Patrik Fitzgerald
Patrik Fitzgerald was one of the oddities that Punk Rock threw up in 1977. A lone singer with an acoustic guitar regaling punk audiences with lyrical songs and interspersing them with chat, stories and poems. Is this what people died in the Punk wars for?
The answer is an emphatic yes. There’s no, better example of the Punk DIY attitude than the lone, slight figure of Patrik Fitzgerald making it happen and expressing himself on stage. Singing songs of alienation, observation and imagined situations and often braving hostile receptions to communicate with an audience. While bands had the safety net of each other and the bombast of volume and wattage he stood alone.
The nearest artist to him, John Cooper Clarke, had sarcasm, humour and a rapid-fire delivery. Patrik had realism, pathos and incisive, sometimes uncomfortable, lyrics. Those early songs like Safety Pin In My Heart and All Sewn Up have amazingly stood the test of time and sound as relevant today as then. Patrik Fitzgerald was the ‘Punk Poet.’
Excellent site on Patrik Fitzgerald here
It’s embarrassing but I don’t know where this feature came from. I remember putting it together but don’t remember the interview or source – so email me if you know.
Patrik was born in Stratford, East London in 1956 of Irish immigrant parents, lived in Leytonstone in his mum’s house and went to school in Forest Gate. English was his best subject and he did some music at primary school learning the cello before leaving with 6 O’levels. While at school he suffered bullying and like so many other kids found music an escape.
I used to get picked on all the time cos I was small, so writing was the outlet I had, the only way I could say what I felt about things. If you’ve got a page in front of you you’ve got the freedom to say what you want. Whereas if somebody’s saying ‘shut up’ or kicking you in the back you ain’t got that freedom. NME, 24.02.79
I was a solitary person and as a kid I was an archetypal loner. People thought I was a nutter, a small fragile looking nutter by the time I was ten. I found that I liked all sorts of stuff. I was brought up on pop and the Beatles because my sister was a big pop fan but while she liked the Beatles I was more drawn to stuff like The Animals, Yardbirds and Stones. I then found my own way into Glam through like Bowie and Roxy Music, Sparks and Cockney Rebel. The Doors sang ‘Music is your only friend’ and for me growing up that was true basically. I spent a lot of my childhood early teens just listening to music endlessly. I first got into guitar when I was about 14 and my cousin, who liked the Beach Boys, played acoustic guitar. When I was 14/15 I discovered guitars and started buying second hand ones.
Leytonstone however wasn’t the centre of the rock’n’roll universe.
Music wise Leytonstone was a no man’s land for music except the Red Lion which was part of touring circuit. There was a bit of underground music there but no one ever came from there or was really interested in going out there to that part of London apart from to visit the Small Wonder record shop.
Wanting to find a band, Patrik trod the well worn route of scanning the musician’s wanted ads in the music paper Melody Maker.
I’d been through trying to find some like minded musicians when I came across the ad in the Melody Maker from the London SS. They advertised for people who liked the Stones, Dolls and Mott the Hoople and I wasn’t falling over backwards about any of those particularly but it was the only ad in the music paper that I thought was vaguely interesting. At the same time as they advertised I had arrived vaguely at the New York Dolls who I remember seeing on the TV and thinking ‘Nah I don’t really like these.’ I vaguely liked them but I didn’t think they were terribly good. It looked like showbiz to me.
I went up to Tony James’ flat in Highgate or Archway for the audition and I remember it was quite funny because they both looked quite hippyish. Mick Jones came over as quite aloof and a bit rock starish and I thought obviously I’m not the right person for them. I was little and quite tubby and certainly not rock starish looking at all and I couldn’t play slide guitar which is what I thought was what they wanted as they were advertising for people who liked the Stones. I did play slide guitar in the audition and it was appalling because I can’t play slide guitar to save my life! I’m sure they must have thought I was completely useless. I didn’t know they were heading to be honest and I don’t think they did either. There must have been a severe rethink to get to The Clash!!
At the time of the audition I had also written some songs and I wrote off to Ken Pitt, who was Bowie’s manager, and asked him to be my manager. I went up to his flat and played him some songs and some tapes and he put me in touch with contacts in the music business. I went and saw some publishers but they just thought my songs were kind of odd.
Certainly two of the songs taken to the publishers were ‘No Fun Football’ and ‘Backstreet Boys’ and the others were things along the same lines as that. In 1975/76 I already had these songs fully formed. A lot of my stuff was lyrical music along the lines of Bowie and Ray Davies and I was into Bertold Brecht. I didn’t really like Bob Dylan. I thought ‘He’s American. What’s that all about?
In England we have a tradition of ‘we gotta get out of this place’ and ‘don’t let me be misunderstood’. Stuff that you could call punk had been going on for a decade.
My reason for getting into writing was obviously because I wanted to express myself in some kind of way and basically what punk was about was writing about what was there. So like other people I just started writing about what I saw really.
I didn’t speak to people where I lived or anything and I never had any connection with anybody hence my connection with punk. The punk scene was a connection for rootless people and homeless people who didn’t fit in and felt alienated. The whole punk thing was like a generation with no home. Everybody seemed to have no home!! (lol)”
Apart from the Sex Pistols and Clash there was other stuff going on at the time. Little political subversive bands coming out of the woodwork. Pub and big bands had had their day and a lot of people were using the stage to express themselves. I wanted to be a part of that.
Tired of playing other people in the theatre Patrik again decided to give his songs another go. Since the London SS rehearsal he had little success. His last band was at the end of 1976 and who had rebelled against his suggestion they should attempt to play ‘Anarchy.’
I had been a customer of Pete and Marion Stennet’s Small Wonder for a long time. Like the theatre group, it was the only other thing going on at that time that interested me. Apart from Petticoat Lane where you could get imported reggae records there was only one other shop in Leytonstone that wasn’t bad. But Small Wonder was the only decent shop. I used to go in there all the time and buy punk records. I used to hang out there every other day with Pete, helping him abuse the customers, putting them off buying records and getting them to buy others.
Pete had mentioned about wanting to do a record label. I made a cassette and popped it through the door. I probably thought he thought I was quite obnoxious so I didn’t name the tape hoping he would give it a listen anyway. But he knew it was me despite my efforts!
A band? I suppose I always wrote my stuff as if it was a band. That was the done thing and I couldn’t really picture it any other way. I had reel to reel tape recorders and used to record myself but I always thought of my songs as having drums, bass and keyboards that everyone has to back them up. Pete would have had as little joy finding people as I did and I didn’t have a band at the time because I couldn’t find people with imagination or spark.
Most of the other bands Pete recorded and released on the Small Wonder I just didn’t get and I just thought ‘What’s that all about?’ I didn’t understand Crass. I thought like The Clash; they were just a bit showbiz, geared towards world domination.
Patrik Fitzgerald – Revolver TV Show 1978
The one thing Patrik was guaranteed to do was get a reaction that could swing both ways and often at the same time. Gigs came first by just turning up at a venue.
“They begrudgingly put me on because it was easy. It was just a guitar. I was an easy option between bands. I played the Roxy and Vortex and many other places. A fair amount of other places had also opened their doors to punk by then like the Marquee and Roundhouse. There was also a lot of other cross over places like the Deptford Albany putting on other bands. It was at the point when everybody put punk things. Shortly after I started playing.
Click above for larger images
I had started playing gigs on an almost daily basis and had progressed to playing huge venues as support act to people like the Buzzcocks, the Jam, the Police, U2, Sham 69, Ultravox, Hawklords, Steel Pulse, Roy Harper and others.
I don’t know how I survived in some places. In a place like the Roxy or the Vortex a lot of people took to me because I had the bottle to go on stage and do something. It’s very different getting on stage with just a guitar and being little over 5 feet tall as opposed to being in a band with 4 or 5 people that looked hard with solid guitars that could crack your skull if you got out of line. It was weird. It was a scene for loners anyway so I think it would have been 50/50 who liked or disliked me. I think a lot of people would have liked to have been me on the stage because that’s the way it was.
The media reaction seemed like a funny joke and quite strange. Some of it was nice though some of it wasn’t. I was called a token cockney by Gary Bushell. People either really liked it or really hated it! It was then that I thought there was something there if I could polarise reaction rather than just get a mediocre reaction.
I’d get things like skinheads that didn’t agree with anything I sang about who nevertheless would want to protect me. There was a guy called Donald who was a nutter and one time he held the mic up to my mouth for twenty minutes when there wasn’t one. He was an absolute nutter and an animal and everyone knew so.
Barracking – I didn’t get that much thrown at me surprisingly. I did some gigs with Sham 69 because Jimmy Pursey took to me. I liked Sham early on when they played the Roxy and I always used to chat with Jimmy. They were the nearest thing to a top notch punk band and live they were superb. It was quite sad what happened to them. I had gigs with them and had run ins with their fans who were right wing skinheads from the same part of London as me and I would have to go into their dressing room and they would all grill me and call me a red or commie. It was quite scary doing their gigs but I got out alive.
I do get pissed off playing acoustic gigs where people just shout and shout. You can only put up with that for so long before you get driven totally mad. If I do gigs like that I’d rather go home and watch television…But I’m not gonna give up. I’m not made that way. I’m gonna keep performing until those people get sore throats from shouting at me. I’m not going to give up cos I still enjoy it. And it’s the only thing I got. NME, 24.2.79
Heckler puts downs? I wasn’t very good at it. I did a tour with the Hawklords and their fans just hated me. I remember at one gig saying ‘look you can shout and chuck things and drown out my songs but I’m on stage for about 40 minutes and I get paid for it so who’s the fool?’ That was as good as it got with me. I’m not witty in that way.
I used to deal with hecklers by directing songs directly at people and others that understood the songs would know exactly who I was directing the songs at. A surreptitious way of dealing with them. Nonconfrontational – I figured where does it go.
The Cockney Rejects in the film ‘Rough Cut’ talk about their methods which is they wade into the crowd and have a punch up. That’s fine but that’s the territory where you end up like Sham 69 and people coming along expecting to have a punch up. It’s no longer about you playing some songs.
I also appeared at anti racist concerts including the one at Victoria Park, Hackney with The Clash, X Ray Spex and Tom Robinson.
The Clash at Victoria Park just seemed like a publicity machine. Dressing up as army people was all a bit fake. The gig was a very separate entity from the rally and from a performance point of view I was separate from the rest of the days events. I walked up there from home got in and waited for everyone to arrive.
There were eighty thousand people there but it didn’t feel that different from playing the Roxy. There it was dark and you wouldn’t be that aware of people with the lights in your eyes. At Victoria Park it looked surreal. I wasn’t phased but it was a bit strange. ‘All those people why are they looking at me?’ I went down terribly. There were the skins down the front throwing darts at bands. They didn’t like me and I thought it was sad that the most vociferous people at the front at a rally against racism were racists. What’s the point of this? These are the guys who were having the biggest say here. At the end of the day it was a great event having all those people there but it seemed all about publicity for the bands having the concert. There were lots of RAR gigs going on and they had the same effect, if not better than Victoria Park really.
In April 1978 and just having released a couple of records on Small Wonder Patrik was in no hurry to go to a major as an interview with Sounds Lindsey Boyd tells.
“…he’s unwilling to sign with a major company because he believes he’d be pressured into changing his material and going for a bigger production. He doesn’t like the idea of big companies anyway and avoids any business dealings. Neither does he plan, as yet, to use a backing band.” Sounds 29.4.78
A year later and the situation had changed. Patrik, though still signed to Small Wonder, would be distributed by Polydor records. He released the album ‘Grubby Stories’ with a band that included John Maher from the Buzzcocks and Robert Blamire from Penetration.
“…basically I take in the tape and they just press and distribute the records. If they’re unhappy about something then fine (laughs). But they’re not a bad company…I mean you either fade out, go on doing shitty records, or sign with a big label and have a bit of scope. If you wanna make records in a serious way, which I do, you need some scope. I don’t want to do just bitty little records forever.” 24.2.79
Not only that but Patrik was going through a purple patch. He wrote and starred in his own play ‘Babytalk’ at the Garage in SW1 with the youth theatre group attached to the Royal Court and had a book of his work published.
It’s just a little paperback. It’ll only cost about 50p. It’s got loads of poems in it and some song lyrics. Some quite good stories too. I like my stories. I think I write better stories than anybody (laughs). A lot of my stories are moral tales. A lot of my songs are too. And people don’t understand. I think most people don’t listen. It’s sad. 24.2.79
The Tower Hamlets Art Project decided they wanted to go into doing books for the community. Mine was the second to be published. They knew my stuff and poems and they thought it would give them a bit more credence and they said do you want to do it. It wasn’t seen as a rival to the bible. It was just a small book. A lot of it was poems that I used to do on stage and stories in between songs and which also used to get strange receptions at places like the Roxy. People used to come up and talk to me about the characters in the stories like Jarvis. Someone asked me who it was based on. I said ‘It’s made up.’ They said because I know who that bloke is!! Strange contact between fact and fiction.
At the time the book came out I wasn’t in the theatre group but I was still living in the commune and going out to their dos and doing charity gigs and community centre gigs. It certainly wasn’t expected to be reviewed and largely slated. It was just a funny little book.
The Polydor record ‘Grubby Stories’ was the first to feature a band, and for some the album was a letdown, as the songs were more conventional and lost the edge of his solo work. For Patrik though, it was a chance to develop and experiment with different chords and melodies within the dynamics of a band.
I wouldn’t say that any of my records come together as grandly as that, having arrangements and stuff. We just went into the rehearsal studio a week before recording and I sort of played through the songs and others jammed along. There’s nothing particularly inspired about it. They’re basically just colouring for the songs.
That was early in the contract with Polydor just before ‘Grubby Stories’. Looking back in 2006, Patrik was a lot more cynical about the whole major label affair and the machine he had joined.
For me, I didn’t have a plan at all. Was Polydor a step forward in my career? There wasn’t much thinking involved in the move. At the time to be honest Pete had had enough of doing the label and thought he’d sell off a few assets and make some money and I was an asset. I did feel I was treated as a commodity. I don’t think I even consulted on the decision to sign with Polydor and my stuff was signed to them. I did feel shipped out by Pete from Small Wonder. Then I got a couple of managers and they dealt with Polydor. It all became quite corporate. From then on that’s where the whole thing largely died for me because it became like a business. In the 80s it changed back with Red Flame.
With Polydor I didn’t understand how things worked and they didn’t understand me. They signed up people and were prepared to throw out 50% of people to the knackers yard. They would sign up everything that moved then you would be expected to play the music game, get a PR person to get in the papers and shell out money to get yourself in the charts so you could stay on the label. That wasn’t why was I doing it. I did it for enjoyment and I naively thought if it was any good then it would sell and if not then it won’t. The reality was very different.
My first experience with Polydor was an eye opener. They came to see me and the Jam play in Portsmouth Guildhall and afterwards one of the people from Polydor asked me ‘What’s my image? That was the first and only question. I said ‘I don’t have one. My songs are my songs.’ They obviously thought right ‘We‘ve got a real one here.’ Very similar to my experience with the music publishers earlier. Later I got a big lesson in how labels can kill you stone dead by owning rights to songs and publishing rights. They can refuse to license tracks or demand huge amounts of money that make it not cost effective to release them. All that kind of crap.
I don’t know if I sold more records with Polydor because I’ve never seen figures. I consider myself quite lucky in that lots of bands came out of contracts with massive debt whereas I didn’t but most of what I’ve done between then and now could be termed negative equity. I don’t see anything by way of royalties or figures for sales. It seems to be a secret society. Even now it’s the same; things don’t change. You would want to wonder why anyone would want to get involved in a rock star life.
All The Years Of Trying
All the years of trying, all the many interviews,
To get your views across, but they always got lost
You always ‘nearly made it’
Your records never sold as many
As your record company hoped they would
And you never made, you never
Never made the top thirty
But you did sell some records
Sold them to the ones that wanted them
Who’d treasure them, and keep them with their other souvenirs –
Never to be sold
All the years of trying, all the many interviews
To get your views across, they always got – lost
You always ‘nearly made it’
Your records never sold as many
As you hoped they would.
But now you’ve made that one
That elusive one
Now you are a failure
And you are a success
Indeed you would and you sense from Patrik that he was never quite sure what he wanted. The only thing definite was he wanted to perform and to express and articulate his thoughts, feelings and ideas. As a loner and a misfit at an early age, impressions was one way to elicit a reaction. Later the stage was that opportunity. The showbiz baggage and expectations that came with the music biz always sat heavily with him.
World domination for PF. What was it all about? I don’t know. Things just happened to a large degree. I was always good at shooting myself in the foot and if there was any chance to become successful I would always make the wrong decision but for fairly good reasons. If I had gone on to be mega popular it probably wouldn’t have been what I wanted to do anyway. I don’t know. It was a chance to do something I liked doing and that was as far as it went.
Anybody that gets on stage has to be looking for some kind of attention on a reasonably big scale or why bother really. When I was a kid I used to imitate people and it would make my parents and relatives laugh and forget they didn’t like me. Suddenly I would get relatives and old school friends, who wouldn’t associate with me before because they thought I was total scum, now suddenly being my best friend. I would think OK what’s changed? All very strange. I could see that anything to do with music is a bit of an act. I’ve always had an uneasy relationship with performance. A lot of it is just total fake.
When ‘Grubby Stories’ and the attendant singles weren’t a success, Polydor basically rejected Patrik’s songs for a proposed second album and dropped him. And that is the end of Patrik’s story in our timeframe.
The recordings remain true to me, even when I don’t. This is what they are; the voice of a small, insecure, somewhat lost person, living in a small, insecure, somewhat lost country.
Safety-Pin Stuck In My Heart
The title song is a catchy rocker from this acoustic New Waver but the best is on the B side. ‘Set we free’ is a sparse reggae shout against da bosses, syncopating awkward lyrics against simplistic rhytm in a sarky pastiche of reggae vocals. ‘Optimism/Reject’ is mongol logic appraisal of YOUR animal existence. Cripple-jokes and why are we numbers? on bare angular guitar. Makes the New Wave worthwhile. Sounds, February, 11.2.78
Initially, we all thought that you go into a studio because you don’t stick home cassettes on records, so we recorded in a proper studio, but that didn’t work out. I thought it was alright, but Pete said “No, it’s crap!”, so we went to a studio in someone’s house to record it again, taking it back down towards the cassette recorder approach. You often start off with a first take that’s the best one, but we had to stop a few takes because the phone rang and cars went past, so I did a few more that become more crap because I got bored doing them over and over, and then I got fed up with being bored and did a good one. Though of course, I broke strings. At that time it didn’t occur to me to bring spare strings, so the Safety Pin Stuck In My Heart EP was recorded on a five-string guitar, in a home studio. From 84 Tigers
While the title track rightly got the plaudits, Work,Rest,Play,Reggae is equally as good and a must hear.
I don’t love you for your many reasons
Propagandas, doctrines, treasons
All I know’s that
Beat-beat-beat-beat-beating
I’ve got an ear inflamed on my dog chain
Painted faces, painted names –
My shirt – it’s all that
Beat-beat-beat-beat-beating
I’ve got a safety pin stuck in my heart
For you, for you
And a quick mention for this one – Patrik appears as part of the mob chorus on labelmates Menace’s classic punk tune GLC from April 1978 and is name-checked on the back.
Patrik remembers nothing about the event and to be honest Menace struggle to remember anything about the recording!
Backstreet Boys
…four tracks which burst with compassion, wit and the whole world about him. First up is “Buy Me, Sell Me”, a cheery snippet with some complex changes, followed swiftly by an off-tape chuckle of “Winky, wanky, woo … that’s a difficult song to do, that.”
Next is “Little Dippers” (great title) which is Oliver Twist/Fagin in today’s setting. The “new breed growing in the shade” set against crowd noises and Patrik’s acoustic guitar. “Trendy” is a barbed shot at many trendy aspects, while the title cut about “being beaten up in the street”.
Great lyrics mould a sharp commentary on all the emotions you go through when a street hassle threatens. Ian Birch, Melody Maker 20.6.78
They could be waiting round the corner
They’re such a scarifying sight to see
They could be waiting for a straying loner
They could be waiting for you or me…..
The patter of footsteps through an alleyway
Impatient in the dark, they wait to pounce
Hey don’t look far when they want trouble
They know it at a glance…..
But, imagine you look like a boy
That they want after
There’s a face on their file
And they don’t care for why
And it’s no good getting mouthy
Or you’ll lose your teeth in their laughter
Nd it’s no use acting timid
No use coming on shy
With the backstreet boys
The Backstreet Boys/ Buy Me,Sell Me…/The Little Dippers/Trendy
The Paranoid Ward EP
(Small Wonder
Containing the classic Irrelevant battles which is pretty much a band effort delivered in true Patrik style. The whole thing is essential. 9 Tracks! Get in there!
Babysitter/Irrelevant Battles/Cruellest Crime/The Paranoid Ward/ The Bingo Crowd (Instrumental) / Life At The Top (12″ only)/ Ragged Generation For Real/Live Out My Stars/George
All Sewn Up/Hammersmith Odeons
(Polydor March 1979)
Featuring a sewing design from Soo Catwoman on the cover, Robert Blamire from Penetration on bass and just 2 piddly tracks!?
The first Polydor single was promoted heavily but failed to make the return.
The public’s loss. A fantastic song that suggests a world-weary belief there is really no free will.
Improve Myself EP
(Polydor June 1979)
The final single for Polydor. Patrik also appeared on the legendary TV music show Revolver with The Bingo Crowd, this time with lyrics, and it’s arguably the better song.
Check out the Peel version – much better arrangement.
The Peel Sessions
15.2.78
- Don’t Tell Me Because I’m Young
- Bingo Crowd
- Little Dippers
- Safety Pin Stuck In My Heart
- Back Street Boys
17.4.79
- Suicidal Wreck
- Improve Myself
- Tonight
- All The Splattered Children
- Dance Music/Late Night
Grubby Stories
“I was fourteen … and then I came to a copy of ‘Grubby Stories’, Patrik Fitzgerald’s 1979 debut album for Polydor. the cover was enough for me to turn the record over to check out the song titles. I used to buy a lot of records just because I liked the song titles, but Grubby Stories was the only one that ever lived up to the promise that those titles held. on the cover of the album Patrik is wearing a pair of sandals with yellow socks and bright red trousers and he’s reading a copy of the daily star and sitting in an arm chair. yes. and then when I read the song titles I was pretty sure that this was going to be something pretty special. with song titles like ‘All My Friends Are Dead Now’, ’As Ugly As You’ and ‘Little Fishes’ how could it be anything else.
so I took it over to the counter and asked my friend to put it on. and for once it lived up to the cover. it sounded fantastic. he was angry like a punk but instead of having a full band backing him up, it was just him. strumming the crap out of an acoustic guitar. his lyrics were fantastic too. there was a clumsy anger to his words and voice. you could tell he was angry but you couldn’t be sure he knew why or what to do about it. he seemed to be angry about everything and nothing. and most of the time just angry at himself. banging his head against a brick wall. a bit like that little girl I saw the other week kicking the shit out of a tree on sports day. he sounded small and lost. and that appealed to me. the language he used was sometimes a little bit cute, like on ‘Little Fishes’, but it always had a sour edge. I bought the record and it became one of my favourites. it was funny and sad and angry and shy and in a funny way a bit hopeful. From the The Boy Least Likely To Blog (defunct)
TalkPunk
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