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11/ Klaxon 5 [ Back to excerpts ]
It was fast becoming clear to Pete O'Sullivan and Angus McLean that working in my backing band was not going to be a full time occupation, and so they justifiably and quite properly resigned. They quickly formed their own band, The Klaxon Five, with Angus's brother Donald, a hairdresser called Mark Chivas, a blonde suburban sex-kitten Mandy Washbourne and sax-player/film-maker Matt Lipsey. That's right- there were six members of The Klaxon Five.
The Klaxons played some memorable gigs at the fashionable clubs of the day, such as Titanic and The Wag, high as kites, arrogant and insolent and irresistible, they took far more pleasure from goading the audience than from playing music, but seeing them sail so close to the wind was almost magnificent. They had a fantastically childlike sense of fun, and a journalist once accurately said in passing that they were like a bumper version of The Beano annual. Donald McLean, Angus's younger brother, was the least talented musically but was the visual focus of the band. He seemed to feel neither fear nor pain, and was consequently compelling for an audience looking for kicks. He had served his apprenticeship while he was still at boarding school, I learned later from Peter.
Once, on School Open Day, Donald was in his third-floor dormitory, looking out of the window, puffing on a joint. He noticed the headmaster walking below the window with the parents of a prospective new boy, and heard him saying how sensible the older boys at the school were. Encouraged by his roommates, who knew how little encouragement he actually needed, Donald eased himself out of the window, edged himself to the ledge and launched himself, like Yves Klein, earthwards. Seconds later he landed at the feet of the startled group. Both legs and one arm were broken, and Donald spent months in traction, but I never once heard him countenance the suggestion that it hadn't been worth it. In any event it made his heart-stopping stage-diving at Titanic, while the Klaxons played Falling Over, look like child's play. Their set included songs with great titles like The Blunder and Dynamite (Think I Lost a Limb).
That August, 1982, I returned to do the Edinburgh festival with a ragbag of acts. There was myself and Rene, Mick Jones and Kerry Bell from The Event Group, a singer/violist called Tymon Dogg, Oscar McLennan, a Scottish stand-up (then fall over) comedian, and a Goth-punk poetess named Joolz. We sold the gig as The Strange Dog Event and got a good venue, The Masonic Lodge in the centre of town. We had a fairly early show, around 7.30, and were finished by 9.30, and so consequently were able to devote the rest of the evening and the night to the more important business of getting totally wired. We did pretty good business and got rapturous reviews and had a week-long party. The Klaxons drove up to join us and were on their very worst behaviour. I believe they all slept in the same car every night. I am glad to say I didn't join them. The performers all stayed in a flat we had rented for the week and it was seriously squalid. We used to meet up at parties to which we had not been invited, and insured by our behaviour once there that there would be many more parties to which we would not be invited.We arrived back in London at the beginning of September like so much broken merchandise.
I often think that London in those days were totally hedonistic and vacuous, creatively speaking, but then I think about who was around and I realize that it was not so. It was a time when the Holy Trinity of British architects, Norman Foster, Richard Rogers and David Sterling, were first making their collective presence truly felt. Katherine Hamnett, Scott Crolla and BodyMap were making beautiful clothes. Michael Clarke was dancing like a faun, Michael Nyman and Gavin Bryars were writing extraordinary new music, Tom Dixon, Ron Arad and Jasper Morrison were producing astonishing designs for furniture which would become classics, and Gilbert and George and Bruce McLean were showing major work. And there was Leigh Bowery.