The session went to air on June 9th 1982, and was repeated for extra effect a short while after. The impact was massive. More and more enquiries for gigs and interviews started to come in - and not just with the mainstream media. Once they’d heard me on Peel the burgeoning punk/indie fanzine movement embraced me big time, and I made sure that absolutely every interview request (those days sent snail mail, of course, to my home address, no PO Box, no email….) got answered. A selected few from those early days – there were many, many more: ‘Cool Notes’, run by Richard Edwards from London: ‘New Youth’ by ‘Swift’ Nick Taylor from Hull: ‘Youth Anthem’ by Martin Smyth from Belfast: ‘Blaze!’ by Janine Booth from Peterborough and, soon afterwards, the seminal and long-lasting ‘Wake Up’ run by punk dentist and erstwhile Attila roadie Dave ‘Womble’ Trent from Lowestoft. All friends from that day to this. Though I haven’t heard from Richard for a while. Hope you’re OK mate!
Talking of fanzines: in those days, it was almost compulsory for budding media folk to run one. It was a bit later than this that Steve Lamacq, from Colchester, arrived at Harlow Tech to study journalism, and very soon we met up at the Square. A mutual love of lower league football (he’s a Colchester United fan: we watched their Wembley FA Trophy win together in 1992, ironically against Witton Albion, the ‘other’ team from my wife’s home town of Northwich) punk rock and beer ensured we got on famously: he had his own fanzine called ‘A Pack Of Lies’ and, as I started to do more gigs, he too was my roadie for a while. Now of course, having graduated via the NME, he’s not that far behind John Peel as a hero radio DJ (Radio 1, Six Music) who has helped countless musicians break through and fulfil their dreams.
Another erstwhile fanzine editor was James ‘Attack on Bzag’ Brown – he also went to NME, thence to found ‘Loaded’ magazine, which as far as I’m concerned was a less glorious path than Steve’s, though it did provide an amusing contrast when Brighton & Hove Albion played Barnet many years ago. Football club sponsors customarily have their name emblazoned on the team’s shirts. We were sponsored by the celebrated Brighton record label, Skint, Barnet by Loaded. Half true. We most definitely were, they weren’t. Oh, and before too long, I’d be running a fanzine myself…
Nigel Morton, the JSE London booking agent I had secured as part of my deal with Cherry Red, was starting to come up with a few real gems. So it was that at the beginning of July I was booked to support the legendary John Otway at the equally legendary Marquee in London. I was absolutely chuffed. Less so when I discovered that the gig clashed with England’s crucial clash with hosts Spain in the 1982 World Cup - I missed half of the great man’s set, constantly dashing out to a nearby pub to catch flashes of the turgid 0-0 draw which sealed England’s exit from the competition. But it was my first meeting with Otway, and we got along very well. Years later we were destined to spend a lot more time in each other’s company…..
I was also honoured to have a tiny bit part in ‘Ten Years In An Open Necked Shirt’, the first film made about punk poet pioneer John Cooper Clarke. I recited my poem ‘Foyer Bar’, about the Harlow Front Line punks’ meeting place of choice, in the foyer bar, with my mate Steve from the Neurotics swigging a pint in the background and the Front Line hanging around behind. Art reflecting life, or something like that.
In August, I made my first appearance at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, at the world famous Assembly Rooms, as part of a superb line-up which also featured Ben Zephaniah, Joolz, Seething Wells and Little Brother. It was organised by Roland Muldoon from the London CAST/New Variety circuit and given that we were all getting loads of publicity it should have been a cert to sell out. But rather than using our names, Roland had billed it as ‘A New Variety Of Poets’ - you had to look at the small print to see who was performing and most people didn’t bother, so attendances were disappointingly low.
I’d be back though: I did the Fringe for many years in the 80s and 90s, firstly in a ‘chalk and cheese’ double bill with the wonderfully clever and satirical comedy trio Sensible Footwear, latterly in a ‘marriage made in a mental hospital’ (as one reviewer called it) double act with John Otway, before deciding that other festival opportunities, and the start of the football season, were more important. You can certainly get ‘noticed’ there, but these days it is a total rip-off for performers and if people haven’t ‘noticed’ me by now they’re not going to, to be honest.
By this time, as well as the Peel session, I had been into Elephant Studios in London (favourite recording haunt of the Neurotics, resident engineer the incredibly competent and friendly Nick Robbins) and done my first recording for Cherry Red Records - aided and abetted by my Harlow friends ‘Red’ Ruth and Lynne Lomond on flute and melodeon respectively, playing mandolin and fiddle myself. The Cocktails EP was released on 15 September and reached number 15 in the indie charts, selling around 3,000 copies. It was a mixed bag.
I was very proud of ‘Contributory Negligence’ and ‘Fifth Column’, but the title track, ‘Cocktails’ was a case of me getting into a fearful tizz about something that really didn’t matter that much – the studiedly elitist London ‘new romantic’ club scene. ‘The Oracle’ (a tribute to John Cooper Clarke’s Psycle Sluts’) was basically an extended knob – or rather testicle - gag, testimony to the fact that I was still some way from coming up with consistently good material. And then, harking back to that gig in Henley and the double bed that our hostess Gerda put us in for the night, there was…
THE NIGHT I SLEPT WITH SEETHING WELLS
A far off town and a late night bash
And a double bed was our place to crash
So listen here – ‘cos this story tells
Of the night I slept with Seething Wells!
I didn’t mind – or so I said
But I wish I’d had the floor instead
Cos you’d never imagine the thousand hells
Of a night in bed with Seething Wells….
When he got undressed I had to retreat
From his shaven head and his mouldy feet
The feet that launched a thousand smells
In that fragrant night with Seething Wells
So I kept right close to the edge of the bed
And I pulled the blankets over my head
But eerie snores and stifled yells
Soon woke me, thanks to Seething Wells
And, turning, I came face to face
With a massive boil in a private place
And a couple of hairy bagatelles
Made me run like hell from Seething Wells!
And I vowed right then that if need be
I’d spend the night in a cemetery
Or sleep with dogs, or DEAD GAZELLES -
But never again with Seething Wells!
That last line is so, so poignant now.
Peel gave me some more plays and everyone was happy. I was writing more material all the time, mindful of the fact that very soon, I’d be doing my first album…
And then I was off to Holland for a couple of performances in Apeldoorn and Groningen I think, my first ever time abroad as Attila the Stockbroker. I don’t remember much about them, to be honest, except that they got me an invite to the One World Poetry Festival the following year, probably the most important of the many gigs I’ve done in Holland over the years and the start of a lifelong friendship with Hague-based writer Cor Gout. Around that time, too, I did a gig in Swindon, and met a young local bequiffed poet called Mark Jones: he’d end up changing his name to Mark Lamarr and making a high profile career in TV and radio as a respected presenter and DJ.
Also around then came a gig which, at the time, seemed much like any other, but heralded the start of a phenomenon. Inspired by the rise of the ranters and the feeling that something exciting was happening in poetry, London-based Mandy Williams had the idea of starting a new performance poetry cabaret called Apples & Snakes. On 2nd October 1982 I did the inaugural show, at a tiny pub called the Horseshoe in Islington. 33 years and thousands of s
hows later Apples & Snakes is without doubt the foremost performance poetry promoter in the UK, running gigs and workshops all over the world and responsible for finding and developing some of the scene’s finest talent. I’m happy I did the first one.
Now it was time to record that album. My first two EPs had featured different approaches: one recorded live, one in the studio. I thought I’d combine the two and have a live ‘mostly poem’ side and a studio ‘mostly song’ side. The gigs I was doing on Roland and Clare Muldoon’s London New Variety circuit were always well attended and great fun, so Cherry Red hired a portable studio and sound engineer and we recorded two shows, at the Cricklewood Hotel and Wood Green Labour Club, on 23rd and 24th October 1982. I was very happy with the results, and with the introduction – which I used on the record – by Cricklewood compere Mark Steel, a fine radical comic to this day. All my live favourites were on there – a now extended series of ‘Russians’ poems, featuring some legendary heckling from Paul Lyne, whom I still see at gigs, ‘Contributory Negligence’, ‘A Bang & A Wimpy’ a couple of ‘Nigel’ poems and many more. But it’s time for a big apology.
Mark’s intro has a very historical feel to it, since he describes me as ‘the man who has drunk more Fosters Lager than Dennis Lillee, and that’s just in the last hour and a half’. In those days all Fosters was imported in huge cans which I thought looked good if you were a loud stroppy punk poet and swigged out of one on stage. Absolutely no excuse though: it tasted like metallic sheep piss. My taste buds were still developing - I’d describe it as the half way point between the ClanDew and VP sherry of my school days and the glorious real ale which is all I’ve let pass my lips, beer-wise, since the mid 80s. STILL no excuse though. Sorry. I used to get crates of the bloody stuff on my riders at university gigs and hand them out to the audience, it got a dedication on the cover of my first album and there was more than one photo of me swigging out of a can of it in the national media in 1982 and 1983. Sorry. Sorry. Big, big SORRY.
I have spent the last 30+ years of my life drinking proper beer as a penance. I have co-run our Glastonwick Beer, Music, Poetry and More Beer Festival for the past 20 years and organised the Ropetackle Beer Festival at our lovely local arts centre in Shoreham for the past 5. Please forgive me. Robina has just read this and informed me that I am a beer snob, by the way. No I’m not. I developed a sense of taste, that’s all.
For the other side of my album I went back into Elephant Studios at the beginning of 1983 and came out with a veritable hotch-potch of all the bits and pieces I’d written in the past few months. For the opener, ‘The Fall of King Zog’, I roped in old local mates Tim Vince and Chris Payne. This very short piece was my first attempt at early music. I had always LOVED early music. A crumhorn/recorder/mandolin/medieval drum instrumental dedicated to the overthrow of the erstwhile king of Albania was maybe not the ideal opening track of Side Two of the debut album by an angry ranting poet, but I didn’t care. I was going to have early music on my first album, and that was that.
Chris and Tim had played together alongside my old university friend Tony Lewis in a ‘medieval rock’ band called Crucible they had started at school, a few miles away from my home in Southwick: legendary Hollywood composer Hans Zimmer was in it too for a while (long story). I was a big fan of Crucible in the mid Seventies, and along with Focus and of course The Clash they can claim to be part of the inspiration for the ‘medieval punk’ band Barnstormer which I started in 1994. When we did form, Tim, re-christened Tim O’Tay (!) was our driver and recorder player for many years: an absolutely lovely bloke. As for Chris, he ended up as Gary Newman’s right hand man in Tubeway Army - and a piece of music he’d written while at college, with added lyrics by Midge Ure, ended up as ‘Fade to Grey’ by Visage. He’s lived in France ever since. Not out of shame, I must point out.
The rest of Side Two – well, the Newtown Neurotics helped me with ‘Holiday in Albania’, there were re-recorded versions of ‘Burn It Down’ and, inevitably, ‘The Spencers Croft Cat’ from my first cassette, ‘Fifth Column’ from my ‘Cocktails’ EP, ‘England Are Back!’ which poked fun at the increased media optimism about our national football team’s chances in international competition on the spurious evidence of a recent 9-0 demolition of Luxemburg, a fake broadcast from Radio Tirana which claimed that Albanian leader Enver Hoxha had a pet flounder called Tristan, a Dylan rewrite, recorded live at Kingston Poly in front of a roaring audience, taking the piss out of the new wave of long mac synth bands (‘Your raincoat, you prat, is flapping in the wind…’) a ridiculous piano piece entitled ‘Where You Goin’ With That Flounder?’ and more. Basically loads of my obsessions, intertwined with weird left wing politics. As a first album by a performer still finding his way, I was proud of and happy with it.
Now I needed a title. Red Alert from Sunderland, mates and brothers of Red London, had just released a great EP called ‘Screaming At The Nation’. Nearly me, I thought. I’m ranting at the nation. And, several years before, Talking Heads had released an album ‘More Songs About Buildings And Food’. For my album I’d written six poems about the ‘Russian Threat’ and there were many references to flatfish.
Pretty soon I had it. ‘Ranting At The Nation’ (More Poems About Flatfish And Russians). Cherry Red liked that. For the cover, I was photographed outside the Poetry Society headquarters in London, wearing torn up denims and a Dexys T shirt in honour of Kevin Rowland: I loved Dexys then and still do to this day. I handwrote the back cover myself and by very early 1983 ‘Ranting At The Nation’ was ready to go to the pressing plant.
1983 was manic: everything was happening at once. I was gigging here, there and everywhere, and not just on the punk and New Variety circuit any more. Helped by all the media coverage, Nigel Morton at JSE was promoting me big time: universities in those days had big entertainments budgets and welcomed me with open arms. I zigzagged frenetically round the country on the train playing to very appreciative, though not always sober students, and after the battles on the punk circuit performing to these audiences was like kicking a jelly.
Not just student gigs either: in January 1983 I finally got to support John Cooper Clarke at the Roundhouse in London, and he was an absolute gent. ‘There’s money to be made in this, John, if you’re careful!’ I remember him saying. ‘I know, mate’ I replied – ‘I’m getting more of it than I’ve ever seen in my life!’ Solo performers obviously fare better than bands in this regard: of course, the money wasn’t the most important thing but it did help. I met legendary performance poet Nick Toczek for the first time when I played his Fatal Shocks punk club in Bradford. Then at the end of the same month I made a triumphant return to Kent University, some five years after I’d left: the local punks remembered me from RAR days and turned up in droves.
I felt as though I was in paradise. All my dreams in all areas were coming true at once. Loads of great gigs, loads of press and lots of opportunities to write about my favourite bands in Sounds magazine. At some point in the previous months I’d done a gig on the South Coast (Portsmouth? Plymouth? Neither Justin or I can remember precisely, and shockingly, none of the more elderly elements of the Army following appear to be able to either – and I can’t find any mention of it in my diaries, which is weird) where I was supported by a new band from Bradford called New Model Army. They were mates of Seething Wells, also from Bradford, who had already raved about them to me. I was most impressed when I heard them and very happy when Sounds asked me to do their first ever national press feature.
Presumably expecting me to be clueless on the matter, frontman Justin Sullivan turned up with the article already written, more or less: a long hand-written essay on English history 1640-51 and the origins of the name. You needn’t have bothered, mate. I knew! I have loved their music from that day to this. Other writing opportunities were presenting themselves: I was offered the chance to do a weekly poem in influential London listings magazine Time Out, and I made the first of my many Radio Four appearances over the ye
ars.
And then there was the football.
On 20th February 1983 I travelled with thousands of other Brighton fans to Anfield, more in hope than expectation. The Seagulls had battled manfully in the top flight for four years, and as ever, were at the wrong end of the table, but after a thumping 4-0 win at home to Man City we were in the fifth round of the FA Cup: problem was, we were playing Liverpool away. They weren’t just top of the league, they were undefeated at home in the FA Cup since 1969…
No one gave us a cat’s chance in hell, but a superb display, a winning goal from former Anfield hero Jimmy Case and a missed Phil Neal penalty made us the authors of one of the greatest shocks in FA Cup history. The following day – the game was on a Sunday - I made sure I listened to the John Peel Show. I thought he’d have something to say on the subject, and he did. He’d been at the match: instead of his usual theme music, he started his show with the sound of seagulls being machine-gunned. It didn’t put him off me though: a few days later he phoned, inviting me to come in and do another session. I didn’t gloat. No that’s a lie. I did. LOTS.
So, in March, two days after Brighton had won at home to Norwich and reached the semi finals of the FA Cup for the first time in our history, I went back to Maida Vale Studio at the BBC to record my second Peel session. I’d decided to do mostly stuff from my soon to be released album and invited everyone who’d played on it to join me – including the Newtown Neurotics, who had actually done a session for Peel the week before. But there was one new track: Sawdust and Empire, the song I had written about the Falklands War. All six minutes of it. I was so proud of that song.
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