Bobby Valentino - Violin, Mandolin & Vocals

            Eric has asked me to write a little something for this page, which is headed by a photograph of my younger self, about what happened after the Fab Poos.   So here goes...

            When the band reached their sell-by date in the early eighties and finally called it a day, I think we all felt a little lost.  Being a Poodle had been our life for the previous five hectically wonderful years.  It had been my longest job up to that point, in fact, the first proper adult(?) job I‘d had.  As the band went through the process of splitting, we were involved in an unfortunate and stupid court case in which nobody really won except, as usual, the lawyers.

            At the same time I was playing a regular Sunday night gig with an acoustic outfit called the Bluebirds in the “Duke“, a public house in Deptford, S.E. London.  Soon Bryn was drafted in on a single snare drum and brushes     (we were acoustic - even the singing wasn’t miked).  We moved up to bigger venues and electrified; thus becoming the Electric Bluebirds , playing a kind of pop/cajun/zydeco mix with no lead guitar, just a 12 string rhythm with fiddle and accordian doing the lead breaks, most of which became duets. Bryn left to join a band with a record deal. I think they were first called Underworld, then became a band with no name just a symbol (years before “The Artist Formerly Known as ...”) that didn’t work, so they were called Freur (I hope that’s the correct spelling - “spell-check” doesn’t work in these situations) they did very well in Italy and I remember a very good single, I can‘t remember what it was called.

            Richie joined the E. B. s when the bassist rôle became vacant.  All this time we were building a good following, beginning to get better gigs and so eventually got a record deal. There is a CD available called “Back on the Train” which includes some pretty good live recordings from the “Dublin Castle” in Camden Town, N. London  as well as the best of all the studio material.  Some produced by Glen Tilbrook and featuring Richard Thompson.  If any one is interested, I do have some.

            Tony at this time was metamorphosing into Ronnie Golden and getting in on the ground floor of the alternative comedy boom.  There were a couple of great characters he created in: Johnny Lee Rotten and Cowboy George.  He was (and is) doing pretty good and one night, on the way home, he was knocked of his bike and concussed.  A few weeks later he was opening for an accapella group called the Flying Pickets (don’t ask) in South End-on-Sea.  It was a family audience and he was suffering from a slight case Tourette’s Syndrome (where the sufferer can’t stop swearing) brought on by the concussion.  He got booed off and made the front page of the local paper- “Filthy comic shocks pensioners” - which he reproduced as his Christmas card for that year.

            All this time I was also becoming established as a session musician - that dreaded expression - and I have ended up playing on quite a few hits, doing “Top of the Pops” a total of 17 times with 7 different acts.  The biggest hit I was on is a record called “Young at Heart” by the Bluebells.  It sold over ½ million copies and the record company (London Recs.) were such cheap-skates, that they never gave me a gold disc, in fact they were so cheap that they even lied to the Musician’s Union saying that it was a live recording (it’s a drum loop and I play harmony to myself) to save paying me a $200 fee for the video. The record business is a wonderful thing.  I now have 2 gold records, one from Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers - “Pack up the Plantation” and one from Billy Bragg - “Talking with the Taxman about Poetry“. I still am a session muso and recently toured with Big Country and Mark Knopfler.   If anyone is really interested, there is a discography on the Los Pistoleros website - www.lospistoleros.com, but more of them later.

            Richie and I were poached by the Hank Wangford Band, a kind of country/comedy band.  With them we: made a couple of below average albums; did the Edinburgh Festival 5 times; made 2 TV series for Channel 4 about the roots of country music (they don’t seem to show much anymore!); were in a musical, C.H.A.P.S. (the Cowboy, Horse-riding And Preforming[sic] School) at the Theatre Royal, Stratford East and I became a singer and songwriter.

            The songs were coming together OK, so I approached a record company that I had been doing some session work for with some rough demos and, unbelievably, they said yes to the idea of making an album.  So I had a record deal, though it got me fired from Hank’s band (they didn’t).  Richie had already left and had joined Barance Whitfield and the Savages - he was a Savage and living in Boston, Mass.

            I got to make a solo record.  It includes Richie (he’d come home and got civilised again) on bass and backing vocals, after all, he is the best.  It was called “You’re in the Groove, Jackson” in the U.K. and the single from it, “The Man who Invented Jazz”, was what they call a turntable hit.  Many artists complain that their label doesn’t do enough promotion, this wasn’t the case with Big Life, they did a fantastic promo job but it never made the shops - the distributor went bankrupt.  There was so much “profile” that many people thought that I had had a hit.  It still gets played on the wireless.

            That was 1992.  After a few adventures the CD was released in Texas by Vireo Records under the title “You’re Telling Me” in 1995 and I have enjoyed my visits to Austin over the past few years. It is soon to be released in Japan by EM Records under the title “This is Murder”.

·               Lets have a competition: I will send the first copy that I receive from Japan, signed and completely free of charge, to any where in the world, to the first person to e-mail me the answer to this question: “Where do the different titles of the CD come from?” I can be e-mailed at :- lospistoleros@tinyworld.co.uk

            These days, I am part of a group called Los Pistoleros (that explains the e-mail address) which includes B.J.Cole and Martin Belmont.  We are an Americana style band and have just released a CD on the legendary Track Records  (“the home of Hendrix and the Who”) called “Trigger-happy”, again, it has had lots of radio play but not too many sales (distribution again!).  You can find out more at;  www.trackrecords.co.uk  and  www.lospistoleros.com

            I’m almost ashamed to admit that I do occasionally work as a Clark Gable look-a-like.  Actually (oh gosh, that’s very British), it’s quite fun and very well paid.  I get to see what it’s like being a film actor (boring) as I have been in many TV ads, usually kissing, which is sometimes awkward as my wife, Marie, is a video editor and has had to work on some of them and I’ve had Atlanta burnt behind me twice!  I was also C.G. in a film  - “RKO 281”, about the making of “Citizen Kane” and was in a scene with John Malkovich and Melanie Griffith.  I was bad, in the correct sense of the word.

            I’d like to thank Eric for putting in a lot of his time to get this site together. I have had to trawl my memories and archives for info and photos so we hope it has been worth our efforts.

Bobby Valentino's Discography