A person who wanted to be (more or less) anonymous sent me this info in 2008:

"Hi, I've just read your Tony Mansfield biography and some of the facts that you have stated are wrong, so I want to clear up a few things. The first synth that New Musik used was a Korg 700s [Korg Mini 700S] but it didn't belong to Clive Gates, it belonged to someone called Pepe Heath. I know this because I was Tony Mansfield’s best mate at the time and I was also Pepe Heath’s best mate, and I borrowed it from him to lend to Tony where we spent hours playing with it to see what sounds we could get out of it. We all lived in a house in Manville Road, Tooting. There were five flats. I had one, Tony had one and Clive Gates had the other. I don’t know if you're aware but at that time Tooting had a very healthy music scene; Everyone we mixed with was in a band. There was obviously New Musik, Nick Straker, The UK Subs, R.P.M who later became Search Party, Girlschool (Kelly is Lee Jacobs cousin), my own band who was called Spanker (Pepe Heath was the singer) and Suzy who was the bass player for The Slits. All of us used to hang around TMC and the castle pub and the majority of them used to land up in my flat after the pubs had shut. I also remember that Tony's dad's painting and decorating company was called Kalode, not Mansell. I also worked there with Tony (for a few years we were inseparable). Tony never worked as a dispatch rider (that was me).

But back to New Musik. I was in the studio most of the time during the recording of the first album and I must say that without Pete Hammond and Bernie, New Musik would have never got off the ground. I was also the New Musik roadie.

You also missed out two massive influences on him: "M" and the French band Space; These two albums were never off the turntable. This was just before the writing of "On Islands" and the first draft of "Science", which were the first two songs that started the whole New Musik thing off.

Also I would love to get my hands on an old demo track that Tony recorded long before any of the New Musik stuff. It's called Emily James, it was part of a concept album that Tony was writing called M.A.R.S. (he dropped it when punk came out and concept albums became unfashionable), and it’s one of the most haunting and emotive tracks that he had ever written. As far as I know he never reused it for any of his tracks, which he did with most of his other songs. By all means forward this on to Lee; who knows, knowing Tony he's probably still got a copy of Emily James on a computer somewhere.

I'm really pleased that you mentioned Maria, his wife, who was a very beautiful lady inside and out and I can't stress enough how important she was in allowing him his time to be creative; She was always happy to take a back seat when it came to his music and she worked and kept him for YEARS and believed in him completely.

I am still in regular contact with Lee Jacob and Alan Rear but have lost contact with Clive Gates. If you have his email address send him a hello from me, I would love to get back in contact with him again as I have something that I would love to play him that would make him laugh.

As for my recollections about the TMC sessions most of the things that went on would be unprintable!!"

Copyright (c) 2008 Jonas Wårstad.

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