Garbage Days Revisited #36 - The Vibrators - "Guilty" (1983)

 

"The enemy is waiting on the radar and everybody’s changing sides…" - The Vibrators - Fighter Pilot

Similar to the UK Subs last week, the Vibrators are one of those bands who will forever be associated with the punk movement - they were there at the beginning, played the Roxy and were one of the first bands to get signed when the movement broke overground. But that's far from the full story with them. Like Charlie Harper, their frontman Knox (Ian Carnochan to his friends and family) was already in his thirties when punk hit and had been doing the rounds in other musical outfits from glam rockers Despair through to folk and Irish bands for well over a decade. The group formed in late 1975 initially finding a home on the pub rock scene where they gigged frequently with another group who would start out there but quickly find a better fitting home with punk, the Stranglers.

The group were viewed with some suspicion by the Pistols/Clash crowd due to their older years and non-punk past (not to mention the fact that they made the very un-punk move of putting a ballad out as a single in Baby Baby) but, similar to the Boys and Generation X, their more tuneful take on punk saw them deliver two brilliant albums. Debut Pure Mania is a brilliantly schizophrenic beast - the group actually had three frontmen and songwriters in Knox, guitarist John Ellis and bassist Pat Collier all of whom had very distinct songwriting styles which meant that their albums would frequently take you off on tangents you maybe weren't expecting. For example, on their debut Pure Mania, you get Knox's love of the Velvet Underground coming to the fore on the likes of Whips And Furs and I Need A Slave while Collier's songs like Petrol and Yeah Yeah Yeah are pure souped up '50s rock 'n' roll given a '77 nip and tuck and Ellis' more cerebral Stiff Little Fingers and Keep It Clean almost pre-date post-punk by a good year or so.

Although Collier would be gone by the time of 1978's V2 (replaced by future Adam & The Ants/Roxy Music man Gary Tibbs), it's actually to my ears an even stronger effort with the band properly locked in and kicking loose right from the awesome divebombing riff of opener Pure Mania. The frenetic Automatic Lover would give the band their one and only Top 40 hit while the tight-as-you-like Public Enemy No 1, Destroy and Sulphate showed the band at full throttle with Ellis' sinister Flying Duck Theory and the ominous closer Troops of Tomorrow (later covered by the Exploited) showing off the group's more nuanced side.

Unfortunately despite being a decent seller, the band was starting to fracture at this point with Ellis leaving soon after the album's release to be replaced by Dave Birch. Knox would follow him out of the door to pursue a solo career (and do some live guitar work for none other than Alex Chilton) after the non-album single Judy Says (Knock You In The Head), a minor chart hit, followed by Tibbs when he got the call from Bryan Ferry. Surprisingly the group would stagger on with drummer Eddie (Knox's cousin) putting a new line-up together featuring guitarist Greg Van Cook (formerly of Wayne County & The Electric Chairs), ex-Eater bassist Ian Woodcock and singer Kip who would go on to front mod revivalists the Chords in their dying days. This line-up put out two singles in 1980, an underwhelming cover of the Spencer Davis Group's Gimme Some Lovin' and the actually-pretty good Disco In Moscow but things would soon fall apart with Eddie going on to join pub rock revivalists the Inmates.

1982 however would bring the news that the group had reunited with their original line-up and signed to Anagram records, Cherry Red's new punk specialist label. Weirdly their first single was a re-recording of Baby Baby which didn't really add much to the original although the pounding B-side Dragnet showed that they definitely still had the tunes in them. As was evidenced when the group's official comeback album Guilty surfaced early the following year.

Similar to the group's Pure Mania debut, it's the sheer variety of stuff on offer here that makes Guilty a bit of a lost classic in this writer's opinion. It's clear as well comparing the two though that Knox, Ellis and Collier have all picked up a few new tricks in the intervening half a decade with Knox's woozy Sleeping, the panicky Fighter Pilot and the chaotic closer Claws In My Brain (which he'd actually been playing as far back as his days in Despair a decade earlier) showing a bit more depth to his songwriting. Ellis chips in with the witty Parties and Do A Runner as well as the ominous The Day They Caught The Killer (written about the scandal involving Sonia Sutcliffe, the wife of the Yorkshire Ripper, selling her story to the Sun) and while Collier's Rocket To The Moon is the traditional fired up rock 'n' roll you'd expect from him, the excellent title track which he sings on is a brilliantly unhinged list of names screamed into the mic ("Heather Hopper! Diana Dors! Elvis Presley! Harrison Ford!") and makes for a fun listen.

The group's good run of form would continue on 1984's Alaska 127 (named after Collier's recording studio in Waterloo where he was already getting a reputation as a good producer) which again saw Knox's ear for a tune on the likes of Amphetamine Blue (which had already been released as a single by his other group the Fallen Angels featuring the off-duty Hanoi Rocks trio of Nasty Suicide, Sami Yaffa and Razzle - Knox was also playing guitar for Charlie Harper's punk supergroup the Urban Dogs featuring Subs bassist Alvin Gibbs and Hanoi guitarist Andy McCoy at this point), Baby Blue Eyes and Flying Home. Elsewhere, Ellis' sarcastic 3D Jesus and sinister Somnambulist brought the more complex stuff and MX America and Jesus Always Lets You Down saw Knox amping up the venom in his lyrics. Another really good effort which I strongly recommend.

Unfortunately, the group would only manage one more album with its classic line-up in the form of 1986's Fifth Amendment which was a disappointment, lacking the tunes of its predecessors with the exception of a rare vocal performance from Eddie on the lurching Frankenstein Stomp. Soon afterwards, Collier would move into production full time and Ellis would leave to join the '90s Stranglers line-up, making his debut with the band touring the 10 album. Knox and Eddie would continue the band but although their subsequent albums were still decent enough they started to become a bit more predictable and patchy quality-wise with only one active songwriter instead of three. Even so, most of the band's '90s stuff has a few decent tunes worth checking out - for a few highlights, try the dark Every Day I Die A Little off 1988's Recharged, the nervy Don'tcha Lean On Me and the louche R&B of Speedtrap from 1989's Meltdown. 1990's Vicious Circle has the fired-up No Getting Over You and the sicko country and western of Juice On from 1997's French Lessons With Correction is also well worth a spin.

Eddie still leads a touring line-up of the Vibrators nowadays although Knox has retired from active touring to concentrate on running his Rock 'n' Roll Rescue shop in Camden (well worth a visit if you're in the area). The pair did however reunite with Ellis, Collier and Tibbs for a couple of albums in recent years in 2016's Past, Present And Into The Future and 2020's Mars Casino (review here) which saw them teaming up with Chris Spedding whose backing band the group started out as some 45 years ago. 2013's On The Guest List is well worth a look as well, featuring guest spots by everyone from Hugh Cornwell through Brian James to the Supersuckers. Similar to Charlie Harper, Knox is definitely a guy who deserves recognition for his services through the years to punk rock (having interviewed the guy for Bubblegum Slut fanzine many moons ago I can also confirm he’s a thoroughly lovely bloke as well) and, much like the UK Subs, the group may have had their origins in punk but they should be commended for being able to vary things up and think outside the box to keep their material a lot more interesting than the three chord thrash merchants who ultimately shunted the movement into a dead end by the mid-'80s. Certainly, Pure Mania, V2, Guilty and Alaska 127 are all well deserving of your attention - proper glammed up punk just the way it should be.