OWNING
UP by George Melly (1965)
Encapsulate
the book in one sentence?
Bisexual
surrealist looks back with fondness on spending the Fifties whizzing about the
British countryside with a jazz band, drinking crates of brown ale and sleeping
with ‘scrubbers.’
When
did I buy it? Where and why did I buy it?
A
couple of years ago. A Penguin edition from the Seventies and a steal for 99p.
I’d seen an amazing TV documentary about the last days of this eccentric
character, who with the last of his strength was embarking on a final concert
tour and still chatting up old flames. The idea of reading a memoir of his
glory days seemed irresistible. But the book has sat waiting for me for almost
two years..!
What’s
your verdict?
This
is a great, scurrilous read. He’s committing all these tales to posterity in
1965 and taking great delight in celebrating and skewering his fellow musicians
and various other figures he bumped into during his ramshackle, rather drunken
career. He relishes the lewdness and the outrageousness and paints a fabulous
picture of a slightly disreptuable Britain – of dance halls and knocking shops
and festivals and jamborees. But there’s a great erudition at work too, as he
explains the history of jazz to us, almost as an aside.
What
genre would you say it is?
It’s
no-holds-barred showbiz memoir of the rarest, most valuable sort. By a showbiz
person who can write like an angel showing the world their arse.
What
surprises did it hold – if any?
Lots!
The jazz world seems to later generations old hat and a bit dull. But what a
bunch they were – these in-fighting radicals, traditionalists, revivalists and
modernists! Zooming about in their camper vans and causing riots in galleries
and pubs and dance halls.
What
scene will stay with you? What character will stay with you?
There’s
an account of the band’s wagon coming off the road and over a bridge,
plummeting twenty feet into a shallow stream. Mostly unhurt, the band members
seek help from reluctant locals, and it’s only when the female backing singer
is taken into hospital that her injuries are apparent. She’s got long slivers
of glass in her back, piercing her lungs. It’s a horrifying realization,
amongst the near-hysterical giggles.
Have
you read anything else by this author? Or anything this book reminds you of?
No,
but now I feel like I want to read the other memoirs he published.
What
will you do with this copy now?
Another
keeper.
Is
it available today?
Yes,
the first three volumes of autobiography Melly published are available as a
very cheap ebook from Penguin under the umbrella title, ‘Owning Up.’ The
earlier volumes are about childhood and his years at sea.
Give
me a good quote:
After
an early gig in Manchester he is almost beaten up by a gang of thugs:
“I
was anaesthetized by fear. I subconsciously did the only thing that might work
and it did. I took out of my pocket a small book of the sound poems of the Dadaist
Kurt Schwitters, explained what they were, and began to read.”
Comments
Post a Comment