The Stiff Records Story
If it Ain’t Stiff, It Ain’t My Story
Paul Robinson writes
As a teenager growing up Surrey in the 70s, I had one bad habit.
Not perhaps what you are thinking. I'd discovered pop music - and every penny I received for birthday and Christmas was spent on records. When I was old enough to get part time jobs, I couldn't only afford singles, but albums. I recall late nights at friend’s houses listening back-to-back to Tubular Bells, Dark Side of the Moon, Ziggy Stardust & the Spiders from Mars and Houses of the Holy. We’d share the cost of buying the albums between us as friends, making cassette copies on C120s so that we all had every record.
By 1974, a new world opened up when a friend passed his driving test and bought a Simca van. It wasn’t luxurious, but now we could get to London without relying on the BR train service to Waterloo.
The first band I saw live was Hawkwind, as much for the music as the outrageous dancing by Stacia and Liquid Lens light show, but I soon realised that the real excitement was in the pubs.
I'll never forget seeing Dr. Feelgood for the first time in that sweaty, cramped basement at The Hope and Anchor, Islington, in August 74. Lee Brilleaux in his crisp white suit belting out the vocals, and that manic wide-eyed stare and frenetic machine gun guitar style of Wilko Johnson. This was exciting music. When their debut single, Roxette, came out that November I went straight to my local Harlequin Records in Camberley.
The pub rock scene in London was a playground with venues like the Marquee, The Greyhound and the 100 Club becoming my regular haunts hosting bands such as Kilburn and the High Roads (fronted by the then unknown Ian Dury), the 101s (with Joe Strummer) Ducks Deluxe and Eddie and the Hot Rods.
By 1976, all these venues started putting on bands with a different energy. They were raw, anti-establishment, angry and aggressive. I saw the Stranglers before they had hits, The Damned, just after New Rose came out on Stiff, and Generation X. Punk wasn’t yet a “thing”, but it was an energy, and it was building.
When Stiff Records released its first single on the 14th August So It Goes, I bought it. I bought singles by bands I had never heard of because they were on Stiff. Which other label could put out records by Richard Hell and Max Wall? And I loved buying records by local Camberley artists. Do you remember Solitary Confinement by The Members?
I can’t ever say I was a punk. I’ve never worn a safety pin. But the invitation to produce The Stiff Records Story for Boom was a wonderful chance to revisit my youth and meet some of the artists I was besotted with.
It was also a joy to spend time with Dave Robinson, Stiff’s outspoken, but brilliant MD now aged in his 80s and Jona Lewie, our documentary host. Jona (pictured above in 1981) invited me to tea and cakes (Vanilla whirls, cut in half!) in his kitchen, from where he hosted the programme.
Enjoy The Stiff Records Story on Boom Rock, Holiday Monday, August 31st at 6pm repeated Thursday September 3rd at 9pm on Boom Radio.
