The next few months were a whirlwind of excitement as I dashed about the DHSS, notebook in hand, reporting on the thrilling activities of the Horticultural Club, the Carpet Bowls League, the Philatelic Society and the Wine Making Circle.
From the age of sixteen or seventeen Jim and I began to rendezvous in pubs instead of railway stations. We were still loners to a large degree. We’d sit in the corners watching people and pass cynical remarks on their behaviour and appearance. The fact that good-looking girls were going out with other blokes and not us gave us a shared, nerdy sense of injustice. In terms of cultural identity Jim and I were hovering somewhere between being hippies and punks. We both had long hair and wore denims, and sometimes we’d go to the Mayfair Ballroom for the legendary Friday Rock Nights. But neither of us played air guitar. We were only there to gawp at the hippy chicks with their tight jeans, cheesecloth blouses and supposedly liberal attitudes towards sex.
In our schooldays Jim had displayed a fondness for Steve Hillage, which I could never quite understand, and he once went to Knebworth to see Rush. I was a bit of a Seekers fan myself. Them, the Beatles and Abba. But if anyone asked me I always said I liked Thin Lizzy. I tried to broaden my tastes but most contemporary music didn’t grab me. A friend once suggested I try lying down on the floor, in the dark, and listening to a Pink Floyd album. I did, but it still sounded shit to me. Punk, when it came, was an absolute godsend. The fashion was a trifle severe, but I loved the spirit of it and particularly the fact that Radio 1’s Mike Read didn’t like it. Jim was more a connoisseur of music than I was. He introduced me to The Buzzcocks and The Stranglers and we started going to see New Wave bands. We were still dithering, going to see Judas Priest one week and The Jam the next, until one night our loyalties were put to the test. It was a Friday at the Mayfair and we’d gone to see a mod-revival package tour, Secret Affair and The Purple Hearts. A battle broke out between the Mayfair’s native rock fans and the visiting mods and punks. As chairs started to rain down from the balcony Jim and I instinctively found ourselves running towards the mod end of the room for shelter. It was a defining moment.
The Two-Tone Ska revival was happening at the time and in Newcastle a new record label had been set up, clearly inspired by Coventry’s porkpie hat-wearing fraternity. The name of the Newcastle outfit was Anti-Pop, and on Monday evenings they promoted bands at a pub called the Gosforth Hotel. Jim discovered the place and suggested I come along the following week. Jim’s musical tastes were still a lot broader than mine so I didn’t hold out much hope for the entertainment, but he’d also mentioned that there’d be girls from Gosforth High School there, and to a couple of likely lads from Heaton Comprehensive the prospect of a room full of high-class teenage totty from Gosforth High was a major attraction.
The Gosforth was a typical two-storey, brick-built Victorian pub, situated next to a busy road junction in a fairly well-to-do suburb. There was a traditional old codgers’ bar downstairs plus a lounge, and upstairs there was a very small function room where the bands played. The function room was dark, with blacked-out windows, a corner bar that looked as if hadn’t been used since the 1950s, a big round mirror on the wall above a fireplace, and beneath that the band’s equipment taking up about half of the overall floor space. Most of the crowd who squeezed into the other half of the room – and some of the musicians – were under-age, so they’d sneak in the side door, dash upstairs and dart into the function room before the red-faced ogre of a landlord could catch them. He was an obnoxious, drunken git who didn’t approve of loud music and alternative fashion, or under-age drinking on his premises. Every now and then he’d storm up the stairs in search of under-age drinkers, threatening to set his dogs loose in the function room if he found any kids inside.
Anti-Pop admission stamp
Admission to the function room was 50p, payable at the top of the stairs. As proof of payment you got your hand stamped ‘anti-pop entertainmenterama’. Sitting on the door counting the money was a scruffy bloke who looked as if he’d just spent a night on a park bench, and then walked through a particularly severe sandstorm. His name was Andy Pop and he always looked like that due to a combination of Brillo pad hair and bad eczema. Andy was the business brains behind the Anti-Pop organization. Sitting alongside him was his partner, the creative guru, a tall, thin man called Arthur 2 Stroke. Arthur 2 Stroke’s eponymous three-piece band were playing that night, and Jim had recommended them highly. 2 Stroke cut a bizarre figure on stage. He was an awkward, gangly sort of bloke, dressed in a dandy, second-hand, sixties’ style. He wore a powder blue mod suit that was far too small for him and a comically extreme pair of winkle-picker boots, and he had an unmistakable Mr Spock haircut. He was a bit like a cross between Paul Weller and Jason King. He couldn’t sing very well, or play the guitar, but he had a wonderful comic aura about him. Next to him was an upright, smiling, red-haired guitarist who went by the name of WM7, and in the background there was an almost unseen drummer whose name was Naughty Norman. Their manic set included a half-decent cover of ‘The Letter’ and a plucky tribute to the well-known 1970s French TV marine biologist, ‘The Wundersea World of Jacques Cousteau’. Also on the bill that night were the Noise Toys, a power-packed post-punk four-piece who bounced around in oversized baggy suits and raincoats, shaking the ceiling of the old codgers’ bar below. Singer Martin Stevens was a timid, slightly built, shaven-headed bloke – a more energetic, better-looking, heterosexual version of Michael Stipe. In total contrast his sidekick, the trilby-hatted guitarist Rupert Oliver, was a bullish, ugly, bad-tempered prima donna, prone to lashing out at the audience with his microphone stand. The rhythm section were the industrious but less noteworthy Mike and Brian, and the highlights of their set were their own song ‘Pocket Money’ and memorable covers of ‘Rescue Me’ and ‘King of the Road’. As well as the Noise Toys and Arthur 2 Stroke there’d be anything up to three or four other bands on the bill, and a lot of them would be playing their first ever gig. Anti-Pop’s policy was to encourage kids to come along and have a go. You didn’t need fancy equipment, or talent. Anyone could ring them up and book a support slot. This was the punk ethic being put into practice, and it attracted quite a few weirdos. But it was always entertaining, intimate and exciting – the very opposite of going to Knebworth to see Rush or lying on the floor and listening to Pink Floyd. At the Gosforth Hotel I felt like I’d found my spiritual home.
Arthur 2 Stroke
Another positive effect of punk was the emergence of fanzines, small DIY music magazines – usually the work of one obsessive individual – that were hawked at gigs or sold through independent record shops. My brother Steve had put me and Jim in touch with a new Newcastle fanzine that was looking for cartoonists. When we met the editors at the Market Lane pub in town we were dismayed to find they were all hairies, and their new magazine – Bad Breath – was going to be a ‘rock’ fanzine. I drew a cartoon about a punk band called Angelo’s Nonstarts for their first issue, but when I saw the finished magazine I wished I hadn’t bothered. It was a feeble orange pamphlet with very little content, badly