Ruts DC Part 1 – Segs Jennings February 2025

I took away three things
1) The legacy of the Ruts and what they achieved is paramount to him to protect
2) The tragic death of singer Malcolm Owen is still, after all these years, visibly raw when talked about, both from a friendship/loss aspect and also cruelly ending the band, leaving some still unhealed wounds
3) 80% of the interview ends up being about The Ruts

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Segs joins The Ruts. Previously, Malcolm (singer) and Foxy (guitar) had been in a hippy band in North Wales called Aslan before somehow ending up in London. Throw in a band called Hit & Run, Punk rock and swapping instruments and The Ruts kick off.

I’d met Ruffy (Drummer) in a record shop, Because I used to work for the Post Office when I was 16, in my in my lunchtimes I used to walk around the record shops around Cannon Street. I was really into funk, James Brown and stuff like that and a lot of reggae. So I used to go round and try and get imports and vinyl’s as I was a vinyl freak at the time.

In that little corner, there was Harlequin Records and there was about three or four shops in that one little bit. One of them was called James Asman and Ruffy used to work in there. So I used to go in there and buy these imports.

Aslam – Malcolm Owen right on guitar and Rocky his wife next to him

Eventually we got to chat and we got friendly. It got to 1976 and he said “Have you heard this?” and he put on the Ramone’s first album and I went “Fucking hell!” and he went, “Yeah!”  He shaved his hair off and dyed it black, and he had a Ramones T-shirt, which I thought said ‘ramp ones’ (laughs) and all the other music went out the window, really. We just loved this cartoon shit. He also had Iggy Pop records in there, like Stooges and stuff but people forget that there wasn’t a lot about.

He was really into stuff like the Pink Fairies, rocky stuff and also Hawkwind because we were both a bit hippy smoking a bit of dope together and just like dropping out really. He was in the band called Hit and Run that I used to go along to see. I didn’t really like the music; it was a bit sort of funk, which it was OK, but with a big brass section. Malcolm also used to come along and DJ and he had dyed black hair, a sort of Hawaiian shirt and plastic sandals. I know it sounds weird, but that soul boy look was outrageous at the time. Punk was just happening and Malcolm was a great candidate for it.

So anyway, Malcolm knew Foxy and they came up with these songs, which was Lobotomy and Rich Bitch. Foxy was a great guitarist and a great funk guitarist as well. But he also dug the punk ethic of simple riffs and he was really good at them. So he did that and Malcolm penned the lyrics. Ruffy was playing bass for a bit in the early days and in the end they got kicked out of Hit and Run because they started doing punk and no matter what people say these days about, ”Yeah, we loved punk.” They didn’t! Everybody fucking hated it except us. We loved it.

So because they’d got thrown out of the band, they decided to have a go of it themselves and do The Ruts. So Ruffy said “Well, I’d rather play drums and they asked me to play bass and I just went like, “Well, no, I can’t do that” but he talked me round and the rest is history really. (laughs)

He said you have to get your hair cut though, because my hair was a bit long.  In the beginning me and Malcolm were a bit at odds but in the end, we were best of the friends. Foxy was just really supportive which was great. I’ve never played bass in my life but I had played a bit of guitar, and Foxy taught me a bit.

Segs at the Hope & Anchor early 1979 – Photo Credit Mick Mercer

I had two rehearsals. The first was to see how much dope you could smoke and drink, and then the second was to see if you could play. We just wanted to see if we could all get on and we did. It was a real unit and wasn’t manufactured in any way and was just fantastic. So we rehearsed a bit and then I came up with this riff  that went, “down, down, down, down, down, down” which was In A Rut and Foxy just goes, oh, great. Yeah. Brilliant. Then a guy called Ken Faloon said you should do a song called “If you’re in a rut, you’ve got to get out of it” and we all went “whoo!” and that was it. Malcolm wrote the rest of it.

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Considering the short time together, In A Rut already had some of the classic Ruts elements of space, echo, guitar effects, dub and a rockier sound.

We used to jam a hell of a lot and a lot of the songs came out of that. Now I hate jamming, but this was good fun. So we used to just jam and when we went in to record In A Rut we had Society and H Eyes. Now Foxy had this Wem copycat because he was into Hendrix as well, but Hendrix was still cool unlike all the hippie music that got thrown out. On the Copycat he’d hit a note and it’d repeat like dub reggae which we were all into. In the middle of In A Rut, he suddenly walks up to the board while we’re listening to it back and he goes “Pull the drums out and then he just did the live dump. Pulled the faders down and that middle bit that’s all echoey is dub and that became our sound – dub rock. That was In A Rut. We came out there with three tracks and wow, you know, we’re still going strong to this day, innit?

Songs come together quickly. There’s an obvious tension between the members

I like things coming from the bassline. Something like Savage Circle for example, which is mad. I was just mucking about and Foxy heard it and just added that simple guitar straight off. That was the thing with Foxy; he never had a problem with what you played and he’d work with what you came up and let you get on with it.

The Ruts were the sum of its parts. With Rude Boys Foxy says I’ve got this and started playing that opening riff, then me and Ruffy just joined in and Malcolm stepped up to the mic and got his lyric book out and that was it. Then Foxy adds another bit and Malcolm goes “Staring At The Rude Boys” and we think “fucking hell we’ve just written a song!”

Even now when I’m on stage playing the bit in the song where it goes to the solo and Foxy went do this change here I think “That’s genius Foxy!”

Favourite Ruts song?

I don’t sit there of an evening and say “Oh. Darling, could you put The Crack on again” (laughs) but it does amaze me when I listen to the stuff because I think “God is that ours?”. I love It Was Cold though. The way that It Was Cold came about was Malcolm used to have a big stereo around his house and we’d go around there before gigs, then get in the van, do the gig and come back the next morning and he’d been carrying on drinking and he’d play anything from Kraftwerk to The Clash and back.  One time he says I want to do a song like this and he took ELO’s Mr Blue Sky and played the bit that goes dun dun dun dun dun. So I just came up with the bass riff and Foxy just went Splang! and Malcolm had written those words already.

Then later we went around Foxy’s house and he said, “I’ve been mucking about with this tape machine and it was the middle bit  – Down, down, down, down down and we said let’s put it in the middle of It Was Cold and we did and it was like wow!

We all thought it was about a holocaust or a dystopia but it was about him splitting up with his missus Rocky. It’s a brilliant, brilliant song. So when we first started doing that live people would go “What the fuck is this?” but then I’d start to leap up and down in what I’d call a slow pogo. Once the audience got that, they would all do it and so that was cool. So we got away with a slow song.

We all love doing it still and so that’s got to be a pinnacle. It’s Captain Sensible’s favourite Ruts song as well

The legendary Foxy at the Music Machine, Camden, London – Photo Credit Mick Mercer

So that was it, and we’re off but it didn’t come out for another one and half years. We formed halfway through 1977 and the record didn’t come out till 1979 because we couldn’t afford it. Then this guy, Andy Damon, came along to see us and he said “I don’t really like your music but I think you’re good at it.” So he bought himself a camera case, hollowed it all out with a foam, and then that became his rock’n’roll case. He had a leather jacket and he’d go around and get us gigs and used to just hassle people. No one wanted to put us on, and no one wanted to put any punk band on. Eventually, he sold some gold that he was wearing around his wrist and got the £100 to get the thing to get the record pressed up.

With the rise of the National Front and right-wing politics, Rock Against Racism was born with at its heart punk and reggae, which was very successful. Unfortunately, behind it was an equally as extreme left wing, the SWP, who attempted to use it for their own ends. For some bands, RAR was seen as a source of gigs rather than politics, but most saw it as a genuine way to bring people together regardless.

We didn’t really give a fuck about the SWP. We were smoking dope, hanging out, listening to reggae and having a good time. Malcolm’s wife Rocky was black, so there was no question of us jumping on bandwagons. So Misty In Roots had two managers; one was Clarence Baker (no trouble maker) from the famous Jar War who was black and the other was Chris Bolton, who was white. They used to come around Malcolm’s and get a little bit of weed from Rocky, his wife and we’d be in there and we’d just chat. Then they said that we should do some gigs together so we did a couple of Rock Against Racism together and we all used to get in the back of Chris Bolton’s truck. To be honest, yeah, there was an aspect of it was doing a gig but it would be black and white people together; no banners really.

So that led into punk anyway, really. At the end of that phase we did that Militant Entertainment tour, which was great. I mean really great. Then after that it all started getting a bit much with people coming up with their banners. So they’d say do you want to play this stop the town hall gig in Peckham and we’d go “Yeah, stop the town hall” and then you get there and people would  be coming up and putting their banners behind us. You’d go look, This is not us really. We didn’t do this gig for all sundry to put their banners up.

Segs on the floor, Leicester 1979 Militant Entertainment tour – Photo Credit Sydney Shelton

So in the end, what happened with us and Misty is we stopped doing Rock against Racism and we just started playing together and we’d do alternate headlines sometimes and at the end we’d always jam. We did that big thing on the back of the truck to Victoria Park. The one where The Clash played. We’re right at the back and we stopped because it was massive and the stage so far way you couldn’t see them. People said don’t stop playing so we played. Then people said You got to stop playing because the Clash were on. Others wanted us to play then some said  “You’re worse than the fascists and you’re racist!” What? We’re playing on the back of a truck with Misty In Roots and it’s just the dichotomy and the ridiculousness of it all. So in the end, we just used to let the music and our actions speak without the banners

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Violence started to plague gigs. Sham got it the hardest but it was violent times with teds, punks, skinheads and soul boys all likely to kick off. Add in the the right wing national Front and it all got a little heavy!

I actually spoke to Jimmy from Sham 69 the other day. He really went through it and he didn’t mean to stir that violence up. There are other bands who should remain nameless that used to like a bit of that. But he was never right wing and he didn’t really want the skinheads. We did have a bit of trouble which is what Staring At The Rude Boys was written about, because the skins tried to smash up our gigs because we were looked upon as left wing.

Our fans were looked upon as a little weak, but actually there were a few sort of strategic sort Kung Fu experts in there that soon put paid to them coming. So a little bit of violence was applied in the correct area, but no one really, really got hurt. There was one particular gig at the Nashville. It was really scary at the time, and you’d have to stand on stage looking tough pretending you weren’t shitting yourself. But I was. Staring At The Rude Boys came from that gig. Turns out Jake Burns was actually at that gig and he said he was scared as well and he was from Belfast, you know!

So yes there was a bit of violence, and a few people got stabbed along the way but no fatalities as far as I know. But it was a rough time because it wasn’t just the skins, it was a lot of different tribes.

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You made it through physically unscathed though?

Well, I have this trouble now with my ear and the doctor asked “Have you ever had any trauma there?” I went “No, I don’t think so” and then I went “Oh yeah, I remember getting a big size 10 in the side of the face!” Me and Malcolm got set upon once on Boxing Day by a load of soul boys with wedge haircuts. Two vans pulled up beside us as were walking by. Malcolm could handle himself, but I just went straight down. Luckily the police turned up, but not before I got a big kick in the head and a big swollen jaw. It was par for the course in those days. But nothing serious. I didn’t die.

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So the band eventually sign to Virgin on a deal that effectively saw them in debt despite hit singles and albums. It seems crazy that a band so obviously popular wasn’t snapped up. Looking back it’s also crazy to think that after signing with Virgin, the band were together for just about a year!

After our first John Peel session (29.1.79), there was a lot of interest in us because we became a name on people’s leather jackets, which was important at the time. The record companies were sniffing around. United Artists was quite liked because of Buzzcocks and Island Records because we liked Bob Marley.

Me and Ruffy wanted to stay independent with People Unite, but Malcolm, almost as if he kind of knew he was going to be short lived (he really didn’t give a fuck), wanted a big label. Foxy was on his side as well. He just wanted to sign and become a pop star because he’d been at it quite a long time.

United Artists cancelled a meeting and we just thought fuck ‘em.” So we signed with Virgin because they didn’t wear suits. They used to come along all casual in Aaron sweaters. We didn’t realise that they probably cost about five times as much as the leather jacket that I could never afford!

We signed to Virgin and a ridiculous deal. We signed in April 1979 and Malcolm was dead a year later in 1980. God, that was a short lived. All in all, we were together about three years, but we were only signed for about a year.

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Babylon’s Burning is a hit which comes as a surprise given its anger and subject matter and not being played on the radio. I’ve often wondered about Virgin and the multiple hits they had with Members, Skids and Ruts and whether it was related to the amount of shops they had and possible chart rigging.

Yeah, yeah it’s not radio-friendly nor is Something That I Said with “OK, kick me in the head.” I say it to my daughter sometimes when she talks about music, and I say, “You won’t ever get songs like Babylon’s Burning again because there was a punk movement, and I think people were genuinely buying the records. I know there’s Payola, and I know the record company were behind it with press and everything like that and we owed them money for ages for everything they did, but people bought the records.

But we were surprised and it was fantastic. I mean, short of being Crass and turning your back on that completely, we weren’t like that. We were just kind of kids really in our 20s at least and it’s like, well, wow, great.

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Malcolm the front man

Now, people are saying he was one of the best punk rock singers and a great frontman, which he was in the history of things, but at the time, he wasn’t. At the time, he was just Malcolm, our mate and as you know, he got a bit naughty. But he was a very funny guy as well and there was a lot of humour even within the tragedy which I suppose is life innit?

It’s a strange one. Looking at the vids and live stuff, Malcolm is an obvious charismatic frontman. Always a great dresser; I mean, not obviously punk but very sharp. And the voice that could go from rage to more emotional stuff like It Was Cold. IMHO lots of similarities with Paul DiAnno of Iron Maiden who had a similar voice and punky look that was perfect over a rockier/punkier music. The trouble was the music papers, apart from Sounds, were more into post punk and The Ruts (UK Subs etc) were seen as anachronistic.

Photo – Mick Mercer

Was H Eyes prophetic or already in motion and a warning to himself?

What does it mean? You know, “You scratch your nose. You like it when it shows.” But he knew what he was singing about. It wasn’t until the book Love In Vain came out and I read his missus’s Rocky recollections that he’d always dabbled in heroin that it made sense. That book came out in the 2000’s so I’d lived my whole Ruts life thinking he smoked a bit of dope, got into heroin then he got in with wrong ‘uns. When I was playing the song, it was prophetic and then, you know, 40 years later, it turned out to be in motion.

But you know, hey, that’s the kind of rock’n’roll life. There but by the grace of God go I really because I didn’t get into it because I was just too much into having a laugh. I mean heroin might feel good on the inside, but it’s certainly not a sharing drug. People don’t go, “Hey, had a great time last night on that heroin!”  Ruffy and I tried a couple of little lines along the way and I remember Ruffy just throwing up. He said he never took it again because I took the piss out of him so much that it stopped him getting into that.  But me and Ruffy were always together. We lived together for quite a lot of time and it was great. So we had full support of each other through the grief because, it was grief, you know.

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Phil Lynott link and song

Sadly, Phil was involved in the old heroin thing with Malcolm. Rocky was selling a bit of weed and stuff to various people like Frankie Miller and Phil Lynott at this place called the Shast Club, which was an afterhours drinking club in Wardour Street. Malcolm used to go along as the boyfriend who was in a punk band and so he got friendly with Phil for various reasons and it led to other things. But he had this song called Eat Your Heart Out and he gave it to Malcolm which had the lines “Fanatical fascists with Italian moustaches. They don’t care.” We played it live a few times. There is a recording, but we never, ever recorded it properly. I think Gary Moore did it in the end, obviously, with a big solo in the middle. (laughs)

For the last 6 months of his life, Malcolm became quieter and withdrawn. He sells all his belongings and anything he can sell to raise money for smack, even moving back in with his parents when he gives up his flat. Malcolm is fired from the band as they try and shake him up and they start writing with Segs singing but with a view to taking him back. They are even the backing band to Laurel Aitkin as they mark time. It seems to work, then disaster and Virgin get tough.

Malcolm was becoming incapacitated and stopped turning up to rehearsals. Or when he did, he turned up with his bag and then he would disappear into the toilet and come out 25 minutes later and you’d be like, “What’s going on?”, but I think Foxy knew. So we just started writing, and then Foxy would say, well, let’s just write the lyrics ourselves, and so we did. We didn’t know what it was going to be. We were just writing now because Malcolm was not there and it was with a full view to these becoming songs with Malcolm involved. But then, on the day we had sorted the demos and gone to Virgin, Malcolm died.

Ian Curtis of Joy Division, suffering from depression, hangs himself in May 1980 and ascends to punk sainthood. Malcolm Owen takes an overdose of heroin and drowns in the bath. His death is marked by a major piece by Garry Bushell in the music paper Sounds that reveals he had been addicted to heroin and had been a coke dealer in his early Aslam days. The band are caught in a perfect storm of grief their friend was dead, anger that he had fucked all of them the band up and probably guilt they couldn’t have done anything about it.

Elsewhere across the Atlantic, two friends discover the band and it will influence them and they become firm fans and intertwined in the later band story. They are Henry Rollins and Ian McNay.

Garry Bushell Sounds feature on Malcolm post death July 1980 – click for larger image

I was only 21 when we had success and by 23, Malcolm had died and my dad was dead; I thought to myself, this isn’t what I thought it would be like.

There was probably times where it got a bit Spinal Tap with the fame but generally we all just had a laugh and got on until Malcolm blew it. Really, he blew it; he said he wasn’t going to, but he did. So that’s it and I wasn’t equipped at all at 22 to deal with someone who was getting hooked on heroin and there was no one else around to help.

It was shortly after West One was released, so God knows what would have happened but there was nothing we could do about it. But you have to think what we have become if Malcolm and Foxy were still alive? Where were we going because West One is getting pretty complex now. It was really very difficult. It’s a very difficult subject because people say “Why don’t you stop him? “ but it’s never really like that.

In parallel Menace were going through the same thing with their singer Morgan Webster. In the ame way the band didn’t realise how bad Morgan was getting and didn’t realise the extent of his drug taking. They also didn’t know how to deal with it and they parted company late in 1979 with him. They would become Vermilion & The Aces and have a post band break up single released.

Meanwhile life goes on for the band as they struggle to know what to do.

So when we went to Virgin we said “We’ve got some good news and some bad news.” It sounds really callous, but we were in so much shock. We said we’re going to continue, but we’re not going to be The Ruts. Virgin said if you’re not going to be The Ruts, then we’re going to drop you.

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