The Hellfire Club - Daniel P Mannix

THE HELLFIRE CLUB - DANIEL P MANNIX

'The rise and fall of a shocking secret society whose sole interests were perversion and politics.' So says the blurb on the front cover and it's almost as if this book had been written especially for me. The Hell-Fire Club? Where do I join? But then I remember the Oscar Wilde quote with him saying 'I don't want to belong to any club that will accept me as a member,' and I'm stuck.

The Hellfire Club by Daniel P Mannix, first published in 1961, is the story of an elite club of men founded in the 18th Century by Sir Francis Dashwood whose main emphasis was on sex, drugs and the ridiculing of religion. A club that attracted the supposed brightest and the best minds of England that would secretly direct the fate of the nation, operating behind the scenes of government.

Members of the club included the Earl of Sandwich (who did indeed invent the sandwich), the Earl of Bute (who later became Prime Minister), Thomas Potter (the son of the Archbishop of Canterbury), William Hogarth (the English artist), Laurence Sterne (the novelist), John Wilkes (the British libertine), and Frederick, Prince of Wales.

The book is composed of large swathes of conjecture though based on a lot of facts that can easily be cross-checked. Amusingly, there doesn't actually seem to be any proof that any of these people were members though that doesn't stop Mannix from having a lot of fun with what is known.

When George III became king, his first act was to make Bute his prime minister, Sandwich the First Lord of the Admiralty, and Dashwood the Chancellor of the Exchequer. "I'll be the worst chancellor England ever had," Bute is reported to have told his friends, to which one of them disagreed: "But you have considerable experience with figures, My Lord. You have often helped chalk up how often each of us have had a go at the nuns."

Ah, the nuns. These were 'special' nuns, of course, who attended the parties and black masses held by the Hell-Fire Club where they would 'service' the attendees. Demonstrating, for example, new positions not found even in the Kama Sutra. Parties where sex and drink of only the most involved and esoteric kind would be served. Parties held under the maxim 'Do what thou wilt' and guided by the words 'Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven'.

I know what you're thinking. It sounds like just a typical night down your local pub except there you've got Guinness on tap and a pool table to mess about on and then back to whoever's house is available that night until the sun comes up. And you wouldn't be far wrong, actually. Debauchery isn't the sole reserve of the ruling class. They might well have more money and be more lavish but when it comes to imagination, inventiveness and indulgence of extremes, they do not hold a monopoly. In fact, this is one of the reasons why the upper class and even the middle class so dislike the poor and the working class. Because the working class naturally know how to enjoy themselves, whilst the middle and upper class can only buy enjoyment. They cannot invent and make it themselves.

The thing of note about this book is that it shows the workings of such elite clubs as the Hell-Fire Club, Eton's Bullingdon Club and the goings-on at Epstein's island is nothing new. Secret societies, elite clubs, nepotism and the old school tie have been with us for centuries. So too has the machinations and the corruption of power and the way it's clung to and wielded for the benefit of the few and the exploitation of the many. And that is where the difference in debauchery lies. Not in the quality of it or in its highs and lows but in the level of the power games that go with it.

John Serpico

Hombre - Elmore Leonard

 HOMBRE - ELMORE LEONARD

The book on which the film starring Paul Newman is based of course, and I'm a sucker for this kind of stuff where a film is based on a book and vice versa. It's the interplay between the two mediums and the 'compare and contrast' that comes into play. It's only natural to match one medium against another and to let the best man win and though both have their own very unique strengths, nine times out of ten 'Het boek is beter' as the Dutch say. Which brings us to Elmore Leonard and I didn't realise just how many films have been made from his books - 23 in total - including 3:10 To Yuma, Valdez Is Coming, Jackie Brown, and this one, obviously - Hombre.

First published in 1961, Hombre by Elmore Leonard is concise, succinct and to the point. It's an example of storytelling in a very precise way. Lean, mean and clean in its structure though set in a hot, dirty and unforgiving landscape. One of the major themes running through it is the subject of racism, specifically in regard to the treatment of Native Americans, accentuated by the main character having spent half his life living with the Apache.

Without going into too much detail, the story involves a stagecoach holding a mixed-bag of passengers being held up by outlaws and them being left to die with no water in a barren, Monument Valley-type environment. A turn of events then leads to the passengers being chased-down by the outlaws across this same hostile landscape. The only one of them who has any survival skills and of any use with a gun is, of course, the one raised by indians so it's him they come to depend on for their survival even when only a day earlier they didn't want him in the stagecoach with them.

The vast amount of the story is centred on the play-offs and stand-offs between the characters, with the indian-raised character - the 'Hombre' of the book's title - being the pivot around whom everything circles. It's a familiar trope, admittedly, but what grips the attention is the masterly way the story is told and the suspense maintained.

But is the book better than the movie? Well, one of the major flaws in the film when watching it nowadays is seeing Paul Newman dressed as an Apache, which unavoidably doesn't really sit right. There's also the feeling when watching the film that it's an ensemble piece but usurped by Newman. So yes, the book - as ever - is better. Or again, as the Dutch say: 'Het boek is beter'.

John Serpico

Dead Kennedys - The Unauthorized Version - Marian Kester

 DEAD KENNEDYS - THE UNAUTHORIZED VERSION - MARIAN KESTER

Another one of those scrapbook-type books but this time on the Dead Kennedys. Vocalist Jello Biafra has recently suffered from a stroke though by all reports he's slowly but thankfully recovering, so now is probably as good a time as any to revisit this: Dead Kennedys - The Unauthorized Version, written by Marian Kester.

Jello is 68 years-old now and the last time I saw him was around the year 2000 when he appeared at the London Anarchist Bookfair, down at the Conway Hall. The night before, he'd stayed at a friend's house in Bristol who told me he'd found Jello to be a bit strange, though that was okay by me because after all - it's Jello Biafra!

I was manning a stall at the bookfair and the place was heaving. I knew that Jello was there but I thought he'd maybe just come along to pick up a few books or at best to do a talk in one of the meeting rooms? What I didn't expect was for him to get up on the stage and deliver a long speech-type rant to the assembled hordes. And neither did anyone else. Unannounced and (as far as I knew) uninvited, there he was: some guy with a funny American accent up on the stage telling the largest, genuinely anarchist crowd he'd probably ever encountered in his life just what was wrong with the world and what we all needed to be doing about it. I looked around and it was obvious that most people there didn't have a clue who he was and were thinking 'Who the fuck is this?' It was pretty embarrassing.

Maybe it was a cultural misunderstanding thing? Maybe Jello felt he was at just another concert? Maybe he genuinely felt that he knew best and needed to enlighten us? But did he not think it strange that of all the people there, that he was the only one important enough to mount the stage and explain everything to us as if we were one of his audiences? To put it gently, there was a slight lack of self-awareness on Jello's part that day, it seemed to me.

Relaying this anecdote is not to diminish the brilliance and even the importance of the Dead Kennedys as a band, but it's just to show we all have our flaws - though most us us don't usually choose to flaunt them in a self-important fashion from a stage in front of our peers in a weird-sounding Walt Disney-character-type voice.

Musically, the Dead Kennedys were really good. Politically they were... interesting. You think of the Dead Kennedys and you think of East Bay Ray's distinctive guitar-playing. You think of the Dead Kennedys and you think of Jello Biafra's politics as amplified by his vibrato vocals. The music carried the politics, the politics supported the music, and combined a force of exuberant energy was created.

Printed in 1983, Dead Kennedys - The Unauthorized Version is, unfortunately, a bit of a cash-in. A vanity project, even. It's a muddle and a bit of a mess due to appearing not to know quite what its purpose is. A lot of the photos are lacklustre and the reproductions of Winston Smith's artwork are uninspiring. The interesting thing about it, however, is that it's almost a meditation on the Dead Kennedys. An attempt to try and understand what the Dead Kennedys are about and what they might represent. The writer, however, is on a hiding to nothing.  

Tucked away in the text of the book there's a line that acts as a clue as to why trying to pin down the Dead Kennedys is a fruitless task and to my mind it says a lot about them as a band: 'Perhaps being political in the US means choosing which conspiracy to believe in?'

For a band whose name rests on one of the biggest conspiracy theories in the world, led by a singer whose whole trip was to raise conspiracy theories as semi-alternatives to the New World Order and then shoot them all down; well, to try and come up with a viable explanation of what the band meant is like trying to nail-down jelly. Or jello. 

For all that, I'll say again, the Dead Kennedys were a brilliant band whose impact has been significant. Moreover, their song Police Truck is sublime: 'The Left newspapers might whine a bit, but the guys at the station they don't give a shit. Dispatch calls, "Are you doing something wicked?" No siree, Jack, we're just giving tickets. Let's ride, how we ride. let's ride, low ride.'

And not to mention, the lyrics to Holiday In Cambodia still stand as almost perfect punk lyrics, up there with the best of them: 'Play ethnicky jazz to parade your snazz on your five grand stereo... You're a star-belly sneech, you suck like a leech, you want everyone to act like you. Kiss ass while you bitch so you can get rich, but your boss gets richer off you...................      Pol Pot!!! 

John Serpico

Access All Areas - Barbara Charone

 ACCESS ALL AREAS - BARBARA CHARONE

When working as a music journalist in the Seventies, Barbara Charone was put on The Who's guest list for when they were playing Madison Square Garden but then found herself being denied backstage access by a security guard who presumed the only reason a girl would want to go backstage is because she's a groupie. Back then, rock critics were almost exclusively male so Barbara Charone was nothing less than a trailblazer, leading the way for other female writers to follow.

Hailing from Chicago, Illinois, by the age of 22 Charone had freelanced for among others the NME and Rolling Stone magazine before moving to London in 1974 to be a staff writer for Sounds music newspaper. This was the era of rock and pop exuberance when bands and singers would not so much walk the earth but soar above it. When private jet planes were de rigueur, payola part of the rule book, and cocaine a measure of success.

Access All Areas is the story of Barbara Charone's journey through the peaks and troughs of the music business - though mostly the peaks. The lofty heights where you'd find the likes of the Rolling Stones, Elton John, Rod Stewart, Eric Clapton and Madonna. A place, in fact, that on maps of old would be marked as 'Here be monsters'.

Two years after arriving in London, Charone was failing to heed the advice of Lester Bangs when in the film Almost Famous he says to the Cameron Crowe-inspired journalist about musicians: just remember 'they are not your friends'; with this actually being key to her whole book.

'You'd be surprised how many people who work in the music business make the mistake of believing the artist is your friend,' Charone writes 'That's really where the trouble starts. I saw so many people try to copy the Stones' extracurricular habits and fall by the wayside.'

Ten pages later she's writing 'At this point I must confess that by now I had developed quite a fondness for cocaine.' And then 'I was unprepared when Roger Daltrey burst into tears when discussing his struggles with Pete and I loved him even more for it. It was this kind of personal relationship that really made this era of journalism unique, something never to be repeated.'

By autumn of 1976, however, Charone was becoming restless: 'Punk was just round the corner, and it just wasn't for me. I was enamoured with more mainstream music and didn't really relate to this soon-to-be next big thing. I could feel the sea change fast approaching and began to feel it was time to move on from being a rock critic.'

So after approaching Keith Richards and him giving consent for her to write a book about him, that's what she did. Coinciding, by chance, with Richard's arrest in Canada for possession of heroin. From there she went to work for WEA Records in their press office before finally starting her own PR company called MBC, taking on (or rather, being taken on) over the years by the likes of Madonna, REM, Rufus Wainwright, Primal Scream, and Foo Fighters.

Access All Areas is a rollercoaster ride of namedropping and as Guardian journalist Alexis Petridis rightly points out in a blurb on the back cover, Barbara Charone is nowadays a music industry legend. In her book she comes across as a really likeable person who would make a good friend - though this doesn't mean, of course, that her book is above criticism.

The main problem with it is in the editing and the question of who it's being aimed at and written for. As an example, is it really necessary after mentioning somebody to put in brackets who they are? I mean: Jim Morrison ('lead singer of The Doors'), Keith Moon ('the infamous original Who drummer'), Ian Hunter ('the fab Mott The Hoople frontman'), Kiki Dee ('famous for a duet with Elton John'), etc, etc. Really?

And then she does Marianne Faithful a disservice when talking about Keith Richards by writing 'Back in 1967 he was infamously arrested at Redlands along with Mick Jagger (remember Marianne Faithful and the infamous Mars bar).' This is when Charone would know full well that the Mars bar incident is a myth and a lie, as stressed by Faithful herself. So why refer to it and in doing so dress her in that lie yet again?

There's also the question of Charone being rather too diplomatic for her own good. She calls Stephen Stills 'plain nasty' and Max Clifford 'despicable', and that's fine but when it comes to Sun tabloid newspaper editor Victoria Newton she calls her 'a credit to women everywhere'. Really? Let's not mention phone-hacking, shall we, particularly during Newton's tenure as deputy editor at the News Of The World before its closure in 2011?

And then there's Russell Brand who Charone was doing PR for at the time when he was hosting the NME Awards at the Hammersmith Palais in 2006, when Bob Geldof called Brand a cunt. The incident was used to escalate and enlarge Brand's public profile but behind the clash was the issue of 29 year-old Brand briefly 'dating' Geldof's 16 year-old daughter.

Access All Areas is good but if I was her editor I would have advised her to take the whole thing away and start again, and then to come back with a 'take no prisoners' attitude and with all guns blazing. She might well have lost friends and alienated people in the process but it would have made for a much better book.

John Serpico

Triggers - A Life In Music - Glen Matlock

 TRIGGERS - A LIFE IN MUSIC - GLEN MATLOCK

If you know your punk rock history then you'll know the sleevenotes to Honey Bane's 'You Can Be You' EP on Crass Records where Honey wrote (to paraphrase it a little) 'Do you know the difference between reality and fantasy? No you don't because you're still buying the Sex Pistols'. The year was 1979. Today getting on to almost 50 years later, I obviously still don't know the difference because here I am still buying.

Is there anything really left to learn from the Pistols? Well no, of course not. Or is there really anything left to learn about them? Well, there's always more than one way to skin a cat as shown by Steve Jones' autobiography 'Lonely Boy' a few years ago and even by John Lydon's stand-up speaking tours he's been doing. And now we have Triggers - A Life In Music by Glen Matlock.

An interesting thing about the Sex Pistols' legacy nowadays is that it's Steve Jones who has ended up being the most likeable member due in no small part to his radio show in America and his Tik-Tok videos. Steve has ended up as a very chilled-out guy possessed of a really good sense of humour. John Lydon on the other hand has ended up as being untrustworthy and conservative to boot, not helped in the slightest by his endorsement of Trump, MAGA, Brexit and even to a point, Nigel fucking Farage.

This is where Glen Matlock now comes in. In his book when talking about God Save The Queen, he says about how a couplet such as 'God save the Queen / The fascist regime' was impactful and powerful stuff and how still to this day it rings true. 'Anything that embarrasses the royal family,' he writes 'or exposes their hypocrisy and brings them to account, can only be a good thing.' He points then at the irony in Lydon now subscribing to the Trumpian MAGA bollocks as it's 'just fascism under a red cap'. 

Matlock also tells us about his television interview with BBC Breakfast that went semi-viral after he slammed Brexit and the loss of freedom of movement that it entailed. Online he received a lot of positive feedback and people thanking him for saying what they were thinking but alongside this came the negative feedback also, particularly on Twitter where people would post comments such as 'Glen, you don't understand. The Right is the new Left'. On clicking on their profile, Matlock says you would find the Brexit supporters to be Public Image Ltd fans.

There's no love lost between Lydon and Matlock and even more so now following the Danny Boyle film palava and the replacing of Lydon with Frank Carter, but where does it all stem from? Lydon has always been notoriously difficult to get on with, which can be seen by even Jah Wobble's disintegrated relationship with him nowadays but Lydon's and Matlock's relationship has historically always been fraught. What was it about Matlock that Lydon didn't like because going by Triggers, Matlock is a really good, very amiable bloke.

Lydon has always proclaimed himself as being working class and indeed, the issue of class has always been an important factor in regard to the whole Sex Pistols project. Matlock, for some reason, was cast as the middle class member of the band but this seems to have been based on him going to art school which is something Matlock suspects Lydon was resentful about, what with Lydon being a talented painter himself.

'Not that it should matter, but I wasn't middle class.' Matlock tells us 'I'm a working class guy who just managed to make it work somehow.'

In fact, when talking about the time when he, Jones and Cook first met Lydon and his gang he says 'They weren't anything like us. We were more working class, like the hoi polloi, and they were kind of druggy types. They struck me as a bit weird, but in a contrived way.' Lydon's gang, of course, included John Gray, John Wardle (Jah Wobble) and John Beverley (Sid Vicious).

There's also the whole thing about Matlock liking the Beatles and this being the reason why he was 'kicked out' of the Pistols. Matlock is almost at pains to point out that this is all 'total bollocks'. He was never sacked, he walked out.

'Can't you just pretend you like John?' he quotes Paul Cook as saying, to which he replies 'Like you two? Never saying boo to him?'

Lydon had always wanted his friend Sid in the band, something he obviously regrets to this day, given what happened to Sid. In fact, Matlock confirms it was Sid whom Malcolm McLaren first had in mind when it came to auditioning for the lead singer role, but it was Lydon who auditioned instead.

Matlock tells it straight and he acknowledges that everyone involved with the Pistols had a part to play in their success. That it wasn't just McLaren being the puppet master and it certainly wasn't all just down to Johnny Rotten. He even acknowledges the role that Freddie Mercury played in him having to attend an emergency dentist's appointment and subsequently enabling the Pistols to appear on the Bill Grundy show instead of Queen.

A whole series of events, in fact - or 'triggers' as Matlock calls them - led from one thing to another. The letting go of Wally Nightingale in their very early days, for example. Or Matlock taking McLaren along to the Hammersmith Odeon (pre-managing the Pistols) to see The Sensational Alex Harvey Band and McLaren when there and looking around and asking how much the tickets cost? About 75p, Matlock tells him, to which McLaren then asks how many people does the Odeon hold? About 3,000 Matlock tells him. To which McLaren does some quick maths - so that's 3,000 x 75p for a night's work - and the cogs in his brain begin turning. Kerching! 'Tell you what,' McLaren says to Matlock 'Let's have a little chat tomorrow about this band of yours.'

Life for Matlock didn't just stop on him leaving the Pistols, of course, which means a large chunk of his book is also devoted to the rest of his career and the countless anecdotes in regard to the Rich Kids, Iggy Pop, Blondie and all the other bands he's played with. 

Apparently he was approached by Paul Weller at one point to potentially join The Jam as a second guitarist but balked at the idea after realising he'd have to wear one of those horrible, cheap-looking suits they used to wear in their early days. From working at McLaren's shop, Matlock knew a bit about good fashion and those suits were most definitely not it.

Matlock also let's us know that on being nominated for entry into the Rock'n'Roll Hall of Fame, Steve Jones was left a message on his answering machine by Cliff Richard singing 'Congratulations'.  Can you imagine?

Unusually for a book such as this, there are no photos included in it though it must be said, the picture of Matlock on the cover is a good one and that's a beautiful guitar he's holding. Triggers is a good read and is probably an important addition to the Sex Pistols story and their oeuvre because it's coming from the horses mouth. Matlock was there whilst hundreds of other writers on punk weren't. So who to believe? Who to sort out the myths from the truth? Well, Matlock comes across as a really decent, forthright and sincere person so more than most he's probably your man for the job.

John Serpico 

Brendan Behan's New York - Brendan Behan

 BRENDAN BEHAN'S NEW YORK - BRENDAN BEHAN

What better person to have as a tour guide of New York than Brendan Behan? Playwright, author, poet, raconteur, rebel and alcoholic. 'To America, my new-found land' as he once famously said 'The man that hates you, hates the human race.' It was New York specifically that Behan loved, so much so that he wrote a love letter to it in the form of a book entitled Brendan Behan's New York that was first published in January of 1964. By March of that same year, however, Behan was dead.

'The person who says that he's not impressed by the New York skyline' Behan writes 'he's either half blind or he's just simply a liar'. And how can anyone possibly disagree with that? In fact, from every angle New York is mightily impressive. From the window of an aeroplane at night it's like the final scene from Close Encounters Of The Third Kind where the mothership ascends and all that can be seen is a dazzling lightshow.

From the streets of New York when looking up it's like being at the bottom of a canyon with the tops of the buildings obscured by clouds.

There's also the sound of New York, best heard from the top of the Empire State Building, that's like a gargantuan machine pounding and rumbling away at the centre of the earth.

And then there's the phenomenon of the setting sun aligning perfectly with Manhattan's east-west street grid, forming a corridor of shimmering gold.

Above all, however, there's the people. From all corners of the world they come. From the lowliest, poorest and most desperate to the richest, most successful and decadent. New York is the melting pot. The world's plug hole where all humankind is washed down. One of whom, of course, being Brendan Behan.

There's an awful lot of name-dropping in Brendan Behan's New York but then Behan seemed to know an awful lot of people, and those he didn't know all seemed to know him. Of those he knew personally, he would always have an anecdote about them or an opinion, almost always funny or complimentary. In regard to Samuel Beckett, for example, Behan writes: 'Samuel Beckett is an old and very dear friend of mine and a marvelous playwright. I don't know what his plays are about, but I know I enjoy them. I do not know what a swim in the ocean is about, but I enjoy it. I enjoy the water flowing over me'.

In regard to Allen Ginsberg, Behan tells us he's a very interesting and important man, whilst Jack Kerouac is easily the most controversial person he met (in Greenwich Village, at least). 'I think the beatniks are highly dangerous men. They are all after a job and they're dangerous. I don't mind people going after a job, but the job that the beatnik is after is my job.' Written with tongue firmly in cheek.

'I never felt so much at home anywhere as I do in New York' he tells us 'I am not afraid to admit that New York is the greatest city on the face of God's earth'. There are other great cities in the world as well, of course, but in regard to New York, Behan was probably right. His ode to it in the form of Brendan Behan's New York serves as a last will and testament and though it doesn't make for a brilliant book as such, it's a very generous one. A returned compliment to a city he so obviously loved and that so obviously loved him back.

John Serpico

Suedehead - Richard Allen

SUEDEHEAD - RICHARD ALLEN

Joe Hawkins is out of jail and the world's now his lobster. He's got himself a job as a junior clerk and even his hair is growing: 'In another month or two it would be suede... in between being a skinhead and being what the Establishment liked to call normal styling. Suede - smooth, elite, expensive'.

No longer is Joe the king of the skinheads though it's a constant battle to temper his instincts and natural inclination toward violence and confrontation. Deep down he's still the same character except now he's more refined. More determined to get what he wants but by using other more varied means besides rampant bloodlust. Joe is now more in control, which means he's probably more dangerous than ever.

Written in 1971, Suedehead by Richard Allen is the sequel to his 1970 classic, Skinhead, where Allen had simultaneously struck gold and a nerve. Allen was a hack who wrote only for the money so after hitting paydirt with Skinhead it was a given that he'd immediately knock-out a follow-up. But hang on a minute. What exactly is a 'suedehead'? Well, Allen cuts to the chase and tells us:

'Suedeheads are difficult to define. They belong to no known bands nor do they amalgamate into gangs as their skinhead predecessors did. They are an enigma. An ant-social anti-everything conglomerate affecting status as their protective cover whilst engaging in nefarious pursuits more savage, more brutal than other cultists we have seen rise and fall in this past decade. Suedeheads have been known to use their umbrellas as weapons. Many adherents of this strange, loosely-joined cult have resorted to sharpening their umbrella tips...'

So does Joe Hawkins - psycho-skinhead extraordinaire - now walk around with an umbrella? You bet he does. And he's even started wearing a bowler hat rather like Alex and his droogs in A Clockwork Orange.

For all its violent elements, a noticeable thing about Suedehead is that there is actually a lot less brutality in it than in Skinhead. Joe still gets into scraps and still vents his rage upon those he hates - and Joe hates everything and everybody - but his violence is now more nuanced. Now he stabs rather than stomps. Moreover, there's a lot more sexual frustration on show in Suedehead than there was in Skinhead. It all still adds up to an enjoyable read but the prose does seems to be more diluted, meaning it has less of an impact upon the reader than its predecessor. If anything, it stands nowadays primarily as a signifier to a youth cult that never really hit the same heights as a lot of others.

Interestingly, at one point in the book one of Joe's friends designs an ad board listing a code of ethics for the suedehead gang they have just formed. Essentially it's a list of all the things they hate but the thing about it is that it's very similar to Vivienne Westwood's famous t-shirt 'You're Gonna Wake Up One Morning And Know What Side Of The Bed You've Been Lying On' that she would come to design years later.

At another point in the book, one of Joe's gang members says 'I hate skinhead punks and ex-skinheads trying to look like suedeheads'. The interesting thing about this being the use of the term 'skinhead punks' because Richard Allen wrote this in 1971, which was obviously some years before the word 'punk' even came into use in England come the rise of the Sex Pistols.

So rather than the sex, violence and misanthropy on display, it's more the cultural stuff going on within its pages that makes Suedehead noteworthy nowadays. And for all this, Suedehead hasn't really dated at all and still makes for a relevant read.

John Serpico

The Word For World Is Forest - Ursula K Le Guin

THE WORD FOR WORLD IS FOREST -

URSULA K LE GUIN

The premise of Ursula K Le Guin's The Word For World Is Forest is that resistance to oppression can profoundly change those resisting, and for the worse. Written on the back of the Vietnam War that Le Guin organised and participated in non-violent demonstrations against, it's an example of how science fiction can be a medium and vehicle for ideas that when taken at face value seem to hold no relevancy to the real world but are in actual fact of profound relevance to the Big Picture. At the same time, throwing into question what exactly is 'the real world'.

Le Guin was an interesting writer, to say the least. It's been said, in fact, that she was one of the finest writers of our time. She had a certain style that was very fluid and very natural, that didn't pander to the reader or condescend. For example, in The Word For World Is Forest she quite casually drops in a line like 'it was clear to anybody who hadn't gone spla from geoshock' and expects the reader to know what it means. And the thing is that yes, you do know what it means because it's all part of the rhythm of her writing and you're tuned-in as if you're clicking your fingers and tapping your feet to music.

And then she'll write 'Davidson lit his first reefer of the day' and then give no more credence to it. Davidson is one of the main characters in the book, and out of the blue Le Guin suggests he might be smoking weed all day as casually as you might chew gum - but then doesn't mention it again until right at the end of the book when his stash is getting low. As if it's all a very natural thing for a person in a science fiction book to be doing and doesn't warrant any more attention.

There's a lot going on in The Word For World Is Forest. The Vietnam War, for a start. The hideous obliteration of all life by fire in a given area via Napalm-type bombs. The equivalent of a My-Lai massacre. 'Swarming' in the way the Viet Cong might do, emerging en masse from nest holes. The idea of destroying to 'save'. Massive power, wealth and technology against so-called primitiveness. Colonization and subjugation under the guise of freedom. It's all there and intentionally so. Le Guin, however, sets her Vietnam on another planet.

On Earth, wood has become almost non-existent and is subsequently more valuable than gold, so when a planet is discovered where its surface is almost entirely covered by forest, it's immediately colonized and plundered. The native inhabitants of the planet are monkey-like, green-furred people who hunt with bows and arrows and live in huts. Like Native Americans and Aborigines, these native inhabitants are adept at transcending world-time and entering dream-time, going back and forth between the two but holding no distinction between each. Though they are two distinct and separate worlds, to them, both world-time and dream-time are as real as each other.

They are a meek, humble and peaceful people who possess no real concept of violence until that is, the humans arrive and start enslaving them, brutalizing them and cutting down their world. They ultimately come to understand that their world is being killed and they either accept it or retaliate. From there on, the battle is joined.

The tragedy of the story that Le Guin communicates so well is that from being a gentle, pacifist people where any fights are settled through singing, it's only a small leap to the adoption of ruthless and unforgiving violence as a tactic and that once that leap has been made there is no turning back. The Pandora's Box has been opened.

It's the eternal paradox. Fools step in where angels fear to tread but once that step has been taken there is no longer anything to reason. The bridge between dream and reality has been crossed. The wall is down and what has been freed can no longer be put back. As the main protagonist of the native inhabitants explains: 'You cannot take things that exist in the world and try to drive them back into the dream, to hold them inside the dream with walls and pretenses. That is insanity. What is, is. There is no use pretending, now, that we do not know how to kill one another'.

Ursula K Le Guin's The Word For World Is Forest is an example of science fiction at its best.

John Serpico

Moleskin Joe - Patrick Macgill

MOLESKIN JOE - PATRICK MACGILL

What do you need to do to earn a nickname like 'Moleskin Joe'? It's enough to make you want to read the book of that title just to find the answer, and the fact that it was published by New English Library in 1973 only adds to the curiosity. The NEL publication, however, is actually a reprint of the original first published in 1923, but on realizing this it simply serves to put the subject matter into some sort of context.

Moleskin Joe is a navvy - a manual labourer of old - working on the construction of canals and railway lines just like those whom Shane MacGowan sang about in his song Navigator on The Pogues' debut 'Rum, Sodomy & The Lash' album. Moleskin Joe is also somewhat of a gentleman of the road as they used to be called, bedding down at night in barns, sheds or under haystacks if the night is balmy enough. He's a confirmed bachelor too, that is until the night he saves the life of a girl from drowning and after her planting a kiss upon him is struck with love. From there on he's a man possessed, and when the girl leaves town the next day with her family, Joe spends his days thinking of little other than making her his wife and so sets out on an endless quest to find her again.

All in all it's quite a simple story but the beauty and joy of it is in the way it's written and the command of English that author Patrick Macgill displays. It's classic English language, I would say, filled with colloquialisms and phrases that are no longer heard nowadays but which at one time would have been the everyday parlance of the English underclass. It's Shakespearian. That's right, the language of the uneducated, English proletarian underclass was once the stuff of Shakespeare. 

Early on in the book, Moleskin Joe returns to the farm where he was raised as an orphan by a farmer who had mercilessly exploited him to the hilt. The farmer, however, has passed away during the six years since Joe had fled. 'What did you want him for?' asks the new owner of the farm. 'To make him die violent,' Joe replies. And what more eloquent way could there be to declare an intention to murder? The book is full of phrases just like this. As for the police, the navvies hold an almost natural dislike of them: 'The devil roast them!' as one of them puts it.

Moleskin Joe by Patrick Macgill is in no way a brilliant book especially as it's let down by some glaringly obvious plot turns that you can see coming like an articulated lorry reversing with all lights flashing. It is, however, a seemingly forgotten curiosity that captures a beautifully vibrant sub-strata of Englishness now long gone. Apart from learning that moleskin is the material used for durable clothing favoured by working men, we don't, unfortunately, discover how Joe came by the name 'Moleskin'. Not that it particularly matters though because Joe's characteristic traits are so well portrayed that you end up seeing the man behind the name, as a fully-rounded character with a heart of gold who, I'm happy to reveal without spoiling the plot, wins out in the end against all the odds.

In his song about 'navigators', Shane MacGowan showed nothing but respect for them, acknowledging the fact that they were a breed of worker who are now somewhat forgotten to history: 'They died in their hundreds with no sign to mark where, save the brass in the pocket of the entrepreneur.' Shane's song acts a poignant marker to their memory and so too does Patrick Macgill's book.

John Serpico

I Am Legend - Richard Matheson

I AM LEGEND - RICHARD MATHESON

The last man alive in a world of vampires, and what could this be a metaphor for, I wonder? 'The strength of the vampire is that no-one will believe in him' as Dr Van Helsing said in regard to Dracula. So what is it in our modern age that we refuse to believe in? That we refuse to believe is real until finally once its swallowed us whole and it's too late? Well, the possible choices are manifold really, aren't they? The horses are on the track.

I'm late coming to the show in reading Richard Matheson's I Am Legend but in being so it's very easy and possibly much easier to see the influence this book - written in 1954 - has had upon culture. For a start, it's obviously the genesis for the whole vampire genre being reimagined along with the idea of the modern-day zombie, right up to Danny Boyle's 28 Years Later saga. In fact, I'd say practically every book or film I can think of post-1960 that involves infection or the living dead owes a debt to Richard Matheson.

As Stephen King, one of the most famous horror writers in the world says in I Am Legend's afterword: without Matheson, he wouldn't be around; or to put it another way: Richard Matheson is as much Stephen King's father as Bessie Smith was Elvis Presley's mother.

Because of all this you might be inclined to think I Am Legend is old hat nowadays? That you've seen and read it all before? A book, however, is never labelled as being a classic for no reason and I Am Legend is indeed a classic and for very good reason. What makes it so is not only in how well-written and composed it is but in its perpetual forward motion, with each set-piece in the story upping the ante and expounding its own inner-world until the completion of a whole universe unto itself. The last page - the ending - being the final coup de grace.

I Am Legend is an excellent book.

John Serpico

Skinhead - Richard Allen

SKINHEAD - RICHARD ALLEN

As a certain Welsh skinhead/Oi! band by the name of The Oppressed once informed us: 'He's the king, the king of the skins. What's his name? Joe Hawkins'. And yes, after all these years he still holds the crown. And yes, if by chance you think you've never been introduced to Joe before then you're wrong because I can assure you, you have. Joe's always been with us and probably always will, with the only thing really changing about him being his style of dress. In Richard Allen's classic, pulp fiction book Skinhead, Joe is exactly what it says on the cover and exactly as described in the song named after him: 'See him walking down the street, Doctor Marten's on his feet. Levi jeans, Ben Sherman shirt, fuck with him and you'll get hurt'.

Joe Hawkins is the British folk devil incarnate, as conceptualized by sociologist Stanley Cohen in his book 'Folk Devils And Moral Panics'. He exists in the flesh but also very much so in our minds. In literature, the obvious comparison is with arch-droog Alex, in Anthony Burgess's 'A Clockwork Orange', except that Joe doesn't possess any of Alex's redeeming qualities such as a love for Beethoven or a knack at turning a good phrase in his native argot. No, the only thing that Joe's got going for him is his love of aggro that he sees as the pathway to him being respected. His motto could even be that which Emperor Caligula was fond of espousing: 'Oderint dum metuant', which as any common or garden Latin scholar would know as meaning 'Let them hate me, so long as they fear me'. 

First published in 1970, Skinhead by Richard Allen was a veritable phenomenon that was picked up and read by a huge number of working class kids. More people probably read it, in fact, than copies sold as it was a book that was passed around, particularly in the school playground and from older brother to younger brother. Teachers, of course, hated it due to the themes of mindless violence, racism and misogyny that ran through it. And they were right to - but then teachers were never meant to like it.

It needs to be pointed out, however, that just because Skinhead found a working class readership, it doesn't mean that violence, racism and misogyny are working class values. Far from it, in fact. In the book, Joe Hawkins' own father for example is a London docker who though quite capable of being violent, shows no signs at all of being racist or misogynist. Rather, he's a solid union man who believes in solidarity and the right if need be for 'the working man to withdraw his labour for better pay'. The only violence he actually displays in the book is when he gives Joe a thrashing in a bid to teach him a (rather too little too late) lesson.

Richard Allen on the other hand is the one who's really driving the book but it's difficult to tell where his personal politics might lie. A literary work exists independently of its author's personality, life or intentions and with Allen this was certainly the case, particularly when it was revealed his real name was James Moffat and he was a Canadian hack writer who lived in Devon. In a somewhat tranquil town called Sidmouth on the East Devon coast, in fact, as far removed from the London East End of old and skinhead violence as might be possible.

Popular culture, of which Joe Hawkins and Skinhead were very much a part of at one point can be an unpredictable thing that can often take on a life of its own, not only permeating and seeping into corners of society that other things fail to reach but also emanating and spreading out from those same corners. Which in this case leaves us at the end of the day with a book like Skinhead and its place in both sub-culture and popular culture alike.

Skinhead by Richard Allen may not be the most ideologically sound of books but it's still a fascinating artefact for all kinds of reasons.

John Serpico

1988 - The New Wave Punk Rock Explosion - Caroline Coon

 1988 - THE NEW WAVE PUNK ROCK EXPLOSION - CAROLINE COON

More so than Virginia Boston's 'Shockwave' book, Caroline Coon's 1988 - The New Wave Punk Rock Explosion once acted as an inspirational blueprint for the punk rock scene in its ascendency. What Caroline did was to capture punk both at its embryonic stage and - some might say - at its height. More so than any other book apart possibly from Ray Stevenson's 'Sex Pistols File', 1988 was the punk style bible that became required reading.

Based on a series of interviews Caroline conducted between July 1976 and June 1977, her book captures a vision being born. The remarkable thing about it is that at the time, she was almost on her own, being one of the few journalists astute enough to realise the importance of the Sex Pistols and the movement she foresaw them inspiring. As she explains in the introduction, she first saw the Pistols in March 1976 at the Nashville in London but on floating the idea of writing an article on them to her editor at Melody Maker music newspaper she was practically laughed out the office. It was a whole five months later that her proposition was finally accepted and in August 1976 one of the first articles ever printed on punk was published, starting with the line 'Johnny Rotten looks bored'. The rest is history.

Like a lot of music journalists at that time, Caroline had been heavily involved in the late Sixties/early Seventies hippy counterculture. She had been in attendance at the UFO psychedelic nights with Pink Floyd, written for Oz magazine, defended and supported Oz at their obscenity trial, and even co-founded Release - the free, independent drug charity.

The difference between Caroline and many of her fellow travellers, however, was that rather than mocking or even being frightened of the new, emerging punk attitude, she recognised the similarities between the two cultures and their shared oppositional positions to the mainstream. Punks were the antithesis to hippies, for sure, but the commonalities were undeniable.

'What's so different about youth today?' she asks The Clash during her interview with them. She's met with silence. But then Joe Strummer stands up and almost relishing the drama of the moment, turns around to reveal the stark, hand-painted graffiti on the back of his boiler suit that says 'Hate and War'. It's the hippy 'Love and Peace' motto but reversed, of course. And right there, like a line being drawn in the sand, history was in the making and Caroline Coon was there recording it.

Interestingly, Caroline ends the book with the words 'Whatever happens now, the force of punk rock will be felt in society at least until 1988'. Hence the title of the book. A whole fifty years later, though no longer viewed as a 'force' as such, punk is still with us in multiple guises with even many of the original school of '76 bands still performing to mixed-age audiences.

The fallout from the 'force of punk rock' is another thing entirely. Punk rock changed lives. Some for the good, some for the bad. Some for the better, some for the worse. Punk rock ruined lives but again for some even in this it was for the best. Like an eternal paradox.

Punk rock was never the be-all and end-all of life as we know it but for those caught in its explosion at whatever period or stage of it, it certainly made life a bit more interesting than the staid, generic version sold as being 'normal'. Better a punk life than a life punked. And as for Caroline Coon? Her legacy is safe but she still deserves to be honoured once in a while and our praise to her offered.

John Serpico

Shockwave - Virginia Boston

 SHOCKWAVE - VIRGINIA BOSTON

As this is its 50th anniversary, punk rock is in for some serious revisionism over the coming months and so, when in Rome, as they say. Shockwave by Virginia Boston was one of the first books to catalogue the very early days of punk although on being published in 1978, because things were moving so incredibly fast with urgent dispatches from the frontline in the form of new, iconic records being released on a weekly basis, it was already somewhat out-of-date.

Not that it mattered, however, because Shockwave acted almost as a drawing of breath. A sort of pit-stop before plunging once more onto the super-highway of cultural discourse. Punk was - it's important to remember - centred on music though this wasn't its sole reason for being of value. Punk was a multi-faceted and multi-dimensional thing. Punk was anything you wanted it to be and was there to take whatever you wanted from it. Punk was a free-for-all. 

Shockwave starts with a quote that says 'It was going to go down as one of the most boring decades in history I should think musically. The Seventies will now be a landmark in history because of what's gone on'. The quote is from Jordan, described as being 'Punk personality'. Nowadays, of course, we all know that Jordan was in actual fact the queen and punk was her once mighty kingdom.

Shockwave is a scrapbook, essentially, composed of photographs, quotes and snippets of lyrics; and that's not to belittle it in any way as there's absolutely nothing wrong with a good scrapbook. From the introduction you can tell it's been written just after the Sex Pistols have split up in San Francisco so therefore Public Image Ltd have yet to be formed, The Clash haven't quite left England for America, Stiff Little Fingers are yet to land, and Crass have yet to rear their angry heads.

All the usual suspects from the '77 school of punk are featured in glorious black-and-white snapshots but in addition to this and just as importantly, there are lots of photos of the audiences and individuals within those audiences. This in itself speaks volumes in regard to the punk idea of levelling the playing field and breaking down the wall between audience and performer. Here it is - within the pages of Shockwave - in practice. Underscoring this is also the amount of attention paid to fanzines and all the many quotes from their editors.

Shockwave is a good book and the enthusiasm it captures is palpable. Its purpose nowadays of course is to serve as a social document of a time now long gone but the problem with this is that if you're mad enough, you can end up paying up to £200 for a copy. The lesson in this is whatever you want it to be - that coincidentally is the same lesson to be gained from punk, really. The lesson is you.

John Serpico

Revolutions And Revolutionaries - A J P Taylor

 REVOLUTIONS AND REVOLUTIONARIES -

A J P TAYLOR

Based in part on his 1978 television lectures, Revolution And Revolutionaries is arch historian A J P Taylor explaining to the masses all about the revolutionary tradition. It's all pretty simple stuff, really, with Taylor writing in layman's terms about the points in time when the narrative was disrupted and the world turned upside down even if only for a brief moment before being righted again.

Starting with the French Revolution, Taylor writes 'There have been violent political upheavals as long as there have been political communities: kings have been overthrown, empires have fallen, new dynasties have arisen. But only from the time of the great French Revolution have there been revolutions that sought not merely to change the rulers, but to transform the entire social and political system. The French Revolution originated revolutions in the modern sense and it was not until after it that people knew what revolutions were like. Its events echoed down the corridors of history.'

It's an important point he raises because it seems as if the idea of revolution these days is that of simply replacing one set of rulers for another, or as Crass once put it: 'Just another set of bigots with their rifle sights on me'.

Ah, Crass. Now there's a  name to conjure with. 'Good old Crass,' as one of their critics once opined 'our make believe secret society, our let's pretend passport to perversity,' though personally, I always had a lot of respect for them. I admit, I was never that much enamoured by their slogans such as 'Fight War Not Wars' because - to put it bluntly - I always felt they were re-hashed and oversimplified hippy tropes, but their sentiments and what they were saying as asides and between the lines were sound. In fact, in a way it was the seemingly throwaway lines tucked away in their songs that held more weight than their grand statements. That what they were implying but not actually saying was better than what they were actually saying.

'Can't imagine a revolution could deal with anything so sad,' for example, from Deadhead. Suggesting a lot more than the whole of their better-known track, Bloody Revolutions. Or the random lines at the start of their A Series Of Shock Slogans booklet: 'Waiter, I came in here for breakfast, you haven't served me yet and now it's lunchtime, perhaps I could order supper?' The point of and the reason for putting the lines there being left for the reader to decide.

But I digress. The point being that a revolution doesn't just mean the chopping-off of the king's head or the deposing of one tyrant only to be replaced by another. Revolution means total revolution from top to bottom. 

A J P Taylor was a serious historian of course, and Revolution And Revolutionaries is a serious book but that doesn't stop him gently mocking in its pages the likes of Trotsky and seeing the comical side of certain events. Interestingly, he relays an anecdote about the time the BBC asked him to give a talk on the man he most admired in history. He offered to talk on Captain Swing but then for some unknown reason the BBC never got back to him about it. Was there an anti-Captain Swing bias at the BBC? Or perhaps the BBC thought Taylor was mocking them by suggesting a person who may never have even existed?

For all that, the best parts of the book is when Taylor is quoting some of the revolutionaries he's writing about such as Chartist leader Feargus O'Connor and his habit of addressing crowds as 'Ye horny-handed sons of toil'. 

Or anarchist philosopher Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and his 'Universal suffrage is counter-revolution'. 

Or better still, French revolutionary Louis-Auguste Blanqui who on being asked what would happen after the revolution, replied 'If you are on one bank of a river you can have no idea what are the problems on the other side. LET US CROSS THE RIVER AND SEE.'

John Serpico