50. welsh folk
In this final term, we started to get noticed in the street.
Harry stencilled the band's name on the back of his Renhault and chalked it across the shoulders of his suit jacket. Occasionally he and Patrick would walk around in those suits and mention the band to random passers-by. Dead normal middle-class boys, those two, but they had their Pythonesque streak.
Wearing my punk gear around town led to someone asking me how much we charged. And something similar happened to Bernie Cook.
One sunny afternoon, he's promenading down Oxford High Street with his girlfriend. They're just passing Queen's College when some guy crosses the road and says hey aren't you the bass player with the Milkins band?
Aye, I am.
You're great! When are you playing next?
Pembroke College, saturday -
Brilliant! We'll be there.
Bernie's girlfriend bats her eyelids in adoration. Ooh, Bernard.
Happens all the time, luv.
*
We weren't just known in college circles.
Independent magazines were banged out on typewriters and photocopied, even university publications with quite a wide circulation.
One of the music mags was called Charlie Horse. Not named after our donkey. I picked up a copy at a proper newsagents like Robert Menzies. Cost me fifteen p. On the front cover, top left, the names of bands featured inside.
Tiger Lily (well known in Oxford pubs), the Stan Smith band (never heard of 'em) - and the Atrocious Les Milkins Banned Band.
Fame at last, I'm telling you. To be on the cover of a magazine that was about music outside the university. And there was more inside.
Quite a long paragraph about 'A new magazine', Intone (they misspelled it Intune), where Tom Morrell reviewed two of our gigs. 'It is run by half a dozen student types' and cost twice as much as Charlie Horse.
The article ripped into Intone's opening line. 'Oxford, summer 1977. There isn't a music magazine in this city yet, no all-music magazine' - a real red rag to Charlie Horse, who were running their fifth edition. They took the piss out of Intone for writing about music that had fuck-all to do with Oxford, including Eric Clapton, ballet, and 'Otway/Barrett', though these last two had just played Pembroke, as we knew, and Charlie Horse conceded 'the Otway article is good'.
But where were all the Oxford bands? 'Nothing however on Tiger Lily, The Robert Wakely Band, Prism, Les Milkins (a little bit)'.
Woo. To be listed in the same sentence as Prism, stars of the Corn Dolly, put us among Oxford pub-rock royalty. Did Charlie Horse know we were just a covers band? Well, Prism were too, and maybe our punk image made us stand out.
Whatever, a helluva find. One more landmark, another step up the little ladder. What a year this turned out to be.
*
Quite a lot of people knew we were a band.
One day I'm strolling across The Parks, maybe to watch a bit of cricket on the way, when I see three or four people on a blanket on the grass. I recognise one of them in particular, so I go over.
I mention we played at Pembroke or wherever, and he turns to his mate and says 'Looks like we missed another Milkins gig', in a voice that wasn't exactly dripping with regret! I didn't stay long.
*
I met Rick Bowden in the italian class.
At the time, most language students did french. And not many boys studied italian at school. German instead. Italian was for girls. So by the end of my first year at Oxford, I think there were only three male students in the italian class, with about a dozen women, including two I went out with.
Rick Bowden was at St John's College, just across St Giles from the Taylorian, the big languages building next to the Ashmolean Museum. St John's was only up the road from Worcester, and I'd sometimes knock on his door.
He was always welcoming - and always in!
This meant he was doing the schoolwork. Partly because he had to. Just like me.
With so few men doing italian, they spread the net wide. They let in the likes of me, with only conversational italian, and Rick, who didn't even have that. We had to learn on the job, him better than me, and you could say we did quite well to get a degree at all. Can't imagine it happening today.
Something else we both had: a complicated year abroad. While I came back early from Rome, his mum's death stopped him going to Siena, and he had to scratch around for time in Italy to help with his oral exams.
When we arrived at Oxford, we both had girlfriends from somewhere else. His was a 'school sweetheart', whereas I went to a boys' boarding school. I'll leave the jokes to you.
Rick's room in St John's was full of stuff, completely different from mine. Like any normal student, he had books everywhere, some of them open on a desk or table. I bought hardly any books at all (cheaper to borrow them from the Taylorian), and I didn't own a kettle or a proper stereo system.
The clutter in his room made it friendlier than mine (no wonder he came round only once!). There was usually a record on. It's where I first heard Goats Head Soup, Kevin Coyne's off-the-wall lyrics, and debut albums by the Velvet Underground and Eno. Here come the Warm Jets has had its reappraisal like everything else, but it gave us a song about a burning baby, ooh how shocking, which shows why Bryan Ferry wrote the lyrics for Roxy. Oh and Eno told David Bowie that Donna Summer's I feel love was the future of music. And Bowie agreed!
The last track on Goats Head Soup is the Stones' starfucker song. I remember Rick mouthing the honey, honey section right in front of me. In a million years, neither of us would've dreamed I'd be the one performing it on stage. That was his thing.
He was big on the university folk scene (it went with his glasses and beard!), appearing in concerts with someone who played all the instruments while Rick sang. This went on throughout his time at college; in his last year, he did also did some 'street theatre and stuff.'
One term, he went off on a medieval music tour of Devon and Cornwall (my idea of hell) - which meant missing a week's work on an essay he had to write. So he borrowed mine! I don't remember this at all, but he reminded me in 2022. He paraphrased what I'd written, but there was obviously a lot left of the original:
Our tutor in italian, David Robey, was already near the top of his profession in his late twenties. He handed back Rick's effort.
Hm, he said. This was quite interesting. When Cris Freddi wrote it...
Ulp.
Rick's respect for the high flyer rose even further.
*
Another thing we had in common: playing at an Oxford Ball.
In his case, it all stemmed from 'the burning need I had then to have a microphone in my hand whenever possible.' He carried on doing that when he organised events in hotels after leaving college. Me, I didn't even think about a mike, but I understood the draw of performing in front of people.
In our first year at Oxford, he told me that one night, right at the end, he switched to rock 'n roll for a couple of numbers. Can't blame him, after two hours of folk! I can still hear him describing the thrill of watching people dancing to his acoustic rendition of Johnny B Goode. I could imagine it - but with my voice, it wasn't something I ever aspired to. Again, the thought of me singing the same track in front of people...
We never did see each other perform live. My views on folk music are on record, and Rick Bowden was no fan of covers bands with tone-deaf vocalists.
*
Yet another thing we shared was girlfriends meeting other men abroad. Mine left me for another italian, his 'brought a bearded Frenchman back from her year in France, so that was the end of that.'
Mind you, Rick nicked her off someone else!
One night he asked me to come over to his room and act as his bodyguard! The guy whose girl he'd pinched was coming round to settle things in trial by combat. When I got there, I found another of Rick's mates ready for active service.
But when the aggrieved boyfriend turned up, he was jolliness itself. Just as well, because he was quite a hefty geezer, though no taller than me.
Rick: So can I send these guys home?
Sure, sure. He even pats Rick's arm.
We the minders made our exits, leaving the two of them to talk things through. No danger to life and limb that night - though I found out decades later that the guy came back another day with some mates and trashed the room!
Why do people do that? It doesn't alter the fact. I could've beaten up the guy who had sex with my girlfriend (he was a lot smaller than me) - but what for? He'd still had sex with her. Punching someone's lights out or wrecking a room doesn't change what's in your mind's eye - or restore your dignity. Just fucks it further. You sad prick.
*
I didn't know this at the time, but Tony Blair was at Oxford in my first couple of years there. Yes, that Tony Blair. The prime minister who did some good things here before becoming a war criminal in Iraq, then a Middle East peace envoy! Like Kissinger's Nobel Peace Prize, some things are beyond irony.
Blair was in a rock band at university. Its name, Ugly Rumours, led to speculation that they never actually played live - but they did. Rick Bowden was at the same college, and he hired them for a St John's cut-price ball called Beggars’ Banquet.
'They weren’t very good...I just remember they were the second-worst band we had, after the Zero-Rated VAT Band!'
Ugly Rumours covered Stones songs, so I can imagine what Rick would've have thought of us.
*
Another mutual interest was rugby. Unfortunately for me, Rick Bowden's welsh, and Wales were very strong in Europe at the time. The girlfriend I'd broken up with had welsh parents too, so there was no escape.
Meanwhile the England selectors picked one shit team after another (I penned a long bitter piece about them when I became a sportswriter).
In our first year at college, with JPR Williams missing, Wales lost at Twickenham, my favourite player David Duckham scoring a try and the referee not allowing a welsh one, which led to a Max Boyce song about a home for blind irish referees! Apart from that, the Seventies were England's worst decade - though they did win in New Zealand while Wales kept losing to them at home. And at least I'll always have 2003.
Rick once announced to me that Steve Fenwick was a genius, which still has me scratching my head - especially as he knew a genuinely great centre. His father, a good club player, was once monstered by Bleddyn Williams. After the game, they were introduced properly. When Rick's dad held his hand out, Williams sidestepped it with his own!
I believed that when Rick told me, like all his tales - until I discovered one of them was a well-known joke! After that, I still enjoyed them. And he insists the Bleddyn Williams story is true. Williams apparently told it himself.
Rick also copied our Les Milkins practical joke by posting notices from someone called Ivor Fallus and insisting it was a real name! He kept a straight face when he told me, but he knew even I wouldn't fall for that.
You could say he had a way with words. And I tried to get some of them published. Not just his, though I knew it was a long shot.
One day he showed me some poems he'd written. I thought they weren't bad at all, but there weren't enough of them, so I suggested I write some too, then see if anyone might be interested. My oldest friend's dad was a published author, bound to know agents and publishers.
So I went away and wrote things. But they didn't take long, which showed how little I cared. They were the only fiction I put together as a student, and they were just crap. Robin's dad dutifully sent them to an agent, which was exciting in itself - but the reply was what I expected really: 'Just because you write poetry doesn't mean you're the only ones.' Rick's pieces would've stood more of a chance on their own, though that's not saying much. Publishers don't buy poems because they don't sell.
One of my attempts was about a wooden rhinoceros I owned, which gives you some idea of the standard.
Don't know why I bought the rhino - I've never been interested in ornaments - but there it was, not much longer than my hand but just as wide. I called it Herb (‘the poem started with 'Herb's not like me' and didn't get any better) and sat it on desks during Oxford finals. Didn't bring me the luck I needed to compensate for lack of revision, but I kept him for years afterwards. Instead of buying a hammer, I used his considerable rump. The heads of nails left pockmarks across his hindquarters. His legs weren't all the same length, so he tended to wobble off shelves, breaking both his horns, and I put him down him in the end.
*
Exams.
As I say, Rick Bowden got a Class 3 degree like me - but not because he started italian late. Instead, another in the string of things we had in common: mums who died young. Mine in our first year, his in the second. And we had outside interests during the last one. Me the band, him the folk music, plus 'Lots of drink and too much dope, not really giving a shit about the degree since my mother died.'
Ah yeh, the reefers. He'd roll one when I was there sometimes, but I never even learned to smoke tobacco, so I didn't join in. I never saw the 'lots of weed, acid, speed and even some cocaine around in my St John’s circle.'
Altered states apparently. Bernie took a lot of substances too. Me, I've always been quite happy with my unaltered state. You smell the roses better if there's no white powder up your nose.
Our finals exams had similar derailments. My face-to-face was a comic disaster; we both had to retake our italian oral; and he had no luck: 'No-one else was doing Calvino in the whole university, but when I got to the exam room I found the bastard had set a paper on his Resistance short stories, without a single question on his later work. I sat for 20 minutes then walked out - not a good start!'
Even worse than my Dante.
*
Nearly fifty years after we first met, Rick Bowden assured me 'I would be honoured to be mentioned in your memoir. Don't be too scathing!'
No idea why he thought I might be. My memories of him involve music and lively conversations, and he remembers 'loads of laughs'.
*
So.
At the end of that final year, the Milkins band were enjoying the attention.
To attract more of it, two of us (Bill again, I think) went round to the house where Tom Morrell was living. He'd written two complimentary reviews of our gigs, and I heard he might be interested in interviewing us. He wasn't in! I never did find out what he looked like.