2004:A Fitting Conclusion
I take up teaching.....
The Fall of the Twin Towers marked something of a paradigm shift for the world. Previously such flamboyant images had been the sole province of Hollywood and the effects men - Grand destructive gestures such as this hadn’t been experienced since the war, and never in isolation. The population was stunned. We were in the process of shutting down our business; Sited under the flight path to Heathrow, in our workshop, there were several days when the roar of a commercial jet on its final approach filled us with terror.It took a while before we were able to settle down, and consider flying again. Regulations were ramped up. Eventually I plucked up courage to get on a plane again. I had returned to the life of a freelance artist/modelmaker; During the post-millenium years, work opportunities had dried up somewhat, as if the furore approaching the date had left clients and advertisers alike sagging aginst the ropes, waiting for a fresh impetus to create.
At this time I took it into my head that whatever else I was going to do, a solo album was going to figure in there somewhere. My eldest son Andrew, exposed to my taste in the house during his early years had chimed wiith the style of music I liked, and consequently, with the drum kit I bought him, had become a fine drummer. I was still in contact with Richard Lightman from ‘Tailfeather’ days, back in the ‘seventies, and together with John Webster, a guitarist from Kingston, and Peter Hammond, a terrific jazz pianist from Twickenham, we laid our plans to record my first album of songs,
Cherché les Florins….
Although I had some money from the dissolution of our business, I still needed to work. I answered an Ad in (I think it was the Guardian) for a Theatre Set Carpenter role at a prominent North London Musical Conservatory- and, although it was somewhat out of my comfort zone, I had little doubt that I would be able to hack it. And so it proved; I was salaried again, and I had a musical project on the go. I packed up fags in celebration (after having smoked for half-a-century) and began one of the most enjoyable periods of my life. Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts had begun just after the end of the second world war - founded in Crouch End by Peter Coxhead, and gradually had grown into a formidable educational institute for young actors, musicians, and theatre technicians. The College relocated in the early 2000s to a number of separate units in The Chocolate Factory, Wood Green - original site of Barratt’s Confectionery. I was sited in what had been the Transport Garage for the distribution vehicles; adapted into a fine high-ceilinged workshop with twin shutter doors, and a mezzanine office in one corner. We built something like 25 shows per year; some located in external theatres, some in the few small performance spacees that the college actually owned. I came to the conclusion that Theatre Techies are amongst the nicest people in the world. They perform a massively creative job for (generally) very little pay, and even less recognition. But they are devoted to what they do - and they do it damn well.
Every Day’s a School Day….
I hadn’t, traditionally, been a massive fan of musicals; although back in the day, after I’d left Smile I auditioned for (and was offered!) a role in Galt McDermott’s follow up to ‘Hair’. I turned it down, more through an irrational prejudice than informed choice… who knows where I’d be if I had followed that path? My time at Mountview demonstrated to me that, as with all Music… beauty is in the eye of the beholder… or in this case, the ear… Apart from anything else, my time there opened up my mind… in fact, I’d almost go further and say that my whole existence has been a process of continual repeated openings of my mind to wider and wider appreciations. .. I was playing harp occasionally with Factory House Blues, a local band fronted by a very good friend Anita Rivera, a professional sculptor, based next door to my (college) workshop and a GREAT blues singer. Sadly, she passed away unexpectedly from a stroke one Easter weekend sending sad shockwaves through the neighbourhood. Mountview did not, at that time, have it’s own theatre space. I was privileged to be able to build and install sets in local theatres like the Pleasance in Caledonian Road, the Shaw Theatre off Marylebone Road, the Bernie Grant Centre in Tottenham, Jackson’s Lane Theatre in Hornsey, the Charing Cross Theatre, in the arches underneath the station, and several more. It was genuinely a joyous and stimulating time - I should say that I was sixty years old - and approaching my retirement….and things were buzzing!
Avenues Of Island Lives….
Of course, during my time at Mountview, I was taking on freelance work in the evenings… I built installations for shows for the King’s Head Theatre in Islington, Lansing College in Sussex, A scaled-up Gibson L-001 to be cast in bronze for the statue of Robert Johnson, the great blues singer in Felix Dennis’s ‘Garden Of Heroes & Villains’ in Warwickshire… (For The Sculptor Steven Gregory) - and an elaborate coffin for Cameron McIntosh’s touring production of ‘Evita’…. and, of course, I also found the time to write and record two solo albums; aMIGO, and Two Late… with my erstwhile musical colleague Richard Lightman - the talented Canadian guitarist who I had worked with in the ‘Seventies, and who I had kept in touch with, contributing occasionally to musical (and graphic) projects that he was engaged in… aMIGO was a hybrid of old material (reworkings of ‘Earth’ & ‘Doin’ Alright’), ‘Why Can’t We Be Free’ (also from that era) - two ‘Tailfeather’ tunes from the ‘Seventies’ and a bunch of unrecorded and newly written material. We cut the backing tracks at a small studion in Fulwell, W. London, and completed the vocal & instrumental overdubs, and mixing at Lightman’s small studio in Twickenham. It was a milestone for me. I had consolidated my belief in myself as a writer, and we had produced a very good album, for posterity, if nothing else. The boost to my confidence, though, was in many ways, the most significant thing by far.
…and Men of No Distinction…..
A few years later, I found myself in Paul Weller’s Black Barn Studio on Ripley Common, out towards Guildford on the A3, recording my second Cd… As I recall, it wasn’t originally going to be called ‘Two Late’ but we ended up not finishing it for quite some time, and it then became an obvious tautology; the album was my second (Two) and it was Late! With aMIGO, I had enlisted the help of my old friends Brian May, Snowy White, and Morgan Fisher to ‘guest’ on the album. This time, we hunkered down and got to grip with a batch of brand new songs, in a forward looking frame of mind, and made the thing our own… It had a special significance for me, in that it proved that I was still able to write material that was interesting and had some substance. As before with aMIGO, Richard Lightman and I collaborated on a couple of the tunes, but this time, the rest were mine.
It would be a few years, a life-changing BioPic, and a Pandemic before I found myself in the studio again, but first - I was about to retire from gainful employment!