords.bandcamp.com

You can also listen to it on streaming services like Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/album/1BKGuKSiDsKzeYZdIrHgpD?si=XjzN0f0vTzOs4dOfheBywg

How Green Are Your Eyes

 

And there, as if by magic, the cover for 'How Green Are Your Eyes' was revealed to the world, one click at a time.

'How Green Are Your Eyes' is the sequel to 2023's 'The Broken Bottle' which, as I am sure you will remember, featured young Wilf from Croalworth as he joined his school friends in forming a band called the Sally Cinnamons. At the end of the story Wilf was ... well, I'm not going to tell you here am I? No spoilers; you might be reading about 'The Broken Bottle' for the first time. 

The cover was designed, once more, by the very talented RubyGoesBananas who can be found under that title on Instagram and TikTok. You can also see and buy her artwork at her Etsy shop   and on RedBubble. 

'How Green Are Your Eyes' will be published worldwide in early October in both paperback and ebook formats. You will be able to order it from any bookshop, online or bricks and mortar. Signed paperback copies will be exclusively available from the Broken Down Records online shop, where you can also get signed copies of 'The Broken Bottle' as well as other books and music. 

Details of how to order and pricing will come soon, very soon; there will probably be a bundle offer for copies of both books at a slightly discounted price too.

Until then, here's some Lego Minifigure images of the Sally Cinnamons, as featured on social media.

Pauline, Neville, Maureen and Kevin

 

‘Welcome to the Underachievers’ is officially published on Friday. Hooray! This means you can now get it from your favourite ebook store, from your local bookshop, and also A*@%on should that be your preferred location.

You may also choose, like the wonderful folk who pre-ordered print copies that came with a free CD, to order direct from the author - ie me - at the Bandcamp store. You won’t now get the CD, but you should get a digital download of the songs soundtracking the book, along with a print version or ebook version depending on your choice.

Hard sell over, let’s move onto the video. It’s another home-made affair, again using analogue technology with essentially no training, and is for the song ‘Pauline and Neville’. The song began life as ‘Maureen and Kevin’ after I saw some graffiti in Harrow, NW London. When I discovered that this was the name of a band, I renamed the track. Susie Woo Marsh sang ‘Maureen and Kevin’, whilst Ria Foxette sang ‘Pauline and Neville’. We did a full studio version of the latter version, but I think the video version is possibly our lo-fi version.

I hope you enjoy it, whatever.

Welcome to the Underachievers

So, here we have it: the follow-up to 'Capturing the Wry'. It's taken a long time to get this out into the big wide world - not that it is completely there yet - and even after the pre-sale launch I've been correcting errors so you get the best possible reading experience. That said, I refuse to rule out any more errors being discovered, but like wrong notes in a piece of recorded music and heavier-than-intended brush strokes on a painting, we'll just have to live with them. I am human after all, and if there's one thing humans are good at it is making mistakes.

I feel privileged to be including a foreword written by Richard Blackborow of the band BOB. BOB have been a source of continual musical pleasure for me since I first stumbled upon them in a 1989 Peel Session. I was lucky enough to write the band's official biography, and very much appreciate Richard taking the time to write the introductory words to  'Welcome to the Underachievers'.

'Welcome to the Underachievers' picks up from where 'Capturing the Wry' left off. Meeting Jacques Cachecarte was a significant marker in my social life; he was the first person I can remember sharing the love of similarly obscure bands as I did, other than my newly-acquired extended family. He could (and still does) write terrific songs and was (and still is) a really talented musician. I may have written the songs, made the videos, done the posters, written this book, but his role in the story cannot be underestimated.

In keeping with its predecessor, 'Welcome to the Underachievers' is being published with an accompanying CD. This time, however, you will have to be quick to get a copy, as only the earliest purchasers from the pre-sale at Bandcamp will get one. 

Here's the link

The Broken Bottle Soundtrack (addendum)

Not all of the soundtrack for 'The Broken Bottle' can be included on a Spotify Playlist. That's because the songs written and recorded by the band during the course of the novel are not widely in the public domain.

Indeed, some of them don't exist at all, other than in your imagination. 'Titch's Song' and 'Jackson's Five' go exactly as you would expect them to, and the lyrics are so clear you can sing them to yourself now. Go on, have a go.

On the other hand, three tracks were kept for posterity from the demo tape the boys record in the music room after school. They are available to listen on Bandcamp. For those of you unfamiliar with Bandcamp, it is a site that allows independent artists to share and sell, or give away as they see fit, their musical creations. Bandcamp take only a 10% share of all revenues on digital sales, and 15% on physical sales. On the first Friday of every month they waive their share completely. This a great model for small scale musical artists.

So the good news is you can listen to three songs from Wilf's band The Sally Cinnamons: 'Half The Magic', 'Hold On' and 'The Bridge'.

Even better, you can download the songs AND the ebook version of the Broken Bottle for a mere £5.00, which seems like good value to me, but then I might be biased. You can also, should you choose, get a physical copy of the book plus the downloaded songs, if everything works how it should do.

The demo tape within the novel is partly inspired by a cassette my own band at school badly recorded in Bolton on a cassette player. The song I contributed to proceedings was a jaunty little affair entitled 'The Puppet'. It has never seen light of day since and, due to its unintentional melodic resemblance to a line from the theme tune to the children's TV show 'The Wombles', is unlikely to any time soon. Never mind ...

The Broken Bottle soundtrack

Stand down, relax; it’s not a whole load of jangly stuff I have concocted in my head purely for the purposes of self-promotion.

No, it’s a whole load of jangly stuff I have collated from professional musicians for the purposes of self-promotion.

Music is, of course, a hugely important theme throughout ‘The Broken Bottle’. As well as the songs written by the band there are songs the friends reference, songs they cover, and songs that crop up naturally during the course of the story.

One afternoon I idly contemplated what a soundtrack album might be, if the novel were ever to be made into a film. The results are the Spotify Playlist linked at the end of this post.

Not all the songs have obvious links to the narrative… take ‘Berth 24’ which opens proceedings for example. It’s an instrumental version of the early Sea Power single ‘Childhood Memories’. I can picture this soundtracking the opening shots of the film, starting with an overhead view of the UK, zooming in towards the north west and the west Pennine moors, before the drone footage sweeps through the moors, over the reservoirs and the cemetery before closing in on the red sandstone school in which the group of friends are gathered one lunchtime. 

‘Childhood Memories’ features the line “God help us if the radiation leaks/God help us if nobody knows for weeks”. My mam used to fret about us living downwind from Sellafield; not in a particularly neurotic manner, just in the way she would fret about about many things, like whether she switched the iron off before we went on holiday. I think Wilf’s mam might be able to relate to that too…

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/34BLxJomE3zp2Dv4ZtW8V1?si=lyweKaAITTatd5Gg06WzrA&pi=e-HdOafGYPRl68

Copies of The Broken Bottle are available here, £10 for signed copies… https://brokendownrecords.bandcamp.com/merch/paperback-the-broken-bottle-signed

And if you prefer your reading on an electronic device, the ebook can be found in several stores. Take your pick: https://books2read.com/u/3nBzEP

Beyond ‘Capturing the Wry’

 ‘Capturing the Wry’ is a musical memoir of being in an indie band in the early to mid 1990s. At the time it felt like came and fortune were both a single song and a million miles away. I mean, who would really be interested in the songcraft of an unemployed twenty year old from the periphery of Bolton? Would the bass guitarist really find his golden ticket away from the Royal Mail in a jangly indie band as lacking in confidence as they were riddled with daydreams? Would the band be enough to keep my cousin away from a proper career? Would it be sufficient to persuade one of my best friends to put his profession on hold?

In 1995 I moved to the outskirts of London and began a new life. It took me a couple of years to find a kindred musical spirit again, and when I did it was in a unit of an industrial estate in the darker reaches of Southall, where a day service for adults with autism and extremely challenging behaviour was located. I didn’t really want to form a band again; my heart was still wrapped up in the Irony Board even though we had been out of commission for a good while by then. However, once you push a cartoon snowball down a cartoon mountain it quickly gathers animated pace and ends up chasing Yosemite Sam through a canyon or something daft like that. And that’s sort of what happened with Echolalia.

The sequel to ‘Capturing the Wry’ will be published shortly. It tells the story of Echolalia, and how I got even closer to the dream of one day holding in my hand a 7”single of my musical wares. ‘Welcome to the Underachievers’ - for that is the title - will be published in early summer. A strictly limited edition print run will be accompanied by a CD containing the songs that soundtrack the story. An ebook version will also be available. Advance orders coming soon.

In the meantime, here’s a video for one of the songs…

Welcome to Croalworth

 Welcome to Croalworth.

Nestling in the West Pennine Moors in Lancashire, north west England, Croalworth’s history is dominated by industry. Weaving and coal feature heavily in the local museum, both industries now far less relevant in the modern world than they had been, leaving the once-proud town now resting its reputation upon fading glory. 

Much the same can be said about the town’s football team, winners of some of football’s most prestigious prizes in the early parts of the last century, now resigned to kicking balls aimlessly around a crumbling stadium in front of supporters whose humour is blacker than the coals upon which the town once relied.

The town takes its name from the river that runs through it. Its source is one of the many deep springs that pepper the hilly terrain and it eventually joins Manchester’s famous River Irwell. At one time the river, whose name is derived from old English meaning ‘winding stream’, was used to power the local industry. These days it mainly transports discarded plastics and other non-recyclables, although a family of rogue terrapins is reputed to live on its banks close to the town centre.

Modern day Croalworth has been hampered by the growth of out-of-town shopping centres, leaving the pedestrianised town hall squad much quieter than it would have been thirty years ago. However, a shift in town planning policy has seen an increase of former commercial premises returning to the family accommodation that could have been found a hundred years ago, and a number of fiercely proud and independent local businesses are beginning for take control of the retail sector. This is drawing in many more visitors from neighbouring towns, and the historic indoor market is becoming a cultural focal point.

Croalworth’s most recent claim to fame is it being the home of Wilfred Hughes, a fictional character in the novel ‘The Broken Bottle’ by John Hartley.

 The Broken Bottle

Paperback published by BrokenDownBooks via Draft2Digital, 2023 ISBN 9798223432487

Ebook published by BrokenDownBooks via Draft2Digital, 2023 ISBN 9798223276418

Order paperback (signed)

Order ebook with additional original music

Order ebook

A novel, for the Young/New Adult (or indeed any adult really). My first novel to boot, and the first of a trilogy featuring Wilf Hughes. Set in the fictional town of Croalworth, Lancashire, the novel tells the tale of a mid-teen, his school band, his first girlfriend and his first taste of the perils of adult life in the late 1980s.

A video trailer for the book can be viewed here:

The story revolves around Wilf's school band, and original music for the story was written and recorded. This can be downloaded with ebook copies of the book if you want to hear it. There is also limited edition art available, including the cover art for the band's cassette and individual sections of the six-part artwork inspired by the novel as seen in the trailer video.

I'll write more about this novel in future posts, and its sequels as they arrive.

 From Banwell to Berlin and Beyond - The Book of BOB

Hardback published by i40Publishing, 2023 ISBN 9781838292423

Paperback published by i40Publishing, 2023 ISBN 9781838292430 

Order copy (paperback only) £10.99 plus P&P

Legendary indie band BOB, championed by John Peel and loved by many, many alternative music aficionados, allowed me to write their official biography. As interest in their reissued back catalogue grew, and plans to release a huge archive of previously unheard material came to fruition, I spent time with the band in Cornwall as they rehearsed for their farewell tour.

I continued to chat with the band members individually and collectively throughout the Covid pandemic and its aftermath, and the story is enhanced by various members of the band's inner circle and, crucially, the fans themselves.

150 Hardback copies were initially published through the i40Publishing micropress, all of which were accompanied by an exclusive CD of unreleased material by the band entitled 'Chapters'. These copies sold out within a month, and a paperback version was printed to meet demand. This did not come with the CD, although the disc remains available from the band's website.

A limited number of copies remain available, and can be ordered by emailing above.

Long live BOB! Here's the video to their Indie Hit 'Convenience':