| In 1978, I lived in a
huge British Rail warehouse in Battersea, in
south London, with an arts community. It was a
hotbed for bright young writers and a rehearsal
room for Iggy Pop, David Bowie and John Cale. Back then it was called Mayhem, and it’s
bang opposite Queenstown Road railway station.
Steve Strange and Boy George had weekend parties
there because it held anything up to 500 people.
The parties were so chaotic that I’d let
them in on a Friday night and come back on Monday
morning, and they never knew I’d left.
I shared with
Adam Ant’s wife, Eve (they had broken up),
an actor called Keith Hodges, the guitarist from
Adam Ant’s band, Kevin Mooney, and a writer
(I’ve forgotten his name). It cost £60 a
week for five of us and I lived there for two
years.
It was on the
first floor above a repainting garage, which was
phenomenally fumey and dirty. When we first got
it, all that was in there were huge acid tanks
with armour-plated glass — I have no idea
why.
We took them
apart and used the glass, which was almost an
inch-and-a-half thick, as flooring. We put our
bedrooms in on stilts. I split my bedroom into
two floors because I’m very short, just
under 5ft. My rooms were full of books and
painting materials. It was very eclectic because
I had lots of possessions. I was into anything to
do with art, anything visual. It was where I was
forming all my ideas.
Eve was a
designer, so her bedroom was white, like a cube,
and spacious. I think she had a workshop that she
went to in the daytime. Some of the boys had an
unpainted space of chipboard. We had no money, so
everything was just thrown together, but it didn’t
matter because it was full of expression.
Opposite us was a place where they built coffins
and at night we’d go over the wall and take
the wood that they stored outside; virtually
everything in our place was made from this wood.
We had one
toilet and no bathroom. The caretaker, who lived
across the way, let us use his bath every other
day or we’d go down the road to the public
baths. We didn’t have a kitchen but I think
we had a toaster and a camping grill in the
communal space.
|
We never cooked —
we’d make toast or go out and get fish and
chips or a kebab. We painted the inside black and
kept the main part as a stage and rehearsal room.
Iggy Pop was the main one. There was one window
that we boarded up because we had to do something
about the noise, as Iggy Pop’s band was just
so big — you could hear it through a nuclear
bomb shelter, it was that loud. My band also rehearsed there. We were
having success on the London circuit, pulling 2,000
people a night, playing venues like the Lyceum.
It was wonderful. I would have been about 19.
We didn’t
have a television, but we had a record player in
the communal area, which was just a boxed-in
lounge. Back then, we listened to the Velvet
Underground, the Sex Pistols, Iggy Pop and David
Bowie. At that time, Bowie was producing Iggy Pop
so he would have come over to check the band.
On the whole it
was quiet during the daytime and lively in the
evening. We all worked in our separate spaces, or
I was out making movies or touring.
It was a very
busy time for me. In those two years, I made
seven feature films and two albums. I started to
make films like Quadrophenia and The Corn is
Green. I was amassing tens of thousands of pounds
so I ended up paying for everything.
Increasingly, I was there less often because I
started touring with the band. It got to the
point where I became the money bag and it was
like, well, why should I be paying? I needed to
get out because I was starting to get well-known
and I needed privacy. My life was so hectic and
so full of turmoil that I wanted a base that was
a little more welcoming. Actually, I think I was
on the road for five or six years.
Even to this
day, more than 20 years on, people occasionally
come up to me and say: “I met you at the
warehouse.”
Sunday Times -
September 2002
|