Walsall ­ Articles ­ the bombsite

It’s where I live. You’ve never heard of it have you? Well it’s in England, in the Midlands, junction 10 of the M6 if you are looking at a road map. The infamous junction 10. It’s actually more famous than you might think. If you don’t already have it, get yourselves down to the local music shop and hunt down a copy of The Rolling Stones’ “Get Yer Ya-Ya’s Out”. Live album. Assuming they haven’t altered the cover for the CD version you should be seeing Mick Jagger dancing around in a white suit and a poor little donkey loaded up with drums on what looks like a road. That’s junction 10 M6 before it got finished.

St. Matthew’s Church at the top of the market is mentioned in the Doomsday Book so we’ve been around for a while as has the market itself. Certainly before junction 10. It is also widely believed that Wyatt Earp’s ancestors, I think on his mother’s side, came from around here before sailing to The Colonies.

Walsall is THE WORLD CENTRE for saddle making and other fine leather work, so if you sit astride a horse on a regular basis the chances are that the leather thing you are sitting on was made here assuming you can afford it. I don’t think they come cheap. We also have one of the newest, purpose-built art galleries in the country which has won a number of design awards. They are currently looking for a new Director at £50K per annum. I did consider it but I don’t think my artistic knowledge would hack it. It was actually another job that was available when I went on my great Stride Out.

Now we have a great musical tradition in the area. Slade all come from around here and we would have known them as Ambrose Slade before they hit fame and fortune. Noddy Holder’s Mom and Dad still live not a mile or so from me. Now you know when you get into a lift and some disembodied voice asks you to “mind the doors”, “doors closing”, “going up” or my personal favourite “sixth floor”? :grin: Well you know that new art gallery I mentioned earlier? Noddy does the voice in the lifts in there! I don’t know where he’s living now. I do know he’s doing a radio show up in Manchester.

A few more oldies but goldies from around here are, The Move/Wizard/ELO, Led Zeppelin, Duran Duran and how can we forget Black Sabbath?

Yes, they of Ozzie Osbourne fame. He’s a laugh isn’t he? I love to see him on chat shows. I generally end up rolling on the floor in fits of laughter at him! But in Walsall there is this tiny little church hall. Yes church hall! It’s called the Central Hall. It’s up Ablewell Street. Wouldn’t get more than 200 people in there at a squash. Now I’m not totally sure of the year but I was with schoolmates so I would be 15/16 which is going to make it errrr….... 1969/1970. We heard that this group was on from one of the older lads who was involved with arranging these things. We’d never heard of them but it sounded like our kind of stuff so we went along. Entry on the door was 25p which equates to something like 45c US. Yeah I know! Criminal ain’t it? But to top things off I knew the guy on the door so guess who got in free. I sat through the concert pretty much stunned. What we got was a full live rendition of what turned into their first LP – “Black Sabbath”. It was electric and I sat not 6 feet away directly in front of Ozzie. I have to say he did look a little healthier then though he could hide behind the microphone stand he was so thin. Mind you they all were. The catwalk models of today can’t hold a patch on most of the male rock stars back then for sheer thinness.

So there you go. A few things you didn’t know. Then again maybe you didn’t want to.