Leisureland Tour part one

I used to have it down, hardly had to think about it, I knew exactly what time to set off to get to places on time, almost by instinct, but it’s been four years since I toured here in the UK and I’m out of practice. Now I have to think about it.

Salford - BBC 6 Music - work backwards from the requested arrival time. Look at the GPS journey time, add an hour - no, two hours - traffic delays, fuck-ups, falling asleep in lay-bys… Work out a departure time, bring it forward an hour because I’m sure to be running late…factor in time for a coffee detour…

So, if I want to be in Salford by 8:30 pm I need to set off at…ten o’clock in the morning. That can’t be right.

I left some time after eleven. Stopped for coffee at Cross Street Union in Holt. It’s one of the best - I wish it was in Cromer. Two espressos and off I went, half convinced that I was late but feeling good about it. I listened to the news on Radio 4 and felt indescribably sad, and heard political commentators droning on until my head hurt. I drove through heavy rain and traffic jams, misunderstood the GPS and drove through the centre of Manchester in the rush hour. Do they still call it rush hour? It seems more permanent than that.

I arrived two hours early.

I’ve always loved doing the Marc Riley Show. Now it’s Marc Riley and Gideon Coe together and it’s called Riley & Coe. They’ve lost an hour a night of cool broadcasting but it’s still the best music show on British radio - that’s as far as I know, so please don’t contradict me, argue the point, or tell me all about your mate on a community radio station in the Outer Hebrides who has the best radio show ever.

They were so nice together - shall I back end this one or would you like too?…would you like to introduce this one Gid?…no Marc, you go ahead, and I’ll look after the back end…
‘Have I caught you in the honeymoon period?’ I asked.
Marc told me they’re like one of those couples or bands who need other people around to be nice to each other in front of.
‘Oh okay, so I’m your Billy Preston then.’
‘Yes that’s it - but we’ll be slagging you off too when you leave.’
I’m pleased for Marc to have a running mate again - I sometimes thought he seemed a bit lonely doing the show alone, but I’m sorry about the loss of an hour.

The engineer got me a great sound. He understood exactly what I’m going for. There’s a pressure to this, it’s totally live, broadcasting to thousands and thousands of listeners, close on a million right there listening to the show as it goes out. There’s no safety net.

I played Southern Rock to start the show and came back later to do three more tunes and an interview - Badhat Town, Drag Time and Standing Water. I put an extended instrumental into the middle of Standing Water, detuned the bottom string down to a D and back up later for the end of the instrumental. It was risky but I actually pulled it off. I usually do, but sometimes trying to get the string back up to an E note in the middle of playing can be a bit hit and miss.

The show in Gravesend was very special because the venue was a decommissioned lightship, the LV21. They told me not to arrive before about four because the tide was going to cause the ship to float rather than sit on the mud as it normally does, and this would apparently make loading the equipment a bit difficult.

When I got out of the car there was a strong smell of oil. At first I thought something was wrong with the car but it turned out to be the smell of Gravesend - it smells of engine oil.

I hadn’t been to Gravesend since 1986. There was a pub called the Red Lion. It had a hall attached which was a great place to play - Chas n Dave started there. Unfortunately it was sold and the new owners fucked it up. Close carpeting, wine racks, an ornamental fountain… They still ran it as a music venue - the new landlady explained: ‘This is a musicians pub, not only do we encourage musicians to play here, but also to come and meet one another and socialise.’ 

I’d played there when the place was in it’s old incarnation and it was great. But the Len Bright Combo played there to a very small audience in 1986, between the wine rack and the ornamental fountain.

Afterwards, when we went to settle up, the landlord told us he wasn’t going to pay us. We asked why not. ‘Because you can’t fucking play - that was a load of old toilet and you know it.’
‘We’re a professional group’ Russ the bass player said. First I’d heard of it but never mind.
‘Professional!! Don’t make me fucking laugh - we have a band comes in here on Tuesday nights that play Lynyrd Skynyrd and they sound just like them. Now that’s professional!’
I said that was okay then, but would he mind signing my PRS form.
‘You can fuck right off with that, go on - fuck off before I throw you out.’
The next day I phoned the PRS. ‘Oh no’ said the man, who in my memory sounds more than a bit like Kenneth Williams. ‘No, no, no, we take a very dim view of our members being spoken to in that manner. Now, I’ll tell you what I’m going to do, I’m going to check that he’s up to date with his licence…aah yes, the Red Lion, yes, I’ve got it here - oh dear…he’s two years behind with his payments.’
When I drove past the place a few months later it was boarded up.

Things were on a much better footing for this show. It sold out almost immediately the tickets went on sale, a great start to the tour. I found myself hoping it wouldn’t be all downhill from Gravesend out. It was a relief to see the place packed with the kind of rabble I love playing for. The last show I did was in Moorestown, New Jersey. That show was sold out too and although the audience were a delight to play for they were a bit reverential. Exceedingly reverential in fact. I like a bit of backchat. As long as they shut up while I’m playing.

My cousin Dave and his wife Michelle were right in front of me. Dave is a London cab driver, the real deal - I’ve often wondered if he was the inspiration for Will Self’s Book Of Dave. A good few people, friends and fans, had come down from London, others had come from the Medway Towns. Afterwards, when everyone had gone home, we watched Later With Jools Holland. It was a relief to finally see it.

I love the LV21, it’s perhaps the most unique venue I’ve ever played in.

I had a few days off before the next show, which was in Folkestone. The rain was beginning to come down as I left Norfolk, and as I drove through the Kent countryside it became torrential. There was no let up.

My friend Andi from the now defunct Lime Bar was there to help set up. There was a stage and he’d lit the place with dramatic uplighters. Holy Trinity Church is a classic town centre church, massive and awe-inspiring even to a none believer. After the soundcheck I sat in the vestry listening to rain pounding on the roof and watched water pouring out of the mouths of gargoyles in black and white on the CCTV. It was almost biblical.

My friend Wendy who is the verger booked the show. Her husband Tim is the church organist. Wendy isn’t religious, it’s a job. She loves it, she’s been there longer than the vicar, who, if I’m honest, sounds like a bit of a twat. He wasn't in attendance.

The rain had affected the attendance and the small audience were gripped by what you might call church behaviour. No barracking, no well oiled rabble. Everything was hushed, the applause muted and concise. I spent half the set wondering if I was doing okay, worrying I might be disappointing everyone. When I finished playing it was evident that I hadn’t. It was atmospheric, ethereal, more like a recital than a rock concert.

Driving to Birmingham was hard. The rain slacked off as I got further north and into the Midlands but it was slow going. I got to within twelve miles of the venue and the GPS said there was still an hour to go. I had to drive through the city centre to get there. I like Birmingham, it’s wacky, and quite unlike any other British city: red brick, and an accent which, though renowned for its ugliness, sounds poetic and quite beautiful to me, almost like Chaucer.

The Rock n Roll Brewhouse is the taproom and clubhouse above an independent microbrewery in the Jewellery Quarter. I was worried about the PA - it was more like a sound system - a wall of speaker cabinets across the back wall of the stage driven by a massive Peavey PA amp, it looked like a disaster, but I worked with it, I made a couple of adjustments, flattened all the eq on the PA amp - those things are built to sound good flat, the eq is just there to correct the odd problem. The room sounded great, the PA sounded fabulous.

The show was sold out in advance. i could get used to this but I don’t want to - I’d prefer to somehow live in a certain amount of trepidation, it keeps you on your toes.

I have to thank the Birmingham promoter, Adrian Goldberg - not only did he sell out the show, he also sold the merch afterwards - I’d asked him to give me a hand, but prima donna that I am I just stood around gladhanding it and signing records while he did all the work.

I also want to thank Gary Weston, Rob Flood, Wendy Parsons, Andi Elliot and Cathy Burton.

Next show is at the Pig in Hastings, or is it St Leonards? Then the Prince Albert in Brighton followed by the London show at the Lexington which is apparently just about sold out. And then I’ll be in the west country and it’s anyone’s guess how that’s going to go.

If this is going to be a real tour diary I should tell you what the set list was but I'm not going to - if you want to know you'll just have to come to one of the shows. Or ask a friend.

Please be kind. Pick up the litter in your neighbourhood, and support the local food bank.

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.

An Easter Pilgrimage To Cromer

I think we were on a high security alert. It seems highly likely at JFK on the day a former US president gets arrested on criminal charges. It’s the first time this has happened in the history of this - I was going to say Great but my British sarcasm might be lost on a few so I’ll amend that to Mediocre - country of ours. Not that it’s my country, I’m just a Green Card holder. I really don’t even have a right to an opinion.

Amy drove me to the airport. The temperature was climbing to an unseasonal seventy something degrees and the temperature in the car was edging closer to the unbearable side of bearable. The air conditioning needs looking at. Air conditioning always packs up when it gets hot, same as it only becomes apparent that the wipers aren’t working when it rains, and brake light bulbs burn out just before a cop gets up behind you and pulls you over. The cop who pulled us over for that said he’d served, or worked, or whatever it is they do, in Catskill but he didn’t seem to recognise the name of our neighbour, the recently retired Catskill police chief. I don’t know why Amy mentioned it - it was hardly likely to work as a get out of jail free card with a Westchester cop. I think she just wanted to see if he was full of shit, which it seems he was.

The roads were crowded, probably due to diversions because of the presidential arrest. I cursed America’s stupidity, the haphazard building of roads, the lack of tenable public transport, the stupidity that launches a Crowdfunding campaign to put an armed guard in a school in Nashville following a terrible shooting. I’m thinking that unless they manage to crowd enough funds to hire a government trained agent and keep him in a permanent state of high alert all they’ll get is some lard arse who’ll be vigilant until too many days have merged into too many same old days, and one day when he’s settling down with a cup o’joe and the racing paper a shooter will pop him on the way in. It’s an ugly thought but I had to say it.

The trek through airport security started as a random jostle and mutated, almost imperceptibly, into an organised trudge. The line meandered around the airport shoulder to shoulder and nose to rucksack. I felt quite intrepid in my quest to reach a promised land that had almost slipped out of view. Fellow travelers became old friends as time stood still in random bits of the airport building that sometimes smelled of stagnant water and fetid drains. 

The line somehow turned into a slow motion Virginia Reel as passengers were paired off into couples and ordered to march two abreast down a corridor of cordons. A large security man and a very keen Alsatian dog weaved between the dancers like oversized and unsupervised toddlers at an all-ages Scottish country dancing party.

And then the removal of the coats, shoes, hats, belts and dignity. A few years ago I was patted down and blatantly touched-up by a security man at Charles De Gaulle airport in Paris. He looked me in the eye as he slipped his hand inside my trousers, felt my bare arse and slowly moved around and fondled my wedding tackle. I didn’t say anything because you don’t want to make a fuss at an airport security checkpoint. Part of me couldn’t believe it was happening. Afterwards I wanted to laugh but I was also deeply disturbed by the realisation that I’d just been sexually assaulted. He had no right to do that but I wasn’t going to say anything because I was poor and there was no way I’d be refunded for the transatlantic flight I’d be sure to miss.

I rented a car from Hertz. In the wake of the pandemic I was surprised to find a touch-screen check in. It was quarter to seven in the morning and the place was empty so I would have thought I could have gone straight to the desk, but this apparently wasn’t an option. An unoccupied employee waited for me to finish the process of prodding my name and reservation number onto the greasy screen. When I was done a ticket was printed out and instructions given to wait for my number to be called and then present the ticket to the next available agent. The unoccupied employee beckoned me forwarded with a disgruntled wave. The first things he asked for were my name and reservation number. He he screwed up the ticket and dropped it in the bin without looking at it.

I was unprepared for Easter, but then how do you prepare for Easter? I hadn’t realised it was going to be Easter when I booked my ticket. I'd put it out of my mind. Easter in the United Kingdom is like four Sundays in a row. By the end of it families hate each other. That’s my experience anyway. And please don’t give me that romantic shit about mods and rockers. I grew up next to Brighton, saw it first hand. It was quite tawdry. Hyped up and orchestrated by the press: “There’s a crisp ten shilling note for each of you yobbos if you’ll just lob a stone or two at those well-dressed boys over there…”

 I had a day to get over the jet lag and then it was Good Friday or Nailing A Man To A Piece Of Wood Day as I prefer to call it. I never did get over my jet lag - I went through most of the elongated holiday weekend in a stupefied fog. It looked warm but it wasn’t - it was bloody freezing. Easter crowds thronged the promenade and narrow streets of Cromer but the mean weather ensured the menfolk kept their shirts on, so it had its upside. I think men over a certain age should keep their shirts on in public. 

I met my friends Lisa and Bernie on Easter Saturday. We spent a delightful afternoon strolling around Cromer. We stopped for tea and cake in the Gangway cafe, That is Bernie and I had a pot of tea and a slice lemon drizzle cake - an effeminate choice for a couple of old men, finished as it was with silvery icing decorated with edible flower petals. Lisa went for the more masculine date and walnut slice washed down with a pint of beer. She has electric blue hair. Stunning. Bernie had a acquired a Watkins Copicat for me, for which I’m already eternally grateful. There’s a lot a man like me can do with a Watkins Copicat.

I’m back home now, gearing up for a special announcement. Nothing momentous like a sex change or something of that nature - all I’ll say for now is it’s ages since I last put out a new album. 

Wilko Johnson

I’m very sad for the passing of Wilko Johnson. I flew to England and got the news when I arrived. I’m glad to be in England at the moment, it seems appropriate - Wilko may have been playing American music but he remains an absolutely English phenomenon.

As soon as I heard Doctor Feelgood I was a fan. I bought their first album as soon as it came out in 1975. Down By The Jetty was not like other albums or LPs of the time. It was in mono and the cover was black and white. It didn’t present the value-for-money facade of the lurid, multi-coloured, Roger Dean gatefold designs and the all-across-the-fireplace stereo spread of other albums, even though it had more tunes on it than seemed possible in the mid-seventies - it contained thirteen tracks, and that was one more than the Rolling Stones first album released only eleven years earlier. I went to the record shop, bought a copy and it changed my life.

There were no wailing guitar solos, no wall-to-wall carpet of deluxe and luscious harmony vocals, and there appeared to be not a single drum fill.  And there were lyrics - direct, poetic and deranged like a gonzo comic strip come to life.

The cars are moving sideways and the traffic lights change to blue
I’m walking twenty yards behind her ‘cause I’m frightened of the damage she’ll do

Dr Feelgood wore suits and ties. They were photographed by a sea wall with a grimy cargo ship parked casually behind them, or outside an old-fashioned barber’s shop where they’d evidently just had their hair cut. They didn’t look like other bands in band photos. They looked like they didn’t give a fuck. And if they suddenly did give a fuck, and if the singer woke up from the daze he appeared to be in, you’d probably be in trouble.

Streets are full of signs, arrows pointing everywhere

Parks are full of people trying to get a breath of air

Listen to the weatherman praying for a drop of rain

Look into the sky, the sky is full of aeroplanes

I imagined I could smell the oil refineries as I stood with Lee Brilleaux, Wilko Johnson, John B Sparks and The Big Figure watching the oil flames burning bright in the full light of day, the sky full of aeroplanes jetting off to some Spanish paradise, their passengers as unaware, as I had been, of Canvey Island, this wonderful and magnificent hell on earth. 

I could hardly believe a person could exist with a name like Wilko Johnson. He was a complete original. He looked like a budget version of Keith Richards, pudding basin haircut, black suit, black shirt buttoned to the neck with no tie - the look was out of time, untenable in the mid-seventies. He was Barbie’s Ken gone loco, a guitar slinging Action Man with eyes like blazing headlights. 

Wilko’s guitar playing is one of the wonders of this world. Left hand almost completely still or moving very slowly, right hand a blur. He played without a pick. I’d never seen or heard anyone play like that. A hacking of chords with wailing notes bending and bursting out of them, neither lead nor rhythm and unlike any other guitarist. Brittle and violent like glass - HH solid state amplifier, no distortion, clean, angular - modern yet deeply unfashionable. And so right.

I saw Wilko with Doctor Feelgood many times, from the early days to the meltdowns and walk-offs at the Hammersmith Odeon and Palais. I saw his subsequent bands, the Solid Senders, the short-lived Wilko Johnson and Lew Lewis amalgamation, and later on I opened for him a good few times. But I never actually met him until the early 2000s. 

The truth is I was terrified of him. He cut such an unreal figure that it was different to see him as  a mere mortal, a human being, one of us. He was the epitome of dark and brooding - he had his demons - he wasn’t always the warm, outgoing and at times hilarious man he was in later life. My perception of him may of course have been coloured by hero worship. 

Not that long after Ian Dury died I was opened for the Blockheads in London at the Jazz Cafe. After my set Wilko burst into the backstage. He came straight up to me. “That was a great set” he said - “You played some things on the guitar that I wish I could do.” I manage to stay cool, accept the compliment, but I was astonished. He made my day, my year, my life. 

Of course, by this time the unthinkable had happened happened - Wilko had lost his hair. He seemed to carry this off with effortless aplomb  - he went from loco black-haired Ken to slack-jawed punch drunk boxer almost overnight. He carried it off because no matter what he did he exuded Wilko-ness. 

A few years ago - about seventeen few years ago in fact - he toured in a package with John Otway and the Hamster who were basically a blues rock cover band with an inexplicably huge UK following. The Hamsters topped the bill, Wilko went on in the middle. At the end of his set he announced: “What follows will be truly bizarre.” And it was. At one point Wilko joined the Hamster onstage for a rendition of Born To Be Wild. He confided in me before the show : “We’ve been studying them - we think they don’t like each other - you’ll never see all three of them at the same time except on stage, and they clearly avoid being in rooms together…” 

Wilko was a poet, a storyteller, highly literate and steeped in the imagery and vernacular of the blues. The most mundane account could turn into an epic tale with wild gesticulations. His big hands would reach up and place the moon in the sky for you - there always seemed to be a stars and a big silver moon in Wilko’s stories - he was a keen astronomer. 

I was booked to open for him at two shows in March 2023. I was looking forward to it immensely. I hadn’t seen him in a long time - I’m an expert at losing touch. I somehow assume people I know will be around forever, but this is clearly not so. I’m going to miss Wilko - the world just lost a true original.

with Wilko at the Jazz Cafe - photo by Karen Hall

Battalions Of Better Bass Players

I have a gig this coming weekend playing with my wife, Amy Rigby. I’m principally the bass player in her band though I also play guitar on a couple of tunes and an electronic instrument called an  Omnichord which has been rechristened by Amy as the Omacron. I also sing harmony or back-up vocals.

I was thinking about the difference between preparing for one of Amy’s shows and one of my own. Preparing for my own shows is a quietly fraught affair - I’m filled with fear and self doubt. Getting ready for a show with Amy there’s a marked absence of all this, apart, that is, from my normal low-level insecurity wherein battalions of better bass players agree amongst themselves that they could do a far superior job, muttering about how I only got the job because I’m married to the artist. Normal stuff as I said. 

I can usually keep these fears at bay because I’ve begun to better understand the chemistry between band members, and that the job of being a band member involves so much more than mere mastery of a musical instrument. This isn’t to say I’m a crap bass player because I’m not - I’m actually pretty good. I have other skills too - I can drive, repair equipment, string guitars so they stay in tune, fit more equipment into a vehicle than anyone would have thought possible… Where bands are concerned I’m a pretty good catch.

I still get twinges of He Only Got The Job Because He’s Married To Her, but never mind, I can push that aside.

Amy and I worked together as a unit for ten years and three albums. We stopped doing it when we realised we could make more money, something like a living wage, if we worked separately. But for ten years we were a two piece rock and roll group - not a duo, we preferred two piece rock and roll group. During that time we developed some kind of telepathic communication. We hardly ever looked at each other while we were playing - we didn’t want to be giving each other gooey and sentimental looks - there was an element of steel to it. We found a way to harmonise - to begin with my voice was twice as loud as Amy’s but she got stronger and I got my voice under control. She started playing the piano, I started playing the bass - not that we were beginners in that - I started out on the bass and subsequently played tthe instrument on a lot of my own records - Amy had been lucky enough to have had piano lessons as a kid. As soon as I found she could play the piano I insisted she did and was always quite envious that she got to sit down for part of the set. Together we’re confident in ourselves and each other, exacting, but tolerant and non-judgemental - we’re facing in the same direction, looking for the same outcome. You might say we have each other’s backs.

Amy’s band is a three piece. She doesn’t play the piano onstage, just guitars. She has three of them: a Telecaster, a 12 string Dan Electro, and a Gibson J45 acoustic. She uses a 1972 Fender Deluxe - originally it was mine but it seems to have been co-opted or annexed which is okay because Amy gets a great sound out of it and I actually get a better guitar sound for me out of a reissue Deluxe. I use a big Traynor tube amplifier and a 1x12 cabinet for the bass. Doug Wygal plays the drums and we’re lucky to have him. He lives down the road in Kingston, and before each run of shows we get together to run through the tunes and indulge in a bit of local gossip.

We’re a tight unit. We know what’s right - what to wear and how to be. We don’t grin. I can’t personally abide bands members that grin. That was an early lesson through the great and sadly late Ian Dury - the audience laughed, the band remained stoic, things would get uneasy... I think he got it from in One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest - you’re laughing at Jack Nicholson’s character when you realise there’s blood seeping under the door because Billy has just slashed his wrists and bled to death, but you can’t stop laughing. I don't know if that makes sense but perhaps you get the idea.

We have a good time together. When we travel to shows we can rely on Doug for a tale or two - the Soft Machine opening for the Jimi Hendrix Experience, early Bob Seger shows, even the Amboy Dukes (who were great even though it later transpired that their guitar player was an asshole called Ted Nugent). How do you reconcile these things? Is it still okay to thrill to their version of Baby Please Don’t Go? 

Last night at our rehearsal we discussed the Standells and Steppenwolf. We told Doug about seeing Nick Mason’s Saucerful Of Secrets and how great they were, and Doug recalled how his first band bought an album by Chocolate Watch Band in order to learn their songs only to find the record inside had been substituted for the Pink Floyd’s first album. They quickly realised this stuff was way more psychedelic than Sitting Here Standing by the Chocolate Watch Band, so they learned Interstellar Overdrive instead and never looked back.

Before the show tomorrow evening Amy will probably be a bit tense and nervous, and we’ll try to give her the space she needs to get ready. I’ll probably break out the lens wipes and Doug and I will clean our glasses before we go on. In my mind I’ll be doing my best impersonation of my alter-ego, the great Bryce McCafferty. Bryce is a classic British bass player. He truly doesn’t give a fuck. He shows no interest in the set list which he shrugs off with a tacit You Tell Me What You Want Me To Play And I’ll Play It. The world of Bryce McCafferty is divided into two kinds of people: drinking buddies, and people who don’t interest him. He gets work because his bass playing is, quite surprisingly, effortlessly astounding. I’m actually nothing like Bryce McCafferty.

Amy Rigby
8pm @ The Spotty Dog
Warren Street
Hudson NY

Before

I used to take it all in my stride but getting ready to go and do shows was always a quietly fraught business for me. Sporadic shows are the worst because during the time at home the equipment gets disassembled for recording purposes, guitar cases end up in corners of the basement, batteries go flat and I lose track of which lead gets used for what. 

It’s important to have a system - people might think I’m being fussy or OCD, but I’ve been going out playing shows for a very long time now, most of the time totally unaided, so I know how things can go wrong. I look after whatever is controllable - it’s advance damage limitation, but during the sporadic periods as I might call them the system quietly unravels

And I unravel too. I definitely don’t feel great these days and there seems to be no explanation for it that my GP can find. We think it’s this thing called Long Covid. It’s either that or something sinister. When I toured last year I set off a bit earlier than I normally would every day and spent an hour or two sleeping in the car in rest stops along the way.

When I played in London last July my left hand cramped up so badly that I didn’t know how I was going to finish the show. The lights were ridiculously hot and I think I was dehydrating. People were talking loudly at the back - the seven piece support who were so honoured to play on a bill with me, together with their massive entourage (they wanted thirty people on the guest list even though the show was a benefit) yack yack yacking all the way through my set.

I forget what keys the songs are in, the instrumental stuff gets sonically magnified in my imagination and falls short of anything I could ever hope to achieve. I feel clumsy and gauche, a cack-handed version of the fabricated me I’ve built up in my mind since the last outing. I had it down back then…

There’s an overwhelming amount of preparation involved in these one-off dates but in the practising and so on I discover new levels of balance and control. I hope it won’t all go out of the window the moment I go onstage - tense, over-amped, digging in too hard and losing the lightness of the quiet bits that give the loud bits at least an illusion of power. If I get anxious the dynamics go to pot.

The idea of an outing always seems attractive. I always imagine there’ll be interesting snacks and I’ll need my trusty pocket knife, but somehow I never do. I make elaborate listening plans - I’m going to listen to the entire works of David Bowie…that kind of thing. It doesn’t happen, I end up driving in silence lost in a dream of all the things I could be doing if I wasn’t doing this. Because somehow it doesn’t matter what I’m doing and how much I want to do it, when I’m doing it I often wish I was doing something else. It’s a tendency I try to guard against. Things go so much better when I live in the moment and just enjoy it. There’s even a risk that I might have fun.

Brake Failure

When the brakes failed at seventy miles an hour in rush hour on the M25 I didn’t panic, I calmly said the word 'no' as if in response to an incorrectly answered question. I used the gears to slow the car down and worked my way over to the inside lane, and then to the hard shoulder. I almost made it to a standstill but I ran out of road where the hard shoulder gave way to an exit. I had no choice but to take the exit, and ended up driving into the delightless Surrey town of Caterham.

I'm sure someone's going to put me right here - tell me how convenient Caterham is - just twenty minutes from all the top West End shows, the galleries, the museums - you're a mere thirty-seven minutes from the O2 Arena and there's a flower basket hanging off every lamp post - we've even got a Waitrose. But there’s a drabness and desperation to the place it’s as though most of the population are fully aware that they wouldn’t live anywhere near this place if it weren’t for its proximity to gainful employment in Central London. 

I pulled up alongside a row of terraced houses on the main road heading in to Caterham. I’d actually done a tour of the town - I found that by pumping the brakes I could bring them back to some semblence of functionality - apart from one heart-stopping moment when my foot hit the floor and the traffic ahead started getting alarmingly close because I’d forgotten to pump, the car seemed to be back to normal. I didn’t mean to do a tour of the town but I figured I needed to find somewhere safe to park for a couple of hours, somewhere accessible to an AA man in a tow truck. 

I saw the sign for Waitrose and naively assumed that a supermarket of that size and noteriety would have a car park (ok, I’ll admit it, I’ve been Americanised). It didn’t, so I followed signs for town centre parking and found myself driving into a multi-storey. A multi-storey car park isn’t much fun when you’re not sure of your braking power. I didn’t want to park in there because it turned out to be attached to a Morrison’s supermarket and it closed when the supermarket closed. I didn’t know how long I was likely to be there, I was facing an uncertain future.

I ended up facing the other way on the road I’d come in on, in a line of small parked cars outside a line of small terraced houses. Next to me, just the width of a Fiat Punto door away, traffic hurtled by. I studied the houses. I wondered who lived in them. I was acutely aware that even though I wasn’t in a resident parking space I was probably taking someone’s assumed space, and when they came home from work they’d have to park up the hill in a side street and unpleasantness might ensue. Parking wars. But parking wars assume a sense of community, or community spirit, and I don’t think there is any in this place. People move in, the renters, the buyers, they exist for a while, then they move out and exist somewhere else. If they were ever noticed they’re soon forgotten.

A very pregnant woman in a business suit walked past my car. She was talking on a phone. She put the key in the door of a house further up and let herself in. The neatly trimmed hedge gave this house an owner-occupied air. The one next door, the one I was parked outside looked rented - the flowerpot by the door containing a long dead plant, the discarded engine treatment oil container - they give some sort of clue. There’s a pride, or even a sense of duty that goes along with home ownership. The curtains of this one, the rented one, are drawn even though it’s only five thirty in the afternoon. Perhaps the occupant is a shift worker, maybe they’ve gone away on holiday, or left in the morning before it got light. Or the place is empty, waiting to be re-rented, to play host to some fresh misery. 

These places would have been built for workmen and their families in the nineteenth century. Front room or parlour for best, dining room, small kitchen. Upstairs two bedrooms and a box room off the back. Outhouse in the back yard. Front garden for flowers, back garden for vegetables. Humble places, all a workman needed. There have been a few upgrades but has anything really changed?

We generate a lot more rubbish these days. The front gardens once so charming are filled with colour-coded wheelie bins - a brown one for garden waste, blue for recycling, black for rubbish. There was even a small green one for food waste. When I was a kid we had a round galvanised dustbin which was emptied once a week even if it wasn’t full. Newspapers were used to light the fire, bottles were refundable, food scraps were thrown into the stove that heated the house and provided hot water. There was never much cardboard becuse we never bought anything. I’m not saying it was better - our lives were austere, the house was cold, I was forever hungry and I felt guilty for eating. But there was less trash, rubbish, garbage or detritus.

I wondered what the woman up the street, the pregnant woman, was doing. I imagined  she’d put her feet up - have to take it easy at that stage in a pregnancy. Perhaps they’d knocked the front room and the dining room through into one airy living space and extended the kitchen. There’s a lot you can do with a long galley kitchen ending in French doors opening onto a small patio, and a small patio would be all that remains of the back garden since the extension. She’s sitting on a white bar stool at the breakfast counter drinking herbal tea, dealing with a few emails. She’s divorced. She’s going it alone. She’s happily married to another solicitor - they’re both solicitors, and when the baby arrives there’ll be changes. By the time the time the child goes to school they’ll have relocated to Lewes.

Will the AA ever arrive?

There’s an app, an AA app, but it doesn’t work on my phone because I’m old so my phone is four years old which means it’s obsolete even though it’s a perfectly good phone and I see no reason to replace it. The AA was keeping me abreast of developments with regard to my breakdown case via regular texts which let me know every twenty minutes or so that due to the high volume of breakdowns in my area - hey, I’m your man on the ground here, I can very well understand how there could be a high volume of breakdowns around here - my recovery is going to be delayed by another ten or fifteen minutes (sad face emoticon).

The ten or fifteen minute delays were adding up, I had time to kill which is why I’d been making a detailed study of the houses and speculating on the occupants. I walked down the road to Waitrose in search of food and drink. As I was paying two young women popped their heads around the corner of the perspex screen meant to protect the cashier from the general public:

‘Do you sell party balloons?’ 

The woman was inches from my face. 

‘Back the fuck off’ said the nice if slightly odd older gentleman. 

I should become a psychopath. Perhaps I already am one.

I went in Nero’s. I think I went in there because it was open and everything else seemed to be closing. I ordered a cup of tea which came in a large mug and tasted vaguely of paprika. A long, skinny, suntanned man in a polo shirt was explaining the (apparently much misunderstood) Russian position in Ukraine to a short, rotund older man who was hanging on his every word and bemoaning the passing of Margaret Thatcher. I didn’t want to get involved, I didn’t feel anger or indignation, just mild irritation. I wished they’d shut the fuck up.

On my way back up the hill, I looked through the windows of a a ground floor flat in a brand new block. Great Opportunity! Hurry! Hurry! Last Few Remaining! The kitchen / living room / dining area looked out onto an eye-level flower bed strewn with weeds and litter, and beyond it the road, filled with angry, hurtling traffic. They’ll struggle to sell this one, but then again there’s always someone who’s desperate.

The AA van pulled up and a cheerful young man jumped out.

I couldn't help it: ‘You’ve got to get me out of this dump’ I said.

He laughed and told me he came from round here. I started to apologise but he said there was no need, he completely understood. I told him what had happened and he gave the car a thorough inspection. He couldn’t find anything wrong with it - he even asked me if I was sure I hadn’t mistakenly put my foot on the clutch instead of the brake. I tried not to be insulted - perhaps it was payback for calling his hometown a dump.

I got him to drive the car. We took it for a spin around deserted residential streets. He performed several violent emergency stops, wrangling and wrestling the steering wheel in an attempt to trick the brakes into another malfunction, but to no avail, the car behaved perfectly. In the end he told me he didn’t think it was going to happen again and advised me to either wait three hours for a tow truck or, if I was comfortable with it, to drive slowly home testing the brakes at regular intervals.

‘So what you’re saying is there’s a choice - I can either die of boredom here in Caterham or I can go out in a blaze of glory somewhere on the M25 - which will of course be your fault almost entirely.’

For a moment he looked quite shocked. 

’That’s a bit harsh’ he said and we both laughed. 

I drove home. The brakes were absolutely fine. I took it to the local garage, they couldn’t find anything wrong either.

I had a strange and spooky idea about this: I'd been down in Shoreham-by-Sea adressing the problem of a storage space which has been full of my late mother’s effects since before the pandemic and has been costing me a fortune. She had a lot of Ercol and G-Plan furniture of which she was very proud. When I was emptying the house I couldn’t quite bring myself to donate it all, so it went into a large and costly storage unit while we look around for buyers. The sale of the furniture would easily offset the cost of the storage unit, of course it would… And then the pandemic came along. The other day I drove down to Shoreham, called a man and van number, and in a mere forty minutes the furniture was being lovingly dusted down ready for sale at the local Emmaus and I was heading back to Norfolk. 

I sort of wondered if the brake failure was my mother expressing her displeasure at the disposal of her furniture. She was never mechanically minded so it’d be like her to go too far and nearly kill me on the M25. It’s a fanciful idea, I know. She’s probably off in some ever-blossoming orchard out in the celestial heavens, dancing eternity away with my dad, and never a cross word. She doesn’t need the furniture, she’d be pleased to see it helping people who need a fresh start.