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Interview with John Robb on his “Do You Believe in The Power of Rock n Roll?” book launch tour.

 

It is a chilly Monday morning in mid-April and John Robb has completed his morning run.  Today he was jogging around Cambridge after another enjoyable evening on his spoken word / talk show / book launch tour.  We have an interview booked, which migrates from the Teams app to a telephone conversation due to poor wi-fi connectivity in Cambridge.  Although there is also very poor phone signal in that part of Cambridge, I feel that the next hour is well-worth the challenge of being in touch.  After our mutual greetings and thanking John for his time mid-tour, I start by asking about his audiences.

 

Who is coming to this round of shows, John?

 

All sorts.  I am meeting such fascinating people and enjoying tremendous conversations.  Who is coming along?  Real music-heads, who are so into music they will go to anything to learn more about it.  The original punk generation, who now are looking back over their lives and enjoying the memories and stories from that special time.  There are people who have bought my book about the history of Goth subculture.  Some people who are into writing who enjoy hearing other writers talking about their life.  People who have seen me on the telly. It’s a broad range.  A few shows have sold out already. 

 

What have been planned as 90 minutes events, with an allowance for audience questions, are turning into three-hour sessions.  I am having so many great conversations with my guests and the people I meet. Time just runs away. I am loving it. It is a great experience. 

 

The itinerary of Bristol, Southampton, Cambridge, Sudbury, Colchester, Norwich is well-planned out, not like the old punk days, when a band might have to do ridiculous miles on relentless consecutive days taking in places like Dundee, Chester, Glasgow and then Oxford.  Who has put your tour together?

 

I have been working with John Cooper Clarke’s tour manager, Johnny Green, who helped get John back on the road in recent years.  It has been wonderful, as many of the places I go on this circuit are proper theatres that I wouldn’t have been to when touring with a band.  Tonight, I am playing in Sudbury at The Quay Theatre, for example.  I am really looking forward to that.  In Bristol I was at The Folk House, an adult education centre.  It’s great to be appearing in such different venues and new places, like Pocklington.

The idea of the tour is a bit different.  What is the thinking behind the two-part event, with a special guest featuring in the second part each night?

 

To be honest, after an hour talking about my journey in music, it will be good for the audience to hear about someone else.  As a journalist, I love interviewing people, so the second half of each evening I am interviewing a selection of people who I have met during my life in music and I ask them about how music has influenced their lives.

 

In Colchester, Steve Lamacq is in the hot-seat, who needs little introduction, but who has a unique take on the power of music.  In Norwich it is Andy Cairns, who I knew before his band Therapy? made it big.  Andy is from Northern Ireland where there was a great punk scene, despite what was happening on the streets in the 1970s and 80s.  There were The  Undertones in Derry, Stiff Little Fingers and Therapy?  in other parts of that region.  The idea of getting together with your mates to form a band and finding a girl to snog was no different from any other bunch of lads, but the punk spirit was really strong there, despite The Troubles.  I feel that punk attitude still is strong in Northern Ireland.

 

I was really proud when Andy’s band covered Tatty Seaside Town, one of the songs written when I was in The Membranes in Blackpool.  Andy is from Antrim, but his friends in the band come from a small coastal town, Larne, I think, in Northern Ireland.  It is great to know that we were connected through music, the same music, because that song captured my experiences of growing up and it rang true for him and his mates.

 

By the way, it is such a beautiful place, Northern Ireland.  Really beautiful. 

I can vouch for that have visited a couple of times myself and being stunned by the beauty of that part of the world.

 

We divert into talk of a book, ‘Anatomy of a Killing' by Ian Cobain, a journalist who worked on the Independent.  It is a dispassionate look at just one of the murders, this of Royal Ulster Constabulary photographer, Millar McAllister.  The officer was shot dead on his back doorstep in front of his seven-year-old son, one Saturday morning.  The book explores the complexities of life, coincidences, politics and responses to just one killing in 30 years of conflict. 

 

But while all this was going on, music was being made; great music. 

 

Talking with John Robb is not a linear experience.  He has absorbed so many ideas, researches his interests and is constantly making connections, trying to understand why things are as they are and more importantly, how the current state of the nation might be improved for the common good. 

 Our conversation had initially explored the Independent Seasiders Supporters Association’s Armfield Club, on Bloomfield Road just across the street from where John’s beloved Blackpool FC play. Football will pop in and out of our conversation throughout the hour-long call, particularly when mentioning John’s friendship with Dale Vince, the sustainable / renewable energy entrepreneur and owner of Forest Green Rovers, the world’s first vegan football club.  We return to the matter of the tour.

 

How did you decide who to invite as guests for this tour?

I would go mad just talking about my own journey every night and it would be over-indulgent too, so to keep things interesting for everyone, I have asked some of my contemporaries and younger people, like Adam Devonshire from Idles, who was with me at the Bristol show, to tell us how the power of music has influenced them and how it has affected their lives.  I am really enjoying these conversations and the audiences have been too.  Every show has over-run because everyone is so into talking about music. 

 

How did you get into writing?

 

The Seventies revolution of punk was life-changing.  Where Glam Rock was London-based, it might have come from outer space, may as well have been.  I was too young to pick and choose.  Glam Rock was pure entertainment, but from a different world.  I was massively into Sweet, Bowie obviously, we were into all of them.  I don’t go along with the idea that one band was everything, like some people say about Bowie.  We didn’t make a distinction between David Bowie, Sweet, or Mud.  They were all the same to us. 

 

The difference was that Punk was participative.  It was the attitude.  You just had to be in a band.  I got together with some mates from school.  We didn’t know how to tune a guitar.  We would just line up all the machine heads and start playing. 

 

Punk wasn’t just music, fashion, fanzines, art.  I found a way to photocopy a few pages and staple them together and started selling my own magazine, Rox.  The punk aesthetic was DIY.  As I said, punk was life-changing and having that punk attitude still is.  

 

In those days ‘Sounds’ was one of three big-selling weekly music newspapers.  They let me write what I wanted.  Over at NME they were always looking to discover the next best new thing.  They had weekly editorial boards to ensure that all the writers were on message.  At Sounds it was different.  They gave me complete carte blanche.  It was a great paper to write for.  I just wrote about bands I met and knew and experiences of being in the middle of the music scene.

 

I organised the very first interview with Nirvana simply because I liked what I had heard from them.  I liked their music and thought them a bit different, so I just phoned up Kurt Cobain and set the interview up.  You just phoned up and spoke direct to the bands.  Yes, Sounds was great to write for.

 

John Robb uses the pronoun ‘we’ a lot.  He is naturally engaging and enthusiastic and generous in his story-telling.  He recently was invited by the local authority to contribute to ideas on how the poorest part of Blackpool, the South Shore district, might be improved.

 

South Shore is the poorest part of England, it has nothing.  The local council is trying to buy up properties from the slum landlords to convert them into proper flats.  Ironically, given the mess they have made of this country, Margaret Thatcher’s legacy, it has been Tory money supporting this.

 

Something has to change.  We can’t go on like this.

 

No, but they don’t care.  They have used Disaster Capitalism for their own ends, to enrich their mates.

 

The belief in punk and the power of music has held firm throughout John Robb’s life.  Being constant in this respect has brought him opportunities to become a celeb in the world of TV and fashion, which would have attracted adverse comment from punks back in the day. However, it is arguable that by remaining so genuinely on message, Robb attracts plenty of interest from those who tempered their attitude and bought into polite society, the corporate careers, mortgages and leased cars and therefore he has become an icon of lost youth, living how others would have liked, but John is not harking back to the past today.  He has a vibrant enthusiasm for taking positive action while he can.  

 

What can be done?

 

I am working with my friend Dale Vince on a getting younger people to vote.  Raising awareness of the voter-ID regulations.  I am not campaigning for any party, I just want to fight the complacency and cynicism that you hear when people say, “Politicians are all the same.” We have to fight that. We have to keep setting off little sparks, hold a positive vision, keep looking for solutions.

 

I am not particularly nationalistic, but I do believe that we need to re-build our local towns, fund local services, education and health, keep libraries open and work at developing strong communities.  I can see a future where city states become a thing again.  What is happening in Manchester, with Andy Burnham as mayor (and he should be Prime Minister) is that the city is rebuilding as an important place in its own right.  Not a second city, subservient to London, but a place where people have genuine pride in their hometown and develop a sense of pride about being part of it, having a say in how it is run, feeling they belong. 

 

I was in Bristol earlier on this tour.  That is a really interesting place.  I had a great time there, always do.  It is a bit removed from London and has a radical vibe and independent spirit.  There’s a lot going on there and the people are making something of their city.

I think that we will see a return of city states, as in Medieval times. Cities that look after their own. Manchester has its own identity and is trying to do what is right for the people of Manchester.  The idea of trying to run a country from one place, like London isn't working.  People in Manchester and Bristol are doing what they think is right for them. 

You know, there is nothing wrong with populism.  It’s just that the Right has worked how to use it for their own ends, but being popular is a good thing.  It can be as simple as making vegan burgers that taste good.  They are better for you and better for the cow too. 

 

My carnivorous Pompey supporting friends enjoyed the hospitality at Forest Green Rovers.  They had been a bit of suspicious of the all-vegan menu, but each of them had a good time and really enjoyed the food there. What Dale Vince is doing there is a bit different.

 

Dale Vince is doing some amazing stuff around sustainable energy and his local community, not just FGR, not just promoting quality vegan food.  He is working on developing zero-carbon planes. He is so positive. 

 

So, what about the power of rock’n’roll today?

Music is so important. Today’s youth are so open to all sorts of music.  The Internet has re-charged the DIY attitude.  Bands, film projects, writing are more easily accessible again, as it was in the Punk days. The Internet is just a different way of doing the same things we were doing during Punk. It enables the cut and paste, scissors and glue stick approach to live on. Anyone can have a go, just like the early days of Punk.

 

Your Louder Than War music magazine website is doing well.  How much involvement do you with it? 

 

I am there as needed.  I have to make sure that we are not putting out anything libellous, but we put out whatever our free-lancers want to write about. It is also how I get to hear about new bands and different music, which is really important. I love music.   

 

I think you took close interest in the Tom Meighan review I wrote of his Redemption Tour when he came to Epic Studios in Norwich. 

 

Yes.  That was important.  He’s done his time and his girlfriend took him back.  He’s paid for what he did and they are back together.  I don’t think someone should keep paying life-long when they have been punished and seen it through.  Fair play to them both.  It is not for me to judge anyone else’s relationships.  I am sure Kasabian would like him back, but they could not be seen to be excusing his behaviour at the time, no one could.  Tom Meighan has put himself out there again as a singer, written his own stuff, after all that has gone on, so I wanted to make sure that the article was fair.  Shouldn’t everyone have a chance of redemption?

 

You are writing books that sell well these days.  Your book ‘The Art of Darkness – The History of Goth’ is a bestseller.  What defines a bestseller? 

 

A best-seller is one that has made it into the Sunday Times sales charts.  Music books normally sell about a thousand copies, this one has sold around 25,000 copies, so not quite a success compared to Iain Rankin’s sales, but very respectable sales for music books.

 

Where will you do your morning run in Norwich?

I love running by the river when I come to Norwich.  I always go by Cow Tower.  Do you know where that is?  When I have been to Norwich before with the band, we would always take a walk by the Cow Tower.  It was funny, not all of the locals knew about it.  I think it is part of the city walls.  No one seems quite sure what the Cow Tower was for, but I always make sure I go by when I am in Norwich.

 

I mention a visit to the city of some mutual acquaintances from Blackpool who were moored up not far from Cow Tower, which brings us back to football and Robb’s beloved Tangerines.  We need your lot, Pompey, to do us a favour at Lincoln next Saturday, if we have any hope of getting into the play-offs.

 

Pompey were already on the plane to Vegas when they lost to Wigan last Saturday, after taking the League One title on the previous Tuesday, so there is not much hope that Blackpool will be getting much assistance from the Blue Army.  Do you get to see Blackpool ever?

 

I have not been to see them for a while.  I have gigs and so many commitments on weekends that it just doesn’t fit with what I do, but I will be a Blackpool supporter for life.  It's what happens with football isn't it?  

 

With that John and I bid mutual farewells after a stimulating and wide-ranging conversation.  No doubt the conversation will be continued by John with Andy Cairns and the audience at Norwich Arts Centre on Wednesday night. 

 

After talking with John I felt energised, positively-charged, motivated to send out a few sparks of my own, to seek solutions and to take positive actions where I can. It was a real pleasure to talk with this upbeat character, not a survivor of the punk rock scene, but a torch-bearer for punk’s DIY attitude. 

John Robb, thank you for your time.

 

~

Spencer Ide

23/04/2024