Sick On You

by Andrew Matheson

  They introduced themselves as Mick Jones and Tony James. Their hair was long, lank, and stiff with hairspray. They had painted fingernails, mascara, and eyeliner. They sported bangles and necklaces and various items from the women’s department of Debenhams. In short, they looked like the Hollywood Brats circa not that long ago.

  Mick and Tony then went on to say that they were huge Hollywood Brats fans and that they had a copy of the record. If this was a shock to me, they in turn seemed shocked yet fascinated by my now-spiky Clambake hair arrangement, and stared as though I was Samson recently returned from an iffy afternoon at Delilah’s Barbershop & Barbiturates Emporium.

  Then they said, “Behold, for we bring tidings of great joy,” or words to that effect. “Yeah, what tidings would they be?” we asked, all tingly with curiosity. The tidings were these: some impresario named Malcolm McLaren wants to manage the Hollywood Brats. Malcolm McLaren. Now, where had we heard that name before?

  Oh, yeah. He had recently managed the New York Dolls (already on life support and nearly flatlined) straight into the grave. Under McLaren’s bogus-Svengali miss-molly management, he and his seamstress spinster auntie, Vivisect Westwood, had dressed the Dolls in ludicrous red patent-leather outfits, adorned the stage with a veritable miasma of left-wing commie tossery, replete with hammer-and-sickle motif, and pushed them out into the world in a puff-pop of publicity, where they were snickered at, briefly pitied, and then ignored. In short, McLaren had ushered the Dolls all the way to true mock-rock status, thereby belatedly, pathetically rendering Old Grey Whistle Pest Bob correct after all. Cripes. Wake me, shake me when it’s over.

  Well done, Malcolm. And now he wants to manage us? Well, hammer and sickle on you, mate. Why not? Let’s go meet him. So we donned the finery and slapped on the face paint. Just like old times. And yet, not like old times at all. This time it felt like dressing up, like playing a role. Like a false little ghostly stab at old times, really. Just messing about, not living a lifestyle.

  As a last-minute “up yours” I strapped on one of my two swastika armbands (the real thing, bought for 50p each at a charity shop in West Hampstead). Mick Jones was rather taken with the look and asked to borrow the other one. Soon afterward, the four of us were parading through Soho looking like the Weimar wing of the National Front, disturbing the delicate sensibilities of the hookers, wide boys, and tourists until we arrived at an address on Denmark Street.

  We entered to find, sitting primly on a sofa, what looked like four trainee accountants staring at us, bug-eyed as lemurs and speechless. I felt like matron walking in and catching four public-school boys, trousers round their ankles in the first getting-to-know-you communal wank of the new term. We didn’t know it at the time, but these were John Lydon (not yet Rotten but quite obviously Rotting), Glen Matlock, and the other two whose monikers escape me, collectively the Sex Pistols.

  An awkward silence ensued, broken by Mick, who picked up a guitar from the floor and said, like the Grateful Dead–type council-flat hippy he was, “Let’s jam, man.”

  At this point, our eyes rolling like pinballs, Casino and I were halfway out the door to find the nearest pub when down the stairs came a chap who was clearly barking mad—indeed, he looked like a caricaturist’s idea of the bonkers scientist: bulging eyes, unwashed hair mud-red and curly (the hair nobody wants), skinny arms sticking out of a faded T-shirt, wrists flapping and fey—beckoning us to come upstairs: come, come.

  Malcolm McLaren was a slippery sort, alternately louche, bored, and slo-mo, the next second spouting staccato rubbish, jittery as a speed freak. Eye contact minimal and a handshake like a half-opened tin of sardines.

  So things looked quite promising.

  Downstairs, Mick had enticed the lemurs/accountants to plug in, and they were all blasting away, out of time and tune, playing what sounded like five different songs in four different keys and tempos. Malcolm, looking disconcertingly reminiscent of Ken Mewis, uncoiled himself from the couch, sashayed over to the door like a drag queen trying to butch it up in front of the cops, and slammed it shut.

  Coming right to the point, he said, “I’ll come right to the point. I want to manage the Hollywood Brats.”

  I said the first thing that came into my mind: “It stinks in here.”

  “Oh, does it? Fuck, let me open the window.” He wrestled with the window like a famine victim trying to bench-press a two-hundred-pound barbell. The window eventually squealed open a few inches, which only rendered the fug stench mobile and brought new varieties of pong to our olfactory receptors. McLaren drew a deep breath, coughed it out, and continued.

  “There, that’s much better. Anyway, Brady was saying that the four of you were looking for management, and I’ve heard the record and I like it so . . .” At this point I held my arm (the one with the swastika armband) straight out, with my palm at a right angle in the “stop” position. Sort of like a cross between an Obersturmführer and Diana Ross.

  “Wait a minute. Did you say Brady? What’s Brady got to do with anything?” Tony James was frantically trying to get my attention, but he’s the kind of chap that makes me frantically hit the “ignore” button.

  McLaren shrugged. “Well, Brady came to see me, with this idea . . .”

  “When?”

  “When? Well, last week, maybe Tuesday.”

  “I haven’t clapped peepers on Brady in months.”

  “What are you talking about? He’s downstairs, you came in with him.”

  Well, what do you know? Turns out Mick Jones has been poncing around town telling everyone he is Brady from the Hollywood Brats. While I was digesting this bit of monumental weirdness, McLaren was outlining his plan for world domination. Apparently, the centerpiece of said plan was “Sick On You.” While struggling to keep up with his flailing limbs and even more flailing syntax, I gathered that he envisaged something along the lines of a snotty musical revolution, with the attack and sonic snarl of “Sick On You” being the template. Oh, brilliant idea, Braino. Except for the fact that everybody hates “Sick On You,” remember?

  Sometime during McLaren’s mouthy manifesto, Mick “Brady” Jones stopped the repetitive thrashing of “E,” the one chord with which he was comfortably familiar, and came upstairs to join us. Casino and I lay back in rock ’n’ roll’s time-honored couch-slouch, while Mick and Tony leaned forward on the edge of their seats, nodding and drooling at every adjective, enthralled by every point-emphasizing cigarette stab, entranced by every promise of a promise that came from the thin dry lips of Malcolm Mac.

  Then Casino Steel, Mick Jones, Tony James, and I were “treated” to the first-ever public performance by the Sex Pistols. The first time they had played in front of humans that weren’t named Malcolm or McLaren.

  Nine minutes. Four songs. Three chords. One verdict: dentist drill in molar, sans novocaine. They even did a song by the Monkees. The Monkees. Made me yearn for Micky Dolenz.

  Very early in the tenth minute we left. As the four of us trudged through Soho trying to find a pub that would accept patrons in swastikas and lipstick, I thought the Sex Pistols were substandard, derivative posers and I thought Malcolm McLaren was a weak-minded, possibly insane, fantasist.

  I was completely right about the Sex Pistols.

  I was completely wrong about Malcolm McLaren.

  But, more importantly . . . we missed Coronation Street for this?

  II

  A few days later came a further knock on the door at 17 London Street. Casino went down, peered through the letter box, and spied Glen Matlock, one of the Pistols, and his manager Bernie Rhodes (McLaren’s partner at the time). They said, “Malcolm wants another meeting. And is Brady here?”

  Casino replied, “Which one?”

  “Either one will do. We’re not fussy.”

  “What’s in it for me?”

  They couldn’t come up with a satisfactory answer, so Cas s
aid, “Fuck off,” slammed down the letter-box lid, and came back upstairs.

  We did meet with McLaren again, this time on our turf, the Sussex Arms. Once again, he was a fidgety ball of twitching nerves. He acted like he had missed his last three appointments with his parole officer and was expecting the rozzers to pounce on him at any moment and drag him back to Wormwood Scrubs.

  He brought his girlfriend Vivisect with him and introduced her as a clothing designer. I had never met one before and I was not convinced that this was what they looked like. She was cadaver pale and wore an orange silk frock that had obviously been run over by a lawnmower a few times. Perched on her hairdo was a pillbox hat with a strip of mosquito netting stapled to the front. She had a severe expression on her face, as though she had been condemned to perpetually gnaw a mouthful of thistles. She plucked a piece of blue chalk from behind her ear and drew annoyed A-line dresses on the tabletop.

  Malcolm explained, to the wall five inches above my head due to his continued aversion to eye contact, that the percentage he would require from us for his managerial expertise was so high because it included Vivisect designing clothes for us.

  I said I liked my own clothes. Vivisect snorted and turned away in disgust. Malcolm implored her to “Tell them what you told me.”

  Sighing a sigh that indicated that she thought any sentence directed at me would be a colossal waste of her precious time (which was, in fact, true), she explained that it was all about T-shirts. The future of fashion was a T-shirt, and if we got with the program we could have all the T-shirts we wanted. McLaren added, “T-shirts and ‘Sick On You.’ That is the future, boys.”

  We drained our drinks and left before I could get stabbed with a hatpin.

  * * *

  Two nights later, Mick Jones and Tony James came back to see us and, after a glance through the letter box, Casino begrudgingly let them in. This time Mick and Tony entirely ignored the McLaren gambit. This time they told tales of an exotic oasis, a haven, a mecca for convivial Hollywood Brats types.

  “Hollywood Brats types? What on earth are you two rabbiting on about?”

  “Yes, yes,” they said. “Come, we will guide you. We will take your hand and lead you to a special environs where ‘Sick On You’ is the anthem and they play Grown Up Wrong into the wee hours.”

  Okay. I decide to indulge. I ask, “Kindly tell, enlightened stranger . . . what is the name of this sacred place?”

  “Verily it is known colloquially as, and I must shield my eyes as I murmur the words, Maida Vale.”

  Maida Vale? Cor, it does sound magical. Makes Camelot seem like a housing estate in Lambeth. I swear, I think I saw the lights dim as he mentioned the name.

  I inquire further. “And where, fair knights Sir Mick and Sir Tone, in the exalted environs of Maida Vale is the exact locale of which you trill so enthrallingly? In other words, can you be more specific as to the fucking address?”

  “Yeah, sure, 47 Warrington Crescent.”

  Well. Let me take you down, cos I’m going to . . . Warrington Crescent.

  Next day, bored stiffer than Bob Guccione’s penile implant, Casino and I got out our London A–Z and located this mysterious outpost of empire called Maida Vale. It was right over there, where it had always been. We checked our schedules and, noting that we had nothing pressing for the next five years or so, brushed our teeth, hit the street, leaped a Tube turnstile, and duly arrived at our destination: 47 Warrington Crescent, Maida Vale.

  What a sight! Spacious, subterranean pad with coal-scullery studio, pool table, more good-looking babes than was strictly necessary (including a soon-to-be Penthouse Pet of the Year, Jane Hargrave), various lurking musicians making with the furtive sidelong glances, a nervous, blond fake-singer fellow, and a black chap, sort of a good-looking Curtis Mayfield, who looked like, in the event of a funk emergency, he could immediately step into Kool & the Gang.

  And, true to rumor, the Hollywood Brats LP was playing, cranked up.

  Six of us peeled off from the crowd, cracked lagers, and had a chat: me (vocals), Geir Waade (drums), Casino Steel (keyboards), Matt Dangerfield (guitar), Mick Jones (guitar), and Tony James (bass).

  Geir, a mate of Casino’s from Norway (good-looking lad, bags of style, erratic talent), suggested we call ourselves the London SS. Great name, I thought, and we all kicked around ideas for a stage set: lighting naturally nicked from Cabaret, coils of barbed wire strung in front of the stage, sirens, light towers on each side, and maybe just a hint, a whiff, the merest puff of Zyklon B to knock out the first two rows.

  But enough chat. We plugged in and had a bash. A crucial mistake. Things were going so well.

  I was a member of the London SS for a grand total of fourteen minutes. Just long enough to be part of an ensemble that massacred “Bad Boy” (Larry Williams song/Fabs version) three times. This wasn’t a band, this was an insult to instruments. Geir and Tony (the so-called rhythm section) played as though they hated each other and couldn’t wait for the rest of us to leave so they could fight. Mick Jones was apparently under the illusion that volume, distortion, and bouncing up and down could paper over glacial, ham-fingered chord changes (turns out he was right, actually; he built a career out of it). Through the chaotic cacophony I swear I could hear Harry Moss calling me back to the management-trainee program at Moss Bros. It was that bad—that hopeless.

  As the last weak, flat, desultory note of attempt number three whined its discordant way into a dank corner of the one-time coal scullery, I ditched the microphone, drained a can of Long Life, wrapped a scarf noose-like around my throat, and stalked out in a huff (a ’59 Huff with big fins and velvet dice hanging from the rearview mirror) into the Maida Vale night, taking a sharp right at the top of the steps and heading to the blessed environs of the sacred Warrington pub, where all ills are nursed, all wounds salved, and all grievances tut-tutted.

  Later, back at the Paddington ranch, Casino and I had a word and we both agreed that the prize pig at the fair was the guy called Matt. Stick a blue ribbon on this boy’s rump, we decided. He was quiet, well, let me rephrase that, he was reserved and cool. He wasn’t all that quiet. He had suggestions but he was the consummate gentleman when it came to voicing them.

  And he could play, which put him in the top 50 percent of the chaps in the room. Much more importantly, Matt looked good. The biggest mystery of all was how this guy had avoided our net all these years. Had he shown up at any Hollywood Brats audition he would have been in before he even stuck a plug in an amp.

  And it turned out that 47 Warrington Crescent was his digs.

  The two of us went back and met with Matt. We had a laugh and a pint or ten.

  But my heart just wasn’t in it. Not to use too emotive a term, but my spirit was in tatters. The failure and demise of the Hollywood Brats had brought me to my knees, figuratively most nights, literally on some. I thought that band was perfection and it quite patently wasn’t. It died a death. Thus my dalliance with the Warrington Crescent experiment was doomed from the start, regardless of the potential.

  So, much like Captain Oates with the Scott expedition or Mick Groome back on Bishop’s Road, I walked off into the night, never to return.

  III

  Whatever Happened to . . .

  Casino Steel

  Casino flourished. He formed the Boys with Matt Dangerfield, Honest John Plain, Duncan Reid, and Jack Black, and under the wine-soaked tutelage of former Brats manager Ken Mewis signed with NEMS Records. “The Beatles of Punk,” as some lazy, talentless hack dubbed them, purely because they could actually play their instruments, sing harmonies, and write real songs. They recorded the Hollywood Brats’ “Tumble with Me” and “Sick On You” on their debut album The Boys. Wise Boys.

  Casino went on to even greater success in the early eighties with Gary Auf Wiedersehen, Pet Holton (soon to die tragically), and then to a solo career, to jail and back.
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  He has played the Grand Ole Opry, backed by Elvis’s singers, the Jordanaires.

  He is as he was, a one-off, a classic, the real thing.

  Brady

  Brady toured and recorded with something called Wreckless Eric, on Stiff Records, kicked heroin, embraced cocaine, emigrated to Australia, came back in tears, and launched a spectacularly unsuccessful solo career. He played, brilliantly, on both of my solo albums.

  An amateur cross-dresser, he can be spied most nights in flamboyant garb, plying his left-handed trade in some of the less reputable pubs and clubs in London Town. He is always entertaining, always thirsty, and quite often in tune.

  Lou Sparks

  Lou married the girl in Clapham. They moved to the ancient land of the Micmacs and lived ever after.

  Roger Cooper

  Married Rosie and lived in Kings Langley, Hertfordshire. Became a dad and a granddad. Played the blues. In 2012, sadly, the Grim Reaper knocked.

  Mal & Yosemite

  Returned to Australia and faded effortlessly into an arid background.

  American Brian

  Followed his dad’s patent-leather footsteps into the polyester/plaid world of mid-level Yankee political chicanery. Played bass in the office band. Sent plaintive e-mails to unresponsive websites. Has either died or moved to Sacramento. It’s not easy to tell the difference.

  Slats Silverstein

  Failed impresario, octogenarian, amateur philatelist, former “acquaintance” of Barbara Windsor. Currently living in Golders Green, wading through knee-high stacks of writs and tortes, nursing grievances and plotting revenge.