History

Coup De Grace History, by Steve Pool:  

The interest to form a band came from a keen interest in singing Beatles songs and learning harmonies with a friend. On the day I heard the news that John Lennon died in 1980, a friend and I were actually meeting to play the Beetles Complete, almost from cover to cover. We went from two of us singing and strumming in each others homes to forming a three piece, having been chatting to my friend Martyn Hill (original member of Coup De Grace) whom was keenly learning to play the bass guitar, he was ambitious and had a natural sense of rhythm. We recruited a guy called Paul who was keen to play lead guitar and also a very young drummer called Gary Philips (original member of Coup De Grace) The band fell apart after a short time having played a couple of local gigs covering songs like Black Magic Woman and an ambitious version of Dire Straits- The Sultans Of Swing.

Martyn and I remained dedicated to the cause and recruited another drummer called Hugh.  We were particularly impressed by two things about Hugh, the number of drums he used and the fact that he could play a rather mean trumpet, the latter we had only discovered after several months. We ventured into our first recording studio at Weston Super Mare and recorded two songs by the three of us and called ourselves “College”. There was a slight Police influence about the band but the recordings were lacking a quality and were fairly naïve.

We began rehearsing at my home in early 1983 and had a short spell including a keyboard player within the line up, with a very overpowering Moog keyboard influence which didn’t fit our sound. We began recording primitively on a Tascam Home recording Studio and almost produced some reasonable recordings.  

Soon we were to catch the attention of a very good guitarist named Kevin Morris (original member of Coup De Grace) whom we auditioned.  Kevin liked the enthusiasm of the other members and the fact that we had been writing and recording our own songs. This proved a very good marriage as he too wrote his own songs and the sound began to develop further. Hugh the drummer felt the band was too ambitious, that time and dedication was getting beyond what he was prepared to commit and soon we found ourselves auditioning drummers. After a few poor auditions it was clear to us that we had to approach Gary Phillips, whom was now aged 19.  He had since matured and grasped the opportunity to join the band, Coup De Grace was at last formed.

We continued to develop the sound.  I struck up a friendship with a local photographer called David Facey, who went on to become our manager and a true inspiration to the band.  He was to become a fifth member of Coup De Grace (Dave has since passed away and it makes me feel saddened that I have over the years lost touch with a truly great individual and my heart goes out to Eileen his wife, she too provided great support for the band and I have never thanked either for their great efforts and support).  Dave was the person whom, with his photographic connections in the music business, provided the conduit by which we were able to showcase our music.  Dave was photographing the likes of Level 42 and Nick Kershaw at Goldiggers, Chippenham, oh and Coup De Grace.

“In its prime the club Goldiggers attracted some of the biggest acts of the 80s, such names as Elvis Costello and the Style Council in 1984, The Smiths with Morrissey a year later, Boy George, Sonia, Damon Albarn from Blur and Bad Manners. The landmark building was knocked down and rebuilt as 49 flats in 2004 and the ground floor has become home to an Insurance firm”.

We played at Goldiggers on several occasions on A&R nights, we proved popular and local people from Bridgwater came to see us we sold the tickets with sufficient profit to pay for the transport for the fans, the band, lighting, a 1000W PA system and some pyrotechnics. The nights were fantastic and we began to develop our direction. 

Soon we were asked by the management at Goldiggers to be available for support gigs, we were asked to play support for Jim Davidson the comedian in front of over Two thousand people and things were hotting up. 

Meanwhile we were never far from the recording studio and were in the process of recording Arabesque (No Time To Lose), Lets Get The Job Done and the Movie Moguls. The later two tracks included keyboards by Tim Moore, session musician and played with the likes of Nick Kershaw. We distributed the recordings on cassette to London record companies, with mixed reviews but could not get that elusive record deal. Some record Companies wanted yet more material and we went back to the recording studio and recorded “Fly For Me Bird Of The Sun” , “Changing Face Of Fashion, “ A Hole At The End Of The Tunnel, and “The Sex Olympics”

We auditioned for a TV competition on Local TV, although looking back we were pretty foolish to play, “This Is The Year Of The Sex Olympics” as one of the song titles, we did get into the top twenty of the competition, although with the benefit of hindsight clearly we were a bit too controversial and I don’t think HTV were quite ready for us.  

Dave lined up a gig at Bridgwater town hall with Racing Cars (famous for the song : “They Shoot Horses Don’t They”) headlining but cleverly he billed it as Racing cars supporting Coup De Grace. It was advertised in the Melody Maker and was a success.

Things were continuing at a rate, our progress appeared never ending.  Kevin Angel a manager at Goldiggers was keen to extort out potential and came forward and offered to co-manage us and take us to the next stage of our development and towards that elusive record deal. 

Dave Facey was rightly not impressed by this move and there became a split in the band as to which way we should go. I think we were probably so full of our own importance at the time, this combined with a determined drive to succeed and a lack of loyalty to Dave caused the inevitable break up, such is the arrogance of youth. 

Kevin, Martin and myself continued our development into drum machines and keyboards and recorded “Mercy Mercy” and “One Day Sunshine” (the sax break in Mercy Mercy was recorded on a staircase in a converted two up two down house, the acoustics were perfect) Martin was experimenting with a fretless base guitar and drum computers, whilst Kevin and I began exploring synths.  We purchased a Juno 106 and a Yamaha drum computer.

We had an involvement early on when we recorded Arabesque (No Time To Lose) with the keyboard player from the band which had a number one hit in the late 70’s “Racey”, Gary Coombes. We recorded the song at his studio, which we fondly named the chicken shack, because the rest of the buildings were used for the rearing chickens. Gary showed a further interest in Coup De Grace and wanted to work with us to record some more material, with no obligation on all parts, just as a project. He particularly wanted to re-record Arabesque. We worked with him for several months and recorded “Arabesque”, “Cover The Eyes Of The World”, “Money Go Round “ “When You Come Running” and another version of “One Day Sunshine “ which I have called “Next Day Rain”. At the end of this track, you can really hear the female voice of Gary’s friend Joy Moholon with all the quality that she posses, she also appears as the female backing vocalist on these tracks.  

Gary Coombes was in contact with old connections in London believed to be linked to the management of Wham. They came to Somerset to listen to the recordings, the fact that we still did not achieve that elusive recording deal, I suppose means that they didn’t like the material; although we were lead to believe, at the time, that it was positively received and that Gary just didn’t want to go through the fame thing again; we will never know. 

Kevin also wanted to do his own thing and Martyn and I took up the baton of success again, the year was 1987 and we set up our own eight track recording studio along with Cubase MIDI recording facilities, the Juno 106, a Korg M1 and an Akia sampler in Martyn’s garage. We worked tirelessly for 2 years, setting up the studio, learning to sound engineer and at the end of it had produced five new songs, “If You Will Only”, “Out Of My Life” , Slow Boat To China”, “Don’t Stop Loving Me” and “Too Hot” ; the standard was at a different level to anything we had previously achieved, polished and much more sophisticated. Ironically Kevin Morris played guitar on the tracks as a session player. We mixed the tracks in a larger studio, paying for studio time and no sooner did we finish the first track “Out Of My Life” when the studio contacted Fox Radio in Somerset and we managed to secure a live interview that evening and we were able to aire our track to the world. That was exciting and you can hear how nervous we were on the recording of that interview. 

We pushed our cassettes up to London, the most intense distribution to date, keeping a log of all our contact, who with, and what was said, after all we were getting quite experienced at this by now. 

After several months of continuous dialogue and with no real positive feedback we were beginning to feel the strain. My own self resilience was finally giving in after ten years work. Thinking this way I felt as though I was letting Martyn down, however I am sure he still had self belief, but mine was straining and inevitably it all sadly ended!

I want to thank the members of the band for their contribution to a very exciting period of my life, one that in many ways, became a way of life. Also to Dave & Eileen who I never got to thank and to the Coup De Grace (CDG’s) fans of which, some, I still meet and remind me of why we did it. Also to my wife Melody who always supported me, particularly through these years when most of the time she must have felt, at times, like a band widow.

A copy of an early "CV" of Coup de Grace: