I’ve just returned from The Beatles Story’s White Feather: The Spirit of Lennon press launch at The Beatles Story Pier Head, where Julian Lennon gave the closest thing to an interview he’s provided in years.
Lennon and mother Cynthia were answering questions on the exhibition, created with mementoes and artefacts they’ve largely collected themselves over the years.
A such it’s an intriguing and invaluable insight into a man frequently described as ‘difficult’ and ‘infuriating’ – it’s hard not to come to the conclusion having read various accounts of John Lennon that these were not simply euphemism for ‘nasty piece of work’.
Of course, behind every nasty piece of work is often a rather vulnerable character, and the anecdotes and notes from the Lennons paint a portrait of John as man equally difficult and easy to love.
They go beyond what one might generally expect to see at an exhibition: beyond the Beatles memorabilia; beyond the obvious anecdotes; beyond myth and legend.
I finally made it to some Sound City stuff, taking in Hallo I Love You, Little Boots, Charnock & Russell, Sidney Bailey and His No Good Punchin Clowns, The Two Man Gentleman Band, Clinic and a.p.a.t.t. at various venues, although I only managed to see one entire set out of that lot thanks to some duff planning, bad luck and general confusion.
In amongst the mayhem I spent most time in the View Two gallery, an oasis in the middle of Sodom and Gomorrah, watching a series of folky, jazzy, swingy, skiffle-y performances. The Punchin Clowns and Gentlemen Band were a particularly rare form of Vaudevillian fun.
Seeing Clinic again after so long was great, especially as it was apparently the first gig they played in Liverpool in donkey’s years. Listening to Clinic always makes me think of what it might be like to die from an overdose of mogadon – creepy and disturbing, but not entirely unpleasant.
I was on the lig the other day at the Conservation Centre’s Sound & Vision exhibition of Francesco Mellina’s pictures of Liverpool during the birth of punk, new wave and new romanticism.
Francesco Mellina was Dead or Alive’s manager – a dubious honour, I’d’ve thought – and once asked a cricketer friend of mine to play bass for the band. Wisely, I think, he declined.
Mellina’s role in the scene at Eric’s and other bars with fantastically- ridiculous names between 1978–1982 was outlined by the always-entertaining Paul du Noyer.
The exhibition is a genuine visual record of the music scene at the time, with an impressively wide range of images – both in terms of their style and content.
The film grain that dates these kind of pictures lends a stylised filter to images like Mellina’s, as does the low-light high-contrast black and white tone.
Like the difference between vinyl and digital, they are technically inferior but have much more character.
Two superb and, certainly in one case, distinctly bizarre updates from two of the Crucial Three – the trio of Julian Cope, Pete Wylie and Iain McCulloch that made up the core of the new wave of Liverpool talent that emerged from Liverpool in the early 80s.