Peerless Texas

So it was the first time I had seen Lyle Lovett since the splendour of his Large Band captivated 3000 fans and more at the Edinburgh Playhouse in the mid 1990’s
In the comparatively boutique surroundings of the Queen’s Hall fronting his four piece ‘Acoustic Band’, the long tall man from Texas is an even more commanding presence.
Sliver of suit, boots boasting the most immaculate chiselled toes, the 51-year-old with the grin that transcends lop-sided is the most tastefully tortured artist imaginable.
Anchored by the redoubtable Russ Kunkel, his drummer of long standing who also played with the cream of the Seventies Californian scene, and gets more power out of brushes than lesser mortals manage with sticks, this is a gentlemen’s ensemble of great talent.
Cellist John Hagen has been around Lyle for at least two decades, and it shows in the repartee between them. If timing is indeed the secret of comedy, then Lovett can stand up with the best of them.
He is more tall and droll than Chic Murray, a deadpan storyteller both spoken and sung. Hagen plays the knowing straight man almost as well as he bows that cello, which is very well indeed.
They reach back as far as If I Had A Boat, cherry picking from a 23 year career, injecting renewed vigour into tunes like My Baby Don’t Tolerate and Since The Last Time.
Showstopper of the night? In a set that wreaks casual emotional havoc throughout, the penultimate tune that opens the encore, North Dakota. Unrequited painful border brooding. Cue moist glass eyes etc.
In this former church, it was a religious experience.

just like a ...

So it was 1982 and the legendary Rolling Stones were playing some “intimate” British shows, work their way back into the British public’s affections ahead of a European stadium tour.
That meant appearing at venues such as the Capitol Theatre in Aberdeen, legendary Glasgow Apollo and newly refurbished Playhouse in Edinburgh, the latter accommodating over 3,000 punters.
By default I had befriended the seasoned manager of the Edinburgh venue, a wily old operator called Ted Way, a professional brought in to ensure the place was properly run after years of less than diligent stewardship.
The Edinburgh cognoscenti viewed Ted with suspicion, a London connected guy pioneering the balding grey mullet look, with the air of somebody who knew what he was doing.
As a comparatively young independent radio buck, I was regularly invited to his office to enjoy the A list acts for whom the Playhouse was one of the first venues penned on any tour itinerary.
Ted was to be late accused of improper practices in the way he ran the theatre, but hand on heart I never witnessed anything to support those accusations. Although he was prone to ask what you wanted to drink, and if you said a Becks German lager, four bottles would be opened and lined up in front of you.
He was an indominatable character whose proudest possession was an oil painting of The Stranglers, with him in the frame as the fifth member of the band. The indestructible Shetland fiddler Aly Bain was a regular dinner guest chez Ted, and you needed to be indestructible to survive at his table.
Getting an interview with Mick Jagger had become Radio Forth’s top priority, and therefore mine.
Ted called me and suggested I come over and interview the promoter Harvey Goldsmith, with a nod and a wink on arriving at his office. Nothing said, just a wave through to the back office where the man who would mastermind Live Aid sat casually at a desk.
Harvey was accommodating and friendly, but I was uncertain how this fitted into the “get Jagger” plan, or how I would explain it back at base. It was the means to an end, a concept alien then, but much clearer with hindsight.
On the day of the show I was drinking IPA in the magnificent Café Royal, drowning my embarrassment at the Jagger failure, and hoping that seeing the Stones in such an “intimate” setting would be some recompense.
Suddenly a breathless Tom Bell, then Radio Forth’s Head Of Music, burst through the swing doors in West Register Street. He was clutching tape machine and said that if I went that minute Mick would grant an audience backstage at the Playhouse.
There was no time to think about it. A whirl and there I was in a dressing room deserted but for the Stone’s singer and some blonde woman.
“Jerry, go and get us a couple of beers darling,” drawled the sexiest man alive.
Only later did I realise that Mick had just asked Jerry Hall to go and get this 24-year-old a Budweiser, which was not as common as piss back then. Still tasted like it though.
He was loquacious, warm and friendly, I was overawed, nervous and full of 5 pints of the Café Royal’s finest.
All appeared to go well. As it turns out, the most significant thing on the tape was the distant sound of Edinburgh’s TV21 playing their final gig, having landed the opening slot through their record company Decca. They of course released all the really good early Rolling Stones material. And turned down the Beatles.
Mick had in the words of David Byrne been talking a lot but not saying anything. Possibly I was mesmerised by those legendary lips and imagining where they had or hadn’t been, but there was nothing of substance in those 15 minutes, Then again the buzz phrase in commercial radio at the time was ‘it’s all about the sizzle not the sausage’.
This was all facilitated by Matt Donald, the Eighties EMI radio plugger and one of the funniest human beings to grace the planet.
I learned that getting the big name interview was not everything after all. Unless you are prepared to ask the tough questions and listen to the answers.

Evidently John Cooper Clarke's Bus Pass

So John Cooper Clarke has just turned 60. The barely bantam-weight Salford bard middle-aged spread appears to have affected only his remarkable hair, still coloured dark as raven’s wings with approximately the same span.On Saturday night a very respectable crowd partial to iambic pentameters in a Mancunian punk rock style crammed into Edinburgh’s Cabaret Voltaire – surely the most appropriately named venue for such a literate performer.And the local literati were littered throughout the crowd, including the redoubtable Paul Reekie, another man of words who seems to improbably improve with age. The long greying hair giving him the look of a craggy Celtic Iggy Pop, but most definitely not that of an insurance salesman.(For the unfamiliar, check his early piece Lovers on the impressive compilation of Scottish post punk Messthetics No 5.)Johnny was due on stage at 8.30 but didn’t make it until 9.00pm, his taxi driver apparently unsure where the Cab Vol was situated in the heart of the historic Olde Towne. Next to the Blair Street Sauna, from where many a promoter of shows source the dressing room towels for the appearing stars. Freshly laundered, obviously.And to think JCC could have hopped on a bus for free, if he remembered to bring the pass. Sporting a heavy red tint rather than the old black wraparound shades of old, he drinks whisky with a bottle of water chaser. Class. His are one of the few shows where the cry of “Twat!” is a request not a heckle, although the occasional Czech lager fuelled hollers from the more drunk and confused are deftly despatched out of the park. There are more yarns and gags than poems, but no complaints on that score.The highlight is Beasley Street being restyled as Beasley Boulevard, with all the accoutrements of 21st century living. Back in 1982 or so I committed the broadcasting faux pas par excellence of deciding to play his single at the time, I Married A Monster From Outer Space.It was during a show called Forth Street at tea time, on curiously enough, Radio Forth.In my defence Forth Street was the station’s actual address.Being disorganised as usual, only the album was to hand, and not thinking about the single edits so popular back in the day, slammed on the LP version.“I mean it’s bad enough with someone from another race,” says Johnny, “But fuck me a monster from outer space.”Cut things short before the next refrain but fell short of an apology. How many of the sizeable drive time audience rang in to complain? Not a single one.Admittedly, I only played a record, but it will come as no surprise that profanity failed to be quite the boosty woosty to my career as it did for those of Ross and Russell all these years later.