United Skins: My (non-) interview with Tony of Control Zone

Control Zone’s ‘Bloody Bouncers’ is certainly one of the best tracks off the Last Resort shop’s notorious United Skins compliation of 1982. The band hailed from Omagh, a northern Irish town of some 20,000 souls, and had originally mailed a four-song demo to the Last Resort shop’s Micky French. French sent the band an advance payment to cut a few tracks for United Skins.

But then, things didn’t quite go as expected: ‘Left-Right March’, which Control Zone had written about the H-Block campaign of Irish Republican prisoners, was left off the album, and they weren’t too happy with the artwork either. Next up, French offered them to tour the UK alongside other featured artists such as Skrewdriver, who in the same month as United Skins was released played their infamous ‘coming out’ gig at the 100 Club. Control Zone declined the offer… Although they marched on with a different vocalist and in a new musical direction (a kind of pop/rock with keyboards and a brass section) for another year, the vinyl world never heard from Control Zone again.

Musically, the Control Zone tracks off United Skins aren’t your typical 4-Skins style Oi with gruffy vocals and brickwall guitars. They had started out as a punk band in 1978, and these origins were still quite pronounced in 1982 – I’d say their sound could be described as somewhere halfway between the Buzzcocks’ Spiral Scratch and Strength Thru Oi! Perhaps it made sense that vocalist Tony McGartland (aka ‘Ernie Badness’) later went on to write the biography Buzzcocks: The Complete History (1995). To my ears, that influence is also audible in earlier demo material, such as this:

Tony had joined the band in 1979, and by 1980 their set list included titles such as ‘I Wish I Had You Back Again’ and ‘She’s Kissing Him’. Around the same time, members of northern Irish punk bands like The Outcasts had begun to sport skinhead styles, and some time in 1981 Control Zone became a full-blown skin combo. In July, pictures of the band playing on the steps of the Omagh Court House were taken:

I was chuffed when I managed to track down Tony and he agreed to be interviewed. Not being a huge fan of punk zine-style ‘questionnaires’, especially when it comes to historical interviews, a real live conversation on Skype would have been my preference – but he said doing it in writing was easier for him. Which is when I made the big mistake of sending him a whopping 37 questions… This, I guess, left him literally speechless: I didn’t hear back from Tony after that, and a couple of follow-up messages remained unanswered too.

Then, after a month – I had given up and wished him a nice life by then – he unexpectedly wrote back. But instead of tackling my 37-question catalogue, he unceremoniously decided to write all he was prepared to say about Control Zone in four paragraphs. So here it is:

“This is brief.

I joined Control Zone in March 1979 and we played various local gigs as well as support gigs for Rudi, Outcasts etc. I was involved with the BBC and we were asked to record material for some of their youth TV programmes in 1980. Soon after we recorded a demo featuring four tracks ‘Bloody Bouncers’, ‘Borstal’, ‘Johnny Johnny’ and ‘Left Right March’.

I sent a copy to Micky French at the Last Resort because I liked skinhead fashion and culture. I had been reading skinhead books since the 1970s. I was now enjoying the work of skinhead artist Mike Furbanks. Micky French was playing the Control Zone demo in his shop in East London and the skinheads who visited the shop were asking Micky who the band was. He thought if his customers liked the sound, he should release it.

He asked us to book a studio and he selected three tracks ‘Bloody Bouncers’, ‘Johnny Johnny’ and ‘Left Right March’. We recorded all three tracks in Slane Studios, Dublin and they were produced on the same desk as Roxy Music mixed their debut album. We recorded all three on the day and l sent the completed master tapes to London.

Micky did not use ‘Left Right March’ and when the album was released with the Union flag we told him we had nothing to do with the label any longer. He also offered us the chance to tour the UK but we refused. I left the band soon after and the band moved in a different musical direction before the split in 1983”.

I asked: Is there any chance of hearing the demo with the four songs?

He replied: “I’m sorry, nobody has them, but Spit Records have some live and demos”.

And alas, we’ll probably never get to hear the United Skins outtake ‘Left-Right March’ either – this one, too, appears to have been lost in the vaults of recording history.

That’s all, folks. Maybe someone else will manage to extract a full Control Zone interview from Tony in the future, but here’s my advice: unless you’re going to speak to someone in person, don’t prepare 37 questions for them…

Matt Crombieboy

Photos 1, 3 and 5 taken from the Spit Records website

Matt Crombieboy