“Smaller than a shoebox, but busting with charisma” read one recent review of the Robin Hood pub in Sydenham Road, Guildford. “If you’re a posh Surrey chap this isn’t the place for you. If you’re a bit of a free-loving hippy you’ll probably enjoy it here. Full of characters, but not recommended for a quiet drink” said another.
Beloved by local rock bands who could practice their art to their hearts content in preparation for greater things, while squashed into a corner at one end of the bar, the Robin Hood had a reputation for its music. It unfortunately also had a reputation for being ramshackle, grubby and chaotic. This could explain why it was such a relaxed place to play – no-one seemed to mind too much what you did. But it also probably explains the pub’s downfall – to the disappointment of dozens of musicians the pub has gone bust.
It’s a nationwide story as hundreds of pubs close every day, victims of recession, computer gaming, and sundry noise pollution, antismoking and drink driving laws. There are plenty of reasons to blame. But as anyone who had played there might tell you, this pub was special. Forget the food on the floor, the crumbling décor and complaints about the beer. Once the band was in, this place had atmosphere. Posters of previous acts lined the dark red walls, and a variable audience of locals would drop in to watch as the music played. Situated in the middle of town, there was a suitable distance between the pub and most local residents, so few complaints about the noise in the evening, but a regular supply of passers-by who could be enticed to pop in to hear what was going on.
Although some familiar names on the local music scene would turn up to play at intervals, pretty much anyone could book in. So even the most green musicians could find a chance to get some live experience - you didn’t need a demo disc or a raving fanbase to get a gig. No, you didn’t get paid and yes, it was a hell of a squash, with barely room for the detritus of equipment that comes with a 4-piece (the keyboard player would have to turn to tambourine and egg shaker duty). And most people in the pub had to twist and crane their necks to see the band tucked away in their corner.
But it was worth the effort from both bands and audience, who were generally the sort of people able to take what they could from the music. If you played badly they didn’t seem to mind, but if you played well they got right behind you, whooping and cheering, offering to join in with assorted instruments, or take over to sing a number or two – and with that sort of vibe how could you refuse them ? And when things were going really well, there was always the chance of a lock-down and the party would smash right on through the night.
So where will we go now ? Lots of pubs are developing their music nights in an effort to staunch the financial haemorrhage as customers dwindle. So there should still be plenty of opportunities to play. Some of these venues have the best rock and roll heritage. Bands can book in to play at the WoodenBridge in Guildford, for example, where both Hendrix and the Stones have left their mark. There is more space to play, proper lighting and the audience can enjoy cold beer and decent surroundings. But maybe more is needed to create the right atmosphere for rock ?
And all too often the price the band has to pay is a complex commitment to ticket sales. If you have a horde of followers then the deal can mean you actually make some money. But for older musicians, whose coterie is more limited, dependent on the vagaries of babysitters or devotion dimmed by the exhaustion of a working day, it can be very difficult to guarantee anything more than a spouse or two. In that case, you end up having to pay to play. Venues are of course a business. They have to make money. But surely there is some way to keep the tills working while the music plays on. We need our grungy old pubs. Robin Hood RIP.
The dignified way : sit them all down with a beer and explain that you are feeling under immense stress at the moment since the cat developed diabetes and falling demand for fig rolls has threatened your job at the biscuit company. Explain that for the sake of all your 16 children, you need to take a break from the frivolity of rock and roll.
The musical turn-off : Tell them you have developed a deep interest in Peruvian Folk laments and refuse to play anything else.
Twist their emotions: have a passionate fling with the vocalist, and constantly whisper sweet asides to them during rehearsals. It can only end in tears.
The cowards way : Play it dumb : deliberately mess up and make a worse and worse racket until they can’t take any more and sack you. Not good for your own reputation and could interfere with future offers.
Don’t wash. Unlikely to get you thrown out when you are a 16 year old punk but older musicians find body odour harder to tolerate.
Change instruments : what self-respecting rock band wants a recorder player?
The vanishing trick : Simply disappear off the face of the planet. Has worked for a few very well known musicians – where are they playing now ?
Count every bar out loudly as you play, over the lyrics, making sure the drummer can hear you.
Offer a tinsy bit of advice to the lead guitarist about where he is going wrong (you may need a supply of sticking plasters, bandages and aspirin for this one. )
Find an amazingly talented stand-in who will wear a hat borrowed from Slash and pretend to be you. Could be expensive - but good for the reputation !
Repeatedly turn up late to gigs, or at least as late as it takes to let everyone else set the rig up.
Alternatively naff off as soon as the last song is finished and leave everyone else to pack the gear up and get it home
Moan endlessly about the set list and make useful suggestions of cheery 1970’s glam-rock numbers and 1950’s crooner-tooons that are “just waiting to be rocked up”
Turn up to gigs wearing a velvet dinner suit and crocs (unless your band has a reputation for irony).
The Summer of Love was drifting towards the Winter of Discontent. This was to be my last festival for a while. Although transport, accommodation, puff and muesli would all be provided by Mag-Neato, our pals’ underground press distribution company, if it hadn’t been for the Grateful Dead headlining, I probably wouldn’t have gone. The hippie ethos was on the wane. Reality was seeping in through the chain mail of psychedelic medication. Apparently we weren’t going to change the world after all.
But we all piled into the Luton Transit, amidst the Frendz, Rolling Stone, International Times and Oz magazines. All the other festivals had been to the south or west of Guildford. This was in Lancashire. Up north. That was a bit scary for us soft southern bastards. Wasn’t it grim up there?
The worst thing about it was the weather. It was grey and drizzly when we arrived, but that was nothing to the downpours that were to come. We were supposed to be crowd-selling, but not surprisingly, few people wanted to buy a magazine when they were camped out in the pouring rain. Oh and did I mention the mud? You think they have mud in Glastonbury? Pah! Bickershaw had clay. It stuck to your boots. And then the clay stuck to the clay. Your feet just got heavier and heavier. It felt like you were wearing diving boots. People clumped around like Frankenstein monsters.
After forty-eight hours the rain finally relented on the Sunday. I’d saved a tab of mescaline especially for the Live Dead experience. I had almost worn out my copy of ‘Dark Star’ over the previous two years. I was very looking forward to this. I was down the front near the press enclosure when the sky lightened and the New Riders of The Purple Sage came on. They were the perfect warm up for The Grateful Dead. The sun came out. The first we’d seen of it since we arrived.
I took my mescaline, although I wasn’t in the best head-space for a trip: in the throes of a mild introspective existentialist crisis. I spent the next twenty minutes failing to have a piss. Then I walked back to the enormous tent where all twenty four of us had been sleeping. Our Guildford dog, Milligan, immediately freaked and ran out yelping. Then the King and Queen of our little tribe, the really solid together forever couple, came in having a furious row. I exited hastily. None of this was on my agenda. By now the drugs had kicked in, but not in the way I was expecting. There seemed to be a slightly twitchy psychotic edge to this particular high. Then I heard the unmistakable sound of the mighty Grateful Dead kicking off.
I headed towards the stage. My pals would all be at the front. I felt decidedly unstable. Before immersing myself in the thick of the throng I thought I’d just stand at the back of the crowd until my trip levelled out. I stopped and tried to focus on the music. Immediately the half dozen or so people in front of me all turned round and recoiled at the sight of me. My face seemed to have lost all muscular control. It was pulling a rapid series of severe, demented and inappropriate expressions entirely of its own accord. I quickly moved to another spot, but the same thing happened again. The people immediately in front of me turned round and did a comic horror double-take. My face was really going for it. I tried several different spots, but always with the same result. Eventually I walked right around the edge of the crowd to the right hand front side and then weaved, twitched and staggered, slowly but unsurely to the front and centre. There was a huge patch of mud there. Clad as I was, in my brother’s brown Moroccan djellaba and already caked in three days worth of mud, I thought ‘sod it’. I lay down in the liquid clay, closed my eyes and finally fully focused on the wonderful music. My head was full of visions of golden skulls, but not in a bad way. Soon my face began to relax. The glorious music was now inside me and taking me higher. I stood up to find my mates not ten yards away on the platform in front of the giant screen. They hauled me up. It just got better and better. The Dead played for five hours with a short interval. It was drummer Billy Kreutzman’s 24th birthday. There was a firework display during Dark Star.
It was like nothing else. They would improvise in the middle of a song going as far as they could from the original theme and then Garcia, Welch, Lesh or Pigpen would hit a riff, the rest of the band would follow and they’d move seamlessly into a different song. That too would have its improvisational space and would transform into a third tune which would go back, via the second song, into the number they first started with. Each point of transformation was greeted with ecstatic whoops of joy as the whole trip went higher and higher.
It wobbled on occasion, but always got back in the groove. The potential to fall apart was intrinsic to make the music as exciting as it was. Without the risk of danger there could be no thrill.
You needed five hours. A breather in the middle to skin up and take a leak, then back on the roller-coastering, musical merry-go-round. It was cosmic and spiritual. There was no Hendrix, Stones or Zeppelin sexuality. This was six individuals sublimating their egos into one glorious organic unit, free-falling, allowing the music to take control.
A couple of things have happened recently that fit into my general musing about what it means to be a “pop” musician in the 2000’s, and more particularly for members of Rock Till You Drop, what it means to be a “mature” pop musician in the year 2010.
Pop Music: art or entertainment?
First, what is “pop music?” Originally regarded as a light, frothy and insubstantial form of entertainment for the masses, pop music has become the world’s common cultural denominator. The broad church of so-called “pop” music now encompasses the disposable trash peddled by Simon Cowell’s zombie hordes and the highbrow fine-art work of Roger Waters-period Pink Floyd and songwriters like Elvis Costello, as well as the abstractions of Jazz and soundscape artists like Phillip Glass. And who could deny the genius of Bob Dylan? My teenage daughters appreciate him as much as they do Elliot Smith or Jeff Buckley. Many people make their livings from the activities surrounding the pop industry and it is a significant contributor to the economies of England and America.
Its legitimacy as art is no longer questioned. As to the question “is it art or entertainment?” I recently heard a great definition of the two: entertainment is what you know you already know and know you want, whereas art gives you something you don’t already know or know you want. By this definition, pop music is definitely art.
The Age Contradiction
There is an inherent contradiction in pop music that is in the process of being exposed and resolved: the idea that pop music is youth culture. This preconception pervades its ethos and practise to the point where it has become the only industry in the world in which the more experienced you are as a practitioner, the less likely you are to get any work.
I’ve been a session musician for 30 years: nothing fazes me and I’m at home in all sorts of situations from stadium gigs to folk clubs, but I’m now considered too old to be booked to play with new acts, despite the fact that the presence of an “old hand” or two would benefit inexperienced performers immeasurably, (especially when they are faced with a hostile audience at the Glasgow Apollo on a dismal rainy February night .) The underlying assumption is that audiences want to see young people on stage and will find the presence of grey hairs offensive, but pop’s audience is now composed of all age groups, and artists like Bruce Springsteen and Neil Young are making music consistent with their ages.
It has become common for me to observe a phenomenon that never fails to make me smile: that of silver-haired old gentlemen in dinner-jackets playing air guitar when a covers band strikes up “Sultans of Swing” or “All Along the Watchtower” at the golf club dinner-dance. The front row of the recent Cream reunion gig at the Albert Hall was composed almost exclusively of balding but extremely well-heeled (check the ticket prices!!) ‘Captains of Industry.’ Not a teenager in sight! As one member of the “50-quid-man” demographic recently said in a survey; “My kids have allowances. I have a wallet stuffed with credit cards and cash!” And yet the music industry ignores this market, not daring to depart from the illusion that pop music is for “the kids.”
What use is Pop Music?
So having decided what pop music is, the next question I have been pondering is : what is pop music for? The answer came to me recently when I did my first ever Jewish gig at the age of 51; (yes, a little late in life to bite that particular bullet, but better late than never.) I sat there at a bat mitzvah in a Schule in Borehamwood, playing music that has been played at these events for thousands of years, and realised what I am for. If you leave aside the nonsense of being a “pop star,” what we as musicians actually do is provide part of the cultural context in which society exists and continues to exist. Look at paintings and read accounts of events from all through history; whether it’s the wedding of a King or a peasant, the death of a middle-class insurance salesman or a Sultan, there we are in the background; the minstrels in the gallery.
That is our function, and that is also our power.If I play the first few notes of the Funeral March during a wedding party I can totally change the mood in the room, and then I can change it back again simply by playing “I Will Survive” or “Dancing Queen.”
Pop music has entered our culture to the point where it is our culture. Even highbrows like Alan Yentob make documentaries about the history of the electric guitar. Commentators speak of the “triumph of vernacular culture”; the idea that the music of Elvis Presley is as valid artistically as that of Mozart. A recent complaint by a vicar that the music people choose to play at funerals is inappropriate completely misses the point: it is the old religious dirges that have become inappropriate. People relate more to “I Will Always Love You” than “Abide With Me.”
The Repertoire Theory
Pop music is now entering a new phase, similar in some respects to the world of so-called “classical” music. There is now a repertoire developing, and in the same way that an orchestra perform a programme of Tschaikovsky’s music or a concert pianist will go on tour playing the works of Rachmaninov, so a tribute band will present an evening of the music of Dire Straits or Abba, or any other band who are no longer touring themselves (or if they are, the tickets are prohibitively expensive and the concerts are in such large venues that there is no longer any sense of connection between audience and performer.)
This is what the phenomenon of tribute bands means; the emergence of an understanding on the audience’s part that the songs are more important than the performers who perform them, and the desire of that audience to hear those songs performed live. There are constant tours of so-called “revival” acts: Eighties pop stars now tour the world playing to audiences for whom that decade’s music was the soundtrack to their youth. In ten years’ time the Nineties revival tours wil be underway, Blur and Oasis sharing the same stage in an eerie echo of the Sixties package tours. Plus ca change.
The evidence for this is everywhere: EMI recently signed the Blockheads (the backing band of one of their dead artists), and there is a Dire Straits tribute band whose personel includes Chris White and John Illsley (both members of the original band.) I recently met a Pink Floyd tribute act who are playing the same 15,000-capacity venues I was playing with Roger Waters in the 1980’s. Where is the border between the original act and the tribute act?
Interestingly, many of the tribute bands are actually better musicians (technically speaking) than those whose repertoires they play: the original act just got there first and were the ones who made the music and style in the first place, but their interpreters are schooled at places like London’s Institute for Contemporary Music Performance, and possess sophisticated instruments and equipment that their heroes had to work for years to be able to afford.
End of the Blip
At the same time, the 50-year “blip” that was the explosion of recorded music is dying; ironically along with its inventor, Les Paul. The idea that it is possible to make millions of dollars by selling recordings of music (combined with the preposterous misconception that just because someone can sing a pop song and simultaneously have great hair should automatically be qualified to pronounce on the great political issues of the day) is falling into disrepair.
There is a generation that believes that recorded music is free, and that music is something you talk over. The music industry has to some extent only itself to blame for this: failure to invest in acts with long-term potential in favour of the “quick buck” boy- and girl-bands has devalued music in the eyes (ears?) of listeners. The ubiquity of music (in the mall, on the bus, in the airport, hairdressers, doctors’ waiting room and restaurant) has reduced the importance and value of music: it’s no longer special or unusual, just everywhere all the time.
Anyone who comes into the music business expecting to make millions is very quickly relieved of their illusions and goes off to make their fortune in organised crime, or The City. (No, not a lot of difference these days, I’ll grant you.) Those of us who are happy to make a living as musicians are having to adjust to a very different landscape.
The old music business paradigm of selling the fantasy of the Artist as someone whose lifestyle you should aspire to is dying. We have all seen far too many documentaries on “The Making of...”and “The Marketing of...” and “The Making of ‘The Marketing of’ “ to be taken in. It’s like being shown how a magician does his tricks; once you know how to saw a lady in half, the only interest that remains in the process is how well that particular magician performs that particular trick and whether they bring a new angle to it. The wonder is gone.
The attempt to sell us the fantasy that Bruce Springsteen rides his motorcycle through the streets of New York at 3 o’clock in the morningis increasingly ludicrous; we all know that he’s more likely to be tucked up on his orthopaedic mattress by half-past nine.
What Do I Have Left?
“You end up having to deal with whatever it is that you’ve got left.” Robert Wyatt ( a drummer who lost his legs.)
What is left is primarily live music, and this is where we find our metier, our place, and our living and being. Once again, the wheel has come full circle and musicians like me have returned to a very simple direct form of music-making: I put my guitar in the car, drive to a place where people go to hear musicians play their music, and play.
Selling CDs is a bonus: I no longer even expect it. I make money from recorded music by producing library tracks and producing unsigned/self-financedbands and singer/songwriters (which has the great benefit that I don’t have to kowtow to some scared kid from a record company who is so frightened of getting fired that the only thing he will accept is a carbon copy of whatever was a hit last week, regardless of its suitability for the artist.)
I teach, write magazine columns, play gigs in living-rooms pubs, theatres and all points inbetween, and am enjoying my profession more than I have done for decades. It feels more honest; less like whoring and more like the calling I felt it to be when I was 18.
I sit here in the gallery where no-one notices me and I observe the world at work and play. If I wasn’t there, you would miss me badly.
A wandering minstrel I —
A thing of shreds and patches,
Of ballads, songs and snatches,
And dreamy lullaby!
My catalogue is long,
Through every passion ranging,
And to your humours changing
I tune my supple song!
I tune my supple song!
Are you in sentimental mood?
I'll sigh with you,
Oh, sorrow, sorrow!
On maiden's coldness do you brood?
I'll do so, too —
Oh, sorrow, sorrow!
I'll charm your willing ears
With songs of lovers' fears,
While sympathetic tears
My cheeks bedew —
Oh, sorrow, sorrow!
It is February, isn't it? I haven't missed altogether, I hope.
This month's Read Til You Drop is late due to the following pile-up of pathetic excuses: leaves on the track; the sheer depressing awfulness of the political landscape; an unexpected item in the bagging area; and the compendious charms of the book under review, Garth Cartwright's More Miles than Money: Journeys through American music.
This is the record of the latest of the author's many musical journeys; he wrote a book about "journeys with gypsy musicians" called Princes Amongst Men, and he's a Kiwi based in South London. Reading More Miles than Money, you fairly quickly find out that he used to live in San Francisco.
He likes travelling, it seems, and doesn't like what's happened (too late), happening (the horror, the horror) and will happen (the writing is on the wall) to the American music "scene" (that's "scene" on a national scale, I guess). As he sees it, this is much about the destruction of political as musical freedoms.
This means taking in a great range of idiosyncratic destinations: Chicago and San Francisco, but also Tucson, Arizona (home of Howe Gelb, of Giant Sand fame), the Grand Canyon, New Orleans and Los Angeles, Austin, Texas, Nashville and Memphis. In all of these places, Cartwright is "listening out for good music and trying to take freedom's pulse", two things that he reckons are intimately connected, if not virtually the same thing.
Leaving the thesis to one side, however, I'd also call this a book about good company – Cartwright's old friends, new friends (he doesn't get very far with Gelb) and travelling companions. Some of the black-and-white photos show musicians having a good time, in the studio or on stage, in their heydays . . . . It's a nostalgia trip as well as a social commentary.
Admittedly, this isn't a book to win any prizes for its fine prose – too many overheated rhapsodies about the state of the States, and invitations to "Think about it". But there are some extraordinary passages, too. There is the vivid, terrible scene to greet Cartwright when he arrives at the LA Greyhound station at 2am, with the homeless and hopeless wandering around the LA streets. There is the view of Route 66, as once celebrated by Chuck Berry et al, now "a ruin, a highway to hell", etc. Hitch-hiking has been outlawed: "American freedoms just keep getting squeezed".
The overall picture isn't entirely one of Doom and its notorious rhyming friend, Gloom. Against the encroaching corporations and the endemic poverty, there's still hope. Look – Howe Gelb's still around, making music. Did I mention that? That's a good thing, isn't it?
My Dad gave me a lift to Basingstoke.We left the house at 7.00am - painfully early for a teenage student hippie.From Basingstoke I hitchhiked.My first lift got me as far as the Amesbury roundabout on the A 303.I took off my Tuf T boots, lay down in the cropped grass ten yards from the side of the road and promptly fell asleep.
I was awoken by rainfall.My boots were full of water.I spent the next hour or two squelching on foot across Salisbury Plain.I squelched past Stonehenge thumbing in vain; nothing was stopping for me.I was wet and miserable.My thumb ached. In desperation, I stuffed my shoulder-length, freshly shampooed hair into a flat corduroy cap.
Eventually a lorry stopped and picked me up.The driver was a West Country redneck who hated hippies.It was a fairly tense journey, stuffing wayward wisps of long hair back under the rim of my cap.Fearful of blowing my cover I pretended to agree with his outrageous right-wing monologue.I was very wet and had blisters on both feet.I wasn’t going to speak up, get out and walk.
I was one tired hippie when I finally got to Worthy Farm.My pal Tristram had arrived the day before and set up a large blue and yellow PVC geodesic dome with a framework of tubular aluminium.It was about thirty feet in diameter.He’d erected it on the hilltop overlooking the Pyramid Stage.I was very relieved to stash my rucksack in there and remove my damp clothing and unsuitable footwear.The festival was due to kick off the following evening.There was free brown rice and veg and a very relaxed atmosphere.Most people hadn’t arrived yet.After food and a few jazz woodbines we settled down for the night.
There were about six of us in the dome, well spread out.I was lying on my back listening to the wind get up; luxuriating in the sensation of my sleeping bag finally drying out.The dome comprised a patchwork of isoceles triangles and I was grooving on that mandala-like quality and that extra snugness you feel when the weather outside is turning wild.Suddenly… Whoompf . I was staring at high-speed clouds scudding across the night sky.The dome had vanished.
Six half asleep hippies blundered around scrabbling for their kit and bumping into each other. We located the dome about thirty yards away.Tristram hadn’t thought of tent pegs.The wind had picked it up and hurled it halfway down the hill it was all bent and scrunched up; we were mildly traumatised and half asleep.We crawled into the wreckage as best we could and crashed out till daybreak.
In the morning we discovered that it had landed upside down on the deep twin ruts of a cart track. Almost half the aluminium struts had been bent, twisted and crushed beyond repair.‘I think the ley lines on top of the hill were too much for it, man,’ muttered Tristram.For an Old Harrovian with a Keith Richards haircut and a penchant for mandrax, Tristram proved surprisingly adept at resurrecting the wreckage of his dome.It still had the same diameter but, with only half the struts, it was now too low to stand up in and pitched on a slope.It filled up over the next couple of days as more and more people arrived.We all crashed out in a circle every night but slid down the PVC ground sheet in our sleep and woke up in a sweaty heap each morning.
The weather after that first wild night was fantastic: hot and sunny.We basked. It was a very small scale free festival with no separate camping areas.People just pitched up wherever they wanted.We soon had a small encampment of Guildford-based hippies around us in tents and smaller scale domes.To be honest, particularly after the mega-star bills of the previous summer’s Bath and Isle of Wight, the music here was more a sideshow, a background to the whole mystic myth of Glastonbury.And the drugs.
I had with me a tab of ‘window-pane’ acid.It was a small triangle of clear gelatine and came highly recommended.I wanted to be tripping for the solstice.That seemed vital.There was a feeling that by doing the right drug in the right place at the right time you could connect to some powerful, cosmic spiritual interface that would either infuse you with maximum Zen sagacity or put you onboard a Starship bound for the next level of consciousness.Hey, we were hippies.We were young, dumb and full of dope.The bubble had yet to burst. ‘We were starlight we were golden.’ [copyright Joni Mitchell]. However the cosmos had other ideas.
I awoke the morning of my planned trip feeling decidedly queasy.As the morning progressed this feeling intensified until I began vomiting.It was not good.I heaved, I hurled, I chundered, I even cried Ruth.One of those epic sessions where long after you’ve emptied yourself, your body still feels the need to retch again and again and again.Thankfully I had good friends and was well looked after. When I finally finished puking I was completely flat out for 24 hours. I missed the actual solstice both sunrise and sunset.
The following evening I enjoyed Traffic:they did a superb version of Dear Mr. Fantasy.Then, perched on a scaffolding pole, I watched the Hendrix Film ‘RainbowBridge’ projected onto a large white sheet.
The next day I felt fit enough for the psychedelic experience.I let the gelatine dissolve on my tongue and with my friend Abe went down to watch Arthur Brown.
At the front of the stage there were three full crucifixion size crosses.Arthur was tied to the central one.One of his band, dressed as a clown offered him a giant cardboard cut-out hamburger on a stick.Arthur said, ‘No thanks.I’m a vegetarian,’ at which point the two crosses either side of him burst into flame and they kicked off their wild and wacky set.
After a couple of hours I was still awaiting the onset of the LSD.Abe and I concluded that it may have gone off in the heat so he gave me another one.As soon as the gelatine dissolved on my tongue, the first one kicked in.Uh oh.Please fasten your seat belt.Here comes a double trip. Although out of synch with most of our chums Abe was up there with me and we whooshed through the night, lying on our backs walking on clouds, that kind of caper.Just before dawn we made each other laugh so much that we woke everybody up in our little camp.We took the hint and drifted off for a stroll.
By now the sun was rising and we could see someone yelling on the pyramid stage so we walked nearer.He seemed to be asking for donations.I thought it might be for contributions towards the free food.I didn’t bear a grudge about the food poisoning and was feeling so damn good I told Abe I’d give the guy a quid.
We walked around the Pyramid and found steps at the back which we ascended.On stage a guy was shouting out that he was thirsty and a few minutes later somebody came up with a flagon of scrumpy.The shouty guy then shouted that he wanted a smoke, and while he waited for that to appear, he sat down on a carved wooden throne and told us his tale.He was, apparently, a reincarnation of not just King Arthur, but also Ramases the Second of Egypt.Moreover Glastonbury Tor was in the wrong place and this Pyramid had been specifically built to right that geographic wrong.The throne was on the specific spot to maximise the power of the rising sun.
He let me sit in his throne for a couple of minutes and, probably through the power of suggestion, my declining trip started climbing back up considerably whilst I sat there.He passed me the flagon.I took a gulp.Two or three glugs seemed to be stuck together.I had to actually bite the scrumpy and swallow all three glugs at once.By this time ‘a smoke’ had arrived.The guy who brought it told us it was Abyssinian.There was a small footstool beside the throne.The smoke guy sat down on the stage and began to skin up on the footstool.King Arthur suddenly lashed out, kicked the Footstool away and roared, ‘I didn’t give you permission to roll a joint.’Uh oh.Obviously we hung around for the eventual spliff.How often do you get to smoke Abyssinian?
The sun had by now just cleared the horizon.We could see the whole festival site waking up.It was a fabulous view: Glastonbury festival from the front of the Pyramid Stage and another beautiful day just beginning.However by now Rameses/Arthur had removed all his clothing and was shouting, ‘Get off my spaceship,’ like he really meant it.He wasn’t a pretty sight and quite frankly we weren’t prepared to argue.We sauntered off and left him to it.
Back at CampGuildford my friend White Rabbit was packing up ready to drive back to Godalming in his white Morris Minor Estate.It felt like a good time to go soI blagged a space in the car and began packing my rucksack.
We both wanted to climb the Tor before departure.To leave Glastonbury without smoking a spliff on top of the Tor just seemed so wrong, so from Worthy Farm we drove to the bottom of the Tor then walked up and skinned up.It didn’t occur to me till later that since my marathon puking session, my stomach muscles were so weak that I hadn’t managed a bowel movement for over three days.Two hefty tokes on the joint and the laxative qualities of black Pakistani hash kicked in.No you do not have time to get downthe hill it is coming NOW.There was nothing else for it.I went into the tower on top of the Tor, persuaded White Rabbit to guard the portal and dropped my trousers.May God forgive me.It was practically pure muesli.I covered it with grass and leaves as best I could, muttered prayers of forgiveness and walked down the hill, chastened and not quite as full of shit as once I was.
R-T-Y-D is a music news feed and webzine aimed at mature musicians and music fans. If you wish to contibute to it, please contact tobyburton at rock hyphen til hyphen you hyphen drop dot com.
.jpg)
Posts
