In the Spring of 1981 the young Gordon "Specs" Macpherson was watching Top of the Pops with his parents in their working class home. Suddenly Gordon leapt form his chair and announced "Mum, I'm going to be a star and so is my friend Dave." This never came true of course, but the legacy of that night remains in the hearts of all those who have been touched by the timeless pop melodies that were "The Trees". Gordon immediately rushed to his room, pulled out his guitar and sang "You'd better not forget it.." and the classic Go for Goal was written within two minutes.
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Eager to bring their songs to an audience outside their Mums and Dads (both sets of parents had agreed that their sons were "genius's"), the songwriting pair decided to recruit a band. What they needed was a bass player "with a bass" and a drummer "with drums and a shed". Of the two that auditioned in the idyllic summer of '81 Mal "Tombola" Tom and Roy "Styx" Campbell were chosen. Tom impressed with his "simple and ineffectual" style while Campbell turned up for the audition in a dress. This immediately impressed Ewen and soon the pair were rifling through Mrs Ewen's wardrobe.
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What the band needed now was a stage. Campbell had the answer "Give the music back to the kids". The Trees took the revolutionary step of playing at their local comprehensive in June '82. The gig was a sell-out. "It was pissing down outside" Tom recalls "What else are schoolchildren going to do in their lunch hour?" The sodden audience were astounded by what they saw and heard. No-one could quite believe any band could get their instruments to sound like they did. Each musician seemed to be playing a different tune while Tom didn't seem to be playing at all - "creating space". Campbell hammered on his "cardboard boxes", Ewen "clanged" on his off-tune guitar and Macpherson crawled around the stage looking for his lyrics while cackling gibberish like a monkey. However, while The Trees struggled through their lacklustre set to the derision of the captive audience, one man stood apart. That man was Leslie Reith the school's rather "artistic" music teacher.
Reith saw in the young musicians a musical complexity that was beyond the confines of pop. He believed they were drawing inspiration from diverse musical sources such as jazz, classical and African tribal dance. Of course he was wrong. Nevertheless, Reith contacted a "friend" at the BBC with the view to getting The Trees their own Christmas Special. The BBC were enthusiastic about the idea and arranged an audition for the following month. The Trees were on a high. So was Campbell's father. Styx had taken the proceeds from the school gig and spent them on "flowers for my Mum" and "whiskey for my Dad". Macpherson was furious. Not only had all the money been "squandered" - it hadn't been squandered by him! Rehearsals for the audition were frought. Campbell and Macpherson bickered, Tom thought everything was "crap" while Ewen, having recently discovered alcohol, just lay on the floor dribbling. The audition was a disaster. The Trees were advised to move around more - "like the Shadows" - and were hastily dropped from the Chrsitmas schedules. Macpherson declared he would never work with amateurs again and The Trees split up.
