IN ONE of my more nostalgic hits,
Come Dancing, I mourn the demolition of the local dance hall: “The day they knocked down the Palais, part of my childhood died,” I sing. The disappearing world is a recurring theme in my early songwriting, typified by the Kinks album
Village Green Preservation Society.
I wrote all the songs on that album when I was in my early twenties, almost as though I was writing for an older generation. Time passes. Things change. But I had no idea I would be around to witness the demise of one of North London’s great landmarks. The Arsenal Football Club will leave Highbury tomorrow for a bright new future at Ashburton Grove.
I will miss the old stadium. It has been a fixture in my life and provided me with some of the most cherished memories of my childhood.
It was a bright sunny September afternoon when I was first taken to Arsenal by my Dad. I was only 5 or 6 years old but I remember going from Muswell Hill on the 212 bus down to Finsbury Park then making our way to the ground by foot. My Dad held my hand firmly in his as we walked down Blackstock Road, and turned right towards Avenell Road. It was then that I saw the stadium for the first time, glittering and palatial between streets of terraced houses. As we got closer, I could hear the crowd cheering and singing. It has turned out to be one of the most enduring moments of my life.
Inside, the brass band of the Metropolitan Police played Anchors Aweigh as the home team ran on to the pitch and at half time they marched up and down in the mud to the slightly dissonant strains of Sousa. The band leader led from the front and would occasionally throw a large metal baton up into the air. He never hesitated or dropped it, even though the jeering crowd did everything it could to spoil his concentration.
My father instilled in me the belief that Highbury was the most hallowed of places and the stadium itself epitomised the noblest spirit of true Corinthian sporting endeavour. He had seen the great Arsenal side of the 1930s dominate English football and on one occasion provide the England team with seven players for one game.
According to my father, the players were as close as it got to god-like status and the club itself was secure and unmovable, a sporting monolith that would last a thousand years.
On my first visit to Arsenal there was a crowd of more than 50,000 and I remember being held up by my father and seeing an array of cloth caps and trilby hats. At half time Dad scrambled in the queue to buy me a weak tea and soggy meat pie. The refreshment stand was dangerously near the toilets and I recall an overwhelming odour of tobacco and urine filling the immediate area where I watched my father eat his pie.
Having a club like Arsenal to support must have given Dad a sense of purpose and place particularly in the postwar austerity of 1950s London, with the old British Empire crumbling around him.
There was a small, railed fence down the side between the North Bank and the East Stand. Once, my father stood me and my younger brother there to keep us away from the packed crowd as it swayed dangerously back and forth. It was from there that Dave and I watched the Busby Babes beat Arsenal 5-4 in a league match, a few days before most of that team died in the Munich air crash.
Later, when I could afford to buy a seat in the East Stand, I saw George Best torment and humiliate the entire Arsenal defence so much that one poor defender miskicked a panicky clearance into his own goal. At a Tottenham derby, and before lighter, more aerodynamic balls were introduced, I saw the immaculate Jimmy Greaves bend a corner so dramatically with his left foot that it put the entire Arsenal defence on the wrong foot.
From that same stand I saw Liam Brady play his first game and the unfortunate George Graham knock his own side out of the European Cup against Ajax by back-heading past Bob Wilson into his own goal. I also witnessed epic encounters against Liverpool and particularly Leeds, when the superb Arsenal hatchet man Peter Storey managed to somehow foul Johnny Giles six times within a 15-yard run. We saw the great Charlie George score against Newcastle on the way to the Double: magnificent days indeed.
I suppose the move is all about survival and making profit. Arsenal, like so many big businesses has been forced to go multinational both on and off the field. The capacity at Highbury is about 39,000 but will be increased to 60,000-plus in the new stadium. That will raise more revenue, provide better conditions for the supporters (those who can afford a ticket) and result in a healthy bank balance. It will also increase the traffic in the area and optimists say it will rejuvenate some of the small businesses near to the new ground. Let’s hope so.
The local Palais was a victim of changing styles and the emergence of a new wave of musicians (primarily beats groups like my own) who came along and contributed to the destruction of the big-band dancehall era depicted in Come Dancing.
Life has to move on; otherwise Paul McCartney and Ringo would still be living in Liverpool and Rod Stewart on the Archway Road (I might be an exception as I still live close to where I grew up), but somehow, until today, wherever I was in the world I would feel secure knowing that Arsenal would be at Highbury.
I’ll miss the walk down Blackstock, the Gillespie and Avenell roads. The new ground is less than a mile away, but for sentimental die-hards like myself, it might as well be in East Cheam or worse, in Tottenham. I suppose I’ll just have to get used to it.
Ray Davies is a musician and was lead singer of the Kinks
