In 1971, Tymon became friends with John Graham Mellor (Joe Strummer). They both ended up sharing a flat that year at 18 Ash Grove aka “Vomit Heights” in Palmers Green, London, with Helen Cherry, Deborah Kartun and Clive Timperley. He now began to take serious interest in learning to play the violin. Tymon says of his struggle to self-learn the instrument (from February 2007 email): “I didn’t really try to play it until I was about 20 - much to the horror of the people I was living with at the time [in Vomit Heights] who thought I was pretty good on the guitar but had to listen to this horrible screeching on the world's worst violin. I had strung it with guitar strings and tuned it like a guitar, because I knew about the guitar - 4th instead of 5ths. I tried to play chords on it and bowed them - I still play like that quite a lot actually. Then I found out the 'normal' tuning and tried that - I realized it gave more range so I had to start learning how to play it all over again. My first impulse was to write songs to it like I was already doing with the guitar. The first song I wrote that way was 'Comes the Rain' and I arranged an American spiritual song called, 'Death Don't Have No Mercy' - they've never been released.” In July of ‘71, Threshold re-released Tymon’s 1970 single, And Now She Says She's Young.
Later in September of ‘71, the ‘Vomit Heights’ crowd moved into a second-floor, three-bedroom flat at 34 Ridley Road, Harlesden, London; rented from an Irish couple. The flat consisted of Tymon, Joe Strummer, Helen Cherry, Helen’s then boyfriend Robert Basey, an unknown Frenchman, and Kit Buckler. Kit soon moved out and in moved Richard ‘Dick the Shit’ Evans, who had the 3rd bedroom.
In early spring of ‘72, 22-year old Tymon and 20-year old Strummer (who had returned to London in May after dropping out of Newport College of Art) took to busking in London’s Green Park tube station during the late evenings between Easter and summer. Together the pair also busked and hitchhiked around various parts of Europe such as Amsterdam (where they also visited a friend who serving time in a Brada jail), Belgium and France. In a January 2003 MAGNET magazine interview with Fred Mills, Tymon recalled those early busking days: “Well, the problem was, like, we went to Amsterdam once, and we lined up a load of gigs, about five, which is all right. But I’d always arrive penniless, just bad organization. So I’d say to Joe, “Let’s go out and play a couple of songs before the gig in the streets, and then we’ll have a meal.” They [police] took the violin, basically. So Joe had to go scour the town to turn up a violin for this gig! Stuff like that happened. [laughing] Then we had to hang out in Amsterdam to get it back from the courts. Couldn’t leave it! So all the money that we had, we had to pay them back. They couldn’t allow busking, such a “free and liberal town” at the town. You could smoke pot, but no street music. I remember hitchhiking out of town with absolutely nothing again! We’d just bought the violin back. On the way to Paris, a guy picked us up in a car, who was going to this big gig in Brussels, so he asked us to play in the bar while the theatre was going on. We ended up hanging out in this place in Belgium for about four days. So stuff like that was going on all the time. Going from day to day, week to week.”
Throughout this period also, Timon was an important influence on Strummer in many ways. He taught him to play chords on an old ukulele by using his right-hand to strum the chords instead of with his natural left-handed ability, this resulting in the unique strumming style later evidenced in The Clash’s music. An August 2000 issue of The Record Collector magazine featured the following Joe Strummer quote about the early busking days: "I began bottling for him (Timon), collecting money in the Underground," Joe recalls, "and eventually began to learn chords off him. I'm left-handed, but I started learning to play on other people's guitars, so I picked up the rudimentary chords the wrong way round. Finally, when I could afford to get a guitar, I was too lazy to start again the right way round. At least I've got some sort of unique style, even if it's a bit grungy or crude."
After being evicted from the 34 Ridley Road flat in April 1972, Tymon then moved in with Helen Cherry into a flat her parents used in London in Miles Buildings - a five-storey apartment building between Church Street and Bell Street. In this building also lived Dave and Gail Goodall, who sold clothing at a weekend clothing stall at the Camden Markets. The Ridley Road collective moved into Dave and Gail’s flat soon after, though most soon left for a farm outside Blandford Forum in Dorset in the summer of ’72.
Solo shows in Berlin, Germany were played in 1973, and this would be the first time Tymon ever played the violin on stage. It was also around this time that he changed his name from Timon to Tymon Dogg. In a 2003 Strummersite interview with Rob Morgan and February 2007 Q & A piece for www.tymondogg.net, Tymon explained his reasons for doing so: "By the time I got to London in my early twenties, as a bit of a joke I called myself Dogg. I moved into a new flat and made a joke to a landlady that I was called Mr Dog and she believed it and said, 'What a beautiful name you have' and then told her sister. They alway said 'hello Mr Dog' after that and my friends heard it and thought it was hilarious. So it stuck. The other guys thought that was very funny and they never let it go. I changed the 'i' to a 'y' because people kept calling me Tim-on and I could see where that was going - Tim!”
In 1974, Tymon was living at 23 Chippenham Road, Maida Hill, London with Helen Cherry, and Dave and Gail Goodall. Joe Strummer also soon took up residence at this address after leaving Newport Art School. 23 Chippenham Road was a ‘short-life’ house, which was scheduled for demolition due to it’s run down state. The low-rent residence was acquired by London Student Housing, which set up accommodation for people involved in a college or university in the capital. Helen and Gail were both students. At the beginning of 1975, Jill Calvert and Mickey Foote had moved in, with members of Alberto y Los Trios Paranoias occasionally dropping by to stay awhile.
In 1975 and 1976, Tymon began playing various support gigs with Joe Strummer's new pub-rock band, ‘The 101ers’; a band Strummer formed with Simon "Big John" Cassell, Antonio Narvaez, and Pat Nother - Richard Dudanski's brother. Tymon was a regular at the Charlie Pig Dog Club, which was a weekly residence at a local dive that the 101’ers organized. He would occasionally join the band for a jam on his violin, and this collaboration continued at their next regular venue - "The Elgin" pub on Ladbroke Grove, that started in spring 1975. In fact, at some of these gigs the 101’ers would sometimes back Tymon on 2 or 3 of his songs. Richard Dudanski says of Tymon's connection to the band (from February 2007 email): "Tymon was a regular at the Charlie Pig Dog Club, which was a weekly residence at a local dive that we organized. He would occasionally join us for a jam on his violin, and this collaboration continued at our next regular venue - "The Elgin" pub on Ladbroke Grove, that started in spring 1975. In fact, at some of these gigs we would sometimes back Tymon on 2 or 3 of his songs. I remember us doing manic versions of Elvis’s "Money Honey", and versions of some of Tymon's songs ("Suffer Our Way To The Stars" and "Sick As A Dog") that were to appear on his Outlaw album. Although after the Elgin I can't remember the 101'ers actually backing him, we certainly continued sharing the bill with him on a number of occasions... especially at benefit gigs for the squatters community". Strummer eventually left the 101ers in 1976 and went on to join iconic punk band The Clash - a band Tymon himself would have a bit to do with in the next few years.
Sometime around 1976, Tymon was charged with ‘intending to busk’ in the London Underground and, refusing to accept the charges, landed himself in court where he would subsequently be awarded £300 for assault by a police officer. He then used these funds to produce 500 copies of his first full-length solo album, Tymon Dogg (aka Outlaw No.1). Tymon recorded the album at the 23 Chippenham Road flat, and provides all the instrumentation including Piano, Violin, Guitar, Viola, Cello, Mandolin, Harmonica, Glockenspiel, Harmonium, Shaum, and Cymbal.
Tymon then formed his own band a year later in 1977. They were a folk-punk trio called ,‘The Fools’; consisting of Tymon, drummer Richard Dudanski and bassist Ron Harvey. Tymon recently said of the band (from February 2007): "We had a guy called Ron Harvey who had made his own strange one-string bass, which he played with a bow on some numbers, Richard Dudanski of course on drums [later with Pil]. It was just us three. We did this gig with The Slits who hadn't played for six months because Malcolm McClaren was keeping them under wraps. I'd just got 'the Fools' together and I thought it would be great if we supported them and the place got sold out immediately. It was funny because it was so packed that the front part of the audience got pushed up on to the stage and we were crammed up at the back of it. I had an Indian harmonium and there was no room for the bellow to go back and forward to get more air in it - imagine trying to play the accordion on a stage so crowded that you can't actually pull the squeezebox open, it was like that! And so many people got on the table the mixer was on that it collapsed and the soundman still talks about it to this day how he had to stand there and hold the mixer in his arms. We only did three or four gigs and then I went to India."
Richard Dudanski adds (February 2007): "I went off to Sicily for a few months and came back Xmas '76. I quickly met up with Tymon and we decided to form a band - Tymon Dogg and the Fools in January '77. Called it the Fools 'cos we knew we were being Fools (in commercial terms) in not toeing the current fashion line - i.e. de rigueur Punk... as A&R men were then scrambling like mad to sign leather-clad guitar bands! For me, and Tymon, Punk meant being an individual, so we went our own way. Must say for me it was great to be playing with Dogg (the punkiest of punks) - not only for his take on things, but also for the music. We kept it as a trio with "Ron the Tassel" on bass and a basically acoustic set up with Dogg's violin and acoustic guitar. Ron would also get out his homemade one string bass for a couple of songs. Did a never to be forgotten gig (amongst others) which we organized in the Crypt club with the Slits - I had to literally bail out Ron from Brixton prison.... 2 hours before show was start as he'd been nicked for nothing the night before! We recorded a few things on a TEAC 4 track, including a version of Loose this Skin - very different, I might say, from the Sandinista! version. After about a year the band broke up." John Peel also promoted The Fools 1977 concert with The Slits on his radio programme. Towards the end of 1977, Tymon left England to go live in India, where he embarked on a spiritual search lasting three years up until early 1980. Indian music and the Indian style of playing violin would also play a vital part in Tymon's musical influences at this point. From a February 2007 email, Tymon said about such influences: "A friend brought back a harmonium and I started droning on that and playing the violin along to it. It sounded great. Then I found out there are some amazing Indian violin players like L Shanka and L Subramanium. His father had taught four or five of his sons to play fantastically and music is passed on from father to son in India as it's all done by ear - it was never written down. This was considered their family trade. I was very influenced by the way they were playing the violin."
The Clash released their third LP Sandinista! in 1980. The album was mostly recorded in New York at Electric Lady studios with session help by the “Hole In The Wall Gang” (Tymon, Mikey Dread, Mick Gallagher, Norman Watt-Roy, Ivan Julian, and Ellen Foley). Tymon, who was in New York for a few weeks (and staying in East Harlem), got involved with the band's album after running into Mick Jones in the street one night as Mick was walking back his hotel. Tymon, at Mick's suggestion came to the studio the next day and the band worked on his own composition “Lose This Skin” - a song that was originally written as early as 1977. He wrote, sang, and played violin on this track, as well as adding violin overdubs to "The Equaliser", "Something About England", "Junco Partner" and "Lightning Strikes". Before Sandinista!, Joe had wanted Tymon to play on The Clash’s Give ‘em Enough Rope album in 1978, on either one of the tracks - “All The Young Punks” or “Last Gang In Town”.
At the time of recording Sandinista!, Mick Jones was helping Foley record her second album, Spirit of St. Louis. The album was recorded back in England in July at Wessex Studio with the help of Tymon, The Clash, and The Hole In The Wall Gang (minus Ivan Julian.) Three songs written by Tymon would feature on the LP, while Strummer and Jones penned the rest of the album. The completion of Sandinista! and her album became enmeshed, with sessions going back and forth between the two.
During the tail end of the Sandinista! sessions back in Wessex, England, Tymon lined up a potential squat in an empty house close to the British Museum in Bloomsbury, London. With Joe Strummer he arrived one night at the address, a large Georgian house in Gilbert Place, and together they broke into their new home. Tymon, Joe, and Helen Cherry lived there until eventually being evicted one day by bailiffs and police while Joe was away on tour with The Clash. Joe’s manager Pete Jenner came to their for aid, helping store all the gear from the squat in the back of his Blackhill office until things could be sorted out.
The year 1981 saw Tymon play violin on Ian Hunter’s Short Back ‘N’ Sides record. The album also features production by Mick Jones, drums by Topper Headon, and backing vocals by Ellen Foley, among other well-known names.
In 1982, Tymon released his second full-length solo LP, Battle of Wills. He produced the album with Rosita Cereza and Mickey Foote, which Dick O’Dell’s Y label Rough Trade Records distributed on vinyl and cassette. Dawson Miller, Chick McLaughlin, and Mishra help out with backing music. One track from the LP, "Low Down Dirty Weakness", also appeared a year earlier on Rough Trade’s Birth Of The Y compilation from 1981.
Richard Dudanski would again team up with Tymon (along with Helen Cherry and Chick McLaughlin) for the Enterprise gigs performed in 1982. Soon after, Tymon and Dudanski got another band together, this time with Ralf Schmidt on bass. They did a few gigs and spent a couple of weeks of recording sessions down at Glynn John’s (The Beatles, The Who, Rolling Stones etc.) studio. Joe Strummer was there, helping out with producing and also playing rhythm guitar on two of the recorded tracks. In the end however, the results weren't what Tymon had hoped for. Even so, Joe paid for Dudanski to fly over to NYC to try peddling the tapes around a few publishers there... unfortunately, to no avail. The album, Hollowed Out, has yet to be released, though a possible release in the near future is for now on the cards according to Tymon, who recently discovered the master tapes stored away in Strummer’s workroom.
The Clash again invited Tymon to help out their 1982 album, Combat Rock. Tymon played the piano on both “Death Is A Star” and “Overpowered by Funk”. Also recorded during these sessions was an unreleased version of Tymon’s ”Once You Know” (from Battle of Wills). Tymon recalls one particular interesting moment during the Combat Rock sessions (from February 2007): “I was playing the violin through a guitar synthesizer and it came out like a Moroccan orchestra; Joe was in the control room and started shouting 'It's a Casbah, Man.' I wasn't sure what a Casbah was. Joe started leading a chorus with Topper and Paul shouting 'Rock the Casbah'. I didn't think any more of it because I was trying to concentrate on the track but when I came to the studio a few days later they said they'd written a song about me, I couldn't get the link at all when they played it - I thought it was a disco song, then they explained 'don't you remember us all shouting 'Rock the Casbah' at you?”
Two more years in later in 1984, Tymon appeared on The Poison Girls’ The Price of Grain and the Price of Blood EP playing the violin on a couple tracks.
Tymon and artist/musician Helen Cherry formed the duo, Frugivores. The duo released only the one album, New Age Songs, on Coda Records in 1987. A single, “Moth Into The Flame” was also released in 1987. Very few CD copies of this album were ever made, though vinyl versions are readily available. Tymon is credited as "Tymon Murray" on this release. Coda Records was a subsidiary of Beggars Banquet. Apparently, one of the company's directors got turned on to "new age music" while in America and started it as a fairly early UK outlet for the genre. It appears to have lasted for six or seven years and released (roughly) twenty albums, some of the later ones on CD. Artists on the label included Tom Newman, Claire Hamill and others. Many of the releases on the label were under the Landscape Series, signifying their musically sedate contents, but the Frugivores were part of the New Lyricist Series. Helen's Marianne Faithfull-type vocals sounds strikingly like Tymon's at times.
Tymon's third LP, Relentless was released in 1989. Like with his very first album, Tymon himself performs all the music on this record.
