An Interview with Clive 'Winston' Blake - April 2019
Part 1: The Early Years
Clive Blake aka Winston - original bass player, and founding member of the League.
This interview - conducted in April 2019, was of course an absolute pleasure for me, and was one hell of a buzz, what with Winston being one of my musical heroes since I was a teenager way back in the 80s!... in one of my alltime favourite bands - the Anti Nowhere League!!
What follows is part 1 of the interview, covering the early years of the band. Parts 2 and 3 to follow.
Q) At what age would you say you became into music and which bands/genre of music were you into?
Blake "Probably when I was a skinhead in 1969. So what would I have been then, eleven, twelve years old? So just before I was banged up in an Approved school really. Which goes onto how I got my nickname Winston - I used to go to the local record store at the end of my road, and in those days you used to have to go into a booth to listen to records, they'd send you into a little booth and they'd play it, and anyway there was a reggae record called Big Thing by a Jamaican artist called Winston Blake, and as my name was Clive Blake when I bought the record everybody called me Winston! So that’s how I got the nickname Winston, which has stuck throughout my life really. I had a mate called Kim Styles and we was both skinheads together. It’s on the Crab label - and I've even got the record on vinyl upstairs in the loft. If you Google Winston Blake - I will come up in search results and so will that Jamaican artist as well. My middle name is Harvey - for my sins! Winston’s my nickname, but just as many people call me Winston now as they did when I was eleven/twelve years old, and just as many people call me Clive. Some people think Winston Blake and Clive Blake are two different people!”
Q) Could you tell us about the Approved school that you went to?
Blake "I was probably 11 and a half when I went in, I was a bit of a.. I mean nowadays they would put it down to ADHD or whatever it is, I was just one of them kids that was always fucking naughty and I was doing things and all that and my parents had enough of it - and I was out doing fucking burglaries and stuff like that, and my parents had me put away. They put me into the care of the local authorities until the age of 18. It was a 'short sharp shock' and you got fucking punished. It was also the time when a lot of sexual abuse and all that sort of thing went on. And I mean - hand on heart that never happened to me, I was lucky - probably nobody fancied me! But with a lot of kids used to go to the masters houses and there was all that sort of malarkey going on. But you never said anything about it - you just knew as a child and would hope that you never got picked. It was just the late 1960s/early 1970s, you know. It probably still goes on nowadays but in those days nobody could have moaned about it, or brought anything down on the people who did it, because they would never have believed them. You know - you was a little toe rag, and you was there to be punished.”
Q) Like most people, I’ve watched the 1979 film called SCUM starring Ray Winstone about British juvenile offender institution– how realistic was that film would you say?
Blake "Yeah, it was very realistic. Uniforms.. you know horrible things like kids wetting their beds, then another kid would come and piss in someone’s bed so they would have to have a plastic sheet on them, and called a bed wetter and all that. The bullying was horrific. But a lot of people come through it all, and yeah it probably had a profound effect on me and my later life, like it would with most people but it would break some people but not break others. It never broke me. It was close to breaking me I must admit, but it never did."
Q) When did you leave the Approved school and what did you do next?
Blake "I was 14 and a half when I came out. I came out on the Friday and I started work on the Monday. My dad was a printer but my dad had a mate who was a panel beater in a garage, and he'd got me a job in this garage as an apprentice panel beater and I started there. I served most of my apprenticeship but I got fed up with the bad money."
Q) So after a few years of working as a panel beater, you joined the Anti-Nowhere League with Chris and Nick?
Blake "Well before that - not many years before, I lived out in Spain working on the boats and that, and a mate of mine had died in Tunbridge wells and I came back for the funeral, and then I ended up staying. I then got a job working in the local nightclubs around our way doing security and all that. And in those days, I was dealing a few drugs, a bit of speed and stuff and I used to sell them on the door at the nightclub I was working at. Then as I say, I went on and did security for the Anti-Nowhere League, then of course went onto play bass for them."
Q) Is it true you had never played a guitar before?
Blake "Well.. its like everybody, you know I probably had an acoustic guitar at one time and a book on how to play the guitar... but couldn't fucking finger the strings properly and give it up. But there again when I joined the ANWL plus it was 2 less strings on a bass guitar, I persevered and mastered it in the end."
Q) Where you a fan of punk music in the 1970s when it all started and what genres of music were you listening to as a teenager?
Blake "I saw The Damned supporting T-Rex at the Rainbow theatre, I think it was when punk first started. I never really classed them as a punk band, what with Captain coming on stage in a fluffy jumper if I remember rightly - but I just thought they were a great band. But I like lots of different music. Probably my all-time favorite music is Motown and reggae. But there again my all-time favourite band is Pink Floyd, so my musical tastes are so diverse. I think in the band all of our musical tastes were diverse, and that’s what really made the Anti-Nowhere League, you know. It’s like Wreck a Nowhere, which came from the tune of Little Drummer boy originally, you know so bits stolen from here and bits nicked from there, and in the end it came to be an Anti-Nowhere League tune."
Q) You, Chris Exall and Nick Culmer all knew each other and were mates long before you formed the Anti-Nowhere League. Can you expand on this and explain how you came to join the League?
Blake “We was all in bike gangs together, you know I went to school with Nick, I knew Chris Exall from an early age and that, and we was all mates and knocked about together. So it was a bit more than just being in a band together. We had formed a bond long before the ANWL.
Chris used to fuck about with a guitar and try and copy Ramones songs and all that, but that was something he always had done back in the punk days. But he was never really an out and out guitarist, by any stretch of the imagination. I used to go over there on my motorbike, and we'd set up in his bedroom and he'd fuck about on his guitar and try and teach me how to play it, but I had no interest in learning how to play a guitar. Then we'd go out on our bikes and have a ride around you know. It was only when he started the band.. well he started with that bloke called Speedy, who was a weird little fucking singer, and with Chris playing guitar then.. in those days I was a bouncer in a local nightclub, and they asked me to do security for them at a gig they done at a catholic hall in Tunbridge wells, and I went along and done the security and they was playing there and erm, and.. I didn't really think whether it was good or whether it was bad. I thought it was a fucking load of noise to be honest with you. And then it was only about a week afterwards that they asked me to join, and I did and the rest is history."
Q) Your first gig with the League was at RAF Lakenhurst in late 1980 – do you remember that show?
Blake "Yeah. I took loads of drugs, drunk loads of Pabst Blue Ribbon all the way through! And because I had only been playing the bass for about 3 days, we had Chris' guitar plugged in through my speaker as well, so it sounded like I was playing! Yeah, RAF Lakenheath. It was where pilots who were into the motorbike thing, with the Chosen Few. Nick was riding with the Chosen Few for a while. All of the bikers were pissed anyway, I think we just kept on playing Johnny Be Good - I think it was! Let's face it, when you've got a load of drunk blokes, out of their heads on drugs and all that, they ain't really worried, as long as there’s something slightly musical in the background! So that was my first gig.”
Q) Looking back would you describe the ANWL as a punk band at the beginning?"
Blake "What we was at the beginning mate - we was a load of shit, we was all bikers, but we was a load of shit, and to be honest the only category you could have put us in was being in a punk band. You couldn't have put us in any other category cos we were so fucking awful. I don't think we ever went out to be a punk band.. I'm not a punk rocker - I don't mind punk music but I'm not a punk rocker. Chris Exall was never a punk rocker, he was a biker and Nick was a biker. So we was never punks, but I think that’s all we could play, punk music and get categorised as a punk band. We had more in common with the ideals, and the attitude than fucking most punks did anyway to be honest with you. Cos we never gave a fuck about anything anyway. Whereas a lot of people in punk did.. but we was all rebels anyway, I mean our first motorbike club was ‘The Rebels’ anyway - that’s what it was called, so we was always sort of anti-establishment long before punk was ever even thought of really.”
Q) In the early days of the band, it was mostly cover versions being played wasn’t it, with a few original songs?
Blake "We used to do Denis Denis, C’mon everybody.. a load of rock n roll songs.. I mean we did So What at that stage and also I Hate People, erm but yeah most of the songs were just cover versions, cos they was easy to play weren't they. They was either A D and E or E G and A.. sort of things like that. They was all pretty simple. Simple songs. The tune for So What was there, but it never really had any lyrics written until we recorded it in the studio. Nowhere Man.. Nowhere Man (sings) was all that was, fucking dire! I Hate People is another early one, but that wasn't all that "I Wish that I could run away, find a wall to bash my brains.." it didn't really have any lyrics at that stage.. it was just 'I Hate People, I Hate People.." !! It was only when we were put on the spot, and we had to go into the studio - I remember Nick sitting there, scribbling down words for lyrics. Noddy was another early one "Noddy you should know, you can never get a blow in Toyland.. Noddy he was there with his mass of pubic hair.." There weren't hard and fast lyrics for any of those songs, when the band was first going to be honest with you. I think Nick made the lyrics up as he went along. At the early shows you never knew what was gonna happen, Chris could have stopped half way through, tuning his guitar...
Q) Were any of the 'We are the League' album songs written before you joined the band, or did you co-write all of them?
Blake "Regarding songs, a couple of the basics were there but I help polish them so got a writing credit for them, but most of the songs we did when I first joined the band were really bad versions of old Rock n Roll songs, and an awful cover version of Blondie's Denise Denise. I co-wrote most of the early songs with Nick and Chris, The bass line for Russians came about just practicing my scales on the bass, A minor was always one of my favourite scales the same scale as Babylon's Burning by the Ruts, I think the last song I wrote the music for just before I left the band was Pig Iron, yes it is true before I joined the band I could not play an instrument but being put on the spot you have to learn and I was lucky enough on the way to have been helped by Alvin Gibbs, Paul Gray and Captain Sensible and my lead guitarist Mark Gilham helped me a lot and was very patient with me.
Q) Until you guys supported The Damned on a short 3 date tour in April 1981, you had only really played small gigs in Tunbridge Wells. The story goes, that you went up to see the Damned at the Bridgehouse in early 1981, and bribed Rat to let them take you on tour with them.
Clive "Yeah, Bridgehouse Canning Town. It was Nick and Chris who went up. I think I was working - I was still bouncing in those days. I think they went up in the week to see them in Canning Town and copped Rat in the toilets. The Damned in those days would have done anything for money and I think. What happened, I think we said we'd support them and pay them - but we ended up getting the same amount of money back when the promoters, as being the support group. So at the end of the day it didn't cost us anything except for the petrol for the van we had to drive up to the shows.
Q) That’s right, because The Damned at that time were on hard times, and had just left Chiswick records. Do you remember much about the 3 date tour?
Blake “Yeah, definitely. The first gig was on the Friday night in Shrewsbury. It was weird because we had only ever done gigs down our way before. I remember us going on stage and going down a storm, and afterwards people coming up and asking for my autograph! It was really weird - I thought why the fucking hell are people asking for my autograph. Before those shows it had been pubs with their own little PAs, or us hiring small PAs and that so they was really the first gigs, the ones we did with The Damned. I mean - fuck me, we never knew what a sound check was, or anything like that. And we hit it off with The Damned big time One thing that did help was that we did copious amounts of speed and amphetamines - and The Damned were well partial to a bit of speed, and stuff like that so turned them on to it, so we were fucking best mates! When someone is giving you drugs you are their best mate, aren't you! At the end of the day me, Chris and Nick are decent down to earth geezers. Whether it had been the ANWL, a biker gang, or you worked with us. It was no different you know, we are what we are at the end of the day.”
Q) Can you tell us the story about the trashed hotel room on that tour – was that all down to Captain and Rat?
Blake "Well - they definitely trashed our hotel room! Yeah, pyrotechnics.. which blew the wardrobe apart! Not sure if it was the Saturday night, or Sunday night, I think what we done was we (League) booked one hotel room and we all stayed in it. Because in those days we didn't have a great deal of money. There was no way we could have afforded a hotel room each. Obviously it was the same hotel that the Damned were staying in. So it must have been after the Walsall show. Anyway, The Damned came into our room.. and we had some girls.. I think we had a couple of birds that came with us from Tunbridge Wells, Rat Scabies got hold of one of the birds and was with her and it was obviously all in our room, because they (Damned) didn't want them going into their room! And then they sort of wrecked our fucking room! And next morning we sort of had to piece it all together, the wardrobe etc everything propped up on matchsticks - the thing was a fucking mess. Luckily we never ever got pulled on that for the damage, which was quite surprising. The last thing you'd want you know, after traveling all the way up there, the petrol costs all the way there and back, get £150 for doing the gigs, and only getting back the money we'd already laid out. And then having to pay for a wrecked hotel room - that would have been really good, wouldn't it!!"
Q) After the support slot for The Damned, things started to happen for the League, with the band being offered a slot on the Apocalypse Now show at the Lyceum.
Blake “Yeah that’s right it was called Apocalypse Now, which John Curd had put on. Curd had done the thing with The Damned and someone had mentioned our name, and he liked the name. We didn't know he was doing it until we saw it advertised in Sounds music magazine. That’s when we phoned up John Curd and said, what the fucking hell you doing you got our name. Yeah I heard your name and wanted you to play. So we turned up and played, and really - from that day onwards, people fucking loved us and we went down a storm. It was one of them weird things, we got on a roller coaster and we couldn't get off. We had started as a poxy bottom of the bill support act, we took a few people up from T Wells with us, and we went down a storm. We found that everybody else liked us and that was it really, we then went from strength to strength.”
Q) The ANWL had a reputation of being rough and ready, and Rat Scabies has previously commented that the League were ‘a bunch of very hard men’. Did you get much violence at League shows?
Blake “In those days you had lots of bands that went out and acted hard and all that, but the ANWL in actual fact were fucking hard! (Laughs). At times we had to back it up, and we did a couple of times. One night at the Marquee People trying to get up on stage and trying to act hard. We could always take care of ourselves. We were never any pussys you know. We weren't musos at the end of the day, we was normal geezers and we didn't portray anything that we couldn't back up.
To be honest, we didn't really have a lot of problems. Once I got hit with a pint pot in the head, which split my head open at the Mayfair rooms in Newcastle. It was just one of them things, I mean obviously some dickhead at the back of the audience thought he was hard and wanted to do that, which was pretty fucking stupid.. but.. and I had someone .. another geezer.. I think it was in Nottingham one night who kept fucking spitting at me - I fucking hated getting spat at, because you know if anyone had spat at me in the street I would have filled them in! But when you are on stage you've got to put up with it, a bit. And anyway, he kept spitting and in the end I smashed my guitar over his head - and he didn't spit again. But apart from that, no we didn’t really have a great deal of problems cos people realised if they acted like that, they would have got fucking bashed up.
We did have that incident.. I think it was Doncaster Rotters.. when that geezer came in to dressing room, and was having a go at Captain and Rat and I grabbed hold of the geezer and beat him up and threw him out. And that was it, over and done with. But you know, Captain and Rat fuckin shit their pants, cos some geezer was having a go at them. But you know, the geezer was a wanker, so he got beat up and thrown out. Other than that, we didn't have a lot of trouble - we weren't intimidated by people like that at the end of the day. I mean I wasn't, and I know Nick wasn't - because both of us could really handle ourselves, you know?
Q) One of the earliest original League songs was ‘Noddy of Toyland’ which you played at a few shows in 1980. Although it was demoed in 1981, why was it re-recorded with different lyrics – Rocker?
Blake “The Noddy lyric was the original, the Rocker lyric came later because our record company thought the Noddy lyrics were far too risky to release because of the chance of litigation from the successors to Enid Blyton who owned the rights to her books and characters which I believe was a company called Hatchette.”
Q) I'm sure I've seen an early photograph of ANWL using the Sex Pistols original amp. If so, any idea how they acquired it?
Blake “We purchased a lot of the Pistols gear from Paul Cook and Steve Jones when we were with the same management as them when they formed The Professionals, I had Sid's bass gear for a while and Chris had Steve Jones Fender Twin Reverb amps, we also had their P.A. system we sold a lot of the stuff later in our career which was a big mistake as it would be worth quite a bit of money nowadays, we also bought Topper Headon's drum kit etc when he was hard up after getting booted out of the Clash.”
Q) What did you/the band think of all of the spitting that used to go on in the 1980s?
Blake “I fucking hated being spat at and if anyone had done it to me in the street I would have beaten them sick! But when playing I put up with it, but on a few occasions I got severely pissed off with it and kicked the perpetrators in the face or hit them with my bass, and it served them right as they were told on many occasions not to spit at me.”
Q) It wasn’t long before Tony ‘Bones’ Shaw left the lineup was it?
Blake “When we had Bones playing for us, we played Retford in Nottingham, and he was asked to do a sound check, well - the bloke went can you run around the drums.. well it sounded like he fell over the drums! LOL not run around them.. Me, Nick and Chris looked at each other and thought - fuck me, we've got to get a better drummer, and also, Bones wasn't committed to the band anyway, cos he was a gold bullion dealer. So, he had a decent job anyway, and it came to a parting of the waves.“
Q) After Tony ‘Bones’ Shaw left the band, PJ was recruited on drums – were there any other drummers in-between?
Blake “When Bones left the band we tried to train up one of our mates to play the drums called Mick Hopper (Mick the Hop) but it never came to fruition so we asked PJ to join. I think we'd already eyed PJ up anyway, he was playing in the most raucous name of a band ever called the Ayatollahs. Funnily enough it was me who gave PJ the nickname PJ. He was always in the local pub playing the fruit machines, and he was an Iranian English student. I knew he was Persian so I called him Persian John. I knew he played drums, so I said - how about him? So we got him over to our rehearsal room in T Wells, and we'll give him a try. One thing led to another and we had him as the drummer in our band. "
Q) When PJ first joined the band, he used to appear on stage with a stocking on his head – what was that all about then?!
Blake “When he joined the band, because we had a big skinhead Oi following, and we had a foreigner for want of a better word, in our band, I said why don't we disguise him? So we said we'd make him wear a stocking on his head, but he was married to a girl called Amanda who didn't have any stockings, she only had a pair of tights, so we cut a leg off of a pair of her tights on put it on his head.. but you could still tell it was him, because he had that sort of fucking profile.. you know, big nose and jutting out. And we said we are gonna have this big unveiling of the drummer and all that, and we made him wear it for about 6 weeks, while he played with us... and then one time we let him go on stage without it. That was a bit naughty of us really. We had said we would have a big unveiling, where he would swing onto the drums like Spiderman, or something, but it was just to sort of pacify him cos we just wanted someone who could play drums reasonably well.”
Q) One of the earliest League songs, was Wreck a nowhere, who’s idea was it to do a cover of the old reggae tune? I’ve heard versions by Prince Buster and Soul Sisters.. and also can’t help noticing that it also sounds like the Little Drummer boy!
Blake “We nicked the song Wreck a Pum Pum by Prince Buster an old reggae/blue beat classic, the version we used is Wreck a Buddy by The Soul Sisters. It was mine and Nicks joint idea, and you're correct it's Little Drummer Boy!”
Q) Did the League ever record a studio version of Fuck Around The Clock, back in the 1980s?
Blake "Yes we recorded it at EMI Studios in Manchester Square London. If I remember correctly it had 53 fucks in two minutes fifty nine seconds! I remember because I was really worried about it - I wasn't a very proficient bass player, at the time, so I was worried about going into a studio and recording, which you would do! I don't know what ever happened to it. It was quite a buzz recording for EMI, cos we had visions of getting signed by them, and getting a million pound advance from them.. or something ! LOL I remember the sound engineer there, cos we had given him some hooter, and that fucking done him in! Captain sensible came in, because he was going to produce it, and I think he might have twiddled a few knobs or something like that.”
Q) You supported Rat Scabies & Brian James in the DamnedDeadSham band at the Clarendon in 1981, another very early gig for the League, with a lot of old songs etc Do you remember this show?
Blake “I don't remember much about it, didn't it go on to be called The Club Foot? About a year later Rat asked me to join a new offshoot band he was forming, it was going to be called the Bastard Squad I can't remember who else was going to be in it, but the League was really busy at that stage and I didn't really have the time with touring and a young family as well so it was put on the back burner and never materialised with me or anyone else to my knowledge.”
Q) Listening to live bootlegs from the early days – from early to mid-1981 the band’s set list consisted of early versions of ‘We Are the League’, ‘I Hate People’, ‘Animal’ and ‘So What’ – along with older songs such as ‘What Life’, ‘Someday’ and ‘You Nowhere!’ – songs that would soon be dropped for ever, in favour of new material such as the classic ‘Woman’, ‘Snowman’, ‘Lets Break the Law’ etc. When comparing shows from early 1981, to those of late 1981, what is clearly evident is how much better the band had become in a very short space of time, both from a song writing point of view, and also the superior live performances.
Blake “It was a case of having to Barry at the end of the day, wasn't it. We was like a poxy fucking band that really only played to our mates in Tunbridge wells. We then bribed the Damned to do that thing up north with them, which we done, Shrewsbury, Walsall and Wakefield and then all of a sudden John Curd liked our name, and put us bottom of the bill on the Apocalypse now. So once we was on that, you know we probably was still a load of fucking shit, to be honest with you! We was then under pressure to actually deliver, so you know I had to learn to play the bass, Nick had to learn to sing, Chris had to learn to play the guitar, and at that time we had to get in a better drummer, cos Bones was up to as far as he could play really."
Q) "Some of these songs, Snowman, woman etc must have been written in a very short space of time though, and there was so much going on in ‘Lets Break the Law’ with Chris’s guitar overdubs etc”
Blake "Yeah, but we was probably practicing 3 or 4 times a week over at Tunbridge. You know. By then we had started to take it seriously. Because we knew.. if you are doing something, you've got to fucking deliver the goods, haven't you. You know, and we had to. And it just all sort of came together. We were lucky. Very very lucky. I think you will find that a lot of the guitar work was double-tracked and triple tracked and things like that... and vocals.."
Q) Snowman is probably my most favourite track on the We Are the League album.
Blake "A quick story about the Snowman. Do you remember a band called the Cockney Rejects? They went up to our manager John Curd and went 'fucking ANWL! if they're meant to be so fucking tough, why are they singing a song about a snowman..' and Curd went 'Do you know what the song is about?' It’s not about a snowman, it’s about a cocaine dealer.. 'Oh!' So that just shows you how much they fucking knew! Cos they always used to make fucking quips about the band.. we never really ever met them, but if we had of done there would have been a fucking tear up with them I think."
Q) It was such an astonishing achievement that - in a very short time period, Chris’s guitar playing improved, you learned to play the bass and Nick actually started singing. I guess getting a decent drummer like PJ in also helped to cement everything. But with all four of you – it just all seemed to come together, against all odds.
Blake "Yeah, it was a case of having to because if we didn't then we would have probably gone up our own fucking arseholes and blown ourselves away. Because people wouldn't have put up with it! I mean I know punk music is sort of like getting out there, and being angry and all that, but you've got to be a little bit musical to a certain extent haven't you! And I think once those songs were polished and once we all worked on them together and everything, and I mean - most of those songs weren't really finished until we went into Nick Lowes studio in Shepherd's Bush and recorded the first We Are the League album. That’s really when the songs were worked upon. Before that time they were just sort of unfinished to be honest with you. I mean they're not difficult songs to play or to write by any stretch of the imagination, and none of our songs ever were. That is - until we got to the Perfect Crime album and all that sort of thing, it was just a case of having to deliver. And it was a good thing because we had to go out there and do it. I had to learn to play the bass and we had to sort of conform, for want of a better expression.”
Q) As you’ve said yourself, a lot of the League songs are deceptively simple to play on the guitar, but to me that’s the beauty of it really. Listening to something like, ‘Animal’ for example - it sounds so much more to it, but when you pick up the guitar and begin to play along, you realise theres not too much to it. It’s like all of the best rock n roll songs, the most memorable at least, they are all quite simple to play aren't they?"
Blake "That’s the thing. Less is more. You know, you've got A D E as most rock n roll songs are written in and all that. I was always a firm lover of the A minor scale - so most of the songs I ever wrote I always wrote in A minor. A prime example of A minor scale is The Ruts Babylon’s Burning, and is a great song and it’s got that off sounding sound to it, if you understand what I mean and that’s why Russians Are Coming & Out on the Wasteland is in A minor.. Lots of our songs are in A minor that I wrote the music for. So yeah, they're simple songs and people can join in playing along with them. We only started getting into faggy diminished fucking 5ths and things like that when Gilly joined the lineup, cos he was the musical member of the band. We had known Gilly years before he joined cos he played with PJ in a band and that sort of thing, but erm when we wanted to get more musical and that. That was our way of doing it - having another guitarist join.”
Q) Was John Curd your manager, and what was he like to work with?
Blake “Yeah, he was a manager of the band but to be honest with you he was a useless manager. Curd was a coke head anyway. He was a good promoter but a bullshitter, a fucking liar and a charlatan - and any other insult you want to throw at him! I always got on alright with him, and Nick got on alright with him. He was a fucking toerag but if you accepted him for what he was then that was alright - he'd lie like a flatfish the bastard would! We always wanted money, but he would never give it to us. I used to go up and stay on his boat - which was on Chelsea wharf, that he lived on, and I used to go up at the weekends and it would be cocaine and all that stuff, because he was a coke head at the end of the day. He ran a successful promotion company. We accepted him for what he was, and we were never under any illusion that we were going to be multi-millionaires or pop stars. Although Nick did - Nick wanted to go everywhere in a limo or a fucking range rover.. but I don't think any of the rest of us thought anything of it to be honest with you. That’s why we ended up selling our publishing royalties for a thousand pound here and 2 thousand pound there. The people that benefited from that were people like Miles Copeland and whoever john curd sold all our publishing to. I don't think we would have gotten anywhere though, if it hadn't have been for John Curd to be honest.”
Q) How did Chris Gabrin fit in to all this?
Blake "Chris Gabrin was an associate of John Curds. Chris was the original bloke who did all of the Madness videos. He had seen us play and introduced himself. He was a mate of Johns and they were gonna go 50% in and be our joint manager and all that. We went up to meet him at Curds office in the boozer there, and that’s when I done that trick where I filled up a pint glass of beer with piss. Some brown ale, and I got you a drink mate. He drunk half of it and then fucking realised it was piss. The truth of it is - it wasn't anything to do with Nick (NB. Nick recalls the story on the ANWL live DVD interview), it was all down to me, I was the one who done it. In those days I drunk black beer, brown ale or Mackeson cream label and I topped up the piss with brown beer and then when Gabrin came up we give it to him. He's come up and you know, giving it the large and that 'hallo boys..' and I'm like 'ere are mate, I got you a drink...'. Anyway, so he's gone 'Glug glug glug..' and he's fucking giving it large, he has drunk half of it before realising what it is! Fucking hell - we laughed our faces off. Anything like that was normally down to me, because I was always a bit of a cunt. Acting hard he drank half of it before he realised it was piss, which was a little bit naughty on our part but it was a good introduction to the ANWL !!
Q) We Are the League - there are just so many great songs on that album. Who produced that album, and did you demo the whole thing first?
Blake "Chris Gabrin. Most of that was recorded, most of the demos was done up at Nick Lowe's studio up in Hammersmith. It was in the back of some fucking house. And the engineer was called Paul Bassman and he was a bassplayer, and was called Bassman! Anyway, we went into some flash studio and done the actual album and he did the engineering there for it. I'm sure it was some big record company. It was a fucking flash studio I remember that.."
Q) So did you demo the whole album before you recorded it?
Blake "Mostly I think we did yeah. I think Curd wanted to hear how they'd come out. Maybe we recorded the songs there, and then mixed them down at this studio. Maybe. I'm not 100% certain on it but I will tell you which studio it was, it was where the Ruts did a lot of stuff.. erm, this one in Hammersmith. So I know they was probably demoed - they might have been demoed and recorded there, and then mixed at this other big studio. It was a big flash studio, cos it had grand pianos, orchestral stuff and all that sort of things. So it must have been a high class studio to have all that."
Q) Streets of London was released in November 1981 and got to number 48 in the UK charts in January 1982, and reached number one in the Independent charts. You were later invited to go on to Top of The Pops, what happened?
Blake “We were going down in the lift and there was Kenny Everitt - horrible little weasily cunt and Billy Connolly. I respect Billy he come up to us.. cos the previous week we had been on a programme called Riverside which was a music programme, and he come up and said 'I saw you on Riverside and thought you was fucking brilliant', and I gave him an ANWL badge. And then Kenny Everett sort of like treated us like a piece of shit. Anyway, they was going up and we were going down in the lift. If I remember rightly you had to go down if you were recording for TOTPs and we had a dressing room. And then there was something.. something was said to - I think it was Haircut 100 or someone like that, and of course Nick had that axe with him, and they wouldn't let us go on in the end.”
Q) You were later invited back for a second time though, in March to do Top of the Pops weren’t you which must have been for I Hate People, your second single?
Blake “Yes. After that when we was in the States.. I think it was I Hate People, then we got asked again because it was climbing the charts. It was either I Hate People or Woman. It was climbing the charts really well and they asked us again if we'd go on TOTPs but by that time we were in America and didn't want to fly back.”
Q) Your second and third singles, I Hate People and Woman also got to number 1 in the Independent charts.
Blake “Yeah, we was always number 1 in the fucking independent charts, but that to me, although the independent charts meant a lot to a lot of people, it didn't mean fuck all to me. The one that mean't that you were in the charts was - 'The charts' you know?!! It was a good buzz though... The thing was - how we did so well with Streets of London, it was a double b-side, Streets of London and So What, and John Curd, with all of his promotional posters - cos he was a promoter he had his blokes done the whole of London.. wherever you drove in London you would see ANWL posters.. so Curd really done us proud there, and we would never have done all that by ourselves, so we've got a lot to thank Curd for. Even though he was an arsehole!"
Q) How did you feel when you suddenly had all that commercial success, and what did your fellow musicians/friends back in Tunbridge wells make of it all?
Blake “What you got to remember about T Wells at that time, T Wells had a lot of musos and we wasn't musos! When we got successful the fucking musos absolutely hated it! You've got three toe rags who can't fucking play their instruments properly, and can't sing and all of a sudden become a successful band. Whereas you had a lot of brilliant guitarist in T Wells but they got nowhere!”
Q) The ANWL were invited as main support act on The Damned’s major UK tour that Nov/Dec 1981, which must have been the first real tour that you guys did. According to Rat & Captain, you all got on very well, and it was one long party – but did you get to know Dave Vanian at all?
Blake "No. Dave would stay out of it. When we toured with them - on the November 81 Friday the 13th Tour, Dave would go back to his room, and would be by himself and that was it. He wouldn't come out and join in. You would have to knock for him and he'd come and open the door very carefully and peer out and say "Yeah, I'm coming down", which was weird - he is weird, you know.. and I don't know whether he really did sleep in a coffin! A very private person I didn't get to know him at all. I got to know Captain Sensible, I used to go up his parents’ house in Croydon and also Rat. I was quite friendly with Rat, we used to go fishing together. Paul Gray we never really had a lot to do with. To be honest I always thought he was a bit of a nob. He just didn't fit in with The Damned.”
Q) When you were first in the band you were married weren't you, with twin daughters, that must have been tough..
Blake "Oh fuck me, yes I would say so. That’s what fucked my first marriage up to be honest with you. Lorraine was my first wife - she was a lovely girl, and you know I've always been a bit of a knobhound and going out on tour, doing loads of drugs getting the chance to fuck loads of birds and all that sort of thing.. it was difficult to say no. And that’s what I did. She stood by me for a while, but in the end she got fucking fed up with it, and I don't blame her. I'm on really good terms with her now - and her husband I get on really well with him. My twin daughters, they're 38 this year you know. Which shows you just how many years ago that was. But you're right it was hard for her and it was fucking hard for me because I got two young twin girls, and I got hardly any money coming in. It was alright for Nick and Chris as they were single. Actually, I don't think I was actually married at the time, but I was with Lorraine and she had had the kids - or she was pregnant, because I know the night before I got married we signed the recording contract with WXYZ records.. and the night before I got married to Natalie was the night we did the Final farewell show, so it’s all tied around the fucking Anti Nowhere League, both of my marriages. So - I've really got them to blame for the failure of both of them I suppose!(Laughs)”
Q) At this time in your career, did it pay the bills etc or did you need a day job as well to support your family?
Blake “At that time we used to get subs off of John Curd. Around that time me and Chris used to drive to London on a Sunday, and do the loading and load outs for the PAs at the Lyceum, for different bands, like the Pretenders, The Undertones - things like that. Curd used to pay us £60 each.
Cos I had to, my kids needed shoes, and they needed this and that.. so it was a case of having to bring in the money. And sometimes we would get a handout from Curd or when he made a load of money on a gig, he would bung us a bit. And that was when we started to sell things, like a percentage of our publishing to Miles Copeland and things like that, you know. As I said before, we got stitched up - we got tucked right up.”
Q) 1982 – was probably the League’s most successful year, so much going on, three singles released, an album, USA tour, UK headlining tour, and TV appearances.
Blake “Yeah. That year we also were invited on TOTPs although we weren't allowed on in the end. Then when the second single was released, we were out in the states at the time, and they wanted us to come back and do TOTPs. It was a busy time. It was a great time, I mean let’s face it we were 22, 23 at the time, we were going out on tour, getting paid for the privilege, getting birds throwing themselves at you, you're getting drunk, getting drugs.. you know it ain't such a bad life to be honest with you is it?!”
Q) How did Miles Copeland become involved?
Blake "Miles Copeland was pretty friendly with John Curd because John put the Police (band) on - when Police was a support band for Chelsea, all of those years ago. Curd promoted the Police and Miles Copeland was just as slippery as John Curd, you know? Both of them - you shook hands with them, and you counted your fingers afterwards! Then Miles had some sort of tie-up with Curd cos Curd was putting on all of these 'Faulty Product' bands - I think The Cramps was there, and Wall of Voodoo. They were both Miles Copeland things.. Miles had 'Faulty Products' and I think 'Faulty Products' distributed the WXYZ records if I remember rightly, and that was a tie in. There was a woman who worked there called Vermilion Sands who was our sort of contact, who sorted all our interviews for us, and that sort of thing - hence we got interviews in Record Mirror, Sounds, NME and Melody Maker."
Q) Throughout 1982 it seemed as though ANWL were flavour of the month, you made it onto a couple of front pages on Sounds & other music magazines too.
Blake "Yeah, we was. And our t-shirt was the best-selling t-shirt in London for about three years! Although we never got any more from it. John Curd did a bit of merchandising for us when we did live shows, but we never really earned any money from it. It was a great t-shirt - the fist.. the logo which Nick had come up with. He had come up with the basic idea for it, and it was then sent to a graphics designer - he retouched it and made it what it is today. So yeah, yet another thing we got ripped off on, the T-shirts. Cos they just sold like you wouldn't believe, in London. “
Q) We Are the League - no. 24 in the UK charts in May 1982 and again No. 1 in independent charts. Was the band surprised at the success?"
Blake "Yeah, we was surprised. You know, if we'd been a band that had been together for donkey's years and we'd had this idea that we'd wanted to have been a successful band and have a career in the music business, then it would have probably been really, really great.. but everything happened so fast.. we just couldn't believe it, to be honest with you! I don't think people in Tunbridge wells could believe it - we had so many good musicians in that town, and they would be so pissed off.. that a bunch of fucking horrible oiks like us got some real success, whereas they'd been playing guitar since they were born (!) yet they had had no success whatsoever, you know! We was just fucking lucky at the end of the day - we had the right formula at the right time, with the right person picking up on us. You had Nick running about with fucking chains "these are the chains that society has put on me.." - I mean fuck knows where that came from (!), it was a fucking load of bollocks really.. erm.. Wielding his fucking axe.. you had me all covered in tattoos, bleached blonde hair.. Chris looking like the 'crow man' from worzel gummidge.. LOL. Chris was a real fan of worzel gummidge, and I think that’s where the hat came from. I remember we were driving along one day, and we saw a dead crow on the side of the road.. and that’s where the crow feather came from in his hat! Cos I think we also hired the hat from a fancy dress shop, and gave them a 'moody' name, and fucking nicked it. That’s how he got the hat if I remember correctly.”
Q) Your next major tour was the USA Hardcore storms America with the UK Subs.
Blake "It was a very positive tour actually. Really good. Billed as Hardcore storms America - a dual headlined tour, it was. But I had heard of the UK Subs, but had never met them, but we got on absolutely brilliant with them. You know Alvin and his partner, his wife Mary got on really well with my wife. Mal? the drummer excellent.. Katy his missus.. Charlie Harper. Well Nicky Garret was a bit weird - he was the guitarist, and Charlie Harper is Charlie Harper.. Really good tour, fabulous. Lovely bunch of blokes. You couldn't have wanted for a better bunch of blokes to tour with to be honest with you. I thoroughly enjoyed the tour. We had our manager, Jane Freedman and her assistant Laura came on quite a few of the dates with us. We had quite a big entourage really. We had merchandising people, we had everything really. It was a big tour. I think it was something like 6 weeks, with one day off or something like that, if I remember rightly. My first time in America. It was a big deal to go to America and play."
Q) Looking at the amount of shows you played, in the amount of cities visited, in six weeks – it was a very hectic schedule wasn’t it?
Blake "Yeah, it was. The only real proper day we had off was that saga at Milwaukee airport when someone stuck their hand up an air stewardess' skirt.. and Chris puking up on the seat, and then the police - or airport security turning up with their guns drawn, and took us off. But that was only because - due to the changeover flight, we was in the bar and we was drinking tequila slammers.. and just being total yobs, and all that - and then going up to the person with the tannoy and saying "Can you page Mr Harry Bollock" (Clive impersonates American accent of Haaairy bollack..") you know, then we'd all be fucking laughing and drinking, then "Could you page Hugh Janus.." (laughs) It was just us being really stupid, but getting drunker and drunker, and then as I say we got chucked off. But on the plus side they stuck us up in a really flash Holiday Inn - and they paid for it, so we got a night off and we got a hotel free of charge, so.. ! it wasn't that bad. I think Charlie Harper was a little bit put out, because he's not really like that.. I mean he was celibate in those days, and he didn't really drink a lot, and as I say, we being yobs getting drunk and being right horrible.. and even to this day I don't know who stuck their hand up the bird's skirt.."
Q) Wasn’t it you that got blamed for the hand up the skirt?
Blake "Yeah, I did get blamed for that.. but it wasn't me.. I know Chris Exall puked up on the seat, but I don't know who it was that stuck their hand up the bird's skirt.. it might have been PJ but I don't know."
Q) I wanted to ask you about the Ballad of JJ decay.. who was JJ? I've a vague recollection that he was an old friend of Nicks who died in the Falklands or something like that.. so was the song in memory of him? Was 'For You' written at the same time?
Blake “In actual fact JJ was a fictional character made up by Nick, the song was built around a bass riff I used to use on sound check, yes For You was written at the same time, we recorded both of them at a Jackson's recording studio in Rickmansworth, with a producer who worked with Motorhead and Girlschool called Vic Maile. The Ballad of JJ Decay, that was when I was going through my Pink Floyd era, and that just started off at practice one day, when I was trying to play Pink Floyd's Meddle. We used to rehearse in a farm at up Tunbridge. I used to play it at soundcheck, but I don't ever remember playing it live."
Q) For You is such a great song isn’t it.
Blake "Yeah. Great song. That just came together at rehearsals, I think on a rainy Wednesday afternoon if I remember. We went to Jackson's recording studio in Rickmansworth For You and Ballad of JJ Decay, produced it, really good and I spent the rest of Sunday fishing on the canal.. so it was a good weekend!"
Q) So you had quite a few bass guitars then?
Blake “I certainly did, my favourite being the Gibson Thunderbird which I had customised at Manson Guitars, the second being the Manson I had made specifically for me which I still have with all its battle scars still intact.
Q)I wonder what happened to the Sex pistols equipment.. I am thinking that must be worth a fortune by now ££ to Pistols collectors..
Blake "We bought the Sex Pistols PA system off Steve Jones and sold it to Jonathan Birch, I can't remember how much now but it wasn't a lot of money, I used Sid Vicious bass stack for a while, it was an Acoustic amp with an 8 x 10 Acoustic cab, all the rest of the Pistols gear went to Steve Jones and Paul Cooks new band The Professional 's.
Q) At the end of 1982 Streets of London was released. There is a band photo of you in a limo going off to see Ralph McTell performing live, did you ever meet him, and what did he think of your cover?
Blake “I remember it well, we were off to the Dominion Theatre in London as a publicity stunt where Ralph was playing a sellout show, he dedicated Streets of London to us saying it was the most original version of it he'd ever heard (read awful) I expect he did quite well regarding the royalty payments for our version, but we got fuck all royalties for playing on it back then!”
Q) A couple of promotional videos were made – Streets of London and also one for So What. Streets of London was premiered on the BBC2 music and arts programme Riverside.
Blake “Riverside was the week before we were at the BBC to do Top of the Pops for Streets of London I believe as I remember Billy Connolly mentioning it in the lift to us when we going to our dressing room (he said loved you blokes on Riverside and we gave him an ANWL badge).”
Q) The band started playing new songs in the live set, including ‘Why do we do these foolish fucking things?” which was basically the tune to Let the country feed you.. although had a different guitar intro and completely different lyrics?
Blake “I don't think it ever got a correct title until the lyrics were changed to Let the Country Feed You, I used to really enjoy playing that live and it always used to go down well.”
Q) You also appeared on Rebellious Jukebox, an American TV show?
Blake “We did a TV special called Rebellious Jukebox that was Meatloaf, Police, Gang of Four, a live show recorded in a studio for American television. They had this American comedian who played the compere - and we had to beat him up or something. I remember it as clear as anything. Cos that’s the one where - well I mean Nick's blown it all out of proportion (in the http://www.uberrock.co.uk/interviews/63-december-interviews/1728-animal-anti-nowhere-league-interview-exclusive.html interview), but that was the time of that upset with Sting, where I threatened to punch his fucking head in. (Story where girl cuts her wrists). She wanted to see the Police, and we were coming past the dressing room and she slashed her wrists. I tried to get her some help.. and she started flying off the handle.. and then that Sting came out of his dressing room, and started acting all hard, so I threatened to fucking fill him in. Then that Andy Summers started as well, so I said "and you better shut your fucking mouth or I'll fucking fill you in as well." Then Stuart Copeland calmed it all down, then Miles Copeland come over and said can we sort this all out. So we all went up and shook hands. So it was no big deal. It was much ado about nothing. I think it was in that interview with Nick, that someone posted on your website. I mean what a load of fucking bollocks. 99% of that interview was bollocks. I nearly fell asleep half way through reading it! (Laughs). It just goes to show how peoples stories differ.. "The girl went up on stage and cut her wrists on stage.." No she didn't, she didn't at all. It was by the dressing rooms, and she hadn't really slashed her wrists at all - she was just distraught, flying off the handle and screaming. Because we - or I happened to be going past they thought I had done something. Anyway, cut a long story short Miles Copeland saw our manager, we all shook hands and that was the end of it. But I never really liked that Sting, and I never liked Andy Summers - I thought they were both jumped up pratts! Whereas Stuart Copeland was a nice, down to earth bloke."
Q) The So What tour was next?
Blake “It was Chelsea, Chron Gen, and Defects.. and us, if I remember correctly.. Gene october is Gene October, he is a dirty old faggot, and always has been. (laughs) His band was alright. Chron Gen I never really had anything to do with them - I don't think I ever watched them play. I don't know any of their songs - I don't know anything about them. And the Defects was the other band signed to our record label, they were the young Irish boys that sort of followed along behind us"
Part 2 of the interview to follow shortly ! Thanks again to Clive Blake.
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