I Know This Much: From Soho to Spandau - Gary Kemp

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Music andMott, to the lad-rock of theWho, Humble Pie and the Faces, with a few Trojan Chartbusters and Motown compilations thrown in. What no longer exists in my dusty record cases are the ones that I covertly sold at Cheapo Cheapo’s record store in Soho that summer of ’76 when the Sex Pistols happened, the ones that if discovered would steam up the Ray-Bans of any discerning punk. These included the public-school bands Pink Floyd, Jethro Tull, Genesis, ELP and, of course, Yes; or basically anything with a Roger Dean cover.

      Roger Dean painted the fantasy landscapes of floating grassy islands that so visually suited the dreams of young, sex-shy, middle-class boys soaked in Tolkien and real ale. It also suited progressive bands—photographs of the pale hairy musos themselves could potentially threaten sales. Roger’s topographic panoramas were all the appetiser I needed before the needle hit the record and the sound of either Bachian or wistful prog filled my bedroom.

      Dad had upgraded the front room’s entertainment to a ‘music centre’, making Mum’s ornaments suddenly homeless. I asked if I could have the old radiogram, and he pulled it apart and rebuilt the turntable, amp and a movable mono speaker into the gap in the wall behind the headboard of my bed. In 1971, when Arsenal won the double and the outside of our house became decorated like a battleship, in red and white bunting, my brother and I placed the speaker on the window ledge to blare out the raucous ‘Good Old Arsenal’ to the entire street. But now, lying on my bed, immersed in folk-styled fantasy lyrics of namby-pamby desire, I’m leaving my humdrum Islington reality on a floating hillock of Roger Dean’s design, and probably passing some ‘Watchers Of The Sky’, or even a ‘Siberian Khatru’. From here I can see the remnants of my discarded bands spread out below me like fallen idols, while I gloat from above, aloft on my own smug superiority.

      What had caused this levitation in musical taste was grammar school. Dame Alice Owen’s had brought together the working-class and the middle-class kids of Islington and the battle played itself out in the quad of cultural choice. Bowie boys lined up against prog rockers; lager drinkers foamed at the mouth against the anti-fizz brigade of the Campaign for Real Ale; while tartan-scarfed geezers, with their war cry of ‘Rod is Guv’nor’, fought tooth and nail with the yeomen manquÉs of the English folk revival. Intellectually—and technically—prog felt superior to pop and embraced my desire for something more challenging. But my journey on that floating tuffet said more about my aspirations within the playground than any real musical taste. Somehow, with skilled diplomacy and a lot of hot air, I managed to hover disgracefully between all camps.

      When I arrived at Owen’s, the school still had one foot in its public school past of classics, fagging and gowned teachers, some of whom were permanently lost in their own brown studies. The other foot, platform-shod, stomped its way forward into the comprehensive future that was planned to happen in 1976. This schizophrenia seemed to embody itself in the architecture: two buildings, one Victorian and musty with cloisters and ghosts for the boys; the other—keeping the girls tantalisingly separate from us—was a sixties vision of the future, all glass and sexy steel geometry. We were to be the final intake on this site, whose foundations in Islington went back to 1613 and the charitable dream of the eponymous Tudor lady. The school was to relinquish its grammar status and move to Potters Bar.

      Over the years, Owen’s had spawned some famous names, the ancient actress Jessica Tandy being the earliest that people knew of, followed by the actor Joss Ackland and, the one we were most proud of, the legend of Owen’s reviews, the film director Alan Parker. There must have been great politicians, judges and curers of fatal illnesses, but frankly the media names impressed us the most. Three years above me, Steve Woolley would play a part in the making of Spandau Ballet before going on to run Palace Pictures and produce the hit movies Mona Lisa, Scandal, The Company of Wolves and Absolute Beginners. In his year a chirpy cockney kid called Chris Foreman would leave at sixteen and, with his mates from Camden, form a ska band calledMadness. It was this frisson of clashing cultures and class that led to its rampant creativity. The working-class boys would be there on creative merit and charm, and the arts, not the bar, were where we saw ourselves as potential champions.

      Those first moments in a new playground are a feverish jostling for status that can brand a boy for life, and I was terrified on my first day there. My mother had bought me a pair of trousers big enough to give me as much wear as possible, and so the turn-up inside went up to my knee. They looked ridiculously wide and my fear was I would be confused for a ‘wally’ and they would condemn me to the infamous and terrifying ‘Fag Cage’. The Fag Cage was a tall gate in the quad that when pushed back against the wall would create a tight little medieval prison for the poor first-year boy chosen as torture victim. Thankful that it wasn’t me, I stood, hands in pockets, desperately pulling my flapping trousers in as tightly as I could, while the chosen quarry was dragged screaming from a group of new boys and placed between the wrought-iron gate and the wall. His back scraped the red brick as he slumped inside the cage, while large, acned lads prodded and abused him until a bored member of staff strolled over and set the blubbing, permanently scarred creature free. Unfortunately, being the last year’s intake at the school, we never got the chance to pass that particular baton of cruelty on.

      There were six of us working-class lads who’d made the grade at Rotherfield and every one of us was named Gary. My name gives a lot away: middle-class kids are just not called Gary; neither, it seems, is anyone born later than about 1965. However aspirational I would try to be, no matter how much I would smarten my accent, ‘Gary’ is always the giveaway and has me bang to rights when among the Simons and Julians.

      I was probably very lucky not to make the Fag Cage, given that I took time off to make films and occasionally carried a guitar to school. For a moment there was a rumble of discontent about it in the year above, but being in films was something that seemed to give me an aura of protection, a veneer of something otherworldly—they weren’t sure how to despise it as it was way off their map of things to hate—and playing guitar was generally considered a lot cooler than swotting at schoolwork, being too fat to do sport or playing the violin. A friend of mine, Neil Barnes, who fearlessly brought his violin to school, took some terrible lashings for what was considered to be a symbol of great queerness. Neil would have the last laugh, though. Small, glasses-wearing Neil would eventually grow to stand tall in contact lenses, and become extremely successful in an electronic band called Leftfield.

      Blessed were we that the school’s trustees happened to be the guild of brewers. From the first year we were given what was called ‘Beer Money’, a subsidy and stamp of approval for our drinking.We boys were taken to Brewers Hall in the City and, with Masonic-like ritual, silently lined up to approach the Master of the Worshipful Company of Brewers and receive an old crown coin in return for a silent and respectful nod.

      ‘Boys, you must promise to save this money,’ the Master said piously, surrounded by grand heraldic ornamentation, ‘until you are old enough to spend it on beer.’

      At Owen’s this was about thirteen and a half. At that point we were allowed to spend our annually increasing payment in the Crown and Woolpack, a pub that adjoined the school building like a classroom for extracurricular studies. Here, certain members of staff openly encouraged our loyalty towards the ancient livery of brewers that owned our school. This dedication was visually borne out by the crest emblazoned proudly upon our blazers: a shield containing six sheaves of barley and three barrels of beer.

      If I were to blame anyone for my journey into prog rock then it would be Ian Bailey. Ian was three years above me but we both took guitar lessons in the music room of the girls’ building and I befriended him immediately, looking up to his musical talent and superior knowledge. Slight, with thick, curly black hair, glasses and a soft-spoken voice, he played rock keyboards like a professional and we soon started playing together around the piano in the music room.

      Once a week we had open assembly and pupils could contribute to that morning’s events in the musty, oak-panelled hall. Ian and I, along with a drummer from my class called Chris ‘Ossie’ Ostrowski, decided to perform two songs in front of this yawning, captive audience, one of which was ‘Light My Fire’. I sung while Ian took the opportunity to go for the full Keith Emerson, his hero at the time, and placed his Bontempi organ at right angles to the piano for full prog-rock simultaneous double-keyboard

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