36. Tom Robinson - War Baby (Panic)

Three weeks at number one from w/e 9th July 1983

At some point in the early eighties I caught a glimpse of Tom Robinson singing “Glad To Be Gay” on the television and sat dumbfounded. I was shocked not because he was gay, but because he wasn’t homosexual in a way I’d been lead to expect. I was a naive child, not even a teen, and my limited awareness came from the music press and national newspapers, who generally put either very camp and effeminate or exaggeratedly butch gay men front and centre of their coverage.

If your childhood is lived in an eighties suburban bubble without much other experience to draw from, that becomes what you think “gay” means (besides a bog-standard playground insult). Yet here was Tom Robinson, a confident but regular looking performer, singing about how proud he was to be gay without make-up or any of the other cliched stylings apparent on his person. How could he be proud if he presented himself as such? Why wasn’t he dragging up like Boy George as he must obviously want to do? So many contradictions here to which there appeared so few answers in deepest South East Essex. I chalked Mr Robinson up as yet another one of those Elvis Costello type performers who was too much of a studious riddler for me to make sense of, and went back to reading my copy of Whizzer and Chips.

Of course, in retrospect I find all this hilarious because – at the risk of heavily signposting the obvious childish errors and ironies – Tom Robinson was an absolute trailblazer for gay rights way before any of the new crop of performers had even left school. Originally discovered by Ray Davies, who briefly signed him to his Konk label in 1973, “Glad To Be Gay” was issued by the charity Campaign for Homosexual Equality (or CHE) in 1975 while Robinson was out of contract. He decided to declare his pride before punk had even emerged, never mind the more open and out aspects of New Romanticism, performing the song defiantly in front of rock audiences. To put this into context, homosexuality had only been decriminalised in the UK for eight years at that point, and seventies rock audiences (and indeed even allegedly right-on rock critics) were not always renowned for their tolerance.

"Glad To Be Gay" remains a superb anthem and portrait of an intolerant, "non-woke" period so many of my moping, sad-arsed fellow heterosexual middle-aged men and ladies would like to return to. Every line is precise and jagged, highlighting hypocrisies and societal inconsistencies so obvious they should never have existed - "Pictures of naked young women are fun/ In Titbits and Playboy, page three of The Sun/ There's no nudes in Gay News, our one magazine/ But they still find excuses to call it obscene". Those were the days, eh chaps? Still, at least we were free to drink water from hosepipes and trepan our skulls or some shit. 

There were other trailblazers besides Robinson, but few actually politicised their sexuality. For his troubles, “Glad To Be Gay” was banned from BBC radio despite containing absolutely nothing that could be deemed controversial a mere 6 or 7 years later. Other tracks of his slipped gay references under the radar and picked up radio play, and for a few years in the late seventies he scored hit singles on EMI, not least the deathless “2. 4. 6. 8. Motorway” which remains an oldies radio staple and heavily compiled anthem.

Later releases struggled, however, with even a songwriting collaboration with Elton John “Never Going To Fall In Love… (Again)” failing to chart. He was dropped by EMI, formed the rock band Sector 27 who signed to a reactivated Fontana records, scored no hit singles with them and promptly found himself completely broke, without a record contract or group and bereft of direction. He moved to Hamburg for a while acting as a musician for hire and gigging around the circuit in Germany, before having an unpleasant, alienating evening in a gay sauna which would at least partially inspire this song.

Frustrated, he spewed various stream-of-consciousness lines into a notepad, including the opening lines here “Only the very young and the very beautiful can be so aloof/ Hanging out with the boys, all swagger and poise”. Having emptied his pen of his thoughts, they sat in his notebook for an undefined period before eventually being used to fill “War Baby”, each line a complaint, a charge, or a recently excavated nugget from his anxious belly, each one not necessarily connected to the one before - “Corresponding disasters every night on the TV/ Sickening reality keeps gripping me in its guts” sits alongside “I don't wanna batter you to your feet and knees and elbows/ When I'm kneeling by the candle at the foot of my own bed” as personal angst jars and rattles against the universal.

You can speculate all you want about what “War Baby” is actually about – Tom Robinson has never helped us in this respect, and the safest conclusion to draw is that the chaotic state of life in the early eighties and his own personal life coalesced to create a frustrated outburst on 45. While the song itself is almost as anthemic as “Motorway”, the lyrical scansion is almost as loose as a Crass record, some lines stumbling hither and tither, stretching to try and fit the melody; I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find out that many of the lines weren’t radically adapted from his notes. Misgivings topple into panic then into grievance and fear before Robinson sings the chorus’s final hook of “I’m scared, so scared, whatever it is you keep putting me through”.

So far, so unbelievably uncommercial, but “War Baby” has major features on its side. The first is the gentle, rocking melody and seductive sax – two things much beloved in the early eighties – but the aforementioned anthemic chorus acts as a glorious, luminous lighthouse beam, spinning around and hitting the listener amidst the choppy scramble of the lyrics. There, in the middle of it all, is the message we could all cling on to. 
There’s also the small matter of 1983 not being an anxiety free period for the rest of us either. If we couldn’t relate to Robinson’s insecurities and relationship traumas (though I’ll bet plenty of people probably could) we could surely relate to him watching the news with terror while his friends unconvincingly shrugged it all off with laughs and japes. Many listeners probably only heard the chorus clearly and put their own spin on it, hearing “War Baby… I’m scared” and projecting their own fears and anxieties on to his spiky and smudged inkwork.

Enough people were able to relate (or misunderstand) to push the single to number 6 in the national charts, one position beneath the point “2. 4. 6. 8. Motorway” managed to reach, and all achieved through Robinson’s own vanity label Panic. He was faced with the irony of the fact that a single both written during and about a period of hardship and confusion had resuscitated his career.

“War Baby” is a surprisingly elegant, steady record overall – for some reason it always sounds faster and more anguished in my mind than it actually is on vinyl - but it’s utterly riddled with the nuclear age blues. Tom Robinson’s temporary exile may have been frustrating, but it resulted in a refreshed artistic purpose which saw him both in the national top ten and voted to number 50 by John Peel listeners for his 1983 Festive Fifty. 

New Entries Elsewhere In The Chart

Week One

23. The Danse Society - Clock (Society)

Peak position: 14

Their debut 1981 single reemerges for a final hurrah. Beginning with an almost Joboxers-esque cry of “Heurgh!”, “Clock” then deviates into a track which sounds like Leigh Bowery having an attack of Chronophobia. The steady, ticking rhythm is punctuated by guitar howls and funky breaks, and it’s an eerie thing indeed, if occasionally a little too melodramatic for its own good.




24. The Sisters Of Mercy - The Reptile House EP (Merciful Release)

Peak position: 24

A rather confusing new entry here, as in previous weeks this five-track EP (plus brief reprise) was confined to the album chart – correctly, I’d argue, as besides containing more than four tracks it’s also more than 25 minutes long.

It would be boring to get caught up in a “When is an EP not an EP?” debate, though, so let’s not. “The Reptile House” is the Sisters sluggishly crawling through cavernous ideas, reverb dials set to the max and bpms to the floor. If you’ve spent most of your time listening to their high budget work, it’s occasionally shocking to hear them reduced to their bare bones, Eldritch trying to impose drama on top of a basic drum machine pattern. You can almost smell the damp in the cheap recording studio walls, but the ideas were already in place.




Week Two

20. Marc Bolan – Think Zinc (Ram)

Peak position: 11

Bolan’s vaults continued to be raided. “Think Zinc” was released as a single in Germany in 1974 (perhaps Tom Robinson picked up a copy while he was over there) but had to wait until 1983 for its moment here, and it’s an interesting 45 where Bolan’s direction feels at its most confused. He buzzes and thumps like a knackered hornet while Gloria Jones’s insistent vocals seem to be screaming for everyone to vacate the room and head towards the nightclub down the road.




23. The Adverts - Gary Gilmore's Eyes (Bright)

Peak position: 9

It’s not clear why this warranted a reissue only six years after its last time round the block, but it’s possible the nostalgia cycle for prime punk hits emerged quicker than expected. Whatever the motive, it wasn’t unwise – the single briefly bobbed up into the National Top 100 at number 91, outperforming most of the other records in this week’s indie charts.

In its defence, the song also feels perfectly at home alongside all the other post-punk paranoia and terror in a way that Sham 69 or The Buzzcocks probably wouldn’t.




27. Rose of Victory - Suffragette City (No Future)

Peak position: 25

The somewhat unexpected work of Nidge Miller and Neil McLennan, ex-members of Blitz who scored two indie number ones we’ve covered elsewhere in this blog. Following their departure, this Bowie-covering single was the only other work of theirs to see the light of day in the eighties, taking the rocking “Suffragette City” and giving it an Oi stomp rather than a glam backbeat (though only a musicologist could probably argue the difference between the two).

It’s all approached from a position of total respect, and that’s possibly the problem; it’s a cover that’s so honest and fawning that there’s really no point to its existence. The sound of the snake’s head of Oi finally devouring its Glam Rock tail.




29. Danse Society – Woman’s Own (Society)

Peak position: 28


Week Three


13. Death Cult – Death Cult EP (Situation Two)

Peak position: 4

Ian Astbury wasted no time in recruiting new cohorts following the demise of Southern Death Cult, and these were the first fruits. Already the new set-up sounded more commercial than their predecessors, eschewing some of the panoramic goth elements for a more Morrison inspired journey.

In common with his debut release, though, whatever is going on beneath or around him, Astbury’s voice remains the loud clarion call – he’s out front pointing the way ahead while the band drag their heavy bags and cases over rocks and debris behind him.




19. The Danse Society - We're So Happy (Society)

Peak position: 19

Two Peel Session tracks (“We’re So Happy” and “Woman’s Own”) completed with “Belief” on the flipside, this saw the so-called Danse Society milking their own back catalogue before signing to Arista Records. The lead track in particular benefits from the BBC Studios and Dale Griffin’s gentle guiding hand, making them sound gigantic where some of their previous self-financed releases sounded claustrophobic.




27. !Action Pact! - London Bouncers (Fall Out)

Peak position: 17

Within which Action Pact sing about many a terrible night out ruined by the swaggering pricks in padded jackets. #NotAllBouncers, obviously, but whenever you saw a stunted, grimacing manbaby scanning a club for possible “troublemakers”, it was astonishing how often they picked on the slightly tipsy 18 year old wimp who was doing nothing more than move a bit clumsily, as opposed to the drug dealer near the toilets who couldn’t have been more obviously a pusher unless he had “Speed or Hash, My Man?” tattooed on his billboard sized brow.

Action Pact take a unsurprisingly aggressive approach to sneering at the big boys, regularly snarling “This is for you!” and presumably offering London crowds a bit of light relief when they played live. The opinions of the bouncers of that era are not recorded.

Interestingly, at the time of writing those geniuses at Google – regular pains in the arse themselves – have assigned the lyrics to “Nights In White Satin” to this track and credited the group with penning it. News to the PRS, I would think.

The full charts are available at the UKMix Forums

Number One in the Official Charts

Rod Stewart: "Baby Jane" (Warner Bros.)

Paul Young: "Wherever I Lay My Hat (That's My Home)" (CBS)