Gig 032 Boomtown Rats / John Otway & Wild Willy Barrett
9 July 1977
Oxford Polytechnic
It’s a beautiful, warm Saturday late afternoon and I’m on my moped, on the way to town to meet my friends and go to a gig. Couldn’t be much better really, except I have another appointment before the gig, at the Radcliffe Infirmary in Oxford. I have to go and see my dad, who is in hospital following a diagnosis of bowel cancer. Worried about him as I am, my main concern is to get through this without blubbing and causing upset and embarrassment, which we don’t like to do in our family. The operation had taken place a couple of weeks earlier, as soon as possible after admission, and I’d visited a few times with mum, on one of the first occasions looking on as dad hawked bright green bile into a small papier maché tray. Churning emotions were kept just about under control. During the last couple of visits he was taking food and looking brighter, but it was early days and there was still a sense of dread as to whether his condition might worsen, plus this was the first time I’d visited him on my own. In the event he was on good form, enjoying banter with the other old fellas on the all-male ward, which he said brought back memories of his time in the military – he had spent five years in India and Burma during the war. It was a huge relief to see him so much better, plus I managed to hold it together. As I rode up Headington Hill to the gig I felt as if a burden had been lifted from me, at least for one evening.
I think the gig was the end-of-year bash for the Polytechnic, which was also open to the public. Whatever, the acts weren’t particularly high-profile, it was a gig and it was cheap. First up were John Otway & Wild Willy Barrett from nearby Aylesbury, and this must have been the first time I saw them though they played a lot around Oxford. Wild Willy was a surly-looking hippy who played a home-made guitar which he called a Les Dawson; Otway an engaging eccentric singer and songwriter quite possibly incapable of doing anything other than being Otway. He liked to ramble all over the stage, climb on the speakers, and quite often hurt himself in the process. While he had none of the earnest ‘I’ve suffered for my art now it’s your turn’ gravity of your standard singer-songwriter, a number of his songs were genuinely affecting. Several others were just daft, notably their best-known (at this time) tune, Louisa on a Horse, to my knowledge the only song which namechecks Buckinghamshire market town Princes Risborough.
During his set attention was distracted by one of my friends who was enjoying rather too much a bottle of cheap Bulgarian plonk which may have been called Bull’s Blood. I remember Otway and Barrett offering encouragement from the stage, probably glad to find someone being as daft as them. At this time none of my friends were big drinkers – it wasn’t the fact of being underage, which in those days wasn’t really a barrier to boozing, more that none of us had much money and such cash as we had went mainly on gigs and records. I had the added disincentive of nearly always being on my moped. The thing about being an inexperienced drinker is that sometimes you spectacularly miscalculate, and on this occasion my friend disappeared behind a curtain at the side of the hall, where he would shortly, erm, become unwell. As everyone knows, drinking far more than is wise is an adolescent rite of passage and happened to all of us at one time or another, fortunately rarely at the same time, and being essentially nice kids we tended to look out for one another. My time would come.
I don’t think I had heard the Boomtown Rats at this point, all I knew from the music press was that they were a sort-of punk group and they were Irish, which in itself was something of a novelty. As it turned out they looked sort-of punk-ish, and in the manner of Dr Feelgood or Eddie & the Hot Rods played the sped-up and stripped-down r’n’b which was right up my alley. Their singer was a tall, skinny, charismatic character, almost too desperate but ultimately successful in his efforts to engage the audience. It might have been a challenge, playing unfamiliar songs to a student crowd who were mainly there just for the end-of-term crack, if they hadn’t (as I subsequently learned) done time on a notoriously conservative Irish circuit in front of crowds who were used to showbands. They put on a great show and in the end were rapturously received. My friends and I, at least those of us still in the land of the living, had a top night. Later on in the Poly bar I vaguely remember offering the bass player a drink, which he very politely declined.
Soon enough the Boomtown Rats would become regulars on Top of the Pops, peddling not punk but a shiny, cadet-edition, sheep-in-wolf’s-clothing form of new wave pop, its twitchy zaniness and primary colours aimed primarily at a younger audience, which I quite quickly found very annoying. Like they should worry.
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