The Worst
There’s a case for arguing that the Manchester band The Worst were THE definitive punk band. For them skill didn’t matter, instruments didn’t matter and even songs didn’t matter. Playing the music industry game was not part of the plan. Even getting paid didn’t matter and admission to gigs was sometimes a cuddly toy for charity! It was all about fun.
Completely without pretension and often making up gigs as they played their sound was as member Odgie describes: “Minimalist, urgent, honest, powerful, spontaneous, occasionally inspired, often shit.”
While their peers got signed to labels and incorporated into the music machine, The Worst didn’t and they left behind no musical legacy….The Worst are true punk legends!
It all starts like this….
Odgie: We played our first gig at a Rock Against Racism concert at the squat in Manchester, I guess that would have been late 76 or early 77.
We knew some guys who were in a band called Warsaw (later to morph into Joy Division), and they said, hey we’ve got this gig, why don’t you come and play, so we quickly formed a band… It was like that in those days. Allan played guitar a bit, I got hold of a Chad Valley drum kit, we knew a guy who had a bass, so we drafted him in.
He didn’t live near us, so me and Allan wrote a few quick songs and we just met Woody at the gig and tried to teach him the chords in the dressing room, but he had no sense of rhythm. So we blatted on stage and did the set but never plugged Woody in. It was all over in about five minutes, but everyone cheered so much they wanted more. We didn’t have any more songs, so we just played the set again as an encore. Me and Allan would have been 22 or 23 then; Woody was a bit younger.
“I don’t know how helpful I can be about The Worst….Ian Hodge on the drums, the first kit was a Chad Valley children’s one…..I remember them playing at the Squat and that could have been their first gig. The Buzzcocks were on, I remember that as Ian asked me to sing with them and Pete Shelley also asked me to sing with the Buzzcocks….one of those decisions in life where you wish you had said yes as that no doubt would have been documented and then you win a place in punk history!!!! Anyway I didn’t……..Alan played guitar. Ian and Alan both came from Preston in Lancs. Ian collected American vintage cars, Alan was married with a little boy, his wife was called Linda. I remember Ian getting a tattoo and he made the gauze that the tattooist had put on it into an earring!!! Funny how some things stick in your mind!!”
Gail 2002
Members of the band and instruments played?
Odgie: Allan guitar, vocals, me on drums, Woody at first as bass guitarist, then we were a two-piece for a while, then Robin came in as guitarist – we never had another bass player.
Steve Shy of ‘Shy Talk’ fanzine recalls…
They were always a trio, always. They had Woody on bass, then got rid of Woody. Robbie came in to play rhythm guitar. That allowed Alan… We just used to tune him up to an E-card, and he just picked at the guitar. They had a sound check at Leeds University and they’d never done one before, it was a waste of time. They always made it up as they went along anyway. By the time they’d finished the sound check, there were about 300 people sat on the floor watching, then they applauded. They were passing through for lessons or whatever. Steve Shy of ‘Shy Talk’
Were you involved with any bands previously…type of bands?
Odgie: There was a thing in Manchester where after a band had played their set, a bloke called John The Postman used to get on stage and do a version of Louie Louie using their gear, with whoever else was in the crowd and could play anything, we used to get involved sometimes. But none of us had done anything band wise – although I used to play a cardboard drum with two pencils in time to the Rolling Stones in his bedroom back in the Sixties…
Robin: None.
Influences?
Odgie: Velvets, Iggy, Hendrix, Stones, New York Dolls, Residents, Can
Robin: The same but with a bit more Krautrock and maybe some subliminal influences from PJ Proby(?)
How did you get into punk rock?
Odgie: Listened to the Velvets and stuff and suddenly everyone was forming bands and you didn’t have to be technical or anything, just play like your soul depended on it… I guess by accident really, right place right time.
“Punk was like cries for help. You’re much better on stage working out your aggression than, say, you are smashing phone-boxes and that’s the sort of urgency the music should have. That’s how it started: then you get into where you want to go with it and what you’re doing.” Odgie, Sounds Feature
Names of songs played. I think you had one called ‘Nuclear Reactor’ and Paul Morley recalls
“Songs – We played a lot with the Worst, who made the Clash seem like Rush. Alas, their 60-second rants about police brutality and the National Front were never recorded.” Paul Morley
Odgie: Christ, can’t remember, a lot of Evo-Stick was going down in those days, plus we had a big Maxwell House jar full of dried shrooms, we’d wake up in whatever squat after the gig, do a handful each and hit the road to the next town. We did have one about necrophilia called ‘Pass Me The Vaseline’, that’s about the only one I remember. But they changed and half the time we were just making them up as we went along anyway.
Robin: Nuclear Reactor was actually ‘Fast Breeder’. Another that sticks in my mind was cover of “Get offa my cloud” – Stones. Our version of ‘Sister Ray’ by the Velvets ended up as our whole set as an improvisation on some gigs. ‘Waiting For The Man’, again by the Velvets and my favourite, – ‘Heroin’.
How would you describe your sound?
Odgie: Minimalist, urgent, honest, powerful, spontaneous, occasionally inspired, often shite
Robin: As my mother used to say – “That’s not music, that’s just noise”. That statement works on so many levels!
Any examples of what you got up to or incidents?
Odgie: We got The Jam booed off stage when they played the Circus. Fuck, they turned up with suits on coat hangers – posing twats! And their music was shite anyway.
Steve Shy… “whenever they could, they’d charge a toy to get in or a donation. Anything left after taking petrol money out, they used to send that to the Pat Seed scanner fund at the hospital. It was only a few pounds at the time, but that was their idea of what punk was about. You’re fighting for yourselves and looking after other people.” Steve Shy of ‘Shy Talk’
Supposedly Phonogram recorded the whole thing!
What were the Worst trying to achieve? For most bands records are the aim but you never recorded. Why was that? You weren’t even on the Last Night At The Electric Circus!
“The disillusionment came when one by one the bands signed up with the big record companies, it was signing away the control. They took one look at the size of the cheque and went into the music machine, the very thing we thought punk was trying to get away from.” IAN HODGES – Evening Post, 1986 10 year Punk retrospective
Odgie: Didn’t want to achieve anything as I recall, we were just doing it cos it was there and it was fun. When it stopped being fun we stopped doing it. People think Life is this huge complex thing they have to be uptight and serious about or somehow work it out or have some sort of goal or something. But the complexity’s all taken care of for you, just do what’s fun and don’t do things that aren’t fun, and you end up where you’re supposed to be anyway. Cosmic man.
Did you do any demos at all?
Odgie: Never went near a studio. Richard Boon who managed the Buzzcocks used to tape our gigs when we supported them, but we never got any copies. He’s about the only person who’d have anything, but God knows where he is now.
What bands did you support, places played. Reaction to you. Spitting, Violence wild adulation?
Odgie: We supported Buzzcocks, Siouxsie, Slits, Prefects, played the Roundhouse and two nights at the Marquee, a few Universities. Reactions ranged from bewilderment to people really getting into it. Cos a lot of what we did was improvised around a loose idea, it was never the same twice, some nights we really gelled and it came out greater than the sum of the parts and we’d look at one another and go fuck, where has this come from, and the audience would pick up on it and their feedback would inspire us more.
Other times we’d be way too stoned and all end up playing different songs, which kinda freaked people out. We did a gig with the Automatics in Coventry, and smoked a whole bunch of Nepalese Temple Balls beforehand (we should have sussed when we offered some to their Rasta roadie and he backed right off). Needless to say we were shite, the audience backed right off to the other end of the room, then someone shouted ‘Kill The Monster’ at us. We thought that was hilarious so by the next gig we had a song called Kill The Monster…
Robin: The Automatics was to become The Specials. They invited us up to Coventry ‘cause I was on the Fine Art course with Jerry Dammers and the “Rasta Roadie” was Neville! (Singer) The Manager of the club was Pete Waterman who refused to pay us ‘cause he said we were crap.
“Alan then sings, his voice is amazing…he makes most of the lyrics up as he goes along…with songs like ‘Police’…’Rapist’ and the great ‘Gimme Some Money’. This is real PUNK…The Worst want to be called a PUNK band…When the Worst play it is real…the feeling is real…right down to the end of their short set when Ian hits his kit apart.” Tony Moon, Sounds 9.7.77, Manchester Squat gig
“They look as though they’ve stepped right out of the industrial waste, totally uncompromising, blinking in the spotlight. No ‘image’. They play, not as though their life depends on it, but because it does. There’s a hunger there. A three piece; the lead singer moves little, sings high – much is lost in the sound, and when his guitar breaks, they call it a day, with only one song, ‘Fast Breeder’, staying in the head. They’re haunting, seeming to epitomise the evening’s movie perfectly.” Jon Savage, Sounds, 15.10.77, Last Night at The Electric Circus 1977
Any difference in playing down south to home in reaction and attitude?
Odgie: No, we didn’t really know where we were anyway 🙂
The Manchester scene seemed very cliquey with a very tight in crowd. Fair comment? Were bands like Slaughter, The Buzzcocks, Drones, Nosebleeds, Warsaw all pally?
Odgie: It might have seemed cliquey from the outside, inside there were the usual mild rivalries I guess. We weren’t really involved in it much, cos really we came from Preston…
“Evidently there are two types of bands in Manchester, loosely defined by myself as Punks and Posers. On the former side so I can gather, are bands such as the Drones, Slaughter & The Dogs, V2 and several other unknown outfits….In the ranks of the latter, so we are assured, are bands such as the Buzzcocks, Fall, Magazine….and The Worst.” Drones Interview, ‘Terminally Blitzed’ fanzine, November 1977
Their attitude to playing could well have got up other bands/venues/dj’s noses who considered themselves more professional though the Worst seemed to have against The Drones.
Odgie: They were a cabaret band, they just wanted to be famous and latched onto punk as a vehicle, it had nothing to do with being professional or not. There was no feud, we just thought they were poseurs. Bunch of tossers – end of story.
A two page interview with The Drones in Terminally Blitzed fanzine November 1977 turns into a mega slagathon of the The Worst with MJ Drone threatening physical violence….
“Its not a bandwagon we just jumped on. You can’t say the same for the Worst…they’ve only been going for a few months, and when they saw us making the breakthrough it really pissed them off. They started saying we were plastic, jumping onto the bandwagon to gain popularity, and even had a go at me because I’ve a sports car….They’re real bastards….They’re a real bunch of posers….the drummer hangs around the bar at Manchester Rafters as though he’s a superstar or something….Even the girls we hang around with, they gob on them!”
Drones Interview Terminally Blitzed fanzine November 1977
How and when did it all end?
Odgie: We got a bit famous, and people started coming to see us with expectations, we felt like we had to perform, and that took a bit of the fun and spontaneity out of it. Once we realized we were having more fun and making better noises in me dad’s garage than we were at gigs, we called it quits.
Robin: And the fact that, inevitably, we actually started to learn how to play our instruments, which defeated the object – we were no longer the worst.
What did you all do afterwards?
Odgie: We stopped being in the Worst
Robin: Got a job! (Grew up!)
The Worst are legendary. But how does it feel though to have no musical legacy only memories of your performances? How should the Worst be remembered?
Odgie: I suspect most of our stuff probably wouldn’t live up to expectations, (Ha!) but when we were good we were really good, like a jam session when suddenly it all kicks in and goes off on one, you know? Like you’re not making the music anymore, it’s making you, coming from somewhere else, and the audience is in on the secret. Be nice if someone had captured that I suppose.
Robin: Our legacy is through people like you keeping the legend alive!! All adds to the mystique.
Anything to add?
Odgie: You never know….. …….and it doesn’t matter.
Absolutely nada! Fuck all!
In some ways absolutely fitting and the perfect punk expression, untainted by greed, desire, the wish to get fame or money. The perfect expression of anti rock ‘n’ roll.
TalkPunk
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