A Quick Word With a Rock and Roll Late Starter
RRL0001
UK
US
I have a gorgeous bite.
The Lady Hack from the Chronicle
so informed me as I snaffled her Snapple
and took a bite of her apple.
Red Max. I winked implying
I like to dabble if something's happening
but the nuances were lost on her.
These local scribes know nothing
of the international, the global,
the universal. Their medium
is whist drives and farmyard incidents,
the diseases of small animals.
She claims to be the point of contact
between near and far,
the middle man in the war
against death by boredom,
expanding the consciousness
of Middle England from the inside out
but I'm not having that.
She's the foot soldier
of the middle-class homeowner
buying shares in public utilities
after the swankiest lot in the cemetery
while my very manner states
I want 3 Number Ones to my name
and a plaque in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
and still have the balls to snub the ceremony.
I'm a tear-arse anarchist in a gatefold sleeve
who hates World Hunger
and I don't take kindly to journalist S.O.B.s
patronising or dissing me.
I've got my honour and my hangover.
I'll not be cannon fodder.
Whatever: the girl didn't care.
I made it clear, be there or be square
Wednesday in the Chartist bar for a gig
that would knock your pilates and pashminas
into perspective.
She could join me
in the dressing room prior to the action
for a spliff or a beer
-1-
and for an object lesson
in succinct application
of melody and passion,
a molten meltdown of the ethereal,
the essential and the dashing.
She didn't get it and that's depressing
but I got my plug in
and that's the main thing.
She's cute but nothing amazing.
RRL0002
UK
US
She can't fool me.
I do a column for the "Staine's
Complete Plumber" biweekly gazetteer.
My Dad - whom I hate
for reasons I can't go into, 'nuff said,
though he cursed me with this chin and hair
and dropped me in this county got me the gig through his water-works connections.
What they meant by the Age of Aquarius!
The Aquarati!
It's the inside track
to the mind-set of the hack
so I'll never be caught out
exposing what I'm thinking
or on the street saying the wrong mo-fo thing.
I can jump their gun.
I can swing things my way.
It's the low down, low-ball
lavender-scented word to the wise:
I can laugh along with those scum
before I poke out their eyes.
It's the antidote to being hypnotised in the headlights,
traumatised, paralysed,
hollowed out like an oyster
and eaten alive.
It counteracts lies.
It ensures the poisoned spike
of the arrow points away from me
and thus preserves my sanity.
I can write what I like
while I name-check the Plumb Centre
and Twyford porcelain.
I'm naturally verbose but it staunches
the flow of my prose
-2-
to U-bend my word-streams
into thoughts of pipefitting
and the workings of the cistern.
Plumbing and Pop Music: they go way back,
and I've laid down many an analogy
binding duct tape and the Alabama 3,
insights so profound you can only connect
with insider knowledge of a monkey wrench
and the Velvet Underground boxed set.
RRL0003
UK
US
Where do you stand on sampling?
Me, I fucking love it.
To drop a beat as sure as a steam train
that does your head in
and a soulful vocal that's a distillation
of slavery, pimping, drugs and pain,
the agony of racial exploitation
EQed to lose the strings
yet keep the consternation in the voice
with a hook that speaks volumes
of your record collection,
layered up with strategic reverb,
reverse echo, a smattering of phase,
panned to perfection, compressed to fuck
with Joe Meek's finest contraption
emphasising the bass and the beat
and letting the spaces room to breathe,
makes the studio an instrument the producer plays,
makes the producer a musician, like Eno says.
It makes pop sensibility its own trump card.
Add to that the capabilities
a simple chump can afford these days
and it's the revolution punk implied,
it's anarchy in your spare room
while your Mother's in the kitchen
making pies.
The Majors have no advantage
save access to radio play, payola
and the promotional junket
but, now all creativity flows
through the underground,
you can make it massive
without touting your soul
down the chart returns outlets.
-3-
All you need's a cheap PC
and some hooky software
and you've got a home studio
like Maison Rouge or AIR
that would've cost a packet not 10 years past.
The business comes to you,
contract free and conscience unabashed.
RRL0004
UK
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And all those megastore cunts dismayed
because Napster gives their MP3's away
are losing sight of the demographics they're pursuing.
Music's only half the story:
these are 15 year-old kids you're exploiting,
desperate to assimilate the alternative lifestyle
with branded t-shirts and logo-ed nose-rings
and insidiously-targeted merchandise
so there's plenty of ways to cream off the top
without losing your cool over the odd stolen track.
And remember, digital reproduction
removes the costs of manufacture
and, as a bi-product,
preserves world resources in the Gulf and Asia
so your overheads are so much reduced.
And consider we're in a golden age of media saturation.
And factor in everyone from 7 to 45
creaming it to be a teenager
with open-to-buy tax dollars they're keen to chuck
at the nearest teenybop TV station
and the market's ever-expanding
from the Pacific Rim to the fall of the Iron Curtain
and even China came online
and Britney's a poster girl in Communist Beijing
so understand this is a magnificent time
for a would-be pop sensation
with beats to flog as content
for the television corporations.
Any bastard complaining
has spent one too many business meetings
planning their success
and not enough time in the mosh pit
drowning in their own sweat.
Metallica, are you listening?
-4-
RRL0005
UK
US
Check out my Coolster C.V..
I was born with my hip cocked to the West
and this fuck-off sneer.
Like the Redskins I walk like the Clash
and sing like the Supremes.
I either scream or daydream.
From an early age I hogged the limelight
on tennis racket air guitar
at the kindergarten talent night
while the kids from the council houses
fucked off home suffering stage fright.
I rocked the mike right
and became the darling
of the playgroup Dancette Dance Set over-night.
My action art was posted on the dayroom walls.
I sang 'It's my party
and you can fuck off out of it'.
I've long been dying
and I've made an art of it.
At infants I made an installation
of my Gola sports bag with logo and tags.
I partied hard. I shat conceptual art.
At Doctors and Nurses
my immersion in my performance
slaughtered them all.
I put a smile on the face
of the nursery nurse in the toy cupboard
with some tricks I learned
from the Sticky Fingers cover,
word is bond.
My signature's an autograph.
You can trust me to get my dick out.
I'm lucky to have a violent streak
but if you've seen me buying shoes,
it's as good as doing an interview:
every seam speaks to you.
Maybe I'm contradicting myself
but I can live with that.
So go on, ask me.
My conscience is clear.
My lines are clean.
I steal my magazines.
I drop speed on Valentines
and e's on Christmas Eve.
You don't want to know
-5-
what I did for Halloween.
I'll be buggered if you'll catch me
on the street wearing jeans.
My heart flips between a hip hop breakbeat
and a one-40 bpm 4-to-the-floor full-on hard core
depending on whether I'm chilling or thrilling,
or what I'm dropping.
Gaze in wonder at these referees
who passed their reefers on to me Robert Johnson, Morrison, Redding, Holly.
All dead. All buried.
They wouldn't say a word against me.
RRL0006
UK
US
There's no flies on me and no fucking meat:
there's no place for fat in Rock and Roll.
I need my sustenance like anyone else
but one good meal could tip the balance.
Look at Bolan in '74.
It wasn't alcohol or rock and roll excess
that swelled his jowls
and bloated his paunch.
He was getting his first real feed
since leaving home.
Do you think he and June
could afford to check the nutrients
of whatever they could get their teeth into
in their coldwater flat in Bayswater
in the years before he went mega?
It's the story of Rock and Soul.
I've heard love is the drug
and angel dust can get you wired
but food is the ultimate pacifier.
Complacency's no use to me.
I go to the other extreme.
I take speed-based slimming pills,
skip meals and vomit beer before I go to bed.
It might fuck with your heart
and play havoc with your head
but you'll still be handsome for the paparazzi
when you're dead.
Get dumb on drugs
and no one will bat a mascaraed eye-lid,
in fact they'll spray graffiti
on your grave at Pere Lachaise
-6-
next to Puccini, Oscar Wilde and Edith Piaf
but get a belly like Elvises
and you're out of contract
back working on the buses.
There's other no-no's too.
There's the salutary tale of the drummer
sacked from Felt for his curly head of hair.
Pop is image, so beware.
Your face has got to fit.
And the rest of it.
Ask Pete Best or Ian Stewart.
RRL0007
UK
US
Nothing stands in isolation.
Everything borrows from everything else.
If you can't see the lineage that tracks back
from Abba, late Elvis, early Springsteen, the Beach Boys the likenesses are blatant: come on, ‘fess up who owed a debt to Phil Spector
who learnt his chops with Lieber and Stoller
(check out the obligato "On Broadway")
then you've no business trading licks for money,
God forgive you.
And those two, Mike and Jerry,
Jew Boys from Baltimore
by way of black California
writing songs for the Coasters and the Robins
and Big Mama Thornton,
dominating the black radio stations
till Presley lifted Hound Dog
and really got the ball rolling.
It's the black/white/Hebrew sketch
mixed and matched and deafening,
singing integration, understanding
and love your fellow dude,
trying to right wrongs, get laid
and bring people together.
Trace the timelines from Amazing Grace
through Stagger Lee and Superfly
and suddenly disco becomes a plea for justice
for black and white gay guys.
Justice. There's been a lack of it.
Chuck Berry was the sweetest man alive
till the trumped-up Mann Act
got him thrown inside
-7-
once the authorities cottoned
he was wasn't white.
The record company (Chess and they weren't the worst,
though they weren't the best)
never put his likeness on the sleeve
to keep the kids from defining
his racial origin.
Maybellene was Ida Red, the country tune,
and substitute -skinned for -eyed
in Brown-eyed Man
and you'll see where his politics lie:
a black man proud of his heritage
but naturally eclectic
and you have pop in microcosm.
And here's an hypothesis for you:
a wack mainstream begets a wack alternative.
Sow the Carpenters, you reap Iggy Pop.
Plant Westlife, you harvest Toploader.
Q.E. fucking D.
RRL0008
UK
US
Where's the worst gig I've played?
God, where do you get these questions?
I've whored myself round so much cess
I couldn't collate an empirical 1-2-3 compilation.
I've ripped the roof off shitholes
slated for condemnation
while the demolition team skanked
as I read the last rites
before tearing down the house
for a wholly fitting death.
I've flossed amid gang warfare
under crossfire like Russian Roulette
laying low because the merchandise
was a bullet with my name on it.
With intent to stay alive long enough
to pick up my paltry cheque,
I've previewed my party piece of death songs
in Buckets of Blood
where candy men bought the farm,
and meat wagons stripped their pockets
of a respectful contribution,
and battering couples stoved
their cars into the lobby doorways
-8-
for the fuck of it.
I've taken to the stage in fleapits
for the lowlife like of Morris Levy,
with the mob breathing down his neck,
and him breathing down mine.
He shafted me for my quota of the door
to compensate for monitors
which were kaputt from the get-go.
I've lorded it in joints so thick with ganga
the cops copped me driving
and hassled me to supply them.
In bronchial night clubs
where rot-gut moonshine was all they served,
with dry rot in the dressing rooms
precipitating my asthma,
with waterfalls of condensation
startling the crackling amplifiers
into picking up pirate radio stations.
But the bottom-dwellers can't half dance.
At least in the slums they know their music.
Worse is the festivals for the Saturday Night TV crowd
where they celebrate tedium,
where they clap but don't feel it,
where they phase themselves out of human life
with the Music Hall, the pantomime,
the holiday camp, the summer season,
so far down the bill I performed
before the schools got out,
on a double bill with crown green bowling,
as a red coat, a yellow coat,
at children's parties disguised as a Muppet,
on talent nights that defied trade's description
where a shepherd's crook returned me to the wings
because I'd the neck to bad mouth Elton John.
Give me the sewers, any day.
If you want an edge, try emoting
beneath a hail of piss containers
with the rain coming down like defamation,
where your strings ice over so your finger ends are dead
and your thumb’s ripped to sheds
and the crowd screams for the juggler
that came before.
That's hard core.
Use that to hone your concentration.
RRL0009
UK
US
-
-9-
Adversity never stopped me.
It raised my game.
I never once asked what's it for,
why am I here,
why do I do this to myself,
is this the best life can offer,
nor was jealous of those who'd cracked it.
I was playing for the people, for the masses,
for myself, for my mother,
for the craic, for the doss,
for that long departed lover,
for life itself, for heaven above,
for the love of a good woman,
to exorcise the demons in me,
for fame, for sanctity,
for triumph over hardship,
for dance, for the tower of song,
for a hundred Germans screaming 'mak shau!'
to live fast, to die young,
to fuck the corporations,
for self-aggrandisement,
to get rich quick,
seeking happiness and fortune,
to avoid a proper job,
for all of the above.
For love!
RRL0010
UK
US
Poetry and Pop Music.
I'm of the former, wed to the latter
but in my heart I'm neither.
I'm Byron's bastard cousin, the dilettante.
I skip between the arts like a man mixing his drinks,
like Kool Herc on the decks spinning two copies
of the same break from Funky Drummer.
It's a sniff of this and a tab of that
and it's melded all in my own base stink.
I bow down before the muse
and she tells me what to do
or is this another ruse to fool you,
what do you think?
If it's true that all is illusion and nothing is real,
I'm the Master sleight-of-hand deceiver.
I can leave you stood naively believing
- 10 -
while I nip out back
to kick some fucker's teeth in.
Why I'm still unsigned
is sincerely beyond me.
RRL0011
UK
US
Unlike my friends.
My friends, so called,
were shown the opening.
I thought they'd crash the party,
squat like bums in the navel of the industry,
establish a cairn where chaos meets harmony,
prescribe a scrip for the roll 'n' roll pharmacy,
like dumb kids singing for the love of eternity,
stake a claim for the arse-end of infamy,
take it to the bridge
and then come back to get me.
No such luck.
Instead they sacrificed art for show biz,
took the purse,
chowed down on glory and fame,
posed for the Face,
gave up on their collective history
and played the game for easy money.
God, what they learned from me,
these chumps sat at my knee,
hearing stories of me and Liam
pre-Patsy, pre-Platinum
bearing down on some poor slob town
on a transit-borne suicide tour,
me supplying weed to keep
their 2 and 4 a tick behind the beat
so they were tight without being neat
and camp without being effete,
to ensure they got high without losing it,
living to excess without over-doing it,
embracing the life
while at the same time eschewing it,
making mad cheddar without pursuing it.
It's the funk and the fury,
the coke field and the brewery,
aspirations while signing on,
tantric sex
and the creative use of sound effects.
It's love and death in the key of E.
- 11 -
RRL0012
UK
US
Me, I want to be legendary.
Just give me eternity
and that's enough for me.
Let a thousand teenage dirtbags cry
at my funeral and I'll rest easy.
Tell me death's not the end of me:
I can spend the Hereafter in your dreams.
I'm not thick: I know that when you die
you're gone and that's it,
but if you're still in someone's head
when you're stone cold dead
that's making it, surely.
If your hits still spin across the ether
when you're six feet under
that's something, isn't it.
And I don't mean dumb celebrity, either:
any moron can get on TV.
Charles Manson, The Trenchcoat Mafia,
Mark Chapman achieved it.
Commit carnage, forfeit your blanket
et, voila, Le BBC,
with a ward of bodyguards,
a stenographer for a biographer,
the court artist sketch.
That's too easy.
I'm talking about glory
from the morning of your sorry obituary
through your wake and on into history,
celebrating your contribution posthumously
with a send off like Ernie K-Doe's.
Of course, you need fame first.
The papers won't run a notice
of the death of a nobody.
No one whistles a song they don't know.
My advice to the Unknown Soldier bone up on your P.R.:
it's not what you know;
it's not who you know;
it's what they know about you.
I court fame with a thirst.
I cultivate mystique,
strip back my life to what's essential,
play the pop game at its most elemental.
- 12 -
The constellations splattered on my boudoir ceiling
saw me working on my mental scars
while my friends were wooed
by these failed bass players,
these leeches with their vested interests,
and were made into stars.
My timing has been consistently poor.
Opportunity Knocked while I was tripping.
It snuck a peek through the window
and couldn't believe it,
felt uncomfortable with what it was seeing,
the all-out assault on my nerve-ends
free-basing with chemicals from the Far East,
the debasement of my so-called genius,
the ultimate 'fuck you' statement,
the counter-culture product placement,
and it crept out and left me to sleep it off.
I went all the way and came back to tell the tale
but that's not what they want to hear these days.
Maybe I over-did it,
but I won't back off
when I've got my teeth into it.
I do it because I believe it,
which you can't say for everyone:
I mean it.
Half measures only cheapen it.
But I always had my head screwed on:
like the Stones, even at my most frenetic,
I'd whup your Phat arse at tennis.
RRL0013
UK
US
Get me on the couch and this comes out.
It's the Afterlife.
I've copped it of heart failure
in the bath from a day bingeing
on a date with twins.
I've finessed it passed St Peter
with James Burton's telecaster
and a gynormous ghettoblaster
and there I am
in the Ethereal Kingdom's Practice Rooms
which functions as a Proscenium Theatre.
It's the wildest set you could ever concoct,
a stage concept like the 13th Apollo
with galaxies for lighting,
- 13 -
risers like the earth's crust parting,
acoustics like cut diamonds,
a-tremble in the evening air.
We've the meatiest backline you've ever seen:
they'll hear us on Saturn
and every place between.
There's a backdrop like a Stone Roses cover
that might be an original Pollock.
A strobe to give your Mother fits.
Woody Guthrie's busking in the lifts.
The Dressing Rooms trimmed like suites at the Ritz.
The rider is a bitching banquet.
In short, it's the Bollocks.
And then the line-up!
The compere's MC Beelzebub in person:
hear God cheer
when he steps through the curtain.
He and God get on fine
joined by a hatred of Allen Klein.
I'm at Hendrix's side, calling the shots
in the Great Rock and Roll Band in the Sky,
shouting down Keith Moon
because he's acting up while
I'm teaching Ian Curtis a new tune.
Al Jackson's behind the kit, as expected.
Grand Wizard Theodore's on decks,
(appearance courtesy of The Here-and-now).
James Jamerson's on bass,
Johnnie Johnson's on piano,
Bonzo Bonham's working the maracas.
Cindy Birdsong, Dusty Springfield
Mahalia Jackson sing backing.
I swap lead with Bob Marley,
Clyde MacPhatter and Jackie Wilson.
You get the picture,
a gone spectacular,
a lit-upon-a-triptych
laid-down, laid back,
worth-the-fucking-heart-attack
Stoned Soul Picnic
of the R 'n' R vernacular
and I'm the brightest star
sporting the biggest bastard britches.
RRL0014
UK
US
-
- 14 -
Add a nod and a wink
for post-modern distance
if you feel more comfortable,
pretend it's a joke if it's easier to cope:
the whole thing's bliss!
But dig this: whispers!
Countless voices leaning forward
like the back-up vox on 'Only the Lonely'
with messages dropped into the chamber of the ear
of each performer that troubles
a stick, reed, pick, key or microphone,
tremulous stories in the whispering gallery
of the hammer, stirrup, anvil,
embedded in the heart and cranium,
in muscle memory,
and if you look closely the whispering masses
are faces from their past:
famous, infamous, unknown,
sponsors, teachers, mentors, patrons,
contemporaries, managers, agents,
fellow bandsmen,
the uncle who bought their first guitar,
the guru who taught sitar,
that group that lent them an amplifier,
a cloud of people stood around
and this is what they are saying:
here's a riff you can use.
Here's a melody to play on.
They're suggesting ways to play,
passing on tricks of the trade,
and rifling through the back catalogue
to identify riffs they've stolen.
It's the echo of influence.
It's credit where credit is due.
It's cause and effect on a massive scale.
Because into each whisperer's ear
someone whispers and into their ear too,
reeling back through generations,
through Two-step, Jungle, Drum and Bass,
Happy Hardcore, Handbag House,
Big Beat, Bangra, Americana,
Dance Hall, Speed Metal, Trip Hop,
Baggy, Hi NRG, Go Go, Hip Hop,
The Sound of Young Scotland, Riot Grrrl, New Wave,
No Wave, Dub, P-Funk, Philly Soul,
Rock Steady, Rare Groove, Ska,
The Sound of Young America, Girl Group, Doo Wop,
through Merseybeat, Skiffle, Western Swing,
Bluegrass, Bebop, Dixieland, Big Band,
show tunes, Torch Song, Chanson,
- 15 -
the Alan Lomax field recordings,
Down Home Blues, Prison Ballads,
Race Music, the Rounds of a Chain gang,
Gospel, Hymns, Spirituals,
Skipping Rhymes, Nursery Rhymes, Marching Tunes, Lullaby,
through Back Beat, Bo Diddley, Burundi,
the Foxtrot, Tango, Polka, Waltz,
the Jig, the Reel, the Morris Dance,
the discovery of the chromatic scale,
the invention of the pianoforte, the harpsichord, the zither,
from Orchestra to Ensemble to Quartet to Acapella,
from French Horn to Bugle to Goat’s Horn,
right back to the trumpets at Jericho
and young King David’s Hidden Chord.
Some resent it, some fight it,
but it's through the foldback,
it's in the cans,
it won't be denied.
It's like Marvin Gaye's drum lessons.
It's like Niall Rodgers jamming
with the Sesame Street band:
it all adds up. Pop is an acculmination.
Behind Packy Axton (sax)
10 guys back is King Curtis (sax)
who's also stood beside him
with Glenn Miller (trombone) guesting
and sat alone composing.
All songs return to their original writer.
Jimmy Reed and his wife, Mary Lee “Mama” Reed,
who penned his tunes,
advise the British Invasion Boys
on the right ways to rob the Blues.
Behind Bowie (I know he isn't dead
but what's the last worthwhile thing he said,
though what he's said is plenty)
is George Underwood,
the school-chum who lamped
a change of pigment into Bowie's iris,
and Carol Goldsmith,
over whom they were fighting.
Warhol's there for his 15 minutes.
He's mocked up the spin-off concept album
and he ligs beside Sterling Morrison
like Bowie beside Steve Marriott,
who’s mentioned in '8 Miles High'.
But Bowie whispers to Kurt Cobain
and Underwood whispers too
about the Hunky Dory cover.
Ritchie Manic’s in 2 minds
should he stay or should he go
- 16 -
while Sid Vicious shows him
how to pose.
RRL0015
UK
US
This might well be my best pop fantasy,
the whole panoply of popular music,
laid out with taste and grace and me at the centre
but I'm on about something else entirely,
the synapse patch bay that's the story of the blues,
a net of influence and effect that connect
each generation to the next,
the neural network that plugs
each killer act into every other,
like a hyperlink to those who touched them
or inspired them or plain ripped them off
or were touched and inspired by them,
whether that's the fluid left hand
of a Domino-knock-off
boogie-woogie jackhammer piano
or some indie fuck felating
a mike on its stand like Jagger.
It's pop's equivalent of Chinese whispers:
gestures and sounds, skewed and twisted
so it comes out funny, so it becomes your own,
though here you're forced to acknowledge
the land you lifted your leitmotif.
And therefore it passes by osmosis
from one to the other
so the circle goes unbroken.
RRL0016
UK
US
And me?
I'm there to pay respect
to the stars I only met
in the grooves in vinyl
or the path traced by a laser,
to be absorbed into the inner sanctum
of the inner circle,
to pass a pipe between Jeff Buckley
and Tim Buckley when their paths first cross.
- 17 -
And to have that respect paid back?
Why not?
I can hold my own with anyone,
I know I can.
And you're only laughing
because you've never heard of me.
And that's the problem.
Do you know the sound of one hand clapping?
It's me, applauding my keyboard lick
while I'm holed away recording,
chasing this 11 year-old premonition
that I'd achieve pop recognition,
gauding myself to keep performing
while no other bastard's listening.
It isn't vanity or self-absorption to admit
I light my lighter for my own guitar solo
or cajole myself to sing along
to my latest self-release.
No, it's desperation
because I've frankly little option:
this is a shoestring operation
and my only motivation is
if I get it right, it's mine for the taking.
I'm just being positive,
at home with my digital audio hard disc recorder,
my 64 tracks of midi
and all the plug-ins my processor can handle,
but it's still just me
and this brainful of ideas.
It's only my own take on editing,
the gems I accept and the slack I reject,
that I know is worth something.
I am the tree falling in a wood,
and it's no less real
because no one bears witness.
I hear it. I believe it.
The self-fulfilling prophecy
that I’m my own demographic
might dishearten me
but it won't stop me.
It's the sound of one glass chinking
at a shindig for my premier solo outing,
where I schmooze with myself,
do the meet-and-greet, glad-hand myself,
make sure my glass is never empty.
Perhaps to you it's nothing but wanking
but how else do you keep working
when you're in isolation?
So where's my entourage,
my manager, my agent,
- 18 -
my mad, gay chauffeur
with gangland connections?
I need my Epstein, my Loog Oldham,
my Peter Meaden, my Albert Grossman,
my champion to PR me to the people,
my King of Spin, my advocate,
my M.C., my Audrey Williams,
the Muscle that Gets the Job Done.
It's just me: Receptionist;
Public Relations; Lawyer; Stylist;
Sales Team; Plugger; Publicist;
Money Man; Producer; Artist.
My own damn Groupie, if it comes to that,
those nights in motels where I demean myself.
I am the sharks I swim with.
RRL0017
UK
US
I go all out to keep up.
Like any fascist-baiting folkie
I auditioned for the Monkees
but the banjo lessons never paid off.
I tried a Goth tack,
slept in a coffin and painted my room black,
till it gave me nightmares,
a stiff neck and this trick back.
Bad music. Bad hair.
I've borne the hairstyles of a thousand trends.
A haircut is the deep end:
for each sub-culture that's turned my head
I've committed to a hairdo that's in keeping.
I've been a skinhead, flickhead, suedehead.
Had a DA Boston, Julius Caesar, Brian Jones.
The Feathered look. The Layered look.
Been quiffed up, kiss curled,
bobbed and moptopped.
Though I've never pulled that white Rasta shtick:
that shit's patronising.
The only No 1s I've notched
have been courtesy of the clippers,
when the demon barber (my little brother)
got me in his chair and laid my scalp bare
and nicked my earlobe in the process.
Ask me where I was when Presley died!
I was a punk selling poses
to tourists in Trafalgar Square.
- 19 -
I laughed out loud when I heard the news.
But that night I cried
and greased my Mohawk with maccassar
in remembrance.
I always look the part, coiffeur included.
During the Malvinas outrage
I was pounding the pavement
shouting 'Thatcher Out!'
with my Lost Soul Rebel beanie
and a donkey jacket.
I was on the militant frontline
at the nadir of the miner's strike
with my Socialist Utility cut,
carrying billboards asking 'Arthur, why?'
I've a photobook of my haircuts
like a social history of the underground
documenting the contrary tides
that shape the landscape in my noggin.
Like my incremental evolution
from Rockabilly to Punkabilly to Psychobilly
to the summit that was Sillybilly
with a flour-bomb matting my cantilevered flat-top
in the underpass en route to see King Kurt.
Or the sly manoeuvres explored
on my journey of simian regression
from slick mod to hairy rocker.
This was inspired:
I kicked off with that Small Faces wispy look,
grew it out to about Revolver,
upped the patchouli quotient to pass for a hippy,
then grossed out
as an arse-out headbanger.
And the current look I favour,
fraying at the temple, greying,
with a bald patch which once resembled
the neck end of a champagne stopper,
then expanded to a template
of my hip flask of Martell brandy,
and now exhibits dimensions
much like an economy-sized Jack Daniels
Tennessee Sour Mash Whiskey.
It's spreading,
growing barren like a coke habit.
I wonder, this hairstyle
represents which trend?
None, except The End.
RRL0018
- 20 -
UK
US
-
Now the venues are drying up.
Once of a day there were ten spots per town to play.
These days you only work as a jobbing musician if
a) you play Irish Folk with an ersatz jig band
in some ersatz Irish drinking den or
b) you jam covers from the 60's, 70's, 80's or 90's.
I understand the appeal:
you can't see the Beatles in the skin every week,
what with them being disbanded
and Lennon gone the way of all flesh, R.I.P.
but, Christ, is that the best we can do?
Where's the innovation, the spirit of youth,
the truth, the rebellion?
I can tell you where it's in its bedroom,
knocking out House tunes
that would scare you shitless,
at worst formulaic and trite
but at best out-of-fucking-sight rocking standards,
loved-up gems of soul and candour.
But where will these ideas go if they are pursued?
Ibiza? The Moon?
I can't get gigs no more.
Between signing on and busking
I get to explore the cosmic karmic laylines
running through my fingertips
scything through the planets core
and out into space.
I'm astrologically savvy.
I can divine a palm or tarot.
I've suspicions that crop circles
are E.T. interventions by aliens
transformed from Giant Lizards
come to tell us where we erred
that the government's afraid to mention,
a conspiracy cover-up that links Kennedy,
Ruth Ellis, the CIA, Lord Lucan,
The Masons and Marilyn Manson.
And perhaps Puff Daddy.
In short, I've too much time
and my mind wanders
to temper the paranoia triggered
when my friends hit the jackpot
and didn't think to tell me.
- 21 -
RRL0019
UK
US
At times I wonder why I was left behind.
I've got my chops and I've paid my dues,
I feel the heartache of a perfect tune
and know the Roland Space Echo, top to bottom.
So, why not me?
I pack the pews.
I play between the cracks on the old Joanna.
I've between-song patter like Jackie Mason,
moves like Jackie Chan,
all skin and sinew.
My voice is almost a theremin,
almost a sine wave.
Like a Moog or mellotron,
I innovate.
I've creativity swelling
like an inflammation.
To say I studied the art
is an understatement.
I bought the book and even read it,
that chapter on social mechanics
and cultural aesthetics
about the lifestyle of the peripatetic troubadour,
at once out-going and hermetic
with emotions like an hermaphrodite
to deify for art
like water symbolises life,
to be canonised and elevated
so society can congregate
at the light emitting from his shaman soul,
that, and his burgeoning bankroll:
of course, it's only rock and roll
but I was born to the role.
I've starred for B-Boys, Fly Girls,
Hippies, Yippies and Yuppies
and I've eaten them whole.
And I once played a support slot
for Bananarama touring Northern Academia!
Hardly a tour of pop Utopia.
But that's the best I ever got.
RRL0020
UK
US
-
- 22 -
It gets me down.
What am I, some schnuck
who's down on his luck
and out of his mind with dementia
and delusions of grandeur
and can't keep time, too drunk to fuck
with a badge declaring 'Disco Sucks:
Keep Music Live'?
Some fool who's borderline cute
fresh from drama school or pantomime,
guzzling camomile, who couldn't find a groove
to save his life?
Some buffoon inextricably lost in the past,
or too far from the future to past muster
in these days of soundbite culture?
Some clown with no ear for melody
or harmony or counterpart or synergy
or the polyrhythmic bigamy
of beats and bleeps and energy?
Some no-hope novelty
who’s too lost in the art to trouble Gallup,
neither mainstream nor chart-friendly nor marketable
nor so far up his arse to notch a real niche
or stand apart?
Some loser with no charisma
who can't fill a dance floor
or some pseudo babbling a beezer game
but who can't keep a band together?
Some chump flitting from one media to another,
from one genre to some other,
without the brains to specialise
or generate the requisite expertise
to become a truly dangerous Motherfucker?
RRL0021
UK
US
So what am I doing wrong?
There must be something.
Maybe it's personality
or lack of star quality.
Yet I can't believe that
when I'm so damn witty?
It could be lack of talent.
But that doesn't wash
when the beats are over a barrel
and I'm screaming at them
- 23 -
'Who's your Daddy?'
It could be access to resources
but I've sacrificed all
to put the scene foremost,
I've begged and stolen
for studio time or a new set of strings
and never missed a session
for want of a spangly top
or a Vox AC60 head
or a Cry Baby wah wah pedal.
Perhaps it's just not to be,
which is hard to swallow
for an existentialist like me.
RRL0022
UK
US
I've done the right things
so the right things should have happened.
I've made my moves and opened up
and sung to the Gods and the peanut gallery
and like Pickett, I've strutted,
and like Daltry, stuttered,
and I've mimicked, learned
and infinitely mocked
and led by following
and tugged my forelock
to my elders and betters,
and like Madonna, I've schemed,
and like Ono, screamed,
and like Cobain, intravened,
and I've picked at the scab
of my own disappointment
and woke fashionably late
to miss my appointments,
and like Joplin, I've boozed,
like Ferry schmoozed,
like Waters, bluesed,
like Clinton, grooved,
like Green, renewed,
and I've dressed like a Queen
like Shirley Bassey, with all the curves
and a sturdy chassis,
a marriage of accessible and experimental
with a baby's dummy and a bag of weed
so I'm built for comfort and for speed,
and I've cut myself and let in bleed,
- 24 -
and like Cooke, I've dreamed,
and like Cropper, dreamed,
and like Bowie, dreamed,
and like Franklin, dreamed,
like Robinson, Wonder, Gillespie, Sedaka,
like Goffin, King, Greenwich, Morton,
like the Everley's, like Sledge,
and, more than any, Orbison, the Big 'O',
I've dreamed and dreamed
and no matter what,
I've never come close
and it's never come off,
and my dreams have upped and died,
like Bojangle's dog.
RRL0023
UK
US
By day my eyes climb stone steps
and I watch office girls downing cigarettes
in vestibule doorways
bored against a hollow sky
describing wedding gowns
with the movements of their arms,
dark-haired and tragic.
How they can settle for ordinary lives scares me,
but I'm learning to let it pass me by.
Ordinary love won't get you high
but it's a way of living a life.
Which is not to say I'm settling down
so late in my career with a wife and maybe family
but it does increasingly appeal.
It's showing me its allure.
And I've avoided it for so long.
You can love or you can die.
The seagulls know the picture,
gliding, pained and lonely
with every cry knowing the day will fade
but in the end above it all.
- 25 -