Merseybeasts.com:
the unofficial ian mcnabb fan site

I'm glad some of you like Blind--I was very pleased with it when it was finished, but by then I'd completely "taken over" and it was less off a collabarative effort than ever.

I was living in London at the time and just ordered everyone down to the Townhouse 3 in Battersea (near where I lived) when I'd written enough songs. To mix, we went to Eel Pie in Twickenham 'cos I could drive there in 20 minutes!

The Who connection was quite important! (Quadraphenia was recorded at Townhouse 3 in Thessaly Rd. when it was called the Kitchen).

We did it dead quick, which gives it its vibe, and there are some really good songs on there. "High Time" and "Little Girl Lost" (which Fine Young Cannibals ripped off later--can't remember the name of the song but they took the chord progression and organ wholesale) got played on the radio a bit, "Starry..." was a big live number, as was "Blind" itself.

"St Peter" is cool too.

"Kiss Off" was done much later on and was stuffed into the final running order. I was happy to do that as it made the LP even more wildly ecletic, thus making it even harder for people to know what to do with us!

The Yanks accidentally cut off the re-intro of "Shit Creek" when they pressed up their (usual) bastardized version of the album (yuk). I met with Iggy pop's ex-manager around this time in NYC and he was very disappointed I wasn't the guy on the cover of the US Blind sleeve I can tell ya... :-)

Anyway it was pretty much all over after that. They weren't great days, truth be told. We'd realised we weren't ever going to be top 40 again (although the album scraped in at that very number for a week) and there was dissent in the ranks. It happens!

Ian McNabb in the discussion group on Yahoo.