And in 2000 a lot more people got to hear about Barnstormer because we had three songs in a cult German movie. I say ‘cult’. It certainly is cult, but it wasn’t supposed to be cult. It had a big budget, was produced by a big company and, apart from us, the soundtrack featured Blondie and the Saw Doctors among others: a well known actor, Eckhard Preuss, starred in it, and it was released in all the major cinemas throughout Germany.
For about a week.
Thereby hangs another funny tale.
It all started at a gig in Dortmund, organised by Benny Richter, who as the head of Terz Records had masterminded my two German solo releases in the early 90s and regularly organised shows for us in his home town. As we were setting up for a gig there in January 1998, he said ‘I’ve got some good news for you, John. A young filmmaker called Matthias Lehmann is going to include you and the band in his next movie. It’s a big production. It’ll get you lots of new fans. You’ll meet him later…’
Great, I thought – wonder what he has in mind? Then I got on with setting up, meeting friends old and new, having a few beers, chatting to the band, doing the gig. No Matthias. But after we’d finished playing and everything was winding down, Benny grabbed me. ‘Come and meet Matthias, John. He’s a bit worse for wear, but he wants to tell you about his film…’
I followed Benny and saw a young bloke lying under a table, absolutely paralytic. ‘Hello Attila!’ he slurred when he saw me. ‘I am going to make a film with you and your band! Big film – Bavaria Studios in Munich! It will be about a special day in my life, and you have an important part in it! I will be in touch soon!’
My initial reaction was understandably sceptical (less so when the promised contracts came through soon afterwards) but given the storyline of the film, this unusual first encounter with its director made perfect sense later on. If a James Bond epic is the ultimate action movie, then ‘Doppelpack’ is the ultimate inaction movie. The director himself said that his intention was ‘to portray everyday life in its banality’ and ‘to make a film using all the bits which other directors leave on the cutting room floor’.
He certainly succeeded.
It is indeed an autobiographical snippet, very much an industrial Ruhr-area film, full of the local slang: a day in the life of two punk friends, Hoffi and (Matthias) Lehmi. Hence the ‘double pack’: two inseparable mates, ‘two for the price of one’. While getting very pissed in a local bar they hear ‘And I Won’t Run Away’ by Barnstormer (called ‘Attila the Stockbroker and the Fabulous Fish Brothers’ in the film) on the radio, followed by an announcement that we are playing in another local bar the next day. They decide to go to the gig: indeed getting to the gig is their Holy Grail as they stumble through the rest of the evening and the following day in an inept alcoholic haze, looking forward to it and trying to round up people to go with them.
They have some more beer and try and walk home, but are too pissed, and end up sleeping in the buffalo park at Dortmund Zoo. The next morning they wake up, buy a crate of beer, wander round Dortmund with it for a bit, go to the park and fall asleep. They’re woken up when some kids playing Frisbee accidentally hits one of them in the testicles with a misdirected throw - that’s the ‘action’ in the film – then they wander about a bit more, find a picture of a pretty girl in a photo booth, try and look for her, can’t find her, get even more pissed and come to our gig, where, amazingly, she turns up and one of them gets off with her.
The climax of the film is the gig - Barnstormer playing ‘March of the Levellers’ and ‘Old Teenagers’ to an enthusiastic, cheering crowd. A couple of other minor things take place which I haven’t mentioned, but basically that’s it. It is a very enjoyable film, as long as you understand Ruhr area slang (or read the subtitles, which aren’t bad) and don’t mind watching a film in which absolutely nothing happens: the kind which is usually made on a tiny budget and shown in ‘art house’ cinemas.
But this one had a massive budget. Not only were all the band well paid, but all of us, along with my soon-to-be-wife Robina and stepson Tom, were flown to Munich, put up in a nice hotel, shown round the set of ‘Das Boot’ in the world famous Bavaria Film Studios, taken out to dinner and generally treated like royalty. The gig was filmed at a local venue, Feuerwerk (made to look like a club in Dortmund) we all had a good time and to round things off the whole shebang took place during the solar eclipse of August 1999, so we got to stand around outside one sunny afternoon while the world got spookily dark for five minutes. Then we came home and waited for the film’s release, interested to see what would happen.
What happened was this. It came out with a huge publicity splash and was shown in big corporate cinemas all over the country. Most of the reviews roared with disbelief that anyone would make a film where absolutely nothing happens apart from two punks getting pissed and going to a gig. The vast majority of the cinema-going public didn’t go, or if they did go, didn’t understand it: no blood, no guts, no nudity, no crime, no…..anything, really! A small minority of people (mainly blokes with one very close friend who loved beer and punk rock) absolutely ADORED it, to the point that in the years that followed I have been told literally hundreds of times by different people (usually pairs of blokes, usually pissed) that it is the BEST film EVER MADE. It lasted in most cinemas for about a week, apart from in Dortmund where it was a hit, and went to DVD very quickly. Despite being the ultimate flop in mainstream cinematic terms it gave, and gives, us increasing numbers of new fans. Many of whom turn up to gigs with one good mate, already pissed, and then get even more pissed. I’m sure that by now you get the, erm, picture…
If you ever get the chance, watch it. It is fun.
Especially if you’re a bloke with one really good mate, and you like going to punk rock gigs together and getting pissed.
Our second album ‘Just One Life’ came out in the same year as the film, once again on my own label Roundhead Records, with a vinyl version produced in Germany by Teenage Rebel Records. This one was definitely more punky than medieval, starting with ‘Haider!’ a warning about the rise of fascism in Austria, followed by ‘The Ghost Road’, the story of my father’s miraculous escape from death in World War One, ‘Game Boy/Rude Boy’, our first venture into ska and ‘Scumball Pinochet’, an anti-fascist musical tribute to my great heroes T.Rex. The only medieval tinge came on ‘The Worm & The Archer’ (you’ll hear about that bastard Archer in the football chapter). I won’t go through it all – for me, and thankfully for Robina too, the highlight of the album is the title track, a joyous punky celebration of our love. We were married on 20th October 2000, the day before my 43rd birthday.
Pressure of work and family life meant that Martin Fish left the band not long after the album came out, with Dan moving back to guitar: for the same reason Tim left as well, leaving me to play the recorder parts on my own (I do manage to play two at once on one number, but that’s just showing off!) McGhee and Dan have been ever-presents in Barnstormer, with the bass player the only one of the basic line-up to change – and our new bass player was Tommy Muir, a New Model Army fan from Hull, recently moved to the South Coast.
Musically Tommy was brilliant, with great backing vocals too, but there were too many times during his couple of years in the band when I thought back to the warning he gave me at our first meeting in Worthing. ‘Just to let you know John, I turn into a complete idiot after two pints.’ Things came to a head when he got so pissed that he lost his passport and we had to drive to Munich, about 200 miles in the opposite direction from where we needed to go, to get him an emergency one from the British Embassy! A really nice bloke, and it was lovely to see him at the Barnstormer 20th Anniversary gig at the Borderline in December 2014, but to be honest it was a good thing he left when he did.
His replacement was 17 year old David Beaken. At that time Robina was head of Popular Music at Brighton Tech, and David was one of her students, a fantastic bass player, and when we needed one, she suggested him. I was a bit worried about the responsi
bility of looking after one so young on tour (we needed to get permission from his parents!) but everything was fine and despite his age – he was immediately christened ‘Baby David’ and still has that moniker as he hits thirty – he fitted in perfectly, and has played with the Fish Brothers for years as well. His first gig was in Hannover: he was nervous as hell but delivered a great set. Afterwards, confronted with endless free beer, he got stuck in and was soon rolling around pissed. On his next visit to the bar he asked ‘Are you sure you want one of those again?’ He’d been drinking alcohol-free beer all night. The power of the mind.
As I had hoped, having a band meant I could play in parts of Europe where the language barrier meant my solo stuff wouldn’t work: we have made it to the Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary, France and Italy as well as Germany, Austria, Holland, Luxembourg and Switzerland, and have done quite a few concerts in Belgium alongside my old muckers Contingent. Our third album ‘Zero Tolerance’ was released in 2004, again on my own label with a vinyl release in Germany, and the latest, ‘Bankers & Looters’ in 2012, with the vinyl coming out in Holland. The later material is much more Clashy punk than medieval, but the live show still showcases all the old instruments and we still don’t sound like anybody else…
We continue to tour mainland Europe a couple of times a year, play a select few shows in England (including that 20th Anniversary one at the Borderline, a wonderful night) and to date are approaching 600 gigs since our debut in Oxford on Guy Fawkes Night 1994. David now shares bass playing duties with Jason ‘Blond Wanton’ Pegg, formerly of Clearlake and another superb musician.
The world is full of bands who argue, split up, reform, split up… I am so lucky to have found just the right bunch of people to play music with, with barely a cross word between us in all that time. To Martin, David, Jason, Tommy, Tim, very occasional bass players John Tugby, Paul Stapleton and the late, great ‘Protag’ Neish – and above all to ever-presents Dan & McGhee – thank you. It’s been fun for over 20 years. Here’s to many more.
And in the penultimate chapter you’ll find a postscript. On January 15, 2005, we got to Number 17 in the charts, and if teenypunks Busted hadn’t split up that week, we’d have been on ‘Top Of The Pops’. But we weren’t called Barnstormer. Read on!
TEN
JUST ONE LIFE… AND 3 U.S. TOURS
I was now literally all over the place in the best possible sense of the term, both solo and with Barnstormer: not all my overseas jaunts were without complications, however. In spring 1994, after another winter trip to Holland for a spoken word tour, I went to Romania and Bulgaria with Henry Lawrence, a true English eccentric if ever there is one – physicist, baronet, juggler and indescribable singer-songwriter, he performs under the name Comrade Sir Henry. He was actually on a visit to help repair machinery at hospitals in Craiova and Sofia, but had managed to organise some impromptu gigs as well, and asked me if I fancied joining him. Since I’d never been to either of the above countries I was well up for it. I was in for rather a shock.
Romania is probably the only place I really don’t think I want to visit ever again. A country where even some of the academics - at least some of the ones I met - were so prejudiced against the Roma population that when, incapable of understanding the technical conversation they were having with Henry, I said I was going for a walk, they told me I mustn’t. ‘It’s not safe because of the gypsies.’ (Needless to say after that I went for a walk, met some gypsies, no problem.) The level of racism was disgusting: the food we had was as well, but I’m sure that was just bad luck. The gigs in Craiova were OK – I performed to some students, they understood most of it, and I accompanied Henry’s songs on violin – but I was pleased when we got a rickety old ferry across the Danube from Calafat, Romania to Vidin, Bulgaria, and headed for Sofia.
Sofia in 1994 was the place to go if you wanted bootleg CDs, fake fashion goods, dodgy DVDs, you name it: street sellers were everywhere. Henry’s work took him to the local cancer hospital, working on their radiotherapy machines in the company of a friendly local doctor called Angel, and I spent my time wandering round the city, ending up in the National Historical Museum trying to fathom out the Cyrillic script.
When he found out that, where possible, I always liked to see football matches in the countries I visited, Angel took me to see the local team CSKA Sofia against rivals Lokomotiv Plovdiv. The first thing that struck me was the catering. A lot of English fans moan about the standard of food in our grounds, but at CSKA they appeared to be selling just one item – sunflower seeds in little wraps of paper – and they were so popular that I thought I’d have a go. They tasted like… sunflower seeds. The kind you feed to budgies. And it wasn’t as though there was a food shortage – the street food in Sofia was delicious. As for the match, a lumbering Plovdiv midfielder flattened one of the home team players and, as one, the home end started shouting something which sounded to me like ‘C’est la vie!’ ‘No, John. It’s not that. It’s a very bad word in Bulgarian. It means something like ‘you sheepshagging peasant!” The match was very one-sided: as far as I remember, CSKA won 4-0.
But the strangest moment was the gig we did, if ‘gig’ you could call it. Angel arranged for us to play for the terminally ill patients in the cancer section of the hospital in Sofia. It was a horribly depressing place, and to be honest to do the kind of stuff we were doing there seemed kind of inappropriate. It may seem strange for me to say that, but it’s how I felt.
Almost immediately on my return I was booked to support Chumbawamba on their ‘Anarchy’ tour, promoting their sixth album. I’d always liked and respected them, and it was quite fun doing the whole tour bus thing, although I did get into an argument with singer Alice Nutter about my ‘Iron Men Of Rap’ poem: she said something to the effect that as a white male I had no right to criticise the rap scene. I said bollocks. I’ve never gone along with that kind of ‘cultural relativist’ argument, and feel the same today in the context of Islamic extremism: I’ll have a go at homophobia, misogyny and downright fascist attitudes whatever their sources. Liberal guilt is not a good basis for a political standpoint. It was a storm in a teacup though, and all was sorted out.
I went down very well at the gigs (despite being billed as ‘Atiller the Stockbroker’ on the tour posters!) and very much enjoyed Chumbawamba’s sets. Three years later, having signed to EMI - itself an irony given the stick they handed out to New Model Army for doing so in the Eighties - they were to have their mega hit ‘Tubthumping’, which propelled them to the top of the charts. Lots of Crass-style anarchists yelled ‘sellout!’ I was happy for them. But then I don’t expect everyone to follow my DIY path if they can sign to a major and stay true to themselves – I didn’t have a problem with The Clash signing to CBS, or NMA or legendary anti fascists The Blaggers, with whom I shared many stages in the Eighties and early Nineties (RIP Matty) signing to EMI. It’s what you do that counts, and both the Blaggers and Chumbawamba used corporate money for sound political ends. Chumbawamba’s acapella ‘English Rebel Songs’ album was excellent and they turned into a fine folk ensemble in later years – I’m just sad they split up before Thatcher died. They should have outlived her.
Otway and I were still gigging together quite regularly, doing sporadic bursts of ‘Cheryl’: in late 1994 I returned to Vancouver for the Writers’ Festival, and in 1995 I went back to my nine year old primary school roots again with a show in honour of my original inspiration, the great Sussex poet Hilaire Belloc. ‘Bellocose’, recorded live at the Edinburgh Festival and broadcast by Radio Four as part of their ‘Poets on Poets’ series, was a warts-and-all tribute, celebrating the way he took on the Establishment and loathed the dehumanising effects of capitalism, while recognising the reactionary nature of some of his politics, above all the vexed question of his dogmatic Catholicism and anti-Semitism, very much a product of its time and itself mired in personal contradictions. The radio programme spawned a host of ‘Bellocose’ gigs all over the country for the next couple
of years and, when asked, I still perform this tribute today. Belloc’s ‘Cautionary Tales’ and satirical political poems are my favourite poems of all time and I feel a great personal identification with him in many ways. (Robina would say it’s because we’re both loud, bombastic, confrontational and always sure we’re right even when we’re obviously not. I couldn’t possibly comment.)
More solo trips overseas. I made contact with Fermin Muguruza, radical Basque nationalist activist and singer with the utterly brilliant and Clash-inspired Kortatu, one of my favourite overseas bands ever (by the time I met him they had split up, but he has had loads of other projects including Negu Gorriak and Brigadistak Sound System and remains a powerful musical and political activist to this day, hugely well known in mainland Europe and South America). He invited me to his home in the Basque Country and offered to organise a gig: I ended up playing in a packed bar in the nationalist stronghold of Hernani with pictures of Basque militant prisoners on the wall, to an audience who appeared to love my stuff even though they didn’t speak English! I returned the favour: when Fermin toured the UK with his band Brigadistak Sound System in June 2000, I put them on at the Barn Theatre in Southwick and over a hundred Basques emerged from the Sussex woodwork (along with many enthusiastic locals) and turned up to welcome him.
In 1997 for the first time I went to the Republic of Ireland: to Tralee with Otway, playing at their town festival. In a wheelchair. It was just after the German tour debacle described above, when I re-ruptured my already ruptured hamstring on stage with Barnstormer in Bremen, and could barely walk: being pushed around (and nearly off) stage by Otway while in a wheelchair is not something I’d recommend to anyone. On a far more serious note, though, two or three weeks in a wheelchair gave me a tiny inkling of the kind of challenges disabled people face every day, and of the attitudes of the able bodied. Real food for thought. But I was about to have far more than just food for thought. I was about to have, quite literally, a life-changing experience.
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