For most Americans, the recollections are pretty much of the music only tunes that drifted over this way by bands with names like, The Sex Pistols, The Specials, Selector, Madness and the English Beat, among others. Unless some American had been fortunate enough to have hung out in London at the time, or made a conscious effort to follow the scene, a good many of us really didn’t have a clue as to what was going on politically behind the music. ‘Only Anarchists are Pretty’ and ‘Wheels out of Gear’ each provide a welcome context of that period for both those that were culturally and geographically out of range, and those that were in the thick of it. Each also employs a different approach to recalling that time.

Mick O’Shea’s, ‘Only Anarchists are Pretty’ (the title taken from a line on a shirt sold in the shop owned by Sex Pistols mentor and manager, Malcolm McLaren) takes an interesting approach; one that I wasn’t sure I was going to gravitate to at the outset. It’s technically a novel, billed as a semi-fictional account of the formation and trajectory of the Pistols’ career starting around 1974, when they were hanging about Malcolm’s shop fooling with musical instruments, up to 1976, after they’d gone through a couple of different record companies, had a fiasco of an appearance on Bill Grundy’s ‘Today Show’ and called it quits shortly thereafter.

The book bases itself on real events, gigs, appearances, etc, but fills in the blanks with imagined conversations and interaction. After an initial scepticism about going this route, two things turned me around. Firstly, this is what a lot of historians end up doing to sometimes make dry historical material more accessible to the reading public but don’t admit this. O’Shea is straight up enough to just state this right off. Second, he really knows this period and its players, either through personal experience or extensive research.

The reader feels like he or she is in the room or club with the lads when they are being themselves. The book’s blurb states:

“Mick O’Shea gives a fly-on-the-wall semi-fictionalised account of the Pistols’ early rehearsals, writing sessions and chaotic support slot gigs at art-schools and pubs capturing the chaos, rancour and the strange innocence of it all.”

Here’s a sample especially interesting, as it tells how the charismatic lead singer, John Lydon, got the moniker that would stick with him for years, Johnny Rotten. The guitar player, Steve Jones, and Glen Matlock, the bassist have written a tune and hand it to John for his perusal:

“It’s just something that me an’ Steve have been messing about with,” said Glen, handing John a folded piece of paper.

“What do you think?” asked Steve, sitting forward.

“Rubbish!” said John, turning his head to one side and blowing a lump of snot onto the floor.

“Fuckin’ hell!” yelled Steve, looking with disgust towards John. “You’re always doin’ that, you dirty cunt!” He stood up and crossed the room. “You’re fuckin’ rotten, you are, like your fuckin’ dog-end teeth!”

“Yeah,” said Paul, grinning at Steve’s outburst, as he was hardly the cleanest person around. “Johnny Rotten, that’s you!”

“Johnny fuckin’ Rotten!” said Steve, walking back towards the others, “that’s your fuckin’ name from now on!”

For the rest of the evening, every time John asked them a question they answered him by calling him his new nickname, much to his annoyance.

There’s tons more O’Shea bounces around going from club to flat to van to Malcolm’s shop, ‘Sex’ imagining the actions and conversations, with a realistic ear and eye. Not only do the dialogues seem spot on but also his visual descriptions lend themselves to imagining the scenes.

“On 30 March the Sex Pistols played their first gig at the 100 Club on Oxford Street. Ron Watts had booked them to play as part of a new groups night; if everything went well, they would be offered a Tuesday night residency… the red painted walls were covered with photographs and posters featuring various jazz musicians with colourful names like Champion Jack Dupree and Eddie Guitar Burns.”

This is a fresh approach to literary music documentation and makes for an entertaining read. It ultimately doesn’t matter if conversations and dialogues are not played back verbatim - who can really remember that well the events of their own lives? O’Shea does a fine job of capturing the flavor and spirit of that short but pivotal moment. Dave Thompson’s, ‘Wheels out of Gear’, follows a more trad linear style but is packed with detail, anecdotes, and analysis, seamlessly merging these aspects into a coherent fascinating whole. He begins with a pre-intro, entitled ‘A Word in Advance’, in which he sets out his intended thesis - an overview of England “immediately following the punk explosion of 1976-1978.” In this, he introduces the twin themes of wide-spread poverty and racism and then introduces the concept of music as a mobilizing and life altering factor:

“This is what this book is about - that four year period, 1978-1981, during which music not only took a stand against inevitability (for that was nothing new) but when it actually succeeded in that quest.”

He gets more specific in the intro as he cites unemployment statistics and events, for example, the 1977 fireman’s strike and the rise of the National Front, Britain’s right-wing racist organization that co-opted a portion of the skinhead movement. He also talks about the development of post-punk Oi! and 2-Tone music. After establishing the mood and transporting the reader back to Maggie Thatcher’s bleak, conservative late 70s Britain, he begins by introducing Jerry Dammers, who more or less single-handedly created the 2-Tone movement, complete with look, sound and record label.

Dammers had always been racially enlightened and aware, and had grown up listening to reggae and early ska amongst other music. Reggae had always been big in the underground in the UK but in the wake of early punk, it became more popular with the skins. Thompson relates how Dammers, after playing in a variety of bands, Soul / R&B, ended up forming his own band with some like minded musicians such as Horace Panter (Sir Horace Gentleman), Lynval Golding, and Neville Staples, among others, to do more pumped up versions of some of the older ska classics and the 2-Tone movement was born. Dammers first band was called the Automatics but the name eventually evolved into the Specials.

Dammers had had a vision of racial harmony in his music, and after getting the band up and running, and playing gigs around the country, Dammers set about realizing that dream on a bigger scale, creating the 2-Tone record label which first put out his own Specials’ records and then, attracting other bands like Selector and the Beat (later to morph into the English Beat, International Beat, Special Beat, etc). He even created the famous record label logo featuring the figure of ‘Walt Jabasco’:

“Drawing from every source he could lay his hands on, from old newspaper articles and photographs, from record sleeves and his own teenage memories, he first formulated, and then applied, the kind of image he believed a modern ska band should have. And finally, triumphantly, he was able to present his colleagues with a sketch of the finished item, the angular pop-art Dr Who whom he christened Walt Jabasco. Half Jamaican Rude Boy (Dammers’ inspiration was a mid 1960s photograph of the Wailers’ Peter Tosh), half London Skinhead; part mod, part punk, Jabasco would come to represent the Specials in every arena that they entered, and epitomize Ska-Punk to this day.”

I’d always been fascinated by the whole 2-Tone look and that Walt Jabasco character just kind of worked its way into my into my head during the late 70s, looking back at me from countless black & white checkerboard 7” vinyl labels - the ultimate hipster. Thompson’s got a lot of these anecdotes and stories behind the songs, gigs and the cast of musical characters who populated the scene but it’s not just a skank down memory lane. He intersperses the stories and history with well thought out cultural and political analyses that really allow the reader to experience the whole period. The 2-Tone explosion wound down a few years later as cultural moments tend to do - infighting, disagreements about direction - Thompson writes of this from the point of view of its creator:

“For Dammers himself, the entire dream had turned sour… as the band members quarrelled not only over the record’s content but its very direction. Everybody agreed that they wanted to take the band’s music somewhere new. But precisely where that somewhere was…that was something they might never agree on.”

Ultimately, life went on, new sounds emerged but the impact first, of the Sex Pistols and then, the 2-Tone sound was considerably felt, and both of these books, ‘Only Anarchists are Pretty’ and ‘Wheels out of Gear,’ offer a very thorough rendering of those years O’Shea’s folksy but entertaining fictionalized approach, and Thompson’s comprehensive behind-the-scenes literary documentary. Thompson also provides an afterward (after the epilogue) that relates what became of those bands and musicians, and also includes a “selectively exhaustive discography (1979-1981) of 2-Tone, Ska, Mod, Oi!, and related singles and LPs released during the period covered by the main text.” Both of these books were a delight to read and the interested reader will be the more informed as a result.

Marc Goldin currently lives in Chicago, with three cats, each one more long-haired than the last. Interests have ranged from medieval monasticism to discontinued stations on the London Underground – literary likes too diverse (some would say schizo) to list here although the last several years have been witness to an intimacy with Scottish and Irish literature. American Southern and Beat era lit also account for some of the ‘missing years’. Music tastes run the gamut from Cuban Danzon to Ska (all three waves but having a specific attachment to the second, two-tone period) to the Tuvan throat singers. Has written book reviews for a now defunct Irish literature site and has several short stories in various stages of development. Mad for black and white photography and aspires to someday have a complete collection of photos documenting every close in the Grassmarket area of Edinburgh. Works in the IT dept. of a French company in the current political climate. In football, supports Chelsea, Hibs, and for the sake of employment security, Marseille.

© 2004 Laura Hird All rights reserved.