For a time our auspicious success afforded us some privileges in the corridors and cloisters of Woolton Hall. We had drinks bought for us, we had rugby full-backs who offered to roadie for us, and when Joe Devaney and a burly Cornishman called Phil Petherick collected everyone’s underpants from the laundry room and put them in an oven pre-heated to gas mark seven, he left ours well alone. At least, I like to think this was a generous-hearted gesture and not just a general fear of going anywhere near Phil’s paisley monstrosities for a practical joke or any other purpose. Our elevated status did not, however, avert the continued culinary bombardment, and only the following week I missed a tutorial on the metaphysical poet Andrew Marvell after being dealt a blow in the eye in a freak flying-rissole incident. To a degree we revelled in our new-found popularity, but there was a yearning to form a real band, one that would earn the respect of our peers, who would come to see us without waiting for us to get our packets out.
In the meantime we continued to go and see every band we could. We saw the Clash, the Damned, the Vibrators, 999, Eddie and the Hot Rods, X-ray Spex, Wire, Stiff Little Fingers, Penetration, Slaughter and the Dogs, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Gang of Four and Buzzcocks, as well as the American contingent led by the Ramones, Talking Heads, Blondie, Television and honorary punk icon Jonathan Richman. The bands were of varying quality, some carrying the suspicious smell of cabaret, but the collective belief and spirit of the audience was what made the atmosphere so electric. Here were gigs where the fans were not just expected to turn up and sit in silent worship at the feet of some seriously wealthy prog-rock plonker, but were actually a part of the performance itself in the clothes they wore, the dances they executed and the opinions they expounded. There was a sense of democracy to it, a feeling that this was our revolution and we all had a share in it. I have no real experience of rave culture, but I imagine its devotees in the early days were thinking along similar lines: this is ours, this is now and things will never be the same again.
During that first summer vacation from university Phil returned to Poulton-le-Fylde, where he spent the season renewing friendships with his old muckers from the now-defunct Warlock and learning to create hideous glass-blown swans in a kiosk on Blackpool’s Golden Mile. For some reason, whoever designed these charmless knick-knacks had decided that each blighted creature should carry a posy of miniature glass flowers between its folded wings. Even when experienced artisans were on duty this looked mighty peculiar, but when Wammo was on the production line the unfortunate beasts looked like a rare disease had manifested itself in bulbous growths on their backs. Mystifyingly, these elephant swans sold in substantial numbers to holidaying grannies, which proves either that senile dementia was much more common than originally estimated in those days, or that pensioners at the seaside will buy any old crap after five bottles of milk stout.
I returned to Bolton, where family connections had provided me with a plum job shifting crates of empty beer bottles round a cockroach-infested warehouse from six-thirty in the morning for £29 a week. What it is to have friends in high places; in this case the charge-hand at Cambrian Soft Drinks (empties division), Graham Smedley. Little did my fellow toilers know of my deeply privileged introduction into their midst. I must have leap-frogged at least two partially sighted retards to secure that position, which just goes to show that the old boy network really does exist.
Most of my esteemed fellow workers were hatchet-faced harridans who could swallow lighted cigarettes, or missing links who had tattoos everywhere bar the palms of their hands, and only then because the tattooist couldn’t get the needle through the thick hair growing there. However, there was one bloke who talked to me at tea break without giving the impression that all students were a perfectly legitimate target for mindless violence. His name was Alan, and even though he had hair down to his waist he knew all about the punk movement. It also turned out that he was a drummer who’d been knocking some ideas around with a guitarist and a bass player, but had been unable to find a singer. After hearing of my vocal exploits with Ridiculous and Jones, he had no hesitation in inviting me to one of their rehearsals. Once again, fate intervened in my journey along the rocky road to rock’n’roll anonymity.
The house Alan shared with his elderly mother was a small terraced affair with no distinguishing features at all save the noise coming out of it. As I turned into their street I could hear him pummelling his kit, which must have made him about as popular as that thoughtless jackass who lives diagonally opposite to me and who insists on mowing his lawn at eight-thirty on a Saturday morning. I was let into the house by Alan’s pocket-sized mum, a simple woman in complicated knitwear, who was evidently spending the afternoon watching a Cary Grant film on television with the volume turned up to eleven. Whether she became hard of hearing before or after her son took up the drums I never discovered.
On entering the back room and witnessing the scenes within, something struck me immediately. It was the smell. If you put three blokes in a small room and force them into physical activity you will without fail find that they produce an aroma that will take the edge off the strongest appetite. Many fans fantasise about what it must be like in the dressing-room with their idols after the concert. Take it from me, it stinks. You might be tormented Thom Yorke of Radiohead, the soaring voice of pale and sensitive youth the world over, but your feet will still empty a post-gig meet-and-greet. It may seem quite a leap from Alan Hulton’s back parlour to Thom Yorke’s insoles, but all I’m saying is that we all sweat and, under certain circumstances, we all pong. Except for Michael Jackson, of course, who’s had all his bodily secretions disconnected by a private surgeon in Beverly Hills.
As my nostrils adjusted to this pheromonal onslaught, I narrowly avoided losing my lunch on the well-worn Axminster. It was a closely fought contest and my digestive system proved a worthy opponent, but I came through on points in the final round. Having thus recovered some equilibrium in the olfactory department, I was then able to absorb the aural experience and it was apparent that Alan Hulton was a genius on the drums. It turned out that he’d spent years drumming along to Yes and Genesis records and the resultant clinical depression had to be balanced against his virtuoso command of his instrument. He could play things with one bodily appendage that I couldn’t manage with five.
The guitarist I recognised as a bloke from school called Seth Mould. He was a couple of years older than me, but had balded prematurely due to a bad nerves problem. He had also grown a huge, bristling moustache due to a bad taste problem. With his large square glasses, shapeless grey slacks and weedy roll-up cigarettes, he looked like someone’s decrepit grandad who’d won a Gibson SG in a competition. Like Alan, it was obvious straight away that he was a consummate musician. He knew every chord that had ever been invented and a few more which scientists were still working on in underground bunkers in New Mexico. When he dropped comments like ‘Yeah, I think that’s a B flat thirteenth’ into the conversation I think he was trying to blind me with science, which wasn’t difficult as anything beyond E, A and B was quantum physics to me.
In stark contrast to the ease with which Seth and Alan appeared to be producing wonderful sounds from the guitar and drums, the generously proportioned bass player seemed to be coming off worst in a strenuous bout of wrestling with a Burns Black Bison, producing a series of alarming farty noises in the process. This in itself didn’t surprise me, because let’s face it, that’s what bass players do. What astonished me was the identity of this man mountain. It was Garth! What do you mean, who? Garth! An original founder member of Manchester punk heavyweights Buzzcocks. The man was practically royalty.
Over that afternoon I began to sing a few of the songs that Seth Mould had written, while throwing in a few vocal mannerisms I’d borrowed from Andy Partridge of XTC. XTC were a power-pop, jazz-punk foursome from Swindon who proved to be the common ground on which young punks like me could share a deeply meaningful relationship with old musos like Seth and Alan. Phil and I had been
to see XTC at Rafters, located perversely in a basement. I never quite worked out if this was an elaborate joke on the part of the owners (they had, after all, gone to the lengths of installing false roof beams down there), or a flaw in the design concept due to the management team being monumentally stupid or completely off their faces. Perhaps they had another venue in a far-off town like Oldham located in a light, airy loft space at the top of a refurbished warehouse complex called the Cellar or the Dungeon or the Crypt.
Anyway, one night Phil and I had descended the staircase to the attic to watch XTC do their stuff, and some stuff it was. Terry Chambers and Colin Moulding were rock solid as a rhythm section, over which Andy Partridge and Barry Andrews strangled all manner of alarming sounds from throat, guitar and keyboards. Andrews, balding and besuited, attacked a wheezing old organ that looked like it might be running off Camping Gaz. It was on a small collapsible frame and could have been an optional extra on a particularly lavish caravan.
I have no idea why, but the devices available on the modern caravan never cease to fascinate me. If you’re ever on a camping holiday, which, to be honest, is a situation no sane person should ever find themselves in, a good way of passing one of your endless, drizzly days with much hilarity is to casually stroll up to a dumpy caravanner with chin-strap beard and bumbag and say, ‘Nice caravan.’ This, of course, like The Les Dennis Laughter Show, is a contradiction in terms, but it will swiftly gain the confidence of your chosen victim, especially when followed immediately by the leading question, ‘And I bet it’s got all the mod cons, hasn’t it?’ Like inviting a Jehovah’s witness into a house, this will be a signal for him to show you everything he’s got and explain it at great length.
‘Yes, this is the combined butane-powered rotisserie and curling tongs set, which is very handy for cooking a lovely chicken before the wife does her hair if we’re off to play bingo in the clubhouse.’
‘Very interesting, and what’s that little wonder?’
‘Well, that’s the portable, stowaway, fibreglass-resin, battery-operated mini-television and strip-light vanity unit, which is very handy for the wife to do her make-up while watching Emmerdale if we’re off to a beetle drive in the clubhouse.’
‘Amazing, and pray tell, my fascinating new acquaintance, what is this device in the broom cupboard here?’
‘Ah, now that’s the fully plunge-operational, pastel-shaded Tupperware chemical bidet, which is very handy for––’
‘Don’t tell me . . . the wife to wash her bottom in after she’s been to the lavatory if you’re off to bore people rigid in the clubhouse. Well, lovely talking to you, but now I really must go back and dig a cesspit before retiring to my damp nylon sleeping-bag cocoon to read a guide-rope catalogue by a flickering gas lamp with the radiance of your average glow-worm. Happy holidays.’
So much for Barry Andrews’ organ. On guitar and vocals, Andy Partridge was a man possessed. He obviously knew as many chords as Seth Mould, but he played them with real ferocity and I remember remarking that it was amazing that he didn’t break more strings:
‘Those strings must be made of steel, eh, Wammo?’
‘Guitar strings are made of steel, Mark.’
‘There you are, then.’
What impressed me most of all about Partridge, though, was his voice and his trousers. He performed vocal gymnastics the like of which I’ve never heard; swooping, screeching, growling and generally ripping and stripping the song until it was practically unrecognisable. Their memorable rendition of ‘All Along the Watchtower’ would accordingly open with ‘The-e-e-eee-ouuuu-there mu-u-u-st beeeeee – grrrrr – some wowowowahway out of hiya-hiya-howee-hubba-hubba-here’ or guttural approximations to that effect. Equally impressive were his strides, which were white with lines of black arrows pointing up the legs showing the general ‘this way to the grotto’ direction to his groin. What a man.
If Alan Hulton’s back room, with its polystyrene ceiling tiles and collection of wall-mounted commemorative thimbles (who commemorates something with a thimble?), lacked some of the atmosphere of the subterranean skylight club Rafters, then it certainly didn’t show in the way I set about the wholesale bastardisation of Seth Mould’s lyrics. One song was called ‘Linda Cartwright’, the chorus of which constituted a four times repetition of the line ‘Linda Cartwright – she can’t even play the part right’. After I’d Partridged it, the result was more like ‘L-L-L-Linduuuuh C-C-C-C-Cartwrooooooowt – she ca – she ca – she cacacacacow can’t even p-p-p-p-play the part-t-t-t rieeeeeeeeeeeeght’.
Mystifyingly, Alan, Seth and even the right honourable Garth decided that this was the missing piece to their musical jigsaw, and with judgement like that it’s no surprise that they never quite cracked the global market. To celebrate our blissful union we adjourned to the pub for last orders, where our thickset bassist ordered two pints of Guinness and two double whiskies. ‘That’s nice,’ I thought, or, as it was just after rehearsals, ‘Th-th-th-a-a-a-t-t-ssss nnnnnnnnn-niccccce, he might be the famous one, but he’ll still get a round in.’ Alas, it transpired that this was his usual last order for personal consumption only. The rest of us got halves of dark mild and we retired to a leatherette banquette to discuss tactics, at which point Seth dropped not only his bumper bag of pork scratchings but also his bombshell.
‘Look, lads, it’s all sounding great, but it’s only fair to tell you that my nerves won’t allow me to play on stage. I can still be in the band and write the songs, but you’ll have to find someone else to do it live.’
There was a stunned silence before we recovered our poise and offered sensitive support, encouragement and understanding:
‘Well, perhaps if you sat down at the back it would be OK.’
‘Maybe you could sit off-stage behind the PA.’
‘Come on, you big bald woofter, just get your prick out of the custard and get on with it.’
Despite these words of comfort, he was adamant he wouldn’t play in front of an audience. Unless we were planning to make a habit of performing to empty halls, and God knows we would come pretty close, this meant we had a vacancy to fill.
‘Do you know any guitarists, Mark?’
Bearing in mind that all the songs Wammo had played up to this point consisted of either E, A and B, or C, F and G, the way he reacted to Seth’s casual requests for ‘F sharp major sevenths’, ‘E flat suspended fourths’ and, on one notable occasion, ‘a B flat seventh augmented ninth’ showed real spunk. ‘Never mind all that bollocks,’ he’d ejaculate, ‘just show me where to put my fingers.’ Calling ourselves She Cracked after the pulsating Jonathan Richman tune, we quickly knocked together a set of angular originals which combined the prevailing attack of the new wave with every chord in the book. When our mates came to see us for the first time at the Oak House Student Flats bar, they were stunned: ‘Christ almighty,’ enthused Rhys Davies, ‘you really aren’t that shit, are you?’ Woolton’s noted Rasputin look-alike Nige Douglas was no less effusive when he said, ‘For a bunch of dickheads it was OK, that.’ Even Joe Devaney was moved to say, ‘Jeez, dudes, that bitched my ass,’ or something similar, which we gladly accepted as a compliment.
Basking in these and other eulogies, we really felt like we were on our way. Here at last was a band to be proud of with real presence, genuine energy, cracking songs, a bona fide punk celebrity and a drummer who was a true world-beater when he wasn’t drunk or suffering an asthma attack. The occupant of the drum stool’s ability might not seem that important to you, but, believe me, there’s never been a truly great band that didn’t have a great drummer. The only exception to this is the Beatles, as it’s fair to say that Ringo Starr wasn’t the best drummerin the world. It’s equally fair to say he wasn’t the best drummer in the Beatles. Alan Hulton, by way of contrast, was a prince among percussionists, and all we would have to do as we toured the world’s ice-hockey stadia was keep an inhaler handy and the cans of Kestrel locked in the fridge until after the show, and we’d be the only
serious competition that Joy Division would lose sleep over.
Tragically, if predictably, it didn’t work out that way. Looking back now, I can’t believe how na?¨ve we were. We genuinely thought that desperate A & R men would accost us backstage at the Russell Club, where we’d shared the bill with Biting Tongues, and beg us to sign world-wide for ten albums. We really did believe that when we sent tapes to record companies and radio stations, people would listen to them and recognise the true value of what we were doing. We thought that a two-line review in the student newspaper that read, ‘She Cracked at the Solem Bar were on decent enough form before their drummer had to go outside to catch his breath,’ would make the national music press sit up and take notice.
Gradually, as with most bands, the realisation that you’re not going to set the world alight dawned, and rehearsals became less frequent and more torpid. The end came in the glamorous surroundings of Tyldesley Labour and Bowling Club, where Garth’s mum and dad were employed as bar stewards. One night we all went down there, primarily because the beer was cheap. After ten pints or so, we were suddenly overcome by the irresistible urge to take to the stage, so Garth accosted the resident drummer Vern and asked him if we could borrow the equipment, and when I say asked, I mean he said, ‘Piss off, Vern, we’re on now.’
Showbusiness - The Diary of a Rock 'n' Roll Nobody Page 9