Good technology

I'd played the song in a couple of other bands with Jerry and I knew it was good but I went away for 6 months and when I got back Jerry had met Hal and formed The Czechs. When I heard what they were doing I really knew I had to wheedle my way into the band...JR

Great memories as it was our first single and the one people tend to remember. I always wanted the snare to be “massive” but John, Hal and Jerry realised it had become a monster and went back and re-mixed it!...MH

We lost a few good lines in search of the 3-minute pop song. I missed “we got chemicals make you believe in god, we got politics that are very odd”...LH

I think the guitar solo was just about the first take we did and I thought it was crap, but everyone else was going “no, keep it, keep it!” so we did. I guess it sounds OK in retrospect...HL

I remember going round to Stuart's place and he played it to me on his acoustic for the first time. It sounded unique then and I think it still does. How many times did we try to record it? At least four. A song in search of its tempo. I love it when Lou's bass starts to walk at the end. Eve of Destruction! This bloke called Tim who was an ex-telephone engineer figured out the number for the direct line into John Peel's studio at the BBC. I bottled out but various people phoned big John and plugged Good Tech. I must say he took it in a very relaxed and Peel-like manner. They changed the number shortly afterwards...JK

Fact

All hinged on one little riff that runs all the way through. I remember Hal showing it to me and thinking how neat and easy. The pain in my hand after 3 minutes was excruciating. For me Jerry's finest lyrics...JR

The band ran a rehearsal place by the fruit market. I went down one day and someone had written “take the profit out of the rehearsal rooms” in great big black writing on the door. Ho, ho, very funny...LH

Peel was a bit pissed off that Jensen got it first, but eventually relented and played it. His response to “Take the profit out of war, we don't need it anymore” was simply, “well, that's difficult to argue with.”...MH

I felt like I'd got dented ears by the time we finished this one - the click track was really loud and we were playing along to it for what felt like a geological epoch to get a good take. I think my hearing still suffers to this day...HL

I've still got the bespoke rubber stamp, “FACT!” - nobody can say we skimped on promotion...JK

Steeltown

Ethereal and Haunting. I remember two kids writing and asking us to draw a diagram of a guitar fretboard showing where the harmonics were played in the intro. Shamefully I never replied. “Doesn't matter how I vote the same confederacy of fools gets in”: Ain't that the truth...JR

We played this on The Old Grey Whistle Test. The band was supposed to be picking me up at Woodall services, but something went wrong and I had to hitch a lift. A hippy in a Morris Minor used the sun instead of an A-Z to get me to the BBC. We drove all round London. I got there just in the nick of time...LH

I remember doing this on “Whistle Test”. They had a decibel meter type thing which cut out the power if you played above acoustic level! MH

Remote Control

A tricky one for me as the first half of the track involved playing with a brush in one hand and a stick in the other. Come the upbeat bit, I often threw the brush anywhere and tried to grab a stick instead. Live, this meant plenty of cock-up potential. MH

"A green light shines out over the water" courtesy of F Scott Fitzgerald's Great Gatsby...JK

Remote Control - One of my favourites this. I love the way the music and vocals intertwine...HL

Dive

Rough and raw, and the “Sweet Jane” steal. Reminded me of “Back in the USSR” with the plane noise...MH

We went to Doncaster and bought some gear. I got an echo unit. Well! Everyone else had stuff to play with! DIVE...Dive...dive...JK

Astronomy

The - for us - somewhat complicated chord changes in the choruses came from messing around with the buttons on an old accordion...HL

(Starlight) Not the real title, but I always think of it as this. I remember the four of us doing the backing vocals at Fairview and making an almighty mess of it. Still love the lyric, with lines such as “and electric-fingered light dislocates the night.” MH

The truth is like an onion; it has many layers and can make you weep. JK

Cloak and Dagger

I think John and Jerry always saw this as a filler, but Lou, Hal and I loved it, especially live. The backing vocals became a pure piss-take in the end...MH

This was always a hard song to pin down at the time, but when I listen to it now I think it sounds great. Especially the swirling Hammond stuff that Danny Wood did for us over the outro...HL

This was always fun to play live. Me and Matt used to really ham it up...LH

Crocodile Tears

I bought a red Hofner Verithin for 60 quid off a bloke on Bricknell Ave and wrote this the same day. It was my first song. I remember overhearing Steve Marshall playing it on the piano once when he didn't know I was there. It sounded great...JK

We worked ages on getting the right beat for this and then it just clicked. When we first used to play it, it was a rock and roll thrash, but ended up as a ballad! “End of another fresh start.” Poignant or what? MH

Someone left the studio door open while Hal was recording the acoustic guitar part and you could hear the telly on the track. We liked it and kept it in...LH

Shaken Not Stirred

I can remember recording this first at Ken Giles' place in Bridlington. My abiding memory of playing live is at Hull Trades and Labour Club with Roy back stage watching me play it. It felt like he was checking I got it right after all that time in the studio. MH

We must've played the songs a hundred times at gigs and rehearsals before we recorded them. I remember going in the studio and actually hearing the words Jerry was singing for the first time. We never really knew what they were before that. This one knocked me out...LH

Sting in the Tail

The monster under the stairs. Jerry's fantastic, psychotic nursery rhyme with me, Hal and Lou all trying to out-mad each other on guitars. A personal favourite...JR

I reckon this was John's favourite track on the album. Mean, moody and bloody difficult to play from my point of view. No snare, all toms...MH

Hal's tour de force. I never felt the vocal lived up to his vision...JK

Marimba Jive

Light the blue touch paper and stand back! On a good night, if we got MJ in the right place in the set list, we had lift off...JK

We had a go at recording this at Matrix in London with John Porter but it didn't work. It was far too fast and had some dodgy sax stuff on it. Time to get back to Hull and Roy Neave! MH

We recorded this for a Peel session at Maida Vale with a BBC producer called Dale Griffin who was a notorious miserable bastard. At one point we were all laughing at John doing his ‘African Women Dancing’ routine through the control room window and he turned round and said “If you want to laugh get outside!” How to make friends and influence people...HL

Slow to Fade

Christ this was difficult to record! We ended up with three tempos and took hours working it through. I was dead chuffed, though, because when we came to getting the drum track down, I did it in one take! MH

It was a nightmare recording the bass line. I must've tried every bass in Hull, just couldn't get the sound. Then I couldn't play it right. Roy was waving a conductors baton at me, going “No, no, you can do it better than that Lou”...LH

Within 4 Walls

Red Guitars do psychedelic! I loved this, and it was a great opportunity for Hallam to play some real Hallam stuff! “Don't ever live in colour, save it for your dreams.” What a fantastic line! MH

Before computerised desks, mixing a song was real big event. We all had jobs to do, you know, riding the guitar or backing vocals. I was in charge of a ‘clink’ sound made by someone hitting a piece of railway track. It took all night, somebody always missed something. We all knew when we got this one right tho...LH

I remember this as being one of the most enjoyable recordings we did - especially jamming over the end in the early hours of a hot summer's night...HL

Heartbeat Go!

Ladies and Gentlemen I give you Hallam Lewis...JR

Hal and I played this in The Planet Wilson too, so it feels like we've played it a million times. The Smiths even played it at their soundcheck once...LH

This sounds much faster than we later used to play it. I had to practice loads to stop my fingers getting tangled up! HL

Paris France

The only time in the band that Hal was really allowed to flex his rock muscle. I had this old Vox AC30 amp with the V missing (known as the OX) and I would always turn it up to 11 for the outro. I am now profoundly deaf in my right ear...JR

The first song I learned to play. Sean O'Brien was still playing timbales in the band at the time. I don't think anyone knew what an “autonome” was...LH

This has one of our best outro's. JK

Again I have very fond memories of recording this one - particularly improvising the long ending in the studio. Jerry came up with this great little speech in a heavy French accent which included the line “...it's true I have reservations about the Pompidou Centre...” it had us rolling about at the time - maybe that's why we left it off...HL

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