I have little doubt that we
will look back upon this year as the time when we had to say some sad and teary
farewells to an alarming number of celebrities. I too have had to hold back
some tears on certain days, and will expand on just a few of these in the main
body of this year’s diatribe.
Not that I am any huge
follower of celebrity fads and fashions, as well you know. Yes, I love my music, and I do worry for the
future of TV once Strictly is over
and the Bake-Off has packed up and
moved, but I have never had a long list of “faves”. In both my reading and music tastes, I am
flighty, I move from topic to topic, author to author, genre to genre, and I
delight in the variety. However, there
have been some passing’s this year which have touched very deeply on my
conscious, cutting deeply to my precious memory banks, and it is to these which
I shall pay some reference.
However, before we get onto
celebrity death, let’s recall that there have been entirely too many
non-celebrity deaths this year, and I have been touched by this also – I had
been to more funerals before the end of February in this year that I had in
total in any other year previously.
Losing two good friends, well within their 60s, put the year into sharp
focus, and reluctantly sharing in the anguish of those left behind is something
I always find more than a little humbling.
So, when turning my thoughts
to the subject and nature of this year’s blessay, it was an easy choice
really. Some of my other festive blogs
have used current events to outline my somewhat tenuous grip on reality,
whereas in others I have tried to crowbar in yuletide cheer in any way
possible. This blog, you will be
disappointed to hear no less, shall prove no exception. I’d like to take you on a trip down my own
somewhat twisted memory lane, and put a very different spin on how to reflect
on this year of celebrity adieus, especially at this time of the year.
Naturally, as you may well be
thinking, how on earth will I limit this to just a few, if that’s what I’m
going to attempt. Well, my plan is to
talk you through the importance of 4 such people to me and to my background,
and to celebrate some of their work, whilst placing it all in the context of
the season we find ourselves descending into.
Four deaths from this year
have had me looking down the myriad kaleidoscopic lens of my past with greater
focus and clarity than usual. And my
point is this: despite the sadness, how much joy is there in the recalling? So,
here goes …
I remember, I remember …
As a secondary school student
who was still trying to decide what hairstyle I should go for / what musical gang
I should join in the playground / how and where to align myself, there were
many minefield like conundrums to negotiate.
Music was first and foremost amongst them. I couldn’t see myself growing my hair and
wearing so much black, so being a goth was out.
Equally, I was one of the few teenagers in my school who liked washing,
and I didn’t like Iron Maiden, so being one of the rockers was also a
no-no. House music was something I
really got into, but being far too young to even consider attending raves or
clubs put something of a dampener on it all.
As I came to slow and sad
realisation that I was about to plough my own furrow, I heard another track
from Prince. I had always listened to
and been aware of Prince, and had enjoyed sneaking a watch of the Sign of the
Times concert video with the older brothers of friends, but I had a secret
confession, an admission too grave to voice to this group: I didn’t get it. I
had a horrible feeling that although I thought the music of Prince was okay, it
was nothing more than okay, and I worried for many nights that I would soon
have to file Prince in the same place I still do Bob Dylan and Fraggle Rock –
thanks, but I just don’t get it.
Then, three things happened
over the course of a single year which blew my mind, and changed my opinion for
ever.
First, on a cold autumnal
Saturday whilst I was staying at my Nan’s house for the weekend, I heard a
track the like of which I had never heard before. It ranged from the classical to the balletic,
and then had a drum beat most military parades would kill for. As for the lyrics, they screeched and soared
poetically above the music like an eagle.
Only at the very end did the electric guitar arrive, weeping and wailing
like it had been shot. My first ever
listen to “I wish U Heaven” by Prince (which, you can guess, I am listening to
as I type these words) made me do something I rarely did as a child: I lied to
my Nan, and told her I was going round the corner, whereas I actually got the 113
bus to Sutton Coldfield where they had the good record shops, and bought myself
my first ever prince single.
Secondly, I was on holiday in
Devon, and was enjoying the last party night in the club house before the
interminable trudge back up the M5 to home the following day. Towards the end of the evening, the cheesy as
you can imagine DJ made some joke about “get ready to party like – “ and the
rest of the sound fell away from me, as the opening bars of “1999” announced
themselves, and the entire room went into some kind of ecstatic trance. For 4 minutes, the room swayed and bounced as
one, and I knew what had been missing from my earliest Prince experiences,
leading to my younger confusion.
Finally, at some point close
to or between these two, which I may have recalled in the wrong order if I’m
honest, I got to see the man himself.
Only briefly, but I attended a concert with a friend of mine who was
disabled, and who was desperate to see him.
However, disabled seats being what they are, we were way too close to
the front for my friend to put up with it for any more than a short space of
time.
Still, after
several years as a devotee of the Paisley one, it is the slow tracks which mean
so much to me. “Scandalous”, the
achingly slow song at the end of Batman,
is still for me the best example of a non-Christmas song to employ bells. “Insatiable” at the late night end of Diamonds and Pearls is the most
beautiful song about being part of a couple.
For me, however, the most poignant
song in the whole Prince collection is one about death. The death of a friend to be more precise, and
a tune that, whenever it is selected by the shuffle function on my itunes,
forces me to stop and think. “Sometimes
it snows in April” comes from Under the
Cherry Moon, and constantly reinforces the unpredictability of life, and
all the questions it may raise. But
isn’t that what is it to be human?
Although I was as sad as the
next person when I heard the news of Prince’s death, I cannot help but feel a
little smug and yet enormously grateful at the fond, fond memories he provided
for me through his life and work. Which
continues on and on in our house, with my son and daughter now massive fans of
the album that, ironically, contains “I wish U Heaven”.
I remember, I remember …
I can recall it even now. Sat there in our lounge, the three of us as
ever, watching something my Dad had chosen.
In fairness, that statement isn’t as negative as it sounds, as it was
through my Dad that I got the chance to watch a whole host of amazing early 80s
TV, such as The Young Ones and Spitting Image.
It was my Dad who got us into watching WWF wrestling long before it ever
became well known in this country, and indeed stopped us watching it long
before it hit mainstream. So he was,
despite all outward protestations, a fairly decent judge.
However, I had never heard of
this woman whose comedy show he wanted us to watch, and so I sat with not a
little trepidation that we sat down to watch an hour long show (rare in its own
right) by a woman who was married to the Great Suprendo (whatever that meant).
Within 3 minutes, I was
hooked. I couldn’t believe that this
wonderful woman could tell these labyrinthine stories and still deliver a
killer gag every 20 seconds. She could
take on characters, she could improvise, she spoke both to the audience and to
herself, and she could play the piano.
Those of you of a certain age
may recognise that I am going on about the first ever viewing of “An Audience
with Victoria Wood”. It was December 10th 1988 since you asked. I can recall even now sitting spellbound,
unconsciously leaning into the TV to drink in more and more of what this woman
was saying. Those of you who do recall
it will of course recall the now-famous song with which she finished the show,
and which has gone on to become possibly her finest single individual moment.
However, my relationship with
Victoria Wood did not end there. A good
few years later I was a student who was delighted to hear about a new Victoria
Wood show about to hit our screens, called “Dinnerladies”. Once again, I was spellbound by a piece of
sheer theatre that was quite unlike anything I had ever seen or experienced
before.
Full of characters you
identified with and cared for, with 1000 story lines being played out
separately but oh-so-intricately all at once, this was a show that went from
strength to strength. Let us not forget
that it also boasted more than a few quite exceptional and heart-breaking /
warming Christmas editions, and script writing to die for.
The news of her death in April
brought so many of us immeasurably sadness, but goodness me, weren’t we lucky
to have had so much to smile about in our lives, thanks to a woman who defied
all odds and almost incurable crippling shyness to become one of the best
comedy writers our country has ever produced.
I remember, I remember …
My mum and dad preparing to go
to one of my junior football Christmas doos on a Friday night. You knew it was a dressing up affair because
my Mum’s mirror and all her hair stuff came out onto the dining table in our
little haven of a flat. Tea was a chip
shop affair (get in!). Taxis were booked and timings made explicit.
Thankfully, I was now beyond
the age of a babysitter, so instead of this interminable torture, my mate Neil
came around with some videos from his Dad’s shop (which I would go on to work
in the following year). We also had, if
memory serves, an industrial bucket of crisps and a couple of cans of
shandy. Surely, that is what is meant by
hedonism?
The first video was a trashy
horror / sci-fi affair; never completely my style, but it had that geezer from
Twin Peaks that everyone was talking about at the time, so all was well. We
ploughed through this film and the vast majority of the crisps, with much
giggling and hilarity.
The second video, cracking
into the shandy, was a very different affair.
I’d heard of it and seen the posters, but apart from that I had little
experience of it. For twenty minutes or
so, we watched Bruce Willis (no relation, no honestly) look all forlorn and
hurt as he was spurned at Christmas by his uber-80s missus. I was getting, truth to tell, just a little
bored.
Then the bad guy came on
screen, dressed in a Calvin Klein suit and with a beard to die for. I was suddenly strangely gripped, mesmerised
and, if I’m honest, scared as this villain became more and more menacing. For two hours we were hooked, until,
oh-so-inevitably, the bad guy won and the villain perished.
I was even more amazed when I
read the credits to discover that this German bank robber was in fact
English.
Of course, the film was Die
Hard, and the actor Alan Rickman.
It was not long after this
that I was being unutterably bored by Robin Hood Prince of Thieves when who
should pop up as the villain but – yep, you’ve remembered – Alan Rickman, once
again acting the Hollywood superstars (including the usually ever dependable
Morgan Freeman) off the screen. Once
again I felt humbled at an amazing performance, and not a little pride at the
work of this English man.
My wife and I watched the
first Harry Potter together when she was heavily pregnant with our oldest son,
on the Christmas day prior to his lengthy birth, and will always be a special
moment in our family history.
Many years later, as a father
whose children still adore the Harry Potter films even now, the sad news of
Alan Rickman’s death earlier this year caused sadness to our entire house, and
the first three HP films to be watched almost relentlessly for a good
month. I am forced to say, I did not
begrudge them a moment. Once again, I was left saddened but openly thankful
that we had had something this good in our lives.
I remember, I remember …
Early this year, when the
mornings were still opaquely dark, I got into my car to make my journey to
work, catching as I did the end of some piece of cheesy musack for which Radio
2 gets a bad reputation. At the end of
the track, the radio plunged into a silence that lasted probably only 5
seconds, but it felt closer to 3 years.
I was imagining something between the death of the Queen and the
detonation of something nuclear. When
the silence was broken, the news was different, but no less sad.
“Apologies listeners, but we
are hearing breaking news stories that David Bowie has died”.
The rest of the journey was
characterised by numbness and disbelief.
Bowie? Dead? Surely the (insert one of his many nicknames here) was
immortal, and would outlast us all, bringing out a brand new album once a
decade for time eternal?
It would appear not. The news of David Bowie’s death hit everyone
in ways we could not have fathomed. In
our playground, I had some of the deepest and most meaningful conversations I
have had with our school community, and the staff split into two broad groups –
those who were experiencing him for the first time now, and those who had known
and loved him for years. I fell into the
latter category, for a whole host of reasons.
I remember the amazement with which
I gawped at the TV the first time I saw the video for “Starman”. Too young to have seen it on first airing in
1972, I was watching it on one of the various music programmes I would have had
available around a decade later. I
recall even now being star struck (pardon the pun) at this incredulous
performance, made by a man (I think?) who hugged and teased his group whilst
they sang the most wonderful song. “Let
all the children boogie” is still one of my son’s best catchphrases.
Soon after this, I remember
seeing the video for “Ashes to Ashes” and cheering and whooping with joy. As a devotee of Adam and the Ants, I always
thought that more men should be dressed as French Mime Artist dolls, especially
at the time of a cliff side apocalypse. All joking aside, once again I was
simply blown away by a song that was utterly unlike anything else I had ever
heard, and I love it still to this day.
I remember, a couple of years
later (I think it must have been around the time of Live Aid, so 1985), the
spine tingle I felt when my dad played me the song “Life on Mars”. I didn’t know whether to clap, cry or hide,
but I knew I wanted more. Of course, with the advent of the internet, I can now
watch the haunting video at the click of a few buttons, but it haunts me still,
even at my ripening age.
I remember getting a bootleg
copy of Black Tie White Noise long
before anyone else, on something called a cassette. It did not matter to me that, two months
later, Black Tie White Noise came out
to very tepid reviews, most people not liking it. Didn’t bother me, I still love it, probably
for that reason, although I‘ve no idea whatever happened to the cassette.
I remember, I remember…that’s
the whole point. I could give you a
thousand memories that concern Bowie and his work that put me in a thousand
different places at a thousand different times in my life. When I first heard Hunky Dory all the way through, when I got my first copy of Ziggy Stardust, listening over and over
to a latter day cover version of “Ashes to Ashes”, watching him perform with
Arcade Fire, being the only kid in my year to have watched Merry Christmas, Mr
Lawrence all the way to the end, the list goes on. I
could also tell you about the Christmas Eve when Labyrinth premiered, and I was
utterly petrified. (In fairness, this
came hot on the heels of the Never Ending Story, so having failed to keep it
together when that wolf-thingy leapt out at the end, I was never going to
manage a baby snatching pixie king in tights, was I?).
And that is the point of this blog.
Although we may feel sad at the untimely, often altogether too early
passing of celebrities and those dear to us, what more joy is there to be had
in the remembering? If it is simply
human to be sad, how humanely simple is it to recall, and to take joy in our
reminiscing? Yes, 2016 will probably
live in our memories as a time of sadness, but I feel it should be looked upon
as a bridge to a wonderful cache of memories for us all to share and delight
in.
After all, isn’t that what
makes this time of year special for us all?
If we didn’t have such amazing memories of Christmas and of this period,
why would we look forward to it pretty much from the end of summer? Surely, if
we didn’t have such a close memory connection to this festival, then the shops
would be spending thousands on advertising and decorations for, well, pretty
much for nothing.
I know full well that the
reverse is also true. There are people for whom this is not a wonderful time of
year, and that is because it is generally connected with exactly the kinds of
memories people don’t want: bereavement, separation, loss and need. Please don’t think that anything else I go on
to say will belittle the angst some people must sadly feel at this time. To these individuals, as ever, go my deepest
and most heartfelt wishes, and a hope that one day this will change.
Also, I know there have been
other deaths – celebrity and non – that have meant so much to people this
year. The first Children in Need without
Wogan was a little poignant for us all.
Again, please don’t feel that I am making one seem more important than
the other – how could I? Whilst I have
been writing this torture, the sad news of the death of Greg Lake has been
announced – it is solely down to him that I truly, truly do believe in Father
Christmas.
However, for anyone like
myself who takes great joy in this time of year (and I know my colleagues will
find that difficult to believe, but it is true) it is our wealth of memories
that connect us and what make us start smiling in anticipation the first time
you hear a vaguely festive tune as the backdrop to an advert, generally
mid-October.
And where does one start? I
remember, I remember …
My first record player
Playing Santa in a school production of
Rudolph The RNR
My millennium falcon
Forever waiting for aunt, uncle and two
cousins to arrive for dinner
Morecombe and Wise
The start of my book collection
Coins from a pudding
Hating the Pogues when I first heard it
My first Christmas as a husband, as an
expectant father, and then as a father
The Two Ronnies
Refusing to wear paper crowns from a
cracker
Even now, Christmases still
hark back to the echoes of generations and yuletides past. I still, to this day, receive a huge box of
After Eights from my mum which generally doesn’t see Boxing Day evening (and a
card from my Aunt with my name spelt incorrectly). I still giggle when my children return home
with their costume requests for their production, which invariably contains the
words “party clothes”. I am still forced
to ask: Why one earth do people drink sherry at any other time of year? And, yes, I still refuse to wear paper crowns
from crackers.
Our memories define us. They shape and style us. Like everyone, I have memories that make me
sad, and, indeed, some I would sooner forget.
But my festive trove of memories from this time of the year are as
precious to me as any trinket or bauble I shall ever possess.
And now, as I get older, and
trust me this year I am feeling it more than any other, I find myself trying
more and more to be the maker of memories, wishing beyond hope that my children
will, in 20 years or so, bore their friends or any other audience with tales of
how magnificent are their memories of Christmases past, and how their parents
provided them with a host of wonderful times.
If I can achieve that, what a lucky man I am. I hope to make the graceful and splendid move
one day from I remember, I remember
to I shall never ever forget ….
Thank you, if you’ve got this
far, for making it all the way to the end of what will probably be my last
Christmas blessay; they have run their course, and times are, I am always
pleased to say, a-changing. To you all,
may I wish you peace, serenity and joy at this time of year, whatever your
faith or persuasion. If this is not your
time of year, then I wish you contentment and peace, and a swift resolution to
whatever it is that ails you.
Above all, I hope that you
find yourself sometime in 2017 (even saying it makes it sound all spacey!) with
a newly replenished and enlarged collection of memories to make you an even
more wonderful you. Merry Christmas to each
and every one of you, and the most prosperous of new years to us all.
For this year, and this part
of the journey, that is all.
