Be Stiff: The Stiff Records Story by Richard Balls (Soundcheck Books 2015)

Prologue

32 Alexander Street, London, W2

1977. An office in a former house in Bayswater, now home to a small record label. Inside is a garrulous Dubliner with scruffy hair, a couple of women hard at work, and a boyish-looking singer called Wreckless lounging in a chair. The door opens and a bloke comes in carrying several large cardboard cut-outs of some of the label’s exciting new acts. One cut-out is of a nerdy, pigeon-toed singer with a sneer and a Fender Jazzmaster.

“Ah great, they’re here. Great,” says the Irishman. “Jesus, these are pretty good. I love the one of Elvis. These look all right.” Excitedly he picks them up and admires them, before grabbing a hammer from a drawer and climbing on a chair. “Hey Suzanne, would you pass me a nail? I want to put these up. These are gonna look great up here.” Bemused at this sudden burst of activity, the singer looks on as the giant shop displays are banged into place. “That’s the sort of stupid thing I’d do,” he thinks to himself.

As the hammering goes on, a wild-eyed, intimidating figure bursts in and looks up at the wall, horrified. “Yeah, we’ve got the displays,” says the Irishman. “They’re fucking great aren’t they? Great.”

 

“What the fuck?” yells the other guy. “What fucking moron did that?” “Well we’ve got to put ‘em up, Jake, you know?” he replies. “Put ‘em up? Do you want to see Elvis Costello with a fucking nail through his head? I fucking don’t”. Jake then storms out of the office, slamming the door behind him, and disappears along the busy London street.

A storm is brewing. Something is going to blow.

Excerpt From: Richard Balls. “Be Stiff: The Stiff Records Story.” iBooks. 

Excerpt From: Richard Balls. “Be Stiff: The Stiff Records Story.” iBooks. 

Freak Out the Squares: Life in a band called Pulp by Russell Senior (Aurum Press 2015)

 

I was living in a flat above a sex shop with a girl who had a bit of a Béatrice Dalle thing going on and was the object of much pining amongst local musicians, including Jarvis. In a bid to impress her, he climbed Artery-style out of the window and made his way along the ledge, only to fall twenty feet onto the pavement in front of the sex shop – his broken glasses and splayed limbs serving as a dire warning on the dangers of pornography to several adolescent boys who had been plucking up the courage to go in.

It seemed touch and go for a bit, he’d broken his hip and was in hospital for a while, then moved out into residential care. But he slowly improved and was able to come out in a wheelchair. We had to cancel a couple of shows but he gamely did the rest in his wheelchair.

I shamelessly milked the mishap for all it was worth and took Jarvis down to London to do press, which included a surreal photo shoot pushing him round a skateboard park in the chair.

For the next show at The Clarendon, London, we brought a coach party down from Sheffield. The trip down to London was always filled with expectation. On the way into the metropolis, the excitement mounted: there were famous people just walking down the street, bold as brass. Rover always seemed to spot Oliver Reed just disappearing into a pub and demand that the van stop, but no one else ever saw him. It was probably just wishful thinking on Rover’s part, like the time when he went past Felicity Kendall in the street and she ‘gave him the eye’. Can’t remember the concert, it got some reviews.

Never one to avoid advancing the greater glory of Pulp by resorting to bad taste, I cut out a picture from a Romania Today, 1968 magazine of a forlorn man wired up with electrodes – onto which I drew broken glasses to make it look like Jarvis.

In the All-Night Café: A Memoir of Belle and Sebastian's Formative Year by Stuart David (Chicago Review Press 2015)

 

At the end of the last day we had a play-through of everything in its finished state, and Stuart, Chris and 

Bel got up to dance behind the mixing desk during the playback of ‘I Could Be Dreaming’. They all had their own dancing styles. Chris was Northern-Soul-Boy, Bel School-Disco, with her pigtails and white knee socks. Stuart was somewhere between Punk and gym hall jogging.

It was joyful to watch, a shy celebration of what we’d achieved, but there was a bittersweet quality to it too – everyone knowing that our tenure at Cava was over. We’d packed our instruments away, all the microphones and patch leads had been dismantled and the live room had been tidied up and prepared for whoever was coming in next. All the mixes had been bounced down onto two-inch tape, and when the playback was over there was nothing much left to do except say our sad farewells to Gregor and Geoff and then go home.

Chris, Bel and me also had our respects to pay to the water-cooler at the bottom of the stairs, the symbol for us of everything that had been great about the week. Then, with that done, Chris said to me, ‘This has been the best week of my life. But I’m not sure if it’s just because I’ve had a shite life up till now or not.’

He disappeared up the stairs, while I went back along the corridor to pick up my bass, and before I got outside a rumour had begun to circulate that Chris was crying.

A Crafty Cigarette – Tales of a Teenage Mod by Matteo Sedazzari (Zani Media 2015)

Luckily for my father Theo did not press charges for criminal damage. Later my mother explained to him about my father’s problem with Charlie Cairoli. Theo, being the wise man that he is, totally understood and told my mother that he was once in The Kinks for a brief time, as 2nd guitar and backing vocals. They did a gig in Acton, this was before they made it big, by the way. Theo broke his strings during a song and Ray Davies never called him again, or so he told my mother. Now Theo can’t listen to any records by The Kinks and has to leave the room the moment their music comes on. 

Shit, both Vinnie’s father and my father could have been huge stars, that’s quite depressing.

I Believe In Miracles: The Remarkable Story of Brian Clough’s European Cup-winning Team by Daniel Taylor (Headline 2015)

The only player Clough doted on was the podgy little Scot he once described as ‘the Picasso of our game’. When Clough walked into Forest’s dressing room for the first time, John Robertson had a chip-fat grin, a slapdash attitude and a packet of Polos strategically hidden in his back pocket to help cover up his fag-breath. Robertson’s career was drifting and it took a “while for the chemistry between him and Clough to work. Yet he has never forgotten Clough’s first day and the instinctive feeling that something better might be on the way. It wasn’t anything Clough said that resonated. It was the aura. It was the moment the dressing-room door almost flew off its hinges. It was the way, before uttering a single word, that in one swift movement Clough was already taking off his jacket and flinging it at a wall peg, as if he had been there years. Clough being Clough, it landed plum on the hook. ‘It was like a whirlwind coming in,’ Robertson says, with the awe still apparent in his voice. ‘I’d never seen anyone in my life with so much charisma. All I could think was: “Jesus, this guy means business.” Right from the very first minute.

Men in White Suits: Liverpool FC in the 1990s - The Players' Stories by Simon Hughes (Bantam Press 2015)

Mangotsfield United saw enough in Tanner to ask him to training, where he first met the late Ralph Miller, a legendary non-league manager, who was a builder by trade.

‘I enjoyed playing under Ralph more than Bobby Gould, Gerry Francis, Kenny Dalglish or Graeme Souness,’ Tanner beams. ‘He loved players that got stuck in, and I was one of them. He was an old-school psychologist, a bit like Bill Shankly, I suppose. The funny stories are endless.’

Tanner recalls one.

‘There was a player that he desperately wanted to sign for Mangotsfield. Problem was, the fella lived in South Wales. So he drove over the bridge in his van with a bicycle in the back. He pleaded with the fella at his front door. “Look, I’ve cycled all the  way over here from Bristol to sign you.” The lad looked at his bike. “Jesus Christ,” he said. “You must really want me.” So he signed the forms there and then. Ralph rode around the corner and chucked his bike in the back of the van before driving home.

‘When I was about eighteen, we decided to go on our first lads’ holiday to Magaluf. To prepare for the holiday I decided to get myself fit, so I went out running every day – did sit-ups, press-ups, the lot. It was the fittest I’ve ever been. After our first pre-season session back at Mangotsfield, I got out of the shower looking all bronzed. “Fuck me,” Ralph went. “You’ve got a body like Tarzan and a prick like Jane!”’

In the mid-eighties, Bristol Rovers were, as Tanner puts it, ‘in financial shit’ and needing players that would play for practically nothing, so manager Bobby Gould scoured the Gloucestershire and Somerset county leagues for undiscovered talent.

‘Rovers signed Gary Penrice, Phil Purnell, Gary Smart and myself from Mangotsfield, all for the princely sum of two floodlight bulbs. I can still remember Ralph turning up at Eastville Stadium while all of us were playing in a reserve game, shouting at the top of his voice, “Where’s my money, Gouldy?” That was Ralph all over. In later years he came to Anfield to watch me play and said how proud he was of me, which touched me, coming from such a hard man.'

The Crazy Gang : The True Inside Story of Football's Greatest Miracle by Dave Bassett and Wally Downes (Bantam Books 2015)

 

Prologue

Dave Bassett

I am not surprised by these achievements, After all, if we can sell Newcastle Brown to Japan, Bob Geldof can have us running around Hyde Park, and if Wimbledon can make it to the First Division, there is surely no achievement beyond our reach. 

Text of a speech given by the Prime Minister, the Rt Hon Margaret Thatcher, FRS. MP, at a dinner hosted by the CBI on Thursday, 22 May 1986.

That’s what she said. I puffed my shoulders. It made me realize we were recognized as a success. Wimbledon are truly a remarkable story, perhaps one of the greatest success stories in the history of the game. Its a story that will certainly never be repeated: a homespun, cash-strapped, often down-at-heel club rising from the Southern League to the old Division One in nine years and staying for more on low crowds, even lower wages, and then winning the FA Cup.

We got criticized by the media and weak-minded opposition, hounded and accused of betraying football. What total rubbish. We fought, we planned, we analyzed, and yet were still branded a long-ball side. That was not an issue or a problem. It worked. Today, if a player hits a glorious 50-yard pass, its considered skill. We had an academy before they became fashionable, producing footballers who went on to become internationals.

We were different. I accept that. A lot of us were in the last chance saloon, but we also believed. We believed, given another chance by people who believed in us, that we could make a new life for ourselves. It was a magic, intoxicating formula that changed the face of football. We didn't hide behind the media hymn sheet. I managed and played to a style that suited us and within our own financial compass. We were fighting against the odds on average earnings of £100 a week.

Even Dogs In The Wild by Ian Rankin (Orion Books 2015)

Darryl Christie wasn’t a huge fan of Glasgow. It sprawled in a way his own city didn’t. And there were still traces of the old enmity between Catholic and Protestant – of course that existed in Edinburgh too, but it had never quite defined the place the way it did Glasgow. The people spoke differently here, and had a garrulousness to them that spilled over into physical swagger. They were, as they chanted on the football terraces, ‘the people’. But they were not Darryl Christie’s people. Edinburgh could seem tame by comparison, head always below the parapet, keeping itself to itself. In the independence referendum, Edinburgh had voted No and Glasgow Yes, the latter parading its saltired allegiance around George Square night after night, or else protesting media bias outside the BBC headquarters. The political debate had melted into a blend of carnival and stairheid rammy, so that you never knew if people were joyous or furious.

Darryl Christie had considered all the implications for his various business interests and come to the conclusion that either outcome would probably suit him just fine, so in the end he hadn’t voted at all.

The House of Twenty Thousand Books by Sasha Abramsky (New York Review Books 2015)

What Chimen did do, though, was pen a series of memoranda about how he had acquired some of his rarest prizes. He wrote, for example, about how, in the early 1950s, he had managed to buy William Morris’s complete collection of the Socialist League’s journal, The Commonweal, along with the wooden box, with a rexine cover dyed blue and lined with a white felt like material, that Morris himself had constructed to house a 1539 Bible, and in which, ultimately, he kept his copies of the revolutionary paper. The pages of the publication—its words printed in double columns originally on a monthly basis, then later weekly, from 1886 until 1895, and filled with the revolutionary musings of Morris, Marx’s daughter Eleanor, and other radical luminaries of the late-Victorian years—had passed from Morris to his close friend, the typographer Emery Walker; from Walker to his daughter and from her to a poet named Norman Hidson. Chimen eventually bought it from Hidden for £50. And there they stayed, in their Bible box, high on a wooden shelf in the upstairs hallway at 5 Hillway, for more than half a century.

Those pages were some of Chimen’s most treasured possessions, their crinkly texture and age-browned color conjuring images of the cultured, tea-drinking revolutionaries who had made up Morris’s coterie. I imagine that, in many ways, Chimen saw himself in their stories. The front-page manifesto in The Commonweal’s first issue, sold to readers for one penny in February 1886 and signed by the twenty-three founders of the Socialist League, put the mission simply: “We come before you as a body advocating the principles of Revolutionary International Socialism; that is, we seek a change in the basis of Society—a change which would destroy the distinctions of classes and nationalities.” On May Day the following year, the date on which it was announced that the paper would be published weekly, Morris and his friend Ernest Belfort Bax wrote an editorial: “We are but few, as all those who stand by principles must be until inevitable necessity forces the world to practise those principles. We are few, and have our own work to do, which no one but ourselves can do, and every atom of intelligence and energy that there is amongst us will be needed for that work."

Blood, Salt, Water by Denise Mina (Orion Books 2015)

She’d been as biddable as a heifer for the two days they had her. She came willingly when they picked her up in the van. She asked no favours, made no appeals for mercy while they waited for Wee Paul to give the final word: kill her or let her go.

Marxism in a Lost Century: A Biography of Paul Mattick by Gary Roth (Brill Publishing 2015)

The Charlottenburg branch (Mattick’s) organised the production of the group’s monthly paper, Rote Jugend [Red Youth]. Mattick contributed short pieces and progressively turned his attention to writing. When he withdrew from view, friends assumed it was because he was composing something new. Radicalism meant that politics and creativity were pursued simultaneously, that protest and expression prefigured one another. The youth group publicised open forums through posters pasted on the sides of buildings. If a wall was wide enough, they displayed their entire newspaper. Small teams set out at night, careful not to get caught. Two people would watch for the police at the respective corners while someone else carried the glue pot and another the poster. Wheat paste (flour dissolved in water) was inexpensive, easy to mix, and nearly permanent as an adhesive. Mattick especially liked the easy-going camaraderie where everyone got along.

Financing their paper was a huge challenge. KAPD members like Max Hoelz and Karl Plättner, whose exploits received considerable attention from the bourgeois press during the Kapp Putsch, served as models. Hoelz mobilised a small army of 2500 to help with heists at banks, factory pay windows, and post offices, even commandeering a tank at one point. Plättner, a KAPD member from the beginning, attracted as many as 100 armed adherents, although the core group included fifteen-odd people who weaved in and out of participation. Members received regular wages in order to support their families and also to prevent personal gain and plundering as motivations. Inordinately scrupulous as to the use of force, they often threatened physical harm but never actually committed it. Couriers transferred expropriated funds between the field operations and KAPD colleagues in Berlin, with official receipts and proper paperwork to conduct the transactions. These radical leftists adhered to standard business practices whenever they handled money. Other KAPDists attempted to bomb Berlin’s Siegessäule, the tall victory column erected to celebrate Prussia’s crushing of the Paris Commune (and defeat of the French), albeit without success.

Class-conscious crimes aimed at the business world, the government, and the possessions of the upper and middle classes were considered proper and legitimate activities. The radicals determined from whom and how they would steal by means of a politicised ethics which guided the choice of targets and the possible uses for the proceeds. Mattick teamed up with friends to sneak into the common areas of apartment buildings where they absconded with things like the brass rods used to hold the staircase carpeting in place. Mattick’s expertise in metal recycling, learned during the war, was put to good use. They discovered, though, that much of the brass wasn’t real brass, only brass-plated. With the platinum lightning rods they took off rooftops, they uncovered something similar. Many of them were counterfeit, affording the buildings no protection whatsoever. For all the hoopla about expropriations, all they had done was to mimic everyday occurrences within the business arena. In the real world, theft and commerce were complimentary phenomena. At Siemens, Mattick carted lead, brass, and copper through the factory gates to sell to the salvage dealers, his contribution to the rampant employee theft during this period.