ARGUMENTS YARD
My Autobiography
35 Years of Ranting Verse and Thrash Mandola
Attila The Stockbroker
POPPY’S POEM
For my father Bill Baine, 1899-1968
#535068, 1/15th Battalion, London Regiment, WW1
‘What passing-bells for those who die as cattle?
Only the monstrous anger of the guns.’
And so some lines to spike centenary prattle:
These words a sole survivor soldier’s son’s.
My father Bill, born in Victorian England:
The sixth of January, 1899.
His stock, loyal London. Proletarian doff-cap.
Aged just eighteen, he went to join the line.
Not in a war to end all wars forever
But in a ghastly slaughter at the Somme -
A pointless feud, a royal family squabble
Fought by their proxy poor with gun and bomb.
My father saved. Pyrexia, unknown origin.
Front line battalion: he lay sick in bed.
His comrades formed their line, then came the whistle
And then the news that every one was dead.
In later life a polished comic poet
No words to us expressed that awful fear
Although we knew such things were not forgotten.
He dreamed Sassoon: he wrote Belloc and Lear.
When I was ten he died, but I remember,
Although just once, he’d hinted at the truth.
He put down Henry King and Jabberwocky
And read me Owen’s ‘Anthem For Doomed Youth’.
‘What passing-bells for those who die as cattle?
Only the monstrous anger of the guns.’
And so some lines to spike Gove’s mindless prattle:
These words a sole survivor soldier’s son’s.
21/2/2014
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
If you are reading this as one of the countless people all over the world who has organised a gig for me, interviewed and/or written about me, played my stuff on the radio, helped with overseas tours, enjoyed and shared my social media activity and my poems and songs published online, played a gig with me, come to a gig I’ve done, put me up/put up with me or in any other way helped me sustain my life as Attila the Stockbroker for the past 35 years… a huge, heartfelt thanks.
There are far too many people to mention here, but everyone has my gratitude: having taken the DIY path it is you who have enabled me to earn my living doing what I love - travelling the world, entertaining people and spreading ideas. Cheers to you all! (Especially if you’ve bought this book – or helped me with memories for it…)
For years my graphic designer friend Alan Wares has been my Minister of Propaganda, creating posters, leaflets, T-shirts and CD sleeves. He has gone way beyond the call of duty here: this is a dedication to dedication. From the bottom of my heart – thanks, mate. Likewise to my talented photographer stepson Patrick Blann and to all the others whose work is featured.
Above all, love and huge thanks to my wife Robina, who proofread the text, always expects better from me, and hopefully has the best of me here.
Incidentally, fans of Lynne Truss may be occasionally irritated by my punctuation style. I’m a performance poet and I write how I speak. It’s deliberate. Just to let you know.
CONTENTS
TITLE PAGE
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
FOREWORD
1: B.A. (BEFORE ATTILA)
2: THANKS PEELIE
3: STARING AT THE RUDE BOYS
4: THIS YEAR’S THING/LAST YEAR’S THING
5: MINERS’ STRIKE, WAPPING, RED WEDGE
6: SIX TOURS OF EAST GERMANY, 1986-1990: MEMORIES OF THE GERMAN DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC
7: NORTH KOREA (nearly), ALBANIA, CANADA, ST. PAULI, SLOUGH - and the POLL TAX
8: MANIC MEMORIES AND ANTIPODEAN ANTICS: ‘ATTILA THE STOCKBROKER, WELCOME TO NEW ZEALAND!
9: BARNSTORMER & GLASTONWICK: MY OWN BAND AND MY OWN FESTIVAL
10: JUST ONE LIFE - AND 3 U.S. TOURS
11: THE LONG GOODBYE
12: BUILDING A BONFIRE
13: FINALE
14: A STING IN THE TAIL
COPYRIGHT
FOREWORD
It was 1991. The first Gulf War had started, and so had the mobilisations against it. That, of course, meant benefit gigs, and in a period where clear-minded radical rock ‘n’ roll vision – as if it had ever existed – had been supplanted by dance music’s all-pervasive ‘doof doof’ and its latter day Pan’s People, such events featured for the most part the usual Eighties suspects. Miners’ strike, anti-Murdoch protests at Wapping, Labour’s ill-fated Red Wedge. Change the slogan and roll ‘em out! This time we were Musicians Against The War. Wall of sound political power punks and relative newcomers Carter USM, Billy Bragg, Bard Of Barking, ubiquitous and long serving hero of the established left, and Your Humble Narrator. At London’s New Cross Venue.
I was trying to soundcheck my acoustic mandola through an enormous PA, settings tuned to the roaring Leviathan which was Carter in their pomp. The sound system didn’t want to know, and imparted this information to everyone within earshot in the unique way only large PA systems can. The screaming howls of feedback attracted Billy Bragg, fingers in his ears. He started ‘ribbing’ me. ‘Why don’t you just give up, Attila? Get a job in a bank or something…’
I’d forgotten that incident until I began writing this book. It’s not your usual ‘showbiz’ book, you can count on that. Not ‘Hello!’ More ‘See ya!’ The media is obsessed with ‘celebrity’. I’m not a ‘celebrity’ and don’t need anyone to ‘get me out of here’: I’m very happy where I am, thanks very much. Over 3000 gigs in 24 countries (and that’s just the ones as Attila) an eminently sustainable living as a poet/musician since 1981 and even more fired up now than when I first saw The Clash in 1977.
No thanks, Billy. I know you were joking, but I don’t want to work in a bank, and I never will now, that’s for sure: my life has been my own for a long time. Travelling to improbable, fascinating and occasionally downright surreal places all over Britain, mainland Europe and the rest of the world, meeting loads of people who share my ideas and some who don’t, performing my poems and songs for them, talking to them, and yes, quite often, arguing with them. That’s what my life’s about, and I run it myself.
In the early eighties, for a short while, the mainstream told me I was ‘this year’s thing’. I was happy about that, although I knew it wouldn’t last. Sure enough, after a couple of years or so it told me I was ‘last year’s thing’ and it was time to give up and get a proper job. I told it bollocks, I’ll do this on my own. At that time I was making a virtue of necessity but thirty years later I wouldn’t have it any other way. I’ve never had a manager (well, I had one for one gig, and you’ll hear about that soon enough…) or tour manager and I haven’t had a UK booking agent or record label since the early nineties. Until Cherry Red took this book on, I hadn’t had a publisher for more than 20 years either. And all by choice. For many years I have put out all my own CDs and books, organised my own gigs and loads for other people, run two festivals, done what I want. No compromise.
Modern-day popular culture is getting blander and blander, cowed by corporate power and its endless conveyor belt of ‘celebrity’ puppets: looking back, I think I’ve done the right thing. Part of my aim in writing this autobiography is to prove to other poets, musicians and performers that it is entirely possible to work long-term completely outside the mainstream entertainment industry. You don’t have to be a product, reliant on fashion, media, the whims of others - you can book your own gigs, make your own records, publish your own books, build your own dr
eams. You don’t have to compromise your material. And I can promise you that the internet makes it far, far easier now than it used to be. Welcome to Arguments Yard!
MY POETIC LICENCE
Yo! I’m the MC of ranting rebel poetry!
I know my history and my identity
I’m independent, a red cottage industry
DIY from here to eternity…
Now let me tell you what’s been going on:
I take inspiration from centuries long gone
Oral tradition of sedition, that’s my position -
No court jester with a tame disposition!
Poetic licence? 35 years I’ve had one
And they don’t come easy, they’re not given out for fun
You have to earn it, work and sweat and move -
Not get stuck in a dead poet bore groove.
I earned mine in dirty scummy punk clubs
Rock gigs, arts centres, festivals and dodgy pubs
And yes, once or twice I’ve had to fight -
But when a fascist hits a poet, the poet’s doing something right!
I love words and I love ‘em in the red and raw
I like to use them in ways they’ve not been used before
Want you to laugh and want you to think as well -
Bollocks to TV - this is live, as live as hell!
Oral tradition - the real origins of poetry.
Attila the Stockbroker - ranting rebel MC.
Dean of the Social Surrealist University.
Welcome to my wild poetic journey!
ONE
B.A. (BEFORE ATTILA)
My first appearance as Attila the Stockbroker was on September 8th, 1980 at Bush Fair Playbarn, Harlow, Essex, supporting the De-Fex, the Condemmed - two ‘m’s - and the Unborn Dead. (Cheers for the gig, Little Dave!) It wasn’t the first one ever though, not by a very long way. That was aged nine - in 1967, at Manor Hall Primary School in Southwick, near Brighton, where I grew up and where, after a long time away, I returned to meet Robina, the other half of me.
As it says in the poem dedicated to him at the front of this book, when I was born, my dad, Bill, was 59 years old. He was born in Brixton, South London, in 1899: I’ve always found it amazing that I have a direct link with the century before last. His dad was an upholsterer and he grew up in Sidney Road, Stockwell, next door to the atmospheric Grosvenor community pub where, over a hundred years later, I did quite a few gigs until it sadly closed in 2014 due to the baleful impact of ‘gentrification’. When I went there the first time to play I was disappointed to find that the terrace my dad lived in was knocked down some time after my grandad died in 1953 and is now a park. Bill volunteered with the Civil Service Rifles aged 18 and fought in the First World War. He was at the Somme, and one fateful day in 1918 he was kept behind the lines by the medical officer with a temperature (‘Pyrexia of Unknown Origin’). The rest of his company was sent over the top. Every single one of them was killed or taken prisoner.
As I write this in 2014, the centenary year of the start of the war, odious Tory minister Michael Gove is prattling on about how that four year long orgy of pointless, senseless carnage caused by a squabble between various (related) branches of the European ruling royal families was ‘a just war’. Even by the rock-bottom standards of your average Tory politician, that is mind-boggling, cretinously offensive stuff. My father saw the war at first hand, was deeply scarred by his experiences and hardly, if ever, shared them with others, but they were there in his favourite poets, Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon. And, yes, he read me Owen’s ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’.
My father loved poetry, from the desperate genius of the war poets to the great Sussex rhymester and polemicist Hilaire Belloc, whose work became a huge influence on me. Bill wrote loads himself, in a whimsical, Bellocian style, but his abilities weren’t recognised beyond the Home Guard (being in his forties during World War Two he was in Dad’s Army) and Civil Service magazines and by my mum, for whom he wrote some very touching love poems. He had left school at 15, joined the civil service as a boy clerk, and, apart from his army stints, worked there until retirement: his generation were taught obedience and they were taught it by rote. He had two children, Don and Audrey, by his previous marriage and when I was born they were already in their mid twenties. I was born an uncle. At 57, I’m now a great-great uncle: my great-nephews Ben and Jamie Smithson are house music producers, which officially makes me an old punk rock git.
Mum Muriel’s family can be traced back generations in my harbour town home of Southwick, working on the docks and at the gasworks which was replaced by our modern-day power station. Her dad, a printer by trade, was born in the now-demolished Adur Terrace a couple of hundred yards from our house. But Mum came into the world in a council house in Sun Lane, Gravesend, Kent – the graves of the victims stretched all the way there at the end of the Great Plague, and that’s where they finished, hence the name of the town. Her parents had met there when her father, who also fought in the First World War, was wounded and came back to be cared for at a hospital in Gravesend where he met her mother, a nurse. Mum was academically bright, won a scholarship to the local county grammar school and after matriculation was called up to aid the war effort working as one of the hundreds of shift typists on the Enigma decoding project at Bletchley Park. She then worked as a receptionist in Bateman’s Opticians in West London till she met my dad, who was 25 years her senior.
Mum was a talented pianist – if she’d been from a more privileged background and the war hadn’t intervened, she could well have made music her career. It was certainly her first love, as words were my dad’s, and they met at a music appreciation class in Notting Hill, West London, near mum’s lodgings. At the time, my father was living in a Civil Service hostel, having left his first wife – an alcoholic - because of her cruelty. He ended up making legal history as the first man to get a divorce because of his wife’s mental cruelty and occasional physical violence towards him: it was a huge media story at the time. My mother and father married in 1953. The divorce left him totally skint: I remember them telling me they started off married life with orange boxes as furniture. None left by the time I came along, though….
Thanks to my parents I grew up with Belloc’s classic Cautionary Tales, the amusingly naff lyricism of the likes of Flanders and Swann (‘The Gasman Cometh’) and loads of classical music that I enjoyed but could never identify. I still enjoy it and still can’t, for the most part, identify it, to my wife Robina’s disappointment, although I am trying harder these days! One thing is for sure: I inherited words from my dad, and music from my mum, and once grown was determined that I would do what they had never been able to and make words and music my life’s work. And I didn’t just inherit a love of words from my father, but a love of football too. He took me to my first Brighton game when I was about six, and I was hooked: Brighton till I die! You’ll find a fair few mentions of the Seagulls in these pages, and what a story there is to tell.
I was born John Charles Baine (named after a famous footballer or a classical conductor, depending on whom my parents were talking to) in West Middlesex Hospital on October 21st 1957: an only child to my mother and father, though they would have loved to have had more. We lived for my first three years in West London where my parents had met - no real memories remain of that for me – then came back to mum’s family roots, next door to my great aunt ‘Aunty Rose’ in Southwick, the port town of Shoreham Harbour, 5 miles west of Brighton. The house we moved into, a Victorian semi then divided into upstairs and downstairs flats, had been built in 1897 and had been home to various family members for most of its existence – at that time we had the top flat and another family, the Martindales, lived in the bottom half, and when they moved out my maternal grandmother came from Gravesend to live there instead. It was sold in 1974 by my mother and stepfather, but amazingly came on the market again just as Robina and I were getting married in 2000 – we bought it back and it is our home today.
/>
Inspired by my father and Mr. Belloc I started to write little poems at primary school and would perform my efforts with no prompting whatsoever. I loved being the centre of attention. Now there’s a surprise.
I enjoyed Manor Hall Infants and the adjacent Manor Hall Primary School, was quite popular, and the bullies who tried to pick on me found that, atypically for a ‘swot’, I was a loud, stroppy fighter as well. The headmaster, George Young, was very impressed with my academic efforts and one day not long after the aforementioned first gig (a spine-chilling performance of cautionary verses by Hilaire Belloc and Heinrich Hoffman at a school Christmas concert) he asked my parents in for a meeting. Something to do with the forthcoming 11 plus exam, which I was entering a year early, and ‘going to hospital’, as my parents explained to me one winter evening in front of the fire. ‘But there’s nothing wrong with me – and I don’t want to go to hospital, I want to go to school here with my friends!’ I really didn’t understand what they were going on about, and forgot about it. Little did I know what was in store for me…
In my last year at Manor Hall, the early spring of 1968, we went on a school trip to Blankenberge in Belgium. I had to share a bed with Chris, who kicked me all night – I kicked him back - and I single-handedly wrecked part of the model village at Walcheren chasing a frog…but I had a great time. When I got off the bus at the parents’ meeting point outside our school I saw Poppy, as I called my dad, coming towards me, and although he was smiling as he nearly always was, something wasn’t right. He was dragging his left foot, and looked really ill.
And that’s when my war began.
Day by day, slowly but inexorably, my father’s condition worsened. The whole of the left side of his body became paralysed: he was moved into the living room and my mother and I were his carers, helped by sympathetic neighbours and the occasional visit from social services. He had sporadic fits: his paralysed leg and arm would suddenly spring into life and jerk frenziedly, dementedly, and at those moments he seemed possessed by some ghastly demon. He became doubly incontinent. Sometimes my mum had to go out, and when she wasn’t there, and I pulled back the cover and saw the mess, I cleaned him up. I saw things a ten year old should never have seen, no doubt of that.
ARGUMENTS YARD Page 1
