| Of all the myriad legends that surround the original
punk era, few can surpass the true story of The Gonads, the first
and arguably the most determinedly underground of all punk bands.
Forming in 1974, they were then five 16 year old schoolmates who built
up a strong following among kids their own age with their boisterous
brand of Slade and Faces influenced rock, chaotic stage performances,
down to earth attitudes and chirpy Cockney humour.
Through-out 1975, the band’s support slots with the Heavy
Metal Kids, The 101ers and the Sensational Alex Harvey Band were
completely ignored by the music press.
But here are my notes from that year:
“Gonads! Gonads! Gonads!” It is the long hot summer
of 1975 and four teenage tear-aways are playing a barnstormer of
a gig in Charlton’s Antigalligan pub.
Tattooed yobboes, surly rockabililes, left-over skins and suedeheads,
pub rockers, and unreformed Slade, HMK and Mott fans mix in a surging
sea of sweat and lager. The band is them and they are the band.
In the pilchard-packed audience are such notables as Pistols-to-be
Cook and Jones – who, if you asked them today, might just admit
that Anarchy In The UK bares more than a passing resemblance to
the Gonads old set-closer Antigalligan Last Bell.
Other soon to be notorious herberts in attendance included the
very young Coming Blood, two of Ian Dury’s roadies, various
members of Squeeze and one Michael Fitzsimmons (who even then was
never known to buy a drink.)
More impressive is the presence of Tucker and his Ruckers, the
pride of The Valley, a bakers dozen of iron-limbed terrace warriors
acting as the group’s legion of horror. No claret and blue
scarf would be raised here this day.
The band are as tight as a gnat’s fore-skin and louder than
a Bernard Manning belch.
The lead singer is strangely beardless and that very first line-up
would be largely unknown to today’s Gonads connoisseur: Mark
Gladding (guitar), Al Strawn (bass), Chris Culmer (cowbells), Peter
Lunn (drums) and Zoe Bailey (hand relief). Steven ‘Si”
Spanner and Clyde Ward were not to join until a year later. While
the songs they played will be familiar only by legend: “Rucking
All Over The World”, “Rob A Bank”, “Stroke My
Beachcomber Baby”, “Filthy Rich”, “Red Robin
Blues”, “Ripper’s Delight”, “England’s
Glory”, “Pink Tent”, “Darling Harold”,
“The Ballad Of Reg n Ron”, “Charlton Salt” and
“Big Balls”.
At the time I wrote ‘This band will go nowhere’. How
wrong I was. For it was only two years later that they played their
first gig outside Charlton (also their last gig outside of London
until 1997!) when they set off on their legendary acoustic tour
of South London curry houses.
After the Pistols signed to EMI, record companies from Virgin
to Jet were queuing up with offers but sad to say football trouble
proved the band’s undoing. Gal Gonad and Si Spanner were arrested
during a pitch invasion at a Charlton Millwall friendly. The ag
spilled over into gigs. The band tried heroically to defuse the
tension, but following a series of shock incidents including the
brutal gang rape of Spanner by a Lions supporter called Emily and
her three uglier sisters, the Gonads grabbed the offer of an American
tour from New York Dolls manager Malcolm McLaren.
It wasn’t until they stepped off the plane and sobered up
that they realised that he hadn’t meant the USA but Latin America.
Dumped and penniless the Gonads had no option but to fulfill their
contractual obligations while Talcy Malcy nicked all of their ideas
and claimed punk as his own.
So while Gonads-influenced punk stormed the UK charts, the band
were playing everywhere from Bolivia to Argentina – a country
they were to flee leaving behind a £75K bar tab, thus inadvertently
setting off a wave of anti-British feeling that was to culminate
in the Falklands War.
Back home in 1977, the Gonads formed their own Scrotum label and
released their first single ‘Stroke My Beachcomber, Baby’.
They also unsuccessfully approached Charlton striker Derek ‘Gypo’
Hales for management. When he turned them down, for a laugh they
accepted a management offer from a local character called Dodgy
Dave Long who immediately decided the band should stop gigging and
“hold back until the time is right”.
They held back for three years during which time Gal Gonad began
writing for Sounds under a pen name and made the Cockney Rejects
stars. Spanner killed time doing session work for Van Halen, reaching
those tricky notes Eddie couldn’t make. Long meanwhile was
flogging Gonads originals such as ‘Two Pints Of Lager &
A Packet Of Crisps’ to his other band Splodgenessabounds.
Outraged Gal and Spanner replaced Long with Garry Johnson who
famously lived “in an ‘ouse in ‘Ackney with an outside
loo”.
They reformed the band with a new line-up in June 1981 and the
rest is history. Their classic recordings like I Lost My Love To
A UK Sub (based on a true story) and Punk Rock Will Never Die cemented
their legend as the greatest Oi! band of all time.
Christine Cousins, 1989
|
The Gonads first formed in 1976
out of the remnants of Pink Tent, a seriously nutty group of teenage
rock and Monty Python fans with situationist ideas above their station.
We got together at school in Lee, South East London in 1970 and started
writing comedy sketches, then graduated into a sub-Dr Feelgood boogie
band playing mate’s houses, parties and pubs. There were a few
Gumbie-inspired street happenings outside the Tigers Head which are
best forgotten.
The original Gonads played a few pub gigs
in Charlton, which is where guitarist Clyde Ward joins the story,
and released Beachcomber on our own Scrotum label before breaking
up in early 1978. The tracks referred to in the mythology are all
actual songs.
When the Gonads reformed three years later
they were just Gal and whoever happened to be around and up for
a laugh. Steve Kent co-wrote most of the early stuff with Garry,
Mark ‘Captain Oi’ Brennan was a frequent Gonads offender.
Our first recorded track was Tucker’s
Ruckers on Carry On Oi, followed by the Pure Punk For Row People
e.p. Back then in 1981 we described ourselves as a socialist street
punk band. We ran the Anti-Nazi League phone number on the back
of the e.p. (along with ones for Alcoholics Anonymous and Beki Bondage)
and supported the Prisoners’ Rights organization and the League
Of Labour Skins.
Gigs were few and far between. We did play
acoustic sets in curry-houses, we did rocked-up music hall covers
in pubs with Frankie Flame and performed as the Gonads at the Bridge
House, Canning Town, but never played outside of London.
The Business played on many of the early
Gonads tracks, then Splodge and the Blood. The Cockney Rejects backed
Gal on the Total Noise e.p.
Iron Maiden, Def Leppard and UFO were all
in on the Gonads caper and volunteered to play on a couple of numbers
behind the backs of their record companies, but sadly the idea never
got past the late night hotel bar stage. Only two of us ever slept
with Christine Cousins.
The Gal Gonad/Steve Kent alliance went on
to perform as both Prole and the Orgasm Guerillas. And Gal played
guitar on Lord Waistrel’s song Reg & Ron, but his only
serious oi-oi input at this time was as manager of The Blood (1984-5).
In 1985, he co-wrote and sang on Hop Off You Frogs by The Bizarre
Boys.
The Gonads weren’t to exist in a concrete
form again until 1990 when Gal teamed up with old buddy Clyde Ward
and Colin Blood (Cardinal Jesushate) to record the original versions
of Lager Louts, Alien Culture and British Steel.
We jammed a bit, but nothing serious happened
until 1996 when Gal and Clyde recorded the Lottery Song and the
as yet unreleased Mystic Meg. A year later, we recruited Casanova
Kev on bass and the hardcore of the new Gonads was born to record
our comeback single Oi! Nutter b/w (What’s The Story?) England’s
Glory.
In 1998, we toured the USA with Rockin’
Dave on guitar and the Romulan on drums (see gig pix elsewhere on
this site). The rest, as they say, is hysteria….
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