‘I found out that the police action was unofficial and sanctioned by van Haelteren, so I rang him on his private number. I told him that unless he ordered them to pack up and go that instant, I would contact every press agency in Europe and tell them that every prejudice they had ever had about our country had just been proved right, and that Belgium was now officially a boring, geriatric, pinched-face, miserable, nasty, petty-bourgois little police state. I also told him that none of the trouble would have happened if the police weren’t such a bunch of prejudiced, ill-disciplined thugs and that he, the mayor, should start to try and live in the 20th century.’
I hope that Daniel is now a hugely successful journalist. He deserves to be.
This strange, surreal story had two positive results. Not long afterwards there was an enquiry in Brussels into police practice and behaviour, and not before time: I can safely say that the behaviour of the Brussels police in 1979 was the most stupidly brutal I have ever seen, and that is saying something. And, on a personal level, I really got to know the Harlow contingent, and especially Steve Drewett and the Newtown Neurotics: they were to play a huge part in the next ten or so years of my life, and Steve is my best mate to this day. It was they who got in touch with the NME, making sure the events of that weekend reached thousands of UK music fans.
There’s a postscript. During my time in Brussels I heard the work of the great Brussels-born singer and songwriter Jacques Brel for the first time, and ever since then I have been a massive fan. Years later my mother and I paid a visit to the Jacques Brel Foundation in Brussels city centre.
‘I know this building!’ I said to her. ‘I’m sure I do.’
I found an attendant.
‘Excuse me, did this place used to be called the Vieille Halle aux Bles?’
It did.
Jacques Brel, one of the most perceptive, biting, satirical, wonderful songwriters who ever graced this earth (he died in 1978) wrote many songs castigating comfortable prejudice and middle class pomposity: I think he would have been proud of the stand we took on that day in the building which was now dedicated to his life and work. He certainly wouldn’t have been a big fan of Mayor van Haelteren - in fact, I think he would have dedicated his song ‘Les Bourgeois’ to him.
The Harlow contingent made their way home, the furore died down, and not long afterwards I went back to England too: Brighton had just been promoted to the top division in English football and I wasn’t going to miss our first ever game there against the mighty Arsenal. But Contingent weren’t football fans, they didn’t understand and were none too pleased: although I returned for a month or so and did a couple more gigs, as far as my time in Belgium goes, back then that was the beginning of the end. Although I had loved playing in the band, by now I was completely fed up with being just a bass player, standing more or less in the background, offering my ideas to other people. I had been writing more and more songs and poems, and was sure that I had the beginnings of some kind of punk rock solo career.
But there’s a postscript here too, and the clue is ‘back then’. As happens all the time to all kinds of people, the internet brought Contingent back together in 2006, 27 years after we’d last played together. Bob, Eric, latter day drummer Daniel Wang and myself did a reunion gig in Brussels in 2007 to a great crowd and had such a good time that we decided to reform the band. Over the next few years we did sporadic gigs, always well received: I invited them over to my Glastonwick Festival (much more of that later) and Contingent supported my band Barnstormer (again, much more later) on quite a few dates in Germany. Under guitarist Eric Lemaitre’s stewardship we recorded the album that we should have done back in 1979. And then tragedy struck. On 10 January 2012, just three months after we had done our last gig together when Contingent supported Barnstormer at the Juzi in Gottingen, Germany, Eric died of cancer. He was just 53.
Music was Eric’s life. As well as being guitarist and trumpet player in three of Belgium’s finest bands (Walpurgis Volta and PPZ30 as well as Contingent) he was a consummate organiser and recording engineer. His music lives on in his talented daughter, Lydia. And his legacy lives on in the Magasin 4, the home of alternative music in Brussels, which he established in 1994 and masterminded until literally a couple of weeks before his death. In its current location at Avenue du Port, by the canal in the city centre, it provides a touring home for the musical underground from all over Europe, hosting literally hundreds of bands a year. As I said in his funeral address in Brussels and at the memorial gig we did for him at his beloved venue: Lenin and Eric both have their mausoleums, but Eric’s is the Magasin 4, which means his is a lot louder!
We said we’d only continue Contingent if we could find a guitarist big enough to fill Eric’s shoes, and, in Irish Brussels-dwelling rock ‘n’ roller James Neligan, we have.
So, very sporadically, the songs which Eric co-wrote for Contingent will live on too.
Adieu, mon vieux pote.
I came back to England for good in September 1979, got a job on a building site near Brighton, cheered on the Albion’s brave attempts to come to terms with football’s top flight and stayed at my mum’s for a short while. I hadn’t really stayed ‘at home’ for more than an occasional couple of weeks since I left school, and though I always had a very good relationship with my mother, at that time my relationship with my stepfather was non-existent and the atmosphere was awful. Once again it was time to go.
The seasonal booze-shifting job in Harlow was available again in October and, as luck would have it, Steve Drewett had just been allocated his flat by Harlow Council and was about to move in. He offered me somewhere to crash, and I accepted gratefully.
In between my shifts I saw as many of the Harlow bands as possible: Newtown Neurotics and Urban Decay of course, plus The Sods, The Gangsters, Pete The Meat and the Boys, Spelling Missteaks, The Rabbits and The Epileptics, who changed their name to The Licks following complaints, and eventually became Flux Of Pink Indians, their bassist Derek starting the hugely influential One Little Indian record label, home of Bjork and The Sugarcubes among many others. Many of these gigs were still taking place at Triad disco in Bishop’s Stortford and every time we went there an awful (to us) jazz rock trio, Tracks, would be playing in the foyer. In time, they would get even more awful: they would become 80s jazz/disco wallahs Shakatak. The Harlow punk scene was developing all the time: it was compact, creative and friendly and I felt very much at home.
I’d left my bass guitar in Southwick: I knew I wasn’t going to be a bass player or band member any more and was absolutely determined that very soon I’d be up on stage on my own. Wandering around Gilbey’s shifting booze left my mind free to come up with loads of new ideas. My poems were developing, becoming funnier and more immediate, and I concentrated on writing material I thought would go down well live.
Towards the end of my time in Belgium I had written the first poem that I was convinced would work well on stage. Thatcher had not long been in power, the ‘Soviet Threat’ was being played for all it was worth, and we on the Left would often hear the cry ‘Go back to Russia!’ I thought it was time to take the piss.
THEY MUST BE RUSSIANS
They slither round corners with scarves round their faces
They always turn up in improbable places
They lack the good taste of the British, our graces
They’re horrid – they must be the Russians!
They’re always involved in some dastardly plot
They’re never content with whatever they’ve got
And they are the cause of the Great British Rot!
They’re horrid – they must be the Russians!
They sit in the Hilton and scowl at the waiters
They drink a foul potion distilled from potatoes
And everyone knows they detest us and hate us
They’re horrid – they must be the Russians!
They’ve Benn and the Trots who all want to enslave us
And countless Red spi
es who all want to deprave us
But Maggie’s alright – she’ll defend us and save us
From the muggers from Moscow, the Russians!
And her mate in the White House, a fine, manly figure
He knows how to handle a Jew or a ni**er
When Maggie gets Trident and Ron gets the trigger
We’ll give ‘em deterrent, those Russians….
Oh, hang on a minute - my brain’s on the blink
I think that the Kremlin’s been spiking my drink
How unpatriotic – I’ve started to THINK!
It must all be down to the Russians…
My mate here just tells me they’ve got a new plan
They’re holding a party in Afghanistan
And he’s got an invite, as number one fan:
They can’t all be horrid, the Russians!
Hey, look – over there – they’re down in the park
They’re holding a meeting out there in the dark
The speaker looks just like that John Cooper Clarke –
They all dress so formal, the Russians…
I’m going to meet them: I want to be friends
Find out if they follow the West’s latest trends
And have long discussions, the means and the ends –
I’m getting quite fond of the Russians….
Hey, hang on – they’re smiling and there’s music playing!
It’s punk rock – the Malchix – oh, I feel like staying!
They’re handing out ice cream, and bopping, and swaying –
I THINK I’LL GO BACK WITH THE RUSSIANS!
Interesting how language has changed over the years: in the late Seventies I felt quite comfortable using the ‘n-word’ in a satirical, anti-racist context but now, I can only keep it there with asterisks in the middle. And note the reference to John Cooper Clarke. I’d actually never seen him live at that point, but I had heard him on the radio and thought he was brilliant. He had paved the way: he was up there, proving it could be done.
When my seasonal job at the alcohol warehouse finished, I stayed in Harlow. I was heavily involved in the local musical and political scene and had made lots of friends, Steve was happy for me to stay in his flat, and in any case my football team, my mother and my Brighton mates were only two and a half hours away by train. In early 1980 I set up another one off gig for the Newtown Neurotics in Belgium (there was another riot, this time with local right wing farmers) and took the opportunity once again to do an impromptu set of solo songs over there on my little electric mandolin, this time put through a phaser unit: again it went down pretty well. Back in Harlow, still not yet ready to inflict myself on the local scene, I carried on writing, determined that very soon I’d be earning my living from my words and music.
But in the meantime, I needed another temporary job. My time in Belgium had improved my French to the point where I was pretty much bilingual, so I registered for casual language-related work with a London employment agency. A few days later, in March 1980, I got a call: they had something for me. Bilingual settlements clerk - at a City stockbroking company.
My first reaction was ‘Bloody hell, no way!’ It was obviously in the very heartland of the system that I have despised all my adult life. Then I got to thinking and realised that it was an ideal opportunity to find out exactly what went on in such places - in any case I wasn’t going to be there long. Although the post was advertised as a permanent one it would be temporary for me - I would be out of there like a shot as soon as I started gigging in earnest. So I decided to go for the interview.
First, of course, I needed a suit and tie. I’d never worn one (and after I left have only done so on about 2 occasions in the subsequent 34 years). A Harlow charity shop solved that problem, and at the interview my French got me the job. It wasn’t very well paid, but the understanding was that, if you knuckled down, you’d progress up the ladder and then it would be, which was why the vast majority of the people who worked there were deferential to their ‘superiors’ to the point of servility. The partners were pompous, the dealers obnoxious. The rest of the staff were clerks: ordinary people who needed a job, knew the rules and either shrunk into themselves or bit their tongues when ‘a superior’ took the piss out of them or bullied them, which happened all the time. One dealer in the office was an absolute arsehole and constantly picked on one individual. He must have really needed that job: if I’d been talked to like that, I’d have decked the bloke.
It was a truly ghastly place.
My job entailed taking calls from French-speaking stockbrokers and passing them on to the dealers, and filling in bought and sold ledgers for hours and hours. At that time, this was done by hand and was, needless to say, stultifyingly tedious. Worst of all, I soon realised that the department I worked in specialised in shares in the South African gold mining industry, which in 1980 was of course controlled by a brutal apartheid regime: huge profits could be made because the wages paid to workers were minimal and working conditions obscene.
News would come through of a fire or collapse in a mine and the dealers would go into overdrive: not, of course, because of any concern for the people affected but because the share price would plummet. Conversely, of course, if a strike was summarily suppressed and the workers forced back, share prices would rise. Callous beyond belief; ‘respectable’ men in suits, doubtless considered pillars of their local communities, presiding over the misery of millions. And of course South Africa was just the tip of the iceberg. In that job I saw unfettered capitalism at its naked, brutal worst, and those 11 months were part of the reason why, when the socialist dream ended for some in 1989, it did not end for me. I will wave the red flag proudly till my dying day.
Filling in the ledgers meant I got to know exactly who was investing in other people’s misery. Lots of banks, as you’d expect, and lots of people with posh sounding names: pension funds: perhaps more surprisingly, the church. But then I know for a fact that one of the partners at the company was a member of the General Synod. What nauseating hypocrisy. Jesus Christ was a revolutionary communist!
The poem I wrote about my time in that job was finished after I’d left. It summed up my feelings about the people there, both the snobbish, status-obsessed partners and the bored, victimised clerks.
EVERY TIME I EAT VEGETABLES…
No agony, no ecstacy, no pleasure and no pain –
So exquisitely uninteresting you drive your wife insane
The TV is your oracle, the newspapers your guide
And your shiny little vehicle is your passion and your pride
You’ve done the same thing every day for nigh on twenty years
And in your ludicrous routines you hide your worthless fears
On the blandest boat in Boredom you are captain of the crew
And every time I eat vegetables it makes me think of you.
You died the day that you were born and now you sit and rot –
A three piece suited dinsoaur in the pond that time forgot
Your image is respectable, there’s nothing underneath
And the whole thing is as surely false as nine tenths of your teeth
Your views are carbon copies of the rubbish that you read
And you swallow every morsel Rupert Murdoch seeks to feed
You go to bed at ten because you’ve nothing else to do
And every time I eat vegetables it makes me think of you.
You’re a cabbage in a pickle and your brain has sprung a leek
So lettuce keep our distance ‘cos I vomit when you speak
I’ll always do a runner so I’m going where you’ve bean
‘Cos to see you chills my marrow and turns my tomatoes green
You’re an eighteen carrot cretin with a dandelion whine –
So stick to your herbaceous border and I’ll stick to mine
And although this verse is corny, it’s amaizing but it’s true
That every time I eat vegetables it makes
me think of you!
All this time I was busily writing, of course, and by mid 1980 I had half an hour of solo poems and songs which I thought were good enough to hold an audience.
And then, one day, I got myself a stage name.
A stage name that, on its own, got me fifty per cent of my earliest gigs outside Harlow, all my early media coverage and entries in ‘silly band name’ lists all over the world, alongside the likes of Death By Milkfloat and Half Man Half Biscuit. To this day, it still raises a smile everywhere I go.
I can be quite clumsy: I bump into things easily. And in that job I didn’t give a shit. I can’t exactly remember how or where, but I knocked a cup of coffee over in the office one day and somebody said something like ‘You’ve got the manners of Attila the Hun!’
A light came on in my head.
Attila the Stockbroker. That’s what I’d call myself.
The last bit of the jigsaw was complete.
TWO
THANKS PEELIE
Back in Harlow the Front Line, as the local punk fraternity was called, was growing all the time: there were fully operational bands, bands who were just starting and ‘bands’ who only ever existed as toilet graffiti. Three of the newest ones had just got themselves a gig at a local playbarn, as Harlow youth centres were called, and they were happy to add me to the bill. Newly christened Attila the Stockbroker, I made my debut on a sunny September 8th evening in 1980 at Bush Fair Playbarn, in between sets by The De-Fex, The Condemmed (yes, those two ‘m’s again!) and The Unborn Dead. They were noisy as hell. So was I, in a different kind of way…
There wasn’t time for me to go home and change after the evening’s commute back from my job in London, so I asked my flatmate Steve to take my mandolin along for me and I did the gig in my work suit. It must have seemed very strange indeed – a bloke in a suit with a tatty green carnation shoved in the buttonhole, hammering out his songs on a tinny little electric mandolin put through a phaser unit, shouting poems in between the songs. But, rather against my expectations, I went down really well and was immediately offered another gig, at a Rock Against Thatcher night in the recently opened Square One youth club in the town centre, which, as The Square, was still hosting gigs more than 30 years on as this book went to press, although its future is sadly in doubt.
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