East Sussex band release Alzheimer’s Society fund-raiser

The Mobiles played a hugely-successful comeback showcase gig at The Piper in Hastings this spring – their first gig together for 44 years.

Now they are back again with a new single in aid of the Alzheimer’s Society’s Forget Me Not appeal, which aims to capture the personal stories of patients, carers and everyone who has come into contact with Alzheimer’s and dementia – about one in three of the UK's population.

The song, LockedIn, reflects “the very personal experiences from the group's friends and families who have been affected by this horrendous disease”, says band original David Blundell (bass, synths, programming).

For the reunion, David was joined by fellow originals Chris Downton (guitars, programming) and Russ Madge (guitars, synths, programming), plus new singer Sarah G, their original singer no longer being in the business.

David said: “The gig was absolutely amazing. To be fair, we rehearsed about seven or eight days. We knew that Sarah was good but we'd never performed live with her before. And we just walked away thinking we want to do a lot more of this. We got such a high from the build-up to playing there and it's such a brilliant venue, and we had the best sound guy. He did an amazing job. We just want to do more.”

Russ added: “We were just lucky to be in the same place at the same time (for the reunion). I had shut that part of my brain off. I got married and had a family and did all sorts of other things for my creative spark but having met up with the boys again, it suddenly opened up the idea of doing this and just thinking why had we stopped doing it. Suddenly I was 18 or 19 again. We started coming up with ideas and putting them down, and one of those ideas was for the song LockedIn.

“I was a coastguard and I had to do a lot of first-aid training but when Covid came along, I thought how can I be useful to my community and I ended up as a community responder and that took me into contact with a lot of frail and elderly people, unfortunately quite a lot of whom had Alzheimer's or dementia. I saw the effect that it had on them, and I saw the effect that it had on their families and that's how the song came about.

“It is a message of hope. With this disease the unknown is the big scary part of it, and unfortunately it’s a disease that is not prioritised in the same way that other illnesses are. It's just a question of how lucky you are with where you are and who the local volunteers are.”

As David says: “Three of us in the group have had experience of Alzheimer's or dementia.

“On the day my daughter was born, we said to my mother-in-law that we were just off to the hospital and she just said ‘OK, dear. See you later.’ Later on we thought that that was really odd what she said, and I think we can almost date it from that day. That was the first time that we noticed that something was strange. 19 years later she is still with us, and she recognises people but she can't now speak but she definitely responds to songs.”

And in fact the single includes a section of a Spanish nursery rhyme (featuring David’s daughter) which was last thing that she did recognise five or six years ago.

“It is not all about doom and gloom. It is also about the lovely moments of lucidity that come around before people fade away back into their dreams.”

The single is available to enjoy on YouTube. It is also available on all the streaming platforms as a fundraiser for the Alzheimer's Society

The Mobiles were an East Sussex band, between Hastings and Bexhill originally.

“The band started in 1980 and we used to play all the pubs, Eastbourne and Hastings and Brighton and Lewes, all along the south-east coast. I've got a very strong memory of a pub called The Squirrel in Eastbourne that doesn't exist anymore. We used to play there for £25. I remember this tiny little pub. We used to play on a stage the size of a napkin!

“But we became more and more well known and as we got better known we started to record and our first record was a hit which is ridiculous. Your first record isn't usually a hit!”

Their debut single Drowning in Berlin went on to sell a quarter of a million copies worldwide. Overnight they went from playing south-coast pubs to performing to 10,000 people at Wembley Arena and touring Europe. New Year's Eve 1981 they were playing Eastbourne Pier. A couple of weeks later the song was going up the charts, and they soon found themselves on Top of the Pops.

“We had a full year. We released a couple more singles. Chris and I were the first ones to leave. We had a new manager. We didn't like him and he didn't like us, and the whole thing started to dissolve.”