by Will Birch
No sooner had Ian signed his new contract than there was a knock on his front door. It was a reporter from one of the Sunday tabloids. ‘We’ve heard Ian’s dying of cancer,’ said the hopeful scribe. Sophy turned him away, but now there were more reporters gathering on the doorstep. Sensing that somebody had leaked the news, Ian immediately took pre-emptive action. ‘The tabloids were on the phone,’ he told me, ‘threatening to print an “Ian’s dying of cancer” story. I thought the obvious thing was to go to Neil Spencer at the Observer and Janie Lawrence on the Independent on Sunday and do a spoiler. Neil came round that evening and so did Janie. We did the interviews and they wrote lovely articles.’
When writer Neil Spencer visited, he found a mellower Ian, not the fiery character he recalled from the 1970s, ‘earring . . . mascara . . . all in black and scary’. They sat over glasses of Boddingtons ale, which Ian liked because ‘it fitted nicely in the glass’, and Neil learnt all about recent developments, including Ian’s irritation at being disturbed by a journalist from the popular press when he was trying to put the boys to bed. ‘He wanted to have a sensible discussion about his illness,’ says Neil. ‘He was spooked because Charley Charles and his first wife had died from cancer. He said he wasn’t in any pain and was all right with it really. By talking about it, he thought he may be able to cheer up someone else, and that was the theme of the interview.’
‘Two photographers came round on the Saturday, ’ recalled Ian. ‘I got the most beautiful pictures I’ve seen of my kids, and that was that. It worked ’cos they didn’t print anything in the tabloids that Sunday. But they cannibalized the two broadsheet interviews and did a nasty on the Monday! Apparently, I’m dying of cancer but I’ve still got reasons to be cheerful! I never said that. I’d never dream of it. They’re slime.’ Ian had kinder words for his medical team and his fans. ‘My doctor’s very pleased with me for coming out, as it were, ’cos it’s good to come out. If you’re going out gigging, the last thing you need is sympathy from people, but it is quite gratifying when people are so nice. I’ve had some quite breathtakingly warm letters – one that said: “You are a tremendous little canary.”’
Despite this huge setback, Ian continued to honour his acting commitments, taking the part of ‘Rat’s Dad’ in Underground, a story of small-time drug-dealing in south London. 1998 also saw the much-delayed release of Middleton’s Changeling, for which Ian had filmed his part back in 1993, reuniting him briefly with his old college mucker, Vivian Stanshall. When I asked Ian to reflect on his movie roles, he replied, ‘Something I should have got was Mona Lisa, the Robbie Coltrane part. I’m not saying I would have been better than Robbie, but it would have been less Mickey Mouse. I shouldn’t say that. I don’t phone my agent and say, “Where’s my next part, darling?”’
Ian and the Blockheads, now with Dylan Howe on drums, released Mr Love Pants that summer on Ronnie Harris Records. ‘Ronnie is my accountant,’ said Ian. ‘I asked him if he would mind me naming the label after him. I thought he might keep an eye on it. He asked, “Is there any blasphemy on it?” I said, “I’ll ask Mickey, he’s a good Catholic.”’ It was their first studio album together in eighteen years. The material had been written over a lengthy period, Ian insisting that this was the only way to craft songs of lasting quality. When I asked him for his thoughts about the new album for Mojo, he immediately compared it to New Boots and Panties!!, hoping that it could be just as successful. ‘I’ve been accused by the Dutch record company of delivering a very short album,’ said Ian. ‘I said, “You like falling asleep halfway through the ninth verse, do you, mate?” Seventy-two minutes of Verve? This [Mr Love Pants] is exactly forty-five minutes to the dog barking at the end. Half a C90. Exactly. Ten pieces is all you need. Ten’s enough, a perfect length. I always think in terms of vinyl.’
The opening cut, ‘Jack Shit George’, was a wry comment on the English education system and in time-honoured Blockheads fashion includes some swearing. ‘It’s probably about my attitude from being at school,’ said Ian. ‘A certain party, who shall have to remain nameless, but is an education officer [Ian was referring to his Aunt Molly], once told me that the unofficial statistic for teachers who are maladjusted is about 48 per cent. The unofficial, unofficial is nearer 80 per cent. I think that’s probably true. There’s always an exception to that. I can think of one, possibly two, teachers I had at the Royal Grammar School who weren’t total roll and butters [nutters]. Others were dangerously barmy, hitting you over the head with something . . . striking out . . . the knuckle treatment. It’s a very dangerous occupation, being taught. I guess the song is about that. It’s quite sentimental in the choruses.’
I commented that the album’s closing track, ‘Mash It Up Harry’, reminded me of the Kinks. Ian: ‘It started out as “He’s got a little problem up his you know where.” [It was] nothing to do with me having cancer of the colon. I thought that was a bit strong, I was being real horrible to this geezer. I don’t hate him. I think he’s regimented. It’s like [Tony] Hancock was in The Rebel, before he became an artist – the bowler hat and the routine. He may well have piles, but that’s not where I’m at. Then I had a friend round, and we were playing it, and I started singing the “We’re on our way to Wembley” bit and I thought, “He wants a bit of Wembley up his . . .” You know, he wants that euphoria, Shearer scoring a goal vibe. He’s got his lounge and his shed and he needs that excitement. So I just put Wembley in to be nice to him, because I do like him. Then mash it up . . . don’t call him a potato, but mash it up because he is a potato. It’s want your cake and eat it time.’
I asked Ian about other songs on the album and learnt that he had written ‘You’re My Baby’ for his son Bill. ‘It was about a little kid,’ said Ian, ‘but it had to be about anybody. Which it is . . . the idea about protecting somebody.’ ‘Honeysuckle Highway’ seemed to be about relaxing and having a mellow time. ‘Yeah,’ said Ian, ‘and a few tributes. I do like making tributes. There’s a tribute to the Troggs in there. “Everything’s groovy.” At the death, there’s: what rhymes with polka and hoops? “Oscar Homolka and Marjorie Proops” – I went into raptures when I thought up that. And, in fact, Marjorie Proops died later that week. I didn’t know she was ill.
‘“Itinerant Child” is about the boys in the old caravans and trailers and getting bashed up in that bean field . . . The travellers – gypsies cum pikeys cum geezers with Strangeways haircuts – not New Age. I associate New Age with the geezers with crystals on their heads and holistic medicine. It’s the guys with the dogs and the women with dirty faces, with their little kids in those big old buses with the windows painted black. The old lorries in the convoys and then the old Rule 98 came out and stopped them. There were a couple of really savage episodes with the old bill attacking them and burning up their homes. I felt a lot of sympathy towards those people. I like the ones who wear it on their sleeves, the sartorial affair, the grime, the ones who can scrape a pink line on their necks, it’s brilliant. You need a lot of bottle to do that. I’m an old home bird. I’ve only ever spent about two nights out. Vagabonding. I can’t stand it. Where’s me bed, where’s me jim-jams and me duvet? I admire it, the free life. There’s a bit of fresh air involved.’
Commenting on ‘Geraldine’, Ian said, ‘When I was in Reading the nearest lovely town was Henley so me and Mickey used to drive over there to do our shopping in Waitrose and have a wander about. There was a little sandwich shop on the side of the marketplace where there was a double gorgeous ginger-haired person knocking out the sandwiches. It was a figment of my imagination that her name was Geraldine, but she was a gingham-clad person, hair tied back. There was a very fresh and clean schmeer to her. That combination of cleanliness and hunger, you can’t go wrong. There’s a bit of innuendo in there . . . “When she’s buttering my baguette” – it’s blatant filth of the Max Miller school. I’m very proud of it.’
Mr Love Pants was without doubt Ian’s strongest collection of songs since New Boots and sol
d in respectable quantities. Shortly after meeting with Ian to discuss it, I hooked up with Dave Robinson, who told me he had received a call, inviting him to go round to Fitzjohn’s Avenue for a chinwag. Several days later, Dave told me that the meeting with Ian had taken place and had been ‘a religious experience’, sitting with him after so many years and reminiscing about pub rock, Stiff Records and the tribulations of Spider Rowe. ‘Ian was quite ill,’ says Robinson, ‘and he wanted a couple of bottles of white wine, so I went and got them. The kids had gone to bed, and we proceeded to reminisce until about 4 a.m., and he rolled some big spliffs. His spirit was quite remarkable. I didn’t get the feeling that here was a man who was worried that he didn’t have too much time left.’
However ill Ian was, he never forgot he was the star of the show. Inevitably, some of the old tensions between himself and the Blockheads resurfaced. Certain members of the band were still dissatisfied with the financial arrangements. Davey Payne was fast becoming group spokesman, observing that his colleagues would complain about the pay, but ‘clam up’ if Ian walked into the room. ‘I knew him better than the others, we went way back,’ says Davey, ‘so they would always phone me and say, “Oh, Ian’s at it again . . . there’s all this money from Love Pants . . . it should be shared out, but Ian wants to pay Storm Thorgersen 15,000 for a video.” The record company had agreed to pay for it if they could use their people, but Ian insisted on Storm. We all needed money, we could have had ten grand each, but Ian was just spending it, wasting it even, because he knew he’d be getting publishing money. After all those years, it was happening again.’
When I pressed Ian on the subject, he commented, ‘Groups are an ecological miracle, given the egos involved. In any group of six people you will always find five bad apples! It’s never equal. I’ll tell you what I really like about U2, REM – they share the dosh. The drummer may not write anything but he gets a quarter. It’s a bit harder to do with seven people. The reason the Blockheads have survived ain’t because of that, because we don’t do that. We stayed together because we’re proud of ourselves, we think we’re the best band there is. There’s a cross-fertilization of friendships and working relationships.’
Davey Payne was not impressed. His final showdown with Ian occurred on 8 August, when the group opened for Paul Weller at London’s Victoria Park. The day started well; Davey had driven up from Cornwall and arranged for his family to attend the concert, but was later told there was not enough room on the tour bus for all of his children. Davey exploded and reached for the whisky bottle. ‘It was late and I went to speak to Ian,’ says Davey. ‘There was this last bit of money from Love Pants. We could have shared it out. I said to Ian, “The problem is, Ian, I’m poor and you’re rich.” He started saying, “I’m dying, I’m dying.” I cared, but I didn’t want him to use it as an excuse every time.’ A fracas ensued and Ian fired Davey.
‘It is with great sadness that I have to report the death from cancer of Ian Dury,’ announced Bob Geldof on 25 August, in his new role as deejay on radio station XFM. Minutes later Geldof was forced to retract the statement, blaming it all on a ‘hoax caller’. The NME quickly dubbed Geldof ‘the worst DJ of all time’. Ian was, in fact, happy to be alive and preparing for his second UNICEF trip, this time to Sri Lanka. ‘The Tamil Tigers have agreed to stop shooting to witness the immunization programme,’ said Ian, anticipating the Asian jaunt. He had been having discussions with UNICEF about introducing other pop celebrities to the cause, and one very big name had cropped up. ‘I got hold of Robbie Williams to come to a meeting,’ said Ian. ‘I like Robbie because of his song “Let Me Entertain You”. I also think he is a genuine bloke. Plus I’ve got a mutual friend who says he’s a nice geezer. I wouldn’t have asked him if I didn’t think he was. I wrote to him, and he took the trouble to write back. We did some photos together, the “Give us your money” shots for UNICEF, and he’s gonna come to Sri Lanka with me if we get it together.’
Robbie Williams nailed his colours to the mast, and the trip got under way in the second week of September. Ian and Robbie, together with Jo Bexley and the UNICEF team, headed east, enjoying an upgrade to first class on the flight, apparently due to Robbie’s celebrity. Ian had hoped that he could travel without his Hickman line but was advised against it. Prior to the trip, Jo had received instruction from Sophy on changing and cleaning Ian’s dressing. ‘I would have done anything to keep Ian happy and take him on the trip,’ says Jo. ‘We were in the Galle Face Hotel in Colombo, in Ian’s suite overlooking the ocean. I had to change the Hickman line. He had it all laid out meticulously. I couldn’t believe it; here I was, a press officer on a field trip and I’m administering chemotherapy! I had the rubber gloves on when room-service knocked on the door with a tray of tea!
‘Robbie was on the brink of becoming a huge star,’ continues Jo. ‘The week we were in Sri Lanka, “Millennium” went to number one. Ian and Robbie were not an obvious combination to manage. Robbie was a good boy, keeping himself to himself. He was in his room, talking to his girlfriend. Ian asked the right questions, looked intelligent, whereas Robbie had to have the two-hour briefing, but what he did bring to it was an interaction with the people. We were in refugee camps – vaccination in wartime – and Robbie would get a football and run off with the kids. He sang “Angels” at a school we visited. Ian played to his strengths, Robbie was the showman. In a way, Ian was handing over the mantle quicker than he would have liked.’
A flight to Jaffna, to witness ‘the day of tranquillity’, was called off following a terrorist threat. Instead, the party visited Vellankulam to witness an immunization programme. Despite Ian’s relatively placid mood, he could still be relied upon to act the naughty schoolboy. His patience was tested when Sunday Times writer Ann McFerren repeatedly asked him, ‘Are you all right, dear?’ Derek Hussey recalls: ‘She was patronizing Ian for a couple of days, and it was getting up his hooter. He arranged a cocktail party with the film crew so we could get to know each other. All of a sudden there was a huge rumpus. Ian has called Ann McFerren “a cunt”. She turns round and says, “I’ve never ever in all my life been called a cunt before.” Ian didn’t stop there. The next day she was going to be travelling in the back of our Mercedes. After breakfast, we went out into the garden. I let Ian walk a little bit ahead with Ann. They stopped for a moment, and he looked round and gave me a wink. Then he said to her, “Ann, I promise you I will never ever call you a cunt again.” He liked getting people at it.’
Shortly after the Sri Lanka trip, Ian was summoned to the UNICEF headquarters, where he was made a ‘UNICEF UK Special Representative’, alongside his old pal Vanessa Redgrave and Lord Bill Deedes. ‘He really was an ambassador on behalf of the world’s children,’ says Jo. ‘Despite a punishing work schedule and poor health, Ian was an unstoppable advocate on UNICEF’s behalf, putting his name to things where his celebrity made the difference between failure or success.’
Ian attended the Cheltenham Festival of Literature in October 1998 at the invitation of editorial director and writer John Walsh. ‘I invited Ian to come and discuss whether music lyrics could ever be regarded as poetry,’ says Walsh. ‘We had a riveting talk for an hour on stage and hung out together later in the bar of the Queens Hotel.’ Walsh wrote about the event in the Independent, where he reported that Ian had said he hated seeing his songs written down because it made him realize how far behind true poetry they fell. ‘Whereupon,’ wrote Walsh, ‘he lifted his vast, grizzle-haired bonce to the hot lights and, with closed eyes, recited the beginning of Keats’s “Ode to Autumn”, word-perfect. A shiver crept up the audience’s spine. Mr Dury, from being the Cockney-roughneck-music-hall-Gypsy-showman as advertised, stood revealed as a thinker, a modest well-read poetry-loving cove.’
The autumn of 1998 also saw Ian and the Blockheads on tour, with new saxophonist Gilad Atzmon replacing Davey Payne. An appearance on Later with Jools Holland on 29 September reminded viewers that Ian and his band were still a formidable force. On
3 November the group played a showcase at Ronnie Scott’s, which was filmed for television. Dates in Ireland and the UK plus forays into Holland, France and Dubai in the run-up to Christmas kept the cash rolling in and continued to promote Mr Love Pants.
As Ian’s tour manager, Derek Hussey had by now experienced all of his various tricks and behaviour traits. ‘When we checked into a hotel,’ says Derek, ‘Ian would give the first room-service geezer a big tip, a twenty or a fifty, depending on what he had in his pocket. The next time Ian rang room-service, the geezer was at the door before you’d taken your hand off the button. Also, he liked to wind himself up before he went on stage, something to get him going. He would have half a nip of brandy to sharpen the tonsils up and three or four olives for their salt content because he used to sweat a lot during a show. If there were no olives on the rider or a rotten drop of brandy we’d get the promoter and send him down the road for some good brandy or some olives. Then it would be: “Ain’t he back yet, where the fuck is he?” an hour before the show, just enough to get the tension going. Some nights, it would have been worth hiding the olives.’
Although there would be a number of shows in the spring of the following year, the 1998 tour was Ian’s last flurry of highly intensive road work. Due to his illness, he no longer had the energy of old, although he never disappointed his fans. His nightly stage entry, in which he would be escorted to the microphone by Derek as the band played the opening strains of ‘Wake Up and Make Love with Me’, was a guaranteed show-stopper. He still managed a few of the old visual tricks, deploying various props, but off stage his behaviour had become comparatively mild. Except, that is, for the events of 13 December.
23
The Diamond Geezer
Amsterdam, December 1998. Marijuana fumes stifled the air at the Paradiso, a legendary music venue in a former church packed with ageing hippies, new-age bikers and young Dutch punks. Tonight would see a performance by Ian Dury and the Blockheads, promoting their new album Mr Love Pants and reprising classics from their 1970s heyday. Expectations were high. Ian had flown into town the previous evening to conduct a number of press interviews and was sitting in his hotel bar when the Blockheads arrived on the afternoon of the show. ‘Letting Ian go over on his own, the day before the gig, was a big mistake,’ says Mickey Gallagher. ‘When we arrived at the hotel, there he was, in the foyer, doing an interview at three in the afternoon and was already rat-arsed. Absolutely pissed, glowing. We poured coffee into him, trying to get him sobered up, and he was still having a sly drink.’