The
Vibrators
This article originally appeared in NFH #11 in
the fall of 1982.
It’s hard to
believe, but it’s now five years ago that British punk rock took England by storm and
turned the entire country upside down in the jubilee summer of 1977. "God Save The
Queen" hit number one right on the anniversary week of the Queen’s 25th
year on the throne despite being banned in virtually every record shop and on every radio
station in the country. It’s hard now to remember all the furor it caused; bands
banned from performing left and right by the Greater Lodon Council (GLC). The Sex Pistols
were of course at the center of it all, but around them swirled a vortex of bands all
inspired by the news that music was going to be interesting and fun again!
The Vibrators were
one of these bands, and one of the best, too. They never got the recognition of some of
the bigger acts; I suspect that this can in large part be traced to their origins. All (or
almost all) of the most critically praised bands were those that began as punk bands from
scratch with no prior experience; kids strapping on guitars and stepping up to the mike to
unleash whatever racket they could. And rightfully so; the output of these untried kids was
amazing, and their sincerity couldn’t be questioned.
The Vibrators
didn’t share this background. In fact, original bassist Pat Collier and guitar player
John Ellis had been in bands since 1971 when they were founding members of a band called
Bazooka Joe. Bazooka Joe suffered from a high rate of personnel turnover, with most of the
members being art school types (Adam Ant even played with them for a short stretch). Their
material was reported to be mostly humorous stuff in the vein of, say, Madness. Later,
they were to be the first band that the Sex Pistols opened for, although it’s not
clear whether Collier and Ellis were still in the group at that point.
February of 1976 saw
the first edition of the Vibrators start playing the London pub scene where they began to
develop and r’n’b flavored sound such as that favored by other pub bands of the
day. The turning point for them came when Chris Spedding hooked up with them late in the
summer of 1976. Spedding was without a band at the point and liked what he saw in the
Vibrators. That must have been a bizarre group to see; the Vibrators resplendent in long
hair and hippy clothing playing r’n’b with guitar wizard Spedding.
Shortly after this
the band began to see the light of day; punk rock was stirring and the change was in the
air. The Ramones had their first lp and single; a UK tour by the Forest Hills four lit the
match and set London burning. The Vibrators found themselves in it at the start, booked
into the two day 100 Club Punk Rock Festival. Also appearing: the Buzzcocks, the Subway
Sect, the Damned, Stinky Toys, Siouxie and the Banshees, the Clash, and the Sex Pistols.
If there is a punk rock heaven, it came to earth those two days in September of 1976. The
Vibrators came dressed for the occasion, cutting their hair for the first time and wearing
leather, leopard prints and those cheap plastic sunglasses that everyone used to wear. The
band consisted of Collier, Ellis, drummer Jon (Eddie) Edwards, and guitarist Knox, with
Spedding guesting on guitar and vocals. They played a batch of covers and some Spedding
originals like "Motorbiking" It must have been wild.
Publicity from the
festival being what it was, the band soon found themselves with a 45 out on RAK, billed as
Chris Spedding and the Vibrators. "Pogo Dancing" has all the trademarks of the
Vibrators right from the start; the crisp rhythmic guitar, solid bass, and that
machine-like 4/4 beat that you just have to dance to. The lyrics to this (as with most
Vibrators tracks) are somewhat moronic ("why move side to side when you can jump up
and down?") and it sounds weird having Spedding sing, but there’s no doubt
it’s the Vibrators back there playing the instruments.
The same month
(November 1976) saw another Vibrators 45, this time without Spedding "We
Vibrate" was more akin to something like Eddie and the Hotrods than the normal
Vibrators sound. The flip has a primordial version of their sado-masochistic masterpiece
"Whips and Furs". One more single came out on RAK in March 1977, "Bad
Time"/"No Heart", but now the explosion was on in earnest. Labels were
falling all over themselves to sign punk bands, and the Vibrators made their move toward
the big time by signing with CBS Epic, with whom they rushed out a single in May:
"Baby Baby"/"Into The Future", which they quickly followed up with
their debut lp, Pure Mania. Suddenly the band was at the forefront; only the Damned
and Wire among UK punk groups had released an lp before the Vibrators. The US record
industry, watching with dollar signs in their eyes, saw in the Vibrators what they
didn’t see in the Damned, a band with highly accessible, danceable songs. Soon Pure
Mania was out in the US, too, and accompanied by "Baby Baby" as a single.
This song seemed at the time like an odd choice for a Vibrators 45; it’s virtually a
ballad, but in retrospect the pattern is obvious; the big labels tried to defuse punk by
turning slow songs into singles where ever possible.
But there was no
defusing the album. Pure Mania is sheer brilliance; no matter that the band
averaged 28 years old and were reformed hippies, there’s no denying that their
opening slavo was on of the best albums of the UK revolution. Despite their roots, the
band believed; once they picked up punk, they never turned back. Even at the end
when the bottom dropped out the Vibrators were still playing the punk style that they so
obviously loved. It’s this fact that makes me sure that the charges that the
Vibrators were opportunists are false; sure, they didn’t start punk, but that they
believed in what they were doing and weren’t playing just to catch a new trend is
clear.
The album contained
new takes of three of their RAK sides and twelve other cuts. The band wears Ramones
influences on their sleeves - all the tracks are short, fast, and catchy as malaria. Most
of the songs deal with girls and girl trouble, but where the radio was playing romantic
slush whose basic idea was "Oh, woe, my girl has left me, I’m so sad, Oh,
woe…" the Vibrators were cranking out ditties like "Wrecked On You" or
"I Need A Slave" and lines like "She drives a black Cadillac, Whips and
furs in the back", or "Well if it wasn;t for your stiff little fingers, nobody
would know you were dead". Girls in Vibrators songs were weird, kinky, psychopathic
and sadistic. The melodies crackled in the same manner; listen to the scorching drum roll
running through "Petrol" or the smooth guitar in "Sweet Sweet Heart".
Interestingly, the US
version contained remixes of several of the songs; in most places the effect is noticed
only if you pay close attention, but on "Sweet Sweet Heart" the guitar line is
really beefed up, improving the song by heaps.
The next step, of
course, was to take the act on the road, which they did as support on an Ian Hunter tour
(!) and then as headliners, where they were booked into such notable halls as
Manchester’s Electric Circus, Liverpool’s Erics, and Cardiff’s Top Rank
Suite. A portion of the tour was sadly wiped out by the ban on punk rock concerts; the
tour was scheduled during the height of the furor over punk with people like Parliament
member Marcus Lipton spouting off comments like: "If punk is going to destroy
Britain’s institutions then it ought to be destroyed first". Hysteria was the
rule of the day.
To give their fans a
taste of their live show, in August of 1977 the band released a live single with
"London Girls" and "Stiff Little Fingers" being the tracks.
"London Girls" is an absolute smash live, with rowdy vocals over chaotic guitars
and the intro "here’s a song…about…girls in London…and it’s
called…LONDON GIRLS!". And of course there was some bunch of Irish
wankers who named themselves after the flip (actually, Ireland’s Stiff Little Fingers
were a brilliant band in their own right). As another note of interest, this record was
actually released in communist Yugoslavia, with a picture sleeve!
At this point, things
were looking rosey; the band had records and acclaim (Rolling Stone had even given Pure
Mania a rave review), but the single had entered the US charts at the bottom and
plummeted from sight. Then Collier took a walk to form the Boyfriends and the Vibrators
went into disarray. There was no place to play, and the band certainly hadn’t become
rich off their record sales.
The band didn’t
resurface until March of 1978, when, with new bassist Gary Tibbs, they came out with
another album V2 and a single "Automatic Lover"/"Destroy",
their highest charting UK single at #35. The lost time killed the band, though; the rest
of UK punk had passed them by. Being out of action, they missed garnering all the
publicity that other groups got at a time when the attention of the entire music press was
focused on the British punk scene. As a result, they were received with "Who?"
by the critics on release of their new lp and it went nowhere. In fact, in addition to not
being released in the US, the import of V2 has always been miserably hard to find
in the US as well. This is a shame, because V2 is nearly as good as Pure Mania.
It has a harder feel, and the girls, while still there, are more bizarre than ever. In
"Destroy" the guy’s response to his girlfriend’s leaving is to blow up
the world. In the song "Pure Mania" (strange that the song isn’t on the
album that bears the same name), the guy’s girl is insane and her whole family tree
is, too ("your grandpa poked his eyes out with a pointed stick…Your whole family
seems to be round the bend/If I get hitched up with you it would be the living end.")
The girl carries a gun to parties "cos she thinks that it’s hip". Radio
songs being in at the time, the band gets their shots in with "Flying Duck
Theory" about how people swallow everything they hear on the box.
Ellis left shortly
after the lp came out and was replaced by a couple of part timers, Done Snow and Dave
Birch, with whom the Vibrators did another 45, "Judy Says (She’s Gonna Knock You
In The Head)"/"Pure Mania", in June, 1978. This was another great single,
but when it only made #70 the band decided it was going nowhere and packed it in in July.
But by August there
was another version of the band out on the road for another tour, this time in Holland and
the UK. Only Knox and Eddie remained from the start, and this version of the band is
represented by one recorded track, a live cover of "Pushin’ Too Hard" that
showed up in June of 1980 on the Vibrators hits compilation lp Batteries Included,
a mish mosh of single sides and lp tracks. Dispirited though they must have been by now,
their rendition of the Seeds’ classic is still typical of the Vibrators at their
best. The one cut wasn’t enough, though, and by October 1978 the band had dissolved
again.
Drummer Eddie was
persistent, though, piling together a batch of new faces to form one last edition of the
band. This group couldn’t recreate the same patented sound of the old group, as can
be seen on the last two singles, "Disco In Moscow"/"Take A Chance" and
the cover single "Gimme Some Lovin’"/"Powercry". The latter
single was actually quite good and gave hopes that the band would get off the mats one
more time, but it wasn’t to be.
Since then the band
members have mostly disappeared. John Ellis has cut a couple of dismal solo singles. Knox
also has two solo 45s, neither of which I’ve ever seen. Gary Tibbs has garnered the
most fame, playing with teen idols Adam and the Ants. Pat Collier’s Boyfriends went
under after a handful of singles and Eddie hasn’t been heard from since the
"Powercry" single. A long story and a sad ending as seems to be the case with
all good bands; 9 singles, two (3 if you count Batteries) lps, and - pfft-
they’re gone. Well, if it wasn’t for their stiff little fingers, nobody
would know they were dead.
Editors note,
1997: it’s 15 years since I wrote this article, and there’s a lot more to add to
this story. I can’t be bothered to do it right now. Suffice to say, the Vibrators
reunited in 1983 and in one form or another have slugged on for years, putting out piles
of records that dwarf their original output. Some of it’s really good, some of it
stinks the place up fairly badly, but by and large staying true to their punk roots.
