Seven Years with Banksy Read online

  Now, Robin is a West Country lad and I’m sure he’d be the first to admit that if push came to shove, and although I hadn’t seen him in a while, the festival would be de rigueur for him. Thus I had an inkling that we would bump into each other at this year’s gathering. I arrived at the site a day before it was due to start and settled in. I was lucky enough to be crashing in the medical staff’s field where one of my mates and my brother were involved in talking people down from paranoid or insane trips over the weekend.

  So I was ambling round the proceedings, looking at everybody setting up when I saw the graffiti bus next to a huge hoarding. Someone was painting on that hoarding and it looked like Robin. And so it was. I strolled towards him, getting closer, and making out the details of his work. Nearby were four large individual letters as big as two-storey houses spelling out ‘LOVE’. The sun was shining, the grass was green, the wind a little breezy. The valley side rose up in the distance and it struck me as incongruous to see him in this environment; out of the gritty city, his usual urban turf, but there he was, throwing up a vision of urban depravity and decay the size of a small hill that would be seen from all around.

  I wandered up to him, stood there, looking up and he continued painting for a while longer then glanced down from his stepladder. ‘Hey, all right?’ he said carrying on with his painting and we talked for a while. He was so relaxed and into it, in his element you could say, and I just hung around, watching his vision come through, watching the clouds rolling past, watching the grass grow with the Glastonbury Tor rising out of the end of the valley, glinting in the distance. Summer entered into me, and the fresh air was calming and serene. I felt the city falling from my shoulders. I was back in the countryside and it felt good.

  I was up in London again later that summer with Robin and we were strolling along in the warm afternoon and he was chatting away about this and that. He would have ideas and I still hadn’t learnt to take everything he said seriously. He was so full of them I thought it would be impossible to realize all of them. Some I commented on, others I was polite about and kept quiet so he wouldn’t lose face if they were unachievable. I mean, that was my fault, to think that way because in reality nearly all he said he would do, he did. He was a man of his word. I never heard him boast, he would just sound off about his complex plans and concepts and then, magically, they would be realized.

  One idea he mentioned that day was the creation of public graffiti areas. ‘Yeah, you know these boards that they put up around building sites, about nine feet tall, usually painted white? Well I’m going to turn them into public graffiti areas,’ he said.

  ‘Yeah, how?’ I asked, intrigued by the concept.

  ‘I’m going to just take an official working emblem, like off of a fag packet like this.’ He fished out his cigarettes, pointed to the emblem on the top and continued. ‘I’ll invent the name of a government agency and just stencil up that it’s a designated graffiti area. And then wait and see what happens.’

  We kept on walking as I was imagining his idea in real life and marvelling at its simplicity. An idea that would inspire all the young hoods to do their thing all across town, thinking it was law-abiding to do so. It was just a subversive inversion of the power of the state. A twist on normality that would inspire a rush of creativity and would piss off the powers that be at the same time. All I could do was laugh thinking about it. Robin seemed to be grinning too. His humour was irresistible but the prankster didn’t really laugh at his own jokes.

  When I went back to London a month or so later I had forgotten his idea. I was out walking and rounding a corner I just happened to come across a large, previously white wall entirely covered in graffiti, tags, and provocative images and statements. It was so completely bombed it was unusual. And it was no dark corner of the city either, it was a well-to-do neighbourhood. Why here? How come so out in the open? I crossed the road to have a clearer look and then, I saw an official-looking stencil with emblem and numerical ordnance code that proclaimed civilly that this was ‘A Designated Graffiti Area’. It didn’t say ‘do your worst’, naturally, but it communicated that very sentiment to all young guns and they had indeed attacked the walls with admirable energy. I laughed out loud, and that I was privy to this idea previously cracked me up all the more. In my usual journeys through the capital I saw many more graffiti sites proclaimed as official by Mr Banks.

  I imagined kids being arrested by the police as they painted, only to tell the good officer, ‘But it’s an official graffiti area!’ and the cops having to let the little tykes go.

  Banksy: 1 – Establishment: 0.

  CHAPTER SIX

  MILLENNIUM

  I had been gallivanting around, spending every spare penny on travelling to see Johanna in Stockholm, doing clubs, some building, some gardening, whatever I could pick up. The nights were drawing in, the millennium was fast approaching. I hadn’t seen Robin for a stretch and I didn’t expect to particularly. He was busy, moving in his circles and manifesting his plan for world domination.

  Then one night, quite late, I was sloping up one of Bristol’s hills, coming out of Montpelier into St Andrews. It was gloomy, wet and cold, you could hear the sound of trains from the main track nearby. The hazy light from street lamps reflected up at me dimly from the puddles on the pavement. I bumped into a gaggle of boys and young men moving solemnly and swiftly along the road. One of them was Robin. I’d never seen him with these people before but I knew one of them slightly. I immediately got the feeling that something was wrong. Robin hardly acknowledged me, he had a backpack on and wasn’t speaking. The guy I knew told me in hushed tones that they had just left a funeral and wake for a guy from a Bristol collective band called the Moonflowers. The young lad had taken his own life.

  The Moonflowers were a sort of hippy-punk crossover band. They lived in a big shared house up in St Andrews. I never knew them well but I went up there a couple of times with a Spanish girl who hung out with them. It was a creative space with lots of musicians and artists from all over. A real bohemian scene, peaceful and lacking pretensions. They had it going on for a while and were making noises on the underground. When they broke up they fragmented into many creative pieces. But standing there, hearing this news was a tragic moment.

  I could see Robin was in pain, shoulders hunched; he was shocked, dejected and confused as to the dark reasons for this loss, and it made me feel sad too. I wanted to say something, to make a difference, but there was nothing. I asked him if he was in town for long but he was en route to Temple Meads station to catch a train, London-bound. I stood aside and let the group pass and watched them go down the hill, their slouched, silent forms moving off and blending in with the murk. I turned, walked to the top of the hill and stopped. I had forgotten where I was going and why.

  I had never seen Robin looking so forlorn. I felt for him.

  The millennium arrived but nobody really knew what they were celebrating or why. It felt pretty vacuous but it gave us all the right to get gloriously trashed. So plans were set, ideas mooted until my mate Fabbie, who ran clubs, decided to have a riotous party of bands, DJs and movies with all the added extras he was renowned for. I was asked to do the door to keep the uninvited out – not to mention the psychos who would duly show up with nowhere else to go, just as Big Ben would be ringing out. It suited me, I actually didn’t want to get alcohol poisoning like everybody else. A mouthful of champagne would suffice while I kept an eye on proceedings, and maybe a joint.

  The venue was to be ‘The Cube’, a multimedia complex around King’s Square. I spent a fair amount of my spare time there due to its eclectic underground avant-garde programme. It was a place of constant enjoyment for the likes of me who prefer their culture raw, straight up and independent.

  All the preparations were done and the big night arrived. I was pleased to have this refuge to shelter in while the rest of the city would be losing its collective mind. Ours was a ticket-only extravaganza and I would be surrounded by the m
ost splendid of Bristol’s freaks, nutters and artists. It was not a bad place to be on the eve of the new millennium.

  Everything was sorted out when I arrived at around eight o’clock in the evening. I spoke to some people and picked up the buzzing vibe then I took my place at the door and waited. It was quiet despite everything, as nobody had turned up as yet.

  The next thing I noticed was a lone figure moving up the hallway. The gait was Robin’s. He was alone, dressed in black and hunched up. He looked up once or twice not without grace as he floated along. Things went sort of quiet, people were absent. It slowed down and I had a chance to observe him. He was a little feline, swift. I can see him even now moving along. And then, bosh, he was there – standing in front of me, looking. I think he was wearing a backpack but that wouldn’t be unusual; he was probably set to run some black-ops on the eve, a perfect opportunity to make art while the town went rampant.

  I could be wrong but I had a strange feeling he had come just to see me. I didn’t tell him I was here tonight but that doesn’t mean he didn’t know.

  ‘All right?’ he said as he looked up, giving a customary nod.

  ‘Yeah; good to see you,’ I responded. There was a slight air of expectation about him so I perked up and paid attention. We exchanged a few pleasantries and he got down to business.

  ‘I’ve got a question for you,’ he says. I knew what he was going to ask. It had been the elephant in the room for some time and it wasn’t going to be my hand in marriage.

  ‘Yeah?’

  He took a breath in. ‘Do you think I should reveal myself, you know, to the press, tell them who I am, let them know and all that?’

  I’d already thought about this so my answer came easily: ‘No, no way,’ I said emphatically. He’d brought the cold in with him and I shivered a little. I offered him a drink but he declined in an instant so I said, ‘You, you’re the Robin Hood dude. Everybody’s going to know you, know about you through your work. The papers are going to love you. You’ve got this Andy Capp appeal, don’t you? From the Sun to the Guardian, you know. They’ll all be talking about you. For what you’ve got to say. You’re that good that you’ll be on the tongues and in the minds of the population. You don’t need to reveal yourself. You’re going to be known by all anyway. And because they don’t know what you look like they’ll always want to know. Won’t they?’

  He was as composed as ever, listening, shuffling his feet a bit but didn’t say anything. He obviously knew this stuff anyway. Sometimes you just need someone to confirm your own way of thinking. I probably wasn’t the only one of whom he asked this question.

  I went on talking, for encouragement’s sake, but the main substance was said. ‘Who the hell wants to be famous anyway? All those fuckers breathing down your neck. It would spoil all the freedom you’ve got. You wouldn’t be anonymous any more – wouldn’t be able to move around the streets, that would be fucked up. It would stop you. You can have the best of both worlds: be free and your work be known.’

  I looked at him because this occurrence was irregular. He had never asked for my advice before. I could tell he was really listening. That was enough deference, if you could call it that, in the absence of suitable words. He didn’t nod, didn’t acknowledge; the silence of consideration enveloped us and a bubble was around us. We were deep in conversation though we weren’t talking. To me his rise was inevitable, he was the unique, the authentic; as sure as day follows night he would be known, he was just that good. Like an equation, you know, mathematics.

  ‘If you make any money you should put some away,’ I added.

  He cut me off real quick and became animated again and said, ‘No, nah, that’s not important. I couldn’t care less about that. I could go back tomorrow to what I was doing before.’

  ‘What was that?’ I asked.

  ‘Working in a slaughterhouse,’ he said.

  I tripped out on that. Who the fuck would go back to working in a slaughterhouse given half a chance? But it sounded true; I didn’t doubt it for a second. This comment cut me down and I thought better of saying more. He was shaking his head. We came back to the room and the goings-on around us. It was the millennium’s eve. Party time. We looked at each other a little. I smiled. It was good to see him at this juncture, at this impossible moment.

  ‘Yeah, see you,’ he said.

  ‘Happy New Year,’ I replied.

  ‘Yeah, right,’ he said, and then he was gone.

  I thought about what he had said for a bit and then the guests started to show and the proceedings began. And what a blast they were! My mum, who came down with one of my Australian cousins, was a little nonplussed with the hard-core porn that shockingly came on the screen at midnight and I got magnums of champagne stuck in my face from all comers, but in tiny corners of my brain I kept rerunning Robin’s appearance and what he said.

  Since the New Year I had seen Robin around and about and he began telling me about an event he was organizing in a central part of Bristol – an old dockside warehouse area that had been trashed and was being developed (sadly) into nondescript offices and generic dwelling spaces in the twenty-first-century fashion. Anyway, for this to happen the developers had to run several kilometres of high-board fencing round the site and that was obviously prime territory for erstwhile graffiti artists to develop their talents. However, Robin had a plan in place before the fencing was even up, discussing with the council, under a pseudonym, the possibilities of an exceptional artistic event.

  For a couple of months after this he mentioned the project every time I saw him and I would listen, politely as always, to the next instalment of his unorthodox plans, and, despite my doubts, as usual, it came together. The event was to be held on a spring weekend and boasted an array of international talent. Robin was excited about it and it had taken considerable effort on his part to arrive at this point, not least his assuring a suspicious city council of the merit of this endeavour and that it would place the city on the map. I could imagine his boldness in the council chambers despite the fact that the very same council was after him for years for criminal damage on account of his continuing artistic assault. You had to hand it to him, and his impudence made me laugh. His escapades were endlessly entertaining.

  The event was to go on for the whole weekend, the artists arriving, setting up shop and finishing their pieces on the Sunday. It was a fresh, breezy weekend and chilly to be out for a whole day but that meant you could easily wear a hood if you didn’t want to be too visible without it seeming superficial.

  I had asked my mum if she wanted to go as I had mentioned Robin to her on several occasions by now. So we both went down quite early on the Saturday and the various artists had begun to set up. There were local names, other Brits, Europeans and Americans who had flown in at Robin’s behest. He had that kind of reputation by now – movers in that world began to pay him respect when he called.

  We found Robin and he was surprised to meet my mum, who rapidly produced a camera when he began to spray his work. He stopped to talk for some time, talking to my mother like a well-behaved and polite English boy would, and she was very impressed. He didn’t like the camera but what can you say to someone’s mum?

  There began to be an easy party atmosphere as folks started to show and watch the art being created. It was intriguing to see all of these different writers putting up their long-considered pieces. The quality was exceptional; it was clear for all to see and under normal circumstances you would never catch a glimpse of a graffiti artist at his or her game. Beat-boxes were sound-clashing all around the block as dozens of painters got into a meditative flow. My mum left and I had to go do some stuff around town, returning later that afternoon.

  By now more of the general public had wandered down and all seemed duly impressed. It was difficult not to be. The artists, friends and acquaintances began to refresh themselves with cans of beer as evening approached and the vibe was in full swing. As darkness fell it became their natural environment and
they kept working late into the night. Robin was doing a piece which showed his tag lying comatose on an operating table surrounded by white-coated doctors, spooks and scientists dissecting and cutting open his name. It was good but he was busy saying that it was nowhere near as good when compared with some of the legends who had come to paint and represent. Many of the new pieces going up were unique, indeed, the whole affair was unique and something to inspire the most humdrum spectator.

  Sunday was sunny and balmy and a lot of the works had been completed. The entire area had been transformed. It was a magic gallery of the most intense, uncompromising contemporary art unleashed anywhere. Photographers and camera crews wandered round. More crowds ambled along, digging the free art. A lot of people were excited by the opportunity to speak directly to the artists. These were the people who put stuff up overnight, under penalty of the law; the people that make life in a gritty city more liveable through their street art. Spray-cans of paint aren’t cheap. What a way to use wasted space. I loved it. I came to sit by an artist from Chicago. He played some sublime beats while finishing his work and I lay back on the tarmac and took it in, chatting to him about his own streets and his own ideas.

  Increasingly I was moving in different circles to Robin. If I wasn’t in Bristol I was in Europe somewhere, along with my motorcycle. And then there was Johanna, up there in Sweden, where I was spending plenty of time exploring. London was still on my radar and I always enjoyed getting up there to see friends, catch up on the scene, attend demos against the war in Iraq and the like. I would usually try to hook up with Robin when I was up there. It was a priority of mine to see him, to keep up with him and his ideas. As always, he was worth being around and his floods of plans, cryptic as they were, delighted me. I always left his presence buzzing from his energy.