[kj] Youth

Mon Dec 1 15:23:18 EST 2014

I though Ninth was excellent, but the new one hasn't really grabbed me. Where Ninth sounded focussed and strong, Lion sounds interesting but rambling and all over the place.

Jim.

--------------------------------------------
On Mon, 1/12/14, Geoffrey ODonoghue via Gathering <gathering at misera.net> wrote:

 Subject: [kj] Youth
 To: "gathering at misera.net" <gathering at misera.net>
 Date: Monday, 1 December, 2014, 8:22

 Youth has been cropping up quite a bit in
 non-KJ-related projects in 2014.
 (the next bit
 is from a post I sent a while back that never seemed to show
 up)

 Peter Murphy's 2014 release, Lion,
 is a full collaboration with Youth in that Mr Glover not
 only produces and mixes but co-wrote the music and plays
 bass, guitar and keyboards. For me Lion is PM's best
 release since Cascade, his last full collaboration with Paul
 Statham. I don't know if it's Youth's
 involvement that has seemingly re-energised Murphy (his
 previous release, Ninth, was quite good) but I really like
 the result of the Murphy/Youth pair-up. Murphy's vocal
 delivery is back to its histrionic and meldoramatic
 finest!

 I was reading a post in another forum
 about Youth's work on Pink Floyd's The Endless River
 and the poster stated that Youth is married to David
 Gilmour's daughter. I searched for confirmation of this
 but couldn't find anything. Is it true or is the poster
 just confusing Youth with Guy Pratt who is married to Rick
 Wright's daughter?

 While searching for
 confirmation I found an item by Youth on louderthanwar.com
 about his pre-KJ days. It's a great read. I don't
 know if it's already been posted here.

 Link -
 http://louderthanwar.com/youth-killing-joke-supported-adverts-1977-band/

 Transcript - 

 In
 1977 I had just left school. I wasn't going to be 16
 till the end of the year, so I was still 15 and had just
 returned from a summer job in the South of France where I
 had been working as a general worker on a British run
 campsite.

 Just prior to this time I was what was
 known as a "Soul boy", going to disco's in
 London like Countdown and the Global village...listening to
 disco ...the look was very proto punk- Bowie pegs or tight
 jeans, winkle pickers or jelly sandals- later it got more
 eccentric with army uniforms and soon black bin liners and
 safety pins. I heard a lot of people talk about the Roxy but
 I never went but although not well documented, soul boys in
 London were the precursor to punk.

 The
 Holiday job was an amazing adventure, only slightly eclipsed
 by the fact that punk rock was exploding in London and I was
 missing my chance and I couldn't wait to get stuck in. I
 had caught a bit of the fever before I left and it tasted
 fresh. Prior to this I thought there was no point in doing
 music as a career choice as I thought it had all been done,
 how were you going to top the Stones and the Zep or the
 Beatles, Marley, Heatwave? It was futile trying, although I
 was writing songs by then I thought it was all over and my
 best bet was my other love, "Art" so, art school
 it was.

 I had been accepted to Wimbledon art
 school 2 years early due to a great letter from my art
 teacher and a great portfolio and A+ O 'levels.However
 as soon as I returned to London I got a bedsit in Earls
 Court with my mate from France Billy Daley who soon moved
 out to be with his girlfriend and Alex Paterson (later on we
 formed The Orb). Alex was my old school mate and moved in
 fresh from Croyden art school. He left school a year before
 and had caught the first wave of punk, going to the Roxy and
 had even been photographed there and was in a Sunday Times
 supplement spread on it!
 Punk taught us the future had only
 just begun.

 Alex and me started going to lots of
 gigs. We would take speed, blues up to 4 or 5, sometimes
 more and pints of snakebite and we would walk all over
 London to gigs getting free entry at the Camden music
 machine and see a few bands on every night at the Marquee or
 the Nashville, and even Croydon Greyhound. Croydon was
 tricky as I had an unusual look at the time - my top half
 was pure Elvis slicked back hair with side burns and leather
 but my bottom half was bondage trousers and a bib. If i was
 in Croydon at a gig and you couldn't see my legs I
 looked like a rocker ted and there was some bad blood blood
 between punks and rockers in Croydon.

 A
 teen punk had been murdered by teddy boys, Hells angels were
 kicking friends out of squats (including Alex) who were
 punk. So I took my life in my hands sometimes and got some
 deadly vibes but mainly incredulous looks of 'he must be
 crazy' luckily Alex knew them and kept them cool.

 I remember Shane McGowen hanging
 around that Croydon crew with his band The Nipple Erectors.
 It was at this time I also started to audition for bands,
 well I only went to one and it was in a Fulham rehearsal
 studio which had something to do with the Lurkers.

 I answered an ad in Sounds music
 paper. The ad was for a band with management looking for a
 bass player. I hadn't actually ever played a bass guitar
 in my life but I could play guitar a bit and knew what they
 did vaguely.

 Luck was on my side as there were
 about 8 guys queuing up outside this room and they were all
 a lot older than me- mid twenties at least they seemed
 ancient to me and none of them were punks.

 They were all pub rockers with
 mullets. The manager, who didn't look much older than my
 16 told me to wait until last. Years later he picked me up
 driving a black cab and told me that he was in fact 17, a
 year older than me!

 I got my chance and feebly
 explained how my bass had been stolen at a party the week
 before, fortunately the guitarist, "Riff ", had a
 spare Rickenbaker copy ...a beautiful sunburst finish on
 her. I kept my eyes on his hands and followed his strumming.
 For some unbeknown reason they immediately said
 "you're in the band" and then "we start
 rehearsing Monday for our tour supporting the Adverts.....do
 you want to move into our flat in Tulse hill?" without
 blinking I said "yes ! I'll move in
 tomorrow!"

 Ten days later The Rage were
 on tour supporting the Adverts and the Saints on a 32 date
 UK tour...Wow, and I was still a virgin.

 Gary Gilmore's eyes was on the
 ascendancy and the shows were packed and I very soon
 developed a huge crush on Gaye Advert, although she was
 friendly and I would get the odd shy smile she was firmly
 attached to TV Smith and they were always together. This
 ended abruptly when I realised I was totally out of her
 league and didn't want to get it in it when I caught
 sight of her and tim doing some, what i though then was,
 "heavy "drugs in a toilet but was speed, everyone
 was usually on speed, except us Proto "straight
 edge" Rage guys and the dark narcotics are usually done
 behind closed locked doors but I remember a few experiences
 where people were doing it openly at that time and it almost
 became hip.

 I'm told that smack came into the
 punk scene from NYC with the Heartbreakers and Nancy
 Stundegn. The Adverts were much older, They were in their
 twenties and they were going through a classic coping not
 very well with fame and success story. So its inspiring that
 Tim has carved out an uncompromising story on his own terms
 with his solo career and that Gaye is very active in the art
 world.

 The Adverts were a great band. TV
 smith had a lot to say and he really meant it. Gaye was icy
 cool beautiful and indifferent on stage but her bass playing
 was great and worked well against Howard's razor buzz
 guitars.

 The Saints were an amazing band. They
 still had long hair and looked liked junkies in old
 raincoats but they sounded amazing, not unlike the Ramones
 but with more chords. They were Australian and ripped the
 place apart every night. The Adverts were riding high on a
 hit single and most of the shows were full if not sold
 out.

 The venues were from large clubs to
 theatres holding a couple of thousand kids. The weird thing
 I remember was their sound guy would mix in the sound of
 applause at the end of their set to get the crowd clapping I
 presume, although totally unnecessary as the crowd went
 berserk every night .....I have never seen or heard that
 since.

 The band I was in was called The Rage
 and they had a strict no drugs. no pot policy- 'hippy
 stuff" they sneered when we came across it. I was too
 young to really question it but it didn't bother me I
 was having the time of my life on half a shandy in a club!
 The band was formed by John Towe, who's claim to fame
 was that he was the original drummer in Generation X. He had
 known the Adverts personally from the Roxy and was a
 determined, ambitious and driven man and a nice guy. Later
 he replaced Laurie Driver in the Adverts who he had taught
 how to play. Laurie only had one beat but he played it
 really well, when John Joined I think the Adverts were at
 their happiest.

 Unfortunately our guitarist
 wasn't a nice guy and very soon upped sticks to form the
 first punk super group called the White Cats with Rat
 Scabies from the Damned. This split the band up. We had
 first begun with an american singer called "Skip"
 who was like a innocent Iggy Pop. I can't remember what
 happened to him, I think his visa ran out and he returned to
 the USA but he was soon replaced by Chris Gent who was
 another pub rocker gone new wave and played a sax and not a
 bad singer. We didn't let him play his sax though.

 Chris later went on to form the
 Stukkas and had a hit with "Too Late To Be 21"
 which was the Rage's best song and as I remember we all
 wrote it. However the Stukkas version, which was a minor hit
 was without our song writing credits. Strange, delicate,
 synchronistic forces were at work. Weird, my manager now,
 and for the last 25 years, is Jaz Summers who managed the
 Stukkas briefly around that time. They were his first band
 after Richard Digence had got them a publishing deal on that
 song and so indirectly was working on my music then from the
 beginning for both of us.

 By
 the time the tour got to Liverpool we were hitting our
 stride and sounding pretty good. The manager of Erics in
 Liverpool offered us a regular support slot at the club- 3rd
 on the bill, 5 nights a week for 2 weeks....Bingo!

 We moved into a road full of squats in
 Liverpool, our manager Dave and I were put up by Budgie,
 then in the Spitfire boys (who also included another member
 who would be my manager and great mentor Bill Drummond of
 KLF fame) and later Siouxsie and the Banshees.

 Budgie was a very affable gent who
 always had a smile on his face. We supported the Stranglers,
 the Pretenders- everyone who was anyone that played at
 Erics. It was two doors up from the original Cavern and had
 a magic and aura of legend and promise. One night we all
 ended up after the gig in a party at another squat in our
 road which was Jayne Casey's, who was then in Big in
 Japan and later on went on to run Cream the legendary super
 club of dance in the mid 1990's.

 "I lost my virginity to a girl
 from the DHSS, in Jayne Casey's squat in
 Liverpool......"
 It
 sounds strange like a Buzzcock's song title but
 nevertheless it's true and kind of sums up my 1977
 experience. It would make a good movie....
 That night I copped off with a girl
 who worked at the DHSS ( the dole office ), I lost my
 virginity that night. It was strange experience. I had been
 waiting to lose it for what seemed like an eternity, and
 here I was with this older, more experienced civil servant
 with liquorice glasses. We got stuck in on a mattress on the
 floor in a quieter room while the party raged next door.
 What I remember was all I could think about was what Peter
 Parker had told me at school when he had claimed he had lost
 his virginity- "Feels like sticking your finger into a
 pot of jam" he had said and it did too, but before I
 had even got it in, I had thought it was in and had started
 thrashing around when she exclaimed "Eee its not even
 in yet ! "

 She then grabbed my wannabe
 manhood and guided me in, when after 6 strokes I blew my
 load and rolled over, she wasn't happy. Later on we
 tried again but her scent and the whole thing was making me
 think that maybe I was gay and didn't know it or
 something was wrong with me, I got out of there super fast
 in the morning.

 Riff had had a flirtation
 with my stepsister Nicole who was drop dead gorgeous, they
 had a snog at the Slough gig but a week later we were
 playing the Vortex and he couldn't remember her name.
 Her face collapsed and I stifled a laugh but also felt for
 her and immediately realised he wasn't a good guy, a bit
 of gigolo. He would always turn up in a Range Rover separate
 from the band driven by a much older attractive women, who
 was married to a well known pop producer/composer.

 The times were such that I shared a
 large room with Riff in Tulse hill, he had the large double
 bed and I had a small single tucked away in the corner. When
 Riff got bored with a girl he was seeing he nodded her on to
 me, Debbie was lovely she didn't say much but looked
 gorgeous and her scent was sweet to my hormone receptors.

 One night I was laying in bed and then
 there she was, naked and next to me, no words spoken but her
 eye's made it all understood. We stayed together a few
 nights.

 This all happened before my next band
 the all girl, all lesbian, Stilleto's- whose lead
 singer, I kid you not was called Fanny! I was the token
 hetrosexual punk. The band were fun but awful but that got
 me spotted by Punk Svengali Jock McDonold at a gig at the
 Aklam hall and invited to join John Lydon's younger
 brothers band, the 4 be 2's and got me on my first
 record, One of the Lads, produced by John Lydon and released
 on Island which grazed the top 40.

 This was all before Killing Joke,
 which was the end of my innocence.... Killing Joke had
 started to happen at around the same time and very soon
 eclipsed it, although there were some interesting
 connections.

 John Lydon came down to a Fatal
 Microbes recording that we all ended up playing on, I played
 bass on an Annie Anxiety record, although that was part of
 the Adrian Sherwood, Crass posse. There was a lot of hanging
 out at P.I.L mansions on Gunter Grove and an inter
 pollination was happening.

 Labroke Grove was a very exciting
 place to be at that time, the birth of Post Punk. The next
 band I supported was Joy Division on their last tour with
 Killing Joke which was an amazing experience and
 still just the beginning....I feel
 very privileged to bear witness .and survive to tell the
 tale.

 -----Inline Attachment Follows-----

 _______________________________________________
 Gathering mailing list
 Gathering at misera.net
 https://pairlist4.pair.net/mailman/listinfo/gathering