Barry Cain was the last person
to interview the Pistols
before their explosive 76 TV interview,
which
led to the 'Filth and Fury' headlines the next day
-- the book is
about a year as Record Mirror's punk correspondent
touring and
interviewing The Pistols, Damned, Stranglers, Clash,
Heartbreakers and
lower league players.
It is the best punk book I've ever read. -- Dave Collins
The Sex Pistols
last pre -Bill
Grundy 'Filth and Fury'
- interview,
If Nick Cohn's Awopbopaloobop Alopbamboom is
Ye Olde Testament of Rock, the New (Wave) Testament being Jon
Savage's Englands Dreaming, then Barry Cain's 77
Sulphate Strip is surely the Dead Sea Scrolls, revived and
risen again from the russet coloured copies of his Record
Mirror reports, reviews and interviews, and scrapbooked against a
lip-smacking-ace-tasting-page-turning-eye-bulging micro dot-to-dot diary
of the key moments, movers, groovers and shakers of 1977. The year
that groups of grey-faced, straight-laced politicians and hair flare
bunches of prog and pop stars went twelve rounds against a fistful of
prickly punks. 365 days with more dynamics, dramatics
and dualility than
any year since pop records began.
After his stretch at Record Mirror, Barry went on to launch
Flexipop, one the snappiest music mag's ever published, I found
a few copies in the loft recently and had forgotten how they crackle
with facts, fun and features - including a genius parody of The Face's
famous '82 'Hard Times' cover - 'Really Hard Times' starring two turps glugging tramps
which perfectly burst The Face's snoot-nosed, yell and bellow bubble .
So some questions for Barry Cain
then....
77 Sulphate Strip is one of only a handful
of rock books I've read without any acknowledgment or nod to The Beatles
-
it's like they never existed. Was this the mood at the time?
No. The Beatles meant everything to me and most my mates
throughout the sixties. They were my teenage idols and helped take the
sting out of those years. There's an unsubtle homage in the names of the
characters in Streatham Locarno at the beginning of Strip. I stopped
dancing to The Beatles after Rubber Soul because that's when they
started inviting me back to their place - via the Pye Black Box in my
bedroom - where I could listen to their darkest thoughts. They changed
the way I thought, simple as that. And thank you, for your very kind
words. They mean so much. Incidentally, one of the 'Hard Times' tramps
in the picture is my dad who will be 91 this year and was, I guess, my
fifth Beatle. I was an only child and my parents (my mum is 81) have had
four dogs all dying tragically and leaving my mum and dad desperate and
bewildered. The last one, Bobby, a cute black poodle, died a week ago in
my dad's arms, and it's eating them both alive. I buried Bobby in my
back garden alongside the previous two and that nearly fucking killed
me.
I felt like some canine-killing version of Fred West.
Sorry to veer off the path , it's just worrying me right now.
Pray, continue.
How did you go from being part of a Motown
loving Boot Boy and Suede head set to becoming Record Mirror journalist?
Pure genius! If you came from a council estate in London at the
time, you became either a straight, a skinhead or, if you took a lot of
hallucinatory drugs, a working class hippy. It got interesting when the
skinheads got into hallucinatory drugs in the late sixties, but that's
another tale. It was rare to stay on at school after 16 but I went to a
grammar and emerged, at 18, with two low grade A Levels. I always kept
my school friends and my flats' friends far apart. As a result, I
became, around 15, two people - schoolboy and coolboy. Two heads are
better than one and after a bit of luck and a lot of graft, I went from
trainee court reporter to indentured journalist on a local paper to
entertainments' editor to Record Mirror. That's a Yellowbrick Road a lot
less travelled these days.
Your first meeting with Rotten reads like a snake charmer being
hypnotised by the snake - have you met any other performers with a
similar charisma?
Malcolm McLaren. He and Rotten both possess the ability to paint stark
pictures with barrages of meticulously chosen words that give delight
and hurt not. They're in a class of their own. Joe Strummer was a little
boy lost who dug his way out of his nightmare with remarkable songs and
a hunk of devotion that swept me away. Paul Weller was hopelessly
devoted to rue, the secret behind his genius. Hugh Cornwell and Jean
Jacques-Burnel were deepsea divers in the psyche and there was nowt more
challenging than a Stranglers interview. The Damned had collective
charisma - they were the commie punk band. Who else? Barry White, Bob
Marley, Paul McCartney? Heaps of charisma. But not a patch on Malcolm
and Johnny.
In '77 the Pistols were possibly the most hated band in history.
It wasn't just the older generation or other youth movements that were
anti-Punk, but politicians, musicians, record exec's, DJs and almost
everyone who wasn't directly involved with the Pistols (or Punk) that
seemed to despise them. Do you think
it's possible we'll ever see such
international outrage caused by a single rock act again?
Impossible. Music has popped its cork. It's no longer the force of
nature it was (what an old git). Outside the X Factor comfort zone,
records just don't sell that much anymore. That's why TOTP was dumped.
That's why Smash Hits, RM, Sounds, Melody Maker all fell by the wayside.
How many generations to go before music is just a bowl of cherries?
Before life gets in the way? Before its portability and a few billion
options make it futile, obvious, an easy lay? I give it twenty years,
tops. My kids' kids will give the odd flying fuck for a stunning song.
Their kids? Different world. Different ballgame. Different tune.
For a movement that was all momentum and 'of the moment,' punk
styles, sounds, designs and influences are still with us and everywhere
from US metal to Top Shop clobber. What do you think has kept Punk (and
New Wave) enduring without dating?
Punk was all about bright minds in bondage who wanted to fuck off out of
old Durham Town. Sleepy time girls and the boys of summer dancing to a
'77 beat. Punk's callous, disruptive demands - an anathema to Joe Public
- could dislodge reality in exciting minds and create innovation.
Originality breeds contempt and contempt breeds originality. It was a
vicious circle that has continued to spin unabated like a flaming
Catherine wheel shooting flames in every direction. And you didn't need
a voice like Sinatra's to make the punters sway. Lapsed punks haunt the
corridors of power.
I loved the piece about your mum and
dad and the pub scene with the piano players, costermongers and
comedians having a sing-a-long.
Do you think the real seventies get
overlooked with all the novelty nostalgia and 'Abbafication' of that
decade?
I don't think there ever was a real seventies. It was the
itsy-bitsy-no-focus post Beatles decade kicking off with dross, glam,
Philly, dross, New York disco, dross and ABBA. It welcomed punk with
open arms, shook hands with high-street ska, gave birth to the New
Romantics and invented Freddie Mercury. If you were in your late
twenties in 1970 the next ten years meant fuck all really. You wouldn't
get it. The seventies had to be 'Abbafied' because the sixties were too
sad.
Caining It -
Barry with beard and Buzzcocks
Malcolm
McLaren once said "I have brought you many things in my time" which
included breaking Punk, World Music and Hip Hop, but equally there's a
trail of broken relationships and bad blood." What's your take on him -
genius or jinx?
Genius. I mentioned in the book that Malcolm asked me to
'ghost' write his autobiography in 1979. I got to know him as well as
anyone after countless interview sessions in my living room over a
three-month period. He made me dance all night and still beg for more.
He's the Brian Clough of pop who should've managed England. Knowing
Malcolm, I think love got in the way - he's an incurable romantic. But
we should all be thankful he turned the world dayglo.
In the book, the music press seem just as
hardcore and heavy living as the bands - almost like The Sweeney with
press passes rather than police badges. Were there a few juicy nuggets,
tear ups and tales you couldn't include?.
Yes.
If you could beam back to 1977 and take someone
aside for a word of advice - who would it be, and what would you
say?
It would be me, I'm afraid, and I'd say, 'Don't get
married, keep your finger on your trigger and put all your money on Man
Utd winning the FA Cup, Red Rum winning the Grand National and The
Minstrel winning the Derby'. Oh, and to Sid Vicious I'd say, 'Go for
it'.
The Damned, The Buzzcocks, The Stranglers, The
Wolfmen (Marco from The Models and Adam and The Ants new band), Carbon
Silicon (Tony James and Mick Jones) have all released new albums over
the last few years. Have you heard any of the original Punk players' new
songs?
I saw Hugh Cornwell play live a year or so back - great
show at Scala - and downloaded his impressive Hoover Dam album, but
that's about it. I don't listen to much music these days and when I do
it tends to be through headphones attached to my laptop as I write.
Usually, it's Michael McDonald's tribute to Motown, which is just
wonderful, interspersed with Steely Dan. I'm a dude. Hey dude, don't
make it bad. Just let it out and let it in.
You were involved with Flexipop, are there any
plans for an 80s sequel to 77 SS using Flexipop as source
material?
Writing it now. Starts in 1978 when I resigned from
Record Mirror, teamed up with then PR guru now PR mogul, Alan Edwards,
running a punk PR company out of a Covent Garden squat, discovered I
wasn't cut out for a career as a publicist, became a freelance writer
and spent the next two years travelling the world with rock stars, doing
big, fat, hairy interviews. It ends 20 years later with the death of
pop. Don't worry, there's not much to tell after '84. I launched
Flexipop together with my ex-partner Tim Lott (now, of course, a hugely
successful novelist) in 1980, and after three bizzarre years I found
myself alone, publishing mainly one shot poster mags on pop's latest
flames which I continued to do for the next decade and a half. Got
myself a family, a house, a Porsche. Cost myself contacts, desire,
drive. Naturally, I blamed everyone but myself for those sad losses -
complacency is a cancer of the spirit. But if you catch it early, the
prognosis is good. Life can be groovy again Oh, and there's a few twists
and a fucking shitload of watusis. The book should be available this
time next year, if anyone has any money by then....
If you were a Record Mirror reporter in 2008 -
what would get you picking up your pen and pad, and who would you be
trying to interview or avoid?
The song Distant Dreamer made popular by Duffy, who
rocked my boat when I saw her perform it at Glastonbury. The version by
MC Almont & Butler is a work of art. Pop music at its finest. I
think Leona Lewis has an incredible voice. I'd love to interview her.
And Duffy. Shit, I sound like an old perve. Who else? Paul Weller, for
old times' sake; Eminem., for Pete's sake; Alex from Big Brother, for
fucksake. That's five cracking interviews.
Never avoided an interview in my life.
And finally, are there two tunes one Pop, one
Punk that sum up 1977 for you?
Anarchy In The UK and Anarchy In The
UK.
77 Sulphate Strip
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