by Suggs
When I got home I phoned Jenny. Her mum said she wasn’t in.
When the day came, Mum accompanied me to the court. We sat in the waiting room. It was a sunny day and the room was getting hot and stuffy and filling with fag smoke, so someone pulled up the blind to get a window open. Mum lit a fag and stared absent-mindedly out of the window. It looked onto the back of Highbury station.
‘That’s weird, Graham,’ she said. ‘Isn’t that the stupid name they call you?’ I looked out and there, painted on the blackened brick wall was the word ‘Suggs’ in giant ten-foot white letters. I looked away.
‘Nah.’
THE GLAMOUR BOYS
The graffiti was getting even more preposterous. ‘Suggs is everywhere!’ ‘Suggs is our leader.’ ‘Who is Suggs?’ Yes, that was a question a lot of people were starting to ask, including a notorious gang from North London called the Aldenham Glamour Boys, whose members included Mr B and Kix – graffiti tags I’d seen round Kentish Town and Hampstead. They were surprised to meet a skinny sixteen-year-old. ‘What, you’re Suggs? And you think you’re our leader?’ I most patently was not.
The Aldenhams were two or three years older than me and got their name from the youth club they hung out at, and the fact they were into glam rock like Roxy Music, T-Rex, David Bowie and Mott the Hoople. They were smart and sprayed their boots a variety of bright colours. They looked like a packet of Smarties coming down the road, but you wouldn’t say that to their faces. Other gangs from round and about would come down just to pick fights with them.
For local lads they were well travelled. When we still made cars in Britain, train loads of Cortinas would come up from the Ford factory in Dagenham and stop at the signal crossing at Kentish Town West. The Aldenham boys would board the train, climb in the cars, hot-wire the engines, get the heaters and radios going and ride the trains, sometimes all the way to Continental Europe. Until they got caught and deported back home.
Mike Barson, Lee Thompson and Chris Foreman were three of the Aldenham Boys I’d met through John Hasler in the Duke of Hamilton. One night we all went to see the film American Graffiti at the South End Green Odeon. It was all diners with waitresses on roller skates, Cadillacs, drive-in movies, good-looking wild-eyed American teenagers all going crazy at the high school hop. The music played as much a part of the story as the dialogue. It was really loud and really good – Fats Domino, Jerry Lee Lewis, Chuck Berry and Little Richard.
I was still singing ‘See You Later Alligator’ when we all piled out of the pictures. I even surprised myself. This was a vocal talent that up to this point had only been utilised in singing folk ballads such as ‘Come On You Blues’, ‘We’ll Never Be Mastered By No Northern Bastards’ and of course the timeless classic ‘You’re Going Home In a Fookin’ Ambulance!’
John Hasler was standing at the bottom of the steps with a few of the Aldenham chaps. He was staring up at me.
‘D’you wanna be in our band?’
Even though my mum was a good singer and there was always music around the house, I’d never considered singing before. I can’t say I had the best voice, but I was a pretty charismatic young chap. And anyway it turned out their previous singer had left, so I got the job. We were the North London Invaders, and we’d rehearse three nights a week (and twice on Saturdays) in a variety of exotic locations such as Mike the keyboard player’s bedroom. Mike, Chris and Lee had started to play together. Chas joined them on bass and John Hasler on drums. Their original singer was a fella called Dickron. I’d seen them play at a party at Si Birdsall’s, who lived just over the road from the Hope, in his back garden. Although it was very early days, they weren’t too bad. I think it may have been that very night that Dickron, who was an out-and-out fifties rock ’n’ roll man, was becoming disillusioned with the more eclectic musical direction the others wanted to go in, and decided to leave. Which was most fortuitous for me.
*
I’d get the 24 bus up to Chris’s flat in Kentish Town and call for him. He lived in a mansion block not unlike Cavendish Mansions, called Penshurst, but it had a kitchen and bathroom. He was newly married to a girl called Sue Heggerty, and I knew her brother Tony, one of the Chelsea Boys who lived on the Regent’s Park Estate in Camden.
Chris and Sue had a two-year-old son, Matthew, and the flat was in the process of being decorated. Chris was working on the council at the time, which meant he had a bit of time to do some DIY and practise his guitar at home. Working on the council was the cushiest number you could get: everyone was skiving and chipping off early, even the supervisors. I sat with Chris in Matthew’s newly-painted bedroom and wrote my first proper song with him, ‘In the Middle of the Night’, about a knicker thief.
Before we set off for rehearsals we’d have a coffee and Chris would play whatever new record he’d bought. I remember it was where I heard Dr Feelgood for the first time – ‘She Does It Right’. It jumped out of the speakers. And for some strange reason I can remember Chris playing ‘Here Come the Warm Jets’ by Brian Eno. We were always listening to music, but it wasn’t always easy to come by. You could spend hours in a record shop trying to find something your mates didn’t have.
After coffee me and Chris would head to Mike’s house in Crouch End, on the bus. Chris was a very funny bloke and we laughed all the way, always paying half fare with our Dr. Martens on the heater at the front of the top deck, smoking Embassy Regals and being told by the conductor that old chestnut: ‘If you’re old enough to smoke, you’re old enough to pay full fare.’ Mike was living in Crouch End at the time and his bedroom was on the first floor. There was an upright piano and a drum kit with a blanket over it to muffle the sound for his long-suffering mum.
We also rehearsed in the basement of a disused dental surgery in Finchley Road, where we rocked out amongst plaster casts of North London gnashers, and in a church hall in Crouch End. Lee, the sax player, used to collect our subs to give the vicar his rent of two pounds a week. One day the vicar knocked on the door and said: ‘I’m ever so sorry to interrupt, boys, but it’s been over three months now and I was wondering if you might have some money for me?’ We all looked at Lee, he looked sheepish and we had to leave.
But, bit by bit, the rehearsing was starting to pay off. We were getting somewhere. Like most young bands we were mostly doing covers. Covers of the music we loved, fifties R & B, Fats Domino, The Coasters and soul, and Motown, Stevie Wonder, Smokey Robinson. Ska and reggae, Prince Buster, The Cats, Toots and the Maytals, Desmond Dekker. Music that no one else seemed to be doing at the time. Music that was relatively easy to play but would really get people going on the dance floor. And we were putting a lot of effort into our image. The way we dressed, the way we walked, bowled down the street, even the way we smoked. And of course the way we danced.
But most of the effort was going into the music. We knew there were better bands around musically, but we felt we were onto something new and different. We were really young – I was seventeen – and there was a real excitement.
The only problem was I had two singing jobs. The band rehearsed on Saturdays, but I still had my vocal duties with the chaps down at Chelsea, where I also felt a real excitement.
As shit as Chelsea were in the mid-seventies, I loved going to the football. It was the highlight of my week. Squashed in the Shed with thousands of other kids like me, singing, chanting and clapping in unison. Like the Slade song at the time you could literally ‘feel the noize’. Other teams’ fans would sometimes invade the Shed and try and take over, but it was mostly just huge waves of pushing and shoving and running around. After one particularly dull game, I cheered myself up with a copy of the Melody Maker. On the bus going home I’d nearly finished reading it when I spotted an advert in the back pages.
‘Semi-professional North London band seek professionally minded singer.’ Hang on, that’s Mike’s phone number.
When I got home I phoned him and put on a funny voice. ‘Ahem, yes, I was just enquiring about the job of singer
in your band. Just out of interest, what happened to the old one?’
‘We had to let him go. He had an attitude problem, always down the football,’ came Mike’s dulcet tones.
‘You bastard!’
‘What, is that you Suggs? Sorry mate … Look, we could do with you back actually. On drums.’
‘On drums! What’s happened to John?’
‘He’s auditioning for singer.’
‘What, you want me to come back and play drums? Go fuck yourself. I never want anything more to do with your shitty band!’
So there I am a week later in Mike’s bedroom playing the drums somewhat erratically, as a succession of Robert Plant lookalikes are rejected one after the other. And to add insult to injury John got the job as singer and I was sacked as drummer.
Three weeks later The Invaders are playing the school dance at William Ellis School in Highgate. I’m standing at the back trying to look nonchalant as the band are going down a storm. All the Camden schoolgirls are down the front shouting and screaming at the band. It’s like a scene from American Graffiti. Suddenly my commitment to the chaps down at the Shed begins to wane a smidge. And I’m hit by the blinding realisation that I need to be up there, not down here. As luck would have it John (the drummer turned singer) was taking a break from The Invaders to go on holiday in France, and with a couple of gigs imminent it turned out I was the only one who knew all the words, Chris phoned me and I found myself back in the band. We were playing a gig at ‘Heavy Petal’, our mate’s mum’s flower shop on Hampstead High Street.
The gig was going great. Admittedly there were more bouquets than fans, but we were storming it among the gladioli. Then a gang of Teddy boys walked in. After a couple of numbers, they were looking deeply unimpressed and started lobbing everything they could at us: roses, daffodils, chrysanthemums, buckets of water, great chunks of oasis (the green foam, not the band) were flying round my head. A Party Five flew past my head, hitting John on his and nearly knocking him out.
Once again I was desperately trying to protect my beloved aquamarine suit. Next thing, they found a box of bulbs, a bombardment of Amaryllis bulbs! Mike’s brother Danny, who was singing in local legends Bazooka Joe, jumped out of the audience and grabbed the microphone.
He started singing the opening lines of ‘Jailhouse Rock’.
I didn’t know what the fuck was going on until I noticed the Teddy boys had dropped the buckets and were happily jiving away at the back of the room.
The next gigs weren’t much better, but amongst the mayhem we were getting somewhere musically. People were starting to recognise us, and people knew our name.
Then we found out there was another band called The Invaders, who’d got a record deal. What! After all that, we were gonna have to change our name!
*
When we turned up to support Sore Throat at the Music Machine in Camden we found out Mike had taken it upon himself to rename the band after the mode of transport we were using at the time: ‘Morris and the Minors’. It was all over the posters outside. Well, I can tell you, I wasn’t mad on being Morris, and the others weren’t too keen on being the Minors neither.
It was decided there and then that we would choose a new name for the band from one of the songs we were playing at the time.
‘Shop Around’. Er … no.
‘Poison Ivy.’ Fuck me, no, sounds like a heavy metal band.
‘Tears of a Clown.’ What do you think?’
‘One Step Beyond.’ Not bad, but a bit novelty.
‘Madness,’ said Chris.
‘Madness’ was a Prince Buster cover we were doing. ‘Madness’.
‘Yeah, not bad,’ we all said. Could be.
‘Nah,’ Chris said. ‘It’ll never catch on.’
HOPE AND ANCHOR
The Hope stood on a corner of Upper Street and was a hotbed of new music. The walls were covered in photocopied posters, graffiti and, more often than not, sweat. It had been the launch pad for a lot of the good pub rock bands like Dr Feelgood, Chilli Willi and the Red Hot Peppers, Red Beans and Rice and Ian Dury’s first band, Kilburn & the High Roads. These were bands that opened the way for punk, bands that proved you didn’t have to be some kind of musical prodigy to get on. That energy and attitude were the backbone of the live music scene in London.
The live room, described at the time as spartan and grubby, only held about seventy people. Going back there is a bit like going back to primary school – the place is tiny. But it made for the most exciting place to see a band. You really felt part of what was going on, part of something special, that the band was yours. I’d seen lots of up-and-coming bands, including Eddie and the Hotrods, prior to their hit ‘Do Anything You Wanna Do’, which I loved. The singer came on stage with the whitest teeth I’d ever seen, turns out he’d Tipp-Exed them. For our younger viewers, that was a white substance you used to blot out mistakes on a typewriter. Well, it was a double whammy for our man: not only were his teeth California bright, but Tipp-Ex got you high, as we discovered at school. Unfortunately halfway through the show it began to peel off, and he spent the next few numbers spitting lumps of white glue into the front row, exposing gnashers of a somewhat darker hue.
Punk was on the horizon and the weird and wonderful were congregating at the Hope and Anchor every Friday night. The place was buzzing with energy and ideas. John Eichler, the guvnor, was an enlightened chap and real music lover. But he was also a big chap and didn’t suffer fools lightly. He let our lot in, even though some of us were of dubious age. He took a shine to us, and we weren’t really any trouble, although we may have looked it to the untrained eye. John’s eye was well trained and we really respected him and his wild pub.
We’d all congregate in the corner and up the stairs round the jukebox. John had increasingly let us put more of our records on it – some old reggae, ska, and fifties R & B and sixties soul. I think that was partly why he took to us, because most of our crowd had good taste in music. Our contributions made the jukebox even more surprising and eclectic. It would veer wildly from The Lurkers to Prince Buster and then the ‘Sultans of Swing’. A fella used to get in there on a Friday night selling these things called tombstones. Well, when I say selling, buying him two pints would get you a handful, and you needed a handful to get anything going. I think they were some sort of slimming tablet. But once they did get going they were a cheap night out. At the weekend there would be all-nighters at the Screen on the Green just down the road at the Angel. All-night Clint Eastwood or James Dean movies, back to back, and the tombstones would keep you going. I remember going with a gang from the Hope to see The Harder They Come with Jimmy Cliff there sitting and dancing in the aisles of the packed, puff-filled cinema. It had one of the best soundtracks of all time.
Chalky and Si in the Hope
In the Hope there was a different band on every night, and if they weren’t sold out John would let us go down for nothing. We saw all sorts. One night me and Chalky turned up to see The Sinceros, a local band who were just starting to get somewhere. I went to the toilet for a piss and amongst the graffiti-covered walls and, next to the ‘Suggs is Everywhere’, noticed a fresh ‘TOKS’ and ‘DIXIE’, tags I’d been seeing more and more round North London.
The band were good, as always, and afterwards we were having a drink at the bar when I overheard someone shout ‘Toks’. I looked round to see a kid about my age and wearing a Harrington jacket and short hair. We got chatting and realised we were both into the same kind of things i.e. football (albeit he was an Arsenal fan), music and clothes. We were both surprised to discover that we were the faces behind the respective monikers we’d seen adorning the walls of North London. Toks laughed. ‘What, and you’re our leader?’ He then took to writing ‘But the bar!’ after my line ‘Suggs is everywhere.’ Toks became a really good friend and, like Chalky, ended up working with the band.
There were probably about fifteen in our little gang in the corner of the pub at this point, mostly into retro
gear and music, but there was a punk crossover. We liked the punks, the fact they were out of the norm. But at the other end of our spectrum was a respect for fifties rock ’n’ roll. It was an odd dynamic, as the hard-core rockers and Teds had taken a real dislike to the punks and their iconoclastic attitude towards Elvis and the like.
You could get stabbed for walking down the street with blue hair, as a mate of mine actually did. But there was rarely any trouble at the Hope. Though I do remember one night when a load of straight goers came up from the Champion down the road to check out the weirdos. Everyone stuck together and me and Toks ended up in Highbury nick for the night.
It was strange that kids whose pubs were only yards apart, and whose musical differences were only a matter of minor increments, could get so wound up. But that’s just the way it was. There were all sorts of crossovers and musical mergings going on, and sometimes just leaving your mates and going home alone would be like running the gauntlet. Psychobillies, rockabillies, Teds, punks, skinheads, soul boys, even the mods were coming back and London was a hotbed of youth tribalism. Music was the way we all communicated and it was taken very seriously as a symbol of what you stood for.
John Eichler became a friend too. Our mutual passion for music cemented our relationship with him. He certainly wasn’t running the music side of the business to become rich – quite the opposite: he’d often end up subsidising undersold gigs. And I think he appreciated the fact we would all pile downstairs to see anyone and everyone. He was aware that a fledgling band was emerging from our little gang.
We got our first gig at the Hope on the 3rd of May 1979. I remember that date: it was the night Margaret Thatcher got voted in, God help us. We were getting a chance to play in our favourite pub. We were gonna be on the stage we’d spent so long staring at. John Eichler had been following our progress with quiet interest, and when we turned up with a cassette of some stuff we’d been doing in Mike’s bedroom, he gave us a break. It was 75p entrance and he guaranteed us forty quid. The gig was like a homecoming, all our pals squashed in that tiny room. With Woody on drums and Bedders on base we had a real rocking rhythm section.
