by Chris Harris
How a gentlemen’s toilet in a West London pub may have inspired one of punk rock’s most famous songs, Protex Blue
In April 1977, The Clash released their self-titled debut album, one of the defining records of British punk rock. It was angry, confrontational and politically charged, with songs about unemployment, racism, American cultural domination and the general hopelessness of life in 1970s Britain. And then there was a song about a condom machine
Protex Blue, written and sung by Mick Jones, it was a gloriously grubby little number about condoms, sex, embarrassment and the peculiar rituals of young men attempting to get themselves laid. Hardly the stuff of political revolution, although in its own way it was every bit as representative of punk as the more overtly political material. Punk was about breaking conventions and saying things polite society preferred not to discuss. A song about buying condoms from a machine in a pub toilet fitted the bill rather nicely.
And the fascinating thing is that the machine which supposedly inspired it can maybe be traced to a particular West London pub, with a seemingly insignificant reference in the lyrics providing a rather compelling geographical clue. It is a location of folklore, the particular pub and the connection, but it seems to stack up.
A Song About Sex…or the Lack of It!
Protex Blue was a brand of condoms sold in Britain during the 1970s, frequently through vending machines in public toilets. Anyone of a certain age will remember these rather intimidating contraptions, generally attached to the wall of a gentlemen’s toilet, requiring coins and the operation of some mechanical device, or fist if the coins or mechanism jammed before dispensing a small packet of contraceptives. There was something wonderfully furtive about the whole business. Buying condoms was still regarded as mildly embarrassing, and the machines provided an opportunity to acquire them without having to engage in conversation with the attractive young shop assistant who would enjoy the look of disapproval to humiliate and help her day ass a little quicker!.
The song takes this unpromising subject and transforms it into a frantic little punk number full of sexual innuendo. The narrator finds himself in a West End bar, contemplating a condom machine and apparently anticipating some sort of sexual adventure. There are references to the practical difficulties of using the product, alongside the suggestion that the whole enterprise may be rather more difficult than originally anticipated. Is he preparing for a sexual encounter, fantasising about one, or simply contemplating the possibility before heading home alone? The final references to travelling home suggest his evening may not have been particularly successful. Well that’s one we can all relate too.
The Clash were capturing the everyday experiences of young people living in London, and not every experience involved overthrowing capitalism. Sometimes it involved standing in a pub toilet wondering whether you had enough change for a packet of condoms. In this case The Windsor Castle, Harrow Road
The Windsor Castle, Harrow Road
The pub, allegedly, at the centre of this story was the Windsor Castle at 309 Harrow Road, Maida Vale. Originally dating from 1829 and substantially rebuilt around 1850, it became an important live music venue during the 1960s and 1970s. The Rolling Stones and The Who were among the acts associated with its earlier musical history, while Dr Feelgood, The Jam, The Stranglers, Madness, the Psychedelic Furs and U2 all appeared during their formative years. Madness reportedly played to an audience of about eight people in May 1979, receiving the princely sum of fifty pence each. An audience number that way surpassed the two when my band played the iconic Ruskin Arms.
Perhaps its most significant connection was with Joe Strummer. Before joining The Clash, Strummer fronted the 101ers, a pub-rock group named after the squat at 101 Walterton Road where members of the band lived. The 101ers played the Windsor Castle on three occasions, beginning in July 1975, and members had watched Dr Feelgood perform there the previous year. It was part of the musical environment that shaped The Clash. As an aside, my band played Clair Hall in Haywards Heath, the venue for the last-ever 101ers gig before Joe joined The Clash.
If ever there was a setting for an early Clash song, this was surely it.
The Condom Machine and the Bakerloo Line
The story that has circulated for years is that Mick Jones took his inspiration for Protex Blue from the condom vending machine in the Windsor Castle’s gentlemen’s toilets. The connection and folklore appears in histories of the pub and specialist accounts of The Clash, and the machine reportedly dispensed the very brand that provided the song’s title.
Although Mick Jones has never confirmed that he wrote the song about this particular machine, the story has been repeated often enough to become accepted as part of the band’s history, but repetition is not proof.
“Sitting in a carriage of a Bakerloo
Erotica my pocket got a packet for you”
One of the most intriguing details in Protex Blue is the reference to going home on the Bakerloo line. On its own, this might seem insignificant, but consider the geography. The Windsor Castle stood at 309 Harrow Road, within walking distance of Warwick Avenue Underground station, on the Bakerloo line. Indeed, the Bakerloo was the nearest Underground line to the pub, although Royal Oak, on what are now the Circle and Hammersmith & City lines, was another nearby station.
So we have a song named after a brand of condoms, reportedly inspired by a vending machine in a particular pub, written by a musician whose band had strong connections with that pub. And the song specifically mentions travelling home on the very Underground line serving the area.
It doesn’t prove that Mick Jones stood in the Windsor Castle toilets one evening, contemplated the Protex Blue machine and subsequently caught a Bakerloo line train home and penned Protex Blue in his mind. He could have encountered the same brand elsewhere, and the line served plenty of other pubs. But the geographical connection provides an additional piece of circumstantial evidence supporting the traditional story. Specialist histories also place Jones in Wilmcote House, close to the Windsor Castle, during this period.
The machine, the pub, the band’s local connections and the Underground reference all fit together rather neatly. Perhaps a little too neatly for anyone determined to establish historical certainty, but sufficiently neatly to make the story thoroughly believable.
P.S The End of the Windsor Castle
Like so many of London’s historic music venues, the Windsor Castle eventually fell victim to changing times. Its importance as a live music venue declined after the 1970s, while striptease entertainment became an increasingly prominent part of its business. The pub finally closed in 2009, ending a history stretching back approximately 180 years. The building survived a subsequent proposal for demolition and was eventually redeveloped.
Its musical legacy, however, is extraordinary. Few neighbourhood pubs can claim associations with so many important bands, from the Rolling Stones and The Who through to Dr Feelgood, The Clash, The Jam and U2. Yet perhaps its most curious contribution to popular music was not a performance on its stage at all, but a mundane piece of machinery attached to the wall of the gentlemen’s toilet.
A Little Piece of Punk History
What I particularly like about this story is that it illustrates something easily forgotten about punk. For all the political anger, confrontational imagery and attempts to overturn the established order, much of the music was rooted in completely ordinary experiences: boredom, drinking, sexual frustration, unemployment, public transport and the general business of being young and having very little money.
Protex Blue was never going to be remembered as one of The Clash’s great political statements. It was a cheeky, slightly grubby little track among some of the most influential music of the decade. But nearly fifty years later, it provides a fascinating connection between a long-closed West London pub, the emergence of British punk and the everyday social history of the 1970s.
Was the Windsor Castle condom machine really the inspiration? We cannot say with absolute certainty, but the pub’s musical history, its connections with the band, the reported presence of the machine and that wonderfully specific reference to the Bakerloo line make a persuasive case.
And I rather like the thought of Mick Jones travelling home on the Underground, possibly after a disappointing evening, with the beginnings of a song rattling around in his head. Not about revolution, unemployment or the collapse of British society.
But about a condom machine.
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Welcome to Denham, a fictitious Sussex village where behind respectable doors, well-tended gardens and familiar faces, things have a habit of going badly wrong.
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