Play for Today: A Mother Like Him (1982)

 

Everybody Wants Some!! (2016)

 

Screen Two: Honest Decent And True (1986)

 

The Shoe by Gordon Legge (Polygon 1989)

Eight

At school Richard had been the boy most likely. He won a debating competition and collected A-grade Highers with case. When punk came along in '76/'77 Richard embraced it. Only two copies of Anarchy in the UK reached town: Richard got one and Senga Somerville the other. At youth clubs and school discos, Richard acted as DJ playing Shirley and Co’s Shame Shame Shame while his friends were listening to Tales from Topographic Oceans. Richard was first to wear an anti-Nazi League badge. Students who took part in the sit-ins to protest against the Biafran war would later admit to taking part ‘just for fun’: punk seemed different. Those who marched against the loathsome National Front in Lewisham projected an intensity of feeling. It was unfortunate that not all such demonstrations were as well motivated and executed. Too many causes were led by the ill-informed and supported by the ignorant. Mental said that pickets and demonstrators aspired to strength through exploitation and intimidation. It wasn’t honest like arguing and fighting.

Richard read avidly the music press of the late seventies: Julie Burchill, Tony Parsons, Jane Suck, Jonh Ingham, Jon Savage and the old guard: Charles Shaar Murray, Giovanni Dadomo and Nick Kent. Julie continued to write, adopting an extreme position then justifying it. She slagged off Catholics, worshipped Russia and supported Maggie in the Falklands. (Richard wrote into The Face saying that although Julie was right to support the fight against a Fascist junta, the British public would always be more motivated by the xenophobic side of the conflict.) Jon Savage became an art groupie. Tony Parsons wrote three bile-filled novels that never fully showed his talent. (His review of the first Clash LP was stuck on Richard's wall. Now that was writing.) Jane Suck became Jane Solanas, superdyke. Nick Kent’s signature appeared at the end of a few articles but they didn't seem very enthusiastic. He loved The Smiths, though. As for the others Richard didn't know where they were. He presumed they'd given up and gone fat. One of Richard's deepest regrets was that he hadn’t kept a chart of his most played records. He knew, though, that Parsons' and Burchill's The Boy Looked at Johnny was the book he had read most. While punk in the south attracted the arse-end of the media (high and low-brow), the provinces adopted the ‘No Fun’, ‘No Feelings’, ‘No Future’ triumvirate as dogma and it stuck like glue. Pun intended. The legacy of Sid Vicious meant spiky tops, leather jackets. The UK Subs, Oi and circles with A in the middle. Richard, though, continued to wear his anti-Nazi League badge through Tom Robinson, The Gang of Four, Cut, London Calling, Paul Morley and Dave McCullough.

Richard thought he'd be intimidated at university. He expected to meet people who knew everything about Dylan, Kafka and Scorsese. He was wrong, of course. The spirit of the Biafra sit-ins reigned. Like the hippies who had never heard of Muddy Waters and the punks who never bought any reggae, the students never did more than they had to. Richard left his degree course in English at the end of the third year. ‘I wanted to be trained in logic,’ he told Archie. 'I wanted to be educated to the extent whereby I no longer made stupid mistakes about things. I wanted common sense. One of my teachers at school said that he had been trained in logic at university. He was completely cool. He could see through lies like that. 

The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole by Sue Townsend (Methuen 1984)

 

Sunday April 4th

 

My father has sent a telegram to the War Office. He wants to take part in the war with Argentina. His telegram read:

QUALIFIED HEATING ENGINEER STOP A1 FITNESS STOP OFFERS HIMSELF IN THE SERVICE OF HIS COUNTRY STOP READY FOR IMMEDIATE MOBILIZATION

My mother says that my father will do anything to avoid working for Manpower Services as a canal bank renovator.

At tea-time I was looking at our world map, but I couldn’t see the Falkland Islands anywhere. My mother found them; they were hidden under a crumb of fruitcake.

I feel guilty about mentioning a personal anguish at this time of national crisis, but ever since last night when a model aeroplane became stuck fast to my nose with glue, I have suffered torment. My nose has swollen up so much that I am frantic with worry that it might burst and take my brain with it.

I rang the Casualty Department and, after a lot of laughing, the nurse who removed the plane came on the line. She said that I was ‘probably allergic to the glue’, and that the swelling would go down in a few days. She added, ‘Perhaps it will teach you not to sniff glue again.’ I tried to explain but she put the phone down.

Pandora has been round but I declined to see her. She would go straight off me if she saw my repulsive nose.

The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13¾ by Sue Townsend (Methuen 1982)

 

Tuesday December 22nd

School was closed this morning because the teachers couldn’t manage to get in on time because of the snow. That will teach them to live in old mill houses and windmills out in the country! Miss Elf lives with a West Indian in a terraced house in the town, so she bravely turned out to prepare for the school concert in the afternoon. I decided to forgive Pandora for the fox-fur in the cat’s basket incident after she had pointed out that the cat was an expectant mother.

The school concert was not a success. The bell ringing from class One-G went on too long, my father said ‘The Bells! The Bells!’ and my mother laughed too loudly and made Mr Scruton look at her.

The school orchestra was a disaster! My mother said, ‘When are they going to stop tuning-up and start playing?’ I told her that they had just played a Mozart horn concerto. That made my mother and father and Pandora’s mother and father start laughing in a very unmannerly fashion. When ten-stone Alice Bernard from Three-C came on stage in a tutu and did the dying swan I thought my mother would explode. Alice Bernard’s mother led the applause, but not many people followed.

The Dumbo class got up and sang a few boring old carols. Barry Kent sang all the vulgar versions (I know because I was watching his lips) then they sat down cross-legged, and brainbox Henderson from Five-K played a trumpet, Jew’s harp, piano and guitar. The smarmy git looked dead superior when he was bowing during his applause. Then it was the interval and time for me to change into my white T-shirt-and-Wranglers Joseph costume. The tension backstage was electric. I stood in the wings (a theatrical term – it means the side of the stage) and watched the audience filing back into their places. Then the music from Close Encounters boomed out over the stereo speakers, and the curtains opened on an abstract manger and I just had time to whisper to Pandora ‘Break a leg, darling’, before Miss Elf pushed us out into the lights. My performance was brilliant! I really got under the skin of Joseph but Pandora was less good, she forgot to look tenderly at Jesus/Peter Brown.

The three punks/wise men made too much noise with their chains and spoiled my speech about the Middle East situation, and the angels representing Mrs Thatcher got hissed by the audience so loudly that their spoken chorus about unemployment was wasted.

Still, all in all, it was well received by the audience. Mr Scruton got up and made a hypocritical speech about ‘a brave experiment’ and ‘Miss Elf’s tireless work behind the scenes’, and then we all sang ‘We wish you a Merry Christmas’!

Driving home in the car my father said, ‘That was the funniest Nativity play I have ever seen. Whose idea was it to turn it into a comedy?’ I didn’t reply. It wasn’t a comedy.

Johnny Jarvis (1983)

 

Wham! (2023)

 

The Shoe by Gordon Legge (Polygon 1989)

 

One

‘Buy a couple of fags, mister?’

The enquiring youth wore Wrangler jeans and a Wrangler jacket. The jacket sadly failed to reach his wrists. His T-shirt read AC/DC. You could smell the shampoo and talc, see the shiny hair and smart trainers but he was still a Heavy Metal fan; he’d rather have been scruffy. He had acne. Bad acne.

‘Don’t bother. It’s okay,' said Archie, declining the offer of 16p as he handed the youth two Benson and Hedges.

‘Save your money and buy some cream,’ scorned The Mental Kid.

‘Thanks,’ said the Heavy Metal fan, embarrassed by The Kid’s remark. He lit the cigarettes using a disposable green lighter and returned to his two friends in the next carriage, handing one of the cigarettes to the smaller of the two, who in turn nodded and smiled appreciatively at Archie.

‘Heavy Metal,’ mused The Kid, ‘it’s okay if you don’t have a brain, I suppose.’

Archie smiled at The Kid’s smug disdain while wondering if it was worth getting upset at being called ‘mister'. The previous Friday, a door-to-door salesman had asked if his wife was in. Archie had blushed and said ‘No’. They never asked that. It was always 'Is your mother in, son?’ And now a fat, ugly (Archie had decided to get upset) Heavy Metal fan called him ‘mister. Twenyy-four next month. Older than Johnny Marr and Pat Nevin.

‘Who was playing in Edinburgh tonight, anyway?' asked Mental, three months Archie’s junior.

Archie shrugged a don’t know don’t care whilst wondering how old The Kid looked. Pretty rather than handsome, punky rather than cool; the triumph of content over style. The Kid wore a black Royal Navy raincoat, Levi’s slit at the right knee, black Doc Marten shoes and a Celtic scarf, which until a couple of years ago he had worn with the regularity of a birthmark; now he only wore it for the Hun games and when it was cold. After every Celtic defeat he would begin the post-mortem with the words, ‘What a nightmare, I was going mental!' The Kid’s concession to ageing was an increased dependency on cliché. But he was still too lean and gorgeous to be addressed as an adult. The Kid leaned forward, resting his elbow's on his knees while tapping his fingers in accompaniment to the noise of the train. Bored out of his skull, like.

‘What time is it?’ he asked.

‘11.18.'

‘Okay. So we get food and drink, go to the Apollo, watch the fights, more food and drink then home.' Mental related the forthcoming events as if he were a hesitant bank robber. Mental didn’t like Glasgow and he didn’t like staying up all night. Were he a bird, he would have chosen to be a budgie. ‘If the Hun had brought his van we wouldn't have had all this hassle.’ The Kid referred to the sleeping hulk across the hallway.

Big Davie looked married (within the year it was expected he would be) and he looked twenty-four (which he was); a ‘mister’. Big Davie wore an old man’s bunnet (10p from a jumble sale), a quilted blue jerkin, brand new Levi’s and brand new Sambas. Solid rather than fat, a team man rather than an individual. The Daihatsu van remained at home so that Davie could have a drink on his night out. He couldn’t be arsed driving to Glasgow, anyway.

‘Work does that to you,' said Mental pointing a derisory finger at the sleeper. ‘Fat bastard!' shouted The Kid, hoping, but failing, to wake Davie.

Work was laying insulation for the council. Ten weeks into a six-month job, Davie hated it, but needed the money. He shared a private flat with his fiancee, Terasa.

Mental had never worked in his life. After school he attended college for three years, switching courses continually until one day he had the flu and never went back. The Protestant work ethic was anathema to him.

Archie left school at eighteen with three Highers: English, Modern Studies and a crash course History. His father was disappointed with Archie staying on at school. ‘Get a trade, an apprenticeship. You'll always have it to fall back on.’ Archie asked what the difference between a twenty-year-old tradesman and a fifty-year-old tradesman was. An argument ensued. Arguments never seemed to resolve anything, never a means to an end. Just an outburst of frustration. The father thought in terms of the home rather than holidays, relatives rather than friends, and work rather than play. Archie didn’t know what he wanted, but when Morrissey sang about never having had a job because he was too shy, Archie understood, while his father would never know or admit to knowing.

For Archie, work had been a petrol pump attendant, a double-glazing salesman and a brickie’s labourer. He had been unemployed for three years. The work provided fond memories and a few anecdotes but at the time it all seemed embarrassment and confrontation. He didn’t know' if he would ever work again; he supposed he would.

The Hacienda: How Not to Run a Club by Peter Hook (Simon & Schuster 2010)

 

I went to the opening with Iris, my girlfriend at the time. We got an invite in the post like everybody else.

As for the night’s entertainment, Hewan Clarke – a lovely bloke who had a trademark lisp – was the DJ. Because of his speech impediment, we teased him by saying, ‘The Hathienda mutht be built.’ He’d stick with us for years. He was a nice, quiet guy. I don’t remember much about his musical tastes, but my memories of him are all good. The cult of the DJ hadn’t yet begun. On the opening night he DJed between acts but nobody paid any attention to what records he was playing.

Bernard Manning was the compère for the evening. Manning was a comedian who owned the World Famous Embassy Club on Rochdale Road in Manchester (which has outlasted even him and us), near where I used to live in Moston. Rob and Tony thought it was ironic, having him do a spot on the opening night. To them he represented the sort of old-school, working-men’s club environment the Haçienda meant to replace. The crowd were bemused, quite rightly. As for Manning, he took one look at the Haçienda and sussed out it was run by idiots. He laughed his balls off as we tried to pay him. He turned to Rob, Tony and me and said, ‘Keep it. You’ve never run a club before, have you?’

We stared at him, puzzled. What did he mean?

‘Fucking stick to your day jobs, lads, ’cause you’re not cut out for clubs. Give up now while you’ve got the chance.’ Then he walked off.

We chuckled, thinking, ‘We’ll show him.'

Starter for 10 (2006)

 

Everton, Howard's Way (2019)

 

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.

Like Punk Never Happened: Culture Club and the New Pop by Dave Rimmer (Faber and Faber 1985)

This is the story of Culture Club, but it’s also the story of pop music since punk. It’s the story of how a generation of New Pop stars, a generation that had come of age during punk, absorbed its methods, learnt its lessons, but ditched its ideals — setting charts ablaze and fans screaming all over the world. It’s the story of a whole new star system, of Adam Ant, Spandau Ballet, Duran Duran, Wham! and many others as well as Culture Club. It’s also the story of a magazine called Smash Hits.

I’ve chosen to base this story round Culture Club because in many ways they were the perfect New Pop group. Only Michael Jackson was more famous than Boy George. Colour By Numbers was the nearest thing to a perfect pop album the decade has produced. ‘Karma Chameleon’ was the nearest thing to a perfect pop single: pretty and sickly, complex and singalong, meaningless and meaningful all at the same time, rising to number one in Britain, the USA and just about everywhere else where pop records arc bought.

The only other group I could have written this story around would have been Duran Duran. Then there would maybe have been more about video, less about the press and dressing-up, but the essential details would have remained the same. In 1983, at the height of the New Pop period, Duran Duran and Culture Club were deadly rivals, but only different sides of the same coin.

As a writer for Smash Hits over this period — one which saw its circulation soar with the rise of the New Pop to become the world’s biggest-selling pop magazine I was allowed unusually close access. Unlike Fleet Street or the old music weeklies, Smash Hits was generally trusted not to ‘slag people off without good reason. I talked to, interviewed, travelled with, got to know and usually liked most of the New Pop stars. In writing this book, I’m not attempting to pass judgement on them, just to make some sense out of it all. And, I hope, make some money too.

In that sense, I’m as much a part of the New Pop which is really the Old Pop now as any of them.

The 80s Marinello

My favourite player as a kid . . .  and then he signed for Arsenal 38 years ago today . . . 

#Charlie Nicholas  #Peter Marinello

'Cruel is the gospel . . . '

Could a picture look any more 80s?

A Prefab Sprout record signing at HMV Newcastle some time in the '80s.

We Are the Best! (2013)

 

Long Hot Summers – The Story Of The Style Council (2020)

 

The Greatest Living Englishman by Martin Newell (Autumn Girl Books 2020)

Young Jobless

I sat with a two-litre bottle of cider in one hand and a roll-up in the other, watching the video screen in my landlord Steve's living room. Roger Maynard, then a news presenter at BBC East in Norwich, was interviewing a young man. The young man, in his 20s, was dressed almost entirely in black, his thin face appearing more gaunt for a surfeit of smeared mascara. He lurched uneasily in his seat as he fielded the interviewer's questions. Did he think, asked Roger Maynard, that a record whose subject matter mentioned unemployment and drugs was relevant as an educational aid for youngsters? The young man stared vacantly at the camera: “Well it’s gotta be better than rock-climbing and Duke of Edinburgh Awards... annit?” he slurred. Then he laughed, lurching almost out of his seat.

Even I, by this time well-numbed with cider, was slightly shocked as I watched the video recording of my first live TV appearance.

Everyone, apparently, had seen it. The pub, so Steve said, had been a-buzz with it earlier. Even an uncle of mine in distant Buckinghamshire had witnessed it. Shortly afterwards, during the course of a telephone conversation, he told me quietly that he thought I’d let myself down. It hadn’t been the plan. I’d put a sharp black outfit together. A little bit rock’n’roll maybe, but smart-ish It was on the train to the Norwich studio that I noticed my throat was swollen, my head ached and I felt slightly other-worldly. The meet and greet person at the BBC showed me into the Green Room (which they still had in those days) pointed to a large drinks cabinet and gave me one of those, you-know-what-to-do gestures. No sooner had the door closed than I’d sprung briskly up and mixed myself a whisky mac. Then, quickly, another. Still no one came to collect me. So I had a third. I now felt confident, witty and erudite.

Thus began My So-Called Fucking TV Career. A few days earlier, my mum had telephoned me at 7.30am and said, “You’re in the Daily Mail. They say that a 'dole and drugs record’ written by a part-time washer-up has been sent out to hundreds of schools as an educational aid. And a Tory MP Nick Budgen, has condemned you publicly." She sounded rather more excited than alarmed about it. On Radio 1, the DJ Dave Lee Travis was playing ‘Young Jobless' at lunchtimes. The record company informed me that my disc had been C-listed, which meant ‘sporadic’ airplay. The drive-time DJ, Peter Powell, had played it too. For the next fortnight or so, I’d be washing up at the restaurant on a busy lunchtime session, and I’d suddenly hear Max Volume’s guitar riff chugging in, as my record came on. 

“Hey, that’s my record again!” I’d squeal. The whole shift would come to a halt until it was finished. I was getting Radio 1 airplay. One evening they played it on Radio 4’s PM news show. I never heard it of course. In those days I only ever listened to pop music stations. Because of that particular news item, some high-up at EMI Records had also heard it.

The next thing you know, along with Kris and Stuart from Offstreet Records, I’m sitting upstairs at EMI’s Manchester Square HQ, negotiating a one-off, piss-poor, four per cent record and distribution deal. The record was hurriedly re- released on EMI's Liberty label. Now we were motoring.

We sealed it with a lukewarm bottle of Chablis, which I'd found while nosing around in their broken fridge, when instead I should have been listening to what was being said. In the bogs later, just along the corridor, I met Mensi, cheerfully ebullient singer of the Angelic Upstarts. “Do some fookin work, yer lazy bastids!” he yelled in broad Geordie, as we passed back through the typing pool together. On the way back up to the meeting room, finding myself on the wrong staircase, I met a few glamorous- looking New Romantic types: tablecloths over shoulders, leather trousers and big ’80s hair. They all had flutes of cold fizzy in their hands. I was informed that it was some kind of reception for Dexys Midnight Runners. And there's me, Kris and Stuart, crammed upstairs in an office with a paper cup of warm Chablis each and a song about the plight of Our Unemployed Yoof. Every expense spared, then.

Back to the Future (1985)