Heart of a Punk Soul of a Rasta

Above is an article snipped from FILM & FILMING issue MAY 1980. This is all the blurb you're going to get about the BABYLON here; after all the name of this article is BABYLON and I.

After seeing Dennis Bovell last month I went home and decided to dig out my copy of Babylon (which Bovell did the soundtrack for) just to see what it looked like now. After a good deal of rummaging in the loft I finally found a tape to tape copy of the film I'd made whilst renting it from Bradmore Video Shop, back when the world was still young.

[Point of order: Just to remind you tape to tape Ed is the same hypocritical old bastard who thinks illegal downloading from the internet should be punishable by death - John].

Anyway I shoved the 13 kilo early eighties VHS video into the machine and after fiddling with the tracking, and then putting a cleaning tape in and fiddling with the tracking some more, the soundtrack was still booooooooooooooooming mentally, so mentally in fact that it rendered viewing impossible. I took immediate steps and bought a copy of Babylon on DVD.

When the film came out I didn't get to see it in the cinema, (I don't think it got a screening in Wolves but I could be wrong), and anyway 1980 wasn't a great time for going to see stuff at the cinema it was a time for mainly porno flicks, the X, the double X and the triple X. There was no Art House cinemas if you wanted to see anything else at the Gaumont or the ABC you had to inhabit a world of sticky seats and rank auditoriums heavy with the stench of bodily fluids. So for me Babylon was a "video" thing; hired and taped (for further personal viewing) around the same time as Quadrophenia, Rude Boy, Breaking Glass, Jubilee and Scum. And by the time it came to a video shop near me it must have been around '82, I guess.

By this time (in Wolverhampton anyway) the heat of mindless organised racist rabble rousing was, whilst not dead, certainly well past its sell by date. Enoch Powell who'd been an MP in Wolves had taken his "Rivers of Blood" speech and pissed off way back in '74. The National Front nondescripts who'd marched in Wolves in '78 had been dismissed by the surge in support here for the ANL and by '82 the NF had melted away leaving only the usual gang of dickheads. Also by '82 St Paul's and Toxteth and Brixton had been and gone and the SUS law was, whilst not abandoned, definitely under greater scrutiny. So by the time I got to see Babylon it certainly wasn't a portent of things to come, in many ways it was already a bit of a historical piece, a snap shot of a time passed. Seeing Babylon for the first time as historical fact rather than a transitory youth vox pop probably gave it a greater dollop of gravitas; a gravitas that has somehow remained intact.

So how has Babylon kept its credibility whilst other films of the time now look a bit creaky? Simple (ish), in the honest performances of the actors and the natural performances of the non actors; there is a modicum of sympathy yes, but basically Babylon is all about realism. Slosh a load of truth around in the script wise, boot out anything mawkish and fake and bingo! With Chris Menges as cinematograper (who was of course no stranger to realism having worked with Mr realism himself Ken Loach either side of shooting Babylon) and Franco Rosso as Director (and ostensibly film maker - who had amongst other things written an episode of Crown Court, which was "TV Realism Central" in the 70's) Babylon was always going to be REALISM writ large.

The scene that I had stuck in my mind, prior to watching the film again was when the Karl Howman ("Oh you've done all that scrubbing") character, Ronnie, gets a Glasgow kiss from Beefy in the gangs lock up; which I suppose is the pivotal moment of the film. But being a simple sod, and since my taste in films is more Tarkovskian than anything else, I do like a strong f**cking image, and in Babylon the strongest image for me comes when Brinsley Forde's character Blue is on his way to the final sound-system clash. He glides up the underground escalator passed an advert for Burtons or Farrah (?) showing the black Toxteth boxer John Conteh wearing the tightest of '70's slacks and a jacket tossed nonchalantly over his shoulder. The contrast between the immaculately attired Conteh and Blue with his dreads and red gold and green track suit (which is reflected in the ad) could not be any starker; an image that speaks volumes.

In amongst the DVD's extras there is a Q&A at the BFI, which is a must see in itself. For me the highlights are Brinsley Forde evading a direct question regarding his age and writer Martin Stellman saying Toyah starred in Breaking Glass ahhhhhhhhhhhhh, it was Hazel O'Connor!

At the end of the day there has never been a British film quite like Babylon, and so it remains "in aspic", the "one and only", the "sole exhibit of its kind", but uniqueness and novelty aside Babylon has withstood the test of time and remains simply a damn good film. BUY IT



Epilogue:
Now when I first saw child actor Brinsley of "Here Come The Double Deckers" fame in Babylon it wasn't a great shock to me. No, cos for me the big shock had come some years earlier when the young Brinsley turned up playing rhythm guitar for Burning Spear in 1977 - eh how did that happen, surely he should have still been at school?

Anyway as I've said the significance of the Babylon film was slightly lost on me, however personally the significance of "Here Come The Double Deckers" cannot be overstated. Now I hate the sort of program that has proliferated over the last few years on which people who were certainly not even born 40 years ago talk about programmes that were last shown 40 years ago. I've not seen "Here Come The Double Deckers" since I was a kid and I'm certainly not going to ruin my memories of it by taking a peek at it now. All I can remember about it is that at the age of seven I really enjoyed it; Melvin Hayes was in it, there was canned laughter, high jinks and cheeky little Brinsley. So why was it significant? Well as I said I was seven and at Junior School in Wolverhampton; a Junior School with no black or Asian children whatsoever. Mid term though this all changed when a boy called John Gale came to our School. Now the exception doesn't exist on a playing field amid the melee of shoulder fights and the such like, but in the classroom things were different. When he first came to the class no one wanted to sit next to John, wary or ignorant I don't know, but that wasn't a problem for me. I'd had no contact with Black or Asian kids being dragged up in middle class suburbia but I had seen Brinsley on the Double Deckers and that was good enough for me - 40 years on John Gale is the only name I can remember from my junior school class, and that is all I've got to say really, "Here Come The Double Deckers" ground breaking, well for me anyway.