‘When you tell people the story it still sounds unreal…’
Updated: 4 days ago
The elevator pitch for Joanna - The Movie. You couldn’t make it up.
Four lads from Leigh, Widnes and Runcorn form a band called Joanna amidst the jangly swirl of the late 80s' Madchester scene and… don’t make it. Then the tapes of their songs are lost because of a mix-up with their old manager. Thirty-five years later they find the lost tapes, release them as an album and suddenly, the old band is back together. They play a reunion gig in Manchester, then another in Los Angeles. Oh, and one of their songs is in an upcoming Chris Rock film. Before their gig at Yes in Manchester this month, guitarist Tyrone Holt tells Cult Manchester’s David Nolan about the highs, the lows and a potential third act twist.
Cult Manchester: When I first came across your story, I thought it might be a hoax… It’s like a film script. What REALLY happened?
Tyrone: We were only together for two years, really. We played at the Boardwalk, the Ritz, we played at the International. We were the best band around without a record deal, according to the NME at the time. And of course, we were up against The Stone Roses and all those big bands that were just breaking through as part of the Madchester scene. Although we were never a Manchester band as such, we were labelled that because we used to play so much in Manchester.
We had record company interest from Factory Records and stuff. We thought we were going to break it. We recorded demos; eight separate tunes over that two-year period in various studios - one of them being Strawberry Studios in Stockport - with the intention of getting a record deal. As you did in those days. And no one quite ‘bit’, and we thought that that was the end of the Madchester scene and therefore the end of Joanna. So, things kind of came to a natural close after two years. And we went to our separate ways.
Then friends of mine, some 35 years later, got in touch with me and said… I found some old quarter-inch tapes that say Joanna on them. There's two of them. Really? So, lo and behold, these tapes that had been in a loft for 35 years, suddenly resurfaced and I got my hands on them. I have them here, actually, I brought them with me (see photo above).
CM: Everyone seemed to think that someone else had the tapes. Turns out no one in the band did! Then they were found. What kind of shape were the tapes in?
Tyrone: We had to bake them. The engineer at Manchester Restoration said... I'm going to bake them at 50 degrees for 24 hours and hopefully, that'll solidify them. But, you might get some sound degradation, so it's fingers crossed. The day after he rang me and said… they're absolutely fine. It doesn't sound like there's any sound degradation in the tapes at all. So, I'd been in touch with one of the old bass players, and he was in touch with the singer, who was also in touch with the drummer… We created a WhatsApp group, and I sent them the tunes.
CM: This is a good bit for the film - what was in your head and your heart when you heard that sound from 35 years ago?
Tyrone: It just blew me away. I didn't kind of have any thoughts of what we were going do with it, to be honest. I was kind of surprised, because I remember, at the time, we were underwhelmed with what we did, really. We never felt that the sounds that we did live represented what we put down on tape. We never had a producer. But, when we listened back again, they just sounded great, to be fair, and we were all kind of excited. We just thought… we've got to do something with them. Our drummer who, lives in Los Angeles now, he's got a friend who's got a record label out in America called New Feelings. I sent the digitised version of the songs to him over in LA, he said, I'm going to send them to a friend of mine, and we never thought anything of it, to be honest. Then they said that we absolutely love them and we want to release them. So, we were just like… does this really happen?
Then it obviously made sense to create some kind of Instagram page. Then we started putting ourselves out there, trying to get interest from as many people as we could. Then getting press reviews and releasing the album [called Hello Flower] on vinyl. So, from that point, we thought… could we get the band back together?
CM: Now, in the biopic, we’d be just over halfway through. Is this the bit where there’s a crisis of confidence? With someone going… what are we doing? This is the daftest, midlife-crisis, barmiest idea ever. And one of them would walk out. Did that happen?
Tyrone: No, it didn't. It was the complete opposite. I know the bass player, Terry, me and him have worked on musical projects since the band. We were musically aligned. Carl, the drummer, was in Los Angeles - he'd been on tour, been on Top of the Pops and stuff before. He's supported Joe Cocker, so he's been on world tours. But it was Neil, who was a singer, who was probably the most nervous, I think, because he'd probably be out of the game for a while. You're not a cocky 19-year -old. You're a man in his 50s exposing yourself through those lyrics. But we even felt at the time that his words and his lyrics would stand the test of time, and I think, listening back to them now, and rehearsing those tunes - I think they do.
CM: Now, I've been semi-joking about this while we’ve been talking… but this sounds like a film script waiting to happen, doesn’t it?
Tyrone: Yeah, when you tell people the story it still sounds unreal - going from finding the tapes in a dusty loft, and the tapes being actually okay and not being damaged in any way. People think it was an album at the time that had never been released, which is a slightly false story. It was actually a set of eight demos recorded at different places at different times.
CM: But for the biopic, we'll make it a lost album, yeah?
Tyrone: Ha! For the biopic? It was an album that was unreleased, of course… So, we've gone from playing a reunion gig in Manchester to our home crowd of 100 people, to then selling 300 tickets at Zebulon in Los Angeles, and then to one of our tunes being selected for Chris Rock's new film, Misty Green, that's coming out in October.
CM: Is there a point where you look at each other and say… we did far more than we imagined we'd be able to do, that'll do?
Tyrone: Well, we're at that point now, actually. Interestingly, we had a rehearsal yesterday and we had that same discussion. Where do we go from here? It's going to end. My vision for the future is exactly what you think. There's got to be some kind of screenplay. So, I think next year, at some point, when it does end, we will work on that. I think that's going to be to be the next move.
CM: But who would play you?
Tyrone: I don't know. We would play me? Gary Oldman!
Joanna are playing at The Snug in Atherton on 13 September - tickets here.
They're also at Yes on 18 September - tickets here.
