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london w.1. |
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A tale of growing up in the Seventies, bad haircuts, Punk Rock and sleeping dogs.
copyright © Mike Slocombe 1998 London, West One. Where the action is. .. Where the popstars roam the streets and the famous and infamous collide in an exhilarating crash of fashion, youth and, most of all, energy. Or at least that's how it appeared to a 15 year old aspiring rock drummer living in the less than fashionable suburbs of Cardiff. I can remember school lunch hours feverishly pouring over the latest Melody Maker, eyes enviously gazing down at the huge lists of bands listed under "London, W1." I'd look longingly at the exotic sounding clubs - the 100 Club (where the Rolling Stones played), the famous Speakeasy (where all the stars hung out), and, of course, the legendary Marquee where Jimi Hendrix and Led Zeppelin had played! Somehow, my hometown's offering of Man at the Cardiff Top Rank's "implosion" and Lone Star at the "New Moon Club" just didn't seem as enticing, It was so rare to find any good bands playing that sometimes we travelled up deep into the dark Welsh valleys for rare one-off's by London bands, who clearly hadn't realised what they'd let themselves in for. For most bands, the experience of one night at the Tonypandy Naval Club was enough to deter them from ever crossing the Welsh border again,  1975 It was 1975 and I was heading down to the big city lights with a friend who'd saved up to buy a guitar. Not any old guitar either, he'd come to London to buy a Fender Stratocaster, the very same guitar that Eric Clapton played! We arrived early at Paddington, my friend buttoned up against the winter's chill in his fashionable army greatcoat while I was resplendent in my matching patched denim outfit, complete with defiant cannabis badge. Twenty minutes later we were at Tottenham Court Road station, our platform boots forming an uneasy alliance with the icy pavement as we tottered off towards the famous Tin Pan Alley - the street where the stars bought their equipment! Of course he didn't buy the guitar. He didn't have enough money in the end and reluctantly decided to come back in a few weeks that turned into years. We did manage to find the exact spot where David Bowie posed for the back of the Ziggy Stardust album, though. And we walked past the Marquee swearing blind that we'd be headlining there one day. 1977. Punk was happening. I can remember hearing "God Save The Queen" for the first time and wondering why I had ever bought an Eagles album. Here was something real. This meant something. They were angry, I was angry too, and what's more my mum hated them. As soon as I'd seen Johhny Rotten's sneering face outraging the tabloids, I knew that I could no longer get my kicks out of drumming along to the Doobie Brothers. I'd half heartedly cut off my long curly hair and had ended up with a hideous compromise that looked like a cross between a failed 1960's footballer and Mick, the presenter from 'Magpie'. I'd been one of the first to walk through Cardiff Queen Street with shiny PVC trousers and ripped clothes, regularly running the gauntlet of taunts and violence from the nine button disco smoothies and wannabe Welsh Hells Angels, and it felt good. Suddenly people were taking notice. The NME and Sounds became my bible. My world started to revolve around London, where it seemed the eyes of the world were looking on as punk started to rip up the nations youth. Even better, it seemed that just so long as you could put together a few songs and look the part, you could join in too. And I wanted to be there. Up till then, I'd been drumming in vaguely likeable 'covers' bands, mainly playing Cardiff pubs and clubs with the occasional terrifying trip up to the Working Men's Clubs of the Rhondda and Rhymney Valley's. Here was a different world where you soon learnt the value of playing whatever songs were asked of you - no matter how awful - or face a sea of flying bottles or the soul-destroying 'pay-off' (this is where the promoter will come on mid-set to the cheers of the crowd and pay you a percentage of your fee to get you off the stage. Although I never suffered this fate, I'm sure it must have psychologically damaged musicians for years). I joined a band from the Valleys who seemed to possess all the right ingredients of a good punk band - limited musical prowess, a pile of attitude, some vaguely hummable choruses and a suitably aggressive 100 mph approach to every song. I think our twelve song set used to come in at around 20 minutes, each one belted out at maximum speed - apart from of course, the obligatory heavy-handed attempt at white boy reggae mid-set. We started out with a couple small pub gigs around Cardiff where punk was just starting to take a hold and the crowds did their best to reproduce an authentic 'punk' environment. Spotty youths pogoed to our basic, but insistent repetoire, while the singer did his best to avoid the snowstorm of stage-bound phlegm. As a drummer, I soon learnt the advantages of setting up my kit as far back as possible and tilting my cymbals to form a useful mucus shield. And then we finally managed to blag a gig at the famous Roxy Club in the heart of London. The Roxy! Where the Pistols had played! Where X Rays Spex and the Lurkers and the Cortinas and The Banshees and the rest of them had played. And we were going to play on the same stage! We picked up our equipment from the disused garage in the Valleys that served as a rehearsal studio and set off for the bright lights. Someone had brought along some lighter fluid and we all tried to sniff it during the long journey down. The van smelt awful and we all had thumping headaches by the time we arrived in London. Still we were here and this was it! The Roxy! London! We bundled out of the van, leering and trying to look tough at baffled passers by, before walking up to the club, trying hard to conceal our obvious excitement. Outside was a list of forthcoming bands and our initial enthusiasm was dampened somewhat by the discovery that we'd been booked into 'Gay Night' supporting a band ominously called Handbag. The sound of an extremely camp singer echoing up the dark stairs added to our discomfort, causing two members of the band (from the none-too-cosmopolitan Valley town of Mountain Ash) to start talking loudly in deep voices as we brought the equipment in. In the shared dressing room backstage, the bass player confided that he was worried about changing as - and apparently this is common amongst the bass playing fraternity - he wore no underpants (well, this was the unenlightened 197O's where homophobia was sadly rampant). The club looked like it had been squatted for years - there was graffiti everywhere, the toilet doors were hanging off their hinges, and your feet stuck to the floor. But this was punk and it was all about attitude and we had that by the truckload. Playing the Roxy was proof that we really had arrived and were ready to take the scene by storm. At 9 o'clock, when we walked onstage we realised that the scene had in fact been, happened and moved far, far away. To an audience of seven men and the club owner's dog, our songs fell silently into the substantial chasm between the stage and the crowd. Even the dog fell asleep in front of the stage. During the gig, the singer ran to the edge of the stage only to find it was merely a piece of drink-hardened carpet jutting outwards. The carpet snapped and sent the singer stumbling onto the empty dancefloor, his amplified "oof!" causing some amusement in the shadows. After twenty minutes of unappreciated social sloganeering we left the stage to the same total silence that had greeted our arrival. "Perhaps there was an A&R man out there", optimistically offered the bass player, cautiously changing his trousers behind his guitar case. The three members of Handbag looked at us in disgust, They knew we were crap too, We packed up our gear in silence, loaded up the van and went back to the club for payment, "quiet night tonight, lads" offered the promoter, handing us three pounds fifty in loose change. We headed back to the Welsh valleys in the early hours, over thirty quid down on the venture, "Can't wait for the next London gig" muttered the singer. We all agreed, © Mike Slocombe 1998 |
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