Broken heroes

Shepperton Road at Junction with Newnorth Rd, Islington, London,  late September, 1977.
Summer rain I can only compare to Glastonbury 1985 where I donned a bin bag and improvised a CND symbol to go on stage - ending the show by announcing that the outfit was available on my merch store at £7 - no laughs but several customers. Lawrence Corner trench coat was just about keeping me dry. An army surplus shop - which one night after a few too many wine gums led me to speculate: why does the army have such a huge surplus? Surely this would imply poor procurement. I generally stuck to the shirts - or got one in Clozo in Camden passage-as Bryan Ferry had a good GI look going at the time with tie tucked in. I did buy a tunic to complete the image. Alright I bought some lanyard too and put a whistle on the end. But no gas masks or ammunition boxes. Well only one of each.

I hope we resist the pressure and  carry on cutting forces budgets until they are forced to wear discarded civilian surplus - a nice floral shirt from Primark deadstock. This would work out well all round as camouflage as most forces mainly appear to target civilians these days. The coat lasted years circulating among kin and friends - a surefire way of having a different outfit for each party although it did rather encourage single gender groups which was a shame as nightclubs then had a door policy which favoured females ( lower prices) banning large groups of males even if they were in pink trousers and black eye liner. If you arrived separately or in twos you were welcome so a modicum of acting talent - say a Bowie level of ability- demonstrated by ignoring friends in queue and you could reassemble within the Sundown or some other horrendous cavern with overpriced watered down carling and casual gang violence on draught. 1980 I arrived at said club with student friends to see Spandau Ballet and only I was given the nod by Steve on the door - did wonders for my ego but little for my long term relations with above.

I was walking like a punk Richard III  to protect the precious cargo: Helden the German lyric version of Heroes. Already one such nugget had slipped through my fingers gifted to a friend - wonder if she still has it. Said friend had encouraged my writing so I  adapted one of my short stories which had echoes of Powell and Pressburgers A Matter of life and Death/ Durenmatt's The Visit / An Inspector Calls and used Low as the soundtrack. As the play was put on at an all girls school, I got more female attention than in all my previous years combined which was a revelation as until then I thought playing for your college football team would have the ladies flocking - I blame George Best. Drama for me from now on please. Copies of the script reproduced in blue ink on a banding machine are available on request though the scent of teen angst is long faded. When I began to do theatre in a less naive way I used Helden as the playout for a production of Woyzeck - the earlier music was all Trans Europa Express by Kraftwerk in original German.

Obviously I thought this record a must have but can't work out why? And why choose German over French? I had studied the latter at school, started to watch French Films on late night BBC 2 not always for purely artistic motives as they approached female nudity in a very different way to Hammer horror - although of late the less pretentious nature of Vampire titles appear to hold up better. They have certainly influenced my view of the erotic far more than the Story of O. Within four years I would be in a lecture theatre with one of the stars of the genre Madeleine Smith listening to lectures on the faerie queen - yes I probably said  to her - he don't mean Kenneth Williams.

Bowie had made Berlin cool to me with Low, the Weimar wierdness of the film of Cabaret still lingered and Lou Reed's album was still influential although I couldn't afford a copy which probably explains why I did not opt for both languages - I'm sure I desired them.

Best of all the record was wrapped in a Picture sleeve of Bowie looking supercool in leather jacket and side parting although the posed pout had echoes of Barbie's friend Ken. This paper portrait of wish fulfilment would be destroyed by the downpour if it were to soak through the heavy gaberdine So I hugged the disc closer, laughed at the elements and got inside the door. Downstairs to my brother's bedroom the scene of an ugly skirmish the year before when the clapping start of Carwash had begun to pale by the twentieth play. It was not intentional - if you pulled the overarm to one side the tonearm would repeat which meant you could get a shave or a wash in on a Saturday night before you hit the pub/party circuit. I was at Tech college by then and there was always a party although I still cannot believe we managed to get into some and am even more credulous we got out of others. You know the scene, if there were two parties in the same night you put your group bottle of bacardi on the sideboard, gave the place half hour or so then decided to split -draw lots to see who would retrieve it for the later do as by now a) you'd spent your wages and b) you might not get served in an offie this far from home. All clear in the big room, reach inside the coat - sleeve immaculate, record cracked in two. It appears I had valued the packaging over the contents - well take that as the moral of the story.

Heroes to me are the first responders, the carers, those who carry out acts of altruism not those who carry rifles, certainly not celebrity honours list twots. One of Bowie's great acts was to turn such a bauble down.
I praise the citizens who stand between the imbeciles who racially abuse immigrants. I think of the incompetent May's appalling statement:
  if you're a citizen of the world you're a citizen of nowhere;
 or everywhere,Theresa, as Bowie said and lived.

I have sat in parks quite a lot with my kids over the years and when I catch a glimpse of a parent from Poland or elsewhere pushing their lovely children on the swings I see a black and white photo of a world citizen - 60s brown plastic frame cats eye glasses, faux fur coat suggesting the day's brightness is a result of winter sunshine. She is smiling despite the harshness of her life, the everyday racism which impacts on her health, housing and hopes - happy to be in this country with the opportunities it presents for her children. The photo lights up my favourite room in the house, hanging just above the record player which even now reclines seductively Marlene Dietrich like longing to embrace Helden (at last mein affare)

The Glass Divide

London N1, early 70s All thirteen pubs within staggering distance of my childhood bedroom had a method of demarcating the saloon from the public bar - a velvet curtain, a smoked glass door, a carpet. The dartboard was always in the public, as were the the pool table and gherkins on the counter. The jukebox was in there too - my new 10p got me two plays - Bowies’s cover version of the Merseys Sorrow; and the B side - more of which later .

The Saloon contained carpets, coasters and ...gulp...women. Drinks cost more in the saloon and there was a dress code a, Hamlet cigar, a Crombie coat and a Tory vote. Keg Double Diamond one side; Warninks advocaat with glace cherry the other. Let’s call the boozer The Lord Raglan as that was its name and acknowledge the divides within the working class. The margin between the groups was the durex gossamer but each imagined a yawning chasm - the saloon occupants identifying with the ruling classes far more than those on the other side of the of the anaglyptic papered wall. Aspirational that’s called now.

Ashtrays piled high with Guards/ No 6 and the rush to closing time when bell sounded - the short not a pint ; the sudden exit into a freezing outdoors; home to a salty chicken sandwich; Capital radio moment of terror and a swirling bedroom ceiling. Tescos Chapel Market deli counter  the next day. Latest RCA Bowie 45 or import soul from some obscure label picked up at lunchtime with a DeMarcos coffee / Neapolitan cone with flakes depending on season. Reciting the coda to Bewlay Brothers as you deal with insane management demands and bizarre requests from the older customers. Always worked, try it- lay me place and bake me pie. If this failed you could bring out the zane zane zane ouvrez le chien but my brother and I would generally save that for our boss. What you would now call a line manager. I also joined the Union (USDAW) at 15 because that was how you got higher pay and better conditions -it still is. You call it a closed shop; I call it a profession. When I struggled for years to get my Equity Card my consoling thought was I’d at least be guaranteed work of some sort. Enter the Tories, exit closed shop for many industries but not for the Law, Politics (check out the PPE grads in cabinet) or Accountancy. Any class bias  there?

The man in the saloon was saying: I can afford to pay more for the same drink in the same glass than you - conspicuous consumption it’s called and it is as much an art as KLF burning those fivers. It is proper working class ; as it is to call them flash gits.Therein lies the dichotomy, the paradox, the swing voter.  So I was caught halfway between thinking wish I was in there and that place looks dreadful - better denigrate all who linger there. So I did.  And that made me happy. They shrugged off the barbs- Majorca next week - that made them happy - golf club membership if I laugh at the chairman’s jokes loud enough - that made them giddy - freemason entryism if I move my orders to their company - delirious. Their nightly joy was only wrecked by the above mentioned B-side: the cover of Jacques Brel’s Amsterdam replete with words rarely uttered in the subdued lighting of the inner sanctum.

Common wisdom tells us the public bar are now UKIP and the saloon UKIP tribute act - Tories. Can the left bridge that gap?  Wrong question. To paraphrase Wilfred Owen, globalisation done for them both with its plan of attack.  Nearly all 13 pubs are gone - worth more as buy to let property for Chinese investors. What we all need is something to vote for.

The Man Who Told My World

1972. Hoxton. Reddish lights up on a council house living room. The predominant colour tan, Faux leather settees purchased on the instalment plan.  They were big enough so we could hide behind them when the tallyman called although often I was sent out - a human shield against humiliation I suppose. What a job marking off weekly payments against advances for carpets, furniture, crockery. I hope some of the notebooks  are preserved in a museum though lately it feels like they might be needed as a training tool for the next big society idea. Later would come the catalogue shopping which my elder brother spent hours doing as I tried to scrape together enough Embassy coupons and Green Shield stamps for a guitar,

I was used to presenting this begging posture - only sent for messages to the shop when the weekly bill was due. Did I have a pleading face or was my burgeoning Uriah Heep impression truly effective?  On my lap sat a lined exercise book, covered in offcuts of homebase wallpaper easily lost against the background of said wallpaper in the panic of a Monday morning. Life was not all drab routine - sometimes the book contained graph paper for Maths problems -  like me I guess. My hair was just short enough to pass muster at daily inspection by the Jesuit brothers. Sit down for this revelation that will shake you to the core: some of the brothers were alright, especially when you were having serious doubts about life’s direction. Bohemia truly was only a place studied in O level History lessons  causes of WW2; Art just a lesson you could go wild in.Then came Bowie.

He brought the counter culture into into our living rooms in a way that had not happened before or since. I came of age in the 70s that much derided ten years often represented (perhaps fairly)  as a 60s tribute decade. Much of the culture was secondhand - Dylan/ Beatles/ Stones still the Holy Trinity with a host of lesser saints and sinners below them Albums were for serious folk - “heads” as we called them and boy did I want to be one.

To mark my gravitas  for all to see I dumped the war comics foregoing the poetic charms among which one line remains with me still

“For once the cowardly Germans had chosen to stay and fight”.

The war had ended 40 years earlier but in London it felt like it was only months since Hitler had bitten the capsule. I grew up an  immigrant in a house bordered by Turkish Cypriot to one side and Greek Cypriot - a sort of UN buffer zone. One was a tailor, the other a barber and like the Maltese and Italian families of a certain generation I am fairly sure the older women did not speak much English. The sweatshops they worked in are now gastropubs and oddly a very chic barbers where if clients are asked if they need something for the weekend they probably reply - an ayurvedic spa treatment, a craft beer and a decent sound system, The world Bowie made. Their sons and daughters made up the dramatic personae of my adolescence- first dates with someone’s sister, football with a cousin, flicks with a mate - Bowie was our glue.

We recent arrivals to  Hoxton had no family connections to the war unlike the Cockneys around us, the grocers, butchers, flower sellers, jellied eel stewers. And did they go on and on and on about it. War films on telly, Airfix soldiers including the subhuman Japanese and the heroic Russians - even though we were repeatedly told we were about to be overrun/ overcooked by them. I guess such figure now would come in a set: paramilitary costumed riot police and T-shirt and jeans clad protesters with their hands up. War ruins such as bombed out churches and houses, some with complete Andersen shelters  were our Eden. Out in morning, back at night playing ...war of course. All day. Everyday. Into that wartime world was born David Jones. Bowie was a son of London too more than anywhere else  with all the humour and energy that implies - if you haven’t yet seen it check out the Youtube video Jazzing for Blue Jean where his wind-up, self deprecating, patter merchant comedy is to the fore.

Smiles were frowned on by the music community. The problem was rock was as progressive as the KKK - they also shared an interest in  devaluing anything with black origins - like blues , soul, rock and roll, This meant the  concept album as expounded by Yes...And then  Lights up. Enter Ziggy Stardust.

Bowie taught us how to reject this drabness - to imagine a different world - one being born every day afresh, reinvention of the self,  gender just a label. Crushing conformity was the enemy of us all so we rebelled - first in small ways: dyed hair, makeup, piercings - and eventually punk DIY culture where passion, commitment and feel outranked technical ability. He opened Pandora’s Box - allowing us to view life as a performance. Thus we can imagine a new world rejecting the grey certainties predicated on the oppression on the many.

I got the guitar from my Dad - a Hofner President from an Irish showband player and spent my Tesco’s wages on a David Bowie book I still have today. When you learn an instrument by internalising the chords and lyrics to  All the Madmen/ Young Dudes, Bewlay Brothers and Rock and Roll Suicide it is fair to say your approach to life is somewhat different to the 12 bar blues players everyone else seemed to be. At my one and only guitar lesson from a maestro of the above scene the previous owner of the guitar was surprised  that I could play diminished/augmented but not the three chord trick. He set me to that and changed my life preparing me for punk some years in advance; it also meant I could write my own songs now.

I kept going and after some months could play Queen Bitch at almost the speed of the record- now to work on the vocals. My favourite Bowie singing is actually on Pinups - possibly because they are cover versions. His vocal performances on Low are up there too - though I was convinced that he was playing with the tape speed - a mistake I learnt years later with the release of the sound and vision guide vocal on a TV ad for a phone. Anyway got the impression honed, got an old Watkins amp too that would feed back horribly with the semi acoustic, someone at school gave me a bootleg of Max’s Kansas City and suddenly Lou Reed was in my life too. That helps - recommendations from Bowie meant a lot to most of us and I see many musicians still touring via that connection to an audience made up of many old friends.

I think of Bowie’s work as political in two ways. My Ziggy copy was on Dynaflex a cheap, thin, vastly inferior vinyl used by RCA to keep their profits high as plastic was expensive during the oil crisis of 73/74. It felt far less endurable than the ex-jukebox 45s without the middles I bought from the local store. My brother and I literally wore it out - so inbuilt obsolescence and geopolitical factors in one easy move. More importantly , he taught us that we should celebrate the difference - body shape, ways of seeing/ being in the world but not of it. In that wonderful difference is the political challenge the powers that be truly fear. I see the big hand on the clock of progress being gripped in an iron glove but the little hand will keep ticking slowly but surely each second a tiny motion forwards. As we move into an era of the White norm comparable to forcing women back into the kitchen post WW2 we must keep the tiny hand moving - get inked, get a guitar, get resisting,