The Ned Wood Archive

I Don’t Want to Change the World

I should have smashed that Bowie album.  I wasn’t going to sit around and waste my life.  My course was boring me.  I was looking for something else.  I went home to see the old dears in the middle of one week but I realised there was nothing there for me, so I caught the train straight back.  I decided I’d have to work on improving myself.  Somehow.  I wasn’t just at University to find out about which rocks you’d come across if you dug a hole in your garden.  I was here to find out about life and I was going to live it.  Mary had found a life. I decided I was going to get the most out of my friendship with Mary.  I’d go round to see her once or twice a week and chat across the kitchen table or over a cup of tea in her front room.  It got to be a habit.  A couple of times she’d cook dinner even though she couldn’t get used to my habit of putting Branston pickle on everything.

Sometimes she’d have one or two of her friends there, but usually it was just the two of us.  She’d gently nag me about my background, my politics, my outlook on life.  Slowly I came out of my shell.  Even though I came from the deep blue sea of middle England and everyone called me a Tory, I’d inherited some liberalism from somewhere.  I hadn’t read Mill at the time, but we probably would have agreed on a couple of points.  Freedom of the individual was always my stock response when Mary debated nationalisation or equalisation of incomes.  I’d tell her you couldn’t pass laws to stop people from earning a living.  She’d tell me that only the rich were free: the working class, her class, weren’t.  They didn’t have the freedom to do what they liked, they were chained by their poverty.

I couldn’t see how the system would work if everyone was paid the same.  There was a lot of talk about tax exiles in those days – folk like the Rolling Stones.  I told her that if the ridiculous tax rates went up any more, folk like my Dad would end up without any incentive to work harder.  She asked me whether I was at University just to get a good job, to earn loads a money, knowing the answer was that I was doing it because it was fun.  She asked me if I thought we should reward people who wanted money or people who enjoyed what they did.  She asked me which person I thought would make the best doctor or lecturer or whatever.  The guy who enjoyed it or the guy who enjoyed taking the money.  This made me feel guilty because I know me Dad enjoys what he does and would probably do it whatever he could get.  

One day I said something wrong, forgetting her Dad was out of work.  I didn’t really believe it, but I repeated something I’d read about the dole encouraging folk to scrounge.  She threw me out.  I had touched a raw nerve.  As soon as I’d said it, she turned on me which a fierce look in her eye, which I hadn’t seen before, or maybe once when she was railing at that Workers’ Revolutionary that used to hang around her.  She said: “Listen, Mr Moneybags-I-was-born-with-a-silver-spoon-in-my-mouth-Wood.  You come here on your minimum grant, throwing your middle class money around and expect us honest working class folk to bow and scrape.  And you tell me that your Dad won’t work because he’s paid too little, and my Dad won’t work, because he’s paid too much.”

The she slammed the door and I walked home.

She found me the next day and apologised, but her outburst had had an effect.  Slowly the world was changing.  I started joining in with the Grants Demos that were all around.  I even went round the hall with Tom canvassing support for the petition the union had organised.  He would say: “listen to this guy – he’s a Tory and he thinks you should sign” as if that would convince anyone.  It was getting exciting.  We went on a demo up to London.  We just marched up and down a couple of streets saying we wanted more money.  There were a few coaches from the Wessex Student Federation or something.  Jo, Helen, Steve, Debbie, and I all had lunch together at some pub near University College and we all had the runs that night. Steve stood at the door to breakfast and caught us all one at a time, saying: “Someone kept me awake last night running up and down the corridor”.  And each of us blushed in turn before he let on that he’d been just as bad.  It’s a wonder I didn’t bump into him on one of my trips to the bog.

The other things that were big then were anti fascist campaigns and rock against racism and stuff which wasn’t really relevant to us in Southampton because, if we had any Nazi’s, they kept themselves well hid.  So we just saved the world by wearing the badges. 

My colleagues on the geology course started picking on me, asking me if I was hanging round with the lefties.  They even started calling me a punk though I don’t know why.  When the NME came out on Thursdays, I’d grab it, take it to the Coffee Bar, and digest it page by page.  That’s when the weekend really started.  Punk was growing, you could read all about it.  That band I’d seen with Patti Smith – they were punk.  Patti Smith was punk too.  So were the Ramones.  But not the Hot Rods.  They were getting unfashionable.  They wore flares.  The thought police had thrown them off the punk bandwagon.  There were so many punk stories going round.  About how the Pistols got dumped by EMI and at the same time dumped their bass player for liking the Beatles.  Or smiling.  Or something.  About the guy out of the Stranglers who’d worn a naughty T shirt on stage and managed to get the gig cancelled.  About a band called the Clash, who were a bunch of street wise revolutionary Che Guevaras and had just been signed by CBS.  About a band from Manchester called Buzzcocks who’d decided to make a record, so they paid for it all themselves.  About a geezer with two big ears, who’d had one of them bitten off at a Clash gig.  About how Patti Smith jumped off stage during the seventh number of the seventh gig or something and broke the seventh bone in her neck.  Proves she’s got some New Age in her, not just punk.  There was stuff about the Jam, a bunch of mohair suited Who fans, who’d just signed to Polydor.  They were punk.  I knew something was happening up in London and I was itching for it to hit the south coast. 

Ultravox, that band that had supported the Hot Rods at Christmas, played a gig at the Old Ref, supporting Supercharge.  They were supposed to be punk by now, although as far as I could tell, that was just on account of their clothes which were straight trousers, thin ties, black T-shirts and such.  They were late, though.  I mean late.  The main act were completely pissed off.  So were the audience.  They played ‘I want to be a Machine’.  I was the only one who liked them and the only one who didn’t like Supercharge.  Steve, Tom, Mike, Neil, even Rod were all at the gig picking on me because I liked the wrong band.  It happens.

Then the Stranglers single came out.  I got the first bus into town and fetched it.  My first punk single.  For a few days the most wonderful single on the planet.  The mightiest 45 in the history of RocknRoll.  The only 45 in the history of RocknRoll.  Get a Grip on Yourself.  Weird, whirling organ chords, pounding bopping bass, jigging guitar chords.  Sleazy vocals, almost spoken chorus, cheap flat backing vocals, while all the while the organ is tripping off on its own in one corner leaving the other three singing their cheap RocknRoll words. On the other side, London Lady.  More straight forward guitar, bass, and drum sound but with the sleazy shouted abusive vocals identifying it with the new punk ethic. What a single.  Two short spurts of high energy RocknRoll, speed guitars, cheap, but imaginative organ, clipped, shouted, London vocals.  I loved it.  I played both sides twice then ran out of my room trying to find someone to listen with me.  Jo was upstairs, so I hauled her down and played her my new discovery.  I was so pleased with myself.  Not only had I personally discovered the future of RocknRoll, but I could also share my unique find with another human being.  “So what?” she said, “They played that on the radio this morning.”