Tuesday 10th October 2006 12.50pm - 2pm Camden Town Inverness Street Market Before buying bananas and grapes at the fruit stall Amy’s press officer Shane tells me about this morning’s Independent feature on Paisley. He’s meeting priests, a prelude to the inevitable accord with Sinn Fein. In deference to the Rev Doc’s past the Indie had drawn up some of his past hits at the “painted harlot of Rome”. I say it seems surreal - all these years after marching his men up to the top of the hill and back down again,, of thumping the table on another local TV report, of castigating the very whiff of the “devil’s buttermilk”, of saying no, of just being there - gigantic,monolithic, blocking the sun, unmoveable - that Paisley - and Adams - and all the others are still there on the brink of power. How many Prime Ministers has Paisley outlasted and outlived? How scary is he and his bearded opposite? Like something from a horror tale, unstoppable, eternally yours. In Ulster everything changes; everything remains the same. In the Good Mixer, legendary nicotine smoke saturated birthplace of Britpop - allegedly - we wait …and wait…for Amy to arrive. When she turns up Amy tells me several things that won’t, because of space more than anything, end up in the finished article, - Daily Mirror, The Ticket, 20th October London and selected regions. The last tattoo Amy got was an anchor accompanied with the words “hello sailor” on her stomach. She has 12 tattoos in total, she doesn’t beleive in regret. The incident that inspired You Know I’m No Good, the second track on her new album Back To Black, went something like this. She was upstairs one morning in bed with her ex. She couldn’t come and she was thinking ” this hurts and its boring”. Then her downstairs buzzer went, it was an old flame. She ran downstairs and ended up crying in his arms. Amy and her current boyfriend were recently asked to leave a cinema because they were canoodling a little too enthusiastically. She thinks that Lily Allen will do well in the states but that she herself has a lot more to prove in the UK before conquering the land of the rich and the free. Her single Rehab came about when she was walking the New York streets with producer Mark (son of late Spider From Mars guitarist Mick Ronson) and started singing the riff. He said ‘who’s that by?’ she said it was something she’d just made up. They hot footed it back to the studio and one of the year’s greatest singles was born. She doesn’t like to sing for more than one or two takes - though Ronson sometimes bribes her with the offer of a drink, or a ciggy if she does one more take. She had a joint the other night - a much rarer occasion now than previously. But when she smoked it her personality is such that she began punding, ie obsessively tidying up the house of the friend where she was. The mobile phone sat out on the table in front of her throughout the interview looked like it had been chewed at the edges and been through several world wars. She woke up and cried one morning recently because she lost her little dog. Her mum is a Pharmacist. Maybe the Fall could do a cross gender remake of their remake - Mrs Pharmacist. She wants to do a future photo session in the revamped Ronnie Scotts. “With the band sitting at the tables, looking bored, will you remind me Shane?” she called over to the press officer. Amy’s a delightfully off message popstar, directly after the interview she goes to Charlotte Church Show were her alcohol fuelled performance causes some concern in The Mirror’s 3AM. Despite her protestations on her single is Amy - young, talented, volatile - destined for a spell in Rehab ? Setting herself up ? Hopefully she has the strength of character and the support of pals (there was one “tasty” looking geezer looking on as I spoke to her with a certain, uhhm, protective concern) to pull through. She’s such a sweet gal, who’d ever want to see her live her life as a car crash? Wednesday 11th October 8.30 - 12.30 Koko, Camden Town London. Thirty odd hours later, a short walk, from Mornington Crescent and just past Camden tube,several years, one Britpop career (retired), 2 lovely children, a spell in rehab a spell in Nashville, a phonecall of encouragement from Bob Dylan, generic musical preferences and her Welsh birthright are just some of the things that separate Cerys Matthews from Amy Winehouse. But they have far more in common. Going to Koko is always a trip back in time to me. It was The Music Machine when I first used to go there in the summer of 78 (or was it 79?). We were over from Norn Ireland squatting in South London, Edgeley Road, Clapham with Rudi (Belfast Good Vibrations signed Punk legends who later had a spell with Paul Weller’s Jamming label). This was the place - free to go to on Monday night. There was a disco, a PUNK disco (which even then was getting a little boring, a little regimented, a little where’s my Bee Gees, Taste Of Homey and Yooooou Make Me Feel Miiighty Real ?). It was the dreg ends of a scene. Topper Headon was around often - a testimony to the hard drug scene that was thereabouts. I remember being shocked to hear that a member of The Clash was into heroin! The venue had been through a name change or two since then (I saw Prince play here for hours and hours after his Parade show at Wembley - when it was called The Camden Palace) but the elaborate interiors, the sodden concrete steps behind the stage leading to dressing room, remain the same. Indeed the somewhat disconcerting aspect of being there was noting how the framed pillars, the melange of Grecian and retro grandeur with the nyphs, cherubs and such like, corresponded to the definition of Totalitarian Architecture as outlined by Jonathan Meades in his Stalin documentary. But Uncle Joe never went in for such a big dazzling Mirror Ball and never had Cerys - a winning combination of her deep in the blood folk ballad roots, crosspatterned with her Catatonia nurtured theatriclaity and new found Nashville Juice - as a house musician. With her life in a mid Atlantic flux Cerys Matthews act and music is similarly hard to pin down. That is of course its charm and, for a record business looking to box things off, to sell to a particular demographic, she must be a puzzle. The audience at Koko was certainly appreciative but in a very studious, stand offishway. A reasonable crowd lined the balconies, stood on the floor but a reverence pervaded. I felt if I hadda whooped and hollered I’d be castigated as too out of control by those gathered round about me. For foxs sake ! Its Cerys Britpop Lioness Survivor Jiver - with all her lung power and love power intact We should be swinging it out in her honour, shouting it high and loud and proud. Yet something about the place - the big hollow high space tween stage and the roof - dwarfed her, allowed thesound to float up to the rafters, losing impact when it came back downto us on the floor. If she was to move into a territory somewhat akin to Nick Cave, Polly Harvey, Tom Waits Cerys could do this show in a small theatre, go for musical tightness rather than looseness, and it might make more “sense”. BUT the good thing about Cerys show and why its possible to connect with it is that its an honest representation of her, who she is - and where she’s been. You can see that backstage as she relaxes with a glass of wine and her two kids. Johnny Jones is still - but obviously not for long - a baby and already a little of the performing gene is evident in his nature. In her lime Green patchwork quilt dress daughter Glenys Pearl has already begun writing songs, at least planning them out in her head. And Cerys and her hubbie Seth? They returned to live in the UK a few months ago. Directly after the show Cerys was going on the ferry to Dublin (where, I’d wager, a more vibrant reception greeted her). When the tour is finished she and Seth take a holiday - without the kids. Then she thinks they’ll move back to Nashville. First time I saw Cerys she was up a very tall lampost, round the corner of my house, being filmed for a video on a winter day that would would have frozen the knackers off a brass monkey. Next time I saw her was at a meet n greet backstage at The Palladium for Glen Campbell. She was with the then leader of Joe Strummer’s Mescaleroes Anthony Genn, as is now revealed in Salewicz’s Redemption Song, Genn was at the time a big junkie. I hadnt seen Genn since the Mesclaeroes days until quite recently. Once when I was being shunted around Polydor Records, to avoid the Snow Patrol press officer mentioned in a previous post, while listening to a playback of The Scissor Sisters second album. He was in there with Rough Trade management team Geoff Travis and Jeanette lee hammering out a deal. Then I saw him when I was interviewing Badly Drawn Boy in The Groucho Club, an ole Strummer haunt. And now there’s Cerys happy and free doing her own thing, still managed, like Genn, by Rough Trade. Amy Winehouse wants to have children after two more albums. In a way Cerys could be a good role model for her,wonder if the time and the short distance between them had been separated and they had met would cerys be able to say anything to assist or enlighten amy. When young ladies are out and up and attem like Amy is - and Cerys no doubt once was - its easy to shrug and say - still hasn’t found what she’s looking for? Well maybe its the looking that that those girls are looking for. They ain’t hurting nobody, leading no people into the blackness, not blocking out the sun. Minstrel angels just a-singing their song, doing the do, dodging and dancing in the mad glare of the media light. That they are still standing, still defining their world in song, is a wonder, really, to behold.
