Photo - SHJ (me) & GPH (Graham) 1980
Our second live performance was at a Young Farmers Pig roast and Disco. As it was just the other side of Inkberrow, about 2 miles away, we decided not to hire a van but to drive all our equipment there in my mini clubman. So the late afternoon was spent driving backwards and forwards to the farm where a stage had been constructed in a covered riding arena.
On one of the trips back home we were surprised to see a line of about ten skinheads walking down the road through the village. We picked up some drums then passed them again wandering down the country lane to the farm. On our way back we saw more… perhaps fifteen or twenty… then on the return there were more still. And more.
Our village had never seen anything like this before, and probably never will again so it wasn’t just us that were wondering what the hell was going on. This is what had happened:
Our bassist, Graham, who as I mentioned previously was a skinhead at the time, was in a gang in Redditch, a town about ten miles away. Now Graham’s middle name begins with a P making his initials GPH, which when spoken sounds almost the same as GBH, a British acronym for Grievous Bodily Harm. Now skinheads get excited about this sort of thing so Graham’s mates decided to call him ’GBH’.
GBH also happened to be the name of a well known Punk band who had a large skinhead following. So it started with one guy saying “hey, GBH is playing a gig in Inkberrow on Saturday - are you coming?” And ended up with word spreading all the way to Birmingham and skinheads from the whole area deciding they were going to this little village to see GBH playing. Many of them having to walk six miles from the nearest bus stop.
Now young farmers and farmers in general are usually peaceful, fun loving folks… but they are also a tough lot and… you can probably see where this is going.
By the time we went on stage the skins had discovered that the GBH they had come to see was in fact a guy who was in a band with two fifteen year old boys and a singer with greased back hair wearing a long grey raincoat and they weren’t too pleased. In fact fights were breaking out sporadically around the arena and the atmosphere was nothing like a country pig roast and disco was supposed to be like. Our performance didn’t help matters either - I remember one big shaven headed bloke right in front of me repeatedly yelling “PLAY FASTER YOU DRACULA BASTARD!” throughout the gig. Not a great feeling at the time but it has turned into a possible contender for the title of an auto-biography if I ever decided to write one.
It would be an understatement to say we were happy to get through the set and off the stage. There was no quick escape though, no backstage and we still had the multiple car trips with all the gear before we could put the experience behind us.
On the final journey back home we noticed a number of large, chopper motorcycles circling the village hall in the dark. We later found out it was members of a Hells Angel chapter one of the young farmers had called up for reinforcements who were looking for but, I suppose thankfully, not finding the location of the farm.
Some days later, when the dust had settled, we decided that as we would probably never get invited to play locally ever again we would rent out the village hall and put a gig on ourselves… with our new home made PA.