Beatles

Remembering Ivor Cutler, the man too strange to be anyone’s pet eccentric

~ Michael Stevenson ~ Leave a comment

Celebrating the centenary of canny Scots poet and much-loved indie touchstone, Ivor Cutler

By Jim Wirth

Having enchanted The Beatles as lugubrious would-be bus conductor Buster Bloodvessel during the making of Magical Mystery Tour, Ivor Cutler received what he considered an indecent proposal from one of the Fab Four to work with their children as a private tutor. The sporran-dry Scottish humorist said he turned the offer down “on socialist principles”, adding: “What made their kids more special than other kids?”

Released to commemorate what would have been his 100th birthday on January 15, Bruce Lindsay’s new biography A Life Outside The Sitting Room shows how Cutler was far too determinedly strange to be anyone’s pet eccentric. The Glaswegian’s surreal poems, songs and meditations on his Govan childhood entranced generations, from the smart set at Peter Cook’s Establishment club to generations of John Peel listeners. Cutler’s voice-and-harmonium combination graced the finale of Robert Wyatt’s 1974 masterwork Rock Bottom and his perverse records were released on the hippest labels of his age: Virgin and Harvest in the 1970s, Rough Trade in the ’80s and Creation in the ’90s.

“It’s the imagination of the man,” says Lindsay, explaining Cutler’s appeal. “He can sing a beautiful song like “I’m Going In A Field” – one of Paul McCartney’s favourites – and he can sing a song from the perspective of a yellow fly.” Matt Brennan (aka Citizen Bravo), who co-ordinated 2020’s all-star Cutler tribute LP, Return To Y’Hup, adds: “He created an absolutely unique and self-contained world through his music, prose and poetry. By operating on the fringes of so many forms of music and art, he attracted admirers from all genres into his orbit.”

A sensitive boy deemed too dreamy to complete his training as an RAF navigator during World War II, Cutler drifted into teaching, including a revelatory spell at AS Neill’s “school without rules”, Summerhill. He continued to work in London primary schools while eventually deciding to perform his own material after publishers could not persuade any artists to record his strange songs. The Beatles dragged him onto the Magical Mystery Tour bus after hearing him on BBC radio and he would continue to be a solitary presence on the margins of the London cultural scene (amusing himself by leaving gnomic sticky notes around town while riding his bicycle out from his Camden flat) until his death, aged 83, in March 2006.

Emma Pollock was entranced by the grim twinkle of Cutler’s Life In A Scotch Sitting Room stories, which were tour-bus go-tos during her time with The Delgados. “It’s that kind of withering wit – that very Scottish take on life when there’s just the hint of a joke but not any more than that,” she tells Uncut. “He had a very individual outlook and he didn’t seem to give a damn what anyone thought.” Lindsay agrees: “There are certainly comparisons with people like Spike Milligan. But with Ivor, I think everything he did, he did primarily for himself.”

Lindsay never got to interview Cutler himself, but assembles his complicated story with the help of a raft of friends and relatives – not least Cutler’s two sons, and poet Phyllis April King, who as Cutler’s partner for much of his later life did not need to address him as “Mr Cutler”, a protocol the artist demanded of anyone meeting him for the first time. Stern and inscrutable but mischievous and at times painfully poignant (hear 1998’s “I Built A House” and weep), Cutler said of himself: “If I am a genius, I’m a genius in a very small way indeed.” Here, his tiny light shines bright.

Ivor Cutler: A Life Outside The Sitting Room is published by Equinox, Jan 15 (£25).

Source: Remembering Ivor Cutler, the man too strange to be anyone’s pet eccentric

Sheridan Smith as Cilla Black

~ Michael Stevenson ~ Leave a comment

The captivating trailer for new drama Cilla, starring award winning actress Sheridan Smith. Just in case you were wondering, thats actually her singing too!

Acclaimed writer Jeff Pope has penned Cilla, a three-part drama for ITV, starring Sheridan Smith as the famous Liverpudlian songbird.

Sheridan will be joined in the cast by Aneurin Barnard as Cilla’s husband Bobby, Ed Stoppard as Brian Epstein, John Henshaw as Cilla’s father, John White and Melanie Hill is Cilla’s mother.

‘Cilla’ tells of her rocky rise to fame and will capture the essence of 1960s Liverpool, the atmosphere of promise and excitement as the Merseybeat music scene was on the verge of exploding in a blaze of tight-fitting skirts, stiletto heels, and beehives.

A young, unknown Cilla works in the austere environs of the typists’ pool at a local company, dreaming of stardom. The drama looks at how she met the two men who came to love her and ultimately fought over her – future husband Bobby Willis and legendary manager Brian Epstein, the tragic young businessman who also guided the career of The Beatles.

We learn how Cilla’s burgeoning friendship with John, Paul, George and Ringo – the four young men who went on to conquer the music world – shaped her career. It was family friend Ritchie Starkey (Ringo), the teddy-boy with a greasy quiff, who help her to cross paths with Brian Epstein and producer George Martin – who were to launch her career with recording sessions at the world famous Abbey Road Studios.

The ITV Studios production will recount the dark days of her early career, her on-off relationship with Bobby, a baker at Woolworth’s with the gift of the gab, who struggled to accept Cilla’s iron determination to succeed and become a star at the expense of practically every other area of her life.

Cilla is available to watch in the US online at Acorn

The Beatles, “You Know My Name” from ‘Past Masters’ (1970): Deep Beatles

~ Michael Stevenson ~ Leave a comment

Since I began writing “Deep Beatles,” readers have challenged me to write about “You Know My Name (Look Up the Number),” one of the strangest tracks in the Beatles catalog. Never one to back down from a dare, I gladly accept the challenge! While the song can be dismissed as a throwaway or novelty, its roots can be traced back to music hall as well as the flourishing 1960s British comedy landscape. In addition, it was almost released not as a Beatles single, but as a Plastic Ono Band track.The majority of “You Know My Name” was recorded just after the Sgt. Pepper sessions. The Beatles were in a highly experimental mood musically and technically, with the recording studio becoming their artistic playground. According to Barry Miles’ Many Years From Now, John Lennon arrived at the recording studio chanting a kind of mantra: “You know my name, look up the number.” Paul McCartney told Miles that he thought the statement may have been aimed at Yoko Ono, but Lennon never verified that. “He brought it in originally as a 15-minute chant when he was in space-cadet mode,” McCartney remembered, “and we said, ‘Well, what are we going to do with this then?’ and he said, ‘It’s just like a mantra.’ So we said, ‘Okay, let’s just do it.’”

In his 1980 Playboy interview, Lennon agreed that the song was meant to be humorous, but did not suggest an Ono connection. “That was a piece of unfinished music that I turned into a comedy record with Paul. I was waiting for him in his house, and I saw the phone book was on the piano with the words, ‘You know the name, look up the number.’ It was like a logo, and I just changed it. It was going to be a Four Tops kind of song – the chord changes are like that – but it never developed and we made a joke out of it.” [ . . . ]

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