The Innocents

Suzie Hogarth – Drums, Sarah Hall – Bass, Greg Van Cook – Guitar
Marguerite – Vocals & Finboa Barry – Keyboards

The Innocents were a peculiar one. Formed in March 1978 by Marguerite Van Cook (girlfriend of Greg Van Cook from the Electric Chairs) and Sarah Hall ex Flowers of Romance, throw in drummer Suzy Hogarth from left wing agit pre punk band The Resisters, add in the aforementioned Greg and a piano player called Fiona Barry and you have a band!

A chance encounter with The Clash, in shared rehearsal studios, sees the band being added to the Sort It Out tour playing along with The Slits on the 30 odd date tour. Gigs also follow with The Adverts.

Demos are recorded with Dave Goodman at Pathway (unreleased) and they are featured in music weekly Melody Maker as the best unsigned band of 1978.

They get management, and an offer to go to the States, but it all crumbles from there and the band ends.

Never mentioned in books on The Clash or women in punk, Punk77 is always happy to step in and present to you The Innocents.

The Innocents were started by Marguerite Van Cook and Sarah Hall, ex Flowers Of Romance in the spring of 1978.

Marguerite Van Cook The band began when Sarah Hall (pic below with Steve Jones) who was Boogie’s girlfriend, (he was the road manager of the Sex Pistols) approached me in the Vortex and asked if I wanted to start a band with her. (She didn’t live downstairs at Highbury Hill). She was the same Sarah Hall that was in the Flowers of Romance. So Sarah and I began writing songs. She borrowed a bass from Paul Simenon, it was the one with the notes painted on the neck and the picture of Patti Smith on it and the Jackson Pollock finish.

Sarah Hall – Photo Bob Gruen

Greg Van Cook was staying at Highbury Hill, (because of a wild scene with Wayne/Jayne County) and he began teaching us to play.

Another roommate, at Highbury Hill Squat, Fiona Barry said she could play the piano and we invited her to join us. We were rehearsing in the house every day and at that time we had five songs. We did them all twice on stage in the best punk way. One weekend we heard a good drummer across the fields at Highbury Hill playing an outdoors gig and went to see who it was, when it turned out to be a female drummer, Susie Hogarth, we really wanted to get her in the band. She was committed to The Resisters and put them first, which was only fair and we had to use other drummers when she couldn’t make it due to prior engagements, or work conflict.

That house was amazing, Vermilion (Dick Envy) moved in after I found her sleeping on a bench one night and the Fabulous Robert Crash (The Maniacs) lived in the attic. What a wild man he was and is!

From there we used to go the Hope and Anchor (Wanker) all the time and the Nipple Erectors became our friends. Shane used to carry our equipment.

Suzy Hogarth  I met up with them after they saw me doing a gig with this left wing political band I was with called ‘The Resisters’. The gig was Highbury Fields.

Greg was the only one who could play actually but Marguerite wrote some stuff. Anyway the three of them lived in a flat in Highbury. Greg taught Fiona and Sarah to play the songs he and M. had written. They were really pleased to get me because I could play – sort of!

Suzy Hogarth

Luck was in for the band as they picked up two managers willing to invest.

Marguerite Van Cook  Around this time, Greg, Fiona and I went to a party for Donovan McKitty and met two brothers, Lenny and Barry who offered to manage us. They were great; they took us to the West End and bought us all equipment.

Further luck came with The Clash and the chance to tour with them and The Slits.

Suzy Hogarth (Drummer The Innocents): We played some good gigs – we played the Marquee, Camden Palace and loads of pubs. Sarah was at a Clash rehearsal and she asked them if we could come on their tour – as the Slits were on the bill – and we thought we could play as well as them at least. So they said yes!  We had a mad manager – whose name escapes me completely but he paid for us to do some promo pics and for us to do the tour. I had a job and a child of two so I made them let me travel to all the gigs by train! (after work). I don’t remember the name of the tour [Sort It Out Tour 1978] but Caroline Coon was managing the Clash.

Marguerite Van Cook (Singer The Innocents): Some of The Clash gigs had huge demos outside because the city officials didn’t want The Clash or any punks to play in their town. The fans were pretty wild too. The crush outside Newcastle Student Union was intense and I nearly got trampled entering the hall.  The Clash insisted that the people from the town be allowed in and not just the students. I’d say fans, but honestly for a lot of them it was the first time they had ever seen a punk band. Because there had been a lot of negotiation all day and they didn’t know whether or not they could get in that night, the town kids were pretty po’d by the time we got on stage. The crew were nervous, but even though I grew up down south, my dad was a Geordie, and so I felt I was on home ground. I remember shouting “Haway the lads,” the Geordie call and they just loved us from there on out. We had a great night.

Sid Vicious Benefit gig – Photo Credit Mick Mercer

I have to say I thought it was really freaking weird that no one asked us, or noticed that we spent so much time with The Clash.  For years you were the only one. All these books came out that were supposed to be so expert and no one noticed that we went on tour with the Clash? I have to wonder why?

Graffiti sprayed on the Music Machine wall post Clash gig 1978

I read this whole passage in the Marcus Gray Book , “The Return of the Last Gang in Town” page 232) You can Google it.

In a 1990 interview with NME’s Stephen Dalton, Julie Burchill declared “What annoys me is feminist revisionists saying that punk was a wonderful time for women because we all started expressing ourselves more. That’s a load of bullocks because bands like the Slits actually got their gigs supporting the Clash because they were fucking the Clash! The whole casting couch routine was still going on…”

It goes on to say she changed her mind later and said there was a lot of speed and and just infrequent casual sex.

I guess if anyone qualifies to be a “a band like the Slits ” getting gigs from the Clash, it would be The Innocents. Firstly, I never spoke to Julie Burchill or even met her, and second none of us had sex with the Clash, their road crew, managers or anyone else.  I just wanted to go on the record with that. We were all friends and that was how we went on the tour. It was a great time for women.  I played bass in the next band to put an instrument in my hands and press forward for other women.  However, if I did want to have have sex, so what? It was my business. Burchill seems to have been stuck in the old mind set.

In fact the band played over a month of consecutive night gigs with barely a day off finishing with a gig with Siouxsie & The Banshees and the Sid Vicious Benefit gig. After the tour Sarah Hall left and was replaced by Jo Hurst.

This should have been The Innocents’ time being named best unsigned act by Melody Maker in 1978, a long tour under their belt and some demos. However, some of the band had problems. Susie’s commitments to both the Resisters and an increasing dependence on heroin did for her.

Suzy Hogarth I got into a bit of a problem with smack – and things were a bit weird. We did some great studio tapes at pathway at Newington Green – Eddie from The Vibrators lent me his kit – it was pink perspex and it was loud! I don’t have any of the tapes though.
 
A new set of managers appeared and I didn’t like the look of them at all and they said there was an opportunity to go to New York – but no contracts, no retainers, no bits of paper at all and so I said I wouldn’t give up my job unless I had a return ticket or a contract.

I got neither so they went with a guy drummer called Terry instead. And guess what? There was no tour or gigs or anything although Greg hustled some gigs and they slept on people’s floors until Sara and Fiona and the drummer got enough money to come home. Greg and Marguerite stayed there and that was the end of that. It lasted about two years.

We had a hard time getting anyone to take us seriously, and I even heard that people thought we were put together like The Monkeys. 

Photos Lyceum 1978 – Photo credit Mick Mercer?

She was replaced by Terry Smith. Greg Van Cook joined The Vibrators and The Front while still performing for The Innocents on their occasional gigs.

Eventually the band split up and Marguerite and Greg found themselves in the US.

Marguerite Van Cook In New York, I wound up playing bass in an all-girl reggae band called Steppin’ Razor (see image below), after the Peter Tosh song. (He came to our gig) and I got to open for Yellowman at Harlem World. There were police alerts for that gig too, They had to close the streets down because of the crowds. Somehow I always found my way into those wild energy gigs.

Steppin Razor 1982

Above a Steppin’ Razor photo from 1982. The African American girl in the photo is Annette Brissett who later formed Sistren. I was close with Lloyd Barnes at Bullwackie records and if you wiki her you can see she worked later with Wackie, as he is known. I spent a lot of time up there on Wackie Records on the White Plains road in 1980-83.

After I came to NY, it was not long before I broke up with Greg. We did have a new crappy manager who sold our equipment in England behind our backs, but also our squat was decimated by Maggie Thatcher’s thugs. The day she was elected they came and smashed the toilets and threw our stuff out of the windows and so we had nowhere to come back to. 

After the all girl reggae band, I opened an art gallery and did a lot of club shows in New York. I also formed a new band, Grade A, with my lifelong partner James Romberger and again made friends with Greg Van Cook, who joined the band. We even all went to Belgium to play. We had Sammy Minelli (also a Jayne County drummer) on drums and then Alvin Robertson, who is known as the fifth Bad Brain. Of course this was in 1989 and by then punk for me was no longer what it had been. I believed in the punk ethic and I still believe and that is in part why I have so little memorabilia, because I was really anti-commercial.

Greg and myself as Grade A playing as Grade A in NYC in 1989, with James Romberger and Sammy Minelli.

Marguerite is now an artist and performed at the Ari Up memorial in January 2011.

Marguerite Van Cook: The Ari Up gig in Brooklyn Hall was very touching, but also lots of fun. I sang “Instant Hit” with Tessa and Felice Rosser. Palmolive spoke, Neneh  Cherry did several songs, Judy Nylon spoke, lots of newer Slits and great musicians were there, Bruce from PiL.

You have to thank the legendary Panache and Zigzag writer Mick Mercer for these colour photos of the band and excellent they are too! From The Clash Sid Vicous Benefit gig at the Music Machine Camden London December 1978.

Black and white one is by David Smitham.



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