In 1992 ‘Scornflakes’, my second book of poems, was published by Newcastle’s Bloodaxe Books, illustrated this time by my friend Womble aka Dave Trent, the punk dentist and talented cartoonist who had joined us in East Germany. His brilliant fanzine ‘Wake Up’ had been supporting radical performers of all types for several years now. Bloodaxe was, and remains, one of the most successful and respected publishers of poetry in the UK: I did however always have the impression that their desire to publish me was based more on the fact that I had a big following (for a poet) rather than any particular respect for my work.
‘Scornflakes’ had all the crowd-pleasers of the last few years in it – and ‘crowd-pleasers’ was the crux of the matter. I’d be the first to agree that, for my first fifteen years or so at least as Attila, the majority of my poems were far better suited to the stage than the page – many more people were always going to buy my book after I’d brought the poems to life at a performance than in the relatively sterile surroundings of a bookshop. That’s what many of my solo albums/CDs have been recorded live as well – the atmosphere provided by the audience is an essential part of the listening experience.
The book followed its Unwins predecessor in having a 5,000 print run, selling far more copies at my gigs than in the shops and eventually being remaindered, with me buying the thousand or so remaining copies designated for pulping at a knockdown price and selling them myself. It sold out years ago, meaning that both my first two poetry books sold 5,000 copies - which in poetry terms makes them bestsellers and then some. ‘Scornflakes’ was the last of those I handed over to a publisher, since I saw little point in paying 45% of cover price, or whatever it was, to buy my books when I sold most of them myself at gigs anyway: these days, of course, the internet is a very important part of the operation too. Since then I haven’t really bothered with bookshops when it comes to selling my poetry collections: all bases are covered now, thanks to electronic media, because anyone, anywhere who can’t get to a gig can buy my work direct from me.
I’ve published my last five poetry books myself, as Roundhead Publications (one author) the print arm of Roundhead Records (one artist). I always smile when I come across articles claiming ‘poetry doesn’t sell, all our books make losses’ and bemoaning the cutting back of arts grants to small presses as ‘making poetry publishing impossible’. Take my most recent book ‘UK Gin Dependence Party and Other Peculiarities’ published – deliberately – two weeks before Christmas 2013. I say ‘published’: 2000 copies turned up on a big pallet outside the front door and were consigned to various spare corners of the house. I did an email to my mailing list, a few posts on Facebook and Twitter, and four or five Christmas gigs. By the end of January I’d covered my costs. And, needless to say, I’ve never had a publishing grant in my life.
The key to the reason small presses publishing page poetry find things such heavy going may well be found in the wonderful quote from Adrian Mitchell which adorns my T-shirt on the front cover of this book: ‘Most people ignore most poetry because most poetry ignores most people’. If your work doesn’t strike a chord with people – or worse, is so obscure that they don’t even understand what you’re going on about – they’re not going to buy your book. You may well get a great write up in some pseudo-intellectual literary publication - the kind that won’t touch the likes of me with a barge pole - but I know where I’d rather be, thanks very much.
For this book, my life’s work, I see things very differently. I’m very much hoping that I’ll reach a much wider audience with it than I have for my poetry books, and obviously want it to be distributed and reviewed as far and wide as possible. For that, I need a publisher: and no one better than Cherry Red, for reasons already explained.
1992 saw my first CD/vinyl release in Germany (apart from ‘Airstrip One’ on the 17th Political Song Festival compilation LP, published by GDR state label Amiga in 1987). ‘This Is Free Europe’, featuring the best of my recent studio recordings, was released by Dortmund radical label Terz, and they followed that with ‘Live Auf St Pauli’ in 1993, recorded at the Marquee after a home match in the spiritual home of punk rock football. I was doing loads of gigs all over Germany now, east and west, twenty or so a year (plus more in Holland, Belgium and Scandinavia) my command of the language was improving all the time and my old friend George from Halle had translated quite a lot of poems for me. At gigs I would perform a couple of songs and poems in German and briefly explain the themes of the others in German before I performed them in English: this worked very well. I’d also do what amounts to a stand up comedy routine about the unbelievably funny town and city names you get in Germany: Hassloch (hate hole), Darmstadt (intestine town), Hodenhagen (testicles town), Hasslich (ugly) and Katzenhirn (cat brain) being five of incredibly many. You just couldn’t make them up – and I haven’t!
More and more, however, I was starting to think how great it would be to return to my punk rock roots and play my songs with a band - not just in Germany, but all over mainland Europe. The punk/alternative scene in most of Europe is very different to the UK: there is a network of hundreds of left wing autonomous youth and cultural centres all over the place, with the notable exception of France. They are run by volunteers and touring bands are treated a billion times better than here, with free food, beer and accommodation a given (absolutely not the case in the UK unless you are several rungs up the corporate ladder, as any musicians reading this will confirm!) And, of course, if I had a band I could perform in countries where I couldn’t speak their language and they didn’t speak English very well: music is common to us all.
In the UK much of my set was spoken word and as a DIY performer the simple need to earn a living meant that working solo was more or less a necessity. But the sets I played in mainland Europe were different, being more song-centred, and the fact that musicians were well looked after, thus keeping touring costs down, made it an idea worth considering. I had a clear idea of the sound I wanted: since early childhood I had been fascinated by early music - I’d put some short instrumentals on my first two albums - and my idea was to form a band mixing medieval music and punk, in much the same way that the Pogues had combined Irish music and punk. It was an idea which stayed in my mind for a couple of years before coming to fruition in 1994.
But before starting my own band, I was to have a go at managing one, and after that, I’d set up my own performing arts series and, together with a bunch of dedicated friends, start a beer/music festival which continues to this day…
As a thirteen year old, Paul Howard from Harlow had come to my first gig at Bush Fair Playbarn back in 1980. Twelve years later he was a talented singer-songwriter with a beautiful singing voice and a great band called The Tender Trap, featuring among others (the others being Mark ‘Walshy’ Walshe on guitar and Andy Macdonald on bass) drummer Simon Lomond from the Newtown Neurotics. Their sound could best be described as passionate pop/soul: like me, Paul was (is) a huge Dexys fan and there was certainly a lot of them in there, but his songs and his sound were all his own. They were very raw, though, and had hardly played a gig outside Harlow. I’d just had my fifth album ‘Donkey’s Years’ put out by Musidisc, a French label with a branch in the UK: I knew the label had money to invest in a young up and coming band, took them a Tender Trap demo and to my delight managing director Francois absolutely loved it.
Soon I’d arranged a meeting and, more or less by default, became their manager. I negotiated the best deal I could for the band, another for Paul’s publishing rights as songwriter (both substantial by my standards!) and we celebrated with a signing party at Joy’s in Sydenham where each member of the band managed to fit a dozen eggs in their underpants and Paul ended up completely paralytic, fast asleep in a long-redundant baby’s cot stark naked apart from a sock draped round his knob. Rock n roll, eh?
Straight away, however, it became obvious that Francois was only really interested in Paul. My first job as manager was to insist – with Paul’s backing – that Francois couldn’t just sack the other members and get in session musicians. I remember his astonishment when we informed him of this: in typical music biz mogul fashion he seemed to assume that the offer of a record and publishing deal would mean that Paul would abandon his friends without so much as a second thought! I set up a tour (including an appearance at Glastonbury) the band rehearsed like mad and I can still remember their triumphant return to Harlow, a wonderful night at the Latton Bush Centre. This band is going places, everybody said.
But then the shit hit the fan. The producers of the intended album came to see the band rehearse. They just weren’t good enough, they said: they could continue to play the songs live, but session musicians were going to do the album. This was a classic case of music business bullshit. The band were perfectly good enough, but Francois dug his heels in and decided that he who paid the piper was going to call the tune, in this case literally.
An impasse was reached, and then the rest of the band told Paul to go for it, since the alternative would be for the whole project to be ditched and at least they would still be playing the songs live. So Paul did, and it must be said that despite the injustice surrounding its creation ‘The Patron Saint of Heartache’ is an absolutely magnificent album. Copies were sent by Musidisc to all their media contacts and then, after rehearsals and a few warm up shows, it was time for the big media showcase at London’s Mean Fiddler.
But the Faustian pact by which the band had been sidelined in the recording process had affected Paul deeply. He’d always been an enthusiastic imbiber, and the night of that showcase he was on a one man self-destruct mission. He could barely function when he walked on stage and the gig was a disaster. Guitarist Mark Walshe remembers Francois’ disgusted one-word review. ‘Shit.’
The band was finally sacked and the album was recorded with session musicians, pressed, but never put on sale. I have five copies: for both myself and Robina it remains by far and away the best unreleased album of all time (although, mysteriously, a few copies appear to be available on Amazon: not sure how that happened). The whole thing finished in a big, unhappy mess. Paul is still writing and playing today: his songs and voice are as wonderful as ever and he played our Glastonwick Festival last year. After a long period of retirement Simon is back on the Neurotics’ drum stool for a few gigs in 2015.
Apart from the Trap I’ve never managed anyone else apart from myself, and have no intention of doing so, ever again. I’m enough of a handful, I guess…
If I wasn’t a manager, I was certainly a keen promoter. By early 1993 I’d been based back in my home town of Southwick for a couple of years and, as an inveterate organiser of gigs not just for myself but sometimes for others as well, I had hatched a plan for a series at our local theatre. Southwick may only be five miles from Brighton but it is a different world in cultural terms and I thought it would be great to bring some of the radical poets and musicians I had met over the years to the rather conservative (with big and small ‘c’) port town where I grew up and stir things up a bit!
From the time my mother and father moved back to Southwick with me when I was three, both of them had been very involved in the local community association and my mum had played the piano for local amateur dramatic groups at the adjacent Barn Theatre, so there was a firm connection there. I got a grant from South East Arts to invite performers from all over the country and between 1993 and 2001 we (myself with volunteer helpers Roy, Miranda and Ralph, plus my mum working the box office) hosted a monthly event – mainly poetry, with music and occasional comedy - under the ‘Barnstormer’ banner. Storming gigs, held in a lovely converted barn, the one rule being that everyone invited wrote and performed their own original material: simple, really. Things went very well indeed.
To name just the relatively well known artists we put on, many of whom played more than once: Half Man Half Biscuit, Linton Kwesi Johnson, Ben Zephaniah, Mark Thomas, Simon Armitage, Phill Jupitus, Jo Brand, John Agard, Grace Nicholls, Patience Agbabi, Terry Garoghan, John Otway, Carol Ann Duffy, Fiona Pitt-Kethley, Jean ‘Binta’ Breeze, Jackie Kay, Murray Lachlan Young, John Cooper Clarke, Adrian Mitchell, Captain Sensible, Will Self, Martin Newell, Levi Tafari, The Men They Couldn’t Hang, Justin Sullivan of New Model Army, Les Carter of Carter USM, Henry Normal, Michael Horovitz, The Tansads, Les Barker, Roy Bailey, John Dowie, Patrik Fitzgerald, Fermin Muguruza from the Basque Country, Neil Sparkes of Transglobal Underground, Mark Steel, Joolz, Mick Thomas of Weddings Parties Anything, Leon Rosselson, Citizen Fish, T.V.Smith, Don Paterson, Wob, Blyth Power and Robb Johnson. Phew! All in our little theatre a few hundred yards from Southwick railway station.
Contrary to the fears of certain minor local Centre dignitaries, there was no drug dealing, no fighting and no goat sacrifices on stage. We had enormous fun, people flocked to the gigs and Southwick was put well and truly on the map. And there was a wonderful spin-off which continues to this day.
Southwick Community Centre is a registered charity, mostly run by volunteers. In early 1996 I came up with the idea of a summer beer and music festival to raise much-needed funds for the place, featuring many of the performers I was putting on at my regular monthly events there. I’d performed at many music festivals where the only beer on offer was the undrinkable corporate urine of Satan (‘real ale is for old beardy blokes!’) and many beer festivals where the usually dismissive nod towards ‘entertainment’ was – you guessed it – old beardy blokes. Usually old beardy blokes stuck in a corner playing mind-numbingly boring blues covers or whining ‘Scarborough Fayre’. HELP!!
It doesn’t have to be like this, I thought. Why not have a beer festival with varied, invigorating, radical entertainment and a music festival with great real ale –simultaneously?
Charles Porter, son of George, the doyen of the Centre, took up the idea with gusto and my great friend Roy Chuter came in to help. Next we needed someone to source and look after the beer: enter Alex Hall, cellarman at Brighton real ale mecca The Evening Star. Alex not only scoured the country looking for interesting new beers but persuaded most of them to do special one-offs for Glastonwick – he still does to this day. We needed a name for the festival: I was a regular at Glastonbury and it was my favourite gig of the year. We wanted to bring a tiny bit of the old Glastonbury spirit to Southwick. It didn’t take long to come up with one…
The same local dignitaries who had predicted drug orgies and ritual goat sacrifices at my music/poetry events were even more worried about the prospect of a full-on beer and music festival - but the more progressive elements at the Centre overruled them, the local Adur Council gave us its blessing with inclusion in its annual summer arts programme and the first Glastonwick Beer Music, Poetry & More Beer Festival took place over 3 days between 24-26 May 1996, with 30 beers and John Otway, Blyth Power, The Fish Brothers (of whom more soon) and surreal folk poet Les Barker headlining. As with my monthly events, I selected the performers, the basic rule being that they must play their own material. As someone who earns his living as a writer/performer, one of my primary concerns has always been to promote and encourage others who do the same.
And the mix worked perfectly. Not all the music/poetry fans wanted real ale and not all the beer fans wanted entertainment: the former gathered in the theatre, the latter sat in the adjacent rooms or the lovely walled garden. But most were there for both, of course. A friendly, fun time was had by all, no animals were harmed in the process and the beer sold out so quickly we had to send to the Evening Star for emergency supplies! Loads of money was raised for the centre, Glastonwick became a regular annual event and new recruits to the music and poetry roster were added every year from people I met and performed alongside on my tours at home and abroad, along with invitations extended to many of the performers I’d already invited to the Barnstormer theatre series.
Alex’s beer selections got bigger in number and better in range as the small independent brewing sector grew across the country. I joined the Southwick Community Centre team which applied successfully for a huge grant from the National Lottery Fund, and managed to get a grant from the Foundation for Sport and the Arts for a new PA system for the Barn Theatre as well. (The local theatre groups made sure it was a theatre one, of course, but it worked for us too, most of the time.) All this meant that despite a few minor disagreements with the Centre hierarchy I thought we were set fair for the foreseeable future.
Until that fateful day on December 12, 2002 when I read the headline in our local paper, the Evening Argus.
‘Beer festival is booted out!’
The people at the Centre hadn’t even told us.
Obviously, I wanted to find out why. Unbelievably, the answer from the Committee was that ‘it was difficult to staff’ and ‘beer was spilt on the floor’. Hang on, I said, my friend Roy organises most of the volunteer serving staff and, yes, a bit of beer does get spilt on the floor at a beer festival, but if you’re raising thousands of pounds and having a bloody good time in the process that’s hardly an issue, is it?
But they were adamant: no more Glastonwick.
I thought it very strange, but immediately set about trying to find somewhere else to host the festival. I found a willing partner in Tom Maryan, bar manager in the lovely 30s art deco terminal building at Shoreham Airport, a couple of miles from Southwick, and despite loads of restrictions due to the fact that it was a working commercial airfield we held ‘Glastonwake’ on 30-31 May 2003 – restricted to two days rather than three and with no music during the day. The ‘wake’ part was due to the fact that at that point there was a distinct possibility that it would be the last one, but after discussions with the airport authorities we got the go ahead for future festivals there. It was an unusual place for sure, from a practical point of view not ideal (no music at lunchtime: difficulty charging admission because people were using the airport for other activities) but we adapted as much as we could. Then, not long after our 2003 event and after we had agreed the dates for 2004, we got another shock, again delivered by the local press, this time the Shoreham Herald.
‘Beer festival set to return!’
‘The festival formerly known as Glastonwick is under new management and returning to Southwick Community Centre for next year’s Adur Festival.’
Obviously the people at the centre had found loads of new volunteer staff and a magic way to stop beer going on the floor! In reality, of course, it seemed to me that the answer was simple: they liked the idea of a beer festival and the money it raised, but they didn’t want us to run it any more. They wanted mainly local beers and local (covers) bands, not our exotic mix of far-flung brews and performers they hadn’t heard of who play their own material. I wish they’d simply told us that! As I have already said, my unpretentious port town home isn’t trendy old Brighton, not everybody likes the ‘alternative’ music/ poetry scene and of course there is absolutely nothing wrong with a good piss up and a set by ‘Ill Eagles’ or whatever. I like living in Southwick and understand the spirit of the place: my family roots here go back far enough…
So, for the next two years, Glastonwick and the ‘Southwick Beer Festival’ took place on the same weekend, a couple of miles apart: it wasn’t deliberate, it was just how it worked out. There was a little bit of bad feeling at first, but the fact that both festivals did well enough to continue at their respective locations proved that there really were two separate audiences, ours from all over the south-east of England (and further afield) and theirs from the immediate locality. In 2006 we finally managed to get the festivals on adjoining weekends rather than in direct competition with each other, and it’s been like that ever since: both happen every year, theirs on the May Bank Holiday weekend, ours the weekend after. I’m happy to say that these days differences are long forgotten and - if I’m not gigging somewhere else - I happily turn up for a few beers at the annual Southwick Beer Festival in the place where Glastonwick began all those years ago.
But the following year it was time for the festival to move again - to our current, absolutely perfect home. Again not by choice, though I’m so pleased we did…
Towards the end of the 2006 festival, myself and bar manager Tom were called into a meeting with the airport manager.
‘We’ve been having complaints from pilots and passengers. Apparently some punks have been making fun of them, calling them ‘posh’ and things like that.’
‘You know what a friendly bunch Glastonwick-goers are’ I replied. ‘You’ve complimented us on how we run the festival. It’s just friendly banter, that’s all!’
Another frankly soppy pretext, similar to the ‘beer spilt on the floor’ one which saw us ejected from our previous home. Be that as it may, for reasons best known to themselves the bosses at Shoreham Airport didn’t want to host Glastonwick any more, and once again we were without a venue. (An interesting postscript here: as I write this in 2015, a licence has just been granted for a 35,000 capacity festival there, organised by mainstream promoters SJM Concerts who run V Festival and Parklife among others. So the airport authorities were uneasy about the behaviour of a few of our 350 attendees but are now happy to host a festival with a HUNDRED times that number? Money talks, obviously!)
We weren’t homeless for long, though. Hats off to the council folks at Adur Arts Festival, for whom Glastonwick had become a flagship event. They suggested that I talk to Jenny and Trevor Passmore, the brother and sister owners of Church Farm in Coombes, near Lancing, about three miles north of the airport. I phoned Jenny and outlined what we were doing: she was very interested and invited me up to the farm to look around.
The moment I walked through the gate I knew that this was the perfect setting. Glastonwick was home at last! A large barn for the beer and the music, a smaller covered area for cider, food and general socialising and a separate seating area where ‘beer scoopers’ could gather for their ‘ticking’ sessions. (The ‘scoopers’ had always been a part of Glastonwick, hardly surprising since Alex Hall, our beer guru, is a dedicated member of the fraternity. Thirty or so dedicated souls whose passion is finding beers they haven’t tasted before and making notes about each one in a little book - a kind of liquid version of trainspotting. No, I don’t understand it either, but each to his/her own…) Furthermore, behind the barn at Church Farm I saw a huge, beautiful valley, ideal for camping, something which hadn’t been a possibility at either of our previous locations.
We’d hit the jackpot. Hats off to the Passmores, and Jenny’s husband Jerry, for taking on trust an event which needed a bit of explaining at first, being 100% behind us from the beginning and doing everything possible to help Glastonwick progress, from our first festival there in 2007 to the present day.
Thanks also to our local award-winning Dark Star Brewery who took over the bar management side of things, providing the logistics and finance to pay for Alex Hall’s beer selections and transport them to the site. Brewery co-founder Rob Jones has now left Dark Star and owns the Duke of Wellington in Shoreham, Glastonwick’s spiritual home for the other 362 days of the year: last year he and Trevor Passmore started managing the beer side of things together.
This year (2015) we celebrated our twentieth anniversary and ninth at Coombes Farm. Glastonwick takes place at the end of May/beginning of June, starting on Friday evening and ending 6pm on the following Sunday. Over the years the capacity has risen slightly to 550 (it’ll never get any bigger) and the number of different beers has stabilised at around 85 - and every year we’ve ended up saying ‘That was the best one yet!’
Each year around 22 bands, poets and solo performers take to the stage over the the course of the weekend. Musical highlights have included The King Blues, Goldblade, Australia’s Go Set, Eddie & The Hot Rods, classical guitarist Richard Durrant, Leon Rosselson, Zounds, Inner Terrestials, Peter & The Test Tube Babies, Newtown Neurotics, an impromptu reunion by Carter USM following solo performances from Jimbob and Fruitbat, The Piranhas, TV Smith, Blyth Power, Jake Shillingford from My Life Story and loads, loads more… including, every year, John Otway. Jenny Passmore says ‘no Otway, no Glastonwick!’ and although under most circumstances I defy authority with aplomb, in this instance I heartily endorse her stance. There really is nobody like Otway, and in 2015 he and his Big Band headlined the Friday night, with my old mates The Men They Couldn’t Hang on the Saturday and comedian Robin Ince doing the business on the Sunday. Plus another twenty or so performers and bands.
Thanks to all the volunteers (you know who you are) who make our friendly local festival what it is. Thanks to co-founder Alex Hall for twenty years of superb ale - and hard work finding it. And thanks and RIP to my old friend Roy Chuter, the other co-founder and former landlord of the Duke of Wellington mentioned above, who sadly died in July 2013 and to whom the 2014 festival was dedicated. We miss you, mate.
But my gig series at the Barn Theatre in Southwick didn’t just sow the seeds for twenty years of Glastonwick: it gave me the name for my band. Not until after a couple of false starts, though…
I’ve already said that by early 1994 I was seriously contemplating getting a band together to play my songs, principally to tour Germany and other mainland European countries. I had a very clear idea of what I wanted: some top rate musicians who could handle the concept of combining punk and medieval music, relate to my radical lyrical content - and, most importantly of all, were a decent, friendly, easy going bunch who were up for a good time and more than a few beers! Having been enjoyably solo for 14 years (and obviously intending to continue my UK solo poetry activities alongside band gigs) the last thing I wanted was a bunch of moaning shoegazers who would take the fun out of touring, causing arguments and splits - or plodders who took ages to learn the songs, thus meaning hours of unnecessary, frustrating rehearsals. Rehearsing is obviously necessary and fine if you all know what you’re doing: if you don’t, it’s about as pleasurable as going to the dentist. (I’m happy to say that the rest of my band have always agreed 100% with me about this.)
The process proved ridiculously easy. I invited Martin and Dan from the Fish Brothers to appear on a local radio show I was hosting at the time, Adur FM. Named for their capacity to consume vast quantities of alcohol, the Fish were – and remain to this day - an entertaining and unique combination of punky toilet humour and cranked-up Victorian music hall songs, fronted by the charismatically obese Martin ‘Fish’ Cooper. I’d always had a lot of fun when I’d seen them live, they were consummate musicians even when paralytic – and the fact that they were already playing Victorian music hall punk with aplomb indicated to me that the concept of medieval punk wouldn’t be a problem for them at all.
We had a load of fun on the show and in the pub: I put it to the pair of them that they should join me in my project. They were well up for the idea and suggested their drummer came in as well, a local character named M.M.McGhee. McGhee’s real name is Martin Wilson: he had been given his alter-ego by fellow Brighton resident and punk legend Captain Sensible, in whose band both he and his guitarist mate Dan Woods had played from time to time. (The M.M. stands for Mass Murderer, by the way, but don’t worry: he neither is, looks nor acts like one, he’s lovely. It’s just one example of the good Captain’s unique sense of humour.)
The Fish proved to be every bit as good musicians as I thought they were and they picked up the batch of songs I had prepared in no time. Now we needed a bass player: McGhee mentioned our project to Captain Sensible and to my astonishment he volunteered for the job. We knew each other as fellow denizens of Brighton real ale mecca pub The Evening Star and I was aware that he liked my stuff – but I didn’t think for a moment that he’d join my band. I was chuffed, not least because I knew what a fine musician he was: I knew he had a lot on his plate and that it probably wouldn’t be long before he was off, but it was a nice touch. He fitted in perfectly and by the autumn of 1994 we were ready for our first gig.
I was incredibly pleased with the band: my vision of a combination of medieval music and punk was coming true. A driving, Clashy core, courtesy of a rock hard rhythm section: McGhee is the best drummer I have ever heard, let alone played with, and the Captain’s bass lines were magic. Martin Fish provided solidly effective rhythm guitar, with superb technician Dan’s melodic lead lines slightly reminiscent of both Mick Jones of the Clash and the mutually admired Jan Akkerman of Dutch ‘classical rock’ outfit Focus (the Clash and Focus, plus the East German band Horch whose tour I had organised five years earlier, and my old Sussex friends Crucible, were my main points of musical reference for the sound I wanted us to have). I sang and played violin, mandola, recorders, crumhorn and shawm. I’ve always been a jack-of-all-trades where musical instruments are concerned, competent on many, brilliant on none: fortunately medieval music is modal, therefore very simple, and punk rock has three chords, sometimes four, so I wasn’t going outside my technical comfort zone. Dan did the main backing vocals: he has a beautiful voice. Martin joined him with his gruff bass tones when needed.
Did I mention recorders? Yes! The recorder is indeed one of England’s earliest instruments: much maligned to be sure, due to its sad fate of being the first instrument that kids - including those without the slightest vestige of musical talent - encounter at primary school. I had learned descant, treble and tenor recorder with gusto from the ages of about six to ten, alongside the violin, and after some determined practice discovered to my pleasure that I had sufficient natural ability to get a reasonable sound out of all of them, and musical parents prepared to tolerate the moments when I didn’t. This stood me in good stead thirty years later. Many of my classmates were not so lucky or dedicated: a badly played recorder or violin is one of the most excruciating sounds on the planet, and I sympathise wholeheartedly with those parents who had to suffer the results! But mistreatment by seven year olds should not be grounds for the rather ‘naff’ reputation the recorder suffers from today: it is part of our heritage (indeed, for the musical period I was making reference to it was essential) and played properly it can sound wonderful.
Shawm and crumhorn, both medieval instruments with the same simple fingering as the recorder and both sounding (intentionally) a bit like a duck being slowly strangled, completed the small arsenal of wind instruments at my disposal. I also had the beautiful mandocello which Horch had given me as a thankyou present after their tour in 1989: it sounded like a lute, and (thankfully) tuned like a mandolin or mandola, which meant I could play it. Although not a stage instrument, it would play a role in the studio when we came to record our first album. As for the songs: ‘Sarajevo’, ‘Cheering the Plough’ ‘Horns’ and ‘The Blandford Forum’ were the first of a swathe I’d deliberately write with the band in mind, augmented with older solo numbers which worked well, such as ‘Tyler Smiles’, ‘This Is Free Europe’ and ‘Market Sektor One’.
But the centrepiece of the set, from our first gig to the present day, was and remains the English Civil War trilogy ‘March of the Levellers/The Diggers’ Song/The World Turned Upside Down’. This is based on the story of the Diggers, the first English socialists who made their stand in the tumultuous times at the end of the Civil War following the execution of Charles 1, setting up ‘illegal’ settlements to work the land and grow food for the poor. It begins with a recorder-based instrumental I had first included on my second solo album ‘Sawdust and Empire’ in 1984, merging into an acapella rendition of Diggers’ leader Gerrard Winstanley’s famous declaration in 1649, ‘You noble diggers all, stand up now, stand up now….’ and ending with a literally barnstorming version of the song that the great Leon Rosselson wrote about the Diggers, ‘The World Turned Upside Down’, with a rap section in the middle in which I tell their story. From the very first performance this was our main signature piece and set opener, and it remains so today.
The band lacked just one thing – a name.
One day I was looking at the sleeve of my first album ‘Ranting At The Nation (More Poems About Flatfish And Russians)’ and had what I thought – not for very long, thankfully – was a wonderful idea.
It wasn’t.
I decided to call our new band Flounder, and have a flatfish as our logo.
I’m a coastal dweller and sea fisherman with a Pythonesque streak: to me a flounder is a flatfish, simple as that. The fact that ‘flounder’ has another meaning – to fail miserably – didn’t even occur to me, unbelievably enough, and the lack of reference to the ‘medieval punk’ aspect of the music passed me by too. I still can’t work out why. Posters with the aforementioned logo were printed and two gigs booked: our debut on November 5 at the much loved and very rock ‘n’ roll Jericho Tavern in Oxford, selected because I wanted to make our first gig as geographically accessible as possible to fans from all over the country keen to be there, and a home town one on the 21st at the old Concorde venue next to the Palace Pier on Brighton seafront. These were warm up gigs for our first German tour, set for 4-18 December.
I can still remember our first gig: a healthy crowd, augmented somewhat by the fact that the good Captain was our bass player, enjoyed a celebratory firework display before the ponderously named ‘Attila the Stockbroker and Flounder, featuring Captain Sensible’ took to the stage. Although everything was very raw, the sound was well and truly as intended, and we went down an absolute storm. As we did at our second gig, the home town affair in Brighton - marred only (but substantially) by the fact that a local crusty who’d played in the support band pogoed onto my shawm and broke it. I was not pleased. (It wasn’t a sixteenth century original, needless to say, but a modern wooden facsimile. That’s not the point.)
By this time the German tour had been organised and posters printed. But we weren’t called Flounder in Germany. Oh, no. The name of the band on our first German tour was even worse.
‘Attila the Stockbroker und die Erbrechenden Rotkehlchen’.
Attila the Stockbroker and the Vomiting Robins.
There was a reason (excuse?) for this. My spoken word piece ‘The Bible According To Rupert Murdoch’ featuring the line ‘And the earth itself wept, and little robins vomited, and cuddly furry animals threw themselves under trains’ had been brilliantly translated into German by George from Halle several years before, and performed as such had become one of the centrepieces of the regular solo tours I had been doing in Germany before the formation of the band. Loads of people thought that it was very funny, and when it came to the name and the posters for the new band’s debut tour there, I was told that being called ‘The Vomiting Robins’ (or rather the German equivalent) was a nailed on piece of genius. Especially since our bass player was notorious rock ‘n’ roll lunatic Captain Sensible.
In my defence, I had my doubts. Not enough doubts, though, obviously…
But not long before the tour was due to start, I had the inevitable phone call from the Captain. He couldn’t do it. I had known it would come to that sooner or later, but hoped we’d manage the German tour together: it was not to be, he had to get back to captaining his own ship again. I was disappointed, of course, but not at all surprised or angry, and we were prepared: Dan, a talented bassist as well as guitarist, moved to bass, and I had even more melodies to play on my plethora of instruments.
That first 14 date tour of Germany was absolutely brilliant. Nick Bond, a friend of the Fish, drove us over in his van and the network of autonomous left wing cultural centres welcomed us with open arms from north to south, Hamburg to Leipzig (especially Hamburg where the St. Pauli crew turned up in force). No-one seemed that bothered that Captain wasn’t with us, even though his name was on the posters, and even among the hardcore punks the medieval tinges to the music touched a chord in a country with such a deep musical heritage. On the way to Hannover we stopped at the world famous Moeck recorder factory and I treated myself to a full set – five of them, from the tiny sopranino to the metre long bass – to replace my plastic ones. It was a big financial outlay, but the band celebrated our twentieth anniversary in 2014 and those recorders have been with me all that time. To initiate my new recruits, a couple of days later on the tour when we had some free time I took the big bass, the tiny sopranino and my fiddle and wrote a long instrumental, ‘The One That Got Away’, another ever-present band signature piece from that day to this.
We returned in triumph. We had all got along famously, the gigs were well attended and great fun and we all couldn’t wait to do it all again. At the end of that first tour I remember being incredibly astonished and happy that the process of forming the band had been so simple (no newspaper ads, no endless auditions) and the end result so wonderful. But the problem of the name was still there. I was determined that we weren’t going to be called Flounder, or the Vomiting Robins for that matter, for one moment longer. I wanted a ‘sensible’ name that wasn’t boring and that summed up the essence of what we were about. I thought, and thought. And then it came to me: the perfect name for the band was one which had been staring me in the face for ages. It was the one I had come up with for the series of monthly poetry/music shows I was organising at the Barn in Southwick, the one that adorned the posters and leaflets I distributed every month.
BARNSTORMER!
That was that.
Dan, a very talented artist and illustrator, designed a logo of two crossed flaming torches with the name in an ancient-looking script: I came up with ‘renaissancecore’ as a description of the music, and the first Barnstormer T-shirt was born. And then in early 1995 I went right back to my roots and recruited another recorder player for the band: my old mate Tim Vince, formerly of the aforementioned Sussex medieval rock band Crucible, who had played recorder on the short instrumental ‘The Fall of King Zog’ on my first album, and who, incidentally, had been taught piano by my mum. I wanted to beef up the recorder sound into a two part harmony, which meant that Tim didn’t have much to do on the minority of the songs that were just punky rather than medieval-punky, but he didn’t mind, and he was in. He would soon start to play a very important extra role in the band, driving us all over the place – first in his old Volvo and later in a second-hand Post Office delivery van.
And on one unforgettable occasion he actually fronted the band. On a 1997 German tour I was on crutches, having ruptured my hamstring playing football, and doing the gigs sitting down. After a few beers in Bremen I forgot myself, stood up and literally felt something snap: from that moment I was in agony and simply couldn’t continue. I went backstage and writhed in pain, the back of my leg turning black, while the rest of the band tried to carry on with Tim singing, despite the fact that he didn’t know half the words to the songs, and couldn’t sing in time. The result was so funny that even though I was in absolute agony I found myself laughing as well! Fortunately I managed to finish the rest of the tour and Tim’s services weren’t required again. (He didn’t stay Tim Vince, incidentally: he was nicknamed Tim O’Tay, which meant that from time to time earnest German leftists would come up and say ‘Tim, are you Irish?’ to which we’d reply ‘no, he’s named after a brand of anti-dandruff shampoo.’)
Tim made his debut with Barnstormer at the Barn in Southwick in February 1995 at a benefit I was roped in to organise against the live animal exports which were taking place through Shoreham Harbour at the time (roped in against my better judgement, to be honest). Jo Brand headlined. She walked onstage and said ‘Actually, I like a bit of veal, me!’ Audience response varied from nervous giggles to outrage: I pissed myself laughing. I wonder how many of those protestors had lifted a finger when Shoreham Port bosses tried to ship in scab coal during the miners’ strike…
A coincidental continuation of the meaty theme. Barnstormer did a few UK gigs and another German tour in the spring of 1995 (driven this time by the friendly but scary Eliot, whom we met at our gig at the Boat Race in Cambridge) and then went into the studio to record a demo cassette for home release and an EP for German label Mad Butcher Records, a committedly anti-fascist label, then in its infancy and now hugely successful, set up by my old mate Mike Wilms, who did actually used to be a butcher. ‘A’ side was ‘Sarajevo’, a stark punk-with-a-Balkan-tinge lament for the unity and brotherhood of Tito’s Yugoslavia, now torn apart by sectarianism and genocidal war. ‘B’ sides ‘Cheering the Plough’ and ‘The Siege Of Shoreham’, were both very medieval-punk, the latter another instrumental using the bass recorder, the title a reference to the fact that the port protests meant that half the Met was currently camped on our doorstep.
The UK cassette release sold out in next to no time – there were only a couple of hundred made - and the EP sold well in Germany on the back of another tour there later that year, driven and engineered by a lovely, friendly bloke, another Tim, whose commitment to the band both as driver and sound engineer was so total that we nicknamed him ‘Tim Herogod’ to distinguish him from Tim O’Tay. The band played at my 15th anniversary gig as Attila on September 8 1995 at the Garage in London alongside Blyth Power, radical comedian Mark Thomas and my old sparring partner Seething Wells and in early 1996 we did another swathe of gigs around the UK. Then it was time to record Barnstormer’s debut album.
In that year we did over 50 gigs together. I was really pleased with the way things were going but still, obviously, loved being a performance poet (and still had to earn a living: all band earnings were split, so nobody got that much) so was doing all my solo poetry gigs on top of the band ones. It was a very busy time. We chose Foel Studios in Llanfair Caereinion in the heart of Wales, and recorded our first album there in the summer of 1996 with the aforementioned Tim Herogod and studio owner Dave Anderson (one time bass player in Hawkwind and Amon Duul II) sharing engineering duties. With reference both to the furore in our home port and the medieval tinge to the music, I called it ‘The Siege of Shoreham’. Dan did a beautiful coat of arms for the cover and a great cartoon of the band for the inside sleeve and it was released later that year on Roundhead Records, my own label formed for the purpose, with Puffotter Platten doing the honours in Germany and, a bit later, East Side Records, old comrades from the GDR days, doing a vinyl version too.
It really was everything I had hoped it would be. Punky and powerful, but different: nobody sounded like Barnstormer. Opening with two medieval-punk instrumentals, ‘Bombarde’ and ‘The One That Got Away’ and then crossing from melodic punk to medieval-punk all the way through, with the Balkan-punk tinged ‘Sarajevo’, the bass recorder-led title track and two mandocello/recorder based acoustic instrumentals, ‘Worms’ and ‘The Torchbearer’ to add still more contrast. The centerpiece was without doubt the Diggers’ trilogy – and it ended with the defiant ‘And I Won’t Run Away’, my adaptation of a song written by an old musical hero of mine, former Doctors of Madness singer Richard Strange, a perennial set-closer in the live show. To keep the continuity with the other side of my work going, I put poems on there as bonus tracks: the already-mentioned ‘Zen Stalinist Manifesto’ and ‘Joseph Porter’s Sleeping Bag’ and the Bellocian anti Tory lament ‘Victoria Road’.
It got some good reviews, mainly in Germany, where there is a huge network of fanzines and political publications, and over the next few years we really established ourselves in the German underground scene with two tours a year, venturing into Holland and Austria as well. We did quite a few gigs in the UK in that initial period, including two appearances at Glastonbury, but then as now our main following was over the Channel: having established myself as a performance poet for fifteen years that was how I was seen in the UK, and given the vastly better way that bands were treated abroad both me and the rest of Barnstormer were quite happy for things to stay like that. From that day to this, we’ve played UK gigs that we knew would be special, and the rest of the time done our stuff over there.
And in 2000 a lot more people got to hear about Barnstormer because we had three songs in a cult German movie. I say ‘cult’. It certainly is cult, but it wasn’t supposed to be cult. It had a big budget, was produced by a big company and, apart from us, the soundtrack featured Blondie and the Saw Doctors among others: a well known actor, Eckhard Preuss, starred in it, and it was released in all the major cinemas throughout Germany.
For about a week.
Thereby hangs another funny tale.
It all started at a gig in Dortmund, organised by Benny Richter, who as the head of Terz Records had masterminded my two German solo releases in the early 90s and regularly organised shows for us in his home town. As we were setting up for a gig there in January 1998, he said ‘I’ve got some good news for you, John. A young filmmaker called Matthias Lehmann is going to include you and the band in his next movie. It’s a big production. It’ll get you lots of new fans. You’ll meet him later…’
Great, I thought – wonder what he has in mind? Then I got on with setting up, meeting friends old and new, having a few beers, chatting to the band, doing the gig. No Matthias. But after we’d finished playing and everything was winding down, Benny grabbed me. ‘Come and meet Matthias, John. He’s a bit worse for wear, but he wants to tell you about his film…’
I followed Benny and saw a young bloke lying under a table, absolutely paralytic. ‘Hello Attila!’ he slurred when he saw me. ‘I am going to make a film with you and your band! Big film – Bavaria Studios in Munich! It will be about a special day in my life, and you have an important part in it! I will be in touch soon!’
My initial reaction was understandably sceptical (less so when the promised contracts came through soon afterwards) but given the storyline of the film, this unusual first encounter with its director made perfect sense later on. If a James Bond epic is the ultimate action movie, then ‘Doppelpack’ is the ultimate inaction movie. The director himself said that his intention was ‘to portray everyday life in its banality’ and ‘to make a film using all the bits which other directors leave on the cutting room floor’.
He certainly succeeded.
It is indeed an autobiographical snippet, very much an industrial Ruhr-area film, full of the local slang: a day in the life of two punk friends, Hoffi and (Matthias) Lehmi. Hence the ‘double pack’: two inseparable mates, ‘two for the price of one’. While getting very pissed in a local bar they hear ‘And I Won’t Run Away’ by Barnstormer (called ‘Attila the Stockbroker and the Fabulous Fish Brothers’ in the film) on the radio, followed by an announcement that we are playing in another local bar the next day. They decide to go to the gig: indeed getting to the gig is their Holy Grail as they stumble through the rest of the evening and the following day in an inept alcoholic haze, looking forward to it and trying to round up people to go with them.
They have some more beer and try and walk home, but are too pissed, and end up sleeping in the buffalo park at Dortmund Zoo. The next morning they wake up, buy a crate of beer, wander round Dortmund with it for a bit, go to the park and fall asleep. They’re woken up when some kids playing Frisbee accidentally hits one of them in the testicles with a misdirected throw - that’s the ‘action’ in the film – then they wander about a bit more, find a picture of a pretty girl in a photo booth, try and look for her, can’t find her, get even more pissed and come to our gig, where, amazingly, she turns up and one of them gets off with her.
The climax of the film is the gig - Barnstormer playing ‘March of the Levellers’ and ‘Old Teenagers’ to an enthusiastic, cheering crowd. A couple of other minor things take place which I haven’t mentioned, but basically that’s it. It is a very enjoyable film, as long as you understand Ruhr area slang (or read the subtitles, which aren’t bad) and don’t mind watching a film in which absolutely nothing happens: the kind which is usually made on a tiny budget and shown in ‘art house’ cinemas.
But this one had a massive budget. Not only were all the band well paid, but all of us, along with my soon-to-be-wife Robina and stepson Tom, were flown to Munich, put up in a nice hotel, shown round the set of ‘Das Boot’ in the world famous Bavaria Film Studios, taken out to dinner and generally treated like royalty. The gig was filmed at a local venue, Feuerwerk (made to look like a club in Dortmund) we all had a good time and to round things off the whole shebang took place during the solar eclipse of August 1999, so we got to stand around outside one sunny afternoon while the world got spookily dark for five minutes. Then we came home and waited for the film’s release, interested to see what would happen.
What happened was this. It came out with a huge publicity splash and was shown in big corporate cinemas all over the country. Most of the reviews roared with disbelief that anyone would make a film where absolutely nothing happens apart from two punks getting pissed and going to a gig. The vast majority of the cinema-going public didn’t go, or if they did go, didn’t understand it: no blood, no guts, no nudity, no crime, no…..anything, really! A small minority of people (mainly blokes with one very close friend who loved beer and punk rock) absolutely ADORED it, to the point that in the years that followed I have been told literally hundreds of times by different people (usually pairs of blokes, usually pissed) that it is the BEST film EVER MADE. It lasted in most cinemas for about a week, apart from in Dortmund where it was a hit, and went to DVD very quickly. Despite being the ultimate flop in mainstream cinematic terms it gave, and gives, us increasing numbers of new fans. Many of whom turn up to gigs with one good mate, already pissed, and then get even more pissed. I’m sure that by now you get the, erm, picture…
If you ever get the chance, watch it. It is fun.
Especially if you’re a bloke with one really good mate, and you like going to punk rock gigs together and getting pissed.
Our second album ‘Just One Life’ came out in the same year as the film, once again on my own label Roundhead Records, with a vinyl version produced in Germany by Teenage Rebel Records. This one was definitely more punky than medieval, starting with ‘Haider!’ a warning about the rise of fascism in Austria, followed by ‘The Ghost Road’, the story of my father’s miraculous escape from death in World War One, ‘Game Boy/Rude Boy’, our first venture into ska and ‘Scumball Pinochet’, an anti-fascist musical tribute to my great heroes T.Rex. The only medieval tinge came on ‘The Worm & The Archer’ (you’ll hear about that bastard Archer in the football chapter). I won’t go through it all – for me, and thankfully for Robina too, the highlight of the album is the title track, a joyous punky celebration of our love. We were married on 20th October 2000, the day before my 43rd birthday.
Pressure of work and family life meant that Martin Fish left the band not long after the album came out, with Dan moving back to guitar: for the same reason Tim left as well, leaving me to play the recorder parts on my own (I do manage to play two at once on one number, but that’s just showing off!) McGhee and Dan have been ever-presents in Barnstormer, with the bass player the only one of the basic line-up to change – and our new bass player was Tommy Muir, a New Model Army fan from Hull, recently moved to the South Coast.
Musically Tommy was brilliant, with great backing vocals too, but there were too many times during his couple of years in the band when I thought back to the warning he gave me at our first meeting in Worthing. ‘Just to let you know John, I turn into a complete idiot after two pints.’ Things came to a head when he got so pissed that he lost his passport and we had to drive to Munich, about 200 miles in the opposite direction from where we needed to go, to get him an emergency one from the British Embassy! A really nice bloke, and it was lovely to see him at the Barnstormer 20th Anniversary gig at the Borderline in December 2014, but to be honest it was a good thing he left when he did.
His replacement was 17 year old David Beaken. At that time Robina was head of Popular Music at Brighton Tech, and David was one of her students, a fantastic bass player, and when we needed one, she suggested him. I was a bit worried about the responsibility of looking after one so young on tour (we needed to get permission from his parents!) but everything was fine and despite his age – he was immediately christened ‘Baby David’ and still has that moniker as he hits thirty – he fitted in perfectly, and has played with the Fish Brothers for years as well. His first gig was in Hannover: he was nervous as hell but delivered a great set. Afterwards, confronted with endless free beer, he got stuck in and was soon rolling around pissed. On his next visit to the bar he asked ‘Are you sure you want one of those again?’ He’d been drinking alcohol-free beer all night. The power of the mind.
As I had hoped, having a band meant I could play in parts of Europe where the language barrier meant my solo stuff wouldn’t work: we have made it to the Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary, France and Italy as well as Germany, Austria, Holland, Luxembourg and Switzerland, and have done quite a few concerts in Belgium alongside my old muckers Contingent. Our third album ‘Zero Tolerance’ was released in 2004, again on my own label with a vinyl release in Germany, and the latest, ‘Bankers & Looters’ in 2012, with the vinyl coming out in Holland. The later material is much more Clashy punk than medieval, but the live show still showcases all the old instruments and we still don’t sound like anybody else…
We continue to tour mainland Europe a couple of times a year, play a select few shows in England (including that 20th Anniversary one at the Borderline, a wonderful night) and to date are approaching 600 gigs since our debut in Oxford on Guy Fawkes Night 1994. David now shares bass playing duties with Jason ‘Blond Wanton’ Pegg, formerly of Clearlake and another superb musician.
The world is full of bands who argue, split up, reform, split up… I am so lucky to have found just the right bunch of people to play music with, with barely a cross word between us in all that time. To Martin, David, Jason, Tommy, Tim, very occasional bass players John Tugby, Paul Stapleton and the late, great ‘Protag’ Neish – and above all to ever-presents Dan & McGhee – thank you. It’s been fun for over 20 years. Here’s to many more.
And in the penultimate chapter you’ll find a postscript. On January 15, 2005, we got to Number 17 in the charts, and if teenypunks Busted hadn’t split up that week, we’d have been on ‘Top Of The Pops’. But we weren’t called Barnstormer. Read on!