The Bikes (not) from NEL – Short Stories by Jim Fogg

This article is about biker books, but it’s also about influences, inspiration, and growing up.

In my Rich King post, I talked about starting to read Back Street Heroes in my teens, and how much impact that magazine, and AWoL Magazine which came along a few years later, had on my life.

I wanted to be an archaeologist since I was seven, and I started writing around the same age.

The fascination with archaeology has had a huge impact, and is arguably the reason I made it through my later teens after getting kicked out of home at sixteen. I focused on my goal of getting to university to train as an archaeologist, and that focus probably kept me alive.

While writing was something that I dabbled in, it didn’t really reemerge until around 2008, mainly because everything up until then was zeroed in on archaeology. After that, my first published work was in Back Street Heroes thanks to Blue who was editor at the time.

So what has all this talk of archaeology, motorbikes, and writing got to do with biker fiction? It all comes back to one writer in Back Street Heroes who had a massive impact on me over the years. Jim Fogg.

Jim Fogg was a writer, biker, and archaeologist who wrote for Back Street Heroes, until his unfortunate death in 1989. While he did write articles for the magazine, mainly talking about history, archaeology and different aspects of biker culture, his fiction is where he really excelled.

Firstly, his stories are very grounded in the biker culture of England in the 1980s.

In Fogg’s stories you don’t see some kind of unrealistic gang war aesthetic, the sort of drama you might see in New English Library books. Instead, they often feature himself as a character, with many different personalities familiar from the biker scene of the eighties.

Don’t get me wrong, sometimes backpatch club members do feature, but they are well rounded, characters like Mad Jack in Fogg’s story, The Angel of Death.

At other times his stories focus on the strange eccentrics in the biker scene like Mould in Rat Bike linked below. The bikers in these stories are not stereotypes, instead people with families, hobbies, and complex friendships.

The story that opens his collection Fogg on the Road is a perfect example of this. The Beasts from the Dawn of Time is told from the perspective of Dek, a young motorcyclist with a GPZ750 and an arrogant attitude. He is on a night out with his girlfriend and two other couples, when a trio of older bikers (including an appearance by Fogg himself), walk into the pub.

The young motorcyclist makes no attempt to hide his disgust. From Dek’s dismissive observations, we get a real sense of who the bikers are, and the gaps in worldview between Dek (who sees his bike as a passing phase), and Foggy, Connolly, and Kidney Jock, all of whom live and breath motorbikes. There is subtlety here, with a real sense of the social differences between those inside a subculture and those who are outside it.

As mentioned elsewhere, something else I share with Jim Fogg is time working as an archaeologist. I often use that experience in my fiction, as did he.

In the story Blood Eagle, Foggy rides his Triumph Thunderbird across the Pennines to help identify a sword found in an Anglo Scandinavian grave, recognising the weapon as a Type VIIa according to the Oakshott-Wheeler classification.

While there, he finds it hard to ignore the tension on the site, but returning home after the finds assessment, he puts the site out of his mind. A call from Hattersley, the excavation director, brings him back to the isolated moorland and the horror that is unfolding.

Fogg had an amazing ability for capturing the mundane of his everyday life, for example in Blood Eagle, the description perfectly captures a small university archaeology project of the time, weaving that into a story with otherworldly elements and making it totally believable.

I think, for me, this is why his fiction is so effective, particularly when he deals with Fortean themes.

I’m using Fortean in a very broad sense here, to cover subjects such as urban legends, folklore, myths and ghosts. Many of the stories that featured in Back Street Heroes played with these themes, such as Rat Bike mentioned above, which revolves around the idea of a rat king, as well as a phenomenon called moving rattons – when colonies of rats move across the countryside.

These are probably my favourite stories, for example The Gabriel Hounds, where an American biker visiting the UK meets Foggy in the pub, has a drink, then encounters a crowd of bikers on the road who are far from normal. Other examples include the ghost story in The Bridge, where Foggy encounters an apparition on the moors, or the timeslip story of World Enough and Time. Each one captures the shift from normality to weirdness perfectly.

As well as Forteana, Foggy also knew his bikes.

Of course this comes through in his non-fiction for Back Street Heroes, for example his Fogg Patches articles or his special features. However, his knowledge about all things two wheeled is also really present in his fiction.

Let’s be honest, it’s very easy to write about vehicles badly in fiction. We’ve all seen the over description of cars in poor quality thrillers. Yet Foggy always managed to get detail into his stories without overloading the narrative, often having his characters talk about their bikes, and it never feels forced, because that’s what bikers do.

If you know your bikes, because these stories were aimed at people who rode and probably rode similar machines to those in the stories, in Jim Fogg’s loving descriptions and dialogue you can feel the heat of the exhausts, smell the oil, and hear the sound of the engines.

Most of Foggy’s writing feels like sitting in a warm pub with a warm beer, listening to him tell you tales that suck you into other worlds that are just beyond the door, if you make the mistake of turning the wrong corner on your bike.

One of my favourite stories by Foggy is Hawks in High Places, which plays with English folklore, and the King beneath the Hill mythic story form. It also takes inspiration from the New Age Traveller convoy of the 1980s, and particularly the social panic fostered by the Tories of the time, in a country that was seeing the Police becoming more a paramilitary wing of Thatcher’s government (with events like the Battle of the Beanfield and Orgreave). In the story he captures the intersection between bikers and New Age Travellers, both subcultures on the fringe of society, a spirit I feel was carried over into AWoL by people like Odgie.

Sitting here as a biker in my late forties, with a career in archaeology, finding my own stories to write, I think his work means more to me than ever.

I’m lucky enough to own three of his collections, but they are incredibly hard to get hold of. However, Back Street Heroes do have a number of stories available to read for free on their website. I’ll link them below

Rat bike

Border story

Queasy rider

New Short Story Collection – Dirt Upon My Skin

While this blog has evolved to focus on motorbike related topics, I do also write fiction, and some of that fiction has been brought together in a new collection.

Dirt Upon My Skin will be released on 25th July as part of the Black Shuck Books Shadows series of micro collections. The book brings together my archaeology themed horror and weird fiction, including two previously unpublished stories.

You can see the cover below, and I love everything about it; the trowel themed design, the colours that echo a munsell soil chart, and the fact the trowel blades look like a cake waiting to be eaten.

I’m really excited about this collection, and if you think it’s something you would like to read, you can pre-order a copy at https://blackshuckbooks.co.uk/dirt-upon-my-skin/

Kaffee Racer 5 – Café Vetter, Hof Saale

I’ve been to a lot of cafes since I started this little blog feature. Not all appear here – mainly because I’m not on my bike when I go there. This includes Café Vetter which feels like a huge oversight, because I consider Café Vetter my home café.

I go to Café Vetter a lot, but normally I’m with family, so it hasn’t qualified for these pages, so far. I take my brief very seriously. Motorbikes and cake. Both have to be present for it to be published under the Kaffee (und Kuchen) Racer heading.

A couple of Sundays ago I corrected that error, and rode out on my Harley to enjoy some early morning coffee and cake.

From the outside, the building looks pretty unassuming, but once you get inside, the sheer range of cake is stunning.

There has been a cafe here since the early part of the 20th Century, known at the time as Bismarck café.

1920s

Over the years it has gone through several changes, but always remained a cafe. Certain elements of the interior have remained constant over the past few decades, for example the central screen and the wooden panelling.

1933

1955

Today

Today

The current owners took over in 2000, and while I wasn’t in Franken at that time, I can say that they have done a fantastic job of maintaining classic elements of the café and Konditorei, while keeping it up to date.

It’s a place to take your time and relax, to let the day pass by while you eat cake and drink coffee. The service is second to none, and the environment is very laid back. Perfect place to stop after a few miles in the saddle.

On this occasion I indulged in a slice of Bailey’s Irish Cream cake, garnished with a soft chewy heart (my favourite kind…), accompanied by a large cappuccino which was big enough to bathe in.

I can’t praise Café Vetter highly enough, but instead of talking anymore, I’m just going to let the pictures do the talking. Here’s a selection of cakes from previous visits.

You can find the Café Vetter website here https://www.cafe-vetter.de/start.html

Beyond Born to be Wild 1 – Psychomania

Music makes a film.

It’s hard to imagine The Good, The Bad, The Ugly without Ennio Morricone’s sparse soundtrack, or Star Wars without John Williams’s sweeping score, and it is unlikely Psychomania would be such a cult film without the score composed by John Cameron.

We open on a stone circle shrouded in mist, the light suggesting early morning, a group of bikers silhouetted as they ride in and out of the megaliths. There is no dialogue, instead unearthly music playing to set the tone for what is to come; a strange, haunting journey into weird rituals, ancient frog gods, and bikers returning from the dead.

Psychomania is an odd film, lying somewhere between the biker b-movies of the US and the weird horror of British cinema that would come to characterise folk horror. John Cameron’s score plays a big role in creating that odd atmosphere.

John Cameron

John Cameron, the composer behind the film music, is an extremely talented musician, songwriter, and arranger. He is responsible for the Oscar nominated A Touch of Class, the film score for Kes, as well as the Emmy nominated music for The Path to 9/11, and the musical Zorro which was nominated for the Best New Musical Olivier.

As well as this list of achievements, he has an impressive list of credits as songwriter on top 20 hits such as Brother by CCS, and as an arranger on a string of hits like Boogie Nights by Heatwave and You Sexy Thing by Hot Chocolate.

The question has to be asked then, how did he find himself scoring a strange film about undead bikers featuring an immortal Beryl Read.

Following a long working relationship with the sixties artist, Cameron did the arrangement for Be Not Too Hard by Donovan that was used in the film Poor Cow, which ended up with Cameron writing the score for the Ken Loach film in a week. He then did Kes for Ken Loach, which after a number of other films eventually led to him being approached to score Psychomania.

Part of the brief was the music would be done at Shepperton Sound Stage, a space designed for a full symphony orchestra. This meant they went for atmospherics, away from the core rhythm. This was pre synthesizers so they used upright bass through an amp with pedals, played the inside of a piano with drumsticks, combined with phase pedals and spooky voices help set the mood.

The Musicians

A quick look at the musicians involved shows that they were people who were top of their game. 

The flautist on the soundtrack was Harold Macnair, a Jamaican born and London based musician who also played on Cameron’s soundtrack for Kes. Although he was a jazz musician, his distinctive phrasing meant that he was very much in demand with non jazz musicians.

The two Cameron projects were not the only soundtracks Macnair appeared on, also playing saxophone on the Dr No music, also appearing on several Donovan projects, as well as John Martyn’s The Tumbler.

Londoner Bill Le Sage played percussion and vibraphone. Playing with Kenny Baker’s Dozen during the sixties, Le Sage also composed several film scores of his own, including The Tell Tale Heart, and Tarnished Heroes.

Drums on the Psychomania score were provided by Tony Carr, who started in Bill Le Sage’s trio, before also collaborating with Donovan in the sixties, as well as being part of Macnair’s band. Carr was an accomplished studio musician, playing with bands such as Magna Carta, The Strawbs, and Paul Macartney’s Wings.

Cameron remembers the bassist as Spike Heatley, another regular musician with Bill Le Sage, who also played in the same session rhythm section with Jimmy Page, before spending the early seventies as part of the jazz rock fusion band CCS (originally formed by John Cameron).

Both Herbie Flowers and guitarist Alan Parker were also members of CCS, with guitarist Colin Green also joining the lineup.

Throughout the score for Psychomania, there are numerous wordless vocals. Cameron recalls these were provided by Norma Winstone who was well known for her wireless improvisations. Winstone has a long career, first getting attention after performing at Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club, recording albums in the late seventies as part of Azimuth, and writing lyrics for Jimmy Rowles’s Well Kept Secret, as well as Fred Hirsch, and Ralph Towner amongst others. More recently, Winstone’s vocals from Azimuth’s track, The Tunnel have been sampled by Drake for IDGAF.

The Music

As mentioned above, the music is what really gives Psychomania its atmosphere.

The film opens on a wide shot of a mist coated stone circle, the low bass giving way to a wah wah guitar (I think), then a lingering high note as the first biker appears in the stone circle, weaving in and out of the stand stones, before he is joined by the others, silhouetted against the mist covered trees.

In retrospect, when we think of British soundtracks of the period, the BBC Radiophonic Workshop will often come to mind, particularly the compositions of Delia Derbyshire. Yet, the work of the Radiophonic Workshop was very experimental, with access to equipment not readily available to other musicians.

To create the strangeness of the Psychomania score, Cameron used lots of different tricks. This was pre synthesizers so they used upright bass through an amp with pedals, played the inside of a piano with drumsticks. These tricks were combined with phase pedals and spooky voices to help set the mood.

For anyone growing up at that time, the landscape says ancient England, but the bikes represents a disruption, and the music, the strange interface between the folk horror of the land, and the bikers, more commonly seen in American B Movies. This is a film about those interfaces between different places, different cultures (both the US and the UK film traditions, as well as the different cultures of Tom and his Mother in the film). The opening track captures that strangeness perfectly.

After the very brief track The Frog (only ten seconds), the soundtrack continues in the same vein with Cross Over to the Other Side, before Secret of the Living Dead introduces a little bit of snare, and an organ sound that is almost ecclesiastical.

The Secrets of the Locked Door starts with a ponderous beat like the steps of an arcane ritual before the organ sound starts once more, picking up the same rhythm. The drums fade away, before coming in at the end to once again guide the music.

The Locked Room and Mirror Sequence introduce the second distinct theme to the soundtrack, starting with a discordant, echoing cry from Tom, before a high pitched pulsing begins, almost like the sound of a finger around the rim of a champagne flute. This becomes constant with the spacious rhythm picked up by what sounds like a clock chiming. This last sound drops out, before coming back in toward the end of the track as the whole score becomes more chaotic.

After the intensity of The Lock Room and Mirror Sequence, You’ve Got to Believe is sparse and calm, almost meditative, and a moment of pause, before the action ramps up.

With the next two tracks we move onto the next theme, and it feels like we have been transported across the Atlantic.

Close your eyes and listen to Motorcycle Mayhem and Cat and Mouse with the Fuzz. With no point of reference the funk feel is soaked in themes of American car chases, through New York or the Bay Area.

These two tunes are far more reminiscent of Steve Mcqueen’s pursuit San Francisco in a Ford Mustang GT fastback than several bikers racing down the rural lanes of England and kicking over traffic cones.

Even when the Living Dead are causing havoc in a shopping centre and getting chased through a car park by the Police in their Jaguar patrol car, it still feels at odds with the setting.

For me, it’s creating a bridge between the British landscape which is the setting for this strange film, and the longer tradition of biker films across the pond. The music is doing a lot of work to set the tone and create a cinematic link the film needs to succeed.

Tom’s Last Ride is a thirty second return to the main themes of the score, before one of the more unusual compositions on the soundtrack

By unusual, I mean in comparison to the other Psychomania music. Most of the other compositions have been setting the atmosphere, but Riding Free is very different.

Written by David Whitaker, known for his work on Hammer Horror scores (there is an irony that Riding Free is the least horror track on the whole Psychomania soundtrack), and Johnny Worth (which, I believe is a pseudonym for the British singer John Worsley), and performed by Harvey Andrews, this is more of a hippy anthem.

The whole scene feels incongruous at first. While people change their behaviour for funerals, all of a sudden these hardcore, devil-may-care bikers turn into hippies, burying their friend in the centre of a stone circle (on his bike of course), while a guitarist strums a Donovan-esque ballad.

In reality British bikers and hippies were often closely aligned, for example through the band Hawkwind, but still, this feels strange in the middle of all the haunting atmospheric music.

Harvey Andrews was not featured in the film (he claims in the short interview on the Psychomania Blue Ray reissue that this is because he is not a pretty boy), and an actor mimes the song while strumming, much to the bemusement of Andrews who was fingerpicking the guitar on the track.

There’s a very good interview with Harvey Andrews below about the song.

By contrast, Up From The Grave, is a ponderous stripped back percussion that barely lasts a minute, with sound only filling half of that, soundtracking a stranded motorist taking a reluctant shortcut through the stone circle, before getting run down by the resurrected Tom. (Presumably Tom’s bike is also undead, because I have experience of starting old British bikes, and they can be reluctant even without a load of soil dumped on them.)

Throughout the rest of the film, the musical themes return and drop out, until the final scenes where The Living Dead meet their final fate.

The whole soundtrack shows how these different themes combine to signpost the reference points for the film, whether that is the haunted British landscape, the American vehicle chase, the psychedelic disorientation, or the hippy funeral which serves to contrast with the darker themes of the rest of Psychomania.

I haven’t talked about all the tracks here. In the last third of the film, many of the themes return in thirty second long refrains, but hopefully this gives a sense of the nature and background of the music that makes this strange little film work.

You can find the whole soundtrack online, but I would highly recommend picking up the vinyl from Trunk Records, and spending some time listening to this unusual marriage between folk horror atmospherics and American urban chase movie.

Kaffee (und Kuchen) Racer – The Bikes 2

In the past couple of weeks I bought a new bike to add to the stable, and it was a bit of a surprise, even for me. However, there are reasons.

Let me introduce the bike first.

It’s a 1999 Harley Davidson Fatboy, with an Evolution engine and a Softail frame. It’s also the youngest bike in my garage by three years. Look at the baby bike.

Now I am of a certain age, buying a big American V-Twin is definitely satisfying a very particular stereotype, but there are a few different reasons (This isn’t a midlife crisis – I’ve had large motorbikes for far too long for that to be a reason, unless I was having a mid-twenties crisis and a mid-thirties crisis. OK, that’s a possibility).

Firstly, I’ve never owned a Harley and I was in a position to get one, so it made sense to do it now while I could. No way of knowing if I would like it long term, or if it would be something I just wouldn’t get on with.

One of the main reasons for buying a Harley is Type Approval, which Germany has for all road vehicles. Remember, I’m not an expert and this is not an academic paper so this is just my understanding.

In Germany all vehicles must have Type Approval and for general aftermarket custom parts, the market isn’t there for Big Jap four customs. It is, however, for Harley. At some point I will be tackling the system with my Norton, but I wanted something I could personalise, without too many legal headaches, and with a vast aftermarket industry for Harleys, it made sense to go that route.

The Softail suits my style of riding. I think that a lot of bikes can be divided into two groups; bikes you sit on and bikes you sit in. With hardtail and softail bikes, you sit more in the bike so it creates a different centre of gravity, and suits my riding style more (and not just because I ride slowly, though it’s true I don’t hoon around as fast as I can), but it’s a riding style I feel more comfortable with.

Comfort brings me onto the next aspect. I’m 6’3 and on a lot of bikes I’m cramped. Even on the 1200 Bandit I look like a monkey riding a tricycle, so having a bike I can stretch out a bit on is important. While the new bike doesn’t have forward controls, it does have footboards, which gives me plenty of space to stretch my feet out.

So there we are. Late forties and buying a Harley, because sometimes you have to embrace the cliche, but I still have the Bandit, GS, and Norton, and all will be ridden. At the moment, I’m just having fun blatting about the Franconian countryside on an oversized V twin, finding places that serve excellent Kaffee und Kuchen.

Mad Max: The Mythic Hero of the Wasteland

Sometimes you get a chance to write about a subject that is just a huge amount of fun to explore. This was one such case.

Thank you so much to Dee Dee and Willow for letting me take a deep dive into the folklore of Mad Max, and giving me permission to republish the article here.

After Mad Max Fury Road came out a lot of people tried to make sense of the chronology of the four films. One of the most interesting theories argues that Mad Max Rockatansky is a folkloric character. A mythic hero of a post apocalyptic world.

Let’s start at the beginning.

Mad Max is one of my favourite films, and it is a very odd film. A lot of the post apocalyptic style and imagery that people associate with the franchise is derived from Mad Max II (sometimes known as The Road Warrior). The original Mad Max is pre-collapse, a world on the verge of falling over a precipice rather than already toppled. Even the signs over the Halls of Justice entrance are falling off the arch.

The Toecutter’s gang rage across the Outback virtually unchallenged, yet the grass still grows, there’s petrol in the pumps and no-one is wearing leather bondage gear while pillaging. (The bikes in the first film owe more to a little known cult Australian film called Stone, which also features Hugh Keays-Byrne who went on to star as The Toecutter and Immortan Joe.)

This is where we see Max’s character established, first as the cool hero during the pursuit of the Night Rider. After all his colleagues wreck their vehicles Max takes up the chase, his mere presence behind the Night Rider enough to reduce him to tears. Then we see the creation of the broken hero. His best friend burnt alive, his child killed and his wife left in a vegetative state. He has nothing left, but to go in pursuit of revenge.

Mad Max is a tale about hero creation, a fact made explicit in a conversation between Police Chief Fifi Macaffee and Max, when Fifi says, “People don’t believe in heroes anymore. Well damn them! You and me, Max. We’re gonna give ’em back their heroes.”

That’s what the film does, not through some higher purpose, but through the breaking down of an honourable man and the creation of something new.

Apart from the tone of the film there is another way Mad Max differs from the sequels. The perspective. In the first film we’re in Max’s community. His world. In all three subsequent stories Max is a transitional character in the story of other communities. He passes through at times of great stress, and moves on. In Mad Max II the story is told by the now adult Feral Kid, and in Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome  Savannah Nix speaks the community’s folklore each night.

“This you know. The years travel fast, and time after time I done the tell, but this ain’t one body’s tell. It’s the tell of us all, and you gotta listen it and remember cos what you hears today you gotta tell the newborn tomorrow…but most of all we remember the man who finded us, him that came the salvage.”

In Fury Road the storytelling of the legendary Max isn’t as explicit to the narrative of the film, but the way he’s captured, held, escapes and leaves at the point the community finds its release from oppression is pretty clear. This is also implied in the way that Max is really a supporting character in Furiosa’s story. However, apart from the first film he’s always really a peripheral character to the stories of the communities. A catalyst of change. It’s also noticeable, as Hernán Gamboa points out on his YouTube channel ‘The Long Take’, that every time we see Max his Interceptor also returns (OK, in Thunderdome it’s in a pretty sorry state and he’s using it as a covered wagon at the start, but it’s still there.)

So if Max Rockatansky is a folkloric or mythic hero, what type of hero is he? What’s noticeable is that in all three sequels he appears at times of crisis. In Mad Max II the oil refinery is under daily attack by the forces of the Great Humungus. In Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome Max’s presence allows the children to escape to the abandoned city, and in Fury Road Max’s presence is the catalyst for Furiosa to lead the people from Immortan Joe’s control.

The most obvious folklore parallel is the king in the mountain motif. In the Antti Aarne and Stith Thompson system, the king in the mountain is folktale type 766. The common motifs involve the legendary hero sleeping, often in a cave or chamber, waiting for the time when the nation needs them once more. Usually the hero has a military background, and is discovered by an individual who has a puzzle to solve which will allow the hero to return.

The best known of these stories are King Arthur, Charlemagne, Key-Khosrow of Persia, and King David. However, I think Max Rockatansky fits a specific subset of this hero type, one best represented by General Ludd, Captain Swing, the Golem of Prague, or even Robin of Sherwood. All are vague characters, very difficult to pin down to historical individuals, who lead or defend certain sectors of society when they’re under threat, particularly those who are working class or vulnerable to oppression. The post apocalyptic wasteland stands in for the mountains where the King sleeps, the night where General Ludd waits, or Sherwood Forest where Robin Hood hides.

Max does not appear to the communities in the films to lead them as a king, but to free them from oppression. In each case he is not rescuing the nation but the ones who are being trampled at the bottom rungs of the ladder. He is a catalyst not a leader. A symbol for that freedom. He embodies rebellion and the drive to fight back. Max appears and goes, leaving the world a better place for those who tell his stories.

Another fascinating aspect of the idea of Mad Max as a King in the Mountains folk hero is that these ideas arose online and have become an example of digital folklore, particularly through the excellent analysis of Hernán Gamboa. The transmission route for this interpretation of Mad Max Rockatansky is within a digital setting, showing how important online conversations and exchange can be in creating new mythic storytelling.

Mad Max has an important role to play in the history and story of the wasteland. Maybe there once was a man called Max Rockatansky who was a ‘Bronze’, or maybe that’s part of the folklore surrounding the Road Warrior. Either way, in the post apocalyptic world of the films, he lives on in the stories and the tells of those who survived to pass on his adventures to the next generation.

References and Further Reading/Viewing

Mad Max, 1979, Directed by George Miller

Mad Max II: The Road Warrior, 1981, Directed by George Miller

Mad Max Beyond the Thunderdome, 1985, Directed by George Miller

Mad Max: Fury Road, 2015, Directed by George Miller

Hernán Gamboa, 2017, In Focus: Myth and Fury Road, The Long Take

Anon, 2014, Who Was Captain Swing?

Matt Gerardi, 2017, Mad Max: Fury Road is dense with myths, but Max is the biggest of all

Eric Hobsbawm & George Lichtheim, 1969, Captain Swing, Lawrence & Wishart

Chumbawumba, 1988, English Rebel Folk Songs 1381-1984, Agit-Prop Records/MUTT

Psychomania 1 – Petrification and Transgression

I’ll begin with a bit of honesty. Psychomania is not my favourite biker film, and it’s not my favourite weird British horror, but the way it brings those two elements together is pretty unique, and means there is a lot to say about this strange early seventies flick about undead bikers causing havoc in the British countryside.

Let’s start at the end.

Psychomania is often talked about as a folk horror film, but what is the evidence for that? There is the opening scene with the bikes riding around the stone circle, and the toad (toad lore also features in The Wicker Man), but there is one key scene that is heavily rooted in folklore that cements Psychomania as folk horror.

Toward the end of the film, The Living Dead gather at the stone circle, while Mrs Latham (Beryl Reid) and Shadwell (George Sanders) sit across a table. While Sanders opens a book and explains that Mrs Latham’s fate (to be trapped as a toad) will be for eternity, he also explains that her son, Tom, was also part of the bargain and will have to pay a price as well.

Realising how out of control Tom and The Living Dead have become, she agrees. 

A demonic wind rises, both in the room and at the ancient monument, and while Mrs Latham becomes an amphibian, Tom and the rest of the bikers are turned to stone, adding to the ancient monument.

Being turned to stone for transgressions, particularly the transformation of rule breakers to stone circles, has a long history in folklore, and can be seen in the naming traditions of many such monuments throughout the British Isles, but particularly in Cornish folklore.

Such examples include, The Merry Maidens in Cornwall, The Nine Maidens of Boskednan, Tregeseal Dancing Stones, and The Hurlers. Similarly Long Meg and Her Daughters in Cumbria have a similar story of transgressing Sabbath restrictions and being turned to stone, and the name of the Nine Ladies stone circle in Derbyshire suggests a similar folkloric tradition.

To take the example of The Nine Maidens Stone Circle near Belstone in Devon, (sometimes called The Seventeen Brothers because of the actual number of stones present in the circle), the story goes that the seventeen brothers suffered the punishment of petrification due to dancing on the sabbath. (https://www.ancient-origins.net/ancient-places-europe/nine-maidens-0015525)

(Photo by Guy Wareham Creative Commons Licence CC BY-SA 2.0)

This link to breaking social mores around the Sabbath is present in most of the folklore tales surrounding these stone circles.

With Psychomania, the transgression doesn’t relate to the Sabbath, but breaking the rules of acceptable behaviour decreed by Mrs Latham. When she sees the activities of The Living Dead bikers going too far once they have achieved immortality, she invokes the punishment of petrification. It’s worth noting that it is not the bikers achieving everlasting life that is the issue, but the transgressive behaviour which Mrs Latham knows is only going to escalate with their everlasting life.

To completely cement the link, is the name of the stone circle in Psychomania, which is called The Seven Witches. With the conclusion of the film, watching Tom and the other undead bikers petrify, we are also being told the origin of the name is not a flourish of folklore, but almost certainly fact.

This is where the folk horror element of the film is really solidified, a magic in the landscape, once seen in the deep past, manifesting in a contemporary setting.

“As Long Compton thou canst not see,
King of England thou shalt not be,
Rise up stick, stand still stone,
For King of England thou shalt be none.
Thou and thy men hoar stones shall be,
And I myself an eldern tree.”

Gruf and Nob the Destroyer – Biker Comics by Rich King – An Appreciation

I write about comics, and I write about motorbikes, but I’m yet to write about biker comics.

Which was the most influential biker comic for me? (Okay, the title of the post sort of gives it away, but bear with me.)

I was a bit young for Ogri, Paul Sample’s groundbreaking comic that started in Bike Magazine back in 1972. By the time I was getting into bikes, Bike Magazine had become more focused on race reps.

Easyriders Magazine ran cartoons, but to a kid growing up in North Yorkshire the world of Miraculous Mutha seemed a long way away.

Although I think Andy Sparrow’s Bloodrunners comic is excellent, it would be a few years before I discovered his work.

For this article, I need to go back to late 1988/early 1989. My parents have separated, my Dad has started knocking around with a bunch of bikers, and I walk into the local newsagents where I discover Back Street Heroes #57 January ’89.

As well as all the gorgeous bikes, there was also a cartoon strip called Gruf. Up to this point most of my comic reading had been The Dandy, Battle, and Scream. All formative in their own way, but Gruf was different. Gruf was about people I knew.

A quick introduction.

The main characters are Gruf, a dog who rides a Triumph chop, his best friend Gilmorton, who is not the brightest and normally rides a Japanese engined hardtailed custom, and Trace, Gruf’s girlfriend, who is the smartest of the lot. As well as these three there is a supporting cast of various bikers such as Chemical Ken, Sprog the Baby Bro, and Evo Eddy, who are as much a part of the storylines as Gruf, Gil and Trace.

For me this is the strength of Gruf as a comic. It gets the biker community, celebrating it for the personalities and characters.

There are scenes in these comics I recognise only too well, including the afterpub discussions back at someone’s flat (normally, in my experience, with either Hawkwind or Apocalypse Now playing in the background), and the bike that won’t start, until someone comes along and spots the problem. Yes, this has happened to me. More than once.

Gruf is also very good at making sure we laugh at ourselves, whether that’s Harley bros, sports-riders, or the righteous biker who constantly boasts about what he’s building, “Mebbe, but nuffin’ as cool as the candy painted Laverda street rat I’m building in me secret lock-up”, why he doesn’t have all the other bikes they see “It’sa FPQX Softbobster Sport – Too Many Hogs around nowadays to get me excited”, then turns up at the bike rally in the car.

In one memorable strip, the Dumpation Bikers go along to an alternative night, and after the dancing someone is saying “Has anyone lost an earring.”, while Gilmorton asks, “Has anyone lost an arm.” In the next month’s strip, we have the conclusion.

Rich King knew the biker scene inside out and that comes through in the story lines. For example Gruf #39 where Gruf goes off on one about doing something for the crack (the fun of it, rather than the highly processed cocaine product), with everyone having prior commitments before agreeing “Next Saturday week it is then. We’ll do summink’ spontaneous then!’

Other strips looked at the difference between old bike shops and new dealerships,

Pop stars who traded on the biker image

and the slight hypocrisy of enjoying wet t-shirt shows at bike rallies while being against their own girlfriends taking part.

Looking back at the strip in that first issue I bought (Gruf #27), Rich King’s knowledge of the biker landscape is all there to see, from Sheepshaggers MCC, with their three members who bring bike parts for Trace’s new bike, to the Warrior Kings MC in East Anglia who follow Scuzz on his BSA Gold Star. The bikes are well drawn and the personality of every character is captured.

This attention to detail, and love of the bike scene, continued in Nob the Destroyer, the strip Rich King started in AWoL after leaving Back Street Heroes.

Gruf and the Dumpation Bikers are trapped in a shed a million years in the future. Back in the past, in some sort of time travel exchange Nob the Destroyer and P’Toke find themselves in Dumpation, taken under the wing of Smeg, one of the local bikers.

The fish out of water setup gives loads of opportunity for storylines, including Nob trying to find a better way to inflate motorbike tyres (pouring golden syrup into them from a teapot), invading a castle tourist attraction, going to their first big biker show, and riding through the urban wasteland that is downtown Dumpation.

In one of my favourite strips from this run, the Dumpation bikers notice kids sat bored on street corners. Rather than berating them, they get together four road legal learner bikes, grab the kids and teach them to ride. The last two panels are perfection, summing up how one generation takes over the mantle from the last.

Of course, it’s worth noting that Rich also draws excellent bikes, both capture the styles around at the time, and the personality of the individual machine. Motorbikes are not easy to draw and all of these are beautiful in their own right.

Gruf and Nob the Destroyer captured the subculture with affection and humour, documenting a very specific moment in time. As I sit here, no longer a thirteen year old kid discovering custom bikes for the first time, but a biker in his late forties who recognises far too much of himself and his friends in Rich King’s comics, I, for one, am grateful.

(Huge thanks to Rich King for giving me permission to use the drawings reproduced in this blog post)

Safe

Since first reading Neil Gaiman’s Sandman in the nineties, I’ve had a bit of a fascination for forgotten gods finding new roles in the world.

Recently, I wrote this about a Mesolithic god finding a new purpose. I make no secret of wanting to write stories about people who have experienced homelessness, and this is an attempt to do that. I just wish more people could find a safe place before they meet the god in the story.

Safe

When Katie died homeless the god that met her was an old god. A god of flint blades and scattered bones, neck bent from the weight of the antlers it wore. She reached out and touched the god’s face, feeling the chapped skin between the scars and knew there were more scars beneath its ragged clothing. Katie did not ask about them and knew the god would not ask about hers. 

She noticed the small bag hanging on a string around its neck, and her fingers went to the one she wore. The one containing a lighter, some cigarette papers, a note from someone long since dead, and a gifted stone, far more beautiful than the winter sky.

“What are you the god of?” She said, surprised to find she still has a voice. Her throat didn’t hurt any more, but not all the pain within had gone.

“I am the god of the homeless dead,” the god said crouching down when it talked to her, oaken legs creaking as it knelt in the dirt.

“Have you always been the god of the homeless dead?”

The god paused as if thinking, and shook its head. Several lapwings took flight from unhealed wounds.

“When you have no family,” it said. “Then found family is everything.”

Although enthralled by the god, and the softness of its voice, Katie glanced past its shattered shoulder toward the distant skyline.

“Is that where we’re going?”

The mountain shimmered in the sun, slopes covered in crystals of all colours. The god shook its head. Insects fell from its clothes and skittered out of sight.

“That place is not for you.”

“How can you tell me that? How do you know?”

All her life, people had done this to Katie. Told her, rather than listening. She had not expected it to carry on after death. The god took her hand, skin soft, despite the fissures.

“That is a place for people who were searching a long time before you lived. We have what you are looking for here. The Rock Candy Mountain is not it.”

They walked in silence through empty streets, air warm but not stifling. Katie spotted the park first, wrought iron fences rising from the ground as if grown in place. There were four entrances, all the gates removed. Inside the lawn was covered with tents. Some were shop bought, neon canvas glistening in the light, others hand made from cloth and string. People sat in front of some, warming themselves by smoking fires.

“How can you make them still sleep rough?” Katie said. “How can you not give them peace, even now?”

The god stretched out a splintered finger.

“That is their home. The home they need for the moment,” it said, a sadness in its voice. “They have spent so long outside, or found danger under roofs.”

“Can’t you make them go into houses?”

“And that would make me better? Make them better? Forcing something they’re not ready to do.”

“Of course. Why do you leave them out here?”

“Some can’t yet cope with living with other people,” the god said, and Katie nodded, remembering being forced to sleep in shelters next to people raging in their own hurt. “Others cannot yet cope with living alone, isolated by four walls from their friends and the only community they know. Some are worried they will have to give up their possessions, others they will have to give up their companions.” Katie noticed the dogs lying curled up on the grass, their owner’s hands absentmindedly stroking their fur.

“Can you not heal them?”

The god looked at the floor for a moment. Something fell from its eye and burrowed into the soil.

“They are healed, and will realise it in their own time, but until then I will keep them safe.”

Katie and the god of the homeless dead walked on in silence. After a while Katie thought of a question.

“Do I have to sleep outside?”

The god stopped and inclined its head as if trying to remember something.

“No-one has to do anything they don’t want. If you prefer sleeping outside, you can. No one will hurt you here. There are no drunks to attack you.”

“There are other dangers,” Katie said, remembering scars that could not be seen on the outside.

“No-one will attack you,” the god said, and for the first time since dying, Katie shivered at the certainty in that ancient voice.

“And if I don’t want to sleep outside?”

“Come with me.” 

Away from the park, the streets changed, lined with buildings of all types. Some were detached, others tower blocks, in between huts of timber and reeds. Katie walked up to a house and looked through the window. Inside, people of all ages sat around a large table, chatting, in the background a fire blazing in the hearth. Deep inside Katie felt an aching, an emptiness she’d sometimes filled with other things that hid beaten dogs in her veins until they gnawed holes in her flesh.

The god was standing beside her.

“I resisted for a long time, you know, Katie said “I asked my friend what it was like. He told me it was like you had a family that wanted you. A home. A warm bed. Safety. He was right. Never lasted long enough though.”

“Here, you can have those things. You don’t need a replacement.”

She looked from one house to another.

“How do I choose? How do I know what will be the right place?”

The god placed a hand on her shoulder.

“Wherever you choose will be the right place. If you want solitude, I can find that for you too,” it said.

Katie looked in at the people in the room. Someone got up from the table and walked over to the small kitchen, turning on the kettle.

“I don’t,” she said. “I don’t want to be alone.”

“Then you will find the right family here,” the god said. “For now, I ask you to come with me. One last place to show you.”

Katie nodded and when the god held out its hand she took it once more.

The building stood in the centre of its own grounds, the facade so vast, Katie had to lean back to read the words picked out in gold on the vast frieze above the door.

“You know what the place is?”

“Safe,” she said.

“Safe,” the god said, leading her up the stairs and opening the door. Katie walked in first.

Shelves ran in every direction, stacked to bursting with books. Katie walked up to a nearby stack and took off a paperback, the cover worn from handling over the years. From somewhere deeper in the library she heard snoring, and someone shuffling in their sleep. She put the book back and lifted down another, this one pristine, the cover ripped off.

“Where do these come from?”

“Lost books need somewhere to go too,” the god said. Katie turned around. The god sat behind the counter. “If you need to find me, this is where I’ll be.”

Katie took the paperback over to the god.

“No need to check it out. Just bring it back when you’re finished.”

Katie nodded. “Will I see you soon?”

“Whenever you need me,” the god said.

Katie nodded again, and walked out of the library. Outside she paused, knowing finally there was home for her, a family, the chance to make choices for herself, and she sat down on the steps and began to read.

END

Stories I Had Published in the Year That Was 2023

Hello!

2023 has been busy, both in terms of stories published and stories written. Here is a short list of my work published this year with a little summary of each piece.

Crumpled in Deadlands #31

Horror, ghosts, family, afterlife.

Dream logic doesn’t normally translate well into the written word, but Crumpled is a story inspired by a dream that broke me. I needed a way to process the imagery and writing Crumpled allowed me to do that. The Deadlands has been a dream market since they first started publishing and I’m over the moon to have my work in the latest issue. You can grab a copy here, and read the story online at The Deadlands website.

Uprooted in IZ Digital

Homelessness, technology, horror, biotech.

Anyone who knows my work will probably be familiar with my own experiences of homelessness and vulnerable housing, as well as my previous work in this area with my writing, particularly Haunt. One aspect of this is to write protagonists who are homeless as rounded, complete characters rather than stereotypes or ciphers (I talk about this in my 2020 Tor article). With Uprooted I wanted to write a story where the main character was experiencing homelessness, and while it’s not upbeat I think the main character takes control of their situation and comes across as a complete individual.

However, this is also a scifi story, set in a future where the dominant technology is based around timber, and was inspired by an article about using tree cellulose to make knives.

You can read the story online at IZ Digital.

The Heart Beats Green and Grey in Three Lobed Burning Eye #38

Folk horror, rural crime, crime families, body horror.

The Heart Beats Green and Grey was published in Three Lobed Burning Eye issue 38, back in March. The story is about a son returning to the Dales village where he grew up to look for his missing father, and might start out feeling like a crime story, but swerves into pretty solid horror territory. With The Heart Beats I wanted to write about that other side of rural life, that not everything is a cottagecore idyll, local criminal families, and the claustrophobic nature of life in these places. I guess a major inspiration was Dead Man’s Shoes, one of the finest British films ever made. You can read The Heart Beats Green and Grey online at Three Lobed Burning Eye.

Through the Ivory Gate in Great British Horror 8 Something Peculiar

Cryptids, Ghosts, Crime, Horror.

Through the Ivory Gate combines a few of my loves, including cryptids (particularly Alien Black Cats), crime stories, and Lovejoy. It is a very British story of power and exploitation, and I’m very happy it found a home in Great British Horror. You can pick up a copy at the Black Shuck Books website.

Vele Di Mar Non Vid’io in Cosmic Horror Monthly #34

Body horror, isolation, cosmic horror.

Vele Di Mar Non Vid’io is a body horror short story inspired by how the Endurance crew used lifeboats as shelter on Elephant Island. Using this as a starting point, I changed the setting and cranked up the horror (which takes some doing, because surviving under a lifeboat after a shipwreck in the antarctic sounds pretty horrifying.), to try and capture the claustrophobia of the situation. You can read Vele Di Mar Non Vid’io online at Cosmic Horror Monthly.

Ohrwurm in Not One of Us #75

Cosmic horror, addiction, music.

Ohrwurm is an example of why you should never delete your trunk stories. I first wrote Ohrwurm in 2012, and submitted it many times over the next seven years. After lots of rejections I parked it for a bit, until this year when I managed to find a home for it in Not One of Us. Ohrwurm is about how music can infect and change us.

Iridescent Screams in Three Lobed Burning Eye #40

Cosmic horror, childhood, peacocks.

Out of all the stories I had published in 2023, Iridescent Screams has the strangest origin. A good friend of mine posted a picture his daughter had made at nursery, pointing out how it looked like a Shoggoth. Someone else commented that it was a very cute picture of a peacock. Iridescent Screams is the result of playing with those two viewpoints, as well as a childhood memory of a freerange peacock that lived on the housing estate where some of my school friends lived. Although the names have been changed, the setting is taken straight from my memories of growing up in my hometown. You can read Iridescent Screams (and listen to me read it to you) at Three Lobed Burning Eye.

And here is the picture that inspired the story.

Best of Selections 2023

Two of my stories from 2022 were selected for Best of anthologies out this year. The Ercildoun Accord was selected by Paula Guran to be republished in The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy and Horror #4.

My knitting cosmic horror story, On the Hills, the Knitters, is going to be republished in the forthcoming Best Horror of the Year #15 edited by Ellen Datlow.

Patreon

I’ve also continued publishing stories each week at my Patreon. I’ve changed the format slightly and now publish a self contained flash fiction every two weeks.

On the other weeks, I’m publishing instalments of an ongoing story called The Bridge about Lily and Rowan who live in the bridge of the title (actually the spine of a long dead creature that stretches between two continents), and are making their way from the middle where they live, to the land. Lily kills demons, Rowan hunts ghosts. Together they might survive.

The Bridge is a lot lighter than some of my other work. The tone I’m going for is a slightly darker Studio Ghibli, with the feel of a webcomic.

Non Fiction

2023 has been a bit quieter on the article front. I’ve continued writing my comics review column for Fortean Times, a job that I enjoy immensely.

I’ve also been publishing my Kaffee (und Kuchen) Racer pieces here, as well as a few little posts about motorbike events in this part of Germany. I’m really enjoying getting back to this side of my writing career.

The January/ February 2024 Analog Science Fiction and Fact is now out, including my interview with Dr Rachel Armstrong. You can grab a copy at the Analog website.