Going to Sea in a Sieve: The Autobiography by Baker Danny

Author:Baker, Danny [Baker, Danny]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780297863403
Publisher: Orion
Published: 2012-11-01T23:00:00+00:00

Street-Fighting Man

Two images from the early pre-Pistols days of my life as a punk rocker endure – and both of them are suitably mundane. The first takes place in my oldest friend Stephen Micalef’s bedroom. Steve still lived a couple of doors along at Debnams Rd and his personal lair therein occupied the same tiny space as my sister’s room at number 11. This was the smallest berth in the house, but Steve’s made Sharon’s seem like the interior of the Tardis. Today I suspect Steve’s room would be on one of those TV shows called Help – I Can’t Throw Anything Away! in which nobody, not the subjects, the makers or the viewers come away from the project with any dignity. It was however a quite magnificent space where, in terms of importance, his single bed and thin wardrobe seemed to lag way behind piles upon piles of old Melody Maker and Sounds music weeklies, hundreds of experimental German LPs stacked up into tottering towers, and various chemistry sets, musical instruments, fish tanks and Romanian folk masks. It was in this claustrophobic retreat that he and I had made a batch of laughing gas a few years previously, simply to find out if the stuff was a myth perpetuated by the Beano and TV’s campy Batman show. The first two attempts to cook up the gas didn’t work, but the third brew sent us straight on to the tiny section of floor space available where we exhausted ourselves in mystifying fits. We later learned it could have killed us, but I must say I have never known such a freaky sensation.

Anyway, Steve had joined forces with Mark Perry on Sniffin’ Glue around issue three and his exotic looks, unapologetic long hair and absolutely eccentric attitude to anything approaching conventional thought rather wrong-footed most punks and made him kind of fascinating. I remember calling round one day to find some of this new crowd had already squashed themselves into his bedroom. It must have been September ’76. Somehow there were five of us in there, cheek by jowl and getting on like a house on fire playing tracks by Hawkwind, Amon Düül and the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band. I could tell these must be part of Mark’s punk mob though, because a couple had very short hair, one a revolting old belted mac that just HAD to be ironic, and another had had a go with some eye make-up. They were Chris, Ray and Dave. Collectively they made up three-quarters of The Damned and amazingly, in a couple of days, they were going to make the very first proper UK punk rock record – an actual record – for sale in shops and everything! They seemed as surprised as we were that such an unlikely thing could be about to happen, but naturally any disbelief and joy at the giddy prospect would be keenly hidden to the outside world. Remember, these were soldiers on the front line of a modern music movement and thus they knew exactly what they were doing .

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