That Close

by Suggs

  CELERY

  It was the 1997 FA Cup Final and we were off to Wembley up against Middlesbrough to try and win the cup that had not graced the trophy cabinet at Stamford Bridge for thirty years. Barbara Charone, the legendary press officer at WEA, was a huge Chelsea fan and had suggested I record a song for it. This was part of a long tradition of Cup Final singles in this country, 90 per cent of them shite. They usually involved an embarrassed-looking team, bedecked in some hideous identical suits, tunelessly shouting some terrible song that sounded like it had been written five minutes before they’d entered the Top of the Pops recording studio.

  But a song had landed on Barbara’s desk called ‘Blue Day’, written by a chap called Mike Canaris. Barbara wasn’t easily impressed, but she was excited as I sat in her office and put the CD on. I was surprised. It really was good and the first line was spot on: ‘The only place to be every other Saturday, is strolling down the Fulham Road, meet your mates, have a drink, have a moan and start to think, will there ever be a blue tomorrow …’

  Having a moan is exactly what we’d been doing for the last twenty-odd years and this wasn’t the sort of line you’d get in the average bowl of clichés that made up most football songs. ‘We’ve waited so long but we’ll wait for ever … and when we make it, it will be together …’ Yeah, very good, and it had a huge rousing chorus. The song ended and we both sat there smiling.

  Heading for the studio I was still nervous, as the last Cup Final song, ‘Blue Is the Colour’, from the 1970 squad, was an exception to the rule. It was a good song with a good melody and had stood the test of time. Unlike most novelty songs it was still popular, and played at every home game as the team came out. It had almost religious connotations, as it was a reminder of our ancient, glorious past. But here we were on the cusp of glory and finally on our way to Wembley after all these years.

  Mike had the arrangement all ready to go and we recorded my vocal quite quickly. The song suited my voice and the track was sounding good. We then took the tapes to a big studio in West London for the icing on the cake, which was getting the team themselves to holler along with the chorus. The team bus turned up and a really great bunch of characters piled out: Vialli, Zola, Dennis Wise, Mark Hughes, etc. Legends all.

  There was a real feeling of fun and camaraderie in the room. The Italians were a bit bemused at first, as there was no tradition of this kind of carry-on in Italy, where it all tended to be about being cool. But Dennis soon got everyone going. Vialli played the piano and Wisey was reading out the lyrics and giving English lessons to some of the less confident English speakers, lessons that up to this point had mostly involved swearing. The day went well and we were all jolly satisfied with the result. We made a video clowning about down at their training ground, and if you look very closely there’s one scene of me nutmegging Mark Hughes. Which I have done quite a number of times! The record came out, was well received, and it started to move up the charts. It became a hit and reached number 22.

  The night before the final I put 300 quid and my ticket in a jacket and hid it in the airing cupboard, I don’t know why but it was just paranoia, I guess, that it would get lost or robbed. I woke up early the following morning, grabbed the jacket and its precious cargo, and headed out. The sun was shining, and at the end of the road a milk float went past, covered in Chelsea flags and parping its weedy electric horn. Life could not have been better.

  I was off to meet some pals at Vauxhall vegetable market, where the bus had been booked to meet us and take us to the hallowed turf of Wembley. The Lays were three brothers, John, Steve and Alfie, all lifelong Blues fans. Alfie was a very funny and generous man with a great family. His dad was called Alfie and his son, Alfie Junior, went to the same school as my daughters.

  As my cab headed south more and more blue and white began to adorn the streets, with flags, bunting and scarves hanging out of hooting car windows. The cab pulled into the market and I was greeted by a sight that could have come straight out of South Pacific. The Lays and all their mates were standing about in Hawaiian shirts, with flower garlands, on a small desert island made from two tons of sand that Alf had had delivered that morning. On the shoreline, a twenty-piece calypso band was playing ‘Blue Is The Colour’ on steel drums. A huge barbecue was smoking away and all and sundry were happily sipping exotic-looking cocktails. What a sight for sore eyes!

  It was eight thirty in the morning. The Lays worked by night, as that’s when the market did its business, so this was the end of a hard day’s work. This was evening for the boys. The open-top bus duly arrived and we piled on, merry as the month of May. We were waved off by wives and girlfriends like soldiers going to war. Which is sort of how it felt. Two years earlier we’d got to the Cup Final after a wait of twenty-seven years, only to be humiliated 4–0 by Manchester United.

  But this time it was all going to be different; this time we would return from the war victorious with silver treasure. The bus was loaded up and because there wasn’t supposed to be any booze on board, it was filled with innocuous-looking plastic containers of fruit juice. The driver asked if he could have a sip. ‘That’s nice,’ he said. ‘I’ll have another of them.’ Alfie thought best not, and someone tried to find him a bottle of water.

  I took my place on the top deck. Foghorns blared and the old diesel engine roared into life, but as the bus ground into first gear and lurched forward there was a shriek from below. Someone had fallen off the back of the top deck! We all rushed up the back and looked down, and fortunately the fella had landed in the sand. So, to the sympathetic cry of ‘Grab his ticket and let’s get going’, we headed west.

  There can be no finer feeling than riding the top deck of an open-top bus to a Cup Final. Even the hardest faces have to crack a smile. Kids up the front were as happy as dogs. The tinfoil FA Cup was aloft, ribbons blowing in the wind. Every kid worth his salt has dreamt of being the captain of the cup-winning side, waving that century-old trophy at the hordes of beaming fans below on a victory parade up the high street.

  Every other pub we passed had a huge gathering of fans outside, all waving and cheering, even though they’d have given their right arms to have seen any one of us fall off and get our ticket. But we were the chosen ones, the ones to represent our club at Wembley, the twelfth man. And the people on the street knew that, and were empowering us on their behalf as they screamed and shouted outside their various pubs, to cheer the Blue boys on to victory.

  The traffic crawled but that was all part of the fun. Waving and singing at the crowds walking alongside as the famous twin towers peeped over the horizon. The bus pulled up in a car park as near as it could to Wembley, and we all hopped off into the chaotic throng. But unbeknownst to the rest of us, in the confusion big Paul (a strawberry wholesaler) and his son had got off the bus straight into a minor altercation with some Middlesbrough fans, and had been carted off!

  The atmosphere around the stadium was pure joy, with people I hadn’t seen for years passing left, right and centre. The Old Bill was searching people for celery, that dangerous and offensive weapon. The only offensive thing about the celery was the song it alluded to:

  Celery. Celery.

  If she don’t come,

  Then tickle her bum,

  With a stick of celery.

  This song, which had lain dormant for twenty-seven years, reappeared spontaneously like a great natural wonder. The celery was being confiscated at the behest of the TV bods, who didn’t want any of that ribald old nonsense coming out of their broadcast on a Saturday afternoon, thank you very much.

  I got split from the others, as my seat was in another part of the ground. On my way I bumped into some chaps I’d seen at the Bridge before. People you’d only see at football and whose names you often don’t even know. They were headed for the Wembley hotel for a glass of champagne, which sounded jolly civilised, so I tagged along.

  The hotel bar was rowdy, with a big group of touts at one end, flashing their ill-gotten gains. Cup F
inal day was a big payday. Everyone was shouting and the place was packed. I went to the toilet and when I came back out the bar in front of me had cleared. A bottle flew past my nose, shit, and then another in the opposite direction. A fight had ensued, involving rival touts, who were now at opposite ends of the bar lobbing bottles at each other.

  I stepped back into the toilet only to be nearly knocked over by the rugby player Brian Moore bursting through the door. I then spent one of the more bizarre ten minutes of my life locked in a toilet cubicle with an international rugby player. Still, if you wanted someone on your side in a situation like this I couldn’t think of any better. We stood in silence until the noise outside subsided, before we peeked round the corner to see if the coast was clear. It was. Brian and I shook hands and went our separate ways.

  The conviviality of the bar returned as if nothing had happened. I couldn’t see my mates, so I bought one of the few bottles of wine that hadn’t been thrown across the bar, and headed for my seat.

  I snuck the bottle into my pocket, slipped past the celery police and found my spot. I had a good view. There was a young fella to my left who’d had a nice few, and on my right a young girl with her dad. Behind me was an old bird who was shrieking right in my ear: ‘Come on, you Blues!’ It was still ten minutes to kick-off. The game started and the girl next to me stood on her seat and kept lookout while I took a swig from my bottle.

  Ninety minutes and two goals later, and there we are, it was over, we’d won. We’d won the FA Cup! I stood on my seat to get a better look at the team running down the pitch in a long line, arm in arm, and diving on the turf in front of the goal. When suddenly ‘The only place to be every other Saturday …’ the first line of ‘Blue Day’, burst out of the Tannoy system. I couldn’t believe my ears, and things had now gone way beyond surreal. I looked round and the place was going ballistic.

  The little girl next to me was too young to know who I was, but the old bird behind me wasn’t. She leapt on my back and shouted, ‘You helped us to win this!’ My seat collapsed and we both tumbled forward. They proceeded to play ‘Blue Day’ and ‘Blue Is the Colour’, back to back, three times in a row. Until there was no one in the ground but Chelsea. I can’t really describe the feeling but I had now, in some small way, played a part in something which had played such a big part in my life, Chelsea Football Club.

  We all got back on the bus, piled upstairs and headed back into town. The pub on the Fulham Road went bananas when we walked in. Chelsea had won the war and we were the living, breathing representation from the front line, witnesses to prove that it had really happened. Short of the team coming through the doors with the cup themselves, it couldn’t have been more joyous. We stood on the bar, careful to avoid the ceiling fan at one end, and we sang songs long into the night. At closing time me and Alf sat on the steps of the pub, and there was nothing more to say. I was tired, it had been a long day, but it was one of them days you just didn’t want to end. Alf was completely knackered and drained too.

  A couple of weeks later I got a call from Alf and we got chatting about what a great day it had been. The Lays don’t do things by halves. Then Alf said that unfortunately Big Paul and his son were being done for affray, and he wondered if there was any way I could see myself writing Paul a character reference. Of course, no problem.

  I set about writing what a straight, hard-working chap Paul was, and how long I’d known him, etc. Which was all true. I finished it off with a résumé of my career in the entertainment business, and explained that I was not writing this lightly, given the importance of reputation within the industry.

  I didn’t see Alf till the start of the following season. We were standing outside Finch’s on the Fulham Road, chatting and moaning as usual. ‘Oh, by the way, how did Big Paul’s case go?’ I asked.

  ‘Not too good.’

  ‘What, did he not get my character reference?’

  ‘Oh yeah, halfway through the case the prosecuting barrister pulled it out and said: “Ah yes, Graham McPherson, aka Suggs. I remember this gentleman’s band. Madness, wasn’t it? Yes, they played at my college when I was studying for the bar, and their fans smashed the place up!”’ Hmmm.

  SKA

  I first heard ‘One Step Beyond’ with Chalky in a pool hall in Tottenham Court Road. It sounded like it had come from outer space via a smoky club in downtown Kingston. Smooth and smoky, but busting with character, it was the B-side of Prince Buster’s legendary ‘Al Capone’, which ironically would inform The Specials’ first single ‘Gangsters’. The music had always been an integral part of British culture, and ska/rocksteady/reggae tracks would show up regularly amongst the other pop hits like ‘My Boy Lollipop’, and Prince Buster and The Skatalites in the sixties, and in the seventies the likes of Desmond Dekker, Jimmy Cliff, The Upsetters, Dave and Ansell Collins and Johnny Nash. Althea and Donna, ‘Conscious Man’, were often one-hit wonders from the Trojan label or ones that had made it onto the radio in Britain from established Jamaican artists. And of course Bob Marley, who with Lee Perry was pushing the boundaries. Marley’s appearance on The Old Grey Whistle Test, with his budding dreads and Peter Tosh in his bug-eye glasses, performing ‘Concrete Jungle’, was the talk of the playground in my school days.

  I started collecting relatively obscure Blue Beat records in the mid seventies. There was a great stall in Berwick Street market which had a good selection of Jazz, R&B and Blue Beat singles (at 10p a pop). At first I bought a couple out of curiosity. Of course, had I been around a few years earlier I would’ve been able to walk into Soho’s mod clubs like the Scene or the Flamingo, not more than a few yards away, and heard this kind of music every night!

  Anyway, by the time I was about seventeen my collection of Blue Beat and old reggae singles had grown to a couple of hundred, and a fair proportion of these 45s were by Prince Buster, including one called ‘Madness’. I really liked the song, and I remember I had it for some peculiar reason when I went into the punk clothes shop, Boy, in the King’s Road, and I was explaining to the owner that we were starting a band.

  He said: ‘What sort of music are you going to play?’ so I said: ‘This kind of music.’ And he put the single on – it had a lot of brass, and a kind of swing, although it was ska. He said: ‘Jesus, this sounds like the Glenn Miller Orchestra,’ which it did compared with the thrashing punk that was coming out of his record collection.

  I finally got the chance to go to Jamaica in the early nineties, to present a documentary for Radio Four called The Story of Ska. I was very excited because the music had always seemed mysterious and unattainable to me. It was researched and commissioned by Sarah-Jane Griffiths and I was about to go on an amazing, once in a lifetime, adventure. Prince Buster, Count Matchuki, Duke Reid, Clint Eastwood – these were names inspired by Wild West films and gangster movies, and here was the chance to unravel some of those mysteries. Everyone wants to go somewhere exotic when they’re a kid, escape from the humdrum to Hollywood or the hippy trail, but for me and my mates it was Orange Street in Kingston Town, home of Jamaican music.

  In the last forty years Jamaica has produced more records per head of population than any other country in the world. And for such a small island it has had a massive impact on music around the world. Including a small corner of North London. We got our name Madness from a Prince Buster song. ‘One Step Beyond’, the title track from our first album, was a cover of another of his tracks. And our first hit, on 2 Tone records, was a homage to the man himself: ‘The Prince’, which includes the line ‘Even if I kept on running, I’d never get to Orange Street.’

  Well, I did get there. I found myself standing in Orange Street, the music street, right outside Prince Buster’s record shack. But my twenty-year wait had been in vain. The signs were still there, but the shop was shut, as were most of the other record emporiums in the street. It was all just clothes and wholesale food stores. In the sixties and seventies, the street would have been booming with music. Competing sound-system
owners had their own shops to sell the records that they were making themselves, the tunes they had tried and tested, and were kicking up a storm at their own dances.

  Finally made it to Orange Street. Unfortunately Prince Buster had already vacated it

  The sound systems were basically giant mobile discos. Prince Buster had his ‘Voice of the People’ system, and there was Vincent Edwards’ ‘King Edwards’ Giant’, Duke Reid’s ‘Trojan Sound’ and, most famous of all, Sir Coxsone Dodd’s ‘Downbeat System’.

  Duke Reid was the pioneer. A fearless ex-policeman, who notoriously never shied away from trouble on hot Saturday nights in downtown Kingston, he was a renowned crack shot, something that would stand him in good stead when rivalries between the competing sound systems got violent. In the mid-fifties it was normal for shop and bar owners to have a bit of music playing to attract customers. Duke took it a stage further, rigging up a speaker outside his liquor shop attached to a 78 rpm record player inside. The Duke had a winning combination: booze, and by now a good collection of American R & B records. He decided to take this heady mix out on the road to the evening dancers.

  He found the biggest speakers he could find and loaded them into the back of his slow, but hardy ‘Trojan van’. Which ironically was made in Croydon! As the van approached excited fans would holler: ‘Here comes the Trojan!’ The ‘Trojan Sound System’ was born. The sound systems would compete, playing obscure records that would really get the crowd going in order to ‘flop’ or ‘kill’ their rivals. Or simply just blast them out with a bigger and louder system. Bass speakers would be put in old fridges to make them boom, speakers would be hung in the trees to broadcast the sound as far as possible. The competition was fierce. Better, louder music meant more customers, more customers meant more money.