Ian Dury

by Will Birch

  The record’s notoriety helped to expand its appeal. ‘Kids all love swearing,’ said Ian. ‘I’m only swearing for the kids, I’m not swearing for the oldsters! But I’m very careful about swearing on record, just enough. You’re allowed one “fuck” and two “bloodies” on BBC2 after 11 o’clock. If you see a film like Serpico and every other word is “fuck”, it’s horrible. In real life I swear as much as possible, but when I wrote “Plaistow Patricia”, it seemed the only way to do it was to get rid of it in one line. I think that’s all the swearing there is on New Boots and Panties!!’ Ian was thrilled when he learnt that architects and lawyers were buying the album, knowing that he also appealed to middle-class professionals.

  Swearing notwithstanding, Ian was poised for national stardom. A television documentary profiled the rising star in a twenty-minute romp around Oval Mansions and Walthamstow Market. ‘He looks and dresses like a totter,’ ran Yvonne Roberts’ commentary, ‘but at thirty-five, this could be his year.’ Ian took the opportunity to further muddy his background. ‘The name is Dury,’ he told the camera, ‘and I come from Upminster and ’ornchurch and Romford and Walthamstow and ’arrow and other places.’ He also made a return appearance on TV’s The London Weekend Show in which an excerpt from his 1976 performance of ‘England’s Glory’ was screened. Presenter Janet Street-Porter declared: ‘Ian Dury believes that the way forward lies in taking punk out of exclusively teenage venues into a new, much wider sphere.’ In the interview that followed, Ian responded: ‘There’s something there for all of us. Music hall was a family outing. Your little brother can go and bang his head against the wall, if he wants. I’d like to see everybody there, having a picnic, dogs running about, I wouldn’t like to say that nobody can come.’

  Ian’s invitation to a raucous evening’s entertainment was not restricted to Britain. Stiff had now licensed New Boots in various overseas territories where Euro-interest was starting to build. Ian and the Blockheads set off on a quick round of live dates and TV appearances, with brief trips to Germany, France, Sweden and Holland. In the UK, the Stiff publicity machine continued to milk the Dury phenomenon, sending Ian to dozens of interviews with a newly inquisitive media. ‘The main target was the provincial press,’ says aide-de-camp Kosmo Vinyl. ‘Those local newspapers like the Newham Recorder would hang around the house for a week. They far outsold the Record Mirror.’ Vinyl would always be present at press interviews to help deflect awkward questions. If Ian was unsure of a response, Kosmo would be either nodding or shaking his head. But although Ian was rarely lost for words, his sound bites were becoming repetitive. Only an American tour would save him from over-exposure.

  Ian wasn’t keen on the idea of taking his music to the USA. ‘You’ll never find me in Malibu, darling, because I don’t like America, I think it’s a pig sty,’ he announced in a TV interview. This was followed by the show’s presenter, Godfrey Hodgson, cryptically describing Ian as: ‘London’s latest temporary export’. But Stiff Records had bigger ideas. In its second year of existence, though it was still a tiny operation, label boss Dave Robinson was typically upbeat about cementing a US licensing deal with the mighty Arista Records. ‘I foresee no problem,’ Robinson would frequently announce. In his mind, Ian was the crucial piece in the jigsaw and would be nominated to spearhead Stiff’s campaign in America.

  When an opportunity arose for Ian to appear on a coast-to-coast tour with Lou Reed, himself an Arista artiste, it seemed too good to be true. Kosmo Vinyl had to persuade a reluctant Ian that it would work. ‘My point of view was that the Lou Reed audience would have been closer to what Ian was all about than some other American acts,’ says Kosmo. ‘I thought that if people liked Lou Reed, they could like Ian Dury.’ Ian put forward a number of reasons for not wanting to tour the States, including the state of his teeth. In typical style, Dave Robinson offered to pay for cosmetic dentistry if Ian would agree to the trip.

  At a surgery in Harley Street, Ian was measured for new crowns and fitted with a temporary veneer on his lower incisors. ‘Can you paint on the veneer?’ he enquired of the dentist, knowing it would soon be time to fly the flag. An hour later, he strode out into the spring sunshine, flashing a Union Jack grin. When Kosmo heard about the teeth he was on the phone to the press. Photographs of Ian’s patriotic smile appeared everywhere. It was now the eve of his first trip to America and other than two brief visits in later years it would be his one and only US tour. ‘He got off the plane,’ recalls Kosmo, ‘and said, “I hate America,” and he got back on the plane six weeks later and said, “I told you so.”’

  Despite his protestations, Ian had been privately savouring a reunion with his former lover, Roberta Bayley, whom he hadn’t seen since she was in London four years earlier. As soon as the tour was confirmed, Ian made some frantic phone calls and persuaded Roberta to fly from New York to San Francisco, where the tour with Lou Reed was due to kick off on 22 March. ‘Several years had gone by,’ recalls Roberta, ‘and even though we had been having correspondence, I’d gotten a whole life, taking photographs and doing well. I was willing to go see him, but – this would always be his thing – he said, “It is definitely platonic, nothing has to happen, I just need your support, I really want you to come out.” I went to the first gig, and Ian wanted me to stay with him. I really didn’t want to, and we had a huge row at the hotel, so I just left and called my friends. As much as you say to the person, “I don’t have those feelings any more, and we’re not going to sleep together,” and they say, “Absolutely yes,” they think that when you see them everything will change. It’s a big challenge.’

  Headliner Lou Reed was not unlike Ian: ‘squat’, chip on shoulder, lethal with words. Proud of his New York street savvy and exalted status as founder of the Velvet Underground, he was in combative mood when paired with ‘the limey upstart’. Peter Jenner’s opinion of Lou Reed was unequivocal. ‘He was just awful. It was all Arista; we were the hot new signing from England, so they put us on a tour with Lou. It seemed like a good thing. In San Francisco all the Arista people were there . . . lots of attention, lots of interviews. Second night, no sign of anyone from Arista . . . we learnt that they’d all been called to Los Angeles because Clive Davis was launching his book. He pulled all his PR people out to promote it. That really upset us. Also, Lou Reed never spoke to us. His crew were nice, but Lou gave us the classic example of how to treat a support band badly. He made us feel very unwelcome.’

  Reed’s ego was about to be deflated. On 26 March, the tour played the first of four consecutive nights at the Roxy in Los Angeles. Expatriate superstars Ron Wood and Rod Stewart turned up to cheer Ian and the Blockheads and, in a gesture of solidarity, set about detuning all of Lou Reed’s guitars in the backstage area, effectively wrecking his performance. Reed would get his own back. The Blockheads had already befriended members of Lou’s band and invited them to sit in on ‘Sex and Drugs’, but Reed instructed his musicians not to fraternize with the opening act. He also made sure that his sound engineer put minimal effort into mixing Ian and the Blockheads. Convinced that Reed was intent on sabotaging the show, Ian sent for Ian Horne, formerly Paul McCartney’s live sound engineer. Horne turned up in Phoenix, Arizona, ready to mix Ian’s set and stayed for the rest of the tour and many years thereafter.

  Chaz Jankel hadn’t participated in the American tour. ‘Every now and again I had to get some breathing space,’ says Chaz. ‘Ian was pretty intense.’ Of Jankel’s defection, Ian told the NME’s Paul Morley, ‘I went on the road without Chaz. He wanted to stay at home and write, and that nearly broke my heart, ’cos I really love him.’ Working two sets a night across the United States, the five-piece Blockheads perfected their musical arrangements to the point where they and Ian could work with or without Chaz. ‘They valued his creative input in the studio,’ says Kosmo, ‘and they liked him, but they became so tight on stage that Chaz Jankel was now superfluous to a great Ian Dury and the Blockheads concert.’

  The US tour ended with a two-ni
ght stand at New York’s Bottom Line on 2 and 3 May. Although his love affair with Denise had effectively ended, Ian flew her over for the final dates, greeting her with two brightly coloured Afro wigs he’d bought in a 42nd Street novelty store. Later that night, Ian’s career in America came to an abrupt end, thanks to the over-zealous actions of his roadie and minder-in-waiting, Pete Rush, aka ‘The Sulphate Strangler’. Rush was a man-mountain, pockmarked and heavily pierced, whose devotion to Ian knew no bounds. His misguided loyalty extended to ‘warning off’ the president of Arista Records when he attempted to visit Ian in his dressing room. ‘Roadies were part of the act back then,’ quips Kosmo Vinyl.

  Clive Davis had guided the stratospheric careers of Janis Joplin, Barbra Streisand and Bob Dylan and was accustomed to strolling backstage at any venue in the world where one of his protégés was appearing. He might have helped Ian too, but for Rush’s actions. The Strangler had received no express instructions to bar Davis from the backstage area, but he knew that, earlier in the week, Ian and Kosmo had visited the record company boss at his New York office, armed with a test pressing of Ian’s next 45, ‘What a Waste’. He had also heard that Davis was uninterested in the record and removed it from his turntable the moment he heard Ian’s voice. Rush had picked up on Ian’s displeasure and, aware that Davis might be persona non grata, advised the legendary music biz mogul to ‘keep walking [away from the dressing room]’. When Davis did eventually get backstage, Kosmo Vinyl made some remarks about Davis’s ‘nice Pringle sweater’. ‘That was it,’ says Peter Jenner, ‘the end of Ian’s career in America.’

  The US tour did earn Ian some good reviews during its six-week trek, but he lost interest by the halfway point. Twenty years earlier, his obsession with all things American had helped to shape his teenage tastes, but once on US soil, the reality was different. His romance with the USA blew hot and cold: one minute he was dazzled by the neon, but if the landscape was bland he would find fault. In a press interview he disapprovingly described the town of Utica, New York State, as ‘Romford at right angles’. Ian put forward countless excuses for not pursuing success in the USA. ‘All the girls have fat bums,’ he flippantly observed, but kept the truth to himself. Deep down, he was worried about being upstaged by his own band. It wouldn’t have happened in the UK, of course, where audiences lapped up his quirky stories about ‘Clevor Trever’ and ‘Billericay Dickie’, but Ian’s alien songbook would never be widely appreciated by ‘the septics’ [the septic tanks = yanks). The faultless musicianship of the Blockheads, on the other hand, was a revelation in music-obsessed America. Ian’s worst fears were confirmed during a performance in Los Angeles when he heard a heckler shout: ‘Hey Ian! Shut up and let’s hear the sax player!’

  Returning to Britain in May 1978, Ian received a hero’s welcome. ‘What a Waste’ had entered the charts and reached number nine, guaranteeing him a spot on BBC TV’s Top of the Pops. It was an important milestone for cult followers who had been monitoring his progress since he emerged with Kilburn and the High Roads five years earlier, but for most of the show’s twelve million viewers, Ian Dury had simply appeared from nowhere. No one was more excited than his old record label, Warner Brothers. They were quick to exploit his success by issuing their previously discarded Kilburn and the High Roads album under the title Wotabunch! – ‘featuring Ian Dury’.

  Written in 1976 with Rod Melvin, ‘What a Waste’ found Ian slightly tongue-in-cheek, musing on life’s lost opportunities:

  I could be a teacher in a classroom full of scholars,

  I could be the sergeant in a squadron full of wallahs,

  I could be a writer with a growing reputation,

  I could be the ticket man at Fulham Broadway station,

  What a waste!

  I could be the catalyst that sparks the revolution,

  I could be an inmate in a long-term institution . . .

  Ian permitted himself a knowing little laugh delivering the ‘institution’ line, as if reminded of his time at Chailey Heritage Craft School for disabled children. After such a harrowing start in life, to have achieved a hit record with one of his own songs was little short of a miracle, a testament to his dogged determination. Coming on top of New Boot and Panties!!, the success of ‘What a Waste’ assured Ian that Aunt Molly’s guru had been right all along – he had always been destined for fame.

  It was inevitable that, after years of public indifference, stardom would provide Ian with a licence to go bonkers. Dave Robinson notes: ‘He always wanted to have girls and when he had hits there were lots of girls, and that was one of his fantasies, world domination. He was a very good-looking guy and knew the power he had.’ Denise Roudette noticed a change in his personality. ‘Up until then he was quite open and trusting, but when he became famous, it was a scary business. His eyes went black and he lost it.’ Denise had prepared herself for the emotional fallout, and, although she and Ian were no longer together, their lives were still intertwined.

  While Ian had been on the road for several months, living out of a suitcase, Denise had stayed on at Oval Mansions, but Ian was now packing his bags for good. Homeless but cash-rich, he checked into London’s Montcalm Hotel near Marble Arch, planning an indefinite stay. The appeal of the Montcalm was its excellent location; its elevators and twenty-four-hour room-service. Anyone requiring an audience with Britain’s hot new star would be summoned to the hotel, where Spider was on hand to keep order. Ian’s managers tried to dissuade him from indulging in such extravagance, but Ian was determined to apply his ‘if you’ve got it, spend it’ philosophy.

  Now footloose and free, he opened the window of his suite and surveyed the 180-degree view. On a clear night he could see the lights of Edgware Road, running north to his Middlesex birthplace; Kensington in the west, where he’d studied at the Royal College of Art; Victoria to the south, reminding him of his dad’s undignified death from cancer. Silently reflecting on his childhood at Chailey, coming to terms with polio and his beatings at the hands of the Royal Grammar School prefects, he also remembered those who had mocked his attempts to get a foothold in the music business. But they would not laugh now. It was time to get even.

  13

  Up Like a Rocket

  England, 1978. Punk rock, the strident voice of disaffected youth, had by now mutated into ‘new wave’, spearheaded by the likes of Blondie and Elvis Costello. Ian wished to align himself with neither musical movement, but it did him no harm to be described as the UK’s ‘godfather of punk’. Although Ian’s music with the Blockheads was more sophisticated than the primeval wail of the Sex Pistols, his street poetry and uncompromising attitude gave him godlike status in the eyes of his fans. Elsewhere in 1978 Britain, cricketer Ian Botham became the first player in Test Match history to score a century and take eight wickets in one innings, although since leaving Oval Mansions Ian Dury would no longer hear the distant sound of leather on willow. In politics, Margaret Thatcher’s Tory party was biting at the heels of the minority Labour government as the country headed for the ‘winter of discontent’. In September, Prime Minister James Callaghan was under pressure to call an early election. Thatcher’s election victory the following year would not best please Ian – a committed socialist – but he would eventually come to appreciate the value of property acquisition.

  Externally, Ian was a man of the people, a role he played to great effect on his national tour, supported by UK reggae outfit Matumbi and rockabilly boys Whirlwind. Opening in Birmingham on 11 May, he made a point of boning up on some local trivia so that, in the time-honoured showbiz tradition, he could make amusing references to the town’s landmarks. It was a trick he would employ on every one of the tour’s twenty-six dates. Local audiences were delighted, of course, and gazed in awe at the ever-changing wardrobe of their lovable cockney rascal, part pearly king, part pantomime villain. Ian’s career as the diamond geezer was gaining momentum.

  Music-hall legend Max Wall, whose version of Ian’s ‘England’s Glory’ had rec
ently been released on Stiff, was given the thankless task of warming up the audience at Hammersmith Odeon on 13 and 14 May. Unfortunately, the London crowd were in no mood for Wall’s slapstick antics and heckled him into submission. ‘They only want the walk,’ he sadly remarked as he shuffled off into the wings. Ian was furious and berated the crowd for giving Wall a hard time.

  Kosmo Vinyl, in his role as Ian’s press officer, persuaded the NME to run a competition to find the country’s ‘Champion Blockhead’ – first prize ‘a pair of new boots and panties and a night out with Ian Dury’. It was won by young Clive Pain of Hampshire, who popped into a Woolworths photo booth and tried to make himself look as numb-skulled as possible. Pain, aka ‘Slim’, later took up the accordion and became a popular musician on the live circuit. ‘It can all be traced back to winning that Blockheads competition,’ says Pain. Another fan who came to see Ian on the 1978 tour was Jock Scot, a twenty-five-year-old building worker who would eventually be employed by Stiff Records and the Dury operation.

  Scot turned up at Edinburgh Odeon on 1 June wearing full highland regalia. ‘I was wearing this Scottish hat,’ recalls Jock, ‘a sort of navy-blue beret with a red pompom and little tails and an army badge, a Glengarry. I was in the foyer before the gig and I saw one of the road crew with an “Access All Areas” badge and I asked him if he would give my hat to Ian as a present. The guy looked at me and said, “Well, come with me and give it to Ian yourself.”’ Jock nervously entered the backstage area, where he was vetted by Spider. Ian was sitting in the corner of his dressing room, applying stage make-up and arranging his props, including a number of plastic fried eggs he would hang from his shirt. The Union Jack still adorned his teeth. Ian acknowledged Jock, who cautiously proffered his Glengarry. ‘It’s just a present from your Scottish fans,’ he said. ‘We hope you’ll support Scotland during the World Cup.’ Ian graciously accepted the gift, and Jock made his way to his seat in the stalls.