I'm incredibly proud to be featured in issue 5 of Northern Correspondent, alongside such superb writers as Harry Pearson. I urge you to buy the magazine from www.northerncorrespondent.com - the magazine is beautifully designed and packed with 130 pages of excellent writing from this region. My piece is a discussion on why I believe Alan Hull and Lindisfarne are of far greater regional, cultural significance than Bryan Ferry and Roxy Music. In addition, it seems clear to me Newcastle has always been a city of long haired, anti establishment types, rather than clean cut conformists.
Perhaps one of
the most unexpected temptations granted by the social media revolution is the
opportunity for those of us whose teenage lives were, in Philip Larkin’s
phrase, “a forgotten boredom” to reinvent one’s younger self as, say, a
glamorous, Bohemian prime mover in the Tyneside punk explosion. However the
obloquy that would descend if one were to be caught reimagining the mid to late
70s by someone who remembers you were actually in the bar when Joy Division
supported The Buzzocks, is reason enough to be truthful. Thus I can honestly
state that in 1976, when the likes of Penetration and Speed were championing the north east New Wave, I was 12 years old
and listening, in equal measures, to Lindisfarne’s
Finest Hour and Viva Roxy Music!
Though I was
too young to realise it, I was straddling a key cultural divide, by liking the
region’s two most successful bands. Then, the lines of musical and sartorial
demarcation were explicit. Mid 70s Geordies opted for either long-haired, scruffy,
down-to-earth Lindisfarne: recently reformed and selling out the City Hall for
a run of their legendary Christmas Shows, or immaculately attired,
sophisticated and glacially aloof Roxy, who were in the midst of a mid-decade
hiatus that allowed Bryan Ferry to pursue both his solo career and Jerry Hall. The
band you preferred was often decided by social class; the shipyards, factories
and pits employed the hairies in overalls and hobnails from North Shields,
Longbenton and West Denton, while Bath Lane College, the Ministry and Civic
Centre harboured deskbound smoothies from Gosforth, Monkseaton and Cochrane
Park.
Despite
Bryan Ferry’s claim that Newcastle in the 1960s was “a Mod town,” the evidence
says otherwise. Scooters and parkas were a Home Counties phenomenon; Eric
Burdon and The Animals knew the blues and they knew how to rock. No wonder
their bassist Chas Chandler became manager of Jimi Hendrix and then Slade. On
Tyneside guitars and facial hair held sway. Even the Skinhead movement in the
early 70s was restricted to a handful of peripheral sink estates and soon died
out, leaving no discernible stamp on the region’s identity.
Perhaps the
most striking difference between Lindisfarne and Roxy, other than the former’s
preference for denim-clad mandolins compared to the latter’s androgynous
synthesisers, were their leaders; Benwell born former psychiatric nurse Alan
Hull and Washington raised, though Holland Park dwelling, fine art graduate Bryan
Ferry. Hull was an unapologetic, unreconstructed Geordie all his life; a
committed socialist, a renowned bevvy merchant, who released a protest single
when Scottish & Newcastle Breweries
were subject to a takeover bid, and devoted family man whose horizons extended
as far as moving to Whickham to bring the bairns up “somewhere safe.” Alan
appeared on the Old Grey Whistle Test
in 1972 attired in a full Newcastle United kit, singing (what else?) Fog on the Tyne.
Hull and
fellow singer, Wallsend native Ray Jackson, looked what they were; normal,
working-class lads, albeit supremely talented ones. They were role models
because they were ordinary and credible. In an interview with Melody Maker in early 73, Hull pointed
out “most of the groups we meet were born
with silver spoons in their mouths; we were born with pickaxes in ours.” This
may not have been strictly true, as bandmates Rod Clements and Simon Cowe had
been educated at fee-paying Kings’ School in Tynemouth, but statements like
these had the required effect on their intended audience. Geordies knew that
Lindisfarne were decent blokes. Unquestioningly, the overwhelming majority of
north east men under 25 in the 1970s selected a uniform that comprised hair
worn significantly below the collar, bike jackets or Afghans, cheesecloth
shirts, flared Wranglers and cowboy boots. These lads drank Brown Ale or
Exhibition in bars like the Haymarket, the Farmers, the Percy, the Hotspur and
the Jubilee. They didn’t attend gallery previews or contemporary dance shows.
They headbanged to heavy rock at the Mayfair every Friday night.
In contrast
to Alan Hull, few people nowadays associate Ferry with the north east, partly
on account of him hightailing it to the Smoke in summer 68. By the mid-70s, he
was viewed with suspicion verging on contempt by the vast majority on Tyneside,
because there was something of the Smart Alec about him. Bryan Ferry’s escape
from what he saw as stifling provincialism acted as a beacon for those marooned
up here, who harboured pretensions of social advancement and adventure, if not
the chance to wear outlandish fashions and step out with dolly birds.
There is
good reason to forget Ferry’s roots; despite his subsequent rediscovery of
regional ties (mainly during Kevin Keegan’s tenure of Newcastle United, when his
professed love of the Magpies seemed as convincing as Tony Blair’s), he sought
to distance himself from his upbringing. Indeed other than inserting the word
“Geordies” into a live version of Do The
Strand recorded at the City Hall in October 75 and his tell-tale
enunciation of the line “how can he be happy” in Let’s Stick Together, Ferry has made it his business to sound like
a minor member of the aristocracy the whole time he’s been in the public eye.
One
interesting revelation in former Guardian
journalist Michael Walker’s book about north east football, Up There, is that former England
international and Everton manager Howard Kendall played for the same school
team at Fatfield Juniors as Bryan Ferry. Unsurprisingly, Kendall confides,
young Ferry wasn’t the most naturally gifted of players and gave up the game on
starting Washington Grammar. These days Ferry’s interest in sport seems to be
confined to unstinting praise of the hunting, shooting and fishing activities
(referred to euphemistically as “country pursuits”) of his convicted felon son
Otis. In a recent interview Ferry praised Otis for wanting to live a
traditional rural lifestyle, which isn’t the only daft thing Ferry has said in
an interview.
Never being
one to turn down the opportunity to praise David Cameron (sample quote; “he’s a
bright guy”), Ferry has amply demonstrated his adoption of a socially
conservative value system, not Thatcherism but the ancien regime brand of Toryism, beloved of the landed gentry and
other recipients of old money: playing benefit gigs for the Countryside
Alliance and signing a letter to The
Guardian urging a No vote in the Scottish Independence Referendum for
instance. Rather more disturbing was his 2007 eulogy of the Third Reich’s imagery
and iconography; “the way that the Nazis
staged themselves and presented themselves, my Lord!...I'm talking about the
films of Leni Riefenstahl...And the buildings of Albert Speer and the mass
marches and the flags. Just fantastic. Really beautiful.”
Thankfully,
Ferry apologised unreservedly for this, but it was a bizarre thing for someone
who was born in September 1945 to say. One can only speculate what Alan Hull,
born six months earlier than Ferry, who stood for the Labour Party in council
elections, would have said about such foolish inanity. Sadly, speculation is
all that is possible as Alan Hull died suddenly on November 17th
1995. It was tragic someone so talented passed on so young. There is the legacy
of his songs; Lady Eleanor, Winter Song and Clear White Light assure Hull’s name will live on, as will Ferry because of Virginia Plain, Street Life and Mother of Pearl.
Of course
both bands had peaked before punk, with their later releases only pale shadows
of their original genius, but I’d like to think Alan Hull would be delighted to
know there’s a blue plaque on the side of the City Hall paying tribute to all
the wonderful gigs he gave there.That’s why, when considering the influence of
Ferry and Hull, Lindisfarne and Roxy Music, on the region, I always think of Ashington’s
own Jack Charlton’s famous words; “our kid was the better footballer, but I’m
the better bloke.”
Musical
tribalism was once so ingrained in our region’s youth culture, as exemplified
by the running battles in town and on public transport between long hairs and
punks on June 12th 1980, when Rush played the City Hall while The
Clash were at the Mayfair, but such fanaticism now seems anachronistic.
Teenagers and students these days seem so much more open-minded and eclectic in
their tastes, giving download space to a multiplicity of genres and eras. It
may make them less discerning, but also more tolerant and receptive to a wider
range of styles than previous generations. However such cultural catholicism
may be something certain oldsters are learning already; when Ray Jackson
assembled his own Lindisfarne to play triumphant City Hall Christmas gigs in
2013 and 2014, as well as involving Alan Hull’s son-in-law Dave Denholm on
guitar and vocals, Jacka persuaded Paul Thompson to play drums. That’s the same
Paul Thompson who made his name in; you’ve guessed it, Roxy Music…
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