'Eric' aka Stuart (see above) but now 'Sam' was living in a house in Crouch End in 1987. He had all his studio  equipment set up tidily in a little room on neat metal shelving. I was impressed by this. I think he’d actually contacted me, in Tufnell Park, this time, but I can’t remember how he had my number. It isn’t a great distance from Tufnell Park to Crouch Hill in fact, CH, sounds worse, but it’s a world of difference. He seemed to be going up in the world, but he was still nervous about the person who owned the house coming back early. Go figure. It was never entirely clear what he was up to, but he was still magnetic. He’d said he could record a demo for me….but this time for a small fee. I took the bait because it was 1987 and I knew I’d never recorded Seven Times Seven properly and I knew it was good. He even let me play lead, because I had an idea of the sound I wanted. He lent me his Levinson Blade; with trem! He charged me £40.00. That’s £172.66 today! That was just for one track and he kept the master. He spent a lot of time fighting with the drum machine’s programming (‘tinkering’, as he called it) to get me the beat I’d shown him I was after.  

“I’m sorry but I’m afraid I can’t do it for nothing anymore, Paul” he said. He must have seen me coming….and I must have been desperate!

Then he took me for a pizza with his girlfriend. I can’t remember who paid.

Another time he took me to Islington and opened the door to a Jazz Café on the High Street, where his band was rehearsing ready for his gig that evening. He went in and talked to them. I said nothing. He was clearly in charge. I knew he had a manager. I told him I didn’t think I would ever be able to be in charge of a band (I certainly hadn’t been in charge of The Stereotypes -see above - although I’d thought I was at the time).

He said,

“You have to be, Paul. You have to get used to it.”

I didn’t go and see his band that night.

Even I had begun to realise that now his recording my music was a professional arrangement and not friendship. He was a friend I couldn’t afford.

I still have the recording he mixed of Seven Times Seven on one old cassette; that’s all I have, but it gave me a clue to a new direction.

I didn’t see him again for years and years, and now only the stones remain. Here it is: