The Boy About Motown
Motown is now a ghost town. It curled up and died along with my youth a long time ago when the days I could dance without feeling discomfited came to an end.
Not only was it the sound of my dancing youth, it was also, as Gary Kemp once succinctly put it, the sound of my soul. When the Four Tops descended from heaven in Tottenham Royal or Streatham Locarno or The Lyceum, well sugar pie honey bunch, I couldn’t help myself. I’d steam onto the dance floor fuelled by an ocean of Double Diamond – it really did work wonders – and start to groove in the hope of getting entangled in a web of sticky-sweet stares spun by creamy girls.
When they slowed things down, you were on cloud nine in dream time with your arms around a shapely stranger hoping upon hope she’d let you in… ‘I'm gonna use every trick in the book, I'll try my best to get you hooked. Oh baby…’
And while each slice of three minute Motown vinyl caressed the gleaming threads of my three piece mohair suit, everything was for the best in the best of all possible worlds.
When the dancehalls closed for the night and the only sound was traffic and the second hand emotions of your mates as you walked home, your soul would still be dancing to that Detroit beat. Motown, mohair, magic.
The lyrics were as infectious as the melodies. Through a funky, speeded-up osmosis (with the emphasis on speed – the pills gave you room to move on the dance floor), they infiltrated your mind. I knew the words to I Heard It Through The Grapevine after just two hearings. Baby Love only required one spin on the turntable and I remembered all its cutie pie sentiments, word for word.
We danced to Motown, snogged to Motown, ate, drove, shagged and fell asleep to Motown. Above all we listened to Motown, and heard, really heard, every glorious, impassioned moment.
The melody lingers on in a new exhibition that’s just opened at the fabulous Proud Gallery in Camden – a unique photographic homage that chronicles the rise of Tamla Motown with rare and unseen photographs of the visit to these shores of artists in 1964 and in 1965 when they played their first British concert tour and when Stevie Wonder had a Little prefix.
It charts the UK history of the label throughout the 60s and 70s, the classic years, the Berry Gordy, Holland-Dozier Holland, Norman Whitfield years when artists like Smokey Robinson, Temptations, Martha Reeves, The Supremes and The Jacksons were never out of the UK charts. All the photos on display were taken by EMI photographers at the time.
These were the sweet days, when songs rolled off the production line like the cars once did in Detroit. When Stevie Wonder ditched his cherie amour for dreadlocks and the sublime sophistication of ‘Sunshine Of My Life’ and the Isley Brothers left the label to become hippies.
After Motown finally moved lock, stock and smokin’ barrel from Detroit to Los Angeles, the hot sun slowly dried out that fecund, motor city magic and things were never the same again, Lionel Richie or no Lionel Richie.
The ‘end’ wall of the exhibition is reserved for perhaps the brightest Motown star of them all. Just think of that gorgeous, searching sax intro leading you to the sweetest vocals this side of heaven… ‘Mother mother, there’s too many of you crying…’
Marvin Gaye was always the grown-up in the Motown stable, like a sexier, despairing Smokey Robinson – mad, bad and dangerous to know, the voice of an angel with a dark secret. The photos were taken in London during visits in 1980 and ’81 just a few years before he was shot dead by his father. It’s a fitting finale.
The Gallery did us Proud at the exhibition preview when Martha Reeves and The Vandellas hit the stage for a blistering set that included their three big hits, ‘Heatwave’, ‘Jimmy Mack’ and, of course, ‘Dancing In The Street’ which this year celebrates its 50th anniversary. Scary.
Martha, at 72, ain’t no spring chicken but fuck me, she could’ve danced all night in that tight gold dress that certainly accentuated her positives, and still have begged for more. Rousing springs to mind, not just the performance but for the memories she brought back to life. It felt like this was the only place you could possibly want to be at that moment and that doesn’t happen very often.
When I got home, I dug out my old copy of Motown Chartbusters Volume 3, the one with the shiny silver cover released in November 1969. How’s this for a track listing:
1. I Heard It Through The Grapevine - Marvin Gaye
2. I'm Gonna Make You Love Me - Diana Ross & The Supremes And The Temptations
3. My Cherie Amour - Stevie Wonder
4. This Old Heart Of Mine (Is Weak For You) - The Isley Brothers
5. I'll Pick A Rose For My Rose - Marv Johnson
6. No Matter What Sign You Are - Diana Ross & The Supremes
7. I'm in a Different World - The Four Tops
8. Dancing In The Street - Martha Reeves & The Vandellas
9. For Once In My Life - Stevie Wonder
10. You're All I Need To Get By - Marvin Gaye & Tammi Terrell
11. Get Ready - The Temptations
12. Stop Her On The Sight (S.O.S) - Edwin Starr
13. Love Child - Diana Ross & The Supremes
14. Behind a Painted Smile - The Isley Brothers
Hardly a dud amongst them. Yet there was only one song in that smorgasbord of classics that got to No. 1 in the UK. Any idea? Have to hurry you…’S’right, ‘Grapevine’.
‘Listening to Marvin all night long
This is the sound of my soul…’
Proud Galleries, in collaboration with EMI, Bravado and Universal Music, present Classic Motown – The Invasion Begins
The exhibition runs from 14th May – 13th July 2014, Monday to Sunday: 11am – 5pm. Free entry.
Address: The Horse Hospital, Stables Market, Chalk Farm Road. London NW1 8AH
www.proud.co.uk
Check out Barry’s new novel, Wet Dreams Dry Lives http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00H0IM2CY
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00H0IM2CY
April 1979
Somewhere Over The Rainbow (Part 2)
As I walk home from the Rainbow that night it suddenly dawns on me that this could be my biggest break – switching from observer to controller. A pop promoter for the biggest band in the world. Power, dosh, fame. Everything I’d always wanted, well, since meeting Dina. This was my destiny and I was going to share it with someone who beat the shit out of me when I was five.
I ring Alan Edwards the next morning to try to arrange the meeting. Debbie Harry and Chris Stein would be arriving in London in a few weeks and he’d see what he could do. He sounds sceptical but eventually manages to set up a meeting at their hotel, the Montcalm in the West End. Alan always comes through: it’s the secret of his success.
It’s an unusually warm Sunday morning in April. The meeting is arranged for noon and Frank picks me up in a smart S-reg something.
This definitely feels right. I lean back in the leather seat and decide I’ve finally arrived.
Frank and I breeze into the foyer and glide up to the reception desk.
‘Room 221,’ I say, in a voice brimming with such confidence it even surprises me.
The clerk dials the room. ‘They’ll ring back in a few minutes,’ she says, as she replaces the receiver.
We turn to find a seat and bump into Frank Infante from the band.
‘Hi, Frank,’ I say, like he’s my long-lost brother.
He hesitates. ‘Oh, yeah, hi.’ I’m used to the pretty vacant look from new-wave bands. A flicker of recognition crosses his eyes. ‘Right, yeah. The other guys are in there having breakfast,’ he says, indicating the dining room.
‘Great, I’ll catch you after I’ve seen Debbie and Chris,’ I say, still confident, still surprised.
‘Okay.’ He shuffles off.
The phone on the desk rings. ‘You can go up now,’ says the clerk.
Frank is wearing a beige suit and brown tie. He looks the part. I’m in a jacket and jeans. I think we make a cool pair, like maybe Sinatra and Martin or Starsky and Hutch.
Chris Stein opens the door. He looks like he’s been up all night.
‘Come through. Debbie will be right in.’
He leads us into an impressive living room and Frank and I sit down on the couch. Debbie walks in. She’s wearing a plain white bathrobe and no makeup. She’s the biggest pop star in Britain and walks in loveliness like the night across pubescent souls starved of glamour in the aftermath of punk.
But at noon on that particular Sunday, she looks like death warmed-up.
‘So what’s this all about?’ Chris asks.
Frank hits the gas. ‘I want Blondie to top the bill at a massive one-day pop extravaganza I’m promoting at Stamford Bridge, the home of Chelsea Football Club. Here’s the deal. We’ll fly the band over on Concorde . . .’ I suddenly feel very cool when he says, ‘We’ll’. Chris and Debbie seem to like the supersonic words he’s speaking. They start to listen more intently. This is going well.
‘Then we’ll---’
The phone rings.
‘Excuse me just a moment,’ says Chris.
Frank starts to make small-talk with Debbie as Chris picks up the phone.
‘He’s the guy who did what?’ We all turn and look at Chris. He stares at me wide-eyed. After a few moments without saying another word he hangs up.
‘That was Clem.’ He’s talking only to me. ‘He says you’re the guy who interviewed them in New York a few months back. They didn’t like what you wrote about them, man. I haven’t read it but I know they were pretty pissed. They’re sending a couple of guys up to throw you out.’
He turns to Debbie. ‘Shit, I don’t know how these guys were allowed up here in the first place. Who arranged this?'
This Montcalm moment is a doozie. Why me?
‘Er, I’m sorry about this, Frank,’ I say, still in a state of apoplexy and frantically trying to remember what I’d actually written that had caused such consternation.
‘Don’t worry.’ He’s taking it nobly.
There’s a loud knock at the door.
I fear the worst. Frank and I had fought each other as kids − now we’re united against a common foe: Blondie bouncers.
Chris opens the door. There’s an exchange of words in the hallway.
He comes back into the room and says the guys outside want a word with me.
I go out. Frank, gratifyingly, watches my back.
A big guy in a black jacket, with the word `Security’ emblazoned across the back in large letters the colour of blood, is waiting. His colleague, similarly attired, stands a few feet away.
‘Is that guy you’re with Frank Warren?’ asks the first guy like it was Mick Jagger or Dustin Hoffman. Shit, Frank from my flats was a media celebrity. The boxing shows at the Rainbow were proving to be his stepping stones to fame. He really has caught the public’s imagination
I try to say, ‘Yes,’ like Al Pacino, but it comes out sounding more like John Inman.
‘I thought so,’ says the guy. ‘Look, we’ve just been asked by the band to throw you out but I don’t want any trouble with you or Mr Warren. I’ve seen you around at concerts and I know
you’re kosher. I don’t know what it was you wrote about those guys but they’re pretty fucked-off. I’ll leave it up to you but I think, honestly, it would be better if you left.’
He’s a straight-up guy and he’s marking my card. And then the two of them turn around and walk away, though I think they were tempted to ask for Frank’s autograph.
At that moment I realise I’d never be able to pin Frank’s arms to the ground ever again. He’s a well-respected man with more influence than I could ever have imagined. I, on the other hand, am a schmuck who still doesn’t know what I’d written that had got them all so pissed.
‘When we sort this shit out I’ll get in touch,’ says Chris. Frank and I both know we’d never set eyes on him again. Or each other come to that.
‘What the hell did you write?’ Frank asks, as we walk through the foyer and out into the spring sunshine. We both laugh about it on the way home but we know we’re never going make it as Barnum and Bailey. This was my last tango in Paris. From now on I have to set my sights lower.
Much lower.
(What the hell I wrote can be found on an earlier blog. Really sorry about that Frank. What can I say? I was a klutz with a vindictive streak. I actually did meet up with Frank over twenty years later. I heard that his mother had passed away. She was an absolute gem, always a smile on her face, always a kind word on her lips. I felt I had to write a letter of condolence to Frank and he replied with a wonderful handwritten letter awash with memories.
We met for lunch, two Finsbury boys with a boxful of chat, and he invited me and my sons Paul and Andrew, who were 16 at the time, to see Herbie Hide at the London Arena. He was fighting some relative unknown called Vitali Klitschko. My boys were well impressed when we were ushered into the up front and personal ringside seats and even more impressed by the Goliath proportions of the Ukrainian. The guy was a mountain and Herbie went down in the second round. It was a wonder he lasted that long.
After the show, I introduced the boys to Frank who chatted to them for a while.
‘I tell you something,’ he said to them as a parting shot, ‘your dad and I had better fights than that one tonight when we were kids…’
When I sent Frank this article, he invited me over the Arsenal as a guest in his box for the last home game of the season against West Bromwich Albion last Sunday. We reminisced about the old days and I asked him if the piece I wrote about him was okay to use. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It’s fine, except for one thing. It wasn’t Monopoly I tipped up. It was Buccaneer…’ What a true gent).
Next: Rush in Newcastle
Adapted from the book Tell Me When by Barry Cain
© Barry Cain 2013
Check out Barry’s new novel, Wet Dreams Dry Lives http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00H0IM2CY
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00H0IM2CY
www.facebook.com/wetdreamsdrylives
April 1979
Somewhere Over The Rainbow (Part 1)
My first, vivid, memory of Frank Warren – or Frankie, as he was known back in the day − was getting a right-hander from him outside my flat when we were both five years old. It was my first fight.
It felt more comfortable getting punched close to my front door: I figured if the fight was going against me my dad would come out and break it up and, if not, he’d let it roll for a while before stepping in. He came out double quick that day. I’d bloodied Frank’s nose but he kicked the shit out of me. My mum gave him a banana and we shook hands, but from then on we were always on opposite sides. He ran with the enemy.
I lived on the ground floor of Bevin Court near King’s Cross and he lived up in the sky on the seventh. He had a lovely mum but he was always such a little bastard – forgive me, Frank. He’d throw other kids’ toys down the rubbish chute, tip up and ruin games of Monopoly that we often played in the stairwells of the flats, and generally cause havoc. He always seemed to be itching for a fight.
He was of slight build, a little below average in those below-average days, but he could punch well above his weight. He was kinda dangerous and I kinda liked that. I had one more fight with Frank. It was in the street that led down to the flats. I guess we were about nine. He’d hardly grown out of his five-year-old shell but I was rapidly turning into a tall, tubby kid. I towered over him and it was a complete mismatch. I knew it but Frank didn’t, and he steamed in like a raging bull and really hurt me. After a fierce struggle, my blubber managed to pin him to the ground and I placed both my knees on his outstretched arms.
We stayed like that for seconds, minutes, who knows? My locker no longer contains such secrets. The older boys who had instigated the fight got bored and started wandering off. It must’ve been hurting Frank because my knees were really aching. I think we both wanted to cry but our hearts wouldn’t let us. It was the way we were. And then I started to feel deeply ashamed. I didn’t want to hurt this person, I grew up with him for fucksake. What was the point of this? Whack! ‘You bully. Get off him.’
An old woman hit me with her umbrella and pushed me over. ‘You’re twice as big as him, you bully,’ and she whacked me again. I got up quick and ran as fast as my tubby body
would let me. I knew what Frank was capable of; I knew what all of us on that estate were capable of and, sure enough, a brick came heading my way. Luckily, his arms must’ve still been numb because I wasn’t caught by the shrapnel as it landed and for a big, fat kid that was a result.
‘You bully.’ I’ve been called a lot of things in my life but those words will always hurt the most. ‘You bully.’ Me?
That was the last ‘straightener’ I ever had. I didn’t like the look of someone’s face contorted with a pain that I was inflicting, someone that I actually, perversely, liked. I also hated getting hurt. But I hated most being goaded by older boys who wanted to see a fight. We were a pair of prize suckers. Neither of us fell for that again.
We were all beasts in baseball boots, but some of us were cleverer than others. Frank passed his eleven-plus – hardly anyone from our area did that − much to the surprise of one particular parent who actually stopped me in the street and said, ‘Can you believe it?’
I could.
By then Frank’s family had moved to another estate, Priory Green, but he was still a frequent visitor to our shores, organising football matches between neighbouring estates on concrete playgrounds with walls for goals. He didn’t play, he organised. He made it happen. When you can do that at ten, the eleven-plus is a stroll in the park.
It was patently clear that the guy had brains. He shed the ‘ie’ from the end of his name, ducked and dived like we all did and became very wise very quickly, like some of us did. I’d see Frank around and we’d chat and it was easy, comfortable. He was flash, but in that good, unintentional way. Natural flash. Organic flash. And every time I bumped into him he’d grown appreciably taller, nicer, genuinely interested in what I was doing. As his reputation grew, I felt a sense of pride that a bloke from my flats could achieve worldwide fame doing something that really did come naturally.
Our paths cross on several occasions in 1979, one of which involves probably the most embarrassing moment of my life …
Frank is starting to make a name for himself as an unlicensed boxing promoter of mainly overweight fighters who beat up each other at the Rainbow in Finsbury Park. It’s popular entertainment and the media love slagging it off
I bump into him in Chapel Market and he hands me a pair of tickets for one of the shows. I take Tim (Lott) and I think he’s surprised at the sheer number of spivs in suits that pack out the venue. The fights are more like boxing matches than I’d thought they’d be. Gloves, a ring, rounds, referee, shit, it’s boxing. There are a few decent contests but no one suffers any really bad injuries. It’s boxing, it’s local, it’s a good night out.
When I meet Frank after the show, he’s backstage sitting at a desk behind a mountain of cash because it’s tickets in advance or at the door and loads of people leave it until the last minute to go. It’s all legit and includes the fighters’ purses, security payments and other staff and receipts are issued. He’s now way out of my league. He’s about to embark on his first trip to the States and I try to impress him with a few feeble stories about my travels.
‘Do you know Blondie?’ he suddenly asks.
I’m delighted. Why, only a few weeks ago I’d spent the night on the town in Manhattan with Blondie, snorting and smoking and scheming. ‘Yeah, sure,’ I reply, and proceed to relate my chemical soirée − naturally leaving out the bit about the chemicals. I figure Frank wouldn’t appreciate that, him being a teetotaller an' all.
‘Look, I’ll be honest,’ he says after listening attentively. ‘I’ve got first refusal on Stamford Bridge for a one-day rock concert this summer and I fancy Blondie to headline. Do you reckon you could set up a meet?’
Blondie are the biggest band in town. Their single ‘Heart of Glass’, released in January, has sold more than they could ever imagine. The band’s PR is none other than Alan Edwards.
‘No sweat, Frankie.’ I instantly regret the ‘ie’ but he doesn’t seem to mind. I tell him I used to be their PR and that they know me really well.
‘Well, if this comes off we’ll all do well. By the way, do you know the Stranglers too?’
Do I know the Stranglers?
‘Well,’ Frank continues, ‘that Jean-Jacques Burnel would be a fantastic attraction if he stepped into the ring against, say, Lennie McLean. He’s got a bit of a reputation of being shit hot at karate, hasn’t he? It would be perfect.’
It’s true. Jean must have every Dan in the book, including Desperate. He was as hard as nails yet supremely intelligent – a beguiling combination.
A few weeks later I’m sitting having lunch in a burger bar in Hoxton with Frank, ex-middleweight champion of the world Vic Andretti and, yes, Jean Jacques. I originally introduced Frank to Jean at a gig to promote Jean’s debut solo album Euroman Cometh and I’d driven JJ to the Ringside bar in Hoxton, which is owned by Vic. The unlicensed boxing shows at the Rainbow were making Frank rich and famous. He was becoming a celebrity and I loved it. Of course, JJ going one on one with Lennie McClean was never going to happen, but it’s good to talk and the idea did receive some media interest.
Besides, there are bigger fish to fry …
Next: Blondie bombshell
Adapted from the book Tell Me When by Barry Cain
© Barry Cain 2013
Check out Barry’s new novel, Wet Dreams Dry Lives http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00H0IM2CY
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00H0IM2CY
www.facebook.com/wetdreamsdrylives
April 1979
Cats & dogs
In a packed Greenwich pub, I share a few pints with Chris Difford. I always seem to talk to members of Squeeze in packed pubs. And you know something? Neatneatneat. Dat’s Squeeze. Sweetsweetsweet. Dat’s Squeeze too.
They’re the doyens of cartoon-strip situation rock. Each song a two-inch-square excursion into the crazy caper world of big noses, dangling fags, words frozen in blurb balloons and painful domesticity.
Yet at the same time they’re as slick as a Sassoon quiff, as succinct as a silicon chip.
Squeeze are artifice with substance. Their dexterity is sometimes quite devastating, sometimes only partially successful due to an occasional lapse into Fantasy Land (a trap they have avoided on the new album Cool For Cats) and very rarely 24-carat oopseroonie.
But, then, a perfect Squeeze would be intolerable. Imperfection is half the fun.
A year ago the Deptford dickie-bow merchants clocked in with the hit single, ‘Take Me I’m Yours’ and clocked out with nothing more than a five o’clock shadow and a few strangled dreams.
A series of indifferent reviews followed, interspersed with downright venomous assaults on the band’s capabilities, too easily dismissed as lightweight and shallow. Then there was an album that made about as much impression as a hooker in an old people’s home.
‘You learn by your mistakes.’ Chris Difford, lyricist, singer and guitarist, grips his pint like Steve Austin and raises it above the sticky beer mat. ‘After the hit we decided, erroneously in retrospect, to try and break America.’
When Squeeze returned from their Stateside sojourn they found themselves back at cartoon strip square one. ‘The press seemed to resent the fact that we’d stayed in America for so long. But I guess the press have never really been on our side. They don’t regard us as being hip enough, a Human League or Gang of Four. That’s fine by me because we see ourselves in the same bracket as the Faces or the Stones. Just good time rock ’n’ roll. When we played Hammersmith with the Feelgoods we got an encore. That meant more to me than anything we’ve done so far. It was more important than a hundred rave reviews in the papers.
‘Christ, we’re doing seven nights at Hammersmith with the Tubes. If we get an encore every night I think I’ll retire.’
And so to the ‘cheeky, schoolboy humour’ (an Anne Nightingale Old Grey Whistle Test special) of ‘Cool For Cats’, which, by the way, was doctored by Top of the Pops.
‘A few minutes before we were due to appear they told us to substitute "blinkin’" for "bleedin."’ I was absolutely petrified because I really didn’t want to do it. But really the joke’s on them ’cos they haven’t sussed yet there are far worse lines in the song – like "Give the dog a bone", for example.’
Chris reckons he got the inspiration for the song while in a boozer, surprise, surprise. ‘In the course of an hour if you’re on your own having a drink your mind will wander over at least five or six different subjects. That’s all "Cats" is, five unrelated images linked by the same phrase.
‘We just get fed up with the acceptable structures for songs. Squeeze are influenced to some extent by Kraftwerk and there is a happy medium between the average rock sound and "Showroom Dummies".’
It’s arguable that they occasionally went overboard with the dummies on the first album, but Cool For Cats is more yer strictly roots beer foam Bensons 33.
‘It’s a London album. The next one will be European. After all, life is just a railway track – once you’ve been to Scotland you’ve got to come back.’
He never said a truer word, although I’d have gone for Newcastle.
The album is not exactly complimentary to the fairer sex. Chris’s songs are littered with earthy references, so women become ‘it’ or ‘dog’. ‘We call ’em trouts round here. My songs are simply observations and you find men often refer to women in such terms.’
One thing young Chris thinks about is his ever-increasing folio of songs – around two thousand at the last count. ‘I’ve sent some to lan Dury because I think he’s the best social writer around. I’d love to team up with him because I’m sure we could become the Gilbert and Sullivan of rock and write a new Threepenny Opera.’
Squeeze have got a new drive, a new bassist, a new series of cartoons, a new confidence. They’ve also got a first-class return ticket to Scotland. What more can you ask?
The Daily Record version of that meeting that I did leaves the Squeeze PR Versa Manos livid. ‘Chris is furious because his words were misconstrued and it shouldn’t have appeared like that.’ I do appear to be rubbing interviewees up the wrong way these days. One in particular hits very hard, causing a landslide that blocks the way to the biggest money-spinning opportunity of my life.
And all thanks to that Debbie Harry interview nine months ago…
(Difford and Tilbrook kept the Squeeze box going until 1999 when they both started to pursue solo careers. In 2007 the pair re-formed Squeeze − minus Jools Holland and drummer Gilson Lavis – and toured the US. Live At The Fillmore was issued on iTunes and as a limited-edition white vinyl double-LP in April, 2012. Last year, Glenn Tilbrook confirmed that Squeeze would be recording between January and March 2014. The songs would feature on an ITV 6 part series based on the autobiography of Going To Sea In A Sieve by Danny Baker. Two songs per week would be featured in each episode).
Next: Blondie bombshell
Adapted from the book Tell Me When by Barry Cain
© Barry Cain 2013
Check out Barry’s new novel, Wet Dreams Dry Lives that’s free to download for three days from 30 March to 1 April inclusive:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00H0IM2CY
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00H0IM2CY
www.wetdreamsdrylives.com
www.facebook.com/wetdreamsdrylives
March 1979
Quiet please – it’s a Sex Pistol
Hampstead in the rain smells like the countryside, but there’s not much green down Jones Street.
‘Yeah, come round to me gaff for a chat. I’ve moved up to posh ol’ Hampstead now.’
Steve Jones’ phone words, still ringing in my ears during the solemn umbrella trudge from the tube station at midday, provide little solace since they have to compete with an insidious shoe squelch due to one tiny sole slit.
His newly acquired flat is on the second floor of a large house. I ring the bell for ten minutes on the main front door. No reply. I ring other bells, hoping someone might deign to answer and let me in out of this interminable wet.
Eventually, a little old woman opens the door. ‘You’re looking for Mr Jones? To tell you the truth, I don’t think he’s in, but you can try.’ She leads me along a passage and up the kind of staircase you usually find in thirties musicals, full of lipsticky smiles and top hats. ‘That’s his door.’ I knock. No reply. ‘Yes, he’s definitely out. This happened the other day when a young girl came to see him. And in this weather too.’
I try the flat next door. Another elderly woman answers. ‘Mr Jones? No, I didn’t hear him leave. I’ve been asleep all morning. Besides, he’s such a nice quiet boy I wouldn’t hear him if I was awake.’
‘Yes, our Mr Jones is a quiet chap,’ says the other. ‘I live underneath him and the only sound you can sometimes hear is when he plays his records.’
I leave this distinctly unPistol-like situation cursing the Milky Bar kid but not before bringing in two pints of milk for the first woman. ‘If I see him I’ll tell him you came. But he’s so quiet you don’t hear him come in.’
Can I believe my ears?
When I get back to the office I ring him. ‘Sorry ’bout that. I had to rush out and there was no way of contacting you. Come round again. I’ll definitely be in.’
Take the motor this time. The hole in my shoe just got bigger.
Inside his flat, I take a close look at him. Steve Jones is beginning to look more and more like one of those photographs in the window of a flash barber shop. His hair is remarkably immaculate and enough to make Tom Jones reach for the curling tongs.
Two-tone too. His face is chiselled like Burt Lancaster’s and beneath the T-shirt he appears to have a Charles-Atlas-was-here physique.
All this, coupled with an indifferent attitude of almost swashbuckling proportions, and you have the Adonis-flavoured chewy pop star. He’s as straight as a Yorkie, as interesting as a Topic and as durable as a Kit Kat.
His flat is epic. The lounge is predominantly black with no furniture except a few large cushions and a portable colour TV in one corner. There’s even a stage, which maybe fulfils a certain need in those long gaps between his public appearances (although it was installed by the previous owner).
‘The flat cost me fourteen grand,’ says Steve, as he shows me the rest of the property, which includes a bedroom done out entirely in wickerwork that the handyman did himself. ‘And then it cost me another six grand to decorate. It’s all I’ve got in the world now. I ain’t got a penny in the bank. Whenever I need any money I just have to go and sell a guitar or something.’
The word ‘unfair’ immediately springs to mind. The Pistols sell as many records now as when Rotten and Vicious called the tune and teased the media. There seems little doubt that, had they survived intact, the band would have transcended reputation and gone on to become the biggest selling ever, in this country anyway.
The success of ‘Something Else’ and ‘Silly Thing’ (best routine Legs and Co. have done in years) reinforces the fact that there are still plenty of people around who refuse to forget.
Unless, of course, you don’t remember in the first place.
‘It’s really strange,’ ponders Steve, strumming a guitar he hasn’t sold yet. ‘There’s all these thirteen-year-old punk rockers wandering about who don’t even recognise me. They don’t know how it all started or why.
‘Everything’s really changed now. There’s no fun any more. People are too straight. All these punk bands are writing songs that mean nothing. The reason rock ’n’ roll lasted so long was because the songs were great. But what’s going down now is rubbish, so the bands don’t last five minutes. Some journalist asked me the other day if the Pistols would ever get back together again and I told him I’d never team up with those sods -- for a laugh, y’know. He printed it, and I tell you something, that was the only true punk thing I’d read in a paper for a long, long time.’
Fun is a key word in both Steve’s vocabulary and lifestyle. It’s fun to be a rock star. It’s fun to be dubbed a charismatic cockney Casanova. It’s fun to be young and curly and popular and twenty-three and to frequent bareback skaters’ haunts full of creamy women and write hit songs and appear in movies and---
In movies?
’S right. Steve plays a diligent dick in The Great Rock ’n’ Roll Swindle. You’ve heard the soundtrack, now wait for the movie when you can …
. . . GASP as Sid jumps out of bed in his underpants.
. . . SCREAM as he rides a motorbike down the high street − ‘It was a three-wheeler ’cos Sid couldn’t ride a bike.’
. . . MOAN as Steve hops into bed with sex queen Mary Millington.
. . . LAUGH as Steve is then pursued by Mary’s screen husband, piano man Russ Conway.
. . . THRILL to Steve as a detective on the trail of Malcolm McLaren.
. . . CRY as they all die.
‘It’s gonna be really funny although I think Malc is trying to make it all too political. He’s rapidly getting away from the point of what he originally set out to do -- have a bit of fun and make a few bob.
‘Rotten’s in a few scenes, like the early days of our gigs, but he didn’t want to know about anything else. Irene Handl is also in the film and so’s that Shaft-like DJ who does that ad for K-Tel records on the telly. I hear the distributors are queuing up for it. I only hope none of this legal wrangling will prevent the film from being released.’
Steve is convinced that people want to know what it was really like in the good old days of the Pistols. ‘They just want to have a laugh, that’s all.’
The movie should also reflect that Steve was, and still is, the original punk beast.
‘It was me who used to get up to all the bother most of the time. Rotten was always pretty quiet. Funny, I knew he’d slag me off when the band split. Same with Matlock. If he got chucked out, everyone was to blame.’
I’ve no doubt that Steve could, if guided in that particular direction, hurl abuse at Rotten all day quite happily. But Pistols’ in-fighting has become rather monotonous, vapid and documented, to tedious length, in other publications. Let’s just say that Steve preferred Sid.
‘He was better than Rotten. I really liked ol' Sid. Naturally I felt sad when he topped himself. It’s not every day one of your mates dies. At least he was one rock star who lived up to the "hope I die before I get old" thing.
‘Paul and me were gonna go over and do an album with him after he got nicked to raise some money for lawyers’ fees. But the day before we were due to fly out we got the news that he was dead. I was looking forward to working with him again.
‘I always knew he wouldn’t last. He couldn’t help but be in bother all the time. Always up to stupid things like fights and getting cut up when he started getting too flash. And what with the drugs … You could never imagine Sid at forty.’
Can you imagine Steve Jones at forty?
‘I suppose I’ll live to be a hundred. I look after myself,’ he says, while chewing into a chocolate bar taken from a bowl of sweets he keeps in the lounge. ‘I don’t go around beating people up. I don’t take any lethal drugs.’
It’s true, he does look the picture of health. He’s lost weight over the last months, leaving a pound or two of sunburned fat on Californian beaches.
‘I had a great time over there. One night I went to a big party where the Runaways were playing and ended up mingling with loads of film stars like Gregory Peck and Zsa Zsa Gabor.’
Didn’t I read that he pulled Miss Gabor? ‘Nah -- she’s too old. I’d like to live in America for a while. They treat rock ’n’ roll totally different over there. It’s much more of a big deal, while here nobody gives a toss. When you play at gigs everything runs so smoothly. Here you always get problems. Like when you travel up north you’re never seen again. All that crap you hear about "friendly" northerners. They hate Londoners. Northerners are so thick . . .’
When he’s not slagging off northerners, Steve is producing records for ex-Runaway Joan Jett.
‘I’ve just done her new single, "You Don’t Own Me", and there’s a chance I might go to the States and do an album with her. It would be great to get away. I hate it here. It’s all so depressing at times.’
Maybe a spot of, er, permanent female company might help.
‘I don’t want to live with a bird yet. I enjoy myself too much.’
Fitting enough finale, I s’pose. I think if I’d ever been a rock star, I’d be a bit like Steve Jones.
And old ladies would love me for my silence.
(Steve has gone on to perform with such luminaries as Bob Dylan, Megadeth, Iggy Pop and Adam Ant. He lives in LA − as does John Lydon − where he was a radio DJ for a while, and has played at all the Pistols’ comeback shows)
Next: A tight Squeeze
Adapted from the book Tell Me When by Barry Cain
© Barry Cain 2013
Check out Barry’s new novel, Wet Dreams Dry Lives:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00H0IM2CY
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00H0IM2CY
www.wetdreamsdrylives.com
www.facebook.com/wetdreamsdrylives
March 1979
Giving Head
Tim and I decide we should use the Stranglers in Japan story as the main feature of our first syndicated column along with record and concert reviews. We do a mass mail-out to every local paper in the country with a covering letter saying they have permission to use this free of charge, then pay twenty-five pounds for each subsequent weekly column.
Lots of papers use the column, but only two agree to pay for a regular supply. Tight bastards. The road to riches is closed for extensive works and won’t be opened again for a year. It’s back to the bread-and-butter stuff of phoners and phonies.
It’s a never-ending story of love, hate and redemption. An orgy of celebrity that demands cynicism. The boy can’t help it and it leaks out during a speed-fuelled meeting with Motorhead in their manager’s London office …
Well, first of all there’s Lemmy – a couple of protuberances on his face (de rigueur for a heavy metal beast), Quo coiffeur (that’s long, no-nonsense greasy), hirsute top lip (curling Zapata moustache currently fashionable among London taxi drivers), mean look (very effective behind a mike), hairy chest with medallion (the Greek pose) and leather jacket. Bassist.
Then there’s Phil ‘Philthy Animal’ Taylor – thin eyebrows (sign of a psychopath), narrow, piercing eyes (sign of a psychopath), Sid Vicious barnet (sign of a psychopath), two days’ facial growth (sign of lazy psychopath), not so tall as other members of the band (sign of short psychopath) and leather jacket. Drummer.
And, of course, there’s Eddie Clarke – er, no painfully obvious physical characteristics (is this man really a member of Motorhead?) and leather jacket. Guitarist.
These men actually appeared on Top of the Pops. And they are probably the most slagged band of our time. Just a few years ago they were voted the Best Worst Band. They’ve been ridiculed, accused of having no musical talent and even disliked a bit too. And because of that they now have a single and an album in the charts. Nobody could accuse them of being insidious.
‘We’re resigned to the fact that we’ll never be accepted on a musical level by the critics,’ says Lemmy, lounging on the lino of his manager’s office in West London. ‘All they ever review is our stance. Okay, at the beginning it’s a laugh, but after a while it becomes both boring and annoying.’
That attitude has recently escalated with the release of their aptly titled second album Overkill. Record Mirror’s lithe, libidinous Chris Westwood has just been awarded the coveted Motorhead Intellectual Nerd of the Year Trophy. His album review really got to their dandruff.
‘He said I should grow up,’ Lemmy complains. ‘Christ, if I grew any bigger I’d be out of reach! He wasn’t constructive at all. It was just one big bitch. Fancy some speed?’
I acquiesce. Hot stuff. In fact, I’m sitting here eating my heart out, baby …
‘Yet when we met him he was really nice – drinking our drinks, smoking our fags. Maybe we didn’t give him enough.’
‘People like that are really beginning to get to me. I seriously think they regard us as three geezers wandering around in leather jackets and gun belts causing mayhem. Well, I regard them as pseudo-intellectuals who lock the world out when they sit behind their little typewriters. I’ve got a really good wall for them to bang their heads against.’
So we’re confronted by two opposing Motorhead schools: (1) the pupils who think the traumatic trio are just another bunch of metal gurus; (2) the pupils who like Motorhead quite a lot.
‘Rock ’n’ roll refused to die and now heavy metal is refusing to die,’ says Lemmy, white speck in a nostril hair, white heat in a brain cell.
‘I hate that term "heavy metal",’ interrupts Phil. ‘It immediately conjures up visions of heeled boots, Spandex trousers and demented fools.’
‘Right,’ says Lemmy. ‘I think we’re more a molten-metal band.’
A molten-metal band that was just a solid mass four years ago when Lemmy first formed it after leaving Hawkwind. You remember them − unidentified flying objects in Lurex strides. Motorhead number one recorded an album that was never released. Lemmy drafted in two new musicians – Taylor and Clarke – and they’ve never looked back.
Mind you, they’ve never looked forward either.
Their first album sold around 50,000 and a single, ‘Louie Louie’, actually showed in the charts. Grown men were seen to break down and cry when they saw the record at number sixty. And now the new success, which has jettisoned Motorhead into the £45-a-week bracket -- each!
But things weren’t always rosy. ‘We looked like splitting at one point,’ says Phil. ‘One night, just before a gig, I punched our tour manager on the head and broke my hand. It was over a chick …’
Lemmy’s eyes light up. Not sure if it’s a chemical or spiritual reaction. ‘Never take chicks with you on the road -- they’re bad news. Hawkwind were destroyed by chicks.’
‘Now we’ve got a good manager and a great lawyer,’ says Lemmy. ‘With a combination like that we’re impregnable.
‘That’s the thing about punk. They were all such a bunch of kids. If you don’t get yourself organised in this business, people will walk all over you. People had been walking all over us for a long time. What do you do when people hate you? You just keep going. You fight back. You survive. That’s why punk was destroyed – it never fought back. Mind you, heroin also helped it along the path to destruction.’
Lemmy and Eddie continue to slag off the use of heroin.
Lemmy: ‘Smack has killed three musical movements – first acid rock, then pub rock and now punk. Okay, I admit I’m a bit of a speed freak – and I’m afraid I’m influencing the rest of this band – but I’d never touch smack. People who like smack also like Lou Reed and that can’t be anything in its favour.’
Eddie: ‘I knew a guy who was into needles so much he once stuck an eye dropper into the veins of his wrist and bled to death in a public toilet.’
Lemmy is thirty-three, nurtured on Johnny Kidd and the Pirates, Gene Vincent and those other two tasty trios, Cream and the Jimi Hendrix Experience. He once worked as a roadie for Hendrix. He’s a man who lives very much in that Middle Earth world of Trafalgar Square hippies and kimonos. ‘I play the kind of music that I’d like to go and watch. There ain’t a band in the world that enjoys doing what they do more than us. We’re so happy doing what we’re being.’
(The indomitable Lemmy has ensured that Motorhead – minus Taylor and Clarke − have continued to record and perform to the present day. They have become something of an institution and even picked up a Grammy in 2005 for Best Metal Performance. They released the their 21st studio album, Aftershock, in 2013).
Apparently, Lemmy, who I actually think is a pretty groovy guy, isn’t terribly enamoured with the intro to the article (unsurprisingly) and tells a colleague that he’ll beat the shit out of me if ever our paths cross. I thought he’d laugh at what I considered to be an obvious joke but, in the cold light of print, it may not have come across that way. So it’s official − I’ve turned into a cunt.
But not where Steve Jones is concerned. He’s always good for a laugh…
Next: Nice, quiet, Steve Jones
Adapted from the book Tell Me When by Barry Cain
© Barry Cain 2013
Check out Barry’s new novel, Wet Dreams Dry Lives:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00H0IM2CY
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00H0IM2CY
www.wetdreamsdrylives.com
www.facebook.com/wetdreamsdrylives
February 1979
The night I became a proper ochinko
The foyer had been full of girls when I returned to the hotel with some of the band and their entourage after touring Tokyo’s hot spots straight after the gig and meeting some real, live Yakuza in a club full of semi-naked women and malt whisky.
Many of the fans are actually staying at the hotel after booking double rooms months in advance and sneaking in some of their friends to keep costs down without the management’s knowledge.
We went to the bar where the girls giggled at tables in corners. At around three a.m. we decided to call it a night and strolled to the elevator followed by a bunch of around eight girls, and we all squeezed in together.
I’d been drinking solidly since 6pm and I was pissed. Really pissed – a gallon of sake, beers, brandy.
And that’s why, as the elevator stopped at my floor, I shouted, for a laugh and for the first time in my life, ‘Right, who’s coming back to my room, then?’
‘Yes, please.’ Softness is a thing called comfort. Her voice sounded miles away. And then, there she was, suddenly, magically, standing next to me in the corridor as the elevator door closed to the sound of applause from the roadies.
‘Hi.’
‘Hi.’
‘What’s your name?’
‘Haroko.’
She wore shiny red boots with high heels, a shiny red mac over a shiny red mini skirt. Her shiny black Stranglers t shirt was as shiny as her shiny black lipstick.
Her eyes stretched into infinity and beyond, I was pissed. When she smiled my heart skipped a beat, I was pissed. She was gorgeous, I was pissed.
And now here I am, outside my door, fumbling for the key. I may be pissed but I’m as nervous as hell. What if she thinks I’m Jet Black? (After all, we are the only two people with beards in this travelling show, maybe in this entire country). Do I play along?
When we get inside I don’t quite know what to do. Does she expect sex or is she just being polite?
Then she starts to cough.
Shit, it’s a nasty one. And it’s persistent. And it’s a bit wet. Knowing my luck, the only time this happens to me I get someone with some weird oriental flu for which there’s no known cure for westerners. Why isn’t she wearing a surgical mask like everyone else?
I convince myself she’s okay. The gallon of sake has distorted my judgement.
‘Bad cough,’ I say, pointing to my throat, like a fucking jerk.
‘Sorry. Very sorry.’
‘That’s okay.’ I tell her I’m feeling tired and indicate by closing my eyes and resting the side of my face on my clasped hands, like a fucking jerk. I point to the bed and start to undress. Like a fucking jerk.
‘Would you like to sleep here?’ I ask. Like a fucking jerk.
‘Yes, please.’ She removes her clothes and we both get into bed, my pants still firmly intact. We kiss. She coughs. We kiss again. She coughs again. I feel like Benny Hill.
‘Sorry. Very sorry.’
‘That’s okay.’ I tentatively touch one of her breasts – and immediately feel a lump. She coughs. No! Japanese flu and fucking cancer? Maybe you get the cancer as a result of contracting the flu. Oh my God! Infectious cancer! You’ve got to be kidding me.
Then she starts to cough again. I convince myself she’s at death’s door and whatever she’s got, I’ve probably got now. I’ve just signed my own death warrant, and all I did was kiss a Japanese girl in the dark.
I have to get her out of here.
‘Are you staying in the hotel?’
‘Yes, with some friends.’
‘Look, let me take you back to your room. You’ll feel more comfortable.’
‘Yes, please.’
We both dress and before we leave the room I give her a signed copy of the band’s X-Cert live album. She starts to cry. ‘Thank you so much. Sorry. Very sorry.’
My heart breaks.
Her friends welcome her, and me, with open arms, and Haroko sniffs, and coughs, as she proudly flashes the signed album and they all go, ‘Oooh!’
None of them has a cough.
I’ll never ask anyone back to my room again, and even think twice about asking myself.
‘It’s amazing,’’ says the normally diffident Jet Black the following day, on the bullet train to Tokyo. ‘The girls are everywhere. We get off the train and they’re there. We go to the hotel and they’re there. We go to our rooms and they’re waiting outside. Sure, that happens in England – but there it’s not girls, it’s the fucking police!’
I know what he means – not the police, the girls. It’s like being an eighteenth century European sailor in the South Seas greeted by a bevy of lei-bearing beauties with Bali Hai’s to die for.
Jet admits he’d rather think than talk. ‘I leave all that to Jean and Hugh. If I wasn’t an introvert we’d probably be fighting all the time. I’m in the classic drummer mould. When bands try putting the drummer up as a front man they fail.’
Dave Clark Five, Genesis, 10cc?
‘The only thing that gets me annoyed is incompetence when we tour. I’ve come across people who can’t organise a bunk-up in a brothel.’
About the disparity. ‘We have all the ingredients for failure. But the pressures, all that we’ve gone through, have given us a mutual respect for each other. We’re all very strong individuals. That’s why we’ve got so much more to offer than anyone else.
‘We’ve been managing ourselves for the last six months, although things on that front are improving. I tell you something – show me a good manager and I’ll show you a Martian.’
It’s raining in Tokyo. The coruscating skyscrapers are wet yet still they gleam, still the cars are meticulously polished, still there are no stains on the pavements, still the women out walking their dogs bend down to sweep the steaming damp turds into polythene bags to deposit in nearby litter bins, still the victims of flu wander around in surgical masks to prevent spreading their kamikaze germs.
Tokyo is straight out of The Shape of Things to Come. It’s more advanced and consequently more civilised than London or New York or any other major city on earth.Wells envisaged the vertical aspects perfectly. He just didn’t latch onto the horizontal aspects of the inhabitants.
The magnificent metropolis of the east is dripping and glistening in the glare of a billion neon lights while the Stranglers prepare for the show. They’re pretty pissed when they find out it’s an all-seater tonight at the Korakuen Hall.
‘You two keep playing,’ Jean says to Jet and Dave in the dressing room, like someone planning to break out of Colditz, ‘while Hugh and I jump into the audience and start wrenching up the fucking chairs. If that doesn’t get them going, nothing will.’
They did. And they did. Result – the most immaculate Stranglers’ show this side of the Nashville.
When you see them perform it live, you realise just how underrated Black and White is. No More Heroes was merely a stepping-stone, a transition between the singalongastranglers of Rattus and the psychopathic delusions that course through the veins of B&W. There’s death and night and blood in Toytown tonight.
In the band’s dressing room after the gig I start talking to the very glamorous Kato, who insists she’s not a groupie. She’s bright and sassy and twenty-one with a bullet and no bra. She taught me oppai (tits), shakuhachi (blow-job), senzuri (wank), omeko (‘girl’s one’), ochinko (‘boy’s one’) and omekoshiyo (fuck). That’s all you really need to know to get by in any language. ‘Before they came, Japanese girls thought the Stranglers would rape them,’ she tells me. ‘See, English bands often make fun of Japanese girls, but this band seem more friendly than most.
‘Also, in general, English men have bigger ochinkos than Japanese men. It frightens the girls, y’know. They had to make a slightly smaller condom especially for the Japanese market. ‘There’s no doubt we are hampered by our lack of English. Usually the only thing a Japanese girl can say to a guy in a band is, "Can I come to your room?" That doesn’t give you much of a start! And the girls then get very sad because they know the guy will leave shortly, Barry.’
When you get right down to it, rock stars are just singing sailors. It’s all in the game and many a tear has to fall.
I love hearing Kato pronounce my name -- not only is it sexier than a French accent, it also makes me feel kinda important. Kinda big and crisp and tall.
I find Haroko sitting outside my hotel-room door when I get back from the gig. She’s followed me to Tokyo. I can’t believe it.
Then I start to worry that she’s some kind of mad stalker. That she’ll stab me repeatedly, mercilessly and tomorrow in the Tokyo Daily Bugle under the headline
‘Coughing Killer Strikes Again’, they’ll report that Jet Black was found stabbed to death in his hotel room.
Fate has decreed that Dina is my last, my everything.
So I tell Haroko she can keep a-knockin, but she can’t come in.
Next: Motorhead bite back
Adapted from the book Tell Me When by Barry Cain
© Barry Cain 2013
Check out Barry’s new novel, Wet Dreams Dry Lives:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00H0IM2CY
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00H0IM2CY
www.wetdreamsdrylives.com
www.facebook.com/wetdreamsdrylives
