I was now literally all over the place in the best possible sense of the term, both solo and with Barnstormer: not all my overseas jaunts were without complications, however. In spring 1994, after another winter trip to Holland for a spoken word tour, I went to Romania and Bulgaria with Henry Lawrence, a true English eccentric if ever there is one – physicist, baronet, juggler and indescribable singer-songwriter, he performs under the name Comrade Sir Henry. He was actually on a visit to help repair machinery at hospitals in Craiova and Sofia, but had managed to organise some impromptu gigs as well, and asked me if I fancied joining him. Since I’d never been to either of the above countries I was well up for it. I was in for rather a shock.

Romania is probably the only place I really don’t think I want to visit ever again. A country where even some of the academics - at least some of the ones I met - were so prejudiced against the Roma population that when, incapable of understanding the technical conversation they were having with Henry, I said I was going for a walk, they told me I mustn’t. ‘It’s not safe because of the gypsies.’ (Needless to say after that I went for a walk, met some gypsies, no problem.) The level of racism was disgusting: the food we had was as well, but I’m sure that was just bad luck. The gigs in Craiova were OK – I performed to some students, they understood most of it, and I accompanied Henry’s songs on violin – but I was pleased when we got a rickety old ferry across the Danube from Calafat, Romania to Vidin, Bulgaria, and headed for Sofia.

Sofia in 1994 was the place to go if you wanted bootleg CDs, fake fashion goods, dodgy DVDs, you name it: street sellers were everywhere. Henry’s work took him to the local cancer hospital, working on their radiotherapy machines in the company of a friendly local doctor called Angel, and I spent my time wandering round the city, ending up in the National Historical Museum trying to fathom out the Cyrillic script.

When he found out that, where possible, I always liked to see football matches in the countries I visited, Angel took me to see the local team CSKA Sofia against rivals Lokomotiv Plovdiv. The first thing that struck me was the catering. A lot of English fans moan about the standard of food in our grounds, but at CSKA they appeared to be selling just one item – sunflower seeds in little wraps of paper – and they were so popular that I thought I’d have a go. They tasted like… sunflower seeds. The kind you feed to budgies. And it wasn’t as though there was a food shortage – the street food in Sofia was delicious. As for the match, a lumbering Plovdiv midfielder flattened one of the home team players and, as one, the home end started shouting something which sounded to me like ‘C’est la vie!’ ‘No, John. It’s not that. It’s a very bad word in Bulgarian. It means something like ‘you sheepshagging peasant!” The match was very one-sided: as far as I remember, CSKA won 4-0.

But the strangest moment was the gig we did, if ‘gig’ you could call it. Angel arranged for us to play for the terminally ill patients in the cancer section of the hospital in Sofia. It was a horribly depressing place, and to be honest to do the kind of stuff we were doing there seemed kind of inappropriate. It may seem strange for me to say that, but it’s how I felt.

Almost immediately on my return I was booked to support Chumbawamba on their ‘Anarchy’ tour, promoting their sixth album. I’d always liked and respected them, and it was quite fun doing the whole tour bus thing, although I did get into an argument with singer Alice Nutter about my ‘Iron Men Of Rap’ poem: she said something to the effect that as a white male I had no right to criticise the rap scene. I said bollocks. I’ve never gone along with that kind of ‘cultural relativist’ argument, and feel the same today in the context of Islamic extremism: I’ll have a go at homophobia, misogyny and downright fascist attitudes whatever their sources. Liberal guilt is not a good basis for a political standpoint. It was a storm in a teacup though, and all was sorted out.

I went down very well at the gigs (despite being billed as ‘Atiller the Stockbroker’ on the tour posters!) and very much enjoyed Chumbawamba’s sets. Three years later, having signed to EMI - itself an irony given the stick they handed out to New Model Army for doing so in the Eighties - they were to have their mega hit ‘Tubthumping’, which propelled them to the top of the charts. Lots of Crass-style anarchists yelled ‘sellout!’ I was happy for them. But then I don’t expect everyone to follow my DIY path if they can sign to a major and stay true to themselves – I didn’t have a problem with The Clash signing to CBS, or NMA or legendary anti fascists The Blaggers, with whom I shared many stages in the Eighties and early Nineties (RIP Matty) signing to EMI. It’s what you do that counts, and both the Blaggers and Chumbawamba used corporate money for sound political ends. Chumbawamba’s acapella ‘English Rebel Songs’ album was excellent and they turned into a fine folk ensemble in later years – I’m just sad they split up before Thatcher died. They should have outlived her.

Otway and I were still gigging together quite regularly, doing sporadic bursts of ‘Cheryl’: in late 1994 I returned to Vancouver for the Writers’ Festival, and in 1995 I went back to my nine year old primary school roots again with a show in honour of my original inspiration, the great Sussex poet Hilaire Belloc. ‘Bellocose’, recorded live at the Edinburgh Festival and broadcast by Radio Four as part of their ‘Poets on Poets’ series, was a warts-and-all tribute, celebrating the way he took on the Establishment and loathed the dehumanising effects of capitalism, while recognising the reactionary nature of some of his politics, above all the vexed question of his dogmatic Catholicism and anti-Semitism, very much a product of its time and itself mired in personal contradictions. The radio programme spawned a host of ‘Bellocose’ gigs all over the country for the next couple of years and, when asked, I still perform this tribute today. Belloc’s ‘Cautionary Tales’ and satirical political poems are my favourite poems of all time and I feel a great personal identification with him in many ways. (Robina would say it’s because we’re both loud, bombastic, confrontational and always sure we’re right even when we’re obviously not. I couldn’t possibly comment.)

More solo trips overseas. I made contact with Fermin Muguruza, radical Basque nationalist activist and singer with the utterly brilliant and Clash-inspired Kortatu, one of my favourite overseas bands ever (by the time I met him they had split up, but he has had loads of other projects including Negu Gorriak and Brigadistak Sound System and remains a powerful musical and political activist to this day, hugely well known in mainland Europe and South America). He invited me to his home in the Basque Country and offered to organise a gig: I ended up playing in a packed bar in the nationalist stronghold of Hernani with pictures of Basque militant prisoners on the wall, to an audience who appeared to love my stuff even though they didn’t speak English! I returned the favour: when Fermin toured the UK with his band Brigadistak Sound System in June 2000, I put them on at the Barn Theatre in Southwick and over a hundred Basques emerged from the Sussex woodwork (along with many enthusiastic locals) and turned up to welcome him.

In 1997 for the first time I went to the Republic of Ireland: to Tralee with Otway, playing at their town festival. In a wheelchair. It was just after the German tour debacle described above, when I re-ruptured my already ruptured hamstring on stage with Barnstormer in Bremen, and could barely walk: being pushed around (and nearly off) stage by Otway while in a wheelchair is not something I’d recommend to anyone. On a far more serious note, though, two or three weeks in a wheelchair gave me a tiny inkling of the kind of challenges disabled people face every day, and of the attitudes of the able bodied. Real food for thought. But I was about to have far more than just food for thought. I was about to have, quite literally, a life-changing experience.

 

Joy and I had never lived together, and the difference in our ages and lifestyles meant that this had always suited us both: she had made me very welcome in her home, and I had become incredibly fond of her daughter Mary, son Jake, grandsons Francis and Adam and granddaughter Amy (especially Francis, who by then was aged about eight and was like the son I had never had). From the early to mid Eighties onwards I had had three homes: the road, Steve’s flat in Harlow, and Joy’s - three and a bit if you count my regular visits to my mum’s to see her, watch the football, catch up with my mates and the local music scene and go fishing. Peripatetic and then some, but it suited me down to the ground. I was very happy.

But after I bought my harbourside bungalow something changed. I still spent a lot of time on the road, and a lot of time at Joy’s, but when I was in Southwick, if I’m honest, I started to feel lonely. I was getting on for forty, and when I was in Southwick I felt like a bachelor living in a bungalow. On one level this was ridiculous: Joy regularly came down to see me, I was incredibly busy gigging, I hardly had time to feel like that. But I did. Part of me wondered what it would be like to have a ‘normal’ kind of family life, to be part of a full-time, ordinary couple, to be with someone of my own age, with a similar past, someone I could look to the future with, grow old with. I never, ever thought there was anyone like that out there for me and had always coped fine with those feelings, though they never entirely went away. Joy and I were happy, I was part of her family.

Then, out of the blue, my life changed for ever.

In the autumn of 1997 I’d had a call from Tony ‘Dusty’ Miller, a teacher at Lancing College, asking me to come and perform for the students there: he told me that his friend Robina Blann, a local teacher and lay preacher, had recommended me as a performance poet who would go down well with the kids. I’d met Robina briefly a couple of times through my mother, and she had come to my gigs: Mum and Robina were great friends, both church organists and piano teachers and both involved in the same ecumenical church group. Robina rang me, saying she was coming to the Lancing College show, and offered me a lift. On October 15, 1997, she knocked on my front door. I opened it to see a huge Volvo sitting outside. (Completely logical: she had four kids who constantly needed ferrying around.)

‘Hi Robina’ I said. I saw the car, and thought I’d make one of my usual cavalier quips. ‘Bloody hell, what’s that, a f***ing hearse?’

‘Well, if it is, I’m driving, so it must be your funeral.’

I was really very impressed: something clicked, there and then. In the course of the evening I became even more impressed, and by the time we said goodbye that night, having spent a couple of hours after the school gig talking in the local pub, I realised with a growing mixture of excitement, disbelief and foreboding that something had happened which I had always thought absolutely impossible. I had met somebody whom I knew could be absolutely right for me, for the rest of my life, and it was already apparent that she felt exactly the same. But she was married with four kids, and I had my own commitment.

Robina and I didn’t see or contact each other again for another two months: we were both supremely aware of the amount of pain we could cause to the people we loved. But in mid December I had a gig in Hastings, and I rang and asked her if she’d like to take me. That was that.

I know I caused Joy terrible anguish and as well as hurting her so deeply I lost the respect of her family: we haven’t spoken since. It makes me sad, but I understand why. For Robina things were cataclysmic too: ever the responsible, caring mother, she had hidden the extent of her unhappiness in her marriage from her children, and it was a bombshell. All our lives changed forever. I now have four stepchildren, Tom, Joe, Rose and Patrick. When Robina and I were married they were aged between 15 and 11: they’re now in their mid twenties to early thirties, Rose married to Marcus, Joe to Nicola, Patrick with his long term partner Kim. All doing their own thing, happily independent, my relationship with each different as all family relationships are. I’ve been their stepdad for 15 years, and I’ve always done my best: it’s not for me to say how good that best as been. I love them all. I love their mother even more.

As mentioned right at the beginning of this book, Robina and I live in the house I grew up in, built by my great-great uncle in 1897, owned by various family members ever since until it was sold by my mother and stepfather in 1974. Incredibly, it came back on the market just at the moment we were selling our respective houses and looking for a place of our own. We were married on October 20, 2000. We’ll be together… yes, just like it says in the marriage service, though she’s a Christian and I’m not.

Till death us do part.

 

And soon after that huge change in my personal life came along, so did another in my working world: not in the same stratosphere in terms of human experience, but a major development nevertheless. I’d been hearing a lot about a phenomenon called ‘the internet’, especially from my friend Steve Drewett, who was a very early user and kept telling me what a useful tool it would be for me: by 1999 I knew it was time I got connected. My Southwick friend Miranda’s son Aidan was an early Mac advocate and salesman (he now has his own very successful company) and he got me set up and explained the basics. IT has never interested me beyond the bits necessary to help me with my work, but it was soon obvious that this new world was absolutely tailor-made for a one-man cottage industry punk poet/musician with a global cult following, and I have done my best with it ever since.

As anyone from my kind of age group knows, all through the 80s and 90s everything was done by telephone, fax machine and post, and it was all very labour intensive. From the very beginning as Attila I would hungrily gather all possible contacts for gigs, media opportunities etc in a book and spend hours on the phone chasing them up. Once the London agencies, main source of university gigs, had lost interest in me I’d get copies of the latest directories containing the numbers of all the students’ union social secretaries and call them methodically, grab all the touring venue contact numbers out of the ads in the NME and call them too. Then I’d add them to a database for future use, with a ‘yes’, ‘maybe’ or ‘not now’ added (I never gave up completely!)

Promoters were sent rolls of posters and ‘Walkerprint’ publicity photos stuffed into envelopes with press releases: fans added addresses to mailing lists at gigs, then got postal mailouts. Imagine the time and cost involved in addressing and stamping over a thousand envelopes and printing the leaflets to put inside them with details of gigs, new books/records/CDs etc (some people reading this won’t need to imagine it: you’ll have done it!) And if you wanted to discuss a prospective faraway tour, say in Australia, you had to stay up late and give them a ring, or exchange faxes in the small hours. The life of a DIY poet/musician could be a hard slog in those days.

How different things are now. Promotional material for a gig? Email. Just attach a jpeg and a biog, click and gone: many promoters will print your poster too if you send a master. Publicity material? Building a fanbase? Personal website, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, downloads, countless music hosting sites, internet radio, email, you name it. Fond memory of gig comes into old fan’s mind. Then: ‘I wonder what Attila is doing now? I saw him in 1983. Is he still going?’ Ponder briefly, move to next thought. Now? Google. Seconds later: Facebook page, www.attilathestockbroker.com with poems, songs, gig list and online merchandise store, Youtube videos, Wiki page, Twitter feed, literally thousands of other pages of varying usefulness. And if you want to contact someone in a different time zone, you email them. They’ll respond when they wake up.

Countless people who saw me in my music press ‘flavour of the month’ period in the early Eighties and lost touch once I slipped out of mainstream view have resurfaced in the last few years. ‘Great to see you’re still going, Attila!’ Makes me laugh that anyone can think that, having averaged about 100 gigs a year for 35 years, but hey – welcome back. As for mailing lists, forget addressing a thousand envelopes. One click on an email list, a few posts on Facebook, a couple of tweets, job done.

The internet was MADE for people like me. But although I can manage the simple stuff (social media, email etc) without any problems I am still the exact opposite of a ‘teccy’. HTML, and associated IT-related acronyms, remain a mystery. My initial website was set up by Klaus Fleischer, TV Smith’s webmaster, in 1999: soon afterwards Marcus Williamson took over the job and has been in charge of it from that day to this. Thanks so much, Marcus.

‘The Rat-Tailed Maggot and Other Poems’ my third book, came out in 1998, again illustrated by Womble: it was the first one I published myself, and it sold out of its 2,000 print run long ago. It had definitely been influenced by the work I had done on Hilaire Belloc for my Radio 4 ‘Bellocose’ show and subsequent tour: the first eight poems indulged my lifelong fascination with what most people call ‘creepy-crawlies’ to the full, a kind of follow-up to Belloc’s ‘The Bad Child’s Book Of Beasts’. Here’s the one about the Rat-Tailed Maggot’s more commonly observed larval cousin…

THE MAGGOT

 

The Maggot’s not for recipes, at least that’s my advice.

It’s true that he looks rather like a wriggly grain of Rice

But don’t use him in Puddings, don’t serve him up with Curry

For if you do, your Dinner Guests will leave in quite a hurry…

He’s best for catching Barbel, Dace, Perch, Gudgeon, Bream & Bleak.

(To make him wriggle when it’s cold, just warm him in your Cheek.)

His Pupa’s called a Caster, and is used for Castor Oil*

That’s why it tastes revolting and makes Small Children recoil…

And, after several days as Caster, turns into a Fly

(an Insect you’ll find on Neglected Pets after they die)

So if you don’t like the Maggot, I have only this to say.

Just make sure that the Children feed the Hamster every day…

 

*this may actually not be true

This collection also featured other poems you’ll have read here including ‘The Zen Stalinist Manifesto’ and ‘Comic in a Basket’ – and if you think the maggotty poems are revolting, they pale into insignificance compared with ‘Joseph Porter’s Sleeping Bag’. I’m not including that one. If you want to read or listen to it, it’s out there on the internet, still festering.

That year, 1998, my mum did her last ever tour abroad with me: TV Smith and I were touring Germany, mum came too. Tim has done a series of tour diaries chronicling this and many other amusing and unlikely situations: they come highly recommended. His writing is as brilliant as his songs. The next chapter of this book contains my full tribute to my mum: she was on top form in Germany but a horrible, horrible disease was just round the corner. Little did we know…

I decided to compile the best songs and poems from my early years as Attila on two CDs, and in 1999 they were released: ‘The Pen & The Sword’ and ‘Poems Ancient & Modern’, both as ever on my own Roundhead Records label. Solo gigs at home and abroad continued apace, Barnstormer were in full flow and preparing for our second album and my personal life was undergoing a huge transformation: I barely had time to think. I’d never learned to drive, being both committed to the idea of public transport and unsure of whether I was safe to be let loose on the roads - but a combination of the increasing piles of books, CDs and T shirts I was lugging around on trains in my sagging rucksack and the desire to help Robina with the practicalities of family life made me decide to give it a go. I had to give it five goes, but at the fifth attempt, on Feb 28, 2000, I passed, and I’ve never looked back: with the amount of merch I have these days there’s no other way! Oh, and I’ve got a really green car. A black green car, naturally.

2000 was even more manic, my third Australian tour sandwiched between loads of English gigs (including a big anti-racist festival with the Angelic Upstarts) and a solo trip back to Belfast and Derry, a big football event in Rotterdam linked to Euro 2000, recording Barnstormer’s second album, summer festivals including my regular Glastonbury appearances and my 20th Anniversary gig at the Garage in London on Sept 8. Oh, and our wedding on 20th October! The simple fact of gigging solidly for twenty years had given me a regular circuit and a huge database to work from, in the UK and abroad, and Barnstormer was enabling me to take my songs to place where the solo set wouldn’t work. There would be even more opportunities as the new millennium progressed, the massively increasing range of the internet introducing me to new contacts and reconnecting me with old ones. And, through the internet, a new challenge was about to come up: one which rock’n’roll mythology views as the biggest of all, but for me was simply a chance to see a new country at first hand, and decide what I made of it. To leftists everywhere the very home of the devil, to music fans a hugely influential and inspirational country: for fuck’s sake, it had given the world The Velvet Underground. As a leftist and a music fan it was time for me to balance the one against the other.

Yes, Robina and I were off to the good old USA.

 

It came about via my old friend TV Smith. Bryan Swirsky, a New York punk promoter, had got in touch with Tim asking him to do a tour of the East Coast, and he had suggested to me that we do it together: we were promised backing by celebrated New York independent radio station WFMU, who were big fans of both of us. The Spunk Lads, a local band who loved my stuff, said they would back me on a few songs. Seemed like a great idea. Brian sorted 11 shows – off we went.

Tim, Robina and I arrived in a sweltering New York on the Fourth of July, 2002, ten months after the attack on the World Trade Centre. The aftermath could be seen everywhere: increased police presence, loads of American flags with slogans like ‘These Colours Don’t Run’. I had written a new song, centred on the ironic fact that the attacks were on the same day as the US-inspired coup against Pinochet in 1973…

DEATH OF A SALESMAN

 

You were there in Chile, 11 September ‘73

Twenty eight years to the day - what a dreadful irony

Victor Jara singing ‘midst the tortured and the dead

White House glasses clinking as Allende’s comrades bled…

 

You were there in ‘79 in the hills above Kabul

Teaching a bunch of psychopaths the fastest way to kill

Just pawns in your global strategy, another little right wing war

But now you reap just what you sow - the monster’s at the door

 

CHORUS

And you don’t understand why those people are so angry

And you don’t understand why they don’t go shopping too

And you don’t understand why your garish colours blind them

Dismiss, exploit and bully - then you wonder at their hate

So many cruel deaths

But these are different, these are American

Now death counts - death of a salesman

 

You use the world as your sweatshop on a bare subsistence wage

Then along come medieval murderers to exploit the people’s rage

And Europe takes the profits too, then grovels on its knees

Saying ‘after you, you rule the world, so do just as you please’

 

CHORUS

 

We don’t need your religion, whether Allah, money or God

We won’t cheer on your armies, won’t wield your avenging rod

We stand for justice, for the future,

for the millions of women and men

Who see through the lies and work for the day

when sanity rules again

 

CHORUS

I had a quick rehearsal with the Spunk Lads, who really had done a good job, and then Robina and I had a bit of time to look around the city. The first two gigs were at the Bowery Poetry Project, hosted by celebrated New York spoken word performer Bob Holman: there didn’t appear to be much advertising and we got a small but enthusiastic crowd. Then Arlene’s Grocery, a legendary rock n roll venue: myself, Tim and about three bands, minimal door charge, punters asked whom they’d come to see, acts paid (peanuts) accordingly. Bit like new band night in the Eighties at the Rock Garden in London. The Spunk Lads backing me were great, though!

In Hoboken, New Jersey, we had a thrash metal band on with us - again not many people. Tim and I weren’t anywhere near the tour target of covering our costs from the money we were getting: for a first tour that was all were expecting, the basis on which we’d agreed to come. It is our living after all. I was getting disappointed with the turnouts and the way things had been organised, but Bryan and his partner were good, friendly hosts, so I kept my mouth shut and hoped things would improve.

And at the next gig they did, big time. We played Manitoba’s, owned by ‘Handsome’ Dick Manitoba, singer of legendary NYC punks The Dictators, on a Monday night: the advertising was great, punk icon Jayne County was spinning the discs, the place was rammed and it was fantastic, the best gig I’ve done in three US tours. After playing with the band I climbed on to the bar and did a real old fashioned ranting poetry set: Tim was brilliant, wonderful night. And then to the home of the New York Antifolk scene, the Sidewalk Café. Surely this was going to be even better! But… another enthusiastic, but very small crowd. A real shame.

Consecutive gigs in New York meant plenty of time during the day to explore, and of course we did. Perusing the subway map, I saw Rockaway Beach, immortalised by the Ramones: punk rock pilgrimage beckoned. But there were several subway stops all along it. I asked some builders working in the lobby of Bryan’s apartment which was the best one to get off at, and armed with that information we were on our way. As the train pulled in, Robina and I thought it looked a bit rough to be one of New Yorkers’ favourite beach destinations, but, hey, that’s what we’d been told…

Those New York builders had obviously thought it would be funny to dump two Limey innocents right in the middle of the hood.

Coming out of the station, we found ourselves in the middle of a huge housing project, the kind of place really luridly violent rap videos get filmed in. We walked for about twenty minutes and stood out like a sore thumb – everyone was looking at us. ‘This can’t be right’ I said to Robina, but it was a lovely sunny day and there weren’t that many people about, so we thought we’d make for the beach, which we did. It was more or less deserted and there were used needles lying about. ‘This ISN’T right!’ we said to each other, and my street sense told me that we’d better get our arses (or rather asses) back to that station pretty promptly, which we did.

When we arrived back at Bryan’s and told him the story he looked really shocked – he’s a social worker, and we’d been dumped in a place where social workers only go in packs. They may have thought they were just having a laugh, but those builders were bastards, and we were lucky.

Our other memorable New York experience on that first tour was infinitely less dangerous, if more embarrassing for my wife. Another musical pilgrimage (Lou Reed and Ramones again) took us to Coney Island, where we went to the acquarium and, wandering round it, came upon an enormous walrus right at the front of his tank, surrounded by a large group of onlookers. He was rubbing his leg between his flippers.

Hang on, I thought. Walruses don’t have legs.

‘BLOODY HELL!’ I said to Robina, far, far too loudly. ‘THAT’S HIS F***ING KNOB!’

The people around us laughed. Robina looked at me despairingly.

(In my defence, it was enormous.)

Sadly, the rest of the gigs on that tour followed the pattern already established: Manitoba’s proved to be the exception rather than the rule. I got rather shirty with Bryan, and I’m sorry I did: he was only doing his best. TV Smith tells me that when Bryan organised stuff for him later it went a lot better, so maybe it was just me. Anyway, at that point I’d more or less put the US in the same bin as Romania: been there, seen it, don’t need to go back. And then I met David Rovics.

 

It was the late Pete Crook, Brentford and Bragg fan and avid seeker-out of new radical music, who put me on to him: the power of that new world, the internet, one click and you’re there. A radical singer/songwriter in the Phil Ochs mould, very folky and hippy-looking when I first encountered him (that would change) with incredibly sharp, intelligent, inspirational songs: wonderful, incisive lyrics allied to memorable tunes. I emailed him, we swapped lyrics and ideas and it became obvious that in terms of DIY organisational skills and general determination to spread the word on our own terms we were blood brothers. We decided to team up: I organised our first UK tour together for the spring of 2002. (The first of no less than 14 to date, in the UK, US and mainland Europe.)

That first tour was good, but is eclipsed in my memory by the second one I set up for us, which came just as the Iraq War against Saddam Hussein had begun, ‘victory’ had been claimed by Bush and Blair and Iraq occupied. Some victory! The deaths of tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis: the turning of their country into a brutal, sectarian charnelhouse, huge swathes of it currently ruled by the unspeakable fascists of Islamic State. And the justification for this murderous carnage? It was alleged that Saddam had ‘weapons of mass destruction’ - later proven not to be the case. Even more ludicrously, George Bush had claimed that Saddam, a Baa’thist and avowed secularist who repressed Islamism with psycopathic force and to whom Al Qaeda was a deadly enemy, had been involved in the attack on the World Trade Centre. That’s rather like claiming that Hitler’s Third Reich had been backed by the Jews. It says a lot about the cretinous insularity of large swathes of the USA that a majority of people there believed this nonsense.

Over a million marched against that war in London, thousands more in other British cities, millions more across the world. But Blair took not one blind bit of notice. Democracy, eh? Blair should be in The Hague on trial for war crimes, not a bloody Middle East Peace Envoy.

On March 19, 2003, I was in Knaresborough, North Yorkshire, while in the North doing a series of gigs. I love history and have always used the daytimes while on tour to visit places of interest: I had gone there because I knew that the mastermind of the Gunpowder Plot in 1605, Guy Fawkes (‘the only man to enter Parliament with honest intentions’) had lived there, and the castle had been besieged by the Parliamentary forces during the English Civil War.

The previous evening the British parliament, including most of the ruling Labour Party, had - in one of the most craven acts in our political history - voted to support Bush and Blair’s war, despite the huge demonstrations and the opinion polls which showed the vast majority of the British public was opposed to it. I’d gone for a pint in the Mother Shipton Inn by Mother Shipton’s Cave and as I sat down with my drink I saw a plaque on the table in front of me. ‘This table belonged to Guy Fawkes during his time in Knaresborough’ it read. In the next twenty minutes I wrote this song, and sang it to Robina down the phone later that day.

Now Blair’s gone I’ve changed the chorus to ‘Aneurin Bevan, your party’s been stolen/The time to reclaim it is nigh’. It’s still ‘New Labour, just fuck off and die’ though. I’m not writing the Labour Party off: it’s Blair’s vision of ‘New Labour’ I find so contemptible, the idea that the once great party which built the Welfare State should become a pale pink version of the Tories to placate the likes of Rupert Murdoch. We want Old Labour back. A party which stands up for the poor and dispossessed, instead of worrying itself sick what the money markets and the Tory press will say, and doesn’t suck up to reactionary scumbags like Bush. I still hope. Maybe I shouldn’t, but I do.

In an age where Islamic State in particular, and Islamic fundamentalism in general, is wreaking such havoc, it is worth pointing out that since the 1970s the West has been energetically backing these lunatics all over the place, and, latterly, deliberately deposing the secular dictators who were bulwarks against them. I remember ITN reporter Sandy Gall’s dispatches from Afghanistan, hailing the antecedents of the Taliban as ‘freedom fighters’, while Ronald Reagan called them ‘the moral equivalent of America’s founding fathers’. The US started funding Islamist extremists in Afghanistan BEFORE the Russians invaded: the socialist government there was instigating land reform, educating women and abolishing child marriage and the West were giving guns and money to people who threw acid in women’s faces and planted bombs in schools. I’ll never forget this quote from an Afghan woman doctor:

‘Life was good then. Every girl could go to high school and university. We could go wherever we wanted and wear what we liked. It all started to go wrong when the muhajedin started winning. They used to kill teachers and burn schools. We were terrified. It was funny and sad to think that these were the people the West were supporting…’

Funny? Sad? It was murderous, imperialist geopolitics: all in the name of ‘anticommunism’: backing medievalist lunatics on the basis of that sad old fallacy, ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’. And remember that when the funding started there were no Russians in Afghanistan, just a modernising Afghan government doing many of the things the West would welcome there today!

The ‘collapse of communism’ in the late 80s took away the secular socialist alternative for millions of exploited people of Muslim background, increasing the attractiveness of radical Islam as an ideology of so called ‘liberation’.

After this the West facilitated the rise of Islamic State in Iraq by deposing Saddam and in Syria by arming Islamist rebels against the secular Assad. They bombed to oblivion the substantial number of ordinary Libyans who supported Gaddafi and handed their country over to competing Islamist militias. No, I’m not saying that any of these dictators were good people, but I am saying that life in all the countries they ruled has got a hell of a lot worse for just about everyone there since the West engineered their overthrow, and that the West has quite literally shot itself in the foot at the same time by paving the way for the Islamists whom they claim to hate so much to gain control. Anyone care to disagree?

Anyway, back to David Rovics and that tour in 2003. I was fired up and angry, so was he: we were almost chronicling the war day by day. His most topical song of very many was without doubt ‘Operation Iraqi Liberation’, which is what the clueless Bush propagandists had called the attack on that hapless country for a few hours - until they realised their acronymic mistake!

‘Operation Iraqi Liberation

What does that spell?

Operation Iraqi Liberation…

O, I, L!’

Says it all really. We were a great contrast: though his words spit fire he is polite, quiet and melodic. I’m not. Some of his audience thought I was too loud and rude: a few of mine perhaps that he was a bit of a hippy. But the gigs went really well, and we knew we were a good team: he invited me to tour the US with him, and so, in March 2004, Robina and I went back.

The tour was due to start on March 5th in Minneapolis, so I booked a flight which would give us a day or so to relax and recover from jetlag before we got going. I chose Icelandair: a couple of hours’ stop in Reykavik, at least we could say we’d been to Iceland. But the plane was delayed, we missed the connection and got a free night there in a lovely hotel, courtesy of the airline: we wandered around a very clean city with steam coming out of the ground, no trees and unbelievably expensive, utterly disgusting beer. (They seem to have dealt with the bankers well though: good on Iceland for that!) The delay meant that we lost the planned day’s rest and had to dash through snow-covered Minneapolis straight to the gig, jetlag in full swing: normally I’d deal with jetlag by applying several pints of decent ale to it in quick succession, but that plan was foiled by the fact that the gig was in a church.

David had explained to me about this. Lots of progressive gigs in the US take place in Universalist and Congregational churches: the Right certainly doesn’t have the monopoly on religion there that a lot of UK Lefties would probably assume. The acoustics were great. There was a good crowd. But there wasn’t any beer (at future church gigs I’d smuggle some in with me) and it wasn’t the kind of place the punks would come: lots of nice, earnest, middle aged Lefties and a few younger people. The occasional rude word wasn’t a problem, however, and we went down just fine. That description covers the gigs in Madison and Detroit – they were in churches too. I knew that not many people in the States knew my stuff, but I knew there were some, nearly all from the punk scene, and I got the impression that perhaps they simply wouldn’t have known I was there, because of the venues and networks involved.

There was one place where they did, though - a community centre in Pittsburgh, where there was a healthy turnout of punk and skinhead Attila fans and a bit of a rock ‘n’ roll atmosphere. The others were in folk clubs, cafes, community centres, a high school, a couple of universities and – hooray! – in St Louis, in the taproom of a small independent brewery: the huge surge in American ‘craft beer’ was just beginning at that time.

Everywhere apart from Pittsburgh the audiences were very… nice. Much less beer-sodden and a lot more ‘polite’ than in the UK (even at the brewery gig!) Respectable radicals, a bit shocked by my energy, passion, punk thrash mandola and use of language, but appreciative nevertheless. I hardly ever use the word ‘nice’ but that is the only adjective that seems right to describe it. I didn’t feel I’d really connected with my core audience, somehow, but I’m not complaining at all: it was just very different to any tour I’d done before. David was an absolutely superb organiser and a great host, everything ran smoothly from a financial point of view and a video done of my set at the Heartland Café in Chicago was so good I released it as my first DVD.

Then we did another three UK tours together, plus a few gigs in Holland: and in 2006, I went back to the States once more, this time to the West Coast, David’s side of the country since he lives in Portland, Oregon. This time David made more of a conscious effort to connect with the punk and burgeoning craft beer scene, and there were cracking gigs at the Ukiah Brewery in Ukiah, the Edinburgh Castle in San Francisco and anarchist publisher/distributor AK Press’s headquarters in Oakland, California alongside the churches, community venues and universities: at many of the other gigs there was a craft brewery nearby, which I’d sample with gusto. (American beers are rarely below 7% and often well above it, though, so I had to be careful before gigs.) David drove me to the very door of the superb Sierra Nevada brewery in Chico, California, where I was hoping for a look round, but it was closed. Never mind…

It’s funny really. When I told people in England I was going to tour the US, people would say to me ‘Watch yourself, John, those rednecks have got guns, you know!’ as though I was booked to play a string of suburban sports bars in the Deep South or something. I am more or less certain that I didn’t meet a single right wing American during any of my three tours. Now there’s an achievement.

Will I go back? I don’t know. It’s a huge place, and to be honest I felt a bit lost there: the network of autonomous social centres that exist all over Europe, or even of friendly pubs that we have in the UK, doesn’t seem to exist. If alternative performers and organisers have to use churches for their gigs, no disrespect to the churches but there’s something wrong in the scene as far as I’m concerned. But if David invites me again, I’m reckon I will. As long as the brewery gigs outnumber the church ones by at least 3 to 1!

His songs are brilliant, and he fits in perfectly there (as I say, he’s polite, sings beautifully, is a wonderful guitarist, doesn’t swear and doesn’t mind playing places where there is no beer – although deprive him of his coffee and he goes nuts). Since that last US trip we have done another six tours here together, the last in the UK in 2011 and in Denmark in 2013: we’ve taken the brilliant Welsh-based singer Tracey Curtis and my gravel-voiced Aussie alt country mate Rory Ellis round with us on a tour each as well. I’ve had an effect on David too: the hippy shirts are gone, he dresses in black these days, and he’s been known to have a beer or two alongside his hippy herbs. After fourteen tours together we’ve given it a rest for a bit, but he’ll be playing Glastonwick this year, as he has many times in the past, and I’m sure we’ll be back on the road together again at some point. Cheers for all the good times, comrade. I’m glad I took the piss out of your hippy shirts: you’re the best radical black-clad-hippy-folk-punk singer on the planet.

 

New millennium well under way, new challenges always afoot: I could go on and on, but I won’t. I’ve talked a lot about recent years in the later stages of this book. It’s time to start tying a few loose ends up now, ready for the final three chapters which have specific themes running parallel with everything else…

In early February 2003 I released the imaginatively-named ‘Live in Belfast’ solo spoken/word album on my Roundhead label (though the front cover was a photo of me in New York taken by Robina). It’s still available online and at gigs to this day. To commemorate the late, great Joe Strummer, whose influence runs like a vein though this book and the lives of millions and who tragically died on Dec 22nd, 2002, I organised ‘Joe Strummer Remembrance Sunday’ at the Concorde in Brighton on 9th November 2003. We raised £2,140 for Strummerville, the charity set up in his memory.

More gigs together in the UK and Europe with my old friend and inspiration, acoustic punk poet Patrik Fitzgerald: likewise with my Aussie alt-country mate Rory Ellis and Geoff Berner, the astonishingly original klesmer-punk accordionist/songwriter from Vancouver. Invited by the British Council to European Championship hosts Portugal in 2004 for some football-related performances: as you’ll find out in the chapter after next, that wasn’t a problem! Barnstormer third album ‘Zero Tolerance’ released. 2005: 25th anniversary BBC Radio 4 programme, a ‘Poetry Please’ special hosted by Ian McMillan called ‘Giving It Lip’: 25th Anniversary gig at the Concorde in Brighton as part of a big UK tour. 2006: toured Holland with Penny Rimbaud from Crass. Weird. Supported The Fall in Antwerp. Really weird: Mark E Smith detuned his own band’s instruments on stage. Apparently he does that a lot. First of three solo poetry/music appearances in Norway (Trondheim and Oslo) alongside Patrik Fitzgerald, spawning my ‘Live in Norway’ CD released in 2007 (Crispin Glover Records). And October 2007 saw my 50th birthday. Robina surprised me with a wonderful book full of messages from friends and fellow-travellers from all over the world.

Also in October 2007 I was due to be doing another US tour with David Rovics, but I had to cancel it. I have blown out very, very few gigs in my life, and that is the only time I have done so with a tour. If I’m a bit ill, I get there and do my stuff, and up until then the only ones I’d missed were when I was literally flat on my back unable to get up or, as in the great storm of 1987, when I was stuck on a train all night on the way to Bournemouth after a tree fell on the line (I entertained a literally captive audience). But when I cancelled that tour it was the easiest decision in the world.

 

In May 2004, just after we returned from that second US tour, my mum was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s Disease. The whole of the next chapter is the poem I wrote for her in late 2009 as she went though the last stages of that heartbreaking illness: I wrote it quite simply to help her remember who she was, helped by the unbelievably insightful things she said about how her brain felt as the disease progressed. I am happy to say that, published in pamphlet form in 2010, this poem raised over £2000 for the Alzheimer’s Society and was featured on BBC Radio 4’s ‘Woman’s Hour’ on Mothering Sunday 2011, repeated on ‘Pick of the Week’. (Radio 4 will have me on as long as I’m talking about anything except politics, it seems.) Robina and I resolved that Mum would never go into a home, and she didn’t: with our help, the dedicated support of my stepfather John Stanford and the invaluable assistance of local social services she remained at home until a few days before she died, just over 6 years later.

Of course, I carried on writing and gigging: it’s not just my living, it’s my life. For the first couple of years things weren’t too bad: we managed to get Mum prescribed the drug Aricept very early in the diagnosis, which meant that her mental deterioration was far slower than is so often the case, and with Robina’s support – she stopped coming to gigs with me much of the time, later on almost all the time, so she could be there for my mum – I could carry on touring overseas. But by 2007 things were getting difficult: Mum needed me there regularly to keep her rooted, a long tour outside the UK was out of the question, and hence the decision about the US visit.

 

In the UK and the more easily accessible parts of mainland Europe things carried on of course, thanks to Robina’s help. In 2008 I published ‘My Poetic Licence’, my sixth book of poems (I’ve missed one out but you’ll hear about it.) 2000 copies arrived at our front door and as I write this in January 2015 there are about 100 left. I did a special ‘best of nearly 30 years’ compilation CD, ‘Spirit of the Age’ to go with it, a limited edition of 1,000: they went ages ago. More and more summer festivals were springing up all over England and Wales, and I was, and still am, doing loads of them: as well as Glastonbury and, of course, Glastonwick, in recent years I’ve done Beautiful Days, Wychwood, Reading, Latitude, Bearded Theory, Shambala, Rebellion, Strummercamp, Strawberry Fair in Cambridge, Musicport in Whitby, the Cathedral Quarter Festival in Belfast, Levellers Day in Burford, Something Else in the Dean, Vale Earth Fair in Guernsey and many more. I get new offers from new festivals every year. Thanks to you all. A special mention for Luke Wright, not just a brilliant performance poet but also organiser of the poetry tent at Latitude – thanks, mate. There’s a burgeoning new spoken word scene happening now among people half my age, led by people like Luke and Kate Tempest, and I’m very happy to see it. For far too long clever people with good words just became comedians, because that’s where the mainstream recognition is, but that’s changing now, and it’s great. And one clever bloke with great words and good politics, who cited an old tape of my ‘Scornflakes’ album as a big inspiration, got a fine band to surround his words and made a huge splash. Step forward Itch from the King Blues. I was delighted to be asked to play fiddle on their 2008 album ‘Save the World, Get the Girl’, we did quite a few gigs together and both Robina and I love the band and were very sad when they split. You’ll be hearing plenty more from Itch though, be sure of that.

 

In 2010 I celebrated my 30th anniversary at the lovely volunteer run Ropetackle Arts Centre in Shoreham, two miles from our home, with a host of friends. Well done to all those who fought to get the place set up and kitted out: having battled to survive in the early years with very little funding it is now an award-winning local venue with a great, varied programme. I put on gigs there and have helped run a fundraising beer festival for the last five years: there’s a surprise.

That same year Mike at Mad Butcher Records in Germany released ‘Disestablished 1980’, a thirty-year compilation of my songs: in 2012 Barnstormer’s fourth album, ‘Bankers & Looters’ came out, as ever on my Roundhead label in the UK and Mad Butcher Records in Germany. And in December 2013 I published my seventh book of poems, ‘UK Gin Dependence Party and Other Poems’. Womble did the cartoon for the cover, more than thirty years after I first appeared in his fanzine ‘Wake Up’. Cheers, my old mate. So many faces and memories have cropped up again and again in this story of mine: I am privileged and happy to have had such good friends and fellow travellers for so long, people I can share a beer and put the world to rights with. (It doesn’t half need it.)

 

But quite a few have left us in the course of this book, and the end of the first decade of the new millennium saw the deaths of two really dear to me. Radical poet Adrian Mitchell, whose words I wear on the T shirt on the front cover, words which have inspired me all my adult life, departed on 20th December 2008 aged 76. And on 24 June 2009 my comrade-at-arms through all those early years of ranting verse, Steven ‘Seething’ Wells, died of cancer in America, tragically young at 49. I wrote an obituary in the Independent. Here’s a bit of it.

 

‘Swells, I always thought you’d pull through. I’d read ‘The English Patient’ - your brilliant, witty, moving piece about your simultaneous battle with cancer and the US healthcare system - in the (Philadelphia) Weekly, swapped emails where you sounded as, well, Swellslike as ever and thought: you’ll make it. This is one roaring, iconoclastic, larger than life, indestructible, stupidly clever, logically illogical everything-demolishing mouth monster who won’t be demolished himself by something as mundane as cancer. But no. Seething Wells is dead. ‘Swells’ and ‘dead’ in the same sentence. We’re all going to die, sure - and our biological health dictates when, not our brain, our spirit, our love of life or our capacity to write verse with the caustic power of concentrated sulphuric acid or prose which immolates crap rock bands, pompous sports stars or anyone else we feel like taking on – but…oh, fuck.’

 

I had tears in my eyes when I wrote that, and I’ve got tears in my eyes re-writing it now. RIP to a hero of the spoken and written word.

 

And just before this book went to press in June 2015 we gathered at Harlow Crematorium to say goodbye to Colin ‘Dredd’ Masters, bassist with the Newtown Neurotics, companion through so many adventures in the 1980s. Steve Drewett read a beautiful tribute. Adieu, old friend.

 

That’s almost it for now. In a moment, you will read the poem I wrote for my mother. But first, here is one for my stepfather, John Stanford.

 

He married my mum in 1972, when I was just short of 15. I was headstrong, stroppy and alienated, like a teenager from hell: he was a 52 year old bachelor with no experience of family life. We didn’t get on. I left home as soon as I could. To the best of my knowledge he never read or listened to a single thing I have ever written, and until about 1990 I’m certain he thought: it’s impossible to earn a living doing what John does, he must be selling drugs or something. But things were slowly changing. When Mum was in Australia with me in 1993 and a new neighbour, John Hilditch, moved with his family next door and introduced himself, John said:

‘My wife is on tour in Australia with her son. He’s a popstar don’t you know.’ (Sic!)

I didn’t find that out until many years later…

When I married Robina in 2000, he obviously really liked her and came to our wedding. That was a big step forward. Things got tangibly easier. Then Mum got Alzheimers and he did everything he could, despite medical problems of his own. Five years later, aged 89, he finally broke his hip in a fall: he was in hospital for ages, slowly declining, Mum with Alzheimer’s at home. I’d go and see him regularly. One day I was there just after his local vicar had been. He smiled.

‘Father Phil has just been to see me, John. He says he’s seen you at a pop festival.’ (It was Glastonbury in the 80s.)

‘I never thought your material would appeal to VICARS!’

John left this earth on 30th December 2009. Just before he died, I wrote this poem. Every word is true.

NEVER TOO LATE

 

My father died when I was ten

and when she’d dried her tears

Mum met you in the choir -

she’d known of you for years.

I was so pleased when she told me

that she would be your wife

and I looked forward happily

to a new man in my life.

 

But you were the classical singer

who thought rock’n’roll was junk

and I was the Bolan boogie boy

who soon became a punk.

You were the civil servant

for whom everything had its place

and I was the left wing activist

out there and in your face.

 

Yes, you were the ‘head of the household’

and I was the stroppy kid

We wound each other up for sure

We flipped each other’s lid

But later we both learned so much

and something new began

And here’s a poem I wrote for you

You decent, gentle man.

 

So I went off to my own life

Left you and Mum to yours

A few words about football

Then the sound of closing doors.

But the passing of so many years

gave us both time to reflect

And slowly, oh, so slowly,

we forged a new respect.

 

When you were ill the first time

and found it hard to walk

I’d take you to the hospital

and we would sit and talk.

It felt so right and normal

And it was such a shame

that it had taken all this time -

Both stubborn, both to blame.

 

’Cos you were the ‘head of the household’

and I was the stroppy kid

We wound each other up for sure

We flipped each other’s lid

But later we both learned so much

and something new began

And here’s a poem I wrote for you

You decent, gentle man.

 

When Mum came down with Alzheimers

Five years you cooked and cared

And we were round there every day

So many thoughts were shared.

Your simple, honest loyalty:

The vows you made, you’d keep.

No longer the big boss man

Me, no longer the black sheep.

 

Then came that day in hospital

The end was near, we knew

You told me ‘I do love you John’

I said ‘I love you too’.

You held my hand and squeezed it

Our eyes were filled with tears

The first time that we’d said that -

It took thirty-seven years.

’Cos you were the ‘head of the household’

and I was the stroppy kid

We wound each other up for sure

We flipped each other’s lid

But later we both learned so much

and something new began

And here’s a poem I wrote for you

You decent, gentle man.

 

It’s never too late

never too late

never too late to say you love someone.

 

And if it wasn’t too late for me and John

Then it’s never too late for anyone.