THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO SAINT BEVY Part I:
Treading on the Corns of the Establishment
Prologue: to Begin at the Beginning
Spitfire and Tardis
Barrows Fields and Sunday School
Taxmen and Birds Wot Can Really Sing
I Forgot Me Book, Sir
Ringleaders
Yes Tractor
Major Disaster
Corporal Punishment
Private Parts
Corn Dollies and Country Kisses
Anarchy in a United Kingdom
Goodbye To All That
Hullo Mr Starkey Sir
Crest of an Old Wave
Smudges
Art School
This is the Modern World
Lulled Cocks and Stunned Onlookers
Pitfalls of Fame
The Scent of Mod
The Dreams of Children
May the Best Man
Win Tricks of the Trade
Accidents Will Happen
A Black Tie Event
That Was The Year That Was
Summer Holiday Modernists
Odd Mod Out
Never Mind the Bullocks, Here’s the Hex Crystals
Operation Paperclip
The Legendary Bruce Ears
Nicknames Are Not Crimes
Cults and Tribes
Earth’s First Onlooking Set
Epilogue
Any resemblance between the characters portrayed in this chronicle and actual living persons is entirely coincidental – I had intended to wait until they were all dead.
TREADING ON THE CORNS OF THE ESTABLISHMENT
To Begin at the Beginning
In the beginning Modfather created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of Modfather was hovering over the waters. And Modfather said: “Let there be light and sound,” and there was light and sound. Modfather saw that the light and sound were good, and he separated the light and sound from the darkness and noise. Modfather called the light and sound “scene,” and the darkness and noise he called “a right load of bollocks.” And there was evening, and there was morning - the first day.
When I was conceived in the month of February, a glowing yellow light was observed hovering 200 feet above Heathrow airport for 30 minutes; a fighter plane from RAF Northolt was scrambled to intercept it by the radar station at RAF Stanmore. This was only a few miles away to the east, as the crow flies, of my mother’s native village. My parents had wed there in Horton on 9th January 1959 but lived in Portsmouth in Hampshire until they were both able to leave the Royal Navy when they then retraced their steps to my mother’s family home during May for my eventual arrival. I think I am safely in the clear, therefore, and am neither an extra-terrestrial nor the Messiah – but alas, I am still a poet.
Forty seven days before the new decade began, and so a fortnight after the ancient feast of Samhain that marks the beginning of the Celtic year, I baled out the womb at Princess Christian’s hospital in Windsor on the Berkshire side of the Thames and set up base camp in our family village, which lay a few miles away on the Buckinghamshire side. After about three years my sister parachuted straight into camp between the releases of Please Please Me as a single then as an album during that coldest of winters. My brother followed suit three years later a few days after midsummer and was stretched out and kipping in his cot in time for the release of Revolver.
Like many people of my generation, an otherwise decent childhood was marred in my teens by music and television programmes that in hindsight could be considered a form of child abuse. We didn’t sit alone in our bedrooms in those days since central heating was beyond reach, people only had the one telly, and rooms weren’t big enough for computers. So we huddled around the fire together as a family and absorbed the popular mass culture of the times
Supercar and Fireball XL5 were exciting enough, as was everything by Gerry and Sylvia Anderson, but by the time of Stingray and Thunderbirds I was beginning to suspect the characters might not be real, though this didn’t stop me from fancying Lady Penelope more than Troy Tempest’s wet bird, but that may just have been c’s Penny had a nice motor and aqua Marina looked a bit vacant. And if you think that sounds weird, the attractive lady at my local library told me the other day she used to fancy Virgil in Thunderbird 2 because he was a real dreamboat. Grown up stuff like The Saint, Danger Man and The Avengers were equally exciting and definitely real–life despite being in black and white, which seemed more natural in some ways.
When colour came in and Emma Peel reappeared in the rig-outs Mary Quant had designed for her, the vibe became distinctly psychedelic and groovy, as it was with The Prisoner. And by Captain Scarlet and Joe Ninety the kids’ stuff was equally so and I started forgetting that they were puppets again because Destiny Angel with the Parisian accent was distinctly alluring. Now that really is weird c’s I’d passed up on Rhapsody Angel who was in fact modelled on Jean Shrimpton, but in any case I actually thought Harmony Angel, the Jap one, was the cutest angel although her being a 4th dan judo black belt made me wary. Guess it was Destiny’s kinky French accent that “Really Got Me.”
How could any kid clock Colonel White giving Lieutenant Green the nod to say: “Angels 1, 2 and 3 immediate launch,” and not go on to be a Mod or Psyche [two syllables] fan? Me and Leechie with Rick from Hayes band The Hitmen used Lieutenant Green’s phrase as the title of a jazzy instrumental number we recorded in Leechie’s living room in 1983, a year after the onlookers split. I think the other two would get jealous if I didn’t mention them - the other two Angels that is, not the other two onlookers. So just for the record, they were the two Yanks - Melody and Symphony.
Oh, by the way, I used the wording “me and Leechie” back there rather than “Leechie and I” not from any feeling of self importance on my part but because, for the purpose of giving a flavour of the times to this chronicle, I prefer the colloquial to the more literary form. I shall try and remember to use “c’s” and “gunna” as anglicised versions of “cos” and “gonna” and while I might well avail myself of the native phrase “awe inspiring” if I feel the urge, I shall certainly not be using the Yank equivalent which I cannot even bring myself to utter. I spose I’ll use good old Limey “spose” for “suppose” and praps “praps” for “perhaps.” If I think of any more, I’ll let y’ know.
So anyway, all this was a good creative and stylistic influence but whenever I walked into the room while The News or “This Is Your Life with Eammon Andrews” was on telly I felt as if the life was being squeezed out of me and even the latter’s four note horn opening made my soul sink. Although on the whole sixties music was superlatively good, there were evil influences afoot. For instance Engelbert Humperdinck, whose name was reason enough to reach for the razor blades let alone him wailing “please release me, let me go.” Well push off then mate, I’m not stopping ya.
But it was 70s music that really oppressed me: Queen, Alvin Stardust, Jimmy Osmond, people tying yellow ribbons around old oak trees and even Chuck Berry going dingaling. Then there was the falsity and glamour of Sweet, Slade, T Rex, Suzi Quatro, Bay City Rollers and, hideosity of hideosities, Abba! How dare people try to get me dancing to it in the 90s by telling me: “It’s so bad it’s good.” No luv, it’s so bad that I’m even starting to hate you for not vomiting along to them. And Bowie’s and Rod Stewart’s voices didn’t grab me either c’s they lacked that emotionally open bell-like clarity I craved and had a touch of the contrived about them. And Nan thought she’d had it rough in the Blitz? Man, if it wasn’t for our sense of humour the English spirit would have been vanquished once and for all. But I always knew there was something better, dear reader, as you shall see.
Chapter 34: Earth’s First Onlooking Set
Our first gig had been planned for the Champney Hall a week that Saturday after the Chords trip. The exciting day soon arrived when the onlookers would lose their musical virginity and we practised our foreplay in the hall that afternoon. Two coppers came in after a complaint about the noise and stood watching as we played The Kids Are Alright, which fortunately featured some rather sweet harmonies that transformed the potential Blue Meanies into our very first appreciative audience. I’ve reported back to GCHQ on all this and have been advised:
“I remember the Chords gig – very exciting! Find it hard to imagine that we booked our first gig less than a fortnight after we formed. From a 53 year old perspective I would have thought we must have rehearsed more, from an 18 year old – who knows these days? Leechie reckons it was a week and a half at most – must have been some quiet practices at his place, with Tez going: “Who’s that at the door naaa?” I split my trousers during the practice and had to nip home to change sharpish! How did we manage to transport gear in the absence of any car owners amongst us? Tez again?”
Quite possibly Roe and the others did enjoy such luxury but it was still the days before Bullock and the Archer brothers lent their muscle and bonhomie to the onlooking folk, and so I lugged me drums down from my bedroom loft, or artist’s garret as I prefer to think of it, then carried them on foot, one at a time, the 262 paces from my back door to the porch of the village hall where I had once danced to a band playing Sgt Pepper as a ten year old at my uncle Ray’s wedding reception in 1969. The set list for that night is a matter of slight dispute 35 years later but whatever it was back then it was certainly free of disputation and we modernist new wavers were familiar with the canon from listening if not playing. Although not performed in any specific order, as it would turn out and for reasons that will become apparent in part two of this trilogy, our repertoire was as follows:
Time For Dancing, I Feel Fine, Please Please Me, Twist and Shout, All Day and All of the Night, Tired of Waiting, All or Nothing, Grow your Own, Hey Girl, Sha La La La Lee, What You Gonna Do About It?, You Really Got Me, Can’t Explain, The Kids Are Alright, Legal Matter, My Generation, Substitute, Do You Love Me?, Glad All Over, This Old Heart of Mine, Boys Don’t Cry, Message in a Bottle, Teenage Kicks.
Mod bands are really defined by their clothes rather than their music. Original mods were more interested in dancing primarily to soul music played by DJs and secondarily to R n’ B acts performing at jazz clubs. But while acts like Georgie Fame and the Blue Flames were essentially accomplished jazzmen playing imported West Indian Calypso and Ska and black American music, groups like the Beatles, Kinks, Stones and Who were young whipper snappers who lacked the musical finesse of the heroes they mimicked but had the artistry and originality to drop their imitation R n’ B in favour of creating the English genre of pop music that ultimately rules the world to this very day.
The major new wave influence the onlookers all held in common and which brought them together was The Jam but since Weller, Foxton and Buckler were currently leading the field in what turned out to be a sixties renaissance we could only ever have been mere imitators if we played their songs and copied their sound, technique and style. Essentially we would have been no different from the pub-rock cover bands that had preceded the Punk and New Wave revolution. And so instead we had to go to the root of things and try to compete with the Jam on equal terms although we were years behind in our musicianship and experience of writing and performing.
If you prefer to stay in and work on your own songs instead of going out to watch other bands play theirs, then you’ve been elected as artists rather than fans and must brave the consequences of the tides of destiny while recognising that the shape of fate may change with dedication and bring the gnosis which the Bard possessed when he proclaimed: “He who is diligent in his works shall stand before kings.” Or before Steve Marriot at the Covent Rock Gardens, which is pretty much the same thing.
Folk can be very secretive about their creativity but artists cannot afford the luxury of such false pride to protect themselves from the fear of criticism. They must strive to be selfless and sharing rather than selfish and resentful, otherwise they become outsiders to the supportive artistic community. Young children naturally share their creations because it is part of their self expression and part of who they are. We constantly have to listen to other people’s bollocks so it’s only fair they should listen to ours from time to time – if not, then we are neither free nor among friends.
It would take onlooking folk another 3 years of navigation upon a consistent set of bearings, while allowing for drift, to evolve to the point where we were an original group in our own right. We would take the 65- 68 swinging London genre as the theoretical peak of popular music and therefore as the beginning of our journey from where we would follow the direction the pioneers had discovered.
Our destination and purpose was to be the continuation of that same spirit into our own times with our own individual lives and through our own individual experiences because the miraculous truth about life is that despite our vast numbers all human beings are unique from tadpole and egg to geezer and bird. But the gift of individuality must be cherished in ourselves and others for it to have meaning. It must be socially expressed. It must be liberated. You must choose life over somnambulism.
“Here endeth part 1 of the Gospel of Saint Bevy but pray stay tuned, dear reader, for parts 2 and 3 if the Spirit of Albion be willing, namely: Mod Madness & Psychedelic Sanity. And before those of a critical cast of mind accuse a humble follower of the Muses of exceeding his poetic licence, let them remember the old adage that you should never let the facts get in the way of a good story. Indeed, my friend Kalevi might consider this work to be a novella of ‘cryptic realism’ – and he should know, for he invented the genre.
The Genesis of the Onlooking Folk
©Detour Records