Wednesday 21 July 2021

Ten Influential Albums

Editor's note:

During the 2020 'lockdown', I took part in the viral challenge that required Facebook users to share 'an influential album a day' (no words allowed!). Having previously completed that challenge the year before, I decided to take a slightly different approach second time around and explain why those albums are important to me. As such, these musings form a sort of  self-indulgent 'musical biography' which seems in keeping with some of themes of this blog, hence this one-off post. Should you wish to indulge yourself further there is an accompanying Spotify playlist. 

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/36I9z3Z2s5i11K96DmRMdC?si=hT_1zHycS4SYmOdWhUn1dg&fbclid=IwAR22rRQyf_gYzDZRj2cUGNvgaqCCnUuEecydUUfp6xL-qi-cfm-ba3Cp4-8&nd=1

(1) 'Van Halen' by Van Halen (1978)


It started with guitars. Big guitars. The glorious riff to Dire Straits ‘Money for Nothing’ was the soundtrack of the Summer of ’85 and a definite beginning for me. A TDK cassette copy of Iron Maiden’s ‘Number of the beast’ soon followed from someone, somewhere. The following spring, I bought the cassette of Van Halen’s ‘5150’ from What Records in Coalville. Even though this was Van Halen mk 2 (the more pop-oriented Sammy Hagar era), I knew enough about rock music by then to know that Eddie Van Halen was a revered guitar player. And it was guitars I was interested in. The album had only been out about a month but it had already been marked down to £3.99 – Coalville’s favoured brand of metal was of the heavy and British variety. My cassette of 5150 was passed around most of my peers at school for the next year. When it was returned to me sans inlay, I shamefully ‘acquired’ a replacement inlay from St Martin’s Records in Leicester, spurred on by a more daring friend...

I’d found ‘my band’, and, by the end of that summer, I’d found myself: I’d devoted my pocket and paper round money to acquiring their entire back catalogue; I’d filled my school ‘rough book’ with dozens of VH logos, and grown a pretty good mullet.

I can’t imagine what it must have been like to hear this, the self-titled Van Halen debut in 1978. ‘Imagine Jagger and Hendrix in the same band and you’re halfway there’ is how the ‘recommended recording’ review of (my former employer) Andy’s Records put it (I wish I’d written that one). The Guardian columnist Michael Hann, a few years ago, wrote a very controversial article, arguing that, after the Beatles, Van Halen were the most influential rock band of all time. So controversial that The Guardian have pulled it from their online archive but you can read it here. https://thequietus.com/articles/23095-van-halen-the-band-the-velvet-underground-could-only-dream-of-being

I probably wouldn’t go that far, but, undoubtedly, ‘Eruption’ changed guitar playing forever, for better or worse, inspiring a million pale imitations, and ‘hair metal’ if you believe some.



And for me, at the time, it was all about Eddie Van Halen. I’m wondering, if in some roundabout way, his playing wasn’t my first gateway to jazz. No-one would argue that Eddie is an out and out jazz player, although he often cited Allan Holdsworth as a big influence. Let's remember too that the Van Halens' father, Jan, was a professional jazz musician - they even recorded this trad jazz tune with him on their 1982 album ‘Diver Down’.



Critics would sometimes argue that Eddie’s playing was noodly, self-indulgent, flashy – but aren’t most jazzers that? He also had that looseness and swing. And the tone on those early albums! (‘The brown sound’!). Yet, even in his most ‘out there’ moments, Ed always brought it back to the melody, serving the song. And his rhythm playing was totally underrated (and equally unique) – as evidenced by Ain’t Talkin’ Bout Love and most of this raw, stripped-down. debut album.


David Lee Roth, the Jagger to Ed’s Hendrix, was never a great singer, but he was one of rock's greatest showmen. Undoubtedly, Van Halen wouldn't have made it so big without DLR's charm, athleticism and shtick. At the time, I was torn between Roth and Hagar - you had to pick a side in 1986 - but I'm firmly in the Roth camp now and appreciate his musicality more than ever: the turbo-charged cover of John Brim's 'Ice Cream Man' and the 'shooby doo wop' break down of 'I'm The One' on this record clearly have Dave's DNA running through them. Roth's love of soul, R&B, and, yes, jazz made Van Halen a unique rock band, and I’m sure, set me off down many musical paths in the same way that Ed's playing did. 



(2) '3' - Led Zeppelin (1970)


For a year or two, I was more than content to listen, almost exclusively, to the Van Halen catalogue and related albums (the first Montrose album, ‘Eat em & Smile’ etc.). Around that time, I bought, and wore out, a VHS of Van Halen’s ‘Live Without a Net’, expensively procured from The States via Shades Records. The concert closed with a cover of Led Zep’s ‘Rock n Roll’ which pointed the way forward. In some ways, it was a very logical step: Van Halen were America’s premier heavy rock band; Led Zep were Britain’s (apologies to fans of Aerosmith and Deep Purple). I remember borrowing a cassette copy of ‘Four Symbols’ with ‘In Through the Out Door’ on the flp side from a mate's older brother. He’d drawn the four symbols themselves on the tape spine too, if memory serves. Pretty cool. (This early exposure might also explain my appreciation for LZ’s often unfavoured last album).

As with Van Halen, I quickly devoured the Zeppelin catalogue – and what a catalogue! Choosing a favourite of the first six is hard, but the third stood out for me. Like Van Halen, Zeppelin were very diverse for a heavy rock band, balancing crunching riffs against acoustic delicacy. On the third album, the balance was more heavily tilted towards the acoustic stuff – like ‘That’s The Way’ and ‘Tangerine’. 




It was also, I think, the first time they’d shown the Eastern influence in their music (on ’Friends’) which became more apparent in Kashmir and other later classics. Of course, Zep were a product of that late 60s British blues boom, and they’d already appropriated the work of many old blues singers by this time, but this album’s ‘Since I’ve Been Loving You’ is surely their best outright blues song. 



This was one of those albums where every single track was my favourite at one point in time. Apart from the throwaway closer ‘Hats off to (Roy) Harper’. Sorry, Roy.

Years later, I wrote the Andy’s Records recommendation for this and it always sold disproportionately well – I’d like to think my strapline had something to do with: “For those who would dismiss Zeppelin merely as the progenitors of heavy rock, this is the album to convince otherwise.” You need to say it in a Tommy Vance voice. For me, it was definitely a gateway from heavy rock into folkier music. I also had a huge amount of fun tracking down Led Zep related albums: Plant’s varied solo career, The Yardbirds, The Honeydrippers, PJ Proby, The Firm, even the Death Wish 2 soundtrack. Not all of it was good, but I did discover the brilliant Terry Reid this way, and finding an original copy of Terry Reid’s ‘The River’ in World Records in 1990 remains my single-most exciting crate-digging moment. And given that this is supposed to be about posting album covers, can we have a moment to appreciate the brilliantly bonkers rotating ‘volvelle’ sleeve. Amazing.

(3) ‘The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan’ – Bob Dylan (1963)


Once you start listening to acoustic music, you sort of have to listen to Dylan, right?

I remember my mum, a big music fan, having three 7 inches that particularly grabbed my attention as a child: Elvis Presley’s ‘Kid Galahad’ ep (boxing and Elvis – what’s not to love?); The Beatles ‘Twist & Shout’ ep; and Bob Dylan’s ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’ ep. Sadly, of the three, the Elvis is the only one I still have. My brother and I played the hell out of the Dylan one, probably wrecking it in the process.

So, it was probably inevitable that ‘Freewheelin’ was the first Dylan LP I heard. It was a good starting point. ‘Blowin' in the wind’, ‘Masters of War’ and ‘Hard Rain’ appealed to my increasing earnestness as a young man – it was probably the first time I’d listened to songs with a serious message. The more delicate moments resonate with me now – ‘Corrina, Corrina’, ‘Don’t Think Twice…’ & the gorgeous ‘Girl from the North Country’ (one of my favourite songs by anyone).


Both my brother and I excitedly explored other Dylan albums, him probably more so than me, helped in no small part by our uncle - big folkie and record collector. One day, I remember him saying to me, “If you like Dylan, see what you make of this…” He handed me his headphones which proceeded to blast out the opening bars of ‘Erin-go-Bragh’ from Dick Gaughan’s ‘Handful of Earth’. I was hooked immediately. Gaughan became a hero to me and remains the artist I’ve seen in concert the most times (I picked ‘Handful of Earth’ on my previous ‘10 influential albums’ list last year in case you’re wondering). From there, I definitely had a folk phase: Sandy Denny, Fairport, Watersons etc. but mostly Gaughan. This coincided with me starting working at Andy’s Records in ’95 under a manager whose folk knowledge surpassed even that of my uncle's.

By this time, if I was listening to Dylan at all, it was his 70s work (‘Blood on the Tracks’, ‘Desire’) rather than the early folkier stuff (Judas!) but ‘Freewheelin’ had cast a powerful spell. There was something about the cover too that fired my imagination, and still does: a young couple rushing through a snow-covered Greenwich village, her clinging so close they’re almost one person. It seems somehow to encapsulate the idealism of young love (and perhaps the era itself): the excitement, the helpless intoxication, the hope. 

(4) ‘Blue’ – Joni Mitchell (1971)


Let’s put it right out there: Joni Mitchell’s ‘Hejira’ is my favourite album by anyone. Of course, ‘Hejira’ wasn’t the first album of Joni’s that I heard; I’d be amazed if anyone ‘got into’ Joni by hearing ‘Hejira’ first - it’s an album that you need to live with (and also, I dare say, have some life experience to fully appreciate).

Bizarrely, I became aware of Joni through my love of Led Zeppelin. I remember reading an interview with Robert Plant where he admitted to have been star struck when he met Joni Mitchell. (You can hear the Joni influence in Led Zep IV’s ‘Going to California’ now I think about it). I didn’t know anything else about her, but Plant’s approval was enough.

I have a very clear memory of buying ‘Blue’ in Archer Records on Leicester’s Highcross Street (Summer 1990, I think). Archer Records was a great little shop – the kind that maximised every square foot: tape racks completely filled one wall; vinyl browsers that surrounded the counter (you had to hand your money over the racks); aisles so narrow you always had to excuse yourself whenever you moved. There was so little room in the shop the CDs weren’t even on display at that time – you had to ask to the owner (Pete, I think) to look through his CD folder! As a very inexperienced crate-digger, I remember being quite intimidated in there, not because he was unfriendly but the rest of the clientele tended to be old geezers who knew their stuff and I was just a long-haired youthful interloper who felt out of his depth. Because of this, I wasn’t comfortable browsing for any length of time – there was a sense of feeling ‘eyes on me’, particularly as the ‘M’ section was right next to the counter. I didn’t have time to make a considered purchase – I just grabbed the one with the cover that appealed most. And that was the one with Tim Considine’s stark, blue-tinted, photo of Joni at the microphone.

From the opening bars of ‘All I Want’, I was hooked. “I am on a lonely road and I am traveling, looking for something, what can it be?” seemed to speak to my adolescent angst in a very personal way. It perhaps also spoke of her own musical restlessness and the journey that she was about to embark on. Each album that followed took her further away from the Laurel Canyon folkie that she’s sometimes mistakenly pigeon-holed as. Her run of albums in the 70s is as good, and 'progressive', as any body of work in ‘pop’ music. Just thinking about the musicians she played with in that time will give you an indication of where she was headed: CSN, James Taylor, Tom Scott, Larry Carlton, Jaco Pastorious, Wayne Shorter, Charles Mingus (!) And, of course, as a listener, I was soon following in her wake, exploring the rest of that whole Laurel Canyon set, and tentatively dipping my toes further into jazz.

‘Blue’ was one of those albums where, at some point, every track was ‘my favourite’ – the one I kept returning the needle to, to play over and over. I guess what made ‘Blue’ stand out from other singer-songwriter stuff of the time was its confessional quality, its emotional honesty; you felt like you knew her through these songs: whether it was her devotion to Graham Nash and their shared domestic bliss in ‘My Old Man’ or the heartbreak of giving up her child chronicled in ‘Little Green’ – “Child with a child pretending… Little Green, have a happy ending.”



The pain of the latter was a recurring thread through her songs. I was listening to ‘Chinese Café/Unchained Melody’ on 1982’s otherwise unremarkable ‘Wild Things Run Fast’ the other day (perhaps the first album where she faltered). Not for the first time, I found myself moved to tears by the deep sorrow with which she sings, ‘My child’s a stranger: I bore her… but I could not raise her...” Even though I know Joni and ‘Little Green’ got their happy ending some years later, that line gets me every time.



(5) ‘Boy Child: the best of 1967-70’ – Scott Walker




My interest in Scott Walker began in July 1990. I can be very specific about this as it coincided with the launch of a new music magazine, ‘Select’, which happened to come with a free cassette (!) 


On the tape, alongside the likes of The House of Love and James, was The Walker Brothers’ ‘My Ship Is Coming In.’ I was instantly hooked: the doom-laden baritone, Ivor Raymonde’s (father of Cocteau Twin, Simon) sweeping orchestration, the unashamed romanticism of the lyrics…

A few months later, I bought my first CD player and, on the same day, my first CD: ‘Boy Child’. It’s easy to be snobby about compilations, but this was a great introduction to Scott’s early solo work (Scott 1-4 and ‘Til The Band Comes In’). As it focuses on self-penned songs, there’s none of his wonderful Jacques Brel covers but the Brel influence is apparent in ‘The Girls from The Streets’, ‘The Bridge’, ‘Big Louise’ etc. Fantastic stuff. 


Those first four solo albums were the soundtrack to my 20s. The references to Brel, Camus and Bergman sent me off exploring all sorts of European literature, film, and music, all of which shaped my identity as a pretentious twentysomething. I can’t deny Scott’s image appealed too – the former teen idol who deliberately turned his back on fame. In the summer of 1966, The Walker Brothers were as big as the Beatles. That same year Scott retired to a monastery, Quarr Abbey, on The Isle of Wight in order to study Gregorian Chant (only to have to cut his stay short after being tracked down by screaming fans). If you look carefully, he’s wearing the key to Quarr Abbey the monks bequeathed to him on ‘Boy Child’s’ cover, symbolising an ‘open door’ offer of return.

‘Boy Child’s’ fabulous sleeve notes by uber-Scott fan, Marc Almond, also fired my imagination and contributed to the Walker legend. As he put it, Scott was more Jean Paul Satre than John, Paul, George and Ringo. (The 2000 reissue of ‘Boy Child’ inexplicably replaced Almond’s sleeve notes with scribbling by the pound shop Scott Walker, Neil Hannon).

I was still very much under Scott’s spell by the time ‘Tilt’ was released in 1995 and that too was a gateway for me, a door to more challenging music.

Scott’s death in 2019 came as shock to everyone, as did the fact that the former ‘teen idol’ was 76. Despite possessing a voice seemingly weighed down by the sorrow of a thousand life-times, there was something eternally youthful about him - the boy child.

(6) ‘(Frank Sinatra Sings for) Only the Lonely’ Frank Sinatra (1958)


I can't recall the first time I heard Sinatra. Doubtless it was one of those ‘chest-out’, barnstorming anthems of his later years: 'My Way' or '(Theme from) New York, New York' perhaps. If there was one an initial impression, it was one of incomprehension, of bewilderment: Why is he singing that way? Why does he sound like he's just speaking the words?

There was no moment of epiphany for me, no ‘Road to Damascus’ type conversion. It was a gradual awakening, a kind of growing awareness. The religious analogy is not entirely inappropriate as there is a sense in which my life-changed, post-Sinatra. 'Getting' Sinatra was like arriving at an alternative world-view, a fundamental truth even - like suddenly realising the world was round (alright, spherical), that Santa Claus was just my dad dressed up and that Bon Jovi were actually never very good. I found it hard to listen to anything else after this Damascene conversion - everything else sounded insubstantial and insignificant in comparison. So, for quite some time, I listened to nothing else. When I say 'I' listened to nothing else I also mean the staff and customers of a record shop I managed at the time. Apologies for that to all concerned.

Anyway, this album comes smack band in the middle of his recordings for Capitol records, which, I think, make up the greatest body of music in popular music, and ‘…Only the Lonely’ is probably the greatest among those albums. Frank understood the importance of contrast, of light and shade: lifting them up and bringing them down. For all of his swagger, he was willing to bare his soul. And he never did it in a more direct way than on this album. These may have been ‘Songs for Only the Lonely’, as the album’s full title promises, but they are certainly not for the faint of heart. Easy listening it aint.



(7) ‘Sounds of the New West’ – Various Artists (1998)


The free CD given away with issue 16 of Uncut, entitled Sounds of the New West, might well be the best ‘alt. country’ collection on disc to this day: The Flying Burrito Brothers, Emmylou Harris, Will Oldham, Calexico, Lambchop, The Handsome Family, Neal Casal, The Pernice Brothers, Josh Rouse...

I was already into a lot of this music without realising there was a genre as such: a friend had lent me a copy of The Jayhawks' ‘Sound of Lies’ and my favourite album of ’96 was Palace Music’s 'Arise Therefore' (Will Oldham at his most bleak). But this compilation seemed to crystallise ‘the movement’ in the UK and set Uncut up as standard bearer for this kind of music. 


There was something wonderfully cool about being part of an underground scene in those early days. I distinctly recall our excitement at being able to fill a whole shelf of these obscure artists at Andy’s Records (although it was tempered by having to file them at the bottom of the country section after the compilations and line dance CDs...)

Leicester seemed like the unofficial capital of the U.K's alt country scene at the time. Thanks largely to Ian from Magic Teapot's promotions, artists like The Handsome Family, Lambchop, Chris Mills, Neal Casal, Grand Drive etc played regularly at the Princess Charlotte and the grandly named International Arts Centre (which was essentially a bingo hall – a solo Kurt Wagner playing to about 20 people there remains one of my all-time favourite gigs). Ditto Cosmic American Music and the Maze in Nottingham. These were exciting times for me: from sharing beers and discussing a mutual love of the Louvin Brothers with Brett Sparks of The Handsome Family, to deeply insulting one of my all-time heroes Mark Olson (ex-of The Jayhawks)...

Me: "Your new album (Political Manifest) seems like a bit of a change in direction...it's more political"

Mark: "We've always been political."

Me: "Ok... musically, it's a bit of change too - it's less acoustic more... funky."

Mark: "We've always been funky."

And so it went on... and so my aspirations towards a career in music journalism ended

(8) ‘If Only I Could Fly’ – Merle Haggard (2000)


Ok, here goes. I know it's not cool to say this but... I love country music. Real country music, that is. It almost certainly goes back to my childhood. My mum was a huge fan at a time when country was probably at its most unfashionable. Distinctly, I recall the strains of Tammy Wynette's D.I.V.O.R.C.E echoing through our house (prefiguring her own actual D.I.V.O.R.C.E from my dad).

The whole ‘alt country’ scene sent me digging back further for ‘gold in them there hills’ where I rediscovered songs I’d half-forgotten from childhood. Still in the middle of my Sinatra obsession, my preference was for country crooners - guys that could really hold a tune: Faron Young, George Jones, Ray Price, Johnny Paycheck and Merle Haggard.

The 20-year-old Merle Haggard was famously an inmate at Cash's first San Quentin prison concert in 1958 and he often credited this as the turning point in his life. The young Hag made much of his outlaw credentials: I'm A Lonesome Fugitive, Branded Man, Mama Tried etc.

‘If Only I Could Fly’ came out around the same time as Johnny Cash’s celebrated American Recordings series for Def Jam and they are a good comparison (although I think this is a far superior album to any of them). His once beautiful voice is rather grizzled, and, lyrically, this is an old man (63), not quite growing old gracefully: “Watching while some old friends do a line, holding back the want in my own addicted mind,” are the opening lines of the album. There are moments of real tenderness too, mostly directed to his fifth wife Theresa: ‘Turn to Me’ and ‘Proud to be your old man’ (“I might be over the hill but you make growing old quite a thrill…”). Admitting his past to his new, young family is another heartfelt theme (“I knew someday you’d find out about San Quentin…”). There’s a delightful paean to their domestic bliss in the form of ‘Leaving’s Getter Harder All The Time’ (“If I don't travel, I don’t make a dime and leaving's getting harder all the time. That old fishing pole looks better every day…”) Perhaps best of all is the beautiful title track, a cover of the Blaze Foley song (the only cover on the album) – a song about enforced separation and a song for these strange times if ever there was one. 



(9) ‘The Black Saint & The Sinner Lady’ Charles Mingus (1963)


By about ’91 or ’92, with Cook and Morton’s Penguin Guide to Jazz as my bible, I’d worked my way through Goldsmith’s music library’s jazz catalogue. I’d also worked out my limits: I’d learnt to steer clear of anything too ‘modern’ after hitting a brick wall with Coltrane’s ‘Ascension’.

This album was a watershed for me in appreciating more difficult jazz. I already owned his collaboration with Joni (and was well aware of his status as an outsider figure), but this was definitely a beginning of sorts. It had beguiled me for a long time: the evocative album title (was he ‘The Black Saint’?); the curious Cossack-hatted figure on the cover smoking a pipe; the biblical proclamations in the songs' subtitles (Stop! Look! And Listen, Sinner Jim Whitney!).

Supposedly conceived as a six-part ballet (!), Mingus himself described it as ‘ethnic folk-dance music’. It’s an incredibly dense but varied piece of work: growling horns rise and swell into a glorious hypnotic cacophony before dissipating into flamenco guitars.



For me, there’s something about it that conjures up the sounds and urban sprawl of a big city – screaming police sirens, the subway rattling underfoot, steam pouring out of the pavements…

As Richard Williams put it in the foreword to Mingus’ brilliantly bonkers autobiography ‘Beneath the Underdog’: “Never was there music in which violence and tenderness were so thoroughly entwined as that of Charles Mingus.”

(10) ‘ Suite for Sampler ECM Selected Signs 2- Various Artists (2000)


Having spent the last five years almost exclusively collecting music on the ECM record label, this had to be my final choice.

For a long time, even as a hardened jazzer, the idea of European jazz was a little off-putting: jazz was African-American music, the joyful sound of New Orleans, the sound of oppressed rising above injustice for a few glorious minutes – Oh, play that thing!

In comparison, everything on ECM (Edition of Contemporary Music) seemed cold, cerebral and, most importantly as a poorly paid record store manager, EXPENSIVE. I could get three mid-price Columbia Jazz masterpieces for the price of one ECM. So, when a £5 ECM sampler appeared as a new release one Friday at Andy’s Records 20 years ago, I was willing to put aside my preconceived ideas.

As any sampler should be, it’s quite representative of the label’s output - but in no way could this be considered an easy introduction. Gianluigi Trovesi’s opening ‘In Cerca di Cibo’ is a mournful duet between clarinet and accordion – beautiful but not exactly a standard opener. The tone veers off widely with Nils Petter Molvær techno-infused jazzy D&B. Elsewhere, there are selections from Heiner Goebbel’s dense ‘Surrogate Cities’ which, in the words of the label, is ‘concerned with the dynamic power and the power dynamics of the modern city - it is an examination of the 'concrete jungle' in all its complexity, complete with musical-historical flashbacks’. It also seems to evoke that defining moment of the twentieth century: the holocaust. 



My personal gateway among this diverse selection was Bobo Stenson’s brilliant ‘Polksa of Despair’, which somehow seemed to combine a European sensibility AND a swinging rhythm.

My interest in ECM coincided with an interest in European cinema and there are connections between the two. Even if you have no interest in jazz or contemporary classical music, Manfred Eicher’s status as ECM’s ‘auteur’ is remarkable. Since founding the label in 1969, as well as producing almost all of the label’s recordings himself, he has almost single-handedly overseen the label’s distinctive aesthetic and sound – in his words, ‘the most beautiful sound next to silence.’

Tuesday 25 August 2015

'Windbag the Sailor' (1936) - The enduring comic genius of Will Hay, Moore Marriott and Graham Moffat.

If you'll forgive the pun, comedy is a funny thing.   It can be very personal, as much as matters of taste - what one person finds amusing, another may not.   It can work along cultural or national lines  - how often does the awkward phrase 'British sense of humour' rear its head as an explanation of Anglo-American misunderstanding? 

Screen comedians are no different.  I've written elsewhere about my love of Will Hay and I'm not ashamed to say that I count his films as among the funniest I've ever seen.  This is entirely subjective, of course, and I can't separate my appreciation of these films from my childhood memories of rainy school holidays and occasional sick days when BBC2's daytime schedule was full of Will Hay, James Robertson Justice, Harold Lloyd, Laurel & Hardy, The Three Stooges and Buster Crabbe serials.  
Will Hay

For these reasons I will concede that Hay's films are something of an acquired taste and might appear a little dated to the modern viewer but his influence on British comedy is undeniable I think.
  
After honing his act during a lengthy career in musical hall, Will Hay appeared in eighteen feature films between 1934 and 1943 for Gainsborough and Ealing studios, where he was mostly directed by Marcel Varnel. This extraordinary output saw him rival the biggest British cinema's biggest stars at that time, George Formby and Gracie Fields. Although they varied somewhat most of Hay's roles can be seen as variations on what the film critic Leslie Halliwell called 'the seedy incompetent' - a pompous fool who bluffs his way into a position of authority and is forced to live on his wits, or lack of... Alan Simpson, half of the Galton and Simpson partnership that wrote for Tony Hancock, describes him as "a con man on the verge of being found out, a ducker, a diver - always dodgy, always shifty'"and sees a direct influence on Arthur Lowe, Frankie Howerd and Hancock himself. You could add Basil Fawlty to that list too.

Hay's musical hall act revolved around a seedy schoolmaster and it was this persona he brought to the big screen in his first films, either at St Michael's or Narkover boarding school  - as in 'Boys Will Be Boys' (1935) and 'Good Morning Boys' (1937).

But Hay's best films were undoubtedly with Moore Marriott and Graham Moffat and together they formed one of British comedy's greatest screen teams. In their anarchic humour and brilliant interplay they were an English Marx brothers. 




1936's 'Windbag the Sailor' was their first film together and it set the tone for what was to come. Hay plays Benjamin Cutlet, a braggart who is paying for his drinks at a dockside inn by spinning yarns of his fictitious sea adventures.  Marriott (Harbottle) and Moffat (Albert) play employees at the inn and his unwitting accomplices as his bluff is called and he's forced to captain an unseaworthy ship and a mutinous crew who soon become wise to Hay's incompetence.

First Mate: Eight bells have gone sir.
Hay (shocked): Well, if it goes on like this we shan't have any left! 

The trio are shipwrecked with only a bakelite radio on an island populated by cannibals. The radio, or 'voice in box', proves awe-inspiring to the cannibals and saves the day as Hay assumes the role of Big Chief Radio Luxembourg and Marriott Big Chief Weather Forecast. You get the general idea, I'm sure. 



Hay was a gifted physical comedian with a huge range of facial expressions and an absolute master of the double-take (Graham Rinaldi claims there are over 200 in his films - crying out for a Youtube compilation video, I'd say). Yet it is the interplay between the three actors that raises their films to the sublime.  Marriot was a remarkable actor in his own right, earning himself the accolade 'British Cinema's master of disguise'. He specialised in appearing as characters much older than his actual age, mischievously winning Southend On Sea's oldest inhabitant competition in 1931, at the ripe old age of 46. 


Moore Marriott in 'Windbag the Sailor' 
Moffat tended to play the smart-alec, wise  to and often critical of Hay's schemes. It probably helped the on-screen dynamic that Hay and Moffatt apparently weren't the best of friends off screen.


Graham Moffatt


So, a comic trio comprising of a boastful shyster, a cynical, smart-alec youngster and a silly old duffer. Sound familiar?















Whether John Sullivan deliberately paid homage to Hay's team is not clear but the influence is there for all to see. I don't pretend that these comic archetypes originated with Hay; the 'old fool' character can be seen as far back as Homer's 'Iliad' and the character Nestor who serves no other purpose in the Trojan war than to offer advice and reminiscences to the younger Greek leaders, usually of the 'in my day...' variety.

While 'Windbag..' was the first time this trio appeared together it wasn't their most celebrated movie - that accolade would probably be granted to 'Oh Mr Porter!' (1937)  or arguably 'Ask A Policeman' (1939). The former was listed by film critics Barry Norman and Derek Malcolm in the top 100 films of the twentieth century. I tend to think of these movies as a pair as they are very similar.  In both our trio are in positions of pointless authority - railway porters at a station that has no passing trains in the former, policemen in a town without crime in the latter. 

In both, their easy life is complicated by seemingly supernatural agencies - a ghost train in the former, a 'eadless 'orseman in the latter. It won't be too much of a spoiler to say that both films have a Scooby Doo-like resolution.


If pushed I would probably pick 'Ask A Policeman' as my favourite, if only for the brilliant scene where Marriott simultaneously plays Harbottle and Harbottle's father (with an even longer beard and an even more high-pitched voice very reminiscent of Terry Jones' character in 'Life of Brian' ).



The team made three more films together, 'Old Bones of the River' (1938), 'Convict 99' (1939) and 'Where's That Fire' (1940). Hay continued to make films after the dissolution of the partnership, with Claude Hulbert and a young Charles Hawtrey as his new stooges but it is the seedy schoolmaster and, in particular, the films with Marriot and Moffat retain a special place in my memory and the annals of British comedy.  

Will Hay died on April 18th 1949, aged 60 - perhaps fittingly, the retirement age of a schoolmaster.

References/further reading - Graham Rinaldi's comprehensive biography 'Will Hay', Tomahawk Press, 2009.
  



Sunday 5 July 2015

Alternative Oscars - 'The Third Man' (1949)

Seeing one of your favourite movies of all-time re-released on the big screen is among the rarest of pleasures and so it proved when I was lucky enough to see a 4k restoration of Carol Reed and Graham Greene's 'The Third Man' recently. 

                           



My giving writer and director equal credit is deliberate: this was very much a collaboration, and the brilliance of the film is as much due to the wonderful characters and eminently quotable dialogue as the haunting visuals. Greene was asked to write a film for Carol Reed but, as he explained in the preface to the book, found it "impossible to write a film play without first writing a story." Having said that there are many differences between the two and Greene concedes the film is better than the story, partly because it is "the finished state of the story ."
                 
Graham Green (left) and Carol Reed
I would go as far as to say 'The Third Man' may be the greatest British movie ever made. Fans of 'Brief Encounter' might have a strong case for an argument, as would proponents of Powell & Pressburger's finest moments or perhaps the best output of Ealing Studios. But not much else compares.

This bold claim got me thinking about the criteria that determines the "nationality" of a film. The location of the production company is probably the boring answer. John Kobal's 'Top 100 movies' remains an essential reference book for me, but I remember being confused that the highest ranked British film therein (# 18) was Kubrick's '2001 A Space Odyssey.' An MGM film, directed by a Jewish American starring two American actors ?! Despite its English director and writer, 'The Third Man' features two Hollywood stars (Orson Welles and Joseph Cotten), an Italian lead actress (Alida Valli) and is a film loosely about post-war Vienna's division into British, American, Russian and French zones. In many ways then, an international film. 

Of course, there's much more to 'The Third Man' than that mere summary of its historical setting. It's that rare instance where every aspect of the film is in perfect synchronicity - the casting, the performances, the writing, the visuals and, of course, Anton Karas' remarkable musical score. 

Without giving too much away, the story essentially concerns a novelist, Holly Martens, arriving in Vienna to meet an old friend, Harry Lime, only to find that Lime died a few days earlier in a traffic accident. Martens suspects foul play and begins his own investigations, aided by Lime's girlfriend, Anna Schmidt, much to the consternation of the British Army Police (memorable turns from Trevor Howard and Bernard Lee). 

Visually it is a stunning movie, recalling German Expressionism and Welles' own 'Citizen Kane' in the camera's unusual angles. Vienna itself is perfectly utilised - its dark cobbled streets, its sewers and a run-down amusement park. Filmed in black and white, and shot at night but with strong lighting, it is full of contrasts. Moreover, the visual contrast of light and dark mirrors the moral ambivalence of the character at the heart of the film, Harry Lime.



It may well be Welles' best acting performance. Brief, but full of moments of brilliance; Lime is a shadowy figure, smirking and winking at the camera before disappearing - a metaphor for Welles' own career as a film-maker perhaps?


                                  



It is a film that contains some of my favorite moments in movie history.  Such as, Lime's self-justifying speech, famously improvised by Welles: "It's not so bad. You know what the fellow said, in Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, murder and bloodshed but produced Michelangelo, Da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love, five hundred years they had democracy and peace - and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock. So long, Holly." And of course,  the ferris wheel scene...

                                  





Greene and Reed disagreed over the ending of the movie. The writer was of the view that "an entertainment of this kind was too light an affair to carry the weight of an unhappy ending", before conceding that Reed was "triumphantly right" in his downbeat finale.  The final scene, Anna's almost interminable approach towards Martens, is glorious and brave beyond measure.  It is intended to recall the opening of the movie but I was reminded also of Lean's 'Lawrence of Arabia', specifically the introduction of  the recently deceased Omar Sharif's Sherif Ali - another film that justifiably could lay claim to be Britain's best, and another movie star taken too soon. 


                  
                                  



                                  


Friday 15 August 2014

Alternative Oscars - 'City Lights' (1932)

'City Lights' was, and remains, a wonderful anachronism. 

By 1931 talkies were the established norm. 'Grand Hotel' picked up the actual Best Picture award for that year and was surely one of the most talky of talkies - focusing on the day-to-day lives of the different guests in a huge hotel, it was the first of the multiple narrative films that have become so popular.


By contrast, in narrative terms, 'City Lights' is a very simple film.

Chaplin once more plays the tramp character. He spends most of the film courting a flower-seller (Virginia Cherrill), who happens to be blind. Consequently she judges him only on his actions rather than his appearance. He takes on any job (street sweeper, prize fighter) to earn money to pay for an operation that will restore the girl's sight.


Most of the comic strands of the film come through The Tramp's unlikely relationship with a wealthy drunkard, played by Harry Myers. 



                                             

This millionaire is The Tramp's best friend during their night-time revelries but disowns him in the sober, cold light of day. This cycle continues over the course of the film, much to The Tramp's bewilderment. It reaches a crisis point when the millionaire lends The Tramp the money to pay for the girl's operation, only to accuse him of stealing it when they next meet.

Consequently the Tramp is imprisoned. The girl, now cured, searches for her saviour in vain. 

A year later, blind (ahem) chance once more throws them together.

Will she recognise him? Will love prevail when she sees his true appearance? 

C'mon, this is a Chaplin movie...





Chaplin was a notorious perfectionist.  'City Lights' was shot over 500 days -  an extraordinary amount of time (and expense) during the depression.  Yet it was a rioutous success. The clash between rich and poor was a favourite theme of Chaplin's, and here, he was playing to the gallery. And of course, it's also a film about the transcendental, all-conquering power of  love.


Is 'City Lights' Chaplin's best film? 'The Kid' tugs at the heart strings more,  'Modern Times' (the film he made after this) may be technically more brilliant but 'City Lights' combines the sentimental and comedic strands of his ouevre brilliantly. 

Chaplin didn't make a true 'talkie' until  'The Great Dictator'  in 1940. 'City Lights' was an act of glorious defiance. Like King Canute he stood stubbornly, refusing to accept the oncoming tide.  





Saturday 9 August 2014

Alternative Oscars: 'Le Jour Se Leve' (1940) - The greatest Film Noir you've (probably) never seen

'Le Jour Se Leve', or 'Daybreak', was the fourth film in the film-making partnership of director Marcel Carne and screen-writer/poet Jacques Prevert; a partnership that came to commercial fruition with 'Les Enfants Du Paradis' in 1945, a sort of French 'Gone With The Wind', often heralded as the greatest ever French movie.


       

Well, as great as Les Enfants... is, I prefer 'Le Jour Se Leve'.   



'Le Jour Se Leve' may well be the definitive film in the 'poetic realism' movement, a sort of forerunner to film noir, and something I've written about elsewhere on this blog.
 http://armpitofpopularculture.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/bad-backs-and-long-memories.html 

This loose movement tended to feature a working-class protagonist, often on the margins of society, doomed to failure. Naturally it reflected the wider real-life context of contemporary France; the dissolution of the Popular Front, and, of course, the looming war. In fact, 'Le Jour Se Leve' itself was deemed so pessimistic that the Vichy government banned it, on the grounds that it was demoralising and had contributed the nation's defeat.

More than any of the brilliant directors associated with the poetic realist movement (Carne, Jean Renoir), for me, its pivotal figure is the actor, Jean Gabin. 


Gabin starred in  'La Bete Humaine', 'Pepe Le Moko', 'La Grande Illusion', 'Le Quai Des Brumes' - all key films in this movement. 

Gabin's great skill as an actor is to somehow simultaneously exude toughness and vulnerability. He's Bogart with a heart. 


In a cinematic sense 'Le Jour Se Leve' works much better than Carne's earlier 'Quai Des Brumes'. It feels very much like a modern film, principally because of its use of dissolves and flashback.                
                                         

It begins with a murder, or more accurately, a manslaughter. A fight between Francois (Gabin) and his love rival, Valentin, gets out of hand when the latter arrives at Francois' bedsit with a gun.
                      



Francois accidentally kills Valentin and quickly realises his own fate. He barricades himself in, awaiting the police. As onlookers gather Francois contemplates the events that led to this and the film proceeds in flashback.







We witness the grinding monotony of Francois' existence. He ruminates, "The jobs I've had, all different yet all the same. It's like waiting in the rain for a tram. Eventually it arrives but... there's no room. The same with the next one. And the next one. They all go by and you stand there, waiting in the rain like a fool." 

Until a chance encounter with Francoise (Jacqueline Laurent) provides a brief moment of happiness, and an opportunity for a different life. Possibly. Unfortunately, for Francois he is already involved with Clara (played by the wonderful Arletty), who has reluctantly settled for the shady Valentin. Clara sees Francois as a kindred spirit and a way out of her meaningless relationship. "I'm sick of men talking about love. They talk about love and forget to make love," she complains. 


Valentin isn't too concerned at the prosepct of losing Clara as he also has designs on Francoise. It swiftly becomes a menage a quatre. In a sense there is another layer of tragedy to Francoise/Francoise's doomed romance; namely that everyone else, but Francois, can see that he and the world-weary Clara are far better suited. 


Yet in forsaking Clara and committing to Francoise, he seals his own fate, and the chain of events is set in action.

Back in the present, day breaks and Francoise snaps out of his daydream. The police decide it's time to act but, at the last moment, Francoise arrives to try and talk her lover into coming down quietly.                             
                                             


I won't completely spoil the ending for you, though you can probably work it out for yourself.   

'Le Jour Se Leve' was remade in Hollywood in 1947 with Henry Fonda in the Gabin role.  I haven't seen it, but, suffice to say, it has a very different ending.


Alternative Oscars (1936) - Top Hat


As a self-confessed admirer of Hollywood's Golden Age, I'm a little embarrassed to admit that I don't generally like musicals. 'Singing In The Rain' is the obvious exception to this, but even that I admire less for its songs than the picture it paints of early Hollywood itself.

However, even I can't deny Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers had something special. 

'Top Hat' was the fourth of ten feature films Fred and Ginger made together and is probably the best illustration of their particular blend of screwball comedy and musical.

The characteristically daft plot need not detain us too much (and is perhaps the reason I don't generally get on with musicals?) Astaire's character, Jerry Travers, is in London to meet theatre impressario Horace Hardwick, with a view to working together. Fred's impromptu tap routine in Hardwicke's appartment disturbs Dale Tremont (Rogers) in the apartment downstairs. 




Jerry is immediately smitten and begins a relentless pursuit of the frosty Dale across Europe, one that would certainly merit a restraining order if happening today. It's not quite as awkward as it sounds, as Dale likes him really - she's just playing hard to get. There is the added complication that, thanks to the mistaken identity above, she spends most of the film thinking Jerry is actually Hardwick, who happens to be already married.


So far, so Fred and Ginger. Of course, it's the chemistry between the two actors that elevates the film to another level. 




It was often said that he gave her class and she gave him sex (or sexiness). Certainly this sexuality makes Ginger seem a very modern screen siren, compared to many of her guileless contemporaries. Astaire has always struck me as the most unlikely romatic lead. There is something odd-looking, almost cadaverous about him. But with those dancing feet, no one was looking at his face. 




The film isn't without it's humour. Much of it centres around Horace Hardwick, whether his Jeeves & Wooster-like dynamic with butler Bates, or his relationship with his long-suffering wife, Madge, who, at the mention of divorce, memorably quips, "he'll probably want me to pay myself alimony."

Bates and Hardwick
There are moments of unintentional comedy too, such as Astaire's imitation of a Cockney cabbie that would put even Dick Van Dyke to shame.


But essentially a musical is only as good as its music and Top Hat has songs by the great Irving Berlin.  And then there's the dancing... 
                                                                                                
                                             


And while we're mentioning the dancing we should once more acknowledge Ginger Rogers, who, as Bob Thaves remarked, did (almost) everything Fred did. But backwards. And in high heels.