Our Johnny is the Only One Dancing in Time: Chapter 10

An occasional series of possibly true scenes from a perfectly normal life. Let's call it faction.

Chapter 10: I’ll Just Lightly Tap It…. With This Sledgehammer

(Want to read previous chapters first? Links at the bottom)

One of the essential things you’re going to need if you want to open a grassroots music venue is money. This presented a small obstacle in our plan to open our own space, as we had absolutely none at all.

A longstanding joke in the live music industry runs ‘how do you make a million pounds running a grassroots music venue? Start with two million’. This witty little saying actual contains slightly more truth in it than we might like there to be. These days there is a whole supporting network established by Music Venue Trust around how to open and how to run a music venue, laying out various intelligent ways to reduce the expenditure and increase the income. There’s even support on how to approach a bank to try and get some funding behind you, and instructions on where else you might look for funding. In 1992, there was nothing at all. You found a space that you could rent, raised the money you could raise, then opened as quick as you could to try and make some money to enable you to actually build what you need. 

We were in the fortunate position of having a whole heap of slightly battered but working equipment that vaguely resembled the essential elements of a live venue. Although all of it had seen better days, we had stuff like a PA, lights, a sound desk etc. What we didn’t have was any money at all to convert the toilet which we had somehow acquired a lease for into a space that we could put that stuff in or on. We had therefore hit upon the idea that we should do it all ourselves using whatever anybody would lend or give us. To emphasise our commitment to this latest hare-brained scheme, we had also decided that we should do our very best impression of some builders we had seen on Auf Wiedersehen. 

Thus it was that at 6am in early December 1992 a ragtag motley bunch of people gathered together in my centrally located flat to partake of a cooked breakfast and examine the tools we had laid our hands on. The breakfast was our little enticement to encourage people out of bed as we understood that most building work was done before lunchtime. The primary gang consisted of Alt-Lovejoy, Mr Handsome, The Driver and me, the team that were going to make it happen, but the size of this mission required the deployment of additional hands. 

Moon, for starters, was on board and had brought a special hat. Another acquaintance, Goth Dancer, came armed with a whole tool kit and a protective yellow helmet. This level of professional equipment seemed curiously out of step with his reputation for hijacking the stereo, inserting Toyah’s eponymously titled third album on to it, then proceeding to do an entire choreographed routine to all 8 minutes and 30 seconds of Ieya with full demonstration of the incomprehensible lyrics. This was a bewildering sight to behold which would significantly unnerve any members of the opposite sex within a forty metre perimeter and cause us to be ostracised wherever we went. The regularity of this occurrence had caused us to form a special band, Jez and the Ejaculations, for the sole purpose of playing its one self penned anthem, the thought provoking and lyrical questionable “We Hate Ashley”, in which we laid out Goth Dancer’s various faults and misdemeanours. However, despite his terpsichorean follies he had a tool kit and we needed one, so he was officially part of the crew. 

The lead singer of the Ejaculations was the only person we knew with an actual qualification in something useful and actually relevant, The Legal Beagle. His professional skills had led to the acquisition of the licence for the premises, almost the first thing we had actually done that had any sort of legally compliant process to it. His knowledge of the law seemed out of step with the pattern of his social behaviour, which almost exclusively seemed to consist of always being near to, but never being responsible for, arson, petty crime and disorder. The Legal Beagle appeared to have brought a series of very large knives with him, although I’m still not completely sure whether that was for the purposes of refurbishing Europe’s largest toilet or just something he liked to have about his person for security. 

We had overly emphasised the need for sledgehammers, resulting in four, and significantly understated the need for any nails, wood or screws, of which we had exactly none. By 7.30am we had agreed a plan of action, hawked our tools down to the common, and nervously opened the threshold to see the scale of the work required. 

After it had spent 40 odd years not being used as a toilet, Fonthill had been converted into a Brass Rubbing Centre. Now, I’m guessing you’ve already got a quizzical look on your face because like most people I’ve ever met you have no idea what that could be. Unfortunately neither have I. Brass Rubbing is obviously the activity that people tired of the excitement of train spotting do in graveyards and churches with charcoal or a pencil and a thin sheet of paper. However, Fonthill having no statues, gravestones, masonry or reliefs to speak of anywhere inside its walls, it’s always been somewhat of a mystery what exactly it is that went on their. Graffiti located in the cubicles dating all the way back to the 1950s seemed to suggest that a certain amount of rubbing had indeed taken place, but not of the Brass variety. The result of it housing this enigmatic activity, however, was that the building had been divided into two. With a great big breeze block walk from wall to wall, floor to ceiling, slap bang in the middle of what we imagined might become the main hall. Moon, who was completely dedicated to his origins story that he had been named after the manic behaviour of his namesake Keith, immediately decided it was his primary mission to remove this barrier and reunite the two halves. 

At about 9am he began hitting the lowest part of the middle of this 8 inch thick wall with the lightest of our four sledgehammers, while we busied ourselves elsewhere knocking holes into slightly easier walls to make things like a box office and a beer cellar. When his initial efforts proved to have no impact whatsoever, at about 10am he called for assistance and was joined by Alt-Lovejoy who opted for the second heaviest implement and joined the swinging. At about 10.30am, after they had jointly been hammering away at it for 30 solid minutes, the very centre-most breeze-block gave up the fight, spat it’s way into the other side of the hall, and a small gap appeared. After we had all convened to admire this progress and exhausted all the fun and amusement to be had out of waving at each other through it, and passing things through it speedily, half waiting for them to be crushed beneath the full weight of the wall that we fully expected to collapse at any moment, we collectively reached the conclusion that simply knocking out this one apparently lynch-pin brick would not, as we had anticipated, cause the entire structure to collapse. Moon and Alt-Lovejoy would need more help, so Mr Handsome grabbed the third most heavy tool and the swinging began again. 

By 11.30 seven or eight more bricks at the bottom centre of the wall had removed themselves or crumbled to dust, but the overall structure seemed as solid as ever. The heroic trio climbed up some ladders and attempted a few swings at the top of it but it just made a decidedly unpromising thud.  At midday they paused their efforts, ate some pre-prepared sandwiches and considered how to complete the task. The Driver grabbed the fourth sledgehammer, and swinging all four instruments about their heads like Thor on steroids the four determined destructors advanced once again. At 3pm we all convened to study the arch shaped hole 6 hours of effort had created. It was now possible, if you ducked down a bit, to pass from one side of the wall to the other. However, the wall still showed no signs whatsoever of collapsing in its entirety. It was agreed that what was required was that all of should take hold of everything we had that might be considered a blunt instrument and strike the centre of the top of this newly created archway as hard as we could.  

This new plan did provoke some discussion about the potential risk of the wall collapsing on top of us, but as I think I previously mentioned we were aware of the word health and of the word safety, but had declined to the opportunity to consider putting them together in one sentence. Alt Lovejoy was firmly of the opinion that if we kept our wits about us, we would see the wall crack a bit, providing ample opportunity to run to the opposite end of the building and admire our handiwork as the bricks gently glided to the floor in front of us. 

Reading this some thirty years later, I am guessing you have, by now, already worked out where this is heading, but I want to emphasise that this is actually how a grassroots music venue used to get built. No architect plan. No building survey. No carefully planned conversion and refurbishment, costed and delivered by experienced professionals to achieve a high standard of construction. Just seven of us stood inside a hole in a wall made of about 300 breeze blocks, hitting the ones dangling directly above us with hammers, poles, pickaxes, bits of wood and rocks, repeatedly, over and over again, as the wall creaked a bit, cracked a bit, splintered a bit…. then dramatically collapsed directly on top of us. 

Alt-Lovejoy was correct though - he had made it to the far end of the hall and was doubled up laughing. Moon had not been quite as fortunate, so we had to dig him out. All of us looked like we had been stuck in a Chilean mine for a few weeks, and I think even now, decades later, I still occasionally spit up some dust from a distant part of my lungs that still hasn’t quite recovered. 

But the wall was gone, replaced by a massive pile of rubble which it would take us two weeks to remove using the single wheelbarrow we had, obviously, stolen from a local park. We now had an auditorium, and we took turns standing at one end of it and singing, imagining what it might look like to have 250 people in front of you staring in your direction. A Grassroots Music Venue is built on a dream, that was ours. 

We ignored Christmas that year. Being due to start paying rent at the end of January left us with no option other than to declare an opening date and stick to it, even if that meant no turkey for us, and even if it meant audience members would still be standing on the remain of the giant dividing wall and wondering why this new venue was so dusty. On Boxing Day we built a stage. On New Year’s Eve we hosted a different sort of party, persuading about twenty other people that it would be simply amazing to see in the new year with a paintbrush in their hand listening to a wonky stereo playing out the sort of music that we hoped would shortly have a home here. Plus the obligatory 8 minute and 30 seconds of Toyah. 

Floor space being at a premium, because every bit we lost meant someone we couldn’t charge to get in, it was agreed to spend all the money we could find building a large steel platform in one corner out of girders. Underneath this structure we could stick a bar, on top of it we put a mixing desk, accessed solely by a ladder which was bolted to the wall. As a result of the decision that we had to have this platform, the stage at the other end of the building has to be built for no budget at all and was put together out of hopes, dreams, glue and recycled bits of MDF and pallets. 

By 10 January we had something that looked a bit like it might be an actual music venue. On 11 January we turned the PA and lights on and someone tried talking into a microphone. This resulted in an immediate noise complaint, so we stayed up for the next two days continuously stuffing foam, rockwool, and egg boxes into the doors. On 14 January someone arrived with a massive amount of bright green carpet that looked like it had been ripped off a snooker table, so we glued that to the floor, rolled about on it and decided that it would work as an anti-slip measure.   

At 8pm on 15 January 1993, the first paying customer walked through the doors of Tunbridge Wells Forum, handed over £5 at the box office we had constructed out of a cupboard, walked round the corner and did exactly what we wanted them to do. They smiled, laughed, grinned their head off at the stupidity of it, walked to the bar and bought the first legal pint we’d ever sold to anyone at the first legal bar we had ever actually legally owned. They were quickly followed by 249 others. Another 200 were left queuing outside. Tunbridge Wells finally had a music venue and we had made it happen. 

At 8.45pm, Mr Handsome’s latest outfit walked on stage, spent a few minutes trying to work out where all these people had suddenly come from, then launched into their song Piecemeal. The place went, and I am not understating this or exaggerating it, fucking bananas. They continued to rip the place apart through the whole of Joeyfat’s set, before treating headliners Foreheads in a Fishtank to the sort of reception normally reserved for the announcement that everyone is getting a free fifty pound note. 

I’ve done a lot of things in my life, a huge number of which seemed like good ideas at the time but retrospectively seem like they were done by someone else who I hardly know. But if you want to know what makes me tick, what is my motivation, what drives me on to do more, then you just have to try and capture the feeling  and emotion I shared with the people who were there the night Tunbridge Wells Forum opened.  

Trust me: Open a grassroots music venue. It’s about as difficult as managing a bag of octopuses into which someone has inconsiderately inserted a dozen reluctant cats. It will give you sleepless nights, emotional trauma, unbelievable levels of stress, very little economic return, and huge and unreasonable amounts of responsibility. You will work hours most people consider to be equivalent to a prison sentence for the sort of pay that would result in a public inquiry into unreasonable conditions of employment if you weren’t doing it to yourself. You will have to deal with a roller-coaster set of emotions on an almost daily basis. You will fail terribly, get up off the floor, struggle on, fail again, and just keep on keeping on because you don’t know how to do anything else.

But you won’t ever regret it.

Read Chapter 11

Catch up on previous chapters:

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9