HELLO GOODBYE
There were drugs, squats, 200 gigs and magical chemistry. Kirk Brandon remembers Theatre Of Hate.
HELLO SUMMER 1980
I’d come out the other side of [punk band] The Pack and escaped with my life. The Pack thing was all mixed up with the punks, the left-wing thing, squats, the Brixton scene, that whole Tooting scene, the thugs, the drugs and the petty gangsters. It was very, very violent – people getting killed and people overdosing… South London was like a nuthouse then.
But I still wanted to do music. Me and Steve Guthrie [guitar], my old schoolmate, always had the idea of getting a band together. I’d met Stanley Stammers [bass] on the tube, he was playing in The Straps, and we gave him a ring and it clicked. Luke Rendle, who’d been working for the guy who briefly managed The Pack, said he drummed, so I said, “Come to the Sunday School” [rehearsal space in Elephant & Castle]. We all liked Roxy Music so we said, “Let’s get a sax player”. We advertised in the Melody Maker and this Canadian guy [John ‘Boy’ Lennard] comes in with leather strides and a big fedora and blew over the top of what we were doing. He just fitted. I listen back to the original recordings and it sounds almost avant-garde. I could never have imagined a band like that, but it happened, which was incredible. The name had nothing to do with Antonin Artaud’s Theatre Of Cruelty.
In that rehearsal room we caught something that provoked a lot of reaction. We’d done our first gig supporting Athletico Spizz 80 at the Marquee, and the next one was at the Moonlight Club in West Hampstead, and there were hundreds of people queuing down the street. A bit later The Ruts were in the next room at the Sunday School, and they bundled in – we thought it was gonna be a gang fight, but they were just curious about what the hell this was. Then they asked us to go on tour round the country with them. It was brilliant. This wasn’t some bunch of morbid bastards in a basement! This was a fun band, a great laugh, and we really took it on.
GOODBYE CHRISTMAS 1982
The things you can do when you’re young, slim and dim. Fucking hell, there was so much crammed into 18 months. We played over 200 shows in the first year. Ian Dury asked us to go on tour, we went on tour with The Clash in the UK and Europe, Mick Jones produced [1982 debut LP] Billy [Duffy, guitar] was with us for the last six months, and Nigel [Preston, drums] was phenomenal. You’re in your twenties doing something you always wanted to do with some great, funny people and it only ever sped up – this frenzied lifestyle of, in a van, on a plane, in a van, on a plane, in the studio, on a stage, back in the van, repeat.
The gigs were always great, there was no dragging corpses around, but at the end there were a lot of very messy and confused things going on internally, in the band, a lot of disquiet about decisions the manager was making. People got confused about where the band was going, and some people were experimenting with pharmaceuticals. You know, there were these guys on the dole and banging about in squats or whatever, and the next minute they’re on TV three times in two weeks. But, how shall I say, financially nothing had changed. We did a second Theatre Of Hate album, but it was never released, and we were booked to start an American tour, but the band blew out just before and broke up. The last meeting was at the Sunday School. I liken it to a rocket – it went straight up and came straight back down.
You got out the other side of it and you didn’t know who you were anymore. Afterwards I was hanging about, sharing a flat with Stanley in Chelsea, and then we did Spear Of Destiny. The name was Stanley’s idea, I wanted to call it Russian State Circus, which made sense to me at the time. It was definitely a turning point – you couldn’t repeat Theatre Of Hate. You find one post-punk, art, avant-garde band like that but you’re not gonna find another one.
There was so much promise in that band, and if we’d stayed together a little bit longer it would have changed everybody’s lives, in a good way. But we’ve revived the Theatre Of Hate thing since, and everyone has been involved. It’s still there, that same spirit.
It kicked off with accidental avantgarde fusion, and came crashing down on the verge of a US tour.
Kirk Brandon plays the WestWorld Weekend XVIII in Wolverhampton in October. Theatre Of Hate’s A Thing Of Beauty is out now.
“This wasn’t some bunch of morbid bastards in a basement.” KIRK BRANDON