Touching from a Distance Page 6

  Arcachon is a town with wide white-sand beaches, pine trees, fresh seafood and a silent, heavy heat. The youth hostel was full and, as we did not have a tent, we took the ferry across to Cap-Ferret intending to hitch to Bordeaux from there. As we sped along in the alarmingly small boat, Ian dragged his sore hands in the sea water.

  The journey back to Paris was a good deal quicker than the journey to Mont de Marsan and after having our last thirty francs conned out of us in the Gare du Nord, we were glad to be back on English soil. When Ian took me to see Iggy Pop in Manchester early in 1977, he introduced me to Peter Hook and Terry Mason who were sitting directly in front of us. As Hooky and Terry grinned at me from across the seats, I decided that this was more like it. Their enthusiasm and energy was boiling over and at last Ian had made contact with some realistic candidates for ‘the band’. ‘Where’s Barney?’ asked Ian. Pete made a movement with his hand, indicating that Bernard was under the thumb. That was the best gig I had ever been to. The audience were ripe for intoxication and Iggy Pop – the original punk – did not disappoint us. Most of us clambered up to stand on the back of our seats, save Ian who was too tall. There were too many of us for the bouncers to prevent it. As I stood swaying and rocking, I held on to Ian’s head to balance, not caring if the seat collapsed – the music was all that mattered. Throughout, Ian was surprisingly still, despite David Bowie making an appearance on keyboards. Perhaps he hoped that it would soon be him up there on stage.

  Our decision to move back to Macclesfield was made quite suddenly, but it was something I had wanted for a long time. We found Oldham very isolated and the arduous bus journey into Manchester every morning was depression itself. We were both working on flexi-time and although it was Ian who insisted we start work as early as possible, he intensely disliked getting up in the morning. He held me responsible for easing him out of bed, but my efforts to get him to the bus stop on time were seldom appreciated. He would urge me to run on ahead in order to instruct the bus driver to wait for him. This I pretended to do every morning. By the time we arrived at Sunley Building, we would be arguing all the way up the escalators. I worked at the Department of the Environment in the same building as Ian, but on the sixteenth floor. It was my fault Ian had to get up in the mornings and it was my fault if he missed the bus. As soon as we met one of his work mates he would be all smiles, cheery and full of fun!

  The Asian family we sold our home to were amenable and very polite, and even though they expected us to leave our meagre sticks of furniture behind, the sale went through smoothly. Ian could be very quiet and polite when it was required and it wasn’t until I spoke to Pete Hook that I realized how racist Ian could be. Drinking spirits always had an adverse effect on his temper and it was only after one of these bouts that he began making vicious, prejudiced comments in an Indian restaurant. He talked about how one family took the toilet out of the house to make another bedroom, defaecated onto newspaper instead, and then threw it into their neighbour’s garden. The rest of the band thought this outburst very funny, but this facet of Ian’s personality was hidden from me and at the time I thought Ian shared my ‘live and let live’ views.

  In the end the actual move was so badly co-ordinated that we had to move in with Ian’s grandparents again. However, it would not be for too long this time. They would visit Ian’s parents every Saturday and let us have the house to ourselves for the day. This gave me a chance to catch up on my hidden washing! Then I would stand in the back garden to put it through the mangle before hanging it on the clothes horse. It was a wooden affair which wound up to the ceiling on a small pulley. The whole ritual was reminiscent of my childhood in Liverpool and as I turned the mangle I couldn’t help but think what a small distance I had travelled in such a long time. My life appeared to be almost pedalling backwards.

  Ian’s reggae fad had passed and he began to experiment with punk, but it was a half-hearted attempt. It wasn’t in his nature to follow the crowd to an extent where he would not stand out. He bought a khaki jacket and wrote ‘HATE’ across the back in orange acrylic paint. This took a long time to dry and left an imprint on Kelvin’s car seat. He would never have shown himself up by pogoing with the rest of them. When we went to gigs, I enjoyed being squashed and having to move in time to everyone else, but Ian was looking for a more individual way. He very much wanted to be the centre of attention.

  Iain Gray had fallen into a routine of visiting us at the Hulme address every Saturday and although he had become literally part of the family, Ian’s dream of having a band seemed to be displaced by the companionship he was providing for Iain.

  While Ian was too soft-hearted to tell Iain this, he became fanatical about meeting the right people and going to the right places. I didn’t object to staying late at city-centre clubs until the early hours, but Ian never let me sleep in and go to work late. We always had to be in work for 8 a.m., no matter how little sleep we had managed to get the night before. One night we were forced into catching a bus that didn’t stop as close to home as we would have liked. We found ourselves crossing a deserted wasteland of rubble, streets with pavements and kerbs, but no houses. There was very little light and although I had no idea where we were, Ian didn’t seem concerned and picked his way across in the gloom, with me hanging on to his arm in fright. Ever so quietly a car drew up alongside us. Ian pulled away from me and, leaning into the car, exchanged a few words before the driver cruised away. I asked Ian what had been said and he confirmed my worst fears: he had just been offered money for my services. I was furious with him for putting me in that position, but waited until we were in the safety of his grandmother’s scullery before letting him know it. Ian said nothing. He turned around, brought two long hands up and put them around my neck, just tight enough to render me immobile. After a few moments, he released me and we went to bed. We were up and about as early as usual and the incident was never mentioned again.

  Peter Hook, Bernard Sumner and Terry Mason had known each other throughout early childhood. When they all found themselves at Salford Grammar School, they joined forces and became great friends. As the punk era arrived, they began looking for a singer for their band. Numerous odd-balls answered Bernard and Terry’s advertisement in Virgin Records, the most odd being a hippie who was dressed in what was clearly an old tasselled cushion cover. Danny Lee, a friend of Peter Hook, was said to be able to ‘out-Billy Idol’ Billy Idol, but he never actually managed to get up and sing. When Ian rang Bernard Sumner’s number, Bernard remembered bumping into Ian at local gigs and made a snap recruitment decision. He told Ian there and then that he could be in the group.

  ‘Because I knew he was all right to get on with and that’s what we based the whole group on. If we liked someone, they were in.’

  Bernard Sumner

  This left Iain Gray very much on his own. He must have felt rejected as he vented his bitter feelings on me at one of the last nights at the Electric Circus gigs. His rude verbal abuse offended me, but as he didn’t touch me physically I didn’t care. All I wanted was success for Ian and, at the time, the number of casualties was unimportant. Also Iain’s attitude was a little unfair.

  ‘Ian didn’t want to let Iain down, so I think he waited until Iain got fed up and left before he joined us. ‘Cause Ian was as soft as shit, wasn’t he?’

  Peter Hook

  To determine whether Ian really could fit in with the rest of the lads, Bernard arranged a ‘getting to know him’ session. This involved an outing to Ashfield Valley near Rochdale. He found a soul-mate in Terry Mason. They had both spent a large portion of their lives avidly reading the music press and waiting in record shops, hoping to be the first to buy each new release. They saw music as the main ingredient in life and believed everything the music press said. Ian in particular revelled in the tortured lives depicted in the songs of the Velvet Underground; any music which didn’t demonstrate a certain sadness, violence, or perhaps a struggle against impossible odds, was dismissed.

  I
decided to take driving lessons and even though Ian had no wish to drive himself, he was very supportive. I enrolled at a school near his parents’ house so Ian could visit them while I was having my lesson. I had no car of my own and there was no one to take me for a drive in between the one-hour lessons each week. One night my instructor directed me to drive down a deserted back street in the middle of Manchester and I found myself on a piece of wasteland behind a derelict mill. Luckily the look on my face was enough to tell him he had made a mistake. Not wanting to tell Ian what had happened, I carried on taking driving tuition from the same man until the day I failed my test. Ian was wonderful when he heard of my failure. I think at that time, if I’d committed murder he would have stood by me. His loyalty made him very stubborn and he was loath to admit that I didn’t yet have the experience to pass the test.

  The house in Barton Street, Macclesfield, was exactly what we had been searching for. It was double fronted and stood on a bend in the road. With a front door and staircase in the centre and a living room on either side, it was considerably larger than the neighbouring homes. The room on the left seemed as though it had been built to fit around the bend in the road and was almost triangular in shape. Eventually, this was to be Ian’s song-writing room, just as he had always wanted.

  The kitchen was compact and there wasn’t a great deal of room in the shared yard for a washing line, so Mrs Moody had an old-fashioned clothes rack in the kitchen. It wound up to the ceiling on a little pulley, just like the one Ian’s grandmother kept. As the Moodys would be taking it with them, Ian resolved to scrounge his grandparents’ identical clothes rack for our own use.

  On a snowy day in May 1977 we moved back to Macclesfield, or rather I did, as Ian was ‘unable to get time off work’. By now I had become suspicious as to why Ian was never able to take leave, even though we hadn’t been away on holiday that year, and he had always ‘just nipped out’ whenever I rang him at work. While living in Macclesfield, we carried on working in Manchester. Ian insisted we catch the early train each morning and start work at 8.30 a.m. in order to give us more time in the evenings. Ian seemed to spend his evenings meditating over a cigarette, while I sewed.

  In the summer of 1977, Ian renewed his acquaintance with Richard Boon, manager of the Buzzcocks. He hoped Richard would show some kind of interest to help the band on their way, but when he suggested the name the Stiff Kittens, Ian was deeply irritated. This was most likely due to the fact that it sounded just like any other punk group. At last they settled on the name Warsaw, taken from ‘Warsawa’ on Bowie’s Low album, which was less typical of the other names being thrown up for contemporary bands.

  On Sunday 29 May 1977 Warsaw played their first gig at the Electric Circus. They were undaunted by the rest of the bill: the Buzzcocks, Penetration, John Cooper Clarke and John the Postman. Tony Tabac made an unrehearsed appearance as Warsaw’s drummer. Tony had a very laid-back attitude, slightly upper crust and looking as if he would never have to earn one. It became obvious that he wouldn’t quite fit in with the rest of the lads, but they persevered because they all liked him. Ian was disappointed by Ian Woods’ review of the gig in Sounds. It picked on Bernard, saying he looked like an ex-public school boy.

  Paul Morley was involved right from this very early start. He saw through the fact that they were still learning to play their instruments (and how to sing), but most importantly noticed that they were different. He wrote in NME: ‘There’s an elusive spark of dissimilarity from the newer bands that suggests that they’ve plenty to play around with … I liked them and will like them even more in six months’ time.’

  Once over the hurdle of that first gig, everyone took it for granted that there would be more. Warsaw started on the irritating and inevitable round of arguments with other bands about who was headlining, who was providing the PA, who was paying for it, and so on.

  Around this time, Martin ‘Zero’ Hannett came on the scene. He was a student at Manchester University, and he and his girlfriend Susannah O’Hara began to promote local bands. They managed to find local venues in the most unlikely places, including an edifice nicknamed ‘the Squat’ on Devas Street, off Oxford Road. This was the worst venue – the surrounding landscape had already been flattened and the Squat stood lonely, waiting for its fate, yet bands flocked to play there. The first time I went there, I didn’t believe anyone would be able to perform because I was convinced that the power wasn’t even connected.

  Warsaw considered themselves lucky to be on Martin and Susannah’s books and took to the dilapidated circuit with enthusiasm. The second gig followed quickly on 31 May at Rafters, a small bar beneath a larger club called Fagins in Manchester. Ian and I were already familiar with Fagins as he had taken me there to see the Troggs before we were married. During June 1977, Warsaw bounced backwards and forwards between the Squat and Rafters in Manchester. When Martin Hannett arranged one of the Rafters gigs, he had told Fast Breeder, who were managed by Alan Erasmus (an actor friend of Tony Wilson’s), that they could go on last. Unfortunately he had made Warsaw the same promise. The two bands argued all afternoon. By 10 p.m., nobody had even had a sound-check. Fast Breeder went on first, as they realized people were beginning to drift home.

  When Ian finally made the stage, he was so drunk and so mad that he smashed a beer glass and cut his leg, which at least made sure the remaining audience remembered him. As this was a midweek gig I stayed at home – one of us had to be sure of getting into work the next morning. That night Ian ripped his leather jeans to shreds, but I was able to stitch them and make them wearable. Despite the condition of the jeans, I assumed his legs would have been all right. In fact they were so badly cut he undressed in the dark that night so I wouldn’t see. I suppose Ian’s stage persona had already begun to get out of hand, but he obviously didn’t want me to see him like that. The performances I saw were nowhere near as frenzied.

  Ian was excited when they were offered the support gig with Johnny Thunders and the Heartbreakers at Rafters. That night was the first time Warsaw were ever called back for an encore and whatever they did after that, it never matched that specific feeling of elation and pride I had that night. From then on, gigs became more available and slightly further afield, including Eric’s in Liverpool.

  We prepared the triangular room of our new home for the composing of Ian’s forthcoming masterpieces. He painted the walls sky blue, the carpet was blue, the three-seater settee was blue, as were the curtains. The only concession was the bright red spotlights and, later, a red telephone. He kept the old stereogramme in there too. Ian had no craving for a hi-tech music system; it didn’t seem to matter to him what he played his records on. We barely set foot in the streets of Macclesfield and as such our social life remained centred around Manchester.

  Most nights Ian would go into the blue room and shut the door behind him to write, interrupted only by my cups of coffee handed in through the swirls of Marlboro smoke. I didn’t mind the situation; we regarded it as a project, something that had to be done. Neither did I inspect his work. I never doubted that his songs would be anything but superior.

  The majority of Macclesfield youngsters were still listening to heavy rock music. Rural life and fashion was at least ten years behind anything that might have been happening in Manchester. The atmosphere was that of intense anticipation, as if a huge tidal wave was on its way and everybody was determined to be on it. The Ranch Bar in Stevenson Square was a favourite meeting place. If you walked down Market Street, you would always encounter one of the Buzzcocks or the Worst. Everyone seemed to congregate around the city centre. They were afraid of losing the momentum; scared of missing out on an impromptu meeting. No one waited to have their talents recognized. Instead, they decided what they wanted to do and did it, be it pop photographer, producer, journalist, or musician. It was a deliberate snub of the London scene and, as far as music was concerned, Manchester was set to become the new capital.

  Paul Morley was one of these hopefuls. To earn m
oney he worked in a book shop in Stockport, but the love of his life was a fanzine called Out There, which concentrated on capturing the current exciting events happening around the area. Londoners finally realized that perhaps their city was no longer the centre of the Universe as they had previously thought, and Paul Morley found himself being asked to write about Manchester and its bands. He seized the opportunity and constructed a niche for himself. There was so much to write about, such a plethora of events, that he was able to push aside his initial shyness. Ian liked Paul Morley’s approach and at home he talked about him as if he was the key to the band’s anticipated success.

  ‘We had the same interests and the same beliefs in the music and in what we wanted to do, the same dreams. The way I wrote about the group probably meant a lot to Ian. A lot of people thought it was indulgent and pretentious, but I meant it and I think Ian knew that. I always thought it was really funny because there was Ian up on stage singing intense songs and there was me writing about it intensely. And we wouldn’t talk about it, but it was always in the shadows.’

  Paul Morley

  In July 1977, the New Musical Express printed a two-page article entirely devoted to the Manchester scene. Written by Paul Morley, it put Manchester at the centre of what was happening in the music business and slated Londoners for their smug complacency. The main attraction in Manchester was Howard Devoto of the Buzzcocks and, later, Magazine. Together with manager Richard Boon he started the ball rolling, hence Ian’s eagerness to get to know Richard Boon. A mishmash of personalities created the atmosphere of that epoch and each one was either photographed or mentioned in Paul Morley’s writing, from the Drones (reputed at the time to be the only band in Manchester to have any money for equipment) to John the Postman (who would come on stage after every gig to sing ‘Louie Louie’). Unfortunately, this would often lend the evening the atmosphere of a working men’s club. Warsaw were described by Morley as ‘easily digestible, doomed maybe to eternal support spots. Whether they will find a style of their own is questionable, but probably not important. Their instinctive energy often compensates for the occasional lameness of their songs, but they seem unaware of the audience when performing.’