It's here at last… Halloween! Tonight I'm out & about leading the Rock'n'Roll London Pub Walk Halloween Special – join me at 7pm Tottenham Court Road tube.
To get you in the Halloween mood, two podcasts - The Famous Monsters of Movieland.
Part One deals with The Werewolf & Part Two concentrates on The Mummy & Frankenstein.
In each one I look at classic (and not-so-classic) horror movies, the legends upon which they are based and look for a London connection in each one…
The Famous Monsters of Movieland No.1… The Werewolf
The Famous Monsters of Movieland No.2… The Mummy & Frankenstein's Monster
Join me on the Ghosts of the Old City tour this Saturday 3rd November. Book here…
Are you dressing-up for my Halloween Ghost walks? Today I'm looking at the famous monsters of movieland from a sartorial perspective. In part one I looked at Dracula and his trademark cape, today the Wolf Man, Frankenstein & The Mummy join us on the catwalk…
The Wolf Man
Committing Double Denim: I don’t care if you ARE The Wolf Man, you can howl all you like, but it’s just a BAD look.
In fact, maybe that’s WHY he’s howling so much. How would you feel if you had to wear a work shirt and denims combo in public? Unless you’re theatre director Sir Trevor Nunn, of course. Doesn’t seem to upset him too much. Or the Marlboro Man.
And at least Sir Trev’s beard is neater.Which brings us to the hair…
Talk about spine chilling. What size of hat would go over such a barnet? 14 and 15/16ths?
The Wolfman and the legend of the werewolf features in this archive episode of the London Walks Podcast…
If you are getting into The Wolfman look for Halloween, then you should definitely check out London's best theatrical makeup shop the old Charles Fox in Covent Garden - now Kryolan City London at 22 Tavistock Street. Find them here…
The Mummy
I will be VERY impressed to meet a walker in full-blown Mummy costume on one of my Halloween ghost walks. In fact I'd go so far to say that if I do meet a Mummy bandaged from head-to-toe, then I'll give her or him a free walk to compensate for the HOURS it would take to get the look just right!
From a sartorial point of view, however, it's not a good look. Drab drab drab. Can The Mummy accessorize? Cufflinks, perhaps? In Scarob beetle blue? Or even, instead of bandages, why not add a few stocks or cravats to the mix?
The Mummy features in this archive episode of the London Walks Podcast…
Frankenstein’s Monster
Here, our model shows the customary two YARDS of cuff…
What the…?
The sleeves, dear boy. It’s not a good look. And it bothers me twice over because it reveals a lack of thought behind Doctor Frankenstein’s otherwise perfectly reasonable scheme of playing God and monkeying about with mortality.
When digging up the bodies and killing the victims for their bits, couldn’t the lazy Doc just have kept the clothes, folded them neatly and put them to one side ready in preparation for the moment when he threw the lever and the monster walked? It’s just bad planning.
And the shoes? Eeeew. Don’t start me. Clumpy barely begins to cover them. Worse even than City types on the tube wearing a suit and (gulp) training shoes. O! The horror…
Here’s Boris Karloff (pictured above) in action…
Karloff's Frankenstein is one of the topics discussed in this archive episode of the London Walks Halloween Podcast. Listen here…
Join me on the Ghosts of the Old City Tour this Halloween. I'm leading the tour on Tuesday 30th October & Saturday 3rd November. Book here…
I'm out-and-about in East London today leading The Unknown East End Tour at 2pm from Whitechapel tube.
As is always the case when heading to the East End, I've got my favourite East Ender on my mind, one of my great musical heroes Lionel Bart.
I'm sharing just three of his many great London works today. Of the three pieces I have chosen, none mention the capital explicitly. But break them open and these songs have London written right through 'em like a stick of rock. As Long As 'e Needs Me…
The showstopper from Oliver! And that's saying something in a show with such an embarrassment of riches in the score. Georgia Brown's version is from the original cast album. It's a voice that could knock yer hat off along the length of The Strand, true as an East End bell. Brown was born Lillian Claire Laizer Getter Klot into an East End Jewish family in Whitechapel in 1933. At the audition for Oliver! in 1960, Bart immediately recognised her as a childhood neighbour from the East End and cried out, "Lilly Klot!"
Who's This Geezer Hitler?
Parody of a wartime comedy morale song – and a very funny one at that.
If 'e was much littler/'e would disappear
'E's a nasty little basket wiv a black moustache/And we won't 'ave 'im 'ere!
In the same show Bart gives us The Day After Tomorrow, and Vera Lynn obliges on the vocal chores. Both songs are so faithful that they could easily have been written on Denmark Street as the bombs nearly hit St Giles Church on the night of the 9th October 1940.
Fings Ain't What They Used T'be…
More a play with music than an out-and-out musical, something more along the lines of Brecht and Weill than Rogers & Hammerstein, this title number from the show that transferred to the Garrick in the West End (with the rhyming slang lyrics translated in the programme notes!) was later covered by the wholesome entertainer Max Bygraves… with cuts made to the bits about hookers, criminal activity and barely-veiled threats of violence. What? Did he just whistle the tune, then? This version is the original cast recording (sorry, Max). Meet me at 2pm Sunday 28th October, Whitechapel tube for The Unknown East End tour. The walk costs £10/£8 pay on the day or book now via my online shop Pay-A-Tour. Click the sign to book…
With Halloween approaching, and the Rock'n'Roll London Pub Walk Halloween Special going out on Wednesday 31st October at 7pm (meeting at Tottenham Court Road tube), here's an excerpt from an archive of The London Walks Podcast - Mayhem & Murder on The Holloway Road, the strange life and brutal end of legendary music producer Joe Meek.
In this post I'll also be looking at his work, most notably Telstar, and there's also an introductory playlist for those new to the work of the man whose influence reaches into the realms of punk and techno.
Joe Meek, trailblazing independent record producer and composer of world-wide hit Telstar worked out of his flat at 304 Holloway Road. By 3rd February 1967 Meek was a haunted man. He was dogged by a bogus plagiarism lawsuit, as well as blackmail cases relating to his outing as a gay man (a criminal offence back in the 60s). Add to this his fiscal woes and the seemingly terminal waning of his reputation as a hitmaker. On the anniversary of his hero Buddy Holly's death, Meek took a shotgun and murdered his landlady Violet Shenton before, in that most chilling of news clichés, turning the gun on himself. He was 37 years old.
Joe Meek's most famous record remains 1962's Telstar, which he wrote and produced for the Tornados. They took it to the top of the British and US charts – the first British group to have a number one record on the Billboard chart.
One of the record's many oddities is that the player of the lead instrument – Geoff Goddard* on the Clavioline – was not even a regular member of the band.
(*See the playlist below for Geoff Goddard's own stab at pop stardom.)
The clavioline – but not ol' Geoff Goddard – can bee seen in one of the Tornados’ early publicity shots, sitting on the shoulder of Roger Lavern, the quintet’s keyboard player…
The clavioline was a forerunner of the analogue synthesiser. A small instrument – a three-octave keyboard – with a separate amp, it was invented in 1947 by a Frenchman called Constant Martin. In its day, it was considered to offer a fairly realistic recreation of up to 30 brass and string instruments – as well as, according to the publicity material, “the beautiful natural voice of the instrument”.
It was sold with a set of metal brackets to attach it to the underside of a piano keyboard, or with optional tripod. The clavioline later made it onto a Beatles track, with John Lennon at the keys on 1967’s Baby You’re a Rich Man. Outside of Telstar, its most famous appearance is on the skipping, descending scale of Del Shannon’s Runaway.
Back in '62 its then futuristic, spacey sound captured the imagination of the questing Meek, and a hit was born.
Joe Meek was born in Gloucestershire in 1929. As a child he was obsessed with electronics and during his national service he was a radar technician in the RAF. A tempestuous character, Meek was the first British independent record producer, recording his own masters and licensing them to the major labels from his north London flat. His legend is based on his meticulous love of sound recording, his unorthodox and ingenious recording methods (recording the drum kit in the bathroom to add echo, for example) and his technical acumen.
Meek was a rare beast, a hybrid of boffin and impresario – part scientist, part song and dance man. And it was the showbiz aspect of this split personality that sent him in pursuit of a gimmick – a USP for each record and act.
On Johnny Remember Me*, the haunting echo and wailing wind effect is memorable; with The Honeycombs* Meek made the female drummer Honey Lantree the focus of the publicity; the novelty Eddie Cochran tribute from his protégé and sometime Tornados bass player Heinz, Just Like Eddie* is another good example.
(*See playlist below)
Meek’s genius on Telstar was to give us not just one gimmick, but three minutes and twenty seconds of gimmick. Every second counts in this landmark production.
The title of the song is taken from the AT&T communications satellite, the first of its kind, launched on 10 July 1962. It is said that, on the morning after the news of the satellite's successful deployment, Meek fell out of bed with the tune already fully formed in his head.
Famously unable to play an instrument or write a note of formal music – Meek was the harbinger of the egalitarian spirit that would suffuse the pop decade ahead – the melody was committed to tape with Meek la-la-ing in his notoriously tone deaf way.
The aforementioned Geoff Goddard – the vital collaborator for many of Meek’s biggest hits – played the melody on the battery-powered clavioline. On the recording, he also adds the piano with drawing pins inserted into the hammers for the special trebly effect.
When musicians and music aficionados remember Joe Meek, it is almost always in a visionary context. He set the benchmark for independent record producers in this country – Andrew Loog Oldham followed in his wake with the Stones. His studio experiments paved the way for the sonic invention that typified the late sixties oeuvre of such luminaries as The Beatles. He even dabbled in an early rock’n’roll concept album (I Hear a New World, released posthumously*). Perhaps above all, he is considered to be the founding father of electronica.
(* See the playlist)
There is an excellent movie of his life and work – Telstar – made in 2009 and starring Con O'Neill's towering portrayal of Meek. Here's the trailer…
The denouement of the movie, towards which the narrative hurtles with all the grim momentum of a satellite plunging to earth, takes place on the 3rd February 1967, the day of his death.
My playlist – 304 Holloway Road: A Beginner's Guide To Joe Meek – has all the tracks named above* with the addition of an early Tom Jones recording and Jack the Ripper by Screaming Lord Sutch & the Savages. The Tornados last hit Is That A Ship I Hear (1966) is also included. The last two tracks are from his concept album, unreleased in his lifetime, I Hear A New World: An Outer Space Music Fantasy.
The Rock'n'Roll London Pub Walk Halloween Special is on Wednesday 31st October at 7pm meet at Tottenham Court Road tube (exit 1).
Join me on a Ghosts of the Old City Tour this October. I'm leading the tour on Tuesday 30th October & Saturday 27th October. Book here…
