Two Stranglers Gigs in 1977

26th June 1977, 3pm my friend Graham and I are standing outside the Roundhouse waiting to get in to see the first of two shows The Stranglers were doing that day, 4pm and 8pm. It was a school day the next day which is why we were at the earlier show. I had a black pair of bondage trousers on from Boy and a self-made ripped white T Shirt with band names felt tipped on as well as one of my dad’s old jackets with safety pins and chains (stolen from the school sinks). Graham had a pair of leopard skin trousers, white T shirt and a black leather jacket…….he was 16 but could have passed for 14 so he would always wear a pair of plastic kids sunglasses you could buy at the seaside for 25p and smoke a cigarette in the line outside a gig to make himself look older……not sure it worked but we always got in. This was the first time I saw the band, I had been a fan since I went to our local record store in Feb 77 and asked for Grip which I had heard on John Peel the night before….the hippy behind the desk was a nice bloke who used to tell me when the new Be Bop Deluxe album was due.  He had never heard of the group but ordered it for me as I was a regular. When the follow up Peaches came out I made it my mission to get it into the Capital Radio Peoples Vote Chart, so in May 77 you would have found me walking around school asking boys if they had 2p and then getting them to use the school payphone to say PEACHES by The Stranglers on the Capital answer machine that logged the votes…….as I was marshalling my troops one breaktime I was confronted by a master asking why on earth there was a line of ten boys waiting to use the phone, “voting for something on the radio Sir” did the trick and off he went perplexed by with an answer. Come the next week when the chart was announced I think the whole school listened in to find that out if our 200 odd votes had born fruit (Peaches of course) and low and behold it was in the Peoples Chart, probably alongside some dreary MOR drudge by Rod Stewart or a new single by Leo Sayer but who cares we had infeltrated the radio station that had come out against punk!

Opening the show at the Roundhouse were The Cortinas which I quite enjoyed, there was a lot of talk about them at the time and I must admit I was hoping for more. The audience was a bit different to the usual punk cotteree as this bands appeal crossed over genres so you had punks and a young metal audience mingling along with the faithful Finchley Boys who followed the group everywhere, plus a large number of bikers. The atmoshere was edgey but not as intinadating as other gigs at the time. When the Stranglers came on the place was rammed and just exploded with hundreds of punks pogoing on the lower level dance floor of which Graham and I were two at centre stage about ten people back. After about forty minutes we took a break and stood on the terracing drinking a cider covered in sweat, rehydrating before rejoining the throng. As we poured out at about 7pm we were greeted by a number of skinheads as we headed to Chalk Farm tube and there were a number of scuffles, nothing to major but then there were more of us than them.

17th September 1977 Bracknell Sports Centre. Most people won’t know but Bracknell is a new town in Berkshire too near to London for any bands to visit so when The Stranglers came to town every music fan in the county came to see them. Once we spotted this venue on the tour list, not too far from my school, me and my mates all got tckets. We got the train and walked from the station past groups of “lads” trying to be intimidating by shouting at us after we’d walked past them. reaching the Sports Centre it was exactly that, again being amongst the first to arrive you could really see that this was a gym/basketball court with a stage at the far end and a bar/catering area in the bit between the front door and the opening to the gym……classic family liesure centre lay out. There were about eight of us so we all went straight in to get a space near the front. As the crowd built up so did the intmidating atmosphere, not due to the crowd which was largely full of teenagers who liked rock rather than punk, but the large amounts of Hell’s Angels and Road Rats that had appeared in the room…..sort of doing security and sort of looking for a fight.

Opening the proceedings were The Only Ones, not a band that I liked and one that definitely fitted into the newly invented category of New Wave. So we stood through a forty minute set that was greeted by unenthusisatic applause and at the final song Pete Perrett thanked the crowd and left his guitar on a stand right at the front of the stage. As soon as they left the stage one of our group shouted “for god sake grab that guitar so they can’t do an encore” so much to our amazement someone did and we watched in hysterics as the Gibson was passed over the top of the crowd to some distant point.

Next up the Stranglers took to the stage and as usual the place errupted as JJ’s bass opened like a caged bears growl. As the punks at the front pogoed they inevitably collided with an Angel which was the followed by a punch or two being thrown and said punk moving away as quickly as possible. The band were on top form, the heat was intense and quickly Brunel and Cornwell took of their leather jackets playing in T shirts. JJ is clearly enjoying himself, throwing shapes and bouncing across the stage……at which point he had an inspired idea to go right to the front and dangle his plimpsoled foot over the crowd, this coinsided with my mate JS’s equally inspired idea to nick JJ’s white shoe….so up comes his hand and he pulls off the shoe but in doing so also pulls JJ into the crowd……suddenly Hell’s Angels appear from everywhere to rescue the bass man who reappears on stage with a smile on his face but only one tennis shoe! His request of “Oi can I have my plimpsol back” was answered by a barage of trainers, but not his item. This episode made us all laugh, unfortuneately in the mille that followed my mate dropped the shoe and we never saw it again…….I presume somewhere in a box in the attic someone has it as a treasured posetion!

The rest of the gig went off without a major incident, there were quite a few Angels on the stage and anyone trying climb up was given a big shove. As we all filed out at the end, drenched in sweat as always, I noticed that stood against the rear wall was a lonesome guitar. However the night wasn’t yet over, as we left the venue every “yobbo” in the town had turned up for a fight. In 1977 Punks had been turned into public enemy number one and these new town lads wanted to tell their mates in the pub about the night they beat us up. A large group of us were going back to the railway station and at various points we were attacked but to our assalents surprise we were no push over and fought back so they ran off. Arriving at the station I think we all felt a lot safer, however this was not the case because the next train was in 15 minutes and the platform was over looked by a footbridge. As we stood idely on the platform suddenly bricks stones and bottles rained down on us, the first wave caught a few people by surprise leaving them with cut heads. The next quarter of an hour was spent looking for something to hide behind as they chucked more missiles at us, this happened in waves as they ran out of stones and left to find more……finally our train arrived and as we left more debree peppered the locomotive accompanied by lots of jestures and jeering from both sides.

However nothing could take the shine off the evening, as was always the case in 77 the quality of the show was matched and feed off the entusiasm of the fans.