From Bootle to Britpop

It started in a rehearsal room

Before there was a band, there was a room. Chris and Tony Griffiths rented a rehearsal space and studio in Pownall Square, in Liverpool city centre — and when they moved on, they handed the lease to a young local band on their way up: The La's. The brothers went looking for a new base and found one across the way in Bootle, at Marsh Lane Community Centre. Armed with a handful of songs and heads full of new ideas, they set about building something of their own.

They called it The Real People. They pulled in friends Sean Simpson and Tony Elson, started a Tuesday-night residency at Marsh Lane, and gigged the pubs across Bootle and Liverpool as word spread. The room got busier every week. A buzz was building.

The first demo

For their first proper recording, the band turned to Sean Morgan, who ran music promotion at Liverpool Polytechnic. They cut a demo in 1988 at Alchemy Studios off London Road, engineered and produced by their friend John Murphy — now a film composer in Los Angeles, scoring blockbusters. Morgan started putting them on at the Poly, opening for some of the biggest names around, including The Stone Roses and The La's.

After a show supporting The La's at Hardman House — with Digsy guesting on piano — a Manchester manager, Jeff Abbotts, came calling. The buzz was turning into something real.

Signed — and straight to Goa

With the Tuesday nights still packed and the band now working out of a warehouse on Derby Road in Bootle, Abbotts had them playing showcases for the major labels within weeks. In December 1989 they signed to CBS for both records and publishing.

In January 1990 the whole camp — band, friends, girlfriends, management — flew out to Goa, having told the record company they were heading to Wales to rehearse. Between the all-night raves and full-moon beach parties, the music started to shift: the melodic songs of that first demo picked up a looser, more psychedelic, baggy edge.

The debut album

Back home, the band threw themselves into recording, laying down around twenty new songs at the Pink Museum studio and piecing together their first album. It was cut across several studios with a handful of producers — Stephen Street and Paul Hardiman among them, alongside tracks the band produced themselves. The newer sound crept in, but the songwriting stayed true to what they were. Whatever didn't make the final cut became B-sides.

Self-titled, The Real People landed in 1991. "Window Pane" led the way to strong reviews, followed by "Open Up Your Mind" and "The Truth." The band spent the best part of a year on the road — Glastonbury, Reading, and tours that reached Japan, the USA and France — before setting up a new base on Jordan Street in the city centre.

Marshmellow Lane

The second album, Marshmellow Lane, was started in 1991 and finished in 1992, with production from Jimmy Miller — the man behind some of The Rolling Stones' greatest records — as well as Chris Allison and Dave Dix, plus the band themselves.

"Believer" reached the UK Top 40. But the label lost its nerve, and the album went unreleased at the time. Its songs would surface in the years that followed, and the record has since become something of a lost gem for those who know.

Doing it their own way

Freed from the majors, the band moved their base to Porter Street in Liverpool and pressed on. They brought in Hambi Haralambous — owner of the Pink Museum studio — and Martin O'Shea to manage them, and started their third album at the Pink Museum and later known as the Motor Museum, with Gary Ford and Alan Gillybrand joining along the way.

The band launched their own label, Egg Records, and released What's on the Outside in 1996 — trailed by singles including "Rolling Stone," "People in the Telly" and "Raynes Lane," plus "Every Vision of You." A companion set of B-sides was later released fittingly titled What's on the B-Side, followed.

The Oasis chapter

Around this time, Chris and Tony did what Liverpool bands do for one another — they opened up their studio to a young, unsigned Oasis and helped them record the now famous live demonstration tape that won them the recording deal with Alan Mcgee and Creation Records. Tony sang backing vocals on "Supersonic"; Chris co-wrote "Rockin' Chair." It's a story worth telling on its own.

Read the Oasis story →

On the road with Ocean Colour Scene

The touring never let up. There were shows with Oasis — Liverpool's Royal Court, Glasgow's Cathouse — and then a long, happy run alongside Ocean Colour Scene, who took the band out on the Moseley Shoals tour and several more besides. Chris and Tony returned the favour in the studio, singing backing vocals on OCS's Marchin' Already. OCS later recorded a unreleased Real People track on the albumn "A Hyperactive Workout" for the Flying Squad called "Start of the day".

Recording carried on — with producers including Brendan Lynch and Mark Wallis, and eventually at the band's own new studio in Birkenhead. Along the way they supported some of the biggest names in the business: David Bowie, Simple Minds, Meat Loaf and the Pixies among them.

The songwriting years — and the way back (needs update)

On the back of the Cher success and the Oasis track "Rocking Chair" Co-written by Chris Griffiths , the brothers signed a publishing deal with Dominic Walker at Famous Music and threw themselves into writing for other artists — a run that took in trips to Nashville and, later, a deal with Hugh Goldsmith's Blue-Sky, including work for Atomic Kitten.

Cher’s 1996 single "One by One" writen Tony Griffiths reached the top 10 in the UK, and the Junior Vasquez remixes peaked inside the top 10 on the US Billboard Dance Club Play chart

Chris and Tony Co Wrote 3 tracks for BBMAK's Into Your Head albumn which had a world wide reach entering the US Billboard 100 and UK charts.

Chris and Tony also Co- Wrote Rooster's single "You're So Right for Me" peaked at number 14 on the UK Singles Chart in 2005

Chris and Tony also wrote Nylon's single "Losing a Friend" entering the UK charts and was number 1 on Icelandic Singles Chart.

When the briefs started drifting too far into pure pop, they turned back to the thing that started it all. The result was Think Positive (2010): The Real People, front and centre again.

The catalogue comes home

Over time, the rights to much of the band's music found their way back to Chris and Tony, and the catalogue was reissued through Townsend Music — the 1998 demos, the debut and its B-sides, the long-lost Marshmellow Lane, What's on the Outside and then came Think Positive in 2010.

In 2016 came Monday Morning Breakdown, their most recent album. They haven't stopped since: new material is in the works, and a collection of rare and unreleased recordings is on the way.