Free Complicated Shadows by Graham Thomson

a rapid and definable creative leap between their early amateur days and a professional career, his
artistic arc would be a steady upward ascent rather than a steep and sudden climb. The reason for this was almost certainly Flip City. The band was ragged, enthusiastic but amatuerish. They sounded
like what they were: a pub band playing for drinks and kicks.
    As a means of getting the band gigs, the BBC demo tape was certainly adequate, but by the time they ventured into the studio above the Hope and Anchor pub in Islington in early 1975, Declan in
particular was looking for much more. ‘He was absolutely dead serious about what he wasdoing,’ says Steve Hazelhurst. ‘He wanted the band to be
successful.’
    The Hope was a regular stop in Flip City’s London itinerary. On the afternoon before a Saturday evening gig, Ken Smith had managed to secure some studio time from proprieter Dave Robinson,
who in between inventing pub-rock, managing bands and promoting gigs, ran a makeshift studio there.
    Having helped Robinson move a piano up to the top floor, Flip City were rewarded with the chance to put down three tracks. Original drummer Malcolm Dennis had now left and a replacement had yet
to be found for the drum stool, so Flip City recorded with a long-forgotten session drummer from a band called Phoenix, whose talents were supplied by Robinson. The results – ‘Pay It
Back’, ‘Imagination (Is A Powerful Deciever)’ and ‘Radio Soul’ – were intended to showcase Declan’s prowess as a songwriter as much as present the band
itself as an entity.
    In any event, the former aim was probably better realised than the latter: driven by enthusiastic but rudimentary saxophone, a driving soul beat and a structure clearly pinched virtually
wholesale from Van Morrison’s ‘Domino’, ‘Pay It Back’ was lyrically and structurally very similar to the later version that appeared on
My Aim Is True,
but
entirely different in feel. Lacking the album version’s loose-limbed swagger, the band instead attempted a fluid blue-eyed soul swagger in an early Springsteen style which they couldn’t
pull off, and which sat awkwardly against the vengeful sentiments of the song.
    The assured – if slightly plodding – recording of ‘Imagination (Is A Powerful Deciever)’ was more successful, and can be heard on the bonus disc of the
My Aim Is
True
CD reissue. It was Declan’s finest song to date, and Ken Smith remembers an attempt to get the American blues singer and songwriter Bonnie Raitt to listen to it, with the aim of
persuading her to record it.
    ‘We went to Browns Hotel in Kensington with this reel-to-reel tape, but she had a cold and couldn’t come down, so we left it with the clerk at the desk with a strong promise that he
would give this to Bonnie. [The tape] might havehad other tracks on it, but it certainly had ‘Imagination’ on it, because that was the one we were trying to
sell.’
    If Raitt ever did get the tape, she made no use of it, but it’s clear that Declan saw his future career as a songwriter as much as a performer, with ambitions and a drive which far
exceeded what he was doing with Flip City. From an early age he would have been fully aware of the financial rewards of song publishing, not least because both his parents were well versed in the
intricacies of the music business. The final track recorded at the session was ‘Radio Soul’. It remained both melodically and lyrically strong, but the band were still searching for the
right musical setting. It would take The Attractions to find it.
    As Flip City continued to gig into 1975, it became more and more apparent that Declan’s attitude and improving songwriting was increasingly at odds with the laid-back, happily amateur
philosophy of the rest of the band. He knew what he wanted – and it wasn’t Flip City.
    ‘They were just the weirdest fucking band,’ recalls Dave Robinson. ‘I booked Flip City because I liked their manager