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  My time spent at work during the day meant that I had no idea what was transpiring back at Prince Street, nor was I under the impression I even needed to be inquisitive about it. But small things had made me start to wonder: Les sent letters addressed to me ‘only’, Brook seemed to be spending more time with another crowd, Jeremy and Haydn had moved out, and Jonji had sent us a poem about how we misunderstood him, that we’d never noticed his X-ray vision since we met him. What? Most of all, as Pinglewad had said, Spydeee was certainly not happy. He’d become more distant and spent a lot of time in his room, only emerging to go out or cook downstairs. If we came across one another he’d avoid eye contact.

  Then, quite unexpectedly, on 22 February 1972 (Gen’s birthday), Spydeee moved out and left COUM. I felt I’d done something wrong but it turned out to be a number of other factors. He told me later that he was sick of being cold and hungry, and of living with Gen. ‘The key reason was that Gen was hard to live with,’ he explained. ‘He always had to be the centre of attention. Gen just wanted followers, not people to contribute. He was very dominant, we had no fun.’

  1 March 1972

  We were on last and we bubbled and sang ‘Teddy Bear Hot Water Bottle’.

  COUM entered and performed at the National Rock/Folk Contest area finals. Sponsored by Melody Maker and MIPA, and recorded by Radio Humberside, the event was advertised as ‘18 Acts of Tomorrow’s Stars to entertain you on their exciting road to fame’. It was held at the New Grange Club, Marfleet, where my dad drank sometimes and not far from my parents’ home.

  COUM attendance was good: me, Gen, Tim, Les, Brook, Fizzy, Harriet and Christine. We did a rendition of ‘My Teddy Bear Hot Water Bottle’, a song Gen had written about loving and wanting to fuck a hot-water bottle. We played last and came last. One of the judges was outraged – ‘How did they have the audacity to get on the stage and play like that?’ That comment seemed apt to us as we’d called our set ‘This Machine Kills Music’.

  I got the sense that Gen had finally outstayed his welcome with many of his upper- and middle-class peers. There was a noticeable shift away from them, most evident in their absence from our lives, save for Tim. Initially, Gen’s antics and temper were accepted to some degree by my friends but overall they didn’t warm to him. I thought it was maybe because he was eccentric; he thought of himself as a misunderstood artist, and so did I. My friends’ opinions were more down to earth. Some found him pretentious, which made them distrust him – as Spydeee discovered after he left Prince Street. He told me, ‘A lot of the people I got to know didn’t like Gen – I was surprised when I started socialising with them that there was such dislike for him. He seemed to have upset a lot of people. Trying to look at it from their perspective, perhaps he came across as having a superior attitude.’

  We had a high turnover of COUM personnel, with some people opting out for a while then returning, and others simply moving on for their own reasons or because of disagreements about what COUM was and arguments with Gen. Arguments were common between him and Les, who had his own view of me and Gen as a couple: ‘Together you worked as a great unit, you grounded him. Separately you were still you, but Gen on his own was something else and people disliked and distrusted him.’

  I was loyal to Gen – we were, as Les said, a unit. It was us against the world. I gradually became isolated from all but about three of my own friends as my life became focused on serving everything that orbited the world according to Gen, and in commitment to what I was led to understand was the COUM philosophy. My world had shrunk in some ways but expanded in others, and changed from a focus on indulgent fun and laughter to serious discussions on art, life, magick, politics and (ironically) systems of manipulation and control.

  *

  We lived on the margins of the fringe and were very much outsiders, along with a small but diverse set of people. It was tough stepping outside the norm in Hull. So much so that an organisation called The Outsiders was founded to provide refuge and support. Among the founders were our Funhouse friend Roger and COUM member Haydn, who’d lived with us briefly in Prince Street. But even within the different ‘other’ groups, there was discord. The mods, Fisher Kids, skinheads and Hells Angels fought each other – and all of those groups antagonised or attacked anyone who hinted at being a peace-loving hippy … and we fell into that bracket. To be fair, our style of dress meant we stood out from the crowd, especially when Gen wore clothes in Day-Glo orange. But we felt it was our right to dress how we wanted, and we expected and accepted the antagonistic attention that came our way.

  15 March 1972

  Rub with a skinhead twice today.

  The skinheads in Hull were a different beast to the Angels. They were led by a young guy called Skelly, who took his inspiration in part from the droogs in A Clockwork Orange – above-the-ankle white jeans, braces, highly polished cherry-red boots, a very confident and threatening swagger, but with the stereotypical very short skinhead crew cut. They were adept at running up on their prey, retrieving their concealed cosh or slashing knife, delivering damage in one swift, practised movement, then running off. Skelly proudly gave us demonstrations of the technique. I mainly had run-ins and face-offs with the skinhead girls, who were known for using their sharpened metal combs to cut rival girls’ faces … whether they were love rivals or just non-skinheads like me.

  COUM ‘Riot Control’ at Gondola was so titled as a reference to the threatened riot between Hells Angels and skinheads that had been threatened when COUM played there. By inviting both sides to have a go on stage we managed to avert a violent clash – at least inside the club itself. Confrontations with the skins were fraught, especially when we took our experimental actions on to the streets of Hull town centre (hence the COUM action ‘Skin Complaints’).

  As we got to know Skelly better, mainly through our common interest in A Clockwork Orange, he stayed overnight occasionally and the rest of his gang fell into line and left us alone. Gen liked Skelly and adopted a version of his dress, wearing shortened jeans with high-top cherry-red Doc Marten boots and braces. Gen hadn’t come across anyone as down to earth, blunt and honest as the people of Hull, and he was fascinated by the characters he met, particularly the Angels, skins, Ray and others, who weren’t averse to getting involved in crime. Their lives were a great source of ideas, for which Gen sometimes took undue credit. Both the future band name Throbbing Gristle and the TG track ‘Five Knuckle Shuffle’ (a wank) are directly attributable to Les, who was using those terms most expressively in his storytelling sessions as early as 1972. Foxtrot admired Les’s extraordinary skill at storytelling: ‘Les, that’s the Reverend, was always telling the most amazing stories. He had a naturally poetic, extreme way of expressing things. And he talked about throbbing gristle; he was always talking about throbbing gristle. It was his phrase, you know … the male member. He was talking about somebody doing the five-knuckle shuffle with his eight inches of throbbing gristle.’

  1 April 1972

  I fell asleep again, though woke up to see Spydeee go and …

  Jo Pemberton and her friend were visiting from Bradford. They’d gone to bed in Spydeee’s old room. I’d woken up in the middle of the night to see Gen and Jo’s friend on the rug, kissing passionately. I was shocked and asked what they were doing … as if it wasn’t obvious. Gen muttered something – I couldn’t quite hear what – and they separated and he came to bed rather disgruntled. I don’t know whether he was more disappointed that I’d interrupted them or that I’d had the nerve to question their (would-be) secret session.

  8 April 1972

  Gen and I had a little disagreement. Anyway I went out and didn’t go home until 4 o’clock. I’d met Marilyn and her mum and had been all round town with them. It was rather nice actually.

  Gen and Les had been looking for me all day. I’d taken Gen to task about Jo’s friend – he didn’t seem to care that I was upset or see anything wrong in what he’d done. To me, it went against the openness of our ‘open�
� arrangement. But to Gen it was OK, in terms of how he felt I fitted into his life.

  As our interest in Crowley (and associated book collection) had increased, so had the sex magick – sex with various friends instigated by and shared with Gen – and he’d pronounced me his ‘Scarlet Woman’. But I discovered over time that his forays were not necessarily for me to share, and certainly not up for debate. If I mentioned or got upset by them, I was reminded of my important ‘role’ as his Scarlet Woman. It was a privilege. Very Crowley, down to a photographic portrait Gen took of me which replicated that of one of Crowley’s wives, Rose Edith Kelly. But the notion of Scarlet Woman had some positives, representing a liberated woman expressing her sexual desires. That seemed applicable to me. What didn’t sit comfortably was that the Scarlet Woman was replaceable – as necessary.

  *

  My long period of unemployment had triggered a lot of stern warnings from my dole officer and I was given the ultimatum of either getting any job or vocational training, or having no money. I chose a six-week clerical course at the College of Commerce. I got more money, and if I passed (I did) I’d get an RSA Bookkeeping Stage 1 Certificate to boot. There was me, following in my mum’s footsteps and gaining a very useful skill. Throughout the course, my COUM activities continued.

  19 April 1972

  Been busy tonight putting the finishing touches to our props for our COUMglomeration of maniasco at Kent University.

  Greg, with his friend Davy ‘Giggle’ Jones, had arranged a COUM gig at the University of Kent, Canterbury. By the time I got back from college, Greg, his friend John Bidell and Les were there, while Gen and Tony, our driver (my ex Steve’s friend), had gone to pick up the hired van. It took us ages to load up. We didn’t set off until 8 p.m., trying to no avail to collect Tim and Nicholas on the way, and finally arrived in Canterbury at 6.30 the next morning … only to find that we’d been banned from performing. Our reputation had preceded us.

  But an alternative venue was found. A marquee had been hired. We created an environment similar to the Arts Centre but more music-focused, with local band Kong Kake playing and Les performing on guitar and playing tapes by him and Greg, who was in drag. It was a full house and was going well but because we had no power supply someone had hooked us up to a nearby lamp post, which short-circuited, causing a local power cut and plunging the marquee into darkness. There ensued a chaotic half-hour, with people wondering if that was part of the show; sawdust that had been scattered to cover the ground was thrown about and people generally went mad amongst the knee-deep debris and polythene. As we started packing everything away we noticed an unoccupied wheelchair lying on its side. We searched for the guy who should be in it but never found him, and assumed someone had taken him home. We called it a night, setting off back to Hull at quarter to midnight and arriving home at 7.45 in the morning.

  22 April 1972

  We took it in turns to sleep in the back and sit in the front to keep Tony awake. However, after a few miles whoever was sat in the front fell asleep as well. It got to one point where Tony was hallucinating aeroplanes landing on the M1. We stopped and had a drink and Tony had a rest.

  We’d had a great time in Canterbury. Gen was nearly arrested for ‘misuse of a zebra crossing’ as he was filmed doing ‘Dead Pedestrians’, pretending to collapse in the road, with Les (as Rev. Maull) posing outside Canterbury Cathedral in full garb. We called the gig ‘Copyright Breeches’ (a project yet to be fully realised), which was an idea based around Duchamp’s ready-made ‘Bicycle Wheel’ and Gen’s run-in with the Fluxus people over their rights to their artworks.

  I made Gen a pair of copyright breeches. Wide, long, skirt-like trousers in white calico, stencilled all over with copyright signs. Gen would walk around in them with a bunch of copyright stickers, sticking them purposely, copyrighting anything and everything he came across to the point of ridiculousness. Instances of ‘Copyright Breeches’, like during the later ‘Fluxshoe’ actions, were photographed and published in 1973 as a small book by Beau Geste Press. It was a statement on ownership … and a recurring theme.

  Things were moving fast. We took part in the Hull Rag Day parade, with Gen in drag as ‘Mellisa Pouts’, did impromptu street-theatre-type actions, and all the time we seemed to be preparing for the next COUM gig. We were both feeling the strain of keeping so many balls in the air on a budget that barely covered our living costs. It got to the point where I had to take milk bottles back to get money on them and we seemed to be constantly ill and tired, having to make frequent visits to the doctor. Gen complained at one point that my early risings to go to college were knackering him, he wasn’t getting enough sleep, so I took a morning off for his sake. Would that I could have lain in bed like him every day instead of getting up for work. It didn’t help that on our quieter days we’d be disturbed by annoying noisy sightseers who would look through the letter box. To get our own back, we wired up speakers above the front door to blast them with weird horror noises or music in the hope that they’d just fuck off.

  We needed a pick-me-up and John Peel provided that. We received a letter from him, giving us his new private home address and saying to keep in touch, that he’d be at Malcolm’s Disco soon and to come along. So we did. It turned out to be a great night. We met up with some of the Angels, Brickhouse people and even a few of my old Disco friends. John was asking for company for after the gig, so I pointed out the blonde groupie who was already trying to grab his attention. He didn’t think she’d fancy him.

  ‘Oh, don’t worry – she’ll go with anyone,’ I said.

  He took it the wrong way … I didn’t mean it to sound insulting to him. Before we left he gave us his card. It read: ‘The most boring man in Britain’, which was so far from the truth.

  6 May 1972

  We decomposed or whatever outside the Art Gallery. In protest of any bloody thing you like. Also we signed a decency petition for Festival of Light. Harriet, Pete (Fizzy) and Ian (Biggles) all joined in and we got some good pictures if they COUM out.

  The COUM actions were now being referred to as ‘deCOUMpositions’ and our attentions were directed to Ferens Art Gallery, where we set up our Bible stand and beach umbrella outside and gave speeches with different COUM members dressed as ‘The Alien Brain’ in a gold-tinsel-dressed gas mask and accompanied by varying characters. We’d take the pram around town, sometimes with Gen in it as a baby being pushed by pregnant Mrs Askwith (Biggles).

  The pram was slowly being transformed into the sculpture ‘Wagon Train’, which was later exhibited at the Ferens Art Gallery Winter Show. That was all very well but the pram was my only means of transporting our bags of dirty washing to the launderette, which was a good four-mile walk from Prince Street. It was bad enough that only I ever did that trip on my own, save for the times Fizzy came to help me. I could just about get away with drawing too much attention when it looked like any old pram, but a gold pram with all kinds of odds and ends stuck to it as Gen gradually worked it into a sculpture meant that I dreaded that launderette trip more than ever. And I was also pissed off that so-called radical thinkers and supporters of ‘liberation’, like Gen, Greg and the others, couldn’t see that they assumed my role (as woman) to be the washer, cook and cleaner, in addition to everything else I did within COUM. When it came to sharing domestic work, equality of the sexes seemed to escape them. It didn’t matter whether I’d put in a full day’s factory work or done a day of maths at college.

  16 May 1972

  Got home packed the pram and set off for the launderette. Just the same hot stuffy place, it’s so tiring. I arrived home to see Pete (Fizzy) working very hard in the living room and Gen & Greg chatting merrily. No sooner had I sat down, but food was mentioned. There’s no rest for the wicked. I cooked and ironed and went to bed. Do you blame me?

  Fizzy had brought his macrobiotic music-teacher friend Robin Rat to visit us and Robin had invited us to his Tao House in Ladbroke Grove anytime we needed somewhere to stay in London.
We took him up on the offer when we went on a combined trip to meet our USA COUM Van Club president, Charmian Ledner, and to see Greg, who was involved in an event at the Serpentine Gallery with someone called Bruce Lacey. It took us thirteen hours to hitch-hike to London.

  We were woken in the morning by a frantic Robin Rat: ‘You’ve got to get out, they’re demolishing the house!’

  Still a bit sleep-befuddled, we scrambled out of bed and packed our stuff as fast as we could. When we got outside we saw a demolition squad at work up the road. That wasn’t the best early-morning call I’ve received. We headed off up the street and got breakfast in a ‘greasy spoon’ cafe, then tried to find a bed for the rest of our stay, ringing Nicholas’s studio repeatedly but getting no answer. We called Gay Lib and they told us he’d gone to Norfolk with Lindsay. We ended up back at the Serpentine and spent the day with Bruce and Foxtrot.

  Bruce took us back to his house to stay the night – at 10 Martello Street, Hackney. He lived in an annexe of an old trouser factory that SPACE Studios had converted into subsidised artists’ studios. Bruce was the caretaker and he lived there with his wife, Jill, and their three children, Kevin, Tiffany and Saffron. He showed us around his amazing workshop full of his sculptures and robots, an Aladdin’s cave of disparate parts awaiting assembly alongside experimental electronic machines, synthesisers, effects units and circuit boards. We had no idea at that time that future TG collaborator Chris Carter had known Bruce for some years and they used to swap circuits and notes on how to build and modify them. Bruce was a fireball of energy, all but running from one place to the next, excitedly showing us his work, bubbling over with enthusiasm for art and life. I thought Greg could talk a lot but Bruce hardly drew breath and he talked at you – a stream-of-consciousness of facts and ideas about himself and his work. We were shown around the factory, which, as well as the studios, had a huge communal space for everyone to use for working on large projects. We were totally blown away and inspired by the whole set-up.