Jeff Geggus - a.k.a. Stinky Turner - tells me about boxing for England and becoming a veteran punk rock star while still in his teens.
At fifty-seven, Jeff Geggus is still fighting. His is a complicated story that begins with the nine-year-old Jeff walking into a boxing gym in East London in early 1974. It takes in amateur titles and England honours, then veers into bars and gigs, football terraces and the streets of the East End, and on to recording studios, hotels in LA, and clubs around the world; even the Top of the Pops dressing rooms saw some action once or twice.
“Yeah it's been a bit of a crazy life I must admit that,” he told me earlier this year. “I don't live a crazy life [now], but the early days was very, very mad. I'm just glad to still be here, mate.”
Throughout, boxing has persisted, and when Covid forced the closure of gyms, Geggus improvised.
“We had to relocate to a park in Hornchurch,” he says. “We’ve got a little circle we call ‘The Death Pit’. It was a bit tough in the winter but we're still at it.”
His Cockney accent purrs with authenticity as he takes us back to the beginning.
“I fell off my bike and broke my teeth, and I had to have silver teeth in the front. And going to school with them silver teeth was a nightmare – the jokes and all that – so you had to learn to fight, and I thought the best thing to do was to go to an amateur boxing club.”
Born and raised in Custom House, Geggus tried a few clubs, and after taking “some hidings” from experienced boxers, settled on Barking ABC, making his debut on a low-key gym show just weeks after joining. Three years later he reached the final of the National Schools Championship in Blackpool, losing to an older boy from Llandeilo.
“It was March 1977, and I was a month shy of my thirteenth birthday. And I represented England Schoolboys in a return match against the Welshman who beat me that May, in Bridgend I think.
“I had fair success, won a couple of Essex schoolboy titles, London Junior ABA titles, but there were kids a lot better than me. And I don't think I ever had any thoughts of making anything as a professional. My brother Micky was a lot better than me; I think he had about 18 fights and won ‘em all.”
In his early teens his dedication to boxing kept him off the streets and stopped him getting into trouble at school. But curiously it was victory, rather than defeat, that began to push him away from the sport. He recounts the story of a fight in 1976 “somewhere in Essex”.
“I'd won about seven or eight fights on the turn, I was on a good streak, and they brought this kid in to fight me. I had a few people supporting, but when I looked in his corner this kid had nobody. I smashed him to bits in about sixty seconds and the ref stopped the fight. And he had no-one there. I went home and I was in tears thinking ‘how do you think he’s feeling now?’. Part of it died in me then because I felt so sorry for him, and it broke my heart.”
Geggus says he took no pleasure in hurting opponents, and his love for competitive boxing faded: “At fifteen I was finished. I wanted to be in a band and that was it.”
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A new force was taking over his life. Micky, the older brother, would bring home the latest rock records by the likes of Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath. The younger Jeff loved it, but got hooked when the punk music scene blew up.
“I always loved music, and it was a very good time, the beginning of the ‘70s,” he says. “When I was about twelve years old I first heard the Sex Pistols, and it was just what music needed, that drive with punk rock. Johnny Lydon [of the Sex Pistols] was a fantastic lyricist, and you had The Clash being very political and all that. Their songs were pretty intellectual.”
Geggus began cutting school and going to gigs around the East End. With no experience, equipment or bandmates, he and Micky formed a new group, Cockney Rejects, with Micky on guitar and Jeff – nicknamed ‘Stinky Turner’ – up front on lead vocals.
He tells the story of the band’s white-hot rise (and fall) in his 2005 autobiography, Cockney Reject. The book is difficult to describe without falling into cliché, but the sub-title – ‘My life of music, football and blood’ – gives a flavour of what is inside.
A group of kids from Custom House, who had written two songs but never played a gig in their lives, get a four album deal with EMI. They get screwed over by managers, promoters and other bands. They have their gear nicked or trashed on a regular basis. They make the charts, get written up in Sounds and the NME, are instrumental in the Oi! Music movement, and make it onto TV with a cover of I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles for their beloved West Ham United. There are girls and drugs, and endless fights, including the incident at Top of the Pops that got them banned from the programme and saw one band member having to escape out of a window.
“When punk music came on the scene, seeing people with names like Sid Vicious, Sham 69 Borstal Breakout and all that, I think I started going a little bit wayward. Boxing kept me on the straight and narrow, but once the punk thing kicked on I was looking to be outrageous.”
The first album, Greatest Hits Vol 1, is classic high-intensity punk, with songs such as I’m Not a Fool, Shitter and East End telling of the social situation at the time, but avoiding party politics.
“It was the establishment at all levels. I've always tried to steer clear [of party politics],” Geggus says. “Maybe it was protest about being working class in East London, the doom and gloom around at the time, singing about getting nicked at the football. I suppose there was a political side, being on the dole and that, but it wasn't really aimed at any political party, left or right. To me [they’re] all the same; no matter who you vote for they always let you down.”
Their aversion to organised politics was tested as far-right group the British Movement tried to infiltrate bands such as Madness, the Specials and Sham 69, as well as the teenage Rejects.
“We were deadly opposed to these people,” Geggus said in a 2012 interview. “[They] were bullies, and we was a lot younger than them, and they wanted to start causing trouble at our gigs. But we give it to ‘em, made sure they never come anywhere near us again. I’m sorry that’s the way it is. We dealt with people like that.”
The early songs reference their many brushes with the law: Police Car, Here They Come Again, and They’re Gonna Put Me Away. Geggus explains: “I got nicked [convicted] twice. When I was fourteen I had a heavy charge on me, but that's when the Old Bill just fitted kids up, it was ridiculous. I had a bad one at West Ham when I was looking at doing time. Luckily, I kept out. I'll be honest, I never hurt anybody, but I’m not proud of it.”
All is detailed in the book, but Geggus insists the scrapping – “youngsters just being youngsters” – was reserved for others who were doing the same dance as them. For the Rejects, success, and a lot of the trouble at gigs, was inseparable from their love for West Ham United, whose Upton Park stadium was only a mile from their childhood home.
“Football was very entwined with [music]. People might say it was a bad thing because it brought violence at gigs, but maybe we wouldn't have stood out if we weren't connected with the football. It's got us where we are now, so a few regrets but it is what it is.”
Firms – “mobs of twenty people, football hooligans, skinheads” – would turn up at gigs “wanting to have a pop” at the band. The Rejects were never shy.
“I was fifteen or sixteen in them days on the road, and I look back and think ‘Oh God, they were dangerous times’. We didn't start the trouble at the gigs, but a lot of it we brought on ourselves, so I'm not blaming anyone. They knew they was coming to see a West Ham band who sang about War on the Terraces, Fighting in the Street. If you come looking for trouble [you] wasn't innocent.”
The songs he refers to come from the Rejects’ second album, Greatest Hits Vol 2. They were on TV, in the charts, and had done sessions with John Peel. But the opening night of their national tour in June 1980 turned into a disaster dubbed by The Guardian ‘the most violent gig in British history’. It effectively ended them as a touring band.
“It seemed wherever we was going there was a football firm waiting to take us on,” says Geggus. “That night [Aston] Villa and Birmingham supporters came together at the Cedar club to attack us. That ended up really bad, a lot of people hurt. My brother Micky got a lot of stitches in the face, a lot of people got cut. And a lot followed on from there: arrests, court appearances.”
Micky was later convicted and narrowly escaped prison. With court cases hanging over them they tried to tour again the following year, but on arrival in Birmingham were given a police escort out of town down the M6.
EMI rushed out a third album, The Power and the Glory, and a live collection, Greatest Hits Vol 4, and were out. The Rejects sacked their manager, but continued to be ripped off by other bands and promoters. There were new labels and albums - The Wild Ones (1982) and Quiet Storm (1984) – and a tour of the US that lasted for one (violent) gig. Micky’s guitar work became increasingly intricate as they experimented with new instruments and arrangements, developing a cleaner sound reminiscent of AC/DC and Aerosmith, T-Rex and early Queen. But the brothers felt they were going nowhere, and officially called time on Cockney Rejects. Geggus became a painter and decorator. Astonishingly, he had barely got past his twentieth birthday.
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Things changed in 1999 when Micky rang to say he had just heard their early song I’m Not a Fool on an advert for Levi’s jeans. They were excited, thinking it might mean they were owed a few quid. But things spiralled, and there followed and extraordinary second act in the Cockney Rejects story.
First it was a few gigs a year in Europe playing to older punks who wanted the music without the fighting. Then things escalated: a record deal, proper tours, and within two years they had new fans across the globe, not to mention better money than they ever saw before.
“We’ve played good places all over the world,” Geggus says. “Marseille, Zagreb, Spain, Sweden, Brazil, Argentina – great reception in Lionel Messi's hometown of Rosario.”
He admits the violence has not completely disappeared everywhere; it’s just no longer directed at the band.
“In Guadalajara, the venue capacity was about four-hundred, but the stage was elevated about twenty feet up in the air,” he recounts. “When we did the soundcheck I thought ‘that's odd’. But when we started playing all these Mexicans just beat the shit out of each other for the whole gig. There was some UFC fighter doing spinning kicks, and that's how they got their enjoyment. And I thought, ‘Now I know why we're fucking twenty feet up in the air!’. But no harm was intended for the band, that's just how they enjoyed themselves.”
The second chance is a bonus after the early days of being ripped off and betrayed. I ask if his own children – all three now in their twenties – ever thought of following him into music.
“They like their music, but they never wanted to pick up instruments. But the music industry is no good for anyone, I tell you. If my [kids] said they wanted to get involved I’d say, ‘No music, stay away!’.
“I steered them away from the boxing as well. I couldn't bear to see one of my [kids] getting punched in the ring. It makes me a hypocrite, but I couldn't. It's an unforgiving game, and I'm just glad [they] never done it.”
He describes the music industry as “another game that's dead on its feet”, fearing “there won’t be any record companies left in five years’ time”. He still goes to West Ham, but is unhappy with the “commercialised” new stadium compared to “the great Upton Park”: “I don't want to get into a riot, but there's just no resemblance of a working-class football ground. It's just gone – people around you are eating popcorn!”
And boxing, he feels, has lost its way, with worse fighters, TV networks, meaningless titles, and terrible judging. There is talk of Evander Holyfield, at nearly sixty, returning to fight Mike Tyson: “That circus will get more pay-per-views than the best fight out there; that's where you know something is wrong.”
But we return to amateur boxing, where he began as a nine-year-old. He worries that Covid will spell the end of amateur clubs like the Peacock Gym in Canning Town, which would be “a dagger in the heart of the community, a terrible, terrible loss”.
“You could walk into that gym, and it's full of people from all walks of life. You could be a world champion, or coming from a day job in the City and just want to hit a punch bag and keep fit, nobody batted an eyelid. You felt at home the moment you walked in there. From Sikhs to Eastern Europeans to Africans, it was just one big family, and that's what I loved about it. You get that respect when you walk in. They're great places.”
Now Cockney Rejects are working on a new album, and their musical evolution continues as they weave the language of their early punk hits through new songs.
“I'm trying to write a song called Up for the Fight at the minute about a good friend of mine who had cancer for five years and succumbed last year,” says Geggus.
I suggest the title could be lifted straight from the sleeve of Greatest Hits Vol 1.
“Could be, of course, but it's a totally different concept: someone who was fighting for their life. Back in the day you was writing about things that was happening at the time – fighting in the streets, getting nicked over the football – obviously we don't do that now.
“You can tell stories about people you know. You can write about the band, being ripped off and stabbed in the back, different things like that. You can be angry, but you can't seem to put it into context like you could when you was young.
“It's a good process, but this will be the last album we ever do.”
The fans, though, want to see Geggus, still fighting alongside brother Micky, and relive a bit of the ‘70s.
“We're [on tour in the UK] November and December, but all the work abroad has been put back to 2022. I just hope we're still around then. We might have played our last gig. You can't get a crystal ball and predict when this thing’s going to be over.
“If we never played another gig I can look back and say it’s been a hell of a ride. Everything has to come to an end one day, but if we get another couple of years I'll be grateful.”
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Cockney Rejects are on tour in the UK in November and December 2021. The new album Power Grab will be out on Cadiz Music in March 2022 (delayed due to the lack of vinyl material available!).
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