Ian Dury & The Blockheads
IAN DURY & THE BLOCKHEADS
The pop history books reveal that Ian Dury And The Blockheads enjoyed five hit singles and two Top Ten albums between 1978 and 1980, but this undoubtedly worthy achievement is no measure of the affection in which Ian Dury is held by music lovers around the world.
The roots of Dury’s creativity can be traced back to the cultural wastelands of post-war Essex and the various schools Dury attended in the 1950′s. Incapacitated by polio, Dury fought hard to gain respect and found sublimation in drawing and painting and the wild rock’n'roll sounds of Gene Vincent And The Bluecaps. On leaving school at 16, Dury studied at Walthamstow Art College, where a love of jazz and a taste for East End street humour helped him to sail through his studies. In 1964 Dury won a place at the Royal College of Art where he was taught by the eminent artist Peter Blake and, in 1967, Dury himself started teaching art at various colleges in the south of England.
The death of Gene Vincent in 1971 inspired Dury to form Kilburn and the High Roads, in which he was vocalist and lyricist, co-writing with pianist Russell Hardy. A year later Dury enrolled into the group a number of the students he was teaching at Canterbury School of Art, including guitarist Keith Lucas and bassist Humphrey Ocean. The Kilburns, as they were affectionately known, found favour on London’s Pub Rock circuit and signed to Dawn Records in 1974, but despite acres of favourable press coverage and a tour opening for The Who, the group never rose above cult status.
In 1975 the Kilburns disbanded and Dury kept his head down for the next year, writing new material and considering his options. A chance encounter in a musical instrument hire shop with former Byzantium guitarist Chaz Jankel led to a new songwriting partnership. Jankel, armed with reams of Dury’s lyrics, fashioned a number of songs, including the classic SEX AND DRUGS AND ROCK AND ROLL Jankel’s treatment of this material was precisely what Dury had been searching for and soon they were recording, assisted by drummer Charley Charles, bassist Norman Watt-Roy and the former Kilburns saxophonist Davey Payne.
An album was completed, but major record labels passed on Ian Dury, whom they may have seen as a Pub Rock no-hoper. However, next door to Dury’s manager’s office was the newly formed Stiff Records, a perfect home for his oddball genius. The now legendary single SEX AND DRUGS AND ROCK AND ROLL c/w RAZZLE IN MY POCKET marked Dury’s Stiff debut and this was swiftly followed by the album NEW BOOTS AND PANTIES which was to eventually achieve platinum status.
In October 1977, Ian Dury signed up for the Stiff Live Stiffs Tour, alongside Elvis Costello And The Attractions, Nick Lowe, Wreckless Eric and Larry Wallis. Dury’s new combo, now augmented by guitarist John Turnbull and pianist Mickey Gallagher, was christened Ian Dury And The Blockheads and the group became the surprise hit of the tour.
To capitalise on this, Stiff Records launched a concerted Ian Dury marketing campaign, resulting in the Top Ten hit WHAT A WASTE. NEW BOOTS AND PANTIES continued to sell in greater quantities and in November of that year, Dury released the memorable HIT ME WITH YOUR RHYTHM STICK, a UK Number One. Dury was now a bona fide pop star and, with The Blockheads, toured to great acclaim, conquering a number of European territories.
Whilst NEW BOOTS AND PANTIES headed towards its remarkable 90 week chart run, the group commenced work on the follow up, to be entitled DO IT YOURSELF. Another Top Ten single, REASONS TO BE CHEERFUL, kept Dury in the public eye during this arduous period of recording. The album was eventually released in June 1979 in a Barney Bubbles-designed sleeve of which there were over a dozen variations, all based on samples from the Crown wallpaper catalogue.
In 1980 Chaz Jankel departed The Blockheads to concentrate on a solo career, signing with A&M Records. Jankel was replaced by former Dr Feelgood guitarist Wilko Johnson, who further enlivened the group’s stage act and contributed to the next album LAUGHTER and its two minor hit singles I WANNA BE STRAIGHT and SUPERMAN’S BIG SISTER.
In 1981 Ian Dury And The Blockheads disbanded. Dury quit Stiff and signed to Polydor, who released the LP LORD UPMINSTER, featuring the controversial single SPASTICUS AUTISTICUS. For this record, Dury was re-united with Chaz Jankel and they recorded in the Bahamas with the legendary rhythm section of Sly Dunbar and Robbie Shakespeare. A second Polydor album, 4000 WEEKS HOLIDAY (credited to Ian Dury And The Music Students), was released in 1984.
In the late eighties Dury scaled down his musical output to concentrate on stage and film work. His theatrical CV includes the writing of the musical APPLES, staged at the Royal Court Theatre in 1992, songs co- written with Jankel and Gallagher for Carol Churchill’s SERIOUS MONEY. Film work includes Roman Polanski’s Pirates, Bob Hoskins’ The Raggedy Rawny and Hearts of Fire with Bob Dylan, plus a voice-over for the fondly remembered TV commercial..’Hello Tosh…Gotta Toshiba’.
In 1990, Blockheads drummer Charley Charles became ill with cancer. The group decided to help with a series of benefit concerts, but sadly Charley did not live to see these shows. The re-united Blockheads, with new drummer Stephen Monti, produced the album WARTS ‘N’ AUDIENCE, released on Demon Records. Throughout the early nineties, the group played gigs on a regular basis, often in mainland Europe. A second album for Demon, BUS DRIVER’S PRAYER, was released in 1992.
In June 1998, Ian Dury and the Blockheads released their first album for seventeen years, MR LOVE PANTS. It was greeted with rapturous acclaim, many critics opining that it was his/their best since the epochal NEW BOOTS ……. a mere twenty-one years later. It was followed up with a special guest slot with Paul Weller at an open-air gig in London, and a sell-out UK tour with a reception to rival the Second Coming!
Ian Dury has recently performed charity work for UNICEF, involving visits to Africa and Sri Lanka, the latter accompanied by Robbie Williams, in October 1998. Ian is a goodwill ambassador for mass innoculation programmes helping to prevent the spread of polio. Since then, Ian has been named (alongside veteran journalist Lord Bill Deedes) as a Special Representative to the UK Committee for UNICEF. This is the highest award the UK committee can bestow upon its celebrity suppporters – other Special Representatives include Vanessa Redgrave, Roger Moore and John Fashanu.
Despite being diagnosed as suffering from colorectal cancer, Ian’s work rate hasn’t slowed; that is unlikely to change going on through 1999. Already Ian’s profile has remained high, be it seen by most of the pop world when presenting a Brit award to Robbie Williams, or through UK cinemas in an inventive and amusing commercial for the Sunday Times.
On March 1st 1999, Ian was involved in a special ‘Night at the Dogs’ at Walthamstow Greyhound Stadium in aid of the CancerBACUP charity. Speaking at the launch of the charity’s new helpline number, he said: ” being told that you’ve got cancer is hard to deal with, but there are people – like CancerBACUP – who can help you through it”.
In April 1999, Ian & the band played 3 sell-out London shows followed by a string of shows around the country. In September BBC2 screened an hour long documentary on Ian entitled ‘Ian Dury – On My Life’ .
September also saw the release of ‘Reasons To Be Cheerful’ – the Very Best of Ian Dury and the Blockheads. An 18 track collection of the many high points of the career of one of British rock and roll’s best-loved characters.
Rounding off another succesful year with ‘Classic Songwriter Award’ presented to Ian and Chaz at the Q magazine awards, a vocal contribution on the new Madness album plus a cinema and TV commercial for The Sunday Times.
If this was not enough, the band return to the studio to start laying down tracks for a new album.
With the dawn of a new millenium the year kicks off with ‘New Boots And Panto’ a one off special evening at The London Palladium on February 6th with kirsty MacColl As special guest support.
IAN DURY DIED ON MARCH 27TH 2000.
INTERVIEW
Kenwood House, the stately home on Hampstead Heath in north London, and a belter of a day. The sky is blue. The sun is hot. The grounds are lush and green. Babies in lacy sun bonnets sit up in their prams. Small children roll gigglingly down the inclines. A young couple neck greedily in the shade of a big tree. Ian Dury loves it here. Ian Dury, who now lives in Hampstead, comes here often. “It’s just so bloody gorgeous innit?” he sighs happily. “It’s just so English. It’s just so. . . who was that geezer? Coleridge?”
Ian Dury – inspirational pop figure, occasional playwright and actor – is big. Or maybe, I should say, gives the impression of being big. His lower body is actually very small, diminished by childhood polio, but his head and neck are huge. He looks part Oliver Reed, part Bill Sykes – or part Oliver Reed as Bill Sykes and part Bill Sykes’s dog, which, if I recall rightly, also had a small body and big head and may have been called Bull’s Eye.
He could look quite scary and would, were it not for the softening, humorous accessories, such as the Joan Collins-style sunglasses that he recently bought from a Rastafarian in a park for pounds 4. A man strolls past, out walking his two gorgeous Dalmatians. “Oi mate,” calls out Ian, “lovely bit a dog action you got going there!” It is idyllic here. It is brilliantly Coleridge. But I wonder, naturally, do heavenly days like this feel even more precious, once you know your time is running out? A cliche of a question, I know, but I’ve got a cliche for a mind sometimes and just can’t help myself. He says: “I just don’t think like that. It’s not in me nature. Do I ever get depressed? No. I only get hangovers. Ha! Ha! Shall we ‘ave a cuppa in the caff? And some crisps? I’m quite peckish, I think.”
In 1996, Ian Dury was diagnosed as having cancer of the colon. He underwent an operation, but then secondary tumours appeared on his liver. “When the specialist diagnosed it six months ago, I said: `What’s the worst scenario?’
He said: `Eight months.’ “
Ian, I ask in my hopelessly clumsy way, how does it feel to know you are. . . um. . . dying? “Bloody irritating! But I haven’t shaken my fists at the moon, if that’s what you mean. I’m not that sort of a geezer. I’m 56 and mustn’t grumble. I’ve had a good crack, as they say.”
Do you ever feel sorry for yourself?
“No. Sorry for yourself is for wankers, innit?”
Any plans to become Cancer Spice?
“No! I don’t like the Spice Girls. I call it the Italia Conti School of Music. I prefer the All Saints. At least they make at an attempt at singing and move their arses right.”
There is, at the moment, no cure for such secondary liver tumours, although treatment can help prolong life, perhaps even keep the disease at bay for six, seven years. Ian is currently hooked up to a “Hickman Line” which feeds him drugs intravenously all day every day, and is not such a humorous accessory. The line consists of “this little chap ‘ere” (a pouch of chemicals, which he wears around his waist) and tubes that have been inserted directly into his chest. His biggest fear, he says, is that some mugger is going to think the pouch is a money bag, grab it and pull me lungs out.”
No, he’s not frightened of death, even though he doesn’t believe in God or any kind of afterlife. “There’s nothing beyond, if you ask me, but that’s alright. The human mind is such an amazing thing, that this life’s been enough for me.” I ask him what he thinks makes life worthwhile. “To love and be loved,” he replies, “and to watch me kids.” Being as cliched emotionally as I am intellectually, I find I get a bit choked up. Ian says no sympathy, please. “Look up sympathy in the dictionary,” he cries, “and you’ll find it comes between shit and syphilis, ha, ha!”
Ian Dury has always been a terrific one-off. Not just as a bloke, but also as a pop star. His music, a sort of cross between rock and music hall with immensely witty lyrics, has always been very much his own. He writes songs about having it off in the back of his Cortina with Nina who is more obscener than a seasoned-up hyena. He has, over the years, introduced us to Billericay Dickie, Plaistow Patricia, Clever Trevor (“knock me down wiv a fevva”), “Sex’n'Drugs’n'Rock’n Roll” and, of course, “Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick”, which shifted a million copies in the UK alone in January 1979.
Anyway, now reunited with his band The Blockheads, he has just bought out his first album for 17 years. “Why so long? Because I’m rubbish! For every good song, I write 20 bad ones I have to chuck away.” Mr Love Pants as the album is called, is as good and as cheeky as anything he’s done. There is an ode to a sandwich maker (Geraldine) that appears to exist purely for the pleasure of rhyming “inamorata” with a very cockney delivery of “dried tomato.” Plus there is the brilliant way Dury delivers them: Oliver Reed as Bill Sykes as Rex Harrison.
Certainly, Dury has always been more concerned with doing his own thing than being famous or rich. Money has never especially interested him, and most of it goes on medical care. He is being treated privately, yes. “I’m a socialist, but I didn’t want to go on no waiting list and become a dead socialist.” He reckons he must have spent pounds 50,000 to date. “I’m not terribly rich, but I’ve managed to so far. I might have to sell me Rembrandt, though.”
He could be a lot richer. Some years ago, Andrew Lloyd Webber asked him to adapt the lyrics for the musical Cats. “But I said no straight off. I hate Andrew Lloyd Webber. He’;s a wanker, isn’t he?” Well, he seems very popular, I say.
“Popular. Popular! Aqua are popular! But it don’t mean they’re any good. To be good, you have to be semi-popular, like me. Every time I hear `Don’t Cry For Me Argentina’ I feel sick, it’s so bad. He got Richard Stillgoe to do the lyrics in the end, who’s not as good as me. He made million sout of it. He’s crap, but he did ask the top man first!”
Dury can be quite horrid about people. Oasis are rubbish, too, he says. “They’re not very good and the music’s boring.” Shakespeare is boring. “I’m very good friends with Helen Mirren. She told me to read it ‘cos I’d love it. But I can’t see the point in it.” He detests opera. He is undecided about Philip Larkin. “I think I’d quite like him if he weren’t such a bitter, curmudgeonly old bastard.” You might, from this, take him to be a bitter, curmudgeonly old bastard himself, but he isn’t. He just says these things because he’s not frightened of saying what he thinks.
He actually strikes me as a very loveable bloke. And the cheerful acceptance of his illness is typical. He could be mean, angry and bitter. But isn’t because, possibly, the first bit of his life was so rotten he decided nothing would ever be as rotten. His mother, Peggy was the middle-class daughter of a doctor while his father, Billy, was a working-class bus driver turned chauffeur. Quite a dandy, by the sound of it. “He was very good looking. Very handsome, with a broken nose. He’d been a boxer once. My dad was quite something. He could fart the first line of God Save The Queen. I think he had a stomach ulcer. Certainly, he always had a lot of wind.”
His parents split shortly after Ian was born, then he contracted polio from, he thinks, a swimming pool in Southend.
He was in bed for the best part of a year and, at the end, had a wasted left side. He says he didn’t mind when he was told he’d have to wear callipers. “When you’ve been encased in plaster for eight months, you don’t worry about something that’s going to help you walk.” He still wears them.
He was dispatched to a special school for the disabled in Sussex where, he says, a lot of sexual abuse went on. “A lot of the staff were pervs. No buggery, but a lot of enforced wanking.” In terms of his disability he wasn’t the worst-off, he says. “You know, there were kids with just fingers coming out their shoulders. Still, they played ping-pong. They were f***ing lunatics!” He was very bright, and got accepted at a grammar school where he was initially bullied. “These loony prefects called me Spastic Joe, so I grassed ‘em up. I wasn’t having any of that.”
His first ambition was to become a painter so he went to art school in Walthamstow, where he did big paintings of either gangsters or naked ladies (“I was very interested in Trilby hats and tits”) and married a fellow student, Betty, by whom he had two children, Baxter and Jemima, now young adults. He was thrilled to become a dad. “When me old man died, I got two grand so me and Betty decided: “Right, we’ll buy a fridge and have a baby.”
His paintings were never successful commercially. “I spent 12 years not earning a crust, so I started doing music as a joke. I thought of a name, Kilburn and The High Roads, and then got a band together.” The band became Ian Dury and The Blockheads, who were to have their first big hit in 1977 with the punk anthem “Sex’n Drugs’n'Rock’n'Roll”.
Fame did not, as it happens, miss going to his head entirely. He and Betty divorced in 1985 mostly because, it seems, he could not resist women who pursued him. “I was 30-years-old and getting smothered in birds, smothered.” His leg has never put women off, he says. “I lost me virginity at 14 on Upminster common. Gorgeous it was.” He remained on good terms with Betty who died four years ago from, yes, cancer.
He has since married the sculptress Sophy Tilson, the daughter of the artist Joe Tilson, who is 23 years his junior. He now has two little sons – Albert, three, and Billy, one – who, he says, smell lovely. “Like chocolate and coconut.” No, they don’t know he’s ill. Yes, he does think about not being there to see who they grow into, but not morbidly. “They’ll be alright. They’ve got their mum.”
Anyway, he’s due for another scan this week, which will tell him the state of his tumours. As we part, two magpies flutter down. “Two for joy!” I exclaim in my clumsy way. “Perhaps the news won’t be that bad.” “Only if you believe in that sort of crap,” says Ian cheerfully. One of us might not be a cliched thinker. And I don’t think it’s me.
`Mr Love Pants’ is available for pounds 12.99 on Ian’s label, Ronnie Harris Records, which he named after his accountant because “I knew he’d take care of the business if I named it after ` im”.
