5. The Only Way Is Essex

"sex, drugs and question authority"

I escaped from Wigan in 1973. I enrolled at Essex University in Colchester. The decision wasn't academic. It was based on a book I'd read, "Playpower" by Richard Neville. He had achieved fame and notoriety as co-editor of counter culture magazine "Oz". In this he published a range of left-field articles. Heavily critical of the Vietnam War,"Oz" discussed sex, drugs, and other alternative lifestyle issues. These were themes Neville expanded in "Playpower". The book included a reference section. Essex University featured prominently in the crash pads list and that was enough to convince me to go there.

It was a Plate Glass campus university and hotbed of anarchy. Revolutionary politics dominated academic life. There had been a riot during the 1968 student rebellions and some members of the Angry Brigade had been based there. This was England's first libertarian communist urban guerilla group; a gang of middle class student drop-outs who formed a militant cell and started a bombing campaign around London. They blasted the homes of Tory politicians, government and corporate offices, banks, embassies and the 1970 Miss World competition.

Things hadn't calmed down very much by the time I arrived. Within the first month, student activists had occupied the university administration block, holding a sit-in that lasted the entire term. The campus became a mini free state. "Stand Up For Your Rights" blared from the sound systems, drugs were readily available and free love was not yet hindered by the shadowy fear of AIDS.

This was the age of the oil crisis, petrol shortages, Watergate and the three day week.

Counter culture literature was essential study. "The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test" described the story of Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters. Driving their psychedelic coated school bus dubbed "Further" across the USA, they turned the youth of America on to The Grateful Dead and LSD. "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest", Kesey's novel about the mental hospital as an instrument of oppression was based on his personal experience of working as an orderly on a ward and taking acid whilst on shift. "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" described a savage drug orgy to the heart of the American dream. Laced with LSD, ether, cocaine, alcohol, mescaline and cannabis, its central characters ruminated on the decline of culture in a city of insanity. "The Teachings of Don Juan" and other books by Carlos Castenada described his training in sorcery and explored an alternative non ordinary reality. "Catch 22", the classic critique of military double speak, summed up the spirit of the times. "The only way to survive such an insane system is to be insane oneself".

It was also the golden age of mythical tales of rock n roll indulgence. The new generation of super groups raised the bar for legends of debauchery to new heights. 

Fleetwood Mac's Stevie Nicks was rumoured to "powder the starfish" when her nasal septum dissolved from massive cocaine abuse. It was claimed that she employed a roadie to inhale a golden straw full of nose candy and blow it up her rectum.

On an average night out, Queen's Freddie Mercury necked two bottles of best Russian vodka and snorted a mountain of cocaine. It cost him £500 a day, but he didn't care. Queen were raking in millions. Freddie's parties were epic. He once installed naked lift attendants at a hotel where he was cutting loose. At another do, the entertainment was provided by naked mud wrestlers. Naked girls in painted-on suits served champagne. He hired dwarfs with bowls of cocaine strapped to their heads, and the main attraction one night was a naked woman romping in a bath filled with raw liver.

Alice Cooper formed The Hollywood Vampires, a drinking club made up of rock superstars. The club had one rule, "the last one standing wins". Keith Moon, Ringo Starr, Micky Dolenz, Harry Nilsson, Rod Stewart, and Keith Emerson were all members. So was John Lennon when he was in town.

If you were operating at the top tier of the music business, you toured the States on Starship 1. The customized Boeing 720B became a jet-propelled Sodom and Gomorrah. It boasted a shag-carpeted lounge with swivelling leather chairs, a pair of sexy stewardesses and a brass covered bar with a built-in organ. The master bedroom had a queen-size water bed, fake fur bedspread and shower. A sea of maroon shag was installed, as was a film library that included everything from the Marx Brothers to ''Deep Throat.'' 

Led Zeppelin leapt aboard in July 1973. At the time, they were the biggest band in the world, and they celebrated in customary fashion. They painted their name across the fuselage, snorted cocaine with rolled-up hundred dollar bills and treated the master suite like a pay-by-the-hour motel. Starship 1 became a floating gin palace. Zeppelin's drummer, John "Bonzo" Bonham, once tried to open the plane's door over Kansas City because he had the urge to urinate. 

Ian Paice, of Deep Purple, recalled being in Miami and flying to Boston for a lobster dinner, a whim later estimated to have cost $11,000. Paice had no regrets. ''The Starship was a great place to join the mile-high club,'' he said.

When these bands weren't indulging in high-altitude high jinks, they were smashing up hotel rooms, riding motorcycles through the lobby and throwing television sets out of bedroom windows. Joe Walsh (The Eagles) took a chain-saw on tour in case he needed to "modify" his lodgings. These modifications included widening doorways, creating doors where there were none, and chopping up various pieces of the décor. 

His mentor, The Who's Keith Moon, graduated from blowing up (and almost deafening) Pete Townsend live on American television, to dropping sticks of dynamite down the toilet. 

“One day I was in Keith’s room and I said, ‘Can I use your bog?’ and he smiled and said, ‘Sure.’ I went in there and there was no toilet, just sort of an S bend, and I thought ‘Christ, what happened?’ He said, ‘Well this cherry bomb was about to go off in me hand and I threw it down the toilet to stop it.’ So I said, ‘Are they that powerful?’ and he said, ‘Yeah, it’s incredible!’ So I said, ‘How many of ‘em have you got?’ with fear in me eyes. He laughed and said, ‘Five hundred,’ and opened up a case full to the top with cherry bombs. And of course from that moment on we got thrown out of every hotel we ever stayed in” (Pete Townsend).

For variation, Moon the Loon once nailed his room furniture to the ceiling. By then, he was devouring a full bottle of champagne, with Courvoisier and amphetamines for breakfast. He died on my birthday in 1978. Even Elton John suffered a drugs overdose in the 1970's. He was later named Artist of the Decade.  

Edgewater Hotel, Seattle

Where legend had Mick Jagger caught in the act of eating a Mars Bar he had inserted into Marianne Faithfull's pussy, Led Zeppelin's roadies were screwing their groupies with fish. The band were once staying at the Edgewater Hotel, located directly on Puget Sound, Seattle. At the time guests were allowed to fish directly from their room's windows. 

Red Snapper

Zeppelin's tour manager, Richard Cole, recalled, "We caught a lot of big sharks, at least two dozen, stuck coat hangers through the gills and left 'em in the closet . But the true shark story was that it wasn't even a shark. It was a red snapper and the chick happened to be a fucking red-headed broad with a ginger pussy. And that is the truth. I did it. Mark Stein filmed the whole thing. And she loved it. It was like, "You like a bit of fucking, eh? Let's see how your red snapper likes this red snapper!" That was it. It was the nose of the fish, and that girl must have come twenty times. But it was nothing malicious or harmful, no way! No one was ever hurt."

David Bowie became the first major rock star to declare his bisexuality. Angela Bowie, his wife, found him naked in bed with Mick Jagger one day. The Stones released "Angie" soon after, a song allegedly about this incident. "Angie don't you weep, all your kisses still taste sweet". The Rolling Stones denied this allegation.

Danny Whitten

Neil Young recorded The Ditch Trilogy after his guitarist, Danny Whitten, died of a heroin overdose. At the time many said Young was committing commercial suicide. Keith Richards, Jimmy Page, Iggy Pop and many other rock superstars also developed raging smack habits, but lived to tell the tale.

David Crosby's substance abuse reached epic proportions. On Crosby Stills and Nash's 1974 tour, things got so bad that he suffered delusions that he had served a tour of duty in Vietnam. He insisted that roadies call him “Lt. Gen. Crosby Esq.” and salute him throughout the jaunt. Within a few years he would be freebasing more than an ounce of cocaine a day. 

Bob Hope - dope

I did most of my "studying" in the campus bar. Beer was forty pence a pint and there were drug dealers openly selling blow at every other table. Finest quality dope cost twenty pounds an ounce. The campus was close to Harwich, a short ferry ride to the Hook of Holland. Many aspiring entrepreneurs regularly made that crossing, smuggling hash back from Amsterdam to keep the campus well supplied.

The first time I tried hash, I ate it. It was in a student house in Clacton On Sea where I'd gone with a friend whose name I have long forgotten. There was a group of hippies sprawled in a room. They were passing joints and a bottle of vodka around and doing a lot of giggling. At one point, this hairy Scottish hippy asked me if I wanted to eat a biscuit. I said, "yeah, sure. Why not?" I hadn't realised it was going to be covered with dope. He passed me a chocolate Club that he had covered with a thick layer of black resin. I ate it, the Bob Hope tasted bitter and left a burning sensation on my tongue. It took a while to kick in. When it did, I was flying. My brain was fried. The night descended into chaos. Everyone was smashed out of their minds. At one point my friend started pissing on the bed. The laced Club biscuit upset my stomach and I threw up. I was spewing everywhere, projectile vomit gushed for what seemed like hours. In the end I decided that I had to go home. I walked, it seemed to take forever, nearly as long as it took for the effects of that hash biscuit to wear off. I was stoned for days. I suppose you could say, after that I was hooked. I started buying dope regularly. You could skin up in that bar too. Nobody tried to stop you. I was constantly stoned after that. I didn't run out of dope until term ended and I went back up north for the holidays.

The music we were listening to was changing. When I first arrived, "Dark Side Of the Moon" and "Tubular Bells" were the order of the day. There were times when Mike Oldfield's album was blasting out of every student bedroom in the towers of residence. But that didn't last long. Prog Rock was on its way out as far as we were concerned. Glam rock was taking over and roots reggae was starting to come in. Boys wore make up, glitter and platform shoes. Tracks were getting shorter, faster and punchier. Bowie's "Jean Genie" vied with Gary Glitter and "Ballroom Blitz" on the jukebox and at the discos. I'd bought "Space Ritual" by Hawkwind with my first grant cheque. But soon, "Burnin" and "Catch A Fire" became turntable faves.

Infact, Bob Marley and the Wailers played Essex University in 1973. Sadly for me, it was in the term before I went there. I still got to see plenty of musical legends. John Martyn performed his ground breaking "Solid Air" album. Roy Harper played at the height of the sheep kissing myth. This story had it that Harper had given a sheep the kiss of life, contracting a rare disease in the process that almost killed him. Harper was a counter-culture icon. Led Zeppelin had written a song about him and he was soon to sing with the Pink Floyd on “Wish You Were Here”. He deserved respect, but we gave him sheep noises, bleating "baa" at him in the breaks between songs. He didn't find our bombed behaviour very amusing.

We had catholic tastes in music. In truth, Bob Dylan dominated my turntable through my university years. I was obsessed with him, particularly the 60's “electric” trilogy of albums. I sat up with my flatmates late into the night, analysing his lyrics, seeking the real meaning in “Just Like A Woman” (was it really about a man?)

Laurel Canyon luminaries Love arrived at the end of term two, though it would be true to say they were past their creative peak. I dropped acid for the first time at that gig. A gang of us dropped it together. After the show, we all crammed into a tiny bedroom in one of the resident towers. I remember being pole-axed, my head a kaleidoscope of colours, unable to move or speak. We listened to "Dark Side Of the Moon" all night on that trip. We had it on repeat. We thought the part with the alarm clocks was hilariously funny. We played that bit at maximum volume over and over again.

Grosvenor Square riot 1968

There was also a riot at the end of term two. It was a famous brawl at the time, though small scale compared with incidents like the Grosvenor Square riot a few years earlier. One hundred and five students got arrested and it was the lead story on the national news. There were riot police in full battle gear on campus that day. They didn't mess about. They beat us over the heads with their truncheons, before dragging us away to the waiting paddywagons. I saw girls grabbed by the hair having their heads smashed into paving kerbs. We fought back, kicking and punching any police that came near. At one point we hi-jacked a lorry that was trying to deliver vegetables. We liberated its cargo and pelted the pigs with cabbages and potatoes. It was a one sided battle that caused a media frenzy. The right wing press had a field day, running leaders demanding that the university be closed or turned into an college of agriculture.

I went back up North the day after battle. My parents were not pleased to see me. They had been mortified by the news broadcasts and wanted to know what the hell I was playing at. I didn't stay at home for long. I couldn't take the outraged silence, so I went back down to Colchester and spent Easter in the bar with my mates.

Essex University lost its excitement after those turbulent beginnings. The university authorities had a purge and the ring leaders behind the unrest were expelled. Life calmed down and we returned to some semblance of academic life.

Our drug use was changing. We were still drinking like fish, smoking tons of blow, and occasionally dropping acid. Poppers had come in, giving you a massive head rush and moments of euphoria. Dodo's, speedy slimming pills, were chewed by the packet to keep you up all night when exam time arrived.

By the end of my university years, the music of the early 70's was getting complacent. The super groups had lost touch with their roots and had run out of direction. The world was crying out for something new. The Damned, The Buzzcocks, The Undertones and The Sex Pistols all formed in 1975.

One band made a lasting impression in the final year at Essex. That was Dr Feelgood. They were a revelation, now perceived as the pre-cursors of punk rock, they played with an aggressive dynamic that hadn't been heard before. They came from Canvey Island, a few miles from the university and they produced an electrifying performance. They dressed differently to the prog and glam rockers of previous generations. Their hair was short, they wore suits and ties. But it was a gangster rather than a bank manager guise. They looked and sounded tough. It was all action, in your face, attacking rock n roll.

Attendance was poor at their gig. There were less than fifty people in the big booming hall. I stood at the front, so close I could almost touch front man Lee Brilleaux. Wilko Johnson, Feelgood's extraordinary guitarist, flew across the stage like a demented robot. He had developed a unique playing style, producing a stuttering machine gun type frenzy, using his thumb for the top two strings and a finger for the other four. He pulled as well as picked at the strings, enabling him to play rhythm and lead guitar at the same time.

In 1976, Dr Feelgood's live album, the adrenalin fuelled, “Stupidity”, went to number one. It seemed that they were destined for big things. But within two months of this happening, The Sex Pistols released "Anarchy In The UK" and the Feelgoods were pretty much forgotten as punk rock took hold of the nation's youth. 

  

3. "What's it going to be then, eh?"

"The vibe at Woodstock was an expression of the times. Energized by repugnance for a senseless war and for the entrenched discrimination of the establishment, a spirited but non-violent counter-culture was sweeping the country. That counter-culture burst into bloom like the mother of all Mother's Day bouquets at Woodstock." Joel Rosenman of Woodstock Ventures once said. "Woodstock is a reminder that inside each of us is the instinct for building a decent, loving community, the kind we all wish for. Over the decades, the history of that weekend has served as a beacon of hope that a beautiful spirit in each of us ultimately will triumph."

As far as I was concerned, those three days of peace, music and love happened in 1970, not 1969. That was when the film and two soundtrack albums were released. The year Joni Mitchell's song was issued and "Woodstock" went to number one on the singles chart. 

In my world, 1969 had meant the Monterey Pop movie, missing Bob Dylan at the second Isle Of Wight and being slightly bemused by John and Yoko's Bed In For Peace interviews on the evening news. 

It was the start of the Me decade. The optimism of the middle sixties counter culture was going sour. People started proclaiming, "Let's talk about Me". 

Death was in the air. Charles Manson, on trial for the Helter Skelter murders, became a cult hero and front cover star of "Rolling Stone". 

The US National Guard shot dead four students during a protest at Kent State University, Ohio. Crosby Stills Nash and Young rush released the song on a single. It was receiving national airplay within a month of the deaths. 

"Gimme Shelter", a documentary about the Rolling Stones disastrous Altamont Free Concert was promoted with a poster that blurted, "the music that thrilled the world, and the killing that stunned it".

Jimi Hendrix's last concert, the third Isle of Wight, was disrupted by anarchists and activists who wanted the event 

declared free. Paul McCartney announced that The Beatles had officially broken up. John Lennon sang,"the dream is over". 



The infamous Oz School kids issue was released and its publishers were charged with obscenity; a crime carrying a sentence of life imprisonment. The charges were eventually dropped following an appeal. 

Heavy Metal was born. Kraut Rock was emerging. The Laurel Canyon singer songwriter movement was coming to its peak. 

The age of the ultra violent movie had arrived. "The Devils", "Straw Dogs" and "The Wild Bunch" depicted unprecedented scenes of nudity and brutality. "A Clockwork Orange" inspired copycat crime. "The adventures of a young man, (Alex), whose principal interests are rape, ultra-violence and Beethoven", took the boundaries of the permissive society to their extreme. A 16 year old, James Palmer, beat a tramp to death. A woman was raped by a gang who, like Alex, sang "Singing in the Rain" as they carried out their ruthless violence. When questioned by police, one of the thugs said, "I got the idea to beat this bitch from a movie I saw. A Clockwork Orange". 

David Bowie originally modelled Ziggy Stardust on its fashions, coming on stage to the film's soundtrack and singing about droogies in "Suffragette City". 

During their 1975 American tour, Led Zeppelin's drummer, John Bonham, dressed like Alex and was introduced to the audience as "our Mr Ultraviolence". 

The influence of Clockwork Orange has never waned. Heaven 17, Moloko and The Droogs are all band names lifted from the book, whilst a label formed in Liverpool called Korova as an outlet for the band Echo and the Bunnymen. 

Going out became dangerous when you aspired to be a hippy and had long hair. That became crystal clear to me one night in Liverpool. Our school ran coach trips to evening events all over Lancashire. To football games mostly, but also to theatres and the cinema. One evening, they took us to Liverpool to see "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid". I walked into a movie house full of skinheads. I almost crapped myself. When the lights dimmed and the film started, they kept tapping me on the shoulder and hissing in my ear, "Aye, lar, you're dead when you get outside, you are". I was bricking it. I didn't fancy a good kicking. So I bolted for my life as the final credits rolled. I made it to the coach in one piece. I sat at the back. I looked out of the window and saw a gang of skinheads shouting at the bus. "Aye, lar, come back down here, we wanna word wiv you". There was no way I was going to move. I might even have given them the finger as the coach pulled away. Or perhaps it was the peace sign. Make love, not war.  

I saw some phenomenal gigs. The Charisma Package Tour at the Floral Hall in Southport. Genesis supporting Lindisfarne and the headlining Van Der Graaf Generator. Fifty pence to get in. Within three years, Genesis would be filling football stadiums, Lindisfarne would go to number one and Van Der Graaf Generator would break up. It cost ten shillings for a ticket and very few people attended. 

I remember enjoying this gig, but this reviewer thought it was duff. 

King Crimson played the Wigan ABC. It was a completely different atmosphere to the Stones gig I had witnessed six years earlier. This one didn't sell out and the kaftan wearing long hairs were serious head nodders who wouldn't be seen dead screaming at the band. 

It was the golden age of Prog. The albums came thick and fast. The first three years of the decade saw all of these and more added to the shelf in my pink bedroom. Thick As A Brick, Close To The Edge, Selling England By The Pound. Foxtrot, Dark Side Of The Moon, Nursery Cryme, Fragile. Birds of Fire, Pawn Hearts, Aqualung, Meddle. Stormcock,  H to He Who Am the Only One, The Grand Wazoo. The Yes Album, In The Land Of Grey And Pink, The Inner Mounting Flame, Tubular Bells. In Search Of Space, Dance Of the Lemmings, Tago Mago, Neu !

I had discovered the Liverpool Stadium too. It became my musical mecca. It was a spit and sawdust  auditorium with a capacity of approximately three thousand. Cold and ugly, with primitive seating and a boxing ring in the middle that doubled as the stage. The air was always thick with the sweet smells of hashish and patchouli oil. There were dope dealers and stalls where vendors sold programmes, badges and other counter culture paraphernalia. Roger Eagles promoted an eclectic selection of the best bands around in this dilapidated boxing hall. He later opened Liverpool's legendary Eric's club. 

When Hawkwind played there, Lemmy was still in the band and Miss Stacia danced naked and handed joss sticks out to the crowd. Lemmy later said, "She was a bookbinder by profession and then she had an uncontrollable urge one night to take all her clothes off and paint herself blue. It was probably a throwback to the Roman invasion of Britain. You think woad, y'know? She was great, blowing bubbles onstage and shit. She was an impressive woman. Six foot two with a 52-inch bust. An overwhelming sight for the youngsters in the crowd."           (Do Not Panic, BBC 4 documentary 2007).


Hawkwind recorded "Space Ritual" at the Stadium. Many people consider it their best album, but I wasn't at that show. Captain Beefheart's Magic Band appeared shortly before their legendary Bickershaw appearance. Frank Zappa once came and played "Willie the Pimp". Roxy Music landed when "Virginia Plain" was released. Bowie brought Ziggy and the Spiders From Mars. One of the strangest bills was avant garde jazz rockers Soft Machine supported by Loudon Wainwright III. I went for Loudon Wainwright. He was a big John Peel favourite and I knew his albums off by heart. I went into the Cross Keys for a drink before that concert and he was in there. I got close enough to speak to him, but didn't have the bottle.

  

1. SUMMER HOLIDAY TO PIE EATERS 1963-1965

"I think the first English record that was anywhere near anywhere was "Move it" by Cliff Richard. Before that there'd been nothing", John Lennon. 

I've spent all of my life involved in popular music in one way or another. I'm not a musician, I can't play a note, so I've always worked in behind the scenes roles. Its been a love/hate affair. I've had periods of struggle and times of great success. 

My obsession started in childhood. Bands, records and concerts were always more exciting than any other part of life. Nothing else has ever interested me in the way that old fashioned popular music does. 

I went from buying records to running my own record label. From watching the Woodstock movie to sitting on stage with Bob Dylan at Woodstock 2. From buying Led Zeppelin's albums to lunching with them in a London hotel. Or secretly listening to the John Peel show under my blankets at night, to buying him a pint in his favourite local. It is without question true to say that my life has been significantly richer as a result of my obsession with music. 

It began when I went to see Cliff Richard's "Summer Holiday" in 1963. I was young, in short trousers in my hometown Nottingham, and Cliff was still THE MAN.


I don't remember much about the film though I’ve seen it since – absolute brainless nonsense - but I did enjoy it and ran around singing the theme tune for weeks. This was early in the year, just prior to popular music really kicking off.

I mention it here as the starting point of my musical adventures for two reasons.

1) It was in the cinema. I would consume a lot of popular music and culture in the cinema that decade.

2) I only lived in Nottingham for a few more months after "Summer Holiday" was released. We were a one parent family and my mum got herself a new job as Head Mistress of a primary school, St Michael's infants in Wigan, Lancashire. So our summer holiday was spent relocating up north, which was good timing as a new sound entered my world. 

In August, "She Loves You" by The Beatles was released. From that point on, Cliff was relegated to the boring old farts bin where he has remained cemented to this day. (Though I do agree with John Lennon that "Move It" is a British rock n roll classic.)

Of course, I wouldn't watch "Summer Holiday" now if you put me in a straight jacket, strapped me to a chair, pumped me full of Valium and paid me hard currency into the bargain.

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When I say I lived in Nottingham, we didn't live in the city. Years later, when I was in long trousers, I worked with a  colleague from Nottingham. When I told him I was born in Clifton, he looked down his nose at me, shook his head and said, 

"Clifton! that's rough". After my father abandoned us, we moved to the village of Radcliffe On Trent, a few miles outside of the city. We lived in Water Lane at first, then moved again, down the road to a hamlet called Holme Pierrepoint. 

You may have heard of Holme Pierrepoint, it was developed as The National Water Sports Centre some years ago and is a beautiful country park with amazing water based activities these days. 

sports centre                                  

(REMEMBER TO HIT BACK BUTTON IF YOU FOLLOW THIS LINK)

When we lived there it was very much a feudal hamlet, home to the Pierrepoint family since 1280 AD, with a hall, Pierrepoint Hall, and a church attached. There were a couple of farms, a lot of sheep and some housing that serfs like us lived in. 

There were no shops, no pubs, no schools, you had to go the couple of miles to Radcliffe for those. There were very few cars as well, only the well to do had motor cars then and we travelled about on bicycles, or walked.

We didn't have a television either until that summer. The earliest memories I have of hearing pop music were on the radio, Pick of the Pops with Alan Freeman and Brian Matthew's Saturday Club. The records I remembered best from those days were the comedy ones produced, I later discovered, by George Martin before he got his hands on The Beatles. 

"My Boomerang Won't Come Back" by Charlie Drake, 

"Football Results" by Michael Bentine.

and best of all, "The Court Of King Caractacus" by Rolf Harris.

Wigan is a town formerly reliant on coal mining. Its people are called "pie eaters". They are proud of this and the annual World Pie Eating Championship takes place in the town. However, the nickname is not thought to be because of the Wiganer's appetite for the delicacy. The name is said to date from the 1926 General Strike when Wigan miners were starved back to work before their counterparts in surrounding towns and so were forced to eat "humble pie".

Before I go any further, I am aware that some pie eaters are prone to getting defensive about their home town. So I have to state here that I am very fond of the place. My mother is a Wigan

Pie eaters get defensive for a number of reasons. The most prominent being a book by George Orwell, "The Road to Wigan Pier". Wigan is fifteen miles from the sea and has no pier in the seaside sense of the term. 

This is a fairly recent photo of Wigan Pier:

"The Road to Wigan Pier" is a sociological investigation of the bleak living conditions endured by the working classes in the industrial north of England in 1935. Orwell stayed in Wigan for one month and wrote one chapter about the living conditions of miners, which were very rough. For many people outside of the town, that book was the only thing they knew about old Wigan. Here's a paragraph of what George Orwell had to say:

"The train bore me away, through the monstrous scenery of slag-heaps, chimneys, piled scrap-iron, foul canals, paths of cindery mud criss-crossed 

by the prints of clogs. This was March, but the weather had been horribly cold and everywhere there were mounds of blackened snow. As we moved slowly through the outskirts of the town we passed row after row of little grey slum houses running at right angles to the-embankment. At the back of one of the houses a young woman was kneeling on the stones, poking a stick up the leaden waste-pipe which ran from the sink inside and which I suppose was blocked. I had time to see everything about her--her sacking apron, her clumsy clogs, her arms reddened by the cold. She looked up as the train passed, and I was almost near enough to catch her eye. She had a round pale face, the usual exhausted face of the slum girl who is twenty-five and looks forty, thanks to miscarriages and drudgery; and it wore, for the second in which I saw it, the most desolate, hopeless expression I have ever seen". 

Wigan was still rough in the 1960's, the skyline and the buildings were grimy with coal dust. The town centre was surrounded by coal heaps known locally as The Wigan Alps.  One route across town took you past a slaughterhouse and a very smelly glue factory.

The Wigan Alps, 3 Sisters

It was a culture shock after the rural isolation of Holme Pierrepoint, a point rammed home to me on the day we arrived. My brother and I took our association football to the local park for a kick about. A small gang of local youths took offence at our "soppy" southern accents and decided to mug us, sending me home in tears.

I seemed to do a lot of crying when I first moved to Wigan. Fighting is part of the growing up culture of young Northern men. I wasn't very good at it. I was "mard", I'd never learned how to fight and I didn't have a father figure to show me how to do it. 

The school yard pecking order was determined by violence. Who was the best fighter, the "cock of the class" and "cock of the school". And I was a big lad, so people were always picking fights with me. I'd burst into tears when they thumped me, which gave the other kids a great deal of amusement. That made them thump me even more.  

This was the way of it, certainly for the first year after I moved there and again, later on, when I went to the hell-hole they called Wigan Grammar School.

There were one escape from all of this pain. Pop music. 

We were three years away from getting a record player in our house, so my musical getaway was still mainly via the radio. This was the golden age of the pirates."199, Caroline", the all day music station. It attracted 23 million listeners at its peak and dominated the airwaves. 

There were three pop music television shows that became mandatory viewing, "Ready Steady Go", "Juke Box Jury" and "Top of the Pops". Its hard to imagine in the modern world of satellites, MTV, laptops and i-phones, but our choice was that limited.   

The Liverpool Merseybeat sound had swept the nation. The Beatles, along with Gerry and the Pacemakers and The Searchers, kept Liverpool at number one on the charts for 34 weeks of the year. 

Wigan is less than 20 miles from Liverpool. If you lived anywhere in the North West of England, you felt like The Beatles were yours. They belonged to you. You were a part of what was happening. And it was plain, even to kids of very tender years, that what was happening was a revolution and it was spreading. The following year, 1964, Merseybeat morphed into the British Beat Boom. New stars emerged weekly. The Rolling Stones, The Dave Clark Five, The Kinks, The Animals. Herman's Hermits, Manfred Mann, Cilla Black, Sandie Shaw all joined the number one party.

In July, The Beatles released their first film "A Hard Day's Night" and I got a small taste of Beatlemania. There were several cinemas in Wigan at that time, the ABC, Princes, The Ritz. I went to "A Hard Day's Night" in one of them, I don't recall which one, but it definitely wasn't the ABC. That came later.  

"A Hard Day's Night" blew everyone away. It was fresh, exciting, confident, funny. "Comic fantasia with music", as one critic drooled at the time.

But more than that, it was audience's reaction to the film that made it unforgettable for me. They responded as if it was a real concert and The Beatles were really in the room. Girls screamed hysterically, lads cheered, people swooned and fainted. There was hysteria in the movie house and pheromones in the air.

That was my taste of Beatlemania and my first real experience of the power of rock n roll. I was nine years old, still in short trousers and I was hooked. I'd decided, this was the life for me. Accept no substitute from here on in.   

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The Rolling Stones landed in Wigan on Saturday October 2nd 1965. The bad boys of rock n roll had a punishing schedule, constantly touring the world. They played two shows a day, a matinee for the young ones, then an evening show for the adults. There was no such thing as a day off. They filled the breaks in between shows with TV appearances, interviews and recording sessions. Bands today would faint at the thought of honouring this kind of schedule, but The Stones did it year on year back then.

Stones schedule 1965

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They were different to The Beatles. They were dirty, raw, juvenile degenerates. The Beatles had become clean cut kids who collected MBE's from the Queen by then. These were the days of "would you let your daughter marry a Rolling Stone?" hysteria.

would you?

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They urinated in public, they grew very long hair and they beat up newspaper reporters. As Tom Wolfe famously put it, "The Beatles want to hold your hand, but The Stones want to burn your town."

I'd got my ticket for my first live gig a few months earlier when my best friend Paul Peakman had dragged me out of bed one Saturday morning. We rushed across town to get in the queue. I have been in his debt forever for getting me out of bed that day. Paul was an outsider in Wigan too. His family had moved there from Birmingham and I guess we bonded because neither of us seemed to fit in. We'd got tickets for the evening show. I was eleven years old by now and in my last year of primary school. 

ABC Cinema, Wigan

October 2nd was a full on day. Wigan played Castleford at Central Park in the afternoon and we went to the rugby league match before the Stones gig.

Paul Peakman was a bad boy and extremely unlucky. He gave me my first lessons in 60's drug culture. He knew where to score them. He first showed me cannabis and later, pills. The cannabis was in a joint he had. It was actually a butt. He'd been smoking it down an alleyway at the back of Central Park the night before I saw it when he saw a policeman coming. He'd thrown the joint behind a lamp post and we went there next day to find it. The butt was still there. He dismantled it in the palm of his hand and pointed out the little black specks amongst the tobacco to me, the hashish. He made a new joint out of it, but I didn't try it at that point, it was several years later before I started taking drugs. 

Paul got pills too. Speed. They called them pep pills and he showed me a handful during the milk break at school one day. He was always up to no good and when we got to the turnstiles that afternoon, he turned to me and said, 

"I'm not paying, I'll bunk in, see you inside". 

programme

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I paid the rate at the gate, bought a programme and took up my position on the big terrace behind the goalposts. A few minutes later, Peakman appeared. He'd bunked over the wall all right, but he'd snagged his hand on the barbed wire on top. He'd ripped it quite badly and it was weeping blood. It needed stitching. A medic saw him, a St John's Ambulance worker and immediately dragged him away. Peakman didn't want to go, he wanted to see the match, but he was dragged out of the ground protesting and taken away for treatment. 

ABC Cinema (right) Wigan Casino (left)

That evening I queued in the street alone, waiting to get into the ABC cinema to see the greatest rock n roll band in the world. The ABC was across the road from the legendary Wigan Casino. Paul Peakman didn't show up. 

"Are you waiting for your friend?" the girl behind me in the queue asked. I'd bought a Stones poster from a tout on the street and I started talking to her about it. We were getting along fine until she asked me what school I went to. 

"St Michael's", I replied. 

"St Michael's", she exclaimed, "That's a junior school, how old are you?" 

"Eleven". Her friends started shrieking, 

"Cradle snatcher". The girl was outraged. 

"I'm fourteen!", she shouted, "Fuck off you shrimp". 

Inside the cinema, the air was thick with anticipation. The show was a package tour, with a large line up of acts who performed two or three numbers, their latest hits, before the main act appeared. I've read somewhere that The Moody Blues were on the bill that night but I don't remember seeing them. The Spencer Davis Group certainly came on prior to the Stones and sang their soon to be a number one song "Keep On Running". 

Paul Peakman appeared in his seat around that point. It turned out he'd legged it from casualty and he'd been hiding away ever since. He thought he was safe from authority now, but the same St John's Ambulance worker who had nabbed him in Central Park was also on duty at the Stones show. He spotted Paul in the crowd. He came over and demanded a look at his hand. Peakman hadn't got it stitched and the wound was still weeping. So he was dragged off to casualty again, just as the Stones hit the stage. 

I still remember that show. The crowd going berserk, the mad frenzy, the smell, the heat, the noise of unfettered youth screaming. I was screaming too. The noise was deafening, like sitting inside a jet engine as it revved up for take off. People were fainting and being dragged into the aisles. There was chaos everywhere. I held my poster aloft and a hysterical girl behind me grabbed it and tore it to shreds. You couldn't hear the music. There were no PA systems then, bands played through their amplifiers with a small vocal PA. When The Stones started "Satisfaction", you heard the first few distinctive notes and the rest was drowned in the shrill sound of the crowd. It didn't matter. The band were there, sneering and pouting before us. We could see them, almost touch them, that was enough. It was real, thrilling, the most exciting night of your life. Then, as if in an instant, it was over. They were gone. We filed out and headed back into the real world. 

After the show, I followed a gang of youths to the back of the ABC. To the stage door where The Stones would leave. There was a large limousine parked there and after a while, a group of people with blankets over their heads appeared. They jumped into the car and drove away. We chased it down the road, thinking The Stones were in it. Then someone said it was a decoy. So we gave up chasing the limo and went back to the stage door, but it was too late. They had gone. 

A few years later, they played a free concert in Hyde Park, London, to 200,000 people. Mick Jagger is interviewed in the film of that day. He says that it made more sense logistically for the band to play shows of the size of Hyde Park than it did for them to do two shows a day in places like Wigan. So he never forgot that night either. 

As for Paul Peakman, his bad luck never changed. He died of a heroin overdose before the 60's ended and before he reached the age of twenty one. In doing that, he unwittingly he taught me another lesson for life, that heroin was very bad news and I should stay away from it, which i did. I owe him a lot. 

He also taught me that you have to grab the opportunities that present themselves in this life. The Beatles came to Wigan in October as well. Paul Peakman had gone to Birmingham the weekend tickets for that concert went on sale. Nobody got me out of bed that morning. So I missed them. I wasn't bothered at the time. I thought, I'll catch them next time they come. And of course, next time never came. The following summer The Beatles announced that they had retired from touring and I never got another chance to see them. 

The Rolling Stones played a free concert in Hyde Park, London July 5, 1969. A crowd estimated at 250,000 people attended.

"Why is it free? Well, it never occurred to me why people should pay because, you know, you don't make any money when you, er, play the ABC Wigan. Holds 2,000 people, two houses 4,000 people. Each pay an average ten shillings which is two thousand pounds of which one thousand

pounds goes to the management of the theatre or the promoter or the da der. The thousand pounds that is left goes to the publicity, blah blah, the groups who are supporting the bill. You end up with three hundred something pounds and it costs you one hundred and fifty pounds to get there. Divide by five, leaves you with (sneer, shrug) I mean, really. You know, you can get all these people, all at once. They don't have to pay, they're all going to have a better time if they don't". 

Mick Jagger, interview, "Stones In The Park", Granada Television documentary film 1969.

In 1994/95 The Stones Voodoo Lounge tour grossed $316,365,576.

In 1997/98 The Stones Bridges To Babylon tour grossed $336,017,048.

In 2005/07 The Stones A Bigger Bang tour grossed $558,255,524. (This was the highest grossing tour in history until beaten by U2's 360 degrees tour in 2011.)

It is safe to assume that by then live shows were making Mick and his band some money.  

Very special thanks to Ben Housden for his advice and encouragement with this blog.