Hell Is Round the Corner

by Tricky

  Nana Violet always encouraged me to go out as late as I wanted. I never had anyone saying, ‘No! You’ve got to be in bed!’ Whitley was the same, so from the age of fifteen the two of us would go out all night. None of that, ‘You’ve got to be back at eleven o’clock,’ like some of our mates had. Maybe that’s another reason why we gravitated to each other because, out of all the bunch of us, me and Whitley were the tightest.

  It was the same when I stayed at auntie Marlow’s. I don’t think it’s because they knew what we were up to, which was increasingly going out late to hear music after hours, but they always encouraged me to be independent. I can even remember one Christmas Day when I was living with my nan, when I went out on the street after we’d eaten the turkey or whatever. I used to hate Christmas Day, because once you’ve eaten your Christmas dinner it’s so fucking boring. I went to hang out on the street corner and smoke a spliff, and I was the only person there, because all my mates had to stay in and do Christmas with their family. But my nan was like, ‘Alright, go on!’

  Whitley and I started smoking weed when we were fifteen, and my first musical experiences were with him. At the same time as we were out housebreaking with Nicky Tippett, we discovered the Saxon Studio International, a sound system from Lewisham in south London who came to Bristol regularly because of the Jamaican population there.

  To start with, we didn’t even know what they looked like. They would make a cassette in London, then that cassette would go all around England. You’d get a tape off someone, then you’d pass it on to someone else. It was literally word of mouth, and we felt like we’d found the coolest thing around. We’d constantly listen to those tapes, full of the latest early-80s dancehall rhythms from Jamaica, with them chatting over the top.

  Me and Whitley were obsessed. We eventually saw Saxon when they came to Bristol, and then we’d check out all the other reggae sound systems, like Jah Shaka and Sir Coxsone Outernational to see if they were as good, but Saxon always had the edge on them. For us, they had the best MCs, and they were renowned for their ‘fast chat’ style.

  I doubt that anyone involved made money out of what they were doing. Smiley Culture was the one who went on to be famous – he got in the charts in ’84 with ‘Police Officer’. A couple of years after that, Tippa Irie almost made it as well, and also Maxi Priest, who was more of a pop-reggae singer, made a load of albums after his association with them.

  There was a lot of personal tragedy within Saxon: Tippa Irie’s sister got murdered in some gangster thing, and then, in 2011, Smiley Culture died during a police raid on his house, although the inquest said he committed suicide – stabbed himself with a knife. I think he was quite a notorious guy.

  For our part, we’d be smoking sensimilla and listening to those guys’ latest cassette, and that really sent me another big step further along my musical path. We became obsessed with Saxon, and sound systems in general, and everything me and Whitley did – all the robbing and stuff we did to get money – was so that we could go out and hear music. We didn’t do it to buy a flash car, or a TV, or trendy clothes, like other kids do. We basically hustled money just so we could go out and party, and it was virtually every night of the week. In a way, I think that’s what kept us out of real trouble, because our goal was different from everyone else’s. Listening to Saxon was where music really started to take over my life and send it in another direction.

  One time in those mid-teen years, we were on our way to rob some-where – a warehouse, if memory serves – and I realised I’d forgotten my gloves, so I took my shoes off, and put my socks on my hands so I wouldn’t leave fingerprints. I think back now, like, ‘What kind of brain is that?’ What is going on there? It certainly wasn’t going anywhere up the ladder.

  On nights out, we used to walk everywhere, from Totterdown or Whitley’s place in Knowle West to a club in town, and then all the way back again afterwards. You’re talking a walk of often an hour or more, but that was nothing to us, walking these distances. You would get into mischief while you were going there, it was just part of the fun, so I never really felt like I needed to learn to drive.

  Our primary objective in life was to hustle for money for the essentials of our lifestyle: some weed, a couple of drinks, and then a bit of food when you leave the club, because then you will be starving. We used to go to this place, Slix – a dirty, greasy-chicken place: we’d come out of the club, go to Slix, then walk home, even if it took an hour and a half. That was a good end to the night.

  We didn’t go to the commercial clubs in the centre of Bristol that often, only on the rare occasion when there was nothing better to do. There were always fights in the centre of Bristol, between guys from different areas of the city, especially around the taxi rank after closing. With a lot of those more normal townie clubs, we couldn’t actually get in anyway. You had to have a white shirt on, and proper shoes, so we used to go to the reggae clubs, or illegal blues or shebeens, or pubs, or this club near Temple Meads station called The Rockpile. That place was on three floors: bikers and Hell’s Angels on one floor, Knowle Westers on the next, and Hartcliffe people on the other.

  There was so much violence in there the doorman had a crossbow behind the counter. One of the doormen was an older guy from Knowle West, called David Kissack. I probably only met him four or five times, but he knew my cousin Mark well, so we’d have no problem getting in. Before it changed its name to The Rockpile, my uncles used to go there. I can’t remember what the music was like, because it wasn’t a place you went for the music. You’d go there to have a late drink and hang out – a horrible place, rough as guts, but I didn’t see it as rough at the time. It was just where I’d see loads of people from my area.

  Sometimes me and Whitley would just meet up, smoke a spliff, walk somewhere, and see what club we could get into. Sometimes you might get in, but sometimes you might stand outside for hours, not getting let in, then just walk home again. We were always very curious. ‘Oh, there’s a new club? Let’s go and try and get in!’ And if we didn’t get in there, we would have a bottle of Cannai, smoke a spliff and stand around outside, and probably have a right laugh doing it.

  The funny thing is, sometimes we’d be out and about, maybe coming out of somewhere at two in the morning, and we’d run into my grandad Thaws doing ‘Tarzan the High Priest’ out on the street. Grandad would be playing all the old reggae classics from the ’60s – ska, rocksteady and early reggae – and while that was blasting out, he’d also be cooking Jamaican street food. He would bless a goat before he killed it, and all that old-school shit. When he was younger, he played in clubs obviously, but I know him from the times where I’d come out of a bar or a club, and he would be right there, set up on the street. You could buy some food off him, and you’d stand there eating and listening to reggae.

  He didn’t get on the mic, he’d just be selecting. The guy was a legend. I didn’t really know that at the time, but these days you can actually Google him – Google my grandad! People would write articles about him. Until I saw him the first time, I hadn’t even made the connection that sound systems were in my culture. It wasn’t like me and Whitley had been led there by our Jamaican dads, though; it was just what we naturally gravitated to.

  Obviously, as a kid you like girls. You’re young, there’s girls – that’s normal. But we went to clubs because of the music, and before long we’d be following the music out of town, to London, Birmingham or Manchester. We were obsessed.

  The first time I wore a dress for a night out, I was only fifteen. It wasn’t exactly that I wanted to look like a girl. I wanted to look like those girls in the video for Malcolm McLaren’s ‘Buffalo Gals’. Through Saxon and some of the other sound systems, we’d been exposed to early hip-hop, and ‘Buffalo Gals’ went a step further, into the charts, so everyone was talking about it.

  Malcolm McLaren looked like an idiot to me, but the little kids body-popping and the little girls in the dresses with the black make-up across their eyes –
to me, they were the coolest ever. So that was the kind of look I was going for – not so much a cross-dressing female thing, but as an early hip-hop thing, in my head at least.

  When we’d got ready to go out, my nan was just, ‘What is he like? Look at that silly bugger!’ She hardly batted an eyelid. Then, me and Whitley went into town and had a great night. We got the bus into town – not in a car or anything – and just went to some bar in the city centre.

  For a guy to wear a dress into the centre of Bristol – I wouldn’t advise that. I definitely wouldn’t advise a young black kid to do that, not in the 1980s. Looking back, I think, ‘You were fucking mad,’ because I certainly wouldn’t do that now. And we didn’t go to an exclusive club, like Soho House or somewhere, but some bar where street guys go to have a fight. Apparently, I once described my actions as ‘a mixture of nosebleed attitude and not taking myself seriously’. It was just a stupid thing to do, really.

  Over the years, I think I developed the outlook that feminine men are more interesting, or more intelligent, than masculine men. To be really tough, you’ve got to have a bit of ignorance or narrow-mindedness about you. For instance, someone who is a proper fighter doesn’t think they can lose. They narrow things down to this tunnel vision. That’s why I’m not a tough guy, and not a good fighter, because I don’t have tunnel vision.

  To me at the time, going out in a frock was just a recipe for a good night out. Everything was fun, everything was adventure.

  Very early on, we cottoned on to Glastonbury festival. I went every year, I think, between the ages of fifteen and nineteen. It was very different then, back in the mid-80s. It wasn’t all about the music being beamed out on live TV – it was a hippy and squat-punky kind of thing, all about the whole atmosphere of the place, the weekend away, and the vibe.

  We’d either get a lift down there with friends, or bunk the fare on the train, or hitchhike. We always jumped the fence. We never paid to get in – ever. There was always a way in there! Then we’d walk around, drop a microdot, sit in a field tripping out and watching people, and then maybe walk around some more and accidentally see a band. Back then, you didn’t know who was playing, but we’d try and search out bands we’d never heard of, and which weren’t famous. It wasn’t all about going to the main stage and seeing whoever the biggest artist of the time was.

  You’d be stumbling around hearing interesting music coming from an outlying tent, so you’d go in and end up listening for two hours to someone you’d never heard of before. Then you’d sit by a fire outside and watch the fire-eaters, surrounded by all these weird sculptures. It was a real outdoorsy, alternative thing.

  I can remember seeing big reggae bands like Black Uhuru, Burning Spear and Aswad, but even then the productions weren’t as big. A band was just onstage playing music, end of story, without all the lights and the smoke and the dancers.

  One time I went with my cousins Michelle and Anthony, who was my uncle Tony’s son, and me and Michelle were watching Aswad, I think, when suddenly we notice Anthony with his face painted, dancing around smoking a spliff on the main stage. In them days, you could get to the side of the stage if you had a bit of hustle about you. I can remember getting backstage on the main stage a few times back then, but try doing that nowadays! It was a much simpler operation then, less corporate, more hippyish and disorganised.

  The drugs were different, too. It was weed and microdots and maybe a few beers. Now it’s cocaine and ecstasy, like a huge club. It doesn’t feel like the Glastonbury I used to go to any more.

  You could say me and Whitley were moving into a more alternative lifestyle, and back in Totterdown, not far from my nan’s, there was a squat where we used to buy weed or hashish, and hang out, smoking, chatting and listening to music. From the people who lived there, we learnt all about squatting, and how they’d hear by word of mouth about a squat that had become available in another town up country, and literally just pack their stuff up, hitch over there, and move straight in. Coming from Knowle West, it was pretty mind-blowing.

  One day, the guys in Totterdown said, ‘Oh, there’s this squat in Birmingham,’ and me and Whitley hitched up there when I was about seventeen, and we ended up living in this place in Moseley for about nine months. A big part of it was, there was a huge reggae scene up there, so we’d be partying the whole time, checking out their bands and sound systems, and doing a bit of work every now and then to get by.

  We’d hook up with Whitley’s brother, Mervyn, who took us to an illegal blues in Handsworth, home of Steel Pulse. There was another blues up there, which was right by Burger Bar, where the infamous Burger Bar Boys gang were from. Obviously, coming from Bristol, we didn’t know any of that was going on.

  On the squat scene, you’d meet all these interesting characters. We met this guy who’d travelled all around the world, and I’d never met anyone like that before. It ain’t that I didn’t want to travel, I just didn’t know what travel was. I didn’t know you could go off to South America. This guy Gary was always barefoot and he would tell us all these places he’d been to, where he was sleeping on beaches and stuff. I didn’t even know you could do that! I didn’t know you could go to a different country and sleep on a beach, so me and Whitley used to sit there and listen to all his stories with our mouths open.

  He would come back to England, live in a squat, work for three months or so, save his money, then fuck off to Africa or Israel. The only reason he worked was so he could get money to travel. That was his life: travelling. Then he would come back to England for two months, do some scaffolding or whatever, save all his cash up and then be away again on his adventures.

  We met a lot of travellers, like this bloke from Peru. I’d never met anyone from Peru before and, believe me, he looked very Peruvian – old-school! I didn’t even know where Peru was, so the squats really broadened my outlook – not just music, but life. I’ve been all over South America now, but back then I didn’t know that a place called Peru even existed. I was a council estate kid, so to be in a squat all of a sudden with a guy from Peru was totally mind-blowing.

  When my grandmother died, she had never left England. She had never been on a plane in her life, and she died at eighty-eight, so I had no business on a plane. I never had a passport, and neither did Whitley. We weren’t even signing on, I don’t think. We always heard that, if the police are looking for you, they’ll catch you when you’re signing on – so we avoided it altogether. We had no passport or ID, because you didn’t have to have it when we were growing up, and we didn’t need it either. It was a totally different world.

  We noticed that we didn’t meet any other young black guys squatting, and living that lifestyle. We can’t remember ever bumping into any other black guys, in all the squats we ended up living in. To us, the people there were very different. If you came from the reggae culture community, this was a different world. We used to see a couple of dread guys who went to squat parties in London, but they weren’t actually squatters. I don’t think black kids squatted. There is black culture and there is white culture, and squatting was white culture, but perhaps coming from Knowle West we hadn’t seen it like that before.

  Whitley was my main mucker. It was like, if you see Whitley, you see me. Whitley is black but, like me, he’s very white as well. He is very Knowle West. We had the black culture, and we used to go to all the reggae, but we were very white as well. I’ve got black friends who say to me, you act just like a white boy. Whitley is like that, too – very white English.

  We started chasing music all over the country. We’d rustle up some cash by selling a bit of weed, maybe, then get up to London or Manchester, to check out a sound system, like when King Tubby’s came to the UK, or to see Saxon or Coxsone. A lot of what we got up to in these teenage years, I’ve forgotten. I guess I was too busy having a good time, but Whitley has a better memory than me: he knows where we went, and who was really around.

  WHITLEY ALLEN: In my teens, I’d go to the football, Bristol Cit
y matches, with these white Knowle West guys I knew, and the reason I stopped was, they were making monkey chants. I was like, ‘What?’ That’s when I realised, this ain’t for me. Your eyes are opened, and you realise they have a real mob mentality. Me and Adrian, we’d categorise Knowle Westers as hyenas – they travelled in packs, whereas we both travelled singly, and that scares them because they’re used to the crowd. I think that’s how I met him, and he met me, because we were curious to go wherever they weren’t going.

  We didn’t follow any code. Our fashion sense was just what was good to us. He did skinhead when he first got to Totterdown. He was hanging around with this other guy called Rob Claridge, who I ended up knocking about with, and Rob was a skinhead. Two-Tone was coming in, and rude boy, so we were all going through that phase, but we only realised after the fact that rude boy originated in Jamaica. We just liked that look, then it’s like, ‘Why am I drawn to that? Oh, that’s why – it’s my culture.’

  We also didn’t really connect why we then moved on to the sound systems: it was our childhood. My mum brought me up, because my dad wasn’t around: she is full Jamaican, so it was a Jamaican household. Being in Knowle West, all my mates were white, but reggae music was always being played, and obviously Adrian’s grandad did a sound system, so we naturally gravitated towards that scene, then you start branching out.

  We’d see Saxon all the time: they’d play quite often at the Inkworks (now known as Kuumba), which was just off Stokes Croft, and Malcolm X, the deconsecrated church in City Road that got turned into a community centre. Then there was Sir Coxsone, and local sounds like Inkerman. We’d see Daddy Freddy, the ragamuffin toaster who moved over from Jamaica, and went into the record books as the world’s fastest rapper – all those sorts of people.

  Reggae was just going into dancehall, but we were wherever the music was at. This is 1984, ’85, so hip-hop was just coming in fresh – if it was a reggae night, we would go to a reggae night, and if it was hip-hop, soul, funk, then we’re going there.