Straight away, however, it became obvious that Francois was only really interested in Paul. My first job as manager was to insist – with Paul’s backing – that Francois couldn’t just sack the other members and get in session musicians. I remember his astonishment when we informed him of this: in typical music biz mogul fashion he seemed to assume that the offer of a record and publishing deal would mean that Paul would abandon his friends without so much as a second thought! I set up a tour (including an appearance at Glastonbury) the band rehearsed like mad and I can still remember their triumphant return to Harlow, a wonderful night at the Latton Bush Centre. This band is going places, everybody said.
But then the shit hit the fan. The producers of the intended album came to see the band rehearse. They just weren’t good enough, they said: they could continue to play the songs live, but session musicians were going to do the album. This was a classic case of music business bullshit. The band were perfectly good enough, but Francois dug his heels in and decided that he who paid the piper was going to call the tune, in this case literally.
An impasse was reached, and then the rest of the band told Paul to go for it, since the alternative would be for the whole project to be ditched and at least they would still be playing the songs live. So Paul did, and it must be said that despite the injustice surrounding its creation ‘The Patron Saint of Heartache’ is an absolutely magnificent album. Copies were sent by Musidisc to all their media contacts and then, after rehearsals and a few warm up shows, it was time for the big media showcase at London’s Mean Fiddler.
But the Faustian pact by which the band had been sidelined in the recording process had affected Paul deeply. He’d always been an enthusiastic imbiber, and the night of that showcase he was on a one man self-destruct mission. He could barely function when he walked on stage and the gig was a disaster. Guitarist Mark Walshe remembers Francois’ disgusted one-word review. ‘Shit.’
The band was finally sacked and the album was recorded with session musicians, pressed, but never put on sale. I have five copies: for both myself and Robina it remains by far and away the best unreleased album of all time (although, mysteriously, a few copies appear to be available on Amazon: not sure how that happened). The whole thing finished in a big, unhappy mess. Paul is still writing and playing today: his songs and voice are as wonderful as ever and he played our Glastonwick Festival last year. After a long period of retirement Simon is back on the Neurotics’ drum stool for a few gigs in 2015.
Apart from the Trap I’ve never managed anyone else apart from myself, and have no intention of doing so, ever again. I’m enough of a handful, I guess…
If I wasn’t a manager, I was certainly a keen promoter. By early 1993 I’d been based back in my home town of Southwick for a couple of years and, as an inveterate organiser of gigs not just for myself but sometimes for others as well, I had hatched a plan for a series at our local theatre. Southwick may only be five miles from Brighton but it is a different world in cultural terms and I thought it would be great to bring some of the radical poets and musicians I had met over the years to the rather conservative (with big and small ‘c’) port town where I grew up and stir things up a bit!
From the time my mother and father moved back to Southwick with me when I was three, both of them had been very involved in the local community association and my mum had played the piano for local amateur dramatic groups at the adjacent Barn Theatre, so there was a firm connection there. I got a grant from South East Arts to invite performers from all over the country and between 1993 and 2001 we (myself with volunteer helpers Roy, Miranda and Ralph, plus my mum working the box office) hosted a monthly event – mainly poetry, with music and occasional comedy - under the ‘Barnstormer’ banner. Storming gigs, held in a lovely converted barn, the one rule being that everyone invited wrote and performed their own original material: simple, really. Things went very well indeed.
To name just the relatively well known artists we put on, many of whom played more than once: Half Man Half Biscuit, Linton Kwesi Johnson, Ben Zephaniah, Mark Thomas, Simon Armitage, Phill Jupitus, Jo Brand, John Agard, Grace Nicholls, Patience Agbabi, Terry Garoghan, John Otway, Carol Ann Duffy, Fiona Pitt-Kethley, Jean ‘Binta’ Breeze, Jackie Kay, Murray Lachlan Young, John Cooper Clarke, Adrian Mitchell, Captain Sensible, Will Self, Martin Newell, Levi Tafari, The Men They Couldn’t Hang, Justin Sullivan of New Model Army, Les Carter of Carter USM, Henry Normal, Michael Horovitz, The Tansads, Les Barker, Roy Bailey, John Dowie, Patrik Fitzgerald, Fermin Muguruza from the Basque Country, Neil Sparkes of Transglobal Underground, Mark Steel, Joolz, Mick Thomas of Weddings Parties Anything, Leon Rosselson, Citizen Fish, T.V.Smith, Don Paterson, Wob, Blyth Power and Robb Johnson. Phew! All in our little theatre a few hundred yards from Southwick railway station.
Contrary to the fears of certain minor local Centre dignitaries, there was no drug dealing, no fighting and no goat sacrifices on stage. We had enormous fun, people flocked to the gigs and Southwick was put well and truly on the map. And there was a wonderful spin-off which continues to this day.
Southwick Community Centre is a registered charity, mostly run by volunteers. In early 1996 I came up with the idea of a summer beer and music festival to raise much-needed funds for the place, featuring many of the performers I was putting on at my regular monthly events there. I’d performed at many music festivals where the only beer on offer was the undrinkable corporate urine of Satan (‘real ale is for old beardy blokes!’) and many beer festivals where the usually dismissive nod towards ‘entertainment’ was – you guessed it – old beardy blokes. Usually old beardy blokes stuck in a corner playing mind-numbingly boring blues covers or whining ‘Scarborough Fayre’. HELP!!
It doesn’t have to be like this, I thought. Why not have a beer festival with varied, invigorating, radical entertainment and a music festival with great real ale –simultaneously?
Charles Porter, son of George, the doyen of the Centre, took up the idea with gusto and my great friend Roy Chuter came in to help. Next we needed someone to source and look after the beer: enter Alex Hall, cellarman at Brighton real ale mecca The Evening Star. Alex not only scoured the country looking for interesting new beers but persuaded most of them to do special one-offs for Glastonwick – he still does to this day. We needed a name for the festival: I was a regular at Glastonbury and it was my favourite gig of the year. We wanted to bring a tiny bit of the old Glastonbury spirit to Southwick. It didn’t take long to come up with one…
The same local dignitaries who had predicted drug orgies and ritual goat sacrifices at my music/poetry events were even more worried about the prospect of a full-on beer and music festival - but the more progressive elements at the Centre overruled them, the local Adur Council gave us its blessing with inclusion in its annual summer arts programme and the first Glastonwick Beer Music, Poetry & More Beer Festival took place over 3 days between 24-26 May 1996, with 30 beers and John Otway, Blyth Power, The Fish Brothers (of whom more soon) and surreal folk poet Les Barker headlining. As with my monthly events, I selected the performers, the basic rule being that they must play their own material. As someone who earns his living as a writer/performer, one of my primary concerns has always been to promote and encourage others who do the same.
And the mix worked perfectly. Not all the music/poetry fans wanted real ale and not all the beer fans wanted entertainment: the former gathered in the theatre, the latter sat in the adjacent rooms or the lovely walled garden. But most were there for both, of course. A friendly, fun time was had by all, no animals were harmed in the process and the beer sold out so quickly we had to send to the Evening Star for emergency supplies! Loads of money was raised for the centre, Glastonwick became a regular annual event and new recruits to the music and poetry roster were added every year from people I met and performed alongside on my tours at home and abroad, along with invitations extended to many of the performers I’d already invited to the Barnstormer theatre series.
Alex�
�s beer selections got bigger in number and better in range as the small independent brewing sector grew across the country. I joined the Southwick Community Centre team which applied successfully for a huge grant from the National Lottery Fund, and managed to get a grant from the Foundation for Sport and the Arts for a new PA system for the Barn Theatre as well. (The local theatre groups made sure it was a theatre one, of course, but it worked for us too, most of the time.) All this meant that despite a few minor disagreements with the Centre hierarchy I thought we were set fair for the foreseeable future.
Until that fateful day on December 12, 2002 when I read the headline in our local paper, the Evening Argus.
‘Beer festival is booted out!’
The people at the Centre hadn’t even told us.
Obviously, I wanted to find out why. Unbelievably, the answer from the Committee was that ‘it was difficult to staff’ and ‘beer was spilt on the floor’. Hang on, I said, my friend Roy organises most of the volunteer serving staff and, yes, a bit of beer does get spilt on the floor at a beer festival, but if you’re raising thousands of pounds and having a bloody good time in the process that’s hardly an issue, is it?
But they were adamant: no more Glastonwick.
I thought it very strange, but immediately set about trying to find somewhere else to host the festival. I found a willing partner in Tom Maryan, bar manager in the lovely 30s art deco terminal building at Shoreham Airport, a couple of miles from Southwick, and despite loads of restrictions due to the fact that it was a working commercial airfield we held ‘Glastonwake’ on 30-31 May 2003 – restricted to two days rather than three and with no music during the day. The ‘wake’ part was due to the fact that at that point there was a distinct possibility that it would be the last one, but after discussions with the airport authorities we got the go ahead for future festivals there. It was an unusual place for sure, from a practical point of view not ideal (no music at lunchtime: difficulty charging admission because people were using the airport for other activities) but we adapted as much as we could. Then, not long after our 2003 event and after we had agreed the dates for 2004, we got another shock, again delivered by the local press, this time the Shoreham Herald.
‘Beer festival set to return!’
‘The festival formerly known as Glastonwick is under new management and returning to Southwick Community Centre for next year’s Adur Festival.’
Obviously the people at the centre had found loads of new volunteer staff and a magic way to stop beer going on the floor! In reality, of course, it seemed to me that the answer was simple: they liked the idea of a beer festival and the money it raised, but they didn’t want us to run it any more. They wanted mainly local beers and local (covers) bands, not our exotic mix of far-flung brews and performers they hadn’t heard of who play their own material. I wish they’d simply told us that! As I have already said, my unpretentious port town home isn’t trendy old Brighton, not everybody likes the ‘alternative’ music/ poetry scene and of course there is absolutely nothing wrong with a good piss up and a set by ‘Ill Eagles’ or whatever. I like living in Southwick and understand the spirit of the place: my family roots here go back far enough…
So, for the next two years, Glastonwick and the ‘Southwick Beer Festival’ took place on the same weekend, a couple of miles apart: it wasn’t deliberate, it was just how it worked out. There was a little bit of bad feeling at first, but the fact that both festivals did well enough to continue at their respective locations proved that there really were two separate audiences, ours from all over the south-east of England (and further afield) and theirs from the immediate locality. In 2006 we finally managed to get the festivals on adjoining weekends rather than in direct competition with each other, and it’s been like that ever since: both happen every year, theirs on the May Bank Holiday weekend, ours the weekend after. I’m happy to say that these days differences are long forgotten and - if I’m not gigging somewhere else - I happily turn up for a few beers at the annual Southwick Beer Festival in the place where Glastonwick began all those years ago.
But the following year it was time for the festival to move again - to our current, absolutely perfect home. Again not by choice, though I’m so pleased we did…
Towards the end of the 2006 festival, myself and bar manager Tom were called into a meeting with the airport manager.
‘We’ve been having complaints from pilots and passengers. Apparently some punks have been making fun of them, calling them ‘posh’ and things like that.’
‘You know what a friendly bunch Glastonwick-goers are’ I replied. ‘You’ve complimented us on how we run the festival. It’s just friendly banter, that’s all!’
Another frankly soppy pretext, similar to the ‘beer spilt on the floor’ one which saw us ejected from our previous home. Be that as it may, for reasons best known to themselves the bosses at Shoreham Airport didn’t want to host Glastonwick any more, and once again we were without a venue. (An interesting postscript here: as I write this in 2015, a licence has just been granted for a 35,000 capacity festival there, organised by mainstream promoters SJM Concerts who run V Festival and Parklife among others. So the airport authorities were uneasy about the behaviour of a few of our 350 attendees but are now happy to host a festival with a HUNDRED times that number? Money talks, obviously!)
We weren’t homeless for long, though. Hats off to the council folks at Adur Arts Festival, for whom Glastonwick had become a flagship event. They suggested that I talk to Jenny and Trevor Passmore, the brother and sister owners of Church Farm in Coombes, near Lancing, about three miles north of the airport. I phoned Jenny and outlined what we were doing: she was very interested and invited me up to the farm to look around.
The moment I walked through the gate I knew that this was the perfect setting. Glastonwick was home at last! A large barn for the beer and the music, a smaller covered area for cider, food and general socialising and a separate seating area where ‘beer scoopers’ could gather for their ‘ticking’ sessions. (The ‘scoopers’ had always been a part of Glastonwick, hardly surprising since Alex Hall, our beer guru, is a dedicated member of the fraternity. Thirty or so dedicated souls whose passion is finding beers they haven’t tasted before and making notes about each one in a little book - a kind of liquid version of trainspotting. No, I don’t understand it either, but each to his/her own…) Furthermore, behind the barn at Church Farm I saw a huge, beautiful valley, ideal for camping, something which hadn’t been a possibility at either of our previous locations.
We’d hit the jackpot. Hats off to the Passmores, and Jenny’s husband Jerry, for taking on trust an event which needed a bit of explaining at first, being 100% behind us from the beginning and doing everything possible to help Glastonwick progress, from our first festival there in 2007 to the present day.
Thanks also to our local award-winning Dark Star Brewery who took over the bar management side of things, providing the logistics and finance to pay for Alex Hall’s beer selections and transport them to the site. Brewery co-founder Rob Jones has now left Dark Star and owns the Duke of Wellington in Shoreham, Glastonwick’s spiritual home for the other 362 days of the year: last year he and Trevor Passmore started managing the beer side of things together.
This year (2015) we celebrated our twentieth anniversary and ninth at Coombes Farm. Glastonwick takes place at the end of May/beginning of June, starting on Friday evening and ending 6pm on the following Sunday. Over the years the capacity has risen slightly to 550 (it’ll never get any bigger) and the number of different beers has stabilised at around 85 - and every year we’ve ended up saying ‘That was the best one yet!’
Each year around 22 bands, poets and solo performers take to the stage over the the course of the weekend. Musical highlights have included The King Blues, Goldblade, Australia’s Go Set, Eddie & The Hot Rods, classical guitarist Richard Durrant, Leon Rosselson, Zounds, Inner Terrestials, Peter & The Test Tube Babies, Newtown Neurotics, an impromptu reunion
by Carter USM following solo performances from Jimbob and Fruitbat, The Piranhas, TV Smith, Blyth Power, Jake Shillingford from My Life Story and loads, loads more… including, every year, John Otway. Jenny Passmore says ‘no Otway, no Glastonwick!’ and although under most circumstances I defy authority with aplomb, in this instance I heartily endorse her stance. There really is nobody like Otway, and in 2015 he and his Big Band headlined the Friday night, with my old mates The Men They Couldn’t Hang on the Saturday and comedian Robin Ince doing the business on the Sunday. Plus another twenty or so performers and bands.
Thanks to all the volunteers (you know who you are) who make our friendly local festival what it is. Thanks to co-founder Alex Hall for twenty years of superb ale - and hard work finding it. And thanks and RIP to my old friend Roy Chuter, the other co-founder and former landlord of the Duke of Wellington mentioned above, who sadly died in July 2013 and to whom the 2014 festival was dedicated. We miss you, mate.
But my gig series at the Barn Theatre in Southwick didn’t just sow the seeds for twenty years of Glastonwick: it gave me the name for my band. Not until after a couple of false starts, though…
I’ve already said that by early 1994 I was seriously contemplating getting a band together to play my songs, principally to tour Germany and other mainland European countries. I had a very clear idea of what I wanted: some top rate musicians who could handle the concept of combining punk and medieval music, relate to my radical lyrical content - and, most importantly of all, were a decent, friendly, easy going bunch who were up for a good time and more than a few beers! Having been enjoyably solo for 14 years (and obviously intending to continue my UK solo poetry activities alongside band gigs) the last thing I wanted was a bunch of moaning shoegazers who would take the fun out of touring, causing arguments and splits - or plodders who took ages to learn the songs, thus meaning hours of unnecessary, frustrating rehearsals. Rehearsing is obviously necessary and fine if you all know what you’re doing: if you don’t, it’s about as pleasurable as going to the dentist. (I’m happy to say that the rest of my band have always agreed 100% with me about this.)
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