CLOCKWORK SOLDIERS: The True Story of Clouds

By Billy Ritchie

CLOUDS are now acknowledged as having a major influence on what became of music in the 1970s. Yet the band disappeared without trace in history, only to surface decades later, in circumstances that Mojo Magazine described as "Archaeology" .

The man behind it all, Billy Ritchie, somehow vanished from the radar and from the music b

• Language: English
• Publisher: HILLFIELD
• Release date: May 3, 2018
• ISBN: 9781789261387

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Book title idea with acknowledgement and many thanks to Will Romano and his excellent work Prog Rock FAQ

CLOCKWORK SOLDIERS

The True Story of Clouds

Billy Ritchie

To my Dear Friend Flam

whose life is an inspiration to me

and countless others.

PROLOGUE

Journal of another Time and Place

School in a village high in the hills, children wearing hand-me-down clothes, knitted jumpers full of holes, odd socks etc etc; tumbling into the playground, bell goes clang, lessons spent looking out the window at the sky, wasting time, just wasting time. This village on a sunny day, seen from a mile away, is a Brigadoon of a place with red roofs that sparkle in the sunlight of the high field.

Home then, through buckets of rain, to clatter and splash along the close into the green and cream scullery, where Dad’s pit clothes stand almost by themselves, and the man himself gives a good-natured grin, and goes back to his paper. Then, a lump of bread with a scrape of jam gulped down, and off to kick a soggy ball around the swing park surrounded by houses, in Merlindale, for that’s where it is, the park, a messy but loveable Meccano, left out too long in the rain; and all the gang are there - Flam, Pancho, Johnny, Jim, and Hugh, and time innocently travels the afternoon as they jump fences like Roy Rogers on Trigger, play hide and seek with coats as capes like Superman, launch expeditions to lost forests, impossible miles away across the wild fields beyond the horizon, Sammy Lang’s pond to see a dead dog’s bum stick out of the water, down to the river near the White Cleuch farm to swim or drown, or watch boys wank at seeing naked girls.

Then hearing the news..................the first TV is here! At young Caff’s house, scores of scruffs congregate at five o’clock for Children’s Hour. Eventually, the fever spreads to all the houses and square-eyed urchins sprint straight from School to catch every image the thing will throw, till boredom quickly sets in, and it’s back to the usual capers, one day, marching with a stick, smashing the light in the living room right in front of the visitors, pulling a handle off a door by banging it in temper, getting a good hiding into the bargain; Flam, riding a bicycle round the Tinto cinema, at the same time holding an opened umbrella high above his head, or dancing across the stage in front of the screen, just for a laugh, daft boys, off their heads; Flam again, throwing a bar of soap into the cafe chip pan, tossing a slice of toasted cheese into the air, waiting for it to fall back to his hand in the manner of the usual ritual, only to find that the cheese had stuck to the ceiling, leaving a mark that was still there, long after the laughter had died down.

Endless walks round the Village and beyond, to Wilsontown, across the moors, carrying a park bench, or stripping off clothes, causing Bill Goldie to collapse in stitches; hiding in the graveyard to give people a fright, watching Edith undress, or maybe one of the Haywood girls. Back then to the chip shop, or to the corner of the cross, chatting, joking, whistling at the girls, hoping to take them to the old barn, where the hay would make a welcome bed, but no girl ever goes, so the mystery remains unresolved thus far. Then one day up the fields, Jean solves the problem, as Margaret does for Pancho, at least till Jean jumps up, grabbing her knickers shouting There’s a man coming!, though he was never seen, and if he eventually came, he was the only one who did.

So life goes on, the School trips, and getting a cuddle on the bus; trying to play the harmonica like Larry Adler or Tommy Reilly; singing a song for a girl, and getting more than a cuddle for singing it, at the old quarry afterwards; and that same girl, Jeanette was her name, putting out the milk when her parents went to bed. All going well, till a garment was found in her room, and that was the end of that.

The sound of pit boots clattering down the street, gruff voices, suited to the weather, spitting coal dust in the gutter, a bit like Grandad does in his silver spittoon that Granny loathes; or sometimes, he spits in the fire and it flares and crackles, so Auntie Grace gets up and leaves the room in disgust - that house now - in it is an old gramophone, the kind you wind up with a handle, playing 78rpm records, scratching and winding down sometimes; and talking of the fire, the taste of toast from a toasting fork! Great Uncle Adam’s picture above the mantle, the picture of him in his uniform, taken just before he was killed at Gallipoli; the other photographs framed in the hallway, Gran and Grandad, looking so strangely young in their odd clothes, and other people, strangers with almost-familiar faces, Great Uncle Edward, Great Grandad who drove a drey, nothing else known about him, only that he married Great Grandma Mary Travers, whose Father was Pat from Ireland, who married Margaret McGinn from Braehead, and after Great Grandad’s illegitimate birth, his mother Ann married Alex McKenzie, and her son Alexander emigrated to Australia - and so, the World seems smaller, all very well connected to Adam and Eve, simple arithmetic even; pictures of boys with short trousers sitting on their tricycles, then the photographs growing younger, and those in them, growing older, on bicycles now, no knobbly knees to be seen, one of Dad and his friend with a slick moustache, their eyes bright, full of innocence, and faces fresh, unlined.

About this time, McCafferty’s piano being passed down, all the children banging on it at once, then quickly falling away, leaving the only one who can a play a bit to sit there for hours, driving everyone mad, as bad as sister Grace’s violin, till they move the piano upstairs, where the sound resonates even better, and nobody ever gets peace again, except perhaps McCafferty, who crashes his car at Harelaw, ploughing right through a fence and field, never again to hear the notes of his piano played from the house next door, and maybe just as well for him.

Brother George joining in on guitar, and Flam buying the Bert Weedon songbook and a Hofner Colorama; things beginning to change now, big school, Grammar, the boys sick on the bus, saying it was the fumes from the engine, and Mum, it was Trevor Gardner who punched my nose, and I should have boxed his ears only the School bell rang, and the bleeding wouldn’t stop for ages and ages.

Next, Flam and Co. at the amateur drama, following Grandad’s footsteps across the boards, Old Jan, the Village hippy leads the class through a chaos of disruption and verse. At one point, Flam puts a stripe of white paint down the back of Jan’s shaggy coat, but the concert succeeds anyway, despite all this nonsense, and the spotlight falls on Tommy Reilly playing Danny Boy on the Super Chromonica, taking a bow, the shy magician, or so it seems.

Then, a comical scene where a running boy trips over a bicycle, catching his feet between the broken wheels chained forever to the past; and there, among the whirl of spinning pictures is the dog the children cried to keep when she came as a pup. Then later, the time when she ran down the street with worms hanging out of her arse yards behind her, poor thing, a black and white mongrel always running and barking, chasing a ball or bits of wood, so full of life she is then on that photograph taken on the Gala day, for instance.

Playing football at the big park now with all the stars - Hammy, who played professional, Bill Gebbie (whose sister Nan is nice!), and Pancho’s brother Bill Goldie, who sings in the chapel choir along with Auntie Grace - and there’s a thing, the altar boys are terrified of the Priest, Father Donahue, who twists their arms and ears and mutters under his breath as he drives his Hillman Minx back to the Manse (God moves in mysterious ways...........), and the singing is powerful and grand, Charlie McCormick has good hands on the organ, all those lovely warm chords and stirring words, chugging at the heart, and when Charlie needs a stand-in, he knows who to call, who can resist the hymns and incense, but all the prayers and sermons make you sleepy (though Dad and sister Catherine don’t seem to mind), but if you stay behind, and the bus is missed, you have to walk back to Cloglands - for that was another move - yes, things turning a corner now, uneasy images beginning to intrude; that boy who was caught inside the roundabout, Geddes was his name, Robert’s brother, and his face like raw mince, till the ambulance came and took him away; someone falling off the wallbars flat on his back in the School gym, and getting no breath of air at all; Coillie, Gran’s black retriever, run over by a car and gone forever, and Gran and Grandad sharing uneasy silences, or harsh terse sentences and glaring eyes. Finally, Gran dies, and Grandad begins to wear out, waiting, sitting in a room with faded floral curtains never drawn, in a deep mahogany tangle of tables, clocks, chairs, and china dogs; fiddling with his braille radio, feeling for sixpence in his pocket to pay for the pools or the writing of it; seeing him clatter along the farm dyke with his white stick, tapping and swinging, suddenly old, along that same road where Coillie used to run, a big happy black dog, wagging his tail, carrying a shopping basket in his mouth. Grandad now, going up the steps at Climpy Road, taking what seems ages, struggling to find the key, to find the keyhole, to feel the handle, to open the door; almost painfully, slowly, padding down the silent hallway to sit in the room, waiting.

Another time, the boy pulled from the fire, the one you could read about in the papers, the fire that killed his Mother, though his Father never said a word of thanks for the boy’s life saved; the press looking for angles, printing rubbish, and Mum chasing them away from the place; sister Catherine and sister Grace beginning to fight about make-up and clothes, sister Lisbeth, a born rebel getting right up Catherine’s nose by staying out late with all the wrong sorts; good old George, growing up, leaving games behind; Flam, driving the English teacher, Long Tom, mad, drawing targets on his desk and having competitions to see who’s first to be thrown outside or get sent to the Rector for six of the best, goading Trevor Gardner into breaking his unbreakable glasses with a brick, and he does, so poor Trevor has to face the wrath of his Father with the stern features and the two big Alsatians always on a leash, but anyway it serves Trevor right for being such a bully.

Mum crying quietly when Uncle Wullie dies, her whole life so unfulfilled and unhappy, not like it was meant to be at all, not like those hopeful days at the Mill, but not knowing what else to do; Dad, putting it all down to God, working endlessly on his scraps and scribbles, reading halfway through the night, always the last light to go out in the street; the whole thing rushing by now, speeding through to longer darker nights, old men, planted thirty summers since, shivering on the cold steps and waiting for Winter; all this missed by the Summer boys walking in the darkness of the park, now covered in snow; the clock knocking on now, they come sauntering home like Kings of the World with no sense of the Sun’s journey, down the familiar street with glowing lights, home, really; it seems it was, or could be; and then, the magic of Christmas, walking back from chapel at Midnight in the crisp sharp air, finding under the tree the Christmas parcels from rich Aunt Anne in London, the ones found in the cupboards weeks before, the sleepless nights and climax; all of this swept away now, just jumbled images in the attic, till beneath the tinsel wrapping nothing lies, only diminishing cardboard boxes.

Then, that time at New Year, Mike causing trouble, getting kicked out, his head bashed, a hero enters folklore; climbing the Christmas tree on the Village green, waking shirtless in the middle of a dark field, flat out in the snow, hearing the far-off bells and celebration, the lights of the Village away in the distance and no idea why; breaking Dick the Pole’s cafe window with a half-brick held by a leather wallet to hide the prints, re-setting the clock so Dad didn’t lie to the Cops.

Flam, his Dad dying in his burning bed, but Flam didn’t cry or care, not then, not till much later when the years and the bottle demanded payment; and that trouble with the dogs as they howled outside the window for the bitch who was in season, chasing them away, throwing rocks and stones, but pups came and went just the same, as she slept in the cubby-hole under the stairs, and Lassie was her name, the name of the bitch, a bitch that died alone and blind on the moors, all that time ago, in those days before life gave the children black eyes on the way home from School; all that and more, grumbling away throughout these years that long since ceased to growl, whimpering now as Lassie will never do; and all the ageing children, Flam, Pancho, Johnny, Jim, Hugh, Louie, Duncan, Big Wull, are almost-forgotten faces from the locked summers of childhood.

THE BEGINNING

The central metaphor of this story began one windy and rainy night in a forgotten village high in the Scottish hills. My friends and I were standing in the main street, ignoring the rain falling on us – that was normal where we came from – and I was becoming more and more anxious as I listened to the enthusiasm of the guys, who were getting excited and animated as they spoke of forming a band and becoming rich and famous.

It was, after all, just before 1960, Elvis had happened, The Beatles were on their way, and the pop revolution was in full swing (though it had taken longer to reach us than most, isolated as we were, no internet in those days! Television and cars hadn’t long arrived amidst us either….).

But there we were, a bunch of ragamuffins, my best friend Flam (Robert Fleming), who I knew played some guitar, I always remember his brown-plated Hofner Colorama…Johnny (Moffat), who (with some justification) fancied himself as a Singer; Jim (Stark), who played in the local pipe band, so was a ready-made drummer; Duncan (Blair), an eccentric but talented bass player. And then there was me – as the guys waxed lyrical, I was quiet, saying nothing, my mind was racing, a bit of panic in the background, asking myself where I would fit into all this. Suddenly, I was on the spot – Jim said What about you Wullie? Without thought, I said I’ll play electric organ. Why I said it, I don’t to this day know, it just came into my mind and I blurted it out. There was a moment of silence, and I could see the guys were a bit perplexed at the thought – what the hell was electric organ? - but no-one questioned it, I was their pal, after all, that got me into the band, even if my role seemed superfluous to the others. It was, after all, the age of guitars.

I did play some piano. Some years before, the man who lived next door to us in 14 Merlindale (where the swing park stood), Wull McCafferty, was throwing out a piano that no-one could play. My Mother and Father