Formed: London, England, UK
Band Bio / Discography
After the Sex Pistols split in January 1978, Steve Jones and Paul Cook carried on working together under the Pistols banner, contributing to The Great Rock N Roll Swindle (LP and film), and issuing a final single as the Pistols in 1980 (Joan Jett's ‘Black Leather' and ‘Here We Go Again') as part of the money-grubbing Pistols Pack set. In 1978 they had backed Pistols producer Dave Goodman on the superb Justifiable Homicide 45, contributed to Johnny Thunders' debut LP So Alone. teamed up with members of Thin Lizzy and as the Greedies released a dire Christmas single, A Merry Jingle, and wasted a few weeks the same year trying to get the Shitty Sham Pistols off the ground.
All of this laid down the groundwork for The Professionals, which for a few years (1979-1981) continued the emphasis on multi-tracked wall-of-sound guitars, a walloping beat and football terrace-style choruses, as had been previously evidenced on Silly Thing and No One Is Innocent. Unfortunately, the band was troubled by drug woes, label uncertainty and a lack of live appearances, but although they had none of the fanatical zeal of the Pistols, they were pretty good nonetheless.
The original lineup was this:
Steve Jones - lead guitar
Paul Cook - drums
Andy Allen (ex-Lightning Raiders) - bass
Allen had actually played on 'Silly Thing' and 'Lonely Boy', making this new band almost the Sex Pistols.
They got off the ground in June 1980 with Just Another Dream, promoted by a Julien Temple-directed video, a sort of Godzilla homage with the band astride various London monuments and buildings, intercut with shots of Japanese people taking snapshots. However, despite the crude but fun video ad appearance on the kids' TV show Fun Factory, the single did not chart, presumably because it was a) rather dull and b) Andy Allen had longer hair than all the Sex Pistols put together. He also sported one of the earliest mullets.
In November 1980 Virgin issued a label sampler called Cash Cows, which was intended to promote new LPs by bands on its roster. It included a song called 'Kick Down The Door', which was to be from the forthcoming eponymous LP. Then Allen left the band shortly after it was recorded and decided to sue Cook/Jones and Virgin for unpaid royalties. Therefore, with no album, and so 'Cash Cows' itself was also withdrawn, although it was subsequently re-pressed without 'Kick Down The Door'.
The unreleased debut album finally saw the light of day in 1990 on green vinyl via Limited Edition Records. Slightly rougher and not quite as lavishly produced, the songs on The Professionals are angrier and funnier, such as the hilarious ‘Little Boys In Blue' (“We'll take you down the bleedin' Yard/We'll find out if yer facking ‘ard”) and the ludicrously catchy ‘Kamikaze', a riposte to being forced to do crap jobs like cleaning toilets. ‘Are You?' is also pretty great, with its tales of pogoing at the Vortex and a hearty "Are you a mod? Are you a skin? Are you a punk?. Or are you just fakin'?" making them sound like The Business. Some of the material overlaps the 1981 album but the recordings are all different.
Late 1980 saw the arrival of a new lineup.
Steve Jones - lead guitar
Paul Cook - drums
Paul Myers (sometimes spelled Meyers, ex-Subway Sect) - bass
Ray McVeigh - guitar
Cook and Jones meanwhile decided that, like McLaren, they wanted their own film too, and so they went off to America and appeared in Ladies & Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains, in which they played in a fictional band alongside Paul Simonon. It was notable chiefly for the appearance of Ray Winstone as the band's singer. He could have had a career singing punk rock, that bloke, as he is great. 'Join The Professionals' was heavily featured in the film, along with three other originals, 'Conned Again', 'La La La', and 'Don't Blow It All The Way'.
June 1981 saw the release of the group's third single Join The Professionals, which came in a delightful gatefold sleeve and had the band blazing away in fine form, and this was followed in November with the sole album, I Didn't See It Coming, which boasted plenty of rabble rousing anthems, including a sideswipe at Lydon (‘The Magnificent'), all sung by Jones in an outrageous Cockney accent that borders on parody.
At the same time as the LP's release the whole band was involved in a car crash while in the States, and therefore never toured to promote it. A mix of lukewarm reviews and inactivity were its kiss of death. Once recovered the band toured the US and limped along miserably until they split in 1982. Post-Professionals, Jones embarked on a solo career as a guitar-wanking heavy rock singer (releasing two abysmal albums, Mercy (1987) and Fire And Gasoline (1989) - and contributing to the Sid & Nancy soundtrack), while Cook teamed up with Matthew Ashman (ex-Adam & The Ants) for The Chiefs of Relief, a lousy Big Audio Dynamite type group.
Cook, Myers and McVeigh reformed The Professionals in 2015 with Tom Spence on vocals instead of Jones, to promote the 3xCD The Complete Professionals. In 2017 the band (minus McVeigh) released a new LP, What In The World, with Jones as a guest musician.
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DISCOGRAPHY
Subsequent studio albums: What In The World (2017).
Singles & Albums
Just Another Dream (7", 1980)
One Two Three (7", 1980)
Join The Professionals (7", 1981)
The Magnificent (7", 1981)
I Didn't See It Coming (LP, 1981)
Extraneous Releases
Sounds Freebie No. 2 (7", flexi, split with Gillan, 1981)
The Professionals (LP, 1990)
The Professionals (CD, 1995)
The Best Of The Professionals (CD, 2005)
The Complete Professionals (3xCD, 2015)
Bootlegs
The Professionals (LP, 2005)
Various Artists
Cash Cows UK LP 1980 (Virgin): Kick Down The Door
After The Anarchy UK CD 1993 (Connoisseur Collection): 1 2 3 / Join The Professionals
Links
Kick Down The Doors - The Cook 'n' Jones site - Very good it is too!
