At Spike, we’re big fans of the 33 1/3 series of music books. You’ll be familiar with them if you’ve browsed a record or book shop over the last half-decade. Each of these pocket-sized editions focuses on a single album, drilling down to explore various elements of it. Each volume is different, some telling the story of the record, others analysing the songs themselves. It’s this flexibility that keeps the format invigorated. Furthermore, the slimness of each book is a definite advantage (each being roughly 130 pages long), forcing a salient brevity on the writers. Hugo Wilcken’s book on Low and Mike McGonigal on My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless are personal favourites. Both are genuinely informative and entertaining, packing a lot of insight into a small space. Both are also very good at demythologising some apocryphal tales. I’d also recommend Mark Polizzotti’s Highway 61 Revisited, but most of them a extremely readable. The latest instalment is Bryan Waterman’s volume on Television’s Marquee Moon, carefully researched with the aid of Richard Hell’s archives.

There’s something both classic and infinitely flexible about the series. Where did the idea come from?

The 33 1/3 series was my idea, way back in 2002. I’ve been working at Continuum since 1996, first in London, then in New York. Initially I drew up a list of 50 or so albums that I thought people would enjoy writing about, and then started contacting some writers, musicians and broadcasters to see if anybody actually wanted to do such a thing. It turned out that a lot of people were really into the idea so I pitched it to the board at Continuum and we were up and running pretty quickly.

How do you decide which titles to go with? It seems to be love rather than demographics?

When I was first putting the series together, there was a list of possible albums for people to write about–from Nation of Millions to Bat Out of Hell, from Murmur to Thriller, and from Piper at the Gates of Dawn to Exile on Main St. But very quickly it became apparent that most people I contacted were more interested in writing about an album that wasn’t on my original list, so it rather snowballed from there. You could certainly argue that the series started out with a larger focus on “classic rock”–Pink Floyd, Neil Young, Bowie, Beatles, Stones, Beach Boys and Dylan were all in the first 20 titles–but as it became more established we felt more confident about publishing volumes in different genres and about artists who were perhaps less well-known. So we’ve ended up, I hope, with an interesting range that covers some obvious stuff but also people like Israel Kamakawiwo’ole, Celine Dion, Guided by Voices, Van Dyke Parks, and Slint. For info about the best-selling titles, best place to look is here.

I love too many of the books to be able to identify one as a personal favourite, but right now I’d say I have the fondest memories of the books about Dusty Springfield, James Brown, Led Zeppelin, The Band, Beastie Boys and The Pixies. If I was to write one of these? I’d probably go for Rattlesnakes by Lloyd Cole and the Commotions, but it wouldn’t sell!

There’s a good blog post from the last time we had an open call for proposals. I feel incredibly lucky to be able to read through that number of proposals, and have learned so much about music–and about writing–in the process. Although, honestly, sending out rejection letters to approximately 580 people is nobody’s idea of fun…

I know Geeta Dayal was approached by Brian Eno. Do you get much feedback from the artists themselves? Any angry faxes from Morrissey?

Somewhat inevitably, we’re more likely to hear from, or be in touch with, the less famous of the artists covered by the series. People like The Flaming Lips, Guided by Voices and Van Dyke Parks have all been extremely helpful. We never heard anything from Celine Dion, which was a shame. And I’d love to know if Dylan likes our Highway 61 book, as I’m sure it’s one of the very best of the many, many Dylan books published so far. Thurston Moore was kind enough to inform us, on the series blog, that our book about Daydream Nation had a couple of lyrics transcribed incorrectly. That was a little awkward. But it was really gratifying to learn that Eno was so fond of Geeta Dayal’s book about Another Green World.

Any plans to branch out into films or novels? Greil Marcus managed a whole book just on ‘Like a Rolling Stone’!

No plans to branch out, although I should point out that Soft Skull Press launched a great series of small books about films, which is often being compared to the 33 1/3 series.

In Rip It Up and Start Again, Simon Reynolds talks about a moment in the 80s when post-punk started looking back. Has pop reached its ‘classical’ phase where we endlessly debate the canon?

I believe the canon will keep evolving. And while it was never the intention of the series to claim these as the best albums ever made, I do hope that we’ve managed to open some new debates about what can be considered a great album and that we’ve managed to turn people on to some great music that they’ve perhaps not tried before. And perhaps most importantly of all (to my mind at least) that the series has explored and encouraged different ways of writing about music. There are so many stories still to be told, and so many ways of telling them.

“To survive in our business, it is necessary to be fluid, to understand trends and timing, while never losing sight of the big picture,” my co-author Don Grierson observes in his introduction. Clearly, those who thrive in our volatile world are those who heed that message. To these ends, here are some choice quotes from a cross-section of sources that serve as a barometer of how the music business is evolving.

“Prince left Warner Bros. over what he thought were restrictions. He wanted to release music when he finished it. He didn’t want to wait for a release cycle, he wanted it to be out there. Fresh. You need to exploit that connection. There has never been a better time for innovative music and musicians.”
– Ted Cohen: TAG Strategic

“I don’t think there’s a music business monster.com that’s going to say, ‘Wow! We’re thrilled with your experience and education’. People have a need to help promote music and artists like crazy. As long as there’s a need, that means you have a job.”
– Jim Guerinot, manager: No Doubt, Gwen Sefani, Nine Inch Nails, Social Distortion

“The best artists know who they are and are really comfortable creating something from nothing. They are confident melodists and lyricists and have something to say. A song is a short story. I love a writer who can say something profound or poignant in a simple way. Language and message is everything in an artist.”
– Rick Nowels, songwriter/producer: Madonna, John Legend, Dido, Keith Urban

“People ask, ‘What does a great bio look like? What kind of picture do I need? Don’t hear my stuff, it’s not mastered, we have another guitar part to add’. But none of this will create a hit song for you. If it were an amazing song, it could have nothing more than an acoustic guitar.”
– Michael Laskow, president: TAXI

“Write a hundred songs a year for a few years. You will eventually write songs that people understand.”
– Toby Gad, songwriter: ‘If I Were a Boy’ (Beyonce), ‘Big Girls Don’t Cry’ (Fergie)

“The best defense against wasting your time is making music you love and believe in. Make a record you want to listen to in 20 years, even if it doesn’t sell.”
– Steve Greenberg, president: S-Curve Records (Joss Stone)

“A lot of it is the ‘X-Factor’ and if something moves me as a fan of music. If it doesn’t move me, how is it supposed to move anyone else? Many times your heart sinks because it’s just not there. I can never judge or pre-judge where an artist or a songwriter comes from, small town or big town, but a guy with a guitar case, a legal pad, and pencil can change my life, and it can change their lives. I’m always open to that.”
– Doug Howard: Disney Music Publishing Nashville

“Get rid of the drunks and drug addicts in your band because they will suck the life out of you. Look at every opportunity and educate yourself. Fire your mother if she’s a drug addict. Don’t get married before your career starts. Every girl has ‘Yoko Ono disease’. Nothing and no one should stop you. Everyone you think is important will try to stop you and demand your time. Give yourself all the time and attention because no one else will pay your salary or your rent.”
– Gene Simmons: KISS

Author/educator/music journalist and networking guru Dan Kimpel contributes to a dizzying variety of print and electronic mediums. His recent interview subjects include Patti Smith, Ray LaMontagne and John Legend. If you fly Delta Airlines, you can hear Dan’s interviews with recording artists and songwriters on the airline’s in-flight audio programming. Dan’s bestselling music industry books including Networking Strategies for the New Music Business, Electrify My Soul: Songwriters and the Spiritual Source, How They Made It: True Stories of How Music’s Biggest Stars Went From Start to Stardom, Networking in the Music Business and It All Begins with the Music: Developing Successful Artists & Careers for the New Music Business, co-authored with legendary A&R executive, Don Grierson.

Further Resources:

• Dan Kimpel’s website
• Where to buy It All Begins With The Music

“Where did you come from, Cotton-eye Joe?”

That’s the first question Studs Terkel asked Bob Dylan on his legendary radio show in 1963. Bob didn’t really answer then, and he hasn’t really answered since. He’s given hints, and ever since Toby Thompson’s attempt in 1971, biographers have tried to find out where Bob Dylan came from. They know where Bobby Zimmerman came from, but Bob Dylan is a bit more elusive.

Bobby Zimmerman was a motorcycle riding rock-n-roll playing greaser when he arrived in Minneapolis in 1959 as a student at the University of Minnesota. By the next year, he had become Bob Dylan, the folksinger, the would-be troubador who idolized Odetta and Woody Guthrie.

It’s not clear when Bobby started using the name Bob Dylan – stories range from October of 1959, when he began playing at the Ten O’Clock Scholar, a coffee shop in Dinkytown where the local musicians hung out. Others say he started using it when he was still at Hibbing High School. The most common story is that he adopted it after the poet Dylan Thomas, while others claim it was in tribute to Matt Dillon, the main character on Gunsmoke, which he was a big fan of.

Legend runs through Bob Dylan’s life story, and the many biographies of him are all very different because of these stories – some of them made up by Bob himself. Right when I was finishing up this piece, Bob had a rare post on his website explaining his recent trip to China, saying at the end that there were a gazillion books on him and encouraged anybody who knew him to write their own.

Highway 61

“Dylan is a genius, that’s all. He is irksome and irritating, very much the Chekhov genius. He is not more complex than most people; he is simpler.
I knew when I met him that he was very talented… He walked around like a young Shelley”
– Harry Weber, who shared an apartment with Bobby Zimmerman and “Spider” John Koerner

When Bobby Zimmerman started to become Bob Dylan, he was a high school greaser with slicked hair, a leather jacket and he loved riding through Hibbing on his motorcycle, usually with his girlfriend, Echo Helstrom, riding behind him. He had dreams of being a rock star like his hero Little Richard. In his high school yearbook, he says he dreamed of joining Little Richard’s band. He started visiting Minneapolis and the Ten O’Clock Scholar regularly in the fall of 1958. He visited so often that Echo broke up with him around the same time.

At the beginning of 1959, Zimmerman was in a band called the Rockets with Monte Edwardson. He may have also been in a band called The Satin Tones. He saw Buddy Holly live at the Armory in Duluth on January 31 – four days before Holly’s death in a plane crash.

In June of 1959, according to Bobby Vee, Bobby Zimmerman was working as a busboy at the Red Apple Cafe in Fargo when he joined Vee’s band The Shadows as a pianist. He insisted on being called Elston Gunn. He left after Vee decided he didn’t need a pianist, though other accounts claim Vee kicked him out because he could only play in one key.

University Avenue

“If you try to figure out anyone like Bob you will only discover that there is more and more that you simply can’t figure out”
– Hugh Brown, a friend of Bob Dylan and a regular at the Scholar

That September, Zimmerman moved to Minneapolis. Thanks to a cousin of his, he was able to move into the Sigma Alpha Mu fraternity house, at the time not far from where University Avenue crosses 35W. Back then 35 was Highway 61, The Blues Highway, which extended from Duluth all the way to New Orleans. Bobby took a few classes in the liberal arts program at the U of M, but his real education would be in his neighborhood, Dinkytown, which is just off campus.

He started playing at the Scholar, which used to sit on the corner of 14th Avenue and 3rd Street, in October along with “Spider” John Koerner, the first guy he met there. He’d asked Jim Lee, the owner, if he could play and that he wanted to be a folk singer. Lee asked him his name and he replied “Bob Dylan”. The usual method of payment at the Scholar was five dollars or a meal. Bob would play there regularly until May 1960, when he asked for a raise. After that, he would play at the Purple Onion Pizza Parlor and the Bastille.

The Purple Onion was in St. Paul, at the corner of Snelling and University. The Bastille was an old house near the corner of Oak and Washington in Minneapolis, fixed up by its owners Harvey Abrams and Bob Brull as a folk club.

Bob Spitz writes in his biography of Bob that to make it as a rock star in those days, you needed original material, a face and a band. But as a folk singer, you didn’t need any of those things.

Bobby stayed in Minneapolis over the Christmas vacation pining for Judy Rubin, a girl he first met at Camp Herzl, a Jewish camp in Wisconsin that he attended as a kid. She told him she wanted to stay friends, but refused his advances. Bobby returned to Hibbing and told his friend John Bucklen that he was a folk singer now, and went on and on about the folk singer Odetta. When he heard her voice in a record shop, he had traded his electric guitar for an acoustic.

When he returned to Minneapolis in January, he left Sigma Alpha Mu and stopped using the name Zimmerman entirely. He moved into an artist loft ($30/month rent) above Gray’s Drugstore, on the corner of 14th Avenue and 4th Street (where the Loring Pasta Bar now sits – see image below).

Dylan's Minnesota apartment loft

Around this time, he started hanging out with Gretel Hoffman, who continued his education in folk music. According to Spitz, Hoffman had just dropped out of Bennington College, a women’s college in Vermont (it’s now a co-ed liberal arts college). She had grown up with well-off parents who were communist sympathizers who sent her to an alternative high school. She listened to jazz, read eastern philosophy and was in to left-wing politics.

That March, the two of them attended a party in St. Paul where they met Dave Whitaker, who was an equally eccentric sort. He had tried joining the Merchant Marines in Paris and would later go to San Francisco and join the bohemian subculture there. Dylan and Whitaker became fast friends.

Bobby had been an avid reader in Hibbing (much of it detailed in his autobiography Chronicles), but he didn’t read much in Minneapolis. Whitaker was dismayed by this and gave him a copy of Woody Guthrie’s autobiography, Bound for Glory. Bob devoured its contents, and was soon carrying it everywhere he went, stopping people on the street and reading passages from it to them.

In May of 1960, Bob made his first recording at the home of friend Karen Wallace in St. Paul. He played traditional songs, a few by Woody Guthrie and some country songs.

Late that month, Bob got word that Gretel and Dave had married on May 20. He was devastated. He had secretly been in love with Gretel and Dave was his best friend. He passed by Gretel on the street and he couldn’t look at her. “When you get a divorce, let me know,” he shouted back.

Bob then hitchhiked to Denver to make his start as a folk singer. He knew a girl whose floor he could sleep on. Robert Shelton in his book No Direction Home (which puts Bob going to Denver in 1959) says he heard from Monte Edwardson that Denver had a lively folk scene.

Denver

Bob had been told to look up Walt Conley if he ever went to Denver by an ex-girlfriend of his. Conley owned a club called The Satire, and was the opening act at the Exodus, where the folk crowd hung out. The star of the Exodus was a 20-year old classical pianist named Judy Collins, who had recently picked up a guitar and begun singing.

Two of the songs she sang when Bob saw her were ‘House of the Rising Sun’ and ‘A Maid of Constant Sorrow. Both of these songs ended up on his debut album. Around this time, Collins was approached by Elektra records, which released her first two albums, ‘A Maid of Constant Sorrow’ and ‘Golden Apples of the Sun’. Collins would become one of the best interpreters of Dylan’s songs, singing ‘Farewell’, ‘Tomorrow is a Long Time’, ‘Masters of War’ and ‘Mr. Tambourine Man’ on later releases.

Bob Dylan arrived at the Satire Club and asked if he could play a few songs. He ended up being the opening act for the Smothers Brothers, playing their first gig in Denver. Neither the brothers nor the audience liked Dylan’s performance. Tommy Smothers especially didn’t like Bob’s unkempt appearance or his raspy voice. Bob also played obscure songs when the crowd was expecting well-known traditional songs that they could sing along to.

Conley found him a gig playing piano at The Gilded Garter, a strip joint out in the gold-rush town of Central City. Collins had been playing there and the manager, Sophia St. John, wanted another folk singer.

The Gilded Garter was probably the worst place to be a folk singer. The crowd was loud and not at all interested in listening to music. Bob said in an interview that it was the worst place he ever played. Bob lasted a week before he returned to Denver. St. John called Conley telling him that Bob, her purse and $20 were missing. She was ready to call the cops, but Conley talked her out of it.

Conley wouldn’t let Bob stay at his house, though he was allowed at Conley’s house parties. Bob got a room at a Salvation Army hotel next to the Exodus. He made regular visits there and heard Leon Bibb, Judy Collins, Dave Hamil, Kevin Krown and blues guitarist Jesse Fuller. Bob was fascinated by Fuller and how he played both the guitar and harmonica at once, with a steel harmonica rack around his neck.

Bob left Denver after Conley and Hamil discovered some of Conley’s records were stolen. They confronted Bob at his hotel. With tears in his eyes, he pleaded he was innocent, but they found the records under his mattress. A similar incident would happen later with Jon Pankake, the editor of the Minneapolis folk ‘zine The Little Sandy Review. Conley asked him to leave, and Bob’s parents drove him back to Minneapolis, thinking that college would dispel his musical ambitions.

No Direction Home

Bob Dylan returned to Minneapolis in September, still intent on being a folk singer. He began playing the harmonica more and more in his shows, using a steel rack like Jesse Fuller had done. He met Ellen Baker, whose father Mike was the head of the Minneapolis Folk Society. He owned an extensive collection of records and other materials related to folk music. He owned many records from the Folkways label (now owned by the Smithsonian). Bob writes in Chronicles that he envisioned himself playing for Folkways and peppers references to it and its artists throughout the book. On one of those records was ‘These Brown Eyes’ by Woody Guthrie and Cisco Houston, which Bob would play over and over again at his gigs. For the rest of his time in Minneapolis, Bob would regularly visit the Bakers.

Later that month, Bonnie Beecher recorded Bob, in a recording that’s been called the Minneapolis Party Tape. It was recorded at the home of Cleve Petterson, who donated it to the Minnesota Historical Society in 2005. Also on the recording are Cynthia Fincher, who played banjo at a few of Bob’s gigs at the Purple Onion, Bill Globus and Bonnie Beecher. Beecher would later record the Minnesota Hotel Tape when Bob returned to Minnesota briefly in 1961 and she is a possible inspiration (another candidate is Echo Helstrom) for ‘The Girl from North Country’.

In an interview with Playboy, Bob said he was turned on to folk music by listening to Odetta. In the fall of 1960, according to Clinton Heydlin, he met her and she convinced him he had real potential as a folk singer. In mid-December, he returned to Hibbing and told his parents he was going to New York.

His first stop along the way was Chicago, where he looked up Kevin Krown, who he had met back in Denver. He stayed a few weeks there, playing in coffee houses and student parties.

And at last, he arrived in New York on January 24, 1961. And the rest is pop music history.

Further Resources:

• Minnesota Public Radio’s article on Dylan’s 70th birthday
• A rare interview with songs from the Democracy Now archives
• 17 ways to celebrate Bob’s birthday in Minnesota (City Pages)
• Springsteen and others help the celebrations at StarTribune
• Minnesota Brown muses on age and the Dylan Days
• Duluth’s Area Voices joins the Million Dollar Bash

Photograph: Josh Palmer (Creative Commons, some rights reserved)

Robert O’Connor reports from the Minneapolis Dinkytown and West Bank scene where Robert Zimmerman became Bob Dylan

The University of Minnesota’s main campus is divided into two campuses – one in St. Paul, the other in Minneapolis. The one in Minneapolis is divided in two again, straddling the east and west sides of the Mississippi River. On both sides are neighborhoods where musicians, artists and writers hang out. Both of these neighborhoods have their own music, their own character and their own legends – some of them have gone away and become more well known like Bob Dylan and Bonnie Raitt.

Dinkytown on the east and the West Bank on the west are the names of these two places. Dinkytown’s business district is two blocks long on 4th Street, between 13th and 15th Avenue. It got its unusual name because of the trolleys that ran between the two U campuses – called Dinky’s – used to be housed nearby.

The center of Dinkytown is the corner of 14th Avenue and 4th Street, where the Loring Pasta Bar sits. For the last 10 years it’s sat in the place where Gray’s drugstore used to be. Bob Dylan and his then-girlfriend Ellen Baker would sip sodas there while he had a room upstairs with a rent of $30/month.

When Bob Dylan came to Dinkytown in the fall of 1959, he was still Bobby Zimmerman. He had played a few gigs with Bobby Vee in North Dakota under the name Elston Gunn that summer and he arrived in Minneapolis to go to the U of M. He stayed in the Sigma Alpha Mu fraternity while taking a few classes in the U’s liberal arts program.

He started playing at the 10 O’Clock Scholar, which used to be on the corner of 5th Street and 15th Avenue. He would play for a few hours in exchange for a meal or a percentage of the sales. While at the Scholar, Bob played with Spider John Koerner – the first guy he met there – and Tony Glover, both of whom he talks about in his book Chronicles. When he asked for a raise, he was kicked out and started playing at the Bastille and the Purple Onion Pizza Parlor in St. Paul. There’s a Purple Onion on University just next to Dinkytown, but the name is apparently a coincidence.

Bob only played covers then, most of them traditional or Woody Guthrie, Jimmy Rogers or Johnny Cash songs. He spent the summer of 1960 in Denver, where he met a young Judy Collins. When he came back he had his harmonica.

His friend Dave Whitaker gave Bob a copy of No Direction Home, Woody Guthrie’s autobiography. Bob devoured it and adopted the name Bob Dylan, after the poet Dylan Thomas. He changed his dream of being a rock star to being a traveling troubadour. He left Minneapolis in December 1960 for Chicago, landing in New York on January 24, 1961. And the rest is history.

John Koerner came to the U of M as an engineering student in the late ‘50s. He was given a guitar and some blues records and became “Spider John”. He was a regular at the Scholar, playing with Bob and Dave Ray. Koerner, Ray and another bluesman Tony Glover started playing together at the Triangle Bar on the West Bank. They would play off an on until Ray’s death in 2002.

In 1968, Glover had an overnight radio show on KDWB-AM where he’d interview musicians, including Jimi Hendrix and The Doors, who were passing through town. He also started writing about the blues for the Little Sandy Review – one of the first publications to write about Bob Dylan. The LSR’s co-founder Paul Nelson later became an A&R man at Mercury Records and signed The New York Dolls to their first label. The LSR was also edited for a time by Barry Hanssen aka “Dr. Demento”. Glover’s since written for Rolling Stone, Creem, Sing Out and Circus! (where he had one of the earliest reviews of the Allman Brothers)

Koerner went to New York in 1966, but was sent back to form a band by Electra Records. With pianist Willie Murphy he recorded the album Running, Jumping, Standing Still.

Ray was the producer and engineer on Bonnie Raitt’s self-titled debut album, where she played Koerner’s song ‘I Ain’t Blue’. Willie Murphy also produced the album and played on it along with members of his band The Bees. Raitt’s brother Steve along with Ray ran a studio Sweet Jane Ltd. in Cushing, Minnesota where The Bees debut album was recorded.

Murphy had a show on KFAI when the station began in the Walker Community Church in south Minneapolis in 1978. The following year Murphy helped get a show for Lazy Bill Lucas.

Lazy Bill Lucas got his name from Little Walter Jacobs. On his radio show he’d bring in blues musicians when they stopped in town. Joel Johnson took over the show after Lucas died in 1982 and continued it until his own death in 2003. Harold Tremblay’s show House Party continues the spirit of Lucas and Johnson’s shows on KFAI. He plays a Lazy Bill Lucas track on every show.

Prairie Home Companion
Garrison Keillor moved to the West Bank in 1964. He was a student at the U and the editor of its literary magazine Ivory Tower. He’d hung out at the Scholar, which he describes in Homegrown Democrat and wrote about his stay in the West Bank in the introduction to Cyn Collins’ book West Bank Boogie.

In 1969, he found a job as a morning show radio host on KSJR in Collegeville, Minnesota, not far from St. Cloud. He played a wide selection of music and eventually had his own house band, The Powdermilk Buscuit Band, made up of friends of his, naming the show A Prairie Home Companion.

The players were local musicians like Bill Hinkley on the fiddle, Judy Larson who sang. When Bill Hinkley left, Mary Dushane replaced him on fiddle. Butch Thompson was the house pianist on the show until 1986, though he still frequently performs there. The show moved to St. Paul in 1974 and it’s been there ever since.

Hinkley and Larson also played in an Australian bush band with Maury Bernstein. Bernstein played folk songs at the Scholar and helped bring musicians there. He taught ethnomusicology at the U for a few years.

Pop Wagner organized the June Apple Musician’s Co-op with Bob Bovee. Mary Dushane and Jerry Rau were members of the collective. It had been inspired by Utah Philips’ Wildflowers Co-op in Saratoga Springs. He also started a label, Train on the Island, for musicians to put out their records. Dakota Dave Hull and Sean Blackburn’s album Here’s Sean Again was the first they put out. Hull currently has a show on KFAI.

Today
Dakota Dave Hull has a show on KFAI every Thursday morning, where he plays folk and roots music with either local musicians like Andy Cohen or Tim Eriksen or the ones who pass through town.

Jerry Rau continues to play his own songs around the University campus and downtown Minneapolis.

The West Bank is a mix of the older folks – the people who made it the Haight-Ashbury of the Midwest a generation earlier, and immigrants from Somalia.

Dinkytown still swarms with students and independent shops, though a few brand stores like McDonalds and Potbelly Sandwiches have gotten in. The Scholar closed down and went through a bunch of changes before becoming a video rental store for a while. When that closed, the building was torn down.

The Loring Pasta Bar and the Varsity Theater are the places to find local music in Dinkytown, while Nomad’s bar, the Cedar Cultural Center and Palmers bar are the places to find the legends, new folks and those passing through town. The Acadia Cafe on the corner of Cedar and Riverside has a growing stable of younger artists who work for a meal or a small amount of change, just like Bob.

The folks you’ll find at these shows are the kinds of people Garrison Keillor saw living in the West Bank when he moved there almost half a century ago: “They had jumped off the career bus and were living for what they loved – the true American Dream, to buck the trend and go your own way, guided by your heart”.

Further Resources:

• ‘Desire Revisited’ by Hans Eisenbeis, The Rake, March 22, 2002
• West Bank Boogie by Cyn Collins, Triangle Park Creative, 2006
• Garrison Keillor’s Prairie Home Companion
• House Party and The Dakota Dave Hull Show on KFAI

“I was there!” exclaims James Murphy in LCD Soundsystem’s ‘Losing My Edge’, before listing his crucial interventions in the history of rock music. But Phill Brown’s ‘right place and right time’ memoir of his career in the studio reveals a man who really was there. Few people were in the room when ’Sympathy for the Devil’, ‘All Along the Watchtower’ or ‘Stairway to Heaven’ were recorded – and Are We Still Rolling? provides a fascinating background to each of these. Fewer still were responsible for the sound of such inspirational records as Talk Talk’s Spirit of Eden and Laughing Stock or John Martyn’s other masterpiece One World – containing as it does the sublime ‘Small Hours’. This is the man who helped create the atmosphere on many of my favourite records and literally soundtracked my life. Phill’s book has a chapter on each.

Are We Still Rolling? is incredibly lucid. Rather than a sex and drugs exposé, the book is a kind of travelogue through the past four decades of British music. Brown’s elder brother Terry worked at Olympic Studios and let him sit in on sessions such as The Yardbirds’ ‘For Your Love’. In November ’67, Phill began his own apprenticeship in sound engineering at the same studio, working on albums for Dusty Springfield, Leonard Cohen, Traffic, and The Small Faces. With certain classics, it is unthinkable that they could sound any other way, but the chapter on Beggar’s Banquet tracks the many variations of ‘Sympathy for the Devil’: “The first version of the song started off lightweight – almost as a country ballad… They tried a 6/8 tempo with Keith moving to electric guitar, and then progressed to Bill playing a cabasa, while Keith played bass… The sessions progressed slowly, as the band worked out different arrangements and approaches.”

After a brief sojourn in Toronto, Island Studios in Notting Hill was Phill’s home for much of the 70s. Here, he honed a style and helped shape many of the records I grew up with. In addition to the Island Records roster, there were visits from superstars in waiting: “Listening to the final version of ‘Stairway to Heaven’, it’s hard to imagine how bad some of the playing and tuning was. There were many loose timing mistakes and wrong notes from Page, and the control room atmosphere remained intense”.

Although Are We Still Rolling? is full of interesting characters and incidents, the three chapters on the Talk Talk / Mark Hollis albums are where the real gold lies. Having sold two million of copies of their album The Colour of Spring, the band decided to expand on the experimental elements of that record. Their record company, EMI, expecting another huge seller, gleefully let them get on with it. Phill originally met Talk Talk producer and ‘fourth member’ Tim Friese-Greene on a Tight Fit session. As the book amply demonstrates, Mark Hollis is a genuine perfectionist and it seems he was interested in the ‘vibe’ Phill helped to create on early Traffic records. The recording of Spirit of Eden and Laughing Stock makes for an incredible story. More outrageous is how these were treated by EMI and then Polydor.

Are We Still Rolling? is a valuable insight into many aspects of the music business, particularly how the balance began to shift unfavourably to the ‘business’ end of things during the ‘80s and ‘90s. Brown decided to go freelance and has openly welcomed the revolution in indie labels. But the book is also a crucial primer on how music sounds. In terms of experience and recording wisdom, this book is unique and could not have been written by anyone else. Mentally, I followed a parallel story as I read it, memories attached to particular songs and albums and the moments I cannot help but associate with them. I hadn’t known these threads were connected by a single person. I’ve a lot to thank the man for.

You came up through a ‘watch and learn’ apprenticeship system with masters like Glyn Johns. Do you think it’s best to learn in real situations?
Yes, it’s still the best way – and many assistants who have completed the technology courses start in studios and spend years watching and learning. Making records is not only about the technology. It’s dealing with people. You can’t be taught that. I did some teaching in the late ‘90s at a music tech college. I did not enjoy it much and was aware then of the little chance of the students getting a job. I did, however, teach recently at ACM in Guildford and it was a great experience. But it’s rare for me to teach.

You had a near disaster working with Bob Marley. It seems to be a job that doesn’t tolerate mistakes. Is this a defining trait of the job? Are there certain skills that can’t be taught?
You get few chances in life – and have to roll with them. Only so much can be taught or picked up through watching and listening. I learnt so much the first time I did a session as an engineer. Mixing also takes years to understand, and so does dealing with events musically, technically, and emotionally. You only get a few chances – if you mess up too often, you’re out!

The London music scene of the late 60s seems to be a very small pool with the same faces and studios coming up again and again. There’s a story that Jimmy Page was on four fifths of the sessions conducted during the mid-60s. Was there a point when you noticed this small pool getting significantly larger?
I worked with Jimmy Page on many sessions during 1968. There was a hardcore bunch of ‘rock’ musicians including Clem Cattini, Ronnie Verrel, John Paul Jones, Big Jim Sullivan… I think things snowballed from 1968 onwards – not sure when it all started, but by 1974, there was a wide collection of players. This grew through the ‘70s and ‘80s but, due to the way records are now being made, many of the great session players are no longer in studios. Some are on the road, some making library music, many doing pub gigs…

The late 60s also brought with it the idea of studio craft as art. Was it a golden age as far as your concerned?
Yes. It was fantastically exciting trying to make those records on four- and eight-track machines. The golden age for me, though, was probably the 1970s: 16- and 24-track, loads of great studios, artists, musicians, etc.

Mick Jagger (who comes across as something of an opportunist in the book) has taken to saying that the era of income from recorded music is over now. What do you make of a statement like that?
I think he is absolutely right. The ‘music business’, as it stands right now, is over. We are all making and selling albums without major record company backing. They have almost shut up shot, apart from ‘pop’.

The amount of work someone like Jimi Hendrix got through in just several years is breathtaking. I know Bob Dylan laments the amount of time it takes to record these days. Is it possible to create a faster and more spontaneous studio environment now? With the unlimited options of digital technology, would you say that a more limited studio forced engineers to be more creative? Limitation as the mother of invention?
Yes. It makes you be creative and make decisions. Very important. I love limitations. When Calum MacColl and I are working together, we often set limitations: recreating the approach of using tape with the three-take rule (after three takes everyone decides which one to go over, rather than just keep recording more versions). Also, with Talk Talk, we set limitations: using specific gear, time frames, etc. Some of the studios we used in the States in the ‘70s were basic in many ways but sounded fantastic. You don’t always need the latest gear.

I should imagine that you can’t help but analyse every bit of music when you hear it? Have your ears ever become a curse and got in the way of enjoyment?
When I’m working, I’m focused right inside the songs. But if I’m listening at home, for pleasure, I don’t analyse too much. I still have the ability to enjoy great and poorly recorded albums. It’s all about content.

It was interesting to read about certain sessions, ‘Sympathy for the Devil’, ‘Stairway to Heaven’, it seems impossible to imagine those records sounding any other way, yet you talk about the hours and variations that went into those arrangements. What do you think about the record company mania for releasing outtakes and demos? Should an album be a complete and definitive piece of work?
Yes. Once the band, artists, producer, etc, are happy with the end result, that’s the album! I’m not a great fan of outtakes, remixes, demos – only in rare cases. I think it was right to release Nick Drake’s ‘last album’ demos.

For me, reading the book was also a personal journey. What would be on the mix tape of your own life?

• The Mikado: Gilbert and Sullivan
• Pet Sounds: The Beach Boys
• My Generation: The Who
• Stand: Sly and the Family Stone
• Magical Mystery Tour: The Beatles
• Tea for the Tillerman: Cat Stevens
• ‘Sailin’ Shoes’: Robert Palmer
• What’s Going On: Marvin Gaye
• Fourth Symphony: Gustav Mahler
• Blood on the Tracks: Bob Dylan
• ‘After the Flood’: Talk Talk
• ‘Romance’: Beth Gibbons
• Country Life: Show of Hands

Much of what you do as engineer is commonly assumed to be the producer’s job. Could you briefly outline the difference between the roles? In reality, do these crossover much?
Involved question because there are so many different approaches to production. Producers such as Jimmy Miller or Shel Talmy did not touch the desk or talk technical. They were ‘vibe’ merchants. Steve Smith had been an engineer and artist and became a great producer in the 1970s by putting the right people together in the right studio and guiding events. Then we have the Chris Hughes / Trevor Horn approach of the 1980s – with lots of high-tech control and relying on some great engineers to make their ideas happen. It’s more blurred today with everyone being an artist who can engineer and probably self-produce. A producer’s job is to book studios, check band / song arrangements, control overall sound, look after budgets, etc. The engineer may get involved with any of these but his main job is to concentrate on sounds.

There are quite a few celebrity producers. Do you feel that the studio staff are unsung heroes? Is there much discrepancy in pay?
Huge. But there always has been. A rough ratio: assistants £50-£100 per day, engineers £300-£500 per day, celebrity producers £5,000-£20,000 per song.

What are your favourite examples of great engineering? Are there any records where you just can’t figure out how it’s been done?
Endless. I love many Beatles records – great sounds, Pink Floyd, ‘60s Beach Boys, Portishead, and on and on… I know how they do it, but it’s excellent.

Different styles of music often use different kinds of studio. ECM records, for example, are very bright and seem to have been recorded in ‘stony’ studios that give an almost chilly sound and favour the higher frequencies. I know Mark Hollis mentioned your talent for placing instruments. What would you say are the other trademarks of the Phill Brown sound?
Air – reality – raw.

I know some electronic musicians like to feed their material through analogue equipment to add some warmth. People talk about the home recording revolution. How necessary is acoustic space to the sound of a record? Is this overlooked in the bedroom set-up?
Everything can be faked today, but I love great sounding rooms. This is not part of today’s recording. A great room, a good mic, and an analogue desk – that’s my preferred system. The new systems are great and, if used as a recording machine, excellent. But every time you add a plug-in, it degrades the original signal. Better to get the sound right at source. Overall, modern recordings sound pretty good. Too compressed and hyped maybe, but that’s the times we are in. Nothing bold, though. Some artists and musicians are working outside the norm. Pop has a big pull, though – especially due to Simon Cowell’s bullshit TV show. There will always be an indie / underground scene.

Do you have a home set-up? Did you never want to start your own studio?
I have a great listening room with five pairs of speakers, ranging from Tannoy to B&W. I also have a Pro Tools rig and an old 3M 24-track machine. I have built three studios for various people but I have never wanted to own and run one. I have no home recording / mixing set-up.

A fascinating (and surprising) theme in the book is artistic loss of confidence, both in your own career at times but also felt by other musicians. Is this a necessary price of creativity or do you think it is more about a lack of support from record labels, managers and so forth?
It’s a necessary price… I always want better. I don’t blame record companies or managers. I’m rarely satisfied.

Thanks to the book, I tracked down a copy of the Murray Head album (Nigel Lived) and have always felt that, great as his output could be, John Martyn had incredible potential. There are many tales of unrecognised or unrealised talent in the book. What could have made it easier for these people?
Wow! Loaded question. It’s often about timing. In Murray Head’s case, I think that was initially the problem, but over the years, Murray managed to piss off musicians, producers, record company execs. John Martyn was such a talent but on self-destruct. David Malin (another great talent) did not want success. Jess Roden… there are lots…

Are there any remaining ambitions? Have you never wanted to originate a project of your own? Which musicians and studio staff would be on Phill Brown’s dream project?
I have few ambitions at this point. Survive long enough to see my grandchildren grow up. I will probably continue with the same approach. Try to find a cool artist and make a great album. I did that last year with Jake Morley. But the dream: out in the country with a control room that has a retractable roof. Open to the sky. With the English funk brothers: Simon Edwards, Martyn Barker, Calum MacColl, Mikey Rowe, and John Evans.

Certain projects only get a mention. What was the criteria for inclusion? Why do you think Robert Plant has a clause of secrecy? Did you get legal advice for the book?
I originally started about 38 stories… ones I could remember well. No real criteria. I’m sure it’s a standard clause with Robert Plant. Dido was also displeased, due to her signing privacy clauses. The book went to LA lawyers and had rewrites and updates.

Five Key Moments (out of many):
The Jimi Hendrix Experience: ‘All Along the Watchtower’:
In January 1968, Phill Brown sat in on the first sessions for this iconic single: ‘I did not realise it at the time but Hendrix was already moving away from his original Experience trio. There was no sign of Noel Redding, and Hendrix way playing bass guitar himself. In the control room there were about half a dozen people, including… Roger Mayer. Roger was a technical boffin who made electronic gadgets, including distortion boxes and wah-wah pedals. George [Chkiantz] was supposed to be assisting, but in reality he was a key influence in the discussions with Roger about fuzz boxes and various effects, and made a significant contributions towards the sounds that were achieved’.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=bng3agUOYiI

Bob Marley and the Wailers: ‘I Shot the Sheriff’ (from Burnin’):
Now working for Island, Brown was part of the 1973 team helping to finish Marley’s second album. At one point, it was necessary to made some edits on the track and the studio was cleared whilst Phill completed the job: ‘As they filed out, I was handed half a coned joint by Family Man. “Hey, you’ll be needing this,” he said and with that I was left to it. The first edit went okay and I moved on to the number two. Having marked it with a white chinagraph pencil, I laid out the tape in the EditAll editing block. The joint was in my mouth. Suddenly a small explosion (probably caused by popping seeds) took off the end of the joint. I watched in horror and slow motion as the glowing debris coasted down towards the editing block. Even before it touched the tape I could tell we had a major problem.’

www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XiYUYcpsT4

John Martyn: ‘Small Hours’ (from One World):
By 1977, Brown was experimenting with recording outdoors, with Martyn’s effects-laden guitar playing across a lake. ‘A further two Neumann U87s were placed close to the water’s edge, as far aways as our leads would allow. These picked up the sound of the water lapping and a distant “strangled” sound on the guitar, which was perfect for lead guitar solos… these quiet hours before dawn created the most magical atmosphere for recording… The outside mics not only picked up the guitar coming back across the lake, but also recorded scurrying animals, birds and the sound of water lapping at the water’s edge’.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=0WSKEuhgwjA

Talk Talk: ‘Ascension Day’ (from Laughing Stock):
Talk Talk’s Spirit of Eden album had been recorded in near darkness with and oil projector and strobe for lighting. Months of painstaking sessions, building sound and stripping back had been a strange adventure. Thinking that they had the method under control, Brown returned for the follow up in 1991: ‘I find it very difficult to describe the “space” that we traveled to during the making of this album. The combination of continuous darkness, the oil projector (which made everything I looked at appear to move) and the process of listening to the same six songs over and over again, put me in a very dark emotional state… the three of us often went for hours without talking or looking each other in the eye.’

www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGHwWwQw3tc

Mark Hollis: ‘Inside Looking Out’ (from Mark Hollis):
Phill returned to the studio for his third project with Hollis in 1996: ‘Mark talked about his idea for an overall sound. “I want to capture a 1950’s jazz approach, with the feeling of a complete band playing live around you – you know, everything on one mic and standing up for solos. How can we bring that approach up to date?” Rather sarcastically I said, “We could make it stereo”.’

www.youtube.com/watch?v=fAMw-oYjHuE

A full list of albums, artists and projects can be found at www.phillbrown.net

Suicide: No Compromise – David Nobakht

See all music by Suicide at Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com

Just finished the top notch hardback edition of David Nobakht’s biography of synth-rock pioneers Suicide. I would have loved to have written this book. Very much a band biography rather than a personal history of Suicide’s two members, Alan Vega and Martin Rev, Nobakht assembles a wealth of material that traces Suicide’s genesis. From the first tinkerings with primitive electronics in the early 1970s, endless confrontational, blood-smeared gigs, through to the release of their seminal self-titled debut album – "up there with the first Stooges or Velvet Underground album" – the extreme reaction they provoked touring with The Clash at the height of punk in the UK (one night someone threw an axe at the stage. A fucking axe!), the involvement of Ric Osacek from The Cars who spent a good chunk of his own popstar earnings on them, through to their gradual acceptance during the 1990s and their triumphant string of gigs that they’ve been playing since 1997 to an increasingly enamoured audience – Nobakht covers it all, and it’s one of the strangest and most fascinating pop history stories I’ve read.

Over 30 years, Suicide have not simply survived, they’ve thrived, and now they are getting as much acclaim as they used to get abuse. It’s just as well, given that both Rev and Vega must be getting on towards 60 now – and having seen them live twice at London’s Garage, it’s evident that age won’t stop them from generating some of the most beautiful and vicious noise you can ever hope to hear. For all their supposed influence on industrial music, Suicide have an intense warmth and humanity to their music – even when they’re sonically scaring the crap out of you – which is wholly absent from the more po-faced knobtwiddlers that came after them. Suicide are still as vital as ever within an increasingly moribund music scene, still outside it even as they become accepted and assimilated into it.

What’s interesting from Nobakht’s book is how aware of their own position in pop history Vega and Rev are – much of the book is written in their own words, and they are reluctant rock stars. Clearly they’re quite thrilled at finally getting some recognition and earning some money to support themselves – because despite being hugely influential, no one actually bought their records – but equally, after 30 years of scraping together enough money to get on to the next album, their new success only comes from doggedly sticking to what they wanted to do. At one point, Vega talks quite poignantly about his 1980s solo career, where he became huge in France of all places, had a major label deal with Elektra – and then suddenly got dropped. He admits it felt really painful to be kicked off the label after struggling so long to get paid anything for making music – but also reckons it was for the best. It’s not often you hear a musician openly admit he misses the money that a major label brings.

Nobakht does a sterling job of chronicling Suicide’s rise over 30 years with a cast of thousands describing what a huge impact listening to or seeing the band had on them – Marc Almond, Henry Rollins, Moby, Michael Stipe, Bono (eh?) – among many others. You’re left in no doubt about the huge impact they had. There’s the received wisdom that the first Velvets album sold very badly, but that everyone who bought a copy started a band – and Jim Reid from The Jesus And Mary Chain says as much about the first Suicide album. People like Marc Almond say it was the second, more heavily produced and disco-tinged Suicide album that actually laid the blueprint for many of the one keyboardist, one singer synth bands that were to follow – either way, neither album had much success at the time of their release. Either way, while Suicide’s records are great, they simply don’t capture the sheer euphoria of what they do live.

Beyond Suicide themselves, No Compromise provides an evocative description of decaying Seventies New York and the emerging punk scene around Max’s and CBGB’s, mixed up with the artist lofts where Vega and Rev first hung out and played their first tentative gigs alongside the likes of the New York Dolls. If Vega and Rev seem like New York cliches at times – summoning up death, darkness, lust and disgust, all the usual motifs of that city’s music – it’s because they were the ones helping create that now-overused vocabulary to begin with. And, as several people point out in the course of the book, others may throw the same shapes or try to adopt the same postures, but very few get near the intelligence that radiates from Suicide’s own sardonic, sonic howl.

Nobakht himself stays pretty much out of the text – he doesn’t really talk about Suicide’s own impact on his own life or the process of writing the book – it would have been interesting to see a more personal slant at times and some "behind the scenes" comments on talking to so many pop stars about Suicide’s influence on themselves. Likewise, the personal lives of Alan Vega and Martin Rev remain firmly out of the spotlight, which is both good and bad – reading the book, you do develop a certain affection for them both and it naturally leads you to want to know more of their traditional biographical details. On the other hand, maybe it’s just better to preserve the mystique. On a pedantic note, I bristled at the one word mention of The Sisterhood, a side project from The Sisters Of Mercy on which Vega guested, as I would have loved to have heard more about how that was recorded. The Sisters were huge fans of Suicide, regularly covering "Ghost Rider" as a set closer when they played live.

Nobakht’s book is definitely an essential for Suicide fans – it’s perhaps a little too reverential, but then, Suicide deserve a bit of reverence after all the shit they’ve been through. (Although there is a hilarious moment when one person describes seeing Suicide as "One guy playing a crappy Farfisa badly and another guy hitting himself with a microphone and falling down a lot"). Vega and Rev prove to be fascinating interviewees, unafraid to try and grasp for the big ideas when talking about their sound but not taking themselves too seriously either. Their self-awareness of their place in musical history, and their depictions of what came before them and after them, makes for a unique perspective on how music has changed from doo-wop to rock’n'roll to punk.

More importantly, though, No Compromise is not an eulogy for a band that was great once but is now just playing the circuit cashing in on their reputation – what’s life affirming about Suicide is that they are a band who are still going strong, still experimenting, still playing. (See a Suicide gig and the only time you might actually recognise a song is during the encore). While the audience has changed and become a lot less hostile, Suicide themselves continue doing just what they want. True, they still don’t sell many albums, but royalties for covers of their songs appearing on soundtracks for The Crow and The Sopranos have apparently earned them more cash than their entire 30 year career of record sales. That such unexpected luck should befall Suicide is a skewed vindication of both their influence and their sound – 30 years old, rooted in the past, playing in the present, still sounding like the future.

Saint Morrissey – Mark Simpson

See all books by Mark Simpson at
Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com

This book is not for people who’ve never, even briefly, fallen under Morrissey’s spell. Don’t bother; it’ll only convince you further of the psycho-obsessive nature of Morrissey fans in general and the author in particular.

Don’t bother either if you’re looking for new facts about The Smiths or Morrissey, anything to do with music rather than image or lyrics. It’s Johnny Rogan’s Severed Alliance or Simon Goddard’s more recent Songs That Saved Your Life you’re after, both of which spell out in dry but meticulous detail most of what you might want to know. And don’t bother if you’re looking for objectivity, or if you’re turned off by riotously over the top prose that out-does even Julie Burchill in the school of forging constant rapid, rabid, contentious assertions from very few base facts. Anyone left? Then, like me, you’ll love it.

Simpson is a True Apostle of the cult of Moz, and like all his ilk found this warped love during a troubled adolescence, described with lively self mockery in a chapter here. The Smiths landed like a chemical warhead upon bored teenagers growing up in the most soulless decade of the 20th century. Here was the nihilism of punk for an even more genuinely despairing generation, with added literacy, sensitivity, wit, and tunes. It was something they would never forget.

Detractors say Morrissey appeals to “the teenager” because both he and they are contrary and self-pitying. This is of course true. But there are better qualities also at a premium in the best of the uppity adolescent and the everyday work of the Moz. A breathtakingly arrogant precociousness, a visceral impatience with the banal, the solipsistic knowing you’re not like anyone else, and the vicious world-weary wit of the damned. All satirised brilliantly in his own song “Nobody Loves Us” casting both himself and his fans in the role of spoilt children (“tuck us in/make us our favourite jam”..)

As Simpson notes; “Sickness never sounded or felt so good…I may have felt unloved or unlovable but I also derived an exquisite, narcotic satisfaction from the knowing of these things and to laugh under my breath at the perversity of this knowledge.” Laugh indeed, the faithful know there’s more laugh-out-loud humour in Smiths and Morrissey songs than in almost any of the swill lapped up by the “oh he’s sooo depressing” dimwits.

Simpson shows that bright teenagers know long after they’ve packed away their last Doctor Martens’s that Morrissey’s self obsession is anything but depressing; it’s a life-affirming blood-pact of strength against the stupidity of the world;

“In assaulting pop’s nostrums and clichés in his own image, Morrissey made it about the one thing both parents and pop music had been united against: intelligence. Forget drugs, forget promiscuity..Thinking Too Much was undoubtedly the most degenerate, most anti-social habit any teenager ever picked up.”

With the added get-out clause in the grand tradition of having your cake and eating it that, while you were vicariously living through the man’s emotions, you were never really as depressed as he quite genuinely seemed to be, even through all the wit and charm. He was doing it for you in Christlike fashion (although this particular Messiah was Mancunian, camp, quiffed, flower fixated and more inclined to call for people’s deaths than turn other cheek.). Lured pied-piper-like by the first incandescent chimes of “This Charming Man”; this is an adolescent anti-fantasy world which still has enough acolytes of all ages to sell out the Manchester Evening News Arena this May in less than an hour.

Simpson shows with aplomb the disparate influences that made the mental make-up of “this alarming man”. Pop, punk and glam rock (which “called for and for a brief moment seemed to actually offer escape from the humdrum by becoming your own glamorous creation.”) The feminine-centred northern drama of the sixties which at once embraced and damned the working-class background he came from, and its lighter modern day offshoots like the comedy of Alan Bennett and Victoria Wood. (“Morrissey’s ‘voice’ is that of the Northern Woman, a certain intensity mixed with a certain breeziness, a certain desperation mixed with a lot of self irony…strong, but touchingly vulnerable…a queer fish.”)

Morrissey’s two greatest idols were Oscar Wilde and James Dean. Wilde for his wit and, in the proper sense of the word, perversity (“an idealist, yet the Queen of Cynics, he was a romantic, but was frighteningly realistic; he was a moralist yet completely dissolute, Morrissey of course is an immoralist who is scandalously virtuous.” James Dean for personifying adolescent rebellion (“Jimmy reflected back as Morrissey would like to see himself: a creature who may have been tortured and full of self doubt but always managed to look comfortable in his own skin and to radiate an animal magnetism.”) And both, of course, for the romantic doom of their exit from this world.

Simpson goes a bit more out on a limb in proclaiming his parents break up was the biggest influence on his world outlook, totally siding with his book librarian mum against his porter dad with all the Oedipus connotations that implies. Speculation it may be, but it does convince. He’s insightful too on Morrissey’s famously enigmatic sexuality, rightly stating the unique mixture of the masculine and feminine, the fleshy exhibitionism (“A Morrissey gig is an extraordinary, epic, religious prick-tease”) entwined with the lovelorn celibacy is central to his unique appeal, particularly in bringing out the homosexual side to otherwise heterosexual men. Simpson is gay himself but happily does not try to claim him for “the cause” and is rightly contemptuous of those desperate to pigeonhole; “What these very helpful, very kind people forgot was that the law ‘what’s not one thing must be t’other’, absolutely correct and inviolable as it is, is a law which only applies to stupid people. And to journalists.”

The title of Simpson’s book is a play on Sartre’s essay “Saint Genet”, and he rightly makes the observation that Mozza has a lot in common with Jean G. Granted, Genet was a tremendously promiscuous homosexual and Morrissey a celibate introvert, but both were initially feted then rejected by liberals who found them a little too complex for their liking, both found a transcendent Rousseau-like glory in the seedier side of lumpen-proletarian life, and both glorify thugs and “rough lads.”

Many people find this both the strangest and the most distasteful side to Morrissey, (“but he seemed like such a nice boy!!”) appealing to sensitive little flowers yet celebrating criminality in a far more unnerving way than half-wits like Guy Ritchie. Yet this too is central to his allure, glorying like his hero Wilde in paradox and contradiction, squaring a circle, dancing outrageously on a tightrope of sensitivities in idiosyncratic celebration of the outsider.

And to the minds of the faithful, not falling off that tightrope. Simpson rightly dissects the fatuous music press chorus that damned Morrissey as a racist in the early 90s for singing his mockingly wry song “The National Front Disco” at the same time as genuinely flaunting the Union Jack and celebrating proper skinhead culture; “some might argue that this subtlety is dangerous because it is too artistic and not didactic (i.e. patronising) enough”.. Simpson argues brilliantly, though he could perhaps have snidely remarked in an aside the never mentioned fact that if the NME’s witch-hunt charges were true this must have been the first Nazi sympathiser in history to be a supporter of Red Wedge, Anti-Apartheid, Amnesty International, CND, feminism, gay rights…..

The final self-centred joy of Morrissey Simpson celebrates is his refusal to play the celebrity game; in an age where even Johnny Rotten parades his wares on reality TV shows, Mozza remains gloriously aloof, last year’s curious Channel 4 TV doc not withstanding. As Simpson puts with typical restraint “A churlish refusal to suck Satan’s cock.”

The hyperbole of the book can grate when running totally counter to your own thoughts. The pronouncement that the young Steven must have found Myra Hindley a “bad mother to offset his good mother” takes his speculation to offensively glib depths, and I for one can do without anyone talking up the dreadful Freud -as he does- even in passing. But then someone with Simpson’s provocative style is bound to piss off everyone at least once during a whole book, and quite rightly so.

The book’s best achievement is it mirrors its subject in being pretentious without being pompous, and taking things very very seriously while at the same time relishing its own absurdity with a constant self-lacerating wit. It is under no illusions its subject is a spiteful, dishonest, difficult sod but loves him more, not less for it.

As the man finally returns with a new album after seven long years, all those nervous fanatics praying for a new Vauxhall and I (rather than a Kill Uncle) would be well advised to have a copy of this book by your bedside to remind you of the childish stupidity and effortless brilliance of your obsession. It will prove you’re not mad after all; or if you are at least you’re in entertaining company.

Morrissey’s new album You Are The Quarry is released May 17th. You can preorder it from Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com

These two new books are a timely reminder of a group whose shocking individuality has been obscured by virtue of their sheer longevity. A reminder this band is not that nauseatingly cosy term "an institution", but a force distending with sinister intent the boundaries of what pop music can do. To use a better cliché; unique.

The Fall are a band that veer between sonic blank noise and insanely catchy pop straddled by tuneless, beguiling vocals, avant garde yet down to earth, exponents of prole realism yet shot through with the most abstruse surrealist and sci- fi imagery. They sing about unemployment, sulphate, time travel, evil ash-filled side-streets, dope, assassinated popes, grimy damp-ridden flats, demonic possession, goblins under the floorboards and football. They’ve been through over sixty line-ups while riding, deriding and surviving punk, 80s indie, Madchester and Britpop. They predicted Terry Waite`s kidnapping and Manchester’s IRA bombing in album releases two weeks before each event. Mark Edward Smith is unique alright.

Middles’ book is misleadingly credited, it is definitely his book, written with Smith`s co-operation. Middles is remarkable amongst journalists in being a genuine friend of Smith, a man who’s perpetual baiting of interviewers has included trying to put his fag out on the face of the man from Loaded (understandable perhaps.) This is the more personalised and subjective work, filled with Middles’ own evocative memories of the Manchester punk scene and astute observations on the contrast between the city’s past and present, rather than the minutiae of past band members (though it does list all sixty-odd line-ups at the end.)
Smith’s own contributions (as well as those of, endearingly, Mark’s mum Irene) mean that it’s unquestionably MES’s voice at the story’s centre.

Simon Ford’s book differs like a technical drawing from an impressionist painting. It’s a much more linear narrative filled with a lot more facts in general. Without Smith to interview the voice is given over to old reviews and The Fall’s vast army of often disgruntled ex-band members. MES appears here as a sinister, enigmatic background presence, the author has strong respect for his talent but is clearly disdainful of his excesses.

The same story though, is told in both. Smith, a plumber’s son from Prestwich in Manchester (not Salford as prolier-than-thou Mark claims himself,) showed signs from an early age of the traits that would mark his leadership of The Fall; fierce individualism, stubborn bloody mindedness, pugilistic troublemaking, powerful intellectual curiosity, fascination with literature and philosophy, strong interest in the psychic and occult, and a wry observation fused with both pride and contempt in his pedestrian
surroundings.

A bright grammar school pupil, Smith dropped out of college due to lack of interest and funds, the emergence of punk saw him link up with similarly disillusioned and inspired working class teenagers to form The Fall. His habit of dropping band members that didn’t suit started even before their first 1979 album, Live At The Witch Trials.

Gaining a moderately sized but fervent fan-base over the next two decades the Fall transcended their early Velvets-Can-rockabilly-punk fusion to a slightly more radio friendly sound with Smith’s incongruously glamorous Californian rickenbacker-toting wife Brix in the 80′s. They went on to embrace techno elements in the 90s and beyond.

There’s quite a few humorous anecdotes in both books. They mainly revolve around Smith’s acerbic and sodden personality, starting with the filthy cat-shit strewn flat that he thought would be acceptable to his rich newly-wed Brix. He faces down countless indifferent and hostile crowds, baffles theatre and gig-going audiences alike with his bizarre stage plays Hey Luciani and I Am Kurious Oranj , batters Marc "Lard" Riley in a New Zealand nightclub, intimidates Morrissey in the offices of Rough Trade, blanks author Michael Bracewell in an amazingly misconceived on-stage public interview, and tells the NME and Jo Wiley to fuck off when they give him a Godlike Genius award. The increasing drunken abusiveness towards his band at the end of the 90s, that saw him arrested in New York for on-stage assault, may lose the sympathy of many.

But despite Smith’s sometimes appalling behaviour (more akin to WMC piss-artistry than rock star excess) even the put-upon ex-group members themselves are unanimous in their admiration for his lyricism, his ability to inject the mundane with the macabre. With Mark you get the best of all worlds. It’s fun to hear about the antics of a Man City-supporting smart-mouthed feral yob, but you’re unlikely to hear the influence of Blake, Dostoyevsky, Lovecraft and Camus with Liam Gallagher. Both on record and on-stage, even when he’s at his most vicious there’s a strange wisdom about Mark’s utterances that reels you in despite yourself.

Where both books ultimately fail is in capturing the core of the main man or the real appeal of The Fall. Ford’s characterisation of Smith’s disillusionment with socialism and anti-liberal views on the Falklands, CND, Europe and third world aid as those of a working-class Conservative is a gross oversimplification. Its an odd Tory who detests everything middle-class and whole-heartedly supported the Moss Side rioters. Even Middles’ frequent interviews don’t give a really clear picture. But then no-one could ever agree on their enigmatic allure. In his trawl of albums Ford specifically cites Hex Enduction Hour as superior to Grotesque, Infotainment Scan above Middle-Class Revolt, and The Unutterable above The Marshall Suite, to which I fractiously reply no, no and no.

Reading both books is enjoyable and adds to your knowledge of the group, but only listening to them, time and again, provides the faintest understanding. Knowledge and understanding are of course very different things.

Gilbert and Sullivan’s London – Andrew Goodman

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When General Booth, founder of the Salvation Army, complained that ‘the devil has the best tunes’, he meant the sensual, drunken pleasures of the working class pub and music hall, not the elegant appeal of Gilbert & Sullivan. Yet Arthur Sullivan’s light operas deliver enduring, popular tunes, and the words of W.S.Gilbert embody a caustic commentary on Victorian society.

Gilbert & Sullivan occupy a unique place in English life – solid, respectable, instantly recognisable. If their comic operas are archetypally Victorian, they have endured – scores of professional and amateur companies include ‘Pinafore’, ‘Mikado’, etc., in their repertoires, while the distinctive G&S style continues to serve as a reference point for comedy – parodies are regularly churned out to deflate some politician, party, or pompous personality.

But Andrew Goodman isn’t writing a biography of Gilbert & Sullivan. He offers, here, an almost-autobiography of London, letting the streets and buildings speak for themselves through their association with G&S and the social world they inhabited.

This is not effortless bedtime reading. Goodman weighs the building bricks of social, urban, architectural, and cultural history, binds them together with guide book mortar, and lays them into a street map of Victorian London and its theatregoing world… which does not make it easy to digest, for there is a recurring subtext of references and allusion which can leave the casual reader struggling. Or hungry to learn more.

These are almost raconteur writings – sketches of a city and a tour of its Gilbert & Sullivan links, comprehensively researched and vividly recounted. What Goodman achieves is a vision of 19th (and 20th) century London, illuminated by vignettes of prominent Victorians.

Goodman’s is a documentary style, but not in the form of glib camera panning and tracking and saccharine voice over. Rather he mimics the pander quality of a bric-a-brac market. He invites you to leaf through boxes of old postcards: study the sepia photos, flipping magic-lantern style before your gaze; stop, occasionally, to take one out and read the back; pause, and imagine who wrote it, who read it, what their lives and relationships involved; select and shuffle the pictures to construct your own interactive narrative.

Goodman’s history builds frozen snapshots into a silent movie of an organic city, growing, living, in places dying and being rapidly built over. This is more a travelogue in the traditions of Dervla Murphy or William Dalrymple than a smooth guide to London. It is a visitor’s time travel companion, not a tourist’s.

A brief stopover in some city gives tourists time enough to take in a few over-dressed highlights, following a non-stop itinerary of sights, but bypassing the sites – the real, living environment, with its pasts, presents, and futures spectral behind the changing facades. Cities cannot be understood through the window of an impatient taxi, casting channel hopping glances at anonymous urban landscapes. To appreciate a naked city, an old city, the visitor has to walk its streets, feel them, get into the plot of their storylines.

Following a guidebook is never a satisfactory way to absorb place. There may be plaques on walls to inform the passer-by that W.S.Gilbert or Arthur Sullivan once lived here, but that conveys little of significance. It’s like trying to read a book by studying the footnotes and ignoring the text.

Goodman unveils the character of late-Victorian London and its absorption into the lives and works of his elegant, privileged, human protagonists. Consider how rarely any of us ever study the human face. We coyly, politely note the current expression, the eyes, the set of the mouth; we rarely focus on the whole, its lines and creases, bumps and blemishes, moles and peripatetic hairs… its composite history.

Painters have licence to erase wrinkles and moles. Photographers – since before the airbrush – have smoothed out texture by careful lighting and strategic camera placement; it’s only in distressing times, when the dispossessed become the darlings of polite society – the Depression, London Blitz, or Third World famine – that they show pain, grime, and the years of living which mould the human face. Agony, as honest fetish, can sell a magazine cover almost as effectively as Buffy. Almost.

Goodman explores the lines and pores, feeding us with anecdotes and snippets, doling out cryptic pieces of a mobile jigsaw puzzle. He investigates a living city, not an idealized one, and invites the reader to put it into perspective. He looks up from street level, looks inside, gives buildings purpose and presence by blending bricks and mortar with the people who climbed their steps, opened their doors, and drew the curtains on the life therein.

As a Scot, I’ve always found London too foreign a capital. It’s a fine city – I lived and worked there for four years – but it’s an invasive world with the mindset of an imperialist; the narcotic of its political, economic, social, and cultural past and power is absorbed by osmosis. London has icons – Piccadilly Circus, Tower Bridge, the Changing of the Guard. But real London life – even for so exalted a circle as that of Gilbert & Sullivan – revolves around work, home, and play, and an endless stream of hasty interactions with anonymous people and places.

Goodman takes snapshots of London’s bygone world, then makes picture postcards of them for the reader. In doing so, he establishes patterns of significance, glimpses of interactions, and a sustained sense of movement and changing times.

Lavishly illustrated, with black and white pictures and vivid words, this is an intriguing, esoteric work into which you may be seduced. An essential for the Gilbert & Sullivan enthusiast or anyone interested in London’s past, it has the capacity to infect the casual reader with curiosity and a desire to explore further… and perhaps even take in the next production of The Pirates of Penzance. Perhaps.

Unknown Pleasures – Paul Stump

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Yesterday, Bryan Ferry nearly killed me. Lost in the music on my car stereo, I took a sharp corner on the A7 south of Edinburgh at a foolish speed. Unable to turn quickly enough, I lost control of the car and skidded to a stop on the wrong side of a road, nanoinches from the tip of a precipice. Pulling into a layby, I morbidly meditated on what might have happened had I parted company with the road. The sequence I imagined went something like this: a breathy expletive as I helplessly awaited my fate; a screech of aluminium on tarmac; an implausibly cinematic car-roll down the cliffside; and finally, nothing save the distant braying of sheep and the melancholic sound of eerie harmoniums and Weill-esque crooning.

Assuming I would have survived the accident, I began to imagine how I would have accounted for my insane driving to any passing constable of the law. "It’s very simple, officer. You see, I was reading Paul Stump’s Unknown Pleasures: a cultural biography of Roxy Music and I just had to revisit the Let’s Stick Together version of ‘Chance Meeting’. And after that, I quite forgot where I was and what I was doing". Quite how effective such pleading would be, I am unsure; but I like to imagine being thrown into an Edinburgh police cell and charged with driving while under the influence of experimental rock.

Unknown Pleasures is the second book by features journalist Paul Stump. Its assessment of the shape of Roxy’s – and, effectively, Ferry’s – career is conventional enough: stratospheric start with Roxy Music and For Your Pleasure; mid-career malaise, culminating in the dreadful In Your Mind; and rocky reascent to Taxi, Mamouna and the smoother nineties schtick. Stump gently scotches the dafter myths about Roxy and emphasizes a number of important propositions.

He rightly argues that Brian Eno’s contribution to the band – though brilliant – was by no means essential to the band’s success; that the Roxy Music vision is comparable in many ways with Bowie’s (here Stump is very insightful); and that Ferry, despite the aforementioned slump in the mid- to late 70s, produced some great work in that period. He also suggests that one misses the complexity of Roxy Music’s lyrics if one makes a simple identification between Ferry’s song personae and Ferry himself, as Johnny Rogan tends to do in his book Style with Substance: Roxy’s First Ten Years. Oh, and along the way, Ferry emerges as a poetic and musical pasticheur of considerable sophistication and integrity.

Regular and transitory Roxy band members are given the respect they deserve and there are separate, rather workmanlike chapters on the solo projects of Eno and of Manzanera and Mackay. Roxy followers seeking new information or gossip about Ferry, Eno et al will find little they didn’t already know; but Stump offers refreshing and convincing interpretations of well-known material, skilfully weaving musical terminology and sociological insights into his analyses of the songs.

Unknown Pleasures shows how Ferry’s extraordinary artistic vision was shaped by his lifelong curiosity about the workings of popular music and cinema and by his immersion in the work of the Pop Artists – particularly his artistic mentor at Newcastle University, Richard Hamilton. Although Stump wisely refrains from grandiose theories, it might be concluded that the former contributed to the deep, romantic streak in Ferry’s output ("2HB", "Three and Nine", "Avalon"), the latter to the hedonistic postmodern celebration of superficiality and consumption ("Beauty Queen", "The In Crowd", "The Thrill of It All"). Whatever the causes, Ferry emerges as a divided character, half Honest Northern Lad (there are overtones of reverse snobbery in "SuperGeordie"’s comments on his poor origins), half coked-up metropolitan dandy, stranded between 20s loungeroom and 80s boardroom.

Indeed, all the Ferries are represented in Stump’s book: Ferry the sensitive Englishman in raffish California; Ferry the parvenue "proto-Thatcherite" snob; Ferry the mercurial self-stylist; Ferry the wearer of the ridiculous "quasi-gaucho ensemble" that made him a critical laughing stock on the Country Life tour and allowed Nick Kent to brutally dub him "the George Lazenby of the Argentinian corned-beef market". Nevertheless, there is a sense that Ferry’s creation of Roxy – and himself – was incredibly purposeful and visionary; nay, a Nietzschian act of will.

Indeed, our Bri finally emerges as a suitably seedy subject for an Amadeus-style biopic – a flawed and multi-faceted genius whose schizophrenic attitude towards wealth and fame produced the creative tension that underpins his masterworks.

Thankfully, however, Stump is never sycophantic towards his primary subject. He does not shrink from criticising Ferry for his sometimes antedeluvian attitudes towards women and money or to condemn the sloppier of Ferry’s solo efforts. Indeed, some of Stump’s aesthetic judgements are perhaps a little too harsh (Bête Noire surely deserves better than "relentlessly nugatory") and one or two of the finest Roxy songs get short shrift ("Still Falls the Rain" isn’t even mentioned, for heaven’s sake).

Other minor irritations are the occasional lapses in spelling, the omission of certain words, and Stump’s repeated description of the Roxy technique as Pointilliste, which needs further unpacking to be intelligible. But these are trifling objections. Mostly the writing is exceptionally lucid and witty; and the book’s comprehensive scope will ensure that it is the definitive work on Roxy for many years to come.

One final word of advice: given the density and length of Stump’s 372-page book, it’s probably wisest to ensure familiarity with Roxy’s output before reading it. So dig out momma’s record collection. Better still, invest in the recently released Valentine CD-ROM (Burning Airlines, 2000), which contains stunning concert footage of six of the best early Roxy numbers. And hey, drive carefully… ]]> http://www.spikemagazine.com/0600roxymusic.php/feed 0