Punks and the Seventies

The Story of Camden Town
Punk

Marie-Elsa went to Camden Girls School and spent a good deal of her
teenage years hanging around Camden. Now thirty-six, Marie-Elsa was
just old enough to see the last few years of the punk movement which
she remembers vividly although she never went as far as styling a
mohican or piercing her cheek. Marie-Elsa is tall and elegant with long
brown hair. Her posture and manner betray her past career as a dancer,
just as her complexion gives away her French roots.

Punk was about being rebellious in your individuality and loving the
freedom England gave you to do that. It was about survival - pinning
your clothes together and sticking safety pins through your face. It
was about kicking everything out of your way and surviving. It was
about making a loud noise and not having an image. I suppose in order
to do that you had to have an image, but you didn't think so at the
time. I mean you could go to a punk gig in a bowler hat if you wanted
to. As long as you had the attitude. You'd probably have to cut it up a
bit. But you could. As long as you had the attitude.

Punk gigs were hysterical. Spitting was the thing, and diving and
surfing on people. There was a violence to it. People would jump, dive
and land on their head and no one cared. Everyone thought that it was
quite cool and funny. I remember one guy leapt into the crowd and
everyone just moved out of the way. The poor guy landed on his head.
Then the crowd moved together again and I thought he was going to get
crushed but luckily he pulled himself up and got on with dancing. We
spat at the band a lot too, especially if they were really good.
Sometimes people would go to the front and by the end they'd be
completely covered in gob - people would be gobbing over them at the
band. That was what you did - I don't know why.

We gate-crashed parties a lot as well. You'd turn up to a party not
knowing whose house it was or who was having the party. Some were more
drug orientated than others. Friends or mine took heroine, speed,
grass, mushrooms. There was also a lot of glue sniffing. I remember a
party once where they raided the utility room cupboard and started
sniffing anything they could find in there. God knows what it did to
their brains.
Sometimes the parties got violent, especially if skinheads turned up.
One time I remember a gang of skinheads turning up to a party high on
glue and brandishing snooker cues. They were there to beat us all up.
It was very frightening. Even if you just saw skinheads in the street,
you ran.

The fashion wasn't made for fighting though. I remember two punk girls
got into a fight in our school and one of them got her safety pins
ripped out from her mouth and ears and I think something around her
nose too. She was scarred for life.

I remember taking my Cumbrian Grandma to Camden Town just after the
Goth Movement had started, and there were people with pink mohicans,
leather jackets, black capes, white faces, black eyes, black lips,
green hair, loads of earrings - earrings in noses, earrings in cheeks,
eyebrows&;#8230; We got off the bus and started walking down towards
the bridge and I turned to look at her and she was white with fear. A
guy had just walked past with a cape and she thought he was Dracular.
It was like walking into a horror film, the kind she doesn't watch
because she doesn't like that kind of thing. Then she began to feel
sick and faint and eventually I had to take her home. We were still
close to the bus stop so we just crossed the road and got the next bus
back up the hill. Throughout the whole journey she was quiet, it had
really terrified her. She'd never seen anything like it!

Ted and Willy Walters

Ted and Willy Walters live in a terraced house just near the station
and gave this interview in their brilliantly decorated kitchen. A pink
flamingo hung on the wall behind them as Willy's clothes mannequins
stood proudly by the sofa. Ted is an interior designer and work
includes 'Seditionaries', Malcom McLaren and Vivienne Westwood's
Pioneering shop on the King's Road. Ted wore a small knitted hat as we
all drank very large measures of vodka with a dash of tonic. Willy has
very beautiful auburn hair which combines with her red lip-stick to
give her a glamorous yet approachable look

Ted: But the punk movement was really on the Kings Road. Dingwalls here
in Camden changed the whole area by becoming a rock venue. Blondie
played there for example. But that was rock and roll, not punk.

T: I did some work on the d?cor of Seditionaries and I can remember
trying to get paid by them the day before Christmas Eve. Special Brew
had just come out so instead of having four pints of larger, we'd had
four Special Brews. He owed us about five grand which was a lot of
money in 1975 so before we went up there me Archie and Alex got all
tooled up - shoved lead bars down our trousers. We got in there and
Malcom was behind the desk and the Sex Pistols were on the couch. Sid
was there with a razor blade cutting his hands and someone else was
sticking a needle in their face and they were all bleeding - you know -
completely mad. Bonkers. A photographer had just come along and they'd
set fire to him. They were like that. So I said, 'Look Malcom, these
guys have done their work and they really need to get paid'. It was
touch and go whether he was going to give us the money but after some
hesitancy he did, thank-God. I wasn't looking forward to using those
tools.

Willy: Our next door neighbour was a very respectable doctor but her
cousin was Sid Vicious. When he died there was paparazzi all around
anything to do with Sid. I remember looking out the window and thinking
'What on earth's going on there?' And her saying, 'Oh God, it's my
cousin Sid Vicious, He's died'

1970's

Willy: I used to run a shop called Swanky Modes in Camden which was a
bit of a landmark. That's when it all became Bohemian but it never
really took off, probably because of all the drinking. It was during
the three day week and I was coming home from the shop after I'd been
working late, feeling very guilty for using electricity and I passed
these three fellas standing in a doorway. Frightened that they might be
from the council, I scurried past, noticing a huge lorry being turned
into Royal College Street as I went the other way. Wee I was so
relieved not to be reported for working over-time, I thought nothing of
it until a week later when I saw it on Police 5. They'd stolen the
lorry and of course I'd witnessed it but I was so worried that the
council were going to get me for working that I didn't even realise
what was happening.