My Pop Life#85 : The Undercover Man – Van Der Graaf Generator

The Undercover Man   –   Van Der Graaf Generator

here…at the glass…all the usual problems…all the habitual farce..

you ask..in uncertain voice..what you should do..as if there were a choice..

..but to carry on..miming the song..

..and hope that it all works out right

Lyrics burned into my brain.   The man who wrote them, Peter Hammill was a constant companion of mine through the 1970s.  I’d bought H to He from Simon Korner in 1971, quite possibly my first album that was all mine;  terribly weird, prog, heavy, jazzy, literate and dense.   I loved it, still do.  I first heard this on the John Peel show late one night in my bedroom in Hailsham.  Van Der Graaf Generator were so underground and unloved at school that I was astonished to hear their name and their music on the radio.  This album Godbluff  and the follow-up Still Life are exquisite.   There is something about the intensity of Hammill’s lyrics, his uncompromising vocal delivery, his fury, his passion and his focus that drilled through the teenage me, through all the layers of coping, pretence and bearing up, all the capability that I summoned at each maternal nervous breakdown, each visit to the phone box to call the doctor and complain about the latest bottle of pills prescribed to Mum, each battle in the kitchen over food, washing up, coal, cats, milk bills, noise, TV channels or haircuts.  The music exposed my innermost panic.  It cut through the pop fluff and the melodic flair to the gritty bone of loneliness that was my very private world.  In a way it was good that no one else in school liked Van Der Graaf Generator because I didn’t want to share those feelings with anyone.   I used to feel that my spectacularly dysfunctional family was a kind of pin-up of affliction, that the cross I bore, heavy and splintered and surely too much for one teenage boy to carry, was heavier and harder than anyone else’s.   It was a badge of honour, a hidden scar that I would only reveal to girlfriends: look, this is who I really am, then they would want to make it better, and they did.

Now an adult I see my childhood as just another suburban tragedy. Everyone has one.

I bought this in late October as the leaves fell from the trees.  I’d left school, left home and been left by my girlfriend in the same week (see My Pop Life #58).

My first day of work on B Villa, Laughton Lodge I had thirty strange faces staring at Mr Brown – the new nursing assistant in a white coat with name badge.  The friendliest bloke Martin had Down’s Syndrome and immediately introduced himself “hello sir!” with a strong lisp.  He shouldn’t have been in there.  But who should ?  Described on the entrance hoarding as a “Hospital For The Mentally Sub-Normal”, Laughton Lodge in 1975 was what local people called the loony bin, ‘bedlam’ or the madhouse.   On B Villa all 30 men could walk, feed themselves and take themselves to the toilet.   Critical distinctions.   It meant our work was watching for epileptic fits, walking the hyper Michael Payne round the grounds because he upset the other “residents”, taking a select group to ‘work experience’ or maybe into Lewes, sorting out problems and helping with tying of shoelaces, distribution of drugs (I wasn’t allowed to do this except with another nurse) and subduing of violence.  The drug of choice was Largactyl, the chemical cosh.  Half of the ward walked around like zombies under the effect of this powerful sedative.  The other half either behaved, or were headed the same way.  Ian was severely autistic and didn’t speak, kind of yelped when he was upset.  He had memorised all the puzzles in the day-room, he would pick up a piece and know where it went immediately.  Ronnie was a 19-year old murderer,  a pyschopath with a sickly grin.  Gerald was a big dangerous intelligent man who would explode with violence from time to time, attack other patients, one day he smashed the acquarium, it would take six male nurses to hold him down.  When a patient went “up the wall” they acquired superhuman strength from deep within and furniture would go flying.  We had largactyl injections, straightjackets and a padded cell upstairs.

Michael Payne was the saddest case. A handsome gentle man in his thirties, he’d witnessed a motorbike accident at close quarters and his mind had cracked.  Somehow through the system he’d found his way onto B Villa Laughton Lodge.  He talked incessantly and we would take it in turns to walk him around the grounds, never quite sure what was a memory and what wasn’t.  “Did you see that tiger on television last night Mr Brown?  Scratched me right down my face!”   Charge Nurse Ray Lucas explained that he was on a decreasing cycle of experience, his ups and downs getting closer together.  At that point he was three days up (walk around the grounds talking incessantly), three days down (slumped in green plastic armchair).  As the wavelength got shorter he would be more difficult to manage and when the up and the down met eventually he would short-circuit, burn out, and become like the monosyllabic zombies. 

The whole place was incredibly sad.  There were psychiatric patients mixed with murderers.  One fella Nick got picked up by his Mum and Dad every Saturday and brought back every Sunday night.  Apart from a twisted hand and club foot he was perfectly fine: intelligent but damaged.  The nurses were compassionate and coped well.   There was no abuse or piss-taking that I witnessed.   All the patients, and some of the staff were institutionalised – stuck in routines and ways of thinking.   I was only there for nine months, I couldn’t change anything.  Eventually one of the nurses from C Villa (the women’s ward) invited me to dinner one night in Ringmer.  While she was cooking, she handed me a book saying “this is what I’m interested in“.   Christine Glinkowski – a Polish woman in her late 20s – had given me “The Joy Of Sex“.  Readers, I was 18 years old.  “We can’t have sex on the first date” said Christine, “but we can do this…”

After work I would walk across the fields to the Nurses Home, a huge manor house divided into living quarters for the staff.  I shared a kitchen with two Mauritian gentlemen who cooked gentle curries and were very sweet, occasionally they would offer food, I would accept.  I would read a book, watch TV or play records on my little record player.  My first independent flat.  No surrogate mum.  Just me and my dope and cups of tea and vinyl LPs : Van Der Graaf, Wings, Joe Walsh, other white people. Pretty much.  To be fair I had a box of singles too, 45s which were nuggets of gold, among them Al Green & Sly Stone.  But yeah, East Sussex is white.  And so am I, kind of.

Van Der Graaf were the original pretentious art-rock prog band par excellence.   The voice of Hammill which goes from an angelic whisper to a blood-curdling scream, from a sweet melody to a harsh monosyllabic bark is one of the wonders of the world, and has influenced many singers.  The solo albums are more introspective and personal, while the Van Der Graaf catalogue is often science fiction speculation, Hammill being a fan (like me!) of Philip K. Dick.  For all their arch beauty the band soothed me through my troubled teens.   Perhaps just knowing that someone else felt fierce anguish and wasn’t afraid to express it was enough.  I was always afraid to express it.  I still am.

My Pop Life #64 : Fresh Garbage – Spirit

Fresh Garbage   –   Spirit 

…look beneath your lids some morning, see those things you didn’t quite consume

the world’s a can for your fresh garbage…

The first time I heard this song was in Simon Korner’s bedroom.  We’d met at a party out of town in Cooksbridge somewhere (in a village hall I think) and walked back to Lewes together getting to know each other like 15-year-olds do, in the middle of the night, probably bonding on absent fathers, but Simon remembers the conversation better than I.   Simon didn’t really talk about his father to be fair, but when was it ?  I’m saying it was the 5th form and the spring of 1973.  Not long after that something went wrong at home in Hailsham and Mum went into Amberstone Hospital for another stay.   I had already stayed with Pete Smurthwaite twice, once at 11 and once, for 9 months at 13.  And I’d spent a month at Simon Lester’s house in Chiddingly when Mum had an abortion in  early 1971, just after we moved into our new home together.

This time my Dad clearly arranged with Shirley Korner that I would be billeted with Simon’s family in King Henry’s Road in Lewes.  I guess it was my choice ?  Simon’s dad Asher had died the year before.  Shirley Korner, Simon’s mother, was a kind, intelligent, sweet-natured no-nonsense social worker now left looking after four children : Deborah the eldest, Simon, my age, Joseph two years below, then Jessica.  At the same time that they took me in, they also housed Maria, a single mum and her sister Melba.  Maria & Melba had been ejected from Uganda by dictator Idi Amin in the great purge of Indians from that country, most of whom came to the UK.  ‘Ugandan Asians’ they were called.  Two of them were now in Shirley Korner’s house.  Melba had a thin right leg, the result of polio as a child, but she was a stunning gentle beauty.   Younger than me by one year, I felt sorry for her, being evicted from her home like that, and having the polio leg.  We flirted, chatted, and walked to school together occasionally, but after I sang Gary Glitter’s “Do You Wanna Touch Me There?” to her one evening in my bedroom, the affair was off.

It was a happy house in my experience.  There must have been a huge bombshell crater where their dad was, but I hadn’t known him, and they were all so talkative and enthusiastic about everything, I loved staying there.  They were jewish, but it was never acted upon either religiously or in diet or indeed politics.   We gathered around the vast kitchen table for tea/dinner, passing food around, drinking juice and tea, Shirley Korner clucking over us all with patient forbearance and amused chuckles.  They all answered back in a relaxed way, there was no tension, no atmosphere, indeed no mental illness that I could detect.  It was a lovely big Victorian house, I guess I was in the former servants quarters on the top floor.  Simon’s bedroom had a drum kit erected on the floor, and was thus massively cool.  Perhaps this was Andrew Ranken’s – Deborah’s boyfriend, later to join the Pogues.  I was sitting at this drum kit when Mathew Ford offered me a joint to smoke and I hit at it with the drumstick.  But soon I was puffing.  I’d been smoking cigarettes since I was about 12.  Roll-ups sometimes, but mainly Number 6.  Learned to do a reasonable beat with the kit too, but drumming never interested me that much for some reason.  Simon played bass guitar.   We only played together once, at my wedding.

Simon was impressive because he didn’t go with the flow.  He was super-bright but also cool, had good clothes and haircut and a witty sense of humour.  I liked him a lot.  Clearly I still do because we’ve been friends since that moment.  There’s too much to say about ‘Simon and I‘ in one post, but I will just add this – about a year later when we all started getting serious girlfriends, Simon was going out with the official sexiest girl in the school, Kerry Day.  She had previously been out with boys in the years above us, and was without question a real catch.  Simon told me that one day he had painted her naked body, it had taken about three hours, then they’d had sex.  This was, and still is, completely excellent….

Simon’s taste in music was very specific, and he would visibly sneer at bands he thought weren’t cool.  Didn’t we all at that age ?  Maybe…  He sold me an LP he didn’t like by Van Der Graaf Generator for 50p, and I loved it.  Still love Peter Hammill’s voice.  Deborah Korner being a year older also had boyfriends older than her, so there was a clearly groovy conveyor belt of music from people like Pete Davies and Pete Thomas (later to join Elvis Costello on drums) and John Whippy down to me.  I should relate though that it wasn’t all about ‘cool’ as Simon’s early and faithful adoption of Elton John would prove, and my own favouring of Ooh Wakka Doo Wakka Day by Gilbert O’ Sullivan.    The singles charts though were magnificent – Stevie Wonder, Roxy Music, Status Quo, Carly Simon, The Strawbs, The Detroit Emeralds.

Thinking about Simon’s music now, Spirit stand head and shoulders above the rest, in particular the first LP ‘Spirit‘ from 1967 and the 4th LP, the magnificent “12 Dreams Of Dr Sardonicus” from 1970.  I would carry Spirit with me into my University years, and find kindred spirits and fans there.  Simon also favoured Hendrix, The Doors and Cream, and actually owned Jack Bruce’s first solo LP Songs For A Tailor.    But I never really got into Cream or Jack Bruce.  Spirit I have held dear to my heart for many years.

 

Spirit were a California band par excellence.  Their first incarnation, which this track is from, was as a jazz-rock outfit I suppose, all the songs on the first LP are really interesting.  Shades of Harry Nilsson, Steely Dan years before they were formed, hard to categorise.  Randy California was the guitarist, (who’d played with Hendrix), and his uncle Ed Cassidy was the bald drummer who was at least 20 years older than the rest of the band, and versed in jazz.  Jay Ferguson was the other key member and singer, alongside John Locke on keys and Mark Andes on bass.  Their first four LPs are an exceptional run of music.

It is also worth noting how prescient the lyrics to this particular song were.  California was always a little further ahead.  A note on my version of the lyrics : I forever thought the first line was “girl – she calls me”  (actually “fresh garbage”), and the next line was “look beneath your lids a moment” when he’s actually singing “look beneath your lids some morning”.  Enjoy!

Marvellous footage of original line-up live on French TV ! :