Days and Days: A Story about Sunderland’s Leatherface and the Ties That Bind – Chris MacDonald
Published by ECW Press
Available Now
‘Documenting is to believe that something should be remembered’ – Chris MacDonald
Days and Days is a pitch-perfect celebration of perhaps the last great traditional sounding punk band. My discovery of its publication triggering a rush of memories, and in an age in what seems like everybody from Slaughter and his Dog has a tome written about them, a surprise that they didn’t get the book they deserved sooner. That the role places have in shaping us, and the peculiar nature of male friendships is examined in as much detail as Leatherface themselves, entirely fitting for the off-kilter nature of the band. A group at least as imposing as original Oi bands like fellow Mackems Red Alert, that attracted skinheads to gigs outside of that circuit, but could feature the wordplay and sensitivity of the best indie poet.
Lyrics so good Days and Days opens every section with a sample which would have been collected to stand alone if they featured in a genre less ignored than the punk scene of the early 90’s. The writer is one Norman Frankie Warsaw Stubbs, a terrace Larkin with zero xenophobia. As both parties succinctly put it, when Chris MacDonald mentions first looking at the cover of Minx and seeing the song title Books he, ‘needed to hear what Frankie Stubbs had to say about books.’
All of which makes it seem less incongruous than it was seeing Leatherface for the first time on a bill with PJ Harvey at the famously compact Hull Adelphi. My fortune or otherwise to be born in the north of England, meaning I was around for their early days but changed shift with MacDonald for the period he picks them up at. Coincidentally first reading about them in a fanzine at the Duchess of York in Leeds, that MacDonald sees Hot Water Music at, and conjures up well as a part of his UK pilgrimage from Canada. Incredulously trying to tell anyone that would listen, that someone reckoned they had heard a band who were like SLF meets Motorhead with a sprinkling of Husker Du, and sending away for their first album at the earliest opportunity.
Amazingly in the days of buying an album because it supposedly sounded like something good, and discovering it didn’t, Cherry Knowle actually did. That it was just about surpassed by follow up Fill Your Boots, a miracle, before the Leatherface masterpiece Mush arrived. From the opening to stream of consciousness, howl for more that is I Want The Moon, where anyone who rhymes contrite with shite, proves themselves better at encapsulating their own yin and yang appeal than Chris and me. The barrage of Not Superstitious and its perfect art in vinyl form, demonstrating why Dave Grohl wanted drummer Lainey’s autograph.
Dead Industrial Atmosphere providing the ideal soundtrack to MacDonald’s road trip around the north of England. Stubbs evoking the decay and disaffection without recourse to the didacticism which blights some punk. Leaving that to me, as the heartbreaking thing is thirty odd years on and it is if anything more pertinent, as the defences of these places are so low, they have been infected by Farage and the far right. Even so, the book drawing parallels between violence in Sunderland and the Troubles in Northern Ireland is a little much.
Despite its melancholy, Springtime is relatively hopeful, its reminiscences perhaps a Transatlantic cousin twice removed of Husker Du’s Celebrated Summer. Elements of the aforementioned Americans sound combining with the words and their sturdy foundations to make Leatherface so special. For me this period all culminated in a triumphant performance to a heaving crowd at Reading Festival in 1992. The tent was so full people having to peer in from some distance away, just to catch glimpses of gangly guitarist Dickie Hammond’s spikey head. Punk crashing the home of alt-rock, with bodies being pulled out over the top of the stage barriers, only to run around and do it all over again.
From here it wasn’t exactly downhill, with a split in ‘93 and reformation in ’99 which still saw them going on to release albums that most bands would have killed for. Days and Days covering what I would consider their pomp, with interviews and structuring the book with an effective time travel style narrative. But it is during MacDonald’s journey with his companion Jason and the turn of the century incarnation of the band when it is at its best. I imagine anyone reading this can relate to his experiences on trains and sleeping on station floors in the pursuit of touring bands, but perhaps less so, pitching your tent on a predictably windblown Arthur’s Seat in Edinburgh.
All throwing a light on young men’s relationships which are usually part sharing, part point scoring in a not necessarily sympathetic split. As is often unfortunately the case, it being the time when things unwind and the boozing isn’t quite as much fun anymore, that prove the most revealing. Some of the funniest, and indeed finest writing, coming when he MacDonald gets angry. In one instance, as he attempts to get a fiercely hungover Jason out of their tent and onto a bus to the airport.
With Leatherface and their sound tech one anecdote, an example of male bonding that entailed breaking each other’s noses, having a particular air of tragic machismo to it. For my part, I cannot deny the horrible subtext of one-upmanship that accompanies my recollections of the band’s early years. This is despite Chris and his friend travelling from Toronto to experience Leatherface rehearse, while I walked down the road to see them.
On a night last week, back in the Adelphi, I bumped into someone I hadn’t seen in a while but attended several Leatherface gigs with. And at the risk of making us both look like bad people, these hopeless obsessives didn’t ask how each other was doing or enquire after our respective families. Oh no, it was straight in to check that each other had got a copy of Days and Days, which coincidently had arrived with both of us that day. When we see each other again, we’ll probably dispute the best bits, before we agree it’s a book that most importantly, does this complex and brilliant band justice.
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Available from ECW Press at https://ecwpress.com/search?q=leatherface and other good retailers
Leatherface’s music can be bought from Little Rocket Records at https://littlerockerecords.bandcamp.com/artists records.co.uk
All words by Steve John – Author profile here. You can also find Steve online at his website & Facebook
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