If A Man Ever Loved A Woman...
We were young, spunky, good-looking and very, very talented and launched a musical revolution from the common room of the ultra-strict London Oratory school.
I'd lived with my family at 20 Wetherby Gardens, off Gloucester Road - 100 yards from Anita Pallenberg, Brian Jones and Keith Richards, 200 yards from Syd Barrett and the infamous 101 Cromwell Road and 50 yards from Mervyn Peake (Auntie Veronica was friends with his daughter Claire). A bohemian atmosphere, you get me? I have fond memories of those times.
Beyond that . . . just of being in the trenches fighting the Great War - winning - going our separate ways at certain points in our lives, only to come back and fight another war . . . like foreign legionnaires or mercenaries . . . perhaps I was the most mercenary of all.
That we almost uniformly came from Catholic working class backgrounds – grew up in council flats in Kensington and Chelsea … some of us in single-parent families for one reason or another … we could all paint and draw, play instruments, write songs, take the piss … the Ready Brechtian kids … we were armed.
Our secret origins were that none of us were really English .. a bit Irish, a bit Scottish, a bit Iberian …
We grew up in the eye of Swinging London, yet for seven hours a day we fell through a timeslip into a Dickensian nightmare world … the apple and the cane … Mr MacIntosh and Father Napier … Life Art …Roundtree’s thrashing in If … Art Life … the psychedelic violence of Performance…
We started to get a good idea how music was made – from hearts through minds, controlled with voices and hands. We applied the ideology of our favourite 60s groups to the chassis of our primitive punk beat. We’d never heard the sound outside our own heads and were keen to live it as O Levels, Personalities or Filmstars.
I don't know how to explain this, but broadly speaking, I see music in my head and can automatically play back vast compositions after one hearing, despite not being able to read or write music. But even with this affliction, I was treated as rather an idiot in music lessons at junior school, given a stick to bang on the floor while other supposedly more talented children were given the keys to the music cupboard. Later on at the Oratory, I would sneak into the assembly hall during breaktime to furtively pick out tunes from memory on Mr Ferguson's upright.
“Ball! Stop with that hooliganism!”.
John and Gerard Bennett would've been a party to all this, we'd shared the same celebrity neighbours and education since we were five years old. Revenge at sweet seventeen would be our first record as O Level, containing the names of our most hated teachers, played most nights on John Peels radio show. But we're getting ahead of our story somewhat . . .
To say that we drew alarmingly similar parallels to the three boys in Lindsay Anderson's 1968 film 'If'... would be an understatement; corporal punishment was an everyday occurrence and public floggings by the Head, in mortar board-and-gown drag were not unheard of. Art Life Imitation Whatever.
Apart from my referred-to affliction and this horrific ability to play virtually anything on guitar or piano, I was pretty good at rugby and football, quite apart from being able to sprint like the devil himself.
Joe on the other hand was a brain in denial. Highly intelligent but always in confrontation with teachers; his tirades often had an undeniable logic and were always very entertaining. Essentially, his rants always articulated our defiance against the bullying education system we were in.
As for Dan, that American expression is redundant, so i'll invent one. He was a ghost; that is, he was never there! He had the school's second worse attendance of all time. I can still recall in our third year when Mrs Couch ushered Dan into Divinity, announcing him as a new boy. But Miss, I exclaimed, he's not, he's been on the books for the last two years, only he's never bothered to come in.
"Ball! You're bad, mad and awfully trad. Go and get the cane this instant!!"
I knew Dan by sight anyway because during those two years truancy, We'd moved flat from Gloucester Road to Beaufort Street, around the corner from Dan's on the Kings Road. Even though he was shy, and that no one seemed to notice him, I knew he was special. He would've been a brain in denial too, because there's an extraordinary part of Dan's mind that could, and still can, work out complicated multiplications mentally. This is particularly interesting because around this time, we were streamed into roughly the same sets for each subject, all of us dumped in the bottom class for Maths. Me, and John Bennett, who couldn't add 5 apples between us, even if you numbered them - sitting next to this mathematical phenomenon waiting to happen. His short stories were fantastical works of invention too.
It wouldn't be much of a conceit to say that I brought us - Dan, Joe, John, Gerard and me - together. Getting us to sit together in classes and at lunchtime. Working at the group's weaker aspects and relationships. Talking us up individually and as a band to anyone who'd listen.
Writing songs for us to practise, writing plays, giving everyone notes, telling everyone what to do . . . fuck, how much did they hate me!! Still, everyone played their part too. John and Gerard, drums and bass, providing a massive basement to practise in; Joe's obvious love and attention to how Byrds, Velvet Underground and early Floyd records were made and a thought process that could 'manifesto' itself at will - Dan's Wilco Johnson guitar style/demeanour, always looking like he wished he was somewhere else. I knew Dan and Joe were geniuses . . . I suppose at that age it takes one to know one.
Johnny O Level used to work part time on the meat counters at Safeways, King’s Road. Spotting Johnny Rotten coming in one day to buy some beers, our John hailed him brandishing a cleaver. ’Je suis un friend!’ replied the Saviour, hands aloft. That’s how our John usually made friends with anyone.
Living around the corner from Malcolm’s boutique, I’d see all the Pistols from time to time. It was the girls in PVC and fishnets that really entranced me … I used to fantasie about having a girlfriend like Sue Catwoman or Jordan or Gaye Advert or … anyone really.
Certainly our very first singles were of that oeuvre but we soon found our own voice.
The Clash were big fans from the start – they played 14th Floor in a top ten on Capital Radio in ’78. Joe Strummer would often refer to us and our records as the real deal.
Although we were largely overlooked by the music papers, there’d always be someone who’d come along and champion us, like Thrills or Morley. When the NME made ‘We Love Malcolm’ EP its single of the week, they printed the sleeve – TO SCALE!
Athough ‘Malcolm’ and ‘Where’s Bill Grundy Now?’ EPs are the rise and fall of punk rock in eight songs, it’s the way we made those records that became really important.
My first ultra-religious belief in anything was the support system Rough Trade set up throughout Britain, a distribution network which eventually became the Cartel. The small label culture that sprung up was my first ‘I’ll lay my life down for this faith’. The best thing it ever did. Later, when the RT label floundered that Distribution was always solid as a rock.
I think our first albums – ‘And Don’t The Kids Just Love It’ as the TV Personalities, ‘Pop Goes Art’ as the Times – is where the story properly starts for all of us …
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www.myspace.com/lovecorporation
A Day In The Life Of Gilbert & George.
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