TOM ROBINSON BAND

TOM ROBIN

OUT OF THE CLOSET AND INTO THE STREETS

Penny Valentine

by

Summer Of '77

A chance mid-week gig at a small London pub. The Tom Robinson Band have been together for six months, working infrequently, held together by Robinson's ambition and belief that it is possible to combine rock and political action in a totally unambiguous way— and to make that commercially viable. Only Bob Dylan and John Lennon have been there before, leaving a silent arena which Bowie tiptoed into and left for the safer pastures pf sci-fi.

"A reluctant political person" is how Robinson described himself, "making this kind of music because of the times we live in. I'm a musician first and foremost and that's why the Tom Robinson Band exists. If—within that— I can put a message over to people then I'll do it, but I'd still be playing and singing, whatever happened."

Hard to say whether, without punk, Robinson and the band would have been able to move so swiftly from tonight's appearance into the charts, but the debt and comparison ends there. What the TRB are doing is to approach the situation from a different viewpoint, and tie up all the ends:

"Freedom," said Robinson, "is indivisible. You can't have it at the expense of somedne else. Either there's oppres-

Ym obviously concerned with Gay Lib... But the others are heterosexual.

sion or there isn't—for gays, blacks, women, unions, gypsies, jews, squatters, everyone,"

Like punk, it's a message that finds an equally ready response. The right wing backlash is visible on the streets of Britain; within rock, Eric Clapton appeared to throw in his support for British MP Enoch Powell's racism (he later chalked it up to overexcitement

and alcohol: see April CREEM), David Bowie arrived at London Airport to give the fascist salute and remark that what Britain needs is another Hitler. There has been no vbice in the area of popular music to hit back—until Tom Robinson.

Alongside him, guitarist Danny Kustow is already prowling, angry and taut, playing in a way that will soon earn him comparison with Keith Richard. But for the moment he, drummer Brian Taylor and keyboard player Mark Ambler seem unsure of their own positions. It's clear that Robinson comes over as a "man with a mission" and the band deliver hard rock that stimulates physical response, but they don't quite enter the Spirit of the message with as much fervor as Robinson:

"Well," said Robinson later, "I'm one gay guy and obviously concerned with Gay Lib because it affects me personally. But the others are heterosexual..."

Danny Kustow may have gone off to Israel to live on a kibbutz "looking for real action," Brian Taylor may have marched alongside Tom in a pro-abortion demonstration, but it will take time for a political cohesion to hit the band: "I remember," said Brian, "I turned up late for a rehearsal session yelling about this 'bloody demonstration' that had held the traffic up for hours. Tom turned 'round and said he was going to join—did any of us want to come along? It was the first political thing I'd been involved in.".

"After all," says Tom, "/ was never a political animal until things started happening close to home, affecting me personally."

The band's set at the pub ends with three encores, the audience on its feet, and a record contract. EMI, terrified and handing back contracts to the S'ex Pistols faster than greased lightning, offer this politically radical band with a homosexual lead singer a 53,000 pound advance on a five-album-deal.

"We've starved long enough. Anyway I've always made it clear I want fame and I want recognition. I'm doing this because I want to be a pop star and I'm insecure enough to want to go out on stage and know people are pleased I'm there. I don't want people thinking I'm an ego-tripper and a hypocrite later on."

With the Pistols signed to Virgin and The Clash to CBS, the TRB take the first step into the open market. Will the record buying public respond to an apocolyptic song like "The Winter Of '79"—can you pogo to it? "All the gay geezers were put inside/ And coloured kids were getting crucified/A few of us fought back and a few folks died/in the winter of '79."

Winter Of '78

"By September of '77 I knew how many mikes we had, how much we were being paid for a gig, how the roadies were managing, what the sound mixers' matrimonial problems were. Then—wham!—all this craziness. I totally lost control and freaked out."

"Motorway," the band's first single, leapt into the top of the British charts. They'd released the most innocuous, least radical song in the set. No "Glad To Be Gay," no "Up Against The Wall," no paen to British prisoner George Ince. EMI are happy, Tom has explained his position over that decision to the left's uneasy satisfaction. Meanwhile the band completed their first sell-out tour, culminating in 3000 kids stamping, shouting, raising fists on every social question he cared to invoke. And if there was a question of compromise, it was answered by their response to the band. Now the band is unified on stage by common experience:

"After all, when the National Front [a British 'political' group of white racists] wanted to pick on someone at gigs it wasn't me," said Robinson. "They knew my position was clear, but they weren't sure ahout the others so they went for Danny or Brian, to see how they'd do there."

Even if it was a subconscious move by Robinson to present a choice of focal points, it had the added advantage of

was never a political animal until things started...affecting me personally, mm m

avoiding any trouble during that particular number: "We played some pretty dodgey places early on," Robinson admitted, "and that was always the 'crisis point' in the set. But there was never any trouble. The moment Danny moved up to the mike and it was apparent he was angry too, they thought: 'Well if that bloke says it's alright, it can't be all bad'...they identified with Danny. He was a macho kid, they hung off him as the guitar hero. They could identify with him and they related to him—animally. The girls wanted to have him, the boys wanted to be him."

Only Ambler, at 18, younger than" the others by at least five years and with a musical background of jazz not rock, still seemed to stand apart. But other problems demanded attention: Robinson was still battling with Ray Davies for a contract release from an earlier publishing deal (at one early gig, Davies turned up in the audience. Robinson dedicated his own version of the Kinks' "Tired Of Waiting" to him and Davies responded by raising two fingers at the stage and walking out); they had to enlarge their management to three full-time managers to sort out the chaos —personal and public—that engulfed

You WILL wor tie*. _

them after one hit.

Robinson is concerned about the future—to keep hold of the band's integrity, professional, personal and political, in the face of success. Was "Motorway" a fluke, can they pull it off with a more overtly political song? "I know I have a responsibility," he said wearily. "And I want to shape up to that. I'm not telling the audience what to think but to say 'have you ever looked at it this way,' to expand the way they see things, to show them that all these things connect. It's not just a question of the working class, women being raped, blacks getting beaten up, gays getting their pubs bombed; they're all linked. They've got to make their own conclusions and then decide where they stand. I don't think you can sit in the middle' anymore.

"But let's face it—in the end we are just a rock group. It is only rock 'n' roll. Let's not blow up the importance of ° what's going on here."

" ☆ ☆ ☆

Summer Of '78

Rock Against Racism, an organization that flowered in response to Clapton's racist comments, together with the recently formed Anti-Nazi League planned a Carnival in London: a march through some of the city's strongest National Front "territory," to be followed by an open air concert at Victoria Park. The TRB were to appear along with the Clash, British reggae band Steel Pulse and punk band X-Ray Spex, whose lead singer, Poly Styrene, has become a feminist "heroine." Around 18,000 people were expected.

Danny Kustow and Brian Taylor stood on a street corner as the march started off, waiting for Robinson to join them. 60,000 were on the streets with banners, whistles, placards, steel bands. Punks, gays, students, actors, parent with babies, MPs... Another 20,000 were already reported to be in the park itself. Two months before, "Glad To Be Gay" had been released— on an EP that again propelled the TRB into the limelight. They'd just finished work on their first album, Power In The Darkness with Sex Pistols producer Chris Thomas; the powerful "Up Against The Wall" was the new single. Mark Ambler had quit, which came as no surprise but was done with what Robinson described as: "a wonderful sense of timing," and they were using ex-Roogalator Nick Plytas as a "temporary replacement" on short notice for the concert.

There was no longer talk of a sell out, Robinson managed to keep his sense of balance and turned out to be the only artist on stage who gave the audience what they were looking for—a sense of identification and a political focus. On stage, Robinson looked out at 80.000 people and the band struggled against an inadequate PA system.

TURN TO PAGE 66

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 36

Glad To Be Gay?'

When the TRB's signing to EMI was first announced, the press focus on the band was around the gay issue. As the first rock musician to stand up and say he was gay, Robinson became something of a news story curiosity.

"I ended up back-pedalling on it, almostgoing back to a closet position of denying it. Like, 'Let's not talk about that'because it isn't important.' "

He feels now it was over-reaction. Desperate to point out the links of oppression and how the band are, first and foremost, there for the music, Robinson wanted that backdrop represented more than a single issue. He admitted it was a naive reaction:

"I don't resent the way the business works but I was worried that it might stop people coming to see us. The first time we played some places, where people had only read about us in the press, we often had them coming up afterwards saying: 'We told Harry he should come down but he said he wasn't going to watch a bunch of fellas mincing around blowing kisses to each other.' I supposed wanted them to come just to see and hear them make up their own minds without being biased."

Robinson, now 28, comes from a comfortable middle-class home. When he was a teenager he went to Finchton Manor, a home for disturbed and emotionally maladjusted boys outside London—the place, as it turned out, he first met Danny Kustow. Five years

later he left and, at 21, came to realize he was gay and "came out:"

"The reason I've probably always found it very easy talking about being gay is that I had the easiest 'coming out' in the world. I moved to London, found others who were homosexual and went to a gay pub where I saw these absolutely magnificent young men walking in off the streets not even giving it a second thought if people saw them going into a pub they knew was for dirty queers. I thought: 'What? It doesn't mean men in dirty raincoats; I don't have to hang around public lavatories or walk about with a lisp or a limp wrist.' Up until then I hadn't defined or accepted anything, but then I found out it was like a fish discovering water for the first time—and I just swam from then on."

When he formed his first group, Cafe Society, a soft harmony band, Robinson made his gayness public. But the group was never big enough to gain much attention and finally broke up. After that came three years of starvation, but Robinson was constantly encouraged by friends at the newspaper Gay News to write songs about the things he personally felt. With that backlog of material behind him, he set about starting up the TRB, bringing in Kustow from the earlier days at Finchton, auditioning for a drummer and keyboard player.

Although "Glad To Be Gay" is only one of two songs in the TRB set exclusively devoted to the issue, it's also only the second song in the history of rock 'n' roll to be overtly about its subject matter. Other artists, like Bowie and Reed, have hinted at bisexuality and transvestism, but it took Rod Stewart to make "Georgie" before a sympathetic and determined move was made to present a rock song about gays. Robinson deferred to Stewart: "I have enormous admiration for what he did, as.far as that's concerned. It's not easy and it took a straight man like Stewart, with his kind of following, to write and record a song about a gay« man who was killed. And that song being a huge hit—it must have changed people's attitudes a little."

Although Robinson has had a huge personal response to "Glad To Be Gay," both through letters—which he always answers himself—and through people coming up at concerts saying "Me and my mate used to go 'queer bashing,' you know, but we think your group's great and have you got the words to that song?"—he's never certain he's generally helped the gay issue: "Because I don't conform to preconceptions of what gay men are like. Me standing up on stage looking very normal and natural—people saying 'I'd never have guessed you were gay; you don't look gay'—well I'm not sure if that's good or not. I haven't necessarily helped the camp kids who need all the support they can get."

Such self-doubts and self-criticisms are part and parcel of Robinson's persona—along with the ability to be a PR man in the style of Paul McCartney.

"The fact is," said Robinson, "we want success but we don't want it too quickly. If we're in demand all over the world at the same time it's going to be harder to fight for the space we need to write new songs that reflect the situation now, us now, our personal view of things. And anyway—the higher up the ladder you go in the business, the more unstable it is." fH)