Tom Robinson: ‘I’m living proof that therapy works’

There’s a note of resignation in Tom Robinson’s voice as he contemplates the prospect of his impending 70th birthday in June.

“It’s a slow process of steepage,” says the veteran singer-songwriter and broadcaster. “By the time the age of 65 comes and goes and suddenly you’re facing 70 in the face.”

At the point at which we spoke, a couple of weeks before the coronavirus lockdown, Robinson was busier than ever, cramming in plans for a UK tour and live album alongside his radio shows on BBC 6 Music and work championing up-and-coming artists via his Fresh On The Net initiative.

“It’s very much about seizing the moment,” he reasons. “The moment’s all we’ve got, isn’t it? The past’s over, you can’t bring it back, and Christ knows what’s going to happen in the next six months. All we’ve got is now.”

The live album Power In The Now includes the last recorded performance by Danny Kustow, mainstay guitarist of the Tom Robinson Band in the 1970s, who died in March 2019. Robinson recalls: “He got up to do two songs at the 100 Club then he did this lovely jam with us at the end where he goes off on one. Out of the 15 albums I’ve made he only played on a couple of them but he was very much my touchstone and it was good to acknowledge his part, particularly in those early couple of years, ’77-’78, where if he hadn’t been part of the band we wouldn’t have had as much success.”

Robinson first picked up a guitar himself in 1969, inspired by blues musician Alexis Korner, who visited Finchden Manor, the Kent therapeutic community where Robinson was staying after a breakdown and suicide attempt. “Actually that’s the first day I met Danny Kustow as well,” he remembers. “He arrived as a new boy the day that Alexis came and played that concert, so we both had that inspiration. He later went out with Alexis’ daughter briefly. Alexis was a mentor to both of us.”

Up until that visit, Robinson had thought of music as “something that happened on TV or in concert halls and you had to have a stage and a band and a microphone, a big palaver around”.

“Alexis was a bluesman, he was of Greek-Austrian-English origin but he was completely accepted by Muddy Waters and Lead Belly. He just opened his mouth and he sang about injustice, being crossed in love, bent policemen. It was fantastic to see somebody get down to the essence, which was communication. He communicated to us, first through his music and then later in the broadcasts he did on Radio 1; he had a world music show. I guess he was my hero and my role model.”

Moving to London in 1973, Robinson joined the trio Cafe Society, who signed to Ray Davies’ label, Konk. Despite the fact that their album only sold 600 copies, Robinson is philosophical. “There’s no point in having regrets...That formative experience made me who I am today and I owe Ray Davies a debt of gratitude for opening my eyes to how things worked.”

Instead he formed the Tom Robinson Band, who scored hits such as 2-4-6-8 Motorway and Glad To Be Gay, an anthem which made its singer a leading light in the gay rights movement (he was also a key figure in the Rock Against Racism campaign). At the time of Glad to be Gay’s release in 1977, it seemed, he says “like commercial suicide...It looked like the wrong thing to do but it felt like I had no choice but to do it. I think the lesson is you have to do the thing that you have to do and integrity counts for more than trying for the commercial. Every time I’ve tried to sit down and write a commercial song it’s been miserable. I’ve written some real stinkers over the years encouraged by managers to try and write a hit; they luckily all sank without trace, whereas when I was writing something with passion which was War Baby or Glad to be Gay or Power in the Darkness, that resonated with people because it was truthful.”

When the band split in 1979, Robinson co-wrote several songs with Elton John. “At the time there weren’t many queer musicians out there who were being open and doing quality stuff,” Robinson says. “When two let’s say bisexual songwriters meet up the obvious thing to do was write some songs, so we did. There was one particular one called Elton’s Song where he played me a melody he’d come up with and I pulled a cassette recording out of my pocket and recorded it then went away and wrote a lyric. I wrote it about the crisis moment in my life aged 16 when I’d been in love with another boy at school and ended up trying to kill myself, so it was quite a powerful lyric for me and it seemed to resonate with him and he recorded it and released it. It’s the one song that we wrote together that he still plays live onstage today.

“Incidentally he had a video made for it which was shot at Cheltenham College, a boys’ school, without their actual knowledge of what the song was about and there was terrible outrage and it got banned on American TV. There was nothing sexually explicit in it whatsoever, but it was considered unsuitable. Again, that video is something I’m very proud of.”

Robinson’s broadcasting career began in 1986. Alongside music shows, he has made programmes about masculinity and surviving suicide. He says he was “fortunate that radio producers and commissioning editors were willing to offer me a chance to talk about those things”.

“It’s been nice to give back in that way. lots of people must be struggling, we all do. Even today, like someone who’s been an alcoholic, you never shake it. Being a depressive, you still are one even if you haven’t had an episode for a while. It’s a constant reaffirmation of the will to live, and you have to let people know that they are not alone. Help is there and it works. I’m living proof that therapy works, that it is possible to come through.

“If I had succeededed the couple of times I’ve tried to kill myself, I would’ve missed out on so much brilliant stuff that in my arrogance back then I had no idea was in store for me. You just can’t know what’s in store. It’s always worth holding on and reaching out. If you have a broken leg you have to go to the doctor, but if you’re broken inside you have to go and get help. There’s no honour in having a stiff upper lip and suffering in silence and topping yourself, it’s nonsense. Get the help, get better and help others.”

His blog Fresh On the Net, which helps independent musicians to find new listeners, began as a programme on BBC 6 Music and then moved online after it was “axed” in 2011. “It’s a completely non-BBC website and we have a team of volunteers who work as moderators,” Robinson says. “It’s just a means for artists to try out new songs in a low profile way and find out what strangers think of them.

“So they send music and we are a panel of strangers and we put our favourites up on the website each week and then invite the public to vote for them. It isn’t like on of those vote-for-your-favourite-song-on-the-radio kind of thing, it’s just what strangers are going to make of them for somebody they’ve never heard of.

“It’s quite nice that regardless of whether I like it, or whether it gets played on the radio, people get validation for their work. Of course, I get to hear stuff through there and if I like it I play it on the radio. I take stuff for the radio from the long list, everything that comes in, rather than the stuff that the blog happens to feature.”

Robinson is looking forward to returning to play in Leeds. “It’s always such a joy to play at the Brudenell,” he says. “They’re the living, beating heart of an incredible music scene. Alan Raw does his stuff [on BBC Introducing], but there’s also the 360 Club [the showcase for independent talent based at The Library pub and run by Richard Watson]. Now Emily Pilbeam is hosting BBC Introducing in West Yorkshire, she’s really got great musical taste. There’s all kinds of strains of music that I love that are coming out of there – Working Men’s Club, The Golden Age of TV, Katie Harkin and Hope & Social are still doing great stuff, but my favourite band I think are Teeff, it’s a two-piece but they completely rock, I came up and saw them at The Library a few weeks ago. Fudge were on the bill, there were great too. There’s just any amount of ridiculously great music coming out of West Yorkshire at the moment.”

Tom Robinson’s gig at Brudenell Social Club, Leeds has been postponed to December 9. tomrobinson.com