Paul Mex writes about The Crowbars, the punk band he formed with Andrew ‘Crush’ Blunt after witnessing the Sex Pistols during the summer of 1976, and the new release of their lost 1977 EP.
I first met and cemented my friendship with the chap who would become my best mate, Andrew ‘Crush’ Blunt, on the school bus, over Marvel comics, which we both had a mad passion for. A couple of years later, as we approached a coming of age, our attentions turned to other things, including pop music, and as neither of us were any good at football, the notion of forming a band became our goal.
Andrew ‘Crush’ Blunt
Siren were born and we learnt to play our instruments ‘as we went along’, struggling to cover classic songs that in essence, were beyond our limited musical abilities. Undeterred, we staged mini-gigs in Crush’s Grandmother’s house, to a babble of friends, that went chaotically and disastrously. Unbeknown to us, just like many others simultaneously up and down the country, who also couldn’t play guitar as well as Eric Clapton, we were already doing punk rock!
Paul Mex
The climate of the time wasn’t too dissimilar to how it’s evolved at now for the working class, with an unjust inequality and in the mid ‘70s, there were three-day working weeks, unemployment, power cuts and strikes. Equally the musical horizon had become very boring with ageing tax-exiled rock stars making dull, indulgent records, sometimes consisting of things like twenty-minute drum solos. There was certainly little around that spoke to a couple of curious teenage scallywags like Crush, myself and our little misfit crew – it really seemed like there was ‘no future’. Through this melting pot of daily life, culture and politics, an horizon was created where my generation felt alienated, un-represented and there was a search for identity and a new ideal… We didn’t have long to wait for what would become perhaps, the second coming of rock ‘n’ roll.
After witnessing the Sex Pistols during the summer of 1976, the light came on, so to speak, for Crush and me to develop further with our musical endeavours, only now realising it didn’t matter whether you could play guitar as well as Eric Clapton, and perhaps, it should even be celebrated that one couldn’t play as well as him!
We set about the demise of our school band Siren, in favour of forming the Crowbars, energised and embracing the new ideology presented, whereby a complete fresh start was the key for teenagers coming of age.
The Crowbars had several line-up changes during their short time, but Crush and I remained throughout, until forming the Passion Killers in 1978.
Instead of trying to follow hollow subjects that were mostly the rock mainstay up to that point, we wrote and performed songs that directly related to our own experiences, joining in on the uprising of an exciting new youth culture. Within this scene, we quickly forged an alliance with other local bands, in particular, the Bears, who we would often open up for as the support act. In many respects, the Bears were more important to us than the Sex Pistols, because they took us under their wing with great spirit. They were a more established band on the scene with a TV feature the broadcaster, Janet Street-Porter, had made about punk under their belt, not to mention a brilliant debut single, ‘On Me’, which was made ‘record of the week’ in most of the music papers of the day. They also had a track, ‘Fun, Fun, Fun’, on the second ‘Live at the Roxy’ album, recorded at the infamous London punk club, which was a very big deal in those days. Most importantly, they were the kings of Watford Art School, whereby we hung out and was the setting for legendary cult artists such as Wire and Prag Vec, who also evolved from there at the same time. It was an incredibly exciting period to be young, with no restrictions bound anymore by the elite when it came to creativity.
1977 was a busy year for the Crowbars, playing live at many venues, including a slot at the mythological Watford Punk Festival of that summer. It was during this bustling year that we recorded four songs intended as a DIY EP release, as putting your own record out was all the rage back then, and let’s face it, with our limited capacity, no major record label was going to come knocking on our door.
Crush and I called numerous studios advertising in the back of the music paper Melody Maker, eventually settling for recording our songs over a four-hour period in a small, but decent, inexpensive place in north London. A few of our mates tagged along, watching us bash down the songs in pretty much one take. Crush changed some of the lyrics in an ad hoc manner, as he often did live, whilst I remember stripping my shirt off to be bare-chested whilst doing the backing vocals, imagining I was England’s answer to Iggy Pop, with the energy and delusion of youth.
Our comrade and roadie, Andreas, otherwise known as ‘Sodhi the Roadie’, carried the master tape of the recording, as we were laden with guitars, cymbals and fuzz boxes. We had transported our kit around courtesy of British Rail, as friends who could drive and crucially, actually had access to a car, were thin on the ground. At most gigs it was down to the generosity of the Bears or another supportive band called Cane, that we were supplied with a back line of amps, etc.
We travelled from Euston Station back to Watford Junction, stopping off for a celebratory drink in a pub called the Wellington Arms, which had inadvertently, become the local boozer that didn’t throw objections to underage punks frequenting it… How could they in lieu that it was also a Mecca for the local drug dealers, pimps and socially disenfranchised folk of Watford.
Only days later, we realised the master tape was missing and ‘Sodhi the Roadie’, was sure he had given it to us before leaving the pub. None of us could recall this and smelt a rat, giving him a hard time in the process, a thing we did often when things went wrong.
Days turned into months and it became apparent the tape really was gone for what we thought, was going to be forever. Then suddenly ‘Sodhi the Roadie’ also disappeared, apparently to travel the world, as young people on a personal journey to discovery do.
In the early ‘80s one of our other pal’s, Ted Hogg, happened to stumble across ‘Sodhi the Roadie’ in Australia, advising him to go to Thailand, where he could ‘really enjoy himself’. During this time, Chinese whispers filtered back to England within our little circle, that ‘Sodhi the Roadie’ still had our master tape and intended to bootleg the recording in the far east. For some unknown reason, this didn’t seem too bizarre at the time, despite that the concept was completely absurd. It wasn’t long after this, that ‘Sodhi the Roadie’ actually disappeared himself, in Thailand, under very suspicious circumstances, never to be seen again. With the passage of time, everyone concerned forgot about the mysterious master tape and focused on what seemed to be a tragic and sad demise for ‘Sodhi the Roadie’, with unconfirmed reports, that he’d been murdered for his money, by bandits in the mountains.
Fast forward to 2018, and somebody thought it might be a good idea for the old gang to gather together, for a small reunion in lieu that some folk hadn’t seen each other for around forty years. The get together was planned at none other than, the Wellington Arms in Watford. The pub itself, really hadn’t changed that much in all the years, with a good dose of hookers, pimps, drug dealers and hustlers, still propping up the bar.
I was actually the first to arrive and set myself up with half-a-lager on a table that could see the door entrance. It wasn’t long before Crush entered, with several people instantly recognising him and going over to chat – it was like time had stood still because this was Crush’s first visit back to Watford in twenty years.
As I went to the bar to buy him a drink, the barman, who was another that recognised Crush, declared he had something for him under the counter. We were intrigued as to what this could be and I started to think Crush had been involved in some sort of underworld activity. You can imagine our surprise when the barman produced our now infamous lost Crowbars master tape, which apparently, we had accidentally left in the pub back in 1977, with the now deceased landlord, putting it under the counter for safekeeping, but forgetting it was there until years later. For all that time, ‘Sodhi the Roadie’, had got the blame for unfounded sinister doings, when in fact it was our own forgetfulness that had caused the tape to go missing for so long.
So, after an eternity of time and some modern digital restoration to revitalise the dusty tape, the Crowbars lost EP finally hits the streets, forty-three years later, whether the world wants it or not! If I say so myself, the band do however, sound as energetic and vibrant as the day it was recorded, which certainly takes me back to my youth and the excitement of that time, when punk rock unleashed itself and rudely awoke a rather colourless country.
Paul Mex
The Crowbars guitarist, 1976-78
December 2019
