This is the second instalment in a hopefully long line of personal interviews from people within the hardcore and punk scene and today’s issue I’m joined by a great man, Clobber frontman Charlie Longman.

Charlie has been fronting London Punk Band Clobber since 2021 and the energy roaring from the stage shows such an exiciting show, be careful because if you’re spotted not moving…you better get moving.

Barber by day, enthusiastic frontman by night and overall an absolute gent.

HI CHARLIE, FIRST OF ALL TELL US WHERE YOU GREW UP & WHAT YOU’RE HOMETOWN WAS LIKE?

Hello! I grew up on the arse end of the central line in a small Essex town called Debden.

Walking round a BNP stronghold as a youngen with a Mohawk, tartan jeans and a leather jacket you learned how to dodge a punch and find your tribe. I left as soon as I could, The songs called Born To Run, not born to stay put.

As an adult I go back pretty much exclusively to see family and record Clobber records at Soundlab Studios. It’s getting gentrified now, same old story. I’m all for the place getting tarted up for the people who live there to enjoy but they’re getting priced out by commuters and yuppies.

CAN YOU REMEMBER YOUR EARLIEST MEMORY FOR YOU LOVE OF MUSIC?

I’ve told this story so many times it might even be true.

For the first couple years of my life music was just whatever boring shit was being played on the radio. I didn’t really care for it much. When I was in primary school, my uncle was working nights, so his “mornings” were the time that we would get out of school.

As a result he would be the one that picks us up. Me and my brother and my cousin. My uncle was one of the first people I knew who had a CD player in his car, which just seemed so futuristic at the time.

The three records he had on regular rotation where The Sweets greatest hits, the Marshall Mathers LP by Eminem (which he probably shouldn’t have played to a load of kids in primary school) but the one that done me, the one that made me stop and pay attention was Johnny Cash live at San Quentin there’s a song on that record called A Boy Named Sue, and it fucks me off so much, I think most releases have censored it now.

Spotify definitely has but there’s a line in that song.

“My name is Sue now how do you do?! Now you’re gonna die!” Jonny just sounded so mean, nothing else sounded like that, nothing on the radio sounded like that. He sounded like he meant business and the story he told and how funny it was and how dangerous it seemed. That hooked me… that along with teenage rampage by The Sweet and probably anything off of that Eminem record that was the first time I was like okay? I like music.

WHAT KIND OF THINGS WERE YOU INTO IN YOUR YOUTH?

As a youth (and to be honest this rings true now) I cared for a few things, Comic Books, Nintendo, horror, fantasy and science fiction of all kinds.

I had very few friends because back in the day before Stranger Things, The MCU and even smart phones all these things were deeply uncool. I was bullied massively and girls definitely didn’t pay me any attention.

As such, being a total outsider I quickly gravitated to music. Especially alternative music.

Kerrang was a weekly bible and my brother was a skater so I would listen to the soundtracks of his skate vhs, Tony Hawks games and so on. As such my school Walkman probably had a regular rotation of: HIM, Green Day, Blink, Slipknot, Linkin Park, Bloodhound Gang and stuff like that.

When I discovered punk rock though that was when I really found MY shit. With music came a friendship group.

If you saw someone on Loughton High Road wearing a Korn T-shirt and they didn’t wanna fight you, you pretty much connected straight away.

I’m a pretty terrible skinhead in the respect that I couldn’t care about football at all growing up. Football was what the kids who bullied me liked after all. The only sport I liked was Wrestling because it always had these big characters, plots and heavy music with it. It’s that outsider art thing all over again.

Nowadays I love football. Because I love Clapton Community Football and that club belongs to the outsiders.

HOW DID YOU GET EXPOSED TO THE OI PUNK & HARDCORE SCENE?

My first exposure to punk was through my parents.

Despite being a soul boy my dad loved The Sex Pistols, Sham 69, The Clash and used to have this cool as fuck hardback book just called simply: Punk.

Fuck me I wore that thing out. Memorised every word.

Every band name and most importantly, the hair, the clothes and attitude. I tore all my clothes up. Sowed everything back together (badly). Safety pins through fucking everything. Spray paint through everything and took my dad’s beard trimmers to my barnet whenever I was left on my own.

I asked everyone I could find and bore about if they liked punk. If they had CDs I could borrow, what they used to use to spike there hair or spray paint there jackets. I use to go the fucking library and look for books on punk or fashion. If there was a punk in a movie I was watching I’d pause the vhs (which would leave scan lines everywhere) and write down what he was wearing incase it was a band t shirt.

We didn’t have tik tok or Spotify either. If I bought an album from a record store and it sucked?! No it didn’t! You just HAD to listen to it (I remember being so bummed out that the first Misfits record I bought wasn’t a Danzig album. I had no idea about that proud boy mug Graves at that point).

It was this bargain bin mentality that turned me onto Hardcore, Oi, psychobilly, the lot. Another uncle of mine, my uncle Kenny however. He was a rude boy and told me “you know punks like Ska right? We used to listen to ska and reggae with all the punks and skinheads.” That was it, my interest in the skinhead subculture started pretty much there.

WHAT INSPIRED YOU TO START WRITING MUSIC?

My older brother, he was my hero growing up.

First guy I knew who liked Green Day, first kid in my school to complete Ocarina of Time, skated, played guitar and started a fucking band.

Granted his first band were terrible and not my music at all. But I was so blown away.

We went to the Walthamstow Standard one night and watched my brother and his friends play there songs to people who paid to be there. Amazing! How fucking cool.

His band GIANTS went on to become sort my degree in punk rock.

I went on tour with them all the time (spent a week with H2O, shows with Adolescents, The Casualties, Comeback Kid, Evergreen Terrace, TRC, The Bled, Dead Swans, We Are The Ocean, Our Time Down Here to name a few) drank there riders. Sold there merch. Met some life long friends and most importantly learned how to run a DIY band.

I owe my entire career in music to Ed Parker, Jack Longman, Paul Richard’s, George Chitty and Harvey Freeman. It’s why it makes me so happy to now see George stage left every Clobber show now.

GIANTS discography is still on Spotify and I urge you to listen to it. 

GOING BACK TO THE BEGINNING, WHATS WAS YOUR FIRST EVER MUSIC PROJECT LIKE?

I don’t know if it counts but it’s the one I’ll always answer with. Me and my best friend Minyard (a nickname I can’t be bothered to explain). We became friends over a shared love of The Clash, The Libertines and Ska.

He played drums and I owned a bass but couldn’t play (but who the fuck actually needs to play there instrument. This is punk god damn it). We would sit in my mums garage with our chosen instruments and talk endlessly about the songs we were gonna write, the shows we were going to play and how we were gonna change the world.

Minyard now plays in the Blues Rock and Roll band Mills and has always been Clobbers biggest supporter. I brought him out on stage with me at Revolution Calling last year officially marking the biggest crowd either of us had played to.

Because my life is the way it is because of my best friends and they always need championing. Incase you’re wondering that band we started never played a note of music. Just some cringe lyrics written in a notebook and a MILLION empty fag packs.

CAN YOU REMEMBER HOW CLOBBER CAME TO FRUITION?

Like it was yesterday, it was lockdown.

My last band long since packed it in and I had no desire to really do music again. But obviously so much bullshit was being paraded in front of of us that lyrics really started coming out like it or not.

Then January 2021 my old mate Joey Brazil text me out the blue. “Here, what do you think of this?” And sent me what would eventually become Tottenham Court Road. He also sent me what would become Karen’s Gammons Hippies & Conspiracies and a song that never made the cut called The End. The lyrics just fit what he was writing so perfectly.

That was it the band had to start. By the time lockdown ended we recruited our old bass player (Big Worm) and the first EP was pretty much written and ready to go. We met our old drummer Sam at the first show that me and Joey went to after the lockdown and the rest is history.

WHAT HAS BEEN YOUR FAVOURITE MEMORY IN MUSIC SO FAR?

Favourite memory in music? Fuck that’s like picking a favourite drop of rain.

I’ve been so fortunate to meet and play with all my hero’s. The first one that comes to mind is 2006. Our small town of Debden used to have these really cool local shows at the Royal British Legion. They were promoted and curated by a man called Rob Tunstle. He would put 4/5 bands on each gig. Every single one a wildly different genre. You’d have metal bands playing alongside reggae bands. Cover bands followed by punk, emo, hardcore whatever. No bookers, £3 in, cheap bar. Proper local scene.

We got some heavy hitters in as well. The Skints played a show there and We Are The Ocean. They were fantastic days. No internet, no drama, just loads of alternative people meeting for the love it.

Anyway our like staple local band that played every show was a Indie band called Blah Blah Blah. They were fantastic song writers. I still to this day get such a big thrill out of three peace bands and I think it’s there fault. They were coming up right at the same time as that whole NME, MySpace, Indie boom (I think the kids call it a indie sleaze or landfill indie now but we never used that term growing up).

Artists like Kate Nash, Jamie T, that sort of stuff. Anyway they had just finished a tour with Lethal Bizzle (if memory serves me right) and we went to see there homecoming headline show at a bar in Camden. It was the first time there were people in the crowd I didn’t recognise.

Me and my friends felt so proud that this small band from our town were being recognised. The owner of the bar was worried because everyone was dancing so hard that the fucking floor might fall through (we were upstairs).

He cancelled the gig like a song in. Jay (BBBs frontman) grabbed his acoustic guitar out the band van and the band played acoustically directly outside on the wall of the Salvation Army building. It was magical a proper movie moment. We all hung out after by the van and that night me and my friends for the first time ever took part in a long lasting tradition.

Missing the last train and getting a night bus to Woodford then walking home in the sunrise  pissed. That venue ain’t there no more. Everyone I walk passed that Salvation Army I smile and think of the song “Death To The Indie Disco” by Blah Blah Blah.

WE CAN’T ALL BE MUSICIANS 24/7 SO WHAT DO YOU DO DAY TO DAY?

I am a barber I work out of the worlds best barbershop in the worlds best city, Wacky Barbers Soho in London Town. I got into barbering after working every other minimum wage job I could while I successfully dossed around for most of my teens and twenties. It’s the best job, the best shop and I fucking LOVE it!

YOU RUN YOURSELF AS A BARBER IN SOHO SICK! I SEE YOU PUT THE ODD SHOW ON THERE, ANY STORIES TO TELL?

A few yeah, we celebrated our 25th anniversary as a shop last summer and put together a line up consisting of purely friends of the shop! The love in the room was real.

Gotta take my hat off to our bosses who always trust us not to trash the place and let us have these mad bastard gorilla shows. Keeps the spirit of what Soho is supposed to be like.

Clobber obviously played our first ever show in there, our pals Waco played there last album release show there and which was mad because THAT day Craig Charles (radio DJ and Red Dwarf legend) played there single on the radio. As I was outside having a gret. I spotted him walking passed and managed to introduce Waco to Craig Charles. Just a fantastic “could only happen in Soho” moment.

A personal favourite memory of mine is cutting hair one day, minding my own. Just me and my client in the shop. I hear the door go and this American accent asks “hey man do you sell products?” Bear in mind in Soho you see celebrities A LOT. You get kinda numb to it after a while.

Seeing Paul Weller and Bobby Gulespy outside Gail’s or Harrison Ford having a Guinness in The Ship, Louis Theroux cycling down Wardour street. It gets quite normal and we (as a rule) don’t bother them incase they ever come into the shop. But this one day, I heard this voice, he passed the threshold into the shop. I turn around and it’s Tre Cool from fucking Green Day. I fucking melted haha.

Drummer of one of my favourite bands of all time. Such a cool experience. Lovely geezer had a photo, spoke a bit gave him some pomade. Pukka memory.

THANK’S FOR SPENDING TIME WITH US TODAY, FINALLY, HAVE YOU GOT ANYTHING YOU WAN’T TO ADD?

This year already has some incredible stuff locked in for the band. Touring the UK again getting back to Europe and finishing up our first full length. 

Hang racists from lampposts not flags!

Donate to: da3m.support and The Sameer Project

Keep supporting band and promoters and of course DIY UKHC

You can listen to Charlie’s band Clobber on all major streaming services now!

For further show information keep an eye out on their socials @clobber.uk

LET ME KNOW WHO ELSE YOU’D LIKE TO SEE FEATURE IN THIS SERIES

Until next time, I’ll catch you in the pit!

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