Any Trouble

Any Trouble's founding members Clive Gregson (guitar), Tom Jackson (vocals) and Chris Parks (guitar) met at Crewe and Alsager Teacher Training College in 1974.[3] Soon after, Mel Harley (drums) and Phil Barnes (bass) completed the line up.[2]

Initially Any Trouble were a covers band, playing anything they liked, including songs by Bob Dylan, The Band and a selection of American rock and roll numbers. With the advent of punk rock and then new wave, Clive Gregson realised they needed a change of material and started taking songwriting seriously. He explained in a 1999 interview, "We were like a human jukebox and it was obvious to me then if we wanted to get anywhere we needed original songs. I started to take it a bit more seriously then".[3]

After vocalist Tom Jackson left, the band was fronted by rhythm guitarist and songwriter Clive Gregson.[2] The remaining four were the first Any Trouble line-up to record, initially releasing the Gregson composition "Yesterday's Love" as an indie single in 1979.[2] This was picked up by some radio stations and was played by BBC Radio 1 DJs John Peel, Andy Peebles and others in the UK.[4]

Airplay for Any Trouble's debut indie single "Yesterday's Love" led to interest from major record labels including WEA, Chrysalis, EMI and Stiff. Any Trouble selected Stiff "because they were our kind of people".[4]

Their first release on the Stiff label, Where Are All the Nice Girls? was perhaps their most successful.[2] The album was produced by John Wood (Fairport Convention etc.) and the band gained significant visibility after featuring on a Melody Maker front cover and in a gushing article by Allan Jones.[3] In some ways the band's career never recovered from this early rush of success and Gregson's singing was unfairly compared to that of Elvis Costello and Ian Dury.[5][6]

The band's second album Wheels in Motion, with Martin Hughes replacing Mel Harley on drums, was produced by Mike Howlett;[2] it would be the last recorded on the Stiff label in Any Trouble's original incarnation.[7]

Despite frequent touring and the release of Wheels in Motion, Any Trouble's record sales failed to grow. The band were dropped by Stiff during a 1983 US tour supporting Ian Hunter,[4] with their manager arranging for them to open for Molly Hatchet to help keep them afloat. At that point Clive Gregson "pulled my plug... threw in the towel... we straggled back to NYC, where our van was robbed whilst we were in the Stiff offices trying to wrestle return tickets to the UK out of the office manager". The band flew back to the UK on standby tickets.[8]

After returning from their US tour without a recording contract Any Trouble took a long break, after which Clive Gregson returned to making demos. He had a meeting with subsequent manager Ray Williams who persuaded him Any Trouble had a sufficient following to justify its revival. Gregson re-formed the band and, on the strength of the demos, Williams secured a contract with Gery Gersh at EMI America.[8]

Any Trouble's new line-up included Andy Ebsworth on drums and Steve Gurl on keyboards, with original members Clive Gregson and Phil Barnes.[2] The sessions started promisingly enough with Val Garay (The Motels) as producer but Garay left after contract negotiations broke down. David Kershenbaum (best known for producing Joe Jackson and, later, Tracy Chapman) was brought on board to produce the band's eponymous third album Any Trouble but they were unhappy with the synthesizer-heavy sound of the final mix. While they toured the UK to support the album there were no funds available from the record company for a US tour; the album failed to chart on either side of the Atlantic.

Gregson decided to throw everything into Any Trouble's second effort for EMI America, producing an ambitious double album (an 11-track single LP in the US) that featured a mixture of new and previously recorded material to highlight the band's diverse range of material. The new release, titled Wrong End of the Race,[2] also failed to chart despite support from the record company.[8] After the failure of their second EMI album, Clive Gregson broke the band up again.[2] He recorded a solo album and joined Richard Thompson's band for a time before starting a successful folk-rock duo with Christine Collister in the mid-1980s, on the dissolution of which he resumed his solo career from 1992 to the present. Gregson has also toured and recorded in various combinations of musicians, including Boo Hewerdine, Eddi Reader, Nanci Griffith, Andy Roberts, Ian Matthews and Dennis Locorriere. Andy Ebsworth was one of the members of Ryder, the purpose-made pop group which represented the United Kingdom at the 1986 Eurovision Song Contest.[9]

In 2007, following the re-release of several Any Trouble albums on CD, the group reformed with the Wheels In Motion line-up of Clive Gregson, guitarist Chris Parks, bassist Phil Barnes and drummer Martin Hughes. After playing a few live gigs, Barnes had to bow out of the reformed group due to other commitments.

With Mark Griffiths as a session musician on bass, the revived group recorded a new album which was released on the reborn Stiff Records label on 10 September 2007. The album was titled Life in Reverse and featured thirteen new Gregson-penned songs. It was produced by John Wood, and had unique artwork by the Stiff Records designer Tobbe Stuhre. The band played a headlining reunion gig at the Jazz Cafe in London, England to support the release.

After another period of inactivity, in November 2013 Cherry Red Records released a 3-CD set The Complete Stiff Recordings 1980-81, comprising the band's first two studio albums with assorted singles and b-sides, plus the Live At The Venue album, packaged in mini-sleeves. The band supported this by re-forming to perform a one-off gig at London's 229 Club. By now, Griffiths was a full official member, and the line-up consisted of Gregson, Parks, Griffith and Hughes.

Any Trouble stayed together in 2014 to record a new album Present Tense and played a short tour in England in December 2014, which included Band on the Wall, Manchester, on 2 December 2014,[10] dates in Newcastle, Birmingham and the 229 Club in London; they also played at the Purple Weekend Festival, in León, Spain.[11] Present Tense was released in November 2015 featuring 18 new songs written by Gregson.

[12]

• Any Trouble at discogs
• Official Stiff Records website
• Official Stiff Records webstore
• Ebsworth on Myspace
• Phil Barnes' website