Phil Jones interview transcripts
early years
"My name is Phil Jones and I live in Cantrill Farm. I was born in Kirkdale in a place called Macbeth Street, actually born in the parlour in Macbeth Street. Lived there 13 years, it was just prior to what they called the slum clearances, so it was an old slum house. The majority of the area were getting moved out to Everton. Our back yard wall fell over, just literally collapsed one night and took the toilet with it, so we got moved out. We were the first to get moved out, so we got slung up here to Cantrill Farm where there was already a little satellite town built ready.
We were a single parent family which was dead unusual at the time. I won't go massively into it but me dad was basically locked up. He was a violent schizophrenic alcoholic, and basically he was locked up long term, that's all I can remember. He was away and he ended up being locked in a mental institution. But again it wasn't too tough I've got 2 sisters, 2 older sisters, they're 2 years older and 3 years. They were big, big bullies man, they were into fightin'! They were into fightin' more than me (laughs) but it was all right though. They actually looked after me if you think about it now like.
Nice childhood but we were very poor as most people are. I mean friends of mine up here now still can't believe when you talk about we had a tin bath that you'd have to fill in the kitchen and stuff. I mean people don't think anyone alive that actually really happened. But we had a tin bath that you had to fill a washing machine up first and then transfer the water from the washing machine to the bath, an outside toilet as I say and stuff like that. When you look back, I suppose it was rough but it didn't seem it at the time, it seemed quite nice."
cantrill farm
"I wasn't particularly enamoured with Cantrill Farm, it was a strange thing to come from a real inner city area and to move up to somewhere like this, which even still now it's still the same. I mean we are surrounded by lots of green.
At that point I wouldn't have regarded myself as dead streetwise or nothin' but it was still dead odd comin' to an area where the first 2 lads that knocked for me to say "do you wanna come and hang out with us?" type of thing, like - wanted to play bike tick! And the next other people I sort of met, they were always goin' on about eggin' and stuff. Goin' the woods and lookin' for eggs, rare eggs and they were dead enthusiastic about it. And building dens and stuff in the woods and that there again I just thought it was totally alien. There was a lot of farms around and everyone was just constantly goin' hare coursing, hunting for hares, they all had whippets and little terriers, they were always goin' out gettin' hares and rabbits and stuff. It was just like, where am I livin'!?
At school I'd got into punk, I went to school in town, in St Nicholas' right by the Bullring there, which was a bit of a tough one. But because we were in town we got into Eric's and stuff like that at a really young age. So we'd go to the Eric's matinees and stuff like that but again that led to me dressin' a bit weirder - I wasn't a full-on punk - but I'd be dressin' differently than, like, certainly the lads up here would be in Cantrill Farm. The thing I remember is, I sort of got into mod then, it'd be about 1979, through The Jam. And I remember a couple of my mates were round at my mum's house in Steers Croft and there was a knock on the door and a gang of the local lads were knockin' outside. And they were just goin' "youse mods?" and we're "yeah, yeah", "Well we're rockers come on we want you a fight" and all that. But we went outside, the 3 of us, and legged about sort of 10 or 15 of them. I think I caught a couple of them, but anyway it led to a blossoming friendship. That got you your respect then and all that like, so I knocked round with the local sort of scallies then. So yeah, once that happened, then things changed, then I sort of started liking it then.
It's like a little mini Kirkby, it's only a small place, relatively like. It's not a massive satellite town but the people up here, even now they're still very insular. They don't travel well, they don't go out of the estate, you'll never find them. We were different, and again it was my influence there probably, I dragged them to gigs in town and they would carry on, it was like they were on holiday. They were just acting like lunatics 'cos they were in this new environment and all that like. But they soon got into it you know what I mean, and they soon had a little reputation in town of being this little gang of nuts who go to gigs and cause a bit of trouble here and there and all that but they loved it in the end."
career opportunities
"Not much emphasis was placed on academia at all at school, oddly enough. I went to school in town in St Nicholas' right by the Bullring, so you got off the bus in London Road and walked through the Bullring. Got shot at nearly every morning with pellet guns every time - every single morning someone'd be shootin' at you.
A lot of the actual pupils where from the Bullring who went to the school, they were a tough old bunch it was a rough school to be honest, teachers were always gettin' attacked. It was the only school I know of that the pupils would go on strike, regular every week. We'd just refuse. It'd be playtime we'd go out and then the older boys would come up to you and go, "Right you'se aren't goin' back in, and when the bell goes, you stay on the playground". So they'd just go to the teacher and go "Right we're on strike, we're not goin' in", and the teachers'd be, " get in school!", and we'd all go, "No". And we'd literally stay in the playground the whole afternoon, "We're on strike" and everyone would be marching round "We're on strike". And I remember, at least twice I can remember a particular teacher trying to intervene and break people up and gettin' knocked out. But yeah, it was a tough school but it was a good laugh as well.
I've now since discovered, by the way, I'm dyslexic as well, although I didn't know that at the time. I'd stay off school quite a lot and bunk school and just go up to New Brighton on the ferry and stuff like that. So I stayed off school quite a lot. So I didn't really get any good education at all.
I can remember when I went to see my careers office in the fifth year, and he just literally would wheel you in and wheel you out. And he just brought me in, and he said, "What would you like to be?" you know, sort of thing. And at that time I probably would have struggled to answer anyway, but the point was he didn't even let you answer, and he went, "And before you answer, you're not goin' to be a doctor, you're not goin' to be blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, what do you want to be? A labourer, a bricklayer or a carpenter or a plasterer?" I think he mentioned them and I went "Oh I don't know", "Well I'm puttin' you down as a brickie then," ticked the box and he said "Right I'll send you some information about bricklaying". But I didn't ever want to be a bricklayer, that was far from me ambition! I think later on I had ambition to bein' a journalist, but again, I was too lazy, and again, it was maybe a symptom of my dyslexia, but I didn't associate that at the time. I was never the type that would ever think of goin' to university or somethin' like that. Again, when I think back now my dyslexia played probably a bigger part than I ever imagined and I just used to think I was stupid to be honest."
eric's
"It was only through gettin' sent to school in the inner city, and then meetin' people, I remember the first lad who was into punk and stuff. Again he wasn't, you know, he didn't dress punk or nothin'. So he was writin' all slogans on his books, 'hate and war', which I thought was hilarious and stuff like. But eventually though he'd sit down and go "now you've gotta listen to this band", you know? He said "I know it sounds a bit sloganeering but listen to this band" and all that, so he got us into it. He put us onto Eric's and all that, and we started goin' to Eric's then.
Again 'cos I was only sort of 14, 15, I was only able to go to the matinees at first, so only selected bands did matinees, not every band would do a matinee. The Clash didn't do a matinee for example, they were supposed to, but didn't do it. Stiff Little Fingers were one of the earliest ones. Gang of Four I've seen an awful lot of times, loved the Gang of Four, became really friendly with them. They'd get us into every gig, literally, they knew us by name. We'd get down there and they'd get us into the night time gig. So they were the first band that got us in, take us to the pub, The Grapes, and all that and then they got us into goin' to the night time ones.
They all looked after us like they were mums and dads and all that, teach us little bits of songs. Again it was all an education, you met your first girls there, you took your first drugs there and stuff like that, and again it was nothin' heavy. No one was into heroin or nothin', it'd only be speed and, well mainly speed yeh really and a bit of pot and stuff.
I think the coolest thing about Eric's was we all got into reggae and stuff which was like dead, dead unusual. Liverpool during the 80s, probably late 70s and early 80s was quite renowned for being quite a racist place. A lot of my friends were out and out racists to be honest. But we got into reggae big time through all the pot and that and we knocked round with a big crew round there. They'd come on a Monday night to Eric's and all that, and again, I think it was a reggae night actually where I met my mate Tony, who I didn't know at the time, but I just recognised him from the match - the Liverpool games and all that, and we just got talking and then all of a sudden it became a whole new thing then it opened a whole new sort of chapter."
the end
"Well, on the back of 'Time for Action' and then sort of gettin' in with that circle of friends as I say, drinkin' in the 'Scarlet's Bar', 'Hoolihans', I met Peter Hooton. At the time Peter was a youth worker and he said, "I'm interested in writing a fanzine about Liverpool and it will be about music, and you've done that 'Time for Action' thing", he said, "But it'll also be about football and all that", so that concept was his.
I think we started in '81, it was the year of the riots, the Toxteth riots, and riots up here as well in Cantrill Farm. So we were just mootin' names round, things like even Ghost Town was mentioned 'cos it's so apt for the time, that song. But anyway we ended up with 'The End', actually it was a sayin' in them days, 'the end', it meant it was crap, something was crap, "oh that's the end that".
We didn't really know what we were gonna do, we didn't know it was gonna become like a cult thing. We just literally said 'Right, we'll write about anything, if you go to a gig write about it, if you go to the match write about it, if you go to town an somethin' happens that's interesting or funny, write about it'. I think, in the early days, I was the music person so anything that was sent to us or any gigs, I'd write the reviews of the gigs, or review any tapes it would have been in them days. We'd write reviews of local pubs and clubs and all that, Scarlet's, Rigby's, Hoolihans, give them little silly names like Hooligans instead of Hoolihans and all that. But again, somethin' just clicked and that football crowd of the 80s, that Liverpool and Everton crowd I will say, just got onto it right from the start almost. It just (clicks fingers) clicked on like that.
All the older generations, all the fellas from much older than us, have used the term scally, and called robbers scallies for example, and we just latched onto that. We used it, but we didn't invent the phrase. But I think the difference is we called that movement 'Scally'. Essentially it's the same thing, you know, it's about lads who go the match and wear a certain type of clothes and all that like, and yeah. I sort of cringe about some aspects of it all like, but at the time it did feel unique and it was... well it was unique, you know, this gang of people around Liverpool decided to dress in this really odd manner.
We'd sell it at the ground, we'd go round the pubs, the different pubs around both grounds before a home game and just sell it to the locals and all that. Then that would be our beer money, we'd always have a little pot that paid for the next 'End' but basically it just got us our beer money and our entry into the grounds as well. When it kicked in properly you're talkin' about 3000 per issue, that's it though, no never really rose above that. I think maybe there was one where we interviewed Alan Bleasedale and it was around the time when the 'Boys from the Blackstuff' was at its height and we put 'Yozza' on the front and that maybe doubled the sales.
I wrote to John Peel at a very early stage, and again he just absolutely loved it from the minute he set eyes on it and he bigged it up on his programme. Yeah literally, every single month he would rave and rave about it to the point were he even got us on a television show at the time called 'Oxford Road Show' and interviewed us on that, so again sales'd pick up then when people'd see that. But word of mouth, again, I mean it'd be a match thing 'cos we'd sell it to the away fans as well, we wouldn't just sell it to the home fans. Wherever, whoever we come across we'd sell it to . Days like cup final days you know, we'd make a fortune then like, I can remember makin' Derek Hatton buy two (laughs), "I've already got one" "Well buy another one!" "
Hillsborough
"Well, I didn't go to Hillsborough. I wasn't one of the ones who'd go to a game without a ticket like a lot of my friends would, if I didn't get a ticket I wouldn't go. But it affected me - it did affect me massively. I mean, I think it's a strange one, I don't like to sort of say it 'cos you feel like you're takin' away from the people who were actually involved, but I think I actually sort of suffered with depression shortly after that. I have been treated with depression and stuff.
That day when it happened I was sittin' in my house, my mum's house it was at that point, with my mate upstairs and we were listenin' to it on the radio. The reports were comin' through about fans on the pitch, that's all it was sayin' at the time, there was no hint of a crush or nothin'. The telly was on in the room and we could see quite clearly it wasn't a pitch invasion as in a violent pitch invasion, it was people tryin' to drag people out and you could see right from the start what was goin' on, but almost immediately I started making like a mental list in my mind then of people I knew - it was between 200 and 300.
Words can't describe how bad that day was. I was ringing round as many people as I could "Have you heard from this?", so I was ringing their parents and they'd go "Yeah, he's rang he's okay", or whatever, you know. It got to about 11 o'clock when the final person that we were tryin' to contact we made contact with, which was Dosher. But by that point there was about 10 people that come round who'd been the game as well and come round to my house to tell me what was goin' on and all that.
We all just sort of sat and drank and talked about it, it didn't really hit home. Still we all got up the next mornin' to go down the cathedral - I don't even know why we knew we would do that. We just sort of got up and we were at the bus stop and there was people doin' the same thing. We all just congregated outside the cathedral, everyone was in shock. I mean people didn't - people weren't speakin', there was thousands of people just walkin' round just not speakin', it was weird.
Yeah, it just affected me massively, it just made me re-evaluate everything. As I say up until that point, not only had we thought nothin' about goin' a match and bein' violent and seein' violence and stuff. At the time you remember all the Munich '58 type songs or even worse would be like the songs, like about the Woolworths fire in Manchester and all that. The sickest chants you could ever imagine, it made me just feel ashamed a bit to be honest and then I just felt foolish then after this Hillsborough thing.
It just changed me whole perspective about everything and it just made me think, 'Nah, I don't want no part of this'. It definitely affected me in a massive, massive way. I became very introverted, it became a really weird time. I think I got involved in drink and drugs more, I didn't go to town anymore, I didn't go to certain gigs and stuff and I didn't see people that, you know, I regarded as absolute best friends. I just stopped, I just dropped them all like a brick to be honest.
I don't know, I think it was an accumulation of feeling disillusioned with The End, the unemployment thing in the 80s and not havin' no dosh, the Hillsborough thing and many things. And drink and drugs obviously don't help with anything like depression either, so it wasn't a great time to be honest then around that time."
places i remember
"I get a hankering for Kirkdale and I've drove through Kirkdale quite a few times. If I go to places like Costco on the Dock Road, instead of comin' home the normal way I'll drive down the Dock Road and that eventually leads you to Kirkdale by the docks there and the train station and Bank Hall Station and all that like.
I've never thought of it bein' my favourite area but I suppose it is to be honest. I do get very rose-tinted memories about Kirkdale and King's Park and stuff like that - but, like for example Macbeth Street isn't there - my street isn't there. There is a Macbeth Street, but it's not the same street, it's different houses and all that like.
The bottom of Macbeth Street was the train line, so it was fenced off then you'd have to climb over a bridge then to go down to St John's Road and then from St John's Road you could literally walk down to the docks, or even from Balliol Road. You can see tankers goin' past can't yeh?
I love that. I'd love to live on, like, the street where Bread was filmed and see the Mersey. My mate's just bought a house just round the corner from there and she can get up and see the Mersey there, so I do get nostalgic about the Mersey and big tankers. I forget how wistful I get about that, I don't even know why, 'cos I've got no history with the docks at all really, apart from livin' in Kirkdale which was close-by you know, strange one."
john lennon
"I think because Liverpool then became a really, really popular worldwide name, you sort felt that buzz, and I can remember a buzz in the 60s of everyone bein' quite proud where they're from. And emphasis' on the accent, you know what I mean, you really would over emphasise your scouse accent in the 60s and all that. I can remember, you know, stupid words like 'ace' and 'gear' and 'fab' and all that like, people go on about that still.
But somewhere, throughout sort of reading up about him, I eventually sort of, for want of a better phrase, fell in love with John Lennon if you like, I just loved everything about him. I loved his nastiness, I mean it's hilarious to see Liam these days you know doin' his 'John stuff' but Liam can never be as clever and cynical as John was at his best and all that. But there was also the other thing, there's a really cynical nasty side of John and he could be really horrible to people, but there was also that genuine thing about, 'All You Need is Love' and all that. That's what come across to me as John was very genuine. He might seem contrived sometimes in his 'Power to the People' songs and his 'All You Need is Love' and all that like, but he genuinely from the bottom of his heart was tryin' to change things for the better, you know, and he was doin' it at times when it was sensitive, during the Vietnam War and all that like.
I watched a film the other night called 'Hearts and Minds', where this crowd of people were in an anti-Vietnam War protest and it was like, you know, 500,000 people singin' 'Power to the People' and stuff like that so it just amazed me. The power of some of his songs, he still fought for what he regarded as ‘the people’. Again, it sounds dead contrived this, the way I'm sayin' this now, but I just genuinely believed he loved Liverpool and he loved workin' class people and he loved his roots.
One of my favourite albums of all time was 'John Lennon Plastic Ono Band' but I can't play it, cos I get upset every time I play it, it's this weirdest thing, it's like I can't listen to 'You'll Never Walk Alone' almost without gettin' teary-eyed."
capital of culture
"When it happened I was in work actually and when the announcement came through on the radio my colleague was, like, literally jumpin' off his seat and roarin'. And I think, I wouldn't say I was annoyed but I just sort of went through him, went "What's up with you, what are you doin'?" and he went "Didn't you hear that then?" I went "Yeah I heard it, yeah" and he was goin' "Well aren't you excited?" and I was goin' "No, what will it mean to me or my children? It won't mean a thing".
I am, I must say, a sceptical old moanin' get! but I really just don't think how it's gonna like improve anything, other than the look of the city. That was my main first impression and, to be honest, I still almost feel a bit like that. You know the look of Liverpool will be improved. I suppose you have to look at the bigger picture and what that'll mean then to income and industry. Whether people will come and bring their factories and their industries to the city, based on what it looks like, 'cos you've gotta think about how well Manchester has done and how they've improved their image. And if by improving the image of Liverpool it will improve industry, then I suppose I have to be less sceptical and say 'well it might actually help my daughter in some way', but I don't see it helpin' in general. I equate everything to my family I suppose, so I just say 'Well, how's it gonna help me and my family?' and I don't see how it does to be honest.
I remember bringin' a couple of mates over from America and takin' them round, the ferry across the Mersey and takin' them round town and stuff like that and this would be early 90s then I presume, I'm guessin'. Eventually one of them, Debbie, turned round and she went to me "there's no black people" I know this is very different now but this was then.
I'd like to see Liverpool change, I'd just like to see Liverpool's attitude change. I can literally say to you now, hand on heart, that probably 60% of this estate are racist and that just infuriates me, I just can't believe it. As I said to you before, some of these people have got hearts of gold and it's weird to hear them spoutin' some of the stuff they come out with. The same people would give you, you know, their last penny.
There is an attempt to change but I don't see it happenin' really like, and I don't see how the Capital of Culture will happen really, how that'll change anythin'. It'll be a really odd thing when it's done, I know that there'll be a big show of tryin' to show this united Liverpool but I don't think it's really true to be honest."
Phil Jones | Back to the top