Dave Edmunds’ Rockpile headlining; so who were these men in black bin bags called Ultravox?

LSE Diaries: 26th February 1977 – Dave Edmunds was headlining with his new band Rockpile, but interest was focussed on 4 men dressed in black bin bags…

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Milk. I wanted breakfast, but there was no milk. I have no choice: a walk down Archway Road to the shop by the tube station was required. I was out of bed at 1015 but had plenty of time to prepare for the gig tonight – and get milk. Made my way into town on the Northern Line and straight into the Drury Lane bar for an excellent pint of Burton’s before getting over to the Old Theatre.

Tonight was going to be an important gig for LSE Ents: three bands, one big – for us – and two new and pretty much unknown. Tickets were only £1 in advance and, surprisingly, fewer than 500 tickets were sold but in the end we did not lose money, touch-and-go though it was.

Rockpile – Dave Edmunds & Nick Lowe

Dave Edmunds was headlining with his new band Rockpile formed in 1976 with Nick Lowe. You could not buy records by Rockpile because Dave and Nick were each on a different record label. Incidentally, Dave Edmunds’ first album was called Rockpile (1972), and included his huge Christmas hit I hear You Knocking

Looking back from the present we know that the band Rockpile finally recorded under that name in 1980 – but broke up in 1981. On the face of it the band was short-lived, but you and I know that it had been going since 1976.

Anyway, I liked Dave Edmunds and the rockin’ blues he was famous for, so I was looking forward to the gig. The co-owner of Stiff Records (If It Ain’t Stiff It Ain’t Worth A Fuck) was present on the evening. I am not entirely sure why – although Nick Lowe was a Stiff artist (so to speak!) – but Jake Riviera was apparently thinking of signing one of the support acts – Ultravox – and presumably wanted to judge how they went down with a central London ‘college circuit’ audience.

I learned some years later that Rockpile disbanded in part because Dave Edmunds had a falling out with the band’s manager – one Jake Riviera.

Anyway, in my diary I made the following terse summation of the three performances that evening:

Ultravox were very good, Plummets not bad and Dave Edmunds well received though a bit dated.

That was clearly how I felt at the time and I understand why. Ever since the first Damned session on John Peel punk was the thing and pretty much every other kind of music sounded dated – to me as well as a lot of others. I was wrong of course, but at the time I was listening to the Sex Pistols, Siouxsie and the Banshees, The Clash and The Ruts – and many others – and against this backdrop Rockpile probably did sound a bit dated, but it was not long before punk shattered into a profusion of varied post-punk shards that would include bands like Magazine, Graham Parker, Nine Below Zero – and indeed Ultravox.

Ultravox – four men in bin bags

Now, Ultravox made an impression right from the start. Four blokes standing equidistant in a line at the front of the stage, each wearing identical glossy-black bin bags. This seemed pretty ‘punk’ to me. They played well too. The music was good, the visuals were right and the showmanship was very much in evidence. But Jake Riviera failed to sign them. They never became a Stiff band. I wonder if he regretted that?

Stiff Records

I was a big Stiff fan at the time and bought every Stiff single – 7” and 12”. I had a 12” Lene Lovich single. I was a collector. Years later I would go on to collect every Two Tone single, but that is a different story. But that night there was a falling-out between LSE Ents and Jake Riviera, an outcome of which was that no Stiff-label band would ever again play at LSE. Shame, because we had been hoping for Elvis Costello or Ian Dury or Wreckless Eric, but it was not going to happen.

Incidentally, Wreckless Eric did in fact make a number appearances on LSE soil – at one of LSE’s Halls of Residence – and I believe it was to visit a girlfriend. Funny, I had a girlfriend at the same Halls at the same time…

It had been a very good day, and I was safely back to my bedsit in Archway by 0120. Early night for me.

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#Rockpile #Dave_Edmunds #Ultravox #music #live_music #LSE #gigs #Stiff_Records