I was supposed to meet my mate Fran. We were going to go to the Birmingham Odeon to see Ian Gillan. The Ian Gillan Band. I remember I got to the station and he says
It’s next week, mate.
Oh, right. No problem. What we going to do?
Erm...let's go to the Tavern.
I've got to say I felt a little bit apprehensive going in. I did. Because I'd heard so much about it, because you'd heard about fights, you'd heard about drugs, you'd heard of rockers, you'd heard of Hells Angels. Blimey. Hells Angels. Anyway we went in.
I became a regular.
I remember having a fantastic night. I was suddenly amongst people who were like me, who had similar kinds of thoughts about music and fashion as I did – which was a bit limited, let's face it. But we had a fantastic night. I remember meeting up with old school friends and their friends and I became a regular there. It was full of...it was very welcoming. It was fun. It was lively. It was full of young people into the same kinds of music, fashions. Rockers. People in motorbike jackets, patched up Levis. There were people who were still wearing flares. There were skin-tight jeans. Girls wearing Afghan coats. Tie-dye shirts.
There was clusters of young people everywhere. Right at the end we called 'The Corner', was the place where we’d hang out. There was this kind of mock cheap medieval-looking mural showing some kind of pageant from the Middle Ages. That's where the jukebox was. And you could get down to the toilets from there, down a flight of steps. I think the girls went upstairs. We went downstairs. Not a particularly salubrious area, that. Very often you had to look over your shoulder because at the top there was one of those big coconut mats you used to get, and so you'd go down there and your mate – predictably – would throw the coconut mat down and try and floor you as you were making your descent to the underground toilets.
There were no windows in the Tavern so it's almost like you were going through a secret little portal in the corner. That's what it was. It was a hole in the wall. It was the door in the wall to a different life. I remember going in thousands of times. You walked in and there was a newly-installed Space Invaders machine on the left when you walked in, humming away bom bom bom. Opposite that, there was the more traditional pinball machine facing you, with its buzzing and its bells and there'd be some long-haired bloke slamming it and bashing it and swearing at it. There was a very low ceiling. Very low. The building itself was old but I suppose it was one room...a long room...a low ceiling. I guess you'd probably say ’60s or ’70s mock Tudor, faded. Mock Tudor would be it, really. A carpet that was sticky and faded with age. And a series of wooden pillars at intervals all the way along to the end. That was opposite the long bar, which again was a great length.
The landlord was a guy called Skip. Bright eyes. Very bouncy. Very sharp. And he was a lovely guy, Skip, because he was very friendly, very cheerful, kind of young-looking but hard as nails. He really was. I think he was very capable in the area of martial arts, self-defence, which you had to be there. You knew he was a man in control, because very, very occasionally he had to evict somebody or he had to settle a quarrel. And you'd think God, this guy is tough. You really wouldn't mess with this fella, you know. I don't know whether you remember him, but he was lovely. He was always very patient with us. We'd be in the corner, and sometimes we drank too much or we'd be singing along to adverts that we'd seen on the telly, thinking it was a really great ironic thing to do. And he'd just come over and say Lads, you know. I like a drink myself, lads, just, you know, turn it down, eh?
And there was no arguing. Yeah, alright, Skip. I think the Tavern was a tough call for any young landlord. You'd probably cut your teeth there.
They served Carling Black Label. There was a smart new brew called Hemeling I remember that we all thought was very trendy. Let's have some Hemeling. And then there was the lovely traditional Brew XI For the Men of the Midlands. We were the men of the Midlands, weren't we? I remember Tuborg, too.
I suppose a big part of the wallpaper was the Hells Angels, wasn't it? I remember them very well because we were a lot younger than them. They would be occupying a darkened area of the pub in there, looking like tattooed pirates. And sometimes you would catch their gaze and they would look back and you'd be Ooo, are they looking at me? Oh my god. They're after me. They're going to sort me out.
But I'm sure they weren't. I'm sure it was just our paranoia really. I'm sure they were a cheery bunch of chaps doing great things in the community, lovely outreach projects for charity, things like that. I expect they were fantastic blokes. If they read this, I hope they know that's the way I feel about them, and always did.
My look was a T-shirt that was normally bought at a gig somewhere. I’d be wearing my festival T-shirt or a Jethro Tull T-shirt. I had a T-shirt that my mom wouldn't iron or anything, because I'd got it on the Stiffs Tour… Elvis Costello, Ian Dury and Nick Lowe… Wreckless Eric. It was white and in black it just said, If it ain’t stiff it ain’t worth a f***. I thought that was great, that really gave me an edge, you know. I wore it and wore it and wore it. So I'd be wearing something like that, with my jeans of course. In that period we moved from flares to straights. And I wore Dunlop Green Flash pumps, dusty, scuffed. I sometimes wore a tatty black velvet jacket, with very, very long hair…shoulder length hair which I started to cut later on. I thought it was a good look. How does it sound to you?
A nice thing that we used to do in The Tavern every Christmas and for birthdays, we'd buy each other albums, LPs. It'd be a surprise. It'd be a secret.
What have you got, Steve?
Oh, I'll tell you...hang on he’s coming...I've got him ‘Trespass’ by Genesis.
Really, you got him that?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And on Christmas Eve we'd bring in our albums and we'd sort of rip open the parcels and we'd be Yaaay! And we'd share these albums. It was lovely that. It was really nice. We always used to buy an album for each other, so you got this big square present with Christmas paper on. I look back and it was the best bit, cuz you'd go away with four brand new albums. Brilliant. Absolutely fantastic. I remember getting Thick as a Brick by Jethro Tull and then later on latterly The Specials album when that came out.
Everybody seemed to be very serious about the music. We were finding ourselves. Cuz you were learning to be...to be the person who you wanted to be.
One of the worst things I ever saw at the Tavern we were down in our corner, chatting, and this guy was at the jukebox. The jukebox was right down in the corner, wasn't it? He was looking at the jukebox...and we knew this guy… we thought he was quite a glamourous guy cuz he wore a long trenchcoat and he said that he was an out of work actor, which was impossibly glamorous to us, really. An out of work actor...wow...that must be amazing. I remember him looking at the jukebox and suddenly these three guys came in in sheepskin coats. They just walked straight through the pub, and it was like something out of a gangster movies, you know. They walked towards him. Dragged him to the ground and kicked him in the head. I remember the sound. The sickening thuds. The blood. And when they were satisfied that they'd done enough damage they just turned around and walked out. It was the most horrendous thing I've ever seen. Ambulance came, took him away. We never saw him again. That was the darker side of the Tavern. It had a dark side.
Amongst our mates was Steve O'Brien. He was our leader. He was brilliant. He'd come in the Tavern, and we'd be in the corner, and he'd say, Haven't you got your Pink Floyd tickets yet? They'm on sale. Sundown Records. They’re on sale now. Do you remember Sundown Records? On Princes Square. They're down there. Why haven't you got them?
OK, Steve. We'll get ’em tomorrow.
There were always discarded copies of NME and Sounds around. We'd go to nearly everything that was touring. We were lucky enough to have the Civic, and the Laff, and the Poly. And you could go to Birmingham Odeon. Or Bingley Hall. And sometimes we'd get the train and go down to London, to Hammersmith Odeon. And the big thing was going to the Reading Festival every year. We'd have our three days there. Or we'd go to Knebworth. I remember seeing the Beach Boys at Knebworth and Genesis at Knebworth. It'd be Who's going. then? We've got the van. We've got the van sorted out. I remember going down to the Blackbush Aerodrome to see Bob Dylan and Eric Clapton. The van belonged to this bloke called Steve Smith who used to go in the Tavern. Yeah, you can borrow me van, he says, you can borrow me van. Fantastic. I was the only person who could drive. Big Bedford van with sliding doors. I remember picking it up from his house. He lived down in Fordhouses, St Anne's Road. No MOT on it. It wasn't taxed and I wasn't insured to drive it. But nobody seemed to care. It was all the men for that one I remember...although we did go with girls. And we rammed the van full of Skol lager and off we went. Kind of madness really. Really crazy stuff.
I stopped going in the Tavern round about late '81. So we went there a long time. My friend Dave Lewis and I started getting interested in performance poetry. We formed this double act called The Precious Poets. And we used to do gigs around Wolverhampton and The Black Country and recited our absurdist poetry, which got us onto Beacon Radio. And suddenly our attention was taken by this because we thought – inevitably – we were going to be famous soon, so we needed to really focus on it, and we stopped going to the Tavern. And some of our girlfriends moved away to universities, so again some of the appeal was lost. I moved away, as you do.
After a series of jobs ranging from working in sales to being a window cleaner to working in a hotel, I went to Exeter University at 34 and did a degree in English and Drama. Worked for a while as an actor, then became a drama teacher for 21 years and alongside that formed a little theatre company. Now I've finished teaching and I spend my time writing and performing wherever I can. I've just recently done a six-part sitcom on Radio 4 which has been quite well received.
I did a play a couple of years ago called Looking for Wolverhampton’s Latin Quarter. It was premiered at the Arena Theatre in Wolverhampton in June 2019 and went on to two successful runs at Edinburgh. It was fun to see so many people in the audience who’d nudge and chuckle at the scenes set in the Tavern in Queen Square.
I’m going back to Edinburgh this year with a solo play called Wonderin’ Y. The title is taken from a lesser-known Slade song written by Don Powell, who is the subject of the play. I worked with Don to create the story.