The Jangling Man: The Martin Newell Story (2022)

 

The Greatest Living Englishman by Martin Newell (Autumn Girl Books 2020)

Young Jobless

I sat with a two-litre bottle of cider in one hand and a roll-up in the other, watching the video screen in my landlord Steve's living room. Roger Maynard, then a news presenter at BBC East in Norwich, was interviewing a young man. The young man, in his 20s, was dressed almost entirely in black, his thin face appearing more gaunt for a surfeit of smeared mascara. He lurched uneasily in his seat as he fielded the interviewer's questions. Did he think, asked Roger Maynard, that a record whose subject matter mentioned unemployment and drugs was relevant as an educational aid for youngsters? The young man stared vacantly at the camera: “Well it’s gotta be better than rock-climbing and Duke of Edinburgh Awards... annit?” he slurred. Then he laughed, lurching almost out of his seat.

Even I, by this time well-numbed with cider, was slightly shocked as I watched the video recording of my first live TV appearance.

Everyone, apparently, had seen it. The pub, so Steve said, had been a-buzz with it earlier. Even an uncle of mine in distant Buckinghamshire had witnessed it. Shortly afterwards, during the course of a telephone conversation, he told me quietly that he thought I’d let myself down. It hadn’t been the plan. I’d put a sharp black outfit together. A little bit rock’n’roll maybe, but smart-ish It was on the train to the Norwich studio that I noticed my throat was swollen, my head ached and I felt slightly other-worldly. The meet and greet person at the BBC showed me into the Green Room (which they still had in those days) pointed to a large drinks cabinet and gave me one of those, you-know-what-to-do gestures. No sooner had the door closed than I’d sprung briskly up and mixed myself a whisky mac. Then, quickly, another. Still no one came to collect me. So I had a third. I now felt confident, witty and erudite.

Thus began My So-Called Fucking TV Career. A few days earlier, my mum had telephoned me at 7.30am and said, “You’re in the Daily Mail. They say that a 'dole and drugs record’ written by a part-time washer-up has been sent out to hundreds of schools as an educational aid. And a Tory MP Nick Budgen, has condemned you publicly." She sounded rather more excited than alarmed about it. On Radio 1, the DJ Dave Lee Travis was playing ‘Young Jobless' at lunchtimes. The record company informed me that my disc had been C-listed, which meant ‘sporadic’ airplay. The drive-time DJ, Peter Powell, had played it too. For the next fortnight or so, I’d be washing up at the restaurant on a busy lunchtime session, and I’d suddenly hear Max Volume’s guitar riff chugging in, as my record came on. 

“Hey, that’s my record again!” I’d squeal. The whole shift would come to a halt until it was finished. I was getting Radio 1 airplay. One evening they played it on Radio 4’s PM news show. I never heard it of course. In those days I only ever listened to pop music stations. Because of that particular news item, some high-up at EMI Records had also heard it.

The next thing you know, along with Kris and Stuart from Offstreet Records, I’m sitting upstairs at EMI’s Manchester Square HQ, negotiating a one-off, piss-poor, four per cent record and distribution deal. The record was hurriedly re- released on EMI's Liberty label. Now we were motoring.

We sealed it with a lukewarm bottle of Chablis, which I'd found while nosing around in their broken fridge, when instead I should have been listening to what was being said. In the bogs later, just along the corridor, I met Mensi, cheerfully ebullient singer of the Angelic Upstarts. “Do some fookin work, yer lazy bastids!” he yelled in broad Geordie, as we passed back through the typing pool together. On the way back up to the meeting room, finding myself on the wrong staircase, I met a few glamorous- looking New Romantic types: tablecloths over shoulders, leather trousers and big ’80s hair. They all had flutes of cold fizzy in their hands. I was informed that it was some kind of reception for Dexys Midnight Runners. And there's me, Kris and Stuart, crammed upstairs in an office with a paper cup of warm Chablis each and a song about the plight of Our Unemployed Yoof. Every expense spared, then.

Random George Orwell quote of the day

Found the quote below in amongst my drafts on the blog. I presume the words were uttered by Martin Newell, but the magazine, Rolling Stone, is one of the labels and I find it hard to believe that Martin Newell was quoted in said magazine. I mean, he should, the bloke's a lost and neglected songwriting gem, but it's strange all the same. If nothing else, it has reminded me that his autobiography (part 2) is on my bookshelf, and should be read:

  "Everybody's quoting Orwell nowadays on the blogosphere for some reason. Something to do with quintessential Englishness and such like. (England must be getting tanked at the cricket again.)"

Upstairs Planet: Cleaners From Venus & The Universe Of Martin Newell (2019)

This Little Ziggy by Martin Newell (House of Stratus 2001)

We have no extradition treaties with the past. That is, we can't bring our younger selves back into the present to account for our doings there. At best, all we may have are a few scribbled notes on faded paper and perhaps a handful of faded Polaroids to tell us that events ever really happened at all. These recollections begin in the late summer of 1964 and end in the early spring of 1975. They are not, therefore, an autobiography as such.

New old music for the New Year

Not enough of you click on the links of the music blogs placed under the Thank You For The Music banner, so a very quick intro to a few of the blogs listed:

Walk Out To Winter - The name of the blog is a giveway. A music blog recently established which is a hymn to singles dating from - but not exclusive to - the period 1978 to 1983. If your musical tastes are for early goth, post-punk and the burgeoning indie scene from that time then this a blog you have to bookmark. I'm guessing the blogger is basically going through their record collection. High Fidelity for the Zig Zag magazine generation.

Consolation Prizes - CP overlaps a bit with WOTW but moves on a few more years and is more rooted in C86 indie pop. The sub-heading marks itself down as dedicated to "guitar pop/indiepop/neo-acoustic/wimp pop/powerpop punk/new wave/post-punk/pre-punk" and, like WOTW again, focuses primarily on singles. A lot of material isn't to my taste but a lot of the bands are new to me. This blog is very much a wee brother to the long established music blog, Take The Pills, which comes out of Brazil, and earned extra brownie points for introducing me to this superb Martin Newell single from 1980 that I hadn't previously come across before.

Moody Places - And it's three in a row for excellent 7" music blogs. I say 7" but Moody Places operating out of Belfast is firmly rooted in the period of the CD single and the multi formatting rip off that we all came to learn to hate in the early 90s. Very much the indie pop kid but his musical tastes are much too eclectic to simply be pigeon-holed as a Brit Pop music blogger. One of the few music bloggers out there who shares my affection for the criminally underrated Diesel Park West. Also check out his sister blog, Grand Passion, which throws up cover version compilations arranged around a particular theme, season or year and can be either 'interesting', left-field or execrable . . . and sometimes all three within the same track if it involves either the Wonder Stuff, Kingmaker or Jesus Jones.

The Post-Punk Progressive Pop Party - Also known as 5P round my way and old favourite that's been mentioned many a time on the blog previously. Still the best place to go on the music blog circle if you're trying to locate dates of releases, record sleeves or *cough* mp3s from the 1978-1984 period. The perfect companion to Simon Reynolds post-punk primer, Rip It Up and Start Again.

Jangle Pop Boutique - Arguably the most obscure of the music blogs mentioned, Jangle Pop Boutique comes from the same mystery music blogger who brought us the excellent Best Kept Secrets blog. Another love letter to obscure jangle pop from the mid-80s period. Bands so obscure that Andy Strickland didn't even namecheck most of them in the sadly defunct Record Mirror back in the day (Though Strickland's Caretaker Race does get a mention on the blog.) With obscure band after obscure band featured on the blog it highlights from that time what was almost a throwback to the punk period with the recurring scenario of four blokes with the same fringe shambling together for the duration of a couple of singles and a feature on a indie compilation record -print run of 500 - only to drift apart in the direction they originally came from. Most of these blokes now have receding hairlines and are now either working in IT or teaching Maths in educational establishments well placed in the school league tables year on year. Take a chance on a music blog who's most famous featured bands are McCarthy, The Close Lobsters and The Boy Hairdressers.

Happy hunting, and feel free to also check out this old post from the blog which very much goes over the same old ground with the same jokes, phraseology and writing everything in threes.

I'm an old blogging dog and I have no new tricks.

Disclaimer Time

This post was written in haste, with no recourse to revision, re-reading or reflection. The typos, spelling mistakes and alliterations are part and parcel of the post and in keeping with the spirit of the music under discussion. Now I'll shamble off in the direction of the kitchen for a cup of tea.

Lost In Music: a pop odyssey by Giles Smith (Picador 1995)

In 1985, the year before I became an official band member, one of Newell's regular mail-order clients in Germany took the cassette version of a collection of songs called Under Wartime Conditions, pressed it up as a vinyl album and distributed it to the stores. Newell was jubilant. This was, he reckoned, a real anarchist's triumph, a giant petrol bomb through the record companies' corporate windows. An album of songs made in his house in his spare time, using only a raddled guitar, an old piano with drawing pins in its hammers, a bass which was a barely modified plank, and a rusty xylophone, had gone down the system's blindside and made it right into the shops. 'And', he said victoriously, 'no one with a pony-tail and stupid plastic glasses came anywhere near it.'

So this was the Martin Newell whom I joined full-time in the Cleaners from Venus: an angered pop guerrilla with his own agenda, a one-man music-biz resistance unit.

The brother of the greatest living englishman

FDTW's Stuart and Dave's old mucker, Chris Knight, gets his three minutes. (Granted, he got his other twelve minutes last week.)

Comedy gold or revolutionary insight . . . I'll let you decide. I just think he's Martin Newell's twin in both get up and humour.

The Road to Colchester

Bastard godlike. The hairs on the back of my neck are tingling at the brilliance of this YouTube clip.

Who thought the nearest I would ever get to a religious experience this side of Denise Mina answering one of my emails would be from watching a black and white clip from an acoustic set performed at the Colchester Arts Centre?

I'm actually jealous of that (seemingly) disembodied foot away in the audience. How's that for a personification of going soft in the head?

Info accompanying the YouTube clip is as follows:

"Martin Newell performs Julie Profumo, in an excerpt from the 1st Golden Afternoon. Recorded live at the Colchester Arts Centre in the summer of 2003. Martin is joined by Nelson on mandolin & backing vocals. The film was produced & directed by Michael Cumming."

There's another 5 or 6 YouTube clips from the same performance that you should also check out but it's Newell singing 'Julie Profumo' that does it for me. A well played mandolin banjoes me every time. Put it down to early exposure to an alternative universe Rod Stewart where he used to be good.

You don't love this clip as much as me? Fuck you cloth ears. (My God is definitely Old Testament.) As penance you can check out this fascinating 49 minute interview with Martin Newell, where he catalogues his life and times, and which comes courtesy of Cherry Red Records Web TV. Yep, that Cherry Red.

I'm saying it's a form of penance but in fact Newell is a witty and entertaining motormouth in the interview. The interviewer, Iain McNay, hardly gets a word in edgeways for forty odd minutes, and Newell takes you on an autobiographical journey that starts in the backwoods of early seventies Essex, careering on to the nascent punk scene in mid-seventies London to selling out tours in Germany but selling sod all back in Britain. Throw in a mention of dodgy dock pubs in Ipswich, Captain Sensible, the cassette culture of the early eighties to Newell at one point being the best selling living British poet - and it all being told with a garnish of wit and Newell's bullshit detector firmly in place - and you'll come to realise that my God has a bit of the New Testament in her as well. Just a smidgeon. That's all you need.