Arthur Brown is likely one of the nice originators of rock’n’roll. As chief of The Loopy World Of Arthur Brown, his 1968 hit Hearth impressed generations of shock rockers. However that was solely the tip of the iceberg, as Basic Rock discovered after we sat down with this nice British eccentric in 2004.
Arthur Brown has all the time had a heat and intense relationship with Hearth. That single (now a bone fide traditional) reached No. 1 within the UK in August 1968 and No. 2 within the US chart a few months later. And though it was Arthur’s solely chart look, it briefly took him from the shadows of being an underground cult determine into the complete glare of rock stardom.
Once in a while you’ll catch a grainy monochrome clip of manic-looking Arthur on some retro TV present, prancing about in his flaming helmet, sinister black-and-white face paint and outlandish cape, his voice constructing from the deep, resonant ‘I’m the God of Hellfire!’ introduction to the tune’s screaming climax. Even now, all these years on on such a imaginative and prescient makes compelling viewing.
Hearth was a cornerstone of The Loopy World Of Arthur Brown’s wild theatrical reveals. And Arthur was all the time trying to give the act a spectacular twist. Just like the time he made his entrance at London’s Roundhouse, swinging down a rope from the ceiling in full regalia, helmet ablaze. “Anyone down there on acid – and there will need to have been a couple of – seeing this determine flying down with flames popping out of his head will need to have thought God was coming,” he laughs.
Or the time on the Windsor Jazz & Blues Pageant when he was lowered on stage by crane whereas equally attired and ablaze. Besides {that a} stagehand mistook his opening shrieks for cries of ache and rushed over and poured his pint of beer over Arthur’s head.
However Hearth additionally gave Arthur Brown a mind haemorrhage practically 30 years later. “It was a scorching, sweltering membership in Southend and I used to be singing the excessive observe in Hearth,” he recollects. “It was close to the tip of a thirty-eight-date tour and I used to be fifty years outdated. I’d additionally been making an attempt out a great deal of totally different fasts, which had undermined my structure.”
He survived, because of the Nationwide Well being Service, and went again to recuperate in Texas the place he’d been dwelling because the early 80s. “However I used to be nonetheless in a foul approach. I used to be having to be taught to stroll once more. However the warmth in Texas was beginning to get to me. I mainly stayed alive by folding napkins. It was all I may do. After which I wrote some actually good songs. That a part of me didn’t appear to vanish,” he finishes with a smile.
Texas appears an odd place for Arthur to have ended up. Stranger nonetheless whenever you uncover he spent a while working a house-painting enterprise with authentic Moms Of Invention drummer Jimmie Carl Black. “I had married this woman from Texas and we had a toddler and I’d introduced him up,” Arthur says by means of clarification. Which doesn’t clarify rather a lot.
However then Arthur’s profession was by no means going to be standard, from the second he ignored the questions on his first-year regulation examination at London College and substituted questions on Marilyn Monroe’s wardrobe as a substitute.
That would have had one thing to do with being launched to the Chelsea Set firstly of the 60s: a hip, swinging crowd who had been into jazz, French movies and dandy garments. Out of the blue Arthur’s musical tastes took on connoisseur proportions: “I used to be guided by voices, actually – Elvis Presley, Little Richard, Nina Simone, Joan Baez, James Brown…”
He was not invited to return to London College. When he switched to Studying College he saved his musical choices broad open, singing in a jazz band, a folks duo and a mod/R&B band. The theatrical component got here when he was supplied a residency at a Paris membership in 1964.
“Up till then I’d simply been standing there singing. I didn’t know something about stage acts. However enjoying three units an evening, seven nights per week, simply singing the songs was not sufficient. I began to include poetry, mime and sketches into the act. I’d come on holding a mop, with a bucket on my head, and fake to be the Statue Of Liberty.”
Returning to England in 1966, Arthur needed to increase his new-found art-rock skills and seemed round for like-minded musicians – whereas narrowly avoiding changing into a member of the Foundations: “I used to be going to sing alongside Clem Curtis, and after I walked into the primary rehearsal, above a bar in Westbourne Grove, the drummer was bent backwards over the bar and Clem was leaning over him with a spear at his throat.”
In actual fact the musician Arthur needed was within the West Kensington home he was dwelling in. “[Future Crazy World keyboard player] Vincent Crane was going out with the landlady’s daughter, and he had a few pals who used to return over and write songs. Vincent was an excellent, classically educated musician with an immaculate style in music, however he had probably not began writing,” Arthur says.
“Collectively we developed this idea present. We began with costumes, and that led on to make-up, after which we obtained a correct lightshow. At the moment there was nearly no one else right here that was linking lights to music and actually going for it.”
However they nonetheless wanted a drummer. An advert in Melody Maker obtained a response from drummer Drachen Theaker, who’d obtained caught in a site visitors jam on the best way to audition for the Jimi Hendrix Expertise and known as in on Arthur and Vincent as a substitute.
Now there was some strong rock credibility for Arthur’s art-rock, and so they began getting membership gigs round London, together with the Speakeasy, a modern hang-out for off-duty stars corresponding to the Rolling Stones. “They [the Stones] had been apparently fairly bemused by our set,” Arthur recollects. “It was earlier than ‘Their Satanic Majesties…’ and all that stuff.”
Another person who noticed them on the Speakeasy was Joe Boyd, who had simply began the underground UFO Membership. The Loopy World Of Arthur Brown had been simply the type of band he was on the lookout for. Legendary because the membership that launched Pink Floyd, UFO was not simply in regards to the music. Theatre troupes, mime artists, trippy lightshows and large inflatable mattresses (this was approach earlier than bouncy castles) had been all a part of the evening’s leisure.
“It wasn’t a lot a scene as a discussion board the place you could possibly explode,” remembers Arthur, who did simply that. “That’s when the flaming helmet and the act actually got here collectively.”
Arthur would emerge via a haze of smoke, the flames from his helmet licking perilously near the low ceiling tiles as he stalked menacingly across the stage, performing The Hearth Suite accompanied by swirling rhythms and gothic, jazzy organ riffs. The lighting mirrored the motion, switching to strobes when the going obtained frenetic. Fairly how he prevented critical facial accidents whereas cavorting round with what successfully amounted to a saucer of burning lighter gasoline balanced on his head stays an unexplained miracle.
“My hair was singed many instances, my garments caught hearth as soon as, and we had been all the time leaving burn marks on phases. However my face solely obtained burnt on a few events,” he says.
It was Pete Townshend who obtained Arthur signed to The Who’s managers Chris Stamp and Equipment Lambert and their Observe Information. Out of the blue there was some industrial muscle behind The Loopy World. Their first single, Satan’s Grip caught the essence of the band’s creepy, compulsive fashion however didn’t have a catchy sufficient hook to chart. Nonetheless, Atlantic Information within the US had been eager for an album, and the band started recording The Hearth Suite based mostly across the tune that was already a spotlight of their set.
However Equipment Lambert wasn’t proud of an idea album. “He needed extra cowl variations like I Put A Spell On You,” Arthur says. “In the long run he allow us to have the primary facet of the album whereas he had the second.”
It made for an uneven album, not helped by being recorded in several studios, though the highlights had been fairly excessive. However that was simply the beginning of the album’s woes.
“Equipment took the album to America and Atlantic stated: ‘It’s nice, however the drummer’s out of time’. He got here again and obtained Vincent to put in writing some brass preparations. The drums had been buried; in case you hear, it’s the brass that’s carrying it.”
They had been on their first American tour – supporting the likes of The Doorways, Frank Zappa and The MC5 – when Chris Stamp arrived with acetates of the album. “We discovered a file participant and put it on,” Arthur recollects, “and on the finish of the primary tune Drachen walked throughout and stated: ‘You fucking cunts!’ He picked up the file and hurled it in opposition to the wall.”
After that The Loopy World obtained crazier. “Drachen was already freaked out by the entire American expertise, now he was indignant. And Vincent was not proud of the best way it was going. I used to be simply managing to carry all of it collectively.”
“Then at some point Drachen, halfway via the gig – whether or not he’d been watching Keith Moon an excessive amount of I don’t know – kicks all his drums off the entrance of the stage. No less than Keith Moon did it on the finish! Drachen thinks it’s an incredible stunt till I begin shouting at him, after which he walks off. Besides that he falls off the entrance of the stage on to his personal package!
“Again on the resort he’s actually misplaced it. He’s working across the resort together with his trousers round his ankles, thrusting his wobbler up in opposition to the home windows. Then Vincent is available in and says: ‘Proper, both I’m going or that fucking wanker does’. I’m making an attempt to calm him down however he’s adamant. I do know I won’t be able to switch Vincent. So I’m going to Drachen and say: ‘I’m afraid you’ll have to go away’. And he says: ‘Proper, I’m going now’. So now now we have no drummer.
“Somebody recommends this Canadian man. He’s a very good groove drummer. The following factor, Vincent begins to get the James Brown vibe. He buys all his albums and performs them always. In actual fact he begins to go excessive. He begins to talk in numbers – ‘You’re the one. Two. Arthur three. 4. Possibly 5’. And there was an aggressive undercurrent about it. We thought somebody had spiked him. However it turned out he was manic depressive.
“Simply as we’re beginning one present, he sees a crate of beer that some idiot has left on the entrance of the stage. He walks throughout whereas I’m lighting my helmet and begins throwing the cans on the viewers. So I’m going over to him and push my flaming helmet into his face; I push him again spherical to the keyboards and he sits down. I nod at him and he begins to play. And the present was unbelievable. However the subsequent day he was again to talking in numbers. And after eighteen hours we’re exhausted, as a result of in case you weren’t paying him consideration he’d break one thing.
“We obtained to the resort, cancelled the gig, then locked him in a cabinet whereas we went to search for some meals. After we obtained again the cabinet’s smashed open – no signal of Vincent. We ultimately discovered him on the principle avenue, carrying only a cape that he opened once in a while, making an attempt to hitch a raise. And there’s a police automotive heading towards us. So we seize him and run again to the resort with him. And simply as we get into the room there’s a cellphone name: ‘When are you arriving for the soundcheck?’ ‘However we cancelled the gig’. ‘No, your keyboard participant rang earlier and stated it’s on once more. And now individuals are turning up’.”
Vincent was invalided again dwelling. Arthur limped again quickly afterward, having in some way managed to finish the tour with stand-in musicians. But when he was on the lookout for sympathy from the administration, he was unsuitable.
“Chris and Equipment had all the time seen me as a solo star. They didn’t suppose the underground factor was going to final. Equipment known as me in and stated: ‘You are able to do your underground nights on the weekend. However the remainder of the week we would like you to play within the lounge. We’re going to make you as massive as Engelbert Humperdinck’. And the humorous factor was that Engelbert’s folks really got here on to me as properly. Additionally they needed me to alter my picture – shave, haircut, possibly even a nostril job. Equipment even urged I may put on a wig for the underground gigs. I simply checked out him incredulously and stated: ‘No, you’re joking. You simply don’t perceive me in any respect. The Loopy World is the place I’m at.”
To be truthful, Stamp and Lambert had a degree. The vary and operatic qualities of Arthur’s voice are distinctive, and he may have been moulded right into a profitable solo artist. However the idea of Arthur Brown as some Bryan Ferry-style crooner is extra surreal than any of the characters he has invented through the years.
So it was again to The Loopy World. Or at the very least it was as soon as Vincent Crane had recovered. And so they struck fortunate with their subsequent drummer, Carl Palmer, who was recent out of Chris Farlowe’s band and a potent musical match for Vincent.
“Carl’s arrival modified the entire fashion of our music as a result of he was way more of a technical drummer,” Arthur says. “Vincent beloved that, and so they additionally obtained on properly collectively which was nice as a result of it was simply when Hearth was successful.”
The Loopy World had been swiftly dispatched for one more American tour. And this time it was Arthur’s flip to flip. “Earlier than the primary American tour I’d by no means even touched a joint. On the second tour I took acid and that modified every thing. I had a very totally different realisation of what was happening.”
This new realisation culminated within the notorious Houston Vacation Inn Expertise that started when Arthur checked in, carrying white robes and carrying two suitcases. He was proven to his room and, nonetheless carrying the suitcases, walked via it on to the patio and straight into the pool. Minutes later he emerged from the pool, dripping, nonetheless carrying the instances, returned to reception and requested for one more room on the next ground.
At sundown, drivers on the freeway had been confronted by the sight of the complete Arthur Brown stage present from the balcony of his resort room – together with smoke, strobe lights and psychedelic results. Full however for one small element: Arthur’s garments. He wasn’t carrying any. He had, nonetheless, remembered his helmet.
“There was pandemonium out on the freeway,” he remembers. “There have been pile-ups, it was fully blocked. There have been most likely a thousand folks watching, and the police had been making an attempt to get via on their bikes. Then we obtained put in jail. Which within the US isn’t very nice.”
Issues actually began to disintegrate when Arthur contrived to show down a £650,000 advance for his or her second album.
“We had a brand new stage act a couple of black magician,” Arthur explains. “Our American managers arrange a cope with CBS and we’d recorded a tune that they thought was certain to be successful. However we had been beneath contract to Observe Information. So we had a gathering in a resort with Chris and Equipment upstairs and the American administration downstairs; I used to be going up and down within the raise between them. However I ultimately determined that no matter Chris and Equipment’s shortcomings – and I did go away their administration later – they’d obtained us up there and it was not morally truthful to stroll out at that time. I feel Vince and Carl thought I’d misplaced my marbles. We performed extra gigs, but it surely wasn’t actually going anyplace after that.”
There was additionally the saga of what may have been: the potential of forming a band with Jimi Hendrix. “We used to play a New York membership known as The Scene, and Hendrix used to return down. We obtained to know one another just a little bit and he’d come up and jam with us. He’d play bass, he’d by no means sing even after I requested him. He hated singing, however he was a fucking nice bass participant!
“One evening I used to be summoned to his resort and he informed me needed to place one thing along with me and Vincent. He had this entire thought of screens, and tapes of Wagner enjoying within the background. He was in one thing of a reverie, however he may give attention to something musical.
“On the time, nonetheless, I used to be in a state of nervous exhaustion and will do little greater than nod settlement. I do know he made the same suggestion to Keith Emerson later, however I used to be flattered even to have been requested.”
The flattery is sufficient to face up to a deflating comparability with Hendrix as a lover, from somebody totally certified to guage. “She informed me: ‘Your love-making was okay, however Jimi takes me proper to the sting, till it seems like I’m going to fall into an abyss. It goes on like that for a very long time. You don’t try this’.” Arthur’s voluntary humiliation in the reason for the Hendrix legend is actually commendable.
However none of it was sufficient to stop The Loopy World from imploding quickly afterwards, Vincent and Carl heading off to type Atomic Rooster. Arthur, in the meantime, determined to observe his religious instincts – one thing that was to be an everyday prevalence over the following decade.
“I’d gone via this entire religious development factor in America, and it reworked every thing; not solely what I needed to do with my music, but in addition how I needed every thing structured. I made a decision there was no place for leaders, and democracy didn’t work both; there was no room for hierarchies.”
It’s truthful to say that an anarchic spirit pervaded Arthur’s subsequent group, Puddletown Categorical. Their act included the Hearth Ceremony that concerned Arthur in a ritual dance together with his Crown Of Flames earlier than making a grand disappearance, solely to reappear… bare.
The band’s groundbreaking inventive endeavours weren’t all the time appreciated; the French Communist Get together reckoned {that a} so-called profit gig by Puddletown Categorical price them a parliamentary seat. And following a spot on the Palermo Pop Pageant, Arthur discovered himself thrown into Sicily’s maximum-security jail.
Not surprisingly, Puddletown Categorical was short-lived. And whereas its successor, Kingdom Come (to not be confused with the 80s Led
Zeppelin clone), had a equally unfastened construction the music was extra targeted and progressive. Kingdom Come’s first album, Galactic Zoo File, was launched in 1970 and will have been a profitable idea album if it had been given the full-on manufacturing and route by a ‘identify’ producer. It actually left a mark on Alice Cooper, who had already been learning Arthur’s make-up fastidiously.
Whereas Kingdom Come‘s self-titled second album was a reasonably muddled enterprise into the theatre of the absurd, 1973’s Journey broke new floor with its use of a primitive drum machine. The truth that Arthur was pressured into utilizing it as a result of his drummer had run off with the bassist’s spouse mustn’t detract from his pioneering use of expertise.
However with out correct administration and promotion, Kingdom Come had been all the time going to wrestle. After touring the Journey album for a 12 months, Arthur eliminated his physique and soul to a college of Sufism (Islamic mysticism) in Gloucestershire; his band went off to affix singer Kiki Dee.
Arthur’s profession for the remainder of the 70s was seldom uninteresting. He pre-empted the world music brigade by practically a decade together with his 1975 album Dance, utilizing African, Jap, reggae and disco beats on varied tracks. He additionally guested on Alan Parsons’s Tales Of Thriller And Creativeness and Klaus Schulze’s Dune’ and Reside albums.
Then there was his look within the film Tommy that ought to have been greater than it was: “Pete Townshend initially needed me to be the physician or the Pinball Wizard, however the man answerable for all of it was Robert Stigwood, who I’d fallen out with again within the Loopy World days. So I ended up sharing Eyesight To The Blind with Eric Clapton. However on the later soundtrack it’s simply Clapton.”
Arthur’s free-spirited artistry was incompatible with punk, which is another excuse why he spent the 80s and far of the 90s in Texas. He wasn’t solely inactive musically, nonetheless, and launched a few industrial/electro albums within the US.
The embers of Hearth had been periodically stoked by cowl variations from Marc Almond, Pete Townshend, The Ventures, Prodigy and Die Krupps – Arthur even helped out on the latter. He returned to England within the late 90s after linking up with Massive Nation’s former supervisor Ian Grant, who was, simply by likelihood, organising a file label known as Observe Information. Grant had even secured the label’s authentic brand, although not the unique label’s now priceless catalogue.
After re-establishing himself on excursions with Robert Plant and The Fairly Issues and competition reveals at Glastonbury and Canterbury Fayre, in 2003 Arthur recorded a brand new album, Vampire Suite, with Massive Nation drummer Mark Brzezicki and keyboard participant Josh Phillips.
“The concept was to get again to the unique format of The Loopy World Of Arthur Brown. It’s a couple of vampire who will get redeemed after attacking somebody who seems to be a saint. It’s a dramatic story, filled with hyperventilating falsettos and screaming. And darkness, too.”
Arthur Brown. Nonetheless loopy in any case these years.
Initially printed in Metallic Hammer problem 63
