Redemption Song: The Definitive Biography of Joe Strummer. Chris Salewicz

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СКАЧАТЬ they still lent us their drum kit and their amps. I thought that was great and I’ve always supported Matumbi since.’

      ‘They were crap!’ said Clive Timperley, Woody’s old friend from Vomit Heights. ‘Strummer with this mad suit and shaking leg, fantastic. That was it really. No lead guitar. They were crap but fun.’

      To Anne Day, ‘Woody’ was evidently still allowed to be ‘Johnny’. (Anne Day)

      Pat Nother agreed: ‘About four or five times we turned up with instruments. To call them gigs is stretching it. My memories are more of things like standing in a cinema [a squat by That Tea Room] in puddles of water, very worried about the effect on the electricity power supply. We played at parties in houses, which involved basements being turned into venues. I mucked around a few times with Joe – that was it, and then it collapsed for me.’

      As a very amused Joe said of Pat Nother to Paolo Hewitt, ‘He said to me in a pub, “I can’t believe that we’re in a group.” And I said, “What do you mean?” He said, “I can’t believe we are in a group. So I’m going to leave.” He said that to me!’ Before he left the band, Pat revealed, they rehearsed all the time. ‘We would play all day long in the basement of 101 and people would come and watch us. But one day the saxophone got ripped off. This was terrible. “It’s been stolen. We need it for our group. Where’s it gone?” So Joe and myself went on this two-day trip to the nether regions of West London.’

      Eventually they retrieved it from another squat; but the thief, clearly disturbed, killed himself two days later. Imagining you were an outlaw from society had its drawbacks. ‘Joe’s street-punk thing was just blagging. Once Joe pissed off some teddy boys with a flick-knife. These guys got him at University College, London. There was a gig there, and me and Joe certainly weren’t going to pay. We climbed through the loo window, and these Teddy Boys came in as we were climbing in, and came up to Joe. He pulled out his flick-knife, and they pulled out their flick-knives, and he does a ballet dance. I was stuck in the window watching this thing. He was very good: it was all bluff on both sides – it was as though it was choreographed. Eventually everyone backs off, and honour is saved. No one was going to knife anyone.’

      Following that one gig at the Telegraph, Richard ‘Snakehips’ Dudanski went on holiday and was replaced by the original drummer, Antonio Narvaez, now back in London. In mid-October there was a benefit for the Chilean Resistance at the Royal College of Art in Kensington Gore. It was a logical event for the 101 All Stars to play, and Alvaro promptly offered their services. Having started off with the rock’n’roll classic ‘Bony Maronie’, the group were two numbers into their set before the audience turned against them: ‘Get this capitalist rock’n’roll out of here,’ as Joe remembered it. As though proof of that old adage that no act of kindness goes unpunished, the squat-rockers – who could hardly have lived a life more untainted by capitalism – were booed off the stage.

      Pat Nother was replaced by a character known as Mole (actually Maurice Chesterton); efficient on guitar, he had never previously played bass. There was another new member: Julian ‘Jules’ Yewdall was briefly brought in on lead vocals and harmonica, leaving Woody free to concentrate on his rudimentary rhythm guitar playing, while still contributing the occasional vocal.

      But where could the 101’ers play? In November an approach was made for a residency to the landlord of their local pub, the Chippenham, a rambling rough pub popular with Irish labourers; ornately decorated with rococo plasterwork and with a central semi-circular bar, the ‘Chip’ had the ambience and character of a Wild West saloon.

      The group were told that, for a rental of £1, they could play upstairs in a room with its own small stage. Joe recalled their first gig there, on Wednesday 4 December 1974: ‘We never really got off the ground until we rented that room above the Chip. Because we couldn’t play, how could we get any gigs? The only thing we could do to learn to play was to start our own club up. I’d go to gigs with two bricks in a shoulder bag,’ said Joe to Mal Peachey, ‘and these bricks were to sit in the deck of a record player, upturned with a broom handle screwed in it which was the mike stand. And the mike was taped on the top, and the bricks were there to drop into the record-player to keep the thing steady so the mike didn’t fall over. I mean, we built our equipment, and we booked our own club. No one was going to book us. Can you imagine what we looked like? A bunch of crazed squatters. We found a pub with a room upstairs and we rented it for a quid for the evening, and that’s how we learnt to play, by doing it for ourselves – which is like the punk ethos. I mean, you gotta be able to go out there and do this for yourself, because no one is gonna give it to you. We clawed our way in.’

      The residency was named the Charlie Pigdog, after a dog of the same name, a brown and white Jack Russell, who lived at 23 Chippenham Road, the pet of Dave and Gail Goodall. Charlie Pigdog would from time to time wander onstage during the group’s sets. As would musicians outside of the core of Woody Mellor, Simon Cassell, Alvaro Pena-Rojas, Antonio Narvaez, and the new members Jules Yewdall and Mole. From time to time, Tymon Dogg would play. Clive Timperley came along to the second night, on 11 December 1974. ‘Bring your guitar next time,’ Woody told him.

      ‘It got really jumping, ’cos all the squatters from all over Maida Hill, Maida Vale, West London would come down,’ said Joe, ‘and it soon became like a real big mash-up, and gypsies would come and rip everybody off and throw people’s coats out the window, and mayhem broke loose. We were onstage playing and the police raided the place. We carried on playing, and it was like playing a soundtrack to this crazy thing going on everywhere. The police rushed in – they didn’t know who to search or what, with all these filthy squatters and gypsies and God knows what in this room. And like we keep playing, and I think we were doing “Gloria” – that’s when we started to extend it into a twenty-minute jamdown.’

      Around this time a severely second-hand hearse was found for sale, priced £50. All the 101’ers clubbed together and bought it. Now they had something in which to transport their equipment. Later it was exchanged for a van. Both vehicles were somewhat erratic, and for local gigs the 101’ers would often walk to the venues, pushing the equipment in an old pram.

      The absence of a lead guitarist was about to be resolved. Clive Timperley was yet another character in the life of Woody Mellor who fulfilled a role of mentor and tutor. He had moved on from the student life at Vomit Heights and was living in the extremely well-heeled environs of Hans Place in Knightsbridge, just behind Harrods, in a flat that belonged to his brother. A boring day-job gave him the freedom to play with groups in the evening. As far back as Ash Grove he had been playing with Foxton Flight, who had once supported Medicine Head at the Marquee, a gig which Woody came to see, at Clive’s invitation (‘He was chuffed he was on a guest list at the Marquee. But he was almost over-impressed. I think it galvanized him more into wanting to become a musician.’).

      There was always a rudimentary element to Joe‘s understanding of the guitar. (Lucinda Mellor)

      By the time he saw their second Charlie Pigdog Club date, the 101’ers had got much better, thought Clive, who found himself frequently tutoring Woody. At around 10 or 11 in the evening Clive’s phone would ring. ‘What are you doing?’ would demand Woody’s gruff vocal inflections, before he jumped in a minicab for the ten-minute ride down to Knightsbridge across Hyde Park. ‘He used to come over with his guitars, four or five at a time, a steel-string acoustic, an electric, solid electric, and this Hoffner Verithin. We’d have a guitar workshop into the early hours of the morning.’

      Then Woody made Clive Timperley an offer. ‘He rang me up and said, “We’d like you to join the 101’ers.” I thought, “Good, СКАЧАТЬ