Then came what was without doubt for me my biggest gig to date. And thereby hangs a tale and a half.
One day a few weeks previously I’d had a call from agent Nigel Morton. ‘I remember you telling me how much you liked John Cale’ he said. ‘Would you like to support him at the Venue in London? Fifty quid, that’s all, sorry….’
‘Nigel, mate, I’d fucking PAY fifty quid to support him.’
John Cale was, and is, one of my all time musical heroes. I’d first encountered him on the Velvets albums, of course, and in my mid teens I’d attempted to play along on violin to his wonderful, original, alternately droning and manic viola playing. When the Velvets split and he went solo it became clear what a great songwriter he was: I bought and loved his albums, and still do. ‘Paris 1919’, which I am playing as I type these words, is still one of my five favourite LPs of all time. Live, he was mesmerising. In 1975, on the ‘Slow Dazzle’ tour, I was a seventeen year old at the front of the stage when Cale, wearing a ski mask, ripped a mannequin to bits and, thrusting its hand into mine, dragged me on stage to claw the strings of his guitar with it while he held me in a headlock. I was in seventh heaven that night, and that mannequin hand stayed with me for ages. And now I was going to support him. I knew he had a formidable reputation, but I wasn’t worried in the least. Maybe it was he who had asked for me…
A Thursday night at the long-deceased Venue near Victoria Station. I got there early with my mandola and watched a bit of the great man’s soundcheck. Afterwards, I wanted to say hello, but the security staff said he didn’t want any visitors. ‘But I just want to tell him how much I love his stuff…’ No go.
OK, I thought, maybe after my set. Though he probably won’t be listening, he’ll be relaxing before his gig. (How wrong I was!)
I don’t really do nervous, never have, and the battles I’d had in the punk scene had given me a hard-edged confidence, but that night I was nervous. As a fellow fan I really wanted Cale’s audience to like me, and I wanted Cale to like me too. I charged on stage and gave it my all, and soon realised that not only was I going down really well but quite a few of the people there were familiar with my material and one or two were singing/reciting along. I was in seventh heaven. Obviously, because I was the support act, more and more people were coming in all the time, but that didn’t seem to make any difference: the applause was building with each poem and song.
Emboldened, I decided to change my set. I’d started off with the ‘grab ‘em at all costs’ shouty punk rock gig approach and assumed that the best way would to finish with a bang as well – at that time ‘Contributory Negligence’ was a very popular setender. But things were going so well that I thought I’d sign off with a tribute to the great man, and play my new song, a ballad, the best song I’d ever written, the first one on my lovely new mandola. All six minutes of it.
‘I just want to say how proud and honoured I am to support John Cale tonight. His music has been an inspiration to me since the Velvets days. And to someone who has written some wonderful ballads I want to offer one of mine, one I’ve just written. This is called Sawdust and Empire…’
It was a risk, maybe, but it worked. The crowd responded to that song, still striking a deep chord given that the Falklands War was not long over, and they rose to me. I got an encore! I came offstage feeling absolutely euphoric, collapsed into a chair, grabbed a beer and looked forward to Cale’s set with the satisfaction of a job well done and a dream realised. Then there was a knock on the door. It was a security man. ‘Mr Cale wants to talk to you. Come with me.’
Oh, fantastic. He must have been watching my set. He’s seen how much his audience enjoyed it, and he wants to meet me!
I can still picture the scene, more than thirty years later. John Cale is standing in the middle of a room, leaning on a high table with a champagne bottle in an ice bucket.
He is wild-eyed and roaring in his distinctive Welsh baritone.
‘So you’re Attila the Stockbroker, are you? What the fuck do you think you were doing out there? Do you call that poetry? You can’t sing! And what’s all this politics? What are you doing at my gig?’
My jaw dropped. To say I was shocked and disappointed is an understatement. But this was 1983. I had had a lot of hassle at gigs. I took it in my stride.
‘I love your stuff, John, with the Velvets and solo. I’ve got every album you’ve ever done. I was offered the support by my agent, and it was a dream come true. It was an absolute honour to play with you. You saw my set so you’ll have seen how much the audience enjoyed it, too. And I’m so looking forward to yours…’
‘I don’t care about that. WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING AT MY GIG?’ He turned to the bouncer. ‘Throw him out!’
Cale may once have famously written that fear is a man’s best friend, but it isn’t mine. ‘What the fuck!’ I shouted. ‘I love your stuff, mate. You may think I’m crap, but your audience didn’t, and there’s no need to behave like that!’
But Cale turned his back and was gone. And the bouncer, apologetically, said ‘If the main act here tells me I have to throw someone out, I have to do it, it’s my job. Don’t worry, though, I’ll explain what has happened to the people on the door and they’ll let you back in…’
They’d better do, I thought. My lovely new mandola’s still in my dressing room.
And so it came to pass that I was thrown out of my own gig, having got an encore, by one of my all-time musical heroes. As promised, I was allowed straight back in: when told the story by their colleague, the other doormen thought it was very funny (as indeed it was, and still is, to be honest). I recovered my mandola, thoroughly enjoyed Cale’s set - he made no mention of me onstage - and went home. It didn’t affect my love of his music in the slightest and I continued to buy his albums and go to his gigs. But I didn’t ask to support him again…
Years later I learned from the internet that there was a report in the London press the next day saying he had chased me down Victoria Street with a big stick. I don’t know where that came from (probably a publicist) but it wasn’t true. If the bouncer hadn’t been there, and Cale had had a go, I’d have given myself a pretty good chance. Compared to a big bunch of fascist boneheads, a roaring mad Welshman wasn’t that frightening a prospect.
And, once again, there’s a postscript. Around the turn of the millennium Cale was on a book signing tour promoting his autobiography ‘What’s Welsh For Zen?’ He was doing a signing in Brighton: I was certainly going to buy the book, and I thought I’d go along and ask him if he remembered the London gig where he got the bouncers to throw his loud shouty punk rock poet support act out of the venue. I got to the front of the queue, and put the question.
‘Sorry mate’ he said. ‘I don’t remember anything about the Eighties at all…’
I mentioned earlier that I started this story listening to ‘Paris 1919’. Well, as I’ve typed it, I’ve gone through ‘Fear’, ‘Slow Dazzle’ and ‘Vintage Violence’. Wonderful.
I still love your music, John. Always will. No hard feelings.
My second Peel session was broadcast soon after that (a week after the Neurotics’ first) and, once again, the feedback was immense. These days fragmented and deregulated broadcasting means a multitude of stations competing for the so called ‘alternative’ audience: back then everyone listened to Peel, which meant an audience of over a million. I got the train up to a gig at the Fighting Cocks pub in Birmingham to be met by a massive crowd – and Robert Lloyd, leader of Birmingham’s angular popsters The Nightingales, label mates of mine on Cherry Red. He took me to Saleem’s curry house in Ladypool Road, part of what Brummies call the Balti Triangle. He became a mate and Saleem’s a regular stop-off point to this day. Soon I was to meet Robert’s mate, anti-comedy comedian legend Ted Chippington. ‘Walking down this road the other day…’ I became a good mate of Ted. I know that, because he gave me a badge with ‘A Good Mate Of Ted’ on it.
Rob loved curry so much that he and his then girlfriend
Patsy Winkelman founded a label called Vindaloo Records, home of The Nightingales, Ted Chippington and, two or three years later, the extraordinary all-girl punk band We’ve Got A Fuzzbox (And We’re Gonna Use It). They toured together a lot. Patsy basically ran the label and managed Fuzzbox, helped by Rob and her brother Pete, the man behind the notorious transformation of Wimbledon FC into MK Dons, the first – and hopefully last – ‘franchise’ operation in the history of our national game, an absolute bloody disgrace. But that wasn’t Patsy’s fault. She came to my 30th anniversary gig in London, and, sadly, one of the last times I saw Rob was when The Nightingales played at the memorial gig for Seething Steven Wells after his tragic death from cancer in 2009. Not seen Ted for a while though…
By then ‘Ranting At The Nation’ was in the shops – and in the clutches of the reviewers.
Until my first album came out, I’d been treated pretty well by the national music press. I was writing for Sounds, so they were always pretty friendly, but Melody Maker had had me on the front cover and I’d had some good reviews in NME as well as the chance to write the piece about new towns for them the previous year. I was proud of the material on my album, but I was in for a shock! I can still remember the day I saw the NME review. I’d gone up to Ipswich for a gig at the Albion Mills, organised by stalwart poet and storyteller John Row, and picked up the paper the next morning at the station, just before I got on the train. I opened the NME and turned to the reviews section.
‘STOCKBROKER BELT UP!’ the page yelled at me. ‘What makes Attila the Stockbroker so infuriating? Why would I rather gnaw through my own arm than listen to this album again? Never mind the Sex Pistols, this album is bollocks.’
There was loads more in the same rancorous vein: you get the gist. It really was a hatchet job. My first thought was to find the reviewer, a Leeds fan called Don Watson, and compel him to engage in the aforementioned act of self-mutilation by force, but fortunately I realised that would be rather counterproductive in terms of any favourable coverage in the future. As it happened I could have done so with impunity: the NME didn’t have a good word to say about me ever again. Well, not until the advent of the internet anyway. I am now described as a ‘punk poet legend’ on their video channel…
These days, I have a rather different attitude to that ‘arm gnawing’ line: it really is an absolute classic, brings huge laughs (including from me) whenever I tell people the story, and I use it on all my internet publicity. Thanks, Don. You bastard.
Melody Maker joined the party, telling me to ‘get my act together or sink into obscurity’ and Sounds got two staffers to review it together and disagree, probably to keep peace in the office. So basically a big thumbs down from the music press – hugely influential in those days – but Peel played it, fanzines liked it, punters bought it and it stayed in the indie album charts for 6 weeks, peaking at number 12. Not bad for autocannibalism-inducing verse. On the back cover I had invited fellow poets to send in their work for possible inclusion in a ranting fanzine I was about to start called ‘Tirana Thrash’ (capital of Albania, punk noise) and the letters poured in from all over the country with, as you’d expect, poetry of every standard from superb to abysmal.
Then I started getting letters from New Zealand: quite a few, actually. This puzzled me, until Cherry Red told me that they’d signed a licensing deal for the album over there. It got an awful lot of play on college and community radio, and its legacy meant that when I finally made it to Auckland eight years later I was in for a big surprise…
And now it was time for the first FA Cup semi final in Brighton & Hove Albion’s history – against Sheffield Wednesday at Highbury. Although we were bottom of the First Division, Sheffield Wednesday were in the division below us, so we were favourites to reach the Final. We went in hope. We filled the Clock End at Highbury. We sang our hearts out. We won 2-1. We got to the FA Cup Final for the first time ever!
Straight afterwards, I had to do a London gig with the Neurotics at the Cricklewood Hotel, and, before that, meet a 16 year old Janine Booth from Peterborough to do an interview for the first issue of her new fanzine, Blaze. With great self restraint I managed to do both, relatively sober, and then got absolutely, totally, utterly paralytic in celebration of our victory. I’ve been friends with Janine ever since that day. Mother, RMT executive committee member, radical author (most recently of ‘Plundering London Underground, about the public-private partnership fiasco) a really good performance poet – she’s just published her first book of verse, ‘Mostly Hating Tories’ – and, most importantly, a lovely human being. I am atheist godfather to her eldest son Alex.
Four days later, having met them in Sunderland some time before and pestered Razor Records, home of the Newtown Neurotics, to give them a record deal, I went into the studio with the utterly brilliant Red London and produced their first EP, ‘Sten Guns In Sunderland’. Patty Smith on vocals, one of the best singing voices I’ve ever heard, Gaz Stoker on bass - currently playing with the Angelic Upstarts - his brother Kid on guitar and a drummer called Raish, who went off the rails soon after that and ended up in nick. We were very proud of that EP. Garry Bushell slagged off my production work in Sounds though. Garry, mate, listen to those old Oi! albums again…
Everything was still happening at once. As I’ve mentioned earlier, loads of new performers had been inspired to take the stage by the ‘ranting poetry’ movement, and some time previously I had decided to organise a gig to showcase them all. Round the corner from Elephant Studios in Wapping, where the Neurotics and I were regularly recording, there was an up and coming performance venue called, rather ponderously, Metropolitan Wharf Studio B2. I approached them with an idea for an evening gig and they were well up for it: it took place on 23rd April, 1983 and went very well.
On the bill, which I compered: Swells, Little Brother, Joolz, Little Dave and myself – joined for the first time by a young Benjamin Zephaniah. And in the very healthy audience, a young aspiring ranter calling himself Porky, real name Phill Jupitus, along with his mate Joe Norris. Very soon, Porky the Poet would join our gang, become a great friend, illustrate the three issues of my fanzine Tirana Thrash, illustrate my first book of poems, my second EP for Cherry Red and my second album on Cherry Red sister label Anagram, do countless gigs with me, hook up with Billy Bragg and Paul Weller, become a comedian under his real name, become famous - and on the way to him becoming famous, we’d fall out big time. I’m so sad about that, and it was mostly my fault. But that’s for much later on…
Five days later came a pivotal moment in the whole saga of fascist violence at gigs. Myself and the Neurotics were supporting glam-punks The Adicts (a great, fun band, very successful in the global underground scene to this day whose first press feature I’d also done in Sounds) at the Brixton Ace. There was a pretty big crowd, and we had loads of fans there, but it soon became apparent that, once again, the far Right had targeted the gig. I was having a chat and a beer with some of the audience when a bloke with very short hair, obviously of a right-wing persuasion, came up and tapped me on the shoulder.
‘D’you know who I am?’
No, I said, I haven’t had the pleasure.
‘I’m Chubby Chris from Combat 84. Where are your Harlow Reds?’
(NB: this is actually what happened. Before his recent death he apparently wrote a book about his hooligan days in which he claimed to have ‘whacked’ me. He didn’t. He said ‘I’m Chubby Chris from Combat 84’ and wandered off.)
I’d heard of ‘Chubby’ Chris Henderson, and I knew about Combat 84’s reputation as a right wing band. It puzzled me a bit, because I’d met Deptford John, their bass player, a few times, and he was a nice bloke and didn’t seem right wing at all. But Chris was definitely a fascist, and part of the notorious Chelsea Headhunters hooligan gang. As for Harlow Reds, me, the Neurotics and a few of our mates were there, but he was talking about an organised group, and that wasn’t us. He seemed to be making reference to the mention of ‘Harlow Reds’ in my
‘Contributory Negligence’ poem. I was puzzled. But soon the puzzle was solved. He may have heard rumours
I hadn’t and got the town wrong, I’ve no idea. If he did, he didn’t get it very wrong. Hatfield starts with an ‘H’ as well and is only a few miles from Harlow… I didn’t actually see what happened, and it happened very quickly: I was either on stage or down the front watching one of the other bands. All I do know is that there was a huge commotion by the entrance and at the back of the hall, then all the fascists were gone and a poisonously intimidating atmosphere suddenly became one of victory and celebration. The Hatfield Reds, soon to become Red Action and then founder members of Anti-Fascist Action, had made their first intervention at one of our gigs, and from then on problems with the far Right became fewer and fewer. That night I got paralytic with happiness: I remember Joy and Mary more or less having to carry me out of the venue on the way back to Joy’s place in Sydenham. I was spending a lot of time there now: Joy and I were a couple and I was splitting my time between her place in South London and the flat in Harlow.
Of course the fascists didn’t go away, far from it: there would be many more attacks over the years, probably the most notorious being that on the Redskins and the Hank Wangford Band at the Greater London Council’s 1984 ‘Jobs for a Change’ festival. But after the Brixton Ace confrontation the fascists knew that there would be no more easy pickings - and the likes of me knew that we weren’t on our own any more. Militant anti-fascists would steward any gigs where trouble was expected, not just for us of course but for loads of performers committed to the cause.
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