Wooo, I have right now thinking about this, oh my goodness the memories for this, my very first exotic jaunt over to the island of Jersey, followed by a swift little airplane ride 3,000 kilometres due... East of ah... well no, no, got that wrong, due west of Watford. My goodness, I go the wrong way and get to bleedin Russia, it'd be all over. Yes, due west of Watford, 3,000 odd bloody miles – forget this kilometre stuff, where do you think you are? Bleedin France? No thanks very much, I'm right here!
Anyway, Flight of Icarus, doo dee doo! Flight Of Icarus, my first single, released the 11th of April 1983, chart position number eleven... da de de da! Didn't quite get to number ten, did it? Anyway, my first record with the band... I starred in the video! Did you see that? Did you see that handsome geezer with the blue chops? Wasn't half cold out there! Anyway no! We did this... ah, fantastic! First trip to Jap... uh... from Jersey to Nassau to do the album, we had five weeks rehearsal in Jersey... well, we had two weeks really because ended up three weeks partying at the bar. My goodness, we had the only 24-hour bar on the island, and we ah... funnily enough we managed to cram 25 hours in a day, hahaha! So there we are, fifteen days before we're supposed to leave... fifteen days! We hadn't even written any... well, the boys had written some... but we really hadn't rehearsed anything 'cause we was partying to much and having a good time, and all that good stuff. So there you are, we get this... most of the song's written, get to Jersey, boom!
Oh, by the way, when we first arrived in Jersey, the first place we went to was a place called The Traveller's Rest. Dear Tony Wiggins our tour manager, he told us all about this place because he checked it out before us. Said "here look, you've got to come in this place before we go" and that's the first thing we did, got of the plane, picked the suitcase up, "HILLO!" they said, "HOWWYOU!", "we're fine", "Ok you can come through". So we go through, get in the cabs... off we go, Traveller's Rest. Stopped in the Traveller's Rest. "You've gotta have a banana daquirie" says Tony Wiggens. Well allright, let's have a drop... banana juice... we says, banana juice... it's a poof's drink! So, fair enough, so there we are sitting at the bar, and there's five poofs sitting at the bar, us! Hahaha! Drinking these daquiries. Hahaha, no! So, the first one goes down, we thought "f'kin' great! Nothing to it, let's have another one!" F'kin' second one goes down... fifteen minutes later we're on our third banana daquirie. Now, we're talking serious alcohol here but you don't taste it because it's a frozen drink, it's bunged in a blender, loads of ice, ton of banana liqueur, na... banana, lot of lichee, and lots of wizzing around of varous parts, and you stick it in a glass and stuff it up with a straw. For about... three of these as I said later... quarter of an hour goes by... half an hour, we try to stand up and leave. I mean, it was like, you know, "Gaaaahh, where we goin?" Ah, we were gone! We, we, we spent many a night down in that place, but only after an hour... we did have a party after we actually recorded Flight of Icarus... we went down to the pub and ah, tried to get it and gave up. The next day it weren't happening, but we went after we celebrated... we went out and celebrated the first single being recorded.
