FPX RIP

I've been involved in the glacial progress of Gob on the Tyne, a project to chronicle an oral history of North East Punk from 1977 to 1980. Previously I've shared my pieces on Speed and a personal reminiscence. This piece consists of the words ofmy friends from years back: Garry Blythe, Gord McGrath, Adrian Ragsdale & Trev Robinson, reminiscing about their own memories of NE Punk. The piece is dedicated to our missing pals David Foster, John Hird & Geoff Johnston, all of whom have found life a struggle. Shine on you crazy diamonds...

The Prigs: Spring 1978-February 1980

John Hird; guitar, vocals

Adrian Ragsdale; bass, vocals (left Sept 79)

Colin Hair; drums (February 79-September 79), bass (September 79-February 80)

Paul Wilkinson; guitar (February 79-February 80)

ALSO

Steve Wilkinson; bass (1978)

CO2: March-September 1979

Trev Robinson; vocals

Scone; drums

Creckas; bass / guitar

???; guitar

Emergency Exit: October 1979-July 1981

Trev Robinson; guitar

Dave Williams; vocals

Russ Kehoe; bass

Paul “Podge” Kehoe; drums

ALSO

Geoff Johnston; guitar (October 79-January 80)

Garry Blythe; vocals (October 79- January 80)

Group 4: September 1980-December 1982

John Hird; guitar

Geoff Johnston; guitar

Gord McGrath; vocals

Gordon McGrath (Gord): vocalist in Group 4. Born May 1965. Now a painter and decorator, living in Christchurch, New Zealand.

I was only just turned 12 when punk happened, so it took me a while to get into it, as I before then I was only listening to the kind of ordinary stuff you’d hear on Top of the Pops. My elder brother Steve had the New Wave album and I immediately loved the sound and the attitude of the bands on that record. Being a rebel was a big part of it for me. Eventually I’d say I decided my favourite bands were The Skids and The Ramones.

One of the first live bands I ever saw were The Prigs, who were a couple of years older than me and I just really wanted to be involved in music after seeing them. I wrote them a song called Psycho Ward, but spelled it wrong; 50 year olds in Felling still remember me as the composer of Pycho Ward. Anyway, The Prigs broke up in 1980 and so we started Group 4 after that. Of course the big joke was that there were only 3 of us: me, John Hird, who had been in The Prigs, and Geoff Johnston, both on guitar. We never really had a bassist or drummer, though we did gigs with Andrew and Rob from ian cusack’s band Pretentious Drivel helping us out. The best gigs we ever did were supporting Pretentious Drivel at Balmbra’s in March 82 and an open air one on Eldon Square Green that summer.

I don’t think any of us really expected to be rich and famous. In fact I don’t think we ever got a mention in any local fanzine, but we did do a demo tape which we sent to John Peel. He said it was ‘derivative,’ which we had to look up in a dictionary. That sort of knocked the wind out of our sails and the band drifted apart at the end of 1982. Geoff was knocking around with this lass Debbie, who became his wife and mother of his kids. He had the real talent in the band and made a wonderful demo tape of his solo stuff, but it never saw the light of day, which is a real shame. John had joined some left wing organization and moved to London with them. I went to America in 1985 and from there to Australia, before settling in New Zealand where I am now, so that was that, but I loved every second being part of the FPX and the North East Punk scene in general.

To this day, I still listen to bands from that time. I’ve never been disillusioned by punk. It changed music for the better, for good.

Adrian Ragsdale (Raga): bass / vocals The Prigs, temporary drummer Group 4. Born July 1963. Now a telecommunications engineer, living in Gateshead.

The earliest musical favourites I had were just what was on Radio 1 or Top of the Pops: Slade, Mud, Sweet, Bowie, though the first record I remember buying was in fact Tell Him by Hello, which I got from Pop Inn Records in Felling Square. Later came Queen, Thin Lizzy, Alex Harvey Band, The Who; the sort of rock acts who were still played on ordinary radio, but by then I’d progressed to listening to albums. I recall sharing the cost of LP’s with my sister. Influences I had were mostly family, though some peers at school brought some things to the table via their older siblings.

I recall becoming aware of the punk movement late in 1976 just after the iconic Filth & the Fury front page. As a paper lad I saw all the headlines, not on the actual day, but the Sunday after. The Sunday Mirror was still on its high horse about it weeks later. As far as punk music was concerned, Go Buddy Go by The Stranglers was the first punk record I bought. I don’t think I was listening to John Peel by then, but I’d probably heard ‘taped’ from the radio punk songs at the Boys’ Brigade, as some of the older lads had started recording Peel on cassette. 

I was not an easy convert and at first resisted punk musically and as a movement, I guess between Christmas 76 and the spring 77, but like smoking your first Number 6 or drinking your first Woodpecker, it was partly the attraction of doing something that was largely frowned upon. I suppose I also saw it as a rite of passage. Musically it was nigh on impossible to even consider getting to see anyone live. I did manage to catch Thin Lizzy several times, but Queen and The Who by then were stadium rock, joining the likes of Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd and all the other bands I’d not heard, as they never produced records that were played on the radio.

The Prigs’ first outing was as a pastiche of punk rock as part of a musical cavalcade at the Boys’ Brigade Christmas Fair in December 77. Ironically Johnny Nerd (John Hird) mimed and sneered along to Frank Sinatra’s My Way, probably because it was his dad’s favourite song, long before The Great Rock & Roll Swindle. Dressed in safety pin adorned BB uniforms and spiked hair, the band consisted of only one of The Prigs when they became a real band. At the very beginning you were only identified as punks at ‘punk’ events, though having straight leg trousers instead of ‘bags/flares’ was noted at school, but dismissed in a mocking fashion for wearing “cacky-catchers”.

In those days punk’s nemeses were supposed to be Ted and Rockers. Avoiding those blokes in Felling who wore drapes and had DA haircuts was as easy as not being near the door of The Jubilee or Blue Bell at opening or closing time. I recall couple of incidents at school, one where a kid who claimed his dad was a Ted (though later proclaimed himself as always being a punk) and another at a school disco. Later I found that was due to me pogoing into his lass and not for being a punk. By 1978-79 most kids who were interested in music at school (as opposed to anti-social behaviour and petty crime, which were real growth industries in NE10 and still are) were listening to or were self-professed outright punks, with most of those who were our real enemies, the Northern Soul crowd, being old enough to take their grievances to The Cordwainers or  The Canny Lad. Again, easy places to avoid…

Musically The Prigs emerged from those members of the BB that had an interest in punk and survived the leap from youth club to pub age in the late 70’s without dropping out; basically it was a show of strength from the Coldwell Street Boys’ Brigade. Instruments were bought or found and Saturday night jamming sessions in the Wilkinsons’ attic on Rochester Terrace, while their parents were out on the pop up the hill at the Columba Club, were a continuation of youth club and Boys’ Brigade friendships. This glorified, weekly jamming session went on for a while, until the older originals sloped off to drink in pubs and chase lasses. By early 1979, the classic line-up was in place as we were all aged 13-17 and too young for pubs on a regular basis, which allowed us to concentrate on adding accompaniments to songs written by John Hird, instead of covering other people’s songs. Assisted by the school caretakers strike during the Winter of Discontent, we used this bonus holiday to become proficient enough to think “this sounds alright”. Originally we’d got together to fill some time, but we suddenly felt we could show people that you don’t have to have be a musical genius or have ££’s worth of equipment to be creative. Musically our main influence had to be The Buzzcocks, whose three verse songs telling a start-to-finish story with twin guitars and harmonies were something we always wanted to emulate. We wanted to be the kids who played pop punk in a haphazard way. Style wise you’d probably say we looked like a cross between The Undertones and The Fall. Farnons was our Seditionaries.

I recall only 3 gigs by The Prigs with the classic line up (Ragsdale, Hird, Hair and Wilkinson Junior). There were numerous attic sessions with people watching, but the actual gigs were firstly at Eldon Square, at a Battle of the Bands contest in June 1979. We played three songs near the end of the event. We’d only found out about the show when we’d come in to town, as usual, on Saturday, so we went home to get our guitars and borrowed the drum kit of the heavy metal band who were booked on to go last (and who would win). There were about 2000 people on Eldon Square Green, with about 20-30 FPX encouraging us to get up. We were introduced strangely enough as being “all the way from Scandinavia”. The week after the Eldon Square gig, watching the soundmen set up for the event that weekend, one of them asked another if anything good came out the Battle of the Bands. The first one said “you should have been here last week; there was a group of kids in school uniform singing a song, telling their headmaster to fuck off.”

The second one was a month later, which was a benefit gig for the National Union of School Students (NUSS), who were a Socialist Workers’ Party youth wing front organisation. It was in a place called the Attic, near Spectro Arts. We supported a reggae band called Hepatitis and played a full set of all the songs we had, concluding with a version of Borstal Breakout, which was a crowd pleaser but not indicative of what we actually liked listening to; also it was dead easy to play.  The show ended with Scone, the drummer in CO2, picking up the mike and pronouncing Giz a Blow Job which became the title of the bootleg recording we made of everything we did.

Finally, for me at least, was Heworth Miners, Welfare Hall, (as U2 would say was a sort of homecoming), at the end of the usual Friday night teenage disco.  By now the four of us had nearly all agreed on which songs worked, though because he wrote them, John was allowed to insist we played some of his more precious ones, even though the rest of us didn’t like them. Everyone in the audience knew us and we went down a storm, helped by the fact the support act CO2 weren’t quite there yet. I believe we finished this one with Mr Pickering a ditty about our headmaster at school, even though I’d just left and John hadn’t gone there at all, telling him where to go. Given that the audience consisted mostly of pupils from that school, we left the stage to great applause.

Ironically, that was as good as it got for me. I got a job in Sept 1979, had money in my pocket and quit The Prigs.  I dabbled in a few other things but never really committed to anything. There was a subsequent swan-song in Nov 1979, after I’d left The Prigs, when they supported The Proles at the Welfare, as part of a Labour Party Young Socialists benefit gig, after John Hird had joined this organisation called Militant, who were involved in the LPYS. Full of encouragement from the cans of lager I’d consumed and fellow members of FPX, I got up and sang the 3 song encore with the new line-up. I was helped by the fact these were the better songs, so we got a great reception, but it was still over for me.

The Prigs played one last gig with their final line-up, again supporting The Proles at the Welfare in February 1980. It was a bit of a disaster to be honest and the band split up after that. Little Wilka and Hair Bear formed Truth Drugs with Anthony James, while John put Group 4 together. Both bands would climb musically higher on the ladder of proficiency than The Prigs had, though still remained gloriously obscure. With Group4 I don’t recall anything apart from being asked to drum as an interim arrangement, but I’d made my point that being a rock-star was not on my career plan long before they asked me. 

I don’t think we left much of a legacy. We never made it into print, other than something in the NUSS bulletin after the July 79 gig. Though I recall The Prigs being painted on the rocks at the Bankies in Felling and on a few garages. When we first started calling ourselves punks, it was nigh on impossible to see any band, as there was nowhere to play. Hearing records was limited to what you bought, often by word of mouth or because of reviews in Sounds or NME, or what was played by John Peel. The great thing was everyone seemed to know everyone; being punks helped to expand our horizons, through meeting punks from other areas. Personally I don’t think punk was something you can ever be disillusioned with. To me, it’s not a type of music or fashion, it’s something that’s part of your history, your environment and how you use those experiences you learned at that time in the future.  I don’t think punk ever set out to achieve anything, it just was and I’m glad I was part of it.  

Trevor Robinson (Trev): vocalist in CO2, guitarist in Emergency Exit. Born October 1962. Now a screen printer, living in Gateshead.

I suppose you could say I was a glam rock fan before I discovered punk; The Sweet and T Rex were particular favourites, but I also liked Status Quo. Everyone knew about the Sex Pistols, but getting to actually hear them was another matter. My first exposure to them was walking through Felling Square and hearing God Save the Queen blasting out of Pop-Inn Records in summer 77. The energy just knocked me backwards. This was something I wanted to know more about, but it took a while before anything happened other than just listening to bands.

We all used to go to this teenage disco on a Friday evening at Heworth Miners’ Welfare and I managed to win the Best Punk Rock Dancer title, for my interpretation of Sid’s My Way. As a result, I got the job of being the singer with my first band CO2. Not that I could sing like. There was a lad called Creckaz, who couldn’t play guitar and a kid called Scone whose parents owned a chip shop and lived in a big house. This meant he was the only one who could afford a drum kit. He couldn’t play either.

After a few months, we got a gig, supporting The Prigs at the Welfare. It was great being on stage. One of the FPX gang Simpa was a butcher and he got some pig’s blood to throw at us, as well as a trotter which I took a bite out of. The set didn’t go down brilliantly with everyone in the audience and I ended up offering Fossy out round the back, as he had heckled us.  This wasn’t the end of CO2 though. Amazingly this mate of John Hird’s joined on guitar and he could actually play, as well as having written a few songs. We did a gig at the Gosforth Hotel, supporting the Noise Toys, but split up straight after as John’s mate was away to be a student in Sheffield.

Having had a taste of the being in a band, I wanted more. I loved playing gigs; I’d got myself a guitar and was learning to play it.  Basically, we started a band with just about everyone from the FPX who wasn’t already in a group. The Kehoe brothers, Paul (Podge) and Russ were possibly the most deranged drum and bass outfit you could imagine. Another lad we knew Dave Williams (known as Shavey Legs, on account of a foolish teenage experiment with a Bic disposable) became the singer, though he was a bit shy and didn’t jump around like I did. Garry Blythe was supposed to be a singer as well, but he came to 2 practices and fell asleep both times, knackered after work. Geoff Johnston was guitarist for a while, but I think he wanted a more melodic, less shouty sound and so he left to start Group 4 with John and Gord.

So, once the line-up was settled, we started to practice weekly at St. Patrick’s Church Hall in Felling. It was opposite the copper station and we used to just break in, make a horrible noise and leave. We did a few gigs, especially with Total Chaos at The Basement, next to Spectro. However, I started to get a bit sick of the rest of them. I’d moved over to Whitley Bay as my parents were running a pub there, so getting across to Felling after work before the Metro opened was hard work. Especially as when I got there, the other three of them would be off their heads on glue.

Things fell apart in around July 81 and I never did anything musical after that. In fact, a year later I was married with a daughter, so other things became my priority. Mind I still love The Clash and The Upstarts even now.

Garry Blythe (Magic Marker Heed or Sex Dwarf); vocals in Emergency Exit. Born February 1963. Now a bricklayer, living in North West Durham.

Right, let’s get this out the way straight off; I had absolutely no musical talent whatsoever. This is why I got asked to sing in Emergency Exit, because not one of us, apart from Geoff and he left pretty sharpish, could play or sing a note. The final straw for the rest of them was when I fell asleep at a practice on a Saturday morning, but to be fair I’d been up since 3 delivering milk. I got asked to leave and Geoff quit in protest, but he was probably knackered as he worked on the same milk round as me.

Shame really, as from the first time I’d heard punk, which was probably Looking after Number 1at the St. Patrick’s Youth Club disco I’d thought, I’m having some of that… There were these lads a bit older than us, but not much, who’d left school and were pogoing in their ridiculously small old school blazers, wearing those cheap Captain Sensible sunglasses. The whole energy, the rebellion; everything. I mean The Boomtown Rats were never any good, but that 3 minutes hearing that song changed my life forever and probably influenced how my own kids listen to music.

The first two records I’d bought were Sorrow by Bowie, which I’m proud of, and The Wombling Song, which I never used to mention. Especially after I discovered the one band that I have loved for 40 years without interruption; The Clash. They are still my band. They made me believe I could fight back against the bosses, teachers, the Royal Family, the Army, politicians, everyone. I believed I could change the world. When I listen to Stay Free I still do.

However, the saddest night of my life was seeing The Clash at the Mayfair in 1980. I’d not got in to either of the Poly shows in 77 and 78, so I queued up all afternoon and was one of the first few in when the doors opened. By the time they played Jail Guitar Doors, second song in, I was in wonderland. I jumped on stage to be with my heroes, but the bouncers threw me off. Normally that would be it and you’d end up at the back of the crowd and have to fight your way forward, but I gave one of them a mouthful, so four of them picked me up and carted me out through the fire door. Broke my heart that did. Mind a few weeks later I had one of my best ever nights, seeing The Fall at the New Tyne Theatre. We commandeered one of the royal boxes in the balcony and had a whale of a time. That was the night ian fell in love with The Fall.

I loved how punk broke down barriers; people from different backgrounds, home towns, ages even, all came together and there was no threats, no anger. Bear in mind that one of the worst cases of hassle we had for being punks was a pair of teddy boys in a transit van trying to run me and Geoff over walking along the Felling bypass, coming home from a night out. They clipped Geoff and he went about six feet in the air. Poor sod spent a week in the Queen Elizabeth after that.

Sure there were egos and celebrity punks in the scene, but it felt like a proper  democratic movement. We’d go to places like The Gosforth Hotel to see The Noise Toys, The King’s Head in Marlborough Crescent for Treatment Room and the Willus Bnad or The Garage for Total Chaos. You were on nodding terms with everyone else there. I suppose it was the Oi generation that turned me right off. I’d never had much time for Sham 69 or the UK Subs, while Discharge and The Exploited did absolutely nothing for me.

Still, I’ve got some wonderful memories and I’m as anti-establishment as I was when I first fell for punk. I don’t suppose that will ever change. Hope not anyway!