This
Little Ziggy (excerpt 1 )
Near Christmas 1973 part 2
Saturday Night:I had a bad cold. It had gone onto my chest. So now I had a mild fever, which gave everything an air of unreality. It was Saturday night at the fabulous Bandbox, thrumming hub of Ipswich’s entertainment wheel. We were on our second set and roaring out a cover of Cum On Feel The Noize. The place was chocka, the dancefloor absolutely heaving. I could feel the heat coming off the dancers. Even though I was singing, because of being bunged up with a cold I suppose, I didn’t seem to be in my own body. It was like I was outside myself watching myself perform.
But something odd was happening on the dancefloor. People seemed to be floating backwards, except for an American airman and a Dutch sailor still in uniform. They were doing a what looked like a high speed Twist routine. Three other Dutch sailors appeared. An American fell. There was blood. It was a vicious punch-up. But in my head it seemed to be happening in silent slow motion. The whole dancefloor went up.
The p.a. speakers, two cabinets and two WEM columns began to rock as the bodies hit them. Our roadies, Nik and Sav took one side each in a well-practiced routine and leanedtheir full weight on the stacks from behind to keep the things from falling backwards. I would have been terrified if I hadn’t been feeling so strange. The dancefloor was just a blur now, of boots, heads, fists and bottles. From out of this mess came Jake, the Jamaican bouncer’s head and one of his hands. Right near to where I was singing. He shouted above the noise: "Keep fockin’playin’maan. Keep fockin’ playin’ !" We kept fockin’ playin’.
Suddenly, all six bouncers retreated from the fray. Had the punters got the better of them? No way, Pedro. The fragile flowers of The Mighty Plod were about to witness The Technique. The bouncers regrouped and forced a wedge into the middle of the fight. They simultaneously seemed to floor six of the main fighters, who went down like spudsacks. Next they formed a sort of human corridor to the top of the club stairs. Along this corridor, they threw their opponents in rapid succession, subduing them with heads or fists on the way through before pushing them down the staircase.
They ejected about twenty people in the space of a couple of minutes. Three bouncers stayed upstairs as a reargard, While the other three followed the ejectees downstairs and threw them out on the street, locking the double glass doors behind them. I had never seen such slick work in my life. It deserves to be written down. Later on that night, in a gap between songs, there was a huge bang and the sound of screaming. Four gentlemen had returned in a large car, and emptied a 12-bore shotgun into the front doors downstairs blowing the things to smithereens. Fortunately, no one was in the way and so theincident ended happily, all things considered.
These were our instructions then. If at any point during our recitation, the ladies and gentlemen on the dancefloor should find cause to disagree with each other in a physical fashion, we were to continue our work vigorously and in a conscientious manner. We were to keep on fockin’ playin’. Maan.
I was twenty years old, Ex was seventeen.Jack and Bachelor Johny were grand old men of twenty-two. We found the experience scary. But frightening. The women were very naughty, and the men were very rough. We were skinny kids in make-up, torn blouses and tight trousers. My trousers were so tight, that with one pair of canary-yellow hipster loons, the only way I could get them on, was to lie on the dressing floor, while the roadies took one leg each and eased them up my thighs. Add to this, the size seven high-heeled women’s boots I used to squeeze into and it made for a very peculiar sort of walk, if nothing else… I like to think however that I cut rather a dash. Some of the huge American airmen took a far less charitable view of me. This could be quite un-nerving say, in the toilet, standing at the urinal between two of them during by breaks.
Stix and I usually went to the pisser in pairs, which made things look even more dodgy, clad as he was in hot-pants and gold lurex tights. We never got in any trouble though. I don’t think the yanks actually believed what they were seeing. Nevertheless, it did sometimes feel like I imagine a Zebra feels, whilst drinking at a watering-hole in between two lions.
Once, when we having a break, the dressing room door crashed open, and framed in the doorway was the biggest American I’d ever seen. "A’m a fight’n muthafucker from Noo Yawk!" he bawled. ‘You guys the fuck’n baand? Where’s aal the balls?" Oh prithee kind sir but we have no idea what you’re crapping on about. "Wimmin, boy. Wimmin! Chicks. Ya know? Ah thought you guys’d be knee deep in pussy. When Ah wanna a woman, Ah jest hop orn. A-huk-huk-huk!"
W4ell quite sir. I expect you do sir. But at this point we are taking a well-earned rest so could you possibly leave us in peace to discuss the pressing matter of whether we begin the next set with Quo’s Paper Plane or possibly our very own Phil the Cleaner ? This was the general nature of encounters with our public at this point in our career. Mildly interesting but ultimately unedifying.
The music which the deejay played while we were having our breaks was heavy funk, which over time, I began to develop a taste for. He also played a lot of Barry White. Barry White was just beginning to break over here at that time and I can never hear a Barry White record, even now, without being transported back to the Bandbox.
I’d never been much of a clubbing guy up untill that point but my experiences during those early years have ensured that I never subsequently became one. Anthropologically though, the Bandbox was a fascinating place. Here I could observe man and woman at play in an endless and delicate courtship pavanne older then time itself. Last Turkey In The Shop was a particular favorite of mine. I now recount it to you for you own delectation.
After the band had finished our last Shakin’ All Over or Johny B. Goode, we would exit the stage, thanking our patrons, and then retire with a beer to watch the drunk and unpartnered come to what conclusions they could. Thus, a broken-nosed beef-baron would shyly approach what I can only describe as a former star of Zoo Time and ask her if she wished to dance. If the offer was accepted, the male would then lurch over to the hapless deejay and slur: "Paper Roses by Marie Osmond, mate." The deejay might reply that that particular disc wasn’t on his play list at this point. The beef-baron would then say, louder: "No mate. Yore playing, Paper Roses… alright?" The record would go on.
Returning to this chosen one, the male would then get her in a clinch which involved grinding his thigh into her crotch and dribbling down her neck while the pair of them went round in slow circles on one spot. The whole spectacle was redolent of watching a sack of spuds in a suit which had been tightly tied to a badly-loaded bag of grapefruit revolving on some sort of invisible turn-table. An enduring image there, Crispin. And deeply challenging. I hesitate to speculate, when desire came to its fruition later on that sylvan evening, precisely what raptures Cupid had lined up for these lovers but I shan’t dwell on it here. You may have just eaten.
Thusly did the apple-cheeked young hopefuls of The Mighty Plod, have their delicate senses awakened by rude old grandmother Reality with her cackles in our ears and her horny hands all over our little pink plums.
Shortly after Christmas that year, Big Nik our roady came up with the following: "Good news lads. The Bandbox loved you. You’re their kind of band. You’ve got a residency."
It was true. We would play there Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights every other week. Four sets a night, three nights on the trot, once a fortnight. Until further notice. With all the punch-ups, drunken servicemen, swamp-donkeys, honey-monsters, tadger-grabbers,pill-pushers, morons and spacemonkeys we could put up with. What more could any four boys want?
Dawn Of The Aicd Wag
July 1971-April 1972 Hertfordshire
It had been a great summer at the Seven Rooms. Aero's mum had been away for weeks and weeks getting herself sorted out in hospital. An academic in her fifties and prone to severe depression, she sometimes needed to go back into the unit to reduce her drug dependency and avail herself of the cures on offer. These included all sorts of strange early anti-depressants, occupational therapy and electro-convulsive therapy. As fucked up boys of seventeen and eighteen respectively, I don't think either Aero or I really quite understood how serious her situation was or how we were supposed to help. Sufficient to say that when she was good she could be fun, witty and kind –she actually liked having all these wacky teenage boys around most of the time. She wasn't a conventional woman. As she was fond of telling us: " In my younger days, I was considered something of a 'hot piece'."
Having Aero and all his friends around meant there was always someone to run the shops, clean the house and do any number of other chores beyond the capability of a neurasthenic. When she got an idea into her head that things had to change around here, she could be a pain in the arse. Such and such a youth would be banned from the house and we'd have to spend all our time trying to sneak him in, or hide him if she was in. She and Aero had a love-hate relationship and if they happened to be at war, both would marshall troops among whoever was in the house at the time. Our practical jokes on her, verged on cruelty sometimes and she would take terrible revenge sometimes by dropping one or the other of us in serious shit with the authorities. In fact, the things which happened in that house would warrant a separate book, if not a sitcom series.
In the end and with the benefit of three decades hindsight, Aero's mum was a force for good. Just. And out of respect for her and Aero, I will draw a veil over any further detail about her. When she was away, Aero and I, as captain and lieutenant of this strange house, later got ourselves into all sorts of trouble. But that summer was a good one. I was cleaner-in-chief. I didn't think the place ought to be in a state. If we were going to run the house ourselves I reasoned that we should show the outside world that we weren't just a bunch of tramps. One bloke, who's personal hygiene wasn't great had his room trashed by us. One day, a group of us, smashed out of our skulls, nailed his socks up all over the walls of his room. We labelled them: 1952-1954, 1956-1960 etc etc etc. He later responded by beating Aero up. A while later, the bikers held a firing squad against his French windows while he was out. Using a mixture of rifles and shotguns, the front rank kneeling, the back rank standing they stood out in the garden and blasted his windows out.
The bikers could be a pain in the arse, or they could be hilarious. One afternoon, a group of us were sitting down to some beans on toast. Spider, Grizzly, Dave, Aero and I had been tidying the joint up and sorting the garden out, so we figured we'd earned some food. What we didn't count on was the visit from Chopper Saunders. Chopper was trouserly-gifted and could do a number of amusing tricks with his organ. Lately however, he'd had something wrong with it, so he hadn't been flashing it around as much. Chopper came stomping into the breakfast room in his motorcycle gear and Spider asked: "How's the old dapper then?"
Chopper said: "I've just been up the quack's, as a matter of fact. It was peeling a bit, round the helmet, so I thought I'd better get it sorted out." With that, he whipped it out and slapped it on the table where we were eating our food. All eight and a half inches of it, peeling helmet too. One or two of us recoiled, Aero actually left the table. Chopper said: "It's alright. It's not V.D. or anything. The doctor just told me to wash my hands first if I've been taking me bike apart. He thinks it's some sort of impetigo."
We never had too many problems with Jehovah's witnesses either. I just used to answer the front door and be incredibly helpful and interested. In the nude. Another useful thing about that house was that the bathroom was above the front door. It was a sash window. The top pane was clear glass but the bottom pane was frosted glass. If I happened to be in the bath when someone who we didn't know called at the front door, I'd stand up in the bath and haul frosted pane up to the top. This obscured me from the face but revealed a naked torso to the caller and anyone passing in the street. I'd then shout: "Who's that? Who's that? I'm terribly sorry. I'm in the bath. There's something wrong with this bloody window!"
And yet, in spite of these teenage shenanigans there was never any shortage of young women arriving at the house just to spend an evening or an afternoon watching what we did. This only encouraged Aero and I to even greater heights of stupidity. Rarely did these young women stay to sleep with us. They were often very well-brought up High-School sixth formers. I believe Aero had a higher score than me. He was a very pretty dark haired teenager. Painfully skinny with seal-pup eyes. He was quieter and more mystical than I was. For girls, I was probably one step beyond. Marty Feldman with a rock star hair cut and bad skin. My idea of an introduction when the girls arrived, was to roll down the stairs in my underpants, like a stuntman, locked in a fight with a dressmaker's dummy which I hacked at frantically with a six-inch knife. Landing in a heap at their feet I'd say: "Hello ladies. It's been a funny sort of day, hasn't it?" Well...you know? We all grow up sometime.
Certainly Aero won the August '71 Stained Bedspread Competition. I'd only lost my virginity about three months prior to that, although, I like to think that I'd caught up quite well. We were neck and neck in the pointless activities stakes. I woke up one morning, still tripping on acid to find that Aero and T. had arranged all the garden equipment in the branches of the apple tree outside my bedroom window. It's very odd to see a Ransome motor mower hanging in a tree next to hoes and spades. I reciprocated by scattering a shredded loaf of Mothers Pride bread all over the living room in an Internal Feeding Of Birds event. Several of us were involved in Outdoor Housework, hoovering the garden, playing chess on manhole covers with apples as the morning rush-hour went past us. All of us had been tripping all night. It seemed to make solid sense at the time.
Early that autumn some particularly strong acid came through. Little Pete, a prankster after my own heart, didn't like getting too far out, so we'd just have a half tab each and sit on the kitchen floor making stupid jokes all night. Often at Muttley's expense. Muttley was a sort of greaser and sort of not. He was a good bloke but often took himself quite seriously. One of the best things about Muttley was that he'd decided to boost his image as a hard-man by having Born To Raise Hell tattooed on his arm. Then he'd fainted while it was being done.
When Muttley had gone, Pete and I went upstairs to see how Aero and T. had been getting on with the full dose. Both of them swore that they'd been to the moon. They pointed at the yellow autumn moon. "You wouldn't believe this, man. We've just been there."
Talk got round to Dunstable Downs. Aero and T. wanted to go there. Right now. It was a mission. Only T. could drive, so it was decided that at five in the morning we'd steel Muttley's van, which he'd left parked outside. Muttley wouldn't mind. T. insisted we should show the world who we were. It was decided to paint the words: ACID WAGON on the side of the little white van, before we left.
Aero found some paint somewhere and T. started painting our message to the world. Unfortunately, his co-ordination wasn't too good so when we came out to admire his handiwork, what he'd actually had written was AICD WAG. From that point on and after the hysteria had subsided, we christened the vehicle the Aicdwag and that's what it was known as for months afterwards. T. was actually a brilliant driver and well capable of out-running any pursuers, even when tripping. It was just a talent of his. His navigation wasn't quite as good however, so we had a confusing and slightly paranoid twenty minutes or so parked in a backstreet in central Luton. After this though, it was plain sailing to a psychedelic dawn on Dunstable Downs. I happened to be wrapped in a white blanket, which scared a passing motorist that morning when he saw me standing in the long grass by the side of the road. Apart from that though, the trip was uneventful. Muttley wasn't ecstatic about his van being defaced but since the Aicd Wag hadn't come to any harm and we had a whip-round for the petrol we used, it all ended reasonable amicably.
Summer nights were often spent on the lawn, getting stoned and drinking Earl grey tea, which to this day I still hate. I had an old pedal harmonium, which had been given to me by Mike who I'd shared the house with in Clapham, a year earlier. We often brought this out into the garden and sit there, frantically pedalling away at the bellows and playing ghastly chords, or doing bad Keith Emmerson impressions. The harmonium was the type of thing that you'd find in a Sally Army hall, being played by some formidable woman, while the down and outs ate their soup. It made a dreadful clumping noise and it puffed and wheezed almost as loudly as the chords which came out of it. One night, I got too stoned to bring it in from the garden and it rained overnight. When I went to play it next, half of the black keys fell off. I couldn't afford to buy any glue so I stuck them down with some ancient honey which I found in the kitchen. It worked fine until it rained again. I'm sure the neighbours loved us. We rarely had any complaints though. Ah, happy days.
If I look back on it all now, every town in England must have had a house like the Seven Rooms, which provided a haven for drug-blitzed misfits such as we were. I'm not a great one for analysing why people turn out like they do. I can't think of any one thing that all of us had in common, apart from the fact that essentially, we were all, in our warped way quite creative. We wanted something to do. Something which was ours. We wanted a place in which to do it. Television, the hated Radio One and the mainstream music industry hadn't got anything which we needed. The idea of a career seemed pointless. If you had to do a job, best do a dead-end job so they didn't steal your brain. Politicians, figures in authority, serious-minded people all seemed completely irrelevant. What did they know about anything? We weren't criminals. Deviants maybe. But not criminals as such. We all swore we'd never change. Like a gang of prankster outlaws. What we actually needed was a kind of adventure playground I suppose. And in the end we made our own.
The amount of drug-taking that I was doing was bound to have a payback sometime. Given that most pharmaceuticals are like an overdraft on one's own health and happiness –an overdraft which must be paid back at a high rate of interest, I was bound to come a cropper. After a great summer, where the parties got wilder and the drugs got stronger, the autumn just seemed to sneak quietly in through the back door like an uninvited guest. He also brought his two mates: Mr. Depression and Mr. Junior Psychosis. To cut a long story short, I wasn't in great nick. The comedowns were getting worse and longer, I'd split up with Lorraine, who'd introduced me to sex, and started hanging out with Patti, who was a heroin user. Very cute, very skinny and a beast for sex. I'd also started swallowing methadrine capsules. This was speed for boys in long trousers. Two caps of this would keep me up for three days. Only an interruption in supply stopped me from becoming a basket case. By mid-October I was a very confused and depressed boy. I was seeing faces at the window and becoming sure that someone was out to get me. They didn't have things like drug-counselling units in those days so I had to muddle through by myself.
In the end, and with Patti's help, it was decided that I should move myself completely away from the area and all my old haunts, in order to sort myself out. What happened? I ended up in a house in Woolwich with some of Patti's friends. Well, I sure didn't know anyone in Woolwich. The other occupants of the house were Steve, a guitarist with a very good glam-rock band called Silverhead, his girlfriend who was a rock promoter, and Ginger, a very likeable Australian rock drummer who'd come over to the U.K. to look for work. These people were a bit older and wiser than me and were very kind to me. They also didn't use drugs –apart from the odd joint which Ginger use to stoke up after tea.
I slept on the living room floor in a sleeping bag. I had terrible trouble sleeping and used to dream about speed at first. I also itched like a bastard. Over the first few days, the itching became intolerable and I went to a run-down surgery in the Woolwich backstreets to get myself looked at. A very grumpy and curt Indian doctor informed me that I had caught scabies. He more or less told me I was filthy, which I wasn't and issued me with some medicated soap and a brutal emulsion called Benzyl Benzoate. They don't use this stuff anymore. It's considered too crude. After scrubbing myself in a hot bath with the soap, I coated my body from neck down –every crevice with this stuff. Within ten minutes, I was hunched over on the edge of the bath moaning with a burning sensation. The next day, I had to do it all over again. My clothes and sleeping bag were cleaned and the dreaded itch went. The whole experience did wonders for my moral: in a strange area of London in winter, deprived of speed, no money and a bad case of scabies.
After a couple of weeks however, I began to think a bit more clearly. I suggested to Steve's girlfriend Shelley that maybe I could find some way to contribute to the household expenses. She came up with the inspired idea of getting me to do some support slots for the main bands at her promotions. And so it was that I found myself as opening act for Spring Offensive and Good Habit at Bowes Lyon House, Stevenage. This was quite a big rock venue at the time. I went on by myself, armed only with my old Hofner solid and played a handful of my songs to a sit-down audience of several hundred people. I don't remember much about it but I do remember being astonished when the applause came back. I did a couple of other gigs for Shelley round about that time. I really should have twigged then, that that was what I was cut to do. But I didn't. A couple of weeks after that, I packed up and went to Herts. I'll always remember what Steve said to me just before I left: "Martin, if you ever decide to go into this game, it doesn't matter what bullshit happens with the drugs, the girls and the money, always keep the music together. Because, that's what got you there and that's what it's all about. If you forget the music, everything else goes down the pan too." This message would take another two years to sink in.
It was coming up to Christmas when I got back to The Seven Rooms. Trying to stay on the straight and narrow, I got myself another job as a kitchen porter and started renting the little box room I'd slept in as a kid at my grandmother's house. I don't remember much about Christmas or the next two months. I lived quietly, read a lot of books and tried to get another job after the Hotel laid me off. Aero's mum had banned me from The Seven Rooms. There was a bit of a dope famine. It was midwinter and I had no money. Round about February I was introduced to heroin. A 'friend' jacked me up on two occasions. I remember coming out of the second fix and thinking how great it was. This was also followed by a wave of guilt and common sense, which dictated that I've never knowingly had it since. It was a salient lesson to me, that even at my lowest ebb, I still had a strong streak of self-preservation.
Sometime in mid-February, I did an interview for the Post Office and secured myself a job as a postman. I took it as seriously as I could and by early April, I was trained and out doing rounds on a bike, my long straw-coloured bushing out under the peaked cap. I should have stuck at it. I was good at it. But now I had money again. And guess what I spent it on? By the end of April I would be headed for the worst twelve months of my life.
Many many thanks to New Model Agnes for typing this for us.
This excerpt was taken from the
pre-publish manuscripts.
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without the permission of the author or publisher.