Wild Youth

Wild Youth and the Durban Punk Rock Scene

Wild Youth was the first punk band in South Africa and were in existence from 1978 to 1980. They released one single “Wot About Me/Radio Youth” and had 2 songs “Record Companies” and “So Messed Up” released on a compilation “Six Of The Best”.

Here follows a short history of the band written by Wild Youth guitarist Johnny Teen.

“Well it all started out of boredom, two guys Mark Dyson and I bored out of our skulls. We used to spend hours in his lounge listening to The Rolling Stones “Hot Rocks” and Black Sabbath “We Sold Our Souls for Rock And Roll”. Our friend Peter Kunst was also around but less so as he was more successful with the girls than we were. Boredom and loads of time is very good for creating rock and roll. As they say the Devil makes work for idle hands.

My first exposure to Punk came in 1971 when I picked up The Stooges Fun House LP on local South African pressing. I remember buying it from Record King in Ajmeri Arcade running off Grey Street. Grey Street was in the Asian quarter of Durban and was an exotic place for a 14 year old with its oriental fabric and scent shops. Ajmeri Arcade reminds me of a Middle Eastern souk (indoor market) except it has an African flavour with its muti shops selling ingredients for African witch doctors. “Funhouse” was a mind blowing album, so hard and powerful and sleazy in feel and though I didn’t know it at the time funky and jazzy as well. Needless to say it got a scratch the first time it got played on a friend’s portable record player but that that didn’t seem to matter as it sounded so dirty and fuzzy anyway. When I played it to people it elicited comments like “all the songs sound the same” and “this is the worst record I have ever heard”, but that is exactly the point. It all sounds the same yet all sounds different.

I then got into The New York Dolls debut album. There were hundreds of copies filling the sale bins at the time. The New York Dolls with its photo of the group in drag on the cover was one of those albums along with Bowie’s Aladin Sane and Lou Reed’s “Transformer” that would get you branded a “moffie” (gay) amongst the “ous” (guys) so you had to tread carefully in the macho world of Durban. The Dolls dressed in women’s clothes but they were tough at the same time. The music was fantastic with its “don’t give a shit attitude”, cool guitar riffs and street poetry lyrics. I loved it.

The next and probably most important step in my quest for Punk was Iggy and the Stooges “Raw Power” LP. A friend’s parents brought it back from England for me. Wow was it great. David Bowie had done such a wacked out production that beats the latter day Iggy grunge remix heads down. The lead guitar was so loud in proportion to the rest of the music. It has been critically panned as a terribly production but to me it sounded so out of control and amazing. The opening track “Search and Destroy” must be one of the most incendiary tracks ever released and was to become a blue print for much of my music later on. The lyrics were dead cool as well, dangerous and sexy at the same time.

Then in 1975, the first Sex Pistols article appeared in a South African newspaper, I think it was in The Daily News, no pics just a short piece about a fight at Nashville Rooms in London. I still remember it today “We’re not into music. Wot then. We’re into chaos” (Steve Jones). I was impressed.

Mark and I decided to start a punk band with Peter. Peter would play bass and sing. I would play guitar and sing and Mark would play the drums. We had never heard or seen pics of The Pistols. We decided to call it The Fourth Reich, a stupid name as we certainly weren’t fascist. It was just schoolboy shock tactics with the intention of being provocative.

I think that now is an opportune moment to mention the environment that the Fourth Reich and Wild Youth came out of. Most of the members came from the fine green open suburbs on Natal’s north coast. Mark came from Glenashly, future Wild Youth bassist Andrew from Durban North and Budgie and I came from La Lucia. We all came from boringly normal Middle class homes. Our families didn’t own corporations or have old money but we were comfortable because our dads had worked their balls off to make lives comfortable. Although compared to the rich we were like the poor cousins from the backwoods.

As people we were just normal young guys. We were only interested in girls, drinking beer, partying and music. We weren’t violent and we weren’t racists. .

For anyone not into sport or the outdoor life, Durban was nowheresville. Television had only just been introduced in the mid Seventies, cinema consisted of only the most popular blockbuster crap, overseas musicians boycotted the country due to the politics and the local bands mainly played cover versions of top twenty hits in tacky niteclubs. Only a few groups composed their own material. Even the excellent Flames had been principally a covers band. Hawk and Freedoms Children were full on hippies from the early Seventies and future Yes guitarist Trevor Rabin’s Rabbit were like a cross between the Bay City Rollers and Queen. The main entertainment for teenagers was jorls (house parties) in the neighbourhood. These given the macho nature of the South African young men usually ended up with a few rorts (fights). I got beat up once or twice for “checking ous out skeef” (looking at them the wrong way). It wasn’t surprising therefore that our early songs were about violence.

My first composition “Hate The World” is an example of this attitude. It was dire. “Maybe I’m Wrong” (co wrote with Mark) and Peter Kunst’s first effort “Sewer Rat” were only marginally better. Peter was an Alice Cooper and Aerosmith nut and this influenced his writing but in a good way. My first reasonably good song was the Kiss and Dolls influenced “Anti You”. I still like it and play the riff to this day albeit in completely different form with different lyrics.

“What’s got into your brain?
Are you going insane?
What’s got into your head?
Pretty soon you’ll be dead
Cos I I I’m.... Anti you.”

As said previously, the first batch of songs all dealt with violence, influenced by the macho attitudes of South African males at the time which glamorised brawling and which had no room for sensitivity or teenage angst, all of which I had in droves.

One day I was in Durban hanging around a record shop, Revolver Records in 320 Arcade, next to 320 West Street. I was wearing a Sex Pistols Anarchy shirt which I had got copied from an ad in the NME.. The sales assistant Denis Shaw asked me if I had seen the Pistols. I hadn’t but we started talking. He had a copy of the Anarchy single which he had got from England and I hadn’t heard. I had the Raw Power album which he hadn’t heard. We decided to swap tapes. He then joined our band on guitar and called himself Johnny Wednesday. He also introduced me to The Velvet Underground. We then added the song “Heroin” to our set even though I didn’t really understand the true meaning of the song. Apart from drinking a bit too much and some small time juvenile delinquency we were pretty stable. We weren’t violent and weren’t into drugs at the time.

On 6th August we played our first show. It was a pretty non descript affair and was in Westville at some friends of Denis’s house.

Next we were booked for our first proper show. This was to be on 26th August at the University Of Natal Student Union and we were to be bottom of the bill supporting Richard Lucey’s Rancid Dwarf. Both Denis and I were students at the University.

When the gig was announced a friend of Denis’s, Glynis Horning came and took some pics and wrote an article which was put on page 2 of the 22nd August edition of the Natal Mercury. We also met Glynis’s boyfriend, Chris Slabber. Chris was a real mellow cat and had the biggest record collection that I had ever seen. I used to love going to his house after university and absorb all those wonderful sounds.

Before the show Mark and I visited the local hardware store and purchased dog collars, chains etc. Denis always looked cooled in his Ramones haircut, leather jacket, white T shirt, jeans with holes in the knees and tennis shoes. We also spray painted our school blazers and other clothing with slogans Clash style. I think I stencilled “Hate The World” on an old blue windcheater. I changed my name to Mick Sick. We were serious maaaan!

On route to the show I noticed that the news headlines of the day where about Johnny Rotten’s about Elvis’s death, stating that “Elvis’s gut cast a shadow on rock and roll”.

We played the show to 500 people. It was chaos. We did the aforementioned originals plus Heroin, some Ramones and Pistols cuts and maybe “Teenage Depression” by The Hot Rods and “1977” by the Clash. By this time Mark and I had been to Johannesburg where I picked up the first 2 Ramones albums. We had also started importing seven inches from the UK. During “Heroin” I kicked over the mike stand. The sound crew jumped on stage to sort me out. In retaliation a whole bunch of guys we knew jumped on stage. It was like a riot. Mark was so drunk he fell backwards off the drum stool destroying the Rancid Dwarf banner in the process. The music was basic to say the least but we had made an impact.

We played a further two shows, 3rd September at the Music Room at the University which was our rehearsal space and 17th September at the Sherwood Hall. Songs that we were doing at the time included “New Rose” by the Damned with Denis on vocals, “Jumping Jack Flash”, “God Save The Queen” and “Anarchy in The UK” by the Sex Pistols, Doctor Feelgood’s “Back In The Night”, and a dreadful version of “Whole Lotta Love” with Peter Kunst on vocals. I had also written a further two songs “Speed Baby” and “All Units Destroy”. “Kamakaze bomber pilot; suicide Mission to the sun. All units, all units Destroy!” “Speed Baby (All I need is Speed)” was not about amphetamines, rather about living life fast.

Pretty soon afterwards Denis upped and left the group. I never found out why.

Soon after that the band folded. We all had exams to do after all. The stage however had been set.

In December 1977 Peter Kunst and I went to England. I was 20 years of age. Whilst we were there we went to 4 punk gigs. London at the Marquee. Eater at the Vortex. Siouxsie and the Banshees supported by The Buzzcocks, Penetration and Warsaw at the Roundhouse and The Clash at The Rainbow supported by Sham 69, The Lou’s and Rat Scabies White Cats. The Shams were particularly good. Their debut 12” single “I don’t wanna” had been produced by John Cale and this was before all the “Hurry Up Harry” stuff. The Clash were riotous, literally the fans demolished the seats while they were playing. A skinhead vomited all over the seat in front of us, and fans spray painted the trains on the way home. But whilst the bands were good they weren’t that good and it was the whole vibe and sense of being on the edge that really impressed me about the punk scene.

We also visited the Seditionairies shop in The Kings Road. It took ages to find as it had no sign and was a boarded up shopfront with some graffiti on the front. Inside was another story, pitch dark with UV lighting. The clothing range was all dayglo designs on white muslin. The “Never Mind The Bollocks” album sleeve was one print. Fascinating place, intimidating but real interesting at the same time! We also visited the Boy shop in The Kings Road. A note in the window stated “Don’t Touch The Fucking Window Display”. Also picked up loads of cool vinyl including The Sex Pistols “Never Mind The Bollocks”, Ramones “Rocket To Russia”, The Dead Boys “Young Loud And Snotty”, Richard Hell’s “Black Generation”, Johnny Thunders and The Heartbreakers “LAMF”, the Stooges debut and New York Dolls “Too Much Too Soon” reissues and so on, all great seminal stuff. I also bought home a pair of blue brothel creepers. Those shoes weighed a ton.

We got back to South Africa the day that the Sex Pistols split up After England, South Africa felt like going back a hundred years in time. Back to braaivleis rugby sunny skies and Chevrolet. More like racism, sexism, violence and small town bigotry. As Lou Reed says “the only good thing about a small town is when you leave.” However fired up from my trip I was real keen to start another band. Mark who was a terrible drummer quit the drums and switched to vocals. Peter opted out as he didn’t want to have his hair cut having had short back and sides all those years at school. He had a point but we wanted to present a united front. Hippies had long hair. In fact almost every body had long hair, usually smoothly styled in a mullet often with a Magnum moustache, even businessmen, doctors, accountants, and teachers. So we decided to have short hair.

Shortly afterwards I was approached by an old school friend Andrew Peinke asking to join the band. Andrew used to sit next to me in class and was a Joey from friends lookalike. He was probably the most popular guy in class and I was probably the least popular having suffered from terrible depression which seemed to come on for no particular reason at all. Andrew was very outgoing, confident and had a charming nature, and seemed a good guy. I began to teach him bass on the Beatle bass that he had bought. He was a good pupil and learnt quickly. He even built his own amplifier using skills he picked up studying Engineering at University. Of the punk musicians, he liked J J Burnell from The Stranglers who had a very powerful bass style. I used to go around to his house in Durban North and teach him the songs in his small bedroom amongst all the motor racing posters. I enjoyed teaching him. He had an animal strength to his playing much in line with his nature. His nickname had even been “Ape” at school which was probably an abbreviation of his initials. He was obviously talented as I tried to teach other people bass later on in my life but never had the same results. It was around this time that I wrote arguably the best Wild Youth stuff, free from other people’s influences and opinions. These first songs were straight from the heart. “Record Companies” was about the dreadful state of the South African music scene which was so dead boring and tired.

“Pub bands sing the hit parade
Nothing but disco on government radio
Smiles and flares and shoulder length hair
Everybody does what they tell them to do”

Musically this song was influenced by a song from The Unwanted called “Freedom” but actually sounds nothing like it. Like all the early Wild Youth songs it had a real powerful driving sound. I was using a white Ibanez ’59 er guitar played through a Jim Dunlop Jimi Hendrix Big Muff distortion pedal all played through a Yamaha transistor stack (not a great amp). I used to play 5th chords which are abbreviated forms of bar chards and have a real powerful sound. These days they are the staple of punk and metal guitar players. When using a fuzz box the distortion creates all these overtones and harmonics which give extra implied melody to the sound. When I hit a solo I would press a volume pedal which would boost the volume immensely. I was very into The Stooges “Raw Power” LP were the lead guitar was mixed well out of proportion with the other instruments.

“So Messed Up” was about a modern “Blade Runner” type age.

“Suicide City in the light of day
I’ve got a television screen to show me the way
I don’t really know what’s going on
It seems like the words of a new rock song
So messed up.”

“Billy Idol” was a slice of pop punk that soon became an early concert favourite. A bit T Rexy. Unlike the next generation of punks and South Africans in general, I was a huge fan of T Rex and David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust. They were considered a bit light weight and “moffie” by most young Durban music fans.

“You look so good
In your spikey hair
Teendream Hero
In your torn t-shirt
Just like…..Billy Idol”

A bit throwaway but who cares. The band by now called itself “Wild Youth” after a song by Generation X, the British punk band fronted by Billy Idol. Andrew even wrote to Generation X, Billy’s band and was surprised when the bassist Tony James wrote back. Tony was impressed by the fact we had named our band after one of his songs and also explained how they made their pop art t-shirts. By this point Mark now called Pogo was manufacturing his own t-shirts. This was a painstaking and laborious task and involved drawing the design and then cutting it out on the silkscreen paper which was then put on a frame. You then had to carefully push the dye across the print. The shirts came out real cool and were real individualistic. We then started making our own spray painted posters to advertise the shows when we started gigging. We were a real little cottage industry.

“So Trendy” had a real driving Ramones style riff which until the ending never changed. The variations came from the vocal melodies and drum patterns. I really like this song and still play it today exactly as it was written.

“I saw you down in my neighbourhood
Wearing real flash clothes
You didn’t even look as I walked past
You turned up your nose
Your so trendy”

“Fourth Reich” had a cool riff and was about the fall of our first band. We lived in a dream world and were overemphasising our importance I think.

“What About Me” was another song that became a concert favourite. This one only had one chord sequence and was a triumph of simplicity over technique.

“I don’t wanna talk about Johnny Rotten
I don’t wanna talk about Sid Vicious
I don’t wanna talk about Joe Strummer
I just wanna talk about….
What about Me

I don’t wanna talk about Jimi Hendrix…” followed by amateur guitar solo.

“Make Up” had a real powerful punk riff. At school some of the guys used to diss girls for wearing make up and not being naturally beautiful. I never had a problem with this, as all that mattered was the end result plus I liked the artificial look.

“Peroxide blonde eyelashes are fake
I don’t wanna hear about those boys you date
Tight pants lips too red
I just wanna……
Co aah aah aah love your make up”

There were other songs as well. “Do The Yoof” springs to mind. It was not a great song.

We did loads of covers in our time as well. The Sex Pistols “God Save The Queen”, “Anarchy in the UK”, “Problems”, “Pretty Vacant”, the Ramones “Blitzkrieg Bop”, “Beat On The Brat”, the Stooges “Search and Destroy”, “Raw Power”, “I Wanna Be Your Dog”, “I Feel Alright”, the Heartbreakers “Chinese Rocks”, the New York Dolls “Bad Girl”, “Vietnamese Baby”….

Andrew was like a human rhythm machine. I programmed him and he programmed the drummer. He also brought a sense of professionalism to the whole outfit. I was only interested in writing songs and playing live. I wasn’t interested in all that getting tight stuff. But that’s were Andrew came in. If the drummer did anything too flash, Andrew would pounce on him and bully him back to basics. Rubin Rose. I can’t remember who introduced him to us but soon he joined on drums. Rubin was a very softly spoken gentle guy who was a black belt in karate. I think he did karate to keep his inner demons in check as when he was younger he had been a very heavy drinker and street fighter. By this time we were rehearsing at the Arts Centre, an office block converted into rehearsal rooms. Rubin used to do his karate classes just around the corner. He came in to audition and he loved our sound. He was a super powerful drummer and fit in like a glove.

After a short period of rehearsing we were ready to do our first show. We hired the Caxton Hall in Beach Grove and charged 50 cents admission. I think this started around March 1978 and became a regular event. Caxton Hall was a dilapidated place well in need of a paint job and was one of those places no one had ever heard of. Early supports were often provided by new wave band the Impact and Dave Wright’s punk rock disco. Dave is a staple of the Durban music scene to this day and a big music fan.

To advertise the gigs we made our own posters 24 inches by 16 inches in size. We would painstakingly cut out a stencil of a basic design consisting of the Wild Youth logo and a crude picture of some punks and spray paint the posters using car aerosol spray cans. We would then add further detail using coloured marker pens. We then would paste them all over town using glue made of flower and water, a real messy affair. The number of posters increased each gig until we were pasting up around 400 posters per show. It was cool to walk around town and see our name up everywhere often in bright fluorescent blue or orange colours. We soon started getting noticed, by fans, the press and the police.

We also created a crudely spray painted backdrop on a white piece of sheeting that we played in front of. This consisted of the group logo and our names all covered in bloodstains.

When we arrived at the hall we would put our own coloured light bulbs into the light fittings shining on to the stage itself.

The shows were rip rawing affairs. Mark was a superb sardonic front man in the vein of Rotten, Strummer or Stiv Bators, with a confident tough personae and a wicked sense of humour. Beside him, Andrew and I lept around like lunatics whilst Rubin kept that demon beat going. That guy’s beat was powerful. There was so much energy on that stage those nights.

The music was basic to say the least, all Johnny Thunders riffs, Stooges song structures and Pistols guitar chords but all taken to an even more basic primeval level. We were real crappy musicians but we made up for that by raw power, a blistering performance full of self conviction and catchy songs. We were not original but we were original at the same time partly due to Rubin’s fast but powerful drumming style. He didn’t play in the style of the UK punk drummers, he had his own style. He even made his own sticks, super thick to achieve an even more powerful sound. And on the top of all this mayhem Mark spewed out all his evil vitriol. The audience was getting younger too and some of these kids went on to start their own bands: The Gents, Powerage, Anti Heroes, Divine Monopoly, Slaves Of Janet, Streetrockers, future techno producer Damon Vallero etc etc. Cover versions around this time included “What’s My Name” by The Clash.

I remember that sound quality was terrible mainly due to the inadequate PA systems. After the show the audience would all spill out onto the streets and hang out drinking and carrying on in the hot humid night air under the brilliant white street lights amid the desolate concrete wasteland. We were having a great time.

The fans deserve a mention too. Philip Swarbrick a bulky guy in a German helmet swan diving cross the floor. Peter’s sisters Marion and Sharon who took the money at the door and later formed the band Leopard who had one great track “Those Boys Are Bitches”. Paddy Vacant the schoolboy who later formed Powerage with the Ratrae brothers Brett and Lance, Sticks Verbarn who later become a journalist and political activist in South West Africa, The Lange’s Keith and Midge. I could go on and on.

Other gigs we played around this time included Sherwood Hall on June 7th and September 29th and Westville Community Centre where some local guys arrived at the sound check to fuck us up and left the show as converts.

Mark was also starting to developed as a song writer, bringing in “Sun City Rebels”, a real powerful number, with very much of an anthemic quality.

It was around this time that Mark fell sick and couldn’t do one of the shows. It was at the Girl Guide Hall in Morningside…..we played all the classy venues. We went ahead and did it without him with yours truly on vocals. I was so used to playing the songs on guitar that adding the vocals was a piece of piss. We really cooked. The performance was just burning with energy. I had so much frustration in me just burning to get out. It was probably the best show we had done to date.

Soon after the show Peter joined on second guitar. The band sounded great with two guitars. Peter was the Bonehead of the group, playing the rhythm guitar. It is so hard to get a guitarist to play just the bar chords but it really ups the groove and makes things more solid.

In the course of my research I found an article from the Insight Magazine of The Sunday Tribune written by Doug MacDonald reviewing probably the last of the Caxton Hall shows.

“They saunter on to the stage without much ceremony. They’re clad in dog collars and slogan daubed T-shirts. They pick up their instruments, and ZAM! they blast off.”

“They play like they are possessed. Relentless drumming, pumping bass, guitar sandpapering your spinal cord, defiant vocals ripping at your brain. My eardrums felt like they were being attacked by a crazy nest of hornets.”

At the end of 1978 Doug and a fellow journalist Martin Hendy approached us with a view to management. Martin resigned as manager quite early on as I don’t think that he had the time to give us full commitment. He however remained loyal to the group and still carried on writing about us and hanging out. Anyway we agreed and things started happening in ernest. Doug was a rare breed of manager, being one hundred percent honest and a very decent guy. He also had the unenviable job of being mediator and pacifier in the numerous arguments and jealousies that later raged as the band became more successful. The first thing he did was to start an intensive media blitz. He also ensured that everything was photographed. In the course of our short life, the Wild Youth was heavily documented by numerous professional photographers. Doug must have boxes of slides, negatives and contact sheets somewhere. He also set about booking shows all over the country. One of the biggest bits of advice that I can give a band is get a manager. It takes such a weight of responsibility of your shoulders and allows you to concentrate on the music. Musicians are like children, and business kills inspiration. Besides if you are playing high energy music, you need to keep all your energies for the show.

Soon after Andrew pulled me to one side and gave me an ultimatum. Either Mark goes or he does. It was a hard decision for me. On one hand Mark was one of my best friends and main collaborator and on the other I had quite enjoyed the buzz of singing. It is unfortunate too that the singer always gets the attention and the chance to sing the songs that I had written was too great a temptation. I was also wary of losing Andrew as he is very organized. So I chose Andrew. In retrospect I don’t know if I made the right decision. Mark would have sounded fine in the studio. He was not the best singer technically, but in my opinion, passion, attitude and individuality wins over technical ability every time. He would have sounded just fine on record. I think also that he was the best spokesman of the group, a factor that weighed greatly in his later success in the legal profession. After he left we spent too much time talking about Mickey Mouse and Spiderman and all that shit. We also lost the gang mentality and after that it was every man for him self. It must be noted too that by now all the essential ingredients of the Wild Youth sound were already in place and that whilst we might broaden our sound later on with the introduction of other influences the foundation was already complete.

Peter decided to leave with Mark. We had underestimated his admiration of and loyalty to Mark. They formed an excellent (for a while at least) band called The Dead Babies. They got a great rhythm section Paulie (James Bondage) on bass and Fly on drums, and had some superb songs, influenced by Peter’s love of Alice Cooper and Aerosmith and Marks humour and aggressively cynical punk lyrics. These included “Juvenile”, “Narrowminded” and “Nowhere To Pogo”. They also did a cracking cover of “Sonic Reducer” by the Dead Boys. The early Dead Babies were a great band but it didn’t last. Unfortunately Paulie and Fly had lots of people whispering in their ear and their days were numbered. The Dead Babies never satisfactorily replaced them. The original line up should have recorded an album. It would have been brilliant. Fly eventually went to LA and rumour has it that he turned down a job drumming with Billy Idol in order to continue playing with Tribe After Tribe.

So Wild Youth started 1979 as a new stripped down unit. One of the first things I did after the departure of Mark and Budgie, was change my name to Johnny Teen. The name was an amalgamation of two guys I thought were cool, Jimmy Dean and Johnny Thunders with a nod to Billy Idol as well. Andrew bought a second hand Fender Precision bass and in typical enterprising fashion spray painted it pink….it looked and sounded fantastic.

I think it is time to point out that when we started Mark and I never ever thought that we would ever get anywhere. It was just something that we wanted to do. I never ever had any ambitions to be a vocalist. I only ever became the vocalist because I could sing in tune marginally better than the others. Of course when I took on the job I enjoyed it and the benefits that came with it. I have also never liked three piece groups, believing that both vocals and guitar could be handled better separately. I thought that most trios sounded week. So in effect the final line up of Wild Youth was a cop out, a case of taking the easiest option. What was surprising was how quickly we gained a name for ourselves. I think it is a sad reflection on the state of the SA music scene of the time that such amateur musicians could make such an impact. I had never had any lessons and had learnt all my tricks from working out songs from records and not very accurately at that. I had zero technique and knew only one basic scale, the blues minor pentatonic. I mainly played fifth chords through full on distortion. The distortion created harmonics which created implied melodies which weren’t actually there. Andrew and Mark had never picked up an instrument prior and Peter had about as much knowledge as me. Only Rubin was more experienced and was living testimony to the theory that a good tight drummer can make a not such good group sound good. Of course then we got all the press, mostly good, some bad, and unfortunately this also influences things. I sometimes think that for art to be pure it needs to be created in a void with no other input from outside influences.

Andrew was always a bit concerned that we would be perceived as UK copyists and came up with a brilliant idea. He likened our bringing the punk sound to SA, being like The Rolling Stones bringing the sound of US Black R&B and Blues artists to the United Kingdom in the early Sixties. And the cool thing about this was that it was true.

It was around this time that Andrew made his remark “we’re into spontaneous violence – if you want us to break stuff, we’ll break it – that includes your nose”. This was on the front page of the Insight Magazine of The Sunday Tribune newspaper. For all our projected bravado we were all quite peaceful guys in reality. Whilst Andrew liked to fancy himself as a rucker and could handle himself well, he was at heart a sensible guy and very rarely got into fights. For some reason this flippant and in hindsight quite quaint remark, really pissed a lot of people off, scaring away some of the artier contingent of our audience. As the front man I found myself bearing the brunt of a lot of the negative response.

Shortly after this article, I started work in my first full time job. This gave inspiration to one of my more heartfelt songs “Friday Comes”.

“Five days a week it’s a private hell
Working for a living in a office cell
Boss comes in his pinstripe suit
Its only worth living when weekend comes
Friday comes I’ll blow my mind

I don’t wanna work 9 to 5
Don’t wanna live my life a lie
Wanna get wrecked and have some fun
Its only worth living when weekend comes
Friday comes I’ll blow my mind”

During Easter 1979 Wild Youth played a free open air show at Durban’s amphitheatre just behind Durban’s beachfront near Durban’s north beach. We were supporting Travesty. The show was organised by the new pop newspaper Music Maker, South Africa’s equivalent to NME or Melody Maker. Music Maker put a photo of us from this show on the front cover of issue number 8 released on April 27th. They also gave us a great review mentioning that we also played some slower songs like “Living Dead”. Whilst I can remember the title, I can’t remember how the song goes at all. Well I suppose that was twenty five years ago and the memory has had quite a battering since then.

We were constantly changing the set and never played the same set twice. I did this to keep things interesting. So songs we constantly added and taken out of the set. Some songs would only get played once before being consigned to the scrap heap. “Last Of The Punks” is an example. I remember that the song used the tremolo or vibrato effect on my amplifier.

The same evening we played at Travolta’s Disco at the Killarney Hotel in Durban supporting The Radio Rats. The Radio Rats were a New Wave group from Springs and were the brain child of singer guitarist songwriter Jonathan Handley. They had already released an album and an excellent single ZX Dan, sort of David Bowie meets the Only Ones “Another Girl Another Planet”. I think Jonathan was surprised by the ferocity of the Durban audience reaction and the power, energy and the music of The Wild Youth themselves. Both audience and band had something to prove to these insurgents from the Transvaal. Opening with “So Messed Up” and followed by “So Trendy”, we rocked like motherfuckers. Jonathan was very impressed and in future always championed our cause. He was a genuine person, a real music fan and not some Johnny come lately jumping on the Punk New Wave bandwagon. He knew his Velvets from his Stooges and his Bolan from his Bowie. Duncan Gibbon gave the gig a killer review in the Music Maker.

In early 1979 we went in C&G studios to record a 4 song demo. We had been playing the songs for a year now so we were as tight as a cat’s anus.
I remember the day as if it were yesterday. It was a beautiful sunny day without a cloud in the sky and we traveled down to Westville in convoy. Andrew had his Fender Precision bass which he had spray painted pink and his newly purchased Yamaha stack. I was using a White Ibanez "59'er" through a Yamaha stack which was not a great amp. The Ibanez might have looked like a Gibson but it sure didn't sound or feel like one and the intonation was not great. However considering the battering that our gear had to withstand, it was probably for the better. I can't remember what make of kit Rubin used.
When we arrived at the studio I saw a black Ovation Breadwinner guitar lying around. It was a real strange looking guitar with a real weird shape and design, a real period piece that was only around for a few years. I picked it up and had a go. It was one cool guitar really well set up. I asked if I could use it for the recording. We started of with “Record Companies”, and what a powerful sound. Second up was “So Messed Up”, another kickin’ number with a Johnny Thunders style guitar break. When I heard the vocals, I was disappointed how wimpy I sounded, so I decided to go with the flow and re-record the vocals as feminine as possible without taking the piss. So there we are Wild Youth go camp. The next 2 songs were real driving punk overdriven blasts. “So Trendy” sounded like The Ramones and is very powerful, I love it to this day. “Make Up” was another punk killer only marred by some dumb gratuitous swearing in the lyrics. I should have known better as the Beatles said. Talking of the Beatles, “So Trendy” ended with a cool Beatles styled sixth chord.

In the studio, we were quite a heads down no nonsense bunch and just got down to business. Afterwards we listened to the results on the car cassette player. I was very pleased with the result and told the C&G engineer so. He looked at me as if I was mad. Tip guys: unless you are a genius producer, the secret to a cool recording, is get the takes down good on tape and unless you know what you are doing don’t fuck it up with some dumb production ideas. Not many of us have the talent of Phil Spector. C&G did a great job! Of course after the session the tapes soon disappeared. Needless to say that was the last that I saw of them.

On June 29th 1979 a four page photo spread appeared in Scope magazine with an article written by Martin Hendy. Scope had a wide readership mainly due to the pin-up’s of scantily clad “bokkies” (chicks) and sensationalist articles that adorned its pages. In those days of strict censorship, any photographs of female’s nipples had to be airbrushed or covered up with a drawn in box circle or star as exposure of any sexual organs was strictly banned. Anyway we were photographed in the University Of Natal music room playing a short set surrounded by scantily clad dancing girls, including Marion, Sharon, Kim and Leah and others all showing a lot of leg. Martin also pranced on stage with his moustache and his slogan clad boiler suit covered with paint daubed slogans. This was a lot of fun and exposed us to a lot of people.

The next day we were booked to play again at the Girl Guide Hall in North Ridge Road, Morningside and Rubin was been beaten up by a gang of youth’s that had gate-crashed the venue during the Dead Babies set. Bullets were fired and later the police allegedly found a spent cartridge. Afterwards Rubin was taken to Addington Hospital for concussion. Things were getting darker and we similar bad experiences in Yellow Wood Park and in Johannesburg.

Soon afterwards we were approached by Benjy Mudie of WEA Records to contribute 2 songs to a compilation that WEA was putting out of local new wave music. The album was to be called “Six Of The Best” and would also feature songs by Bill Flynn, The Safari Suits, Roger Lucey, Corporal Punishment and Leopard. We decided to re-record “Record Companies” and “So Messed Up, so again we went to C & G. This time however it was decided to produce the songs a bit more. but whilst the versions are tight, they lack the oomph of the demo’s.

The album came out and it must have had one of the worst record sleeves that I have seen in my life, a terrible drawing of a school teacher flexing his cane. I suspected then that the South African music scene was beyond repair.

The record came out in August and we got pretty good reviews. We certainly stood out as having the hardest punkiest sound on the record and sounded real professional compared to some of the other groups on it.

To promote the record we even did some more free gigs, but then again most of our gigs were in effect free as we rarely got paid. We did it for the love of music and we often sold ourselves too cheap. That fact probably was a factor in our eventual downfall.

So we played an open air show in the open lot outside Nicol Square garage in Grey Street. It was a great gig real fun to do. We played well and from the heart.

On 11th August we did another promotional gig in Sanlam Arcade 331 West Street outside Nash Music formerly Record King. We even signed album sleeves at Nash. The owner let us each have an album of our own choice as a thank you. That was cool and I appreciated it. I had been going to Record King since I was thirteen and the owner was always real nice to me. The show was real energetic.

Soon afterwards we played at Majestic Cinema in Chatsworth supporting local band Fame. I found the gig poster recently and was interested to note that it was done in real old boxing match style. Chatsworth is an Asian area about 20 kms south west of Durban. With about 300 000 residents, Chatsworth has been described a "city within a city”. As a white South African it was the first time I had been there.

After a set by Naked Truth, we came on to a barrage of tomatoes and abuse, but like real troupers we soldiered on. Well at least it wasn’t wine bottles or full beer cans being thrown at us. The red tomato stains only looked like blood. We did a blistering set including covers of the Monkees “I’m Not Your Stepping Stone” and Elvis Presley’s “All Shook Up”. It was a real good gig.

Sadly the Majestic Cinema is no more, closed 'long ago'. The building now houses a church upstairs, and a club downstairs.

Over the next year or so we played many shows all over the country, met some real interesting people and some real good bands. I will try to list some of the highlights.

We did a week long tour down the coast from Durban to Cape Town to promote the What About Me single which had also been recorded at C&G, accompanied by Doug, Martin and Garry Scott (friend, Johannesburg gig promoter and tour roadie). The people loved it. It was a real buzz , our coming of age, voyage of self discovery, a real road trip with so many great gigs and memories! Plettenburg Bay, East London, PE, Cape Town, sleeping on the beach, a blind drunk out Andrew driving the truck down precariously steep winding, mountain passes…. The beautiful scenery of George, Kysna, Jeffreys Bay ….. We had taken our own PA, a real tiny thing totally inadequate for the job and our guitars were taking a real beating from the abuse.

Cape Town had a real scene, proper venues, much more developed than Durban…our gigs there were a blast, starting at the Mowbray Hall.

On the same bill was the Housewive’s Choice a great band who later evolved into the Rudimentals, another great band that we played with at the Hermanus festival a few months later. Older and tougher than us in a streetwise Johnny Thunder Heartbreakers type of way, real tight and real rockin’. The guitarist in particular Michael was stunning with a real acid Hendrix freeform style. They deserve an article by themselves.

The Hermanus Festival was the biggest audience we played to, about 30 thousand from what I recall. We were collected from the airport and driven down in a big car like real popstars and given our own house to stay in. We played real late, in the early hours of the morning, and where tired in more ways than one. I don’t think we play great but we had a huge article and photo in the Cape newspapers. Afterward people where selling bits of my guitar outside the venue.

I remember that Rubin couldn’t do one of the Cape Town gigs due to having stomach problems and a drummer from one of the other groups deputized in his place. Unfortunately I can’t remember his name. He gave the band a more Ramones feel which was fun, but we also lost a bit of our unique sound at the same time. Steve Moni, the guitarist of The Safari Suits joined us for the encore of Iggy and the Stooges “Search and Destroy” which was real cool, me being such a huge Stooges fan. I hadn’t yet learnt how to play the lead solo, so it was great to meet someone who could play the song properly. Guillaume Gap from the Housewives Choice lent us his PA for the gig. This was a real camaraderie with everyone helping each other out.

When we came back to Cape Town a few months after the Cape Tour to play a gig at the University it was total mayhem, packed out. I have never seen so much spitting, much more so than in England. It was near impossible to play with fingers stuck to the fret board like glue, and the floor being so slippery and it was a terrible gig musically.

On February 18th 1980, we were booked to play the Wits Free Peoples Concert in Johannesburg with Gate, Copperfield and other bands.

The first trip to Johannesburg was a trip in more ways than one. Hicks from the suburbs enjoying the big city lights for the first time! It was fantastic. We had a few dates booked, starting with a spot at a local disco the Bella Napoli complete with cocktail tables and flashing lights etc…real Saturday Night Feversville. We rocked. I remember that apart from our own compositions we also played “Pipeline” and “Stepping Stone”.

We went to Johannesburg a few times, played Johannesburg to rapidly expanding audiences, mainly at the University but also at various halls, theatres and nightclubs. I remember at open air concert at the University were the audience was particularly large and rawkus. I loved going to the new wave clubs, Metal Beat, Blue Beat, DV8. I loved the sleaze of these places. We met some real genuine people too, Neil Bolitho who later was parylized in a motor cycle accident, Gilbert Calvert son of the famous jazz musician Eddie Calvert and so on and so on. Sadly Gilbert later commited suicide.

We really developed in Johannesburg playing real large venues. We often took the music right down the bass and drums, and I used to hang from the mike stand improvising in the manner of Iggy from the Metallic KO album.

On March 3rd we played the Majestic Cinema again, this time with Suede. The response this time couldn’t have been more different. The audience really loved it.

On May 10th we played the GR Bozzoli Pavilion on Wits University campus. Support acts were The Party and Dog. “New wave dress is preferable” said the organisers. Yeah right!

We played Steve Fataar’s club several times. Steve had been in the Flames and later in The Beach Boys. I had met him years before when as a schoolboy I had been the only outsider present when he recorded an as yet unreleased solo album with his brother Issy, during which I remember him teaching me Led Zeppelin licks on his Les Paul.

We were developing new more challenging (but not necessarily better) material with a more post punk edge in the vein of PIL, etc. “Avalanche” was a blend of Dead Kennedy’s and Joy Division with lyrics inspired by cold war thrillers, the bass heavy “Take Off”, the Lou Reed influenced “Berlin (Candy)” and “Hiroshima” during which I read from a sheet pasted in a book during stage performances. Another cool song was “City Girls” which used a cleaner guitar sound and seventh chords. These were all good songs but a deviation from the original vision of the group.

And so on and so on. The gigs blur more and more into each other. I intend to go into more detail one day but time is running out and I am getting bored.

It was towards the end of this story that our faithful supporters “Music Maker” ceased to be. What made it even more tragic was that the Music Poll results were soon to be published and I had heard from good insider sources that we had won the “Best Band” category. Not bad for a band with minimal music ability.

And then one day Andrew dropped a bombshell. It was at Doug’s house. He was leaving the group to concentrate on his job at the railways. Of course he formed his own group soon after, with himself on vocals. I was devastated. To have it go so far and have it all fall apart.

So that’s that then. What an anti climax. Goodbye rose tinted world and welcome to the harsh comedown of reality. We still had one show to complete, at Wits University Student Union. I really didn’t want to do it and got real drunk before the show to drown my sorrows. It was a lifeless, turgid affair with all the songs played far too slow and dirgelike. Unfortunately this was about the only show to be bootlegged and there is a terrible tape doing the rounds somewhere. In retrospect we let our selves down by not being strong enough as a unit and by letting ego’s get in the way. Andrew was probably right to break up the band as if we would have carried on we would probably become parodies of our former selves or else got sucked into the mindless violence that is the public’s perception of punk. Once one gets pulled into the media world of violence or drugs you are destined for a bad ending. One only has to look at Kurt Cobain, Sid Vicious or Ritchie Manic as prime examples. Having to live up to a public image is a real shit existence. Everyone wants to either show they can party or fight harder than you and to that extent I am glad we opted out.

So what did we offer then? We were mediocre musicians but we wrote catchy songs at a time when very few groups in South Africa wrote their own material. We also believed in rock and roll and played it with a passion. We also saw the way things were going when most people our age only listened to the Eagles or John Travolta. One only has to look at today’s scene to see bands like Wild Youth everywhere.

I regret that we never recorded an album at the same time as the first demo’s as at that point we were really cooking and without that album we are nothing just a shitty footnote in South African music history. I also feel sad at the way Rubin and Doug were treated. They were fine people and were always a great levelling influence.

I realise now that despite the fact that I played with Andrew for two years, I to this day don’t know what music he really liked. I think he liked Hendrix but we all loved Hendrix. He admired the Stranglers because the bassist was macho, did karate and looked a bit like him. He laughed that little laugh that he always did and was amused by the Vapors “Turning Japanese” a song about masturbation. He also liked Echo and the Bunnymen and later on became a big fan of U2. Apart from that I don’t know.

I formed other bands but it was never the same. I should have had the pride and dignity to quit right then.

I am not a very social person. I get bored at social functions or chewing the fat. Artistic projects are my thing. That is why I am writing this at present. To do something like Wild Youth takes obsession to do such a thing and I was truly obsessed. I still am. I saw the reformed Stooges and New York Dolls recently and they were fucking awesome.”

“Walking the line between good and bad
I’ve got a hot wire burning in my heart”

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