Jones, Allan. "Lost in France: Allan Jones at the Mont de Marson punk rock festival." Melody Maker, 13 August 1977, pp. 26-27, 41
Lost in France
— Allan Jones documents the chaotic second Mont de Marson punk festival in southern France, featuring The Clash, The Damned, and Dr. Feelgood amid technical disasters and drunken antics
— Main story follows the disastrous coach journey from Paris and chronicles on-stage meltdowns including The Maniacs' bassist attacking equipment and Captain Sensible being stretchered off after stink bomb prank
— Reports The Jam arrested for fountain-diving while naked, Rat Scabies vomiting in hotel lobby, and violent encounters with French paratroopers
— Details musical performances: The Damned battling sound failures, The Clash's politically charged set interrupted by Sensible, and Dr. Feelgood's midnight frenzy saving the festival
— Highlights Tyla Gang as musical standouts with "Young Lords" and "Suicide Jockey" amid otherwise shambolic French bands like The Lous
— Quotes Lee Brilleaux's relentless anti-French tirades throughout, culminating in backstreet bar declaration: "I 'ate the f----- French"
MELODY MAKER | August 13, 1977 | Page 26, 27 & Page 41
Lost in France
Allan Jones takes a coach trip through la belle France and comes upon a scene of unparalleled chaos – the second Mont de Marson punk rock festival, where such luminaries as the Feelgoods, the Damned and the Clash were in (literally) devastating form ...
Lee Brilleaux took a healthy belt from an early morning glass of whisky. "As it 'appens," he observed philosophically, "I 'ate the f____ French. And, I don't know what God thought he was f____ playin' at when he created France. They should turn it into a golf course or something. No use at all a country like this. Not to a gentleman, anyway.
"And that's the trouble with the French. They're not gentlemen. Not like the English. Not polite, like. None of 'em. Ill-mannered sods. Always shoutin' and gettin' bleedin' hysterical."
We are sitting, in the fierce heat of a Mont de Marçon morning, outside the town's principal hotel, the Sablat Brilléaux, having miraculously survived a ferocious boozing extravaganza the previous evening (the licensing hours in the south of France, at least, are to his liking). Brilléaux is dissecting the qualities of our Continental neighbours and their nation in the company of Sean Tyla, Jake Rivera, Feelgoods' bassist Sparko, Rat Scabieà, various members of Les Press Anglais and their harassed chaperon, Rick Rogers. A lone Frenchman at our table is bearing the cruel brunt of Lee's attack.
"We nothing against you personal, like," Lee reassures him. "I just can't bear the French. I mean, I hold you Frogs indirectly responsible for the unfortunate death of my Uncle Ernie. F____ died for you lot, he did. Died on the railways. Bomb fell on 'im. Durin' the war it was. Doin' 'is bit to save you lot from the f____ Germans.
"If you lot had been able to sort them out on your own he might 'ave been enjoying a drunk wry us 'ere today. Typical of the French though. War starts. They wade in and then surrender.
"Start collaboration with the enemy. Many of 'em around 'ere? Collaborators? Not liked are they? 'Ere, where's that old buddy with the booze? God, I 'ate all this. Too hot. Too much sun. Like a bit of rain meself. Don't like these places where she sun never takes a f____ break. Jesus."
He pauses in reflection for a moment and then turns to Sparko.
"I'll tell you something, Sparko. We're not coming 'ere for our 'olidays next summer. We'll stick to Canvey."
Mont de Marson is the kind of slumbering French town you might expect to have as its mayor someone like Anthony Quinn. Indeed, it is almost too easy to imagine Quinn, in one of his more ebullient roles, striding about the cobbled streets and giving alleys of Mont de Marson, unshaven, his braces flying behind him like streamers, a bottle of the local wine to his lips (simultaneously pressing the local whore to his hips), celebrating the liberation of France.
Quite what Tony would have made of the events of the last weekend in Mont de Marson is, frankly, beyond my imagination. I'm not sure he would have been too thrilled, however, by the assault on this provincial toytown, led by Brilleaux and the Feelgoods, enthusiastically augmented by the various outrages wreaked by the likes of the Damned, the Clash, the Jam and Les Press Anglais.
"You see, last year a French promouder by the name of Marc Zermatti ("Arab name zhat," Brilleaux will later observe), had the novel idea of capitalising on the longstanding Frogs infatuation with nascent punk rock bands of the Sixties (the Groovies, MC5 and the Stooges particularly) by organising a festival in the building down in Mont de Marson.
He imported last year a motley crew of English bands, including the Damned, Roogalator, the Hammersmith-Gorillas, and a curious assortment of musicians from the pub rock scene, like Nick Lowe, the Pink Fairies, the Tyla Gang and various accomplices.
They played alongside a smattering of French bands vaguely allied to the British new wave. The concert wasn't exactly a major success, but the events of the last year and the increasing commercial success of new wave bands encouraged Zermatti to repeat the exercise on a much larger and ambitious scale.
This year the Mont de Marson punk band was a two day event featuring the Clash, the Damned, the Jam, Dr Feelgood, Eddie & The Hot Buds, the Tyla Gang, the Boys, the Boats, the Maniacs, Rings, and a whole brace of French bands headed by Little Bob Story.
Frecklessly, the entire trip was as cleverly organised as the military tactics employed by the late General George Custer at the Battle of the Little Big Horn, where his perceptive grasp of the situation provoked the destruction of the entire 7th U.S. Cavalry.
Cock-up simply isn't an adequate description of the utter chaos that surrounded this year's Mont de Marson festival.
Let's start from the top: Initially the Clash, the Damned and the Jam were to fly to the south of France accompanied by Les Press Anglais. They would be followed by the Feelgoods and the Rods, who had decided to share a chartered flying charabanc.
The supporting cast of English bands would travel by coach (as had all the bands the previous year). Sufficient, indeed luxurious, accommodation was promised in three of Mont de Marson's premier hotels.
The French, however, have yet to master the subtle art of organisation. Neither have they yet achieved any understanding of simple mathematical principles and are thus unable to calculate the specific number of rooms it requires to accommodate a specific amount of musicians, journalists and roadies (without whom nothing would be possible).
The first thing that happens is a relatively minor misfortune: Les Press Anglais lose their seats on the aeroplane; never mind, we'll take the coach with the Tyla Gang, the Police and the Maniacs.
This entails suffering a 12-hour coach drive to Paris, where we have an overnight stop (14 of us sharing what the French annually describe as a hotel suite, which in fact resembles a rabbit warren), the antics of Henri Paul, the Maniacs' French guitarist whose idea of enjoying himself is jumping on people, biffing them over the head or just comprehensively annoying them with all manner of pranks in the pursuit of what the French eccentrically regard as a good time ("Trying to be this year's Rat Scabies, are we?" asks Sean Tyla scathingly, recalling Rat's outrageous behaviour last year on the coach); a coach driver from Buffalo Travel who's seemingly intent upon emulating the escapades of Neal Cassidy and, finally, a 14-hour drive the length of France to the godforsaken metropolis of Mont de Marson.
A jig too far, indeed.
The coach party arrives in Mont de Marson somewhere beyond midnight to discover that the hours preceding our belated appearance on the scene have not passed entirely without incident.
The Damned and the Jam, we were informed, had, at least, arrived on schedule (the Clash missed the flight from London); however, the bands had become involved in a jovial drinking contest during the flight and arrived at Mont de Marson reasonably legless. The Jam decided to cool off by diving into the fountain in the town square. Some reports suggest they were splashing about naked and blitzed. Bruce Foxton, their bass guitarist, says they were merely enjoying a sedate paddle. Whatever: the gendarmes moved in and arrested them.
Rat Scabies, not to be outdone, introduced himself to the proprietor of the Damned's hotel by evacuating the contents of his stomach onto the floor of the lobby. They were quickly accommodated elsewhere. Later that evening Rat was out boozing with the Damned's new guitarist Lu (no one admits to knowing his surname though Rat attempted to christen him Lu Nater for reasons peculiar to the Scabies personality). The pair successfully provoked confrontation with a dozen or more French paratroopers who set upon them.
"Chased them around town," Jake Rivera recalled later. "Despicable lack of bottle on Rat's part, I thought. Any punk worth his salt would've taken on 12 French paratroopers without thinking twice about it."
Rat has already crashed out (taxed, no doubt, by the day's exertions) when Les Press Anglais troop into the downtown bar where various representatives of the Clash and the Damned, including Joe Strummer, Mick Jones, Dave Vanian, Brian James and Captain Sensible are enjoying a quiet drink. Sean Tyla stands at the bar and views them all with suspicion: "Lot of little pop stars," he remarks without sympathy.
Les Press Anglais are eventually turfed out of the bar and decide to accompany Captain Sensible to his hotel (which we have to pass, anyway, as we've been conveniently billeted at a boarding house two kilometres out of town). Our last clear memory of this first evening in delightful downtown Mont de Marson is of the Captain chainwhipping a clump of shrubbery. "It was taking the p- out of me," he explains quite rationally.
Friday: scheduled to appear today are the Maniacs, the Police, the Boys, the Damned and the Clash who are to be preceded by a contingent of native combos. At 6 p.m. the news from the building is not encouraging. The festival is already running late and it has yet to start.
At the Sahiat, Rat Scabies is furious to learn that the stage at the building is dominated by the Clash's White Riot backdrop. "If that's up when we go on," he informs Mick Jones, "I'll burn the f- thing down." Mick Jones expresses no profound concern: "Do what you f- like to it," he tells Rat.
Les Press Anglais tumble in to the Mont de Marson building to hear a quartet of French boilers called the Lous assaulting the ears of the 3,000 or so lunatics gathered in the stadium. It's immediately clear that the festival p.a. is not the most sophisticated sound system ever assembled. The Lous (possibly the most bizarre female quartet ever to set foot on a stage) are lost completely in a haze of electronic screeches and whining feedback.
Les Press Anglais retire bemused, with the final observation that one wouldn't like to be caught in a barroom brawl with any of these ladies: especially the drummer, whose tattooed biceps suggest a strength that would not easily be contested.
No more inspiring than the Lous were Asphalt Jungle who followed. Clearly inspired by the rhetoric of the Clash, they will, incomprehensibly, even attempt a version of London's Burning. It's comical. In fact, the entire festival is by this time assuming the character of a Mel Brooks-inspired farce.
The Maniacs are the first of the English bands to suffer the lunatic inefficiency that is beginning to afflict every aspect of the event. They are barely halfway through their set when the bass speakers blow out; in a fit of anger, their bass player Robert (a fearsome looking German with a Mohican haircut) flings down his guitar and lashes at the recalcitrant amplifiers with a cable. The band look on astonished, and not a little embarrassed. Robert accosts the audience with verbal abuse, leaps off the front of the stage and vanishes in a crowd of photographers. The set is subsequently resumed, but the impact the Maniacs seemed set to make has been lost.
The Police, making their first appearance with veteran guitarist Andy Summers (an incongruous recruit to the new wave), succeed this debacle. They perform competently, and Summers delivers some demon guitar breaks, but the music as yet lacks any real identity. And the sight of Summers pogging and going down on the bass guitarist is more than a little disconcerting.
Similarly characterless are the Boys, who appear between the Damned and the Clash: a basic unfamiliarity with their repertoire leads to an initial detachment and finally disinterest. Their collective image, I might add, is not enhanced by the fact that they remind me of Zigzag's Kris Needy impersonating five of the Seven Dwarfs.
It was left, then, to the Damned and the Clash to provide what entertainment there was to be enjoyed from the stage of the Mont de Marson bullring (the principal source of entertainment being thus far derived from observing the disintegration of the organisation into utter chaos).
The Damned returned this year to Mont de Marson with an additional guitarist (we met Lu earlier, you might recall), who's apparently been recruited to allow Brian James more space to express his musical creativity. This proposed new dimension was, however, somewhat lacking in their performance. Lu could rarely be heard; in fact, neither could the rest of the band, come to think of it. For virtually the entire set the p.a. was a silent monument to French inefficiency and lack of adequate preparation.
The Damned struggled on commendably, with Dave Vanian turning in his standard impersonation of a black widow spider on roller skates and Captain Sensible sprinting all over the joint as if his trousers were on fire. Still, they persevered and their final half hour was delightfully lunatic, with Vanian shrieking into the crowd, Sensible freaking away like a nightmare on bad acid, and Rat finally demolishing a drumkit in a furiously destructive display that he seemed to enjoy immensely. The ultimate mental asylum band, perhaps.
Sensible, incidentally, was back in action during the Clash's set. The incorrigible rogue slinked onstage during one of their apocalyptic rants and unleashed some distinctly powerful stink bombs, much to the fury of Joe Strummer who proceeded to decry the Captain's childish antics (I thought it pretty hilarious actually). Joe was not alone in finding the incident a little short on humour. One of the security bozos threw the unfortunate Captain off the side of the stage and he landed, legs apart, on a length of scaffolding, a fate that proposed a serious threat to his manhood.
Then, as he lay there writhing in understandable agony, a squadron of French Red Cross fellows dragged him onto a stretcher and almost had him in the back of an ambulance. This really freaked him out: he suddenly bolted off the stretcher and, doubled over in pain, he scrambled crab-like into the night. He was later discovered hiding on the roof of an equipment truck, and almost beaten up by a confused Frog, who thought he was attempting to hijack the vehicle.
But back to the Clash. Much has been written about their radical political stance and their authentic reflection of contemporary social deprivation and disintegration and most of it's been chickencrap. Granted, they are an exciting rock and roll band, but ultimately they're likely to be as politically effective as a fart in the dark.
Still, I can't deny the irresistible rush of, say, Hate And War, White Riot, or new songs like the vivid The Prisoner or White Man in Hammersmith Palais (the precise significance of this reggae opus was completely lost in the mix). It may provide an impressive spectacle, but it's still showbiz, Batman. And ultimately all the indignation and righteous fingerpointing becomes wearing. Being smacked over the head by an iron bar of confused rhetoric doesn't inspire me to race to the barricades.
Oh yeah, before leaving Saturday I should record that Twink and a hastily assembled version of Rings (the original line-up having sacked their leader to re-form as the ill-fated Maniacs) played out the first day of the festival; because his band went on last he was reported to be under the impression that he was headlining the gig. Curious, but what more can you expect of an old hippie with delusions of grandeur?
Saturday: this is where we came in. We have been joined outside the hotel by Captain Sensible, who has recovered from the mishaps of the previous night. Rat Scabies engineers the conversation around to the subject of the Captain's mother. "Not a well woman," he tells Lee Brilleaux, and proceeds to relate several scandalous tales. Even Jake Rivera, who's managed the Damned for the last year, is lost for words at these revelations. It's about as much as Lee can stand, too. He retires to the hotel bar to join Sparko in a rendition of the theme from the Martini ad ("Anytime, anyplace, anywhere..." they croon endlessly at every conceivable opportunity).
There had been a rumour circulating the previous evening that the Feelgoods had been on the verge of returning to England, so disenchanted were they at the lack of organisation at the festival. "Well, we weren't exactly thrilled when we got 'ere," Les replies. "But we got the cabbage upfront so we stayed. Things brightened up a bit then, like." Sparko launches into a couple of choruses from Oklahoma.
Les Press Anglais decide it will be saner in the bullring, and mosey on down into the heat of the stadium to be affronted by a couple of mediocre French bands (Shakin' Street, fronted by a female singer dressed in leather boots and shorts, who looks as if she's auditioned for the title role in a Dick Whittington pantomime, and the anonymous Marie Et Les Garçons).
Les Press Anglais decide that even another chorus of "Anytime, anyplace, anywhere" would be preferable to all this baloney, and are on the point of returning to the hotel when the imminent appearance of the Tyla Gang is announced. Now, from the moment the Buffalo Travel charabanc left Praed Street, Sean Tyla has been quietly bristling and bitching about the new wave bands – "the little pop stars" – around whom the festival has been promoted, and I, for one, am interested to see what he does to reply to their challenge.
"There was only one hour of real music at Mont de Marson," he argues later, leaving one in no doubt as to which band he thinks provided it, and his case is really quite justified. Simply, the Tyla Gang take the place apart with their swiftly-paced, carefully-organised, cut-throat rock and roll.
Tyla's assembled about him a band of musicians ruthlessly efficient at fleshing out his rock and roll fantasies (the band includes the original Winkies rhythm section of bassist Brian Turrington and drummer Michael DesMarais and lead guitarist Bruce Rowlands). It's undeniably exuberant stuff, particularly the vintage anthems Young Lords and Suicide Jockey. The band are accorded the most enthusiastic reception of the festival thus far, and the audience showers the stage with bottles and cans until Tyla's allowed to return for an encore that it would have been churlish to deny.
Indeed, it is on the crest of the energy and enthusiasm provoked by the Tyla Gang that both Little Bob Story and Eddie & The Hot Rods, who succeed them, coast to similar successes – though neither band match the musical excitement of the Tylas. The audience, though, is now geared for action. During Little Bob's Riot In Toulouse (the best of an indifferent repertoire), they storm and breach the crash barriers at the front of the stage to occupy a vantage point from which it is impossible to shift them, drongo Frog hordes that they are.
from page 31
The Rods, who are showing reassuring signs of resolving whatever differences of musical policy or internal discussion that seems recently to have afflicted them, are particularly well received, though they tottered precariously throughout their set on the verge of banal metal headbanging.
It is during the Rods' set that news reaches us that the Jam, who have been waiting around Mont de Marson since Thursday, have pulled out of the festival. The promoters, who had earlier promised them an early appearance, possibly before the Feelgoods, had told them they would have to appear last on the bill. This would have meant their playing at the ridiculous hour of 3 a.m. There would have been no one left alive by that time. Their manager reluctantly withdrew them. Bruce Foxton is clearly brought down by this decision. Later at the bar of a café he is questioned by some French fans about it. "Just what can you tell them?" he asks bewildered. "I think I'll go and get drunk."
Meanwhile, the Rods are roaring through Get Out Of Denver. The Feelgoods have at last made it down to the bullring and wander about in the press area. "Jes' think," Sparko slurred (understandably after nearly 10 hours of boozing), "I've got to go on that stage in about ten minutes and make a fool of myself. Still, I'm doing it fer money." He left to compose himself for the Feelgoods' set – bolstered by that last consideration.
When the Feelgoods do finally appear (it's gone midnight when they stroll out) they're a God-almighty, reckless frenzy. They've played tighter (I mean musically tighter, of course), and more precisely, but rarely, I'm sure, have they played with a more emphatically lunatic zeal. Their repertoire (including a smattering of new songs from the album they've just recorded) was familiar, but their crazed presentation was brilliantly infectious at this hour.
Brilleaux attacks each song like a demented cannibal going to work on the ample flesh of a bloated corpse, savaging each line of every lyric. John Mayo, frantically attempting to maintain the hilarious pace set by Lee, races after each riff and solo, taking off into the most insane orbits on those solos where his fingers keep up with the speed of his imagination. They bring the festival to a dizzy climax, and I collapse laughing in exhaustion.
"It had its moments," Brilleaux says of the set later in the seediest, most seriously gonzoid bar this side of Hunter Thompson's imagination. "Sometimes we hit it, once or twice we missed it. But we stuck it out. It was good. Enjoyed it as it happens. Good fun." He looks around at the pimps, hustlers, whores, assorted maniacs and generally off-the-wall types hanging around the bar. He knocks back a Fernet. He tastes a glass of the local beer. "The f- French don't know nothing about beer. Muck that is. Strange mob, the French. Can't work 'em out. Who's round is it? Fred, get 'em in."
Fred "Borneo" Mount, the Feelgoods' tour manager and all-round nutter, charges to the bar declaring war on the local population: "Who's ready for battle, then?" he demands.
"'Ere watch it, Fred," Brilleaux warns. "Some of these people is real odd sobs. Portuguese from across the border some of them. Get in a bit of bother with one of these lads and it's a quick six inches of Toledo steel beneath the fourth and fifth." He puts a reassuring hand to his ribs to check for the point of a blade.
A young French fan accosts him: "Lee Brilleaux. It is, too. Docteur Feelgood. Bon! Très bon!" Brilleaux stares at him fiercely. "Yeah. That's right, mate. Now. 'Oppit, vanish. Au revoir. Goodnight. Chill out. See you. Out winders and arseholes – to the door. Move on. See yourself to the door, will you? Good?"
The sun smiles at him in…
"… I 'ate the f----- French. There's just no talking to them."
As it happens, it's perfectly true.
Captain Sensible of the Damned backstage at the festival. Below left: Maniacs/Feelgoods/Damned, Tyla Gang on stage. Pictures by George Hodnar
MELODY MAKER, August 13, 1977