Who Wrote the Book of Love

Last Saturday I went to Liverpool to see the amazing giants, created by Royal de Luxe. I had been looking forward to going for some time, and it didn't disappoint - nothing like a piece of street theatre to bring people together, and it really was an extraordinary spectacle. I met up with my sister and my cousin. My cousin lives in Liverpool, and was able to take us through some unexpected twists and turns in our route to catch the Giants - the Little Girl, her uncle the Diver and the dog. Our walk took us past an old Banksy piece, discovered on a building being redeveloped somewhere near Chinatown. It took us down to Pier Head, and outside St George's Hall. As a Mancunian, I hadn't really appreciated the memories Liverpool holds for me. We went past the hotel where I had breakfast with Rockette Morton, after Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band played the stadium, promoted by Roger Eagle. I'd seen Sha Na Na there earlier the same year, and ended up living in a house and singing in a band managed by Roger as a result. The band was Drive In Rock and the Rockettes ,a 50s rock'n'roll revival band, and some of us are still around and in contact. We played the university circuit for a few years, and I have a recollection thet the Average White Band supported us in our hey day. We may simply have shared a bill, but it's a niggling memory. The Sea Odyssey event was about the Titanic disaster. There's a possibility that I am related to the Captain of the Carpathia, the first rescue ship on the scene.A young man gave me his seat on the packed train home. Conversation followed, which meandered through Titanic family connections - his great grandfather was stoker in Engine room 2 - through shaman stones in Finland, to music we both liked and a forthcoming Philip Glass concert he had tickets for. Somewhere in the conversation Roger Eagle was mentioned ( Eric's is legend in Liverpool), and I told him about Drive In Rock and AWB. His parent were friends with one of them. All that seemed coincidence enough. On the Sunday morning I lay in the bath, pondering on the meaning of life and the kind of amazing conversations travel and public transport can offer, ones that could never take place travelling solo in a car. And the Monotones 'Book of Love' came on the radio - one of our favourite Rockette numbers - I can still remember the harmonies and choreography!

One good thing to come out of Guantanamo Bay

Last week a film company location manager got in touch with where I work. They gave some information about the film, including the main stars. One was an actress called Sienna Guillory. Now I had followed her career with some interest over the years because back in May 1997 I had been to a local folk club at the Miners Standard in Winster to see her father play. He was Isaac Guillory, a favourite on the South Yorkshire folk scene, exotic, good looking and a hugely talented singer and guitarist. I know it was probably May 30th 1997, because he told us that his friend's son, Jeff Buckley, had just drowned.He sang a song for him. He also mentioned his daughter Sienna, which was a coincidence as some friends of mine who were there also had a daughter called Sienna. He sang a song for them. So I can remember where I was and who I was with when I heard the sad news about Jeff Buckley.
In an odd twist, I know where I was and who I was with when I heard that Tim Buckley had died back in June 1975 - I was watching the Old Grey Whistle Test in a holiday cottage in Port Isaac. Bob Harris played a clip of him singing Fred Neil's 'Dolphins'.
Guantanamo Bay comes into the picture because Isaac Guillory was Cuban, and he was born there. I once told someone who asked me to sign a petition against Guantanamo that there was only one good thing to come out of there- luckily he knew who I was talking about. Two fans sharing a moment.
Isaac Guillory died in 2000, way too young, of complications from undiagnosed cancer apparently.
The film crew decided to film elsewhere.
I never got the chance to talk to Sienna about her father.

Hacienda Daze or My Life as a Museum Exhibit

Once upon a time in the west – or in the North West to be precise – and mostly Manchester, I met someone who had a profound influence on my life without either of us realising it. So it goes.
“So it Goes’ was the title chosen for his first music TV programme for Granada. A fellow fan of Vonnegut. In those days he carried a famous leather bag, made like a western saddlebag, worn over his shoulder, to carry a dozen LPs in each pocket. It was made for him by my second husband. It featured in ID magazine.
To start at the beginning, I first met Tony Wilson when I was about fifteen. He was the school friend of my friend’s oldest brother.
Tony was striking in many ways, physically and intellectually. He was reading English at Cambridge. He was confident and opinionated, but in a fascinating rather than facetious way. He was something foppish about his style. More Cam than Irwell.
Our paths occasionally crossed at family get togethers.
I was offered a choice of places at university, when I was seventeen. My options were Durham or Exeter, and I didn’t know which to choose. I was going to read English. Tony gave me some advice. Quoting Carlos Castaneda, he told me to follow the path with heart. So I did. I had friends in Devon, and Exeter offered American Studies, so I headed southwest. By Christmas I had left. So it goes.
I came back to Manchester and worked at On The Eighth Day. After a Sha Na Na concert in Liverpool, promoted by the legendary Roger Eagle, I found myself living at a famous house on Wilbraham Rd, with Cathy Hopkins and Martin Hannett among others. I was invited to join Drive in Rock, a 50s revival band managed by Roger Eagle (in a nutshell, Twisted Wheel DJ, Magic Village, Eric’s in Liverpool and friend of Captain Beefheart).
Later that summer, the summer of 1973, I met up with Tony again, and we ended up wandering through Longford Park in Chorlton, under the influence of mescalin. I thought the parrots I could hear calling were some sort of jungle flashback to my time in the far east. It was only later I discovered that there was an aviary there.
He told me to go and see the Wailers if I got the chance. Within a few weeks I had started university afresh in Leeds. And the Wailers were on at Leeds Polytechnic, so I went to see them.
After university, I returned to work at On the Eighth Day. It was 1977, when two sevens clashed. Tony came into 8th Day very excited, and told me he had new protégés, the Durutti Column, or the Movement of the 24th of January. ‘That’s my birthday’, I cried. So it goes.
My Dutch boyfriend was asked to roadie for them, and I was asked to regularly do the door for Factory at the Russell Club, and Alan Wise at Rafters. Our paths crossed again. I was there the night he was attacked by feminists. He got up people’s noses. He was clever and eccentric. A contradiction – a posh lad from Salford, and a grammar school boy who went to Cambridge. Granada had claimed him, but he had influence and ambition. He was a big fish in a provincial sea.
I left the boyfriend and spent a year teaching in Morocco. On my return Ian Curtis had died and the Hacienda had been envisaged. I was invited to become part of the team on the basis of my previous door-keeping experiences. At the same time I was offered a job as a local history researcher at Manchester Polytechnic.
I took the day job, and I worked a couple of nights a week on the door or in the cloakroom. I was on the door the night the Hacienda opened, May 21st 1982, but I don’t feature in 24 Hour Party People. I was too busy to watch Bernard Manning, I do remember being introduced to the architect, Ben Kelly. It was an amazing space, created in a former yacht showroom. The industrial factory style design echoed Peter Saville’s designs for the Factory label. If you were culturally literate, it referenced Warhol’s New York Factory, but wasn’t no CBGBs. The space was clean and bold, both utilitarian and expensive looking and above all an unfamiliar aesthetic. In the early days the club included a hairdressing salon in the basement, and was intended as a daytime arts centre. Whilst this double life never really succeeded, at least it wasn’t doubling up as a hen party venue with sticky carpets and flock wallpaper. Venues in Manchester tended to be based in existing mainstream clubs on quiet weekday nights. There was the Free Trade Hall and the Palace for sit down concerts, and the Band on the Wall, and student union venues for beer swilling musical events. Tony famously said that the Hacienda was ‘for the kids’, but it attracted a much wider age group. People recognised that it was a statement, a custom made club with style. There was even talk of putting the bouncers in track suits rather than tuxedoes, to make them less intimidating.
I saw some unlikely bands there. Grand Master Flash, Thomas Dolby, Burning Spear, Robert Palmer. There were videos – Fish Heads sticks in my mind. The Jazz Defektors danced. Mike Pickering (later of M people) booked the turns. I missed out on the night when Madonna performed for the Tube. I still have a handwritten photocopied list of forthcoming bands. Sadly it was a live venue with poor acoustics and a badly designed stage. I am convinced I did the cloakroom with Johnny Marr. I didn’t know him, but I translated his name from the French as ‘I’m bored’. I wasn’t sure if it was a stage name. I have other memories – New Order in baggy shorts, Hewan Clarke playing the Thunderbirds theme to close the club at 2am. Of course I may have imagined some of this.
It was good to reconnect with Tony. I left the Hacienda after a few months and
I married and had a daughter. We lived next door to Bruce Mitchell and Vini Reilly of the Durutti Column. She was born at home to the sound of Vini’s guitar floating through the party wall. The midwife was very impressed. Her son was a big fan. I only knew Tony’s first wife by sight and reputation, but I met his second wife through a toddler group and eventually our children played together. I was deeply shocked when she was attacked on her doorstep by a woman wielding a Stanley knife, who was looking for Tony. He was a very provocative man. Just think of the names of the bars in the Hacienda- Kim Philby and the Gay Traitor, named after homosexual spies of the cold war era, or the name Joy Division. A colleague was held at gunpoint in the basement, in an attempt to persuade her to reveal the code to the safe. As she told me at the time, she hadn’t taken acid regularly in her youth to be intimidated by a gun held to her head. So it goes.
We never met again. I watched his career develop, and then the legend turned to myth. He wasn’t a musician. In spite of Factory’s cool image, his favourite band was Kid Creole and the Coconuts. Fair enough. He was an enigma and an entrepreneur. A pompous poser and a manipulator. A mover and a shaker. His professed cure for the common cold was LSD. So it goes.
Fac 51. Madchester. 24 Hour Party people – the book, the film, the soundtrack. There was a Hacienda exhibition at Urbis. My life as a museum exhibit. It was good to be able to show my children something of what it represented. The V & A are now planning to recreate the interior.
Tony’s the only man I can ever imagine having a ticketed funeral, in the wonderful St Mary’s Church, the Hidden Gem, beloved of Manchester Catholics. I wasn’t invited but I have seen one of the fancy Perspex tickets.
If I had gone to Durham, I might have stayed. And if I had stayed, everything that have happened to me since I followed that path with heart, that didn’t lead where I expected it to take me, would never have happened. So it goes.

Reasons to be Cheerful - again!

Last night I went to Nottingham Playhouse to see a fantastic performance by Graeae Theatre Company. Ten of us went. Their marketing co-ordinator is my friends’ daughter, and we wanted to support her.
The show is called Reasons to be Cheerful, and as I write this, they will be warming up for their last performance of the run.
It’s a play based on Ian Dury and the Blockhead’s music.
There’s a story threaded through, set back in the late 70s. There’s a family coping with terminal illness, a desperate desire to get tickets to see Ian Dury and the Blockheads, and some late teen rites of passage.
Graeae Theatre Company are an inclusive theatre company, and this means some of their performers could be described as disabled.
Suspend your preconceptions about musicals. Suspend your preconceptions about what might be meant by disability.
This show is a message for our times, in spite of being set in the 70s. Politically we are all facing the same problems. And Ian Dury’s music, and the themes of the story resonate just as powerfully in 2012.
There is more to this show than a great back catalogue of songs threaded through a story, imaginatively and enthusiastically performed. The choreography incorporates signing. A character in the corner appears to be on an old payphone, but he’s describing the action on stage for those who can’t see it. There’s a screen that’s used for projections of the script as it’s spoken and some brilliantly chosen images and photographs to enhance the action. The main vocalist has Ian Dury’s jacket slung over the back of his wheelchair, given to him by the Blockheads in recognition of what they are all doing for Ian’s legacy.
Seeing the lyrics on screen makes you realise what an exceptional poet and wordsmith Ian Dury was. Every word, every little phrase expresses multiple meanings and conjures up images and connections. A rap artist, an artist, a performer, a poet, a vocalist. It’s very powerful. When I spoke to one of the signers after the show, he said the most difficult thing is to express the nuances and innuendoes – it’s a challenge to sign such clever and intricate wordplay.
They have played Hackney Empire, with the Blockheads in the front row. ‘Oi, Oi’.
It’s a celebration and a tribute. A rediscovery and an affirmation of everything he stood for.
‘Spasticus Autisticus’ was banned from airplay by the BBC, fearful of offending. It’s an anthem and a battle cry. Maybe they just didn’t want something so powerful broadcast far and wide. As the band on stage perform it, there’s a montage of images on the screen, all terrifyingly familiar from my youth. Collection boxes for cripples. Models of a boy in callipers, holding a collecting box for your loose change. They used to be on every counter and outside the high street shops with a conscience. And then you look at the people on stage, and you recall Ian Dury, white silk scarf, black leather glove, silver topped cane. Part teddy boy, part dandy, part Sweet Gene Vincent. Razorblade earring and slicked back dark curly hair. A beautiful, stylish and charismatic man by any standards.
I met him twice. Once backstage at an Edgar Broughton Band gig in London in 1973, and later at Les Prior’s funeral in Heptonstall. Les was in Alberto y los trios Paranoias, and died too soon of cancer. The Albertos were on Stiff records and they became close.
I saw Ian Dury and the Blockheads in 1977, when I went to see the Stiff tour in Rochdale. We weren’t encouraged to dance in the aisles back then, but last night I got my chance to leap up and dance for the joy of it all to Sex and Drugs and Rock ‘n’ Roll. It’s been a long wait. I felt privileged to see Ian back in ’77 and I feel privileged to have seen the show last night.

Romantic Ireland's dead and gone. Discuss

Romantic Ireland’s dead and gone.
It’s a line from a W B Yeats poem, September 1913, put to music by the Waterboys.
“Love Songs R Us’ said Mike Scott last Friday night at Bridgewater Hall in Manchester. Not just love songs.
The first set started at a level of passion and energy that made me wonder how any group of musicians could begin a concert at such a pitch. By the end of the evening, I was wondering how they stepped down and back into reality. It was an intense experience as a member of the audience. I believe what happened to us all for the two and half hours we shared together helps maintain their stamina and creativity. It certainly inspired and energised me.
A back catalogue is both a blessing and a curse, especially nowadays when Radio 2 airplay could lead us to believe that songs like The Whole of the Moon and Fisherman’s Blues were part of the mainstream in their day. We all expected to hear old favourites, but once the concert began, it was clear that they were covering more than old ground.
Irish Rock and Soul. Flashes of Thin Lizzy, Rory Gallagher and O’Carolan. Traditional jigs and reels. Steve Wickham’s transcendent electric violin, Mike Scott’s distinctively powerful voice, and a powerhouse rhythm section.
Mythical, spiritual, channelling Van Morrison, ‘the healing has begun’. Conjuring up whirling dervishes and faerie folk. I felt like the faerie queen, watching from my vantage point at the back of the circle. And this was before they even started on the set of songs based on W B Yeats poems – the arch poet of Ireland, mystic and occultist, as Mike Scott described him. The Pan Within – swing your hips, loose your head, let it spin. I surrendered and discovered the still point that’s at the heart of all the energy on stage. Goosebumps. The silver apples of the moon, the golden apples of the sun. Shamanism at its most powerful, through movement, words and music.
And that brings me to the historic part of this post.
Over the years, from 1973 until the late 1990s I went to see Van Morrison, religiously – and I use that word deliberately. Sometime in the 1980s I recognised him as a shaman in the unlikely surroundings of the Ardwick Apollo. (Maybe the clue was in Apollo!) No matter that he was grumpy, disengaged from his audience, a hard taskmaster (an old friend was part of his team of roadies for many years), and a perfectionist. He pulled no punches. The first time I saw him, Summer 1973 at the Free Trade Hall, he stormed off stage, having lashed the audience in the balcony with his microphone lead for daring to take photographs during the performance.
I am now inspired to venture into the mystic once more. I sleep with a piece of Connemara marble under my pillow, and a bhrat bhride tied to the bedhead, courtesy of my friend Nora in Ireland. I am not afraid to acknowledge my belief in the power of music.