LIVERPOOL POETS ADRIAN HENRI, ROGER MCGOUGH, BRIAN PATTEN + PETE BROWN and SPIKE HAWKINS

This is the beginning of a multi-layered post on Adrian Henri and the Liverpool Poets triggered by this brilliant book, sent to THE GENERALIST by Antony Hudek who is Director of Objectif Exhibitions, Antwerp and
Curator at Large at Raven Row, 56 Artillery Row London.

It was published by Occasional Papers to accompany an exhibition, curated by Catherine Marcangeli, staged at Liverpool John Moores University [5 July - 26th October 2014]. Antony facilitated the exhibition and contributed two essays including one based on a visit to Henri's home and archives, preserved thanks to the efforts of  Catherine M. who writes in the book's intro:



'In 'Notes on Painting and Poetry' Henri insists that he found 'no difficulty (other than shortage of time) in being a painter, poet, organiser of happenings, teacher and touring musician. This versatility is paired with an open-minded curiosity for and delight in other artists' work.'

In that same essay, Henri begins: 'The trouble is people want a label for you'. He looks back to Dada and Surrealism for validation. 'Consider Duchamp, or the prewar activities of Salvador Dali: films, exhibition-environments, poems, book jackets, objects, ephemeral events are equally important in their oeuvre'.

I'm ashamed to say I was largely ignorant of his work as an artist before seeing this book. He studied art at King's College, Newcastle-upon-Tyne and then gained a BA at the University of Durham where Richard Hamilton, the quintessential Pop artist, was a lecturer. Henri's initial work is very street-level and contains elements of Pop and collage. Its exciting and stimulating to see this work from the 50s/early 60s. His first exposure was at a group exhibition at the Walker Arts Gallery in Liverpool in 1958.


Adrian Henri with (on the right) his Big Liverpool 8 Murder Painting, c1964. Photograph: ICA.
This images, which appeared in The Guardian is almost certainly wrongly dated. In this book's detailed chronology and on the chronology on the Adrian Henry website: www.adrianhenri.com
its lists a solo show at the ICA in 1968. The website has great portfolios of his work.


'Total Artist' also has a excellent essay by Bryan Biggs, a Liverpool artist and now Director of the city's Bluecoat Arts Centre.


Interestingly Biggs suggests that Henri may have been influenced in his concept of 'total art' by the 1955 publication of this book by Roget Shattuck which documents the origin of the avant-garde in France at the beginning of the 20th century. It focuses on the naive painter Henri Rousseau, the composer Eric Satie, the poet Gulllaume Apollinaire and playwright Alfred Jarry, creator of Pere Ubu.

Biggs writes: 'The book pointed to the possibility of interdisciplinarity which Henri took a stage further by coalescing all these artforms into a single practice - the artist as painter-poet-performer-musician.'

A parallel book, Calvin Tomkins 'The Bride and The Bachelors' (published in the UK in 1965 as 'Ahead of the Game: Four Versions of the Avant-Garde') profiles composer John Cage, mixed media painter Robert Rauschenberg, machine sculptor Jean Tinguely and grandfather of the avant-garde Marcel Duchamp. [See Previous Post: Masters of the Avant Garde (Nov 2010)]

Biggs writes: 'By the time this book was published in Britain, Henri had 'already staged several 'events', arguably the first performance art in the UK, which put the idea of the multimedia experiment into practice...poetry, painting and pop.'

Another big influence on Henri was the American artist Allan Kaprow, a painter and pioneer of peformance art, who coined the term 'Happening'.

The book as a whole and Bigg's essay in particular, give a real feel for what was going on in Liverpool alongside the Beatles and the Merseybeat boom. I love this account of Allen Ginsberg's visit to the city in 1965. Biggs writes:

'He famously described the city as 'at the present moment the centre of the consciousness of the human universe. They're resurrecting the human form divine there - all those beautiful youths, with long, golden archangelic hair'. Henri recalls taking Ginsberg to the Cavern and other venues to taste Merseybeat first hand, drummers from local beat groups jamming with the Beat legend, who played Tibetan rhythms on a set of finger cymbals.'

Of course Adrian Henri came to national prominence, alongside fellow Liverpool poets Roger McGough and Brian Patten, through the publication of 'The Mersey Sound'  (1967) which has become one of the best-selling poetry books of all time and had a huge influence at that time. It was above all accessible to our generation.

From the 'happenings' Henri and the others realised the potential of combining spoken word with live music. Much of the collaborations up to that point were improvisations to jazz. Henri liked scripting rather than improv and was keener to combine poetry with rock and pop. The Mersey poets' work lent itself to performance. Biggs  gives us a valuable history lesson:

 'Poetry and live music was not new. In London, poetry and jazz were being performed together in concerts organised by Jeremy Robson featuring Adrian Mitchell, Laurie Lee, Dannie Abse and Christopher Logue, who also recorded an EP, 'Red Bird,' with The Tony Kinsey Quintet."

'Michael Horovitz's 'New Departures' visited British towns and cities between 1960 and 1965, the first touring jazz and poetry group in the country, coming in Henri's words 'to evangelise the north,' including Liverpool.

'A concert, 'Blues for the Hitch-hiking Dead', at the Crane Theatre in 1961 featured Horovitz, Pete Brown and Mark (Spike) Hawkins with The Art Reid Quartet. 

[You can listen to a long interview I recorded in November 2007 with Mike Horowitz on the Audio Generalist site ]

'Henri was disdainful of poets improvising with jazz: 'Some of the English poetry-and-jazz people make exaggerated claims about this and some poets I know are constantly re-writing their work'.

 'Pete Brown describes the poetry he was then writing 'in loosely musical forms like chase choruses. Theoretically it was pretentious but what saved it was the humour and a certain Britishness'.  

'If these experiments were unsuccessful artistically, the efforts of Brown and Hawkins - 'hitch-hiking evangelists of the London poetry/jazz circuit'" - were however instrumental, working with 'local unknowns', in getting the Liverpool live poetry scene going in the early 1960s, with readings at Streate's coffee house on Mount Pleasant hosted by Dubliner Johnny Byrne who, with Hawkins, relocated to the city. This was the archetypal 'cellar club', candlelit and with whitewashed walls, duffle coats and modern jazz. It 'was to poetry what the Cavern was to rock'n'roll'

'Musical accompaniment was a regular feature of these poetry readings and, at Sampson & Barlow's basement beneath the Peppermint Lounge on London Road and other venues, was increasingly played by electric bands, notably The Almost Blues and The Clayton Squares. In contrast to New Departures' proselytising, it was pop and rhythm & blues, not jazz, that offered a way forward for the emergent pop poetry, a path more in tune with the local Merseybeat.'

Most of the audience were fans of The Beatles or other bands at The Cavern. According to Mike Evans, one of Henri's chief collaborators, George and Ringo came to one of the poetry events at Liverpool's Hope Hall.

THE SCAFFOLD

The best-known band to emerge from this scene was The Scaffold (1963–1974), which featured John Gorman, Mike McCartney (brother of Paul McCartney) and Roger McGough.

Wikipedia claims that 'Initially Adrian Henri was a member, when they were known as 'The Liverpool, One Fat Lady, All Electric Show'. ("One Fat Lady" is the bingo term for 8, and they mostly lived in the Liverpool 8 district.)'

In December 1967 'Thank U Very Much' (sung with a Liverpool accent) reached number 4 in the charts. A year later 'Lily the Pink' reached number 1. Ringo Starr's bass drum was used; also featured were Jack Bruce from Cream, Graham Nash from The Hollies and Reg Dwight, later renaming himself Elton John. Both hits were in the spirit of cheery and humorous drinking songs.'

POP STARS & POETS

Henri envied the greater freedom of pop stars compared to poets. In his essay: 'Notes on Painting and Poetry' he wrote:

'Because of the whole pop aura that surrounds their work they could allow themselves obscure or very personal images or sounds and their public will accept it. Whereas we always have to worry about the problem of communicating: what can't you allow yourself to say. I think this is a marvellous situation, for them. I think Dylan falls into the obvious trap this freedom opens, sometimes: The Beatles always seem to avoid it. Because no matter how interested in Oriental music or post-Stockhausen techniques they are they always seem aware of their responsibility as entertainers.'

 THE LIVERPOOL SCENE (1)

In 1966, Henri teamed up with guitar player Andy Roberts and they fine-tuned music that worked with the poetry reading. Early in '67, they started performing in collaborations and happenings. 

Also in 1966, Henri and Patten met Edward Lucie Smith at the Nottingham poetry festival. He was known to them both as a prominent published poet and art critic. ELS wrote and said he wanted to publish one of Henri's poems in 'Encounter' but also later expressed an interest in producing an anthology of the Liverpool poets and quickly found backing from Rapp & Carroll. Born in Jamaica, Oxford graduate Lucie-Smith was an unlikely champion (as was Brian Epstein for the Beatles). 

Meanwhile McGough had been signed up by another publisher and the Liverpool poets came to the attention of Tony Richardson, the originator and publisher of the Penguin Modern Poets.'The Mersey Sound' which was published in the summer of 1967.

According to 'A Gallery to Play To: The Story of the Mersey Poets' by Phil Bowen [Liverpool University Press * see UPDATE at end] Lucie-Smith's book with photos by Phillip Jones Griffith was launched at the Cavern on March 3rd with a big press junket. It was then launched in London at the ICA, which Biggs says, led to tv appearance on BBC2, a gig at London's underground UFO club.

CBS used the same cover image for an album entitled 'The Incredible New Liverpool Scene' released to coincide with the book. Recorded in two hours in a studio in Denmark Street, it features Henri and Patten with Roberts on guitar. John Peel plays it on his pirate radio show 'Perfumed Garden' which led him to nominally becoming the producer of the first album by Henri's band: The Liverpool Scene.

THE LIVERPOOL SCENE (2)

'The Liverpool Scene shared a breadth of musical backgrounds that included jazz, beat, folk and blues, all of which were effectively deployed to create evocative settings for the poems of Henri, Evans and a non-band member, the Liverpool painter Maurice Cockrill ('Happy Burial Blues')... 'We do a noisy kind of abandoned thing', Henri declared, stressing that they only came together as a band for the last half hour of their set, the rest of the time being devoted to individual performances of poetry and songs.'
- Bryan Biggs



The band crystallised mid-1967 with Henri and Roberts being joined by Mike Evans (poet/sax), Mike Hart (vocals/guitar), Percy Jones (bass), Brian Dodson (drums) and became a regular gigging band on the progressive rock and university circuit.

In 1968, 'The Liverpool Scene: 'Amazing Adventures of...' album was produced by John Peel and released by RCA Records. After its release Brian Dodson was replaced by Peter Clarke.

 May 1969 saw the release of the their second album 'Bread On The Night' followed by appearances at the Bath Blues Festival, the Albert Hall and the Dylan Isle of Wight festival. and then toured the US doing supporting gigs with Led Zeppelin, The Who, The Kinks and Joe Cocker. At Kent State University, Ohio, they played support for Sly and the Family Stone in front of 17,00 people. None of their charm worked for an Americana audience and their three month tour was pronounced an 'absolute disaster'.


Their final album 'St Adrian Co., Broadway and 3rd' contained one live side and on the reverse a 22-minute word and sound collage 'Made in the USA'. The band split in 1970.

Adrian Henri [Born April 10 1932; died December 20 2000]  

Obituaries by Mike Evans and Nell Dunn/The Guardian    

ANDY ROBERTS

www.andyrobertsmusic.com

Band members : ANDY ROBERTS, ADRIAN HENRI, MIKE EVANS, MIKE HART, PERCY JONES, BRIAN DODSON, (replaced by) PETE CLARK, (and later) FRANK GARRETT.

'Andy accepted an offer to study law at Liverpool University, almost immediately bumping into Roger McGough at a bookshop as soon as he got there. The ‘jazz and poetry’ movement was at its peak, and Roger invited Andy to dive in: ‘February 1966 was the first time I did a thing with him and Adrian Henri, at the Bluecoat Theatre in Liverpool. It just took off from there. Within a couple of months I was doing poetry events at The Cavern and playing with a band at the University. There was loads going on.’

'Soon, on the back of a 1967 poetry anthology entitled The Liverpool Scene, Adrian Henri, Roger McGough and Andy, along with jazz saxophonist Mike Evans and songwriter/guitarist Mike Hart, were taking bookings as ‘The Liverpool Scene Poets’. Roger had to drop out of the poetry gigs (The Scaffold), leaving Andy to suggest to the charismatic Adrian Henri that all they needed was a bassist and drummer to become a bona fide band. .The Liverpool Scene was born.

'An album for CBS had already been recorded, prior to the band’s formation, called The Incredible New Liverpool Scene' BBC Radio’s champion of ’the underground’ John Peel took a shine to it and regularly booked the now fully-fledged band (or, as a duo, Roberts & Henri) for his show and for his own live engagements. He also nominally produced their first full-band album, Amazing Adventures Of… (RCA, 1968), in a recording deal secured by their new manager Sandy Roberton – a key figure in the careers of many now legendary acts at the progressive ends of folk and rock music of the time.

1969 saw the Liverpool Scene at their peak – delivering their second album Bread On The Night, touring the UK on a three act bill with Led Zeppelin and Blodwyn Pig, playing to 150,000 at the Isle of Wight Festival and touring America for a gruelling, and revelatory three months. ‘Absolute disaster', is Andy’s verdict on the tour. ‘We suddenly came up against the utter reality of it. With a British audience, given this poetry and a band that were never rehearsed, we got away with it through being so different and [through] our verve and irreverence. None of which worked in America.’

'The American experience would nevertheless inspire the band’s best work – the lengthy ‘Made In USA’ suite, one side of their last LP proper, St Adrian Co, Broadway And 3rd (1970).'



THE AMAZING ADVENTURES OF THE LIVERPOOL SCENE | ECLEC22138 | 2009


The 2-CD package features most of the band’s recorded output, along with some previously unreleased live material. Many of the included tracks have never been available on CD before, others have been meticulously remastered from the original master tapes from 40 years ago. This release has been made possible with the co-operation of the original members of the band and Adrian's estate.

PETE BROWN & SPIKE HAWKINS

Bryan Biggs has already flagged that Pete Brown and Spike Hawkins were however instrumental, working with 'local unknowns', in getting the Liverpool live poetry scene going in the early 1960s, with readings at Streate's coffee house on Mount Pleasant hosted by Dubliner Johnny Byrne who, with Hawkins, relocated to the city.

 Pete Brown also ran on a parallel course with Adrian Henri in that he got several bands together, got on a record and gigged. More anon.

Pete Brown's autobiography 'White Rooms & Imaginary Westerns: Ginsberg, Clapton and Cream an Anarchic Odyssey' which The Generalist has been digesting in sections and taking notes on over the last couple of years, makes more sense to me after reading Bryan's essay. Its published by JR Books but copies are rare and very costly on Amazon.

In an early chapter 'Devon and Beat Beginnings', he describes how he and Vic (his lifelong friend who he met at grammar school) 'bonded with Mal Dean, who was trying to play the trombone badly, and his fellow Liverpudlian Johnny Byrne. Mal, who had been a contemporary of John Lennon at the Art School, confirmed that there was a great scene in Liverpool and we should visit.'

[Left: John Lennon's own book of poetry, writings and drawings was published by Jonathan Cape in 1964. A treasured possession.]

Back in London, while his parents were away, Brown's homeless friends came to stay including the aforementioned Mel and Johnny. When the Browns returned, they were kicked out and were joined by Spike. All crammed into Victor's one-room flat. During a thunderstorm, they were all evicted by the police with a huge dog. 

Brown says of Spike: [He] 'had a similar relationship with his parents to mine, although his seem to have prompted more extreme behaviour. Legend had it that after he dropped out of college he was living in a hedge near Aylesbury. He was to become an extraordinary poet and a great friends.'

Somewhile later, Spike, Brown and other dossers were staying in 'a hovel in Victoria' which was soon overcrowded. Brown recalls: ' I arrived early one morning to find a note pinned to Spike's (still sleeping) conquest: BROWN. HAVE GONE TO LIVERPOOL. PLEASE FOLLOW.

'Spike had indeed gone to Liverpool, where he promptly began the seminal (in more ways than one) poetry readings in Streate's coffee bar on Mount Pleasant. The manager there, John L., later to become my roadie, dispensed sped pills from a huge sweet jar under the counter.

'It really was Spike who started the whole Liverpool poetry scene, and he has never received the credit for it, along with Johnny Byrne who helped organise things and later became a writer himself. Between they they recruited local talent such as Adrian Henri, at that time chiefly a painter and teacher, Sam Walsh, also a painter but a fine folk singer, Roger McGough, and a little later, the amazing 15-year-old Brian Patten. John Lennon was certainly around - he lived in the same building as Adrian and Sam across from the towering Gothic cathedral, the famed Gambier Terrace.'

Brown fell in love with Liverpool: 'The mixture of Welsh, Irish and Lancashire cultures crossed with Afro-Caribbean, Chinese and socialism was very attractive. The city was soon to be home to nearly 500 professional or semi-pro rock bands, and probably the only independent poetry magazine in Britain ever to make any money, 'Underdog'. [Produced by Brian Patten]

Brown is probably best-known for the great songs he wrote with Jack Bruce for 'Cream' (four tracks on 'Disraeli Gears') and later for Jack's brilliant first solo album 'Song for A Tailor', one of my all time favourite albums.

Like Adrian Henri, Pete Brown formed, gigged and recorded with bands - the Battered Ornaments and Piblokto. Brown was unceremoniously turfed out of the BOs, a band he set up, on the night before they played the Stones concert at Hyde Park in '69, shortly after the death of Brian Jones. He immediately formed Piblokto. Many of the posters and album covers for these bands were done by Mal Dean, Genius.

*
UPDATE/5 SEPT 2016

A GALLERY TO PLAY TO: THE STORY OF THE MERSEY POETS 

by Phil Bowen [First published by Stride Publications(1999); revised 2nd Edition/Liverpool University Press (2008)]

'...the Liverpool poets listened, learnt and led.'
- Adrian Henri

When I began writing this post some days ago now, I did not even know this book existed. Halfway through the story, I discovered it on Google Books. I then ordered a copy from the net, devoured it in a few days, wrote to Phil Bowen who replied that, as it turns out, he is coming to visit Lewes before the end of the year. Result.

To summarise briefly, this is the boss history, a master class in how to write a group biography (v. tricky), how to write about poetry and analyse it well enough so that it is not pretentious but enlightening. Its extremely elegantly written, flows beautifully and takes us on an imaginative tour of the streets of Liverpool, the clubs, the flats, the Mersey, the sounds of the 1960s/1970s. 

Phil is no less successful in bringing the three major characters to life. He writes about their performances in Nightblues, a 1963 'event' in Liverpool, featuring also John Gorman and a local R'n'B band the Roadrunners.:

'Nightblues is something of a template for the three poets' performing styles. Henri, the front man, but self-deprecating and still uncertain of himself as a poet; Patten, young - but as McGough had noted 'mature in the sense that he knew he was a poet' - but uneasy and uncomfortable regarding performance; and McGough, already the assured poet-performer, handling both aspects with consummate skill.'

The book takes us in chronological order decade by decade up to The Noughties, setting the progress of the three poets and poetry in general in a well-fleshed out background of the national politics of the day, other cultural activity and international movements.

 One of he aspects of the story that is so striking is how prolific Henri, McGough and Patten were and are. Also was completely unaware of how much successful writing they had done for children. It's a wonderful tale to have a chance to tell, very satisfying, very real. Phil expertly weaves multiple threads together, making it both informative and readable, full of fresh interview material, quotes from the odes, and insider observations.

It is highly recommended to the more than one million readers who have bought the original Penguin Mersey Poets book. 

Phil is a poet whose last collection is Starfly (Stride Publications.2004)> He has edited two anthologies of poems also published by Stride, one that celebrates Dylan [Jewels & Binoculars (1993)] and Things We Said Today,which celebrates The Beatles. He has also written four plays including A Handful of Rain, an imaginary meeting between Bob Dylan and Dylan Thomas. Born in Liverpool, he lives in Cornwall and works all over the country as a freelance writer, teacher and poet.
See: www.philbowen.co.uk

PERSONAL CONNECTIONS

I organised both of these gigs. The first (left) was in 1970 when I was 19 and was running with others the local arts lab The Worthing Workshop. Yes, I was Freaky John! According to local press clippings of the time, we had an audience of 350 but lost £100. This came after a hugely profitable benefit concert in January featuring the original Deep Purple and others. The second (right) was one of a series of events called 'The New Beat Experience', which we staged at the Komedia in Brighton for several years. This 'happening' dates from September 2003 when I was 53. To have Spike Hawkins and Pete Brown on the bill made for a memorable night.

A NEW WASTE LAND: Mike Horowitz

Wed 20th: The Generalist attended Fine Art auction at the East West Gallery in Blenheim Crescent, Ladbroke Grove, London for the Benefit of 'A New Waste Land: Timeship Earth at Nillennium' - a major poetic work by Michael Horowitz, a ten-year labour. The funds are to rescue the hardback edition which is currently stuck at the printers. A small but enthusiastic gathering were able to bid for works by Hockney, Peter Blake, Martin Sharp and others. Mike read stirringly from his book and made everyone feel at home. Lord Gowrie handled the aunctioneering with the aplomb appropriate for a former Director of Sotheby's. Hopefully a fine total was made.

The book's advance information release describes the work as follows:

'In his most political work to date, Michael Horovitz adapts and extends the structure, music and apocalyptic collage of T S Eliot’s The Waste Land of 1922, to take a hard look at the state of the nation and the planet at the turn of the millennium, and after. Among the soulless forces of darkness deconstructed in the poem itself, and in the abundant notes and illustrations, are Tony Blair’s degradation of the Labour Party; the mega-materialisms of Margaret Thatcher and Rupert Murdoch; the macho duplicities of Bull Clinton and Gorge Dubbya Bash; Hypeing Up, Dumbing Down and the “EnterPrize Culture”; the hubristic vacuities of the Greenwich Dome saga; and the suicidal commercial triumphalism promoted by the arms, nuclear, advertising and war industries.

Where 'The Waste Land' of 1922 echoed phrases and lines from the past cherished by T S Eliot, Michael Horovitz mixes more substantial quotations into his update. Virgil, Christ, Blake, Burns, Wordsworth, Byron, Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Kipling, W H Davies, D H Lawrence, Pound, Bunting, Primo Levi, Paul Celan, Allen Ginsberg, Kazuko Shiraishi, Adrian Mitchell, Bob Dylan, Jeni Couzyn, Frances Horovitz, Grace Nichols, John Lennon, Mahmood Jamal, Stacy Makishi, and Eliot himself are among the angels whose insights fuel the text’s lyric fire.

The book also projects a kaleidoscope of telling photographs; images from artists including Bosch, Michelangelo, Brueghel, El Greco, van Gogh, Picasso and Hockney; cartoons by Steve Bell, Peter Brookes, Nicholas Garland, Michael Heath, Andrzej Krauze, Chris Riddell, Gerald Scarfe, Posy Simmonds, Trog, and their peers, at the top of their form.'

The Generalist will be digesting the book and reporting back.

A New Waste Land: Timeship Earth at Nillennium'
is published by New Departures.
Price: £15 (paperback) ISBN 0-902689-18-5 978-0-902689-18-3 (pb)
Publication: October 2007

NME2: GRANT GEE AND MICHAEL HOROWITZ

 

Pleased to see in the same issue tips to the hat for two of The Generalist’s favourite people, both of whom I have done extensive interviews with.

Following the NME’s cover story on the upcoming Stone Roses documentary by Shane Meadows, the paper features a Top 10 line-up of the greatest examples of rock movie-making. Included is Grant Gee’s very excellent Radiohead movie ‘Meeting People Is Easy’ which follows the band on their exhausting world tour in support of their 1997 album ‘OK Computer.’ Its unusual and insightful into the realities of global promotion. The band burn out in front of your eyes.

My favourite of Grant’s film to date is the brilliant Joy Division documentary he made with Jon Savage. You can read my excitable early review of the film.

My lengthy 2008  interview with Grant about the making of the film is on the AUDIO GENERALIST site.

Grant also shot and edited [with Mat Whitecross] the remarkable doc ‘Scott Walker: 30 Century Man’ for which David Bowie was Executive Producer.

Most recently I watched with great interest ‘Patience’, Grant’s most recent film following the journey the late writer W.G. Sebald made across Suffolk, which formed the basis of his now famous book ‘The Rings of Saturn’. Beautifully shot on b&w film stock , the subject suits perfectly Grant’s multilevel collage film-making approach. Three-quarters of the way through I remembered that I still had Grant’s number in my book (yes I still have a phone book). The number still worked, Grant was at home and a few days later we met up at the Lewes Arms for a catch-up. I’m sworn to secrecy at present about his next documentary project but it promises to be interesting. There’s a great 2001 interview with Sebald here. Also a great post on Richard Skinner’s blog on Max Sebald’s Writing Tips.

 

Good to also see the great British poet Michael Horovitz in the NME. He recently performed at the Albert Hall with Graham Coxon and Damon Albarn from Blur with Paul Weller (on drums!!). The results of their collaboration is a full album and single to be released on Record Store Day.

I conducted a long in-depth interview with Mike on 25th October 2007 which can be found on the AUDIO GENERALIST site. I was pleased to discover today that my interview is also linked via Mike’s Wikipedia site.

This followed my attendance at a launch event in September  that year for his magnum opus ‘A New Waste Land’. See full report and picture here. Mike has done more than any other single person to promote and develop poetry in Britain over the last 50 years at least. Hats off to this man.

THE GENERALIST AUDIENCE

This is a snapshot of The Generalist's global audience, courtesy of Stat Counter, a wonderful service for all bloggers. Stories being accessed in this view of my blog's global traffic (16th December 2007) include stories on the Bering Bridge, on Arthur Brown, Tony Tyler, Mike Horowitz, Truman Capote, Al Gore, Johnny Depp, Joy Division etc etc

In case people wonder why anyone would spend 2 1/2 years writing hundreds of thousands of words - for free - the answer is in this image. After decades of working for mainstream newspapers and magazines, my blog gives me complete freedom to write about what I think is important, in a way of my own choosing. Equally important is the oppotunity to reach out to a genuinely global audience, of all cultures, backgrounds and thoughts.

Imagine if there was some global system whereby, when you wrote a book, you could log on to the internet and get a map of everyone who had taken your book to bed that night and was reading it. This blog gives me a feeling of real connection with an incredibly diverse global world.

I have written stuff every month since June 2005 - except for three months surrounding my mum's death - and the possibilities keep opening up before me.

Thanks to you all - past and present readers. Output is variable but consistently so. The plan is to keep this baby going until I run out of road. Hope you will join me for the ride.

Check out the Audio Generalist here

SPIKE HAWKINS TRIBUTE [1942-2017]

Spike Hawkins by
Philip Jones Griffiths

This is a tribute post to Spike Hawkings, a poet who was and is held in high regard by his peers. His poems are short, surrealistic and funny. A pioneering force in the Liverpool poetry scene in the '60s as we shall see. Yet his name and story are not known to many.

It was message on Facebook from Marc Carey that triggered things off with a link to the 'Up Your Chuff 'Mixcloud site, featuring a just-under two-hour podcast of Mr C's 'Rock Roots Radio' show devoted to Spike and the world he inhabited.

It is composed of three audio interviews with poet Pete Brown (see below), writer Jenny Fabian {Co-author with Johnny Byrne of Groupie fame) and poet Michael Horovitz. These are interspersed with some great music and a kind of episodic, anecdotal history of the poetry/jazz scene from the late '50s through the '60s and beyond.


The show's really well put together, with some slight audio issues in places but hey, it was just like listening to Radio Caroline. Mr C knows his stuff and is enthusiastic and interested which helps make it a warm-hearted piece of work. Dotted throughout is the voice of Spike reading his own work, some great Horowitz stuff from the famous Albert Hall poetry event in 1965 - the great attendance at a poetry reading in history - and later, including recent work with Damon Albarn.

We had the privilege of presenting two great poets on one night at a 'New Beat Experience' event/happening at the Komedia in Brighton in 2003) - Spike Hawkins and Pete Brown (best known for his lyrics for The Cream [including Tales of Brave Ulysses]. As I remember it, both gave short punchy sets that were enthusiastically received. I seem to recall some sort of argy bargy with Spike. I think I just had to reassure him he would get paid. Fair enough.


Spike was blessed with a rich, fruity voice which he used to significant effect when performing his work. He was a great mimic and had a vivid imagination sliced with street humour. No pretentiousness; the real thing.

Having decided to write something about it all, I began with Wikipedia (as you do), which features an entry not quite as brief as his poems but short and to the point.

Spike Hawkins (born 1943) is a British poet, best known for his "Three Pig Poems",^[1] included in his one book, the Fulcrum Press  collection The Lost Fire-Brigade (1968). He was part of the poetry scene in Liverpool during the 1960s and much of his output upholds the values of that group; short, modernistic, humorous pieces of free verse. He was published in Encounter, International Times,^[2] The Guardian and in the 1972 anthology The Old Pals' Act, edited by Pete Brown.^[3]

He was a friend of Johnny Byrne; together, they formed the surreal act "Poisoned Bellows".^[4][5] He was a friend of Syd Barrett, a founder of Pink Floyd.^[6][7] Hawkins continues to be active, for example performing in the 2005 Poetry Olympics at the Royal Albert Hall,^[8][9] having originally performed there in the International Poetry Incarnation in 1965.^[10]

A brilliant mimic, he could imitate Harold Wilson very well.^[11]

His Wikipedia entry is missing the fact that he died in March 2017. I found this out, not by googling his name, but by asking it the question 'Is Spike Hawkins dead')


It took me to a site called Ocatillo Audiovisual which carries the online diary of composer  and filmmaker Robert Robinson. The entry dated 3rd March 2017 reads in part: 'Very sad news – earlier this week the poet Spike Hawkins died, aged 74. Always unpredictable, he was known in some areas (like hospitals) as John Hawkins. As a poet, he was known as Spike Hawkins, and taxi drivers called him Frank.'



Robert recounts how he was asked by his boss [at Harwood Academic] to set up an international poetry book series, which would include an audio CD, called Poet's Voices. Spike was third in the series. Robert writes:

The relatively short, pithy and amusing poems in the book are everyday but surreal in character. What could we call this collection of distilled different experiences, word-plays and atmospheres? I suggested the title 250 Grams of Poetry, which Spike liked, as he enjoyed street-markets. Years later I chose sixteen of my favorite poems from this book, and set Spike’s reading of them to film, in I’m Back, the title of the shortest poem in the collection.

 He also filmed him in his home for a second film called Assault on Time  named after one of the poems he performs.

'This reading took place during a brief summer thunderstorm, whose rumbling followed with providential timing a tragic poem about a soldier lying on barbed wire on a battlefield in World War I. At another synchronous moment Spike reads a poem which features the sound of dogs barking – and there they are: the dogs in Breugel’s famous painting of hunters in winter, they bark on the wall behind the poet. Later, Death makes a brief appearance:

​‘Met Death on the market –

                           asked him if he was on the ‘phone                            

He started waving and said he was

an unlisted number.

Why? I asked.

Nobody rings my number (he said),

But I ring everybody once.'

[From Spoonflags by Spike Hawkins (1943-2017). 

​*

See this lengthy Previous Post

LIVERPOOL POETS ADRIAN HENRI, ROGER MCGOUGH, BRIAN PATTEN + PETE BROWN and SPIKE HAWKINS

*

FROM THE ARCHIVE

The original editio of this book was
published by [Rapp & Carroll Ltd.
London.1967]. Its very difficult to find.
Bought this U.S. edition from the U.S.
[Doubleday.1968] It's inscribed on the
inside cover in open: Harry or Larry
(there's a punch hole) & Agate or Agatha
[with the 'a' missing at the end] Krouse.
They come from Whitewater, Wisc. Dated
February 12th 1971.

This is a wonderful book on 'The Liverpool Scene', a Granada TV documentary. The opening essay is by Edward Lucie-Smith and the rest if a great selection of poems and some stunning black and white photography by the late great Welshman Philip Jones Griffiths, whose war photography in Vietnam had a big effect on American public opinion. Henri Cartier-Bresson said of his work: "Not since Goya has anyone portrayed war like Philip Jones Griffiths."

Lucie-Smith writes: The 'Liverpool scene' of this book seems to have been born in the very early sixties. Pete Brown, more usually associated with jazz-and-poetry readings in London and the south of England, gives a lively account of it: '

'Well, this is the poetry thing really: I mean the atmosphere and the people were there already, definitely, and it was very sort of ripe. Late in 1960 Spike Hawkins and I were living in London but we met up with a team of people from Liverpool at the Beaulieu Jazz Festival in 1960 and they said, you know, that things were good up there and that we should come up and sort of enjoy 
ourselves. Well, Spike and I got into conditions of extreme and dire poverty, so one night he hitched up there and accepted the invitation. They had this coffee bar there which was run by a very extraordinary guy—it was named after some Victorian, Liverpool Victorian person, Mr. Somebody Streate, and was called Streate's Coffee Bar because of this painting they had of him there. This guy that used to run it was a very good guy. That was the centre of activity and meetings. Finally, Spike and another guy called Johnny Byrne, who's an Irishman who was living in Liverpool at the time and was a friend of Adrian Henri's—they started these readings up there.

'The readings—well, Adrian, in fact, hadn't written any poetry for about six or maybe more years before that—he knew all about it, of course, you know, the things that were happening in poetry—but he just hadn't written any, and Brian Patten and Roger McGough were completely and absolutely unknown, and the fact of having regular sessions at this place brought them into the light and made Adrian start writing again. This was early '61. That's how the poetry thing in Liverpool began"...'

Here's the accoun from the seminal authentic history of the times [published in 1999] 'A Gallery to Play To': The Story of the Mersey Poets' by Phil Bowen [see full review in Previous Posts above]:

'Byrne was also present at the Art College dance where Hawkins read his poetry, and was later approached by Eddie Mooney who ran Streate's Coffee Bar. Mooney wanted to start some readings there and perhaps get a scene together. Hawkins' reputation at that time was purely word of mouth, but he was able to find some jazz musicians glad of a place to play:  

[Johnny Byrne] 'It was a wonderful joining together of talent: people from Liverpool, the States, a lot of first-timers. There was this connection, a complete network of people, virtually penniless, travelling to and fro as they spread the word, bringing out new literature, new poems, prose and books." 

Pete Brown recalls:

"We were all busy being bums in London. Mal Dean and Johnny Byrne were in Liverpool and they said, 'Come up and steam about: Hawkins had been living in a hedge or a haystack. Anyway something clicked in his head and he left a note pinned to his sleeping girlfriend saying, ---`Brown. Gone to Liverpool. Please follow"

Bowen says: 'The first poetry events consisted mainly of Hawkins, Byrne and Brown reading their work, and poems from the revered Evergreen Review stolen by Hawkins from Better Books in London. 

Two poetry anthologies from back in the day which both contain some of Spike's work
There are a few in this commercial title
'Love. Love, Love: The New Love Poetry'. Edited with an Introduction by Pete Roche.
First published by Corgi Books in 1967, this is the 4th Printing [1970].
The seminal and substantial 'Children of Labion: Poetry of the Underground in Britain',
First published by Penguin Books in 1969. This is the second edition.
Edited by Michael Horowitz, it's a remarkable classic anothology which contains 15 of Spike's poems
 alongside a wonderful collection of work by his peers. MIke has also edited  'The Grandchildren of
Albion' and has plans for a new volume: 'The Great Grandchildren of Albion'.
*

BLEEG

we have bought some food
she has put it on the best table
we are not going to feed you
so go and stand outside in our
forest

- Spike Hawkings

PS: HERE'S A VERY STRANGE LINK; THIS AWESOME BOOK

Go figure

Syd meets Spike Hawkins

In a YouTube interview Rob Chapman, author of the Syd Barrett biography A Very Irregular Head, recalls how he found out that beatnik and poet Spike Hawkins was an acquaintance of Syd Barrett. He was interviewing Pete Brown for his book and when the interview was over he remarked that some Barrett lyrics had a distinct Spike Hawkins style. At that point Pete Brown remarked: "I think Spike Hawkins knew Syd Barrett." Without that lucky ad hoc comment we would (probably) never have known that the two artists not only knew, but also met, each other at different occasions, although it was probably more a Mandrax haze that tied them rather than the urge to produce some art together.

http://atagong.com/iggy/archives/2010/07/syd-meets-a-lot-of-people.html

Jeff Nuttall: Bomb Culture and Beyond

Jeff Nuttall at the Chelsea Arts Club on 4th November 1985.
Photo by Ed Barber (Copyright Reserved)

First publication

Jeff Nuttall was the first proper artist I ever met. Way back when, at the tail-end of the 1960s, he came to give a talk to students at the local art college in Worthing and I got in on it. As I recall it now, he breezed in the lecture hall, wearing a long brown check overcoat and loose scarf and, will little ado, sat up on the front table (rather than taking the chair), said ‘I’m Jeff Nuttall and I’m going to read to you from my new book ‘Pig’”, loosened his coat, and was off for the next couple of hours. It was brilliant. I loved his irreverence, his speaking voice, the gusto and non-pomposity of it all. Even better, after the reading, a gang of us went with him to The Wheatsheaf and I got to talk to him some more. The details have passed into the mist but it certainly strengthened my determination to try and avoid the normal workaday world and be an artist. I succeeded – but at a cost.

Then I read ‘Bomb Culture’ – one of the great books to come out of the 1960s – a vibrant and thrilling account of the internationalist counter-culture in Britain and the effect that the shadow of the Bomb had on the post-Hiroshima generations. It remains an important book and a big impact on me. Still one of the best books for getting a taste and flavour of the real underground scene.

There was of course much more to Jeff than that. He was a poet and singer, played jazz piano and cornet, published some 40 books in his lifetime, performed cameo roles on film and tv, founded a rabble-rousing improvisational theatrical group called the People Show and was, in the words of Michael Horovitz, ‘a catalyst, perpetrator and champion of rebellion in the arts and society.’

It was December 1984, some fifteen years after our first meeting, that I met up with Jeff again under very different circumstances. It was a dingy night at the Chelsea Arts Club in London and I had come with photographer Ed Barber, to record an interview with Jeff, as part of a series of pieces I think I was trying to do for 'Time Out' magazine on ‘Bomb Culture’ revisited. After hanging round in the bar downstairs for some time, we were ushered up to the Hancock Room, where Jeff was staying for the night.

The room, named after Tony Hancock I presume, was small and shabby, classic theatrical digs. Just enough room for a bed, a basin, a chair and the rotund figure of Jeff. Ed struggled to get his tripod and other camera gear in the door and we all ended up crammed together. To make it even more intense, Jeff was not in a happy mood. After the successes and energy of the 1970s, things had not gone well and Jeff, disillusioned and professionally ostracised, retreated to Portugal. This it seems, was the first interview he had given to the British press for years. He let me have it full bore. Vitriolic and intense, it was as if I was personally responsible for the situation. Very uncomfortable. Afterwards, sitting in the car, Ed and I breathed a great sigh of relief to get out of that room. Of course, as a result, it was a great interview and a great photo (see above).

Jeff sadly died at the end of last year and his comrade, friend and collaborator Michael Horowitz produced a wonderful little illustrated book and record to celebrate Jeff’s multivarious talents or, as he put it: ‘A keepsake anthology of the life, work and play of a Polymath Extraordinaire.’ There are still copies available which can be obtained from Mike as follows:The Book: Jeff N utall’s Wake on Paper (New Departures 33 /ISBN 0 902689 22 3)(£5.00 + £1.00 p&p)Jeff Nutall’s Wake on CD (NDCD 34/ ISBN 0 902689 23 1)(£10 + £2.00 p&p)Mail address: New Departures, PO Box 9819, London W11 2GQ

The following extract from my interview was included in the book ( as follows) with a slightly different audio version on the record:

JM: What were the circumstances that led you to write ‘Bomb Culture’?

JN: I’d had a couple of preliminary stabs at it and then I went on holiday to Wales and suddenly it all fell into place: the three strains – the pop strain, the protest strain and the art strain – and the merging of them in some kind of movement that felt that everyone of these three strains had something to offer in the state of emergency - which was the failure of CND. It became clear in the early 1960s, that massive crowds and massive civil disobedience were ineffectual and nobody in Parliament was bothered about them one iota.

Several people came up with the idea of cultural warfare, of seeding pacifist and subversive elements in the popular culture. The popular culture having been almost purely a commercial enterprise previously (if you can say purely commercial), art not being concerned with being popular at all, and protest eschewing art as though art were self-indulgent and were not sufficiently puritan, not sufficiently ethically motivated. Just for a while they merged and that was what Bomb Culture was all about, and I happened to be around while it was merging. I wrote it in 1967, which was the year of mounting protest against the Vietnam War, and 1968 was the student upheaval. In Paris, as everybody knew at the time – though people have kind of forgotten – they did open prisons and burn the stock exchange and it really did look as though this was it, this was spontaneous revolution.

I was very much concerned about the Bomb, and about sowing this element of dissent into the popular culture, that would ultimately lead to inevitable disarmament and probably the dissolution of nations, and the setting up of a common human consciousness. We all believed it then you know! It looked as though it was bloody near inevitable, because the change in thinking and the change in culture between ‘65 and ’67 was amazing.

Hunter S. Thompson talks very eloquently about how it all seemed completely inevitable, the victory was there, it was just a question of letting it happen. So my writing Bomb Culture was a signing off from it really, a kind of retraction to going back to writing poetry which was concerned with poetry and concerned with the interpretation of a highly personal vision, and making art which owed nothing to anybody and didn’t have to contain any kind of message at all.

JM: You talk in Bomb Culture about the gap that’s opened up between the generations in the atomic age.

JN: The gap is between those people who have experienced a notion of the world as a continuum and those people who have not had that experience. I don’t want to be patronising or come on like an uncle, but I think I can remember up until 1945 believing that one way or another there might be some awful things that would happen, but the world would continue. That whatever went wrong, in the fullness of time, it would eventually come right. You can’t remember that. You might wish to remember it. You might be able to imagine it. But I can remember when everybody believed it. I think this has done something quite disastrous to social ethics.

JM: Is the Bomb shaping artistic consciousness all over the world?

JN: What one wants from a Bomb-conscious artist is an antithesis to the Bomb. One wants opposition to the Bomb, and one can’t have opposition to the Bomb which in itself has its roots in the existence of the Bomb. What one actually wants from one’s artists is gestures and statements and experiences that are going to perpetually put before humanity, before the public, before society, a way of thinking, which is not part of the internal, competitive, war-power system.…..You have to overcome the difficulty of loving your state, your condition. Anybody can look at a sunset and say goo goo goo, how nice, or cuddle a baby, or fall in love with a pretty girl or a pretty boy. That’s the easy bit. The difficult bit is somehow loving a state which includes the obscene and the vicious and the dreadful and the painful and loving that. Really loving it, not tolerating it or blessing it or forgiving it or putting up with it or grinning and bearing it, but really loving it as being an integral and unavoidable part of the kind of creature your are and the state of existence you inhabit.That’s where I stand at the moment. Far too much, somewhere hovering behind the existence of the Bomb, is the notion that…it’s not worth saving. It’s so disgusting, it’s so foul, so corrupt, it’s so old and so boring and its so diseased that you might as well…

JM: Just wipe it clean ?

JN: Yes. What you’ve got to really do is create some kind of cultural movement which would be against that. How it’s to happen now I really don’t know. I don’t feel despairing because I think that – I’m 52 now – I really didn’t expect to see the age of 30.

More information on Jeff Nuttall:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Nuttall

www.dreamtargets.com/nuttall.htm