Adventures In Wonderland by Paul Charles.

I have just finished reading a very interesting book which two of my Irish friends recommended to me, so I thought I would tell you about it. It is called Adventures in Wonderland by Paul Charles. In case you haven’t heard of him Paul Charles was born in 1949 in Magherafelt a small town in Northern Ireland. He is a novelist, concert promoter, manager and talent agent. The book chronicles his rise from managing his first act The Blues by Five, when he was only 15 years old to moving to London in 1967 and writing for the Belfast music magazine City Week, before working in the music business full-time as manager, agent, lyricist and roadie for progressive rock band Fruupp who I must confess I hadn’t heard of before. He then formed a promotion agency, Asgard, with associate Paul Fenn and went on to work with some of the most famous acts in music such as Tom Waits, Ray Davies, Christy Moore, Don McLean, Waterboys, Nick Lowe, Paul Carrack, Van Morrison, Crosby, Stills & Nash, Rory Gallagher, Jackson Browne, Elvis Costello, Gerry Rafferty, Robert Plant, John Prine, Lonnie Donegan, Roy Orbison, Gordon Lightfoot, Paul Brady and many many more.

One thing that surprised me is that Paul speaks very highly of almost all the artists he had dealings with in his long career. You hear so many stories about what a cut throat world the music business is, yet Paul seems to have had a very friendly relationship with most of his clients. He did have some harrowing experiences along the way though. There are vivid descriptions of him narrowly escaping from a house fire and being mugged on the streets of New York. Mostly though he had pleasant experiences. I especially liked his accounts of hearing albums for the first time such as Sargent Pepper, Astral Weeks and Rough & Rowdy Ways by Bob Dylan although the only time he met Bob was backstage at Slane Castle in 1984 when Bob wanted Paul Brady to show him the chords to Lakes Of Pontchartrain. Van Morrison seems to have more mentions in the book than any other artist. 

Van has a reputation in some circles of being curmudgeonly and ‘difficult’, but Paul is full of praise for Van’s business-like attitude and has worked with him for over forty years. He also says that Van has a great sense of humour. There are some amusing anecdotes about Van. For instance, he says that Van once said to his drummer Bobby Irwin that he was thinking about disbanding his group and making documentaries instead, and what did Bobby think he should make films about?, “You could make a documentary about an unemployed drummer”, Bobby replied. Paul seems to have made a lot of friends through working with Van, such as with the late Hugh Murphy who co-wrote songs with Van for Beautiful Vision, also another of Van’s drummers Peter Van Hooke who I learned is now the manager of Paul Carrack.

I found the section about his long association with Glastonbury Festival organiser Michael Eavis very interesting. In 1987 Paul provided all the acts for Saturday on the Pyramid Stage plus other acts on the Sunday including Van. They first worked together in 1982 when Paul got Van and Jackson Browne to play at Glastonbury. I did notice one mistake in the book where Paul has the year of Jean Eavis’s death wrong by a decade, but I won’t quibble over that. Like me, Paul is a big fan of the Acoustic Stage at Glastonbury, and he encouraged Michael to keep that stage going when Michael was thinking of closing it for financial reasons. 

He also makes a good point about the BBC coverage of Glastonbury not giving the full picture because there are no cameras at a lot of the stages, including the Acoustic Stage. Paul put Robert Plant on the Acoustic Stage one year. He tells how he would have worked with Robert more often but Robert was always trying to get him to reduce his commission. He says there are many stories of Robert Plant’s tightness with money. I’m not sure I agree with that because if Robert was so money obsessed you would think he would still be touring the world with Led Zeppelin. Paul says the great men of modern Ireland are Seamus Heaney, George Best, Rory Gallagher, Christy Moore, Brian Friel and Van Morrison. I would agree with that, although I don’t know a lot about Brian Friel. 

I wish there had been a bit more about Christy in the book, but maybe their paths didn’t cross as often as others. I could go on and on about the great stories in this book, such as in his early days as a music journalist accidently witnessing Rod Stewart recording Maggie May, Roy Orbison’s comeback gig at the Mean Fiddler, Sonny Terry & Brownie Magee working together, but hadn’t spoken to each other for seventeen years, Lonnie Donegan phoning him up for work an hour after having heart surgery. The ill-fated time as manager of Tanita Tikeram, and the failed attempts to persuade people like Clifford T Ward, Carly Simon, and Jennifer Warnes to go onstage. Paul also sings the praises of some artists who I’m not that familiar with such as The Blue Nile, The Roches, and Mary Margaret O’Hara, but I will check them out. I am very grateful to the people who recommended this book to me. If you are interested in the history of modern music than I think you will enjoy this book as well.