Chiswick Part 2

How did you get into punk ?

It sort of arrived on our doorstep. We had cut the 101ers single and though it might not seem that adventurous now it was a record that paved the way for punk. Malcolm invited Ted and I to go see his new band at some gig in Chelsea. Basically it was about a dozen drunk students, Malcolm, Vivien, Ted maybe Bernie and a couple of others and me, with John taunting the students and getting beer cans thrown at him – most impressive. Before that one night at Upstairs at Ronnies Malcolm had already bent my ear about whether the lead singer of the Count Bishops, Mike Spenser would be right for his new band. Fuck off Malcolm we’re making a record with them.

The idea of getting into punk never occurred to us at the time. There were a bunch of bands and me and my friends went out to see them. We knew a lot of the musicians and so went to support them. It wasn’t a case of getting into them, they were just there and we went to see them, sometimes recorded them and were generally out to enjoy ourselves. I was already pushing 30 so it was my 2^nd childhood – and last given that next up were the new romantics!

How did you get involved with punk ?

Via the 101ers, then the Gorillas, then the Radiators, Skrewdriver and Johnny Moped, with a few other records along the way.

Like Lee Woods of Raw records you started with a stall / record shop. What made you make the leap to starting a record label ?

I think more than anything we were inspired by the people who ran independent record labels in the US from the 40s to the 60s - King, Stax, Sun, Aladdin. Imperial etc etc. Ted and I were sold on the romance of making a record and just selling it however it could be sold. Ted would drive around in his battered Peugeot selling records out of the trunk to shops on our first release – The Count Bishops EP. There had been very few British independent labels before us. There was Island and Virgin run by guys who were well off from the start, and there was RAK and UK run by successful producers, but not much in the way of a street based operation with absolutely no money. As the Desperate Bicycle’s first single said – ‘It was easy it was cheap go and do it’. I think that up to then everyone had assumed that making and pressing a record required a lot of money, whereas the truth has always been that promoting a record into the charts is the thing that costs money.

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The morning after one of the Ramones gigs @ the Roundhouse they turned up at the market stall having wandered the streets all night in search of some ‘action’. London in 1976 was very dull, particularly on a Sunday night. Anyway Joey was very excited that he was able to pick up some Sweet singles with different B-sides to the US issues. Roger Armstrong

Riff Regan singer from the band London remembers..."The whole period was incredibly exciting. Every night we'ed go to a gig and I felt punk was very close to bands like the Small Faces/Kinks/the Who in the 60 s. There was a real buzz in London during 1976/77 that the music was changing... Another side of it that attracted me was collecting the records. Picture sleeves and limited editions became popular and it was fun to hunt them down. I often used to go down to the Soho market (no longer there) and search through the record racks. There was always this other guy doing the same, later I realised he was Paul Weller. I built up an incredible collection and then about fifteen years ago, when I was really broke, I had to sell them. I wish I hadn t"

I also heard that the Pistols might have signed for Chiswick but viewed you as too small. Whats the story ? Were the Count Bishops really rivals for the Pistols

Neither Malcolm with the Pistols or Bernie with the Clash (or for that matter Andy with GenX) ever had any intention of signing with an independent label. We just did not have the money or the muscle and we couldn’t be wound up the way the majors could. The Pistols weren’t going to come round a sprew up over our carpets – wasn’t worth it they were messy enough anyway and they would have been told to fuck off and catch themselves on. They (Malcolm) needed something to rail against and Ted and I did not fit the bill. We nearly signed the Jam. The day before we had a meeting set up with Paul and his dad/manager John, Chris Parry at Polydor heard that Bernie had shafted him and taken the Clash to CBS, so he rang the Jam and said they had a deal and they blew us out. Probably just as well all round.

Lokking at their roster that had signed alot of these high charged r& B acts. As punk broke the rush for the bands came . The majors cherry picked made a few ballsups and in the wake of Chiswicks exampole formed their own record labels for one offs etc. Basically I see that Chiswick just released stuff they liked

Looking at the first 20 releases or so your roster seemed to be representative of a lot of pub rock acts like The Bishops, Hammersmth Gorillas, Stukas etc and a few minor punk bands like Johnny & The Self Abusers, Johnny Moped etc. was this a conscious decision. ? What did you hope to achieve ?

We hoped to sell some records. Decisions were not very conscious in those days. To a large extent whatever came at us that we liked we went with it. At one point we were in financial trouble – owed a lot of money and were not getting the success – so we put out the Drugs Addicts ‘Make A Record’ EP with ‘Gay Boys In Bondage’ as the lead track – positively chart bound! However it did give Kirsty MacColl her first outing on record – as Mandy Doubt. I think also that punk as a phenomenon and as a scene of some kind is really analysing after the event. At the time there was all sorts of music being played – punk was just part of it. We were selling all sorts of records in the Shop and the Stalls and what we put out just reflected that as best we could. These things all co-existed and apart from those into the whole deal – fashion and all – most of my friends listened to all sorts of music. Really it is abit like looking at music today and saying that it is all about House Music. For some it probably is, but then there is a lot of other music around – same then. For me punk really lasted about a year and a bit. It was all over really quickly as indeed it probably should have been.

( Roger makes some fair points here but I think that punk really did stand out as seperate from other music. Yeah it overlapped in places but it had an identity)

Onto Chiswick Part 3 and Johnny Moped, Radiators from Space and Johnny & The Self Abusers