In Conversation with Don Letts and Jeannette Lee

Don Letts is a film director, DJ and musician. He worked in the punk retail outlet, Acme Attractions, before becoming videographer for The Clash in which he directed several of their music videos. He co-founded Big Audio Dynamite along with The Clash’s Mick Jones. Jeannette Lee also worked at Acme Attractions alongside Don Letts. She went on to become a member of Public Image Limited (PIL) and is now co-owner of Rough Trade Records.

Watch the video or read the full transcript below:

Question: What was the landscape of the 1970’s like?
Don Letts: The landscape back in the mid to late 70’s was shit, it was dominated by an economic, political and social climate. What particularly got up my nose was the rise of the National Front. So it was grim. But it wasn’t just grim for black people, it was grim for a lot of my white mates as well.
Jeannette Lee: It was difficult for everybody at that time, it was so miserable, and we were all looking for something to break us out of it.
DL: John Lydon summed it up best with the whole ‘no future’ thing. I don’t think it was a statement of defeat, it was like, ‘no future if you don’t get off your arses and do something about it’. You had a feeling of no future unless you did something.

Q: How did you get involved with Acme Attractions and what was it like?
DL: The owners of Acme were two characters, John Krivine and Steph Raynor, a Leicester dude. I’d met John when he had the original Acme Attractions, which was in Brixton, and he sold jukeboxes, pinball machines and one armed bandits. I’d walked in there one day because I was like, ‘who the fuck is selling this shit in Brixton?’ You know what I’m saying? I kind of struck up a relationship with John, who was about to open Acme on the Kings Road with the help of Steph Raynor, because he  was more into 20th century antiques while Steph was the one that was really about the clothes. So it moved from a stall upstairs to a basement in the bottom of Antiquarius and that’s the shop that really became famous with Jeannette and I running it.
JL: When I met Don, Acme Attractions was just a stall in a place called Antiquarius. He was wearing a plastic pakamac and I was like, ‘who is this arrogant shit wearing that really good coat?’ We ended up talking and he said, “I can sell you one of these”. So, he told me where to go and on the following Saturday I went and found this stall, which was called Acme, on the King’s Road. They didn’t have any macs that would fit me but he did sell me a rather nice trench coat. He said that they were just about to move to the basement to turn it into a much bigger thing and he asked me if I would go and work there, without the permission of the owners I seem to remember. Punk hadn’t happened yet, so there wasn’t any punk music to play so we were mostly blasting out reggae, usually tapes that Don had made. Glam rock was the other thing.
DL: Acme Attractions was a trip, I think it’s the place where I was the happiest in my entire life. It wasn’t just a shop, it was like a club for misfits and outsiders. And it had this multicultural vibe going on before the word multicultural even existed in our vocabulary. We were pumping out the music that we liked, which was primarily reggae, dub sort of reggae, because Jeannette had been listening to that where she was coming from in East London. That was the lick for the white kids back then. And it was obviously my thing. And I think that drew in people as much as the clothes that we sold. We had some really interesting characters pass through, I think everybody that was anybody in the punk rock universe passed through either our shop or Malcolm and Vivienne’s shop, which was a bit further down the road. I don’t think the word punk had even entered our vocabulary by then though.

Q: McLaren and Westwood’s SEX was open at the same time up the road. What was the dynamic between your shop and theirs?
JL: In the beginning, the relationship with SEX was fine, their clothes were more expensive and arty compared to ours.They humoured us and they were really nice but then I think Steph nicked one of their tailors and that’s when the rivalry started. The tailor was making these peg  trousers for SEX and when they changed, we started making the same ones and Vivienne really didn’t like it. Until then, I think she just thought we were sweet but that all changed.
DL: I guess there was a kind of rivalry between the two shops but SEX was more expensive than our shop, which was a bit more multicultural, and the clothes were cheaper. And as Jeannette said, their clothes were like art, our thing was a bit more – what would you call it? You can’t call it vintage because that word didn’t exist.
JL: They were vintage clothes, but they hadn’t been worn. They’d mostly come from warehouses but they were vintage styles that people hadn’t seen for a long time.

Q: Who were the type of people that used Acme?
DL: Outsiders and misfits but pop stars would also pass through. Bob Marley used to visit because I’d struck up a relationship with him but there was also Peter O’Toole, Patti Smith, Steve Strange. Chrissie Hynde used to hang out with us in the shop all of the time. And then there was Sid before he was Sid Vicious, an annoying bastard who took a shine to Jeannette, couldn’t get rid of him, he was always down there bending her ear.
JL: He was very nice. Don didn’t like him but I thought he was very sweet, he used to come in all the time.
DL: The reality is that Sid was a victim, you know, because he was a nice guy. He was a nice, gullible guy that started to believe his own hype and mixed up with the wrong crowd. I know it sounds like a cliche, but that’s what happened.
JL: Before all those famous people started coming in though, we used to have groups of kids that came from quite far afield, some used to come from Newquay, the Surf Posse Surfing Gang and the Welsh Posse. It was a destination place, people used to travel to get there and that was really nice.
DL: I mean, it almost got to the point where they’d come to see what was going on and meet each other more than buying clothes. There was nowhere else for them to go that they could relate to at that time.
JL: Yeah, it was like a club really, people would come in to peacock around and look at other people that looked good. They couldn’t hang around SEX.
DL: Or the popular West End clubs, you know, because they were playing music that they weren’t into, they didn’t reflect the vibe on the street that they got from either SEX or Acme Attractions.

Q: David Parkinson, the photographer, is a bit of a cult figure to people in London and people that knew about him in the photography world, but nobody really knows about him in his hometown of Leicester. What can you tell us about him?
DL: Dave Parkinson did a poster for us and he also did a feature in Club International. I remember I was quite pleased with that because I think it was the first bit of press that I’d ever had in my life. But he was a bit of a mystery, wasn’t he?
JL: I don’t think we knew him very well, he was one of Steph’s friends that would just come in and do his thing.

Q: What can you tell us about the Leicester creatives involved in punk, in particular Steph Raynor?
DL: I’ve got to say, all of the Leicester Posse were a bit strange, somewhat removed, not just geographically, and they were a lot older than us. They all seemed to be experts in certain fields. There was Dave Parkinson, Roger Burton, Jack English, William English – they all seemed to revolve around Steph, it has to be said. Steph imagined himself as a svengali, he’d worked it out. He liked to tell a tale, you know, I think he liked to have an audience. And we were gullible then, we were kind of open to these guys that were bringing in these kind of strange left of centre ideas.
JL: I remember when I met Steph Raynor, he was about 29 and was probably the oldest person I’d ever met that wasn’t one of my parents. I think it’s fair to say that he was a tastemaker in his time, and it seemed like he was the leader of the gang. He was quite voyeuristic, he would sit really quietly with dark glasses on and just watch people coming in and out of the shop and make mental notes about who was wearing the right clothes and who wasn’t. And he’d always have a comment about what people looked like. He was quite an interesting character, but he was very insular in a lot of ways, he didn’t really say that much. Like I said, he was an observer really.

Q: Why did you finish at Acme, why did it come to an end?
DL: The whole tabloid punk thing got into the mix and all of a sudden people were wearing bin liners and had mohawks. And then, for whatever reason, Steph decided to paint Acme black, which was fucking horrible. Before that it looked like our living room.JL: I guess they were influenced by punk, they were trying to move into it.
DL: Well, yeah, but the modern perception of punk, they almost got trapped by the tabloid headlines, hence BOY. All of a sudden Acme had closed, we’ve opened up BOY and neither of us could hold our heads up because all of a sudden it’s become this kind of tabloid nonsense that none of us were into. Shortly afterwards we both bailed, we weren’t there for very long, it wasn’t my thing, not my interpretation of punk at all. But hey, there’s no accounting for taste, it became absolutely massive with people like Madonna, wearing those BOY caps.

Q: What did you do after Acme? What did you move on to?
JL: I moved on to working with Public Image Limited. You started making films?
DL: Yeah, I think briefly after I left BOY I tried to manage The Slits for one tour and I realised that was ridiculous. And then I picked up a Super Eight camera and reinvented myself. They say ‘Don Letts made the punk rock movie’ but in a way we both made it, Jeannette would be in the club holding up the lights and helping me cut it together. If it wasn’t for Jeannette I might have missed the punk rock thing because, initially, I was like, ‘who the fuck? Who are these guys stealing the attention of my then girlfriend’ and I was very reticent to the whole thing. And then she took me to see, I think, The Clash first and then maybe the Pistols and then I was in. But I could have missed it, you know, if it wasn’t for this young lady.

Q: Was it the punk DIY spirit that enabled you to do that, even though you didn’t have any experience managing bands or picking up a camera?
DL: I think that DIY thing for me was punk’s greatest gift, making you feel that you could be a part of it. All you needed was an idea and a motivation, you know, because with that I picked up a camera, people picked up guitars and I think that’s why we’re still talking about it today, it wasn’t just about a soundtrack. It was a very complete subculture, you know? I mean, I still use the shit I learnt back then on a day to day basis today.
JL: When we started seeing each other, the first concerts that we ever went to were acts such as Todd Rundgren, Weather Report, stuff like that. And we’re on the balcony at the Hammersmith Odeon as it was then, you know, just clapping politely at the end and I remember thinking, this is really difficult, I don’t know how much more I can do this. And then punk happened and you were right down at the front, it felt so liberating.

Q: Don, how did you become a DJ at The Roxy?
DL: By accident, that’s how the whole DJ at The Roxy thing happened. The person who opened The Roxy was a gentleman called Andrew Czezowski, who was Acme Attractions accountant, and he realised this scene was happening. They’d got a look, a style, a sound, but no place to play. So he opened his club and because of the reaction he saw, with the music I was playing at Acme, he asked me to DJ there. I’d never deejayed in my life but I thought I’d give it a go.
JL: It wasn’t just Andrew Czezowski though, there was Barry Jones as well, he designed all of the amazing flyers for The Roxy. They were great, he was very artistic. Barry never gets mentioned, but he was an important part of it.
DL: It was so early in the scene though and there weren’t any punk records to play so I played what I liked. Hardcore punk – reggae, the punks loved it. Although I did slip in some New York Dolls, MC5, Iggy and The Damned and The Clash when they released something.JL: Any of the ones that already existed we slipped in. There weren’t many releases at that point though.
DL: Predominantly it would have been hardcore dub reggae, the likes of Prince Irie, Burning Spear, Tappa Zukie and Keith Hudson. In fact, there’s a rather nice compilation I did called Dread Meets Punk Rockers Uptown or something, it’s a sample of the stuff I played at The Roxy, the dub reggae that some of my white mates couldn’t get. Here’s the thing though – people make a big deal of ‘Don Letts turning on the white guys to reggae’, that’s only only partially true, people like Joe Strummer, Paul Simonon and John Lydon, or Rotten as he was known then, were hip to reggae before I came along. The people I turned on to reggae were all the white folk that didn’t interact with black people and that’s a fucking lot of people.

Q: The black and white fusion kind of developed from there didn’t it, with bands like The Specials?
DL: No, that’s not true. Listen, I got to call it as I see it. Punk rock in England, when it started, was primarily a white thing. The multicultural movement in this country was the scene before, the Soulboy scene. It included girls and everybody else as well. But it was called the Soulboy scene and that was much more multicultural than punk rock.
JL: I would say that most of those kids that were at The Roxy that loved reggae and hanging out with Don and his crew probably didn’t know any Black people, so it was really exotic for them. Everybody really embraced it though, it was a big multicultural thing.
DL: Somebody told me that in John Savage’s book, England’s Dreaming, his theory about why the reggae went down so well in The Roxy was because it was such a refreshing sonic break from the noise that the bands were playing, you actually had a bit of musicality and that’s why it worked.

Q: Don, when did you start working with The Clash?
DL: So, after The Roxy I’m trying to manage The Slits, I’d kind of worked up this film thing and I was going to say The Clash asked me to do my first video, but that’s not true. The first video I did was for your lot Jeannette, Public Image. I did the video for their debut single, then did The Clash’s first video and then went on to do all of their videos.

Q: Jeannette, can you tell us about your work with Public Image Limited?
JL: After the Sex Pistols broke up, I think John was quite bitten by the whole working with Malcolm McLaren experience. Malcolm tried to put over the message that it was all about him and that it was all his work. John took that really badly, he was writing the songs, he was the frontman and I think at the end of that, at the end of the Pistols, he didn’t want to get another manager, he didn’t  have any trust in anyone in the music business. And he just asked me if I would work with him. He said, “let’s start a collective where everybody is doing something creative and we’ll get to travel around the world and it will be amazing. You’ll get paid and you’ll get to go to America”. And that’s how it started. We went off and lived in America and we travelled around all over the place. But it was a good time, you know, I enjoyed it. We were a really tight unit, maybe to the point of being paranoid. We took loads of speed, stayed up all night, didn’t answer the door when people knocked and only let our mates in.

Q: What do you feel is the legacy of punk?
JL: On a personal level, I feel like I’m still operating on the same principles every day. I’m still working with young bands that are trying to make it and, you know, basically telling them what not to do.DL: You know what, when I look around these days, I sometimes wonder myself. Because it feels to me like punk rock never fucking happened. I mean, I know what it is for me, it always was about an attitude and a spirit that can inform whatever you do. And like I say, it still works for me on a day to day basis. I still believe that a good idea attempted is better than a bad idea perfected. I still believe in using what you got to get what you need. And I still believe in turning problems into assets. So that’s what it is for me. But what I think is really screwed up though is people thinking that punk is something to look back on. It’s something to look forward to, it’s not this dead thing or this weird anomaly that happened in the late 70s. I’d argue that this overemphasis of that period belittles what is a bigger idea, and that is it’s a fucking living thing that will take you forward.