Cuban Heel: An Interview with Laurie Cuffe

This week a conversation with Scottish singer and guitarist Laurie Cuffe, whose career started with The Cuban Heels.

There is a myth that when Johnny & the Self Abusers split, two bands were formed, one being The Cuban Heels, the other being Simple Minds. The Cuban Heels, though, had already been in existence for a year or so at this point, although John Milarky did join their ranks from J&TSA.

The band’s debut single was released on independent label Housewives Choice Records in Spring 1978, a double A-side consisting of a frenetic cover of Petula Clark’s international hit Downtown and a self-penned number Smok Walk.

A string of singles and an album followed in the early 1980s but the lifespan of the band was relatively short with Laurie going on to feature in the line-ups of a number of other bands, including The Saints, One O’Clock Gang and, in recent years, The Véloniños, along with Davie Duncan, Kenny McLellan and Shug Jamieson.

In 2019, The Cuban Heels were represented in the highly recommended Big Gold Dreams: A Story Of Scottish Independent Music boxset. That same year, The Cuban Heels were featured in the Spirit of Punk 2019 – RIG Arts exhibition held at Greenock’s Beacon Arts Centre, while Laurie was interviewed for Punching Above Our Weight, a documentary that examined the 1970/80s music scene in the Inverclyde area.

After an absence of decades, the band took to the stage together again to perform two shows: the first at the Beacon Arts Centre to coincide with the exhibition, the second at Glasgow’s O2 Academy.

Can you remember when you first decided that you wanted to become involved in music?

My parents got me a guitar when I was around 12 and I got serious about playing around 14 or 15, listening to bands like Thin Lizzy and The Sensational Alex Harvey Band. My older brothers were big music fans so there was quite a mix of records lying around. Lots of Beatles and Stones (mostly Stones) but also Bob Dylan, folky stuff like the Incredible String Band and Pentangle and I remember loads of Chess label singles including Chuck Berry and Howling Wolf.

Chuck Berry and The Incredible String Band! That really is quite a mix!

The first Dr Feelgood album ‘Down By The Jetty’ had a huge effect on me, especially Wilko Johnson’s guitar style. A real lightbulb moment was hearing the Damned’s ‘New Rose’ on the John Peel show. The first Ramones album and then the first Clash album made it seem like something you could attempt yourself.

So, when and where did the Cuban Heels start and what was your first live show?

We started off in Greenock around ’76 as a three piece. I think the first gig was playing at a mate’s birthday party. I remember doing a cover of Chuck Berry’s ‘Oh Carol’. Suits and skinny ties, trying to look like the Jam!

What was the music scene in the Greenock area like when you started out? Were you aware of Thomas Leer and Robert Rental over in neighbouring Port Glasgow?

We weren’t aware of them. The music scene at the time revolved around a gig called the Victorian Carriage. It seemed to be mostly bands doing Steely Dan covers. I recall a lot of versions of ‘Haitian Divorce’. We were more aware of what we didn’t want to be like. One great exception was Chou Pahrot, who were from Paisley. They were a kind of weird hippy/punk, instrumental, Captain Beefheart mash up. Ahead of their time, really good guys and very encouraging to us.

How true is the story of the guy behind the Housewives Choice label being a millionaire who worked part time in an Edinburgh music shop?

Well, he seemed like a millionaire to us as we had fuck-all! His name was Mel Benton. I think his wife came from the landed gentry. I seem to remember they had a big flat in Edinburgh’s New Town. There was a thriving punk scene in Edinburgh based in Cockburn Street. We used to play a pub there called The Wig and Pen.

The band made a cameo on BBC drama Just A Boy’s Game, how did that come about and what did you make of the play?

Scouts from the film company saw us playing at the aforementioned Victorian Carriage. It was shot in Greenock, and our bit was filmed in a bar called The Norseman which is still there. The play was very much ‘of its time’. Looking back it all seemed very bleak. Greenock looks like Gdansk.

After a gap of a few years, your second single Walk On Water appeared on Cuba Libre, which was your drummer Ali Mackenzie’s label, wasn’t it?

Yes. Ali liked the business side of things. He put out early Shakin’ Pyramids and James King & The Lone Wolves releases too.

The Cuban Heels’ sound had moved on significantly since the early days. Who would you say was influencing you at this point?

I remember listening to Talking Heads a lot. I was impressed by Teardrop Explodes and Echo & The Bunnymen. There was a lot of good stuff happening then.

By the time of the release of the Work Our Way to Heaven album, things must have been looking good for the band, Peel sessions, live concerts on Radio 1, working with in demand producers like John Leckie – what would be the highlights of your time as a Cuban Heel?

Working with John Leckie in the Manor Studio in Oxfordshire was amazing. Recording Peel sessions at the BBC was a great experience. We played great places in London like The Marquee, Hope & Anchor, Rock Garden, Dingwalls and The Vortex. I have equally fond memories of iconic Glasgow gigs like The Burns Howff, Amphora, Mars Bar, and the student union at Glasgow Tech was always a good gig for us.

Yeah, I think next to the Apollo that was the best venue in Glasgow in the late 1970s.

We did a support slot with the Stranglers at the Apollo too, and it’s nice to have played that stage.

Being a Nico fan, I’m curious about the time you acted as her backing band for some songs in Edinburgh in 1981.

I remember we did ‘All Tomorrow’s Parties’, ‘Waiting For The Man’, ‘Femme Fatale’ and a version of Bowie’s ‘Heroes’. The gig was at the Nite Club in Edinburgh. We worked out the songs beforehand and had a rehearsal with her on the afternoon of the gig. I remember us going through ‘All Tomorrow’s Parties’ and she pointed and shouted ‘Play!’, when she wanted me to do a guitar break. I’m pretty sure she was in the midst of heroin addiction at the time, but she was still an imposing presence. Her voice was as great as ever.

Later you played with The Saints, how did you enjoy that experience?

Touring Australia was great fun. It was a carefree time – quite liberating to be just the hired guitar player.

And more recently you’ve played with and released music as part of The Véloniños, how would you describe this band’s music?

I suppose it’s kind of ‘modern/retro’. New songs but with a 50’s and 60’s instrumental feel.

Can we expect more Véloniños shows when things (hopefully) return to normal? Or maybe even a second album?

I really hope both of those things happen. I enjoy working on the guitar parts and recording the songs but playing live is my favourite thing!

2019 saw a brief live return for The Cuban Heels, any plans for more shows with them?

I’ve been writing songs with John Milarky, and we’d been talking about doing some small gigs before Covid hit the fan. Hopefully, that will happen before too long. Another Heels gig would be great.

Definitely. Thanks for talking, Laurie.

For more on The Véloniños click here.

Nashville: New Waves #17

The question of what is the greatest music related movie is asked online regularly.

It’s tempting to answer with a film with a connection to music you love but some of my favourites feature genres that I have little or no interest in. The 2011 documentary Last Days Here tells the story of Bobby Liebling, lead singer of the heavy metal rockers Pentagram, as he battles his demons. It’s compulsively watchable but did I seek out any Pentagram music after seeing it? No.

Likewise, Robert Altman’s 1975 satirical drama Nashville is seeped in country and western balladry, the popularity of which as I’ll mention isn’t something I can readily fathom. It is, though, a great film which should appear on many more lists of best music movies. Here’s a review I wrote for Louder Than War for the Eureka Masters of Cinema release of the film in 2014.

Okay, firstly, Nashville isn’t the easiest film ever made to review – he says, getting his excuses in very early – and resides at the completely opposite end of the cinematic spectrum to the high concept movies beloved by Hollywood producers of the present day, ones that can be summed up in a single and easily understandable logline.

Sprawling and featuring many of Altman’s trademark – and for the time highly innovative – techniques such as his routine use of overlapping dialogue and improvisational shooting style, Nashville is an audacious and hugely ambitious ensemble piece with no real star unless you count the city itself.

Instead of focussing on a small cast of leads, Altman gives us twenty four main characters, whose lives we follow over a period of five days in the run up to the Tennessee presidential primary, where an unseen upstart candidate named Hal Phillip Walker of the fictional Replacement Party is attempting to record his fifth straight electoral success.

A number of themes also weave their way through the film’s very much less than straightforward narrative and Nashville can be viewed in a number of ways: as a biting satire of a country in crisis, a political parable (Nixon resigned as President during the shoot) or even as a musical, as Altman himself points out in his commentary, there’s about an hour’s worth of songs in the film.

Here I should really point out that if you’ve ever been put off watching the film due to its Country and Western backdrop then don’t be and I say that as someone who is just about allergic to the genre. Altman and screenplay writer Joan Tewkesbury weren’t fans either and on its release, the musical community of the titular city were far from enamoured of the representation of their scene which many felt the director had set out to mock.

Certainly, for this non expert, Ronee Blakley as down-home country queen Barbara Jean and Karen Black as her bitchy rival Connie White, appeared to be very convincing country stars from the era of Tammy Wynette and Dolly Parton, while Haven Hamilton (Henry Gibson), a little guy with an ego the size of several Southern states, also struck me as a very plausible Mister Nashville figure with his homespun philosophies and ridiculous late Elvis style wardrobe.

Some of his material such as the jingoistic dirge 200 Years that celebrated the United States Bicentennial and the cloyingly sentimental For The Sake Of The Children do walk a fine line between pastiche and caricature, but back then at least, the latter was something that Country and Western artists weren’t afraid to flirt with. In the same year that Nashville was released, Tammy Wynette scored two huge hits in Britain with Stand By Your Man and D.I.V.O.R.C.E, the latter a song that gave Billy Connolly a UK number one single when he parodied it, although it was surely already bordering on parody even before the Big Yin got his hands on it.

Hamilton could definitely be filed under what one out of towner dismisses as country crapola but Altman was aiming for a mix of good and bad songs and Keith Carradine, who is very plausible in the role of a manipulative womaniser called Tom Frank, provided the film with a track that I found an unexpected treat: I’m Easy, a country folk number that went on to win the Academy award for Best Original Song and also reached the Billboard top twenty chart.

In fact, the scene where he performs the song with several spellbound female characters in the audience clearly under the illusion that he’s singing it to them personally is a real highlight of the movie.

With so much great acting on display, it’s almost impossible to pick out favourite performances but Lily Tomlin is superb in the role of Linnea Reese, the one woman that Tom is actually delivering those lyrics to. She’s also the wife of one heartless husband, the mother of two deaf children and a member of a large gospel choir and what makes her turn even more astonishing is the fact that this was Tomlin’s feature film debut.

Another relative newcomer, Ronee Blakley, is equally fine as the afore-mentioned Barbara Jean, whose success is the envy of many but whose mental state is at best fragile, coming over at times like a cross between Loretta Lynn and Ophelia.

Gwen Welles delivers too as Sueleen Gay, a pretend name for a pretend talent. She has delusions of being the next big thing but no Auto Tune as yet to help her out with that ambition. It’s before the age of the Wonderbra too, so to catch some extra attention, she has to make do with a pair of socks to prop up her cleavage. Today, this gal would undoubtedly dream of the chance of appearing on X-Factor; here though the only time anyone pays any real interest in her onstage is when she’s tricked into attempting to strut her stuff during what is surely cinema’s saddest ever striptease in a club full of men gathered for a Replacement Party fundraising event.

Karen Black, maybe the most under-rated actor of her era, is predictably good. Finally, a mention too for Shelley Duval, who also excels as a brazen and shallow groupie who insists on being called LA Joan, a creature with a penchant for wigs and a talent for latching on to suckers – and if she was ever to catch something rather nasty from her regular bedroom romps then you really might still struggle to work up much sympathy for her.

As Nashville reaches its conclusion, each of the characters who have been zigzagging through the storyline and interconnecting along the way, at last converge together at an outdoor concert at the city’s Parthenon to promote Hal Phillip Walker’s campaign. Some will be onstage, some in the wings and many in the audience – and let’s just say that one is never going to be allowed the chance of vote for Walker or any candidate in the forthcoming election. If you’ve never watched the film, don’t worry, I won’t be spoiling the ending for you here.

Film critics of the day lauded Nashville. ‘It’s a pure emotional high,’ Pauline Kael raved in the New Yorker, ‘and you don’t come down when the picture is over.’ Roger Ebert declared it was the best American movie since Bonnie And Clyde and it was nominated for four Oscars, including for Best Director and Best Picture.

It’s remained highly influential since its release. Paul Thomas Anderson’s Boogie Nights and Magnolia were both large cast, multiple storyline movies that clearly took inspiration from it, as did Paul Haggis’s Crash, which bagged a Best Picture Oscar win, although few film afficionados would judge it was in any way more deserving of that honour than Altman’s film. Here in Britain, Annie Griffin’s Festival from 2005 was also absolutely in debt to Nashville albeit here comedy replaced country with Edinburgh providing a memorable backdrop.

Nashville is not a perfect film. It does sag slightly round about its halfway mark and an argument could be made that Altman should have excised a couple of songs from the Grand Ole Opry show but it is right up there with his very finest works such as M*A*S*H and Short Cuts. Not only that, but in a period when American cinema was arguably at its creative peak, and intelligent and often provocative motion pictures like One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Dog Day Afternoon and Taxi Driver were all huge box office hits, Nashville was right up with the best of them.

If You Like Nashville, you might also like Altman’s The Player (1992), an absolute joy from the almost eight minutes long opening sequence without an edit to its final credits. Again, there’s a fantastic ensemble cast including Tim Robbins, Greta Scacchi and Peter Gallagher, along with cameos from Andie MacDowell, Malcolm McDowell, Jeff Goldblum, Elliott Gould and many, many more.