THE Friday Boys are a disparate group of men spread across Tyneside who meet once a week - 'always on a Friday' - to talk about the arts, raise a glass to recently departed heroes and villains and, at the evening's end, down a whisky or two. The FBs have only one golden rule - talk of the working week is strictly off-limit.
ALONG with 4,000 other hardy souls, I took part in the Blaydon Race on rain-lashed Saturday night.
It often felt more like surfing than road running, but there was the primeval satisfaction of taking on the very worst the British weather could throw at us.
And since this year also marked the 150th anniversary of the Blaydon Races itself, there was no way I was going to miss out.
The rain was gently pattering down by the time I emerged out of the Metro station, but it just got heavier and heavier.
For some reason, the famous - or infamous - underground toilets in the Bigg Market were locked, so large queues of blokes waited patiently to use a limited number of portable loos.
Realising I wouldn't make it in time, I set off down High Bridge, in search of blessed relief.
Going with strangers is not really advisable, but I noticed a group of male runners heading into a comedy cafe.
My need was great and no joke at all, so I tagged on the back, quickly realising they'd persuaded staff to allow them to use the downstairs toilets, which turned out to be state-of-the-art.
Suitably relieved, I stretched my legs with a jog towards Grey Street, before heading back to the assembled Blaydon racers, many huddling in a bookies' entrance opposite Balmbra's pub.
The sky was coal-black and the rain pulled out all the stops before we could even manage a verse or two of the timeless Blaydon Races song.
My lifelong friend, Jim McCullough, took part in the race for the first time on Saturday night, so there was a little added pressure, apart from the rain.
After wishing Jim all the best, I muscled my way into the already damp 4,000-strong crowd and headed off through Newcastle city centre.
A few brave Saturday night revellers emerged out of pubs to cheer or mock us, but being morally superior runners, we ignored their jibes.
The rain was inches deep as he went gannin' along the Scotswood Road, but I didn't feel like singing Beach Boys classics.
However, I received a boost towards the end when I met up with Corporal Andy Garthwaite, the South Tyneside soldier who lost his right arm when he was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade while serving his country in Afghanistan.
Andy was doing well in the race, but admitted he was "canny tired." I knew how he felt, but pushed on towards the end.
The finish this year was at a place called Shibdon Ponds, where soaken race staff handed out goody bags, including the all-important Blaydon Race T-shirt.
Will I be back for more in 2013? Of course, but I hope the sun has got his hat on next year.
Set 1: -
How Can We Say Goodbye?
Falling
Love Song
Set 2: -
There Stands The Glass
I Don't Want To Talk About It
Some great turns including 2 pals from Barnsley; one played excellent lap steel (inc. Rollin' In My Sweet Baby's Arms) and the other sounded like Eddie Vedder.
Which makes the elegy I wrote for him seem a little distasteful.
Let me tell you, just because you see someone in a black
and white photograph doesn’t mean he’s dead.
Even if you find the photograph in an old-looking
box inside your grandmother’s closet,
the person in it standing against an old Ford
with a goat walking past and a farm in the distance,
he may still be alive, in a nursing home being fed
by a large Kentuckian named Tony, but alive
all the same. And it’s the same with people
much older than you. Just because
they were buying cups of coffee
for a nickel and listening to Sarah Vaughan live
at the Blue Note, they’re not always sleeping
through their hangovers under a quiet blade of grass
in God’s Acre. When I bought the Chick Corea album
and saw him in the silvery sheen of the cover art,
smoking an unfiltered cigarette, the smoke rising
over his face like the hem of a silk dress,
I didn’t even blink. He was dead. And I? I was sad,
listening to his fingers, his poor dead fingers, flying
like ghosts over IT DON’T MEAN A THING
IF IT AIN’T GOT THAT SWING, and thinking
this man’s a genius! playing Ellington like a bartender
plays a Singapore Sling, all that maraschino cherry
sweetness, a little clink of ice, and his voice
doing a kind of mumble-moan
over the keys like a man whose been raised
from the dead, looking down at a woman’s knees
after years in the dirt, singing yeaahh!
yeaahh! this is what I’m talkin’about, yeaahh! this good, sweet life!
Neil interviewed by John Wilson on BBC Radio 4's Front Row (Friday 8 June 2012)
In a rare extended interview, the Canadian singer-songwriter Neil Young discusses his latest disc, a selection of traditional songs, recorded with the uninhibited rock band Crazy Horse.
The album includes a version of God Save The Queen, the anthem Young recalls singing as a schoolboy in Canada.
Young, who topped the album charts on both sides of the Atlantic 40 years ago with his LP Harvest, also reflects on the role of the protest song in the age of the TV talent show, and considers his own instinctive approach to music-making, and his reluctance to become a crowd-pleaser.
Fantasy writer Neil Gaiman remembers his friend Ray Bradbury who has died at the age of 91
Neil Gaiman
guardian.co.uk
Wednesday 6 June 2012
Yesterday afternoon I was in a studio recording an audiobook version of a short story I had written for Ray Bradbury's 90th birthday. It's a monologue called The Man Who Forgot Ray Bradbury, and was a way of talking about the impact that Ray Bradbury had on me as a boy, and as an adult, and, as far as I could, about what he had done to the world. And I wrote it last year as a love letter and as a thank you and as a birthday present for an author who made me dream, taught me about words and what they could accomplish, and who never let me down as a reader or as a person as I grew up.
Last week, at dinner, a friend told me that when he was a boy of 11 or 12 he met Ray Bradbury. When Bradbury found out that he wanted to be a writer, he invited him to his office and spent half a day telling him the important stuff: if you want to be a writer, you have to write. Every day. Whether you feel like it or not. That you can't write one book and stop. That it's work, but the best kind of work. My friend grew up to be a writer, the kind who writes and supports himself through writing.
Ray Bradbury was the kind of person who would give half a day to a kid who wanted to be a writer when he grew up.
I encountered Ray Bradbury's stories as a boy. The first one I read was Homecoming, about a human child in a world of Addams Family-style monsters, who wanted to fit in. It was the first time anyone had ever written a story that spoke to me personally. There was a copy of The Silver Locusts (the UK title of The Martian Chronicles) knocking about my house. I read it, loved it, and bought all the Bradbury books I could from the travelling bookshop that set up once a term in my school. I learned about Poe from Bradbury. There was poetry in the short stories, and it didn't matter that I was missing so much as a boy: what I took from the stories was enough.
Some authors I read and loved as a boy disappointed me as I aged. Bradbury never did. His horror stories remained as chilling, his dark fantasies as darkly fantastic, his science fiction (he never cared about the science, only about the people, which was why the stories worked so well) as much of an exploration of the sense of wonder, as they had when I was a child.
He was a good writer, and he wrote well in many disciplines. He was one of the first science fiction writers to escape the "pulp" magazines and to be published in the "slicks". He wrote scripts for Hollywood films. Good films were made from his novels and stories. Long before I was a writer, Bradbury was one of the writers that other writers aspired to become. And none of them ever did.
A Ray Bradbury story meant something on its own – it told you nothing about what the story would be about, but it told you about atmosphere, about language, about some sort of magic escaping into the world. Death is a Lonely Business, his detective novel, is as much a Bradbury story as Something Wicked This Way Comes or Fahrenheit 451 or any of the horror, or science fiction, or magical realism, or realism you'll find in the short story collections. He was a genre on his own, and on his own terms. A young man from Waukegan, Illinois, who went to Los Angeles, educated himself in libraries, and wrote until he got good, then transcended genre and became a genre of one; often emulated, absolutely inimitable.
I met him first when I was a young writer and he was in the UK for his 70th birthday celebrations, held at the Natural History Museum. We became friends in an odd, upside-down way, sitting beside each other at book-signings, at events. I would be there when Ray spoke in public over the years. Sometimes I'd introduce him to the audience. I was the master of ceremonies when Ray was given his grand master award, by the Science Fiction Writers of America: he told them about a child he had watched, teased by his friends for wanting to enter a toy shop because they said it was too young for him, and how much Ray had wanted to persuade the child to ignore his friends and play with the toys.
He'd speak about the practicalities of a writer's life ("You have to write!" he would tell people. "You have to write every day! I still write every day!") and about being a child inside (he said he had a photographic memory, going back to babyhood, and perhaps he did) about joy, about love.
He was kind, and gentle, with that midwestern niceness that's a positive thing rather than an absence of character. He was enthusiastic, and it seemed that that enthusiasm would keep him going forever. He genuinely liked people. He left the world a better place, and left better places in it: the red sands and canals of Mars, the midwestern Halloweens and small towns and dark carnivals. And he kept writing.
"Looking back over a lifetime, you see that love was the answer to everything," Ray said once, in an interview.
He gave people so many reasons to love him. And we did.
1st set (with Ron): - Bye Bye Love Chains The Singer Not The Song Walk Right Back The Price Of Love Let It Be Me
2nd set: - Love Song Love Cry Baby Cry Till There Was You
A packed night with plenty of players and a comedian! One chap in a lumberjack shirt did an excellent Old Man and a Ryan Adams song Jacksonville Skyline. Good beer and good craich.
It shows the young adventurer dressed as a cowboy sitting on a rock, his dog Snowy at his side, as axe-wielding three native Americans creep up behind him.
The previous owner, another Tintin collector, had bought it for 764,218 euros ($979,000) in 2008, which had until now stood as the record price for a comic.
1st Set: -
Mind Your Own Business
Only Love Can Break Your Heart
Let Your Fingers Do The Walking (aka Good Phone)
2nd Set: -
Is It Only The Moonlight?
Falling
A weird night - entered to the smell of fish & chips - the 'music' bar was filled with bikers demolishing the contents of the nearby chippy. So it was a somewhat ambivalent audience for an open mic night! By the time they left it was fairly late, but a sigh of relief was heard from everyone including the publican.
Some excellent stuff: - Make Me A Pallet On The Floor (Mississippi John Hurt via Gillian Welch) and Folsom Prison Blues by a picker from the Uni and an amazing set from the York Glee Singers (whatever that means) doing a capella versions of From Me To You, Sandman and Smells Like Teen Spirit!!
DESPITE fighting a cold, Dionne Warwick still exuded class for an adoring audience at The Sage.
Celebrating 50 years in the business, Warwick knows everything there is to know about stagecraft.
Although a throat problem hampered Walk On By and some of the first numbers she performed, the 71-year-old singer from New Jersey built in vocal confidence as the show progressed.
Backed by her top-notch band and a small orchestra, Warwick gave the audience what it wanted as she explored the peerless Bachararch and David songbook, with Alfie, Message to Michael, This Girl's In Love With You and Do You Know the Way to San Jose? all being instant crowd-pleasers.
But Warwick moved into a different gear with a newly-revamped version of I Say a Little Prayer, from her forthcoming album.
Riffing brilliantly on the title phrase, the song proved the vocal highlight of the night.
A Brazilian section possibly outstayed its welcome, but Warwick built towards a popular finale, getting the audience to harmonise on the Bee Gees' Heartbreaker and bringing the show to a close with her 1980s hit, That's What Friends Are For.
Even with a cold, Dionne Warwick remains the real thing.
Doc Watson, folk and bluegrass guitarist, dies aged 89
30 May 2012
Grammy award-winning folk and bluegrass guitarist Arthel
"Doc" Watson has died in North Carolina aged 89.
The American musician died following abdominal surgery, and had been in a
critical condition for several days, his manager said.
Watson, who was blinded as a child, was known for his lightning-fast style of
flatpicking which influenced guitarists around the world.
He won eight Grammy Awards including a lifetime achievement prize in
2004.
Watson died at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center in Winston-Salem, where he
was admitted recently after falling at his home.
"Doc was a legendary performer who blended his traditional Appalachian
musical roots with bluegrass, country, gospel and blues to create a unique style
and an expansive repertoire," his management company, Folklore Productions,
said.
"He was a powerful singer and a tremendously influential picker who virtually
invented the art of playing mountain fiddle tunes on the flattop guitar."
Blinded by an eye infection before his first birthday, he learned to play the
banjo at the age of five before picking up a guitar in his early teens.
He got his musical start in 1953 playing lead guitar in a country-and-western
swing band and became a full-time professional musician in the 1960s.
Watson's mastery of flatpicking helped make the guitar a lead instrument in
the 1950s and 1960s, when it was often considered a backup for the mandolin,
fiddle or banjo.
For much of his career he toured and recorded with his son, Merle Watson, who
died in a tractor accident in 1985. He set up an annual fundraising musical
event, Merlefest, in his memory.
The musician played at events across the US from folk festivals to the
prestigious Carnegie Hall in New York and recorded some 60 albums, with his most
popular songs including Tom Dooley, Shady Grove and Rising Sun Blues.
Country and bluegrass singer Ricky Skaggs paid tribute to Watson saying: "An
old ancient warrior has gone home."
"He knew he wouldn't last forever, he did his best to carry the old mountain
sounds to this generation," he added.
Neil Portnow, the president of the Recording Academy, praised Watson for his
"masterful skills as a musician and his beautiful, emotion-filled voice".
"Watson's immense talent and spirit will be deeply missed, and our sincerest
sympathies go out to his family, friends and all who were inspired by his
music."
Documentary which records and celebrates the life and works of 'punk poet' John Cooper Clarke, looking at his life as a poet, a comedian, a recording artist and revealing how he has remained a significant influence on contemporary culture over four decades.
With a bevy of household names from stand-up comedy, lyricists, rock stars and cultural commentators paying homage to him, the film reveals Salford-born Cooper Clarke as a dynamic force who remains as relevant today as ever, as successive generations cite him as an influence on their lives, careers and styles.
From Bill Bailey to Plan B, Steve Coogan to Kate Nash and Arctic Monkeys front man Alex Turner to cultural commentators such as Miranda Sawyer and Paul Morley*, the film reveals the life behind one of Britain's sharpest and most witty poets - a national treasure.
For the past four Sundays, John Cooper Clarke has been warming up the Punk Britannia season with a weekly show on BBC 6 Music. Punk Britannia is a season of specialised programming across BBC Four and BBC Radio 6 Music marking 35 years since punk's heyday in 1977, which exploded across the country during the Queen's Silver Jubilee.
Available on BBC iPLayer until Monday 11 June, so get it while it's hot...
Bob Dylan, who once wrote that "even the president of the United States
sometimes must have to stand naked", has received the Presidential Medal of
Freedom from Barack Obama.
Fifty years after one of the 20th century's greatest songwriters released his
debut album, the 71-year-old was awarded the prize in a ceremony at the White
House, recognising his "considerable influence on the civil rights movement in
the 1960s" and his "significant impact on American culture over the past five
decades".
Other recipients included former Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres,
Pulitzer Prize-winning author Toni Morrison, former astronaut John Glenn and
Bill Clinton's Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright.
Things We Said Today Military Madness The Needle and The Damage Done There Stands The Glass Mind Your Own Business I Don't Want To Talk About It
A booze-fuelled night with several drunks in the audience. One over-served individual made it his business to sing between acts doing songs by Paul Robeson (Ol' Man River) and The Bonzo Dog Band (Hunting Tigers Out In India). Amayyyzing!
He was a seminal influence on punk, a ferociously funny performance poet. Over martinis, John Cooper Clarke tells Simon Hattenstone why he's back
Simon Hattenstone
guardian.co.uk
John Cooper Clarke is pleading with the photographer. Not outside, please. It's windy and the great punk poet is worried about his barnet. "I'm 63 and need all the help I can get. It's not that I think I'm some matinee idol. Quite the reverse. It's damage limitation." He's still got a touch of the young Bob Dylan about him, but these days he's more likely to be mistaken for the raddled Ronnie Wood.
In the 1970s and early 1980s, Clarke was huge, in a cultish way. (Snap, Crackle and Bop, his most successful album, reached 26 in the charts.) He was a lab technician at Salford Tech when he began performing his verse, backed by a folk group, the Ferrets. His poems were about everyday life: package holidays to Majorca where "the Double Diamond flowed like sick", and the fact that you'd never find a nipple in the Daily Express. They were smart, rude and angry ("The fucking weed is fucking turf/ The fucking speed is fucking Surf," goes the magnificently dystopian Evidently Chickentown – although the recorded version, which once closed a grim episode of The Sopranos, had "bloody" instead of "fucking").
Then he disappeared – lost to heroin. "I didn't write for at least 10 years." No records, no books and no money. The decades ticked by. But now he's back: DJing on Radio 6, appearing in the new Plan B film Ill Manors, gigging a lot and – most importantly – writing poetry. Tonight, he is the subject of Evidently ... John Cooper Clarke, a documentary kicking off BBC4 and Radio 6's Punk Britannia season. Clarke was a seminal influence on the punk movement, and might well be its most enduring. In the documentary, Steve Coogan says: "If I'm talking to someone and go, 'D'you know John Cooper Clarke?' and they say, 'Oh yeah, he's a genius', I'm then, 'Good, you've saved me a lot of time.'"
Clarke is having his photo taken and I'm staring at him: toothpick legs, 28-inch waist, huge hair, polka-dot cravat and matching handkerchief. Was he rich in the old days? "No. I ain't waving the victim flag, but considering the massive impact I've had on British culture, it's fucking diabolical how poor I am." What does he mean? "Everybody that read one of my poems went off and wrote poetry. They said that about the Velvets, didn't they? They didn't sell many records, but everybody that saw them formed a band." He looks at the photographer. "Make me look handsome, David. I know I've fucked you around and you hate my guts, but please. Please. And not just good for me age. Good." He laughs loud and the sun bounces off all the gold. How many gold teeth does he have? "About half a dozen. Honest, I'm worth more dead than alive, Simon. He he he he he he!"
We sit down and order drinks at the Heights, a bar 15 floors above London's West End. "Dirty Martini, a couple of blobs of olive oil over the top. Good for you, keeps you regular." People can't keep their eyes off him. He starts talking – about anything and everything, from how we were all happy under Harold Wilson, to how the Ramones were every bit as good as the Beach Boys, to the genius of Chuck Berry. "He's got cheekbones you could hang your coat on. Very handsome man. Greatest lyricist in rock, obviously. You read the lyrics and you're just singing the song. Every beat is spoken for. It's a tragedy he's remembered for My Ding-a-Ling."
And now he's on to the movies: from the gold fever of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre to the improvised genius of John Cassavetes. He's an encyclopaedia of 20th-century culture, with added jokes. Most apparent is his joy in language – forever mixing and matching unlikely words, sounds and ideas in a voice tough as Tarmac. Does he know everything about everything? "I know everything about movies. When my ma went shopping, she'd stick us in the Rialto and say, 'I'll pick you up on the way home.' There were half a dozen cinemas within a quarter of a mile. That was my babysitter, the movies."
A woman walks up to us with a camera. "Can I have a photo, please?"
"Yes, of course," he says.
"Say cheese, Ronnie. Hey, I used to be a Wood before I was married."
"All right darlin', take care sweet'eart," he says in his best Cockney. He looks at me as she leaves. "It doesn't cost you nothing, does it?"
I ask what he did all those years he wasn't writing. "It was a feral existence. I was on drugs. It was hand to mouth." Has he still got track marks? He lifts up his sleeves. "No, I've got no veins left."
One story about this period was that he had hooked up with Velvet Underground singer Nico. It's only partly true, he says: they were living together in Brixton, but not as a couple. Ach, that's disappointing. He smiles and says that's everybody's response. "Who wouldn't like to think you were with one of the 10 most beautiful women in the world, official – and that was in the day of Brigitte Bardot and Julie Christie."
Did Nico ever make a pass at him? "Well, we were junkies so it doesn't really come up. It's not a physical world. It's just not a sex drug, heroin. You just don't get round to thinking about it." Do any junkies have an active sex life? "I've known it happen. Yeah, but not guilty. Ha ha ha ha!"
How close did heroin come to killing him? "Well, you go into a clinic and they tell you: 'You would have died next week if you hadn't come in here.' I never felt it to be true. If you're shooting up junk, you're a bit cavalier. You overdo it and have to be brought back into the land of the living, but I wouldn't say you embark on a career of drug addiction in order to kill yourself. It's driven by the pleasure principle."
Does he miss it? "Oh yeah, course. A lot of times I remember it as fabulous. But I can't do that and have the life I have. And I ain't gonna sink the ship just so I can feel a bit better. If I live 'til I'm 80, I fully intend to reacquaint myself with the world of opiate drugs. I think it's ideal for the elderly. It should be there for the asking. If you're over 70, you should be able to go and say, 'Just give me some diamorphine and I won't mither you any more.'"
Clarke grew up a Catholic and still has faith. "People who believe in God are happier than those who don't. I've never met a happy atheist." He lives in Essex with his French wife of 22 years, Evie; they have a daughter at college. It's not his first marriage, but he won't tell me how many times he's been married. "Let's gloss over that. I don't want to sound like some tragic Hollywood type. I'm a romantic." He pauses. "I don't like the idea of deflowering an unmarried woman."
Instead, he tells me how he and Evie met, on Friday 13 November, and how they bonded over Baudelaire. "I had this translation of Les Fleurs du Mal. I love Charles Baudelaire. Him and Shakespeare are the only people I think are better than me. I swear to Christ, I think I'm better than every fucker. When I finally met the wife, languages were her thing. So I said, 'Is that a good translation?' And she said, 'I couldn't imagine a better translation.'" And that was that.
He says he has never felt so content, not least because he's writing again. Now his poems tend to be more to do with ageing and mortality. Inevitable really, he says: so many people have died around him (including Nico, in 1988). "Increasingly, I have to deal with bereavement. I could go to five funerals a week. But that many vol au vents isn't good for you. He he he he he he!"
Time for another martini. "Cold, not tepid this time, please." Underneath his shades I can see a pair of pale blue eyes. Next he enthuses about John and Pauline. Prescott. "That time he took that 100-yard trip in the Jaguar and the green fascists took him to task and his answer was: 'Pauline had just had her hair done.' Every working-class geezer knew where he was coming from. He is the last politician with integrity. Have you seen pictures of him as a young man, all quiffed up, in the Merch [Merchant Navy]? He was a good-looking fella. Tony Blair or John Prescott? OK, take the piss out of John Prescott if you like, but who would you rather wake up next to: Pauline or Cherie? Pauline looks like Elizabeth Taylor at her peak. What a goddess. Beautiful!"
He shows me his notepad – full of word puzzles and half-completed poems. He never stops these days, he says, and tells me about his latest work in progress. In the past, he has proposed that, for National Poetry Day, all human affairs be conducted in rhyme, with the exception of the emergency sevices. But now he's decided there need be no exception. He grins. "You go to the doctors, the doctor says, 'I understand your question./ Now here is the answer./ It isn't indigestion./ You have stomach cancer.' To which you reply, 'My imminent estrangement/ has come as quite a shock/ I'll make the relevant arrangements./ Thanks for the information, doc.' What d'you think of that? It's good, isn't it? It could even bring a much-needed smile to the cancer sufferer's face."
He falls about laughing. "I thought of it on the way in. How good is that? Ha ha ha ha! Terrific, kid. Terrific."
Again: Mark Kermode's choice. My own list would have to include Quatermass and the Pit (1967), The Thing From Another World (1951), Forbidden Planet (1956) and Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), although the remake (1978) is also good - and if I wanted comedy, I'd include Alan Arkin's faux alien from Simon (1980).
Mars Attacks (1996) 'Aack aack ack ack aack!!' Little green men go on a
diminutive killing spree in Tim Burton’s bonkers alien invasion gem, inspired
in equal measure by the weirdly collectible Topps trading cards and the
notoriously terrible movies of Ed Wood. The result is a delirious joy, like Plan 9 from Outer Space remade with a
massive budget and a star-studded cast. Memorable moments include Lisa Marie’s
face falling away to reveal a grinning green alien skull beneath. But like all
space invaders these Martians have a weak spot – in this case, the sound of
country yodelling, which makes their heads explode
The
Thing (1982) When
John W Campbell Jr’s story Who Goes There? first came to the screen in 1951 as The Thing from Another World, its alien FX
famously stretched to the sight of James Arness dressed up as 'a big carrot'.
Years later, the advance of latex technology enabled John Carpenter to explore
the shape-shifting aspects of the story in his head-scrambling – and at first
sorely underrated – classic The Thing. The result is a fiesta of exploding
dogs, toothy chest-cavities, melting limbs and (most spectacularly) a severed
head that sprouts giant scuttling spider legs, prompting the movie’s most quotable
line: 'You’ve got to be fucking kidding!'
The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) 'Klaatu barada nikto!' Handsome Michael Rennie and his
giant silver robot Gort, whose metal face shoots powerful rays, presented the
scary but benevolent face of aliens in the 50s, bringing the human race’s
technological advancement to a halt in order to warn Earthlings of the dangers
of their newfound knowledge. The Christ-like overtones of the central character
have exerted an unearthly pull on wannabe messiahs ever since; Ringo Starr cast
himself as Klaatu on the front cover of his 1974 album Goodnight Vienna, while
Keanu Reeves employed his trademark 'barely human' face in a recent rubbish
remake
The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976) Nic Roeg cast David Bowie as the spaceman who comes to
earth after seeing him in the documentary Cracked
Actor. Bowie inhabited the
alienated 'space oddity' to the full, resorting only briefly to 'space lizard'
makeup, but more generally relying upon sheer charisma and a British accent
(plus, of course, his famously mismatched eyes) to suggest he was not of this
world. Cover photography for not one but two of his subsequent albums featured Bowie as starman
Thomas Jerome Newton: Station to Station and Low – the latter containing
original music intended for the film
The Rocky Horror Picture Show(1975) As the 'sweet transvestite' Frank-N-Furter, from the planet
Transsexual in the galaxy of Transylvania, Tim Curry remains the most
lusted-after space alien in the history of cinema – a vision of interstellar
haute couture in glam boots, stockings and spangly corsets on a mission to
encourage the people of earth to 'give yourself over to absolute pleasure'. A
flop on its release, the film version of Richard O’Brien’s campy stage musical
became the definitive cult movie, drawing legions of fans who dress up as their
favourite characters and engage in rowdy 'audience participation'. Let’s do the
time-warp again!
I have to say in advance, much as I usually respect Kermode's opinion, I'm not a great fan of some these choices...
The 10 best screen aliens – in pictures
With Ridley Scott's Alien prequel Prometheus set to land on 1 June, here
are 10 others in the fine tradition of cinematic extra-terrestrials
Mark Kermode
The Observer
27 May 2012
This Island Earth (1955)
Few creatures typify the classic ‘bug-eyed alien’ stereotype
better than the marauding lobster-handed ‘mutant’ seen terrorising Faith
Domergue in publicity images for This Island Earth. Sadly, budget and time
constraints meant he was only properly mutant from the waist up – the planned
‘weird alien legs’ were ultimately reduced to mere silver trousers on
screen. The perennial favourite gave us
a race of high-foreheaded brainboxes from the planet Metaluna. Their elevated
hairlines would inspire the TV ads featuring the Tefal scientists, who briefly
usurped the Cadbury’s Smash Martians as icons.
The Blob (1958)
Perhaps the most spectacularly simple space alien ever
conceived, this gooey, gelatinous mass was originally backed by church groups
who had been bamboozled into believing that its adventures were a Christian
morality tale (sinners got glooped while the righteous endure). Starring a young ‘Steven McQueen’, this 50s
classic featured special effects achieved by dropping slime over dimensionalised’
photographs and then filming it falling off in reverse. Simple but brilliant. The Blob even had its
own catchy theme tune, co-written by Burt Bacharach.
Alien (1979)
Screenwriters Dan O’Bannon and Ron Shusett first got the
idea for their chest-busting xenomorph after reading about wasps that paralyse
their prey to create a living food-sack for their spawn. Pulsating eggs, leaping face-huggers and
giant beasties with extending mandibles and acid for blood followed, as
director Ridley Scott and Swiss artist HR Giger redefined the face of alien
predators for years to come. Later
instalments suggested the shape of each particular alien was defined by its
host (human in parts one and two, a quadruped in Alien 3), upon which subject Prometheus
may shed some light – or not!
E.T.: The
Extra-Terrestrial (1982)
Steven Spielberg describes his melancholy masterpiece as ‘my
most autobiographical movie.’ It tells the story of an anxious boy from a
broken family (the dorector struggled to cope with his parents’ divorce), who
forges a bond with a lost alien desperate to ‘phone home.’ Critics marvelled t
the universal sympathy ET inspired in audiences despite an appearance regularly
likened to a ‘walking penis.’ Powered by puppeteers, complex animatronics and
(in some sequences) a dextrous performer walking on their hands, ET also
famously employed the voice of actor Debra Winger to help create his
extra-terrestrial croak.
2001: A Space Odyssey
(1968)
The actual form of the aliens in Kubrick’s epochal
masterpiece is never revealed, but their presence is signalled throughout by
the appearance of a mysterious monolith.
Originally described in Arthur C. Clarke’s short story as
pyramid-shaped, it appears on film as an enigmatic oblong that functions
variously as a teacher, an interstellar alarm, a star-gate and (ultimately)
some form of rejuvenating deity. What it all means remains a mystery, though
many have observed that the measurements of the monolith closely resemble the
upended dimensions of a CinemaScope screen.
Spooky!
