Without Pretention Or Affectation

The rather weirdly coloured cover to Black Sabbath’s second album Paranoid (1970).  This album cover always puts me in mind of something that was thrown together in order to meet last minute deadlines.

Another post accompanied by a contemporaneous article, the latter of which is necessary to lighten the literary fisting that is my writing style.  Today my gaze falls upon Black Sabbath.

Heavy Metal is one of those genres of music that is treated with a dismissive attitude.  It is easy to understand why when watching some of the more excessive poodle rock/cock rock bands performing.  I don’t imagine that Black Sabbath intended that the genre they were so central to establishing was eventually to be usurped by the likes of Kiss or the Scorpions. Maybe this is unfair, as there is an undoubted continuation of a more acceptable kind of the trend set by Black Sabbath to be found in groups like Metallica.  This timeline is somewhat reinforced when the anti-war stance of ‘War Pigs’ is laid alongside Ulrich and Co’s ‘One’.

I have been very surprised at how irate people get if one is foolish enough to say that Heavy Metal was invented by Black Sabbath. Before you have finished typing some hairy type, no doubt sporting a denim cut-off will harangue the author by pointing out that bands such as Led Zeppelin or Deep Purple were there before Sabbath. They will likely conclude this re-education of one’s rock history by noting that they ‘ave friends in the All-England chapter of the Hells Angels’.  I would never dispute the veracity of such arguments other than to say does it really matter?  It is similar to the freakish debates amongst punks as to what the first punk single was.  The album Paranoid, if not a ground-breaking LP, certainly went a long way to solidifying the concept of what we now know as heavy metal.

Accompanying the article below is a video of Sabbath performing War Pigs. I have been led to believe that the track ‘War Pigs’ is a condensed version of a track that when performed live would take over 40 minutes to resolve itself!  I have to say that this astounds me, because when looking at Bill Ward’s performance on the drums it would be easy to imagine that after 40 minutes of such exertion there would be little left of the drummer apart from a moustache, some hair and a desiccated cadaver.

Some of the lyrics in this song do confuse me.  Notably the line:

“Generals gathered in their masses, just like witches at black masses”.

Apart from the couplet being made to rhyme with the use of the same word, I have trouble equating generals and witches.  This is a small and ultimately irrelevant aside. What is undeniable is that this song has some of the most famous riffs to be found in the whole rock canon.

This track was the opener for the album and coming in at nearly eight minutes long certainly shows the band’s intent.  Ozzy Osbourne is not the greatest of singers but all credit to him, he really gives it a go on this album and his wails seem to perfectly offset guitarist Tony Iommi’s low riffs.

I have only recently reacquainted myself with this band and I am glad that I have done so. I am not a little impressed that this album in particular sits so comfortably next to its descendants in the form of Metallica or Mars Volta. This is an astounding achievement when one considers that the album was released 39 years ago.

War Pigs as performed by Black Sabbath.  Footage taken from a 1971 Paris concert.

Black Sabbath: Nobody But The Public Digs Sabbath

Keith Altham, Record Mirror, 30 January 1971

There would seem to be a lot of unnecessary resentment over Black Sabbath’s success in this business. And even outside it by those bastions of public musical taste who regard any kind of youthful success on an inflationary scale as some kind of obscene hype.

The group were initially launched by the enterprising Vertigo label as the flagship for their underground promotion (everything is underground of course until there are so many converts it becomes establishment) some two years ago. Having worked the treadmill of Scottish venues as ‘Earth’ they sought to change their luck and their name by coming South from Cumberland.

While in Sweden an album sleeve was designed for them by their label involving ‘inverted crosses’ which gave further creedence to their name as being inspired of the occult. The Press who are ‘hook conscious’ seized upon the Black Magic inferences and some capital was made of this in order to give the group momentum but as if a publicity gimmick had never been used before this is now held against them by some.

The Sabbath wear metallic crosses on stage as a matter of choice and identity and their present act and the success of ‘Paranoid’ would seem to have little to do with Satanic powers – they are when you meet them more ‘Brum’ than Beelzebub. Their other sins have been to have a number one single and play loud.

Friendly

The group themselves are a friendly and high spirited collection who really do not deserve the snipes that come their way and quite genuinely cannot understand the attitude of a few who seem to go out of their way to be unfriendly. They are a little bruised by certain snubs and prone to retaliation which is inevitable but there is little or no malice in their reaction – more a hurt and understandably suspicious.

“Some groups or individuals seem to go out of their way to be unpleasant to us,” said lead singer Ossie when I spoke to the group back stage on their recent tour. “When we played the Filmore recently for example in the States the Faces just didn’t want to know us. Well that’s O.K. if that’s the way they feel – we obliterated them anyway.”

Another figure the group feel has become disenchanted is John Peel who earlier in their career was one of their supporters but appears to have handed in his support since their number one hit.

Jealousy

“That’s one we really can’t understand,” says guitarist Tony.

“We got on really well with John to begin with but something seems to have upset him. It’s very difficult to say what gets into these people. There are certain musicians on this tour who seem to actively dislike us although we’ve given no cause. Others like Sonja Kristina of Curved Air have been really nice.

“Maybe it’s a kind of jealousy of our success but it’s not been an instant thing – we had to work for it and we struggled for a couple of years before we achieved anything worthwhile. As ‘Earth’ we did nothing and earned less until we began writing our material.

“We play loud because we like to build up an atmosphere in the hall – something which is almost physical and can totally involve and absorb the audience. The only people who complain about our being loud appear to be the writers but we never get any complaints from our audience.

“The people who really matter to us are our audiences and it is what they think and how they react which really concerns us. Your reputation is as good as your performance these days and at present we are playing to capacity houses on a British tour. We don’t suffocate people with our personal appearances in England but when we do a concert we like to pull out all the stops and hit them hard.”

One of Sabbath’s other problems at present is a tendency to put the foot in the mouth and bite which is aggravated by certain journalists who take what they say out of context and use it for effect to produce a sensational head-line.

Fans

“We got a headline in one paper recently which inferred there were a great many fans especially those in America which we could do without,” said Tony. “What we actually said was that there was a small percentage who came along to make a row, scream and generally spoil it for the others.

“It is true that we are attracting some younger people into the gigs but most of them are a new generation who are prepared to listen and just dig the music. No one really minds if they jump about a bit as long as it is not all over us or the equipment. We like to play concerts which turn into events rather than listening booths – you can sit at home with your head-phones on if you want that kind of involvement.”

The subject of ‘hit singles’ got a slightly paranoid reaction from Tony because the entire group have almost been forced into the position of having to excuse the fact they made number one with a 45.

“The single was just one track taken from the album by the recording company because they thought it would sell and was representative of something we did,” said Tony. “We don’t specifically record singles and the decision to release them rests with the record company.”

On a more frivolous note Ossie recalled an amusing episode during their recent American tour when they visited an area on American West Coast called ‘Laguna’ which is run almost exclusively as a hippy community.

“We were lying on the beach sunning ourselves where the tide was some way out and there was a tall lookout tower for the purposes of a life-guard with a diving board. Suddenly this hippy gets off the ground and starts climbing the ladder with a glazed look in his eye – no one really believed he was going to do it but he did, dived straight off this ten foot high board into beach! He got up, scratched his head and wandered off, still stoned out of his crust!”

I must admit to being biased about Sabbath after meeting them for the first time – they struck me as four typical Northern lads without pretention or affectation who are busily playing hard, exciting rock and enjoying themselves while others enjoy their music. I was also bribed with a kit-kat and a cup of tea!

© Keith Altham, 1971

John Wildman’s Vision

The record book from the Putney Debates of 1647.  The issues being debated by the men of the victorious New Model Army were of a hitherto unheard of revolutionary nature.  Curiously the debates resulted in a division between the officers and rank and file of the army with the lower orders tending towards a more seditious and experimental perception of how the country should be governed. No resolution was made as Charles I escaped from capture and thus initiated the Second Civil War and ultimately his own execution. (Image retrieved from The British Library Online Gallery).

Following the capture of Charles I, one of the more famous outcomes of the Wars of the Three Kingdoms were the debates in 1647 in a Putney Church as to how the country should now be managed.  The debates in Putney centred around proposals made by civilian Levellers and army Agitators in a document called ‘The Agreement Of The People.   Certainly in the case of those in the army, there was a perception that they were martyrs to the cause of people’s liberty. Undoubtedly many were radicalised as can be seen from the opening paragraph of ‘The Agreement…’:

“Having by our late labours and hazards made it appear to the world at how high rate we value our just freedom…”

The passage continues:

“… to avoid both the danger of returning into slavish condition…”

Despite the undoubted fanaticism of some combatants there was also an element of uncertainty of how to proceed.  Details of the discussions were recorded by William Clarke.  The following is an extract from the views of an ex-New Model Army Officer turned civilian named John Wildman and somebody who was very likely to have been involved in the drafting of ‘The Agreement Of The People’:

“Our case is to be considered thus: that we have been under slavery, that’s acknowledged by all.  Our very laws were made by conquerors. […] We are now engaged for freedom; that’s the end [purpose] of parliaments. […] Every person in England hath as clear a right to elect his representative as the greatest person in England.  I conceive that’s the undeniable maxim of government: that all government is in free consent of the people.”

I think that implication is clear.  Wildman is suggesting that England should be governed under a form of Democracy. That is, England (Britain?) should be governed by a system that has as its authority the will and votes of the people. The sense of injustice that Wildman taps into can be seen from his assertion that the British have been living in slavery and subject to laws that have been imposed on them from abroad (possibly referring to the Norman’s?).

It should be noted that the Putney Debates did not explicitly suggest the removal of the monarchy and certainly did not advocate regicide. However, many of the debaters envisaged a nation whereby legislation could only come from an elected parliament and that the powers accorded to the monarch and House of Lords should be removed.  In light of this, it is hard to see what else could be done other than to physically remove, or kill, the King (exile would only provide the opportunity to return at a later date).

Caution should be exercised when reviewing such material and too readily making the leap to modern concepts of government and democracy.  For example, there is no certainty that Wildman or his contemporaries wished to include women in his declaration.  For many Levellers, the woman’s place was firmly in the home.  Nonetheless, it is amazing to think that over 400 years ago, people entertained such ideas.  I don’t think it is stretching the point too far to say that even this far along the historical timeline we are indebted to them.

Crime Of The Century

Supertramp are one of those bands that I adore. Yet, perversely I am embarrassed to admit this.  They made wonderful music and better still they got up the nose rock music’s self imposed arbiters of what should be considered ‘cool’ and what is music for dinosaurs.  Mind you, when the above album was released it was generally received and listened to in a positive light.  Those people that objected to Supertramp (and their ilk) tended to come from within the punk movement.  It was amongst these people that I seeped into my teens and I suppose that in an attempt to convince my peers of my credibility I tacked on to their dismissive opinion of anything outside of The Sex Pistols.

Maybe to the punk ethic, a band such as this were guilty of two crimes (of the century, sorry, couldn’t resist).  Namely being progressive and therefore by definition pompous and musically bloated.  This, allied with Supertramp’s accessibility makes them quite poppy as well, which of course is anathema to many punks.  Yet, I can listen tirelessly to the harmonies of ‘Dreamer’ and if that places me outside of the punk mentality, well, so be it.

Yet this does not explain why I am still embarrassed to admit that I like Supertramp and, what’s more, why I adore the track ‘Dreamer’.  Maybe it’s a legacy of my formative years.   To counterbalance my inverted music snobbery and by way of penance for my cowardice with regard to standing up and being honest, please find below an article grabbed from the NME.  Published in 1974 the author reviews the excellent album (there, I can admit it now) Crime Of The Century.

Dreamer by Supertramp.  This video is of the band performing at The Great Hall, Queen Mary’s College in 1977.

Supertramp: Crime Of The Century (A&M)

Fred Dellar, NME, 26 October 1974

Own up – you’d written Supertramp off, hadn’t you?

To tell the truth, so had I. Their first album, which appeared in 1970, was a good enough effort though I doubt if, saleswise, it did enough to keep Herb Alpert in bedsocks for a week. And the band’s drummer had a breakdown about that time – which really didn’t help much.

Between then and now there’s been just one album and a few changes in personnel.

And that, my friends, is the history of Supertramp. Not impressive huh?

But now they’ve come up with Crime Of The Century which, whisper it not, has the makings of a monster.

I suppose a lot of the credit for the band’s apparent transformation must go to producer Ken Scott who (Bowie fans please note) has surpassed himself on this occasion and shaped an album that grips you right from the first eerie sound of Richard Davies’ mouth-harp.

But the more I play Crime – and that’s pretty often – the more I appreciate the strength of Supertramp’s writing and playing abilities.

The band – Davies (keyboards, vocals), Roger Hodgson (guitars, keyboards, vocals), John Helliwell (reeds and vocals), Dougie Thomson (bass), Bob Bemberg (drums) have at last come up with something they can justifiably call Supertramp music – seventies rock that stems from many sources but funnels down to an almost orchestral sound that’s impressive, though not pretentious.

Among the high-grade tracks are ‘Bloody Well Right’, which moves from a meditative piano lead-in, punctuated by ‘heavy’ blasts, into a solid little bouncer, basically simple but schemed in diverting manner; ‘Rudy’ a song about a guy who’s on a figurative train to nowhere, which comes replete with some Paddington sounds that would have pleased Izzy Brunei mightily; and ‘If Everyone Was Listening’, a pretty ballad and Beatle-ish in so far as Helliwell’s clarinet gives it that kind of aura.

Right then – fair dues to all those involved in Crime Of The Century – to Ken Scott a mention in the New Year’s Honours List, to Richard Davies a gold-plated Steinway…and a fair share of the spoils to A & M, who have for so long placed confidence in the band.

© Fred Dellar, 1974

Bloody Well Right by Supertramp.  The song is about society’s infatuation with money and heritage at the expense of knowledge and education.  Maybe the punks I alluded to above should have considered this before writing the band off. This video is of the band performing at The Great Hall, Queen Mary’s College in 1977.

Bauhaus – Darkness And Degradation

The cover to Bauhaus’ 1980 debut album ‘In The Flat Field’.  Despite receiving generally negative reviews from the press (no doubt not helped by what some perceived as the bands childish truculence), it did become something of a cult favourite and is now regarded in some quarters as a classic album.

Goth music is one of those genres that people find easy to ridicule.  I imagine that it is seen by many as the flip side of the ostentatious cock-rock found in Heavy Metal and exemplified by the likes of Iron Maiden and Saxon.  Instead of balls out rock’n’roll attitude, Goth music seems to spend a possibly unhealthy amount of time sifting through the minutiae of the darker aspects of life and living.

Mind you, the fashion sense of this genres adherents was always likely to provoke some sort of reaction from the everyday Joes on the street.  It is also certain to be one of finger-pointing mockery. Similar one would imagine to that which the Emo’s must face from their baseball-hat wannabe gangster peers.

But it would be a fool who ignores the musicians that contributed to this scene.  Some, notably The Cure and Siousxie and the Banshees, have crossed over into the mainstream and achieved a sort of respectability.  In the case of the Banshees I am not sure that they would regard such a move as an achievement.

For me, the single most important band to emerge from the Goth subculture were Northampton’s Bauhaus.  To my chagrin, I came to Bauhaus’ version of gloom and introspection at a late date (following their first split in the early eighties).  In fact, it was through Bauhaus that I came to discover and appreciate those other notable purveyors of murky minimalist misery: Ian Curtis and Joy Division.  For that alone I am truly in their debt.

Yet Bauhaus’ music speaks for itself.  For me they appear to have assembled lumps of Punk, Prog and Krautrock, oh; and Bowie’s Berlin period and sort of mashed them together to create their own brand of despondency.  Considering much of what was popular at the time of the band’s inception (Gloria Gaynor, Anita Ward, Cliff Richard) it was no wonder that me people fled for into the arms of Bauhaus alternative approach to melancholy.

The following is an interview between Mike Stand of Face magazine and members of Bauhaus.  The interview was conducted in 1982 about a year prior to the band’s first split. As ever with these sort of posts, I have split the interview text up into sections separated with a couple of videos of the band performing.

Bela Lugosi’s Dead – Bauhaus.  Probably their most famous song and considered by some to be the first Goth Rock song ever released (1979). Bela Lugosi was the Hungarian-American actor who pretty much provided the template for what we understand Dracula to be.  Or at least Hollywood’s understanding of what vampires should be.

This video is taken from the Bauhaus DVD/VHS ‘Shadow of Light’ which was released in 1984.

Darkness and Degradation In Sound and Word!

Mike Stand, The Face, February 1982

But first let’s talk about Northampton!

“60 miles by road or rail/is the love in my fairy tale/60 miles to reach my gay Northampton/It’s a feeling you can’t explain/I only know that it feels the same/I just can’t wait to be in Northampton, Northampton, Northampton, Northampton middle England!” (from ‘60 Miles By Road Or Rail’, Northampton Development Corporation promotional single).

Bauhaus come from Northampton, a large town which you don’t know unless you’ve lived there or have business there. I’m told by sources – impeccable and otherwise – that it has:

• A population of 160,000
• Unemployment well below the national average
• The biggest computer-controlled clothing warehouse in Europe (Levi’s)
• Barclaycard’s national HQ
• The only Carlsberg lager brewery in Europe outside Denmark
• A high rate of violent crime
• More parks per head than anywhere else in England
• Princess Diana’s ancestral home near at hand

The single cover for Dark Entries.  The second single released by Bauhaus (1980) the subject matter appears to concern the main protagonist of the song’s fixation with prostitution within a possibly post apocalyptic, certainly dystopian future.  I think.  If I’m right. I am happy to stand corrected on this issue.  Either way, it is my favourite track from the band.

Accentuate The Positive

I met Bauhaus in a vacuum: Cologne, and the gig cancelled. A long way from home and no reason to be there.

Daniel Ash (guitarist) and Peter Murphy (singer), owners of the two pairs of eyes which demand the attention in any snap of the band, gave me the deep freeze and went off for a game of squash with the more affably disposed David Jay (bassist), leaving Kevin Haskins (drummer) behind.

The others returned, evidently, to my relief, purged of bile and bitterness by an hour of smashing a ball against a wall. They glowed with good fatigue and bonhomie. We took a taxi to a restaurant and for three hours they willingly answered questions like why and how does such an extreme band have its roots in Northampton, middle England?

David: “We’re so steeped in this rich cultural heritage that…no, we’re not.”

Kevin: “It’s a negative influence.”

David: “It’s a void. When you have a blank environmental input what you do has to come from within. That means it’s much more concentrated because of lack of distractions. We wanted to make something which didn’t exist which would stimulate us. That’s much stronger than being inspired by things you like.”

But no environment is “blank”.

Eliminate The Negative

Peter Murphy actually comes from Wellingborough, a few miles outside Northampton: “I used to get the bus in to live it up at the disco.”

David: “In the midst of bingodom there’s always been an isolated elite spot which shifts up and down Abingdon Street, the main road, every couple of years.”

Peter is the youngest of eight children in a Catholic family, though religion was presented to him in two very different contexts: “I was very sheltered emotionally by my family. They were great. We enjoyed being Catholic as a family activity. We were very aware of our faith and it permeated our lives. The feeling was that you should go to church when you wanted to.

“But at school they would ask who hadn’t gone to church on Sunday and if you put your hand up they were down on you with hellfire. It was very frightening. So if I was told off I’d sit and cry and shout ‘I hate you, Jesus Christ!’. I was scared, but it was great.”

“In a crucifixation ecstacy…in scarlet bliss”, as he wrote in ‘Stigmata Martyr’.

“My mum was a player of bit parts in early German expressionist films,” announces David Jay, who likes to toy with the boundless possibilities on the interface of the band’s image and journalistic gullibility. He’s feeling generous, though. He concedes that his parents are really shopkeepers who wanted their sons – Kevin is David’s brother and Haskins is the real name – to go to public school.

“I’m glad I went there. I think I benefited because it was disciplinarian. The disadvantage came in when the teachers went over the top. Then it was cruel. Boys would come back from a caning with blood running down their legs. Once when I’d been up to no good at the end of games they made me run round the grounds in my stockinged feet. The only consolation was it made me so ill I had a month off afterwards.”

He and Kevin had to move to the local secondary school when their parents couldn’t afford the fees any more. Coming from the high teacher-pupil ratio of public school meant that they were way ahead of their new classmates, so they laid back for the rest of their educational careers.

They didn’t know it then, but Daniel Ash and Peter Murphy were gazing at them enviously over the fence from their own adjacent, less comfortable comprehensive. When it wasn’t disorderly – a “madhouse” – it was drawing strict lines around their potential, Daniel reckons: “You were always being told you were good at one subject and bad at another. So by the time you’re 14 you’ve written yourself off at, say, maths and you’re scared stiff of going to the lessons.”

At least Peter was. Daniel took a more independent view. The result was that when they were both offered places at Nene Art School in Northampton, Daniel accepted while peter didn’t think he was up to it and shuffled off humbly to become a printer’s apprentice.

Meanwhile, David and Kevin had set up a succession of bands which took them from northern clubbing as The Jam (about ’74, this), through punkish Submerged Truth, to The Craze (about ’78, enter Ash), and Bauhaus’s predecessors Jack Plug and the Sockettes.

David had joined Daniel at art school and in due course Kevin followed – he’s three years younger than the other Bauhausers who are all 24. It proved to be the radical experience the drummer needed to make Bauhaus possible for him: “It was mind-opening. I hadn’t been in contact with people like that before. If you can imagine this on your first day after leaving school, they took us into this hall where there were 12-inch squares mapped out on the floor and ceiling and pieces of string hanging down to make each one like a small cage. They told us to create our own environments within those squares and gave us all day to do it.”

Aye, well it would make you think, wouldn’t it?

Latch On To The Affirmative

Peter: “I worked for five years printing beer mats and letter heads. But I was singing-alone in a room for hours. I do love to sing. And I’d always admired Danny for getting up and doing things so when he rang me up with the idea of singing…in a group! Live music! Through a microphone!…I quit, went on the dole and it was bloody wonderful. I didn’t need money.

“I’d been very inhibited, lacking in confidence. What I do is an extreme reaction against that.”

Daniel: “You’re breaking through.”

The retrospection stops here. The rest is Bauhaus gnawing at now.

Don’t Mess With Mister Inbetween

Kevin: “Living with these people most of the time there is a closeness. And it can be claustrophobic. You’re in a metal box: the van, the hotel, the dressing-room, the studio, the stage. It sometimes gets overbearing.”

Peter: “We’re all really different. I do question myself a lot. Sometimes I see what I’m doing as naïve and eccentric. But on stage I’m totally inspired, really…moved.”

David: “There’s a fifth member of Bauhaus which is a sort of spirit entity. When he isn’t there he’s sorely missed. When he is the performance is invested with real magic. Playing is about trying to make that.”

Daniel: “Usually our best gigs are when things aren’t going right. The Knife-edge. No soundcheck or something. If it flows it’s mechanical.”

There’s merit in danger? But whose danger? This led to talk of their relationship with their audience, what they do to and with people, the unreal qualities of performers on stage. The issue, though not the direct question, was “Why do people like music which doesn’t make them happy?”.

David: “The audience’s involvement should be total, like ours. But often it works the other way and alienates people. There again, partly because of the way the press has presented us, lots of people like to be alienated by us.”

Peter: “Letters we get suggest they think we’re heavily into black magic and the occult. They want to see that in us.”

Daniel: “It’s a fantasy image.”

David: “Then there the ones with definite masochistic tendencies.”

Daniel: “They wan to be bullied. If Peter gestures towards them with the mike stand you can see in their eyes…”

David: “’Hit me! Hit me!’ Sometimes I do feel at odds with what Peter does, although I can channel it into inspiration.”

Peter: “It’s the comments I make isn’t it? Abusing the audience.”

David: “Yes you’re whoring yourself and you’re making it cheap.”

Peter: “I know. I feel bad about it because I know I’ve represented us in the wrong way. I get carried away. I see a heavy kid at the front and I go out of my way to make him hate me. Maybe that comes from the blockheads at school. My chance to get back.

“You can to overboard because of all that. I hit a guy with the mic stand once. He was spitting at me. Laid him out stupid.”

Daniel: “We were all quite disgusted with Peter after that. It was just irresponsible.”

David: “We don’t want to inflict violence on the audience. We do want to imbue the music with it.”

Daniel: “But you can ask why you want that in the music if you’re not going to carry it over into a physical act?”

David “Because that turns horror into terror. And nobody wants terror. We are in control and we have to assert it. Keep the fine balance. Either that or it’s bland and inane. What we’ve done on stage so far has needed a certain amount of internal violence to succeed.”

Peter: “Perhaps it goes back to me suddenly being in the position of being totally creative instead of totally inhibited. It’s…”

Daniel: “Overstimulation.”

Peter: “…a really strange experience. You can be frightened of an audience and strike back by becoming this superhuman, mad, powerful personality. When you are conscious of that you see it’s loud and ugly.”

Daniel: “I’m starting to question our violent side now. It’s good that you feel anger – but I think that’s essentially negative. I don’t like it. OK, if just before we go on something pisses us off and we go crazy. But I think it’s bad to have to get into that state.

“We’re looking for a completely new concept of what Bauhaus is about.”

As you might gather from the drift of the dialogue that last “we” wasn’t necessarily unanimous. Murphy responded only by saying that for him any change would have to come “from within” rather than from a concept.

Presumably most Bauhaus fans like them the way they are. There’s no great demand for them to turn cheery. But what intrigues me is that amid all their darkness and degradation in sound and word they’ve recorded a couple of tracks which I think of as their “chin-up songs”, namely ‘Double Dare’ and ‘Hair Of The Dog’.

Has anybody noticed? The queues for emotional excoriation, flagellation etc can also get this: “The man who was mortally wounded in war/Kept on fighting/The man who was cut to the quick by love/Kept on loving/The man who was mercilessly tortured by thoughts/Kept on thinking/The man who was crippled with concern/Kept on caring (‘Hair of the Dog’).

Is this Bauhaus or the Morning Service?

David: “It’s true , they are optimistic songs. That’s what we mean to be. I’m an optimist with nihilistic tendencies. The hope in our music is overlooked some of our new stuff is …I was going to say ‘heroic’, but that’s not a good word … uplifting! Stirring!”.

“They’ve travelled miles across the vast unknown/Fleeing from a neutron war they had to leave their home/They were looking for a world where they could start anew/For the ship was breaking up, they must find somewhere soon/There was a town on planet Earth/With Energy for which they searched/A town with all the modern technology/A town where they could be free-ee-ee…They found the answer at Northampton/Northampton, Northampton, Northampton middle England.” (“Energy In Northampton”, NDC promotional single B-side).

© Mike Stand, 1982

Dark Entries – Bauhaus. This is the 1998 incarnation of the band.  The footage is from their performance at Hammerstein Ballroom in New York City and was taken from the DVD ‘Gotham’.

A John Cooper Clarke Triptych-Part 03

To read part 01 of this post please select this link. To read part 02 please click here.

The Bard Of Beasley Street At The Seat Of Learning

Phil Sutcliffe, Sounds, 24 May 1980

(Continued)

Evidently Chickentown – John Cooper Clarke. This track is one of Clarke’s more famous tracks not least for it being used on Sopranos. (Taken from the British Arts Council and Channel 4 production ‘Ten Years In An Open Necked Shirt’).

We supped up and returned to the hall. This time a long exploration in the TWA bag: “Blimey, I haven’t paid me rent,” Holding the edited book-version of 10 Years In An Open-Necked Shirt he started to tell the crazy tale of the artist as a young man “bastard offspring of Count Ludwig Dreckstrasse (the lard mogul). One of the reasons JCC is a prince among wordsmiths is that when he invents a mogul he turns out to be a lard mogul.

He improvised freely, around the text, extending the story into an epic, and at the end said with some satisfaction, “I’ve sold the film rights”. Just as well really. Half an hour later there might not have been any buyers left. John Cooper Clarke was about to hit the skids.

He started on ‘The It Man’ from his new album, but stopped in disarray with an “I’ll do that later”.

He tried ‘36 Hours’, broke off mid-line to complain “This is like singing without a group”, and quit again. So he reached right back to his working men’s club routines, a Mickey Spillane parody called ‘Meet Johnny Madrid’. Very funny in his Bogart voice (”I remembered the six-inch rip in my gut”) he got through it okay, bar a few whinnying giggles of nervousness.

“The flashing neon sign was all I had to tell me I was alive . . . blank. . . Burgerama . . . blank . . . Burgerama. . . blank. . . Burgerama. . . blank. . . blank . . . blank…

Lizzie was shaking with laughter, as much at his mistakes as his humour it seemed. The Twit was out in the foyer checking out the slim volumes on display there. Clarke told us the one about dieting by shoving your food up your arse, and the one about the bloke who was good at chatting up girls and his mate who wasn’t.

He emptied his TWA bag on the floor, sorted the contents, and uttered a determined “Right!” There were shushes from the more serious to the more restless in the crowd and we were sitting comfortably. Waiting. But no, he snaffled another fag and told us the one about the elephant and the chihuahua. Then the one about the galley slaves and the cat o’ nine tails.

“Ask me any questions about pop music!” he challenged.

Of course, journalistically speaking this was all good stuff, seeing the man on his feet and on his knees in the space of an hour and clocking his reactions. I loved him either way — and that’s not too loose a use of the verb as he’s a performer, like great clowns of every stripe, who makes you fond of him so that you can’t look on his foibles too harshly. He was obviously intoxicated by the rich chaos of holding the stage.

What struck me as strange while he stumbled through his crisis, was that all his jokes were old and borrowed. Belters mind you. Yet in the middle of the Cooper Clarke avalanche of comic words not one of his gags was an original.

Perhaps he feeds all his wit into his poems. He really goes for one-liners, in conversation the same as in his work. He seems to value and savour their wisecracking razzle-dazzle with a peculiar and personal intensity.

I got the feeling it was like this. A high-kicking one-liner has a life of its own. It says something very well. There is no call on it to be ‘right’. It may not even mean what the speaker intended: a slip of .the tongue may accidentally have alchemised gold out of dross. And yet, because it is well said it will make people laugh and stop and think and possibly get closer to forming their own view of what the ‘truth’ is.

Majorca – John Cooper Clarke (Taken from the British Arts Council and Channel 4 production ‘Ten Years In An Open Necked Shirt’).

After poring over his notebook and making a couple more false starts on new material, he managed to get most of ‘Beasley Street’ out, lines profound and/or hilarious whirling in the blonder of his imagination. .

“Sleep is a luxury they don’t need! A sneak preview of death… Where the action is, that’s where it isn’t…. Keith Joseph smiles and a baby dies in a box on Beasley Street… The rats have all got rickets/They spit through broken teeth…. Their common problem is they’re not someone else… People turn to poison quick as larger turns to piss… On easy, cheesey, greasy, quesy, beastly Beasley Street.”

Even this piece de resistance died a few lines short. “I’m sorry about that,” he said. “I’ve had amnesia for as long as I can remember.” He went over to his benefactor for another fag, tripped over the mike lead and pulled the stand over.

On a last deep breath he charged through ‘Post-War Glamour Girls’ and ‘Kung-Fu Internationale’ all the way to ‘Enter the Dragon — exit Johnny Clarke’, was warmly applauded (though a call for ‘more’ fizzled fast) and moved swiftly over to the bar again where he received lager, congratulations, requests for autographs, and a wad of fivers in respect of his art.

“Treat the place like a working men’s club and you can’t go wrong,” he enthused. Later Judy Totton was putting it to him that, in the second half, he had gone wrong and it would be inadvisable to go equally wrong at his forthcoming Venue outing because, as his trophy case of Things That Have Been Thrown At Me attests, rock audiences allow less poetic licence than Oxford students.

We went for a curry and I tried to interview him over the lobster tikka tandoori he’d chanced his arm on. It’s disconcerting because of those shades. No eye contact. But the mouth is friendly, charming, entertaining — you address yourself to that.

John Cooper Clarke is a man of encyclopaedic if haphazard learning. Not that he parades it uninvited, but previous articles I’ve read about him are a-wriggle with literature, art and all-round culture references And I stand before you, a man with a degree who has not the remotest idea what concrete poetry or dada are — both of them being major JCC influences. So you can see that ignorance is one solid reason why I did a lousy interview.

But he did get off this short manifesto for the rock-comic-poet: “Humour seems to be viewed with distaste by rock critics. There was actually a favourable review of the album the other week which had a line saying ‘No more the easy laugh’. I don’t think there’s any such thing, as an easy laugh. Look at the comedians who have cracked up from the pressure. Well, pro rata I’ve paid to see more comedians than poets so that must show my preference.”

Clarke has no manager. He has no telephone. He calls Judy Totton from time to time to find out what’s happening. One of his heroes is the late misguided genius Tony Hancock — yet when The Twit in his coarse upper-class way asked me whether Clarke would be burnt out by the time he’s 35 (four years hence) it struck me as a ridiculous notion.

The poet reflected: “I wish I had the kind of personality that could shape a career. It would be reassuring. I feel very insecure with myself (check ‘Sleepwalking’ from Snap, Crackle And Bop). I pass tramps on the street and see myself in that position I’d hate it.

“I want a home. Apart from with my parents and lodging in Salford with Steve Maguire, who illustrated the book, everywhere has felt temporary I’m getting married soon and we’ll be looking for a house — it’s more an act of passion that , a search for security mind you!

“Though look what happened to Marty Wilde’s career when he married one of the Vernon Girls. Plummeted. I wonder how much of my appeal lies in my eligibility?”

© Phil Sutcliffe, 1980

The Ghost Of Al Capone – John Cooper Clarke (Taken from the British Arts Council and Channel 4 production ‘Ten Years In An Open Necked Shirt’).

John Cooper Clarke’s website can be found here.

For part o1 of this post please select this link.  For part 02, please click here.