He tells me that the Clash played an impromptu set there in the mid-80s that has since become a much-sought-after bootleg, while a very young Björk played there when she was in a band called Kukl. Malcolm gives me a potted history of the venue that includes his memory of a riotous night when right-wing skinheads caused havoc at a gig by the Subhumans. “His main stipulation,” says Malcolm, “was that there would be no official bouncers who treated the punters like they were animals.” So he decided to have members of the collective take their turn as low-key security staff. Not long before, Nigel had been badly beaten up by bouncers at a venue in Newcastle for, as Malcolm puts it, “jumping around to Discharge”. Then Nigel painted a huge stencil of the venue’s name as the stage backdrop.” “The first thing we did was buy a ton of black paint. “My brother was in the Gateshead Musicians’ Collective and he somehow got the grant for the venue,” says Malcolm.
Malcolm’s older brother Nigel (“Big Toot”) was the founder and main organiser at the Station.
I talk to Malcolm “Little Toot” Lewty, guitarist and vocalist in Hellbastard, who are still gigging to the faithful. ‘The first thing we did was buy a ton of black paint’ … punks at the club. They rotated their jobs every few months so there was no hierarchy. There was a booking agent and even a green room attendant looking after hospitality for visiting groups. “It was a genuine cooperative,” says Killip, still sounding impressed. At night, the collective manned the bar and took care of security. In contrast, he says, The Station “is different in style to much of my other work in terms of its rawness, which of course suits the subject matter, but I do see it as part of a continuum – the decline of the industrial north-east at that time”.ĭuring the day, the Station was hired out as a rehearsal space for local bands. Back in 1985, he had been photographing what he calls “the landscape of the de-industrial revolution in the south-east” for over a decade, but had yet to publish his photobook, In Flagrante, now revered as a classic of British documentary photography. Killip had filed them away and forgotten about them.
It was Killip’s son, Matthew, who discovered the contact sheets while rooting around in his father’s archive. An accompanying exhibition was scheduled to open this month at the Martin Parr Foundation in Bristol, but it has been postponed due to the coronavirus. In 2018, Killip published The Station, a large format zine comprising photographs from the venue and now Steidl has published a similarly designed book of his work. ‘The women tended to stay back’ … mohican love at the Station. I used to drive home and go straight to sleep, the noise ringing in my ears.” After three hours in there, I’d be totally exhausted. I was concentrating so much that I never had time to chat. “No one ever said, ‘Who the fuck are you?’ They were in their own world and I was in mine. In the pitch-black interior of the Station, he cut a curious figure, carrying a big plate camera around his neck as well as a flash and an outsized battery that was strapped to his waist. Throughout his time there, he never witnessed a single fight or experienced any hassle save for one “mad-eyed guy” who would occasionally emerge from the melee “to take a swing” at his head. The atmosphere, he says, was charged but never threatening despite the pummelling music and the ritual aggression enacted on the dancefloor. Basically they didn’t have money for better drugs.” There was a big sign saying, ‘No glue, no glass bottles’, but there was a bit of glue-sniffing and gallons of strong cheap cider. He describes the Station fondly as “a total anarcho-punk zone: black walls, black ceiling, black floor.
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