I first met Barry Laing, who has died aged 75, in the college bar at the then Goldsmiths’ College, London, in 1970. Hearing the sound of a squeezebox emanating from the adjacent Small Hall, we went to see what was happening and found Dave Surman attempting to teach morris to a collection of hopefuls.
Inspired, no doubt, by the beer and the apparent oddity of the proceedings we asked to join in … the rest is history.
Both Barry and I had some previous musical experience – he on the fiddle and I on the piano accordion – and, knowing that Dave was approaching the end of his time at “Smiths”, we went to the local music shop and each bought ourselves an appropriate instrument to keep the ball rolling.
Dave asked us if our musical capabilities might run to a barn dance he was calling at the nearby Rachel McMillan College and weagreed.
We had to choose a name for the band for the posters. Dave, coming up for his final exams, kept asking people if they knew anything about Skinner’s rats, as in the animal experiments by BF Skinner, and so I suggested we should call ourselves that. We played under the name of Skinner’s Rats (and a couple of others) for the next 52years.
We all leaped upwards to clash sticks, came down as one, and as one our feet shot out from under us on the polished floor
Most of the aspiring morris men wore motorcycle boots and chose to dance in them. I suggested that we try dancing in clogs (inspired by the Bill Tidy cartoon of The Cloggies in Private Eye), and we were all measured up and the clogs ordered. They arrived on the day of our first public show at one of the halls of residence.
Dave started the dance with a chord on his accordion, we all leaped upwards to clash sticks, came down as one, and as one our feet shot out from under us on the polished floor. Much hilarity and a rapid change of footwear.
For whatever reason, we originally appeared under the title of the Blackheath Foot & Death Men, appearing in such unlikely places as the Marquee Club, although this title later, for respectability, morphed into the Blackheath Morris.
Terry Heaslip of the Hartley Morris invited us all down to Farningham, Kent, to dance at their Boxing Day stand, and Barry and I decided to visit the folk club there on a regular basis, joining John Barker (double bass) as one of the later incarnations of the Crayfolk. It was John who referred to Barry as “the bishop of Welling” and the name stuck. Indeed, in 1995 when we attended the funeral of Father Kenneth Loveless, the morris-dancing dean of Hackney, and, arriving late, sat with the clergy, people said: “Oh, you really are abishop!”
After some time, I and Peter Hicks (also of Crayfolk) decided to form a second incarnation of Skinner’s Rats, bringing in Ken Logan on fiddle. However, he fairly soon left to play elsewhere, with Barry rejoining the body of the band and Skinner’s Rats continuing to host Farningham Folk Club.
Thereafter, with slight variations in the lineup Skinner’s Rats appeared at many folk clubs and festivals – opening Sidmouth one year thanks to the good offices of Loveless, later appearing in the A tent at Cambridge, and travelling widely on the continent with appearances in France, Germany and Spain. Barry, at the request of a Nigerian friend, even flew to west Africa and appeared on stage with a Nigerian band.
The Christmas pantomime was always eagerly awaited each year at Farningham and Barry never failed to thrill, from appearances as an ugly sister to a made-up Rastafarian for a performance of The Israelites. The Rats were even asked to play at the Greasy Truckers concert at the Roundhouse and were brought on to play when the power failed as they needed neither amps nor lighting.
Doug Hudson writes:
Barry frequently played fiddle for our student barn dances in Broadstairs which were part of the Kent School of English language programme. It ticked boxes as it was cultural, physical and fun, and required them to understand basic instructions in English. Barry greatly enjoyed playing for these kids from around Europe and sometimes beyond, and inadvertently became something of a cult figure.
He had broken a violin string in a Skinner’s Rats gig where the clientele had been issued with toy green plastic sunglasses. When his string broke it catapulted towards his face and almost hit him in the eye.
The sunglasses provided the perfect protection, particularly when performing for a large number of students where the sound needed to be loud and hence his playing a little more “urgent”. So he always wore the green sunglasses. The students assumed he was an ageing punk musician and asked for selfies, sometimes whole groups descending on the stage with Barry the centrepiece.
We decided to capitalise on this and purchased boxes of these green plastic sunglasses, which flew out of the boxes and were sported by foreign students in London and Canterbury. In his mid-70s he became something of a European punk music icon, something he accepted with the usual Barry Laing laconic attitude.
Barry Laing, born 7 October 1948; died 17 November 2023. This article appeared in Folk London 330, April-May 2024
