Gig 056 Generation X

Gig 056
Generation X
Oxford Botley Elms Court
21 March 1978

Although founder members Billy Idol and Tony James had been around since the start, Generation X arrived a bit late on the punk scene, only releasing their first single towards the end of 1977 by which time the whole schtick had become a bit formalised. From this distance it’s clear that the group, and Billy in particular, were comparable to the pre-Beatles UK acts managed by the likes of Larry Parnes, from Billy’s classic dreamboat looks (quite rare in punk, give or take a Paul Simonon and Jean-Jacques Burnel) to his name which fits right in with Billy Fury, Marty Wilde, Duffy Power etc. For all their pretensions to Wild Youth, and Billy’s curled lip, they were manufactured pop to fit a growing market and about as dangerous as a glass of strawberry Nesquik. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, they wrote punchy, tuneful songs and their pop-cultural references – the Who, Cathy McGowan, Mondrian – were exemplary.

Rather appropriately for suburban boys – Billy from Bromley, Tony from Twickenham and a graduate of Brunel University – the gig took place in a function room in the not-at-all-edgy neighbourhood of Botley in West Oxford, where my mum occasionally did her shopping because there was a branch of Bejam in the arcade. So long as you weren’t expecting anything revolutionary, and I wasn’t, Generation X were great; they could play better than most of their contemporaries and Billy was a born rock’n’roll frontman. Their dabbling with dub reggae was a bit hamfisted but no more so than that of the Clash at that point. They were flogging their debut album, and gave it plenty. Again the Banbury Art School punk crowd was in town, and the gig was disrupted just a little by the same oversized dork who kept invading the stage at the Damned’s gig a few weeks previously. His sole objective in life seemed to be to get on stage with punk acts – what he might have done if no one had thrown him off, who knows? Probably jump around a bit and make a nuisance of himself. Whatever, it was quite funny and didn’t distract from the gig.

I don’t really remember much more than that, but a postscript to this is that for all their reputation as lightweight pretty boy chancers Generation X retained a loyal punk following because it seems they were (at this time at least) genuinely approachable and and stuck around playing the circuit after the Clash had buggered off to the US and most of the other punk groups had split. A year or so later they played Oxford’s legendary – and tiny – pub the Oranges & Lemons to an appreciative crowd of punks, and there aren’t many chart acts who would have done that when they could sell out much bigger venues. Only Otway, in fact.

And when it all fell apart Billy went to the States and became a genuine if rather caricatural rock megastar, on a scale that Larry Parnes’ boys could only dream about. Dicky Pride should be so lucky.

*The photo is from the gig Generation X played at the Oranges & Lemons pub, towards the end of 1979. (I went along but couldn’t get in, unsurprisingly.)