Page 3 Legends Living on.

Thursday night and I make my way through the trendy surroundings of Shoreditch, over to Cargo for Tangent Books launch of Banksy’s “Home Sweet Home”, the very last place you would expect to find Ray “Roughler” Jones and Ian Bone. The two old boys are sat around a table discussing tales from the Swansea days, Ray seems to be breaking into a sweat, obviously withdrawal symptoms as he’s away from his usual west london haunts in Portobello. Ian surveys the crowd pensively, keeping an eye out for a Daily Mirror journalist, supposedly he has been in email contact and has spun them the lie that he is in fact Banksy. The idea makes me smile. Ian out at night with spray paints and stencils scaling a wall. Genius.

The venue starts packing out with the usual milieu of East London fashionistas and try hards. Grafitti artists are daubing the walls as the DJ plays records. And on the line up tonight, after a 28 year hiatus, Ian and Ray are back together as PAGE 3 to perform “Fuck Off Gordon Brown” and “John Bindon”. After a brief moment of worry when Ray goes missing (he went to the bookies and got lost!) – the two of them are on. The crowd is initially confused, this isn’t the kind of music they expect around here, but after a while the catchy rhythms of PAGE 3 become infectious. Well it’s not too difficult really as Ian tells me he writes all his songs to either “Knees Up Mother Brown” or “My Old Mans A Dustman”. The evening goes well, a packed night for the launch of Tangents new book (Which looks great!), and the video above is our impromptu performance of “John Bindon” featuring Ian and Ray, myself at the back (half cut by this point due to the wristband I was given that entitled me to free pints) next to the wonderful Jane Nicholls and two other women (Their names escape me now) but they are the new recruits to the Page 3 backing group. Also featured is Piers Thompson (One half of the “Portobello Laurel & Hardy” double act with Ray), who shot it by propping the camera up, from the excellent Roughler TV.

The image above are original lyrics from the old PAGE 3 days. For those who haven’t read the book the band were taken to court by The Sun newspaper over copyright infringement and we expected the gig at Cargo to be stormed by a Court injunction at any time. Though thankfully it never materialised. Part of my research has involved getting the original lyrics off Ian for the script and for your pleasure I include a section of “Tory Funerals” in memory of the recently deceased Doc Whelan:

“I couldn’t care less, I couldn’t give a toss,
At the sudden death of a factory boss,
The ruling class are really hated,
All I want is them cremated! Conservative Ministers or Tory MPs,
There’s one sure way for them to please,
They call me a bastard, call me a red,
In return just drop dead!
Tory Funerals, Tory Funerals,
I want more of Tory Funerals, Tory Funerals, Tory Funerals,
I want more of Tory Funerals.”

This image above is again courtesy of Young Chris Lows archives (More stuff to follow!). Original flyers from the Living Legends (The band that PAGE 3 became) gigs which pay a very close resemblance to the original Class War papers – I guess Ian just loves to get a Lucy Parsons quote in where ever possible.

Above is the artwork to the Living Legends single “The Pope Is A Dope/Dum Dum Bullets For A Dumb Dumb Dummy” featuring the controversial image of the Pope in cross hairs.

Ray Jones tells me he is off to Swansea to record some of the old songs and excited over the fact that PAGE 3 are back together. He is already trying to get me to book them for the premiere. Let me get the first draft nailed first. We also plan a trip to Swansea very soon to meet up with some of the key characters from the book.

The rest of my night is a drunken haze over in a pub in Whitechapel with Martin Wright and good friends. I wake up the next morning with flashbacks of me trying to get the other drinkers to sing “My Old Mans A Dustman” even though I couldn’t remember any of the lyrics and memories of Martin singing an old Irish folk song as a duet. The research so far has been going really well. The question is will my liver sustain this abuse?