Childhood conceptions of musicians (Strawberry fears forever)

[Greg Torso]

As a child I was really scared of the Beatles. My dad had taped the video for Strawberry Fields Forever over the the end of Robin Hood on my most watched Christmas VHS and I thought he'd done it as a warning, a presentation of the grainy desolate hell he had come from, the 1960s, where the Beatles lived, and they were dead but could not die, and they would claim me.

I thought about this while watching the video for Ashes To Ashes with my son, who is currently going through an interminable data collection phase (not that he retains any of it, just an endless undisciplined cycle through the same stock topics). As I fielded incessant questions like what is wrong with David Bowie's eye, will my eyes go like that, is he dead now, is he bones now or is there some meat still there, did David Bowie die because of his eyes, what planet is that he is on, is he a clown, are you going to die, am I going to die and so on and on. I (1) regretted watching a David Bowie video and (2) I remembered my repeated self-torturing and compulsive viewing of Strawberry Fields Forever when I was a similar age.

Those things, The Beatles, I was very young and it coloured me forever my relationship with 'old' music, specifically The Quality Quartet, The Fabulous Four. They seemed so dead in that video, reader: DEAD. Embalmed, waxy, cunted to oblivion, the bleak face of Communism seen through a curtain of pubic beards and funeral home foundation. A portal through time back to death. A horror that I had to repeat. I'm sure you're familiar with the video, they are all in extreme close-up, lit up flat like shining a torch on a dead jellyfish.

And my dad had done this! He'd recorded this mummification showreel right on top of the denouement of Robin Hood (year zero for cartoon animal FUCK fic by the way, wellspring for confusing pubescent ponderings such as why does the chicken have enough big bosom spill and why do I kind of can't stop thinking about them normous hen tits), bad enough in the midst of this uncoiling of the big spring of childhood innocence to be suddenly presented with four dead murdered scousers capering in a blood soaked field, hopping backwards like Chinese vampires and speaking in semitones about the strawberry death myxomatosis blue-screen afterlife and rapping about opium seed bagels.

And this happens again and again, dear fuckers, as you will remember there were no clouds or streams or instant clickable access to all of media in all its creation, there was just a tape at Christmas of whatever low-tier Don Bluth shit one of the terrestrial channels had managed to secure while we all waited for the Queen Majesty to come on and do a burp and her piss-take of the poor 1980s twats stuffed to suffocation with Bisto teleplays and John Lewis support socks.

So going from lazily cut-and-paste anime fox shit into the realm of death was quite the ice bath. I really thought I was watching dead people walk and move (Lennon was of course dead for real at this time, shot through the paperback some years previously by Stephen King's mirror-activated ex-security guard patsy, Mark David Chapman, and gone to play Sega bass fishing for eternity in the piano-white solstice of his own imagined gentleman's afterdeath).

And there is that piano with its guts all strung up in the tree and paint splashed over it. All rotting in a featureless scrubland. Except in my mind, it wasn't a piano, it was a horse, butchered and flayed, and Ringo was laughing as he whipped its intestines across George Harrison's hunchback. And so still now, the sound of Beatles singing conjures up this faded field fiesta of death and butchery, and their pale gasping fish mouth and olive pit eyes behind glass panes unblinking.

I just watched it again, after many years of scrubbing this cursed blush-land from my psychic dustbowl, just to experience it. It's obviously different, but it's been tainted for good. It'll never be what it should. Ringo limping like an old shire horse of joke. Twilight in the country of rabies. John hanging teru teru bozu dolls from the bushes of his sweetheart, twisted from napkins drawn and quartered from a Wimpy. The influential destruction unit, the blinking seers, bellbottom jeans in the left ear, tangerine marmoset fur collar jacket in the right ear. McCartney is there like a physical bitcoin, newspaper handsome in stupid armour. Gerogerigegege Harrison lost multi-tracking his nasal shits over the mirrored wingtips of a Japanese businessman's suit shoes.

And before anyone rolls up to aggressively play a rusty old tin whistle at me about how groundbreaking the video is, and how good a drummer Ringo was, and the stereo-panning could literally dig wells in famine struck blast zones, I know it OK. I know it. Just to save you the rescue breaths, I don't need saving, I love the song now. It's all fine.The Beatles are fine and death is OK.

[famethrowa]

I thought Rolf Harris was from Holland.

[non capisco]

One of the first music videos I ever remember seeing was 'Save Your Love' by Rene and Renato and I got it into my head that the bit where Rene fades away from the bed was actual live footage of her dying. The idea of death would have only been a new and inchoate concept to me at the time (28 years old, I was) and I figured that's probably how it happens. You're here and then you just fade away and then you're not here. At least the slumbering Renato was spared the heartbreak of seeing the demise of his turtle dove although my mind did flicker on the thought of his anguished confusion on awakening.

One of my parents would have presumably reassured me that wasn't what was happening in the video and isn't what death is actually like, and yet not a year later during my first trip to the cinema it appeared they were talking bollocks.

[Clatty McCutcheon]

I remember thinking that Cyndi Lauper was some kind of genuinely mentally unhinged teenage delinquent when she appeared in TOTP doing 'Girls Just Wanna Have Fun' - the mad mop of coloured hair, running around the set in bare feet climbing on bits of the set, running up onto the balcony, dancing with members of the audience, batting at balloons and pulling weird faces. I imagined she was some sort of feral girl with a remarkable facility for singing catchy dayglo pop songs, and wondered if she'd ever be able to make her hair go back to 'normal' and live in a house in a town like a normal person.

I don't know why it didn't occur to me that she was in fact a 30-odd-year-old woman doing a performance, but children are stupid aren't they?

[BJBMK2]

Keith Flint - alien. That's what 5 tear old me thought, watching him all goggle eyed and mohawked in a sewer, singing about how he was a "Flying saucer, twisted flying saucer!".

That is the lyric.

[Elderly Sumo Prophecy]

I think I took lyrics a bit literally as a child, and I wondered about how Kate Bush managed to run up buildings.

There was also The Riddle by Nik Kershaw:

Near a tree by a river
There's a hole in the ground
Where an old man of Aran
Goes around and around

You wot mate?

[The Mollusk]

Brushing aside for a moment the banal prepubescent naivety of thinking Oasis were the most blistering white-hot and dangerous animals ever set loose upon a bunch of mediocre instruments, there is a bit on the album (What's the Story) Morning Glory where one of the band coughs between songs. It was probably Noel being like "check this out our kid, here's how you show the world how NOT ARSED you are about making a pristine album - AHEM".

This cough, then. There's a reverb on it - because of course there is, how else are you going to make whatever dire bilge is spewed into those microphones sound good - and for some reason instead of just recognising it as a stoned chimp with heavy set eyebrows clearing his throat in a very tangible recording space, just a normal room, my brain was unable to see it as existing in any particular space at all. It was like a ghost in the CD player. Do ghosts cough? Probably ones who died of lung cancer, yeah. Anyway it was totally detached from any corporeal sense of existence and just seemed to linger in a void, a cough from an unseen mouth in negative space.

To be honest I've almost never been able to picture musicians making music when I listen to it, it's part of why I find it so magical not being able to determine exactly where it's come from and yet here it is, but that cough left me feeling very strange whenever I heard it. Not scared, just sort of wondering that maybe the things I can see and touch around me aren't the only things that exist, there might be something beyond. And that thing is Noel Gallagher hocking a bit of phlegmmy spittle to call his brother a knobhead without fear of needing to swallow or have a sip of water mid-sentence. Chilling.

[famethrowa]

Me and my mate became aware of Pink Floyd when they put out Learning To Fly and started doing mega tours, and we pieced together their history, and deduced that Dave Gilmour went mental in the 70s, and was daily let out to do a gig at Wembley or wherever, then straight back to the nuthouse.

[Kankurette]

i thought Debbie Harry was French, probably because of Denis. And The Police had magic powers.

[idunnosomename]

I was a bit scared of the Beatles because my dad had the chord book with all the surreal psychedelic images by Alan Aldridge in it



I like them now but as an idiot baby even the cover is creepy

[pigamus]

i thought Debbie Harry was French, probably because of Denis. And The Police had magic powers.

Does she actually speak French?

[The Mollusk]

Alternate title: "My Birthy-Wirth" by Noel Fielding.

[holdover]

I used to think that all pop stars/ people on TOTP were employed by the government. Like official sponsored minstrels of something.

Also, growing up in the 80's when The Monkees tv show was on during summer holidays I thought they were contemporary and didn't even notice anything strange when Davy Jones started presenting some treasure hunting show on the bbc other than that he had a new haircut.

Also with The Monkees, for years I was convinced that the four of them had once turned up at our back green which overlooked Aberdeen beach and enjoyed a game of football with me. It was a few years later when I realised it hadn't happened and I'd either dreamt it or just met a nice bunch of teen lads out for a walk and my childlike imagination had blurred things.


Only knew Jackson Brown from the titles of cassettes lying around at a mate's house. Was surprised to eventually discover he was a white lad.

[Pauline Walnuts]

I still like to think that bands all live together like the Monkees.

[Elderly Sumo Prophecy]

Does she actually speak French?

Yes. She French kisses as well, but only at home.

[willbo]

And my dad had done this! He'd recorded this mummification showreel right on top of the denouement of Robin Hood (year zero for cartoon animal FUCK fic by the way, wellspring for confusing pubescent ponderings such as why does the chicken have enough big bosom spill and why do I kind of can't stop thinking about them normous hen tits), bad enough in the midst of this uncoiling of the big spring of childhood innocence to be suddenly presented with four dead murdered scousers capering in a blood soaked field, hopping backwards like Chinese vampires and speaking in semitones about the strawberry death myxomatosis blue-screen afterlife and rapping about opium seed bagels.

is this from a new James Ellroy memoir

[SteveDave]

Also, growing up in the 80's when The Monkees tv show was on during summer holidays I thought they were contemporary and didn't even notice anything strange when Davy Jones started presenting some treasure hunting show on the bbc other than that he had a new haircut.

I thought the exact same thing. I was confused because they were on telly every day in the Summer holidays, but their songs were never on the charts on Sunday.

[Levi]

Always thought Richard Clayderman was blind. No idea why. I've just Googled loads of images to prove my point and I'm none the wiser.

This is the only picture I've found where he looks even vaguely impaired.

[Kankurette]

I also thought Tracy Chapman was a man and Michael Jackson was a woman.

Does she actually speak French?

A bit, if Sunday Girl is anything to go by.

[non capisco]

Also with The Monkees, for years I was convinced that the four of them had once turned up at our back green which overlooked Aberdeen beach and enjoyed a game of football with me. It was a few years later when I realised it hadn't happened and I'd either dreamt it or just met a nice bunch of teen lads out for a walk and my childlike imagination had blurred things.

I love this. As hauntological in its own way as something like Sam the Sandown Clown.

[JesusAndYourBush]

A bit, if Sunday Girl is anything to go by.

And Denis and Call Me.

[Icehaven]

I remember watching the Thriller video with two friends when we were about 6 or 7 and us all being absolutely terrified by it, particularly the bit where a load of blood comes out of a zombie's mouth. The friend's older sister came in and saw us all nearly crying and said "don't worry, it's only syrup", which did nothing to abate our fear and just made me scared of syrup.

Also, growing up in the 80's when The Monkees tv show was on during summer holidays I thought they were contemporary and didn't even notice anything strange when Davy Jones started presenting some treasure hunting show on the bbc other than that he had a new haircut.

I watched it then too! I also really fancied Davy Jones before I knew what fancying people was, and weirdly my first proper boyfriend when I was in my late teens looked just like him.

[Kankurette]

Stewart Copeland was my first rock star crush.

[daf]

Always thought Richard Clayderman was blind. No idea why. I've just Googled loads of images to prove my point and I'm none the wiser.

Continuing the theme, I - like probably everyone else on the planet before the internet came along - thought Roy Orbison was blind.

Turns out he was just wearing shades to look cool, the vain gargoyle!

[poodlefaker]

I was scared of The Who as a kid in the 70s. My brother's copy of Meaty Beaty Big and Bouncy freaked me out. All the songs seemed to be about unhappy children: Pictures of Lily, The Kids Are Alright (which I thought was about parents going out and leaving the children alone in the house at night), Substitute, I'm a Boy (terrifying to me), Happy Jack...even the cover picture scared me. I saw Tommy on TV around the same time, which didn't help. Roger Daltry still gives me the creeps.

[idunnosomename]

I agree the cover of The Who Sell Out is terrifying

[PaulTMA]

Also, growing up in the 80's when The Monkees tv show was on during summer holidays I thought they were contemporary and didn't even notice anything strange when Davy Jones started presenting some treasure hunting show on the bbc other than that he had a new haircut.

I can't remember who it was, but fairly recently I recall seeing an interview with someone whose first concert was the 1980s Monkees, as was genuinely horrified to discover they were in fact these weird-looking middle-aged men with mullets.

[Brundle-Fly]

When I fist saw Bad Manners on TOTP, I thought Buster Bloodvessel and Winston Bazoomies (curly haired harmonica bloke on percussion) had genuinely been let out of a high security psychiatric unit for the day. Loved'em ever since. The sad thing is, Winston AKA Alan Sayag did suffer hugely from MH issues and was eventually sectioned for a while or so I believe. I had heard he'd died some years ago but no info online.

http://www.badmannersontour.com/home/winston_bazoomies

[Jockice]

When I was a kid I thought Bryan Ferry was a horrible creepy, greasy , slimy wanker. And nothing since then has remotely altered my opinion.

[beanheadmcginty]

I thought Chevy Chase was Paul Simon.