Sham 69 - Biography
By Jonny Whiteside
While London punk rock quartet Sham 69 had one of the shortest runs in that music’s lurid heyday, the band’s explosive mix of great music, passionate messagery and emotional manipulation set them apart from most of the other groups who surfed the punk wave into the annals of rock history. On paper, they were also one of the most successful, with three Top 30-charting albums, seven popular singles--two of which, “If the Kids Are United,” and “Hurry Up, Harry,” made the Top Ten--and even an episode of BBC television documentary series Arena devoted to the band. In the clubs, it was a much different story, and more than a few fans crawled away from their shows badly beaten by Sham’s steadily increasing tide of skinhead followers.
Formed in South London’s Hersham in 1976, within a year, lead singer-writer Jimmy Pursey, with guitarist and songwriting partner Dave Parson’s, drummer Mark ‘Dodie’ Cain and bassist Albie Slider, had fast talked their way into a deal with Step Forward Records (“we‘re the best punk band in the country,” Pursey announced), who issued their classic debut single “I Don’t Wanna,” in September 1977. Produced by former Velvet Underground-er John Cale, the song was a purely nihilistic rejection of mainstream society and 9 to 5 life, while the flip side “Red London” was almost straight-up conservative political doctrine that bemoaned loss of democracy and championed the individual.
The band celebrated by playing a gig on the roof of Wardour Street punk haven the Vortex, which of course, resulted in a police presence and Pursey’s arrest. A string of gigs at the Roxy quickly established them, now with Dave ‘Kermit’ Tregenna, as a different breed of punk, one who utterly rejected the fashion-conscious image favored by the Clash and Sex Pistols in favor of hard-case, working class Cockney street wardrobe, and with the release of their second single “Ulster Boy” Sham 69 were clearly treading in a much more grimly realistic path than their contemporaries. It worked: by 1978, they had a deal with Polydor, who quickly issued their third single, the brutal, brilliant “Borstal Breakout.” No one involved a crowd the way Jimmy Pursey did, as with the heady call and response of “What’ve We Got?” (“Fuck All!”), and his choice of material displayed a natural gift for rabble rousing. His subjects, the blood thirsty revenge fantasy of “Borstal Break Out,” the class war fury of “Hey Little Rich Boy,“ and Malcolm McLaren-Vivienne Westwood-castigating “Rip Off” seemed to significantly amplify the already desperate attitude common to the youth who followed Sham 69--and they loved the band for it.
Pursey’s hard edged, graphic socio-political bent made the Clash’s metaphorical White Riot and Sten Guns in Knightsbridge sloganeering seem , in comparison to Pursey‘s inflamed, gutter bred pleas, like melodramatic shtick. As a result, Sham 69 engendered a wave of stormy populism that the burgeoning neo-skinhead cadre adopted in short order; unfortunately, many of them were affiliated with fascist organizations like the National Front and British Movement and violence frequently broke out at Sham’s shows. Buffeted by forces apparently beyond their control, the mixture of shock publicity, adrenaline and adoration (the skinheads, with their high-volume, militaristic football chants, were passionately demonstrative in their allegiance) must have been addictive and Pursey maintained a dangerously ambiguous stance.
Perhaps unwisely, side two of their first album, 1978’s Tell us the Truth (Polydor) was a live recording driven by the skin’s non-stop chants, further legitimizing what seemed a now deliberate emphasis on that segment of the audience (and drawing additional hordes of these quite vicious bastards to their shows). By the time Sham participated in a much-ballyhooed Rock Against Racism gig with Elvis Costello, it was too little, too late; by 1979, it was nothing short of foolhardy for punk rockers to attend a Sham 69 show.
For Pursey, it became a terrible scenario that played out nightly; he often wept onstage when the inevitable fights broke out, cursing and pleading for the crowd to stop, listen and dance (“Enjoy,” he‘d shout,” just fucking enjoy!”). The result was supercharged anthem “If the Kids are United” and later, the more penetrating “Questions & Answers.“ For fans, the matter came to a final head during a Sham appearance at Finsbury Park’s Rainbow theater, where it had been collectively determined by the skins to “smash up all the punks” who came in, and those unlucky enough to stay past Sham‘s encore found themselves caught in the middle of a full scale riot.
This ongoing aggravation and fragmentation of an increasingly tribal audience helped to produce a context that made both it difficult for Sham 69 to tour and enabled white power favorites Skrewdriver to thrive. Sham also anticipated the Angelic Upstarts and Cockney Rejects (both of whom Pursey, as producer, was directly involved with), but the briefly promising new groups quickly succumbed to the boneheaded exclusionary brand of cockney hardcore that Sounds magazine dubbed “Oi.” Even more bizarre, as Sham softened their tone, they found themselves pop stars with a hit record, “Hurry Up Harry,“ which could be heard piped into the PA’s of London supermarkets--a genuinely disturbing shift away from what had been strictly street-level kicks onto the Top of the Pops’ television sound stage and mainstream BBC radio‘s airwaves.
Equally unsettling was Pursey’s ambivalent attitude, on one hand begging for collective openness amongst the kids, on the other catering to and cozying up with the skinhead faction who now seemed to be Sham’s target audience. The alliance was understandable--Sham 69’s music galvanized disaffected yobbo’s with a irresistible, high-voltage simplicity that still slams one’s eardrums today with an unrivaled, raw-knuckled, boot to the head impact. But theirs was a dangerous game, and ultimately, everyone lost, as Sham began to retreat from the stage. The band had adopted an on and off no-live show policy, in favor of recording soppy concept albums (That’s Life and Hersham Boys, both Polydor). Before long, it simply became too hazardous to continue and by mid-1980, the band broke up.
Pursey went on to cut some alarmingly “sensitive” solo albums, and Parsons joined Stiv Bators’ post-punk “super group” Lords of the New Church, but ultimately, neither amounted to much. While Sham 69 periodically reformed years later, as of 2008, an apparently irreconcilable rift between Parsons and Pursey has developed; the former claims that without him, there is no Sham 69, while the latter states that his new line up represents the genuine article. Typical Sham.