Album artwork

by Ian Wright and Tony "Agent" Cooper:

When we were tired and needed a bit of a sit down

When we were a bit out of focus

When we were tough

Don't forget...

... if you're reading this, please feel free to comment by clicking on the "comments" link at the bottom of each post.

The story of ....... Hugo

***

Anthony 'Hugo' Longden comes from a musical family - his maternal great grandfather was the leader of a colliery band in Washington, County Durham, playing double bass and tuba; his mother was a talented amateur pianist, and his many cousins play all kinds of instruments in a range of different styles.

He learned the piano at seven, but it was not destined to be his natural choice. "Something wasn't quite right," he recalled. "I kept getting told off by the teacher because I always wanted to play by ear. I used to trick her by getting her to run through new pieces first, and then I'd try to remember them - I wasn't really reading the dots properly at all, and to this day I'm lousy at sight reading for piano, and I can't do it at all for bass."

Both his father and sister worked for the BBC, and music was always being played around him. His father, Johnny Longden, designed the first 'self-drive' control desk for the new Radio One, and he was exasperated by his son always turning up the bass gain on their old Grundig radiogram (remember those?).

"It used to drive him mad," Hugo said. "My sister had been working with Robbie Vincent on BBC Radio London, and I was fed a diet of some of the best funk and soul around. The first basslines to grab my attention were those on Marvin Gaye's Trouble Man album on Motown. The film was a turkey, but the soundtrack was fantastic. I didn't even know what a bass guitar was at that stage, but I always loved listening out for it."

"Robbie Vincent really liked Heatwave at that time, and that was another revelation to me. I loved those early tracks, like Too Hot To Handle, Boogie Nights, Ain't No Half Steppin', and when I heard Groove Line and Put The Word Out in 1977, I couldn't believe my ears."

But Hugo's piano playing was beginning to slip, and he soon parted company with his piano teacher. "I had learned a bit of basic jazz improvisation and broken chords, which helped, and I continued to mess around, but it wasn't really happening for me," Hugo said. "My parents bought me a classical guitar, and I didn't get on much better with that, but it was an important change." Within a couple of years, he had re-strung the hapless instrument with four, instead of six strings.

Hugo, raised in Uxbridge, attended Abbotsfield boys' school in Hillingdon, Middlesex (famous ex-pupils include astrologer Russell Grant, and comedian Rowland Rivron), where music was high on the agenda.

The school's famous youth jazz orchestra got itself on to Blue Peter in the 1970s, and there were a lot of musical teachers on the staff. "Some other people in my class started talking about guitars, and then it happened - I was shown a brochure full of electric instruments, and there was a bass guitar," Hugo said. "To cut a long story short, I saved up £80 and bought myself a Japanese Maya Jazz Bass copy in 1979, and I never looked back."

So where did the 'Hugo' bit come from?

"I am blessed with a spud of a nose, and for a short while at school I was known as 'Hugo the hippo'. That thigh-slapper only lasted a matter of months, but a sax player I had been playing with, Tim Sayers, left school still calling me it. Six months later, when he wanted me to join a band there was already an Anthony, so I became known as 'Hugo' and the name stuck. I don't mind it, actually - it could have been far worse!"

The band in question was swing jazz outfit, The Figaro Club, which had already cut a demo tape to land a number of London gigs. "It was my first crack at walking bass lines, and although it was a world away from the soul and funk I loved, I was just glad to be gigging. It was all new and exciting for me."

The band had some changes of personnel, and eventually became The Jumping Belafontes. A gig at The Fridge in Brixton in August 1982 was to prove momentous. "That's when I met Sean. He had been asked to stand in as second guitar, and we hit it off from the start," said Hugo.

Hugo and Sean gradually shifted the flavour of the band's output, introducing funkier elements in place of the standard jazz undertones. "We were flying high for a while," Hugo remembers. "We were playing the club circuit in London hard. At the time, I was training as a journalist in Portsmouth, and wore a groove in the road up to town several nights a week. We did a lot at The Whisky A Go-go in Wardour Street, often supporting Roman Holliday, and it was a lot of fun. We also did places like the 100 Club, the Rock Garden, and appeared at the Capital Radio South Bank Splash on the terraces of the National Theatre - supporting The Troggs, incredibly."

The Belafontes' success peaked with a Radio One session for David 'Kid' Jensen. "Kid Jensen really liked us and helped us by plugging the fact we didn't have a record deal. Unfortunately, our drummer wasn't really up to the task, and ultimately it cost us dear."

After the disappointing session, Tubeway Army's John Garrett took to the drummer's stool, and the tours continued, including a blast at Steve Strange's Camden Palace. But the funkier undertones had driven a fatal wedge into the band, and it split in 1984.

"Sean and I were devastated. The Belafontes had been our lives, and it was like the splitting up of a relationship. We floated around aimlessly for a few months, and then started forming Pressure Point in 1984," said Hugo.

Another momentous date. "I had to travel up to the north east for a family funeral and was late getting back to an audition we had arranged for a new drummer, Matthew Best. When I arrived, I met this fantastic guy who could play some of the funkiest stuff I'd ever heard - I was worried, because he looked a bit weary, and I guessed the fact the bass player hadn't been there at the start might have pissed him off a bit. Anyway, we hit it off instantly, and have worked together ever since."

Pressure Point went through many incarnations, often numbering up to nine or ten at times, including brass players and percussionists. The first single, Mellow Moods, was a Capital Radio people's choice, and received widespread airplay.

But the band's high point came with the recruitment of former Ikette, PP Arnold.

"Pat was superb, and she brought a wealth of experience with her," said Hugo. "She was great to be around on tour, and I still don't understand how such a massive voice can come out of such a petite woman - it's really something else."

An album was recorded at various studios around London during 1987, produced by Steve James, and was mixed in Bath. Perhaps the best known track was Dreaming, which later featured on Totally Wired, a soul and funk compilation. The CD also features Hugo and Matthew in another guise - as the blistering rhythm section for The Explosions. Guitars were provided by James Johnson of Pigbag fame.

Hugo has fond memories of the session in a studio at Baron's Court. "Those guys were fabulous. They thought they were James Brown, right down to their moves, their singing and their clothes - and they were bloody good at it, too. We did the track, Shuffle Bump, in one take, and it went on forever - my hands were actually hurting by the end, but I was pretty pleased with the results."

Other sessions followed with various artists, along with some BBC television work which included writing and performing soundtracks for two QED science programmes.

"This was all very well, and I enjoyed myself, but I missed working with Matthew and Sean," Hugo said. "Matt and I are very fortunate - we just gel when we play, and we seem able to anticipate what the other wants to do. That is fantastic if you want to take a groove and then develop it - it's the way we've written a lot of stuff. We rely on each other, and we've often flattered ourselves by complimenting each other on the fact we have never played with anyone better. It's true. Honest!"

Around the same time, the band developed a musical alter ego - The Greedy Beat Syndicate, and it was this work that allowed Hugo, Matthew and Sean to really develop the harder, funkier and more experimental side. Sampling was the new craze, and GBS were at the forefront, quickly taking their music to market with the first single, Listen To The Band.

"I didn't really like the idea of sampling to begin with," admits Hugo. "I love to play, but all that used to be required was the odd burst into the sampler and that was it. But when I got a chance to slap on Ride The Rhythm I fell in love with the whole idea."

And it was GBS's work that got the boys involved with Genesis P Orridge and Psychic TV. "Matthew had been playing with PTV for years, and he put in a word for us with Gen," said Hugo. "Next thing I knew, we were regularly on stage with them, and this was the start of a really crazy era for us."

Appearances at Reading Festival, Subterrania, The Mean Fiddler, The Zapp Club in Brighton, the Trinity College May Ball in Dublin, a gig in Zagreb in the rapidly imploding Yugoslavia, and even at Tuppy Owens' Sex Maniac's ball in a field somewhere in darkest Oxfordshire followed.

These days, Hugo is still in demand as a session player, and he says slap bass is beginning to make a comeback. "I think there was a time when people got a bit fed up with it, unfortunately. It is always popular live because it looks good, but I noticed fewer and fewer people wanted me to do it on their tracks, preferring the more solid lines instead. That was fine by me, but slapping is really what I do
best.

"I played at Glastonbury 2005 on one of the smaller satellite stages with a band called Storm Pilot. They are heavy rockers, really, but that didn't stop me from bunging a load of sixteenths under everything - the crowd seemed to like it. Well, they didn't throw anything...

***

Influences

Hugo likes...

Rufus; Slave; Heatwave; Marvin Gaye; Roy Ayres; Rick James; Funkadelic; Earth, Wind & FIre; Average White Band; BB&Q Band; LTD; BT Express; Brass Construction; Cameo; Chic; Lonnie Liston Smith; Donald Byrd; The Strikers; The Isley Brothers; Defunkt; The Brothers Johnson; Incognito; Level 42; George Duke; Marcus Miller; James Brown; Me'Shell; David Sanborn; Patrice Rushen; Prince; SOS Band; Stevie Wonder; GQ; Narada
Michael Walden; George Benson and hundreds more...

Hugo says: "Of all of those, it was Rufus, Slave, Heatwave, Level 42 and the Brothers Johnson who really taught me how to play."

***

Equipment

Hugo has used...

1983 Fender Jazz Bass, black, maple neck [Pressure Point; GBS]
1987 Fender Jazz Bass Special, black, rosewood neck [Pressure Point; Psychic TV]
2004 Fender Jazz Bass Marcus Miller signature model, natural, maple neck, active [GBS]
1988 Music Man Stingray (Ernie Ball), natural, maple neck, active [Pressure Point, GBS, Psychic TV]
1996 Patrick Eggle 5-string, red, rosewood neck [GBS]

1994 Fender Stratocaster, sunburst, rosewood neck [GBS, Psychic TV]
1984 Squier Telecaster, black, maple neck [GBS]

Another photo:

This is a photo of Matthew Best playing the drums at the Pyramid Club, New York back in 1988.

North Sea Jazz Festival

A BIT OF HISTORY

THE BACKGROUND

Throughout the late 80s and early 90s The Greedy Beat Syndicate was one of the busiest funk/dance/acid rhythm sections around.

They locked down grooves for an astonishingly wide range of artists, never easily pigeon-holed. Take, for example, their mad acid work with Psychic TV guru Genesis P-Orridge at one end of the scale – with the smooth satin soul of PP Arnold and Pressure Point at the other. But more of all that later…

So who the hell are they anyway?

GBS members and London club regulars Matthew Best, Sean Maher and Anthony ‘Hugo’Longden worked through a gruelling apprenticeship on the punk/funk/soul/jazz/swing/R&B route writing and recording their own material, working as session players, and DJing.

Maher and Longden met when they were thrown together for a Figaro Club gig at The Fridge in Brixton. Maher had stepped into the breach with just two hours’ notice, and had to learn the set from an old tape machine while crammed into the back of a Triumph Toledo.

The pair hit it off instantly, and were still in place when the band became The Jumping Bealfontes, working the club circuit in support of the likes of Roman Holliday, The Chevalier Brothers, Richard Green and The Next Step, and Joboxers.

A radio one session with David ‘Kid’ Jensen opened doors to bigger and better things – but it also opened some cracks in the Belafontes’ line-up, and Maher and Longden were soon looking for a fresh challenge.

Bass player Longden had cut his teeth with west London funksters Standing Room Only, and had been looking to move away from the 50s swing style and into something harder, louder and, well… funkier. He found a willing accomplice in Maher, and within just three months Pressure Point had been formed, with Best taking his place on the drummer’s stool.

Best, whose credits at the time included such punk luminaries as the UK Subs and The Anti-Nowhere League as well as numerous demos for the Damned, completed what became one of the tightest funk units at a time when British crowds were craving Cameo, Jam and Lewis, Rick James, Rogers and Edwards…

Pressure Point featured several different vocalists, including Corinne Drewery, later of Swing Out Sister fame; Ingrid Mansfield-Allman (best known for chart-topping 1980 hit Southern Freeez); Angie Waithe and Lydia Gayle.

Gayle’s lilting vocals brought early success for Pressure Point with bossa classic Mellow Moods, voted People’s Choice on the weekly Gary Crowley within days of its release in 1985.

By 1987, PP Arnold had joined the line-up, recording an album with Pressure Point just ahead of her highly successful spell with The Beatmasters (Burn It Up) the following year. The album, This Is London, was produced by Steve James, son of classic funny man, Sid James of Carry On fame.

The LP featured a number of classically silky soul numbers, such as Dreaming, Stay, Mellow Moods, and Everything To Me.

At the height of their success, the Best-Maher-Longden team secretly formed The Greedy Beat Syndicate – a musical alter ego that spearheaded early use of the sampled sounds of the fledgling cut-up movement which snowballed into the trip-hop scene.

GBS unique take on the style was to play real instruments across a range of samples and loops, often developing well-known classic bass, guitar and drum lines themselves.

At that stage no-one had the faintest idea who or what GBS was – and they liked it that way.

Speaking in an interview at the time, Maher summed up the musical schizophrenia of those days.

“It was weird. One minute we were working in the studio with Pat Arnold and a big brass section producing pretty slick American-sounding soul and funk (if I say so myself!); the next we were sweating away in a bedroom surrounded by old albums and samplers from floor to ceiling.”

“It was liberating stuff – we could make things up as we went along much more easily with GBS, and we weren’t under the same kind of constraints – no record company or accountants breathing down our necks.”

“Nothing was off limits. We experimented with all sorts of different musical styles, and when we were asked to do a film score we even dabbled with bhangra – this was to come in very useful when we worked with Psychic TV and Genesis P Orridge later on.”

The first GBS album Stragglers From The Catastrophe (Captive But Safe) was an immediate success, though supply was always a headache – a factor that has made the early discs collectors’ items.

Study The Funk, released ahead of the album, was voted into the top three club singles of the 1980s by London-based City Limits magazine.

As the clubs picked up on the new phenomenon, GBS found itself in increasing demand, both as a unit and as individual session players, performing and writing for others, and even doing a bit of television and film work into the bargain.

Best had been working with Psychic TV for a number of years, touring in Europe, America and Japan with Genesis and Paula P Orridge during the Godstar incarnation of the band, and when he heard Gen was planning yet another shift in direction, he suggested bringing Longden and Maher into the mix.

A two year collaboration followed which married Gen’s anarchic experimental rock/punk with GBS’ slap bass/funk guitar/hard dance rhythms – it shouldn’t have worked. But somehow it did.

Tours in Europe and all over the UK followed, with Best, Maher and Longden being featured on the PTV Black video, among others; playing at Reading Festival, and in the bizarre surroundings of Tuppy Owens’ Sex Maniacs’ Ball.

With Gen’s departure from Britain, the PTV/GBS era came to a close, but collaborations with various members – Dan Black, Fred Gianelli (Turning Shrines) and Richard Schiessl (Sperm Records) have continued ever since.

More recently, GBS have turned their considerable talents sessions, television and film, providing the soundtrack for the ill-fated Norman Wisdom film Double X The Name of the Game, and the critically well received Guru In Seven.

Discography

To come.everything.

PHOTOS:

This is Matthew and Fred the Kookie Scientist from Psychic TV at Fabric in 2005.