After all those years of doing this and that, now I was just doing this: I was a professional poet, performing most nights of the week.
I didn’t have a Malcolm McLaren to look after my wellbeing, but I did have representation, of sorts, through Rabid Records – as much as anybody else in the world of punk anyway. At the very least, I could now refer people to ‘the office’ for bookings, plus Rabid had the promotional facilities.
Rabid may have been going to be my management, but they were very indistinct about their role in that. I didn’t really know what they were supposed to do either. Perhaps I was expecting more help than was reasonable, or maybe I just wasn’t that manageable. The habit was beginning to impinge. I was off the case, permanently distracted by the acquisition of narcotics, or the acquisition of the money to get the narcotics. It was a millstone around my neck, but it was also the engine room: to spend a lot of money, I had to make a lot of money. I thought this worked in everyone’s favour. If anything, it made me more reliable; when it came to money or dope, the catchphrase was always the same: ‘I need it, man.’ That being the case I was always available for work. Even so, I acquired a reputation around Rabid Records for being both feckless and difficult. When in doubt, blame the junkie.
In January 1978, I went down to London with the Rabid posse – Tosh Ryan, Laurence Beadle, Martin Hannett, and their lawyer – for meetings at all the big record companies with a view to signing me with a major label. We saw all the head honchos, including Chris Blackwell at Island, but I seemed to hit it off best with Maurice Oberstein, head of CBS UK, so the Rabid cohort and CBS’s lawyers proceeded with the necessary negotiations.
While I was down there, I did my first interview with Steve Clarke (no relation) for the NME. Because of my high-velocity house style and my crisp silhouette, along with my constant gum-chewing plus various nervous affectations, which were probably the product of stage fright and general existential angst, the press tended to mark me down erroneously as some kind of pathological speed fiend. I didn’t complain; in a way, this distracted from the fact that I was actually a fucking heroin addict. They could say what they liked, it’s a free country, but as far as I was concerned, it was ‘No Comment’ every time. Whatever your drug of choice, you kept it between you and your supplier. There was no mileage in any kind of reputation, and who needs a visit from John Law.
In those days I used to score at a place in Sussex Gardens where I’d run into another NME journalist called Nick Kent, one-time paramour of the pre-Pretenders Chrissie Hynde. Nick lived in a series of boarding houses all over London, fucking flophouses frankly, with his intriguing Parisian girlfriend Hermine. Hermine was quite high-profile, very chic, a dancer and a professional high-wire walker. She had been a mentor to that guy who walked between the Twin Towers on a tightrope.
Nick was extraordinary-looking, way more exotic than any of the people he ever interviewed. He would have made anyone look like a schlub. Honest to God, he was like some tropical bird of paradise, usually dressed in a Lewis Leathers biker jacket, leather jeans, top-dollar leather motorbike boots with buckles, a ruffled blouse, and the full mascara. If you saw him across the road you’d go, ‘WOW!’ A fantastic rock and roll apparition, but when you got up close you’d notice the patina of grime. It was like he slept in his clothes all the time, or perhaps never even went to bed. Occasionally, he’d go to Boots in order to douse himself in perfume. What they call ‘a whore’s bath’.
His legs were the same length as my entire body. To witness him approaching was like watching a giraffe’s slow-motion gait. He wrote a song for Marianne Faithful called ‘My Flamingo’. He was quite the exquisite, and had a mythological band, The Vicarians.
Nick was also a fan of the Buzzcocks, The Fall, and The Only Ones, so I bumped into him all the time at various gigs and out and about in the West End. He would go around the major record companies in Soho blagging ‘white labels’ – pre-release copies of albums sent out to reviewers, that didn’t have any information printed on the label at all. Anorak collectors would pay top dollar for them, so Nick would be round CBS in Soho Square ripping off the mega-star end of the market with white labels from Bruce Springsteen, Johnny Cash, Teddy Pendergrass, Charlie Daniels, The Clash, ABBA, whatever. He used to flog them to a shop in nearby Hanway Street, one of those obsessives’ record outlets as portrayed in Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity. One of the sales assistants had a sideline in drug distribution, so any money Nick made on the white labels was probably spent in-house in one smooth transaction.
In February 1978 I embarked on my first major UK tour of large halls, with a group from Wakefield called Be-Bop Deluxe. This seemed counterintuitive, given that Be-Bop Deluxe had nothing to do with punk. What they had, however, was a high mainstream profile: they’d been on The Old Grey Whistle Test, and were popular with erm . . . Music Lovers. The punk scene revolved around small clubs, and this was my way into the larger venues.
Be-Bop Deluxe were a little bit prog rock, a little bit new wave and electronic experimental, with a touch of David Bowie modern glam – not entirely my cup of tea, but I could see it had some kind of value. Their music was very much predicated upon the extreme technical proficiency of Bill Nelson, their virtuoso guitar player, but they didn’t do concept albums, all-night solos, or anything self-indulgent like that. Plus, they looked good in their own way: nice clothes, space-age equipment, short hair, apart from Charlie Tumahai, their Maori bass player, who affected the ’fro.
Given that recent guests on their tours had included proper musos like Steve Gibbons and the Doctors of Madness, you might well ask why Be-Bop Deluxe thought it a good idea to have John Cooper Clarke as their support act. After all, in 1978 the only poets most people were aware of were Pam Ayres and Cyril Fletcher out of That’s Life. Perhaps they felt slightly out of date and were anxious to be seen as up to the minute. Having a punk poet as the support act would give them a credible modern edge, whereas the snotty approach and youthful energy of, say, The Drones, Eater, or Terry and the Idiots might have made them look a bit last week. I couldn’t do that – no poet could upstage a band; you can’t compete with music. It was me who was taking the risk.
The Drastic Plastic tour was as big as it gets: we were playing in venues like the Hammersmith Odeon, the Manchester Apollo, the Grand Theatre in Leeds, places of that magnitude. I had to crank everything up a bit in order to meet the requirements of a seated crowd in a large theatre.
Be-Bop Deluxe travelled in a tour bus. Martin Hannett, my producer at Rabid, now doubled as my driver, and would ferry me back and forth in a top-of-the-range Volvo on lease-hire. At this point Martin had tragically acquired a habit, although frankly I soon saw the upside. We pooled our resources. He had connections I didn’t know about, I had connections he didn’t know about, and between the two of us, we were always sorted for dope. It was as smooth as it gets, but there are always dramas around that shit. Even with the best plans in the world, things get nutty. Whatever – deal or no deal – showtime was 8.30pm on the nose.
Some of the shows were quite encouraging, but Be-Bop Deluxe’s people were not necessarily my people. They were a weird cross-over mixed bag: young married couples, prog-rockers, David Bowie types, some kind of borderline hippys, air-guitarists, one or two head-bangers, maybe the odd foreign student – but no visible evidence of the New Wave. Unlike a lot of people in his corner of the rock biz, Bill Nelson was quite amenable to the more imaginative elements of punk rock; he liked The Clash and The Sex Pistols. The Bopsters, however, didn’t always agree with him on this, and saw people like me as an unwelcome intrusion. Some nights, they would even scream curses and blame me for the ills of society.
The Be-Bop road crew, however, liked my act because of the jokes and the filthy language. They were fond of a bit of banter, and liked to wind me up. After those shows when the audience had been less than enthusiastic, they would say something encouraging like, ‘Think that’s bad? Bloody hell, wait till you get to Glasgow!’ ‘What about Glasgow?’ I’d ask. There would be a lot of muttering, darkly veiled hints of what might be in store, the general gist of which was, ‘They’re gonna fucking kill ya! Them porridge wogs don’t take no prisoners.’
It was the first time I’d performed in Scotland, plus it was at the Glasgow Apollo, a four-thousand-seat former movie theatre that had been known as Green’s Playhouse, a massive place with two balconies. The original carpet was still intact – indeed, an offcut now covers the floor of Rod Stewart’s LA games room. Anybody who is anybody in the Sassenach world of showbiz has died there at one time or another, so if I could nail it there, I’d make it anywhere. I was shitting myself for the entire two weeks, or however long it was, before we got there.
I lasted four minutes. Instant outpourings of pure hate. Jeering. Thousands of Sweaties* proactively withholding their love. I just stood there for the entire four minutes, with no indication that the hostility would ever abate. You can’t fight that level of animosity, so as soon as the volume dropped a fraction, I just said, ‘Let’s call it a draw.’ Even in a situation like that, I had to have the last word.
After that night, had it not been for Elvis Costello, I might never have gone back to Glasgow again.
The Be-Bop Deluxe tour taught me how to roll with the punches. Like all artists, I have a delicate ego, and what I require from an audience is a unanimous display of carefully considered adulation. In Glasgow, this was not forthcoming, but you know, put it into perspective: nobody died.