After about six months, with my help, Sabrina managed to move into Number One when a room became vacant. She was upstairs and I was in a room downstairs. One day, I got bored of all the chat with no action, so I said, ‘Let’s do a five-year plan.’ My plan was to write better songs, put a band together and get a record deal. I had no idea how I was going to do it, so step one of my plan was to find a manager. I can’t remember all the details of her plan but there was definitely an incredible book at the end of it. Straight away I started working on my plan by writing songs and hanging out in places where I thought other musicians and managers would be.

By then I no longer worried what others thought of my musical tastes. From my DJ stint at college, to my role booking bands as ENTS Officer at Teesside, I discovered all types of music, from A-ha to Aerosmith. I would read the NME and Melody Maker religiously every week. On evenings and weekends I sang with a jazz band from east London I’d met through an advert in the NME classifieds. I would also do small gigs with the band’s guitarist in local bars like the Brixtonian. I learnt jazz standards like ‘Autumn Leaves’ and ‘Summertime’ that were a good grounding for my voice, teaching me how to sing properly. I learnt to sing by listening to the greats: people like Sarah Vaughan, Ella Fitzgerald, Nat King Cole and Dinah Washington; singers who had big, thick voices, wonderful phrasing and voice control, one-take kings and queens. I’d sing in my house, my kitchen, the street, everywhere. I wrote songs all the time, dissecting those I heard on the radio, copying the structure: verse, chorus, verse, middle eight, out. I recorded some melodies on my tape recorder, because my head was bursting with tunes.

Sylvia was so much fun to record with. She loved anything unconventional, and no idea was too crazy. Skunk Anansie worked by two mottos: ‘leave your ego at the door’ and ‘you never know until you try’. That way, everyone was free to criticise anyone else’s contribution, and no one was allowed to kill an idea without trying it first. Some things sound awful in your head, but when they hit the air magic flies into them. We always worked hard on the groove so our music wouldn’t sound disparate. Cass used to say that we weren’t about being ‘clever bollocks’, until Robbie (the drum virtuoso) proved him wrong when he wrote ‘Fuck you jazz cts’ out in Morse code and then played it for fun. I call that very clever bollocks!

I liked experimenting with new sounds, and started thinking about doing a solo album, working on song ideas with Len. I was unsure about Skunk Anansie, and was becoming more and more focused on the idea of making my own record. I started work on it, and sent Leigh a demo of ‘Burnt Like You’. Leigh listened to it alone in her flat, to the lyrics:

I can’t watch the same mistake

Waiting for the boys to turn out straight

No I can’t run the same dog race

And get burnt like you

You’re swollen in the gut

From all those last nights

Still swinging vodka punches

That don’t land right

She told me later, ‘I sat and cried my eyes out for a whole afternoon because I knew the band was over.

Our equipment was ruined. We didn’t know if we could go onstage, and thought it was all over. But then the most beautiful thing happened: every crew member from every other band brought all their towels and blankets, anything they could find, and stretched them out in the field backstage. Then they all proceeded to dismantle our entire production – lights, speakers, amplifiers, instruments, flight cases, amps – they even took the valves out of the guitar. All of our gear was spread out to dry. It took up a whole field behind the stage.

It was a clear sunny day, so everything gradually dried out. Then, all of those wonderful, beautiful human beings put our stuff back together again, and we did the gig. It was one of those moments when people pulled together and helped us, so that we could carry on and play in memory of everyone who had died. We could not have played without them, and it’s one of the most special memories of all my years of touring. It makes me emotional just thinking about it. Reminds you of how much love there is in our rock community.

One of disco’s big producers was Pete Bellotte, who I’d known back in the sixties: Bluesology had played alongside his band The Sinners at the Top Ten Club in Hamburg. It was good to see him again, and the album we made might have worked, had I not decided that I wasn’t going to write any songs for it – I’d just sing whatever Pete and his staff writers came up with. I suspect the thinking behind this idea was influenced by the fact that I only owed my American label, Uni, a couple more albums. I was still furious about them refusing to release ‘Song For Guy’ and had decided that I wanted to get out of my contract as quickly as possible, with the minimum of effort. Not everything on Victim of Love was terrible – if the title track had come on at Studio 54, I’d have danced to it – but making an album in bad faith like that is never a good idea. No matter what you do, it somehow gets into the music: you can just tell it’s not coming from an honest place. Furthermore, it was released at the end of 1979, just as a huge backlash against disco started in the States, with particular venom reserved for rock artists who had dared to dabble in the genre. Victim of Love sank like a stone on both sides of the Atlantic. Once more, the offices of Rocket rang to the screams of John Reid firing everybody, then sheepishly having to hire them again.