Babylon Revisited
What was Camden really like in its noughties indie heyday and what of its legacy? I went back to make sense of it all
“If you remember the sixties, you weren’t really there” goes the old adage, and the same could be said of the remarkably less glamorous but possibly equally hedonistic Camden noughties scene. Indie music was thriving, alcohol and drugs were flowing, and in 2005 I got the train to London from Berkshire and inadvertently plonked myself at the forefront of it all.
I have been thinking about those days a lot recently. There’s been the emergence of ‘indie sleaze’ nostalgia, skinny jeans are - gasp - making a comeback, and, of course, the film Back To Black, a biopic of the late singer Amy Winehouse, is due to open in the UK next Friday.
Amy and I moved in similar circles in those Camden days and had a number of mutual pals. I’m not claiming to have been close to her and I will leave the documenting of her legacy to her true friends and family but I will say that I found her to be sweet, with a mischievous sense of humour, and what happened to her was a tragedy. I affectionately remember Amy’s nickname for me, Tights, due to my enthusiasm for black (and occasionally coloured) hosiery. At the time I rarely wore anything else, mainly with short skirts but often, regrettably, with shorts. The nickname still tickles me.
I moved to London at 23, having successfully applied to a job ad in a newspaper (how retro) for an assistant at MTV to work on its partnerships team. There, I helped out making sponsorship bumpers that said things like “Pepsi sponsors Pimp My Ride UK!” Not particularly cool but whenever anyone asked what I did, I swiftly replied “I work at MTV!” which seemed to be good enough for people back then, most of whom were doing infinitely more creative things.
MTV was located just around the corner from The Hawley Arms and so that’s where we all drank after work. I didn’t realise it at the time but the pub would enter into indie lore. All the big names of the era drank there: Pete Doherty, Kate Moss, every band on NME’s Radar list, and, of course, most famously, Amy. It was common to see paparazzi parked outside the pub, these were the tabloid stars of the day. We had lock-ins until god knows what time, went to work the next day (well some of us did), and then did it all again. Some weeks I’d spend more time at the Hawley than I did at my own home.
I doubt I’ll watch Back To Black but I have been looking through old photos of that era and ruminating on how it shaped me. In a bid to make some sense of that time, which was so, so fun but, now, also tinged with sadness - for the passage of time, for my youth, for those we lost - I returned to Camden this week.
Looking around Camden High Street it seems unrecognisable until I realise it’s the same mishmash of indie stores, high street shops, and tat it always has been, just different ones. A man is selling Apple iPods for £20, just outside a shop hawking “Dior” and “Marc Jacobs” bags. There is now a Fred Perry store, presumably to cater to Amy’s tribes of fans who visit, and a Ray Ban store: musical history meets commerce. Graffiti dedicated to Amy is all around. I pass by MTV which has had a huge, swish makeover from my assistant days, now a bright orange, yellow and blue eyesore.
On entering the Hawley Arms, where I haven’t been in well over a decade, I’m struck how it’s sort of the same, but feels slightly less authentic, as if it might have been franchised by the Hard Rock Cafe (it still has the same owners as when I was a patron). But perhaps it was always like that. The jukebox plays “Stuck in the Middle With You” and “Cool for Cats” and pictures of Ozzy Osbourne and retro Guinness ads adorn the walls alongside a bunch of old Polaroids that somehow survived the Camden fire of 2008 but are mostly too faded to work out its subject, although I recognise Razorlight’s Andy Burrows and The Kills’ Alison Mosshart among them. In the bathroom, elegies to Amy are scribbled on the stall doors. Business is booming but it’s mostly tourists. A number of people are having their photo taken out the front.
In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1931 short story “Babylon Revisited”, a man, Charlie Wales, goes back to his old Paris stomping ground, the Ritz, having left the city years earlier after becoming too entwined in the hard-partying lifestyle of the Jazz Age. When he returns to the Ritz he notes that “he felt polite in it, and not as if he owned it”. When I order my sparkling water at the bar, served by someone in a polka dot black shirt with a dangly earring who could have been in any indie band back in the day, I realise I feel like that too. I feel polite in a place where I used to happily serve myself drinks and take a nap on the sofa.
I bump into the pub’s owner, Dougie, who doesn’t recognise me at first but when I remind him, runs excitedly around the bar to give me a hug and then takes me upstairs to show me the office which still has my picture on the wall. We sit and reminisce about the old days: how wild they were, how fun, who’s still friends with who.
In “Babylon Revisited”, Charlie reflects on his party days to his estranged in-laws: “But it was nice while it lasted… We were sort of royalty, almost infallible, with a sort of magic around us.”
Apart from my pilgrimage this week, I only go to Camden now when my husband, son, and I go for lunch at the Greek restaurant Lemonia in Primrose Hill and I insist on getting off the Overground at Camden Road so I can walk by the old, familiar places. I point out the haunts of a past life - Marathon Bar, The Lock Tavern, The Hawley - and relay tales of another time and another person, who neither of them would probably recognise.
Last year I made an appearance on the popular Indie Sleaze Instagram account, one of dozens of faces on a carousel, faces far more notable than mine, all enjoying different nights out. One of the comments on the post leapt out at me: “Everyone looking at these photos and reminiscing - I wanna know what you’re up to now. Are we grown up and have kids and all that real life stuff, or… did we say no?”
I didn’t reply but I wanted to say that, yes, I managed to escape my pursuit of hedonism and swap it for the “real life stuff”, the slower, more contented happiness of a husband and child. It feels like a privilege and a gift. That now my idea of a ‘good time’ is having a dinner party or drinking wine with my husband while our child sleeps soundly. But not everyone I knew back in the Camden era got the chance to have that ending. A number of people I know didn’t make it. They were all girls. Women, I suppose, but I remember them as girls.
When Amy died in July 2011, a song called “Video Games” by a brand new singer called Lana Del Rey had just started to circulate online and it seemed to sum up the melancholy that swept through London that weekend. I recall many people sharing the song in a bid to make sense of the sadness. It was a different sound to Amy’s but still retro, and steeped in the past, and still about being enthralled by a man. “I heard that you like the bad girls, Honey, is that true?” Lana has gone on to make nine studio albums and has another due out this year. Amy only left us with two.
One time, around 2007, though I can’t be sure, I was at home alone in my rented flat on the Holloway Road, so decrepit and loud that the whole living room would shake when a double decker bus went past, which was frequently. I was sitting on a chair, smoking a cigarette out the window, when suddenly a black beehive emerged on the floor through the chair legs, followed by Amy, flat on her back, shouting “Tiiiights!” She had entered the room silently with my flatmate and they decided to surprise me for a joke. I screamed and then roared with laughter until it hurt. As the scrawled graffiti around Camden Town now reads: Amy forever.
Beautiful writing
Such a good read! Thank you