Basically, Johnny Moped

And with us tonight are Johnny Moped.

- Johnny. - Yeah.

Where does the band come from?

- Uh, hell. - Hell?

Well, we come from Croydon, it's about ten miles south of London.

What sort of gigs have you been doing in London and around London?

- Well, we started at the Roxy. - Yeah.

- The Roxy. - Yeah.

There is no one faking it less than Johnny Moped,

he was tailor made for punk rock.

He was a legend back then.

The Captain and everyone just loved him and talked about him a lot.

The worse you were, the better people liked you in 1976,

isn't that great?

It was tremendous fun,

having battled for so many years to just get one gig,

suddenly two, three gigs in a week.

It was a spectacle to behold,

you never knew what was gonna happen next.

The Mopeds and The Damned and the Pistols and that

were going up on stage singing stuff that related to normal people.

And um… That's why everything changed.

I'm gonna blow your lips, sweetie, hahahaha!

Ow, yeah, baby, I really go for you a whole bunch!

Croydon is essentially a very dull place.

It's full of people shopping and lots of office blocks.

I never considered that there was anywhere else to be, really.

I didn't know any different, it was just Croydon.

But as we got older, I think we sort of collectively realised

that Croydon is the butt of the joke,

and although we were very Croydon-centric,

we would sort of half support it but half also take the piss.

And that was very much the ethos of how the band grew up,

in what I now know is this goddamn awful place to live,

and if I ever go back there, please kill me.

The band that we had in the early days,

three of us were from the same class at Selhurst Grammar School.

I sat next to Phil and in front of me was Fred

and in the next class was Xerxes.

John was just John until I looked in one of our history books

and there was a story of King Xerxes of Persia.

He seemed to think that John possibly wasn't rock and roll enough.

I think because it was the name of someone

who was quite powerful and important, and John thought he was important.

Xerxes was always very cynical and he still is very cynical.

Fred was always really cool.

At the age of 13, Fred was quite remarkable,

he could grow sideburns quite successfully.

He was probably the coolest guy in school.

Why did we all get together?

I don't know.

I was only asked in the band because I had a drum kit.

My mum bought me a drum kit, I didn't want to play the bloody drums,

but it was an opportunity to be in a band, playing drums.

Captain went to a different school, to Stanley Tech.

Ray, my brother, he became a close friend to all of us

through music, really.

We used to watch Top of the Pops religiously.

We just saw The Sweet and Slade and The Glitter Band,

and we just wanted to be up there doing that stuff.

It's the age old story, I'm sure it still goes on.

Um, the...

Through friends and school and things like that,

a group of people get together that want to make music.

If we had spent half the time…

Um…

We'd spent discussing what the band should be called

that we had on actually playing it, that may have brought things further.

The band was the Black Witch Climax Blues band,

but when Johnny joined, we thought we'd better change the name,

and Genetic Breakdown seemed a good name.

I am the singer of the group Genetic Breakdown,

the true singer.

No, believe me, I'm not joking, this is true.

I met Johnny at a party in South Norwood.

One of my school chums was having a party

and he lived about four or five doors down the road from him.

And you know the expression "life and soul," and he certainly was.

He was dancing and singing, and I just thought,

"This guy is just like a bundle of frenetic energy,

he's a megastar waiting to happen."

I think Paul had this aspiration to be a biker

and he used to hang around with people who thought they were bikers,

maybe they were bikers, I don't know.

One of them persuaded him one day to go down the tattoo shop

and get "Hells Angels Croydon" tattooed on his arm,

which he did.

He was a biker, he was a wannabe Hells Angel.

He wanted to be Johnny Harley or Eddy Vincent, or something like that,

but…

He ended up with Johnny Moped.

He may have dreamed of being James Dean,

but at the end of the day he was just Paul Halford,

and Moped was as good as he was going to get.

I think he was quite pissed off. He was…

"Guys, do you think it is a good idea then, this Johnny Moped thing?

Don't you think it sounds a bit weedy?"

"No, no, Johnny, really, it's a happening name.

Don't worry, everything is fine!"

Johnny became the identifiable face of Johnny Moped

and Johnny Moped was Johnny Moped.

Ray's Dad very kindly let us use the place to rehearse

and it would normally be Phil's bedroom, which was downstairs.

They weren't actually really rehearsals, they were an event.

You didn't want to just keep playing the same old crap over and over again,

you would just make it up as you go along, and that's what we did,

we'd just make things up as we go along, completely fearless.

He was very good at improvising, that was the whole ethos of the band,

that we would improvise.

And he would make words up and Xerxes would make words up,

we would make the music up,

and every week we would do something different.

Okay!

Yeah!

We just aspired to play a gig,

just a gig in front of an audience would just suit us fine.

There was this natural amphitheatre called Beaulieu Heights,

up near where the Crystal Palace TV aerial is.

And they had a local festival there, in this park.

What did we do?

Most bands would sit down, they'd work out a set list,

they'd have some kind of rehearsal.

Nah.

How did we start it?

Well, we started it by just following on

from the song that the DJ had been playing,

and just off it went.

And where was the frontman? Where was the singer?

The mic was standing there, on the grass,

in front of this bunch of local people waiting to be entertained.

And they soon found out where he was,

because they heard the sound of this Moped careering down the hill,

actually through the audience,

and he was a bit out of control because it was such a hill,

that he was careering through these people,

they were throwing themselves out of the way,

kids getting out of the way of Johnny.

The picnics, he was riding through on his moped.

And it kind of ground to a halt in front of the microphone

and everyone was like looking aghast, with disgust,

"Who is this complete pillock?"

And he said, "Hi, baby, my name's Johnny Moped,

I've just flown in from LA, come on, let's take it away, one, two…"

What? I don't remember that.

I don't remember that at all.

That is…

No.

No, I didn't turn up at Beaulieu Heights

because I was on holiday, but I forgot to inform the rest of the band.

The funny thing is, when you start a band, you have to interact, I suppose,

with all the other bands in your local area.

And, um…

We were universally despised

by everyone else who played a musical instrument in Croydon.

There was a group.

I suppose, theoretically, they were our rivals in Croydon,

called Dominus Contraband.

I'm sorry, I should say Dominus Contraband…

If you couldn't play your instruments you were never gonna get anywhere

and they could play them, because they could play

King Crimson's, "21st Century Schizoid Man."

I remember the guitarist saying, "They can't play their instruments."

And of course, that became a great source of pride for us all.

You know, we can't play our instruments.

Give me an M.

Give me an O.

Give me a P.

Give me an E.

Give me a D.

What's that spell?

What's that spell? What's that spell?

Ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce to you, Johnny Moped!

We couldn't get a gig anywhere

so we put our own gig on in the back garden.

And we did put posters all around Croydon advertising it,

"36A Broadgreen Avenue, Saturday Afternoon."

I mean, we were so lousy that, you know,

where could you play but the back garden, really?

There were a couple of kids walking past

and we paid them six pence to come and stand at the back.

Looked like there was an audience.

And they kept going, "Can we go now?"

And the police came around,

"Okay, The Beatles over there, turn it down."

I think Johnny piped up,

"We're not The Beatles, we're loads better than that!"

I think the neighbours were complaining

that it was so boring rather than loud.