Record Play Pause

by Stephen Morris

  Why do they call it ‘musical differences’ anyway? It seems like band splits are rarely anything to do with music. It’s the people who create and perform the music that cause all the trouble.

  The great drummer shortage of the late seventies was a troubling time.

  So, thanks to the wonderful lo-fi publication Shy Talk, the name Warsaw had entered my head. It had been checked and filed, and that was more or less that. I didn’t really fancy the prospect of another don’t-call-us audition.

  A couple of weeks after the Television gig I spotted an advert in the Record Mirror. It was a bit of a second division music paper. Melody Maker, the NME and Sounds were the main ones, and I thought reading Record Mirror was a bit desperate or lightweight at the time. Not something you owned up to reading willingly. But being inquisitive and enthusiastic, I used to read all the papers, including the motleys such as ZigZag, Creem and Let It Rock. It was the only way to keep up with what was happening.

  I enjoyed looking hopefully through Melody Maker’s musicians-wanted ads – ‘Drummer for hot new band with record company interest – must have own gear and transport’ – with stars in my eyes, but the reality was I’d pretty much resigned myself to it all being a bit out of my reach. Since the petering out of the Folk Band Whose Name I Don’t Remember, I’d concluded that I would forever be a recreational drummer, making a racket in my dad’s bedroom. But it turned out punk would change all that.

  I wanted to do something, instead of skiving and lurking around Macclesfield, but the Record Mirror ad wasn’t for a musician. Simple and straightforward, it just said ‘Fancy a career as a music journalist? The Record Mirror is looking for new writers. Simply write a review of a record and send it to us. The lucky winner will get a chance to become a writer for Record Mirror.’

  I had recently started and then swiftly abandoned a fanzine of my own. It went by the pretentious name of Fatal Errors and was doomed by the office Roneo printer; it wasn’t really up to the job, but that might have been because I didn’t really know how to work it. My efforts ground to a halt at page 2, with the machine spewing out a mass of inky, illegible pages as I cranked its handle. But my journalistic pretensions were not going to be deterred by a complicated machine. Seeing the Record Mirror advert, I thought here’s an opportunity to become a journalist. You have to remember that, back then, to us avid readers, the writers were almost as interesting as the bands they wrote about.

  Johnny Rotten had said (at least according to Caroline Coon’s book, 1988), ‘Everyone is so fed up with the old way. We are constantly being dictated to by musical old farts out of university who’ve got rich parents. They look down on us and treat us like fools and expect us to pay POUNDS to see them while we entertain them and not the other way around.’

  So I thought, as a writer, I could be an antidote to the old farts and I too could be punk. OK, my parents were reasonably well off, but I had evaded university and therefore a life of musical dictatorship quite successfully. And I was not up for entertaining anyone, especially students.

  I quickly bashed out my thoughts on Elvis Costello’s My Aim is True, which had only just been released, hoping to impress with my up-to-the-minuteness. I slipped it in with the office post and, after a few days, forgot all about it.

  On another baking hot day of 1977’s endless summer, I was trying to spin out my lunchbreak for as long as possible and set out in search of Macclesfield’s largest Cornish pasties. These could only be had (so legend had it) from the pie shop near the train station. (In Macclesfield, pie shops were very high on the cultural agenda; they still are, for that matter.) Pausing for a look at the gear for sale in Jones’s music shop on the way down the slope of Queen Victoria Street to the pie emporium, I spotted a new handwritten advert in the window.

  It said, ‘Drummer Wanted for Local New Wave Band Warsaw Phone Ian XXXXXX’. There was that name again – combined with word ‘Local’ and a Macc phone number, it was too good an opportunity to miss. It was fate, kismet – something of that nature. I made up my mind to have another shot at glory and call that number. I scribbled it on the back of my hand in biro and pushed on to the pastie place.

  I called as soon as I got back to my junk-cluttered desk. Ian, the author of the advert, answered.

  ‘Hi, my name’s Steve. I’m ringing about the drummer-wanted ad in Jones’s window,’ I said apprehensively.

  ‘Right, great.’ He sounded very affable. I don’t know why but I was expecting this conversation to be difficult, awkward or at least to move quickly to ‘No, it’s all right, mate, we’re fixed up, ta’ and that would be that, but it didn’t.

  He explained the band hadn’t been going for that long, they’d done a few gigs and he’d got a tape of some songs he could lend me if I wanted to pop round to his house that evening.

  His house? His parents’, surely?

  He said that the rest of the group – Peter and Bernard (Did I hear that right? Sounded more like a folk duo than punk, but who was I to question?) – were on holiday in France till the end of the following week.

  I asked where he lived.

  ‘Barton Street, off Park Lane,’ he replied.

  ‘Just down the road from me then, I’m on Ivy Lane.’ Realising that this didn’t sound like an address with much street cred, I added, ‘Close to the Weston Estate end.’

  ‘Oh, Debbie’s parents live near the Weston. I know it pretty well. Pop round about teatime, half-sixish, and I’ll play you the cassette.’

  ‘Right, half-six it is. See you then.’

  I settled down to an afternoon of dodging work and letting the monster pastie go down.

  Six o’clock rolled round and, not wanting to be late, I scrounged the use of my mother’s Austin Maxi and set off down the road for Barton Street.

  Ian’s house was a double-fronted end terrace on the corner. I parked up and knocked on the door.

  ‘Hi, I’m Steve, the drummer.’

  ‘Ooh hiya, Steve, come in, come in. This is Debbie, Debbie this is Steve. He’s come about the advert in Jones’s.’

  He had blue eyes and a haircut like Augustus Caesar.

  ‘That was quick,’ said Debbie.

  ‘I know. Come in here, Steve,’ showing me into the blue room on the left of the hall. It seemed that he genuinely did live in his own house with his wife, which was very grown-up. ‘The record player’s in here. What sort of stuff are you into? Would you like a cup of tea? We’ve just ate, it’s no bother.’

  We sat on the sofa and Ian offered a packet of Marlboro.

  ‘Want a fag?’

  ‘No thanks, I’ve just given up.’ This was true. I hadn’t had a smoke for two weeks and was feeling quite proud of myself.

  ‘Go on,’ he insisted good-naturedly, ‘one won’t make any difference.’

  ‘Well, I don’t suppose it will, will it? Just one, mind.’

  I am very easily led.

  I gave him an edited CV of my drumming career. Leaving out cabaret and folk bands, it was basically, ‘I’ve got some drums and I think I can play them.’

  He told me about the record stall he used to have on the market, prompting a game of what’s the rarest album you’ve ever seen/bought/sold?

  We talked about bands – Bowie, the Velvets, New York Dolls, Iggy – and books we’d read – William Burroughs, Ballard etc. – and found we had a lot in common. He gave me a brief history of the band, that they’d already done gigs with Johnny Thunders and Penetration (Warsaw were credited on the flyer as ‘Stiff Kittens’ but soon changed their name). I was impressed. He put the tape on and we listened.

  ‘It’s not a great recording.’

  I thought the tape sounded OK. I’d heard worse. It sounded a lot better than the cassette recordings of Will’s band.

  Warsaw’s origins lay in the now mythical gig of 4 June 1976: the Sex Pistols’ first gig at Manchester’s Lesser Free Trade Hall. Not so much a gig, more an epiphany. Most of the numerically impossible number of people who claim to
have been in that tiny audience were righteously inspired to go forth and form a band in tribute or something. I wouldn’t know. I wasn’t there. Friday night was a big drinking night in Macclesfield.

  Here, some attendees reminisce about the gig. You may have heard of some of them. They may do more of this type of thing later on or they may not: they’re an awkward bunch.

  They are being treated to a free Chinese lunch one Sunday. I am elsewhere:

  TW (Tony Wilson): Who was at the very first gig?

  PH (Peter Hook): Me and Barny and Ian. Well, Ian was there on his own. We weren’t, were we? He was there . . .

  Mary Harron: Was this the first gig they played in Manchester?

  PH: Yeah.

  TW: This was when there was, there was thirty-five people . . .

  PH: 50p.

  TW: I was there.

  PH: I remember seeing you, yeah.

  TW: There was thirty-five people, well thirty-five to forty . . .

  PH: What’s that?

  IC (Ian Curtis): I don’t know.

  TW: It was arranged by Howard Devoto.

  TW: It was set up by Howard Devoto and . . . what else happened that night . . . There was . . . Pete Shelley did the lights. Buzzcocks hadn’t been formed at this point . . .

  IC: They were advertised on the tickets though weren’t they?

  PH: Yeah.

  TW: Were they?

  PH: Yeah.

  BS: That was the best gig they played there.

  PH: I reckon it was the best gig they ever played.

  TW: The very first one?

  BS: Yeah, it was great that.

  TW: It was funny in that little audience, the very little hall, in this little tiny hall, it was like a very small audience and people were yelling ‘Eddie an the ’Ot Rods!’ Remember that?

  PH: That was because they’d had that fight with them hadn’t they?

  TW: That’s right.

  MH: Oh right, right, right

  PH: Over the equipment.

  IC: Was it John the Postman at the back shouting ‘Ultimate Spinach’ . . .?

  TW: That’s right, John the Postman, who’s a great Manchester character, was shouting . . . insults, and when someone shouted Eddie and the Hot Rods, John said, ‘We’re not facking ripoffs!’

  PH: Yeah, that’s right.

  TW: And then everyone was screaming and my favourite moment was when John said, he looked down and said – everyone was going ‘urgh urgh urgh!’ you know – and he looked down and he said, ‘TELL ME ABAHT IT!’

  PH: Have you heard the bootleg?

  TW: I’ve got it, yeah, love it.

  BS: What’s that?

  MH: How long after that did it take for a Manchester music scene to start? . . . No thanks.

  PH: He’ll tell you about that cos I don’t know.

  TW: It really took four weeks cos then the Pistols came back a month later and played with Slaughter and the Dogs and Buzzcocks.

  BS: Didn’t think it was as good.

  TW: I was away, I was on holiday, I missed that one.

  PH: With Slaughter? Slaughter were terrible, they were so posey compared to Johnny Rotten. They dressed up like Bowie and Ronson.

  RG (Rob Gretton): Yeah but they could play compared to . . . Buzzcocks.

  PH: There was a big fight.

  TW: Yeah, Buzzcocks couldn’t play at all.

  PH: All the Slaughter and the Dogs fans had a fight with the Sex Pistols fans.

  TW: They always do. Slaughter and the Dogs used to have a roadie called Shed . . .

  RG: Still have.

  TW: Still have. He picks fights with everybody. I once hauled him off Pauline one night. Penetration had finished at Rafters and Shed, ‘Right, up for a fight? Your band’s crap!!’ and this poor little girl, you know, he was insisting on having a fight with her. Is that your lager or mine?

  IC: That’s my lager!

  TW: Is that mine?

  Ian, Bernard, Peter and their friend Terry Mason were genuinely at the Lesser Free Trade Hall and, moved by the spirit of punk and a bit of ‘if this lot can get away with it, anybody can’ sympathetic inspiration, the idea of what would become Warsaw was born.

  Initially they were two bands: Bernard, Peter and Terry on one side and Ian and another Ian on the other. Other bands who trace their genesis to that Lesser Free Trade Hall night were the Fall, Buzzcocks and, allegedly, the Smiths.

  Ian told me that Warsaw had parted company with the drummer on the tape.

  ‘He’s gone off to join another band.’

  I didn’t ask questions – no point.

  ‘Have another fag,’ he said, so I did. We chatted away over coffee about punk bands, the scene in Manchester and Ian’s plans for the band. He had ideas, lots of them. We hit it off straight away.

  After a couple of hours I left with the tape so I could do my best to learn the songs. He said he would call me once the others got back and to fix up a rehearsal.

  Back at home I gave the tape a few more listens. The tracks on it were: ‘Inside the Line’, ‘At a Later Date’, ‘Gutz’, ‘The Kill’ and ‘You’re No Good for Me’. And I think ‘Reaction’ and ‘Tension’ might have been on there too.

  The songs were a bit punk-by-numbers but the band sounded pretty tight. One thing that did strike me was that the bass sounded a bit weird, a bit like a flute somehow.

  All right, they weren’t the best tunes I’d ever heard but at least they were their own, and the thing about your own songs is that no one can say you’re playing them wrong. Well, that’s the theory anyway.

  I listened to the tape a few more times until I thought I’d got the general idea and waited for a call from Ian, which came the middle of the following week.

  Peter and Bernard were back from holiday, and could I do a rehearsal in Manchester, twelve o’clock-ish Saturday afternoon?

  I said, ‘Pick you up about half-eleven then.’ As if I had a car.

  Warsaw are one of many recent new wave functional bands; easily digestible, doomed maybe to eternal support spots. Whether they will find a style of their own is questionable, but probably not important. Their instinctive energy often compensates for the occasional lameness of their songs, but they seem unaware of the audience when performing.

  Paul Morley, ‘They Mean It in M-a-a-a-nchester’, New Musical Express (30 July 1977)

  10

  DRUMMER AND DRIVER

  ‘Can I borrow the car again this Saturday? Something’s come up’ was becoming my new catchphrase. There wasn’t much point my mum asking me what that something might be. I was naturally evasive.

  Drums and their transportation. I was getting pretty good at packing up and moving an unfeasibly large kit – I did it every night, after all, shifting drums and clattering cymbals from one bedroom to another, stumbling over a percussion mountain if I needed the loo in the night. But cramming them all in the back of an Austin Maxi and setting off for the big city felt like a bit of an adventure.

  First stop Barton Street to pick up Ian and his bits of gear. A mic, some leads, a TVM Sound PA amp (made in Manchester) and a pair of Vox column speakers; boot slammed shut and we were off

  ‘Where we off to then, Ian?’

  ‘Do you know the way to Strangeways?’

  ‘What, Strangeways the nick?’ I didn’t know if I liked the sound of this.

  ‘Yeah, that’s right.’

  ‘Er, sorry, no, actually I don’t.’

  ‘I said we’d meet them there. I work not far from there so I know where it is, don’t worry.’

  I was beginning to wonder whether this ‘Bernard and Peter’s holiday’ story might be euphemism for something a little more sinister . . .

  ‘Tension’ – lyrics to an early song.

  We whiled away the drive into Manchester talking about music and growing up in Macclesfield. It turned out Ian was another ex-King’s schoolboy, just like me, but being older he would have been a year above me. Strange we never met, though. It wasn�
�t that big a place and we had so much in common. He remembered the fuss about me and my friends’ expulsion. Ooh, the scandal. Apparently the older boys and prefects had been instructed to keep a lookout for empty cough medicine bottles and to inspect the younger pupils for signs of narcotic intoxication. That made me laugh, though it all seemed a lifetime ago.

  True to his word, Ian got us to Strangeways without us getting lost and in record time too. It’s hard to miss, really – a bloody big Victorian prison with an ominous tower.

  We were a bit early and hanging about outside a prison was a new Saturday afternoon diversion for me. It felt like we were there to spring some old lag. The Sweeney vibe went up a notch with the arrival of a Mark 2 Jag, the traditional getaway car of many an East End villain, shortly followed by a Honda motorbike.

  ‘Here they are. That’s Hooky’s car.’

  Obviously I hadn’t been paying enough attention as this was the first time I’d heard the name ‘Hooky’ mentioned. A bearded bloke got out of the Jag. Ah, I thought, Hooky must be either Bernard or Peter’s dad or uncle, something like that. (Bit of an old bloke’s car, the Mark 2 Jag, after all.) Call me beardist, but there was no way I thought he was going to be one of the band unless they really were more folky than the cassette suggested. Well, appearances can be deceptive.

  We got out and said our hellos. The one on the motorcycle turned out to be Bernard and the bearded Hooky and Peter were revealed as one and the same. Introductions and confusion over, we set off in a Hooky-led convoy bound for the Abraham Moss community centre in Crumpsall. To the casual observer watching us pull out from Strangeways, it may have looked like we were a bunch of n e’er-dowells off on a job to knock off a bookies.’

  We set up my drums and the amps from the back of the Jag in a small room in the modern community centre. After a bit of chat and some amp fiddling, we set to making a racket. I just did my usual stuff of frantic thrashing, which had not won any admirers in the past. But for once it seemed to fit in with what everyone else was playing.