For the ’burbs
JC Carroll on how “Johnny-comelately oiks” The Members are still annoying the neighbours
JC Carroll
Post punks: JC Carroll (bottom left) alongside Nicky Tesco in The Members
EBET ROBERTS/REDFERNS
JC Carroll today: second-gen punk’s not dead
WORKING in the City of London during the day and frequenting the Roxy or Vortex by night, The Members’ chief songwriter JC Carroll lived an odd double life in 1977. “It was like Superman,” he tells Uncut. “Mild-mannered bank clerk turns into crazy punk rocker.”
Seeking excitement, the guitarist had moved up to London from Camberley, initially working for the Queen’s bankers, Coutts, before punk rock took over. His new memoir, (Still) Annoying The Neighbours, details how he was drafted into The Members by singer Nicky Tesco, before penning the two brilliant singles that would define their legacy – 1978’s “Solitary Confinement” and 1979’s “The Sound Of The Suburbs” – in his bedsit in Kilburn. “I was singing about mylife: alienation, desperation,” explains Carroll. “A window had opened where you could do that.”