The Crew: Roddy

Roddy did one of the coolest things I ever witnessed as a kid watching a band...

When we were teenagers we'd drink cider in the woods and listen to Metallica on a boombox, stomping about “the tree” and mosh like we were down front in the pit itself. Since we weren't eighteen yet we had nothing else to do... Until Franny Lagan started putting shows on at Channel 2 and Andy Warzone at the Willow Room. Still too young to attend, these places usually let us in on the strict condition we didn't attempt to buy drinks from the bar. And it worked for the most part, at least for a while.. The main thing for us was getting in to see “the band”. We were heavy metal nuts and seeing live bands playing our kind of music in our home town was a fucking dream. Roddy was a few years older than us and played in a great band called Krust. For a while he was the coolest guy in town and we all looked up to him a great deal. A few years later he'd be Speedhorn's stage manager and guitar tech.. but it was a long and rocky road that got us to that point.

Anyway, this one night Krust were playing the Willow Room and me and the gang turned up looking forward to seeing the show. It was to our absolute horror then that on arrival we were told by a very regretful looking Andy Warzone that we would not be allowed entrance due to us being under-age. He'd been getting a lot of hassle from the authorities about letting kids in and his hands were tied. We were truly fucking gutted! I didn't care about drinking the shit lager on offer at the bar, although given the chance I'd gladly have a pint, I just wanted to see Krust play their set. After hopelessly arguing our case for a while, we finally turned away. I felt bad for Andy, I could tell he really wanted to let us in, he, like us, really wanted to help the music scene in the town and he knew we, the kids, were a vital part of it.

Not to be deterred we decided we'd head around the back of the venue and at least listen to the band from there. Directly behind the stage in the venue was a wall of large windows that they would draw curtains across during gigs. This was a floor above ground level, which is where we were stood looking up at the back side of the curtains, listening to Krust start their show. It was loud as fuck out the back and we could hear every note they played. This just seemed to put us further down in the dumps though because as good as Krust were, a big part of the band was the visual live show, which included their friend Nogs dressed in a Frankenstein's Monster suit and Roddy in a doctor's blood covered smock and balaclava, waving various weapons about his head. As we were stood loitering about the back door of the venue listening to them play, a couple of cops turned up and asked us what we were doing. We explained and they were actually pretty cool with us. At first they were of course suspicious but they soon realised we were just a bunch of kids genuinely mad about music and they conveyed a great deal of sympathy with our plight. They left us alone to enjoy the gig as best we could.

Word must have got about inside the venue, no doubt aided by the fact that there was a large contingent of the usual audience missing, because after a few songs we heard Roddy complaining down the mic about the fact we were not allowed in to the show. We got a buzz when we heard him fighting our cause but it was nothing compared to the buzz we got when the band opened up the big curtains behind the stage, turned their back on the audience inside and played to us instead! We went fucking mental and started moshing right there in the car park! You could see Roddy was loving every minute of it and before long he had the crowd inside join him in a chant of “Let them in! Let them in!” This was the coolest thing I had ever witnessed. And fuck me, after a few minutes there was Andy at the back door hastily waving us in to the venue. When we walked in the audience inside gave us a big round of applause and Krust started their set over and we got to watch the whole thing for real.

A lot of dirty water passed under the bridge between that night and the night Roddy quit working for Speedhorn, there were a lot of arguments along the way, most of the time probably our fault, but Roddy went from being our local hero to one of my best friends for a while. And as much as we argued during our time on the road together, we learnt a lot from him, even if most the of the time it was begrudgingly... Roddy had toured all over with various bands and tried his utmost to pass on his experience to us and keep us on track...the problem is, we argued with just about everyone all of the time, none more than amongst ourselves.. And Roddy was always right there in the middle of it. That said, there are some great memories from the five or so years he worked with us...

When we started out, playing hundreds of shows all over the country, travelling about in the dark in the back of a hired Transit van, it was Roddy who was often at the wheel, taking us from town to town. Those who had driving licenses in the band helped out too but Roddy took the wheel for the most part. He also took care of what tour managing there was to do, as well as helping out with merch, fixing gear, you name it. Roddy was our main man, he did everything for us. And being best friends with our manager, Dave, he was also the link between the band and the management/label. Note: having the management and the label under the same roof is not always a good idea...

Now if there is one thing we moaned and fought about more than anything else in the early days, it was the fact that we were always broke. Sure we never had to worry about sorting out payment for the van or Roddy, that was taken care of by the label, but at the same time we didn't have any money in our pockets back then. We used to live on the bare minimum which sometimes amounted to the seven of us, Roddy included, sharing a couple of packets of instant mash and a tin or two of stewed steak. At the time we just got on with it but I couldn't imagine eating that shite now, vegetarian or not..

Anyway, Roddy had to put up with hearing us constantly moan about having no money, and he did a pretty good job of not blowing his lid at us, for the most part... This one day though, we're playing in Wolverhampton I think, and Roddy is driving the van around the block where the venue is, looking for somewhere to park and load in the gear. The thing is it's parking meters all over the place and there doesn't seem to be anyway of avoiding paying for a ticket. We're spread out across the cold Transit floor in the back, getting more and more restless with each lap of the block, some of us dying for a piss, others dying to get into the venue and see if there is any free grub or booze knocking about, Roddy sighing deeper and deeper with each circumnavigation of the venue. Eventually he leans into the back of the van and asks if anyone has any change for a parking meter. He's met instantly with a wave of disdain and moaning, some of us are actually shocked that he's had the gall to ask us if we have money, the odd sarcastic laugh somewhere in the cacophony...”You fucking joking mate? I haven't got a fucking pot to piss in!” Etc, etc.. Roddy huffs and puffs and continues his search of a free space. Of course, as irony would have it, the first corner he takes after being balled out by the lot of us is met by the sound of coins flying out of someone's pockets and rolling across the steel floor of the transit! Typical. We all used to wear these ridiculously baggy jeans with big silly pockets in them and as if style had it's own sense of karma, those pockets gave one of us away. Actually, I don't think it was just one of us, since there were two or three of us scrambling around to pick up the guilty coins. We all thought it was hilarious but Rods was far from amused. As usual, he screamed at us, letting us know that we're a bunch of cunts and refused to talk to us for a while...

He always came around though, although not before getting his own back. I remember later on that day we were sat around waiting with nothing to do. It was some all-dayer and we were playing later on, the load in times for these things always being stupidly early. We had no food and no, or little money, and were bored off our tits. We were all starving and moaning again.. Roddy decided he'd exact some sort of revenge on us by sneaking off to Burger King and treat himself to a meal. He came back with the empty paper bag looking completely chuffed with himself. Of course we all went mad, “Where the fuck did you get the money for that?” grilling him suspiciously. Roddy just had that chuffed little smirk on his face and said nothing.. Later on in the day I went out to the van for something or other and when I opened up the back doors I found Roddy squatted over taking a turd in the empty Burger King paper bag. He just commented matter of factly that the toilets in the venue were “fucking disgusting”...

Roddy used to piss about a lot when driving up and down the country, just to kill the boredom during the seldom periods we weren't partying or fighting with each other. One of his favourites was to slam the brakes on when nobody was expecting it, just to hear us all fly about in the back of the van, these were the days long before we had seats in the back..Of course, he wouldn't do this on the motorway but when we were trawling about the inner cities looking for the venue. This one time in Manchester he did his usual trick and I happened to be lying on the floor at the back of the van, up against a guitar cab. It just so happens my guitar amp was lying up there and when Rods slammed on the breaks the fucking amp fell down and landed on my head. Fuck knows how I came away unscathed! I didn't even really hurt, just shocked me if anything. The guys went fucking mad at him, claiming that he could have killed me. I think he actually felt a bit bad about that one.

But there was plenty we gave him back in return that we had to feel guilty about. Like I say, we were always fighting! And even though we were all at it at one point or another, ninety percent of the time the two that were knocking lumps out of each other were the two singers, Frank and John. Among the worst of times was this occasion we were driving down the M1 in a Transit and trouble erupted in the back between those two. A catty argument soon boiled over in to fists being thrown and Roddy screeching the van to a stop on the hard shoulder. As he did this someone opened up the side sliding door and Roddy's uncased JCM 800 amp, the one he'd been good enough to lend us, fell out on to the tarmac. The van hadn't even come to a complete stop yet. As John and Frank are going at at and we're all piling on top trying to break it up, Rod's is just sat there with a look of horror on his coupon, staring at his amp lying beside the van. As far as the fight goes, it was John as usual coming out on top, and most of us were on him holding him down. Just as we thought it had settled, and unmanned Frank takes a pop at John's jaw, the cheeky cunt. At that we all let go of John and let Frank know he'd be on his own. The two of them end up twenty yards down the motorway in a ditch beside the hard shoulder, Frank losing a shoe along the way somewhere. Amazingly Roddy's 800 suffered no damage and whilst all the mayhem is going on I see Roddy standing proudly over his amp, “Can't beat old school Marshalls. Tough as nails!”..

It went on in this fashion for a couple of years, how Roddy put up with us for that long I'll never know. He finally did end up quitting and moving down to his cousin Kitt's in Exeter, who was one of the former bass players in Krust. We lost contact with him for a few months but then he ended up coming to a gig we had at the Cavern and got pissed up with us. He told us that only the week before he'd been thrown out of the very same club for getting up on stage smashed out his mind whilst a band was on stage, picking up one of the front stage monitors and putting it to his ear and telling the band to give him some vibes. The bouncer's had used his head to open the doors with apparently. I could tell, just by hanging out with him that night that he was missing the life with us. He looked a bit lost down there in Exeter. There was some grudge between him and someone or other in the band though and despite the fact that a few of us were grumbling about bringing him back out on the road, the band answer was no. But then a couple of months later we were heading out on our first European tour, our first on a night liner, and Roddy was back. I've never seen him so happy as he was on that tour. And by then he'd been promoted to stage manager/guitar tech, and he was fucking great at his job. Oh how times had changed...

It was a different, far less stressed Roddy who was out on tour with us now. In fact, we were all a lot less stressed, at least for a while, because things were starting to happen for the band and for a while there we felt like this could go really big. And for a while it did, but we didn't sustain it to long, we just weren't the right people to make something like that last. But that European tour, that first one when we were out supporting Biohazard and playing to an average crowd of about eight hundred a night, was one of the happiest times of my life, of all our lives I guess. Not that we didn't continue to wind each other up...And Rod's still got his share of that.

This one night we're in Copenhagen and we all take a trip to Christiania to check out what it's all about. Eskimos and drugs I'd soon find out. Anyway, Roddy had ended up eating some hash chocolate or something and quite a dose of it it seemed, since a couple of hours later he was totally freaking out. It got to the point where Dave was actually a bit concerned about him and told him to go and chill out on the bus and watch a film. A short while later Dave comes on the bus to find the lot of us slumbering about the back lounge of the bus, lazily watching the film Lancelot Link, Secret Chimp, a secret agent movie where all the characters are played by chimpanzees, just like the old PG Tips adverts. Dave takes one look at the tv and then another look at Roddy, who is sat there in pale, terrified, silence and asks us what the fuck we think we're doing. “What? Fucking great film..” replies Frank, completely oblivious to poor Roddy. Dave just pisses himself laughing and calls us a bunch of twats whilst helping Roddy out of there. We hadn't even soundchecked by this point.. meaning Roddy hadn't even started work, the poor bastard. When we did go inside the venue to set things up, it was really dark in there for some reason and Gords thought it would be funny to freak Roddy out by sparking his lighter randomly in his face. Great fucking mates...

As much as we all took the piss out of each other though there was a certain bond between us for those first few years, although sadly it did eventually dissolve. But, as much as we argued with Roddy, we learnt a hell of a lot from him and we knew deep down that he just wanted the best for us. Roddy taught me more about touring than anyone else has since, he taught me all the tricks of making money stretch and how to scam free food, like going in turns into to Pizza Hut when they had an “Eat all you can for a fiver” campaign and sharing the same plate, or turning up at the back of McDonald’s at the end of the night and waiting for them to throw the unused food in the bins. He also drilled it into us that we should always treat people with respect, that great line about meeting the same people on the way up as you do on the way back down, has always stuck with me.

Roddy quit touring with Speedhorn a few times and came back, but it was over for good once he started Viking Skull. To be fair, we were touring less by that point as in-fighting and record label problems finally took their toll. But in Viking Skull Roddy finally got to be in the band he'd always wanted. I remember those first shows when they'd play before us if there was no opening support band as some of the most fun gigs I've seen. It was a great set up since our merch guy and close friend Waldie was also in Skull. I remember thinking of them as our Nig Heist and for a while it was great. But in the end they got more serious and it eventually led to a bit of a conflict between the bands, although I feel that I always supported them. By the time Viking Skull were heading to the next level Speedhorn were already starting to reconnect with some of those friends we'd met on the way up.. The tide was changing.

I haven't seen Roddy for a long, long time now. Not so strange since I live in Sweden and Rod's is still in Corby, and Skull and Speedhorn are now gone. I miss him sometimes. I'm happy to hear that he's still involved in music though, having started a new venue in Corby at the Rugby Club where my uncles sit on the committee. Roddy was always a really great at promoting shows and things seem to be going well with The Zombie Hut. I cracked up when I heard the name, he was always into gore and heavy metal splatter. As soon as I heard what the club was called it made me think of the old days when “The Doctor” would come out on stage waving an axe around, covered in fake blood, possessed eyes staring through the holes in the balaclava. Good times indeed.