Distractions

Brothers and Sisters

2012-02-16T11:59:00.001+13:00

From New Zealand to New Orleans: the Moahunters and the Neville Brothers

Moana Maniapoto with Cyril, left, and Charles Neville; Napoleon Avenue, New Orleans. Photo: Chris Bourke

NEW ORLEANS, April, 1992 – “I’ll give you a quote for your magazine.” Cyril Neville puts his arm around me. He has a broad grin on his face, which is framed in dreadlocks. He’s dressed in a purple robe, with a cap encrusted in sequins to read “N”.

“Why isn’t more Maori music played on the radio in New Zealand?”

Cyril is the political Neville, the raving rastaman who makes rappers look inarticulate. He’s standing on the corner of Tchoupitoulas and Napoleon, outside Tipitina’s, the small club in uptown New Orleans, just a few metres from the Mississippi River. The Neville Brothers grew up near here and return to play at Tip’s every few months. Tonight, they’re on the bill with Moana and the Moahunters as the support act.

Cyril is the one who invited the Moahunters to play the celebrated Jazz & Heritage Festival and share a few gigs with the Neville Brothers and his own band, the Uptown Allstars.

The invitation came after the Neville Brothers, at their lowest ebb, were welcomed on to a South Auckland marae during the visit to New Zealand last October. The band was at the end of a world tour; Aaron was in a wheelchair, having pinched a sciatic nerve. Mixing with the bros from South Auckland, the brothers thought they were home already.

“It felt like I’d been there before – I was part of the family,” Aaron Neville says. He’s blocking the sun in a doorway at Tipitina’s, wearing a bulging denim jacket embroidered with a large “A”.

“Everybody was just overwhelmed,” says his brother Charles, the suave saxophonist. “We felt like we were being welcomed home.”

On Tchoupitoulas Street, a few blocks from the Nevilles’ home turf, it’s very apparent this is there home. As Moana conducts a TV interview with Cyril and Charles, people cruise by in large, large motors. “Heeey, Neville Brothers!” they cry. Cyril’s family sit in a late model station wagon, waiting for their father to stop talking. Elder brother Art Neville (Dr Funk) is inside the club, complaining about the new graffiti in the dressing room. Aaron has disappeared and Charles ... Charles just waits for Cyril to stop talking.

The Neville Brothers have just welcomed Moana, the Moahunters, their relatives and a New Zealand film crew to their whanau. The launch for the Brothers’ new album, Family Groove, got lost in all the ceremonies.

The welcome began before at the Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport. The Soul Rebels brass band fanfared the Moahunters’ exit from the plane.

“It was outrageous, like being in a dream,” says Moana. “They were raging already and the first thing I saw was Aaron’s great hulking form, dancing away. And all the other Nevilles, waiting for us. Far out!”

That night, there was a party at the home of the Nevilles’ business manager. Tables were laid with candies and every Louisianan dish imaginable and the Soul Rebels came blasting out of the house with Art Neville following, waving a Mardi Gras umbrella.

“He’s pretty funky, old Art,” says Willie Jackson, the Moahunters’ manager.

Memories return of the Neville’s emotional farewell party after their Auckland concert last year. Charles saying goodbye to a group of Maori women from the marae. Cyril saying hello to someone from Greenpeace. Aaron in acute pain, sitting stiffly in his chair. And Art introduced to this magazine’s editor. “Rip It Up? Rip It Up?” he cried, bursting into song. ‘Saturday night and I just got paid ...’ I was on all those Little Richard records.”

Moana, the Moahunters and the Nevilles, on stage at Tipitina’s, April 1992.
Photo: Nick Bollinger

THE TIPITINA’S welcome began with an African dance troupe, drumming, chanting and leaping their way into the club. Then Cyril took the stage:

“We welcome today not only our friends, but our extended family from New Zealand – Ao-tea-roa. The Maori people. We’re trying to duplicate here what happened when we went there. We were welcomed into their families, into their homes, their society.”

Then the brothers produced gifts, each one a personal gesture. From T-shirt collector Art came a bundle of the Nevilles’ classic shirts; from Aaron, carved figurines; from Charles, screen prints of a painting he had done, and from Cyril, political texts that look well read and annotated.

“I learnt so much about their culture from them, and so much about myself,” said Cyril. “So I offer them knowledge of me and my people in these books ... we have some of all our bloods running through each other, so we may as well get it straight and be one family: the family of maaan.”

Moana’s uncle responded with a speech in Maori and English saying what an honour it was to be among the “big guns” of the music world.

“I’ll be a hero when I get back! As it is now, I’m just a nobody. But it doesn’t worry me. We’re all here together, as one people.”

Then Willie, telling the audience of assorted Nevilles, hangers-on TV crews and international press, about life in South Auckland. Crime, unemployment – Maori are the leaders in all areas, he said.

“The stresses and problems just to survive are great. So when the Brothers came to South Auckland it gave our people the opportunity to relax, to sit back and know that if there’s nothing else in this world, there’s music – something that bonds us all.

“When the Brothers came to South Auckland, the last thing in our minds was a gig at Tipitina’s, or at the the New Orleans Jazz Festival. Well, most of our guys hadn’t been out of South Auckland, let alone past Australia to America. What brought us here was the bond we achieved in New Zealand. If the Brothers had said, just come over to our houses and we’ll have a jam, we would have organised the same way we did. Because a special relationship has been set up, something that will stay in our hearts forever. So the album is aptly named Family Business.”

The Moahunters, their family and the Maori TV crew then all sang ‘Whakaaria Mai’. The Nevilles join in with the English words (‘How Great Thou Art’), just as they do on their new album: on the closing track the Brothers are over-dubbed on a location recording of the Moahunters singing the song to them at the Mangere marae.

At Tipitina’s, after the bands’ duet on ‘Whakaaria Mai’, there is a New Orleans feast. Tucking into jambalaya, chicken gumbo and bean hash, Willie Jackson is well chuffed. “I just sang on the same stage as Aaron Neville,” he says.

That night 1000 people were jam-packed into Tipitina’s, which is about as flash as a woolshed. And when a Maori warrior took the stage, with tattoos and fierce eyes, shouting the challenge, they listened. And they stuck with it as the Moahunters came on with their unique mix of traditional Maori music, funk, pop, pois and politics. The audience, full of listeners waiting for one of the world’s greatest live bands, was won over. It happened again through the week, at the Moahunters’ gigs with Cyril Neville and his fiery Uptown Allstars, and on the exotic Congo Square stage at the jazz festival.

LIKE FATS DOMINO, the Moahunters would have walked to New Orleans if they had to. Every government agency, funding body and corportate sponsor turned them down, not seeing the significance of the visit. Rich men’s yachts, orchestras to Expo, no problem. Maori pop music? Forget it. The only support the band got was from grassroots people, their family and friends – and from Crowded House, who put on a free concert for the band which raised $3500.

“People might think, ‘Oh you just got invited because of the powhiri at Mangere’,” says Willie. “But Cyril and Aaron would never have invited our band if they didn’t think they were up to scratch. They watched the band very closely in Auckland. And in New Orleans, Cyril had advertised and he’d said to all his mates, ‘I’m telling you, these guys are family.’ They were sitting at the side of the stage, connoisseurs of funk.

“But people from the music industry ask, ‘So – did you get a record deal?’ That wasn’t the be-all and end-all of the trip. We went across to meet our friends, and also to get our band inspired at the Jazzfest. And we achieved everything we wanted to achieve. There may be the possibilities of a deal, we met with a few different record people. You never know.”

And in New York, Moana and Willie had a lengthy meeting with ane xpensive entertainment lawyer – attorney to David Byrne, Cyndi Lauper and the Jazzfest – who had taken a fancy to them. His office was on Park Avenue, with rejection letters for ‘Girls Just Wanna Have Fun’ on the wall. He charges $1000 for 10 minutes, but talked to the Moahunters for two and a half hours. “We can’t pay you,” they said. “Who mentioned money?” replied the attorney, inviting his partners in to watch their videos (the ones that can’t get played on New Zealand television).

The Moahunters couldn’t believe they were on their way until they were on the plane. And when they got there, “They just couldn’t believe it,” says Willie. “To see the calibre of musicians.” But they could cut it there; they found when they got up to jam that to the Americans, there was something unique about South Auckland funk.

“For me it just confirms that a lot of our Maori musicians are right up to their standard,” says Willie. “Here, there are no role models – no funk role models. In New Zealand they’re probably the best in the business, but there’s no one they can compare themselves to. And then to go across to America and they know they’re on the right track. They see the Neville Brothers, the Uptown Allstars – they’re great players, those guys, but not that much better than our guys.”

Moana is more down to earth: “At one stage the band got a little bit down, after a performance we didn’t think was that good. We were comparing ourselves to the only two bands we’d really related with in New Orleans adn then thought, hang on – we’re talking about the Neville Brothers and the Uptown Allstars. Why get depressed because we don’t think we’re up to their standard?

“But given the lack of support we got to get over there – the struggle for funding, the music awards thing, etcetera – you think, ‘God, don’t people take Maori music seriously?’ And then to go over there and see the response that it gets and the respect. And that Cyril Neville and his Uptown Allstars are doing exactly the same sort of thing we are, fusing the traditional with the modern. They’ve got their Mandinka maidens on stage and the people just go ape over it.”

Simon Lynch, keyboardist with the Moahunters, says, “A lot of people came up and said they’d never heard funk played that way before. ‘You guys have definitely got your own sound.’ We got a great reaction. It felt very good. I knew we were different. If we were trying to copy the style of any of the New Orleans bands we would have ended up on our face. We had our own style. Full credit to Moana for developing that style and sticking to what she believes in. For the band, it peaked at the festival. It felt very privileged to play there – here’s us, in some very illustrious company. But we justified ourselves.

“The main thing was how proud New Orleans people are of their music. That just got to me. I thought, why can’t we be like that? Here, it’s a very oppressive environment to be making original music in. You’ve got people who look down on New Zealand music. They should look up to it. In New Orleans, if you’re a musician, you have some respect, whereas here ...”

For many who went, a favourite moment was backstage at Tipitina’s. The Neville Brothers are kicking back on their turf, and so are the Moahunters. Lynch describes the scene: “In walks Eric Clapton, Nathan East – Stevie Wonder’s bass player – and that annoying percussionist who used to play with Elton John. All the guys from the Moahunters say, Wow! And Aaron and Cyril are sitting there, like, ignoring them. And Willie says, ‘That’s Eric Clapton over there – aren’t you gonna go and speak to him?’

“And quite within earshot of Eric Clapton, Cyril says, ‘Hey man – in this town, he comes and speaks to us’.”

___________

First published in Rip It Up, June 1992. Looking back 20 years later, that Moahunters trip was trail-blazing. While Maori pop is still hardly heard on mainstream radio, so much else has changed: support from the New Zealand audience and funding bodies, and thinking global. Moana has had a very successful career taking her unique music around the world, as have Te Vaka. A couple of years later, the Proud compilation testified to the wealth of contemporary pop coming out of South Auckland (and Once Were Warriors filled cinemas). In 1996, ‘How Bizarre’ broke Polynesian pop worldwide. Simon Lynch’s compilation Rare Kiwi Soul from the Eighties (Rajon) goes back a decade to recall the musicianship present in South Auckland funk clubs such as Cleopatra’s (on Morrin Road, Panmure). The most prominent – and original – band to emerge from this scene was Ardijah, for whom Lynch played keyboards before founding D-Faction and other outfits. There is a Cleopatra’s reunion from April 6-8, 2012.

Indoor Outdoor Flow

2012-02-04T11:11:00.001+13:00

Talk about a one-room shack. A New Orleans dwelling, c1959, from Frederic Ramsey Jr’s Been Here and Gone, a lyrical photo journey through the American South (Cassell, 1960).

The book shows “the men and women who have created work songs, spirituals, blues and jazz”, with Ramsey’s lens creating a distancing goldfish bowl as he romanticises “the other” on Catfish Row.

Heading Home

2012-01-24T11:53:00.001+13:00

Actor Peter Bland came back to New Zealand to play the lead role in Came a Hot Friday. But there were other reasons.

by Chris Bourke (NZ Listener, 1985)

The same year Peter Bland returned to New Zealand, the Ronald Hugh Morrieson industry hit its stride. The Scarecrow was on television, all four of Morrieson’s books were back in print, and this week a film of his novel Came a Hot Friday was released around the country, with actor/poet Bland in his first major film role. The film brings together Bland and director Ian Mune 20 years after they first worked together at Wellington’s Downstage.

Bland plays Wes Pennington, a likeable conman who cruises into a small New Zealand town with his accomplice. They plan to make easy money out of the locals, but there are others in the town with grander and nastier schemes under way.

Set in 1949, Came a Hot Friday is a rollicking yarn which – judging by preview screenings – takes its audience back to a simpler age. Adults return to Saturday matinees at their local Deluxe, when they walked home acting out the heroics of Errol Flynn or the antics of the Marx Brothers. They boo the baddies and cheer when the hero arrives – just like their children, who are too busy revelling in its slapstick humour to notice the film lacks space-age special effects, visitors from other galaxies, or hidden messages from the Moral Majority.

The New Zealand portrayed in Came a Hot Friday is similar to the country to which Bland emigrated in the early 1950s. In a way, it was a movie which brought him here the first time as well. Bland was looking in a newspaper for a film to go to when he noticed an advertisement on the film page. “It said, ‘Come to New Zealand’,” recalls Bland. “I thought it was a film and I’d seen all the others.”

Although World War II had ended nearly a decade before, Britain was still feeling the effects. Bland was 18 and both his parents were dead, so he paid his £10 and sailed for New Zealand. “I suppose that was the last period of immigration on that scale,” he says. A lot of people were escaping the post-war hardship in Britain. I mean, they still had ration books in ’54 and they were coming out here to enjoy their Pacific dream.”

As part of the deal – and to repay the cheap fare – the immigrants agreed to work for the Government for two years. So when he arrived in Wellington, Bland was given a job with the Social Security Department – sitting alone in a huge room full of filing cabinets. “But I told the immigration official back in Britain I was interested in ‘working with people’,” says Bland. His departmental supervisor waved an arm at the files. “You’ve got everybody in New Zealand in this room with you.” At least Bland was better off than his ship-board friend who wanted to work in “communications”. “He was given a job in Invercargill digging holes for telephone poles!”

Having told the tale of his first meeting with New Zealand bureaucracy, Bland laughs as loud as his audience. He is a born raconteur, with a droll Yorkshire accent and a mobile face that can play any part.

But it was only after his arrival in New Zealand that Bland began to act and write. “My creative roots are here,” he says. “I placed on a New Zealand hat firmly and swiftly.” Newly married, and exiled to the state housing area of the Hutt Valley, Bland began to write about the “barren deserts of wooden tents”.

By the late ’50s, Bland and his wife Beryl had three children; he had a diploma in social sciences from Victoria University – going to university would have been impossible in Britain – and had started to receive awards for his poetry. Bland quotes from “the Nose” – a study of a bigot on a bus, controversial for its use of a four-letter word – and “Four Poems from Plunket Street”, which, with its social comment and suburban imagery, is reminiscent of James K Baxter’s “Calvary Street”. The comparison is acknowledged. “We were all writing similar things at the time – ‘Barney Flanagan’ and Louis Johnson.”

With Baxter and Johnson, Bland edited the literary magazine Numbers in the early ’60s. A war of words began between the Auckland and Wellington literary circles. “We had different approaches to the way we felt New Zealand writing should develop,” says Bland. Auckland went in for “flag-waving, writing which proclaimed its New Zealand character with large gestures. While Wellington thought the writing should be localised and the greater view of New Zealand would come naturally.”

For 18 months Bland was a journalist on the Listener – “Everyone new Bland started his week’s stories on Thursday, and the rest of the week there’d be a sonnet in progress on the typewriter,” he grins. Then in 1964 he left for the world of the theatre.

With Tim Eliot, Martyn Sanderson and Harry Seresin, Bland co-founded Downstage. Once again, there were opportunities in New Zealand his background would have prevented in Britain (he had left before the “kitchen sink” school of drama emerged). Bland began writing for the theatre – for him it was a stimulating period, when the old rules were abandoned: “Suddenly there were open stages, open poetry ... I saw the production of Jim Baxter’s Wide Open Cage at Unity and I found it very exciting. It was the first time I had seen New Zealanders talking their own language on stage.”

Bland would occasionally go on stage to fill out the cast, “found I had an appetite for it and gradually ended up playing a lot of leading roles”. Among them was Claudius in Hamlet. In this production, the Downstage rats stole the show. Poison had been laid, and the rats kept coming out on stage to die. “They’d wander out on centre stage and turn around and around. One had a death scene of five minutes! The audience would immediately take their eyes off the actors, push their dinner plates to one side, and watch the rats.”

Trying to support a family on the income of a professional actor was proving impossible – Bland tells of raiding apple trees for dinner – so he applied to the Arts Council for a grant to spend a year full-time at Downstage, “which in those years was a fairly revolutionary thing”. Once again, Bland encountered the absurd thinking of the bureaucrat. “We couldn’t get a grant to stay alive here, but they said, “Now if you apply to go overseas, you might succeed.’”

In 1968 Bland returned to England with his wife and children. Trying to make a living as an actor mean his writing went on “hold” but, unusually for British actors, he was rarely out of work. He was not a star, but a “jobbing actor”. “I was one of the people producers would think of first after they had cast the lead roles.” Over the next 15 yeras Bland played in many West End plays and television shows, in dramatic and comic parts.

Bland was offered the part in Came a Hot Friday by Mune; 20 years ago, Mune was offered his first theatre job by Bland, when he was at Downstage. Bland’s West End comedy experience was very useful in the film – many of his scenes are improvised, and were shot in only one take.

Bland is pleased the film emphasises the sense of life in the novelist. “It picks out the life-loving qualities rather than the black side of Morrieson.” Why was Morrieson ignored when his books were first published in the early 1960s? “He threw people – they didn’t know how to react. He was a colloquial writer like Dickens, and totally uninhibited about literary expectations. The literary world didn’t know how to handle Morrieson, though he had some champions, like Monte Holcroft, Louis Johnson and Maurice Shadbolt.” Meanwhile, others were still waiting for the “great New Zealand novel”, “which was expected to be an intellectual thing, using the mandarin language of a Janet Frame or Allen Curnow.”

Bland agrees the New Zealand of the 1980s seems more aware of itself. “Poeple don’t apologise for it so much; they are much more conscious of the benefits of the place. And there’s been that whole switch away from dependence on Mother England to a gradual awareness of New Zealand’s place in the Pacific.” He says it is noticeable in recent literature, especially in plays. “People like Greg McGee and Dean Parker are writing plays now which are really using the place. They’re not pretending to be new Zealand plays – they are not self-consciously New Zealand plays like early Bruce Mason was or even Jim Baxter was – they actually are, and not because somebody is waving a big banner saying ‘New Zealand play’. This is absolutely great, but my one qualification is one does see the ghost of a new isolationism appearing.”

Bland is now back in this country to live, and says he should have returned years ago. “I hung on too long.” In 1982 he was filming commercials in Australia and came here for a month’s holiday. “It was almost a visionary thing for me,” he says. “Emotionally it was tremendous coming back, because all the old feelings returned. The place itself – the elemental qualities, the smell of fennel, the lights and the hills – all those things which I’d given up by going to England. Suddenly they started to mean a hell of a lot to me and then when I came back to do the movie, that reinforced the feeling, so I just had to make the move.”

Perhaps the sense of homelessness spotted by reviewers of his poetry will now be resolved. Bland and his wife have settled in an elegant Herne Bay villa 200m from Auckland’s Waitemata Harbour. Their three children, now grown up, also decided to return.

“How am I going to make a living? That’s a thought ... I earn my living as an actor and I’ll have to just keep on working as an actor. It buys me time for my writing.” Bland is editing a selection of his poems for publication, having just completed shooting a television series in Auckland, called Heart of the High Country.

“It’s lovely in the mornings here – I open up the french doors and the sun comes straight in. I’ve got a lemon tree and the tallest ponga in captivity.”

Outside, there is a howling gale and torrential rain. The photographer [William West] wants a portrait on the Herne Bay jetty. A coincidence makes it worth it. “Did you know the Listener has just accepted a poem of mine about this very bay?” [“Home Bay ...”]

The rain is now horizontal. Standing in the window in his overcoat, Bland hesitates. “You’ve probably got enough photos haven’t you? Yerr.” But, we protest, the choppy seas, the mist, the poem, the drama ...”

Bland decisively puts down his mug of tea. “Okay,” he says, “Let’s do it.”

First published as “Mr Mobile” in the NZ Listener, 24 August 1985. Peter Bland’s 2004 memoir is Sorry, I’m a Stranger Here Myself; Came a Hot Friday was recently released on DVD.

Parties we missed

2012-01-19T15:50:00.001+13:00

After this vicarious London pleasure comes, from the wonderful Voices of East Anglia site, “There’s a party down Wolseley Road.”

Was Slade on the Garrard turntable?

You can tuna fish, but …

2012-01-18T09:36:00.001+13:00

In a radio series on alternative country in the late 1990s, I enjoyed bending the definition outside of the Jayhawks/Uncle Tupelo/Wilco party line, in which miserabilists genuflect to Uncle Neil without the melodies or edge. Among the items I used to illustrate a point – probably that there had always been alt country, or the connections to Gram Parsons - were the Rolling Stones’ ‘Country Honk’ and the Flatt and Scruggs theme to Beverly Hillbillies. Shortly afterwards, reviewing a record I foolishly said, “and that’s about as likely as a bluegrass revival.” Virtually the next month, along came O Brother Where Art Thou, and it was all on.

Banjo players get a bad rap. There are many websites devoted to banjo jokes, and some bluegrass/banjo sites even include them among the transcriptions and flat-picking tips (“Why are banjo jokes so simple? So that bass players can understand them.”) This week on the New Yorker blog the comedian – and part-time musician – Steve Martin has written a warm-hearted, musical tribute to the bluegrass banjo legend Earl Scruggs. He begins with hyperbole:

Some nights he had the stars of North Carolina shooting from his fingertips. Before him, no one had ever played the banjo like he did. After him, everyone played the banjo like he did, or at least tried.

But Martin then describes how Scruggs – as a 10-year-old – discovered a method of picking using the third finger, creating a seamless, staccato roll that made the banjo a virtuosic instrument, while never losing the song (okay, occasionally losing the song).

The banjo lends itself to showing off: it’s often played fast and thrillingly, fingers flying up and down the neck, the right hand connecting to the left with seemingly impossible accuracy. But Earl always remembered his mother’s advice when he was a boy: “Play something that has a tune to it.” His first and last priority was to make music, which keeps his sound melodic and accessible.

Martin also mentions Scruggs’s shabby treatment by the egomaniacal bluegrass “father”, Bill Monroe, and his commitment to civil rights that led him to break up the partnership with Lester Flatt and feel at ease with the late 1960s “counter culture”. Scruggs, who is still playing aged 88, can be seen playing ‘Foggy Mountain Breakdown’ with Martin and others here, but this clip shows him playing a Dylan song with the Byrds at the time of their Sweetheart of the Rodeo album.

Listless Summer

2012-01-13T11:59:00.001+13:00

Early in this summer which has never quite arrived, Trade Me featured a listing for the soundtrack of Children of the Sun. This cult surfing doco is New Zealand’s equivalent of Bruce Brown’s classic 1966 film Endless Summer.

The soundtrack EP – by Hamilton’s Music Convention - is regarded as a New Zealand psychedelic classic, featuring a sitar and heavily phased guitar from Rob O’Donnell. The opening track ‘Belly Board Beat’ has a stonking drum solo from Sean Kelly. It can be heard here, or on Grant Gillander’s second New Zealand psychedelia compilation, A Day In My Mind's Mind, Vol 2 (EMI).

On Trade Me, the Children of the Sun EP – water stained of course – called for opening bids from about NZ$300. But the entire film (and soundtrack) can be experienced on NZ On Screen here. It was shot by Andrew McAlpine over three years, on beaches all around New Zealand and Australia, and released in 1968. The editor was Kelvin Peach, son of the legendary Tanza sound engineer Noel Peach. The essential local surfing text is Luke Williamson’s utopian Gone Surfing: the Golden Years of Surfing in New Zealand, 1950-1960 (Penguin, 2000).

Gigantism

2011-10-26T12:49:00.001+13:00

In 1978, I experienced my first foreign epic, Bertolucci’s 1900 (Novacento). A propagandistic saga about class and coming of age, at a shortened 4.25 hours it was still a luxurious, grand folly. De Niro and Depardieu as childhood friends then competitors; the gorgeous Dominique Sanda; Burt Lancaster as a family patriarch; Donald Sutherland playing a Fascist as “only a very dedicated liberal” could: “hyperbolic … grotesque … curling of lips, baring of jagged teeth, and flashing of demented eyes …”

Next day, I found a copy of the New Yorker at the local library with “Hail, Folly!”, a review that praised Bertolucci’s “crazed utopian romanticism” while still being appalled by his vision, its flaws and the occasional horrific scene (one featuring Sutherland and a cat, hence that line above). The review was equally epic, flamboyant and unforgettable. The final lines were: “… a grand visionary folly. Next to it, all the other new movies are like something you hold up at the end of a toothpick.”

The critic was Pauline Kael, the issue was 31 October 1977, but the review is collected in her 70s anthology When the Lights Go Down. A new Kael collection and the first biography are about to be published, and the New Yorker has marked the occasion with an essay by Nathan Heller. The magazine’s astute sub-editor of its film reviews Richard Brody also blogs about Kael’s foibles, includes links to other tributes, and directs the reader to her collection of capsule reviews 5001 Nights at the Movies for the nearest she ever got to declaring her canon. When Kael died 10 years ago, Brody provided links to other tributes, at Salon and The Cooler; on her 80th birthday in 1999 Salon published “A Gift for Effrontery”, a profile of Kael, and they have just published a slideshow of their selections of great film books.

Without visiting the library though, we can spend half an hour in the company of the woman herself:

On the Ball

2011-10-09T14:39:00.001+13:00

Cannes without cant

2011-10-06T13:02:00.001+13:00

It was probably in the dying days of one-channel NZBC-TV that I saw Lost in the Garden of the World, so it was unavoidable. But the 1975 documentary was unforgettable, because it was about New Zealand and the world, culture and identity. Most importantly it wasn’t about sport, the only other occasions New Zealand seemed to feature internationally (though the broadcast of ‘God Defend New Zealand’ – mistakenly performed as our national anthem at the 1972 Munich Olympics – was also a cultural watershed).

Lost in Garden of the World follows a small New Zealand film crew as it makes a DIY documentary about the Cannes film festival. Tony Williams, who made many legendary advertisements (eg, the Crunchie ad, and Dear John for BASF tape), is the director. But the star is the frontman and scriptwriter Michael Heath, who swans about like a hippie Bruce Mason, waxing lyrically about the relationship New Zealand writers and artists have with the Northern Hemisphere, three-quarters of the way through the 20th century.

There were other stars in the film, the people they came across as they spontaneously and cheekily asked for interviews. Filmmakers I’d never heard of until the night of that broadcast, late on Friday as the August school holidays began: a small, hyperactive, bearded Italian-New Yorker who’d just directed Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore (Martin Scorsese); a tall, young man who was about to release a film about a shark (Steven Spielberg); an apparently important German called Werner (seen here with Michael Heath on the right). Dustin Hoffman was charmed by the film crew’s chutzpah and offered to take messages for them on the phone at his outdoor cafe table.

About 15 years ago I went to the NZ Film Archive to see why the film had knocked me out so much at the age of 15. It turned out to be much more about “overseas” than New Zealand, and much more pretentious. But it was still an inspiring romp.

Lost in the Garden of the World can now be viewed in its entirety at the NZ On Screen site, which goes from strength to strength. They describe it as being about “Cannes is the town in France where Bergman meets bikinis, and the art of filmmaking meets the art of the deal.”

A Less than Lovely War

2011-09-02T10:44:00.001+12:00

Even in the playgrounds of Lower Hutt, Peter Watkins’s 1965 docudrama The War Game was discussed with alarm. And we had only heard the terrifying trailer. The film portrays Britain before, during and after a nuclear attack. Originally made by Watkins for BBC, the governors of the Beeb got the heebie-geebies. They said it was unsuitable for a mass audience and banned it from broadcast. After an outcry, it was released to cinemas.

Variety describes The War Game as “grim, gruesome, horrific and realistic … the most telling part is the aftermath of the bomb – the severely burned are killed off and their bodies burned, and looters face the firing squad.”

Even though there was no hope of seeing it mid-60s New Zealand, just knowing about it almost kept me awake. Now it can be viewed via the always-worthwhile site The Documentarian.

Mountains crumble to the sea

2011-08-23T22:17:00.001+12:00

Jerry Leiber, 1933-2011

Life during Wartime

2011-08-05T13:10:00.001+12:00

The Guardian has just published a piece in which musicians describe their "worst gig ever". Among them are these items from Tina Weymouth of Talking Heads,and Suzi Quatro. Weymouth describes the Sweetwaters festival of January 1984, and Quatro a New Zealand gig when she was peaking in 1975. Monitor: KW.

Tina Weymouth

The absolute worst gig ever was the last Talking Heads show. We were headlining this tour in Australia and New Zealand. Opening for us were bands like Simple Minds, INXS, Eurythmics, B52's, Pretenders … It was a phenomenal lineup, and we were the headliners, and it was a fantastic opportunity. But we couldn't go on stage because David Byrne, without telling anyone, had let on a couple of crazy girls – who I suppose had their hearts in the right place – who were trying to promote this freedom for Maori people thing, but it was the wrong place and the wrong time. People were booing and throwing things at them, and that was difficult enough. Anyway, we finally got on stage and we were five songs into the show when David Byrne ran off and refused to come back on. He said: "I'm not going to play for a bunch of people dancing in the mud." Go figure. David had a lot of temper tantrums when he got to be a big star. He couldn't stop it; fame and the whole diva thing was just overwhelming for him.

There was meant to be a great big party afterwards and David didn't even show up. It was just this really sad, dismal affair where people got quietly drunk in the corner. The tour ended not with a bang but a whimper. It was awful that everything we'd been working towards ended like that.

Suzie Quatro

We'd been in America with Alice Cooper as special guests on his Welcome to My Nightmare tour, that was 80 shows, then we went to Scandinavia, then we flew to Japan for some shows, then to Australia for a month, then we went to New Zealand – we were on the road for about six months non-stop. You're talking tired. New Zealand was the last port of call and we were flying through the night when I noticed a little spot on my leg – I thought I'd got bitten. Then I woke up and the spot was travelling up my leg in a line: it was blood-poisoning. This was the day of the gig. The doctor had to cut me, but I still went onstage with the poison pouring out, in all my leathers! It's called being a pro. The show must go on and all that. But this was the only time I ever thought I shouldn't have gone on. It was really painful. I was on painkillers and the dressing had to keep being changed.

Lost Soul

2011-07-24T12:51:00.001+12:00

In early 2004 John Russell sent me the debut album of an unknown young talent. She looked certain to have a big future. This from Real Groove, April 2004.

There are no flies on Frank, the debut album by 20-year-old British diva Amy Winehouse (Island). Quite simply, it’s a knockout. It lifts the bar for her precocious compatriot Joss Stone and, with its risk-taking, self-assuredness and contemporary relevance, shows exactly what was missing from Norah Jones’ timid, soporific follow-up. Born in North London in the year Frankie went to Hollywood, Winehouse seems to have been breast-fed Sarah Vaughan and Anita O’Day. Add in a nurturing of urban grit, and her voice sounds like Erykah Badu or Macy Gray after years of paying dues in jazz clubs. With slinky contemporary beats behind her songs – almost all are sassy originals – this is where hip-hop meets swing and bossa nova, where torch is spelt with an E for erotic. The lyrics are Cole Porter having Sex in the City, particularly ‘F**k Me Pumps’ (about slappers on the pull), and the first single ‘Stronger Than Me’ (about the inadequacies of a “sensitive” older lover who takes “longer than frozen turkey”). She whoops, purrs and snaps effortlessly, quotes ‘Lullaby in Birdland’ almost without thinking (this most perfect of melodies isn’t credited), hints at the classic ‘Moody’s Mood’ in one song then tackles the real thing later on. Like Lauryn Hill’s Miseducation this is an almost perfect mix of soul-jazz through a filter of hip-hop. The depths of Frank unfold like layers of a mystery parcel, and Winehouse’s journey to maturity is going to be a ride worth catching.

Behind the Stage Door

2011-07-22T22:57:00.001+12:00

New Zealand has lost so much in the way of visual and aural archives. But I’m convinced that every sub-culture has an aspirant photographer and film-maker – in love with the possibilities – who captures the action. Sometimes the results never see the light of day. Occasionally they emerge from under a bed, decades later, to be the backbone of a great documentary.

The legendary Chants R&B from Christchurch luckily had an art student friend with a movie camera. Now we can all witness the scene at Christchurch’s Stage Door in the mid-1960s. Rumble & Bang is at a film festival near you soon. It was directed by Jeff Smith, former member of the Newmatics, and Simon Ogston.

My idea of Hell

2011-07-22T09:17:00.001+12:00

Monitor: The Word

F-Stop Fitzgerald

2011-07-15T08:25:00.001+12:00

In the 1950s a Cleveland radio DJ called Tommy Edwards – not the singer of ‘It’s All In the Game’ – took colour photographs of stars and aspirant stars who came to his station or gigs he promoted. At a time when there was no colour TV and very little colour printing in pop mags, they were of such interest that he used to have slide shows of his snaps between sets.

The photographs have been collected in a book, 1950s Radio in Color. Many of them can be viewed at the Collector’s Weekly site, in a piece headlined “When Rock Lost its Innocence”. Though I don’t think there’s too much innocent about this shot of Elvis, seen here before he started dying his hair black, with Bill Haley, or the teen temptress Arlene Fontana (right).

More lost photos can be found here, of the Rolling Stones’ portrait sessions for Sticky Fingers, and here, of the Beatles’ US tours in 1965-66.

Monitor: Word

It’s Madison time

2011-06-28T13:38:00.001+12:00

When I say hit it, I want you to go two up and two back, with a big strong turn – and back to the Madison.

Hit it!

One of the biggest hits by the suave jazz-blues pianist Ray Bryant has had many revivals. ‘The Madison Time’ – an instructional dance tune – was already two years old when the Ray Bryant Combo recorded it in 1959, but his group’s cool, swinging version of it has proved irresistible.

In 1988 John Waters used it in his original film version of Hairspray, and since then Quentin Tarantino has referenced it in Pulp Fiction, and it is featured in a scene in The Go-Getter, a 2007 vehicle for Zooey Deschanel. Both scenes were tributes to yet another film, Jean-Luc Godard’s 1964 Bande a Part (Band of Outsiders). The famous dancing scene starring Anna Karina is stylish, although her technique is wooden, and the dance is not actually the Madison.

Godard later said of the Pulp Fiction tribute that he would have preferred Tarantino had just given him some money. We can’t blame Tarantino on the Madison’s influence on the robotic dance craze of the early 1990s, line dancing. ‘Achy Breaky Heart’ was as dumb as the movements it accompanied, but it has to be said the Madison was its forebear.

Bryant, who died earlier this month aged 79, had a piano style perfect for the cool jazz era of the late 1950s. As this Independent obituary notes, he wasn’t swayed by the frenetic bebop pianists of the period, instead he kept his roots in gospel and blues; among his mentors was the elegant Teddy Wilson. Here is the Ray Bryant Combo performing an instrumental version of ‘Madison Time’ in 1960. The lyrics – or rather, instructions – are here. Hit it!

Collision on State Highway 1

2011-06-27T13:51:00.001+12:00

Originally from SH1 forestry town Tokoroa, funk band Collision emigrated to Australia in 1976 and got a gig at Les Girls in Sydney's King's Cross district. In 1978 they recorded their only album - Collision - for the Infinity label in Sydney. The producer/engineer was Richard Batchens, house producer for Festival Records. Overlooking the production was Dalvanius Prime of 'Poi E' fame. Nick Bollinger's 100 Essential New Zealand Albums (Awa Press, 2009) revived interest in the album; he reports that Lionel Richie encouraged the group to move to New York, but that was a step too far.

Collision were Harry Morgan (vocals, sax), Ali Morgan (vocals, guitar), Charley Hikuroa (vocals, bass), Colin Henry (vocals, drums), Philip Whitcher (all keyboards) and Mike Booth (vocals, trumpet). These are the first three tracks of side one:

1. You Can Dance (A. Morgan)

2 You Give Me Love (Muggleton-Nobel)

3. Love Finds Its Own Way (Jim Weatherley)

Minting new coin

2011-06-24T10:12:00.001+12:00

Did Philip Larkin ever worry about key performance indicators? In Britain, there are 4500 public libraries, and government budget cuts are likely to close 500 of them. In the Observer Magazine of 1 May 2011 (not online), Ian Stringer, a retired librarian in Barnsley, said:

“The council once asked us for an assessment of outcomes, not output. Output was how many books we’d stamped out, and outcome was something that had actually resulted from someone borrowing a book. So say someone took out a book on mending cars and then drove the car back, that’s an outcome; or made a batch of scones from a recipe book they had borrowed.

“It lasted until one of the librarians told the council they’d had someone in borrowing a book on suicide, but that they’d never brought it back. The council stopped asking after that.”

The headline above comes from Larkin:

Library Ode

New eyes each year
Find old books here,
And new books,too,
Old eyes renew;
So youth and age
Like ink and page
In this house join,
Minting new coin.

Philip Larkin

Jokerman

2011-05-21T11:17:00.001+12:00

From the back pages, for the 70th birthday this week: a 1991 reconsideration after the often desultory 1980s. (from Rip It Up)

BOB DYLAN: The Bootleg Series, Vol 1-3 (Rare and Unreleased) (Columbia)

IT HAS often been said that Bob Dylan is a man of many masks. After this year’s bizarre Grammy performance, many must have thought, who was that masked man? In the 80s, Dylan devotees became Dylan apologists - for his lazy recordings, his perfunctory performances, his lousy voice and, of course, his flirtation with Christianity. New generations, confronted with this legend who didn't have the grace to die dramatically, or at least fade away, wondered what all the fuss was about. The Bootleg Series answers all their questions. It strips away the masks and re-establishes his credibility.

In the arts of the 20th century there are only a few people whose stature compares with Bob Dylan. I can think of only four: James Brown, Miles Davis, Picasso and Stravinsky. All astounded their peers with their precocious talent and their early mastery of classic forms. All were provocative, caused riots even. All never stood still, kept changing their styles throughout lengthy careers and yet were always at the cutting edge of whatever form they chose. And none of them were wunderkind: all fulfilled their early promise.

On The Bootleg Series, over 50 unreleased tracks, Bob Dylan stands naked. The recordings range from an early session in a New York hotel room to a slick Oh Mercy out-take. They follow all the stylistic shifts in his career, and collect many of the rarities Dylanologists have been reverently swapping for decades. Coffee bar folk nights; publishing demos; the unreleased live album from ’64; sessions with the Band, the Rolling Thunder Revue; George Harrison (pictured below, at Woodstock, 1968); the Muscle Shoals crew; rehearsals, out-takes and leftovers from all the albums. It gives box-set archaeology a good name, not only because it re-assesses Dylan's career but because it is richly rewarding listening for its own sake.

Millions of words have been written about Dylan's way with words. And certainly, he deserved the adulation. Before he was anywhere near 25 he'd coined dozens of phrases that had entered the colloquial vocabulary. But there are so many unacknowledged facets to Dylan's talent. It's easy to forget just how funny he can be, in the early talking blues and shaggy dog stories, the apocalyptic nightmares and even the harrowing sagas from Blood on the Tracks or the chilling Old Testament scenarios. His comic liming is pure Charlie Chaplin by way of Woody Guthrie. Even in a song like the tortured ‘Idiot Wind’: “They say I shot a man named Gray, look his wife to It-ill-ay / She inherited a million bucks, and when she died it came to me / I can’t help it ... if I'm luck-y”.

Take a verse out of any of the classic songs and it encapsulates all his talents. Besides his humour, there's his melodic sense: as hook-filled as Lennon-McCartney's but more creative with it. Add to that the passion and personality of his singing, which often recalls Hank Williams or Robert Johnson, plus his idiosyncratic use of metre and phrasing - and you've got a ground-breaking artist to stand beside Charlie Parker. Many of his songs are capable of becoming standards for all to interpret, though some work for Dylan alone.

Dylan has often been criticised for his casualness in the studio, but that's a mixture of his perverse need for unpredictability and his old folkie attitude that every performance is a fresh statement. This interpretation is the core of Paul Williams’s analysis of Dylan's early work, Performing Artist (Underwood Miller, 1991), an entertaining rave full of coherent insights.

But throwing caution to the wind is what rock’n’roll has always been about. Dylan's carefree attitude to recording has given us many of rock's most incendiary moments. He heard the Animals obliterate his version of "Rising Sun", then hired the best musicians he could, told them to turn it up - and let it rip. The resulting noise brought a sardonic literacy to rock that made Chuck Berry and Smokey Robinson's adept penmanship look effete. It was a dandy's blues stomped out with Cuban heels; Ferlinghetti through a Fender Twin Reverb on 10.

The last time I got excited listening to Dylan, he was still an agnostic. But it wasn't turning Christian that put me off – no one had been born again like Dylan since St Paul, no glazed eyes and beatific grin for this iconoclast – although the hectoring damnation had a muddled concept of evil. Besides, I grew up on Mahalia, and Dylan had always used the Bible when it suited. Could anyone else have kick-started a song, “God said to Abraham, kill me your son / Abe said man, you must be putting me on / God said no, Abe said what? Where you want this killing done? / God said out on Highway... 61!”

No, it was the voice itself that lost me: many of the songs still have the edge. But his unique instrument, that inimitable, malleable whine had become a ragged wreck, ravaged after years of abuse. Untrained singing takes its toll, combined with smoking, alcohol, whatever else plus the Never-ending Tour.

Of the three discs, it’s the middle period that I keep going back to, from the early electric years, when you can hear Dylan reinventing rock’n’roll on the spot, through to the blistering self-exposure of Blood on the Tracks. But there's something in this set from every period to stimulate a reappraisal, be it for unreconstructed Guthrie-ites or latter day Infidels. So here's a document for those one enthralled by Dylan who later became bored. Maybe a bit much for the uninitiated – for them, any of the dozen seminal albums, or the Biograph set, would be preferable – but not only for closet Dylanologists either. After all, it’s brought it all back home for this doubting thomas.

Fabulous Freak Brothers

2011-05-05T22:19:00.001+12:00

Little Richard on his former employee:

Also at The Documentarian: a complete 85 minute copy of The London Rock’n’Roll Show, showing a 1972 revival gig starring Little Richard, Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis et al. A revelation when I saw it in Wellington circa 1974, it was also pivotal in Rip It Up magazine getting its name.

Little Richard’s First Rule of Rock’n’Roll

2011-04-07T19:45:00.001+12:00

“You got what you wanted, but you lost what you had.”

1957: ‘ “Lu-CILLE! You won't do your sister's will!” came blaring through the house like a pack of rabid dogs. It was as if a Martian had landed.’

1987: John Waters finally meets Little Richard. It doesn't go well, but it’s entertaining. “What about the future?” I lamely ask, hoping for a few more minutes. “I was just offered a role with Gary Coleman. They wanted me to be his father. And they wanted me to weigh 300lb.”

Inside the cordon: 2

2011-04-07T12:02:00.001+12:00

At least one aspect of Christchurch’s cultural history is safe: pictorial evidence of its thriving jazz scene from the 1920s to the present day. About 18 months ago I was in the central city on photo research and wandered into the great Scorpio bookshop on Hereford St (soon to re-open in Riccarton) and there was a gem of book, just published. A Passion for Jazz is a visual history of “the Christchurch scene then and now”. That means the jazz scene, and it’s the kind of book I hope that some Cantabrian will produce about the city’s rock’n’roll scene, from Max Merritt to, ah, Zed.

The wonderful photos show big bands led by the likes of Brian Marston and Martin Winiata, small combos, glamorous chanteuse, goateed 1950s hipsters, guitar heroes such as the Kahi brothers, stars such as Doug Caldwell, Harry Voice, and Stu Buchanan, satirist Rod Derrett when he was still a jazz guitarist, and more recent stalwarts such as Paul Dyne, Neill Pickard and Malcolm McNeill. They are accompanied by short biographical pieces, and photos that also show the musicians who are still living in their current environs. Many of them still playing.

A Passion for Jazz was put together by Jo Jules, under the auspices of Christchurch Polytechnic’s School of Performing Arts, which Pickard was instrumental in founding in 1991. (There’s a great shot of him playing guitar in 1963 – wearing fetching swimming trunks – with the Undergrads at Caroline Bay, Timaru.) The School’s address is PO Box 540, Christchurch.

There are many photos that I would love to have featured in Blue Smoke, but I wanted to avoid double-ups. Among them is this charming cover portrait of, from left, Nick Nicolson, Doug Caldwell, Harry Voice and George Campbell (the classy tuxes are for their role as Gale Garnett’s backing band, 1961). One we both feature is the shot of Martin Winiata’s 3YA big band in the late 1940s (p168 in Blue Smoke). A Passion for Jazz got every name, no easy task. They are, from left: Wally Ransom, Bill Bailey, Lloyd Hunter, Ron McKay, Lou Warren, Bernard Winfield, Barry Warren, Cliff Inns, Bob Bradford, Ross Floyd, Brian Marston, Martin Winiata, vocalist Coral Cummins and a 3YA announcer.

Inside the cordon: 1

2011-03-23T19:49:00.001+13:00

The 1970s are often sneered at as a dire period for New Zealand music, when covers bands played beer barns and dodgy nightclubs. Yes, that was the world that dominated live, local music – but many great musicians served their apprenticeships in those scenes.

If Chants R&B are now heralded as the great Christchurch 1960s beat band after Max and Ray left town with their Fenders, who took over in the 1970s?

For evidence we can turn to a wonderful photo archive that has just been put up on the web. Kevin Hill was a music fan and tireless photographer who covered the band scene in Christchurch right through the 1970s and into the 1980s. Among those he captured before they started shaving are Barry Saunders of the Warratahs, Steve Gilpin and Kevin Stanton of Fragments of Time (evolving into Misex), Brent Parlane, Jim Hall, Rob Winch and Sharon O’Neill. Bands included such lost names as Beech, Link, the In Betweens, Shannon, Inspiration and the Newz.

The pictures of Dave Kennedy remind me of the Invercargill scrapbook music history 45 South in Concert that Neil McKelvie put together for the Southland Musicians’ Club in 2006. A few years back I suggested an equivalent was needed for Christchurch.

Have a look at Kevin Hill’s photos and wonder at the high-waisted jeans, the loon flares, the tight T-shirts and all that long, greasy hair. This advertisement is just a teaser to the Aladdin’s cave that is Hill’s photo collection.

Trouble in River City

2011-03-03T13:11:00.001+13:00

There’s a case to be made for Christchurch being the most influential city in New Zealand music. In pop music, the American servicemen who passed through as part of Operation Deep Freeze provided R&B 45s to bands such as Max Merritt and the Meteors (Max is on the left in this picture), and Ray Columbus and the Invaders. In turn they influenced bands throughout the country. Earlier, guitarist Tommy Kahi taught hundreds of pupils, among them Billy Karaitiana (third from left) and Kevin Bayley (Rockinghorse). With his brother Mark, Kahi held court at the North Beach surf club, while beat bands competed for audiences at the Spencer St and Hibernian dances. In jazz, the Bailey-Marston big band hired the city’s best swing musicians, apart from Martin Winiata, whose own big band held down a residency at the Union Rowing Club featuring glamorous singer Coral Cummins (she can be seen here with the 3ZB Brian Marston band, and heard here with Winiata’s Quintette, along with several other Christchurch radio swing bands from the 1950s). Winiata also backed Peter Lewis on the local rockabilly classic ‘Four City Rock’. From the 1950s, musicians such as Doug Caldwell, Harry Voice and Stu Buchanan passed on their skills to countless young musicians. Caldwell backed All Black Pat Vincent on an excellent EP on local label Peak in 1960. Now in his 80s, was still teaching at the Christchurch Polytechnic jazz school the last I heard.

Also to emerge in the beat boom of the 1960s was Diane Jacobs, originally from Waimate, who performed with Phil Garland in Christchurch combos the Saints and the Playboys. She went on to become Dinah Lee; he became New Zealand’s leading folk-song collector and performer. Really, the names from Christchurch are endless: Chants R&B, the Hip Singles, Pop Mechanix, the Dance Exponents, the Gordons, the Androidss, the Jean-Paul Sartre Experience, the Narcs, the Feelers, Jody Lloyd’s Dark Tower … right through to Bic Runga, Anika Moa and Scribe. (Many of these acts were featured on a great double-CD compilation produced in 2005 by the Narcs’ bassist Tony Waine, Christchurch The Music, on EMI.)

Much earlier, and on the other side of the tracks – in classical and contemporary art music – professors such as Vernon Griffith shaped the way music is taught in this country, following a strictly British model. Among those who passed through the portals of the University of Canterbury school of music are Frederick Page and Douglas Lilburn. The latter two went on to found Victoria University’s school of music in Wellington in the late 1940s, emphasising original composition far more than Christchurch.

Still, it was Christchurch where Lilburn got his first significant formal training, while in 1930s Christchurch alongside artists in other disciplines, such as Rita Angus, Leo Bensemann, Allen Curnow and Denis Glover. This review of the award-winning Douglas Lilburn biography by Philip Norman is from the Sunday Star-Times in 2006.

Fanfare for an Uncommon Man

By Chris Bourke

DOUGLAS LILBURN: His Life and Music, by Philip Norman (Canterbury University Press, $55).

Douglas Lilburn was a man alone, and he felt it. His reputation is now secure as the “father of New Zealand composition” but it was a lonely, courageous path he chose. He had no mentors – predecessor Alfred Hill of “Waiata Poi” fame mostly lived in Australia – and when Lilburn won his first prize, for composing a symphonic tone poem, he had never heard an orchestra perform live.

The prizes came quickly, but respect came slowly. In the 1940s, the New Zealand music establishment was unused to having a composer in its midst (“meeting a composer then was like meeting a polar bear in Lambton Quay,” said Richard Campion). Some local orchestral players were reluctant to give premiere performances; when confronted with a hand-written manuscript, one musician asked, “How do we know if it’s any good?”

Eventually, Lilburn would receive every honour this society can offer: the rare Order of New Zealand, an honorary doctorate (though he never completed a music degree), a bronze plaque on his student flat in Christchurch, his Wellington home revitalised as a residence for visiting composers. Before he died in 2001, Lilburn established a trust that has hugely assisted New Zealand’s musical heritage. Now composer and musicologist Philip Norman has returned the gesture. This extraordinary biography ensures that Lilburn’s achievements are properly acknowledged. Scholarly yet compelling, with a rare mix of honesty and affection it portrays the complexities of its subject.

Lilburn was intensely private, almost a hermit in his last two decades. “Biographers,” he wrote, “are maggots on the meat of reputation.” Yet he ensured his legacy was preserved for posterity, keeping a diary for years, getting his papers in order, creating an archive. Norman, whose PhD thesis was on Lilburn’s music, has picked over the bones thoroughly, but with fairness and flair. He has resisted being cowed by his subject, or swamped by his material.

Lilburn’s isolation started early. He was born in 1915, the seventh and last child of a Scots-born farmer with vast holdings near Wanganui. His upbringing was Presbyterian-staunch and lonely, but also idyllic: the 8000-acre farm had four waterfalls and Mt Ruapehu on the horizon. A Quaker primary school gave him a Thoreau-like respect for the environment and the disposition of a gentleman and scholar. Boarding school at the other end of New Zealand – Waitaki Boys High, during the legendary regime of Frank Milner – was “utterly barbarous” but ultimately beneficial. Milner passed on a reverence for language, another teacher brought out his musical talents, and Lilburn credited the experience with giving him survival skills.

Canterbury University College did more than nourish the shortcomings in his musical education; it introduced him to a supportive artistic circle. His friends became giants in New Zealand’s cultural awakening: Rita Angus, Denis Glover, Allen Curnow, Ursula Bethell. Travelling to London he studied with Ralph Vaughan Williams, befriended Robin Hyde, and won more awards. Prodigal Country was an early prizewinner, and he returned home to become a wartime shepherd on a Taihape farm.

He resettled in Christchurch to become a freelance composer and, briefly, a critic and conductor. The book’s major surprise comes from this period. Lilburn, already aware of his homosexuality, had a relationship with Rita Angus, who miscarried their child. Lilburn’s archive contained 400 letters from Angus.

In the late 1940s, as a tutor at the summer music schools in Cambridge, Waikato, Lilburn found his musical isolation was evaporating. He was already an inspiration to a new generation: David Farquhar, Larry Pruden, Dorothea Franchi. An early champion, Frederick Page, recruited him to Victoria University’s fledgling music department, and the institution’s emphasis on composition was in place. “Conditions for a composer in New Zealand were bleak,” Lilburn recalled later, but he had no shortage of offers, or well-meaning advice. Angus scolded him for becoming an academic, thinking it would stifle his art; architect Ernst Plishke advised against taking a job as the National Film Unit’s composer: hack films would kill him.

Instead, Lilburn’s creative path was not dissimilar to Stravinsky’s. He was drawn to experimentation; by his third symphony (1961) he was using the mathematical constructions of the modernists, rather then conventional harmony. Owen Jensen wrote that the angular symphony “may never be popular, but … it represents a new and even more mature Lilburn.” Within a small circle, his music – and success – caused controversy and envy.

Exploration into even more unknown territory followed: the new medium of electro-acoustic music. Lilburn wanted to “exorcise the demon by meeting it on friendly terms.” Twenty years after his famous orchestral collaboration with Curnow, Landfall in Unknown Seas, in 1965 an electronic treatment of Alistair Campbell’s The Return was equally groundbreaking.

Norman captures the contradictions of Lilburn: he was given many accolades, but felt undervalued. He was a visionary intellectual, generous and erudite, but could be touchy and acerbic. He had many devoted and supportive friends, but was not beyond a feud (his professional relationship with the less-adventurous composer Edwin Carr is “worthy of a roman à clef,” says Norman).

Lilburn abandoned composition after his retirement, and spent 20 years putting his papers in order. Deafness and alcoholism hastened his natural tendency to solitude, but anonymously he was a champion and benefactor of young composers and many causes.

One of the great New Zealand lives has now been rewarded with a great biography. Norman’s dedicated scholarship is balanced by an easy narrative style, and the picture research is simply astonishing (the pedestrian use of an Angus watercolour portrait for the cover doesn’t reflect the treasure inside). Lilburn’s impact on New Zealand culture went beyond music; this biography shows that in all the arts, he was a crucial figure in a young country finding its own voice.