Hell Is Round the Corner Read online

  There was a picture of my mum at my nan’s in Barnstaple Road, and I would see it every day when I got up. I’d go over to the window and say ‘good morning’ to her in the sky – because when you’re a kid they tell you your mum is up there in heaven, don’t they? I don’t believe in that shit now, but when you’re young everything’s a cartoon. I suppose not having my mother around took me into an imaginative space. And later on, my music was these imaginary spaces – me imagining things.

  My nan used to listen to Billie Holiday on an old cassette player. I would be sat in the middle of the room, aged about six or seven, playing on the carpet, and she would just watch me – not like ‘don’t put your fingers in the plug socket’ kind of watching. She used to smoke a cigarette and just watch me. She’d put her ash into her palm, because she didn’t have an ashtray, and rub her two palms together to get rid of it, then she would say, ‘You look like your mum, you do!’

  Billie Holiday is the first music I remember hearing; this haunting voice, and my nan telling me I reminded her of her dead daughter. She obviously missed her so much, because she was watching me like I was TV. My sister doesn’t look like my mum – she looks more like my dad. I was too young to really know what was going on there. It was like I was my mum’s replacement, almost. I was my mum’s ghost.

  I can only have been five or six when I suffered my first asthma attack. My first memory of it is my great-grandad, Farmer, holding my hand at 13 Padstow Road because I couldn’t breathe. That’s what he always did whenever I had an attack, because he didn’t know what else to do. He’d sit there holding my hand in the little room upstairs until it was okay and I could fall asleep. I didn’t get a Ventolin inhaler till I was thirteen or fourteen, because living with my great-grandparents, their generation didn’t really do the hospitals thing, or go to doctors. You know how everybody these days goes to the hospital for anything – they get toothache and they’re straight down to the emergency room? In those days, you didn’t do that, or at least they didn’t. My great-grandmother never went to the dentist, and because sweets weren’t in their culture, she never had a filling in her life. Any pain or illness, they’d just tough it out and let it pass.

  I didn’t have breathing problems until my mum died, apparently, and when I eventually saw a doctor, they said my asthma was probably brought on by the trauma of losing her. One time when I was about eight years of age, I was having an attack in the same house, sat on the concrete floor, while my great-uncle Martin was there.

  ‘You know why he’s having an asthma attack, don’t you?’ he goes to my great-grandmother, Maga.

  ‘No, why?’

  ‘Because he’s a breed.’

  ‘Shut up,’ she spits back, ‘don’t say that in front of him.’

  That one stayed with me. What’s funny is, Martin isn’t white neither: his mum is half-black, and his dad is white, so it was weird coming from him. I don’t think he was being wicked, that’s just how people thought in those days. He wasn’t being nasty; he was my uncle – he loved me! It’s just that our family say anything to each other; there are no boundaries.

  At Padstow Road, we lived like gypsies. The only difference was we didn’t travel around in a caravan, so, the way I see it, I had the best of both worlds.

  I used to go rabbiting at night with Farmer and his son, my great-uncle Martin. To me, it was exciting creeping around the countryside at night, but of course it was illegal to trespass on farmers’ land, so it was quite dangerous – you could get shot. We’d go out with netting and all this other equipment. You used little lamps or the lights from your car to get around, but often you would be going through hedges and ditches in pitch-black. Real fun, but scary too. As well as farmers with shotguns, there were bulls to contend with. There was one farmer who had a sign that said, ‘You may be able to make it across the field in ten minutes, but my bull can do it in three!’ It was risky, but that was part of the fun.

  We had all the kit in my great-grandparents’ house, with the long nets that Maga made hanging all over the walls, and ferrets in cages in the back garden, to send down the rabbit holes. Ferrets are one of my favourite animals: if one bites you, you have to burn its nose to get its jaws to unlock. After a good night’s hunting, there would be rabbits hanging all over the kitchen walls, and we’d eat the rabbits. Rabbit is good! We had pigeon too, on occasion, but mostly rabbit. For us, steak was a rare treat. We lived off the land.

  This wasn’t something everyone my age in Knowle West did. It was because I was raised by older generations – old-school, eating rabbit stew, and bread and dripping and vegetables we grew in the back garden, like carrots, potatoes, runner beans and tomatoes. They didn’t call him Farmer for nothing. We’d go scrumping for apples, too. It was just eating for survival, really.

  At Farmer’s funeral, they spread his rabbiting nets out all over the cars in the cortège. Martin was drunk and going on, so my nan Violet had a fight with him outside, and his sisters Olive and Maureen had a fight in the hearse, actually going at it right by the coffin.

  Uncle Martin was well into rabbiting too, and he had the gypsy look – whippets, horses, big boots and a shotgun. After we’d been out at night he’d walk in the house, string around his trousers, rabbits hanging off his neck – we’d always come back with a couple, maybe four or five. I learnt how to kill a rabbit when I was still very young – you grab it by the neck and push up the chin to break its neck. It’s the quickest death. Martin knew how to skin a rabbit and cook it. Hunting involves a lot of skill.

  When I stayed in Totterdown for a while, there was a gypsy camp near where we lived, and my uncle Martin used to hang out there and go drinking with them. He was friends with them, as was my great-grandad, Farmer, and there was a kind of gypsy vibe about them both.

  As well as rabbiting, my great-grandad and my great-uncles were bareknuckle fighters. Farmer fought the king of the gypsies, and his son Arthur fought the gypsy king’s son. I never went to any of the fights, but I saw enough in the way of street fights, bar fights and what have you, as I grew up. What I do know is, a lot of the guys doing the bare-knuckle fights ain’t getting exploited, they love it. They grew up with it. They’re doing it because they want to do it. Professional boxers get exploited by the big promoters, but not the bare-knuckle guys. You get bare-knuckle guys fighting for no money – gypsies fighting for the name of being the best.

  My uncles were full-on gangsters. They did protection, so pubs had to pay them to keep trouble away. Also, they owned clubs themselves. Martin and Arthur, Farmer and Maga’s sons, were known all over Bristol. Martin was feared by everybody – including my dad, after his threats from inside Dartmoor. When Martin was free to roam, he used to extort people. At one point he owned his own club in Manchester, and then burnt it down himself for the insurance. Ever since I can remember, his left eye was milky – I don’t know what happened, but it was probably something to do with violence.

  Arthur was just like his brother but less crazy. Where Martin was right in your face, people used to say Arthur was more sly – quiet but dangerous. He used to fight like fuck, but he was just more devious about it. Martin would slice up a fucking room of people – that vibe – whereas Arthur would get you on the quiet, smile at you, then do it. So they were different personalities, but they were together; they were known together and would do things together.

  When he wasn’t dressed in the gypsy style, Martin was a proper gangster, suited and booted. At seventeen, he’d been the youngest guy ever to be sent to Wormwood Scrubs, and he was often on the front page of newspapers for the crimes he committed. I wouldn’t call them local celebrities exactly; people were just scared to death of them, especially Martin.

  Their nephew, my uncle Tony, was a big guy up in Manchester, and known for violence. He’d moved up north from Knowle West when he was a kid, along with his mum Violet and his sister Maxine (aka my nan and my mum), but when the women returned to Bristol, Tony, who was fifteen at the time, stayed up t
here because he loved it so much. When I was little, we used to go up and stay with him for a couple of weeks for our summer holidays. Otherwise it was a week in Butlin’s in Minehead, with six of us in a chalet – I never went abroad until I started in music.

  In the mid-90s, I was out for dinner in the ‘Curry Mile’ in Manchester, with this guy who made a documentary about me. We’d been filming at my uncle Tony’s house, and then we all went out to eat afterwards. Just as our food arrived at the table, the owner of the restaurant came in, saw uncle Tony and looked at our plates, and shouted something at the waiter in Indian, and the waiter came and chucked a napkin over the food and rushed off with the plates. The owner said to my uncle, ‘That’s for the punters, not for your family, Tony!’ Obviously, he didn’t want to offend my uncle, or piss him off.

  Uncle Tony was a serious guy, but the women in my family also used to fight. My great-auntie, Maureen Godfrey, was a top female streetfighter in Manchester. If she got into it with a woman, she’d fuck her! My mum used to fight, too. The women in a gangster family are often tougher than the men. Most gangsters are mummy’s boys – look at the Kray twins – and my uncles got into boxing through their mum. The person who first sent me to boxing training was my auntie Maureen.

  One day, Maureen stabbed my uncle Martin, which I saw happen. I don’t think Martin liked Maureen’s husband very much, and he might have been trying to get money off him, so he used to go around and smash the house up sometimes. One day he went around there, and my auntie Maureen opened the door, threw pepper in his eyes and stabbed him in the stomach.

  Auntie Maureen was funny – a lovely, lovely lady. Once, I was walking home from school, and my mate goes, ‘Look at that woman!’ She was laid out on the floor drunk, with a bottle, outside a phone box. I pretended I didn’t know her. She was a funny woman, but people thought she was nuts as well, so they left her alone. She had a scar because someone cut her with a knife, or so my uncle Martin told me, but I can’t remember who.

  This is the world I grew up in. I saw a lot of violence at a young age, and it was almost normal to me. I grew up around things like me saying, ‘Where is Uncle Martin?’ and Maga replying, ‘Oh, he’s in prison, but at least I know where he is.’ Instead of Maga going, ‘Aw, I wish he wasn’t in prison,’ she would look at it as, ‘Well, at least I know where he is.’ I grew up with that mindset.

  I knew about my uncles, and what they got up to. Often when you walked into places with them, you could feel the respect in the room, but when someone’s your relative, you don’t see them as bad or good. If you’re related to Al Capone, you ain’t gonna see him as Al Capone like other people do. He’s just family.

  I feel like my dad had a really shit life. Growing up in Jamaica, his own father left him, and after that it was almost like Dad was basically chasing him around. I don’t think his dad was very paternal: he was off doing his thing. Instead of you looking for your kid, it’s your kid looking for you. My grandad moved to England, and if my dad hadn’t followed him he might not have even had any further contact with him until Dad tracked him down. He wasn’t the sort of guy to look back. Like, ‘Oh, I left Roy there!’

  My dad was a bit of a bad boy. He had a dominoes crew, and they ended up taking over my grandad’s sound system, but then my great-uncle Martin threatened to kill him, and after that he had to stay away from me.

  I’m going to hand over to him for a bit now, because he knows a lot of stuff about my background that I don’t remember or wasn’t around for.

  ROY THAWS: I come from a place in Jamaica called Saint Catherine, down near Spanish Town, which was country then, not too ruffian. I was born in 1943, and when I was young there my mum and dad were working in Kingston, so I lived with my grandparents.

  I was brought up Christian and went to a church school. As I got into my teens, school was very far away – too far! – and I never spent much time there, so when I was about fifteen, I came up to live with my parents in Kingston – in Greenwich Town, right by the sea, across the bay from the airport. I was in Kingston for four or five years. My mother did cleaning and odd jobs, and my dad worked at the sugar refinery at the wharf.

  A lot of people in Jamaica lived very rough. I saw it, but, praise God, I never went through that. We always had our own light, electricity, water, everything. My memories of Jamaica are good, but it was hard for everyone living there. I used to work on the quarries for my money. From the day I was born, I lived independent.

  My brother was the first one who came to England, then my father, then my niece, and eventually in 1962 I followed her. That quarry was very hard work, breaking the rock with machinery. My brother said, ‘Oh, it’s good over here,’ so I’d dream of coming to join him.

  I came over on the boat, and I paid a hundred pounds for the trip. My brother Rupert sent the fare home, because he was already in England for two or three years before me. The crossing took three weeks, and I didn’t bring nothing from Jamaica, only my clothes. There were four of us in this little cabin in bunk beds. There was hundreds of people on there, and some were stowaways, hiding in the lifeboats, then at night time they’d come out.

  At first I lived in Wolverhampton, because my brother and my dad were there, but I didn’t like it. When I first came, I cried, wanting to go home. ‘It too cold!’ I got used to it soon enough, then after two or three months I came down to Bristol. Dad had been to Bristol before, so I followed him, and then my brother followed me. I just love Bristol, from when I first come here, and life was better, going to lots of nice parties and having fun. I never got myself into trouble.

  I lived in Hartcliffe. It wasn’t rough for black people and, telling the truth, I never had no problem with racism. I didn’t have any time for that. My time was all spent going to work, to put food on the table. Before I met Maxine, I had two kids with another woman, Kevin and Julian, so I used to work very long hours, from six in the morning till six at night, in a bakery in Kingswood, north of Bristol. I would have to get up every morning at five o’clock, then I would also do nights, from 6pm until 6am. It was very hard, but I stuck it out.

  I usually worked Sunday morning to Saturday morning, then I’d go back to work Sunday. I was getting good money. I used to send some back to my mother in Jamaica, but otherwise all my family was here. For a time, my father and my brother and I all lived together in St Paul’s. So, we would be out at parties every Saturday night. Sometimes after leaving the party I would go straight to work – no clean clothes!

  After my father got to England, he started up a sound system – he’d never done it before, in Jamaica. The music was all ’60s reggae – ska and rocksteady and early Bob Marley. He would get imports straight from Kingston. He’d write to a friend back home, and the guy would send the records Dad wanted – the latest Jamaican records before anyone else had them. That’s why he was so good, and we used to travel all over England – everybody want to hear ‘Tarzan di High Priest’!

  Dad never actually played the records himself, or got on the mic, he always got somebody to do it for him. My brother Rupert used to DJ a lot, and sometimes I would play on a Saturday night, but I couldn’t do it the right way, and I had to go to work.

  I still went around with him a lot. We would play in the Bamboo Club in St Paul’s, against other sounds from London – that club was very good! A bloke in Bath used to have a sound, so we’d go down there and do a contest, to see who won. We’d go all over – Manchester, Liverpool, London, Cardiff – a network right around the UK. We used to do a lot of contests, sound against sound.

  I met Maxine at a blues party in Albany Road in St Paul’s. We just clicked straight away and started going out. The two of us were just good together. She was very lively, a very nice girl, and once we were together she kept herself to herself. Looking back, I never really had any time to do anything with her because I worked from six until six and I only had one day off on a Saturday.

  Maxine’s family were more established in Bristol, in Knowle Wes
t, which was a very white area. We were together there for quite a while, when she had Adrian, but she used to have fits, fits, fits, all the time. I couldn’t do nothing about it. She said she wanted to keep the family together, the three of us, but all she would have was fits all the while, so she couldn’t do it. After we had Leanna, she sent Adrian to live with his grandmother, Violet.

  Sometimes I would be there when one of Maxine’s fits started, and I had to hold her down and put my fingers in her mouth to stop her swallowing her tongue. She loved to go to a dance, but after a while she went off it because every time she came out and had a drink, she would have fits, so she didn’t like to go any more.

  Every day I still talk about her. She was a good mother. She had a good brain, and she used to tell good stories, but that’s why she took her own life, because she wanted to look after her kids, and she thought she couldn’t do it.

  So I came home from work one evening and I saw that she had passed away. It was a terrible thing to live with, coming in and seeing her. I will never forget it. Adrian was at his grandmother’s, but Leanna was there – she was only two, and hadn’t had anything to eat all day. When I came in, I saw Leanna lying down on Maxine, and she was dead. Leanna ran up and grabbed me, and I saw the tablets beside her, and the letter she had written.

  I fed Leanna, then ran over with her to tell Marlow, and everybody started crying. Maxine wrote the letter because she knew all her parents and family would carry on at me, thinking I had done something to her. The letter was saying, ‘Roy doesn’t have nothing to do with it.’

  What I didn’t know was that she’d tried to kill herself before. Her mother Violet knew, and if she had told me everything, and said, ‘Watch her, otherwise she’ll kill herself,’ she would probably be alive now – I would’ve left two tablets out for her and hidden the rest – but her mother never told me nothing. Only once we’d notified the police and they started pushing me around did she say, ‘No, he had nothing to do with it – she tried to do it before already.’