However, it had a precedent which should have warned Thatcher off, since the only other Poll Tax in our history, instigated in 1381, had led to the Peasants’ Revolt led by Wat Tyler, one of the most famous English rebellions ever. The tax had already been introduced in Scotland in 1989 to widespread opposition, which rapidly spread to England, where it would come into force a year later. I’d already done some anti-poll tax gigs in 1989 and while I was in East Germany and Canada in the early months of 1990, anger was steadily growing: when that anger finally exploded in the legendary modern day Peasants’ Revolt in Trafalgar Square on Saturday 31st March, I was a few hours back from Canada, jetlagged as hell, unaware there was a riot goin’ on – and not there. No social media in those days, remember: if you were on tour on another continent, things like that really could pass you by. I did write a song about it, though, one of my best ever, I reckon.
This second Canadian tour was even more extensive than the first, which is saying something: Nova Scotia to Victoria, BC in a month. Canada is a huge country and in winter it is bloody cold: I arrived in Halifax in early March and immediately had the chance to walk on water for the first time in my life since the sea was frozen! I had a very warm reception from the people of Nova Scotia, though. Canada is very different from the USA, far more ‘European’ in its perception of events, and none more so, of course, than in Quebec, where the original French settlers made their home and French is the primary language.
And what a language Quebecois is, an amazing mixture of 17th century French and modern Americanisms: ‘char’, literally short for ‘chariot’ is their slang word for a car, for instance. Most amusing for me was the fact that all their worst swear words are related to Catholicism, which until recently had an iron grip on Quebec, and the words are in themselves not rude at all, it’s the context and tone of voice of the user which makes them so. Say you’re a bit of a sweary person and you hit your thumb with a hammer doing some DIY. An expressive way of showing your dissatisfaction with this turn of events in Quebecois would be to say ‘Criss de calice de tabernac d’osti de sacrement!’ which literally means ‘Christ of chalice of altar of host of sacrament’, which actually sounds rather pious, doesn’t it? However, despite the fact that your observant relatives would happily use these words to their priest, they would be shocked beyond belief at your using them in this context : I guess the English translation would be something like ‘fucking shit wank cockwomble fuckturd’. The wonders of language.
I was able to explore all of this in October 1991 courtesy of the BBC, in a six part series for Radio Four entitled ‘The Art of Insult’ in which I documented precisely how different cultures and nationalities choose their terms of abuse: one of many sporadic appearances on that esteemed station over the years, although I have always been used sparingly and virtually never allowed on live radio. I think I am viewed as a bit of a loose cannon. I wonder why?
From Quebec I basically went to every major town in Canada, even more than on the first tour, finishing in triumph at the Vancouver East Cultural Centre with the local launch of the ‘Live at the Rivoli’ album just released on Festival Records. On the way I did two shows at the University of Alberta in Calgary with the fantastic Canadian band Spirit of the West, who were to become firm friends: when they finally made it to the UK I helped as much as I could. Linda, Geoff, Hugh and John: we haven’t seen each other for years, but I have fond memories of our times together and John, my heart goes out to you in your battle with early onset Alzheimer’s, a ghastly disease I know only too well. All the very best. I also met and made friends with manic klesmer-punk accordionist Geoff Berner, who, I’m happy to say, claims me as a formative influence on his bitingly satirical and highly original songwriting style. We see each other fairly regularly, indeed did a show together at the Greys in Brighton in March 2015.
I returned to Vancouver for the Folk Festival in 1993 and the Readers’ and Writers’ Festival in 1994, and then eleven years came back with Robina in the summer of 2005 to do the Winnipeg Comedy Festival (even though I’m not a comedian as such) and the Vancouver Folk Festival. I keep thinking ‘I must get back to Canada’ and often get emails asking me to – I hope very much it’ll happen one day.
Back in 1990 I returned to an England in the grip of an anti-Poll Tax campaign and despite missing the big Trafalgar Square demonstration there were once again loads of benefits to be done and events to perform at. And this time we won – although it would be a somewhat Pyrrhic victory since the Tories still got in at the 1992 general election. But at least the Poll Tax debacle brought about Thatcher’s downfall: it was so unpopular that the Tories knew that to have a chance of winning the next election they had to pledge to ditch it, and the only way they could do that was by ditching Thatcher, so, quite unceremoniously, they did. The utterly unremarkable John Major became leader of the Conservative party, and soon the next Prime Minister. Thatcher left the Commons for the last time with tears in her eyes. We cheered. I wrote this song, dedicated to the leader of the Peasants’ Revolt against the Poll Tax of 1381.
Goodbye, Iron Lady, and good riddance.
TYLER SMILES
Here’s to you, the sceptic few
In the dark old days of ‘82
When a thousand corpses stoked an awful pyre
Here’s to ‘84 and 5
When all our dreams took another dive
‘Midst the jeers of Mammon and the howls of the Digger’s choir
There were times I really thought
They’d all been conned and all been bought
Too much Chingford on the brain
And never going to think again
But it’s a taxing time for Essex now….
CHORUS
And Tyler smiles, Tyler smiles
On an angry crowd stretching miles and miles
Six hundred years but the lesson wasn’t learned
And Tyler smiles, Tyler smiles
Though a hail of bricks and stones and tiles
Now history rolls back, the worm has turned
Retribution earned.
Tell me why it took so long
All these years we’ve sung this song -
And will the spectre ever go away?
A hundred thousand garden gnomes
Outside a hundred thousand homes
Are ‘standing on their own two feet’ today
No strident tones now, just a whine
A hand picked bank clerk holds the line
The same song with a few new chords
For Albion’s user-friendly hordes
A thornless rose is flopping in the breeze….
And Tyler smiles, Tyler smiles
Through the acid rain and the sheepdog trials -
Perhaps he never really went away
And Tyler smiles, Tyler smiles
On the village greens and the seven dials
There’s still a bit of fight in us today..
Tyler smiles.
And if it’s really over
And the swords turn into ploughshares
She’ll go to Eastern Europe -
Oh, they really love her there
The fool Walesa and the iron curse….
And Tyler smiles, Tyler smiles
As Labour’s leaders close their files
On ‘Wat’s his name?’ from their own history
And Tyler smiles, Tyler smiles
On that angry crowd stretching miles and miles
‘Hey, gotcha, lady, gotcha - finally!’
Tyler smiles.
EIGHT
MANIC MEMORIES AND ANTIPODEAN ANTICS: ‘ATTILA THE STOCKBROKER, WELCOME TO NEW ZEALAND!’
By now I had myself pretty well established as far as earning my living as a DIY performance poet/musician was concerned. I had a good presence on the UK underground music and alternative cabaret gig circuit, augmented by some university shows and music and literary festivals, and now my main efforts were directed overseas: I wanted to spread my wi
ngs as far as possible. In May 1990 I was excitedly looking forward to using my East German contacts again and touring the Soviet Union for the first time: sadly the tour was cancelled (the system was collapsing and organising a tour for Attila the Stockbroker was hardly a high priority) and instead of two weeks travelling round Russia I ended up doing an anti-poll tax benefit in Slough. Classic stuff.
But the fact that I was looking for gigs all over the world didn’t mean that the UK circuit was getting boring, far from it. Every gig was different – still is – and there was always a surprise in store.
On October 15, 1990, I was booked for a gig at Swansea University, supported by my friend TV Smith. After The Adverts, always one of my favourite punk bands, split up, Tim formed another brilliant band called the Explorers: the quality of his songwriting meant that anything he touched turned to musical gold as far as I was concerned. Then he seemed to disappear from view for a while: he resurfaced with a band called Cheap, and in 1990 I went to see them at the Bull & Gate in London.
I was shocked. The band were great: loud, energetic and powerful. The new songs were as good as anything he had done before. He was on top form, prancing around in a top hat and carrying an umbrella (!) and still sporting his trademark tie with a ‘TV’ badge pinned to it.
But there was hardly anyone there: maybe twenty people. I talked to him afterwards, and he seemed quite despondent and unsure where he was going. ‘Tim’, I said, ‘you don’t need a band. You’ve got great songs and a brilliant voice. Just get yourself an acoustic guitar and play the stuff solo. It means you’re far more versatile - you can play anywhere, from a big rock venue to a little acoustic club with no PA – and you can appeal to a far wider cross section of people, since not everyone likes loud noisy punk rock and many who don’t will love your tunes and your lyrics. And I can tell you that with a cult following and a bit of organisation, a solo performer can easily earn a reasonable living: I’ve been doing it for years. It’s twenty times easier than being in a band!’
Tim was sceptical, but I was insistent. I was organising a little acoustic event in a London pub a few months later, and challenged him to do a set: he agreed. He turned up really nervous, went down brilliantly and hasn’t looked back since, releasing loads of great solo albums and establishing himself as a much sought after singer-songwriter as well as collaborating with other musicians sometimes (I have played violin for with him on many occasions). Back then he was just starting out as a solo artist, though, and I tried as much as I could to help him get gigs: that is how he came to be supporting me at Swansea Uni. But as it turned out, there was to be a band on the bill as well.
A few weeks before the gig, I had a phone call from the student union social secretary.
‘Hi John. I hope you don’t mind, but I’m going to put a really good local band on with you and TV at our gig – a couple of them are students here. You won’t have heard of them: they’re called the Manic Street Preachers.’
I hadn’t heard of them, but when I saw them, I was most impressed. Covered in home made stencilled clothes, coming on like a Welsh Clash, great melodies, great attitude (one of them shouted ‘fuck off’ for a joke while I was doing my set, but we had a good chat backstage).
Bloody good band, I thought, as I stood at Swansea station waiting for my train home. Not as good as Datblygu, mind you, but I reckon they might get somewhere.
A few months earlier I’d heard (by letter of course - remember those old things?) from an Australian poet, Steven Herrick, who was planning to come to England and wondered if I could help him with gigs: he’d sent me his latest book of poems, ‘Caboolture’ and it was great, a distinctively Australian collection with themes similar to those I’d found in the songs of Mick Thomas, main songwriter for Weddings Parties Anything, the Melbourne band I’d met in Vancouver the previous year. I set up a tour of England for us in November 1990 and we had a great time on stage and off: he promised to do all he could to help me tour Australia soon. Bearing that in mind I wrote to David Eggleton, aka The Mad Kiwi Ranter, whom I’d met and helped with gig some years before when he came to the UK, asking me if he could help sort gigs in New Zealand, and I received an enthusiastic response. It wouldn’t be long before my horizons would expand still further, but that would be a year away – there was more than plenty to deal with in the here and now.
1991 was, to coin a phrase, manic. The reaction on the Left to the start of the first Gulf War was immediate and there were benefits to be done all over the place (including the one at the Venue in New Cross on February 5 which I describe in the foreword to this book). I was now doing loads of ‘Headbutts & Halibuts’ double act gigs with John Otway, reaching a new audience who, in the main, seemed to take to me, presumably on the basis that I appeared as mad and manic as Otway! I was busily writing and recording for my six part BBC Radio 4 series ‘The Art of Insult’ which would be broadcast at the end of October, and doing a bi-monthly column for the Guardian as well. In addition to all this there were my regular pub/club/university circuit gigs, promoting my fifth album, ‘Donkey’s Years’, which had just been been released by French label Musidisc, my first-ever CD release, also available on vinyl and cassette.
This one was studio-based, recorded in Harlow with the help of my old friend Richard Holgarth: it was, as ever, full of material inspired by my experiences of the previous few years. ‘Market Sektor One’ and ‘This Is Free Europe’ were angry responses to the betrayal of hope and growth of fascist ideas in the former GDR in the aftermath of the fall of the Berlin Wall: ‘The Pen & The Sword’ was a song for Salman Rushdie, then in fear of his life following the publication of ‘The Satanic Verses’: ‘Tyler Smiles’, as mentioned earlier, celebrated the end of Thatcher: ‘The Iron Men Of Rap’, recorded with The Men They Couldn’t Hang and also featuring on the B side of one of their singles, was a satirical response to the ‘look at my gun and the size of my wallet’ type lyric which was, sadly, firmly supplanting progressive wordsmiths like Brother D and Grandmaster Flash in the rap scene. And ‘The Bible According To Rupert Murdoch’ was a piece inspired by the news that Murdoch had bought the company which prints the UK version of the Bible. Given that Murdoch is indeed Midas in reverse – everything he touches turns to shit - I wrote a New Revised Version, backed by an angelic-sounding choir…
THE BIBLE ACCORDING TO RUPERT MURDOCH
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was Gotcha! And the Lord Rupert said let there be a Royal Family, and let enormous quantities of trivia and drivel be written about them, yea even unto the point where a mentally subnormal yak couldn’t possibly find it interesting any more, and let babies be born unto this Royal Family, and let the huge swathes of sycophantic, nauseating sludge written about them surpass even that written about their parents, even though these babies and their parents are about as interesting as a wet afternoon on the terraces at Selhurst Park.
And the Lord Rupert said let there be soap operas, and let each of these soap operas be so mind-numbingly moronic as to make a wet afternoon at Selhurst Park seem a truly uplifting experience, and let entire forests and the ecological balance of several continents be destroyed in the endless vistas of retarded outpourings about these unspeakable transmissions.
And let there be enormous breasts, and endless bonking, and hours and days and weeks and months and years of chauvinistic right-wing propaganda so that the brain-dead prats who like the bonking and the soap operas and the breasts and the royal stories get the politics as well.
And let any journalist who tries to stand up to the proprietor and editor in the name of truth, and intelligence, and integrity, and journalistic standards, be summarily dismissed, and cast forever into a bottomless pit of decomposing chimpanzee smegma, and let those journalists who suffer this fate rejoice at the great career move they have just made.
And the Lord Rupert looked at his work, and even he saw that it was a load of crap, but this was the enterprise culture and it sold millions so it was good. And on the s
ame basis he decided to take over the television too, and the earth itself wept, and little robins vomited, and cuddly furry animals threw themselves under trains, and the whole thing was filmed by Sky Channel for a horror nature programme, and the most awful thing of all was that this was just the beginning…
All in all I was very pleased with the album and happy to have loads of gigs to promote it as far as I could.
That summer I went back to Canada again, this time with Otway (and my mate Mike) to our double act in Toronto, then Mike and I flew to Vancouver for another appearance at the Folk Festival: my mother and Joy met us there and after the festival we took a trip to Seattle, my first time in the USA. On our return it was time for my debut in Denmark, and then, after Otway and I had performed and recorded ‘Cheryl – A Rock Opera’ at that year’s Edinburgh Fringe, we started to tour it round the country. It was a very train-related epic, and one of the main props was a train door: not an actual train door, which would have been rather unwieldy, but a wooden facsimile. Many of the gigs were reached by public transport, and I got some amused looks getting on trains carrying a train door…
And somehow, in the middle of all of this, I found time to move house. It has always been a source of pride and honour to me to earn my living doing what I love, and was especially proud when, in the summer of 1991, I finally bought a home. For more than ten years I had been based at Steve’s flat in Harlow, latterly spending loads of time at Joy’s in London as well, but I always knew that one day, when I could afford to, I’d move back to Southwick, the harbour town just outside Brighton where I grew up and where my mother’s family roots go back generations. Family ties, the friendships, my football team, the harbour, the sea: the pull was always there, and in mid 1991 I bought a little bungalow in the residential/industrial area more or less opposite the entrance to the port. I did so without a mortgage, and without any outside financial help. Starship may have built their city on rock n roll: I built my little harbourside home on punk poetry.
ARGUMENTS YARD Page 27