Speed Freaks

On Friday 8th May, the very wonderful Band of Holy Joy are playing Cluny 2 and I'm looking forward to seeing them as much as ever. A few weeks ago I was interviewed for a forthcoming book about the North East music scene from 1977 to 1980. Afterwards, I penned this memoir of seeing Johny's first band Speed in summer 1977, who were the first punk band I ever saw.

The first gig I ever attended, attired in compulsory Arran sweater, was The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem at the City Hall in November 1968; I was 4 years old when my parents, both folk music devotees, took me to that one. I suppose my parents’ tastes had quite an influence me in terms of my formative musical preferences, as other than a yen for a bit of Roxy Music, my first two musical heroes were Bob Dylan and Lindisfarne, which explained why I requested and got an acoustic guitar for my twelfth birthday. As I had a terrible voice and could barely play, I thought my version of With God on Our Side was as good as the original. The second gig I ever attended was Lindisfarne’s Christmas concert at the City Hall on December 23^rd 1976 and the fourth gig I ever attended was Lindisfarne’s Christmas concert at the City Hall on December 23^rd 1977. However, something seismic happened at the third gig I ever attended, which is the point of this piece.

In our house we only ever got the Radio Times at Christmas. I used to love reading it from cover to cover, poring over the detailed descriptions of recondite programmes on the Open University and Radio 3 that I’d never have a hope of understanding. One thing caught my eye at the start of the holiday season in 1976, the night after my Lindifarntastic night out, was Christmas Eve on Radio 1 at 10pm; John Peel was going to be introducing his Festive Fifty, playing 50-41 as well as an hour of other stuff. This appealed to me, so with my parents carousing in the lounge to the sound of Seven Drunken Nights and Bold Thady Quill, I headed for bed with my old man’s hefty solid state radio for company and turned it 247 metres in the medium wave.

It’s often a misconception that Peel played back to back punk and dub in those days, but he didn’t; for a start at number 50 in the listeners’ chart was And You And I by Yes, who he hated. While it’s true this show marked the first radio broadcast of Anarchy In The UK, a track that left me fairly cold as it sounded like an unspectacular glam rock stomper, an opinion I still hold of The Sex Pistols’ oeuvre other than Submission, the session guest was folk veteran Martin Carthy, whose work I knew and still admire. There were two songs that stood out for me that night; the bizarre a Capella ramblings of Wildman Fischer on Go to Rhino Records (number 47 I believe) and one track that effectively changed the way I viewed music forever; (I Belong to the) Blank Generation by Richard Hell and the Voidoids. Such louche insouciance, I said to myself; the drawling, languid vocals and minimalist backing uncoiled like a trashy snake and seduced my ears forever. To this day I adore the man and his work. Of course, living in Felling , being 12 years old and subsisting on a couple of quid a week pocket money, there was no hope of me getting the record from the local Pop Inn store (I didn’t discover the joys of Listen Ear until autumn 77) or seeing him live, but it didn’t matter; something had changed.

One rite of passage that the start of 1977 heralded was me opting to take New Musical Express, as we called it back then, for my weekly reading pleasure rather than the infantile Shoot. Despite Newcastle finishing 5^th that season, I was starting to understand that football always lets you down, but music never does. Voraciously scanning the print off the NME each week, I read with increasing excitement news of the punk revolution happening seemingly everywhere but the mean streets of NE10. As Peel was out of bounds except in school holidays because it was well past my bed time, I didn’t get to hear The Worst, The Desperate Bicycles or any of the other bands the papers raved about. My cousin John Hird, who is 3 years older, got into punk as well and started to go to the infrequent gigs at the likes of The Guildhall, seeing The Adverts in June 1977 for instance, but such adventures were completely impossible for someone as young as me. However, one Saturday night in July 1977, I saw a band whose music exists only as a receding memory, but whose singer I am proud to say, has become a great friend over the years and is one of the nicest blokes I know.

Austerity isn’t new; Dennis Healey the Labour chancellor at the time introduced budgets that slashed public spending, to try and repay the IMF loan that had kept Britain solvent after the 1973 oil crisis that preceded Wilson’s government coming to power. Seemingly every lamppost was adorned with a Socialist Workers Party Fight The Cuts sticker as general disquiet with this policy was widespread. One institution that suffered from a decimated budget was Newcastle’s University Theatre, which was revamped about a decade ago and is now Northern Stage. The ending of any subsidy for this beacon of creative arts on Tyneside was met with fierce resistance; an occupation of the building took place, with a series of fund raising gigs scheduled.  According to an article in The Evening Chronicle, the first of these was scheduled for Saturday 16^th July, the day after school had broken up for the summer.  I pointed this out to my mam and dad and amazingly, perhaps because I’d brought home a remarkably decent report card from school, they agreed to let me go, providing our John went along to chaperone me. This was no hardship for him as he’d told me about it in the first place.

Arriving far too early, around 6 or so, we self-consciously shuffled into the foyer and sat down, as inconspicuously as possible in an almost deserted room. Aged 15 and 12 respectively and not being with one of the bands, we must have stood out like Nigel Farage in a Mosque. After about an hour of sitting around, idly chatting as there was nothing else to do with the bar being shut, not that we could have got served anyway, someone involved in the sit-in announced the running order for the night; two bands, a theatre show and then another band, with a 10.30 curfew.

One of the bands were clearly punk rockers; cheap sunglasses, pink mohair jumpers, tartan strides and Doc Martens. These were Harry Hack and The Big G, who have gone down in Tyneside folklore as legendary trailblazers. To be honest, they didn’t do it for me; it was all a bit theatrical and mannered, rather like art students having an ironic take on what rebellion involved. They seemed to be able to play and had obviously rehearsed their stagecraft as much as their musicianship as well as fetching a gang of mates who danced and pogoed with them, but it was more Boomtown Rats than Throbbing Gristle.

However, the band that had preceded them onto the floor (there was no stage) utterly blew me away. Female drummer, bespectacled bassist who seemed to struggle with his instrument and broke a string, moody guitarist in a bike jacket throwing a load of Chris Spedding poses and a shy, almost diffident singer in the kind of plain white shirt and blue V-neck jumper combo your mam would get you from Farnons, who exploded into life when the music started. This was music I’d never heard the like of; fast, uncompromising, ugly and above all, short. This band were Speed and, not knowing the drug reference, I thought their name reflected their approach to music. Songs like Job Shop, Suck and Gonna Hit You were game changers for me, completing a process that Richard Hell had started Christmas Eve previously. In retrospect Harry Hack were utterly tame compared to Speed. The subsequent entertainment that night, consisting of a one act play about borstal by 7:84 radical theatre group and a self-indulgent hour of dull prog rock by arrogant long hairs Raven had zero influence on me, though I’m glad to say the University Theatre was saved and I saw several innovative and challenging plays there that helped shape my teenage world view. Though that was for the future. As John and I hightailed it down Northumberland Street to catch the 59 from Worswick Street to Felling Square, all I could think about was the band who’d opened proceedings.

And then, as quickly as my enthusiasm started, it was curtailed by circumstance. I heard Gonna Hit You on Radio Newcastle’s Monday evening Bedrock show, but there were no Speed releases to grab hold of. I bought a Speed badge from Kard Bar for 30p; a big one, with a large pop art style closed eye with long lashes and wore it proudly. I wrote their name on my school books and in the bogs, but the group’s music existed only as a memory.  However, more than a year later, September 12^th 1978 to be precise, there was a free gig in Exhibition Park bandstand and, among the list of scheduled acts advertised on the publicity posters, was the name Speed. Excitedly, I rounded up a few mates, including Chris Dixon and Rob Gosden who I’d just started making noise with as part of what would become Pretentious Drivel. We met outside Listen Ear, of course, before heading up to the park.

Like all good free events of the time, it was utterly disorganised and running wildly late, with punk bands always getting the shitty end of the stick. The 1978 May Day march took place on the wettest day of the year and the rally was switched to the big room at the Poly students’ union; boring and uninspired local rock outfits like The Squad were allowed to play, but The Mekons who’d travelled up from Leeds were denied a spot on stage. Talking to Jon Langford a couple of years ago at Summertyne at The Sage, he still remembered that slight. Anyway, in Exhibition Park, entertainment came in the shape of a banal hour of pub rock by smug musos The 45s.

After their set, a commotion at the side of the stage suggested a change in the running order; Speed were being prevented from doing their bit it seemed. A few minutes of pushing and general argybargy followed, before they were finally allowed to take the stage. However, this was a different Speed to the one I’d seen; a male drummer and instead of the diffident genius that was Johny Fusion on vocals, a moody looking bloke with a leather jacket and rockabilly quiff was up front. They began with When I Get You Home Tonight; the sound was as intense and driven as before, though the singer was less animated than Johny. And then, when the song finished, he smashed the microphone on the floor and the band stormed off stage without saying a word. Never mind the Mary Chain’s 15 minute sets, this one had lasted barely long enough to soft boil an egg. One song; that was all and I never heard Speed again.

Within minutes competent, plodding jazz funk and blue eyed soul covers band Boulevard had started their Hall and Oates from Wallsend type thing and we drifted away. That seemed to be it for Speed. There were a couple of tracks on a TJM records compilation, but I never tracked one down and the band simply disappeared from view. Thankfully, in around 1987 I came across the Band of Holy Joy and I’m a passionate devotee of their music, delighted to note Johny Brown is as electric and charismatic a front man as when I saw him first; 38 years ago.