MERRY XMAS EVERYONE

 

ROCK AROUND THAT CHRISTMAS TREE!

 

‘And so I’m offering this simple phrase 

to kids from one to ninety-two 

although it’s been said many times, 

many ways Merry Christmas To You…’ 

BE EXCELLENT TO ONE ANOTHER! 

Adieus Till Later 

-Andy-

 

KNOWING, AND 

NOT KNOWING 

I was there at White Sands 

wearing sunglasses to watch 

the detonation at the end of the world, 

I was free-falling with Little Boy 

through the skies above Hiroshima, 

I was checking through comic-books on the 

newsstand outside the Dallas Book Depository 

when I heard the shots that took away our future, 

I watch the 9:11 towers fall over and over, 

on a million TV-screen repeat, 

I hung around the Dakota Building 

as John Lennon signed his final autograph, 

something outside me takes the words away, 

evil passes me blind on the sidewalk, 

if this is a phase I’m going through, 

when does it end and move 

smoothly into the next phase? 

is there a chart you can consult, 

a graph that indicates you’re here, 

moving up this sharp incline 

towards that point there, 

after which you move through 

into the next phase where all this 

mixed-up confusion resolves, 

if this is a learning process, 

when does the knowing set in? 

because the more I’m seeing 

the less I understand… 

Featured online at: 

‘IT: INTERNATIONAL TIMES’ (17 January 2018) 

http://internationaltimes.it/knowing-and-not-knowing/ 

Collected into: 

‘TWEAK VISION: THE WORD-PLAY 

SOLUTION TO MODERN-ANGST CONFUSION’ 

Alien Buddha Press (USA – March 2018)

Saint Etienne: Foxbase Alpha & Beyond

 

SAINT ETIENNE: 

BEYOND ‘THE HEART OF DARKNESS’ 

… INTO ‘PALE MOVIES’

 

Sarah Cracknell is the starlet of Saint Etienne. 

But are they just smooth Retro plagiarists? And would 

they smash their guitars in a remake of ‘Blow-Up’?

 

You out there, reading this webpage, come closer. Closer. Now prepare yourself for a shock. When Sarah Cracknell swears, you tend to notice. 

‘I’m really into the film ‘Apocalypse Now’ (1979). That’s one of my favourite films, and it’s based on Joseph Conrad’s book’ she explains brightly. ‘The funny thing is, when I opted to read it on Radio One I didn’t realise how difficult it is to actually read out loud. It’s just m-a-s-s-i-v-e sentences with loads of commas. And you’re trying to find out what the point of the sentence is, in the sentence-structure, while you’re reading it. You end up just going BLUUUURGH. It ended up with me going ‘yes, and blah blah blah – SHIT! BOLLOCKS!!!,’ and they had to edit it out.’ 

She giggles delightfully. Sarah has a fractured innocence you last encountered in a Swinging London movie, where ‘bad language’ still tests out the boundaries of what is daring and what is permissible. She’s explaining how she got to read Joseph Conrad’s ‘The Heart Of Darkness’ (1899) on Mark Radcliffe’s radio culture-vulture slot. 

So why choose Conrad? Why not John Braine’s ‘Room At The Top’ (1957) or Shelagh Delaney’s ‘A Taste Of Honey’ (1958), or at least Jack Kerouac’s ‘On The Road’ (1957)? Something more evocative of the image Saint Etienne tend to evoke. 

‘We’re deeper than we seem’ says Pete Wiggs darkly. Then ‘if I’d done it I would have chosen the ‘Mr Men’ books. I could just about manage those.’ 

It’s almost like the lyrics of “Pale Movies” – ‘he’s so dark and moody, she’s a sunshine girl.’

We’re in the dressing room. Leeds Metropolitan University. The gig was a breathtaking movie of sequenced chart contenders, with Sarah in the lead role. The focal point. She’s still wearing the silver-grey mini-skirt and black leather boots she wore on stage. At her throat is a pink heart choker. 

Saint Etienne are named after a French football team. Sarah’s co-conspirators are Bob Stanley, and the aforesaid Pete Wiggs. Together they write knowing and affectionate, engaging and clever love-notes to Pop’s back-catalogue. They are English Popstrels with Euro-kitsch embellishments. Tone, pace, style, and dance-friendly bass-lines. 

She jokes lightly about getting psyched up for the gig. But seems effortlessly at ease on stage. As though it’s her natural environment. 

‘It is’ says Pete. 

‘It is my natural environment’ agrees Sarah with another throwaway giggle. ‘I love live gigs. No, I don’t get nervous. I wasn’t nervous tonight. But I was worried because my voice has been really hoarse. I thought it was – like, going, and I was worried it was just going to pack up altogether.’ A smile of secret intimacy. ‘And I made the fatal mistake of apologising for not having my voice – two songs in, and then thought ‘why did I do that?’’ 

A little gruffness adds a sexy edge to the voice. 

‘Ye-eh’ she concedes. ‘Yeah, when it’s sort-of s-l-o-w.’ Like she’s imagining Barry White doing it. ‘But some of the songs we do are very high and very intricate. Like “Avenue” (a seven-minute track from ‘So Tough’). That’s really one of the difficult ones. But then, I’ve got Debsey and Siobahn to help me out on that.’ Debsey and Siobahn Brookes nod enthusiastically. They wear, by turn – a Sonic the Hedgehog T-shirt, and a sequinned ‘Miss America’ tank-top. But glitter ye not…

 

--- 0 --- 

Sarah on the rigours of touring: 

‘Actually we’ve got quite a plush 

tour coach. With a video’

 

‘Call me old-fashioned, but I’m a little nervous about the future’ sez Carter USM. ‘Modern Life Is Rubbish’ agree Blur. What’s the answer? A retreat into the past? 

Saint Etienne’s show leads in on tapes of Kathy Kirby and Dusty Springfield. Their first album – ‘Fox-Base Alpha’ (1991) opens out into a booklet of liner pin-ups of Marianne Faithful, Monkee Micky Dolenz, and Billy Fury. A year later they sample the film soundtrack from ‘Billy Liar’ (1963) on their second LP ‘So Tough’ (February 1993), ‘…a man could lose himself in London…’ Then they quote Brian Clough as a ‘Folk Hero’ on the sleeve of their compilation ‘You Need A Mess Of Help To Stand Alone’ (November 1993). Meanwhile, the B-side of their no.1 Indie single duet with Charlatan’s Tim Burgess is a cover of Billy Fury’s “My Christmas Prayer”. 

And someone mentions noticing the Small Faces in their set tonight. 

‘The Small Faces were in HERE tonight?’ goggles Pete. 

No. Not in HERE! In one of the slides used in the stage backdrop. 

‘Yes. They were on the slides’ confirms Sarah. ‘There’s a few of those slides which I’ve forgotten about. That’s why I’m sometimes standing with my back to the audience – I’m watching our slides. I was a bit worried tonight though when I was watching the slides. They’d put the word ‘EASY’ above my head. It’s a slide from the ‘Easy Rider’ (1969) movie, but I turned round and, there it was. ‘EASY’ written above my head! That’s not very nice, is it?’ 

‘It’s awful when the truth comes out’ gags Pete.

Pete initially pacted with Bob Stanley in 1988. Bob was a music journalist whose review of the Lightning Seeds ‘Cloud Cuckooland’ once graced the pages of a leading music paper with the initials ‘MM’. Their first single together, “Only Love Can Break Your Heart”, was a cover of a Neil Young song, with Moira Lambert contributing guest vocals. It was followed by “Kiss And Make Up”, again a cover version – this time from obscure Indie band Field Mice. The vocalist is Donna Savage. It’s not until the third single – in May 1991, that the Ett’s third vital ingredient falls into place. “Nothing Can Stop Us” c/w “Speedwell” is an original Stanley-Wiggs song, even though it samples Dusty Springfield (“I Can’t Wait Until I See My Baby’s Face”). Sarah Cracknell is the voice, breathy, fragile and pure. 

How many French bands are there named after English football teams? 

‘About twenty’ deadpans Pete. 

Wolverhampton Wanderers? Leeds United? …Chelsea? 

‘Ah – yeah’ joins in Sarah. ‘Don’t dare mention Chelsea. Not in this vicinity.’ She nods at Debsey and Siobahn. ‘I’ll get my scarf out,’ 

‘She’s their no.1 fan!’ 

‘There IS a band called Chelsea’ chips in one of the posse. 

But I know that. It was a joke. 

‘Tiger Bay’ (February 1994), issued in CD, vinyl LP, cassette and digital formats, is Saint Etienne’s best-received album to date. Haunting melodies. Opulent orchestral embellishments. Less scope for the usual press swipes about assorted pastiches and the suspicion of tongues not entirely dislodged from stylish cheeks. The album spin-offs also include a David Holmes dance-floor mix of their Disco-friendly “Like A Motorway”, and a Kris Needs Techno remastering of the “Pale Movie” single – quintessential La-La-La Pop with Spanish guitars and tactile-to-the-touch lyrics about a girl with ‘the softness of cinema seats.’

But Saint Etienne are still a ‘concept’ band. 

‘In a way. But that’s because we were all Pop fans. Because we were all into the musical heritage, as it were. We like things that are good from certain periods. And we incorporate them into our music. We don’t go all the way. We don’t want to be a seventies group. Or a sixties group. But there’s certain things about those periods that were really cool. And we can adapt them to modern usage. I think most bands are probably the same to different degrees. Everyone always has. The Rolling Stones – they were using Blues. You use things you like. You try to get elements of what you like into it. We get criticised a bit more than others for that. Just ‘cos we’re not a traditional four-piece group. In the old days it was just guitars and drums. But now – with the technology, it’s more easy to replicate things. Now you can ape things really easily. Rather than just incorporating ideas you can end up copying things totally, perfectly. But we’re never going to do that. We’re just taking certain elements from each particular style.’ 

‘In a way it makes me laugh that the Press has had a bit of a ‘pop’ about how we’re retro and how we’re post-this and post-that’ smiles Sarah. ‘Yet now they’re heralding the New Wave Of The New Wave, and that’s the best thing since sliced bread. I mean – you can’t get more retro than that. But that’s what they’re into at the moment. The Music Papers today. They love all that.’

 

--- 0 --- 

Pete Wiggs on why Saint Etienne have yet to 

tour America: ‘Lack of support from our American 

record company. They’re a bit crap.’ 

Sarah: ‘They’re very crap.’ 

Live, Saint Etienne do “Nothing Can Stop Us Now”. An anthemic declaration of intent. Think Positive – ‘there’s gonna be a storm soon, get ready, ‘cos we’re coming through.’ Then there’s material from ‘Tiger Bay’ – Sarah’s compositions “Marble Lions” and the Poppy seventies-flavoured “Hug My Soul”. She says ‘thank you, you are too kind.’ 

It’s a smooth, flawlessly textured set, opening with the scene-setting instrumental “Urban Clearway”, a track that ‘Q’ magazine describes as ‘wordless sub-techno soundscapes (of) mythical late-nite London’ (April 1994). There’s “Cool Kids Of Death”, a title that’s allegedly a typing error for ‘Cool Kinds Of Death’. But one of the most fascinating titles – “Western Wind”, is a kind of medieval poetry set to (what ‘Select’ calls) an ‘ambient trance Folk ballad.’ Stephen Duffy – of Lilac Time, shares the vocals with Sarah. Then there’s orchestral follies of oboes and cellos chiming with electric guitars of “Former Lover”, a Paul Simon-esque ballad with intriguingly oblique lyrics about ‘Milan, when I was a kitten.’ And there’s more. “On The Shore” has Shara Nelson returning a favour; the Ett’s collaborated on her hit “One Goodbye In Ten”, she sings back-up on ‘Tiger Bay’. 

Coming off stage Sarah confesses ‘I tried to mention everyone in the band tonight. But I didn’t get everybody.’ As we settle into the dressing room, the omission seems to bother her. Because ‘everybody in the band are friends, ultimately. They begin as friends. And then they end up playing guitar or keyboards.’

We talk more movies. Antonioni’s surreal ‘England Swings’ classic ‘Blow-Up’ (1966). ‘It’s kind of pretentious towards the end’ judges Pete. ‘Though it’s still very good. I like the Yardbirds sequence, where Jeff Beck is smashing the guitar in that Club scene.’ 

Could you see Saint Etienne doing that? ‘What? Smashing our guitars?’ 

No, playing in a film sequence of that nature? ‘It’d be great. If there was a movie sequence in a film in the same vein, I’d love for us to do it. But smashing your guitar is a bit corny in a way now, isn’t it? Although back then, in ‘Blow-Up’, it was still a curiosity. Paul did smash his guitar after one of our gigs. And regretted it ever since.’ 

‘Yes’ enthuses Sarah. ‘Instead of being all Rock ‘n’ Roll about it, he was ‘EEEEK, look what I’ve done!!!’ 

‘He burst into tears, ‘WAAAAAAH, what have I done? WHY?’ 

But talking futures, some Saint Etienne pieces sound exactly like music for unmade movies. “Highgate Road Incident” would not sound out of place on the ‘Blow-Up’ soundtrack. Would they like to work in that direction? ‘Yeh’ from Sarah, ‘We’re just waiting for somebody to ask us.’ 

So does she see Saint Etienne as a long-term project? ‘Until we run out ideas. Until we become boring old buggers.’ 

When Sarah Cracknell swears, she does it delightfully…

 

Pete Wiggs on Kim & Kelley Deal’s band, the Breeders: 

‘They’re a bit more of a traditional Rock band, aren’t they? 

I think we’re a bit more like accountants.’ 

Sarah: ‘STEADY…!’

ST ETIENNE: 

RETURN TO ‘FOXBASE ALPHA’ 

To mark its eighteenth anniversary on September 2009, Heavenly Records issued a ‘Deluxe Edition’ of the ‘Foxbase Alpha’ album, proving that it remains one of the most dewy-fresh debut albums ever made. Back then, newly located from suburban Croydon to Tufnell Park, north London, school-friends Bob Stanley and Pete Wiggs set about making what Stanley has since described as ‘a time capsule of our lives in that year’. ‘Foxbase Alpha’ was named after a childhood in-joke about a place filled with gorgeous people, via an esoteric reference to TV’s ‘Space 1999’. And it is both retro and modern, a love letter and a scrapbook, a compendium of private passions from Dusty Springfield to King Tubby, David Mamet to footfall, C86 to ambient house, and London, always London. The packaging, from its cover placard-carrying gentle-protester with the album name carried as its declaration, to its Jon Savage sleevenotes and Smiths-inspired gallery of sixties icons, is gorgeous. An eclectic bonus CD of singles, ‘B’-sides and offcuts enhances the sense of joyous adventure. The effect is to invite the listener into a world slightly warmer, brighter and more exciting than the real one. And despite its many American influences, its Swinging London romanticism anticipated Britpop. The Balearic reinvention of Neil Young’s “Only Love Can Break Your Heart” may be its most celebrated moment but “London Belongs To Me” – a NW1 fantasia, is the album’s awestruck heart. To Dorian Lynskey, reviewing the package in the ‘Observer Music Monthly (May 2009)’ ‘Sarah Cracknell coos the opening line ‘took a tube to Camden Town’ like she’s Alice passing through the looking glass.’

THE SAINT ETIENNE HIT-FILE 

18 May 1991 – ‘Nothing Can Stop Us’ c/w ‘Speedwell’ (Heavenly HVN009) reaches no.54 

7 September 1991 – ‘Only Love Can Break Your Heart’ c/w ‘Filthy’ (Heavenly HVN12) reaches no.39 

16 September 1991 – ‘Foxbase Alpha’ (Heavenly HVNLP1CD) 

(1) ‘This Is Radio Etienne’ (0:43, Bob Stanley-Pete Wiggs) 

(2) ‘Only Love Can Break Your Heart’ (4:29, Neil Young) Moira Lambert vocals 

(3) ‘Wilson’ (1:59, Stanley-Wiggs) based on a Wilson Pickett ‘Hey Jude’ sample 

(4) ‘Carn’t Sleep’ (4:43, Stanley-Wiggs) 

(5) ‘Girl VII’ (3:46, Stanley-Wiggs) 

(6) ‘Spring’ (3:44, Stanley-Wiggs) 

(7) ‘She’s The One’ (3:07, Stanley-Wiggs) 

(8) ‘Stoned To Say The Least’ (7:42, Stanley-Wiggs) 

(9) ‘Nothing Can Stop Us’ (4:21, Stanley-Wiggs) includes Dusty Springfield sample from ‘I Can’t Wait To See My Baby’s Face’ 

(10) ‘Etienne Gonna Die’ (1:32, Stanley-Wiggs) sampled dialogue from ‘House Of Games’ 

(11) ‘London Belongs To Me’ (3:56, Stanley-Wiggs) 

(12) ‘Like The Swallow’ (7:41, Stanley-Wiggs) (13) ‘Dilworth’s Theme’ (0:39, Stanley-Wiggs) 

Plus bonus disc on Deluxe Edition: 

(1) ‘Kiss And Make Up’ (6:20 extended mix) cover of Field Mice record, Donna Savage vocals, written by Wratten-Hiscock 

(2) ‘Filthy’ (5:35, Stanley-Wiggs-Mais) Q-Tee vocals 

(3) ‘Chase HQ’ (3:32, Stanley-Wiggs) 

(4) ‘Sally Space’ (5:06, Stanley-Wiggs) 

(5) ‘The Reckoning’ (1:31, Stanley-Wiggs) 

(6) ‘Speedwell’ (6:33, Stanley-Wiggs) 

(7) ‘Parliament Hill’ (2:38, Stanley-Wiggs) guitar by Harvey Williams 

(8) ‘People Get Real’ (4:45, Stanley-Wiggs) 

(9) ‘Sweet Pea’ (4:49, Stanley-Wiggs) 

(10) ‘Winter In America’ (5:53) Gil Scott-Heron song sung by Donna Savage 

(11) ‘Fake 88’ (5:03, Stanley-Wiggs) spoken vocals by Stephen Duffy 

(12) ‘Studio Kinda Filthy’ (4:58, Stanley-Wiggs-Mais) vocals by Q-Tee 

(13) ‘Kiss And Make Up (USA version’ (5:16) Sarah Cracknell version 

(14) ‘Sky’s Dead’ (7:26, Stanley-Wiggs) 

16 May 1992 – ‘Join Our Club’ c/w ‘People Get Real’ (Heavenly HVN15) reaches no.21 

17 October 1992 – ‘Avenue’ (Heavenly HVN2312) reaches no.40 

13 February 1993 – ‘You’re In A Bad Way’ (Heavenly HVN25CD) reaches no.12

18 December 1993 – ‘I Was Born On Christmas Day’ (Heavenly HVN36CD) reaches no.37 

19 February 1994 – ‘Pale Movie’ (Heavenly HVN37CD) reaches no.28 

28 May 1994 – ‘Like A Motorway’ (Heavenly HVN40CD) reaches no.47 

1 October 1994 – ‘Hug My Soul’ (Heavenly HVN42CD) reaches no.32 

11 November 1995 – ‘He’s On The Phone’ (Heavenly HVN50CD) reaches no.11 

7 February 1998 – ‘Sylvie’ (Creation CRESCD279) reaches no.12 

2 May 1998 – ‘The Bad Photographer’ (Creation CRESCD290) reaches no.27 

 --- 0 --- 

Gig Review of: 

SAINT ETIENNE 

At ‘Leeds Metropolitan University’, Yorkshire 

Jane Fonda in ‘Barbarella’. And the Smallfaces. 

Hayley Mills in ‘Whistle Down The Wind’. And the Jam. 

But Sarah Cracknell, in white feather-boa, silver-grey mini-skirt, pink heart choker, and kinky boots, is tonight’s REAL Starlet. Watch her ooze ‘we think you’re gorgeous. You really are,’ blowing sweet kiss-ettes to the assembled glitterati and fashion victims. And you know that Sarah is Venus In New Genes. 

Saint Etienne are a timeless party. Of the Sixties. But not Sixties. Of Seventies Disco. But not Seventies either. More a Soda-Pop Dance Inferno fine-tuned for the Nineties. Sharply dark Pete Wiggs and Bob Stanley are the wizards of twiddly as the Bridget Riley ‘Time Tunnel’ spiral revolves on the backdrop behind them. Siobahn Brooke and Debsey Wykes stand stage-right in leather Hot-Pants, ‘Miss America’ sequinned top, and ‘Sonic’ T-shirt, doing a neat Supremes dance routine – ‘STOP, in the name of love’ to 1993 mini-hit “Who Do You Think You Are?” (it reached no.23). Five males and three girls on stage at any given time, plus the style-referencing slides – Sonny Bono to Jean Luc Godard and beyond. 

There’s a smooth opening instrumental Movie soundtrack punctuated with melodica, ‘Hawaii Five-O’ quotes hinting at the diversity to come. And Saint Etienne shift across a wider range of sounds than I’ve seen on stage for a long time. Irresistibly straight La-La-La Pop like “Pale Movie” (no.24 in February 1994), the acoustic strum of “Former Lover” (from their ‘Tiger Bay’ 1994 album, with lyrics that go ‘Milan, when I was a kitten…’), and then into a Kraftwerk autobahn detour for “Like A Motorway” – by way of trad-Folk anthem ‘Silver Dagger’ but decked out with authentic synth-drums… and Presley’s electro-redesigned “We’re Coming In Loaded” (from his 1962 ‘Girls Girls Girls’ movie). ‘Do you like Elvis Presley? – good’ purrs Sarah, twirling her party frock. 

She’s most impressive on “Don’t Forget To Catch Me”, laced with touchingly slow keyboards and a lethally incisive guitar solo. ‘You are tooooo kind’ she drools in appreciation. 

Visually it’s a trip. Sonically it’s a complete edition of ‘Top Of The Pops’ when it was good. “People Get Real” is rousing Girlie-Pop to tear your face off. “You’re In A Bad Way” is a chart single to die for (their biggest hit, no.12 in February 1993). ‘We don’t normally do this’ oozes Sarah through shimmers of blonde hair, ‘encores are a big no-no. But just for you…’ 

And they close with “No No No”. A cover of Nancy Nova. 

But me, I ran out of goose-bumps long before that.

Two Albums By The Enid

 

THROUGH HALLS OF MIRRORS 

Album Review of: 

‘DUST’ 

by THE ENID 

(2016, Operation Seraphim/ Vibe Led) 

 www.theenid.co.uk

If Punk meant anything, it was do your own thing, on your own terms. Robert John Godfrey might have launched the Enid’s unlikely Prog-on-stilts symphonic-Rock during the 1976 turmoil, but his intense persistence of vision guided the seven-piece group beyond its lapsed big-label period into admirably self-sufficient fan-funding as radical as anything in Mohawk and ripped leather. ‘Dust’, the third part of an album-trilogy, fades in through murmurations that tingle like ghosts gliding up and down the spine, into a masterclass in guilty pleasures, high-end pomp and rich cinematic orchestration. Bohemian rhapsodies ricochet around your headphones, terrific textures where Stravinsky strings swoon and Jason Ducker’s lead guitar glistens appealingly while Joe Payne’s smooth rangy five-octave voice effortlessly dives into mind-tunnelling tunes and arrangements of labyrinthine classicism. Bitingly beautiful gauzy melodies, both brittle and complex, are spliced and diced into crescendos and jittery choral choruses you need Google-Earth to navigate. And if the libretto of the seven tracks spread across forty-three lavish minutes tend to bland emotive platitudes about illusion and love born of fire, then that’s exactly what the Enid audience needs. For they do their own very unique thing, on their own terms. 

Published in: 

‘R2: ROCK ‘N’ REEL Vol.2 no.57’ 

(UK – May/June 2016) 

Album Review of: 

‘LIVE AT LOUGHBOROUGH TOWN HALL, 1980’ 

by THE ENID 

(Angel Air) 

www.angelair.co.uk 

Symphonic-Rock was always something of an unwieldy concept. Rapid-run keyboard cascades, unexpected tempo switches, thoughts that tick like a watch mechanism, both tastefully gifted yet problematic. This CD is the Enid’s full Loughborough Hall concert – admission £1.95, recorded for Radio Trent transmission, but previously unreleased. They open with “665 The Great Bean”, a cheeky pun on Aleister Crowley, as a ‘monstrosity about monsters’, saved from the brink of pomposity by the ‘redoubtable’ and ferociously-bearded Robert John Godfrey’s manic vocals, both effete and ‘a little bit eccentric’. “The Dreamer” takes the seven-piece band through a soothing pastoral mid-point instrumental break leavened with shovelful of sunshine. 

Another alleged Pop Song – “Golden Earrings”, opens with Aaron Copland’s ‘Fanfare’ that we know from ELP, then throws in a clever-clever muso-literate quote from ‘Hernando’s Hideaway’. There are two sequences from their third album – ‘Touch Me’ (1979), the elaborate “Humouresque” and “Cortege”, immaculately arranged, intelligently performed to studio-standard perfection, plus “The Dreamer” and “Hall Of Mirrors” from ‘Six Pieces’ (1980). Then the full 18-minute centrepiece “The Fand” from ‘Aerie Faerie Nonsense’ (1977) with Francis Lickerish’s soaring guitar and expansive rising and falling waves of intricately-scored light and epic deftness that bizarrely leaves the ‘absolutely splendid’ audience foot-stomping for more. This album predates the release, but not the recording of their ‘Live At Hammersmith’ (1983) set which also includes “The Song Of Fand”. Now they close – in the tradition of their ‘Land Of Hope And Glory’, with a tongue-in-cheek “Wild Thing”, emoting a camply exaggerated ‘I’m going to smack your bottom you naughty girl!’ (catch the YouTube clip of this from the 1984 Stonehenge Free Festival). Bucking trends through often unsympathetic years, the Enid nevertheless established an awkward but fiercely defiant Prog presence that gifts them a loyal and enduring fandom.

Published in: 

‘R’n’R Vol.2 Issue 96 (Nov/Dec)’ 

(UK – November 2022)

SF Novel: Stephen Baxter's 'Galaxias'

 

THE DARKNESS OF THE SUN: 

STEPHEN BAXTER’S ‘GALAXIAS’ 

Book Review of: 

‘GALAXIAS’ 

by STEPHEN BAXTER 

(Gollancz, 2022, ISBN 978-1-473-22887-0) 

 www.stephen-baxter.com 

Beware: Includes plot-spoilers!

 

‘WHERE WERE YOU WHEN 

THE WORLD WENT DARK?’ 

This is a self-contained stand-alone novel. But – running to 523-pages, excluding ‘Afterword’ and ‘Credits’, it’s still only a dozen or so pages short of Isaac Asimov’s entire ‘Foundation’ trilogy, which collectively adds up to 548pp. So, still a hefty tome, although a strangely static one. There are jaunts to the Moon, and a character who freezes to death on a return trip from Mars in the Al-miriykh, but there’s also much high-level conferencing, symposia and presentations, dialogue and discussions from which clues are eked, conjectures considered and radical conclusions arrived at. It might have been an advantage to have at least one ordinary protagonist, buffeted and baffled by events, struggling to comprehend the massive changes through rumour and fake news. Instead, the In-Jokes are a Yale clique of academic nerds who map out the protagonist constellation, they talk, they separate, and are drawn inexorably back together again in various configurations. But they are less than action figures. 

Stephen Baxter is nothing if he’s not SF-literate. After all, he’s the man who wrote the authorised HG Wells sequels, the head-spinning ‘The Time Ships’ (1995) and ‘The Massacre Of Mankind’ (2017). But the obvious nudge here is Arthur C Clarke, with an alien ‘Lurker’ assemblage located on the Moon’s Sinus Medii – a region that ‘Jules Verne’s lunar travellers saw,’ which fires off a signal projectile in the direction of the newly-revealed worlds of Ophiuchus, Barnard’s Star which is six light years away. And the American Pioneer 10 probe which – as the first human-made artefact to leave the solar system, in doing so, alerts a galactic consciousness to not only human presence, but our expansive potential. Baxter collaborated with Clarke on the ‘A Time Odyssey’ trilogy. 

This novel opens in 2057, which is a century since Sputnik 1 became Earth’s first artificial satellite. And a century since Elvis Presley appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show, actually it was 9 September 1956, although the New Diaspora 1957-themed summer party in secessionist California obviously ain’t counting! The world Baxter imagines has endured climate change trauma, and emerged in some ways stronger, in other ways more fragmented. Britain is fractured into independent states, with the English Federal government relocated north to Gateshead. After the DC floods the rump of the dis-United States of America is governed from the Alaskan Winter White House in New Anchorage. Melting ice-caps and the ‘Greenland Melt’ have resulted in flooding land-loss, and the erection of huge barriers to contain and channel floodwater. There were ‘massive technological fixes’ including carbon-munching trees in every public place, ‘but, you know what? We adapted and survived.’

There are drones and everything is smart, from smart-walls to smart-cars, smart-planes, smart-wood, a smart bus, smart-doorways, smart-materials and smart-tables. And the prose is so politically correct it creaks, all the power-figures are female, including American President Cox and Space entrepreneur Serena Jones – a kind of hyper Elon Musk figure, and the only couple allowed to express love – and then grief, are two Gay men engaged to be married. The In-Jokes are Natasha ‘Tash’ Brand – who has a Nigerian-born mother, and is adviser to Science Minister Fred Bowles. With strawberry-blonde Melissa ‘Mel’ Kapur who rides the vacuum-dirigible Skythrust, ‘a human-made island in the sky’, and has an activist daughter called Jane. And there is Wu Zhi on Lodestone a million kilometres from Earth, whose estranged mother – Wu Yan, a senior space scientist in her own right, is central to the Chinese Replicator project on the planet Mercury. Even Astronomer Royal Charlie Marlowe resembles ‘Judi Dench as M’. 

The novel’s central idea is that the sun vanishes at a point timed to coincide with a total eclipse, the reflected light from the visible planets going out in light-speed order. Facing a potential new Dark Age and rapid extinction, the sun is first relocated twelve-light-minutes out beyond the Kuiper Belt, but then reappears back in its original position. This is interpreted as a warning message from a galaxy-scale extra-terrestrial intelligence they name Galaxias. But what the warning means, and how to react to it, remains moot. As a response to Pioneer 10 it could be the imposing of limits, a quarantine that says so far, and no further. Faced with a power capable of shifting suns, is it wise to challenge that warning… if that is indeed the warning? Or can humanity forever cower, bottled up within the inner solar system by this Sinister Barrier for fear of provoking that seemingly limitless power further? And yet, Galaxias is less than omnipotent, the sequence timing of events suggests that it is limited by the speed of light. 

Why Galaxias? It was the ‘Greek or Roman name for the Milky Way, as visible in the sky. Named for the spilled milk of a goddess. Root of our word ‘galaxy’… so, a singular name – yes. It. Not they. Monstrously powerful, but one entity.’ There’s later speculation of its aquatic evolution on a water-world radiocarbon dated to ten billion years ago, with resonances back to Stanislaw Lem’s 1961 novel ‘Solaris’, filmed twice, by Andrei Tarkovsky in 1968, and then by Steven Soderbergh, with George Clooney in 2002. 

‘Another conference, Tash thought. Another all-nighter to prepare.’ And yes, it does seem that way at times. Like the characters, the reader gets conference-fatigue, conferenced out, until Naples disappears in a massive volcanic eruption that precipitates a nuclear winter. And on mission-day 513 the three-person crew of Pioneer 14 – including Wu Zhi with Texan Sara West and Russian Marina Petko, reach the Kuiper Belt ‘Blink-point’. A negative-matter anti-Sun. ‘The enigmatic artefacts of Galaxias.’ Yet there is no meeting. No first-contact communication. Galaxias remains an off-stage presence. All is inference and guesswork. 

Baxter’s detailing of, first the strategies employed to combat the climate threat, the global plagues and pandemics, then the resounding aftershocks of the Sun’s disappearance are exhaustively pursued. Brainstormed fully as if it’s some rigorous intellectual exercise, what ‘Starburst’ magazine calls ‘big thinking and ‘New Scientist’-flavoured techspeak.’ The orbits of the worlds have been slightly altered due to the abrupt gravitational loss, with resulting extreme weather events, shifted seasons, tidal patterns and a new calendar. Electromagnetic ozone-layer irregularities cause communication problems, and there is seismic magma instability as the Earth’s interior adjusts. Hurricanes become hypercanes, as formerly dormant volcanoes erupt, and massive submarine quakes cause major land slippage. Halley’s comet fails to reappear. The Fermi Paradox is resolved. Elections result take a lurch to the right as the world becomes a more introverted paranoid place. 

All of which is happening as governments struggle to formulate their response to ‘Blink-day’. America plans to defy Galaxias by deliberately confronting its ultimatum with a crewed dark-energy-powered spaceship following Pioneer 10 out of the solar system. Lodestone is part-cannibalised in order to construct Pioneer 14, powered by solar sail and a dark-energy ramscoop as the notoriously secretive Chinese scheme their own more nuanced response. Replicators devour Mercury just as they had devoured Mars in Baxter’s earlier work ‘Evolution’ (2002). Theoretical technologies are meticulously explained, with credits correctly assigned in the Afterword, including the Lodestone station located in the Earth-umbra, the Skylon spaceplane, self-replicating machinery and the Kardashev classification of hypothetical alien civilisations. As well as Negative matter and Dark Energy. Stephen Baxter does his research with unstinting thoroughness, while his well-earned status as hard science fictioneer in the Arthur C Clarke lineage commands the respect of helpful academics. The final sequences in which the sun and the entire planetary system are shifted out of Galaxias’ reach to the M-12 globular star cluster might just reference back to Clarke rearranging constellations in ‘The City And The Stars’ (1956). 

This may be a self-contained stand-alone novel, but it does span millions.

Movie: Roger Corman's 'TEENAGE CAVEMAN'

 

ROCK WITH THE CAVEMAN…! 

Review of: 

‘TEENAGE CAVEMAN’ 

(1958) With Robert Vaughn, Darah Marshall, 

Leslie Bradley Director: Roger Corman. 

DVD: 2012, The Arkoff Film Library

 

‘In the beginning there was chaos and eternal night’ runs the portentous pseudo-Biblical voice-over, with credits superimposed over cave-paintings set to Albert Glassner’s epic soaring score. Roger Corman can conjure something worth watching out of zero-budget and nil-resources. It looks easy. But watch the films of Ed Wood to see how vaguely similar ingredients will end up when handled with more enthusiasm than competency. Of course this movie is Drive-In trash. Even the title is a trifle of irresistibly playful mischief. Yet you have to admit that, even though Corman himself irritably protested ‘I never directed a film called ‘Teenage Caveman’’, it’s a marked improvement on his original ‘Prehistoric World’ title, or the critic’s suggestion ‘Rubble Without A Cause’! 

The tribesmen, wearing loincloths and brandishing ‘throwing stick’ spears, carry the body of a freshly-killed deer into ‘the clan’ cave village. They’re remarkably well-fed healthy primitives. Only the lone ‘Son of the Symbol-Maker’ stands apart, staring wistfully over the forbidden river. He sports a stylish cross-the-shoulder tunic, neat dark hair, and a knife thrust under his belt. He questions and demands to know answers. His discontent mirrors teenage rebellion. In ‘The Wild Ones’ (1953) Mildred asks Marlon Brando ‘Hey Johnny, what are you rebelling against?’ He shrugs back ‘whadda you got?’ That’s the Symbol-Maker’s Son’s attitude. He’s warned off questioning ‘the signs and gifts and mysteries’. Why can’t the Clan cross the forbidden river? Because the law says so. Because there’s superstitious fear that beyond the river there are shadows ‘deep and cold’ where men ‘sicken and die, red and dried out’. Because of the burning plain with ‘dirt that eats men’, and ‘the god that gives death with its touch’. These warnings come dramatised with insert-clips of savage jungle and dinosaurian lizardoids. His grey-bearded father (Leslie Bradley) advises him ‘wonder no more.’ ‘I wonder still’ he muses. 

The young rebel is Robert Vaughn, decidedly no teenager. He’d already done TV parts in hardboiled cop-drama ‘Dragnet’ (with its much-imitated intro ‘the story you are about to see is true, only the names have been changed to protect the innocent’) and gritty Western ‘Gunsmoke’ – with James Arness as Marshal Matt Dillon, as well as popular sitcom ‘Father Knows Best’. He had successes, but it wasn’t until he was cast as ‘Napoleon Solo’ – a name suggested by Ian Fleming, in the hugely tongue-in-cheek ‘The Man From U.N.C.L.E’ from September 1964, that he ascended to household name status. Intended to be the suave James Bond in the agents’ fight against the evil ‘T.H.R.U.S.H’, he was ironically overtaken in the sexy pin-up stakes by enigmatic sidekick David McCallum as ‘Illya Kuryakin’, who had the advantage of a comb-forward Beatles fringe. 

‘Teenage Caveman’ may well be trash, but they play it admirably straight-faced. They may have no names beyond Blonde Maiden (Darah Marshall), the Black-Bearded one (Frank DeKova), or the Curly-Haired boy, but they yield nothing of R Wright Campbell’s dialogue to dramatic theatricality. When Vaughn challenges ‘The law is old, but age is not always truth’ he might as well be adding ‘whadda you got?’ in stirring up generational confrontation. The following day the clan hunts again, and although they kill a ‘fur-beast’ bear, his father is wounded. As he recuperates, four prehistoric rebels – ‘The Young And The Brave’ according to the trailer, set out in defiance of the law, wade through waist-high swamp, and swim a jungle-river to reach the forbidden far shore of ‘A Wonderful And Strange World!’. Once there one of them admits ‘there’s meat here, we kill and go back.’ Vaughn is not so easily satisfied, ‘no, I came to find the truth or lie of the old stories, the ancient Law.’ He’s not about to go back, yet. 

Filmed on a tight two-week schedule in Griffin Park, Arcadia, the Californian landscape is suitably primeval. The Symbol Maker’s Son blows into a hollow-twig flute, which attracts two dueling dino-lizards. As usual in this kind of movie the monsters attack each other, allowing the tribesmen time to flee. As they penetrate deeper, one of them drowns in the ‘sinking earth’. Two get scared and head for home. Only the Symbol Maker’s Son goes on. When he builds a campfire for the night it attracts a monster-mutation, unafraid of his flames. In a matter of moments he invents, and masters the bow-and-arrow. Only to be attacked by a pack of wild dogs. 

Meanwhile, his father recovers, follows his son and intervenes. Once they’re safely back in the village Vaughn is sentenced to die. He fights back, and his punishment is commuted to isolation. No-one talks to him. Even his Blonde Maiden girlfriend shuns him, at first. Until he plays his flute as she coyly skinny-dips. He’s now reached the age of ‘Manhood’, and takes an oath to renounce his questioning. Will he settle down with the blonde girl in their ‘sleeping place’? ‘Wonder no more’ she urges him. ‘I will always wonder’ he affirms. Yet he bides his time, for now. 

Corman’s tyro producer/director quickies – ‘Highway Dragnet’ and ‘Monster From The Ocean Floor’, had come in January and May 1954. He made five rapid turn-around films the following year, three in 1956, and no less than nine in 1957, running the gamut of titillating exploitation from tacky horror, westerns, Beatnik and noir-crime as well as opportunistically settling on what could loosely be termed SF. Of course, the movies are Drive-In trash that look laughably easy. ‘Teenage Caveman’ is one of five movies directed in 1958, with cheapo effects patched together from archive stock-footage. The dinosaur sequences were originally contrived by Roy Seawright for Hal Roach’s ‘One Million BC’ (1940), while a clip from Edward L Cahn’s ‘The She Creature’ (1956) is also filched and inserted to illustrate radiation mutation. But this seamless zero-budget nil-resources collage technique catches something of the jittery angst of its time. Something a 2002 ‘Teenage Caveman’ remake, directed by Larry Clark, fails to do, despite its gore and nudity. 

The film’s final section opens with a horse-riding stranger approaching the cave village. Fearfully they hurl spears. Only Vaughn tries to stop them. The stranger manages to utter the single word ‘Peace’, before they spear him to death. In a Clan debate his Symbol-Maker father now argues for seeking out other tribes. His scheming black-bearded rival seizes on this blasphemy as an opportunity to strip him of his symbol-making powers. ‘There is no more to say’ declares Vaughn defiantly, ‘it is time to act.’ He has his bow, and a quiver for his arrows. His blonde woman watches him set out alone. But first his father follows him. Then the vengeful tribe pursue them both intent on killing them – only to be attacked by the wild dog-pack. 

In the forbidden zone the duo are menaced by a crawling slithering mutation. A curious Vaughn approaches it in a gesture of conciliation, just as Black-Beard hurls a rock at the monster. The Symbol Maker’s Son turns and shoots him with a well-aimed arrow, but it’s too late. Beneath the mask is a wizened old man, the last of the long-lived ancients. ‘A man, another kind of man.’ They find a book within his corroded radiation-suit covering, turning the pages in uncomprehending awe. Cities. Skyscrapers. The UN building. ‘The Atomic Era’. 

‘What symbols are these?’ they wonder. We know. This is the shock revelation. The punchline. Theirs is not some long ago sometime in the distant past. The Clan are not only the remote survivors of atomic war, but of a historical eternal recurrence. Will the tribe now be wiser? ‘Perhaps man will dare to try again?’ The stern voice-over resumes to ram home the warning message, ‘this happened a long time ago. How many times will it happen again? And if it does, will any at all survive the next time?’ A sobering closing question in a time of Cold War brinkmanship, ‘or will it be… THE END?’

 

‘TEENAGE CAVEMAN: PREHISTORIC REBELS 

AGAINST PREHISTORIC MONSTERS!’ 

‘TEENAGE CAVEMAN’ (American International Pictures, July 1958, black-&-white) Producer & Director: Roger Corman. Executive Producers: Samuel Z Arkoff & James H Nicholson. Screenplay: R Wright Campbell. With Robert Vaughn (Teenage Caveman), Darah Marshall (Blonde Woman), Leslie Bradley (The Symbol Maker), Frank DeKova (Black-Bearded Usurper), June Jocelyn (Symbol-Maker’s wife), Beach Dickerson (Bear, Man from the Burning Plains) and tribe-members Charles P Thompson, Ed Nelson Robert Shayne, Marshall Bradford, Joseph H Hamilton. Music: Albert Glassner. Cinematography: Floyd Crosby. Film Editor: Irene Morra. 65-minutes. DVD April 2012, The Arkoff Film Library. DVD extras include trailers and Samuel Z Arkoff NFT audio interview.

 

Originally featured on website: 

‘VIDEOVISTA’ (April 2014)

Poem: 'In The Garden With Peter Green And His Sea-Lion'

 

IN THE GARDEN WITH PETER GREEN 

AND HIS SEA-LION/ 

THE GREEN MANALICHI WITH 

THE TWO-PRONGED CROWN 

(Peter Green was the original guitarist and 

guiding intelligence behind Fleetwood Mac, 

currently rehabilitating mind & music)

 

hic 

“it’s my sea-lion” says Peter Green, 

“my pet sea-lion coming through” 

& he hiccups again 

here in the garden, 

apocalyptic omens ripple 

in crowding shadows, 

here at the still centre of rage, 

all is flat, calm, & 

scoured to bone 

it’s only the dark places 

that suggest endless nights 

boiling with madness 

Blues and acid 

hic 

“sometimes your life 

changes direction” says Peter 

“like a fish” 

& you cross the line, 

a line of fire drawn sweet 

and oversweet, but here, now 

beyond this savage quiet sky, 

on the rim of sanity, I hear 

the sound of galaxies colliding 

in those strange nights of 

paradox and betrayal 

but here in the garden 

the lilac ripples, gently 

creating and destroying 

monstrous shadows 

“sometimes they throw me a fish” 

says Peter Green, “a red herring 

...what is a red herring 

...a dead herring... “ 

& he hiccups again 

hic 

Published in: 

‘TEARS IN THE FENCE no.22: Spring 1999’ 

(UK – March 1999) 

‘BOGG no.71’ (USA/ UK – June 2002) 

Featured online at: 

‘PRESSURE PRESS PRESENTS’ (25 July 2017)  

Collected into: 

‘TWEAK VISION: THE WORD-PLAY 

SOLUTION TO MODERN-ANGST CONFUSION’ 

Alien Buddha Press (USA – March 2018)

Previously Unpublished Interview: Mick Fleetwood

 

MICK FLEETWOOD: 

RUMOURS… AND 

YET MORE RUMOURS 

 

The album is called ‘Say You Will’ (2003), the first new material 

 from a re-union of the classic ‘Rumours’-era Fleetwood Mac line-up. 

Mick Fleetwood, John McVie, Stevie Nicks, Lindsey Buckingham – but 

no Christine ‘Perfect’ McVie. In this previously unpublished interview 

Mick Fleetwood tells Andrew Darlington the full story. It starts with the 

Shadows. Playing along to records of drummer Tony Meehan.  It leads to 

one of the biggest-selling Rock album of all time – ‘Rumours’ (1977), 

 with more than a little ‘glitzy Rock ‘n’ Roll stories of blood and guts, 

 booze and drugs’ along the way. There are a million stories 

in Fleetwood Mac. This is just one of them...

 ‘RUMOURS...’

 

Did you ever want to go back? Back to those moments that changed your life forever. And have the opportunity of asking that question – ‘how did I get here, from there’? Mick Fleetwood did. 

On my TV screen he’s standing on Platform Four of Gloucester Station, long coat drifting as he paces its length, long scarf pulled in against the wind, his once-long shaggy hair now scratched back into a ponytail. And a now-neater, more disciplined beard. On a platform full of ghosts. In his eyes there’s ‘a boy with a dream and eyes full of fun, to conquer the world with two sticks and a drum.’ Then it was a ‘wet and dreary’ 1963, his parents last goodbye, ‘the umbilical broken’ as the train pulls away, and he sets off for a new life in London... 

‘Yes. Putting that film* together was great to do,’ he admits to me now. ‘We spent the better part of two years doing it. And it was very therapeutic once we started. Because it’s setting down stuff you don’t normally get a chance to do, in terms of reflecting ‘how did I get to what I’m doing?’ It’s an attempt to capture an over-view of my journey from childhood, through my dreams and aspirations of becoming a musician, with all the ups and downs, the faults, the good things and the bad... so, going back and doing it was actually therapeutic in many ways.’ 

But it’s also an opportunity to take stock and ask, what would that young Mick Fleetwood think of the international megastar he was to become? ‘I think, generally, he’d be pretty pleased.’ A moment’s careful consideration. ‘Yes. He started out with such a desire, just to be around music and to be IN music. And all the trappings, pitfalls, distractions, and the ups and downs that came with it, they didn’t destroy any part of that original dream. My first love is my music, and to be around music. Luckily, I was able to do that, and I’m still doing that. So I think he’d be happy. I have no real ultimate complaints.’ 

And now there’s new product to promote. A new album with a revitalised tour-schedule to promote it. The current album – ‘Say You Will’ (2003, Reprise 48467-2) has been enthusiastically received with global air-play, and although it’s unlikely to set the Pop charts ablaze it’s significant in that those instantly familiar harmonies recall Fleetwood Mac’s commercial Golden Age. Forget the line-up changes and solo ventures that filled the intervening years. This is the real deal – Mick Fleetwood, John McVie, Stevie Nicks, Lindsey Buckingham – but alas, no Christine ‘Perfect’ McVie. 

‘Yes. It’s an album we worked on for over a year’ he resumes. ‘And we’re all really excited about it. It’s everything that we like about playing our music, and we’ve done it together. Lindsey produced the album, and engineered a lot of it too, so it’s been very much a home ‘in-house’ no-outside-interference album. It’s all about what we want to do, and what we feel creatively is exciting. And we are really excited about making new music together.’ But no Christine McVie? ‘No. Correct. She’s living in England. And she’s retired from showbiz, in this context. Y’know – we miss her, but she didn’t want to tour, and she didn’t want to be part of the whole thing. We talked to her a lot. She’s actually been writing some music and doing some recording which is exciting for her. But I don’t think she’ll ever get out on the road and really do anything. Because she doesn’t want to travel anymore. She’s had it with touring. So sadly, we parted company. We go on, and she’s doing what she needs to do, and hopefully enjoying her life. That’s part and parcel of her choice. And we’re comfortable with it. We know that she’s happy. And there’s nothing much one can do about it.’

 

‘CHEYNES, BO-STREET RUNNERS, 

AND STEAM PACKET...’ 

When you think Mick Fleetwood – if you think of him at all, you might think of the unfeasibly tall guy beside the diminutive Samantha Fox at the Brits, or perhaps the incredibly lanky guy with the ludicrously dangling balls positioned between his splayed legs, beside the petite Stevie Nicks on the iconic cover of ‘Rumours’ – the biggest selling album of all time, until ‘Thriller’ came along. But right now he’s looking at his life with strange amazement. Saying that to stay ‘in the trenches’ for as long as he has – as part of an on-going ‘showbizzy and glitzy Rock ‘n’ Roll story of blood and guts, booze and drugs’, is to be ‘incredibly blessed.’ His voice is smoothly accentless. He spent his first twenty years in England. Then America. But there’s no trace of either. Not even mid-Atlantic. And he’s well-used to this interview situation. He does the false-modesty thing to perfection. It comes easy. He’s practised in the art of technique so there’s few awkward silences, and no unplanned gaffes. Just the correct spice of excess and Rock ‘n’ Roll weirdness as required. Stories full of sex, glamour, drugs, ambition – and all of them true. 

He was born the 24 June 1942, to an RAF service family. So just how does a gangly guy from Redruth, Cornwall come to be an integral part of the US West Coast’s most defining Soft-Rock Mega-Band? The DVD/film follows Mick through his nomadic childhood – following his father’s postings to Egypt and Norway, to a spell at King’s School Sherbourne, ‘the first of two boarding schools, a gorgeous place,’ from which he persistently ran away. Through to his move to London at the age of sixteen – ‘a spunky thing to do’, and into his early career in the Blues Clubs of the Mod R&B underground, and thence into superstardom with Fleetwood Mac playing to gross-out audiences across the world, while travelling in a self-contained ‘bubble’ of narcotic and life-style excess. 

But first, both the DVD – and his autobiographical book ‘Two Sticks And A Drum’, emphasise the point that he’s a self-taught drummer. ‘Absolutely. I was self-taught. I just taught myself in my attic, playing along to records (on the radiogram). I can’t always remember the names of the drummers I used to listen to, because I’m not great at remembering names. But they must have been the people who played with Buddy Holly, and the Everly Brothers. While the first drummer I really listened to a hell of a lot, and learned from was the English drummer who used to play with the Shadows – Tony Meehan. He would basically be the first guy that I listened to, the stuff he did. And the Shadows were such a great band. Later on, I found that I enjoyed listening to a drummer called Sonny Freeman who played with B.B. King. ‘Blues Shuffles’ is something that I’m seemingly fairly good at. And I get that from him. That’s his influence.’ 

Mick talks readily about practising and perfecting hand-and-foot co-ordination, accurate time-keeping, and the naive rudiments of a personal style by playing along to “Apache”, Buddy Holly, and the Everly’s, but in fact he has a far more direct biological link with that first great Rock ‘n’ Roll era. Because one of the later Fleetwood Mac line-ups featured Billy Burnette – son of legendary Rocker Johnny Burnette. So did he get any good ‘early-Rock ‘n’ Roll Johnny Burnette’ tour stories from him? ‘Oh masses’ he gushes. ‘First of all, those guys were all maniacs. They make us modern-day Rock ‘n’ Rollers look like pussy’s...’, then he goes on to relate how ‘those were literally the days when you’d strap your double-bass to the roof of your car, and you’d go off on tour.’ Of course – Johnny Burnette’s Rock ‘n’ Roll Trio ‘were an enormous influence on Elvis.’ But ‘they were all prescribed those pills by the Doctors – Elvis of course, but the Everly Brothers and Johnny Burnette too. Benzedrine. And sadly they were – legally, made into junkies through their increasing dependence on them...’ 

But meanwhile, Shadows-influenced guitarists may have been ten-a-penny in 1963, but good sticksmen were a more rare breed, vexingly few-and-far-between. So the mere ownership of a kit proved sufficient to attract overtures for your services. So much so that on his arrival in London, with a copy of ‘Playboy’ under his arm and his precious drums stashed in the Guards’ Van – to stay with older sister Sally in bohemian Notting Hill Gate, he was almost immediately recruited by Peter ‘B’ Bardens, a keyboardist in an Italian-style mohair suit, for the upwardly-mobile Cheynes. Their most visible moment would come with their cover of Bill Wyman’s song “Stop Running Around” c/w “Down And Out” (1965, Columbia DB7464), but in the meantime they play the sleazy West End Mandrake Club, frequented by prostitutes and GI’s, despite being underage. 

And Fab it is to be young and alive, with London rapidly tripping and Swinging into its ‘Dedicated Follower of Fashion’ phase as centre of the style-world. Sister Sally was making silk ties for David Hockney. Mick was meeting – and wooing fashion-model Jenny Boyd-Levitt – sister to Patti Boyd who just happens to be married to Beatle George. So it’s like ‘I was around all that, and yet I hadn’t made it myself, but I was able to see what it was like to make it.’ After the demise of The Cheynes Mick sticks with Bardens for its successor group, the Peter B’s, long enough to record one further single (“If You Wanna Be Happy” c/w “Jodrell Blues”, March 1966, Columbia DB7862, with a young Peter Green guesting on guitar). 

So he was moving in the right circles, albeit stuck at 45rpm. Until – following ‘a very brief year’s tenure’ playing alongside John McVie and Peter Green with John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers – ‘the beginning of a relationship that later on would become Fleetwood Mac,’ those elusive chart hits were just around the corner. For John McVie would become the other essential ingredient in the Fleetwood Mac equation. Its’ only other constant point. ‘Me and John have always been there, the ‘nuts-and-bolts’ through all of that history’ enthuses Mick. ‘And he’s every bit as great a bass-player as he always was. In fact, he’s a better bass player now – and a dear dear friend. We’ve been playing together for so long we’ve developed this amazing unspoken thing, we don’t have to speak about it. You don’t have to think about it. It just exists. It’s pretty cool.’ 

But the rock-steady tom’s on “Albatross” come from Mick Fleetwood, as does the sharp drum-snaps of “Go Your Own Way”. 

‘THEN PLAY ON...’ 

Perhaps all that childhood nomadism was a preparation for the Rock ‘n’ Roll touring lifestyle? ‘Perhaps. I always had a superb ability to daydream, to such a degree that I was really... not around.’ 

The heavily TV-advertised compilation ‘The Very Best Of Fleetwood Mac’ went Top Three in the immediate run-up to Christmas 2002, and it tells the most complete story so far. Starting with hits from the Peter Green era, most obviously the shimmering “Albatross”, moving through the big American break-through with “Rhiannon” from ‘Fleetwood Mac’ (1975) into “Dreams” and “Don’t Stop” from ‘Rumours’ (1977) – into the controversial aftermath with the ‘Tusk’ (1979) double-set, plus tracks from their massive re-emergence in 1987 with the ‘Tango In The Night’ (1987) tracks “Seven Wonders” and “Big Love”. 

But right from the start – from the spine-tingling authenticity of their Blues soloing at their live debut on 13 August 1967 at the Windsor Jazz & Blues Festival, Fleetwood Mac where a surprisingly strange band. They consisted of nominal leader Peter Green (guitar), John McVie (drums), Jeremy Spencer (guitar), and Mick on drums. Later recruiting Danny Kirwan on additional guitar. Spencer was ‘totally outrageous.’ But Peter Green’s instabilities – brought to breaking point by bad encounters with LSD, were even more extreme. His song “Man of the World” is ‘like saying ‘please help me’ recalls Mick, and his leaving the band was ‘the most threatening thing that I can relate to in the ranks of Fleetwood Mac.’ 

Inevitably, with the onslaught of the 1970’s, a ‘very disorganised survival period’ followed – with Spencer also abruptly disappearing (to join the religious cult ‘The Children of God’), Christine – by then married to John, joining on keyboards in time for the ‘Kiln House’ (1970) album, and then the addition of ex-jazzer Bob Welch which helped carve them out a niche on the US touring circuit. Almost by default, but with a ruthlessly single-visioned focus on ensuring the group’s survival, Mick became even more of a motivating force. Until the break-up of his marriage to Jenny, alienated by his total dedication to keeping Mac touring, resulted in a more full-time shift to America, with Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham coming into the band just as Bob Welch is phasing out. 

Now – in the wake of Abba and Queen-derived stage-success, there are rumours that Matthew Vaughan – husband of Claudia Schiffer (and financier of ‘Lock, Stock And Two Smoking Barrels’) is producing a stage-musical of ‘Rumours’. And it’s an album rich in potential source-material, notorious for coming out of a period of personal stress and group disruptions, recorded ‘through various forms of emotional hell’ according to Mick. A Soap-Opera drama involving relationship make-ups and break-ups, with those ups-and-downs, those chaotic periods he talks about, presumably fuelling its edgy creativity? So were the downer-periods an essential part of the process that made the highs possible? ‘I think they have been known to do that. There’s no doubt that that sick equation can exist, from my own memories of – ‘oh my god, I’ve been up for five days’ – yeah! I don’t feel horribly comfortable applauding the fact. But it would be less than honest if I said that we – or I, didn’t, er... have moments of what I think were fairly CREATIVE moments, that came out of some lunatic situation that I was in.’ 

But then there’s also the element of happy accident. For example “The Chain” ‘basically came out of a jam. That song was ‘put together’ as distinct from someone literally sitting down and writing ‘a song’. It was very much collectively a band composition. The riff is John McVie’s contribution – a major contribution. Because that bassline is still being played on British TV in the car-racing series to this day. The Grand Prix thing. But it was really – something that just came out of us playing in the studio. Originally we had no words to it. And it really only became a song when Stevie wrote some. She walked in one day and said ‘I’ve written some words that might be good for that thing you were doing in the studio the other day.’ 

So it was ‘put together’. Lindsey arranged and made a song out of all the bits and pieces that we were putting down onto tape. And then once it was arranged and we knew what we were doing, we went in and recorded it. But it ultimately becomes a ‘band’ thing anyway, because we all have so much of our own individual style, our own stamp that makes the sound of Fleetwood Mac. So it’s not like you feel disconnected from the fact that maybe you haven’t written one of the songs. Because what you do, and what you feel when we’re all making music together, is what Fleetwood Mac ends up being, and that’s the stuff you hear on the albums. Whether one likes it or not, this is – after all, a combined effort from different people playing music together.’

Listen to ‘Rumours’ now, and it hardly sounds like one of the Top Five biggest-selling albums of all time. On vinyl or CD. Thirty-million-plus copies so far, and counting. You know the tracks. They’re all familiar, of course. It couldn’t really be any other way. They’ve been wall-to-wall on daytime radio ever since their first release, playlisted relentlessly between phone-ins, traffic reports and polite banter. Pleasant folky non-intrusive guitar riffs, cleanly urgent harmonies, usually from Stevie Nicks or Christine McVie. But none of the characteristics we assume with Rock greatness. No bombastic ambition. No searing angsty solos. That’s not what it’s about. This is where AOR begins. This is music for grown-ups. For expensive sound-systems and settled double-income young partners. It was ‘Rumours’ which first defined this lucrative market, this demographic. And it sounds so effortless. It demands only to be listened to. But that’s Mick’s drumming on the original of Stevie Nicks’ “Dreams” (‘I keep my visions to myself’), and Lindsey Buckingham’s “Second-Hand News”, his ‘Ticket To Ride’-snap-drums on Buckingham’s “Go Your Own Way”, “The Chain” and Christine McVie’s plaintive “Songbird”, or “You Make Loving Fun”. You know these songs. You grew up listening to them, consciously or not... 

Stupid questions sometimes have to be asked. Impossible, sure, but did Mick have any premonitions when it was first released (in August 1975) of just how big ‘Rumours’ would be? ‘No. I thought it would do well. ‘Cos we’d just had ‘Fleetwood Mac: Fleetwood Mac’ which was the first album that sold – like, about four-million copies in the United States alone. So – unless we really fucked it up, we knew we had a shot of at least doing fairly well with the next album. But no, we had no clue that that album was going to blow up, and – it’s like Pink Floyd’s ‘Dark Side Of The Moon’, it still keeps going. To this day it’s still one of those classic albums. So no – we could have no concept of what was about to happen to us...’ 

And now it continues. ‘Yes, we are currently being VERY active, ‘cos we’ll be touring with ‘Say You Will’ throughout this year and it’s going to be very busy. But this is what we know how to do. It’s like – people are still amazed at the Rolling Stones. Every six years or so THEY go out and tour. And every time they do it they say ‘this will be the last time we’re going to do it’ – and who knows, maybe it is the last time? But with us, we’re just really looking forward to doing it.’

‘MAN OF THE WORLD...’ 

Did you ever want to go back? Back to those moments that changed your life forever. Mick Fleetwood did. The film closes with him today, sitting on the beach, staring into the Hawaiian sunset. 

‘Now – it’s just a different time, a different space,’ he tells me. ‘We all take care of ourselves, and we wanna be healthy and well when we’re seventy-five years old. And there’s only one way of doing that. You have to take notice of your body and respect it, and do the right thing. And certainly – in my opinion, the music we’re playing now proves that the creative juices are still present and still very much intact.’ It wasn’t always so. There are life-changing moments. One occurred as he stood on Platform Four of Gloucester Station, on a ‘wet and dreary’ 1963, as the train pulls away, and he sets off for a new life in London... and another happened in 1989, in Maui with his third wife, Lynn. 

‘My life was increasingly controlled – as years went on, by my use of cocaine, and I was a heavy drinker.’ Sometimes stress and creative chaos can be a stimulant. ‘But it happens the other way too. ‘Cos sometimes people can lose confidence and say ‘well, if I’m not drunk I don’t think that I can play’ – or ‘I don’t think that I can have a good time on stage etc etc etc’. It’s a bit of everything.’ Until finally, ‘in a wretched condition from alcohol abuse, drug abuse, a wretched life-style, and not a happy one, it was no longer a laugh, it was no longer funny, it was sad.’ He turns his life around.... 

‘If that young Mick Fleetwood knew what the ‘Mick-Fleetwood-now’ had gone through, I think he’d say ‘you’re pretty lucky to have survived. And I’m glad you’ve survived!’ But my first love is my music, and to be around music. Luckily, I was able to do that, and I’m still doing that. So more than anything else it would be – ‘I’m really happy that you took my dream of being a musician, and you stayed true to that original dream. You didn’t waver.’ I never have – and I don’t think I ever will.’ 

On my TV screen Mick Fleetwood is sitting on a beach full of ghosts. And in his eyes there’s ‘a boy with a dream and eyes full of fun, ready to conquer the world with two sticks and a drum’. And he’s asking that question – ‘how did I get here, from there’?

*His personal and at times extremely candid DVD/video profile ‘THE MICK FLEETWOOD STORY’ (Direct Video Distribution. DVDUK-001D) forms a definitive portrait of his extraordinary life lived at the heart of Rock ‘n’ Roll’s greatest years.