So in our second season back at Withdean I wasn’t just playing punk rock before the games, but performing Albion-related poems on the pitch before the game to 7,000 or so fans as well. I got a mixed response, from enthusiastic support to pissed abuse: my favourite example of the latter was the bloke who shouted at me in Brighton town centre one day. ‘You’re the c**t who does the fucking poetry at the football aren’t you? We’ve already got a fucking reputation as a poofy club, and now we’ve got a fucking poet as well.’ (I gave him short shrift, needless to say, as would 99% of our fanbase!) There’s a great song by Magazine called ‘Shot By Both Sides’ which reflected my feelings as I got occasional stick for being a poet at the football and, when my long involvement in the Albion campaign started to creep into my live shows, would get occasional stick from my fans for talking about football at my gigs.
But the reaction of the majority of Albion fans - or at least of the majority who cared either way - was illustrated by the fact that when I published ‘Goldstone Ghosts’, a book of the poems I had written and performed during that 2000-2001 season, as a fundraiser for the club and put 500 copies in the club shop, they sold out quite quickly. It helped that we won the championship (albeit the championship of the bottom division) that year, so the poems were pretty upbeat! As part of my year as Poet in Residence I also held writing workshops with fellow fans and edited an excellent book of supporters’ work - and when my official Arts Council-sponsored role ended, Dick Knight asked me to carry on (unpaid of course) and put me in the front of the programme as Poet in Residence alongside the names of the chairman, board members and so on. I was honoured. I carried on performing the pre-match poems for a while, and did an occasional one on the pitch or from the PA box right up until our long-awaited move to our new home in 2011.
That, of course, was the next and final stage in our campaign, and it had begun even before our return to Brighton. Withdean Stadium only held 7,000 people, far fewer than our fanbase, the club was running at a big loss and we needed to find a location for a permanent home as soon as possible. All kinds of sites were looked at and soon the only suitable one was identified: a patch of land on the edge of Brighton, next to Falmer station and the main A27 trunk road, adjacent to the two Sussex universities and partly covered by some shabby old university buildings. Opponents (local NIMBYs and adjacent Lewes Council Liberal Democrats) claimed it was an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. We said ‘Bollocks! It’s a patch of land next to Falmer station and the main A27 trunk road, adjacent to the two Sussex universities, partly covered by some shabby old university buildings!!’
We set up the Falmer For All Campaign Team, a group of dedicated activists who had mostly been involved since the very beginning of the fight to save the club, headed by the indefatigable Paul Samrah. Planning permission for our permanent new stadium there was applied for in October 2001: in a 1999 referendum, 68% of local people who voted had supported our move there, but the Falmer residents succeeded in getting it called in for a public inquiry. The battle had begun. Little did we know then, but it would take TEN YEARS from the time planning permission was submitted until our new stadium would finally open…
In the meantime, although things were getting a lot better on the pitch (club hero Bobby Zamora’s goals had won us the championship of the bottom division and the next season did the same in the one above) the club was still running at a massive loss, simply because Withdean was so small and loads of people who would have loved to come and watch us just couldn’t get in. Fans were coming up with loads of initiatives to raise money to keep us going, under the banner ‘Keep the Albion Alive and Kicking’. I had an idea.
By 2004 I’d been doing my stuff for nearly 25 years and had an awful lot of material. I decided to do a non-stop sponsored gig in aid of the club at my local in Brighton, the Evening Star, on Sunday 28 November, starting at opening time (12 noon) and finishing at closing time (10.30pm) performing everything I’d ever written, with a special ‘agony half hour’ where I’d do unspeakable versions of awful songs for large donations, backed by Robina on piano.
The idea got loads of local media coverage and was a tremendous success. I performed my entire back catalogue plus some covers of my favourite songs: in the ‘agony half hour’, fellow fans sponsored me and Robina large amounts to do some covers of my LEAST favourite songs. Fellow PA announcer Paul Samrah, who would take advantage of my occasional absences at gigs to play Supertramp (yuk!) over the PA at Withdean, sponsored me to do ‘The Logical Song’: we also covered ‘Mistletoe and Wine’, ‘D.I.S.C.O’ and ‘Hopelessly Devoted To You’ among others. And then there was ‘My Favourite Things’ with a special new verse…
‘Archer immersed in puke, rancid and grotty
Thousands of red ants all eating Bellotti
Their knobs in a wasp’s nest all covered with stings
These are a few of my favourite things…’
The pub was packed all day, we raised over £2000 and I literally performed non stop, apart from three visits to the toilet. But by then I had an even bigger campaign project – or musical prank - under way…
In February 2004 there had been a real setback in our campaign for our new stadium at Falmer: up until that point we’d basically concentrated on letter writing to support our case, but all that was about to change. A government planning inspector, having heard the evidence at the public inquiry, had submitted a report recommending the stadium plans be rejected! He obviously thought a patch of land on the edge of Brighton, next to Falmer station and the main A27 trunk road, adjacent to the two Sussex universities and partly covered by some shabby old university buildings, was an area of outstanding natural beauty. We were gutted.
Fortunately for us, however, we had had intimations that Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott was very much on our side. We launched a charm offensive on him: on Valentine’s Day 2004 we sent him over 100 bunches of flowers and got loads of national publicity for doing so. Sure enough, he didn’t rule against the stadium, but declared that the public inquiry would be re-opened early in 2005 with seven other sites to be considered. We knew that none of them were suitable and stepped up the pressure, all very much aware that keeping the issue in the public eye was essential. We were constantly trying to come up with new media stunts as the year progressed. Party conferences in Brighton were targeted with demonstrations, and these and all sorts of other cleverly targeted actions would continue for the next couple of years.
Legendary Brighton punk band The Piranhas, whom I had first seen back in the old Vault days of 1977, had had a 1980 hit with ‘Tom Hark’, their adaptation of an old South African kwela song. It had been picked up big time by football clubs across the country, many of them using the jaunty opening bars as celebration music when the home team scored a goal: hearing a Brighton band used against us by opposing clubs at away games in this way always pissed me off no end! And one day I had an idea to redress the balance and get us into the headlines, big time…
The rickety old PA box at Withdean was always full of banter. Paul Samrah, myself and local radio personality Richard Lindfield shared PA duties, Robina was there with me most of the time as well, safety officer Richard Hebberd was often around and various club officials and the occasional injured player would pop in to say hello. Paul and I would always be talking about new initiatives for the campaign.
One Saturday in early November 2004 during a lull in play I was moaning about yet another away defeat where ‘Tom Hark’ had been blared at us in unwelcome fashion. That song had become really popular in football circles: just about every fan knew it, and many chants were based around it. Suddenly I thought: let’s rewrite it with new words about the battle for Falmer and try and get it into the Top 40 - that would get us loads of publicity. My old mate John Otway’s devoted fans had got him to Number 9 in 2002 with ‘Bunsen Burner’ after a very organised internet campaign. The Albion have a massive fanbase, why couldn’t we do the same? But I knew it had to be done quickly – in a mi
nute, I’ll explain why.
Everyone thought it was a great idea, so I got on the case straight away. My task was made a lot easier by the fact that well known DJ and Brighton fan Norman ‘Fatboy Slim’ Cook’s record label, Skint, were our club sponsors at the time and easily approachable: I had a meeting with Damian Harris and Andy Mac from the label and they liked the idea too. I turned Piranhas’ singer ‘Boring’ Bob Grover’s original lyric (about fear of a nuclear holocaust!) into a brief summation of our plight, coupled with a plea to John Prescott…
TOM HARK (WE WANT FALMER)
Intro: ‘Prescott, Prescott give us a ground!’
(recorded live by the massed ranks of Albion fans)
We want Falmer
We need Falmer
We need Falmer
We want Falmer
We Brighton fans are angry - we’ve been messed around
Since the wayward Archer sold the Goldstone Ground
We’re stuck in an athletics track we really hate
Like playing in Albania Division Eight!
The whole thing’s daft
We don’t know why
We have to laugh
Or else we’ll cry
Our ground’s too small
The costs too high
Without Falmer
Our club will die
For years the planning process has dragged on and on
A paralytic snail wouldn’t take that long
So listen Mr Prescott as we tell you how
We need our Falmer Stadium - we need it now!
The whole thing’s daft
We don’t know why
We have to laugh
Or else we’ll cry
Our ground’s too small
The costs too high
Without Falmer
Our club will die
We want Falmer
We need Falmer
We need Falmer
We want Falmer!
I then approached Piranhas main man and original lyricist Bob Grover, asking him if he’d like to get involved: he gave us his blessing but said no. So in the next few days I came up with a name for the band – Seagulls Ska – and recruited Dan, David and McGhee from my band Barnstormer to play guitar, bass and drums, local actor and Albion fan Ralph “Withnail & I’ Brown to do the sax solo and Marlon, Tony and Alan from excellent Brighton ska band Too Many Crooks as the brass section. Crooks singer Dave and ‘The Falmer For All Campaign Team Choir’ provided backing vocals, and we recorded the song in 811, a local studio, in late November 2004. There were B sides as well: two ska versions of the old First World War marching song and Albion anthem ‘Sussex By The Sea’ and a new version of ‘Roll Up For The Donkey Derby’, my tongue in cheek ‘celebration’ of rivals Crystal Palace’s FA Cup Final appearance in 1990. Ros South took some photos, my mate Alan Wares did the sleeve design, Skint got the copies pressed up and the internet downloads online, and, very quickly, we were all set to go.
As I mentioned above, the timing was all-important. Every year the major record companies compete for the Xmas Number One single, and then, for a couple of weeks, everything goes quiet in the music business over Christmas and New Year. That means that in the first few weeks of January it’s possible to get a higher chart placing with fewer sales, and so it is obviously the best time to bring out a single such as ours. That’s exactly what we did: it was released on January 3rd 2005, about six weeks after the idea had been first conceived, after a presale campaign orchestrated via the excellent Albion internet forum North Stand Chat which centred on getting as many pre-orders as possible. It was a two pronged effort: physical CDs available in the major record stores and independents in Brighton (a lot) and elsewhere in Sussex (to a degree) and internet downloads, which could be purchased anywhere in the country and indeed the world. Obviously we were up against national chart acts with big promotional budgets – but we were going to give it our best shot.
The local press got behind us, Seagulls Ska launched the record with a live performance and signing session at the Brighton HMV store, loads of Albion fans spread the word to supporters of other clubs over the internet, FC St Pauli fans in Germany got stuck in big time spreading the word over there and quite a few Attila fans who don’t like football downloaded it too. (Cheers to you all!) Word came through after a couple of days that we were Number One on the Amazon download chart – beating Elvis – and the message from Skint was that we were going to do very well.
On Sunday 15 January 2005, Robina and I listened to the chart rundown for the first time since Alan ‘Fluff’ Freeman days. Number 30 came and went, no ‘Tom Hark’. Number 20 did too! Bloody hell! We made Number 17 in the Top 40, and we would have been on Top Of The Pops if Busted hadn’t split up that week. That Sunday night we celebrated with a live performance and party at the Engine Room in Brighton, and Albion manager Mark McGhee and, of course, chairman Dick Knight were there too.
The single was played in full on the Radio 1 Top 40 Chart Show, we had major national press coverage in The Times, Guardian, Independent, Mirror, Sunday Mirror and Sun (!) among others, national TV including a short appearance on Football Focus, features on Radios 4 and 5 and loads of local and regional media coverage of all kinds. ‘Tom Hark’ sold out of its first pressing of 5,000 in two weeks, ended up selling about 6,500 copies and, as well as a massive publicity boost in our battle for the stadium, it raised over £6000 for the Albion’s ‘Alive and Kicking’ campaign.
Result.
The planning inquiry re-opened in February 2005 and the Falmer residents and Lewes Council members opposed to the new stadium were still claiming that it was going to despoil an area of outstanding natural beauty. There was talk of exotic wildlife under threat, of the possibility of ‘vehicle-bat collisions!’ Part of our opponents’ media campaign was centred on pictures of ‘idyllic’ Falmer village centre, complete with pond – though how this was relevant was beyond us really, since the stadium would be situated half a mile away.
And as for Falmer pond being ‘idyllic’ - the previous summer I’d read a report in the local paper that it had become infested with rats. Since Robina and I love ponds and are actually very fond of rats (I had a pet one called Strummer for years) we had decided to go and see for ourselves. It was a calm, hot day, half the pond was dry, the water level in the rest was very low and discoloured by algae and a group of bored and bedraggled-looking ducks were huddled disconsolately on an island in the middle. Next to them was a home made sign.
‘DON’T FEED THE DUCKS, IT ENCOURAGES THE RATS!’
Funny people, these NIMBYS, I thought. Not only do they think that a patch of land on the edge of Brighton, next to Falmer station and the main A27 trunk road, adjacent to the two Sussex universities and partly covered by some shabby old university buildings, is an area of outstanding natural beauty, but they reckon a rat-infested pond is too. (No disrespect to the rats of course.) I decided to write a horror poem…
FALMER POND
Upon approach, the stench of foetid mud.
If, undeterred, you head towards this place
Mosquito clouds fly up into your face:
A vampire squadron, hungry for your blood.
And then you see the rats. Their gimlet eyes
Bore through you, as if sizing up their prey.
But they are full: they have a meal today.
A local dog has just met its demise.
It decomposes while they gnaw its flesh.
Diseased and dying ducks are all around
Choking on the used condoms that they’ve found
Their scab-encrusted feet caught in a mesh
Of rusting supermarket trolleys. Worse!
A host of bats (protected species, these)
Each carrying a different foul disease
Rises on stinking wings to spread a curse
Across the innocent East Sussex sky.
A chill runs down your spine, the message clear.
Abandon hope, al
l those who enter here:
This is a place where creatures come to die.
Then, from the shadows, awful shapes lurch forth.
Pale, hideous forms, by putrefaction scarred:
With querulous moans of ‘Not In My Back Yard!’
The zombie hordes of Falmer Village North…
But, Mr. Prescott, you are stout of heart.
You knocked that deadly Welsh egg thrower down
And didn’t let the crap canoeist drown.
We know your courage: you will play your part.
Outstanding Natural Beauty there will be
Next to that awful breeding place for flies.
So give the word, and we will claim our prize:
A Stadium for the City by the Sea.
The Falmer residents HATED that poem. Quite a lot of Brighton fans thought it was very funny though…
Planning disputes are not interesting subjects, so I am going to wrap this up quickly now. There were loads more demonstrations and stunts cooked up by clever, resourceful Albion fans as the pressure on Prescott mounted. On 28 October 2005 he gave permission for the new stadium – but there was a mistake in his ruling (an absolutely stupid factual error, shame on his department!) Lewes Council mounted a new challenge and permission was withdrawn. Hazel Blears re-affirmed the approval on 24 July 2007 and on 4 September 2007 the deadline for appeals expired and the club received full permission to proceed. Work began in December 2008.
ARGUMENTS YARD Page 38