It wasn’t just about getting into punk rock music; we cut off our long hair and wore narrow, ‘drainpipe’ trousers and this, remarkably, was enough to completely set us appart, to make us different… different enough for people to regard us with suspicion and often a kind of fear or hatred. We were punk rockers. For me personally it was the first time in my life that I felt Ok, good even, about being different. It meant I didn’t have to keep trying to be like everybody else.
At the end of 1978 Justin got an electric guitar, a second hand, red, Höfner that cost £42.50 from a shop in Leamington Spa (his guitar of choice to this day). One of the first things he did was saw off the tremolo arm, an act he later realised was an error of judgement. Anyway, with an electric guitar in our midst the natural thought was to form a band. The idea was that Nick and Graham would learn bass and drums and I would shout. Graham was supposed to be the drummer but it turned out that Nick was a natural born percussionist so they swapped. For an amp, Justin plugged his guitar into the record player in his bedroom and we started trying to play.
The noise we made was driven by a combination of anger, frustration, defiance and wonder. It must have sounded terrible but it was fun.