The WLA dug an underground bunker in the woods, where we kept our armaments: we had a sten-gun that we'd dug up in a field and 303 Lee Enfield rifles adapted to take 410 cartridges - you used to be able to buy them from Exchange & Mart. We also had a more 'active' wing called 'The Walderslade Liberation Army', which was basically formed with one goal in mind - to stop people building on the woods that we played in. We'd go and break into the local forts - the Napoleonic and the Palmerston's Folly forts around here. We had a strange thing going on at the time: we formed this military research group - called the 'Medway Military Research Group' - and we used to go round studying and surveying the local forts around Chatham. He'd read up about all sorts of strange ideas - nitroglycerine and all sorts of more dangerous stuff which involved him trying to get hold of sulphuric acid. I'd known Goldfish since I was about four, and we became thick when I was about 13. My schoolfriend Goldfish and I used to make these guns. It's intriguing, impressive stuff, and it maps out the contours of a life lived with unusual fire, perspicacity and innovation. He is a true raconteur - very funny, very sharp, and eloquent about the connections and contexts which have informed his work for more than 40 years. Beleaguered throughout his career by dubious summations and categorisations advanced by bewildered critics, Childish has remained defiantly obtuse and uncategorisable.Ĭhildish has chosen 10 artefacts from his long and hugely eclectic career as a way in to familiarity with what may appear to be an intimidating corpus. Childish is also responsible for of countless incarnations of esoterica, including the Short Sunderland door-knocker, the Dazzlelac guitar and home-made guns discussed in our interview below.Ĭhildish has forayed too into the realm of experimental film, and collided repeatedly with the high-end art world represented in part by (now-not-so) 'Young British Artists' with increasing penetration, success and recognition - Childish arguably now has a better reputation among the more critically astute. It's an oeuvre which, to date, has produced hundreds of records of punk, rock & roll,blues, spoken word, nursery rhymes and garage rock via his litany of bands and musical projects (including the Pop Rivets, The Milkshakes, Thee Mighty Caesars, Thee Headcoats, The Buff Medways and Wild Billy Childish And The Musicians Of The British Empire - latterly morphed into CTMF), thousands of paintings, sketches and woodcuts, collections of poetry, artistic treatises and a slew of autobiographical and experimental novels (including My Fault, Notebooks Of A Naked Youth and Sex Crimes Of The Futcher). Once inaccurately described by The Guardian as the definitive 'gentleman monomaniac' of the British counterculture, genius savant Billy Childish is in fact distinguished by his omnivorous, multifaceted approach to his work.
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