As the 80s drew to a close, the cool, forward momentum of grunge lurking just around the corner, a couple of London builders started a band that was all about looking back. The Quireboys’ music was the stuff of lock-ins and last orders, merrily nostalgic and in thrall to the blues-born rock’n’roll of the Rolling Stones. Second single Hey You was their biggest hit (UK No.14), but it was 7 O’Clock – an irresistible houseparty of honkytonk keys, Brit invasion guitars, harmonica and all the alcohol in Soho – that made them.
“When we started we wanted to sound like an English rock’n’roll band,” vocalist/ co-founder Spike reasons. “Because at the time it was all glam rock and everything like that. We weren’t heavy metal – we loved the blues, and my love was the Rolling Stones, Mott The Hoople…”
Having grown up in Newcastle playing ragtime guitar and inhaling records by the Stones, Humble Pie and others, Spike was always primed this way. So although music wasn’t his reason for moving to London, aged 16, it was laid on thick in his DNA.
7 O’Clock started life in a flat overlooking the Oval cricket-ground, where the 17-year-old Jonathan Gray (workmates called him Spike because of his Rod Stewart-style coiffure) was living with soon-to-be bandmate Guy Bailey. Not that they realised this at first. In the first year they lived together, working on the same building site by day, neither had a clue that the other was musical. Until one day.
“My dad came down to watch the cricket, cos he had a perfect view from the flat,” Spike explains, “and he brought my guitar with him, and Guy Bailey said to me: ‘I didn’t know you played.’ And he picked up the guitar and started playing Chuck Berry stuff.”
Inspired, they started jamming and coming up with ideas. By the end of the day they’d written 7 O’Clock, I Don’t Love You Anymore and How Do You Feel. “And all in front of me dad when he was watching the cricket telling us to shut up!” Spike laughs.
The Quireboys played their first proper gig at the Half Moon in Putney, where 7 O’Clock was an instant favourite. The fact that it still lacked a chorus didn’t seem to matter.
“The original gig we ever did was in a friend’s cellar,” he says, “and they went ‘oh play 7 O’Clock’. That was the one people always wanted to hear, and it didn’t even have the chorus yet. So we knew we were onto something with it.”
It was another five or six years before the Quireboys secured a record deal, during which time they opened for just about every band that headlined the Marquee. Friendships with the likes of Guns N’ Roses, Cinderella and Faster Pussycat developed. 7 O’Clock was the perfect opener (and, indeed, closer) for short, sharp 20-minute support sets. And when the Marquee closed at 11pm they’d all decamp to Buttz n’ Spikes (the night the singer co-founded with their first manager, Bush Telfer, at Soho haunt Gossips) and wreak havoc until 3am.
Line-up changes (Ginger Wildheart was an early member), name changes (from Choirboys, to Queerboys, to the more widely sellable Quireboys) and even role changes later (Spike played guitar until he broke all his strings one rehearsal and switched to vocals), EMI signed them – “for one pound!” – and Sharon Osborne became their manager.
In 1989 the Quireboys were flown out to Los Angeles, where they “raised hell” on an initial trip before heading into Cherokee Studios to cut their debut album, A Bit Of What You Fancy. But with the local hair/glam scene kicking off on their doorstep, their Stateside time was at least as characterised by rampant excess as it was by recording. Getting them into the studio wasn’t always easy.
“I don’t think any of us had been out of the country before,” Spike remembers. “It was about two weeks of recording and two months of pissing around! Hahahaha! We didn’t wanna leave! We were having such a good time, but we knew we were there to work and to do something good.”
Finding a chorus for 7 O’Clock – which would become the album’s opening track – was a priority, instigated after one of many eventful evenings out. “Jim [Cregan, producer] said: ‘Spike, wouldn’t it be great if just… if it just went somewhere?’” Spike chuckles. “It was my second day and I’d had one of them stupid evenings out; I was walking into the apartment I was staying in and I fell on a bottle of wine. It cracked and went right through my wrist. So I couldn’t really play the guitar that well. But I sat down and just went (sings) ‘oh it’s 7’clock’ and the chorus just came to me.”
The stakes were even higher when it came to recording the track. Rod Stewart popped in, as did a news crew, who asked for a shot of the band playing in the studio. “So we played 7 O’Clock live on the news, we all went into the studio cos it was set up live, and that was the actual take that we used for the album,” Spike says. “That’s my vocal and everybody playing live on that song. We obviously upped our games because the TV cameras were there…”
Upon its release in 1990 A Bit Of What You Fancy charted at No.2 in the UK. Shows with Guns N’ Roses and Spike’s heroes the Rolling Stones followed and the band enjoyed a period of gleeful momentum. “When we played Donington and you hear 90,000 people go ‘woohooo!’ it’s a great feeling,” he remembers. “Thunder, Poison and Aerosmith were playing. That was when Donington was great. I remember Steven Tyler had all his kids [backstage] and I had all my nephews and nieces and they were all playing together.”
It was a brief golden age. 1993 follow-up Bitter Sweet & Twisted (UK No.31) jarred with the rapidly changing musical climate of the day. The band subsequently peeled off in different directions, not releasing another studio album until 2001. But they’ve prevailed – on and off – ever since, steadily releasing records and performing, even after Spike's sudden departure from the band in 2022 resulted in two versions of The Quireboys doing business at the same time.
And 7 O’Clock? It remains a firm favourite. “Everywhere. Sometimes you just have to stop the song and the whole crowd sings the chorus,” Spike says, “and everybody loves the ‘bah-bah-bah-bah’s and the ‘woohooo’s. So yeah, I think we got it right on that one.”
Spike is currently in the studio recording a new Quireboys album, Wardour Street. Four album launch shows are lined up for May. The original version of this feature was published in Classic Rock 274, in March 2020. Guy Bailey died in 2023.
