Leigh and Rodney have a right royal tadoo before agreeing that Harry is a…you will have to watch

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The death of Elvis’s daughter Lisa Marie from heart problems at 54 has saddened so many of us.

She was ultimately controversial beautiful, rich and famous. Daughter of The King and wife of Michael Jackson, one of the most disturbing pop music stars ever.

She also ran the grand mausoleum to her Dad, Gracelands.

In fact she told crowds there only a few days ago that they were the ‘only people who can bring me out of the house’ and many saw it as a confirmation of her failing health.

She  was marking Elvis’s 88th birthday recently. Fans said she  looked ‘incredibly sad’ and ‘really hurting’. It is two years since the death of her son Benjamin Keough who is buried alongside Elvis at Graceland.

Lisa suffered a fatal cardiac arrest on Thursday.

And she is far from the first member of the world-famous family to die from heart troubles.

Elvis died from cardiac arrest when he was 42 years old, and his mother Gladys died from heart failure at 46. She had three brothers, who also died in their forties from heart failure or lung complications.

In the recently published biography, Elvis: Destined to Die Young, author Sally Hoedel argued the deaths of Elvis, his mother, and his uncles were likely caused by a genetic defect.

Hoedel suggested the deaths in Elvis’s family were caused by an Alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency, a genetic disorder that damages the lung and liver and leads to other.

Whatever the cause, it is sad that a family is blighted like this.

#daddy #elvis #marie #lisamarie #graceland #presley #jackson #statins

About 35 years ago, I’d just finished an interview for a morning newspaper with pop crock PJ Proby.

Jim was making yet another comeback, this time by claiming that Madonna was singing on the notorious Savoy Sessions, his latest recording.

Of course she wasn’t and she was apparently threatening to sue him. What did she expect to get? Some ring-pulls and a few bottle tops?

So I’d called him.

I’d met Jim many times and this was just another stop along the way to the bottom of a Jack Daniels bottle.

But what surprised me more was his claim that the enigmatic Scott Walker was having an affair with Jacques Brel, the French doyen of songs of poetry and pomp.

Scott had sung many of them including Mathilde, Amsterdam and the heartbreaking If You Go Away.

Yes, over the years there had been hints of Brel being gay or bisexual in the French media. But that simply made him seem more exotic and charming.

But Scott?

There had never been any suggestion that he was gay.

I remember feeling a bit angry at Proby, who had rapidly become an inglorious singer most famous for repeatedly losing his career and falling off the stage drunk.

Anyway, I had met Scott years ago and despite his waif-like wasted elegance and the androgynous of the 60s and 70s there was nothing to suggest Proby wasn’t making this up as well.

Besides, Scott was married.

Yep, I was angry with Proby…

Anyway, round about then – it would have been 3pm – the office tea trolley squeaked and creaked across the editorial floor followed by another trolley which brought the latest review copies of CDs and tapes of the likes of Mariah Carey, Boyz II Men, TLC and Hootie & the Blowfish.

And there it was, Tilt… the new Scott Walker album – 11 years late as far as his die-hard fans were concerned.

I studied the paper artwork inside the slightly scratched plastic box it had arrived in. The original ‘rare’ jewel case had been ‘nicked’ of course.

But the cover imagery itself was darker than even Climate of the Hunter, a decade earlier, had managed to be… a mangle of eyes and fingers and the sensuality of high heels and stockings… the eyes were dark and brooding, yet lights pocked them like tears and pearls. There was also what could have easily been a distorted cartoon of Marilyn Monroe, dress drawn out into a flying saucer as it billowed around her waist …

But the gnarled-looking hand had me from the start. It turned out it was Scott’s. Hard, gnarled and dead. Scott was in his early 40s but that hand held its own story.

I left the office early claiming that I was going to drive to Prestwich where Proby was holed up in a grubby house rolling in discarded cans of super lager. It stood next to the Halfway House pub where by now he would be holding his addled court and telling tales and half-truths about Elvis.

I poured out of the big glass Art Deco office on Gt Ancoats Street, found my car and thought ‘stuff Proby’. I would be far more interesting to know what Walker had been doing.

So I turned left towards the dark Stockport garret I called home.

I was recently divorced and lived in two rooms on the top floor of on old dolorous Victorian house, heavy in dampness and ghosts. As I closed the big oak door I flicked the switch on my electric fire, pulled the curtains shut and switched on my midi-cd player. It hummed as it waited for my new cd.

And so it began. Something abandoned … other worldly, disembodied. Scott had created a burnt-out landscape, not smouldering, not smokey but stark, a place where only the dead could walk.

“… who’ll give me 21, 21…”

Scott Walker, that handsomeness of a smile had created the loneliest place in the universe.

Remembering Mr Invisible…

And he was comfortable there. His voice was a clear sonorous bell – just like the opening of Farmer in the City… but it was now a clarion cry of surrealism over elements of industrial rock, Zappa. opera and aria.

And of course there is his dark Gothic poetry.

 Tilt threw out everything that we recognised of the Walker Brothers and even Brel. Now we had a new classical music. Tilt is a masterpiece. It isn’t easy listening like My Ship is Coming In or Like Walking in the Rain but it is astonishing when put up against them.

Which is better? The pop or the Art?

I think we just thank our gods for allowing this man to walk and create among us for more than half a century.

Do i hear
21
21
21

i’ll give you
21
21
21

Do i hear
21
21
21

i’ll give you
21
21
21

This night you
are mistaken

i’m a farmer
in the city

Dark farm
houses
against the
sky

Every night
i must wonder why

Harness on the
left nail keeps
wrinkling wrinkling

Then higher above
me – e e so o
e e e so o o

Can’t go by
a man from
Rio

Can’t go by
a man from
Vigo

Can’t go by
a man from
Ostia

Hey Ninetto

Remember that
dream

we talked about
it
so many times

Do i hear
21
21
21

i’ll give you
21
21
21

Do i hear
21
21
21

i’ll give you
21
21
21

And if i’m not
mistaken
We can search
from farm to
farm

Dark farm houses
against our eyes

Every night i
must realize

Harness on the
left nail

keeps withering withering

Then higher above
me e e so o
e e e so o o

Can’t go by
a man in
this shirt

Can’t go by
a man in
that shirt

Can’t go by
a man with brain
grass

go by his long
long eye
gas

And i used
to be a
citizen

i never felt
the pressure

i knew nothing
of the horses

Nothing of the
thresher

Paulo
take me with
you

it was the
journey of
life

Do i hear
21
21
21

i’ll give you
21
21
21

Do i hear
21
21
21

i’ll give you
21
21
21

##SCOTTWALKER #walkerbrothers #engel #pjproby #jacquesbrel #brel #tilt #myshipiscomingin #walkingintherain #climateofthehunter #manchester #stockport #gtancoatsstreet

Whether you are the Prince of Snark-ness or just a work-a-day scribe, the writes and wrongs of selling your granny …

Does a writer have the right to write about their own world gone wrong?

A few days ago I wrote a short piece looking back at Like a Rolling Stone by the never-ending Bob Dylan. LRS is a song that changed the world … six minutes of angst, anger, vitriol and viciousness.

Bob was a wild skinny foppish wisp of will-and-determination who brought a tortured voice of poetry and accusation to a world slopping its way through the mud and the blood of war, violence and hatred.

That was back in 1965 – the era of short melodic a-doo-ron-ron two minute love songs to your girl, your mum, your car and your dog.

But LRS launched itself out of the mono-speaker in dad’s valve radio like a banshee in shades, howled, melted the wallpaper, came on at your girl, boiled your car, licked your mother and kicked your dog in the b*llocks.

And it shocked, mystified, appalled and frightened your parents, particularly those who extolled the virtues of their working-class background yet aspired to the middling mordancy of the middle-classes who are bit squiffy in Torremolinos and down the Tory club.

The six minute song was based on a blues standard, glistened like a Christmas tree of Phil Spector’s wall of sound, had the hip-ness of The Beats, the arrogance of rock ‘n’ roll and was searingly honest – telling things just how they were.

And that’s the point … writers are told to write about what they know.

So, does that include members of your family or friends, warts and all?

I say yes.

I am first and foremost a writer, but my mainstay has always been journalism and I have always told the truth. That’s my job. And like 95 per cent of my colleagues I have never knowingly published anything untrue.

That’s what writing is about … publish and be damned.

Well, I was damned – by somebody who should be close to me – and they have never spoken to me since.

My literary crime?

I used a figure from their lives to creative the tension of juxtaposition between a Bob Dylan figure and the regular bloke on the street back then.

My memory is clear. I was brought up in a noisy laughter-ridden sometimes brutal big beer drinking back street town of pubs butchers and scruffy terraced houses. Big men, beery men, dripping Park Drive from their bottom lips, proud of their beer bellies that turned the belts of their work-pants into wobbly slings.

Real men liked to look pregnant way back in the 60s.

Real men in the 60s drank and smoked too much, admired celebrity drunks like John Wayne and Robert Mitchum, saw women as things to be shouted at and ridiculed regularly… treat’m mean, keep’m keen.

Real men gauged each other’s worth by how much beer they could drink, how many cigarettes they smoked and how many husbands they claimed to have cuckolded behind their own wife’s back.

I wrote about a real man just like this … a man I watched go apoplectic when out-of-the-blue Dylan’s anthem burst from the airwaves. His re-action was madness. And terribly frightening for any child already flying head-long into the exotic horrors of puberty.

This man was the juxtaposition … Bob, spooky, androgynous, mysterious, artistic. Skinny as a rake … on the other hand, our 60s artisan was a big general construction worker, bluff, inarticulate, angry, uncomprehending, humourless and dark, dark, dark.

And he drank cider on the privacy of his own couch.

I mentioned this in the LRS piece … I mentioned it because men – and women – drank to excess back in the 60s, it was just a way of life. Men got drunk. Women got migraines.

And this is where the conundrum raised its hyenic head. And screamed at me.

I had apparently betrayed this man by telling the truth about him.

I hadn’t said he was a sober, even-tempered, witty, caring, loving, intelligent, articulate, gentle, thoughtful, generous, spiritual or even demonstrably loving person, because he wasn’t.

No. I’d taken the essence he showed to the world and depicted him on his couch with a glass of cider in his hand objecting in words of no more than four letters about a song on the radio.

That’s the way so many working class, drinking class, bad tempered class men were in the 60s. I never suggested he was a drunk or a bully. But so many men were way back then.

So, as a writer, a man who delves invited or uninvited in to other peoples’ live for a living – a man whose job has always been to challenge liars, cheats, thieves, conmen, politicians, businessmen, princes and kings – I was being ‘spiked’, edited by a member of my own family for telling the truth.

A truth they didn’t want to come out, despite the fact that this man who drank at home and had a vile temper was a secret all over the place. Also, let’s face it, he chose to be a drinking man and never bothered to address his vile temper.

A member of my family was asking me to tell lies about a man I hadn’t even insulted as far as I was concerned. Yet, he had insulted me all his life.

So, should writers write about the rights and wrongs in their own families?

I say yes.

It is honest.

And why should family not be looked at through the arrow of light in a prism?

Your life is made up of good and bad, angst and fear, love and loss, unfairness and luck … but it is also made up of the influences of those around you, the good, the bad and the ugly, the cousins, the uncles and the aunties, the vicar at the local church, the teachers and the lawyers.

Write about those who have done you good and those who did you wrong.

Tell the truth as a writer, always.

And never ever be afraid of showing the world about the truth of your life and of those who influenced you … these people are the teachers.

Those who need to know the truth about how their lives affected the lives of others.

And that’s the truth.

#bobdylan #princeharry #meghan #kingcharles #thequeen #buckinghampalace #royals #royalrows

We all had sympathy for poor little Prince Harry … he was a ruddy-looking child with lost horizons in his eyes. He was the product of a broken marriage, bereavement and speculation about his mum and dad’s morals. And it went on and on.

And on.

Not only this but he was a key member of what is one of the world’s most publicly dysfunctional families who live in a tumbled-down council house in the better part of town.

There was a vulnerability too that made his blue eyes sad.

Yet can any of his traumatic – but ultimately priveliged – life really ever justify the vengeance and coldness of throwing his own family under the golden coach for hundreds of millions of pounds.

Harry is no longer that child from 1997 consumed by loss and betrayal.

He is a Big Boy now – a dad of two, on the cusp of middle age and, like so many family members we’ve all despaired over, refuses to accept he could be to blame for anything that’s ever gone wrong.

Harry only sees himself as the victim.

Even the shameful wearing of a Nazi outfit in 2005 was actually his brother and Kate’s fault. He would never have worn it to a party if they hadn’t found it so hilarious!

And then of course there is the time his brother put the Willies up Harry by assaulting him as he insulted his wife.

Then horror of horrors a pet food bowl became involved and little Willy broke Harry’s necklace!

This of course followed the revelation that lovely Harry had no real negative feelings about the 25 people he claims to have killed in his army career.

From hero to villain in a ruthless fell-swoop to make his glitter-kissed life into a royal fortune.

Yep, he was once potentially our most popular Royal, But now he is being seen for what he is, a whingeing, moaning manipulative, accusing finger that refuses to move on no matter what his ghost writers and editors push to the upper echelons of his truth.

Personally, I believe, like any family member who tortures others, he has crossed that bridge too far…

#harry meghan #kingcharles #war #family

Why are banks doing this to us? Leigh and Rodney are both victims and ask the relevant questions – then they get stuck into the news.

CLICK TO WATCH…

In my life, I have met many narcissists and, to a man and woman, they were all talented, charming, attractive, witty, intelligent and ambitious.

Narcissists even walked beside me in what should have been the fairytale of my formative years.

They gently held my hand and purported to teach me how I should act on the manufactured stage of sand and badly painted backdrops they set before me…

… All the world’s a stage, I began to believe.

But I became convinced that the only truth in the script of life is a mesmerising swirl of lies.

***

In my late 30s, I was devastated to discover the new narcissist in my life was, in fact, a serial love cheat. She later spent a decade abusing me on the phone over why our great affair had ended so badly.

I didn’t change my number because I felt there might be a glimmer of truth in her gaslight.

Then I had a lasting relationship with another who made me believe she was vulnerable and broken. The tough fact was she only wanted to get married and have children so she could divorce me and steal my 19th century country cottage.

In my 50s, I went in to business with another narcissist – I thought he was my best friend.

But a narcissist can never be your best friend. He can only be his own.

***

I have to say I have always known about narcissism – at least I knew of its origin in Greek mythology … a young Narcissus fell passionately in love with his own image in a pool of water.

For him there could be no other.

What I didn’t know though, is that it narcissism means grandiose self-importance in a fantasy world of delusions. It means a desperate need for praise and admiration. It means a sense of entitlement and exploitation without guilt or shame.

It also means intimidation, bullying and the belittling of others.

In business it manifests itself in people who genuinely believe that the whole world owes them.

Today, after another day of accidentally ending up swimming with sharks, I have started to see narcissism in this way … it is like a twisted marriage which never gets beyond ‘what’s yours is mine…’

#narcissists #liars #sharks #toxic #parentalalienation

It’s a few years now since we turned into Buchanan Street in Glasgow on New Year’s Eve and were met by what looked like a band of wild men down from the mountains. Yep, we’d stumbled across Clanadonia, the world-renowned drum and pipe band who still bring their tribal music to the streets of their city regularly. And they do it brilliantly. Unfortunately, our film of them rendered itself useless for some reason … but then we found this vid posted by luclvs on YouTube … it tells the tale!

Let’s stay true to ourselves, drum up good luck and, more than anything, let’s wish everybody in the world a good New Year … and do everything we can to make it happen!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

#happy #new #year #happynewyear #clanadonia #glasgow

We are back in the UK after many years of riding our chrome horse round Europe.

And right now we live on top of hill in a rented farmhouse in a place called Middleton Scriven … Robert Plant lives round the corner.

And so do a load of sheep!.

The nearest pub is five miles away.

But this is Merry ol’ England and I love the smell of tractors in the morning.

So, let’s visit a model railway club in a little town by the River Welland not too far from Spalding.

It’s very nice in Market Deeping. It has a couple of pubs, a couple of fish and chip shops and a BMX track.

And at the Market Deeping Model Railway Club, there are a lot of Bob Dylan fans.

But things had been a bit rocky there over the Covid years. They’d hit the buffers, so to speak. Club members were unable to meet for two years because of the pandemic.

And that was compounded when vicious vandals went off the rails and destroyed a major display.

But the ‘day was saved’ when model railway fan Rod Stewart sent the club £10,000 to rebuild it.

It took about 30 members approximately 1,000 hours to remake the train, track and buildings by hand.

And when they were done re-modelling the Market Deeping rail buffs decided to have a day out to celebrate the revamped display and the reopening of their new clubhouse in nearby Essendine.

They chose to go to the Castle Fine Art gallery in Stamford High Street to ‘meet’ Bob Dylan and his Train Tracks work in the Retrospectrum series.

Bob wasn’t there of course – like the rest of us he probably couldn’t afford the UK train fare.

But club boss Peter Davies said: ” It was brilliant after so much trouble … the paintings are truly atmospheric. It is definitely a ‘must’ to visit!”

For Market Deeping Model Railway Club visit www.mdmrc.org

#marketdeeping #modelrailways #castlefine #traintracks #bloodonthetracks #vandals #bobdylan #rodstewart

Always worth a listen, the gentlemen ranters put the world on the line, even down to who spells Marbella wrong

#Marbella #Robots #Nurses #strikes #railways