Coincidentally ... Or Not (Part One)

 

Things fall apart. Oh yes. The old fabric is torn away, or disintegrates, and all that. But, sometimes, when you least expect it, things fall into place, and new patterns and stories emerge. So, towards the end of January this year, things were looking pretty grim. It was a tough time, but one bright spot was the Pauline Boty exhibition at the Gazelli Art House in Mayfair, which was a revelation. I went early one Monday morning, soon after opening time, and was the only one there. It felt a privilege to be there, alone with Pauline’s now famous works of art, at a time when her reputation’s at a high. This being, as her evangelist Ali Smith argues in her Autumn, part of the cycle where cultural figures are ignored, lost, rediscovered, and so on.

In the basement of the gallery, on a loop, a video of Ken Russell’s pioneering Pop Goes the Easel documentary played, featuring Pauline and three colleagues who were at the heart of the British pop art scene, and perhaps contrarily I found myself very taken with Derek Boshier, a new name to me, who came across as young, handsome, and casually smart in a rather Continental, urbane, modernist way: pretty much everything the non-teenage British male really was not in early 1962. I was so intrigued and came away raring to find out more.

Derek sadly died in September of this year, but by then I had found out quite a bit about him, one way and another. Predictably, I loved how he and Pauline Boty would be among the dancers on early episodes of Ready Steady Go! Anyway, Derek even as an elderly gent seems to have been incredibly cool and a particularly well-dressed person. He was, first and foremost, over a long period of time, an adventurous artist, in many forms and with wildly differing materials. And, being a shallow sort of soul, I love that he has had links to the Pretty Things, The Clash and David Bowie. Much of what I know about Derek comes from a beautiful book, a huge tome, called Rethink / Re-entry, from 2015, which I really recommend. It’s edited by Paul Gorman, who is someone I respect for getting things done and for his store of knowledge.

‘The knowledge’: it is a recurring theme in Robert Elms’ book London Made Us: A Memoir of a Shape-Shifting City. I have, for several reasons, an enduring fondness for Robert, have done since he wrote for The Face in the very early 1980s, and one day hope to thank him for introducing me to Eric Dolphy’s Out to Lunch! Anyway, this is a book I have been reading on recent train journeys, and it is great. With the eternal Venn diagrams of life, we have some things in common, and he and his book have at times had me nodding vigorously and smiling rather ruefully.

I was particularly delighted he shared his excitement at learning about London’s deep shelters, for earlier this year I also got excited about this subterranean network, after reading the middle part of Oliver Harris’ exceptional and madly entertaining London trilogy, his series of Nick Belsey books.  What can I say about Nick? He’s a charismatically renegade, disgraced detective constable, ostensibly paying the price for having his own moral code. He is very much not conventionally corrupt, but blatantly beyond good and evil (probably not coincidentally one of the books comes with a Nietzsche epigraph), very much about what happens when you absorb evil, what happens to you when you deal with it on a daily basis, what it does to your psyche, with echoes of the nuns in The Clash’s ‘Death or Glory’.

Old Nick’s a proper devil, a handsome one at that, someone who really does understand all destructive urges. He is fighting his own demons, haunted by the ghost of a young man, happiest among damaged people, but utterly charming. A cool cat embarked on a journey of designer dissolution, though old enough to know better. There is a cartoon aspect to the books. They may be implausible and absurd, with Nick someone seeking oblivion, at odds with the Met culture and many of his police peers, so within that establishment he is respected by some but to most remains an eternal outcast, a wild-hearted outsider, smarter than all the rest, with disdain for the plodders. In his world, the ends justify the means, though ultimately he’s on the side of the angels, at least those with a broken wing or two.

He is described as restless, always looking for something more, not (just) a lost, violent soul. I was reeled in by the title of the first book in the series, The Hollow Man, though initially my reaction was: “What the hell is this?” The same thing happened with Mick Herron’s Slough House series. On both occasions I was soon addicted, albeit very late to the party. The trilogy’s a decade old now, published in the early 2010s, a lost decade for some of us. Where did it go? Anyway, in Nick Belsey’s London, those profiting from gentrification live side by side with those left behind, in the shadows, slowly sinking without trace, and this is also a theme in Robert Elms’ London book.

There is a striking quote in The Hollow Man about how the world’s most careful with you when you really care least. I like that. In the third book, The House of Fame, Nick wonders about the people who seek him out, those who “come to a place of dereliction to find someone who knew the terrain. Someone familiar with the cracks through which people fall. That was his thing.” Predictably, for me, there are echoes here of Josef K’s ‘It’s Kinda Funny’ and Magazine’s ‘A Song from Under the Floorboards’. So, sort of appropriately, the second book, Deep Shelter, is largely set underground, or with Nick lost outside the tunnels.

The tunnels here are part of London’s network of deep shelters, each with WW2 and Cold War connections. While reading the book things really did fall into place, like the structure which is an entrance to the Goodge Street deep shelter, in Chenies Street, which in the pre-Internet days would fascinate me so, but I never had a clue what it was: a secret always on display. The Goodge Street one is mentioned several times in the book, though much of the drama in Oliver Harris’ Deep Shelter takes place in and around the Camden Town deep shelter and tunnels.

Again, coincidentally, I recently and very belatedly found a blog by The Baker, a legendary character in certain music circles, who has on his site a fantastic post about another set of Camden tunnels (known as the Camden Catacombs), which he would explore with his friends from schooldays Subway Sect, plus Paul Simenon of The Clash, from an entrance in Rehearsal Rehearsals, when the punk explosion was about to take place. I believe the article was also published in the Ham & High, Nick Belsey’s local paper.

Thoughts of The Baker (or Barry Auguste) were prompted by mentions in Rob Symmons’ superb Subway Sect serialised story for Ugly Things. There is a photo of The Baker in the second part of the series looking pretty cool in his pork pie hat. His article on those Camden tunnels features a fantastic photo of Rob Symmons, in obligatory grey school jumper and white shirt, sitting atop The Baker’s Transit van, and wearing a very smart pair of boots, which remind me of the John White ones my Grandad would always insist on wearing.

The Baker’s site has some other classic photos: him in 1978 wearing a very mod boating blazer with his little Renault 5; him with Vic Godard, Paul Simenon and Joe Strummer backstage at the Royal College of Art in November 1976; and him in 1978, again, looking like he has stepped out of the pages of Mark Baxter and Paul ‘Smiler’ Anderson’s beautiful book on suedeheads, alongside his Clash roadcrew comrade Johnny Green.  

The best bits of history are still scribbled in the margins, like with The Baker’s blog and Rob’s Subway Sect story. Similarly, in the second half of the 1990s, unexpectedly, Vic Godard started casually revealing priceless scattered fragments of memory, and sharing incredible photos, via liner notes for a reissue of What’s The Matter Boy? and the Twenty Odd Years compilation on Motion, plus the We Oppose All Rock & Roll one on Overground. The effect was quite disorientating, and even now I sometimes wonder where I read what and when. Like, somewhere Vic mentioned the early Sect inner circle wearing Smith’s jeans, but I haven’t a clue at this moment where I saw that. Maybe I made it up. I am quite often getting my wires crossed, haring off down blind alleyways, putting two and two together, and sharing wholly inaccurate conclusions.

Impressively, The Baker has never, as far as I know, consented to give an interview about his time with The Clash in the 40-odd years since he was demobbed. Even on his blog, which is brilliant, he doesn’t dish the dirt in the dozen-or-so posts. I guess not coincidentally The Baker subtitles his blog Scraps and Glimpses … Maybe most of what we know about him comes from A Riot of Our Own, the memoir of his Clash oppo Johnny Green. So, we know they were the odd couple, yin and yang, chalk and cheese: the long, tall rock & roller with the short, stocky soul boy.

The Baker, we are told, preferred the O’Jays and the Philly sound to punk rock, and being transpontine (I think Johnny’s book was the first place I saw that word) he lived “over the bridge in Barnes with his mum and cacti”. We find out he was practical, straight, and hardly ever drank, and that he was “a bit of a snappy dresser in his own idiosyncratic way”. New editions of the book have a touching epilogue, with Johnny reflecting on their enduring friendship.

There is a lovely mention of The Baker, in Johnny’s book, where he’s driving around London in his Transit van singing along with the O’Jays on his ghetto blaster. Brilliant! I seem to be having a bit of a Philly phase myself at the moment, partly prompted by an ultra-cheap 3CD set, Out on the Floor: Northern Soul Floorshakers!, which features Sheila Ferguson’s sublime recording of General Johnson’s ‘And In Return’ plus the Three Degrees’ ‘Driving Me Mad’, and partly by a wonderful 5CD box set of the O’Jays’ Philly LPs. Coincidentally, the final album in that sequence, Travelin’ at the Speed of Thought, was reviewed for Record Mirror in 1977 by a certain Geoff Travis who, as we have mentioned before around here, that summer claimed to be “the world’s most committed new wave soul fanatic”, which would have made the perfect start to Garry Mulholland’s This is Uncool.

Rather wonderfully, Geoff seems to have spent plenty of time that year reviewing LPs and live shows for Record Mirror, ones which were predominantly on the soul side. With Geoff, alongside Robin Katz, Robbie Vincent, and James Hamilton, the weekly paper gave plenty of coverage to new soul, disco, and funk releases. In 1977 Geoff got to review Harold Melvin, the Philadelphia Int. All Stars, Moments, Rimshots, Manhattans, Stylistics, Three Degrees, Love Unlimited, Chi Lites, Detroit Emeralds, Betty Wright, Gloria Gaynor, Gladys Knight, Millie Jackson, Archie Bell, Bill Withers, Smokey Robinson, and more again: so many of the names that a short while before formed such a vital part of our listening and dancing habits.

Add to that list Patrice Rushen, Cameo, Space, Bros. Johnson, Grover Washington Jr., Crusaders, and you’re starting to get the picture. I was particularly pleased to see Geoff give a rave write-up to the K-Tel compilation, Soul City: 20 Original Soul Hits, which has such a great track listing for a budget compilation. I should add that in 1977 Geoff also got to review Milton Nascimento, Donald Byrd, the Mighty Diamonds (I bet he never suspected he would one day release records by them), Loleatta Holloway, Letta Mbulu, Bob Marley’s Exodus, Parliament, Pablo Moses’ Revolutionary Dream, Big Youth, Dennis Brown, Steel Pulse, Third World, George Faith’s To Be a Lover. Maybe more. Maybe I unknowingly read them. Again, maybe this is all made up.

With more than a few of the above names Geoff would reluctantly admit their new LPs lacked fire, and that there was a sense of ‘going through the motions’. As you might expect he was invariably generous, affectionate, and knowledgeable, even when the artists were marking time and treading water. That is, I guess, where punk comes in, except that oddly Geoff rarely reviewed the new wave. That was left to the likes of Barry Cain, Tim Lott, Rosalind Russell, and sometimes Stephen Morris who was sending in live reports from Manchester. There, however, were a couple of very early, excited and reasoned reviews by Geoff of Generation X.

Coincidentally, in Robert Elms’ London Made Us, among a litany of lost things and bittersweet memories from the Notting Hill and Ladbroke Grove areas (with echoes of the Ballistic Bros. and ‘London Hooligan Soul’, consciously or not) he writes of “Geoff Travis selling me a sweet deep Al Green tune when I’d gone into Rough Trade to buy some punk.” So, there you go. What was Rough Trade stocking back then? What records did Geoff bring back from his road trip to the States? What did he play in the shop when customers were few and far between?

In that same passage, Robert’s litany, he mentions The Clash in the KPH with the old Irish, one of several mentions of the group in the book. Not being my part of London I had to look up KPH. But there’re a lot of things I don’t know (though aren’t we all gradually learning?). Like, I didn’t know Derek Boshier had designed a Clash songbook featuring the lyrics from Give ‘Em Enough Rope and attendant singles from that that period. Songbooks were a bit of a thing back then. Flicking through old copies of Zigzag recently I noted ads for a Buzzcocks Another Music one and an Ian Dury New Boots one plus an earlier Clash one, available from Mail Order Music or Music Sales in Newman Street, which I think had or have something to do with Omnibus Press.

I really have no recollection whatsoever of seeing anything about the Derek Boshier one. To this day, I have never seen a copy, though there are a number of brilliant reproductions of pages from it in Paul Gorman’s book, and he writes about it too in a fascinating essay. Derek, it seems, taught the young Joe at art school, when he was Woody Mellor, and they met again when punk had taken off, which led to an invitation (via Caroline Coon, another ex-student of Derek’s) to design the second Clash songbook, with no interference from the band, except an instruction to use the nuclear symbol somehow on the cover, which was no doubt music to the artist’s ears, being a veteran of CND and the early protest marches.

When Derek designed his Clash songbook, it was at the height of Cold War paranoia, and the fear of a Nuclear Armageddon was rife. That sort of brings us back to the deep shelters, and also links to a memorable early episode of Only Fools and Horses where the Trotters build a nuclear fallout shelter, with Rodney in a UK Decay t-shirt. Wouldn’t Peckham have come under the London Borough of Southwark, who were presumably among the local authorities in London that declared themselves to be a Nuclear Free Zone? Certainly neighbouring Lewisham was, and I vividly recall the signs as you entered the Borough heading into Blackheath.

That in turn brings us back to The Baker: “Say, where have I seen that guy?” Well, apparently, we have heard him whistling at the start of ‘Jimmy Jazz’, and you may have seen him in Don Letts’ video for ‘Bankrobber’. I certainly never saw it at the time, but that’s him, with Johnny Green, masked and heading down Lewisham High Street, on their way to rob a bank to pay for their tickets to see The Clash at the Lewisham Odeon, rather more Del Boy and Rodney than Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, but that’s fine.

It is hard to say what’s funniest about that video. The two ill-matched bandits in their bandanas? Yet they look so cool. Joe in a suit at the microphone? Though he never sounded or looked better. Mikey Dread in a Capital Radio sweatshirt? But back then David Rodigan’s Roots Rockers show on the station was a huge part of so many Londoners’ lives. Or is it the memory of Legs & Co. channelling ‘Jailhouse Rock’ while dancing to ‘Bankrobber’ on Top of the Pops? Well, they certainly had cool hats. Or perhaps today’s YouTube logic, prefacing the video with an advert urging us to join the Met? What would Nick Belsey say to that? Coincidentally, Nick was originally from Lewisham. But of course.

This summer Don Letts was back in Lewisham, in the courtyard (with Bobbie Gentry whispering in my ear again) of the Fox & Firkin. The Lewisham Odeon’s long gone, and there is a supersized new nick on the High Street where the department store Chiesmans used to be. Step lightly past, go easily on by the market, up to the Ladywell end of the High Street, a little beyond where the old musical instrument shop used to be, where apparently Subway Sect bought their first drum kit, and just past Courthill Road where ghostly whispers from the old June Brides HQ can still be heard, till you get to the unprepossessing looking Fox.

Don was there with his box of records, behind the consoles with Jazzie B and Daddy G, all that Black British history onstage together momentarily, looking out on the smiling faces dancing in the sunshine. All of which really would not have seemed possible at the start of the year. Something that had really struck home, overwhelmingly so, several weeks earlier, sitting there in the sun, listening to Vandorta from Sounds of the Universe and then Jerry Dammers, no less, playing wonderful vintage reggae 7s, and chatting with a stranger about Josef K, a true chance meeting, at the Deptford Dub Club’s summer party. Special memories to keep the cold away: Dawn Penn’s dance, African Head Charge’s chants, Prince Fatty’s dubwise selections. And everybody there plays Horace Andy. In the light, perpetually. Rub-a-dub-dub in a South London pub. Here’s to the Boshier, The Baker and all the risktakers: “Here what I say”.