Reviews

THE ROXY LONDON WC2 A Punk History - Paul Marko
Punk 77 Books £19.99

If you’re thinking that seems a bit steep for a book, don’t. It’s 500 pages for one thing, and heavily illustrated, but it’s also been self-published, so Paul’s taken quite a risk. As he’s also created something quite unusual and revealing I don’t think it should prove much of a risk in the long run. To take the subject of a Punk icon, the Roxy, and throw fresh facts in your face isn’t easy. Known as the breeding ground for the initial Punk movement, helping to crystallise the energy flying around ten or twelve bands, giving them a central bolthole to turn into a creative volcano, the Roxy deserves its reputation. It also deserves, as would anywhere under scrutiny, the brutal autopsy Paul provides.

Paul turns the story upside down, and leaves you astonished. Although his approach is modest, he knows his stuff, being the brains and passion behind the Punk77 website, the greatest online Punk resource there is. He has done his subject proud and no serious Punk fan should be without this as it will change how you view one aspect of the Punk story.

From creative hotbed to piss-stained sleeping bag, The Roxy was clearly an important but bizarre place, but you have no idea just how bad things became until you read this.

I never went to the Roxy, for the record, but not for the want of trying. The first time I attempted it I assumed I had somehow missed a Punk Brigadoon, as I simply couldn’t find it. The next couple of times I went I realised I’d found the right unmarked door, but it simply wasn’t open. Being a club and not a gig it opened later than venues, supposedly 8-30 but often later, which was no use to me or any of my mates as we’d already be at a gig somewhere else, fanzines to inflict on people. Then again it had to play safe with certain aspects as it had no drinks licence. Some nights during the early months, when I doubt I was alone in being baffled, it actually wasn’t open at all. (January – 17 gigs, February – 22, March – 19, April – 13!) Most people simply went elsewhere. Me and my friends were the first to make the Intrepid Fox our temporary home, at the time a dark and dismal boozer’s boozer, as Wardour Street made for a sensible central point of the musical compass if you were in town. (Everyone else seemed to like The Ship, which was chronic.) Or just out of town, you had the whole Hammersmith/Fulham zone. Very few even gave Covent Garden a second thought, especially once the Roxy ended early as a creative outlet. You went up town as quick as you could, and then decided what to do. The more fanzines you sold, the drunker you became. What you didn’t do was waste time fucking about if something didn’t do what you wanted it to do. If a place can’t even open on time, forget it.

Previous coverage of the Roxy always falls quite understandably upon the initial, clearly most important, phase when Andrew Czezowski ran the place, but this was only a few months out of a sixteen month story, and Paul Marko covers it all, including rare photos, interviews with people who played or worked there, reproducing rare flyers and maintaining a comparative timeline, by telling in monthly instalments what else was happening in the world of Punk, which helps mark The Roxy’s dismal decline.

You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, and perhaps overall you won’t care if you never went, because it sounds so grotty overall. From a vital first grounding for most bands, to a wild anything-goes spot of debauch, it just becomes a small gig, basically, for bands destined to be playing better places very quickly, but in this book you will get some interesting views from people generally excluded from the story and as much detail as you could possibly want, and the real meat of the story is after that first phase.

When Czezowski gets kicked out, everything kicks off because the far larger Vortex in Wardour Street took up the Punk club reins in central London anyway, being open longer, with a proper bar and PA. Around that time the Punk elite would be braying that Punk was over. Marko has no time for such snob mentality, and nor do I. There may well have been a few dozen people aggrieved that their private party was over, but then nobody getting into Punk from the start of 1977 onwards knew who they were anyway. What mattered was the bands. It’s true that by the end of 1977 Punk had served its purpose – it sluiced out the backed-up sewer that was British music, represented until then by a constipated muso mentality but, more importantly, it highlighted, politically, the rise of the far right, and got people active (Rock Against Racism its most important achievement there), and it made you concentrate on your aspirations while never again taking seriously the notion that society had any ability to control what you would do. Once you understood and accepted everything (which took, ooh, all of a split-second) you would always be looking for something more personal anyway. Hence, Post-Punk and Goth. By the time that first phase of The Roxy finished everything had changed, forever, and the Roxy wasn’t needed. In fact by the middle of 1977 you’d forgotten all about it.

During this period a gangster took over the club, which is where the weird story this book uncovers begins, and where Paul Marko has done everyone a favour by picking the scabs of this celebrated corpse, to shine a torch on the maggoty activities within. Kevin St John sounds very strange and ran the club for the longest time. A real 70’s throwback, style-wise, in his white flares and dodgy waistcoat, this gay letch would be forever propositioning bands for ‘favours’, looking for runaways to ‘befriend’ and overseeing the club with a total lack of understanding, while his underworld cronies would fill the bar for lock-ins, worrying those who had no choice but to be in attendance. The story, as seen through the eyes of members of Blitz, who’d become his house band there, and unpaid skivvies (even living at his house!) makes for mind-boggling reading.

Most people think of The Roxy being represented by the two compilation albums, one rough but interesting, capturing much of the initial excitement of Punk, the other highlighting third division bands who barely trouble your brain. It’s an accurate picture, and that sort of freefall that this St John character oversaw and if, like me, you’d never heard of him, you’ll also be gripped by the sordid drama which played out right up until its unmourned demise.

This book highlights well why The Roxy was vital to the Punk scene in London, but it tells you so much more, including some fabulous images, that it’s done the impossible and rewritten part of Punk’s history, and in such a way that you can only be grateful. In fact my only gripe with this brilliant book is he ignored my fanzine Panache which did eight issues in ’77, but he includes some lesser dross in the photo spread.

An outrage! I’m off to kick the telly in.

A lovely review from Mr Mercer. Mick puts a lot of time into his site and gets, I'm sure, hundreds of cds and fanzines to review but he still finds time to give the best and most accurate account of what the book is all about.