July
1977. The first Saturday evening of the six weeks holidays in Newcastle upon
Tyne. Two weeks previously Queen Elizabeth II had been in town on her Silver
Jubilee tour. Six weeks earlier my cousin John brought the Chilside Road Jubilee
street party to a juddering, premature close by repeatedly blasting The Pistols
through his open bedroom window. A week earlier Mohammed Ali had turned up on
Tyneside to officially open Eldon Square shopping centre. He drew a bigger
crowd than Mrs Windsor and autographed my mate Roy Fox’s copy of Pretty Vacant that he bought in Listen Ear that morning. Now, three weeks shy of my 13th
birthday, I’m at my first ever punk gig. The University Theatre has been
occupied by a disparate gang of lefties, artists, students, beatniks and other
marginal subcultural species, after it was announced that funding would cease
and the place could close. Tonight is a benefit gig to raise funds for the
protest. Four of us take the 59 from Felling Square into town; wander up Northumberland
Street, drop 30p each in collection buckets and take an uncomfortable pew on
the sagging velvet couches in what is normally the bar area, which is closed.
Three bands are playing; local long hairs Raven top the bill, ironic comic book
new wave funsters Harry Hack and The Big G are on middle, but first up are
Speed. A female drummer smashes the kit like she’s a grudge against all snares
and cymbals. The bespectacled bassist is wearing a rugby shirt. He can’t play
properly. The guitarist, all bike jacket, bleached hair and defiant poses
slashes away at barre chords on numbers such as Suck, Job Shop and Gonna Hit
You. The singer seems shy, almost diffident. He’s in a blue v neck jumper
and clean, white shirt; like he’s just taken his school tie off before coming
to the gig. He’s electrified once the music starts though. Mesmerising. He’s
called Johny Fusion and he changes my life. I don’t see the bloke again for ten
years, save a quick glimpse of him from the upstairs window of the 529 walking
down Gateshead High Street, clutching a blue Adidas holdall.
December
1987. Surfers Bar. Tynemouth. A freezing Wednesday by the bleak North Sea
two days before Christmas. I’m living in
Leeds, where that autumn I’d seen Big Black, The Swans, The Gun Club, Age of
Chance and The Men They Couldn’t Hang, but this was the one I had to come back
for. Summer 87 my mate Karl introduced me to the work of this incredible group,
who amalgamated Viennese klezmer music, with Brechtian tales of woe and excess
on the streets of South London and North Tyneside. Rosemary Smith was outside North Shields Metro station in the first
song I heard by this astonishing ensemble. I recognised the voice from a decade
earlier; it’s unmistakably Johny, but he’s using his surname Brown now, as lead
singer of the Band of Holy Joy. As a glorious, riotous, anarchic gig comes to
its conclusion, I end up with a microphone in my hand, somehow, singing along
with Johny to my favourite of theirs; Who
Snatched The Baby? I’ve never heard them play it live since that night.
Three days later, floating deliriously out of the Gallowgate after beating Man
United 1-0 on Boxing Day, who do I fall into conversation with going out the
ground? Johny Brown.
May
2015. Johny’s 54th birthday. The night before he completed a 10
kilometre sponsored run for Mencap. Two weeks previously, the night after the
election and the day before his hometown team North Shields win the FA Vase
(for amateur clubs) at Wembley, which Johny gives his ticket away for, he plays
a gig with Band of Holy Joy at Newcastle Cluny. It is a triumphant homecoming
and, over a backstage beer, I present him with a copy of PUSH #16. He’d read us lots of times before, ever since
Joe England sold Johny a copy of PUSH #7 at an Irvine Welsh reading down the
Mile End Road. Johny’s partner Inga flicked through and came across the story A Quick One and said “Ian Cusack?” Two
degrees of separation at most…
Small
world it may be and Band of Holy Joy are a big part of mine. It hasn’t been a
breeze for them; endless critical acclaim and public indifference. Shortening
the name to Holy Joy then a hiatus for a decade from 1993. A false dawn of
reformation, before another period in the long grass. However since 2007, Band
of Holy Joy have released a series of ever improving albums, backed up with
storming live performances and a regular presence on air at Resonance FM (check
out their Friday night BAD PUNK show). Not only that, but Johny has assembled
the best band he’s ever played with; Bill Lewington (drums), Mark Beazley
(bass), James Stephen Finn (guitar), Peter Smith (keyboards), Inga Tillere
(visuals) and Johny Brown (vocals and harmonica), who spared some precious time
from recording their new album to answer some questions.
IC: 38 years
is a hell of a long time to be involved at the margins of the music industry,
however much quality you’ve produced. Where do you get your inspiration and
motivation to keep doing stuff from? What would the 1977 Johny say to the
modern day one?
JB: I think
Bill and me both share an urge to improve as musicians. Bill especially is
really driven, but maybe we’ve got something to prove as we weren’t exactly
technically the best when we started, and this phase of the band is us trying
to catch up and make records of worth at last. Stuff you can be really proud
of. Though when most people our age have long thrown the towel in, it seems
that we’re just limbering up. Shadow
boxing. The ability of the rest of the band and especially their dedication (all
of them do stuff at Resonance as well) is so high that there’s definitely
something to aim for. Being honest, I don’t think I’m ever going to be a
proficient vocalist in the accepted sense, but I still like to try and work
keenly with the limited range I’ve got. That’s why we did a cover of Don’t Dictate when Rob Blamire and
Pauline Murray (of Penetration) came to see us, and of course we’ve been
playing with Gary Chaplin recently, who is writing brilliant new material; it’s
such a blast to do. Although it sounds like a new song to young bucks like James
and Peter. What Goes On was for a
Velvets tribute / Resonance benefit night. It fitted our strengths really well
and was such good fun to do it has stuck around, and maybe it might point to
where we might head on our next album musically, but who knows. At the minute
we’re listening to lots of Sun Ra, The Monks, Ethiopian Funk and Joe Meek. I
think the 1977 Johny would dig this 2015 version, as he was listening to
Nuggets, funk and reggae back then, as well as punk, I would hope so anyway. He
would be absolutely appalled at the thought of having to exert himself in any
physical activity or do corporate charity fundraising shenanigans though.
You’ve been
in London now for twice as long as you ever lived on Tyneside; which city do
you prefer? If pushed, could you say which place feels more like home for you?
I think I’m
lucky to have and know both places. Depending on mood and circumstance, both
Newcastle and London are equally inspiring, stimulating, depressing,
irritating, boring, life enhancing, soul destroying and so on. As the years
pass, I grow more regretful that I never had the opportunity to live in Paris,
Athens or NYC properly for an extended period of time. Being honest, I see this
question as being as much about people as places. For instance, I would be
happy to live in Latvia (Inga’s home country), I think, or indeed, as we’ve
often talked about, Edinburgh or Glasgow.
Ah;
Edinburgh, or Leith in particular. You’re great pals with Irvine Welsh, sharing
a passion with him (and me) for Hibernian FC. How did either of those things
come about? Is that why you shot the stunning video for “There Was A Fall / The
Fall,” about the murder of Ian Tomlinson, with the superb Scottish actor (and
Hibee) Tam Dean Burn? Your music isn’t expressly political in ideological
terms, but there’s a strong sense of morality and social justice to it; how
conscious is this?
A friend of
mine Max moved up to Glasgow in about 1987 and we sort of fell into company
with Irvine one time and hit it off really well. Quite ordinary really. As a matter of fact, I went to my first Hibs
match with Kenny MacMillan, a school mate of Irvine’s. It was a derby at
Tynecastle, Hearts’s ground, on a really cold snowy New Year’s Day. We were
still tripping from the previous night’s activities, but had a pretty dramatic
comedown after a terrible nil nil that was probably the most dreary football
match I’ve ever attended but I’ve had a soft spot for them ever since. Football
players and teams come and go but it’s the supporters that make a club good or
bad, mediocre or legendary in my book and I love the vibe at Easter Road . I
get on well with a load of Hibee fans. Tam is a long-time friend and
collaborator; I’ve done four stage plays with him and countless radio dramas.
He’s looked after me a lot over the years. He’s a top man and a great fucking
actor. The best plays that Tam and
myself have worked on together do have that strong sense of morality and social
justice in them as well as a theme of unquestioning love for the underground
and counter culture. Funnily enough, the only time we ever came a cropper, and
it was a big cropper, was at the Traverse in the Festival, when we tried to
write something that was expressly political in content and narrative.
Disaster. Total. Don’t want to talk about it. Sniff.
Your last
Newcastle gig was the day after the general election, as well as the day before
your hometown club North Shields FC played at Wembley, to win the FA Vase. I
know you gave up a ticket for that; any thoughts on the relative benefits to
Shields of those two events? And,
staying in the north east, how do you feel about Newcastle United these days?
Bad timing
for me, but a great day for the town and I do wish I’d been there. The election
will do the town no favours at all. But then again, when have the powers that
be ever thought about rough and unpolished diamonds like Shields? ‘A town where
no town ought to be.’ I think Ralphie Gardner (the man responsible for North
Shields becoming independent of Newcastle in the 17th century) said
that! As regards Newcastle, you used to find me in the Leazes End every other
Saturday and any Wednesday night match from 72 to 77, but with the advent of
punk, there seemed to be a mismatch between liking football and liking music. I
don’t know if this was a peculiarly Geordie thing, but I stopped going until I moved to London, then
started again around 82, so most NUFC games in the south in the 80’s I was at.
I still love Newcastle away; the collective craic and the vibe. I watch it on
the internet on dodgy links these days as the Premier League is sadly mainly a TV
spectacle. If I was signed up to a ten year season ticket deal, I would be
tearing my hair out. It seems that the soul or spirit or whatever I knew
Newcastle and our support had when I was a youth is gone. Imagine going for a
pint with Mike Ashley or Lee Charnley? No, me neither.
I’m going to
miss Upton Park.
The
Band of Holy Joy’s next album, “A Night of Fire and Stars in the Land of Holy
Joy,” is out on Stereogram records on September 21st; more info from
http://www.bandofholyjoy.co.uk/
BAD
PUNK is on every Friday night at 10pm on Resonance FM; 104.4 if you live in
London, http://resonancefm.com/ if you
don’t
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