It was forty years ago today - a photo on Flickriver

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23rd October 1976. It is forty years since I went to see Patti Smith at the Hammersmith Odeon. I went with two friends from Weston-super-Mare, Mike Llewellyn and Jane Jackman.  The 1963 Citroen 2cv Van that I had at the time was only capable 50 mph and only had proper seating for two so we decided to travel up to London by train. We spent the afternoon checking out record shops. I found this live Patti Smith bootleg "Turn It Up" in market, I can't recall exactly which one.

I was already a committed Patti Smith fan. I had bought the first album "Horses" on American import in December 1975 from the old Virgin Records and Tapes in Haymarket Walk, Bristol. I still reckon that the opening lines on that album, "Jesus died for somebody's sins but not mine" are amongst the greatest opening lines of all time.

The UK punk movement was starting to get quite a bit of media overage by October 1976. This was still before the Sex Pistols vs. Bill Grundy spectacle but if you went by what you read in the NME you would have expected the streets to be swarming with punks. They were not, and the audience inside the Hammersmith Odeon looked pretty much like any other rock gig crowd. We did however get to hear New Rose by The Damned packed over the PA while we waited for the support act to play. It had been released on Stiff Records the day before. 

The support was The Stranglers. I remember not being particularly impressed and finding them a bit dull at the time but a few months later I did buy their debut album. Patti Smith though was great. Very intense and energetic. She was joined onstage at one point by reggae artist Tapper Zukie who was also on tour at the time. I don't pretend to remember much about the setlist apart from Gloria, but it included songs from both Horses and the newly released Radio Ethiopia and I think as well the Velvet's number We're Gonna Have a Real Good Time Together.

After the gig we made our way to Pimlico where we crashed at the flat of Pete Flanagan, also Weston-super-Mare and a friend of Mike's. I knew him casually. He had been a year below me in school. A nice guy. That was the last time I ever saw him.

Mike and I did quite a few gigs bak then, including the Runaways and Graham Parker and the Rumour at Cardiff University a couple of weeks earlier. We did use the 2cv Van to get to that one. It wasn't quite so far to go at an average of about 40 mph. Mike gout very aught up in the whole punk thing and things got a bit out of hand. We lost touch and sometime during the 1980s I heard that he had died. A great shame. He was a gentle soul who just loved music. I remember listening to LPs on his Rigonda Stereo. Rigondas were made in the Soviet Union and sold very cheaply in the west to earn had currency. THey looked a bit naff but sounded great. I bought my opt of the MC5's Back in the USA off Mike.

Jane also dived into punk culture big time. She moved to London and changed her name to Jane Suck and beams a freelance journalist. She came back to Weston a couple of times and I bumped into her in Maximillian's Wine Bar. She was really excited about the whole punk think. She told of her first meeting with Johnny Rotten. "I'm the female equivalent of Iggy Pop" she had told him. "Don't tell me that you are the female equivalent of anyone" he had replied. She had become friends with T.V. Smith and Gaye Advert. Tim Smith is the real thing she had told me, the true future of punk and a great writer and a really great person. She is credited on the back of their debut album for owing up with the album title "Crossing the Red Sea". Jane gets a paragraph in Jon Savage's book on the punk years "England's Dreaming". Her journalism career did not last long. She had already been involved in an altercation with Suzi Quatro mid interview. She had a short fuse and the music papers stopped giving her assignments. I gave her a lift back to her parent's house and never saw her again.

Earlier this year I went to see T.V. Smith at Katie Fitzgerald's and asked hime if he knew what had happened to her. He had not seen her about fifteen years but yes, she had survived the punk era. I was glad to hear that.  And Jane was right about Tim T.V. Smith, he is a really nice person and a great performer.

Anyway, I still have that bootleg album and the ticket from the Hammersmith Odeon gig still lives inside the sleeve, along with another one from her gig at the Birmingham arming Academy in 2004.

Art + Electricity = Rock and Roll
Taken on: October 21, 2016
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