More than a band, The Farm were always a gang. The first time I saw them live, at the Left Bank Bistro in Mathew Street, was a jubilant riot of louts in tweed jackets and Genesis t-shirts, their kid brothers bouncing alongside in Fila Bj tops and Trimm Trab wheels. The band themselves looked like they’d come directly from a Bernard Matthews turkey shoot – Norfolk jackets, Barbours, checked shirts and Hush Puppies. They looked brilliant. They were a gang.
They came along at just the right time. It was 1983 and the transformative energy of punk had fizzled out. Mick Jones had left The Clash; The Jam had split up and Madness were about to go the same way. Underground music had morphed into different tribes – HipHop, New Romantic, Goth… previously sane street kids had even been spotted in legwarmers as they searched for a new wave. But those Genesis and Floyd t-shirts told their own story; things had reached a tipping point. Your everyday, match-going, music-loving scallywag had nothing they could relate to; nobody who looked like them or told their stories. Enter The Farm.
After that Left Bank Bistro gig, The Farm’s following grew with the band’s reputation for a great live set, peppered with catchy tunes. An ‘exuberant’ coach trip to Keele University ended with Staffordshire Police giving the convoy an escort off the campus. Another university show at Edge Hill climaxed in repeated pleas from the flustered organisers for the delirious young potheads to get off the stage before it collapsed. This only encouraged more and more revellers to join the band on the creaking podium, prompting the Head of Ents to shout: “There’ll be hell to pay in Finance Committee on Monday!” before cutting the electricity. There were adventures in New Mills, Carlisle, Blackburn, Stockton-On- Tees, often coinciding with football matches that swelled the numbers in these sweaty backwater venues. The band’s appeal and their young, working-class fanbase was a throwback to the Mod era – sharply- dressed, streetwise boys and girls, looking for catchy tunes and good times.
John Peel was, as ever, the first to recognise that something was brewing. He invited The Farm into the BBC’s Maida Vale Studios to record a hallowed Peel Session, sending tracks like Memories and Haunting Me out to a nationwide audience. The Peel Session led to an appearance on The Oxford Road Show. Watching that show were two aspiring musicians from Little Hulton in Greater Manchester. Gary Whelan and his mate Paul ‘Horse’ Ryder. The two of them had been saying for a while that what the music scene really needed was a band who looked and dressed like they looked and dressed. Adidas training shoes. Benetton rugby shirts. Ciao jeans. And now these Scousers The Farm were up there on the telly, doing it. You didn’t have to look like Kajagoogoo to be in a band; you could look like you shopped at Dunne & Co. Horse and Gaz went to find Paul’s brother Shaun, who reckoned he had a book full of lyrics and Happy Mondays were born. It was the start of a beautiful friendship, with The Farm inviting the Mondays to support them at The Picket in Liverpool in May 1987, and Happy Mondays returning the compliment in spectacular style with their stadium show at Leeds Elland Road in June 1991.
There was a road well-travelled for up-and-coming bands back then that would go something like: local gig, admiring fanzine spread, bigger local gig, local newspaper write-up, session on local radio, even bigger local gig and a couple of smaller shows in nearby towns. Live Review in NME, Sounds or Melody Maker. John Peel Session (cunningly doubling as well-recorded demo tape.) Cassette mailout to record company Artiste & Repertoire (A&R) scouts. If the band got lucky, there might be a slot on shows like The Tube or the playout track on Tony Wilson’s Granada Reports – then, the Big One. A London gig, attended by A&R scouts. If a band was going to get signed, it would happen at that point.
The Farm’s Big London Show was at The Rock Garden in Covent Garden. The band alerted numerous reps from all the big record companies of the day – Arista, EMI, London, Polygram, Island, Virgin – and a handful of music publishers. Publishers weren’t as sexy as record companies – they didn’t offer big money deals, and they worked out of smaller, boutique offices. But a good music publisher is like a good mechanic or barber: once you find a reliable one, it’s a thing for life.
In the run-up to the Rock Garden show, a common theme was starting to emerge: “where’s the image?” Some of them were a bit more tactful than that, but the message was unanimous – how come The Farm hasn’t got a gimmick? Bands at the time included the likes of Haysi Fantayzee and Culture Club who appeared on stage in flamboyant threads and hairstyles. Liverpool’s very own Frankie Goes To Hollywood and Dead or Alive brought their own brand of high camp fashion into the nation’s living rooms. But The Farm were never about that. The record companies were missing the point – the non-image was the image!
One interested music exec called Nod! (he signed his name with an exclamation mark) came down to the Rock Garden soundcheck and told The Farm that he liked the songs, but his advice was that they steer clear of “this football thing.” In the mid-80s, football was frowned upon by much of the music world, ignored entirely by the rest. In the tender world of mid-80s indie rock, football was the enemy, rather than the NME. If you took a random sample from bands of the day, you’d be hard pressed to tag a football allegiance. Paul Weller? Joe Strummer? Siobhan Fahey? Who did they support? Even the likes of Bernard Sumner or Roddy Frame who looked like match-goers, weren’t vocal football fans. Football was for scallies. Nod! said that, if he signed it (he called bands ‘it’) he would want to work on its image. He was in for a rude awakening…
The Rock Garden gig was the night before Everton played Southampton in the FA Cup semi-final at Highbury. Joining the regular mix of tourists and weekenders who routinely headed to The Rock Garden for live music, was an ebullient posse of Everton fans in bobble hats. From the moment the band took the stage, they were up on the dance floor, piling into each other, prancing around and grinning from ear to ear. Little by little, step by step, the curious onlookers at the back began to join the boisterous Blues until the entire dance floor was up and bouncing. The fashion of the day was corduroy semi-flares with a little nick cut into the ankles to allow the seam to ‘sit’ on your shoes. Every single Evertonian was wearing semi-flares that night, with Ireland rugby shirts or Lacoste polos. For the final track Information Man, a platoon of suedies and Diadora Borg Elite or Reebok Ed Moses or Adidas Tom Okker training shoes invaded the tiny stage, proto mullets sprouting out from under Everton/Celtic half-and-half bobble hats. “There’s your image,” I said to Nod! “I fucking LOVE it!” he grinned. The band never heard from him again.
In that mid-80s period, The Farm came close to getting signed a few times. The revered music publisher Bryan Morrison, who had signed Pink Floyd, T-Rex, The Jam, Haircut 100 and Wham! (they spelt their name with an exclamation mark) knew a tune when he heard one. He loved The Farm’s tracks Hearts and Minds and Too Late and thought Somewhere could be a summer smash hit – but it all came down that one sole obstacle, once again. “Where’s your image? You look like convicts on an I.D parade!” He signed Brother Beyond, instead.
And it all started to fizzle out a bit. The Wedding Present released an album called George Best but the new wave of indie bands like James and Seymour still weren’t really talking about football. But The Housemartins were. With his crew-neck jumper and smart Mod haircut, The Housemartins’ singer Paul Heaton loved Sheffield United and made sure his football mates were employed by the band as roadies and merchandise sellers. He also loved The Farm and invited the band to tour with The Housemartins, a brilliant experience but also a potent, nightly reminder of what could have been. Was it really over?
Not quite. Pre KLF, Bill Drummond approached the band with an offer of management, though he said they’d need to work on their image. Drawing on their last gang in town persona, Drummond pitched the band an idea that they should go on Top Of The Pops in deerstalker hats, with bulldogs on a short leash. Bill was always a maverick innovator, and he could see that the tide was starting to turn away from all-in-black indie doom to a non-stop technicolour party – but deerstalkers and bulldogs was just plain silly.
As the 80s drew to a close, the music press began to champion a new scene coming out of Manchester. To The Farm’s slight surprise, having been demonized for so long for their dressed-down image and their football affiliations, bands like Stone Roses and The Farm’s old pals Happy Mondays were getting cover features that focused as much on their look – semi flares, training shoes, bucket hats – their swaggering streetwise attitude and their love of Man United, as their music. Furthermore, in search of a label for this new tribe, they christened them… Scallies. The Farm’s little brothers from Little Hulton had taken their essence and fused it into their own potent brew. The NME went all in on The Mondays, celebrating their witty street slang, their dodgy mates and their football terrace chic. It was a tough one to take, the whole country doing a cultural U-turn, but at least it was The Mondays getting the limelight. It energized the band. They decided that, if you want something doing, go DIY.
A small club near the Mersey Tunnel which had always housed counter- culture scenes, The Underground was the birthplace of Liverpool’s rave scene and, fittingly, was the club where Produce Records was launched. Produce harnessed everything The Farm had learned over all those years on the road – mates organising recording sessions, running the merchandise and the fan club, making handmade fanzines and DIY t- shirts. The t-shirts became very important in the run-up to the 1990 World Cup, Italia 90. From a situation just a few years previously where football and music just didn’t go, the entire country had gone football crazy, football mad. Seymour had become Blur; they loved the footie. James revealed that they whiled away dead hours on tour by playing football. Primal Scream transformed overnight from psychedelic indie rockers into nouveau Mods in white jeans and suede shoes. Everyone wore Gazelles – and the England football team released World In Motion, which pulled all those threads together into one glorious disco anthem that would’ve graced the nightclubs of Rimini.
And The Farm were at last starting to get belated recognition for being pioneers of that whole inner-city, modernist look (and sound.) The band’s home-made label Produce collaborated with Chelsea fans Suggs McPherson and Terry Farley to produce two thumping dancefloor classics, Stepping Stone and Groovy Train. During the countdown to Italia 90, The Farm appeared in The Face magazine wearing Chipie and Chevignon, with their own home-Produced No Alla Violenza t-shirts – a giant, old-school leather casey at the centre of the design. Other mags were quick to cotton on to the fact that The Farm knew their stuff: Peter provided a Top Ten Training Shoes for Smash Hits and Carl wrote a potted history of the bubble jacket for Select. Finally, finally, it was happening: the band getting acclaim for the millstone that had held them back for so long.
In the blink of an eye though, The Farm’s working-class roots became a stick to beat them with, once again. As The Mondays split and The Stone Roses went into hibernation, reviewers who’d never felt entirely comfortable letting the hoi polloi in, lampooned The Farm as a bunch of plumbers and navvies. Not that music should divide us, but skilled workers take more pride in their appearance than most Goths and Eco Punks; this felt more like class prejudice than any music critique. The implication was that, if you were into football and training shoes you must therefore be thick: an interesting perspective on a band who’d go on to spawn filmmakers, lecturers, a viniculturist, dramatists and composers!
But another volte face was on the horizon. As Blur reinvented themselves again and another streetwise, football-loving Manchester band sauntered onto the nation’s stage, our esteemed cultural commentators were once more ready with open minds, open hearts and effusive praise. Harnessing The Stone Roses superstar bravado and The Farm’s love of a good anorak, Oasis proceeded to blow a stagnating music scene to smithereens. They had catchy tunes, sure. They had a charismatic lead singer and a hardboiled council estate attitude. But, above all, they had an aura, an image – and that image was the very thing the music business had always shied away from: rough lads in sharp clothes. The Gallagher brothers’ energy transformed a docile live music scene; festivals and mega gigs became huge again. And, reversing a prolonged and general pattern of decline, album sales Oasis, Blur and satellite bands like Ocean Colour Scene and The Verve went through the roof. So, there’s the irony; the last gang in town managed to save the UK music industry, even if their image did need a bit of work. And the first gang in town go on tour with the Happy Mondays in March and April.
K Sampson, West Bank of the Mersey