Chaise Longue by Baxter Dury.

Baxter & Ian Dury.

It is Friday evening, and I am listening to a CD called Ten More Turnips From The Tip. It is the last studio album by Ian Dury And The Blockheads released in 2002, two years after Ian’s death. It is a very enjoyable and underrated album with some great tracks such as It Ain’t Cool, Dance Little Rude Boy Dance, Cowboys, & One Love. I hadn’t played it for years until I was reminded of it yesterday. I remember vividly the night I bought the album. It was when The Blockheads played at The Cheese & Grain in Frome about fifteen years ago. When I got home that night and went to play the album I was disappointed to find that there was no CD inside the case. Next day I tracked down the bands phone number and rang up to complain. To my surprise it was Micky Gallagher the keyboards player who answered the phone. He passed me on to a nice lady who was on their management team. It turned out that I had accidentally been given a display item. I ended up having a great chat with her about Ian and the band. I told her how I had always felt a connection to Ian because he taught my brother at Canterbury Art College which is where Ian formed his first band Kilburn & The High Roads with some of the students. A few days later a correct complete CD arrived in the post.

The reason I was reminded of this album is because I have just finished reading a book called Chaise Longue by Baxter Dury. Baxter is Ian Dury’s son who was born in 1971. I found the book so enthralling and moving I read it all in one day. If you know the album New Boots & Panties which is one of my favourite records of all time, you will have seen the famous photo of Ian and Baxter on the cover. Baxter was only about six years old when that album was released. His book Chaise Longue is a memoir of his turbulent childhood. His elder sister was called Jemima and his mother was Betty. Ian and Betty separated and were finally divorced in 1985. Baxter later had two half-brothers, Bill and Albert when Ian met sculptor Sophy Tilson. Because of coming from a broken home Baxter’s early years were divided between spells of living with Betty or Ian. The book chronicles this chaotic period in his life. It is funny and sad in equal measure. Just to write it is a remarkable achievement because Baxter doesn’t appear to have had a proper education at all. He was always playing truant, refusing to go to school, or getting expelled. It is a wonder that he can read or write at all. 

Ian was often absent, away on tour, or filming and Baxter would be left in the care of some strange characters such as Pete Rush who was a six-foot seven roadie and drug dealer who was known as the Sulphate Strangler because of his habit of picking people up by their neck. That is what reminded me to play the album again, because there is a track on it called Ballad Of The Sulphate Strangler. There are other amazing characters in the book such as Alfie Rowe known as Spider, and Kosmo Vinyl. I remember Kosmo because one night when we saw Ian Dury & The Blockheads at Bristol Hippodrome the band shone a spotlight on the audience and picked out a girl for a spot prize. She went onstage all excited, and Kosmo presented her with a packet of Scotch eggs. The book is called Chaise Longue because living in this chaotic environment with a motley crew of strange people coming and going there often wasn’t a bedroom for Baxter to sleep in, so he often slept on an old Edwardian daybed in the living room which Ian called the chaise longue.

Ten More Turnips.

It was a difficult upbringing for Baxter, but Ian and Betty must have done something right because Baxter has become a very successful musician in his own right and has made about six highly acclaimed albums of his own and is now a writer. Reading the book hasn’t changed my view of Ian Dury. He had a very hard life. He contracted polio at the age of seven which left him paralysed on one side. That would have broken a lot of people, but Ian achieved great things in art and music and acting. He was a national treasure. Nobody since has equaled Ian Dury for writing such witty, poignant and funny lyrics as in his songs. As well as Jazz, Soul & Funk, Ian loved English Music Hall which is where the humour in his lyrics came from. Songs such as Sex & Drugs & Rock N Roll, Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick, Reasons To Be Cheerful, There Ain’t Arf Been Some Clever Bastards & What A Waste are classics of British music. Ian had to be hard in order to succeed. It was a tough world for a raspberry ripple (Cockney rhyming slang for cripple) He resorted to psychological bullying of people in order to get his way and achieve his dreams. I always knew that Ian had a dark side, so nothing in Baxter’s book surprised me. Underneath all this, Ian had a heart of gold which is shown by all his charity work. I was especially pleased when his song Spasticus Artisticus was chosen as the theme song for the London Para-Olympics in 2012.

Ian & The Blockheads.

The sulphate strangler died of a heart attack while in police custody. When I read that in the book, I felt sorry for him. I think, like Ian he was another person who probably meant well, but didn’t know how to go about expressing it. Baxter knows the truth, not me. In a way the story of his mother Betty is even more tragic than Ian’s. She was involved in a car crash in which a motor cyclist died, and Betty never recovered from the trauma and guilt. She died aged only 52. There are many reasons to be tearful in this book. Despite that, as I said, I really enjoyed reading Chaise Longue by Baxter Dury. I don’t have any of Baxter’s albums in my collection, but I think I will buy one in the very near future and tell you all about it here. Cheers.

Baxter & Ian.