T.U.S.H.

Biography     Discography

The story of TUSH started in 1976 when Dany Lademacher and Charlie De Raedemaecker (b. 1948 June 15th) decided to disband their band Klepto. It was a young singer, Walter “Paa” De Paduwa (b. 1953 Feb. 1st) who started the spark for this new rock band. During those last Klepto months, Walter had joined the others a few times on stage to sing along some songs. He had never been in a band before but really enjoyed these little stage appearances, so when Klepto finally got on hold he asked his friend Charlie to form together a new band. Walter was that enthusiastic that he also managed to convince Dany to join them. They initially named themselves Toxic Cow-dung and the following weeks all three worked separate on new material while finally in October 1976 they got together to work things out. The place of action was a private house owned by Jacky, a friend of Charlie, in a little town called Berg. For more than two weeks they gathered every evening in this living room and recorded thirteen songs on a Real to real tape machine.

It was Walter who came up with TUSH: “I was crazy about ZZ Top, who by then just had released their Tejas album. This song-title from the Fandango album we both liked as it can stand for different things, although EMI messed it up by putting a period between each character”.

For an item called “Rock in Belgie” they were filmed and interviewed at EMI recording studio’s.The actual release itself was postponed quite a few times so that it only hit the shops at the end of September 1977. Entitled “We’re Just Boys”, the front cover showed a picture of Walter and Charlie that wasn’t very rock and roll after all. Walter: “We had absolute no idea for the record sleeve so when it was about time for the release a photographer took us for a session to some sort of farm with a terrible result…  We should have used only the name TUSH for the front without stupid pictures. Maybe we look so sad because we knew this project was already dead right before it started…”
The album was a reasonable enough release, simply heavy rock & roll. “No No No” a fine boogie-song was one of the (reworked) tunes Walter had been singing on stage with Klepto. The funky “Roosevelt And Ira Lee”, a cover-tune (with sax) from Tony Joe White contrasted very much with rockers such as “Atomic Slaughter”, “Greyhound Bus” and “Don’t Drink Anymore”. Followed by this Belgian release this album was seen in the shops in Holland, Germany, Spain and probably a few more European countries.

Next to the album release, EMI put out “No No No” as a single in December 1977 throughout almost the whole of Europe.  But it failed to really hit the mark, while a more radio-friendly song, as the Eagles-like ballad “Jeffrey”, could probably have been a better choice. The single was released in Switzerland, Spain, Portugal, Holland and Germany. “No No No” was also the Belgian contribution to the popular European radio contest “Radio-Vision: European Pop Jury” and when it finally won, this helped to get the necessary airplay.Unfortunately TUSH wasn’t ready yet for the live-promotion. On drums came Eric (?) while Dany was replaced by two young guitar players from Tervuren, Franky Tommelein and Pieter Van Leeuwen. Eric’s only appearance was for the “Tienerklanken” television show on BRT TV.

A few weeks later they replaced Eric by Dirk Vanganzbeke. This new line-up was seen for the first time on another TV-show; RTB’s “Follies”, once more performing their single “No No No”. Then they started rehearsing in the cellar of a club in Auderghem called Le Gemeaux, a place who also used to be the home of Kleptomania. Soon they came up with quite a lot of new compositions to extend the set-list of their upcoming live shows.

Still recorded at the album sessions with Dany (and by then already left out to be the second single), it was probably released to match up the sales of the album. Charlie: ”EMI never really asked us to record anything new as they knew this group was really adrift so it didn’t take long before the band split-up”.

I started this whole adventure for fun, but as it appeared since the departure of Dany I turned out to be the man in the spotlight, something I didn’t like at all! I simply didn’t considered myself as a top-class singer; I stayed a music-fan in the first place and heard so many influences from all those great voices, that I was then unable to find my true identity as a singer. At the end it turned out that I asked myself “What am I doing here; I’m not the star”; that’s why I still hate the song “I am a star” from the album. It is probably the main reason for my lack of motivation, while my daily job made it easy to return to the life I had before the band…”

When the others finally found him, he refused to sign and so he disbanded another opportunity, and with it a complete set of great songs to the vaults…. Charlie who had since then only done a bit of session work (he’s f.i. featured on the 1979 Vankessel album “Ballen”) had enough of it and sold all his stuff to try his luck in California. He left Belgium in January 1980 and would work in Los Angeles for a year and a half. Illuminaty was an American hardrock band he initially played in, but soon he became the singer in a band called The Kind.

Back in Belgium Charlie got a proposition to record a single (“Surprise” & “The Backyard”) and he started playing as Charlie Maker. Another offer came from Philippe Lafontaine and this resulted in his second 45rpm, this time in his native language (“Mais Moi Ca Va” & “L’amour Aie”). Next release happened in 1985; “Sextime” while a year later ”YaYaHic & Ho“ came out as a single but only in Canada. In September 1987 he played music and acted in a theatre-play called “Jail” and two years later he contributed as composer (“Cocaine”) and actor in Tarifa for the movie “Last Shot/Overdose”. He stayed in Spain until 1992 when he was asked to play in theatre once again, this time for a play entitled “Fou’l Contact”. Another year later he records a solo album entitled “Voyage” who unfortunately never saw the light of day. Since then he kept playing as Charlie Maker Band, much at the Flanagans club he worked (and where he organised weekly jam-sessions) but it was only since 2003 he had formed a steady band.

Together with JC Massaux (guitar), Thierry “Jeff Allenbeck” (guitar, vocals), Jerry Delmotte (drums) and Sébastien Coppens he finally managed to release in 2006 his first cd entitled “Live Music”. It contained great rock tunes Charlie had written during his entire career and even three reworked songs from the TUSH long-player. By the end of 2007 there was a treat in store for Belgian rock fans as Kleptomania reformed to play some gigs early 2008.
Drummer Dirk Vanganzbeke was seen behind the kit of rock band Once More (later renamed Luna Twist) after his Superhuit adventure.

In November 1981 Walter was approached by some Flemish musicians who asked him to write melody-lines and lyrics for two songs they had recorded yet. Later on, both songs “In My Car” and “Something To Tease” were recorded in a studio in Aalst, and although the result was quite good (especially the bluesy hardrock on “In My car”), he never heard of these people again.
For another unreleased song entitled “I Wanna Be Free”, Walter asked Wim Hombergen from Kleptomania to make arrangements and to play guitar. They recorded it on August 10th, 1982 and to this day it sounds probably as fresh as it did in 1982.

Around the same time he also started rehearsing with an old friend, bass-player Alain Goutier and soon they had formed a complete band (Werner Breito, Paolo…) named Wolfpack. This time they played the music Walter loved most of all: dirty blues and boogie. Their only claims to fame were two concerts; one in Brussels and one in Bissegem supporting Canned Heat. After all, an argument between two of the members, once more made them decide to put this one on hold. It is not impossible to see Walter one day on stage again: “as long as it’s music I like, as dirty boogie or solid rock ‘n’ roll and as long as I don’t have to play the leading part, I think I would probably accept…” The last TUSH news came in 2006 when Walter and Charlie decided to make the album available on cd. One of the album tracks “I’m a Star”, a song Walter never had liked in the first place, was left off. Instead it contained four unreleased songs (“He’s Back”, “Let Me try”, You’re A Leech” and “Unsettled Man”) from that very first thirteen song demo. Strange that a few other unreleased songs as the beautiful “Freedom Train” are not included. Maybe in the future they will end up on a record from one of the musicians involved…

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