It’s the winter of 1979-80. By the time I find myself living in Willesden Green, the Kinks song (1971) has been and gone. I won’t discover it until decades later by which time it won’t seem very Kinks-like.
The Willesden Green I know in 1979 is mostly terrace houses divided into flats and bedsits. We have what we need: a corner shop, a greengrocer, couple of pubs and breakfast cafés, and the tube station. I am working in a print shop off Fleet Street. I travel by tube every day, returning home to Willesden Green Station. Anyone can fall in love with London Underground. I do.
But I haven’t lived long in the flat-share in Willesden Green. London remains old and strange to me. Had I studied History by now, I might say that England – to this young American – is like stepping into the long post-war. But that’s not quite right. Thatcherism has come. The cold, damp, black-and-whiteness of the place possesses something – we don’t yet know what – to do with Thatcher’s vision of Britain. It is the turning from the postwar period to something that would prove hard as if by choice, cruel in its unique way.
The flat is a refrigerator. I teach myself to live without central heating. The first task upon returning home from work is to make a coal fire. Don’t wait. Don’t take off your coat under the mistaken impression that you’ll be able to face it later. You won’t. Make the fire now. Other things can wait: food, drink, life, thinking. You start with firelighters, kindling if you have it, rolled up newspapers. Put your match to them. Add coal strategically. Don’t rush this step or you risk going back to cold-jail immediately. Before the firelighters and kindling have gone out, spread open a page of yesterday’s Guardian and hold it over the chimney opening to encourage the small fire you are birthing. Behind the page which you find yourself reading again, you’ll hear the flames suck and pop and leap. You’re waiting for the fire to grab the coals irreversibly. When the paper begins to scald, press it into a ball and add it to the fire, making sure it doesn’t fly up the chimney. A skilled fire builder may only need one sheet of newspaper. I am not skilled.
An hour later, I am eating a Fray-Bentos pie and drinking a glass of red wine that I have warmed in a saucepan on the gas cooker.
We have a box television next to the fire. I watch the news and Top of the Pops. In January, 1980, the Specials are on:
I don’t know it yet, but the Specials will forever be in my mind. They will be this moment. Willesden Green. The flat like a refrigerator. Making fires night after night. Early jobs in London. Falling in love with the tube. Falling in love with the city. Music and the resistance to Thatcherism.
The Willesden Green year that starts with the Specials ends with them, rocking their Christmas jumpers, again on Top of the Pops.
Not long after that, I move from Willesden Green to Finsbury Park. The Rainbow Theatre, best of old gig palaces, is only down the road.
One day, I will lose count of the bands I see there, most of them with a close friend. In May 1981, she and I see the Specials together. By the end of the year, the great concert period at the Rainbow will be over. The last gig, on Christmas Eve, is Elvis Costello and the Attractions.
It’s 2022. I experience a terrible longing to pick up the phone, all these years later, and say to my friend, “Terry Hall has died. Do you remember when we saw the Specials at the Rainbow?” But she won’t remember and this might confuse and upset her because she is losing her memory. Very fast now. I don’t pick up the phone.
But when I manage to see her, sometimes I tell her things we did together, almost as though they are stories in which we are the young characters. She takes pleasure in these. She says, “Really? Did I do that?” And I assure her that she did.
Such a vivid recapturing of a place and era. Wonderful writing as always, Amy.
Thanks for writing about the Specials. They were incredibly important to me.