I f***ing hate the Clash now,” were the first words Chris Sullivan ever said to me, in the refectory at the Ralph West Hall of Residence in Albert Bridge Road, opposite Battersea Park, in August 1978. This was where art students stayed when they first arrived in London, and Sullivan had recently started at St Martin’s School of Art.
Sullivan was from south Wales and had been one of the original punks in 1976, regularly coming up to town to buy clothes from Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren’s shop in the King’s Road and traipsing along to Sex Pistols gigs in the Nashville, the 100 Club and the Screen On The Green.
