Here & Now Issue 35 | August 2019

“I loved it, the ethic that anyone can do it,” he says. “It encouraged
me, because I’m quite shy but I like writing songs. I couldn’t find
anyone else to sing them, so I ended up fronting a band.”
DAVE AND BRANKA FENTON
PERFORMING AS THE VAPOR
CORPORATION
His life might have been very different if his firm hadn’t given him an
ultimatum. “In 1978 they asked me to sign a new contract for another
year, but they put a provision in that I couldn’t play in a band,” he
remembers. “They felt that brought the firm into disrepute.”
Dave took the plunge and threw himself into music. He quit the law
firm to work in a fruit shop, but a year later his band, The Vapors,
were spotted by Bruce Foxton of The Jam, who saw them play at the
Three Lions pub in Farncombe. He got them a couple of support slots
on The Jam’s May ’79 Jam ‘Em In tour.
On first, they nevertheless received an encore, impressing Jam
manager and Paul Weller’s dad John, who agreed to co-manage
them with Foxton. They soon had a record deal with United Artists.
The Vapors’ debut single ‘Prisoners’ appeared in late ’79, and they
supported The Jam on their Setting Sons tour. The single did nothing,
but early in the following year they released a new song called
‘Turning Japanese’. It was a massive hit, in the UK and abroad.
“It was an amazing time,” smiles
Dave. “One of the things that’s stuck
in my head forever was when I was
woken up by the radio alarm playing
my own record.”
Unfortunately, although The Vapors
didn’t know it, this short period was
their commercial peak. “EMI bought
out United Artists,” Dave explains.
“We had no friends in our own record
company.
“Following that we were in the charts
at No.3 and The Jam were No.1
THE VAPORS NOW
TURNING JAPANESE: THE UNSTOPPABLE HIT
[with ‘Going Underground’].
John and Bruce said ‘Sorry,
chaps, we haven’t got time
to manage you’. So we
effectively lost our record
label and management at same time.
“The follow-up to ‘Turning Japanese’ was ‘News at Ten’. We went to
see our new A&R man and he didn’t even know we had a single out
that day. Despite this, it was still the charts’ highest climber, but the
BBC had a strike so we couldn’t do ‘Top Of The Pops’.”
‘News at Ten’ stalled just outside the Top 40. It was the beginning of
the end. The Vapors produced two albums of spiky, socially aware
new wave guitar pop, ‘New Clear Days’ (1980) and ‘Magnets’ (1981),
but the writing was already on the wall.
“Our A&R bloke came to rehearsal to hear us play what would have
been our seventh single,” sighs Dave. “We jammed it out to him, then
we all went down the pub. He bought us a pint, said,
‘Cheers! Brilliant!’, shook all our hands, then went and
cancelled our studio time. That was the last straw.”
In 1982 Dave quit The Vapors, which finished the band.
He spent the next decade in The Vapor Corporation,
known as TVC, with his girlfriend (now wife) Branka
and her brother, but never quite made it. His main
income came, instead, from sound engineering at
Croydon’s Cartoon Club, until he eventually returned
to law, becoming a successful music lawyer. He
recently took early retirement.
In 2016, although drummer Howard Smith couldn’t
commit, The Vapors reformed with original guitarist
Edward Bazalgette and bassist Steve Smith, alongside
TVC drummer Michael Bowes. They’ve recorded a new
album with Steve Levine (producer of Culture Club’s
biggest albums), are touring the States as part of Lost 80s Live, and
this autumn will be supporting From The Jam, featuring their old mate
Bruce Foxton.
“My kids come to the gigs and my wife does merch,” says Dave. “My
son even plays guitar when Ed can’t. He’s better than me! People
say ‘Do you mind being a One Hit
Wonder?’ and I say, ‘It’s better
than being a No Hit Wonder!’ I’m
satisfied by the way things have
gone. It’s amazing people still want
to listen and that I still have a fairly
reasonable income from stuff I did
40 years ago. Who can say that?”
Who indeed! n
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