The wild rocker who toured with the Stones, befriended Princess Margaret – then fell apart
Rock ’n’ roll is a funny business. British rock band the Quireboys were once managed by Sharon Osbourne, marketed alongside hair metal juggernauts including Def Leppard and Thunder, and eventually achieved arena-level status in the UK and around the world. After forming in 1984, they played to 72,000 people at Castle Donington and supported Bon Jovi in front of 50,000 screaming fans at the Tokyo Dome. The band chalked up five Top 40 singles (do you remember Hey You? I bet you do) and a number-two-charting debut album, A Bit of What You Fancy (1990). Then they fell apart.
By the time the Quireboys released their second album, Bitter Sweet & Twisted, in 1993, fans had moved on to a chap called Kurt Cobain and the sounds of Seattle grunge. Bitter Sweet & Twisted peaked at a modest number 31 and dropped out of the charts just two weeks later. An eight-year split followed. Since reforming in the early 2000s, they have survived in the underground, sustained by a hardcore fanbase. The central survivor of all this chaos is their charismatic frontman, Spike, who I am hoping to speak to today before a forthcoming UK tour – but he is, of course, running late.
I’ve been in the restaurant at the Soho Hotel with his PR team for 45 minutes, and the ice in my sparkling water has long since melted. I’m feeling antsy; he’s got a sound check around the corner after this, and time is draining away.
Suddenly, the 60-year-old appears, swaying slightly with his arms outstretched, dressed in his usual pirate uniform: a light-blue bandanna, pinstripe waistcoat, skinny black jeans, Cuban heels, smudged mascara and a silver skull on a chain.
Immediately, even before Spike sits down in front of his cider and tonic, the wild stories start coming, gathered over five decades in the music industry. Since forming the band with childhood friend Guy Bailey in 1984, Spike (real name Jonathan Francis Gray) has supported everyone from David Bowie to the Rolling Stones, befriended Princess Margaret and Joanna Lumley – and fallen out with more people than he can count. He’s one of those mythical rock figures who has never fully fit into the mainstream, preferring instead to populate the dingy bars and clubs of the capital, including Soho’s Marquee Club.
It was at the Marquee Club that the Quireboys (originally the Queerboys – a name which, unsurprisingly, record labels weren’t too keen on) started to mix with the rich and dissolute, including the New York Dolls’ Johnny Thunders (who, Spike recalled in a previous interview, “treated us like s---”) and the members of Guns N’ Roses. In June 1987, the Quireboys’ bassist Nigel Mogg struck up a friendship with Axl Rose, Slash and Duff McKagan. One month later, Guns N’ Roses became the biggest band in the world after the release of their record-smashing debut album, Appetite for Destruction. The Quireboys’ then-manager, Nigel’s uncle Phil, singer with the 1960s hard rock band UFO, then secured them a support slot on Guns N’ Roses’s UK tour.
The Quireboys’ rapid ascent continued throughout the late Eighties: they signed to the EMI records offshoot Survival, releasing their first two singles, Mayfair and There She Goes Again, and played Reading Festival in 1988 alongside Iggy Pop and the Ramones. Then along came Sharon Osbourne, who managed them from 1989 to 1992.
When Osbourne was managing the Quireboys, they shifted more than four million records worldwide. At their peak, they shared a festival bill with David Bowie in Germany and were hand-picked to support the Rolling Stones at St James’s Park, home of Spike’s beloved Newcastle FC. They appeared on the cover of Kerrang and Q (an edition of the latter, from April 1990, featured the tagline, “Yikes! It’s those horrid Quireboys!”).
Today, Spike loves talking about the stars he’s met over the years. “You know, Stephen Fry was really good friends with Guy Bailey? One day Stephen said, ‘Oh, do you want to meet my friend Joanna?’ It was f-----g Joanna Lumley! Guy Bailey called me the ‘Quentin Crisp of Soho.’”
But even the future Dame Joanna paled in comparison to Spike’s most elevated acquaintance. “I met Princess Margaret. I knew her quite well, actually – she was f-----g brilliant, I tell you. She was beautiful. I’m talking 35 years ago. What a lovely woman. Me mam still won’t believe me that I met Princess Margaret. I even put her on the phone to her. I can’t say any more than that...”
When most people hear Spike’s ragged, raspy singing voice, they reach for comparisons to Rod Stewart. “I know Rod. Of course I take it as a compliment. Although, in my head I’m Mick Jagger, you know, except it comes out like Rod,” he laughs. “If I’m singing full pelt, I can’t help it, it’s just one of them things. I just did a duet with Bonnie Tyler who passed away recently. Powerful voice. She was one of the greatest. I’ve sung with Aerosmith, Guns N’ Roses. She could out-drink all of them.”
Spike has been having a particularly rough time for the past four years. In spring 2022, the band announced it was parting ways with Spike, and made a claim to the band name. Guitarist Guy Griffin’s line-up toured as “the Quireboys” while Spike fought to maintain the rights to the name under a slightly modified moniker, “Quireboys”.
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The strains were obvious to fans: one wrote on Facebook: “Feel sorry for them really as after seeing Spike at Stonedead [festival] you could really hear he missed the band.” This dispute was finally put to bed when Griffin’s breakaway faction agreed to surrender the name and rebrand as Black Eyed Sons. As if this wasn’t tough enough for Spike to deal with, in April 2023, Bailey died suddenly. The gig he’s playing tonight, at the Spice of Life in Soho, is a tribute to his friend.
“I just hope I don’t burst into tears, mate,” he says. “I know that Guy’ll be looking down, sitting with my father, and his dad, saying ‘What the hell is Spike doing now!’”
In a statement at the time of the split, the band said the decision had not been taken lightly. It was “the culmination of not just months but years of persistent problems, as many working in the music industry know”. They had strings of grievances, including Spike’s last-minute no-show on the Monsters of Rock Cruise, and what they called the double-booking of solo shows “in a bid to jeopardise contracted Quireboys shows”.
“The trouble is, I’ve been in the business all my life, and I knew it was going downhill. I knew what was happening. When everything happened, they basically took over, and I became a hired hand, if you like. And the music that was going on was not the Quireboys. We’re not Americana, we’re British rock ’n’ roll, and I didn’t like that whole thing. As Guy Bailey said, ‘Do not play chords with numbers in.’”
The atmosphere in the band was off, too. “Every time I opened my mouth, it was like, ‘Spike’s starting again…’, but I knew what was going wrong.”
“The one thing about the Quireboys is that we were all s---, but when you put it together it became…” The PR jumps in to finish the thought – “Rock ’n’ roll” – then asks Spike if he wants another cider. He does.
Tonight’s gig showcases God Bless America (The Best of Thirsty), Spike’s tribute album to Bailey, which was released earlier this year. After the band first split in 1993, Bailey pursued his own creative projects, including his band Thirsty, with the Russian lyricist Irina D. The new album revisits songs from that projects.
“Being in the studio was the most emotional time. Initially, I was going to go down and record a duet,” says Spike. “I was like, f-----g hell, I’d love to hear his voice again. I sang it in his key, which was fine but then I said, ‘Can I sing this how I think it should have been done?’ I did, and everyone was getting shivers.”
He’s also been looking to his native Northumberland for musical inspiration, and is currently working on a more traditional record, Geordie Rogues. “The inspiration for the Geordie Rogues project came from my mam,” he says. “She was watching a documentary about Sting’s shipbuilding musical [The Last Ship, which is now on the West End] on Broadway. I actually went to school with Sting’s cousin, and my mam was sitting there watching him on the telly going, ‘Look at him with his fake Geordie accent! You should do an album to show him how it’s properly done!’” So I told her, ‘Alright, I’ll do an album of Alex Glasgow [the Gateshead-born folk singer-songwriter] songs for you.’ People don’t realise that Northumbrian folk has a totally different rhythm and bounce to Irish folk music. But once I sat down and started playing those old tunes, I just couldn’t stop.”
It’s surely time to go and be late for his next appointment, but Spike can’t stop reeling out stories about the people he’s met over the years. We enjoy tales about him impressing David Bowie at the Berlin Wall, and how he met his hero Ralph McTell in a pub in Putney. Alongside the wild stories of excess and celebrity, I see a man still grieving the loss of his best mate, yet filled with contentment.
“I’ve had a charmed life. I am really happy. It’s a treat to be alive, mate.”
The Quireboys tour the UK from Oct 7
