Suddenly had Bowie’s version of All The Young Dudes playing in my head this afternoon – thinking about Jim waxing lyrical of his love for Mott The Hoople. Obviously he was in good company, as David gifted them All The Young Dudes as a way of imploring them not to break up. (He had initially offered them Suffragette City but they turned it down.)
It was only just now having listened to the song on YouTube to share it here did I wonder that…do we need to consider Bowie’s version to be a “cover” as he allowed Mott to record it and release it first? I do somehow see it that way. It does somewhat feel that David’s version *is* a cover.
Oh, I miss talking of him…and of other music. I have been so wrapped up in my little SM/Kerr world so strongly lately.
Perhaps I should do something every week for David? I shall think of a themed title and day on which to do it. A replacement for Kerrsday Thursday? Unless I bring that silly bit of sycophancy back! (Heaven forbid!)
Anyway…free-flowing randomness. Here’s the Bowie version of All The Young Dudes.
Another piece of memorabilia recently gained from eBay trawls was this. I’ve seen several photos from … I’m guessing the same photoshoot – before, but never this particular photo. And it’s a genuine vintage promotional photographic print. In stellar condition it was too!
I’m very happy with this. Yes I am!
The photographer is Paul Canty – hence the watermark.
I love it when Charlie tries to look all “mean ass” in promo photos. Lol
Jim’s trying out his prowling cat moves.
They are bunched up so close, you can see Charlie’s foot wedged under Jim’s thigh.
Why this blog has the domain address of “priptonaweird.co.uk” is because – one: It was primarily started to be more of a dedicated site to Jim, but would encompass and embrace all things Simple Minds. I never had any intention to make it some “super serious – uber fan” blog. It started as fun. 100% fun – with lots of ogling and drooling and petty fangirling.
Then I started to share the memorabilia I was collecting. Then talking about Jim’s FB posts and maybe screengrabbing a reply I got from him that I loved or thought was amusing. Also it became a place for my “art”. As I made my digital fan art and also began drawing and painting. And then going to gigs – and not just SM ones – and it just kept growing and growing and I thought I wanted it to be taken more seriously. A place where maybe “serious” SM fans could actually find useful information and learn something they hadn’t known before, etc, etc.
I started to conduct interviews: First with Jaine Henderson, then with Bruce Findlay, last year with Steve Jeffris of Warm Digits, and this year with Stuart Crouch and most recently – and most professionally too (I guess) with The Anchoress.
And that’s been great. I love doing those kind of things – although the interviews can terrify me! As much work as each post can be, I have been really loving doing the posts for Minds Music Monday on the Sons/Sister 40th Anniversary. And some of these posts came together with the help of Malcolm Garrett as well. I’m proud of all those posts.
But with that pride has crept in an embarrassment – because also, this blog has always had a personal slant to it. It is my own personal blog. That’s why the web address is what it is! It’s why it doesn’t have a “Simple Minds” name to it. I could have hauled it over. I could have bought a Simple Minds reflective domain name – but I love that this domain name is associated to ME!
Today has been another incredibly tough day. For reasons I don’t actually feel able to talk about right now but it is going to have a lasting impact on me. It’s been very emotional today. A lot of tears. I feel like I have spent sssoooo much of the past 12 months crying – esp. the past 9 months.
Sitting about, drying my tears, feeling embarrassed – yet again! When I was thinking about the blog and thinking about how open I’ve been on here of late – again…feeling embarrassed. But WHY?! Why should I feel embarrassed by my emotions?! Why should I be embarrassed to feel things and want things and want to be able to express things?! If I express them here and that ultimately allows me to work through those things and sort my shit out, isn’t that good?!
***I KNOW**** I overshare, and overthink, and over-analyse and … all of these things. I know this! But this is MY place! This is me! As I used to say in the past – and I really need to remember this because this is what I was saying to myself this afternoon – MY BLOG, MY RULES! I am NOT beholden to ANYONE. And I am NOT going to try and make this blog into something it isn’t. As much as I feel I want to make this blog 100% professional with only serious band-specific content – IT ISN’T GOING TO HAPPEN!
This used to be my retreat. The place I would run to for comfort and fun and happiness. It is still a place I am running to but for different reasons. Because now it feels like it is the only place I am understood, the only place I feel able to be me. And, well, even that hasn’t felt entirely so lately. But I am taking that back! I want this to be my safe place. If I am not understood – tough! If you come here and read content and think I share too much – tough! With all due respect – I take your concerns on board. I am aware of them. Let it be known that I concern myself also – okay!!!! Nobody is more aware of my mental instability than me – OKAY?!
And even THIS will be deemed “oversharing” but … I’m working through stuff, okay.
To the people who visit, always, thank you. You don’t have to and lord bloody knows why you do…but holy heck, thank you for doing so. Whatever you gain out of each visit, I hope it is informative, useful or mercy be on the rare occasion FUN!
Welcome to Priptona’s weird, wonderful world of … whatever!
But next week we’ll be back with Love Song in profile as the Sons And Fascination/Sister Feelings Call 40th Anniversary celebration continues.
In the meantime, I’d like to share a few earworms that are currently buzzing around my noggin.
He was my love before I became “Kerrsed”. I honestly couldn’t remember the last time I had listened to an entire David Bowie album. Some time that’s for sure! There was a time – for a long period of my life – that a day wouldn’t go by without me listening to at least ONE Bowie album. Last night I listened to Station To Station.
“Does my prayer fit in with your scheme of things?”
A friend had me in a reminiscing and nostalgia mode with this one. It has always resonated with me. And again now. Pondering that question but extending it to – “could we ever be”? “Were we ever”? Was I ever truly that deluded to think it?
The final one is a happy memory from long ago. A first date with my first serious boyfriend. Good days from a lifetime ago…
Long overdue to have got myself a copy to scan and share this article. Damn pissed that the long coveted photo of them on the sinking Titanic is – one: cropped and two: crap quality.
I love that other photo of them taken when they had one of their TOTP appearances. Jim with a tambourine in hand is always a winner.
Might have a go at some tidying up work on it later – a la “Mr Tambourine Man” banner artwork you may catch on here if you hang about for long enough.
Again – click on images to get increased image viewing options on the bottom right of each page.
Always a great excuse to share what is probably the best set of photos I’ve ever had with ANY band member, past or present.
Happy Birthday, Mick! You amazing, talented, gorgeous man! Hope you have the most wonderful day.
I decided to show the rarely seen third photo today. I usually don’t show it because I hate my 17 chins – but we are in just such a happy moment there, how could I not? Despite my chins, it’s full of joy.
“So when I thought Charlie’s guitar in ‘Angel’ sounded like church bells…” – writes Adam Sweeting, having just been given an explanation by Jim of the ideas behind the song. You can read a full extract of that below.
I’d be intrigued to know what the book of short stories was. I thought for a few minutes about asking Derek Forbes if he’d remember it. Even went to Twitter in further contemplation of conjuring up the gumption to ask him…but I can’t. Best to let sleeping dogs lie. And I guess if Jim had remembered it, he’d have mentioned its name or the author back then during the interview. Maybe someone could find out or shed some light on it?
Anyway, let us ‘push on’.
UPDATE: A regular visitor and reader of this blog – Scott, contacted me about who he thinks the author of the short stories might be and which short story it is! And I think he just may be right. He read on Dream Giver about Jim mentioning Philip K Dick. Well of course I remember that too because of Jim’s reply to me (when I quizzed him about having read sci-fi) about “growing out of things…like drugs, alcohol, hair dye and jodhpurs”. But I didn’t make the connection when compiling this post. A book of short stories of Dick’s is titled “A Handful Of Darkness”. Released originally in 1955, it contains a short story called “Upon The Dull Earth” (that even sounds like a line Jim would use in a song!) – a link to the plot of the story HERE – I think Scott came up trumps with this! Where would I be without him?
The original working title for the song was “Petrocello” – a word entirely made up it would seem. A portmanteau of the words “petronella” and “Limoncello”, perhaps? Or maybe of “petronella” and “uccello”? A portmanteau of those two words could translate as “dancing birds”. For “petronella” is a style of Scottish folk dance while “uccello” is the Italian word for bird. That would be lovely if it was a combination of those two. I’m always trying to put romantic connotations to everything.
Again it was one of the songs that Mick gave to Jim to listen to on cassette and obviously he could hear such potential in all the pieces. I guess had Mick not heard the potential in the music himself first, he’d have not passed it on to Jim to pass his lugholes over it.
I can’t claim to know about music or its structure and complexities (or otherwise) and what it is to describe something as “melody” as opposed to labelling it an “arpeggio” – but what I do know is those chords, those notes from Mick MacNeil’s synths are some of the most beautiful pieces of musical notation you will ever hear. And that Adam Sweeting is right, that Charlie’s guitar chords do sound like church bells.
As it started life as one of Mick’s workings, it may have initially been going to remain an instrumental. Who knows at what point during recording proceedings Jim was ready to provide lyrics? He seemed quite the procrastinator back then – leaving lyrical input until pressed to provide it. Then again ‘Angel’ was seemingly one of the earlier tunes to be formed so maybe it was a rare time in which Jim was ready with lyrics fairly early on but he just delayed putting them across in the studio? All supposition by me.
The song had a brief run of being in the live set during the opening part of the Sons And Fascination tour in Aug/Sept of 1981, performed just a handful of times before leaving the set altogether. Never to reappear again until 2006 on the Black and White tour. And not on a set list again since.
The only live recording of it that exists from those handful of 1981 shows is from the Royal Court in Liverpool on September 22nd. It’s performed in Edinburgh on the opening night of the tour on August 28th – it doesn’t seem to go too well.
The next two shows, it’s off the set list – the reason for the Bingley Hall absence I guess would be to how ill Jim was on the night. The next gig in Nottingham, was the one and only time that Wonderful In Young Life was performed. Ironed out, perhaps? It was then back in the set until the final gig of this first short leg of the tour at the Hammersmith Odeon in London on September 25th. A total (potentially – as some set list information is unavailable) of seven shows that it was performed at. Amazing then that there is even one recording to exist of it. I’m sure that given that the gig was recorded for the specific purpose of putting out some live content, that a recording of it being performed at Hammersmith must exist somewhere in a vault.
It was a fairly prominent feature in 2006, particularly during the first part pf the year as the band tour around Europe. It makes its last appearance during the opening gig of the Australian leg of the tour in May. There are several live versions to be heard. The pedant in me couldn’t really stick with any of them. I am terrible for that. I love lyrics as they are. As they’ve been written and intended to be heard in the first place and when that doesn’t happen I find it annoying. Yes! I know. There is the excuse that the band hadn’t actually performed the song 25 years by that point – I could give them a break! But my counter argument would be one – they would have given themselves time to rehearse before going on tour. Also, the element about it that leaves me disappointed has nothing to do with the music. It’s being played very well from the examples of performances I had heard. My gripe is with Jim and the lyrics. The version I can listen to that plays furthest along in the tour is in Rome on March 19th. Some six weeks into the tour. It’s the 34th performance of the song.
I will say no more of it because I know where he’d tell me to stick it – esp. after given a critique of something some 15 years after the fact, but I can’t help being a pedantic c*** about these things.
All I know is that as a track to end an album with? Very few match it for statement and feeling, to summerise and sum up all that has passed in the album that has just been experienced. The melody. The “church bells”. The amazing bassline. The underplayed drum beat. The beautiful backing vocal. It’s exquisite. As delicate and as haunting as the angels it is depicting. That daydream, vision, visitation – whatever it was that Jim experienced as a child certainly left its mark on him. And all these years later it still lives on and will live on eternally in the mindset of Simple Minds fans. Those angels are with all of us. For many of us they feel like guardians. Guardians of the thoughts and feelings we hold so very precious. If what Jim experienced was indeed “a vision”, then it was definitely meant to be. They wanted to be seen, and they wanted Jim to see them.
What an absolutely sublime piece of work to finish an album on.
Photograph of Jim by Virginia Turbett
Angel wings vector graphics: Bastian Schwind
Additional source information: simpleminds.org
