The Members: how we made Sound of the Suburbs

Jean-Marie “JC” Carroll, songwriter, guitarist

I used to be 19 and residing a double life. Night-time punk rocker, then I’d flatten my hair down with water and go to work in the financial institution in the daytime. The unique punk scene was about 200 to 300 individuals in London and Manchester, however as soon as we began doing gigs we noticed all these children from small cities who weren’t half of the metropolitan elite and wished to be half of it. I assumed: “These people need a song.”

We had been children from Surrey, so we knew all about being seen as oiks from the suburbs. We had low cost guitars with a scratchy, twangy sound. I began enjoying the riff and as soon as I had the better part of a track I took it to the band. I wished one thing at the starting to announce its arrival, so performed this twangy intro. It is definitely the reveille, the bugle name you hear when the cavalry fees on outdated movies.

When I wrote “the youth club group used to wanna be free, now they want anarchy”, I used to be referring to the group Free, who sang Alright Now. The concept was that the youth membership group had been a bit heavy metallic however they’d reduce their hair and gone punk. The line “annoying the neighbours with his punk rock electric guitar” got here from one thing my mum used to say to me after I performed mine: “Stop that bloody racket! You’re annoying the neighbours.”

The Sound of the Suburbs was one of Steve Lillywhite’s first productions. He was our drummer Adrian’s brother. Steve had us doing handclaps, which he’d achieved on Do Anything You Wanna Do by Eddie and the Hot Rods. Then he took his tape recorder all the way down to Staines railway station and recorded the British Rail announcer calling out the cities we got here from “Camberley, Bagshot, Lightwater … This is Staines.” You can hear that on the file throughout the instrumental breakdown.

We performed the track for the first time when we supported the Vibrators at the Marquee in London on 13 August 1978, and the crowd went loopy. We knew it was going to be an enormous file as a result of it was like they already knew it. It wasn’t our track – it was their track.

Nicky Tesco, singer, songwriter

When we began getting interviewed by the press, I used to joke about being from the suburbs and coming as much as London to discover a dirty alley to take our image in however they had been full up with different bands queueing to take theirs. That’s the approach we performed it, however our following was full of children from out-of-town locations equivalent to Staines, Finchley or Woking. Phill Jupitus was from Essex – we’re nonetheless actually good mates – and he slept on the flooring of my bedsit with one other child whereas my then girlfriend and I had been in the mattress. England footballer Stuart Pearce was in the Fulham crew and went to all the punk gigs.

We had been supporting somebody at, I believe, Aylesbury Friars, and JC stated: “We need an anthem.” He got here up with a pair of verses, the refrain and the center eight. I got here up with the third verse, beginning “Saturday shoppers crowding out the centre of town / Young blokes sitting on the benches shouting at the young girls walking around / Johnny stands there at his window looking at the night …” Once we acquired in the rehearsal room it grew to become a band effort. Nigel Bennett performed the “punk-rock electric guitar”.

It was an apparent single. Malcolm Garrett, who’d achieved all the Buzzcocks sleeves, made a terrific sleeve with an enormous sq. gap in it. He wished the file in clear vinyl, so it looked like a TV set.

We had been enjoying in Great Yarmouth when we acquired a really excited cellphone name from our supervisor going: “Guys, Suburbs is in the Top 40! We’ve got to get you back to London to do Top of the Pops!” We mimed to a BBC playback that sounded prefer it was popping out of somebody’s house stereo, however the file shot up the charts. The demand caught the label unexpectedly. The manufacturing supervisor instructed me he had individuals working till 10 at evening discovering urgent vegetation to print sufficient copies to promote. I nonetheless love the track. It encapsulates that second whenever you’re nonetheless too younger to get in pubs and caught in suburbia. It was the soundtrack of our youth.