SCIENCE FICTION PIONEER: ER JAMES - FROM SKIPTON TO THE STARS

E.R. JAMES:

FROM SKIPTON...

TO THE STARS

12 April 1920 - 25 August 2012

If ever there was a Golden Age of British Science Fiction,

then former Skipton Postman ER JAMES was an integral

part of it. From 1947 to today his fiction has

been prominent in genre magazines

ANDREW DARLINGTON tracks

him down for an interview / retrospective

FROM NEW WORLDS TO NEW MOON

“Here was a story screaming to be written.

I began to dream of incidents in it.

My brain was on fire. The

typewriter drew me like a magnet ...”

(‘Too Perfect’ in ‘Science Fantasy’

no.19 - August 1956)

“I am rather ancient” ER James admits with sly humour, “tho’ not yet moribund.” To a seventy-seven years young ‘time-traveller like myself’, Science Fiction is a vital pulse that has carried him across not only hundreds of future centuries, but thousands of light years of interplanetary space too. All from the modest confines of his Postal Delivery route through Skipton, North Yorkshire.

But ER – or Ernest Rayer, is maddeningly self-deprecating. Tall, with short spiky silver hair, he sits opposite me now, rubbing his forehead or down-stroking his neatly disciplined moustache as he says “your praise leaves me shattered”. This, from the man who wrote as ‘Somerset Draco’ or ‘Edward Hannah’, whose science-based fantasies are reprinted in German and French magazines and anthologies, while there are over one hundred stunning fictions published under his own name spun out across the years from 1947, to the present day. If there was ever a Golden Age of British Science Fiction, then ER James is an integral part of it. He was there at its inception. His fast-paced action stories jostling for text-space with those of EC Tubb, John Brunner, and Ken Bulmer – often in consecutive issues of the same magazines. While open up a recent 1990’s title – ‘New Moon’, and he’s there too with a fine ecological story of the menaced rainforests.

“I don’t know that there has ever been a ‘Golden Age of British SF’” he argues. “Some of Hamilton’s and Carnell’s magazines of the 1950’s and sixties may have merited ‘gold’ – but it depends on the reader, as does all writing. I merely enjoy trying to write stories. I spent most of my life earning – rather than writing, just to survive. The stories helped me run a car...”

His right eye has a greenish iris, the legacy of World War II enemy shrapnel that ‘peppered him’ after five weeks in Normandy. “At the end of the war I was still in the Army – a Lance Corporal” he recalls, “when my cousin (SF writer Francis G Rayer, who died in 1981) wrote that he knew of an editor who wanted Science Fiction stories. This was Walter Gillings, a very helpful man who took three of my earliest tales.” The first of these, “Prefabrication”, appeared in the slender ‘Fantasy No.2’ – one of the original British weird fiction titles. A collector’s gem that now fetches an outlandish price-tag, it arrived in April 1947, during a time of post-war reconstruction – but his story concerns the prefabrication not of houses, but people! ‘IS SUCH A THING POSSIBLE – TO CREATE SYNTHETIC LIFE?’ probes the magazine blurb, ‘SCIENCE HAD FOUND A WAY TO MANUFACTURE HUMAN BEINGS... IN A WORLD IN WHICH MONOPOLY HAD THE LAW ON ITS SIDE. RESULT – CONFLICT!’

His next editor – John Carnell of Nova Publications, “asked me to meet him in London, and we had a lunch together. London was very different then, and I’m not sure – but I think I was still not demobilised at the time.” Carnell’s stable of magazines became a regular ER James market, with work subsequently appearing most frequently in ‘New Worlds’, ‘Science Fantasy’, and ‘Science Fiction Adventures’. He experienced little editorial interference, although James recalls Carnell as being a ‘very moral’ editor, “he once commented ‘is it really necessary to have the word ‘body’ in this story?’ I mean – ‘body’!”

The ER James novel-length “Robots Never Weep” took the cover of the launch issue of ‘Nebula’ in 1952. Oddly, editor Peter Hamilton Jrn liked the story because it was significantly different to what Carnell was publishing. To further emphasise the ‘clear blue water’ between titles – as James was a recognised ‘New Worlds’ writer, Hamilton initially wanted to publish the story under a pseudonym. James wasn’t keen, and the ensuing dialogue resulted not only in his name being retained, but at an improved word-rate too. ‘HE AWOKE. FINDING HIMSELF IN A METAL WORLD, PEOPLED MOSTLY BY MACHINES, HE STRUGGLED FOR THE RIGHT TO LIVE – AND GRADUALLY THE NIGHTMARISH TRUTH CAME HOME TO HIM...’ ran the blurb. The wide sweep and breath-catching speed of its two-fisted action has many purely Gernsbackian elements, leaving little space for reflection, motivation or characterisation. There are metal raiders with pre-Asimovian tendencies rampaging from a fantastic Space Island built on an orbital ‘volcanic asteroid’. Their leader, the deranged Ursula, is a brain in a metal shell, ‘a woman shut up in a sphere, with lenses for eyes. Human, yet inhuman’. Agent Johnny Found comes to awareness as he’s about to be pitched into an ‘atomic furnace’ by a noxious dwarf and his robotic cohorts, only to be rescued from certain death by the lovely Sacha (‘his stunned soul warmed to her exotic beauty’). He’s had his memory erased and replaced with an artificial identity enabling him to infiltrate the raider’s base, where he finds himself torn between his conflicting loyalties to the ravaged and besieged Earth he’s left behind, and his new allegiances to the evil cybernetic dystopia planned by Ursula. Meanwhile, the armies of manic mechanoids attack, ‘from the sky, between lofty pinnacles of tall buildings, down past upper-level roads, huge rockets soared tail-foremost. Robots moved towards this second wave, even while the roads still glowed red hot’.

Johnny Found’s adventures in the robotic future came with a dramatic cover painting by long-time SF artist Alan Hunter (who died 1 August 2012). James was just thirty-two when he wrote “Robots Never Weep”. But by then he’d already sold over forty articles and stories, some half of which were SF-based. According to Hamilton’s editorial comment he also had a novel placed with an agent – although ‘this (is) by no means sure of publication...’ Well, that novel has yet to appear, but as the 1950’s picked up momentum ER James’ magazine adventures were unstoppable – the powerfully tense “Blaze Of Glory” has three people trapped in an asteroid as it spirals in towards the sun, “Ride The Twilight Rail” – often cited as his greatest tale, is a cover story for ‘New Worlds’ set on the hostile planet Mercury with its silent inhabitants ‘utterly alien beings, outwardly featureless, huge; inwardly a complexity of crystalline structures with a silicon base’, and then, notably, there’s “World Destroyer” for which ‘New Worlds’ set aside its ‘strongest editorial taboo – that of current world politics coupled with the threat of atomic war’.

Beyond the solar system – in “The Moving Hills”, he created the deserted Siemens Planet, a world of dead cities and apparently empty deserts in which two stranded Earthmen become assimilated into the automated self-replicating pseudo-living landscape. There was also “Made On Mars”, “Galactic Year”, “Advent Of The Entities”, “Forty Years On” (a retro-Detective theme as Dormer – as in ‘Sleeper’, attempts to reconstruct events leading up to the explosion off Ceres which cost him four decades of life) and so very many more. His prose is often functional, his protagonists have Euro-friendly names like Johnny, Ricky or Ann, while his female characters are little more than plot confections, and although there’s an unmistakable sophistication as the work evolves, James remains an exponent of basic story-telling skills. The elements he excels in are conflict, hardship, and action, all set against the eerie poetry of the solar system where ‘on one side of the thread of life was the burning heat of killing, on the other the utter chill of death’.

In the 1957 fanzine ‘The New Futurian no.6’, he contributes a rare article touching on his methods of writing. “With me, the idea is the peg for a story” he expands to me now. They were originally written directly onto the typewriter, “but it was already worked out in my head, everything that was going to happen through every stage. Perhaps the ending wasn’t clear yet, but everything else was.” A pause. “In the past I used to have an idea, sit at my new Imperial Companion, and change hardly anything. But now I write and re-write before turning to an electronic machine...”

He gets up. Leaves the room for a moment to return with an original ‘Nova Publications’ share certificate, dated 1st January 1949 and signed by John Beynon Harris (John Wyndham). He passes this rare artefact of SF history across to me dismissively. “You might as well take this. As a souvenir of Skipton!”

TO BOLDLY GO... TO SKIPTON?

Critics were not uniformly supportive. ‘You could go to the bookstalls and there they were on time, the same shaggy old writers in there’ recalls Brian Aldiss (in ‘Crucified Toad no.4’), ‘all those frantic people, ER James and Francis G Rayer, couldn’t put two words together in the right order.’ James’ success throughout this period proves that others thought differently. Lacking the intellectual vigour and experimental energies that Aldiss was to bring to the genre, James’ stories are never less than solidly inventive and often wildly enjoyable, ideally suited to the demands of the magazine market of the period. Born 12th April 1920, Science Fiction was always a part of his life. The influences that shaped his style began when, “as a boy, I read some of the Gernsback ‘pulps’ and the first three volumes of the Martian romances of the Old Master Edgar Rice Burroughs which held me spellbound (but not so much his Venus books)”, while HG Wells “still reads as well now as when I first read them. Then there were boys mags such as ‘Adventure’ and ‘Wizard’”. ‘I began reading Science Fiction stories before leaving school’ he told a ‘Nebula’ ‘KNOW YOUR AUTHOR’ column, ‘and can remember the plots of quite a few stories out of the American ‘pulps’ of Gernsback and his contemporaries. Wondered why these and other such stories were not more popular, and began to write manuscripts with a science flavour myself – and enjoyed doing so, though no-one wanted them’. He continues, “I wrote a little, but submitted none of it. The war altered everything, however”.

The years 1945 to 1950 were an experimental period, testing out markets, trying different genres. He wrote a ‘psychological thriller’ “The Hynotised Murderer” (1946), another titled “Pabulum Of Death” (1946) rejected by ‘Strand’, ‘Chambers’ and John Carnell. “The Circus Thief” (April 1950) was begun – and abandoned, a juvenile Western “King Shadow, Wild Horse” went to Gerald Swan. “The Subconscious Mind Of Luke Frazer” – ‘all rights sold’ to Gerald Swan for £3 (1945), and “The Power Of Speech” for £2 (August 1945). He tried ‘Argosy’ and ‘Tit-Bits’, even sold a series of ‘helpful DIY-features’ to ‘Hobbies Weekly’. Intriguingly he completed 25,000-words of “Twenty-Five Billion Miles Up” during July 1950, before it was rejected by Tempest, and abandoned. But the steady and increasing success-rate of his SF resulted in a growing confidence that determined the direction he’d concentrate on.

As the first stories appeared he “made plans with a friend, also writing and selling, to live together. But instead married Margaret, and altered my address from Somerset to North Yorkshire”. In common with many of his contemporaries he took a ‘bread and butter’ job, with the GPO – perhaps delivering his own royalty cheques, and the occasional rejection slip too. Skipton is a beautiful town for such activity. On the way here today I pass Menwith Hill – a surreal formation of huge Quatermass-like white spheres that house a US radar installation (don’t look for it on the map, it’s not there!), and a Greenham Common-style Peace Camp beyond its periphery. Then I pass through the looming shadow of Skipton Castle. Two very different zones of fantasy. ‘I found that postal work fits in with a career of part-time writing very well’ he told a ‘New Worlds’ author profile. ‘In fact, I declined an offer of an indoor clerical appointment in the Post Office because I felt that the outdoor work left my mind less exhausted and more eager for thinking up stories.’

He was a guest speaker at the Harrogate SF Convention alongside Aldiss, Kingsley Amis, and James White (who was ‘even quieter than I am!’). Organiser Ron Bennett, now a Harrogate-based book-dealer specialising in ERB-iana “had me give a sort of opening speech, at the beginning of which I stood on my head Yoga-fashion to get attention”.

Among the work produced through this, his most prolific period, was “Refrigerator Ship”, delineating the murderous equation necessary when a ship full of deep-frozen colonists emerge from star-drive to find their potential colony-world vaporised by nova, and they have insufficient reserves to return them all to Earth. “Hospital Ship”, which vividly illustrates the horror and absurdity of a ‘strange and remote war of annihilation’ fought 12,000,000,000,000 miles from the solar system’ in the thirteen-planet Alpha Centauri system. Here, James deliberately ignores the usual SF warp-drive conventions in favour of fully involving the logistical difficulties of conducting warfare when ‘the long haul’ involved takes four-and-a-third years! The first punitive expedition is launched twenty-seven years after the initial incident, and ‘each commander, isolated by time and space, was on his own’. Unrelentingly bleak, the action is set on a derelict Biological Study Ship crewed by the victims of ‘Island Of Dr Moreau’-style miscegenation, and the powerfully repellent horror is vividly realised as Cliff Heron is experimentally transplanted into an alien body. Elsewhere, “Friction” is set on Betelguese IV where poor miners are lured away by the fabulous wealth and technological richness of Earth.

There were also a number of collaborations with cousin ‘Frank’ Rayer, beginning with “The Lava Seas Tunnel” for ‘Authentic SF’, predicting the eco-energy crisis when an expedition beneath the Earth’s crust in a boring machine seek an alternative to the exhausted oil and coal fossil fuels. Built up largely by passing manuscripts back and forth, making alterations and additions to each other’s work, he admits to being “never completely satisfied” by such joint efforts. Although they were snapped up by the magazines. He does, however, admit to a certain retrospective satisfaction with his fictional portrayal of Venus as a super-heated desert world, “more as it is, or more as the planet has proved to be” than the lush tropical jungles envisaged there by some of his contemporaries. Among my own favourites is the hauntingly atmospheric “The Truth” from the December 1958 edition of ‘Nebula’. Four survivors of a Space-Time Liner from the 22nd Century are marooned in the ‘endless ooze’ of a world that may, or may not be primeval Earth. The corpses of two other crew members are buried there with the foreknowledge that ‘the atoms of their bodies don’t belong in this time and place’, and inexorably their viral presence infects and alters the biosphere. Meticulously worked out, and forsaking his more usual speed of narrative pacing for a slow claustrophobic intensity, it’s a beautifully worked out story.

“Then TV came along, and the old magazines all suffered. Not just SF titles but all printed-word publications clear down to the text-based boys comics. I transferred to working on the Post Office counter and did less writing.” He did, however, resume with a vengeance following his retirement, selling a number of extremely well-received stories to a new generation of magazines – beginning with “Second Century Koma” in ‘Dream’, and then “The Tree” in ‘New Moon’. His current writing method involves “two large bulldog clips on a sheet of plywood about 12”x18”, or another sheet of plywood about 12”x30” with an adjustable lamp on one end and a slot into which the smaller board will fit. These are excellent when sitting in an armchair. One clip holds notes and the other the narrative on old A4 paper (torn in two and written on the back).” He half-jokingly toys with the idea of writing and submitting a story to one of the current crop of Women’s magazines, ‘Best’ or ‘Bella’, while adding “the necessity of earning a crust, a lack of scientific background and various other circumstances and failings, and competing personal inclinations all held me back from making a real effort to be a success. And now I have advancing years to contend with. But I’m halfway through a novel (‘The Lure Of Far Centauri’) of which I have high hopes – who can have more?”, so perhaps Peter Hamilton’s 1952 prediction will yet be fulfilled?

“I still enjoy other people’s stories. I admire, and subscribe to ‘Interzone’ – but I rarely enjoy the stories in it, many of them seem to me so very depressing. I suppose it must be what most readers like. And I belong to a postal book-chain through which I get issues of ‘Analog’. But I look in the Science Fiction section of W.H. Smith, and there’s no SF there! It’s all Fantasy or Sword & Sorcery. I still wonder why the British public generally takes so little interest in science, and more particularly in the wonderful, if frighteningly vast and terrible vistas which seem only just around the corner of the future in these inspiring times.” And on a more personal note “I just keep trying, somewhat fitfully, but hopefully, to become a little famous” he concedes modestly.

Now ancient – but not yet moribund, he’s not always at ease with current trends, or with all of the stories he shares magazine space with. “I live reasonably well. I survive and write an occasional short story that does more for postal profits than it does for me. ‘Interzone’ seems out of my reach, my ideas don’t suit them (he writes that Ed Gorman’s “Cages” in ‘Interzone no.109’ ‘would have so disgusted EJ Carnell of the old ‘New Worlds’ that he would have lost faith in humanity’*). Perhaps I’m too old, but I find some of their kind of writing very disturbing. There’s so much sex-for-sex sake and sarcasm these days that I try to promote a little romance and sincerity whenever I can. But of course”, the slyly self-deprecating humour again, “it could be said that, as I am no longer so fired-up with youthful ways, some of this is sour grapes – and the rest is a senile tendency to think the best of people…!

 --- 0 ---

Margaret James died on the 25th August 2012. After sixty-six years together, Ernest Rayer survived her by just ten weeks. He died 2nd November, aged ninety-two, leaving a daughter, Hazel, and two grandsons. His funeral was on the 16th November 2012 at 1pm at Skipton Crematorium.

ER JAMES: THE

COMPLETE BIBLIOGRAPHY

PREFABRICATION in FANTASY no.2 (April 1947)

THE REBELS in NEW WORLDS no.4 (1949)

‘WORLDS AT WAR’ by FG Rayer (1949, paperback anthology from Tempest Publ, Bolton, Lancs) with “Scapegoat” (as Edward Hannah), “Masque” (as Somerset Draco), “The Cleverjacks And The Moonstalk” (as ER James) plus “Dodie Slammed The Door” (by ‘Malcolm Ruy Wade’?), and long story ‘Fearful Barrier’ by FG Rayer

ADVENT OF THE ENTITIES in SCIENCE FANTASY no.1 (Summer 1950)

THE MOVING HILLS in SCIENCE FANTASY no.3 (Winter 1951/’52)

ASTEROID CITY in NEW WORLDS no.14 (March 1952)

THE WISDOM OF THE HYPRIANS in PHANTASMAGORIA no.4 (Spring 1952) fanzine edited by Derek Pickles

EMERGENCY WORKING in NEW WORLDS no.17 (Sept 1952), reprinted in anthology GATEWAY TO TOMORROW (1953) edited by John Carnell

NOT AS WE ARE in SCIENCE FANTASY no.5 (Autumn 1952)

ROBOTS NEVER WEEP in NEBULA no.1 (Autumn 1952), also includes brief ‘Know Your Author’ biog

WHERE NO MAN WALKS in NEW WORLDS no.18 (Nov 1952)

UNDER ATOMIC COVER in SLANT no.6 (Winter 1951/2) fanzine edited by Walter Willis, art by Bob Shaw

RIDE THE TWILIGHT RAIL in NEW WORLDS no.21 (June 1953)

THE LAVA SEAS TUNNEL (with F.G. Rayer) in AUTHENTIC SF no.43 (March 1954)

BLAZE OF GLORY in NEBULA no.8 (April 1954)

SPACE CAPSULE in NEW WORLDS no.23 (May 1954)

MAN ON THE CEILING in NEW WORLDS no.25 (July 1954)

THE MINUS MEN in NEW WORLDS no.26 (August 1954)

ROCKFALL in NEW WORLDS no.29 (Nov 1954)

REPORT ON ADAM in NEBULA no.12 (April 1955)

SMOOTHIES ARE WANTED in SCIENCE FANTASY no.13 (April 1955)

HIGHWAYMAN GREEN in NEW WORLDS no.36 (June 1955)

WORLD DESTROYER in NEW WORLDS no.37 (July 1955)

HOT WATER in NEBULA no.16 (March 1956)

PERIOD OF QUARANTINE (with FG Rayer) in NEW WORLDS no.48 (June 1956)

TOO PERFECT in SCIENCE FANTASY no.19 (Aug 1956)

CREEP in NEW WORLDS no.51 (Sept 1956) reprinted in German ‘UTOPIA’ magazine as ‘Maschinenschaden im Weltraum’

BEAUTIFUL WEED in NEW WORLDS no.57 (March 1957)

‘THE NEW FUTURIAN no.6’ ER James article on his method of writing (fanzine edited by Ron Bennett & Mike Rosenblum from 7 Grosvenor Park, Leeds)

FOURTH SPECIES in NEW WORLDS no.59 (May 1957)

GALACTIC YEAR in SCIENCE FANTASY no.23 (June 1957)

POMPEY’S PLANET in NEBULA no.22 (July 1957)

MADE ON MARS in NEW WORLDS no.63 (Sept 1957)

TRAINING AREA in NEBULA no.30 (March 1958)

ROUTINE OBSERVATIONS in NEW WORLDS no.71 (May 1958)

FRICTION in NEBULA no.34 (Sept 1958)

THE TRUTH in NEBULA no.37 (Dec 1958)

HOSPITAL SHIP in NEBULA no.38 (Jan 1959)

SPRINKLER SYSTEM in NEW WORLDS no.85 (July 1959) reprinted in French ‘FICTION Special no.3’ as ‘Dispostif d’Arrosage’

BEYOND REALISM in NEW WORLDS no.86 (Aug/Sept 1959)

REFRIGERATOR SHIP in SCIENCE FICTION ADVENTURES no.11 (Nov 1959)

SIX-FINGERED JACKS in NEW WORLDS no.119 (June 1962), anthologised by BLACKIE & SON PUBL

THE THOUSAND DEEP in NEW WORLDS no.121 (Aug 1962)

FORTY YEARS ON in NEW WORLDS no.135 (Oct 1963)

SECOND CENTURY KOMA in DREAM MAGAZINE no.13 (Sept 1987), reprinted in A BOOK OF DREAMS anthology (1990) edited by Trevor Jones and George P Townsend

THE ABREACTION in DREAM SF no.20 (Summer 1989)

THE SUGGESTION FORM in DREAM SF no.21 (Autumn 1989)

SURVIVING THE NIGHT in DREAM SF no.28 (April 1991)

THE TREE in NEW MOON no.2 (January 1992)

FATAL UNITY in FANTASY ANNUAL no.2 (Spring 1998)

BODY AUCTION in GRYPHON SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY READER no.1 (January 1999, Gryphon Books, USA ISBN: 1-58250-011-8) edited by Philip Harbottle

Other Published Work:

‘HOBBIES WEEKLY’ ER James made a number of anonymously published contributions to this 3d twelve-page magazine from Balding & Mansell Ltd (vol.107 no.2780, 9 February 1949). (no.2781, 16 February 1949). (no.2782, 23 February 1949). (no.2785, 16 March 1949). (vol.108 no.2807, 17 August 1949, ‘Workshop Cupboard’). (vol.109 no.2814, 5 October 1949, ‘Table Extension’). (No.2832, 8 February 1950, ‘Renew Small Windows’). (No.2834, 22 February 1950). (vol.110 no.2861, 30 August 1950, ‘A Practical Dog Kennel’)

‘AFFINITY no.23’ (August/September 1949) 1/- romance magazine published by Gerald G Swan, includes ER James story “The Suspicious Lady”

‘SCRAMBLE ANNUAL’ (1948) 2/6, published by Gerald G Swan, includes ER James text-story “The Twenty-Four Hours Global’

‘BOYS’ FUN no.2’ (December 1952) Monthly comic published by Gerald G Swan, includes ER James text-story “We Answer Everything”

‘CUTE FUN ANNUAL’ (1953, Gerald G Swan Juvenile Hardcover) with “Champion Robot”, lead story

‘SCHOOLBOYS ALBUM’ (1954, Gerald G Swan Juvenile Hardcover) 4/-, with “The Qualtimers”

‘VECTOR no.44’ (May 1967) BSFA-magazine, includes ER James review of ‘The Wonder Effect’ by CM Kornbluth and Frederik Pohl

There were other stories sold ‘all rights’ to various small publishers under various pseudonyms, of which “I now have no record beyond small cash entries”, there’s a letter published in ‘VECTOR no.139’ (1987), another in ‘INTERZONE no.111’* (Sept 1996), as well as the following:

MURDER IN REVERSE – a “time-travel story, if I remember correctly”, accepted by Peter Hamilton for NEBULA, but never used due of premature cessation of the title.

My thanks to ER James for invaluable assistance

and co-operation in compiling this feature

Original version of this feature published in: ‘VECTOR no.209: Jan/Feb’ (UK – February 2000)

INTERVIEW: JOE BROWN 'BEEN THERE THEN, BACK FOR MORE NOW

JOE BROWN:

BEEN THERE THEN,

BACK FOR MORE NOW

Joe Brown was one of Britain’s first home-grown

Rock ‘n’ Roll stars with real musical ability.

Now ‘56 AND TALLER THAN YOU THINK’

is his first new album for many years. And while

he’s quite happy to talk about the album, about his work

with Billy Fury, Nick Lowe, Eddie Cochran, and Gene Vincent,

just... don’t ask him to talk about Techno!

“The thing that REALLY bores me is the CONSTANT BEAT! When you’ve got a throbbing beat that keeps the same time all the way through!!! It gets in your BRAIN, y’know?” Joe Brown leans forward, enthusiastically warming to his subject. “Yeh, what I mean is, you get two guys with synths just standing up there and, every now and then, they lean forward and press their finger on ONE note, THAT’S the thing that REALLY BORES me!!! I mean, I sometimes wonder what it would sound like if Beethoven or any of those Classical guys had had synths available. It would still have been great music, obviously, because whether it’s good or not depends how you use the technology. You just use what’s right. And that’s the difference between a good musician and a bad one!”

Joe should know. I guess. Think “A Picture Of You”. Not the Boyzone whimp-erama. But Joe’s no.2 hit from June 1962. The one about Kodak voyeurism, a sneak photo of the girl on the crest of a hill. Then the sharp guitar kick. ‘In the night there are sights to be seen, stars like jewels on the crown of a queen’. A face glimpsed on the Streetcar, or in a cafe. Yeah, that one. It’s on every Sixties hits compilation you ever heard. It’s one of the microdots of all our yesterdays.

And like the Movie title says, Joe’s lived a Life Less Ordinary. He turned fifty-six on the 13th May 1997. He’s issued ‘56 And Taller Than You Think’*, his first new album in a long while, to mark the occasion. It comes through the respected Demon label, and all the evidence you need is here, in its fourteen tracks. Joe Brown has always been a musician, first and foremost. It’s there in the down-to-earth normalcy of his anti-Pop Star name. In the grin they couldn’t surgically remove. And it’s the role the legendary Jack Good originally assigned him for those ground-breaking late 1950’s TV Rock Shows. It was his guitar skills that got him the back-up gigs with Eddie Cochran, Billy Fury, Johnny Cash, Gene Vincent and the rest. Of course, he’s put on various faces since then, Pop Star, Cheeky Chappie, Character Ac-tor, Spikey-Haired youth out for the Craik, Variety Artist, but the music’s always been there as the underlying continuity. And, as (daughter) Sam Brown told me prior to the interview, “I watched Dad go into Cabaret. Then I watched him come out unscathed”. And although the album has some admittedly duff moments, it’s salvaged by some music of genuine power. Some Nick Lowe songs. Some songwriting co-credits with Chris Difford and Roger Glover. And a ragged weary breadth of vision taking in four decades of British Rock ‘n’ Roll culture.

Nick Lowe’s “Rose Of England” is a stand-out. “It IS a good song that, in’it?” he agrees. “It’s a bit Folksy, but it’s nice, it’s a good track that. When my son Peter, who produced my record, started out as a recording engineer a number of years ago, he used to work with Nick. He always liked Nick’s stuff. And I do too. ‘Cos he’s got that natural thing about him. So we looked at Nick’s songs when we started doing the album, and we found two. “Rose Of England” is one, and the other is a nice perky little number that we put in our act called “Without Love”. It’s a bit tongue-in-cheek that one, really. But it’s good bouncy Country-style stuff, y’know?”

Joe began in the late 1950’s with Skiffle, and comes neatly full circle back to Skiffle again. He did a recent Four-Part Radio Two Rock-umentary about it, called ‘The Rock Island Line’. And there’s a stage musical written with Roger Cook called ‘Skiffle’ waiting in the production wings. Joe started out as part of a group called The Spacemen who played East End Pub knees-ups and Butlins Holiday Camp Hops. Exploits narrated in Joe’s book ‘Brown Sauce’. “It was quite an interesting era that Skiffle business” he begins. “‘Cos it only lasted two years. But it created havoc when it came on the scene. ‘Cos every kid in the world could play it, y’know? And that’s what it was all about. It was sort-of derived from the American Rent Party thing, where they’d get everybody round their house with some beer, and they’d play their songs. And everyone would chip in a few quid towards the rent. That’s how that all started. They used to use Tea-Chest Basses, Wash-Boards and... anything that came to hand that they could make music on. And everybody could do it. Then Lonnie Donegan really opened the whole thing up over here. At one point in 1957 it was estimated that one-in-nine of the male population was in a Skiffle Group. That’s a fact. There you go.” Other members of that one-in-nine were a young Cliff Richard, and a guy called John Lennon playing with the Quarrymen Skiffle Group in Liverpool.

Discovered at a Southend audition Joe was immediately recruited as featured guitarist for monochrome TV’s ‘Wham’ and ‘Boy Meets Girl’, which soon became personality showcases for his blonde crew-cut and exuberant winkle-pickered Rock Cockney. He got to play as part of Eddie Cochran’s backing band on the American stars fatal last tour, and then played session guitar on what is arguably Britain’s first great home-grown Rock album, Billy Fury’s ‘The Sound Of Fury’ (May 1960). “The great thing about that was that we went in the studio... I think it was round about two o’ clock in the afternoon, and we was out by three! We’d done all the album, everything, and out, finished in one take, the whole thing done in an hour. And it turned out very well.” Then, as Joe’s own hits began, he found himself touring on bills with Chuck Berry, Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis.

Exciting times? “I remember years ago, the first time I heard Ray Charles. There was a singer / compere guy called Davy Jones on our show. He was American and he’d brought all this Ray Charles stuff over, which we hadn’t heard before. Georgie Fame was on that tour as well. And it just knocked us out. We’d heard nothing like it before. And we didn’t hear it again for another two years. But he was there with it. So – you know, you do get to hear the good stuff if you’re mixing in the right circles.” Brian Epstein promoted some of Joe’s shows in the North of England, ensuring that his protégés the Beatles played the opening slot. They needed the exposure that a big chart name like ‘Joe Brown’ could provide. While Joe’s hits – and there are quite a few of them – “Your Tender Look” (no.31, September 1962), “It Only Took A Minute” (no.6, November 1962), “That’s What Love Will Do” (no.3, February 1963), “Nature’s Time For Love” (no.26, June 1963), and “Sally Ann” (no.28, June 1963), carried him through the Sixties.

It’s fair to say that the clean melodic Hank Marvin was the guitarist everyone aspired to be, but Joe Brown was a respected guitar hero before they even got around to inventing the term. Tucked away on the ‘B’-sides of those hit singles were guitar-instrumentals that young would-be-muso’s listened to with awe, working out the fingering of “The Spanish Bit” or “Hava Nagila”. And you want to know where Jimi Hendrix got that playing the guitar behind the head bit, yes, Joe was doing it way back then. One of his last sixties hits was a cover of Epstein’s protégés “With A Little Help From My Friends”. It lost out in a chart battle to Joe Cocker’s version, but still scored a respectable no.32 (in June 1967), and anyway “by the time the Beatles came along I was already into other things. I was doing TV Shows and Pantomimes and stuff, so it didn’t really bother me that much.”

Ominously it looked for a while as though Joe had become a casualty of the Celebrity Game-Show circuit. There were high-profile Movies and West End Shows, a role in ‘Pump Boys And Dinettes’ with the legendary Cyd Charisse (name-checked on Madonna’s “Vogue”) and three TV series of ‘The Joe Brown Show’, ‘Set ‘Em Up’, alongside guest slots on the likes of ‘Junior Showtime’. And there were some dodgy records too, including an instrumental “All Things Bright And Beautiful” done St Winifred’s-style in 1977 with the Dovedale Junior School Choir! “Ah well – there you go” he comments philosophically. But Joe Brown has always been a musician, first and foremost. More recently he toured with daughter Sam in the experimental setting of the Subway Soopa Stringz quartet. And his 1993 ‘Come On Joe’ album proved to be a major step back to credibility. Part-written out of a song-deal for the US Country market during trips to Nashville, it came with occasional guitar supplement from Alvin Lee on tracks like the gruff “Battle Hymn Of Love” and “He Can’t Hold Still”. “You’ve got to keep up with it” he explains with a verbal shrug. “Even now, when I hear an obscure record on the radio or something, I write the number down and ‘phone up the next day and order it, y’know. Just heard a great one by Junior Wells which is a version of “That’s Alright Mama”, the Presley song, and it’s a great track. Great, different thing. Different groove, you know? It’s not case of availability. It’s a case of going out looking for it...”

And now there’s ‘56 and Taller Than You Think’, an album that quotes from all the most vital stages of his career, with revealing autobiographical material drawn from a Rock ‘n’ Roll Life Less Ordinary. All driven by a kick of guitar. His Country influences shine in a Billy Joe Shaver cover, or the tactile instrumental “Brother Can You Spare A Dime”. Then his own songs, “The Corner Of Our Street”, a Cockney ‘Old Vic’ knees-up co-written with Squeeze mainman Chris Difford, the more affectionately reflective “When I Write My Book” about ‘playing guitar with Little Richard on the radio’, or the title track looking back to ‘when I was younger’ and ‘they all saw me on TV’. A song that poignantly concludes ‘in their mind’s eye that boy will never be extinct...’

Been there then. Back for more now. “And you won’t really hear me making derogatory comments about today’s music” he begins tactfully. “I’m very careful about what I say. It’s just that... these days it’s 90% image and about 10% music. In our day you still had to get up and do it. You had to have that bit of music in you. With a lot of groups now, you don’t. As long as you can move, and so long as you look good, you don’t need to sing or anything. You just get up and do it.”

But aren’t there parallels there with Skiffle? Weren’t you just saying that was cheap get-up-and-do-it DIY music as well? “I guess that’s true, because when I started out they said THAT was a load of rubbish too. But you’ve taken it a little bit out of context with what I mean.... anyway.... good luck to them I say” as a throw-away afterthought.

And what about bands like U2 and Oasis? “Oh, they’re good. You see, they’re very good. They don’t fall into the category of what I was saying. I had more in mind...”

Boy Bands, Techno, programmed drum machines, Dance Music? “Yes. THAT’s what I was talking about. ‘Cos I have used drum machines. They lay down a real solid beat, but what happens musically when you’re playing is that you get excited and you try to push ahead of it, but as soon as you start pushing, the bottom falls out of the whole thing. It goes to pieces on you and you just lose interest in it. A real drummer will move around, he gets faster, then slower, and it makes for more life in the music. D’yer know what I mean? It’s weird. THAT’S what I was trying to say. The thing about drummers is that everyone always has problems with drummers. It’s probably ‘cos they wanna HIT things, yeh? But I always prefer ‘em. It’s like anything else that’s got such a wide range. Sure, you have it all available to you, but you don’t have to use everything all of the time. I mean, I have a little 16-track studio set-up that I lay my demos down in. And when I’m writing songs on my own them things are very handy. If I haven’t got a drummer available then I’ll use an electronic beat to keep it together. I always lay the beat track down first with those things, but every now and then I’ll tweak ‘em. Where the chorus comes in I just edge it up a notch, so it gets faster. It’s hardly noticeable but it just pushes it on a little bit. People listen to my demo’s and say to me ‘how do you do that? it’s an electric drum thing but it gets FASTER at the end ?’ And I say ‘well, I just bloody TURN IT UP!’ And they go ‘I never fort of that.’ But I wouldn’t put it out on a record. I’ll take it off afterwards and stick a real drummer on. D’yer know what I mean, mate? ‘Cos the thing that REALLY bores me is – the CONSTANT BEAT! When you’ve got a throbbing beat that keeps the same time all the way through! It gets in your BRAIN...!!!” Joe Brown leans forward, enthusiastically warming to his subject.

Joe should know. I guess.

* ‘56 AND TALLER THAN YOU THINK’ by JOE BROWN
is available on Demon Records (1997, Demon FIENDED 790)

'ANDREW DARLINGTON'S ETERNAL ASSASSIN'

AT LAST, THE FULL AND

UNEXPURGATED PUBLICATION

OF:

'ANDREW DARLINGTON'S

ETERNAL ASSASSIN'

...a slim Dark Mood-Fantasy in the tradition of

Michael Moorcock or Jack Vance, 

(28pp) fully illustrated by

JAMES CAWTHORN

exclusively available from

Spectre Press

56 Mickle Hill

Sandhurst

Berkshire

GU47 8QU

ISBN: 0-905416-08-2

(all proceeds to charity)

POEM: "HOW DOES IT FEEL TO FEEL...?"

HOW DOES IT

FEEL TO FEEL…?

(Incident Sourced at ‘Jumbo Records’

St Johns Centre, Leeds) 

hey andy,
flipping vinyl in jumbo’s
Ian, great to see
bin a while, how long?
doin fine, I can see
how’s the lady? – oh
she’s not your lady now
stuff happens, man, yeh?
when she goes, she’s gone, but
we had happysad times though
partners in rhyme though
you & me, Ian, riffing verse
reelin in them years, wow!
how we did Blackburn…
driving down to Blandford
a high hi-fidelity weekend
Ian, crazy days drift away
what’s bin did & what’s bin hid
never forget, know warra mean?
flipping vinyl through futures past
yeh, we’re younger than that now
are you on Facebook, Ian?
see you there, great, great…

it’s only later
walking away,
no, it wasn’t Ian
it was Martin…




This poem is one of many published in the new issue of the wonderful ‘NEON HIGHWAY no.23’ (with guest editor: AC Evans). Contributors include Fiona Pitt-Kethley, Michael Woods, Rupert M Loydell, Alicia Winski and others.

It costs just £3 from:
Alice Lenkiewicz
37 Grinshill Close
Liverpool L8 8LD

enquiries to  neonhighwaypoetry@yahoo.co.uk

CULT ALBUM: 'JOHN'S CHILDREN AND A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S SCENE'

‘JOHN’S CHILDREN:

A MIDSUMMER

NIGHT’S SCENE’

The story of a flashy 1960’s cult group

seen through the lens of CD compilation:

‘THE COMPLETE

JOHN’S CHILDREN’

by JOHN’S CHILDREN

(Pilot Records 118, 2002)

There was a 1983 TV-ad for ‘Kit-Kat’ in which a music mogul auditions a new band. ‘You can’t sing, you can’t dance and you look awful. You’ll go a long way…!’ The punch-line must have worked something like that when Simon Napier-Bell first encountered John’s Children. There was a new breed of music manager in 1966. Larry Parnes and Brian Epstein had conclusively proved there was money to be made in spades from that crazy Pop stuff. They even named Parnes ‘Parnes Shillings & Pence’. But Parnes and Epstein were not exactly the models. It was more Andrew Loog Oldham who derived his cool from somewhere around Phil Spector, and promoted himself as much a dodgy-geezer star as the sometimes naff acts he managed. Using the Stones as touch-stone, and their songs in the same way that Epstein had used John-&-Paul cast-off hits to build his stable, Oldham scored with Chris Farlowe, Marianne Faithful, Twice As Much, and The Mighty Avengers. Others took note.

Simon Napier-Bell had been instrumental in promoting the Nicky Scott & Diane Ferraz boy-girl duo. He’d adapted an Italian melody into Dusty Springfield’s “You Don’t Have To Say You Love Me”. And he’d inherited the Yardbirds from eccentric Giorgio Gomelsky. He had a good eye for a scam. As ‘Black Vinyl, White Powder’ (2001, Ebury Press, ISBN 0-09-188092-0), his book of spaced-out, acid-tinged, technodelic memoirs makes clear. And John’s Children were both his best shot to crack the upper continuum of Pop celebrity, and his most contrived scam. The resulting score of classic vinyl might be slight – “Desdemona”, “Come And Play With Me In The Garden” and… maybe, “Midsummer Night’s Scene”. But the group burned bright, if briefly. In ‘Record Collector: 100 Greatest Psychedelic Records’ (Diamond Publications, 2005) David Wells writes ‘with its blissfully stoned repetition of the phrase ‘petals and flowers, petals and flowers’ and fey, wilting atmosphere, “Midsummer Night’s Scene” couldn’t really have come from any time other than the summer of 1967’. Inspired by the group’s slot on the bill of ‘The Fourteen-Hour Technicolour Dream’ Hippie Freak-Out Happening at the Alexandra Palace (29 April 1967) alongside Pink Floyd, Soft Machine, the Pretty Things, Tomorrow, the Crazy World Of Arthur Brown, plus John Lennon and Yoko Ono, it was a career peak, of sorts… surely?

From the West Surrey stockbroker-belt John’s Children were a flashy Mod four-piece cast from the Who/Small Faces template. In Great Bookham, near Leatherhead, personable blonde extrovert Andy Ellison and Boarding School-friend drummer Chris Townson had been involved with a number of local groups. Recruiting tall lanky guitarist Geoff McClelland and bass-player John Hewlett they managed to wangle some dates and build up a strong local fanbase. On a trip to St Tropez with Chris, wandering penniless, Hewlett fortuitously happened to collide with Napier-Bell in the ‘Voom Voom’ club, and blagged the group to his attention. ‘Oh, he’s the best seducer ever’ explained Chris, ‘if we want something from someone and everything else has failed, we send John along. He won’t tell us what he does, but it always works. It’s his eyes, I think.’ Sufficiently intrigued, Napier-Bell even bailed Chris out of jail, where he was facing vagrancy charges.

Later, back home, they were still called the Silence when Napier-Bell subsequently stumbled across them on a temporary-stage at the Burford Bridge swimming pool. And as he tells it in his other – totally scurrilous but irresistibly funny memoir ‘You Don’t Have To Say You Love Me’ (2005, Ebury Press, ISBN 0-0919-0272X), ‘they were dreadful. Positively the worst group I’d ever seen… none of them could play his instrument well enough to be called a musician. And although the singer, Andy, had a great talent for leaping up and down, he couldn’t actually sing’. For their eventual ‘Newcomers To The Charts’ box in ‘New Musical Express’ he goes on to expand his description of them as ‘completely arrogant, cripplingly honest, totally naïve and four good clean healthy lads’ (18 March 1967). Maybe be exaggerates for effect? Maybe not.

Certainly they had cheek, energy and attitude. They had EEL-LECT-TRY-CITY…!!! Perhaps that’s enough? It’s not as though musical excellence, technical virtuosity… or even functional competence has ever been an integral element or an essential qualification for Pop success. To merely suggest as much would be absurd. Looking cute is more vital than knowing your chord-shapes. And Napier-Bell knew a thing or two about cute boys. Hadn’t Kit Lambert promoted the Who into the charts through a barrage of controversy and outrage? Surely Napier-Bell could do the same with the newly renamed John’s Children? He signed them. Dressed them in all-over white. And took them into the recording studio… or, at least, he took one of them there!

He began with a backing track cut by Los Angeles session professions, dubbed Andy Ellison’s vocal across it, and thus John’s Children’s “Smashed Blocked” became an unlikely US ‘Billboard’ Hot Hundred entry. Feeding into the same kind of incoherent amphetamine speed-buzz that powered the stuttering ‘My Generation’ Andy Ellison emotes ‘please, I’m losing my mind, help me before it’s too late! My eyes are tired. Where are you? Where am I?’ as a discordant jangle fades in behind him. An effective promo now on ‘YouTube’, filmed in the basement of Peter Cook’s Greek Street ‘Establishment Club’, immaculately catches the moment, shadowy, blurry, a swirling red spiral op-art backdrop. The glisten of a single tear as Andy emotes ‘sometimes I cry’, or maybe it’s sweat? Andy helpfully explains ‘SMASHED was a Mod term for drunk, and BLOCKED was a Mod term for being pilled up – high on amphetamine’.

Written by Napier-Bell, taking and using their phrase to exploit the shock-value of cult drug-association to gravitate the frisson of attention, he then defused it so as not to scare wider audience access, via radio-play, when the single was issued through EMI’s Columbia label. More accessibly renamed “The Love I Thought I’d Found” in October 1966, this re-edited variant, the result of guerrilla surgery nip and tuck, renders the singer’s mental confusion more romantic, less pharmacological. Its attack becomes an embrace. So this miscalculated revision opens with a softening tacked-on verse resembling ‘Bring It On Home To Me’ as done by Herman’s Hermits, an impossibly fey foreplay before exploding into the centrifuge of guitar-effects climax with the disembodied ‘Smashed Blocked’ mid-to-echoed-fade ‘please, I’m losing my way. Help me now! Try to bring me back before it’s too late. Where am I…? Everything’s spinning…!’ like a Merry-Go-Round being sucked into a black-hole. The track falls one-millimetre short of becoming a garage psych-beat classic by virtue of what seems like this calculated loss of last-minute nerve. But flip the single, and even stranger there’s “Strange Affair” (by Napier-Bell with Kyle Ellison), a wondrous farrago which is kind of like Blur’s ‘Park Life’ as scripted by Joe Orton, the story of Ernie and the Vicar, recited with funny-voice narration, taking the story as far as Grimsby Fish Market. Was there ever commercial potential here? even as a wacky novelty…? It’s difficult to imagine.

With some momentum established, accelerated by their explosive live stage act, “Just What You Want, Just What You’ll Get” swiftly followed, with the rapid-crunch martial drumming in 5/4-time, a one-finger keyboard, and the title delivered in a hissy intimate-whisper, then a catchy Turtles-style ‘ba-ba-ba-ba’ chorus. Still entrusting the actual playing to seasoned studio musicians, Jeff Beck contributes a distinctively deep-burning solo to the ‘B’-side “But She’s Mine” which creatively rips-off and adapts the Who’s ‘Can’t Explain’ riff. A later ‘Melody Maker’ scribe finds even more, ‘every girl they fall for is a lie… (its) jut and thrust hold together a shuffling lexicon of rhymes that become interchangeable, hinting successively at Pop romance, then the embrace of a corpse (one of the band’s scarcely-submerged themes), and then the threat of utter non-sense. The girl… is made of contradictions, a perpetual shifting and threat to identity that JC are both attracted to and terrified by’ (Paul Oldfield, 6 August 1988). Which is perhaps a deconstruction too far? possibly reading a mite too much into it…? Maybe. The single nudged and nibbled the very foot of the charts, not entirely undue to Napier-Bell’s payola investment. According to Johnny Rogan’s book ‘Starmakers And Svengalis’ (MacDonald, 1988) chart-fixer Harvey Freed was hired for a few hundred pounds to elevate the single to no.28 in the ‘New Musical Express’ Top Thirty (the week of 18th March 1967). Such a showing was not enough to satisfy EMI however.

Nevertheless, the precarious purchase established in American awareness prompted their US label, White Whale, to agitate for a tie-in album which was duly cobbled together. As well as singles “Smashed Blocked”, “Just What You Want” and the forthcoming “Not The Sort Of Girl” there were new titles. The best of which was probably “Jagged Time Lapse” written by Hewlett with McClelland, provoked by the ‘flashing waves and violent thunder’ of a migraine attack Geoff was enduring. It fizzes and glows in spasms of distortion. This is energy forever. Yet in what seems like a further loss of nerve, Napier-Bell dubs live audience-screams (nicked from the soundtrack of ‘A Hard Day’s Night’) over the resulting tracks, either to paper-over the musical inadequacy, or to create an impression of massive English popularity. Coincidentally, the Byrds later also sampled the same Beatles scream-track for their music-industry satire “So You Wanna Be A Rock ‘n’ Roll Star”. Meanwhile, Napier-Bell also thought it a great idea to name the album ‘Orgasm’ – which further complicated matters. The label, despite having stumped-up the initial financial backing, lost its nerve, and delayed putting it out, fearing outraged conservative backlash. It was kept on permanent hold, and only finally emerged in 1970, by which time the group’s brief career-arc was well and truly over. A subsequent Cherry Red CD edition, expanded with bonus tracks, allows the opportunity of hearing the original un-dubbed tracks, which largely stand up well. Although, inexplicably, the version of “Strange Affair” included here is played backwards…!

Meanwhile, there was another single scheduled – “Not The Sort Of Girl You’d Take To Bed”, the kind of song-title the likes of Morrissey could make great play with. It counts in ‘1-2-3-4-5’ into nagging jerky lumpy rhythms with stinging fuzz guitar. She – the girl, is maybe a groupie who’ll brag about the sex afterwards, ‘your friends would be very proud if they heard you’d had me too’. He’s not keen, ‘I’d never think of kissing you… all I want of you I’ve had’, before the repeating staccato accusation ‘you’re sick! – sick!! – sick!!!’ It could be argued there’s a kind of in-your-face honesty here. Weren’t the broadsheet newspaper’s howling against the ‘permissive society’, wailing about pill-liberated teen promiscuity? Isn’t that what this record is all about? But despite Napier-Bell’s astute cash-from-chaos appraisal, flirting with the margins of what they could get away with, perhaps the scam was just a little premature, a little too ahead of the game? The title alone scared the label off. The group were promptly dropped.

Maybe the grand strategy was flawed, or at least needed further fine-tuning? Perhaps some degree of musical talent would be a positive asset after all? Napier-Bell grabbed the opportunity of renegotiating a new deal with Kit Lambert’s Track Records, to reshuffle the line-up, upgrading their flair in the process. Marc Bolan was a raggle-taggle talented misfit with turreted castles, wizards, gryphons, warriors and prancing horses living inside his head. He’d just penned his own strange third solo record called “Hippy Gumbo”, with Napier-Bell producing. A solo acoustic performer, his braying vocal style lacked – say, Donovan’s wistful romantic melodic quality. So he needed a convenient commercial vehicle to ignite his obvious potential. Napier-Bell remembers that ‘Marc definitely wanted to be a solo star. He never saw himself as anything else. But I persuaded him that John’s Children would be a good stepping-stone. I felt that if he was singing with John’s Children people would get used to his voice and he’d begin to find a market’. Andy Ellison once claimed the prime qualification for membership of John’s Children was that they were all the same height, so they looked uniform in press-photos. Well, 5ft 6ins Marc certainly blew that theory. Nevertheless his self-evident talent outweighed his lack of stature, and he was drafted into the group to replace guitarist Geoff McClelland, drawing “Hippy Gumbo” into the repertoire with him.

Amusingly, the press photos were hastily adjusted, with Geoff’s face simply cut-and-pasted away and replaced with Marc’s – and back then that literally meant scissoring and gumming! They promptly embarked on a German tour with Marc, supporting their new Track label-mates the Who, leaving for Nuremberg, and scheduled to return 18 April. But once plugged-in and wigged-out their deliberate attempts at upstaging the headliners ignited an escalating feud that led to spectacular levels of sensational outrage involving fake blood capsules, on-stage skirmishes, cherry-bomb explosions, whirling feathers, Bolan playing his Gibson SG with a length of chain, stage-diving and probably real blood too. A (possibly planted?) letter to ‘Melody Maker’ protests that the group’s performance was ‘the most atrocious excuse for entertainment I have ever seen. They issued forth a barrage of sound bearing no resemblance to anything on Earth – it was sickening’. Following a particularly riotous set at the 12,000-capacity Messehalle hall in Ludwigshafen, which assumes even more outrageous proportions with each telling – ‘a forty-five minute happening’ according to Marc, they were dropped from the tour. ‘People who see us play often think we’re out of our heads’ John told a hapless ‘Record Mirror’ interviewer (June 1967). Despite the altercation it’s significant that Townson was later asked to sit in on drums near the end of the Who’s UK tour in June that same year after Keith Moon injured himself demolishing his drum kit on stage. John acquitted himself well.

‘The reason we’re succeeding is ‘cos we do everything for ourselves… we don’t sit around waiting for publicity people to do all our promotional work for us’ insists Chris. Well, maybe. The journalist breathlessly adding ‘John’s Children don’t wait for questions, nor do they stop talking, nor does their enthusiasm ever drop for a second.’

As quirkily attractive as some of the group singles had been, the only ones with any creative depth and originality are those subsequently written for them during Marc’s brief stay as one of John’s Children. “Desdemona” – with its title-nod to the Bard’s murdered heroine of ‘Othello’, is the motherlode. This is as good as John’s Children were ever going to get. It’s a great little single. For the first time there’s a song and a performance strong enough to stand without the added buzz of inflated controversy. The curious lyric plays around with tasty titillation while further flaunting Marc’s cultural credentials with ‘just because Toulouse Lautrec painted some chick in the rude, doesn’t give you the right to steal my night, and leave me naked in the nude…’ But if there was ever going to be a John’s Children hit record, this was surely it? Then the moral guardians of the BBC took offence at the line ‘lift up your skirts and fly’, and promptly banished it from their hallowed airwaves. As a last-minute damage-limitation they played around with alternate lines, replacing the offending text with ‘why do you have to lie’, ‘why do you have to cry’ and for the final verse ‘why do you have to speak’. But it was too late. Admittedly, by then the BBC wasn’t the only voice in the ether, their chokehold was no longer absolute. And the Pirate-stations played “Desdemona” on high rotation. I well remember hearing its energy crackling from the transistor, with Marc’s frenzied bleating repeating the title behind Andy’s lead. Enticingly strange. Ahead of the game. Singles had charted on the strength of pirate-support… but no, not this time. Even a front-page ad in ‘New Musical Express’ failed to do the do. It was too late.

But wait, flip the single and ‘B’-side – “Remember Thomas à Becket”, is equally strong, making it a value-for-cash coupling. ‘What sounds like a strangled horse at the beginning is in fact a car skidding into a plate-glass window’ offers Andy by way of explanation, plus ‘a crate of empty wine bottles thrown down the stairs’. I’m not sure where Thomas à Becket fits into the lyric either, or why we should remember this ‘turbulent priest’ murdered at the behest of Henry II in 1170. Not that it matters. The song was promptly reworked. To Andy Ellison ‘with a new set of lyrics each time, we managed to get three or four songs out of what was originally a rip-off of a Small Faces tune’. Dropping the Thomas à Becket element, but with the song otherwise intact, it was launched as the follow-up ‘A’-side as “Come And Play With Me In The Garden”. It reprises the ‘come and play in the petals and flowers’ from ‘Midsummer Night’s Scene’ and adds the ‘why you always cold like ice-cream, don’t you know that love’s a nice dream?’ Again it’s a strong and highly-likely chart contender, with Pirate support, that failed to crack the Top Fifty.

Even the new ‘B’-side, “Sara Crazy Child” is another mysterious example of Marc Bolan’s early magic, and a late John’s Children’s gem. There’s a drum feed-in that again recalls the Small Faces, leading into a fractured fairytale lyric that’s pure Bolan referencing the Minotaur, and Sara’s ‘brother, the juke-box king’ who, ‘in summer he’s a young boy, but in winter he’s a bear’. Marc’s voice is clearly audible in the mix. Between the two releases there were at least three attempts at recording a viable singles version of “Midsummer Night’s Scene” – sticking with the close-Shakespeare theme but feeding in lines such as ‘eating the heat’, ‘disfigured with love’ and a reference to ‘the dance of the hours’ (from Amilcare Ponchielli’s ballet ‘La Gioconda’), its echoey emanations set against the primitive amplified dinosaur’s heartbeat of a brooding one-note bass-riff – before it was abandoned and shelved. Acetates briefly distributed at John’s Children’s own ‘Bluesette’ club in Leatherhead rapidly assumed such legendary collector’s status that its epic price tag even qualified for a mention on a BBC2’s ‘Antiques’ show. All three takes are salvaged onto ‘The Complete John’s Children’ CD compilation, the third involving ‘arguably, the first backward guitar chords used in recording… possibly psychedelic’ according to Andy on the liner notes.

For a BBC radio session DJ Brian Matthews urges ‘let’s turn on a groovy beat’ with the ‘mind-bending sound’ of John’s Children. They play Otis Blackwell’s “Daddy Rollin’ Stone” (‘B’-side of the Who’s “Anyway Anyhow Anywhere”) propelled by tribally solid backbeat, starting out as a passably goodish R&B cover it collapses midway into a ‘uh-hah, uh-hah, uh-hah, uh-hah’ vocal chant over relentlessly pounding drums. A phonetic nonsense, seemingly lifted from the background of “Just What You Want”. But as the crescendo of a sweaty club set, surely it must have worked as a powerful incendiary routine? Brian Matthews interviews John (as the only John present, they must be his children, right?), inviting him to explain what the group is aiming for. When the response is simply ‘I think we’re just putting across what we feel musically’ he probes deeper. Are John’s Children deliberately breaking down musical restrictions? ‘Well, we’ve been told we’re doing this’ he concedes, ‘but it’s not intentional. It might come across as we play that we’re doing this sort of thing, but we’re just going on stage playing what we feel’. He seems not entirely at ease doing the talking bit, as though his ‘seducer-magic’ is temporarily disengaged. Clearly this exchange is not about to result in startling revelations. Is Brian Matthews maybe out of his comfort-zone? Andy Ellison relates an anecdote about the staid veteran-presenter quizzing Napier-Bell ‘are the band on some kind of drugs?’ Probably not. Brian’s been doing this sort of thing since the dawn of BBC Pop, surely he’s seen them all come and go?

Brian Matthews calls Bolan the group’s ‘built-in writer of weird and wonderful songs’. And in a last-minute salvage-operation he enquires about the lyrics. Again John simply deadpans ‘the lyrics? Marc is the song’s main writer, and his are tremendous lyrics as far as we’re concerned’. With the sound of emptiness roaring around them. Elsewhere John is more expressive, telling ‘Record Mirror’ that ‘Marc’s songs are part of it, they’re super-dimensitive (!)… not just double meanings but millions of meanings’. John also adds that they’ve been working on an album, ‘yeah, it’s great, we’ve been recording it for the past month or so’. Maybe he was just referring to a sprawl of sessions done at ‘Spot’, a small studio in South Moulton Street, that result in a spread of demos, incomplete backing tracks and try-outs relegated to the archives, only to emerge as bonus CD tracks on compilations decades later? “Arthur Green” is pounding drums and echoplexed guitar. “The Perfumed Garden Of Gulliver Smith” – done complete on the BBC radio session, also appears as an instrumental demo. On “Hot Rod Mama” Bolan takes the second verse lead vocals, using auto-metaphors for his female object of desire, showing a lyric continuity with his later “Get It On” (‘You’re built like a car, you’ve got a hub cap diamond star halo’) and “Jeepster” (‘Just like a car you’re pleasing to behold, I’ll call you Jaguar if I may be so bold’). Then there’s “Mustang Ford” – another girl/car song ‘all put together with alligator leather’. The group reconfigured it into their final single “Go-Go Girl”, after being impressed by seeing the nubile dancers on a Hamburg TV-pop show they were guesting on. Although – yet again, it failed to chart, Marc also salvaged both songs for the debut long-player of his next project, Tyrannosaurus Rex’s ‘My People Were Fair And Had Sky In Their Hair, But Now They’re Content To Wear Stars On Their Brows’ (1968).

Although the group was no more, and he’d only been adopted as one of the Children for a brief time – rating as scarcely John’s step-child, as Marc’s glam-star rose into 1970’s glitter-Rock celebrity, eager archivists began excavating his past. And came up with these neglected gems which were newly re-polished with escalating collector price-tags. Elsewhere, the muses of time were also shifting. In 1975, Andy Ellison and Chris Townson formed Jet with former-Nice guitarist David O’List, for a new chapter of sonic adventures and vinyl history. Then there was Radio Stars. And Simon Napier-Bell? He eventually got the commercial equation right as manager of Wham! Meanwhile, here in retrospect, is John’s Children’s legacy to the youth of posterity. History tints events. People have their own interpretations. But they generated a sizable media buzz, even if it never quite translated into big bucks. Their score of classic vinyl might be slight – “Desdemona”, “Come And Play With Me In The Garden” and… maybe, “Midsummer Night’s Scene”. But they burned bright, if briefly. They were mad, crazy, dippy, disingenuous, irrational, and – as a targeted Pop product, not even especially commercial. But surely it’s chastening for indiePop kids to discover that every extreme they strive for in terms of drippy-soppiness and giddy-miasma dementia has already been exceeded here, simultaneously. John’s Children were fun in a way that’s totally absent from anything going on now. Irresponsible, for the hell of it…

JOHNS CHILDREN: ‘LIFT

UP YOUR SKIRTS AND FLY…’

‘Incredible Sound Show Stories Vol.5: Yellow Street Boutique’ (sampler featuring songs recorded by ‘The Silence’ – “Down Down”, “Cold On Me” and “Forgive Me If I’m Wrong” recorded on a Revox two-track during Summer 1965 by local enthusiast Pierre Tubbs)

14 October 1966 – “Smashed Blocked” (Simon Napier-Bell and Hewlett) c/w “Strange Affair” (USA, White Whale 239). Debut John’s Children single, backing-track done by L.A session musicians with Andy Ellison vocals. British ‘A’-Side retitled “The Love I Thought I’d Found” (UK Columbia DB 8030) in which form ‘Record Mirror’ review says ‘This is so unusual that it just gets a ‘tip’. Spoken intro over ‘space-age’ instrumental sounds, but it’s rather a patchy production thereafter. Maybe the slow opening will hold it back, but it deserves to do well for originality. Hard to describe… just play it! TOP FIFTY TIP’. While in the USA, December 1966, it makes the ‘Billboard’ Hot Hundred and local (Florida) Top 10.

3 February 1967 – “Just What You Want – Just What You’ll Get” (Hewlett, Townson, Ellison, McClelland) c/w “But She’s Mine” (UK Columbia DB 8124) ‘A’-side, backing by UK session musicians, Jeff Beck guests on ‘B’-side. ‘Record Mirror’ review says ‘Full marks for originality. Not so many for commercial prospects this time, but they ARE trying’. Nevertheless it enters the ‘New Musical Express’ chart at no.28 for the one week of 18th March. In Germany ‘B’-Side of February 1967 single “Smashed Blocked” is “Just What You Want...” (Polydor 59069)

‘Orgasm’ (Album, projected release, 18 March 1967 as White Whale 7128, withdrawn and finally issued September 1970) Recorded at ‘Tiles’ in Oxford Street, and Advision Studio, titled by Simon Napier-Bell who also dubbed a scream-track lifted from the ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ soundtrack to give the effect of a ‘live performance’ (or to ‘conceal their failings’). With “Killer Ben”, “Jagged Time Lapse”, “Smashed Blocked”, “You’re A Nothing” (‘pathological masculine thrust’), “Not The Sort Of Girl”, “Cold On Me”, “Let Me Know”, “Just What You Want” (plus “Leave Me Alone” and “Why Do You Lie” which ‘flirt with the residue of Merseybeat’s honied harmonies’). 1988 Cherry Red CD (CDM RED 31) is expanded to fourteen tracks with un-dubbed ‘studio’ versions of “Smashed Blocked” and “Just What You Want”, plus “But She’s Mine” and a reverse-tape version of “Strange Affair”. Sleeve notes by Chris Donovan. Reviewer Paul Oldfield writes ‘ignore every other punkadelic sixties band till you’ve heard this’ (‘Melody Maker’ 6 August 1988)

1967 – “Not The Sort Of Girl You’d Take To Bed” (Columbia) release cancelled

Born in Hackney in 1947, Marc Bolan’s pre-John’s Children solo singles started out with a one-sided acetate “The Road I’m On (Gloria)” (an old Dion ‘B’-side) recorded at Regent Sound Studios with producer Jim Economedes in early 1965 as by Toby Tyler (EMIDISC), subsequently reissued as a one-sided 7” single on Archive Jive TOBY1 in March 1990. A lost ‘B’-side of Bob Dylan’s “Blowin’ In The Wind” later turns up – issued in August 1993 (Zinc Alloy ZAR CDS9005). Then “The Wizard” c/w “Beyond The Rising Sun” issued as by ‘Marc Bowland’ (1965, Decca F12288) string-arrangement by Jim Leander and vocal back-up by The Ladybirds, performed on a ‘Ready Steady Go’ show with Wilson Pickett and the Small Faces. “The Third Degree” c/w “San Francisco Poet” by Marc Bolan (1966, Decca F12413), his last with producer Jim Economedes. And “Hippy Gumbo” c/w “Misfit” by Marc Bolan (early 1967, Parlophone R5539) produced by Napier-Bell, about which the ‘Record Mirror’ reviewer wrote ‘this one could easily make it because of the unusual, tense, dramatic voice used this time by Marc. Sort of wavering… like an old jazz singer’. Despite being picked up by John Peel and played on his ‘Perfumed Garden’ show, and promoted by a second ‘Ready Steady Go’ slot – alongside Jimi Hendrix, it sells only 200 copies. Its failure prompts Marc to accept Napier-Bell’s suggestion of a temporary liaison with John’s Children…

24 May 1967 – “Desdemona” (Marc Bolan) c/w “Remember Thomas à Becket” (Hewlett and Ellison) (Track Records 604-003, Germany Polydor 59-104), with Marc Bolan on ‘A’-side – he claimed to have written “Desdemona” in just 25-seconds!, and McClelland on ‘B’-side. Producer: Simon Napier-Bell. Track Records take out front-cover ad in ‘New Musical Express’. The track is later included on the Track Records compilation LP ‘Backtrack One’ (2407-001) Record Mirror review says ‘This is an intuitive tip for the Fifty – based on a feeling that this is very commercial though also rather different. Verse is well sung and the chorus, with ‘answering’ voice in the background, is both catchy and impacty. Strong guitar in parts and the beat is just right. Rather a refreshing slice of Pop. Flip: Noisier, also rather original – but not so strong. TOP FIFTY TIP’ In ‘NME’ Napier-Bell says about ‘Thomas à Becket’ ‘we decided to play safe with this and get right away from drugs and sex and into a good healthy murder. They wrote it themselves and it’s all about a fella who goes mad and begins playing funerals in his back garden!’(18 March 1967)

June 1967 – “Midsummer Night’s Scene” (Bolan) c/w “Sara Crazy Child” (Bolan) (Track Records 604-005) full length mix, release cancelled, and only a few copies distributed to fans at John’s Children gigs, making it highly collectible. Included on ‘Nuggets II: Original Artyfacts from the British Empire and Beyond 1964–1969’ (Rhino 4CD Box-set, June 2001). Bolan’s original ‘B’-side title was ‘Sister Crazy Child’

14 July 1967 – “Come and Play with Me In The Garden” (Ellison, Hewlett) c/w “Sara Crazy Child” (Bolan) (Track Records 604-005). Issued by three-piece line-up following Marc’s departure (he plays his final live gig with them 19th May, although he’s there 17 June for the BBC sessions), Marc plays on ‘B’-side only. Press ads feature the group nude ‘veiling their hairy bits with convenient hunks of shrubbery’, and the ‘Record Mirror’ review says ‘Drummy precussive (sic) opening, then group vocal for the flower-power group who are getting enough publicity to make it quite big this time. Chorus is catchy and the directness of the arrangement is effective. Odd little falsetto touches. What you’d call a ‘full’ sound. Flip: a Marc Bolan song, original, but just a shade monotonous. TOP FIFTY TIP’. A full un-edited version issued in Germany only (Polydor 59-116). “Come And Play With Me In The Garden” is later included on the Track Records compilation LP ‘Backtrack Two’ (2407-002)

6 October 1967 – “Go Go Girl” (Bolan) c/w “Jagged Time Lapse” (Hewlett and McClelland) (Track Records 604-010) ‘A’-side is a revision of Bolan’s “Mustang Ford” featuring Bolan on guitar, ‘B’-side from remaining recordings with Geoff McClelland (Germany Polydor 59-160). The ‘Record Mirror’ review said ‘these boys have so much going for them that they actually deserve a hit. This starts rather in olde-Rock style, yet up-dated – if you understand me. Wordless chanting a lot of the time, but with explosions of sound, plus organ, midway. It’s rather clever but I doubt if it’ll be a massive hit. Flip: guitar-intro and quite good lyrics. TOP FIFTY TIP’. While ‘NME’ says ‘If you can resist the compulsion to dance to this disc, you must be a Radio 3 listener! It’s a sizzling hunk of R-and-B, blended with psychedelic effects and oscillations, and strings – surprising, but effective – in the background. Ideal for discothèques, but the welter of big-name releases coming out simultaneously may prevent it from making the Chart. Flip: You’d expect something way-out from this title – and you’d get it. Not so much from the treatment, as from the lyric, which is very surrealistic. Unusual!’ Also issued in Greece as Polydor International 244.

Briefly, for live work, Chris Townson switched to guitar while former roadie Chris Colille (who also ran the ‘John’s Children Club’ in Leatherhead) took over on drums – he was ‘driver, substance procurer, raconteur (wreck on tour!), all-round nutter and brilliant guy’. There was a final German tour – including TV with Jimi Hendrix, before winding up at the Hamburg ‘Star Club’, after which the group split

Post-John’s Children Andy Ellison solo singles: “It’s Been A Long Time” c/w “Arthur Green” (December 1967, Track Records 604 018) Andy Ellison sings the ‘A’-side on the soundtrack of the movie ‘Here We Go Round The Mulberry Bush’. The ‘B’-side is the final recording from John’s Children, with Chris Colille helping out on drums. The second solo Andy Ellison single is “Fool From Upper Eden” c/w “Another Lucky Lie” (March 1968, CBS 3357). The third and final solo single is “You Can’t Do That” (Lennon-McCartney) c/w “Cornflake Zoo” (Andy Ellison and Marc Bolan) (May 1968, SNB 55-3308, Simon Napier-Bell’s own label). Two other solo cuts, a big-band arrangement of the Beatles “Help” and “Casbah Candy” (aka “Jasper C Debussy”) – written by Marc Bolan, remain unissued until ‘The Complete John’s Children’ CD anthology

June 1972 – Marc Bolan solo single “Jasper C Debussy” c/w “Hippy Gumbo” + “The Perfumed Garden Of Gulliver Smith (acoustic)” (Track 2094-013), three tracks recorded with Simon Napier-Bell from 1966. Nicky Hopkins on piano. Single withdrawn but eventually released June 1974

June 1974 – Marc Bolan ‘The Beginning Of Doves’ (Track 2410, reissued Media Motion MEDIA2), with underground elf Tyrannosaurus Rex, then Glam-Slam T Rex the biggest band in Britain, this is a timely and useful compilation of Marc’s very earliest recordings, the acoustic solo tracks put down at the De Lane studios with Napier-Bell in late-1966, then two tracks from the later session used for the re-recording of the “Hippy Gumbo” single, and finally informal Napier-Bell-produced tracks of Marc with Steve Peregrine-Took prior to their first Regal Zonophone session. Includes “Jasper C Debussy”, “Lunacy’s Back”, “Beyond The Risin’ Sun”, “Black And White Incident”, “Observations”, “Eastern Spell”, “You Got The Power”, “Hippy Gumbo”, “Sara Crazy Child”, “Rings Of Fortune”, “Hot Rod Momma”, “The Beginning Of Doves”, “Mustang Ford”, “Pictures Of Purple People”, “One Inch Rock”, “Jasmine ‘49”, “Charlie”, “Misty Mist”, “Cat Black” and one-half of a John’s Children demo “Sally Was An Angel”

1974-1976, JET – formed by Andy Ellison and Chris Townson (who had been playing with Jook since John’s Children), with Martin Gordon (bass, ex-Sparks), David O’List (guitar, ex-Nice and Roxy Music) and Peter Oxendale (keyboards). They tour with Ian Hunter-Mick Ronson, and issue one LP, ‘Jet’ in May 1975 (CBS S-80699) and two singles “My River” c/w “Quandry” (March 1975, CBS 3143) and “Nothing To Do With Us” (June 1975, CBS 3317). A subsequent compilation, ‘Nothing To Do With Us’ (double CD Fan Mael Records) includes everything Jet ever recorded, the LP coupled with demos and all sorts of non-album track. Jet also played back-up for ex-Glitter Band frontman John Rossall’s solo single “I Was Only Dreaming”, which was later collected onto 1987 ‘Great Glam Rock Explosion’ compilation (Biff Biff 3). Chris augmented the (Hammersmith) Gorillas briefly for a Cheswick single “She’s My Gal” (July 1976)

1977-1979, RADIO STARS – Glam-Rock Jet evolved into post-Punk New Wave Radio Stars, with Andy Ellison (vocals), Chris Townson (drums, replaced by Paul Simon, then Steve Parry, then Jamie Crompton), Ian MacLeod (guitar) and Martin Gordon (bass). They make their TV debut on ‘Marc’ – Marc Bolan’s show playing power-Pop second single “No Russians In Russia” (later featured on Chiswick compilation ‘Long Shots, Dead Certs And Odds-On Favourites’, April 1978)! And the ‘B’-side of single “Nervous Wreck” c/w “Horrible Breath” (no.39, in February 1978) was a Marc Bolan song (“Dan The Sniff”) dating from the John’s Children period. This time they manage three CD’s for Chiswick – ‘Songs For Swinging Lovers’ (December 1977, WIK5), ‘The Radio Stars Holiday Album’ (September 1978, CWK3001) and ‘Something For The Weekend’ (March 2008, Radiant Future RSVP010CD) before splitting. They leave a compilation CD ‘Somewhere There’s A Place For Us’ (Chiswick CDWIKD107)

‘Music For the Herd of Herring’ CD by John’s Children – live (2001, Radiant Future Records REVP001CD) Prompted by renewed archival interest in John’s Children during the mid-nineties, Andy Ellison reforms the group with Boz Boorer (guitar) and Martin Gordon (bass) from Radio Stars, performing gigs in Britain, Italy, Spain and the USA. In 1999, Ellison, Townson and Gordon recruit Leatherhead guitarist Trevor White (ex-Sparks) and Ian Macleod (ex-Radio Stars) to tour a repertoire of John’s Children songs, with additional material from Jet and Radio Star. This CD was recorded in Britain, the Netherlands and Germany.

‘Black & White’ (Acid Jazz AJXCD 234, sessions begun in 1999, but issued in June 2011) New recordings by the reformed line-up of Andy Ellison, Chris Townson (drums), Boz Boorer (guitar) and Martin Gordon (bass) with a new mix of old and new titles, including “Train In My Head”, “Sara Crazy Child”, “Lazy Sunday”, “Eleanor Rigby” and “I Got The Buzz”. John’s Children officially reform again in June 2006 with Ellison, Hewlett and Townson plus guitarist Trevor White. Until Townson’s death in February 2008

Compilations

February 1988 – ‘A Midsummer Night’s Scene’ (Bam Caruso MARI 095 CD) with “Smashed Blocked”, “Just What You Want, Just What You’ll Get”, “Desdemona”, “Remember Thomas A Beckett”, “It’s Been A Long Time”, “Arthur Green”, “Midsummer Night’s Scene”, “Sara Crazy Child”, “Jagged Time Lapse”, “Go-Go Girl”, “Come And Play With Me In The Garden”, “Hippy Gumbo”. Reviewer Simon Reynolds writes ‘John’s Children were one of those mid-sixties beat groups like The Eyes or The Creation who were too extreme to make it, while more professional ‘accomplished’ peers like The Yardbirds and the Who prospered’ (‘Melody Maker’ 20 February 1988)

1997 – ‘Smashed Blocked!’ (New Millenium Communications NMC Pilot 12) with “Hippy Gumbo”, Hot Rod Mama”, “Perfumed Garden Of Gulliver Smith”, “Sally Was An Angel (instrumental)”, “Jagged Time Lapse” (BBC session)

1997 – ‘Jagged Time Lapse’ (NMC Pilot 18)

1999 – ‘John’s Children’ (EP) – 1999, Trash (LARD 20 07 99)

2002 – ‘The Complete John’s Children’ (NMC Pilot 118) 2CD set, 31-tracks including BBC sessions, instrumental versions of “Come And Play With Me In The Garden”, “Perfumed Garden Of Gulliver Smith” and instrumental original “Sally Was An Angel” (probably a uncompleted backing-track), with solo Andy Ellison tracks “Help” and “It’s Been A Long Time”

INTERVIEW: 'THE FLIGHT LOG OF GRACE SLICK AND JEFFERSON AIRPLANE'

AMAZING GRACE:

THE FLIGHT LOG OF

GRACE SLICK &

JEFFERSON AIRPLANE

In the 1960’s they sang ‘fly JEFFERSON AIRPLANE,

get you there on time...’ And GRACE SLICK’s flight-plan

with the band took in the Monterey, Woodstock, and

Altamont Festivals, the high – and low points of Hippie-dom.

Then the STARSHIP enterprise boldly took her to new highs –

three American no.1 hit singles with slightly less adventurous, but

monstrously mega-platinum MOR Rock. And it’s all here.

Three decades of the most outrageous Rock Life-Style excesses

...in this interview with ANDREW DARLINGTON

‘years, or maybe centuries from now, someone

will discover that there really was a music of the spheres,

and it will sound not unlike the music the

Airplane plays in the moments of its highest flight...’

                                                   (Lillian Roxon - 1969)

Years, and decades – if perhaps not yet centuries later, I’m interviewing Grace Slick. I’d been pre-warned by the publishers of her new book ‘Somebody To Love?’* that she is ‘feisty’. I’d read the previous interviews too. I know her reputation. To Philip Norman (writing in his 1993 biography of ‘The Stones’) Jefferson Airplane were ‘a band of psychedelic chamber musicians fronted by the vengefully beautiful and beady-eyed Grace Slick’. Even then they were a band capable of putting the psychotic into the psychedelic. And even Marty Balin – founder and co-pilot of the Airplane once confided that ‘back in the sixties her nickname was ‘ICE’, you know. Her whole trip is self-destruction’ (‘New Musical Express’ 29th June 1987). While now Danny Sugerman – who wrote the Doors biography ‘No-one Here Gets Out Alive’ (1980, with Jerry Hopkins) and ‘Wonderland Avenue: Tales Of Glamour And Excess’ (1989) claims that in her book ‘Grace has finally lifted up her skirt and given us a view you won’t soon forget... ‘

Born Grace Wing, she’s been the Dark Angel of Rock, the Ice Queen and the Chrome Nun, and her book is a Bliss-O-Rama of Acid Flashback visions and twisted wisdoms. But – pre-warned, I start off gradually by asking what she’s wearing, and where exactly she’s speaking from. Telephone interviews are fine if there’s no other option available, but you miss all kinds of minutia of body language, facial expression, and personal-space ambience. It helps if you can build up some kind of visual impression in your head of what the other end of the line is like. ‘I’m at home. I live in Malibu which is on the... er... Pacific...’ she replies, more evenly now. ‘Yeh. Well, right now I’m standing in front of the fax machine, because the fax-line is running, and looking partially at the ocean which is covered with fog at the moment...’

‘PILLOWS ARE FOR

DREAMING. BUT THIS

ONE ALSO FLIES’

(JEFFERSON AIRPLANE press ad

for ‘SURREALISTIC PILLOW’

                       – September 1967)

Andrew Darlington: In your book you seem to date the start of your musical career from an incident where – as an early teenager, you go into a record shop with the intention of buying “La Bamba” by Ritchie Valens – but wind up listening to Lenny Bruce instead. You write ‘I knew I’d found a soul mate’. And in fact you devote more text-space to describing the effect that Bruce had on you than you do to any musician. And later, of course, you wrote a song for your first band – Great Society (“Father Bruce”), about him.

 

Grace Slick: Well, Lenny Bruce, Miles Davis, Edvard Grieg (Norwegian composer of the ‘Peer Gynt Suite’) – those people had an impact on me, and DID influence the music. I was watching a recent documentary about a painter who said that he is more influenced by what he’s READ than what he’s SEEN! Which is a very interesting remark. In other words, when he reads, there will be a scene or description of a person that will – er – create or BECOME real in his mind, and he wants to bring that to life visually. So Lenny Bruce influenced the way I speak, and how what I’m saying comes out. That’s very important. Lenny Bruce could have influenced the way an artist DRAWS. Or the way an actor ACTS. Or the way somebody views POLITICS. He was very important to me in how I thought about politics. Which end I wanted to be on. Who I was fighting for, or not. So, Lenny Bruce had a very powerful influence on me, and so he DID influence the music.

You took his attitude? Well yeh, in other words. He brought to light some extreme problems in the so-called marvellous democratic society that we think we have in this country. And instead of just going along thinking you’re fabulous, he brought to light that NO, we aren’t quite as marvellous as we think we are – and HERE’S where the problems are. And he did it with a sense of humour. So that was just irresistible to me.

After working with Great Society around San Francisco clubs you were recruited by Jefferson Airplane, who’d already released an album (‘Jefferson Airplane Takes Off’, September 1966). Before reading your account of the process in the book I’d imagined that you’d perhaps seen Airplane in their first incarnation, when they were fronted by Signe Anderson, and seen her as a rival, a kind of ‘Wow – I could do that!’ Exactly. Yeh. I looked at it (the band) and thought ‘I can do that’ – ‘cos I knew I could carry a tune, I mean, there’s my parents - they used to sing around the house, just for the hell of it. And I know I can more or less carry a tune, so I figured I could probably do that. It just seemed like a reasonable thing to do at the time (Jefferson Airplane then consisted of Jorma Kaukonen – lead guitar, Jack Casady – bass, Spencer Dryden (replacing Skip Spence) – drums, Paul Kantner – rhythm guitar, Marty Balin – vocals, and Grace – vocals).

Your first album with Jefferson Airplane – ‘Surrealistic Pillow’ (February 1967), became massive and spawned two American Top Ten singles, “Somebody To Love” (no.5 on the 6th May 1967) and “White Rabbit” (no.8 on the 1st July 1967). What was it like when suddenly Airplane became, not only one of the two biggest bands in America (the other being the Doors), but also the most visible face of the whole new San Francisco ‘Hippie’ scene? Was it scary? I’m sorry – what? I didn’t get the first part of that question. Yes – was it what? Oh no, it wasn’t frightening, because there were about twenty bands at that time, some from Europe – couple from New York, couple from L.A. – and so, there were a bunch of us who were out on the road doing that, and I felt that we were doing it. It wasn’t a matter of narrowing it down to Airplane. I thought it was a generation of people making various remarks through music. It wasn’t like I’m here doing this all alone. It was a whole bunch of us. So – no, it wasn’t frightening, it was kinda fun as far as I can determine.

In Jefferson Airplane Paul Kantner seemed to be delineating the generational aspects of the Hippie dream that the Airplane supposedly represented through confrontational lyrics such as ‘loyalty to their kind, they cannot tolerate our minds, Loyalty to our kind, we cannot tolerate their obstruction’ (“Crown Of Creation”), asserting that – unlike previous generations ‘this generation’s got soul’. At the same time Timothy Leary was writing about the supposed evolution in the psyche which our generation had over the previous generation. Were you suckered by all that? You always seemed to be more into realism. Well – I’ve got a little darker eye. I live more in a... I’m a little bit more sceptical, and cynical than – er – Paul Kantner. Or Leary. I don’t have that ‘let’s all go to the moon together and storm the Capitol and all that kind of stuff’. But it’s not necessarily more healthy that way. I’m not saying that I’m right either, I’m just saying that I happen to view things that way. I’m not going to assume that that flower’s gonna bloom. I wait till it BLOOMS before I get REAL excited. You know what I’m saying? It’s a PROBABILITY, but it’s not absolute. There aren’t ANY absolutes that I’m aware of – except death and taxes, they say. Y’know? – so I just view everything with the attitude that it is POSSIBLE (pronounced ‘PAWSIBLE’). When I went to the White House it was with my tongue planted firmly in my cheek, rather than with any intent of the ‘purest’ nature. I don’t go there with any of that kind of stuff. I don’t know what the hell the ‘purest nature’ is anyway (Grace and Yippie activist Abbie Hoffman were turned away from the East Gate of the White House 24th April 1970, when they tried to attend Trish Nixon’s Garden Party there organised for alumni of Finch College, Grace’s former school. Hoffman later joked to ‘Rolling Stone’ magazine ‘I wouldn’t let Ms Slick go in there alone. I understand they lose a President every three years. It’s a dangerous place’).

When I was a kid delivering newspapers in 1969 I came across the headline ‘CHARLIE MANSON’S HIPPIE DEATH SQUAD MURDERS’ – and I thought ‘No! – Hippies don’t DO that, Hippies are Love ‘n’ Peace’. I was suckered by that Hippie illusion. There aren’t any heroes. Some people do some things very well, but that same person is gonna be hideous in another area, i.e. – Hitler loved his dogs, OK? Jeffrey Dahmer was probably real nice to the mailman or something. There aren’t people who are all good or all bad. And the second you decide somebody’s all BAD – you’re wrong! It just doesn’t work that way. The second you decide somebody’s all GOOD –you’re wrong too. Mother Theresa was fine, she’s out there saving lepers and all that, but she’s HELL as far as business goes. She wanted what she wanted, and by god she’d walk over you to get another hospital in Tangier or wherever (in the April 1981 issue of ‘US’ magazine Grace also commented about Mother Theresa that ‘she’s suppressing the Hitler in her’!). So EVERYBODY is an ass-hole. And EVERYBODY is an angel. You can’t land on either side. Because it just isn’t happening that way.

Were you aware of Hippie-doms ‘darker side’ at the time? Well you see – I didn’t call myself or anybody else a ‘Hippie’. Herb Cohen – a San Francisco columnist made that term up. So that’s it – these are PEOPLE. They’re not HIPPIES, they’re people. And some people are gonna murder people, and some people aren’t. Some HIPPIES are gonna murder people. And murder each other. And some Hippies aren’t. So it’s not a matter of whether or not you’re a Hippie. It’s like, the Catholic Church is not all good. Hideous things were taking place during the Inquisition. And yet at other times there are some Catholics out there saving people. Same thing. Again – it’s 50/50. It’s Yin/Yang. There is no... it’s not just all Yang – it’s Yin and Yang together.

There’s a very good chapter in your book about your very first LSD trip, which was conducted according to Tim Leary’s recommended method – with a non-participating guide. Yeh. It’s a REAL powerful drug. It’s not like just getting kinda loaded on alcohol and putting a lampshade on your head. It’s not an EASY drug to take. If you’re not psychologically in balance... IT – IS – A – ROUGH – DRUG! But if you’re in a good frame of mind – which fortunately I was when I took it, then it’s very exciting and very eye-opening and mind-altering, and all that sort of ... and all those other cliché’s. But what if you’re NOT in psychologically good condition...? It’s best to have somebody with you. People assume they can fly. I mean – and you know, you CAN’T! So you’ve got to have somebody there saying ‘ah – not now, maybe later’ (laughter). So it’s a good idea to be ‘in nature’. Ah – it’s a good idea to have somebody be a guide with you, and it’s also a good idea to take it with somebody else. So that you have a frame of reference.

In your book you talk about recording the Jefferson Airplane albums, and the constant consumption of chemicals that took place while you were in the studio. Do you now accept that perhaps if you had been under greater control – at least in the studio, that the albums might have been in some ways better? Yes. I’ve always wanted... I always wanted to do more practising, so that we knew a song so well that when you go on stage or go into a recording studio, then you can elaborate on it, or improvise or something. But – I was always sort-of jealous of the tightness of Crosby Stills & Nash harmonies. Their harmonies were so beautiful and so pristine. But – on the other hand, our not knowing led to a lot of improvising that would not otherwise have happened. So – either way, it’s OK. If you practice a lot, then you get a really pristine clean sound. And if you don’t practice then you get some... er, interesting improvising. So – either way is OK. It was just, at the time – I thought, I would have liked to have practised a bit more than we did.

Just that it’s the unpredictability and the occasional unevenness of the Airplane albums that makes them artistically fascinating. Oh good. Thank you, I like to hear that (laugh). That makes up for a lot of wanting more practice.

‘GO ASK ALICE. SHE USED

TO KNOW ALL ABOUT DRUGS,

BUT NOW SHE’S DEAD...’

(Press ad for the Corgi Paperback

novel edition of ‘Go Ask Alice’

by ‘Beatrice Sparks’, 1971,

October 1973, 30p)

‘What Is Your Favorite Stripe On The (American) Flag?’ (It’s posed as ‘Question Of The Day’ on the reverse of the ‘Volunteers’ (November 1969) album sleeve. Grace’s answer then was ‘Point that thing somewhere else’.) What’s your answer now? The fourth one. The fourth stripe has always been my favourite.

Any particular reason? Because it’s right about... it’s right there, it’s the fourth one down from – y’know where there’s the square full of stars? I mean not the fourth one down from the top. But the fourth one down from the bottom of that square. That’s the best stripe in the flag (this is all delivered seriously dead-pan. Is this a send-up or what?)

 The ‘Volunteers’ album was reviewed as ‘arguably the best rock album 1970 has yet produced, and certainly it’s one of the best things the Airplane have done’ (‘New Musical Express’ - 21st March 1970). Yet following its release Jefferson Airplane fragmented into solo projects... Well – yeah. We couldn’t find Jack and Jorma! They were in one of the Scandinavian countries speed-skating. They got real interested in speed-skating. They were over there, and we had no idea even what country they were in. So Paul and I just sorta started making our own albums – ‘Sunfighter’ (1971) and ‘Baron Von Tollbooth And The Chrome Nun’ (1973) and some solo-album type things. Until we figured out where we wanted to go from there. And then Paul sort-of got into forming Jefferson Starship on the kind-of next-step deal. He had an album called ‘Blows Against The Empire’ (1971) that went very popular. It talked about going off in a starship – so he called it ‘Jefferson Starship’. But we literally didn’t know where Jack and Jorma were. So we were (laughs) just kinda waiting around, and we got bored waiting.

It’s generally accepted that those solo projects – including Jack Casady and Jorma Kaukonen’s spin-off band Hot Tuna, weakened the integrity of Airplane. Was that something that was inevitably bound to happen, given the diversity of talent within the Airplane tribe’s irregular alliance? When you say ‘inevitable’ it depends on a lot of different things. In other words – the Rolling Stones are still together. And who knows why? But they are. There’s a variety of reasons for that. It might be the genetic make-up of each member of the group, or it might be what happened two weeks ago – who knows? Who knows why groups break up? You know – who knows why they’re still together? Who knows why marriages break up? And yet others stay together. It’s the same dance. The same scenario.

Grace married Jerry Slick when she was twenty-one, but sexual honesty was as much a part of the ‘Hippie Dream’ as recreational or spiritual drug-use. And Grace’s book describes her sexual encounters with Spencer Dryden, Jack Casady, Jorma Kaukonen, and – of course, Paul Kantner with whom she had a child. All of which occurred while she was still technically married to Jerry! While ‘The Observer’ newspaper recently carried a further excerpt from her book – one that claims ‘I regret not getting Jimi Hendrix into bed, and not getting Peter O’Toole’, in their ‘Quotes of the Week’ column alongside all the portentous pronouncements of politicians. Alright. Ah – Ha-ha...

Do you feel that when you work in close proximity with people, in an office, a factory, or as you did in your sexual relationships with various members of the Airplane – a Rock band, that sexual intrigue is inevitably likely to result. And for a band on tour, sharing a double room tends to save on expenses! Yeah – sure they do. It’s like Pat Benatar married her guitar player. And there was everybody in Fleetwood Mac doing it. And the Mamas & Papas – generally that happens. It’s hard not to love people, I think. I think it’s a very good thing to love people. It’s too bad we have that possessiveness that we do. THAT’S what gets us into trouble. But loving people you work with is wonderful. It’s a whole hell of a lot better than hating them! But possessiveness – generally, will get in the way. People are very possessive. But apart from that – ah, the loving of the people you’re with is fun. Fun. Interesting. A way of connecting, y’know?

Virtually the only member of the band you didn’t ‘sexually connect’ with was Marty Balin. And in your book he comes across as a very enigmatic figure. He is enigmatic. I think he’ll even cop to it. Some days he’ll be delighted with the world, y’know – ‘I felt wonderful and I walked on the beach blah-blah-blah’, and then the next day he’ll be gone. And we’d say ‘well, what happened?’ He wouldn’t show up. ‘Well – I had to walk on the beach’ or ‘I had to go...’, I mean, you – I, just never knew what was happening there. But he’s fascinating. It’s fascinating to see somebody move like a child. Children can move very quickly from one emotion to another. And he’s very much like a child in that he can move quickly from one frame of mind into another.

One product of that period of solo projects I always enjoyed was your ‘Sunfighter’ (November 1971) album (released as by ‘Grace Slick & Paul Kantner’). You’ve described on a number of occasions how you came to write “White Rabbit”. And in your book you explore the history behind your song “Lather”. But what is ‘Sunfighter’s opening track – “Silver Spoon”, all about? Ah – “Silver Spoon”? That’s not, is that the... is the other line ‘cannibal soup’? Yes? Well that was – we were living in Bolinas at the time which is, there was a kind of a... a lot of Hippies around there. And I was getting hammered by that kinda deal because you gotta make your own bread, you gotta be a vegetarian, and you gotta do... so I was annoyed with that. You shouldn’t shave your armpits, don’t wear any make-up – you gotta be REAL. And I thought ‘fuck all that shit’. I wanna hear, and I wanna do what I wanna do. So I wrote a song that was purposely kind-of disgusting. Just to shock those people. Usually I was interested in shocking or making fun of the Right Wing. In this particular case I was trying to shock the Hippies, because... they were talking about not eating meat, and being pure and all that kind of stuff, and I just thought ‘Oh Christ’, everybody’s 50/50. You’re going around thinking you’re pure? You’ve got your head up your ass! So I wrote the song because at some point you could be faced with the decision to eat your brother! In this country there were some people coming across from the East Coast to the West Coast – and they got stuck for months in a blizzard. I believe it was in the Donner Pass in Colorado (they were pioneers in 1846), and they were there some months – they couldn’t get out, too much snow. People were dying. Pretty soon they ran out of food ‘cos there was no way to get in, no way to get out. Because they were stuck in the blizzard. So they had to eat the people who’d died. And they were called the ‘Donner Party’. So I was sorta making a song...

‘...what if you were starving to death, and all you had to eat....’ (quote from “Silver Spoon”) ? ...that’s right. What would you do? Yes – what WOULD you do? In certain circumstances you do things that you ordinarily would not. And is that wrong? The guy’s dead! Who cares? It’s just food. Everything on this planet depends upon – we KILL to eat. You may be killing a broccoli. But you’re killing. The problem with eating meat now is that it is not sudden, it’s brutal, it’s a long process of putting these animals into pens and shooting them full of drugs, and they get so insane from confinement that they sometimes even bite themselves to death. I mean – that’s torture. But if you have to eat something – you go kill a broccoli, or you go kill a whatever. I was just objecting to their flat-out statement that ‘this is wrong, that’s wrong’ – who knows? You may have to eat your SISTER at some point. WAKE UP!

‘Frank Zappa once said –

I believe, that today’s

revolutionary is tomorrow’s

boring old fart. Grace

Slick may be living proof

of that axiom on record...’

                    (journalist Sandy Robertson

         writing in ‘Sounds’ 10th May 1980)

As early as May 1968 ‘IT (International Times)’ had warned ‘Grace is at her best when she is at her least slick’. And later in your career, when you do become more controlled and more digitally perfect – around the time of your successes with the Starship troupers in the eighties, you become more commercially accomplished, but less artistically interesting. Well – yeah, but there was a lot of fear... there was a fear around money. The people in Starship had families, and, in other words, people didn’t want to experiment with weirdo songs. Because they were afraid they wouldn’t sell. They were afraid. There was a lot of fear in that. Now – it was a commercial band, and Starship actually sold more... I mean, had more no.1 singles and all that kind of stuff, than Airplane ever had. So – it was a commercial band. And we had played our instruments or sung long enough to know what we were doing. So it was relatively easy to go into a recording studio and make a song. But I don’t think they were quite as interesting. I prefer, for myself – to go, ‘I’ll write the song that I sing. Paul writes his thing, Suzi – you write this, Freida, Joe – y’know, whatever’. So, I like it when the bands write their own songs. I really was not all that fond of singing somebody else’s song. I mean – there was a song that went to no.1, it was called “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now”, and it was written by Diane Warren. And I like her – as a person. She’s very funny. Very bright. Loves writing. She stays in her little studio and writes all day long – sixteen hours a day. She’s amazing. And I like her. But “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now”? I don’t believe that. That comes from Diane. A truck will stop you in five seconds flat. I DON’T BELIEVE that nothing’s gonna stop you! I’m cynical. I think that there is a great possibility that this romance is not gonna last more’n six months. So, I would not have written a love song in that way. So I’m basically singing something I don’t believe. And I don’t like that. It’s a good song. But not for me, ‘cos I don’t believe it. Somebody who believes that ought to sing it. That’s what’s important. So I don’t think I’m right or Diane’s wrong or any of that kind of stuff, I just think that somebody who believes those words ought to be singing them.

Diane Warren has written lots of MOR hit songs. Well – I was amazed, ‘cos I just saw it on TV the other night somewhere, that she can write for anybody. She has written for Rock bands too, and she also writes for – er... but I’m not just talking about her necessarily... there was another no.1 song we had which was “We Built This City On Rock ‘n’ Roll”. Everybody assumes we were talking about San Francisco. It was not written by us. It was not written about San Francisco. It was written by a British guy – Bernie Taupin, about L.A.! So – you see what I mean? It’s a good song. But it doesn’t have anything to do with me. He was talking about - there was a grey time in the early Seventies when cops were closing clubs or something – I couldn’t give a shit! That’s not gonna last long. I couldn’t give a shit whether they close the clubs in L.A. OK – so they close the Clubs. They’re gonna re-open them all in a month anyway. Everybody needs Clubs. So – y’know, I’m singing songs that I really don’t care about, and lyrics I don’t believe in. And I think that’s a mistake. You shouldn’t do that. I had fun during the Eighties. It was OK. I can DO it. It’s not like I CAN’T do it. I’m a professional in the sense that I’ve been doing it over a long time, but I would prefer to sing songs where I know the lyric, I know what I’m talking about because I WROTE it.

So your current activities are restricted to book-signings and promotions for your autobiography. Ah – well, I certainly did meet a lot of people, ‘cos we did book-signings over here in the book stores. So I ran into a whole hell of a lot of people in New York, San Francisco, Toronto – places like that. And it was very interesting. But in this country its already been released some time ago, so I’ve already done it here. Only now it’s being released in Britain – or the UK, or whatever you like to be called.

Didn’t that promotion give you a renewed taste for interfacing with an audience, and perhaps give you an appetite for doing something like an MTV Unplugged? I don’t DO that now. I haven’t been in a Rock ‘n’ Roll band for ten years. And I don’t even think about it. In other words it’s a little bit anachronistic. It’s just... I’m not there. So, it’s a little odd. It’s sort-of like going around representing an airline company when you don’t fly anymore – it’s like ‘huh, what am I doing here?’ It was interesting. Almost anything is interesting if you get the right frame of mind. But no – I don’t like old people doing Rock ‘n’ Roll. I think it’s kind-of pathetic. Yeah, I’m sure that if people – if the person whose doing it likes to do it, then that’s fine. It’s just that I think – I feel SAPPY!!!, at age 59, singing ‘UP AGAINST THE WALL MOTHER-FUCKERS!’ (quoting a line from the ‘Volunteers’ track “We Can Be Together”) . It’s STOOOO-PID. Or – as a non-practising alcoholic, singing ‘feed your head’ – it’s not pertinent. Now, if I were to write an album of songs talking about the way I feel and am right now, it would be rude to an audience, because they want to hear – understandably, ‘why don’t you play “White Rabbit”, why don’t you play dada-dada-dada’. I don’t want to DO that. And you can’t do that to an audience – you can’t go out and say ‘I’m not gonna SING that...’ (in bratty little girl voice). Well then – don’t sing. So I don’t.

Nevertheless, this opportunity of speaking to you has been a peak experience for me – and I for one look forward to seeing you on stage again – in some format, in the not-too-distant future. Thank you for the thought. I’ve enjoyed talking to you. I may talk to you again. Bye Bye.

‘Slick was the only other female

singer of her generation (with

Nico) not ensnared by the

sixties and seventies stereotypes of

virgins, whores and Earth Mothers..

 Grace Slick was never a ‘Chick’...’

                                       (Journalist Bill Graham writing

                                                in ‘Hot Press’ July 1987)

*‘SOMEBODY TO LOVE?’ by GRACE SLICK with ANDREA GAGAN (VIRGIN PUBL – £16.99 – ISBN 1-85227-738-6)

Original tape of this interview featured on:
‘ZINE-ON-A-TAPE 2000: ANDY SAVAGE C90’
(UK -July 1999 & Jan 2000)