Seven Years with Banksy Read online

  This was becoming amusing, but daft. All of a sudden, he just popped out from behind a close-by pillar. ‘All right then?’ Robin said as he shuffled his feet in front of us and we were all a little taken aback. How he had got from the first place I saw him to appear from behind the pillar I do not know because I was looking about the whole time. He was here and he seemed a little nervous so I tried to put him at ease and introduced him to the chaps who were, by now, regarding him with mild amusement.

  We started talking and Robin relaxed. However, it taught me again about how careful he is around people he doesn’t know; how seriously he takes his liberty and how trust with him was a rare thing – and if you had that trust, even a little bit, it was hard won. By now it was obvious he did have a tag on his tail. He was known and if a copper could take him in for all his graffiti it would be a very serious business. But still, the image of him checking us out and dodging behind walls and pillars before he made his mind up to meet us that day still makes my ribs tickle.

  As it happened, Jesse and Kes had things to do, so they left shortly after, leaving the two of us alone in the square. I looked at him enquiringly but he didn’t offer an explanation, as if his behaviour hadn’t happened.

  ‘Let’s have a look at the Dome, or what?’ I said, and we trotted off through this brave new landscape to view this corporate wonder. It was a big site and obviously we couldn’t walk in past security but it had fences, which you could see through all around its periphery. The white Dome was actually up and it was quite an impressive sight. There was a lot going on: earth movers, lorries and workers. They paid us no attention as we circumnavigated, as best we could, the whole place. We ended up by the waterfront looking over towards the new buildings of the World Trade Centre, then over at Canning Town on the north side of the Thames.

  Robin was pretty distant and I could tell the cogs in his brain were whirring.

  ‘What do you think then?’ I asked.

  ‘I’ve got a few ideas,’ he replied. I never did know if he carried out an art attack on the Dome and its surroundings. I haven’t been down there since. The new architecture creates very exposed spaces so get-away plans are limited.

  Every time I was in London I would hook up with Robin. I was moving mostly between Stockholm and Bristol but also felt a pressing need to get up to the capital as often as I could. By this time he was mostly living there and things were starting to happen for him. As a side effect of his bombing campaigns, in which he would litter neighbourhood after neighbourhood with his judicious work, he was getting known. I was personally amazed at his all-town obliteration. His art was getting bigger and bolder. Shoreditch walls and Brick Lane bridges, Soho for its centrality, Camden, Notting Hill and several other places all had his signatory efforts.

  He never once told me about what he’d been up to, never pointed out a new piece. I just came across them as I moved around – and I didn’t even live there, so the spread of his work was obviously much wider than I could ever take in. And all this as his work in Bristol was increasing too. He was becoming notorious. Some of the locations were breathtaking like his ‘Wrong War’ on high bridges. How did he get up there? How did he remain unseen? He was outrageous, he was everywhere, like a nocturnal tomcat on the prowl. He saw the city’s ripped backsides at an hour of night that not many of us are privy to.

  The remarkable aspect is that it all seemed effortless. Whenever I saw him he was just the same as always, admitting nothing, releasing nothing, just composed. I made a comment that he had hit the ground running in London, that I’d seen his stuff all over. He didn’t even respond. He was totally unconcerned. He was just doing it. Full on, non-stop, rocking-the-block. Rising again and again.

  I was on one of several anti-globalization demos in the wake of the riots in Seattle around this time. The police were trying to kettle us in Oxford Circus and a group of us managed to break away and move south, pursued by the coppers – who were on horseback, on foot, in their riot wagons and in a couple of helicopters. They chased us to Broadwick Street in Soho, where the inevitable face-off ensued. The tension was high and the coppers in body armour, shields up, truncheons raised, moved in. Then boom! In the corner of my eye I saw ‘Mona Lisa Wielding A Bazooka’ straight in front of us, the size of the back of a bus. It was a Banksy, of course, and it lent such an inspirational uplift to the proceedings that I felt his art had become the very soul of the city, empowering us with its intelligence and liberty and encouraging us onwards. We got the fuck out of there, like slippery eels, and later that night I went back to that spot just to relive the moment, to look at his art on my own. It blew me away and I was all the more inspired because I knew him.

  The next time I saw him I told him of the piece of theatre that had taken place and the effect of his Mona Lisa on the proceedings. I think he smiled at that – it was high praise indeed.

  Sometimes when I saw him in London we would just wander without any destination in mind. Just me and him, no rhyme, no reason. And it was in these quiet moments that he would explain his latest ideas to me. I would just listen. It wasn’t that he ever asked for a response and all I could express really was my interest in whether it sounded good or not. As we wandered I remember him telling me that he was going to commission a sculpture of Liberty and her scales, wearing stockings and suspenders, as a prostitute that could be bought, and that he was going to have it raised in a public square somewhere in London.

  I acknowledged the idea but was foolish enough to assume it would never happen. I just thought he was getting ahead of himself. His thoughts were always on full tilt. The money it would cost, et cetera, seemed too far-fetched and I asked him about this but he said he was going to put every penny he had into it. He was so into his plans for bigger things, bigger statements, that I kept quiet, in case he didn’t achieve them. But how wrong I was. I wasn’t there when he raised his Statue of Liberty in Clerkenwell, maybe I didn’t deserve to be either. Oh me of little faith! He bowled me over with his conviction, having the wherewithal to carry this project entirely at his own expense.

  He never gave me the impression of having much money; his clothes weren’t extravagant, we never ate when we met, he was skinny. Every penny went to further his vision. I was just lucky to hear about some of these plans. But I could see he was fulminating on his course. He’d only just started doing work that wasn’t graffiti. His energy was definite and careering, naturally emanating. He was on an upward curve, God-given and righteous.

  Similarly, when we were walking past the impressive statue of Boadicea and her chariot outside the Houses of Parliament he just said casually, ‘I’m going to put a wheel clamp on that.’ And later, he did. The image of this British warrior being stopped in her tracks by petty officialdom is so him, irony for the masses. And, then again, he had this idea: ‘You know how students always put a traffic cone on the heads of statues on a Saturday night when they’re pissed? Well I’m going to get Rodin’s ‘The Thinker’ cast, full sized, with a bollard on his head.’ And we would just jog on whilst the City polluted us. Silence falling again between us.

  Sure enough it was done – on Shaftsbury Avenue! It was huge and weighed tons and would have cost an arm and a leg to commission and he needed a truck and a crane just to plonk it there. It’s incredible that he believed in this so much that he would cough up all his hard-earned cash just to have the satisfaction of bugging-out the passers-by on their way to work the next day. For the city to remove them also raised questions: ‘Who put this here?’ ‘What are we going to do with it?’ ‘Move it?’ ‘Where to?’ ‘How can someone just set down a huge sculpture and inflict on us their humour?’

  I was wondering about where he was getting money to carry out these guerrilla operations in such an audacious fashion. He didn’t seem to be holding down a job. I didn’t ask; but one afternoon as we were walking up Wardour Street he went into a record shop and said he just had to pick up something. The guys behind the counter knew him and chatted and handed ov
er to him some money while I noticed his work on T-Shirts which they were obviously selling. And then, later, we were hanging out down Westbourne Grove. When we were just about to part company. ‘So what’re you gonna be doing then?’ I enquired.

  ‘Ah, I got some work on – for a record label. I’m gonna do Blur’s record cover for their next release.’

  ‘All right’ I say and nod. If he was in there he was in all over I figured and besides the earnings he was getting connected to another world well outside of Bristol. He wasn’t going to stop moving up. London had him now, beyond the parochial confines of the West’s capital. I felt a little sadness at this realization but could only wish him on, usher him forward (not like he needed it) but as our friendship went through its paces I felt for the first time that he was on an upward spiral of his own making that would make him international, that Bristol would be robbed of him. It is hardly a betrayal and he’s never forgotten the City – far from it.

  After we parted that day I headed down to see some architect friends who had an office in a large communal warehouse space near the Westway. As I walked in the main area, which was the size of a tennis court, I casually looked up and bang! On the main wall was a large canvas displaying a rioter, arms outstretched, preparing to throw flowers. The iconic image I had seen at the studio in Easton. This was one and the same. Sold. ‘Shit! He’s London’s now,’ I muttered as I headed for the stairs and regarded this familiar piece from the balcony.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  MIDSUMMER

  I was just doing my own thing – running here and there, helping to run clubs and what-have-you; running about in various guises; spending time in Europe when funds would allow and getting onwards and upwards as much as the world at large would let me. I came to realize that I had encountered and befriended one exceptional person in Banksy. We kept in touch and I always liked to see him but I could feel this other force pulling him in a certain direction. He was headed somewhere I wouldn’t be going.

  There was an independent bookshop called Greenleaf on a street called Park Row in Bristol, that is sadly now defunct, and was run by some rather nice ladies. They kept an excellent stock of books and periodicals and I was often in there, looking at something, purchasing something. I was cycling past one day and saw that a few prints had been displayed in the window and they were for sale. They were some of Robin’s stencil works, in colour no less, but they were pieces you could see just yards away in any direction on the walls. It was the first time I had seen any prints of his for sale and they were signed and numbered. They looked good but did not have the impact that they had out on the street. Still, there was one of my favourites – ‘Bombing Middle England’ – a stencil of proper English ladies practising the refined sport of bowls. All clad in white as befits the civilized game, only the bowls were bombs. The prints were not expensive, maybe twenty or thirty pounds, so I snapped one up even though my cash flow had become severely limited of late. I stuck the print up in my hall with a few thumbtacks.

  I told my family and friends that this guy’s prints were on sale and that they should go and get one before they all flew out the door. My mum was about the only one who thought they might be worth buying. Most people were too strapped paying the bloody council tax to even bother considering it. Can’t say I didn’t try.

  Perhaps six months later they were selling another selection of two prints and I gazed at them from the pavement unable to buy one before they were all gone. By now I was done-in financially too. Sure as hell should have bought one but that would have meant going hungry. Oh well. The price was minuscule in comparison to what one of those prints would go for now.

  It wasn’t long after that his first ever exhibition was to be shown down in the old docks in what was then a new restaurant, the ‘Severnshed’, an old industrial shed transformed into an eating establishment. I mentioned it to my brother and a few other mates and we got down there on the opening night. Robin hadn’t told me about this event and, of course, he wasn’t going to be present there either. We walked into the pretty swish surroundings, all bright, new and expensive-looking, juxtaposed to the gritty streets around it. This is about the time that people started getting a bit precious about Robin leaving his roots, beginning to sell out and all that. I probably felt a little that way myself but put that out of my mind to take in his new framed works. They ranged from little to large and they all looked good. A lot of it was new stuff I hadn’t seen and I was suitably impressed.

  The crowd was pretty sparse. Quite a few Eastonians were there, milling about, appreciative but a bit sniffy about their ownership of this young man. There were others, more moneyed, more clueless, the ones who had never actually seen a Banksy on a wall. And then there was us. All the pieces were for sale but they were more pricey than the works at the Greenleaf Bookshop. I think they started at perhaps forty pounds and went up into the hundreds. ‘Fuck, we should buy one,’ I said to my brother. But he didn’t have any spare cash – same as me. I had another look round before we sat back on a couch, taking in the evening and looking out over the water, watching as little sticky red dots were placed on each piece that was sold. It felt horrible to not have enough cash while they all went, one by one. We couldn’t even afford a round at the bar. But what we did know was that this artist was one of us and that was reward enough; we could see all this stuff on our streets for free anyway, any time.

  It was also the point when Robin’s work started to become popular in a different way, with rich collectors, looking for an investment. They would buy a picture and then sit down to eat. We couldn’t take much more so out we went and stood in the rain instead, silently.

  It wasn’t too long before Robin and I met up again, although I was more likely to see him in London than anywhere else. Things were continuing to happen for him up there and he was enforcing his carpet bombing campaign of all available public space from traffic bollards, to billboards, to bridges, to walls, to signs, to pavement, to cars, to tunnels, to wheel clamps, to all available surfaces. He was becoming a fixture.

  The newspapers were beginning to wonder who he was. He was never one to explain his activities or what he’d been up to but if something significant had occurred he would mention it. We were sitting somewhere in Central London when he told me this tale.

  ‘I was out just the other night, setting up a stencil on the walls of the Telecom Tower. It was late and I had some mates sitting in a car next to the kerb. The paint was by the door of the car and I was just going to get it when out of nowhere the cops show up. One copper comes out with a sub-machine gun, you know the kind they carry at airports, and holding it cross-wise over his chest, you know how they do. The cop looks me up and down and asks what I’m doing and he looks at the car and at the paint, and then at my mates inside the car.’

  ‘Shit!’ I said, ‘What did you say?’

  ‘I said something about how we were moving the paint around in the car because it was in the way and by this point he’s well suspicious and the cops in their car were running the registration through their records. I was sure he was going to notice the stencil taped to the wall, but he just kept looking at me. Then he turns to me and says: “You better be careful, I might shoot first and ask questions later.” And he just stared at me. He was wired and nervous and he just kept looking at us while they were checking up on the registration, it went on for ages.’

  I could imagine the face-off underneath the Telecom Tower, early in the morning, some traffic rushing past. Stencil hanging on the Telecom wall. If only the copper had twigged this was the underground legend ‘Banksy’ he would be on about it over his tea and biscuits for years to come. Robin was good at keeping his mouth shut and just seemed to play out the moment. It was hardly his first encounter with coppers. He had run from many of them in many towns and usually got away. But this was a little different, a little snappy copper with a top-of-the-range sub-machine gun strapped on who ‘might shoot first and ask questions later’. He continued, ‘Eventual
ly the copper got a signal from those in the car and he told us to fuck off.

  ‘We drove off and I was mentally begging him to not look at the stencil on the wall. We took off and that was that. He just hadn’t made the connection.’

  ‘What happened to the stencil in the end?’ I asked.

  He looked up, almost surprised by the question. ‘Oh, I went back a couple of nights later and sprayed it.’ I cracked up completely. The tension of the story and then his brazen attitude had me reeling.

  This story has got to be a perfect illustration of the boy’s resolve, but the cop with the Heckler and Koch certainly made an impression on him, for he was to mention that incident again on a number of occasions.

  Summer was coming up and the West Country was a pleasant place to be. Bristol got even more laid back than usual and Somerset (‘summers setting’ to the ancient Britons) was gloriously fecund and its coasts cooling. Music festivals were in full flow, you could spend your entire summer moving between them. However there is one festival that every native of Bristol thinks they have a divine, ancient right to attend gratis, just courtesy of the fact that they were born and raised in this magical landscape. That festival is, of course, Glastonbury. Down in a valley, lost to England in normal days, near Shepton Mallet, on a farm that is relatively anonymous for most of the year, takes place a circus extravaganza that has beguiled hundreds of thousands since the early ’70s.

  I first spent an insane, tripped-out weekend there in 1978 and returned every summer I happened to be in the UK. Even when I’m abroad, the summer solstice always tunes me into the magic of Glastonbury Festival. We all know the festival has changed with the advent of the circle of steel fencing that is supposed to be impenetrable, but when I first went there you could just wander into the fields where the festival took place and no one would challenge you in any way. I can still see the connection between the old times and the present day.