by Will Birch
Other than a brief period managing ‘Fire’ hit-maker Arthur Brown, Roberts had no track record in the music business. Nevertheless, he had a pretty dim view of it. ‘I didn’t really like the music business,’ says Roberts. ‘The artistes think you’re screwing them and successful managers treat their artistes like a sack of potatoes. There are some terrible people around. One famous music publisher – plays polo and all that – said to me, “I buy them a curry and they sign up.” I never understood why the artistes signed those contracts. It’s money for old rope . . . a thieves’ charter.’ With this in mind, Roberts set about promoting the Kilburns. First, he had to clear the air with Ian’s former managers. ‘I went to see Charlie Gillett. He was very pleasant at first, but then he turned nasty. I don’t know why. I was only helping Ian. He was annoyed, I suppose.
‘Ian still had a contract with Warners,’ continues Roberts. ‘It wasn’t going anywhere, and they were certainly not interested in doing anything. I told Ian I’d try to get him out of the contract. I said to Warners – the chap was in a wheelchair – “I’m the new manager, when shall we come in and start recording? Can you book some nice studio time so we can make a start? We’ll need a studio with a nice ramp because, like you, the drummer’s in a wheelchair. We’ll need a few hours, about three weeks actually, because they’re not experienced musicians, plus their meals, because they’ve got no money.” Their faces went grey. I said, “You’d prefer to drop the group really, wouldn’t you?”’
With one bound, the Kilburns were free. They retained the van and the p.a. system that had been purchased with Warner money and commenced the search for a new label. ‘I went to Pye Records,’ says Roberts. ‘Charlie Gillett had been to all of the others, he’d done the lot, but he hadn’t done Pye. Ian said he would be flattered to be ‘on the same label as Max Bygraves’, but when the deal was finalized, Pye placed the Kilburns on their ‘progressive’ imprint, Dawn Records. ‘They’d had a hit with Mungo Jerry,’ adds Roberts. ‘The A&R guy wore cowboy boots, feet up on the table, and his briefcase was covered in stickers.’
David Rohoman had returned to the drum chair after a break of six months. After several unsuccessful drummers, Ian had relented and invited him back into the fold just in time for the group’s sessions for Dawn. It was decided that the Kilburns would re-record most of the songs from their unreleased album for Raft, including ‘Crippled with Nerves’ and ‘Rough Kids’, which had been earmarked as the first single. With music by the recently departed Russell Hardy, ‘Rough Kids’ was a Dury masterpiece that conjured up the image of a tearaway street gang terrorizing the neighbourhood. An excellent finished product, it anticipated the onset of punk by several years and put Chris Thomas on course to produce the Sex Pistols.
‘It was “Rough Kids” that swung it for me,’ says future Pistols bassist and songwriter Glen Matlock. ‘I loved the staccato guitar at the beginning. The Kilburns were an important step on the road to punk rock . . . it was the way they presented themselves. A lot of bands around that time were very polite, but Ian was a stroppy bugger. I liked the fact that the Kilburns were confrontational.’
As the needle located the ‘Rough Kids’ groove, one heard the strained voice of Tommy Roberts. ‘Oi, Ian, what’s going on over there?’ he enquired in a delicious Bethnal Green rasp. ‘I dunno,’ replied Ian in an equally gravel tone, ‘I think there’s a bit of trouble . . .’
Rough Kids play rough games and kick tin cans . . .
Leave their feet out in the aisle!
Ian was bang on target. In 1950s cinemas across the land, the defiant Teddy Boys he once idolized did indeed leave their feet out in the aisle, to prescribe their territory and intimidate the locals. The image was lodged in his brain from the first time he visited the Ritz, Romford as a teenager and was just one of many crucial observations that characterized his writing down the years.
Rough Kids move supreme and disobey,
Trouble comes when times are tough,
Rough Kids move in teams, don’t play away,
They go round knocking off some stuff!
To fill the void left by Russell’s departure, session pianist Roderick Melvin was drafted in. Tommy Roberts had bumped into Melvin at the Last Resort, a cocktail bar frequented by the Chelsea set. He had been in a group called the Moodies, whose party piece was ‘Thank Heavens for Little Girls’. Ian described it to me thus: ‘There were four girls and Rod, as camp as anything. The first girl would come out and go, “Un,” and the second girl would go, “Deux,” then, “Trois, quatre,” and Rod would come out dressed like a fairy in a tutu and wings and go, “Cinq . . . heavens for little girls . . .”’
For the b-side of ‘Rough Kids’, Ian selected a song he had co-written with former Kilburns bassist Charlie Hart. ‘Billy Bentley (Promenades Himself in London)’ opens with another spoken introduction. ‘’Ello playmates,’ intones Ian, ‘here’s a little London song.’ There follows a barrage of cockney phrases, such as ‘half a quid, mate’ and ‘stand to reason’. An instrumental break, not dissimilar to the theme from TV’s Steptoe and Son, was followed by a roll call of London omnibus destinations – Dalston Junction . . . Clapham Common . . . Ealing Broadway – half sung by Ian, no doubt with his late father in mind.
Sadly, Ian’s vinyl debut, released in November 1974, failed to chart, as did the follow up, ‘Crippled with Nerves’.
Although Ian had been industriously writing lyrics, no new songs had been completed since Russell’s dramatic exit. Rod Melvin, who had accepted Ian’s invitation to join the Kilburns after playing piano on the recent sessions, would become Ian’s new songwriting partner. ‘He had a huge pile of lyrics,’ recalls Rod, ‘and because he wrote rhythmically, it was easy. Sometimes he would use combinations of words where the meaning wasn’t obvious, but you could hear the rhythm he had in mind for the song. I had a few of my own songs, but because Ian’s lyrics were so good, I felt embarrassed about showing him any of mine.’
Ian and Rod collaborated on a number of compositions, including ‘Broken Skin’ and ‘Thank You Mum’, but when it came to recording these and other titles for the album, producer Chris Thomas was unavailable. To help the Kilburns realize their varied and ambitious range of material, the task passed to Hugh Murphy. In the exacting atmosphere of the recording studio, the Kilburns’ musicianship went under the microscope. Murphy identified David Rohoman as a weak link, and session drummer Dave Mattacks was brought in. Mattacks has little recollection of his contribution to the recordings, but his sound is unmistakeable, laying down the groove on tracks like ‘The Roadette Song’ and ‘The Mumble Rumble and the Cocktail Rock’.
‘Rohoman’s legs didn’t function,’ explained Ian. ‘He had to swivel from the hips. We all knew he wasn’t Al Jackson and yet the equation felt right. Plus he was such a wonderful geezer, we never thought about his disability. A lot of producers had told us he didn’t lay it down too well, but we knew that.’ Rohoman wasn’t the only Kilburn to be replaced on the recording; Keith Lucas was also a casualty. ‘It was a shame that Ian allowed Keith’s guitar and Rohoman’s drums to be taken off,’ says Davey Payne. ‘The whole band lifted when Rohoman joined – OK, he may have sped up a bit, but maybe the band sped up naturally with the excitement of the music. That’s how we were live, and, in retrospect, it may have been better if we had been recorded live. But Ian had delusions of grandeur in the studio, he got carried away. All the time we were recording he was saying, “This is going to be the best fucking album since Sergeant Pepper!”’
When not in the recording studio, Ian settled into a domestic routine at Oval Mansions, usually rising around noon to plot the day. Creativity was top of the list, but first he would make his phone calls to various Kilburns or their agent Paul Conroy, who would get an ear-bashing if the Kilburns were being sent to too many ‘khazis’.6 As the afternoon unfolded Ian would listen to Capital Radio or read a Chester Himes detective story. Then his thoughts would turn to new songs, which often started with a rh
yming couplet or a title such as ‘What a Waste’.
Money was tight, but if there was a good gig at Ronnie Scott’s jazz club, it would be prioritized, even if it meant living on biscuits for the rest of the week. Ian’s philosophy towards money was that it was there to be used. Spare change or ‘shrapnel’, however, would be chucked on the floor. If cash for sundries was needed, a quick trawl of the carpet would yield sufficient coins for a pint of milk or a newspaper. ‘Ian was extremely cautious about the group’s finances, as opposed to his own,’ says Tommy Roberts. ‘He was a bit of an old woman, more worried about doing kind of clerical work, writing down how many studio hours they’d used. There were lots of notes and bookkeeping. He was always a bit like that. I told him to go in there and sing. Never mind how many hours we were using. If it came to it, I could go in and stretch it, but for fuck’s sake, “Don’t write it down!”’
‘Ian always had his lists,’ confirms Denise. ‘He did a going-away list, right down to the detail of pencil . . . rubber . . . and it would all be packed. He liked to have his bag packed and sorted, and then he wouldn’t have to think about it. Then there would also be the monthly gig list. Where it warranted it, he would organize things. I think that’s the way he wrote songs as well. Attention to detail. In the studio he would always talk about “building up a picture”.’
While their album for Dawn awaited release, the Kilburns were forced to schlep up and down the motorway, now with Denise at the wheel. Having her drive served two purposes; it relieved Tommy Roberts of the task and provided Ian with company on the road. ‘Ian wanted her along on the gigs,’ says Roberts. ‘It caused problems because the others didn’t like it. Ian could be a swine, he was an expert at winding people up, and he and Davey were always fighting. If the gig had been fantastic, Ian would go mad. I once threatened to leave him on the motorway. I couldn’t drive the van with him ranting. The others would say, “Go on, Tom, fling the cunt out!” It was that sort of group.’
By this stage, the Kilburns looked more bizarre than ever, particularly the night they raided the fancy dress cupboard at a provincial college gig. On the way home, Rod Melvin led the group into Scratchwood service station, wearing his pink ballet tutu. The tea-swilling lorry drivers couldn’t believe their eyes when they glimpsed the procession: Ian limping purposefully; Davey wild-eyed; Rohoman on crutches; Keith in his Liquorice Allsort suit; and the diminutive Charlie Sinclair bringing up the rear. With Denise in a white lab coat, it really did look like ‘care in the community’, especially when Rod sat down and pulled out his knitting.
‘What I tried to put into the Kilburns was the secretive aspect of sartorial elegance,’ said Ian. ‘If you talk about it, you spoil it. As Oscar Wilde said, “The greatest stylist is the one that remains the most obscure.” Once it’s public knowledge, it’s not stylish any more. I knew the New York Dolls a little bit. We’d been to their gigs at Bibas. I read somewhere that their audience used to wear safety pins through their nipples. I thought, “Lighten Up!” So I unwound the safety pin and put it through my lughole. Sartorially, I’m not a claimer, but I would say that I must have worn the first razor blade.’
The razor blade earring was designed by Martin Cole, aka ‘Smart Mart’, whom Tommy Roberts had brought in to relieve Denise of driving duties. Cole immediately recognized Ian as ‘Toulouse’, the crippled Bohemian he had last seen digging Roland Kirk at Ronnie Scott’s ‘old place’ in 1964. Another sartorial gem was ‘the Billy Bentley dressing gown’, a satin boxer’s robe worn on stage by Ian. Tommy Roberts had arranged for this and other outfits to be made by Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood at Let It Rock. ‘McLaren and I were always doing things together,’ says Roberts. ‘Just before punk, the kids all wanted to be glam, like Bowie. I did bits of Bowie’s clothes. I got Vivienne to make a suit for Ian but he didn’t like it – “too baggy”.’
It was Let It Rock’s Saturday boy, Glen Matlock, who was charged with measuring up the Kilburns for their suits. Matlock recalls, ‘Malcolm had a tailor in the East End who I never met, but I had to call him up and give him the measurements. I was the bloke with the tape measure – the John Inman of the punk generation. I measured Davey up for the shiny black suit – outside sleeve, inside leg . . . When I measured Ian up, I got to the shoulders and one side was narrower than the other because of the polio. My granddad had polio. When I realized how withered Ian was down one side, I felt a little bit more of a connection than if I’d only seen him on stage. It made him a bigger bloke in my eyes . . . what he had to put up with.’
Denise Roudette would contribute to the look of the Kilburns by finding unusual items of clothing at charity shops and market stalls. She ran her own stall at Club Row market in Shoreditch, selling pre-war bric-à-brac and Bakelite antiques. The meagre takings would help to keep Ian and Denise fed and watered during the increasingly thin patches in the Kilburns’ schedule. On 11 March, the group came off the road. ‘After about the third time our bubble had gone up and burst again we were still doing Cleopatra’s Club in Derby,’ said Ian. ‘It was a step up from the pubs, but one you’d rather not take.’
The success of Dr Feelgood had become a major thorn in Ian’s side. Although he acknowledged that their singer, Lee Brilleaux, was ‘a bit of a number,’ he was envious of the Feelgoods’ status in the music press and any thunder they had stolen from the Kilburns. ‘I’d seen them go screaming past us like a rocket ship,’ said Ian. ‘I started worrying that we were doing it wrong. You blame your agent, but he wasn’t neglecting us, it was just their vibes were happening for the Feelgoods, and they went roaring into the mystic.’
The Kilburns’ final show, supporting Dr Hook at Hammersmith Odeon on 4 May 1975, saw Ian, Keith and Davey from the original group with bassist Charlie Sinclair and new drummer Malcolm Mortimore. Backing vocals were provided by ‘the Blister Sisters’, comprising Celia Collin (later to record as Celia and the Mutations) and Denise Roudette. Few people had turned out to see the group in its death throes, despite Tommy Roberts’ injection of theatrical excess. ‘I tried to glamorize the Kilburns a bit,’ understates Roberts. ‘I put a show on at the Chelsea Cinema and built a stage set like Tower Bridge, slightly out of perspective. We half filled the venue. I wanted to get Ian a great big shepherd’s crook and for him to lean on it, in a pseudo-religious way, for a biblical kind of vibe. Ian wouldn’t have it.’
‘Ian wanted the glamour,’ continues Roberts. ‘He wasn’t worried about Top of the Pops, but he was very hungry. He wanted to be a celebrity. He was a bit older than the others. He had a wife and two children so there was always a pressure to find him some money. He was a married man, thirty odd. I resented it a bit. I told him he ought to consider doing music part-time and get a job. We gigged hard but we didn’t make enough, although we eked out a living with the little bit I got from Pye. It came to the end of the road, and I was broke. I’d devoted myself to Ian for a year trying to break it, but the group had to disband. They’d done the circuit.’
It was now unlikely that the Kilburns would reconvene. Ian was troubled by the constant challenge of juggling musicians and had wanted to evict Keith Lucas from the group for some time, but hadn’t been able to fire his longest-serving Kilburn. Instead he’d contrived to make life difficult for Keith, hoping perhaps that he would leave. ‘Ian and Keith used to argue a lot,’ says Denise. ‘Ian told him, “I haven’t promised you anything. You’re along for your own ride.” It’s tough to take that when you’re around someone like Ian, when he’s the lyric writer, the singer, the star, and you’re doing your bit, whatever that is. You become insecure when you realize someone else could do your job. “You could be replaced!” Ian would joke. “You saw what happened to the drummers!”’
‘I’d started to write with Ian, round at his place,’ recalls Keith Lucas. ‘We’d written this song, “A Band Called the Tights”. Ian wrote the words, and I wrote the music, but Ian tried to tell me he had written it all and it was his song. He wanted sole credit. He knew th
at songwriting was where the money was; he was no fool when it came to things like that. I said, “Fuck it, Ian, I helped you write it,” but he started getting a bit funny. He actually said, “I’m the singer so therefore I should have the lion’s share of the money.” I reminded him that we were in it together and had agreed to split the money equally. He said, “That’s no longer the case, I want the money.” I told him that wasn’t the way I saw it and that we should stick to the verbal agreement we made. But it was all falling apart, so it was a good time for me to go.’
Kilburn and the High Roads were now effectively finished, although their album was awaiting manufacture, and there was the distant hope that its release might reignite interest. But with no further dates in the diary, the last remaining veterans of the Kilburns, Keith Lucas and Davey Payne, felt justified in claiming some of the group’s equipment for themselves. On 30 May, they sold the p.a. system to singer Lene Lovich for £3,000. ‘Keith and I needed to earn some money,’ says Davey. ‘Ian had the two Bedford vans, which were worth more than the p.a. It had been purchased with the Warner Brothers money and we sold it.’ This simple transaction sparked an incident that would haunt Ian’s conscience for decades to come.
In early June, Ian paid Keith Lucas a visit at his Thurlow Hill flat, accompanied by Spider. Having heard that the p.a. system had been sold following the group’s acrimonious split, Ian wanted a word. ‘Where’s the money?’ he demanded. ‘Ian threatened to break my legs,’ says Keith. ‘I told him to fuck off or I’d call the police. I reminded Ian that my uncle was the assistant commissioner of the Metropolitan Police. I also reminded Ian that everything was equal, but he said he was the singer and wanted all the money and I shouldn’t have taken any of it. They were still threatening to break my legs if I didn’t hand the money over. Maggie, my girlfriend, had gone downstairs and called the police. Ian started saying, “So we can expect a visit from the police then, can we?” I said, “Of course you fucking can, get the fuck out of it.”’
