MARSHA HUNT - Woman Child

By her own admission, Marsha Hunt was maybe not the most technically accomplished of the many female vocalists to make their mark in the 1960's and on occasion she seemed to overcompensate for inappropriate material by singing in the style of someone trying very hard to get noticed. This collection of songs covering sessions from 1969-1971 is a hotch-potch of bluesy show tunes, swamp rock, Dylan, The Band, Traffic and a brace of songs by the fledgling Marc Bolan. Sometimes she's backed by strings, jazz musicians, rock stars and sometimes it sounds like its a bit of everything.

But like Hunt herself, the whole package gels as a sum of its parts, pulling you back again and again for repeated listens. Whether it's her unpredictable vocals, the ambitious range of material or the top-notch backing, the whole thing seems to work!

What was she anyway? A singer, an actress, a model, a dancer... a groupie? In fact she was all these things. The timeless story of a young ambitious "face" propelling herself into whatever the people with money and influence wanted her to be. Whatever it was Marsha Hunt ensured she was part of it!

Yes it's Marsha's.

Her route to fame was legendary. From a mid-60's Berkeley hanging out with Jerry Rubin, to the London blues scene in the company of Alexis Korner, John Mayall and Long John Baldry. She then auditioned for an unimaginable Soft Machine line-up, gaining UK residency and a husband through a marriage of convenience to keyboardist Mike Ratledge. From a minor role in the major musical "Hair", her exuberant kinky afro soon ended up on all the promo posters and album sleeves and modelling contracts with Lord Litchfield and Horace Ove soon followed.

Dracula AD 1972...err...1973 (in Spain)

Suddenly everyone wanted a piece of Marsha Hunt. The Stones wanted her in the publicity photos promoting their "Honky Tonk Woman" single which she turned down, but by November 1970 she'd given birth to Jagger's daughter and their union immortalised in the Stones iconic "Brown Sugar".  In this period she also appeared in the rock-Othello theatre production "Catch My Soul" and added glamour to the Chelsea-set Hammer horror film "Dracula 1972" (AKA "Dracula Chases the Mini-Girls"). She topped this playing The Nurse at the Rainbow Theatre, Finsbury Park in a symphonic "Tommy" appearing in an admittedly b-team (though eclectic) line-up of David Essex, Elkie Brooks, Vivian Stanshall, Roy Wood, Jon Pertwee and...Bill Oddie. She got around!

Amongst all this in 1969, she picked up a track from Dr John's "Gris Gris" album and unleashed an inspired "Walk on Gilded Splinters" on a quite unprepared British public. The Marie Laveau voodoo bit and the impact of her provocative couture, ended up jamming the BBC switchboards long into the night. Future Yes-man Rick Wakeman contributed the keyboards, but it's the sinister cor anglais obligato that pushes this song beyond the boundaries and into somewhere very dark. The full BBC clip has gone down I'm afraid but you get this:

The flip of the single, a trilled flutes and funky bombast version of Marc Bolan's "Red Hot Poppa" was just as good and the package paved the way for the release of a double Bolan-penned follow-up single "Desdemona / Hippy Gumbo". When originally recorded in 1967, Bolan's band Johns Children imploded in the aftershock of a BBC ban which effectively decapitated their chances of achieving any lasting fame. That the ban was a result of the following lyric says much about the rapid speed of change in those late 60's:

 "Desdemona...Desdemona...Desdemona...
  Lift up your skirt and FLY!"

Slowed down into a funky groove, Marsha lives the lyric, crafting the definitive interpretation to the extent that it could have been written for her alone. Of particular note is the superb choir of fellow yank exiles Madeleine Bell, Nanette Workman and Doris Troy. They would appear on multiple records in this period, including The Stones "Let it Bleed" and their backing vocals add a sweet counterpoint to Marsha's exuberant wailing. When their soul chorus merges halfway through with the string arrangement, "Desdemona" is propelled high indeed. Great piano too!

The Bolan connection came about through producer Tony Visconti, another displaced American carving a niche for himself in a vibrant London scene. Working on Tyrannosaurus Rex's "Unicorn" LP at Trident Studios in Soho he introduced the pair and as he memorably recorded:

"you could see the shafts of light pouring out of their eyes into each other...We finished the session unusually early and Marc and Marsha walked out into the night"

Hunt and Bolan clicked and in addition to composer royalties the diminutive one hung around long enough to add memorable backing vocals to a dramatic cover of The Supremes "My World is Empty Without You". His un-restrained ejaculations add a haunting presence to an already edgy inversion of the Motown template. Visconti's sweeping strings go even further turning this into something akin to an Anglo-American "Je T'aime Moi Non Plus"!

Other songs of note include the spooky title track "Woman Child" and the old-time jazz excursion "Moan You Moaners" cut with a visiting Count Basie Orchestra. The LP was recorded on Track Records with label boss Kit Lambert overseeing production of a couple of songs and in-house genius Pete Townshend adding the flesh to a rolling version of "Long Black Veil". Its also The Who-man's distinctive guitar runs that slash through an admittedly ragged "Wild Thing" finale, recorded in the company of Ron Wood, Kenney Jones and Ian McLaglen of The Faces.

To these ears the Simon and Garfunkel song is a mistake and there is a very unflattering YouTube clip of a pregnant Marsha BLARING this out to an absolutely bored Italian TV audience. The pre and post song interviews are particularly painful with her hair-style occupying the most coherent question and with arms folded she strains to hide her irritation. Track down the 1972 Italian TV performance instead with her frugging away on oversized building bricks with a Roman version of the Young Generation. For a moment she looks like she is going to be very big indeed.

It is a flawed LP (and it is after all a compilation) but the great moments are many and when it hits its stride the overall sound works wonders. There's a great deal of care given to the arrangements and the ensemble playing is consistently impressive in both the thrashing rock and the moody ballads. Once again we're reminded of how much talent was around at the time and these recordings sound like the collaborative effort of friends as opposed to rivals. There were plenty of egos on show but it doesn't come across.

One final request - go back to the top and really blast out "Hot Rod Poppa". And when you've done it can someone please tell me who the hell is playing that guitar?

LUIGI BAZZONI -The Fifth Cord / Footprints

The Fifth Cord (Giornata Nera Par L'Ariete) - 1971
Footprints (Le Orme) - 1974

In the first film, a disorientated man becomes entangled in a web of murder and vice, in the second a lonely woman drifts through time and space towards a recurring nightmare. The films are by the little known Luigi Bazzoni and they capture the essence of giallo.

Italian for yellow, the term giallo came to signify the mystery genre in Italy due to the popularity of the yellow-spined novels that appeared from the 1930's onwards. The likes of Agatha Christie, Raymond Chandler and even Edgar Allen Poe, all found a home between the garish covers printed on cheap paper ubiquitously sold in garages and newsagents the length and breadth of the Italian peninsula. After the war the term encompassed the full range of imported crime films, taking in film-noir through Hitchcock to the German krimi productions of the Edgar Wallace mysteries. As the 1960's progressed, elements of the French fantastique genre mixing comic book, horror and sci-fi were added to the mix, which by the end of the decade resulted in a complete re-marketing of the giallo-product.

The commercial success of Dario Argento's iconic 1969 film, "The Bird with the Crystal Plummage" set the template for this new breed of stylistic thriller with worthy contributions soon following from the likes of  Mario Bava, Luciano Ercoli and Lucio Fulci. "The Bird With the Crystal Plummage" not only set the template for the look and the plotting but also the bizarre zoophilia in film titles that became a requisite selling point until the mid-1970's. "The Black Belly of the Tarantula", "Lizard with a Woman's Skin", "The Cat O' Nine Tails" and "The Case of The Scorpion's Tale" would all follow, culminating in Fulci's ill-fittingly titled masterpiece "Don't Torture a Duckling". In this context Luigi Bazzoni's 1971 entry "The Fifth Cord" at least merited an alter-ego based on its Italian title as "The Black Day of the Ram".

The film is a memorable addition to the genre containing many of the core iconic requisites. The sad-eyed Franco Nero plays the hero implicated in the mysterious crimes, unravelling the complex plot through a depressive whisky hangover. (The ubiqutious product-placement of the J&B label on show in this film is a recurring giallo within giallo.) The black gloved killer pursues his victims from a point of view perspective and there is a de rigour subplot in which morally corrupt older men exploit young people, mirroring the generational conflicts in contemporary Italian society. The stylish camera-work and lighting, working in tandem with the immaculate Ennio Morricone score, raise the overall product above a plot which like so many giallos twists and turns around a fairly preposterous motive for the actual murders. Indeed the whole genre, more accurately labelled thrilling all'italiana, is an abject lesson in Italian style over essence. Even when the blood comes it's bathed in chic profundo rosso.

That said, this is not to denigrate "The Fifth Cord" or the genre itself as mere vacuous exercises in style. These films were made to look good and 40 years on their immaculate "look" remain an integral and inescapable part of the viewing experience. In 1974's "Footprints", when Brazillian actress Florinda Bolkan walks from her ultra-modern office, framed by a towering block of steel and glass, we go "wow!" because she is a beautiful woman giving meaning to the modernist architecture of the surroundings. The giallo offers us an alternative universe in which the concrete visions of Le Corbusier and Oscar Niemayer cast 70's Italian cities as modernist utopias. The characters exist in surroundings torn straight out of Sunday colour magazines with their style complimenting the narrative as fully as the shadow photography of Film Noir or the horses charging through the Monument Valley Western.  

Adding futurist landscapes to a story that loosely plays with Science Fiction gives the mystery at the heart of "Footprints" a profundity somewhat deeper than the average giallo. As a result the film stays to haunt the audience long after the end credits, inspiring repeated viewings.

The memorable Florinda Bolkan

We wonder what planet Bolkan's character Alice is actually on when she visits the out of season resort of Garma. The mosques tell us she is in Turkey but it is never mentioned. The mysterious Garma is a strange place somewhere in the subconscious. This Alice in wonderland is drawn to the resort through an instinctive feeling that it holds the key to an understanding of her loss of memory and her recurring sedative-enhanced nightmares. Where in "The Fifth Cord" the mood is dark and oppressive with distorted camera angles mirroring the disorientating decadence of narcotics, "Footprints" takes place in clear Mediterranean light. Where the mysteries of the former film are hidden in shadows, Alice's fears are to be found within a fracturing mind, straining like her eyes in the bright sunlight of the day. It's an unsettling contrast.

Edwige

The popularity of the genre ensured that the more lurid traits of giallo found expression in a number of lesser works that either cranked up the grand guignol horror or provided exposure to a cavalcade of European lovelies. (The work of Edwige Fenech springs to mind in the latter category). Many of these films maintain the high production values, but the routine nature of their contrived plot-construction leave them largely forgettable. It is a brave man indeed who sets upon the task of consuming the 200-plus films made within this period that feature some elements of the iconography. But dip into giallo with this double-bill of Bazzoni films and you might be pleasantly surprised with what you find. 

ROBIN GIBB - Saved by The Bell

Fifth of November 1967, the Hastings to London train, from it's tracks...was driven.

In his control box the Hither Green signal guard reported the wheels as burning white hot. The impact sent the 17 year old Robin Gibb, dressed in mac and trilby, head-first from his seat into the overhead luggage rack. His 19 year old girlfriend clutched her mother's bread pudding for dear life as rails smashed through the window, inches away from her head. Before long there were 53 dead passengers scattered across the tracks and 78 severely injured, many receiving on the spot amputations. Face black with oil, Gibb assisted the survivors including a small boy who screamed "The driver's dead! The driver's dead!". Not long after, Gibb entered a period of sustained post-traumatic shock. Already a sensitive child, brother Barry opined, "he was never the same again".

Robin Gibb's AMBITIOUS title track to the 1968 double album "Odessa" would be the culmination of the Bee Gee's intense synthesis of the late 1960's music scene. Like an immensely gifted ocean cruise band, the brothers whipped their way through Beatlesque pop, blue-eyed soul and sweeping ballads, even dipping their toes into voguish swamp rock and country and western sounds. It was all here. Arranger Bill Shepherd was given free reign to articulate their grandiose visions and the pudding was predictably over-egged with the inclusion of instrumental tracks representing each brother. Robin's "The British Opera" closed proceedings in a suitably epic fashion prefiguring his little heard massed strings and choir "Moon Anthem", recorded in tribute to Apollo11. In the pressing plant, the unique red flock cover of "Odessa" forced a rash to break out on the assembly line, but within the family more significant problems were breaking out.

In an atmosphere of rising egotistical tensions which were seemingly orchestrated by management, Robin left the band to venture out into a wilderness of legal writs and bad blood. Amongst statements confirming his admiration for Charles Dickens, talk of a film about Henry VIIIth and a brace of anachronistically jingoistic comments about Empire, he embarked on a series of nocturnal recordings at the IBC studies in Portland Place. His single "Saved By The Bell" followed the established formula of emotional balladry entwined in quavering falsetto harmony and strings, but the sessions also utilised a primitive drum machine and a plinking plonking moog synthesiser. At nearly 13 minutes the sweeping  "Hudson's Fallen Wind", was like a dark cousin to the Beach Boys "Smile", recounting as it did the chaos and disaster inflicted on a Mid-West farmer in the storm season. Gibb's verse concerning the screams of cattle lost to the maelstrom of a typhoon seemed to bring to mind his own recent traumas.

Austrian sleeve

The resulting album "Robin's Reign", would feature only a fragment of this track, with the running order dedicated to his slightly troubling ballads. The mood was dark and strange with songs that evoked another age. "I get the feeling I was born in the wrong century" he would quip to reporters, glossing over a lyrical content not only influenced by Victoriana but one seemingly contemplating the sacrifice of The Great War. Another lost track , "Alexandria Good Time", which was considered as a possible b-side, sets Winston Churchill's "History of the English Speaking Peoples" to a dirge-like funeral procession. "Gone Gone Gone" was one of many meditations on loss whilst the LP closer "Most of My Life" repeats the same words over and over:

"Most of my life I had to run away
 Life was a game and I just had to play
 The friends that I thought I had, were never there
 You look for love, but you don't know where" 

Other intriguing songs remain as mere titles. If we can hazard a guess about the subject matter of "My Love Life Expired", one can only wonder about what was going on in "The Band Will Meet Mr Justice" and "The People's Public Poke"?

A solo concert in New Zealand resulted in a memorable performance of "Massachusetts" with a tomato hitting him at the start of the song and a girl pushing him into the on-stage orchestra at the end! Back in London he complained to the press of living in poverty in his big house in stockbroker belt Virginia Water, fuelling accusations of exploitation by his 22 year old wife (the girl with the bread pudding). This period resulted in Gibb having the ignominy of being made a Ward of Court by his concerned father. (Hugh Gibb was also tellingly the Bee Gees business manager). The solo path was proving a strange place to be. This clip gives a flavour:

The recordings continued into 1970 and if anything Gibb was becoming increasingly avant-garde. The songs from this period have been widely bootlegged but this doesn't make them the any easier to compehend. The mood is austere with an anguished sub-text that even brings to mind the distinctly alien feel of Nico's harmonium-accompanied recordings. Scott Walker would certainly have been the life and soul of the party compared to this stuff! The lyrics are deeply mournful and seem to sketch out a possible war-time story-line. The overall atmosphere is actually enhanced by the rough bootlegged quality, as though it was pressed on scratchy early-20th Century shellac. This gives it the convincing sound of music made in another age, an accident that Duchamp and the other cut and paste surrealists would certainly have approved of ! The actual recordings are a marked improvement on the previous album's almost low-fi sound with more cohesive arrangements that in their ambition quote such diverse sources as Gustav Holst, Richard Strauss and "Big Country" composer Jerome Moross. But for the most part it is simple orchestration, harpischord and Robin's multi-tracked vocals, quavering over moody doom-filled lyrics. The LP was rumoured to have been titled "Sing Slowly Sisters" after the following song and it gives a good representation of the sound:

NB: This stuff has now come out in pristine quality. Get hold of it!!

Father Hugh, Robin, Barry, drummer Geoff & Maurice

By the summer of 1970 Robin was back in the fold and the brothers Gibb were once more The Bee Gees. In interviews his relief at being returned to the fold was palpable and his statements dismissing his solo work sound like the words of a young man chastised for staying out all night. He was now back at the table and the band continued where they left off. This 1971-72 period resulted in albums that contain a wealth of unfairly neglected material and both "To Whom it Might Concern" and "Trafalgar" demand re-appraisal. In the latter you can hear a band making up for lost time with the album concept a probable hangover from Robin's history fix. The inside sleeve of the gate-fold features Barry as Admiral Nelson with Robin leaning over him as Hardy. Tellingly father Hugh looms over the pair keeping a watchful eye on his combative child prodigy's.

The 1969 break-up would prove to be an aberration in a career which would go from strength to strength. They would conquer America, establish themselves in the international pop firmament and tan wildly. Whether the stuff they knocked out from the mid 70's was any good is far beyond this humble scribe's remit. But I can certainly confirm that the under performing records from their crisis years and the stuff left mouldering in cardboard boxes in Marylebone recording studios, is very good and demands pulling out.

Here's Robin, synthesizing his historical obsessions into something mega Bee Gee.

MARK WIRTZ - A Teenage Opera

"Stop what you're doing, put the ironing board down and listen to this! It's the new single from the Teenage Opera!"

(DJ Tony Blackburn, BBC Radio One, Nov. 1967)

Like a call to arms, the message spluttered over a million transistor radios the length and breadth of the British Isles that Autumnal morning in 1967. The Portland Place relay bounced with an unstoppable momentum winding over field and dale to the Eastern lowlands of Trimley St Martin and on past the vast conurbations of the industrial North. Over the Welsh borders and deep into the pork scratchings heartland of the Black Country. The message finally settling in the blinking transmission mast located in suburban Sydenham, high above the "Great Wen" itself.

This was it! After many months of careful preparation the latest instalment of "The Teenage Opera" was ready to be unleashed...!

And if they wern't sitting down when it started they most certainly were by the time it ended. But unfortunately nobody seemed to get up again to go out and buy it and another hype drifted into the ether.

Mark Wirtz. Hard at it.

The failure of the record put paid to the release of the mooted film, stage show, double album...probable moon-shot... and all the feverish debate that had dominated the music press since that July. The concept's signature-tune smash, "Grocer Jack (Excerpt From a Teenage Opera)", had swept all before it that summer and seemed to usher in the next paradigmatic shift in pop music production, originating as it did from from the very same studios that had given birth to "Sgt Pepper". The songs were the brainchild of German wunderkind and Abbey Road staff producer, Mark Wirtz, sometime MOR songwriter and arranger of period curios for the likes of Caroline Munro, Bob Monkhouse and Barbara Windsor ("Don't Dig Twiggy"... anybody?). Wirtz was also the producer and mentor to underground pop-group Tomorrow and for much of that year, band members Steve Howe and Keith West found themselves cajoled into extra-curricula "Teenage Opera" sessions when not working on their own album.

Tomorrow were a band dogged with frustration despite their recognition as founder members of the original British psychedelic wave. Their club appearances were contemporaneous with the likes of Soft Machine, Pink Floyd and The Crazy World of Arthur Brown but bad luck and management saw them miss commercial opportunities for wider success. In 1966 the band auditioned for Michaelangelo Antonioni's opaque and frankly loopy swinging city statement "Blow Up" starring David Hemmings and Vanessa Redgrave, but they lost the gig to The Yardbirds. They did however wind up in sister Lynne Redgrave's almost anti-"Blow-Up" satire "Smashing Time", written by surrealist jazzer George Melly. In this exuberant and genuinely uplifting camp romp, the band had an acting role as "The Snarks" appearing in a manic custard pie fight and an even more manic party at the long-gone revolving restaurant of the Post-Office Tower. By the time of the film's release their album was in the can but the unexpected success of "Grocer Jack" convinced EMI to sit on it.

Tomorrow (Keith West & Steve Howe left)

The company found themselves with a potential money-spinner with Wirtz creating manifold spin-off songs to bulk up a full-on concept album. What the concept was wasn't exactly clear, but that year's new children's show "Trumpton" seemed to be sipping the same creative juices and one imagines a film version might have ended up like the whimsical 1969 featurette, "Les Bicyclettes De Belsize". Unfortunately for vocalist and co-writer Keith West he found himself an integral part of the whole package and when Tomorrow left London to tour the wild provinces that year, they found themselves compelled to play the song in their set. Exactly how this came off without the orchestra and children's choir is anyones guess!

The failure of the brilliant, "Titfield Thunderbolt"-inspired, "Sam" brought the curtain down on the whole thing but for Tomorrow it was too late. Media-promoted psychedelia rapidly came to a close with The Beatles "Magical Mystery Tour" film fiasco and at the "Christmas on Earth" extravaganza at Olympia in December, the band shared the stage with a rapidly imploding Pink Floyd and proto-metal showman, Jimi Hendrix. The year gave way to the cold reality of 1968 and with the momentum lost the band members split for pastures new. West tried for an Apple contract but lost out whilst guitarist Howe, responsible for the impressive West-coast raga-rock sound on the band's eponymous Parlophone album, finally released in February 1968, had to wait a good 2 years to find a similar band to match his talent. (Yes I know he joined Yes!)
 
In the meantime Wirtz soldiered on with his backlog of recordings issuing a number of singles under different guises, including another remarkable excerpt from "The Teenage Opera" under his own name. The February 1968 single "(He's Our Our Dear Old) Weatherman", was another Toy-Town masterpiece with Wirtz fashioning a Wagnerian cacophany of BBC light programme strings, children's choir, kazoos, tub-thumping drums and trademark balalaikas. His phased teutonic phrasing make this a particularly memorable number. It beggars belief that this was released as a single and needless to say it sank like a stone:

Phil Smee of Bam Caruso fame compiled a "Teenage Opera" facsimile a few years ago on RPM Records which shouldn't be too tricky to track down. (He once taped for me a Czechoslovakian "Beat 67" LP which I never thanked him for...) The CD is fleshed out with too much material to make it a comfortable listening experience but one is grateful for the effort put in and great fun can be had assembling an ideal 45 minute LP from the sessions (...I mean if you've not much on!). At times it's easy listening, at times it's whimsical pop but throughout it's uniquely Mark Wirtz, with the kitchen sink never far away. It's not the British version of "Smile" but I can't think of too many other pop records with such misplaced ambition. I'll post a definitive imagined version of this album later on. I've just got to track down all the necessary tracks annoyingly scattered elsewhere.

As the summer of 1968 saw the last vestiges of psychedelia give way to hard rock and roots music, Keith West in the company of Ron Wood, Aynsley Dunbar and Steve Howe, returned with a solo single. The quite beautiful "On a Saturday" gives a hint of the star West could have been if things had fallen into place. The song's summer into autumn feel, pensive lyrics and jazzy guitar and drums offer a sweet counterpoint to Wirtz's sturm und drang excesses.

I think I'll leave you with this. A bit like a cool mint after a rich curry:

RAY DAVIES -Spring 1966

"Days went by, I walked around dressed in a disguise.
 I wore a moustache and I parted my hair 
 And gave the impression that I didn't care
 But oh the embarrassment, oh, the despair!
 Came the day, helped by a few large glasses of gin,
 I nervously mounted the stage once again, 
 Got through my performance and no one complained
 Thank god I can go back to normal again"
 All of My Friends Were There 

On the 16th April 1966 a moustached Ray Davies appeared on stage with The Kinks at the Locomotive Club, Paris. He'd been absent for 6 weeks, recovering from a pressure-induced breakdown. The day before, TIME magazine had published it's infamous "London The Swinging City" edition. The cover montage of dolly-birds and old-money aristocrat's strewn over Westminster Bridge, encapsulated the rough-hewn cut and paste exuberance of the moment and The Kinks radio hit of the day added a soundtrack that seemed to celebrate this resplendent Spring:

"He thinks he is a flower to be looked at,

 And when he pulls his frilly nylon panties RIGHT UP TIGHT

 He feels a dedicated follower of fashion"

NME March 1966 , Ray (right)

But the only thing right up tight was the song's tortured composer. 

The previous month, ex-art student Ray had drawn a portrait of The Kinks on the cover of the NME at the request of management to promote the Dedicated Follower of Fashion single. Ray's self-portrait in floral roll-neck sweater was a picture of coiled rage and pent-up frustration. The song had been inspired by a punch-up he'd had with a fashion-designer at a pre-Christmas party and the actual recording sessions had been laboured with the composer emerging less than satisfied with the finished product. One speculates whether the jolly sounding camp of the final version came as a commercial compromise, with a searing personal character assassination hidden somewhere on scraps of paper in the Davies archive.

The period running up to Christmas 1965 had been marked with a rash of darker songs reflecting the rigours of the tread-mill music business, featuring increasingly acerbic lyrics. Sharpening around the grey reality of life, the songs were offering an uncomfortable reality check on the swinging decade. From the summer the contemptuous A Well Respected Man had heralded the first of a long-line of character portraits highlighting lives that offered little real reward. Where Have All The Good Times Gone and I'm On An Island were self-evident statements of Davies own state of mind regarding his own predicament and they were soon followed by I'm Not Like Everybody Else, a song so close to the bone that it was originally seen as being unsuitable for the band to record. The demos recorded at the time give an even more undiluted view of Davies world view. All Night Stand, from December was an essay in exhaustion:

"All night stand, been around seen a million faces, yeah
 All night stand, seen a good half a million places, yeah
 All night stand, can't get these people off my back.
 All night stand, ten percent for this and that.
 All night stand, all night stand..."

During this period the band recorded a song that would remain buried in the vaults. Influenced by Dylan's vitriol, Mr Reporter featured lyrics that did not not sit well with the hit-machine image that management had them firmly locked into. This was a song that would be impossible to promote:

At around this time Davies began to balance his increasingly dark satirical vignettes with a strand of quasi-philosophical lyrics seemingly written to pull himself out of depression. The songs varied in tone and delivery but they clearly reached out to "bigger forces" putting the everyday grind into perspective. Songs like Lazy Old Sun and Big Sky with their reference to heavenly bodies, have their origins in the sentiments expressed in The World Keeps Going Round which first appeared in November 1965. The lyric circles around a world-weary acceptance that this is how it is so we might as well just get on with it:

"You worry 'bout the sun, 
 What's the use in worrying 'bout the big ol' sun
 You worry 'bout the rain, 
 The rain keeps falling just the same"

On 4th February a group called The Lancastrians would release their version of the song, marking a period filled with cover versions of Davies product. With the encouragement of a management eager to utilise their prize songwriting asset, Davies would embark on his first forays into extra-curricula activity, writing songs to order like Leapy Lee's King of The Whole Wide World (featuring back-up from The Kinks) and a proposed LP project with "Private Eye" contributor and TV presenter Barry Fantoni. The resulting single Little Man in a Little Box emerges as a typically moody Davies lyric, with the song's protagonist lost in his TV world isolated from his audience and his love:

On 26th February 1966 in between TV performances in London and Birmigham The Kinks appeared in concert in Nelson, Lancashire, squeezing in an appearance at "The Inn Place" boutique in Blackburn. The first week of March was then spent touring Switzerland and Austria. At the end Ray collapsed with exhaustion.

Whilst the band toured France and Belgium with a stand-in guitarist and a Carnaby Street film promoted the Dedicated Follower of Fashion single on TV, Ray convalesed at his North London home. But things got worse. On 17th March he famously ran from Muswell Hill down to central London and attacked the band's publicist Brian Sommerville. Whisked away into the care of a psychiatrist, The Kinks were seemingly in disarray.

Yet the release of tension would turn out to be a godsend. Already banned from US touring, the band now scaled down their live commitments in the UK and Europe. The semi-retirement would effect the band members already parlous finances but the benefits would soon bear fruit. Davies would use the time to compulsively write out his problems in song and the greater proportion of the brilliant LPs recorded in the next 2 years would have their genesis in this public hiatus period. By the time Davies returned to the fold in Paris the band were back in full swing, recording their landmark "Face to Face" LP at the Pye Records Marble Arch studios. The songs reflected the turbulance of the period to a greater or lesser extent. Too Much on My Mind is a stark appraisal of mental health, Rainy Day in June a malevolent fantasy induced by depression and Fancy an altogether elliptical commentary on the enigmatic source of the band's stardom:

Face to Face 1966

"No one can penetrate me,
 They only see what's in their own fancy,
 Always"

But the songs were wrapped in a sound that at least gave the impression that the good-time band were back. A garish pop-art sleeve added to the myth and despite further setbacks including the temporary loss of bassist Pete Quaife in a road accident, 1966 was turning into a good year after all. It is interesting to note how Davies reacted to the second Harold Wilson administration that Spring. The increased austerity gave the country a wake-up call and the newly impoverished Kinks would mark the changing times with songs about upper-class despondency (Sunny Afternoon, Most Exclusive Residence For Sale, End of the Season) and working class hardship framed in Dickensian terms (Dead End Street, Big Black Smoke). The sound was whimsical if not "chipper", but the dark clouds were never far away in Ray Davies world.

To balance this Ray continued to develop a strand of songwriting dedicated to the management of his own state of mind, writing songs that challenged him to transcend everyday circumstances. These songs were clearly therapeutic in their design and at their best, joyous celebrations of the simple pleasures of life. They would culminate in Days recorded 2 years later. Davies was now emulating the positivism encapsulated by the poet Rilke:

"...try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now."  

We leave with one such reflection, written with the wisdom of someone who's been run through the mill and come out the other side. This is Where I Belong:

MINA - The Tiger of Cremona

Mina Mazzini was an Italian singer responsible for one of the greatest pop-melodramas ever recorded. In her rise to stardom she encountered many obstacles and the bitter lessons learnt ultimately lead her to a life of self-imposed exile. 

By the early 1960's the former rock'n'roll Queen of the Screamers was beginning to experience the downside of her provocative stardom. The exuberant repertoire of her early songs reflected the usual teenage obsessions but they also reflected the deeper repressed vitality of life within a highly conservative society.

As a nation-state Italy is not unique in it's ability to dupe the masses with democracy, whilst an elite minority oversees a process that siphons off the nation's wealth. In Italy however this process is re-inforced by the alliance of Church and State which dictates a strong moral justification for the preservation of this status quo. Mina almost single handedly invented the pop-singer in Italian society through her immense popular appeal to the proletarian masses of both the working class north and the impoverished agrarian south. The hypocrisy of Italian society is however so entrenched that once she overstepped the moral code in her personal life, the recording industry whose pockets she lined, felt compelled to join as one in an attempt to sacrifice her.

Mina found herself banned from the the state controlled RAI public broadcasting company due to a scandal caused by her relationship with a married actor and the pregnancy that followed. New recordings and TV appearances were suppressed and after the death of her brother in a car accident, her withdrawal from public life was complete. The authorities however found it hard to maintain censure of a figure of such genuine popular appeal and unsurprisingly the ban was lifted despite renewed efforts from the RAI to maintain standards. Commercial considerations ultimately dictated how far morality could be pushed and the Italian public democratically voted Mina back with their lira. An image-conscious but impotent Vatican looked on, as Mina returned back to the charts, stronger than ever. It is interesting to gauge just how much damage had been inflicted on society by Mina's moral weakness by the haste with which the world of commerce would embrace her triumphant return. Indeed a contract with the Batolli pasta company would soon prove a lucrative arrangement for all concerned.

This period would also mark the beginning of an artistically rich period with her highly melodramatic multi-octave vocals given free reign over material edging into uncharted taboo areas. Here is a pregnant Mina back on the TV demonstrably proving that "one kiss is not enough" :

Songs became dedicated to a liberalising agenda glorifying the pleasures of sex and the similarly outrageous act of smoking as in "Ta-ra-ta-ta (Fumo Blu)" (Blue Fumes). Pushing things further she covered Wilson Simonal's Brazilian samba "Nem Vem Que Nao Tem" which toyed with sex and religion with it's references to the devil (Tellingly the song would be camped up by Brigitte Bardot as "Tu Veux Ou Tu Veux Pas" a couple of years later). A run of memorable songs would follow culminating in a moment of genuine creative genius that would transcend the lower-brow nature of this thing dismissed as "pop-music". In 1966 the collaboration with composer Ennio Morricone would result in the phenomenal and deeply moving "Se Telefonando" (If Over The Phone). Famously inspired by the sound of police sirens, the song eschews Anglo-Saxon pop-song conventions with a unique repeating crescendo of choruses mirroring the rising emotional intensity of the song's protagonist. The song is a revolutionary experiment in pop and arguably un-equalled by anything recorded in Britain or the USA at the time. In this song we have to concede that verses are irrelevant when the chorus is this immense:

Mina was now the iconic symbol of assertive Italian womanhood. She'd ridden the wave and crashed but was now back, firmly in control of her own destiny. In this period she married and embarked on very public affairs with actors Walter Chiari and rising star Gian-Maria Volonte, then making a name for himself in the Morricone-scored westerns of Sergio Leone. By 1969 she had entered the third phase of her career mixing bossa-nova and easy listening songs to reflect the upwardly mobile direction of a maturing fan-base then enjoying a relative boom in living standards. Blues and soul work-outs featured in her repertoire and her sound mirrored the influence of singers like Dionne Warwick and Dusty Springfield. At 5ft 10" Mina cut an imposing figure. At the start of her career she'd been dubbed The Tiger of Cremona and she was now emulating that image with her shaved eyebrows and heavily made-up eyes glaring through a mane of long golden dyed hair. The 1970 song "Viva Lei" (Hurray For You) was a virtual manifesto of what she was now all about with it's depiction of a woman breaking free from chains she didn't need. One wonders if this is a song about a relationship or whether it's actually about Italy itself. The song certainly starts with a look that says "Don't mess with me!" and the smile at the end screams "F##k you!". It's mid period Mina at her very best:

The "Insieme/Viva Lei" single marked the tipping point where the Tiger of Cremona transcended her role as a record industry sex-object to become THE diva of Italian pop music. It also marked her 30th year.

The success of the record set the template for her future career and ushered in a productive collaboration with songwriters Lucio Battisti and Mogol. (Mogol had penned the original which as "I Who Have Nothing" would become a standard for Sinatra and Matt Monroe amongst others). She now had greater control over her albums and recorded in Lugano, her Swiss home since the mid-60s exile, she was now geographically and symbolically just beyond the control of the Milanese record industry. Each year an album would appear following the same formula, highlighted by European hits like "Grande Grande Grande", a song covered by fellow-diva Shirley Bassey as "Never, Never, Never". One of her best albums 1972's "Cinquemilaquantre" would feature "Parole Parole", an almost comical duet with Alberto Lupo, where the singer mocks her suitor, degrading his fawning confessions of love as mere words, words, words. It would become a much-parodied song and it's popularity would lead to a similar duet in France between Dalida and Alain Delon.

In the mid 70's like Bobbie Gentry in the USA, Mina would commence her retreat from the public eye making her final TV appearance in 1974. In 1978 she performed an emotional and final concert performance at the Bussola Nightclub in Tuscany. She continued to record and to this this day releases at least one new LP a year to a fan-base bolstered by a new generation taking advantage of the availability of iconic 60's and 70's recordings.

It might be said that she compromised her sound in the 70's through the adoption of the prevalent mid-Atlantic trends of the day and it is certainly true that the work is more formulaic than some of the truly innovative records that she made in the mid-60's. However there is much to admire in her 70's output and Italian pop music in general enjoyed something of a renaissance in this period with the rise of other female singers like Patty Parvo, Milva and Ornella Vanoni.

Ultimately however the musical legacy of Mina is constantly referred back to that collaboration with Morricone. A recent poll in "La Repubblica" voted the song as Mina's finest achievement. It is intriguing to consider that in theory the pair could get together and do this live in concert....

ANDRE DELVAUX-Un Soir, Un Train

Released 1968

And now a trip to the complex patch of European mud called Belgium.

In Andre Delvaux's film, the opening shots of the frozen, misty Flemish landscape symbolically reflect the distancing bond between Yves Montand's linguistics professor and his stage-director partner Anouk Aimee. The doom-filled love song played over the titles makes this impression explicit but the surreal turn of the narrative gives the film a unique depth that reveals a great deal more. If you can imagine what a collaboration between Bergman and Tarkovsky might have looked like, well this is it.

Aimee's portrayal of Anne reveals an independent woman, marooned in an alien culture, drifting iceberg-like from Montand's Mathias. Through flashback we gain insight into their relationship beginning with a fable-like first encounter at Christmas Mass in Spain, their two lost souls magically connecting before an open fire. Then through a chilly detour in London, a scruffy pack of kids by the Rotherhithe quayside, puncture an afternoon, emphasising the absence of children in their life. By late summer they wrap themselves round each other in a fatalistic show of tenderness, with one eye on a farmer malevolently chopping wood on the horizon. The scene acting as a literal and metaphorical preparation for the cold days ahead.

Anouk 

In their flat they dine in oppressive silence sipping wine over oysters. Rejecting Matthias' plans for a romantic afternoon Anne finds herself rejected when the offer to accompany him to a University in the Flemish north is dismissed as linguistically in-sensitive due to her French mother tongue. Yves Montand in the midst of a compelling run of mid-career acting performances, stands passively aloof to Anne's isolation, failing to grasp how close he is to losing her. When Anne unexpectedly appears in his train carriage they exchange words and a smile, teetering on the edge of reconciliation, teetering on the edge of an abyss.

Like a maverick travelogue director, Delvaux connects artistic portrayals of his culture, to the different phases of the film. Here the gloomy pastoral imagery of Breughal is evoked by the wintery flat-lands flashing by the train windows. Outside a stark church organ in homage to Cesar Franck, accompanies the wind whipping the ploughed fields. And before long the film unexpectedly lurches into the subconscious dream world of the 20th Century Belgian surrealist masters.

Awaking from sleep Matthias finds Anne gone, the train at a standstill and the passengers asleep. Leaving the train in the company of an older colleague and a former pupil, the men suddenly find themselves stranded on the tracks as the train abruptly pulls away. With a rational resolve to find a telephone they wander across the landscape, finally huddling round a fire as the night closes in. Then finding a deserted town they search for human life and food.

Here the director evokes the world of his namesake Paul Delvaux. In his canvasses Delvaux obssesses about empty nocturnal train stations shining in moonlight and archaic vistas decorated with owl-eyed alabaster nudes. In all his paintings there is a feeling of people and time waiting portentously for things to happen. The mood extends to the three strangers as they wander through the illuminated empty terraced streets. Finding a cinema they sit impassively through a bizarre and disturbing film depicting floating bodies suspended in mid air. Then gaining directions from a man speaking in an alien tongue, they find their way to a busy back-street hotel restaurant. Here they encounter the enigmatic Moira.

The film lends itself to multiple interpretations due to its multi-layered symbolism and a direction which gives the most innocuous scenes added significance. The Belgian setting in itself is a master-stroke, exploiting the Director's conservative and culturally divided homeland with the underlying tension forever threatening the bourgeois status quo. It is interesting to note that the student protests over linguistic dominance that we see rumbling in the background, were also captured in the contemporary James Coburn thriller "Hard Contract". At the same time the films of Harry Kumel were similarly exposing the eeriness found in the Flemish landscape with both "Daughters of Darkness" and "Malpertuis" turning this corner of northern Europe into a cerebral landscape of lonely terror and dread.

Andre Delvaux

In this period Delvaux would produce another mysterious meditation on human relations, releasing "Rendez-vous a Bray" in 1971 with Mathieu Carriere and Anna Karina. Set during the First World War the film appears to centre around two friends divided by conflict, women and ambition. Though lacking the fantasy element of its predecessor the film maintains a similar mood of unfathomable mystery.

At the beginning of  "Un Soir, Un Train" Matthias promises his mother that he will lay chrysanthemums on the grave of his father. En route to his life-changing train journey he wanders around the cemetery in search of the grave. Finally in despair he places the flowers on an empty plot and makes a hasty retreat. It's a scene straight out of the repertoire of Belgian singer Jacques Brel, a poet divided by both love and hate for his homeland. In his songs Brel drifts between the good intention to do good and the corresponding bitterness and despair found in failure. I leave you with Brel's "J'Arrive" and the symbolic chrysanthemums of his own imagined memorial. I trust Delvaux would approve of the connection: