TEN MORE IMUSIC MAKERS WHO MADE A DIFFERENCE TO ME

I will keep on with these lists of musicians, ten at a time, till it doesn't make sense to me anymore. Anyway, on with part 2. Again, these artists are not here in order of any preference, but rather they are listed as I think of something to say about them.

LIGHTNING HOPKINS

Hopkins seems to be discounted by some blues aficionados of being from the very top draw but I don't agree. From the time I first heard his laconic vocal delivery coupled with his lively turn-around dominated guitar style I was hooked. Also, I will take recordings of him from just about any time in his career. The video below is from 1962, and finds Sam Hopkins in strident form.



JOHNNY CASH

Hello, I'm not Johnny Cash but I can detect integrity and talent when I see and hear it. Johnny Cash was one of the few artists my Dad and I both liked. He appealed to so many outside of the rigid Nashville dictated view of what country should and shouldn't be. The 'man in black' image attracted me long before I learned there was a connection between the words 'Gothic' and 'rock', but his music was the reason I stayed. His work was vital throughout his career but it amazes me that the Country music establishment seemed to want nothing to do with the remarkable 'American' recordings Cash made with Rick Rubin in his twilight years. Here are two videos, one featuring the Johnny Cash my Dad and I shared, the other, the most touching video I think I will ever see.





NICK DRAKE

When I was fifteen or so, Saturday afternoon was not complete without a visit to Tally Ho Electric music store in the Arcade, North Finchley. One day I was there with my friend Torquil. We wanted to buy an album, but didn't have enough to buy a full price LP. We ended up with 'Nice Enough To Eat', an Island label sampler. I discovered so many artists from that record, Fairport Convention, Jethro Tull, Spooky Tooth, Quintessence and Dr Strangely Strange to name a few, but none affected my more than 'Time Has Told Me' a beautiful almost country like song, but with crystal clear British accented vocals, and an otherworldly appeal. So it was that I became one of the four thousand or so record buyers to become aware of Nick Drake in his short lifetime. This track led me to the album it came from, 'Five Leaves Left' and the astonishing follow up, 'Pink Moon'. English singer songwriting at it's best. There is no video footage I know of of Drake performing, in fact he only played 12 gigs in his life I think, but there are some tribute videos on Youtube that feature his music. By the way, I believe the lead guitar on this track is played by Richard Thompson.



DOCTOR FEELGOOD

Before punk, there was the London pubrock scene. I forget the amount of times that I saw Doctor Feelgood in some sweaty North London pub such as The Brecknock, NW5, or the Torrington N12 But the impression of the Bg Figure on drums, Sparko on bass, the mechanical genius of Wilco Johnson on lead guitar and the manic Lee Brilleaux on vocals and harp will never leave me. With their beyond back to basics approach and Wilco's lead and rhythm at the same time style, the Feelgoods reinvented the British blues scene while taking steps towards the imminent birth of punk. They were best experienced in a pub, not a TV studio full of 13 year old Osmond fans and one of the most punchable DJ presenters it has ever been my misfortune to witness, but the videos below give some idea of what they did. Anyone who sees me playing in California these days will be able to spot the influence straight away.





DICK HECKSTALL-SMITH

I had been aware of Heckstall-Smith the sax player for a long time, even saw him once in the early 80's playing with the pub band 'Big Chief', but his real influence started on me when I began creating a web-site for him, which led to me being his manager for the last four years of his life. Dick needed someone to believe he had a future, more than anything, and I performed that function to my limited ability. Dick had led a career too confusing for the music industry to want to bother with. He played blues in Jazz clubs, jazz in blues clubs and in a world where everyone has to be neatly packaged, Dick tended to be ignored. This was a mistake, he was a musical genius, perhaps too wrapped up in the mathematics of music in later years, but a genius nonetheless. And man, could he play, from spells in Alexis Korner's Blues Incorporated (along with Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker) Graham Bond ORGANisation (again with Jack and Ginger), John Mayall's Bluesbreakers, Coloseum, through to DHSS, the unrecorded fusion band that meant so much to him, and his generally overlooked solo work. I am biased of course, but Dick taught me so much about music. I thought I knew so much before I met him, and it turns out I hardly knew anything at all. here are a couple videos, one of Dick playing with Norman Beaker in Jack Bruce's band in 1988, and a curious period piece, The Graham Bond ORGANisation in a very silly movie, "Gonks Go Beat" in the mid 60s. This skims the surface of what Dick could do, but if you have never heard him before, it's a start.





BB KING

I discovered the music of BB King through that of Peter Green. I once had the chance to interview Greeny in his then home and ask him how much BB King influenced him, and in particular, how much his 'Live At The Regal' rubbed off on Peter Green's playing. He agreed that it had meant a lot to him, and so it should of done. All these years later and it is still the handbook on how to play beautiful reverb soaked heartfelt blues lead guitar. A wonderful singer as well as guitarist, King goes into the 60th year of his recording career. His shows now feature as much storytelling as guitar playing, he is in his mid eighties, yet that magical touch remains.



THE BEATLES

There I was, a six year old oik with his plastic Beatles guitar, convinced that I had found what I wanted to do when I grew up. The Beatles invaded every part of my life in 1963, and 45 years later I still play their music, read about their lives and unlike John in his Rolling Stone interviews,I 'believe' in the Beatles, or at least in the music they made. If that makes me a sad case, fair enough. Four lads from Liverpool who shook the world in general, and a weird North London kid in particular.



FRANK ZAPPA

I had accompanied my Mum and Dad to see my Great Aunt Gracie when I was about 14 or so. I was as bored as I could be, and found myself in a different room to the grown-ups, trying to find something acceptable to listen to on an ancient bakelite radio. Finally, on BBC Radio 3 of all places (they usually played classical music) I found a documentary about The Mothers Of Invention. The music was crazy, doo-wop one minute, space rock the next with long passages of incomprehensibility thrown in along the way. I loved it then, I love it now!



KEVIN AYERS

I think I discovered Ayers through finding a 2nd hand copy of 'Whatevershebringswesing' somewhere. As with most of my musical obsessions, that led to me getting as much of his stuff as possible. He had this aura of a hippie ex pat Englishman with more than a touch of Noel Coward. He used great guitar players (Mike Oldfield, Andy Summers and the great great Ollie Halsall) and a romanticism that maybe only John Martyn came anywhere near. The video below does show a little of what made him so special to me! By the way, I think that is the great free jazz sax man Lol Coxhill on soprano.



DAVID BOWIE

Bowie has been a constant in my music collection since I bought 'Space Oddity' as a thirteen year old. I might have discovered 'The Man Who Sold The World' late, but that LP is still of great importance to me now, all these years later. Bowie is a lot of the things I can never be, but he also reminds me of some of the things I can.

Ten Music Makers That made a Difference to Me (Part 1)

I am wary of 'Best Of' lists. The recent 'Best Singers Of All Time' poll in Rolling Stone is a good example. I did get inspired to compile a list of sorts though. These are ten music makers that have made impact, not just on my musical taste, but on my life. Music can do that, affect how you think about everything. Well, that's what it can do to me anyhow. Some of the people on this list are still around, some aren't. There are some iconic people mentioned here as well as some obscure but no less worthy artists. This isn't my 'Best of' list so I am not saying that the person at the top is better than the one at the bottom, this is just a bunch of people who have all made contributions to my education, my point of view and of course, to my record collection. When I feel like it, I will get round to another ten, and then another ten. We will see!

Lotte Lenya

There used to be this radio show in England on Saturdays I think called 'Junior Choice'. It was a music request show for kids. They played Disney tunes, Danny Kaye and Phil Harris novelty songs, Sparky and his magic and very annoying piano, that kind of thing. I remember listening one day in the garden, I must have been seven or eight. The kids show had just finished and instead of the usual safe bland stuff, this very scary but compelling woman was singing about Pirate Jenny. I was excited and totally scared at the same time. There was a sinister other worldly feel to the music and in particular the vocal performance that made me replay what I had heard in my head, kept me awake at night. I had no idea who Lotte Lenya was at the time, even less who Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht were. I loved the  records my sister played me, but this was different, music that had the power to paint horrifying yet vital pictures in my mind. It was a lot later before I heard the rest of 'The Threepenny Opera' or made the connection between Pirate Jenny and the Jenny Diver mentioned in Mack The Knife. I will never forget the impact hearing that recording for the first time had on me.

Miles Davis

I was a rock kid pretty much from the beginning, and I found so much jazz to be nothing more than inconsequential noodling. That is not the case now, far from it in fact, and the bridge that let me cross over to the delights of the blue note was undoubtedly Miles Davis. Again, it was a radio broadcast that set things in motion. I heard an early 60s live recording of "So What" and suddenly the nonsensical made sense. There were no spare notes here, everything that was played made absolute sense to me. I was prompted to listen to more Miles, 'Sketches of Spain", "Miles Ahead", "Bitches Brew" and was amazed by the variety and feeling I discovered.

Peter Green

The subject of my musical obsession since I was 16. Green was a founder member of Fleetwood Mac, but had established himself as being at the forefront of the 'British Blues Boom' before that. As a child, I was aware of 'Albatross', Green's haunting instrumental, but later on I started listening to the early Fleetwood Mac albums. The conviction in his guitar playing, singing and harp playing moved me like no one else has before or since. The tone in his guitar playing especially ripped through me then and still does now. The fact that at the time I discovered his music he had already disappeared from view only heightened the appeal for me. Well, he came back to some extent in the late 70s, illness pulling him away again by the mid 80's. Ten years later and another comeback, which lasted till about four years back. Each return showed that his powers had diminished to some extent, but there were still songs, performances where enough of the magic was revealed for me to feel like I did the first time I heard him play 'Merry -Go-Round' on Mac's first album. I know from first hand experience that Peter has the capability to let some of the magic through now if only he allows it to come. The word is that he has been working with producer Pete Brown in the last few months and maybe just maybe there is more music to be heard. I will be waiting, ready to have my hopes dashed, but hoping they might be fulfilled instead.

Nick Cave

One of the artists that can scare the bejesus out of me, but in  a good way. Part blues singer, part old testament prophet, part cool man about town if the town happens to be Sin City, Cave makes me happy. Successive line ups of the Bad Seeds lurch through the dark visions in Nick's head and the man himself croons his way round the lower reaches of hell. 'The Mercy Seat' is to me now as chilling as 'Pirate Jenny' was back in the day. Challenging whole hearted scary music.

Portishead

In the mid 90's, I was in a bad place. (What is that wrong with North London, you may ask?) I had been very ill, lucky (or unlucky as I thought at the time) to be alive, and I had no interest in music, no interest in the future. An appearance by Portishead on the Jools Holland TV show started to change all that. Here was a band that seemed to feature elements I always looked for in music with more modern components I had ignored up to that point. Beth Gibbons seemed so frail, yet this amazing sound came out, and who was that guitarist with the blues rock touches. the music press called this music 'Trip-Hop', I called it one small reason to stick around and see what would happen next. Sadly, new music from Portishead was thin on the ground, but now, years later, a third album has arrived and rather than trying to live on rehashes of 'Glory Box', it finds this band still experimenting, looking to the future. Thank goodness you came back.

Muddy Waters

Through Peter Green, I found my way back to some of the original blues men. Muddy Waters has a voice that cuts through me. hearing the singles he cut with his band in the fifties is as exciting today as it must have been then. I saw him three times towards the end of his life on stage, and there was enough of him left to dominate the stage with his presence. He moves me man, and I'm not sure how it's done.

Richard Thompson

A great guitar player, his style laying between folk/blues, something like Davey Graham say, and a Hank Marvin/Surf guitar vibe. That would be enough for me, but his song writing is off the scale. His early stuff was so good, later songs such as 'Can't Win' seemed to sum up my life in a way I couldn't, and he is still putting out wonderful if still neglected work today. With the song 'Dad's Gonna Kill Me' from his last album, he has summed up so much about the Iraq war that I have been unable to elucidate myself.

Jimi Hendrix

In three short years, he subverted what the electric guitar was capable of, and inadvertently almost killed off my favorite musical genre, the blues. After Hendrix, where was there to go but backwards. Voodoo Chile seems to take the blues to it's logical conclusion, yet against the odds, blues survived and Jimi didn't. Well, the man didn't, the music stays with us. I have to say that I find it harder and harder to listen to now, and I can't really explain why, but his influence on me remains.

John Martyn

Another one like Peter Green. Musically on the fringes, dancing between experimentation and innovation and monumental indulgence, yet his best music, no even a lot of his less than best music still affects me more than most stuff does. Wrongly labelled a folk artist by an industry that has to label you, put you in a box and keep you there, he is no more a folky than I am a sea lion but elements of folk permeate his work, as do elements of reggae, trip-hop, blues, rock, jazz and some stuff that doesn't have a name but that John Martyn came up with anyway. At his best (and worst) on stage, JM has been there in my life for so long that not having his music available is unimaginable. There are some songs of his that make me cry every time, some that I find new things in every time, one or two that just make me pissed off. All that and a song about John Wayne. Brilliant.

Freddie King

A huge influence on Peter Green, who seems to try that bit harder when he comes to a King tune, and one of the reasons I could never fall out of love with the blues. His wonderful guitar style sounds deceptively simple, but it isn't. A musician I once knew, ( a wonderful musician who will feature in one of the sequels to this blog entry) once said that the best way to understand a musicians work is to try and 'be' that musician for a while, to walk in their shoes, do what they did. You can play the notes, chop them off as he did, do a fair imitation, but never ever can you be Freddie King. Wrongly dismissed by some in my opinion, he was a truly great blues player, and someone I could never ever stop listening to.

(Part 1, 2, 3 etc soon come. Or not.)

Whose gig is it anyway?

First off, I must apologise, to myself if no one else, for not touching this blog for so long. It's not that I don't have anything to say for myself. Far from it, I am full of thoughts, ideas, accusations and threats as usual, I have just let my lazy bone dominate the more productive ones. That's it.

Now, back to the plot. I used to be a working musician of middling ability but plenty of passion who five years ago found himself uprooted from surburban London to Porterville, CA. The culture shock has been considerable, the resulting reverberation will forever ring in my ears, but one thing I never expected was to get my music back. I was never anyone you heard of, or were likely to hear, but for reasons I may or may not explain at some point, I had stopped playing some time ago. A spell in music management had all but killed my love for all things musical, but with the encouragement of my partner Karmen and the economic need to make some wonga I found myself playing guitar again.

Before going any further, I should talk about Porterville a little. It is a small agricultural town about fifty miles out of Bakersfield. It has a population of around 50,000, pretty evenly split between predominantly Hispanic and mostly white communities . On the face of it, it would seem to be a friendly little place, and in some ways it is, but there is an undercurrent here, several in fact. There is gang activity, and the murder rate per capita is higher here than in LA. Poverty and all that goes with it is evident, yet there is something about this place that is almost inspiring. It is a real community with real people and it is my current home and I am good with that. There are community events here that can move me to tears of joy in a way I was never moved back home in London.

Well, about three years ago, my resumed guitar playing had improved enough that I wanted to start playing in front of people again. I started tentatively, playing a few numbers in a small coffee house to no one in particular. Then a few benefits at the local community theater and finally... This is when it all got a bit daunting. At one community theater thing I met a John Mayall look-alike called Bob who it seemed was a mainstay of the local music scene. (I thought this at the time, and I still do, even though I now know what the local music scene actually is!) He played bass, liked the blues, wanted to play it, and heck, he thought, why don't we form a band. We found a drummer and the rest is history, albeit a history only about 8 people actually know about. I was never what you could call the premier division of guitarists, but I found the kind of gigs we could get soul destroying. The few venues in Porterville itself used mostly country bands. Our gigs were mostly out of town, in restaurants where folks were paying to eat, not listen. Also, the musical dish of the day round here IS country, ninety nine times out of a hundred, so our brand of brash blues rock with a murder ballad or three thrown in was not always to our audience's tastes. (In fact the drummer didn't like it that much to be honest. The bass player and I once turned up late at a gig to find he had set up karaoke by himself and was regaling the audience with a selection of George Strait classics, but I digress.) We would get asked to play George Jones and Johnny Cash songs far more than we would ever get asked for BB King or Muddy Waters. I even tried a few perfunctory country songs, but I mostly ended up sounding like an English person choking over an inedible fish entree. We made a little money, and that helped a lot, but I couldn't help feeling that this was a long way from where I wanted to be. Things came to a head one night at a gig in nearby Exeter, I threw a temper tantrum worthy of a five year old, just as we were approaching a few proper gigs that would have audiences willing to listen. The band broke up, I was sent to bed without supper and I had to face the prospect of finding another outlet for all my bluesy white boy angst.

I joined one of those 'rehearsing a lot for a gig that never quite comes' type bands. Rather than blues with a fair bit of improvisation this outfit favoured reproductions of fifties and sixties top 40 hits. I was hopeless at this. The thought of playing the same thing in the same song every time appalled me far more than the prospect of trying to feed some bluesy improv to a bunch of disinterested Merle Haggard groupies. It felt like being one of those pavement artists recreating the old masters in chalk on the sidewalk before footprints, dog poop and rain destroyed the whole thing. What a precious A-hole I was, but it did set me to thinking. The rest of the 'cats' in this covers band kept going on about how this was 'supposed to be fun', even though their constant bickering and power trips proved one of the main reasons why it wasn't. I recalled how with the last mob there were times when I had really had fun. The sort of 'flying by the seat of your pants not knowing what you are going to play next but if one person enjoys what you play it has been worth it' kind of fun. Men! They never know when they're well off do they? The covers band finally had enough of me. They swear to this day that I was not fired from the band. Instead, I received an email saying that the band were 'going in a different direction'. I assumed this was up a one way street and after moping for half a day for being turfed out of a set-up I didn't even rate much, I breathed a sigh of relief. Then, in the few months that followed I missed rehearsals a lot. We men... etc. etc!

One of the high points of the first band had been one night when our regular drummer couldn't make it and instead we had a native American guy sitting in with a friend of his on guitar. The jamming quality that night improved a thousandfold, the meagre audience even enjoyed it to the extent that the tips almost doubled our fee. (An exaggeration, but I am running with it.) In March of this year Bob the bass player from the first band contacted me to say that the other two had a three night engagement up at the local Indian Casino, good money, turn up and play. I did so with trepidation , but it was wonderful. Four sets a night, 12 over the weekend, and we averaged about five songs a set. Lots of guitar play, bordering from the aargh to really quite good. The band stayed together. Our drummer left, the next one got arrested after one of our gigs, but the one after that stuck. The moral of this story? I am not sure, other than that maybe I have realised that playing is infinitely better than not playing. The work we can get is better than no work, and there is more than just a little cash in it for us. We play originals, we do get to do shows in front of appreciative (if admittedly mostly very drunk and fairly small) crowds. I spent too much time thinking about the what could have been stuff. The here and now can be pretty good too.

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DAD, GREAVSEY AND ME!

I remember my Dad smiling at me when I was little. Thinking about it now, he actually smiled a lot, although at the time I don’t think I always saw it that way. He would come in tired from work but would always give me the thumbs up sign and play with me a little. Sometimes it would be some typical father/son play wrestling, sometimes it would be just a bit of kidding around. For instance, one of his typical moves would be to hold his hand sideways under my chin and say, “Get out of that without moving!” Looking back, one thing is clear. He always made time for me.

Kids always like to think that they can get one over on their parents, but on reflection I can now see that Dad was capable of some pretty slick moves where I was concerned. When I was five or six, I needed two heavy duty dental appointments, both extractions. I was scared of Dentists in general and our dentist Mr Cooper in particular but dad had a plan to get me through each time. If I promised to be a big brave boy, he would buy me a record at the Arcade music store in North Finchley, just round the corner from the dental surgery. I was as obsessed with music then as I am now and I jumped at the chance. He held my hand till the gas did its work in sending me to narcotic slumber. When I woke up, I was groggy, my mouth was sore, but so what! We were going to buy a record. The first time we got ‘I Remember You’ by Frank Ifield, the second time a Pat Boone recording. If you find it odd that an infant school boy would choose songs by a yodeling Australian and the whitest of all white singers then frankly, so do I. Dad’s genius was that he managed to coax me through two scary tooth extractions with the promise of buying records, and then managed to persuade me to get records HE wanted to buy in the first place. Nice one Dad!

Actually, my Dad was very generous, often to a fault, both with the money he had, and with his time. We were not well off by any means, but I generally got what I wanted for Christmas. When I was younger, there were train sets, Minnix Motors, Meccano, the usual boy things, later on when my interest in music became more aggressive than passive there were guitars. Right from the start I was always fascinated by guitars. I used to figure this was a disappointment to my Dad. He had been so good at playing football, it was his passion, and although I liked it a lot as well, it seemed like I had three left feet, not just two. I know he would have liked me to have followed in his tricky footsteps down the wing but it just wasn’t to be. I did love our sessions with a football outside of our house, or over on Hampstead Heath extension. “Keep your eye on the ball son, always keep your eye on the ball” he would say. I tried to do that, even when I had just tripped over the thing and had landed upside down on the grass.

When I was eleven he took things to the next level. Mum and dad had always taken me to movies, museums, zoos, etc, but from 1968 Dad began taking me to White Hart Lane to see the Spurs. To this day, I can remember the sights and sounds, the different quality of light within the stadium, the roar of the crowd as the Tannoy system played ‘Glory, Glory Tottenham Hotspur’ when the team ran out. My Dad pointed out one player in particular, who weaved his way to the Park Lane end goal with a football at his feet, blasting it into the net as he arrived, driving the crowd crazy. “That’s Jimmy Greaves” said dad. Any schoolboy with any kind of interest in football would have been able to spot Jimmy Greaves at a thousand paces, but it was cool because my dad wanted to share what he knew with me, and I liked that, it made me feel very secure. We had found our meeting point. I was never going to be the next Jimmy Greaves, but the two of us could share in watching the last season at Spurs of the real Jimmy. We were there against Newcastle United when Greavesy scored a wonder goal beating numerous defenders and dancing round the goalkeeper before running the ball into the goal. We saw other games, even other teams. We were at Norwich City’s first game in the first division for example. I think it was against Everton, although you would have to ask my cousin David to confirm that. We continued to go to matches together through to the 80s. When our local team Barnet joined the football league, we were there to witness it. A shambling middle aged man shuffled by us a few minutes after the game started. It was Jimmy Greaves again, a constant in our ever evolving universe. By that time I was as grown up as I was ever going to get and a lot of water had passed under the father/son bridge by then. We still found the time for footie though. When Dad no longer felt up to attending games, we still watched at home on TV, and he still loved to point out little playing tips to me, even though my botched ball juggling days were long since gone. Right up to the last few weeks we shared together in Finchley, almost four years ago now, we would always watch a game.

Through the years Dad always tried to help Janice and I when he could. As Mum became more immobile Dad took on many household roles that were new to him. He lived by the mantra that “As long as we have some eggs, bread, butter, milk and tea in, we’ll be ok.” Years after he was first diagnosed with dementia he could still be seen waiting in line for the 143 bus with his little cap on, en-route for Tescos, chatting to the old ladies from Basing Way that Mum and I used to describe as his ‘Harem’. Dementia is such a cruel condition, Dad used to be frustrated by his inability to do all the things he once took for granted, but every now and then he was still able to laugh at himself. One time he answered the phone, and a work friend of mine asked who he was speaking to. Dad paused for a moment or two before admitting, “Hang on, it’s on the tip of my brain.”

My wife Karmen met Dad for the first time in 2003. A year later, we were married in the USA, and she came back with me to Finchley for a few weeks afterwards. In that short time she and Dad, now sadly a widower, were able to get to know each other. she recalls when he would make tea, and ask her how many sugars she wanted. She would hold up the appropriate number of fingers and he would reply with a smile and a thumbs up sign. That thumbs up sign stayed with him the whole time I knew him. Karmen told me a few days ago that she knew Dad loved her because he told her so. Once I had moved to the USA, our contact was restricted to phone calls. We would both ask dad how he was and he would invariably tell us that he had “A bit of a cold.” The last phone conversation I had with Dad was last October on his Birthday. I told him I loved him and he told me he knew that. We had never had the kind of relationship where we said that kind of thing to each other before, but it was a loving relationship. Karmen and I loved you Dad, and we will miss you so much.

My Dad died in January, 2008

FROM VALLEY TO VALET AND BACK AGAIN

When the Founding Fathers of the USA disposed of colonial rule, they of course severed any allegiance to British Royalty. Within a hundred and fifty years however, the lure of having some kind of ‘super-class”, a bunch of elitists to admire, defer to or despise had become so irresistible that it was necessary for America to invent it’s own royalty. The myth making began, and Hollywood as we know and admire, defer to or despise it was born.

There was no direct line of accession to the Hollywood throne, even though family dynasties to rival the house of Windsor would emerge. Rather, corporate America under the guise of the studio system selected the Kings and Queens of Hollywood and manipulated the public into making or breaking those that were chosen. Myth making machinery every bit as deadly and effective as a siege engine came into being. One of the myths that persists to this day is that of privacy for the rich and famous. From the very moment Greta Garbo declared that she wanted to be alone, every two bit ham with a S.A.G card has agreed. The studios want, need us to love the stars, care for them, be obsessed with them even so that we will buy their mostly cheesy products at inflated prices, but the stars themselves reserve the right to their privacy. I can imagine Marie Antoinette laying besides the pool, protected by a 20 ft fence and fifteen ex CIA guys and a middle-weight champ or three. “Let them eat Blu-Ray DVDs” indeed! Yeah, boundaries of decency do get crossed, and the way the business sets up lambs for the slaughter is truly obnoxious, but privacy can be attained if you really want it. You can buy anything in Hollywood right?

Another myth concerning the movie biz is that of “Old Hollywood.” There is no such thing as old Hollywood, the whole stinking cancerous mess stinks of new money, Corporate money. Throughout the whole debacle of watching Brittany destroying herself (and potentially any other drivers within a fifty mile radius at any given time) I can’t help but think there is someone somewhere sitting in front of a bank of monitors watching Entertainment Tonight and thinking that this is very good for business. Look how well the last Spears CD has done. “It worked for Princess Di so it will work for our screw-ups too!”

So, we have the illusion of a Golden era of Hollywood where the men were men and the sheep were nervous fans to go along with the privacy hoo-ha. In modern day Hollywood there are perhaps two locations where these cock and bull market stories go hand in hand. On Hollywood Blvd you will find Musso & Franks, a dining establishment that has been there since 1919. The PR behemoth has painted pretty pictures regarding the joint’s history. Chaplin and Fairbanks were said to have raced Thoroughbred horses through Hollywood ending up at the diner for an alcoholic brunch. Bogie and

Bacall played footsie with each other whilst waiting for his divorce to come through in one of the wood and red leather adorned booths which remain unchanged to this day. In another, F Scott Fitzgerald was said to have tapped out ‘The Great Gatsby.” The great and the good mingled with Mafia dons, all handled with the utmost discretion by the aged red shirted waiters. I got to have a late lunch in Musso’s about five years back. I was a tourist at the time. Oh yes, I buy into the whole plastic package as much as anyone else, I just reserve the right to be sarcastic about it as well. The dinginess of the place, the old wood, the shiny worn leather interiors were quite alluring to me. I even enjoyed the plain omelet I was served. The fact that it was the only menu item I could afford did not seem so important at the time. This was a place where Hollywood business of sorts was being carried out. A member of the Star Trek Next Generation cast was being interviewed by someone who would have been at least twenty years away from being a foetus when Jim Kirk first boldly went where no second rate actor had gone before. I left choosing to believe that I had had a brief glimpse of the 'real' Hollywood, and headed out to the waxworks where the kid in the ticket booth took one look at me and asked if I was from the Mid-West.

Anyway, move forward in time to June 2008. By this time I was living with my wife in Porterville, CA, as far away from Hollywood culturally as London was geographically. A friend of mine from England was going to be working in West Hollywood for a week, mixing a CD in a West Hollywood studio. He was going to have a tight schedule, but he invited us to drop in and visit for a while. We were originally going to meet up at the studio, but that didn't work out, so instead he invited us to visit him in his hotel, the Chateau Marmont on Sunset.

Even I had heard of the place. Thirties movie stars went there to engage in the kind of activities the publicists either kept quiet or exaggerated depending on the way the wind was blowing. It was the private getaway the stars could make and yet still make the early calls. By the Sixties, rock stars had added it to the tour itinerary. Jim Morrison jumped off a window ledge or something, Led Zeppelin carried out their four man war against the TV manufacturing industry a set at a time, and John Belushi checked out not of the hotel but life itself.

The Marmont is actually easy to miss from the street, which is my way of saying we drove straight past it. Finally, we realized that we had to drive down to the underground car park. There were several self important looking people waiting for limos under the watchful eye of a well dressed security guy who looked rather a lot like Alexander O'Neal. I really wanted to go up to him and say, "Go on, do it, 'All You ever do is criticize', you know you want to," but I didn't really feel like being shot that early on a Monday morning. We asked how to get to bungalow 2 (the very place the Blues brothers went singular) and were told that we would have to have our truck valet parked. I rather liked the idea of our humble Chevy S10 being parked next to all the vintage open top sports cars, Bentleys and Humvees. I asked the valet guy about that and he answered that, "We get all sorts here!" We handed over the keys to the truck and were shown through a padlocked door. On the other side was a cross between a botanical garden and a not very well constructed movie set of the Burmese jungle. Hotel staff seemed to scurry everywhere, and there was an eighteen year old in a bathrobe smoking a cigarette like he had just invented them a few minutes before, and generally acting as if he owned the place. We asked him if he knew how to get to bungalow 2, and he pointed out that we were right in front of it. Despite that blunder, he still looked more stupid than we did. Turning our backs on him, we saw what looked like a tiny house in any town in middle America, picket fence and all. bungalow. Our friend greeted us at the door and we entered what looked on the inside like the apartment you and your college friends rent once you get the first good job. Nice, comfortable, but not ostentatious.

As we caught up with our friend, I couldn't help but let my mind wander a little. Where exactly was Belushi when he drew his last breath? What other unpleasantness had gone on here in the past. What teen idol had done what to whom and holding what? It was a bit like an X-rated version of Clue. (Cluedo to us Brits.) An idea started to form. Maybe that was the true nature of this place. A safe haven for the stars, yes, to a point, but like all Hollywood, it was an illusion. I thought more about that as our visit continued. It was good to see my friend. He was doing nothing more than working hard and making Organic shakes when he was home in the bungalow, staying there because it was being paid for by someone other than him. We said goodbye just as staff arrived armed with complimentary newspapers and other bits of hotel swag. We got back to the underground car park to find that we had to go upstairs to the lobby to settle the 12 buck parking bill. We found ourselves in the tiniest elevator I think I have ever been in (except for the dumb waiter I squeezed into during a drunken game of 'hide and seek' in a hotel in Bournemouth years ago). As we entered the lobby, yet more staff were milling around being discrete. The woman behind the desk eyed us up and if smugness were a disease she would have died on the spot. Her attitude made us both feel that we had to act like we knew somebody, which was ridiculous, not least for the fact that we bloody did know someone, that was why we were there. A couple of colleagues joined her to watch the proles, and everyone (us included) left the encounter feeling morally superior. As we picked up our truck which was helpfully waiting for us, a TV movie actress that used to be in a well known sitcom waited for her ride, wanting to be left alone almost as much as she wanted to be recognized. I pandered to the first demand by ignoring the second. Then, as soon as we had entered the world of the beautiful people (there were certainly more blondes here than in real life) we were out of it again, pootling along Sunset to IHOP and a late breakfast.

So, what had we learned? Not much I suppose. The theory I had been working on since our brief adventure in bungalow 2 had kind of formed. Hollywood has always been and always will be sold on myth and legend generated by whatever media is handy at the time. If Chateau Marmont didn't exist, it would be necessary to invent it, so that is what has happened. It is an overpriced hotel in a very convenient location selling discretion as blatantly as it sells it's souvenir tee-shirts. It isn't the fabled playground of the rich and infamous of legend, but it sort of is as well, and if it hadn't had any kind of impact on me, I wouldn't be writing about it now. I can be as sarcastic as I like about it now (and I like) but if I had seen some debauched A-lister while we visited I would have been thrilled, I know I would. I suppose the only thing I really learned was that however much we might despise the machinery, Hollywood works.