Spike holds Court at the Cavern with special guests, text and photos by Dawn Osborne

Spike is clearly amongst friends at The Cavern allowing him to be even more mischievous than normal. His solo shows are always an opportunity to hear more stories from the road and tonight was no exception.

He has a special guest tonight first, though, Del Bromham from Stray who is a character in his own right. As well as high quality vocals and guitar that reminded me of Grammy nominated performer Kip Winger when he does his solo performances, we also got stories and acutely observed impressions.  He actually looks like Kenneth Williams when he pulls the face and I swear he sounds more like Bob Dylan than Bob! He had everyone roaring with laughter as he painted a picture of Mick Jagger calling a late Keef from Paris to ask him where the hell he was, and after a mime of Keef looking out of the window the punchline was ‘Milan’ (apparently true and made more hilarious by accurate voices and gestures)! Anecdotes about how everyone used to record in the toilet in the old days and one of the reasons why Bill Wyman played the bass vertically is that he had no choice in a stall were fascinating.

Bromham makes a lovely phat noise with his guitar as he treated us to the old Stray number ‘Lovin’ You Is Sweeter Than Ever’ and ‘Around The World in Eighty days’. He recounted how the band when they started literally knocked on doors in Tin Pan Alley with their acetate pressing and how one day they saw John Lennon, but he didn’t stop to chat. His anecdotes give a real insight into post war Britain from ‘Saturday Morning Pictures’ to how people used to take their old unwanted shoes into the bowling alley before making off with the standard issue leather red, yellow or blue bowling shoes instead. The band had some mob connections being managed by a Kray and Del told a story about how he acquired a taste for Jack Daniels when he was first entertained by a Godfather type figure on tour in the USA, although he was more used to Scotch and putting it on gums for toothache! With jokes about the HMV label (dog and gramophone) I wonder how much some Japanese who had come all this way to see Spike got the jokes, but the crowd full of those of a certain vintage certainly did.

There’s were some newer Stray songs too: ‘Dust In Your Pocket’ in 2023 is about how Del’s dad being a greengrocer always had sawdust in his pocket from the floor. Like Spike Del has a strong sense of his family and where he is from, which might be why they chime so well. He finished with ‘Train’ from his solo album ‘Devil’s Highway’ influenced by the old Black Blues and there was a sense we had already seen something special.

Spike is in fine fettle despite having had a wisdom tooth fall out, which had yet to be treated. He, himself, loves to tell a story and he’s run a gamut soon as he got up including how he managed to get fired from his own band and he greeted the Japanese who have travelling six thousand miles to see him in Japanese.

His tooth issue makes his accent even more idiomatic and even I struggle to understand everything he says tonight. Everyone can, of course, enjoy the music and after “Crumbliest Flakiest Chocolate” from the Cadbury’s advert to illustrate the echo on his mike Spike launched into ‘Raining Whisky’ from the latest Quireboys album and ‘Roses and Rings’.

Spike heats up quickly and to a loudly sung ‘na na na na’ the strip tease song, he took off his jacket. He thanked the audience for coming out “especially as obviously you have a really sad life”. He make the crowd chuckle by insulting Wimbledon football club, talking about softie southerners and making jokes about The Wombles. He gives a lady at the front his red carnation and adds ‘I’ll sign it for ya later and you can sell it to the Japanese for 100 quid!’. He switches the subject asking if people are in love and no doubt touched a few nerves when he joked that after splitting up and paying child support, men love the new guy she meets to marry. He suggests men buy a Spike t shirt and pretend to be him later in bed with their wives before launching into ‘You and I’. Anyone who knows a Spike solo show knows that he often departs from the Quireboys repertoire and these are the first and last Quireboys tunes this evening. (Again I wonder if the Japanese knew that, but they seem delighted especially as they got to spend some time with Spike after the gig.)

Spike is accompanied by Chris Hellmann, who fortunately as well as a fine guitarist is also a great sport and genuinely finds Spike hilarious (which must definitely help!)

Spike welcomes Del Bromham up as a guest to play and Del comments that Spike has written some great Geordie songs. That is cue for Spike to tell everyone he met a Jamaican once and got on like a house on fire, because they have the same twang. I had to laugh, because if I try to speak like a Geordie I do indeed sound like I come from Jamaica!! For some reason Spike then tells us that Nigel Mogg tried to light a log with a lighter at his house. This is all so entertaining, it’s hard to notice we are only on the fourth song ‘Press Gang’ Spike wrote with the Geordie Rogues. He’s waited long enough through the jokes to play and the guitar from Del is truly great. Afterwards we get reminiscences from Spike’s childhood tin baths, fish and chips in newsprint that got onto hands, going to school with Gazza, and he moves to note in disgust that now Newscastle imports coal from Australia!  Bearing in mind the old proverb it is indeed astonishing!

Spike asks who is married in the audience, either no one wants to be picked on or everyone married is at home, because very few hands go up. When he tries to give one wife advice for when hubby “f*cks off to vegas”, she retorts “that’s me not him”, but Spike continues anyway saying “when he comes back remember he loves ya” before launching into a truly fantastic version of ‘Wicked Game’. Reverting back to family he sings “You are so beautiful” to his daughter, before ruining the sentiment by saying “she’s not really my daughter.. I’m still waiting for my wife to be born”.

Amid more panto banter with Del, stories about the Wombles, Lonnie Doneghan and Tom Jones Spike squeezes another song in “I’ll Never Fall In Love Again”. The finale is ‘House of The Rising Sun’ another amazing version which has everyone singing! Spike asks the time and says “Don’t Say 7 O’clock!”. Finding out it’s almost curfew, he finally stops chatting and we get the old African American Gospel song covered by the Stones ‘You’ve gotta Move’ and deconstructed like this I could see from where AC/DC got ‘She’s got The Jack’!!

So once again it was a pretty amazing evening. We may only have had time for seven songs from Spike, but out of the ones we did, ‘Wicked Game’ was worth the admission price alone! Spike’s stories keep people coming back and hopefully we’ll see the Japanese also back next time for more!!

Dawn Osborne