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| The Waltons
perform Black Leather their mickey take on bikers on Vaguely Sunny - Isle of Wight Rock anthology CD, price £10 p&p |
| The Waltons Cheese's website dedicated to one of the wild, anarchic and chaotic Island bands of the eighties. Also in the pipeline stuff on The Be Bop Dustbins and Cats Like Plain Crisps. |
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The
Waltons
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An
extract from Isle of Wight Rock - a music anthology:
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| 'Taking a pocket sized guitarist looking like Charles Manson before he was caught, a keyboard player like a psychotic left over from Woodstock, a pretty boy bassist studiously chewing gum while pumping out wonderfully moronic lines beautiful in their gross simplicity and add a vocalist. |
| Well not any vocalist, but a man who I was subsequently told was quietly self demeaning in real life. Maybe, but such eyes have not been seen since the first trips festival, and coupled with the arrogance of a young Steve Harley, the lust to succeed of Bowie on the White Light tour, from which I will never forget the blank gaze of a man who knew his time at last had come, and the dangerous animal grace of Iggy Pop before he sported a tail. |
| What is more, singing tales of surveilance, the steeling of Jack Kennedy’s brain and the incidence of nervous breakdown in a wonderfully clear snarl. One could actually hear every word the bugger sang, and wished one couldn’t. This was the kind of skull and rhythm attack that heavy metal so grossly parodies and fails to reach. |
| Musically the Waltons veer between a post punk aggression which I must admit I occasionally found wearying and an insistant thrust not heard much since the rancid side of psychedelia, the dark side of Quicksilver or Mad River at their nattiest with an occasional nosedive into dank pool of the early Velvet Underground. And I want more. |
| Rhythm meshed behind a guitarist who was acutally improvising, with the electric charge that such a forgotten craft bestows, a solid row not much heard on these shores since the demise of the likes of Mighty Baby or Blossom Toes, not the same old set parrotted out, but a real event, dangerous music. |
| The singer showed an energy level that was doubly frightening for his sheer commitment, the viens in his neck bulging while his eye swivlled round the audience like some mutrant waxwork. And the soap opera name hardly applies to such an anarchicist crew. |
| Crass with muisical ability and more than one chord, although, yes, one could hum the chorises afterwards. With a minute of ear destroying keyboard delirium not heard since John Cale packed in his viola, things came to a satisfying concusion. and the lights came up on a motely crew of sweaty Hells Angels, drained Goths and a punch drunk old man who had not shaken his head so much since early Hawkwind. I want more.' |
| Brian Hinton, author Nights in White Satin (book on the Isle of Wight Festivals), Message to Love (about the Afton Festival), Celtic Crossroads (Van Morrison biography) and Both Sides Now (Joni Mitchell biography) |
| If one band emerged with the spirit of the age it was the Waltons. The depth of the band stemmed from Tony Waltons long pedigree. Between the festivals of 1968 to 1970 he’d been a hippie until the collapse of Dancer in 1972. |
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'I went off to India. When I came back punk was happening. I shaved my hair off and thought I’ll have some of this.' - Tony Walton |
| 'The Waltons worked because of the clash of personalities. Everybody was a really strong personality. We didn’t socialise together. Before that I’d only written sort of Dylan-ish acoustic guitar pieces. |
| It was a time, the Prince Consort made the Waltons and Brian McDermott, theatrical camp. He didn’t give a shit. The last time we played there people were going to the off-licence, the brewery had stopped delivering. He just didn’t care. Mad nights when we would turn up with bags of flour. We were lucky to have a place like that to play. That was the last time the Prince Consort was used properly I think. |
| Annika was done at the Prince Consort. There was a producer down here looking for locations. Dread ended up driving him around. He was looking for a band. We used the top part that Brian McDermott had turned into a theatre. |
| We thought of ourselves as an underground band. We were a live band, that’s where the magic was, that’s where it worked. Steve Gold arranged for us to play at the Pavilion for Scandanvian students. It was packed after the first number there were about five people left. |
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After a biker’s gig got cancelled, the Mechanix, who turned up at Lakeside with nowhere to play offered us £60 not to play. We had a meeting in the back of their van. It wasn’t enough. The Mechanixs played support. After three songs we played a piss take of bikers called Black Leather. The bikers started throwing things at us. That sums up the Walton’s for me, adversity.' |
| Adversity came to the front when the Waltons were invited to play at the prestigious Isle of Wight International Song Festival. The event sponsored by South African Airlines in the anti apartheid eighties took on the script of a Marx brothers movie. |
| We were Steve Goulds baby. We did our set. Our final number was Black Leather, basically a piss take of the bikers. Underneath my trousers I had a pair of women’s tights. The shock of the night was that I emptied twelve tins of spaghetti in to my tights. |
| We were invited to the champagne receptions. We found out that the event was sponsored by South African Airlines. We spent the rest of the festival making a nuisance of ourselves. We were banned from the auditorium. We busted into the champagne buffets upsetting everybody. We just made our stand. |
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I wrote to the County Press and really stirred up a hornet’s nest. We couldn’t believe Steve Gold could be so unaware to accept sponsorship from South African Airlines.' |
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all
above quotes Tony Walton
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| 'The Mothers of Invention, Freak Out, that heavy cynicism that takes the piss out of everything that should have the piss taken out of it. There’s a lot of that attitude in the Waltons music. It’s one of the reasons why the band never got anywhere in business terms. Zappa will go down as a 20th Century musical genius. |
| A few nights ago I watched 200 Motels. For the first time I actually got to the end of it. The Bonzo Dog Dooh Dah band was another influence. I used to see Viv Stanshall on Shanklin front in his pink suit and pink sunglasses. |
| There was a punk influence that gave it the aggression. We had this effect where people would back away. Someone like Neil Cassady you get great stories about but you wouldn’t want them to come around. They would fill up your house. The neighbours wouldn’t like it. |
| Burroughs is as sharp as a razor blade. I find his dreadful cynical stuff coming true. He is an influence, and I’d have to quote Dylan as well when he was in that Subterranean Homesick Blues era, where he was taking vast quantities of amphetamines, stream of consciousness.' |
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Tony
Walton
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| The Waltons came to end after a tour of Holland in an old bus. |
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'The only people who pushed the boat out as far as we did were the Be-Bop Dustbins. They were probably influenced by the Waltons.' - Tony Walton |
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| 'Walking the length of Shanklin Pier, slipping on ice, pushing the gear on a trolley, skipping over the holes. They had a big oil fired boiler but it was freezing. Everywhere you went on Shanklin Pier there was buckets and bowls. |
| Jo and Fred Sage were still running the pier, cups of tea for the boys in the band. Cheaper Than Neckache did an anti apartheid gig on the pier with the Hilltop Boys and the Waltons (21/4/87) There were seven hundred people there it was very well organised by the Walton’s management. |
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I went to the shop and bought these paper plates and shaving foam. When the curtains were pulled out front. There was Tony Walton, Mike Jolliffe and John Wroath leading the crowd in No Woman, No Cry. Al and I were making up the custard pies. Mike Jolliffe ducked, Tony Walton moved out of the way and we both got Wroathy full in the face with the custard pies. A rock’n’roll highpoint.' - Rick East |
| The Waltons
perform Black Leather their mickey take on bikers on Vaguely Sunny - Isle of Wight Rock anthology CD, price £10 p&p |
