THE QUIREBOYS

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The Quireboys ride out: The early years and EMI

The Quireboys were formed in London in late 1985/86 after Spike and Guy Bailey met through Spike’s older sister who worked in Guy’s local pub. The main nucleus of the band featured Spike, Guy Bailey and Chris Johnstone. After Chris briefly left the band, Nigel Mogg was recruited to fill the vacant bassist slot. Chris later decided he wanted to rejoin the band, so he learned piano to complete the initial line up. The band were originally called The Choirboys after a movie they had seen, but colleagues on the building site where Spike and Guy worked joked they should be called The Queerboys due to the way they looked.

The Queerboys started building up a following, playing the old Marquee in Wardour Street in the West End of London and regularly selling it out. Unfortunately for the boys their name was causing a real stir, forcing some gigs on a Cherry Bombz tour to be cancelled. On top of that, the group were offered a slot on the Reading festival on the understanding they would change their name and so The Quireboys were born.

After playing Reading, the band had built up a solid following and released a couple of singles Mayfair and There She Goes Again through Survival Records. By this time Ginger (now in The Wildhearts) was a full time member of the band, making his debut when the band supported Guns ‘n’ Roses at the Hammersmith Odeon. By now the boys were attracting major record company interest, mainly from the U.S. Ozzy Osbourne’s wife Sharon stepped in and took over management from Bush Telfer, who was then manager of The Marquee.

EMI won the race to sign the band and it was at this time that Ginger parted company with the boys, leaving a vacancy for a guitarist. Enter Guy ‘Griff’ Griffin, who had been playing in a band called The Cradle Snatchers who had supported The Quireboys a couple of times.

The band then went to LA in April 89 to begin recording A Bit Of What You Fancy with Rod Stewart guitarist Jim Cregan. Rod even came down to the studio and gave it his approval before slagging it off a couple of years later. The band at this time consisted of Spike (vocals) Guy Bailey (guitar) Guy ‘Griff’ Griffin (guitar) Nigel Mogg (bass) and Chris Johnston (keyboards))

Joining them in the studio, on drums, was legendry session man Ian Wallace. At end of 1989 the band released the single 7 O’Clock in the UK which scraped into the top 40. The album A Bit Of What You Fancy followed, entering the UK charts at number 2. Going gold in the UK and platinum in Canada and Japan. Over the next 13 months, the band toured the world. This time joined on drums by Rudy Richmond. They went to the US, playing clubs with LA Guns, arenas with Heart and festivals such as The Gathering of Tribes (the blueprint for Lollapalooza) with The Charlatans, Soundgarden, The Cramps, Iggy Pop and The Cult.

In June 1990, whilst touring the US, the band was offered a special guest slot with the Rolling Stones at St James Park, Newcastle. (Spikes dream gig as he comes from Newcastle). In August the same year they played to 72,000 people at The Monsters Of Rock Festival at Castle Donnington with Whitesnake, Aerosmith and Poison. They finished of the year with a memorable gig at the Tokyo Dome on New Years Eve with Bon Jovi, Cinderella and Skid Row in front of 50,000 people.

Following the high of 1990 Spike, Guy and Griff went to Ireland to work on the new songs for the follow up album Bitter Sweet & Twisted. After a couple of months the rest of the band arrived in Dublin to start pre-production. It took a while to decide on a producer and eventually Sharon went for Bob Rock. Rock had previously had great success with The Cult and Aerosmith but they had to wait until he finished Metallica’s Black album. The band finally started recording in Vancouver in late 1991/92 at Little Mountain Studios. A lot of money had been spent on the band in the hope of a huge follow up. The second album was recorded in two studios in Vancouver, about three or four in London and even one in Hawaii. The band was beset by more problems with the album being further delayed and the bands A&R guy leaving EMI. Finally a single Tramps & Thieves was released in late ‘92 followed by the album itself in ‘93. Another tour followed but unfortunately for the band the music scene had changed seemingly overnight with the birth of grunge.

Even though The Quireboys were never part of any particular scene, they suffered and although the sales never quite matched that of their first album, they still went platinum in Canada. Having sold over one million records EMI dropped the band with Sharon Osbourne departing shortly afterwards. After Axl Rose personally asked them to appear with Guns N Roses on the Use Your Illusion tour in Scandinavia and Germany the boys decided it was time to call it a day.

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