Category: First Cab/Donovan’s Brain

I lived in a tiny village outside Oxford for a year and bandmate-to-be Chris had made friends with our Scottish neighbours, Syd and Ann. They were a little older than us and had invited us for lunch one Sunday. Syd and Ann’s traditional English Sunday lunch of roast beef, roast potatoes, Yorkshire pudding and vegetables was the first truly memorable meal of my life. There was nothing special about the food itself, but it was just so well cooked! Living at home with my parents, I was used to something completely different. On a Sunday, vegetables were boiled until they turned to jelly, and the beef shrank to a dry, woody lump while we were at the pub on the corner of our street having a lunchtime pint. The beef usually came out of the oven about half its original size. Like magic! Syd and Ann’s perfectly cooked roast beef lunch exploded in my mouth with flavours and textures I had never experienced.

Many years later, Ingre and I were taken to dinner in London at the Japanese restaurant Benihana by my brother Brian. Their advertising blurb goes “not just a meal, it’s an experience”. It’s true, it was an experience, and we had a very good evening out. The food was great, but there was also all the dicking around and juggling with knives and other kitchen utensils by the cook which was fun to see and made it special. It was also my first experience of Japanese food. Then I had another great Japanese restaurant experience in Stavanger, Norway of all places. I was on stand duty with some colleagues at an exhibition and we went Japanese for dinner. The Kobe beef and sashimi were something else!

In the early 90s, driving north from Newcastle for a camping trip in Scotland, Ingre and I stopped off at an Indian restaurant just outside Edinburgh. About the restaurant itself I remember almost nothing, but the food and especially the naan bread
was superb. That meal most likely contributed to us being able to tolerate the rain, which fell every day for the two weeks we drifted around in Scotland and the north of England. Why we didn’t even think of checking into a B&B is a mystery and we stubbornly pitched a wet tent every day.

Just to balance things a little, I ate an outstandingly disgusting meal in Shanghai on one trip to China. That popular restaurant served every part of a cow that you could possibly wish for. Knees? Eyes? Nose? Stomach? No problem at all! And the menu had pictures of everything, in case you didn’t know what a cow knee looked like. “And how would you like your cow spleen, sir? Medium rare?” It was a pity that all the food, like the restaurant itself, smelled like the silt on the bottom of a stagnant pool of rat-infested water. Or a rotting carcass. The spirit they served tasted even worse than the food, but it completely numbed my taste buds and, in the end, made eating possible. It also made my young colleague drunk.

When we lived in France, our favourite restaurant in Bourges was Vietnamese – not French – and we staggered home from there on a regular basis after a good meal, a bottle of wine and the free saki, which we were always given after we paid the bill. The saki cups had tiny pictures of naked men and women in the bottom, which we found inspiring.

The Cypress Tree, a song from the 1985 First Cab album “Little Pieces”, is about a fictitious Japanese restaurant and written before I’d ever visited one. It’s also the only song from the album that I still get a tiny royalty from every year (which is shared with two publishing companies and the rest of the band). Someone, somewhere is still playing that song every year on the radio. Sadly, the album is not available anywhere, though I have a spare vinyl copy if someone wants to make me an offer I can’t refuse… No, just kidding. Wild horses couldn’t make me part with it. I’d love to put the album out on streaming sites and we’ve talked about it, but unfortunately, I don’t own the rights.

Jag bodde i en liten by utanför Oxford i ett år och bandkompisen Chris hade blivit vän med våra skotska grannar, Syd och Ann. De var lite äldre än oss och hade bjudit oss på lunch en söndag. Syd och Anns traditionella engelska söndagslunch av rostbiff, rostade potatis, Yorkshire pudding och grönsaker var den första riktigt minnesvärda måltiden i mitt liv. Det var inget speciellt med maten egentligen, men det var bara så vällagat! Att bo hemma hos mina föräldrar var jag van vid något helt annat. På söndagar kokades grönsaker tills de blev till gelé och köttet krympte till en torr, träig klump medan vi var på puben på hörnet av vår gata för en lunchöl. Köttet kom vanligen ut ur ugnen ungefär hälften av sin ursprungliga storlek. Ren magi! Syd och Anns perfekta rostbifflunch exploderade i min mun med smaker och texturer som jag aldrig hade upplevt tidigare.

Många år senare togs Ingre och jag på middag i London på den japanska restaurangen Benihana av brorsan Brian. Deras slogan går “inte bara en måltid, det är en upplevelse”. Det var sant, det var en upplevelse, och det var en mycket bra kväll. Maten var fantastisk, men det var också allt lek och jonglering med knivar och andra köksredskap, av kocken, som var kul att se och gjorde det speciellt. Det var också min första erfarenhet av japansk mat. Sedan hade jag en annan stor japansk restaurangupplevelse i Stavanger, Norge av alla ställen. Jag var på plats med några kollegor på en utställning och vi åt japanskt till middag. Kobe nötkött och sashimi var något speciellt!

Tidigt på 90-talet åkte vi bil norrut från Newcastle för en campingresa i Skottland. Ingre och jag stannade på en indisk restaurang strax utanför Edinburgh. Om restaurangen själv minns jag nästan ingenting, men maten och särskilt naanbrödet var utmärkt. Den måltiden bidrog sannolikt till att vi tolererade regnet, som föll varje dag under de två veckorna vi drev runt i Skottland och norra England. Varför vi inte ens tänkte på att ta in på ett B & B är ett mysterium och envist satte vi upp vårt blöta tält varje dag.

Bara för att balansera saker lite åt jag en enastående äcklig måltid i Shanghai på en resa till Kina. Den populära restaurangen serverade varje del av en ko som du någonsin kunde önska. Knän? Ögon? Näsa? Mage? Inga problem alls! Menyn hade bilder på allt, ifall du inte visste hur en kos knä såg ut. “Och hur vill du ha mjälten, min herre? Medium?” Det var synd att all mat, som restaurangen själv, luktade som sumpmark. Eller ett ruttnande kadaver. Spriten som de serverade smakade ännu värre än maten, men det bedövade mina smaklökar så att jag till slut kunde äta den. Den äckliga spriten gjorde också min unga kollega full.

När vi bodde i Frankrike var vår favoritrestaurang i Bourges vietnamesisk – inte fransk – och vi stapplade hem rätt ofta, efter en god måltid, en flaska vin och gratis saki som vi alltid fick när vi betalade notan. Saki-kopparna hade små bilder av nakna män och kvinnor i botten, som vi fann inspirerande.

The Cypress Tree, en låt från First Cab albumet “Little Pieces” (1985), handlar om en fiktiv japansk restaurang och skrevs innan jag någonsin hade besökt en. Det är också den enda låten från albumet som jag fortfarande får en liten royalty från varje år (som delas med två förlag och resten av bandet). Någon, någonstans spelar fortfarande den låten varje år på radion. Tyvärr är albumet inte tillgängligt någonstans, även om jag har en extra vinylkopia om någon vill ge mig ett erbjudande som jag inte kan tacka nej till … Nej, skojar bara. Vilda hästar skulle inte slita den ifrån mig. Jag skulle gärna lägga ut albumet på Spotify osv, och vi har pratat om det, men jag äger tyvärr inte rättigheterna.

When the First Cab album “Little Pieces” was about to be released in 1985, we did a record label showcase concert in Stockholm at the Orion Theatre, together with stablemates Imperiet and Docenterna. First Cab were at the bottom of the bill and Imperiet at the top. Which puts Docenterna, hmm, firmly in the middle. We had borrowed an apartment from the record company for a couple of nights and the evening before the concert went out to celebrate the album release and the upcoming concert, which was perhaps the biggest gig we had done at that point and certainly the most important. The beer flowed freely during the evening and at least one of us threw up walking back to the apartment. Not naming any names, but I think it was the drummer. Initals BH.

We had to be at the venue by early afternoon for the soundcheck, and standing in the centre of that huge stage, pale-faced and shaking slightly, was not one of my proudest moments. We were all very tired and badly hungover and struggled through the soundcheck. Nobody was expecting any action from us and of course they didn’t get any. We simply played through a few songs and that was that. The concert was also to be filmed, adding to the stress, though the main focus for that was Imperiet.

Just before we went onstage, I was speaking to the label MD Peter, and asked him if I should talk in English or Swedish between the songs. “English” was the reply, so that’s what I did. The consequence of that was one of the daily newspapers (DN) in their concert review wondering why the First Cab singer spoke in “bad English” between the songs. What? My English isn’t that bad! I’ve always suspected that in fact it was his English that was crap and he simply didn’t understand what I was saying.

But we weren’t as active onstage as we normally would have been. We didn’t have enough energy for that. So, although our gig was also filmed, no-one ever bothered to edit it for use in any way. Not worth the expense, most likely. There exists a video cassette (somewhere), taken from one of the three cameras which filmed the gig, the one placed right at the back of the venue. I haven’t seen the film for 30 years and to be honest I don’t have any great desire to see it either. In fact I watched a bit of it only once when I had it in my possession. The sound on the video cassette is from the microphone on that particular camera and though I can’t actually remember what it sounded like, it had to be substandard, with the whole length of the venue between us and the microphone. We were a good live band – sometimes very good – which is how we got the record deal in the first place. We had the opportunity to make an impression on a crowd of two thousand in a classic Stockholm venue with all the major newspapers there to see it, but we lost it in a cloud of alcoholic fumes. I can’t even blame it on being young and stupid, as I was 31 at the time.