Nicky Tesco

Nicky had been poorly for years, I suppose this was sadly inevitable.

From  JC Carroll

Terrible News ... We have lost Nick Tesco

It’s difficult for me to take on board the fact that we have lost one of the most influential people I’ve ever met. Nick Tesco left the room on Friday after various battles with different illnesses. Nick had not been well for a long long time but he battled his disability and he never complained . I first met him on a train going to Camberley when I was working in the bank he was just down from Liverpool University he was charming and charismatic he had been everywhere he had done everything and he was going to do it all over again little did I know that he would change my life.

Maybe a year later I got a call from him saying would you like to join my band. Nick asked me to join the members not because I was a great guitarist. Because I wasn’t, he asked me to join The Members because he had a feeling that I would be good and he heard that I had written some good songs.

Nick had the desire and the drive to become famous and he wanted to do something in PUNK ROCK at the time he was living in Camberley in Surrey and that was not a very PUNK ROCK place but he had assembled round him a great band with a really good guitarist and a fabulous drummer. I’m still not quite sure why he asked me but I think secretly it was because I looked a bit more punk than the others.

I remember one of my first rehearsals with Nick in Tooley street we bumped into Ian Drury in the pub and Ian Dury told us he thought we had a great look , we were too embarrassed to tell him that we were wearing suits because we had straight jobs in the daytime Nick was selling insurance and I was working in a bank. Not very Punk Rock but the members are different from all the other PUNK ROCK groups because we were very suburban and Nick and I worked in office jobs but that gave us a unique take on PUNK ROCK. PUNK ROCK was not the Punk Rock of squats it was not the Punk Rock of the art school of PUNK ROCK was something special and it would become with the help of Adrian lillywhite Gary Baker Chris Payne Nigel Bennett a really special mix of reggae rap and Rock. And it had a very special story that was different from all the other groups. Our story was the story of bedsits at the escape from the suburbs it wasn’t the nihilism of squat rock it wasn’t the artiness of Saint Martins it was the sound of the suburbs.

Nick had a Charisma and drive that was something very very special, Women found him extremely charming and he was never without female admirers He really came alive on stage he was a completely different person a gobby pocket rocket with an arresting smile or a look of perpetual astonishment. Nick wrote some very very good songs with Gary Baker but it was when we collaborated together on Solitary Confinement for another Nick Tesco popped up the Nick that did the talking bit vulnerable inadequate boy from Camberley. He captured everybody’s imagination in a small talking bit in the middle of this song! We recorded that song with Larry Wallis and spent most of the day arguing about how the record should be because Nick and I argued a lot and we argued a lot because we cared a lot. Larry Wallis would later joke that he did not produced The Members single but umpired it. Solitary confinement is a great record not just because of solitary confinement but also because of nicks extraordinary performance on the B-side Chris Payne’s weird reggae song rat up a drain pipe. Nick Tesco turned this loping looping song into a rap but not a American rap a mad psychotic Camberley rap.

Of course we had another big hit that everybody knows about one of the most important things about Nick was that he encouraged me to express myself and he was the perfect foil for songs that I wrote and brought to the band for example I phoned him up one day and I said I’d written a song about tax evasion most people would’ve just said that’s stupid we should never do that but he simply said know it’s brilliant we will do it and it will be the follow-up to sound of the Suburbs Because Nick did not just believe in being a popstar which was something that he really wanted to be …he also believed the rather unfashionable idea that we could use music to “stick it to the man” to bring down Babylon to be revolutionaries. Some people believed that Punk was just a vehicle to get into the music business to get fame But Nick believed it was the soapbox that he could tell the world how are you felt about injustice. The further we progressed people just wanted us to write Pop songs but he wanted to write his great social commentaries and he did.

The thing nobody tells you about the music business is that if you have success you suddenly get thrown in a bus and have to spend 24 hours a day with a small group of people for the next two or three years that is enough to put you off anybody. It becomes intense too intense and of course as irresponsible young men we thought we had to behave like rock stars and indulge ourselves we drink and all the other accoutrements of rockstardom!

We spent a lot of time together banged up in a van a bit like being in prison locked up in a small cell five or six hours a day an allowed out for an hour to jump around a stage For an hour drink a case of beer and a bottle of Jack Daniel’s and then back in the van. That’s what living the rock and roll dream really is.

Nick Tesco was a facilitator prime mover somebody that did things ordinary people did not do we work together we made records together and we fought like cat and dog like brother fights brother.

He’s remembered on video on the Internet with fantastic performances of working girl and Sound Of The Suburbs but one of his favourite records was the song recorded on the 1983 album Martin Rushent studio Streetly Hill it’s a song called “we the people” If you want to know about Nick Tesco go and listen to that song it’s an idealistic shout and tells a lot about him it references psychedelic music funk music and a bit of Temptations and it was lovingly Recorded by Dave Allen and the late Martin Rushent who sang beautiful backing vocals on it. Martin also sang the lovely high backing vocals on working girl.

After six years working together The Members went on hiatus and incredibly we still remained friends Despite all our bickering on the road. I watched him grow up and have a family and our families became intertwined he was like an uncle to my children. And we holidayed together in his beautiful retreat in France.

Nick went on to make some great movies with a finish film director he wrote some songs for people like Roger Daltrey and was a successful Music journalist and broadcaster for 6 music With his great friend Phil Jupitus it was brilliant when we brought the band back together again in 2008 to do some more shows ! When you have presence and chops like Nick it never goes away! Unfortunately his health did not let him do everything that he wanted to do . But he had achieved everything that he wanted in life he had a beautiful family who had made some great records and he leaves behind him . A massive Nick Tesco sized hole in our lives.

He was a film star rockstar a husband a dad a very funny man A great writer a bon vivant and he will always be the Sound Of The Suburbs!

Happy trails Nick!

Our thoughts are with Francesca Cassavetti Lucy Tesco @ned Lightowlers his best Friends Huw Gruffydd Norbert Kilzer Laura Hartong and old shipmates Adrian Lillywhite Nigel Bennett chris payne Nick Cash Ian Grant Michel Carroll Lloyd Jones Frank Gallagher

Just found the first one - thanks Andy



Nick Tesco of The Members - his life and times in the music business told to Keef Trouble.

Part 01: The 1970s, Musical Influences, Canada.

So many parts of my youth gradually disappearing, Great band, great tunes, great singer. RIP Nicky.

Sad. 67 is no age.

The Members never got the credit they deserved.

However, sometimes you think given the state of the world with Ukraine Covid and Brexit that the likes of Nicky are better off out of it.

You feel for his family however.

RIP Nicky Tesco.

Go sit in the "naughty corner".