It's grim up north...

 

     The Gents were a club act, a cabaret outfit, little more than a cover group who had the cheek to write the odd song of their own and make records now and again. Which to be honest didn't fit in clubland.  Well that's the cynical view of that half of the band's career, so now I'm going to tell you why that's a completely incorrect and bollocks assessment…

     I first saw the Gents in a club, Pontefract Labour Club, in early 1983, that much is fact.  It also would have to be conceded that had the Gents not played on the working men's and social clubs circuit then I most probably would never had heard of them, so that much I guess I should be grateful for.  Having said that, the truth of the matter is that the Gents were one of the few, if not only bands who have managed to cleverly combine both, a full-time career in the northern clubs and the more street-cred route of being an originals band, writing and performing self-composed songs and playing a different type of gig to a different type of customer, away from the club scene and more in the underground/indie area.  So it's possible that you might be able to count bands like that on the fingers of one finger.

     It could be argued, and I may possibly even be a subscriber in small part to this theory myself, that deciding to be full-time and to make their living out if whilst also aspiring to the dizzy heights of pop business acceptance and commercial success, was the Gents' single biggest mistake, on the basis that the instant you are pigeonholed as a club/cabaret act then breaking through into the national and commercially successful side of the industry is a virtually impossible task to set oneself.  And that's what ground the Gents down in the end, endless slogging around the circuit whilst knowing deep down that their chance had gone.  It was time to move on.

     As I've told you in the Mods! section, when I came across this band for the first time, there wasn't a great deal that moddy going on in the Gents' existence, being in a sort of lull period between modishnesses or whatever you would call it.  So the clubs in the first instance were my staple diet, the only diet, and it was as a consequence of that one-trick type of gig that I was able to comprehend right from the start that as a club band, the Gents were different, precisely in the fact that they wrote their own songs, played them live in between the covers and generally got away with it, having a following in the clubs just as devoted and peripatetic as the indie/moddy people who came to the more rewarding "real" gigs, the mod gigs, the scooter gigs, the student gigs.

     As previously mentioned, I first started seeing the band with my gang of mates, as many times a week as we could make a gig, which with the Gents being a local band meant quite a few!  However, also as previously mentioned, those mates of mine lost interest after several months and so me, still being dead keen on the band and their music, was left to carry on regardless, going round mainly the clubs of South Yorkshire and then when I was a bit better known to them, in the North-East and other places.  The thing is, it was of course a slog to them, but me, not being directly employed by the band, didn't really have to do all the objectionable things like carrying (too much) gear etc.  Having said that, it did become noted after a while that I had developed an extraordinary talent for turning up just as the van had been emptied!

     Apart from the interminable drudgery of seeing the same old Doncaster and Barnsley clubs week after week, month after month, the thing that made it all worthwhile was hearing the songs; it was the Gents, it was their songs, and even the odd decent cover now and again.  That plus the whole experience, just being there, the fans, the funny incidents (which I'll come to in a minute) and all that sort of stuff.  It was just a fun way to spend your evenings, regardless of how many games of bingo you had to put up with.  In short, for me, the pros outweighed the cons.  They certainly didn't put any less effort into the live show just because it was a club!

     However, there was the odd occasion when the two sides of the Gents' Jekyll and Hyde career reared their heads and bit them!  By this I mean some of the times when a gang of mods or scooter boys for instance turned up at a club gig and there was the once or twice where it proved to be an explosive mix and ended up in big fights.  The one particular one which springs to mind was the incident which went down in history as "the Dial House massacre" when the Stocksbridge Scooter boys turned up at a club gig at Dial House WMC in Sheffield and the whole thing turned into a major riot; chairs,  tables and bodies flying everywhere.  Steve Kendell remembers "We just went in the dressing room and cowered.  There was a point when I poked my head out of the dressing room door but a chair came flying over my head and hit the wall!".  Dial House is also the club where they used to film Freddie Trueman's "Indoor League" in the 1970s and I understand from hearsay that an Indoor League finals night at Dial House finished in a similar sort of riot and that was the end of the Indoor League.  It was also the end of the Gents as they were officially banned and never booked to play Dial House again.  The Men's Club have in fact played there since and apparently the concert secretary didn't realise who he'd booked…

     There was another big fight at Skellow Grange one time and it has to be said that there were a small number of times when it was a real problem, with those nutty youth cult types turning up and spoiling the bingo! Skellow Grange weren't so quick to blame the Gents though, because that's where the Men's Club played their first ever gig as one of those Gents/Men's Club/Lip Service triple headers.

     I also recall a gig at a pub called the Winning Post in Moorends near Thorne, where some drunken idiot decided to shout insults about Steve Kendell's mother, so Steve just jumped off the stage and whacked him over the head with a mike stand!  Another place that seemed to get more than its fair share of violent disorder incidents when the Gents were in town was Askern Miners' Welfare.  But talking of violent incidents, I guess the drudgery of the clubs was at times so much that even the band felt like lashing out, which brings to mind the time at Abdul’s Club in Great Houghton when Steve Chambers and Paul Burton exchanged words, probably about something Paul had done which Steve didn’t like and they were found scrapping in the car park, apparently with Chambo trying to bite Paul’s ear off!  At least 20 years before Mike Tyson copied the trick on Evander Holyfield!

     During my time in the company of the band, probably the one thing I got the most used to was seeing different sets of fans come and go.  There are loads and loads of names I could mention, Shirley and Trina from Doncaster, Joanne and Judy from Ackworth, Norman Buckley the pools collector and his daughters Anne and Alison and friend Hazel (who all these years later I still feel I owe an apology to…sorry Hazel), Mark and Billy, Bev and Anna of course, Jason and his sister Gail from Cudworth, Paula, Blowjob and Catherine from Darfield, Hazel, Paula (and the other one whose name I can ‘t remember) Leo and his gang of Doncaster mods, of course Sir Ian McKinnie and the Featherstone boys (who give 'em credit, tended to steer clear of the club gigs), Terry Sutton of Mexborough and his band the Way, Alison, Paul and Andrea, Woody and his Revenge scooter, Ted, Gary, and even the infamous hanger-on Stuart Black didn't stick it out right to the very end.

     And then of course you'd get the fans who'd come along specifically to try and shag the band, you know, the groupies and the gropies etc, but of course I can't talk about that, save to say that at no time did any member of band shag any person whatsoever, male or female, definitely…not at all, never.

     There was one incident regarding some loopy female fans that sticks in the forefront of my mind, which was at a gig at Ryhill and Havercroft WMC, where two nutty girls came into the dressing room, on the lookout for free beer ostensibly. For a joke we offered one of them a glass and she got almost halfway down when her taste buds finally kicked in and told her it was not the amber stuff out of a barrel but the amber stuff out of someone's penis.

     There is one particular thing that needs mentioning on the subject of the Gents and the clubs and the 1980s, because it was something which of course went deep into the culture of the whole club scene at that time, and that was the miners' strike of 1984/85.

     Now working men's clubs were something of which I, previous to the Gents, had zero experience of, and thus it was a real eye-opener to be amongst the very people who were taking part in that seismic event in the history of British social culture.  I personally have never been the slightest fan of Margaret Thatcher, in fact if I had the chance I'd spit on her grave if she was currently dead, on the basis that she was the most divisive Prime Minister of the most divisive Government this country has ever elected.  However, at that time, I have to say that I didn't really have much of a candle for the strikers at that time either, because I just found it such an uneasy thing that the whole thing was based on having had no ballot and no democratic say on the matter.

     In that respect I feel that the blame for pretty much the whole thing lies with Arthur Scargill, who started a strike based on at least as much division and acrimony as the Conservative Government could have ever dreamed up.  Arthur Scargill was a fool in that he allowed Thatcher to lay a trap for him and he willingly fell straight into it, hook, line and sinker, by handing Thatcher and MacGregor the gold-plated gift-wrapped gimmie of no strike ballot.  That way, the miners were handicapped from the start and could never win.  Net result – end of mining industry.  It makes me very sad to see all those communities, devastated by the closures after the strike and to realise that in basic essence Scargill was right.  If only he'd done it with a ballot.  I saw all this at first-hand being as the clubs of South Yorkshire were exactly where I was spending 90% of my time with the band during that year.  Also, it should be noted that both Martin and Paul Burton were ex-miners, having worked at I think Cadeby Colliery before the Gents and so as you can expect, they had some empathy with the situation also.

     Anyway, in relation to the Gents and the strike, I found that the best policy was that whatever your position was, to keep one's mouth shut, as in general that was the sort of debate that you couldn't win and indeed was one that was more likely to get you taken outside and filled in.  The Gents did do a number of miners' benefits during that year and I have to say that it pleasantly surprised me to see how people were able to buckle down and get on with and especially in managing to come to the clubs during that year.  Money was in very short supply in South Yorkshire in 1984/85 and that the clubs managed to keep entertaining their communities with acts like the Gents was commendable indeed.

     Another vaguely related area of gigs on the clubs scene were the nightclub cabaret gigs.  These were just like WMC gigs and used the same roster of club bands in that they were definitely cover gigs, but slightly removed in atmosphere from the WMCs, Social Clubs and Miners' Welfares.  The Gents used to regularly do three or four night stints at the likes of Pussycats in Wakefield (formerly Wakefield Theatre Club), Rooftops Gardens in Wakefield, the former Batley Variety Club, then the Frontier Club (where the Men's Club still occasionally play) and the odd nightclub gig in Barnsley and Doncaster.  They weren't that different from WMC gigs, but just went on a lot later and there were more silly drunk girls about (but like I said, nobody ever, ever…)!

    We had a very silly gig at Rooftop Gardens on Christmas Eve 1986 when the whole band decided to go on stage in fancy dress, which they did, very drunk and I can tell you, the sight of Glyn in a ballet dress was a sight worth seeing!  There was a video of that gig but I'm afraid it hasn't survived.  There might be some photos though…

     Nightclubs were another place where the odd gang of mods or scooter people would cross over and infiltrate in order to see the band, with sometimes predicable results.  I remember my own gang of mates trying to get into a club called the Bar Celona, off Kirkstall Road in Leeds, when they were only 16 or so, so I being 19, went in on my own and then tried to let them in through the toilet window.  It was probably the closest I've ever come to being filled in by doorstaff!

     Well, whilst heading vaguely towards the conclusion for this section, I feel I should mention the fact that it was whilst at a WMC gig, in fact the SYD (Scottish, Yorkshire and Durham Miners' Welfare) Club in Knottingley, whilst at a Gents gig, that I met my first wife Jennifer.  We married in June 1998, six months after she had given birth to our twins, Stuart and Stacey, who are now both nearly 19 and we also had Amy in 1993, who will therefore be 13 this year.  Jennifer separated in 1993 and were divorced in 1997 but whatever the emotional issues attached to all that, the fact can never be taken away that we met at a Gents gig and so it's only because of the Gents that I have three wonderful children.  Steve Kendell was my best man and most of the band came to my wedding.  I have to say that Steve Chambers tried to warn me and I didn't listen (well she was my first girlfriend – honest!), so on that score I have to say "You were right matey!".  I should have known how it was going to go when she told me on that first night that she'd recently been banned from Ferry Fryston Miners' Welfare for fighting! (and that was at a Gents gig too).

     Anyway, in relation to the whole playing on the WMC circuit issue, the truth is that playing in the clubs, three, four, five nights a week is exactly what made the Gents what they were, accomplished musicians, musicians who had lot of their own good tunes and words in them too.  As I've said in the Mods! section, that was something which in some ways worked against them amongst bands and musicians of lesser ability, but the truth is that this wasn't 1976, when being able to play more than two notes in a row was frowned up by the punk cognoscenti, but some of those people seemed to think otherwise.

     So like I said, clubland made the Gents as musically good as they were, and certainly gave many of us some good experiences as well as the "proper" gigs.  The Gents were almost unique in that they fitted well in club gigs whilst at the same time fitting well into an originals career and almost pulled it off.

 

…almost.