Live: Loudon Wainwright III in Leeds

Gig Review of:

LOUDON WAINWRIGHT III

at ‘Fforde Green’, Leeds, Yorkshire

I read all the right critics. Through a process of assimilation I’m able to determine what’s current and politically acceptable (i.e. what sells), in a variety of areas including film, art, books, anarcho-syndicalism, and contemporary music (i.e. any music that allows you, for the price of a haircut, to belong to a group of people who think alike and consider themselves the one true stylists of genuine hip). The problem is that Loudon Wainwright III totally confounds that whole logic. By rights he shouldn’t even be here, alive, on this stage, never mind doing a two-hour solo set and coming back for two encores. Anyone who sings about dropping acid and listening to the Grateful Dead has got to be terminally brain-damaged, right? Not coming on with more lethal irony and cynical wit than a truckload of early Elvis Costello albums. So I ditch all accepted credibility standards, and just enjoy.

He comes on more ‘Beat’ than Tom Waits, leather flat ‘at, attempted beard, ludicrously striped soccer jersey and $20 shoes he claims he bought off a dead pimp in Austin, Texas. He hobo-grimaces and guns clear through the entire Lexicon of sex, illustrations provided by a hugely lewd and lasciviously lolling tongue. His humour is finely tuned, his guitar tuned only ‘close enough for Folk’. And I ain’t laughed so much since the last Tory Party Political.

“(IDTTYWLM) I Don’t Think That Your Wife Likes Me” (from ‘Fame & Wealth’, 1983) – emphasised by gun-shot stage-kicks – is a killer, as is “Saturday Morning Fever”, a plea for tolerance on behalf of Elmer Fudd. “Surfin’ Queen” is a complete debauched Fifties Beach movie with Annette Funicello waxed down and used to catch that last wild wave. Then there’s that ‘Dead Skunk in the middle of the road – stinkin’’ (from ‘III’, 1972). For the most they’re masculine songs, ‘sleazy but sexy’, about boozing and women, but they touch all the bases behind that stereotype. He’s never more perceptive than when he’s at his funniest, and through that strategy he managed to observe the minutia of relationships more accurately than most tediously serious writers. The ‘sad love’ of divorce, breakdown, and separation comes through on “Call Me Mr Guilty” by avoiding sentimentality and delivering each line tipped with vicious steel toe-caps; just as in “Woke Up This Morning And Didn’t Have The Blues” the confession of loneliness and loss surfaces only through its repeated comic denial.

The Music Lounge of this spacious and imposing hostelry is jam-packed to the ceiling with hairy and grizzled people joining in the choruses of songs I’ve never heard before. But what the hell? This time I’ll give the right critics a miss and just let ‘Rudolph the Red-Nosed Wino guide my sleigh tonight’.

Poem: 'Terror On Tethys / The Stone God Of Saturn'

TERROR ON TETHYS /

THE

STONE GOD OF SATURN

grown different, we destroy them,
the parents, as we must,
in the ruins of ship we devour them,
the parents, as we must, yet
voices persist from eaten flesh
to stalk sleeptime to echo lies
of worlds beyond world
a home beyond home and
a life without statue

grows different each brood,
limbs imitate stone tentacles, now
sleek-beaked, scale-warted skin with
ichor-green gleam of Saturn light

I’ve seen beyond
the statue’s jewelled jungle
that grows as broods multiply, seen
the incandescent configuration of Saturn
rise over mile-high methane mountains
and know there’s nowhere but here

grown different, we destroy them,
the parents, as we must, in the
ruins of their ship we eat flesh
to feed the statue as it feeds us,
yet voices stalk sleeptime
and whisper lies

of this dead moon they hit, dead but
for billion-year artefact, alien, vile,
statue vaster than ship itself, octopoid,
triggered by, reacting to, feeding on
human warmth, and lives: exhaling air,
and new life - of a kind, speeding
metabolism, scrambling gene-codes
into otherness, while
returning Tethys
to... what?

growing different,
as we must




Published in:
‘GRUE no.13’ (USA - October 1991)
‘THE 1992 RHYSLING ANTHOLOGY’ (USA - August 1992)
and the collection:
‘EUROSHIMA MON AMOUR’ Hilltop Press (UK-Oct 2000)

Book Review: Edmond Hamilton 'City At World's End'

EDMOND

HAMILTON:

THE MAN WHO

SAW THE FUTURE

Book Review of:

‘CITY AT WORLD’S END’

by EDMOND HAMILTON

(Crest Books ISBN 0-00-649907-4, 1951,

free download from: http://www.manybooks.net/

titles/hamiltoneother05cityworldsend.html)

‘CASTAWAYS AT THE END OF TIME…’

‘In one split second they were hurled across

time into a world a million years away…’

There’s an argument that Edmond Hamilton’s writing sophisticated as a result of his marrying Leigh Brackett. He’d been a leading SF writer for decades, associated with world-wrecking high-octane Space Opera. Although to say that is deceiving. Space Opera is a lazy term now applied to very formulaic very stereotyped interstellar romps. Back then, along with Doc EE Smith and Jack Williamson, he was virtually inventing all those conventions, spinning galaxy-spanning fantasias where literally none had boldly gone before. Born in Youngstown, Ohio on Friday, 21 October 1904, he was just twenty-one when his first short story – the Lovecraftian “The Monster God Of Mamurth”, appeared in ‘Weird Tales’ (August 1926) telling how an archaeologist quests through the north African Igidi desert to find a lost Carthaginian city, only to be terrorised by its demonic invisible dweller. From this promising, if traditionally structured, start he realised early that SF didn’t have to shadow the European path of philosophical contemplation, political allegory or strict technological speculation, that all of time and space could instead be the most wonderful playground for outrageous plot-invention, a formula with which he went on to dominate those early pulps with extravagantly clamorous high-adventures.

Across four decades his creative energies were freakishly prolific, stories gushed out of him, endlessly inventive. Luring and enticing from American newsstand displays, he exploded across the luridly gaudy covers of ‘Astounding Stories’ (with “The Sargasso Of Space”, September 1931), and ‘Thrilling Wonder Stories’ (with “Doom Over Venus”, February 1940), with tales in every sense the equal of the magazine titles – amazing, astounding, and wonderfully thrilling. Then there was ‘Wonder Stories’ (“The Island Of Unreason”, May 1933), with Allan Mann – as in ‘a man’, exiled from the totalitarian global civilisation of City 72 for his heretical crime against ruthlessly-enforced ‘reason’, only to discover he prefers the lawless wilderness reservation. Although the triumph of natural instinct over chill super-science is hardly a unique theme, the story flows with vigour and irresistible pace. In his ‘Before The Golden Age’ (1974) anthology Isaac Asimov recalls, as a teenager, ‘reading and slavering joyously’ over Hamilton’s “Cities In The Air”, the cover-story in Hugo Gernsback’s ‘Air Wonder Stories’, November/December 1929), with Frank R Paul’s spinning golden flying city suspended in a lurid pink sky, its beacon radiating messages to the world below. Or, at his most outrageous, the stunningly implausible “Thundering Worlds”, one of his seventy-nine sales to ‘Weird Tales’ (March 1934) in which – at the far-future time of the Sun’s slow death, the nine inhabited planets (newly-discovered Pluto was then considered a proper planet) are engineered to leave the solar system and navigate their way across space to find a new star. After various set-backs, Mercury is used as a projectile to destroy rival alien worlds in a final battle to occupy a new system. Character is sacrificed to rousing action, science is an enabling double-talk, a plot-convenience. But why not? wide-screen escapist fantasy has its place in attracting devotees to the genre, who then stay for the long-term. He built a loyal fan-base, who noted that even his brand of outlandish universe-wrecking imagination showed signs of evolving, perfecting into a slick style perhaps best epitomised by the exploits of his Interstellar Patrol, the law-enforcers of the Federation Of Suns, a seven-part story-series that, in the absence of anything resembling a televised ‘Star Trek’ – or indeed, a TV set at all, was the ongoing serial sci-fi of its day, with all the attendant cult appeal that implies (it ran from “Crashing Suns” in ‘Weird Tales’ August 1928 through to “The Cosmic Cloud” in ‘Weird Tales’ November 1930).

Or the later series that begins when dissatisfied World War II veteran John Gordon is psychically projected across 200-centuries into the body of Prince Zarth Arn of ‘The Star Kings’ (1949), an invincible swashbuckling hero in a galaxy-spanning future where fabulous crystalline cities shimmer beneath gleaming white suns, foul jungle planets conceal cruel and disgusting aliens, and vast Empire World starships confront the tyrannous League Of Dark Worlds in a titanic interstellar war. Inevitably, there’s beautiful princess Lianna, and a cute telepathic alien resembling an overgrown mynah bird, while Shorr Kan makes a fascinating super-villain and the ‘Disruptor’ is an ultimate-weapon worthy of ‘Death Star’ status. In fact, any resemblance to ‘Star Wars’ is purely probable. There’s even an argument that Hamilton invented ‘light-sabres’ (in his 1933 story “Kaldar: World Of Antares”).

To a later generation of academic writers anxious to legitimise SF as serious literature, brandishing their ‘1984’, their ‘Brave New World’, their HG Wells and John Wyndham, Edmond Hamilton’s disreputable pulp excesses prove something of an embarrassment. In his excellent ‘Billion Year Spree’ (1974) Brian Aldiss dismisses Hamilton’s entire career in less than a paragraph with the single derisive put-down ‘super-hack’. But he was more than that, he was perceptive enough to make the transition from zap-pow super-science romps, and adapted to the changing moods of the times. And just maybe, working with Leigh Brackett had a transformative effect on his work. Although she’d begun later, with “Martian Quest” in ‘Astounding SF’ (February 1940), if anything, her career was even more high-profile than his, screenwriting Howard Hawks movies for Humphrey Bogart (‘The Big Sleep’, 1946) and John Wayne (‘Rio Bravo’, 1959) before we even get to ‘The Empire Strikes Back’ (1981), as well as writing some of the most romantically evocative fantasies in the SF canon. Her Martian tales may owe a debt to Edgar Rice Burroughs’ ‘Barsoom’, but she invests poetic dimensions never equalled within the genre before or since. The pair married 31 December 1946.

So, for Edmond Hamilton, ‘City At World’s End’ (1951) is a mature novel. It’s also a Cold War novel. But that doesn’t imply a stark political message, a dour warning aimed at the folly of superpower confrontation. The threat of the ‘long-awaited atomic war beginning with a sneak-punch’ was always there – ‘it was like death’. But he uses the first-strike thermonuclear-attack scenario merely as a plot device to ignite the action, to set the tale in motion, to trigger the what-if situation. One June morning there’s a multiple warhead hit by superatomic bombs – the next generation in armament escalation, an obvious evolution on the ‘A’-bomb to the ‘H’-bomb, only ‘a thousand times more powerful’. They target mid-western America, the mill-town of Middletown, population 50,000. The shock of detonation is so devastating it disrupts the integrity of space-time itself. The city is wrenched from its continuum and deposited billions of years into the future. For the disorientated townsfolk, the dull red Sun they see above them is obviously not their normal Sun, and they imagine ‘we’re only ghosts, and not living on Earth any more.’ Another asks out ‘if a war’s started, who’s the enemy?’, ignoring the obvious reply. ‘I was in London last war’ grumbles electrician Johnson, ‘I know what blast can do. This isn’t destruction.’ But no, ‘instead of shattering buildings’ the atomic cataclysm has ‘shattered space and time’. Einstein is dragged into the equation, ‘a great enough force could hurl matter from one part of the (space-time) curve to another’. An audacious idea. It’s as though Hamilton is posing himself an impossible situation. As though the idea came first. Then he had to work out where to take it from there. His character ‘walked back down Mill Street, towards the garage where he had left his car, a billion years ago…’ Into grimmer, stranger and madder terrain.

The end of time has always intrigued the dream-weavers of speculative fiction. As soon as HG Wells’ ‘Time Traveller’ took his most distant jaunt to the frigid tideless shore at world’s end, it posed an impossibly powerful concept that many have attempted to explore further. Although few have come close to touching Wells’ tantalisingly melancholy conjecture, Edmond Hamilton’s future-Earth, lies in direct line of descent. He conjures the bones of the long-dead mingling with the dust that blows eternally over the dead face of the lifeless planet that once was our familiar world. Trackless red deserts, beneath a huge red sun swollen to monstrous size. Then the horror of the dying planet’s gathering night, in sad wastes of empty stillness beneath a moon many times magnified. Is all the world like this, dried-up ocean-beds, vanished cities? It seems so.

There’s a give-away character called Hubble. Another called Crisci, and Beitz. But the central protagonist is John ‘Ken’ Kenniston. He’s a scientist, in fact his ‘Industrial Research Lab’ actually houses one of the key nerve-centres of the US Atomic Defence network, located in Middletown as part of a dispersal policy. A clever strategy, but ‘not clever enough’, because the ‘unknown enemy had learned the secret’. The guilt that it was this covert function that made the town a target haunts him, and creates a gulf between him and fiancé Carol. As a man of the 1950’s he expresses antiquated opinions that now slam uncomfortably up against current attitudes, prompting odd reactions. Carol ‘didn’t know about science, and such things as time warps and shattered continuums had never entered her head.’ There’s a patronising ‘pretty little head’ slant to this, she’s the ‘little woman’ who likes ‘Tennyson and children and small dogs, and her ways were the ways of pleasant houses and fragrant kitchens, of quiet talk and laughter.’ Kenniston felt ‘a terrible pity for her, which almost smothered his irritation at the inability of the female mind to grapple with the essentials of a situation’. Prat! While Hamilton writes of ‘the faith which the people of the twentieth-century had come to have in the interpreters of the complex sciences they themselves were unable to comprehend.’ They ‘accepted the powers of scientists with the same unquestioning faith with which men had once accepted the powers of wizards’, a trusting brand of simple faith doubly assailed in the twenty-first by resurgent creationist anti-stemcell fundamentalism, and by venal corporate manipulation mounting assaults on climate-change science and the rest. But in time-lost Middletown, the full weight of mature responsibility, of adult male scientific understanding, rests uneasily on Kenniston’s broad shoulders.

The self-contained civic structure of small-town America works to the exile’s advantage. The local telephone exchange still works. Power, gas and water still function. Churches, and bars, do good business. It is only contact with the outer world that’s been lost, because there is no outer world any more. There’s no national radio. A woman complains she’s missing her ‘radio stories’ – her Soaps! There’s no mention of that new-fangled TV. Even the enemy, Kenniston thought bitterly, is a country that perished and was dust, how many millions of years ago? After their first frozen night, the garden roses are dead. The last roses in the world. No more roses. As he inhales from his carefully stored last cigarettes, he muses that there’s no more tobacco either. Pudgy Mayor Garris and Police Chief Kimer overcome their incomprehension, and rise to the occasion, Police and National Guardsmen establish some kind of order. Then Hubble and Kenniston take a jeep trip ‘for inspection of the contaminated region’. Out beyond the sharp demarcation where the world ends, to where there’s only ochre-yellow scrub, dust and wind. Out into the silence and the arid dusk of world’s end. There are devolved rodent diggers. And further, over the low ridge, a solemn domed city of tall towers in alien grace and symmetry. It, too, is empty, nothing but darkness and crowding silences.

By Chapter Six – ‘Caravan Into Tomorrow’, the Middletowners are forced to migrate to the protective sanctuary of the domed city. Requisitioning coaches, police patrol wagons, army trucks, and a trail of laden Buicks, Chevrolet, Hupmobiles, Plymouths and jalopies. No Hondas or Toyotas. This is 1950’s Americana. And they settle uneasily into their new environment. There’s something of the bleak resonance of Arthur C Clarke’s Diaspar – the ancient Earth’s last city, about ‘New Middletown’. As they explore, they discover geothermal heating vents, and a televisor system (‘they’d apparently gone beyond the vacuum tube’), which they adapt to send out messages in the hope of reaching some other surviving community.

The second phase of the novel begins when their distress call is answered, and a silent submarine-shaped spaceship alights just beyond the city. In Hamilton’s scientifically absurd “The Man Who Evolved” (in ‘Wonder Stories’, April 1931), Pollard is a typically Wellsian backroom inventor who schemes to harness cosmic rays to accelerate the process of evolution. ‘It seems somehow a thing forbidden’ protests his friend. Even ‘evolution’ itself is ‘a fighting word in some states… when you say it, you’ve got to smile’ cautions another. Yet, within his chamber, exposed by successive jolts of energy, Pollard evolves. First, by fifty-million years into a physically-perfect superman. One-hundred million years into a massive head with a shriveled body. Another fifty-million-year leap mutates him into a power-mad walking, seeing monster brain. And finally into a blob of protoplasm. (An ‘Outer Limits’ episode “The Sixth Finger” (Season 1:5, October 1963) replicates Pollard’s unwise venture – ‘an experiment too soon, too swift’, using a young pre-‘Man From Uncle’ David McCallum as his slow-witted test-subject.) But although Middletown has been dislocated billions of years into the future, no such bizarre evolutionary changes are apparent as the crew of the ‘Thanis’ disembark. Led by Piers Eglin, a historian who studied pre-atomic Earth civilisation, and the beautiful but haughty Varn Allan – her ‘hair the colour of pale gold smooth-curled about her head’, these are humans from the Vega system, their ‘faces darkened by the rays of alien suns’. As the Earth had grown increasingly inhospitable humans have migrated to ‘the worlds of warmer suns’, meeting and mingling with alien Spicans, Mirans and Capellans.

Although initially beneficial – repairing the city’s heat and lighting systems, it soon becomes apparent that these are temporary measures, and the newcomer’s eventual aim is an evacuation plan to resettle the temporal-refugees away from the unsupportable Earth, to the planet of some new star system. Already bewildered by their shift through time, and agitated by Mayor Garris’ frightened rhetoric, the castaways refuse to be moved, and prepare for armed resistance. Kenniston, attempting to arbitrate, is caught up between the two intentions. To resolve the impasse he must journey ‘through the worldless emptiness’ of space, making worldfall on Vega Four, the galactic capital of a thousand-thousand worlds, to make his appeal direct to the Board of Governors of the Federation Of Stars. When they reject his appeal he’s caught up in alien political intrigue. Gorr Holl, a bear-like Capellan – another ‘primitive’, suggests using Earth as a test-case for Jon Arnol’s theoretical terraforming process, hazardously making Earth habitable again. Chapter Twenty, ‘Appointment With Destiny’ finds them speeding back to Earth with the energy-bomb, taking Varn Allan with them as hostage, and pursued by Vegan starships intent on quarantining their prehistoric violence-virus. En route she lets slip her mask to reveal the feminine vulnerability beneath, conceding ‘that in spite of all we have gained since your day, we have lost something too. A courage, a blind, brave something – I’m glad I stayed.’ Needless to say, the bomb works, reigniting the world’s cold heart. And ‘it was as though a dead heart had suddenly started to beat again. To beat strongly, exultantly, a planet reborn…’ A winter that had lasted for a million years, is over. The people gratefully return to Middletown, symbolically to live out their lives in a Heritage-site past. Kenniston turns his back on their insularity, choosing the ‘vast star-shot spaces’ of the future. Carol lets him go. He returns to the starships, to where Varn Allan is waiting for him.

Is it a good novel? As literature, as great writing… obviously, not. But that was never his intention anyway. When people talk in breathless admiration of Literary Outlaws or Cultural Outsiders they’re usually referring to ‘Beat’ counter-culture writers such as Jack Kerouac, William S Burroughs or Charles Bukowski. But Edmond Hamilton is even more the outsider. He was a working writer, never a literary figure. He was never quite ‘respectable’, barely even within his own SF community. He was never embraced or celebrated by academia. To this day he remains beyond the pale of who is, and who is not, acceptable. He’s far too raw. And I, for one, find that makes him worth further investigation. As an example of his work, this book is highly readable. Great fun. Upbeat, with a vividly-imagined sense of limitless possibilities. All the ingredients required of genre fiction of its time. That’s more than enough. First chance the SF-readership got to see the novel was when ‘City At World’s End’ appeared as a ‘complete novel’ in the July 1950 issue of ‘Startling Stories’ (Vol.21 no.3), under the editorship of Sam Merwin Jrn. The cover-illustration by Earle K Bergey shows a human spacer in yellow, brandishing a blaster-pistol while being attacked from behind by a bear-like Wookie-cum-Ewok alien – obviously intended as Gorr Holl, as a horrified girl in figure-contouring yellow looks on. Their spaceship can be glimpsed behind them. It shares the cover-blurb with “Robot Nemesis” by Dr Edward E Smith. Soon after, the story reappeared in hardback as part of ‘Fell’s Science Fiction Library’ in February 1951, then the ‘Museum Press: Science Fiction Press’ (1952), and back into softback digest form as ‘Galaxy SF Novel no.18’ (1953) with a lavish Ed Emshwiller cover showing the domed city on the arid plain beneath the dying red sun. It was well-received, first reviewed in ‘The Magazine Of Fantasy & SF’ (August 1951), then by L Sprague de Camp in ‘Astounding SF’ (August 1951), and by Groff Conklin in ‘Galaxy’ (March 1952).

Although there’s an argument that Edmond Hamilton’s writing sophisticated as a result of marrying Leigh Brackett, he accomplished a smooth transfer into scripting picture-strips too, after all, from a suggestion by editor Mort Weisinger he’d already devised the pulp super-hero ‘Captain Future’. The Earle K Bergey cover of ‘Startling Stories’ (Winter 1946) shows “Outlaw World: A Captain Future Novel” with a space-girl in a beguiling gold bikini in free-fall, as red-headed hero Curtis Newton jetpacks to her rescue. By then the ‘Wizard of Science’ had already faced ‘The Space Emperor’ (in his own ‘Captain Future’ magazine, Winter 1940), set on Jupiter, where Jungletown is ‘several hundred million miles north’ of Jovopolis...’, and it opens with ‘the chill, uncanny breath of a dark menace millions of miles away’. Then, with his ‘Futuremen’ companions – Grag, a seven-foot-tall robot, Otho, a green shape-shifting android, and Simon Wright, a brain in a box, he takes a “Quest Beyond The Stars” (Winter, 1942). Although some of the twenty-seven ‘Captain Future’ titles were by others, under the house-name ‘Brett Sterling’, or by Manly Wade Wellman, Hamilton wrote the majority of the tales through the 1940’s and revived Captain Future for a second run in ‘Startling Stories’ in the 1950’s. But juvenile comic-books paid even better than pulp-fiction. So Edmond Hamilton happily adapted to writing ‘The Legion Of Super-Heroes’ for ‘Adventure Comics’ too. And when he went on to script for ‘Superman’ he introduced elements from ‘City At World’s End’ into his picture-strip “Superman Under The Red Sun” (‘Action Comics’ no.300, 1963). After all, a great plot-idea is not something to waste…

THE MAN WHO EVOLVED:

FIVE OTHER EDMOND

HAMILTON TALES

“Kaldar: World Of Antares” (‘The Magic Carpet’ magazine, April 1933) Penniless Stuart Merrick answers an ad placed by nine eminent astronomers/astrophysicists – he is expendable, they are not, to be teleported via a ‘vibratory beam’ to a planet of the Antares system. Finding himself in a city of black metal terraced pyramids, and mistakenly believed to be the Chan – or ruler of Corla, he’s ‘brain-changed’ to understand their language. Humans only inhabit what lies within a circle of metal mountains, outside of which are ‘unhuman races as ancient and intelligent and powerful as our own’ in a giant world of ‘great unhuman races and unending war and strange monsters, with all its mystery and horror and unearthly beauty’. His treacherous rival Jhalan connives with a race of hostile Cosp spider-men to kidnap the beautiful Narna, daughter of the previous Chan, and hence Merrick’s partner by right of succession. By airboat over fungus-forest beneath five bright moons he penetrates the labyrinthine Cosp tunnel-city to rescue her. Snatched back to Earth he resolves to return for further adventures (“The Snake-Men Of Kaldar” in ‘Magic Carpet’ October 1933, & “The Great Brain Of Kaldar” in ‘Weird Tales’ December 1935). Gloriously trashy ER Burroughsian fantasy at its best, this tale arguably anticipates ‘Star Trek’ beam-me-up technology and ‘Star Wars’ in its use of ‘Light-swords’. It was collected into the anthology ‘Swordsmen In The Sky’ edited by Donald A Wollheim (Ace Books, 1964)

“The Man Who Returned” (‘Weird Tales’, February 1934) Catalepsy-prone John Woodford wakes into an Edgar Allen Poe-influenced ‘Premature Burial’. Freeing himself from the tomb he returns home, only to discover his wife, Helen has already married his friend – and her long-time secret love, Curtis Dawes (he quotes the Tennyson poem ‘Enoch Arden’ who returns from sea also to discover his wife, believing him dead, has remarried. Unwilling to spoil her new happiness he never reveals his return). Woodford then visits his son, who’s new business is benefiting from the insurance pay-out from his father’s death. Rebuffed by his former employer, and rejected by another friend, he has nowhere to go but back to his tomb. This story of melancholy black humour, was reprinted as facsimile in ‘Weird Tales’ edited by Peter Haining (Neville Spearman/Xanadu 1976)

“The Accursed Galaxy” (‘Astounding Stories’, July 1935) Dr Ferdinand Peters, bickering astronomer is summoned by Garry Adams, a journalist from the ‘filthy rag’ popular press, to investigate a suspected fallen meteorite which turns out to be a polyhedron of crystalised energy from the primal super-galaxy from which all galaxies formed, something that existed only in Hamilton’s mind from theories before the ‘Big Bang’ was formulated. Within is imprisoned one of the ‘volitient beings of force’ which created the ‘strange disease of life’ and led to them creating the expanding universe to prevent it infecting all matter. This is one of three Edmond Hamilton tales selected by Isaac Asimov for his ‘Before The Golden Age’ anthology series (Doubleday & Co, 1974, Futura paperback, 1975), Vol.3.

“Devolution” (‘Amazing Stories’, December 1936) In the wilds north of Quebec, Ross, Gray & Woodin search for the blobby protoplasmic beings Ross had spotted from an aircraft. When the Arctarians appear it is to explain how the human concept of evolution is reversed. Life on Earth has instead regressed from its original Arctarian colonists into lower and lower forms, until the lowest of them all, the brawling warring humans, ‘the last hideous freaks’ who ‘would soon wind up the terrible story entirely by annihilating each other in their madness’. As the aliens leave the ‘soul-sickening world’, Ross shoots himself rather than live with the terrible truth. This story of unusual bleakness was republished in Asimov’s ‘Before The Golden Age Vol.4’

“He That Hath Wings” (‘Weird Tales, July 1938) David Rand is a hunchback orphan, his parents exposure to an ‘electrical explosion’ causing his mutation which, as he’s taken in by Dr Harriman, develops into fully-functioning wings. As an adult he migrates with the birds as the seasons change, ‘a roaming half-wild creature of the air’, until love for Ruth Hall brings him down to Earth. At her insistence he has the wings amputated and tries to adjust to dull normality, until – with the birth of their child, his ‘freak genes’ regrow new wings. The ‘blind buried longing’, the urge to migrate, lures him back into the sky before falling like Icarus ‘after a brief lifetime of wild, sweet flight, dropping contentedly to rest’. Maybe a metaphor for freedom, or how domesticity crushes creativity, this is Hamilton at his very best. Collected into ‘Weird Legacies’ edited by Mike Ashley (Star Books, 1977)

Album Review: The Young Tradition 'So Cheerfully Round'

Album Review of:

‘THE YOUNG TRADITION:

SO CHEERFULLY ROUND’

by THE YOUNG TRADITION

(Castle ESM CD 409, 1996)

Norma Waterson’s been belatedly Mercury Prize’d into celebrity, so it’s fitting the Waterson’s only real mid-sixties rivals should now get their moment’s revitalisation too. For at a time when chart-greedy Dylan clones were rocking Folk ‘n’ Roll hybrids towards Pop audiences, the Norfolk-based Young Tradition were leading a purist backlash from a grass-roots bedrock of Folk Clubs. Their songs not only rediscovering the earthy lure of the traditional repertoire but throwing new curves of powerfully raw authenticity onto them. With minimal drain on the National Grid, but electrifyingly acoustic interpretations to the max, the late Peter Bellamy, with brother and sister Royston and Heather Wood achieved near awesome performance levels. Each concert cunningly replicating a rural Theme Park Arcadia of ‘Bold Dragoons’, Pretty Ploughboys, Poachers, seduced Serving Maids and the romanticised barbarism of Fox Hunting and Class inequality as sharply evocative as hell.

Here Wood-Bellamy-Wood’s concise three-part harmonies are faultlessly clean, but never sterile. Finger-in-the-ear unaccompanied deliveries, but no mere hard-line Traddie imitations either. ‘I personally don’t copy’ declared flamboyant Rudyard Kipling-fixated Bellamy, ‘but by god, I steal!’. Lifted from their first two LP’s (‘The Young Tradition’ TRA142, 1966 & ‘So Cheerfully Round’ TRA155, 1967, originally issued on credibility-plus white-label Transatlantic), here are the macabre liturgical resonances of their stand-out “Lyke Wake Dirge” – a healthily pre-Christian song later taken over by Pentangle, following the ‘soul’s journey after death’. Then the keening dissonances of “Pretty Nancy Of Yarmouth” and “Byker Hill”, plus a charming “Derry Down Fair”, “The Banks of Claudy” and the rest. Barring odd re-unions the trio finally split – mission completed, in September 1969, for diverse solo ventures. But these earliest of tracks remain pristine, and Prize’d.

Traditional, yes, but Forever Young.

Live: Sneaker Pimps at Temple Newsam, Leeds

‘POST-MODERN SLEAZERAMA...!’

SNEAKER PIMPS (and friends)

at Temple Newsam Park, Leeds

What really spooks me is that between the Saturday and the Sunday night sessions, the giant inflatable octopus suspended from the ceiling has moved! I mean, that’s some heavy heavy paranormal vibe going down there. Meanwhile there’s Olive, an unstoppable dance machine in her little black dress, her cool horn, cooler vibes, and rapid dubwise rhythms. And between “Curious” and “Outlaw” she addresses her tribe. ‘I wanna see you dancing. You’re dancing like bags of SHITE!!!’ Sneaker Pimps say less. In fact they say nothing at all except ‘P.M.S.’ as an abbreviated introduction to “Post-Modern Sleaze”. But with Kelli Dayton in spray-on pants and bra beneath flash-frame film of the grim android gunfighter aka Yul Brynner in ‘Westworld’, they don’t need to. They’re in love with your confusion. Theirs are fully-chromed high-impact drones, glacial sounds with a low-end rumble that might say Nada, Nothing, but says it with an immaculate sheen of electronic nihilism. It’s got snap, crackle, and sometimes Pop too. But never ask the Press Officer. He’ll only spiel you platitudes. Never ask the Record Company either. They only give you the party line. If you want the real insight, dear reader, ask your feet. And tonight, in the ultra-stimulation of these alchemists of beat, we’re coming over all knee-trembly

‘It’s great to be back in fucking England’ says MC Maxim through dark bass detonations and deeply-dim lighting. ‘In America they don’t know shit. And it’s on their doorstep.’ Does he speak with forked tongue? No, tonight, it’s here on our doorstep. They’re going Prodigy? Sex Pistols via Mothercare, says Barbara Ellen. And hey, I knew Keith when he was normal. Before he smacked bitches and fire-started. And Monaco? A Low-Tar New Order. While all around them the Dance Tent is a giant sweatbox of rhythms, its skin wrinkling above your head like the inside of a giant scrotum. You have to dodge Security cordons intent on keeping you out, such is the maximum compression of pressed flesh drenched in blizzards of volume, lights and film for the gargantuan grooves of the Chemical Brothers, or at least the single glimpsed Chem-Brother visible through the punishment deck of magic mist, sweat vapour and heads. It’s banging. Sorted. Mental. Wicked. And all those other phrases so loved by ‘E’-outcasts.

The screens pulse scary cinematic steals. ‘CHEMICAL IMBALANCE’. Then ‘STABILITY RESTORED’. While Sneaker Pimps extend faster and further than a lizard’s tongue around long shadows of smooth bass-heavy skank and dark therapies of smart alecky minimal rhythm. Slow-burning. Like dropping a lazer-gun down your Kelvin Cliens. They gather momentum towards “Spin Spin Sugar” using as diverse samples as Britt Ecklund’s Wide-Screen sobbing spliced into Luciano Berio’s “Visage”, and “Six Underground” with its oblique descending chords moving at ludicrously spaced juxtaposition to the rest of the song. Coming up out of the alien blueprints for the Subterranean Dance once called Trip-Hop it took a remixed, rebranded, reconstructed, and Movie-soundtracked (sampled from James Bond’s ‘Goldfinger’) re-issue for it to eventually go Top Ten. But with Kelli’s disconcerting way of suddenly putting scary angles on the sound, sticking her oar in, while at the same time prompting, steering, and correcting the narrative course of Liam Howe’s vintage analogue synths and Chris Corner’s guitar, tonight it sounds freshly minted. There’s a rumour they’re going to do their radical Folk rework of “Firestarter”. They don’t. They don’t need to.

If modern dance is dog eat dog (at £28.50 a day ticket), just for tonight, it’s Bon Appetite! While the inflatable octopus on the ceiling watches. And it moves – I SWEAR it fucking moves!

Poem: 'A Kind Of Achievement'

A KIND OF

ACHIEVEMENT

He

always

seemed to

attract attention.

Started on a small scale.

two inches of local newspaper

column depth. A story headed

‘VANDALS FINED’, his

age (15) parenthesised

after his name.

Didn’t stop there though.

Soon after he was a face in

that sullen crowd on the regional

TV report, stood slightly bewildered

behind the Spokesperson urging

Govt subsidy for industrially

depressed areas.

Three years later

he died in Iraq,

half-tone blood on

half-tone uniform,

made the front page

of the nationals,

lead story in

one of them.

Made his

Mother

almost

proud

Published in:-
‘MOTH no.2’ (UK - Dec 1976)
‘IMPACT vol.1 no.4’ (USA - Nov 1978)
‘IT - INTERNATIONAL TIMES vol.5 no.5’ (UK - Jan 1980)
‘SLOWDIVE no.2’ (UK - July 1985)
‘LUCKY JIM’S no.4’ (USA - Dec 1985)
and the anthology:-
‘WRITERS AGAINST VICTORIAN VALUES:
LET THEM EAT CAKE (Sepia Anthology)’ (UK - Oct 1986)
‘A REASON FOR STAYING / THIS IS THE END: POEMS BY STEVE SNEYD & ANDREW DARLINGTON Silver Gull Publications (UK - April 1999)

The ZOOT MONEY Interview

ZOOT MONEY’S TRANSITION:

FROM BIG ROLL BAND TO

ENGLISH PSYCHEDELIA,

FROM DANTALIAN’S

CHARIOT TO BEYOND…

Zoot Money was the ‘Big Time Operator’

of 1960’s Club R&B. Later he was known as a

character-face on TV. Was there never a danger

of the TV eclipsing the music...?

‘When Marvin Gaye recorded this song, he didn’t know he had a cocaine problem. When Marvin Gaye recorded this song, he didn’t know he had a Father problem. But he recorded it anyway.’ Thus spake the legendary Zoot Money, introducing his own live version of “Stubborn Kind Of Fellow”. This night he neglects to mention that the song was also a 1965 Big Roll Band single! And by a neat word substitution it could be said that when Zoot himself recorded that song he didn’t know that twenty-something years later he’d write charting material with Jim Diamond, that his guitarist on that single – Andy Somers, would rack up mega-hits with Police, that his (Zoot’s) rubber-faced visage would be familiar to mass-audience TV-viewers via a comic lager-commercial, or that RSO would re-issue his long sought-after ‘Zoot: LiveAt Klook’s Kleek’ as a budget-label CD, to a gentle ripple of nostalgia cult approval.

It’s Thursday, 29th November 1984. The ‘Dortmunder Bierkeller’ slotted into the giant ‘Clockwork Orange’ ‘Merrion Centre’ complex of uptown Leeds. For the record, Zoot Money’s looking good, and he’s on fine form. He’s just delivered a hip-shakin finger-popping fifteen-number set chockfull of stone classics. A rapid re-run, in capsule form, of an amazing career. On stage he wears a head-mike for greater mobility, and a bright red Micky Mouse ‘T’-shirt for visual effect. He dances absurdly, cajoles and parties generously, with a tight-but-loose double-sax, drums & bass Roll Band behind his keyboards. Now we’re sitting backstage in the instant-party bare-brick cell that pretends to be a dressing room, indulging in the indulgencies familiar to generations of musicians. He’s still wearing the Mickey Mouse stage ‘T’-shirt, but now it’s partially occluded by black leather jacket. He’s also wearing cartoon-style lime-green socks that glow in the dark. He’s shorn of the beard and the exaggerated locks he adopted during his phase as back-up keyboardist to the likes of Kevin Coyne, Steve Ellis and Kevin Ayers. He’s leaner, slimmer and fitter, like some Thatcherite recipe for industrial efficiency.

I mention his stage announcement that runs ‘when I think of all the royalties Duran Duran make’, introducing the Ray Charles song “It Should’ve Been Me”…‘Oh, that was just a little fun.’ I realise that Zoot, but why not mention Police as examples of platinum-status Rock zillionaires, instead of the Duranies? ‘Well, I could have done. But I’ve no hard feelings towards Andy. Andy’s doing very well. Police were a good band.’ And Police completists could do a lot worse than hunt out the ‘Zoot: Live At Klook’s Kleek’ re-issue. It’s a perfect time-capsule of mid-sixties Club Jazz/&&B fusions. With a heavy dose of young Somer’s fretwork. ‘Forty-eight minutes of hip listening’ quoth ‘New Musical Express’ on its initial release, and it still stands comparison with today’s new jazzers. Less cool, more fire perhaps, including the full James Brown medley that always highlights the Big Roll Band’s volatile Club set. With the Godfather of Soul still a hip name to drop, even across the intervening decades. No Rap, Urban or Electro act can hope to compete without its JB samples.

‘That’s right. Well, he did start doing some quite…’ we get derailed by an obscure query from his current bassist – a former Nucleus sideman, and Nick Newall, original Big Roll Band tenor saxist, a man who still boasts ‘all his own hair’. ‘Brown Bag?’ answers Zoot confusingly. Nothing, apparently, to do with James Brown’s ‘Poppas Got A Brand New Bag’, no – nothing as obvious, this relates to a real lost bag. ‘It’s outside. Up behind the stage, just up the stairs.’ Then he burrows helpfully in another brown bag of ‘T’-shirts and assorted changes of underwear. A Louis Jordan cassette surfaces. ‘Yeah, well…’ It all disintegrates into ludicrous laughter before he resumes. Because, although his concerns are emphatically of the present, with a little effort he can be side-tracked…

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Own up time. First saw Zoot Money’s Big Roll Band through the sound-stunned multi-coloured twilight of the Hull Arts College, must have been 1965-ish – and the sight of George Bruno ceremoniously lowering his trousers to the stampeding Soul Classic “Haunted House” is an image that’s stayed with me intact across the intervening decades. I hoped he might do “Haunted House” this night. Zoot pulls a garish face of infinite comic resignation, shrugs a huge shrug, ‘well, you know, I try to get through as many old songs as possible. But in fact, the support band played a little longer, so we only had an hour or so.’ He hedges expertly, ‘we were gonna play for an hour and a half, and I would’ve included – not “Haunted House”, but some of the other old ones. I was gonna do ‘em, yeah, but it’s just the time thing, y’know.’ A manic gleam takes possession of his eyes, ‘HOWEVER – if people would like to come back – Folks!?!?, I’d be only too glad to play them ALL!!!’

Zoot Money – the legendary ‘Flamingo Club’ flasher, a mental aerobics master, flickers that famous visage through a range of expressions faster than a pickpocket through a bankroll. He knows his music every-which-way out, but hangs it all on an entertainer’s perception of pure joy. They say he tried on a serious expression once, but it didn’t fit right. So we talk through archive music. From his native Bournemouth through a stint with Alexis Korner’s Blues Incorporated, to his own chart hit “Big Time Operator”, and on… In Michael Moorcock’s apocalyptical novel ‘The Final Programme’ (1969), hermaphrodite Sci-Fi hero Jerry Cornelius plays “Zoot’s Suite” by Zoot Money’s Big Roll Band on his transistor radio. The perfectly hip soundtrack for the beautiful people of Swinging London. We talk through the devious exploits of Svengali-managed Rik Gunnell and then Zoot’s psychedelic Dantalian’s Chariot (with Andy Somers, Zoot? ‘That’s right. The main instigator’ he self-quotes). Their mesmerising single “The Madman Running Through The Field” remains a ‘Nuggets’-style collectors’ gem…

Nick Newall still calls Zoot by his real name – George. So why and how did it become Zoot? ‘It was Zoot Sims really. I saw him play a long time ago, and got nicknamed Zoot when I got home’. Home was the sedately respectable south-coast resort town of Bournemouth, where GBM was born on 17 July 1942, to an Italian immigrant family, although with paternal English roots. A ‘Melody Maker’ musicians’ file documents those early days. ‘My musical education started when I played French horn at school – but even before that, I could often be found messing about on guitar. Even while I was still at school I played guitar with local groups (the Black Hawks, and the Sands Combo – with Colin Allen) and then had a spell on bass and sometimes piano with a local palais band’. I heard that once he got to London he played with seminal UK Blues Master Cyril Davies, but ‘I only actually sat in with Cyril Davies once. No, it was Alexis Korner I worked with – not Cyril Davies’. So, in 1963 he was part of Blues Incorporated, ‘before the first Big Roll Band, yes’. Then ‘the original Big Roll Band was a semi-professional band. I still see the members of the Big Roll Band from right back then…’

The line-up that signed to Decca in 1964 consisted of four musical refugees from Bournemouth, Zoot (vocals / Hammond organ), Nick Newall (tenor sax), Andy Somers – later Summers (guitar), and Colin Allen – later of Stone the Crows, Georgie Fame, John Mayall, and Focus (drums), plus Clive Burrows (baritone sax) and Paul Williams – later of Juicy Lucy and Tempest (bass and vocals). The liaison resulted in a fistful of sides including the band’s debut 45rpm – “The Uncle Willie”. It was a ‘Hi-Heel Sneakers’ variant with a casual nod at the Jimmy McGriff organ style. It attracted attention and press coverage, but failed to chart. Instead they played the cult-clique club ‘The Flamingo’, taking over a residency vacated by Georgie Fame, and in-crowd credibility was assured.

In retrospect it seems a vastly fluid period. Club-bands were fusing R&B with Soul, and both of them with free-blowing high-flying jazz. ‘During the early sixties? Yes, you’re right. There was a lot of free-association between styles, a lot of ‘bridging-of-the-gap’. But of course, it didn’t happen everywhere. Some of us had to, sort of, be pioneers in that respect, to be a bit pioneering. Trying to free things, to get someone to listen to a jazz solo in the middle of “Johnny B Goode” or something. It was pretty good. But I always saw them as mixing anyway. I never saw them as being separate. Music is music, you should listen to as many forms as you can. The more you mix together, the more influences you’re open to, then the more international you are. That means the more ‘human’ you are, I suppose. The common denominator of any good music is SPIRIT! The only exception is when it sounds sort-of, slightly crass. Bad is still bad. Bad music is bad music. Good music is good.’

There was a jump to the Columbia label, and the singles cover-version of Marvin Gaye’s “Stubborn Kind of Fellow”, followed by a live album ‘Zoot: Live At Klook’s Kleek’. It was recorded 31st May 1966, the first production job for Elton John’s future producer Gus Dudgeon, who also scripted the gush of sleeve-notes. The band’s personnel had by then switched Burrows for future Mayall saxist / flautist Johnny Almond, to form what Dudgeon called ‘a classic example of the showmanship, professionalism and inventive musicianship of a great big gassy band!’ Reviewers tended to compare Money’s playing with Jimmy Smith’s. But was Smith a prime keyboard influence? ‘Not prime perhaps. Not prime… but listening to him helped me get, I suppose, a reasonably good sound.’ But James Brown? The highlight of the Big Roll Band’s club set, the opening slice of the album’s second side, was the “James Brown Medley”. ‘Yeah, well, JB, the Emperor. He was quite novel, in fact, very innovative at the time. First band I ever saw with more than one drummer. First band I ever saw who used TWO drummers, at it all the time, v-e-r-y good. But, it’s like, the medley I play on “Tribute To James Brown”, is more as he was then. Not the rhythm-machine-cum-electronic funk thing he later became.’ Point taken. ‘Zoot: Live At Klook’s Kleek’ catches James Brown as it happened. Not a retrospective style-theft. ‘This can never change, this is archive music.’

The act captured on live vinyl was spiced with rampaging humour. Zoot came to epitomise the after-hours ‘looning’ of a hellfire Mod elite represented in the Klook’s Kleek audience that night by Eric Burden, Brian Auger, Chas Chandler, and Georgie Fame. The attitude remains. ‘My gig is, I treat it with a little bit of jollity, a little big of seriousness, as much music as possible. I don’t hold people down. What they wanna play is what they wanna play.’ And outside the ‘looning’ circuit there was inter-band poaching as well as fraternisation, fights as well as interactions. ‘Actually, there’s some great bands that broke up during that time (he guffaws) – and I helped to break two of them up! I was stealing people. NO – it was like that in those days. There was a lot of sharing of musicians, and then, well, not totally sharing. If they go – they go. If they stay they stay. You could go join someone else BUT DON’T EVER COME BACK!!!’

On such a fluid basis the lifelines of Big Roll Band membership gets complex. ‘It all gets confusing ‘cos there’s been so many’ he agrees. ‘They go on and on. There will be a book out, a brought-up-to-date book on the Big Roll Band some time next year (in 1985?). I’m working on it now. I’m not actually doing it myself, somebody’s writing it for me (ghosting it). We haven’t sorted the publisher out yet – we haven’t actually got to Chapter 3 yet to be honest! But we will, by next year some time. It’ll be an informative book with a few anecdotes thrown in. Not really a sort of ‘faction’ book, it’ll be FACT. A book to put people straight on what they all want to know. People ask who left when and why, they all want to know. So THIS WAY I don’t have to go through the motions EVERY time.’

The nominal support structures for the Band throughout this period was a promotional organisation known as the Rik Gunnell Agency (‘I’m afraid so, yes’ he admits with a grin), with Zoot Money under the personal management of Bob Hind. And some strange stories come out of that period, ‘yeah, most of them are true. If they’re anything to do with Rik Gunnell they’re true! Actually he’s still alive and well. I’m not supposed to tell the Taxman that, but yes, he had us, he had John Mayall, Alan Price at one stage, Georgie Fame, the Shevells, they go on and on. He had Chris Farlowe too. They go on and on and on…’ There was a run of highly-rated singles, benefiting from heavy-rotation on the Pirate stations, culminating in the chart-hit “Big Time Operator”. Its lyric lists Zoot’s fictionalised career-cv, as he ‘started off a newsboy on a paper, for a time I worked in an elevator’ delivered in a picaresque gravel-growl, then ‘I drove an excavator, I became a wine and brandy waiter (yes I did)’ with honking unison-horns punching out emphasis, adding ‘airline navigator, crime investigator, commentator and administrator’, but all the time there’s the lurking ambition to ‘be a big time operator’ fading out with ‘now listen to me, I’m telling the truth’. With the inference that just maybe his Big Operation will turn out to be of a fringe-legal nature.

Writers Tony Colton & Ray Smith tailor the material to match Zoot’s exuberant persona, “Nick Knack” is a raucous roughened take on the kid’s rhyme, given a ‘this old man got rolling stoned’ twist, while “The Star Of The Show” gently mocks Pop by lamenting ‘been around a long time, working with my band, playing music people just didn’t understand’, until he launches into an insanely catchy la-la-la chorus which brings instant stardom. They are Mod Club and air-play hits, I dance to them at the ‘Gondola’ and ‘Kon-Tiki’ clubs in Hull and listen to them on the Pirate radio stations. I bought them, played them on my Dansette, and follow their progress through the music press, from singles’ reviews and club dates, into chart positions and interviews in ‘Record Mirror’, ‘Melody Maker’, ‘Rave’, ‘Disc’ and ‘NME’. Never less than soulfully-charged, with fluid keyboard skills, and funk-infused horn section – best showcased through instrumental ‘B’-sides located between Ramsey Lewis and Booker T, the unique quality Zoot brings to R&B is the full not-inconsiderable force of his character. And that is irrepressible. But a scene that boisterously explosive was bound to end. Despite much fine good-timely Jazz-Blues music and a series of excellent near-chart hits Zoot’s reputation (as far as the Press was concerned) began to rely increasingly on his ebullient stage eccentricities, his extra-curricula antics as lunatic comedian. Mythologies grew spontaneously around him – stories of him ‘debagged’ by Eric Burdon on stage at the ‘Paris Olympia’, the shorts thus revealed with slogans or Union Jack across the broad seat…

And even the Mod club-scene itself began decaying. The sudden Media celebrity of its ‘Swinging’ life-style robbed the movement of its exclusiveness, and the rival attractions of the psychedelic avant garde from America’s West Coast stole its prestige. Almost overnight the place to be seen was no longer the ‘Cromwellian’, the ‘Scotch of St. James’ or the ‘Bag O Nails’ – it was the ‘Middle Earth’, the ‘U.F.O.’ or the ‘Roundhouse’. Hair was longer, clothes more gaudy. Zoot’s strategy was an effortless metamorphosis into Dantalian’s Chariot; a new line-up unveiled at the 1967 Windsor Jazz & Blues Festival.

Psychedelic London 1967. Eric Burdon, embracing Love ‘n’ Peace, marries in full hippie regalia, while Zoot Money – larger than life – is his Best Man in contrasting top hat and tails. He’s changing horses in mid-stream, with Dantalian’s Chariot on full frontal assault, a band now slimmed down to Zoot, Allen, and Somers, with in-comer folk-rock bassist Pat Donaldson. ‘New Musical Express’ records that they ‘specialised in all-white costumes and instruments, had what was for a while regarded as the best light-show in town – and lost a small fortune’. They entered the vinyl zone almost immediately with a stone-classic of English psychedelia that still stands comparison with anything from early Pink Floyd, Tomorrow, or Soft Machine. “The Madman Running Through The Fields” employs all the studio devices and electronic trickery associated with the genre – reverse tapes, tempo-changes, surreal schizoid Laing-ian lyrics, and a mid-point dream-sequence, all ignited by a contagious melody-line and liquid harmonies. ‘Strong guitar, and a bit of messiness in other places’ says ‘Record Mirror’, while making it a Top 50 tip (a status it was never destined to achieve!), ‘a psychedelic pot pourri of monstrous proportions’ says ‘Record Collector’. As Zoot had earlier spoofed – ‘too far way out, working on a limb’, inevitably “Madman…” remains a much sought-after collectors item, a quintessential slice of vintage English weirdness at its most breathtakingly pure.

Zoot remembers the time ‘with great affection. It was good. We had a great, good time, for as long as it lasted. For as long as the money lasted, it was good’. It offered ‘a chance to be more creative, to move on to writing our own material and try out new things’. An album – ‘Transition’, was recorded over a twelve-month period, and as such it documents the stylistic transformation from Big Roll Soul (“Stop The Wedding” and “River’s Invitation”) to the new phase, best epitomised by Somers long Eastern-flavoured instrumental “Soma”, composed with his sitar-tutor Narzir Jarazbhoy. ‘They were all our own songs, folks! We wrote them all’. Previously there’d been self-penned ‘B’-sides, often instrumental cuts like “The Mound Moves”, but with the Chariot ‘we got into writing, so no real complaints about that’. With Andy Somers as an integral part of the process.

But looking back, it couldn’t last. In retrospect psychedelia and the style-progressions of the sixties takes on a certain inevitability. Through repetition and over-zealous journalism the whole period assumes an inflexible logic that now seems obvious, predetermined. But at the time there were no guidelines, things were wide open. ‘I was just, sort of, basically inexperienced about presenting any kind of image or anything. I was just DOING it, y’know. We got a little bit too… introspective, I feel. We lost some of the extrovert-expecting audience that was about at the time’. Dantalian’s Chariot split. Zoot and (by a different route) Somers flew out to join Eric Burdon’s New Animals in San Francisco. They arrived in time to contribute to the July 1968 ‘Every One Of Us’ album (MGM). Although never issued in the UK at the time, it remains an intriguing set, in some ways continuing the ‘Transition’ theme of meshing Blues (“St James Infirmary”) with the ‘new thang’ (“Year of the Guru”). Six months after its release came ‘Love Is’, a varied double-set packaging “River Deep Mountain High” and “Ring Of Fire” alongside a seventeen-minute re-run of Zoot’s “Madman…”, before the Animals too disintegrated in multi-coloured dayglo fragments. Zoot briefly formed a pick-up band with Jim Gordon and Lee Underwood, and cut an album called ‘Welcome To My Head’ with ex-Animal Vic Briggs (‘It was deleted within a year!’) It was a hectic period, one I have a lot of affection for. ‘It WAS great’ he concurs, because – or in spite of its wild unplanned momentum. ‘I was just doing it. Like I am now – but now, I hope, with a little bit more experience.’

Writing in ‘New Musical Express’ (January 1971) Roy Carr points out that ‘when having the now rare pleasure of seeing Zoot Money perform, one is inclined to try and separate the artist from the enigma which has grown up around this most loveable of original hirsute looners. Only to realise that it is this near legendary aura that makes him the incomparable entertainer.’ Elsewhere Chris Salewitz wrote of Zoot’s ‘perpetual eighteen-year-old’s smile’ even in a later band in which everyone ‘is over thirty’. And – although it’s true that Zoot’s wide-screen reputation was built up through his sixties bands (reinforced by often unacknowledged sessions jaunts, such as adding keyboards to Jackie Lynton’s 1967 single “I Never Loved A Girl Like You”, for example), he went on to several more careers-worth of adventures that deserve an article apiece to do them justice. Adjustment to the cold realities of the seventies after the heady optimisms of the counter-culture was traumatic for many – terminal for some. But Zoot had his musicianship to fall back on, and that was never in question. Associations with a number of names followed, largely in a support capacity.

There was ex-Love Affair star Steve Ellis re-launching his career as ‘Ellis’. ‘Ellis – the little chap. Yes, that was good stuff. Steve had all these songs in his head and he wanted to get them out. So I said ‘let’s get a band and do them’. CBS went with it for as long as they could – two albums worth, and then that was it really. Ellis was a good Rock ‘n’ Roll band. Nice and loud. Lots of hair’. Of the two Ellis albums I prefer the brilliantly-titled ‘Riding On The Crest Of A Slump’. ‘Yeah, we tried to have a little poke. We didn’t really get into politics as such, they were just songs that HAD to be done. Ellis – yes, it was great stuff. And Steve, he’s living in Brighton somewhere now.’

Ellis did a BBC ‘Old Grey Whistle Test’ TV-session. ‘Yes, ‘Whistle Test’’, he smiles. ‘They keep replaying old ‘Whistle Test’ things don’t they? Did they ever regurgitate any of that? Did they bring that back?’ They didn’t. ‘They should use the Kevin Coyne stuff they have in the vaults as well.’ Zoot played with the legendary eccentric Coyne. He nods, ‘Mmm, Kevin Ayers too’, played ‘six countries in three weeks!’ There was the epic Centipede project inaugurated by jazzer Keith Tippett, and the occasional Grimms jazz / poetry review made up of former Scaffold and Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band members. ‘I’m seeing John Gorman tomorrow. I don’t know what he’s up to now. He’s in Tyne-Tees television – maybe we’ll get something together there, I don’t know.’

We talk some more about Eric Burdon, and how Zoot co-wrote (and performed on) eight of the ten tracks on Burdon’s come-back album ‘Survivor’. Clear through to the 1990 ‘Blues Relics’ tour with Chris Farlowe… and then with the ‘Alan Price & Friends’ revue… interspersed by occasional Big Roll Band re-unions – like this one, now, in Leeds. A self-indulgent, effortlessly enjoyable journey back through the ‘Flamingo’ / ‘Klooks Kleek’ repertoire. For strictly train-spotterish reasons, the set-listing consisted of “Poppa’s Got A Brand New Bag”, “Out Of Sight” and “I Got You” – forming the James Brown medley, then “It Should’ve Been Me”, “Hide Nor Hair”, “Stubborn Kind Of Fellow”, “Big Time Operator”, the moving slow “Please Stay”, “Sweet Little Rock ‘n’ Roller”, “Smack Dab In The Middle”, “Nothin Shakin”, Robert Parker’s “Barefootin”, Marvin Gaye’s “Ain’t That Peculiar”, “Uncle Willie” and Phil Upchurch’s “You Can’t Sit Down”…

And how does your new Roland Juno 60 compare with the old Hammond organ used on the ‘Klook’s Kleek’ album? ‘It compares very well. I like it a lot.’ Much more portable. Although his concerns are emphatically of the present, with a little effort he can be side-tracked… And the future? ‘I’m open to all suggestions. I don’t say no to ANYTHING…!’

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By the late 1970’s Zoot was extending his career, moving sideways into TV and Movies. There was a role in the cinema spin-off from Ronnie Barker’s comedy series ‘Porridge’ (1979), shot entirely at Chelmsford Prison in Essex. Zoot plays ‘Lotterby, the thickest bloke in the nick’. The Hazel O’Conner Punk movie-vehicle ‘Breaking Glass’ (1980) followed, with Zoot as her sinister promo-manager figure, then a walk-on part in the movie of Colin McInnes novel ‘Absolute Beginners’ (1986). His parts in TV crime dramas ‘The Professionals’ – as an over-the-hill Pop star, and ‘Shoestring’ – as a DJ, got spliced in with legit stage-work – a National Theatre role as a picket in ‘Line ‘Em’. He was musical director for BBC1’s retro ‘Tutti Frutti’ series (1987). With character parts for telly commercials – a Teddy Boy for Knorr’s Knoodles, and a tourist jetting home from Benidorm for Carlesberg.

Pity you can’t get Carlsberg to sponsor the Big Roll Band, like Coca Cola did for the Jacksons, eh, Zoot? ‘Carlsberg wouldn’t go down to that level.’ He erupts in a fit of laughter that’s a joy to behold. ‘No, no, I’m just employed as an actor on those things. It’s a different life. It’s just who I am for that day – what they want. If they want a silly face…’ He pulls a silly face by way of illustration, and it’s a classic.

In fact, for the audiences who watched him doing an infectiously absurd parody-spoof of Tom Jones’ “It’s Not Unusual” in a Spanish Bar sequence in the ITV series ‘El C.I.D.’, it’s possible that Zoot Money was becoming known more as a face, than a musician. So, isn’t there a danger of the TV eclipsing the music? ‘Well, yes, some people might see it as that’ he concedes. ‘But with a bit of luck they just see the character I’m playing. They don’t see me as me.’ Another deep volcanic laugh. ‘Me – as me, appears on the stage, live! As you’ve just seen. I’m a conglomeration of all those things, I suppose. Music is a very big part of my life, and it’ll never go away. So I keep playing. I’ve got to sing and play. I’ve got to do that. I do the odd straight acting parts, as you’ll have seen. It depends on what I’m doing how I treat it. But I don’t neglect music even when I’m into a part for – say, an advert. I sing and play, and film the thing during the day!’

And ‘a recent Jim Diamond single had a song of mine on the ‘B’-side. A song we wrote together. It’s on his album too…’ his voice switching to heavy-promotional falsetto, ‘it made no.1 ON THE ALBUM CHARTS TOO FOLKS!!! Yes, I’ve worked with him. He produced my last album actually, Jim Diamond did.’

I fumble for something polite to say about a figure of such stunning banality as Jim Diamond. Wasn’t he in, er, Sad Café? ‘PhD’ Zoot corrects me. Then stabs a finger at my cassette recorder, ‘I’m sorry, freeze that a minute, business is business.’ And he rips a ring-pull off a can of (the opposition’s) lager. Smiling genially as the spray erupts…

ZOOT MONEY DISCOGRAPHY:

‘SERMONS & OTHERS’

1964 ‘R&B’ (Blues Roots 6, re-issue Nov 1978) a compilation including two Big Roll Band tracks alongside John Mayall, Alexis Korner, Graham Bond and others

August 1964 As ZOOT MONEY’S BIG ROLL BAND “The Uncle Willie” c/w “Zoot’s Suit” (Decca F 11954) produced by Noel Walker under the musical direction of Mike Leander. Later included on multi-artist LP ‘Hard-Up Heroes ’63-‘68’ (Decca DPA 3009, 1974)

1965 “Bring It On Home To Me” c/w “Good” (Columbia DB 7518)

June 1965 “Please Stay” c/w “You Know You’ll Cry” (Columbia DB 7600) vocals by the English Paul Williams

Sept 1965 “Stubborn Kind Of Fellow” c/w “Something Is Worrying Me” (Columbia DB 7697)

‘IT SHOULD’VE BEEN ME’ (Columbia 33SX 1734, October1965) debut LP, produced by Rik Gunnell, with “I’ll Go Crazy”, “Jump Back” (Rufus Thomas song), “Along Came John”, “Back Door Blues” (Eddie ‘Cleanhead Vinson song), “It Should’ve Been Me” (Ray Charles hit), “Sweet Little Rock And Roller”, “My Wife Can’t Cook”, “Rags And Old Iron”, “The Cat” (an instrumental written by Lalo Schifrin), “Feelin’ Sad”, “Bright Lights, Big City”, “Fina”. Reissued in July 2005 by Repertoire, with bonus tracks “Uncle Willie”, “Good”, “Bring It Home To Me”, “Please Stay”, “You Know I’ll Cry”, “Something Is Worrying Me”, “Stubborn Kind Of Fellow”, “Big Time Operator”, “Zoot’s Sermon” and “It Should’ve Been Me (alternate take)”. Original sleeve notes by Alexis Korner. CD liner-notes by Chris Welch

Nov 1965 “The Many Faces Of Love” c/w “Jump Back” (Columbia DB 7768)

March 1966 “Let’s Run For Cover” c/w “Self-Discipline” (Columbia DB 7876) enters ‘Melody Maker’ chart 16 April at no.43, moves up to no.40, then gets a final placing at no.50. ‘B’-side, written by Ray Smith, comments on boozy indulgences by rhyming ‘better get a lesson in, self-discipline’

July 1966 “Big Time Operator”/ “Zoot’s Sermon” (Columbia DB 7975) a Tony Colton & Ray Smith-penned ‘A’-side backed by a Zoot Money & Andy Somers-penned instrumental flip, produced by John Harris, it entered the ‘Melody Maker’ chart 13 August at no.42, rises to no.37, then no.32, it peaks at no.25. It reaches no.22 on the rival ‘Disc’ charts on 24 September, and no.7 on ‘Radio 270’ Pirate Radio chart. It stayed on the charts for eight weeks according to the ‘Guiness Book Of Hit Singles’

1966 ‘Big Time Operator’ EP (Columbia SEG 8519) with “Florence Of Arabia”, “It Should’ve Been Me”, “Chauffeur” and the title track

‘ZOOT! LIVE AT KLOOK’S KLEEK, LONDON’ (Columbia SX 6075, October 1966, reissued on RSA SPELP79, then December 2003 on Repertoire CD) recorded live at Dick Jordan’s legendary Hampstead club, with “Chauffeur”, “One And Only Man”, “I've Been Trying”, “Florence Of Arabia”, “Let The Good Times Roll”, “James Brown Medley: I’ll Go Crazy, Poppa’s Got A Brand New Bag, Out Of Sight, & I Feel Good”, “Mashed Potato USA” (with strong Andy Somers guitar solo), “Nothing Can Change This Love”, Barefootin’”. Sleeve-notes by studio-engineer Gus Dudgeon. ‘Record Mirror’ review says ‘this is one of those few live LPs where the artiste or group has succeeded in putting across a variety of atmosphere, instead of just the usual frantic heat and muzzy vocals’

December 1966 “Star Of The Show”/ “Mound Moves” (Columbia DB 8090) another Colton & Smith song, produced by Bob Hind. ‘Record Mirror’ review says ‘a novelty in some ways, but bluesily and gustily sung. Must be a sizable hit’

April 1967 “Nick Knack” c/w “I Really Learn How To Cry” (Columbia DB 8172) ‘Record Mirror’ Top 50 Tip, ‘Zoot invests it with his own hardly-shy sort of personality – with modern lyrics and a wonderful sense of power and fun. Instrumentally it’s darned good, too’

1967 Jackie Lynton single “I Never Loved A Girl Like You” c/w “Answer Me” (Columbia DB8224) with Zoot on keyboards

September 1967 As DANTALIAN’S CHARIOT “The Madman Running Through The Fields” c/w “Sun Came Bursting Through My Cloud” (Columbia DB 8260) Zoot Money & Andy Somers ‘A’-side, Colton & Smith ‘B’-side, credited as ‘A Rik Gunnell Production’. ‘Record Mirror’ review says ‘strong guitar and a bit of messiness in other places, but it builds well and with ingenuity’. Both tracks later featured on 1996 fix-up LP ‘CHARIOT RISING’ (Wooden Hill WH CD005) with Money & Somers songs “World War III”, “This Island”, “Fourpenny Bus Ride”, “Four Firemen” & “High Flying Bird”, plus Colton & Smith songs “Recapture The Thrill Of Yesterday” and “Coffee Song” plus Colton & Somers “Soma”

May 1968 As ZOOT MONEY ‘TRANSITION’ (CBS Direction 8-63231, reissued in October 2009 as Righteous Psalm PSALM2319) produced by Bob Hind, with “Stop The Wedding” & “Let Music Make You Happy” (both by Money & Somers), “Soma” (Colton & Somers song with druggy drift and sitar), “Problem Child”, plus “River’s Invitation” & “Deadline” (both by Curtis Mayfield), “Watcha Gonna Do ‘Bout It” (Carroll, Garvin & Payne), and three by Colton & Smith “Recapture The Thrill Of Yesterday” ” & “Just A Passing Phase” & “Coffee Song”

July 1968 By ERIC BURDON & THE NEW ANIMALS ‘EVERY ONE OF US’ (MGM) US LP

October 1968 ‘LOVE IS’ is as a single album (MGM CS8104), then as the full US double-set in 1971 (MGM 2619-002) includes extended reworking of “The Madman Running Through The Fields” plus another from the live Dantalian’s Chariot set, “Gemini”

1969 ZOOT MONEY ‘WELCOME TO MY HEAD’ (US only, Capitol ST318) arranged by Vic Briggs (guitarist with the New Animals), with “ The Man Who Rides the Wind”, “Eight Is the Colour”, “Heavy Load”, “You Got to Believe It”, “Landscape”, “Her”, “The Music Shop”, “The Door”, “Hideaway” and “The Decision Hour”. The liner-notes by Debbi Smith (of ‘Strobe’ magazine) announces ‘all hope abandon, ye who enter the head of Money…’

May 1970 “No-One But You” (Polydor 2058-020) a solo Zoot Money single written by Philip Goodhand-Tait, from October 1970 ‘ZOOT MONEY’ (Polydor 2482-019) solo album produced by ex-Animal Alan Price, with Paul McCartney’s “Blackbird” plus songs by Leonard Cohen (“Story Of Isaac”) & Philip Goodhand-Tait (“When Tomorrow Comes”). Other tracks are “When Will You Know”, “Leaving It All Behind” (by Julie Driscoll), “Listen To Me”, “The Prisoner” and “I Need Your Inspiration”. Musicians are Micky Moody (guitar), Lem Lubin (bass), Bernie Berns (drums), John Beauchamp (trombone) and Mike Cottom (trumpet). Has the same sleeve-notes as the US-only ‘Welcome To My Head’

July 1973 ‘SNAPE: FEATURING ALEXIS KORNER & PETER THORUP (ACCIDENTALLY BORNM IN NEW ORLEANS’ (Transatlantic) Zoot plays piano on track “Gospel Ship”

1973 With ELLIS ‘RIDING ON THE CREST OF A SLUMP’ (Epic EPC 64878)

1973 ‘ELLIS: WHY NOT?’ (Epic EPC 65650)

1974 ‘SECOND HAND DEALER’ (Dawn DNLS3054) album by Scots singer-songwriter BRIAN FRIEL, with Zoot & BJ Cole playing back-up

February 1974 ‘ATLANTIC JAZZ EXPRESS’ (Atlantic ATS20082) compilation LP with Zoot and Albert Lee contributing to one Eddie Harris track. Recorded in London

June 1975 ‘ARRIVEDERCI ARDROSSAN’ (Dawn DNLS) second BRIAN FRIEL album, with Zoot & Paul Vigrass playing back-up

1976 ‘HEARTBURN’ (Virgin) by KEVIN COYNE, with Zoot Money as group member

January 1977 ‘IN LIVING BLACK & WHITE’ (Virgin) by KEVIN COYNE

March 1978 ‘DYNAMITE DAZE’ (Virgin V2096) by KEVIN COYNE

February 1978 ‘SURVIVOR’ (Polydor) by ERIC BURDON. Produced by Chas Chandler, with Zoot Money instrumental and song-writing contributions

1979 ‘ALEXIS KORNER & FRIENDS: THE PARTY ALBUM’ (Castle Classics CLA CD290, reissued 1992) with Dick Morrissey, Duffy Power, Paul Jones, Eric Clapton, John Surman, Dick Heckstall-Smith alongside Zoot

September 1980 “Your Feet’s Too Big” c/w “Ain’t Nothing Shaking But The Bacon” (Zoot Money solo composition) (Magic Moon Records) ZOOT MONEY solo update of Jazz novelty number, both lifted from LP ‘MR MONEY’ (Magic Moon LUNE 1 through Paul McCartney’s MPL Communications), produced by Jim Diamond, with musicians Jim Mullen, Nick South, Les Davidson, Paul Robinson, Dick Morrisey, Martin Drover, and Francis Monkman. Other tracks are “Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate The Positive” (by Johnny Mercer & Harold Arlen), “Two Of Us” & “Can I Get Closer To You” (both written by Zoot with Colin E Allen), plus “Hello”, “Riders In The Sky”, “It’s Too Soon To Know”, “Careless Hands” and “Sentimental Journey”. Album ‘cover concept’ by Zoot Money & Paul McCartney

1988 ‘FARLOWE, DAVIS, YORK, HODGKINSON, MONEY, ANDERSON; EXTREMELY LIVE’ (Inakoustik insak 8905CD) – Chris, Spencer, Pete, Zoot, Colin & Miller

1998 RUBY TURNER ‘CALL ME BY MY NAME’ (Indigo Records IGOX CD511) Zoot Money produces, plays keyboards and sings, with Bobby Tench (guitar) and Boz Burrell (bass)

September 2000 ZOOT MONEY ‘FULLY CLOTHED & NAKED’ (Indigo) with “Let The Good Times Roll”, “The Rock”, “Let’s Run For Cover”, “Loving You Is Sweeter Than Ever”, “Hallelujah I Love Her So”, “Bare Footin’”, “People Gonna Talk”, “Smack Dab In The Middle”, “Nothing’s Gonna Change This Love”, “Florence Of Arabia”, “Your One And Only Man”, “Look At You Now”, “Arkansas”, “Good To Be Alive”, “Following You”, “It Ain’t Easy” and “Six Days On The Road”

April 2003 ‘ZOOT MONEY’S BIG ROLL BAND: SINGLES A’s & B’s SCRAPBOOK’ (Repertoire) 24 digitally remastered tracks including “No-One But You”, “Prisoner”, “Stop The Wedding”, “My Sly Sadie”, “I Really Learnt How To Cry”, “You Know You’ll Try”, “Gin House”, “Rocking Chair”, Jump Back” plus singles

September 2005 THUNDERCLAP FEATURING ZOOT MONEY ‘PICK ‘N’ TELL’ (Speakeasy, then Thunderclap OMP, January 2011) with Pete Goodall (guitarist with original Thunderclap Newman), co-writing with Pete Brown, and Zoot Money (keyboards & vocals), Nick Payn (saxes), Dick Heckstall-Smith (sax), Noel Norris (trumpet), Richard Bailey (drums), a new version of Thunderclap Newman’s “Something In The Air”, plus “Own Way Home” (with Pete Brown vocals), “Sunshine In My Life”, “Thunder”, “Don’t Come Down”, “Waiting Here For You”, “Love Is Only You”, “Along Again”, “Tear In My Heart”, “The Mask”, “The Old Soul Singer” and “No Shape No Form”

November 2005 ZOOT MONEY’S BIG ROLL BAND ‘BIG TIME OPERATOR’ (Castle 2CD) compilation of 39 vintage 1960’s tracks

June 2007 ‘BEST OF ZOOT MONEY’S BIG ROLL BAND’ (Repertoire) 19 original recordings remastered

July 2007 ZOOT MONEY’S BIG ROLL BAND ‘FULL CIRCLE’ (Universal RC001, Wrasse Records) with “Captain America” (also on 1995 ‘Alexis Korner Memorial Concert Vol.2’), plus sessions from 2003 and 2004 with Gary Foot (sax), Ronnie Johnson (guitar), Steve Laffy (drums), Paul MacCallum (bass), “Roll With My Baby”, “Heaven & Earth & The Stars”, “Born To Live The Blues”, “Hide Nor Hair”, “Watcha Gonna Do?”, “Fog On The Highway”, “May The Circle Be Unbroken”, “It Never Rains But It Pours”, “Medley: Barefootin’ & Walking The Dog”, “It Should’ve Been Me”, “Wild Women & Desperate Men”, “Promised Men”

February 2008 ZOOT MONEY’S BIG ROLL BAND ‘WERE YOU THERE: LIVE 1966’ (Indigo) a kind of bootleg companion to the original ‘Klook’s Kleek’ album, these archive live sessions recorded at the ‘Flamingo’ include “James Brown Medley” and “Big Time Operator”. Soul Star Herbie Goins guests

January 2010 ‘HAMMOND HEROES: 1960’s R&B’ (Bear Family) compilation with Brian Auger, Graham Bond, Georgie Fame, and Zoot’s “Zoot’s Sermon”

This Discography makes no pretence of being complete!


This is an amended version of an original
interview published in translation in:
‘ROCKERILLA’ (Italy)