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<\/p>\nBy George Berger.<\/p>\n
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I came straight up from nowhere, I\u2019m not going straight back there.<\/p>\n
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Pulling into Herne Hill station, your view on the left is the beginning of Brockwell Park. It was here you\u2019d alight to see one of the many big gig \/ rallies of the early eighties. The Right to Work, CND, righteous one day festivals often organised by the GLC under the leadership of Ken Livingstone. As such, perhaps the last time any authority got busy with proactive behaviour that felt benign and on your side. Ironically in or near 1984.<\/p>\n
Distant memory of a distant smile. Off the train, pit stop at the offy at the bottom of Railton Road, then a day\u2019s free entertainment as the alternative masses mingled on the grass. Good times.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n <\/p>\n As the great and the good gathered, a particularly vivid memory revolves around the \u2018Jobs for a Change\u2019 march. It\u2019s vivid because it recalls the nuances of the times. Unemployment was rife.<\/p>\n The \u2018dignity of labour\u2019 was something I\u2019d seen my dad buy into and be consumed by (see the Kent House chapter), and I had no intention of following him down that route.<\/p>\n That day, I had a Clash t-shirt on, with \u2018Abolish Work\u2019 written on the back in marker pen. The nuance of the times is such that nobody thought I was on the other side of the argument \u2013 people understood beyond the binary back then.<\/p>\n A couple of notably sympathetic people were handing out similarly sentimented leaflets on the day, entitled \u2018Work Makes Free?\u2019, and illustrated poignantly by a picture of the gates to Auschwitz (\u2018Arbeit Macht Frei\u2019). The invitation was to look beyond a life of drudgery to a better existence \u2013 the rejection of the work ethic that has so insidiously undermined human happiness ever since the industrial revolution and probably before.<\/p>\n This had been influenced by various benign forces: I\u2019d read (and indeed reproduced) the Yippie manifesto of 1968 which declared \u2018let the machines do it!\u2019 and foresaw a future where every man and woman is an artist, unencumbered by the drudgery of spending the majority of your time being somewhere you didn\u2019t want to be. Over the pond, the French were expressing similar ideas:<\/p>\n More contemporarily, the Clash made various lyrical remarks about the soul-destroying nature of some jobs, with \u201cMonday\u2019s coming like a jail on wheels\u201d and \u201cit\u2019s the best years of your life they want to steal\u201d. It was supremely comforting and strengthening to know that others were thinking along the same lines.<\/p>\n And they were right. The protestant work ethic is hideously outdated these days, despite the reluctance of reactionaries on both the right and left to come to terms with this reality. I like to think I was in the avant-garde on that one: I had no intention whatsoever of rotting away in some job I hated. Which at that time looked like all jobs. I was far from alone that day in Brockwell Park, which was also a source of comfort. It didn\u2019t even occur to me that there may be jobs out there I didn\u2019t hate.<\/p>\n I decided not to put it to the test anyway, just to be sure.<\/p>\n Despite all this, of course, there was a broad solidarity with the unwillingly unemployed being tossed on the scrapheap (as they perceived it). There was a broad solidarity with anyone who was fighting the Tories on any level. I think that was understood by all sides, despite the traditional in-fighting of all the left groups, vying for top dog position in their imaginary revolutions. And Brockwell Park, Herne Hill end, was the early 80s setting for many of these debates and celebrations.<\/p>\n * * *<\/p>\n Herne Hill. It sounds like a setting in Robin of Sherwood doesn\u2019t it? The hill of Herne, where the horned God is worshipped on the first day of spring every year, as the Wickerman<\/em> soundtrack smirks insidiously in the background. Only it\u2019s in London, so it\u2019s nothing that prosaic.<\/p>\n These inner suburbs have more history than the outer ones, somewhat logically. Because people were living inner, back when it \u2018were all fields round \u2018ere\u2019 outer. The area was previously known as Island Green, or even Ireland Green in some references, dating back to 1746. According to a local estate agent, there are three suspected sources of the modern name, none of which suggests a pagan place:<\/p>\n So strange how we live our lives via these semantic signposts without a clue as to the meaning of the words we utter with such regularity. Words become mere recognized patterns of sound, stripped of meaning or history. Bastards.<\/p>\n Though only 4 miles from Charing Cross (officially the centre of London from which all road signs are measured), it\u2019s got a genteel suburban nature for the large part.<\/p>\n By the 1800s, it was home to the posh houses of the \u2018merchant class\u2019, including John Ruskin, who grew up there. Then, the train line that forms the spine of this series of articles, arrived in 1862 and changed the nature of the area into an early commuter hub.<\/p>\n Like so much of the London sprawl, there are outlying facts that serve as a dichotomy to the general image of the place. Just outside the station \u2014 on the right as you approach on the train \u2014 stands the Half Moon pub (which will turn up later in this story as well). In the 80s, banners advertised the boxing gym upstairs, as though a part of the Old Kent Rd had been misplaced at the end of a row of uber-posh town houses. From uber-posh to Uber.<\/p>\n The tragic recent death of Sinead O\u2019Connor reported that she\u2019d moved to Herne Hill. Other celebs hover in the vicinity too. So, I guess it must be getting trendy now, all these years later. How different it must feel to share your living area with people who (financially) have a choice. Rather like Bowie in the Beckenham Junction piece. I grew up jealous of those strokes of good fortune: no one like that ever chose to live in Petts Wood. Indeed, you never even saw anybody that looked like they knew anyone like that in Petts Wood. Doors slammed shut in your face, locked, and the key thrown away into the grey, pin-striped swamp of conformity.<\/p>\n For me, Herne Hill is inextricably linked to the teenage dirtbag band I was in, and somewhat defined by, when growing up along this train line. We called ourselves Flowers in the Dustbin, after a line in the Pistols’ \u2018God Save The Queen\u2019.<\/p>\n The initial formation was largely a two-man affair, with me teaming up with bass player Chas. The seeds of that were first germinated in 1980, over in Lewisham Odeon, where I saw Adam and the Ants tear up the punk rule book, even discarding white sox, and do something far more interesting instead. There was only a tiny window between that and their subsequent, rather soul-destroying move into the teenybopper market, but that window \u2014 largely ignored by history \u2014 changed me forever. It was the art education I craved but never formally had. A slow burn coming of age.<\/p>\n However, it\u2019s not the gigs or records we ended up making that I remember when I think of Herne Hill. It\u2019s the year or so of magical inspiration that took us on a quest that led all over the place whilst getting it together. \u2018And then my mind exploded\u2026\u2019 as Hendrix once said. We were rubbish at that point, but it was a compost where the magic was grown.<\/p>\n Another thing I had in common with Chas \u2014 as I had had with previous bandmate Steve Steroid \u2014 was a burning desire to not get a job. From a wider perspective, of course, we were learning a trade. But the modern era, and particularly the Thatcher years, wouldn\u2019t frame it like that at all. Through their Daily Mail<\/em> filters, we were just layabouts. Of course, we were<\/em> layabouts but there was a lot more to it than that.<\/p>\n That freedom to know that all bets are off and everything is allowed. A glorious summer of commuting to Herne Hill, out of the station and along Milkwood Road to Ferndene Road. Two young punks armed with a battered acoustic and a heartful of ideas. I wanted us to be as arty and original as the (old) Ants but as authentic as Crass. I hoovered up the subversion in Malcolm McLaren\u2019s interviews as he promoted Bow Wow Wow, which seemed a fair stab at sitting astride both these ambitions. I sought an authentic art-glamour that could make a serious positive impact on the Culture War that was rapidly being lost to Thatcher, her theatre of cruelty and the promotion of selfishness as a good thing. She turns up a lot in these stories, doesn\u2019t she?<\/p>\n Also feeding into all this were my dark experiences outlined when we stopped at Sydenham Hill. Some early songs were the sound of me trying to make sense of it all, or shed metaphorical blood in pursuit of relief from the pressure. \u2018Another Love Song Bites The Dust\u2019 springs to mind as an early song title.<\/p>\n Chas was a year or two younger \u2014 a long time at that time and age \u2014 and therefore into slightly different stuff: Dead Kennedys and early Pink Floyd, for instance. Joy Division were in there too. Both he and I also had a big thing about war (or perhaps peace, more accurately). As did almost everybody at that point, what with the threat of imminent M.A.D. nuclear annihilation.<\/p>\n We both had a thing about inspiration that summer of \u201882. I\u2019d read Adam Ant talking about heroes and how he sponged up inspiration from great figures in modern history. We sought to do the same. \u2018No more heroes\u2019 was a decent and necessary catchphrase a few years earlier, but it didn\u2019t give you any signposts.<\/p>\n We went to the Scala cinema in Kings Cross to check out Ma\u00eetresse<\/em> and the Tin Drum<\/em>. Ma\u00eetresse<\/em> (rubbish) c\/o my Ants influence and Tin Drum<\/em> (brilliant) c\/o a Sex Gang Children interview we did for my fanzine, by now called Stability Ink<\/em>, having found a fourth chord in the rubble, to move on from Ability Stinks<\/em>. We bought a chamber music LP to see if there was anything in there we could get inspiration from (you can, I assume, guess the answer to that one! Unless you\u2019re really weird).<\/p>\n The point is, our minds were wide open and ready to sponge up the attitudes, successes and failures of the giants who had gone before us, and on whose shoulders we could stand: Lenny Bruce, Joe Orton, Johnny Rotten, Egon Schiele, Poly Styrene, Allan Jones. The list was endless; the guest list was open and inviting.<\/p>\n We tried serious covers of Jacques Brel\u2019s ‘Seasons in the Sun’ and Nat King Cole\u2019s ‘Nature Boy’. We went to the 121 Anarchist Bookshop in Railton Rd for their advertised Sunday lunch but were turned away. It was a mutual autodidactic DIY art course \u2014 chaotic and unfocussed, but swimming with ideas and positivity. I was moved by the appearance of the burgeoning Blitz Kids and wore a Chinese dressing gown with espadrilles, the soles of which wore out after about 2 weeks \u2014 those boots weren\u2019t made for walking. Chas wore make up, flowing fabrics tied to his holey black jeans, and kept the hairspray industry as afloat as his hair.<\/p>\n This all bears little relation to the band that Flowers in the Dustbin later became. We will be forever associated with the anarcho-punk genre now. Various reasons for that include the bands we shared bills with and the record labels we were on. We certainly shared ideals with those bands, as witnessed by the various benefit gigs we played and (importantly to me) our extra-curricular activities, aimed at changing the world for the better.<\/p>\n I\u2019d say this is actually where we parted company with most \u2018anarcho-punk\u2019 bands. I was interested in changing the world, not creating a self-imposed ghetto of mutual backslapping. We were at serious odds with a lot of the people in that scene, in that respect. They were often deeply (small-c) conservative and completely uninterested in taking the general public with them. Music by punks, for punks only. That was a serious fork in the road away from the original punk bands.<\/p>\n I wanted to play for the people \u2018outside the outsiders\u2019, the genuine freaks. I wanted to do gigs in mental homes, in prisons. I wanted to a crowd full of the disabled, the ugly, the socially rejected. When Morrisey wore a hearing aid on TOTP, I felt a kindred spirit. In Chas\u2019 bedroom in Herne Hill, these were the kind of ideas that were in free flow. To take punk where it was meant to go next, rather than getting trapped in a revolving door. I thought everybody would do that, and was bitterly disappointed when other energies \u2014 the forces of reactionary fear \u2014 were at work instead.<\/p>\n I also wanted to be as trendy as Theatre of Hate, paradoxically. I wanted the people who shopped at Worlds End and Johnsons to love us, the cool fashionable kids. Diametrically-opposed views going on there, but that\u2019s a prerogative of youth isn\u2019t it.<\/p>\n * * *<\/p>\n That offy that we stocked up in, on the way to Brockwell Park was at the start of the then infamous Railton Rd. Chas & I would sometimes walk the road up to Brixton. The sun always seems to be shining that year. Or maybe we just didn\u2019t bother going out when it rained.<\/p>\n Railton Rd had a bit of a reputation back then, particularly the squats at the Brixton end, being the epicentre of the riots, but that\u2019s for the next station. A teenager did try to mug us once about halfway up \u2013 \u201cgive me your money\u201d, he sneered, holding a pen as though it was a knife. We laughed and said (truthfully) we had no money and he walked off, crestfallen. That\u2019s not to say the adrenalin wasn\u2019t pumping though; any situation like that has dangerous potential.<\/p>\n (EDIT: note from Chas: “When that guy tries to mug us, I had just cashed my dole cheque!”)<\/em><\/p>\n * * *<\/p>\n Our early line-ups featured a tap-like succession of revolving drummers, finally coalescing on another Herne Hill resident on drums, Bill. When we also pulled in Simon, from the Anabollic Steroids and West Dulwich, we were essentially geographically a band based around Herne Hill, with me as the outlier down the line. On the outside again.<\/p>\n Bill was the other reason I spent a lot of time in Herne Hill. His knowledge of music was eclectic and encyclopedic. We\u2019d sit in his parents\u2019 house listening to music, grooving to all manner of stuff. Bill really opened my eyes to a lot of new things: sixties hippie obscurities, lots of funk.<\/p>\n By this time Chas, had defected to North London to be a squatter: though he was still in the band, the epicentre of inspiration had changed.<\/p>\n But Herne Hill was largely where it all started. Down the line, FITD returned to Herne Hill to play a gig at the Half Moon. The extremely dodgy promoter demanded a deposit against not enough people turning up. Though the crowd was decent, he decided it wasn\u2019t enough. Thank God for rubber cheques.<\/p>\n * * *<\/p>\n These days, Chas lives less than a mile from where I was born, on the banks of the river Mersey. Bill lives in Mallorca. I live just outside Brighton. But it was the hill of Herne that provided the backdrop to those early accidental magic rituals.<\/p>\n I eventually realised that self-employment was the missing piece of the puzzle that I was blind to back then, At that time, I just didn\u2019t know it was possible unless you were a plumber or a builder. I am more than happy for my taxes to be spent on people lazing around on the dole, for their whole life if they want to. I don\u2019t want people punished for not wanting to work \u2014 I want a kinder, more tolerant society than that. Basic universal income would be a start. An art start. That space is where creativity would live if it was still available.<\/p>\n Instead, we have an artistic culture dominated by posh boys, as they\u2019re the only ones who can afford the apprenticeship. We can all see how that\u2019s ended up. No future.<\/p>\n Other than the next stop: Brixton, where we seamlessly move from the SE postcode to the SW one, and indeed into a different world altogether. One that I would love. Go west, young man. More of that next time.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n An archive of all the articles in this series can be found here<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n![\"zina](\"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/zina-gerard-simon.jpg\")
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