Wreckless Eric writes about Alan Clayson..........
The Alan Clayson Experience The other night I played the guitar with Alan Clayson at a pub gig in Tooting. Last month I accompanied him at the Komedia in Brighton. Normally he has Dick Taylor backing him but Dick's busy with the Pretty Things at the moment, so I stepped in as the sole member of the Alan Clayson Orchestra. I feel like Jools Holland - no, only joking…. One of my first ever mentions in the British music press was in a live review of Clayson & the Argonauts in the Melody Maker in 1976 . Allan Jones wrote - "Clayson occupies a premier position on rock's lunatic fringe alongside Wreckless Eric". I don't know where to begin in describing the Clayson phenomena. He came out of Reading University in the early seventies with a history degree, formed Clayson & the Argonauts and confused audiences up and down the country with a mix of historic odyssey and kitsch rock'n'roll. Their first single was a cover of The Taster by Wild Man Fischer. Unfortunately the band didn't share Alan's unique vision - they wanted to rock out, so after an hour of, in their view, slowly alienating the audience they'd finish with a version of Route 66 in an attempt to placate them. The band were straight, Alan wasn't.

I met Clayson for the first time in 1986 when I was in the Len Bright Combo. Bruce and I recorded some tracks with him but it came to nothing. He was working as a music teacher in a primary school at the time and had just published his first book, Call Up The Groups, The Golden Age Of British Beat. Since then he's become a full time writer with something like twelve or thirteen books to his name. His writing has been an inspiration to me. Where he excels is in documenting the minutiae of the provincial England we grew up in:

I knew a Boy Scout called Kevin who sang with the first group I ever saw, the E-Types. He was hovering apprehensively as the others prepared to entertain on "Open Day" at their Aldershot secondary modern one afternoon in 1965. The lead and bass guitarists both plugged into a 15-watt Rangemaster while Kevin's microphone went through a nameless practice amplifier. The youth on rhythm thrashed a finger lacerating as the drummer did likewise on a cheap Gigster kit - kick bass, snare, hi-hat and floor tom.
Authority, complaining of noise from this "Teddy Boys gala" abruptly terminated the set after twenty minutes of wrong notes, meandering tempos and long pauses between numbers which included I'm Into Something Good (twice), and a Concrete and Clay in which Beatle-fringed Kevin, forgetting the words, mumbled vaguely about "candy in the moonlight". Nevertheless, I filed out of the classroom in a daze. That the E-Types had approximated Number One hits placed them beyond criticism. Surely it was only a matter of a year at most before they "made it"…. READY STEADY GO…. TOP OF THE POPS…. SUNDAY NIGHT AT THE LONDON PALLADIUM…. MADISON SQUARE GARDEN. Imagine the laugh-a-minute recording sessions: the limousine gliding to the sold-out theatre; changing into stage gear fresh from Carnaby Street; David Jacobs announcing you in his BBC voice; everybody screams; wild scenes on the boards and off; police cordons; adoring girls; envious boys; hanging about the Scotch Of St. James with all the other stars.
What would be the E-Types angle? The Stones and Beatles were deadly enemies - everyone knew that. Gerry grinned Freddie was Clown Prince. Dave Berry was weird. The Merseybeats had frilly shirts. Manfred had a beard. Them were Irish. The Joystrings were religious. The Who smashed up their equipment. Kevin would think of something.

Sadly, as Clayson's writing career flourished his musical career was becalmed, if "becalmed" is the appropriate word. His stage presence is edgy, but strangely comforting at the same time because Clayson packs enough neurosis to make the most neurotic amongst us feel fine about ourselves. Dick Taylor described doing a gig with him as being like "running very fast down a flight of stairs with no handrail". I understand that, his rhythmic timing is highly personalised and his chord structures are eccentric to say the least. He's been described as the A J P Taylor of rock music and his shows are like a slightly psychotic history and sociology lecture taking in vikings, bikers, greasy cafes, Roman emperors, rock'n'roll bands, science fiction and the para-normal. Oh, and he specialises in audio visual aids too, one of which looks like it's been made from flattened out Shredded Wheat packets.

The gig went fine - in fact I think it was one of his good ones. There was the usual collection of misfits and weirdos that you come to associate with a Clayson event. They come with autograph albums and copies of his books on sixties music into which he inscribes florid dedications ; "to my deeply intimate personal friend Raymond, with best wishes from Alan Clayson…" - that sort of thing. God knows what they make of the performance that follows. Last night he started with the story of a man who was obsessed with the Dave Clark Five, and filled his house with memorabilia. When his wife was finally driven out of his life by the enormity of his obsession he apparently said, "I can always find another woman, but some of these records are priceless". I can well believe it - I once met the man in a shabby hotel at the Elephant & Castle, at a Dave Clark Five convention which Clayson had taken me along to as a treat back in 1986. The man's wife told me that they had Dave Clark Five weekends - he'd get dressed up in the gear and play all the records.
"Well," I said, "that's Saturday morning taken care of, but what do you do then?" How naïve. It seems that when you take into account the Austrian pressing of "Bits And Pieces" with the slightly different B side, and the South African "Everybody Knows" which has a change to the lyric in the third line of the second verse, the Urdu "Glad All Over", and you've got all these records to get through, you're looking at a tightly packed weekend. And when you consider the photo montage of the Dave Clark SIX which adorned their mantelpiece - the Five on the cover of their first album with our middle-aged friend in matching Beatle drape edited in, "tightly packed" is probably about right. It seems he went round the twist in the end, but not before making a vow to collect every record on the same label as the Dave Clark Five. As this was EMI I can imagine that his wife had to leave him because there quite simply wasn't enough space left for her.

Before the gig Alan told me another tale of disquieting fan-life: Some time ago while he was in Chicago he gave his address, phone number and an invitation of the "if you're ever in England…" kind to a fan who he'd got on with quite well. The other day he got a phone call - not from the fan himself, but from some friends of his who'd been assured that they'd receive a warm welcome should they look him up. They were a couple in their seventies who ran a boarding house in Illinois in which George Harrison had once stayed. Afterwards they re-named the hotel "A Hard Day's Night" in his honour, and became Beatle anoraks. Unfortunately for Clayson he once wrote a book about George Harrison, and although he's never met him, he lives near the Harrison mansion in deepest Berkshire. Anyone else would've at least lied there way out of this potentially disasterous situation - I would've said I was doing the night shift at the Cadbury's factory, visiting a sick cousin, anything… But Clayson's too polite, so he autographed the book, and endured a tortuous and horribly embarrassing afternoon of sight-seeing, gawping and photo-taking outside the Harrison pile, followed by a tedious evening in a restaurant with two people he had nothing to say to; and when it was too late to get a hotel, and the last train was about to pull out, the old couple intimated that they'd like to stay the night…

copyright eric goulden 2001,  used by courtesy of www.wrecklesseric.com