Monocled Alchemist

Fighting talk from WATTIE of the EXPLOITED, as reported by SANDY ROBERTSON

Article published in Sounds, 10th July, 1982

The Exploited | “We’re Pleased With The New Album . . . “ | “BAMBI!! BAMBI!” Wattie Buchan is calling his pet: the eight-foot German Shepherd puts me down, leaving only teeth indentations and streaks of white saliva the size of slug-trails as its calling-card.

The dog and the antique army banner on the wall are the only things which one might cringe at as being suitable fodder for the gutter press to misinterpret as links between Wattie’s punk music and the potential for right wing violence therein, but when in need of more the guys from the street of shame can always simply bend, fold, spindle and mutilate Wattie’s words too.

The dog is gentle as a lamb and the flag is memorabilia, a gift, the sort of thing harmless old men in Hampshire collect all the time to nobody’s interest at all. Appearances can be deceptive; deception can be Exploited.

Wattie and girlfriend Carol live in punky bliss in what looks from the outside like a New York ghetto, but inside the Edinburgh flat all is comfy and plush in a modest sort of way.

Wattie was burgled recently; all I can say is the tea leaves musta had X-ray viz, ’cause even the front door looks like an old plank on the outer surface.

The kids got the place via Jimmy Boyle, the reformed Scottish hard man now on day-release from nick, who Carol works with. The street is a project for the underprivileged, the flat is cheap in return for Wattle and Carol being sorta caretakers.

The Exploited | “We’re Pleased With The New Album . . . “

It’s not hard to see why Wattle got the job. Not because the Exploited do a song about Jimmy Boyle. Wattie is the kind of bloke people like; down the road to the local watering-hole ordinary folk of all types hail the guy with not a whiff of prejudice agin his punk gear or bright, erect Mohican cut, now repaired from the drooping state it was in when I woke him up at 1pm on my arrival.

Is he using Harmony?

“Ah jist use whitiver Carol’s goat left,” is his beauty hint. More and more the Exploited are the wonderfully illogical successors in the komic-kutz punk league to the tired old Ramones. Sure, their music doesn’t tickle me much, but the style, the style . . .

WATNE AND the boys being banned from the Mecca circuit after the onstage death of a mouse (hardly Alice Cooper, eh?); The Exploited winding-up Isla St Clair at an airport luggage-go-round, pretending it was a Generation Game set; the mad Scots doing a gig that lasted all of four minutes in Norway . . .

News Of The Screws

It’s the absurdity that saves the day, the music being little more than fast, furious, competent punka-metalbeat several simplistic notches down the philosophy scale from the first Clash LP.

When I first arrived Wattle seemed nervous, things being helped a tad by my turning out to be a tartan tearaway m’self. But journalists, well . . . Wattie was waiting in trepidation for the outcome of the News Of The Screws piece on his team, which as we now all know turned out not as a pop-page plug but a twisted slab of rancid fabrication on the theme of broken glass surgery.

I guess I was fortunate in getting up North ahead of that scabrous rag, prompted as I was by the addition of new drummer Danny; ironically, since he’s English, the only member known to me. So how . . .

“We were having auditions, and Rat Scabies said we should get his mate . . . He was the last one that came. He wiz mair punk than the rest o’ them that came so we jist took him. We wurnie verry sure efter the first gig, but since we started tae practice he’s fitted in really good.”

The Exploited | “We’re Pleased With The New Album . . . “

Ah, rehearsal, it helps. Danny, former Satellite, Lucky Saddle and occasional Max Splodge pal, got into blonde dye and black leather so much his mom ‘widnae’ recognise him, and the transformation was complete. And the previous tub-humper?

“He jist goat a bit o’a w***er, see he wiz a guid drummer but he wisnae pulling his weight, would never practice.”

So this frivolity is serious, see! Since he’d been commenting earlier as he made me a cuppa that the bassist Gary was a loonie, I wonder how long his tenure will be?

“Ah, we’ll keep him, he’s f***in’ good! He’s no bad, but he’s no goat a brain.”

Troops Of Tomorrow

24 now, Wattie thinks age irrelevant, as he does his army past and tales of trouble with the Bilko men for wearing bondage strides on his nights off. My reasoning was sound, though, the mentioning of khaki being prompted by my new flat-mate Johnny Waller yelling surprise that the latest chartbusting Exploited disc is named ‘Troops Of Tomorrow’ when Wattie, the little rotund one sez to me, hated all things military so much. Er, well?

“A lot o’folk say the cover’s a bit like heavy metallish,” says our man, referring to the Iron Maiden ambience of the mutants portrayed thereon. “But to me the punks now could be the troops of tomorrow, an’ the cover jist shows like the skeletons an’ that efter a nuclear attack, y’ken yer body wid jist be like waste.

“That’s whit the troops of tomorrow will be —skeletons. It’s an awl Vibrators song, they were my favourite band, the first punk band ah ever seen . . . And we needed a slogan to follow up ‘Punks Not Dead’. I wanted to call it ‘Chaos’, but we said naw, everybody’s done that . . .”

THIS LAST from Wattie does indicate a possible situation oft talked about outside the band: that despite Wattie coming across as frontmanbrains and axe-ist Big John seeming like a Hulk figure (both visually and as man behind gross tales about eating handfuls of vomit, etshitera) the situation is somewhat different.

The Exploited | “We’re Pleased With The New Album . . . “

Viz: Big John’s a Bill Nelson fan fed-up with punk’s restrictive practices, a man who wanted to do a song called ‘Johnny Waller’s A Wee Fat C***’ if only to test the bounds of reality, Jimmy(!) Unfortunately, by pleading lack of bus fare BJ managed to not turn up till after the interview. What can I say?

He turned out in the short time I was with him to be a witty, sharp type who longs to blast away the thick-punko image by doing a Tony Mitchell techno page and telling the world how he listens to v. little of the type of music he plays, preferring eclectic stuff galore: he dug wild Bill Nelson since the first issue of the ‘Northern Dream’ album, it turns out, was the first in the Exploited to have a Mohican cut (not to mention that beard), was in Glasgow futurist outfit Zeitgeist and before that, even, trod them boards in a bunch of your actual (uniformed) niteclub human jookboaxes called Bobby And The Blue Jays.

He’s Too Fat

Tony! Tony! This man deserves a two-page spread . . . The man they begged for hours to rejoin after firing him for his, er, size.

“Ah lay in bed thinking, ‘He’s too fat’!” says Wattie, laughing cruelly.

Whatever, the Exploited are going forward in some ways, if not others.

“The first album we done we were really naive . . . the production wuz shite. We’ve no hud any royalties back from it, an’ there’s a live album called ‘On Stage’ that’s just a bootleg our auld management released. We’ve goat lawyers on tae it tae stop it, but it’s no happened, it’s jist a rip-off.

“We’re really pleased with the new album, I reckon it’s better than any other punk album that’s been oot since the Damned‘s first one. Ah canny see any other punk album bein’ better than it.”

The gap between Wattle’s touching faith and the grim reality is so vast that I find it impossible to argue with him: I told him I liked the Exploited, if not the sounds they make, and I promised no-slag-offs ’cause that’s not how I feel about them.

Suffice it to say that I can’t get into a scream of “FOCK THA’ EWWWESSAAAYY!” as a critique of Reaganomics, and that John’s occasional strange bursts of fret dissonance come as Beach Boyesque light relief against the constant backdrop of hard chording.

The chugging, menacing title cut is an oasis of texture in a blank desert.

The Exploited | “We’re Pleased With The New Album . . . “

Ulp: With a drummer as versatile as Danny and a guitar player like Big John hiding his light under a Garry Bushell, they could do so much more. But as I said, the band have learned some things about making records:

“A lot of punk bands now are gettin’ ripped off an’ they cannae see it, they reckon they’re gettin’ great deals. I wiz talking tae one manager of a Scots band the other day and they were getting fur a publishing deal fifteen quid each! AN THEY RECKON THANT’S GUID!

“We’re happy noo, efter three years. Oor new manager came well recommended. He’s goat t’be guid cos he kens he’d get dun in! It’s OK independent labels an a’that, but ye still need tae tek yer contract tae a lawyer and get it looked at.”

CND gigs

Sound advice which sadly many still don’t heed: Punx, to live outside the law you need an attorney!

“Everybody wants tae make sum money, but ye can make money withoot rippin’ fowk off.”

A HARD road it is: Tenner each for gigs and in hock to Secret for 26 grand. No hip CND gigs, either.

“It used tae be RAR wiz hip, noo a’the bands dae CND gigs. If somebody killed yer mum or dad, ye’d want them tae get killed as well. Well, if Russia’s gonnae blew us tae bits ah want them tae die as well, y’ken? It’d be OK if everybody banned the bomb but it’d never happen.”

For Wattie, punk might not be a force for change, but it can alter the individual:

“I look at punk as an alternative tae everyday life, a 9 to 5 job. I prefer no tae get involved wi thae kind o’people. To me being a punk is doing what I want and no letting anybody interfere with ma life.”

The Exploited | “We’re Pleased With The New Album . . . “

The ironic thing is that much of the time Wattie’s life involves TV, pub, shops, walk dog, make tea, chip shop just like all the ordinary folk, except that Wattie does it with a strange haircut. But it must be said that he does it at his own pace and to his chosen schedule, and the day I saw him wasn’t a typical Exploited-on-rampage-road day. Oh no.

The USA again: Wattie hates much of that Americapunk, having encountered visiting Black Flag whose stage antics he dismisses curtly and with authority.

“Ma bird asked them if they wanted some drugs and they said ‘No us!’ They thought this wiz f***in’ raj!!”

(I should point out that in Edinburgh teen talk, ‘raj’ is a derivative of ‘outRAGeous’ and means just that or crazy, wild, etc, while ‘barry’ means ‘good, derivation unknown. ‘Raj’ can also mean that a person is mental or a w***er. TV Smith once wondered aloud who these roadies ‘Ken’ and ‘Barry’ were, y’ken).

“Even the Dead Kennedys are shit as well . . .”

Despite being banned in numerous sectors of Europa (unjustly, sez Wattie!) the Exploited like the fans.

“All o’them take part . . . Ye play places in Britain and they stand like they’ve goat superglue on thir feet or varicose veins. But I like Brum . . .”

America may see Exploitation soon, but two previous tours have been blown out.

“We don’t preach like a lot o’other bands,” swears Wattie, “We jist have a good time. That’s whit the Exploited are aboot.”

Top of The Pops

But . . . principles? Was TOTP a problem?

“We’d a big f***in’ argument aboot that, ‘cos we wurnie sure if we wanted t’dae it. We said it was shit, but ye never see any punk bands oan TV so we decided we wid dae it. We were bored when we done it, it’s that false the way they dae the programme, nae drink or f*** all. After it we took the piss out of the snobs in the BBC bar. There was this ugly bird with buck teeth, we were saying ‘Are you in Pan’s People’?”.

They declined a TOTP return.

IT OCCURS to me to ask if anyone has ever tried to exploit the Exploited for right-wing purposes, like the band in the abominable TV play by the author of Reds, Oi For England.

“Naw . . . that play wiz crap. What ah hate is every time ye see a punk or a skinhead on telly, right, they always make him out to be f***in’ stupid, like baby Frankensteins, awwuuduhh, y’ken?

“People categorise punks as troublemakers, but when they go to a club they usually get drunk and have a laugh, they don’t fight each other. Ye find trouble when straight people start pickin’ oan them.”

Mohican cut

This may be an over-simplification, but it can hardly be true that IQs drop and tempers flare the minute one gets a Mohican cut, can it? Sometimes, though, when the touring and the rest get too rough, Wattie considers whether it’s all worth it. What else would he have wanted to do?

“Be a fireman, when I was wee,” he chortles. “And I was gonna be a mercenary when I left the army. Gonna go over to Angola wae ma mate . . . I joined the army tae learn tae kill. I loved weapons, but ah never liked the drill.”

There’s a lyric for you, Wattie!

“I wiz in gang fights so I joined up to keep oot o’trouble . . . I went tae Ireland a coupla times an’ shot at people, ma knees were trembling . . . Once there was a bomb blast and we played football with a foot wrapped in plastic when they brought back the bits.

“It was the same as when I started the band, for the excitement. Ah wiz jist bored!”

Bored? That boy Wattie does his charity parachute jump soon, another army-learned skill. Big John may need some further encouraging . . .