Dec 3, 2022
Antony Holloway: My Life So Far 2022 Psycho punk in the Medway, Sculptures, Cellos and living in France.
This was a blast ..
The show notes have been provided by Antony so I have kept them in his voice.
I was born in 1963. Grandad on my mum’s side had been a professional violinist, playing on cruise ships, in orchestras and silent movies. I have vague memories of visiting his family home, an East London terrace house with his brothers standing around singing and him rattling off “Roll out the barrel” and “My old mans a policeman” on an upright piano. My dad was born in a horse drawn caravan into the family of a traveling theatre. He was orphaned when young and the company broke up before he was old enough to join in the vaudeville shenanigans.
When I was a child, my dad would call in to pay bills and leave money for food shopping, otherwise he was absent. My mum painted and played the piano but also spent long periods of time in bed depressed. During one such depression she was seduced by a visiting neighbour and shortly moved in with him. My eldest two sisters both left home around this time so I was left to bring myself up along with my remaining sister, Louise. I was eleven and had just started secondary school, Louise was three years older.
There were advantages and disadvantages to an unconventional childhood. Nobody ever mentioned school or homework, there was never any talk about qualifications or careers. The only thing that had been pressed upon us was musical instruments. I started playing the cello when I was seven years old and throughout all of the chaos I always managed to go for a music lesson on Saturday morning. At school I was quite bright but found rules and regulations difficult. It all seemed rather irrelevant and the only lesson that really interested me was art.
In 1978 I was fifteen and my sister Louise went to art school in Rochester, at this point I was living in the house of my mums chronic alcoholic boyfriend which soon became my personal hell. Then, I think it’s fair to say that post punk counter culture saved my life. I had always worn jumble, had a home cropped mop on top of my head and just generally didn’t relate to other peoples experiences. Having generally been an outsider, I started visiting my sister and suddenly felt right at home. The Medway garage band scene was just kicking off, the Pop Rivets had released their first LP and I was there for the first Micky and the Milkshakes gig. I went back to Folkestone, nurtured myself on the John Peel show, got hold of an old Woolworths guitar (Satelite?) and started writing, playing and singing three chord songs.
I played guitar and sang in bands (punk/rockabilly/skiffle) around Folkestone and Dover while I got myself an Art A level at the local Tech College. I then headed off to art school in Rochester and found that the garage band scene was now thriving. I came across a busker, Tim Webster and started playing with him. Tim had a Johnny Burnette album, so we learned all the songs and played them on the streets of Kent. I soon started playing bass guitar in a band with him and Martin Waller, sax player from the Gruffmen and very early Milkshakes gigs. Originally called The Outerlimits we later became The Sputniks. We played so many gigs at pubs, art schools and parties, practically every week for three years.
The cello lessons had remarkably carried on in parallel with gigging, I think I stopped just before The Outerlimits. Even during my Foundation Course at Rochester I thought that I would probably go to music school. However, the rock and roll was just too much fun, so art school seemed a better place for me. The flexibility of Art school hours gave me the opportunity to slope off and play music and again it was somewhere I felt at home.
When art school finished and the Sputniks broke up I was briefly at a loss for what to do. However, following the birth of my first daughter I was obliged to earn some money and through relentless searching and endless job applications I quickly got myself a commission to make a public sculpture in Swindon. Following this I had a commission at the prestigious Grizedale Forest Sculpture Trail which was my passport for back to back public sculpture commissions all over England.
Thirteen years, three more daughters and god knows how many sculptures later I found that I was spending all my time on motorways or in meetings with councils and local community groups, this was not where I wanted to be. In 2000 we moved to France, I carried on knocking out sculptures for a few more years but became more interested and occupied with restoring ancient buildings.
In 2006 I had a chance meeting with Bart Coles who had played with The Escalators back in my Sputnik days and was living nearby in France. Although our paths had never crossed we had been playing the same venues and had been on the same scene. I’d never played double bass but bought one, learned how to play and started to play and sing Rockabilly music with Bart on guitar and a variety of local drummers. As The Gruff Cats we played plenty of local gigs over a six year period but eventually with no permanent drummer we packed it in. Around this time I made the decision to restart playing the cello. After a 35 year gap it took a while to get up to speed but now, six years later, I’m probably better a cellist than when I was at 18, certainly a more experienced artist and performer.
So now in 2022 I play my cello every day and have regular concerts playing baroque, blues, rock and roll or swing on cello or bass with a variety of musicians. Sculpture is on the back burner for now, but I’ve started on a long awaited project printing T-Shirts. Lino cuts to begin with but hopefully moving onto wood block printing and screen printing before too long. We also recently finished the 22 year renovation of the farm house we bought in 2000 so last year we moved into another ruin and have started all over again. I don’t really see much difference between making stuff or playing music, all that matters is that I don’t stop.