• Edited excerpt from Agoristo, the fifth chapter of
‘How To Never Have A Hit:
The confessions of an unsuccessful singer-songwriter.’ •
By
Alan Tyler.
•••
EARLY IN 1992 I had a dream, and it told me three things: Agoristo, number 14, and Devon & Exeter – a name, a number, and a racecourse. I had dreamt a winning horse.
Would my dream horse present itself in reality? I went to the nearby betting shop that morning to find out. I had great expectations, but there was no Devon & Exeter meeting. I looked the next day, and again there was nothing that corresponded to my dream. After that, I forgot about it. After all, it was only a dream.
But one afternoon, as I passed Ladbrokes on Camden Road, I remembered to have another look. This time there was a Devon & Exeter meeting, with only one race with more than 14 runners, which had already run. Up on the screen I read that in the 2.35, the number 14 horse, Rags To Riches, had come in the winner. Though not a perfect anagram, all of the letters in Agoristo can be found in Rags To Riches. Wow, I thought. As a matter of fact, in my excitement I had misread the name, which was Road To Riches, not Rags. It lacked the “G” of Agoristo, but still not far off – and Devon & Exeter and the number 14 could not be mistaken. It was annoying to have walked into the betting shop too late to make a profitable bet, but I still marvelled that my dream horse had come true.
From then on, Agoristo became a thing for me, a magic, dream thing. It sounded like a place, a place I was going to, maybe in Texas, home to so many of my musical inspirations. Agoristo was a Shangri La, a final destination, a lost world, a promised land, a prophecy. From rags to riches… on the road to riches…
The name testified to our improving fortunes. Jeff was negotiating a label deal for Heavenly with Rob Stringer, head of A&R at Columbia, part of the Sony conglomerate. After years of the dole, busking, student grants and shitty jobs, I would have more cash than I had ever seen. I was on the road to riches indeed. Jeff was doing a great job in getting everyone interested in the group; we had an album to make and TV and radio to do, and bigger gigs and the main festivals coming our way. Dreams were coming true, and I decided the album had to be called Agoristo. For a while, it was going to be.
Once the deal was in the bag we could start on the album, which was to be produced by Clive Langer at Westside, the studio in west London he co-owned with Alan Winstanley. The pair had made their fortunes recording hits for Madness and Dexys Midnight Runners. The Dexys connection was a big selling point for us; Sean and Andy were great fans, as was I. With only one single proper, we were still fairly naive about recording, or at least I was. Now we would work with respected pros who had a habit of making hit records.
I made a big thing about wanting the recording to be “as live as possible”. The affable and companionable Clanger went along with this, knowing that once we were in the studio we could be persuaded to go his way. He joined us for a week of pre-production at the Easyhire rehearsal place in Islington, and our keyboard-playing buddy, Zeben Jamieson, who had been touring with The Pretenders, was brought in for the recording sessions. Our songs were already fairly tightly arranged, which gave Clive less scope for his own inventions, but he came up with useful ideas for Gradually Learning, and a transformative key change for Time Drives The Truck.
By now 123 Camden Road had been taken back by its housing association owners. Sean had been living there at the end, and he and Strobe and some others broke into and squatted a shop-fronted house in the Angel, Islington: 321 St John Street, as numerological chance would have it. I got rehoused for a while in Dalston. St John Street, with its well-appointed bar in the front room, became the new band HQ. From here the band travelled each day to Latimer Road tube to get to Westside. The studio was only a short distance from where I had first recorded at Street Level; things were much changed now.
I had a grandiose idea to re-record Only One Flower with the Chalk Farm Salvation Army Band, the band my grandad had been in. Being the backing vocalist and tambourine player, Sean didn’t have a lot to do in the early stages of recording, so he occupied himself in a side room composing and scoring a full brass band arrangement, instrument by instrument. We couldn’t get the Chalk Farm Band (who reserved their services for A Higher Power) but a good amateur band was hired, and on an evening towards the end of the sessions the brass players assembled in the live room and were given their parts as written out by Sean. With only one or two minor corrections, the arrangement went to tape in no time. It was heavenly perfection, and I was deeply impressed. He was a clever lad, our Sean, as had been previously observed.
Our recording extravagances were not over. In June, after we’d finished recording the band, Jeff Barrett, Clive Langer and myself flew out to Austin, Texas to record horns, banjos and other instruments with The Bad Livers and other musicians at Arlyn Studios. At the helm would be “Texas” Mike Stewart. Clive had worked with Mike before on one of his less well-known production projects, an album by an Austin band called Poi Dog Pondering.
We arrived at 11pm Texas time (4am in London) and, too excited to turn in, I left Jeff and Clive at the hotel and wandered off into the hot Austin night, checking out every band in every bar I could find open on Sixth Street. That trip was the best time, the most amazing time for me. I loved working with those musicians, playing my songs in Willie Nelson’s studio. All these things I had wanted, coming into being.
Part of me is always a bit lost, though, and I kept thinking about Agoristo. I had been thinking, “When this recording is done, then that’s it… what then? Where to?” My vision did not extend further than the making of the record. It was the limit and entirety of my ambition, my all in all. Like the singular flower, bird, ocean and land in my song, there was to be only one album. With everything of mine now recorded, my work was done.
I succumbed to a romantic, fatalistic and vain idea; Agoristo was my destiny. I needed to find out where it was, while I was in Texas, and go there. It might be a town… or might it be a restaurant, or a bar? I looked in the telephone directory and an atlas, but there was nothing. I asked Texas Mike, expecting him to say “Oh, yeah!” but he had never heard of it. Maybe I just had to walk out and disappear into the desert to find it, like Harry Dean Stanton in Paris, Texas. I looked for the desert, but there is no desert to walk out into from Austin, just fences with arable land beyond. There was no ‘nowhere’ to go to or disappear into. Agoristo was not to be found, so on the last day I got on the plane to go home with the others, as I was always going to do.
A few weeks later we returned to Austin to shoot the Gradually Learning video, this time with the whole band, and I was able to share with them my new-found love of Austin, staying in the same nice hotel on Congress with a pool, going to great gigs every night at places like The Broken Spoke, Henry’s and the Continental, and buying old records, American clothes and other cowboy treasure. Terry Staunton from the NME came and joined us; together, we broke a margarita-drinking record at some restaurant, which got written about in The Austin Chronicle – and the NME, of course. We had a high time making that video, with Jeff Barrett walking on stilts, Goulding in cricketing gear, and Hackett on a horse. But still I succumbed to melancholy moments, and was missing Anna, who I’d split up with before we signed our deal. When I got back to London, we got back together, rented a place, and I asked her to marry me, and she said yes.
• • •
• How To Never Have A Hit: the confessions of an unsuccessful singer-songwriter by Alan Tyler •
For friends and fans, signed copies are available on Bandcamp now, in advance of the book’s publication date – 24 February, 2025.
The memoir of Alan Tyler.
Alan Tyler is the singer of The Rockingbirds, the chaotic, swashbuckling country-rockers who galloped haphazardly into the 90s Camden indie scene, got signed, appeared on Top Of The Pops, went head to head with Nirvana at Reading ‘92, and produced, eventually, four albums of unsurpassed Americana.
From DIY/punk beginnings, in 1980 Tyler arrived at the experimentalists’ haven of the London Musicians Collective and was soon playing swingy pop at Bernie Rhodes’ Club Left, sharing the agitpop aspirations of Scritti Politti and other Rough Trade acts before being there at the dawn of Creation Records. At various times he’s been a choirboy, a fanzine writer, a Young Socialist, a tap dancer, a polytechnic philosopher, a cycle dispatch rider, a news-monitoring video pirate, an ill-suited civil servant, and a Deptford Creek dwelling river poet. Long after his Heavenly Recordings heyday, Tyler remains a stalwart of London’s roots music scene: a critically recognised singer-songwriter who has never had a single hit.
Buckle up for a ride from the suburbs to the city, and from the city to the country. From the lowest dives to the tallest buildings and, finally, to pride of place in your local bookshop’s self-sabotage section…
The Rockingbirds self-titled debut (HVNLP2) was released in 1992. It sounded like a classic then and it sounds like a classic today.
• EVENTS •
• Friday 21 February, 2025 • Book launch at Rock’n’Roll Rescue 96 Parkway, Camden NW1 7AN (7-8.30pm).
Readings, a few songs, chat, book signings, and maybe a couple in the Spread Eagle afterwards…
• Sunday 23 February, 2025 • The Alan Tyler “How To Never Have A Hit Show” at Come Down & Meet The Folks The Betsey Trotwood, 56 Farringdon Road, London EC1R 3BL.
Alan and friends play two sets of music from the book (Rockingbirds, Famous Times, Lost Sons, solo stuff and some swingy pop numbers from the 80s) interspersed with readings and a bit of tap dancing!
• Monday 1 March, 2025 • John Niven talks to Alan Tyler about “How To Never Have A Hit” at The Social
The Social, 5 Little Portland St, London W1W 7JD
Time and ticket price to be confirmed.
• Monday 4 March, 2025 • John Niven talks to Alan Tyler about “How To Never Have A Hit” at Real Magic Books 2 High St, Aylesbury HP22 6DX
Time and ticket price to be confirmed
• Saturday 31 May, 2025 • Red Rooster Festival The Alan Tyler “How To Never Have A Hit” Show (45 minute version!) plays the main stage.
• Head to Alan Tyler’s Website for event ticket links and updates. •