"King Of New York" was one of the least disciplined writing sessions I've been involved in.

Producer Bob Rock booked me for a writing session with the Quireboys for their "Bitter Sweet And Twisted" album. They had four days available, with a suggested 1:00PM start-time each day.

On the first day, 1:00PM came and went ... no Quireboys.

Their tour manager, Bobby Thomson, phoned at 2:00 to say Jonathan and Guy were running late and they'd arrive at my studio by 3:00.

They finally arrived at 4:00, looking dreadful and complaining of horrendous hangovers, having partied heavily the night before.

No worries. I made a pot of tea and we got down to business.

They played me an idea they were working on called "King of New York". They had a rough musical sketch, but little more. By dinner hour we'd managed to get the structure of the song "mapped out", and the boys headed off for the evening.

Next day, Wednesday, I received a number of phone calls from Bobby, at regular intervals, each time promising the boys' imminent arrival. By four o'clock Bobby had to admit they wouldn't be coming in that day at all, as the previous evening's debauchery had been even more damaging than the night before.

No worries.

Next day, Thursday, Jonathan and Guy made it to my studio by 3:00PM, looking worse than they had on the first day.  Oh dear.  A pot of hot tea and we got to work, making further progress on the song.

Thursday evening Bob Rock called to see how things were going, seeing as Friday was to be our last day. He wasn't pleased to learn that the boys hadn't taken full advantage of their time with me.

Bob must have given the boys a stern talking-to, because they arrived punctually at 1:00pm on Friday, our last day.  As a result, were able to get the song finished and demo'd, more or less "on schedule".

Here's Spike from a January 2025 interview with "Classic Rock" magazine:

"Jim Vallance was a lovely bloke, but he wouldn’t let me smoke. I looked at Guy Bailey and knew we had to get the fuck out of there as quickly as possible, so we wrote the song [The King Of New York] and were gone in two minutes flat. To me it’s shit. I only wrote it to get a fucking cigarette!”

Bobby Thomson, the Quireboy's tour manager, was a lovely fellow ... the quintessential English gentleman.

I first met Bobby in 1993 when he was working for the Quireboys, and I met him again in 2003 when he visited Vancouver with Ozzy Osbourne. We had a nice chat backstage before Ozzy's show, and we promised to keep in touch. Tragically, Bobby died in his sleep two months later, on July 24, 2003, while on tour with Ozzy, the result of advanced throat cancer.  He was only 50 years old.