The River Bar was the coolest hang out in town. My eyes were well and truly opened when my mate Graham Scott and I went down there one summer lunchtime. This was where all of the town’s 'heads' gathered. The place where, in the words of the Sounds magazine lonely hearts ads, freaky guys met up with groovy chicks. For a 16-year-old this was the world I’d been looking for. The smell, the incredible aroma that was new to me, but I would come to adore. The smell of patchouli oil, Afghan coats, dope and greasy denim. Aaaah!
The River Bar was attached to a once-swanky hotel, and in an attempt to keep up, or perhaps keep going, they used to run discos on a Thursday and Friday, but on Saturdays, the news was that Saturdays would feature live rock music. Live music, here and just a bus ride away. Wow, this was going to be something, right?
We went along, whoever was on, we went along. Be it Graham Parker and The Rumour who were great, or be it Budgie. Who weren’t. I remember giving up on Budgie and going outside, hanging around the river bank, popping back in to get another drink, but never entertaining the idea of going somewhere else. Hanging in there, but keeping Budgie at a suitable distance. Although we could still hear them, so it wasn’t entirely successful. Incidentally, nowadays Budgie’s frontman and singer, we’ll call him The Head Budgie, Burke Shelley looks like Charles Hawtrey.
So, hanging around and being regular faces brought benefits. Graham got a job as a humper. “What’s that?” I asked. He explained that he had to be there on a Saturday lunchtime, and when the band’s gear arrived he assisted with carrying it into the venue. He was doing other stuff now too. There were several points of entry into the hall, so doors had to be manned. A table was placed there in an attempt to prevent free entry. For this, he got free admission, a hot meal and a few quid.
We saw Curved Air there in the company of an audience who numbered less than 20 – which was rather more than the post-Wings Denny Laine got at the leisure centre up the road (The Mull of Kintyre sideman's foray into a bagpipes'n'moptop-free outfit being pretty much responsible for the venue's first foray into music promotion being their last.)
My chance came when someone dropped out and Graham asked if I wanted to do some humping that weekend. For Thin Lizzy. Now, this wasn’t much of a deal at the time, because Thin Lizzy had had their hit with Whisky In The Jar a few years previously and with nothing to follow, they weren’t much of a draw. But this, although we didn’t know it at the time, was the tour that laid the foundations for them getting big again, and properly this time.
We hung around, we humped the gear in. We dealt with questions from the promoter like “What is it you do exactly?”. We buggered off for a bit. On return Graham was summoned and ordered to deliver another crate of beer to the Lizzy dressing room, from which he reckoned he returned high on the aroma of herbal smokes. Easy to believe when later, having deserted my post, I stood 3 feet from Phil Lynott as he played bass with one hand, sought desperately to remain upright, while examining a bottle of beer as if it were a work of fine art and all to establish whether there might be a mouthful left in it.
I say I deserted my post. Well, earlier I sat at my designated double swing doors with table set across them. Doors swung open. Five large gentlemen stood there.
“You can’t come in this way,” I squeaked.
“We’re with the band sonny,” said the biggest, in a deep, gravelly baritone. He loomed over me like a thundercloud.
“You’d better come in then,” I said. Helpfully moving the table out of the way, ushering them through, making my own way towards the stage, and thus resigning from my first and last rock-related position.
In those days, you see, the broadest point of my frame was my haircut, not that this ever-expanding tumble of golden curls got cut very often. The rest of me was about 6 inches across at my widest and if I were to lean in a corner I would occasionally be snatched up by a passing char who had mistaken me for a mop. And I wasn’t about to die for rock ‘n’ roll.
Friday, 24 June 2011
Thursday, 16 June 2011
Shortcuts (A piece from the Why The Long Face? radio show)
It’s a film. The character over there whom we know nothing about yet is introduced to the audience as being selfish, arrogant and deluded. He’s smoking a roll-up of dubious provenance and at last we pan back so that a guitar case is revealed to be sitting beside him. This is the dramatic portrayal of the musician. They do the something similar when they want to signify a writer – except they substitute a half-empty bottle of scotch for the joint and a pencil sits in for the old banjo.
I realise that there are artistic factors at work here, and the director needs a shortcut to save 2 things. Firstly, time, and secondly, the audience having to think too hard when he wants them to be concentrating on his carefully designed tracking shot. But is it really necessary for the lawyer to always be the one who’s in a tearing hurry? ‘Sorry, I’m due in court’, they’ll gasp as they struggle with the hugest of humungous bundle of files underarm, papers spilling out, yet being caught by a handy and handsome-stroke-pretty passer-by when it’s necessary to engineer a little love interest.
In the old days if you saw someone in a mac, in the pissing rain, lighting up a fag and looking for a pub that was open then that person was bound to be a copper, if he had an ex-wife and a boss who didn’t like him, well that was the full set and he was obviously a very good detective, if not a very good husband or much of a team-player, but you marry the job don’t you, love?
Journalists also ticked most of those boxes, but they tended to have bad teeth and a rather seedy air about them.
You want a loose-ish woman? Then get the wardrobe department to dress her in stilettos and a pencil-skirt. Make sure her highlights are overdue, she has a slightly knock-kneed walk and can hold a glass of gin at a 30 degree angle. Job done.
On the other hand, if you’re casting a vicar he must have a big set of teeth that wrap around his chops like a corner sofa in white leather. Well, not really, but ever since Dick Emery played such a character that’s what I expect from a vicar. To the extent that one of the experts on the Antiques Roadshow – the one with the large specs, the slightly greasy hair in a side-parting and, most crucially, the mouthful of teeth – is known round these parts as Dick Emery.
If a murderer’s involved this will invariably be the loner, the outsider. The kids throw eggs at his windows, and he is what used to be called the local nutter. In fact, life imitates art here, as I believe there have been certain high-profile, real-life cases in which they’ve been so pressurised for a result, that the police still rely on this theory, regardless, or in spite of, or possibly because of, offender profiling like they have on telly. Which leads them to arrest the local oddball, even though he’s likely to be freed on appeal in a few years when all the fuss has died down.
During a murder mystery we were watching, I said to Sandra, “Look, you can tell she’s supposed to be a librarian, ‘cause she’s wearing glasses.”
But my theory doesn’t always hold true, as Mrs Bryer replied, “Wouldn’t be the fact she’s surrounded by shelves full of books then? In a big building marked Library?”
Never said it was foolproof. Did I?
I realise that there are artistic factors at work here, and the director needs a shortcut to save 2 things. Firstly, time, and secondly, the audience having to think too hard when he wants them to be concentrating on his carefully designed tracking shot. But is it really necessary for the lawyer to always be the one who’s in a tearing hurry? ‘Sorry, I’m due in court’, they’ll gasp as they struggle with the hugest of humungous bundle of files underarm, papers spilling out, yet being caught by a handy and handsome-stroke-pretty passer-by when it’s necessary to engineer a little love interest.
In the old days if you saw someone in a mac, in the pissing rain, lighting up a fag and looking for a pub that was open then that person was bound to be a copper, if he had an ex-wife and a boss who didn’t like him, well that was the full set and he was obviously a very good detective, if not a very good husband or much of a team-player, but you marry the job don’t you, love?
Journalists also ticked most of those boxes, but they tended to have bad teeth and a rather seedy air about them.
You want a loose-ish woman? Then get the wardrobe department to dress her in stilettos and a pencil-skirt. Make sure her highlights are overdue, she has a slightly knock-kneed walk and can hold a glass of gin at a 30 degree angle. Job done.
On the other hand, if you’re casting a vicar he must have a big set of teeth that wrap around his chops like a corner sofa in white leather. Well, not really, but ever since Dick Emery played such a character that’s what I expect from a vicar. To the extent that one of the experts on the Antiques Roadshow – the one with the large specs, the slightly greasy hair in a side-parting and, most crucially, the mouthful of teeth – is known round these parts as Dick Emery.
If a murderer’s involved this will invariably be the loner, the outsider. The kids throw eggs at his windows, and he is what used to be called the local nutter. In fact, life imitates art here, as I believe there have been certain high-profile, real-life cases in which they’ve been so pressurised for a result, that the police still rely on this theory, regardless, or in spite of, or possibly because of, offender profiling like they have on telly. Which leads them to arrest the local oddball, even though he’s likely to be freed on appeal in a few years when all the fuss has died down.
During a murder mystery we were watching, I said to Sandra, “Look, you can tell she’s supposed to be a librarian, ‘cause she’s wearing glasses.”
But my theory doesn’t always hold true, as Mrs Bryer replied, “Wouldn’t be the fact she’s surrounded by shelves full of books then? In a big building marked Library?”
Never said it was foolproof. Did I?
Tuesday, 7 June 2011
Beached
“On the beach you can dance to the rock and roll.” The rock and roll – so say Cliff Richard one time.
Or as The Who put it, “A beach is a place where a man can feel he’s the only soul in the world that’s real.” And in my experience, having never actually danced like Cliff on the sands at Weymouth or Worthing myself, The Who are a little more on the money. Despite Cliff having the more obviously appropriate name to be linked with seaside fun, of course.
Some years back, we’re on the beach, Sandra and I, and as is the way of these things I got up to take myself off for a stroll. We’d been there for the best part of the morning and, once you’d lathered up with factor 8 (which in those days was considered to be so strong that it was akin to popping on a burka) and read for a bit and looked out to sea, and nudged your snoozing better half because that’s definitely a whale surfacing right there and not a turtle. Well, once you’ve done all that, and watched the tide coming in or going out, and gone for a cooling dip or two, and come back and brushed off the sand that’s stuck to your feet on the way back, but however diligent you are with brushing it off as you squat on the edge of the sunbed there’s still plenty to be found in your shoes as you slip them on and announce you’re going for a walk. And d’you wanna come? And she tilts her head up above her Susan Lewis novel, and the silence and the reflection of yourself in her shades is enough to tell you that, no, she isn’t coming, which is fine – because there’s nothing like exploring on your own, as when you discover something – well, who are you going to come back and tell?
Away I went, it wasn’t too crowded anyway, but after a quarter-of-a-mile the people had thinned out delightfully, and after twice that I was truly alone. I struck out along a spit of sand which led to a spectacular nowhere in particular. Surrounded now on three sides by the sparkling crystal sea, I slipped off my shoes and walked on into the end of the world. The last Man on Earth.
“You’ve got to see this,” I suggested a couple days later, “this is where I walked the other day. It’s fabulous, so isolated, you’re like the only people on the planet.”
However, the Robinson Crusoe on an all-inclusive thing pales into blank depression and disappointment when one finds out that others have not only discovered the last place on Earth, but are busy discovering it with surfboards and shouting and, well, to be fair, I think there were only a couple of other fairly quiet people there, but they ruined it for us, as I’m sure we did for them.
Back we go to our rooms of an evening, and we shower away the grit, the sweat and the suncream, until we’re as pink and scrubbed as we were as babes, but then we slap on the greasy after-sun lotion and douse ourselves in pungent insect repellent, so we’re ready to face the evening all stinking and slippery.
Better by far to have the simple life. On a jet-lagged early morning walk in Sri Lanka we paused under the palm trees that ringed the beach, watching the waves break as the huge tropical sun burst into view over the horizon. “Look at that old bloke,” I remarked. “Sitting on the beach there, what a way to start the day. He’s getting up now, look, adjusting his sarong, and kicking sand into the hole, and euw, wiping his bottom with a handful of sand. Still quite a way to start the day. Perhaps we’ll go up the far end today, though, and no digging…”
Or as The Who put it, “A beach is a place where a man can feel he’s the only soul in the world that’s real.” And in my experience, having never actually danced like Cliff on the sands at Weymouth or Worthing myself, The Who are a little more on the money. Despite Cliff having the more obviously appropriate name to be linked with seaside fun, of course.
Some years back, we’re on the beach, Sandra and I, and as is the way of these things I got up to take myself off for a stroll. We’d been there for the best part of the morning and, once you’d lathered up with factor 8 (which in those days was considered to be so strong that it was akin to popping on a burka) and read for a bit and looked out to sea, and nudged your snoozing better half because that’s definitely a whale surfacing right there and not a turtle. Well, once you’ve done all that, and watched the tide coming in or going out, and gone for a cooling dip or two, and come back and brushed off the sand that’s stuck to your feet on the way back, but however diligent you are with brushing it off as you squat on the edge of the sunbed there’s still plenty to be found in your shoes as you slip them on and announce you’re going for a walk. And d’you wanna come? And she tilts her head up above her Susan Lewis novel, and the silence and the reflection of yourself in her shades is enough to tell you that, no, she isn’t coming, which is fine – because there’s nothing like exploring on your own, as when you discover something – well, who are you going to come back and tell?
Away I went, it wasn’t too crowded anyway, but after a quarter-of-a-mile the people had thinned out delightfully, and after twice that I was truly alone. I struck out along a spit of sand which led to a spectacular nowhere in particular. Surrounded now on three sides by the sparkling crystal sea, I slipped off my shoes and walked on into the end of the world. The last Man on Earth.
“You’ve got to see this,” I suggested a couple days later, “this is where I walked the other day. It’s fabulous, so isolated, you’re like the only people on the planet.”
However, the Robinson Crusoe on an all-inclusive thing pales into blank depression and disappointment when one finds out that others have not only discovered the last place on Earth, but are busy discovering it with surfboards and shouting and, well, to be fair, I think there were only a couple of other fairly quiet people there, but they ruined it for us, as I’m sure we did for them.
Back we go to our rooms of an evening, and we shower away the grit, the sweat and the suncream, until we’re as pink and scrubbed as we were as babes, but then we slap on the greasy after-sun lotion and douse ourselves in pungent insect repellent, so we’re ready to face the evening all stinking and slippery.
Better by far to have the simple life. On a jet-lagged early morning walk in Sri Lanka we paused under the palm trees that ringed the beach, watching the waves break as the huge tropical sun burst into view over the horizon. “Look at that old bloke,” I remarked. “Sitting on the beach there, what a way to start the day. He’s getting up now, look, adjusting his sarong, and kicking sand into the hole, and euw, wiping his bottom with a handful of sand. Still quite a way to start the day. Perhaps we’ll go up the far end today, though, and no digging…”
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