One Train Later: A Memoir (26 page)

Back in London, I importune people at Virgin to make solo albums, continue to cut tracks on my own, keep writing songs. But getting all the way over is proving difficult, and I feel a strong urge to scream-I hate the business of music.

By the mid-seventies England is in full recession, with unemployment reaching its highest figure since the 1940s and the standard of living crumbling. The "English way of life" is under attack; there are muggings, letter bombs, and public-sector strikes; and the country as a whole becomes masochistic and ripe for chaos. Beneath the hippie surface of Virgin and the dribbling end of the sixties, something is turning a corner. London suburbia is a place of cynicism and boredom, and with it comes the state that gives rise to expression of actual violence and the tendency to fall to the political right. A new generation has emerged, and some of them-already in pub rock hands-are against the music scene of the early seventies with its expensive producers, East Lake studios, and records swollen with ego and overdubs. The pub rockers are a new breed who have returned to a more rootsy rhythm-and-blues-based sound. Performed to rowdy pub audiences around London, this music is gaining ground with bands like Bees Make Honey, Kilburn and the High-Roads, Dr. Feelgood, and Joe Strummer's 101'ers. They are the precursor, the pre-echo of a howl that will go around the world.

Around this time an old word with a new connotation is beginning to be heard in London. The word is punk, and the genesis of its new meaning is a shop in the Kings Road by the name of Sex-a place that I have walked by many times, never suspecting that it is the crucible of a new movement and something that will change the world, for a while anyway. I occasionally run into the guitarist Chris Spedding and he tells me that he's involved with a group called the Sex Pistols and that they are great and are really going to shake things up-the guitarist really has something.

By the end of 1975, after the Sex Pistols have appeared on the nationally televised Bill Grundy show and called him a fucking totter, punk has exploded onto the national consciousness and is emerging fast to shake the music industry to the ground. The Union Jack rises upside down to the top of the mast, and the kids of England become rotten. But this year, in which North and South Vietnam reunite, Mao Tse-tung dies, Jimmy Carter becomes president, and on television we watch Rising Damp, Porridge, and the Rise and Fall of Reginald Perrin, punk bands proliferate like a swarm of locusts. We hear the names of the Clash, the Damned, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Generation X, the Slits and X-Ray Spex. Toward the end of the year a club called the Roxy opens and becomes the place to see and hear punk. It lasts for about three months and then is replaced by the Vortex. Playing around Europe with Kevin Ayers and out of the country half of the time, punk feels like only a slight threat, a roar in the distance.

In this brief mid-seventies moment, punk, prog rock, pub rock, glam rock, and disco all coexist. In New York the Ramones, Television, Blondie, the Talking Heads, and Patti Smith are playing at CBGB's. In London in the stifling summer of 1976 punk Fashion is everywhere, and sweeps through the city with spiked hair, ripped T-shirts, black leather, pogo'ing, and sulfate am phetamines. The Sex Pistols and their manager, Malcom McClaren, are at the front of the new dispossessed as they storm the gates and attempt cultural access. McClaren, with his art school background, clothes design, and partnership with Vivian Westwood, has constructed this new scenario partly as a way to sell his (or rather Vivian Westwood's) clothing designs, partly out of his "political interest" in the Situationist International, and partly because he is a born entrepreneur/snake oil salesman. Inspired by the New York Dolls-as was the pre-glam David Bowie-McClaren had seen them on a trip to New York and attempted to manage them but after a series of mishaps they disintegrated and he returned to the rag trade until the arrival at Sex of Steve Jones, who gets him interested to try again. I had seen the Dolls at the Whiskey in L.A. just before returning to the United Kingdom and thought they were fantastic and definitely the progenitors of a new scene-or at least the latest version of punk, which has its own precedents in the United States with the Stooges and the MC5, the Velvet Underground, and Devo and writers like William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac.

At first the whole thing, with its gobbing, violence, and nihilism, seems faintly repellent to me. Coming from another era and still foolishly embracing bourgeois values like wanting to be able to play your fucking instrument, I think it's just the latest model of rage and fury that signifies nothing, looseness mistaken for a political concept. But this new movement hasn't come out of a vacuum. The peace and love of the previous generation did not accomplish, any real change: corruption and capitalist propaganda continue, and a lot of kids feel it. What is there to do but get numb and stay numb or rage and spit against the machine? There is a part of me that identifies with them because I also have a tendency to mouth "Fuck you" when faced with any kind of authority. We all want the power to shake the world and despite being one generation earlier, I think they are doing what youth always does-it's just wearing bondage gear this time. But then I have another problem because I have a whole other set of musical values that are foreign to the punk credo, and joining the ranks is not an option. As I have always held the core belief that music is a spiritual force, an agent for change no matter how angry or aggressive, spitting on it is counterintuitive. But rage and aggression can be the elements of productive tension. As nice as Virgin and the soporific "Tubular Bells" are, music needs a hefty kick in the ass-and these bands, clawing their way into the public imagination, are doing it. This is rock and roll.

In October 1976, at the opposite end of the spectrum, Virgin Records asks me if I would like to play the guitar in a performance of "Tubular Bells" with the Newcastle Symphony Orchestra-Mike Oldfield can't make it on the appointed night. His album is still dominating the charts, so despite misgivings about "Tubercular Balls," I agree. Standing in the middle of the orchestra and playing all the famous guitar parts under the baton of David Bedford turns out to be fun, and for an hour or so I have the spotlight. There is an intermission spot that will be filled by a local band called Last Exit, a jazz fusion group. They have a bass player named Sting and are supposed to be quite good, so I decide to watch them. I stand at the back of the hall and watch for about five minutes and then wander off for a cheese roll and a cup of tea.

Eleven

Two weeks later I am back in Newcastle again, this time with the Kevin Ayers Band. After our gig we return to the Drogenheyer Hotel, where it turns out that the group Curved Air is also staying. In short order we end up in someone's room, sharing the usual drinks, smokes, and musician bull. I sit on the floor and get into an intense conversation with a young American: his name is Stewart Copeland. He is engaging, friendly, and intense-a nonstop talker-and he gives me a long rap on how there is a guitar factory not far from Newcastle and how he has been in there and has hustled them into giving him a free guitar, even though he is the drummer in the group, and recommends that I do the same-it's easy. Easy, I think, with a mouth like that. they probably gave him the bloody guitar just to get him to shut up and go away! But I like him immensely and wonder vaguely if I will ever see him again.

At this time I retain a loose connection with the Soft Machine/Gong/ Virgin crowd. The reigning queen of this set is a woman known as Lady June. Occasionally there are parties at her large flat in Maida Vale, and at one of these I run into Mike Howlett, the former bass player of Gong, who as a group have now called it a day. We get into a conversation and he tells me that he's seen me playing around London and is complimentary, asking me if I would like to be in a group that he's putting together as a special project for the Gong reunion in Paris. The event will be an eight-hour concert in which each former member of Gong will bring his own new group, the culmination being Gong themselves playing together again. I express mild interest and Mike tells me that he has a bass player from Newcastle named Sting whom he wants to use. He's in a punk band called the Police, and maybe we could use their drummer, and he-Mike-will also play bass. It sounds odd-two basses?-but I shrug and agree to meet again.

A few days later in Shepherds Bush, Mike plays me the material, some songs of his and some by this Sting bloke. I tell him that I'm not all that impressed but think the songs are okay; we can make them work for this project.

He arranges a session for a few days later at a studio in Swiss Cottage called Virtual Earth. I make the trek across London from Putney and get up there around eleven A.M. The bass player and drummer are already there; they seem like just a couple of musicians, and I have no recollection of having met them before. The one with the bass says nothing but saw me a few years earlier in Newcastle playing with Zoot, so to him I am a well-known London musician-someone who, although scratching and clawing to survive, has already made it. We get into the rehearsal, and as it's his gig, Mike leads the way. The atmosphere is affable as we feel out one another's playing and learn sonic of Mike's material. But things suddenly come alive when we start a song by the bass player called "Visions of the Night." With a furious forward drive and a punk edge, this song pulls me out of a pleasant, if slightly somnolent, state to a fully galvanized awareness and I start playing with renewed energy.

We take a break and the drummer enthusiastically tells me of their activities as the Police, how they are out on the road with a singer from New York called Cherry Vanilla, backing her up for fifteen quid a night and then doing their own set. He speaks volubly of the punk scene, how great it is, how alive -that this is what's happening-and I find it hard not to get caught up in his enthusiasm. He then reminds me that his name is Stewart Copeland and that in fact we met three months earlier at the Drogenheyer Hotel. It comes back to me like an old black-and-white photograph-lying on the stale carpet of a hotel bedroom in a haze of beer and cigarette smoke, Stewart's words flying past my ears like arrows. And then the bass player, Sting, points out that the two of us have also sort of collided, as he was the bass player for Last Exit, the support group for the "Tubular Bells" concert. "Now I remember you," I say (or rather, lie), but the three of us are in a room together and the wheel of fortune clicks forward.

I drive back through the dense London traffic with a feeling that is different. Playing along with the kinetic fury of Stewart's drumming and Sting's soulful voice and bass playing was raw but powerful. Staring out across the standstill traffic and blare of Capitol Radio, I intuit something but try to put it to the side: this is a one-off project, not a real group; they have a guitarist and are out gigging with him; they are a band. My natural enthusiasm tends to pull me into difficulties because I find it hard to play with the necessary emotion and remain detached at the same time, but something is getting to me.

A few days later Mike gives me a cassette of the songs we recorded, and it's a letdown. Rushing and charging along with no finesse, it's the sound of a train wreck; maybe it's punk, but it doesn't sound like a band, isn't yet cohesive enough to be powerful. But despite the crudeness of the tape, there is a provocation that comes through and I decide to reserve judgment and carry on for a while. We continue rehearsing and by degrees get deeper into one another's skin as we work our way through the songs for the Paris show. This is a potent period because I am replacing Henri Padovani, their guitarist, for a while and a new bond is being formed. But underneath the groundswell of rhythm, bass lines, and chords and the conversational banter being tossed back and forth, another agenda is forming. Sting, who doesn't always verbalize his feelings, is already brooding about Henri's lack of ability, is frustrated by it; it's limiting him and his own considerable songwriting abilities. I stumble into this fragile scenario and we play; we interact; and not holding anything back, I demand more, push for musical excellence even if it's for a one-night show. Sting says nothing but sees a new set of possibilities, and the seeds are sown.

We play the show at the Hippodrome in Paris to a large crowd of Gong devotees as a group called Strontium 90. We go over well enough, but I am somewhat ambivalent about it. The two-bass thing seems wrongunbalanced-but the idea of a knockout power trio begins to take shape.

We part company the next day, as I have to get to Colmar to play with Kevin Ayers. But after the intensity of being with Sting and Stewart-the three of us playing together stays with me-being back in the Kevin Ayers Band suddenly feels too comfortable, too tame, the old world.

Back in London Mike has set up a few gigs for us as the Elevators, the name he chooses to replace Strontium 90. We play a couple of shows, one at the Nashville and one at Dingwalls, but from a musical perspective both gigs feel strange. It's okay but it's not quite coming off, the two electric basses distorting the focus of the band. The other problem is that we all like Mike but he's the odd man out. Compared with the three of us, he is mellowrelaxed-and we are all intense and edgy, as if from the same mold. After a few furtive phone conversations we decide to go on without him. He is disappointed but not devastated. But there's another problem: I am not actually in the band, but somehow I'm half in the Elevators and half in the Police, which is frustrating. But this fuzzy move to continue without Mike seems to imply that together we have made a decision, a commitment that somewhere in the future we will be a group.