I attended Manchester University in 1967, and I was in the Drama Department. I was keen on Theatre but by then I was becoming even more entranced by rock’n’roll. The Student Union hosted regular gigs, and booked acts a long time in advance. This meant that we were able to see some fabulous bands, up-close and at modest cost. Cream, Jimi Hendrix, Steve Wonder, Pink Floyd (though that gig may have been at the Technical Collage) among many others. It was an education.
The most impressive act I saw, however, even more so than the rather terrifying Jimi Hendrix, was a relatively lesser-known ‘underground’ band, ‘The Crazy World of Arthur Brown’. I went with another first year student, my new friend Peter Hammill with whom I was kicking around ideas for a band of our own. (It occurs to me that as little as a year earlier we would have been talking about forming a ‘group’.)
The first surprise is that there were only two musicians on the dimly lit stage: a Hammond organist in a hooded monks’ robe (Vincent Crane) and a drummer (Drachen Theaker). They were both amazing; playing a complex, dark, classically influenced rock, that was intensely dramatic. For years I was under the impression that the drummer was a 17 year old Carl Palmer, but apparently he replaced Drachen Theaker the following year.)
Vincent Crane was a classically trained organist who used the foot pedals of the Hammond to cover the bass lines. I have noticed that ‘real’ organists with their extraordinary skill-set are never averse to playing without a bass player, Hugh Banton of VdGG being one such. The mighty Hammond can produce a satisfying, rounded bass sound, though I have always preferred the in-your-face thump and twang of a bass guitar. In the early 1980s Taurus Bass Pedals came on the scene, and then a twinkle-toed organist could thump and twang with the best of ‘em.
Meanwhile. back at Manchester Students Union, the music reached a climax and changed tempo as a strange flickering yellow light became apparent off-stage. Then, to my lasting wonder and admiration, a tall – very tall – figure emerged slowly onto the stage. It was limping on crutches and covered by an enormous psychedelic cloak. Its face was completely masked with a silver helmet, a helmet surmounted by a lofty headdress of some kind which was on fire; really on fire, in a high, flaming, smoking blaze.
Trailing smoke, the figure came to the front of the stage and slowly raised its arms, extended by the crutches, to each side. The cloak spread out like a giant peacock opening its tail. A roadie came on and removed the smouldering headdress with its gleaming metal mask revealing Arthur in wild face-paint, eyes as wide as a madman. And all this was before he started singing.
At the time I thought that he was properly disabled, but I subsequently heard that he had broken his leg a few days before by falling out of a van. At that moment however, he embodied for me the figure of the Fisher King, a wounded monarch like Anfortas, or King Bran the Blessed.
His singing was incredible. Quite what he sang I don’t remember; ‘The Devil’s Grip’ certainly, but not ‘Fire’, that was to come the following year. It was the voice that got me: operatic but without any of the absurd accent or mannerisms of that genre, a blues voice but unquestionably English, hugely powerful but not posturingly macho like the heavy metal vocalists to come, who were certainly influenced by him but who all tended to sound the same. Arthur’s croon or howl is instantly recognisable. ‘I want to sing like that.’ I thought. What a fool I was! But I was very young.
The broken leg certainly constrained his characteristic dancing, which I would subsequently come to know well, a strange side-to-side, wide-striding dance that kept him in front of the microphone stand. However, his even more idiosyncratic head movements were present and correct. In time with the music his head would suddenly turn to the right. Click! Then back to the centre. Click! Then to the left. Click! Then back to the centre. Click! This continued like a machine. It was mesmeric; mechanistic, but also perhaps like the display behaviour of some exotic bird or giant insect.
There was something avian or insectile about his fire helmet as well. Despite proclaiming ‘I am The God of Hell Fire’, his blazing horns are certainly not satanic or even aggressive in appearance. They are lyre-shaped appendages that more closely put one in mind of an insect’s antenna or the curling head feathers of some exotic bird. They have remained consistent throughout his long career and perhaps they are the same fire-blackened ones that he has always worn.
Peter and I were knocked out by this extraordinary performer, and the Hammond-heavy sound was instrumental in our agreement that our new band would have to be organ-based rather than a guitar-based band. The next time Arthur performed at the Union, quite soon afterwards, we presented him with a big bouquet labelled ‘The Van der Graaf Generator Salutes Arthur Brown’. He name-checked us from the stage which did our university ‘rep’ no harm at all.
The next time I encountered Arthur must have been almost two years later. My time with the VdGG had come to an end and that band were on their way. I had a new band called ‘Heebalob’. (How could we not have been a success with a great name like that?) We got a gig at the 1969 National Jazz and Blues Festival, held at Plumpton Race Track in Sussex, and caught the eye of Giorgio Gomelsky, the first manager of the Rolling Stones and the Yardbirds and an important rock impresario, with his own record label, Marmalade Records.
I was summoned to meet the great man backstage, and was sitting on the grass like a rabbit in the headlights, clearly failing to impress him with my rock star potential, when Arthur Brown walked by, then at the peak of his fame, as ‘Fire’ topped the charts around the world.
Seeing me and Giorgio, Arthur stopped. “Hi man!” he beamed down at me. I had scarcely exchanged a dozen words with him a couple of years earlier. “Hi Arthur, nice to see you” I replied. Nodding pleasantly to Gomelski, he strolled on. “Oh, you know Arthur?”, said Giorgio. “Oh yes”, I replied. “Arthur and I go way back.” Mr Gomelsky now mellowed considerably and offered us the opportunity to record some demos in the big Polydor studio just off Oxford Street. Nothing came of these because, as soon as we’d done them, Marmalade Records rapidly ceased trading.
Many years later I met up again with Arthur, through our mutual friend, the incomparable Lene Lovich. He was in the process of moving back to the UK from America and he settled near the town of Lewes in Sussex, a few miles from where I was living. For several years we saw a good deal of each other and became good friends. Arthur delivered a wonderful performance as the deranged ‘Lucky Breeze’, captain of the doomed R101 airship, on my Year 2000 double CD ‘Curly’s Airships’, and he was instrumental in persuading me to do some small-scale gigs in Lewes, Brighton and London.
Arthur is a remarkable man. He still completely embodies the ideals of the ‘60s Counterculture, but unlike so many surviving psychedelic warriors, he is, to use a counterculture word, very ‘together’. He is organised and reliable and also has about him a considerable spiritual authority. While in the US, he trained as a psychotherapist and I have seen his skills in action. I was lucky enough to get some singing lessons from him, and very useful they were in developing my vocal chops. These sessions took place in a church in Lewes, and on one occasion we were interrupted by a highly disturbed man crashing into the building and running around aggressively. My instinct would be to get as far away as possible from someone like this, but Arthur approached the man, getting very close to him and speaking to him quietly. What was said I do not know, but the guy calmed down immediately and after a few moments quietly left the church and my lesson continued.
I feel privileged to have known Arthur. In recent years he moved, I believe, to Yorkshire and we have rather lost touch. He is still performing though, a living legend and a National Treasure if ever there was one.
