Between 1976 and 1979, I lived in a bedsit on the ground floor of 22 Rosebery Gardens, in Crouch End, north London. I got the room when I started my job at the NME [New Musical Express]. Before that, I had been living in Billericay, in Essex, with my parents and working in an Islington gin distillery. I had written a novel, The Kids, which was published in the summer of ’76, the year punk started.

When Nick Logan, the editor of NME, advertised for “hip young gunslingers” to write about punk, I sent in my book. Nick didn’t read it, but the fact that I’d had one published, and everybody else was sending their little typewritten or Biro reviews of Bruce Springsteen or Patti Smith, got me the job. I looked the part, too. I’d been working the night shift for a few years, so I had the pale, interesting, mole-like look that was in vogue. I looked as though I could hang out with these new bands and they wouldn’t eat me alive.

But I needed somewhere to live. I had no objection to living with my parents, but I realised immediately that writing for the NME was a 24-hour job: we didn’t go to bed much, let alone go home. I was taking a lot of drugs and having a wild time – not something I could do with my mum downstairs.

The bands became my mates. My favourites were the Clash – I loved them – but I liked the Sex Pistols, too. Rat Scabies, drummer of the Damned, told me about Rosebery Gardens – he was the previous resident – and, at six quid a week, it was within my budget. Crouch End was where I spent that brief window of freedom between parents and marriage. My mum visited a few times, and could not believe the depths to which her son had sunk. The house was like Withnail and I: young, bohemian squalor. It was more squalor than bohemian, but it was full of publicists, roadies and burnt-out cases from the 1960s. We used to get raided by police regularly.

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It was a Victorian terrace with an off-white front door. My room had a bay window and a huge crack in the ceiling above the bed. The rain would stream through and hit the mattress, so I slept with my feet at that end in bad weather. Whenever I said to the Greek landlord, “Is there any chance of getting a bit of plaster to fill the crack?”, he’d reply: “It’s not worth it, because this country’s all washed up, and I’m off to Australia.” It had an electric double-bar heater, and a table for stacking music equipment. It was a bit like the garret Thomas Chatterton expired in.

There was a shared kitchen on the ground floor, and a shared toilet. The only telephone was owned by the guy who lived in the front flat. Maybe once a month, he would say, “Debbie Harry wants to see you”, or “Iggy Pop’s in town, and wondered if you’d any drugs.” I didn’t receive many calls, but they were glamorous.

Julie Burchill joined the NME the same day as I did. She was trying to commute from her parents’ home in Bristol, but I soon found her a room down the hall that was only four quid a week. We were big mates at that stage; she was my best friend.

About a dozen people lived in the house, but there was a huge amount of traffic, with strangers going up and down the stairs at all hours. The house was a tip, but it didn’t matter, because we were out seven nights of the week. Nothing got cooked in that kitchen. I heard a rumour that there was a washing machine on the third floor, but my mum did my washing. Although Julie and I were wild kids, we loved our parents. Once a month, we would go to Billericay to see my folks, or to Bristol to see hers.

There was a bathroom in the house, but I think all the baths I had were in hotels, because I was on the road a lot with bands. The bathroom was pretty unsavoury: a lot of plant life and fungal manifestations. There was a band called the Runaways, an all-girl group from California, and Joan Jett was the lead singer. I remember her passing out in that bathroom one night.

For all the sex and drugs and rock’n’roll, I think of it as a curiously innocent time, because I was really happy. But after three years, Julie and I had had enough. We had got together by then, so we bought a flat in Billericay. We were getting older – I was 24 – and the excitement, and the drugs, had worn off. It’s a bit like doing National Service: they send in the boy and the man comes out, but you don’t want to sign up for life. Some of my friends had died, and others, like Phil Lynott and the American musician Johnny Thunders, were struggling. They both eventually died. Nancy Spungen was dead and Sid Vicious was awaiting trial for her murder. For a lot of people, punk was just starting, but for us it was dead.

Tony Parsons’s latest novel, My Favourite Wife (HarperCollins £17.99), is out tomorrow

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