Whatever Happened to the C86 Kids?: An Indie Odyssey by Nige Tassell (Nine Eight Books 2022)

When Malcolm returned to Essex from university in Sheffield, his ears full of a new band called the Smiths and his head full of Marxist theory, the three of them resumed making music together. This was the point at which the idea of fusing tuneful pop music with political lyrics was forged.

‘It was political almost from the start. “There’s no point writing love songs” became a thing because we couldn’t be as good as the Beatles. We could never hope to write something like “I Saw Her Standing There”. So Malcolm decided what he could do was write political songs because there hadn’t really been any particularly fantastic ones written in the way he was thinking about politics. There obviously had been political songs, but not from a real, properly thought-out Marxist perspective.’

The concept was sound. Pop tunes to get people over the threshold and then encourage them to think about the lyrics. Another iron fist in another velvet glove.

‘It made us stand out from everyone else. We weren’t marching around. We weren’t Stalinists or anything.’ At the time, Billy Bragg was the most conspicuous political songwriter. He was from their home patch, a few years ahead of them at the same comprehensive school. ‘We knew him as one of the big Jam fans in Barking. He was in that band Riff Raff who, for the Queen’s Silver Jubilee in 1977, played on the back of a lorry in Tim’s street.’

This top-floor office is level with a railway viaduct just outside the window, carrying trains back and forth between Clapham Junction and Richmond. They rumble past every couple of minutes, occasionally emitting a metallic screech. John is clearly used to it. He’s been at Domino now for fifteen years.

‘At the beginning, we always aimed for Top of the Pops,’ he explains. To some, being an anti-capitalist band aiming to work in an industry known for its rapaciousness and greed might seem a little contradictory. ‘My favourite quote about this is from John Cooper Clarke – “There’s no point being an island of Marxism in a sea of capitalism”.

John then cites McCarthy’s ‘Use a Bank I’d Rather Die’, a song written with heavy irony. ‘Just because you think a certain way, you’re not going to stop using the bank. You’re not necessarily going to cut things off.’ (The use of irony and sarcasm – those traits much enjoyed by the Manics – often led to the band being misunderstood. ‘Almost all of the McCarthy songs are sung by a “character”,’ Malcolm explained in a 2007 interview before he fell silent on the subject of the band, ‘like a character in a play. I often don’t agree with the sentiments expressed in the song. Quite the reverse.’)

My Favourite Waste of Time . . .

. . . is scrawling through unnamed folders on the laptop and finding random jpegs saved from months previously, and thinking 'Why the fuck did I save that? What was the point? What will I do with it?' 

Of course the self-interrogation reveals no answers and I'm left with no other recourse than to either bin it - and I've binned thousands of said jpegs - or randomly post them on a blog that should have been blow torched years ago.

Apparently- no apparently about it you dunderheid, it's posted below - Charlie Nic' once appeared on the front cover of the NME. (All the more shocking because it wasn't Stuart Cosgrove who is on the byline.) It dates from 1984, so I would either have been reading Smash Hits or Number 1 at the time, so it passed me by. Nowadays, Charlie Nicholas is considered a blow hard dickhead for those of you have access to a subscription to Sky Sports. I don't have a sub, so I still cling on to the happy memories of him being a brilliant player for Celtic circa 81-83. By November '84, when he appeared on the front cover of the inky music press he was what is best described as a mercurial playmaker in a so-so Arsenal team. By '84, for Arsenal, the FA Cup finals were long gone and George Graham was yet to appear on the horizon but they kept Nick Hornby busy and, for me, YouTube clips of Nicholas, Woodcock and Mariner will always take preference over the dull shite that Arsenal became when they were winning titles and breaking scouser' hearts in the late '80s.

Why was Nicholas on the front cover of the NME in 1984? I don't have a scooby. Sadly, the interview/article itself is not online and, short of winning the lottery, I'm not forking out 15 dollars on ebay to find out why. I never pegged him as a 'trendy' when it came to matters relating to  music. That was Nevin and McClair's niche. And the Owen Paul haircut doesn't help matters. 

Never mind. Charlie and I will always have Switzerland.

Repetitive Beat Generation by Steve Redhead (Rebel Inc. 2000)

G. L. I think it was Simon Frith that told me this, that when he was working with Melody Maker the editor's idea of the ideal very loyal reader was somebody (male) who stayed in a town just outside Middlesbrough who didn't have a girlfriend. This was what they looked forward to every single week, this was the highlight of their week - reading Melody Maker or NME. Most of the provinces, and the towns that surround the provinces, things like the music they take a hold. Punk was still strong for a long time up here. Acid house was still very strong up here. The Scottish hardcore scene, the happy hardcore scene, it is basically acid house what 'oi' was to punk - it's that kind of boom boom boom all the time. It's just taking the basic elements. Things like that do stick longer in the provinces. We rely more on this. We don't have the same input from friends and all that to change us. My friends who I talk with about records are very good but there's not an awful lot. It's not a matter of somebody saying 'Have you heard this great new record?' and all that sort of stuff. That doesn't happen all the time. It happens with my good friends fairly regularly but then again I'm getting the same sources as they are - through the radio, through the papers, whatever. It's not a case of people I know going to clubs and saying 'I heard this great tune at a club blah blah blah'. Again the money thing came into it. You didn't have the money to go out and see too many bands. You can also tie that in to a love of the journalists from the music press at that time. The stalwarts - the Nick Kents, the Charles Shaar Murrays, the people who came in with punk, particularly Tony Parsons, Julie Burchill and Paul Morley - a 'Manchester' man, still a big hero of mine. He could have done anything. I once sent stuff off to NME where I reviewed a couple of records. It didn't get printed. It was probably rubbish. That was just after my mother died.

Gordon Legge in conversation with Steve Redhead

Going to Sea in a Sieve by Danny Baker (Phoenix 2012)

Good though I was with our Olympian clientele, I confess the first time Marc Bolan came in I thought I was going to go off like a rocket and sit sizzling in the rafters. As already described, the shop was a small space and people just bounced straight in off the street to be presented in front of you like the next hopeful to be auditioned on our well-lit stage. When that someone is Marc Bolan and it’s 1973, you have only a few seconds to think, ‘Okay, okay. Got it. That’s Marc Bolan. And this is me. He is looking right at me and in precisely two more footsteps’ time he is going to talk to me. I, me, will be engaging with Marc Bolan. Don’t be loopy. Don’t do what you did with Michael Caine and shout, “Whoa, Michael Caine – top customer ahoy!” ’

I didn’t. I said, ‘Ha! Marc Bolan! There’s something!’ I may have even loudly warned him to have a care as we employed several store detectives – always a favoured joke of mine to shout in a shop barely the size of most people’s front rooms.

‘Hi, darling, is John about?’ he said in a bouncy Bolan-esque style, not unlike Marc Bolan.

John appeared immediately with a playfully caustic, ‘Well. Hello, stranger. Where the fuck have you been? This is Danny. He’s in love with you, so careful he doesn’t leap on you or something.’

There was some truth in this. When first taken on and informed, ‘They all come in here, so get over it,’ I had asked, possibly breathlessly, whether Marc Bolan or David Bowie could be included in that number. Ian had answered, ‘Bowie might do – did a bit before he tarted himself up – but Marc’s in and out all the time. Call him Mary: he loves it.’

I was not going to call him Mary. As far as I know, nobody ever called Marc Bolan Mary, but I did come to know many of Elton’s crowd by their feminine handles.

Marc and John disappeared into the small back area and gossiped over tea. I had to stay out and man the counter. I didn’t mind that – in showbiz, pretending to be professional and cool is one of the most cool and professional bluffs you can master. However, by now, I was brooding over something.

How did John know everyone? Pushing the philosophy further, I wondered how, in fact, everyone seemed to know everyone. I had often watched This Is Your Life and asked myself the same question. In theatrical circles, everyone seemed to have known everyone else for ever. They were all mates. How did that happen? I can understand that you might cross paths with a couple of subsequent celebrities on the struggle upwards, but how was it possible that entire legions of the famous charged into the spotlight en masse and linking arms?

I didn’t know anyone. Nobody in my family or army of friends knew anyone either. You’d have thought that we’d know at least someone, but no. I had never once been round a mate’s house and when the phone rang somebody answered it and said, ‘Joyce! Harry Secombe on the phone for ya.’ It just didn’t happen. And that’s Harry Secombe! You can imagine the remoteness of a John Lennon or even Kiki Dee. Yes, I had pretended to be David Essex’s brother, but it was precisely because nobody had a clue how an anomaly like that could exist and behave that I got away with such flapdoodle. And remember: not David Essex. His brother.

Now here I was. I knew Elton John. I’d made Long John Baldry a cup of tea. Run after Rod Stewart when he’d left his Access card in the machine (calling him a dozy git into the bargain), and now Marc Bolan – who Bernard Sibley and I had once imagined kidnapping and making him tell us all about the real meaning of Tyrannosaurus Rex lyrics – had just called me darling. He was sitting three feet behind me – behind me. When I’d paid to see him at the Lyceum Theatre I had battled and sweated for every inch that I could get closer to him onstage. Now he was less than a guitar case away and here I was, turning my back and doing a terrific impression of a man reading the NME. What on earth was going on?

After a short while Marc emerged past me again – I confess I took a whiff of what he smelled like as he inched by (Sweet Musk) – and began sorting out a few albums from the racks that he wanted to take with him. His browsing style indicated that in terms of having a finger on the pulse, he was no Elton John; he would hold up LP sleeves and shout, ‘John – what’s this? Any good?’ To which John would reply either, ‘Yeah, you’ll like that,’ or ‘Oh, please! Fucking dreadful.’ I was on the verge of also giving my opinion to Marc, but was sadly too busy not reading the paper.

Sneaking direct looks at him, I now noticed he was wearing The Greatest Shirt Ever Made. Between the open buttons of his full-length bottle-green coat, I could see it was of the palest peach silk and had Warhol-like prints in various bold colours of Chuck Berry doing the duck walk. This was a shirt that, if taken at the flood, might lead to greatness. As he came to the counter with an armload of covers I let him know. ‘Mary,’ I said (though instead of Mary I said ‘Mr Bolan’), ‘that is the greatest shirt I have ever seen on a person. Where’s it from?’

‘Oh, this? Um . . . I got it in New York. Funky, innit? You can’t get it though, this is the only one.’

I gave a regretful response while inwardly quite giddy with the notion that Marc Bolan actually thought, had the piece not been unique, I might shoot over to the States and buy a couple. I began sorting out his purchases and bagging them up. Marc went off to talk with John.

When he returned, he had done the single most magnificent and starry thing I have ever known. He had taken the shirt off and was now handing it to me.

‘There you go, babes. I don’t wear things more than once, so knock yourself out . . . Listen, John, I’ll call you, okay. Give Ian and Jake my love, talk soon.’

And with that he tripped out of the shop on his built-up Annello & Davide heels, his green coat now worn over a bare chest. I don’t think I even said thank you. As far as I recall, I was too busy standing there open-mouthed and thunderstruck. John looked at me and laughed. ‘She is something isn’t she? That is a STAR. It’s a great shirt, by the way.’

I just stood there, holding this saintly relic still warm from the Bolan body. I tried to respond to John but could only manage a noise like the death throes of a seagull.

It’s fair to say that, whereas Marc professed to wear a thing only once, I could make no such claim. I didn’t leave the shirt off for a fortnight. Everyone in the pubs of Bermondsey asked where did I get that shirt, and I would say, ‘This shirt? Marc fucking Bolan gave it to me.’ In return, I would ask where they got their shirt, and they would say a shop like Take 6 or Lord John, and then I would ask them to ask me once more where I got my shirt and when they did I would say, ‘Marc fucking Bolan gave it to me’ again.

So where is that shirt now? Why isn’t it in the Rock’n’Roll Hall of Fame or currently on eBay for ONE MILLION pounds?

Because my mother washed it. In our banging, boiling Bendix washing machine. Probably along with some of my brother’s rotten pants and last week’s football socks. In short, she had taken a recklessly cavalier approach to the ‘DRY-CLEAN ONLY’ warning on the shirt label. I can hear her defence even now:

‘Well, how was I to know? A shirt! Who the pissing hell dry-cleans a shirt? If it can’t take a wash, what’s the point in having it? Blimey, we’d go skint overnight if we had to dry-clean all the shirts in this house! Now buck your ideas up, because I’m busy.’

I was crushed, sickened by this act of wanton philistinism. But, as she further pointed out, ‘If it was so bleedin’ precious, what was it doing laying all over y’bedroom floor?’ She rather had me there.

For the record, when I found it, it was in our airing cupboard, sans any silken lustre, with the remnants of Chuck’s duck walk now barely discernible and suddenly of a size that might just about fit a ventriloquist’s doll.

Whenever Marc came into the shop after this he would always say, ‘How’s the shirt, D? Still loving it?’ And I would say, ‘Had it on last night!’ I lived in mortal fear he would one day ask for it back.

But, of course, real stars don’t do that.

That's Me in the Corner: Adventures of an ordinary boy in a celebrity world by Andrew Collins (Ebury Press 2007)

It’s 1988 and heady being back at work after such a long interval. Seven years have passed since packing in Sainsbury’s, during which time I got myself further-educated: two A-levels out of three, and one Bachelor of Arts — not that anybody here asked to see my certificates. This is rock’n’roll.

The interview was held in what I presumed to be a storeroom, with back issues of my beloved music weekly stacked all around us. James Brown, features editor, asked the questions; I felt like a band being interviewed for the paper.

‘What was the last LP you bought?’

I found myself perched upon the knife’s edge of credibility with this innocuous enquiry, selecting Surfer Rosa by the Pixies over the more truthful Raintown by Deacon Blue. It was risky — James would have known that the Pixies came out three months ago. Perhaps he’d think I hadn't bought an LP since March.

Quickly, I threw in the Full Metal Jacket soundtrack. Vietnam scores points at the NME.

‘Who are your favourite bands?’

The Fall — obviously! — The Jesus and Mary Chain, Cocteau Twins ... I also boldly confessed to a liking for the great toons of George Gershwin. (It’s a Woody Allen thing.)

James raised his eyebrows ambiguously. Good? Bad? Had I blown it?

‘How often do you go to gigs?'

I swallowed hard and considered massaging the figures, but instead recklessly gave him the truth: about once a month.

‘Good. We want someone who’s mature.’

James Brown is twenty-two. A year younger than me.

Old NME quote of the day

The Byrds . . . a Postcard Records connection . . . pop cynicism . . . the nugget compilations (which I haven't listened to in the longest time) . . . and 1981, which is still my favourite year for pop music . . . this quote has everything for a Monday morning:

“We were all wound up in the Rough Trade Conditioning Syndrome, whereby you’re told that everyone on Rough Trade is ethically sound and morally very, very good; and that the people in the big corporations are evil ogres, bureaucrats and capitalists, bourgeois pigs. But once you meet those people you realize that they’re exactly the same as the people at Rough Trade—it’s just that their Kickers are newer… It’s stupid to stick to the sort of independent ideas that we had about 18 months ago. We can’t do it ourselves. I want to be able to sit back and say, well here’s 40 percent of a hit record – a decent song—and have someone else arrange it, produce it, get it played… That way you end up with ‘Mr Tambourine Man’. Only one Byrd actually played on it, but so what? It still stands up today as a great record. And if The Byrds had played on the single the way it had been written, then it would probably just have ended up as a track on the Nuggets album.” Alan Horne (NME, November 1981)

From Simon Reynolds Rip It Up and Start Again: The Footnotes blog. Hat tip to Brian over at the Like Punk Never Happened blog.

He never stood a chance

Via the Brittle Heaven website, and conclusive proof that Tony Parsons was always an arsehole:

“One to Infinity” - Review
"Tuneless, gormless, gutless. An Anglo middle-class version of Blue Oyster Cult’s rivet-punching guitar solos and protentious visions. The Outsiders are obese midgets who wear bicycle clips on their flairs (sic) because they think it makes them look punky. I like them a lot. It takes real punks to make a record like this."

by Tony Parsons

(NME November 26, 1977)

From reading the early reviews on the website, it looks like The Outsiders were considered the Keane of their day . . . and were hated accordingly.

Question of the Day

What's Helen Mirren doing on the front cover of the NME back in '76? (Looking like Hazel O'Connor in the grainy image, I might add.)

Just stumbled across that startling fact via this anorak page over at wiki. That page would be a thousand times better if the person who wrote up the page also scanned in a few of the front covers as well. I had to find the grainy image to your left via eBay. The paper is yours for a fiver, apparently. Get clicking.

Update

OK, did a bit of internet digging, and I'm guessing that Helen Mirren is on the front cover because of 'Teeth 'N' Smiles', a David Hare play from the mid-seventies that's apparently "a searing look at the madness and excesses of the rock n’ roll years.". (More tangential info about 'Teeth 'N' Smiles' over here.)

1994: And Mr Hansen's losing it with the pop kids

Weekly Bulletin of The Socialist Party of Great Britain (59)

Dear Friends,

Welcome to the 59th of our weekly bulletins to keep you informed of changes at Socialist Party of Great Britain @ MySpace.

We now have 1315 friends!

Recent blogs:

What to Do About Fascism?

Not Worth the Paper

Free work versus forced employment

Quote for the week:

"Not only can we manage very well without the interference of the capitalist class in the great industries of the country, but that their interference is becoming more and more a nuisance." Engels, 1881, Social Classes - Necessary and Superfluous.

Continuing luck with your MySpace adventures!

Robert and Piers

Socialist Party of Great Britain

Steven Patrick: the original wannabe music blogger

Via Martin at Counago & Spaves comes the wee gem of Morrissey's youthful letters to the NME.

I think I've seen excerpts of the letters before - maybe from Johnny Rogan's 'Severed Alliance'? - but this month's Uncut music magazine captures the letters in all their glory.

Read on as a 'Steve' cribs from my school of music journalism when penning a lust letter about the 1974 Sparks album, Kimono My House: 'Here are my favourite tracks in descending order. Don't you dare contradict me'.

Fast forward to 'Steven' doing the original 'I heard of this band before you lot. Suck it up as you cling for dear life on the back of my superior musical knowledge' type music blog post as he coughs up a love you more type letter about the Buzzcocks.

And don't forget the 'guilty pleasure' type music blog post as he mentions having to put his Carly Simon, Buffy Sainte-Marie and Phil Ochs albums on a "smouldering . . . low light" since discovering Johnny Thunder and the Heartbreakers. (Guilty pleasure music blog posts always make me do a double take 'cos I'm like, 'What do you mean you're not supposed to admit in mixed company that you think that S Club 7 rocks?')

Saying that, guilty pleasure or not, I never would have pegged Mozzer for a Phil Ochs fan. Not Moz in any of his musical or personal permutations: Not going by the name of 'Steve', 'Steven' or 'Steven Patrick'.

But I'll take that on board when I listen to Phil Ochs's wonderful 'Love Me I'm A Liberal' in the future. I'll think of Moz and his number one fan in the political blogosphere, Harry Place's David T.

Resting, Not Absconding

The lack of picture in the top left hand of the blog is due to the fact that the World Socialist Movement website is currently down. I'd love to claim sabotage or an exceeded bandwidth has temporarily crippled the cause of impossibilist socialism, but it's probably more down to a "The cheque is in the post" type scenario.

In case some SPGB anoraks are suffering withdrawal symptoms, I thought I'd post an old Socialist Standard cover as a stop gap. It holds a special vice like grip on my heart, 'cos it was the first Socialist Standard I ever got my grubby little mitts on.

The little matter of a three line advert in the back pages of the New Musical Express, coupled with the mid-eighties being a shit time for music - "Mmm, will I read a three page article on the Age of Chance or write off for a introductory pack about a political party I've never heard of?" - led me to the fateful decision that day of dipping my toe into the murky waters of abstract propagandism. Falling in - and never learning to swim - I've been waving and drowning in equal measure ever since.

OK, I need to get back to working on that time machine to take me back to that fateful day in 1986 but, in the meantime, here's a couple of articles from the above issue and an mp3 from the same month that fuelled the teenage political angst:

'Jewish Anarchists'

'Bar Room Rebels'

The The - 'Heartland' mp3