Douglas Steel - Nov 72 - August 22

 

I had some of the best times of my life with Doug Steel. 

We made a lot of sweet music together in his big boxy spare room. That sounds sexier than it was. Doug claimed he wasn't a musician, but he was the most fluid and remarkable "non-musician" I've ever worked with. He could summon the perfect sound from nowhere, and his chord progressions were melodic, peculiar, and exactly right. There was probably some sort of equation at play, as I always felt that Doug was attempting to sneak maths and science into my pop songs, which was the last thing I would've been able to do. The songs we wrote together were the best, the silliest, and cleverest ones I've been involved with, because they were so much fun to do. That was the primary ingredient: fun. You can hear it. It was sublime. Moments of sunshine. 

 The vocals were always a tricky - sound bounced off the hollow woodenness of the room, making recording a problem. Doug's solution was to have me warbling under a duvet draped over the door. I spent hours under there heroically singing into the fart-smelling eiderdown, while Doug smoked and sipped and laughed his head off at the sounds emanating from the trick-or-treat ghost haunting the doorway. It was like I'd jumped from a plane and landed feet first on the landing, the parachute draped over me. 

Doug had very specific ideas about what he wanted from a vocalist. "Don't sing," he would say, "That's too much singing. Stop singing." Unique vocal coaching. Less is more was his credo, though only when it came to my singing voice. 

Simon Moran was over with his guitar and we wrote a couple of rockers: "Space Birds" and "Don't Touch My Cigarette" in an afternoon. "Space Birds" was recorded in less time than it took to play back, as the second verse is just the first one repeated. As usual I wrote down some nonsense lyrics. I sang it in a Paul Williams voice with a lot of reverb over Simon's Syd Barrett riff. On the chorus Simon suddenly bellowed "Wolves! Wolves hate space birds", as though channeling some cosmic truth, and we dissolved into tears of laughter. And that's the image of Doug I still hold in my mind's eye: sat at his console, bent double, stubbly and usually sockless in his loafers, his cheeks wet with tears. We laughed a lot in those days. All the time. We had fun.

I was once on holiday with him and Simon in Greece, staying with Simon's mother-in-law in the hills of Andros. She invited a few of her friends over for nibbles: ex-pat English ladies of a certain age, in chunky jewelry and gleaming dentures. Simon was explaining how we all knew each other and, in passing, mentioned that I had "turned a few heads back in the day." 

"John?" said one of the clamorous grannies, "Surely you mean Douglas." And the conversation turned to Douglas' good looks and charm while I sat there, his plain friend, vowing to work on my personality. Doug took this post-menopausal pawing in his stride, by the way. He was probably used to it. 

He was always well put together, always semi-sharp in his dress, lots of Aryan pretty boy energy: Doug would’ve have been a boon to any touring production of "Cabaret" or "The Sound of Music", though he'd have to have played the baddy. He’d have made a rubbish nun. 

He was a man of parts, but the image of Doug I hold in my head is the smart, kind, funny one, or the man casually puncturing a foolish opinion with cold, hard logic, something he often did, but lightly and without malice. He was a brilliant man and a better friend, and if I thought he squandered his talents they were his to squander. Not everyone needs to monetise their hobbies. He never thirsted for fame. I don’t think he thought about the music we made as anything other than as a means for us to be friends in a slightly different way. It was just fun. And it was. It really was. 

Not even fifty. Bloody hell. I'll miss you forever, mate.