From the unwritten memoirs of Euston Arch - York punk band manager and venue promoter

Hugh Bernays, promoting and managing punk bands as Euston Arch 1978 - 1981

They say,

When faced with the choice of printing the truth or printing the legend – print the legend.

But sometimes the truth will do:

From the unwritten memoirs of Euston Arch - York punk band manager and venue promoter. Bands: Cyanide, The Jermz and The Straits. Venues: The Munster Bar and The Revolution Club. 1977 - 1980

It was 1977. People would call me the Malcolm Mclaren of York. As a 27 yr. old, one of the original hippies me and others of managing age were responding so gratefully to our younger brothers and sisters playing the stuff we’d always wanted to hear but didn’t because the managers, when we were young, were all squares.   I was an early adopter. A poet who wrote what turned out, on reading back, to be wonderfully mad things trying to describe astonishingly exciting stuff going on when and wherever it was. And went in search of it. Cyanide, York’s first punk band, playing at the Grob and Ducat was one such thing. I sat at the back and reached, with good reason, for my hyperboles.


Cyanide's Jock and Bob - photos by Nev Astley

Naturally I started asking landlords to put them on so I could get more practise using this saturated language, required, as it was, to get across the mayhem they released and then held for their own entertainment in one room. Bliss was it then to pogo but to be in a band was very heaven.

You could say people were intoxicated all right. And the sound was stronger than the beer.

Cyanide, aware that I was trying to get them gigs and, never mind for what reasons, asked me to manage them. This was not an outcome that had ever been in my mind but, as a writer, it is difficult not to simply take the course that makes the better reading. And I said I’d give it a go.

So, working at that time as a typist and then, on shifts, as a bag-filler and weight humper at the local sugar factory to finance this precious bit of York's punk ambitions, I became their manager – chipping in for room hire, PA, transport, publicity, demo singles and whatever it took. For everyone involved, it was a roller coaster ride.

So apart from bookings, the most legendary of which was supporting Wayne County and The Electric Chairs and perhaps the stint at the Roxy in Covent Garden, I arranged the making of their first single: ‘No Progress’ and ‘Mac The Flash’. I have not forgotten that night: them coming back from the studio with it and us going up to the University to get it an instant review.


                                                                      Photo: Nev Astley

We used to say that Elvis Presley was America's Bob de Vries, and certainly Bob was a vocational performer with an unlimited commitment to holding your attention but there was also Jock Marston on bass - the extraordinary foil to Bob’s domineering stage presence with his own answering vocabulary of vicious stop-frame moves and terrifying facial expressions all relayed by the unstoppable punch of their beat.

I lost Cyanide, to their being offered a tour by a pair of would be managers, plus the promise of a deal with Pye which would involve Cyanide, pre-album, going out on tour. This was going to have to be without Jock who was always going to want to stay in York with his good job, great girlfriend and quite able to form a new band and carry on enjoying himself as was. Which he did and Sema 4 was the result.

Cyanide Pye Poster

It wasn't physically possible to take the band Cyanide on the road without Jock. He was too much part of the act. The ridiculous energy of him. Now, I think I became too easily resigned to the split. But it’s hard to stand up for ‘no fun’ as against mayhem on the road supporting The Jam. I should have been brave and more imaginative. I should have come up with a vision to rival signing to Pye and a tour and with this I could have fought for a compromise. It could have been done. And if I knew then what I know now, I would have definitely given it a go.

I moved, instead, on to the most prominent of York's 2nd generation punks, The Jermz. In partnership with local record shop, Feelgood Discount Records I did their first single with them: 'Me and My Baby' and 'Power Cut on One Way Records. Great picture cover and now upwards of £150 on Discogs. Of all the music I had a hand in, this record by the Jermz is the one that came out best – the last bars of Power Cut still volunteer themselves unbidden in my ears as I go about the business of being 73. Bliss.

Jermz 'Power Cut' single - artwork by Rene Eyre

When they broke up the drummer went to Delta 5 and the rest dispersed, I don’t know where. Bands collapsed and reformed like Rubic cubes in those days. After the Ziggy/Elvis look-alike, lesbian band, The Straits, who I got a support with Siouxie and the Banshees, left me because we weren’t earning enough to make me worth-while, I found myself most constantly in demand as a Venue Promoter. Very nice work at that time if you had an ear to the ground.

We didn’t listen to the radio or have a telly. I was quite happy with my records and there was quite enough going on in the town. What I was doing was very reliant on word of mouth and I was lucky enough to have the expertise of a very independent thinking, early school-leaver from Batley, Elaine Asquith. In addition, because we were listed in the NME we had the singles and tapes sent to the venues themselves by bands looking for a gig.

I had moved on from the strictly boutique stage of the Munster Bar Cellar - absolutely the most authentic, punk connoisseurs’ location in the whole city - the roar coming up the stairs and out on to the wet streets in January was the sound of a molten culture erupting from the very throat of its volcano. Everything that happened there seemed what we had been put on the planet to do. Sema 4, The Blades and The Mekons. Scenes like that can be equalled but it doesn’t get better.

It was when I had moved to the slightly bigger, night club-licenced ambience of the Revolution Club in Lady Peckett's Yard, that amongst the publicity sent to the club by bands in search of a gig that we got was the quite extraordinarily generous package from Joy Division. It contained original photographs a whole lot of badges in minimal print style and in pride of place, the Ideal for Living ep on the anonymous label. This was around October 1978

It posed a problem for myself and ‘The Lass from Batley’, as she was known. We loved the booty but the imagery, not to say the sound was clearly referencing Nazi Germany.

Joy Division's promo pack: Live photos from the Factory / Russell Club 1978 ...



           An Ideal For Living 12"   Gareth Davy AIFL photo session pic Liverpool December '77

Chapter II

Elaine rang the number that had come with this material and asked if they were Nazis. They said they weren't, so we booked them. But with their short, back and sides and so neat, compared to punks they still did look like Brown Shirts and then they played with the sinister thud of a Nuremberg Rally. We remained suspicious as we fell ever more deeply in love with the sound they had sent us. It did feel dangerously cordite and corrosion. Its doomy tread. Its harangue, its internal conflict. Its beauty with a sense of ecstasy. That later but not yet, was to be followed by the surrender and resignation of love torn apart.

I have been playing it more frequently lately, enjoying it for itself - especially Warsaw - at an unsociable volume. One where you can hear all the components of its clamour. Now knowing their later work, I love to listen out for that, too, crying in the heart of the furnace of that first EP

I am aware that through Martin Hannet’s production we would come to know Ian Curtis as a nervy, neurotic, consumptive introvert who could speak with voice of God – that unmistakeable tone of loneliness and power. But back then, at the start, we were swept up by his passion and obedient solely to this glorious punk thunder of this their beginnings that is An Ideal for Living.

Come the cold December night, the day they came to play, I saw them first when they were sound-testing the equipment their gigging partner, Cabaret Voltaire, was providing for the gig. But it is the lot of the small promoter that a personally vigilant presence on the door is required. This is the terrible price of money. One has Joy Division captive in the bowels of the club and one has to be on the door waiting for people who don't come. I was there for most of the night.

I saw a bit of cabaret Voltaire and only caught one fleeting glance of Curtis and Hook & Co. in full flight. But they are still there, I assure you. Not a huge lot of people were in that night but lucky for them they were and, it must be said, some had paid their dues and, with the benefit of John Peel, knew very well what they had come to see.

There's a lot of disappointment in this business - not that night. We were very proud to have such utter class at our tiny club.

We settled up first with Cabaret Voltaire. We paid them for the hire of their PA and tried to split the rest of the money between the two bands equally but they weren't interested. They wanted £40 for playing as well and were adamant. So, we paid it. I think it was Peter Hook who came to see us for Joy Division's money. The first thing I said was that I'll have to go and get some from the cash-point and if he'd tell me how much I'd be off. The Lass from Batley was there holding what we had left. Hook asked 'well how much have you got there?' and she said £11. And he said 'Give it here. That'll be all right' and the deal was done. Never in my time as a punk promoter did I expect or ever find this sort of charitable understanding among visiting bands.

Punks could be very loyal, very supportive of each other. But among bands intent on growing in popularity money is what you need to water the plant with. Where, too, the respect you command is, in the circles that matter, measured out in money. I had formerly only ever found such a sense of its irrelevance among the humblest of 14-year-olds rehearsing in the family garage.

In the months that followed, as we all saw the funereal splendour of Joy Division’s music blossoming like a melancholy stain across the fabric of our culture, I had to think that their forgiving attitude must come from the certain knowledge that they were already the major power that they subsequently proved to be and there was no need to sweat the small stuff. They had the slack. Something had happened that had changed the way they thought. Their music had become timeless.

That the people who came to The Revolution that December night were able to hear them at their beginnings, was on its own a miracle enough and one which only looks more astonishing as time has passed.




Hugh Bernays, promoting and managing punk bands as Euston Arch 1978 - 1981

They say, When faced with the choice of printing the truth or printing the legend – print the legend. But sometimes the truth will do: From the unwritten memoirs of Euston Arch - York punk band manager and venue promoter. Bands: Cyanide, The Jermz and The Straits. Venues: The Munster Bar and The Revolution Club. 1977 - 1980 It was 1977. People would call me the Malcolm Mclaren of York. As a 27 yr. old, one of the original hippies me and others of managing age were responding so gratefully to our younger brothers and sisters playing the stuff we’d always wanted to hear but didn’t because the managers, when we were young, were all squares. I was an early adopter. A poet who wrote what turned out, on reading back, to be wonderfully mad things trying to describe astonishingly exciting stuff going on when and wherever it was. And went in search of it. Cyanide, York’s first punk band, playing at the Grob and Ducat was one such thing. I sat at the back and reached, with good reason, for my hyperboles. Cyanide's Jock and Bob - photos by Nev Astley Naturally I started asking landlords to put them on so I could get more practise using this saturated language, required, as it was, to get across the mayhem they released and then held for their own entertainment in one room. Bliss was it then to pogo but to be in a band was very heaven. You could say people were intoxicated all right. And the sound was stronger than the beer. Cyanide, aware that I was trying to get them gigs and, never mind for what reasons, asked me to manage them. This was not an outcome that had ever been in my mind but, as a writer, it is difficult not to simply take the course that makes the better reading. And I said I’d give it a go. So, working at that time as a typist and then, on shifts, as a bag-filler and weight humper at the local sugar factory to finance this precious bit of York's punk ambitions, I became their manager – chipping in for room hire, PA, transport, publicity, demo singles and whatever it took. For everyone involved, it was a roller coaster ride. So apart from bookings, the most legendary of which was supporting Wayne County and The Electric Chairs and perhaps the stint at the Roxy in Covent Garden, I arranged the making of their first single: ‘No Progress’ and ‘Mac The Flash’. I have not forgotten that night: them coming back from the studio with it and us going up to the University to get it an instant review. Photo: Nev Astley We used to say that Elvis Presley was America's Bob de Vries, and certainly Bob was a vocational performer with an unlimited commitment to holding your attention but there was also Jock Marston on bass - the extraordinary foil to Bob’s domineering stage presence with his own answering vocabulary of vicious stop-frame moves and terrifying facial expressions all relayed by the unstoppable punch of their beat. I lost Cyanide, to their being offered a tour by a pair of would be managers, plus the promise of a deal with Pye which would involve Cyanide, pre-album, going out on tour. This was going to have to be without Jock who was always going to want to stay in York with his good job, great girlfriend and quite able to form a new band and carry on enjoying himself as was. Which he did and Sema 4 was the result. Cyanide Pye Poster It wasn't physically possible to take the band Cyanide on the road without Jock. He was too much part of the act. The ridiculous energy of him. Now, I think I became too easily resigned to the split. But it’s hard to stand up for ‘no fun’ as against mayhem on the road supporting The Jam. I should have been brave and more imaginative. I should have come up with a vision to rival signing to Pye and a tour and with this I could have fought for a compromise. It could have been done. And if I knew then what I know now, I would have definitely given it a go. I moved, instead, on to the most prominent of York's 2nd generation punks, The Jermz. In partnership with local record shop, Feelgood Discount Records I did their first single with them: 'Me and My Baby' and 'Power Cut on One Way Records. Great picture cover and now upwards of £150 on Discogs. Of all the music I had a hand in, this record by the Jermz is the one that came out best – the last bars of Power Cut still volunteer themselves unbidden in my ears as I go about the business of being 73. Bliss. Jermz 'Power Cut' single - artwork by Rene Eyre When they broke up the drummer went to Delta 5 and the rest dispersed, I don’t know where. Bands collapsed and reformed like Rubic cubes in those days. After the Ziggy/Elvis look-alike, lesbian band, The Straits, who I got a support with Siouxie and the Banshees, left me because we weren’t earning enough to make me worth-while, I found myself most constantly in demand as a Venue Promoter. Very nice work at that time if you had an ear to the ground. We didn’t listen to the radio or have a telly. I was quite happy with my records and there was quite enough going on in the town. What I was doing was very reliant on word of mouth and I was lucky enough to have the expertise of a very independent thinking, early school-leaver from Batley, Elaine Asquith. In addition, because we were listed in the NME we had the singles and tapes sent to the venues themselves by bands looking for a gig. I had moved on from the strictly boutique stage of the Munster Bar Cellar - absolutely the most authentic, punk connoisseurs’ location in the whole city - the roar coming up the stairs and out on to the wet streets in January was the sound of a molten culture erupting from the very throat of its volcano. Everything that happened there seemed what we had been put on the planet to do. Sema 4, The Blades and The Mekons. Scenes like that can be equalled but it doesn’t get better. It was when I had moved to the slightly bigger, night club-licenced ambience of the Revolution Club in Lady Peckett's Yard, that amongst the publicity sent to the club by bands in search of a gig that we got was the quite extraordinarily generous package from Joy Division. It contained original photographs a whole lot of badges in minimal print style and in pride of place, the Ideal for Living ep on the anonymous label. This was around October 1978 It posed a problem for myself and ‘The Lass from Batley’, as she was known. We loved the booty but the imagery, not to say the sound was clearly referencing Nazi Germany. Joy Division's promo pack: Live photos from the Factory / Russell Club 1978 ... An Ideal For Living 12" Gareth Davy AIFL photo session pic Liverpool December '77 Chapter II Elaine rang the number that had come with this material and asked if they were Nazis. They said they weren't, so we booked them. But with their short, back and sides and so neat, compared to punks they still did look like Brown Shirts and then they played with the sinister thud of a Nuremberg Rally. We remained suspicious as we fell ever more deeply in love with the sound they had sent us. It did feel dangerously cordite and corrosion. Its doomy tread. Its harangue, its internal conflict. Its beauty with a sense of ecstasy. That later but not yet, was to be followed by the surrender and resignation of love torn apart. I have been playing it more frequently lately, enjoying it for itself - especially Warsaw - at an unsociable volume. One where you can hear all the components of its clamour. Now knowing their later work, I love to listen out for that, too, crying in the heart of the furnace of that first EP I am aware that through Martin Hannet’s production we would come to know Ian Curtis as a nervy, neurotic, consumptive introvert who could speak with voice of God – that unmistakeable tone of loneliness and power. But back then, at the start, we were swept up by his passion and obedient solely to this glorious punk thunder of this their beginnings that is An Ideal for Living. Come the cold December night, the day they came to play, I saw them first when they were sound-testing the equipment their gigging partner, Cabaret Voltaire, was providing for the gig. But it is the lot of the small promoter that a personally vigilant presence on the door is required. This is the terrible price of money. One has Joy Division captive in the bowels of the club and one has to be on the door waiting for people who don't come. I was there for most of the night. I saw a bit of cabaret Voltaire and only caught one fleeting glance of Curtis and Hook & Co. in full flight. But they are still there, I assure you. Not a huge lot of people were in that night but lucky for them they were and, it must be said, some had paid their dues and, with the benefit of John Peel, knew very well what they had come to see. There's a lot of disappointment in this business - not that night. We were very proud to have such utter class at our tiny club. We settled up first with Cabaret Voltaire. We paid them for the hire of their PA and tried to split the rest of the money between the two bands equally but they weren't interested. They wanted £40 for playing as well and were adamant. So, we paid it. I think it was Peter Hook who came to see us for Joy Division's money. The first thing I said was that I'll have to go and get some from the cash-point and if he'd tell me how much I'd be off. The Lass from Batley was there holding what we had left. Hook asked 'well how much have you got there?' and she said £11. And he said 'Give it here. That'll be all right' and the deal was done. Never in my time as a punk promoter did I expect or ever find this sort of charitable understanding among visiting bands. Punks could be very loyal, very supportive of each other. But among bands intent on growing in popularity money is what you need to water the plant with. Where, too, the respect you command is, in the circles that matter, measured out in money. I had formerly only ever found such a sense of its irrelevance among the humblest of 14-year-olds rehearsing in the family garage. In the months that followed, as we all saw the funereal splendour of Joy Division’s music blossoming like a melancholy stain across the fabric of our culture, I had to think that their forgiving attitude must come from the certain knowledge that they were already the major power that they subsequently proved to be and there was no need to sweat the small stuff. They had the slack. Something had happened that had changed the way they thought. Their music had become timeless. That the people who came to The Revolution that December night were able to hear them at their beginnings, was on its own a miracle enough and one which only looks more astonishing as time has passed.