Dave Cairns was at the forefront of an exciting period in music when bands like The Jam, The Beat, Madness, The Buzzcocks and The Selecter were at the forefront of guitar lead new music that spawned in the late 1970’s. Secret Affair were part of this new wave and brought their own mix of mod laced po-going music to the masses. Demon Music Group are releasing a vast compilation of the bands material on vinyl and CD with liner notes from Mod champion Ed Piller. Here Gigslutz interviews the bands guitarist and fonding member Dave Cairns for this exclusive interview for Gigslutz:

Can you please tell me about your upbringing?

My Scottish Father ran field hospitals during WW2 and settled down as a GP of over 40 years in Essex with my Irish Mother so I haven’t got a drop of English blood in me which might have helped me in my song writing with all that Celtic blood. We lived in the middle of Epping Forest and I sometimes wrote with my acoustic guitar sitting in the field at the back of our house.

What was the first music you can remember hearing?

Well, that’s a tough one, my Mum loved her opera and classical music right up to the end of her life so that would have been playing in the background as child.

What was the first serious music you can remember hearing?

My brother who is five years older had an amazing vinyl collection and he bought everything from The Beatles, The Who, prog rock to Blues artists and when he wasn’t around, I’d play through the lot. I remember hearing ‘I Heard It Through The Grapevine’ by Marvin Gaye in 1968 when it was a huge hit in the UK and I used to play it over and over.

Who influenced you to play the guitar? Were there any specific influences?

I used to have piano lessons but after my school moved me out of music and into Latin classes I got so frustrated I bought a cheap electric guitar and played through my brother’s homemade amp and speaker.

I realised in my first school band that playing in the background to a lead guitarist noodling away wasn’t go to work for me so I started playing in a rhythm and lead style of which Pete Townshend was one of the masters of and slowly learning lead solos listening to Peter Green and Carlos Santana who played a lot of slow melodic instrumentals. At College Mark Knopfler who taught English, also gave me guitar lessons every Wednesday afternoon, and I then formed bands with only myself on guitar and locking into the bass and drums using a lot of open chords and two string solo parts to fill the sound out and I’ve never played a barre chord to this day.

How about keyboards? Again, did you have any specific influences?

I love playing keyboards to this day so it was plain stupid for the school to stop me studying music, I’ll never forget being caught in a piano room during lunchtime playing boogie woogie from a score by the music teacher who said if he ever saw me in the piano room again I’d be sent off for ‘six of the best’ being hit with a ferule on my hands and fingers.

Over 20 years later I wrote almost the entire album by ‘Walk On Fire’ on keyboards for MCA Records so I never let it stop me.

When I was 12 years old my brother took me to see ELP at the London Pavilion and I was blown away by Keith Emerson on Hammond Organ who managed to play brilliantly whilst stabbing the organ with a knife and rocking it backwards and forwards.

Were you in any bands before Secret Affair?

I was in various school and college bands and then I met Ian Page at Loughton College in Essex and we went out playing gigs in London as ‘New Hearts’ – a new wave post punk band and we were watched by CBS CEO Maurice Oberstein several gigs in a row and signed to CBS Records shortly after.

How did Secret Affair form?

With New Hearts everything that could go wrong did go wrong!

The CEO handed us over to his label staff and they had no idea what to do with us, terrible producer choices and they tried to market us a teeny boy band that was all wrong. The only good thing they did was to get us on tour with The Jam.

After two flop singles we broke up and Ian and I set about getting it right with a new band and we wrote Secret Affair’s debut album in my parent’s garage and we still had access to CBS studios to record the songs, recruited Dennis Smith on bass and Seb Shelton on drums and started gigging.

Is it strictly true Secret Affair formed on the back of the late 70’s mod revival?

Completely untrue!

In January 1979 our booking agents Cowbell got us support slots with The Cure, The Pretenders, and we were building up a following playing pubs in the East End. By the summer of 1979 we were playing the Marquee Club in the West End on a regular basis.

The film Quadrophenia came out in Nov of ’79 which inspired a lot of kids to become Mods but Mod culture had never gone away, it simply wasn’t front page news any more after the tabloid encouraged Mods V Rockers fights on the beaches back in ’64.

Garry Bushell who gave us a front cover on Sounds Magazine admits he called it a ‘Mod Renewal’ but has no idea who called it a ‘Revival’ and what self-respecting band would aspire to be part of a revival with it’s negative connotations? But it stuck.

What music were you listening to around this period?

In-between playing our own shows we’d be out every night of the week watching other bands and virtually lived in the Marquee Club bar but I really can’t remember exactly who, everyone at the time I guess! But U2 supported us at The Nashville Rooms in 1979 well before they took off.

How about clothes, were you regulars down Carnaby Street and the like?

We started out with mohair suits we found in charity shops and we were trying to get a look inspired by the South London gangsters in the film ‘Performance’ which we’d seen many times on the late night cinema circuit. Ian Page then started getting his suits tailored and we had stage clothes made by 60s legend Colin Wild at his Carnaby Cavern shop.

Did you have a specific favourite piece of clothing?

That would have to be my black mohair Edwardian frock coat that was found in a charity shop that I wore on TOTP for ‘Time For Action’ and I still have it.

How did the band sign to Arista Records?

Our publisher Bryan Morrison (who published Pink Floyd & The Jam) got Ian Page and I out of CBS who would have ruined the band once again and we signed to Arista for the world except North America where we signed to Sire Records.

Did you build up a big following once you’d formed and signed to Arista?

We already had a big following known as The Glory Boys, which is why we were offered a number of record deals to choose from and in December ’79 we sold out the Rainbow Theatre, Finsbury Park, where I’d seen David Bowie as Ziggy Stardust when I was still at school.

How about your appearances on the likes of Top Of The Pops, was this a dream to true to perform on prime time TV?

Getting on TOTP was a make or break moment for any act and after just one appearance your gigs would sell out the next day and that’s exactly what happened to us along with a massive increase in single sales which peaked for us at 200,000 copies.

On the day of our first appearance with Time For Action, half the band had gone off to a club show up north in a car when the news came through we’d got TOTP and with no mobile phones in those days BBC radio one sent out urgent messages which were heard by the guys in the car and our publisher sent a helicopter to go and pick them up, we are the only band to appear on TOTP without an afternoon rehearsal.

That was a great day for me, but it was our appearance on The Old Grey Whistle Test album programme that really was a dream come true that I’d grown up with and not everyone got invited whether you had a hit single or not.

How did the songs come to fruition? Did you and Ian Page work closely when composing songs?

We did indeed work closely together, there would be times when he’d hand me a bunch of lyrics to a number of potential songs which I’d take away and put guitar to and we also wrote tracks on our own.

Was there any element of jamming to produce any of the songs?

We wrote the first album, ‘Glory Boys’ without a drummer or bass player so we played various instruments to imagine how the songs would sound and go into the recording studio with other musicians.

Time For Action, My World and Do You Know, can you go over how these songs specifically came to fruition?

Time For Action and My World were written by myself, TFA on a bass guitar and My World on an acoustic guitar, we had a four track reel to reel tape recorder in my parent’s garage so we put down all our ideas as they came along.

Do You Know was a co-write with Ian’s lyric written a couple of years later for our third album having come back from a three month tour of the States and we disappeared into a studio in Cornwall to record the album through the summer.

Was Time For Action a rally cry towards your mod following?

I wrote Time For Action when I was 19 years old and yes I wrote it for all the Mods that were around us and you could sense something big was about to happen.

We got a lot of stick for my ‘We hate the punk elite’ line but it wasn’t about punks on the streets but about the clique of middle-class people behind the scenes who wanted their slice of the business and there was a lot of nastiness and sniping that New Hearts had been on the receiving end of.

In a live setting there are some legendary gigs that you played probably none more so than the Mods May Day gig. What memories do you have of this gig?

Mods Mayday at the Bridgehouse pub in Canning Town was an all-day recording of multiple bands recorded on Ronnie Lane’s mobile recording studio (I found out it was previously used by The Who’s engineer on Quadrophenia for addition multitracking).

It was a great day but I’m afraid it left me with a bad taste in my mouth to this day about things that went on, regarding the use of the recordings.

Are there any other gigs that stand out in the memory?

As I mentioned earlier, I was thrilled to sell out the Rainbow Theatre in ’79 where I’d seen David Bowie as Ziggy Stardust as a schoolboy, and I was using one of the first radio packs for guitar so during a drum break I ran up into the circle and played a guitar solo near where I been watching Bowie years earlier, I don’t think anyone could figure out how I could play the guitar without a guitar lead. Six months later we sold out Hammersmith Odeon which was equally amazing and playing two nights at The Whisky a Go-Go on Sunset Strip in LA was pretty special too.

The band have had various reincarnations since you originally formed, are the band due to play live again any time soon?

We are playing a short acoustic set after a Q and A at the 100 Club on Sept 30^th, JACS Aberdare on Nov 18^th and the Cambridge Junction on Dec 28^th & in 2023 we’ll be back tour and playing a number of summer festivals too.

Do you think we’ll ever see the original line up reform again?

We did that back in 2002 playing Shepherd’s Bush Empire and The Scala which became a live DVD but there are no plans to do it again.

Demon Music Group have kindly reissued a best of, of the bands material. Listening back to the bands material now are you pleased with how the band sounds?

I’m thrilled with this release, it’s a great selection of tracks carefully chosen and curated by Eddie Piller, great artwork by Paul Bevoir and delighted it’s also come out on vinyl too. It also features tracks from our 2014 fourth album, ‘Soho Dreams’ so it’s the full story over the years since ’79.

What are you up to at present?

We are supporting the Demon Music ‘So Cool, The Very Best of Secret Affair’ release with a Q and A in conversation with Eddie Piller, at the 100 Club, London, Sept 30^th followed by a short acoustic set (for the first time).

Finally, what’s on your turntable at present?

Stevie Ray Vaughan with Double Trouble.

 

LINKS

Link to buy tickets for the Q&A https://www.seetickets.com/event/secret-affair-so-cool-q-a/100-club/2392509

Website www.secretaffair.info

Facebook https://www.facebook.com/secretaffair.official

Twitter https://twitter.com/secretaffair79

Instagram https://www.instagram.com/secretaffairofficial/

TikTok https://www.tiktok.com/@secretaffairofficial