North London Suburbia - June 1989, a chance meeting of teenagers at a party and a band was formed. Paul Hogan (No! Not that one!) and David Casson had got the bug for making music, on a school sixth form electronic music course but as much as they loved bands such as Depeche Mode, their hearts lay with rock and roll. David had recently purchased his first guitar, a white Squire Stratocaster and he had begun learning the songs of his heroes. Paul, was completely undecided on what his role in a band could be, having found that without the top of the range DX7 keyboard, that had done all the work on the aforementioned music course, getting a tune out of anything would take some degree of learning and at least a small amount of talent. In the meantime, he put his skills in partying (skill that were to become quite legendary in certain lunchtimes!) to good use and stumbled (literally) across Sean Kelly at said party. They had an immediate rapport, due to, in no small part, their mutual musical tastes and upon discovering that Sean was a trainee drummer, it was only a matter of days before the boys had their first band practice in Sean’s front room. The embryonic line up of the band featured David on guitar, Sean on drums, Paul on keyboards (including an ancient machine that only made the noise of a car accelerating!) and Sean’s brother Jason on bass guitar. Within a matter of weeks, Jason found ‘love’ and quit the band, leaving an opening on bass. Paul had not been getting on with the car noises and noting that a bass guitar had only four strings, how hard could it be? The line up was now David on guitar (and with some coaxing, vocals), Paul on bass, Sean on drums and Kevin (Paul’s cousin and all round legend), on backing vocals, tambourine and general, standing in the background, looking like a bouncer. Kevin looked mature for his years and was handy for buying the baby faces’ lager! Now the boys were motoring, recording demos, with the help of David’s elder brother and established band man, Mark, of their own basic compositions and covers of songs such as ‘Rescue’ and ‘Do it clean’ by Echo and The Bunnymen. The band also had a name – ‘Heavens Echo’. The first gig would come about without any prior warning. In February 1990, David’s brother Mark was playing a gig in Kenton at the notorious Plough. His band, ‘The Scandinavian Roof Jumpers’, needed a support band for the gig. A call was made to David and Mark told him to get the band together, so they could make their debut. David tracked all the boys down, bar Kevin and on arrival at the venue, were literally shoved onto the stage, in between bouts of throwing up! The nerves were obvious, but that didn’t matter because the crowd really seemed to appreciate what they were hearing and seeing. The band started to pursue gigs all over London (Kevin was dispatched after about gig three) and they were getting noticed on the indie scene. The owners of The Attic Club in Clapham, South London, were about to put a compilation album together of the best unsigned acts in London. Heavens Echo was asked to record a track for the album called ‘VINYL UNDERGROUND’. Recording of the song (Something for Someone) took place in August 1990, at the famous Elephant Studios in London, and the boys were buzzing. A series of gigs followed. Some great, some good and some best forgotten. It was around this time the band started doing press interviews (local papers), and were really starting to think that a full time career in music was beckoning. They were playing better gigs, writing more and more complicated and mature songs and were starting to gather a loyal following. It was by now late 1990 and the band needed to push things on and the big push would coincide with a new member joining, in January 1991.