I’ve always liked encounters with the figures at the periphery of a story. In many ways I suspect you’d learn more from chatting from the milkman to the McAloon family in Witton Gilbert than you’d get out of endless conversations with the McAloons themselves. As indeed I did, he’s called Tommy, but that’s a story for another day.
In this case, the person involved was Steve Dalder (or Dolder), who played drums with Prefab Sprout on live gigs towards the tail end of 1983 and into 1984 including the Elvis Costello support slots. He was widely criticized in the contemporary reviews of the January 1984 ICA show, I think unfairly, and had been replaced by the inestimable Dave Ruffy (ex Ruts) by the late January gigs.
But before disappearing into history, he gave an interview for the Consett Music Project “Rock and Dole” (issue 4) fanzine, and here it is.
