Billy
& Sean at The Roxy Dec 1977
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Most
of the time in the early 1977 period the atmosphere was charged with a
feeling that something was going to happen - a bit like it must have been
in the early hippy times of Haight Ashbury in 1967. When you are walking
along (say) the Kings Road in Chelsea about 8.00am and a taxi stops, a man
gets out who looks like a City banker (bowler hat, pinstripe suit, etc),
and tries to attack me and Sean - then you know that something has upset
the status quo - people actually thought that punks were the Antichrists
and that Johnny Rotten was our demonic God! The
Roxy was a former gay club called Chagaramas in the early '1970's and
Kevin St. John (the owner) put bands on there. In fact, as most ordinary
gig sites would not put punk groups on and 'soil their darling rock
groups' nearly all punk groups had to play in weird and wonderful gigs
like gay clubs and pubs, garden centres old cinemas - even strip clubs and
gambling dens! The Roxy was actually quite a good club (its
now a sandwich bar!) and nearly every one of the punk groups played there
sometime or other. The other places on the punk scene were The
Rock Garden in Covent Garden, Louises - a lesbian bar!, The
Bridge House, Tidal Basin, Hope & Anchor, The Wag in Wardour Street,
and the Windmill. Our favourite place to play was the Music Machine (now
called the Camden Palace), an old music-hall (you call them vaudeville???)
absolutely gorgeous late 19th century building with red velvet and
coloured glass everywhere, that held about 15,000 people. We used to pack
it out and after the first time we played the manager used to keep the
place open until about 4.00am so people could see us play! He (the
manager) adored us and put us on about 35-40 times! The first night
we played there I had a sort of row with Iggy Pop, drank Paul McCartney's beer,
and got introduced to Freddie Mercury -
who'd just introduced his 'clone look'! (so I enjoyed myself, if no-one
else did!). Incidentally, if you watch the opening sequence of the
film 'Breaking Glass' with Hazel O'Connor you'll see us all (C.Toys) in
the party scene - we were asked to be in the film and if the film company
hadn't gone bust, we were going to do even more stuff with them. |
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actually recorded quite a bit of European television and appeared on
everything from a bad Spanish Quiz Show to an American show on eating out
cheaply (hence Cheap Night Out!!! - does anyone know which TV channel
in the USA that was on?!). Someone
did win the cheap night out competition and we met him and his girlfriend
from France , but I daren't tell you what happened when they stayed over
with us in case they're still together!! (I wonder which one of us they
named the child after?!). |
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The Raped
competition from 'Cheap Night Out'...Questions included guessing Raped's
vital statistics. A baby wasn't part of the original package !!! |
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| One
time we played a series of concerts in the high north of England around
Yorkshire and beyond. That area, nice as it is, is very rural -I suppose a
bit like the midwest of America; we were on stage at a real working-man's
club one lunchtime (and all the people in the front rows had vegetables on
their tables as they had been to the market earlier on in the day!).
During one song called 'Universe' - a slow, dramatic build-up song,
very florid and emotional - when the club owner quickly walked on stage,
told us to stop playing, took Sean's microphone off him and said "Hot
pies are being sold at the end bar everyone...thanks, son - carry on with
your song"...Ha! it completely phased Sean who just cried with
laughter and collapsed on the stage clutching his stomach - so me and the
rest carried on...and the audience afterwards thought it was part of
the act!. Then we played a very large club called (I think) 'Whites', that
normally had bands like UFO, Iron Maiden, etc, and the clientele a sort of
biker-rocker crowd had obviously never even seen a punk group before! We
did all our numbers to almost silence, nobody moved and one of the people
in the front looked up at us and said "What you're doing is very
well, all this country and western or whatever it is (!) but do you know
any Black Sabbath Numbers or even Led Zepplin! ...so, we quickly conferred
with each other, and agreed to play Zepplin's "Heartbreaker".....
continuously....for one-and-three-quarter hours! They loved it! The
crowd went mad, dancing on tables, dancing with each other , jumping in
the air, screaming, crying, blowing kisses and loud hosannas to us.....we
had hit on the one song they all loved! (for one-and-three-quarter
hours!) - we had to do 4 encores -- all of the same bloody song!!
afterwards the manager (who was a big fat old hippy type who seemed
to be permanently eating apples) came up and wiping his eyes said that we
were the best group he'd ever had on and if we wanted to play there again,
anytime, we were welcome, in fact why not play the following night?
(God! some people are so easily pleased!!) On the way back to
London we were stopped by the Police as we were thought to be murder
suspects in a double-murder (the suspects had driven away in a large white
van very similar to the one we were using), but when they found we had
about 10,000 witnesses who could verify that we had - at the time of the
murder - been playing moosik, well, we got off! One
gig we did in London was at Ronnie Scotts - the famous Jazz Club in the
West End . ....Now this place was the bastion of jazz
music; they had us on (God know's why) as some sort of aberration but
these were people who were more familiar with Bix Biderbecke, Louis
Armstrong, Stan Getz...not Eater, 999 or The Damned! The audience
were mainly composed of either strange looking punks with multi-coloured hair
or serious looking men with goatees, dark glasses, berets and
polo-neck jumpers, with girlfriends dressed like beatniks. The punks
danced about like nutters - and the jazz'ers would sit looking
intense and saying things like "this is really, quite, quite
experimental...where are they taking it too???" or "Mmmmm,
strange use of an A minor suspended with a modal fifth....very Art
Tatum..." (!) (one said to me that my playing was beautifully naive -
like Miles Davis! I didn't really even know who Miles Davis was
at the time! When we were leaving and putting our equipment away in
the van, Ronnie Scott himself and George Melly (the British Jazz singer)
appeared and Ronnie said to me and Sean..."Man, you cats were
hot! you were really swinging! that was real beat!" We
didn't believe anyone talked like that in real life
- especially not in the late 1970's! and all the way home me and
Sean kept saying things like "man, that was groovin'!"
or "hey daddio! take it way, way down!"----pisstaking
bastards we were! |
Sean has a
breather while the pies are sorted out
Sid
and Nancy...an offer you could refuse !
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I
wasn't gay in Cuddly Toys, that was just some ridiculous marketing ploy
by our manager Alan Hauser, who said we would get a huge gay
following for the band - well we did, but no thanks to Alan!
In fact my girlfriend at the time was very androgeneously - boyish so a
lot of people assumed she was my boyfriend and that I really
was a wootje! But on the strength of that I did get Sid Vicious
ask if he could give me a blow-job in Dingwalls one night
- sorry but that's one offer I had to refuse, there are certain
standards...dont'ye know!!
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| I'm
not related to Aleister.Crowley at all - it was just a bit of fun with a
friend of mine from the Daily papers but I did have a great interest in
the magical arts at the time. I used to know Kenneth Anger and he asked me
to do some music for Lucifer Rising - as he'd fallen out with Jimmy Page,
but I didn't due to something that I won't go into in print...Proof
is that I knew him and that this could have transpired is that I still
have the drawing with a magical blessing he did for C.Toys! I
also studied some ritual magic and witchcraft under Maxine Sanders (the
wife of Alex Sanders who formed what are now called Alexandrian
Covens) she is often called the Queen of the Witches!) but I never got any
benefit from it whatsoever. |
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After
the group split up, Sean (against the wishes of the Japanese record
company), reformed a totally-new group and called them alternatively
Cuddly Toys and Cuddly Toys II. but he then left himself
and the new group got Angela Bowie (David's ex - who Sean had known for
some time) to front them! so there were no original members left! I
actually formed a duo with Angela in the late '80's but she was such a
lazy bitch she wanted me to a/ do all the recordings b/ organise any gigs,
club dates, record contracts, etcc/ and - if she nothing else on - she might
just turn up and rehearse with me...if she don't like me saying this -
then she's entitled to sue me! ('can't sing anyway!! meeoww!'). but
some of the songs we (read I) did write weren't bad. I
then drifted into (after Cuddly Toys finished) the New Romantic scene and
hung around with Duran, Culture Club, Soft Cell, etc and the whole of
that early 1980's London club scene. I still know quite a few of the
people from then, but most of them are phased- out or married with 100 kids!
As Cuddly Toys
we had a fair bit of success in other countries, including such diverse
places as Russia and Portugal, Saudi Arabia(!) and of course, Japan. |
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And afterwards.....
I went off onto other
things . I am still interested in doing new ideas and stuff...one thing I would
like to do is that I still have the songs that Marc Bolan gave me that have never
been released and wouldn't mind releasing them with a decent
singer...any offers?!! Incidentally,, anyone
that wants to e-mail me on anything ..... please do so and I will try my hardest
to reply immediately - or earlier!
Lots
of love
Faebhean Kwest
faebhean.kwest@zoom.co.uk
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