Under Exmouth Skies (Part 29)

UNDER EXMOUTH SKIES (Part 29)

"Turn off your mind, relax and float downstream..."

"It is not dying, it is not dying..."

The Beatles - Tomorrow Never Knows via Timothy Leary - The Psychedelic Experience.

One Train Later - Andy Summers

ONE TRAIN LATER - ANDY SUMMERS

One Train Later by Andy Summers. Yes, that's right, he of the Police. It's his memoir and as pop memoirs go it's a good one and I'm not even a fan. I can recall in old interviews with the Police it often being mentioned that Stewart Copeland once played with arch hippies Curved Air and that Sting used to be a teacher in Newcastle but I can't recall much ever being mentioned regarding Andy Summers' past which is strange because boy, does he have one.

Amusingly, it all starts with Andy as a young boy having piano lessons and him being asked one day by the husband of the teacher to whip him with a belt because he "deserves it". Andy duly obliges as he can't see anything wrong with it and why should he? He then progresses to having to walk through a wood each day to get to school. This particular wood, however, is populated by hundreds of homosexuals - all pale, lonely, and middle-aged to a man - all twirling their spinnakers from behind stout oaks, as Andy puts it. I'm not making this up. He's then one day given an old, beat up, Spanish guitar by his uncle and from that moment his universe shifts and it's all down hill from there, really.

He jams with whoever he can, becomes an adept guitar player, meets a singer/keyboard player by the name of Zoot Money, gets invited to London by the manager of Alexis Korner's band and with Zoot Money becomes the R&B house band at a club in Soho where he meets and plays with everyone from John Lee Hooker, Eric Burdon, Albert Lee and Ben E King to Ronnie Wood, Georgie Fame, John Mayall, Eric Clapton, Fleetwood Mac and the Pink Faries.

One evening he takes a new drug that people are talking about in almost hallowed terms. It's Andy's first ever acid trip and fair play to him for writing about it so openly and admitting that it affected him profoundly. It's like Bill Hicks doing his monologue about how you never read or hear about good drug stories in the news, only bad ones. Andy's is a very good drug news story indeed and interesting to boot.

Him and Zoot almost immediately split up their R&B band and set their controls instead for the heart of the sun. They dramatically change their style of dress and start writing songs about universal love before painting all their equipment white and employing a psychedelic light show casting swirling shapes and groovy colours upon them whilst playing live. They call themselves Dantalian's Chariot and become a hardcore, psychedelic hippy band. Check 'em out on YouTube, freakoids.

Nothing lasts forever, of course, and after being upstaged one night by nature's own psychedelic light show as in the Aurora Borealis and being involved in a near-death car crash brought about by bad vibes, the band splits.

He joins Soft Machine, then the Animals and whilst in America jams with Jimi Hendrix. Did you know that? Andy Summers of the Police once jammed with Hendrix? I certainly didn't. I always assumed he was just some boring old wanker in a pop band that had hitched its wagon to the Punk train and found fame and fortune by jettisoning any notion of a scruple. How wrong was I? Sort of.

But anyway, after returning to Britain he joins Neil Sedaka's band, then the Kevin Coyne band, then the Kevin Ayres band; and even plays lead guitar at a live rendition of Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells and is touted as a potential new member of the Rolling Stones. Fucking hell. I didn't know any of this. Through a series of twists of fate via uber hippies Gong he then meets and re-meets Stewart Copeland and Gordon Sumner and from then on pop history is in the making.

Now, I was never a fan of the Police but unlike Julie Burchill I never considered them to be the worst band in the world. No, I tolerated them. They were one of the first bands I heard being spoken of in terms of 'selling out' but this was in the Punk Years when such things seemed to matter.

The Police never had any Punk credibility from the start and it was fairly obvious to everyone at the time that they were simply using Punk as a stepping stone to pop stardom, though most people didn't seem to have much objection to this, probably because they were never promising us the world unlike some other bands I could mention.

I remember back in those days I used to bleach my hair white (and dye it blue, and black, and yellow) and girls would approach me saying I looked like Sting and though I didn't take it as a compliment (because Sting had no Punk credibility) I would still try and take advantage of this predicament. If you know what I mean?

At that same time, I remember going to the Stonehenge Free Festival and the Police album was being played over the p.a. and me feeling uneasy about it. As if something a little better, a little more independent could and should be played instead. This feeling of unease regarding them was crystallised when they ended up playing in Chile when under the jackboot of the Pinochet regime and Argentina when under the junta of the Generals and their dirty war campaign against their own citizens. Did the Police ever play Sun City in South Africa at the time of Apartheid? If not, they might just have well as done just to have the full deck.

Andy doesn't shy away from this stuff in the book but at the same time he fails to see anything explicitly wrong in endorsing these regimes by playing under them. Similarly, when they play Mexico the tickets are sold at $40 each which is well beyond the means of their fans there, meaning they end up playing to a rich elite.

They play in India and Andy describes the atrocious poverty there (which he's taken aback by) but then he ventures into Calcutta to take fucking photographs of it! It's a cheap holiday in other people's misery, as John Rotten said. It's also known as 'splendid isolation' whereby a person (or a whole country) stands back in a way that makes them seem special, believing it's not their business to comment or get involved in any direct way with what is usually tumultuous events. And Sting's still at it to this day, playing exclusive parties for the children of Russian oligarchs - for 'the experience', apparently.

Either the Police never really understood what they were doing and were just innocents abroad or (as managed by Miles Copeland) they were cynical and calculating. I suspect the latter. At one point they play a gig at Disney World, in Florida, and they worry it might be detrimental to their credibility. This in itself suggests a disconnect. Play to members and associates of Chilean death squads and not care a fuck; play to Mickey Mouse and the fat spawn of fat Americans and lose sleep over it.

When they headline the Reading Festival in '79 an awards ceremony is held backstage with A&M Records who present them gold records for the sales of their album. Mark Perry of seminal Punk band Alternative TV and Sniffin' Glue fanzine intrudes upon it and yells at them all, accusing them of selling out and betraying Punk. He ends up being forcibly ejected. "We didn't carry out his agenda," writes Andy "But that was never in the cards."

In Mark Perry's defence I'd argue he never had any agenda just a dream by the name of 'Punk' and he wanted it to be wild and free, not corporate and concerned only with record sales. But how little did the Police understand this. How little did they understand Punk at all, in fact, as evidenced by Andy reporting on a 1977 Punk festival the Police took part in alongside the Clash, the Damned, Eddie and the Hot Rods and the Jam. On the journey back from the festival, all the bands are in a coach and he describes how Sting is sat reading a book and how Stewart Copeland is "mortified by this defiant act" because "no-one is supposed to read in the Punk world." Is he serious? Where the fuck did he get that idea from?

It's all water under the bridge now, of course, and I don't really intend my observations to distract from what a good book this actually is. It's quite a hefty tome too, coming in at over 450 pages so these episodes I highlight are essentially minor incidents in the whole sprawling tale.

I'm loathe to criticise the Police too harshly as well because weirdly, I suspect if I ever met Andy Summers (or even Sting come to that) I'd probably get on with him. I'd approach him (and Sting - particularly Sting) with caution and be wary of him, however, simply because of the Jupiter-sized ego he carries with him. I'm not too sure I'd get on with Stewart Copeland though, as he tends to come across as one of those loud, annoying septic tanks (yanks) that you bump into when on holiday in Europe.

And if I can just make it clear, I don't hate the Police (as in the band) at all but by doing this review it enables me to also post one of my favourite songs...

John Serpico

Under Exmouth Skies (Part 28)

UNDER EXMOUTH SKIES (Part 28)

If I had my way there wouldn't only be fireworks in the sky on Guy Fawkes night and New Year's Eve but on every single night of the year, even at the height of summer. In fact, especially at the height of summer...

Poems 1956-1968 - Leonard Cohen

POEMS 1956-1968 - LEONARD COHEN

Some books being torn, tattered and dog-eared are all the better for it. It lends them character.

When travelling to a different country or even to just a different town, I always try to seek out any second-hand bookshops or charity shops as there's no way of knowing what book (or books) might be waiting there. You never know what might be found.

Occasionally I might come upon a book in one of these places that I'd quite like to read but it will be damp-stained and thoroughly worn out so I choose not to buy it simply for the fact that I don't want it in my house. I have my standards. Sometimes a book can be found, however, and though its pages might be loose and its cover torn I would still buy it because the damage lends it an unknowable history. Where has it been? Where has it come from? Who else has read it? How did it end up here?

I worked once for a prestigious wine company called Avery’s of Bristol and there I was taught that wine is a living thing that should be respected, be it the cheapest bottle from the shelves of Lidl to the most expensive from the cellars of Andrew Lloyd Webber. The same philosophy is one that I've always applied to books, that they're 'living' things to be respected and like wine they can age, some for the worse but some for the better.

The copy I've just read of Leonard Cohen's Poems 1956-1968 is in a beleaguered condition but I don't mind. I guess that new, shiny copies can still be purchased on Amazon or some such place and there's nothing wrong with that and nothing wrong in getting a copy from there. But a copy from Amazon may look new, it may smell new, it may be pristine but it won't, however, come with a history.

I've never understood Leonard Cohen being criticised for being 'depressing' or for making music 'to slash your wrists to' as I've always found his songs to actually be beautifully uplifting, often serving as a genuine antidote to melancholia. And if Leonard is meant to be such a depressive then how come he's always been such a ladies man?

He's always interested me has Mr Cohen, not only for his songs but for the whole way he's lived his life. In 1960, for example, he bought a house on the Greek island of Hydra and that's where for the best part of the next seven years he remained; writing his songs, his books and his poetry.

I've been to Hydra and it is indeed a very beautiful place. Very rustic, with no cars allowed there and hundreds of cats everywhere. Could this copy of Leonard Cohen's book of poems have come from there? It's possible and I like to think so.

Although not all of the poems would have been written in Greece, a good amount of them would have been and you can tell. If you have any affection for his songs then these poems will also appeal. Plato said: "At the touch of love - everyone becomes a poet" and if that's the case then Leonard Cohen is a man forever in love.

"You tell me that silence is nearer to peace than poems," he writes in Gift "But if for my gift I brought you silence (for I know silence) you would say 'This is not silence, this is another poem' and you would hand it back to me."

For myself, one poem in particular struck a chord going by the title I See You On a Greek Mattress because I too (coincidentally whilst living in Greece) once knew a guy called Steve who I used to really like but have now long lost touch with. And I too have had dealings with the I Ching, again (coincidentally) whilst living in Greece.

A lot of books that I read, once I've finished them I tend to donate to a charity shop rather than keeping them because I always feel that books are meant to be read and not just left on a shelf to gather dust. This one, however, I think I shall keep.

John Serpico

The Impostor - Jean Cocteau

THE IMPOSTOR - JEAN COCTEAU

I was unaware of Jean Cocteau's sense of humour until reading his novel, The Impostor. Why did I presume he was a serious-minded fellow interested only in serious art and serious subjects albeit revolving around the avant garde? His humour might be black but here it is on display for all to see if anyone cares to look.

It's rather similar to the way Morrissey is viewed as a miserable person when in actual fact he's a very funny guy. The same with Hilary Mantel as in her being viewed strictly as a serious writer when in actual fact she possesses a very keen sense of humour.

The Impostor concerns itself with the collision between the reality of war and the fantasia of the mind. It's set in France during the First World War at the point where the government has fled Paris and all kinds of madness is subsequently flourishing. Those who have chosen to stay behind are either heroic, loyal, foolish or just plain crazy; and in many cases a good mixture of all four of these things.

Cocteau introduces us to an esoteric troupe of misfits gathered together under the leadership of a princess who has ambitions to be a cross between a Florence Nightingale figure and an actress. She's set up base at an old nursing home in Paris and is setting off for the front line in a convoy of vehicles carrying crates of dry biscuits, oranges and Cordial-Medoc. Their mission being to pick up wounded soldiers and bring them back to Paris.

Just before they're due to depart a sixteen year-old boy in a soldier's uniform enters the camp and on being asked his name is mistaken for the nephew of a famous and much revered General. He does nothing to correct the mistake and in fact assures everyone that he is indeed the General's nephew. The boy is, however, nothing more than a wandering fantasist who has spent his whole life in a world of make-believe and delusion. His fantasies and his adoption of another's identity serve to be a useful asset to the princess who asks him to help her secure the necessary passes and documents required to travel unobstructed through France. He duly sources her the papers that she needs simply by mentioning to the authorities the 'fact' that he's the General's nephew.

Cocteau describes the war as a Catch 22/MASH-type situation of blackly funny and illogical circumstances. He wrote it, however, in 1923 so this is years before either of those books (or films) had even been thought of.

At times it's not the most well written book ever but this might perhaps be down to the translation? It's Cocteau's weaving of reality, fantasy and farce that makes it interesting, particularly in his depiction of the young boy living a life of illusion ultimately to the benefit of other people. The boy himself is unable to distinguish between reality and falsehood but nor does he make any attempt to do so.

His fantasy is his reality, right up to the final moment on the battlefield at the end of the book where he is shot and says to himself he doesn't have a chance unless he pretends to be dead - even though he is actually dead already.

Cocteau would go on to develop his ideas and his writing powers most notably in Les Enfants Terribles before moving into film making. Though having written much poetry before, it was with The Impostor where it all really began and if for no other reason this makes it an important book. Perhaps significantly, the same year that The Impostor was first published Cocteau became addicted to opium...

John Serpico

Guilty Pleasures (Part 9)

GUILTY PLEASURES (Part 9)

I always thought Boney M were brilliant and subversive. I know they were manufactured and all but so what? Does anyone still care about such things these days?

I've nothing at all against ABBA but at a time when the IRA were at war with the British State did they ever sing a song about Belfast? No - but Boney M did. At the height of the Cold War did ABBA ever sing "I see mushrooms, atomic mushrooms. I see rockets, missiles in the sky. We kill the world - Don't kill the world."? No - but Boney M did. At a time when Bob Marley was considered to be a 'political' singer, did ABBA ever cover any of his songs? No - but Boney M did. And was I just imagining it or did Boney M make Painter Man by The Creation their own and turn it into an anti-fascist anthem (a painter man being what Adolf Hitler was before he started his career in dictatorship)?

I remember seeing Boney M (or a version of them, at least) some years ago at Gay Pride in Amsterdam. There I was, skipping and dancing away amongst a thousand gay men, all singing along to Brown Girl In The Ring (tra la la la la - she looks like sugar in a plum - plum! plum!) and mid-song Bobby Farrell made a short speech from the stage, urging us all to love foreign gay people as much as we love ourselves because they're not as strong or as confident as us and they need our support. "Will you do that for me?" asked Bobby. He himself was originally from Aruba but was by then a resident of Amsterdam where as you might imagine, he was treated like royalty.

Did Cliff Richard ever make such a speech at one of his concerts? No - but Bobby Farrell did.

And talking of Bobby Farrell, wasn't he one of the greatest dancers ever? Wasn't he so obviously born to dance? Did he not blaze like a comet with the wind at his heels?

And so, Boney M are playing at the Exmouth Pavilion next month (or a version of them, at least). Bobby Farrell won't be there as he sadly passed away a few years ago and of course, any version of Boney M without him is like a house without books, or a body without a soul. So should I go to see them? Let's go to YouTube and just remind ourselves of them for a moment, shall we?

The problem with playing just one song by Boney M is that you immediately want to play another and there's such a choice to be made. Let's run with it...

Oh, I just can't stop...

Fuck it. I'm going to see them. They're even being supported by ABBA tribute act GimmeGimmeGimme, which just about seals it. It's like a Don Corleone offer that you can't refuse. I'll be digging out my sequinned cat suit and cape from the back of the cupboard, taking a load of amyl nitrate and I'll be dancing crazy like a fool. See you there, windowlickers.

To Sir With Love - ER Braithwaite

TO SIR WITH LOVE - ER BRAITHWAITE

I read this on the recommendation of Steve Ignorant, ex-vocalist of Crass who, in George Berger's book The Story Of Crass is quoted as saying the following: 'One day we were all talking about books around the table. Penny Rimbaud was talking about Tolstoy and I chipped in with To Sir With Love, and was met with roars of laughter, it was quite a joke. When there was the yearly clear-out of books, out it went. But the Maigrets stayed. That book To Sir With Love is about one of the first black men to go into the East End of London and teach unruly white kids how to respect themselves and other people as human beings. Which I thought was the basis of anarchism, wasn't it?'

The story is essentially just as Steve describes but its main theme is the subject of prejudice and racism as experienced by a black man in late 1940s Britain and how he translates that experience to the kids he teaches so they might learn to respect not only other people but also themselves. The school he teaches at is in the East End of London so as might be expected, they're all from very poor families. He's somewhat shocked at first by the general conduct and crude language of his pupils but come the end he loves them all dearly as they come to love him.

All in all it's a very nice story but is not without flaws. In his descriptions of some of the women - both fellow teachers and 15 year-old pupils alike - there's a fair few mentions of 'large breasts' which doesn't really sit well coming from a teacher who's on a mission to instigate respect. There's also one incident where he refers to a sanitary towel as a 'disgusting object' and the conduct of the girls in his class as 'sluttish behaviour'. ER Braithwaite wrote the book in 1959, however, and it's set in 1949 so at a stretch this attitude toward women may be forgiven because the past is, as they say, a different country. It's hard to ignore it though.

What's possibly more significant - in my eyes, at least - is what the teacher is aiming for in his bid to educate the kids in the ways of civility. They might all be unruly when he at first encounters them but at least they're street-wise and at least they're nobody's fools - and is there anything wrong in being unruly? The teacher seems to want them to be model citizens; obedient to the law, saying 'yes sir, no sir' and never causing a fuss. He wants them to be like him.

He knows, however, that British society can be conservative as hell with all its ingrained codes of crap morality and 'acceptable' racism and prejudice. He's experienced it himself and he soon comes to see that these working class children of parents he describes as looking and acting like peasants from a Steinbeck book are prejudiced against also. Not for the colour of their skin but for their class and their poverty.

He goes out on a date with a fellow teacher to a well-to-do restaurant in Chelsea and the sight of a black man with a pretty white woman immediately instigates racist behaviour and attitude from the waiter. To him it's nothing out of the ordinary but his date storms out of the restaurant in outrage and then vents her spleen upon him. In as much as she's disgusted by the racism she's just as outraged by his willingness to just sit there and take it:

"What was I supposed to do, hit him? Did you want a scene in that place?" he asks.

"Yes, I wanted a scene. I wanted a big, bloody awful scene." she replies.

"What good would that have done?"

"I don't know and I don't care. I wanted you to hit him, to beat him down, down..."

"It wouldn't help, it never helps."

"Why not? Just who do you think you are, Jesus Christ? Sitting there all good and patient. Or were you afraid? Is that it?"

"You're being hysterical, beating people up never solves anything."

"Doesn't it? Well, you tell me what does. You've been taking it and taking it, don't you think it's time you showed a little spirit?"

This particular exchange is interesting for a couple of reasons. Firstly, it reveals the extent of the teacher's vision as in how he sees the model citizen should behave. His passiveness and his unwillingness to cause a fuss is essentially allowing what's unacceptable to remain unchallenged and his silence is ultimately condoning racism and prejudice. By not causing 'a big, bloody awful scene' he's allowing the situation to continue and subsequently remaining in a position of being a victim.

So is this how he wants the kids in his class to be? To not speak up, to not challenge, to not object, refuse, reject, abuse? However much he may wish to educate his pupils and teach them good manners, are they forever meant to accept their position in society and subsequently accept the more 'fortunate' positions of others?

For anyone who knows anything about Crass, this is similar to the same impasse that they came up against in their bid to do nothing less than change the world. They were very happy to make a big, bloody awful scene but ultimately were only willing to go so far. They showed spirit, yes, but when it came to the point and the question of 'beating people up' as the teacher puts it, they capitulated and their advocacy of pacifism became a burden that led to being a major factor in them falling apart.

It's interesting that Steve Ignorant recalls his mentioning of To Sir With Love led to roars of laughter around the kitchen table from his fellow Crass members because in actual fact the book contained some pertinent messages if not a significant warning to them. Had any of them actually read it, I wonder?

Apparently the film version of the book, released in 1967 (and set in the Sixties) starring Sidney Poitier and Lulu was a huge box office success and the theme song as sung by Lulu was number One in America for five weeks. Viewed nowadays it's quaint and charming, held together by Poitier's performance. Steve also cites the film version as being an influence upon him along with A Taste Of Honey and Kes. Whilst not being on quite the same par as A Taste Of Honey and Kes (and other black and white, kitchen sink Sixties movies) it's still (in a way) part of that same oeuvre and so is an enjoyable watch if only for Poitier's performance and the often hilarious depiction of 'the wildest set of rebels London ever produced' by rather well-spoken young actors and actresses fresh from stage school.

John Serpico