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Those Landmark YearsFor two years I'd slavishly followed those artists who had either predatedModernism or been part of its banquet years and beyond but in '76 a new decade,that of Brando, Monroe, Presley, Dean, and the first stirrings of the Rock-youthrevolution, started to influence me way I dressed and acted, so for much of theyear I dressed down in a workmanlike uniform of red windcheater, white tee-shirtand cuffed jeans worn as worn by Dean in Nicholas Ray's "Rebel Without aCause".Dean had died a week to the day before I was born in late 1955 - seen by manyas the Year Zero of the Rock'n'Roll era - and the 20th anniversary of his deathappared to exert a strong influence on rising Pop stars such as John Miles andSlik's Midge Ure. Slik were one of the biggest bands in Britain in 1976, with animage clearly modelled on Dean and ‘50s Highschool movies. Sadly for them, andmany other bands that had surfed the Glam Rock wave or emerged in its wake,Punk was poised to make them all look dated (contrary to the time-honouredview, the music scene of mid-70s Britain was far from stagnant).There were still times, however, when I reverted to the old romantic escapistimage I'd adopted in defiance of what I saw as the leaden drabness of post-HippieBritain, while immersing myself in an alternative world fashioned entirely out of the past, and specifically the golden age of Modernism of ca. 1830-1930, andeffectively discovering Modernist giants as Baudelaire, Wilde, Gide, Cocteau (aswell as many lesser poets, dandies and decadents from the same period) for thefirst time.One of these occasions came during the dying days of a famous long hotsummer, when I wore top hat and tails and my fingernails painted bright red likesome kind of hellish vision from Weimar Berlin to a party hosted by a friend fromBrooklands. It was mid-September, and I know that to be a fact because I wassupposed to have been at sea at the time on the minesweeper HMS Fittleton.HMS Fittleton had been accepted into the RN in January 1955, although shewasn't actually named Fittleton (after the Wiltshire village) until almost exactly 21years later.I think it was only a couple of days afterwards that Fittleton capsized and sank tothe bottom of the North Sea following a tragic accident involving another largership, the frigate HMS Mermaid. It resulted in the loss of twelve men most of whom I knew personally, given that only weeks earlier I'd spent a few days onFittleton with more or less exactly the same crew.She'd set sail from Shoreham in Sussex on the 11th of September 1976 with theintention of reaching the port of Hamburg on the 21st for a three day OfficialVisit, but never arrived. On the 20th she took part in the NATO exercise"Teamwork" 80 miles off the Dutch coast in the North Sea, after which she wasordered to undergo a Replenishment at Sea with the 2500 ton frigate HMSMermaid, and it was during this exercise that the bow waves of the frigate inter-reacted with those of the sweeper to cause the two to collide.For some reason I'd earlier decided to opt out of the trip by pleading sickness. Itwas a decision that came to haunt me...despite the fact that had I taken part inthe RAS manoeuvre I'd almost certainly have been assigned what was known asTiller Flat duty, as had been the case on many previous occasions duringexercises of this kind. This would have put me below deck, making escapedifficult although not impossible. In other words, I may or may not have survivedthe accident.Of the twelve who
didn't 
survive I knew three quite well, and they were all menof remarkable generosity of spirit and sweetness of disposition, what I'd callnatural gentlemen, and it broke my heart to think of what happened to them. I sowanted to comfort my shipmates for their loss, to bond with them and be part of what they were going through. I wanted to have survived like them. I went overit all again and again in my mind, until I drove myself almost insane with regret
 
and grief. Once more I'd taken the easy way out, but this time it wouldn't be soeasy for me to forget or explain away.Looking back, I can’t help thinking that 1977 was a far darker year than thoseimmediately preceding it, mainly perhaps because it was marked by the violentirruption into the British musical and cultural mainstream of Punk, which could besaid to have irreparably disabled Rock's uneven progress as an art form. From itsLondon axis, and yet with roots in the US it spread like a raging plaguethroughout that landmark year, even infecting the most genteel suburbs with anextreme and often horrifying sartorial eccentricity, which, fused with a defiant DIYethic and brutal back-to-basics Rock produced something utterly unique even bythe outlandish standards of the time.For this genteel suburbanite, '77 was a year of incessant partying as one afterthe other of my old Pangbourne pals celebrated their 21st in houses andapartments in various corners of trendy west and central London. Of all of them Iwas perhaps closest with Craig, a future plutocrat of devastating style andcharisma who was yet barely less awkward than me. Despite this, he was onfriendly terms with a blindingly cool young fashion designer from the north of England who forged cutting edge images for some of the most powerfultrendsetters in Rock music, and we went out with him a couple of times to hisfavourite disco, Maunkberrys, in Jermyn Street. Apart from the Sombrero inKensington High Street, it was the classiest club
I'd 
ever seen.Soon after the start of the year, Craig had traded in his tired old velvet jacketand flares combo for tight drainpipe jeans and black Cuban-heeled winklepickers.I followed suit with a pair of cream-coloured brogues...black slip-ons with goldsidebuckles...sham crocodile skin shoes with squared off toes...and a pair of blackChelsea boots, all perilously pointed. By about the spring of '78 I'd junked the lotfor the sake of white shoes with black laces, something I'd seen on a member of London Punk band 999.Being the naif I was, I thought the style that dominated London's clubland wassomehow related to Punk, but I was way off the mark. Like Punk it was theantithesis of the hippie-student look that was still widespread throughout the UK,but deployed for posing and dancing to the sweetest Soul music rather than as anact of violent social dissent. It was the property of the Soul Boys...flash whiteworking class kids with a love of black dance music much like the Mods and Skinsbefore them, although I was not to discover this until later in the year when I wasat Merchant Navy College in Kent.It was through one of the college guys in fact that I found out about the GlobalVillage night club under the Arches near Charing Cross that was a magnet forSoul Boys throughout '77, as well as a handful of Punks. Its key elements werethe wedge haircut, which could be worn with blond, red or even green streaks,brightly coloured peg-top trousers or straight leg jeans, and the obligatorywinklepickers...or for a time, beach sandals.The wedge was taken up at some point in the late 1970s by a faction of Liverpoolfootball fans known as Casuals who'd developed a taste for European designersportswear while travelling on the continent for away matches. A passion fordesigner sportswear exists to this day among British working class youth, beingvisible in every high street and shopping centre in the land, although the Casualsubculture has long been extinct.For most of '77, I looked more like a Soul Boy than a Punk, not that I knew thedifference, even though while strolling along the Kings Road in what I thinkmay've been January, I was assaulted for the first time by the monstrousvarieties of dress being adopted by Punks about that time, and it'd only be amatter of time before I too hoped to astound others the way they'd done me.Sure enough, by the end of the year, I'd become a full-time Punk and stayed thatway until the Mod Revival started drawing me away around the summer of '79.But that's another story.
 
The Restless and the RiotousBy the summer I was working as a sailing instructor in Palamos on Spain's CostaBrava. For a time I was joined there not just by my dad but my cousin Rod andhis girl friend Lucy; and my brother stopped by for a few weeks, but mostly I wasalone. Rod and his sister Kris, together with my uncle Peter and aunt Marge, hadlived more or less opposite us in Bedford Park in the sixties, and we'd holidayedtogether at my grandmothers' house near Montroig for many years. Aspellbinding guitarist while still in his teens as part of '70s Prog collective Rococo,Rod now plays for Zero Point Force.After a few months I lost my job, but stayed on in Palamos for several monthsafterwards, parading around town by day, while spending most evenings at theDisco where my favourite was Donna Summer and where each lost or shatteredaffair left me feeling empty and disconsolate. One of these saw me trying to tracka girl down all the way to the campsite I knew she was staying at, but having allbut deliberately alienated her one horrible night at the disco, she was nowhere tobe found.Perhaps this obsession with what lay just beyond my grasp bore some relation tothe ferocious thirst for fame that'd afflicted me even since as far back as I canremember. I mean...I was hardly suited for it. Granted, I had the pretty boylooks, but very few actors, or even musicians, become truly successful on thestrength of looks alone, and this was especially true of the seventies, an agewithout MP3s or My Space or endless TV talent showcases. I'd not yet appearedin a single play, except for a handful at Pangbourne.My roles there included two elderly women; and one of these transvestite bitparts had me standing onstage for a few brief minutes without uttering a singleword and then spending the rest of the play - Max Frisch's "The Fire Raisers"-offstage. The other was as a maid in a one-act play by George Bernard Shawcalled "Passion, Poison and Petrifaction". Clomping around in a dress with studdedmilitary boots speaking in a hysterical high- pitched voice, I can rememberbringing the house down with that one. I also played a society beauty engaged insome kind of illicit relationship with my mate Simon, but the name of the playescapes me. My only male role was in "The Rats", a little known Agatha Christieone-act play, and my performance as a camp psychopath showed real promise if the praise of the college nurse was anything to go by…but when all's said anddone, I was hardly a National Youth Theatre wunderkind.In terms of my other "talents", I'd written a few simple songs on the guitar, but Istill couldn’t play barre chords. I wasn't a natural born genius like my cousin Rod.My singing voice was good, though, and already quite versatile. As a would-bewriter, I'd filled countless pages with endlessly corrected notes, but there wasnothing tangible to show for it all. It could hardly be said then that my futurepositively glittered before me.My final trip with the RNR came towards the end of the summer. My best RNR palColin was sadly not onboard, but I had other mates to raise Hell with such asAdam, a tall redheaded young man of about 26 who looked a little like theyouthful Edward Fox with a trace perhaps of Damian Lewis, that is in hindsight.Like me Adam loved music and fashion and clubbing - I think he was a regular atPantiles in Bagshot - and we hit it off from our very first meeting back atPresident. He later confided in me about his early life which had been marked byone tragedy after the other, and his quiet and courteous manner masked atroubled inner life which he didn't like to flaunt any more than he did an ability tolook after himself in any situation no matter how violent. I can remember onenight in a south coast bar when for some reason a drunken sailor took a seriousdislike to me and clearly wanted to rearrange my pretty face when Adam puthimself in my place and caused the sailor to back off, no doubt swearing furiously
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