Memories of The Adverts

Wednesday May 5, 2010

It was the summer of 1977 and, alongside lead singer Tim 'TV' Smith - who has been her partner for more than 34 years - Gaye Advert had hit the charts with one of the most enduring anthems of the era, Gary Gilmore's Eyes.

The manner of her appearance on Top of the Pops, a full year before the safetypinned icon Siouxsie Sioux made it big, says a lot about this reluctant star, acclaimed as the first female punk rocker.

Any other punk band boasting a female bass guitarist would surely have placed her at the front for the cameras, and - more importantly - the watching army of record-buying teenage boys.

But while Tim hogs the limelight, belting out his superb self-penned lyrics, Gaye hides at the back, as if she's hoping no one will notice her.

While the guitarist and drummer cockily pose and posture, Gaye nervously glances away if she spots the camera looking at her, and seems to keep her heavily made-up eyes fixed on the floor.

She also regularly checks her fingering on the guitar fret, suggesting that she had only recently learnt to play bass.

"Tim taught me to play it when we lived down in Devon," she confirmed. Gaye and Tim had come up to the bright lights of London in 1976 from the picturesque but sleepy north Devon town of Bideford, where Gaye had already marked herself out as a rebellious teenager by doing a photoshoot for a top-shelf magazine in a series of saucy poses.

They moved into a flat in Agate Road, Hammersmith Grove, and embraced the vibrant west London punk scene.

"I went to loads of places like the Palais, the Kensington, the Greyhound, the Nashville and the Red Cow," recalled Gaye.

She and Tim had formed a band, the Adverts. "Tim wrote and was the driving force; he started it," she said.

In keeping with early punk convention they recruited a couple of other musicians, and everyone changed their names.

Tim Smith became TV Smith, Gaye Balsden (as she had been back in the West Country) became Gaye Advert, guitarist Howard Boak became Howard Pickup and drummer Laurie Muscat became Laurie Driver (think about it).

By 1977 they were a regular act at the Roxy in Covent Garden. After signing for Stiff Records, they pushed out their debut single, One Chord Wonders, at Easter, and on August 19 released the song that made them, Gary Gilmore's Eyes.

An astute and witty writer, Tim Smith had scribbled out the lyrics to the song earlier in the year after reading about the execution in January of
36-year-old Texan Gary Gilmore.

Gilmore was killed by firing squad for two cold-blooded murders committed in Utah, but there was a twist to the tale.

He had requested that his eyes be used for transplants, and within hours of the execution two people had received his corneas.

Tim was intrigued, as was the writer Norman Mailer, who won a Pulitzer prize for his book about Gilmore, The Executioner's Song.

The lyrics of Gary Gilmore's Eyes imagine how the recipient of the murderer's after-death gift might feel on discovering the identity of the donor.

"Tim wrote topical songs and it caught everyone's imagination," said Gaye. "He read the story and it just led him to speculate about what might happen."

The song ends with one of the greatest punk rock couplets of all: "Gary don't need his eyes to see, Gary and his eyes have parted company."

In August the Adverts got their big break, appearing on Top of the Pops a couple of days before Gaye's 21st birthday.

The following month the single reached its highest position, no18. Six months later, the band released an album (Crossing The Red Sea With The Adverts), but within two years the group had split up.

For the Adverts' final gig in the autumn of 1979, only Tim Smith remained of the original foursome.

Looking back nearly 30 years, I wondered how Gaye now felt about her punk past. What are her memories of the London audiences?

"Well, it was pretty horrible being spat at. I didn't like it at all," she said. "I didn't cope with that as well as a lot of people seemed to. I'd just shelter behind the PA and keep my mouth shut."

Post-Adverts, while Tim pursued a solo career in music, Gaye joined the council.

"I was a home care manager in Hammersmith & Fulham for 17 years, through the 1990s and right up to two years ago," she said. "I started doing office jobs. Then I worked on the elderly visiting scheme. There was only one social worker there when I joined."

"Currently I'm doing arts stuff; curating a show. I do collages," she said. At the end of last year she took part in the RARE exhibition (it stands for Rock And Roll Expressionists) with artist Tom Spencer, who does tattoo-style stained glass.

Next up is a show which Gaye (today less flamboyantly known as Gaye Black) is helping organise in August at the Signal Gallery in Curtain Road, Hoxton, east London, featuring work by ex-Sex Pistol Glen Matlock and fellow female punk star Poly Styrene.

These days Gaye, who now lives with Tim in Stamford Brook, finds it strange to look back to those far-off days when she strutted her stuff on stage.

"I don't do any music," she said. "I like it, and I go and see it, and, yes, I've got fond memories of those days, and Tim's still gigging. But these days I never pick up a guitar. Well, only for fun."