Still Breathing

by Donnelly, Anthony; Donnelly, Christopher; Spence, Simon

  Christopher: It was that time when all the lads older than me and older than Anthony, the cool thing – or they thought it was cool – was to get into heroin. All the major lads who you looked up to were smoking heroin. But then the next thing they were all fucked and became smackheads. [In the mid-’80s Wythenshawe was awash with a tidal wave of cheap heroin and it became a well-known destination for those seeking to score.]

  Anthony: Someone had put a sawn-off shotgun through someone’s letterbox in Wythenshawe. I was in the back bedroom at home with some weed and a grand in cash with thirty police, some armed, outside the house. It was half five in the morning, they were banging on the door and they got no answer, so they crashed the door. They burst in the house and came up the stairs. When they came in the bedroom, I’m screaming at them to ‘fuck off’. They’re telling me to lie down and I wouldn’t – they wouldn’t put the guns down. It was a screaming contest. We were all wrapped up together – my mum, my dad and me. They found nothing. I was only worried about my readies. I didn’t want them fuckers grabbing my hard-earned cash. Me and my dad got taken to the police station and then we got bailed. We were asked about the gun. There was a gun but it was a replica – there was a daft Mickey Mouse gun floating around the estate and there was nothing more to it.

  Christopher: The armed response came through the door in the house looking for me. I was at Natalie’s, my girlfriend’s, house, asleep on the couch. There had been some trouble with a local drug dealer in Wythenshawe that day. I’m surprised my mum didn’t have a nervous breakdown. The police were looking for me for armed robbery on a smackhead. It wasn’t me, obviously. I handed myself in for it because the police said it was. It was a case of mistaken identity and all the charges got dropped because the kid never turned up for the ID parade. He had moved off the estate in a rush apparently.

  June: That was very scary. We had to keep Chris away for a week. The armed police don’t knock. They turn you upside down. It’s terrible. And if you don’t know anything about what’s going on, that’s even more terrible. We’d just had the local bobby previous to that, or perhaps the CID. But this was something else – they’re armed and everything. I think it was about a week later Chris handed himself in with a solicitor. That was it.

  Christopher: That was the kind of shit going on all the time. I had a friend, who’d been in my class at primary school, who got into drugs and burned himself to death. He was drinking spirits and set himself on fire by accident. Things were happening every single day all over the estate that would make your hair turn grey. It’s a dirty drug, heroin, isn’t it? Nobody wanted it on the estate. Nothing surprised us anymore.

  Arthur: I moved from Wythenshawe. The police were terrorising us over the boys. No one knew where I was for two years. Nobody. The police finally got me over an MOT on my wagon in the city centre – they swooped mob-handed. They got me to a police station, knocked fuck out of me. They said, ‘There’s a funny MOT on the wagon.’ I said, ‘What a fucking pisser, that’s how I bought it.’ But my new address was now known to the police.

  Whereas once the Quality Street Gang (QSG) had been so secretive it was said they didn’t exist, in this period, as a result of a purported association with John Stalker, Deputy Chief Constable of Greater Manchester Police (GMP), they found themselves on the national TV news and splashed across newspapers from The Observer to News of the World. All police surveillance on them in the past had been unsuccessful, but now it was suggested that the newly formed Greater Manchester Police Drugs Intelligence Unit had been set up purposefully to investigate the QSG. During this brief and unfortunate period in the public glare, the QSG were linked to armed robberies, fraud, drugs smuggling cartels and gunrunning for the IRA. Despite this intense period of surveillance, nothing was pinned on the QSG – leading to the police once again wondering if the QSG existed at all.

  Christopher: I didn’t know what my dad was doing. All I can tell you about is the stuff I was doing. I know my mum was ill with the police constantly kicking the door off. It was making her ill – the police coming every day for my dad, Anthony or me. She wanted to get away from the area. They found somewhere out of the way with a bit of land. Although we moved away from the estate, all our pals were still there and we drank in the pubs round there every night. I was eighteen when I moved away from Wythenshawe. I was seeing Natalie, who I’d been seeing since I was sixteen. She’s now my wife. When we arrived at the farm we were like the odd family all stood in the window together when anyone walked past, thinking, ‘Who the fuck is that out here on the lane?’ Looking back, I bet the person walking past must have thought, ‘Look at them fuckers in the window looking at me’ – about seven of us, like The Hills Have Eyes.

  Anthony: We had got nowhere to live in Benchill; we were ostracised from our mum and dad. I was seeing Annette [with whom Anthony has two children]. I was living at her mum and dad’s in Woodhouse Park [Wythenshawe]. I’d been dating Annette since I was sixteen. Chris found out that some fella was having his house repossessed and I was given the opportunity to buy it. All I had to do was get the deposit to move myself up a gear. Annette was pregnant. I found the money.

  Tracey: I was working in Swing and then I started doing the tickets for the gigs and merchandise at The Hacienda. Then they started asking me to answer the phone for The Hacienda. Next I got a job working in the Factory Records’ offices on Palatine Road. They had starting this new manager, Paul Mason, at The Hacienda. He’d come from somewhere in Nottingham and was starting on Friday night. It actually coincided with Anthony’s twenty-first birthday. So I said to Tony [Wilson], ‘Is it okay if they all come in The Hacienda?’ I went in to work on the Monday and Tony said I’d been totally inebriated and that my brothers and their friends had been fighting at the door. Anthony and his friends had been refused entry and the whole reception area and the doormen got smashed up. I was held responsible as I had arranged it all and was suspended from work at Factory for a week on full pay. Tina, who I worked with, was quite rightly annoyed, as it left her on her own in the office while I had what she saw as a week’s holiday. There was a definite divide between The Hacienda people and your Brewster’s people. If you went to The Hacienda you were a ‘weirdo’ but Anthony and Chris were really cool with my crowd. They had already got to know a lot of them through hanging out at Swing. The Hacienda would be empty some nights and a bit boring, so I’d leave and walk to Brewster’s because I knew Anthony and Chris and my cousins would be in there. It was from one extreme to another for me.

  Mike Pickering, Hacienda DJ and Factory A&R: I met Tracey working at Factory. I met Anthony and Chris shortly after. Anthony’s birthday was my Friday night at The Hacienda. Anthony had planned to get a coach-load of his mates down but in the meantime Paul Mason had got the job as manager. I remember Paul coming up to the box going, ‘There’s a load of people outside; they’re saying they’re with you? I can’t let them in; they look like a bunch of thugs.’ It was Anthony and Chris. So I let them in and Paul Mason and me had a huge row. There ended up being quite a bit of trouble that night. Anthony and Chris were always getting in trouble. They’ve calmed down a lot since then.

  Christopher: We had Anthony’s twenty-first in the RAF club in Wythenshawe and then we all got a coach to The Hacienda. We got there and they decided they didn’t want to let us in. So we ended up having a riot on the door with all the doormen and left. This didn’t help our cause with Factory or Tracey at that point. Tracey was a big influence in our lives – probably the most significant. She was the catalyst. She inspired us and introduced us to a different type of person. The people who were running The Hacienda and Factory saw something in Tracey. Anthony and me would go to The Hacienda to see her but we were always known as Tracey’s ‘Scally’ brothers and that’s what we were. Most of our friends wouldn’t go there. We were going between the two worlds – between The Hacienda and Brewster’s.

  Tracey tried to get me a job as a roadie for [Factory band] James. I liked the b
and but I turned up in my dad’s XR3 Cabriolet. The band were a bit posh, a bit New Age – not like me. I lasted a day. My mum and dad had moved to the farm and I had an argument with me mum over not working. The next thing my dad appeared and pinned me up against the wall. We were both screaming. I was shouting, ‘Go on then, do what you want.’ Mum pulled him off. I’d had enough. Our pals were living in Gibraltar so Anthony and me decided to go away. We nicked our dad’s car. We took my best pal Stephen [Yates]. We were going to jib every train and steal our way across Europe. We ended up in Lyon with about fifteen quid left. Outside the train station was a massive big kiosk that sold magazines and different things. So we stood outside and Anthony said, ‘There’ll be readies in there, cash.’ Stephen and me got the women out and Anthony got into the safe. There was a load of coins in rolls. Anthony took about 150 quid. We were all laughing and we ran for the train with the money. But we missed the train – it was pulling out. We said, ‘That’s an omen.’ So we went back and pulled the same trick. This time we were going to search the safe thoroughly. He came out of the kiosk and he had his hands under his coat running through the square. And we were going, ‘Have you copped? Have you copped?’ He just went, ‘The bag’s loaded.’ There was just short of about twenty grand in cash, so instead of getting the train we booked into a hotel across the road and decided to go on the piss. Bad mistake.

  We should have left town immediately but we crashed in a hotel across the road from the safe we had robbed. The following morning the first shop we walked into was a leather shop and we put a leather on each – we just couldn’t help ourselves. There was no shopkeeper there. As we were walking out the postman was walking in and he’s obviously seen that we’ve all got tags hanging off our leathers. He started shouting, ‘Thieves!’ We managed to blag a taxi and got away, got our bags out of the hotel and took a taxi to the next town. It was one of the most enjoyable times I can remember stealing money. We travelled to the next big town and boarded a train heading towards Spain and the border.

  Anthony: And then we turned up in Gibraltar. Our pals were starving and living in a cave on Miami Beach. So we hook up with our friends and go out in Gibraltar town centre and get pissed. There was an argument with this soldier and his mate. We were fighting with them and a policeman came over and someone chinned him. Chris got off and escaped over the border back into Spain, to La Linea, where our hotel was. I got remanded in custody with Stephen and a pal called John Molloy. We were charged with assaulting a police officer.

  I represented myself and the others in court. At the end of the small trial the court usher came up, shook my hand and the judge gave me a £60 fine. The usher said I did really well defending me and my two pals. We part-paid the fine and we were released immediately. Obviously the rest of the fine remains unpaid.

  I’ve always known that we’re talented at getting money. Around this time we were starting to seriously do black market tickets and band merchandise in a big way. We were making money doing anything we could turn our hand to.

  Christopher: We were doing the concerts, working the passes – the swag. We were smoking loads of dope and drinking. There was no plan – it was just a case of getting a few quid from where ever you could. A lot of kids were doing what we were doing at that time – kids that weren’t doing nine to five, earning money other ways. You’d get a knock on the door, ‘Do you want to come to Germany? Do you want come to Switzerland?’ You might turn up in Germany for, say, Michael Jackson and you’d have us there, a firm from Wilmslow, which was Ritchie and Jimi Goodwin [of the Doves], a Scouse firm, a firm from Southend … everybody knew each other but you were in your own little mob. We’d all buy our T-shirts from this one firm of older geezers.

  The common enemy was the security and the police because they were tying to stop you selling merchandise in the streets. So you could end up all teaming together and have a running battle with security for Pink Floyd, Queen, U2 or Springsteen – whoever it was. We did all those tours. You’d have all the different firms, all driving around Europe, taking anything that wasn’t nailed down and then all converging on a pop concert for two or three days. We were young, travelling abroad, having a laugh getting stoned, drinking, making money. Anthony was leading the way on that.

  Anthony: It was a way of life. There was a concert on and that was your job at the time. I’d drive the van and there’d be thirty of us Mancs all night outside the stadium in whatever country, selling tickets and T-shirts. I used to drive everywhere, all over Europe. I loved it.

  Christopher: Anthony had the foresight. He said, ‘Why are we buying T-shirts to sell off other people? Let’s make our own.’ I mean, Anthony would always get a good deal off whoever was selling the T-shirts, but making our own gave us control. It was a great idea. Nobody could stop us doing that. No matter what age we were. Anthony ended up in this warehouse on Oldham Road with all these Littlewoods’ seconds he’d got off these fellas that our dad put him in touch with. Our pal, a designer, got this U2 T-shirt made and all the other concert sellers paid to use his artwork. It was shit hot, just as good as the official T-shirt.

  Anthony: We would always challenge people. We’ve always had a ‘fuck you’ attitude. It was all our friends who were selling the T-shirts for other people [the established manufacturers of bootleg T-shirts] so I knew I already had the workforce. All we needed was the product. We get involved in the design and the quality of the merchandise, sourcing it. We worked the [U2, 1987] Joshua Tree tour – to the point I became quite friendly with The Edge and Bono. They used to spot me outside and pull the window down and talk to me, ask me how I was doing with the tickets.

  Christopher: You’d get different firms, on various scales, doing this. We might print a thousand T-shirts but then someone from Miles Platting might come and get a run of a 100. So Anthony would have a price on that: a wholesale price and a worker price. For Michael Jackson we got a coach to Sweden, fifty-two people – the official bootlegging coach. Then you have to monitor them, restrain the lunatics. There was a lot of fighting breaking out. We ended up in Germany and went in this shop and came out all in new yachting gear. There was a burger van and you could see the cash box. Someone jumped over, passed it to me and I put it under my jacket. We got about £200 out of it. Anthony got the hire car towed away. He’d parked in a disabled parking zone with about six grand in the boot. We got it back. He’d hidden the money inside where the indicator was. There was always drama and adventure on tour, always a tall story to tell in the local pub on our return.

  Anthony: We were doing okay but we didn’t make a lot of money off the T-shirts. We were losing as much as we were making. Trading Standards in every country would try and grab the T-shirts off you. Then you’d be fighting with the security. It all had to be done with military precision. You’d turn up in a bus and hide two mile from the venue. Then you’d distribute the T-shirts evenly – 1, 2, 2, 1, one small, two medium, two large, one XL. Someone had a pen and paper and booked it out. Then the twenty people go off with the merchandise and only nineteen come back because Billy’s gone missing with his money, spent it in the pub, bought weed and met a bird – she blew him off round the back of the stage and now he’s fucked off and is living in Austria with this new woman – this shit really happened. So you get people MIA, missing in action. Then there was the ones that came back and said, ‘Listen, I’ve sold 140 but Trading Standard’s seized twenty so I’ll weigh in my 140 but can I have another forty to go and get the money to pay the fine for the ones that were seized?’ It was a business. The book was closed and we’d pack up to go to our accommodation – that’s where the fun begins. It was a rock ’n’ roll band. We were on tour. We’d book into a hotel, get a double room and then fourteen lads would be up the fire escape. At the service station, you’d take the table nearest the till and twelve dinners would go round the back and two got paid for. You were on tour. It was the most fantastic life ever. We were the unofficial side of the band’s tour. We worked Michael Jackson
in Europe. But we printed a T-shirt with Michael Jackson’s face on that we could only sell at night because the ink had run green. I suppose we were before our time with Jackson.

  4

  DANCING GANGSTERS

  Anthony: This kid called Eric Barker started wearing silk pyjamas and a Moroccan hat at the football. We asked him why he was dressed so freaky and he said, ‘Because I don’t care anymore – I’m just into music.’ We all thought Eric had lost his marbles. He was not a hard-core hooligan – he was on the periphery. He wasn’t into putting jewellers’ windows in or fighting; he was the nice kid who you could talk to about football, music, fashion and clubs. He was like an academic, from our point of view. I got talking a bit more to Eric at the match. He said, ‘You have to get on this,’ and he invited me to a club called Stuffed Olives. I turned up and he gave me my first Ecstasy tablet. I was beered out of my mind and holding onto a banister as it hit me. It was like a rocket. Eric was saying, ‘Let go of the banister.’ Once he prised me off the banister, my hands went up in the air and I was on the dance floor. It was amazing.

  In very early 1988, Eric Barker was at the very forefront of what would become the Acid House revolution in Manchester. His nickname, coined by Bez of the Happy Mondays, was ‘The Wizard of E’. The club, Stuffed Olives, was a well-known gay bar in the city centre that was transformed on a Sunday night into the city’s first major Ecstasy venue.

  Eric Barker: In the beginning I was dressed like any other normal geezer on the terraces at Old Trafford – in a pair of jeans and a Fred Perry polo shirt. But we’d be coming out of Stuffed Olives with steam coming off us, soaking wet from dancing so much when we were out E’d up. I just thought, ‘This clobber is not up to this.’ I’d been to Ibiza and seen someone there dancing in silk pyjamas like what old men used to wear in the ’60s, with nice patterns on them. So I started wearing them. Soon enough, everyone started changing their clothes and wearing baggy stuff rather than tight fit.