GLASTONBURYOFTHEMIND

This was the email I received from Snow Patrol’s then PR, Paul Smernicki, after the piece (included under the Snow Patrol Say No heading) was printed. Gavin, So, I made a mistake so you stitched up the band? How classy. No one complains about negative press if it’s a journalist’s honest opinion - this just feels so petty and vindictive I’m flabbergasted. Thankfully, the comment you added about Tom’s waist size at the end of the piece should have shot a hole in any shred of credibility your piece might have had. What on earth has that got to do with anything? You know how apologetic I was about the fuck-up and we got there in the end, but clearly that wasn’t enough for you. I imagine you are feeling pretty smug about the whole thing. AND HERE IS MY RESPONSE TO HIS RESPONSE > Gavin, > So, I made a mistake so you stitched up the band? How classy. > No one complains about negative press if it’s a journalist’s honest opinion > - this just feels so petty and vindictive I’m flabbergasted. That might be how it feels but what it is is someone telling a story which seems to have been missed or glossed over in previous articles. > > > > Thankfully, the comment you added about Tom’s waist size at the end of the > piece should have shot a hole in any shred of credibility your piece might > have had. What on earth has that got to do with anything? It has to do with the way the band’s image is moulded and marketed. The point would surely be if the gut wasn’t held in. I notice you aren’t disputing that point. > > > > You know how apologetic I was about the fuck-up and we got there in the end, > but clearly that wasn’t enough for you. Well as the piece explains we didn’t really get there in the end , did we.?I never talked to Gary to finish the interview and about the half the questions I submitted by email weren’t even dignified with an answer or a simple no comment. > > > > I imagine you are feeling pretty smug about the whole thing. Not at all I am feeling pretty shortchanged this took me longer to set up than other interviews for no more reward. Its much easier for me to do a straightforward here’s the story from the subject’s mouth piece. And frankly I would much rather do that. But when the story seems to lie elsewhere, as a journalist, as I’m sure you will understand, I am duty bound to go there. Best G The “fuck-up” that the press officer refers to here seems to be either setting up or cancelling an interview, without telling the artist (who had actually agreed to do it at a prearranged time when he had spoken to the journalist (that’s me). at the time the interview was meant to happen but didn’t Smernicki was in the office but in a meeting which could not be interrupted, until after the agreed interview time had passed. And, on the first attempt at conducting this fucking interview, Smernicki’s colleague had tried for 30 minutes, after the time allotted for the interview, to connect me with Lightbody at his home in Glasgow. When he was finally contacted I spoke to Gary Lightbody for 4 minutes before he claimed he had to be somewhere else and his mind wasn’t on the interview. After I had told him that I too was from Bangor, Co Down, Norn Ireland (not Brazil) he seemed uneasy. Why? I can only speculate. Possibly because I think he knew then, instinctively, that I could see through his charade. Using my new technique I might, if I can be arsed, transcribe every last um and ah of that 4 minute interview sometime soon. Thinking back I think I rattled Gazzer because most journalists have never heard of Bangor, the bastion of British Conservatism in Northern Ireland for over 30 years. They confuse it with Bangor in Wales so often But I grew up there. Slept there. Wept there. I know a little of what makes the place tick. Bangor always had a big part of it that was as shallow as the duck pond in Ward Park, as soulless as its Saturday Nights, as hypocritically non commital as it could be - a living Ulster tragedy. It was like that when I was growing up there in the after the fall of the 60s. And onto into the head in the sand, say nothing 70s. And now, under the new peace agreement dispensation, with its council having taken the sea out of the town centre and sold its all for a mess of nothing, it continues to mock its wondrous, ancient, Viking Warrior, Historic Holy Learning Centre status. Everything there is manicured, blue rinsed, airbrushed, and these days, no doubt, botoxed out of existence. A cultural slum. Lightbody - who has endlessly played the whimsical bluff card (as Pete Paphides perceptively noted in his Times piece) and the Indie Rock Mister Nice Guy ticket - is the first big popstar Bangor’s ever produced. In the truly laughable responses to the email q and a Gary confirmed Paphides whimsical observation. Asked which was worse - Bangor Council opting to take the sea out of the centre of town to build a rich folk’s Yachting marina or banning outdoor drinking he plumped for the latter - the easy going, uncontroversial option. Who could argue against alcohol in N Ireland? Indeed alcohol and the imbibing of it - or not - is a recurring motif in Gary’s diary on the official Snow Patrol site. All of which makes him the perfect Bangor Icon - duly pampered, avoiding the issues, remaining blithely non commital, a regular guy. But, of course, I could be wrong about that. Why? Because I speak as the guy who wrote the review that elicited this email from the PR after the interview had taken place - but BEFORE the feature was printed. Smernicki, Paul to Gavin Jul 19 Hi Gavin, Hopefully everything worled (sic) out OK in the end. On another topic, in your very excellent review of Eyes Open, you describe the album as ‘the best album of their career’. We’d like to use this quote on a press add and require permission. We have to quote the paper, not the writer. Can you grant this or can you point me in another direction. Chees (sic) Funny thing is that since the runaround that went with the feature - and some even more untenable bollocks that went on afterwards which I haven’t even gone into here - I haven’t, surprise surprise, had the inclination to listen to the album by the biggest selling Bangorian in rock history. Eyes Open? Ears Closed. As Charlie Murray used to say - quote that in your ads!

JERRY LEIBER’s Upper West Side town house circa 1960. Having aceded to Phil Spector’s pestering by agreeing to compose a tune with him Leiber hears the Teddy Bear turned producer play a guitar figure that calls to mind the finale of Jaques Ibert’s 1922 suite Escales. “It was Spanish, Spanish Harlem and I wrote it …on the spot,” says Leiber. Leiber’s partner Mike Stoller, cooking Hamburgers in the kitchen, chipped in with the descending triplets that would be played on marimbas on the finished Ben E King tune, though modest Mike wouldn’t claim credit on his contribution. Shortly after record plugger extraordinaire Artie Ripp invited the obsessive Mister Spector to his hotel room to share the company of “two maniac chicks”. While Artie was “getting sucked, fucked and this and that and going crazy” Spector hunkered down on his guitar, and finished off the tune -Spanish Harlem. THAT’s how its done? Source - Ken Emerson’s elegant Always Magic In The Air THE BOMP AND BRILLIANCE OF THE BRILL BUILDING ERA (4th Estate)

Well, an exract from the rock n roll interview of the year. Ben Pritchard ex Fall guitarist exclusive interview by Anthony Meirion, given just a month after Ben, Steve & Spencer walked out of The Fall during the 2006 US tour. It’s a very lengthy and detailed interview in which Ben talks candidly about his time in the group and gives what many people have been waiting for - the other side of the story on the US tour walkout. Read the full thing at http://www.visi.com/fall/news/fallnews.html Thanks to Kevin for sending it. Now if only Mark would respond ! AM: It became unbearable? BP: Yeah. We did Austin, we did Dallas, we did Tucson and then we went to Phoenix… and then when we got to Phoenix, the guy that was driving our bus, the tour manager, he’d just had enough. This guy said from day one, and this guy was the only person who was prepared to do this tour out of all of the tour managers that the record company had asked, this guy was the only guy who was prepared to do it. And he was a brilliant tour manager, it wasn’t like he was someone from the bottom of the barrel. This guy’s attitude was he knew how difficult it is working with The Fall, y’know, he’s heard all these horror stories, but he was gonna do it, cos he wanted to get to New York at the end of the tour and have his picture taken with a sign saying, “I Survived The Fall Tour 2006”, that was his attitude, d’you know what I mean? He was a real kind of… he’d put up with anything. And a week later he was like, “I can’t do it. I’ve gotta go.” So we got to Phoenix and the tour manager was leaving and he was taking the vehicle with him. He was taking the vehicle that we were all getting from A to B in. I knew that this guy was going to do it and there was tempers flaring anyway, because… what started it all, the tour didn’t get off to the greatest start because we’d just had some new backdrops made, y’know the backdrops that we have behind us, Fall Heads Roll and all this. We had three made, Mark paid for them and they’re about three or four thousand pounds worth of backdrops done by this artist. And Mark flew on a different plane over from Chicago than us. We flew British Airways, he flew the ones that go to Atlanta, I can’t remember who they are. And he gave us Eleni’s keyboard and the backdrops. The backdrops never made it to Austin. They made it to Chicago… and he was like, “You fuckin make sure, you take care of them fuckin’ backdrops, they’re fuckin’ money, them! I won’t be fuckin’ happy if they’re not there!” So the worst thing that could have happened, I mean if I hadn’t have turned up or if Spencer hadn’t have turned up that would have been fine, as long as the backdrops were there… those backdrops were absolutely everything to him and they didn’t turn up. And when he eventually arrived in Austin, Texas it was like, “Well somebody’s gonna have to tell him. Who’s gonna tell him?” So I told him and he was like, “Right. Ok. Alright.” And I thought at the time, I thought, he’s took that a bit too well. That’s not gonna be the end of this… Then it started coming out, it was all our fault the backdrops had got lost and it was just kind of… every day peoples heads were just getting lower and lower. It was just like, sat in the dressing room before a gig like that (puts head in hands). Fookin hell… just keep yer heads down and don’t look at him. And then we’d go and play a gig and we’d play a fucking blinding gig but back into the dressing room you’re like that again (resumes head in hands position). I was listening to an interview that Mark did on Dragnet Radio, it’s on the Fall website, and he said that people were leaving during the shows but, you know, that’s bollocks. People weren’t leaving. And if people were leaving, it certainly wasn’t because of us. I mean we fucking work really hard for the guy, we always have done. We just get our heads down and get on with it, but you just end up getting dragged into these fucking horrible games. You don’t want to be a part of it, you just want to get on with it, but when you’re all in the back of a tiny little Winnebago, it’s just… (shakes head). AM: Didn’t he pour a pint over the tour manager’s head while he was driving? BP: Yeah. Well we were driving down from Tucson to Phoenix, driving through the desert at 70 miles an hour, we’re in a Winnebago, or that kind of thing, nobody’s got a seatbelt on in the back, it’s like a tiny little flat, you’ve got a bathroom, a little bedroom, a kitchen. People were walking around d’you know what I mean? And Mark was pissed, he was foaming, he was drooling… and he just came wandering over, walking to the front of the bus and I was sat next to the driver with a map, giving this guy directions. You know, for some reason, Mark had made this guy the enemy. Before this guy has a chance to do his job, Mark was like, “You’re fuckin’ shit! I’m getting rid of him!” But he doesn’t just sack him, he winds him up and he winds him up and he winds him up. He’ll make him a target until the guy walks. And if he’s not walked by a certain time, y’know, normally changes his mind. But unfortunately what happened is we were on this two hour journey and Mark had a bottle of beer and I think he just poured a bit on this guy’s head. This guy had two massive braids, you know what I mean, French plaits going down the side of his head so Mark just wasn’t having any of it (laughter)… so, y’know, he just… I don’t think he did it maliciously or in a nasty way, I think he might just have been being playful, but… it was the straw that broke the camel’s back for that tour manager, he was like, “fuck this!”. In theory, if this fuckin guy hadn’t have been as on the ball as he was… some people having a beer over their head could’ve gone off the road, just panicked, y’know and with people walking around in the back, he could have killed everybody. And that was like, “for fuck’s sake, it’s getting out of hand this.” And y’know, he was throwing chewed up pieces of banana at me because I was helping this guy with directions. And he walked up to the back of me with a lit cigarette in his hand and I could smell something burning and I’m sure he was at it with a cigarette at the back of my head, just cos I was helping this guy with directions. AM: Nobody would put up with that… BP: No. And we got to Phoenix and it was like, “Look, what do we do?” We were looking for signs that it was gonna get better, it was gonna be alright, we were desperately trying to get this tour Manager to stay, but he just wasn’t having it. He was leaving and that would have meant that we were stuck in Phoenix with no tour manager and no money. And ultimately someone was gonna have to go and tell Mark that this guy had left and, of course, it would have been our fault, just like the backdrops not turning up. The tour manager quitting would have been our fault and he knows himself that it’s not our fault, but he winds himself up and he starts believing himself. He tells himself so many times that he starts fucking violently acting on this thing that he’s made up. But at the end of the day he was our boss and we understand what he’s like. We understand that you are putting up with things that no other band in the fucking world at the moment has to put up with. I can’t remember if it was Spencer or Steve, but somebody said that we were the worst treated band in the whole world and I sat there and thought of all the bands in the world that are performing at the moment, no one can be. Especially with all the money and attention that’s pumped into these new bands, a band like The Fall… we were the worse treated band. He kept trying to take our wages off us after we’d been paid, y’know it’s just…

Back then, last year, just a month from now. Past the announcer’s particularly feisty intro, the clangour of the post Rumble opening. Maggie’s Farm announced what was suggested - a punchy 65 year old out to drive his chariot far as it would run. Bobby was the defiant, Jewish American, Jewish American rocker, rocker incarnate. Far from having disengaged from the movement he is a movement - shaking the autodictat groovethang. Sometimes its impossible not to hear much of what Dylan does as a statement of faith, incandescent and telling it like it is. Maggie’s here, during 5 night Brixton Academy run, recalls something of the kickass pelt of Infidel’s Stonesalike, Pro-Israel Neighbourhood Bully. This ability to personalise landmasses, entire nation state’s of being, is inherent in the first track of Modern Times, Vinyl Version Side 4. Levee Gonna Break. In its free wheeling propulsion, and in its curiosity for curving the structure, warping Tin Pan Alley, this tune’s musical gait recalls Highway 61. Both use a manmade structure to summon up Modern Times in America. And beyond. Finery of the composing reminds that Dylan was a man who grew up hearing Leiber and Stoller rewrite the blues. Just like Side 1 track 1 Thunder On The Mountain makes you think he might have lived, and understood, the words of Sly “I’m a songwriter - my only weapon is my song”. The gift of song He took to it like Nabokov at a Cantor’s canter, then imagined it as played by smoking and drinking electric Detroit hardasses. Meeting higher than a hog, tilling fields at harvest time, white mountain men. Both sides come together, to sing and bear witness. Jewish American Beatnik Ginsberg would approve - Dylan expresses ancient blues truth in Katrina’s wake. “If it keeps raining the levee’s gonna break” Paisley and Adams soon in power. Alien child pesterer, recast as Foxy Democrat in Congress. Who knew what and when and why and how. Everywhere - in British courtroom from govermental policy to Iraq street - psychopath given dominion. This now is in, not before, the flood. The Highway 61 60s metaphor don’t run from from here no more. Country’s gone drownd’d