Danny Fields, Manager Of The Ramones
As part of this summer’s celebration of forty years of punk, I interviewed New Yorker Danny Fields at Leila’s Cafe last week about his enduring relationship with London and the crucial events of July 1976. The feature is accompanied by Danny’s photographs of The Ramones.
Danny Fields by Sarah Ainslie
The Gentle Author – When did you first come to London?
Danny Fields – In 1958. I was nineteen, I had just graduated from college and I had a book called ‘Europe on Five Dollars a Day.’ One pound was $2.80 then, it had been devalued from almost five dollars. So literally, I had five dollars a day for food and lodging, not for party time or cocktails, but yeah I was nineteen and I stayed in Russell Sq.
The Gentle Author – Why did you come here?
Danny Fields – It was the grand tour. I had finished college, I was about to go to law school but first you had to go to Europe: London, Amsterdam, Munich, Rome, Venice, Florence… I’m sure I left somewhere out… Paris, of course.
The Gentle Author – What was your impression of London at that time?
Danny Fields – It was overwhelmingly beautiful. It was London! My mother’s family was from Yorkshire, from Leeds. She was the youngest of six children and the only one who was born in the United States – her brothers and sisters were all born here, so I always felt a little bit British in my blood and I’m a great anglophile.
It was way better than the United States, more civilized and the people speak better, and they’re just smarter and prettier, and the whole place is way more wonderful than dreary pathetic America… which has good natural scenery, let’s be honest.
The Gentle Author – What did you enjoy in London?
Danny Fields – I stood in front of Buckingham Palace and then I went to the Royal Parks. I enjoyed cramming in as many of the ‘must-sees’ as one could. Especially, the Elgin Marbles. The forty or fifty times I’ve been here since, that’s the one must-see for me. When I see the Iosius, the river god lying there on the pediment from the Parthenon, then I know I’m here in London and I’m happy.
The Gentle Author – So after that first visit, when did you return?
Danny Fields – I started coming back regularly in the seventies when I began working in the music business. One would come then on trips and junkets, record companies would fly reporters and journalists first class to London to see a new band. In those days, the record companies were immensely rich. I don’t even remember the details, it was just: ‘Do you want to go to Copenhagen?’ ‘Oh sure!’
The Gentle Author – Do you remember any of those bands?
Danny Fields – No, I don’t remember any because they all sucked! I only remember the city. But forty years ago this week, I came as manager with The Ramones to play the Roundhouse and apparently made some kind of vibration in the existing musical plasma in this country. It was meaningful in ways that I didn’t realise until much later, because we were only here for three days.
The Ramones played at the Roundhouse on the Friday night and sold it out, which was remarkable. It proved that this amateurish do-it-yourself band, who were not musically virtuosic, not blessed with the gift of knowing anything about music, but with a power all their own, were viable commercially.
The promoters saw that and it became the catalyst for the creation of bands here that weren’t even invented yet, those still toying with the idea of becoming a band, perhaps getting together and playing but were not good enough.
The first afternoon we were here Paul Simonon of The Clash, which became the greatest of the British bands in ensuing years, came into the dressing room and asked, ‘How do you guys do it? You must be really good, because we just aren’t good enough to play in public.’ Johnny Ramone said, ‘You haven’t seen us – we stink! We can’t play, we just put it on and we’re fast and loud.’ It was the velocity of the music that was a revelation to musicians here. ‘Wow, they like it when we play fast!’ The Ramones liked playing fast because no one noticed when they hit a wrong note. ‘Don’t ever tune up in between songs it’s not sexy – just shoot that rocket and keep it moving.’
You don’t tell a rocket to stop, it’s got to keep going or it’s going to fall. The same thing happens in the mind of an audience when a band starts playing. The Ramones, as another musician said of them, ‘you could not slide a cigarette paper between two of their songs.’ One song ended and the next song began before you knew it, so there was no disruption of the moment and that became definitive for Punk Rock.
The Ramones got called ‘Punk.’ I don’t know how we became ‘Punk,’ but it’s a very handy term. It has such scene stealing tendencies. Four letter words are great, they last a long time, they’re easy and then they become umbrella terms, covering fashion and politics. Punk has lasted now for forty years and it’s not going away. The death of Punk is predicted frequently but this year is the year of Punk in London. There’s Punk tattoos and Punk ballet and Women in Punk, an entire year sponsored by the Mayor’s Office and the National Lottery. So it occurred to me that London is trying to own Punk Rock, which they should because anything exciting to do with Rock ‘n’ Roll since the late fifties was born here, I mean except for Elvis.
Punk is an idea that it changes its hue and dimensions, but elements of it were started by The Ramones. They were poor kids from New York who came here on July 4th 1976, which – ironically – was also the Bicentennial of the American Revolution when the American colonies fired George III. It was like a Brexit in reverse: Britain got fired. Then, two hundred years later, four guys from the former colonies, now the United States (an unfortunate agglomeration of areas) came here and triggered Punk.
The Gentle Author – Why had The Ramones not made it in America yet? Why did it happen in London?
Danny Fields – It’s much smaller and denser here, geographically, whereas America’s so spread out. There’s all those time zones but here something can happen instantly. Whether you were in Belfast or Cornwall or Edinburgh you read the New Musical Express and the music weeklies had immense influence. There were brilliant people writing for them, and bands-that-wanted-to-be-bands were reading them and dreaming – everyone at once. John Peel was playing the music on Radio One, so you could have the igniting of an entire culture in an instant, which you couldn’t have in America.
The Ramones were struggling to get into Cincinnati before they took London by storm, yet when they came back to America it was as it was when we left – very few places to play. Meanwhile, here’s another irony, the whole of America knew what was happening with the Sex Pistols, that they were trouble and they vomited wherever they went. The shenanigans of the Sex Pistols at that time – it was a watershed moment when these drunks went on a TV show and said a dirty word – they went from coverage in the music section to front page news.
The Gentle Author – As manager, did you feel vindicated by the success of The Ramones in London?
Danny Fields – Oh no, it was too astonishing. As manager, I was still struggling to get them into Cincinatti. Of course, I loved their music, but it was hard.
The Ramones came to London with an exotic musical aura. There was interest here in the downtown New York scene and British music weeklies sent reporters to cover what was going on at CBGBs. So that was glamorous and it was why thousands of people turned up at the Roundhouse. The band played for more people that one night in the Roundhouse on July 4th than they had played for in their entire two year career until then. I expected nothing to come of this except a trip to London. This was a delightful surprise, kind of like – ‘Pinch me, did two thousand people really come? Oh my God!’ In the photos, you can see the astonishment of the band. ‘It’s us!’
It was the London heat wave of July ’76 but there was no air-conditioning anywhere. Business men were walking down Piccadilly in wife-beater shirts and there were no ice cubes. The band couldn’t believe it, because we were used to totally air-conditioned New York in the summer. But we had an air-conditioned room at the Holiday Inn in Camden, so all the kids came back and stayed at our hotel and there were wild sex romps. That was just a little extra something. We did not ask for the heat wave but it was part of it. I’m sure it was part of it. So little of it you can plan. You book the hotel rooms and the venue, but then ‘Who’s there?’ and ‘What do they think?’ and ‘Do they want more of you?’ and all that. There’s no planning for that, just wishing.
The Gentle Author – Why do you keep coming back to London?
Danny Fields – I love it, especially the history. I’m a great fan of the Royal family (not as human beings, except for the Queen!) because they’re so hilarious and wonderful, and you can trace the history of civilization by the British monarchy.
Oh it’s just, yes, there’s an affinity… there’s no word for it but I know it when I see it, and I feel it in London. It feels correct and right and civilized here, far more civilized than America. We have New York which is a little oasis of civilization – but Britain is totally civilized wherever you go.
London is the busiest city I’ve ever been, except maybe Tokyo. The people are so creative, everybody here looks self-invented, not cookie-cutter identities, they all have a personal style. I love everything about it as a culture. I love the National Gallery and I love the Tate and I love the neighbourhoods and I love Bloomsbury and the squares. We don’t have anything so perfect as London. What a perfect idea of a city, it’s just punctuated by green, beautiful green spaces. Yet to think that it was pulverized between 1940 and 1945. Some of my favourite movies of all time were made here in the thirties and forties, and my favourite actors and actresses are from here. Even Middlemarch is from here – the best book of all time! I have no problems, it’s quite the perfect civilization. I can’t imagine the human race has come up with anything better than London.
Transcript by Rachel Blaylock
Danny’s portrait of The Ramones in Washington Sq, Greenwich Village, New York
Dee Dee & Johnny Ramone at Heathrow Airport
The Ramones on Park Lane
Joey Ramone outside the Roundhouse
The Ramones play to 3,300 people at the Roundhouse on 4th July 1976
Dee Dee Ramone
Linda Clarke, Lee Black Childers, Nancy Spungen, Sid Vicious, Dee Dee Ramone
Stuart Keen, Tommy Ramone, Dee Dee Ramone, Keith Levene, Paul Simonon, Johnny Ramone
Danny Fields (right) and friends at the Bottom Line, New York 1978
Archive photographs copyright © Danny Fields
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Viscountess Boudica At The Society Club
In her ongoing attempt to prevent eviction from her council flat, Viscountess Boudica of Bethnal Green is exhibiting her drawings for sale at The Society Club, 12 Ingestre Place, Soho, W1F 0JF. All readers of Spitalfields Life are invited to the opening next Wednesday 20th July 7-9pm. Drawings are priced at £40 each or you can click here to donate direct to the Viscountess’ fund.
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At Central Books
Do you wonder where Spitalfields Life Books come from? Perhaps you thought I keep them in my attic in Spitalfields and I climb a rickety ladder every time someone wants one? In fact, they have recently been coming from Central Books‘ magnificent agglomeration of old warehouses in Hackney Wick, which is the next best thing.
Yet the modern age has caught up with Central Books, which was founded by the Communist Party in 1940, and they are now moving to fancy new warehouse in Chadwell Heath opposite Nichols & Clarke, another emigrant from the East End. So, as they make preparations to leave their nineteenth century premises for good, I took this last opportunity for a ramble around to explore the forgotten corners of the lonely old book store with my camera.
Central Books’ headquarters is a tall building on Wallis Rd that was originally the Clarnico Chocolate Box Factory. It houses offices on the top floor, a packing room on the ground floor and three floors of bookshelves in between. During the Olympics and to bemusement of the staff, MI5 made frequent visits to this building which enjoys a unique view upon the site of the games.
Grafted onto this tower are a string of warehouses of differing ages, connected by yards that have been subsequently roofed over to create a curious architectural assemblage, in which former exterior walls become interior and you walk from early nineteenth into early twentieth century spaces. Before they became a book warehouse, all these structures were built for different purposes, some lost.
The largest warehouse has an elaborate wooden roof with rough hewn timbers which appears as much agricultural as industrial in style. This early nineteenth century barn-like space was once used for the manufacture of lace and, since the precise location is unknown, may be where the very first plastic – parkesine – was manufactured in the eighteen-sixties in Hackney Wick.
Central Books arrived here in 1990 from the Leathermarket in Bermondsey, yet the company began at the Communist Party HQ in King St, Covent Garden, in the thirties, before opening a shop in Red Lion Sq then Grays Inn Rd and expanding to thirty-two party shops across the country by 1945, distributed books produced by the USSR to the entire free world.
Yet when Bill Norris – who runs Central Books today – took over in 1984, the fortunes of the company had followed the decline of the Communist movement. Bill oversaw the transfer of ownership of Central Books to the workforce in the nineteen-nineties, as it cut its political ties and expanded to distribute a wide range of independent publishers.
Today, a small company like Central Books give a personal service that cannot be matched by corporate distributors yet, although the move to Chadwell Heath will increase efficiency, I shall miss the atmospheric old warehouses in Hackney Wick which have given my books a temporary home on their journey between the printer and the bookseller, on their way to you.
Announcement of the founding of Central Books by the Communist Party. Nowadays, Central Books distributes The Gentle Author’s London Album and Spitalfields Nippers but it was once quite different.
Central Books in 1961
Two buildings spliced together
Central Books occupy the former Clarnico Chocolate Box Factory
Retailers can order all Spitalfields Life Books wholesale direct from orders@centralbooks.com
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A London Bestiary
Contributing Artist Adam Dant has created this splendid portfolio of chiaroscuro wood cuts of Ten Creatures of London Legend
The Vegetable Lamb Of Tartary, Lambeth Palace
This was believed to be a sheep grown on a plant from a melon-like seed. Introduced to England by Sir John Mandeville in the fourteenth century, an example of this legendary zoophyte can be found at Lambeth Palace.
The City Of London Dragon, Chancery Lane
The dragon guards the boundary of the City of London and its design is based upon a seven-foot-high original created by J B Bunning in 1849, upon the roof of the former Coal Exchange in Lower Thames St.
The Werewolf Of London, Guys Hospital
In 1963, Dr John Illis of Guys Hospital wrote a paper On Porphyria & Aetiology Of Werewolves, arguing that red teeth, photosensitivity and psychosis experienced by those suffering of Porphyria may have been the characteristics that led to them being mistaken for werewolves.
The Enlightenment Merman, British Museum
Part-monkey and part-fish, the Merman was ‘caught’ in Japan in the eighteenth century and given to Queen Victoria’s virtuous grandson Prince Arthur who donated the desiccated creature to the British Museum, where it may be found today in the Enlightenment Gallery.
The Olympic Park Monster Catfish, Stratford
In December 2011, a Canada Goose was dragged beneath the waters of the River Lea by an unseen predator believed to be a Monster Catfish known to locals as ‘Darren.’
The Sheep Having A Monstrous Horn, Royal Society
This animal from Devonshire gained fame in the capital having been presented to the Royal Society on account of a giant twenty-six inch horn which grew from its neck.
Old Martin, Martin Tower At The Tower Of London
Old Martin, the phantom bear of the Tower of London’s Martin Tower is reported to have scared one unfortunate beefeater to death. A bear by the name of Old Martin was given to George III by the Hudson Bay Company in 1811 when the Tower had its own menagerie.
Spring-Heeled Jack, Bearbinder Rd In Mile End
Numerous sightings of a violent demonic creature with supernatural abilities at jumping terrorised people in the East End in 1838.
The Phantom Chicken, Pond Sq Highgate
The half-plucked Chicken, which was seen most recently in 1970 by a caressing couple, is said to be the same chicken which Sir Francis Bacon had attempted to pack with ice in 1626 during an early experiment in freezing food that resulted in the philosopher’s death from Pneumonia.
Twelve Foot Fossilised Irish Giant, Broad St Station
Weighing two tons and fifteen hundredweight and standing twelve feet two inches tall, the fossilised ‘Irish Giant’ disappeared from Broad St Station in 1876 after being dug up by a Mr Dyer in County Antrim and toured around Liverpool and Manchester.
Images copyright © Adam Dant
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Map of Shakespeare’s Shorediche
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At Spitalfields Fruit & Veg Market
Twenty-five years ago this summer, the wholesale fruit & vegetable market left Spitalfields, where it had been established in 1638 by charter of Charles I, and transferred to a site on the Hackney Marshes where it continues to operate today.
Mark Jackson & Huw Davies’ Spitalfields market photographs of 1990 seem now to be images from the eternal night of history – with fleeting figures endlessly running, fetching and carrying, pushing barrows from the flaring lights out into the velvet blackness, where a bonfire burns beneath the great tower of Christ Church looming overhead.
Mark & Huw were poets with cameras, aware that they were in an epic world with its own codes and customs, and they recognised the imperative to record it before it disappeared. No one asked them and no one paid them – as recent graduates, they shared a tiny flat and worked, as a courier and in a restaurant respectively, to buy film and subsidise their project. Each evening they took the last tube to Liverpool St Station and spent the night at the market, taking pictures and befriending the traders, before going straight back to work again in the morning, often without any sleep.
Like many of the most inspiring cultural projects, this remarkable body of photography was the result of individuals pursuing their own passion – Mark & Huw were committed to record what no one else was interested to look at. Neither became photographers, their greater project to record all the London markets was reluctantly abandoned when they went off to pursue other careers, but their Spitalfields Market photographs remain as an unrivalled achievement in the photography of markets.
Mark & Huw had only the resources to print a tiny fraction of their photographs, which means that this is the first time anyone has seen many of these pictures. Although there is a vivid realism in these photographs, there is an ethereal quality too, especially as many figures exist as mere shadows against the glimmering lights of the market. After the recent architectural interventions, there is an emptiness in the Spitalfields Market now it has been cleaned up, a tangible absence of everything that is here in these pictures. The chaotic beauty of market life has gone and these shadows haunt the market today.
Photographs copyright © Mark Jackson & Huw Davies
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Mark Jackson & Huw Davies’ Photographs of the Spitalfields Market
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In A Dinghy With John Claridge
You have until July 21st to visit John Claridge’s EAST END photography exhibition at Vout-O-Reenee’s in Aldgate and there are still tickets available for the EAST END documentary film show introduced by David Collard at Vout-O-Reenees this Thursday 14th July at 7pm. (Email info@vout-o-reenees.co.uk to reserve your free ticket)
Ship maintenance, 1964
Take a trip down the Thames at a relaxed pace with Photographer John Claridge, in his tiny inflatable dinghy with outboard motor attached. The journey begins in 1961 when the London Docks were still working and ends in the nineteen eighties once they were closed for ever. This set of photographs – published here for the first time – are some of the views to be seen on that voyage.
Setting out at dawn, John’s photographic adventures led him through smog and smoke, through early morning mist, through winter fog and haze upon the river, all filtering and refracting the light to create infinite luminous effects upon the water. In the previous century, Joseph Mallord William Turner and James McNeill Whistler had attempted to evoke the distinctive quality of Thames light upon canvas, but in the mid-twentieth century it was John Claridge, kid photographer from Plaistow, who came drifting out of the London fog, alone in his dinghy with camera and long lens in hand to capture his visions of the river on film.
Look, there is a man scraping an entire boat by hand, balanced precariously over the water. Listen, there is the sound of the gulls echoing in the lonely dock. “It smells like it should,” said John, contemplating these pictures and reliving his escapades on the Thames, half a century later, “it has the atmosphere and feeling of what it was like.”
“You still had industry which created a lot of pollution, even after the Clean Air Act,” he recalled, “People still put their washing out and the dirt was hanging in the air. My mum used to say, ‘Bloody soot on my clean clothes again!'” But in a location characterised by industry, John was fascinated by the calm and quiet of the Thames. “I was in the drink, right in the middle of the river,” John remembered fondly, speaking of his trips in the dinghy, “it was somewhere you’d like to be.” John climbed onto bridges and into cranes to photograph the dock lands from every angle, and he did it all with an insider’s eye.
Generations of men in John’s family were dock workers or sailors, so John’s journey down the Thames in his dinghy became a voyage into a world of collective memory, where big ships always waited inviting him to depart for distant shores. Yet John’s little dinghy became his personal lifeboat, sailing on beyond Tower Bridge where in 1964, at nineteen years old, he opened his first photographic studio near St Paul’s Cathedral. John found a way to fulfil his wanderlust through a professional career that included photographic assignments in every corner of the globe, but these early pictures exist as a record of his maiden voyage on the Thames.
Across the River, 1965
Gulls, 1961
Quiet Evening, 1963
Smog, 1964
At Berth, 1962 – “It wills you to get on board and go somewhere.”
Three Cranes, 1968
Skyline, 1966 – “I climbed up into a crane and there was a ghostly noise that came out of it, from the pigeons roosting there.”
Steps, 1967
Crane & Chimney Stack, 1962
Spars, 1964
After the Rain, 1961
Capstan, 1968
From the Bridge, 1962
Across the River, 1965
Wapping Shoreline, 1961 – “I got terribly muddy, covered in it, sinking into it, and it smelled bad.”
Thames Barrier, 1982
At Daybreak, 1982
Warehouses, 1972
Photographs copyright © John Claridge
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Should you ever require it, here is evidence of the constant volatility of English summer weather, courtesy of George Cruikshank’s Comic Almanack published by Henry Tilt of Fleet St annually between 1835 & 1853, illustrating the continuum of festivals and seasons of the year for Londoners. (Click on any of these images to enlarge)
JUNE 1835 – At the Royal Academy
JUNE 1836 – Holidays at the Public Offices
JUNE 1837 – Haymaking
JULY 1835 – At Vauxhall Gardens
JULY 1836 – Dog Days in Houndsditch
JULY 1837 – Fancy Fair
AUGUST 1836 – Bathing at Brighton
AUGUST 1837 – Regatta
SEPTEMBER 1835 – Bartholomew Fair
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