Swerve

Hulme life and Geno Washington

An extract from Mark Hoyle's memoir Swerve: Dub Sex & Other Stories. Here we get a glimpse into life in the Hulme crescents and a party attended by soul legend Geno Washington that has since become part of Manchester music folklore.

A new glass collector had started at the Haçienda called Mike Hutton. I’d known him by sight for quite a while, having spotted him at gigs and around Hulme. He lived in the flats on Bonsall Street with his dog, Zero, a beautiful Dalmatian, and like me, had been attending musical events and clubs for years despite being far too young to be allowed in officially. Tony Wilson had given him a note to show to the Russell Club doormen, explaining that Mike, despite his baby face, was old enough to be admitted. Now Mike was working for Tony in his club, alongside me and several of the original Factory crowd.

We all took to Mike, and before long he was part of our lives. The time was right for several artistic worlds to collide, and in Hulme we were given the space and freedom to do pretty well what we wanted. Mike’s flat was a work of art in itself, with banks of television sets tuned to nothingness, illuminating an array of found street objects and garish, naive paintings. He had a taste for the same kind of weirdness as Lee and Karl, and we would lose hours and days, our senses sharpened by fierce uppers and black microdot acid, immersed in The Residents’ Third Reich and Roll album or their ‘Duck Stab’ EP and even more left-field fare.

Mike’s girlfriend, Jackie, shared a flat in William Kent Crescent with a clothes designer and fashion graduate called Catherine. She was from Hazel Grove, near Stockport, and had known some of the more interesting people that had been part of that town’s punk and post-punk scene, like Paul Morley and Joanne Whalley, whose job I had taken over several years earlier at Roxy.

Catherine was small, with striking, cyclamen-dyed hair, and, being skilled in that direction, she used to make her own clothes, which gave her a look all of her own; plain fabrics and pencil skirts of an almost wartime simplicity. She was something of a self-contained unit, like me, although her friendship with her next-door neighbour, Michelle, would see her go out with Michelle’s wider group of friends to Berlin, the club where I used to work. She had even ended up going on a scooter run with them but found the laddishness not to her liking.

I started to visit Catherine as a friend, and, as ever, music was at the heart of everything. We bonded over a shared appreciation of the better guitar-based music around at the time, stuff like Echo & the Bunnymen, The Comsat Angels and The Psychedelic Furs, and she had a good ear for decent US soul and funk, arrived at, like many, by hearing David Bowie’s Young Americans and Station To Station, then working backwards.

Hulme had its own arthouse cinema, The Aaben, something of a trailblazer, and the only place to see films outside the mainstream at this point, and we’d go there to watch classics like The Boys From Brazil and The Tin Drum, getting closer, but all the time keeping our growing relationship under wraps. It wasn’t anybody else’s business, but the amount of time I was spending at Catherine’s flat must have made things obvious to our friends if they had given it any thought.

We saw a lot of Michelle next door. Once again, we had friends in common, in particular Lita Hira from Spurtz and Stockholm Monsters. Her boyfriend, Ian Brown, was part of a scooter-loving crowd who frequented Berlin and other city centre hangouts. We got on well, the two of us being informed and kick-started by punk, and I already knew some of his other friends, (Skinhead) Rob Powell and Ste Cresser.

I kept my Boundary Lane flat on, but spending more time at Catherine’s turned in to moving in there, to all extents and purposes. By now, we had ‘gone public’ and settled into a fairly intense period where it was just the two of us. We’d go out to the local White Horse pub or to clubs in town, but were always together, even in a crowd.

Catherine’s civilising influence was rubbing off on me. With no experience in such matters, I marvelled as she brought her eye for taste to the flat. Jackie had moved into Mike Hutton’s flat by now, and I got involved in re-decorating Catherine’s place with her, picking paint colours and having them mixed in a shop, a totally new experience for me. It was good to be not too crazy for once.

We’d get visits from Dave Fielding and his girlfriend, Julie. He had moved to Cheetham Hill, and although Hulme scared him, he’d brave the concrete to come and see me. It was good to show him that I was living a more stable lifestyle. The Chameleons were taking off in a massive way by now, especially in the US, and Dave was frequently away, but the four of us had some magical days together. We trekked over to Alexandra Park for the Moss Side Carnival to see our friend, Kwasi, who was performing with Sword of Jah Mouth, one of Manchester’s rising reggae bands. They were dark, religious and mournful, and I was reminded of the impact that Misty In Roots had on me the first time I saw them at Deeply Vale. As their set progressed, local youths started to move en masse through the crowd, hitting people and snatching bags. Even the weather became moody as the whole carnival atmosphere evaporated. I felt it myself, but Dave took it to heart, reinforcing his fear of Hulme and Moss Side even further.

Next door to Catherine, plans were underway for Michelle’s 21st birthday party. I helped Ian and Skinhead Rob move some furniture into Catherine’s in the daytime, and afterwards, we flopped down on the settee for a hard-earned rest. I hadn’t known Ian for very long. He worked for the DHSS, and had only just moved, semi-officially into Michelle’s. I think that his crowd saw Haçienda workers as somewhat aloof, but we got on fine, and had some musical taste in common, although I was neither here nor there about Generation X, who Ian absolutely loved.

Once the party was in full flight, Catherine and I were lucky enough to have a place of respite next door, and would take occasional breaks from the action to recharge our batteries, pacing ourselves. It was just as well, as the music was full on from minute one. Northern soul, ska and punk tunes shook the prefab flats, and to be honest, it sounded just as loud in Catherine’s flat.

Much later, after the clubs had shut, the party’s attendance was swelled by well-meaning gatecrashers of every description, and things were in full swing. Ian and Skinhead Rob sauntered over to me.

‘Eh, Mark. Do you know where we can get some draw from?’

It seemed important and, to Ian and Rob, it was. Soul legend Geno Washington, in Manchester to perform, had been dragged down to Hulme post-show by a friend of Ian’s who was part of Geno’s road crew. He wanted to buy some weed.

‘The Front, Ian…’ I replied. I referred to the row of shops in the shadow of the Harp lager brewery on Princess Road, just along from the Nile and Reno clubs.

After asking almost everybody else, a mission was embarked upon, and within the half hour, Mr Washington had what he wanted, and Hulme’s reputation as a den of iniquity remained intact.

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