Ian Dury Page 7
‘Peter Blake and I are good mates,’ said Ian in 1995. ‘The kind of work a few of us were into related to being able to enjoy things that were popular rather than going down the bleeding library all the time. Pop Art, I suppose you could call it. Jazz was involved. It was OK to be rude or common in our art. Nobody was aiming to be academically clever. I was into jazz then, more than anything – the Johnnie Burch Octet at the Plough in Ilford with Ginger Baker and Jack Bruce, Don Rendell, Tommy Whittle at the Bell in Walthamstow, the local pub for the art school. At the Ship in Bermondsey we used to see a drummer called Lenny Livesey – he was really good. I was always into checking it out. All of us were insane about Ornette Coleman. My tastes were towards modern, free-form jazz, Albert Ayler, Don Cherry, Pharoah Sanders . . .’
Although Ian clearly loved jazz, this complex, demanding music was not easily replicated. He was still keen to be in a band, but learning the saxophone would require dedication, so Ian decided to stick to rock ’n’ roll, quite happy to try and emulate the style of Gene Vincent or Eddie Cochran. But even rock involved a certain level of commitment if the guitar, for example, was to be mastered. Although it is doubtful whether Ian’s left hand could have coped with the fretboard, he was not about to submit himself to months of practice. He wanted a more immediate result and chose to concentrate on drums and vocals. But whilst Ian’s rudimentary percussion skills were OK, he was unfortunately not a natural singer. ‘Every time I tried to do a bit of skiffle, they told me my singing was out to lunch,’ confessed Ian. ‘It was in another key or whatever. So I did a little bit of bongos. We used to have these mad voodoo ceremonies. I hung out with Terry Day.’
Terry Day was a Dagenham rascal with an eye for the girls. Arriving at Walthamstow in February 1962, he made a big impression on Ian. Heavily into modern jazz and the action paintings of Jackson Pollock, Terry had started his record collection at the age of five. With help from his older brother, he learnt to play an assortment of musical instruments by the time he was fifteen. His first love was drums, and he found himself giving Ian some early tuition. ‘We were always hitting things with paint brushes, bashing out rhythms and making a noise,’ recalls Terry, who would go on to be one of Ian’s closest pals.
Ian spent four years at Walthamstow, during which he received a travelling grant to enable his commute from Upminster. For the first two years, Peggy kept him in meals and clothing, but he later enjoyed an income from part-time teaching, as the Essex education authority insisted students gained some practical experience by taking four-week teaching courses in local schools. Ian was despatched to Culverhouse Secondary Modern School for Boys in South Ockendon, where he would teach art two days a week, qualifying him for a grant to continue his studies at Walthamstow, where he had his eye on an Intermediate Arts and Crafts Diploma. Peggy was proud of Ian’s status of ‘student teacher’ and bought him a smart sports jacket and slacks from local clothiers Meakers. While at Culverhouse he befriended fellow teachers Barry White and Gordon Law, the piano-playing head of the art department who was about to experience the tweedy academic ambience of 12 Waldegrave Gardens.
Ian had been trying to persuade his mother and aunts that he had enough talent to continue with his training. The formidable Aunt Elisabeth – the dominant Walker sister – summoned Gordon Law to give his professional assessment of Ian’s artistic talents. Law, who remembers first seeing Ian ‘rocking down Upminster High Street, supported by Pat Few and looking like a diminutive Captain Morgan, with flowing hair and maybe a beard’, was interviewed as an ‘art education expert’. He confirmed that Ian did possess a natural talent for painting. Somewhat encouraged, Peggy allowed Ian to use the attic as a makeshift studio. ‘I used to think it was somewhat unjust that Ian had to limp up flights of stairs to a pokey garret,’ says Gordon, ‘while his cousins romped freely around the more accessible parts of the house.’
Gordon became a good friend, and he and Ian spent hours listening to jazz and reciting poetry. They made tapes for imaginary radio shows and dreamed of finding an outlet for their off-the-wall improvisations. When Gordon acquired a secondhand Bolex cine camera, they would spend Sundays making whacky black-and-white home movies in Peggy’s back garden or the fields close to Barry White’s house in Brentwood. ‘Ian would stumble on the rugged terrain,’ recalls Barry. ‘I once tried to help him up, not in a patronizing way, but he gave me a mouthful. “I can fucking get up!” he roared. Ian was totally independent.’
Gordon Law’s silent 8mm films were much in the style of Richard Lester’s The Running Jumping & Standing Still Film (1959), featuring Spike Milligan and Peter Sellers. Law’s troupe comprised himself and wife Ann, Barry and Barbara White, Mike Price and Ian and Pat. The films had no real plot, and the action consisted of the players running around and falling over repeatedly. Title boards were held up to the camera, announcing improvised sketches such as ‘The Great Tortoise Hunt’. Ian was photogenic throughout and provided a couple of inspired Chaplinesque moments. Chubby and be-suited, he assumed the role of principal actor and could be seen giving direction to the other players. In one section of the film, he acted out the part of a western gambler, loading bullets into a six-gun. In another, he played a New York taxi driver in flat leather cap and was seen dashing in and out of the bushes in defiance of his disability.
Early in 1963, Walthamstow School of Art proposed over two dozen of its most promising students to the Royal College of Art. Walthamstow was a prime source of raw artistic talent and, largely due to the persistent networking of its tutors, was a principal conduit to the Royal College. The list of students put forward that year included: Alison Armstrong, Valerie Wiffen, Paul Babb, Joe Snowden, Bill West, Stanford Steele, Laurie Lewis, Terry Day and Ian Dury. Neither Ian nor Terry had much idea about the direction they wished to take, but they were sent for interviews during the three-day induction process. It was during that week that Ian first met Geoffrey Rigden, an art student from Somerset, also trying for one of the thirty available places. ‘Where are you from, then?’ Ian asked Rigden. ‘Taunton,’ he replied. ‘Very well, then,’ said Ian, ‘I shall call you Taunton.’
The mid-1960s would represent a high-water mark in universal artistic expression, not to mention a social and sexual revolution. In Britain, it was an era that started with the Profumo scandal, the ‘great train robbery’ and, according to poet Philip Larkin, the birth of sexual intercourse ‘between the end of the “Chatterley” ban / And The Beatles’ first LP’. As acting social secretary at Walthamstow, Ian had already turned down the Beatles for a live appearance at the college dance in favour of jazz musician Tubby Hayes. ‘We got heavily involved with rhyming slang and jazz,’ said Ian. ‘The little team we had going at Walthamstow carried on as a little team [at the Royal College]. They called us the Walthamstow Cockneys. A load of us got in – fourteen into the painting school, let alone the dress design department. There was a mass exodus for a further three years of jollification.’ If Walthamstow had been Ian’s creative kindergarten, the Royal College of Art would be one giant playground.
5
Swinging London
‘Walk! Not bloody likely. I am going in a taxi.’
G. B. Shaw, Pygmalion, Act 3
Kensington, 1963. On 2 October, Ian began his studies at the Royal College of Art, working in the painting school, then housed in an annex adjacent to the Victoria and Albert Museum. Pop Art was still prominent, and Peter Blake, Ian’s mentor from Walthamstow, was a part-time teacher at the college. Blake told his students ‘to paint what they liked’ and Ian obliged with a succession of 6B pencil drawings of nude pin-ups, dolly birds and Laurel and Hardy. Getting into the Royal College was the only thing Ian had aspired to in his life. ‘It’s the only achievement I’ve ever felt,’ he said, ‘a bit like going to the university of your choice. I’m really pleased I went there, I’m proud of it. I wouldn’t have been able to learn about how to live as a person doing what they want to do if I hadn’t gone there, allowing your determinatio
n and output to control the way things go – my nine and my five.’
For Peter Blake and his students, influences ranged from the American modernist painter Jasper Johns – famed for his many variations on the stars and stripes of the American flag – to the abstract expressionism of artists such as Larry Poons and Morris Louis. As one might expect, Ian took the opposite stance and favoured figurative paintings. Many hours were spent debating the merits of abstract versus figurative, as Geoff Rigden recalls: ‘Ian and I were rivals in terms of taste, but we more than liked each other. We used to argue a lot. Ian was a good bloke to have an argument with. In fact, he was an argumentative cunt. He knew how to wind you up. And he’d end up agreeing with you and then he would say, “See, I was right!”’
Ian acknowledged Blake’s influence and the ‘American vibration’ that was prevalent. The students’ minds were open to enjoying themselves in common or garden ways; it was OK to paint pictures of your heroes, ‘heroes’ being the big word that Blake introduced. Popular entertainers such as Elvis Presley or Brigitte Bardot were typical subjects, in much the same way as American artist Andy Warhol had immortalized Marilyn Monroe on silkscreen and would later iconize Presley. ‘I think that I opened a door for them and gave them licence to paint something other than a couple of apples on a plate,’ says Peter Blake. ‘It probably wouldn’t have occurred to them to paint Elvis. It would have been banned subject matter, too vulgar.’
Ian was now desperate to leave home and live as close as possible to the Royal College. With Peggy’s blessing, he clubbed together with his East End pals Terry Day and Alan Ritchie, a student in Dagenham but still part of the gang. They were joined by a second-year sculpture student from Blackburn by the name of Derrick Woodham. Together, they looked around for somewhere to rent. First stop was an estate agent in Notting Hill Gate, from where they were directed towards 144 Elgin Avenue, Maida Vale. The ground- and lower-ground-floor flat would become Ian’s home for the next three years. For a fairly agreeable £42 a month, Ian and the lads could enjoy their independence and play jazz records at ear-splitting volume. ‘Drums, clarinets and marijuana!’ was how Ian described the cacophonous atmosphere, with the music of Charlie Mingus and Albert Ayler blasting out of every room. ‘The bloke upstairs worked at London Airport,’ recalled Ian. ‘He used to wear those ear defenders they use to bring the planes down with. It was quite a noisy flat for some years.’
The room allocation at 144 reflected the social pecking order. Alan Ritchie was consigned to the basement; the reticent Derrick Woodham was given the small, middle room; Terry Day perhaps the cheekiest member of the quartet, claimed the nice back room that overlooked the BBC studios in Delaware Road, where he laid polystyrene floor tiles, which Ian would frequently trip over. Ian, whether through sympathy or his forceful personality, was assigned the large, magnificently appointed front room with its bay-window overlooking the tree-lined Elgin Avenue. ‘Nobody minded,’ says Terry Day. ‘We were all happy to be where we were.’
Geoff Rigden was a frequent visitor and would accompany Ian to the West End, where they would hang around the pubs of Fitzrovia and visit nightspots such as Ronnie Scott’s and the Flamingo. Ian was Geoff’s guide to Bohemia in London. ‘I was from Somerset, and Ian knew Soho a bit,’ says Rigden. ‘In me, he got someone whom he could guide. If you were prepared to hang with Ian, he would lead the way. Because he couldn’t get around fast, you had to sort of wait for him. Because I liked him, I was prepared to go at his speed. He always made it entertaining.’
London was now in full swing, and Peter Blake was a considerable influence on Ian and his chums in the area of sartorial style, flaunting the American ‘college boy’ look, achieved by shopping at Austin’s in Shaftesbury Avenue – renowned purveyors of American button-down shirts and Ivy League jackets. Blake set the pace and Ian, who up until then was never seen without his duffel coat, tried to keep up. ‘We went through a Bohemian phase, long hair, in the art school days,’ said Ian, recalling the look he and his mates strove for at Walthamstow. ‘By the time we were at the Royal College of Art we all dressed as much like bricklayers as possible: Tuf boots, checked shirts, rolled-up jeans and nice macs, rugged “working man today”. We looked more like an American painter would like to look. Not long hair and moustaches, not hippiefied.’
Soaking up diverse influences, Ian attended key concerts and cultural happenings as the lines between entertainment and art became blurred. One of the first shows he and his pals experienced was ‘An Evening of British Rubbish’ at the Comedy Theatre, featuring the ‘madcap music’ of the Alberts with ‘Professor’ Bruce Lacey, whose bizarre ‘inventions’ were certain to amuse the art school crowd. In October 1964, jazz saxophonist Roland Kirk’s fourteen-night residency at Ronnie Scott’s club in Gerrard Street was another crucial attraction, for which Ian and Terry Day managed to secure front-row seats. ‘Kirk was swinging his saxophone backwards and forwards, almost touching our noses,’ recalls Terry. ‘In the interval we approached him and shook his hand – you have to remember Kirk was blind – he said, “I know you, you’re the cats in the front row!” Ian was made up.’
In June 1965, Ian and his friend Barry White made their way to the Royal Albert Hall for ‘Poets of the World’, a galvanizing event at which leading American beat writers Gregory Corso, Allen Ginsberg and Lawrence Ferlinghetti performed. En route, Ian and Barry visited a number of pubs, including the Hoop and Toy, close to the Royal College. Meandering through Knights-bridge in search of a lavatory, Ian remembered that actress Kim Novak and her husband – the Upminster-born actor Richard Johnson – were honeymooning at the Hyde Park Hotel. ‘I’m Kim Novak’s brother,’ Ian told the commissionaire as he unsuccessfully attempted to cross the threshold. Desperate to urinate, Ian and Barry turned into a quiet mews nearby, where they came across an antiques shop displaying a giant silver urn in its window. Finding the premises momentarily unguarded, Ian and Barry pissed into the urn before hot-footing it to the Albert Hall.
Throughout his time at the Royal College, Ian was an avid letter writer and often confided in his friend Gordon Law, who had now moved to Rayleigh in Essex to teach at Southend Art College. Ian’s letters to Gordon are full of rambling, abstract prose, but in between the whimsy they provide an insight into Ian’s melancholic state, especially when sans girlfriend. In his careful lower-case printing, Ian pleaded to Gordon:
Please forgive my apparent don’t give a damn attitude. I do give a lot of damn. I am writing this and I don’t know for sure even if I’ll post it. I don’t think you will condemn me outright for faults that I wish I didn’t have, but sometimes the act of getting things done is beyond me. I have no chick at the moment and life in general is rough. I think perhaps the summer will bring a life worth living back to Dury. I have been working and thinking but without a dolly to be with, all I do comes back to me as shit. I am not as bad as I sound, but a big hangover and a lot of guilt is exaggerating the situation. I am looking forward to the future and the holiness of activity.
Wishing to escape the serial man-eaters who would ‘invite you round for a spag-bol and a shag’, Ian was desperate for a permanent girlfriend. Although Pat Few was still on the scene and often visited Ian at Elgin Avenue, her days as his girlfriend were numbered. Various women whom he thought might make a suitable partner were mentioned in further letters to Gordon Law. Prospective girlfriends included Sylvia and the previously courted Alison Armstrong, whom he referred to as ‘Alice’:
Sylvia is ex- teacher of me at Walth I told you about before. She has young girl brat and husb. [who] has gone away with first year RCA potter name of Dawn. Goodly riddies (I think) but what of lovely Sylv? I see her a lot and snap her out with talk of my lust and other fantasies.
. . . perhaps Alice will help. She is my friend of six years, through Walthamstow and now in the painting school with me. We suddenly took off our trousers last week and I have a permanent stomach ache for she lives with an Indian gentleman at Stewart Ray’s house,
and time must pass before she can see me clearly, however. I will show you my Alice of whom I am proud, by bowling down to Rayleigh with her.
When told about this cryptic correspondence some forty years later, Alison Armstrong was touched by Ian’s affectionate remarks. ‘Hearing Ian saying “my Alice” was very pleasurable,’ says Alison. ‘I’ve never heard the expression “took our trousers off” before. It is nice to know he was proud of me. We never did bowl down to Rayleigh.’
I would very much dig to bring Alice down to Rayleigh but I may have to miss out there because her mean fellow may not relinquish his cruel hold over her and I’m not going to force the scene because then me and she won’t be equal-Stevens. I shall move down anyway, to see youse and it will be soonly Write and say when you will definitely be there and I’ll tell you when I’ll definitely come. The thing is I must finish 2 pictures to ‘ease my mind’ and I must also get this magazine cheque to ease my ability to feel equal in the eyes of men and also to have the satisfaction of getting you stinking pissed on my money.
I had a long letter from Sylvia two days ago and she says much of me and her. Ever so sad but bloody beautiful and it scares me stiff. She’s in Scotland at the moment with her kid . . . before she went away, she came over here and, as much for a giggle as for anything else, I gave her a haircut. She began a dreadful weeping scene and to stop all that we had a grand Hollywood type clinch . . . me standing holding scissors and comb . . . her all hairy shoulders and towels sitting near the wardrobe mirror . . . a real gor blimey, but it cheered her up and I didn’t even feel soppy.