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

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and Norman et al. never made another snide remark about me again.

      Recently a series of the best of SaturdayMorning Pictures was issued on DVD and Junket 89 was one of them.With some curiosity, I slip the disc into the machine, hit play, and the movie fades up. The CFF opening titles have a familiarity that comes from being burned into a fresh young brain. The shot is of the fountains at Trafalgar Square with St Martin-in-the-Fields dominating. The bells are ringing out across the square and then the feeding pigeons suddenly take wing into a perfect sunlit sky. It’s a symbol of Britain at its Ladybird Book best. Fade out and up on to hands filling the screen and a football-terrace clap begins. And here’s Stephen, blond and squinting in the early seventies sunshine, just how I remember him. And there’s Linda Robson, the attractive ‘standing girl’ from my first visit to Anna’s, in miniskirt and long white socks. Twenty years later, Linda will become nationally famous in the hit sitcom Birds of a Feather, along with her best friend, the ‘fat girl’ from the sofa, Pauline Quirke. Pauline will appear any second now, in her sulky ten-year-old incarnation, but before then the camera pans down a school building and follows a young Christopher Benjamin as the pompous headmaster. A school bell rings for playtime and here’s an interior shot of kids coming down the stairs, screaming and fighting. The faces are all familiar. Here’s my good friend, Tony Bayliss, the coolest dresser I knew at the time. He’s the only one wearing Levi’s, narrow, of course, and also a Brutus check shirt with button-down collar and a half-pleated back (both bought from a small boutique at the Angel run by ex-mods), a real suedehead look, and one that I would soon aspire to. He’s already ahead of the game and starting to grow his hair. Here’s Ray Burdis, who would enter my life again twenty years later as one of the producers of The Krays. And here is Mario, playing the ‘mummy’s boy’, who, in a few years’ time, will try to seduce me to the sound of a Diana Ross record. Hopping down the steps comes a sweet-looking black girl, hair pinned up. I can’t see her clearly, but now she appears again, face smiling, and I see that it’s Hyacinth, gaily unaware that she would, sadly, only have a short life.

      Cockney voices sing the title song: ‘Who takes the cake then lands in ‘ot wa’er? I know because he’s a mate o’ mine. It’s Junket eigh’y nine!’ This was what the producers wanted when they picked Anna’s children, genuine street kids, not drama-school fakes or hams. It’s a different cockney to the London voice of a ten-year-old today, but this is the London of my memory, and here I am, coming down the stairs.

      During this process of thinking and writing about my past I suppose I’ve envisaged myself as a slightly smaller version of who I am today, albeit younger, obviously. But as I rewind and play again, the boy I see here is not the one I’ve had in my mind; he’s fresher, with no great experience or aspirations; he’s not seeing this moment through any nostalgic haze or wry cynicism, and hasn’t even thought about playing in a band yet. He comes from a different world to the man watching him now.

      I suddenly feel a sadness, a pathetic desire to speak to him, and, with a deep sense of loss, realise that I miss him; because he no longer exists.

       CHAPTER FOUR WATERLOO SUNRISE

      The guitar was awkward to carry. I held it by the neck, my skinny arms aching as I fought to keep it from hitting the pavement. I had its body tied in a plastic shopping bag, probably from some peculiar idea of decency—it felt wrong to parade the thing exposed through the street, especially its two mournful ‘F’ holes. A late spring sun was starting to warm the air as I walked the few hundred yards to school. Apart from where Bentham Court now stood, our street had survived the Blitz—and the developers—and the little front gardens of the more privileged tenants blossomed with roses and hydrangeas, their morning scent reassuring. Being so close, school felt part of my home, my little universe of four blocks that included the swings, shops, family and friends.

      Every lunch break I would come home with Martin for ‘dinner’. Dinner was always at one o’clock—the evening meal at six being ‘tea’ and usually something like Spam or fish fingers (sometimesMum would boil a pig’s trotter as a ‘treat’—a pink and often hairy amputation in a bowl of broth that you’d tug at with your teeth until it was mutilated). But dinner meant chops, sausages or mincemeat, and Dad would come back from work for that hour and we’d sit together as a family. It was wonderful but, with some sadness, I was already anticipating its loss. In September I would begin at the local grammar school, Dame Alice Owen’s, and today Rotherfield leavers were to receive their end-of-school prizes. The headmistress, Miss Bannatyne, would make a little speech, hand out the books and then, at some unrehearsed point, I was to provide the entertainment by performing two songs that I’d written.

      I’d had a choice that Christmas: to ignore the guitar and sulk until it was returned to the music shop in Holloway Road for the five pounds it cost, or make an attempt at learning it. I soon found myself becoming obsessed with the thing. I loved it most of all for the privacy it gave me. This was different to the solitary wonder of books and comics; here I could create the atmosphere I wanted and the sound of it soon became a close friend.

      BertWeedon was a London guitarist who’d had some success in the fifties. A smiling, unassuming celebrity, he based his style on Les Paul and enjoyed a hit with ‘Guitar Boogie Shuffle’. Play in a Day was his successful tutorial book for the guitar. Its red cover with black-and-white photo of the smiling, freckled Bert looked dated even in 1970, but inside was a method based around chords and rhythm that was simple for the novice. Hours were spent with Bert attempting to get my fingers into the correct positions, which wasn’t easy as my guitar’s steel strings were like cheesewire on my young fingertips. The usual guitar for beginners was the nylon-stringed Spanish version; however, the sound and style of my guitar, picked by my father by chance and from budget, were much more rock‘n’roll. And it also looked damn good in a mirror.

      And then something odd happened. I’m not sure what inspired it or why I did it as I had no concept of writing a song, but once comfortable with some prosaic chord changes on the cheese-cutter, I began to sing my own melody over them. It was thrilling and I couldn’t stop lalaring it.Mr Allison, my class teacher at Rotherfield, was a guitar player too. Young and geeky, in Buddy Holly glasses and tweed jacket, he offered to help me with my playing during break times and I showed him what I’d come up with. A friend, Gary Jefferies, was present, and Mr Allison suggested that we both try writing some words to go with the tune. As it was the end of March, he thought that it might have an Easter theme.

      My mother had deep beliefs, but like alcohol, church was only for weddings, and though within a year or so I was, precociously, to dump all spiritual belief, Religious Knowledge was at that time one of my better subjects. Equipped with the story the lyrics for the song came easily and the first verse still remains firmly in my head.With soft rhymes and bad grammar, I was obviously made for pop music.

       Jesus rode through Jericho on his way to the cross

       He met blind Bartimaeus, who his sight had lost

       Jesus touched his eyes and Bartimaeus could see again

       So Jesus rode on safely to Jeru-oo-oo-salem.

      Probably under the influence of a recent Roger Whittaker single, I decided to intersperse the verses with an annoyingly whistled phrase, but Mr Allison was impressed, and within the week we had a group of children from my class singing it. We performed my first song in front of the school just before Easter—whistling included. My parents were thrilled; their gift was worth more than they’d thought.

      That weekend Dad drove me and my guitar to Waterloo. In the novel Brighton Rock the anti-hero, Pinkie, records a nasty message for the innocent Rose in an acetate-booth at a railway station. The booths were the size of telephone boxes and once inside you’d pop a coin in a slot and through a window you’d watch a smooth acetate disc being lowered on to a turntable. A needle landed and as you spoke your voice would be etched into the disc’s soft blankness. When finished the disc would slide out, equipped with an envelope for you to post it to a loved one

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