It was ten years ago today, that Joe Strummer of The Clash sadly passed away and to honour his memory, man about town Stuart Deabill chatted to Ray Gange, star of  Rude Boy film cum documentary about The Clash and a fan now turned Roadie. Released in 1980, much to the delight of the fans, but not so much to the band. Oh well, we love it, and pleased to say it has been out on DVD since 2003, so Stuart was happy to chat to Ray in his favourite London pie and mash shop.  Over mash liquor and mince meat they chatted about  fame, music, Joe Strummer, Chelsea, Djing and much more. 

What was the first music you got into?

The first music I got into was T-Rex and Bowie and the glam bands and you know when you read all the information on the back of a sleeve, so through reading Hunky Dory I discovered The Velvet Underground and also Bowie produced the Funhouse album by The Stooges . So whatever Bowie and Bolan were into took me down different roads. Slade as well.

How old were you when you started going out to places that played music?

I was 14 and started going to the Marquee

What was your first gig?

First one I can remember is Alice Cooper and Roxy Music at the Empire Pool, Wembley on the Killer tour (72).  With Snake and the Gallows and Roxy headlining it was quite eye opening.

In 73 my mate at school wanted me to see Status Quo at the Imperial College which I had no interest in but he insisted, and opening for them was the original line up of the New York Dolls! I was thinking who’s this bunch of freaks and by the end thinking wow – what the fuck was that?! Then two days later they were on The Old Grey Whistle Test.

Do you remember what Bob Harris said about them at the time?

Yeah, the fact he didn’t like them made me like them even more! He made my dad look interesting!

The first band I really got into after that was Dr Feelgood. Saw them and then thought got to go again, where they are playing next... got to go, got to go!

Did you ever speak to them at the gigs?

In those days they used to drink at the bar so yeah! They never used to get into long conversations but you know it was ‘Alright how ya doing, etc. . . . ‘Saw them at the Nashville, Hope & Anchor all those pubs really. Going to see a band was better than going home, so I used to go and see anyone really. 

Were you still at school then?

Yeah, also there were a lot of people my age going to gigs. It was all pretty friendly, everyone had a few beers – all there for the same reason so that was the first scene I was into. The Feelgoods really stood out, people say Kilburn and the High Roads but for me The Feelgood’s where the one. The used to really make you wake up.

Lee in his white suit that he used to wear 30 nights in a row!

Yeah I wonder what happened to that suit. Hope someone’s kept it for posterity. They were really scary as it happens; they looked like they could jump off the stage and beat you up if they wanted! Especially when you’re 14/15.

Did you ever used to see people in the crowd at these gigs who became musicians themselves?

Not really, not that I knew anyway. I’m sure there was but none of my mates wanted to be in bands.


Where did you grow up?

Brixton. My Mum and Dad used to throw loads of parties and I would get woken up by the sound of The Stones and The Beatles at 2 in the morning.  My Mum was the first president of the Elvis Presley fan club in Britain when she was 16/17.

There was always music being played in the house and I find that weird if I go round someone else’s house and they’ve got kids and they don’t have music on.

You were born with music then?

Yeah, but I was too lazy to play rock and roll so the next best thing is to play records.

I learnt early on that it was easier than playing guitar.

Strummer said to me, you’ve got to practice till you’ve got permanent grooves in your fingertips, and when he told me that I said – nah I’ll give that a miss ha ha.

So what was happening after the pub’s shut?

We’d start going onto other places and the main place was Global Village in Charing Cross. (Now Heaven) That was great as there were all kinds of people from different scenes. A really pivotal place with 3 rooms of diff music and gave an insight into what was to come with Punk. Another club was one on Kensington High Street called Yours Or Mine. It was a gay club but me and my mates quickly realised that if you were a teenage boy you’d get drinks bought for you all night!  A lot of the people in the punk world would have gone there.  There was a lot of the ambiguity that happened, thanks to Bowie and Bolan, which made it sort of acceptable to be different – A really cool night.

A club called The Sundown on the Charing Cross Road was another we frequented as well.

I always thought it was mad, you’d see working class geezers wearing make-up and nail varnish back then in those overt macho times.

Look at The Sweet who looked like a bunch of Brickie’s!

There was a story about one of the Sweet getting glassed in a pub in Hayes by a Who fan who was incensed that a pop band was supporting them at the gig at Charlton’s ground in 74.

I was at that, it was a crazy gig, Lou Reed who had a load of bottles chucked at him around the time of Rock and Roll Animal and wasn’t in the best shape. We all loved him but everyone else was trying to hurt him. I think he was oblivious to it as he didn’t react, probably smacked out.

A club called The Sundown was another we frequented.

Which was the first punk band you saw?

The Sex Pistols at an Andrew Logan party in a warehouse near Tower Bridge.  It was like a ghost town round there back then. The Clash I’ve seen so many times I couldn’t tell you where I’d first seen them. The Clash were the band from that era that stood out for me – their energy was completely different and as much as I liked The Pistols they were a rock and roll band , The Clash had a bit more going on.

At the time I had a girlfriend who worked at Malcolm and Vivienne’s shop which was in King’s Road and I was spending more time with The Clash over Camden way and we would argue about our different worlds. I remember getting an advance copy of The Clash’s debut and taking it down there, playing it and arguing on behalf of The Clash as they were all Pistols, Pistols. Good friendly rivalry.

Did you go to the 100 Club Punk Festival?

No, it’s funny when you look back at all the things that are so called legendary the ones where all these people claimed to have been at, it really wasn’t seen as that big a deal at the time. Most of the gigs never sold out. Even when the Anarchy tour got cancelled you just thought oh I’ll see them in a few weeks’ time .Of course no one was to know how it would go. People’s perceptions of those days are so different from what it was like. Recently one bloke asked me if I could get him Strummer’s autograph, I told him it would be a bit difficult. He then said I must have loads of stuff lying around at home to which I said ‘Do you get all your mates to sign something just in case?’

The London punk scene is seen as this huge entity but at the time it wasn’t back then. X - Ray Spex and Adam and the Ants played the basement of The Man in the Moon pub in World’s End and there were more people in the two bands than there was in the audience.



How did you become friends with Joe?

There was a pub in Putney that used to put bands on and I’d gone down there one night to see either Wayne County or The Lurkers and I was up at the bar getting a drink, I swung round and Strummer was sitting at a table on his own . I’d just seen The Clash a couple of days previously at the Harlesden Roxy if I remember rightly.  I walked over and said hello and we spent the night just hanging out and we got pally after that. I was working in a record shop and Joe would come in and listen to records, one day he brought a Japanese girl in and got me to play her the original of Police and Thieves as she didn’t believe it was a cover. The first time I went round his place, I walked in and there was a Dansette on the floor and next to it was a Bob Dylan album and at the time Dylan was like the mafia. I pretended to myself I couldn’t see it but Joe gave me like a history lesson on music and that was kind of cool.

What did you think of The Clash supposedly selling out to sign to CBS and all that rubbish?

I didn’t care I just wanted them to bring an album out. It was nice that there was all these independent labels and stuff but, so what, they were on CBS? If you actually examine the deal, they got shafted quite badly so there was no selling out.

Did you see Mark Perry still banging on about it recently?

Was he? I put things up on Facebook to start debates and I have this saying – Too many purists, not enough pure.  Everyone wants it to be the way they want it instead of enjoying it the way it is. People’s little views aint gonna change how it was, deal with it. I certainly do. Or do something yourself.

The main things with clubs was A to be able to hear the music loud and what I wanted to hear and B to be able to be around people that were like minded and you knew where they’d be.

In the mid to late 70’s you was either dead normal or you were weird – there was no in-between. At clubs, like Louise’s, if you stood out in the street, you’d get left alone in these places.  You’d be welcomed in and because there were a lot of girls on the scene you wouldn’t get drunk blokes leering all over them so it was great to be immune to all the crap going on outside back then.

That look you had in Rude Boy with the leather jacket and combat trousers, was that your everyday dress?

Well growing up in Brixton, getting into Reggae really young and listening to the albums by The Mighty Diamonds and Peter Tosh who adopted the military look, all those dread people and the leather jacket was a direct influence from The Ramones. And, god bless him, Sid as well. The punky reggae look.

Did you feel the tension of the times?  Were you going to Chelsea back then?

I stopped going to football around that time and didn’t go back till the mid 80’s. The only real tension I saw in the early days was the original skinheads but really the punks and teds thing was something I was on the receiving end of. I got a pasting in Hammersmith on the way to the gig sung about in White Man. The George was a big Ted pub on the corner of the Broadway and I’m in Bondage trousers! Tally ho went the cry and of course I can’t run!  My mate managed to jump on the back of a Routemaster and got away but the Teds got me up against the railings. As they wore brothel creepers I didn’t come off too badly, bit bruised but glad it wasn’t skinheads with steel toe caps! I ended up in the Palais with the bass going through me and my head pounding. That was the only conflict really. As for the Rock Against Racism , where I grew up I never really felt the tension. Brixton had this bad reputation but for me I used to think ‘what are they on about?’

I was speaking to a mate recently who was in The Vibrators about the lone punks that used to live in a small town and used to take a beating for being different. They were the real deal compared to some of the people we knew. Flying the flag and not with the comfort of safety in numbers.

One time we walked along Sloane Street and we got chased by about 20 Teds and as we ran into Sloane Square there were 40 odd punks. We jumped in with them and as the Teds came round the corner they saw a load of punks and legged it back! Real Keystone Cops stuff.

When did you start DJing?

I did some DJing about 15 years ago helping a mate out in a pub in New Cross but I really seriously started a few years later after going to see The Stray Cats at Brixton Academy when I bumped into Mike Peters of The Alarm . We started chatting and he said I’m surprised you haven’t got on the DJ bandwagon yet, like everyone else. I said that’s a good idea but how do you get on that? I’m not someone who pushes myself onto people so he replied ‘The Alarm have got 3 gigs at the Islington Academy, why don’t you come and do that? ‘  And from that I started getting calls.

Fav club or stand out night that you had from Punk days?

The Vortex and the Banshees were playing and Danny Baker makes the big announcement that Elvis has died and everyone started cheering. Danny wasn’t too best pleased and thought we were ignorant I think.

The Roxy had Cherry Vanilla on and The Police were her backing band and it’s looking back in retrospect that this massive band started out playing a tiny gaff where Stuart Copeland was playing drums underneath a staircase! I was there most nights; I was working in Soho, go to the pub then go to The Roxy. You never worried about who was on, you’d just go along.



Did you see any of the violence that Weller sung about in A Bomb in Wardour Street at the Vortex?

No but I’m sure there was. The most trouble I saw at a Jam gig was at Battersea Town Hall in June 77, bouncers trying to stop people getting in and windows were smashed, scuffles galore. Complete chaos. I also saw The Jam play at Soho Market outside Rock On Records. Really important shop. Great place.

What was your take on the rivalry between The Clash and The Jam?

I never got into any conversations with the band about The Jam and I don’t really know that the Clash had a problem, but Bernie Rhodes was good at soundbites and feeding info. I’ve never met Weller but I can imagine he can be a bit chippy. So whenever the statement was made about him voting Tory I could imagine that it was a much bigger deal to him than Joe. They probably said it as a chuck away comment and then the Burton suits blah, blah so I can imagine he took it really personally.

What was The Batcave like?

Very dark and very druggy. A lot of time spent in the smallest room in the club. I went to Billy’s as I was mates with Steve and Rusty but then I dropped out of clubbing until the late 80’s when I started going to The Limelight.

Did you get into Acid House?

Not really, as I’d cleaned up by then and the music I didn’t really get as I was sober. There was a club called Kinky Galinky I used to go to which was for everyone who had ever dug Ziggy would turn up to.

Rude Boy took about a year. It was very random making it and no one really knew what was going on. The scene where me and Joe are in the pub talking about limousines was mad. We’d been given 4 lines of dialogue on a sheet of paper hand written with the instruction, speak about that. Now if I was at drama school it might have been relatively straightforward but all I could think about was whatever he says, say something different. 

What do you think of Rude Boy now?

I describe it as a very good document of the time but it wouldn’t be in my top ten! It was confusing making it and when it was finished it felt like Punk Rock in London was over. I went out and stayed with some friends in Paris, I was there for 6 months and then came back to London to do some overdubs for the film and then decided I wanted to go to New York and see their scene. This was in the days of Freddie Laker. I remember clearly that you had to go to Victoria Station and it was 59 notes for a ticket to New York. Next to that sign was the weather forecast and NY was – 10 or whatever being January and underneath was LA which had a sunshine sign and 70 degrees which was 83 quid. I thought I’d go to LA and go to NY when it’s warmer. A mate of mine came with me, we arrived at 2 a.m. and it was pissing down. We found a hotel and then next morning we asked in the foyer how do we get to the beach? We were told we have to go by car, not realising LA was so big. We ended up getting a bus which took over an hour and when we got to Venice Beach it was like an episode of Baywatch! I thought this is great I’m not fucking leaving here and I ended up staying out there for 4 years. In that time I got a call one day asking me to come to an audition by one of the guys who made Rude Boy. The film hadn’t come out by then. I was sitting in my mate’s kitchen and I said if they send me a plane ticket I’ll come and audition. The ticket didn’t come but more importantly it didn’t even occur to me there could be a career to be made out of this. I even ended up having dinner with Ridley Scott after an invitation by one of the filmmakers to go along. They were talking shop and all I could think about was having another bottle of red wine. First thing you’d do now is to ask if you could get a part in their new movie rather than get a drink down. Bang goes a part in Blade Runner!

© Stuart Deabill August 2012

Part of this interview is from the forthcoming book by Stuart Deabill and Ian Snowball ‘From Ronnie’s To Ravers – 50 Years Of London Clubland ‘

This is the full transcribe of the interview conducted in A. Cookes Pie And Mash Shop , Goldhawk Road , London W12  exclusively for ZANI  Media.