For guitarist Richard Oakes, the rehearsals for "Head Music" were unpleasant. Faced with Anderson's hedonistic lifestyle, Oakes began to drink more to make rehearsing more endurable. As he recalls: "I remember for quite a few of them, having to make sure that I was semi drunk just in order to turn up." Oakes also found his contributions being regularly knocked back in favour of Anderson and Codling's electronic experiments. Anderson felt that his spiralling drug use and Codling's illness made Oakes become more isolated from the group; and that the only people who were still getting on well were Osman and drummer Simon Gilbert. At one point relationships became so strained that Anderson demanded future member Alex Lee to be summoned to the studio presumably because no one else was willing to turn up.