paul douglas lovell

 I don't know if you remember my Uncle Tony, the outrageous gay, psychopath from The Albert, he brought me in once with him. He was an old Teddy Boy, so he used to wear a leather jacket with lapels, and had rockabilly hair. He was practically the last standing Teddy Boy in town. You just didn't see them. He had scars, one from an iron bar and one from an axe. He was a right headcase.  His funeral was a town event. And the person who'd put the axe in his head was there. 

Tony was the first one to tempt me in there.

I was in the closet. I didn't like my hair. I didn't want to be a rocker, but I did like rock music. I liked Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Santana. I didn't like AC/DC and the Motörhead and Iron Maiden.  That was far too aggressive for me. 

The clothes I wore wasn't a choice. I was a rocker by default. This is how I describe it. And it was a bit of a disguise. All through my childhood I felt scruffy and I was aware of my scruffiness, whereas in the Tavern I was scruffy, but so was everybody else.

I remember one chap – I don't know if he was a punk or a skinhead it was hard to tell – he had nails sticking out of his shoulder and a dead pigeon pushed onto it, and as time went on this decomposing pigeon turned into a skeleton. You don't get characters like that nowadays. Then there was Punky Pam who used to walk round with a pack of dogs. I used to call her Wolf Woman. And there were people like Caeser from Blakenhall flats and Canon and Willie. All these people. You got rastas from Blakenhall flats. One called Noel used to go out with a girl across the street, and we used to war with that family, but he was really nice to us. Then you'd get skinheads, and punks, and students at the polytechnic. The poor students, they'd come to Wolverhampton, use the Tavern, and I don't think they ever left. They just got sucked in. 

One of my teachers, a classroom assistant for art class, was in there one day and I was still of school age. So because she drank in the Tavern we had this almost unspoken friendship. When I did my picture of a rock concert I managed to blag her to put it up to a B instead of a C, which was quite nice. I probably said it with a bit of menace Ahhh, you're not meant to be in the Tavern. Because you did get the impression that it wasn't the place that you should be. You walked in the door, you got hit with a cloud of smoke, and you knew what it was straightaway. It wasn't cigarette smoke. I remember it being very pungent.

It was like an assortment of rebels and reprobates. People’d come from Heath Town, Wednesfield, Blakenhall, Merridale, wherever. It's almost like the worst...or the best…of each section would congregate into the centre. It really was the hub of Wolverhampton. Around all the town of all the pubs it was the central pub. You'd go from one to one to the other but the Tavern was the place you'd go first to look for everyone and then go searching elsewhere, always ending back up at the Tavern, you know.

The jukebox was brilliant, wasn't it? When they'd play something like Bronski Beat I used to feel a little bit more secure within myself. It wasn't just rockers playing rock music, there was a real mix on that jukebox. There was some really good tracks on there. It had a bit of everything I think. I remember The Joker, Black Betty and Hawkwind. And whenever Hawkwind was on there'd be a fight. That's probably a fake memory, but that's in my head. 

The 'Man on the Horse' and the benches around it was almost like the beer garden. When the pub closed at 3 o'clock it just moved to there. And sometimes to British Home Stores café – that was probably in the Winter.  It was nice to be in the crowd.  

I do remember the bar was on the left when I first went, and then it got refurbished and I think after the refurbishment it was under new management and wasn't as good. It was dark in there, because when you used to go out on the Saturday afternoon you got almost snowblind from the sun. I never bought a drink in there – we used to sneak out to the Spar and get a can of Coke which cost about 15p and I'd sip it. But a lot of people did that. I saw a lot of people with their cans of Red Stripe pulling them out their pockets. Nobody really had much money. It wasn't like everyone went and bought rounds. I think my Uncle Tony was the only person who ever bought a round in there.  

I got invited to an Indian wedding from a customer there, which is a bit off the wall. She was a rocker chick and then she got married. An arranged marriage. It was a massive event. I can’t remember everyone else’s table, but I remember our table had so much alcohol on it. We were on the white table. They put us all together. There was Bacardi and vodka and gin and whisky. It was the first wedding I'd probably ever been to.  That was really nice.  

The Tavern got raided by the drugs squad one Saturday afternoon. I remember it well. I was at the back, and I was rolling a joint on the pool table, and the police came from the front and from the side all of a sudden. En masse. Just swarmed into the place. I threw the joint under the pool table and put the 'ash down my trousers. 

My dad was in there.  Occasionally he would go in, just pop in for a drink or a half. He went Paul! Come over here. You're not planting drugs on my son! And the cops were going, Oh calm down, Mr Lovell. Dad was a little bit notorious in that sense, a little bit well known. I remember going straight to my dad. Because dad was the authority. The police were not. If Dad said, You come here! you went. And I happily went to him and slipped out of the pub and everything dispersed. 

I remember being happy that I was allowed to go in the Tavern. Feeling sort of comfortable. Although I was in the closet I wasn't constantly thinking Oh, I'm gay...Oh everyone's going to know. That was probably in the back of my mind. At the front of my mind I was too busy, you know, looking to find a joint, cuz to me this was almost the most important thing about it for me. I was not a drinker. I went there to get stoned. It's funny, you do it to block things out, but then you go into the centre of life to block life out. 

As soon as I left Wolverhampton and the Tavern and went to London, my hair was gone. My clothes were gone. I changed image instantly as I left. 

I live in Switzerland now. I've moved from the Black Country to the Schwartzbubenland, which means the black boy land. I did work in a bar in London for about five years after the Tavern. Who knows, maybe that experience paved the way for me working in a bar? I do like the bar atmosphere. But I'm just not into the drunkenness of it all. That's why I keep going on about weed and smoking in the Tavern. Because that was my thing. I didn't go there to get pissed. I went there to get stoned. 

I’m a writer now. The Tavern was such a major part of my life it couldn't help become part of one of my books. And that's Empty Corridors - Learning to Fail. It's basically set around the school times.  So of course learning to fail and empty corridors. It was all about school, but still the Tavern in that period crept in.