Eric and Me. Yes, I know it should be Eric and I, like Withnail and I, but Eric and Me just seems to sound better. Eric never really existed, anyway. What happened? What happened was we started a little student band called The Stereotypes and at the end of the year (1979, I think) Martin, our guitarist, decided he was leaving. He was a nice guy, Martin and probably a better guitarist than I was; like a lot of guys those days, he was a student who played guitar….but Eric was something else. As soon as he turned up for an “audition” with us, we hired him. "We hired," may be a phrase too far, as all the money went towards making the single, but that’s another story. Jeremy, our drummer, found him, and Jeremy said he was Eric. Jeremy knew everyone. His real name was Stuart Donaldson, but he was known as 'Eric' in the ranks, because of his skill as a guitarist, on a par with Eric Clapton. As has been noted, he didn’t actually sound like Eric Clapton, it was just a way of labelling him as very good; a kind of short-hand (slow-hand) that he could play very well. e.g.

“Hey, is your new guitarist any good?”

“Well, listen, man, they call him Eric!” ‘nuff said.

When these guys come along, you just know that they are beyond average; you pick it up. They are not trying to impress, in fact they are often quite self-deprecating; Eric was. Johnny Marr, Mark Knopfler, these guys are the greats; you just know they could play anything if they wanted to, in the same way that Rubens could paint; they just can, they just are, and they also seem to have no ego.

So, when Eric joined The Stereotypes, we improved greatly as a band. When The Stereotypes ended, he joined a band with me called Strange Fruit. The name was his idea; he was ahead of his time, or behind it. Strange Fruit only lasted about a year. What was great was I would write a song, play him the chords and then say, “Can you do anything with that?” and he’d always come up with an amazing guitar part. I wrote more songs than he did in Strange Fruit, this was because he was so self-critical; he’d come up with some amazing verse and guitar part and then you’d never hear it again; he’d say it was okay, but he wasn’t happy with it; whereas I was arrogant enough to be pleased with most things I wrote, and whole songs flew to me.

When Strange Fruit finished we went to Paris; it’s not as grand as it sounds. We got a lift in the back of a white MG to Paris from Cowley Road, Oxford, provided by the guys in the musical equipment hire shop. We sat in the back of the MG with our guitars on our knees. Eric took his Strat and his Ibanez acoustic for me to play, plus we borrowed a little Vox battery-powered amp.

I’ve written all about how we thought we were going to make £100.00 a week busking (that’s what encouraged us to go there) and how we didn’t and had to run and starve sometimes; but the highlights for me were strumming and singing Sultans of Swing (a fairly new record, then) and Train, Train outside Chatalet Les Halles in the rain, with Eric playing the Strat, just like Mark Knopfler and people just staring.

It was like having Messi on your team, but I never realised it wouldn’t last: he was just passing through, on his way to a record contract. He had to return home because his Dad had opened his bank statement, showing an £800.00 overdraft, revealing that he hadn’t won the black Strat in an NME competition, after all. £800.00 overdrawn in ‘81 is like £2,700.00 overdrawn today! He left me with his Ibanez acoustic to look after and I stayed in Paris. I stayed as I didn’t have the fare back.

After I returned (long story) he helped me make a demo on one of those ‘new-fangled’ Porta-studios, and it was 1982. He just knew how to operate it, and he added guitar parts etc. to my songs (see below).

It never was Eric and Me, though, and we didn’t form another band together. He went on to London and a record contract. So, Messi and Knopfler had gone, along with my certainty, but they left the recordings ….      

​P.S. Stuart Donaldson is not to be confused with Stuart Donaldson of Skrewdriver – different type of music entirely. Sometimes Jeremy called him Eric Donaldson and I know in the 90’s he became Sam Donaldson. He always claimed that the songwriter Walter Donaldson was his Uncle.

Walter Donaldson wrote the music for My Baby Just Cares for Me and Carolina In the Morning, so he was in good company.

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