How I Redeemed Myself (Part 2 1973-1974)

Following let’s just say my ‘troubled’ teenage years, having returned to Essex at 19 years old, under something of a cloud, aged 20, only months later I’d emerged like a butterfly to become the singer in a Colchester glam-rock band. I was also still on probation, as my father dryly described it, for being stupid enough to get caught. My new probation officer was in Clacton. I think she was a first-timer. After an initial meeting she said that she’d need to visit me at home. “How will I know your house?” she asked. I replied, “There’ll be loads of chicks outside, trying to climb the drainpipes, to get my autograph.” Her eyes widened, “Really?” I shook my head. “Nah. It’ll probably just be my mum hoovering one of the Jack Russells or something. They moult at this time of year.”

I got on well with my probation officer. I also recall that after a rocky start to 1973, landing a role as the singer-frontman for the Mighty Plod, was extremely good for me, both as a confidence builder and as an outlet for my hyperactivity. The first gigs were a rollercoaster. Our drummer Michael Natkanski’s diary reads.

“Wed April 4th, first gig with Martin. Fairlop Girls School, Chigwell: Screams. Mobbed. Autographs etc.

Sat 7th April. New Penny Disco, Stevenage. Booed offstage and nearly beaten up.”

After that first hysterical gig in front of teenage girls, the second gig was packed with resentful new-town suede-heads and their flinty-looking girlfriends. It had been dangerous. There followed another dozen gigs between then and April’s end. Our engagements ranged from Derby in the north to Margate in the south, taking in Southend, London and several other places. It was a baptism of fire, but I can’t, offhand, think of a more exciting way of beginning my 20th year. We were so young. The drummer and the guitarist were teenagers and Carl our bass-player was only 22.

We quickly became veterans. Not everyone in our locality approved, of course. The older blues and prog-based ‘musos’ didn’t think much of us. They didn’t like the prancing around, the make-up and our tarty clothes. They said we couldn’t play. But we were very visual, and crucially, we were working, while they weren’t. Other local bands didn’t range as far as we did.

We didn’t make that much money but we seemed to survive. We acquired stage clothes from various places and we ‘borrowed’ our girlfriends’ make up. Looking at old pictures I can see that we were all a little underweight. You tended not to see well-padded pop musicians back then, when most venues didn’t serve food. Returning late from gigs we sometimes stopped at vans parked in lay-bys, selling fairly disgusting burgers and hot dogs. These were usually wrapped in nasty white buns, devoid of any nutritional content.

Unusually for that time, my new companions in the band, unlike some of my earlier teen associates, were drug-free. We also didn’t drink much, so apart from our frequent lack of sleep and food, we were improbably fit too. We all ran on nervous energy. My parents, I think, were heartily relieved that, I’d found this new obsession and despite my increasingly outlandish appearance, that I seemed happy and ‘back in the world with us’ again.

That summer, our guitarist Paul Hart, moved on to a new band, and the band came off the road to train a new axe-man, Bachelor Johnny Cool. By late summer we were back in business again and by now, also beginning to write our own material rather than just playing covers.

That December we got a long residency in an Ipswich night-club, The Bandbox in the Buttermarket. Every other weekend, we’d do three nights in a row there, often playing four sets a night.

The management worked us like huskies. The Bandbox customer-base was a bit rufty-tufty and things could become somewhat sporty at times. But we loved playing there. The effect upon the band was to transform us into a rocking little unit. By the following summer we were, as they say in the trade, ‘tight as a gnat’s chuff’. Looking back on it now it was probably our very own Hamburg period. I’ve liked Ipswich ever since and went on to join an Ipswich band for three years.

The Mighty Plod also enjoyed several adventures playing the many air bases in East Anglia. One particular incident involved a woman twice my age, ‘no better than she ought’ who, as I walked offstage, strode across the dancefloor, then, in front of the entire audience committed an absolutely unprintable assault upon me. This, she said was because of the tight yellow trousers that I wore, the contents of which, so she said, she and her friends had been speculating upon. Certain of our rural gigs could be a bit ‘frontier’ like that at times To conclude, all I’ll say, is that joining an Essex glam rock band when I did, made a man of me. On balance, however, joining the British Army, as my father would have wished, might have been safer and better paid.