so, alex curran (mrs stevie g-lad) claims liverpool is a dangerous place to be at night? with groups of inebriated young men pepared to repeatedly attack a hitherto unknown disc jockey for not playing phil collins, then i'm not surprised she thinks it's a bit hairy.
phil collins, phil, bloody collins.
i like 'stevie g-lad's' style though. here is a wealthy, successful young athlete prepared to chuck it all in and potentially spend the next twelve months at her majesty's pleasure all for his unswerving devotion to phil collins. in one way you've got to admire the beaut, although somewhere aloing the line i think he go his convictions a wee bit twisted. the perceived school of thought suggests that if you believe in something so passionately you may be prepared to die for it. in stevie g-lad's case he loves phil collins so much he thought it was worth someone else dying for his cause.
but phil collins, phil fuckin' collins
as a soul who has spent an awful long time at the coalface of disc-jockeying i can sympathise and understand how when large volumes of alcohol and drugs enter the fray some people's usually impeccable taste goes out the window. i have been harangued and threatened for not complying to some of the most bizarre requests in the history of music. and i hate to say it, but some women are the worst, working on a heady brew of strong booze, poor taste and bad ideas they will get right down, in yer face and scream at you because you don't like the same music as they do and are therefore not carrying every great record they've ever heard.
teflon stevie g-lad, the nugget that he is, despite being one of the 'crown jewels of english football', thinks he has the will and skill to play music to a packed bar based purely on the fact that he's stevie g-lad. again, as a dj you get this a lot. again, and unfortunately in my experience it's usually pissed women. once booze and bugle has kicked in the overwhelming spirit of empowerment overtakes them and they need to hear young hearts run free or woe betide. in stevie g-lad's case it was phil bleedin' collins. i shouldn't really be surprised, footballers are notorious for their poor taste in music.
dating back to tne late sixties i can recall reading the profiles of my heroes in the now defunct shoot, only to be amazed that tese hip young things worshipped not at the altar of the jefferson airplane or the temptations but barbra streisand and andy williams. and worse. stevie g-lad is simply conforming to a historical trend by having apalling taste in music.
the judge when he inevitably acquitted the philsters biggest fan said something to the effect of walikng from this court with his character unblemished. i don't know, for me having yourself exposed as the sort of phil collins fanatic who is prepared to maim in order to hear the music you want is a blemish most of the known universe would rather live down.
if anyone knows stevie g-lad, point him in the direction of this podcast for some corrective therapy. it won't work. but it'd be fun trying.
this week: we tore up the greatest art of the 20th century then called it our own.
WE WILL NOT SHY AWAY FROM POP MUSIC.
don't split it.....subway sect
intriguing feathered creatures.....pepe bradock.
masterpiece.....the temptations.
lullaby for robert.....al usher.
mr. soul.....the everly brothers.
sex bomb....flipper.
lasaron highway.....meanderthals.
different drum.....stone pony.
everybody but me(diskjokke remix).....lykke li.
she's building something out of me.....forest fire.
snipers in the street.....singers & players.
tears of rage.....the band.
invented and directed by bernie. realised in the nick of time by sike or delia.
………………..then they imploded. Just at the point where they should have morphed into the greatest pop/rock band of their age, Love were to be found slugging it out with hard drugs and personal demons while the young pretenders picked up the crown, polished it down, glued it to their heads, where it remains to this day. The keys to the magic kingdom were there for Arthur Lee to take, Jac Holzman handed them Jim Morrison, he seemed like a safer bet at the time. In spite of all this, the album that Lee and Love had just released on Holzman’s Elektra records (Forever Changes) would be one of the most popular and enduring of all the so-called ‘underground’ records of the late 20th century, casting a giant shadow over everything Arthur did right up until his death in august 2006.
LAUGH LAUGH, I ALMOST DIED………………………
Once Mr Tambourine Man had broken and The Byrds elevated onto a global platform the scene on the strip looked for another house band to play minstrels to the new court of youth freedom. Arthur Lee and his newly formed band of pistolleros fitted that bill perfectly: young, adventurous, uneasy on the eye and sporting two over-sized African-Americans which would have been unthinkable in most other states, Love began to gain attention as the new sound of LA’s burning young hipster set. They took over a lot of the gigs vacated by The Byrds, they took most of their audience too, the freak children of Ben Frank’s diner shifting their attention to the newly crowned kings of the ‘heads’. They even took their guitar roadie, Bryan McLean who brought a sense of stability and waspish good looks to the most challenging band of the day. And therein Love flourished, like flowers in the sunshine, their adventures on Sunset strip became notorious must-see events attracting the attention of every band, musician and industry exec that passed through, and eventually scoring them a deal with Elektra records in late ’65. Elektra was an odd choice of home for Lee and his cohorts, the label was the voicebox of the Greenwich Village folk revival scoring reasonably good attention and minor hits with Judy Collins, Phil Ochs and the hugely influential Fred Neil. For a time it looked like Love would follow McGuinn, Crosby and co out of the Whiskey-a-go-go and into the world of tripping with the Beatles and number one records, this sort of success was possible and possibly just around the corner. Maybe for other bands, not for love though. Love’s first offering, a punked-up cover of Bacharach and David’s My Little Red book (a song from the Woody Allen vehicle What’s New Pussycat?) was a reasonable success for a debut by a band who recorded for a label that did folk and very little else. Their debut album, released in early 1966 is a masterpiece of snot-nosed, sneering punk-rock in the truest sense of the phrase jam-packed, wall to wall with wayward spirit within Arthur Lee that held out so much potential for the oncoming watershed in popular music. Every track glistens with a double dose of California sunshine, a zillion miles away from the breezy comfort of the Byrds debut album, it’s bittersweet yet brash, fuck you attitude would be a template that Arthur would use to destroy a promising career on more than one occasion.
The year 1966 was a good place to be for Arthur and Love, the success of their first album was on the surface ‘the shape of things to come’, in the actuality 1966 brought about the gradual disintegration of the perfect imperfect pop band. From their lofty communal home The Castle (once the home of the great Bela Lugosi) the group detached themselves from the rest of the rapidly expanding LA music scene. Despite all the danger and lunacy surrounding them they managed to score a top 40 hit in the wondrous, snarling punk of Seven and Seven Is, a thrashing high-volume, 100 miles an hour…………. which was galloping up the charts while the band themselves were trying their damnedest to scupper any attempt to make them the household names their record company and fans thought they should be. Their second album Da Capo was released in the autumn of that year underlining their credentials as fine purveyors of dark, twisted pop music; bright on the surface, twisted and uninviting as the surface was scratched away. The entire side two was taken over by a long meandering studio jam called Revelations, originally from a riff they would paly on live, keeping it happening for extraordinary lengths of time on stage. If that would seem like a pointer for te direction the band would follow then what actually did follow raised the stakes in modern pop music so high that even in this relatively new century musicians are still trying to make that creative leap to be on a par with where Love found themselves in early 1967.
Forever Changes created the mould of deranged psychedelic pop and smashed it into a trillion pieces ensuring its originality and sonic beauty would outlive almost all the major protagonists, Holzman, Morrison and undoubtedly ourselves as it carries the torch of peerless, beautifully crafted art way into this century and probably the next. The bright California sunshine still shines out of every note and hook, it’s all encompassing appeal being one of its major advantages over most of its peers. It has redefined pop music to mean something very different from its original intention. Though it toys with the accepted structure of pop, its dark, sneering underbelly takes it somewhere that any music had not been to in 1967 and few have returned to since. It became an instant classic among the underground set, in a year that saw the album as a genuine art-form peek its head above the parapet for the first time Forever Changes was one of the true stand-out offerings in a world of mediocrity, over-hype and, what Eric Clapton called ‘Peter, Paul and Mary with an electric guitar’. It was, of course, a different universe, the pop business that had been re-invented, then ruthlessly exploited by what the Americans called the British Invasion groups had flowered into a deluge waiting to happen. Artists were for the first time seeing the potential of their ‘career’ beyond the three minute chart-stab and beginning to imagine themselves as real musicians a light year away from those purveyors of restrictive chart fodder -in the same way jazz players saw themselves as the new virtuosi- expressing their feelings through the new medium of rock music. Similarly record companies were keen as mustard to ruthlessly exploit this new found freedom, more album sales=healthier balance sheets. It was as simple and as cynical as that unfortunately.
Released into the political and social carnage that followed the summer of love, Forever changes sticks out like a sore, festering thumb. Its peers and contemporaries on the album charts were preparing for a decade of improvisation and soloing that would render the whole scene redundant and pointless and reduce the music to the level of young men wanking off on stage. Unlike their jazz counterparts rock musicians were restricted by their over reliance on 4/4 rhythm and the extended solos they purveyed were often executed by musicians with very little experience of improvisation per se. None of these bothersome features rear their ugly head on Forever Changes, it is a master class in sonic adventure, brevity and a stunning ability to create songs (beautiful songs) that melted the heart of a lost generation. What it gave to the world was an utterly unique take on the psychedelic vision, colours, light and shade streaming from every note and lyric, the radio friendly arrangements which were more in tune with the work of loungemeister Ray Coniff than their contemporaries The Buffalo Springfield or The Doors. Upon its release in the UK it went top five early in 1968, for any other act of the day it would have been a pre-cursor to a glowing, hugely successful career taking in millions of sales and arses on seats. But this was Love, and before the album was even completed their drugs of choice had altered radically and was beginning to render the band unworkable and a liability to all but themselves.
HEAVINESS WAS…………………………
In spite of industry cynicism, a group that didn’t actually exist, and every other barrier that faces a young musician in the early stages of a life long drug dependency, the sheer unashamed beauty and cosmic otherness of the record reached out to a generation that was dying to be touched in a positive way. The production and genius song writing accosted the listener by the throat, the bright, spacious, rolling sound transfixing young ears and enticing them into a false comfort zone before they were assailed by the uneasy subject matter of the lyrics. Not for Arthur or Bryan McLean were the trappings and themes of the counter culture, the feeling of uneasiness and paranoia swarms all over Forever Changes, the burning sunshine in the music and production offsetting the dark areas the lyrics dealt with. This was no sugar-coated pill for an easy fix to your troubles like Sgt Pepper or Surrealistic Pillow, in one of the most grandiose statements in music to date the overall effect was of ill-will wrapped up in promise and optimism. Back door subversion of the greatest kind, rubbing shoulders very uneasily with the bright colours and new school of thinking.
The disintegration of the band was sure to follow suit, there was a follow up album tentatively titled Gethsemane mooted for a 1968 release but only the scorching 45 Your Mind And We Belong Together coupled with the wayward Laughing Stock surfaced. Bryan McLean had quit and it seemed Love and their haywire lifestyle were destined for the bargain bucket of life, flapping around in the water with one fin and no rudder for guidance. In spite of all this Forever Changes became the counter culture masterpiece it never set out be, indeed the sales of the album increased into the new decade opening up that psychotic, narcotic drenched sound to a new generation of listeners. In Liverpool it became the bible of modern music, every music fan worth their salt gravitated towards its enticing, comfy feel, turning on a new breed of musicians who, spurred on by the freedom and experimentation of punk had begun to look beyond the horizon of the three chord thrash.
THIS IS WHERE I CAME IN……
You can’t understate the effect Forever Changes had on late 70’s Liverpool, it was the soundtrack to a thousand Sunday morning come-downs, moments of utter bliss and love. It contained the vital elements for survival in a city where the youth had been let down so badly that they founded their own society from outside the perceived norm. The alienation, paranoia and frustration within the album reflected the life most of these chemically altered young ‘uns were living and spoke directly to them in a language they could understand. This was our post-punk happening, it seemed an obvious direct line to follow too, not just for me and my mates but for disenfranchised youth the nation over. Up in Glasgow Alan Horne started his Postcard label with a small roster of bands that would exude the influence of Forever Changes in everything they did, and turned a passing interest into thousands of sales when it became glaringly obvious that it wasn’t just Liverpool and Glasgow that was so absolutely enthralled by this piece of unbridled beauty but in villages and hamlets all over the country children were citing it as the most influential recording of their lives.
Conversely, while his music and lyrics were playing the role of salvation to an abandoned generation, Arthur himself was struggling with the down side of drug dependency and faced a very uncertain future. The Rhino Records Best of Love selection was met to rapturous applause in both the US and UK, but for Arthur himself it appeared to be just another lost victim of late 60’s excess, a bright talent snuffed out by chemicals, ego and bad, bad direction. All the influence in the world don’t pay no bills, Lee was out of the frame and stranded helpless on the rocks. In more ways than one. Again.
If the 80’s proved a difficult decade for Arthur those who picked up his baton and run were rewarded with commercial success beyond their imaginations. Bands like Echo & The Bunnymen, Everything But The Girl and Aztec Camera tore up the top forty with music that had been lifted directly from Forever Changes and remoulded in their own image. The album itself was regularly cited in the music press as one of the top ten albums of all time, rightly rubbing shoulders with Pet Sounds and Revolver as those in the new positions of power sought to elevate it to its rightful highs.
As far as I’m aware nobody championed Arthur and Love’s music in quite the same way as Michael and John Head, tirelessly and without concern for their own personal safety they immersed themselves into emulating the feel and song writimg techniques displayed by Lee and McLean on the first three albums. With their bands the Pale Fountains and Shack, the Head brothers fashioned themselves into almost a Love tribute band, the all pervasive sound of drug-fuelled California being alive and unwell in pretty much everything they did. And in turn the Head brothers were very good to Arthur, along with teir tireless promotion of his music asnd his band, in a …….of life imitating art they also became Love for two a few nights in 1992 when a narcotically challenged Arthur Lee made his first visit to the UK since 1970 and set Liverpool ablaze with a feeling of the second coming. The performance, which the Viper label preserved for posterity (Viper cd 003, pop pickers) is one of the all time great Liverpool music events. Aside from Michael and John Head, the pick-up ‘Love’ featured the cream of young Liverpool musicians who turned out for the evening –like the entire audience- in full hero worship mode, in absolute awe to be in the presence of this colossus who had shaped their lives in such a huge way. Arthur declared this show to be one of the greatest of his life, the love in the room that night could have saved a thousand worlds. Arthur said he’d be back, we had no idea it would take so long.
A resurgence in fortunes was surely just around the corner and while Arthur was not in the best shape the love from this new generation of fans and the re-interest in his music was a positive step in the right direction. This was all small beer, in 1996 Lee was sentenced to twelve years in prison for illegal possession of a firearm under California’s draconian ‘three strikes and your out’ laws. While incarcerated both Bryan Mclean and original Love bassist Ken Forssi died and the often cited Love reunion with them. Arthur truly had dropped out the drop-outs.
Five and half years in prison can do strange things to a man, in Arthur Lee’s case it straightened him out a little and he re-found god, which in turn gave him a new found strength. Within months of his 2001 release Arthur was once again touring and playing the psychedelic high-priest this time with a more permanent ‘Love’ line-up in the shape of California popsters, Baby Lemonade. During this tour he returned to the scene of his previous triumph in Liverpool, almost ten tears to the day Arthur took to the stage at Nation (now the home of super-club Cream) and once more blew away his audience with a set so electric and urgent. After the show I ventured into the dressing room, ostensibly to have him sign the sleeve notes I had written for Viper cd 003. As I stood in the presence of this great man who had done so much to make my younger years as confused as possible I became tongue tied for the first time in my life; deathly silent. When I met him I was amazed at how gentle and caring he was –none of this seemed visible in 1992- he chatted to me about this and that, life in prison, the price of fish, scanning the room in bemusement at the hero worship taking up every square inch. Then, you know what Arthur Lee said to me? He said, ‘will you let go of my hand’. Actually, he never said it me, he said it to Michael Head. He said, ‘Michael, can you ask your friend to let go of my hand, please?’ Completely awe-struck and unbeknownst to me I’d been shaking his hand and glaring up at him for about ten minutes, not a very comforting prospect if you’re Arthur Lee.
on august 3rd 2006 arthur Lee passed away in Memphis Tennessee, the place of his birth some 61 years previous. He left behind a staggering body of work, even if he’d only made the first three Love albums it would have been infinitely more than most musicians would achieve in a thousand million careers. There is a light that shines on the universe that beams directly from the soul of Arthur Lee, a truly monumental human being. I met him, I spoke to him, I got his autograph on my living room wall. I feel very honoured indeed.
Rest in peace Arthur, Liverpool misses you so much. Love from Bernie. X
an edited version of this text forms the sleeve notes for ARTHUR LEE: FOREVER CHANGES LIVE IN LIVERPOOL 2003. released soon on the viper label.
this week: we stood up against the searing heat, gasping for our collective breath.
WE WILL NOT SHY AWAY FROM POP MUSIC.
masterblaster (turn it up).....joint venture.
velvet.....the big pink.
it's a rainy day.....faust.
herb vendor.....horse mouth.
where there's a will......the pop group.
got you on my mind.....cookie & the cupcakes.
sweet child of mine.....akasha.
ensonique.....seventeen evergreen.
can you get to that?....funkadelic.
i'm five years ahead of my time.....the third bardo.
no way down.....air france.
ooh child.....the five stairsteps.
schwester.....einstellung.
did you see her eyes?....the illusion.
hastily prepared and directed by connor. shaped with patience and attention to detail by the sike. ta. x
i had to ask our joe if the top forty still existed the other week. i wasn't being arsey or facetious, i genuinely didn't know if it was still the nation's favourite rundown. i suppose as you get older, things like the top forty, which for many years had operated on the very outskirts of my peripheral vision, lose their purpose and disappear from view altogether. i don't wanna get all 'weren't spangles brilliant' on yer arse, but despite there being tons and tons more stuff around these days, some of the things that were once the most precious get moved to the back by sheer virtue of their own lack of staying power. they get replaced by' power stuff', with longevity and meaning and focus. and that.
in a world much smaller, the top forty was one of the three wise men that called the shots on your daily life, an essential part of your existence that was there for a million different reasons, at a million different times. whilst listening to the radio station that plays 'everlasting love' every forty minutes, i was dazzled by the summer hits of 1974 and '75. there are few things that i have ever experienced that are anywhere near as as good as rock your baby by george mcrae, from the opening drum machine to the final crescendo of beautiful falsetto, everything in between is pure heaven.
and this is what happens.
as we grow up and our minds and tastes become more sophisticateed, we allow ourselves ideas and opinions that put us in a certain space and a certain time. often, in order to maintain our personal space and time we allow the style police to keep an eye on what we like and more pertinently, what we don't like. and, because that time and space is so precious we forego the things we love, often casually admiring them from afar and vowing that the contents of your time and space are more important.
and this has to happen.
we have to make crass, ridiculous decisions and statements to keep our time and space looking inviting and right. the events of 1976/77 saw this taken to a ludicrous extreme, rendering not only the sacred top forty pointless and obsolete but huge tracts of other cultures and media, many of which have taken decades to grab back our attention. some of the best pop music ever made was deemed inappropriate and an enemy of the state during the punk wars, most of it rightly so but some of it is so utterly brilliant that no amount of posturing can eradicate that. the top forty of the mid seventies was a miraculous beautiful place that just so happened to coincide with my accidental induction into a stalinist purge on all things bright and beautiful.
it has taken me 33 years to write this. see what i mean?
this week: we welcomed the new golden dawn.
WE WILL NOT SHY AWAY FROM POP MUSIC.
walk on the wild side parts 1&2.....elmer bernstein/jimmy smith.
kosmos (bonus beats).....paul weller.
better scream.....wah! heat.
k-jee.....the nite-liters.
hold the line.....major lazer ft lexx & santogold.
guillotine.....the lea shores.
question.....the moody blues.
reasonable sensible......akwaaba.
green door.....wynder k. frog.
take the skinheads bowling.....camper van beethoven.
walking on thin ice.....yoko ono.
i heard wonders.....david holmes.
hello or goodbye.....tyrnaround.
produced and directed by bernie connor. made very real indeed by sike kupp-stares.
dedicated to the memory of steve cox and james klass. lots of love. r.i.p.
the news of the death of michael jackson produced the usual sickening media scrum frenzied for any information or tittle-tattle that might keep their viewers and readers nailed for the foreseeable future while every last insignificant detail is pursued till like michael himself is, limp, lifeless and no longer necessary.
aside from the initial shock at losing one of the most famous and instantly recognisable people on earth, the reporting took sedonds to lapse in to a mawkish, voyeuristic bunfight that kept the rolling news services and a trillion websites going way past the dawn. apart from the omg! factor the one salient point trying to be weedled out of the talking heads was 'what about those allegations?'
those allegations.
michael jackson was one of the most villified people on the planet these last few years, his inability to confirm or deny aspects of his sexuality and personal life led to a huge raft of scurrilous yarns being told and retold with embelishments like chinese whispers till we ended up with what we talked about here on these pages the other week: the gospel truth.
even as his slippers were probably still warm people i know were bombarding facebook with messages along the lines of 'he's a fuckin' peedo, never mind the music'. utterly incredible, a forty year career at the very toppermost of the poppermost tree casually swept aside in order to castigate a dead man for being ambiguous and not like us. siigmund freud said that the adult is a mirror reflection of the child that came before, to that end the unworldly adult that michael jackson was is perfectly understandable, any child that is treated as little more than a performing monkey and brow-beaten for perfection by his own father will no doubt grow to be a little screwed up.
the need to live his lost childhood at any cost has been one opf the key issues the world finds so strange about michael jackson.
in the real world however, i shall remember him as one of the true great, creative artists of the twentieth century. sure, his music's gone off the boil in more recent years, but who can sustain a non-stop hit machine for near five decades and touch gold every time? very few, if any. ostensibly, the music he made when he was still a young black man (by this, i go right up to bad) will stand the test of time and still being blogged and analysed long after us cynical cunts have been worm food for centuries.
many years ago my then girlfriend and i were high as kites on lsd and joanne was having a particularly wobbly time. the great tim o'shea entered the fray clutching a carrier bag of 7" singles, i told him what was happening and without hesitating he produced a copy of 'got to be there' from the bag, placed it on the turntable and turned it up loud. the sweetness and beauty in michael's juvenile voice disarmed a potentially dangerous situation and turned the evening into one of the most lovely i ever spent in my entire life. thanks tim, but foremost, thank you michael. you changed my life. i'll never forget the miracle of that song and that moment. lots of love, from bernie. x
this week: we swapped one rascal for another and caught the final whiff of molly sugden's pussy.
WE WILL NOT SHY AWAY FROM POP MUSIC.
hello hooray.....judy collins.
been caught stealing (12" version).....jane's addiction.
she put the hurt on me.....prince la la.
gigantes.....tortoise
do the standing still.....the table.
sync jam.....levon vincent.
ku klux klan.....steel pulse.
waltz for a pig.....graham bond organisation.
rockchester.....fats comet.
baby what you wabt me to do?.....jimmy reed.
moth.....burial & four tet.
crimson and clover.....tommy james & the shondells.
save ny soul.....wimple winch.
xam.....subway.
cosmic dancer.....t.rex.
rolled into little balls by sir bern, straightened out and given a bloody good looking at by sike kupp-stares.
so, alex curran (mrs stevie g-lad) claims liverpool is a dangerous place to be at night? with groups of inebriated young men pepared to repeatedly attack a hitherto unknown disc jockey for not playing phil collins, then i'm not surprised she thinks it's a bit hairy.
………………..then they imploded. Just at the point where they should have morphed into the greatest pop/rock band of their age, Love were to be found slugging it out with hard drugs and personal demons while the young pretenders picked up the crown, polished it down, glued it to their heads, where it remains to this day. The keys to the magic kingdom were there for Arthur Lee to take, Jac Holzman handed them Jim Morrison, he seemed like a safer bet at the time. In spite of all this, the album that Lee and Love had just released on Holzman’s Elektra records (Forever Changes) would be one of the most popular and enduring of all the so-called ‘underground’ records of the late 20th century, casting a giant shadow over everything Arthur did right up until his death in august 2006. 
i had to ask our joe if the top forty still existed the other week. i wasn't being arsey or facetious, i genuinely didn't know if it was still the nation's favourite rundown. i suppose as you get older, things like the top forty, which for many years had operated on the very outskirts of my peripheral vision, lose their purpose and disappear from view altogether. i don't wanna get all 'weren't spangles brilliant' on yer arse, but despite there being tons and tons more stuff around these days, some of the things that were once the most precious get moved to the back by sheer virtue of their own lack of staying power. they get replaced by' power stuff', with longevity and meaning and focus. and that.
the sound of music has gone to france. back next week with all the usual thrills and spills. until then, here's some music.
the king is dead. long live the king.
