My Asylum Years

Back in 1979 I decided I’d had enough of the daily trudge of my office job for the past four years and considered it was maybe time to try something different. As I was quite enthusiastic about photography I thought that some sort of college photography course would be the thing.

So in the April at the carefree age of 22 I packed in my job with very loose plans to go to college in the October. In the meantime I had enough funds for my needs to get by along with some help from the DHSS, something I would not condone nowadays.

At that time a group of mates had just formed a rock band – Asylum.

The line-up were Alan Kewn, drums, Steve Jones, guitar, Alan Kilfoyle, bass and two guys new to me brothers Paul and Steve Rooney, vocals. Living in Liverpool they quickly managed to slot into the local music scene playing the usual pubs and clubs gigs.

As the only one of us who had a camera, an Olympus OM1 at the time, I became the groups unofficial unpaid photographer. Also as the owner of an Akai 4000DS reel to reel tape deck I was also roped in to record them at rehearsals.

I attended many of their gigs in an attempt to capture them in action. However, I very quickly learnt the pitfalls of low light indoor photography especially when combined with drinking pints of lager.

Ilford HP5 at box speed of 400ASA was my film of choice at that time. I also used Ilford XP when it was introduced a year or so later, but again still at 400ASA. Unfortunately I knew nothing about pushing film speed, it would have been useful to have that extra stop or two. I recall 1/30 second at f1.8 was a go to setting.

After establishing themselves on the Liverpool music scene their biggest performance to date happened on the 18 November 1980 when they played in a regional heat of Battle of the Bands at Liverpool’s Empire Theatre. I recall that one of the other bands were big favourites to win but Asylum pulled off a great performance and crowned winners.

I was there of course to capture the event, on HP5, with my newly acquired Canon AE1, 50mm and 200mm f4 lenses.

For the show all the spectators were in the stalls but I snuck into the upper circle and got some shots with the 200mm. After the winners announcement I managed to get myself onstage then backstage for the celebrations. I recall one of the band liberated a bottle of champagne from the judges stockpile. Sorry Noddy Holder I’m sure you would have enjoyed it.

One of the perks of winning the contest was a track featured on a compilation album with 11 other regional winners. RCA were the record company and Asylum’s song “Nowhere to Run” was track six on side one.

The band also got to play the song on Granada Reports, a local TV programme that went out after the six o’clock ITV news. It was however for me quite a disappointing showing as the sound technician could have done better with the mix.

A few years ago I found that someone had uploaded the song to YouTube which was played to the accompaniment of revolving shots of the band. Those pictures were very familiar, some cheeky monkey had only nicked them from my Flickr stream, never sought permission or tagged any acknowledgement of the photographer. I’ve tried to find the song since without any success, there are far too many more prominent search hits of the same name.

The band continued with local live performances but these dropped off and they took an eight month hiatus. During this spell they made a number of demo tapes and targeted the record companies.

They had me do some studio shots, well the lead guitarists front room actually, where I used a couple of tungsten lights someone had gifted me. I bounced lighting off the ceiling or a white cloth background we had pinned up.

One of the shots was used in a magazine article about the band. The 26 November 1981 edition of “City Girl” no less. Guess what no payment and even worse no photo credit. I did however buy a copy, for my younger sister of course, so I had a clipping for the photo album we kept back then.

Circulating the demo tapes eventually paid off and a couple of record companies wanted to send their A&R people to see them so a gig at The Warehouse, Liverpool was arranged for the end of November 1981. It was one of Asylums best shows but a recording contract never materialised.

The band eventually split up and went their separate ways. I kept in touch with Steve who had moved to London and managed to earn a living in the music industry. He continues to do some solo performances on an acoustic guitar in local clubs.

Steve set up a home studio and recorded several albums which can be found and listened to for free on Bandcamp here

One particular song I enjoy is City of Dreams from his 2008 Inspiration album, the female singer gives a great performance. Hear it here.

Whilst editing the photos for this article, which at that time were home developed and printed, it made me wonder just what I could have done those 40 plus years ago with todays technology. I think that maybe I would have happily settled for just some 3200 ISO film.

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