The Ned Wood Archive

Then Raise the Scarlet Standard High

Come On You Reds.  COOOOOMMMMME OOONNNNNN YOOOOOOOOUUUUUU   REEEEEEEEDDDDDSSS.  Don’t mind me, I always get excited when I’m on my way to a game.  I’m sat on the train going up to London for the Orient v Forest game.  It’s my first game for a couple of months, since Carlisle at home in fact, so I’m even more excited.

You know, I always used to think that my ideal day would be watching Forest win, then going to a gig afterwards.  I’ve done that a few times, but when I think back, I can never remember which game occurred before which concert.  The two are separate events.  You go through one set of emotions, calm down, then get up for another different set.  Sometimes though something happens that links everything together so you don’t remember just the game or the band, you remember them as part of something bigger.  That’s how it was this weekend.  Not just the game, not just the couple of days I spent in London – the whole weekend, including the Friday night back at Southampton.  They all stick together in my mind because they remind me of what I was thinking about then.  

Mary.  I couldn’t get her out of my mind.  How many times had I seen her? Four or five.  I noticed her that first day, that smile, that hair, those eyes, that beauty.  But I wasn’t aware how deep an impression she’d made.  And then watching her in her room spouting all that stuff.  She was so much in control, so much the leader.  And her measured put downs, all said with that fire in her eyes.  So much passion, so much knowledge, so much honesty.  And now the sum of all those observations was acting on my mind  and coalescing into a thought that was at once frightening and exciting.  I wouldn’t admit to it.  I imagined her face and I felt my heart grow in my chest.  I teased myself by rehearsing imaginary conversations, echoing her delightful accent.  Throughout that weekend I enjoyed the nervous pleasure of her presence in my minds eye, but still refused to admit it until it became too exciting a thought to contain.  So I let it explode.  Yes, I wanted her.  And the thought exhilarated by body, tingled my fingers and toes, froze my spine and warmed me throughout.  It was true.  She was beautiful and different and I wanted her to be my girlfriend.  I wanted to know that she thought the same way about me.  It wasn’t love and it wasn’t lust.  It was a desire to be with her, to be liked by her.  To look into her eyes and see her soul.  To have her listen to me when I wanted to tell her something.  To play her my John Cale albums.  Perhaps to just sit and hold hands.

Friday night had been Deaf School in the Old Refectory.  Deaf School were one of those bands we’d got into while trying to find something new in music.  I guess we’d lost faith in the Stones after that appalling album and tour they’d done that summer.  I’d seen the Stones at Earl’s Court earlier that year and the sound was pathetic, not to mention the stage being a couple of miles from where I was sat.  Mott the Hoople had split.  Rod Stewart had lost the plot.  Roxy Music had probably split by then.  True, Bowie was still around, but he’d made a couple of soul albums which I guess we thought made him more American and no longer one of us.  Whatever, he wasn’t doing Ziggy anymore.  Genesis had split a couple of years before and although they’d made an album since, we knew deep down inside it was crap, even though none of us admitted it – hell I’d even been to see them that summer.

I’d seen the Who at Charlton too, and although that was better sound-wise it was still pretty dreary: band after band of mindless guitar boogie.  I swear one band had twenty seven guitarists playing – were they called the Outlaws or something?  Only Alex Harvey had broken the monotony and I’d missed most of his set because I was watching my back after being scared shitless by some nutter who was walking around asking folk who they supported and finding an excuse to lay into them whatever they said.  And the other thing that pissed me off was when you sent off your two or three or four quid for tickets, you got nothing back for weeks, sometimes if you didn’t get a ticket, like for some of the Stones gigs, you didn’t get your money back until after the concert even.  Except that it wasn’t your cheque, it was theirs because the thieving bastards had cashed your cheque and everyone else’s months back and lived off the interest. 

So we’d tried to liven things up that summer, me, Harry, Alex, and our kid, by finding new and different bands.  We even invented our own: Sandy and the Quartzites, but we were never good enough to play a gig.  Deaf School were one of the bands we got into.  Split Enz were another.  And the Rods.  Shit, we even thought Burlesque might be one, but that was one the basis of a single gig.  I even bought the album when it came out later, but it’s embarrassing.  Split Enz were weird.  The music was a bit old Bowie and a bit Roxy, but they dressed up in crazy ill-fitting jackets on stage.  I’d seen them down in Southampton.  I can’t actually remember whether they’d been big at home.  Deaf School were.  Some of the older guys got into them first after they’d seen them at Barbarella’s.  They were supposed to be more like Bryan Ferry’s solo stuff, but if you listen to the album it’s a mix of this twee obvious jingle like stuff followed by some cool jazzy sax.  So I’d persuaded some of the guys at Chamberlain to come to the gig with me – Jo, Helen, Steve.  Helen had been to Split Enz with me and liked that.  In fact they all liked Deaf School too – they did put on a professional show.  Anyway I was sat on the floor of the Old Refectory listening to words like “I said ‘Hello Angel’ cos I’m that kind of guy” and listening to that smooth silky sax and visions of Mary started to swim around my brain.

And then the next day on the train, while I was watching the countryside go by, I thought of her, wondering what it would be like for the two of us to walk through the fields together.  Wondering what it would be like to take her to a game.  I’d only ever taken a girl to a game once – this was Anna Mulcahy, who I’d gone out with just before I went to University.  We’d lost 2-1 to Bolton I think.  After the game she’d told me how some guy had stepped on her toe and apologised to me instead of her.  She was most upset, not about her toe being trodden on, but because the guy had said sorry to me and not her, which was typical of her, but tell the truth, I couldn’t remember anybody saying anything.  You tend to retreat into a shell when you lose.  Especially when you lose at home.  For the fourth game running.

But that happens.  Come the next weekend you’re ready to take on anyone.  You’re as excited as ever, you can’t wait for the game to start and of course, you believe you’ll beat anyone.  OK, so we hadn’t won away all season, but Orient were right at the bottom of the table.  I always enjoyed going there – I’d even got the train down when I was at school and made a day out of it – buying records in London and then going to the game.  So as the train trundled through southwest London toward Waterloo, the old buzz started to grow and my mind moved away from Mary and back to the beautiful game and the Reds.  True, I had to scoot over to Ealing where I was staying and dump off my bag before I could get to Orient’s ground, but I was in London, I was going to a game and we were going to win.

To get to Brisbane Road, which is where Orient play, you have to ride for what seems like years on the Central line.  When you get out, you’re in the centre of what seems to be a small town.  The first time I went I just followed the crowds, this was my third visit so I knew where I was going.  The last couple of times I’d been we’d stood on the away end, which is still an open terrace, but when I got to the ground I found that most of the Forest fans seemed to be trying to get into the stand furthest away from the tube, so I joined in with them.  It was a better view.  We were covered and we could stand nearer the half way line.

I don’t know exactly what started me supporting the Reds, I was 9 at the time and influenced by all manner of things that seem unimportant now.  Like, which came first – was red my favourite colour at the time or did I change it when I started supporting Forest.  Did I just like the name.  Could it have been because they were successful that year?  Could it even be because they were playing in the second match I’d ever seen?

1966 was World Cup year.  No-one my age or older needs to be asked where they were when Geoff Hurst scored those goals, or when Nobby Stiles danced his jig, or when Weber lunged to prod home the last minute equaliser, or even when Jack Charlton gave away the free kick that led to the last minute equaliser.  I was in the grounds of a hotel at the seaside kicking a ball with a kid my age, conscious that something immensely important was happening, but too nervous to watch.  All the grown ups, except my old dears who didn’t like football, were crowded round the hotel’s single black and white TV.  Of course they were all black and white then.  A nation’s finest hour remembered in fifty shades of grey.  One of them called us in to watch the last minute of the game and see England pick up the cup.  I can still hear the groan that went up.  “I don’t know why Charlton has to climb on his back, he’s as tall as a giraffe already”.  A nation represented by thirty frustrated adults and three innocent kids held their breath.  And celebrated half an hour later to those famous words.  Of course I don’t remember them from the time, only from countless repeats, but we must have been watching BBC that day – you always watched BBC for Cup finals and the like, even if the game was on ITV as well.  And then we kids ran back out to continue our game on the grass knowing it wasn’t over, it was only just beginning.

“I’m Geoff Hurst” I said.  

“Is that who you support then ?  West Ham?”  this kid asked.  Who were West Ham?  A month ago I didn’t even know about football.  My old dears weren’t interested, so I’d lived without it for nine years.  I knew about four or five teams: England, West Germany, Portugal, Argentina, and North Korea. 

So I got a quick lesson on who to support: Manchester United (who everybody supported), Spurs (for Jimmy Greaves), or West Ham (whose players had just won the World Cup).

So West Ham it was.

Me Grandad was going to take me to see West Ham the next time they played Villa, because he lived in Birmingham.  But that wasn’t until the following Easter, so he arranged that I go see another game sooner and that just happened to be Villa v Forest, all I remember was it was 1-1 and Forest played in white. Before that I got to see Stoke City play Fulham.  I’d gone a mate of me Dad’s and his kid and Stoke wasn’t far from home.  We left before the end cos our kid went too and was bored.  Just after we’d left Fulham scored the winner.   My first game and it didn’t make an impression. My second game did. So, as a result of having seen the might Reds in November, when I went to see Villa play West Ham four or five months later, I was a Forest supporter.  A mad obsessed Forest supporter. We got all the other scores that day and I spent ages working out the tables.  We ended up second to Man United that year.  And beaten by Spurs in the Cup Semi Final.

Almost ten years later and we’re playing Leyton Orient in front of less than six thousand people in the second division.  We’d been going steadily downwards since that first magical season, and perversely my love had been growing steadily as if to compensate.  I’d cut out newspaper reports and rewrite them to make it look as if we’d played better than we had.  I always had Ian Moore score a couple of goals, even if they had to be disallowed for offside.  I’d plead with my old dears to let me stay up to watch Match of the Day on the isolated occasions that we were on.  I even managed to sneak down and see us on TV one year when we beat Everton.  Me Dad even took me to the ground a couple of times.  Once, during the week, just to see the ground, even though no-one was playing.  I remember we stopped at the Forest shop and got a team photo.  Then later we went to see Forest play Arsenal and stood on the East Stand terrace.  Arsenal won 3-0. They won everything that year, and me Dad has never forgotten that the crowd sang Charlie Charlie where’s your handbag.  He still sings it when he thinks me hair’s getting too long.  That was a night match and we got lost driving home, so he never took me again.

The next year I started to go on my own.  Get up early and catch the nine thirty bus to Burton, then the train to Derby at about twenty past eleven.  Change at Derby and arrive at Nottingham at 12:30.  Hang around for two hours.  What that meant was walk down to the ground and wait on the embankment to be let in.  Sometimes I’d meet up with some lads from Burton and when we got to Nottingham, we’d try and summon up the courage to go to a pub.  We were fourteen, but I must have looked eleven or twelve.  Old enough to get a drink at the Queens Hotel. I took to hanging around the club shop.  Then at 1:30 you got let in the Trent End.  We’d grab the front just behind the goal.  Most of the older kids would be wedged at the back.  There’d be two or maybe three leaders who took it in turn to start the chants.  Then everyone would join in, especially us kids at the front.  La, la, la lalalala, lalalala Forest to Hey Jude, or Through the Seasons Before Us to Elgar, or we all hate rams and rams and rams, rams and rams and rams and rams and so forth to Dambusters.

The worst day was Ipswich at home, the day Ian Moore left.  The Trent End sang “Bring back, Bring back, Oh Bring back our Ian to us, to us” all through the match.  It was soo cold, coldest I’ve ever been. And we lost 2-0.  After that we went down.

We nearly went back up a couple of seasons later, by which time the Forest lads had moved to the East Stand, just the other side of the halfway line.  This was probably to get closer to the opposition hoolies who were in the Bridgford.  There must have been regular fights in those days, though they don’t seem to stand out in my memory.  If you went to the right places and stood in the right part of the ground, you could avoid them.  We’d sing “You’re going in the river” and you’d hear stories about folk being thrown off the bridge, but I never saw it happen.  I remember we beat Middlesbrough who were about fifty points clear at the top of the second.  We were wary of them, even though we 3-1 up at half time.  I remember someone saying as we ate our pies “we might beat this lot if we can hold on”.  We won 5-1.  George Lyall got a couple.  He was one of my heroes, but Duncan McKenzie was the king in those days.  He could do anything on or off the pitch.  He could jump over cars or throw golf balls miles or waltz through the Man City defence.  When they had a defence.  We played Newcastle in the Cup quarter final at their place and went 3-1 up with twenty minutes left.  Then a load of Newcastle hoolies ran on the pitch and kicked a couple of Forest players.  After that Newcastle won 4-3, but I was convinced the FA would over turn it.  We should have played Burnley in the Semi Final, but had to play Newcastle again at Goodison.  If it had been 3-3 we would have got them at our place.  Even so we should have beaten them at Goodison cos we had a goal disallowed.  We had to replay it again and they won.  The next Saturday I went down to Fulham to see us lose there too.  So we missed out on promotion and sold Duncan McKenzie.  It took me years to forgive Newcastle.

The next year we were 16^th, then 8^th, now we were 6^th after 13 games, but only two points behind Wolves in second.  Always behind Chelsea and Wolves.  We’d moved back to the Trent End at the end of the previous season.  Terry Curran is the new king of Nottingham, although he’s been out for a month.  We’ve got Robbo on the left wing, Withe and Woodcock up front,  Martin O’Neill, Bomber, and John McGovern in midfield, Frank Clark, Viv Anderson, Larry Lloyd and the mighty Sammy Chapman at the back.  When we’re good, we’re really good.  We can take on anyone in the division.  I’d seen us take Carlisle United apart a couple of months previous.  It’s not the winning, it’s the taking apart that counts. We’d start the game like dynamite, fizzing the ball about for twenty or thirty minutes.  If we got a goal during that time, we’d be coasting, if not, we’d just as soon lose one and struggle to get back.

But I love ‘em.  I love the red of the shirts.  I love the green of the City Ground pitch.  I love the banks of the Trent.  I love how we’re not fashionable enough.  I love how we play the game and don’t get into trouble arguing or scrapping on the pitch.  I love the way we play.  Not hoofing up the field and running, not crowding men behind the ball and waiting for a break, but going forward, looking to attack, home or away.  I love how we’ve been to Europe and won the cup twice.  I love the way when we’re really on song we can pass the ball around at speed.  Not the measured slow build up of Liverpool or the continentals, but a faster movement like an expert playing pinball.  I love watching the ball fizz around like a crazed fly on a hot day but always finding the right man.  I know we play like Arsenal some days and like Wimbledon on others, but that’s more through incompetence than lack of desire.  We’d show the world how the beautiful game should be played, if only we had a decent striker, or a midfield that could tackle, or a defence that could defend at corners.

We beat Orient 1-0.  Bomber got the goal.  We sang “Hello Hello Forest are back”.

So I’m a happy man as I walk down the road from Ealing Broadway to Lil’s digs, where I’m staying the weekend.  Everyone called him Lil or Lilly cos his name was Lilburne.  I’d been to school with him.  It never occurred to any of us at school to use first names like Edward or John.  I was Riff or Woody.  He was Lil.  He was doing some sort of Management degree sponsored by some company or other.  He was one of my best mates at school, but this was the first time I’d been to see him in London.  He was living with another student and a family in Ealing.  His landlady,  Billy, had a couple of teenage kids and no husband.  She’d kicked him out when the kids got old enough, she thought, to look after themselves.  I don’t know, maybe it’s short for Wilma.

So they’re all there sitting round the TV arguing about what’s on.  We hardly ever watch television up at Southampton.  The TV room is so small, you can only fit about ten or fifteen people in it.  There’s only one TV, so the chances of even watching the channel you want to are limited.  Also, it’s generally thought to be bad form to have to stay in of a Friday or Saturday – you’re supposed to have somewhere to go like a party or something and even if you don’t you’re supposed to have enough mates to be able to go to the pub or Glen bar.  Anyway there’s never anything on.

But these girls are watching something and arguing about the clothes.  It’s a sitcom about life in the fifties in America called “The Fonz” or something.  What they’re doing is looking at the jeans on the show and at the same time cutting their own jeans up and sowing them back together without the flares.  Without the flares!  I can’t believe it, they look really square, but the two of them, Polly maybe fifteen, Susie maybe a little older are taking the flares out of their jeans and sewing them up as drainpipes.  Apparently all their schoolmates are doing it all over West London.  And I’m so out of touch because I live in the sticks.

Lil tells me he’s had his eyes opened just by living in the same house as these girls.  How they pick up new fashions that he’d never even began to imagine.  How they get into bands he’s never heard of.  How they wind their mother up by falling in and out of love all the time.  How they have panic attacks and get close to nervous breakdowns because some guy they’ve just met hasn’t phoned them.  And how they’ve found this neat show about some American dude from the fifties and they’re going overboard about the gear in it.  Thinking about it, I sometimes get like that meself.  You get hold of a new craze and you throw yourself into it totally like it’ll be out of fashion in half an hour.  You know that bit in Hairspray were Rikki Lake and what’s her name meet Pia Zadora and next thing you know they’re ironing their hair.  That’s what it was like in the house in Ealing.  Stalin never rewrote history as fast as these kids reshaped their jeans.

Billy waltzes in and asks me if I like Pizza.  I don’t know, I’ve never tried it.  What is it?  For a moment, the girls look up from the TV and tell their mother not to invite such ignorant jerks into the house and then not acknowledging the contradiction tell her to serve me her anchovy special because that’s her best.  OK I know, I’m a hick from the sticks.  Billy asks where my bag is and when I say I left it in the front room all afternoon, she pulls me to one side and suggests I don’t do it again, because one of the guys her youngest had round that day would lift anything.  OK, so I’m still a dumb provincial kid.

That snapshot in my mind of Billy in her front room, chaos whirling around her, yet calm and assured, will remain with me for all time.  The time worn mother having overcome all of her troubles and cares and now in complete control.  And the reason I’ll never forget it is because at the time the thought that came to my mind was of Mary.  They were so alike.  Billy in her house in Ealing, Mary in her room at Glen.  Both in control, rising above the petty squalls beneath them.  I wondered what she thought of Chile.  (Yeah, the old baaag makes a good chilli, said Susie.)  And after that I spent the evening thinking of Mary, remembering the few precious moments I’d spent with her.  

And each time I thought of her, my heart jumped a bit as if trying to tell me something.  I had excellent dreams that night.

Lil took me round the pub on the Sunday.  It had an OK Juke Box, but Lil liked it, so he banged out Honky Tonk Women and Brown Sugar and Jumpin Jack Flash.  He was big on the Stones was our Lil.  Probably still is.  He’s one of these guys that knows what he likes and once he’s decided he never changes his mind.  He likes the Stones which means he likes everything they’ll ever do.  Now if you ask me the Stones haven’t done anything since Exile On Main Street.  Well maybe a couple of tracks on Goats Head Soup, plus Start Me Up and It’s Only RocknRoll.  Ask Lil and every album is a gem.  He was also very much into the Feelgoods and the Who – all that RocknRoll band stuff.  Every year you’d have enormous arguments over whether the Stones were still the Greatest RocknRoll band in the world.  It was between them, the Who, and the Faces.  Maybe you’d throw in Thin Lizzy now or Mott the Hoople or Alex Harvey.  Of course Sticky Fingers was the Best Album Ever, so the Stones still rule on account of that.  Plus, no-one has made a better track than Sympathy for the Devil.  I made a tape called the Greatest RocknRoll bands in the World, but if you look at it, it’s a lot of slow stuff.

The Greatest RocknRoll Bands in the World

Stones

• Angie
• Sympathy For the Devil
• Tumbling Dice
• Gimme Shelter
• I Got the Blues
• Sister Morphine

Rod & Faces

• Maybe I’m Amazed
• Maggie May
• I Still Love You
• Mandolin Wind
• Memphis

Mott the Hoople

• Darkness Darkness
• All the Way from Memphis
• Laugh at Me

Alex Harvey

• Delilah
• Boston Tea Party
• Faith healer

Who

• Baba O’Reilly
• Won’t Get Fooled Again

You have to realise that there are certain rules about making tapes.  First, you don’t put all the same artists together like I’ve listed it here.  You mix them up.  That way you can do really clever stuff like put Memphis next to All the Way from Memphis.  That’s probably the only reason why I put Memphis on there – although I remember I used to like it a lot.  Of course I should have put stuff like Mott’s Dudes, Violence, Ballad of Mott, Angel of 8^th Avenue, Wrong Side of the River, Waterlow, Sucker or the Stones Sing this all together, Moonlight Mile, Dead Flowers, & Wild Horses or Rod’s Man of Constant Sorrow, Farewell, and You Wear it well.  See – more slow stuff.

Another rule about tapes is you stick to your period or style.  If this is RocknRoll, you can’t have sixties stuff on it.  Which is why you don’t have Honky Tonk Women or the Kids are Alright or anything.  Which brings up the tough point about where you draw the boundary.  Answer is if you don’t know, you’ll never find out.  See the trouble Danny Stern had in Diner when his misses put his records back under the wrong classification.  It’s just one of those things, you either know it or you don’t.  The safest thing to do is to put them alphabetically, so you might end up with the Outsiders next to Buck Owens, but at least you know where you are.

Also you don’t put common stuff like Brown Sugar on a tape.  Everybody listens to it.  Blokes like Lil play it on the pub jukebox.  You got to have more obscure, more eclectic stuff like Sister Morphine.

The other thing we were both into was Bruce Springsteen.  Lil of course had been taken in by the hype which had been going round for about a year, since he’d first played London.  So he got the jukebox to spin Born to Run.

Anyway talking to Lil about music gets a bit like listening to my copy of Wings Band on the Run which sticks when you play Jet.  Which is sad because that is about the only track you can listen to.

Next day we went up to town where I finally found a copy of the Split Enz album.  Had to pay three and a half quid for it though which was far more than I’d ever paid for an album.  I can’t remember if we talked much that day.  I was looking forward to going home.  I guess I was pre-occupied.