ian wollaston

I did my early drinking in the Tavern when I was seventeen, eighteen. There was a period 1979 to ’81, before I went to university. And then when I came back from university in ’84.

I was a bit of a rocker, and I got to the Tavern through friends at school who were into the same sort of music. There was a whole network of places. The Cock Inn at Bilston, I used to go to the rock discos there. I was a classic rocker. Well, a metalhead rocker. Denim jacket, bit of a cut-off. Few patches. You know the sort of drill. Patches and jeans and denim jackets. I discovered music, like live music, around that time. I’d been into punk, and ended up going the wrong way into rock music, really, but my first big, proper gig was UFO at the Civic in about 1979, and then Motörhead.

The biggest thing that ever happened to me in the Tavern? I was beaten up by Hells Angels. You know what the building was like. It was quite an intimidating place to go in, but we used to go in, albeit we were scared of it. Then you got to know a few people in there and it was OK. It was a bit of a dive, but it was our dive, and it was great.

A few weeks before it kicked off, the odd Hells Angel started coming in. Just one of them would come in through the back entrance and everybody would run out through the front. Then one night, two of them came in through the back, and everyone had got a bit used to it. And then a few more, and a few more, till there was about six or seven of them. And it just kicked off. I was at the bar and I’d just bought a round. Three Tennents Extra. I turned round to tell my mate We’d better get out of here! and he’d gone, out the door. So, beers were dropped, out the door I went. Knocked over, right in the entrance, somebody kicked me in the head – they didn’t mean to – and I wandered out into Queen Square, a bit dazed. Someone picks me up. I thought they were helping me out. They weren’t. It was an Angel.

He said something along the lines of Are you one of them? I hadn’t got a clue what he was on about. Next thing, this skull and crossbones ring is coming toward my face. He knocked me out. I came to, and he’d gone. I lived in Bradmore at the time, and I just remember staggering down the road past Beatties. A mate of mine came back and found me. I got home. Mother wasn’t happy with the black eye. But there you go. It didn’t stop me going in. Perhaps I didn’t go in for a few weeks, but I went in after that. I bounced better then. It would stop me now, probably.

Why the Tavern? It’s your tribe, isn’t it? As a kid I wasn’t very confident. I was quite quiet, and then I found the Tavern, and the people there were my tribe. That feeling of belonging, of community. I didn’t know hundreds of people in there, but you could go in there on your own – not that I did that very often – and you could guarantee you’d get a nod, or you’d just know somebody there. And you felt, because it was your community, you felt safe. Even though it felt like a really dodgy black hole, with no windows.

I had a great time there, and it was a real dive then. It was. You’d go in, and the entrance way in there’d just be people sitting on the floor and copping off with each other. There was a mattress out the back door, allegedly. Although I can’t remember seeing it. It was a dive, but it was our dive. So the sticky floors and all the rest of it didn’t matter.

And then it changed to Moriarty’s. I remember going in there. It was horrible.