Part three of the Peter Bell story, originally published in November 1994
When Ten Ten’s album “Walk On” came out in 1986, Peter Bell
remembers it was destroyed by the British music critics. “In England, they make
a big difference, not like here. They have tons of music newspapers. People buy
them every week and it’s gospel, especially the three majors, Melody Maker,
NME, and Sound. They can ruin you.”
One of the criticisms was it didn't capture the raw energy
of the band, that it was too polished. “Even the other members of Ten Ten bought
into that. That’s a bunch
of shit! Ten Ten was never raw. It was always polished. I loved that album.”
Undeterred, they toured and toured. “I got to meet all my
heroes. We played with everybody that was popular at the time. Our first show
with Simple Minds was an Amnesty International concert in Amsterdam for 50,000
people, the only time I had stage fright. I was dying. The stage was outside
and so big. You were far away from the next person in the band. Then you’d
realize it’s a whole different approach to doing the show, and I’m all about
the show. I can outrock anybody in this town. So after that, I was fine. The
next show was 100,000 people. The biggest was 150,000. We played with INXS. We
played with The Cure, The Bangles. What a shitty band that was except for the
bass player. We played with James Taylor in Munich. I got to meet Chrissie
Hynde at a Lone Justice show in London. She was so nice, gave me her phone
number, said call any time. I saw her two years later and she said, Why haven’t
you called? That was cool.”
Bell learned to like the big shows, running around the stage
and destroying hotel rooms under the tutelage of INXS. The record company kept
paying to clean things up. Mark Lewis separated his room from the rest of the
band. Bell was also doing “a ton of drugs,” he admits.
“On every big tour, there was one person hired to supply you
with drugs, whatever you wanted. It was like that at the studio, too, when you
were recording. I thought it would last forever. I used to set goals, and I
reached every one, but once we got signed, I didn’t set any more goals. I
fucked up. I went on autopilot. Somebody else could take care of things now. I
had done what I set out to do, made a career of what I love and what I’m good
at. I had done my part and didn’t want to worry about where the money went. We
were selling out Radio City Music Hall in 1987. We had videos on MTV.”
The album was released in the United States. “Q-94 put it on its ratings show and it got 98 percent favorable. XL-102
did a similar thing, and then they wouldn’t play it. Q-94 had a top 40 format
and had no choice. They couldn’t play it. XL-102 just wouldn’t. Our record
company flipped out. They were already stunned by the bad reviews in England.
What’s going on? Your hometown stations won’t play your record! We thought you
were popular there!”
XL-102 told Peter nobody was calling for it, but Bell says
he would call at least six times every day he was in town. So did his friends.
“They just wouldn’t play it. We would listen for hours. If I ever meet Rick
Maybee on the street, I’ll punch him in the face and not tell him why. People
don’t want to hear local music? Who the fuck is he talking to? I call and ask
for local music all the time, and so does everybody I know. I want to strangle
those bastards. They have a responsibility to support local music. Every band
they play was a local band at one time, trying to get somewhere. Even Roanoke,
the worst music town I’ve ever seen in my life has better radio.”
In the end, Bell placed “a lot of blame on those fuckers at
XL-102 for my career getting fucked up.”
The band kept putting out records. The last one, “Promises,
Promises” was in 1988. “We were doing well in Europe. We stayed in great hotels
until I smashed up too many of them. Chrysalis didn’t do anything to promote
our last record. They printed them but wouldn’t put them out. They were so
desperate to get rid of us, they offered to buy us out for $100,000. We were
still being courted by other labels. I voted to stay with Chrysalis, but I was
the only one. We were still touring, still making money. It was a sure thing.
But the others were worried we’d lose momentum if we didn’t get on a new label
right away and get a new record out. Virgin wanted us, so we had to go.”
They returned to Richmond to wait for the Virgin contract,
but when it came, it required they return to England to live. “And I was over
that! I didn’t want to see England again as long as I lived. It was a filthy and
disgusting town. I don’t like big cities. There were tons of homeless people.
We never had much money anymore and lived in a slum. I was lonely. It was
depressing. We ran up huge bills calling home, flying to Paris and Amsterdam to
forget about England. It rained all the time. It was cold. I hated it. I think
everybody in the band did. I wasn’t going to sign that contract. Why did they
care where we lived? But it was a deal breaker. We thought, okay, we’ll get
more offers. Flash was working his ass off.”
Meanwhile, The Good Guys signed a management contract with
Flash and went on tour in the United States with Simply Red. They were
compatible and Simply Red wanted them to finish the tour with them in Europe.
Flash offered to put up the backing money for the tour if The Good Guys agreed
to pay it back 500 percent if they got a record deal. Bell thought it was a
good deal for them. But The Good Guys consulted a New York lawyer who said it
was “nuts,” Bell remembers. The negotiating went back and forth, and in the
end, The Good Guys didn’t get on the plane. Simply Red got another opening act.
Bell feels it was a mistake. “Without that agreement, Flash
couldn’t get the money for the tour from his backers. The papers in Europe were
already excited about The Good Guys. They were running photos, advance press,
more than Ten Ten ever got. They would have been signed for a ton of money, but
they thought Flash was ripping them off. But nothing from nothing is nothing.
It was future possible money, down the road. If they didn’t get signed, they owed
Flash nothing. So they didn’t go. Look at them now, still trying eight years
later. No deal.
“It’s all just play money. I wouldn’t give a shit who got
the first advance money. You can always get a lawyer and break a contract
later.”
Meanwhile, Ten Ten was working on songs in Richmond, waiting
for the buy-out check from Chrysalis. It’s 1988. “I’m letting my bills pile up.
I was a bad drug addict. I spent all my money on drugs. I bought a big house
sight unseen on Elwood Avenue and Nansemond while I was in Europe and my
sister, brother, and a girlfriend were living there. I moved in, too. All my
investments had gone sour. The banks were knocking on the door. The police were
there every night. But whenever I was in town, it was a party. The other band
members kept to themselves, but I was the party guy. Everybody loved me.
Everybody came over. It was drugs and beer all night, non-stop, free party
house all the time.”
When the pay-off $100,000 check came, Flash called them
together and said the band owed him $130,000.
Bell lost his house. He and his girlfriend moved to Shockoe
Bottom. Don Ruzek left the band, but Ten Ten would still play. “We went back to
the original incarnation, the original three, me, Mark Lewis and Lee Johnson,
just playing around town. But I couldn’t go from playing in front of 150,000 to
the Jade Elephant. The only way I could do it was to be wasted. I couldn’t even
stand up. Any drug I could pump into my body before a show, I would. I hated
playing so much because it was cutting into my drugging time. I never went to
sound check. All I did was show up for gigs blitzed out of my mind
“To this day, I don’t see how the others did it. I couldn’t
adjust. We didn’t have a road crew anymore. We had to schlep our own stuff like
everybody else. I thought my days of doing that were over.”
The band pushed on for a couple of years. Bell thinks it
finally ended around 1991. “I went to Florida for a vacation and they called
and said I had to come back to play a show at The Library. I said I wasn’t
leaving Key West to play The Library. They said I had to, to get on the plane. They
didn’t believe I wouldn’t come. They went to The Library and waited. I didn’t
come. That was the end of Ten Ten.”
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