Pete Gage from Vinegar Joe on "Here With You Tonight," the song he wrote for Pressure Drop.
(Thanks to Steve Smith & Tony Moss)
"Well Vinegar Joe were headed on a collision course with record company & management issues - Rob & Elkie were restless and a rift was shaping up with the press trying to exalt one above the other - despite that the song emerged late one night in a rehearsal room beneath a music shop in Fulham Rd, London. I'd go there and work on my own throughout the night bashing around on a wurly piano & acoustic guitar with rats running around in the ceiling above my head, even knowing that maybe this batch of songs might never see the next V Joe album. 'Here with you tonight' shaped up well and Rob liked my demo - I think we tweaked a few bits together but knowing Rob's phrasing so well having worked together so long, the melody was totally tailor-made for his timing, pronunciation & phrasing and it fitted him like a glove, as it should.
I know we rehearsed it and we might have demoed it as VJ but when Chris Blackwell called Rob out of the band and all hell broke loose with the management problems I thought the song would never get recorded - and it was for Rob not anybody else so I thought it was over. Then some time later Rob called and said he had tried it out for the solo LP and it had scrubbed up nicely - that is of course the version you have.
So great you like it - hope this little chat has made you feel even closer to the song - who's it about? Well I hate to explain that cos so often it can spoil who you think it's about - - like a book you draw your own characters and the film can disappoint you? - - so all I'm gonna say is it was drawn from an experience from my life many years earlier but as Rob and so many other probably agree we have been in those situations and can all relate to the words.
Anyway Tony my old mate - sing along with it - enjoy it - somewhere up in heaven Rob might be singing along the harmonies too - not to mention a swarm of deceased cockney London rats saying "I was there in the ceiling when they wrote this song - not many people know that!" :) © Steve Smith 2009
If you have a personal memory of Robert that you would like to include, please email whatmanagement1@blueyonder.co.uk
From Andy Fraser, who was the bass player with Free at the time he met Robert....
“I have really good memories of Robert, back from when we used to play in his local town Scarborough. He would come see us and chat. Only much later on did I find out that because he thought of himself as a bass player, that he came to see me. I always thought of him as a singer and assumed he came to see Paul, who in fact he didn't much care for.
Other memories of him after he came down to London, with Vinegar Joe became part of Island's family, and had that little flat in Hampstead Heath, where he first turned me on to Marvin Gaye and "What's Going On". Changed my whole perspective.
Right up to visiting with him in Switzerland, in this beautiful old Mill House he had converted, with that awesome view over the lake. Always the best host, the nicest, most generous guy, and really a terrible loss for the rest of us.”
Andy Fraser
