WOBBLESOX - THE CHRISTMAS SINGLE

Some time ago Braggtopia! revealed that back in 1980 Billy Bragg was involved in the production of a single for a girl band called Wobblesox. Just recently I discovered (with the help of Geoff Wilson !) that one half of the band, Sue Fisher-Hendry, now lives in Australia and so we caught up for a chat :

How did you first get to meet Billy ?

I'm hazy at this stage, it was a long time ago. From memory I think what happened was I'd been doing some co-writing with various different people and one was a guy called Rod Melvin who had written several hits with Ian Dury and was part of Ian's band when they were still called Kilburn & The High Roads. Then via a group we were all involved with at the time I also met Jane Pooler-Williams and she was the other Wobblesox. I haven't had any contact with her since those days and haven't the foggiest idea what happened to her.

Well, that answers my "What happened to her" question ! Basically, we were writing and one day we started mucking around and wrote the Christmas song "Get Your Sox Off". It's all pretty suss, it's very much of its time because at that stage that yelling and screaming style of delivery was very, er, relevant. And I don't have any issues with anything I've done in the past because I think it takes everything you do to be the sum total of who you are now. Anyway, she and I wrote this single and laughed our heads off. It took us 7 minutes to write that song and we ended up on the floor laughing because it was so silly. And then we thought, why don't we get someone to release it, and we started hunting around. Now somebody knew Jackie (MacKay - Riff Raff's manager) - through a friend of a friend we got introduced to Jackie and we went down to see her in Acton where she had just taken on these premises for Freewave Records. We met her and Billy, Wiggy and one of the other members of Riff Raff who were around at the time we were there. When was this ? Late 1979...1980 ? I can't remember to be honest. When was the record released ?

It has 1980 on the label.

Well then it was Christmas 1980. We only got together with Jackie a few months before Christmas and part of what was wrong with that single in terms of how it was marketed was that none of us really realised that if you want to release a Christmas single you have to start doing something about it probably in May.

So, it was all released really quite late and didn't have proper distribution and all that kind of stuff. Jackie was very eager and very keen but we were all on a very steep learning curve.

This all happened after Billy had left the army and was working for Wiggy and Jackie's video production company ?

Billy wasn't in the army when we met him. Jackie and Wiggy were certainly staying at the same place but I not sure if Billy was there or staying somewhere else.

I recall Billy told me he was living for a while at Acton Lane as he remembers being there at the time John Lennon was killed which was November 1980.

Yes, there's was really not much there at the point when we first went down there because Jackie had just taken it over. I remember one time we were sitting around eating fish and chips and Jackie had a Samoyed dog which was always very keen on leftovers. I can't remember whether it was Wiggy giving the dog leftovers and Billy telling the dog to go away or the other way around. It all had a very cottage industry type of feel.

When Jackie introduced you to Billy and Wiggy did you know anything of their background as by that time they'd been playing together for some years.

I knew they were really good mates and I knew they'd been playing music together for a while.....in fact I was brought up on the London-Essex border in Gants Hill and my Mum worked in Barking. I remember telling Billy that at one point.

Did you ever hear anything of Riff Raff ?

Oh yeah ! When we were down there what we did with our single turned out to be a very hands-on thing. We would be writing letters and stuffing envelopes and writing promo pieces, while at the same time we'd be watching the footage that Jackie had videoed of Riff Raff. At that time we were involved in whatever was going on, really, or it kind of felt like that anyway. I can remember sitting and watching the footage Jackie had shot of the boys for two songs for videos before she'd edited it all up. I very clearly remember turning to Jackie after I had watched the video and saying "Billy will be successful". I watched him on video and I knew.

Going back to the Wobblesox record - when you got together with them you'd written the lyrics but what about the music ? Oh yeah. Whenever I've written anything with anybody we've either co-written the words and music or one has written the words and the other the music, so that when we've presented it to someone we have a complete package. And where was it recorded ? Some friends had a studio, well a sort of studio, on Fulham Road. It was actually a room soundproofed with carpet and a 4 track recorder. And who played on it ? Well my memory may be wrong but I thought the whole of Riff Raff played on it but on your website it says it was just Billy and Wiggy... Well, that's all I could deduce from conversations with Billy and Jackie as both of them have vague memories about it.

What's written on the sleeve ? You know the sleeve you've put up on the website - on there, although it was all written to deliberately to look like sort of boarding schoolgirl tittle-tattle from a diary, if you read all the stuff that's written over the outside cover it's got all the credits in it.

Well the only two names that are mentioned are Sue Fisher and Jane Pooler-Williams, and a photo credit for Jackie MacKay.

Oh really ! Because Jackie wrote that, she designed the sleeve. So she didn't credit the boys !

Now, what about the costumes you all wore for the sleeve photos. Billy was in a Santa outfit and you and Jane were dressed up as schoolgirls. When I asked Billy about that he seemed a bit embarrassed !

(Laughs loudly) ...I think because the lyrics were quite bawdy the idea was we'd dress up as 6th Form St. Trinians schoolgirls. Then Jackie started talking about having photos taken with Father Christmas and that led to her talking Billy into dressing up as Father Christmas ! Then we had this silly session of us sitting on Father Christmas's knee, and whispering in his ear...just gooning around really.

So was that the last time you saw Billy ?

Yes, it was. We did do a little promotional tour with Jackie which Billy wasn't involved with. We got on a train and went up to Liverpool and went into several record stores. We persuaded them to put the record on, and then we danced around miming to it and doing a little show in the middle of the store. As you can see it was a very high budget affair !

You were big in Liverpool ?

Absolutely - a legend in our own lunchbox !

And did you sell many copies of the single ?

Not really, I think mostly friends took them off our hands. If we sold 100 it would be a lot.

Was that the first thing you'd ever recorded ?

That was the first thing I'd ever released. We recorded some other stuff with another record company but it never got released. But most of what we were doing was entirely not like that single. That sound, that very raw, punky sound - we sang that way for that single because it suited what we'd written but most of what we were writing didn't sound like that at all.

Now I've just realised, we've been talking all this time and I still don't know which of the two girls on the Wobblesox sleeve is you. I'm the one on the left, the shorter one of the two...and in fact on the back of the sleeve the girl facing Father Christmas - if you look at the shadow it's deliberately supposed to look suggestive - that's me. In your younger days - your wild youth ? My life's been fairly wild from one end to the other really ! It's been an interesting ride so far ! Sue now works as a singer, songwriter, author, artist and actor. She released a CD "All Kinds Of Love" in 1999 and her website is here . Currently she is working on a second CD and writing a book. She now lives in Perth, Western Australia.

POSTSCRIPT

Since talking with Sue I have had further correspondance with Jackie MacKay who adds these comments :

Sue said :
So, it was all released really quite late and didn't have proper distribution and all that kind of stuff. Jackie was very eager and very keen but we were all on a very steep learning curve.

Jackie's comment :
All true but the real thing that totally killed it was John Lennon's death. The song was SO not appropriate given the mood at the time which was properly heavy.
I remember going into radio stations dressed as Father Christmas with the single and having a laugh giving copies to people I was told were 'important'. It was actually quite well recieved. Then the tragedy and it just went dark. All the songs played after that were the exact opposite of 'Get yer socks off'. Fact is that we had loads of juke box people promising to buy it for the pubs and that rather fell through as well !

Sue said :
Oh really ! Because Jackie wrote that, she designed the sleeve. So she didn't credit the boys !

Jackie's comment :
They did not want to be credited. I am very much in favour of 'credits for all' so please don't think that was me being mean :-)