I’m best known as Monty Oxymoron, keyboard player with the Damned (as I have been since 1996.) But I was a psychiatric nurse BEFORE I joined the band. At school I had absolutely NO IDEA what I wanted to do for a living, in fact the very idea I’d have to sacrifice hours for my time in some strange place simply to stay alive horrified me! I remember a call for a show of hands at school: “Who’s had a job?” Only myself and my friend Henry didn’t put up our hands: we were far too busy making music and noise, creating artwork, thinking up crazy things: we had no time to ‘work”! (In fact Henry did do a paper round for a while after that, but not me!) Some of those early “musical” experiments are present on my Monty Oxymoron BandCamp at the start of my “For Acid Folk” album under the name “Moon Orchid”.
In seemed really absurd to spend most of one’s life doing something unrelated to one’s interests and passions simply to continue existing: yet I also wanted a relationship and girls want things! (Or at least that was one of my thoughts at the time: “You want love: they want houses, better dig in your trousers, put your money where your mouth is…” sang Kevin Ayers on the subject. So not only did I not have a job until well into my 20s; no girlfriend either!
I knew I was good at art: could I make a living that way? Some lucky people do: creating art for fantasy novels and prog rock album covers, cartoonists and so on, and some artists get famous (and surely rich?) So on leaving school I went to art college. (Well even if I DON’T become a famous artist I might meet some musicians and form a famous band, like Pink Floyd did!!!) Trouble was times they were a changin’ and art college in the 80s was very different to the 60s/70s. I found that out the hard way when I was doing some psychedelic doodles when I felt a dark presence over my shoulder: a TUTOR! “Oh…one of THOSE: didn’t you realise Jimi Hendrix died years ago?!” It said, and sloped off. Oh…what am I doing here then? I’ve been typecast and ridiculed ALREADY: maybe art college was a mistake???
Also this was Eastbourne College of Art and Design (that no longer exists at least in the building we were in) and so rather provincial minded: most of the other students were not into crazy music; the latest trend was FASHION and the New Romantics. That, it seemed was where “it’s at”just then: I was way out of place. I was surprised too at there being racist attitudes there (South of England inbreeds you know!) I changed to a foundation year and explored it all but found nothing that fitted me. I fell between stools stinking of “fine art” and “graphics”.
However: I did meet one really good friend there: Alasdair Willis (now of the Vitamin B12) and we shared lots of musical interests, in fact he educated me into the world of free improv and experimental jazz. He brought his large cassette player into the sessions and so we annoyed the other students with obscure music all day! Then we had the idea of creating our own music/noise with whatever we could find lying about and with toy instruments we got in town. Drumming on tubs of printing ink, filing cabinets and a large metal spring: “No WAY are you getting away with making all that noise!”, another student into Heavy Metal exclaimed…but we DID! Soon many of the other students joined in the cacophony can be heard at the start of my “Dr Swastika’s Analysis” album on BandCamp.
One time one of the studios was empty being decorated and it had a great echo in it so that encouraged us even more: screaming, roaring and tooting on plastic trumpets and saxophones we created a truly wonderful din. I used those recordings for years: speeding them up into screeching gnomes and slowing them down so the screams sounded like dinosaurs: “Laurence is upstairs making screeching noises again!” said Grandma (mother’s mum) to my Dad’s father on the phone; “I…KNOW what you Mean!”, he said gravely. (Actually Grandma was very tolerant of creative and experimental music and made a debut at Brighton’s Zap Club with me. (Examples of her stories and dreams are also on by BandCamp.)
So I left the college having not found my way forward and joined the ranks of Thatcher’s three million unemployed. I was still living at home and still had few real friends (Alasdair was an exception) and no girlfriend. The years dragged by like nails across paper: “I really need to get this life off the ground!” I remember thinking: but how…what…where…when?
Finally I was invited to join a project created by our neighbour across the street: Karanjiit Gill. This project was funded by the government (those cynical of us might say: to reduce those embarrassing employment figures!) The project was to design soft-ware to help children with special needs learn at school. “But I know nothing about computers and I’m bad with technology!” I countered. “Do not worry: you can learn and you can help with the artwork and music on the programmes!” he said. So off I went, to Moulsecoombe. Henry also joined the project and he DID know about computers, and as he said it became obvious that Ranjiit’s vision was way too ambitious for the primitive machines we had then.
I struggled with programming “Structure” and the like: the machines I did not care for but I did enjoy visiting the special schools and working with the kids: they were lovely. So, it seemed I liked working “with people”, that’s a start! But I didn’t think I could handle being a teacher and controlling a class-full: one to one was fine. (I came across the same dilemma when I later trained in Art Psychotherapy as we had to work in groups as well as one to one sessions: that made me nervous and deskilled; I did qualify though and the experience deepened my nursing work as it turned out.
But then one day an extraordinary thing happened: a young woman called Carolyn began working on the project, very pretty she was too. She had a strange look in her large blues eyes that fascinated me somehow. One cold spring morning she came into work and her eyes looked stranger still: “I have until a quarter to ten to save the universe!” She declared and went off. What? Where?? Who??? “She said strange stuff: she told me we should smash up all the computers!” I said to Henry, but seeing as the computers were’t up to the job that didn’t sound so insane!
I later heard she had been admitted to a mental hospital. I knew I just HAD to visit her and try to be of help though the idea of a psychiatric hospital frightened me somewhat: I had no idea what they were like: “Supposing they realise I should be there too?!” I worried, but I went anyway. I had experienced “night terrors” and hallucinations as a child and had recovered from it: maybe I could help Caz out from her living nightmare: I hoped so.
The visits were quite extraordinary: her “flight of ideas” really took me into another world where, though it was scary, life was really rather interesting. She did get well and was released back to the project (though she sadly had relapses ever after.) If I had helped, or the drugs, or maybe both + time: who knows but I missed the visits after they came to an end. At one point she said someone should write a song about her: so I did:
“I saw a rose on the pavement this morning, trampled by the feet of passers by; there’s a cold wind blowing in the spring time: don’t you feel strange and wonder why? She’s a fallen, fallen rose. What can I give this lady with a shattered mind? It’s not enough to care or to be kind. I’m a lion on the road but with no bravery; but nothing can dissuade me from my slavery. She a fallen, fallen rose.” (And yes, it IS on my BandCamp.)
Now, I told my friend Adrian Kendon about my experiences and my interest in psychology and he leant me Carl Jung’s “Psychology and Alchemy”: that was a real game changer. As I got deeper into Jung I learned that, for a man, a woman could symbolise something powerful and life changing: she could be his “Anima” (or “Soul Image”) and an encounter with her was indeed “fate”. And so it was: I saw an advert for psychiatric nurse training in Chichester and KNEW I had to go for it. Again I was afraid: not all people with mental health issues were as nice as Caz and some of the things I’d have to do (giving injections in particular) didn’t appeal; but I went anyway.
I’d found work that had intrinsic meaning: it wasn’t just a 9 to 5 to make money: it was a vocation. At last I felt I could try and prove my life was worthwhile and earn some money while about it. I entered training in the Spring of 1985 and qualified three years later in 1989…but easy it WASN’T.