Ian Dury

by Will Birch

  Sophy didn’t leave Ian – yet – and there were periods of work to take his mind off the pain. In February 1990, he returned to Japan as ‘Ian Dury and the Apple Blossom Orchestra’, largely driven by his desire to show his daughter Jemima ‘the beautiful Japanese countryside’. A little film work dribbled in, including the part of a bartender in The Rainbow Thief, which ironically put Ian back in the company of Omar Sharif, with whom he now shared a drink and a laugh. A few years earlier Omar had whacked Ian in a restaurant punch-up.

  It happened in 1985. After years of pushing people too far, someone – and not just anyone – had given Ian a black eye. It happened at the chic Mayfair eatery Le Caprice. Ian and Norman Watt-Roy had gone for dinner with Peter Blake and his wife Chrissie. Ian had consumed a few drinks beforehand. From the corner of his eye, he spotted Sharif at a nearby table, accompanied by a young girl (whom he thought he recognized) and two burly minders. Emboldened by alcohol, Ian couldn’t resist going over to Sharif’s table and telling him that all of the films he’d made since Lawrence of Arabia were ‘rubbish’. Sharif remained calm at first, but when Ian continued ribbing him, the movie star leapt up from the table and landed his bronzed fist in Ian’s face. In the taxi home, Ian proudly told the driver he’d just been ‘punched in the teef by Omar Sharif, upon which the cabbie replied, ‘That’s the most expensive fist you’ll ever have in your mouth.’

  Ian’s attitude towards Omar Sharif typified his opinion of any famous person with whom he had briefly come into contact, but not fully endorsed. ‘Omar Sharif?’ he would say. ‘What a cunt!’ But, of course, once he’d worked with Sharif, it was: ‘My old mate Omar!’ Other celebrities received similar treatment. ‘Nigel Kennedy? What a wanker!’ Until, that is, Kennedy chose one of Ian’s records on Desert Island Discs and suddenly it became: ‘Nigel, a fucking gem!’ ‘Jools Holland? Another wanker!’ ‘Paul McCartney? “Yesterday”? It’s the sound of sewage,’ said Ian, prior to befriending the legendary Beatle some years later.

  There was also some light relief amidst the gloom; Ian had turned on his television one August afternoon and seen an advertisement for Edam cheese. He couldn’t believe his ears. The narrator’s voice sounded just like ‘Ian Dury’, but he was sure it was not his own work, no matter how many bottles of Beaujolais he’d been knocking back. He called his agent, Pippa Markham, who in turn sought advice from the actor’s union, Equity. There was no option but to send a ‘cease and desist’ letter to the advertiser’s agent. Ian’s solicitor, John Kennedy, recruited a voice expert to analyse the TV ad as evidence. In his submission, the expert wrote:

  Having seen and heard the commercial myself and knowing the style and sound of Mr Dury, I must agree with Miss Shelley [voice-over agent at Markham’s] that the out-of-vision performer on this commercial performs and sounds very much like Mr Dury and it is my view that any viewer of the commercial might reasonably believe that the performer in the commercial is Mr Dury, given that Mr Dury has a very individual sound and performance technique. Whether or not it was your intention to engage an out-of-vision performer to imitate Mr Dury is I believe arguable, but regardless of your intention, I believe that the performer engaged is or could be said to be copying the style of Mr Dury. It is for this reason therefore that Mr Dury’s solicitors wrote to you in an attempt to try and discuss this matter further and this is my reason also. Needless to say, both sides could refer this matter to their solicitors, which would be a costly and time-consuming business.

  The Edam ad was quickly taken off the air, and Ian received compensation.

  Ian’s next film was After Midnight, starring Hayley Mills and Saeed Jaffrey, a tragicomic drama set in an old hotel, in which Ian played ‘Harry’, the crippled telephonist. Filming took place at the Fitzpatrick Castle Hotel in Dublin. ‘It was a low-budget job,’ recalled Ian, ‘Saeed Jaffrey really had a go at me.’ According to Mickey Gallagher, Jaffrey had come on the set and performed an ancient Indian ritual. ‘He smashed a coconut and gave a piece to everyone involved in the production, as a token of good luck. The idea was, and Saeed kindly explained this to us, you were supposed to keep your piece of coconut until the filming was complete. Ian ate his.’

  The film’s director, Shani Grewal, asked Ian to contribute some music, but Ian didn’t ‘do music’. Words were his speciality, but he would insist on the credit: ‘Words and music by Ian Dury and Mickey Gallagher’, thus blurring the lines between their individual roles and claiming spurious credit for compositional skills he didn’t possess. Whereas Gallagher was never asked how he came up with the lyrics, which were of course written by Ian, many of the stage directors and producers assumed that Ian’s talents were all-encompassing and might say, ‘Oh, Ian, your music, it’s wonderful,’ when his contribution had extended to playing the bongos. ‘They were in awe of him,’ says Mickey. ‘I had to fight for my position, but it was funny when the stage director would say, “Ian, the musical director wants to talk to you.” Ian would try to bluff it out, but invariably I’d jump in and save him.’

  Mickey Gallagher helped with the After Midnight songs, as did former Music Students guitarist Merlin Rhys-Jones. Two numbers, ‘Bye Bye Dublin’ and ‘Quick Quick Slow’, plus some incidental music were recorded at Turbot, Tom Robinson’s studio in Shepherds Bush. Further recording took place at Jamestown Studio in Whitechapel, where, on 2 September, an incident occurred that cost Ian several hours in police custody. When a recording engineer by the name of Fraser accidentally wiped one of the tracks (instantly earning him the sobriquet ‘Fraser the Eraser’), Ian threatened to set fire to the studio. Before Ian could locate a box of matches, Fraser had phoned the police. By the time the cops showed up, Ian was drunk and started asking the policemen if they were ‘homosexuals’. ‘They were amused at first,’ says Merlin, ‘but eventually they dragged Ian out and took him to the station.’ Following Ian’s arrest and removal to Leman Street police station, Baxter and Sophy were contacted at Digby Mansions. They arrived by taxi to hear Ian’s anguished cries from the cells, ‘Don’t beat me!’ ‘They’ve taken my shoelaces!’ Ian was released without charge in the early hours of the morning, proudly proclaiming, ‘Sophy sprang me!’

  Ian hadn’t seen much of drummer Charley Charles in recent years. Norman kept in touch with him, but otherwise Charley had been out of the picture. Of all of the Blockheads, he was the most militant, ready to down tools if he felt the band weren’t getting a fair shake. Despite being one of the greatest drummers on the planet, Charley had been reduced to driving mini-cabs, just as Norman had been seen standing in the dole queue when the session work dried up. It was a crime that such great musicians were out of work, and Ian knew it. It was made worse by the news that Charley had now been diagnosed with cancer.

  Ian and the Blockheads planned a series of benefit shows for Charley, but were overtaken by events. ‘I think he’d been very ill for a long time,’ said Ian, ‘but it was only five weeks from the time they discovered it to him dying. He had colon cancer. They can screen for it, but he wasn’t getting any medical attention . . . by the time he went to the hospital it had spread quite a lot.’ Stunned by Charley’s tragic death on 5 September 1990 – just weeks before the benefit concerts were due to occur – the Blockheads joined Charley’s family and friends at his funeral at Lambeth Cemetery on 13 September. The wake took place back at Digby Mansions, and many old friends and colleagues attended, including Fred Rowe and Chaz Jankel, just back from the USA. As the drink flowed and the spliff kicked in, Charley’s wake climaxed around midnight, by which time Sophy was getting ready to quit Digby Mansions for the peace and quiet of her flat in Wandsworth. She had already made up her mind to leave Ian to his own devices, hoping that Chaz’s return to the UK would help him to concoct some exciting new songs for a Blockheads reunion that now appeared to be unstoppable.

  To raise some money for their drummer’s grieving family, Ian and the Blockheads played three nights at the Forum in Kentish Town, their first London shows together in n
early five years, with drummer Stephen Monti filling in for the late Charley Charles. As soon as the dates were announced it became the hottest ticket in town. ‘We hadn’t seen each other for ages,’ recalls Wilko Johnson, ‘but when we played Charley’s benefit, the feeling came back.’ Ian was so overjoyed to be working again with Chaz and Davey and company that an additional benefit show was arranged to take place at Brixton Academy on 22 December (recorded and released as Warts and Audience). Following a tour of Spain in the New Year it looked like Ian and the Blockheads would be reuniting on a permanent basis.

  Ian added yet another string to his bow when he was asked by London Weekend Television to introduce Metro, a series of thirty-minute arts programmes under the aegis of executive producer Melvyn Bragg. On 18 March 1991, Ian met with Bragg to discuss the appointment and was introduced to the show’s editor, Nicola Gooch. She wanted to find a presenter who wasn’t highbrow or too arty; someone who could make the arts accessible and bring them to a wider audience. ‘We met with Ian, and I thought he’d be very good,’ says Nicola. ‘He’d been an actor, but he hadn’t done presenting before, so it was a bit of a risk.’

  Despite a £100-a-week wardrobe allowance to find something fancy for his Metro appearances, Ian insisted on dressing in black and donning a Blockheads T-shirt. ‘He has taken to wearing black since he put on two stone,’ wrote Serena Allott in the Sunday Telegraph. ‘I’ve been sitting round on my arse drinking too much,’ Ian responded. ‘When I’ve lost weight I’ll go back to wearing white.’ Ian had been fretting over his weight since 1957 when, as a chubby schoolboy, he sought to emulate his rock ’n’ roll hero, Gene Vincent. Unable to shake off the puppy fat, he remained cuddlesome throughout his adolescence, and it was not until his early thirties that he began to slim down, following an arduous string of nightly performances with Kilburn and the High Roads. By 1974 his weight had become an obsession, and he remained trim for a decade or more. By the mid-1980s, however, alcohol and middle age had caught up with him, and he found it impossible to shake off the excess pounds.

  The first edition of Metro on 12 May saw Ian reading his script from an autocue as he nervously introduced singer Alison Moyet, but he would soon thrive in interview mode. A discussion with the lively Miriam Margolyes went well, largely due to Ian’s willingness to listen to the actress’s flamboyant stories. ‘It was wonderful watching Ian trying to have a conversation with somebody,’ says Humphrey Ocean. ‘He’d never had a conversation with anybody in his life! It was one long monologue! It was torture for Ian, waiting to speak.’

  In a later edition of Metro, Ian was perhaps overly relaxed, greeting veteran actor Anthony Hopkins with an embarrassingly familiar ‘nice to meet you, mate’. It had been a scoop for Metro to get Hopkins on the show the week that his hit movie Silence of the Lambs was due to open, but Ian talked about himself, even to the extent of comparing notes with the famous thespian. ‘I went for an audition last week for Dracula and I had to play a loony in a cell,’ Ian told Hopkins, who was wondering why he wasn’t being asked about his new blockbuster. But Hopkins remained the complete professional, responding with warm gestures, momentarily bestowing upon Ian his seal of approval.

  Metro kept Ian in the public eye, but he prayed that his offscreen exploits would escape newspaper coverage for fear of his mother reading about his occasional bad behaviour. Although it is doubtful Peggy would have ever bought a copy of News of the World, there was always the chance that she could have caught sight of its 19 May headline: ‘Ian wrecks bash in rhythm stick row – another belting exclusive’. As part of his Metro contract, Ian had been asked to present a feature on the English National Opera’s production of Timon at the London Coliseum. It was an optimistic brief, but LWT had decided Ian was the man for the job and sent Melvyn Bragg’s limo to collect him from Hammersmith for the opening night. As the curtain rose, Ian was in the front stalls, accompanied by Metro editor Nicola Gooch. Immediately behind them sat the opera’s composer, Stephen Oliver, whom Ian was due to interview later that week.

  Ten minutes into the first act, Ian became exasperated and, during a particularly quiet passage, exclaimed, ‘I’m not fucking staying for this, it’s about fucking cottaging!’ His outburst was causing consternation amongst the audience, who mainly consisted of friends and patrons of the Coliseum who would have been pleased to see the opera featured on television. Nicola tried to pacify Ian, but before long he was out of his seat and headed for the bar. By the time that the interval drinks were being served, Ian was stuck into a bottle of champagne. Then he visited the lavatory and was delighted to discover that the attendant, an elderly lady named Ivy, was also a callipered polio victim. He dragged her back to the bar, announcing to Nicola, ‘Meet Ivy, she’s a raspberry ripple like me! We’re having champagne!’

  Ian started knocking it back big time. ‘I’m not fucking going back in there, I’m staying with Ivy!’ he shouted when the bell rang for the second act. Nicola tried to force him back into the auditorium, but Ian refused to budge. She returned to her seat, so she could at least tell him what happened in the next act, but by the end of the performance Ian was rolling drunk, still with Ivy. The opera glitterati looked on as flunkies carried silver trays laden with food for the first-night party in the foyer. A girl came out of the lighting box and recognized Ian. She said, ‘You’re Ian Dury, you must come and meet my father.’ Ian turned round and saw a tall, rather distinguished-looking gentleman who had proudly come to see his daughter operating the lights at the opera. Ian greeted him, saying, ‘Tell you what, mate, shall I show you how far I can spit? Let’s have a spitting contest!’ ‘Ian spat across the full length of the room,’ recalls Nicola, ‘right into the man’s face. He was horrified.’

  The bar refused to serve Ian any more drinks. At the height of the reception he was swinging his stick around and prodding people in the back, asking for cigarettes. Gradually everybody moved away until he was alone, surrounded by a wide space in the middle of the room. ‘I couldn’t wait to see what would happen next,’ says Nicola. ‘The front-of-house people asked us to leave – I think they thought I was Ian’s moll, because I was wearing a leather jacket – so I asked them if they could help me get him out, as I couldn’t really cope with him. He started being really horrible and abusive to me, swaying and staggering. I said, “Look Ian, on Friday you’ve got to interview the man who wrote this opera. You must leave now otherwise he is going to back out of the show.”’

  Security arrived and picked Ian and Nicola up by their armpits and took them into a corridor, as Melvyn Bragg looked on, appalled. Ian, still spitting and cursing, fell over, only to be kicked by a security man, who shouted, ‘Get up, you fucking cripple!’ Nicola exploded and pushed the man against the wall, yelling, ‘Don’t you dare talk to him like that!’ On the other side of the double doors, the row could be heard by the opera-goers, one of whom called the police. Ian and Nicola were escorted from the Coliseum, out into the pouring rain. Ian leant against a wall and, as he fell onto the pavement, Nicola hailed a taxi. ‘I took him back to Digby Mansions and literally put him to bed,’ says Nicola. ‘I took his calliper off and everything. I was really pissed off with him but, as I tucked him in, feeling slightly maternal – I think Ian had that sort of effect on people – I said, “OK, I’m going now,” and as I said it, he took my hand and replied, “Nicola, I just want to say something to you. Don’t fall in love with me, will you?”’

  20

  The Passing Show

  The After Midnight recordings of 1990 would become the basis of Ian’s next album, Bus Driver’s Prayer. Ian had no recording contract at the time, and the tracks were self-funded. Fans had hoped that it would signal the return of Ian and the Blockheads as a recording act. Although Messrs Gallagher, Turnbull and Payne all appeared on the album, they were rarely to be found in the same studio at the same time. Chaz Jankel had contributed some keyboard and guitar parts, but Ian wouldn’t allow any of the material he’d co-written with Chaz to appear on the a
lbum, favouring songs he’d concocted with Mickey Gallagher. ‘Ian omitted the Chaz Jankel songs from Bus Driver’s on purpose,’ says Mickey, ‘to demonstrate that he was in control.’

  Ian was far from ready to commit to a full-blown reunion, explaining that he needed to select musicians according to the demands of each song. It was a neat way of side-stepping ‘the Blockheads issue’ while peppering the credits with their names. When it came to the drums, Ian insisted on using a machine, even though a number of hot drummers, including Steve White from Paul Weller’s band, had been involved in the demos. ‘Ian loved that Alesis drum machine,’ recalls Merlin Rhys-Jones. ‘He was intrigued by the endless programming possibilities. Being a percussionist himself, he would always get on drummers’ cases, even Charley Charles had suffered from it.’

  Bus Driver’s Prayer (which would be released on Jake Riviera’s Demon Records in 1992), included the songs: ‘That’s Enough of That’, written with Mickey and Merlin, which mirrored ‘Reasons to Be Cheerful’, in that Ian presented a list of the mundane things in life of which he might easily tire: cornflakes, commuting, the office, pub grub; ‘Bill Haley’s Last Words’, a rap based on an obscure reference to Haley’s post ‘Rock Around the Clock’ days in Mexico, interspersed with brief snatches of the Haley hits that Ian knew intimately from his schooldays, and ‘Poor Joey’ – prime Dury humour, as Ian climbed inside a bird’s brain and contemplated the daily routine of the average budgerigar, including ‘at least half-an-hour trying to undo my catch’. And how was Joey expected to speak, with ‘half a ton of cuttlefish stuck in his beak’?