The Ned Wood Archive

Theirs is a Land of Hope and Glory

I got back to the old dears late on the Sunday night.  Not too late – first thing I did was to look up Alex and find out which gigs we were going to and where the parties were.  The first choice was between Eddie and the Hot Rods and the Anarchy in the UK tour which had some band called the Heartbreakers and the Pistols who a lot of folk in NME were talking about.  We’d both been Hot Rods fans since the summer, but we wanted something new, so we decided to experiment and go for the Anarchy tour which we’d both read loads about and were inquisitive to find out about.  Something was happening, and we didn’t know what it was.  Did we, Mr Jones.  Of course having decided to go, we then found out that it had been cancelled, so we ended up at the Hot Rods gig.  The support band was a group called Ultravox who everyone said were like Roxy Music and of course no-one liked them.  Maybe you’re just not supposed to like support bands.  I got turned on by a couple of songs – one which I ended up singing a lot of called the Wild the Beautiful and the Damned even though I didn’t know about Fitzgerald.  The other I could only remember the title, not even the tune.  It was ‘I Want to be a Machine’.  Isn’t that cute.  The Rods had just released the Teenage Depression single which I thought was a bit weak, so I was ready to be disappointed.  Maybe I picked up that the music press were getting ready to disown them.  They were good though.  A bit more polished than at Glen, but still with that same amazing energy.

At the time we didn’t really know what we’d missed not being able to see the Pistols.  I guess when you look back, you can remember a day that changed your life or a really significant event.  Like where you were when you first heard Virginia Plain or watching Eddie and the Hot Rods for the first time on Top of the Pops.  Some things, however, pass you by.  You don’t notice them or you only catch them out of the corner of your eye and pay no more attention.  Well a couple of things like that happened those couple of weeks before Christmas that year.

The first of those things that I didn’t even notice was when Forest won the Anglo-Scottish Cup.  The first leg was the day of the Hot Rods gig.  The second was a couple of days later.  It was a Mickey Mouse Cup so the national press ignored it.  I don’t think I even knew we were playing, so I didn’t go looking for the result.  I was more concerned with the fact that we were now second in the table, in one of the promotion places, and equal with Bolton and Blackpool, plus we were at home the following Saturday.  Anyway that Anglo-Scottish Cup was the start.  That was when Forest started winning things.  That was when the Hope turned into Glory.

Same with the Pistols.  They’d been on the cover of the NME and were getting attention.  But so were a lot of people: Deaf School, Split Enz, Racing Cars.  You always kept your eyes open for new stuff, but you couldn’t catch everything.  So, I knew about them and I was inquisitive.  That last week at University, the NME had had a story about them having been on TV.  It was some London only programme anyway so we wouldn’t have seen it.  The way the NME told it gave the impression that all of the NME writers were crowded round this one TV waiting for them to come on.  And come on they did.  And said a naughty word.  Which somehow turned out to be a BIG THING.  No doubt the writers at NME, huddled round their twelve inch black and white screen, thought this was big enough to put in their rag.  After I’d read it I thought no more of it apart from maybe ‘Sad little boys who think swearing is funny and the band aren’t much brighter’, given as I was to bouts of pontificating.

So it Goes that Middle Class England and his wife doesn’t like having kids swearing on TV.  And regardless of the fact that no-one outside the South East of England saw it, the guardians of our morality don’t stop at ‘swearing isn’t funny’ but decide that on no account can they allow this filth to be flung at their kids (which was you and me guys) and ban the whole shooting match, ban them from going on TV, ban them from playing their record, ban them from touring the country saying ‘We can’t have those nasty little Cockney gits playing RocknRoll in our town, they might say ‘fuck’ again’.

Nowadays when the man tells us not to do something, we form a great big queue and try to do it as soon as possible, just to annoy him.  Back then we thought what the hell and counted the days till the new Genesis album was released.

Actually, one of me brother’s mates from school, a guy called Morris got the Pistols’ single before it was withdrawn.  He had that and I’m Stranded by the Saints, a bunch of Aussies who never did anything.  He’d be everywhere with just these two singles.  There were a few parties that Christmas where we sat playing or trying to play them all night. One was at Anna’s place, one at a pub, and one at some house I’ve never been to since, so I don’t know whose it was.  The pub party was a washout – the DJ never turned up, so we sat in the corner with some guy’s squeaky portable deck spinning whatever we could lay our hands on, which was Anarchy.  Most of the folk there kept coming across and telling us to take the crap off.  It wasn’t of course, it was loud and raw and hilarious, and with a few more listens, they would have got the joke.

Anna’s parties were always good.  For a start her parents would leave, so we’d have the place to ourselves all night.  And I mean all night – with Anna’s parties, you had to stay up till dawn.  I remember one summer we walked round the pool in the middle of town at sunrise, the beautiful colours in the sky just about justifying our hollow heads and wrecked mornings.  This Christmas party was a fancy dress, so I reckoned on turning up in a bin liner which was, according to the press, the latest London fashion.  Funny it didn’t match with anything I’d seen Paulie or Susie wearing, but that was all the press knew about ‘punk’ wear.   Bin Liner and safety pins, though of course, none of them went anywhere near my face.  You know, I didn’t really link the punks that had started appearing in the papers with those two girls that lived in the same house as Lil, or even with those Angels I’d seen at the World’s End.  To me “punk” was a press invention – epitomised by bin liners.  Susie and Paulie were obviously real people doing real things with their look.  Weird things, sure, experimenting every night, but real.  That they had things in common with tabloid punks (like two legs, two arms, and safety pins) I put down to coincidence.  

Anna didn’t like Anarchy, so we didn’t play it much.  She always accused me of being a record player fascist.  She told how me and Alex would always commandeer the record player at any party we went to  and just play our records.  Which was true, because you couldn’t trust anyone else’s taste, although Anna was into funk, so would play stuff like War or Timmy Thomas or Labelle, which was fine for dancing if you were in the mood.  Plus she had a copy of 10cc’s Original Soundtrack and would insist on playing One Night in Paris which you can tire of quite quickly.  (The Worst Band in the World, however, is excellent.)

The other cool thing about Christmas, of course, is the cash.  If you’re lucky you maybe get about twenty or thirty quid, which you just have to spend on presents for yourself, otherwise your aunt or gran or whoever would feel disappointed if you couldn’t say, look what I just bought.  So me and Alex would wing it into Birmingham and relieve Virgin of some of their old vinyl.  I got myself a Small Faces compilation with Sha La La La Lee & My Mind’s Eye & Whatcha Gonna Do about It & Runaway on.  Runaway was the main reason, because I’d got a few of the other tracks and, anyway, I liked the original.  I was building up quite a collection of sixties vinyl through going into Birmingham.  If I was feeling rich, I’d head over to Reddington’s Rare Records and get a Yardbirds single or a Kinks single.  Otherwise I had to pick up a compilation at Virgin.

The best sixties bands were the Stones, the Yardbirds, the Animals, the Kinks, and the Small Faces.  Trouble with the Stones was that you heard them too often.  They’re not on the tape.

Sixties tape

Animals

• Baby Let me Take You Home
• House of the Rising Sun
• Don’t Let me Be Misunderstood
• We Gotta Get out of this Place
• It’s My Life
• Don’t Bring Me Down  

Herd

• From the Underworld  

Kinks

• Waterloo Sunset
• See My Friends
• Sunny Afternoon
• Tired of Waiting
• All Day and All of the Night  

Manfred Mann

• Do Wah Diddy
• Pretty Flamingo
• The One in the Middle  

Pink Floyd

• See Emily Play
• Arnold Layne  

Small Faces

• All or Nothing
• My Mind’s Eye
• Sha La La La Lee
• Lazy Sunday
• Tin Soldier

Them

• Gloria
• Here Comes the Night
• Baby Please Don’t Go
• Call My Name

Traffic

• Paper Sun
• Hole in My Shoe

 Yardbirds

• For Your Love
• Heart Full of Soul
• Still I’m Sad
• Evil hearted You
• Shapes of Things
• You’re a Better Man than I

Zombies

• She’s Not There

The thing that really got me listening to sixties stuff seriously was Bowie’s Pin Ups.  I tried to start collecting all the songs from that, done by the originals. (Or at least the Yardbirds for I Wish You Would.  Years later I got the original by Billy Boy Arnold.)

Of course some of the stuff I’d heard first time around and remembered like Hole in my Shoe.

You know, some of those sixties bands got it just about right.  The Who, the Stones obviously, the Small Faces, the Kinks, the Yardbirds.  Brilliant songs, but classy not poppy.  You don’t hear any decent music on the radio these days, but in the sixties half of the stuff in the charts was cool.  When have you heard a song like Waterloo Sunset?  Amazing hook, beautiful imagery, emotive lyrics, unique sound.  All of this plus the echoes lingering from my childhood which resurface when I hear those classic singles.  Top of the Pops in black and white in our old front room.  Birthday parties with simple games on the back lawn, beach holidays and trips.  Days of Innocence and Fun. As long as I listen to Waterloo Sunset, I am back in paradise.