Your humble narrator would like to say a few words on how it all happened after reading various bullshit accounts on various releases by ex record companies and managers, written by people who neither know nor care.
Let me take you back to the summer of 1977. At 16 years old, Con Larkin had just completed his first month as an apprentice draughtsman and with his first wage bought a Rickenbacker 4001 copy and was able to start playing bass after months of trying on a £5 acoustic spanish guitar with two of the strings removed. He was very much inspired by the likes of The Clash and that same weekend had been to see the Sex Pistols perform at the Rock Garden in Middlesbrough under the guise of Acne Rebel.
Meanwhile, similarly inspired brother Paul, 14, was trying to put together a punk rock band with friends Dave Hammond and the Newnham brothers Craig and Shaun and had got as far as playing 'One Chord Wonders', and 'I Don't Need to Tell her', in Dave's mother's front room with Paul on bass, Dave on guitar, Shaun on vocals and Craig on Drums. Con had got together with some other friends Nell, Stuart and 'The Grant', to form a band called Insipid, though it never actually got any further than talking about it and getting together to get pissed in the pub.
Back at Paul's motley crew, Shaun fast lost interest in the band, though together with Con, Paul and Craig formed the notorious drinking team 'The Darlo Wildboys',(sic), that's another story in its own right. After deciding that Paul would not be able to play the bass if he practiced until 1999 Con joined forces with them. After all he could just about play 'White Riot', if he missed out the difficult bits, and he owned a bass. It was with this trio that the song writing began, and the grand moniker of Major Accident was agreed on and as they could hardly play a note between them the songs all turned out three chord thrashes (check out Con's first ditties 'Self Appointed Hero', and 'War-boots', deep and meaningful studies of Dr Marten boots and local heroes, and Dave's first ditties 'Terrorist Gang', and 'Side-lines', deep and meaningful studies of terrorist gangs and er sidelines).
It was now time for gigs and so followed the now legendary Skerne Park Youth Club gig. The set that evening (performed on the floor as there was no stage) included the previously mentioned self penned hits along with classic tracks of the moment like 'White Riot', (3times) ,'Suzy is a Head-banger',, 'Police and Thieves','Career Opportunities', 'Garageland', 'Janie Jones', (thank God for The Clash). The band walked off that night, after several encores, to tumultuous applause and the grand sum of £12 in their collective pockets.
Several more gigs followed over the next few months at the same venue supported by bands such as 'The Bloodclots', 'The Urban Guerrillas', and the 'Eels of Sex', (featuring Jim -Rod the Mod- Moir, better known as Vic Reeves, on bass), before Craig decided to call it a day and was replaced by Col Stephenson.
This line-up continued for several months (except for a brief period when Paul left due to internal squabbling [in real bands they call this 'political differences]but if the truth be known it was his round) playing local pubs. Col then decided that punk wasn't for him and left to play in a reggae band. He was replaced by big brother (and 'Psycho-about-town') Porky.
At last things were beginning to happen and having built up a strong local following the boys decided it was time to record some demo material. Guardian Studios in Pity-me was chosen and three tracks, Terrorist Gang, Sidelines and Self Appointed Hero were recorded. While warming up a lot of cover versions and other early Major Accident songs were recorded and recently have come to the surface as'Clockwork Demosâ (totally without the knowledge or consent of the band. Legal action has been entered into over this and other releases by a third party, we can't go any further into this at this moment in time). Having made this fine recording the lads didn't have much of an idea what to do with it so they did what they did best and carried on gigging around the north east.
Still determined to bring their brand of pneumatic pop to the masses, they decided to have another go at recording a demo as they now had enough self penned material for track studio near Manchester. The recording went reasonably OK but when they got the tapes home they found that the engineer had used DBX sound reduction on it and had totally lost the top end leaving a dull muffled mess. This recording has also surfaced recently calling itself Massacred Melodies in a feeble attempt (not by the band) to avoid legal proceedings from Step Forward records who own the real Massacred Melodies. The chaps did not regard this recording as good enough for a demo let alone good enough to be released. This has also been brought to the attention of the lawyer representing the band and the boys apologise to everyone who has bought these recordings and stress once again that they are not involved in any way.
Around this time Darlington F.C. were going through a period of financial embarrassment and to help with their fund raising the boys offered to put on a benefit gig to raise some cash. The club readily accepted the offer and a gig was arranged at a club in Darlington. The Nosejobs were brought in from neighbouring town Newton Aycliffe to provide support with the intention being they would pull a lot of their own fans from out of town and add to the gate receipt. On the night The Nosejobs played a great opening set, including a cover of 'Stay Free'.
Major Accident walked onto the stage to the sound of Warsawa as they always did in those days and just as they were about to hit the opening chord of 'Terrorist Gang' a chair flew from one side of the hall into the crowd at the other. All hell broke loose and a mass riot ensued. Porky was disgusted as he was totally anti-violence and to prove just how upset he was he walked around the melee punching anyone who came within his reach. The end result was that the police turned up in force and everything was brought to a halt. Several people were hospitalised mainly by flying furniture and the band was to be plagued by this around Darlington for the rest of their days. The news of the affray made the front cover of The Northern Echo!
Anyway, back to the story. Porky was now sick of the lack of success and upset by the violence at the forementioned gig, decided to call it a day. Stu Lee was to be his replacement and was duly welcomed into the Legion (after he had a no.1 haircut).
Stu's style of drumming was more of a head down, no nonsense attack which led to they up tempo sound on the real Massacred Melodies. The album was recorded as a demo at Woodland Studios in Normanton in 3 days in the summer of 1981.
The boys were well chuffed with the result and still feel that it was a ground breaking session. Cassettes of it were made and sent all over in the hope of acquiring a deal. It came to the attention of John Hewlett of A&M Records and one time manager of the Dickies. He flew to the North East to see the boys but wasn't too impressed with what he saw as their number 1's, whites & bowlers looked a world away from the art school boys that A&M were used to calling 'punk rock'. He did, however appreciate that the boys were making a new and exciting sound and passed them on to Step Forward Records, one of A&M's subsidiaries. Step Forward liked the demo a lot and wanted to release it as it was, claiming that re-recording it would lose the raw energy atmosphere that they had captured, (More like the tight gits would have outlay some money).
Massacred Melodies was duly released in November 1981and a nationwide tour supporting Chelsea followed. The tour included London, Middlesborough, Glasgow, Birmingham, Norwich, Manchester and Brighton among others.
Major Accident blew Chelsea off on almost every night, so much so that Gene October had the boys open the night playing before an unknown local band at Manchester, but the idea didn't work and the band still went down a storm.
It was on this tour that the 'Clockwork Legion' began to come together and many of the faces can still be seen at current gigs carrying the standard towards the next century. Paul went totally 'Clockwork' on this tour sporting the infamous grandad haircut featured in the book (though not in the film) which led to a couple of embarrassed people to ask how he had gone bald so quickly!
Time had come to invest the grand sum of £200 in an old furniture wagon as they couldn't afford accommodation when gigging away from home and the idea was that they could live in it as well as travel in it. They boys painted it in black with 'The Man' on the sides and even installed a couple of cupboards on the walls inside and Dave even produced a portable telly and a car battery, but Stu soon saw it off when he spilt a tin of soup down the back of it while parked outside Skunx in Islington. The picture did remain and although it was only about 3mm in depth, Dave still managed to watch his favourite show 'The Dukes of Hazard'.
This profile was edited with Thomas' Myspace Editor V3.2b
