by Kevin Brooks
I have to admit, though, that we did have some really good times together. Curtis took me to see all kinds of bands in all kinds of places – bands I’d always wanted to see, bands I’d never heard of, bands who were great, bands who were awful. We saw Dr Feelgood, Eddie and the Hot Rods, Bazooka Joe, the Stranglers, the Count Bishops, the 101ers, Kilburn and the High Roads … and dozens more. Although I didn’t know it at the time, a lot of these bands were, in a way, the forerunners of punk, and some of them included people who would eventually become really big names. The 101ers, for example, were Joe Strummer’s band. Ian Dury was in Kilburn and the High Roads. Bazooka Joe featured Adam Ant.
And it was seeing these kinds of bands, and the people who went along to watch them, that first made me realize that something was starting to happen in the music world … at least in London, anyway. There was a change of mood in the air. There was a feeling that rock music had gone too far, that famous bands like the Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin had become too pompous and out of touch. Simplicity was back in vogue. Rock ’n’ roll was going back to the basics: short songs, no solos, everyday clothes, everyday people.
I liked it a lot.
What I didn’t like quite so much was when Curtis started taking me to a clothes shop in Chelsea that everyone was talking about. The shop was called Sex, and over the years it came to be known as the birthplace of the Sex Pistols. When Curtis first took me there, in August 1975, it already had a growing reputation as the place to be. It was owned and run by Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood, and over the years its shop assistants included Glen Matlock and Sid Vicious, Chrissie Hynde (who later formed the Pretenders), and a punk girl called Jordan who was famous for wearing the shop’s incredibly revealing and provocative clothes. A lot of the clothing was bondage gear – rubber stuff, hoods, T-shirts printed with pornographic images – the kind of clothing that was intended to shock. And that, to me, was what the whole place seemed to be all about – being shocking, being offensive, being outrageous. Which Curtis, of course, found fascinating. And that’s one of the reasons he liked going there. Another reason – which he flatly denied – was that Jordan wasn’t the only girl in the shop who wore revealing and provocative clothes. There were lots of them, all strutting around in their ripped fishnets and black PVC, most of them quite happy to try on the shop’s clothes without bothering to go into the fitting room, just stripping off in the middle of the shop, the more people watching the better.
‘It’s nothing to do with sex,’ I remember Curtis telling me once, after I’d caught him ogling a half-naked girl. ‘It’s about breaking taboos, you know … it’s about not being hung up on traditional sexuality …’
‘Yeah, right,’ I’d told him. ‘Of course it is.’
But although the girls – and the underlying sexual nature of the whole place – were undoubtedly part of the attraction for Curtis, his main reason for going there was simply that Sex was where it was happening. Not that Curtis – or anyone else – really knew what it was at the time, but his instinct told him that whatever it was, it was fresh and exciting, and it was different, and it was going to be big, and Curtis was determined to be part of it. So he spent as much time as he could just hanging around the shop, getting to know most of the regulars – the Sex Pistols, Johnny Rotten, Sid Vicious, Malcolm McLaren, Siouxsie Sioux, Steve Severin … the names and faces who would come to be known as pioneers of the nascent punk scene.
I didn’t always go with him when he went down to Chelsea – sometimes he’d go with Kenny and Stan, sometimes he’d go on his own – and even when I did go with him, I didn’t really get involved all that much. I’d talk to people if they talked to me, but mostly I just hung around in the background, keeping myself to myself … partly, I suppose, because I was still quite shy and a bit overwhelmed by everything, but I think the main reason was that I didn’t actually like most of those people. They were interesting, and different, and there was no doubt that some of them were incredibly exciting … but, as far as I was concerned, most of them weren’t very nice. Not that nice mattered to Curtis. All that mattered to him was the energy, the danger, the new ideas, new sounds, new clothes – the home-dyed spiky hair, the DIY fashions, the over-the-top make-up and attitude … all of it designed to shock.
Of course, nowadays it’s perfectly acceptable to have spiky hair and dye it whatever colour you like, and it’s quite commonplace for middle-aged parents to buy ready-ripped jeans from Asda, so it’s hard to believe that these things were once considered outrageous.
But they were.
And Curtis took to them all with a passion.
On 6 November that year, we went to see the Sex Pistols play their first ever gig at St Martin’s College. Curtis was really looking the part by then. His hair was hacked short and dyed bright green, he was regularly wearing eye-liner and lipstick, and he’d taken to wearing the same clothes pretty much all the time: dirty old straight-legged jeans, ripped at the knee; a threadbare T-shirt with the sleeves torn off, a pair of black motorcycle boots, and an ancient black leather jacket with NAKED daubed on the back in blood-red paint.
He was also, by that time, getting more and more into drugs.
It wasn’t a new thing with Curtis. He’d always smoked a bit of dope now and then, ever since I’d met him, and while I didn’t like it very much, I soon got used to it. I never really got into it myself – although I’d be lying if I said that I never touched drugs – but I couldn’t help getting used to it, because in Curtis’s world, which had become my world, it was simply something that everyone did. It wasn’t a big deal. If you had some grass, you smoked it. If you had some speed, you snorted it. If you could get out of your head, you did. That’s just the way it was.
That night in November though, the night of the Sex Pistols gig, when I met Curtis at the squat in Seven Sisters where we sometimes rehearsed, I knew straight away that he’d had something more than just a joint or a line of speed. He was so strung-out, so bug-eyed and twitchy and sweaty and manic … it was frightening.
‘What the hell have you taken, Curtis?’ I asked him.
‘What?’ he grinned.
‘What have you taken?’
‘Nothing … I had a smoke, that’s all. It’s good stuff … you want some before we go?’
‘No, thanks.’
‘Come on, Lil,’ he said, flinging his arm round my shoulder. ‘Just a quick hit, get you in the mood –’
‘I don’t need to get in the mood,’ I said coldly, shrugging his arm off. ‘And don’t call me Lil. You know I don’t like it.’
‘Yeah, all right,’ he said defensively, stepping back. ‘There’s no need to get uptight –’
‘I’m not uptight. I just –’
‘Hey, you look fucking great,’ he said, grinning crazily again. ‘I mean … shit, look at you …’ He stared at me, running his fingers through his hair. ‘You know what you are, don’t you?’
‘What?’ I sighed.
He smiled. ‘You’re the most beautiful girl in the world.’
‘Yeah, right –’
‘And you’re mine.’
I looked at him, shaking my head, but I couldn’t help smiling. ‘Come on,’ I said. ‘Let’s get out of here.’
Despite everything, the Pistols gig was amazing. Despite the state that Curtis was in, despite it being a cramped little venue with no stage and terrible acoustics, despite the sporadic outbursts of violence and venom, and the undeniable fact that – musically – the Pistols weren’t actually all that good … despite all that, it was a night I’ll never forget.
The headline act was Bazooka Joe, but I don’t even remember what they were like. All I remember is standing with Curtis, Kenny and Stan, watching Johnny Rotten and the rest of the Pistols getting ready to play, the four of them slouching around like a gang of demented street urchins. Johnny was wearing baggy pinstripe trousers and his infamous ‘I Hate Pink Floyd’ T
-shirt; Glen Matlock was wearing a pink blouse and paint-spattered jeans; and Paul Cook and Steve Jones … well, they just looked how they always looked – like a couple of happily-stoned criminals. I don’t mind admitting that I wasn’t expecting to like them very much, mainly because I simply didn’t like them as people, but even before they’d played a note I could tell that something special was about to happen. I could feel it in the smoke-filled air, I could sense it … and so could everyone else. As they plugged in their instruments and got ready to play, Curtis leaned in close to me and whispered in my ear, ‘Do you get it now?’
And I realized, quite suddenly, that I did.
As Steve Jones cranked up his amp and blasted out a buzz-saw chord, it dawned on me that the things I’d never liked about these people – their studied unpleasantness, their don’t-care attitude, their desperate need to shock and offend – these were precisely the things that, as performers, made them so thrilling and unforgettable.
It wasn’t the music, it was the attitude.
The energy.
The chaos.
As I said, in a strictly musical sense, the Sex Pistols weren’t all that impressive that night. They weren’t terrible or anything – I mean, they could all play – and although Johnny Rotten’s voice was way out of tune at times, it was, without doubt, unlike anything else I’d ever heard … but overall, as a band, they were nowhere near as good as Naked. We were a much tighter band than them, our songs were far better, and more original, and although we hadn’t actually played live yet, I was pretty sure that when we did, we wouldn’t be as shambolic or ragged as the Pistols. They didn’t even seem to know what they were doing most of the time.
‘Look!’ Curtis shouted in my ear during their second song. ‘There’s Malcolm!’
I looked where he was pointing and saw Malcolm McLaren down at the front, waving his hands around and shouting at the band, telling them where to stand and what to do. He had his usual entourage with him – Vivienne Westwood, Jordan … all the Sex regulars, most of them wearing clothes from the shop. When I looked back at Curtis, I saw him staring at one of the girls with Jordan. I didn’t know what her name was, but I’d seen her before in Sex. She was a couple of years older than me – very pretty, very punky – and she always wore extremely revealing clothes. That night, as far as I can remember, she was wearing a black rubber miniskirt, a studded dog collar, a swastika armband, and not much else. As I watched Curtis leering at her, I saw her look back at him, all sultry and pouty at first, and then she smiled.
‘Hey!’ I said to Curtis, elbowing him hard in the ribs.
‘Fuck!’ he spluttered, spitting out the mouthful of lager he’d just taken. He wiped his mouth and glared at me. ‘What the hell was that for?’
I didn’t say anything, I just glared back at him for a moment, then went back to watching the band. He got the message though, and for the rest of the night he kept his wandering eyes to himself.
I’m not exactly sure what happened when the Pistols finished their fifth song, but there was some kind of bust up between the Pistols and a guy called Danny from Bazooka Joe – something to do with the PA, I seem to remember – and I don’t know if it was Danny who cut the power, or someone else, or if the Pistols had borrowed some of Bazooka Joe’s sound system and wrecked it or something … but whatever the reason, everything suddenly kicked off at the end of the fifth song. Johnny Rotten started yelling at Bazooka Joe, calling them a bunch of fucking cunts, then this Danny guy attacked Johnny, pinning him up against the wall … and then Malcolm McLaren and everyone else got involved, shouting and screaming, pushing and shoving … and, basically, that was it – a totally chaotic end to a totally chaotic gig.
While all this mayhem was going on, I remember turning to Curtis and seeing him just standing there, watching the after-gig chaos with as much – if not more – intensity than he’d shown when he was watching the actual gig. And I’m pretty sure that that was the moment when we both realized that although Naked were, in so many ways, a much better band than the Sex Pistols, that simply wasn’t enough.
Yes, we had good songs. And they were our songs, not cover versions of old songs like the Pistols mostly played, and we could play them well. And, yes, that was all very important. But if we wanted to be something special, if we wanted to be a band that mattered, we had to have more.
It wasn’t the music that mattered, it was the attitude.
The energy.
The chaos.
But as we headed home later that night, with Curtis jabbering away like a madman about everything we’d just seen and heard, telling me over and over again that that was the future, that was the way things were going, that was how Naked had to be … I was already beginning to have my doubts.
Did I really want Naked to be like that?
Did I really want Curtis to be like that?
Did I really want myself to be like that?
I wished I knew.
5
A lot of people have since claimed to have been at St Martin’s College that night, and a lot of famous names have said that it was the Pistols first gig that inspired them to either form their own group or, if they were already in a band, to break it up and start a new one. And although I’m fairly sure that at least some of these claims aren’t strictly true – mainly because, as far as I can recall, there simply weren’t that many people there that night – there’s no denying that it was a seminal event in the history of rock ’n’ roll music. It made people realize that you don’t have to be a genius to be in a band, you don’t have to be a vacalist to sing, you don’t have to be a godlike guitar-hero to play the guitar … all you have to do is learn a couple of chords, grab hold of a microphone, and start making some noise.
Simple as that.
It changed people’s lives.
It certainly changed ours. Me, Curtis, Kenny, Stan … we were still the same band after that night, we were still called Naked and we still played the same songs, but now – as Curtis had put it – we’d seen the future of rock ’n’ roll, and if we wanted to be part of it, we had to get moving.
Two days later, at our first rehearsal after the Pistols gig, Curtis sat us all down and laid out his plans.
‘All right, listen,’ he said. ‘This band needs more bollocks, OK? We’ve got to crank it up … make it faster, louder, nastier. We’ve got to really fucking wind things up –’
‘Why?’ Kenny said.
Curtis glared at him. ‘Why?’
‘Yeah … why?’
‘You were there the other night, weren’t you?’
‘Yeah, but I don’t see what that’s got to do with us.’
Curtis shook his head. ‘That’s the whole fucking point, Kenny. If we don’t sort ourselves out, it won’t have anything to do with us.’
‘So what?’ Kenny shrugged.
Curtis frowned at him. ‘Don’t you want us to make it?’
‘Yeah , of course, but I don’t see why we suddenly have to start copying the Sex Pistols. I mean, they can hardly even play –’
‘Who said anything about copying them?’ Curtis said. ‘We’re Naked, aren’t we? We’re the fucking best. But things are changing, you know … it’s no good just being the best any more. It’s not enough.’
‘So what do you want us to do?’ Kenny said. ‘Play badly?’
Curtis shook his head again. ‘Just play harder. Give it more energy, more speed … more attitude.’ He looked at Stan. ‘Do you know what I’m saying?’
Stan nodded.
Curtis turned to me. ‘You need to hammer the shit out of that bass, all right?’
‘Yeah …’
He smiled. ‘I mean, really whack the fucker.’
‘Hold on,’ Kenny said. ‘That’s my bass, don’t forget. I don’t want it getting damaged –’
‘Jesus Christ,’ Curtis sighed.
‘What?’
‘You’re so rock ’n’ roll, Kenny. You really are.’
‘Yeah, well … you wouldn’t like it if someone broke your guitar, would you?’
‘I’ll tell you what,’ Curtis said, giving him a patronizing look. ‘If Lili damages your bass, I’ll buy you a new one, OK?’
‘Yeah, right … and where are you going to get the money from?’
‘We’ll have a record deal soon. We’ll be rolling in cash.’
Kenny laughed. ‘A record deal? We haven’t even played anywhere yet … how the hell are we going to get a record deal when we can’t even get a gig?’
Curtis stared at him. ‘We’ll get one soon enough.’
‘How soon?’
‘I’m working on it.’
‘Yeah?’
‘Yeah.’
The two of them just stared at each other for a while then, and I thought for a moment that either Kenny was going to storm out in a sulk, or Curtis was going to hit him or something. But eventually Kenny just kind of nodded and looked away, and Curtis lit a cigarette and said, ‘Right, let’s fucking do it.’
We plugged in, cranked it up, and launched into a 100 mph version of ‘Naked’.
Curtis was as good as his word about getting a gig, and a couple of months later, on a cold Friday night in January, we piled all our gear into the back of a Transit van and headed off up the Seven Sisters Road towards a pub in Finsbury Park called the Conway Arms. The van belonged to – and was driven by – Stan’s twenty-year-old brother, a Neanderthal-like guy known as Chief. He was as non-talkative, if not more so, than Stan, and he suffered from both a really bad BO problem and a tendency to fart quite a lot, neither of which made travelling in the unventilated confines of a Transit van all that pleasant. But as well as being the only person we knew who had a van, Chief helped us out in lots of other ways too – hefting equipment around, setting up lights, sorting out all the electrics … and, because of his sheer physical presence, he was a very useful person to have around when things got out of hand, which they often did.