A Multitude Of Sins - Hugh Cornwell

A MULTITUDE OF SINS – HUGH CORNWELL

There is life's rich tapestry and there is Punk Rock's rich tapestry and now and again they are both one and the same. There are also, however, anomalies. The Stranglers position in the tapestry of Punk Rock was always a contentious one with them at times being ostracised and at other times loved. When they first started out in 1974 they had been deemed too young and not good enough musicians to be accepted into the pub rock scene alongside the likes of Dr Feelgood and Eddie And The Hot Rods. But they were then deemed too old and too good musically to be accepted by the Punk scene though they were happy to be called a Punk band by sections of the media as it gained them publicity and ultimately secured them a record contract.

Pete Waterman once said there were only two great English pop bands, The Beatles and The Stranglers. It's an opinion (and a soundbite) though not one that very many people would probably agree with. The Stranglers were decent enough. The aggression in their music was always of interest though their sexism and sometimes even misogyny irked, to put it lightly. And when the two were married together and they came across as being aggressively misogynist it was just repellent, basically, because it was done without even a sense of humour.

Hugh Cornwell, of course, was the lead vocalist and guitarist in The Stranglers and A Multitude Of Sins is his autobiography and it's a curious affair. Essentially there's something at the heart of it that seems to be missing. A dimension to it that's just not there. It's like he's holding back on something and because of this it comes across as being pedestrian. It's almost as if it's been written by rote, as if writing his autobiography is the thing to do at this stage in his career rather than the thing he feels a need to do.

There are some interesting bits in it, of course, but then there's bound to be given the history of The Stranglers. Hugh tells us of a gig in early 1976 at Walthamstow Town Hall where they play support to Kilburn And The High Roads, this being the last gig played by The High Roads before their vocalist Ian Dury quitting the next day to form The Blockheads. Bottom of the bill is a band dressed in demob suits going by the name Sex Pistols. This extraordinary gig, Hugh tells us, was seen by the grand total of about thirty people.

When The Stranglers support Patti Smith at The Roundhouse in '76, backstage after the gig Joe Strummer bursts into tears in Hugh's arms and screams “My band is shit, Hugh! I want a band like yours!” The following week Joe disbands the 101ers and very soon afterwards goes on to form The Clash.

According to Hugh, the unsung heroine of the Punk era is Shirley Bassey because if she hadn't been selling huge amounts of records in the mid-Seventies, United Artists Records would never have been able to sign The Stranglers, Dr Feelgood, 999, Wire and many others. Apparently, Shirley Bassey was the 'cash cow' of Punk and has never realised it.

Hugh claims responsibility for starting the trend of spitting at Punk gigs, and apologises for it. He says he was also approached to produce the first Psychedelic Furs album but was too busy so Steve Lillywhite stepped in - and the rest is history (for Psychedelic Furs fans). Oh, and he confirms that Golden Brown is about heroin.

Hugh talks quite openly about sex and drugs but again it's all a bit pedestrian. He admits to taking practically every drug under the sun apart from ketamine (horse tranquillizer, basically) and Ecstasy, which is funny because both used to be eaten like food where I come from. He also seems quite pleased to have taken part in threesomes but again where I come from it's considered weird when you're not having sex as a threesome. His only celebrity affair, he tells us, was with Hazel O'Connor but again that's quite amusing because who hasn't had Hazel O'Connor?

I'm joking, of course, or at least partly, but it's all that can be done to derive some enjoyment from Hugh's book. And actually, the funniest bit is when he mentions the ice cream van The Stranglers used to drive around in to get to gigs, though I should add that it's not intended to be funny. Can you imagine? The men in black? Aggressive. Bad attitudes. Bad motherfuckers. Drug fiends. Misogynist. Turning up in an ice cream van?

A multitude of sins? Not really...

John Serpico

Poor Cow - Nell Dunn

POOR COW – NELL DUNN

My only problem with Nell Dunn is that she was upper middle class writing about the working class and this has never sat comfortably with me because I've always believed the working class should be writing about themselves, not having it done by others. That said, with Nell Dunn all is forgiven because essentially she was an observer and her observations are very truthful. Unlike most other writers from different backgrounds writing about the working class, she's neither condescending, patronising, mocking or critical but rather supportive, sympathetic and participatory.

Poor Cow was Nell Dunn's second book following the success of her début, Up The Junction. It was published in 1967 and with that in mind it's a surprise in just how adult it is in its subject matter and how ribald the language is.

Actually, the subject matter isn't so much 'adult' just unexpectedly honest, open and unflinching. There's no pretension, no coyness, no shame and no agenda just a refreshing transparency in saying how it is whether it's regarding sex or crime or the nuts and bolts of everyday living.

Poor Cow is a series of snapshots of a young girl's life, living in London and bringing up a baby alone. Life, however, is never a straightforward narrative from A to B but more like a ball being flipped around a pinball machine with the bells and the buzzers and the flashing lights adding not only to the delight but to the frustration.

Poor Cow is a patchwork quilt of monologues, plain storytelling, letters (complete with spelling mistakes), snippets of songs, anecdotes and memories. The whole creating a tapestry of working class life described by one of the characters as having one foot in the grave and the other in the gutter.

All that the main character wants is that which she only deserves but life is a perpetual struggle so happiness when it comes is grabbed at with both hands only for it to always slip through her fingers like sand. Her only constant source of joy is from that which she never asked for – her child.

On the one hand, Poor Cow is a depressing tale though on the other hand it contains a lot of humour ('Every bloke I've been with has bin very, very clean that's my main interest – if someone doesn't look clean I won't have anything to do with him – well I'll give him a wank, I'm not that selfish.') and the kind of lust for life that can only come from those with the odds stacked against them. Laughter in the face of adversity is a tool for survival used not only to smite the high and mighty but also wife beater husbands, men in general, nosey neighbours, and anyone really who might be the cause of grief. Tellingly, the main character uses laughter constantly against herself from start to finish.

Nell Dunn isn't what you might call a brilliant writer as such but she is a brilliant observer and Poor Cow is a very good example of this as is Up The Junction. Poor Cow is like the book form equivalent of having the words 'love' and 'hate' tattooed onto a pair of knuckles...

John Serpico

The Death Of Grass - John Christopher

THE DEATH OF GRASS -

JOHN CHRISTOPHER

It was during the summer heatwave as I watched the fields turn yellow, the reservoirs deplete, and swarms of insects emerge from the earth sending seagulls into a feeding frenzy that it became ever more clear how close society actually is to major disaster. Just four months earlier the snows had come bringing towns and cities to a grinding halt and the shops running out of food after a couple of days. How close exactly are we to the edge, I wondered?

Only recently when talking to one of the soldiers stationed at the army training camp close to where I live, the conversation turned to the worst case scenario from a no-deal Brexit. Current austerity might be a walk in the park compared to what could happen. Might there be major riots? Might the army be sent in to help restore order? He seemed to think so. It was discussions that soldiers at his camp had already held and not idle chat but serious debates.

Would you shoot me, I asked? Of course, he replied. Would you shoot your own mother, I asked? Too right, he said, she'd be the first...

The Death Of Grass by John Christopher is a book that had been out of print for years with original hardback and paperback copies being sold for silly money on the Internet. In 1970 it was turned into a film called No Blade Of Grass that likewise hasn't been shown on television or been easily available for years. Written in 1956, it's a cult classic that details the rapid disintegration of society when a virus wipes out all forms of grass; which means not only your typical green grass but also rice, wheat, corn and barley etc. This leads, of course, to there being no more sheep or cows etc due to there being nothing for them to graze on.

The story is relayed via the experiences of a typical middle class family and the effect the epidemic has upon them. It's not really the most thrilling of premises to view mass starvation through the eyes of the middle class but the way John Christopher handles it is quite brilliant. The first mention of the virus is when it's casually dropped into a conversation during a pleasant afternoon walk through a countryside pasture:

'There's such richness everywhere. Look at all this, and then think of the poor wretched Chinese.'

'What's the latest? Did you hear the news before you came out?'

Apparently there is mass starvation taking place in China, Peking is in flames, and the starving millions are swarming to get into Hong Kong to gain access to food. In India, Burma and the rest of Asia it's a similar story. It's anticipated that the swarming hungry will be machine-gunned to keep them at bay and if that fails then napalm will be dropped on them. All this stemming from a virus that kills grass.

Just as casually, it is then dropped into the conversation that the virus has now reached England.

It's the casual acceptance of multi-millions of starving people in the world that John Christopher highlights with this. The normalization of it. The concern that lasts for 5 minutes before the conversation moves on. The passive acceptance of there being nothing to be done about it. The passive acceptance of there being nothing they can personally do about it. Leave it to others is the accepted line. Leave it to the government.

Even when they know the virus is in England they sweep aside a frisson of fear because after all, this is England and they are English and they do things differently from the Chinese and other foreigners. The stiff upper-lip, the moral codes, the standards and the ethics are but a thin veneer, however, as they very rapidly break down to reveal the core sense of self-preservation at all costs.

As soon as the father of the family the story centres upon is confidentially informed that the virus is proving to be indestructible, that global mass starvation is pending and that the British government have hatched plans to bomb major British cities in a bid to cull the population so that some, at least, may stand a chance of surviving; all his middle class sensibilities are discarded and he turns into a lying, robbing, looting, ultra-conservative killer. Without a moment's hesitation he also then derides the altruism of others as being naïve and the displaying of basic human decency as being weakness.

Amusingly, in today's terms, the father could be called 'alt-right' and those he derides be called 'snowflakes'.

The main characters in the book are middle class and whilst John Christopher rips away the facade of their civility to expose the cold-bloodedness beneath, the story could just as easily have focussed upon a family from any other class. The difference being that the middle class family have the means and the connections to make a bid to escape to a sanctuary (in their case, an isolated farm in the north of England) and in that sense they can be lumped in with members of the government, the Royal Family, and other VIPs who are reported as having fled the UK to a sanctuary in Canada.

Those from any other class without the means and without the connections are simply abandoned and left to cope for themselves. They can go hang, take a hike, go to hell, or as writer Whittaker Chambers once put it: 'To a gas chamber – go!'

The Death Of Grass serves as a warning shot – a distress flare – signalling how close society actually is to total collapse. It serves as a reminder that come the time, if the ship should begin sinking that our leaders and our so-called 'betters' will leave us to drown if not firstly shooting us dead beforehand and then simply throwing our bodies to the sharks.

As Martin Luther King once pointed out, it's essentially socialism for the rich and dog eat dog turbo-capitalism for the poor. So when next there are food shortages, or when next the riverbeds run dry, there is really no room for us to complain. We can't say we've not been warned. Ultimately, we have only ourselves to blame...

John Serpico