During my tenure as the manager of the greatest unknown band in the world, Mick, John, Peter and Iain (along with several other drummers during the time of the earliest recordings) created perhaps their finest work – though the two things are not necessarily connected.

Sadly for all of us “Waterpistol” was not released for several years after its completion and even then the release was not given the love and devotion which had been shown by the band and their close associates during its inception.  There was a generic Shack-type image on the final Marina sleeve and a tacky ‘Ex Pale Fountains’ sticker applied to the case and no real thought appears to have gone into the packaging considering the myth that had built up around these recordings in the intervening years.

Plenty of advertising for future Marina product and some well old pictures of Mick and John along with a selection of random photographs without cohesion or reason.  At the time no doubt all of you’se where happy to have the music and “who gives a shit if it had come in a brown paper bag”.

Now I could be mistaken about much of the following but my memory of these times is pretty clear – as was my head in those days!  At the time of recording, which was a long drawn out process I can tell you, going first from Mike Hedges’ Willesden studio where “I Know You Well” and “Al’s Vacation” were recorded, to Amazon Studios in Kirkby where a great chunk of the tracks which later became “Waterpistol” were first laid down, including “Mr Appointment”, “Sgt. Major”, “Mood of the Morning”, “Time Machine” and “Neighbours”.

After these sessions, one meeting with Dick Leahy and Paul Kinder at Ghetto in that London descended into a combination argument about the expense of the recordings, the need to complete the LP and, according to Dick, the fact that these versions where simply not good enough considering the quality of the songwriting and what he felt was the potential for them. Fair play to him for these opinions – he was right and further recordings where agreed with producer Chris Allison.  These recordings  took place at Chapel Studio in Lincolnshire and mixes at Air Studios in Oxford St, and I can also recall time spent at Abbey Road (though not exactly what was done there).

Undoubtedly better versions of most of the above, along with “Stranger”, “Hazy”, “Undecided”, “Dragonfly, “Hey Mama” and “Walter’s Song” came out of it all.  At one point, including “I Know You Well”, “Al’s Vacation”, “Feel No way”, “Irish” and “London Town”, there was serious planning for a double LP, although sadly during my time there was no definitive LP master created except for a few cassettes which we knocked up to pass to friends and close relations and supporters of the band.

However there was planning for the sleeve of the record undertaken, and whilst it was never completed, these images have remained locked in the fabled Moondog shoebox for near on twenty years. At the time Mick was instrumental in the design of the sleeves and I felt was moving away from the generic black & white photo archive style favoured across Pale Fountains releases and Zilch.  This was evident in the sleeve for “I Know You Well” being based on a plate Mick had in his mum’s house, which the pattern was taken from and then memorably ‘tidied up’ by Ghetto -  removing the knife and fork scratches off the colours and presented as a finished item to the band.  Mick was not happy at all with the final result. I felt bad as I should have kept my eye on what Ghetto were doing – but hey it was my first single and they were the record label and anyways it sounded fucking great.

I never let the label press anything without us OK-ing it again.  For “Al’s Vacation”, Mick had a picture of an old Shack where he imagined Albert Goldman was locked up and a rear picture of a plane refuelling (taken from the credits of Dr Strangelove) which looked pretty sharp.  The finished 12” single stands as perhaps the greatest single piece of vinyl they ever completed.

At this point everything seemed hunk dory, the recordings were going well, Dick was loving the finished versions coming out of Air Studios and he was continuing to bankroll the band and the project. Mick had decided the LP was called “Waterpistol” and I was trusted to purchase some actual waterpistols for messing about with in terms of artwork. Photographs were taken of these pistols and we had a meeting with a graphic designer and some images were created for the ‘forthcoming’ LP.  I am uncertain about exactly who but it may have been Stylo Rouge who created them.  As a tribute to The Velvet Underground, the yellow one (see above) was clearly the most striking and my recollection is that that is the one Mick was happiest with, it was to have a small “shack” nametag on it like a ‘levis’ kinda thing.  The other mock up’s (see below) were basically just that – alternatives for consideration but probably would not have passed muster in the final reckoning.   It was a very striking image and one which would have fitted the recordings perfectly, an iron fist in a velvet glove indeed.

In my humble opinion, any of these sleeves would have been a more accurate reflection of the recording than the images used much later by Marina and even later still by Red Flag on their own re-issue where they had the typical self important liberty of a record label to use photos of the suspect fire which allegedly destroyed the “Waterpistol” master tapes – interestingly we never hear of the lost Distant Cousins or Dave Howard Singers LP’s . Ghetto did have an awesome single by Lucky Gordon – he of the Profumo affair scandal – which never saw the light of day.  But any of these things could have been down to the business failure of Rough Trade Distribution rather than a cigar falling down the back of a couch or whatever.

The mock-ups were rescued back to Liverpool by me for further consideration and remained safely stored, until just recently when they left my possession for the first time for Matt to use them on the truly impressive Shacknet website.  Now send them back.

- Andrew Erskine, February 2010