House of Fun: The Story of Madness

Gillett

Introduction

ALOT of people became Madness fans that night in September 1979 when the lads first tumbled onto a Top Of The Pops stage. 2 Tone felt like the next big bang after punk – but the Nutty Boys, as they came to be nicknamed, were different. The seven gangly teenagers (though one or two were a bit older, true) felt like a gang, the Bash Street Kids of the ska revival. Back then, cool bands usually looked serious. Madness kept smirking. They might have shared the black-and-white ‘rude boy’ imagery of The Specials et al but these impish lads from north London felt like the polar opposite of 2 Tone’s earnest diatribes.

At first, few predicted that Madness were more than mere novelty. After all, they were named after and covering a song by ska pioneer Prince Buster on the B-side of their tribute to the man (‘The Prince’). Yet they endured, shunning the pantomime ska leanings of contemporaries Bad Manners for qualities more akin to that of a folk band, painting vivid caricatures of life around them in north London with a songbook crafted from childhoods exposed to The Beatles and The Kinks, ska and Motown, sax-driven rock’n’roll and early seventies glam.

Madness did seem to live in their own comic strip, throwing shapes in photo sessions, perfecting the nutty walk and forever namedropping their manor of Camden and Kentish Town. They even adopted their own nicknames. On piano was Barzo, Chrissy Boy played guitar, Bedders was on bass, the drum sticks were held by Woody, the bonkers saxophonist was known as either Kix or El Thommo and the singer … well, he was simply Suggs. They even had their own dancer, Chas Smash. Who needed The Beano?

Having flown the 2 Tone nest, they swiftly evolved into a hit factory under the watchful eye of Stiff Records’ maverick boss Dave Robinson. Between 1979 and 1986, they notched up 23 singles on the Top 40. In fact, they spent more weeks on the chart than any other act of the Eighties bar contemporaries UB40. But Madness weren’t about statistics. Their wacky image disguised a motley crew of individuals yearning for a sense of belonging – six of them came from single-parent families, often with faintly bohemian leanings towards the arts – and they found such an identity in their songs.

To a generation too young to have engaged with punk, Madness offered a soundtrack as they progressed from the playground to the park and the pub. Lyrics were – to paraphrase Suggs – simple but not stupid, tackling those first murmurings of adulthood which kids of all ages understood. ‘House Of Fun’, surprisingly their only chart-topper, worked as a piece of musical slapstick which harked back to music hall; equally, its mischievous double entendres about that awkward first purchase of condoms left a twinkle in the eye of many a male teenager. They even cracked America for five minutes with the Ivor Novello-winning ‘Our House’.

Behind the scenes, Madness’ dysfunctional democracy was quite something. Perhaps unique in pop history, they boasted at least five talented songwriters. Decisions were made en masse. Their inventive videos – quite rightly hailed as groundbreaking at the dawn of the MTV age – were as much their creations as the songs themselves. Lee Thompson’s desire to fly through the air during the video for ‘Baggy Trousers’, the only true soundtrack song for the Grange Hill generation, created one of the pop video’s most iconic images. Madness even got their own A Hard Day’s Night in 1981 with the movie Take It Or Leave It.

Madness were technically born on the eve of the election of Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government in May 1979 – and as time wore on, they slowly shifted from good-time music to more cerebral material railing against the injustices they saw. Around them, pop just got more escapist, from the New Romantics onwards, and that took its toll. By early 1984, Madness had been dealt two fatal body blows. Pianist and founder member Mike Barson – unquestionably their lynchpin – left the band and they fell out with Stiff Records, for so long their spiritual home.

As six, they persevered for two more years. As four, they had a brief dalliance as The Madness. But by 1989, they were history. Then in 1992, after hits compilation Divine Madness sold a million copies, the band reconvened to play the farewell show that never was, Madstock. Faced with 75,000 adoring fans and swelling bank balances, they felt somehow vindicated – and, in various shapes and sizes, Madness has been a living, breathing entity ever since.

While the Nineties was primarily a nostalgia exercise as Suggs flirted with a solo career, they finally staked their claim as a fully-functioning new band with 1999’s Wonderful, uniting Madness with their musical hero Ian Dury for his last-ever recording. For a while, they were distracted by a musical, Our House. While their legacy appeared to have influenced everyone from Blur to the Ordinary Boys and Lily Allen, their career appeared to falter with a disappointing covers album under the muddled guise of The Dangermen. But in 2009, Madness finally unveiled their magnum opus, The Liberty Of Norton Folgate, a double album rich in musical textures, awash with incisive lyrics and steeped in the history of the capital city they called home. What a way to celebrate their thirtieth anniversary.

House Of Fun is also a celebration. This is the first major biography of Madness, which in itself is surprising. But for too long, these colourful characters have somehow been misunderstood, sometimes dismissed as the consummate Eighties singles act and little else. Others have had nagging doubts about their skinhead origins. Maybe they were too parochial. How could a band dressed up like extras from It Ain’t Half Hot Mum be taken seriously? Well, House Of Fun sets out to reappraise an outfit who’ve never quite been accorded the respect they deserve. Altogether now: Don’t watch that, watch this. This is the heavy, heavy monster sound …

John Reed, June 2010.    

Chapter 1

HUMBLE BEGINNINGS IN NW5

ALTHOUGH Madness will forever be synonymous with Camden Town, their roots more strictly lay a half a mile up the road in Kentish Town and its environs, a fact reflected by the title of their 2009 single ‘NW5’ – chosen instead of Camden’s postcode of NW1.

Before the development of north London, Kentish Town existed as a relatively rural, self-contained suburb on the River Fleet, and a popular daytrip location for Londoners. In the early 19th century, huge tracts of land in the area were purchased to build a railway for trains travelling northwards from the new stations at King’s Cross (opened in 1852) and St Pancras (opened 1868). It was a logical location because the Kentish Town Road was a major arterial route heading north from the city – and a sizeable railway depot was built at nearby Gospel Oak.

Forgive a momentary lapse into the London A-Z in order to get our geographical bearings. To the north of Kentish Town lies Tufnell Park, then a major road junction, Archway, then beyond to Highgate Hill to the north west and Crouch End to the north east. To the east of Kentish Town lies Belsize Park and north of that, Hampstead and Hampstead Heath. Swiss Cottage and Primrose Hill are situated a few miles south west of Kentish Town. Camden is directly south; heading east from Camden leads to Holloway, Highbury and Islington.

From a historical perspective, Kentish Town’s most famous resident was Karl Marx, who lived at 9 Grafton Terrace from the 1850s. During the 19th and early 20th centuries, Kentish Town played host to many famous piano and organ manufacturers. In fact, it was described by The Piano Journal in 1901 as that healthful suburb dear to the heart of the piano maker. Kentish Town was to see further modernisation in the post-World War II period. However, many of the locale’s residential areas date back to the mid-1800s and are much admired architecturally.

Since 1965, Kentish Town has lain within the London Borough of Camden – and it has played second fiddle to nearby Camden in terms of its nightlife and music venues. However, the roots of the Pub Rock scene of the early 1970s can be traced back to the Tally Ho, a former jazz pub in Kentish Town opposite a converted cinema which subsequently became a major rock venue as The Town & Country Club and latterly The Forum. The Tally Ho provided residencies for pub rock acts like Eggs Over Easy, Brinsley Schwarz and Kilburn & The High Roads.

There is a big divide between Camden Town and Kentish Town, suggests the broadcaster and writer Robert Elms. Kentish Town is simultaneously both more middle class than Camden Town – there’s an old middle-class side to Kentish Town that used to be the wealthier bit – and an area in west Kentish Town, Queens Crescent, which is villainy central. There’s a historical reason. It’s where families who lived in the Agar, a famous 19th century slum that was cleared when they built King’s Cross and St Pancras stations, were shipped up to. It’s an area of market traders, old school white working-class London – very Irish in its origins. That’s the kind of Kentish Town that Madness might be talking about. This whole bit of London is a fantastic interface because, on the one hand, it’s dodgy market dealers and then, 300 yards away, it’s two or three million pound houses on Highgate.

Camden Town itself has only existed since the late 18th century. Before that, only a few scattered farms and two coaching inns, The Mother Red Cap (established 1676; now The World’s End) and the Southampton (now Edwards), marked a dangerous landscape frequented by highwaymen. Suggs later recalled his memories of the Mother Red Cap back in the 1970s as the biggest pub I’ve ever been in and there was never more than four people in it – the same four! The venue was name-checked in the Madness song ‘Bingo’ on The Liberty Of Norton Folgate (2009).

Camden stands on land which was once the manor of Cantelowes, acquired through marriage by Sir Charles Pratt (later the First Earl of Camden), a radical 18th century lawyer and politician. In 1791, he granted leases for 1,400 houses to be built and is widely credited with the establishment of Camden Town. As the first of a number of wealthy individuals involved in the development and urbanisation of this part of London, his initial building programme focused on land on the east side of Camden High Street. Pratt’s role in shaping the area is marked by a street and mews that bear his name in the heart of modern Camden. Mary Shelley, the original author of the gothic horror story Frankenstein and the wife of the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, was born in Camden during this period (1797).

The arrival of canals and then railways transformed the whole region; the Regent’s Canal was completed in 1820, requiring the construction of Camden Lock and a flurry of nearby buildings to support the resulting local industry; the first line to the Euston terminus opened in 1837; Camden Road railway station opened in 1850. The opening of an underground station in 1907 marked the final integration of once rural Camden into the wider city. The heart of Camden Town is surrounded by canals and railways, Suggs later observed. All the digging of these canals and railway sidings was done by hand by Irishmen. Apparently, there were 70,000 Irishmen in Camden at one point. In his book Suggs And The City, he writes: Camden was, as I always instinctively knew, pretty much the epicentre of London’s comings and goings.

Railway and canal construction had brought the first Irish settlers to Camden, a process accelerated after 1840 by terrible famine in Ireland. By the end of the 19th century, soot and grime from major railway terminals to the south covered a Camden High Street busy with shops, trams and horse-drawn buses. Charles Dickens referred to Camden Town; in A Christmas Carol, Bob Cratchit and his family lived there, for example. Indeed, as a child, Dickens lived at 141 Bayham Street in Camden in 1823. Another renowned literary figure, poet Arthur Rimbaud (1854–91), also lived in the area for a period.

By and large, though, Camden Town was considered an unfashionable locale but that gradually changed throughout the 20th century. George Orwell lived in Camden during the 1930s, as did the poet Dylan Thomas. Around that time, live music started to become a vital part of Camden life, perhaps because of the many Irish immigrants who continued to flock to the region. Irish flute and fiddle musicians played in pubs and dance halls to enthusiastic local audiences. Two cavernous music halls attracted stars of the day. The Bedford was eventually demolished in 1969 but the Camden Theatre (which hosted the famous Goon Show in the 1950s) eventually changed its name to The Music Machine in 1977, then to the Camden Palace in 1982 and more recently to Koko. Another Irish dance hall was the Buffalo Club, which opened around 1940, before eventually being re-born as The Electric Ballroom. During the Second World War, the area around Mornington Crescent was badly damaged by bombing. Post-war, the gradual restoration of Camden Town coincided with its emergence as a centre of Greek-Cypriot settlement in London, a reflection of its cosmopolitan nature.

The first major rock’n’roll concert in Camden took place on October 15, 1966 at the Roundhouse, a converted former railway engine shed constructed in 1847 at the top of Chalk Farm Road by the Midland Railway Company for the London and Birmingham Railway. In an event which marked both the launch of International Times and the dawning of the psychedelic era, Pink Floyd and Soft Machine performed in front of a star-studded audience, the first of numerous musical and theatrical happenings. In the coming years, the venue would host concerts by many of rock’s illuminati, including the Jimi Hendrix Experience, The Doors, Marc Bolan, The Move, The Who and The Rolling Stones.

Camden’s famous street markets started in 1973 and grew steadily in popularity and size to attract thousands of visitors to the region. Other important music venues opened in Camden, from Dingwalls (1973) up by Camden Lock to the aforementioned Electric Ballroom (1978). At the same time, several local pubs introduced live music: The Carnarvon Castle (now The Fusilier & Firkin), The Royal Exchange, The Monarch, The Devonshire Arms, The Falcon, The Good Mixer and, last but not least, The Dublin Castle on Parkway.

As the 1970s wore on, Camden also became a nerve centre for second-hand and specialist record shops. Most famous was Rock On, an outlet for old rock’n’roll and R&B, which opened just around the corner from Camden tube station on the Kentish Town Road in 1975. The shop was actually the third Rock On outlet to be opened by ex-Thin Lizzy manager Ted Carroll, complementing successful open-air stalls in Portobello and Soho. (Carroll and ex-Rock On employees Roger Armstrong and Trevor Churchill would eventually form Chiswick Records, the only major rival to Stiff Records in the late 1970s to have evolved out of the pub rock scene.) It was no coincidence that the fictitious record shop Championship Vinyl in Nick Hornby’s best-selling book High Fidelity was set in Camden.

Today, vast swathes of north London have, to a greater or lesser extent, been gentrified by a gradual influx of money and of middle-class professionals keen to live within sight of the city centre. But the Kentish Town in which members of Madness grew up was very different. In the Seventies, it wasn’t in any way middle class, says Kerstin Rodgers, who knew the band during that time. It was pretty rough. Camden was still Irish. You still had Irish boozers, lonely Irish men sitting there with their Guinnesses. There were still collections for the IRA, although it had the hippie side, with the market, and some posher houses and streets. North London has always been cheek by jowl, poverty with money.

Madness’ story actually began a couple of miles north of Kentish Town in the more middle-class environs of Crouch End – or Park Avenue South, to be precise, the home of schoolboy Michael Wilson Barson. The youngest of three brothers, Mike was born on April 21, 1958 in the Newington district of Edinburgh, Scotland, where the family lived for a period before returning to their roots in north London. He came from a family with a strong creative strain. His father Anthony had married his mother Patricia J. Gott in early 1953 in the borough of Hammersmith, west London. Born in 1926 in Rochford, Essex, Patricia was a painter (she eventually worked as an art teacher at a comprehensive in nearby Highbury). She shared this passion with Anthony, who was also an art teacher – but the couple split up when Mike was still a baby. They were brought up by their mother, explains Barson’s ex-girlfriend Kerstin Rodgers. The dad came to visit once a year for ten minutes. Mike was a really good artist as well.

The piano occupied a central part of family life for the Barsons – and Mike’s interest in playing was soon awakened by the efforts of his brothers Ben (who was some five years his senior) and Dan (who was two years older than Mike). While Ben and his hippie-ish friends were enamoured of jazz (He had a five-album box set by Keith Jarrett, which had one good song on it! Mike later commented), the more extrovert Dan was smitten by rock’n’roll.

From childhood, Mike was acquainted with two future members of Madness: an older boy, Chris Foreman, nicknamed Chrissy Boy, whom Mike had met via another friend, Lee Thompson. The trio attended Brookfield Primary School in Chester Road, London N19 (in the Dartmouth Park area, between Kentish Town and Highgate). My favourite subject was science because we had a good teacher, Barson later remarked. Lee had even lived opposite Chris in Kentish Town for a period. I’ve known Mr Barson since we were about three or four, remembered Thompson. "I think we went to see Bridge On The River Kwai together."

Years later, Chris recalled the start of his lifelong friendship with Mike in Madness’ fan club magazine Nutty Boys: At the time, I was really talking to his older brother Danny as Mike himself was only about eight. The reason they were at my house was that Mike’s mum knew my parents. I must have been about 10. Mike used to live near me, and over the next few years, we would occasionally nod at each other in passing. Around 1971, kids from the Highgate Road (in Kentish Town) area amalgamated into groups. In my particular group were John Jones, Paul Catlin, Lee Thompson, Michael Barson and myself.

Lee’s father, Frederick W. Thompson, was born at the tail end of the First World War in 1918 in Walsingham, Norfolk. His family eventually settled in Great Yarmouth, which is where, in spring 1950, he married Lilian F. Scannell (born in late 1925).* Lilian’s family came from Islington – indeed, her father was a local street planner – which eventually drew Lil and Fred back to north London.

The future Madness saxophonist was born Lee Jay Thompson – named after his mother’s admiration for American actor Lee J. Cobb – on October 5, 1957 in St Pancras. Thompson’s father has been described as one of the top safe-breakers in Soho and seems to have spent more time in prison than at home. As such, Lee and his younger sister Tracy (born in 1961) had an unsettled childhood. By his own admission, Lee was a bit of a tearaway, getting up to mischief with school friend Robert Townshend.

My dad was doing time and my mum couldn’t handle me, Lee later confessed. I was a bit of a Tasmanian devil, all over the place, no concentration span. In 1969, the family moved from the Highgate Road area to the Holly Lodge Estate, a set of early 20th century mock-Tudor mansion blocks which enjoyed a prominent view of the surrounding area – Highgate Cemetery to the east and Hampstead Heath to the west - but which had fallen into disrepair. It’s actually rather nice, leafy and green, in Dartmouth Park Hill, adds Kerstin Rodgers. It’s always been a place for single mothers … still is.

As a child, Thompson attended Acland Burghley School in Burghley Road, Kentish Town before moving to Haverstock Secondary School in Chalk Farm. I was never bullied, which was a problem for some kids, Thompson commented to Later in 1999. I use to turn up, get marked in and go straight down the arcade. I remember putting a magnet on a tape recorder. It erased all the information. Miss Durham made me sit in a bin all lesson! I went in for a few exams but I was really only interested in English and Art.

In his formative years, Lee proved to be a wayward character who flirted with petty crime, prompting a string of court appearances (Thompson once suggested as many as 20). One particular scam involved inserting a piece of cardboard into GPO phone boxes to extract money – but occasional house-breaking and shoplifting weren’t off limits. According to George Marshall in Total Madness, ‘Young Thommo’ (as his friends called him) bunked off school on his fourteenth birthday and stole a bag containing £130 from a hospital locker. The would-be Artful Dodger then passed some of the proceeds to friends but somehow the police were informed of the crime and Lee was sent to Chafford Approved School in Harwich, Essex, from November 1971 to January 1973 – an experience later immortalised by Thompson in the Madness song ‘Land Of Hope And Glory’. Thompson later admitted that he also spent time in Stamford House in Shepherds Bush – one of the most notorious secure institutions for young offenders in the country.

Having reacquainted himself with Barson in his immediately pre-teen years, Thompson felt lucky to have friends likely to keep him on the straight and narrow. It was a fortunate privilege to have met Chris and Mike, Lee later confessed. Prior to meeting them, I was knocking around with a chap called Bobby [Townshend] and we used to get into some pretty serious trouble. I was sent away for a year and a day, and when I was sent back into the smoke, that’s when I started hanging around with Mike and Chris. I think that if I hadn’t have met them, I would’ve gone down the pan! Foreman later recalled that period: [Lee] used to come home at weekends – he’d get out on Fridays and we’d spend the weekend with him and see he got back on the train OK!

Lee was quite well-known amongst all the parents, Barson admitted to Later magazine. They knew he was a bit of a rascal. He would always have to wait around the corner because our mums and dads didn’t want us to hang around with him. He was heading towards a heavyweight life of crime because he was mixing with the wrong kind of people, then he started mixing with us and we got involved in a lightweight life of crime!

A couple of years older than Barson, Christopher John Foreman was born on August 8, 1956 in University College Hospital, Euston Road, London. He was the son of a folk singer (as were brothers Ali and Robin Campbell from UB40, whose father was Ian Campbell). Born in 1931 near Euston Station as the son of a postman, John G. Foreman described his childhood within the war torn city streets as happy. He married Chris’ mother, a dancer named Rita M. Alden (who was born in Malton, Yorkshire, also in 1931) in 1952. The couple had two children (Chris was joined by younger brother Peter N. Foreman in 1960) but they split up when the kids were still quite young.

As a young man, John worked as a doorman at The Metropolitan in the Edgware Road, and as a bottler (money collector) with a Punch-and-Judy man, Professor Alexander. John regarded himself as a true cockney and held an abiding fascination for music hall. There was theatrical talent in his family: his father’s mother, Elsie Naish, danced with and under-studied Adeline Genee, and through his mother, formerly a Miss Harper, he was related to Victoria Lytton, who worked the halls and teamed up with Arthur Cunningham, a noted singer and whistler. His mother’s Uncle Charlie worked as a clown and her grandfather was a circus ring-master.

Fuelled by a lifetime’s research, Foreman regularly performed these traditional songs at pubs and clubs from the 1950s onwards. His repertoire was learned both from his parents and from hearing songs via post-war music hall revival singers, particularly at London’s Unity Theatre, established between Camden Town and King’s Cross for working men and where Foreman would perform. He was more specifically a broadsheet balladeer than a folk singer*. And he would have been well acquainted with folk songwriter/performer Ewan MacColl, the father of future Madness labelmate Kirsty MacColl.

In 1966, Foreman recorded an album, The ‘Ouses In Between, for Reality Records (the sleeve-notes for which provided much of the biographical information here). Some of its songs later graced a Folktrax album, The Londoners (1975). In 1977, Foreman contributed the song ‘London’s Ordinary’ to a double album compilation The Tale Of Ale, issued by folk label Free Reed. Onstage, John was known to play steel guitar, a ‘squeeze box’, harmonica and ‘the Spoons’. For his finale, he performed with a miniature ‘Music Hall’, a shadow puppet show, juggling the varied skills of musical accompaniment, sound effects and puppeteering. He still performs at such venues as London’s Musical Traditions Club to this day.

John Foreman became a noted printer by trade, known as ‘The Broadsheet King’ through his work publishing traditional song collections, song-sheets and Broadside collections. Frequently, John operated as a busker and sold song-sheets in open markets like Petticoat Lane and at CND/ban-the-bomb marches and meetings. He taught in many different schools in London, worked at the London College Of Printing, and was a founder member of The British Music Hall Society in the early 1960s. As well as being a budding poet, Foreman was also the author/editor of several self-published pamphlets and books, including Jumbo, Just Deserts: Or Ways To Martyrdom, Babes And Sucklings (A Book Of Jolly Lolly Sticks), Ten Greenish Bottles, Ap Daze, Little Red Riding Hood and Heroes Of The Guillotine And Gallows, as well as occasional reprints of deleted titles (for example, Leslie Shepard’s The History Of The Horn Book from 1977 or John Ashton’s Real Sailor-Songs in 1973).

Interviewed by The Word magazine, Chris commented that his working-class intellectual father once took him to the former Yugoslavia by road – when he was only nine years old – as well as introducing him to the cinematic delights of the classic Russian epic, Battleship Potemkin, at the South Bank. My old man is a singer, explained Chris in 1981. He even does gigs every now and then, performing traditional cockney songs. He always used to try and teach me guitar when I was a kid, but I was never really interested in things like ‘Bobby Shaftoe’! By all accounts, John Foreman was diametrically opposed to his brother, who was a bit of a chancer.

At first, Chris showed little sign of inheriting his father’s passion, drive or motivation. I went to a grammar school in Islington, Dame Alice Owen’s, he told Later magazine in 1999. It’s been knocked down since but Alan Parker and Spandau Ballet went there. It was a crap school. I bunked off and went to Haverstock, Lee’s school! I went into the classroom and the teacher’s going, ‘Who are you?’ I said, ‘I’ve come from Birmingham’, so I got expelled from Lee’s school! When he wasn’t attending one or other school, Chris was kicking his heels with his mates. The lads spent their free time drinking in local pubs, spraying graffiti on walls around north London or jumping freight trains.

There was always something about railways, Mike later recalled. They were at the back of everything somehow, round the back of houses where nobody went. We used to build little camps over the railway, and we’d hide in them and when a freight train would come along, we’d run after it and jump on the back. One time, the gang ended up in Ramsgate, missed the ferry and had to sleep under a tarpaulin on a facsimile of a Viking longboat. On another occasion, they were atop a slow-moving train in Willesden when Barson and a mate were hit by a bridge. They staggered off the train and, bleeding heavily, were dragged by their mates into a back garden where there just happened to be a wedding in progress. The assembled throng apparently looked askance at four lads in balaclavas, covered in blood and identity-concealing boot polish, carrying two wounded and shouting for an ambulance.

In the 1984 TV documentary South Of Watford, Lee recalled those days fondly: On bank holidays, we used to take off on a freight train, [up to] Leamington Spa, mainly northwards. We ended up in Leigh-On-Sea once, near Southend. Jumped out, pitched the tent, woke up to find cows nibbling at the strings. In the same programme, Foreman recalled schoolboy pranks on Kite Hill, alias Parliament Hill, next to Hampstead Heath. We used to walk from the Lido, the swimming pool, up this hill and we used to set fire to all the rubbish bins on the way. We’d get to the top, look down and survey all these glowing rubbish bins, which was quite fun. The park keepers used to chase us in vans at night.

Graffiti was still a relatively new phenomenon in the capital. "I first remember seeing an ad in the Sunday Times colour supplement around ‘73, wrote Thompson on Madness’ website, that had a piece on graffiti carried out in the dead of night on the New York subways and trains. So to pass a little time, a few of my mates would acquire some aerosol cans and get to work. My ‘tag’ was ‘KIX681’. Thompson had apparently attracted the nickname ‘Kix’ because of his growing reputation for fearless stunts and crazy escapades. Some of the lads’ graffiti in and around Kentish Town dating from 1973/74 still survives to this day, including a bridge at a local train station and a nearby block of flats – both of which were wrapped in scaffolding at the time and were hence inaccessible once the scaffolding was removed. I think most of the best ones I did have been cleaned off by now," Barson suggested.

Two examples of their handiwork (including an abandoned car on Hampstead Heath customised with Mr B. and Kix) were featured in photographer Roger Perry’s book, The Writing On The Wall: The Graffiti Of London, published in February 1976 with a foreword by trad jazz star and author/writer George Melly. By coincidence, Thompson had once tagged Melly’s garage door as J4 KIX, prompting an outburst in Melly’s national newspaper column. Kix was a common graffiti around Hampstead, Gospel Oak, Camden, recalls Kerstin Rodgers. I knew his tag before I met him but he got done for doing graffiti. Another admirer from afar was future drummer Daniel Woodgate. Mark and I vividly remember graffiti around the Hampstead area, he told Later magazine. We remember seeing ‘Mr B’ and ‘Kix’ written on railway arches, and we used to think, ‘How the hell did they get up there?’ Mike and Lee were quite infamous, so to find out you’re in a band with them years later – Mark and I were in awe!

Mike was very good at drawing, school friend and graffiti accomplice Simon Si Birdsall later commented. I used several names – ‘Columbo’ from the TV series, ‘Sha Na Na’, ‘Sneaking Sally’ from the Robert Palmer album. What brought an end to it, I think, was we went up to Woolworths in Hampstead and went crazy. We got carrier bags full of spray paint, three or four of us with two carriers each. We hid them in a cemetery, and for a week after we just overdid it … we just got fed up with it. Mike did a good one at Highbury Station, from the Kilburn & The High Roads album … it’s still faintly there.

By the time Mike had moved schools to Hampstead Comprehensive in Westbere Road, Cricklewood in the early 1970s, he’d picked up the rudiments of the piano. We learnt different set pieces, rock’n’roll on the left hand and fiddling round on the blues scale on the right hand, Mike later explained. I did have a few classical lessons but most of what I know I taught myself.

Meanwhile, older brother Dan was playing with a rock’n’roll/pub rock band, Bazooka Joe, which had been formed by Kentish Town lads John Ellis and Danny Kleinman as early as 1970. With their madcap, theatrical show (band members adopted stage names like Danny Angel, Robin Banks, Mark Time and ‘Upright’ Willy Wurlitzer), Bazooka Joe built up a local following, playing at art schools and on the London pub circuit. Infected with a strong vein of humour, their set mixed original material with oldies such as Frankie Lymon & The Teenagers’ doo wop classic, ‘Teenager In Love’, The Shadows’ instrumental ‘Apache’ and The Chantays’ surf instrumental, ‘Pipeline’.

When bassist Pat Collier left, Kleinman introduced a replacement, Stuart Goddard, whom he’d met at Hornsey College Of Art. A few years later, Goddard who would reinvent himself as Adam Ant. Thinking of the two of them, one of his teachers later opined, one would have expected Danny more than Stuart to have ended up as Adam Ant. Instead, Dan Barson is now a doctor in Vancouver. He later recalled his days with Bazooka Joe: It was more like a friends’ band – just have a good laugh, get drunk and fall over, go wild.

– itself borrowed from ‘Beatnik Flyer’ by Johnny & The Hurricanes, which Bazooka Joe used to perform – on their debut album One Step Beyond. The song was a mainstay of Madness’ set list for several years. "Bazooka Joe was the local rock and roll band, Foreman told musician/author Terry Edwards. We used to see them a lot."

I used to see Bazooka Joe at the Haverstock Town Hall and elsewhere, adds Kerstin Rodgers. Danny Barson wore a gold suit. He was a natural lead singer type: all the girls fancied him. There was a big rockabilly presence at the gigs and fantastic dancing. Sometimes, the whole hall would break out into line dancing. I was proud when later I got to go out with Danny’s younger brother Mike. It’s great to remember all these connections: Arabella Weir is the older sister of Christina Weir, who was good friends with Miranda Joyce of the Belle Stars, who went out with Mark Bedford. Mike and I used to go see The Vibrators often.

Hornsey College Of Art was also a logical next step for Mike to attend after leaving school. (By this time, Barson had also moved to Muswell Hill, much to his friends’ dismay.) The college was centred around Crouch End and had previously harboured chief Kink Ray Davies – but Barson dropped out after just one year, having spent much of the time improving his keyboard skills. Quite often I’d go into college and spend the whole afternoon just playing the piano in the hall, he later confessed.

I used to like advertisements, he explained in The Face in 1982. I never particularly liked any great works of art, I preferred commercial art and cartoons. I didn’t really like it there. Art schools don’t really seem to be into art: they’re more into talking about it. I didn’t go in very frequently. I applied for another three-year course at the London School of Printing, but I turned up two hours late for the interview and they never let me in!

Another student there was Eric Watson, who would later photograph Madness. I was on a foundation art course in 1975, remembers Eric. "I met Mike Barson there. He only did a couple of terms, as I remember. I was a little older than him and he got into a spot of bother over ‘twoc’ing’ (taking without the owner’s consent), or something like that, and I was asked to mediate between him and the college. Mike was largely monosyllabic in conversation and really just wanted the time at college to draw bande dessinée or what are now called graphic novels. I remember telling him to check out the Sex Pistols who I had seen at the Nashville Rooms."

Chris had left Dame Alice Owen’s School with just one O-level (in English). He wrote about his formative years on Friends Reunited with typically self-deprecating humour: I left school in 1972. Well, I was asked not to come back actually. During the summer holidays, I had seen a gardening job advertised in a newsagents, which I successfully applied for. After the holidays, I eagerly returned to continue my education which was sadly not to be. So I stayed at the gardening firm for about two years. I then worked for the glorious London Borough of Camden as a gardener. We used to wear donkey jackets with LBC on the back, and if people asked what it meant, we said London Brick Company (or the more fruity London’s Biggest C**t). Having by now learnt a tremendous amount about gardening, I then applied for a job on the Camden painting and decorating department and got sacked after about six months for turfing someone’s front room and wallpapering their window box. For a period, Foreman’s gardening chores were shared with Thompson.

Eventually, and much to the relief of Barson’s mother, the threesome switched their affections to all things musical. They shared a mutual admiration for Kilburn & The High Roads (Ian Dury’s band prior to The Blockheads), as well as Fifties rock’n’roll, doo-wop and R&B (Fats Domino, The Coasters and Chuck Berry were favourites), classic Motown and Jamaican ska and rocksteady. The lads were also smitten by the glam rock-influenced acts of the period: especially Roxy Music but also The Sensational Alex Harvey Band, Mott The Hoople, Slade, The Faces, Alice Cooper, David Bowie, The Sweet, Cockney Rebel and Gary Glitter (at the height of Madness’ popularity in 1982, Thompson was photographed for The Sunday Times dressed in Glitter’s trademark stage outfit).

In the 1981 film Take It Or Leave It, in which Madness re-enacted their early years to such great effect, Barson and Thompson were seen stealing an old Fats Domino album from Rock On. Their love of rock’n’roll – and Americana in general – was fuelled by seeing George Lucas’s 1973 film American Graffiti, a bittersweet tale which neatly evoked US youth culture of the late Fifties/early Sixties, from hanging out in diners to cruising in open-top cars, with a rock’n’roll soundtrack to die for, which wasn’t presented merely as background music but as an integral feature of the movie – where, to quote Terry Edwards, the music was as much a star as the cast and plot.

Additionally, Barson had developed a taste for piano-based singer-songwriters, as he later revealed: "I used to listen to Elton John’s Tumbleweed Connection and I liked Carole King and Joni Mitchell … the piano playing does sort of affect you. ‘Fire In The Hole’ by Steely Dan had a really nice piano solo which I listened to again and again." Other favourites included later Kinks albums, Dave Brubeck’s jazz hit ‘Take Five’ and Cat Stevens’ Tea For The Tillerman (for ‘Sad Lisa’, in particular).

Barson was already adept on the family piano; he was soon accompanied by the first attempts of Foreman and Thompson to master their respective instruments. The trio would play along to their favourite rock’n’roll records (a scenario re-enacted in Take It Or Leave It, with Fats Domino’s ‘I’m Walkin’’ from that half-inched LP!). Nobody could really play anything for quite a long time, Barson told Smash Hits in 1979. We just played the records that we liked: a few ska records, lots of Coasters, ‘Love Potion Number Nine’ and ‘Poison Ivy’. We just heard all that from older brothers. I definitely had a Motown [song] book with all the chords in it but I was such a lazy bum that I never learnt how to read music so it took ages!

Various people used to go to Mike’s house and try to play any songs we liked, Chris later wrote in Nutty Boys. Mike’s older brother Ben had various amplifiers which we used. Mike’s mum was tremendously understanding, though at times we nearly must have driven her potty. Foreman’s father had tried to teach him the ‘How To Play The Guitar’ a few years earlier to no avail. Now motivated by Barson’s enthusiasm, Chris bought his first guitar around 1976 from a second-hand shop which Lee had spotted in Camden with £20 he received from a tax rebate.

It was a real cheapo, semi-acoustic Woolworths type guitar, Foreman later recalled to Chris Hunt. A Waltone. I just used to play these notes – one string at a time, I wasn’t even very interested in it. Then I started playing chords and that started me off. At that time, there wasn’t anyone I really emulated but I did like Wilko Johnson [of Dr. Feelgood]. As he used to play a Fender Telecaster, I eventually got one and it cost me about £130. I used to use it all the time – on the first album, I used just that.

A temporary lull in Foreman’s employment prospects allowed him more time to practise. When I got the sack as a painter and decorator, I started to play the guitar by listening to Dr. Feelgood, he explained. By coincidence, both Foreman and the Feelgood’s manic guitarist Wilko Johnson were left-handed but took a leaf from Jimi Hendrix and played right-handed guitars. Chris had a definite bent towards the theatrically-minded rock acts of the day. He loved Mott The Hoople and caught the very first UK performance by Australian rock band AC/DC in May 1976. Back then, it was Chuck Berry and Duane Eddy for me. [But] Angus [Young] was just rolling around the floor and I thought it was great, he later admitted to The Word.

Thompson, meanwhile, was inspired by two saxophonists: Roxy Music’s Andy Mackay and Kilburn & The High Roads’ Davey Payne. First of all, I had a clarinet but I swapped it for a battered old sax down Dingwalls Market, he wrote on Pete Frame’s Madness Family Tree. Originally, I was happy just to poodle along to records by Roxy Music, Fats Domino [and] The Coasters … but then I bought a brand new Selmer and began to get more serious about being in a group. That first sax had been obtained in winter 1975 with a questionable chain of title; one of the many highlights of the film Take It Or Leave It was a hilarious re-enactment of Lee’s one-and-only lesson at Highbury School, during which the streetwise teacher noticed that the saxophone’s serial number had been filed off.

All the American R&B I loved had sax on it, Lee later explained. I was always drawn to that breathy, organic sound. When Roxy Music came onboard, Andy Mackay was like a God to us. I loved his style of playing – not too busy, not too John Coltrane, not too technical either. Thompson later recounted one particular shoplifting trip, which involved his mate climbing through a side window of the Fender Soundhouse on Hampstead Road. Having passed out a couple of guitars, he was about to liberate a tenor sax when two policemen appeared nearby – and he froze. Thompson and his pals created a diversion to distract the police and the sax went on to appear on all the early Madness records.

While everyone seemed to love Roxy Music, Thompson & Co. were particularly drawn to the misfit image of Kilburn & The High Roads. I wouldn’t say that Davey Payne was an influence on Lee, Barson later opined to Terry Edwards. What’s the word? Yeah, he used to copy him a lot. In various ways! Thompson was later quoted as describing Madness’ sound as Steptoe & Son music. It relates to the Kilburns who were a massive influence, Madness bassist Mark Bedford told Richard Eddington. The archetypal pub-rock band. They brought in that ‘music hall’, fairground, cartoon image of London life.

Although Ian Dury would become a bona fide pop star with The Blockheads, it was clearly his earlier work with Kilburn & The High Roads which had the more profound influence on Madness. When I first joined the band, Woody told Terry Edwards, all they ever went on about was Kilburn & The High Roads. I’d never seen them – or even heard of them!

When you saw them sitting round before the gig, there was a real mystique to them, Barson later enthused. "They looked like a band, and you wanted to be in one too. It all looked pretty exotic. They were all individuals. If you watched just one of them all night, it would be a complete show. We got a lot of inspiration from them – a band of characters where there was always something to look at."

Born on May 12, 1942 in Harrow in north-west London, Dury contracted polio as a child, leaving him partially crippled. After attending grammar school in High Wycombe, west of London, the teenager attended art college in Walthamstow, east London (which may have explained his thick cockney accent) before eventually studying at the prestigious Royal College Of Art in the late 1960s. It was there that he enjoyed the tutelage of no lesser figure than Peter Blake, whose love of what Suggs later described as the eccentricities of the music hall rubbed off on Dury.

Dury was old enough to have witnessed first hand the arrival of rock’n’ roll in the 1950s. He was particularly struck by Gene Vincent, whose volatile mix of menace and tenderness was made all the more poignant (to Dury, at least) by the fact he suffered from chronic pain and a limp in his left leg. When Vincent died in October 1971, legend has it that Dury was inspired to found his own band, Kilburn & The High Roads, recruiting a number of students he was teaching at Canterbury College Of Art. In stark contrast to the glam rock images in vogue at the time, Dury and his cohorts adorned themselves in thrift-shop attire, purveying the same gritty, working-class demeanour conveyed to such great effect in the poetic rantings of Dury’s songs.

With help from managers Charlie Gillett and Gordon Nelki, their no frills approach won them support on the burgeoning pub rock scene, landing them a contract with Pye’s progressive rock arm Dawn, a degree of critical acclaim and a prestigious support slot on tour with The Who. The streetwise suss of songs like the single ‘Rough Kids’ (which Barson & Co. covered during early rehearsals and gigs), ‘Billy Bentley’ and ‘The Upminster Kid’ sounded like a breath of fresh air to those tired of the manufactured bubblegum pop of the era – teenagers like Mike Barson & Co. Dury’s portrayals of an altogether less savoury London were perfectly crystallised by the sleeve design for debut album Handsome, which depicted six scruffy, tired-looking men against a backdrop of a bleak, barbed wire fence and, behind it, Tower Bridge.

This spoke of a London beleaguered by power cuts, strikes and unemployment instead of the futuristic escapism of Roxy and Bowie or the knock-kneed bubblegum rock’n’roll of the Chinn and Chapman stable at Rak. That’s not to say the future members of Madness worshipped Kilburn & The High Roads exclusively – in fact, Roxy Music were probably their favourite band of the period. But the Kilburns were one of just a handful of acts (among them Dr. Feelgood) to pre-empt that spirit of social realism which came to the fore with punk. Indeed, John Lydon was clearly inspired by Dury’s off-kilter, physically awkward stage manner – an anti-hero that was part Steptoe, part Laurence Olivier’s Richard III.

Dury was brought up in a relatively bohemian, middle-class environment, suggests writer Alan Robinson, "but his disability placed him outside of his class milieu, which he was able to exploit by creating a kind of character that was constructed from elements he found around him. I think Dury was a Beatnik more than anything else. He was at least as much of a jazz fan as a rock ‘n’ roller and a big fan of Rahsaan Roland Kirk. The Kilburns were as much of an art-rock concept as Roxy Music. It’s just that Dury dressed it up with an anti-image. On the back cover of Handsome, there’s a black and white photograph called ‘Paul Hangs Loose’ by Poundcake, a reference to William Burroughs’ book, The Naked Lunch. Burroughs was a big influence on the Brit art world of the time. ‘Paul Hangs Loose’ didn’t go unnoticed by the likes of Mike Barson, either, who later borrowed the idea for Madness’s trademark Nutty Train" pose, immortalised on the sleeve of debut album One Step Beyond.

Part of the appeal of The Kilburns was that they looked like they were assembled entirely from spare parts, kind of human flotsam and jetsam, continues Robinson, very tall people and very short people, a black drummer and a disabled lead singer, who proudly sported a calliper on his leg. Underneath the menacing image Dury carefully cultivated, it was studied, ironic. He told me there was a geezer who had a stall in Brixton Market, who would set aside old overcoats and suits he thought would work for the band, image-wise. So the Kilburns’ ‘look’ was not necessarily accidental. One of their bass players, Humphrey Ocean, was a trained artist, six feet six tall, and their guitarist was almost a midget. The drummer was on crutches. Davey Payne looked like he was wearing purple tights into a pair of wellies.

Kilburn & The High Roads’ sound was difficult to summarise. They were more about musical pastiches, with an element of Music Hall, Robinson explains. A song like ‘Pam’s Moods’ is about pre-menstrual tension, done up in a Light Programme bit of tin pan alley song-craft; ‘Crippled With Nerves’ is about impotence; and they played the occasional bit of mutant ska (‘The Roadette Song’, ‘The Call Up’). Their most obviously ‘London’ songs were ‘The Upminster Kid’, an affectionate series of recollections of East End Teds; and ‘Billy Bentley (Promenades Himself Around London)’, essentially a ‘list’ song, a litany of London phrases and place names.

Although Dury emerged through London’s pub rock scene, he was also peculiarly anachronistic. Alan Robinson: The Kilburns were the most self-consciously ‘London’ of Pub Rock bands. Acts like Brinsley Schwarz, Ducks Deluxe, Bees Make Honey, were ‘Americana’-influenced, taking their lead from Eggs Over Easy, who were essentially a live musical jukebox. The Kilburns were not singing about Honky Tonks or yearning to be The Band; they were darker, more menacing in look and intent. Whereas it’s true that their milieu was the Britain – in particular, the London – of the 1970s, they were only about social commentary in an oblique way. They were quite sophisticated musically. The Kilburns’ influence on Madness is most palpable in that Dury avoided Americanisms in lyrics – and their look, of course, was all-important. Their musical line-up – as well as guitar, bass and drums, they also utilised keyboards and sax – was a template for Madness, too.

Unlike those of Dr. Feelgood, the Kilburns’ records didn’t sell in any quantity and they disbanded in 1975. While their musical stew of Fifties rock’n’roll and flourishes of jazz captured the taste buds of future members of Madness, and Suggs’ stilted, near-robotic on-stage movements bore more than a passing resemblance to those of Dury, far more vital was that sense of rekindling the spirit of old London rooted in, say, the songs of the music hall or Ealing comedies like Passport To Pimlico. Also, with both the Kilburns and The Blockheads, Dury created vivid characters like Clever Trevor, Plaistow Patricia and Billericay Dickie.

Quite how many members of Madness ever got to see the Kilburns is questionable – but they certainly included that initial core of Barson, Foreman and Thompson, whose curiosity had been aroused by the band’s name on a poster. Thompson admitted to seeing them at Dingwalls and The Hope & Anchor. The only thing I’d go for, though, was the sax player Davey Payne, he later admitted. It was going to see them that made me get a sax. I got a lot of the fun element of the group from him.

According to Will Birch in Ian Dury – The Definitive Biography, Foreman once spotted Dury in the Tally Ho’s car park. A guy with a bow tie came limping along, and I thought he worked at the pub, Foreman remembered. I asked him what time the band was on and he replied, ‘No idea mate.’ I later realised it was Ian. We started following the Kilburns around and thought they were brilliant, visually and musically. Dury himself later recalled meeting one of them at the Tally Ho: We had to get changed into our stage gear in the toilets and I can remember Lee Thompson bunking into the gig through the toilet window and seeing us lot with our trousers down!

* Lee’s family in Great Yarmouth owned the fun fair which was used as a location for Madness’ ‘House Of Fun’ video.

* Broadsheet (or broadside) ballads were the printed sheets of verses that were sold in the streets from as early as the 16th to the late 19th century.

Chapter 2

MEMORIES

NOW approximating a teenage gang of sorts, the lads used to congregate around the Aldenham Boys Club in Highgate Road, which had been set up as a philanthropic venture by Aldenham School, a public school in Elstree, back in the 1920s as a refuge for under-privileged teenagers in or around Kentish Town – then considered one of the poorer areas of north London. Barson would tinker on the piano in the club’s main hall.

Since meeting at Aldenham Youth Club in 1972, Chris had been going out with Susan Hegarty (born in 1958 in Bethnal Green). During the long hot summer of 1976, he not only married Susan at King’s Cross Registrar Office but, soon afterwards, the couple had their first child, Matthew Christopher Foreman. The couple eventually settled in Finchley, which was more affordable than Kentish Town. I spent some most excellent quality time looking after my young son whilst on the dole and also trying to learn how to play the guitar, Foreman later wrote on Friends Reunited. After a while, I got a job in the UCH Hospital, allegedly helping the carpenters bodge up roller blinds and repair things. I got really sick of it and applied for what was to be my last job, working for the GPO as a cleaner/tea boy which was the best one yet, money/skiving wise.

Thompson, too, was in a long-term relationship, having met his future wife Debbie Fordham at a local dance on January 6, 1974 (Debbie had also attended Acland Burghley School). Around this time, Lee was doing a bit of work with another Aldenham Boys Club regular, whose cousin they already knew from their school.

Cathal Joseph Patrick Smyth was born on January 14, 1959, in Middlesex University Hospital, west London, into an extended Irish family which in due course included Brendan, born in 1961 in Wood Green, and twins Dermot Gerard and Bernadette Mary (known as Bernie), born in Islington in 1969. The future Madness MC shared his father’s name: Cathal Patrick Smyth Senior had been born on March 26, 1929 and married Maureen McGloin in 1953 in Hampstead.

My dad’s from Kilkenny, my mum’s from Mayo – they were Irish dancing champions, Smyth told RTE TV in 1993. They met through dancing and formed the first Irish dancing school in England. Actually, it was Cathal’s grandfather Charlie who set up the school during the Second World War – and one of his pupils was Sheila Clerkin. It was 1944, wartime still, and this particular ceili was in Great Portland Street, an exhibition of figure dancing by this new school in London, remembers Sheila. It was a big public hall. I was twelve/thirteen and people were just thrilled with it all, quite a big occasion. Mr Smyth was very important. He was from Kilkenny. His wife didn’t teach but she was always there at any big occasion.

According to Suggs, the club was frequented by folk legend Ewan MacColl. A prominent figure within London’s Irish community, Charlie Smyth was able to carve out a good living with his classes across London, from Kilburn to World’s End near Chelsea, and son Cathal (senior) was his star pupil, one of the leading traditional Irish dancers of his day (there also existed Irish commercial dancehalls which were separate from the traditional Irish dancing class).

When I started, the Smith School Of Dancing was in an Italian church hall in Clerkenwell, remembers Sheila. "Mr Smyth had other classes in other halls. Later on, he became the first person to teach Irish dancing in the evening classes run by the London County Council. He was very proud of that – Irish dancing on the map in an official capacity. He was professional, the first teacher in London to be registered with the Irish Dancing Commission in Dublin. There obviously had been other people teaching Irish dancing in London before