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Why by Discharge (Clay/ 1981)
By the time Discharge had taken the stage I was
languishing in a cell at Rhyl police station, my earlier indignation at
having been arrested knocked out of me in an instant, courtesy of a powerful
slap across the face from the thick-set desk sergeant. But quite frankly,
I was surprised to learn that the gig had gone ahead at all, such was
the violence of the evening.
The so-called ‘second wave’ of punk had for the most part
left me cold. Since I’d first pogoed in earnest at the school disco
to the likes of The Clash and X-Ray Spex, my musical palette had broadened
to take in the artier end of post punk; Pop Group, PIL, Echo and the Bunnymen
etc. Crass had completely passed me by and bands such as The Exploited
and the Anti-Nowhere League just seemed to me to represent a massive step
back to the moronic excesses of Sid Vicious.
Discharge though were different. In them I recognised a righteous anger
and an unwavering commitment to exposing certain ugly truths about the
world, which is reflected both in the excoriating intensity of the band’s
music and, in the case of the 1981 mini-LP, Why, perhaps one of the most
uncompromisingly graphic album covers of all time, depicting what I believe
to be the aftermath of a chemical weapons attack on Iraqi Kurds. All of
which chimed perfectly with my own burning sense of social injustice —
the flames of which had been well and truly fanned by the riots that had
erupted in Britain’s inner cities earlier that same year.
However, the principal reason I went to see Discharge play a pub in Rhyl
in the late summer of 1981 was because my town’s local anarcho-punk
band were playing support and had hired a van to run the gear and a bunch
of fans up to the nearby seaside resort. Our town’s local punk band
were actually pretty good, but the trouble was that they were followed
by a self-proclaimed ‘army’. And where there are armies, violence
invariably follows.
I was never a part of the 'army' myself, but I knew them all. Many were
decent lads whom I’d grown up with and gone to school with. One
or two, I recognised even then, were a little unstable and partial to
a spot of the old ultra-violence. But when they came together trouble
was usually never far away. Our town’s local punk band may have
sung with conviction about ‘police oppression’ but far too
many of their followers seemed just up for a ruck.
To this end, having joined-up for the night, I was soon to realise that
for the rest of the army, this trip to the seaside was as much about ‘sticking
it to the Rhyl’ — in much the same way as a firm of travelling
football hooligans — as it was about supporting the band. And subsequently,
it didn’t take long for things to kick off.
I was jumping about to ‘Holiday in Cambodia’ with a couple
of the guys who I considered mates, when this kid joined us on the dancefloor.
I say ‘kid’ because I was nearly 16 at the time and he looked
all of 14 — and to think this was supposed to be an over-18s venue.
But to my utter horror, my two ‘mates’ just attacked this
kid and left him out cold. Then they started attacking the DJ in his booth!
An ambulance was called for, and so keen was I to disassociate myself
from the actions of the other two that I helped carry the lad out to the
ambulance.
Perhaps a little shocked themselves, the army then turned its attentions
to inanimate objects, smashing windows and tearing condom machines off
toilet walls. Now the thing was, although I was repelled by violence —
or at least violence without a political/ revolutionary aim — I
was, as my school reports often pointed out, ‘easily led’.
Essentially, that meant I was a bit of a swotty mummy's boy who was forever
keen to earn the respect of the bad boys by kind of acting a bit tough
but quickly hot-footing it when things looked as if they were about to
get properly nasty. And so, seeking once again to establish my street
credentials, I drunkenly punched an already broken pane of glass, and
ended up with a deep cut to my knuckle which bled profusely.
Soon afterwards the police raided and started weeding out those that looked
obviously under-18. An officer pointed my way and ordered me to leave.
I refused. He grabbed me by the arm and I pulled back and gave him a mouthful
of abuse. Which turned out to be a bad move as he grabbed me by the scruff
of the neck and dragged me kicking and screaming up the stairs and into
the paddy wagon.
My parents eventually had to drive over to collect me from Rhyl police
station. Thankfully, they were more supportive than I could have hoped
for. Perhaps blindly so, as it goes without saying that I gave them a
slightly edited version of events which they were only too happy to believe.
A few weeks later I appeared at Rhyl magistrates court charged with being
drunk and disorderly. Despite pleading ‘not guilty’ I was
fined about £30. Of that day, I remember prior to my hearing, my
‘brief’ bargaining with the police and offering not to mention
my slap at the police station if the Police omitted to mention the deep
cut to my knuckle — which they were going to cite as evidence that
I’d been fighting. I also recall the officer who arrested me telling
the court in that characteristically clipped way the police have of relating
events that, ‘the defendant then said, “Back-off copper. You’re
always picking on us kids. Remember Toxteth!” (a reference to the
Toxteth riots of 1981). I guffawed in court at the very ridiculousness
of the suggestion. That just sounded like the kind of thing Rik would
later caricature in The Young Ones. Trouble is though, in hindsight,
I’m embarrassed to admit that that’s probably a fair approximation
of what I did say — and I can feel my cheeks colouring even now.
So I never got to see Discharge, but I still have the album which in spite
of, or even because of its aggrieved sixth-former lyrics: ‘horrific
disturbing visions of war fill my head’ — stands up rather
well some 25 years later as a marvellous youthful gob of fury at the world.
And which for me serves as a personal reminder in the wake of much fuzzy
nostalgia — of just how brutal the late-70s and early 80s actually
were.