Three Sevens. Songs and Jukeboxes

“From Rotherhithe to Putney Bridge me love I was declaring

And she from Kew to Isleworth her love for me was swearing

Love it set me heart a-burning, flow sweet river flow

Never saw the tide was turning sweet Thames flow softly…”

So sang Planxty at the Ritz cinema in my hometown in the early 1970s. The queue stretched west across the bridge. It was said [that] 70 years earlier the piper Dinny Delaney enchanted listeners here on market days on this same bridge. Now Planxty sang enchanting a new generation to take to/in their native music; bridging the gap. That cinema straddled a river; Ireland’s longest. It’s said the town took its name from the original ford, the ford of the moon.

A few years later; I’m on Putney Bridge, London SW15. Putney’s Half Moon pub was my employer. A bridge and the moon once again. The river Thames cut a huge swathe through the big bustling city landscape, curving gracefully in a huge arc moving northwards and to the right towards Kew.

They’ve brewed beers in this area and at the same brewery site since the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. Good Queen Bess, as she was known, commissioned Athlone’s first bridge in her reign. Putney had to wait about another two hundred years for a bridge.

Records of Young's ‘Ram’ Brewery go back to 1531. Many of the pubs in London SW15 bear the Youngs name, the beer is pulled by hand pumps. Youngs, whose family ran the brewery for generation, kept to the old tradition. Traditions run both long and strong here; The Boat Race starts here. Two to three boat clubs share a huge communal slipway down to the water. The cream of Oxford and Cambridge rowing talent carry the boats aloft to the water's edge like some surreal sixteen-legged millipedes. It was a Britain happy with itself here.

Fulham FC's tall floodlight pylons stood advertising themselves over the tree-lined promenade. It had the name of a friendly relaxed club by the riverbank. The TV cameras had come one time in the days of Johnny Haynes and Jimmy Hill, but had left again. By this stage the club still languished in the old Third Division. Nowadays Fulham FC sit amid the giants of the Premier Division, indeed mostly because of an influx of ‘new money’ (how dare they…?!) and the TV cameras are back.

The Half Moon was among the UK capital’s premier music pubs. Liam O’Flynnn of Planxty was a regular visitor. Christy Moore also lists it among the several London venues he has played at. Not much room for a jukebox here, I think the saloon bar had one. Leo Sayer would sing about When I Need Love on Capital Radio. David Soul did not want to be given up on. Was it a TV series signature tune?

One night the Bushwhackers came. ‘They play Australian music,’ someone said. They brought a huge following. One man wielded what resembled a wooden telegraph pole bearing a number of tambourines. He thumped it off the ground to the melody. And not a diddgerydoo in sight. A Horslips tribute band having dropped a few lines of acid; that’s what they sounded like.

An elderly gentleman frequented the public bar in the mornings. He was a resident of an old person’s home at nearby Barnes Common. That same location was to claim Marc Bolan later on that year.

Piccadilly Circus, Leicester Square, Covent Garden, Holborn, Kings Cross/St Pancras, Caledonian Road, Holloway Road, Arsenal, Finsbury Park, Manor House, Turnpike Lane. The Tube stations read like the Stations of the Cross. One station had a pub’s name. It was said the pub’s landlord had huge bets on Offaly to win the All-Ireland in the early 1970s.

I’m in Wood Green, North London, now. The pub bore the name of the last Irish-born British Prime Minister. I’d to work a week in hand before getting a wage packet. Red Rum won his third Grand National the first weekend I was there. Having had backed it, I didn’t need to get a ‘sub’ on my wages.

The landlord was from what used to be Ireland’s tidiest town. He bore a stately look; a look of a pope, he could easily fit into a film about the Vatican. Some customers used to say he wave or extended his arm pope-like upon saying ‘hello’ to them.

The National Front rallied outside the Wellington one Saturday afternoon. A counter protest rally was lined up further up the road. The police walked three to six abreast alongside the marchers. You could hear the footsteps padding the road in the near silence and the tension. A loudspeaker sounded somewhere in the distance. The clip-clop of mounted police horses cut through the silence. ‘The Front’ as they were known, wanted a conversion back to an England of warm beer, cricket games on the green, and above all, true ethnicity of ‘their’ England.

Inside in the saloon bar of the Wellington one English man’s account of a conversation frequently sounded on the jukebox. Peter Gabriel sang about Climbing Up On Solsbury Hill.

This was a different England; one at war if not itself, elements within were. It was a year after the Grunwick strikes and pickets. A white building over yonder east in Tottenham, I could spot it from my bedroom window, turned out to be Broadwater Farm. It was the scene of the famous 1981 riots. I recognised it from the news clips.

‘Music is a world within itself

With a language we all understand

With an equal opportunity

For all to __ dance and clap their hands’

So went the lines of Stevie Wonder’s You Duke.

Bob Marley’s music of exodus and redemption sung with passion and gusto did it for me when they played on the jukebox. He sang about another world. Redemption for another people; they got promised car assembly jobs in Dagenham; that would be their (reputed) redemption.

Boz Skaggs opening words of One For the Road. ‘Lido missed that boat that day he left the shack….’would momentarily take me back Athlone and the Shack.

‘Give us a brew man’ a half-cast looking man would order. He always had what looked like a teacosy on his head.

A man told me in the public bar he marched around Athlone Barracks during the war. He used to take his landlady’s red setter dog with him into the bar. My own father told me he took turf from the bogs to Dublin’s Phoenix Park. They claimed they used to wet the turf it so it would weigh more. They could well have met up in the effort of war. It’s not known what Hitler would have made of heaps of turf laying around the place.

This was the generation I was meeting. They’d never gone home; stuck in a time warp; probably now never to return. Many of them tuned into Radio Eireann on a Sunday afternoon to pick on the GAA results. Now once again they’d meet coming across, another generation of Irish emigrants forced to leave. And that after all the promise of the 1970s.

Manchester United 2; Liverpool 1. I watched that cup final upstairs, one man had a TV in his room. That same evening I served a man in the public bar. He happened to tell me he was Wembley’s head groundsman. He was indeed; I found out. He lived not far away.

Chanson D’Amour by Manhattan Transfer was always on Capital 194. It was their sole UK number one hit. Their own US market in comparison ignored it. It was preceded at number one by Leo Sayers ‘When I Need Love’ and in turn followed by ABBA’s ‘Knowing You Knowing Me.’

‘Fanfare for the Common Man’ was another track always played on Capital Radio 194.

On the jukebox the guitar riff near the end of Andrew Gould’s Lonely Boy sounded like Focus.

Hampstead, a lovely leafy suburb, and the Heath. I bought a London Times that day. I read that Liam Cosgrave was rallying the troops at his party conference calling a General Election.

Tales abounded the Galtymore and such places. But I wanted to get away from showbands and their ilk; I never went.

Indians running corner shops. The term sliced ‘pan’ remained completely unknown to them.

ELP Fanfare for the Common Man was another always playing on Capital Radio 194.

A black African priest said Mass in St Pauls in Wood Green - the first time I’d seen it.

At QPR and Arsenal games, Gerry Daly played for Derby at Highbury. I saw lawn bowling for the first time in Finsbury Park; a ‘genteel’ pursuit.

Finsbury Park nowadays hosts the London ‘Fleadh’ – marking or celebrating a newer sense of Irishness in music.

That era, the late 70s was a peculiar era in music. Punk was ‘in’, so was New Wave. The era of Led Zeppelin and that brand of heavy [metal] rock music or once termed ‘progressive rock’ had peaked. Zep (I was a big fan) were playing big gigs in US, they were being reviewed but from somewhat at a distance in NME and Melody Maker as if their star had waned. Their concert film ‘The Song Remains the Same’ wasn’t even showing in London cinemas anymore. I recall looking for screenings for it in Time Out Magazine.

Alexandra Palace was not for away. It carried an entire vista of faded glory cast atop a quite picturesque hill. It was a big empty shell inside. I think it was an heirloom from the old GLC days and nobody knew just what to do with it. The BBC’s first live TV broadcasts came from here. There was a disused racecourse in the grounds. The summit had a spectacular view over London.

CAMRA ran a one-day folk festival here one bank holiday Monday. The group, they were nearly a ‘cult’ at the time, have tirelessly campaigned for years to get ‘real beer’ returned. I had cut my teeth drinking Youngs bitters. I’d a great evening drinking real ale listening to committed ‘folkies’ like Noel Murphy and Nick Pickett singing English folk ballads. ‘Ally Pally’ has been back in the news since, hosting boxing plus more recently a major snooker tournament. At one stage several years ago it was gutted in a huge fire.

I recall somewhat fitting in here in among a hotchpotch of Irish, West Indians, Polish. They supplied the ‘underclass’ the British wanted; needed even; to clean the platforms of the Tube stations and such like.

I moved back home, I was young, I would still have my (at that stage it seemed) long life in front of me, being still relatively carefree. It was only a ‘job’ and ‘work’ after all. Too early yet; my life was before me to thinking about ‘work’ or a ‘job’, not to mention a ‘career’.

Well, that was my thinking at that time.

II

I’m traipsing up Kilburn High Road looking a ‘Black’ Lion pub. (Who put colours on these lions?’ Who ever saw a ‘black’ lion?) The man running the pub wasn’t there when I asked for him by name. Upon returning to the agency I told this to the agency woman. It was she who had sent me out to Kilburn.

‘Did you show them the card?’ ‘No,’ I told her. I still don’t know what the point of showing this card. I had asked for him. Would the man have suddenly have appeared by magic from under the floor upon production of this apparently magic card? Maybe magicians carry Equity cards.

Another day; another agency; another interview; another pub. The Tube station nearby to the suburban pub was a (distinctive) modernist designed building. I’m ushered into a back office or store of a pub. The barman resembled a kind benign clergyman; he had a red beard. A woman listened to me.

‘I’ll tell the guvnor’ was all she said, a cigarette still in her mouth, having never left it.

‘I’ll tell the guvnor about you,’ she said again. They were the (to her anyway) some assuring-sounding words. She was clad in slippers. I was to ring back in a day or so.

I rang at the designated time; however the phone stayed engaged.

‘Oh it’s you’ her voice declared when I (finally) got through. That job wasn’t for me.

‘What county man are you?’ The man asked. My mind envisioned a hat with the names of all 32 counties written down on tickets about to be drawn out.

‘Westmeath’, I told him.

‘Good’ he said, upon hearing the Lake County invoked. It seemed to press the right button.

‘Call down to me.’ I wondered if I’d said ‘Fermanagh…’ what would have (the) his reaction have been? Numerous phone calls from phone kiosks, Tube stations, and wherever were at last beginning to pay off.

I’m back to London looking for a job, yet again. It’s a warm Summer of ’87. I’d rung this pub on a notion, I’ve forgotten how I’d thought of ringing it. Funds had gone perilously low having come here come on-spec to get work. I’d become an expert in fare dodging on the Tube.

I had confidence in the man; he sounded honest. That couldn’t be said about some I had contacted. Upon contacting him after the weekend he gave me the job. I’d have a room, board and above all, wages to replenish my diminished funds. I’ve an honour of working in both South London’s Half Moon pubs but just ten years apart; both were popular music venues. This was the Half Moon, Herne Hill.

‘And If I Stop . .(double drumbeat)
Then Tell Me Just What
Will I Do’

So went Michael Jackson's lines on the video jukebox. From my viewpoint ‘And if I stop’ now, my studies would grind to a halt. I had one year completed as a mature student in university; I needed to fund my second year.

Not long after starting I was asked was I from ‘southern’ Ireland? I replied that I was. I was living in Cork and studying; I still don’t know was the landlord wondering had I ‘abdicated’ on my native County Westmeath. The ‘southern’ Ireland term threw me.

One gentleman came most mornings early, he looked like a retired chap. ‘I worked here once,’ he told me, sounding sort of proud of it.

‘But I worked for the brewery,’ the man told me in a confidential tone at the end of the counter.

‘I worked for the brewery. I didn’t work for the landlord…’ The word ‘brewery’ was mentioned as if it was MI5 he’d been working for.

‘Oh.’ I absorbed all in confessional style. ‘I see.’

(The pub was in fact a ‘managed’ pub. All the staff were technically employed by the brewery who also owned the pubs. Some pubs had a landlord where he would both take on the staff and technically employ them. Since then it has changed a lot as regards pub ownership and breweries merging and so on.)

A nearby burnt out British Rail station house had been rebuilt and revived as a bar. It was one of a chain of real ale pubs; the Firkin chain. They took, appropriately enough, the name The Phoenix and Firkin. I think an Irish Stock Exchange company became a vehicle to finance and set up the Firkin company. My ‘Youngs experience’ came into use again in sampling the beers brewed in-house. I recall ‘Dog Bolter’ was the strongest one; very much so.

The distinctive opening sounds of the Pet Shop Boys ‘It’s a Sin’ would sound on that video jukebox.

Walking up nearby nearby Railton Road, Brixton, I observed I was the only white person on the entire thoroughfare. Here Garvey, Kenyatta, Mandela gave their names to streets, avenues, blocks of flats. ‘What Happened to the Heroes’ sang the Stranglers about ten years earlier. In this area these folk did indeed have heroes; major ones at that, and these often recognized well before the general population. Then, at that stage, Nelson still languished in Devils Island prison.

At a Sunday morning live jam session I recognized a sax player; he looked very familiar. I enquired. He was John Earle, one time player with Thin Lizzy, the Boomtown Rats and maybe Graham Parker. He has spent time in Dublin and passed away only a few years ago.

College life expanded my interests and horizons that London would show up. The Guardian on sale at a kiosk under a big railway arch for fifty pence. Luxury.

A Lorca play (he was on my Spanish course) produced at the Cottlesloe Theatre. Juliet Stevenson was just outstanding as Yerma portraying Lorca’s harsh rural southern Spain.

‘….and the night goes by so very slow…’ sang Heart in ‘Alone’ on that video jukebox. It was a busy place so the nights didn’t go all that slowly; luckily.

One night a rumpus in the bar, loud noise. I thought someone had thrown something at the window. A girl’s voice called out for people to get down, she crouched down. In the following silence a small pane of glass lay broken showing a small hole. I didn’t know just what had happened. A man’s head, a nice elderly man we all knew, lay flat on a table he had drinking at. The glass from the small window lay in pure powder on the floor. Someone had let off a shotgun at the window. Happily the man was all right after hospital treatment. I think among the only one who immediately knew what had happened was the young lady. She evidently immediately knew what the sound of gunshot was; wherever she’d been before…

This was Thatcher’s Britain. The underclass, the immigrants were all still here to do all the menial jobs no-one in Mrs Thatcher’s England wanted to do—or to be seen doing.

A trip into London and onto the Docklands Light Railway. You took off into a different world to see Docklands and the mega-development; a complete different world; the age of the Yuppie.

I flew back to Cork on the very day of registration for second year, my first year debts paid inside the nick of time, so I could borrow for my second year.

Paul Brady was playing in Cork City Hall that evening. I paid my last sterling to get in.

“I want to take you to the island,” he sang.

I had taken myself back. I was home.

III

Dateline January 1997

The pub could have done with a jukebox. Any kind of a machine with simple florescent lights inside it. And with it the melody of some a good old country and Irish song. Or even standing there silent; its presence would have added effect. While placed on top of the jukebox one of those distinctive beer tumblers only known to British pubs with a tired looking Guinness head on it.

There wasn’t even the Pogues, or Van Morrison playing background music on a CD.

I’m on a short whistle-stop holiday from Dublin to London. I’m in what’s basically a shell of a former English pub. It’s masquerading to be one of the more, by now, trendy ‘Irish’ pubs. These catered for the ‘new’ Irish’. All I saw were painted wooden walls; some framed Guinness adverts, that’s it. Pretty atmosphereless; especially on a January weeknight.

Seeing as such places cater for the generation fifty five minutes away from home, I thought it opportune to order Guinness. Well, seeing there were now the ‘sophisticated’ Irish here I thought the stout would travel well.

I noticed the Guinness taps were the distinctive black taps. Always in Britain the Guinness taps were tiny red taps, often lay unseen. I observed to the barman about this; I’d never seen those taps in a British pub before. But any such observations, never mind an instruction to top up the pint the correct way, was met with first indifference, and then hostility from the staff.

If they wanted ‘Irish’, well it was ‘their’ version of Irishness they wanted or basically what tourists thought Irishness was; so long as it attracted in the tourists and rang the cash register. They didn’t seem interested in the authentic or anyone claiming to be the ‘authentic’; it interfered with their vision of it. What they wanted and were interested was the fake; the garish; the pastiche model.

Maybe the name MacNasty has some connotations…….

Funnily enough quite nearby I spotted a pub which was a former ‘Firkin’ pub. (Oh well, when in Rome and all of that….) I enjoyed a pint of their bitter, brewed in-house, quiet, almost quaint pub, a pleasant barman and what more do you ask for.

I’d seen enough. I’d know now where to find the authentic.

I was catching a 9pm sleeper from nearby Euston in a few hours.

(More coming here...)

IV

A towering apartment block now occupies the site of Athlone’s Ritz Cinema. Facing the river, the apartment balconies address the river front like some giant cruise liner docked in port. In comparison, Scott’s Ritz cinema design ignored the river, presenting the river front with a complete blank wall. A space underneath for a café or restaurant stayed unused right through all the cinema’s existence. At least the current Custume Pier development makes allowances for the waterfront. And the space below is utilized nowadays too.

Custume Pier nods towards history with Sergeant Custume being among the main protagonists of a famous battle in 1691. (His rival Ginkel did give his name to a local nearby night club – but the name has since gone again.)

But of the Ritz some memories do remain. In Gertie Browns pub, in among an impressive ___ of memorabilia sits a sign, ‘The Pit’. It’s displayed illuminated. The sign had not far to be moved; the pub adjoins the old cinema back entrance. The sign sits somewhat forlorn in this new world almost seeking some authority or credence for itself. But located here in among a varied set of paraphernalia all of some resonance to locals, the old sign still manages to evoke memories and familiarity to locals who view it.

Beside it an old Ritz cinema poster, I believe dated from the 1950s. Moby Dick is one of the films up for show that week in the1950s. Ironically what I assume was among the original artist’s impression of the cinema remained a practical logo for the cinema. It’s on the poster and was always on the Ritz posters. It’s possible to gauge Scott’s Modernist vision of the cinema. By the late 1970s the impressive glass front and doors were all gone and changed.

Two short footnotes:-

Athlone Bridge has had a cinema at each side alongside the bridge. Prior to the Ritz, the Father Matthew Hall on the opposite side, was itself a cinema. It may have been the ‘Savoy’ at some stage, but I think it was mostly used and named as ‘The Father Matthew Hall’ when even as a cinema. On research I’ve located, it’s claimed that London’s Putney Bridge has the distinction of having a church at both sides; and it’s the only one in London to have this distinction.

Youngs ‘Ram’ Brewery, Wandsworth, only shut and finally moved a few years ago. The original Young’s were still in the business having marked the 150^th year of their family involvement in 1981. Practically in the week of the brewery closing, the last of the direct Young's descendants died. Youngs moved to a new brewery with Wells and Youngs. But I understand the Youngs shareholders sold out their stake a while ago to Wells. One presumes the Youngs name will live on. Currently, a Youngs pub in Wandsworth is being run by an Athlone native.