Anger is an Energy: My Life Uncensored (9 page)

Kingsway was about a ten-minute walk from King’s Cross up Gray’s Inn Road, and when you followed the road right up to the top, you could get into Soho in the heart of town. But the
college itself was bang opposite a council estate – poor people’s housing all round.

The main thing was, I wanted to continue with English Literature, because I loved my reading, and Piss-Stains Prentiss, however much of a bastard, had got me into Shakespeare – so yippee,
thanks to him, not all bad. I also wanted to do Technical Drawing, because I love draftsmanship, but it came together with Maths and Physics, so that was a no-no.

Apparently I’d been quite good at Maths before meningitis, but afterwards it was like that capability had been extinguished in my brain. Stuff like Physics is a literal rocket science to
me. I find those subjects mind-numbing because I can’t place them in any kind of reality. They all seem to be like complicated suppositions to me. It’s like imagining three-tiered
chess, without the chess boards. Where’s the inspiration in logarithms and binary? It was never explained why we’d sit there like dummies, going ‘Zero, zero, one, one’, over
and over again. ‘X plus Y equals what?!’ ‘Who cares, if I don’t know what X is!’

So I did three ‘A’-levels: English, Art and History. Initially, I found it extremely difficult to get into the way subjects were debated rather than lectured; previously you were
told, ‘This is this, and that’s that,
and don’t ask a question.’ But now it would be a lot of preponderance on what your thoughts were, but that was
good because it dragged that out of me, and slowly but surely I came out of my shell.

I found that I could actually do what I could do socially now, also in an educational scenario. What a thrill. And to not be shy, to be able to stand up and read out aloud a piece of poetry or a
section out of a novel. I learned public speaking, I suppose. That’s not what I went there for, but that’s what I got from it – the emphasis on words, and sentence structures and
all of those delicious things. I suppose I was writing things of my own. I’d tease myself with a subject I knew nothing about then I’d go out and find as much information on it as I
could and put together a thing on it, a piece, to educate myself, and I liked doing that. At Kingsway I could actually share those ideas with other people because they were doing the same kind of
thing, and I’d be able to stand up and proudly present my thesis. It was creative writing, really. I was ready for something, I just didn’t know what.

The English Literature teacher there in particular was great – loved her. Really proper analysis of poetry and the written word. Even Samuel Pepys’ diaries, we’d have a poke at
that occasionally. Just loved it. Behind the scenes, I’d be reading everything and anything. Chaotically. Probably the same way I approached music – ‘I like the colour of that
electric-blue book!’

I loved Ted Hughes. That was fun. Years later I had a conversation about him with Pete Townshend from the Who, because he wrote the intro – in German! – to a Ted Hughes anthology.
Wow! Ted Hughes’ poetry was just great. The first one that pops to mind was a poem called ‘Thrush’, as in the bird. No, not
that
bird,
a
bird. It was great stuff at
that level, great stuff for kids of sixteen, seventeen, to be reading. It seems quite complicated and confusing, but as you grow older you realize that that’s quite a childish level. Small
steps get you there in the end – don’t rush into Polish philosophy straight away!

Dostoyevsky: there’s another hard one at an early age – you can’t
quite get to grips with the sheer audacity of the size of it.
Crime and
Punishment
, yes, but Tolstoy’s
Anna Karenina
I kind of disliked. And I had no tolerance at all for them bloody
Jane Eyre
-type novels. That’s Barbara Cartland territory
to me, I can’t relate to it, can’t empathize with the self-pitying woman having to deal with a man’s world. It’s Presbyterian, that’s the word. Everybody’s so
overly nice in it, and the cruelties are so exaggerated as to be cartoonish, so I have no time for it.

Oscar Wilde I found outrageously funny. Way ahead of the game, that fella, and wouldn’t be ground down, and led what was a very dangerous lifestyle at that time. Not delving too much into
exactly what it was he was doing, because there are no hardcore details, but it was the fact that he mocked the class he came from so well; he got at all the faults that were there. He was really
criticizing himself at the same time, and I liked that, I learned from that. We’re not perfect. And if I’m approaching things in my working-class way, I’m damn well sure I’m
going to be mentioning all the negatives along with that. And there are many.

Sid went to Kingsway too, and within a week or two, I’d met another John – John Wardle, whom Sid named Jah Wobble one night when he was so pissed he couldn’t talk properly. The
three of us were all problem children, for very different reasons. One way or the other, we didn’t fit into the system, and I don’t suppose many people can or do. The system I think
should be adjustable to us, and our tastes and needs. If you’re not meeting our expectations, then you’re going to get these oppositional scenarios.

Wobble, again, was hilarious. He looked so weird, a little warped. He was trying to affect a tough-boy look but it didn’t quite work on him. He looked more like someone’s dad out of
World War Two days, with the hanky on the head and the braces. And a big Tottenham scarf, and a big grin on his face. Hilarious, but a chap full of malcontent.

He lived near that Krays pub, the Blind Beggar in Whitechapel. The first time I went down there, I said, ‘But don’t you know that’s
an Arsenal
pub!’ We never rowed about football – there wasn’t the need for that. We had much bigger rows with everybody else. I had other mates, like Dave Crowe from William of York, who
were Tottenham. Of course there’s always been a big rivalry been Arsenal and Tottenham, but it wasn’t like something you’d resent each other for, because we had other things going
on. I’m not going to want to kill someone over a game of football. And I emphasize the word ‘game’. And seeing as I’m not specifically playing or in the team, I have to
remove myself from the brawling. Although I have enjoyed a good football brawl from time to time. Sid of course was indifferent, anyway.

I never really discovered what Wobble’s curriculum was. I don’t think we ever sat down and discussed our lessons. He was someone else to hang out with at lunch breaks. You had a
group of people to communicate with, and of course we were all on the outside of things. Wobble couldn’t understand Sid, and I’m the unification, how we all knew each other. Sid, me,
Wobble – and there were a few others, like John Gray – we didn’t really look like we belonged in this environment at all.

We were all viewed as potential-for-violence people. We understood that, because a friend of ours broke into the files at the college, and they had on file that Wobble, Sid and I had a
propensity towards fighting. Now, we didn’t. What we had was a questioning propensity, and then if you talked shit to us, you’d get beaten up. We were in this ridiculous fiasco. It was
utter nonsense, the accusations and misunderstandings of what we were and came from – that led us into being violent. Wobble genuinely wasn’t, originally. He wanted to achieve, and he
was pushed and presumed by the system. He was Stepney, Sid was Hackney, I’m Finsbury Park. It’s basically the same manor, it really is, with variations on a theme. The problem being
that the school system adjudged us as unteachable, uneducation-able.

Wobble was gone in six months – bored. He’d had enough. But he was my best mate, and stayed that way for a while. Do you
know why? Because he stood up for
Tottenham. He believed it, as ridiculous as it is. And I have no doubt, he believed me, as ridiculous as my Arsenal is. We were forming terra-firma gangs, outside of the regular discipline.
That’s good roots to punk, mate.

I was a diligent student, but about what mattered to me. And again the authoritarian encumbrance of times and lessons was not very helpful to me in the long run. Or the short run. After about a
year I got so mindlessly bored with it. It just wasn’t moving quick enough, and there wasn’t enough to occupy the head.

I was still working on the side, so I was bringing money in. I had all manner of jobs – I’d take anything that was going. Mainly, I worked on the building sites – Dad got me
jobs there for a while. I loved that, the money was fantastic.

On the sites, it was hard having to deal with the threatening behaviour of the Paddies. They were definitely always trying to enforce a pecking order, which I would have none of. ‘Ye need
ti knoaw yer place!’ ‘No, I fucking don’t!’ I resented being given a shovel and told to dig a hole. That was not fun for me. What fascinated me on a building site was
working with the site engineers, and designers, because it meant I could look at the technical drawings, and I loved all of that. I didn’t mind going out measuring the landscape.

Dad loved his cranes, loved them. He could talk up a storm on cranes of all kinds. He loved any heavy goods vehicle with a jib on it. That was his fantasy. He just loved being in control of
machinery, and he was very good at it. Manipulating cranes and moving things about, very excellent, pinpoint accuracy. The workers on the site really loved him for that, because if he was
delivering the bales of concrete, you knew it would go exactly where it was wanted. There could be some awful mishaps. I’ve seen people seriously injured with that stuff. If the crane driver
wasn’t up to it, there’d be bodies knocked off.

Dad taught me a lot about how to control the cranes. He’d just shut me in the cabin, and – ‘Get on with it!’ The noise alone would
terrify me.
There was no such thing as ear muffs in them days, and those machines could kick up a noise – solid cast iron, everything. Everything cold and freezing and hateful. I couldn’t make out
why he loved this. It wasn’t at all my thing.

If I was misfiring on the pedal, he’d slam his foot down on top of my foot, and that would hurt like hell. I suppose it had to be done, but Jesus Christ, the technicalities of trying to
operate two legs and two arms, and making them all do different things at the same time, was just beyond my reach.

One time, he broke my ankle with a shovel. Yep. I was actually in bed watching
Mystery and Imagination
, and he told me not to watch horror shows, because they give you bad dreams, so he
slammed the shovel on the bed, and that’s where my foot was, although he didn’t realize that till it was too late. I don’t remember much, like how my mum reacted, just the pain.
My ankle’s been a problem ever since. If it gets in any way cold or damp, oh boy, does that ache. I’ve had a form of arthritis from it ever since. It’s just one of those annoying
things that don’t go away.

It’s like when I dislocated my shoulder; it was not for any good reason at all, but I was too lazy stretching out in bed for a glass of milk – I love milk, you see, I drink it all
night long, so I always have a glass next to the bed, but I could not be bothered to actually move my body, and so I kind of twisted my whole arm, and dislocated my shoulder. So: hunchback,
dislocated shoulder, shattered ankle. . . Now I can’t move like a suave Mediterranean, and my life’s fucked.

Long hair had worn itself out for me. It was just a nuisance. It was a good thing to have on the building sites, because the old-aged Paddies hated it. Long hair made you a
magnet for coppers. But then, because that was the case, many thugs
wanted
long hair. Long hair meant many things. For some it meant, ‘Peace, man, I wanna look like Jesus, and
here’s my couch slippers.’ For others, it was a full-on aggressive act, like, ‘Fuck you, I’m not cutting it!’

The crop, the full-on skinhead crop, was an absolute act of aggression. I think most things begin with a form of aggression, even for the most passive of hippies.
Passive-aggressive was the stance. It was declaring that you don’t fit in, just let it grow out, and whatcha gonna do about it? That’s going to be the order of humanity, I think,
forever and a day; we will strive to be different. By the time everybody catches on, and we find out we’re the norm, then it’s time to move on.

So I decided to have my hair cropped short and dyed green. Krazy colour was genius. It’s a shame it’s not of the same thickness and durability today as it was then. They’ve
somehow watered it down, and the colours aren’t as vibrant. It’s pretty damn near next to useless unless you want to look like a faded newspaper. You know the cartoon segment that used
to be in colour in rancid old newspapers? Them kind of colours – that’s all you get out of it now. Or maybe people don’t know how to bleach properly. Back then, the colours were
really zingy and thrilling.

My dad seriously didn’t approve, though, and it was the final straw that got me thrown out of home. Dad’s famous quote was, ‘Get out the house, you look like a Brussels
sprout!’ I never forgot him saying that. I just laughed. Even in the painful separation of child and parent, there was humour. I loved him for it, because it was witty. Up to that point, I
hadn’t realized it, but it was true – I did look like a Brussels sprout.

The only way I’d ever get in the house after that was if I crept in at four in the morning. Except of course if my Auntie Pauline was over from Canada, at which point I wasn’t
allowed to come near the house at all, because I was an embarrassment.

After I got kicked out, I went straight up to Hampstead, where Sid was squatting. Sid had set up the squat, so well done him. I think he had a lot of help from his mother, so he was the leader
in all of that.

It turned out that his mother was a registered heroin addict. I was round at the flat in Hackney one time: we were playing Can’s
Tago Mago
album, and it was
Sid’s birthday, which I didn’t realize beforehand, and she gave him a little bag of heroin to shoot up. I have to say, I was really shocked. Sid said to me, ‘D’ya want
some?’ ‘No bloody way, I don’t go
down.
’ ‘Okay, it’s time for you to leave.’