Ian Dury

by Will Birch

  Lloyd Webber notwithstanding, Ian and Mickey Gallagher were now an established songwriting team. Mickey was quite happy to drive to Digby Mansions from his home in Essex to work with Ian. He was also willing to accompany him on his daily walks or run the odd errand. It was the start of a long, close working relationship in which Gallagher would be forced to witness the best and worst of his writing partner. ‘Contrary to the way I sometimes come across when I talk about Ian – like I’m “Mr Angry” – we were good mates,’ says Mickey. ‘This was because he allowed me to hate him.’

  Ian and Mickey became mentors to each other and would enjoy walking in Richmond Park so that Ian could get his much-needed physical exercise. The arrangement would continue from Monday to Friday for the next eight years, sometimes taking in visits to Roehampton Hospital, where Ian would get his callipers made. He no longer tended to wear a lisle stocking under the support to prevent chaffing because technology had moved on. ‘But the leg irons had a life,’ says Mickey. ‘It used to take ages, shaving bits off the calliper to make it comfortable. When we were out we never talked music, we talked about nature and what was happening in the world, it was lovely. Ian used to like me driving him through Buckinghamshire at 30 miles an hour. People would be tooting us from behind, and Ian would say, “Don’t go any faster!”’

  Although Mickey enjoyed working with Ian, it was not always easy to get away at the end of a long day. Sometimes he could escape before ‘the night shift’ – usually meaning when Ian’s other co-writer of the period – Merlin Rhys-Jones -arrived. ‘At 6 p.m. Ian would say, “You couldn’t get me a few beers, could you?” I’d get him the beers, and then he would say, “Give us half an hour.” His biggest indulgence was your time. He would want to keep you sitting there as long as possible, even when you’d been with him all day. Then it would be, “Can’t you stay here until Merlin gets here?” I’d meet Merlin on the stairs. Phew!’

  Despite Ian’s initial reluctance to play Japan, he and the Blockheads visited the country in June 1987, giving concerts in Osaka and Tokyo. As usual, there was tension between Ian and Davey When Ian was shown a video from the previous year of the Blockheads playing behind Kiyoshiro Imawano, he spotted Davey in the brass section and muttered under his breath: ‘Fucking Davey Payne . . . ’As Ian continued to make snide remarks, Davey reached boiling point, suddenly smashing a beer bottle and pointing it in Ian’s direction. ‘We jumped in,’ remembers Mickey Gallagher. ‘The Japanese were loving it: “Lock ’n’ loll!”!’

  Davey Payne had known Ian longer than anyone else in the inner circle and had a most perceptive insight into Ian’s psyche. ‘He may have been seen as the leader of the group, but inside he was still like the Plato guy in Rebel Without a Cause, tagging along and looking up to everybody. His dream was to be the leader of a gang, and the only way he could do it was with his mind. He knew that, and that’s what made him aggressive.’ But Davey still loved to see Ian enjoying himself at Digby Mansions, playing tapes for mates during the mainly friendly drinking sessions. Davey remembers that Ian would keep going when everyone else was passing out and would ‘put you to bed like an old mum and place a bucket nearby in case you felt sick’.

  Ian would be on his best behaviour when Peggy or Betty and the kids visited, and there would be expensive cake from Fort-num and Mason with Earl Grey tea, but as soon as they left, it was: ‘OK, Davey, let’s get drunk on Jack Daniel’s!’ Sometimes it would ‘go off. Davey, who at that point had not been drinking for fifteen years, remembers a session when the Strangler turned up. ‘I said something to Ian, maybe about his mum, and suddenly he turned. He was winding me up, knowing that the Strangler was there. I slammed my glass down on the table, and the whiskey went shooting over everything. Ian said, “Right Strangler, get him!” Strangler grabbed me round the throat, and his black painted finger nails were piercing my neck. Then Ian shouted, “Off him, Strangler!” Ian staggered out into the hallway, then suddenly his legs were in the air, and he was lying on the stone floor with a broken tooth. The Strangler was crawling around, looking for pieces of tooth.’

  19

  ‘Ian Wrecks Bash in Rhythm Stick Row’

  The Czech Republic, August 1987. The bar of Prague’s Hotel Panorama was packed with East Germans, whose custom it was to cross the border on the weekends to drink cheap beer. Today they found themselves rubbing shoulders with a vast film crew under the direction of Bob Hoskins, in town to film his new movie, The Raggedy Rawney. Glancing across the bar, Jenny Cotton noticed that Ian was ordering drinks. He had decided they were going to have champagne because he was due to meet some important people to discuss his next film. He turned to Jenny and asked her to carry the champagne to the table, leaving him free to walk through the packed bar and goose-step past all the Germans. ‘That is the kind of nerve he had,’ says Jenny, ‘he was lucky not to have been beaten up.’

  The Raggedy Rawney tells the story of a young army deserter who joins a gypsy caravan and evades capture by dressing as a girl and being adopted by the travellers as a ‘Rawney’ – in gypsy culture a half-mad woman with psychic powers. Ian had a small part as ‘Weazel’. Filming often involved long hours of inactivity, and, when boredom set in, Ian’s thoughts turned to the bottle, although he disciplined himself during most of his time in Prague. ‘If I drink I’m out of the game,’ Ian told me. ‘It’s boring, locations . . . sixty noisome mates of Hoskins, that’s a lot of cockneys.’ There were frequent disturbances at the Hotel Panorama caused by the tension between the British film crew and the German contingent singing, ‘Happy Birthday, dear Heinzig’. ‘Amazingly, it never went off,’ said Ian.

  On Saturday nights the caterers would throw a party, usually with a theme. ‘We had a Roman party,’ recalled Ian. ‘Hoskins would come down with the laurel leaves on his head. Then we had a beach party – snorkels, flippers and all that caper. I was so bored I started a newspaper called The Pikey Bugle. Early mornings were a doddle. There were three yobbos doing the catering. They had half an hour’s kip a night. You’d see ’em on the roll run . . . when you go round at three in the morning in the hotel corridor looking for discarded food on trays, ’cos you’re hungry – something to soak the alcohol up with. At half-five we’d be off on location, asking catering for an egg and bacon sandwich – Vince the Mince – “Quick Vince, I’m dying!” You get locked into this mad world. Zoë Wannamaker, brilliant actress. “Where’s the Jack Daniel’s?” I did have a drink one night. I was off-duty watching the explosions. Me Doc Martens were in the camp fire, “Oi, mate, your boots are on fire!”’

  Ian enjoyed back-to-back film roles throughout the late 1980s, usually playing minor characters. In Burning Beds, however, he would have a starring role as ‘Harry Winfield’, a kettle drummer who travels to Germany to play with a symphony orchestra. While there, he shacks up with ‘Gina’, played by Pia Frankenberg, who also wrote and directed the ‘comedy’. Filming took place in Germany in the autumn of 1988. While in Hamburg, Ian called his old friend Humphrey Ocean and flew him over from London. ‘He needed some support,’ says Humphrey. ‘Me and Strangler stayed in a hotel on the Reeper-bahn, but Ian was at the Four Seasons. We were sitting in a club, and Ian had the Strangler “parked up”. There was a German bloke bothering Ian, but Ian was ignoring him. Then suddenly Ian turned to this German and said, “Weren’t you the people responsible for Auschwitz?” The German lunged towards him . . . Strangler sees it, jumps over the table. Next thing there’s a brawl. Ian was sitting there amongst it all, but nobody was touching him. He didn’t spill a drop of his drink.’

  Pippa Markham remembers: ‘At the end of a day’s filming in Hamburg, Ian would get on the tables and do the entire Third Reich. Referring to the Strangler, the club owner said, “Mr Animal can come in any time he wants, but not Mr Dury”’ While Pippa was telling me this story, she phoned Frances Tomelty for her recollections of working on Burning Beds. Frances recalled: ‘Oh God, yes! The female director was trying to get Ian to improvise. He planted
both of his feet very firmly on the ground and said, “Sorry love, you’re asking me to do jazz. I only do rock ’n’ roll.”’

  Other late-1980s movies included Die Stimme, aka The Voice, in which Ian played ‘Kowalsky’, and Bearskin – An Urban Fairytale, with Ian cast in a minor role as ‘Charlie’. Bearskin starred Tom Waits. ‘He talks like that when he’s off-duty as well, I couldn’t believe it,’ said Ian of Waits’ guttural drawl. Ian also appeared in The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover, written and directed by Peter Greenaway, a contemporary of Ian’s at Walthamstow School of Art. In the 1989 movie, Ian plays ‘Terry Fitch’, a low-life villain. Michael Gambon plays ‘Albert Spica’, the drunken, bullying proprietor of a gourmet restaurant, who terrorizes his customers. He also taunts his wife, the apparently infertile ‘Georgina’, played by Helen Mirren. In order to exact revenge on her oafish husband, ‘Georgina’ enjoys spontaneous sex with ‘Michael’ (Alan Howard) in the restaurant’s various cubby holes.

  Helen Mirren has since stated that she ‘quite fancied’ Ian during his hit-making years but was ‘far too intimidated by his image’ to ever get in touch, but The Cook, the Thief eventually brought them together. Despite minimal onscreen interaction, Ian and Helen formed a brief friendship and attended a Royal Academy of Arts dinner together. Mirren reportedly visited Digby Mansions on several occasions and once accompanied Ian to Dr Kit’s house in Putney, where she enjoyed a late-night dip in the hydrotherapy pool. Close observers note that Ian was somewhat intimidated by Mirren, who could match him verbally to the point where his only recourse was to ‘pour scorn’ on her.

  Also appearing in The Cook, the Thief, as an extra, was Ian’s minder, the Strangler. Ian had sacked the Strangler on a number of occasions, but in 1985 invited him back into the fold to keep an eye on fourteen-year-old Baxter, then staying with his father at Digby Mansions. ‘Me and this guy [Rush] bonded,’ Baxter would tell the Independent’s Glyn Brown in 2002. ‘He was six foot eight, covered in tattoos. He’d drive me to tutorial college every day, then cook me pie and chips when I got back. I was invited into his world and I saw a few weird sights at a young age. He became my best mate.’

  Friends expressed concern that Ian had entrusted the care of his teenage son to the wayward Strangler, but Ian considered him to be a loyal and dependable aide. With his typically lateral logic, Ian figured that, actually, Baxter was looking after the Strangler ! ‘It was the same with Spider Rowe,’ says Ed Speight. ‘Ian always considered himself to be minding his minders and he’d go into that convoluted logic. He had that attachment to criminal matters and glorifying the underworld, it always intrigued him. He used to say that if he hadn’t got the polio then he would have probably been a bank robber. I said, “Don’t talk rubbish,” and he would quote George Bernard Shaw13 at me.’

  Pete ‘Strangler’ Rush was asthmatic and would apparently get through four Ventolin inhalers a day plus a bottle of Scotch. In 1989, his lifestyle caught up with him, and he died from a heart attack while in police custody in his home town of Bournemouth. Baxter and Ian attended Rush’s funeral on 17 September. Ian kept in touch with Rush’s mother, Marge, for many years thereafter and generously continued to pay her telephone bill.

  Any spare time that Ian had during the late 1980s was spent developing Apples, set to become his lone foray into the world of writing stage musicals. It was Royal Court Theatre director Max Stafford-Clark who suggested to Ian that he should try his hand at the notoriously challenging medium. Encouraged by Stafford-Clark, Ian took a batch of songs he had been writing with Mickey Gallagher and attempted to build a story around them. Ian would play the central character, ‘Byline Brown’, a tabloid journalist on the hunt for sex scandals, bent coppers and dodgy MPs, notably ‘Hugo Sinister’. ‘Ian arranged the songs into a sequence,’ says Mickey, ‘but there was no real storyline. The producers gave him carte blanche, but Ian had no idea how to write a play or a musical. The director, Simon Curtis, was so awestruck by Ian that he didn’t question anything.’

  Advance publicity for Apples included an interview on BBC Radio 4’s Loose Ends, chaired by Ned Sherrin, in which it sounded as if the musical might be a shot in the arm for West End theatre. Auditions and rehearsals began in the spring of 1989 and continued for some months in the gaps in Ian’s schedule. Jemima, who was then living at Digby Mansions, remembers Ian talking about the audition process ‘day in, day out’ and going ‘misty-eyed’ about actress Frances Ruffelle, who would be playing the part of ‘Delilah’. Jemima felt that her father had been taken in by the world of theatrical performers who were going to bring his show to life. ‘He was somewhat naive,’ says Jemima, ‘but charming.’

  Ian had always been green about certain aspects of the entertainment business, but such naivety was crucial to the creative process. If he had known then what he knew now, ‘Spasticus Autisticus’ would never have left the drawing board, but he was even less clued up about musical theatre.

  The soundtrack recording of Apples took place at Liquidator Studios in July, for which Ian recruited his former songwriting partner, Mike McEvoy, to play bass. It was the first time they’d met since their bust-up in 1984. The mood was tentative as Ian and Mike got reacquainted, but the old animosity was quickly forgotten as the music took shape. ‘Ian liked working with me,’ says Mike. ‘I was quick and good-natured. He paid me good money.’

  In August Ian signed his contract for the show’s three-month run at the Royal Court Theatre. Apples opened on 4 September, but ticket sales were patchy and reviews poor. Jack Tinker of the Daily Mail referred to ‘the barrow-load of dispiriting mush to be found in Ian Dury’s half-baked musical’. The Financial Times called it ‘a feeble night out’. Ian was devastated by its failure at the box office and felt even more let down by critics who panned what was the culmination of many years’ work.

  Jemima was working at the Royal Court as an usher and witnessed countless performances of her father’s show. ‘Some nights I would be sitting in the stalls, hoping the audience would laugh at the jokes, but it was a painful experience all round. There was a lack of control over the end product, and dad didn’t know how to write a script. People didn’t step in early enough to tell him about the weak parts. I’d seen about 200 plays and I knew Apples was on a very simplistic level. The characters were two-dimensional, archetypal. He sent me a postcard saying: “To my daughter, the greatest critic.” It was slightly sarcastic, but a bit of a nod from him realizing how much I was noticing about what he did. There would be about twenty-five people in a matinee, it was excruciating.’

  Apples had been funded and produced by Royal Court patron Diana Bliss, who put a tab on the bar at a pub near the Royal Court for the cast and friends to get ‘bladdered’ every night after the show, which presumably helped to keep up morale. Meanwhile, the Royal Court was coping with the worst financial situation they had ever experienced as Ian’s musical failed to attract customers in sufficient number.

  Back in 1976, when he was considering writing ‘a musical about prison’ in conjunction with Fred Rowe, Ian confidently wrote to Roberta Bayley: ‘The basic essentials for musicals are fairly straightforward. I can write to themes very easily. The difficulty will be in making sure that the music is good and proper, and not some clanky old pit orchestra reading boring dots. The only way to do it is to star in it as well, so I’ll have to always do musicals that limp.’ Apples did indeed limp, but the show completed its three-month run. Many old friends showed up to see it, including Fred Rowe, who hadn’t spoken to Ian for eight years following ‘the HMV incident’ of 1981. Another friend, Sophy Tilson, reappeared during the Apples run. In the five years since meeting Ian at Gold Diggers in Chippenham, Sophy had studied sculpture at the Chelsea School of Art, where she attained a BA, and the Accademia di Belle Arti in Florence. After the show she went backstage and said to Ian, ‘You don’t remember me, do you?’ Ian took her to one side and said, ‘Go on, give me your number, Soph.’

  Ian and Sophy started court
ing and they fell in love. Sophy, who then lived in south London, recalls: ‘I had this crazy old boyfriend from Italy who kept threatening me with physical violence. It was over, but he kept turning up on my doorstep. I told Ian about it, and he said, “What you need is a Rottweiler, a minder, or . . . you can come and live with me.”’ Sophy moved into Digby Mansions with her sculpture materials and met Jemima, who was still staying with Ian and working at the Royal Court.

  The aura of Apples hung around Digby Mansions long after its demise, with posters from the stage show adorning the walls and lyric sheets littering the floor, artefacts that served to remind Ian that he was not the invincible wordsmith – ‘the top man in his field’ – he’d once considered himself to be. Mortified by the bad reviews, he started drinking heavily and didn’t stop for nine months He was embittered by the whole experience and went into another deep depression, severing connections with friends and associates. Personal assistant John Wynne, whom Ian nicknamed ‘Grey Wolf, was one of the first to walk out, unable to take the verbal lashings any longer. Even friends such as Jock Scot and Smart Mart were not spared in the trail of devastation. Shocked and upset over the failure of his musical, he was on a mission of destruction, systematically cutting himself away from his past. ‘It was critical death,’ says Sophy, of the response to Apples. ‘He absolutely couldn’t believe it. He couldn’t control the depression, it was bigger than him. There was heavy drinking every day. It was too destructive, so we decided to part. He told me and Jemima we should go. He was hurting us with his anger.’