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3: Real Punks
The next morning I got a phone call from Steve telling me that our drummer had quit. He'd already found a replacement: people were queuing up to join the Rats at that time. Ollie Harrison, one of the band's followers, was in. Steve had decided. No vote, no democratic process. 

Fortunately, both Roy and I liked Ollie and knew he could play. He learnt the set in a few days and proved his worth at Pershore College of Horticulture on the 17th June. The set looked something like:

A few days later we travelled to Birmingham for the festival. But as he climbed into the van, that evening, Roy whispered in my ear:

"Heard about Steve's new stage-name? Its Steve Ego!"

We were a moderate success at Barbarella's, outshone by the Killjoys and the Suburban Studs but better than a couple of other outfits. Just as well. In the club were a few hundred Brummie punks. They turned over half a dozen cars before the gig just to pass the time, pogoed and spat their way through all eight bands, then rounded the night off with a concerted attack on the club's bouncers.

We returned there the week after to see the Buzzcocks and the Fall. When singer Pete Shelley asked,

"Would any little boys like to come backstage afterwards?"

I sensed that I had entered a new social scene. The Fall were equally different. Ranting on about "Industrial Estate", but telling us nothing about it, was clearly intended as some new urban poetry. Our material was old-fashioned by comparison.

Yet it was a proud day when the cassettes of our first demo arrived and we handed them over to Mick Butler and Duncan Hands, proprietors of a record and tape shop in Evesham, imaginatively called "The Evesham Record & Tape Centre". Butler and Hands claimed to have influence in the business, so we let them send off copies to the major companies on our behalf. 

We took them with us to Tracy's in Redditch, where DJ Pete played "Year of the Rats" for the apathetic locals. The dance floor was comfortingly small - our dozen or so fans filled it as they loyally pogoed along. Perhaps success was a little harder to achieve than we had so far thought?

"You'll go far," said Butler, making it a total of one hundred clichés he'd used that night. Tosser. We were sitting in his office, discussing plans for the band. Across the desk sat Duncan Hands, Butler's diminutive sidekick. He played Josef Goebbels to Butler's pathetic portrayal of Adolf Hitler.

"You sound like the Who'" pronounced Duncan. That was a new one. Blatant flattery. He knew I liked the Who - I'd bought "Meaty, Beaty, Big and Bouncy" the week before.

Steve looked dubious. Not that he didn't think we sounded like the Who - it was simply that he thought the person to decide what we sounded like was ... himself.

"Let's hope the kids think so," said Roy, sounding rather too much like Pete Townsend for my liking. Were we all losing our personalities? For my part, the pressure to sound like Johnny Rotten was proving an unwelcome burden. 

"Let's hope the record companies like us," said Steve, realistically.

One record company did: Dick James Music. They sent an ageing A&R man, Les Tomlinson to see us play at Tracy's. When Les told us he liked our "Primitive Dance Principles", Roy looked as if he was going to heave, but we accepted Les' invitation to sign for DJM after considering the offer for a full five minutes.

The boys at DJM

One wet lunchtime in Denmark Street, the four members of Satan's Rats made their mark along the dotted line and immediately ordered larger size headgear and leaded boots to keep their feet on the ground.

"I think you look like Les McKeown," said Linda from A&R, pointing a bejewelled finger at yours truly.

"Don't you mean Jean-Jacques Burnel?" I asked.

"Is he a Bay City Roller?"

Satan's Rats looked at Linda and knew they were on their own. DJM were not a Punk label, like Stiff or New Hormones, or Virgin. These Jewish Princesses loved Elton John and Johnny Guitar Watson and regarded us with polite caution. When Linda rose to her cute little feet and proposed a toast to the band, saying:

"Good luck, S-S-Satan's Rats,"

I suspected she wanted to laugh at the name. Let's face it, it just didnt fit. It was on a par with "Slaughter & the Dogs". While other bands either went for brute nihilism - Sex Pistols, Stranglers, Dead Kennedys - and others settled for subtlety - XTC, Wire, Undertones - we had a name which reminded people of a naff B-Movie. It never stopped us getting a gig, probably helped us at the beginning, but did it sell discs? 

Years later, at college in London, a bloke on my course told me that back home in Thame, together with his mates he had once set fire to "Year of the Rats". I remarked on what a nice ashtray "In my Love for You" can be moulded into ... then told him the Tale of Rikki's Can.

5: Unreal Punks
We drowned our sorrows that last night in the Vortex, where girl band the Slits were assaulting anyone who ventured into their pungent orbit. The bands on stage were reassuringly crap. Mean Street posed and puckered like petulant adolescents, threatening members of the audience at random. 

The atmosphere was plastic. There was TOO much aggression, TOO much spitting  and TOO much swearing. These kids were acting in a mannered way, a tabloid-inspired way. The truth was embarrassingly plain. They, like the Greasers and Soulboys in Evesham, had believed the Sun.

Two months later we returned to London to play the Roxy in Covent Garden. A group of sub-Nosferatu creatures set up a barrage of abuse as we took the stage. They had rumbled us for a bunch of hicks from the sticks, though what they called us was less poetic. I gave as good as we were getting.

That eloquent exchange of opinions was the inspiration for a whole advertising campaign. To coincide with the release of our single "You Make Me Sick", DJM ran a large advert in the NME proclaiming "NEVER MIND THE SEX PISTOLS - HERE'S SATAN'S RATS."

6: Pistols at Dawn
Its a small world. A short time after this advert appeared, we got a phone call asking us to support the Pistols at the Wolverhampton Lafayette, on their secret tour - they were banned by most city councils by then.

I suppose we should have expected a Malcolm McLaren-inspired trap. But then even that would have been worth it. There was no BAD publicity in those days - McLaren's own credo. In fact the atmosphere in the Rats camp was ecstatic. Rotten and co were my favourite act, though the others were less committed, citing the Clash and the Stranglers as possible rivals. But we were unanimous in our recognition that the Pistols were the top draw in rock at that time. And we were to support them. 

Before getting in the bus that evening, I spoke to my brother, then thirteen, who was keen to come along. I'm glad I said No.

Rotten spent the afternoon laying on the club's floor reading about himself in the Melody Maker, while Sid and Nancy skulked in a corner, hyperdermics at the ready. Two paunches appeared briefly in the doorway, then were gone. 

"Where have they gone?" asked Roy. 

Jones and Cook were down the pub, leaving the Pistols' road crew to entertain us. A scrawny individual who called himself "Rodent" wasted no time castigating us for the NME advert and for including a Beatles song in our set.

"I hate the fucking Beatles," he opined.


And a fat roadie named Steve English put his arm round Jackie Pickles, one of our camp, causing so much nervousness that our roadie Lurch suggested we fetch some fish and chips from down the road.

Looking remarkably timid for a twenty-stone bloke, Lurch approached the current star of British Punk, who appeared engrossed in his paper.

"What would you like from the chippie, Johnny?" he asked the prone star. "Would you like scallops, like the rest of us. Without looking up, the Finsbury Park Anti-Christ replied:

"Never mind the scallops, I'll have cod roe." 

Our sound check was highlighted by Sid Vicious' refusal to allow Roy to use his bass stack. I was tempted to suggest to Mr Vicious that from what we'd just heard, he didn't need the gear himself, anyway. I relented when I got an eyeful of Sid's expression. Somewhere between Charles Manson and Freddie Kruger.

Two hours later the club was fuller than Gaye Advert's bum flap. The Pistols were tight and brilliant. Satan's Rats got an encore and enjoyed themselves thoroughly. We did not get to know our heroes, but did we want to? Their general demeanour was unsociable.

The club was still filling when Satan's Rats the support group hit the stage.They were a mixture of high energy pop and new wave,very energetic and a good warm up for the audience. (Peter Don't care personal reflection of Pistols/Rats gig)

There followed a period of intense gigging. We appeared on the same bill at Barbarella's as Slaughter and the Dogs and XTC. The former were foul-mouthed yobs - the Genuine Article? - while the latter took the stage with the meek diffidence of public schoolboys. As Andy Partridge looked around the Brummie punks, he seemed to say, "We're good, we're really good, you'll like us - Promise."


Barbs was also the place for a night out, the place to "die a little". It stank of stale beer, served lousy ships, but the underclass of Birmingham fraternised there in a sub-culture of drugs and kinky sex that lent it a powerful energy. In Ollie's company mostly, I stalked its corridors, bumping into the likes of Bill & Belle, tailors to the Stars of Brum's Underworld and one night, to a lad of our age who introduced himself as Spizz.

"I've got an album coming out," he said. I nodded, not especially impressed - everybody in the club seemed to be signed up. Spizz sensed my boredom and asked: "Do you like Star Trek?"

 Onto Part 2