From Robyn on Patreon in 2023
In early autumn 1985 I found myself in the small seaside town of Lytham St Anne’s, on the West Coast of Northern England. It was still sunny and one afternoon I sat on the promenade, gazing out to sea with a cup of tea and a cheese sandwich. The seagulls ignored the cheese sandwich and flocked towards the horizon - what could be out there? I was 32, feeling ancient as usual - I was due to start touring the USA with my hot new band the Egyptians, although my first attempt had been scuppered by a post-operative illness. Roger Jackson from the Egyptians was with me, we’d come to advise in the editing of the Gotta Let This Hen Out footage, shot that spring at the Marquee in London by a company named Jettisoundz that was based up coastal Lancashire.

But I was staring out to sea by myself that afternoon. Antiquated shapes were forming on the horizon - sea-creatures, flying boats, the conning towers of a submarine. I fell into a reverie digesting my sandwich: the hot strong tea seemed to heighten my senses and put me into a trance simultaneously. Suddenly a host of fishes appeared before me, parading on the beach before me in semi-human form like creatures from Alice In Wonderland. The Tench, the Barbel, the Bream, the Chubb and more flippered their way over the sand and the debris of summer up onto the promenade.

The Barbel and the Tench wore striped blazers and straw hats, like a grotesque vaudeville duo from some Edwardian end-of-pier show. Ebony canes jutted incongruously from their fins. The Bream dodged around behind the other fishes, picking their pockets and then waving their wallets in the air, leering gleefully. The Mullet came right up close to my face - too close - and gurned at me. The Flounder and the Chubb came on like renegade security heavies, menacing where they should protect…

…and ruling over them all was the Bass, a dodgy British school-teacher with a penchant for the unspeakable. But they all made their moves so cheerfully - shameless cartoon characters who mocked what remained of my ancestral Victorian boundaries. These fishes were grooving, baby, and if I was too uptight to groove with them, that was my loss.

I came back to consciousness as the sun sank into the sea, my empty cup beside me. In my notebook were the words to “Bass” more or less as I’ve sung them ever since. All that remained was for me to go back down south again and put a jaunty tune to the lyrics I’d written. When I took it to the Egyptians they made it more percussive, even coming up with a sampled deep-voiced “BASS!” for Morris to trigger when we played that song opening for REM on their “Green” tour a few years later. And it all began in Lytham St. Anne’s…