When I began the Celebrity Jukebox, it wasn't just for celebs who had passed away. Living legends were also featured. Nowadays though, it's just a place to celebrate those who have left us. Sadly, this means I now have to revisit this edition from 2022. Rest in peace, General...
“Kneel before Zod!”
For most of my generation, our first encounter with Terence
Stamp was as the evil General Zod in Superman II. The Grauniad called him “the
master of the brooding silence”, and he certainly sent shivers down my spine. Gene Hackman’s Lex Luthor was a pussycat in comparison.
I was surprised General Zod didn’t get referenced all over
the place, but only Eminem (who’s the same age as me) was prepared to kneel
before him.
Terence Stamp had been around for a couple of decades by the
time he played that memorable supervillain, making his screen debut in
the movie Billy Budd, an Oscar-nominated performance that obviously made some
impact on a young Steven Patrick Morrissey…
Morrissey also used an image of Stamp in The Collector as
the cover of the third Smiths single, What Difference Does It Make?
Stamp
originally refused permission for the picture to be used, but relented in the
end… possibly after he’d seen Morrissey’s alternative.
Pete Townshend from The Who has a younger brother called
Simon who has occasionally play with big bro’s band, as well as ploughing his
own lonely solo furrow. Here he is with a track called Highness, which begins
thus…
I am what I am
I just happen to be related to the king
…before named dropping Bowie, Eddie Vedder and Rod Stewart,
as well as… yes, you guessed it, Terence Stamp.
48 Cameras are described on their bandcamp page as “Collectif
international à géométrie variable”, which means they come from all over the
place, but mostly Belgium. This is from their 2006 release After All, Isn’t
Tango The Dance of the Drunk Man? It sounds like an orchestra tuning up to me, but what do I know? It's probably art.
I watched the final episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm last week. You may or may not be familiar with the show in which Seinfeld co-creator Larry David plays himself as a miserable old misanthrope constantly butting heads with societal niggles. Like most comedy shows, you’ll either connect with it immediately or wonder what all the fuss is about. Being a miserable old misanthrope myself, I have found Larry a wonderful companion for the show’s duration, and while I don’t always agree with his grievances, I do understand why he gets so worked up about them.
But this isn’t a post about Curb Your Enthusiasm. I wouldn’t argue with anyone who said the show was long past its best and wasn’t as funny or as incisive as it once was. After 12 seasons, Curb had definitely become comfortable, but there’s a lot to be said for comfort TV, and I did so enjoy being invited to share in the ups and downs of Larry’s life… especially when you never knew which celebrity guest star was going to pop up to be offended by him next. Bruce Springsteen appeared three times in the final series… that in itself made my day.
12 series though… I’ve watched this show for quite some time. And I knew that wasn’t a series a year, because Larry took regular breaks, especially during the pandemic. Still, I was shocked when I looked back and discovered the first series ran 24 years ago! Hang on a minute… I’ve been watching this show for 24 years?
And suddenly, I was taken back to the year 2000. Where I was. Who I was. A completely different person. There’s a popular misconception that all the cells in the human body renew themselves every 7 years, and while that’s not 100% true, there is something in it. I was 28 years old when I started watching Curb. I lived in a different house, worked in a different job, had an entirely different social circle. Liked slightly different records, felt different emotions, saw the future… and the past… in an entirely different way. Somewhat ironically, when the show launched in 2000, Larry David was 52. The same age I am now. I’m not sure why I related to him so much as a 28 year old. In the final episode, he proudly announced that he was 76 year olds… and had never learned a lesson in his life. It made me wonder how many I’ve learned… and how 76 year old me will feel in another 24 years. 2000 doesn’t seem that long ago, and time gets faster every year. 2048 is just around the corner…
The interweb tells me than an idiom is "a group of words established by usage as having a meaning not deducible from those of the individual words". I'm not sure I agree with that - you often can figure out the meaning of an idiom if you sit and think about it.
"Raining cats and dogs"?
It's belting down; the rain is so heavy it's like small domesticated animals falling out of the sky.
"Sit on the fence"?
There's one field of opinion to the left, one field of opinion to the right - you can't decide which you agree with (or don't want to upset either field owner) so you sit on the fence in-between.
Regardless, having taught English to students of other languages, I will say that the preponderance of idioms in our language is one of many things that makes it so bloody difficult to learn (or to teach, at least).
All this is an introduction to a lazy new feature where I pick a random idiom and see how many songwriters have decided to steal it to make a tune from.
We begin... by going Nowhere Fast. And I guess we have to start with this one, a fine example of why (latter day crimes not withstanding) Morrissey should still be considered the greatest lyricist of his generation.
And when I'm lying in my bed I think about life And I think about death And neither one particularly appeals to me
Girls At Our Best! (exclamation mark theirs) came from Leeds in 1979. They self-financed their debut single on their own Record Records label and it reached #9 in the UK Indie chart. It was later covered by The Wedding Present.
Shoes were an American power pop band from Zion, Illinois. They were one of the first bands to be played on MTV... presumably before anyone started watching it.
I did find a band called Nowhere Fast as well. They released a solitary album in 1982. That's the record cover at the top of this page. You can listen to all of it on the tube of you. I'm guessing they went...
You can finish that sentence yourself, I'm sure.
The phrase Nowhere Fast is an oxymoron, so it was bound to appeal to Jim Steinman who loves contradiction as much as he does hyperbole. This was one of only two Steinman compositions on the fourth Meat Loaf album, Bad Attitude, and naturally it's one of the best two songs on that record. It was originally recorded by Fire Inc. for the soundtrack of the rock n roll movie Streets Of Fire starring Michael Paré, Diane Lane, Rick Moranis and Willem Dafoe. The movie was an expensive flop, but it's got a pretty decent soundtrack.
Sam's football training has changed nights, from Tuesday to Thursday. They've also got a new venue since last year... my old high school.
Last night then, I set foot in my old school gym for the first time in 34 years. (I left in 1990, but I never went near the gym after the end of the 5th form... why would I? There had to be some perks to being a Sixth Former.)
But now, here I was again, staring up at that same wood-paneled ceiling, breathing in the same stench of stale sweat and plimsolls, hearing the squeaky echo of gym shoes on barely-polished tiles... a shudder went down my spine as a juggernaut of memories came rushing back.
Two nights ago, I had an anxiety dream about returning there and being met by my old P.E. Teacher, Mr Sh***ocks, who always called me "Roly". Which. I. Fucking. Hated. But was powerless to do anything about. Only in the dream, he didn't remember me at all, and he was struggling to give directions, and I realised what a sad little man he actually was, not the terrifying ogre of memory.
The weirdest thing of all was how nothing had changed. From the outside, the school looks quite different. They've built a whole new wing and turned one of the playgrounds into another car park (more teachers driving to work than in the 80s?)... and there are huge green security fences surrounding everything. There were no fences when I went there. You could have walked up to the entrance at any hour of the day or night and peered in through the classroom windows. It's more prison that high school now.
Inside though... time had stood still. The gloomy stairs up to the staff room, the grubby corridor leading to the Sport's Hall... the horror of the changing rooms... they were all exactly as they had been 34 years ago. Admittedly, I only walked that one corridor; the rest of the school was closed off. Still... I might as well have driven there in a Delorean, at 88 miles per hour.
I think they've painted the metalwork blue... but the woodwork, the walls, the floor tiles, the showers (not pictured - I'll spare you the horror)... for a second, I almost went and hung up my bag and started getting changed. With that ugly lump in my throat I felt every Tuesday afternoon when it was time for games...
Yes, I'm heartbroken. Mrs. McCluskey, actress Gwyneth Powell, died earlier this week. Another icon of my childhood gone. Who's going to stop Gripper Stebson now?
Oh, very well then...
I have been consciously avoiding writing about the death of
Queen Elizabeth II due to the lynch mobs who are out there, listening to our
every word, waiting to hang, draw and quarter anyone who responds with anything
other than reverential grief. But since Alyson threw down the gauntlet... let’s see if I can dip my toe in
that puddle without the piranhas biting it off.
I was saddened to hear that the Queen was dead. It’s sad when
any old lady dies, and given that she was just a couple of years older than my
own parents, it obviously made me worry more than ever for them. Is it more of
a big deal when a famous person dies? I can’t claim to believe otherwise, since
I’m regular wailing and gnashing my teeth as I eulogise departed icons here –
musicians, actors, TV personalities, writers, comic book creators… Mrs. McCluskey! I still find
it hard to accept that Prince is no longer with us. And Stan Lee. And Olivia
Newton John. The list goes on and on. And the Queen was, we are told, the most
famous person in the world, so clearly her death is a huge deal for many, many
people, and who am I to question that?
What I don’t like is this idea that everyone is expected to grieve
in the same way and at the same level. A level of grief prescribed and dictated
by the TV stations that have cancelled all their programming in favour of
wall-to-wall mourn-porn, and a Bank Holiday in which everything is shutting
down (hope you weren't planning on visiting Center Parcs) to force us all to watch a state funeral, whether we want to or not.
Attention, populace: YOU WILL BE DEVASTATED. None of this is about paying our
respects; it’s just about putting on a show.
Andrew O’Hagan, a far better writer than me, wrote what I
consider to be the
definitive response to the media… I want to say circus, but it’s much
bigger than a circus, isn’t it? Media Apocalypse? Royale-with-cheese-mageddon? Yet at no point is he disrespectful to the memory of QE2. Indeed, he makes some excellent
points about how the Queen herself was a woman of quiet dignity, and how the
very newspapers that are flagellating themselves the most are the ones who have
tried their best to make her life miserable for the last half century. It’s one
of the best pieces of social commentary I’ve ever read (hey, if everyone else
is allowed to drown us in hyperbole this week, at least let me get in on the
act), culminating in a final paragraph that lifts the roof off.
The Express reports on huge
crowds weeping in the street. Modern journalism loves the idea that a nation
has a heart and that a heart can break, as if there were a requirement to
confect a sort of togetherness out of national torpor, the quivering lip having
long since replaced the stiff upper one as a symbol of our essential nature. It
won’t matter for very long, but today it all seems part of the workaday
hysteria of British life, yet perfectly at odds with the quiet, persevering
woman on the postage stamp.
Beyond all that, I firmly believe that the death of the
Queen is another nail in the coffin of “Great” Britain. First Brexit, then a
government that takes ineptitude beyond satire (The Thick Of It looks tame in
comparison), now the death of the monarchy as an institution. Don’t try to
convince me that Charles or William or anyone else will be able to save it,
because without Elizabeth’s dignified resolve, the gradual slide into Reality
TV Royals will become a landslide. Republicans might cheer at this, but they’d
be wrong to do so. The Royal Family won’t go away. They’ll just become an embarrassment, and so will the “United” Kingdom. “And it’s so lonely on a limb,” sang that bloke I’m not supposed to be mentioning, but I’ve now mentioned
two days running.
I didn’t post The Queen Is Dead here on Friday, partly
because it would have been crass and disrespectful, but mostly because it was
Sam’s ninth birthday and that meant a thousand times more to me than any of this. Choose Life, as Renton said.
TQID is my
favourite album of the 80s, and the title track is one of the best things The
Smiths ever recorded. But it’s also a rather misunderstood song. Despite the savage title, it’s not really about the
Queen herself at all, but about the Queen as a figurehead for the monarchy.
I’ve stolen this from Genius, because
talent borrows but genius steals…
“This does not refer to a literal regicide. It is about how
British society is still, culturally, rooted in the monarchy and aristocracy,
and how the sudden decline in the relevance of those institutions means that
British society is wayward and lost – it’s on a limb. To go “out on a limb”
means to put yourself in a risky/vulnerable position. 30 years on, with
devolution in full swing, a London-centric Parliament that can run wild, and
peerages for sale, one might be inclined to think he’s got a point.”
And even despite Morrissey dreaming of “her very lowness
with her head in a sling”, the Queen comes out of her encounter with this
Rusholme Ruffian pretty well, firstly by playing Ernie to his Eric…
“She said, “eh, I know you and you cannot sing,”
I said, “that’s nothing. You should hear me play piano.”
And secondly, because it all ends thus...
Life is very long when you're lonely.
Thinking about that repeated coda now, in light of all
that’s happened in the past week, I can’t help but wonder if the Queen herself
lived a lonely life. If she did, then she does truly have my deepest sympathy.
Because, as Mother Teresa once said, “loneliness and the feeling of being
unwanted is the most terrible poverty”. Even if you’re the richest woman in the
world. I know loneliness, and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone… especially not a
lady who meant so much to so many.
We watched the Edgar Wright movie Last Night In Soho recently, and I very much enjoyed the recreation of 1960s London, the retro soundtrack, and the performances of Thomasin Mackenzie and Anna Taylor-Joy. The film took a swerve into unnecessary melodrama towards the end, which I found a bit of a disappointment. I like melodrama, but this felt a bit rushed and didn't really match the tone of the rest of the movie. Still worth a watch though.
Among the cast was a cameo by 60s star Rita Tushingham, now in her 80s but still going strong... and those piercing blue eyes were still very much in evidence. (She won awards for her role in the movie The Girl With Green Eyes, but according to iffypedia, "as the film is in black and white the green eyes are never seen".)
Rita Tushingham made her screen debut in the 1961 adaptation of Shelagh Delaney's A Taste Of Honey, a movie which was hugely influential on a certain Stephen Patrick Morrissey. There are at least six Smiths songs on which Morrissey pilfers lyrics from Shelagh Delaney's script, including one of their best known tunes, This Charming Man. Morrissey's favourite movie was controversial at the time for a number of reasons, including one of the first interracial kisses seen on screen. How ironic. I've long stopped trying to convince anyone (including myself) that Morrissey isn't a tad racist. The truth is rarely black and white, but there are some ugly shades of grey. Unlike many former fans, I'm still able to disconnect and enjoy his old music on its original merits. If you choose not to anymore, I respect your opinion. Respect mine and we can send a message of tolerance and harmony to the man with the quiff that might one day change his ways.
A Taste Of Honey isn't the only movie to connect Rita to The Smiths. The video to Girlfriend In A Coma also features clips from her 1964 film The Leather Boys.
While no Morrissey lyrics mention Rita Tushingham directly, she can be found in songs from another pair of John Peel's favourite acts. Firstly, Martin Newell's Cleaners From Venus, who cast her alongside a number of other 60s icons...
Rita Tushingham isn't smiling
Waiting for the green electric
Train to take her
Down to London
Where she will see Mr. Wilson
Standing by the iron railings
Opposite the chestnut palings
David Hemmings will be waiting
With a job for David Bailey
And secondly, here's Rita in one of Franz Ferdinand's very best tunes...
Great Western Wind catches in your Celtic hair
Flicks it round your face like flames around the sun
In the bright cold air you seem as innocent and fair
Always try to be better than your old man and you'll stay on the right track.
For the rest of you... this is Sam's favourite record at the moment. I did not introduce him to this one.
Apparently Rick Astley is amazing if you're nine years old. He is da man.
Who knew?
I hated this when it came out. I've developed a grudging respect for Rick over the years, especially when he did that gig of Smiths songs. But Sam has made me hear the song in a completely different way. It's doubly affecting now. In years to come, it will remind me of being 15, and of being 50. How many songs can you say that about?
Don't worry if you Drew a blank yesterday, here are the answers to our special 200th Anniversary edition of Saturday Snapshots. All the song titles were taken (or adapted) as band names by other artists...
