Leisureland Tour part five

The rain stopped as I arrived in Manchester. I was an hour late because I’d underestimated the traffic. The load in at Gulliver’s is a nightmare - block a narrow one-way street while you get everything out of the car and through the door into a passageway leading to the toilets and the flight of stairs up to the venue. There’s usually no one to help you.

You can’t leave everything cluttering up a very public area of a busy pub while you drive off through the city centre in search of a parking space. You’ve got to get it all upstairs to safety. Guitars first, then the stuff that’s light enough and small enough to be walked away with. And the amplifier, a Fender Deluxe Reverb which seems to get heavier with each passing year. Once everything’s upstairs it’s time to face the honking of horns and the abuse of taxi drivers who thought they were taking a short cut.

Find a legal parking space, pay a lot of money for the privilage, walk back to the venue through the rain. The soundman’s put the amplifier on a box on a far corner of the stage and carefully miked it up. Waste of fucking time. He could have helped with the load-in instead.

I’m really annoyed by sound engineers who make assumptions. There are no assumptions to be made. There’s a tech spec, a pencil and ballpoint plan of the stage set up, and several paragraphs of clear instructions on every aspect of the sound. The drawing may not be one of those dry, corporate diagrams that supposedly professional outfits send out, but it has humanity, it’s real. Good engineers read it, understand, appreciate it, and act on it. The bad ones don’t bother. The mediocre ones glance at it and make assumptions.

It wasn’t actually that hard to do the load in if I’m honest because my friend Marc Valentine was opening so him and his friend Geoff who helps him out hiked everything up the stairs for me. I was glad of that because mid-tour fatigue was beginning to set in.

After the soundcheck I met up with Marc Riley and some friends for Indian food. He’d brought Will Sargeant from Echo & The Bunnymen along with him. I was kind of in awe but I played it cool and he was great, really nice, interested in stuff and engaged.

The Manchester showed was totally sold out, but sadly I don’t think it was one of my best. It was up to standard, but not stellar. The stage sound was very uninspiring - underpowered monitors - and the lighting was utterly abysmal. The promoter was away and the sound engineer who appeared to be in charge was young and insipid. I played half the show with the house lights on.

The following night in Hull was a totally different matter. The Wrecking Ball wasn’t easy to find - I had to drive the wrong way down a one way street and along a pedestianised street to get there, but it was worth it. The Wrecking Ball sells books, records and probably CDs too. It  has a cafe and they host book readings. Upstairs there’s a fully functioning venue: PA, lights, stage with red velvet curtain behind… And a young and enthusiastic sound engineer. I loved it.

Having finally reached the Spoilt Diva stage of my career I was a bit disappointed that it didn’t sell out - Bristol didn’t either - the two place where I went to art college…

I had a day off the following day so I met with my friend Kathie who years ago used to be my art history tutor at the art college in Hull. We decided to go on a quest to find the bench up near the university where I sat to scribble down the lyrics for Whole Wide World back in April or early May 1974. I realise it’s a slim chance that the bench would still be there but it was worth a look. It was raining and the night was coming down.but we drove around and had a look. It's changed in the intervening fifty years, I didn’t recognise anything. 

My feeling is that Hull should start to own that song - they’ve got Mick Ronson, Trevor Bolder and Woody Woodmansey - David Bowie’s Spiders From Mars (formerly the Rats) ; they’ve got Roland Gift of The Fine Young Cannibals, Henry Priestman of The Yachts and The Christians; they’ve got The Housemartins, The Beautiful South, Throbbing Gristle, The Red Guitars. It’s impressive. They could have me too.

I don’t come from Hull - I wasn’t born there, but I started my development as an artist there, and I wrote Whole Wide World there. The song is not insignificant - I’d like some recognition from the city of Kingston Upon Hull. I figured that if we could find the bench we could at least put a brass plaque on it, but I want more - I want official recognition from the city.

I hope that doesn’t sound hopelessly arrogant, egotistical or unrealistic.

I made a detour on my way to Barnoldswick in Lancashire. I took up an open invitation to visit the East Lancashire Railway. A good few years ago I became aware of a woman called Emma Seddon on Instagram. Her posts were all photos of old trains. I love trains and she was posting a photo of one every day so of course I started to follow her. I wondered what the story was - trains have always been a bit of a boy thing - when it comes to steam locomotives most of the women I know are fairly ambivalent.

Eventually I met Emma and her partner, Andrew, at one of my shows. It seems she used to walk her dog alongside the railway line so she she started to take photos, and that led to jotting down numbers of diesel locomotives. Eventually the East Lancs Railway and Emma got together, and she went from curious dogwalker to volunteer to engine driver.

I have a huge affinity with trains - I was born next to the railway line in Newhaven, East Sussex. My earliest memories are the sound of shunting in the freight yard in the middle of the night. As a youth I spent hours hanging around railway lines. I used to make drawings of signal boxes, signals, those big old telephone and telegraph wires…

I can’t tell you what a thrill it was to walk around the sidings and through the engine sheds with Emma and Andrew. I even got a ride on a steam locomotive! I felt a bit guilty about that - my nine year old grandson should have been there. I recently offered to take him to the Aviation Museum in Norwich - you can climb into the cockpit of big old aeroplanes - they’ve even got a simulator. He declined the offer: ‘Thanks Grandad but I’m more of a train guy…’ He’s a lot more enthusiastic about the possibility of a trip to the East Lancs Railway.

The Music & Arts Centre in Barnoldswick was a lot of fun. It’s an awkwardly shaped basement under a pub, not ideal as a venue, but nonetheless quite wonderful, and it was packed.

I had a few days off after Barnoldswick. It was a relief, and much needed as it turned out because the next section of the tour was quite unrelenting.

Later With Jools Holland

I’ve always thought of myself as the kind of artist who would never appear on Later With Jools Holland. Over the years I’ve turned this into a great comfort to myself: imagine the stress of it -  the compromises, the trying to not look like complete shit, the crash diet because everyone knows that television adds twenty pounds to your weight, the other bands all sniggering at my incompetence and total lack of cool…

And I’d be sure to be the poor sod that plays alone with an acoustic guitar, 

sandwiched between the piano and the studio audience. They’d probably make me play Whole Wide World… I’d have to do a short interview with Jools, and he’d probably want to play the piano with me. No, much too much stress, I’m better off at the low level I’ve been operating at for the past forty something years - underground, which is another way of saying almost cool.

As time has slipped by the possibility has become a thing of dread to me. Occasionally some publicist has said it’d be a good idea - there’s some remote possibility… And this has been enough to turn me into jelly - not that I’m scared or anything - I could take those bastards on…except,  of course, that they’d win. It would be a battle, and I’d prefer to stay home thank you very much.

My new album, Leisureland, has been very well received. It took me by surprise. I signed up with a German label, Tapete Records. I was going to put the record out myself but I talked to a publicist, Sean Newsham, who said he’d love to work with me in whatever way I was comfortable, but that he worked with Tapete, and if they were interested that would perhaps be better than trying to do it myself. I didn’t tell him to fuck off, but I pretty much dismissed the idea out of hand. Then I had a think about it and thankfully I came round to the idea.

The album came out and there was the usual flurry of reviews and mentions And there were interviews - I don’t do many of those, or at least I didn’t. I wasn’t at all used to it. At the end of the first interview I found myself apologising to the interviewer - ‘We’ve been talking for an hour and I haven’t asked anything about you!’ I got more used to it - there’s seemed to be one a day, five days a week for a while. Sean mentioned the possibility of a feature in The Guardian, an interview with Alexis Petrides, and suddenly that was a reality.

And then he started to mention Later With Jools Holland…

That surely wouldn’t happen! It was a possibility, nice to be considered. Let’s move on.

And then it was happening. I was utterly terrified at the prospect. Amy ran into Michael Lindsay Hogg (Ready Steady Go!, Rolling Stones Rock n Roll Circus, Let It Be…) Michael asked after me and Amy told him I was at home suffering the Later terrors. I saw Michael a couple of days after that and he gave me a talking to: ‘I want you to get on a plane to London, I want you to get in there and show them who you are and what you do. And have a great time, enjoy it, you’ll be fine!’ Okay Michael.

It was a project, the stuff of pop stardom. I played in Cambridge, New York, drove home after the show, packed a bag, had a couple of hours sleep and drove to Newark airport. I probably passed Amy on the way as she drove home from the airport after a trip to Nashville, carrying a yet to be diagnosed dose of Covid. It’s fortunate that I left early and missed her. As it was when I came home after the trip I had to hole up in the guest room with the bass amps until she tested negative.

The show was being filmed at the Alexandra Palace Theatre so I booked into a nearby Premier Inn for two nights. No, you don’t get hotels, limo rides, champagne, flowers, and all that - pop stardom is a much harder job than it used to be.

I landed early on Sunday morning and  travelled almost the full length of the Piccadilly Line, Heathrow Airport to Arnos Grove - thirty two stops - clutching my guitar and small rolling suitcase. The train filled up with people heading for art galleries, Sunday employment, assignations and visits to far flung aunties. It emptied and filled up and emptied again, Somewhere around about Holborn the Arsenal supporters got on, large men in triple XL football jerseys. Football fandom evidently doesn’t keep you in shape. They were great fun, i enjoyed their banter. There were Arsenal dads with their Arsenal sons, and they all seemed much nicer than Roger Waters. One Arsenal dad was accompanied by a daughter who must have been about ten. She was togged out in full Arsenal strip and looked radiant. I imagine she’ll play for England one day.

I finally reached the hotel. I spent a lot of time sleeping and lying around. My friend Marc Valentine drove down from North Norfolk with my amplifier, spare guitar and sundry bits of equipment. We got him checked in and set out on an expedition across the North Circular to a BP petrol station which hosted a Marks & Spencers, or M&S as I believe they prefer to be known - must make an effort, must keep up…

We retired to our rooms with healthy sustenance from the M&S. More lazing around, more sleep… I was determined to not succumb to jetlag and I think it actually worked. Suddenly it was the morning of the show - the day had finally arrived. Sean met us in reception in time to go and get coffee before we had to report to the place of execution.

I think Sean’s expectation of coffee was more Starbucks oriented than ours. There was no way I was going to Starbucks or Costa on the day I performed on Later. Marc and I are serious caffeine addicts. We’d done some research and decided on a place somewhere between the hotel and the Alexandra Park Theatre where we could get properly caffeined up ready to promote an air of steely calm that would hopefully cover our combined nervousness. We left Marc’s van parked in an Acacia Avenue kind of neighbourhood and followed the aroma of roasting coffee, which actually turned out to be the smell of burning toast.

The coffee was okay and thankfully not over-roasted, and we arrived at the theatre sporting a thin veneer of quiet but slightly jittery confidence.

I’d braced myself for a day of being shouted at, being told what to do, being told off and told that what I wanted to do was not possible. A day of being abused, belittled and cowed at every turn. Bear in mind that I haven’t done any mainstream TV since the seventies.

I was amazed at how kind, how professional, and how downright nice everyone was. They were quiet, calm and very accommodating. We installed ourselves in the allocated dressing room and shut the door. Keep calm, keep quiet, don’t get rattled by anything. Eat, hydrate, breathe… It was really good to have Marc and Sean there.

They called me for a soundcheck, a run through, a rehearsal for the cameras. It was intimidating in that big space, the Alexandra Palace Theatre with all the seats taken out and four sets of band equipment set up facing each other. 

I was doing one song on my own in the middle of the floor - Badhat Town from the Leisureland album. The sound was instantly great - no one complained about my amplifier or the crappiness of my acoustic guitar pre-amp. The monitor man actually came and asked me how I was getting my sound - he was really into it. I ran throught the song once and then again, and then we were done.

They explained how it was all going to work and someone took me to meet Jools so we could run through the song we were going to play together. I like Jools - he’s intelligent, warm, maybe a bit shy. He’s very human and he loves music. He made me a cup of tea and we had a chat. Then we got to work on the song.

When I first heard they wanted me to do Whole Wide World I felt a bit crestfallen - other artists get to do two songs off their new album but I’m not good enough to stand on that alone… But that’s how it works - other artists don’t have a hit - if you have a hit you’re going to have to play it, so it’s really a badge of honour. I didn’t want to play it on my own - look at Billy No Mates trotting out his hit - so in the days leading up to the recording I asked if Jools would play it with me.

It was fun. He has an upright piano in his dressing room. We ran through the tune and I asked him if it was okay. He looked surprised and asked if it was okay for me. We made some adjustments, I suggested a more celebratory ending going to a G chord and an A chord before landing on the E. He loved the word celebratory. We talked about Igor Stravinsky, Edgard Varèse, driving through Lincolnshire in the moonlight. I told him how I'll sometimes play a single chord on an electric guitar very loud for minutes at a time, how I can hear so much stuff in it, and I always wonder if other people can. He told me he’ll put his ear to the piano as a chord fades and hear all kinds of things going on.

We ran through the song on set and then there was time for a rest before make-up time. A knock at the dressing room door, a lady came in and asked what I was going to wear. I told her she was looking at it. I’d come dressed for the job. She said that was fine, I looked good. There was ironing, pressing, steaming available should I need it.

Make-up was a laugh - a nice older lady who understood the hazards that age brings with it. In the old days they used to slap stuff on until you looked like someone’s auntie or an exhibit from Madame Tussauds. They’re much more subtle with it now. 

Then it was downstairs for the photos.

You could sense the nervousness. Everybody all together for the first time - The National, Say She She, Jorja Smith, Anthony Szmierek… I found myself standing next to this cool looking older guy - not as old as me, no one’s as old as me, but not a youth - we got talking and he turned out to be Roddy Bogawa, director of the Syd Barrett documentary, Have You Got It Yet?

The show went by in a whirl. I don’t think I felt at all nervous - I’d done all that beforehand, which is, I think, how I deal with it. I had a good chat with Jools - most of it was edited out of course. My favourite bit didn’t make the cut: at the end of the interview he leaned over the piano: 

‘You know, I couldn’t hear a word of what I was asking you.’

‘That’s okay’ I said, ‘I was miming.’

We played Whole Wide World and I loved seeing the look of joy on his face. I wish they’d put my guitar up in the mix, the same with Badhat Town, my guitar wasn’t loud enough. I sing a lot louder than anyone expects, I can’t help it, I have a loud and powerful voice, I need something to sing against. I also make spaces for the singing in the way I play. I’ve been doing this a long time, I know what I’m doing. Take the guitar away and the voice is out of context. I should have talked to the sound engineer but I didn’t. It sounded great in the theatre when we were doing it but a little lacking in the broadcast.

Afterwards I had a good chat with one of the production people. I said I’d been scared of being bowled out, exposed for the charlatan, the imcompetent, that I am, but I’d begun to realise that everyone feels like that. She told me there wasn’t an artist in the room who didn’t suffer from imposter syndrome - 'if you get to this level in your career without it there’s something wrong' she said. I’ll hold on to that.

Once it was over the other bands were a lot more open, a lot friendlier.  Anthony Szmierek came and talked to me - he was such a nice guy, the whole band were. They come from Hyde - us and Harold Shipman… He told me how nervous he’d been, he could barely keep it together. They were set up next to the piano so I was facing him with Jools between us. He said he watched me talking and then playing and it gave him confidence. That was such a nice thing to say. I like them, they’ve only been together for two years. I hope I see them again.

It was a strange anti climax. We packed up, said out goodbyes and stumbled out into the darkness in search of Marc’s van. Marc dropped us at the hotel and set off back to Norfolk with the equipment. Sean and I sat in a daze, basking in that weird WE DID IT afterglow, then he set out for the tube station and I went back to bed. Taxi, flight, drive home, gig at the Avalon in Catskill. Still no jetlag!

What can I say? It was scary as fuck, but I wouldn't have missed it for the world. The photographer told me to sit on a flight case and imagine I was waiting for a bus. I'm pretty sure I was the only artist with a senior citizen's bus pass but I didn't say anything. I've been waiting for this bus for a long time.

Hey Hey They're The Monkees!

The Monkees TV show was first shown in England in September 1966. I was twelve at the time so it was ok to like it. I was instantly a fan. I liked the clothes they wore, I liked how Peter Tork held a bass guitar, loved the big tambourine wielded by Davy, the English Monkee who came from Manchester like my family did, and had the added attraction of not being very tall just like me. They were a perfect pop group for a twelve year old - they got involved in all sorts of mad capers and looked good with guitars. And one of them wore a woolly bobble hat just like the kid down the road. That kid’s hat went from being a thing of ridicule to being decidedly cool almost overnight - suddenly I wanted one and got my grandmother to start knitting.

I watched the show every Saturday. I looked forward to it. Debate raged all around, mostly amongst older people - who did they think they were these Monkees? Were they as good as the Beatles? I didn’t care, I just sang along - take the last train to Clarksville and I’ll meet you at the station - I had no idea where Clarksville was but I’d be there if only I could. Hey hey We’re The Monkees, I’m A Believer… 

I guess I should have stayed in bed my pillow wrapped around my head… 

I could relate to that - my life was a living teenage hell - I had a bad time at school and things weren’t much better at home. I wished I could live in the Monkees’ wild western world of pop, and wear clothes with fringes or double rows of buttons.

By the time the series ended in 1968 I was into the Jimi Hendrix Experience and early Pink Floyd. I started listening to John Peel’s radio show, Top Gear, and though I could never rebel completely against the top thirty singles chart, I was beginning to understand that some groups just weren’t cool, and that included the Monkees. The Monkees were a teenybopper group, as in not heavy, or even unlistenable. If the British gutter press was to be believed, they didn’t play on their own records, and word had it that they couldn’t even play their instruments. Definitely not cool.

Fortunately my pursuit of lofty and difficult listening didn’t last long, I learned to differentiate between great pop music and middle-of-the-road schlock and expanded my musical horizons to encompass anything from bubblegum to free jazz. 

I became an art student, first in Bristol and then in Hull where I was enrolled on the fine art (painting and sculpture) diploma or degree course. That was a wild time. There were parties where the only records that were played were by Bo Diddley, the Velvet Underground and the Monkees. We loved the Monkees. We formed a group, Addis & The Flip Tops, named after the Addis Flip Top kitchen rubbish bin that was the drum kit at our first rehearsal. To begin with we were called Johnny Part Time & The Ready-Mades, but that was changed to the Home Mades  because we’d concocted (I won’t say composed) a Monkees pastiche - Hey Hey We’re The Home Mades. That was as close as we ever got to playing a Monkees song, not that it was ever actually played - I don’t think it went further than being a scrawl on the back of a beermat. Which was probably just as well. We played Bo Diddley in the style of the Velvet Underground at art school dances. We would have liked to have been the Monkees complete with harmonies, outfits and madcap capers, but we were dirty, dissolute and unlistenable, and songs like theirs were musically beyond us.

A few years later, sometime in 1979 or 80, I was in the Stiff Records office when a tall, lean and vaguely familiar looking man walked in. He approached the receptionist and said he had an appointment. ‘My name’s Micky Dolenz,’ he said in that slightly high but unassuming voice. So he really existed! I didn’t get up and say hello or anything, that would have been too weird, and fraught with potential embarrassment. I just tried to act cool like it was the most normal thing ever for a childhood hero to suddenly materialise as a slightly older real human being. But I was shocked, shocked and stunned. Very stunned in fact.

A few years further on than that it was 1987, My life was impossibly dark and I had decided that for the good of all concerned I must never play music again because me playing music had brought nothing but misery to myself and anyone who had ever come in contact with it. I was having a nervous breakdown at the time but hadn’t quite realised it yet. 

At some point in the darkness I had a phone conversation with John Tobler who was a journalist at Music Week, the British music industry magazine. He said he’d been thinking about me because he’d just received a review copy of the Monkees comeback album and it had one of my songs on it. It seemed the Monkees had recorded a version of my song Whole Wide World. John gave me a number for the record label in Los Angeles, California, and instructed me to call and speak to Harold Bronsen, the director of Rhino Records. Harold was very pleased to hear from me and confirmed that the Monkees had indeed recorded Whole Wide World - Micky had sung it. Everybody loved the song. Me, I’d almost forgotten the song even existed.

They promised to send me a copy of the album. I was walking on air - making lists in my head: Last Train To Clarksville, I’m A Believer, Whole Wide World… They always had the best songwriters working for them: Goffin & King, Neil Diamond, Boyce & Hart, Me…

A week later an LP sized package arrived in the post. I tore it open with great excitement. My excitement was tempered by the front cover. The album was called Pool It! and there was a photo of three - not four - guys in a swimming pool. Everything seemed to be shades of bright blue and bright yellow - eighties garishness at its most er… eighties.

There was a track listing - yes, and there was my track (I’d Go The) Whole Wide World with my name in brackets next to it - track number two on the first side, so that was good. And there was an inner sleeve with a list of musicians credits. Michael Nesmith wasn’t on it and that was a minor disappointment because I was a fan of the First National Band - and wasn’t he the one of the four who could really play? But the producer was Roger Bechirian and I really liked him - he did The Jesus Of Cool and Nick The Knife with Nick Lowe, and Jumpin’ In The Night by the Flamin’ Groovies, and got that big drum sound - so this was very good sign indeed. I noticed that one of the songs was written by the songwriting team Fairweather Page with whom I had briefly come into collision when Stiff Records decided that as I had no talent or ability for writing tunes they were putting that chore in the hands of industry professionals. It hadn’t gone well. So that wobbled me a bit.

I put the record on and it was ok. It was great in fact, hearing the unmistakeable voice of Micky Dolenz singing my words, my tune, with that great big beat behind it. I was almost lifted out of the swampy waters of depression in which I was slowly drowning. 

The album wasn’t particularly well received - it wasn’t one of their best - but I seem to remember they came over and played at Wembley Stadium. I didn’t go, I cracked up instead and spent some time in a psychiatric hospital.

People told me that it was really good for my career that the Monkees had covered one of my songs but I never capitalised on it. By the time I was out of hospital and in what you might call circulation again, any heat that may have been generated had died down. I wouldn’t have known how to capitalise anyway, but I’ve always been immensely proud that the Monkees have recorded one of my songs. 

We saw that the surviving Monkees, Micky Dolenz and Michael Nesmith, were doing a farewell tour. We’d been alerted to it by a Facebook post from their manager, Andrew Sandoval (who Amy knows), refuting some garbage claims that Michael Nesmith was a rock n roll slave, beset with dementia and being used to promote a tour of which he had no understanding or wish to participate in. We were quietly incensed by the idiocy of these claims and decided to see the tour for ourselves, so we got tickets for a show at the Tarrytown Music Hall.

Amy and I have always liked the Tarrytown Music Hall. We first went there to see Ian Hunter. I thought the place was called Terry Town and was quietly charmed by this, but disappointed when we got there to find it was just plain old Tarrytown. Tarrytown, New York. that was where we first met Ian Hunter, and subsequently saw Kris Kristofferson and later Steve Earle. 

Tarrytown Music Hall was my introduction to the crampiness of ageing American audiences - the barked order from behind when the act comes back on for an encore following a standing ovation - Sit Back Down! The dads who bring disinterested ten year old sons to concerts in order to expose them to good music, and to instruct them in the ways of rock: ‘Now, that guy carrying the guitar, he’s a roadie…’

Steve Earle launched into a speech concerning abortion rights. It went on for some considerable time and the atmosphere was…a little less than comfortable. You could hear the buzz and hum of amplifiers. Dissenting groans echoed around the hall, a commanding and flatly measured voice came from the back: 'JUST PLAY THE MUSIC' 

But much to my admiration he carried on...

An old guy in a mint green polo shirt, beige chinos with turn-ups, and large white trainers waddled down the aisle. In my imagination he looks more and more like an aged Homer Simpson. He waggled  a finger at the stage, yelled ‘You’re dead to me!’ and waddled out into the night.

The audience for the Monkees were a lot less uptight. I don’t think there was anyone in there under the age of fifty and everyone was wearing a mask.

The stage set up looked very promising - everything packed in close and businesslike - no giant video screens and no room for choreographed dancing, unicycles, giant balloons…

The lights went down and an announcement cam over the PA: ‘Ladies and gentlemen, the Monkees present the Mike and Micky Show’. Musician’s in silhouette clambered into position and two figures appeared in a spotlight to the side of the stage. 

It was them! Micky Dolenz in a long western coat, black hat, white shirt, Michael Nesmith looking almost scruffy by comparison in a brown velvet jacket with t shirt and black jeans, grey hair slicked back - a little frail but obviously pleased to be there.

They kicked off with Good Clean Fun and were soon into Last Train To Clarksville. The band were noticeably cool and very groovy. A relief because there’s so often an element of wrong in these things:

Steve Miller with a rhythm section who sounded like they’d never actually heard him before they got job, and possibly only got the job because for some reason nobody else wanted it.

Ricki Lee Jones with a technical metal guitar player.

Ari Up with a man on the bass who looked like he’d come round to put up a shelf and been co-opted into the band - 'Well. I can turn my hand to most things…’

Tommy James with a random collection of Shondells including a drummer who sounded as though he was building a shed, and a faux hawk sporting guitar player who looked as though he would have preferred to be home in his garage working on a custom car, and punctuated each song with a blistering and entirely inappropriate guitar solo.

The Mike & Micky Show didn’t have one of these. 

Two guitar players, one of whom always seem to be playing a twelve string, an understatedly brilliant bassist, a pedal steel player doubling on acoustic guitar, a keyboard player, drummer, and a magnificent woman who played percussion and sang vocal harmonies along with one of the guitarists and the keyboardist.

I was immediately struck by Micky’s casual tambourine playing. It seemed to me that the tambourine is the key to the man - he is effortlessly rhythmic in everything he does - in his singing, even in the way he moves across the stage there’s grace and rhythm. With a maraca in each hand I felt that he made them sing. When the band was introduced the fabulous percussionist and harmony vocalist turned out to be his sister, Coco Dolenz. 

It must be a family thing.

They performed hit after hit - songs I knew so well, others I’d forgotten but which were so familiar - and just as I thought they surely must have run out of hits they busted out another one. I had forgotten all about the Peter Tork song For Pete’s Sake and maybe never knew it by that title - in this generation, in this loving time we will make this world shine… it was the play-out music on the second series of the Monkees TV show. We were born to love one another and that’s something we all need…it wasn’t a hit single, but somehow it’s always there, in the ether.

At some point during the show Mike Nesmith made the point that the songwriters they were using , who were some of the very best America had to offer, were saying things in songs that were important and quite profound. He talked about how they were invited by their producers to participate, to share their ideas, but when Nesmith bought in songs he’d written they told him they didn’t need them - they’d already got that covered. One of these songs was Different Drum - he gave that one to Linda Ronstadt’s band, the Stone Poneys who had a huge hit with it. Suddenly they wanted his songs.

Micky talked about Nesmith encouraging the others to write songs because that’s where the money is. A timpani was bought on stage and Micky recalled being in London, England, and meeting the royal family.

 
Nesmith began to list them - ‘Arthur, Janice, Pat…’

‘No,’ said Micky, ‘the other royal family - the Beatles.’

The Beatles threw a party for the Monkees where Micky enjoyed himself a little too much and behaved badly. He went back to his hotel and wrote Randy Scouse Git / Alternate Title. He sang, played the timpani part, Mike did a wacky dance - perfect.

I could go on and on about the show but I feel I’m beginning to sound like a review in a regional newspaper, so I think I’ll stop. You get the idea anyway, and maybe you should go see them yourself if you can.

The Monkees are still often criticised or sidelined for not always playing the instruments on their records. As I understand it they had very little input on their first album and practically none on the second, but on their third album, Headquarters, from 1967, they played on all the tracks and had substantial songwriting credits. From then onwards they had artistic control. The Headquarters liner note begins with a statement: We aren’t the only musicians on this album, but the occasional extra bass or horn player played under our direction, so that this is all ours.

The Beach Boys never had to do this.

The Monkees crime against pop was that of being a manufactured group, and having a TV show. These things stygmatised them. But aren’t all groups manufactured in some way and to some extent? Double standards have prevailed - the Beatles have never had to seek forgiveness for that technicolour turd of a movie Help! - the Beach Boys have never had to justify the use of session men even though their main guy stayed at home and made the records while the band went on tour.

The Monkees quietly married pop to country with an unassuming psychedelic edge. They're a huge part of the fabric of popular music. And yet they haven’t even been inducted into the Rock n Roll Hall Of Fame - arguably a dubious honour, but one which should be theirs. The Beatles are in it in spite of Help! and so are the Beach Boys even though they didn’t play on their own records to a much greater degree than the Monkees. 

While we were having dinner in a restaurant over the road before the show Amy was busy texting with her friend the manager/tour manager about the possibilities of meeting after the show. I was doubtful that this would happen given the circumstances and especially since the backstage at Tarrytown Music Hall is cramped at the best of times. I was utterly thrilled to bits when a text came through with a message from Micky about Whole Wide World: Tell Eric it’s a great, great song

After the show we met Micky Dolenz in the parking lot by the tour buses and had a masked conversation. He couldn’t have been more charming - he asked where we lived and where I came from, and waxed lyrical about Brighton where, he told us, he had directed his first documentary. He told me again how great Whole Wide World was and I thanked him for recording it and told him it means a lot to me that they did. He asked me what I thought of the show: ‘I absolutely loved it, I said, and then found myself saying ‘I was particularly struck by your tambourine playing.’ He looked crestfallen for a moment but he laughed and said he just taps the thing and tries to keep up. I said there was a whole lot more to it than that. I hope he understood the sincerity of the compliment. He fist bumped me three times.

I met Micky Dolenz. The twelve year old me is very impressed. The sixty-seven year old me is also quietly thrilled. I’m so happy that the two remaining Monkees are making such a good showing but I’m sad that it’s their farewell tour - I want to see them again. And again.

When I Was A Young Boy...

I just realised, as I do at this time every year, that today (well yesterday technically) is the anniversary of my first ever record release. April 1st 1977 - it’s forty-four years today since Whole Wide World came out on the Bunch Of Stiffs compilation. Happy anniversary April Fool…

I sometimes wonder if my debut on such a day blighted my career. It’s a thought that I quickly put out of my mind because it’s not going to do much good - you can’t change the past. I'd prefer focus on the more positive aspects and learn to enjoy them. Whole Wide World or Go The Whole Wide World as it was originally titled was incredibly well received - it took everyone by surprise. It was John Peel’s favourite track on the album, it was singled out in all the reviews and plastered all over the airwaves. I went from being some div cluttering up the Stiff office in the hope of being noticed to being an overnight sensation.

They actually took time to talk to me:

‘We need to put this out as a forty-five - have you got a B side?’

‘Yes’ I said, suddenly inspired with confidence. ‘It’s called Semaphore Signals’. 

Arrangements were made and two days after my birthday on May 20th 1977 we went into Alvic, a four track studio in Wimbledon, and recorded Semaphore Signals. Denise Roudette on the bass, Ian Dury on the drums and me on my Top Twenty guitar through the Hohner Orgaphon amp with its jukebox speakers. Ian was the producer because he was the oldest and he’d been in a few recording studios before with his now defunct group, Kilburn & The High Roads. He also knew his way around Alvic because for the past year he’d been recording demos there for what would become the huge selling New Boots & Panties. 

Ian was very focused, not lost, but riding an edge of desperation.The record companies weren’t interested - a typical reaction came from Dick James - ‘Ian Drury [sic] - talented boy - spastic isn’t he?’

He wound up being my drummer and later producer because Nick Lowe introduced us and Ian thought I was as weird as he was so we quickly became friends and started hanging out together. He took me under his wing - he was probably hedging his bets in case he had to make a sideways move into artist management and production. He was my mentor. He could be a complete pain in the arse - a difficult man born of a difficult past, a polio victim since the age of seven, twisted, bitter and occasionally downright evil. He was also one of the kindest, caring and most loving people I’d ever met, and great fun to be with. Even though it seemed at times that everything was some sort of test designed to make you fall over so he’d have the perverse pleasure of watching you struggle to get up again.

Because that’s what he’d learned at Chailey Heritage.

Chailey Heritage was in East Sussex close to where I grew up and went to school. It was renowned locally as a dumping place for the mentally and physically unfortunate. We had no idea what went on there, who the inmates were, or what had caused them to be incarcerated there. We were totally ignorant of all that but Chailey Heritage was woven into our folklore and vernacular:

Lewes County Grammar School For Boys.
The place was fucking ludicrous. They didn’t play football, they played rugby. I say they because I didn’t – not if I could help it anyway. It was always mid-November. Standing around on a field of torn-up turf and mud, with a big white H at either end. H for Hellbound, He-man, Homo, Hypocritical, unHappy, Hard-Hearted, Hurtful and Humiliating…
The wind whipped across the field. It was getting dark and the lights were on in the classrooms. The silly oval ball came lolloping over and I got out of the way so that some other, keener boy could dive on it, face first in the mud.
‘You’re useless. Why don’t you go and play tiddlywinks with the spastics at Chailey Heritage.’
I started to walk away. I felt like crying. Not because I was useless – but because I just wanted to be somewhere else – anywhere but here. The games master sprinted across the pitch in his tracksuit. (Oh yes, he got to wear a tracksuit while we froze our bollocks off in silly black shorts and blue and black striped Bukta rugby shirts.) He came to a halt in a flurry of shrill whistles:
‘GOULDEN! WHERE DO YOU THINK YOU’RE GOING?’
‘I’m off to play tiddlywinks with the spastics at Chailey Heritage. Sir.’
Ten laps of the rugby pitch while everyone else had a shower, but at least I missed the wanking. The games master used to stand at the entrance to the shower making sure that every naked boy went through. He didn’t mind how long you stayed in there, in amongst the steam and naked pubescent flesh. He must have seen the wanking. He was probably quite pleased about it, because that’s what we were aspiring to – Public School Traditions. And if boys couldn’t warm up toilet seats for older boys, the least they could do was wank each other off. 
extract from A Dysfunctional Success, Eric Goulden 2002 

At some point towards the end of my time at school I met a jazz fan, a man called Stan. Stan was short, burly, walked with the aid of two forearm crutches, and was incredibly jolly. He travelled all over South East England in a blue invalid carriage (which he reckoned he could get forty-five miles an hour out of with luck and a following wind) in search of live jazz and good times. Stan had been in Chailey Heritage. I never knew why - it wasn’t the sort of thing you could ask about. We’d been well brought up - you didn’t stare at a metal and brown leather leg brace or ask searching questions. I still tend not to ask searching questions but I’d be much more likely to stare at a leg brace, principally because you just don’t see them anymore - the metal and brown leather leg brace has gone the way of white dog shit and that clipped British accent peculiar to BBC radio announcers of yore. 

Ian didn’t wait to not be asked, he talked quite openly about deformity, disability and the horrors of Chailey Heritage. If someone fell over the house rule was that you didn’t help them get back up again, they had to do it for themselves, even if it took them all day, which it often did. They had fighting too, just like at our school, but there the kids fought each other sitting side by side though they were no less brutal for that. He told me that some of his Chailey Heritage peers were so badly afflicted that they couldn’t pleasure themselves so you sometimes had to give them a helping hand. I’d never in my life heard anyone talk of these things. Chailey Heritage made Ian tough and maybe a little cruel. Stan the jazz fan was tough in a different way but they were both resiliant. 

Ian died twenty-one years ago - March 27th 2000. It was the anniversary of his death just the other day. I didn’t do anything to mark it other than quietly think about him in my own head. I’d prefer to remember him alive and driving us all slightly fucking mad. Scary and lovely, with the best advice anyone ever gave me: look after your talent and your talent will look after you. I’m trying Ian, I’m trying, though sometimes I think the talent’s run off and found a better billet elsewhere. 

I don’t know whatever happened to Stan but those blue invalid carriages have gone the way of the metal and brown leather leg brace, white dog shit, and the clipped BBC accent. 

I wish I could have got beyond my ingrained tendancy to not ask searching questions in everyday life - I worry that people might think I’m not interested in who they are - it’s not the case, I am but I don’t want to be rude. Professionally it would have helped me immeasurably if I’d learned over the years to ask Mr Nice and Mr Smiley-Goodvibe just what they did before they started Shyster Records: We were fraud specialists working for an organised crime syndicate. I mean, they were bound to have owned up to that, weren’t they? But I at least wish I'd been forward enough to ask the question.

I feel proud and happy to still be making records all these years later but these feelings are tempered by ever present self-doubt - perhaps my detractors were right, I’m an also-ran, a desperate and deluded no-talent who should have long since given up. I don’t know how the fuck I’ve got away with this for all these years but somehow I've kept going. I'm glad I did. 

It's Casual Friday over at Bandcamp today (Friday April 2nd). They don't take any commission for an entire day which means people like me get all the proceeds from the mega-tons of product that are bound to shift on such a day. I'm trying my best here - you won't, to paraphrase an A&R man, find another Whole Wide World in there, but you could augment or enhance your collection and help me make some room in the basement for the next unsung and unsold album, the one I'm working on right now. The postage and packing for everywhere that isn't the United States is obscenely, prohibitively expensive so if you don't live in the USA please accept my apology and ignore this entire paragraph and sales pitch. Unless of course you're made of money, in which case flop out yer wallet. Here's the linkage: https://wrecklesseric.bandcamp.com/merch 

Also The Good Lyre, a compilation of songs by Wes Stace / Jon Wesley Harding and featuring The Minus 5, Graham Parker, Josh Ritter and a host of other luminaries. I do a version of Sick Organism. All proceeds to Sweet Relief, a fund that helps cover musicians medical bills.  https://johnwesleyharding.bandcamp.com/track/wreckless-eric-sick-organism