PUNK

LET THE MUSIC DO THE TALKING – in South Tyneside

/ Alikivi

10 years ago I started researching the South Tyneside music scene and from there a number of interviews with musicians were set up. Here is a few stories taken from them.

Duncan Binnie: ‘I was seeing bands when I was ten year old and at that time to go and watch bands at the Newcastle City Hall you’re just blown away.

My brother had a guitar that I pinched out of his room, tried playing it, just the one string, thinking I can play this. Eventually it leads to a band, four lads getting together which we did’.

Ted Hunter: ‘My first inspiration to play music was me Dad, he was a guitarist in the ’60s. Then when I was 14 I got a ticket to see Ted Nugent, he was jumping around the stage, screeching his head off.

We had a little covers band and we used to practice in St Peters Youth Club in Whiteleas. There used to be a youth club in South Shields called St Hildas and local bands used to play there’.

John Hopper: ‘I just bought a cheap bass rehearsed and plugged away at St Judes Church Hall in Laygate. We played The Cyprus, the pubs in Shields. We just liked gigging that much we realised we had to do it more and more’.

John Lockney: ‘I was forever bashing away on me legs to music and many people said why don’t you become a drummer. We used to rehearse in the back of Tyne Dock Youth Club and we started playing gigs, I remember Bolingbroke Hall and Boldon Lane Community Centre in Shields’.

Joe Peterson: ‘Around the age of 14 my Dad was a singer in the North East Social clubs so that’s where I started thinking about music, started playing guitar. We played all round the country at that time as the clubs were thriving’.

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Robby Robertson: ‘First band I saw was The Damned, my lad took me along and that was it, hooked from then. Everybody had a go at being in a punk band. Everybody could have a shot at it and they did. We started off in Hebburn, Kinx nightclub, it was a cellar. We thought we were the business, we were rubbish like.

We done the first gig, we jumped around all over, pulled the leads out and the p.a. caught on fire. The singer run over and blew it out. We had to finish after three songs, it was an absolute disaster, thinking this is a bit harder than we thought it would be.

We went on to play The Station in Gateshead with loads of bands, decent bands like Conflict and Icons of Filth’.

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Paul McRae: ‘I got into music when I was about 10, in the backyard of John Williamson Street, playing with knitting needles and a dish. We used to rehearse at Trinity House Youth Club and we were right into Free then, so we started rehearsing all Free tracks.

Then we played the schools, Stanhope Road, Dean Road. We used to play The Hunter and we liked it that much we played it ten times in the same gig’.

Rob Atkinson: ‘Lou Reed, The Doors, Iggy Pop that’s where I was at the time. In the band Next it was the influence we had on each other. It was a bit off the wall, could be a bit weird. But there wasn’t much else like it.

When you work with people who can be so productive and come up with ideas, when you bounce of each other that’s the best part of the music.

You don’t have to sit for years and think am I good enough. You just go out there and if they like it they like it, and if they don’t they don’t come and see ya’.

Billy Morgan: ‘The alternative punk scene started and that changed things for me. Instead of being someone who was an observer in music I thought that I can do it. It was like we wanted to jump up and down and be heard, I’m here, I exist.

Definitely pushing things to the alternative and coming up with something different.

The very first gig we played in front of six people. Then the next gig we played in front of twelve and we thought we really doubled up’.

Richard Jago: ‘The punk thing was pretty fundamental, it was totally different. XTC, Ian Dury and the Blockheads that was the stuff that really made me sit up and listen.

I couldn’t play guitar at least I couldn’t play very well, I couldn’t play drums so I started throwing words together. A number of influences like John Cooper Clarke, Ian Dury, the humour that was in what they were doing.

I was also very much influenced by the ’80s, middle of the Thatcher regime, pits were closing, industry was shutting down the yards were going’.

Some bands scraped the money together to go into studio’s and record demo tapes and singles. If the band were lucky enough small record labels would make albums.

Joe Peterson: ‘Lots of bands at the time used to record demos and post them off to every record company they could think of. I think they were very rarely listened to’.

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Ted Hunter: ‘There was plenty of bands doing original music at the time that could of got further, and obviously the record deal is the holy grail. But many bands got plenty ‘we regret to inform you’ letters.

We spent four days in Guardian Studios in Pity Me, Durham and spent £400. Which was a fortune in those days. I was only getting £25 a week. We come out with two really good Prog tracks. Which I don’t think got the band anywhere’.

Duncan Binnie: ‘Desert Sounds was the first studio where we done a demo. But I was such a perfectionist. I wouldn’t send a demo tape away to a record company because I didn’t think it sounded quite right, I wouldn’t send a photo away to a record company cos I would think I didn’t look right.

I just didn’t want the letter back saying, we don’t want this’.

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John Hopper: ‘First major gig was Tiffany’s in Newcastle, that was a showcase. That’s where we got the record deal with NEAT Records in Wallsend. When we went into the studio we done most of the tracks that was listed for the album and the demo ones got taken off the reel and put onto the album reel.

Originally the album was just called Slutt and then it got catalogued as Model Youth. It was released in 1988′.

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John Lockney: ‘The studios we used was Guardian Studios in Pity Me just outside Durham, run by a man called Terry Gavaghan. We recorded the four track EP and that was so nerve wracking at the time because we were green as grass.

We were proud of the songs and we went around the local record shops to leave some copies on sale or return. It really was great, I mean you’ve been brought up on singles. Now suddenly you’ve got one of your own. It’s still one of the proudest things I’ve ever done you know.

We went back to record another two tracks for a compilation album Roksnax, the production was better then, we weren’t as green and went back again and done another four tracks for demos to flog around record companies. You can tell the difference how confident we were with more experience in the studio’.

Being in a band can also bring it’s funnier moments…

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Robbie Robertson: ‘Kev the original singer out of The Fiend decided he was going to get a mohican, so we cut this mohican for him but it turned out a bit wonky and looked rubbish so we painted it with yellow gloss paint’.

Joe Peterson: ‘We spent a lot of time in Scotland. Used to drive to a club, put the gear in the club, do the performance, leave the gear in the club overnight and sleep in the van. Which was really hot in the summer and absolutely freezing cold in the winter.

So cold I remember waking up one morning, someone was sleeping in the passenger seat and his forehead had frozen to the window. We had to peel him off in the morning when he woke up’.

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Duncan Binnie: ‘In ’87 we’re playing the Amphitheatre down South Shields in front of can I say, one of the biggest crowds that’s been down there. Council wouldn’t give us any lights so it was an absolute disaster ‘cos halfway through the gig it was dark. But we had the fireworks and the stage was pretty good at that point.

We had a few unpaid roadies one of them was called Joe and it’s unbelievable what effort he’s putting in for nowt. Well during a song one of our explosions went off at the wrong time and the poor guy gets blown up at the gig.

I remember going into The Marsden Rattler pub afterwards and he was standing there his coat was all burnt, the whole top of it was fringed up and he had no eyebrows left’.

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John Lockney: ‘We supported Fist one time, they were in a different league to us. When they went on I remember there was flour bombs from above the back of the stage getting dropped on the drummer Harry Hills head. He ended up being a blur of white as he thrashed around the drums’.

Joe Peterson: ‘A band I was in The James Boys did an audition for the producer of The Tube, and The Tube at the time was the music show. Everybody played live on it, this was the very last edition and we passed the audition.

We were given our times and dates to go and do it but a few days leading up to the recording we were told that as it was the last show Paul McCartney decided he wanted to appear on the show. So we were dropped and Paul McCartney took our place’.

Duncan Binnie: ‘We were playing Middlesbrough Town Hall which was the biggest gig we’d done ‘cos you’d feel cool, we were playing a stage the size of Newcastle City Hall. But the sound guy was going to me ‘give us £50 and I’ll get you a good sound’ and I was going we haven’t got £50, it took us all our bus fare to get up to Middlesbrough’.

Last words…

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Joe Peterson: ‘Music is such a massive part of my life, that I think it has helped me through some really difficult times’.

Paul McRae: ‘The music, the scene, well it was just our life, everything about it, we were in it from the beginning’.

Robbie Robertson: ‘We just enjoy ourselves really, that’s what it’s about, if you don’t enjoy it you’re wasting your time’.

Interviews by Gary Alikivi 2007.

UNDER THE SKIN with drummer Stevie James

/ Alikivi

Stevie James has been in a few punk bands over the years so he’s collected a lot of memories…

‘I’ve being tapped up by a midget in New Orleans, locked in squats in Genoa and our singer got stuck in a parachute once. I got altitude sickness on stage in Columbia and hid from Nazi skinheads in a loft in Poland. So many memories but if you venture out of your door you experience life in all its glory’.

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Where did it all start ?

‘I started off playing in bands as a kid, playing punk rock on drums. My first band was called The Betrayed and since then have played in so many bands including Hellkrusher, Grudge, Blunt Wound Trauma, Demon 340, The Fiend and The Varukers’.

Who were your influences ?

‘Like most kids growing up you start with the music your parents listened to. For me it was a family of two sides. My mothers music taste was diabolical but my dads was great.

He listened to bands like Them, The Kinks and the Rolling Stones. But he was also into heavier stuff like Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden, AC/DC and Motorhead. It’s all music I still listen to.

My own music started with Damned, Specials and The Sex Pistols. I remember me dad playing Friggin in the Riggin to me uncle and thinking, I’m gonna get me lug dadded here but he just laughed. Then I discovered Angelic Upstarts and the UK Subs.

Now I had a thread to follow I quickly discovered punk in all its forms and along with school mates, found the harder edged and politically motivated punk of the early eighties. Once I discovered that, it was life changing, I never looked back’.

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How did you get involved in playing music ?

‘When we were kids we hung around in large groups on the streets, roaming all over the place. In the early eighties there was an old drum shop on Bede Burn Road in Jarrow that would chuck old sticks and drum heads in a skip around the back. We would go and raid it and see what we could acquire.

Kids from my generation didn’t have access to much so even an old drum head would spark off the imagination.

We would play Crass records that one of our friends older brother had. The anger and politically charged lyrics was the first time I really related to someone else’s point of view. It was the beginning of my interest in music.

Around ’81 or ’82 we went to see The Phantoms of the Underground, Blood Robots and The Pigs in a church hall in Jesmond, and that was that.

I remember having to lie to my dad about where I was going and when I got dropped off at home after the gig, I thought I was gonna get a clout around the ear, but he just said ‘get to bed lad’ and I escaped another hiding.

We decided after that to start a band and moved into me dads garden shed for about three years. I built a drum kit from water barrels from me dads’ allotment.

They were covered in towels perched on upside down chairs with the backs pulled off and the dowel from the backs for sticks. I had a snare drum shell with only a bottom head and no snare, so I turned it upside down and covered it with a towel.

That was my first kit until I bought a proper kit from a lad at the paper shop for £30.

We did our first gig in my parent’s kitchen when they went shopping. We sold tickets for 25p and filled the house with kids from the estate. We borrowed the school drum kit and took it to mine in shopping trolleys.

Me parents came home half way through the gig and caught us. Me old man said I had one hour and went in the living room and closed the door. He was alright about me music was me old man’.

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When did you start playing gigs and what venues did you play ?

‘When I got heavily involved in the punk scene it was very diy and we would play gigs anywhere and everywhere. The bands we followed predominantly played at The Station in Gateshead, The Bunker in Sunderland and later The Broken Doll in Newcastle.

I played my first gig at the Anglo Asian club in the west end of Newcastle but we shook the floor so much they stopped us playing there. ‘We also used to play a lot at The Irish Centre in Newcastle’.

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‘When I was in a band that you could call serious, we did our first gig at The Riverside in Newcastle but we played all over the country and some of us into Europe and America.

I have played worldwide over the years, the punk scene is as far reaching as it gets and I’ve played with everyone from Glen Matlock from the Sex Pistols, to UK Subs, Discharge, Exploited, GBH, The Damned, Steve Ignorant from Crass, The Dickies, The Misfits, you name it. Those early days of kicking around the doors were special though’.

What were your experiences of recording ?

‘We were about as clueless as it gets but what we lacked in knowledge we made up for in enthusiasm. I can’t remember prices but we recorded as cheaply and as quickly as possible in those days.

We used to go to Rednose Studio on the north side and recorded our first single with a band called Senile Decay, which was mastered at Abbey Road then our first album there with Hellkrusher on the Wasteland record which was released in 1990.

The record company said it wasn’t good enough so we went to Baker Street Studio in Jarrow owned by local musician Howard Baker’.

‘I turned up with a pair of old drum sticks covered in gaffer tape and when the engineer asked me where my drums were, I told him I didn’t have any. I thought this was a studio so there would be some here. We ended up borrowing the kit of someone who stored it in the studio.

I later went on to study and become a sound engineer and record many artists over the years and in studios all over the world, including the amazing Rooftop Studio in South Shields.

I went on to design and build The Cave Studio that is still standing to this day, which I’m proud of as it’s in my hometown. I’ve always produced everything I ever did since I had the knowledge to do it’.

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Have you any funny stories from playing gigs ?

‘Oh aye. So many, I wouldn’t know where to start. Most bands spend just about the full day travelling and drinking so they do everything three sheets to the wind but I don’t drink so I remember everything.

I’ve got loads of memories, like the time I slept in a convent, we’ve been escorted by police out of various cities and even over the borders of countries. There has been riots, kick off’s, we’ve blown so many circuit boards in venues it’s not funny.

I remember doing a gig with The Fiend and the guitarist Robby pulled into a petrol station to fill up the van and somehow managed to jam his keys into the van ignition and pulled off the steering wheel trying to get them back out.

We had to leave the van on the forecourt and Robby got a lift on a moped to go get his car. Aye we still did the gig!’

‘We done a gig in The Ferry pub in South Shields where we were so loud we vibrated all the bottles off the bar. They could hear us down the road at another pub so they complained to the police.

One time we went through the metal detector in Berlin airport and one band member accidentally had a butter knife in his boot, it didn’t go off but we were sweating buckets going through security.

We were on tour in America when one of us got pulled in Dallas for having the same name as a wanted terrorist! They showed us a picture of an Asian fella and asked if it was one of us before they would let us go into South America’.

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What are you doing now and are you still involved with music ?

‘Music got under my skin and never left me. I was involved in an accident that damaged my spine badly and it had an impact on my health in general. It was a long and arduous climb back up to a semblance of normality, but it changed how I live my life and affected me profoundly.

I can’t play anywhere as well as I used to as the damage is degenerative, and I have to tread really carefully but I still play’.

‘I just can’t imagine my life without playing music in it. I will always play diy punk just how it’s always been, and how it feel’s natural to me. There isn’t a single penny in it and it’s a chore like you couldn’t imagine.

It can be frustrating to manage the logistics of it but I love it with everything that I am and always will’.

Interview by Gary Alikivi June 2017.

Recommended:

Mond Cowie, Angels of the North, 12th March 2017.

ANGELIC UPSTARTS: The Butchers of Bolingbroke, 1st June 2017.

Neil Newton, All the Young Punks, 4th June 2017.

Wavis O’Shave, Felt Nowt, 6th June 2017.

Crashed Out, Guns, Maggots and Street Punk, 6th July 2017.

Wavis O’Shave, Method in the Madness, 5th September 2017.

Steve Staughan, Beauty & the Bollocks, 1st October 2017.

Steve Kincaide, Life of Booze, Bands & Buffoonery, 11th January 2018.

GUNS, MAGGOTTS & STREET PUNK – Just a normal day for Jarrow band Crashed Out

/ Alikivi

‘We played South Central LA and the gig got swamped by two rival gangs. The street outside had gangbangers in cars screeching up and down the street. The gangs were ready to go to war. Everyone was crapping themselves. We finished the set then legged it’….

Where did it all start ?

’The very first line up of Crashed Out consisted of four 15 year old school mates, Gary Fulcher, Mark Spencer, Lee Griffiths and me, Lee Wright.

The present line up is my brother Chris Wright, Spencer Brown and Carlos. I’m the only original member from the start. At the very beginning we wanted to sound like a mash up of Rock and Punk. We listened to bands like Stiff Little Fingers, UK Subs, Nirvana, Cock Sparrer and AC/DC’.

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How did you get involved in playing music ?

‘The only reason I picked up the guitar was boredom. I was 14 years old and got it as a present for Christmas. I started to watch early Guns ’n’ Roses videos and got obsessed with music. I wanted to learn how Slash played his guitar solos, it amazed me.

When I realised I couldn’t play like that, I turned to punk music, mainly Stiff Little Fingers and UK Subs. I spent months learning in my room. I found I could pick their songs up easier.

Many years later we would tour and become friends with these types of bands, who would have known.’

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When did you start playing gigs and what venues did you play ?

‘We started off playing our school hall in front of the kids and teachers. They didn’t think much of us punk kids making a noise, but we left our mark for sure. Twenty odd years later I bumped into an old school teacher and he mentioned that gig haha.

After that we started playing pubs up and down the country, it was difficult ‘cos of our age. But we managed to pull it off somehow. Around that time we supported the likes of UK Subs, The Exploited, Peter and the Test Tube Babies, GBH and a few others.

I wrote hand written letters to gig promoters back then, it was hard work but it was great. We even managed to get to Belgium for a few gigs’.

What were your experiences of recording ?

‘In 1995 we recorded our first self financed single in a studio called Uncle Sams here in Newcastle. It was a professional analogue set up. I can’t remember costs but it wasn’t cheap.

That first single was called Memories of Saturday and on the b side was Fight Back. Both those tracks are on a compilation album put out by Hammer Records called True Brit.

After releasing the single we followed it up with an album This is Our Music. Uncle Sam’s studio had a good vibe !’

Have you any funny stories from gigs ?

‘There are always funny stories when traveling abroad with the band, trouble is it’s always a blur because of the alcohol ! I remember on one of our first trips abroad we decided to go by ferry. We got absolutely plastered on the way over and one of the lads passed out drunk on the floor. Someone decided to pour a carton full of boiled rice down the back of his underpants while he slept. It wasn’t hot by the way.

Anyway, morning came and we forgot about the various antics that had went on the previous night. As we left our cabin we joined the queue of people near the exit waiting to leave the ferry, when suddenly our mate started screaming and grabbing at his arse.

He was dancing round as if he was on fire, pulling rice out of his pants, he thought he had maggots coming out of his arse. With the added hangover he was really panicking, you should have seen the look on his face. I can still remember it now’.

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Chris Wright:

’Once we played in an old prison in Germany, with support from The Bruisers, who went on to become The Dropkick Murphys. Anyway it kicked off outside and some nutters were shooting guns so we had to hide in the back of the building.

This is a very bizarre but true story. We were in LA when we met Lemmy at the Rainbow Rooms. He asked me if I wanted to buy a Hollywood star paving slab with my name ettched on it. He said he could have it shipped to Jarrow for me!! Honestly true story’.

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‘Former Angelic Upstarts drummer Decca Wade (pic above) was playing for us in 2006. He played a gig in Spain completely naked and when he finished he stood up from his kit and bowed to the crowd. He took a step back and disappeared off the stage. Thing was the stage was in the centre of a hall and a curtain was drawn behind it so he couldn’t see the 5ft drop. He had to run from behind the stage through the crowd to the dressing room, all this while he was naked’.

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What are Crashed Out doing now, and have you got any plans for the future?

‘Well twenty plus years later we are still playing all over the world. We have new recordings in the pipeline and we have some new band members too. Things are going really well. Thanks for the interview’.

Crashed Out have lined up a few stand out gigs this year. They are playing at a charity gig at the Head of Steam in Newcastle on August 25th.

In October the band are at Newcastle Uni with Cock Sparrer on the 7th, then on the 20th they are supporting Sham 69 at Newcastle Academy.

December 9th they travel to Wales for a pre-Xmas bash then on 28th they are having a Xmas Mash Up at Trillians Bar in Newcastle.

Check the official website crashed-out.co.uk or their facebook page for more dates.

Interview by Gary Alikivi June 2017.

Recommended:

Mond Cowie, Angels of the North, 12th March 2017.

ANGELIC UPSTARTS: The Butchers of Bolingbroke, 1st June 2017.

Neil Newton, All the Young Punks, 4th June 2017.

Wavis O’Shave, Felt Nowt, 6th June 2017.

Crashed Out, Guns, Maggots and Street Punk, 6th July 2017.

Wavis O’Shave, Method in the Madness, 5th September 2017.

Steve Staughan, Beauty & the Bollocks, 1st October 2017.

Evo, No One Gets Out Alive, 8th October 2017.

Steve Kincaide, Life of Booze, Bands & Buffoonery, 11th January 2018.

STILL GOT THE BLUES – with guitarist Trevor Sewell

/ Alikivi

This Friday June 23rd, is the the launch of ‘Calling Nashville’ the new album from Trevor Sewell.

If you don’t know him check this for an impressive record in the music biz; Winner of 9 major awards in the U.S.A , 4 times nominated in the British Blues Awards, his debut album ‘Calling Your Name’ spent a staggering 7 weeks at number one on the American Blues Scene Chart.

His second album ‘Independence’ went on to win multiple awards and firmly establish him as a real force to be reckoned with.

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Sewell’s music has not only been recorded recently by several American artists but also featured on numerous major compilations alongside legendary artists such as Robert Johnson, B.B King and Howlin’ Wolf.

The years have seen Trevor Sewell continue to go from strength to strength…

‘We have the new album coming out which features some amazing guests in the shape of the wonderful Janis Ian who is herself a multi platinum selling artist and Grammy winner. Also Tracy Nelson from the legendary Mother Earth and produced by American producer Geoff Wilbourn’.

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Rewind the tape Trevor and tell me where did it all begin and how did you get involved in playing music ? 

‘The people that influenced me in the early days and really got me started playing were Jimi Hendrix, Freddie King and John Mayall with Eric Clapton and the Bluesbreakers.

I have a very eclectic taste in music but it was these guys that really made me want to pick up a guitar and make a go of it.

My brother brought a guitar home along with the John Mayall album and I was hooked before the intro of All Your Love had completed. I just thought how can I get a guitar, it was an amazing moment for sure’.

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Where did you rehearse and when did you start playing gigs? 

‘Like most bands we started off rehearsing in each others houses and church halls, anywhere we could really. The first one I ever did was when I was 13, it was at a Drill Hall in Heaton, Newcastle in front of about 400 people.

But since then I’ve played pretty much every sized venue from the very smallest to 20,000 plus’.

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What were your experiences of recording ? 

‘I spent a lot of 1983 working in the major London Studios which taught me a lot and gave me a taste for recording and over the next decade or so I worked hard to learn how to do it myself and build my own studio enabling me to record my albums at home.

Although I recently did one at Capitol Studios in Hollywood and have just returned from Nashville where I’ve recorded the new album’.

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Have you any stories from playing gigs ? 

‘I remember touring in Norway with The Monroes who were signed to EMI Norway and had a number one album at that time. The Monroes were themselves Norwegian and wanted to take the show to places where major bands didn’t usually play so over six or seven weeks we played pretty much everywhere in Norway and it is such a beautiful country.

It was amazing driving through the mountains in the Arctic circle and then getting a small plane into Hammerfest, the most Northerly town in the world, it was a fantastic experience.

I also love playing in America we have had our last two album launches in Los Angeles it’s a fantastic place’.

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What are your plans for the rest of 2017 ? 

‘We played at the pre-Grammy Soiree earlier this year and we are planning to go back to the U.S for the Grammys next February. I’m also lucky in that I get to play on other people’s albums sometimes particularly in the U.S.

I really do think I am a very lucky person as even after all this time I still love playing’.

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Tickets are still available from http://www.thecluny.com for the launch for the new album ’Calling Nashville’ on Friday 23rd June at The Cluny in Newcastle with special guests (from Lindisfarne) Rod Clements with Ian Thomson plus Les Young of the Wall to Wall Blues Show.

Interview by Gary Alikivi April 2017.

Recommended:

Bernie Torme, The Dentist, 21st March 2017.

Steve Dawson (ANIMALS) Long Live Rock n Roll, 2nd April 2017.

Robb Weir (TYGERS OF PAN TANG) Doctor Rock, 21st June 2017.

John Verity, (ARGENT) Blue to his Soul, 7th November 2017.

FELT NOWT -The world according to Wavis O’Shave

/ Alikivi / 2 Comments

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Who was Wavis ? An exclusive interview with the reclusive character and his biographer Gary Craig.

Gary: ‘As a kid I’d been to Wavis O’Shave gigs at the Bolingbroke Hall and St Aidens Church Hall in South Shields. He used to have some strange sort of admission fees, like slices of bread or boiled eggs.

It had to be a hard boiled egg cos he wouldn’t let you in with a soft boiled egg. If the entry fee was a white slice of bread but if you brought a brown one you were caught with a forgery’.

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‘When he was making the album Anna Fords Bum we decided to go down to ITN in London and try and meet up with the TV newsreader Anna Ford.

Amazingly enough we had only stood around for an hour when Anna Ford herself just walked straight out onto the steps of ITN.

She was approached by a man with an 18 inch polystyrene nose attached to his face. She stood there, waited while he got down on one knee and proposed marriage, we took a couple of photographs and it made the national newspapers.

After that I think he managed to get a bit more famous, he used to get on The Tube and establish one or two characters’.

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Wavis: Wavis had many adventures. I remember driving through London in the Wavis mobile. Someone sprayed a massive nose along the length of the car. You could see we were out of the area because of the licence plate on the car.

Gary Craig: We got ourselves a bit lost and headed down a dead end. We realised there was a car following us, I thought it was just going to come past so I was waving them on.

Wavis: All of a sudden it was screeching of tyres. Turned out to be the Flying Squad. It was just like Reagan and Carter on the telly. When I used to leave the area I used to have masks and stuff like that in the boot, this time I also had a baseball bat wrapped in Christmas wrapping paper. They asked me to get out and started to search under the seats and opened up the boot.

Gary Craig: They started to look at all the things in there and said sticks and masks son you could get 15 years for this. But Wavis and another lad who were in the backseat donned the 18 inch polystyrene conks, stuck there heads outside the back window and said ‘can you tell me what’s wrong officer’.

At this stage I think he decided we were pretty much crazy and there was no point of trying to pursue enquiries.

FOFFOBOVRILHARD

The Tube in the early 1980’s was a music programme broadcast live from a studio in Newcastle. I was lucky enough to be in the audience for a few shows.

The early series featured Wavis O’Shave but it was in the Summer of 1982 when we witnessed the birth of one of Wavis’ best known creation’s, The Hard.

Wavis: ‘I’d filmed two 45-minute VHS movies, The Hard and Enter the Hard, where with a bit of camera trickery The Hard challenged and fought Bruce Lee.

These films were quickly made available to Wavis fans on the Whiteleas Council Estate, South Shields. Video copies fired around the estate and a Hard mania was born’.

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‘I was asked by Tyne Tees TV who were making a music programme for Channel 4, if I would like to contribute as I had been on their Check it Out show as Hootsi Tabernacle.

Hootsi was a spoof about an American Cult leader of Nebbism who had bought Marsden Rock and was having it transported bit by bit over to the States by helicopter’.

FOFFOXMAS

‘Researcher Nigel Sheldrake loved The Hard videos and wanted him on the show.

Somewhat lazily I was hoping they could simply use the footage from my own VHS movies but of course the quality would be far better if we re-shot some with professional cameras, so I conceded to redoing some in my own humble back yard in Stoddart Street, South Shields’.

THE HARD

‘The brand new TV station Channel 4 and The Tube was planned to air in November 1982 so we did the shoot sometime in September.

I was designated a sizeable film crew including the cameraman who couldn’t stop laughing, nobody knew what I was going to say or do next, so it took a few takes until he and his wobbling camera settled down.

Director Geoff Wonfor took an unashamed back seat, left me to it really, and told all the crew to do whatever I asked them to. And they did. It took about three hours and obviously not all of the sketches made it to the screen’.

‘The origin of the famous stripy jumper worn by the Hard was that I spotted it hanging up at a friend’s house. He was much taller than me so in order to make it fit I was inspired to have to pad myself out quite a bit, hence the exaggerated muscles.

I guess it may have reminded me a bit of Dennis the Menace’s jumper. The Dennis the Menace Fan Club is the only thing I have ever joined in my life. When The Tube first aired The Hard’s national debut was on the second or third episode’.

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‘On another occasion, I was given the luxury and rarity of a full day to film on location in Newcastle.

As the day wore on the crew got progressively drunk on the free beer, the disastrous result being that much of the footage was unusable, and so Lord Lobsang Coalseamwig, The Hard’s toff cousin, with top hat, tails, monocle and Doc Martens with his posh phrase ’I felt no thing’ never made it onto the Mid Summer Tube Special.

This was despite it been advertised the previous week. That was naughty of them because it was probably the best thing I had ever done.

Part of the jollity that day was when word got back to Director Geoff Wonfor that I said I was going to throw myself off the Tyne Bridge instead of the prepared Hard dummy but not to tell him.

When he found out he pinned me up to a wall and said if I did he’d kill me! I’d have thought the drop would have done that’.

‘The immortal catch phrase ‘Felt Nowt’ came naturally, although we suspect the Hard actually did feel the lot.

Two weeks after he made his debut on the show The Tube crew were sent to film something in a Manchester nightclub and all the bouncers were wearing homemade ‘Felt Nowt’ T-Shirts! The Hard was here to stay.

But these days, The Hard resides at a secret location, frozen solid in a state of cryogenic suspended animation in order to avail himself for historical study by future generations, as the worlds hardest person ever.

Premature defrostment is only an option should he be called upon to save the world if ever under threat from an incoming asteroid, whereby NASA have booked him to head butt it away’.

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‘I, Mr Wavis O’Shave true to my origin, remain an enigma even to myself, projecting multiple aspects and facets of my being hither and thither under numerous names and identities, some of which are known only to a few.

One of me being a successful author, broadcaster and occasional film maker of all things deeply profound….’

Interview by Gary Alikivi 2017.

Recommended:

Wavis O’Shave, Method in the Madness, 5th September 2017.

ALL THE YOUNG PUNKS – The early day’s with ex Upstart’s guitarist Neil Newton.

/ Alikivi

Neil Newton is a musician based in the North East of England. For 11 years he was guitarist for Angelic Upstarts.

Here he looks back on his career and where it all began…

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‘It all started off with Wizard and The Sweet, my earliest memory as a kid is seeing Roy Wood’s geet mad hair and makeup and the music just hooked me even though, at 5 years old, I didn’t understand why it appealed but I didn’t care, those songs and images were fucking great’.

‘A few years later punk came along and that was it, I had already been primed for punk by listening to the Glam Rock bands and the impact on me was massive.

I loved the energy, the anger and lyrics being spat out like venom, fucking incredible and punk still does that to this day, it still makes the hairs on my arms and neck stand on end’.

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‘Punk music did so much more than influence me musically though, it shaped my whole attitude to the world in general and it was a local punk band who brought everything into focus about just what it was that punks were angry about.

The Sex Pistols were writing about Anarchy in the UK but the Angelic Upstarts were writing about events and issues that were happening in my hometown. I loved punk because of the Pistols, Damned, Clash et al but I understood punk because of the Upstarts’.

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‘One other major influence at that time was my dad. He heard me learning and practicing some punk songs on my first ever guitar which I still have. He gave me one of his Eddie Cochran records and said ‘Here, learn that’.

So I did and said to him ‘Here dad, that record’s just like the Pistols’ my dad’s reply was ‘check the date it was recorded you stupid bastard’.

1950’s! Fuck me, that seemed prehistoric to me at the time and there was me thinking music only started with Glam then Punk…Wrong!. I scored for all my dad’s old vinyl though, Chuck Berry, Eddie C, Buddy Holly etc…Mint!’

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How did you get involved in playing music ?

‘The Boy’s Brigade. I started as a bugler but always wanted to be a drummer, so when I got the chance I took a drum and started rehearsing with it at home. Well, when I say at home I mean my dad’s shed.

My mam hate’s noise, always has and even to this day she has her telly’s volume on something like minus 24! So I’d get hoyed out into the shed. It was cosy as fuck. I can still smell the creosote, Jeyes fluid from Lindgrens, old tins of gubbins and my sneaky tabs – loosies, remember them?

Our neighbours must’ve been either stone deaf, extremely tolerant or best mates with Ted Moult and got a great deal on double glazing, because the noises coming out of that shed must’ve been bloody torturous!’

Where did you rehearse and when did you start playing gigs?

‘I played my first gig before I had ever rehearsed! I was still at school maybe 14 or 15 year old and I was approached by a 6th former. He’d heard I’d played guitar and would I help his band out by playing bass, as they had a gig coming up.

I agreed and asked him when the gig was, thinking it might be in a few months time and the lad said ‘Oh it’s tonight’! Ehhhh ! Don’t worry, he said, ‘do you know the bass line for Satisfaction by the Stones?’ Aye? Right, well just play that for every song.

A few hours later I was upstairs in the Marsden Inn drinking pints of lager and belting out Satisfaction like there was no tomorra’.

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What venues did you play ?

‘In the early days I played a few pubs in South Shields, upstairs in The Cyprus, The Commando but because I supported Newcastle United, I would spend more time in Newcastle than down Shields.

I discovered great bars like The Farmers, Jewish Mother, Egypt Cottage, Barley Mow and the best bar ever for live music in Newcastle…The Broken Doll.

Mega City Four gigs upstairs in The Doll, smashed off your tits on Slalom D, those were magic times Gary, magic times’.

What were your experiences of recording ?

‘Mostly positive and I’m not talking about the actual written material, because that usually takes care of itself either by being written and well rehearsed before you go in, or jammed out spontaneously to give it an extra edginess on the day.

Like most things, the greatest experiences are when you learn the most and I fell double lucky by having Steve Mack as producer for a band I was in at the time called The Sunflowers’.

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‘Steve’s from Seattle but in the early ’90s he had a studio called Bang Bang in Hackney. Steve was also the front-man for That Petrol Emotion who were formed by John and Damian O’Neill and were signed to Virgin.

Steve was a brilliant producer and he showed me how to properly arrange songs to get maximum impact, he explained about dynamics, he was a fucking genius and my biggest song writing mentor’.

Have you any stories from playing gigs ?

‘Haha, oh aye shitloads but a lot of them I can’t repeat. Ok then here’s a couple’.

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‘ The first involves a band I was in called Speedster and we were asked to play an all-day music festival at Newbiggin Bank House Social Club. How they even got onto us in the first place is still a mystery but contact us they did and asked if we would play.

As soon as the bloke said ‘Social Club’ I immediately asked him if he knew that we were a punk band, that we played all original material and no, we wouldn’t ‘play something wa knaa’! He replied that he was happy with that and that he wanted, as he put it to ‘put summat on for everyone son, a bit of variety’.

Well you can’t say fairer than that I suppose so we agreed to play even though, to be truthful, we still had reservations.
Anyway, the day of the festival arrives and we travel up in our drummer’s van.

We arrive and get shown through to the dressing room by the Concert Chairman, who introduced us to some bloke and his barely teenage son.

‘See this lad here’ ? says the CC pointing to the young lad, ‘he can play The Shadows on his guitar, give him a listen and tell iz what you think’ !

Now I don’t know if the CC had mistook us for Tony Hatch or Mickie Most but we stood in uncomfortable silence as this young kid gave us back to back versions of  Apache and FBI’.

No disrespect to the young kid but it was cringingly embarrassing to see his dad and the CC with a proper chuff on about this young lad, who probably felt as uncomfortable playing for us, as we felt watching him.

A pushy parent is one thing but a pushy parent and a concert chairman, the poor kid must’ve been going through hell.

Whilst all this had been going on an old bloke had been popping in and out of the dressing room. We assumed that he was club staff, or one of the dreaded ‘committee men’, so we didn’t really pay him that much attention….more on him later!

We asked if we could see where we were playing and were escorted outside and onto a concrete flagged patio, with two small speakers for the vocals…and that was it.

I remember it was a sunny, warm day so we buggered off into Newbiggin and got ourselves a slab or two of lager, it was Oranjeboom lager and how the fuck I can remember that I’ll never know but there you are.

We went back to the club and just sat in the sun drinking our cans and waiting for our patio erm stage time.

In fairness we had a great view of the seafront and it was a beautiful day but we began to dread what would happen when we got up, as the audience was comprised mostly of old people and staunch clubmen types – sorry for the generalisation.

Nonetheless, as more of the Oranjeboom began to go down, the less we gave a fuck….except our drummer, who wasn’t drinking because he had the van and was dreading it more and more the nearer it got to our stage time.

Finally we got up to play our set which was approx 50mins long. Not today though, our drummer just wanted to get on and off as quick as he could and set a band personal best time of just over 30 mins, by playing the set at 200mph!

There was problems with the weedy little PA as our backline just roared over it. When we finished, you would’ve thought the audience had been twatted with a wet Turbot, they just sat there, stunned and bemused.

We got off and went back to the dressing room and were met by the bloke who had booked us, he paid and thanked us and seemed happy enough so we thought fair enough, a little surreal but fair do’s.

Then we noticed the little old fella from earlier, except now he wasn’t wearing old gadgie gear, he was squeezed into an Elvis Presley, Vegas bloated years jumpsuit.

I did spot a custom addition though, the proper Elvis caper has something like American Eagles sewn on it and encrusted with jewels, this fella had Magpies sewn on instead of Eagles and glitter that he’d glued on.

We thought he was fucking mint and couldn’t wait to see him get up and strut his stuff, so we went up and parked our arses where we could get a good view.

Hey man, when he came on everyone gave him a big cheer and he was over the bit glad with himself. He started belting out Elvis songs and you know the crack, it’s just owld fella chanting and wobbly vibrato innit.

Then he fired up with a real classic (You’re the) Devil in Disguise. A track I quite like as it happens, but this fella sang his own version.

I suppose the Magpies on his shirt should’ve been a big enough clue but the owld fella was clearly a proud North-East working class fella and when he got to the chorus he roared out ‘You’re Mike Neville in Disguise’ !

It probably doesn’t sound all that funny a story in and of itself but the experience of it was fucking hilarious’.

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‘Second story, I can’t give names for this one but it involved some after show shenanigans at a hotel in Blackpool. One of whose guests included a certain diminutive Scottish lady, who likes dressing up as a schoolboy.

The surreal level went off the scale with that one, especially when the after show shenanigans moved from the bar and upstairs to a hotel room. True story’.

What are you doing now and what are your plans for the future ?

‘I’ve just left the Angelic Upstarts after being with them for the last 11 years and having written and released two albums.

I’ve got my University finals coming up for an MSc so I need to focus 100% on them for the next few months but after that I’ll be heading straight back into music again, although probably not with the Upstarts.

I’ve got plans for what I’m going to do music wise and should be able to reveal those towards the end of the year’.

Interview by Gary Alikivi March 2017.

Recommended:

Mind Cowie, Angels of the North, March 12th 2017.

Angelic Upstarts, The Butchers of Bolingbroke: Gigs, Pigs & Prisons, June 1st 2017.

Neil Newton, Vinyl Junkies, 12th September 2017.

THE BUTCHERS OF BOLINGBROKE – Pigs, Gigs and Prisons with Angelic Upstarts

/ Alikivi

1983

In 1977 three big events happened in the small seaside town of South Shields in the North East of England.

The boxer Muhammed Ali had his wedding blessed in the town’s mosque, on her Silver Jubilee the Queen visited the town and while ‘God Save the Queen’ by The Sex Pistols was blasting out of the radio, three friends from a working class housing estate started a punk band.

It took them on a journey they could only dream of…

Mensi: The nucleus of the band really was me, Dekka and Mond

Mond: We had known each other since we were kids, we used to hang around the shops at Brockley Whins.

Decca: They said here Decca we’re forming a band and you’re going to be the drummer. I wasn’t doing too much then, so I thought it would be a bit practice.

Mond: Initially we used to rehearse in Percy Hudson youth club in Biddick Hall and I remember our first gig was there, we done a show for the kids.

Decca: Yeh and we only knew six songs, so we played them same six songs three times!

Mond: We found you can hire the Bolingbroke Hall in South Shields for about £10 or something like that, and we had a big enough following by then, we used to get about 300 people in.

Decca: We used to play there regular, the admissions were a bag of coal or 50p, well there was coal wagons turned up !

Mensi: We gave the coal to the pensioners.

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At one gig a special guest was brought on stage and fans in the crowd Graham Slesser and Steven Wilson remember it well…
Graham: The first time I went to see the Angelic Upstarts was at the Bolingbroke Hall when I was 14. There was a pigs head and everybody would run to it, fling it and kick it about.

Steven: First ever concert. First ever punk gig. Unbelievable, walked in, paid me money, it was wall to wall, heaving. I just have this vivid memory of a pigs head being held aloft, and I was transfixed.

Mensi: I think he made his first appearance at the Bolingbroke Hall with a police helmet on !

Mond: But at those gigs people started to sit up and take an interest.

Decca: I think that’s when we all started to take it serious you know, when we all got our heads together and started writing. I mean Mensi was a prolific song writer.

Mensi: My lyrics are mainly the easiest lyrics to write cause I just write about what’s happening around us.

Decca: He came out with the Murder of Liddle Towers, the song that made us famous.

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Mensi: When I wrote Liddle Towers it was more a sense of injustice that basically someone could be kicked to death. I don’t think I’m ashamed of anything I’ve wrote.

Although in hindsight, being a lyricist and songwriter you can write a song about something that’s in your mind for just that moment.

Another thing is being in a band sometimes you think you have great power to change the world, write a song that’ll change the world, full of ideals when you are young.

How did the Upstarts get their name about on a national stage ?
Mond: The journalist Phil Sutcliffe came to see us and gave us our first big write up in the Sounds, it was a centre page spread.

Mensi: We got big helps in our early days. Number one would have been John Peel, he actually played Liddle Towers when nobody else would because I believe it got banned. Then Phil Sutcliffe who actually championed the band. Then Garry Bushell.

Mond: Garry was working for the Sounds at the time and he saw the write up that Phil Sutcliffe did. He was into punk so he came up to see us.

There was something in the Sounds every week about us, if it wasn’t a single review it was an album review or a gig review.If there wasn’t any new records out we used to just phone him up and give him stories, we used to just make them up.

At one time the Sounds used to be called the Upstarts weekly because there was something about the Upstarts in every week without fail.

And that was all down to Garry Bushell. Bless him. One time we played in Acklington Prison and we actually sneaked Garry in, we pretended he was one of the roadies.

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Mensi: A lot of people thought it was a made up publicity stunt but it really happened. Yes we went in there. The prison Chaplain booked us as he thought we were a Gospel band.

Mond: We sneaked Bushell in with a camera, I mean if he got caught he would of ended up stopping in there.

Mensi: It wasn’t just a couple of songs we done a full set, we played Police Oppression and Liddle Towers that went down a storm didn’t it.

Mond: That got us some great press if nothing else. There was hell on, it was in all the Sunday papers. How could such an anti Police band be allowed to play inside a prison.

I seem to remember an MP from Tynemouth called Neville Trotter, he stood up in the Houses of Parliament and asked questions like how was this allowed to happen. Neville Trotter and a pig’s head, you couldn’t write it could you.

Decca: The rest is history after that… next you know your on Top of the Pops.

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Pop music has an air of glamour and in the 70’s shows like Top of the Pops paraded the latest stars in front of a huge TV audience of teenagers looking to spend their pocket money on the latest single.

At its height the BBC show was pulling in audience figures of 15 million. In the Summer of ’79 the Angelic Upstarts were booked for the show. The glamour bubble was about to be burst…

Mensi: We should of got on Top of the Pops with I’m an Upstart because it got to number 31 and stayed in the chart a few weeks but they wouldn’t have us on at first. But we were on once. It was like, nothing. There was no atmosphere.

Mond: I remember we did Teenage Warning it went in around number 29 on the chart. It was a horrible cold studio with four stages in it. There was only 20-30 people there. It was like playing a big warehouse, it was horrible really, not a nice experience.

Mensi: The only good thing was I sang live, they wanted us to mime but I wouldn’t so that was something.

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What did punk do for the band ?
Mond: Punk was a great platform it enabled us to get a deal with EMI, another one with Polydor and one with WEA. So yeh it enabled you to get a foot on the ladder.

Mensi: It was a way out for what I consider to be working class kids. You didn’t have to be a student in art school, you didn’t have to be prolific at music you could just bang a dustbin lid and you were away mate.

Decca: The first time I went to America, the kids in New York were into skinheads and that but in L.A. where I lived for a little while it was more like a fashion with them. But here in the UK it was a real movement.

Mond: I never thought I would be with EMI and do an album in Abbey Road studios where The Beatles used to use. We were in studio 2 the one that they recorded in.

Decca: Imagine how I felt you end up drinking with Hollywood movie stars like Marty Feldman who I loved and adored.

Mond: When I was in the shipyards putting lights up on type 42 Destroyers and you told me I was going to do an album in Abbey Road I would of just laughed. I’m an alright guitarist not a great guitarist but I couldn’t see it happening.

Decca: Yeh looking back I’ve been a lucky man.

Mond: But that’s what punk did it made peoples dreams come true.

Interviews from the documentary ’The Butchers of Bolinbroke’ (2013) available on You Tube.
Interview by Gary Alikivi  2013.

Recommended:

Mond Cowie, Angels of the North, March 12th 2017.

Neil Newton, All the Young Punks, June 4th 2017.

TEN: Soundbites from first 10 blogs.

/ Alikivi

cropped-c2t4gd2wiaavbvh1.jpgComing up to the 10th interview posted and well over 1,000 views on a blog which I thought would be read by half a dozen people – but these stories will just keep on, keeping on…below is a list of the posts so far. Coming soon interviews with John Gallagher (RAVEN) Steve Thompson (NEAT Records songwriter & producer) & Paul Di’Annio (BATTLEZONE/KILLERS/IRON MAIDEN) and plenty room for more musicians and bands to tell a few stories, just get in touch.

STILL BURNING (MYTHRA)
Vince High ’I wrote the words to Still Burning about the band as we are now, the whole team and how we feel after all these years, we felt we never really went away and the music was always with us so yeah, Still Burning sums up where Mythra are right now. We are really pleased with the album, we’re proud of it and how it’s turned out’.

LIFE SENTENCE (SATAN/BLITZKREIG)
Brian Ross ‘The kids were hungry for this noise, anger, excitement and a do it yourself attitude. It was definitly getting to me, getting in my blood, this raw and visceral sound was becoming addictive. The term New Wave of British Heavy Metal had been coined by then, and yeah it really was a new wave and you’ve gotta go with it… and we did’.

ROCK THE KNIGHT (SARACEN/BLIND FURY)
Lou Taylor ‘We jumped on a ferry to do some gigs in Holland. We took this thing around Europe and by then the whole British Heavy Metal scene was red hot so it was one mad scene of gig here, gig there, some stories you can’t tell. When you’ve played the Royal Standard in Walthomstow in front of fifty people and they aren’t interested, then you get out here where they are running after your car, sign my booby and all that, that’s gonna turn anybodys head…and it did’.

ANGELS OF THE NORTH (ANGELIC UPSTARTS)
Mond Cowie ‘I remember Joe Strummer saying we’re coming to your gig tonight do you mind if I bring Iggy Pop? We said Aye go on then haha. The gig was in New York we walked on stage, the lights blazed on and Mensi screamed “We’re the Angelic Upstarts, We’re from England, 1,2,3,4” as I strummed my guitar there was an almighty bang, it all went dark then nothing! There was a huge power cut. They couldn’t get it sorted out so we jumped off stage and went to the bar at the back where The Clash were standing and I ordered a Jack and Coke and said to Iggy Pop “It’ll be sorted in a minute, this sort of thing happens to us all the time”.

CAT SCRATCH FEVER (TYGERS OF PAN TANG)
Mickey McCrystal ‘It’s amazed me the amount of new fans who are just discovering the band and like the new songs, then go back and look at the history of the Tygers. It’s about respecting the song, doing it justice and sticking to those key Sykes solo’s and licks that people are waiting for, plus there’s plenty of opportunity for me to put my own stamp on the songs’.

THE DENTIST (GILLAN/BERNIE TORME)
Bernie Torme ‘Creative process for me is always different, some are instant, some are like pulling teeth and it goes on for years, literally. You never can tell. Just have to have a good memory really! Lately I’ve been able to do a single album, a double album and now a triple album. Mind you I’m not planning to buy a yacht or anything on the proceeds! Just as well really, maybe a toy yacht haha’.

LONG LIVE ROCK N ROLL (BORDELLO/THE ANIMALS)
Steve Dawson ‘I remember Bordello doing a showcase for CBS. We really went for it, putting our heart and soul into it you know. A guy called Dave Novek came along to have a look at us, we really laid it on in a good studio. But we found out that we ‘weren’t quite what they were looking for’. A couple of weeks later he signed Sigue Sigue Sputnik!’ Go figure Haha!’

TO HULL AND BACK (SALEM)
Paul Mcnamara ‘On stage our flash bombs comprised an old camera flash bulb wired to the mains electric, then flash powder poured on top and as we made our dramatic entrance one of our faithful roadies would throw the switch and BOOOM!! The crowd didn’t expect a mini nuclear mushroom cloud!’

THE HUNGER (WARRIOR)
Dave Dawson ‘I remember getting a call around 1981 from NEAT records owner Dave Woods he asked me if NEAT could include our song Flying High on a compilation they were producing called Lead Weight. Well of course I said yes when he listed the other bands who were going to be on. Fist, Venom, Raven just those three names were enough, they were THE Heavy Metal bands from the North East and to be in their company was fantastic for Warrior. Yes really proud of that’.

Next post week of April 18th 2017.
SHINE ON (CLOVEN HOOF)
Lee Payne ‘1983 saw Cloven Hoof touring throughout the length and breadth of the UK, earning ourselves a sizable underground cult following. In the summer of that year the band recorded a four-track session for Tommy Vance’s Friday Rock Show on Radio One and on the strength of the bands popularity Tyneside based NEAT Records signed us to record our first album. Things were starting to happen for the band, we were really in the mix’.

Interviews by Gary Alikivi 2017.

ANGELS OF THE NORTH – Mond Cowie original guitarist with Angelic Upstarts look’s back on his career with the punk band.

/ Alikivi / 7 Comments

Mond Cowie was guitarist with Angelic Upstarts from 1977 to his last album for the band Reason Why in 1983.
‘I was getting interested in the recording side of things and taking note of what could be done in a studio as by then we had worked with a few different producers with different styles. Result was I produced our album ‘Reason Why’ in Alaska Studio’s in Waterloo. It was owned by Pat Collier bassist with The Vibrators.

I got some great guitar sounds in that studio and I remember the sound of the guitar solo on Solidarity especially, very Paul Kossoff I thought! I’m really proud of that one’.

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Who were your influences in music ? ‘I was listening to bands like Free, Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple when I was about 15. My favourite guitarist then was Paul Kosoff from Free, I really liked the Les Paul sound he had and in fact my first guitar was a Sunburst Gibson Les Paul like his.

I bought it out of the Exchange and Mart magazine. Me and a friend drove down to London and I paid £320 for it.

In my time I had three Les Paul’s stolen, one from a gig in Glasgow – when I got stabbed in the back the same night, the joys of touring with The Upstarts – another in New York and one when Lynx Studios, Newcastle where I was working, was broken into’.

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How did you get involved in playing music ? ‘I was originally in a club band with Decca Wade on drums, we were playing rock standards, some Led Zeppelin, Thin Lizzy and the odd chart songs in the working mens clubs on Tyneside.

We also worked together in Hebburn shipyards, I was an electrician. Mensi used to be a miner.

One night we were drinking in our local, The Jester pub on the Brockley Whinns Estate in South Shields when Mensi came in and said I’ve just seen this band called The Sex Pistols, why can’t we do that?

Mensi wasn’t a singer but neither was Johnny Rotten so we thought we would give it a go. And we did and The Angelic Upstarts was born, in a pub in Brockley Whinns’.

1983

Where did you rehearse and when did you start playing gigs? ‘The Upstarts used to rehearse in a pub in South Shields called The Cyprus and a youth club in Biddick Hall called Percy Hudson. That’s where we did our first gig when we only had six songs, we played them all twice and then again for the encores. Fearless eh?

We also rehearsed at Temple Park Leisure Centre and ended up doing a gig there as well. Me and Decca ended up playing in two bands, one making money in the clubs and The Upstarts which was really a bit of fun at first.

With The Upstarts we started gigging seriously around 1978, some of the early gigs were places like The Bridge Hotel in Newcastle and The Old 29 on a Saturday afternoon in Sunderland.

We were the only band that they put a cover charge on for the punters because they knew it would sell out, it used to be absolutely mental in that place. You couldn’t breathe there were so many bodies in!’

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‘We also booked the Bolingbroke Hall in South Shields from the Council and did a couple of gigs there. That was mostly through lack of other places to play at the time. When we stated making a bit of a name for ourselves we got invited to play at the Newcastle Festival.

We played an outdoor gig in Jesmond Park with The Showbiz Kids but the most memorable was playing at Old Eldon Square in Newcastle city centre on a Saturday afternoon.

There was probably over 1,000 people there because it was a lovely sunny day. We were never one for compromises so we played exactly the same set we always did with Liddle Towers, Police Oppression, Fuck Off and Leave Me Alone, it didn’t go down very well with the mams, dads, grandmas and grandas out shopping as you can imagine.

Next thing we knew the police were storming into the square there must have been 50 or 60 of them, and trying to get to the stage to stop us playing but that just made Mensi worse and he started slagging them off and screaming fuck you! Fuck Law and Order! Who Killed Liddle! You get the picture!

They collared the promoter to stop the gig but nobody was going to get us to stop, we were loving it. It was mad, absolutely crackers and boy did we get some press from that one!

I don’t know who thought it might be a good idea getting us to play there on a Saturday afternoon but thanks for the publicity whoever it was’.

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How did the move to London and signing to WEA come about ? ‘Our first album was a funny old story. We were still living in South Shields and had just signed with the Jimmy Pursey label, he was singing in Sham 69 then. He asked us to come down to London to record some demos so we did that and recorded everything we knew in one day.

He phoned me a couple of weeks later and asked us to come back to London to hear the album. I said we haven’t recorded it yet Jimmy, but it turned out he had mixed the demos and it was going to be Teenage Warning, our first album.

And that’s what is was, it was recorded in one day so that must be a record for a debut album. It charted at number 29 so we weren’t going to complain. Later I heard that he and some of his friends had recorded backing vocals on some songs, but I’m not convinced’.

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‘It didn’t come out on Purseys label either, he had a distribution deal with Polydor who sacked us after Mensi had a fight with the doorman but Pursey got us signed to WEA a week later and they released it.

We got 25 grand off Polydor and then another 25 off WEA for signing to them so not a bad weeks work. If only we got it… but that’s another story.

By the time we moved to London we were headlining gigs like The Marquee, The Rainbow, The Lyceum and we played an all dayer at Alexander Palace organised by Jimmy Pursey and headlined by his band Sham 69. That was huge for us.

We were then signed to WEA for two albums. They had some huge artists on their books like AC/DC, Foreigner, Led Zeppelin, The Eagles and Fleetwood Mac so it was amazing to be on the same label’.

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‘When we were staying in Wood Green anyone from South Shields that was going to London for a show or the weekend would just turn up at our house and crash, some stayed for weeks, some never went home and some were never seen again, it was a magic time.

Me and Mensi wrote all the songs, I wrote the music and Mensi wrote the lyrics. We wrote very quickly but never rehearsed new material, most of the songs were created in the studio.

We tried rehearsing new stuff a couple of times but it just didn’t work for us, rehearsals ended up as a drinking session and lots of spliffs which I was very into at the time.

The record company would have had a fit if they knew they were booking studios for us and we didn’t have any songs ready cos it used to cost around £2,000 a day for a studio in London (laughs).

There was a time when we were due to record a new single and the company asked us what it was about, Mensi just made up a story on the spot about the miners, he was good at that.

When we recorded it, I think it was England, we played it to them and they looked very confused, that’s not about the miners they said? Mensi talked our way out of it and England was a great song so they were happy (laughs)‘.

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‘But we felt no pressure, that’s how we worked and it worked for us. And we were daft as brushes and didn’t give a toss, that helped!

Mensi was a prolific songwriter, when we were recording he would turn up with an armful of songs and I would have a cassette with all my tunes on. I used to keep a cassette recorder by my bed with a guitar because I always got ideas for songs first thing in the morning.

The recording process was usually me showing the bass player and drummer my idea and arranging it like: intro, verse, chorus, second verse, solo and three choruses to end. Then I would decide which of the lyrics fitted the tune.

Sometimes Mensi would say how he thought the tune should go for certain lyrics, like England had to be acoustic for example and sometimes I had already decided which lyrics went with what tune but not always.

When Decca left the band I asked Paul Thompson from Roxy Music if he would stand in on drums until we found someone. He was a mate of mine and we used to drink in The Ship in Wardour Street just up from The Marquee.

He ended up playing on England, Kids on the Street, the album Reason Why and he also came to America with us and did a tour there’.

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What were your experiences of recording ? ‘Our first time in a studio was in 1978 when we went into Impulse Studios in Wallsend to record our first single The Murder of Liddle Towers, the engineer was Mick Sweeney. I thought the guitar sound was a bit naff but he said he would beef it up in the mix! The lying TWAT.

I later found out that all engineers say things like that just to get the recording finished so they can fuck off home early so I’d learnt my first lesson about recording.

The reaction to that song was phenomenal, we were really surprised, it got in all the papers and also got us noticed by The Sounds which would prove very beneficial to us. Gary Bushell became a great friend and supporter of the band.

By 1981 we were with EMI and went into Trident Studio in London where some amazing artists had recorded, The Beatles did the White Album, Queen, The Stones, Thin Lizzy had been there and of course David Bowie had recorded Ziggy Stardust there. We recorded England and a few other songs.

EMI owned Abbey Road Recording Studios so they asked us if we wanted to do an album there, well do you need to ask haha! We did the 2 Million Voices album there and that got to number 32 in the charts’.

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‘We also recorded a live album for EMI using the Rolling Stone mobile. That got us to number 27. So we were hanging around the charts.

When we were at Abbey Road loads of our friends including Stiff Little Fingers used to come over every night because there was a bar and restaurant down in the cellar and everything you got just went on the bill. We thought it was free until our manager got the bill at the end of the session. He said how can one band drink so much?

The band played a couple of radio sessions at the BBC for John Peel and Mensi had the idea to write and record a song just for the session as a thank you to Peely because he was always playing our stuff.

So I came up with a riff and while we were recording the backing track, Mensi was scribbling some words on a bit paper and out popped ‘Kids on the Street’. Song writing the Upstarts way but don’t try this at home kids!’

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What venues did you play and have you any stories from playing gigs ? ‘In 1981 we went on our first American tour. We got there a few days early to acclimatize and The Clash were staying in the same hotel so we used to meet them every night for the happy hour.

Happy hours are class in America you don’t just get nuts and crisps you get chicken wings and pizzas and all sorts. We used to starve ourselves all day just waiting for the happy hour.

It was a great laugh with them and I remember Joe Strummer saying we’re coming to your gig tonight do you mind if I bring Iggy Pop? We said ‘aye go on then!

The gig was in New York but I can’t remember if it was Radio City or Civic Hall but we walked on stage, the lights blazed on and Mensi screamed “We’re the Angelic Upstarts, We’re from England, 1,2,3,4” then just as I strummed my guitar there was an almighty bang, it all went dark then nothing!

There was a huge power cut. They couldn’t get it sorted out quickly so we jumped off stage and went to the bar at the back where The Clash were standing and I ordered a Jack and Coke and said to Iggy Pop “It’ll be sorted in a minute, this sort of thing happens to us all the time”.

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‘We played all over the States, New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Houston, Dallas, Austin, Chicago, Washington, Seattle and right up into Canada – Toronto and Montreal.

In LA we played a place called The Florentine Gardens which was massive and also the legendary Whisky a Go Go. Punk had become a fashion then in the States where in the UK it was all pins through the nose and glue sniffing.

I remember one of the barmaids in The Whisky loaned me her sports car for the week we were there, a Datsun 280 ZX and Decca was loaned a Fiat Spyder 2 seater sports car but he couldn’t drive. It didn’t bother him, little things like that.

It was unbelievable how friendly people in the US were to us. I loved it and still go back regularly for holidays’.

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‘Our manager was called Tony Gordon he also had Sham 69 and Culture Club in his stable. Before he signed Culture Club, I was in the office one day and he asked me if I wanted to come and see a band that night at a club in Carnaby Street. The band was Culture Club and they were fucking shite.

I kid you not, probably the worst band I’ve ever seen in my life. I said don’t touch them Tony. but he signed them anyway because he thought the singer had something.

I have to admit he was right because they became one of the biggest bands in the world at the time’.

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What did the ’80’s have in store for the Upstarts ? ‘I was getting interested in the recording side of things and around ’83 I produced the first New Model Army album Vengeance and some singles, my favourite was The Price, after me they got in Glyn Johns to produce them so I was in good company.

Glyn Johns had done Led Zeppelin, The Who, The Stones, The Eagles, Eric Clapton, The Beatles he is a legend’.

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‘By 1983 I felt the band had run its course, there were no hard feelings when I left but I was looking to work more in production. Also we were on an independent label by then and weren’t getting the big advances anymore like we did with WEA and EMI, we were only receiving recording costs so financially we weren’t as stable.

I headed back home and started working as producer at Lynx Studios in Newcastle that lasted for a couple of years, it was owned by the AC/DC vocalist and fellow Geordie Brian Johnson. I have known Brian since his days in Geordie and we were close friends and still are to this day’.

Whats your thought’s today on your time in the Upstarts ? ‘You know looking back, one minute we were playing the Bolingbroke Hall in South Shields and the next we were signed to WEA in London. One of the biggest labels in the world.

I remember one day me and Mensi had gone into WEA to pinch records, I had some record collection in those days, and we were sitting with our press officer, Dave Jaret, he said can we be quick lads because I’m having lunch with Fleetwood Mac and I’m going out with Rod Stewart tonight. Unbelivable eh?

Me and Mensi from Brockley Whins mentioned in the same breath as those two. There were a lot of occasions when I had to slap myself to remind me it was all real and YES, it is happening. But that’s music for you, there aren’t many other jobs that can do that for you.

And now here we are 40 years later and still talking about it. Nobody saw that one coming, certainly not us, we thought we might get a couple of years out of it at the most. We must have done something right I suppose.

Thank you to everyone who ever bought an Upstarts record, who came to see us playing and who supported us over the years. Thanks for the memories. It was a blast.’

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Interview 24th February 2017 by Gary Alikivi.

Recommended:

Angelic Upstarts, The Butchers of Bolingbroke: Gigs, Pigs & Prison, June 1st 2017.

Neil Newton, All the Young Punks, June 4th 2017.