Living.

I went to the Odeon cinema in Trowbridge with my friends Dave and Kate last night for the second time this year. The previous occasion was to see Belfast. I made the effort last night because I wanted to see the new film starring Bill Nighy called Living. Bill has been my favourite British actor for a long time, even more so since I discovered that he is a huge Van Morrison fan. I met Bill one night at Nell’s club in London when he was sitting next to me at a Van gig. In real life his demeanor is just as self-effacing, honest, and polite as you see him in interviews on the television. When I met him, he was there as a music fan, not as a famous actor. Another reason I wanted to see this particular film is that the screenplay is written by the great Nobel Prize-winning author Kazuo Ishiguro. I have enjoyed reading several of his books over the last few years. Like Bill, I know that Kazuo is also a great music fan. I imagine that when they met, the talk would have been more about music rather than acting and writing.

Living is adapted from a 1952 film called Ikiru by the Japanese director Akira Kurosawa, which in turn was inspired by a 1886 Russian story The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy. I think Kurosawa has been a major influence on the writings of Kazuo Ishiguro because I can detect very similar themes in this film to his great novel Remains of the Day. The film is set in London in the 1950s. Bill plays a bureaucrat called Mr Williams who works in the stultifying atmosphere of County Hall which seems to be designed to stop anything being achieved. Nobody accepts responsibility, and everything is pushed from one department to another. Mr Williams reminded me slightly of the butler Stevens in Remains of the Day. 

Bill Nighy & Aimee Lou Ward.

One day Mr Williams has some dramatic news which causes him to reassess his life. I won’t tell you any more about the plot because I hope you will see the film for yourself. I must say though that I also thought Aimee Lou Wood was brilliant as young Margaret who helps Mr Williams discover the secret of how to be happy. I hadn’t heard of the director Oliver Hermanus before, but he has done an excellent job in capturing the mood of 50s London. The cinema-photography and lighting are also wonderful, as is the soundtrack by Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch which includes music by Sibelius, jazz by Vic Damone, and another string to Bill Nighy’s bow is that he is a great singer, as shown in his performance of The Rowan Tree which must have been difficult because he also had to appear drunk and emotional whilst singing. That song is also performed in the closing credits by Lisa Knapp who I mentioned in my previous post about her husband Gerry Diver.

Kazuo, Bill, & Oliver.

Despite the grim subject matter of the film, I left the cinema feeling very uplifted because the message is so life-affirming and positive. When the awards season gets underway before too long, I want to see prizes for best actor, best supporting actress, and best screenplay. Thank you very much.

Lisa Knapp: The Rowan Tree, from the film 'Living'.

Speech Project by Gerry Diver.

In the evenings when there is nothing on the TV worth watching, which is quite often, I usually listen to BBC 6Music on the radio. Often, I don’t pay much attention, but occasionally I hear something that makes me stop and listen. A week or so ago Tom Robinson played a track called My Margaret by Gerry Diver. It featured the voice of an Irish lady talking about the death of her mother. I found the combination of the voice and the music had a mysterious haunting quality which made me want to find out more. I found out that the woman who was speaking was the Irish singer Margaret Barry and her words were taken from a 1953 interview she gave to the musicologist Alan Lomax. In case you haven’t heard of Margaret Barry, she was born in Cork in 1917 into a family of travellers and street singers. As well as singing she also played the banjo and fiddle. By the 1950s she was so popular that she even sang at Carnegie Hall in New York. She was a huge influence on later singers such as Luke Kelly of The Dubliners. I also found out that the track was on an album called Speech Project released in 2011. When I learned that the likes of Christy Moore, Shane MacGowan, Damien Dempsey and Martin Hayes contributed to the album I decided to order a copy which arrived yesterday.

Gerry Diver.

Gerry Diver is a multi-instrumentalist musician, composer and producer who was born in Manchester to an Irish family. He studied the violin at university in Cork with Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin. The idea for this project came about when he heard an interview with the accordionist Joe Cooley and was struck by the musicality in his speech. He noticed that Joe’s voice drifted in and out of musical notes like a slip jig reel. In the interview with Joe made shortly before he died in 1973, he talks fondly about the eighteen years he spent in the USA. This forms the basis for When In New York which is one of two tracks here with Joe’s voice. The other is called Old Time Musicians. Gerry takes key phrases from what his subjects say and then loops them in a kind of cut and paste technique throughout the music he composes inspired by their words.

Christy Moore is featured on two tracks called Fulham Broadway and Million Times. I have always thought that Christy has a very musical lilting speaking voice. You can hear it on such songs as Lisdoonvarna or Lost Tribe of the Wicklow Mountains on his album Lily, so his voice lends itself perfectly to this project. Damien Dempsey is featured on a track called Feel No Pain where he talks about the spirituality of music, and says that atheists are rarely good singers. One of the longest pieces is Music For Tape Loop in which Shane MacGowan talks about the Irish diaspora. Another person with a very expressive voice and a way with words is the fiddle player Martin Hayes who I know from his work with The Gloaming. He talks about the importance of authenticity in music, on a track called Sincerely Felt. The fiddle player Danny Meehan recites a W.B.Yeats poem The Ballad of Father Gilligan on a track called Famine. The album ends with House Ceilidh in which Margaret Barry recounts how after she had been at a fair, she would be invited to someone’s house. The furniture would be pushed back and there would be singing and dancing until 7.00 in the morning.

The music composed for this album includes violins, viola, dulcimer, guitar, harpsichord, recorder, whistles, bodhran, cello, bones, flute and pipes. The only name I recognised from the musicians was Gerry’s wife Lisa Knapp who also provides vocals on one track. I’m pleased that I bought this album. I think I might be biased because I come from an Irish background, but I have thought that Irish speaking voices are very suited to musical accompaniment, ever since I heard Ronnie Drew on the Celtic Poets album by Jah Wobble. Well done to all concerned in the making of Speech Project. I have shared House Ceilidh to this blog page to give you an idea of the album.

House Ceilidh

Hanging In The Gallery by Dave Cousins.

Leonard Cohen Chelsea Hotel #2 Live

Inside The Dream Palace.

Although it is quite warm for the time of year the skies are grey and we have had buckets of rain the last few days. It is Thursday afternoon now and I haven’t ventured out since Monday, but I have been quite happy staying up all night at the Chelsea Hotel. What I mean by that is, I have been reading a book called Inside the Dream Palace, The life & times of New York’s legendary Chelsea Hotel. It was published in 2014 and written by Sherill Tippins. A few months ago, after I wrote a piece about the artist Vali Myers which mentioned her meeting with Patti Smith at the Chelsea, a friend of mine who read the article thought I might like to read this book and kindly sent me a copy. I finally got around to reading it this week and I must say I found it a most enthralling read indeed. Just in case you are one of the few people who haven’t heard of the Chelsea Hotel I’ll just give you a quick few details about its history. It was opened in 1884 as a visionary utopian co-operative of apartments for people of all backgrounds. At the time it was New York’s tallest building. 

In 1905 financial problems caused it to be converted to a residential hotel. It became a haven for artistic creative types from all over the world who were drawn to the Chelsea because of it’s relaxed welcoming bohemian atmosphere. A journalist described it as ‘The Ellis Island of the Avant Garde’. It became a home to writers, musicians, painters, fashion designers, and all manner of creative people who influenced each other. A whole cavalcade of people I have admired fill the pages of this book. There is Thomas Wolfe whose books Look Homeward Angel and Of Time and the River I read decades ago because he was a big influence on Jack Kerouac’s early writing. Thomas Wolfe was encouraged to live at the Chelsea by Edgar Lee Masters who wrote Spoon River Anthology. I had never heard of him before, so this book is quite educational in introducing me to different writers. 

Jack Kerouac stayed at the Chelsea as well and had an encounter with Gore Vidal. I think it was a similar experience to the Chelsea meeting between Janis Joplin and Leonard Cohen which was immortalised in Leonard’s song Chelsea Hotel No2. As well as Jack, there are many other Beat related characters here such as Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, Brion Gysin, Gary Snyder, Hubert Hunke and Gregory Corso raging through the lobby. I didn’t know that Arthur C Clarke lived here while he was writing the screenplay of 2001, A Space Odyssey for Stanley Kubrick. Brendan Behan lived a drunken existence at the Chelsea for a while until it was making him so ill he had to return to Ireland, but while in New York he managed to dictate Confessions of an Irish Rebel. 

Another Celt with a penchant for drink was Dylan Thomas who made many long visits to New York, on the last occasion without his wife Caitlin who complained that she was ‘left to rot in this bloody bog’. Dylan came back to his room one night and said, “I have had 18 straight whiskies, I think that’s the record”. He died a few days later. I found some of the stories quite amusing, such as the painter Jackson Pollock who when praised as a genius for his ‘action painting’ drunkenly ranted, “Do you think I would paint this shit if I could draw a hand?”

Bob Dylan wrote some of his greatest songs while living in the Chelsea, such as Visions of Johanna which mentions the ‘Lights flicker from the opposite loft, In this room the heat pipes just cough’. The heat pipes were notoriously noisy apparently. He wrote Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands here as well, and Leopard Skin Pill Box Hat which I didn’t know was about Edie Sedgwick until I read this book. There is a lot about the tragic story of Edie, and of course Andy Warhol. Also, Valerie Solanos who wrote the S.C.U.M Manifesto and shot Warhol, but luckily he survived. Leading on from that is The Velvet Underground and Lou Reed. When Warhol made the film Chelsea Girls Dylan said, “That’s the end of the Chelsea Hotel, you might as well burn it down’. 

Bob was wrong of course. Patti Smith and her boyfriend Robert Mapplethorpe found inspiration here when they arrived penniless. It was where Patti found her voice with encouragement from other residents. Something else I didn’t know was that Patti met both Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix here in 1970 shortly before they died. One of the most tragic events was the deaths of Nancy Spungen and Sid Vicious in 1978/79. I’m not convinced that Sid killed Nancy. I think it was probably a drug dealer who did it to get their money. The police didn’t seem very interested in finding out what really happened. It did cast a cloud over the hotel’s reputation, and I don’t want to dwell on that. 

There are many, many amazing colourful characters in this book, such as the elderly artist Alphaeus Cole who was given a long-term low rent agreement by the hotel because they didn’t want him worried about money. They thought the agreement would only be for a couple of years, but he lived to be 112. I enjoyed this book immensely. I don’t know if it is the definitive work on the history of this great and iconic building because it is the only one I have read, but I heartily recommend it to anyone who is interested in the counter-culture of the 20^th century.