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AmeriCymru:  Who were the Tunnelrunners? How was the band formed and What was your role in it?

Madoc: The Tunnelrunners were a punk band formed in Neath around 1977. We played around the Swansea area for a few years made a record and then split up when we went to college. What we didn’t know is that after splitting up we had a career which involved several bootlegs and our records selling for as much as $1,000.

Our gigs were very rare because there weren’t many places to play and our drummer Jeff Burton only had a small van. We used to have to pay him for petrol with our pocket money, that is how young we were. There were three of us in the band. Graham Jones who played guitar, Jeff Burton who played drums and myself, Madoc Roberts. I was the main singer and played guitar. Graham and I wrote the songs. It was a great laugh with lots of late night practicing and funny gigs.

The name came whilst we were watching Magpie a children’s television programme. The presenter forgot the name of a small mammal that was featured in an item and kept calling them tunnelrunners we thought this was hysterical and chose it for our name.

Our first gig was at Circles club in Swansea which was notorious for its sticky floor. Many famous bands played there and legend has it that the Sex Pistols played a gig there. On the night of our first gig our drummer pulled out and in true punk spirit someone else stepped in. However he didn’t know the songs and the sound hadn’t been set up properly. We were dreadful and an older man at the bar started booing. By the end of the set he had given up booing and was pleading with us to get off the stage as we were ruining his night.

After that the gigs improved and we built up a bit of a reputation. Then one night we were approached by Steve Mitchell who was a radio dj with Swansea Sound. He had started his own record label called Sonic International and asked us if we wanted to make a record.

We turned up at the studio to find an old sound engineer who wasn’t used to punk bands. He spent hours trying to make us sound like a “proper” band and then played it back. He made us sound clean and horrible so we told him just to mike up the amps and we would play the songs as live. We wizzed through our set in about twenty minutes (some of our songs lasted less than a minute!) We told him not to worry about the mistakes and left. From that session came our Plastic Land EP. There weren’t many copies made so it was quite rare and in recent years it has become very collectible. There were another five songs recorded at that session that were later released as the 100mph ep. We knew nothing about this as our manager has lost contact with us. We never even got a copy. Sonic International later developed into Fierce recordings which had bands like the Pooh Sticks. They also released stuff by Ian Brown, Patti Smith and even Charles Manson!

Without us knowing our record became quite sought after and appeared on several bootlegs. When I finally got the internet I was amazed to find all this interest in the Tunnelrunners had been going on without us knowing. One of our records was even sold in an ebay auction for $1,000. So in our absence we had done quite well!

Every now and then I am contacted by someone who wants to do an interview or re-release our music. A few years ago it was Sing Sing records from New York who re- released Plastic Land and this year I was approached by Stephen “Haggis” Harris of Punk House records. Stephen lives in New York but is originally from Swansea. As a youngster he sneaked into our gigs (he was only fourteen at the time). He later went on to have a glittering career as a musician, playing bass for Guns and Roses and forming Zodiac Mind Warp and the Love Reaction. He thinks that the Swansea Punk scene had something special and wants to make a record of the bands. His record label, Punk House are re-releasing stuff by Swansea bands from that era and it is good stuff. They have already released our 100mph ep which sold very quickly and they are going to a second pressing. They are re-issuing Plastic Land around June 10th. They make the records interesting by adding memorabilia from the time.

http://punkhouserecordshop.com/

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AmeriCymru:  How would you describe the early punk scene in Swansea and in the UK generally?

Madoc:   The Punk scene in Swansea was unique. We didn’t really know what was going on in London because punk wasn’t reported in the newspapers except in some shock horror story, but the main thing about punk was the do-it-yourself attitude. Music had become big business, the bands were massive and the music had become self -indulgent. We couldn’t play like Led Zeppelin. That amount of gear would never fit in Jeff’s van. So punk was a way of reclaiming music from big business. In the early days each band interpreted this in their own way and we were all different. The same thing happened with the fashion. There were no Sid Vicious clones in black leather, we wore colourful stuff that we got from jumble sales or charity shops. It was only later that the punk image and music became a stereotype. They were fun times although we did get some trouble from older rockers who were scared of anything new and different.

There were some great bands in Swansea at that time like the DC10s, The End, The Lost Boys, the Urge, The Dodos, Venom, The Autonomes etc We all played at the same venues and then would see each other at gigs. There is a Facebook page where we all meet up, share photos and chat about old times. I think it is a closed group but if you are interested let me know. Swansea - Punk Rock and New Wave .

AmeriCymru:   What were your favourite bands of that era? Which ones did you get to see live?

Madoc:   I went to see bands whenever I could including the Clash, The Damned, The Buzzcocks, The Lurkers etc. My favourite band was the Ramones. It could be quite dangerous going to see a punk band. On one occasion I was chased by some angry locals from Port Talbot and on another occasion I went to see the Damned in Cardiff. This was a big adventure for a boy from Neath. The venue was an old cinema called the Prince of Wales which showed “adult” films. We found the people selling the tickets and they looked like proper London punks. They giggled as we left but we didn’t know why. Then when the Damned came on stage we realised that these were the people we had brought the tickets from. We had heard their music but we had never seen pictures of them them. During the gig, which was on the first floor (second to you Americans) there was so much pogoing (bouncing up and down) that the floor started to shake. That was the last gig allowed at the venue.

The other thing that happened around that time was the Rock Against Racism gigs which were organised by the Anti Nazi League. This was in response to an unhealthy surge in right wing politics in the UK. Groups like the National Front and the British National Party were pretty nasty and seemed to hate everyone who wasn’t like them. Something had to be done about them and music became the rallying point. At these gigs reggae bands and punk bands would share the same stage. I saw lots of great acts like Elvis Costello, Matumbi, Burning Spear, Aswad, Richrad Hell and the Voidoids. It was fun but we were also politically aware and active.

AmeriCymru:   Where can readers go to hear the Tunnelrunners online?

Madoc:   If anyone is interested in hearing our music there is a myspace site https://myspace.com/tunnelrunners/music/songs

and there are several videos on youtube. Here is a link to Plastic Land

There is no footage of us live just photos and these are on our facebook site https://www.facebook.com/TheTunnelrunners?fref=ts

The music sounds best on vinyl so if you can get hold of it that way you should.

AmeriCymru:   Any final message for AmeriCymru members and readers?

Madoc:   The Tunnelrunners did reform in the eighties and made a film which still exists somewhere. We got some new band members. Neil Sinclair on Bass and Guy Lawrence on drums. The music became a bit less punky but we never smoothed off the rough edges. We played gigs in Cardiff and Newport for a few years. We even played at TJs where Kurt Cobain proposed to Courtney Love. Our last gig was in the late nineties by which time I was becoming too old and too fat so we had the good sense to stop.

There is a lot of nonsense written about punk and what happened in the late seventies but as far as I am concerned it gave the music industry the kick it needed. These days kids can make music in their bedrooms which sounds very punk but then they all seem to want a record deal from a big company. We did it for ourselves and there is something to be said for that. It teaches you valuable lessons for life about being self-reliant and builds up a healthy distrust of authority which has stood me in good stead through my career.  I now work in television and have worked on many pop videos and music shows with lots of Welsh bands like Cataonia, The Stereophonics, The Manic Street Preachers and the Super Furry Animals. All these bands owe something to the punk revolution of the late seventies and it was great fun being young and in a band at that time.