I met Andi in 1977 at the Hockey Club THC Mettmann in the Zweite-Herren — men's second division. Andi was also allowed to play in the first division, he was a good striker. I, on the other hand, was a goalkeeper in the second division. I didn't think it was so bad to play in the second division because they drank more alcohol than those in the first division, who took the sport very seriously. After training, the older guys used to buy rounds of beer, the two of us never had to pay for anything. I regularly rode home from the club on a small motorcycle that leaned sideways, which I inherited from my brother Mike. My father was worried that the sport would cause blood circulation problems to his boy.
The motorcycle thing was less dangerous than it sounds. My small Fantic motorcycle only reached 23 km/h since Mini Frielinghaus tried to increase the previous top speed of a dishonorable 45 km/h by improving it. Mini only said: "It's an Italian model. Nothing can be done."
The second problem with the motorcycle was that it wasn't a normal size, but rather it seemed to be made for children. It had very small wheels and was painted in candy color, snail's pace no longer made a big difference. When Andi and I came back from training, he used to ride his bike faster. He lived in Schillerstraße street, less than 500 metres from my house. We visited each other almost every afternoon and I showed him my new vinyls. As I went to school in Düsseldorf, I had an advantage over my friends from Mettmann when it came to music. My trusted salesman, from the Rock On vinyl store on Schadow Street, received new merchandise direct from London every Friday. The tall Wolla would then reach over his counter bar and whisper confidentially: "Hey Andreas, the new Devo stuff arrives in yellow vinyl next Friday, there's only 1000 copies. Shall I reserve one for you?"
The new Devo stuff in yellow? Not bad; on the other hand, I still needed Fulham Fallout by The Lurkers and I only had 20 DM left until next month. I helped my mother at home by picking blackcurrants, increased my budget to 30 DM and bought both vinyls. The very limited yellow copies of Devo remained in the shop for three more years and were soon available at half price.
On the other hand, Andi and I — two kids with acne and spiky hairstyles. We dyed each other's hair with cheap dyes, which we found in the supermarket and always made us look sick. We were never accompanied by girls, but always by our Ramones vinyls in plastic bags. Maybe we were boys to look twice, but Mettmann's girls never looked at you a second time.
For the summer vacations of 1979, we got BritRail tickets, which we used to travel free of charge on every train in Britain. As much as we had been planning the trip for weeks, it wasn't until two hours before departure that I started packing my backpack. Obviously, half of the clothes, which I put in at the last minute, turned out to be useless in the end. Can opener, corkscrew, cutlery, toothpaste — all that I had to borrow from Andi. Anyway, I packed my father's very old four-person tent, which he probably still had from the Second World War. Unfortunately, at the train station in Düsseldorf, the tent turned out to be too heavy, so we left it lying on the platform.
We wanted to travel throughout England at all costs. Our stated goal was to see as many Punk bands in as short a time as possible. After getting off the ferry at Dover and passing through security checkpoint, we went to the nearest newsagent to buy the New Musical Express, which was the best weekly music magazine in England. Unlike German music magazines like BRAVO or Musikexpress, the NME, as it was called, had a serious newspaper format. It was our reliable compass in the sea of new Punk bands constantly emerging from England. You could also get the NME in Düsseldorf at the train station, but the newest issue was always the previous week's edition.
On the train from Dover to London, we opened the most important page for us: Nationwide Gig Guide, to find out which band was playing when and where. The Piranhas in Brighton on Monday, UK Subs in Leeds on Tuesday, The Extras in London on Wednesday, Adam & The Ants in York on Thursday, Sham 69 in London again on Saturday, etc. In the capital, the Punk movement was leaving its peak behind and the first bands, such as the Sex Pistols, had already broken up again. In other cities, things were just getting started.
Punks with their radical attitude to class struggle contrasted staunchly and with vociferous resistance to "Maggie" Thatcher's Britain. Punk was perceived worldwide, but in the late '70s it was a very English and thoroughly political issue. They shouted No future against the Hippie slogan Love & Peace. The concerts weren't meant to be just nice evenings with music, they served as a meeting place for those who were disgruntled. Not only with their lives, but with everything: the lousy job, the shitty flat, the incomprehension of their parents shaking their heads. They wanted to fight against all that, no matter how they sang: No more heroes and Do something. They started occupying buildings and founding organisations such as Rock against Racism and the Anti Nazi League. In 1977, that stance hit me like a bombshell. I felt like a blind man who could suddenly see. I went to the hairdresser, paid 5 DM, got my hair cut and took part.
Our clothes were our uniform and sympathisers recognised each other immediately, even if they had never seen each other before.
Sitting on the London Underground with Andi, we were approached by a group of Punks: "Alright, lads? You got some fags?"
"Sorry, we're not smoking...", Andi replied. We struck up a conversation with the group and one of them asked where we were going. His hair was shaved and dyed leopard print and he wore an angry red leather jacket.
"To the Rainbow to see Sham 69.", I replied.
"To see Sham? Are you crazy? A bunch of Skinheads from the National Front announced their presence tonight and there's going to be a lot of fuss. Come with us. We're going out to Ashford to see the UK Subs. We'll all be there tonight." As intimidated as we were, Andi and I didn't hesitate for too long.
"No, thanks. We have to go there today.", I replied. Another guy shook his head and said: "Don't do it... but it's your decision. We warned you. If you change your mind, just go later. The Subs take the stage at nine p.m."
They got off the train at the next station and Andi and I continued alone to Finsbury Park, where the Rainbow Theatre was. Sham 69 was one of my favourite bands. Unfortunately, they decided to split up. It became impossible for them to do a show without massive violent fights because also the Skinhead scene demanded Sham and their singer Jimmy Pursey for themselves. That's why during the shows there were real battles for the band. Pursey and his musicians tried to pacify the groups and came up with a song called If the Kids are United, but the attempt failed brutally. Before long, Sham 69 had the same problem as English football clubs at the stadiums. This didn't detract from their legend.
"Andi, if they end up killing us over there... We have to see that band once in our lives. I'd never forgive myself if we don't go now because we're cowards."
"I'm going with you.", Andi replied and with that he anticipated the future credo of the Hosen Alle oder keiner (Everyone or no one), and so we hesitantly walked along Seven Sisters Road to the Rainbow Theatre. Originally, this theatre had been a gigantic cinema with a capacity of almost three thousand spectators. There were already a lot of people outside: Skins, Rockers, also ordinary people, but, as the guy in the underground had predicted, unfortunately very few Punks. We picked up our tickets at the pre-sale and passed through the entrance control without any problems. All quiet so far. I thought nothing could happen to us once we were inside. The security at the Rainbow was going to keep an eye on things.
How wrong I was! As much as they had a bunch of tough guys and boxers among them, security guards didn't even stand a chance. The night got off to a quiet start. A band called The Low Numbers put in a lot of effort, but the disinterested people stayed at the beer stands and preferred to sing football chants. Andi and I stood downstairs in the centre of the room, above us was a huge balcony packed with fans and sometimes a glass of beer would fly down. Good mood.
Until Sham 69 took the stage and all hell broke loose. Right in front of the stage everyone was moshing, but only a few metres further back, in the dark part of the hall, wild fights broke out, in which different groups were involved. Sometimes, the ones who were downstairs tried to storm the balcony and the ones who were upstairs jumped to the ground floor and made their way to the stage, punches were flying everywhere.
Escaping to the exit now seemed impossible, all the ways were blocked. The only ones who seemed to remain untouchable in this mess were a group of biker-rockers, who apparently nobody wanted to mess with. Fifteen to twenty people, long hair, leather caps, thick rings on their fingers and easily ten years older than anyone here. They were standing relaxed with their girlfriends in the background against a wall and watching what was going on calmly and in anticipation.
Andi and I stood next to them and struck up a conversation with one of them. He had tattooed neck and arms and was 6'2" tall. We tried to look like we belonged to their group. Surely they must have found it amusing.
"It's a bit of a rough evening, isn't it? We're from Germany, we don't know what's going on." The rocker smiled at us. Big crooked teeth, also some golden ones among them. He inmediately understood what was going on. "You stay with us, mate.", he said and put us behind him and among his friends.
All around us, panic was spreading. After five songs, in the middle of Hersham Boys, the band had to stop their show. Jimmy Pursey shouted into the microphone for them to stop fighting and left the stage with his band. The situation calmed down for a moment, the thugs seemed hesitant: punching or live music? After that pause and a few more messages, Sham 69 tried to continue with their show. Hardly had they reached the second chorus and it was all one big massive battle again.
Jimmy Pursey angrily shouted: "We tried to give you everything. You fucking cunts will never understand! You fucking ruined it all!"
He turned around, ripped the drum off the bottom of the drum kit and threw it into the crowd. Chaos! They pulled down an iron curtain in front of the stage, security guards took cover at the back, the fights in the hall continued and slowly moved outside.
At an opportune moment, Andi and I said goodbye to the rockers and ran through the emergency exits, into the street and to the underground station, but the police had already closed it as a precaution. We kept running down the street until we could get on a bus, which stopped at a traffic light. Behind us, there were still chase scenes, but we had made it. A skinhead, who was also at the concert, got on the bus with us. Apparently, he wanted nothing to do with the trouble.
He gasped: "What a waste. It was Arsenal against Chelsea fans. The gooners won." Apparently, the Arsenal Skins wouldn't tolerate Chelsea fans on their turf. Andi and I looked at each other shaking our heads. Maybe we should have gone with the London Punks to see the UK Subs, but then we had to laugh at ourselves. Sham 69 — we saw them!
However, from now on only Punk shows, no Skinheads, please, because it was always like that, no matter where we went, we always felt part of a group. Among us Punks there was an implicit solidarity, also in this context was Us and them, us against all the others, as I got to know later at away games in football. As soon as a patrol car turned the corner to check on us, the whole group gathered closer together, closing ranks. We knew that if they tried to take just one of us, we would all be in the same bag.
As we wanted to invest all our money in concert tickets and vinyls, unfortunately there was no money planned for accommodation in the budget. We planned to have my father's tent. We had to get a new one in London, an early blow to our travel savings. Over the next few weeks, the new and much lighter tent went into action in various places: on a golf course in Scotland, in the front garden of a house in Brighton or in York City Park — even though the Yorkshire Ripper, the serial killer, supposedly was around at the time.
A good alternative to the tent was to sleep on trains. We once went on the Flying Scotsman to Edinburgh, only to return to London the same night. That way we also went to Liverpool, where we stayed at the station for a few hours. Lime Street Station was the first, and for the moment the only, thing I knew of Liverpool. To explore the city, we lacked the money, and neither talk about having to watch a football match, plus it was summer and football was in recess.
So we took a train back to the south and slept for a few hours. We brushed our teeth and the most important things of personal hygiene in public toilets, that's why we preferred cities on the coast, where the conditions usually were better. Sometimes, we also went to the sea and had breakfast on the beach. Our breakfast was white bread and jam for 14 days, but Andi dropped the jar of jam on the sand on the second day and, as we didn't want to invest two precious pounds to buy another one, from now on it crunched between our teeth when we chewed it. Two pounds could have been two vinyl "Singles" in a Record-&-Tape-Exchange shop. After the trip, I didn't eat any more jam for many years.
There were also days when no band we were interested in was playing in the whole of Britain. On those days, we spent our time with a very special game: In the morning, we would bet on where we would end the night and whoever's bet got closest to the destination train station, which we had chosen by rolling a dice, would win. There were tough negotiations.
Andi: I'll bet my new Single Tommy Gun by The Clash on Exeter. If I win, I get your Buzzcocks."
Me: "Are you crazy? Buzzcocks? It's limited. If you win, I'll give you la Cortinas — that's enough! Anyway, we're going to end up in Ipswich."
So we sat on the platform. Two teenagers from Germany wearing torn t-shirts and carrying heavy backpacks and big bags with vinyls inside. We took two dice, first to sort out the platform we were going to get on and then the number of stops we were going to travel. So, sometimes, we ended up taking the slow, regional train to a suburb of London, nothing more, but it also took us to the north of Scotland, to Inverness. The lightness of simple being.
From Campino's book 'Hope Street: Wie ich einmal englischer Meister wurde' (2020)
2087
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