'In 1976, The Cultural Goalposts Were Shifting In A Way No One Could Yet Comprehend'

In the sixth extract from Good Guys Lost, Billy goes to London only to discover punk is changing the pop world. Back in Liverpool, the 'Scallywag' look is sweeping the city

Read part five of Good Guys Lost here

THINGS WERE GOING well for Duke. He acquired a share in a club after a particularly vicious clubland spat. The owner thought it prudent to give his most prominent bouncer – and bodyguard – a financial interest in staying loyal. He married, too, which was a surprise but the wedding was one of the few episodes in Duke’s mid-70s life in which a shotgun did not play a role. The marital union had no impact on his romantic life.

If he had been sharp and modish in the 1960s, Duke became fashionable and flamboyant in his 30s. His three-piece suits with big lapels and wide flares made him stand out. An ill-conceived Zapata moustache completed the look.

There seemed to be a little more money in his pocket, at least to the outsider. He bought a Bentley and loved its varnished wooden dashboard and luxury interior. Duke took a special glee when parking it in front of the social security office on Newington Street when he went to sign on.

The police were watching him but he had friends on the force. If they came to the club they were given VIP treatment and some were rewarded with an envelope of cash. There was an understanding that he would not practise his daytime job of theft within the city limits. The sub post offices of the Wirral and the Lancashire hinterland were fair game.

Joey’s death hit him hard. Growing up, Duke had piggy-backed his brother’s reputation. There were some whispers that the younger man would not be able to maintain his jurisdiction without the threat of family backup. The young bucks in the club tried it on and the up-and-coming hard cases toned down their respect a notch. It was a mistake. For a month or so after the funeral there were frequent challenges to Duke’s authority. They were dispatched with a brutality that few had associated with him. When everything settled down his reputation was stronger than ever.

Things were beginning to change. A new wave of criminality was starting to sweep the port. In Liverpool 8, where the black community of the city were grouped, there had long been a tradition of smoking weed. Soft drugs were nothing new in the south end.

It was different on the other side of town. Even when The Beatles and Bob Dylan popularised cannabis, it had made little impact on the streets of the north end, where alcohol was the mood-changer of choice. Now weed began to spread. Importing and selling it would soon become more lucrative – and less dangerous – than armed robbery. Before long Merseyside’s underworld would be able to make a career choice. The new generation could see this development looming. Duke didn’t. His quick wits had carried him a long way but he did not recognise the changes occurring under his nose.

* * *

Billy blew out a plume of blue smoke and laughed a high-pitched giggle. “Not sure I like that stuff,” Duke said, nursing a squat tin of Long Life beer. They were in a flat on the 14^th floor of Canterbury Heights, one of the towers in a three-block complex on the slopes of Everton. The high-rises were less than a decade old but had already acquired a nickname that reflected their squalor: the Piggeries. The lifts were broken that day and it was a long haul to the top.

“It relaxes you,” Billy said. “And helps the creative process. You can write songs on weed. You can’t do that drunk. It’s harmless. Have a go.”

“Just don’t smoke it in the club,” Duke said. “Even my mates at Rose Hill” – the police station – “wouldn’t turn a blind eye to that. And if your mate sells it in my place I’ll break his legs.”

It was a rare spat. Duke was delighted with his cousin’s career progress. The era of velvet and jokes was over. Billy had teamed up with a former member of a Merseybeat group and created a band called Scouse Pie.

After leaving the showband, the aspiring singer-songwriter had begun to hang around the local gig scene. He got wind of a weekly Wednesday afternoon football game that musicians played on the all-weather pitch – it was really just hard-packed sand and gravel – at the bottom of Everton Valley.

The kickabout was the entrée he needed to the incestuous world of Liverpool’s pop clique. No one was interested in Billy in the bars and venues of the city but that changed when he took his kit and stood on the sidelines at the Valley. When one team had a no-show he asked to fill in. As soon as he got on the pitch the other putative music legends saw his star quality. The boy from Burly could dribble, shoot and had a fearsome tackle. Football means something on Merseyside. The performances on the stony pitch at Everton Valley catapulted Billy to prominence.

It was division two stuff, though. The more successful pop figures in the area had their game in Skelmersdale, where chart stars like Liverpool Express enjoyed their exercise. The players in L6 dreamt of promotion to matches in the new town on the outskirts of Wigan, where the men seen on Top Of The Pops had their weekly runout.

The Valley was good enough for Billy. One of the regulars had a couple of hits under his belt but could not be bothered to drag himself out to Skem. He soon demanded that the newcomer play on his team. They became friendly and, before long, were jamming together. It seemed natural to take the next step and perform as partners.

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They formed Scouse Pie and soon developed a local following. They headlined at the Montrose and the Wooky Hollow, traditional cabaret venues, but there were no gags or repartee. This was a serious band. They were reviewed in the New Musical Express and Melody Maker. The interest of the press brought A&R men to Liverpool. The prospect of a record deal felt very real in the first weeks of 1976.

Duke looked around the shabby flat and pulled a face. “From the Piggeries to the Palladium,” he said. “Don’t let the junk you’re smoking get in the way.”

Billy laughed. He extinguished his joint and popped a Long Life. “This,” he said with certainty, waving the tin, “ruins more careers.”

His cousin took a deep breath. “The fella who lives next door to Joan sells that shit,” Duke said, returning to the subject of cannabis and pointing at the ashtray. Joan was his brother’s widow, my mother. “Smokes too much of it himself. Nothing creative about that destructive gobshite. I’m hearing bad things about him. I might need to have a word.”

Billy sat up. “She’s said nothing to me.” He had visited the family the previous week. “You sure?”

“Yeah. Nothing to me, either. Well, we’ll see. So when you playing London?”

“Next week,” Billy said. “And I sent some of my songs to a publisher down there. I’ll meet him, too. The money’s in writing songs. I love singing but I wouldn’t mind a few quid.” He laughed.

“It’s been a bad few years,” Duke said, looking from the window down the slope and over the Mersey. “But things are getting better for you.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a wad of notes. “Judging by the way you’re living,” he said, “you’re skint. Here.” He placed a pile of five-pound notes on the windowsill. It was a lot of money. “This will see you through the next couple of weeks. You can’t go to London looking like a tramp. Go down there like you own the place. And don’t spend it on that shit you’re smoking.”

Shaking his head, Billy smiled. He wanted to say no. But no sane person said no to Duke when his mind was made up. “A big job?” The younger man imagined a horrified sub post office manager cowering in fear as Duke emptied the till.

Duke shrugged. “Let’s just say a little win on the horses. Go down there. I want to see you on Top Of The Pops. You might even be able to pull as many birds as me then. Come on, let’s go for a pint. Do you know the lift’s broken? No? At least it’s all downhill from here.”

* * *

There were big things happening in 1976. Billy was heading towards a London where the cultural goalposts were shifting in a way he could not yet comprehend. Scouse Pie were on the soft wing of pub rock but at the other extreme of the genre there was a youth movement growing that would destabilise the pop world that the Liverpudlian duo knew. Punk was about to smash its way into the national consciousness and the music industry was not ready for it.

Under Billy’s nose a different sort of teenage culture was developing and it was a style that would outlast punk and influence the way young people dressed for decades.

Some half a mile to the northwest of Canterbury Heights was Arden House, a huge, gothic, Salvation Army hostel. It sat on Scotland Road with the Kingsway tunnel 100 yards or so away to its north. To its south there was a vast swathe of wasteland up to Leeds Street, which was being converted into a new ring road. This empty space at the top of Blackstock Street where the slums had been cleared would become the crucible for a new fashion.

Why? Because lorry drivers who converged on the docks would park up here and spend the night in Arden House, a cheap resting place close enough to town’s pubs to make it convenient. Local youths, myself included, nicknamed it ‘the loadies’. We tried to break into the wagons and generally failed but we were just kids. The older boys who were following in Duke’s footsteps were more expert in their lockbreaking skills and made off with as much of the cargo as possible.

How did this have an impact on fashion? In the streets around Scotland Road the young lads were already wearing Adidas Samba training shoes under their flared jeans. Other pieces soon began to fall into place.

That summer, ITV’s answer to BBC’s coverage of the Montreal Olympics was the mini-series Rich Man, Poor Man. It was set in the immediate post-war era and the protagonists had short-back-and-sides haircuts with floppy fringes. Teenagers like me loved the Tom Jordache character, a tough-guy boxer who could not compete with his intellectual brother but who could beat any antagonist half to death. We all wanted to be the hard man, not the rich man. Suddenly, feather cuts and mullets disappeared among my age group on the streets of L3 and L5 and shorter, clean-cut hairstyles replaced them.

Then, at some point in that scorching summer, someone illicitly opened a vehicle at the loadies and discovered a shipment of Adidas tee-shirts. They were the round-necked, short-sleeved type with the trefoil on the chest and three stripes down the arms. They were similar to the Bruges shirts the Belgium team had worn in the Uefa Cup final against Liverpool earlier in the spring and all the young lads loved the look. By the next day the Adidas tops were available for sale in Tate & Lyle’s factory. My auntie came home with three, one for each of her nephews. Within 48 hours most of the young boys in the area were wearing them.

The entire consignment seemed to be orange, a colour usually anathema on this side of Great Homer Street but everyone wanted one. Sectarianism didn’t matter in this style uprising.

Fashion used to be brought back on ships. Now it was delivered in lorries. Horizons had shrunk. We would soon expand them again.

No one worried about buying stolen goods in the district. The same youths who pillaged the loadies were also talented shoplifters. While big consignments sold in the factories, items purloined from town’s department stores were offered door to door. The robbers quickly worked out what clothes and goods were favoured by individual households and would knock on their neighbours’ doors with products they thought would appeal to the residents. The money they earned was spent on beer, the horses and – crucially – football. We all went the match. It was the great leveller.

When kids from Huyton, Kirkby and Bootle saw the germinating Scotland Road look they copied it. The older generation looked on askance, tutted and called us “scallywags,” a term of distain common among my father’s generation. We embraced it. We liked being Scallies. We were happy to describe our style as Scal. That would come later, though. In 1976 we did not realise we were part of a menswear revolution.

The new fashion might have withered over the long, hot summer without football but the trip to Bruges in May was an eye-opener. The youths who went to Belgium loved the beer and food but most of all they appreciated the naivety of the shopkeepers. Back home, the stores were sharpening up their security and the thieves were recognised the moment they set foot in town. In Europe they pillaged places that they would never visit again.

The new season was around the corner. The warm-up tour was to the Netherlands and groups of lads went to Rotterdam, Roda and Enschede. One of the fellas from Burroughs Gardens brought back a pair of blue Kickers in my size.

They cost me £8 – half the retail price in town – and were a ridiculous extravagance, but the fashion was beginning to take shape. Like the rest of my mates, I was eager to be at the forefront of it. A buzz went round the district. The Continent was like a big loadies with easier access. The blaggers could hardly wait for the European Cup campaign in the autumn. I was desperate to be part of it. I was just a little too young and a little too cowardly.

I started going to regular away games. Until then, I had alternated between Liverpool and Everton home matches, sometimes going to Goodison with Billy. Now it was just the team I supported and I was a Kopite. We began to be conscious of how we dressed at matches. Punk’s biggest impact for us was the rejection of flared trousers; but we wore straight-legged Lee Riders, Farah and Levi 501s instead of bondage pants.

But I run ahead.

In the late spring of 76 I was hanging around, lurking on the same crook in the stairs where Billy had played cards and thrilled his audience all those years ago. He came up the street after visiting his mother on the next block and spotted me. He was wearing a denim shirt, Birmingham bags, his hair was on his shoulders and he had grown a drooping moustache with the same unfortunate consequences as Duke.

“Look at you, you little square,” he said, noting the short hair. “How old are you now? 15?” I nodded. “Come and see the band play in town. I’ll get you in. I’ll even let you have a beer.” There was no chance of me taking up the offer. To me he reeked of the past.

Neither of us recognised, or could articulate, what was happening. So he gave me a pound note. That was enough. I still loved him. He had learnt how to win over an antagonistic audience.

* * *

The London gig was not quite the triumph Billy had expected. There were quite a few A&R men at the Windsor Castle on the Harrow Road but they had an offhand insolence that did not bode well. Although the Abbey Road studios were only a 15-minute walk away, they might have been on a different planet. The crowd, in the throes of the punk uprising, were hostile and alien-looking. Someone shouted “hippies!” from the floor. Billy had that grim feeling that he knew from the tail end of his showband days, although he was buoyed that one of his own compositions was the least badly received of the set. Scouse Pie were dead. He knew it before the closing song. The recriminations in the poky dressing-room confirmed it. There was no encore.

He had an appointment the next day with Richman and Richman, a tin-pan alley music publisher that Billy had sent a tape. There were four songs on it, written for a solo performer. They were quite distinct from the band’s sound. He had always intended to go it alone.

Billy went down to Denmark Street for a 2pm appointment and was told to take a seat by a dismissive secretary. At 3.30 he was still there, unseen and unheard. He rose and towered over the girl, who could hardly have left school such was her youth.

“Your boss know I’m here?” he said.

The girl looked at him as if noticing his presence for the first time. “He does,” she said, holding his gaze just too long for him to be comfortable. She picked up the phone and pressed the intercom button. “Mr Richman, the pop star’s beginning to get angry. I’m scared,” she emphasised the word, “he’s going to trash the office.” She put down the phone and smiled at him. “He knows you’re here.”

Forty frustrating minutes later Raoul Richman opened the door of the office and angrily waved Billy in. He chomped a huge cigar, wore a pinstriped suit and acted, as he looked, like a caricature. He pointed to a stool, sat down on a leather sofa and snapped: “Play the song.”

Billy fumbled with his instrument and began to tune up but Richman shouted “play!” Barely 10 seconds into the first song, the publisher threw up his arms and said: “Not that one! Stop wasting my time.”

He was completely unnerved but was allowed to get through the remaining three tunes. Richman harrumphed and went back behind his desk.

“Is that how you dress on stage?” Billy’s senseless gape suggested the answer was affirmative. “You look like a tramp. Tramps don’t sell. Someone else will have to sing them. How many more songs have you got?”

That was the moment when Billy realised that he was underprepared, an amateur in a professional world. “Er…”

“Don’t er me. Go back to your hovel and write some more songs. Come and see me in a month. You’ve got one more chance. Go, go. And arrive on time next time.”

His head spinning, Billy went back to the waiting room. The secretary smiled sweetly. “Went well?” He fought off the urge to swear at her. It was not easy to be mocked by a girl.

“I have to come back in a month.” She took a business card and wrote a date and time on it.

“I’ll cry every night until I see you again. Give my love to The Beatles.” He snatched the card and went down the stairs. Behind him he heard the girl’s voice, projected so she was sure he could hear. “I think it’s sweet the way they all think they’re going to be stars, boss. Yes, he’s gone. I don’t think he’ll be back.”

* * *

In the off licence at Euston Billy bought six cans of Younger’s Tartan and drank them on the rattler back to Lime Street. It was cheaper than the buffet. He was not despondent. Three days in London had induced an epiphany. Over the previous few months Billy had come to believe he was talented enough to write and sell records. He thought he had the awareness and acumen to negotiate the music business. Because he was from the roughest of areas, had been away to sea and had spent time in prison, Billy had mistakenly assumed that he was streetwise enough to cope in any situation. Now he understood he was out of his depth.

He went home, hauled his guitar up 14 flights of stairs and decided on a new course of action. Tonight he would sleep. Tomorrow he would work on the dozens of fragments of songs and lyrics that he had discarded for lack of inspiration. This was not about being inspired. It was time for hard graft; harder, indeed, than humping a hod full of bricks up a ladder. He smoked the last of his weed and resolved not to buy any more. At least for a month. The next time Billy went to Denmark Street he would be prepared.

• Next: Billy is energised by punk and comes within touching distance of pop success