Paul Weller and his father John WellerThe fourth release on Terri Hooley's Good Vibrations Records was the legendary Undertones "Teenage Kicks" EP, but the very first in 1978 was "Big Time" by Belfast's very own Rudi.
Lead by Brian Young they later released the I-Spy EP also on Good Vibrations and then two singles on Jamming! Records, the label set up by Tony Fletcher (biographer of Keith Moon and editor of Jamming! Fanzine http://www.ijamming.net/Moon/KeithMoon.html) and funded by Paul Weller.
Rudi never released an album and split up late in 1982, though not before supporting The Jam on several dates of their Transglobal Unity Express Tour in March and April of 1982.
I'd been in touch with Brian for a while and interviewed him (by phone) late in 1981 for issue four of my Stringent Measures fanzine, and continued to keep in touch, receiving an invite to meet up with them at Leicester's De Montfort Hall on 22nd March 1982.
Arriving at this fine venue, I picked up my ticket and backstage pass at the box office, and proceeded to seek out the band. Blithely wandering round behind the stage, I tried this particular door, and found myself in a room full of guitars – very soon after entering though, I was accosted by an irate middle aged gentleman asking me what the fuck (probably more “what the fack”) was I doing in there, that I should leave at once and, by the way, hand over my backstage pass. Which I did, and thus began and ended my one encounter with Mr John Weller, father of Paul Weller, who sadly died in April.
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