Mensi – Thomas Mensforth (vocals), Mond (Ray Cowie) (guitar), Steve Forsten (bass) and Decca Wade (drums)
The Angelic Upstarts were formed in South Shields, in the North-East of England in mid 1977. Influenced by bands such as The Clash and The Sex Pistols, they were a meeting of working class ideology and musical aspiration.
Mensi was always liable to provoke reaction; his lyrics making much of his working class roots, and lashing out at police and politicians. When they weren’t kicking a pigs head around onstage, Northumbria’s finest were knocking out class songs like their debut Murder of Liddle Towers and others like Student Power and I’m An Upstart.
The North East of England was renowned for its shipbuilding, steelworks and coal mines all of which are now mostly long gone. At such it was a strongly working class socialist area and fairly radical – the Jarrow March started in the North East.
While London, Manchester, Liverpool and other larger areas seemed to have punk scenes the North East was more fractured. Look at the bands. How many can you name that got anywhere? Penetration, Punishment Of Luxury, Carpettes, Blitzkrieg Bop…any others? There were no major places to play and censorship and bans were rigidly enforced by a police force run like the old wild west.
Forming in Mid 1977 in South Shields, original members Mensi, Mond, Steve and Decca all came from the Brockley Whims Housing Estate. While punk became new wave became power pop, The Angelic Upstarts with savage shouted vocals, hard men image and street clothes to boot were a breath of fresh air imitated by many a second/third generation punk band.
The Angelic Upstart’s name came from a newspaper headline about some kids in trouble who Mensi thought looked “angelic”.
While The Clash may have played at Police & Thieves here was the real thing stripped of romanticism and Seditionaries fashion. This was reality. Police brutality epitomised on their classic first self financed single Murder Of Liddle Towers concerning an electrician, Liddle Towers, kicked to death in police custody which was classified as justifiable homicide.
Couple this with The Angelic Upstarts stage show of using a pigs head with police hat on, open criticism of the police and a punk rock band to boot made them high profile targets for mr plod who used the Liddle Towers single and pigs head as possible breaches of the law against obscenity and incitement to violence. With this ammunition they used it to unofficially ban the band from playing and spreading their message in the North East and repeatedly harassed the band.
It was Sounds music paper and John Peel that catapulted the band into the limelight and record deals. Phil Sutcliffe did an interview in April 1978 and Garry Bushell picked up on the band as matching his view of working class street punk bringing together skins and punks.
Mond: The journalist Phil Sutcliffe came to see us and gave us our first big write up in the Sounds, it was a centre page spread.
Mensi: We got big helps in our early days. Number one would have been John Peel, he actually played Liddle Towers when nobody else would because I believe it got banned. Then Phil Sutcliffe who actually championed the band. Then Garry Bushell.
Mond: Garry was working for the Sounds at the time and he saw the write up that Phil Sutcliffe did. He was into punk so he came up to see us.
There was something in the Sounds every week about us, if it wasn’t a single review it was an album review or a gig review.If there wasn’t any new records out we used to just phone him up and give him stories, we used to just make them up. Gary Alikivi, 2013
Nor for them the artiness of PIL or the rock n roll glam of America like the Clash and they famously appeared on the Tyne Tees show “Check It Out” in 1979 which PIL were on doing Chant, slagging off Johnny Rotten and he famously stormed off.
All this publicity helped the band out and positioned them with others like the Ruts, UK Subs and Cockney Rejects as hope for punk continuing and the rise of ma more streetpunk/oi movement championed by Bushell and Sounds.
Their self released first single, Murder OfLiddle Towers, was picked up by Small Wonder/Rough Trade and distributed by them nationally and they also gained a useful John Peel session featuring We Are The People / Student Power / Upstart / Youth Leader broadcast in October 1978.
It also brought Jimmy Pursey’s interest and he signed them up to his package tour. They were nearly signed to Polydor before fisticuffs between Mensi and a Polydor employee after he pelted Polydor secretaries with snowballs scuppered the deal (or so one of the stories goes). Fair play the next day Pursey secured them a deal with Warner Brothers! They released the (Jimmy Pursey produced) album Teenage Warning and even appeared on Top Of The Pops with the same named single.
The short-lived signing to Polydor with The Invaders
Avowedly socialist in leanings and working class, the anger and aggression at their gigs and in their music naturally attracted the boneheaded thugs who had latched onto Sham 69 and others and who viewed the band and their gigs as a chance to fight and release their own aggression. But Mensi in particular was a vociferous anti-fascist throughout his life and the band were the same. He saw no real benefit in RAR gigs playing to mainly white audiences and distrusted what he saw as a student supporting SWP.
Mensi…they [the SWP] had a march in London, one of these “troops out” things. I went down just to clock the situation. It’s the same faces all the time, these poxy students with long hair, glasses and shoulder bags. Getting the troops out isn’t the solution to the problem…[talking about RAR gigs] I mean what’s the use of playing Alexandra Palace in front of 4000 people when 3900 of the are white.
The Angelic Upstarts were a great band who saw the possibilities of punk, were genuinely of the people and could/should have been even greater.
Mensi: It was a way out for what I consider to be working class kids. You didn’t have to be a student in art school, you didn’t have to be prolific at music you could just bang a dustbin lid and you were away mate.
Decca: Imagine how I felt you end up drinking with Hollywood movie stars like Marty Feldman who I loved and adored…Yeh looking back I’ve been a lucky man.
Mond: When I was in the shipyards putting lights up on type 42 Destroyers and you told me I was going to do an album in Abbey Road I would of just laughed. I’m an alright guitarist not a great guitarist but I couldn’t see it happening.
But that’s what punk did it made peoples dreams come true.
Gary Alikivi, 2013
The band went on to release a number of successful albums and minor hit singles before splitting in 1983. Since then the band in various forms have reformed, played and recorded with Mensi becoming a punk folk hero. Sadly in March 2021 he died of COVID aged 65. Much missed!
The Angelic Upstarts sound is nothing like what you think its going to be. No ramalama 1234 or Oi crazy attack about fighting and terraces. The songs are a mixture of fast and slow tunes, dynamics and all topped off with Mensi’s glorious roar of socialist protest. What more could you want? An authentic punk band.
Murder Of Liddle Towers / Police Oppression (May 1978 Small Wonder)
The band paid for the recording and pressing of 500 singles which they released themselves and sold at gigs and local record shops. The single was then picked up by Small Wonder Records who released it nationally. While most debut punk singles come charging out of the blocks this one delivers a sucker punch. Starting slowly, it works itself up into indignant white hot fury before delivering the killer blow before again going slow and quiet. Equally great b-side as well.
In between signing for WEA, the band recorded a session for John Peel featuring We Are The People / Student Power / Upstart / Youth Leader which wasbroadcast in October 1978. To my ears the songs sound better produced than the album, though Upstart doesn’t yet have its guitar coda.
I’m An Upstart / Leave Me Alone ( WEA March 1979)
To have one great single is good but to have two in a row is some going. Impassioned, screaming vocals with catchy call and reply chorus all built over a raucous punk heavy metal riff. Pursey’s production on this is excellent. The song had come some way from its original form on their first John Peel session. Another great B-side as well.
“Go away and leave me, f**k off and leave me …Go away and leave me alone!”
Teenage Warning / Leave Me Alone (July 1979 WEA)
Like ‘I’m An Upstart’ it charted, but this time the boys got a Top Of The Pops television appearance.
In my view a weak song that fails to get going combined with a not great production.
“You wind me up like a clockwork orange Then you hid the key to my destination There’s no satisfaction Its all frustration”
Never ‘Ad Nothin’ / Nowhere Left To Hide ( WEA October 1979)
Back on familiar territory here with another stomper about the poliss, their failings and shoot and ask questions later. This time a story about Paul Howe, an 18 year old, who held a man hostage in the Castle pub in Essex. He tried to run and was shot dead by the Police.
Sadly in 2023 in the Police are still the same and still misogynistic, racist homophobes who seem to attract pondlife to their ranks with inpunity.
We don’t normally go beyond 1979 on the site but honourable mentions for these 2 belters.
Teenage Warning (July 1979 WEA)
The album was dedicated to The Pistols, Jimmy Pursey and Northumbria Police!
Signed up to WEA they released a fairly lacklustre album Teenage Warning. While the I’m An Upstart / Leave Me Alone single sounds great the rest of the album sounds weakly produced. Mensi is on great form with the usual subjects close to his heart – the police, the downtrodden, students, anger and growing up all delivered with that impassioned roar of his set to the Upstarts metal punk riffarama. Picks – We Are The People and Student Power. I don’t mean to sound negative – it’s a good album but it could/should have been exceptional.
Amazingly the NME (11.8.79) review below by Paul Morley is positive! They were the first to proclaim punk dead and Morley was renowned as a cutting intellectual.
Newcastle’s Upstarts are already, for obvious and not so obvious reasons, being prepared by the vulture voyeurs as the successors to Sham. I’m not sure what that means. I suppose it means that because of appearance, anthemic noise, naive determination and the violent impulses of their crass visions they’re set to attract similar sorts of publicity soaked fans and thus to adopt the lethal mantle of the voice of the hairless confused.
Such thoughts are a sad indication of the way factions and labels have unfortunately established themselves: how spitefully bigoted people can be. The problems of greatest concern to Angelic months will not to be how to expand and extend their music, but how to control the indulgent, ignorant fervour that is likely to greet it. Jimmy Pursey’s career as personality has been crushed, or at least redirected and compromised, by the unprecedented interference of thugs who took their vague identification with Pursey’s frail and hopeful philosophies to ludicrous and disturbing depths. The Angelic Upstarts have it in them to be the pop group the Damned never were. But they won’t be given a chance.
The Upstarts, a bunch of apparently illiterate and petulant Geordie hooligans, have where they could into a position forced to confront the danger. with little outside help or compassion. But, for now, stupidly avoiding the issue, what must be done is to celebrate the release of their debut album on Warners after the illustrative JP Production fracas. It’s cuddly, with a few pin pricks of frustration. Teenage Warning’ is the audacious, frantic Pursey produced work of four youngsters from the North East whose fate of dockyard, dole and premature drunken middle age has been temporarily halted. I don’t expect I’ll play it many times, but it’s good to have around.
There are 12 fun energetic and explosive punk metal expressions here that have been blasted out of confusion and frustration with unexpected consistency and effective crudity by people who still seem shocked that they have found a way to vent their feelings. Tradition has it that this is the Upstarts’ one burst. Fron here on they’re destined to go the way of Slaughter And The Dogs or Eater or The Damned or, of course, Sham.
The fate of such groups has always been all but certain, because of limitations and immaturity. These groups though, do leave behind records, made so affectionately and convincingly, that are at worst atrociously bad-good and at best raucously lovable and, in a tritschy way, timeless.
This is a classic of genre. Cheaply packaged. excruciatingly but proudly designed, it contains five pulp gems that place it many rungs higher than the Eater or Dogs bursts, and only just below the Damned debut. The ultimate masters of the genre, Clash and Sex Pistols. are credited as ‘inspiration’ —along with the Northumbria police.
In many ways the album is something like that which Sham would have made if they were less Pursey-dominated and directed —a record of urgent unity. There is no outstanding individual like Pursey, in the group and Pursey’s production seems to exaggerate all the Pistols/Clash aspects to splendid proportions. This is predictable, punk-condensed heavy metal without the parody of the Pistols, the imagination of the Clash, the starstruck indulgence of Slaughter, the comedy of The Damned or the slippiness of UK Subs. The purest late ’70s Punk rock, in fact: excitable, blank songs that snap leave me alone, moan about the problems of young life, loathe the police, mock students, scream at the kids to be unit., and advocate a sensible form of anarchy. Dedicated to their mums and dads, and put together with the passionate feeling that it is the most adventurous, brave, important and poet, music of its time.
What do you say, What can you do? Not the greatest listening experience. but I had great fun reviewing it, and in years to come it will no doubt say one hell of a lot about the times when it was made.
Love them, but don’t abuse them Paul Morley
Say what you like about Gary Bushell but I think his story of OI isn’t that bad or that far removed from the truth. However Oi’s ‘working class’ ethic and facet of national pride can and was easily mistaken for fascism and nationalistic antagonism. However this is not the place to go into it here. This is his story of The Upstarts that he has kindly let me use on the site. To read his full article click here
Before he went potty, Jimmy Pursey gave the kiss of life to the two bands who defined the parameters and direction of original Oi – the Angelic Upstarts and the Cockney Rejects. Singer Tommy ‘Mensi’ Mensforth and guitarist Ray Cowie, known as Mond, formed the Upstarts in the summer of ’77 after getting blown away by the Clash’s White Riot tour. Childhood mates, they had grown up together on the Brockley Whinns council estate in South Shields and later attended Stanhope Road Secondary Modern school (Mensi got expelled from the local grammar school at thirteen for delinquency.) Mensi worked as an apprentice miner after leaving school. Forming the band at 19 was his escape route from the pits. Mond worked as a shipyard electrician right up until their first hit. The Upstarts’ original drummer and bassist quit after violent crowd reactions to their first gig in nearby Jarrow, to be replaced by bakery worker Stix and bricklayer Steve Forsten respectively. The band were also soon to recruit the services of Keith Bell, a self-confessed former gangster and one-time North Eastern Countries light-middleweight boxing champ, who as manager, bouncer and bodyguard was able to maintain order at early gigs on the basis of his reputation alone.
The Upstarts soon attracted the attention of the Northumbria Police Force, who haunted the band’s early career like a malignant poltergeist. Police interest stemmed from the Upstarts’ championing of the cause of Birtley amateur boxer Liddle Towers who died from injuries received after a night in the police cells. The inquest called it ‘justifiable homicide’. The Upstarts called it murder, and ‘The Murder of Liddle Towers’ (b/w ‘Police Oppression’) was their debut single on their own Dead Records. Later re-pressed by Rough Trade, the song’s brutal passion was well received even by music press pseuds, although not by the Old Bill who infiltrated gigs in plain clothes. Charges of incitement to violence were considered. Only the Upstarts’ mounting press coverage dissuaded them. For their part the band were uncompromising. They appeared on the front cover of the Socialist Workers Party’s youth magazine Rebel soon after and accused their area police of being largely National Front sympathisers.
Official police action might have been dropped but unofficial harassment continued unabated. Mensi claimed he was constantly followed and frequently stopped, searched and abused by individual officers. The band blamed unofficial police pressure for getting them banned from virtually every gig in the North East of England – via the promise of raids, prosecution for petty rule breaking, opposing licence renewals and so on.
The Upstarts got the last laugh though when in April ’79 they conned a Prison Chaplain into inviting them to play a gig at Northumbria’s Acklington Prison (where ironically Keith Bell had finished his last sentence). 150 cons turned up to see a union jack embellished with the words ‘Upstarts Army’, a clenched fist, the motto ‘Smash Law And Order’ and a pig in a helmet entitled ‘PC Fuck Pig’. The band hadn’t managed to smuggle in a ‘real’ pig’s head (they usually smashed one up on stage) but the cons revelled merrily in the wham-bam wallop of rebel anthems like ‘Police Oppression’, ‘We Are The People’ (about police corruption), and a specially amended version of ‘Borstal Breakout’ retitled ‘Acklington Breakout’.
The Daily Mirror splashed with ‘Punks Rock A Jailhouse’ (wrongly identifying me as the band’s spokesman.) The Prison Governor and local Tories did their nuts, with Tynemouth MP, the appropriately named Neville Trotter, condemning the gig as ‘an incredibly stupid thing to allow’. Only Socialist Worker printed a true record of the gig, quoting Mensi telling prisoners they’d be better off in nick if Thatcher got elected that summer, and urging punks to vote Labour as ‘Thatcher’s government will destroy the trade union movement’. (In reality Mensi’s brand sub-Scargill patriotic socialism was far removed from the SWP’s revised Trotsky-lite posturing).
The band’s salty populism and savage post-Sham punk attracted a massive following of working class kids in the North East, the self-styled Upstarts Army, while the power of their debut single convinced Jimmy Pursey to form his JP label with Polydor. The Upstarts were the label’s first signing and also their first sacking after a jumped-up Polydor security guard tried to push the band about. He took on Mensi in a one against one fight and went down like the Belgrano. Polydor dropped the band. They never bothered to ask for Mensi’s side of the story. Soon after the Upstarts signed with Warner Brothers. Their second single, the Pursey produced ‘I’m An Upstart’, was released in April ’79, charted, and was chased hard by the ‘Teenage Warning’ single and album.
The Angelic Upstarts also fought – and won – a couple of sharp battles against the far right. They played numerous Rock Against Racism gigs too, including one at Leeds where the band sported SWP ‘Disband The SPG’ badges.
The Angelic Upstarts lost their momentum in 1980 as well, getting dropped by Warners in the summer. And although they were snapped up by EMI, going on to release their finest studio album, ‘Two Million Voices’ in April ’81, they barely played live and fans were getting frustrated.
“All you kids, black and white/Together we are dynamite” Angelic Upstarts, Kids On The Street, 1981.
Photo Credit Rik Walton
I’ve deliberately kept this low key because I don’t want it to become the main focus as I view it as a red herring. The photo above is from the earliest interview with the Upstarts. Each one of them is wearing a swastika armband. If you add the regular violence at their gigs, Mensi’s shaved head, British flags and their associations with Oi then you get all these pointers that the band were right wing. This is BOLLOCKS. The group didn’t help themselves with these associations, even though they played with Smash The Front on their backdrop and at one time the leader of the local branch of the NF was at the police station complaining about the Upstarts abusing him!
And to further muddy the race waters and try to convey that politics and life isn’t all black and white (sic) and that being working class didn’t mean you were some prized ideal or free from bigotry here is an old interview with the boys complete with dodgy humour and attitudes that in 2023 is pretty cringeworthy. That said, its pretty typical of attitudes of the time as people were coming to terms with what it meant in the changing times to be working class, white and Britishness. And if the boys talked like this, think what the Northumbria Police force and other forces were like. Make of it what you will.
Stolen from ‘Rising Free Fanzine’ no. 3. (81?)
The Angelic Upstarts were formed in South Shields after the initial punk explosion had hit London. Their first single “The Murder of Liddle Towers” was released via Rough Trade/Small Wonder and it still remains a classic punk single. Since then the band have ridden the bumpy road in search of stardom. Line up changes, naughty goings on in the North East and violence at their gigs has not quenched Mensi’s thirst to create a band that inspires others to achieve goals of their own. Hopefully the past misfortunes will not rear their ugly head again. The band, Mensi, Mond, Glynn and Decca have never minced words. This interview is not an exception.
The single ‘Last Night Another Soldier’, was this aimed at the British Army in Ireland or at the Army as a whole? Mensi: The Army as a whole, but both really, it’s about soldiers dying.
Do you think the Army should pull out of Northern Ireland? Mensi: I haven’t hot the answer, I’m not intelligent to say whether they should pull out, but someone should do something instead of pissing about and arguing amongst themselves, cos kids are still getting killed. Send Tony Gordon (Sham Rejects Upstarts manager) over there, he’d sort ’em out, put them on a weekly wage that they couldn’t afford to live on. With 25 pounds per week they wouldn’t have enough money to buy bombs or guns. Or send Jimmy Pursey over to talk them to sleep, and Garry Bushell, he’d scare ’em with his spots, I’ve never seen anybody with so many spots as Bushell, Acne Bracket, Acne Bracket Bushell.
Do you like him? Mensi: No, not really (long pause) he’s to spotty, he’s really ugly. Do you know why he slags me off all the time, ‘cos he’s jealous of my good looks. Like when Charlie Harper compared our bands in your last issue he forgot to mention that I’m the prettiest man in punk rock.
You talk like Ali. Mensi: That’s right, I’m the Mohammed Ali of punk, ‘cept I’m white. (Mensi adds if there are any girls reading this and they are interested they should get in touch with him. Oi! Oi!)
After writing the song ‘England’ what makes you proud to be English? Mensi: What makes a Scotsman proud to be Scottish, what makes an Irishman proud to be Irish. The trouble is there’s not enough people in this country who are proud to be English. Mond: Put it this way, you could have been born a Greek or an Iranian and that should make you proud to be English. Mensi: You’re a racist! You’re a racist! This band has been infiltrated with nazis. No seriously, there is no-one in this band who is colour prejudiced. It’s just we hate niggers. No, it’s not true. The Anti-Nazi League thing is a load of toss.
You wouldn’t do RAR again? Mensi: I mean what’s the use of playing Alexandra Palace in front of 4000 people when 3900 of the are white. And another thing, niggers are more racist than white people are.
But there’s good and bad in everyone. Mensi: Yeah I know but they could do a lot more for themselves and RAR. When RAR has evenly split audiences that’s when you’re getting across.
Do the National Front Skinheads try and influence you? Mensi: They try, but I haven’t met any bright ones.
Do you think it’s just something for people to follow? Mensi: Yeah, it’s just a fashion, the best parts of the aren’t nazis. The pub where we drink has some NF/BM people but some of their mates are darkies. People are entitled to their own views, whether I think they’re right or wrong. It’s a free country.
You shouldn’t be ashamed to be English and white which is another thing the SWP put over, it’s as if it’s our fault we were born white, we should all have been born niggers. I’ve got nothing against niggers but I’m proud to be white. But the way things are in this country, if you’re proud to be English and white you’re branded as a nazi, and it’s time it’s stopped. Glynn: You can’t wear a Union Jack badge without people thinking you’re a racist.
So perhaps the SWP, in a way, cause more trouble between factions? Mensi: I’m sure they do, they had a march in London, one of these “troops out” things. I went down just to clock the situation. It’s the same faces all the time, these poxy students with long hair, glasses and shoulder bags. Getting the troops out isn’t the solution to the problem.
I’ll tell you who I thought was a really good politician who got slagged down, and that was Enoch Powell. I don’t think he was a racialist at all, he just predicted things that DID happen. He was probably the most under-estimated politician of all time, until he was exiled in some remote Irish constituency. The papers branded HIM as a racist. If the NME get hold of this fanzine and read this interview they’ll brand ME as a racist. I think he should have been Prime Minister, there you are.
Do you think politics and music should mix? Mensi: No, but it happens ‘cos everyone seems to ask me leading questions. (I decide to change the subject to avoid asking leading questions).
From where do you get most of the ideas for your songs? Mensi: From the poxy newspapers. Glynn: He just writes about things around him. Mensi: I can’t write love songs. Sticks can. Mensi: That was a leading question, “Sticks can” – tell ’em about Sticks. Glynn: “Stick’s Diary” is the B side of the latest single. Mensi: We found Stick’s diary and Mond was reading out the words “oh my God I love her so much, I can’t live without her” and all that crap. It’s about his girl friend Karen who lives in Liverpool. It said in his diary that he was going to sell his drum kit and give her the money so he could see her smile. But we sold his drum kit and we smiled. (The band sold Stick’s drum kit, which was worth 500 pounds to the drummer of Infa Riot for 40 pounds. Because in Mensi’s own words ‘He’s a good kid’.)
Why did Sticks leave? Mensi: It was all over his girl friend, we didn’t gang up on him, we didn’t mind him joining the Rejects, we’re not all gangsters you know. But Sticks started mouthing off to the papers that we were too polite and soft and how he wanted to be hard and the Rejects were hard. And after he had said all this we found his diary and it says “I love you so much, I can’t spend another minute without you” and I thought what the fucking hells going on like. So instead of telling the truth that we wouldn’t let his girl friend live in our house, he told all these lies. That IS the real reason he left the band. Glynn: She lived in the house for 6 months and all for free. Mensi: You see originally it was the four of us in the house living and working together. We had this rule, by all means bring a lass down, she could stay for a weekend or a week and then fuck off. Glynn: But when Karen came down from Liverpool for a weekend, she had six cases, she stayed for 6 months. Mensi: Every time I went to the house she was there, you must understand this, that I personally couldn’t live with my own girl friend never mind living with someone else’s. I bear no personal grudge against him but you must remember we’re down here to work… it’s no playtime. I mean, I wanna go mad and smash the house up now and again. Mond: I wanna play with myself while watching our blue films and I can’t do that while someones lass is in the room. Glynn: The thing is, he was the sort of bloke who took everything very personally, he’d go off in a mood. I had my girl friend at the house, but she left after a while and got a flat so I moved out with her. Mensi: Which was fair enough. Glynn: Stick’s lass was a dead idle anyway, she couldn’t get a job. Mensi: When he did leave the house he said “By the way, I’m leaving the band for the Rejects”, I said right, great, fair enough. In fact, it was one of the best things that has ever happened to the band.
Did you play prisons and sing ‘Liddle’ and ‘Police Oppression’ to get back at authority? Mond: No, we just played ‘cos it was a gig and they’re hard to come by, we knew a few blokes in there.
Did the screws let the prisoners dance? Mensi: What do you think it is, a fucking disco! It’s a prison man.
It’s a wonder they let you out. Mensi: Me, I shit myself it was frightening, once you get in there and they close those gates behind you. We got in the hall and there was complete silence, we did the first number and everyone sat there, then they all clapped together and all stopped together, really weird.
What were the real reasons for the split with Warner Brothers? Mensi: We were pinching too much stuff, no, we were blamed for a lot of things we didn’t do. They also wanted us to change musical direction, they wanted us to be the British equivalent of the Eagles. They said to us your third LP must be a change of direction. So we left. Mond: But we were still coming up with the goods. Mensi: Jimmy Pursey’s the boy though, have you heard his new album? No. Mensi: You’re lucky then. No, Pursey’s into what he’s into. I hope he does well, the best luck to him. But it’s great when you’re unemployed like Jim is to have a swimming pool.
Do you have any desire to play any foreign countries? Mensi: I wish we could, you’ll have to see Tony Gordon about that.
What about America? Mensi: Yeah! The girls over there are really dirty, I’ve got this good film called “Debbie goes to Dallas”. You’ve got to realise that there are so many girls in this world who haven’t had the pleasure of my body. Glynn: I’d like to go abroad because it’s different, it would be a nice holiday.
Mensi, if you ever had to give up music would you go back down the mines? Mensi: Yeah, I suppose so, it’s good money, it’s the only thing I know. The only thing I really miss is the money, welll put it this way, I used to have a sheepskin coat, four suits and a 1600 GT Capri, but I used to work for it.
Do you get a set wage each week from the record company? Mensi: 25 pounds a week. Glynn: It’s not much, you get it om Friday, it’s gone by Sunday. Mensi: I hate it when you go down the Marquee and kids come up to you and ask you to buy them a drink and when you tell them you aint got no money they don’t believe you. Sometimes I get very cynical with the kids. Glynn: Half the kids are most probably getting more on the dole. (The Upstarts are hard up, Mond still uses the same amps and cabs he started with. Glynn adds that the whole back line is falling to pieces. On their last tour they lost 2000 pounds. Their overheads are high, as they have to live down here, Mensi also needs petrol for his Granada.) Mensi: The company (E.M.I) give us a certain amount to record with. We like to get the best studios available to make a good recording and good records.
You could do it cheaper and save a bit for yourself. Mensi: We could do it, but we wouldn’t be progressing and we’d be cheating the kids, so it’s not worth it. We’re real heroes knoworrimean, Charlie Harper was right, we’re still doing it. Mond: We done it for the kids.
The interview finished with Mensi impersonating Jimmy Pursey, But Mond is right they have done it for the kids.
And I stole it from … http://www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/1196/upstarts.html
TalkPunk
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