‘Schitzoid Joe’ was recorded in 1981 by teenage duo Steve (North) and Juice (Lucy Nabijou). They wrote all of the songs, with a concept based around Juice's original song ‘Schitzoid Joe’. This song includes elements of storytelling.

For example: "Peter Pan grew up a long time ago and now he's an office clerk, in the City. If you ask him about his childhood, he don't even remember..."

Schitzoid Joe is scattered with a late 70s mixture of Bowie, prog and psychedelic rock, folk and funk influences which (in retrospect) were desperately uncool and uncommercial at a point in music when Punk was heading into Post-Punk and New Romantic.

It's hard to hear any of the Punk/New Wave/Alt Rock/Indie influences which the both listened to at the time and would (within a year or so) inform their later bands/solo work and recordings. But, it is intriguing and somewhat charming to hear what many teens (even in London) were actually listening to and emulating at the time.

Engineered by Paul Anastasi at The Pitz studio in Crouch End, which was previously The Tourists' rehearsal space.
Produced by: Juice, Steve and Paul Anastasi
Lucy (Juice) Nabijou - vocals - in the 21st century she sang with the band StrangeStar.
Steve North - all guitars and bass - later of 80s Rough Trade goth-funksters Lethal Poor, thrash-country shockers If It Bleeds... , Desperate Fun and many solo projects.

Additional musicians (also teenage friends):
Pascal Consoli - drums - (later to play with - Boys Wonder, TOM JONES, BJORK, UNDERWORLD, D'INFLUENCE, SISTER SLEDGE)
Nick Bunker - keyboards - Fischer-Z/Fatima Mansions
Special guest star on this album was legendary jazz and blues saxophonist the late Dick Heckstall-Smith (1934--2004). He played with some of the most important English blues-rock and jazz fusion bands of the 1960s and 1970s. His credits include: Alexis Korner's Blues Incorporated, The Graham Bond Organisation (with Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker), John Mayall's Bluesbreakers (with Jon Hiseman and future Rolling Stones guitarist Mick Taylor), Colosseum and Fleetwood Mac guitarist Peter Green. On the day of the recording (a Sunday morning, I seem to remember!), Dick turned up and improvised his sax parts on all of the 'Schitzoid Joe' tracks over an hour, or so! I'm sure he was gently amused to be scattering his magic over a teenage concept album, but he never let on :) We are eternally grateful for his contribution...what a nice guy.

A couple of 2020 notes from Steve and Juice:

We REALLY do know that the word in its medical context is spelt ‘S-c-h-i-z-o-i-d’ and that it does NOT have a ‘t’! We can’t remember why the ‘t’ is there and we’re too fond of it to change it now. Maybe it has a totally different meaning? Or it was Joe’s nickname, given by others in his story, that just stuck?

From a 21st century perspective, we DO know that using ‘schizo’ or ‘schizophrenic’ is ableist when used as a substitute for ‘switching rapidly’ or ‘acting without regard for others’ or otherwise implying a person seems mentally ill simply because they are unpredictable or make someone uncomfortable. We don’t think that this usage was our intention, even back in the mists of 1981. We certainly don’t remember ever thinking that it meant that Joe had a split personality (which would also be an inappropriate use of the term). Did the Joe character really have schizophrenia or schizo-affective personality disorder? Was it an ableist label that fictional others put on him (hence the misspelling)? Who knows...

Although we probably both considered ourselves fairly educated about social justice issues back in 1981, we were both still teenagers and attitudes were very different. To modern ears (and to both of us in 2020) the lyric “burning Red Indians” sounds wildly inappropriate. We wouldn’t use that term now. We were picking linguistic symbols, words and phrases from the ether and this illustrates what was culturally acceptable, at the time.

In 2020, I’m [Steve] not particularly comfortable with our names being in the order that they are: Steve and Juice. It’s just always been what we were called... but it has allowed me to reflect on why the choice of name order might have happened in 1981. Were we just following sexist conventions of the times, or did it just sound better? Honestly, we can no longer remember. The name order certainly has no significance in terms of our contributions to our joint work (!).