by Will Birch
Dave Robinson could only run so far with Ian, citing other commitments, chiefly his management of Graham Parker, now recording his debut album with producer Nick Lowe. Ian was irritated by Parker’s rapid success and ribbed Robinson repeatedly. Graham Parker remembers, ‘I was playing Dingwalls with the Rumour, our first big headline pub gig in London, and I distinctly remember that for much of the show Ian and Fred Rowe were standing at the lip of the stage, both wearing shades, presumably attempting to put the frighteners on me.’
Robinson knew that, ultimately, Ian was unmanageable. There were, however, other managers who fancied their luck with the troubled genius, little realizing the aggravation that lay ahead. Three years earlier, Robinson had referred Ian to Messrs Gillett and Nelki, but Ian had ruthlessly fired them in favour of Tommy Roberts. Now, he would offer Ian to Peter Jenner and Andrew King, proprietors of Blackhill Music Publishing, whose premises at 32 Alexander Street would imminently house the nascent Stiff Records. ‘They won’t screw you,’ Dave Robinson told Ian, ‘they’re vicars’ sons.’
Jenner and King were Oxbridge graduates with rock sensibility. They had been the instigators of the famous Hyde Park free concerts and managers of Pink Floyd, but the psychedelic superstars had moved on, leaving a void in the roster. Initially, it was Ian’s writing that impressed Peter and Andrew. ‘He had these lyrics, typed up, and I remember reading “Nervous Piss”,’ recalls Andrew. ‘We realized that they were incredible words and offered him a deal. We were going to pay him £25 a week, which was what he would have got on the dole.’ Peter Jenner adds, ‘I suspect Ian thought we were suckers, but we weren’t your standard music biz schmucks. We recognized that Ian was an extraordinary person.’
Despite this breakthrough, Ian was still in the doldrums and continued to lurk around Dingwalls in heavy dude mode. There was talk of live work in Europe, but the dates fell through when early in 1976 Rod Melvin fled to Sussex to become a Scientologist. Ian came close to calling it a day, but there was always a ray of hope. ‘I have decided to become a famous person this year and told my mum at Christmas,’ Ian wrote to Roberta Bayley as soon as he heard that the Kilburns had just been booked for yet another session – their third – on The London Weekend Show. At the tele-recording on 7 January Ian looked superb with his crimson blue-beat trilby and safety-pin earring. The group performed a storming version of ‘Rough Kids’ and a new number entitled ‘England’s Glory’, co-written with Melvin.
‘England’s Glory’ was essentially a list of British entertainers, eccentrics and popular products of the post-war era that were ‘jewels in the crown of England’s Glory’. These included: Walnut Whips (a chocolate confection); Stafford Cripps (the Christian socialist politician); Vera Lynn (the popular wartime singer); and Mr Pastry (a children’s entertainer). The song, as performed by Ian in 1976, pulling faces like an exasperated Alastair Sim, offered a glimmer of what might have been if he had chosen to become a mainstream entertainer. 1970s television might have welcomed a modern-day Harry Champion or Sir George Robey, music-hall maestros of the double entendre, but there was nothing remotely showbiz about Ian’s routines. He confessed to Roberta Bayley that he had been ‘nicking a lot of strokes from Max Miller and Max Wall’, whom he saw as great English comics, Miller being particularly strong with words and Wall ‘a master of lewd visuals and physical innuendo’. But Ian refused to record his own version of ‘England’s Glory’. Dave Robinson thought Max Wall would make a cracking cover and kept the idea up his sleeve.
On 9 February 1976 Ian signed his contract with Blackhill Music, who would publish his new songs and manage his career. Suddenly, Ian was happy; he now had the beginnings of an infrastructure, including a band, a small road crew and personal minder Spider Rowe. ‘[Blackhill] were investing in my potential as a writer and performer,’ said Ian of his new managers. ‘My tab at the bar was running up. I wasn’t getting motor car money, it was about £25 a week, but they were getting us a nice Elsie and Doris [Kelsey Morris, a renowned speaker manufacturer] p.a. system and a nice van to go around in.’
Following Rod Melvin’s departure, the Kilburns hung on minus a pianist. Guitarist Ed Speight thought that the band needed a keyboard player and took the initiative to seek out Rod’s replacement. ‘We don’t need a piano player,’ Ian told Ed, ‘they’re all poofs.’ But Speight disagreed and persisted in his quest. Via a musical instrument shop in the Goldhawk Road, he tracked down one Chaz Jankel, who was summoned to an interview at the Nashville in May 1976, where the Kilburns were playing one of their regular dates. Ian recalled being slightly nervous about meeting the young musician: ‘I was in the dressing room, a bit disgruntled, when Jankel walked in with his big white teeth. I said, “Do I know you?” He said, “No.” So I said, “Well do us a favour and fuck off then!”’
Ed Speight confirms the brief encounter. ‘It’s true. Ian was so rude to Chaz that I had to be the diplomat. I was sent out to apologize to him. He was wearing his nice suit. I don’t know if Chaz knew what he was letting himself in for, but I told Ian to stick with him. He had that broad musicality, that attention to detail. It was just what Ian needed.’ Chaz Jankel, from Stanmore, Middlesex, was ‘a nice, middle-class, Jewish, suburban boy,’ according to Ian’s co-manager, Peter Jenner. He joined the group in its dying days and played a handful of dates, including the Kilburns’ last ever show on 17 June at Walthamstow Assembly Hall.
Also on the bill were the Stranglers and the Sex Pistols, whose manager, Malcolm McLaren, had instructed his raging young protégé, John Lydon, to study the Dury stage persona ‘and learn’. Ian was accompanied that night by his new publicist, B. P. Fallon, a quick-thinking and creative Irishman who had a good relationship with the music press due to his PR work for Led Zeppelin. ‘Ian made a great show of being furious with Malcolm for Rotten nicking his poses,’ recalls Fallon. ‘He and Spider stood each side of Malcolm till they got the haberdasher twitching.’
Lydon, now known as ‘Johnny Rotten’, would soon be hanging onto his microphone stand for grim death, just like Ian and Gene Vincent before him. ‘Ian, like me, was part of an older generation, but he passed the baton on,’ says McLaren. ‘He was influential in the whole advent of punk. He was a mirror to the crowd, as huge as the crowd and had this immense reservoir of electricity that would ultimately spark and give birth to something else that the new generation was going to feel was their own. Punk, really, was born out of that, the anger all us disenfranchised art students at the end of the sixties felt.’
But Ian had no desire to align himself with the oncoming punk movement, although he frequently complained that Johnny Rotten had stolen his shtick. ‘John did borrow a little from Ian,’ says Glen Matlock. ‘Some of his stance, the razor blade, an homage to small elements.’ Peter Jenner recalls, ‘Ian would say, “Rotten ripped me off. I showed him the razor blade. That was me.” He always said that.’ Following his encounter with the Sex Pistols, Ian wrote an article for Melody Maker in which he described his preparation for the performance that McLaren and Lydon had witnessed:
I prepare myself properly for my beloved Walthamstow. Black embroidered lace widow’s scarf and Pikey satin shirt. I polish the razor-blade ear-piece, oil the knife, primp the barnet, dip the gloves in water to make them wearable and spray and splash until I smell like a moose. Green eye-shadow and Argyle socks from Burlington Arcade. The Brixton tuxedo is still wet from the previous engagement. I would love to become Gene Hackman’s wardrobe mistress. We were magnificent and the Sex Pistols are smashing.
Ian also revealed in the article that he had recently seen a doctor – ‘a pricey-looking geezer with a miner’s lamp on his head’ – who had diagnosed a weak heart due to ‘giving it too much stick on the boards’. A break from live performance was recommended, but Ian protested: ‘I’m not nearly famous yet so I can’t stop now, you bastard!’ Ian closed his Melody Maker piece with: ‘I’m a performer and people like me don’t operate too well in cupboards. It isn’t applause that gets me at it.
It’s knowing that somebody is really there.’
The health scare was something of a fabrication. B. P. Fallon, whose job it was to help Ian reinvent himself, or at least amplify his existing charisma, says, ‘It was madness, the idea of making this Ian Dury fellow into a mega rock star. That was part of the catalyst for me, that and his wordsmith talent and embryonic visual charisma, not only on stage but as the geezer walking down the street. From the get-go the man had a magnetic visual but it had to be honed, because at the beginning it was a front, a shield. Ian was putting it on, but it had to become like a flag, with the cat truly believing it, rather than acting it out.’
The one grain of truth in the ‘weak heart’ story, however, was that Ian really did crave the affection and approval that only a live audience could provide. But it would be another fifteen months before he would enjoy the warm glow of the spotlight. Tired of running his band on a shoestring, Ian made half-a-dozen telephone calls and despatched the Kilburns into the pages of rock ’n’ roll history.
11
A Mouth What Never Closes
South London, 1976. ‘This is you, Mr Dury, isn’t it?’ asked the government VAT inspector, pulling a sheaf of Melody Maker cuttings from his drawer. Ian had been summoned to the Kennington Customs and Excise office to substantiate his tax returns. Imagining that he was in the presence of a pop star, the civil servant was fascinated as Ian pulled out his little black book. It was finally going to come in handy as it contained written evidence that the Kilburns had performed exactly 365 shows in just over forty-two months and that their average nightly fee was £75. Ian explained that the expenses of running a group were considerable, and his tax bill was reduced accordingly.
His indebtedness to Blackhill, however, had now reached £7,000, and there was no sign of a record deal. Since his realization that the cost of running a group was prohibitive, Ian decided he would remain a solo act until such time as he had a great band, a great album and a recording contract. Songs were the priority, and Chaz Jankel was to be his new co-writer. Retreating to Oval Mansions, Ian spent countless hours at his desk assiduously writing lyrics with a giant cardboard cut-out of Gene Vincent watching over him. Hungry for inspiration, his antennae were constantly receptive to any phrase or newspaper headline he thought might make a good song title. When he found one, he’d confer with Denise. ‘I’ve got it, I’ve got it . . . listen to this! “Sink My Boats” – brilliant! Does it work for you? This is great – “I’ve Got A Lump In My Jeans For You”. What do you think?’
Denise was always amused by Ian’s wordplay and offered encouragement. She was also optimistic about the Dury/Jankel songwriting partnership, knowing that Ian had been waiting for a collaborator who spoke the same language . . . well, almost. Unlike many of the musicians who had passed through Ian’s ‘academy of Jack-the-lademy’, Chaz was not exactly ‘street’, but his instrumental skills would introduce a welcome degree of musical sophistication. He had tasted modest success with the rock group Byzantium and more recently formed a ‘dubious cabaret duo’, Pure Gold.
Ian learnt that Chaz’s cousin Robert was married to Jennifer Loss, daughter of the famous bandleader, Joe Loss. This excited Ian. He told friends, ‘I’ve met this young bloke, he’s terribly talented . . . you know his uncle is Joe Loss!’ Although Joe Loss was the epitome of square and symbolized the old showbiz establishment, he was – crucially for Ian – a household name. ‘Ian was very impressed by Chaz Jankel’s musicianship,’ says Peter Jenner. ‘He told everyone that Chaz was “a fucking genius”. In Ian’s eyes, everyone was either a complete genius or a total wanker. You were either a diamond geezer or a tosspot.’
Chaz started to visit daily with his guitar and Wurlitzer piano and would occasionally bring his toothbrush and stay over for days at a stretch. Ian had reams of new lyrics and used his miniature drum kit to convey the rhythmic feel he envisaged for each song, much to the annoyance of Mrs Cave, who lived in the flat below. All she could hear was the thump of Ian’s bass drum, not the intricate words and cool, jazzy melodies that Ian and Chaz were now producing. She also had to contend with other disturbances in Oval Mansions, namely the odd ‘domestic’. On the first floor, Fred and Val argued noisily, and there was always the possibility of Fred receiving a visit from some gangland overlord offering him ‘work’. Ian told Fred that, if he had to revert to crime, why not make it ‘a retirement job, like a good £200,000 airport raid?’ But Fred was trying to go straight. Mindful of his criminal connections he’d installed bullet-proof glass in his windows, boasting to Ian, ‘You can hit those with a fourteen-pound sledge hammer, mate – they won’t fucking break!’
Upstairs, Ian and Denise’s interminable rows heightened the pandemonium. The sound of flying crockery could be heard by passers-by, who were constantly in danger of being struck by flowerpots falling from Ian’s third-storey window ledge. The mansion block was a war zone, but it was in this atmosphere that Dury and Jankel produced a body of work that would become the cornerstone of Ian’s career as the rock ’n’ roll poet laureate.
Unsure of his future with Denise, Ian flitted backwards and forwards between Oval Mansions and Betty and the kids, who in July 1976 moved into their new home in Mount Pleasant, Aylesbury, a street Baxter remembers as ‘impoverished, multiracial; we were one of the wealthier families’. The house had been purchased with financial help from Aunt Molly, which aggravated Ian’s guilt further, but music remained his focus. On 27 July, he and Chaz went into Livingstone Studios and recorded five tracks with Pete van Hook and Kuma Harada on drums and bass respectively, with Geoff Castle adding synthesizer. Songs included ‘Wake Up and Make Love with Me’ and ‘Sink My Boats’. Ian was excited, but his new demos would simply gather dust in the A&R offices of the half-dozen major record labels propositioned by Andrew King.
Elsewhere, the long hot summer of 1976 was proving to be a musical turning point. If punk wasn’t yet making the headlines, the signs of a revolution were in the air. Fired up by the then influential British music press and, specifically, hip writers like Nick Kent and Giovanni Dadomo, adventurous young music fans began checking out the sounds that had in recent years been emanating from New York and Detroit – the New York Dolls, the MC5, the Stooges and now the Ramones and Patti Smith. In the UK, it was the incendiary live performances of Dr Feelgood that had inspired those same kids to buy guitars and drums, cut their hair and play fast. One Mark Perry, a young bank clerk from Deptford, crucially started the shortlived fanzine Sniffin’ Glue, which covered the Buzzcocks, the Sex Pistols and the Clash and would probably have found space for Ian Dury.
Another significant event that summer was the launch of Stiff Records. Ian’s former manager, Dave Robinson, had been plotting for some time to start a record label, primarily as an outlet for his pub rock casualties. When he hooked up with human dynamo and former Dr Feelgood tour manager Jake Riviera in July 1976, the label was born. Stiff was a shoestring operation that nevertheless had the wit and imagination to forge would-be hits from its roster of musical underdogs, most of whom were too unconventional for the major labels. Ian was a perfect contender. Riviera tried to persuade him to let Stiff release some of his demos and unissued recordings, but Ian was intent on keeping his head down until he was ready to re-emerge. ‘I’m going to be a rock ’n ’roll star one day,’ he wrote to Roberta, ‘in case you hadn’t noticed.’
It was an exciting time and Ian understood only too well what was happening. In February, at the behest of Malcolm McLaren, he had seen the Sex Pistols at the Marquee and later at Walthamstow. He thought they were ‘dire’, but saw the funny side of it. He had investigated the Ramones’ debut album, which he liked. He had also dragged Ed Speight to see the Feelgoods, but Speight was ‘worried’ by their ‘hi-octane aggression’. Ian decided that the omens were good, noting that in recent weeks his name had featured as a music press crossword clue on no less than three occasions!
In August, Denise left Oval Mansions once again, leaving Ian and Chaz to
get on with their music. An early gem was ‘Hit Me with Your Rhythm Stick’, although it would not be fully realized for another two years. Also hot off the press was ‘Razzle in My Pocket’, a semi-autobiographical account of a thieving expedition, Ian’s quarry a copy of the ultra-sleazy Razzle pin-up magazine. He’d gone out in his ‘yellow jersey’ to South Street Romford Shopping Arcade. Much detail was contained in the three-minute opus. With keen perception Ian captured the shopkeeper’s coy reference to the merchandise: ‘I think you’ve taken one of my books.’ The observation was spot on; ‘one of my books’ was exactly how the purveyor of ‘top-shelf’ titles such as Razzle would refer to his titillating merchandise, glossing over the true content. ‘It’s not a magazine, for God’s sake, it’s a book!’ As in ‘The Upminster Kid’, the imagery of ‘Razzle in My Pocket’ placed Ian in a geographical and social context his fans would come to appreciate. He was from the street and of the street. He was single-handedly inventing British ‘street credibility’.
‘Razzle in My Pocket’ would later appear as the b-side of Ian’s first solo record, the seminal ‘Sex and Drugs and Rock and Roll’. Its groove had been hatched at a late Kilburns practice session. ‘Jenner had sent us to Headley Grange for a week’s rehearsal,’ Ian recalled. ‘We went there, Irish, Malcolm, Ted, Chaz and myself. We wrote a few songs. I went down early one morning and started playing Malcolm’s drums, a straight-down-the-line groove. Behind me, I heard Chaz on the piano, playing the “Sex and Drugs” riff. I heard what I wanted to hear, what I’d been waiting to hear for years – “Superstition”, that area of groove.’