“All of us had grown up being equally into punk rock and discovering 50s and 60s stuff, and hearing the same kind of wildness in all of these things.
“We loved the Meteors at the very beginning, in their first incarnation,” says Alec Palao of the Sting-Rays, one of the groups who subsumed all those influences under the banner of “trash”. Their singer/guitarist, P Paul Fenech, was a rock’n’roller, their bassist, Nigel Lewis, loved garage rock, and Robertson had been a punk. You just had to look for it.’” If the word itself came from Johnny Cash describing a “Psycho-Billy Cadillac” in One Piece at a Time, the Cramps provided a convenient definition in the song Garbageman: “One half hillbilly and one half punk.” I think the Cramps themselves said: ‘We didn’t invent anything, it was already there. “I suppose the first record is Love Me by the Phantom. “I think it existed before the Meteors,” says that band’s original drummer, Mark Robertson. The founding texts of this tidal wave of trash were records by the Cramps, and before them 60s garage bands such as the Sonics, or rockabilly wild men such as Hasil Adkins and the Phantom. The Milkshakes, fronted by Billy Childish, were in thrall to the sound of Hamburg-era Beatles the Sting-Rays played a version of garage rock laced with psychedelia Restless were pure rockabilly King Kurt played a Bo Diddley-esque R&B. The Meteors mixed up their rockabilly rave-ups with covers of the Rolling Stones and the Electric Prunes.
Photograph: Peter Noble/Redfernsīut in those early days, psychobilly was still unformed, part of a wider wave of bands in thrall to the whole span of primitive rock’n’roll. It should be fast and loud, exciting and fun.”
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Overdriven guitars and full rock drum kits, big quiffs, weird and wild clothing, makeup and props – blood and skeletons welcome. “My take on it would be a much more aggressive, loud approach to rockabilly that must include a double bass, modern lyrics – no cars, pinups or bubble gum – lots of graveyards, vampires, zombies, horror flick and death-influenced lyrics,” says Mark Harman of Restless, who came through the psychobilly scene in the early 80s. In time, psychobilly – a turbocharged twist on rockabilly, the country-enhanced variant on R&B that prefigured the classic rock’n’roll of the late 50s – would become codified. And as their frontman would later claim, “Only the Meteors are pure psychobilly.” “You’ve got your good things, and I’ve got mine.” A few months later, that chorus opened, and gave its name to, the first LP by the Meteors. “In heaven, everything is fine,” they sang. Waiting for them to come on, those fans launched into the song that served as their heroes’ unofficial theme, from David Lynch’s Eraserhead. That night, at the Marquee club in Soho, a few hundred kids gathered to watch a band who were almost singlehandedly kickstarting a new wave of alternative music. I f you wanted to date the moment one of the biggest youth subcultures of 80s Britain arrived, you could pick 40 years ago this month, on 4 July 1981.
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