‘The Stone Roses were trying to get hold of us to be their support band at Spike Island...’ The story of Asia Fields.
They’re namechecked in Clint Boon’s new book. They should have played at the most famous Madchester gig of all time. They sounded like Haircut 100 meets Santana. North Manchester band Asia Fields had everything going for them. Nearly. Guest Cult member Sean Connors was the kind of die-hard fan who’d go to the ends of the earth - well Derby, anyway - to see his heroes. Sean reflects on what might have been for this ‘lost’ Manchester band.
Looking back on Asia Fields’ career in the music business, they had all the right attributes to break through: the right look, the confidence, the swagger, mighty tunes, great haircuts - but what they were missing was the slice of luck it takes to really make it. The north Manchester six-piece band added layers of percussion to irresistibly catchy pop songs which made it impossible to stand still to their music. To my ears, they were one of the finest live bands I’ve ever heard. I saw them many a time across the country, once hitch-hiking to London, once sleeping on Derby train station having missed the last train home... but it was worth it every time.
‘I’d been in bands since the early ‘80s and they’d had different names and line-ups, but Asia Fields formed in 1985,’ singer Graham Maley says. ‘Like a lot of the bands that broke through in the late ‘80s when the world’s eyes turned to Manchester, we’d been rehearsing and gigging for years, honing our music. We recorded some demos with a then-unknown Clint Boon and started to find our sound. It was a mix of Talking Heads, ACR, Postcards Records, The Smiths and early James. I would write the songs on an acoustic guitar, bring them into the studio to be fleshed out by a line-up that now included a percussion section.’
Could the band sense that things were building? ‘Yes, we had momentum, confidence and arrogance. The more we rehearsed, the better we got, the more confident we became…it was an infectious feeling. We were playing gigs and we could feel it building. We were still playing low level gigs, but we could sense it.’
A breakthrough came in November 1989 when the band supported their old friend Clint Boon's band Inspiral Carpets at the International 2. I was in the audience that night, and it was love at first for me, as an unknown band came bounding on, full of confidence, throwing t-shirts into the crowd. They sounded incredible: imagine Orange Juice and Haircut 100 mixed with Santana, throw in the list of bands mentioned earlier for good measure - and you’re still only halfway there.
‘That gig was the definite turning point,’ confirms Graham. ‘The crowd were on great form, and they seemed to love our songs. We were playing the Hop and Grape about a month later, so we decided to go down to The Haçienda beforehand in these two old vintage cars that me and Hewie [percussionist Paul Hewitt] had. We pulled up and us six scallywags got out and jammed for about fifteen minutes to the queue, giving out flyers for the gig. It was a great scene!
‘We were hoping there might be 30 people there,’ Graham says, remembering the gig at the Hop and Grape. ‘We were backstage and had no idea how many had turned up. We’d seen a big queue and people milling about, but we assumed there must have been another gig on at the other venue on the floor below. The first we knew was when we walked out, so yeah, it was a big shock!’
I was there that night, too. The official capacity of the venue was 500, but it felt like there must have been double that number present. I was down at the front, for what was one of the greatest gigs of my life.
The band now had a manager, a rehearsal space, a steady line-up and an ever-growing following. ‘We formed our own label, Frank Records, with our manager. We wanted to remain independent. We had some big offers from major labels, loads of great live reviews. We refused to do any press, though. We wanted to grow it on our own terms, remain independent and not get caught up in the Madchester thing.’
The band released their debut EP, Burst, in October 1990, featuring three live favourites: ‘Ain’t That Just What Love is’, ‘Dazed’ and ‘Save Me’. It was engineered by Graham Massey from 808 State and released on Frank Records.
‘We had 6,000 copies pressed and they all went,’ Graham says. ‘We were still being asked to do interviews, but we wanted to remain elusive, and it worked to a point. It intensified people’s curiosity.’ Asia Fields were on an upward trajectory, filling bigger venues with a growing live reputation.
As the band were riding high, their manager started to suffer some health issues. The band were loyal to him, as he had helped to set up the label, source the rehearsal space and was essentially an additional member of the band. Every decision so far had gone the band’s way, so they decided to stick with him until he was well enough to return to the fold.
This is the ‘what-might-have-been’ point in the story - the chance to play with The Stone Roses at Spike Island. ‘Greg Mounfield was our lighting engineer at the time,’ explains Graham. Greg had a brother called Gary - better known as Mani, bass player with The Roses. The band’s infamous Spike Island gig in1990 didn't feature any support bands. Instead, they opted for a series of DJs - but should Asia Fields have been on the bill that day? Graham picks up the thread: ‘Years later, Greg told me that the Stone Roses’ team were trying to get hold of our manager to see if Asia Fields would have supported them at Spike Island, but he wasn’t returning their calls... so it never happened. It would have been nice…’ he adds stoically. I suspect he’s told this story a few times over the years and has now reached the stage of acceptance when recounting it.
‘By the time he returned, momentum had been lost and the scene was changing. We could sense it and we knew we weren’t the little darlings of the scene anymore. We shelved our second single’s release, and we had a gig lined up at The Ritz, which we cancelled a couple of times before eventually playing it. Again, it was all down to internal problems.’
Fast forward to 1998 and one last roll of the dice… The band had continued with various line-up changes, as fashions had transformed and music tastes had evolved. Graham had written a whole new set of songs. At this time, DJ Mark Radcliffe found himself in the unlikely position of presenting the Radio 1 Breakfast Show, after taking a circuitous route to the biggest job in British radio. Together, Mark Radcliffe and co-host Marc Riley had broken many left-field acts at this time with unexpected exposure on national daytime radio. Whitetown’s ‘Your Woman’ reached the dizzy heights of number 1 in 1997, thanks in no small part to their support for the track.
So, when Mark Radcliffe picked up on Asia Field’s 1998 release ‘Crazy Caroline’, it looked like good fortune might finally come a-calling. Pulp, who’d been around since the early 1980s, had taken over a decade to break out from the indie ghetto, courtesy of a Britpop-era audience now paying attention. Maybe fate was about to play a kind hand to Asia Fields at last…
‘We’d pressed a load of stock up at the distributors and we’d played quite a few in store PAs at HMV,’ Graham recalls. ‘There was a sales force ready to distribute stock to the record stores and obviously radio was playing it, too. I’d put everything into that record, it had been a tough time, as I’d recently got divorced and I was living in this tiny little place in Werneth [just outside Oldham].
‘Then, just as the record was about to be released, the distributors went bust and the administrators seized the stock, meaning all the momentum was lost. Anyone who went into a record shop on the Monday couldn’t get hold of a copy as a result. It was crushing.’
They tried, though, but after further frustrations - including a week spent recording songs for an album that wasn't released - Asia Fields were no more.
Today, Graham lives in Spain and remains on good terms with the other members of the band. Fellow Oldhamer Clint Boon recently name-checked one of Graham’s songs, ‘Miss Maxwell’, in his recent book The Manchester Chronicles. Apart from that, Asia Fields remain another ‘lost’ band. But, a few weeks ago, Cult Manchester told the story of Joanna, another semi-forgotten band from the Madchester era who, miraculously, came back and are now gigging again. Could there be a third act in the Asia Field’s story, too? I hope so. I really do.
You can hear ‘Miss Maxwell’ on Graham's Instagram - @GrahamMaley
