The Satellites

The Satellites were an Acton (London) band and featured Derek Gibbs (aka Dr Strangelgove ) on vocals. Derek was a well-known Acton punk who had appeared in the local press a few times courtesy of journalist friend Carol Clerk (who would later go on to write for the Melody Maker), had his own fanzine Sound Of The Westway (the Westway is a London dual carriageway that intersects Acton and North Acton) and wrote for the poster zine New Wave News, a short-lived punk club night. He’d also appeared on the cover of the popular budget Phonogram punk compilation New Wave in late 1977.

A band was the obvious next step and Derek Gibbs takes up the story…

Our first gig was in December 1977 at the Oriel Youth Centre with Tubeway Army who’d just signed to Beggars Banquet. We had eight songs after a couple of weeks in existence. West Acton Shakedown/ Windscale Boy/ Destroy Society/ Evil Ones/ Bored School Leaver/ AC – DC/ Lucy Is A Prostitute/ Sick Planet

Our bassist cheekily said “We’ve brought the PA so we’re headlining” and they said “ok”. I was so nervous I got off my face, tripped over the mains lead on stage, and cut their power; Gary Numan looked at me in a suitably android way. The DJ though who was at that gig came down to the White Hart in Acton and he started putting on bands and it became the Last Bastion with some great bands there like The Slits, Skids, Chelsea, Menace Ruts etc

Within a couple of months they were featured in the local press as recording their first single at Gooseberry Studio in Gerrard Street in Chinatown with engineer Mark Lusardi who was Page 3 girl Linda Lusardi’s brother.

Our first single Urbane Guerilla was produced by Rat Scabies. The Satellite’s supported his band, the White Cats which was his band after The Damned. He just said straight away he’d like to produce us and we held him to that. He also did a couple of gigs with us on drums and occasionally on 2nd guitar;  again, it was at the White Hart pub in Acton.

The single came out on a label called Rewind Records which was run by Harry Barter, a record plugger and who had written songs for The Nolans. A very nice chap, who was real music business through and through. We liked him. Obviously, Harry now needed a mental Punk band on the books and Harry thought Urbane Gorilla with its chorus going. “Urbane Gorilla. He’s gonna kill you. Eeyore Eeyore Wahee Wahee.” would be a great novelty record, get loads of radio and sell loads. In fact Urbane Gorilla got played on the John Peel Show and also on a Friday Teatime show and er.. didn’t sell loads.

And then we did another single that was Not really representative of us but they were written at the same time. Human Being was always less hell for leather than Urbane Gorilla.

It was in the studio that it became more Psychedelic Punk/Folk Whimsy, with the idea of getting some radio airplay and having a hit single. Amanda De Grey was my girlfriend, and she had left The Transmitters, who were friends and also based around the Borough Of Ealing in West London.

I was listening to the Nuggets album a lot and also liked The Doors and The Velvet Underground. I thought keyboards would be good, which they were, but they got lost onstage in the sonic barrage of our sound. Amanda sang the lead vocal on the chorus of our Human Being single and her keyboard came to the fore on that track. She was in the band for about eighteen months.

Funny enough, we sped up  Human Being later for live performances and added another verse with a Chuck Berry guitar solo, which we all preferred.

By 1979 it was hard to get signed up because music was so fashionable. I mean, one minute we’re dreadfully old fashioned for being punk rock and then the next minute people were moving into New Romantic and electronic and clubby, funky soul sounds. Plus all of a sudden we were quite lightweight compared to the more hardcore 1982 punk bands because they were just like really hammer and tongs.

Add into that we were getting older, had responsibilities and day jobs to make ends meet and gigs were getting harder to come by and it all slows down and eventually you stop. It was then a couple of years before we did the next singles and the album and then we split in 1985.

The infamous Crass gig… Opinions diverge on what actually happened. But let’s be charitable and say when you have a hall full of violent right-wing skinheads looking for aggro, anything was going to set them off but The Satellites song choice wasn’t the cleverest of things and predictably it all kicked off.

We did do the Crass gig. The evening ended up dramatically and I think we got the blame for it unfairly.

There are 2 completely different views and one is just such pure fantasy it’s unbelievable. Somebody put online that it was all the singer from The Satellites fault and that I came on stage and said “Heil Hitler we’re going to kill the Reds!” He’d got Urbane Guerilla mixed up with Goose Step Goose Step Sieg Heil Sieg Heil which in hindsight wasn’t a clever choice and we revised the lyrics and title post that gig.

But what made it worse was that the police came in with dogs and the dogs were snapping at these young punk girls and they were in tears. Meanwhile, the police were threatening me because I was trying to get our equipment out of the way.

The first time I saw the Specials and Madness it was in a local pub and it was lovely. The second time it was just full of marauding blokes looking for aggro. But that’s not the band’s fault, you know? I mean, some groups maybe did encourage it, but we certainly didn’t.

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