anyone
else.
Drugs were everywhere, probably because of the mods. The mods were very into uppers, and that passed on. The skinhead thing was a bit purist, but not by Arsenal way.
I’m not talking heroin here; that was a great unknown to most of us – it was just something the Grateful Dead did, and by God, didn’t they sound it! The dullest band I’ve
ever known. What a waste of four and a half hours! I saw them once at Alexandra Palace when I was young. No! No! I couldn’t relate to the crowd that would be digging that kind of stuff. To
me, it was life-threatening. Comatose.
These were very difficult times, in 1973 and ’74.
Everything
was flared. Please: how to avoid flares! We had no relationship to hippies, they just seemed to be spoilt rich kids.
That’s probably what drew me into the second-hand demob suits and the Paddy look. We were coming out of the ’60s, and that for me was more in keeping with the skinhead approach to
clothing than the hippie lot, so I headed straight into that one.
From an early age, I’d been hanging out on Sundays at the Roundhouse. John Gray lived in Kentish Town, and the Roundhouse is not far away in Chalk Farm, so what I’d do is, get the
bus up to Kentish Town, pick him up, we’d walk to Chalk Farm and then we’d spend all day, way into the late hours, watching about twelve or fifteen bands. As I got a bit older,
I’d probably been out since Friday night, so what a perfect way to end the Sunday.
It was astounding, the diversity of music. I’d see Roxy Music, Judas Priest, Queen (when they were very young), T. Rex, the Seeds, Mott the Hoople – the variety was fantastic, and
there was no snobbery about who was top of the bill or whatever. It was just whoever turned up at that specific time – they’d put their equipment on the stage, and off they’d go.
The audience was mostly hippie, lots of floral prints and girls dancing barefoot, and bongo players, the scent of joss sticks – all of that. I kind of paid noattention
to that, I only liked what was happening on the stage, and I just soaked it all up.
Punk history later dictated that music was shit all through the mid-’70s. Not true, if you knew where to find it. It was the making of me. I could quite happily spend a whole weekend
–
alert!
– going around to all these late-nighters around town. The Roundhouse scene was full of insane bands. People like the Pink Fairies were full-on, hard, heavy, loud,
aggressive – absolutely the opposite of the hippie vibe. There they were with their long hair, but throwing it back at you in such a noisy destructive way. Fantastic!
Likewise, the Edgar Broughton Band had the longest, filthiest beards and hair, and dressed like bikers and sang songs called ‘Gone Blue’, whose classic line was, ‘I’m all
undone by the things she said, but I love that little hole in the back of her head.’ Hah! Wow! That topic for that time and that age was like – ‘Oh, they’re going somewhere
here.’ That’s not your hippie message at all, is it? And their album cover was sensationally hilarious – racks of dead cows hanging on hooks. I don’t suppose the music would
bear up too much today, but that isn’t the be-all-and-end-all.
Black Sabbath were the same – a very different approach to music, and different drugs, more on the up-all-night variety. Ooooh, yeah, you were completely aware what this lot were prepared
to do with themselves. When you listened to bands like that and the Deviants, you knew the chains were off. Rules are for fools – that’s what you were gathering from them. At least I
was. You know – ‘Oooh, don’t do this, it’s bad for you!’ ‘Bollocks! Go forth, create chaos, and begin in your own head!’ What’s wrong with being off
yer nut every now and then, you know? It’s a healthy thing. But these bands, it was a very youthful contingent – it was all about us young bloods who were made to feel unwanted by the
sit-down mob.
else.
Drugs were everywhere, probably because of the mods. The mods were very into uppers, and that passed on. The skinhead thing was a bit purist, but not by Arsenal way.
I’m not talking heroin here; that was a great unknown to most of us – it was just something the Grateful Dead did, and by God, didn’t they sound it! The dullest band I’ve
ever known. What a waste of four and a half hours! I saw them once at Alexandra Palace when I was young. No! No! I couldn’t relate to the crowd that would be digging that kind of stuff. To
me, it was life-threatening. Comatose.
These were very difficult times, in 1973 and ’74.
Everything
was flared. Please: how to avoid flares! We had no relationship to hippies, they just seemed to be spoilt rich kids.
That’s probably what drew me into the second-hand demob suits and the Paddy look. We were coming out of the ’60s, and that for me was more in keeping with the skinhead approach to
clothing than the hippie lot, so I headed straight into that one.
From an early age, I’d been hanging out on Sundays at the Roundhouse. John Gray lived in Kentish Town, and the Roundhouse is not far away in Chalk Farm, so what I’d do is, get the
bus up to Kentish Town, pick him up, we’d walk to Chalk Farm and then we’d spend all day, way into the late hours, watching about twelve or fifteen bands. As I got a bit older,
I’d probably been out since Friday night, so what a perfect way to end the Sunday.
It was astounding, the diversity of music. I’d see Roxy Music, Judas Priest, Queen (when they were very young), T. Rex, the Seeds, Mott the Hoople – the variety was fantastic, and
there was no snobbery about who was top of the bill or whatever. It was just whoever turned up at that specific time – they’d put their equipment on the stage, and off they’d go.
The audience was mostly hippie, lots of floral prints and girls dancing barefoot, and bongo players, the scent of joss sticks – all of that. I kind of paid noattention
to that, I only liked what was happening on the stage, and I just soaked it all up.
Punk history later dictated that music was shit all through the mid-’70s. Not true, if you knew where to find it. It was the making of me. I could quite happily spend a whole weekend
–
alert!
– going around to all these late-nighters around town. The Roundhouse scene was full of insane bands. People like the Pink Fairies were full-on, hard, heavy, loud,
aggressive – absolutely the opposite of the hippie vibe. There they were with their long hair, but throwing it back at you in such a noisy destructive way. Fantastic!
Likewise, the Edgar Broughton Band had the longest, filthiest beards and hair, and dressed like bikers and sang songs called ‘Gone Blue’, whose classic line was, ‘I’m all
undone by the things she said, but I love that little hole in the back of her head.’ Hah! Wow! That topic for that time and that age was like – ‘Oh, they’re going somewhere
here.’ That’s not your hippie message at all, is it? And their album cover was sensationally hilarious – racks of dead cows hanging on hooks. I don’t suppose the music would
bear up too much today, but that isn’t the be-all-and-end-all.
Black Sabbath were the same – a very different approach to music, and different drugs, more on the up-all-night variety. Ooooh, yeah, you were completely aware what this lot were prepared
to do with themselves. When you listened to bands like that and the Deviants, you knew the chains were off. Rules are for fools – that’s what you were gathering from them. At least I
was. You know – ‘Oooh, don’t do this, it’s bad for you!’ ‘Bollocks! Go forth, create chaos, and begin in your own head!’ What’s wrong with being off
yer nut every now and then, you know? It’s a healthy thing. But these bands, it was a very youthful contingent – it was all about us young bloods who were made to feel unwanted by the
sit-down mob.
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