ON A WING AND A PRAYER
Welsh trio Budgie were 15 years and nine studio albums into their career when, in August 1982, they first stepped through the Iron Curtain to undertake their first tour of Poland. By that time, in the UK the hard-gigging band were accustomed to playing decent-sized venues – the Marquee, The Whiskey, Hammersmith Odeon; in Poland they found themselves playing stadiums and sports arenas – 17 soldout shows to thousands of baying fans each night.
“We did this one gig, and the ZOMO [paramilitary police] were there on stage, bassist/vocalist Shelley tells Classic Rock. “They were just criminals in uniforms, with white sticks, guns if needed. People hated them. The young kids in the audience were spitting at them and cursing them out. They got hold of one kid and beat him really badly. We had to get off because a riot was about to start. But our drummer at the time, Steve [Williams], was a brave lad. He got hold of an interpreter, went back down to the stage and managed to calm the atmosphere. He said: ‘Look, we’ve come here to rock. Nothing political. We just want to play.’ We went back on, and it was a great show in the end.”
From that tour onwards, Budgie received a hero’s welcome from Polish audiences whenever they played there. Just three years ago Shelley returned to accept a prestigious Open Door award on behalf of the band.
“It was a big deal,” he says. “I was sitting there with all these heroes of the underground resistance, famous poets, people who had really risked their lives [against the communist regime] and whose friends had been tortured or killed. We were told we’d been the musical backdrop to it, and that was amazing.
