Songlines #8: I’m Waiting for the Man

The Question:

“What song or piece of music means the most to you and why?”

A coming of age experience from Paul

The Song: I’m Waiting for the Man

The Artist: The Velvet Underground

The Reason:

Paul could remember exactly how the slightly older girl had signed the record for him, with a special pen that raised the letters like embossing. He still has the copy she gave him. The connection with the girl and the connection with the record seem completely intertwined although Paul didn’t think there was a sexual dimension to his choice.

David Bowie performing it with Lou Reed (who wrote the song):

And here are the lyrics, an everyday story of tasting forbidden fruit in the Big Apple:

I’m waiting for my man
Twenty-six dollars in my hand
Up to Lexington, 125
Feel sick and dirty, more dead than alive
I’m waiting for my man

Hey, white boy, what you doin’ uptown?
Hey, white boy, you chasin’ our women around?
Oh pardon me sir, it’s the furthest from my mind
I’m just lookin’ for a dear, dear friend of mine
I’m waiting for my man

Here he comes, he’s all dressed in black
PR shoes and a big straw hat
He’s never early, he’s always late
First thing you learn is you always gotta wait
I’m waiting for my man

Up to a brownstone, up three flights of stairs
Everybody’s pinned you, but nobody cares
He’s got the works, gives you sweet taste
Ah then you gotta split because you got no time to waste
I’m waiting for my man

Baby don’t you holler, darlin’ don’t you bawl and shout
I’m feeling good, you know I’m gonna work it on out
I’m feeling good, I’m feeling oh so fine
Until tomorrow, but that’s just some other time
I’m waiting for my man

 

 

 

Stormtrooper: Goodbye to Berlin (Day 39)

Started the day in Leipzig, boarding the train early at the Hauptbahnhof (the biggest in Europe, reminiscent of Grand Central, New York in its grandeur). Arrived at Berlin Hbf and taxied over to Tegel airport. The local placenames of Berlin are resonant from literature in particular (Moabit, Kopenick, etc.) The city looks good in its autumn colours but not as good as Leipzig where the colour of the brick and stone is light and complements the autumn palette. Meanwhile, back in Blighty a storm was coming…

My younger son sent me a text last night from the NFL 49ers game in Wembley – “don’t get on the plane it is too dangerous and u will probs die the wind could go as fast as 80 mph have fun hope u get back back safe love form (sic) all”

My flight was cancelled which gave me time to plough back through a key Ginsberg/Beat book which I read just before deciding to write this book, in fact it was part of the inspiration. It was interesting to revisit it with a particular focus on openness and generosity. A number of the people I met at Leipzig Networking Days/DOK Leipzig found the subject interesting and were keen to get a copy of the book when it appears which was encouraging.

Yesterday one young film-maker from Chicago/Berlin gave me a copy of his last documentary film which was on William Burroughs, who of course features in the opening scene of my book. [William S. Burroughs: A Man Within (2010) by Yony Leyser] I’ll have a watch as a reward some time this week. He is about to embark on a documentary about gay punk which features an interview with Laurie Anderson whom I’m thinking of pairing with Jeremy Deller in the Art chapter. That meant we were talking about Lou Reed at lunchtime, only to find out a couple of hours later that he had gone to the Great Gig in the sky on the very day. He had agreed to be interviewed for Yony’s film too. Echoes of my Carolyn Cassady set-back.

I was only ever a moderate admirer of Lou Reed. The Ginsberg chapter has a little diversion into that scene via its film-makers, in particular Barbara Rubin. Lou and the Velvets played live in front of her film Cocks and Cunts. The Velvet Underground & Nico speaks to me most but he is always a challenging listen. The work he did with Bowie, including in South London, was also ground-breaking and bold.

So I ploughed through the Beat book only to notice from my annotations that I had been reading it the very same day last year in Leipzig (near the St Elisabeth Krankenhaus). These kind of skeins of coincidence and connection seem to weave through creative enterprise. As I was reading Harry Thompson’s biog of Peter Cook whilst researching the Comedy chapter over the weekend I rewarded myself with a peak at the photo section in the middle of the book. As I came to a picture of him at his daughter’s wedding I spotted a woman I knew yonks ago (went to her for the occasional aromatherapy massage when my back was sore from child-lifting) – I had no idea she was one of those Cooks, hadn’t made the connection, though looking at the photo the resemblance is obvious, she is clearly a chip off the old block in looks at least.

Managed to get myself on a Lufthansa home so disruption minimal and a reasonable amount of reading and research got through.

Heddonism

copyright: Brian Ward, courtesy of Des Shaw

It’s 08:45. I’m dripping wet, just out the shower, drying off by Whitey (our trusty old iMac) with Twitter open. I notice a tweet flow by: ‘Ziggy Stardust plaque being unveiled at 9:45 just off Regent St, if you’re in West End come by’. I’d heard about the plaque earlier in the week from Des Shaw at Ten Alps, the TV indie set up by Bob Geldof. He’s making a radio programme about Bowie and we’re working together on a couple of multiplatform developments – one to do with music, the other about waste – so we’d been chatting on the phone a few days before about Bowie and he mentioned the impending event. 60 minutes – just doable if I didn’t mind venturing forth a bit moist. I took off, kept up a decent pace, the Northern Line behaved and I walked into Heddon Street, powered by Ziggy on the iPhone, with a minute to spare. I positioned myself behind a TV crew and texted Des to check he was there. The ceremonies were opened bang on time by a fella from the Crown Estate who gave us a brief history of this backwater behind Regent Street, personalised by his own memories of the record. He handed over to Gary Kemp, formerly of Spandau Ballet, who was the prime mover behind the project, much inspired in his music career by the album. He spoke with great enthusiasm about the record and tipped the hat to the two Spiders from Mars who were among the small but perfectly formed crowd, bass player Trevor Bolder and drummer Mick Woodmansey. Then the little curtain was drawn back to reveal the elegant black plaque – one of only two in London to a fictional person (the other being Sherlock Holmes at 221b Baker Street). It reads: Ziggy Stardust 1972 This marks the location of the cover photograph for the iconic David Bowie album ‘The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars’.

40 years before, outside the office of Bowie’s management which was located for a while at that time on Heddon Street W1, Brian Ward took the iconic photo of the newly created Ziggy character outside the warehouse-looking entrance of K. West. It was a black and white shot subsequently hand coloured by Terry Pastor, who switched on the light and pulled out that resonant name. So Brian Ward’s original photograph was black and white, one of twelve 10 x 8s submitted to Bowie’s artist pal, George Underwood. George passed the one selected for the front cover to his colleague Terry Pastor. It was Terry who airbrushed the cover – he decided on the colouring of Ziggy’s hair, his costume, the lights and so on – very much a joint effort taking it to icon status. Des Shaw has a print of one of the other original 10x8s [above] which gives a good insight into the shoot and what the street looked like back then. Des brought me in to the special reception area where a six foot square print of the cover hung [below]. At 12″ x 12″ its magic and mystery are even more powerful through concentration.

The doorway in question has changed over the years and the whole street is far more salubrious and tamed through pedestrianisation. Less clean cut and tamed than when I first saw him perform To Cut A Long Story Short on telly when I was still immersed in punk and new wave was Gary Kemp who Des introduced me to – he was all a-flutter with the event and went off after a few moments to do another radio interview.

I think the original record was recorded at Trident Studios across Regent Street in Soho (certainly some of Bowie’s 70s classics were recorded there) – I recorded a voice-over a few years ago at Trident and was suitably impressed with the trophy album covers on their wall. Des told me a really interesting story he’d uncovered in the making of his radio programme: at one point around this time Bowie was rehearsing in an innocuous basement in Greenwich with his Spiders from Mars and was joined by Iggy Pop and Lou Reed. The basement studio space was called Underhill and was chosen because it was within walking distance of Haddon Hall where Bowie was living in Bromley, his old manor. After Bowie met Iggy Pop and Lou Reed in the States he invited them to England where he then produced Iggy’s Raw Power album (after he’d produced Lou’s Transformer). So at one point in the tiny basement rehearsal space there were David Bowie and The Spiders from Mars, Iggy Pop and the Stooges, and Lou Reed and his post-Velvets band, three of the most influential groups of the early 70s – all playing in a tiny subterranean space under what is now a pharmacist on the corner of Lewisham Road and Blackheath Road. This city, beneath the surface, behind out back, has a music goldmine rich like no other.

Ziggy Stardust impressed me when I first heard it but was never an absolute favourite. Although I remember Starman in the pop background as a little kid – and V2 Schneider (B-side of Heroes) entered my life briefly on board the SS Uganda on an educational cruise to the Baltic sharing a dorm with a bunch of skinheads from Romford – Stage was the first Bowie album that crossed my path in full consciousness.

Probably the three most significant Bowie records for me were:

* Aladdin Sane – I got totally bored by the monotony of school in the 6th Form and retired to a room at my dad’s house for a few months with Aladdin Sane and a pile of Jane Austens – it just chimed in perfectly with that most fucked up of teenage times

* Lodger – Bowie did a radio programme/interview about it during which he mentioned the Austrian painter Egon Schiele, who I’d never heard of and who was much less well known at that time – within a couple of years I found myself in Neulengbach on the outskirts of Vienna on the trail of Schiele (thanks to the Morrison Travel Scholarship from Girton College, fair play to them, it was one of the things at university I probably learnt most from)

* Let’s Dance – the soundtrack for my year living in France, culminating in seeing a very smooth Mediterranean Bowie (he’d been at the Cannes Film Festival that year with Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence – the tanned, light suits, dyed blonde floppy English hair era) at Grenoble, from the front of the auditorium with all the energy of a young man who had just cut the umbilical chord from home.

The other records over the years have pretty much all come to win their places in my heart and life, and one of the key endearing aspects of them is that resolute voicing of the Anthony Newley style London accent. You can take the boy out of London but you can’t take London out of the boy, however much you swing him.

Fanboy Gary Kemp showing off his Ziggy badge