Dave Swarbrick RIP – the Passing of a Legend

IT has taken me the whole weekend to get my head around the death of the most wonderful and idiosyncratic of all British musicians: David Cyril Eric Swarbrick.

Even now, some three days since his passing, I am still struggling to find words for Swarb – or just Dave to his many friends.

How do I find the right words for a man who died twice and has occupied an iconic status in my life for nigh on 40 years?

And a man regarded by many as the greatest fiddle player these islands have ever produced?

Although short in stature, he has always been larger than life with his high octane virtuoso fiddle playing, wit, banter and infectious personal charm.

A legend in every meaning of the word.

I first met Dave at the bar of Fairport Convention’s annual Cropredy Convention sometime in the late 1980s. A pint of beer in one hand and obligatory cigarette in the other, he giggled and gently spat jokes with us mere mortals, before asking politely: “Whose round is it?”

In recent years we maintained a good friendship through social media, sharing the same political outlook on “a world gone badly wrong”.

When his health started to finally fail in January this year – ironically at the time of David Bowie’s untimely death – I designed him a Get Well card with a picture of Bowie on the front and a “Message from God” simply stating: “you’ll have to wait, Dave”.

The juxtaposition of Bowie’s final Lazarus album, and Swarb’s final band, also called Lazarus was obvious to us both.

I sent the card to the hospital in Aberystwyth, where he was being treated. His wife, Jill, responded that he “loved it”.

His passing six months later is tragically sad, but somehow expected.

For many years Dave suffered steadily worsening health due to emphysema.

There was huge embarrassment for the Daily Telegraph in 1999, when it published a premature obituary for Swarb, after he was admitted to hospital in his home town of Coventry, with a chronic lung infection.

When informed that the musician was still alive the Telegraph’s obituaries editor and his staff were said to be “distraught”.

Luckily the piece made flattering reading, describing Swarb as “a small, dynamic, charismatic figure, cigarette perched precariously on his bottom lip, unruly hair flapping over his face, pint of beer ever at hand, who could electrify an audience with a single frenzied sweep of his bow”

After the initial shock and apologies, Dave could see the funny side, coming out with the priceless one-liner: “It’s not the first time I’ve died in Coventry.”

“After all, I’d enjoyed the text of the obit – it was very complimentary,” he explained. “And it had answered a question I’d often asked myself: whether any paper would bother when I died.”

In fact Swarb went on to turn the newspaper’s error to his advantage, admitting that “I never got half as much attention playing as by dying.”

“So, I photocopied the obits, took them to gigs, signed them “RIP Dave Swarbrick” and sold them for £1.

“After all, where else are you going to get a signed obituary? I had to stop, though, when The Telegraph got in touch and told me I couldn’t do it as they had the copyright,” he later recalled.

Dave Swarbrick, the violinist and singer, was one of the most influential folk musicians of the 20^th century.

He was born at New Malden, Surrey, on 5 April, 1941.

He was first drawn to folk music after taking up the guitar during the skiffle boom of the late 1950s.

When he was 16, the pianist Beryl Marriott invited him to join a ceilidh dance band. She also persuaded him to have another crack at the fiddle, which he had played as a child but which he had long since consigned to the attic.

In the 1960s Swarb was invited to play in some of the sessions of Ewan MacColl’s and Charles Parker’s Radio Ballads — setting stories about Britain’s fishermen, roadbuilders, miners, boxers and travellers to music.

Through these he was introduced to Ian Campbell, and joined the Ian Campbell Folk Group in time to play on their first record, EP Ceilidh At The Crown (1962); he went on to help establish them as stars of the emerging folk club scene.

I still have a faded poster from a gig the group played at Kirkwall in January 1966. It hangs on my living room wall, as one of many mementos.

A year earlier Swarb had been invited to play on Martin Carthy’s first album.

Later in 1966 – just as England were winning the World Cup – Swarb suddenly decided to emigrate to Denmark and marry his Danish girlfriend. But with little money and no return ticket, he was detained at the Hook of Holland by customs, and promptly sent home again.

He ended up staying in London with Martin Carthy, with whom he went on to develop an important partnership.

The intuitive interplay between Carthy’s guitar and Swarb’s fiddle was something entirely new. Their albums, Byker Hill (1967), But Two Came By (1968) and Prince Heathen (1969) broke the mould of traditional song arrangement and opened the door for the fusion of folk and rock.

When he was asked to play on a session for Fairport Convention in 1969, however, Dave had never even heard of the band.

He was initially booked for one number only, but he ended up playing on four tracks on Fairport’s Unhalfbricking album (1969) and was invited to join the band full time.

His first album as a fully fledged member of Fairport Convention was Liege and Lief (1969), which broke new ground in marrying traditional songs with rock.

Two members of the band, Sandy Denny and Ashley Hutchings, walked out after disputes about the direction of their music. This left Swarbrick and the guitarist Richard Thompson to take their place at the core of the band.

Over the next 15 years, Fairport Convention undertook world tours and made more than a dozen albums.

After Richard Thompson’s departure in 1970, Swarb developed into a surprisingly sensitive songwriter, and also took on the role of lead singer. In 1971 he was the prime creative drive behind Fairport Convention’s most ambitious project, Babbacombe Lee, an album based on the story of John Lee, a convicted murderer who was reprieved after three attempts to hang him at Exeter in 1885 had failed.

Swarb remained a constant presence throughout the numerous internal disputes which disrupted Fairport.

But continual playing of the electric violin left him virtually deaf in one ear, and in 1984 he decided to retire.

During his Fairport years he had also released three well- received solo albums, Swarbrick (1976), Swarbrick 2 (1977) and Lift the Lid and Listen (1978).

He reverted to the acoustic violin as he returned to folk clubs with fellow Fairport member Simon Nicol.

He also made occasional returns to the Fairport fold, playing at their annual Cropredy Reunion Festival in Oxfordshire.

“I’m always amazed to listen to my Fairport stuff,” he said in 2014. “It’s so fast. What was I on?”

In 1988 Swarb linked up again with Martin Carthy. They made some successful tours, and produced a couple of fine albums, Life and Limb (1990) and Skin and Bone (1992).

He also spent some years in Australia, working with the guitarist and singer Alistair Hulett, with whom he recorded the impressive The Cold Grey Light (1998), before returning home.

Then came his hospitalisation with emphysema and the Telegraph’s infamous obituary.

Almost immediately his long-time friend and drinking buddy Dave Pegg and wife Christine launched the SwarbAid appeal.

This included a fund-raising concert at Birmingham’s Symphony Hall in July 1999, and a limited-edition EP recorded live, to raise cash for Dave whilst his poor health prevented him from working.

It is a personal joy that I still have a copy of that EP.

After a relapse a few years later, they launched SwarbAid II with a similar concert in 2004 – and yes I have that T Shirt too!

Dave received his double lung transplant on 2nd October that year and a new lease of life.

In 2006, he started touring again with fellow ex-Fairporter, Maartin Allcock, and Kevin Dempsey – calling themselves, with a wink to the Telegraph’s premature obituary, Swarb’s Lazarus, producing the album Live and Kicking (2006) and appearing at the Cropredy Festival.

He also reignited his partnership with Martin Carthy, with whom in later years he regularly hit the road for an autumn tour.

In 2007 he joined his old cohorts from Fairport Convention on their 40th anniversary as a band at Cropredy to play their legendary album Liege and Lief, in its entirity on stage.

It is one of the highlights of my life to have been there and witness Swarb play as amazingly as ever.

In 2010, backed by a stellar array of guest musicians, Swarb released Raison D’être, his first solo album for nearly 20 years.

It was reviewed in more than 20 publications, the English Folk Dance and Song Society Magazine describing it as “the work of a fine fiddler who simply refuses to lie down and rest on his not inconsiderable laurels”.

In 2003, Swarb received the Gold Badge from the English Folk Dance and Song Society and the Gold Badge of Merit from the British Academy of Composers and Songwriters.

In 2004 he received a lifetime achievement award in the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards, and in 2006 Fairport’s Liege and Lief album was voted “Most Influential Folk Album of All Time” by Radio 2 listeners.

At the 2007 BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards, he and Martin Carthy won the “Best Duo” Award. In 2012 he received another lifetime achievement award at the 2012 Fatea awards.

In the summer of 2014 – following a flurry of emails – I was lucky enough to visit Dave’s home in Coventry, where his wife Jill sold me one of his beautiful old fiddles from his Fairport days.

The fiddle also hangs in my living room – next to that 1966 poster.

I have determined that the fiddle is now retired and will never again be played.

Now as I type the last few words of this eulogy, I look down on the desk at a yellowed 1980 copy of The Penguin Book of English Folk Songs – distinguished by Dave’s signature on the inside cover… it was his own personal copy.

His album English Fiddler plays gently in the background.

In so many different ways, David Cyril Eric Swarbrick will always be part of my life.

Rest in Peace, great and wonderful man.

* Dave Swarbrick is survived by his wife, the painter Jill Swarbrick-Banks, whom he married in 1999, and by a son and two daughters.

Born 5 April 1941, died 3 June 2016, aged 75.

 

Death, Where is Thy Sting?

My death waits like an old roue’

So confident, I’ll go his way

Whistle to him and the passing time

My death waits like a Bible truth

At the funeral of my youth

Are we proud for that and the passing time?

My death waits like a witch at night

As surely as our love is right

Let’s not think about the passing time

But whatever lies behind the door

There is nothing much to do

Angel or devil, I don’t care

For in front of that door there is you

 

My death waits there among the leaves

In magician’s mysterious sleeves

Rabbits and dogs and the passing time

My death waits there among the flowers

Where the blackest shadows, blackest shadows cowers

Let’s pick lilacs for the passing time

My death waits there in a double bed

Sails of oblivion and my head

So pull up your sheets against the passing time

But whatever lies behind the door

There is nothing much to do

Angel or devil, I don’t care

For in front of that door there is You

(Jacques Brel)

 

THE death of my father hit me hard.

I held his hand and gazed into his eyes as he drew his last breath.

It is a moment in time that I will never forget.

It is now more than seven years since that moment.

My dad was part of me and I part of him in every way. He is never far from my thoughts and often inhabits my dreams.

He was not the perfect man, but he was my father and the best there ever was. He taught me so much about optimism, overcoming setbacks and being myself… and much more about living.

He left his mark on this Earth and, yes, he lived.

And then there was Andrea.

At 21, she was the sweetest and most funny girl I had ever met and we quickly became inseparable soul mates, while we both battled cancer together during the winter of 1987.

Racked in pain, with Ewing’s Sarcoma, a bone cancer – diagnosed while she was on a walking holiday in France – she knew her chances of survival were slim.

“But I’m going to fight it,” she urged, willing me to do the same. “I haven’t yet got my degree, I haven’t learned to drive… and I’m still a virgin.

“I want to live a bit before I die.”

She did.

But that did not dull the agony when three years later, in May 1990, our mutual friend David and I stood together and shared heart wrenching tears at her funeral.

For me, my memories of Andrea always remain, and has often been my driving force to live.

Her smile and her laughter as she beat me in a physiotherapy game of football in the hospital gym, where she was only allowed to use her right leg and I only my arm. At the end of the game we collapsed side by side on the floor guffawing at how silly all this was.

Then there was the Wednesday night visit to the local rugby club for a game of bingo and a half pint of beer. We walked slowly back to the hospital hostel at 10pm. She rested her head on my shoulder as we walked and suddenly whispered: “I love you Nic… we are going to win, aren’t we?”

I kissed her forehead and answered: “Of course we will.”

A year before her death I visited Andrea again in a hospital in Birmingham, where she had undergone a hip replacement operation in a last attempt by surgeons to remove the seat of her cancer.

I sat and clenched her right hand and looked into her sparkling eyes.

I giggled: “Hey, you’ve got freckles and hair!”

“Yes,” she answered, “I have been off chemotherapy for three months now to build up my strength for the op’.”

I had only known Andrea as a tall, underweight, pale-faced girl stooped under a horrendous NHS wig, which at times made her look like an extra in the Addams Family.

But now, holding her hand, this was how I was going to remember her.

I have faced the death of family and close friends quite a few times over the years.

The grief is always immeasurable, and in recent years some of those deaths were untimely and shocking.

And as I look at my ageing mum – still an inspiration at 85 years old – and in the mirror at myself, I realise that time never stands still.

I could have died a few times – twice from cancer, once in a high speed car crash and more recently from a vicious assault which left me minutes from the end.

But I am still here and age defines me.

As it does for all of us.

So we live our lives as constructively as we can, seeking happiness and pleasure, loving and caring, and at times grieving.

But always knowing that our own time is limited.

I recall two sets of lines from that wonderful movie Dead Poets Society.

The late Robin Williams, playing the role of school teacher John Keating, teaches his charges of the essence of life: “We don’t read and write poetry because it’s cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race.

“And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for… that you are here – that life exists, and identity; that the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse.

“That the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse. What will your verse be?”

And later, turning to fading sepia school photos of students taken decades earlier, he reminds them of the passing time and the brevity of life: “They’re not that different from you, are they? Same haircuts. Full of hormones, just like you. Invincible, just like you feel.

“The world is their oyster. They believe they’re destined for great things, just like many of you, their eyes are full of hope, just like you. Did they wait until it was too late to make from their lives even one iota of what they were capable?

“Because, you see gentlemen, these boys are now fertilizing daffodils. But if you listen real close, you can hear them whisper their legacy to you. Go on, lean in. Listen, you hear it? Carpe – hear it? Carpe, carpe diem, seize the day boys, make your lives extraordinary.”

We should all make our own lives extraordinary.

But death is shocking.

And somehow when someone famous dies we immerse ourselves in a communal grief which is sometimes shared across the globe.

Yesterday, another celebrity and amazing musician,  Prince suddenly died. His body was found in a lift at his home in the Paisley Park Estate in the USA.

He was only 57 years-old, and the world began to mourn.

Some 20 years ago, I remember feeling a deep sadness when two of my musical heroes died.

Mick Ronson was a guitar virtuoso who succumbed to liver cancer in 1993, aged just 47. And former Small Faces bass player and singer songwriter Ronnie Lane died from MS in 1997, aged 51.

But these were the days before the internet, so my grief for them was private and personal.

But that was to change.

The death of pioneering rock musician Lou Reed in October 2013, hit me harder than I might have expected.

But this time I was able to share my grief through Facebook, Twitter and email.

And that grief was world-wide and genuine.

At 16 years-old I came to Lou Reed via David Bowie, or to be more exact, his 1971 album, Hunky Dory and the track Queen Bitch with its overt references to his former band The Velvet Underground.

So when his album Transformer was released in November that year I rushed out to buy it, without ever hearing a track.

Two weeks later I was the proud owner of a compilation LP called The Best of the Velvet Underground.

I became a lifetime fan of Lou Reed and rate his 1973 album Berlin and his 1989 album New York as two of the greatest rock albums ever produced by anyone. His later album Magic and Loss is, in my opinion, one of the most moving single pieces of music and poetry ever produced.

I mourned his death with real tears.

Tears shared by millions across the globe.

Just five months later, in March 2014, the death of my political hero Tony Benn, hit me even harder.

At the time he was the last truly great parliamentary socialist, and a man of courtesy, decency, principle, integrity and vision.

And he was a true hero of mine.

During my years as a newspaper journalist I was fortunate enough to interview Tony three times, and each interview was a joy.

And I have another reason for loving Tony Benn.

In 1994, 43 MPs signed an Early Day Motion in the House of Commons praising my year-long investigation into the link between the test firing of depleted uranium tank shells and local clusters of cancer.

The same tank shells provided a link to Gulf War Syndrome in the first Gulf War.

Some of my political heroes signed that EDM including Alan Simpson, Ken Livingstone and Dennis Skinner. But the sixth signature on that motion was Tony Benn. His name next to mine was like a personal shield of honour.

A treasure I will keep till my own grave.

Tony was true fighter for ordinary working people from the moment he was elected an MP in 1950.

Later in life he became a folk hero as well as a campaigner for a number of causes, particularly opposition to UK military involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan and for the liberation of Palestine.

My grief for his passing was deep and I still often dig out YouTube videos of some of his amazing parliamentary speeches.

But I guess nothing prepared me for the morning of Monday 11 January this year.

I woke as usual at 6am and like millions of others across the world I was presented with news I never expected to happen: my musical hero David Bowie was dead.

I was stunned, heartbroken and gutted. I honestly thought David Bowie was immortal… he had been part of my life for 44 years.

He wasn’t just the Man Who Sold the World, he was an Earthling who pulled every one of us into the Quicksand of his thoughts and music.

Actor Simon Pegg tried to put his death into perspective, saying: “If you’re sad today, just remember the world is over 4 billion years old and you somehow managed to exist at the same time as David Bowie.”

Three months have now passed and a passing thought is just how many of Bowie’s sidemen and close musicians have also died: the aforementioned Mick Ronson, Trevor Bolder, Lou Reed, Luther Vandross, Ralph MacDonald, Sean Mayes and Steve Strange… what a heavenly band.

It now seems rare for a week to pass without a significant celebrity death being reported – from David Bowie in the second week of January, to actor Alan Rickman a week later, to comedian Victoria Wood and now Prince.

So is this wave of celebrity deaths the new normal?

The BBC’s obituary editor Nick Serpell today said that the number of significant deaths this year has been “phenomenal”.

Nick prepares obituaries for BBC television, radio and online, that run once a notable person’s death is confirmed.

The number of his obituaries used across BBC outlets in recent years has leaped considerably.

It’s a jump from only five between January and late March 2012 to a staggering 24 in the same period this year – an almost five-fold increase.

And that’s before counting some of the notable deaths in April, including American singer Merle Haggard, the former drug smuggler Howard Marks and this week’s two notable departures.

Here in the UK, the Daily Telegraph maintains a gallery of famous people who have died, and updates it throughout the year.

Up to this time in 2014, the number of those in the gallery was 38. By this time last year, the number of people in the gallery was 30. This year, the number is already 75.

At the beginning of every year, the website deathlist.net lists 50 celebrities it believes may pass away that year. In six of the last 10 years, two or fewer of its predictions had come true by this time – this year, five names have died so far.

So why has death’s sting become so much sharper?

There are a few reasons, explains Nick Serpell.

“People who started becoming famous in the 1960s are now entering their 70s and are starting to die,” he says.

“There are also more famous people than there used to be,” he says. “In my father or grandfather’s generation, the only famous people really were from cinema – there was no television.

“Then, if anybody wasn’t on TV, they weren’t famous.”

Many of those now dying belonged to the so-called baby-boom generation, born between 1946 and 1964, that saw a huge growth in population. In the US for example, the census bureau said that 76 million people in 2014 belonged to the baby boomer generation – some 23% of the population.

Here in the UK, people aged 65 or older make up almost 18% of the population – a 47% increase on forty years ago.

With more babies born into the baby-boom generation, it meant more went on to eventually become famous.

Now, those famous former babies, aged between 70 and 82, are dying.

The age-bracket 65 to 69 is the one, in England and Wales for example, where death rates really start to increase – some 14.2 per 1,000 men in that age bracket died in 2014, compared with 9.4 per 1,000 in the 60 to 64 age bracket.

Among the major deaths this year, many – including Prince (57), Alan Rickman (69), David Bowie (69) and Victoria Wood (62) – were baby-boomers.

Another factor that may play into the impression that more celebrities are dying is that we have heard of more celebrities than before.

“Over the past 10 years, social media has played a big part,” says Nick Serpell.

These days, it is far easier to hear news of whether anyone has died than at any time in the past.

“Over the next 10 years, these people will get into their 80s and it is going to continue at this level,” adds Nick Serpell.

“And that doesn’t count the surprise deaths, when people die that shouldn’t.”

My death waits like a Bible truth…

So pull up your sheets against the passing time

For whatever lies behind the door

There is nothing much to do

Angel or devil, I don’t care

For in front of that door there is You

 

Goodnight Legends, Goodnight

YOU know that feeling of a sudden realisation of something that had previously passed you by.

That flash of light, the road to Damascus experience, that “OMG how did I miss that?” feeling.

Well, one of those happened to me early this morning.

I was lying in bed, sipping a cup of tea, and ruminating on the death of David Bowie and the other famous artists who have passed away in the last few weeks. Lemmy, Alan Rickman, Dale (Buffin) Griffin and Glenn Frey all came to mind.

Then flash!

David Bowie passed from his Kether to his heavenly Malkuth just 10 short days ago…. and in that moment so passed one of the last musicians responsible for one of the most ground breaking musical albums of all time: Lou Reed’s 1972 release: Transformer.

To this day, Transformer is probably the most universally loved collection of songs Lou Reed recorded as a solo artist.

As with many classic albums, the stars were aligned for this one.

Unlike the tracks that made up his patchy self-titled debut, he didn’t have any material left over from the Velvet Underground days. This forced him to get to work writing.

And what songs these are.

The supposed ode to his drug habit, Perfect Day, only works because, no matter who the song is dedicated to, it is a beautiful ballad.

Then there is the epic, neon-drenched goodbye to his association with Andy Warhol and his factory acolytes, Walk on the Wild Side.  The proto punk swagger of Vicious, the gorgeous Satellite of Love, the snarky brass parp of New York Telephone Conversation and the quirky Goodnight Ladies: every track is a classic.

Of course, having his number one fan David Bowie, along with his guitarist Mick Ronson, trying out new production techniques didn’t hurt.

Forty-four years on, Transformer still sounds startlingly fresh, free from many of the clichés that taint other similarly minded records of the period. Their production work was so loaded that, were it not for the incredibly focused songs beneath, it might have been overbearing.

But with a solid base, the ornate arrangements help bring these songs to life, lending Reed’s music a broader palette.

Lou himself, by contrast, sounds as intimate as ever on the record’s more sedate tracks, crooning in a sensitive lilt that maintains his blissful, effortless cool.

But now the legends of that album have all gone.

The singer, guitarist and the man himself Lou Reed died from liver disease, aged 71, in 2013.

Former Spiders from Mars bassist and trumpet player, Trevor Bolder died from pancreatic cancer the same year, aged 62.

Guitarist, pianist and the album’s chief producer and arranger Mick Ronson died far too young from liver cancer, aged just 46, in 1993.

Sax player Ronnie Ross died in London in 1991 aged 58.

Drummer Barry De Souza also died in London in 2009.

Fellow drummer on the album Ritchie Dharma died in 2003.

And, of course, producer, backing vocalist, keyboards and acoustic guitarist David Bowie joined the ethereal band after succumbing to cancer on 10 January this year, aged 69.

Only ageing British bassist Herbie Flowers, 77, and engineer Ken Scott, 68, still survive from the original album line-up.

A good man can be measured by his friends, and Lou Reed certainly had some good ones on Transformer.

Goodnight legends, goodnight.

 

David Bowie’s Death Bed Riddle

DAVID Bowie’s unexpected death from cancer at 69 on Monday has inspired many people to look more closely at his final song, Lazarus.

 

The track’s haunting music video was released just last week, showing Bowie hospital-bound, lying on a deathbed with his eyes bandaged, writhing around and singing about being “free just like that bluebird”.

The opening line of “Look up here, I’m in heaven” has taken on a poignant new meaning following his sad death.

As Bowie writhes around on the bed, trying to break free, another Bowie then appears, a Bowie clad in black and stood upright, a Bowie who can still pose, pout, pick up a pen and create.

Inspiration hits him and he scrawls at speed in a notebook, while the other Bowie continues to convulse.

As he writes, we see a skull sitting ominously on his writing desk, the spectre of death looming over Bowie and his final creation, before he steps backwards into a wooden wardrobe, a fitting kind of coffin for an icon of style and fashion.

Scenes of Bowie frantically writing while clearly heavily tormented are harrowing to watch in the video, which ends with the singer retreating into a wardrobe (his closet/coffin for him and his many costumes) and closing the door behind him, seemingly bidding farewell as death finally comes for him.

The name Lazarus is commonly used in pop culture to refer to the restoration of life and there have been numerous uses of it in art and literature.

Lazarus of Bethany is the subject of one of Jesus’s most prominent miracles in the Bible’s Gospel of John. Lazarus is brought back to life four days after his burial, proving the power of Jesus over humanity’s greatest and most merciless enemy: death.

“This sickness will not end in death,” Jesus tells his followers after learning that Lazarus is ill. “No, it is for God’s glory so that God’s Son may be glorified through it. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies.”

Bowie has been a lifelong Christian. “Just Because I believe, Don’t mean I don’t think as well… Lord, I kneel and offer you my word on a wing” he sang on his 1975 Station to Station album.

And who could forget at the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert in 1992 when he asks the 90,000 audience to kneel with him and recite the Lord’s Prayer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJ6T9uYImnQ

Bowie could easily be describing himself as Lazarus, knowing that his musical legacy will transcend his death. After all, “he’s got drama, can’t be stolen, everybody knows him now”.

But in the Lazarus video there lies one huge riddle.

As Bowie steps back into the wardrobe at the end of the video, his all black costume acquires white diagonal stripes.

So what? I hear you ask.

Well the only time Bowie has worn a similar costume was for one single photo shoot in 1975 while filming for Nick Roeg’s acclaimed art house movie The Man Who Fell to Earth.

The fact that the new video was filmed towards the end of 2015 – exactly 40 years since that photo shoot maybe relevant.

But why did Bowie choose that one costume to film the end of his life?

One friend suggests that it was to show that the Man Who Fell to Earth was now ascending into Heaven… but who knows?

Anyone have any ideas?

 

Journey Through Dark Heat: Part 1

1972-1978

 Forty years
Forty banners united over the field
Where my life lives and grieves
Desperate men, desperate women divided
Spreading their wings ’neath the falling leaves

HOW can I do justice in words to a writer I have admired beyond all others for more than 40 years and to whom my words are like dust?

So I will not try to even pass close to justice. Instead just a simple narrative about my love affair with the greatest and most profound poet of my generation.

I came to Bob Dylan by way of a detour through David Bowie. I discussed some of the details in my recent eulogy to Lou Reed. It was one song by Bowie on his 1971 album Hunky Dory that provided my own Highway 61. The song was unsurprisingly titled: Song for Bob Dylan!

The lyrics are a refrain to my life:

Now, hear this Robert Zimmerman
I wrote a song for you
About a strange young man
Called Dylan
With a voice like sand and glue
His words of truthful vengeance
They could pin us to the floor
Brought a few more people on
And put the fear in a whole lot more.

After playing this one song more than a dozen times in the first week I bought Hunky Dory, there was an inner need to discover more and answer some unanswered questions. Sure, I had heard Mr Tambourine Man, Blowin’ in the Wind and Like a Rolling Stone on the radio when I was younger, but what makes this guy Dylan so important that my hero Bowie writes a whole song to him? And what was I missing?

The answers came quite soon.

It was late 1972 and a lad in our upper sixth form was a Bob Dylan fanatic – he even had hair like him and was forever being reprimanded by teachers for not wearing a tie! So I asked him why… he eagerly lent me Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits on vinyl LP and suggested I should get a copy of Blonde on Blonde to discover the real Dylan.

Then two related events overtook me. First I bought a copy of More Bob Dylan Greatest Hits simply because 21 tracks seemed like good value. Then CBS suddenly released the film soundtrack album Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid and the single Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door made the UK charts!

Now armed with two albums, plus the Heaven’s Door single I was beginning to discover Bob Dylan and it didn’t take long before I was hooked. His voice like sand and glue and words of truthful vengeance had me pinned to the floor, and like those before me I started to dissect his lyrics and find a new meaning to living.

More Greatest Hits was a delight. From Watching the River Flow to Crash on the Levee I was entering into his world of music and poetry. Two songs in particular drew me in… the wonderful Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues and the forgiving Tomorrow is a Long Time.

If today was not an endless highway
If tonight was not a crooked trail
If tomorrow wasn’t such a long time
Then lonesome would mean nothing to you at all

I spent the rest of my sixth form and university years buying up Dylan’s back catalogue of albums on cassette tape and allowing his music and words to become the soundtrack to all I did. Another Side of Bob Dylan and The Times They are a Changin’ led me to discover folk music and in turn Fairport Convention, while the awesome Planet Waves and Desire wrapped me up in stories, vignettes, lyrics and emotion I had never previously known.

On its own Forever Young became the anthem to my life, which I have played to each of my children in turn:

May God bless and keep you always
May your wishes all come true
May you always do for others
And let others do for you
May you build a ladder to the stars
And climb on every rung
May you stay forever young
Forever young, forever young
May you stay forever young

These years also included the magnificent Blood on the Tracks, but more about that later in this narrative. He had already lit a burner on my stove and brightened my life.

And suddenly it was 1978… an important and pivotal year.

For the first time in my life I was working – as a trainee psychiatric nurse – and earning money. It was the first disposable income I could really call my own. So apart from buying Dylan’s latest LP Street Legal I also got to my first gig.

It was life changing.

I bought the ticket for one night at Earls Court in London after queuing for hours at an over-the-counter box office in Brighton. For weeks afterwards I was sweating with anticipation. At the age of 22 I had been blessed to have seen some amazing live acts; David Bowie (twice), Roxy Music, the Average White Band, Al Stewart and The Stranglers to name just a few. But as Dylan had not gigged in the UK since 1966, I – like thousands of others – had to wait to see my hero live.

Saturday, 17 June 1978 dawned like no other day in my life. I had hardly slept the previous night and was up at the crack of dawn with my ticket clenched firmly in my wallet. My father gave me a lift to our local railway station on his way to work, and I hopped a commuter train to Brighton and then a connecting express to London, Victoria. I arrived in the capital just before mid-day, grabbed a coffee and had hours to wait until the evening performance… but I was not going to miss this life event.

I spent most of the day in and around Oxford Street browsing record shops and at one side street outlet was a breath away from buying my first Bob Dylan bootleg… but that would have to wait. At around 6pm I met a friend from my university days and together we shared a couple of beers and our mutual excitement. The tension was palpable. It was Dylan’s third night at Earls Court so he should be relaxed and well in tune… we hoped.

And our hope was rewarded.

By 7pm we were in the venue and took our seats way back in the auditorium. Suddenly something was happening… the opening number was an instrumental Hard Rain’s a Gonna Fall, with sax and keyboards blasting the arrangement and pinning us back, waiting to hear the voice of the man himself. There he was singing an (at the time) unknown number Love Her with a Feeling, complete with female backing vocalists. He was live in front our eyes and invading our senses.

Dylan was awesome. The sound and the view weren’t great from our seats; but when he sang “You’ve been down to the bottom with a bad man babe, now you’re back where you belong,” it didn’t matter… this was amazing, and yes “the sun was always shining”.

Sure I had heard his 1975 live album Hard Rain, but to listen to new interpretations of his songs straight from his mouth and guitar in the same room where I sat was without precedence. I had bargained for salvation and here he was giving me a lethal dose.

Dylan was this tiny figure in a waistcoat singing for me. His voice was strong and his harmonica electric. Here’s your throat back, thanks for the loan.

The highlights were many: Tangled Up in Blue was sung like never before, almost a hymn, and after about 45 minutes Like a Rolling Stone had me on my feet singing back How Does it Feel? I was tangled up by every song and by the time he sang All Along the Watchtower I was enveloped by tears of emotion.
The full setlist that evening was: A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall; Love Her With a Feeling; Baby, Stop Crying; Mr Tambourine Man; Shelter From the Storm; Love Minus Zero/No Limit; Tangled Up in Blue; Ballad of a Thin Man; Maggie’s Farm; I Don’t Believe You (She Acts Like We Never Have Met); Like a Rolling Stone; I Shall Be Released; Going, Going, Gone; Rainy Day Women #12 & 35; One of Us Must Know (Sooner or Later); You’re a Big Girl Now; One More Cup of Coffee (Valley Below); Blowin’ in the Wind; I Want You; Señor (Tales of Yankee Power); Masters of War; Just Like a Woman; Simple Twist of Fate; All Along the Watchtower; All I Really Want to Do; It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding); Forever Young; The Times They Are A-Changin’.

We left exhausted and exhilarated… my love affair with Bob had entered a new dimension and I vowed to see him again, and again, and again.

I stumbled to my feet
I rode past destruction in the ditches
With the stitches still mending ’neath a heart-shaped tattoo
Renegade priests and treacherous young witches
Were handing out the flowers that I’d given to you

The palace of mirrors
Where dog soldiers are reflected
The endless road and the wailing of chimes
The empty rooms where her memory is protected
Where the angels’ voices whisper to the souls of previous times

Bob was no longer invisible but he still had secrets to conceal.

To be continued

Lou Reed… magic and loss

THE death of Lou Reed yesterday hit me harder than I might have expected.

It has taken me the night to fully understand why.

I came to Lou Reed via David Bowie, in much the same way I discovered Bob Dylan… or to be more exact, the 1971 Bowie album, Hunky Dory was my conduit to them both.

For while Song for Bob Dylan provided a highway to my lifetime obsession with His Bobness, another song, Queen Bitch, led me to Lou Reed and by dint of passage, to my career in journalism.

I was a 16 year-old teenager trying to find my musical muses and heroes. I had been fed a diet of Nat King Cole and big band swing by my parents throughout my childhood before discovering The Beatles, The Who, The Kinks and Marc Bolan and T Rex for myself.

I had only recently been turned to David Bowie via his single Starman. Sometime during the summer of 1972, I bought my first proper LP, the now timeless, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars. Suddenly I was besotted with Bowie and through my local record store in Lancing ordered his back catalogue of Space Oddity, The Man Who Sold the World and Hunky Dory… all at £1.99 a time. I was listening to Bowie back to back throughout that summer and autumn.

Through the pages of weekly music newspapers, I had heard mention of Lou Reed and his recent collaboration with Bowie. So when his album Transformer was released in November that year I rushed out to buy it, without ever hearing a track.

From Vicious, you hit me with a flower through Perfect Day, Andy’s Chest, Satellite of Love and New York Telephone Conversation to Walk on the Wild Side and Good Night Ladies, at 36 minutes 40 seconds, it just wasn’t enough.

His voice and his lyrics had me hooked, even if I didn’t yet know what ‘giving head’ meant!

So I returned to Bowie’s Queen Bitch and the oblique reference to Lou Reed’s first band The Velvet Underground.

I trotted back to my local music store and asked a bemused middle-aged proprietor if he could order any album by the American group The Velvet Underground.

He scoured his catalogue and suggested a recently released Best of the Velvet Underground. I waited a full week before I had the LP tucked under my arm and headed home to get it on the turntable as soon as possible.

From the first track it blew me away. Here I had everything Bowie had delivered but much more. This music was raw, invigorating and loaded with lyrics that took a lifetime to unravel. It was nothing like Transformer… it was better!

Lady Godiva’s Operation, White Light/White Heat, Venus in Furs, Waiting For the Man, Heroin and Sister Ray all battled for my attention. This was the real Lou Reed. Added to that, there was the warmth of Nico’s flat voiced psalms Sunday Morning, Femme Fatale and All Tomorrow’s Parties.

The LP didn’t leave my turntable until about Christmas, when, for the umpteenth time, my father yelled: “Turn that bloody racket down”.

I had never written to a newspaper before that point. But something persuaded me to pick up my pen and write a scrawl to my favourite music paper, Sounds. My letter eulogised the Velvet Underground to the point where I described them as more important and better than The Beatles. It was a teenage rant and I never expected to see it published. But a week later my letter was there in all its glory in 9 point Times Roman with a single column headline Better Than The Beatles.

I was in print. It was my first ever published piece of writing and I still have a yellowing copy stuck in a scrapbook in a cupboard in my study.

As for Lou Reed, I became a lifetime fan and rate his 1973 album Berlin and his 1989 album New York as two of the greatest rock albums ever produced by anyone. His later album Magic and Loss is, in my opinion, one of the most moving single pieces of music and poetry ever produced.

The Velvet Underground never achieved commercial success during their 1960s existence, but their influence on music since then is unparalleled.

Music producer Brian Eno once summed up their influence by saying: “The first Velvet Underground album only sold 10,000 copies, but everyone who bought it formed a band.”

And they also helped create a journalist.

Rest in Peace Lou, you were larger than life and your creative genius will never be forgotten.

* A beautiful video of Lou singing I’ll Be You Mirror, with his wife Laurie Anderson in 2009: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUr8oRfG1AM