I’m Alright Jack<\/a><\/p>\nAbsolutely thumping third 7″single from T.R.B. both sides that could have been written for the state of society and the labour goverment in 2008, let alone\u00a0the state of society and the\u00a0labour goverment in 1978, exactly thirty years ago.<\/p>\n
Tom Robinson jettisonned his band Cafe Society after he attended a Sex Pistols gig and got\u00a0to work\u00a0on a band that\u00a0what would become the overtly political T.R.B.<\/p>\n
Storming stuff from a great band.<\/p>\n
The debut 7″ single from Jam Today, a hardcore lesbian -feminist band mentioned by Tom Robinson\u00a0in the excellent N.M.E. article below can be found on this site if you use the search function.<\/p>\n
![](\"http:\/\/i192.photobucket.com\/albums\/z149\/pengy1966\/pengy1966%20stuff\/KYPP489.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
NEW MUSICAL EXPRESS – February 11 1978
\nBy Phil McNeill<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n\nPictures of naked young women are fun
\nIn Titbits and Playboy, page three of The Sun
\nThere\u2019s no nudes in Gay News, our one magazine,
\nBut they still find ways to call it obscene . . .<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\nLong before Mary Whitehouse ever discovered the hideous charge if \u2018blasphemous libel\u2019 on which she spiked Gay News last year, the vigilante forces of our nation had worked out another method of hurting Europe\u2019s foremost homosexual newspaper. If anything, it was even more slimy than Whitehouse\u2019s tactic. See, Gay News has always been most careful to stay within the highly flexible limits of the laws governing obscenity. Like the song says, no nudes, no porn, no sensationalism. No way could GN be found to contravene the Obscene Publications law. But \u2013 and this was the BIG but that the authorities latched onto sometime around 1974 \u2013 just because a paper isn\u2019t obscene doesn\u2019t mean you can\u2019t take it to court. It may come out of the case innocent, but the British courts have a clever way of fining the innocent: LEGAL COSTS.<\/p>\n
Twice in 1974 GN fell victim to the British legal system. Police swooped on newsagents in Bath and some other south coast town, took the paper to court \u2013 and the judge, although deeming the magazine innocent, refused to award legal costs, thus depriving it of the several thousand pounds required to mount its defence against the police\u2019s rejected charges. It was at a benefit to raise funds for one of these Gay News legal battles that I first saw Tom Robinson. The venue was the Royal Mail pub in Upper Street, Islington, the date late 1974. A typically jolly gay get-together it was. GN editor Denis Lemon \u2013 already a hero and potential martyr to the people there \u2013 blushingly handed out the prizes in the raffle, and then, to fill the gap before the headlining drag queen made her entrance, a pallid youth got up on the stage and diffidently strummed out a totally unmemorable little ditty he\u2019d just penned.<\/p>\n
That young man, of course, was Tom Robinson. If you\u2019d told me then that three years later he would be leading one of the fiercest rock \u2018n\u2019 roll bands in the country, you would have been laughed out the door. So how did he get from sentimental acoustic love songs to Whitehall-up-against-the-wall? The glib answer would be; money. It would be very easy to accuse Tom Robinson of jumping onto a political slogan bandwagon just as the whole \u2018movement\u2019 gathered impetus in late \u201976 \u2013 and people have already done so. One of those people, who has known Tom for five years now, is Ray Davies.<\/p>\n
A well known groover, rock ‘n’ roll user,
\nWanted to be a star.
\nBut he failed the blues, and he’s back to loser,
\nPlaying folk in a cafe bar.
\nReggae music didn’t seem to satisfy his needs.
\nHe couldn’t handle modern jazz,
\n‘Cause they play it in difficult keys.
\nBut now he’s found a music he can call his own,
\nSome people call it junk, but he don’t care,
\nHe’s found a home.<\/em>He’s the prince of the punks and he’s finally made it,
\nThinks he looks cool but his act is dated.
\nHe acts working class but it’s all boloney,
\nHe’s really middle class and he’s just a phony.
\nHe acts tough but it’s just a front,
\nThe prince of the punks.<\/em>He tried to be gay, but it just didn’t pay,
\nSo he bought a motorbike instead.
\nHe failed at funk, so he became a punk,
\n‘Cause he thought he’d make a little more bread.
\nHe’s been through all of the changes,
\nFrom rock opera to Mantovani.
\nNow he wears a swastika badge
\nAnd leather boots up past his knees.
\nHe’s much too old at twenty-eight,
\nBut he thinks he’s seventeen,
\nHe thinks he’s a stud,
\nBut I think he looks more like a queen.<\/em>He’s the prince of the punks and he’s finally made it,
\nThinks he looks cool but his act is dated.
\nHe talks like a cockney but it’s all boloney,
\nHe’s really middle class and he’s just a phony.
\nHe acts tough but it’s just a front
\nThe prince of the punks<\/p>\n<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Thus spake Uncle Ray on the B-side of his recent seasonal opus, \u2018Father Christmas\u2019. Sure, it could be applied to most current bandwagon jumpers \u2013 indeed, Ray denies that it was written with Tom in mind \u2013 except that Robinson is generally believed to be 28 (he\u2019s actually 27), he does have a motorbike, he is gay, he did use to sing in a coffee bar (Caf\u00e9 Society had a residency at Bunjies when they first signed to Konk), he is middle class, he does adopt a Cockney accent for a couple of songs . . . and he does want to be a star. Oh yes \u2013 and here\u2019s the rub \u2013 he\u2019s finally made it too. Even among TRB admirers, the question nags; what the hell was Tom Robinson doing in that wimpy band all those years? How come he\u2019s only just started playing hard, committed rock in the past year? So . . . what I\u2019d like to do is explain why Tom was in a basically heterosexual band in the first place, to counter some of the more disdainful write-offs of Caf\u00e9 Society that have gone down in recent Tom Robinson interviews, and to trace Robinson\u2019s path from indifference to dedicated activism and (as he would claim) back to non-activity.<\/p>\n
A very rough chronology: Tom Robinson met Ray Doyle and Hereward Kaye in Middlesbrough around 1969\/70. Tom \u2018came out\u2019 around 1971\/72. Caf\u00e9 Society was formed in 1973 after a reunion with Doyle and Kaye in London. His first \u2018political\u2019 act was to work at Gay Switchboard, which he did from early \u201974 to late \u201975. In other words, although he was openly homosexual by the time he formed Cafe Society, he was not \u2018politicised\u2019. By the time he was, his career with Caf\u00e9 Society was well underway. Being a gay activist began virtually as a hobby, and at first had little or no relevance to his \u2018day job\u2019. Maybe this calls into question Robinson\u2019s increasingly frantic \u2018commitment\u2019 \u2013 coinciding as it has done with his increased success – but I think not. In fact, if we pry into Tom Robinson\u2019s past we see a remarkably clear-cut path of self-realisation and action.<\/p>\n
Early in 1975 he did his first ever interview. It was in Gay News.
\nQ: What do you see as your responsibility within the gay movement?
\nA: Just to be openly that I think. If every gay in Britain were to come out overnight, an awful lot of the prejudice and ignorance that abounds among hets would disappear. This is a thing that so many people don\u2019t realise about coming out. They imagine that if they come out people will think they\u2019re a \u2018nasty queer\u2019, whereas in fact when one comes out with one\u2019s friends they change their idea of what a \u2018nasty queer\u2019 is. A lot of people rationalise their fears about coming out. They say they\u2019d lose their job or it would hurt their friends too much. One has to be very scrupulously honest with oneself to make sure one\u2019s not making excuses. I was lucky in that I have a very tolerant father, who is heartily in favour of all forms of sexuality except asexuality.
\nQ: There are always times \u2013 when one meets someone on a train, say \u2013 when it would be so much easier not to come out to them. Do you have that sort of experience?
\nA: Yes, there are always occasions when one does find oneself passing (\u2018passing for straight\u2019 being opposite of \u2018coming out of the closet\u2019). I wonder if there is such a thing as a totally come-out person? I expect there is . . .<\/p>\n
Tom Robinson has since become such \u2018a totally come-out person\u2019 that he now says that he is \u201can \u2018Uncle Tom\u2019. I\u2019m a straight man\u2019s homosexual . . . a lone homosexual in straight circles.\u201d In passing \u2013 we happened to be talking about a song from TRB\u2019s new EP, \u2018Right On Sister\u2019, and in what ways men could or could not support women\u2019s rights \u2013 Tom told me recently that he would \u201cdeeply resent a heterosexual writing about what it\u2019s like to be a male homosexual.\u201d I\u2019m already aware of the trap, having encountered a bit of flak for supposedly patronising women whilst criticising the Stranglers\u2019 sexism on \u2018Rattus Norvegicus\u2019. All the same, I reckon it\u2019s possible for anyone to think about major personal \u2018confessions\u2019 from their own lives, then to consider the stigma attached to homosexuality \u2013 after all, it\u2019s only ten years since it was illegal! \u2013 and begin to appreciate the pressures on gays not to come out. Hopefully this may go some way to explain why when Tom first joined Caf\u00e9 Society he was apparently prepared to sublimate his sexuality in a group format, rather than storm the barricades from the first minute he registered with an oppressed minority. (\u201cRegistering\u2019 is actually the telling appellation Tom gives to his decision to become a member of the CHE \u2013 the Campaign for Homosexual Equality.) And then of course, there was Caf\u00e9 Society\u2019s music \u2013 which was actually very good. I interviewed Tom for \u2018Let It Rock\u2019 in June 1975, and asked him then if he might not be happier in \u2018an all-gay band\u2019. \u201cI suppose I might consider it,\u2019 he replied, \u201cbut they\u2019d have to be incredible, because I really believe in Caf\u00e9 Society.\u201d<\/p>\n
At that time Caf\u00e9 Society were, I guess, at about the peak of their blighted career. Their sole album had just been released; everything before them led up to it, subsequent events lust led down. From the start, Caf\u00e9 Society were an imaginative, \u2018professional\u2019 trio. The demo tape they cut for Ray Davies \u2013 the one that persuaded him to sign them early in \u201974 \u2013 contained a couple of the songs that would finish up on their debut album 18 months later. Even at that early stage, the crafted harmonies that gave the band its principal raison d\u2019etre were inch-perfect. The album is still good. On the inner sleeve, each member wrote a note about another: Tom on Raphael, Ray on Hereward, Hereward on Tom.<\/p>\n
\n\u201cI sing the song of my friend Tom
\nGetting ready for his evening cruise
\nHe looks askance in his baggy pants
\nAnd sparkling tennis shoes
\nHe grabs his scarf and his other half
\nAnd they\u2019re gone before there\u2019s time to glance
\n\u2018Cos it\u2019s Friday night and tonight\u2019s the night
\nThey go to King\u2019s Cross to dance
\nOn a silent shelf there\u2019s a photo of himself
\nAnd harmonicas from A to G
\nA reel-to-reel, an A.S. Neil
\nAnd a letter to the NME.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\nThey were a sentimental band. Ray: \u201cHereward is a top hat and a rose, a mask and a melody, a song and a smile. He\u2019s corny \u2013 we should all be so lucky.\u201d Top hat and rose indeed \u2013 there was a real corny side to Caf\u00e9, a penchant for music hall which came out in their one single, \u2018The Whitby Two-Step\u2019, and which is still uncomfortably prevalent in TRB\u2019s \u2018Martin\u2019. But Ray, as Tom put it, \u201csang with a frightening intensity\u201d. A great singer, with a lovely, warm rasp to his voice. Combined with Hereward\u2019s lyrical passion and Tom\u2019s deft arrangements, it made for an album, which deserved to sell considerably more than the derisory 600 copies it finally shifted. Robinson was more impatient than the others \u2013 though none of them speak too highly of Ray Davies and Konk\u2019s record (or lack of \u2013 they eventually bust up because the second album never looked like seeing the light of day). Had more Caf\u00e9 Society products actually crept onto the market, the band might still be together, and the Tom Robinson Band might not exist.<\/p>\n
On the other hand, Tom\u2019s entry into the world of sexual politics definitely caused a certain amount of aggro in Caf\u00e9 Society. At the same time as he gradually became frustrated within the confines of a band he now terms \u201cgreat, but hopelessly \u201860s\u201d, so Kay and Doyle became irritated by Tom\u2019s attempts to inject gay content into the stage act. He now compares their feelings then to how he would feel if one of his band was a health food freak who insisted on singing songs about the evils of white bread . . . The first real infiltration of gay matter into Caf\u00e9\u2019s material was, in fact, quite absurd. Soon after he first started working with Gay Switchboard, Robinson became involved with Gay Representation Action Group, who wanted to get a radio programme together for gay people. Tom wrote a jolly little jingle for the show \u2013 which, as far as I\u2019m aware, never reached the airwaves \u2013 and somehow it got into Caf\u00e9\u2019s set.<\/p>\n
Audiences for the likes of The Kinks, Barclay James Harvest and Leo Sayer \u2013 all of whom the trio supported on tour \u2013 would blink with amazement when the three guys strumming guitars would suddenly gather at the mike and croon;<\/p>\n
\n\u201cIf you\u2019re down in London town and happen to be gay
\nThere\u2019s a great information service open every day
\nIt will tell you who and where and when and how and why and more
\nOn eight three double seven three two four.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\nEnd of jingle. The Gay Switchboard number, incidentally, is still the same. Perhaps, understandably, the bigger the audience they played it to, the more embarrassed the other two began to feel. As it happens, the jingle did get played on the radio. \u201cKenny Everett played it once,\u201d grins Tom, \u201cand for an hour afterwards Gay Switchboard was swamped with calls with the answer to the Capital Radio Competition.\u201d<\/p>\n
But let us digress to Gay Switchboard. Up till his stint with them, Tom\u2019s only gay \u2018involvement\u2019 had been to attend a few discos. Then a friend casually invited him to come over and see what went on, and Tom decided to join in. \u201cI was just an ordinary volunteer,\u201d he recalls, \u201cIt\u2019s in King\u2019s Cross \u2013 this office with three phones and two or three volunteers on a shift.\u201d Tom used to work an afternoon a week. \u201cThe phones were just manned 24 hours a day. You\u2019d get these calls in the middle of the night saying (adopts deep Scottish voice); \u2018I\u2019m in Abercrombie, and I think I\u2019m a lesbian\u2019 (laughs) \u2013 or somebody in Hampstead police station who\u2019d just been arrested. You were like the ambulance service to the front lines. You really saw what was going on at the front, in the daily lives of ordinary homosexuals right across the country. There were calls from people who\u2019d never spoken to another gay person in their lives . . . a lot of silent calls. The phone would ring, and they wouldn\u2019t say anything, but they wouldn\u2019t hang up either. You\u2019d just talk to them, constantly, reassuringly, until you got them to talk. I always used to do that because that was what you were told to do \u2013 just on faith \u2013 until the first time I actually persuaded somebody to talk after five minutes. After that it was just a natural thing, because there really was somebody at the other end. Or you\u2019d ask them to tap the phone so you\u2019d know there was somebody there, listening. Terrified people all across the country calling you.\u201d<\/p>\n
Even so, Tom Robinson still wasn\u2019t angry. I remind him of that first time I saw him, the GN benefit gig at the Royal Mail, and he laughs at how innocent he used to be. \u201cJesus, yes \u2013 I remember it well. But it all felt like a bit of a game, it all felt rather jolly. I don\u2019t really feel . . . (punches fist into palm) this means you \u2013 and this means your teeth . . .\u201d Ah, no. The younger Robinson was a man who really did feel \u2018Glad To Be Gay\u2019. The song by that title on the new TRB EP is actually \u2018GTBG Part II\u2019, or \u2018(Sing If) You\u2019re Glad To Be Gay\u2019 \u2013 and it was written in direct response to \u2018GTBG Part I\u2019.<\/p>\n
A typically infectious number, it was written specifically for the CHE Conference in Sheffield in 1975. \u201cA jolly little sing-along calypso,\u201d Robinsons spits contemptuously. \u201c\u2019A natural fact \u2013 it\u2019s good to be gay\u2019! And I really believed it!\u201d Over the course of the next 12 months, Robinson discovered that people really did mind if you were \u2018honest and gay\u2019, and that rather than \u2018prefer you that way\u2019, they\u2019d prefer you either locked up or hospitalised. \u201cA year later I\u2019d been thoroughly disillusioned not only by the apathy of the gay movement itself, but by the things that were being thrown at us as the gradual clampdown and the backlash came. \u201cA year later I wrote, (Sing If) You\u2019re Glad To Be Gay\u2019 as a reaction against my own naivety in writing \u2018Glad To Be Gay Part 1\u2019. I\u2019m sure I\u2019ve gone down in print saying this lots of times before, and I\u2019ll probably end up quoting myself, but we had fascist editorials \u2013 there\u2019s no other word for it \u2013 in the Sunday Express and the Telegraph, about \u2018The Buggers\u2019 Charter of 1967\u2019, and the People writing stories about vicars and scoutmasters with monotonous regularity during the early part of \u201876 . . . We had the Peter Wells case. Peter Wells was sent to prison for two years for having sex with a consenting 18-year-old \u2013 at 18 you\u2019re meant to be an adult, man. You\u2019re allowed to vote, kill, buy a house, get a mortgage \u2013 you can do anything except go to bed with another guy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Beginning to sound unnaturally like a politician even in the confines of his dowdy little Highgate bed-sitter, Tom runs on through the list. \u201cOne of my best friends, David Seligman from gay Switchboard, got beaten up by queer-bashers. His face is still scarred even now. Incognito, which is a gay publishing chain, got busted, and its shops were closed down. Okay, Incognito published a bunch of sexist shit, but they were busted because it was gay. By the time of Gay Pride Week, at the beginning of August 1976, Robinson was transformed. During that week, he staged his solo \u2018Robinson Cruising\u2019 shows for four nights at the Little Theatre, St Martins Lane, receiving an approving, sensitive NME review from Penny Reel (who, interestingly, recently remarked to me that he found the TRB\u2019s sloganeering style trite and outdated). For that performance, Robinson would sing \u2018Glad To Be Gay\u2019, then reel off a list of gay clubs and pubs whilst a stooge in the audience hollered out the fate that had recently befallen each one of them: \u201cclosed \u2013 closed \u2013 busted \u2013 closed \u2013 busted \u2013 busted \u2013 closed . . .\u201d Tom\u2019s ire was not lessened by what he saw as his brothers\u2019 and sisters\u2019 apathy in the face of the backlash, retreating placidly to whatever new boundary the law chose to ring around them. He would then perform \u2018Sing If You\u2019re Glad To Be Gay\u2019.<\/p>\n
Written initially as a venomous send-up of male homosexual complacency, with a verse (since deleted) referring specifically to Peter Wells, \u2018Sing If You\u2019re Glad To Be Gay\u2019 is both misinterpreted and completely bizarre when it\u2019s yelled out lustily by a predominantly het TRB audience. \u201cYes, very bizarre,\u201d Tom agrees. \u201cIt was on the strength of the thing as a song rather than who it was for or about, that it ended up in the set. Now it would be a sell-out not to play it. I don\u2019t know how I feel about hearing 2,000 heterosexuals singing it at the Lyceum. I have very serious reservations about it. I don\u2019t know how I feel about going to play in Middlesbrough, and I see all these butch young men who are either working down the docks or the steel works or unemployed, who I used to be in terror of having my head kicked in by when I used to live there, standing there waving their scarves, going, \u2018SING IF YOU\u2019RE . . .\u2019 I don\u2019t know how I feel about that. All the time I lived in Middlesbrough I was terrified out of my life, in case anyone found out I was gay . . .\u201d<\/p>\n
Apart from the anti-homosexual backlash over that year, \u201975-76, the other major influence on converting Tom Robinson from passive pride to militant action was a New York theatre group called Hot Peaches. A radical, outrageous drag show, their leader Jimmy Centola became a firm friend of Robinson\u2019s \u2013 indeed, he guested on the Robinson Cruising shows \u2013 and it was his brash drag queen approach that pushed Tom out of his previous laidback \u2018cool\u2019 stance into fist-brandishing anger. \u201cApathy ruled that summer,\u201d Robinson recalls. \u201cStill does, come to that.\u201d The Hot Peaches came over to do a week\u2019s stint at the ICA. They needed a guitarist, and Tom was enlisted . . . \u201cIt was just sweltering in the theatre \u2013 people had their shirts off \u2013 and every night there was another riot down at the Colherne. While we were playing, the news was filtering back. That\u2019s when I wrote \u2018Long Hot Summer\u2019 \u2013 a gay street-fighting song.\u201d Its inspiration was taken from a Jimmy Centola rap\/poem, in which he would describe the events, which took place at Stonewall, New York, one night in 1969 \u2013 the gay world\u2019s most famous riot.<\/p>\n
Robinson spits this out now, word for word \u2013 he has an amazing memory \u2013 to illustrate Centola\u2019s straight-ahead, shocking, audience-confrontation approach. I never saw Hot Peaches, but according to Tom they would stun even the most upfront gay into a new self-pride. Again written principally for gay consumption, \u2018Long Hot Summer\u2019 actually found its way into Caf\u00e9 Society\u2019s set towards the end of Tom\u2019s sojourn with the trio. Indeed, its easy flow matched that group as irresistibly as its tension now matches TRB.<\/p>\n
That song was first unveiled during the Robinson Cruising Gay Pride Week shows \u2013 when Tom\u2019s band included, incidentally, Caf\u00e9\u2019s Ray Doyle and a guy who would later play guitar in an early incantation of the Tom Robinson Band, Roy Butterfield (a.k.a. Anton Mauve). It must have struck an ironic note, with its call to resist police harassment, because the Gay Pride Rally, which climaxed the week was Apparently governed with an iron fist by the friendly Bobbies.<\/p>\n
A swift drive through the cross-town traffic to a Queensway Chinese restaurant, and Tom describes the events of that day. We\u2019re actually discussing the compromises Gay News makes in terms of toning down its content to get a place on W.H. Smith\u2019s racks. Tom defending it staunchly against those gays who put it down \u2013 \u201cThey\u2019re as stupid as Mary Whitehouse is shrewd\u201d \u2013 but he has to admit that even he couldn\u2019t take the respectable face that the Gay Pride Rally attempted to put on homosexuality. \u201cThe reason I sang \u2018Sing If You\u2019re Glad To Be Gay\u2019 at the rally in Hyde Park was because I found out who the speakers were \u2013 like the \u201cGay Vicar of Thaxted\u2019 (a safe, religious homosexual frontman); Ian Harvey (former Tory MP) . . . there was nobody radical there at all.\u201d So Robinson performed \u2018SIYGTB\u2019, followed by a song written by Bradford GLF (more of whom later). \u201cHalfway through singing it a message came through from the police: \u2018If he doesn\u2019t shut up we\u2019ll arrest him\u2019. I had to stop in mid-song. Mind you, \u201cSing If You\u2019re Glad To Be Gay\u2019 isn\u2019t the most pro-police song.\u201d I can imagine then being irritated . . . \u201cYes. We were surrounded and practically outnumbered. They used the same tactics on us as they later used on the blacks at Notting Hill, only the blacks wouldn\u2019t put up with it. We did. We arrived at Hyde Park, and I think there were eleven buses of reinforcements waiting. And they made a little avenue for us to walk down into the park, and then just fanned out into a circle around us. A real heavy show of strength \u2013 like, \u2018You may think you\u2019re liberated, but just don\u2019t come it!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
The Notting Hill Carnival \u201976, less than a month later . . . the rise of the National Front. \u201cComing to a realisation that gay people were copping it, was only a short way away from looking around and seeing that it\u2019s happening every night in Brixton. You only have to open your eyes, once you realise it\u2019s happening to you, to see it\u2019s happening to other people. So yeah, that\u2019s how I became politicised.\u201d Three months later, infuriated with the lack of danger in Caf\u00e9 Society, he quit the band and started fixing up gigs for a group that didn\u2019t yet exist . . .<\/p>\n
On its day, that group can be devastating. The Tom Robinson Band is one of the very best rock \u2018n\u2019 roll bands to emerge in the great rock renaissance. Without them, Tom would still be plugging away inside the closed world of sexual politics, instead of blasting out his \u2018message\u2019 in punk clubs and concert halls, in newspapers and on the radio. Without Danny Kustow, Brian Taylor and Mark Amber you would probably never have heard of Tom Robinson. What\u2019s more, they\u2019re all good interviewees, judging by what I\u2019ve seen of them in print (particularly the excellent interview in Rock Against Racism\u2019s \u2018Temporary Hoarding No. 4\u2019. However, the TRB feature awaits another writer. The idea of this one was sheer exploitation of the fact that Tom and I have been good mates for so long.<\/p>\n
He is unique in that he is the only rock singer of the new breed of \u2018street\u2019 kids who actually had a solid \u2018political\u2019 involvement before he began singing about it. In fact, as the story shows, initially he sang for his bread and spent his spare time campaigning \u2013 totally the reverse of the singer who forms a band) or for that matter, the writer who loins a newspaper) and then finds an issue to beat his\/her breast about. As Tom says, in a most telling turn of phrase, \u201cYou know, I\u2019ve only been acclaimed as a campaigner for gay rights since I ceased to be one.\u201d Although he hasn\u2019t allowed his CHE membership to lapse, he is no longer involved in the nitty gritty of sexual politics. He doesn\u2019t even do benefit gigs (preferring to donate gig money \u2013 like the recent Hope gig for Gay Switchboard) because the band find the audiences either too unresponsive or too preoccupied with the niceties of whether Tom demonstrates the correct stance. The classic example of that particular problem came with the celebrated incident in Bradford when the lesbians of the local Gay Liberation Front \u2018zapped\u2019 TRB \u2013 stormed on stage \u2013 during \u2018Right On Sister\u2019, accusing Tom of being patronising. Most people would come out of that incident cursing the women who interrupted the show. Tom\u2019s reaction; \u201cIt\u2019s cool. I stopped playing it at once. It was written as a statement of solidarity with those women, and if they don\u2019t want it I\u2019m just gonna play the next number.\u201d<\/p>\n
As it says on the sleeve of the new \u2018Rising Free\u2019 EP, on which \u2018Right On Sister\u2019 is the last track, the song was inspired by Jill Posener, a playwright whom Robinson worked with in Gay Sweatshop, because \u2018That was the first time I\u2019d worked with real dynamite lesbians. It\u2019s not about women\u2019s lot \u2013 that\u2019s for women to write about. I wrote it from a man\u2019s standpoint, and most women take it in the spirit it was intended. I can understand it if Spare Rib don\u2019t like it when they review it \u2013 I dunno . . . But I\u2019d just like to point out to women who find it patronising that I did have a letter from a 14 year old girl who said, \u2018Dear Tom, thank you for \u201dRight On Sister\u201d. I thought me and my pen friend in Norway were the only two who felt like that.\u2019 Now that girl doesn\u2019t care what\u2019s right on or politically correct, but that one little song, stupid and banal as it is, touched a chord in her. I hope that means something to feminists. There\u2019s such a danger with the Left generally \u2013and people involved in sexual politics in particular \u2013 that the things they attack are on their own side. For instance, the Bradford GLF lesbians zap us but not the Stranglers. It\u2019s their party trick. The rest of the band were totally freaked out by it,\u201d he chuckles.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s evident that Tom actually quite relishes the ins and outs of the gay politics he reckons to have left behind. Nevertheless, its obvious he must now reach thousands of hung-up gay kids who\u2019ve never even heard of CHE, GLF or Kinsey, and would never dare to read Gay News. His grounding in sexual politics is a breath of fresh air in rock music. For a supposedly libertarian genre, there are an astounding number of people in this business who don\u2019t even realise how much their exploitation of their own and others\u2019 conditioned responses to sex reinforce an oppressive status quo. Tom Robinson has sexual oppression sussed. Amazingly, he\u2019s the first major rock singer to simply be homosexual rather than pose about and use the \u2018abnormality\u2019 of gayness as titillation. As Steve Clarke observed, his onstage persona is \u201clow-key macho\u201d. He has a horror\/fear of appearing camp, because for him it\u2019s not a flirtation, it\u2019s a hard fact. No bisexual chic, and no gratuitous outrage (not onstage at least \u2013 though he did manage to outdo any attempts at outrage I\u2019ve ever seen when we went for a meal together at Christmas, in a posh West End restaurant, and Tom merrily sported an extraordinary \u2018obscene\u2019 Seditionaries fist-fuck T-shirt for all and sundry to blink at).<\/p>\n
Robinson\u2019s awareness of political games also makes him extremely wary. So resolutely upfront is he about his desire to be successful, I doubt whether even my most cynical colleague could berate TRB for selling out.\u201d I wanna be a star,\u201d Tom insists. But, I offer, you are also very dedicated to personal communication. The newsletter, free badges . . . \u201cOnly because that makes you more successful as a rock star,\u201d Tom deadpans. \u201cObviously, if an audience feels personally involved they\u2019ll enjoy it more. You give away a free badge that cost three pee to make; they\u2019ll wear it as a present from the band. That\u2019s sound marketing. I don\u2019t understand why other people don\u2019t do it. Kids pay \u00a31,50 to see you, \u00a34.00 for an LP, 80p for a single, \u00a32.00 for a T-shirt . . . If you can\u2019t give them a little three-pee tuppenny ha\u2019penny badge, what\u2019s it all about? If you make people feel you care about them, that makes them care about you. That\u2019s why we write back to all letters. If you don\u2019t, word gets about. So you send them badges even if they forget the stamped addressed envelope, and Charlie out in South Glamorgan tells all his friends, \u201cJesus, I got a personal reply, and I didn\u2019t even send a stamped addressed envelope!\u201d That\u2019s ten people\u2019s worth of good vibes. It all makes good financial sense.\u201d So all these people who write to you are just being used? \u201cI didn\u2019t say that. But it does make perfect commercial sense.\u201d<\/p>\n
Even so, the sight of the TRB office in full spate during a letter-answering session is completely unnerving. I dropped round one evening recently \u2013 no set-up or anything \u2013 and there was the whole band and a couple of friends sitting on the floor surrounded by mountains of mail, scribbling and typing personal notes to stuff in all these envelopes along with badges, stickers and newsletters. Baffled, I retreated to manager Steve O\u2019Rourke\u2019s empty office (yes, that is Pink Floyd manager Steve O\u2019Rourke . . . Tom reckons he\u2019s such a nice guy, he was almost hurt when I expressed suspicion; good business sense again, as O\u2019Rourke has already exerted his weight by getting EMI to put out what amounts to half an album at single price with \u2018Rising Free\u2019) and only the exhausted Danny Kustow was tempted off the factory floor to share my indolence. \u201cThe thing is,\u201d Tom stresses, \u201call those things are not against my personal interests. Again, he\u2019s completely honest about making compromises for commercial success \u2013 for instance in choosing \u2018Motorway\u2019 as the first single.<\/p>\n
At the same time he praises to the skies bands who he reckons haven\u2019t compromised, like the Sex Pistols (he recounts an incident at the Music machine where Johnny Rotten accosted him and hissed \u201cDon\u2019t ever give in\u201d and was promptly sick on the carpet) and the feminist band Jam Today, whose stance is so \u2018pure\u2019 that their drummer even resents men being in the audience. Jam Today, he says, don\u2019t make any bread, but they act as a \u201csignpost for the rest of us\u201d. On the other hand, I suggest, Jam Today don\u2019t reach as many people as you. Would you say it was necessary for bands like them to inspire groups like yours, who are more likely to effect change? \u201cNOOOO!\u201d he howls, \u201cI\u2019m not gonna say that! Bollocks. I\u2019m not gonna go round blowing that trumpet. I was pissed off when Ray Coleman (in Melody Maker) invented the quote \u2018Clash and Pistols equivocate, we don\u2019t\u2019. I never said that. I said that their stance was equivocal, but I didn\u2019t say immediately afterwards \u201cwe don\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n
In fact, he proceeds to detail how he\u2019s actually \u201cripped bits off\u201d from those two bands, and later goes into a whole long list of people he\u2019s blatantly taken ideas and inspiration from: Hot Peaches, Frank Zappa (Zappa used to do a kind of Mothers News column in some papers, which inspired the TRB bulletins), Hereward Kaye, The Kinks, Dylan, Bobo Phoenix (whose onstage ferocity with Dead Fingers Talk made Tom discard Caf\u00e9 Society\u2019s \u201cdiscreet performance\u201d), Robert Godfrey (whose persistence in keeping The Enid afloat through numerous trials and tribulations was another inspiration), Andy Fraser (\u201cthe guvnor bass player\u201d) . . . \u201cI\u2019m a magpie,\u201d he says. \u201cI\u2019m not an original thinker. I\u2019ve gotta admit the only new thing about TRB is the synthesis.\u201d<\/p>\n
And, I would venture, the honesty and the extremism. Extremism? Yeah, I know what you\u2019re thinking \u2013 TRB are safe. And it\u2019s true. In a world where the rock audience\u2019s senses have become blunted by ever more ludicrous extremes of outrage, in a world of pop groups bidding desperately to outdo one another for grotesque appellations (Moors Murderers, \u201cPretty Paedophiles\u201d, etc.), in a world where rock journalists pretend to be literally bored to the point of suicide (if only . . .) and search for ever more nonsensical insults just because last week\u2019s idol didn\u2019t toe some party line that he or she hadn\u2019t the least idea existed. . . In this world, yes, TRB are \u2018safe\u2019. They\u2019re polite, they\u2019re friendly, they don\u2019t provoke riots. I would even doubt, despite their outspokenness about, say, homosexuality or the National Front, whether they are in any more physical danger than you or I \u2013 except, that is, when Tom frequents gay pubs like the Royal Vauxhall Tavern, which was recently raided by over a dozen heavies in NF badges who stormed in and smashed glasses, furniture and the barman\u2019s ribs and hospitalised one customer before fleeing in waiting taxis.<\/p>\n
Listen, I\u2019ll tell you what\u2019s extreme about Tom Robinson: he is making a stand on behalf of people. There is no mistaking what he\u2019s saying, no way \u2013 apart from the odd ode to a motorcar or some tiresome imaginary brother \u2013 that any TRB song, uh, equivocates. And he\u2019s not just preaching to the converted (not that it would necessarily invalidate anything if he were) because not only is he going to reach an audience who came to rock first and listen later, but also his major statement \u2013 that human rights are inseparable, that you can\u2019t divide it up into homosexuals, immigrants, women, etc, etc, that you have to decide which side you\u2019re on \u2013 that statement is a clich\u00e9 only for those who can\u2019t be bothered to think about it. It is extreme. It requires that hoary old beast: constant re-evaluation of oneself. Our prejudices are so conditioned into us that even now \u2013 after watching and supporting the gay movement from the outside for several years \u2013 even now I listen to \u2018Sing If You\u2019re Glad To Be Gay\u2019 or Tom\u2019s Jimmy Centola rap, and I discover that there is still room to lower my personal barrier of irrational fear of homosexuals by another notch. The work of twenty years is not necessarily undone in less than a decade.<\/p>\n
Tom Robinson, I would suggest, is extreme because he is rational. Normally we think of people as extremists \u2013 Patti Smith or Johnny Rotten, for instance \u2013 for exactly the opposite reason; because they lay bare their irrationality. This sparks against our own insecurity, and our need to come to terms with their extremism is cathartic \u2013 and, incidentally, a powerful factor in their success, both artistic and commercial. But Tom Robinson is just plain old rational. Straight. Mr Nice Guy. In fact, I\u2019m slightly surprised he\u2019s so popular in these times of mental machismo . . . Characteristically, Tom tries hard to defuse any attempts to lumber him with a saintly image, and I don\u2019t blame him. But everyone is someone else\u2019s guru, and in some respects Tom Robinson is mine right now. It\u2019s easy to become complacent about truisms like the evil of the National front, and Robinson\u2019s constant reiteration of his beliefs acts upon me in the same way it would appear that, say, Jam Today inspire him.<\/p>\n
Finally, let me make a guess about the album. See, they\u2019ve already dispensed with most of the off-centre stuff; \u2018Motorway\u2019, \u2018I Shall Be Released\u2019 (the George Ince song), \u2018Don\u2019t Take No For An Answer\u2019 (the Ray Davies song), \u2018Martin\u2019, \u2018Glad To Be Gay\u2019, \u2018Right On Sister\u2019. Which leaves . . . \u2018Up Against The Wall\u2019, \u2018Power In The Darkness\u2019, \u2018Long Hot Summer\u2019, \u2018Winter Of \u201879\u2019, \u2018I\u2019m All Right Jack\u2019, \u2018Better Decide Which Side You\u2019re On\u2019, \u2018We Ain\u2019t Gonna Take It\u2019, . . . the street-fighting songs, the wide-screen anti-Front songs, the backlash songs. Take a listen to \u2018Don\u2019t Take No For An Answer\u2019 on the new EP. LOUD. Now think; Chris Thomas is producing the album, that band is playing it, those are the songs they\u2019re playing . . . I tell you, it will be a real fist in the face of oppression \u2013 our oppression as well as \u201ctheirs\u201d. A clenched fist, naturally.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Up Against The Wall I’m Alright Jack Absolutely thumping third 7″single from T.R.B. both sides that could have been written for the state of society and the labour goverment in 2008, let alone\u00a0the state of society and the\u00a0labour goverment in 1978, exactly thirty years ago. Tom Robinson jettisonned his band Cafe Society after he attended […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-888","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-links-downloads"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/killyourpetpuppy.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/888","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/killyourpetpuppy.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/killyourpetpuppy.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/killyourpetpuppy.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/killyourpetpuppy.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=888"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/killyourpetpuppy.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/888\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/killyourpetpuppy.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=888"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/killyourpetpuppy.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=888"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/killyourpetpuppy.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=888"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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