Record Play Pause

by Stephen Morris

  Hooky had an aggressive, driving way of playing the bass and Bernard, the most musical of the bunch, had a great guitar sound. They were a lot tighter than anyone else I had played with and seemed more organised. Hooky and Bernard were both easy-going and I guessed had similar musical tastes to Ian. They’d known each other at Salford Grammar School and consequently had a shared history. I got the impression the band functioned as a sort of democracy. This was how I thought a punk/new wave enterprise should work – it fitted with my old hippie/underground leanings.

  We went through all the songs on the tape, had a fag break for me and Ian, another bit of a chat about life and bands, and then went through the songs again.

  ‘Another one from Macc, eh? You’ll be all right for a lift home now, won’t you, Ian?’

  ‘It’s a bit of a greaser town Macclesfield, isn’t it? Don’t they all shag sheep and that?’ was Bernard’s take on my home town.

  ‘Only when it’s very very cold,’ I said.

  Apart from Bernard, we had similar office-bound jobs, Ian at Manpower services and Hooky at the Manchester Ship Canal Company. Bernard worked at Cosgrove Hall, the animation studio that produced the kids’ TV classics Chorlton and the Wheelies and, later, Danger Mouse. It was, according to the Evening News, Manchester’s version of Disney but without the theme park. Working in film production, even if it was of the two-dimensional rodent kind, had to be more creative than shuffling paper and getting bollocked when a delivery driver got lost.

  At some point Bernard and Hooky’s friend Terry Mason appeared, though I don’t think we were formerly introduced at the time. I thought his name was a parody of Perry Mason, Raymond Burr’s TV lawyer. His role in the band was a bit vague – that he was something was obvious but not what that was. Time would eventually assign various roles to Terry: guitarist, manager, live sound engineer and tour manager were some of his many job descriptions. Every band has someone like Terry, and their importance should not be underestimated.

  Apart from the odd complaint from the community-centre caretaker about the volume, everyone was happy at the end of the day. And as no one else had applied for the job I would have to do. They never told me this. As they hadn’t actually sacked me, I assumed I was in.

  Driving home, Ian and I talked about gigs and how to go about getting them. Getting in a band now looked like the easy bit – anyone could start a group – but if you couldn’t get to play anywhere, what was the point?

  Ian had some contacts: Buzzcocks manager, Richard Boon; Music Force, a Manchester music collective/agency set up by Martin Hannett (called Martin Zero at the time) and Suzanne O’Hara; plus he knew a couple of people at RCA’s Manchester office.

  I didn’t even know RCA had a Manchester office. It turned out it was in Piccadilly Plaza, where I used to go to get out of the rain when I was avoiding going to Audenshaw Grammar. I’d spent many unhappy hours sitting in there studying ZigZag’s Rock Family Trees and never noticed. I was either a bit depressed or a bit out of it at the time, so no wonder.

  Ian would use the phone at his work to pester any likely source for a chance of a gig and, as I had easy access to a phone at the office, it wouldn’t be long before I would be doing the same.

  Imagine my surprise and delight when a couple of days after the first Warsaw rehearsal I got a letter with a fancy London postmark.

  I may have forgotten about the Record Mirror job, but they hadn’t forgotten about me. The job was surely mine.

  Er, well no, actually.

  ‘Thank you for your review, unfortunately you were not successful on this occasion . . .’ blah-blah-blah, polite rejection letter stuff, except for ‘. . . however we would like you to write for us on a freelance basis – please call XXXXXXXXX to discuss this further if you are interested’.

  I had no idea what the words ‘freelance basis’ meant but this was something not to be sniffed at. I would get my name in the papers again, and not in the local crime section for once.

  This punk thing (or was it new wave? To the man in the street they were one and the same but there were crucial differences) really was fantastic. Suddenly I had gone from a work-shy ‘office employee’ to a drummer in a band that had gigs (well, maybe) and now I was a music journalist. My lack of qualifications had not been questioned once. New wave, punk, call it what you like, to me it was the land of opportunity.

  Back at work I waited for my fellow office skivers to slip off for a well-earned tea break and commandeered the phone. I dialled the number as instructed in the letter from Record Mirror.

  The very nice lady at the other end explained that all I would have to do was go to gigs and write a review of what I saw. This they would then publish in the Record Mirror and I would receive money.

  Fantastic, I thought. ‘How much money?’ I asked.

  Now here it all got a little vague, with much talk of pounds per hundreds of words and such like. I kind of drifted off and imagined myself waltzing into the Rainbow or the Marquee or other such far-flung venues, all expenses paid no doubt.

  Er, no.

  The gigs in question ‘would be in your locality so you shouldn’t have far to go. Call us once a week and we will let you know what we want you to do. No, of course you won’t have to pay to get in. How silly!’

  Well that was something, even though it wasn’t quite the marvellous deal I was expecting. It was a start and who knew where it might lead?

  Where it led was Rafters, a suitably dark basement club on Manchester’s Oxford Street.

  I’d kept my eyes on the forthcoming attractions in the Manchester Evening News, wondering where my first journalistic assignment would take me. I was obviously hoping for a gig at the Free Trade Hall or maybe the Apollo, or maybe it wouldn’t be in Manchester at all . . . bound to be somebody famous.

  I rang the Record Mirror and a chap in the editorial department said that I should go to see a group I’d never heard of called Ed Banger and the Nosebleeds.

  ‘They’re from Manchester and they’ve got a single coming out this week. We’ll put the review in next week. Don’t worry about paying, we’ll sort out getting you into the gig.’

  Thursday 25 August 1977 rolled around and, with a good supply of fags – I was back up to thirty a day again by then – and a pocketful of stolen office biros, I set off for the big city.

  ‘Hello, I’m from Record Mirror. I’m here to review the gig,’ I announced to the girl behind the till.

  ‘Oh that’s nice, lucky you, that’ll be seventy pence.’

  So with dreams of free admission and the possibility of being blackmailed with free booze more than slightly dashed, I went on down the steps to the subterranean nightspot.

  I bought myself a half and sat down at a table next to the dance-floor to take in the surroundings. They were of the dimly lit bierkeller, olde world fake wood beams and red paint variety prevalent in the 1970s. Nice drinking ambience, though.

  I was a journalist, I thought, and what I needed was a bit of background. I would have to engage someone in conversation.

  The DJ looked as if he would be a likely source of local knowledge. He was playing some good tracks and was chatting freely with the regulars. Spotting my chance, I went over and sort of hovered in the vicinity of the DJ booth. Where I was professionally ignored.

  ‘Hi there,’ I said finally.

  ‘Hi,’ he grunted.

  ‘Have you got any Patti Smith? I mean I wasn’t that sure about the Horses record and that. But I think the new one, that Radio Ethiopia, is really good, the first track on side one in particular. Why don’t you play that?’ I spluttered, expecting a critique of the Smith canon to be forthcoming and perhaps eventually a bit of background on Mr Banger and his Nosebleeds.

  ‘Fuck off’ was the somewhat harsh response.

  Twat, I thought but did not say.

  I had just met Robert Leo Gretton, destined to become a rather important figure in my life.

  Still trying to look cool but not succeeding,
I shuffled back to my table, which in the course of my weighty dialogue with the DJ had been claimed by another solitary lad like myself.

  ‘Er, do you mind if I sit here?’ I asked, indicating my chair.

  ‘Feel free.’

  A period of awkwardness followed. I finished my half and blurted, ‘Hi, I’m reviewing the gig for Record Mirror. Would you like a drink?’

  ‘That’s nice. Yes, ta, I’ll have an ’alf.’

  Ice now broken, we embarked on a discussion of the Manchester punk scene – Buzzcocks and Slaughter and the Dogs mostly. The Nosebleed’s single ‘Ain’t Bin to No Music School’ was coming out on Rabid, the Manchester label that had released the Buzzcocks Spiral Scratch EP. My new friend was a mine of information. The conversation expanded to take in various new bands and, not wishing to seem totally thick, I finally came out with ‘Have you heard of a band called Warsaw?’

  ‘Warsaw? Yeah.’

  ‘Any good?’

  ‘All right. Singer’s a bit of a nutter.’

  Thinking he must have misheard me or something, I let the matter drop. Maybe there was another band called something like Warsaw with an enraged singer. He couldn’t mean affable Ian . . .

  The gig was great. I think they played ‘Ain’t Bin to No Music School’ twice and Ed Banger was what you might call an animated frontman. The guitarist was particularly good.

  After the set was over I did a bit of hovering near the dressing-room door at the side of the stage and using the ‘Hi, I’m from Record Mirror’ line yet again, had a bit of a chat with the guitar player. He told me he was inspired by all kinds of revolutionary music and was a genuinely nice person. He said his name was Vini Reilly.

  I think I gave them a good review.

  Ian and Terry, meanwhile, had managed to cadge a gig out of Roger Eagle, who was manager at Eric’s in Liverpool. Well, it was more an audition really. Roger was doing this thing on Saturdays where the bands would do two sets, a matinee in the afternoon for the under-eighteens and a late-night slot for the regular punters. We could come and do the matinee support slot for X-Ray Spex and if Roger liked what he saw he would put us on again.

  We squeezed in another quick practice at Bernard’s place of work in Chorlton and one late summer Saturday morning I knocked off work early, loaded up the kit, collected Ian, and set off for Liverpool. Ian kindly lent me his Gary Gilmore execution T-shirt for the gig – my wardrobe was a little light on stage wear (it still is). I think my mum shrank it in the wash.

  We were hoping to badger our way into doing both slots but, despite Terry, Ian and Hooky’s best efforts at persuading Roger and X-Ray Spex’s road manager, we had to settle for just the afternoon show. Well, getting any gig was a success.

  The gig was the most exhilarating thing I’d ever done.

  I think that the assembled Liverpool youth – there weren’t that many of them – were impressed by our slightly nervy performance and we left with the promise of a repeat booking from Roger.

  By seven o clock I was back in the pub in Macc toasting my Warsaw debut with a pint of bitter. I’d like to think I was the envy of all my chums but the general reaction was more like:

  ‘It won’t last, y’know.’

  ‘This punk stuff’s just a flash in’t pan.’

  ‘You ’avin a safety pin through yer nose then or what?’

  That’s Macc for you, I thought, walking home with a spliff in hand.

  In truth there were very few piercings and leather jackets at the gig. No show-offs, for the most part.

  The Eric’s gig was my also my introduction to Ian as the frontman. At the rehearsals he had seemed pretty reserved: sitting down, mumbling or occasionally shouting his words into the mic. At the gig he was a lot more . . . animated. Especially for a Saturday afternoon. I remembered the words of the guy at the Nosebleeds gig and, though I couldn’t agree with his assertion that he was a ‘nutter’, Ian was a lot livelier than I had been expecting. In a good way, of course. The sort of way you’d want a lead singer to be.

  When starting a band, the hardest job to fill initially is that of singer. It’s always a big challenge. You could find a mate – a bit of a show-off maybe – who fancies their chances at the role, and they might be OK in the garage or your auntie’s front room when no one is looking, but once the spectators arrive the brash bravado soon disappears like a snowball in the sun. The singer is usually the first thing the audience looks at and, with only a mic stand to hide behind, they are the most exposed.

  Assuming that they do get over that hurdle of nerves and can sort of sing, the question is what do you sing? You’ve got to have words. Gibberish might be OK to get a song going, but the paying customer expects a modicum of intelligibility, or something that sounds like it. Christian Vander’s band Magma managed to swerve this by inventing their own language, Kobaïan, but that was a bit over-elaborate. Being French and a bit jazzy, they somehow managed to make it work.

  We were very lucky in having someone who not only wanted to be a singer and had the bottle to do it convincingly, but also had the intelligence to write meaningful words.

  Get a good singer and you’re halfway there. The next difficulty, so I’m told, is finding a good drummer. But I wouldn’t know much about that. I was Warsaw’s third or fourth drummer, depending on how you counted. It is a standard rock joke, one that is accurately portrayed in the spoof rockumentary Spinal Tap, that drummers are the most serial of musicians – there tends to be a succession of them in bands. Are drummers precious and picky, or as my father worried, is the problem that they are typically unstable?

  Our next gig would be back at Rafters, of all places. We were playing with another Manchester band, Fast Breeder, and as Warsaw had done the most gigs we figured we would be headlining, a technical term for going on last.

  The way this usually works is that the headlining act gets to do a soundcheck first and the support band goes second. This way, the main act get to waste loads of time pissing about with amps, one-two-ing into microphones and flaunting themselves while the support bands pretend not to be jealous or impatient.

  So me and Ian got there first, unloaded the car and I set to putting up the drum kit on the stage.

  ‘What do you think you’re doin’?’

  ‘Setting up me drums.’

  ‘No you’re not, mate. Fast Breeder haven’t soundchecked yet.’

  I should have mentioned that there was at that moment no PA for anyone to soundcheck with, but I didn’t and the moment passed.

  Now I might have been new to gigging in the Manchester scene but I did think of myself as a bit of a Rafters regular by now, and there was something about the chap’s manner that didn’t exactly equate with the chummy notion of new-wave band camaraderie. Also, he was a bit scary. So, seeking safety in numbers, I went looking for Ian to express my concerns.

  ‘It’s all right, Terry sorted it out.’

  Terry, like Hooky and Bernard, hailed from Salford and had been promoted to manager. He was very funny in a droll kind of way. Anyway he was supposed to have sorted this booking out with Suzanne at Music Force, who had sorted it out with Dougie at Rafters, who had . . .

  ‘Er, I’ll have a word,’ and off went Terry to fix it, while me and Ian stood at the back trying to look a bit menacing.

  He came back minutes later. ‘He says we’re going on first.’

  ‘No we’re fuckin’ not,’ said Ian. ‘Who says we are anyway?’

  Events then followed the usual course: a bit tense, then a bit heated, then a bit shouty. No one would back down.

  ‘How about we toss for it?’ I suggested.

  ‘Fuck off, that’s a shit idea.’

  It was what they call a Mexican standoff, only with amps and drums instead of pistols.

  Terry went off to a payphone with a load of 5ps to try and call Suzanne or Martin. The Fast Breeders set off with more 5ps to speak to their management.

  Christ, I thought to myself, you’d think this was an argument
about topping the bill at the Hollywood Bowl or Wembley Stadium, not a dingy cellar on Oxford Road in the middle of the week. Is it always like this?

  Eventually the Fast Breeder’s big gun turned up. A bloke called Alan.

  ‘I’m their manager, I booked the gig and you’re going on first. If you don’t like it, you can fuck off.’

  ‘No, you fuck off!’ Ian was by this time getting truly wound up. He was on his second tin of Breaker and the malt liquor was not having a soothing effect. ‘Fucking bastard bastards! We were here first so we’re going on last.’

  I wasn’t going to disagree. We were all feeling the frustration of the underdog.

  Each passing hour ratcheted up the tension another notch. The club doors opened and the gear was still piled up on the dancefloor in front of the stage. This was getting stupid.

  Finally a resolution was reached and Alan reluctantly agreed we could go on last. Hurray for us! Victory is ours! That’d teach the twats to mess with Warsaw.

  Except . . . Fast Breeder turned out to be bad losers and took to the filibuster strategy and went on a go-slow. They eventually took to the stage about half-eleven, this despite Hooky and Terry’s frequent exhortations to get a fucking move on.

  It must have been gone 1 a.m. when we finally got a chance to play and we were all wound up to fever pitch. What followed was not so much a gig, more a channelling of the spirit of the Stooges live in Detroit. Ian jumped off the stage (more a platform really) and accosted the few punters that remained, turning over tables and smashing glasses in the process. He was wild. We played as though we had something to prove. It was brilliant. It was cathartic. It was us against the world.

  And I had seen another side of Ian.

  Alan, it turned out, was an actor with the second name Erasmus. Fast Breeder were later joined by Vini Reilly, the guitar player with the Nosebleeds, and Bruce Mitchell, the drummer last seen at Reading 1975, and they became known as the Durutti Column.

  The Rafters DJ was so impressed by our anarchic antics that he decided he wouldn’t mind being our manager. It took him a while to tell us that, though. Never one to rush things was Rob.