My Band T-Shirt

The city of Oxford during the mid 1980s, pre-Radiohead, pre-Supergrass, pre-Ride, pre-just about everything, was a surprisingly quiet place for a city that was home to a disproportionately large number of young people. Despite the presence of a world famous university, a large Polytechnic (the consolation prize for those who couldn’t make it into the posh place) and a College of Further Education, the expected student contribution to the local music scene never really appeared. There were possibly only half a dozen bands native to the city that gigged with any regularity and I was a member of one of them. We were different to most of the others. We were into The Stooges, Motorhead, 13^th Floor Elevators, The Velvet Underground, MC5, Hawkwind and hardcore punk and attempted to sound like some kind of combination of them all, to varying degrees of success depending on how drunk or stoned we happened to be at the time.

Anyway, one of the more obscure punk singles that was very popular in our small circle was the Slow Death EP by a Swedish band call The Leather Nun, the lead track of which, No Rule, became a particular favourite.  It was rare that any of us would make a mix tape that didn’t feature it and it was very quickly bagged as a cover version by our guitarist’s side project.

By the time we had discovered The Leather Nun, the band had already had a rather erratic career which had seen the release of only three singles and one cassette in nearly seven years. Their sound had also moved on from being pure punk, and had become a greasy kind of biker rock that featured single repetitive riffs and feedback drenched lead guitar. Lead vocalist Jonas Almquist had also dropped his early shouty punk approach and was now crooning in a deadpan style that was an uncanny imitation of Lou Reed.

So, as all this was still pretty much to our taste, when the band announced a live date at the London Clarendon for late 1986 a friend and I hitch hiked our longhaired and unkempt selves up the M40 from Oxford at attend. Inside the crumbling ballroom, a makeshift merchandise stand was situated in an alcove, behind a rickety wallpaper table and the only available item, a t-shirt, was taped to the wall behind and I immediately wanted one. The band’s Totenkopf Rock ‘n’ Roll design had brought them some notoriety in Germany as the use of the word in conjunction with a skull graphic raised associations that the band were quick to refute, but the shirt itself is a great. In stark black and white, the skull and crossbones and gothic lettering should make it a rock cliché and I suppose it is, but as I’m that way inclined and have never been a great fan of t-shirts with large, vulgar designs or tour dates or other clutter, I found the simplicity of this one very appealing and it quickly became a favourite. The arms were swiftly removed, in the prevalent style of the time, and it got some very heavy use for the next couple of years, eventually becoming faded, misshapen and riddled with tiny holes as the result of falling ‘hot rocks’ (an ever present hazard during those Rizla happy days). All of which made love it more, of course.

The grand finale for this t-shirt, before it became totally worn out and unwearable, came during 1988 when one of my first jobs as a professional touring guitar technician was as a roadcrew member for none other than The Leather Nun. This took me on my first tour outside the UK and the Totenkopf Rock ‘n’ Roll t-shirt was in full effect every night, as was the song No Rule which was the band’s traditional encore. It was soon after this tour that the band changed direction, became less abrasive, and moved away from noisy rock ‘n’roll. I lost touch with them and stopped following their career. They apparently made a couple more albums with Kim Fowley then Mick Ronson in the producer’s seat, before Jonas Almquist departed and became a major star on Swedish MTV.

I tried to wear the t-shirt on a couple of other occasions in the early 1990s but its increasing fragility, and my increasing girth, made it impossible. I still couldn’t bring myself to throw it away though and have kept it safe as a reminder of old times and old habits ever since. I was fondly reminded of it recently when viewing a documentary, released last year called Anyone Can Play Guitar, a history of the Oxford music scene. I was delighted to notice, among the archive material in the film, a previously unseen photo of myself and a bandmate during rehearsals. I am, of course, wearing my favourite t-shirt and it looks fresh, and still black, unlike the item I’m left with now. It would seem that although classic t-shirts will never die, they do (literally) fade away.

Adrian Vines
(rehearsal photograph by JohnnyMoto Photography)