Menace [Noel Martin interview]
(April 2000)

Menace reformed for 1998's Holidays In The Sun Festival, and have gradually been working in fresh releases of re-recordings and new material, culminating in a new single on Knock Out at the end of last year. I wasn't exactly in a rush to hear the new material, in case it tainted the memory of their glorious past, so the first I got to hear them was when a CD compilation called 'Scene Killer 2' was sent over to me from the States, and on it one new Menace song, "C & A". As soon as I put it on it was slapped wrists for me for doubting them, it was suitably 'knockout' and also the best song on a really excellent compilation. So quickly I sent off for the 7" on Knock Out, also on there you get another new track "Punk Rocker", which is corking as well. So if any of you out there are wondering if Menace are a band you should be paying attention to today then the answer is a resounding "yes". I spoke recently to Noel Martin, drummer in the original Menace line-up and drummer in the current Menace line-up, to get the low-down on the new band and some stories from the days when being "influential" meant not as many people liked you at the time. Having just come back from Germany, Noel was using his last day off to put up a bit of plasterboard and get interrupted to do showbiz interviews. After arming myself with a cup of tea, the questions began:

I've got the sleeve for the new single in front of me, what's going on in the picture on that?
Well that's my son. That was taken in Stuttgart, and although it looks like he's dancing sidewards, he's not, he's lying on the floor drunk. He tried to get up and he fell over again. He's on the floor killing himself laughing, pissed out of his skull at about 6 o'clock in the morning at the end of tour party in Stuttgart. On the next photograph in the line, there's about 2 or 3 people trying to get him up - this is the good influence I have on my children, I take them along to punk gigs and get them pissed! He's 19 today.

Have you encouraged him to join a punk band yet?
Yeah, he does a bit of singing for a band. They're currently trying to get some names, but it's kind of a cross between punk and grunge.

Most kids I see of that age tend to be into the American stuff and the whole skateboard thing.
Yeah, I mean I like some of that too, like Nirvana. You can see the roots of that if you go back in the past, you can see where it all comes from. I reckon if you look at any music you can always see something that's preceded it. But I think punk in its form that we know it started in this country. In America The Ramones were a good band but they were more of a rock band really with a bit of attitude.

Basically it was the speed of their records that had the influence, and obviously the pub rock bands over here were a big influence because it meant that anyone could be in a band.
Yeah there's a lot of stuff you could listen to and say it was an influence on punk, for example some of the mod stuff. Some of the lesser known Who tracks, if you listen to them live you could say 'well that's a bit spunky'.

Well the Sex Pistols started off doing Who and Small Faces stuff, didn't they.
I don't know, did they?

Yeah they were doing covers of that kind of stuff.
I've never actually read how Menace formed, so tell us a bit about how you all met and began in the first place?
I knew Steve Tannett and Charlie Casey from school. Charlie was in my class and I'd known him since the second year at Sir William Of York in Kings Cross. The same school incidentally as Johnny Rotten went to, but he was a year below us. John Lydon and his brother, they all went to the same school, so Sir William Of York was kind of a breeding ground for young punks - obviously a lot of disenchantment there!

Did John Lydon stand out to you at all before he became well known?
Yeah, but not in a way that you would like to think about, he was more a kind of a kid that got picked on as opposed to a rebel.

Well perhaps that explains a lot then?!
Well yeah, he was a bit like what we would call in London as a bit stroppy. But when he came out as Johnny Rotten I was very surprised, I thought 'fucking hell - that's John Lydon - I don't believe it!' But y'know, good luck to him. So yeah, me and Charlie both come from Ireland, so when Charlie first turned up at Sir William Of York we got talking because basically the last place he lived in Ireland was where I lived, in the west of Ireland in Galway. So we got to know each other quite well. Later on, Steve Tannett was a year below me, and he used to come and talk to us as well in the playground. Then after we left school we got to know Steve a bit better, and then we met up with Morgan Webster at the Hope & Anchor just after the kick off of it all, when there were a few bands going around in '76. I can't remember exactly the dates but it was around early-to-mid '76.

Most biographies of the band say that you formed "at the Hope & Anchor", which makes it sound like you formed in a pub?
Yeah, well that's right. It's a pub. We're all from Islington - me, Steve and Charlie - and it was very much our local pub. Morgan was from Islington as well. He was originally from Canada but he used to live down Essex Road way, just off Islington High Street, and hang around Islington. So the Hope & Anchor was the pub that you went to at around that time. That's where the bands got put on. It wasn't punk bands, not in '76 I have to tell you, but it was a fairly band-y type of place, so we just got talking over drinks and thought 'let's have a go'. And the rest is basically history. We got a rough set together and started playing. Our first gig I think was probably at The Roxy. I'm not sure though because it's 24 years ago and it's hard to remember details. Someone said recently that they'd got a bootleg of a gig of ours at the Lord Ragland in Wolverhampton, and I couldn't even remember playing that! It's kind of a bit hazy, we used to get pissed a lot.

Well I suppose at the time you didn't think it was the sort of thing that anyone was gonna be interested in, in 20 years?
Yeah, quite. It was really a surprise for us because we kind of lost touch. Shame on us, but that's the way it happened. We felt a bit disillusioned, and after we split up Morgan went his own way and Steve went into the music business. He's a big guy now with Miles Copeland and does a lot of record deals and stuff. We still played together - me, Steve and Charlie - in a band called The Aces, and we played with Vermillion And The Aces for a while - that was a bit funny.

What sort of bands were your big influences? Did you start off more kind of pub rock-y? Or had punk already started?
Well punk had kind of just started, and the Sex Pistols was the only 'name' punk band really, 'cos they were getting all the publicity. Siouxsie was just about as well. But there was a buzz about punk, and a lot of the kids were punks, so we just got into it and the only place to play was The Roxy. That was the only club we knew. I can remember it was Kevin St.John down The Roxy at that time, so we'd give him a call and he said 'Yeah, yeah, come down'. And almost at our first gig at The Roxy a guy called Kim Turner, who's now Sting's personal manager, he lived round the corner from me in Crouch End at the time where I used to live, and he came down to see us and signed us up there and then. Almost our first gig, and we went into the studio soon after that.

That was Illegal Records was it?
Yeah.

And was that label originally set up to release Police records 'cos no-one was interested in them?
I don't know, I've heard that. I think there were a few other labels set up within that Illegal thing, there was Step Forward, and there were a few other labels set up to do with Mark Perry and Miles and people like that. I think it was originally probably to release the early Police stuff, but they obviously changed from that quite quickly. In those days with punk, to the major labels signing a punk band was only like a couple of pennies to them. We didn't get an advance, we just got signed to come in and do two records. All we ever got out of those records was whatever royalties were due on them. I mean, people are making more money on Menace records than we ever did. They cost so much to buy now, the original vinyl ones, they're quite rare now.

"Screwed Up" was the first one, wasn't it?
"Screwed Up" was the first one, and that was originally a 12", and then came "G.L.C.", and then "I Need Nothing" after that. But "I Need Nothing" was recorded at the same time as "Screwed Up". We didn't go back into the studio to do "I Need Nothing", it was just mixed differently. We recorded the 4 tracks on Illegal first of all: "Screwed Up" was mixed by Kim Turner, and at the same time "I Need Nothing" was mixed by John Cale. And then they just kept it and released it later. But in the mean time we'd done the Small Wonder one, "G.L.C.", and then after that we did the Fresh one, "The Young Ones". Then just at about the time we were finishing we did the 'Final Vinyl' one, which was "Last Year's Youth" and "Carry No Banners", and that for me was more of a classic record. You can tell by that time from the lyrics to something like "Carry No Banners" that we were getting badly fucked over really. "Carry No Banners" was about all the politics that started creeping into it, and people started jumping on the bandwagon and using it for their own devices. And "Last Year's Youth" was 'cos everybody and his mate were getting signed up to majors and we were just not even considered. I don't know why, it was just one of those things.

Didn't some people tag you as right wing, even though you'd done Rock Against Racism gigs?
Yeah, I know, it's incredible. I mean, Morgan was from Canada and "I'm Civilised" had "I'm from a ghetto in Soweto and I carry a gun," so we were writing political things in those days, albeit apolitical. But to be right wing, I know we got classed as it sometimes but I just don't know where that came from.

Well I think it's people that don't actually know much about the band.
I think it's people that don't know much about the trends of the way punks and Oi! went. 'Cos there were a lot of skinheads involved in punk in the early days, punk and Oi! And I think people normally assume that if there's a lot of skinheads, they must be right wing because we all know that skinheads are all right wing, don't we? It's stupid classing what your political belief is just from what you look like. It's incredulous. You're taught at school to be tolerant and all that, and the very people that are telling you to be tolerant are the people that are the first to label you, and to do Rock Against Racism gigs, y'know it's a bit weird!

Who was the leader of the G.L.C. at the time you wrote that song?
Horace Cutler.

Right, so it was before Ken Livingstone was involved. I was wondering who you were gonna vote for, for mayor?
Oh I would probably vote for Ken, although I'm not so sure about the conductors on the buses, but I like his rebellious nature. He's not a party man as such. But yeah, it was Horace Cutler. The reason "G.L.C." was written was Horace Cutler and the G.L.C. Because at the time they cancelled a big punk festival that was gonna happen. It was basically the first major punk festival and it was gonna happen at Charlton Athletic football ground. And it was cancelled for the usual 'oh punks are gonna wreck the place and blah-blah-blah', so we did "G.L.C. - You're full of shit!" On the live album, John Lacey the new singer says "and this one goes out to Horace Cutler," or words of that effect. A lot of people don't realise that and they wonder 'Why are they writing about the G.L.C.?' Cos as soon as Ken got in it was got rid of. And we haven't played until it's now coming back! And Ken is still around so maybe we should send him a copy of "G.L.C."?

Did you do much gigging outside London?
Not an incredible amount. We didn't play at all out of the country. We didn't even play in Scotland. I think we did one gig in Newport in Wales, and we only basically played London, Birmingham, Brighton, all the provincial towns like that. And generally a lot of them were with Sham. We did a lot of supports with Sham because we had the same agency as them called Panda in West London. So we did a lot of gigs with them because of that, and also we were mates with them as well, they were good people. But they then went off and started doing their own kind of gigs, and we went off and did our own, and that was when the violence started creeping in to it, with Jimmy crying onstage and saying 'Why are you fighting?' and all that. We didn't quite get that far.

And you split, was it in '78 or '79?
I think we split in '79. We'd done about two-and-a-half years, although people often say it was a year-and-a-half because they're not aware that we got together in '76. We did a gig at The Roxy and a few low-key gigs initially. Then the first single came out in 1977. We weren't doing a lot of gigs. The Roxy was really the only place, and then after we'd played there two or three times the single came out. I think we recorded it in '76 and then it came out in '77. We split up because of the apathy. I think because "G.L.C." got banned off the radio, a lot of people didn't get to hear Menace, and we weren't a particularly 'fashionable' good-looking spiky-haired mob. Although that came later, we didn't have the safety pins and we didn't have the archetypal 'punk' look, we were more kind of 'ordinary'.

Yeah, well in a way that's what appealed to a lot of the people who were later influenced by you, in the second wave. Whereas at the time everyone was more into dressing up and what-have-you instead.
Yeah, I mean we were very much like Sham in the way we looked, but Sham had Jimmy Pursey. He was a very dynamic kind of person. I think whatever he'd done he would have done something, 'cos everybody looks at him 'cos he's very flamboyant in his way. And he wrote good lyrics as well. But we had the same kind of look. We didn't go for safety pins or bondage trousers and all these coloured spiky things that people wore, and studded belts and all things that, we just looked like ordinary kids. This is where Garry Bushell comes up with the 'streetpunk' type of thing, because he's saying there was this generation of bands that were like streetpunk bands, and he puts us in with Sham and Slaughter & The Dogs and a couple of other people, and people have said to us now that that's where it all started.

Well a lot of the bands that came up in that second wave of 'new punk' as it was called, they cited Menace as one of a handful of their main influences alongside Sham and the Upstarts and Cock Sparrer and what-have-you. I think Roi Pearce of The Last Resort used to roadie for you at one stage didn't he?
Yeah he did, but d'y'know, I can't remember him! Again, the way it was, Menace didn't have 'roadies' as such, we couldn't afford it. I mean, we were getting twenty quid for a gig or something like that, so we would turn up with our gear in a cab. The main guy who used to roadie for us wasn't a roadie, he was a London cab driver. He was mad on punk, he absolutely loved it. A very straight looking guy, you wouldn't have believed he was into punk, and he used to come and pick up the gear in his taxi. We'd put all our amps and drums in the back of the cab and turn up at the gig. That's how we got around. But there was always a lot of people in to help us out, so Roi was one of those people but there were quite a few of them.

Saxby from The Last Resort was a big Menace fan as well.
Yeah, we've met Saxby since. When we bumped into him we were in Hamburg.

Yeah, he told me about when they were doing a gig in Germany and someone said to him 'There's a punk band here who want to do a short set if that's alright?' And he said 'Yeah, alright. What's their name?' 'Oh, it's Menace'!
I sat down on the drummer's seat and broke it.

Yeah, he said that happened and something about Arthur having to get a workshop going backstage.
It was a cheap seat though, I have to say.

Ah, he didn't mention that!
It wasn't like a solid, professional seat. It was a brand new seat but it was one where the screw actually goes into the seat itself rather than tightening up on a collar. I could never use one of those myself, it would never last the wear that a professional kit gets. I was sat there halfway through the gig and it just collapsed. So I was just balancing around on this thing onstage. We only had five numbers but we had a bit of a job getting the seat back together, I felt really bad about it 'cos it kind of screwed them up a bit. But we walked into this club and we recognised each other straight away. It was a really good atmosphere, it was full of people. We had a gig in Hamburg the next night, which was a slightly different demographic group. We had more punks - it was about half and half with skins and punks. But at The Warriors gig there was predominantly skins. But we didn't feel out of place or anything, they're partly our audience, skins.

Does it feel strange that you often get called an Oi! band now? Seeing as how it was something that came after you?
Well yeah, it is a bit strange because there was only punk really. And bands like us and Sham, when we started playing together, the very first time we played with them at The Roxy, we had our sound and they had their sound. And we were similar in a way, in that we had those 'chanty' type of choruses. Which is what people then later on have said Oi! is. So in some ways when people say we're one of the people that started Oi! off, it makes me feel really proud that people think that, but we didn't do anything to change our music to BE Oi!, because we split up before it really took off. It WAS about, but it was called street punk, and then before we split up, Garry Bushell was starting to call it Oi! And there's "Oi!" in some of our lyrics as well, in "Tomorrow's World" at the end of it, so you'll find references to it in one of our early songs.

I think he got the idea from Stinky Turner of the Cockney Rejects, who used to say it all the time between songs. He used to say "Oi oi oi!" instead of doing introductions.
Again, Ian Dury was doing it and he wasn't even classed as a punk, he always used to say "Oi!" when he was talking, 'cos he was an Essex boy. It'd be "Alright lads? Oi! Oi!"

So after you'd split up some of you formed the Aces?
Yeah, me, Steve and Charlie were in The Aces, it was just Morgan that went off. We did Vermillion & The Aces first, which was basically down to Miles. He said "I've got this woman and we need a backing band." And as we were doing bugger all we thought we'd give it a go. So we did plenty of gigs and it was a bit embarrassing, but it kept the three of us together 'cos we might have drifted apart had it not been for Vermillion. That's the only thing that we can say was good about it, that we stayed together and worked at that. And then The Aces came about because Vermillion got really pissed off with us when we did the Lyceum, because she'd gone offstage and the place was full of people but they were all at the back - 'cos we were doing "I like motorcycles.." and stuff like that. And there were all these people at the back, and we did "G.L.C." at the end as an encore. Steve just went up to the mike: "You might know this one, G.L.C." And the fucking place just erupted! Everybody just ran down to the front, all going "G.L.C! - G.L.C!" And then afterwards she just said "Fuck off guys, you do that to me and show me up?"

So they all liked your one song but not her set!?
Yeah. So then we went off and did The Aces, 'cos when we were working with Vermillion we'd started to write some stuff which I guess you might call 'new wave'. It was still guitary and bassy, and had the same kind of power but toned down a bit. I dunno, a bit Joe Jacksony or Policey maybe. But not like The Police. With a bit more power. I mean, we were doing that for a while and then that died a death.

Did you release any records?
We did, we released a single called "One Way Street" on Etcetera Records.

Was it any good?
It wasn't bad; people have got it. There's lots of collectors that are into Menace that have also got that in their collection, and funnily enough it's actually fairly rare too, and it goes for 20-30 quid.

Would it fit into the 'punk' bracket?
It would fit into power-pop/punk. The funny thing is that John Lacey, our singer now, wrote the lyrics to it. He was involved with The Aces, and he was also involved with Menace because he worked for Miles as a delivery man. He used to go off on the lorries and drop off records here and there. So he wrote that, and he used to write a bit of punk poetry, a bit like Patrick Fitzgerald. But yeah, he wrote that.. "Life's a one way street, full of broken people walking the narrow line..", so if we were to do that now, it wouldn't take an enormous push to make it much more powerful than it was. But we're not gonna do it, 'cos it's been done. But that was the only thing we released, and we did that for a while and then Steve just drifted off into his job really.

Does he sign bands still?
He does, yeah.

And that's with I.R.S. is it?
Yeah. It's not punk though, I think they're more into garage and all that kind of stuff.

Right, they've moved into the 'dance' field then.
The punk of today, some people would say. It's what the kids like. So they release two or three hundred copies of a record and it gets played around the dance halls and they go onto the next one and stuff.

Mm, you get some of them just in plain sleeves with no details on, which you can't get much more punk and D.I.Y. than that, can you?
Well yeah, quite, quite.

And for anyone that doesn't know, your original singer, Morgan, he returned to Canada didn't he in the 80s, and as far as you know he got killed a few years ago.
Yeah, we think. I guess we should try to find out, but it ain't the easiest thing to do in a foreign country. Who do you phone up to say 'Oh, by the way, is your son dead?' or whatever. We don't have any contacts for him, we don't know where he lived in Canada. I think it was Toronto, but that was about it. I don't know who we'd even call, we'd probably have to phone the Canadian births and deaths or whatever to find out. But the story is that he used to go and see Charlie Harper, 'cos Charlie and the Subs used to do a lot of supports with Menace in the early days before they got a bit bigger, and so Morgan knew Charlie really well and used to go along to see the Subs any time they played in Canada. He used to go to all their gigs, and he was telling Charlie about the aggro he was having with this woman and her family and everything, and the next thing, that's it. He never turned up any more. There's stories going round that he's been bumped off, but he could have just gone to China. Morgan was that sort of person, you could never discount him really. But we believe now that he was a user of heroin and other bits and pieces like that. We didn't realise at the time. So it's a bit difficult to trace him. The royalties that he would get is not a big deal, it's just a couple of hundred quid here and there, so we just keep it for him and if he turns up we'll dish out whatever we need to. It'd be nice if he does turn up one day. He doesn't deserve what he got if that's true, he was a good lad. Morgan and I got on really well.

Supposedly a bit of a character and a good front man was he?
He was, yeah, he was good. He had a strange voice because of his Canadian accent and he was a bit mad really because of the antics he got up to. He wasn't the best on the 'patter', he would repeat himself a lot, 'Good to be back, good to be back,' all this kind of stuff, but he was good physically. He really used to throw himself into songs and dive into the audience and all that kind of thing..falling off stage. He fell off the stage at the Music Machine and nearly broke his neck, 'cos it was a twenty foot drop.

You were known for stage invasions at gigs weren't you?
We still are!

Were they ones that you set out to encourage? Or did they just happen spontaneously?
They just kinda happened. I think the catalyst to it really is "G.L.C.". "G.L.C." and "I Need Nothing". Because everybody knows it, they all now wanna sing it. So they all jump on stage and sing it. It still happens now. The last London gig we did at the 100 Club, there must have been 40 people on stage. I couldn't see or anything. But it used to happen then and it still happens now. I don't quite know why that happens to us and not to other people.

Have you seen The Business?
I haven't seen them, no.

'Cos they traditionally these days encourage it on the last song, they always do "Drinking And Driving" last, and say 'Well you can get on the stage if you want but don't wreck the equipment'. When they closed down Holidays In The Sun last year at Morecambe there were about 300 people on the stage - which looks brilliant.
Yeah, it is great. When we did Holidays in '98 they couldn't get to the stage 'cos there were barriers and bouncers in the way, but it would have happened.

Which leads us nicely into asking why did you get back together then?
Well it was a bit of a coincidence, it wasn't something we set out to do. Charlie and me, and Andrew the new guitarist and John Lacey, we're mates and we've been mates for years. So we were playing just doing the odd gig here and there to friends, and writing music and stuff like that. I don't know how you would class it? Sort of rocky. 'South London Soul', John Lacey used to call it. Which is a bit of a piss take - South London Soul. But it was a bit like quite a strong bass and drums, and lyrics that were saying something. We were playing together for quite a while, and John knows Mark Perry quite well from the old days, him and a guy called Harry Malowski who's "Hurry Up Harry" in the Sham record. He's a photographer and he used to drive like a fucking maniac.

Oh and that's where the "Hurry Up Harry" comes from is it?
Yeah, "Hurry up harry, we're going down the pub mate." He's fucking mad, he drove from Kentish Town to Waterloo in 15 minutes. In traffic. In my car, which was worse! He used to fly about like a maniac. But it was him and Mark and John, so Mark said 'Why don't you come and do a gig with ATV?' And we said 'Yeah, alright.' Which was in Chad's Palace in Hackney, so we thought 'Well there's bound to be one or two punks there'. We were a bit naïve really - bound to be one or two punks; at a Mark Perry gig. 'Cos Mark was doing all kinds of stuff, not necessarily punk. He was doing all kinds of things. So we thought we'll do "G.L.C." to finish off the set and see how it goes. And after we'd done it we had people coming up to us, and the first guy that came up to us, to his eternal embarrassment 'cos he's now a mate of ours and comes to every gig, he said 'That was the best Menace cover I've ever heard'. I said 'Excuse me? I'm Noel Martin!' And you could see the white drain out of his face when he realised, he said 'Oh my god, you are aren't you. Fucking hell, are Menace getting back together then?' I said 'Well no, not really. We hadn't made any plans to. We're just playing a gig with our mate Mark.' But within a week I'd had a call from another guy called John. It was a strange coincidence, because Mark Perry was using the drummer from The Cardiacs, and this guy John is The Cardiacs accountant, who happens to be a friend of my wife's friend. So it's all a bit coincidental. Anyway, this friend, Linda, phoned me up and said 'I was talking to John the accountant and he said that you'd just done "G.L.C.", are you interested in..~whatever~..?' I said 'Yeah, get him to give us a call.' So he phoned us up and he said 'I've got a mate who does punk festivals.' I said 'Oh, do they still have all that?' He said 'Yeah, we do Holidays In The Sun and it's in Morecambe. Are you interested in doing it?' I said 'Well yeah, okay, sure.' This was in about September of 1997. Then Darren Russell called up about three weeks later and said 'Do you want to do it?,' and I said 'Well yeah, okay, it'll be a laugh.' So from that September until the following August we just went into the rehearsal studios and basically put on the old CD and re-learnt the stuff.

Was Holidays In the Sun the first gig you did again as Menace?
No that was the second one. We did a warm up the week before in the Dublin Castle, which in actual fact, apart from the number of people - I mean the audience were great at Morecambe, but we were all a bit overawed by it. Huge p.a., huge stage; I mean I'm miles away from the bass player and the guitarist and we're not used to that, we play in small places that are in your face - but we'd done the Dublin Castle the week before and it was heaving. You could not move. And we were going 'What is going on? Where are all these people coming from!' And there's punks and skins and people going 'Menace! Menace!' And we thought 'Fucking hell! What's happened here? Where were all these people when we were playing the first time around!?' I felt really good with all these people coming up to me going 'Oh great, you've got back together.. godfathers of punk.. godfathers of Oi!', and it was fantastic. But we just really didn't know. It may sound really naïve, but you get married, you have kids, you play a bit of music…. When we were doing The Aces there wasn't really any punk around. Although on reflection if you look, there WAS. There was the Angelic Upstarts, but apart from that there wasn't much, it was Joy Division and Teardrop Explodes and all that, who weren't really punk. I mean, Crass weren't punk. They were a bunch of guys in black that used to stand there and do nothing.

Mm, it's ironic that Special Duties now seem to be a lot more popular than the things that Crass went on to do, and Special Duties brought out the "Bullshit Crass" single, and at the time had everyone against them.
Yeah, they got slated for it at the time.

But it's turned full circle 'cos that's the sort of thing that people want to go and see now; it's dated better or whatever.
Yeah, Special Duties are now quite mates of ours, again they're one of the people who have cited us as being influences and they've got that "Colchester Council" song which is like a "G.L.C." tribute if you like, and their T-shirts have got 'Last Year's Youth' on them. It's one of the lyrics in their songs, which is kind of weird. But at the time, although there was a lot of stuff like that around, we couldn't see it and it was like punk had actually gone, so we just moved on. Then when we got back and had all this groundswell of people, we just thought 'facking hell…' And on the way up to Morecambe we got the Pulped interview that Charlie did with George Marshall, and it was all 'Carry No Banners..Punk legends, or Oi! legends Menace are back'. And we were really just thinking 'Oh my god, what is going on?' It brought a tear to my eye on the way up to Morecambe. I'm not normally a person that cries a lot, but the emotion of it was like finding your soul. You don't know it's gone until you find it again. Then it's like: Where was it? Where was I? Why was I such an idiot? We could have kept going. It wouldn't have made any difference if we'd kept going or not, 'cos we all worked at the time then, and we all work now. We were never gonna break any sort of major box office records or anything else like that, we just play the music we like to play so we don't have to worry about anything else. My biggest worry is that people should come to the gigs. I'm not as bothered about how the records do. Record companies are not telling us what to do, apart from on that first Vinyl Japan single, 'cos the deal was they wanted to put it out in Japan and they wanted four old songs. So we said rather than that, we should do one new one really, and they agreed so we said 'Alright then, fine. Let's do it.' Originally they wanted us to just license the old songs, but we re-recorded them all instead because we're a different band and the power now is much more aggressive, much more in yer face. On the German single, "Punk Rocker" is actually an old '77 one. We'd forgotten it, except for the "crash, bang, wanna" bit, that's all we could remember. And Dave Pearce from Last Year's Youth, he'd done a tape and bootlegged it. He doesn't sell it but he'd done CDs for the band, and that was on it. So we listened to it and re-did it again. And the only other ones we had were "Rows Of Empty Houses" and "I Like Chips". There were three songs that we had that we never recorded. "I Like Chips" we'd never ever recorded because it was a bit shit, but "Rows Of Empty Houses" was good. But again, we can't remember that. But we used the idea of it in "Society's Still Insane". The "rows and rows of empty houses, and a lot of people sleeping on the street" bit. We used the idea of that. The new songs, even "G.L.C." and "Last Year's Youth", I think are much more powerful, they're a bit faster, but they've still got that original kind of energy.

Yeah, Menace songs were quite fast originally, compared to some of the old punk stuff which if you listen to it now it can seem slow, but your stuff was probably faster than most of the bands at the time.
But by comparison to nowadays though, it's very slow. Everybody seems to have gone a million miles an hour

It does. Other genres of music are the same, even if you look at dance music and disco it's so much faster these days. So who came up with the lyric for the "C&A" one, 'cos it's a great lyric isn't it?
That was John Lacey. He's a very good lyric writer.

Someone ought to pick up on it for an advert or something on TV because there's a lot of product placement in there!
Yeah, but it's a bit ironic about the C&A thing. I don't know whether they'd approve because it's kind of slagging them a little bit in that it's saying there's all these things going on around the world dad, what did you do? Oh, I was Man At C&A wasn't I? So everything completely passed this bloke by, except that all he was interested in was having a good suit. Certainly "C&A" is in the old style of Menace, and we're gonna keep it to the old style, we're not gonna start adding keyboards or saxophones or doing reggae.. although we might do a little bit of reggae on the album, a bit of a ska type of thing, but we could never do it live because it wouldn't have enough power. We're writing stuff now, but not at such a pace that people are gonna come along to a Menace gig and it'd be a completely new set.

You're just sort of dropping them in as you go along?
We're dropping them in, yeah. In fact "Society's Still Insane", which was a new song, we don't do that as part of the set anymore. That's come in and gone out. We don't do "It's Not Unusual" as part of the set anymore either, it was only meant as a silly cover for Germany really but we put it down on that record.

Mm, and there's a version of "Last Year's Youth" on that record as well, which is newly ironic, isn't it?
Yeah, well we can point at the audience now and go 'Don't you know? You're last year's youth!" It's kinda more ironic now than it was in the first place. People will be shouting for "Last Year's Youth" when we do the set and John goes "Alright lads, alright - there's no need to take the piss, we know we're old but facking 'ell, leave it out!"

Yeah, it's like when Cock Sparrer re-formed a few years ago they said they were falling about laughing when they had to sing "We're the youth of today, we don't want to get any older".
On "Carry No Banners" sometimes on the bit where I sing "look at me / I can set you free", sometimes I sing "Look at me / I'm fat and 40". But aside from all that, I'm 45 now and Charlie's 45. John's a bit younger, he's just turned 40, and Andrew's about 35 I think. But the power's still there. Once the gig starts it doesn't stop, and it doesn't let up until the last note is played. There are very few slow bits. There's one little bit in one of the songs, and we do a cover of "Babylon's Burning", which is a fast punk cover, and we keep the power up all the time. So for young guys never mind 40 year old guys, the power is there and it's punchy and it really goes.

So what countries have you played in since reforming?
The only country we've played in apart from the UK is Germany, and we've done that three times now. We did it twice last year, and we've just done it now. If you take April-to-April, we did it last year over Bank Holiday, in November, and we've just done it now. And we'll probably look at doing it again in November time. We've had an offer for the States, we had an offer for one of those big tours, it was about 5 weeks and we couldn't do it 'cos we work and so we're never gonna be able to do anything like that. And just recently Taaang! Offered us 20 dates, 'cos they wanna license 'G.L.C. - R.I.P.', and we said if we're gonna do that why not put some other tracks with it, to try and give people some new Menace stuff - "C&A" and "Punk Rocker" and those kind of ones that are already out. License it from Knock Out and Vinyl Japan and just put it out in the States. Not in Europe 'cos it's already licensed there, and it's all on so many bloody compilations already anyway - all of this unknown to us by the way. We didn't know we were on so many compilations. There's about 30-something of them. That '1-2-3-4' thing, we've got "G.L.C." on that, and we didn't even get a copy of the record for our troubles.

No, I've heard of that quite a lot from people in bands.
It's a bit mad isn't it? But we are looking at doing the 20 dates, though realistically if we wanna do Germany and we wanna do other bits and pieces, to do 20 days is hard. We're not gonna give up work, it's impossible to give up work, and anyway it would then be a job. And once it's a job, we don't have a laugh anymore. When we do the gigs now, like we just finished this tour in Hamburg, we keep playing 'til 6 o'clock in the morning. We do our set, we do the Menace stuff, pack up all the gear away, get the acoustic guitars out, and we have a laugh. You get all these punks sitting around camp fires, or in the last club we played, The Kanutze, we were onstage playing acoustic guitars, drums acoustically, playing Clash and Stiff Little Fingers numbers and stuff like that, having a right laugh. People saying 'What a party,' y'know? The disc jockey that was booked, turned it off and was down the front singing along with everything, and we did a couple of hours like that. So we have a laugh. If we were doing it for a living, it wouldn't be a laugh anymore and it wouldn't be enjoyable, so we wouldn't want to do it. As long as it's like this, it's good fun.

You've got quite a few gigs dotted up and down the country at the moment haven't you?
Yeah, we've only got two left now.

Well you've been doing quite a few, and there's one coming up in Sheffield in May with The Damned.
Yeah, I'm looking forward to that one, and we're doing Derby the night before.

Did you get played on John Peel at all?
We did, a lot. I used to know John Peel very well and we used to go down to his show a lot. He was about the only person who really played us extensively.

Was he allowed to play "G.L.C."?
Not once it was banned. Which was a real shame. 'Cos that was doing quite well.

Did you get much music press coverage?
No. Apart from Garry and a few of his mates in Sounds. NME really didn't like us at all.

They didn't cover 'streetpunk' at all, did they?
Well we weren't 'arty' enough for them. We were kids from the street, we didn't give a fuck about all that. They didn't like it. I mean, the NME are a load of bollocks anyway, and again, the Melody Maker was sort of old jazz guys who were nothing to do with us really. We used to use it to put the ad's in the paper for gigs and stuff, and I think maybe one or two people wrote the odd review here and there but not much. We didn't come across as strikingly colourful, we didn't have crash helmets on, or whatever.

Having good songs wasn't enough.
No, you had to be something special. We weren't a good looking band either. I mean, look at me! Someone said I look more like someone out of a mental asylum rather than a good looking photogenic punk. But I trade on it anyway. What's good about me is what's inside, and what we do and our music. It's not about what I look like, although what I look like actually suits us quite well because I'm a big menacing kind of bloke. Y'know, I'm 18 stone and I'm built like a brick shithouse! So it gets away with it. In the new band, I think the dynamics are better now than they were in the old days, and the people in it works better because Steve and Charlie used to be arguing all the time, whereas now that doesn't happen. John is Charlie's brother in law.

Did you get barred from the Hope & Anchor at one stage?
We did. We've actually been barred from there twice now. The first time was to do with eggs and flour.

Oh right, a bit of a Slaughter & The Dogs type-situation?
We had a bit of an 'eggs and flour' kind of fight, y'know, and were told we weren't playing there again. And the second time was January of 1999 when we played there again, 20-odd years later, we got barred again because it was dangerous. It was so full that you could not move. The Special Duties done support as well, so you can imagine the crowd, it was absolutely heaving. It took nearly half an hour to get from one end of the room to the other. So it wasn't our fault, it wasn't a ban as such, it was just 'Oh you can't play here again because it's dangerous.' It was a great gig though, because you've got a decent p.a., hardly a stage worth talking about, and people are right in your face which is just the way we like it. Truth be told, we'd prefer to do the smaller gigs and get them really full, than do the larger gigs and having huge stages and stuff. 'Cos the atmosphere is always better, and there's nothing like a Menace gig, you're really pumping it out and the people are sweating and diving about, and they all come on stage and everything and have a good laugh. It's just great, it's unbeatable. It's such an adrenaline trip, it's great. All these people just jumping onstage and I'm about the only one that can play because they leave the drums alone.

Another venue you used to play at I think was the Blue Coat Boy?
The Blue Coat Boy in Islington was actually my club. Not for long, but me and Morgan ran that place for about 8 or 9 weeks and put Eater and a few people on. We played there as well.

'Cos The Blue Coat Boy was where Skunx was a few years later, wasn't it? The main punk venue in around 1982/83?
You could be right, yeah. That could be The Pied Bull, which is kind of round the corner. 'Cos we had another venue there as well. It was the Powerhaus for a while as well, that's the same place under a different name. We started that out back in 1980, and I called it the Number One Club. We had Madness and Menace and a few other people played….and the Thompson Twins did a support.

Oh yeah, the ones with the big hair?
Yeah, funny looking people, they sent me a tape. I had the power over the Thompson Twins! But the best gig I think though was Madness. They were just about to break it and the place was really heaving. Yeah, me and Morgan got into that, and Morgan also ran The Dublin Castle back in 1979/80. We used to call it The Coal Bin - although I don't know why.

It's still a big venue now on the circuit for new bands isn't it?
Yeah, it's kind of come back again.

Did you deliberately move labels when you went from Illegal to Small Wonder and what-have-you?
We did yeah, we had the song and we wanted to put it out, so we just found a label for it and Small Wonder said 'yeah'. Then with Fresh, Charlie was working for Fresh, so we did that first single with them. Then the second single on Fresh we didn't put out until after we'd split up, which was why it was called 'Final Vinyl', it was basically a farewell. Because we had no intention of coming back and it took us 20 years to do it.

Did you ever ask Steve if he was interested in doing any stuff with you these days?
We asked him. To be fair; although we knew he wouldn't. It's all too embarrassing for him really in a way, because he's an executive for a record company and people would take the piss out of him something rotten. But people respect the fact that he's Menace's ex-guitarist. That goes down very well. There's actually a review on Punk & Oi! website of the last 100 Club gig, and Steve came to the gig. It was the first gig he's been to in the two years since we've been back, and he absolutely loved it. He jumped onstage at the end and he sang "G.L.C.", and he was really in his element. And I got this email from him the next day which was really, really emotional. If you read it in the context of what it was, it's him saying 'a fat balding guitarist with a heart condition', or whatever, 'jumped onstage', and it goes 'and he went to bed and dreamt of backs of vans, pints of lager and punk rock. See you in another 20 years.' It was really an emotional piece. But hopefully he'll do the Punk Aid thing with us. We did the Holidays in The Sun in '98 and we were asked to do it in '99, which we were gonna do but we said we'll leave it, 'cos we just didn't wanna do it every year. We'd probably do it again if he gives us a call at some point, but the Punk Aid thing is about bands doing it for nothing. Which is difficult to get a large band to do it for nothing, but people are generally interested in doing it. The difficulty is, that unlike Darren (Russell/HITS), because he's paying, bands will commit to it because of the dosh. With the Punk Aid thing, bands will say they're gonna do it and then unfortunately some will say 'Oh, something's come up,' and they don't feel so obliged to do it, so they'll pull out for less reason. Which makes it difficult for Tim Scargill who runs it, because it makes him look bad. But it is the way with charity gigs. We'll usually pay the bands to do it, someone like One Way System who are coming a long way, we'll pay them a hundred quid because they're coming a long way, but Menace will get fuck all. We don't take anything for it at all, not even expenses. But it's a good thing, Charlie's kid's got cerebal palsy, and it's all about giving to cerebal palsy and helping children basically and buying bits and pieces. It's a really, really good cause, and people are involved in it and it's got a good buzz to it. Punk giving it back.

The other thing I was gonna ask you about, was the band you were in directly before Menace restarted. Was that Jennifer Blue? Was that the band that turned into Menace?
Yeah, that's right. We used to have a different name every week though.

What's happened to the songs then, did you ever record any of them?
No.

Do you use any of them with Menace, or is it a different type of music?
The songs were transferable, originally "C&A" was a Jennifer Blue song, but it was different. Although the basic melody of the verses is the same, I transposed it into being more like it should be. Because it was a good song, it was silly to waste it. The chorus wasn't like that, the chorus was more like the verse. The "C&A, C&A" bit was something that I put in. It transfers quite well but it's only really that one that we use. The rest of them wouldn't really transpose.

And there's a new album out which is the 'Live In Bermondsey' one, and then probably a studio album to come sometime?
Yeah, we're writing songs now, we've got about eight numbers that we can use for a new album and we're looking at doing a Mark Perry song with Mark singing, just doing one of the old ones like "ATV" or something. One of the old classics, depending on what Mark wants, but something which is in our style. Whether we would put "C&A" and "Punk Rocker" onto an album, I don't know yet, because there's probably a lot of people that won't have bought the singles yet who would like to hear it on an album.

Well you could put the version on that's on that American compilation, because that's slightly different isn't it?
It is slightly different, yeah.

Is it the same recording but mixed differently?
No, no, it's a different recording. From six months earlier.

Oh right, I didn't realise that, 'cos it sounds so similar.
Yeah, the funny thing is that the timing is exactly the same. We didn't work with metronomes or anything, we just played it. But the timing is exactly the same.

Shows how tight you are these days, eh?
Yeah, tight as a nun's cunt. It's funny. Also on the new live album if you actually line them up, the timing is almost the same on that as well. It's really, really, really close. So yeah, but it's more vocally, the other one. It's got that deep vocal going through it, a bit Squeeze-y almost. We went to record it again because we wanted the guitar to sound slightly different, a bit more raw. But it was done in the same studio, Pathway. I think the video we did is of the first one, which Stuart Newman came down to record. I think he came down to the first one, which we didn't actually release in the end. We've got a couple of new ones now, "Rocks And Dust" which is all very singy choruses, "Shine" which is about living in London. "Working Man" is another of the titles, and they're all good strong songs, so we've got a few things coming up. Another one which goes along the lines of "fingers, two fingers stuck up in the air", that kind of chanty chorus, I don't know what to call it yet. So yeah, we just need to find someone to put it out for us really, 'cos what we want to do if possible is spend a bit more money on it and get a good sounding record, 'cos the album we've just done, we only spent a grand on it, which is hardly anything.

What about the few live tapes and videos that are around, are they official? Like I saw one called 'Menace Full Of Shit Live At Camden Monarch'.
It's not official as such but it's done with our approval. It's not done by us and we don't earn anything off it. It's a guy called Dave Ferguson from Destroy. He's just a really good mate and he comes to all our gigs, he videos almost everything that we do, and he put that out. It's got a rehearsal on the back of it. He's got a video as well. There's 'Menace Live At Morecambe', which is Barn End, and then Dave Ferguson's done a video of Derby and High Wycombe White Horse, just sort of done with a camera at the back of the hall. They're sort of bootlegs in a way, but we know about them. The way we look at a bootleg, is that if someone puts the bloody thing out then all the more people are gonna hear what Menace does and it's better for us at the end of the day.

Yeah, the old argument that people will buy bootlegs instead of studio albums just isn't true at all, is it?
I don't think that's true. I think people who are into it will like to hear something slightly different. They almost like to hear mistakes don't they? To hear the fluff and hear the bum notes and stuff, and say 'Yeah, that's good, it's different, it's real.' But we have got a video coming out that we made ourselves of the 100 Club gig. Again, it's all done with mates, but there were five digital cameras there so it'll all be edited, and we've done a digital soundtrack just done on minidiscs, but it sounds good, and when that comes out then that will be our 'official' release if you like, and that's got the new songs on it as well. So it'll have "Rocks And Dust" on it, and it's got "Shine" on it and I think it's got "Working Man" on it as well. So that should be good when it's out. I dunno when, 'cos we're not big marketing people, so I dunno how we'd even get it to people? We need to find someone that's gonna distribute it I suppose. What we need is someone to come and manage us and tell us where to do things. Not to tell us what to do artistically, just to help organise things like for example if we want to send an interview and photos out to all the German fanzines, we just don't know about all the logistics of that.

We may as well round off with a plug for the internet site, 'cos you've got your own now haven't you?
Yeah it's www.menace77.co.uk A guy called Al McAlpine puts that together. Again, it's all mates you see, so it's all a bit slow. If I tell him some information today, it might not get on there for a week. Andrew the guitarist is also trying to write pages for it and put it on there, and I've gotta sort out the merchandising page for it now that we've got the new CD album that we can actually sell and everything.

Loads of thanks are due to Noel for doing the above interview. Since that was done I've also seen them live for the first time, and they really were fantastic. Miss them and you'll miss one of the best bands around today. Crash, bang, wallop. Shop down at C&A.