Jewel of Irony

Gary Oldman (actor) is 13 days younger than Gary Numan (singer)

Oldman is young (in Sid & Nancy)

Numan is old

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My Saucer Runneth Over

Nick Mason & Gary Kemp

In October 1966 Pink Floyd played an all-nighter at the Roundhouse in Chalk Farm, London, the circular former railway turning shed which that night proved a musical and cultural turning point too.

It’s interesting to see what language was already in circulation in 1966 – “rave” which we commonly think of as an 80s term from the E era; “pop-up” as a 2000s term from the new age of austerity.

This line-up touches on my life in a couple of ways. I have met Barry Miles, editor of International Times, a couple of times since 2013 – once when I was writing about Allen Ginsberg, another time at a party at the October Gallery given by my friend Kathelin Gray. The Roundhouse event was the official launch of the publication.

My wedding suit was made by John Pearse, co-founder of Granny/Grannie Takes a Trip, which was established at 488 Kings Road, Chelsea that February. (He also made my Lucky Jacket which I’ll be wearing next week to the TV BAFTAs.)

So to be gathered in The Roundhouse in 2019 awaiting the arrival on stage of Pink Floyd’s drummer, Nick Mason, the most consistent member of the landmark band, with his new band, Saucerful of Secrets, was highly resonant.

The new band consisted of:

• Dom Beken, on keyboards, formerly of The Orb
• Lee Harris, on guitar & vocals
• Gary Kemp, on guitar & vocals, beating heart of Spandau Ballet
• Guy Pratt, on bass & vocals, related by marriage to Rick Wright (Floyd’s keyboardist) – as far as I know, I last saw him live on Bowie’s Serious Moonlight tour in 1982

Gary Kemp I had the pleasure of meeting around the same time as Barry Miles, in connection with the same writing project (When Sparks Fly). He has a very clear take on bands, their dynamics and motivations. I also met him when he unveiled the David Bowie blue plaque in Haddon Street. And one other time briefly (with Barbara Windsor, who I also interviewed for When Sparks Fly) at the Theatre Royal, Stratford when he was performing in a Joan Littlewood musical, Fings Ain’t Wot They Used T’Be.

On Saturday night, the final night of their tour of the UK and USA, Saucerful played a great selection of songs from pre-Dark Side of the Moon Floyd, from 1967’s The Piper at the Gates of Dawn to 1972’s Obscured by Clouds, their first and seventh studio album respectively:

Interstellar Overdrive – probably the one everyone was waiting for, emblematic of early Floyd psychedelia, it didn’t disappoint from those distinctive opening chords – the lighting replicated the lava lamp type effects I’ve seen in photos and footage from the era
(The Piper at the Gates of Dawn)

Astronomy Domine
(The Piper at the Gates of Dawn)

Lucifer Sam
(The Piper at the Gates of Dawn)

Fearless – from my favourite early Floyd record, one I grew up with
(Meddle)

Obscured by Clouds
(Obscured by Clouds)

When You’re In
(Obscured by Clouds)

Remember a Day
(A Saucerful of Secrets)

Arnold Layne – also grew up with the 1971 compilation album Relics, as Guy observed, it was the one everyone had because it was cheap (on MfP label I think – Music for Pleasure) – Nick Mason designed the cover when he was an architecture student at Regent Street Polytechnic
(single March 1967)

Vegetable Man
(1967 unreleased)

If – a highlight sweetly sung by Gary
(Atom Heart Mother)
+
Atom Heart Mother
(Atom Heart Mother)

The Nile Song
(More)

Green Is the Colour
(More)

Let There Be More Light
(A Saucerful of Secrets)

Childhood’s End
(Obscured by Clouds)

Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun – another highlight, epic
(A Saucerful of Secrets)

See Emily Play
(Relics, single June 1967)

Bike
(The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, Relics)

One of These Days
(Meddle)

Encore:

A Saucerful of Secrets
(A Saucerful of Secrets)

Point Me at the Sky – suitable goodbye lyrics
(single Dec 1968)

Gary mentioned how pleased he was to be home in London with the show. The way most of the songs were sung felt very London – connected back through Bowie (especially early Bowie on Deram – see Mr Gravedigger in this post on the death of Bowie) to Anthony Newley.

Syd

Nick made a point of paying tribute to Syd Barratt, prime mover of Pink Floyd. I saw him, Dave Gilmour & Rick Wright play at a Syd tribute gig at the Barbican, with Roger Waters playing separately. That night they played Arnold Layne, the debut single that started the whole story.

Fond memories

Story Snippet – Trondheim train

I find myself sitting next to Sissel on the six-hour train journey from Trondheim to Oslo. She is an elegant elderly lady with a wicked laugh. A native of Trondheim, she used to be the projectionist at the Cinemateket where I delivered my lecture on Thursday. She is on her way to Oslo airport heading for Berlin, her first visit there since 1977. The last time she went she tried to call David Bowie and Iggy Pop. She found the phone number of their flat under James Osterberg (Iggy’s non-stage name) in the phone book. She rang but a woman answered and said they were out.

4 of the Greatest Drummers

I’ve been enjoying the 3-part series Guitar, Drum & Bass on BBC4 commissioned by my old friend & colleague Jan Younghusband. Some of the presenters are better than others (Tina Weymouth of Talking Heads a real natural on Bass; Stuart Copeland gives it a good try on Drums, enthusiastic but not the full monty).

Of course it gets you reflecting on the greats so here are who I consider 4 of the drumming greats:

1) Michael Shreeve – Santana

[comes in at 0:38] He blew everyone away at Woodstock as a fresh 20-year-old.

2) John Bonham – Led Zeppelin

A driving force of great technical accomplishment – heavy as it gets.

3) Budgie – Siouxsie & the Banshees

[kicks in at 0:36] A perfect off-beat sound

4) Clyde Stubblefield – James Brown

[solo at 0:30] Funky as fuck

Bubbling under:

• Elvin Jones – John Coltrane
• Gene Krupa – Benny Goodman
• Itamar Doari – Avishai Cohen

Itamar Doari with Avishai Cohen

Also of note:

• Gregory Coleman – The Winstons (creator of the Amen Break)
• Stockton Helbing – Maynard Fergusson

[6 famous seconds at 1:26] The Amen Break

 

Quote of the Day: Resilience

Learn to deal with the valleys and the hills will take care of themselves.

– Count Basie

The Count & The Chairman of the Board (Basie & Sinatra)

Join Hands 11.11.1918-11.11.2018

In 1979 I went to see Siouxsie & The Banshees playing at Hammersmith Odeon – it remains one of the best gigs of my life. Just before the tour half the band had gone AWOL so new musicians had to be drafted in including Budgie on drums (formerly the token man in The Slits, one of my favourite drummers – Stewart Copeland considers him one of the most interesting drummers for his “very economical and offbeat” playing, that offbeat being what I most like about him) and John McGeoch on guitar (formerly of Magazine). That tour marked the release of the LP ‘Join Hands’. The hands joining are those of four bronze WW1 Tommies on the war memorial between Horseguards Parade and St James’s Park (the Guards Memorial) – I passed it regularly when I was working at Channel 4 and it always brought me back to that music and excitement. The LP opens with the tolling bells of a 2-minute track called Poppy Day.

In the same way that Punk (especially The Clash) introduced me to reggae, through this track it introduced me to the First World War poetry of John McCrae, a typical example of the less known poets who emerged in the Great War, the one-hit wonders and offbeats. McCrae was a high-ranking Canadian army doctor serving on the Western front. In Poppy Day the resonant bells give way to the distinctive driving guitar wailing of The Banshees and then just a few short lines, delivered in a distorted Siouxsie voice:

In Flanders fields
The poppies grow
Between the crosses
Row on row
That mark our place
We are the dead…

I don’t think McCrae is credited for the lyrics which are very close to the opening of his In Flanders Fields, in fact every word is derived from the poem:

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie,
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

Siouxsie & The Banshees filtered out the patriotic and the warmongering/cheerleading to open their record with the zombie or heroic or haunting dead, we don’t know which. What we do know, two years after the Silver Jubilee and the Pistols’ God Save the Queen (the Fascist regime), with rubbish piling up in the streets of strike-bound London, is that these dead were neither glorious nor patriotic in the establishment way.

The band were inspired not only by the chaos and crapitude of the late 70s Home Front but also by conflict witnessed on their suburban Kent TVs, particularly in Iran. (Plus ça change).

The LP cover was extracted from this shot – L to R Steve Severin (bass), John McKay (guitar), Siouxsie Sioux (vocals), Kenny Morris (drums) – before McKay and Morris went AWOL

Banshee stalwart, bassist Steven Severin in the wake of watching the two minutes of silence in memory of the war dead on TV on Sunday 12th November 1978 explained about Poppy Day: “We wanted to write a song that would fittingly fill that gap”. On the inner sleeve of the record (which sits still in the room just below me, alongside its vinyl sisters The Scream, Kaleidoscope, Juju and A Kiss in the Dreamhouse) beside the lyrics of the song is specified (with echoes of John Cage): “2 minutes of silence”.

So here we are on Sunday 11th November 2018, 40 years after Severin watched that broadcast, 100 years after the world watched that bloodbath, that futile wiping out of a generation, and we are still all struggling to join hands. The irony of The Banshees brooding in the studio while recording this masterpiece of an LP and splitting up in its aftermath is as nothing to the irony that we mark this centenary at a time when the world’s international institutions are being deliberately dismantled, Europe re-fracturing and the zombie voices of patriotism, nationalism and fascism wailing more discordantly than John McKay’s guitar. We are the Dead. We are turning in our graves row on row between the poppies.

Reinforcements arrive: L to R John McGeoch (guitar), Budgie (drums), Siouxsie & Steve – Paris (1980) where 70 world leaders are arriving this morning to mark the centenary of the Armistice including Macron (accordion), Merkel (tuba), Trump (mouth organ) and Putin (triangle)

 

Something Is Happening

Highway 61 Revisited photo session (New York 1965)

Just listened to a music podcast called ‘Is It Rolling, Bob? (talking Dylan)’ in which two actor blokes (Kerry Shale and Lucas Hare) talk to a journo bloke (David Hepworth) about a song & dance man, Bob Dylan.

It is a lot better than ‘Stalking Time for the Moon Boys’ in which two TV blokes (David Baddiel and Tim Hincks) talk to various other blokes and each other about a song & dance man, David Bowie. But it’s still not great. Entertaining enough if you’re keen on your Dylan.

One interesting fact I picked up was that Dylan named himself not after Welsh poet D. Thomas (which I’d believed) but after Marshall Dillon in some TV cowboy show (‘Gunsmoke’). Dylan as lifelong cowboy makes a lot of sense.

A question they asked David was how did you first come across Dylan. Got me thinking.

As a six year-old, just allowed to go by myself across one road to the newsagent (Eric & Mavis’s or perhaps it was the previous incarnation), I bought myself a fold-out poster magazine. I got it home expecting it to fold out to reveal a hippy rabbit (Dylan of ‘Magic Roundabout’ fame). Instead it was an unprepossessing bearded bloke with a guitar. A disappointing first encounter.

When I first fell under Dylan’s spell was having one of those Moments listening to ‘Ballad of a Thin Man’. I’d heard bits & pieces of Dylan during my childhood, listened to him a bit at uni through friends who were advocates (but I still had my Punk head on). But it was listening to this track on ‘Highway 61 Revisited’ when the light went on. It was the Surrealism of the lyrics that really grabbed me – I’m not really a lyrics man but the words made their impact, above all the non-rational, dream-like nature of them. I was in.

This moment lead directly to my ending up with a son called Dylan (who looks at times a little like the Big Man of this vintage).

You walk into the room with your pencil in your hand
You see somebody naked and you say, “Who is that man?”
You try so hard but you don’t understand
Just what you will say when you get home
Because something is happening here but you don’t know what it is
Do you, Mr. Jones?

You raise up your head and you ask, “Is this where it is?”
And somebody points to you and says, “It’s his”
And you say, “What’s mine?” and somebody else says, “Well, what is?”
And you say, “Oh my God, am I here all alone?”
But something is happening and you don’t know what it is
Do you, Mr. Jones?

Sometimes it’s really good not to know what it is – just let it sink in and brew up.

Oh Geno (Gee Knows)

Curzon Bloomsbury 23 October 2018 – Dalton Deverell (Prod) Sophie Shad (Wr/actress) Onyinye Egenti (Dir) GENO Washington ??? (Ram Jam Band bass player)

On arrival at the Curzon Bloomsbury on Tuesday evening to see a drama-doc short ‘Oh Geno!’ I was greeted with a lovely surprise – the director Sophie Shad welcomed me and explained that the film had come about because of me. I had no idea. But was delighted. Here’s how it happened…

I was introduced to Sophie through a fellow trustee at the Phoenix Cinema, East Finchley, the oldest purpose-built cinema in the country (which is about to join the Curzon group – there’s a Company Members’ meeting going on as I write but I’m 8,000 feet above Finland so unfortunately can’t be there).

Sophie had just produced her first scripted short ‘Kitty’s Fortune‘ (2016), a story set in Auschwitz, and came to see me at Channel 4 about next moves with her producing partner Dalton Deverell. They were thinking of following up with another holocaust story. During the course of the chat it came to light that Sophie’s grandfather is none other than Geno Washington, the soul singer (who I first came across through Dexy’s Midnight Runners’ eponymous song).

That man took the stage, his towel was swingin’ high
(Oh Geno!)
This man was my bombers, my dexys, my high
(Oh Geno!)
How the crowd, they all hailed you, and chanted your name

I gave the opinion that at that particular juncture a holocaust story might be especially challenging to get off the ground and perhaps the Geno connection was a more joyful route for the times and a better use of weapons in their young armoury.

We discussed a short form documentary series in the wake of that meeting but it never quite came together, I left Channel 4 and our ways parted (largely because their focus was on scripted).

A few weeks ago an invitation arrives for the screening and I am surprised and delighted the Geno project came off. What I hadn’t realised was that it was on leaving that initial meeting at Horseferry Road that the pair of them determined on making a film about Geno.

Sophie kindly explained my role in the genesis of the film in the Q&A after the screening to 150 delighted audience members. Besides her and Dalton on the panel was the director,Onyinye Egenti, and the great man himself, Geno. Geno bantered with me in the audience, saying I was to blame, with his crazy infectious laugh.

The film is to debut at Aesthetica Short Film Festival in York next month. It is a really well scripted piece focused on the meeting of Geno and his wife-to-be, Frenchy (Sophie’s grandmother) in a London club in the mid-60s. He was just out the US Air Force, getting to love Britain. She was a Jewish refugee from France, a single mum and feisty club manageress. Sophie plays her own grandmother – which has a certain resonance – with a beautiful stylishness (the camera loves her). The moment zoomed in on is just right to capture the essence of an extraordinary couple. And the ending is pulled off with aplomb – avoiding the common pitfall of the punchline-type ending of short dramas (it has the punch-line dynamic but it is subtle and judged just right).

Sophie Shad plays Frenchy

At the screening I found myself sitting beside the young actor who portrayed Geno, Edward Nkom. He captures the physical charm of Geno well.

Edward Nkom plays Geno

It will be interesting to see if this nugget develops further and into what – scripted, drama-doc, it could go in various directions. I’d love to see it evolve into an iterative project centred on this fascinating couple.

68 Comeback Special Comes Back

Marked the passing of Elvis to the great gig in the sky (on this day in 1977) by going to watch his ’68 Comeback Special on the big screen. I filed out of the Phoenix Cinema, East Finchley along with Elvis admirers from near and far (including actor John Simm all the way from Muswell Hill) with a big smile on my face and a warmed heart as Elvis on screen was a unique, charismatic blend of cool and warm.

“…he was a bad muthafucka boy, Elvis was bad…”

Eddie Murphy, Delirious

Here are six of the seven or so costumes he wore in the show, designed brilliantly by Bill Belew.

The famous black leather

The most famous white suit until Stop Making Sense

Pure showbiz gold

‘Saved’ in brown tones

Stylish denim ‘Guitar Man’

Classic black & red combo

Rock in Peace, big man

And what a coincidence that the Queen of Soul died today on the same date as The King (of Rock n Roll) – Respect to another unique one…

The Queen is dead

Long live The Queen

Elvis talks in the 68 Comeback about how the roots of his music are in gospel and then launches into ‘Saved’.

For the record

A relative in Ireland recently sent me one of those chain postings in Facebook – I don’t go for passing those on but since I did the thinking – about what my favourite records are – I’ll plop them in here for posterity.

My funeral record (last track)

My other funeral record (first track)