As the spring of 1982 turned to summer, and especially after the battle at Skunx, the music press interest in ‘ranting poetry’ in general, and me in particular, intensified to a point that was almost ridiculous. Attendances at gigs rocketed. Of course I was pleased, but in many ways I was also a bit worried. I was now rapidly becoming ‘this year’s thing’ in media terms, and all the weeklies and associated publications were going for it simultaneously. Having read the music press for years, not to mention recently becoming a budding writer myself, I knew very well that ‘this year’s thing’ more or less automatically became ‘last year’s thing’ before too long and if I wasn’t careful I ran the risk of being ‘old hat’ before I’d even really got started. But, to be honest, I didn’t worry about it too much – it was great to get the coverage, and I thought I’d cross that bridge when I came to it. As it turned out, it only took Andy Warhol’s famous fifteen minutes for the bridge to loom into view…

Although I was based in Harlow and was very proud to be associated with the local scene, when Melody Maker approached me asking to do a feature I was determined that my Brighton roots would be brought well and truly to the fore as well. So I asked the journalist, Lyndon Barber, to interview me in Brighton and a long time associate and friend of myself and the Newtown Neurotics, Harlow-based rock photographer Tony Mottram, did some excellent snaps of me around my home town’s most famous landmark, the Palace Pier. The photos went down very well with the paper’s editor, and in mid June 1982 I found myself on the front cover of Britain’s oldest music paper… now defunct, of course.

I’d done one EP and a bunch of punk rock gigs and had some plays on Peel and there I was, front cover of Melody Maker, standing on the Palace Pier in Brighton, smiling out of the racks in the newsagents! Bloody hell, I thought: what next? Well, the answer is that one of my absolute lifelong dreams came true. If John Peel playing my first EP on his show made me feel as though I’d scored the winning goal for Brighton in the European Cup Final, then I literally cannot describe my emotions when, one evening, I picked up the telephone in Harlow to hear his unmistakable tones on the one other end of the line, inviting me in to the BBC to meet him and record my very own Peel Session.

Peelie was just as I imagined he’d be, just as he sounded on the radio - friendly and approachable, a lovely bloke. We talked about football, of course (famously, he was a Liverpool fan) and as I mentioned earlier, he was very interested to hear that I was involved in the Brussels gig at which Misty’s ‘Live At The Counter-Eurovision’ was recorded, since it was his favourite album. As for the session, the best thing of all was that it gave me the chance to select the material to be aired on the show.

Ensconced in the BBC studio at Maida Vale, I recorded the first two Russians poems printed earlier, plus a third, ‘Russians In McDonalds’ and ‘Death In Bromley’ (see below), ‘A Bang & A Wimpy’, ‘The Night I Slept With Seething Wells’, a new song called ‘Cocktails’ and a long-time live favourite, ‘Nigel Wants To Go To C&A’s’ - a surreal poem based on a snippet of conversation between some passers-by I’d overheard in an Oxford shopping centre. Yes, I know it should be ‘C&A’ not ‘C&A’s’. But that’s what was said – and this is what I thought…

This poem was featured on one of my earliest TV appearances, which was on the seminal early 80s Tyne Tees programme ‘The Tube’ on Channel Four. More than ten years later, as part of the performance poetry/music series which I ran between 1993 and 2001 at the Barn Theatre in my native Southwick, I finally fulfilled my ambition to organise a gig featuring Birkenhead’s extraordinary surrealist beat combo Half Man Half Biscuit (still very much going and bringing out brilliant albums to this day – I’m a lifelong fan). Main man Nigel Blackwell recalled how he had been watching the programme with his brother when my poem came on, and described the hilarity that ensued. I was very honoured. That particular Nigel is an absolute bloody genius.

 

As for the third poem in the ‘Russians’ series, also featured on that Peel session – well, not content with running the DHSS, they’d taken over one of the greatest bastions of American civilisation:

The ‘Russians’ series ended up as a six-poem saga: they turned into a load of drunken Dynamo Kiev football hooligans for the final three. ‘Russians at the Henley Regatta’, ‘Russians on the Centre Court’ and ‘Russians versus the Tetley Bittermen’ (the latter inspired by Swells’ celebrated poem about the Yorkshire beer-swillers). Up until the mid-Eighties the ‘Russians’ were the backbone of my set, and I continued doing the poems sporadically until the collapse of the Soviet Union and Yeltsin’s tank stunt, after which, of course, nobody was scared of them any more (though they seem to be getting scarier again now, for all the wrong reasons). By then the right wing media had new demons – Iranians, Libyans, Iraqis - and I, of course, had some new poems satirising their attitudes, as I always will.

The other Peel Session piece I want to include here was the last one to draw its inspiration from my time in the stockbroking job, though this one was not about the job itself, but the journey to and from work, which was just as horrendous. It’s about dead commuters – or, to be more precise, about the very small difference between dead commuters and live ones…

DEATH IN BROMLEY

 

Deep in the dingy dirty dog shit-dripping dungeon of a graffiti-graced southern region train compartment stuffed full of bad-breath-breathing halibut-eyed computer commuters with boring suits and boring habits the state of play is giving cause for concern the middle-aged middle-class middle-management middle-everything puke-suited slack-jawed suet-pudding-faced powell-worshipping willie whitelaw clone by the window is slumped rigidly over his daily telegraph in a posture indicating his sudden demise this alarms the prim po-faced-clean tablecloth-every-night sex-in-the-dark-once-a-week daily-mail-female secretary by his side who asks him politely if he recently died receiving no reply she turns to the lard-arsed times-reading tory-voting pinstriped wimp sitting opposite and demands an opinion in company with the three paul eddington clones also occupying the compartment he lowers his eyes and stares fixedly at his newspaper in the time honoured fashion of the don’t-pinch-my-seat-don’t-invade-my-world-I’m-alright-jack-leave-me-alone English suburban commuter husbands club she turns to me and confidently I tell her that most commuters are dead it’s their natural state and anyway dead executives can’t possibly be any less interesting than live ones although I can see that they might smell a bit more and that’s why they always get aftershave for christmas and anyway I’m never going to Bromley again unless I become an undertaker or join the SDP which is roughly the same thing…

Note the references to the SDP, the ‘middle ground’ party formed in 1981 by four renegade ex-Labour ministers (Roy Jenkins, David Owen, Shirley Williams and Bill Rogers) who claimed that the Labour Party had moved too far to the Left (!) The NME journalist Don Watson, who did a spectacular hatchet job on my first album ‘Ranting At the Nation’ when it was released in 1983, claimed that my swipes at them were ‘at the easiest of easy targets – as if they were any threat to anything’. Well, Mr Watson, you are an idiot. They managed to divide the anti-Tory opposition so effectively that the most brutal right wing government in British political history stayed in power for three terms with around 43% of the vote. They certainly were a threat, and deserve all the vilification and abuse they got, and more!

The session went to air on June 9th 1982, and was repeated for extra effect a short while after. The impact was massive. More and more enquiries for gigs and interviews started to come in - and not just with the mainstream media. Once they’d heard me on Peel the burgeoning punk/indie fanzine movement embraced me big time, and I made sure that absolutely every interview request (those days sent snail mail, of course, to my home address, no PO Box, no email….) got answered. A selected few from those early days – there were many, many more: ‘Cool Notes’, run by Richard Edwards from London: ‘New Youth’ by ‘Swift’ Nick Taylor from Hull: ‘Youth Anthem’ by Martin Smyth from Belfast: ‘Blaze!’ by Janine Booth from Peterborough and, soon afterwards, the seminal and long-lasting ‘Wake Up’ run by punk dentist and erstwhile Attila roadie Dave ‘Womble’ Trent from Lowestoft. All friends from that day to this. Though I haven’t heard from Richard for a while. Hope you’re OK mate!

Talking of fanzines: in those days, it was almost compulsory for budding media folk to run one. It was a bit later than this that Steve Lamacq, from Colchester, arrived at Harlow Tech to study journalism, and very soon we met up at the Square. A mutual love of lower league football (he’s a Colchester United fan: we watched their Wembley FA Trophy win together in 1992, ironically against Witton Albion, the ‘other’ team from my wife’s home town of Northwich) punk rock and beer ensured we got on famously: he had his own fanzine called ‘A Pack Of Lies’ and, as I started to do more gigs, he too was my roadie for a while. Now of course, having graduated via the NME, he’s not that far behind John Peel as a hero radio DJ (Radio 1, Six Music) who has helped countless musicians break through and fulfil their dreams.

Another erstwhile fanzine editor was James ‘Attack on Bzag’ Brown – he also went to NME, thence to found ‘Loaded’ magazine, which as far as I’m concerned was a less glorious path than Steve’s, though it did provide an amusing contrast when Brighton & Hove Albion played Barnet many years ago. Football club sponsors customarily have their name emblazoned on the team’s shirts. We were sponsored by the celebrated Brighton record label, Skint, Barnet by Loaded. Half true. We most definitely were, they weren’t. Oh, and before too long, I’d be running a fanzine myself…

 

Nigel Morton, the JSE London booking agent I had secured as part of my deal with Cherry Red, was starting to come up with a few real gems. So it was that at the beginning of July I was booked to support the legendary John Otway at the equally legendary Marquee in London. I was absolutely chuffed. Less so when I discovered that the gig clashed with England’s crucial clash with hosts Spain in the 1982 World Cup - I missed half of the great man’s set, constantly dashing out to a nearby pub to catch flashes of the turgid 0-0 draw which sealed England’s exit from the competition. But it was my first meeting with Otway, and we got along very well. Years later we were destined to spend a lot more time in each other’s company…..

I was also honoured to have a tiny bit part in ‘Ten Years In An Open Necked Shirt’, the first film made about punk poet pioneer John Cooper Clarke. I recited my poem ‘Foyer Bar’, about the Harlow Front Line punks’ meeting place of choice, in the foyer bar, with my mate Steve from the Neurotics swigging a pint in the background and the Front Line hanging around behind. Art reflecting life, or something like that.

In August, I made my first appearance at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, at the world famous Assembly Rooms, as part of a superb line-up which also featured Ben Zephaniah, Joolz, Seething Wells and Little Brother. It was organised by Roland Muldoon from the London CAST/New Variety circuit and given that we were all getting loads of publicity it should have been a cert to sell out. But rather than using our names, Roland had billed it as ‘A New Variety Of Poets’ - you had to look at the small print to see who was performing and most people didn’t bother, so attendances were disappointingly low.

I’d be back though: I did the Fringe for many years in the 80s and 90s, firstly in a ‘chalk and cheese’ double bill with the wonderfully clever and satirical comedy trio Sensible Footwear, latterly in a ‘marriage made in a mental hospital’ (as one reviewer called it) double act with John Otway, before deciding that other festival opportunities, and the start of the football season, were more important. You can certainly get ‘noticed’ there, but these days it is a total rip-off for performers and if people haven’t ‘noticed’ me by now they’re not going to, to be honest.

By this time, as well as the Peel session, I had been into Elephant Studios in London (favourite recording haunt of the Neurotics, resident engineer the incredibly competent and friendly Nick Robbins) and done my first recording for Cherry Red Records - aided and abetted by my Harlow friends ‘Red’ Ruth and Lynne Lomond on flute and melodeon respectively, playing mandolin and fiddle myself. The Cocktails EP was released on 15 September and reached number 15 in the indie charts, selling around 3,000 copies. It was a mixed bag.

I was very proud of ‘Contributory Negligence’ and ‘Fifth Column’, but the title track, ‘Cocktails’ was a case of me getting into a fearful tizz about something that really didn’t matter that much – the studiedly elitist London ‘new romantic’ club scene. ‘The Oracle’ (a tribute to John Cooper Clarke’s Psycle Sluts’) was basically an extended knob – or rather testicle - gag, testimony to the fact that I was still some way from coming up with consistently good material. And then, harking back to that gig in Henley and the double bed that our hostess Gerda put us in for the night, there was…

THE NIGHT I SLEPT WITH SEETHING WELLS

 

A far off town and a late night bash

And a double bed was our place to crash

So listen here – ‘cos this story tells

Of the night I slept with Seething Wells!

 

I didn’t mind – or so I said

But I wish I’d had the floor instead

Cos you’d never imagine the thousand hells

Of a night in bed with Seething Wells….

 

When he got undressed I had to retreat

From his shaven head and his mouldy feet

The feet that launched a thousand smells

In that fragrant night with Seething Wells

 

So I kept right close to the edge of the bed

And I pulled the blankets over my head

But eerie snores and stifled yells

Soon woke me, thanks to Seething Wells

 

And, turning, I came face to face

With a massive boil in a private place

And a couple of hairy bagatelles

Made me run like hell from Seething Wells!

 

And I vowed right then that if need be

I’d spend the night in a cemetery

Or sleep with dogs, or DEAD GAZELLES -

But never again with Seething Wells!

That last line is so, so poignant now.

Peel gave me some more plays and everyone was happy. I was writing more material all the time, mindful of the fact that very soon, I’d be doing my first album…

And then I was off to Holland for a couple of performances in Apeldoorn and Groningen I think, my first ever time abroad as Attila the Stockbroker. I don’t remember much about them, to be honest, except that they got me an invite to the One World Poetry Festival the following year, probably the most important of the many gigs I’ve done in Holland over the years and the start of a lifelong friendship with Hague-based writer Cor Gout. Around that time, too, I did a gig in Swindon, and met a young local bequiffed poet called Mark Jones: he’d end up changing his name to Mark Lamarr and making a high profile career in TV and radio as a respected presenter and DJ.

Also around then came a gig which, at the time, seemed much like any other, but heralded the start of a phenomenon. Inspired by the rise of the ranters and the feeling that something exciting was happening in poetry, London-based Mandy Williams had the idea of starting a new performance poetry cabaret called Apples & Snakes. On 2nd October 1982 I did the inaugural show, at a tiny pub called the Horseshoe in Islington. 33 years and thousands of shows later Apples & Snakes is without doubt the foremost performance poetry promoter in the UK, running gigs and workshops all over the world and responsible for finding and developing some of the scene’s finest talent. I’m happy I did the first one.

Now it was time to record that album. My first two EPs had featured different approaches: one recorded live, one in the studio. I thought I’d combine the two and have a live ‘mostly poem’ side and a studio ‘mostly song’ side. The gigs I was doing on Roland and Clare Muldoon’s London New Variety circuit were always well attended and great fun, so Cherry Red hired a portable studio and sound engineer and we recorded two shows, at the Cricklewood Hotel and Wood Green Labour Club, on 23rd and 24th October 1982. I was very happy with the results, and with the introduction – which I used on the record – by Cricklewood compere Mark Steel, a fine radical comic to this day. All my live favourites were on there – a now extended series of ‘Russians’ poems, featuring some legendary heckling from Paul Lyne, whom I still see at gigs, ‘Contributory Negligence’, ‘A Bang & A Wimpy’ a couple of ‘Nigel’ poems and many more. But it’s time for a big apology.

Mark’s intro has a very historical feel to it, since he describes me as ‘the man who has drunk more Fosters Lager than Dennis Lillee, and that’s just in the last hour and a half’. In those days all Fosters was imported in huge cans which I thought looked good if you were a loud stroppy punk poet and swigged out of one on stage. Absolutely no excuse though: it tasted like metallic sheep piss. My taste buds were still developing - I’d describe it as the half way point between the ClanDew and VP sherry of my school days and the glorious real ale which is all I’ve let pass my lips, beer-wise, since the mid 80s. STILL no excuse though. Sorry. I used to get crates of the bloody stuff on my riders at university gigs and hand them out to the audience, it got a dedication on the cover of my first album and there was more than one photo of me swigging out of a can of it in the national media in 1982 and 1983. Sorry. Sorry. Big, big SORRY.

I have spent the last 30+ years of my life drinking proper beer as a penance. I have co-run our Glastonwick Beer, Music, Poetry and More Beer Festival for the past 20 years and organised the Ropetackle Beer Festival at our lovely local arts centre in Shoreham for the past 5. Please forgive me. Robina has just read this and informed me that I am a beer snob, by the way. No I’m not. I developed a sense of taste, that’s all.

For the other side of my album I went back into Elephant Studios at the beginning of 1983 and came out with a veritable hotch-potch of all the bits and pieces I’d written in the past few months. For the opener, ‘The Fall of King Zog’, I roped in old local mates Tim Vince and Chris Payne. This very short piece was my first attempt at early music. I had always LOVED early music. A crumhorn/recorder/mandolin/medieval drum instrumental dedicated to the overthrow of the erstwhile king of Albania was maybe not the ideal opening track of Side Two of the debut album by an angry ranting poet, but I didn’t care. I was going to have early music on my first album, and that was that.

Chris and Tim had played together alongside my old university friend Tony Lewis in a ‘medieval rock’ band called Crucible they had started at school, a few miles away from my home in Southwick: legendary Hollywood composer Hans Zimmer was in it too for a while (long story). I was a big fan of Crucible in the mid Seventies, and along with Focus and of course The Clash they can claim to be part of the inspiration for the ‘medieval punk’ band Barnstormer which I started in 1994. When we did form, Tim, re-christened Tim O’Tay (!) was our driver and recorder player for many years: an absolutely lovely bloke. As for Chris, he ended up as Gary Newman’s right hand man in Tubeway Army - and a piece of music he’d written while at college, with added lyrics by Midge Ure, ended up as ‘Fade to Grey’ by Visage. He’s lived in France ever since. Not out of shame, I must point out.

The rest of Side Two – well, the Newtown Neurotics helped me with ‘Holiday in Albania’, there were re-recorded versions of ‘Burn It Down’ and, inevitably, ‘The Spencers Croft Cat’ from my first cassette, ‘Fifth Column’ from my ‘Cocktails’ EP, ‘England Are Back!’ which poked fun at the increased media optimism about our national football team’s chances in international competition on the spurious evidence of a recent 9-0 demolition of Luxemburg, a fake broadcast from Radio Tirana which claimed that Albanian leader Enver Hoxha had a pet flounder called Tristan, a Dylan rewrite, recorded live at Kingston Poly in front of a roaring audience, taking the piss out of the new wave of long mac synth bands (‘Your raincoat, you prat, is flapping in the wind…’) a ridiculous piano piece entitled ‘Where You Goin’ With That Flounder?’ and more. Basically loads of my obsessions, intertwined with weird left wing politics. As a first album by a performer still finding his way, I was proud of and happy with it.

Now I needed a title. Red Alert from Sunderland, mates and brothers of Red London, had just released a great EP called ‘Screaming At The Nation’. Nearly me, I thought. I’m ranting at the nation. And, several years before, Talking Heads had released an album ‘More Songs About Buildings And Food’. For my album I’d written six poems about the ‘Russian Threat’ and there were many references to flatfish.

Pretty soon I had it. ‘Ranting At The Nation’ (More Poems About Flatfish And Russians). Cherry Red liked that. For the cover, I was photographed outside the Poetry Society headquarters in London, wearing torn up denims and a Dexys T shirt in honour of Kevin Rowland: I loved Dexys then and still do to this day. I handwrote the back cover myself and by very early 1983 ‘Ranting At The Nation’ was ready to go to the pressing plant.

 

1983 was manic: everything was happening at once. I was gigging here, there and everywhere, and not just on the punk and New Variety circuit any more. Helped by all the media coverage, Nigel Morton at JSE was promoting me big time: universities in those days had big entertainments budgets and welcomed me with open arms. I zigzagged frenetically round the country on the train playing to very appreciative, though not always sober students, and after the battles on the punk circuit performing to these audiences was like kicking a jelly.

Not just student gigs either: in January 1983 I finally got to support John Cooper Clarke at the Roundhouse in London, and he was an absolute gent. ‘There’s money to be made in this, John, if you’re careful!’ I remember him saying. ‘I know, mate’ I replied – ‘I’m getting more of it than I’ve ever seen in my life!’ Solo performers obviously fare better than bands in this regard: of course, the money wasn’t the most important thing but it did help. I met legendary performance poet Nick Toczek for the first time when I played his Fatal Shocks punk club in Bradford. Then at the end of the same month I made a triumphant return to Kent University, some five years after I’d left: the local punks remembered me from RAR days and turned up in droves.

I felt as though I was in paradise. All my dreams in all areas were coming true at once. Loads of great gigs, loads of press and lots of opportunities to write about my favourite bands in Sounds magazine. At some point in the previous months I’d done a gig on the South Coast (Portsmouth? Plymouth? Neither Justin or I can remember precisely, and shockingly, none of the more elderly elements of the Army following appear to be able to either – and I can’t find any mention of it in my diaries, which is weird) where I was supported by a new band from Bradford called New Model Army. They were mates of Seething Wells, also from Bradford, who had already raved about them to me. I was most impressed when I heard them and very happy when Sounds asked me to do their first ever national press feature.

Presumably expecting me to be clueless on the matter, frontman Justin Sullivan turned up with the article already written, more or less: a long hand-written essay on English history 1640-51 and the origins of the name. You needn’t have bothered, mate. I knew! I have loved their music from that day to this. Other writing opportunities were presenting themselves: I was offered the chance to do a weekly poem in influential London listings magazine Time Out, and I made the first of my many Radio Four appearances over the years.

And then there was the football.

On 20th February 1983 I travelled with thousands of other Brighton fans to Anfield, more in hope than expectation. The Seagulls had battled manfully in the top flight for four years, and as ever, were at the wrong end of the table, but after a thumping 4-0 win at home to Man City we were in the fifth round of the FA Cup: problem was, we were playing Liverpool away. They weren’t just top of the league, they were undefeated at home in the FA Cup since 1969…

No one gave us a cat’s chance in hell, but a superb display, a winning goal from former Anfield hero Jimmy Case and a missed Phil Neal penalty made us the authors of one of the greatest shocks in FA Cup history. The following day – the game was on a Sunday - I made sure I listened to the John Peel Show. I thought he’d have something to say on the subject, and he did. He’d been at the match: instead of his usual theme music, he started his show with the sound of seagulls being machine-gunned. It didn’t put him off me though: a few days later he phoned, inviting me to come in and do another session. I didn’t gloat. No that’s a lie. I did. LOTS.

So, in March, two days after Brighton had won at home to Norwich and reached the semi finals of the FA Cup for the first time in our history, I went back to Maida Vale Studio at the BBC to record my second Peel session. I’d decided to do mostly stuff from my soon to be released album and invited everyone who’d played on it to join me – including the Newtown Neurotics, who had actually done a session for Peel the week before. But there was one new track: Sawdust and Empire, the song I had written about the Falklands War. All six minutes of it. I was so proud of that song.

Then came what was without doubt for me my biggest gig to date. And thereby hangs a tale and a half.

One day a few weeks previously I’d had a call from agent Nigel Morton. ‘I remember you telling me how much you liked John Cale’ he said. ‘Would you like to support him at the Venue in London? Fifty quid, that’s all, sorry….’

‘Nigel, mate, I’d fucking PAY fifty quid to support him.’

John Cale was, and is, one of my all time musical heroes. I’d first encountered him on the Velvets albums, of course, and in my mid teens I’d attempted to play along on violin to his wonderful, original, alternately droning and manic viola playing. When the Velvets split and he went solo it became clear what a great songwriter he was: I bought and loved his albums, and still do. ‘Paris 1919’, which I am playing as I type these words, is still one of my five favourite LPs of all time. Live, he was mesmerising. In 1975, on the ‘Slow Dazzle’ tour, I was a seventeen year old at the front of the stage when Cale, wearing a ski mask, ripped a mannequin to bits and, thrusting its hand into mine, dragged me on stage to claw the strings of his guitar with it while he held me in a headlock. I was in seventh heaven that night, and that mannequin hand stayed with me for ages. And now I was going to support him. I knew he had a formidable reputation, but I wasn’t worried in the least. Maybe it was he who had asked for me…

A Thursday night at the long-deceased Venue near Victoria Station. I got there early with my mandola and watched a bit of the great man’s soundcheck. Afterwards, I wanted to say hello, but the security staff said he didn’t want any visitors. ‘But I just want to tell him how much I love his stuff…’ No go.

OK, I thought, maybe after my set. Though he probably won’t be listening, he’ll be relaxing before his gig. (How wrong I was!)

I don’t really do nervous, never have, and the battles I’d had in the punk scene had given me a hard-edged confidence, but that night I was nervous. As a fellow fan I really wanted Cale’s audience to like me, and I wanted Cale to like me too. I charged on stage and gave it my all, and soon realised that not only was I going down really well but quite a few of the people there were familiar with my material and one or two were singing/reciting along. I was in seventh heaven. Obviously, because I was the support act, more and more people were coming in all the time, but that didn’t seem to make any difference: the applause was building with each poem and song.

Emboldened, I decided to change my set. I’d started off with the ‘grab ‘em at all costs’ shouty punk rock gig approach and assumed that the best way would to finish with a bang as well – at that time ‘Contributory Negligence’ was a very popular setender. But things were going so well that I thought I’d sign off with a tribute to the great man, and play my new song, a ballad, the best song I’d ever written, the first one on my lovely new mandola. All six minutes of it.

‘I just want to say how proud and honoured I am to support John Cale tonight. His music has been an inspiration to me since the Velvets days. And to someone who has written some wonderful ballads I want to offer one of mine, one I’ve just written. This is called Sawdust and Empire…’

It was a risk, maybe, but it worked. The crowd responded to that song, still striking a deep chord given that the Falklands War was not long over, and they rose to me. I got an encore! I came offstage feeling absolutely euphoric, collapsed into a chair, grabbed a beer and looked forward to Cale’s set with the satisfaction of a job well done and a dream realised. Then there was a knock on the door. It was a security man. ‘Mr Cale wants to talk to you. Come with me.’

Oh, fantastic. He must have been watching my set. He’s seen how much his audience enjoyed it, and he wants to meet me!

I can still picture the scene, more than thirty years later. John Cale is standing in the middle of a room, leaning on a high table with a champagne bottle in an ice bucket.

He is wild-eyed and roaring in his distinctive Welsh baritone.

‘So you’re Attila the Stockbroker, are you? What the fuck do you think you were doing out there? Do you call that poetry? You can’t sing! And what’s all this politics? What are you doing at my gig?’

My jaw dropped. To say I was shocked and disappointed is an understatement. But this was 1983. I had had a lot of hassle at gigs. I took it in my stride.

‘I love your stuff, John, with the Velvets and solo. I’ve got every album you’ve ever done. I was offered the support by my agent, and it was a dream come true. It was an absolute honour to play with you. You saw my set so you’ll have seen how much the audience enjoyed it, too. And I’m so looking forward to yours…’

‘I don’t care about that. WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING AT MY GIG?’ He turned to the bouncer. ‘Throw him out!’

Cale may once have famously written that fear is a man’s best friend, but it isn’t mine. ‘What the fuck!’ I shouted. ‘I love your stuff, mate. You may think I’m crap, but your audience didn’t, and there’s no need to behave like that!’

But Cale turned his back and was gone. And the bouncer, apologetically, said ‘If the main act here tells me I have to throw someone out, I have to do it, it’s my job. Don’t worry, though, I’ll explain what has happened to the people on the door and they’ll let you back in…’

They’d better do, I thought. My lovely new mandola’s still in my dressing room.

And so it came to pass that I was thrown out of my own gig, having got an encore, by one of my all-time musical heroes. As promised, I was allowed straight back in: when told the story by their colleague, the other doormen thought it was very funny (as indeed it was, and still is, to be honest). I recovered my mandola, thoroughly enjoyed Cale’s set - he made no mention of me onstage - and went home. It didn’t affect my love of his music in the slightest and I continued to buy his albums and go to his gigs. But I didn’t ask to support him again…

Years later I learned from the internet that there was a report in the London press the next day saying he had chased me down Victoria Street with a big stick. I don’t know where that came from (probably a publicist) but it wasn’t true. If the bouncer hadn’t been there, and Cale had had a go, I’d have given myself a pretty good chance. Compared to a big bunch of fascist boneheads, a roaring mad Welshman wasn’t that frightening a prospect.

And, once again, there’s a postscript. Around the turn of the millennium Cale was on a book signing tour promoting his autobiography ‘What’s Welsh For Zen?’ He was doing a signing in Brighton: I was certainly going to buy the book, and I thought I’d go along and ask him if he remembered the London gig where he got the bouncers to throw his loud shouty punk rock poet support act out of the venue. I got to the front of the queue, and put the question.

‘Sorry mate’ he said. ‘I don’t remember anything about the Eighties at all…’

I mentioned earlier that I started this story listening to ‘Paris 1919’. Well, as I’ve typed it, I’ve gone through ‘Fear’, ‘Slow Dazzle’ and ‘Vintage Violence’. Wonderful.

I still love your music, John. Always will. No hard feelings.

 

My second Peel session was broadcast soon after that (a week after the Neurotics’ first) and, once again, the feedback was immense. These days fragmented and deregulated broadcasting means a multitude of stations competing for the so called ‘alternative’ audience: back then everyone listened to Peel, which meant an audience of over a million. I got the train up to a gig at the Fighting Cocks pub in Birmingham to be met by a massive crowd – and Robert Lloyd, leader of Birmingham’s angular popsters The Nightingales, label mates of mine on Cherry Red. He took me to Saleem’s curry house in Ladypool Road, part of what Brummies call the Balti Triangle. He became a mate and Saleem’s a regular stop-off point to this day. Soon I was to meet Robert’s mate, anti-comedy comedian legend Ted Chippington. ‘Walking down this road the other day…’ I became a good mate of Ted. I know that, because he gave me a badge with ‘A Good Mate Of Ted’ on it.

Rob loved curry so much that he and his then girlfriend Patsy Winkelman founded a label called Vindaloo Records, home of The Nightingales, Ted Chippington and, two or three years later, the extraordinary all-girl punk band We’ve Got A Fuzzbox (And We’re Gonna Use It). They toured together a lot. Patsy basically ran the label and managed Fuzzbox, helped by Rob and her brother Pete, the man behind the notorious transformation of Wimbledon FC into MK Dons, the first – and hopefully last – ‘franchise’ operation in the history of our national game, an absolute bloody disgrace. But that wasn’t Patsy’s fault. She came to my 30th anniversary gig in London, and, sadly, one of the last times I saw Rob was when The Nightingales played at the memorial gig for Seething Steven Wells after his tragic death from cancer in 2009. Not seen Ted for a while though…

By then ‘Ranting At The Nation’ was in the shops – and in the clutches of the reviewers.

Until my first album came out, I’d been treated pretty well by the national music press. I was writing for Sounds, so they were always pretty friendly, but Melody Maker had had me on the front cover and I’d had some good reviews in NME as well as the chance to write the piece about new towns for them the previous year. I was proud of the material on my album, but I was in for a shock! I can still remember the day I saw the NME review. I’d gone up to Ipswich for a gig at the Albion Mills, organised by stalwart poet and storyteller John Row, and picked up the paper the next morning at the station, just before I got on the train. I opened the NME and turned to the reviews section.

‘STOCKBROKER BELT UP!’ the page yelled at me. ‘What makes Attila the Stockbroker so infuriating? Why would I rather gnaw through my own arm than listen to this album again? Never mind the Sex Pistols, this album is bollocks.’

There was loads more in the same rancorous vein: you get the gist. It really was a hatchet job. My first thought was to find the reviewer, a Leeds fan called Don Watson, and compel him to engage in the aforementioned act of self-mutilation by force, but fortunately I realised that would be rather counterproductive in terms of any favourable coverage in the future. As it happened I could have done so with impunity: the NME didn’t have a good word to say about me ever again. Well, not until the advent of the internet anyway. I am now described as a ‘punk poet legend’ on their video channel…

These days, I have a rather different attitude to that ‘arm gnawing’ line: it really is an absolute classic, brings huge laughs (including from me) whenever I tell people the story, and I use it on all my internet publicity. Thanks, Don. You bastard.

Melody Maker joined the party, telling me to ‘get my act together or sink into obscurity’ and Sounds got two staffers to review it together and disagree, probably to keep peace in the office. So basically a big thumbs down from the music press – hugely influential in those days – but Peel played it, fanzines liked it, punters bought it and it stayed in the indie album charts for 6 weeks, peaking at number 12. Not bad for autocannibalism-inducing verse. On the back cover I had invited fellow poets to send in their work for possible inclusion in a ranting fanzine I was about to start called ‘Tirana Thrash’ (capital of Albania, punk noise) and the letters poured in from all over the country with, as you’d expect, poetry of every standard from superb to abysmal.

Then I started getting letters from New Zealand: quite a few, actually. This puzzled me, until Cherry Red told me that they’d signed a licensing deal for the album over there. It got an awful lot of play on college and community radio, and its legacy meant that when I finally made it to Auckland eight years later I was in for a big surprise…

And now it was time for the first FA Cup semi final in Brighton & Hove Albion’s history – against Sheffield Wednesday at Highbury. Although we were bottom of the First Division, Sheffield Wednesday were in the division below us, so we were favourites to reach the Final. We went in hope. We filled the Clock End at Highbury. We sang our hearts out. We won 2-1. We got to the FA Cup Final for the first time ever!

Straight afterwards, I had to do a London gig with the Neurotics at the Cricklewood Hotel, and, before that, meet a 16 year old Janine Booth from Peterborough to do an interview for the first issue of her new fanzine, Blaze. With great self restraint I managed to do both, relatively sober, and then got absolutely, totally, utterly paralytic in celebration of our victory. I’ve been friends with Janine ever since that day. Mother, RMT executive committee member, radical author (most recently of ‘Plundering London Underground, about the public-private partnership fiasco) a really good performance poet – she’s just published her first book of verse, ‘Mostly Hating Tories’ – and, most importantly, a lovely human being. I am atheist godfather to her eldest son Alex.

Four days later, having met them in Sunderland some time before and pestered Razor Records, home of the Newtown Neurotics, to give them a record deal, I went into the studio with the utterly brilliant Red London and produced their first EP, ‘Sten Guns In Sunderland’. Patty Smith on vocals, one of the best singing voices I’ve ever heard, Gaz Stoker on bass - currently playing with the Angelic Upstarts - his brother Kid on guitar and a drummer called Raish, who went off the rails soon after that and ended up in nick. We were very proud of that EP. Garry Bushell slagged off my production work in Sounds though. Garry, mate, listen to those old Oi! albums again…

Everything was still happening at once. As I’ve mentioned earlier, loads of new performers had been inspired to take the stage by the ‘ranting poetry’ movement, and some time previously I had decided to organise a gig to showcase them all. Round the corner from Elephant Studios in Wapping, where the Neurotics and I were regularly recording, there was an up and coming performance venue called, rather ponderously, Metropolitan Wharf Studio B2. I approached them with an idea for an evening gig and they were well up for it: it took place on 23rd April, 1983 and went very well.

On the bill, which I compered: Swells, Little Brother, Joolz, Little Dave and myself – joined for the first time by a young Benjamin Zephaniah. And in the very healthy audience, a young aspiring ranter calling himself Porky, real name Phill Jupitus, along with his mate Joe Norris. Very soon, Porky the Poet would join our gang, become a great friend, illustrate the three issues of my fanzine Tirana Thrash, illustrate my first book of poems, my second EP for Cherry Red and my second album on Cherry Red sister label Anagram, do countless gigs with me, hook up with Billy Bragg and Paul Weller, become a comedian under his real name, become famous - and on the way to him becoming famous, we’d fall out big time. I’m so sad about that, and it was mostly my fault. But that’s for much later on…

Five days later came a pivotal moment in the whole saga of fascist violence at gigs. Myself and the Neurotics were supporting glam-punks The Adicts (a great, fun band, very successful in the global underground scene to this day whose first press feature I’d also done in Sounds) at the Brixton Ace. There was a pretty big crowd, and we had loads of fans there, but it soon became apparent that, once again, the far Right had targeted the gig. I was having a chat and a beer with some of the audience when a bloke with very short hair, obviously of a right-wing persuasion, came up and tapped me on the shoulder.

‘D’you know who I am?’

No, I said, I haven’t had the pleasure.

‘I’m Chubby Chris from Combat 84. Where are your Harlow Reds?’

(NB: this is actually what happened. Before his recent death he apparently wrote a book about his hooligan days in which he claimed to have ‘whacked’ me. He didn’t. He said ‘I’m Chubby Chris from Combat 84’ and wandered off.)

I’d heard of ‘Chubby’ Chris Henderson, and I knew about Combat 84’s reputation as a right wing band. It puzzled me a bit, because I’d met Deptford John, their bass player, a few times, and he was a nice bloke and didn’t seem right wing at all. But Chris was definitely a fascist, and part of the notorious Chelsea Headhunters hooligan gang. As for Harlow Reds, me, the Neurotics and a few of our mates were there, but he was talking about an organised group, and that wasn’t us. He seemed to be making reference to the mention of ‘Harlow Reds’ in my ‘Contributory Negligence’ poem. I was puzzled. But soon the puzzle was solved. He may have heard rumours

I hadn’t and got the town wrong, I’ve no idea. If he did, he didn’t get it very wrong. Hatfield starts with an ‘H’ as well and is only a few miles from Harlow… I didn’t actually see what happened, and it happened very quickly: I was either on stage or down the front watching one of the other bands. All I do know is that there was a huge commotion by the entrance and at the back of the hall, then all the fascists were gone and a poisonously intimidating atmosphere suddenly became one of victory and celebration. The Hatfield Reds, soon to become Red Action and then founder members of Anti-Fascist Action, had made their first intervention at one of our gigs, and from then on problems with the far Right became fewer and fewer. That night I got paralytic with happiness: I remember Joy and Mary more or less having to carry me out of the venue on the way back to Joy’s place in Sydenham. I was spending a lot of time there now: Joy and I were a couple and I was splitting my time between her place in South London and the flat in Harlow.

Of course the fascists didn’t go away, far from it: there would be many more attacks over the years, probably the most notorious being that on the Redskins and the Hank Wangford Band at the Greater London Council’s 1984 ‘Jobs for a Change’ festival. But after the Brixton Ace confrontation the fascists knew that there would be no more easy pickings - and the likes of me knew that we weren’t on our own any more. Militant anti-fascists would steward any gigs where trouble was expected, not just for us of course but for loads of performers committed to the cause.

A few weeks after typing this I’m again booked to play the Green Room in Welwyn, very near Hatfield, part of their manor, and if the last gig is anything to go by, loads of old faces will be there. We’re all old gits now, of course, but a bit of reminiscing will be in order and I’ll be reading them this bit. To Mick and the Hatfield crew, to Jim, Big Andy, Gary, Colin and the others – and to all those comrades who came later – a heartfelt thanks. You made the work of an anti-fascist poet, and not just me but all of us involved in the ‘cultural’ fight against the far Right, a lot safer back in the day.

April turned to May and the gigs kept coming: Birmingham Poly, then I headlined Manchester University Great Hall for the second time that year supported by Seething Wells and Little Brother. The day after that, a May Ball at Wadham College, Oxford, the first time I had done that kind of gig. Dinner jackets, ball gowns. It was like a door opening into another world, not one I wanted to be part of. Good reception though…

All this time, my thoughts kept returning to one upcoming date, and this one wasn’t a gig. It was going to be one of the greatest days of my life, one I wished so much my dad could have shared with me, one I’d never forget. Before that, I did a couple more shows and interviewed the superb Action Pact – shouty female-fronted bouncy Heathrow punk - hi Alison! - and militant talkover/dub trio Anti Social Workers for Sounds. Tim Wells, then one third of ASW, is now a clever, charismatic hub of the London spoken word scene and editor of Rising fanzine. He is currently setting up a ranting poetry archive and hosting a big London ranting gig in June 2015. Lovely bloke – and a Wells to boot. (Doc Marten boot: he’s a reggae skinhead.)

And then the day arrived. May 21st, 1983. FA Cup Final, Wembley, Brighton & Hove Albion v Manchester United. Our first ever final. The stuff of dreams. I know the FA Cup has been a bit devalued these days by the attitude of some of the top clubs, but back then it was the big one, especially for the fans of a team who had never been there before.

We’d just been relegated from the First Division after a four-year battle: Manchester United were, well, Manchester United. No-one gave us a cat’s chance in hell. I went back to my mum’s a couple of days before and travelled up with my friends, with the euphoric blue and white throng. We flooded into Wembley, sang our hearts out, and watched in hope. Somehow our team was matching the gods from Old Trafford. Then, unbelievably, we took the lead! A cross into the box, Gordon Smith in between two defenders – GOAL! We went nuts. Leading at half-time!

In the second half United’s Irish midfielder Norman Whiteside’s dreadful tackle left our right back Chris Ramsey writhing in agony: we screamed for a red card, but he stayed on the pitch. Ramsey was crocked and hobbling, but this was the Cup Final and he wanted to carry on. Frank Stapleton took full advantage, beat him to the ball and scored. Then an unmarked Ray Wilkins gave United the lead. Time ticked away. Despite a wonderful display it seemed the dream was over: in the final stages we started a new refrain. ‘We’re proud of you, we’re proud of you, we’re proud of you, we’re proud!’

Three minutes to go. We won a corner. Case to Grealish, Grealish to defender Gary Stevens, standing on the penalty spot. He controlled the ball, then smashed it into the net. We roared with happiness. 2-2! Extra time.

Both teams very tired. Few chances. And then the moment that all English football fans of a certain age will surely remember.

Ten seconds from the end of the match. United gave the ball away on the halfway line. Jimmy Case played it over their defence to our centre forward Mick Robinson. Robinson beat a couple of defenders and passed the ball to Gordon Smith, scorer of the first goal, standing only a few yards from the target with just United keeper Gary Bailey to beat. Around the country, around the world, listeners heard commentator Peter Jones shout, excitedly and almost in disbelief:

‘And Smith must score…’

Smith took a touch to steady himself, then shot, but he hadn’t lifted the ball high enough. It hit one of Bailey’s desperately flailing legs, then richocheted away to safely. The referee blew the whistle for full time. Teams like United don’t give teams like ours a second chance. No penalties in those days: the final was replayed the following Thursday and we were annihilated 4-0. No more dreams.

That was the start of a gradual, inexorable decline in the fortunes of the Albion, a decline which ended with us bottom of the whole league, ground sold by greedy scum, nearly going out of existence. But this isn’t primarily a football book, obviously, and if you don’t like football you may be pleased to hear that you’ll hardly be hearing about Brighton & Hove Albion again until the penultimate chapter: when you do, the story won’t just be about football. It will be in the context of an organised and very long supporters’ struggle against rapacious moneymen, a struggle in which I gave my all and which brought our fans into the national news headlines as pioneers in the fight against the destruction of our national game by people who care about nothing else but pounds and pence. But as the last word for the moment, here’s the poem I wrote about that memorable day: we used to have a fanzine with the same title as well.

So near and yet so far. Sorry, Gordon.

I trudged sadly back to Harlow by tube and train after the replay, sticking out like a sore thumb decked out in blue and white. But straight away I had something to take my mind off the football: in this insanely busy and eventful year, the very next day I was off to Holland with Swells, Little Brother and Belinda Blanchard to take part in the One World Poetry Festival, with shows in The Hague and at the world famous Paradiso club in Amsterdam.

If you are a writer and/or performer born with English as your first language, you’re very lucky: you have a gateway to the world. Your words will be naturally understood in most of the most populous, powerful and influential places on it, and in the others there will be many thousands or millions of people either fluent in your language or trying hard to be so. I can and do regularly perform in Holland and Scandinavia, for instance, because they speak English nearly as well as we do. If you are born with a minority language as your mother tongue, however, it’s far more difficult.

Every time my talented Dutch writer friend Cor Gout asks me to look over and if necessary correct or improve his work in English, I reflect on this. If you’re Dutch, say, your direct audience is Holland, the Flemish part of Belgium and tiny Suriname (you’ll be understood in Boer South Africa as well I guess, but they won’t like you!) And because of this tiny catchment area few people in other countries round the world will be learning Dutch as a foreign language: your horizons truly are limited.

For a prose writer that’s not so bad: there are excellent, sensitive translators around. For a songwriter it’s crippling, for a performance poet it’s worse. Not only does the translation of a song or poem have to reflect the meaning and the ‘feeling’ of the original, but it has to fit into the musical or rhythmical framework you started with, or it becomes something else completely, usually something else nowhere near as good. I have experienced this myself.

I am pretty fluent in French and German: in 35 years I have managed one half-decent translation of a piece of my work into French and have three working pieces in German, one poem, two songs, all translated for me by fine East German linguist George Wolter (more of him later) and his former partner Ilona Vildebrand. I have done perhaps 500 gigs in Germany, solo and with my band Barnstormer, and those are or have been mainstays of my set. The rest of the time I do my introductions in German and the material in English, and that works fine. Germans speak reasonable English: give them the gist in their own language, and they’ll get the rest. As an English language performer I don’t have to translate my stuff unless I want to: it goes down very well if I can, but it’s not essential.

But minority language songwriters and poets are not so lucky. They have to write and perform in a foreign language to have any hope of wider acceptance at all. The best way for those who want to reach an inevitably mostly monolingual audience of native English speakers, or communicate with people from other countries who also use English as a second language, is the way that Cor and countless other good writers do it. Become fluent in English, write in English, get a friend to check and hone the finished product where necessary. That’s fine for songs, and for page poetry as well, but it doesn’t work for performance poetry: translating performance poetry into another language is more or less impossible.

Ask Jules Deelder.

I met Jules at the same time as I met Cor. Jules was already pretty famous then (he’s a national institution in Holland, a bit like a Dutch John Cooper Clarke) and he was compering our gig at the Paradiso in Amsterdam. It was a very ‘arty’ gig: the poets literally had to walk the plank. Yes, a plank, maybe a yard and a half wide, sticking out from the stage with a mic at the end of it. Imagine that after a few pints! But it was a great gig, we all went down very well, Jules was obviously much-loved and I could tell that he was a very clever and skilful performer, although I could understand very little.

Afterwards I asked him if he’d tried to work in English to reach a wider audience, and he said it was impossible: his English wasn’t that good and translating wouldn’t work anyway. As I say he’s very well known in Holland, but I guess nearly everyone reading this will have no idea who he is, and that’s down to language. We native English speakers really are very lucky.

Cor Gout and I are firm friends to this day. When I met him he was writing an article about the poetry festival for a national paper, but he was already working on spoken word and musical performance material under the name Trespassers W, taken of course from Winnie the Pooh. His first single with musical sidekick Wim Oudijk was a spooky pop cover of my pyromaniac anthem ‘Burn It Down’ and he has since released a huge number of challenging and very clever experimental music/poetry albums with a whole host of collaborators under the Trespassers name. And then there’s the books of poetry, the self-published magazines, the music criticism, the huge volume of writing on the history and culture of his home town of The Hague…but that’s all in Dutch. See my original point. He came over to England quite a few times for ranting poetry events I organised, and, having played semi-professionally, was also by far the most talented member of our ranters’ football team. A true polymath, Cor.

A mention here for another Dutch poet friend I have known for years and often shared a stage with: Harry Zevenbergen. He does perform in English, and it works well enough for everyone who hears him to enjoy his stage show and give him huge credit for trying. But hear him in Dutch and it’s like a straightjacket coming off. Anyway, our little troupe of ranting poets had fun in Amsterdam and Groningen: I’d be back. In about six months’ time, as it turned out.

 

On 9 June 1983 Thatcher was returned to power in the General Election. Countless Ragged Trousered Philanthropists thought ‘Victory In The Falklands War’ was more important than the fact that her policies were wrecking their lives, just as she had hoped they would when she escalated a conflict which could have been resolved through diplomacy by sinking the Argentine cruiser General Belgrano as it was sailing away from the Falklands exclusion zone. The intervention of the pathetic SDP - splitting the Labour vote in half - did the rest. But those of us who loathed everything she stood for just got shook ourselves down and carried on: for me, personally, things were going very well and now it was summer and time for my first Glastonbury. I celebrated my 25th in 2014: I hope there will be many more. Thereby hangs another tale.

I’d heard a lot about the legendary festival, was incredibly chuffed when the agency got me the gig, and even more chuffed when I learned that Swells had been invited too. I got there on the train and purchased an enormous amount of extremely raw scrumpy upon arrival. This was to be my downfall…

Glastonbury had started in 1970 with an attendance of 1,500: 1983 was the seventh, and the numbers of punters attending had rocketed to 30,000, but the original hippy vibe was completely intact. Everything I had heard appeared to be true. There was minimal security at the fence, and everyone was incredibly friendly: some people were wandering around naked, more than a few completely off their heads. The weather was hot and sunny, which added to the laid back atmosphere: it was perfect.

I was booked to play the Cabaret Tent, probably less than a quarter of the size it is now - these days it’s the Cabaret Marquee. I’d been told I could sleep there as well, so I hadn’t bothered to bring a tent of my own. Swells and I met Cabaret organiser Arabella Churchill (granddaughter of Sir Winston, co-founder of Glastonbury with Michael Eavis and organiser of the Theatre & Circus Field until her sad death in 2007: Bella’s Field was named so in her honour) who was lovely, and I made sure that my scrumpy was secure and out of temptation’s way until I’d done my gig. I remember that I went on after Rik Mayall, who was doing his Kevin Turvey routine, and I got a great reception: Swells had been on earlier and gone down well too. Happy with a job well done, and thirsty in the heat, I took the lid off the scrumpy and got stuck in big time.

I’d never drunk proper West Country scrumpy before. The nearest thing to decent cider we had in Sussex was Merrydown, and I’d had some of that, but this was different. It tasted wonderful, and not as strong as I thought it would. Little did I know! I was drinking real ale now quite a lot of the time, and this was like real ale only made with apples: an absolute treat. I was feeling sleepy, and starting to see double. It was so hot. I didn’t really need all these clothes on, did I? Loads of people were walking around naked. It wasn’t something I’d normally do, but when in Rome…

I stripped naked, put my clothes under my head as a pillow and went to sleep on my back in the blazing afternoon sun, still clutching the scrumpy.

The next thing I knew, I was being blasted back into consciousness by a bucket of cold water and an unmistakable West Yorkshire accent. ‘John! John! John! You’re bloody frying mate! Wake up!’

It was Swells. He’d found me, still lying on my back naked asleep in the sun. Seeing what it was doing to me, especially certain tender bits of me, he’d tried to wake me and failed, so he’d gone for the bucket of water. That worked. I woke up. After the initial shock of the cold water had passed, I realised that I was absolutely roasted. I looked like a cooked lobster on a fishmonger’s slab. All bits hurt, but some bits hurt more than others. My poor knob looked like a tiny sundried lugworm. My scrotum was a raw mass. (Goodness, gracious, great balls of fire!) And, as happens with sunburn, after a couple of hours the pain got worse, and worse…

Arabella Churchill took pity on me. She gave me some soothing cream to put on my tenderest parts, some strong coffee to clear my head and let me sleep in her (huge) tent. Despite the pain I somehow managed to enjoy the rest of the festival, and it certainly taught me a lesson about scrumpy!

Arabella invited me back to the next Festival and I have played every one there has been since: I guess I’m one of the longest-serving performers on site these days. It has been fascinating to see how it has grown and how the security/commercial aspect has increased. For the first few years the deal I got to perform there was £100 plus more or less as many tickets for my mates as I wanted! Bomber, Mike and Roy (RIP) were very happy and quite a few others got in that way too. Imagine that kind of a deal now, where 135,000 tickets sell out online an hour and a half after they go on sale…

After the controversial incidents involving the travelling community in 1990, security got tighter and tighter, and numbers have increased massively over the years as well, from 30,000 punters at my first festival in 1983 to around five times that at my 25th in 2014 (total numbers on site these days must be well over 175,000). Given that ticket prices have soared to over the £200 mark too, there have been all sorts of accusations that Glastonbury has ‘sold out’ and ‘isn’t what it was’. Of course, I understand what people mean. Loads of old Glasto fans simply can’t afford to go now, and it is a huge operation, a world away from 1983.

I have to say that Robina and I still absolutely love it, however. Some of the main stage fare is certainly mainstream beyond belief these days, but there’s good stuff on there too sometimes - and there is such a diversity of music and performance on offer elsewhere, and so many different arenas to watch it in, that I defy anyone not to have a good time. In the Green Fields (and to a large degree in the Cabaret Marquee where I have performed each year) the spirit of the old Glastonbury is still very much alive, or at least it is for me. Since I stopped doing ‘comedy’ gigs in the early Nineties, Glastonbury is the one place where I still meet and perform alongside old friends from those days: Steve Gribbin (hi to wife Sharon and their kids, who always come too) Mark Thomas, Jeremy Hardy, Simon Munnery, Arthur Smith, Steve Frost, Robin Ince and many more. And my old mate Otway, though I see him a fair bit elsewhere.

Of course, the big jokes about Glastonbury have always been the same ones: the toilets and the weather. Having had a performer’s pass for every festival I’ve been spared the worst excesses of the toilets, though with the massive increase in personnel in all departments these days there are sometimes quite a few ‘convex’ ones in the backstage compounds too (yuk!) As for the weather: after 25 festivals I have seen it all. My first two sum the whole thing up: baking sunshine at the first, mudbath carnage apocalypse at the second. I have a wonderful memory from the second one. John Peel and myself spotted each other simultaneously. We were only about a hundred yards apart, but a huge sea of cloying black mud stood in the way: determinedly, we waded towards each other, shook hands, and then waded off to find a bar.

I love Glastonbury. Thanks to Haggis McLeod and all the lovely stage crew who give us all such a great time every year. And here’s a poem I wrote. (Sorry, Robina, I know the memory still makes you cringe…)

TWO GLASTONBURY ERRORS

 

Now I’ve performed at Glastonbury since 1983 –

Precisely 25 so far, though each feels new to me

I’ve seen it grow from hippy roots into a massive splurge

You get the lot, from ranting poets to quids-in corporate dirge

And that’s OK. Each to their own. Us old school hardcore purists

And all the mobile-cashpoint-weekend-hippie Glasto tourists.

I have a thousand memories of sunshine, rain and flood

Joe Strummer on the main stage, John Peel in the mud…

No time for all. Two special stories, and a rare old mixture.

The beer-befuddled memoirs of a punk rock Glasto fixture.

 

The first concerns a gruesome and apocryphal event

Concerning those unfortunates ensconced in the Dance Tent

One afternoon when Glasto staff were cleaning out the loos.

The bloke inside the toilet truck had two buttons to choose –

The one emblazoned ‘Suck’ and the other labelled ‘Blow’…

Wrong button, wrong place and wrong time. The end result?

Oh, no.

 

The second is more personal and close to home, I’d say.

My wife and I were wandering one sunny Saturday

Amidst the close-pressed masses of a modern Glasto crowd

When she had a whim to do something to make her husband proud

Give me a lift, despite my beers, and really set me up

So she gently reached behind herself to make a loving ‘cup’

But my stopping by the beer tent quite undid her wifely plan

And the loving cup was given to an unsuspecting man….

Her fingers knew at once the heinous nature of her error

And she dashed off in embarrassment, confusion, pain and terror!

I’ve never asked Robina if the grounds for her surprise

Were because her chosen target was over- or undersized…

Or was it just a different shape? Well, that’s as it may be.

Long live Michel Eavis, and long live Glastonbury!

Incidentally, if you are one of those who think Glastonbury these days is too big/too corporate/whatever and you like the idea of a 550 capacity festival with over 80 real ales and ciders from small producers and 3 days of original, spiky music and poetry with tickets at £52 including camping – well, we run one in West Sussex and have done for the last 20 years (so far) as many of you will know. More about GlastonWICK later…

 

Back from Glastonbury and the gigs were still coming thick and fast. Absolute stormer at Exeter University. A very snooty crowd at the ICA and another at Corpus Christi College, Oxford. Journalism, too – reviewing New Model Army, by now making big waves, and support act The Three Johns (English White Boy Engineer: an absolutely classic song) for Sounds. Interviewing Ed Ball, main man of TV Personalities spin off band The Times. I loved The Times’ classic English mod-pop and they made some fine albums which I still listen to today. As an ex stockbroker’s clerk I took part in the ‘Stop the City’ demonstration in London in September, precursor of today’s Carnivals against Capitalism, and met anarchist icon Ian Bone at the bottom of a scrum of bodies outside some den of exploitation or another. A good guy, Ian. His book ‘Bash the Rich’ makes riveting reading and apparently is going to be turned into a film. I can’t wait.

When given the chance I was still determinedly preaching to the unconverted, whether snobby upper class types or the other extreme – hostile, racist white working class youth. A social worker got in touch with me, asking me if I would do a gig at Barton Hill Youth Centre in Bristol for a bunch of ‘problem’ fourteen to sixteen year old boys. Sure, I said. I thought I’d start by making them laugh, at the same time confronting their prejudices head on, so I gave them ‘Jingo Bells’, my piss-take of the attitudes of right wing ‘En-ger-land’ football hooligans…..

THE DUTCH the Dutch they’re much too much we’re gonna kick them in the crutch flick bogies at the slimy wogs and trip them up with their own clogs we’ll twist their ears and break their glasses stick their tulips up their arses foul their windmills with our bowels and vomit into their canals THE DANES the Danes we’ll bash their brains and wire their willies to the mains boycott their bacon and their prawns and go and piss over their lawns the scabby Scandinavian scum got scrotal scabies of the bum they live on fish-heads and weak tea their lager tastes like canine pee THE SWISS the Swiss they stink of piss no race more tedious than this with cuckoo clocks and huge amounts of money in their bank accounts they may be rich but we don’t care we’ll shave off all their pubic hair and make them live in Belgium - that’s the right place for the boring prats THE FRENCH the French they smell like tench we’ll chase them all into a trench get loads of garlic on our breath and suffocate them all to death we don’t like onions snails or Proust so smeg off frogs we rule the roost you may be existentialists but we’re dead hard and we get pissed the CZECHS the Czechs they’re scared of sex they’ve all got crabs and skinny necks their cars are shit their beer’s too strong we’re not gonna stay there for long there’s absolutely zilch to do there’s no Black Label and no glue so we’ll just wreck the place and go and leave them to their queues and snow the FINNS the Finns live out of tins they all look like the Cocteau Twins their scenery’s not very nice ‘cos most of it’s a mass of ice so don’t go there it’s much too chilly you’ll end up with a frozen willy it’s a godforsaken hole obscenely close to the North Pole THE KRAUTS the Krauts they think they’re louts but I’ve seen nastier Brussels sprouts they strut around like football yobs but they’re all talk and cheesy knobs they live on pickled vegetation what a bloody stupid nation all their nipples are bright green the strangest folk I’ve ever seen THE SWEDES the Swedes they’re fucking weeds and all their cities look like Leeds they walk around with plastic bags and noses stuck in porno mags they live on fish just like the Danes but they’ve got even smaller brains their language sounds like double Dutch their land smells like a llama’s crutch THE GREEKS the Greeks we’ll slap their cheeks and lock them up in bogs for weeks puke in their restaurants and bars and write rude slogans on their cars we’ll get a load of herpes scabs and stick ‘em all in their kebabs and write a note IN PUKE to say ‘CLUB 18-30 RULE OK!!’ THE POLES the Poles eat toilet rolls their underpants are full of holes they have to queue over an hour to get a mouldy cauliflower they whine and whinge and gripe and moan and play the hairy pink trombone they’re always wanking in the loo there’s fuck all else for them to do THE YANKS the Yanks ……duh…..many thanks for bringing in your bombs and tanks and crossing many a foreign border to bolster up the New World Order you’re foreigners but you’re alright ’cos you speak English and you fight or so it tells me in ‘The Sun’…… COR! BEING A MORON IS SUCH FUN!!!

They smiled! They laughed! They cheered me to the rooftops! Until the last line, which was met with stony silence. They thought the whole thing was serious: I suppose that they took my short hair and Doc Martens to mean I was ‘one of them’. When I made it quite plain that I wasn’t, and that what I was doing was ‘satire’, they decided, with some justification I suppose, that I was taking the piss out of them and started to get nasty. I was confident: although there were lots and lots of them, they were mostly half my age and half my size, and surely they wouldn’t attack someone who was basically a kind of visiting lecturer, would they?

I tried to win them round with football poems (‘We’re the City Boot Boys, we hate Brighton, fuck off!’) and rude poems (worked for a few seconds, then they remembered that they’d already decided they didn’t like me, so the ones who laughed were elbowed and told to stop by the others). And then I did what I often did back then in such a situation, I just gave up and went for full-on confrontation with my anti-fascist poem ‘Andy Is A Corporatist’ - and a substantial mob moved forward to attack me.

Fortunately the social worker had the common sense to intervene (‘I think that’s the end of the session now’) before escorting me to her office - and locking the door, which was then kicked repeatedly. ‘Miss, what are you protecting him for, he’s a c**t!’ She was made of stern stuff, though, and I was soon on my way. Before and since, that place had a horrible reputation of having gigs wrecked by fascist boneheads: mine was wrecked by their younger brothers. I hope Barton Hill is different now.

October-December 1983. Back to my old stomping ground, Kent University, again in triumph, and then my third gig of the year at Manchester University. Support was Seething Wells… and a young singer/songwriter from Barking called Billy Bragg. It was the first time I saw him play and the first time I met him properly, although not for long, because he had to dash off to do another gig somewhere else that night. Having got his big break by being taken under the wing of the massively influential ex-Pink Floyd manager Pete Jenner, he was working here, there and everywhere. I was impressed with his set - with his chunky electric guitar sound he was like a one-man punk band - and his lyrics were great. As a bloke I remember him being quiet, a bit phased by the rumbustuous horseplay which regularly took place whenever Swells and I were in each other’s company, and calling Jenner ‘boss’ a lot.

Then the Jump Club in Oxford, another five-show stint round the New Variety circuit in London, a support set for rising stars The Alarm at the Savoy Ballroom in Tufnell Park, my first show of many organised by local poet Ledger de la Bald at the lovely, friendly Bricklayers Arms in Parkestone, Poole run by Geoff and Ruth and another first show of many for the Northampton Musicians’ Collective. Imperial College London, Hatfield Poly, Hull University, a gig at the Albanian Society (!) a spot at Michael Horovitz’s wonderful, ubiquitous and eccentric Poetry Olympics and a third visit of the year to Holland for three shows. And just to round off the year, my last gig of ’83 was an end-of-term gig at a school in Crawley where some local fascists turned up to have a desultory pop. Nothing much happened though. Even by fascist bonehead standards, it’s pretty sad to try and start a fight at a poetry gig in a school, isn’t it?

And in the last few hours of the last day of what had been an inspirational, eye-opening and exhausting year for me, I started to write a song which I still consider to be one of my best, all these years later. I’d come back to my mother’s in Southwick for New Year to see her and to celebrate with my friends. In the early evening of New Year’s Eve I was wandering along the harbour seafront between Southwick and Shoreham to meet them there in the now-demolished King’s Head pub.

1984 was hours away. In his famous novel of the same name Orwell describes a Britain turned into Airstrip One – a huge, unsinkable aircraft carrier for a foreign power. His prediction was coming true: American Cruise missiles were arriving at RAF Greenham Common and the Women’s Peace Camp had been established there in protest. (As mentioned earlier I had done a gig there in late 1981, just before it became an all-women camp.) As I made that familiar walk I was thinking about the challenges ahead - and the words and tune of a song started to form in my brain.

Many, many beers later I made the same familiar journey back, somewhat unsteadily, and as I did so I came up with the first verse. The rest was completed back in Harlow: it took a while and sadly wasn’t done in time for my second album, which was a real shame. The Newtown Neurotics covered it, John Peel played it, Steve Lamacq loved it. I’m still very proud of it.

THE BALLAD OF AIRSTRIP ONE

 

Another New Year and too much beer and a puke into the sea

Though the lights of Shoreham Harbour still look the same to me

And some bloke on the radio is saying things that I heard before

And he’s going on about Orwell and it’s getting rather a bore

And out there in the darkness there’s a Yankee with a gun

But we’re too wrecked to care right now ‘cos the New Year’s just begun

We’re having fun

Down on Airstrip One

 

The Harlow lights shine brightly as the wheels eat up the road

But the motorways are runways now and they’re carrying a deadly load

‘Cos the monsters are all mobile and there’s anarchy in the air

And the driver’s name is Sutcliffe and he’s too far gone to care

And if you think your Kentish prayers are mightier than the gun

I’ll tell you that you’re dreaming ‘cos the coundown’s just begun

But we’ll still have fun

Down on Airstrip One

 

Some folks are angry and some folks are cool

Read all the newspapers, don’t be a fool

Video nasties and sugary tea

That’s the way to get away scot free

On Airstrip One…

 

There’s some choose civilisation and a promise unfulfilled

And there’s some choose extermination – when it’s someone else who gets killed

A gesture of insanity and a word left to the crabs

Five thousand years of history and now they’re up for grabs

So send that fucking cowboy riding off into the sun

And send with him the culture of the dollar and the gun

Then we’ll have fun

Down on Airstrip One

The cowboy, of course, was Ronald Reagan: as I wrote the song I thought that the campaign to get our country back from the clutches of his evil empire would be the big one of 1984. How wrong I was. We were three months away from the biggest trade union dispute since the General Strike of 1926, a virtual civil war that would see whole sections of the working class and progressive movement described by Margaret Thatcher as ‘the enemy within’ and one with repercussions which would still be felt to this day.

And then some.