How did The Boys get started?

I was in my early 20s when The Boys started. I had a little recording studio at the time. Like just a home recording studio, and I just met a lot of people through that. So I got together a little band with Mick Jones and Tony James which we called The London SS. It was like a provisional name. There was another band on the scene called The Hollywood Brats who had put out an album the year before which I'd heard. It was about the same time as The New York Dolls, and they were very New York Dolls-y, but better.

Was this '74?

Must've been '75. Yeah. In fact, "Sick On You" comes from The Hollywood Brats. The two main guys were this Canadian guy called Andrew Matheson who acted like a big star. Always. Even though no one had heard of him. He was also a very talented lyricist. And there was another guy, a keyboard player, named Cas (Casino Steele), who he wrote the songs with.

So they ended up playing with you in The Boys?

Well, they came along to sort of rehearse with me, Mick and Tony. And after the session, they said they didn't want Tony or Mick, but they wanted me to start a band with them. And, yeah, I thought about it and thought "at least they've made a record." And it was a record I admired. So that's how the Boys started, in fact. I discovered there were very, very few people who were interested in that sort of music, and we were all kinda like musicians trying to get into bands. You know, I never actually went to an audition in my life. Mick Jones did. He'd have joined anybody. He was a prostitute, really. But we were all a bunch of people who really couldn't... I mean we weren't good enough to get in other bands, and it had gone very prog rock by then.

We knew of The Sex Pistols, 'cause, in fact, The Hollywood Brats had gone to see Malcolm McLaren cause he'd been involved with The New York Dolls, managing them... And The Brats were like an English or more international New York Dolls who could actually write songs, which The New York Dolls couldn't, really.

And did Malcolm get involved at all with The Hollywood Brats?

No. No, cause he already had The Pistols then. But we knew of the Pistols even though they'd never done a gig. We just knew there was this band.

So there was this buzz in the air, and everybody wanted to get in on it?

Oh yeah. Nobody'd done any gigs yet. The Damned were sort of forming, and they were on the same sort of wavelength. There was The Boys sort of getting together, and this London SS, and not much else.

So just to get an idea about your thinking at the time, did you consider yourselves punks?

Not really, no. That word came later. But the press quickly gives it a title, and that was the nearest thing to equate it to, you know. In a way it was taken from New York. Cause if you read the music press every week, sometimes you'd have little snippets from New York, so you'd hear things about people like The Ramones and Blondie. Anyway, you'd hear about this New York punk scene and Richard Hell and all that. Yeah, whatever music we could get to hear, we'd quite like and we were sort of picking up on all that. American punk music probably had more of an impact over here in Britain than it had in America.

How did you get signed?

It actually happened quickly. Too quickly, if anything. We'd only played about six gigs, and we were quickly running out of places to play, because everywhere we'd play, they'd say: "You're the worst band we've ever had darken our stage, and you'll never play here again." So we were doing the pub circuit in London, which is where most bands start, burning our bridges as we went. They just did not want us back. We played one gig at Dingwall's, which was a support gig, to Babe Ruth, as I remember. They were on the wane. Anyway, we were supporting them, and at Dingwalls, it's quite a late start so we'd been in the club for a while. We were a bit pissed off that we didn't have any more gigs, really. By the time we got on the stage at around 12 o'clock, we were a bit pissed and we didn't give a shit any more, so we just did our set. We got a rave review in the NME and we got signed up the same evening. But we played really badly. We didn't give a shit, we were just kind of laughing and joking and having a chat with a few mates in the front. And I think that kinda couldn't-care-less attitude came over well.

Because I'd had a studio, I was quite clued up on recording, in a simple way. So it wasn't a big shock to me. Basically, we would record pretty much the whole band, playing at once, live, and then overdub a few guitars and vocals. At the outset, it was a bit difficult, cause they gave us a producer and put us in a good studio. But the producer, I've forgotten his name. He just didn't... Cause what we wanted was a really raw sound, we didn't want it polished up at all, and it was very hard for the people in the recording studios, the engineers, to understand that. They wanted to make it sound polished, and we wanted it to sound rough, so there was a bit of a conflict there. Later on, it was easy, cause they understood. They had something to compare it with, but in the early days that was very difficult. In fact, we sacked the producer, and finished off the first album ourselves. Produced it ourselves.

The North End Musical Stores (NEMS) was the shop Brian Epstein used to have in Liverpool where somebody came in asking for a Beatles record they had made in Hamburg, which made him interested in finding out who the Beatles were. So he had a NEMS company, and it had long since passed into lesser hands, if you like. Although they were a shit record company, they were a very good live gig agency, and we thought "at least we'll get gigs, you know?" So they came to see us that night. We didn't know, otherwise, we might've stayed sober, but anyway, they loved it, and they wanted to sign us.

Were they looking for one sort of band to sign from the 'punk movement'?

There was no punk movement then. It was far too early. In fact, in the next few months after that, we had all the majors coming up to us after gigs, saying, "We want to sign you guys." We said "Sorry, we're already signed."

Did you feel like you should've waited?

Oh yeah, yeah. Very much so. I remember one night when this guy came up and said "Ahh, we saw you guys tonight. We just signed The Jam yesterday and I wish we had seen you first." That was Pye. You know, cause suddenly everybody went "Oh, we gotta have a punk band." Panic time. "We gotta have a punk band on our books."

In the end, NEMS were a dodgy company, who wouldn't pay their bills. For instance, we would go into a rehearsal studio, and next time we'd turn up, they'd say, "You can't come in, because your record company hasn't paid for the last lot you did." Same with recording studios. In fact, we bootlegged ourselves. We put out Christmas records under the name The Yobs. The Yobs came from booking rehearsal time which we couldn't book under the name The Boys. I remember the guy saying, "Weren't you in The Boys?" And I said "Nah, I left them."

Was the Yobs solely a recording outfit?

Yeah, just Christmas songs. With the Yobs, we played only one show, in 1978, which ended in chaos. It cost us a lot of money, because the stage was invaded by the crowd. It was filmed by an Italian film crew, but I've never seen it. It was just ridiculous. The PA got wrecked; we had tubular bells... Every piece of equipment was wrecked, so we thought it was a good idea for the Yobs not to play again. We couldn't afford it.

Did NEMS help The Boys at all?

Pretty early on, like I said, we were desperate to play, so we'd play anywhere. We did join one tour, with John Cale, which was quite successful for us 'cause I think we were one of the first punk groups to get out in the sticks. And after that, gigs kind of tended to help themselves. We played Holland quite early, France quite early; 'cause there was interest in those places.

How was that?

For us it was very good. We were amazed that we got these amazing articles written about us, and about how different it was. Yeah, for us playing abroad was more enjoyable than playing England. Cause once you've played Birmingham two or three times it loses its charm, y'know?

What were the crowds like?

Holland was pretty wild. France is a bit strange in that the French kind of sit on their hands, and then, just when you've finished your set, then they go apeshit. We were booked to play five nights at the Gibus club, which holds about 250 people, 300 maybe. Yeah, foreign excursion, brilliant. The first night, we were a bit disappointed, cause there was about 30 people. The next night, there was about 60-70. And the next night about 150, then the next night about 200, and the night after that, our last night, was just packed to the rafters. It was just great.

Were you exposed to the gobbing phenomenon?

For me, it started with The Vibrators, and the drummer is responsible. Perhaps indirectly. He had a habit of spitting, while he was drumming, and it wasn't particularly spitting at the crowd, but he had an amazing kind of projectile gob that could, you know, splat all over. He used to drum away and spit to the side of the stage. I think he had this problem where he had to get rid of this excess saliva. But some of the punks picked up on this, I think, and started spitting at him, which was a mistake, really, cause he could pick somebody out at 30 paces and get them between the eyes. So their pathetic little dribbles were nothing. So there was a bit of that, but not much. Then I think, some writer in the NME wrote about the spitting as if it were the thing for punk bands to do. So a lot of people read it and believed it. I remember there was one series of gigs we were doing, and we just walked on stage, immediately after this NME prat had written this story, we were just greeted by a barrage of gob. And there's not much you could do about it.

Yeah, how do you react to that?

You got really angry, but it's pointless spitting back cause you're outnumbered. But basically you gotta carry on, and eventually they dry up anyway. I mean, people can't keep spitting forever.

Beyond the gobbing, did the shows ever get out of hand?

I think a lot of it was the media, because the people looked frightening. The thing about the way punks looked at the time is that they were actually pretty ugly people. Girls for instance, punk girls. I think it was a way of getting noticed for ugly girls, 'cause the standard of girls that were punks were pretty bad.

I don't think that's changed too much today.

Actually, later on, you started getting pretty punks, when it became more fashionable, but in the early days, the hardcore punks were pretty damn ugly, and so were the guys as well. An ugly looking sight, I can imagine.

It only lasted about 100 days or something, but while the Roxy was there, it was the place you would hang out, you didn't care what band was on particularly, you'd just hang out there. And buy Don Letts' 50p spliffs.

Was reggae happening?

Yeah, if there was one sort of music that was accepted by punks outside the punk genre, it was reggae. Don Letts was the DJ, so later on in the evening, he'd whack on reggae. But it was weird times, anything could happen. I remember we were playing at the Roxy once, and Led Zeppelin came down. We didn't know, but there was this fat, roadie-type person, with long hair, who was badgering our drummer saying, "Let me have a blow, man. Let me have a blow." And, after the gig, you know our drummer was complaining that "This twat was annoying me." It turned out that it was John Bonham. You know, all these boring old farts were coming along to check out this new thing.

How do you feel about those years now?

I'm really proud of it, actually, not just for my band, but for the whole scene, because it was the one point, definitely, ever, when the bands and the musicians got the better of the record companies. Cause the industry did not know how to deal with us. The bands were in control of the music business. It just put a panic through the whole music business, which was quickly harnessed, and eventually everyone became a part of the music establishment. But in those early days, it was really exciting, cause the music business was being fucked, and they couldn't do anything about it.