memories of PD, hitching & strange places you slept

[Little Dave]

Okay, so here?s a thought. Following Play Dead around the country was, for me, 25 years ago, And, since that time much water has flowed under the bridge (life has got serious & sometimes it hasn?t)
Anyway, can you remember any of the daft or crazy places you had to sleep when hitching around the country?
Here are some of my memories
I remember sleeping in a burnt-out, derelict house in Retford one winter. The place was falling to bits, you could see the night sky through a large hole in the roof & I was bloody freezing due to the fact that I did not have a sleeping bag.
I can remember a group of us slept on the floor of a hall in Liverpool University (I slept under a table). I slept on a bench in Victoria coach station London for 2 nights. I remember waking up in the morning to discover an old lady replacing the sleeping bag that had fallen off me during the night. On the second night we were joined by an Italian punk whose only words of English were, ?Yes, no, please, joint?. The only other word he knew was ?Pig?, which he would shout loudly every time he saw a police man (this was when I went to see PD support Sex Gang at the Lyceum).
After a gig at Keele University a group of us were offered a room by the University?s Samaritans. During the night a would hear the phone ring in the office next door & a voice say something along the lines of, ?No, don?t do that, you?ve got your whole life ahead of you!?
After gigs in London I have slept in a boot of a car, under a sink at someone?s flat & squats in Brixton. I remember a group of us sleeping at Hulme (sorry for the spelling) flats in Manchester & hearing gunshots during the night.
I slept in numerous people?s front rooms with lots of people elbowing each other for floor space & once, in Sheffield, I asked a woman why she was off to Paris. She told me she was going with the Skeletal family & I told her to enjoy the gig. After she left Fuggy started to laugh at me & said, ?Lucky you didn?t call the Skeletal family crap?.
?Why? I said
?Because? Fuggy replied, ?She is the singer of the Skeletal family?
Anyway, do any of you have any good memories of the places you ended up sleeping in on your journey around the country following PD

[Preston Mark]

Dave

Don't think I can match you on sheer volume and variety but a few interesting ones nontheless.

In a summerhouse on a park somewhere in Richmond ( I think) after the Lyceum gig supporting Nick Cave , we were unceremoniously booted out by the sitting tenants once it came light and they sussed we were in there !

In a tent in the grounds of Keele University , some pissed up students came past about four in the morning and were contemplating trashing the tent ( with us in it ) only prevented by us shouting out threats in the toughest voices we could manage !

In a waiting room on Sheffield railway station after a gig at the leadmill , there was nobody in it but us when we finally crashed out , woke up under one of the bench seats looking at a row of businessmen's feet , you should have seen their faces when I crawled out.

Finally remember a close shave when staying in someone's basement in Oxford ( the night of the first live album recording at Oxford COHE ) when my sleeping bag was pushed up against a portable calor gas heater and caught fire.Don't know what was worse having to sleep in a half frazzled bag or the fact that the guy who's house it was insisted on playing Gil Scott Heron all night !

[Little Dave]

Preston Mark

excellent stuff, makes me laugh
Since i've discovered this site it brings back so many memories. I tell my wife some of this stuff & she looks at me as if i am bonkers..."You slept where!"

I hated gigs at Retfors Porterhouse. Not because of the venue, they were always good gigs, but because there was no way to get out of the town at night without your own transport. So you were stuck until the morning.
I remember after seeing PD support sex gang at the Porterhouse i had to sit alnight on a bench at the open air coach station. It was freezing (why was it always cold in Retford) & at 5 in the morning i found a baker's who were in early & they took pity on me. They gave me a cup of tea & a freshly baked bun. That got me through until 8 in the morning when the national express arrived

Anyway, sounds like we went to some of the same gigs. I'm sure i can remember an someone from Preston, did you know Batman at all

cheers
little Dave

[Preston Mark]

Dave

There were a few of us from Preston that used to travel around watching PD , not religously to every gig but certainly any in the North West / Yorkshire / Midlands and further afield if circumstances allowed.

I knew who Batman was and have spoken to him on occasion , he may even have been one of the half dozen or so who crashed at my mum and dad's after a gig at Preston's Paradise Club ( nice surpise for my parent's when they got up in the morning as I had neglected to tell them anyone was staying !).

On the theme of kipping rough , some of my mates travelled down to Rock City to see Killing Joke on the Fire Dances tour , after the gig they decided to kip rough and ended up climbing over a wall into a field and crashing down there , in the morning they woke up to find they were on the very edge of a quarry , thank god no one wanted a piss in the night !

Never got to the Porterhouse so can't comment , wasn't it popular with our shaven headed friends ?

[Little Dave]

Hi Mark

Love the story about the quarry-crazy stuff
I never actually went to Preston to watch PD, the nearest I got to the city is when I hitched from Manchester & was dropped off near Preston when the driver took us the wrong way!
I have some funny recollections of hitching with Batman. One evening we hitched down to London together (PD were playing in Brighton the next day) & the bloke who gave us a lift realized we had nowhere to stay so he let us sleep in the boot of his car. Yep, the two of us slept in a boot of a car.
The next day we hitched off to Brighton but some how got lost and, for some totally insane reason, we had to walk across a motorway to get to the junction that we needed to hitch from (I knew I was a bit light in the head when I was 17 but I must have been as daft as a bag of frogs). After the gig 4 of us managed to get a lift back to London and me and Batman slept on the floor of a squat. I?m not sure if I ever saw him again after that gig (long time ago and the memory plays tricks)

I also have a few memories of waking up in strange living rooms and being stared at by puzzled parents saying, ?Who the hell are you lot?. They always turned out to be nice & we usually got tea and toast.

I don?t recall any problems with skinheads at the Retford Porterhouse (Birmingham was usually the place where you had to watch out for them)
The strangest thing I ever saw at the Porterhouse was when I went with a mate to see Gaye Bikers on Acid. My mate knew one of the Bikers so we got in to watch the sound check. Well, a few minutes after the sound check I was walking about when I noticed Kevin Crap (the drummer) was sitting in a corner trying to wrap his whole body in toilet paper. He wasn?t doing it for attention because there was nobody around to watch what he was doing (apart from me, and by this time he had covered his head in the stuff and so probably couldn?t see)
Anyway, after he?d finished he set fire to himself!
What can you say
All the best

Little Dave

[Preston Mark]

Dave

Funny how you remember the good times and laughs associated with hitching whilst blotting out the 5 hour wait at Corley Services (it always seemed to be Corley) in the pissing rain whilst your hand went numb and the ink on your sign ran !

One time I was hitching up from London to Nottingham for the PD gig at Rock City ( Longest Day I think the show was called ).My girlfriend of the time was with me ( strange because she didn't really do PD , more of a TOH / SOD fan) and I remember thinking we'd struggle to get picked up as there were a fair few people already at Staples Corner when we arrived meaning we were virtually stood on the motorway itself ! Anyway we did get picked up by this scally type who claimed to be a drug counsellor on his way up to Lancaster University to give a lecture.As we approached St Albans the car started to overheat and we pulled off the M1 to see what the problem was.

Turned out the radiator was f**ked and this bloke announced he would park up , leave us in the car and go and see if he could sort it , he also left us a bag of weed ( obviously gave some practical demos in his lectures) and told us to help ourselves.It was only mid morning so we happily settled down to get stoned.A few hours later he still hadn't appeared and we were thinking of sacking the lift and trying to get
back to the motorway.Just as we were about to split he turned up clutching a radiator that had obviously been liberated from some other vehicle , he proceeded to fit it ( it was from a different make so didn't fit properly) and off we went , stopping every twenty miles or so to fill it up as it kept leaking.We were flapping about missing the gig and were anxious to know where he was going to drop us ( Watford Gap looked favourite) as it was getting on by now , he then announced he'd come to the gig , not only that but produced a big bag of whizz which he shared with us !

Upshot was we got to Rock City about 15 minutes before PD came on , buzzing like good 'uns , flung ourselves around the dancefloor and then got a lift back to Preston from some mates of ours who had driven down.Last time I saw our driver he was clutching a pint and trying to get stuck into some Goth girl at the bar !

The things you do when you're young !

Mark

[Little Dave]

Mark

Totally agree. You never remember all the terrible hitching journeys & I?m sure I must have had my fare share.
I suppose because it is such a long time ago we filter out these episodes in our lives.
To be honest, until I recently found this PD site, I had forgotten a lot of what happened and since then it is like opening a treasure trove of long forgotten thoughts and emotions.
Every time I read a story on here it opens up another door to a memory that I had disappeared out of my conscious mind.
Sorry to sound all ?metaphysical? but I was 17 when I first started following PD; a skinny wide-eyed kid who loved the buzz and excitement of hitching around the country (better than sitting at home on the dole). I?m now in my 40s and it is over half a life away
Anyway, an excellent story; I don?t think I ever had a hitch like that (showed the story to my wife and she just looked a bit ?gob-smacked?)
I always disliked hitching from Nottingham Trowel services; it always seemed to take hours to get a lift.
I remember getting a lift from a lorry driver at Trowel. Once I had got into the cabin I realized that I couldn?t understand a word of what the driver was saying.
He was not foreign; he just kept shouting incoherent sounds at the top of his voice. Also, every time he saw another lorry he would jab his finger violently towards the windscreen, raise his voice by several decibels and then thump the dashboard. He was very angry.
The only time his mood changed is when he saw that a lorry had crashed by the side of the motorway. He immediately stopped thumping the dashboard, pointed towards the stranded truck driver and burst out into hysterical laughter, while at the same time, waving his arms around the cabin like a demented octopus.
I asked to be let out early

Hopefully a few other people will tell us about their memories of hitching and sleeping rough as they are excellent

Cheers
Dave

[bluefromnowhere]

Saw PD at Retford once only. I actually got the bus from Sheffield - which took about an hour and a half but only cost 10p. The better days before deregulation.

Why have a venue at all in Retford? It's a nowhere place stuck to the East Coast Main Line. But there used to be lots of these 'regular' venues in out of the way places. Northampton Roadmenders, Chippenham Goldiggers, Aylesbury Friars etc. Many of them presenting real challenges for the Motorway-happy hitcher

Anyway; the gig. Who supported that night? Was it the Stingrays? There was a lot of red-faced pushing and shoving, but no major punch-up. Afterwards a group of us (including Fuggy, Mick from 'Boro and others) headed to the 'house' long known as a good place to crash. Being in Retford past closing time was like being on the moon in terms of transport options. So this derelict place was the Mecca for the temporary homeless. We climbed over the wall and while not strictly breaking-in, heaved the door open before finding an upstairs room .

An uneventful night passed. In the morning, I remember Fuggy complaining that his pee smelled strange! But then we'd all used the non-flushing toilet, so this could have been the problem. Happily, we'd all used the loo and had got packed-up ready to go when the owner of the house arrived with his kids. We heard them coming, and just stood rooted to the spot as there was no way out. At last the guy just walks in and stops dead with his mouth open. He was so surprised that he hardly reacted as we quickly slipped by him saying things loudly like 'Sorry!' and 'Didn't realise it was your house' etc. I definitely recall him saying - as we were on the way out "You'll have to leave, otherwise I'll need to call the police". We would have been half a mile up the road by the time he discovered the toilet.

Other fun places to crash? How about Nottingham coach station? I spent a happy night eating apple peelings out of a bin and drinking the odd sachet of vinegar during a hunger crisis after a Nick Cave gig at the Rock City. Then a load of us slept there with safety in numbers - after PD - again at the Rock City (where else in Nottingham!?).

I didn't much like Nottingham. The RC was pretty good, but I never heard the golden words 'you can crash at mine if you like' there. It was miles from the Motorway if you didn't fancy the coach station. I did this walk twice, once with those cute girls from Shepton Mallet (after SOD). I did it again with my mate, Roy. This was during the miner's strike with police turning away flying-pickets at the motorway junction. We awoke in a colliery bus shelter in the midst 'industrial action'.

Had the 'privelidge' of staying in the band's hotel after an abortive Chester Munro's gig - thanks to John from Chatshow. Another game of 'look straight-ahead an keep walking' to get past the staff in the morning.

By far the most common hitch for me was London - Manchester overnight. By and large it wasn't too bad. But I did experience one of the coldest nights on record - much of it at Newport Pagnell - after a Crime & the City Solution gig at Acklam hall. The wind chill (I discovered) was -19. JESUS CHRIST it was REALLY COLD.

I suppose most of us would have experienced one of 'those' lifts when hitching alone. Had a couple myself, and my trick was to talk constantly about football. A real passion killer. I always thought this supported the argument that you should use a sign when hitching, because it made it obvious you were going somewhere. Then again, lots of people swore by 'thumb only'. Does anyone hitch long-distance anymore? You rarely see anybody at the exits of sevice stations. Are students/younger people too wealthy or is it just because of fear?

[playdeadandi]

having just been released from youth custody(non payment of fines)on
1ST august 86 saw DANSE SOCIETY were playing marquee on5/6th and
decided to do my 1ST solo hitch so living in nottingham at the time made
my way to trowell services.got picked up in no time at all by a german
lorry driver delivering loads of wellingtons to london from bradford i think.
was rolling myself a roll up when in his very limited english he offerered
me one of his which turned out to be a massive cigar which lasted me to
the outskirts of london i dont recall how but the guy was under the very
much mistaken idea that i knew my way round the london one way system
which resulted in the police being called out in great numbers just to halt
traffic so me and my german friend could exit the wrong way!with a bit of
personal hash in my pocket and being only 5 days out of prison the
abbundance of plod around meant i abandoned the lorry asap when we went past a underground station and got off at oxford circus.i got a coach
home.

[Little Dave]

First of all, bluefromnowhere, I am now feeling guilty that I did not put you up at my bed-sit. So sorry you had a few uncomfortable nights around Notts.
The truth of the matter is that I lived in tiny room in a shared building which had a bed, a sink, an armchair and one set of drawers and that was about it. When PD came to town I used to get me, Foggy and two other people into the room and that was it (2 on the bed, one on the floor and one in the armchair).
I know it is now over 20 years ago but I do feel a bit guilty so sorry you had to sleep rough.
Yep, I remember the miner?s strike in Nottingham; it was a crazy time. I have memories of being searched by the police when I used to go and visit my girl friend. She lived very close to a pit.

Bluefromnowhere, you are also right about the amount of tiny, one horse towns that used to have little venues for gigs. Chippenham Goldiggers always reminds me of stories about drunk squaddies. Also, your story about the run down house in Retford sounds like the place I stayed in one evening. However, I was sure you could see the night sky through the roof of the house because someone had set fire to that part of the building

Playdeadandi, that sounds a truly bonkers experience, which must have been odd at the time but hilarious to look back on now.
Me and my girlfriend were once searched by the police while we were hitching from a motorway service station. We had been hitching around for over a week so when they emptied our bags on the side of the road looking for dope all they discovered were a week?s worth of dirty, sweaty laundry (you never know, maybe that is what they were secretly after). They kept on insisting that we had dope on us because my girlfriend wore petunia oil as a perfume and they thought she used it to cover up the smell of dope. All I can say is that they must have had very strange training in drug searching techniques.

The only time I saw the Dance Society live was at Rock City and to be honest they were not that good; a bit flat.

[shaeve]

I got together with a young lady for the first time after a PD gig. I think that says it all

[playdeadandi]

jauary 1985 venue brixton academy benefit gig for the miners strike
artists orange juice...their last gig the woodentops who were absolute shit
and played the longest set everything but the girl and headlining aztec
camera whose set was short because the woodentops had more than
overstayed their welcome pretty straightforward hitch nottingham trowell
services to brent cross with some punks who were picking a friend up
from heathrow but journey home went like this...and i am not making any
of thisup;i dont remember how we got from brixton to the m1 at brent cross butwe arrived there at about 1.30ish i was wearing an oversized mans suit jacket getting the fear t-shirt jeans and a hat there was snow
and ice on the ground there were others already at the motorway and we
got talking to them finding out where they were hitching to basically.
after about an hour we got a lift in a big american oldsmobile from a mixed race guy heading to northampton we both went in the back but before we could the guy had to move a large item of luggage from the back seat to the boot i am still convinced to this day it was shotguns in this
case when we got to scratchwood services the guy announced he was getting a drink so we stopped.we met up with 2 girls from earlier who were
heading to coventry our driver appeared very interesterd in this news and
got me to offer them a lift on his behalf... one of the girls got in the back
with me and my mate but the other called coco got in the front having had hardlyany sleep for about 3 days i was dozing in the back but was aware of the fact the conversation in the front was of a sexual nature and my mate was getting a bit freaked out by it all at some point coco was giving the driver a hand job when we had a high speed bblowout on the m1.after
the shock had died down we had to all get out the car so the driver could jack it up i was so frazzled by now that i didnt want to get out the car as i thought it was all aset up...anyway he did the deed and dropped us off at leicester forest east services and he headed offwith coco and her friend presumably to coventry.....memories ha ha

[johnpne]

Were to start, like the others many a night at Fuggys after gigs in Birmingham or Dudley usually drunk. Also remember sleeping outside the venue at Hull on the Killing Joke, Play Dead tour on the grass verge woke to find loads of people on there way to work starring at us in disbelief. At stourbridge gig should have stayed in the hotel booked for the band but got thrown out for having a party in the pool and finished up behind a hedge in a field. Remember staying in the house at Retford usually got in through the back door if it was open or broke in if not. There will be many others but it was 25 years ago

[staydead]

Slept under the car at Keele Services, in a car park outside some offices opposite the Hacienda - police called numerous times, Oxford bus station after gig at the poly, in Foggy's doorway all night after dudley JB's only to be woken by the owner the next morning to find we were at the wrong address - thanks for waiting Foggy!