Nottingham punk/new wave group circa 79/80

Line up #1 1979-80
Vaughan Wilkinson: Bass
Paul Hartshorne: Guitar
Micky Dawson: Vocals
Keith Gotheridge: #1 Drums
Bob Fawcett: #2 Drums
Dave Kerry: #3 Drums

Line up #2 Aug 1980 –
Vaughan Wilkinson: Bass
Paul Hartshorne: Guitar
Andy Shread: Vocals
Paul Betts: Drums

Vaughan recalls:
“I was a founder member of the Drug Squad who played bass and wrote some of the songs in collaboration with Paul Hartshorne – guitar and Micky Dawson – vocals. We did indeed have Keith Gotheridge playing drums and a few others before Paul Betts. Keith left us to join The Darts. The music you’ve put up is The Drug Squad mark2 with Paul Betts on drums, Me on bass, Paul Hartstone on guitar, and Andy Shred (I think that was his surname) on vocals. Andy was introduced to me and Paul Hartstone by Paul Betts after Micky had left. I have some studio recordings with Micky on vocals which we recorded at Sin City. Also some photos of a gig we did in Birmingham“.

Hear the four tracks here.

“My musical influences from an early age ranged from Elvis, my mum was a big fan, and also The Beatles. Although not quite old enough to enjoy them at their peak I was still a fan in my early teens after they had split up. This led to me discovering lots of sixties bands like The Who, the Stones, Kinks, and Small Faces. All these bands definitely influenced me as to what kind of music I wanted to play”.

“The Drug Squad evolved from a band I was in called The Features. Both myself and Paul Hartshorne were members of that band which I’d formed with a keyboard player called Steve Daley. When we split up Steve started playing with Medium Medium, and Paul and I joined Micky to form The Drug Squad. The name came about because like a few bands at that time, we dabbled with mind expanding substances and we thought that it was a cheeky moniker. Also we were not too far away from the punk power pop genre and the name seemed a good fit for that. I was born in Nottingham, Paul was from Ilkeston and Mickey was from Greater Manchester. We had a few drummers, Keith Gotheridge, who I have mentioned already. After he left, Bob Fawcett who had played with Some Chicken took over for a while. After he left, we found a drummer from Mansfield called Dave Kerry”.

“The band had been formed in Nottingham. Art failure were big friends of ours so we did do a few gigs together, I seem to remember if you did a gig at the Outlaw bar they gave you the use of a hotel room to get changed and hang out in. It made you feel like you’d made the big time. We had a couple of managers, Dick Lawson who was in insurance and used his office for our business too. Also Roger Rothwell who financed a few of our recordings.

I know we did a recording in a big studio in Huddersfield, can’t remember the name of it, but the Brighouse and Rastrick brass band had been there before and recorded there number 1 hit, the Floral dance!! (Nov 1977). The engineer told us the story. I can’t remember what we recorded.

As far as I remember the second line up of the band with Paul Betts and Andy Shread didn’t gig. That was why I was quite surprised to hear the recordings that were put up on your site. I know we rehearsed quite a bit but didn’t remember them being recorded for any reason. I certainly don’t have them but it was great to hear them. Paul’s drumming sounds great as does Andy’s vocals. I can’t quite remember why the band didn’t do any gigs but we may have just drifted apart. I later ran a rehearsal and recording studio for 27 years in Nortingham called Subway. Subway Studios was not the old Kev Jackson MEK studio. Subway was run by a guy called Dave Reynolds. You probably haven’t come across him as he was a pro session drummer, lived out in Burton Joyce, who went off on tours with big established artists”.

The Drug Squad were friends with rock and roll singer Garry Slack and recorded four songs with him at Sin City Studios in July 1980. You can hear them here.

After the end of The Drug Squad Vaughan Wilkinson and Paul Hartshorne went on to form Kid Freedom.

Notes

There are four recordings of the second main line up supplied by Paul Betts who drummed for them on occasion. Steve Harvey also drummed for them a couple of times deputising for maybe Keith Gotheridge or so he thought/remembers.

The 4 songs from Paul Betts are Drug Squad rehearsals at the Peoples Centre, Mansfield Road, Aug 1980.

They can be heard here.