Old Geezers

I play in a football team that has a back four with an average age of 47 (and a 15 year old goal-keeper bizarrely enough). So I guess it shouldn't be too much of a surprise that a 74 year old was able to sell out a 16,000 capacity this month. Leonard Cohen started at 8pm and, including a short break, was still going when we left just after 11pm. I missed Leonard Cohen the first time round, and I must admit I find his music a little downbeat in large doses, but he was fantastic. He turned the O2 into a smoky New York club.

This Time its for Real

Along with a surprisingly large number of West London's baby-boomers my brother and I went along to see New Jersey's 2nd finest son (below Bruce, above Bon Jovi)Southside Johnny and his band the Asbury Jukes. I have seen them about four times over the years. My enjoyment has usually hinged on how the soundman has set them up. If he has amped up the horn section I love them, if he has amped up the guitarist (who thinks he is Brian May) then I just like them.

I'm pleased to report the horns got the jump this time - not only that but there were four of them. Southside's financial status at the time dictates how many make the trip. The most I have seen has been five and the least two.

Bizarrely he went on stage at around 8.15 - no Special Guests as the ticket promised. Around 8.20 I was in the kitchen at home and I made a call to see what time he was on. "He already is." came the response!

Luckily a cab was already outside so we only missed about 15 minutes and he played for a further two hours. Endearingly he got the hits out of the way early, oh alright best known ones. By the time he got to the encore he had lost most of his voice and/or got bored with his own stuff. So the guitarist took centre-stage and played various Beatles songs and an Eddie Cochran one (as it was his birthday Southside had just remembered) for about 30 minutes. Despite a career of over 30 years, presumably playing the same set, Southside and his band still behave as if they are having an after-hours party with friends in a New Jersey club. And Southside still has a fantastic rasping voice. They remain one of the great white soul bands who deserve more recognition than they have ever got. They would have been made for life with a spot in the Blues Brothers film for example. Mind you I would have had to go and see them in Wembley Arena if they had done that and Shepherds Bush is so much nearer home.

F.A.B.

I met Fabio Capello in a hotel lift at the end of August in Monte Carlo. I like to think my pep talk has helped to turn England's fortunes around. Here it is in its entirety

Me - You are doing very well
FC - Thanks
Me - It is a tough job
FC - I know
Me - A very, very tough job
FC - I know, I know
Me - Stay tough, Fabio
FC - I will
Me - Good luck
FC - Thank you

Clearly this brusque, Pinter-esque dialogue cut through to Fabio in a way all the football scribes have failed to achieve. Since then he has won all his games making tough decisions about who he picks and who he drops.

It was good to see that he kept faith with Frank Lampard, albeit through force majeure. Frank has been brilliant for Chelsea this season. Against Villa today he and Ballack led a master-class in passing and moving. This season's Chelsea team have not yet received the praise they deserve. Mind you there has been barely time to reflect on it such has been the torrent of off-the-field M&A and managerial changes going on.

Crunch Time

One was always told that banks were the secure places you went when everything else was crashing down. It seems like the world order has been reversed this year with, first, Bear Stearns and then Lehmans and Merrill Lynch hitting the decks at break-neck speed. With necessities 50% up on last year and everything else 50% down, it is bizarre to see economists still debating whether and when we are going into recession. By the time they make up their minds we will have sailed past recession into whatever the next stage is - slump, armageddon, meltdown. But hopefully its all a bad dream.

Simon Gray

As might have been predicted by any reader of his diaries, Simon Gray finally died this month at the age of 71. I really liked his work although, I admit, when I thought about it I had only seen 3 of his plays in the theatre and 2 on TV. He had a very specific world view which he bestowed on all his central characters, one which rarely seemed to travel far emotionally speaking from the Senior Common Room. But his plays were always very funny and he rarely shrank from taking the contrary view. I guess that is one of the reasons he was and will be regarded as a 2division players compared to his contemporaries, a George to Pinter's John and Stoppard's Paul. A right wing playwright in a left wing decade also contributed to this I think.

I especially liked the two diaries he wrote about the first UK and US productions of The Common Pursuit - in my view his best play along with Otherwise Engaged. He was very amusing and honest about his frustrations with the theatrical profession in the UK one and most of the US population in the second one. He never held anything back and you could really feel his anger bubbling up, communicated in a series of ironic asides and unforgivable outbursts. It is amazing he and Harold Pinter got any work done given the amount of champagne drinking that went on!

More importantly when you read about his conversations with Harold Pinter about text edits, sets, positioning, costume, interactions and pauses, one can really apprecciate the huge gap a Director fills between the text and the performance.

Many people praised the series of diaries he published most recently, The Smoking Diaries. Unquestionably they were a great holiday read but unedited and rambling it was harder to find the funny bits between the ruminations of his encroaching death compared to the earlier ones. Thus said he was totally honest about himself and his failings to the end and spared the reader nothing. Not many writers could claim that today.

Simon Gray

As might have been predicted by any reader of his diaries, Simon Gray finally died this month at the age of 71. I really liked his work although, I admit, when I thought about it I had only seen 3 of his plays in the theatre and 2 on TV. He had a very specific world view which he bestowed on all his central characters, one which rarely seemed to travel far emotionally speaking from the Senior Common Room. But his plays were always very funny and he rarely shrank from taking the contrary view. I guess that is one of the reasons he was and will be regarded as a 2division players compared to his contemporaries, a George to Pinter's John and Stoppard's Paul. A right wing playwright in a left wing decade also contributed to this I think.

I especially liked the two diaries he wrote about the first UK and US productions of The Common Pursuit - in my view his best play along with Otherwise Engaged. He was very amusing and honest about his frustrations with the theatrical profession in the UK one and most of the US population in the second one. He never held anything back and you could really feel his anger bubbling up, communicated in a series of ironic asides and unforgivable outbursts. It is amazing he and Harold Pinter got any work done given the amount of champagne drinking that went on!

More importantly when you read about his conversations with Harold Pinter about text edits, sets, positioning, costume, interactions and pauses, one can really apprecciate the huge gap a Director fills between the text and the performance.

Many people praised the series of diaries he published most recently, The Smoking Diaries. Unquestionably they were a great holiday read but unedited and rambling it was harder to find the funny bits between the ruminations of his encroaching death compared to the earlier ones. Thus said he was totally honest about himself and his failings to the end and spared the reader nothing. Not many writers could claim that today.

Staples in the Hand

Good of Labour to lay on some silly season entertainment with David Milliband deciding to mount a leadership challenge while his boss hides away in Suffolk. Sounds like most of the cabinet are skipping quality time with families to bombard their colleagues and media with their carefully-coded views and aspirations. Meanwhile Dave has done his Boden catalogue photocall and is tucking smugly into some lobster and chips in Rock. The first cabinet meeting of the Autumn should be fun - "How was your break, Gordon?" "You know how my f**king break was."

Great Summer of Sport

I missed the greatest tennis match of our time. I was standing in pouring rain trying to get excited about K.T.Tunstall. Granted she was doing a fabulous job trying to whip up some fun from the crowd of corporate umbrellas - "everyone with stripped umbrellas raise yours up high..." - but it was pretty hard to ignore the 46th consecutive hour of rain at Cornbury. I felt most for my mate Anthony who loves tennis and was getting ball by ball text commentary during the show from Andrew. I think Anthony earnt some big credits that night! He hates most music bar Meatloaf.

Having decided in February that it would be great fun to camp most of my family responded with a quick call to a local luxury hotel as back-up. My wife and two children did one night and then decamped - my middle daughter and I did both nights and wrapped it all up with a tent deconstruction in driving rain on Monday morning.

Most of the music was a disappointment to be honest, notably Paul Simon who played everything at one pace and totally screwed up all the Simon & Garfunkel classics ( copyright Bob Dylan).

I did enjoy Carbon/Silicon, the new band of Mick Jones and Tony James. They looked like they were past it and didn't care one jot. I especially like Mick Jones' inter-song chat on the disappointments of modern politics and the first song, Magic Suitcase. They were followed by Nick Lowe who also took the diminished status of The Word stage with grace. The Word sponsored this second stage and had a tent nearby selling magazines. When I was at the counter one 60 year old guy with a Grateful Dead haircut came up and asked them when they were going to do a piece on Donovan. "He was very big" he said, "Yes" said the girl. " He still is ", said the deadhead. Let the shipwrecks of others be your landmarks as Hancock
once said.

I did get in some good sport, notably some excellent Nadal matches at Queens and a thrilling one day international at the Oval that came down to the last ball. England lost because they forgot to hit the bails and New Zealand ran twice to clinch it! Not much gumption our boys. Talking of absent friends, I also enjoyed the Euros more than for a long time - the Spanish were superb passers of the ball and the Turks were a fairytale in adidas.

Brooooooooooce!!!!

Last night we went to the Emirates to see Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band - a superbly chosen, very generous present from my staff last Xmas.

It is hard to think of a better rock'n'roll band on the road today. Granted the Led Zep re-union was pretty special, I have never seen U2 and I am sure the Stones still cut it on a good night, but for sheer tightness, drive and joy the E Street Band are hard to beat. Most of them are in the late 50's so one wonders how many more tours they will fancy. Maybe it is the last time? Not that they couldn't do them I expect, especially Clarence Clemons who gets to bang a tambourine most of the concert and blow his saxophone for about five, albeit five fantastic, minutes.

The Emirates is a great venue. You walk up to it up a long thin street, Drayton Park, a bit like they do in Fever Pitch. We were on the pitch with a great view, good sound, big screen right in front of us and a bar not far behind. Perfect.

When I last saw Bruce at Wembley Arena I was way back and they didn't have screens in those days. He was just a highly-animated, pin-prick in the distance. This time you could see every tic, every grimace, every grin. My wife said he reminded her of Tom Jones. Funnily you can see the resemblance with his all-black outfit, his dyed brown, bouffant hair and his cheesy, crowd-pleasing smiles. I didn't think Bruce did cabaret but maybe every act turns to cabaret after 25 years. Nevertheless he still comes across as a guy from the crowd who decided to go on stage and act out his dreams. There is nothing starry about him at all.

He and the band were pretty awesome. Loads of songs from Magic, Darkness and Born to Run. Some from even earlier. I especially like Jungleland with a huge solo from Clarence on Jungleland. Other great moments included Backstreets, Growing up, Badlands and Radio Nowhere. The trouble for me with a Bruce concert is that I grew up reading about these four/five hour concerts he used to do in Asbury Park, New Jersey on Xmas Eve in the seventies and you always expect to get something of the same. 150 minutes of non-stop classics would be amazing from any other group but from Bruce it feels, ridiculously, like he is short-changing me. Can't win can he?

Paul Weller

So Paul Weller is 50! When I first hooked onto The Jam he was 18 and praising Margaret Thatcher. You can't but admit he has become a quintessential rock god over the time. I like the way he has meandered through the rock history books plundering genres and styles as he goes. Funny to think he slagged off the hippies in 1977 and 20 years later did two or three albums inspired by Traffic. When I saw him at Hammersmith Apollo in July 1977 playing the Batman theme I never imagined he would be an elder statesman of pop. Long may he strum. (Still think I've Changed My Address is his best song ever though).

The Business End

Tomorrow - well, today now, the Premiership will be decided. If Manchester United slip up at Wigan and Chelsea win they will be champions. When I wrote about Chelsea at Xmas I said that it was time for the big players like Ballack to stand up and be counted.

Well, they did - they all did. With the exception of Shevy, all the Chelsea players have had some outstanding matches since Xmas and they have ground out result after result. Ballack has been brilliant and shown himself to be the leader we were told we were buying two years ago, Joe Cole was brilliant in Jan and Feb, Makele has stepped in and been brilliant, Carvalho has been player of the season and, even, Drogba has shown his true class in the big matches like Arsenal on Easter Sunday. In the last couple of weeks Terry and Ashley Cole have give performances to match their salaries.

The media are pretty down on Chelsea and talk of them as if they were George Graham's Arsenal. But they play as a team and fight harder than anyone gives them credit for.

I doubt they will get the Premiership but in Moscow on Wednesday week there will be more Chelsea players playing the final big match of their careers than those at Manchester United. I have no doubts where I think that Cup is going.

A Good Heart is Hard to Find

My eldest daughter is 14 tomorrow. She told her 11 year old sister that she wanted money as a present. When the 11 year old told me this I said to her, " You don't have any money - I always forget to give you pocket money. You have only got your birthday money." "I know", she said, " I will give her some of that - I can't decide whether to give her £10 or £15". Well, I reckon she only has £30 of birthday money, if that, so she was saying that she was going to give her sister half of all the money she had. I don't think you can really top that as an act of generosity, can you?

Ending Up

I have read two memoirs this year - both by writers in their seventies, both of which conclude with the announcement that they have terminal cancer. One's uplifting, one isn't. J.G. Ballard's Miracles of Life is fabulous. He writes with such unrepressed joy about his years bringing up his children on his own after his wife died. He obviously did a pretty good job even if he, by his own admittance, drank as much whiskey for breakfast (and then stopped) as his friends did in the evening. The most amazing part of the book is his childhood in Shanghai before and during the war. His stories of his time in a prison camp with his parents outside Shanghai is amazing. The fact that, as a seven year old, he was allowed to cycle wherever he wanted all around Shanghai made one very jealous indeed. No wonder he is such an imaginative writer!
The other book - The Last Cigarette by Simon Gray - is less uplifting. He has written alot of these memoirs since his playwriting slowed down and I have enjoyed them all. He writes in a stream of consciousness that covers his day, his thoughts on life and his past with great humour. But he is clearly a man on his last round looking back rather than forward - and his early memoirs were much more of the moment - so one can't help feeling a little depressed by his situation.

Hong Kong Garden Takeaway

Quite often I switch into 'old bore' mode and talk about how accessible musicians were when I started to go to concerts in the mid- 70's. In the punk era groups took great pride in being with the fans. I remember being with Feargal Sharkey of The Undertones in the Civic Hall at Guildford after their concert and he happily sat there for an hour after the concert chatting and signing autographs. One of my favourite moments was when, bored with studying, I sat outside the stage door of the New Theatre in Oxford and listened to the Boomtown Rats in concert. Their manager came out and asked me what I was doing - just listening I said. He gave me a free pass - access all areas. The Rats were a great show despite what everyone says.

So, when one goes to the stadium gigs and sits obediently under the slow eyes of security, I often think back to those old days when stars were among us.

Three weeks ago I stopped off at the Shepherds Bush Empire as I knew Siouxsie was playing. I loved her in her pomp. I had no ticket and her set had already started. So I asked the security man on the door if I could come in. He said no but talk to their guy pointing to a large guy next to him - "He's her manager". The manager was a little sheepish and had to check with some head of security lady but then he said, "Come with me" and he took me up to the balcony on one of his free passes. He wouldn't take payment. So I got to see Siouxsie strutt her stuff in silver, skintight spandex and sing classics such as Spellbound and Israel.

People always thought at the timethat punk gave music back to the fans and, for a long time, I thought everyone had over-sentimentalised it. Had they?

Churnalism

There's a new book causing some consternation in media circles called 'Flat Earth News' by Nick Davies. I haven't read it yet but I have read quite a number of the reviews so I am pretty confident I understand its drift. Basically Nick Davies says that too many news stories in national newspapers are poorly researched, rarely second-sourced and, more often than not, fed to them by PRs. He says that this is the consequence of a long-term, dwindling investment in UK editorial resources by publishers.

I think he is right about the dwindling investment piece and partly right about the source of stories. It is pretty clear that journalists are more reliant on companies and their PR representatives for information than they ever have been. From personal experience I can confirm that, if they dont want to know about your story they will still let you know in no uncertain terms. However I think the bigger picture here is what people want to read in their papers. Once you are beyond the big news of the day on page one what do you put in the following pages before you get to the sport? And how do you ensure you choose the stuff that keeps people coming to your paper? If you were in the editorial chair you might be tempted to take the low road after a while. Much cheaper..and people seem to read it.

(I promise I will read the book soon..and sooner if it proves that I have made a point that the book already covers adequately!)

There Will Be Blood

Actually it was crud...........

I thought this was going to be a modern epic. Not in the least. Daniel Day-Lewis did a great Burt Lancaster impression but there was no story, emotion or drama. Maybe all the critics had just come out of National Treasure before they went into it.

(I note I have just broken the basic tenet of this blog. Mmmm....must do better.)

At Ease Sergeant

Fabio Cappello has made headlines more for his off-the-field decisions than his on-field ones so far. If he wasn't a stylish Italian, I think most people would think we had appointed a 1950's sergeant major. So it was good to see that he resorted to the Big # 9 in the second half. An English manager would have got pilloried for that. Maybe he is going to ask all the players to have a short back and sides and go to the Brecon Beacons for a yomp when the rest of the Premiership is competing in Austria and Switzerland next summer. I think his best bet is to drop a star every time to keep the talent on their toes. If he keeps doing that maybe we will yet see Joey Barton at the World Cup. On 2nd thoughts......

Microsoft and Yahoo!

Microsoft want to buy Yahoo! and try and fight back against Google. It is amazing to think that two relatively new giants of the internet age might need to join together. The trouble is that internet search defies management theory. There are meant to be three strong global players in any one market. In internet search there is only one. And it doesnt look like there will be another one for a while. Why change when it is so good? The other problem is Yahoo! It is incredible that a company so young has managed to evolve so fast into a company that combines the worst of 70's conglomerates with the 'anything goes' ethos of dotcom. I hope Microsoft know what they are taking on. (Although, incidentally, Yahoo! Answers is very good. You can ask any question and someone will give you a really good answer within five minutes. Someone should spin it off and float it as a separate business!)

London Calling

I just read Chris Salewicz's biography of Joe Strummer. It brought back alot of memories. At the end of the seventies, when punk petered out, The Clash were the one band who took the best of punk and developed it. OK, they filched lots of rock'n'roll postures and gear and were occasionally a little self-aggrandising , but, particularly, around the time of those 1978 singles such as Complete Control and White Man in Hammersmith Palais, and, a year later, with London Calling, they were the best by far. The book is very balanced in terms of how it presents him. Joe Strummer comes across as someone determined not to be taken in by the star trip, unlike Mick Jones in the Clash's heyday, and also someone more open to new experiences than most, especially if they also involved booze, women and staying up all-night. They don't make pop stars like that anymore - those who not only aspire to stay one of the people but are actually able to do it. One of my friends at school went by tube to the Rock Against Racism concert in Victoria Park in 1978 when The Clash were second on the bill. He reported sitting next to Joe Strummer on the tube going to the concert. Can you imagine Thom Yorke or Damon Albarn doing that? The book also implicitly stresses the point that, if you find a good partner in life or business, then don't let the detail get in the way of the big picture. If the partnership works then let the little things go, the big things matter more. This was clearly how Strummer and Jones felt. At least they stayed friends and played together once more before he died.

The Vertical Hour

We went to see the new David Hare play "The Vertical Hour" at the Royal Court last week. I have always loved his plays ever since I saw Anthony Hopkins do a near-perfect impression of Rupert Murdoch in Pravda in 1985. Since then we have seen lots of his plays including the fabulous trilogy of religion/law/politics and the recent docuplay on the Iraq War "Stuff Happens". What has always been great about David Hare is how he seamlessly combines the political and the personal, the serious and the humorous (although his jokes are sometimes a little stuttered). " The Vertical Hour" is the most disappointing of his plays I have seen. It is very static, the jokes are few and the arguments are basically handbags at 10 paces. The performances are great especially Indira Varma's but one can't help feeling that David Hare has become rather too detached from the people he writes about. He needs to get out and about a bit more to regain the authenticity of his language. On the other hand maybe it is a price he is happy to pay for what must be a fairly angst-free life.

Toontastic

Much I love Wor Kev I can't see how his appointment as Newcastle manager is a step forward. Their best chance for long-term success was for Big Sam to be given the time to re-build the club from the ground up. It might not have been pretty but it would have meant some silverware.

Rotten Jobs

Democracy is the greatest thing but when you read about the US caucuses it does make you wonder how we managed to get to this lowest common denominator approach to politics. Obama wins one caucus and Hilary decides to get aggressive. This mud-slinging continues until the least dirty candidate battles his or her equally-besmirched opposite number and one of them emerges in the White House. The least unelectable wins through. Then the next day that person has to get up and convince the world that he or she is the right person to lead the free world. What a process - what a job. We saw the same thing in the UK last week when Stephen Carter took the job as Brown's top advisor. Very quickly the papers went to the archives to see what they could dig up. There aren't many people in the UK with both the public and private sector experience and the youth and commitment to do such a job. Not that you would know that from the press coverage. Every time it happens it make it less likely that the really able people choose politics as a career. I know I wouldn't fancy it - even if I had the desire and capability!