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April 1979

Cats & dogs 

And all thanks to that Debbie Harry interview nine months ago… 





Posted by Flexifriend at 14:41 No comments: 

March 1979

Quiet please – it’s a Sex Pistol Hampstead in the rain smells like the countryside, but there’s not much green down Jones Street.

‘Yeah, come round to me gaff for a chat. I’ve moved up to posh ol’ Hampstead now.’

Steve Jones’ phone words, still ringing in my ears during the solemn umbrella trudge from the tube station at midday, provide little solace since they have to compete with an insidious shoe squelch due to one tiny sole slit.

His newly acquired flat is on the second floor of a large house. I ring the bell for ten minutes on the main front door. No reply. I ring other bells, hoping someone might deign to answer and let me in out of this interminable wet.

Eventually, a little old woman opens the door. ‘You’re looking for Mr Jones? To tell you the truth, I don’t think he’s in, but you can try.’ She leads me along a passage and up the kind of staircase you usually find in thirties musicals, full of lipsticky smiles and top hats. ‘That’s his door.’ I knock. No reply. ‘Yes, he’s definitely out. This happened the other day when a young girl came to see him. And in this weather too.’

I try the flat next door. Another elderly woman answers. ‘Mr Jones? No, I didn’t hear him leave. I’ve been asleep all morning. Besides, he’s such a nice quiet boy I wouldn’t hear him if I was awake.’

‘Yes, our Mr Jones is a quiet chap,’ says the other. ‘I live underneath him and the only sound you can sometimes hear is when he plays his records.’

I leave this distinctly unPistol-like situation cursing the Milky Bar kid but not before bringing in two pints of milk for the first woman. ‘If I see him I’ll tell him you came. But he’s so quiet you don’t hear him come in.’

Can I believe my ears?

When I get back to the office I ring him. ‘Sorry ’bout that. I had to rush out and there was no way of contacting you. Come round again. I’ll definitely be in.’

Take the motor this time. The hole in my shoe just got bigger.

Inside his flat, I take a close look at him. Steve Jones is beginning to look more and more like one of those photographs in the window of a flash barber shop. His hair is remarkably immaculate and enough to make Tom Jones reach for the curling tongs.

Two-tone too. His face is chiselled like Burt Lancaster’s and beneath the T-shirt he appears to have a Charles-Atlas-was-here physique.

All this, coupled with an indifferent attitude of almost swashbuckling proportions, and you have the Adonis-flavoured chewy pop star. He’s as straight as a Yorkie, as interesting as a Topic and as durable as a Kit Kat.

His flat is epic. The lounge is predominantly black with no furniture except a few large cushions and a portable colour TV in one corner. There’s even a stage, which maybe fulfils a certain need in those long gaps between his public appearances (although it was installed by the previous owner).

‘The flat cost me fourteen grand,’ says Steve, as he shows me the rest of the property, which includes a bedroom done out entirely in wickerwork that the handyman did himself. ‘And then it cost me another six grand to decorate. It’s all I’ve got in the world now. I ain’t got a penny in the bank. Whenever I need any money I just have to go and sell a guitar or something.’

The word ‘unfair’ immediately springs to mind. The Pistols sell as many records now as when Rotten and Vicious called the tune and teased the media. There seems little doubt that, had they survived intact, the band would have transcended reputation and gone on to become the biggest selling ever, in this country anyway.

The success of ‘Something Else’ and ‘Silly Thing’ (best routine Legs and Co. have done in years) reinforces the fact that there are still plenty of people around who refuse to forget.

Unless, of course, you don’t remember in the first place. ‘It’s really strange,’ ponders Steve, strumming a guitar he hasn’t sold yet. ‘There’s all these thirteen-year-old punk rockers wandering about who don’t even recognise me. They don’t know how it all started or why.

‘Everything’s really changed now. There’s no fun any more. People are too straight. All these punk bands are writing songs that mean nothing. The reason rock ’n’ roll lasted so long was because the songs were great. But what’s going down now is rubbish, so the bands don’t last five minutes. Some journalist asked me the other day if the Pistols would ever get back together again and I told him I’d never team up with those sods -- for a laugh, y’know. He printed it, and I tell you something, that was the only true punk thing I’d read in a paper for a long, long time.’

Fun is a key word in both Steve’s vocabulary and lifestyle. It’s fun to be a rock star. It’s fun to be dubbed a charismatic cockney Casanova. It’s fun to be young and curly and popular and twenty-three and to frequent bareback skaters’ haunts full of creamy women and write hit songs and appear in movies and---

In movies?

’S right. Steve plays a diligent dick in The Great Rock ’n’ Roll Swindle. You’ve heard the soundtrack, now wait for the movie when you can …

. . . GASP as Sid jumps out of bed in his underpants.

. . . SCREAM as he rides a motorbike down the high street − ‘It was a three-wheeler ’cos Sid couldn’t ride a bike.’

. . . MOAN as Steve hops into bed with sex queen Mary Millington.

. . . LAUGH as Steve is then pursued by Mary’s screen husband, piano man Russ Conway.

. . . THRILL to Steve as a detective on the trail of Malcolm McLaren.

. . . CRY as they all die.

‘It’s gonna be really funny although I think Malc is trying to make it all too political. He’s rapidly getting away from the point of what he originally set out to do -- have a bit of fun and make a few bob.

‘Rotten’s in a few scenes, like the early days of our gigs, but he didn’t want to know about anything else. Irene Handl is also in the film and so’s that Shaft-like DJ who does that ad for K-Tel records on the telly. I hear the distributors are queuing up for it. I only hope none of this legal wrangling will prevent the film from being released.’

Steve is convinced that people want to know what it was really like in the good old days of the Pistols. ‘They just want to have a laugh, that’s all.’

The movie should also reflect that Steve was, and still is, the original punk beast.

‘It was me who used to get up to all the bother most of the time. Rotten was always pretty quiet. Funny, I knew he’d slag me off when the band split. Same with Matlock. If he got chucked out, everyone was to blame.’ I’ve no doubt that Steve could, if guided in that particular direction, hurl abuse at Rotten all day quite happily. But Pistols’ in-fighting has become rather monotonous, vapid and documented, to tedious length, in other publications. Let’s just say that Steve preferred Sid.

‘He was better than Rotten. I really liked ol' Sid. Naturally I felt sad when he topped himself. It’s not every day one of your mates dies. At least he was one rock star who lived up to the "hope I die before I get old" thing.

‘Paul and me were gonna go over and do an album with him after he got nicked to raise some money for lawyers’ fees. But the day before we were due to fly out we got the news that he was dead. I was looking forward to working with him again.

‘I always knew he wouldn’t last. He couldn’t help but be in bother all the time. Always up to stupid things like fights and getting cut up when he started getting too flash. And what with the drugs … You could never imagine Sid at forty.’

Can you imagine Steve Jones at forty?

‘I suppose I’ll live to be a hundred. I look after myself,’ he says, while chewing into a chocolate bar taken from a bowl of sweets he keeps in the lounge. ‘I don’t go around beating people up. I don’t take any lethal drugs.’

It’s true, he does look the picture of health. He’s lost weight over the last months, leaving a pound or two of sunburned fat on Californian beaches.

‘I had a great time over there. One night I went to a big party where the Runaways were playing and ended up mingling with loads of film stars like Gregory Peck and Zsa Zsa Gabor.’

Didn’t I read that he pulled Miss Gabor? ‘Nah -- she’s too old. I’d like to live in America for a while. They treat rock ’n’ roll totally different over there. It’s much more of a big deal, while here nobody gives a toss. When you play at gigs everything runs so smoothly. Here you always get problems. Like when you travel up north you’re never seen again. All that crap you hear about "friendly" northerners. They hate Londoners. Northerners are so thick . . .’

When he’s not slagging off northerners, Steve is producing records for ex-Runaway Joan Jett.

‘I’ve just done her new single, "You Don’t Own Me", and there’s a chance I might go to the States and do an album with her. It would be great to get away. I hate it here. It’s all so depressing at times.’

Maybe a spot of, er, permanent female company might help.

‘I don’t want to live with a bird yet. I enjoy myself too much.’

Fitting enough finale, I s’pose. I think if I’d ever been a rock star, I’d be a bit like Steve Jones.

And old ladies would love me for my silence.

(Steve has gone on to perform with such luminaries as Bob Dylan, Megadeth, Iggy Pop and Adam Ant. He lives in LA − as does John Lydon − where he was a radio DJ for a while, and has played at all the Pistols’ comeback shows)

Next: A tight Squeeze






Posted by Flexifriend at 13:39 No comments: 


Giving Head 

Mind you, they’ve never looked forward either.

Lemmy and Eddie continue to slag off the use of heroin. 

Next: Nice, quiet, Steve Jones


Posted by Flexifriend at 23:52 No comments: 


The night I became a proper ochinko 




Then she starts to cough.

‘Sorry. Very sorry.’


I have to get her out of here.

‘Are you staying in the hotel?’

‘Yes, with some friends.’

‘Yes, please.’

My heart breaks.

None of them has a cough.

Dave Clark Five, Genesis, 10cc? 

Fate has decreed that Dina is my last, my everything.


Posted by Flexifriend at 21:51 No comments: 


Outside Tokyo So the self-styled Queen of Pop, Nina Myskow, and I board a plane for Tokyo.

She’s in first, I’m in economy. She works for the Sun, I work for myself. She wears red, I wear black. She’s a sweetheart and so am I. The same can’t be said of the Stranglers …

And I tell you what – it’s definitely not true what they say about Japanese girls

Unless, of course, you happen to be cross-eyed.

So tell me more . . . They wait, these Nipponese nymphs, on bullet train stations, in airports, in hotel lounges, in the shadows of afternoon corridors, in vain, in rain, armed with heart-shaped chocolates, flowers, love letters, sugar-sweet smiles, bird-wing eyes, all things feminine, for… the Stranglers. It could’ve been any other band, any other full-cream hard-ons in Brylcreemed trousers, any other bunch of matinée idols with false bollocks and painted smiles.

But the Stranglers?

As the band alight from the bullet train onto the platform at Osaka station, they’re immediately surrounded by a mob of girls, all manicured giggles and stiletto-heeled admiration, looking as incongruous as dogs on hot tin roofs.

‘They don’t think of us as idols,’ says Jean in the cab on the way to the hotel where another gang of honeydew peaches is waiting to pounce. ‘They’re really into what the band says. They understand.’

To back up his statement he flashes some letters written in over-formal, shaky English. They’d been thrust into his hand at various points of his journey across Japan by girls anxious to identify with his admiration of the writer Yukio Mishima and to provide a few enlightening anecdotes on the subject of his decapitation after committing suicide or seppuku (sounds like a word game)

Not exactly love letters in the sand. Japanese girls are like that.

Osaka is around two hundred miles from Tokyo. It’s like a brass rubbing of Birmingham but more curvaceous and sparkly. It’s the second concert into The Stranglers’ Japanese tour. The previous night in Fukuoka – many Japanese words sound vaguely obscene − they apparently went down so well they were banned from ever playing there ever again due to audience overreaction.

Tonight the barriers again didn’t prevent the fans tumbling down to the front in desperation to celebrate the appearance of sour-faced Jet, doe-eyed Dave, lecher Hugh and jumping Jacques flash.

After years of heavy-metal conditioning in the shape of clapped-out, podgy, monolithic dross kings from far beyond the seas, it’s not surprising they find the Stranglers something to write home about. These normally placid, peek-a-boo people from the valley of the dolls are even starting to spit! What other race would go berserk for an hour, kick stewards in the bollocks, mob the band and then politely bow to each other afterwards as they file out of the hall?

I expected order. I expected rules. I expected the Stranglers to be regarded as a novelty act whose only redeeming factor was Jean’s romantic attachment to their country and his cutie-pie smile. But with kind of indomitable elegance, the fans accept the moribund meat the band relish chewing before their very eyes.

They seem to get it. Back in the Osaka hotel basement bar, Jean intimates, in no uncertain terms but with a snappy smile, that he wants a fight. And he wants a fight with Judas Priest, who’d just played a concert of their own and sit like Madame Tussaud rejects in the corner being ogled by a dozen leopard-skinned groupies.

Jean scrawls, ‘Judas Priest R Fucking Women.’ on the back of a menu and places it on a silver platter held by an unsuspecting waiter who proceeds to deliver the message to the Birmingham metalheads.

No takers.

Jean departs, disappointed but still smiling. Judas Priest may not have even heard of the Stranglers.

The evening culminates in manager Ian Grant insulting a concrete-arsed groupie, tour manager Tom playing tunes loudly on a silver tray and Ian banging nails into the ceiling.

None of the band participate in such on-the-road antics. They’re parsimonious with their off-stage energy. Apart from Jean’s occasional muscle flexing (he does tend to tread on your toes a great deal: I put that down to him being French an’ all), they’re more inclined to exercise the larynx than the inebriated soul.

I guess that’s part of their attraction.

The following day we coach it to Kyoto, the ancient capital awash with Buddhist temples all made entirely of wood and without the merest hint of a nail. Despite the overbearing symbolism that pervades the ornamental parks in which these wonderful edifices are set, it’s difficult not to snigger when confronted by ‘Get your souvenir Buddhas here’ signs.

The band pose for the Sun’s Queen of Pop outside one temple. Nina’s probably still feeling a little freaked out after seeing Jean’s balls swinging like church bells in the dressing room the night before when he emerged stark naked from the shower. Still, he didn’t seem to mind.

The venue tonight is Kyoto University. There’s holes in the ceiling, holes in the walls, holes in the hearts, holes in the holes. This black hole of Kyoto is tailor made for the band. No police are allowed on the campus. No chairs are allowed in the main hall. No holds barred.

But without the barriers and red-jacketed stewards, the element of anarchy is dispelled. Unfortunately it becomes just another gig – unusual in Japan, maybe, but I’ve seen more exciting nights at the Palladium.

‘No, I don’t mind Jean getting all the attention at the moment. After all, he makes a prettier cover than me.’ Hugh, wearing the tongue-in-cheek sincere look he cultivates so well, pours another beer in his hotel room at the Nagoya Miyako Grand the next day. Initially, he was the Strangler who grabbed the attention but in recent months he’s taken a back seat‘Last year I got pissed off with being pushed into situations. We’ve had a very depressing time on the business side but things are looking up. I haven’t got time for the pain.’

There’s a knock on the door and the tour manager wanders in with a leather-jacketed boy who looks around eighteen and a slightly older girl. ‘You said you wanted to talk to some fans,’ he says to me. ‘Here’s one.’ Hugh leaves us to it.

Aya is a student and has saved up for months just to accompany the band on every gig and he’s taken a week off work to do this. Why?

‘Because the Stranglers are unique,’ he says. ‘They sing about all our lives and I understand and identify with what they think. Other rock bands sing about love between men and women, they sing about the government. People are afraid to sing about the government, but they’re not.’

Ayako Shimizo is twenty-three, works for a bank and lives in the dormitory her company provides for its employees. She has a record player in her room, a boyfriend in LA and a thing about Jean. Or she did have.

‘He was my favourite. I liked his playing. I liked his philosophy. I think he is very strong and very manly. More manly than Japanese men. But I was disappointed when a friend told me he had gone to bed with a Japanese girl while he was here, I was surprised. I didn’t think he would be just another rock star.’ She leaves. Hugh returns and I mention the conversation.

‘She’s just like anybody else,’ he says ‘She can’t cope with reality. She hasn’t sussed out yet that there are no more heroes. You’d have thought the Zen way would have taught them to think otherwise.’

Nagoya lies sixty-seven miles outside Kyoto and is the fourth most populous city in the country. It’s a little like Osaka but with a shade more character.

Before going to the sound-check, I corner Jean and tell him what Ayako had said. He’s obviously upset. ‘It’s frustrating. What her friend told her just isn’t true.’

This is becoming a soap opera.

What her friend told her just isn’t true. No. We don’t behave like rock bands with their idiotic on the road antics. I don’t want this band to be like any other. The Stranglers are all I’ve got. No. Shit, man, that’s a drag. I didn’t expect to hear something like that, something so palpably untrue.’

I mention the conversation I had with Hugh as he puts his Dr Martens on.

‘At the beginning I felt Hugh had a lot more going for him than me. He’s got a regular place to live. He can concentrate on higher things. I’ve never had security, just the Stranglers.’

The show in Nagoya is a triumph. The stewards, up until now fairly tame by Japanese standards, are coming on strong. So strong, in fact, that the band stop playing to point an accusing finger at one particularly venomous steward who is subsequently hounded out of the hall in a blaze of vitriol.

Backstage I meet up with Marl Takahashi, a bespectacled twenty-year-old, and the president of the Japanese Stranglers’ Information Service. She, too, has been travelling with the band for the duration of the tour.

‘At the moment there are seventy members,’ she says, ‘but I expect that to really increase after all this. The average age is eighteen but we have a few thirty-two-year-olds. We also have a fanzine.

‘For me The Stranglers are so different from other bands. They have opinions and they point out all the wrong things in England. Other bands just sing and wear pretty clothes and I’m tired of all that. I know the band look so wild, but after meeting them I know they are gentle. But all the girls that come to the hotel don’t understand them. They just want to go to bed with them. I don’t. I just want to be their friend. If I went to bed with Jean I wouldn’t be his friend anymore.’

Why do I get the feeling that I’m turning into a News Of The World reporter?

And you thought The Stranglers were a boys’ band.

I’ve been going out with Dina pretty solidly for nearly two and a half years. I love her madly but I know she’s unsure about me, about the kind of job I do, about the way I live my life. She could hardly be described as a rock chick. She hates receptions, doesn’t matter how glitzy, she doesn’t care much for most of the music and she definitely never bothers with people she hates. It’s part of the attraction.

Despite the obvious temptations, I never fool around at home or away. I sussed out a while back that sex without love was intensely unsatisfactory and not worth the hassle. Hey, but if you’re a rock star it’s part of the nine to five.

I love Dina and want her so much to be my bride. It’s the most important thing in my life: why fuck it up?

So what am I doing walking down this endless corridor to my room at the Nagoya Miyako Grand holding the hand of a girl called Haroko with oriental sex on my mind…?

Next: The Stranglers in Japan Part 2



Posted by Flexifriend at 00:10 2 comments: