The Jangling Man: The Martin Newell Story (2022) Movie Script
Hey, where come back to the line?
The last time alternative Essexman Martin Yule appeared on the line,
he was feeling poetically inspired by Brighton.
But in his latest musings, he's more inclined towards the rural delights
that lie on Brighton's doorstep.
There are times when the Hurley-Berlie of Brighton
can prove to be too much even for the best of us.
Those alternative types, who complain so vehemently about the
stridancy of so-called straight society, are only too happy to
carpet bomb you with their own advertising.
In every cafe and pub pounding music raw as at you while posters
were forthcoming events scream at your eyes, window displays,
visually mug you, and if you're feeling hung over delicate or
dare I say poetic, there is an alternative to staying in bed or
coseting yourself in a sensory deprivation tank, should you be
lucky enough to have access to such a thing.
After the sensory overload of Brighton, the downs have an almost
narcotic quality, the undulations and sheer vastness conspire to
give you the feeling you've been dropped into an older time
somehow.
One of the best things about Martin is the way he works.
If something needs to be done, he gets on and does it.
And there's no sort of thing I'll do it tomorrow.
You know, he's just always been a bit sniffy about me,
didn't he? So I just don't bother with him, you know.
I don't have any infamous for it, but remember saying something.
Should we send some review copies out and me saying, I'm not
fucking sending review copies out to people who can't even write
it as well as me.
I'm fucking playing an instrument.
And I've just said that, you know.
Naturally, you may imagine how popular it would make one how receptive
people would be towards me for thinking like that.
But they haven't fucking earned it and they should see their fucking
sailors.
And if they want to come up from London and see me about it in S6,
we can have a socially philosophical discussion, can't we?
I don't care.
I don't care.
I don't care.
I've got my beard and cyborg here.
I don't care if he comes out here.
Music
This was a private hedge which was damaged by an underground gas leak
sometime in the 60s or 70s when the maths professor Chris Winston had it.
And gradually I cut it into the shape when I originally cut it.
People say, what do you got there? A hamster or something?
Because it did look like a hamster.
But gradually it became a cat.
Hi, how are you?
Well, they look at the most unlikely of gardeners.
But that's how Martin Newell actually earns his living at a Regency house in
Wivenhoe.
He brought back a rabbit the other day.
I saw him carrying a rabbit back in his mouth.
The cat, the black one, was a rock poet.
And he's not sweeping gardening tips.
He writes song.
I'm an inspiration.
Strikes.
Pen is another little masterpiece.
My ambitions strange as it may seem.
Really, at the moment I just like a permanent cottage with roses around the door that I can't
be thrown out of.
Ever.
You know, I'd like some stable places I teeter uncertainly towards my forties.
And you know, just live a relatively quiet life and occasionally go for a pint and meet famous people
and have some money.
You know, it's kind of guy I am.
I am just a juggling man.
I am just a juggling man.
I am just a juggling man.
I...
You know, the making of the film, I don't have to say this, some seriousity, as the Americans would say.
That it's taken a juggling long time.
I mean filming does take a lot of albums take a long time and this film started in February
2018 and where we're going I was told by its director James
We're only got we're gonna be really quick cheap and cheerful shoot 20 it's gonna be a 20 minute film. We want to see if you
2 and a half years later
One of my daughters has grown up gone to university started shaving and I've started collecting a pension and
And the film still isn't finished in fact. This is what we're doing now isn't it finished but wait, why does it take so long and
And you've worked your way through my entire address book, which is actually quite a lot of famous people
This may sound odd. I may sound crackers, but Marty Newell is he's the kind of guy that quite a lot of us would like to be if we were
Brave or full-hardy enough to risk everything by just following one goal following our love following our love in art and music and you know
Living a life that you really wanted to live but we just went too concerned about
Where's the next paycheck coming from or something for a man to be able to sort of go through life?
I don't know I mean he's had he said obviously a lot of disappointments. There's been a lot you know heartache along the way
But you know, I mean if I was a young if I was a young man, you know, my father said what do you want to be when you grow up?
Either Jeffery Bernard or Martin Newell that'll do
But other than the neighbors complain and I do hear bits about him and that
You know you seem to have influenced loads of people who come after him
For a lot of it. I mean a lot of people obviously listen to it through the progression
But for people like me or other young people to like just have this well opened up
It's like here drink like drink you can drink for days
Like the water won't stop and the music is incredible
Martin can get more great lines into one song than most people can come up with in a lifetime
I mean picked at random the world strikes won you've got in there
Missy chimney smoking in the rain and kids drag slowly by the gravity of school
Cats out sleeping in the ten-watt song
Wonderful
Harry the writer is giving his girlfriend a good bike kiss with a train
And give strikes slowly by the gravity
Because I think like he does belong in that
Really in that class of of great 80s English songwriters, you know with an Andy Partridge with
You know Morrissey and Mar with all those all those people
He's not self-consciously retro either which is something I have to put my hand up the bin a little bit
He actually just is lucky breathed in and it comes out
Well the essence of a song got to have good tune and a good melody and he knows that both of those things
He's got a great ear for a melody and he has that unique songwriters way of
marrying a lyric to a melody to a tune so that it works and what comes from the same place
There's no
There'll be else interfering with it. It's that
Tunnel vision thought
Express through a tune and that's the that's the magical gift
That so few people have you come into music business not because you're seeking
You know normal
Pay check or a normal bingo with normal people and this is the sort of character you wish to meet isn't it? It's like a
Marta new
He's like a kind of cat whiz organic person who just hops around with and her on bicycles and of course when I first met him
He was a gardener, you know
I don't think he'd given up musical together
He's a really old character he is the you know essential English eccentric and
You know he will always be remembered in that way he has an artistic vision for the world
And that that runs through his work and he has to create he has to put it out there
Everything that I'm going to say has been said before about Martin but he's extraordinary
He's very talented. He's a marvelous wordsmith and a very good composer
Um, and you put all that together in an eccentric package and and you have Martin
Excuse me. So do you know Martin you'll
Martin you you mean sir Martin you'll of course I know him we go way back way way way back
Accomplish poet Accomplish musician songwriter sex god
I love the man
We're practically related
Being a fellow musician. I love his music the man's got swagger and attitude
That's what I like about him
If I wasn't married and he didn't have a girlfriend, I'd be banging on his door
That's so that's so good. What else can we say
I did actually I did actually incidentally. Yeah, I did actually
Engineering produce one of his out
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, you're right mate. How you doing?
Maybe say like
Because you say so you've got any funny story about anything you know like
He's a bit of a question like god, but it doesn't go on
I only know the world on you thing that kind of thing
I haven't really I can't really say any stories because they're a bit
The only stories I know he's like
Fucking nightmare ones and like bad ones. I can't you won't get to put them in there
I think Martin be be the first person to say these
I think he calls himself difficult and he can you know can be some people find that they're just too intense and too much to be around
But I don't I've got used to it. I've tried you know 40 years. I've known him all what I've got used to it
And he's worth hanging on because stuff comes out sometimes. It's priceless
This on a freezing cold mid summer day
With a mist come down suddenly is devil's dike
Um, you can see something of the mystery of the downstate you can't actually see the dike at all because this mist has just suddenly come down
And the legend about devil's dike is that the devil was to have plunged his spade into the dams to allow the sea to flow in and drown a thousand Christian churches
Well, the devil ever does come back to have a go at submerging this place. I hope he has better weather for it than I have
In the meantime, I suggest that some of you couch potatoes explore your lovely backyard before he returns with his spade to finish the job
Now where the devil did I put my bike
So what are you gonna up to hey I've been recording
I spend all I spend lots of my time recording and writing when I can writing songs
And I spend a lot of time in correspondence that I'm very busy
I really cannot help the way I feel
And I will build a house
And a place for the kids to grow in
Build a house
I
I think it was in me from a really early age my mum came into the kitchen and once when I was
Very young and family singing singing the boy and cos Diana
You know please day by me really at the top of my voice when I'm pretty about four or something and
um
I remember when I was five or six
Making up little songs in my head
You know and I never told anyone about them because that I put the words together and just thinking
I would never turn anyone this because it's like
People would think there was something wrong with me and they may have been you know
I don't know
But it just didn't feel normal and then when I was seven I hold my mouth open somewhere and found I could actually play tunes on it
But I didn't get a guitar
So I was I think 12 my 12th Christmas after much pestering
I got a guitar and it's it's hanging out there somewhere in the kitchen
It went everywhere with me it had very bad action but because I never had a guitar before I didn't know
There was bad action so I really struggled with it
So as I knew three chords yeah, I didn't think let's learn a fourth one
I thought let's write a song so I'd I attempted to write songs when I was 13
I finally managed it when I was 14 from then I was
Right it. I just thought I want to write songs
Summer holiday the song studies spectacular that's gloriously gay and deliciously young
Well, I liked Cliff Richards
Summer holiday that's great with the shadows. They were big favourites of mine
I thought it would be really heroic to be with a bunch of guys
You know who all had guitars going twangy twang
But when I saw the Beatles now it's interesting George Harrison says that without the shadows
There would be no Beatles but they weren't that much different in age the shadows were just doing it incredibly young
And I saw the Beatles in hard days night and I just thought
Not I want to do that. I think I want to go and live in that
That's what I wanted to do. I just thought life would be just about
Running down fire scopes high speed and sort of kicking and things and doing all this in a field and running around it
I just thought why couldn't you do that? I'm sure many of my friends thought the same you know we just
You know you can't have a fight you know tick off all the things. You're not a girl. You swat
You're a useless school. You always been shouted at
You can't
Play football or even have a simple fight for that matter
And then you got your dad saying and of course I was that spurgic and then he said well you're one of a million
What makes you so eager to see all thinking you're going to be any good, you know
And I said yeah, but if I never give it a shot. He don't want to take it and
I don't think till the day he died
He ever acknowledged anything that I did was good not to me apparently did to my brother, but you know people are always saying
You know like they do in that kind of gentle English money. Are you stupid?
Plod were my first
First band I joined them when I was 19 because I spent my teenage years
Been rather silly with you know smoking things and taking pills and got myself in a bit of a muddle really
It's the best way I can say it now in a very English way
You know how drugs can muddle you a bit and I say this LSD and this frisco speed balls of which you speak
They really do make your brain a bit muddled don't they you know and now this gentleman in blue is just taking me away and charging me with
fucking possession
So that was good wasn't it so
You know we got over that we agreed we would come to a county where nobody knew me
And live in a village with my parents and get a proper job which I did for about three months
As a paint sprayer or in a factory in Maldon and then my mum in her
My late mum god bless her just in her peggy archer sort of way comes it gets it look here's a job you'd like
There's there's this rock band here who's just appeared to have lost this singer and they said they wear makeup and
Look a bit peculiar like you and I said well, I can't just go into a town where I don't know anybody and and it's 13 miles away
There's only four buses a day to this place to get from from this place to culture. It was called gold hangout. It weren't it
But I did I just go on the bus and I went and I walked into shop. It's like this is like something out of a cliff
Richard film you know
Hi guys, where's the bad why don't we just do the show right here
It completely changed my life
It revolutionized me I did this one gig there's a picture of it somewhere
Of me
You know just on stage just absolutely like a duck to water like the ugly duckling that suddenly realized it was this one I can do this
We got signed and then you know as usual
Nothing happened for a while and the band just kind of drifted apart and I found myself without a band and and
Eventually
A bass player came along who I knew and we were playing barbillia, which is what I did for about six months while there was no band
Well, I mean, I washed up dishes in a restaurant as well sometimes and you know just enough to make my beer money and everything
This bass player come along so there's a band in Ipswich and I'm going for an audition. They might need a singer
So we went along and met these guys there and ice guys and it was just on the cusp of
It was that year that punk was starting to happen is 1976
And I've very nearly joined a band. I should really having been the glamorok singer being the kind of person I was
I would have been ideally suited to punk, but I didn't I was Alfredi Newman
You know the guy from the front cover of mad always gets the thing wrong
So what I did was joined a prog rock band in you know the middle of 1976
I was working with a band and we'd lost the the guitarist
We'd lost the bass guitarist and a singer and we'd advertise and a bass player phoned up Ken Elson
He's a really good bass player and he ended up working with Nicky Nicky Kursher for a while
Anyway, he said he'd knew another singer called Zap
I don't know if Martin's mentioned it but he did used to be called Zap in those days
And he said I'll bring him over
And we met up in a local pub chatter the night away and
Then eventually he went back to his place a couple of days later and listened to
Real real stuff that he'd done you know just really good songs and thought he's the man for us
One of the things that really jumped out was the fact that he was just able to pull this stuff out of the air really
So if we'd come along with we all wrote and we'd bring along something and he'd just say
To rehearsal and he said just keep playing that and he'd go to the back of the room or whatever
And he'd knock out the lyric in 20 minutes half an hour and that would be it
He probably wouldn't change it you know and they were really
Good interesting lyrics
And always a great he'd always get great song titles
And I looked really
Because I still try and make music and I look through some of these
These lists on on the albums of this is these are the title sounds fantastic. So why can't we think of this stuff
Gip were up here
locally speaking and were the local band heroes
And so I was a bit of a fan of Gips
Even though in those days they were writing 20 minute
Song marathons that invariably had a bit in the middle called dream sequence
Where they would just kind of make noises on their instrument but it was acceptable in those days
But then somehow Martin and Gip hooked up
And Martin injected a sense of song writing into the band and they were playing in Bishop Stortford and
So I walked in they were halfway through their set and there was this bloke
Performing like I'd never seen anyone perform in that kind of environment before he's in a two-bit little pub
And he's climbing over the bar and he's hanging from the ceiling and he's doing all these
Lead vocal lead vocalist gymnastics he'd be prancing around
Yeah, there was a lot of prancing
We've got East Anglican prancing boys really
For very
enthusiastic a very energetic frontman extraordinary
And like I said in the in the Alma that used to be a pillar in the middle of the stage
Which most people just treated as an object to be
Distained but so Martin used it he then to dance dirty
He hugged it
And I couldn't believe what I was seeing and I thought I got to be part of this you know
So I lied my way into the band that I was a bass player which I certainly wasn't at the time
But you know held my place in that band for a while and got to know Martin
Actually, I don't know if I ever really got to know him to be honest
We were so different as people
That we kind of passed you know we never really did that but
He was a riot to be in a band with it made me a very experienced frontman you know I could
You know I'd climb things. I wouldn't waste my time doing nothing. I'd be running around
Anything I could climb running out into the audience and just
You know being a lunatic
I was a clown you know. I was I knocked about a lot
You know it's like this is a join the army or something see the world join the rock band in the right
In centuries with Martin Mule sit back and enjoy it. We've had a ride so much fun
I think I'd laugh with him as much as anyone on the planet over the years
Yeah
That's really good quote
I guess there's anything else around that area we could we could chat about I mean
Usually I'll start with that. There are things I can't mention
There was the incident with the German girl the skunk and the sink plunger but
I don't think Martin would know he wouldn't
He wouldn't want that
When Martin decided to go his own way as an artist
I tried to take his place as the band songwriter
I never really felt we did we did have limited success with that formula but
In my mind I never got anywhere close to what Martin
Was as a songwriter
But I tried and he was the reason I tried
Jit was kind of like a family but I also knew
That I knew about writing three-minute pop songs
Towards the end of that summer I got a team of guys small team of
Another more missfits and we recorded some demos and I got a brief solo deal
And through a convoluted set of circumstances ended up having a solo single which ended up being on radio one
played by
Dave Lee Travis
quite a lot
And other DJs
And there was a little bit of a scandal surrounding it
I
Think it's a viable alternative
This is sent out so that school children can hear this stuff about unemployment and drugs and that sort of thing
But it's so anywhere we did this and at that time and things went wrong with record companies
EMI picked us up
For a bit I did a bit more tele a bit more radio
um
The world forgot about me and I got on with home recording with a bloke called LOL
Who was another stoner
And we started making music and some of it and we thought we'll sell it on cassette
That's what we do cottage industry. Let's not involve the record industry
Let's keep a good chat about
I like him
I don't know if you already will
Okay, so this I should take you around this guitar really not not in a technical way because I've still never got to the bottom of it
I get a man to do that for me
It's a it's a Hoffman of V3
But this guitar I got for 19 quid in guitar village shall to be having you when I was 17 in 1917
And people didn't reckon it much as a guitar because then it was prog rock and everyone was doing wiggly wiggly
And this was a jangly jangly sort of guitar
But it came into its own in the cleanest from Venus
Okay
That's wavy. Hello wavy
What is it?
Back around back there oh you see the
Shush wavy
The camera
It's a pan-tile building there
Can't get any noise yet
That that building there with the red pan tiles
That's one building you go around the back there and that's why I used to live
It's a sort of it's a story in a half I mean, you know
It's a one and a half stories is what I mean and that's where a lot of noise did the first ever cleanest from Venus recordings
So a lot would put a beat down and I'd play the bass and that would go into the women
We'd now have a bass and drum thing and then we'd put some echo on that then leave that and then
I just dash out some lyrics, you know, whatever we've felt about felt like writing about that day whether it was aliens or nuclear bombs
Which we've got recurring themes and that's as she need wonderful as he's and
We you know, we just recorded for fun, but something this stuff started to get good
And then I got really good at using the port of studio and the second cassette
By which time lulls now got a girlfriend in bath
So he's going down there a lot and I'm doing these things by myself
A bit alarming that
Anyway, let's find out here should be a drumbeat
Helen Luia
That's a very good basic beat but I need to humanize it so I put a shake on it made a split piece in a kilo jar
Doesn't that sound ginshi then the bass comes in I like playing bass it's my hobby
And there were various people who helped me out with this and that but really it then became me for a couple of albums until Giles Smith joined
But Giles ended up joining me but Giles was actually a very clever boy
Who was doing his PhD at Cambridge on Dr. Johnson
And
He spent half his time at Cambridge
So it's been my fate to always have band members who are busy doing something else Giles once turned up three and a half days late for a session
Round me now, I'm clinging on somehow to the remains of a much better time which is cherished
He was the original independent artist, you know before it was a phrase
And I don't think it was by design. I think it was an necessity
He always felt uncomfortable in a studio in a in a in a traditional studio environment I think
And he was obviously a lot more relaxed with his little 8-track
Tascam, Porter studio thing he would make these records but unlike everybody else
They weren't demos they were the records that you ended up buying you know and that it was brilliant because of that
Loads of character and he did as he always did he did it his way and
It was fantastic and I have always really loved recording and when when the Porter studio came out
I just thought that's it. I am going to I want to make
Basically revolver in a garden shed
That's what I wanted to do and the whole cleanness of Venus started from that
I know you didn't turn up to see me re-stringing again so I could have been the beer and the
Doe pice up others but
You know I don't know how these things happen but unlike other bands you know with a strict engineer saying oh we better take that old nonsense off
We just used to leave it on there. I am really am I oh that'll do let's fuck off to the pub
That'll do see where it sounds out and we're after we've had a drink and it sounds all right it goes out, okay
That was
My whole attitude it wasn't some great big artistic endeavor or something like there's no magic in it
I was just a sloppy English bastard. I wasn't going anywhere no one gave a fuck
Oh
Just a typical day
I'm not been in here. I think
I'm a track in salesman
I'm going to eat tomorrow, rip
It's a beautiful summer tree to fall in love with the ice and she
up the bottom of the country
And when it's back, it's what you've done but now it takes it's never a
Which means that someone has to face the need
Well, we kind of knew about each other because we were both in sort of local bands around sort of Essex
And I'd spoken to him a few times but I really got to know him when
He asked me to play with the cleaners from Venus
When they finally got signed to a proper record label rather than doing his DIY cassettes
And you know he thought I'll get someone who knows how to play bass to do it rather than himself
Could he just make the racket when he does it
Meeting Martin was
Some just a beautiful moment. I was at the women's home
Spring I think was sunny spring kind of day
I was sitting by the key where the pub is the ship and this guy turns up
Oh with you know
Hey man kind of thing with her
Captain's hat on that was Martin
He had heard about me just because I was playing around
In the sort of pub circuit whatever the gig site could find at the time
He said oh yeah, you couldn't run so something
So you know this room I'm famous you know, I'm going like fucking out
Martin knew and he was probably the one with the first
musician weirdos I met in UK, England
And we did some dates with played in Germany, France
Few in London
like Ding Walls or places like that and then moved on
and did the next album and a term and country
Played on that we did some more gigs
And then I think
Martin got a bit fed up with the record label for some reason
Decided he didn't want to do the cleaners anymore
And so I thought well I'm not doing it if he's not doing it
At the time I think he was very struggling
As an artist it's it's it's very very difficult to make a living
And it was at the time he was
Highly stressed I think just to find
His place in in the industry
We all do but at the time I think he was as a as a bound leader as an artist I think it was
very confused and struggling you know and we all were but I think the pressure was definitely on him
So I think I
Also did another tour which Martin couldn't
Sing we had higher someone else to do a tour
I do remember playing someone in Germany. It's always Martin
You know these people shouting now always Martin. No, we just understandable that that happened it was a
Contractual thing maybe had to do
It's it's Martin
I think it was very confused
All I wanted to do was be in the studio and make records I've become and at one point I ran out of the story and they
They were saying I was like Brian Worstner. It's right a letter of apology to the German record company for not going on sir
Stay just trying to get out
Yeah, and then to basically admitting to my madness
Which was um
Which wasn't fun, but it got me out you know the band were furious
Because the band had been got together for me and they wanted to go out and play rock stars and I didn't
And the whole thing
It's ever since there's just been this standoff
between me and
A record company or a manager saying I'm not going on till it's at white because it will make me mad and as soon as I get on to
There's a bottle in my hand and I'm usually tipping it over my head and shouting shouting it traffic
Actually finally at realizing that I was at budget taking the test
Yeah, and it's took
It's taken decades for me to discover why I'm like that
And women have left me
Things like what's wrong with you and people used to hit me and I'm like my dad and people say I used to be in that
No, no, no, I'm not it's just you know, and I didn't know
I don't feel
Victimized or anything all like I ought to sue somebody for ruining my life for having issues
But I can now understand why these things happen and what I'm actually like doing is
Writing poems and writing songs and recording songs and occasionally and then talking a lot
Impubs and cafes
It's interesting looking inside the minds
um
Of mind just at the times the you know the the little victories and the crashing defeats
Which all feed back into the music
You know
Down the foggy streets to a sea port
You knew
Go the ghosts
Of the wires and all those
Pay much
One night
In a pale blue yellow light
Where the mist wraps them up where it smells
At the store where you last told
Is they in that room
They just stay as they once used to be
Maybe Martin's like Van Gogh and people like that, you know, you'll only be really
understood and appreciated when he's dead
I got this one gig
working on
A captain sensible album on the day one of the studio
We sort of sat around and you know, we had to
Captain there and we said all right captain
What you got play us your songs for the new album only when
Well, I've only got one really
So we're like oh, okay
And
Play us the one you've got and he played the one you got and it was pretty good song
But that's all we had so the producer says to me. Do you know any song writers?
I don't know yeah, I do actually also I called Martin that night
We hadn't spoke for years at that point and I said I'm working with captain and
Captain sensible and he desperately needs some writing. Do you want to come down to sorry and
and and be his co-writer and
It was almost like I put the phone down and Martin was at the door, you know
But he he turned up in true Martin style. He got his push bike put it on the train came down to sorry
or horse and railway station and
Got off the train and rode to the studio and so he turned up at this beautiful place on his push bike
And of course
Started to write with captain and come out with some fantastic stuff
And and those two I think I still friends now they just clicked, you know, they really hid it off they had the same
quirky eccentric outlook and
And approach to music and they just really you know clicked
So that was quite a challenge he was the last bit of my education because he was a fussy bugger captain
He wouldn't take something second rate he even that very
Very high expectations quite high maintenance, but he also knew when he was pushing me
So he'd he'd give me a beer and say come on, let's go out to the pub. So a rattling good bloke
So the cleanest stock saw about 1988 and there was a period where me and Nelson
We'd like to join new model army partly as a result
um
Decided we'd we'd make a record and captain and a good old Annie McQueen who formed a little record label
Uh heard the staff and said this is great and
Annie McQueen said I don't suppose there's too much chance for you touring this and I said bye bye. It's cool
So when we moved on
uh formed the brotherhood of lizards and did a little demo cassette back to cassettes
We thought that was all it was going to do or all that was going to happen really um
We went out busking I had me little mandarin
Which I painted a lizard. Oh, it's this here. I can't believe it. It's actually there. It's still there look. Just the lizard I painted on that
mandarin
That's the one I used with brotherhood it is as long with my base had a drum machine and stuff
uh
The twisting trees in the station beyond the single prices out
When the wind blows hard on the market day
market day
You read it there in the trade with dyes that there's something going wrong
Where the wise on market day
market day
Hello, hello
Too high too high
I told you so
Goodbye, goodbye
So they sell in novels and wedding rings where the creaking sign of king edgy swings on market day
market day
oh
Where's breakfast? I'm absolutely hanged more of him
I'm wilting I'm doing wilting we had breakfast that's at about nine o'clock breakfast is very important to us in the
I think you have to have a really good breakfast and it's also a forum for a debate sometimes violent discussion
This is what vegetarians eat folks
No meat
No B.S.C. or both my spongy forming
Kepler paffes we know it in the trade
We've got to set off the knowledge at one thirty, right?
And we've got to be there at seven thirty
It's about forty miles
Yeah, I guess six hours
We have a jake miles an hour usually
Because we keep stopping to pick her about the map you say yeah
But at least it's raining and it'll be headwind because he always wants to do really straight reactionary things like look at the map
And I just want to kind of heal it by the legos
What I do with these beans we should get some extra
Push
What do you mean?
We're going to know it so we can play a gig at the university and to promote our record
Right and also to prove that people can
Do rock gigs on bicycles
I recognize that great thank you very much
But it's nice to stay in the places like there's supposed to hotels or
Or sort of outhouses along the road
It's cheaper
Ready then?
Mind the puddle
It could have been a show
So think of her when you wake up on the floor
And your back is feeling so
It could have been a show
Right these these idiots from Essex right are going to be turning up on their bikes
We're going to talk to them do some filming of them
Warbling around on their bikes and then playing a guitar perfect
Anyway, so we did so around the time the brother who's at Liz's album
We did an interview and
I'm never known I mean it was great because he's so he was so engaging but also so
brutally honest and so
I was like he'd back about the whole thing
I mean I'd wanted to work for the music papers since I was 12 13 years old
I couldn't see anything else more exciting than being in the music industry
And it was Martin there
I've never seen a man less in fraud by the music industry
I mean less beguiled unbeguiled by the music industry
That's what he that's that's how he came across
I don't even know if unbeguiled is a word but if it is
Martin right a song called unbeguiled by the music industry and that
That will that will do you they'll end up being the hit
But we did this interview and
brilliantly of course you know might have we talked about the music and just at one point
He just went
You see I'd rather be a gardener
than be a pop star
In a country rich town
I have been to a city
Like it's later now
Like it's been the other day
For the religion
So I was in a bit of a sulk
Everything had collapsed around my ears
Suddenly now that gone I didn't have a band
And I couldn't get arrested
I just thought this all must be worth something
I've been on television for the last three months
I've had all this but no
Nobody wanted to touch me with a barge part
I was just some dick
So I thought so I covered this piano over
I
Put my guitars away
I sold my porcelain and I just thought sod it
I'll just be a gardener then shy
Jerusalem artichokes are sturdy vigorous plants
Easily holding their own when they're forced to compete with trees and shrubs
But even so Martin likes to encourage them with his special cocktail
And what I use is it is nettles soup as well to feed them
What do you mean by nettles?
Well I get a whole lot of old stinging nettles and bung them in a bucket
Preferably with some rainwater
And give them a stir for about 10 days until it's in
It really smells quite foul
But you can either filter it and use it as a folio feed
Or you can put it around the roots because they love that
It's full of nitrogen because nettles are very nitrogen-gruiting
And if you really want to give them a good feed
You get horses doobries in a bag
And spend that on a stick over the bucket
I was miserable as sin for about the first week
And suddenly having cast off all this burden
It's like light came into my life
Not this is what I should be doing
Pruning trees and looking after the land
It's what I'm good at
And London can just, you know, fuck off
You know, the whole, all that pretence, that showbiz shit
What was I thinking of?
Then sometime in September the phone rings
And I'm on it because it's been rained off
And it's someone in London, it's Radio One
And it's Mike Reed reading out my poem
I Hank Marvin on the Steve Wright show
I Hank Marvin's
We all did
We cricket bats in front of a mirror
In our bedrooms, after school
I Hank Marvin, quite regularly
My mother nearly caught me
What were you doing? Nothing, mum
And I became a poet very, very quickly
Within about six months
I'm on Radio Four
The independent of taking me on semi-regular
And I've gone from again nothing straight up to being
Suddenly, instantly well-known pot poet
And very shortly after that
I met John Cooper Clark
In Goldchester
And became sort of very good mates with him
And doing gigs with him as well
And it seemed like from a year
I suddenly was, you know, everybody's favorite on Radio Two
And on Radio One
And I thought, you know, what the hell's happening here
You know, it's like
Whatever the supreme being was
It ripped the guitar in my hand, giving me a tight row
And so you get on with that, I see you all right
And it did
I'm not sure if it's something else
Shanked from the shovel out at the rhythm of the rake
The garden of Eden without the snake
Who did the business for fuck's sake?
Ma'in Nul
Welcome back
Explan Rocker Martin Newell
Now describes himself as a pot poet
I went down to Wivenhoe in ethics to meet him quite a while ago
And he was an absolute riot
And Marie Hughes had the same experience
But more recently
She went down to talk to him about his newly published memoirs
The Little Ziggy
And got rather distracted along the way
When things go wrong with your CD
The vinyl record called juice to be
Called juice to be
With all that jumping up and down
At least the vinyl catches you fit
You've kept you fit
You've kept you fit
Unless you fix the light white
Ah, with first a scene or two baby
You describe yourself as a pot poet
Yeah
Because I want you to be popular as opposed to obscure
This you've seen as a crime
in some sections of the literature business. In fact, I was quoted as somebody said,
ah, but what is the poetry, I didn't know. I said, it's a very poorly paid branch of
the entertainment industry, which I was so horrified by, I was quoted on it. This is an
ideal not to be stripping tools, but I think you should be popular. I think pictures should
be off something and pot songs should have tunes and films should have happy endings. Call
me a Phyllis time, but it works for me.
We've published probably eight or nine books now, and I think it's hard to make a living as an artist,
but it's even harder to make a living as a poet, and by combining our two skills, I can illustrate
the poetry, or I don't like to use the word illustrate, I'd rather say a company, a company
is poetry. It's just great fun to collaborate, and within the small village we've got all these
talented people, and to work together, it just breaks a monotony of working on your own all the
time. I mean, here's genuinely the power of rural Essex, I think. I mean, more poets than you might
imagine, they're nation poets, all they have local roots, something like Philip Larkin was a nation
poet, or despite all his sort of cynical image, he was equally capable of describing the
natural world around him, that's what most of us. He's like, the uncle I never asked for, but I'm very
glad I have, all my poetry dad, he likes to come sub my poetry dad, and he's like my poetry dad,
you know, I have to play my visit at Christmas, and because then the reason he's maybe underrated is
because he doesn't take part in the poetry scene, doesn't care, I think give a fuck about
those cunts in London, he's not going out to London, he hates it, right? He won't go, I keep saying
Martin, you know, you could fill in an arts council application, I give you money to, oh fuck
I don't fucking do that, you know, he won't do any of that stuff, he's entirely his own man,
and he bought his house, right, where he lives, he bought his house with poetry money, he earned all
that money doing poetry, writing three poems a week in national newspapers, right? You know,
the words are John Cooper Clarke, they can't knock success, how can you, you can't knock it,
you know, and that's what Martin's got, he isn't playing anyone's game, he's just written poems in
their beauty, and they touch the hearts of anyone. Beard, bike out, Alex, Victor, all the bees I'd need to know,
leaning from my bedroom window, gazing out at Luton Glow, five miles north, the lights of Luton
hanging in the frosty air might be seen from Harpendon when Harp the town was working there,
sodium lit, the winter skylight over bowers heath below, what's that light I asked my mother,
back my boy is Luton Glow. Two years after that, less, there's a phone call, and it's Andy
Partridge from XTC, who wants my second book, and then I made another record company guy and he
said, look, I think you should do an album and Andy Partridge should produce it, and that became
the greatest living Englishman, which by any terms is regarded as a good album, I don't think
all the British reviewers thought so, but the Yanks certainly did, and back into rock and roll,
I drifted for a bit, but I never let go of Partridge because I didn't trust rock and roll, you know.
I think the greatest living Englishman is the pinnacle of his creativity, and Andy Partridge is,
you know, there's another pretty crazy guy who's given him a unique production.
I first became aware of Martin, I would say in the early 90s, through his a poetry book,
Andy Partridge would ring me up, and he'd say, have a listen to this, I hang Marvin, and he'd read
this poem over, I was in stitches, and he'd say, so where did you get this then? He'd say, was his
fellow Martin Ewell, he sent me this, I assumed he'd been sent these books of poetry by Martin
himself, he was a big XTC fan, and it turned out later, you know, that he was a songwriter as well,
and I think Andy had just set up a recording studio in his garden, in a shed in his garden,
and he'd been equipped with an ADAT digital recorder, one of the first eight track digital recorders,
so Andy was, of course, gung-ho to try out this new device, and coincidentally, Martin came to him
with these demos and said, I want, I'd love you to produce an album, can we work together? So Andy was,
yeah, let's do it, so it was a kind of experiment on two sides, Martin working with Andy to make a record,
and Andy experimenting with his new studio stuff, and it kind of worked, it was, as you know, produced a
great record.
Here she comes, here she comes, right now.
And so your heart turns upside down, and then you lose your precious girl.
This would have been 1994, the summer of 1994, sometime after the album had been released,
and because the songs were so great, it was a joy to learn how to play them, and then we had
other musicians joined up, like Captain Sensible, I've never met before, it was a great bloke,
a good character. It was a fun team, we had Peter Nielsen on bass and Mandolin,
and a guy called Gary Dreadful, who was, I think, Captain Sensible's drummer at the time,
so we all piled into a plane and headed off to Japan, could you believe it? That's what happened.
He's a genius, I think, he really is. He's got the same thing that John Unnan had,
which is he can take apparently crap material and make gold out of it. You know, some of his
songs have got very simple chords, some of them are more complex, but he's just wonderful.
He's been putting up lately on Facebook, he puts track of the week and that sort of thing,
and he puts up, he put up, well, I can't wish song it was, he put up one song,
that I only heard once when he played it as a demo on one of those tours, and I could remember the melody,
the lyrics, everything, from just hearing it once, 25 years ago, and that shows you what a great song
went into years, you know, he really is. So, we learned these jazzy songs I wrote in the end of
Rotemann's Sinatra's Ballad called Grenadine and Blue, which everybody liked. So, this became a
flagship song, which you might be able to play. It's a song, you know, it's grown-up songs because by
now I did 40 something and I'm thinking, well, I've got to, you know, write grown-up songs, I can't
go on writing songs about, I've just met a girl and you've stolen her from me and I'm really cross
about it, so now I'm going off to take some drugs, kind of song. I've got to write something that's a bit
kind of, I'm sorry, I regret the fact that I said those things to you and I've tried to stop drinking
and I can't, but I still love you, maybe in a year, I feel better about all this, which is much
more grown-up, isn't it? So, I wrote Grenadine and Blue and he goes something like this.
There had been anything to say, but what have slipped away on the smoky day of the blue disember,
one before I leave, maybe, well, just another drop. No, I promised I would stop
he's a poet first and foremost, I think, and then I think he puts the chords, but the marriage
between the poetry and the songs, so just, it's just lovely, really lovely. I did a gig with him recently
and he suddenly started playing all these jazz songs on the piano. I mean, I'd never even heard of him
playing the piano before. I said to him, I should learn that. He said, oh, I just listened to a few
records and then I started just kind of playing it. I thought this man's genius. I teach a bit of jazz
now again. I couldn't even play what he was playing. It was brilliant. It was all down the bottom
end with little improvisations.
I remember playing and I think the Hamburg gig, Martin did a solo piece. I was sitting by the
drummer kid just watching him sing and getting goosebumps just how amazing it was. You treasure that
moment. Don't you've been a player. That's why you live for the paycheck. You just
meet some weird people and enjoy the experiences. That's quite something, the fact that
records, I know, I've got a lot of records which were released in the 80s and 90s which I've
probably never listened to again and here's music from the past 30 years which
hasn't dated in its own way because it was his own thing so it's out of place at the time
and it's still probably out of place now but it's still new and it's still fresh and it still works
and more people are finding it. I think that's the best testimonial probably Martin can have.
I was just tired
and you had the right to call me a liar.
In 2011 I was making a solo record in Nashville and we finish every day at about five o'clock
and I was left two weeks and most nights I drive to Madison, Tennessee to see our
Stephen Moore. So we would go there and he would drink wine and I would buy dinner which would be
pizza and we'd go through his tapes and talk about music and we talked about everyone
and his love of Martin Ewell as well.
Yeah, we were pen pals early on I guess early 80s from the UK to me in New Jersey
and we just exchanged letters and tapes. I think it was obvious we had a mutual
association society going on but it never got very much more serious than that
but sure I worshiped him kind of and he
reciprocated. We were underground do it yourself and low five didn't enter into it. That's the
critics speaking but I'm not sure if we were influential on each other we sort of came
at the same time and our aesthetics of fucking the system matched perfectly but I don't know why
and I also proudly recorded a cover and filmed it the session at a friend's house of his great song
I wasn't pranking I was just tired
so yes the kids in America were playing the cassettes in their second hand cars and you know all
this time there was a growing interest in the old cleaners from Venus albums which I really could
not understand why are they so interested in this stuff and round about this time was when I first
got approached by Mike sniper which I thought was not exactly a joke but I was getting a bit fed
up with people saying I would like to release some of your own records I was thinking I'm a grown-up
now why would you want these things? I've got new stuff as well if you're interested in that let's
forget about the old stuff for a bit and I couldn't sort the way out from the chaff so I said no
so in the end I just said no I thought it was pushy and I said no then there was another attempt I thought
this guy's not going away is he so I said no and we got to about a third time he said well I really
want to release these cleaners from Venus and I think I just write about what bits of fucking off do you
not understand you know and I thought well that'll do it and it did it went completely sun I
thought well that's that I had one point I gave up I did I you know at some point it just becomes a
matter of I don't want to put this guy through hell and like keep on cajoling him into trying to do
something he doesn't want to do at some point you have to even though you're even though you're
convinced it's in this person's best interest that you're but you can't force that on someone
and then you just start fine and then Ryan Frost and you currently works at Matador at the time she
worked at capture tracks and without my knowing she sent an email to him that was really well written
really beautifully written it kind of brought him back I'm not as eloquent I guess as she is
and then I was lying in bed up there the only usual morning sort of mood look at the thing I think
I've got a load of oxide up there gradually rusting away in plastic bags
and what's the worst thing it could be happening that I don't get any money what's the best
thing I could have I could turn them into beer vouchers I just wanted the catalog to be taken care of
almost like a custodial a custodial archival kind of thing like we want to get it all together master it
before all these tapes disappear we want to master it as good as we can more and I need you to go
up into your attic and find whatever you can find which was not much if you look at the visual
document we don't have that much you know so we've got everything we possibly could just so that
has some kind of a permanence you can't polish a turd they say but you can roll it in glitter
somehow they cleaned it up but there were people who actually wanted this thing I thought
well am I to argue with popularity in the end and then there was other tapes now we're getting
better and I began to listen and reassess my old stuff as I digitized it using a porter studio
and a fairly good cassette player I've got and I thought actually some of the stuff was pretty good how
old was I 20 something so capture tracks released it and it was popular and then they sent me some money
and I thought well that's good then
and it is kind of like it's like a bit of like a race where it's like oh no I'm gonna get that one
I'm gonna get that reissue yeah so Mike got it and did a great job at the boxes and it's like
it's cool I think a lot of a lot of my contemporaries and like people that I know
have been really inspired by cleaners from Venus probably you know for the same reasons of like
this songwriting being really good and just aesthetically it's it has aligned up with I think a lot of
contemporary independent music how good anyone have for seeing that you know it's just kind of one
of these like round robbing things where it just eventually it's just his music made so much sense to
so many people yeah like years later
as usual when I hear mine's music mainly because the writing is still strong
it still sounds like he's inspired to do it and he's kept hold of that all this time where
other even the greats the Stevie Wonder's the Paul Simons the Stings the the Beatles even
they reach a point where they've got no more juice left it seems you know and they still go through
the process but the spark isn't there anymore but that's not happened to mine and I've done a
wary you know gets that from but he still got that inspiration I don't know how he does it I'm going
to ask him but but another thing that knocks me out about his work still is that it still sounds
like he records in his kitchen and well clearly if it's not the kitchen it's the room next door
I'm going to wait
I'm waiting to wait
I'm going to wait and try to get out of here
there's no time to stay
there's this in his sixties
and there's nothing to lose
I jump in the room
it's saying it moves
I'm sorry sorry
forget this chunk y'all
take it away
if you're bad my way
it's a changing world
I can tell you one thing
time is wasted
time is waiting
right now it's in my way
I remember my train as we did the five-year anniversary for the label I guess I think it's 10
years now so about five years ago yeah and he really wanted to get Martin over and I remember that
where Martin was like I'm not fucking I'm not flying in New York like you fuck off you know
so I said I'm not doing a tour because as I've said many times before I don't want to be one of
these kind of terrible old bison lumbering amnesically around the stage you know and I don't think a
lot of these old guys lumbering around the stage is now
realise how terrible they look and I think the audience if they're the same age look even worse you know
a bunch of sort of elderly people kind of shaking uncertainly you know with their sort of
heart pills and all the rest of it and some of the younger than me
I just don't think it's something that I think it's something you should be enjoyed privately
like so and other things that we we still do when we're older but really don't want to be filmed
doing but I can be as young as I like in the studio so so that's what I do I mean I make nice
songs for people to listen to that's classic cleaners called combination of all you think you have
an auto nightmare you know it's a boy playing children in the woods
some silver or some mourning remember days like these as horses seen through trees
and in forgotten orchards the ochre of the sun and echo of a gum a gale bends the birches the
elders crick and groan the moon is smashed to pieces in the waters of the cone as autumn drags you home
the dead are reacquainted with the living they have known they're half-remembered faces in flowers
muscle stone ashes earth or bone and if I die in early autumn light a fire boy in the woods build
it well and crack a bottle share that's all my worldly goods and on some silver mourning remember days
like these as horses seen through trees thank you
you
and in that great tradition of English lyrical poetry you're exemplified by the likes of A.E.
houseman Sir John Benjamin and more recently Ray Davis of the Kings fame all still getting it
I've always been fascinated by artists who operate on the outskirts of any industry possibly
because I've had to make the move into sell out town a few times and found that it's not all that's
cracked up to be but Martin is one of those people who you know by sheer doggy determination
bloody mindedness and you know a lot of hard graft of carved out a career without needing to
compromise you know now I'm as free as the times let me be no one's the governor apart from me
that's him he's no different than any other famous musician you know there's no difference he's up
there without a doubt you know with Brian Wilson and and McCartney it's just a different way
of looking at things the most exciting part about discovering cleaners from Venus was just that there
is a you know there is a huge body of work and just discovering an artist that has this like
whole world is just like the most exciting thing you know it's it's like when you
find out that one of your favorite artists that your your friend has heard it and it's just like
I wish I was you like the arrangements are so clever the songs are so clever
and you can tell he's not really fussing over the recording too much
which is really cool you know it's like the songs are these absolutely like brilliant brilliant
songs and it seems like the idea is more to just get them out and get it over with so you can move
on to the next one instead of fussing over the you know this one song for ages a few years ago when
I was with my band in England and we had played in the sort of eastern area of like around cold
chester and we had stayed at somebody's house as we often stay at people's houses in this area
with an hoe and we happened to have to wake up really early the next morning for a drive to wherever
we were going the next day it was it's hard to find a long drive in England but I think we had to get
to cornwall on the other end of the country so we we had to wake up really early and we were loading
the car and I'm talking to the guy who's house we stayed at and somehow we start talking about
the cleaners from Venus and he was like Martin Nua lives in this town and uh you know at this point
it's like 7 30 a.m. right and we're like loading up to hit the road and he's like and he always buys his
like morning newspaper at this magazine store like right on the street I you'll find him there he's
he's like you'll find I was like what Martin Nua is going to be like right there you know and um
there he was so I got his autograph you know and there's like newspaper store at what to me was like
a very early hour
that'll do it man
The last time alternative Essexman Martin Yule appeared on the line,
he was feeling poetically inspired by Brighton.
But in his latest musings, he's more inclined towards the rural delights
that lie on Brighton's doorstep.
There are times when the Hurley-Berlie of Brighton
can prove to be too much even for the best of us.
Those alternative types, who complain so vehemently about the
stridancy of so-called straight society, are only too happy to
carpet bomb you with their own advertising.
In every cafe and pub pounding music raw as at you while posters
were forthcoming events scream at your eyes, window displays,
visually mug you, and if you're feeling hung over delicate or
dare I say poetic, there is an alternative to staying in bed or
coseting yourself in a sensory deprivation tank, should you be
lucky enough to have access to such a thing.
After the sensory overload of Brighton, the downs have an almost
narcotic quality, the undulations and sheer vastness conspire to
give you the feeling you've been dropped into an older time
somehow.
One of the best things about Martin is the way he works.
If something needs to be done, he gets on and does it.
And there's no sort of thing I'll do it tomorrow.
You know, he's just always been a bit sniffy about me,
didn't he? So I just don't bother with him, you know.
I don't have any infamous for it, but remember saying something.
Should we send some review copies out and me saying, I'm not
fucking sending review copies out to people who can't even write
it as well as me.
I'm fucking playing an instrument.
And I've just said that, you know.
Naturally, you may imagine how popular it would make one how receptive
people would be towards me for thinking like that.
But they haven't fucking earned it and they should see their fucking
sailors.
And if they want to come up from London and see me about it in S6,
we can have a socially philosophical discussion, can't we?
I don't care.
I don't care.
I don't care.
I've got my beard and cyborg here.
I don't care if he comes out here.
Music
This was a private hedge which was damaged by an underground gas leak
sometime in the 60s or 70s when the maths professor Chris Winston had it.
And gradually I cut it into the shape when I originally cut it.
People say, what do you got there? A hamster or something?
Because it did look like a hamster.
But gradually it became a cat.
Hi, how are you?
Well, they look at the most unlikely of gardeners.
But that's how Martin Newell actually earns his living at a Regency house in
Wivenhoe.
He brought back a rabbit the other day.
I saw him carrying a rabbit back in his mouth.
The cat, the black one, was a rock poet.
And he's not sweeping gardening tips.
He writes song.
I'm an inspiration.
Strikes.
Pen is another little masterpiece.
My ambitions strange as it may seem.
Really, at the moment I just like a permanent cottage with roses around the door that I can't
be thrown out of.
Ever.
You know, I'd like some stable places I teeter uncertainly towards my forties.
And you know, just live a relatively quiet life and occasionally go for a pint and meet famous people
and have some money.
You know, it's kind of guy I am.
I am just a juggling man.
I am just a juggling man.
I am just a juggling man.
I...
You know, the making of the film, I don't have to say this, some seriousity, as the Americans would say.
That it's taken a juggling long time.
I mean filming does take a lot of albums take a long time and this film started in February
2018 and where we're going I was told by its director James
We're only got we're gonna be really quick cheap and cheerful shoot 20 it's gonna be a 20 minute film. We want to see if you
2 and a half years later
One of my daughters has grown up gone to university started shaving and I've started collecting a pension and
And the film still isn't finished in fact. This is what we're doing now isn't it finished but wait, why does it take so long and
And you've worked your way through my entire address book, which is actually quite a lot of famous people
This may sound odd. I may sound crackers, but Marty Newell is he's the kind of guy that quite a lot of us would like to be if we were
Brave or full-hardy enough to risk everything by just following one goal following our love following our love in art and music and you know
Living a life that you really wanted to live but we just went too concerned about
Where's the next paycheck coming from or something for a man to be able to sort of go through life?
I don't know I mean he's had he said obviously a lot of disappointments. There's been a lot you know heartache along the way
But you know, I mean if I was a young if I was a young man, you know, my father said what do you want to be when you grow up?
Either Jeffery Bernard or Martin Newell that'll do
But other than the neighbors complain and I do hear bits about him and that
You know you seem to have influenced loads of people who come after him
For a lot of it. I mean a lot of people obviously listen to it through the progression
But for people like me or other young people to like just have this well opened up
It's like here drink like drink you can drink for days
Like the water won't stop and the music is incredible
Martin can get more great lines into one song than most people can come up with in a lifetime
I mean picked at random the world strikes won you've got in there
Missy chimney smoking in the rain and kids drag slowly by the gravity of school
Cats out sleeping in the ten-watt song
Wonderful
Harry the writer is giving his girlfriend a good bike kiss with a train
And give strikes slowly by the gravity
Because I think like he does belong in that
Really in that class of of great 80s English songwriters, you know with an Andy Partridge with
You know Morrissey and Mar with all those all those people
He's not self-consciously retro either which is something I have to put my hand up the bin a little bit
He actually just is lucky breathed in and it comes out
Well the essence of a song got to have good tune and a good melody and he knows that both of those things
He's got a great ear for a melody and he has that unique songwriters way of
marrying a lyric to a melody to a tune so that it works and what comes from the same place
There's no
There'll be else interfering with it. It's that
Tunnel vision thought
Express through a tune and that's the that's the magical gift
That so few people have you come into music business not because you're seeking
You know normal
Pay check or a normal bingo with normal people and this is the sort of character you wish to meet isn't it? It's like a
Marta new
He's like a kind of cat whiz organic person who just hops around with and her on bicycles and of course when I first met him
He was a gardener, you know
I don't think he'd given up musical together
He's a really old character he is the you know essential English eccentric and
You know he will always be remembered in that way he has an artistic vision for the world
And that that runs through his work and he has to create he has to put it out there
Everything that I'm going to say has been said before about Martin but he's extraordinary
He's very talented. He's a marvelous wordsmith and a very good composer
Um, and you put all that together in an eccentric package and and you have Martin
Excuse me. So do you know Martin you'll
Martin you you mean sir Martin you'll of course I know him we go way back way way way back
Accomplish poet Accomplish musician songwriter sex god
I love the man
We're practically related
Being a fellow musician. I love his music the man's got swagger and attitude
That's what I like about him
If I wasn't married and he didn't have a girlfriend, I'd be banging on his door
That's so that's so good. What else can we say
I did actually I did actually incidentally. Yeah, I did actually
Engineering produce one of his out
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, you're right mate. How you doing?
Maybe say like
Because you say so you've got any funny story about anything you know like
He's a bit of a question like god, but it doesn't go on
I only know the world on you thing that kind of thing
I haven't really I can't really say any stories because they're a bit
The only stories I know he's like
Fucking nightmare ones and like bad ones. I can't you won't get to put them in there
I think Martin be be the first person to say these
I think he calls himself difficult and he can you know can be some people find that they're just too intense and too much to be around
But I don't I've got used to it. I've tried you know 40 years. I've known him all what I've got used to it
And he's worth hanging on because stuff comes out sometimes. It's priceless
This on a freezing cold mid summer day
With a mist come down suddenly is devil's dike
Um, you can see something of the mystery of the downstate you can't actually see the dike at all because this mist has just suddenly come down
And the legend about devil's dike is that the devil was to have plunged his spade into the dams to allow the sea to flow in and drown a thousand Christian churches
Well, the devil ever does come back to have a go at submerging this place. I hope he has better weather for it than I have
In the meantime, I suggest that some of you couch potatoes explore your lovely backyard before he returns with his spade to finish the job
Now where the devil did I put my bike
So what are you gonna up to hey I've been recording
I spend all I spend lots of my time recording and writing when I can writing songs
And I spend a lot of time in correspondence that I'm very busy
I really cannot help the way I feel
And I will build a house
And a place for the kids to grow in
Build a house
I
I think it was in me from a really early age my mum came into the kitchen and once when I was
Very young and family singing singing the boy and cos Diana
You know please day by me really at the top of my voice when I'm pretty about four or something and
um
I remember when I was five or six
Making up little songs in my head
You know and I never told anyone about them because that I put the words together and just thinking
I would never turn anyone this because it's like
People would think there was something wrong with me and they may have been you know
I don't know
But it just didn't feel normal and then when I was seven I hold my mouth open somewhere and found I could actually play tunes on it
But I didn't get a guitar
So I was I think 12 my 12th Christmas after much pestering
I got a guitar and it's it's hanging out there somewhere in the kitchen
It went everywhere with me it had very bad action but because I never had a guitar before I didn't know
There was bad action so I really struggled with it
So as I knew three chords yeah, I didn't think let's learn a fourth one
I thought let's write a song so I'd I attempted to write songs when I was 13
I finally managed it when I was 14 from then I was
Right it. I just thought I want to write songs
Summer holiday the song studies spectacular that's gloriously gay and deliciously young
Well, I liked Cliff Richards
Summer holiday that's great with the shadows. They were big favourites of mine
I thought it would be really heroic to be with a bunch of guys
You know who all had guitars going twangy twang
But when I saw the Beatles now it's interesting George Harrison says that without the shadows
There would be no Beatles but they weren't that much different in age the shadows were just doing it incredibly young
And I saw the Beatles in hard days night and I just thought
Not I want to do that. I think I want to go and live in that
That's what I wanted to do. I just thought life would be just about
Running down fire scopes high speed and sort of kicking and things and doing all this in a field and running around it
I just thought why couldn't you do that? I'm sure many of my friends thought the same you know we just
You know you can't have a fight you know tick off all the things. You're not a girl. You swat
You're a useless school. You always been shouted at
You can't
Play football or even have a simple fight for that matter
And then you got your dad saying and of course I was that spurgic and then he said well you're one of a million
What makes you so eager to see all thinking you're going to be any good, you know
And I said yeah, but if I never give it a shot. He don't want to take it and
I don't think till the day he died
He ever acknowledged anything that I did was good not to me apparently did to my brother, but you know people are always saying
You know like they do in that kind of gentle English money. Are you stupid?
Plod were my first
First band I joined them when I was 19 because I spent my teenage years
Been rather silly with you know smoking things and taking pills and got myself in a bit of a muddle really
It's the best way I can say it now in a very English way
You know how drugs can muddle you a bit and I say this LSD and this frisco speed balls of which you speak
They really do make your brain a bit muddled don't they you know and now this gentleman in blue is just taking me away and charging me with
fucking possession
So that was good wasn't it so
You know we got over that we agreed we would come to a county where nobody knew me
And live in a village with my parents and get a proper job which I did for about three months
As a paint sprayer or in a factory in Maldon and then my mum in her
My late mum god bless her just in her peggy archer sort of way comes it gets it look here's a job you'd like
There's there's this rock band here who's just appeared to have lost this singer and they said they wear makeup and
Look a bit peculiar like you and I said well, I can't just go into a town where I don't know anybody and and it's 13 miles away
There's only four buses a day to this place to get from from this place to culture. It was called gold hangout. It weren't it
But I did I just go on the bus and I went and I walked into shop. It's like this is like something out of a cliff
Richard film you know
Hi guys, where's the bad why don't we just do the show right here
It completely changed my life
It revolutionized me I did this one gig there's a picture of it somewhere
Of me
You know just on stage just absolutely like a duck to water like the ugly duckling that suddenly realized it was this one I can do this
We got signed and then you know as usual
Nothing happened for a while and the band just kind of drifted apart and I found myself without a band and and
Eventually
A bass player came along who I knew and we were playing barbillia, which is what I did for about six months while there was no band
Well, I mean, I washed up dishes in a restaurant as well sometimes and you know just enough to make my beer money and everything
This bass player come along so there's a band in Ipswich and I'm going for an audition. They might need a singer
So we went along and met these guys there and ice guys and it was just on the cusp of
It was that year that punk was starting to happen is 1976
And I've very nearly joined a band. I should really having been the glamorok singer being the kind of person I was
I would have been ideally suited to punk, but I didn't I was Alfredi Newman
You know the guy from the front cover of mad always gets the thing wrong
So what I did was joined a prog rock band in you know the middle of 1976
I was working with a band and we'd lost the the guitarist
We'd lost the bass guitarist and a singer and we'd advertise and a bass player phoned up Ken Elson
He's a really good bass player and he ended up working with Nicky Nicky Kursher for a while
Anyway, he said he'd knew another singer called Zap
I don't know if Martin's mentioned it but he did used to be called Zap in those days
And he said I'll bring him over
And we met up in a local pub chatter the night away and
Then eventually he went back to his place a couple of days later and listened to
Real real stuff that he'd done you know just really good songs and thought he's the man for us
One of the things that really jumped out was the fact that he was just able to pull this stuff out of the air really
So if we'd come along with we all wrote and we'd bring along something and he'd just say
To rehearsal and he said just keep playing that and he'd go to the back of the room or whatever
And he'd knock out the lyric in 20 minutes half an hour and that would be it
He probably wouldn't change it you know and they were really
Good interesting lyrics
And always a great he'd always get great song titles
And I looked really
Because I still try and make music and I look through some of these
These lists on on the albums of this is these are the title sounds fantastic. So why can't we think of this stuff
Gip were up here
locally speaking and were the local band heroes
And so I was a bit of a fan of Gips
Even though in those days they were writing 20 minute
Song marathons that invariably had a bit in the middle called dream sequence
Where they would just kind of make noises on their instrument but it was acceptable in those days
But then somehow Martin and Gip hooked up
And Martin injected a sense of song writing into the band and they were playing in Bishop Stortford and
So I walked in they were halfway through their set and there was this bloke
Performing like I'd never seen anyone perform in that kind of environment before he's in a two-bit little pub
And he's climbing over the bar and he's hanging from the ceiling and he's doing all these
Lead vocal lead vocalist gymnastics he'd be prancing around
Yeah, there was a lot of prancing
We've got East Anglican prancing boys really
For very
enthusiastic a very energetic frontman extraordinary
And like I said in the in the Alma that used to be a pillar in the middle of the stage
Which most people just treated as an object to be
Distained but so Martin used it he then to dance dirty
He hugged it
And I couldn't believe what I was seeing and I thought I got to be part of this you know
So I lied my way into the band that I was a bass player which I certainly wasn't at the time
But you know held my place in that band for a while and got to know Martin
Actually, I don't know if I ever really got to know him to be honest
We were so different as people
That we kind of passed you know we never really did that but
He was a riot to be in a band with it made me a very experienced frontman you know I could
You know I'd climb things. I wouldn't waste my time doing nothing. I'd be running around
Anything I could climb running out into the audience and just
You know being a lunatic
I was a clown you know. I was I knocked about a lot
You know it's like this is a join the army or something see the world join the rock band in the right
In centuries with Martin Mule sit back and enjoy it. We've had a ride so much fun
I think I'd laugh with him as much as anyone on the planet over the years
Yeah
That's really good quote
I guess there's anything else around that area we could we could chat about I mean
Usually I'll start with that. There are things I can't mention
There was the incident with the German girl the skunk and the sink plunger but
I don't think Martin would know he wouldn't
He wouldn't want that
When Martin decided to go his own way as an artist
I tried to take his place as the band songwriter
I never really felt we did we did have limited success with that formula but
In my mind I never got anywhere close to what Martin
Was as a songwriter
But I tried and he was the reason I tried
Jit was kind of like a family but I also knew
That I knew about writing three-minute pop songs
Towards the end of that summer I got a team of guys small team of
Another more missfits and we recorded some demos and I got a brief solo deal
And through a convoluted set of circumstances ended up having a solo single which ended up being on radio one
played by
Dave Lee Travis
quite a lot
And other DJs
And there was a little bit of a scandal surrounding it
I
Think it's a viable alternative
This is sent out so that school children can hear this stuff about unemployment and drugs and that sort of thing
But it's so anywhere we did this and at that time and things went wrong with record companies
EMI picked us up
For a bit I did a bit more tele a bit more radio
um
The world forgot about me and I got on with home recording with a bloke called LOL
Who was another stoner
And we started making music and some of it and we thought we'll sell it on cassette
That's what we do cottage industry. Let's not involve the record industry
Let's keep a good chat about
I like him
I don't know if you already will
Okay, so this I should take you around this guitar really not not in a technical way because I've still never got to the bottom of it
I get a man to do that for me
It's a it's a Hoffman of V3
But this guitar I got for 19 quid in guitar village shall to be having you when I was 17 in 1917
And people didn't reckon it much as a guitar because then it was prog rock and everyone was doing wiggly wiggly
And this was a jangly jangly sort of guitar
But it came into its own in the cleanest from Venus
Okay
That's wavy. Hello wavy
What is it?
Back around back there oh you see the
Shush wavy
The camera
It's a pan-tile building there
Can't get any noise yet
That that building there with the red pan tiles
That's one building you go around the back there and that's why I used to live
It's a sort of it's a story in a half I mean, you know
It's a one and a half stories is what I mean and that's where a lot of noise did the first ever cleanest from Venus recordings
So a lot would put a beat down and I'd play the bass and that would go into the women
We'd now have a bass and drum thing and then we'd put some echo on that then leave that and then
I just dash out some lyrics, you know, whatever we've felt about felt like writing about that day whether it was aliens or nuclear bombs
Which we've got recurring themes and that's as she need wonderful as he's and
We you know, we just recorded for fun, but something this stuff started to get good
And then I got really good at using the port of studio and the second cassette
By which time lulls now got a girlfriend in bath
So he's going down there a lot and I'm doing these things by myself
A bit alarming that
Anyway, let's find out here should be a drumbeat
Helen Luia
That's a very good basic beat but I need to humanize it so I put a shake on it made a split piece in a kilo jar
Doesn't that sound ginshi then the bass comes in I like playing bass it's my hobby
And there were various people who helped me out with this and that but really it then became me for a couple of albums until Giles Smith joined
But Giles ended up joining me but Giles was actually a very clever boy
Who was doing his PhD at Cambridge on Dr. Johnson
And
He spent half his time at Cambridge
So it's been my fate to always have band members who are busy doing something else Giles once turned up three and a half days late for a session
Round me now, I'm clinging on somehow to the remains of a much better time which is cherished
He was the original independent artist, you know before it was a phrase
And I don't think it was by design. I think it was an necessity
He always felt uncomfortable in a studio in a in a in a traditional studio environment I think
And he was obviously a lot more relaxed with his little 8-track
Tascam, Porter studio thing he would make these records but unlike everybody else
They weren't demos they were the records that you ended up buying you know and that it was brilliant because of that
Loads of character and he did as he always did he did it his way and
It was fantastic and I have always really loved recording and when when the Porter studio came out
I just thought that's it. I am going to I want to make
Basically revolver in a garden shed
That's what I wanted to do and the whole cleanness of Venus started from that
I know you didn't turn up to see me re-stringing again so I could have been the beer and the
Doe pice up others but
You know I don't know how these things happen but unlike other bands you know with a strict engineer saying oh we better take that old nonsense off
We just used to leave it on there. I am really am I oh that'll do let's fuck off to the pub
That'll do see where it sounds out and we're after we've had a drink and it sounds all right it goes out, okay
That was
My whole attitude it wasn't some great big artistic endeavor or something like there's no magic in it
I was just a sloppy English bastard. I wasn't going anywhere no one gave a fuck
Oh
Just a typical day
I'm not been in here. I think
I'm a track in salesman
I'm going to eat tomorrow, rip
It's a beautiful summer tree to fall in love with the ice and she
up the bottom of the country
And when it's back, it's what you've done but now it takes it's never a
Which means that someone has to face the need
Well, we kind of knew about each other because we were both in sort of local bands around sort of Essex
And I'd spoken to him a few times but I really got to know him when
He asked me to play with the cleaners from Venus
When they finally got signed to a proper record label rather than doing his DIY cassettes
And you know he thought I'll get someone who knows how to play bass to do it rather than himself
Could he just make the racket when he does it
Meeting Martin was
Some just a beautiful moment. I was at the women's home
Spring I think was sunny spring kind of day
I was sitting by the key where the pub is the ship and this guy turns up
Oh with you know
Hey man kind of thing with her
Captain's hat on that was Martin
He had heard about me just because I was playing around
In the sort of pub circuit whatever the gig site could find at the time
He said oh yeah, you couldn't run so something
So you know this room I'm famous you know, I'm going like fucking out
Martin knew and he was probably the one with the first
musician weirdos I met in UK, England
And we did some dates with played in Germany, France
Few in London
like Ding Walls or places like that and then moved on
and did the next album and a term and country
Played on that we did some more gigs
And then I think
Martin got a bit fed up with the record label for some reason
Decided he didn't want to do the cleaners anymore
And so I thought well I'm not doing it if he's not doing it
At the time I think he was very struggling
As an artist it's it's it's very very difficult to make a living
And it was at the time he was
Highly stressed I think just to find
His place in in the industry
We all do but at the time I think he was as a as a bound leader as an artist I think it was
very confused and struggling you know and we all were but I think the pressure was definitely on him
So I think I
Also did another tour which Martin couldn't
Sing we had higher someone else to do a tour
I do remember playing someone in Germany. It's always Martin
You know these people shouting now always Martin. No, we just understandable that that happened it was a
Contractual thing maybe had to do
It's it's Martin
I think it was very confused
All I wanted to do was be in the studio and make records I've become and at one point I ran out of the story and they
They were saying I was like Brian Worstner. It's right a letter of apology to the German record company for not going on sir
Stay just trying to get out
Yeah, and then to basically admitting to my madness
Which was um
Which wasn't fun, but it got me out you know the band were furious
Because the band had been got together for me and they wanted to go out and play rock stars and I didn't
And the whole thing
It's ever since there's just been this standoff
between me and
A record company or a manager saying I'm not going on till it's at white because it will make me mad and as soon as I get on to
There's a bottle in my hand and I'm usually tipping it over my head and shouting shouting it traffic
Actually finally at realizing that I was at budget taking the test
Yeah, and it's took
It's taken decades for me to discover why I'm like that
And women have left me
Things like what's wrong with you and people used to hit me and I'm like my dad and people say I used to be in that
No, no, no, I'm not it's just you know, and I didn't know
I don't feel
Victimized or anything all like I ought to sue somebody for ruining my life for having issues
But I can now understand why these things happen and what I'm actually like doing is
Writing poems and writing songs and recording songs and occasionally and then talking a lot
Impubs and cafes
It's interesting looking inside the minds
um
Of mind just at the times the you know the the little victories and the crashing defeats
Which all feed back into the music
You know
Down the foggy streets to a sea port
You knew
Go the ghosts
Of the wires and all those
Pay much
One night
In a pale blue yellow light
Where the mist wraps them up where it smells
At the store where you last told
Is they in that room
They just stay as they once used to be
Maybe Martin's like Van Gogh and people like that, you know, you'll only be really
understood and appreciated when he's dead
I got this one gig
working on
A captain sensible album on the day one of the studio
We sort of sat around and you know, we had to
Captain there and we said all right captain
What you got play us your songs for the new album only when
Well, I've only got one really
So we're like oh, okay
And
Play us the one you've got and he played the one you got and it was pretty good song
But that's all we had so the producer says to me. Do you know any song writers?
I don't know yeah, I do actually also I called Martin that night
We hadn't spoke for years at that point and I said I'm working with captain and
Captain sensible and he desperately needs some writing. Do you want to come down to sorry and
and and be his co-writer and
It was almost like I put the phone down and Martin was at the door, you know
But he he turned up in true Martin style. He got his push bike put it on the train came down to sorry
or horse and railway station and
Got off the train and rode to the studio and so he turned up at this beautiful place on his push bike
And of course
Started to write with captain and come out with some fantastic stuff
And and those two I think I still friends now they just clicked, you know, they really hid it off they had the same
quirky eccentric outlook and
And approach to music and they just really you know clicked
So that was quite a challenge he was the last bit of my education because he was a fussy bugger captain
He wouldn't take something second rate he even that very
Very high expectations quite high maintenance, but he also knew when he was pushing me
So he'd he'd give me a beer and say come on, let's go out to the pub. So a rattling good bloke
So the cleanest stock saw about 1988 and there was a period where me and Nelson
We'd like to join new model army partly as a result
um
Decided we'd we'd make a record and captain and a good old Annie McQueen who formed a little record label
Uh heard the staff and said this is great and
Annie McQueen said I don't suppose there's too much chance for you touring this and I said bye bye. It's cool
So when we moved on
uh formed the brotherhood of lizards and did a little demo cassette back to cassettes
We thought that was all it was going to do or all that was going to happen really um
We went out busking I had me little mandarin
Which I painted a lizard. Oh, it's this here. I can't believe it. It's actually there. It's still there look. Just the lizard I painted on that
mandarin
That's the one I used with brotherhood it is as long with my base had a drum machine and stuff
uh
The twisting trees in the station beyond the single prices out
When the wind blows hard on the market day
market day
You read it there in the trade with dyes that there's something going wrong
Where the wise on market day
market day
Hello, hello
Too high too high
I told you so
Goodbye, goodbye
So they sell in novels and wedding rings where the creaking sign of king edgy swings on market day
market day
oh
Where's breakfast? I'm absolutely hanged more of him
I'm wilting I'm doing wilting we had breakfast that's at about nine o'clock breakfast is very important to us in the
I think you have to have a really good breakfast and it's also a forum for a debate sometimes violent discussion
This is what vegetarians eat folks
No meat
No B.S.C. or both my spongy forming
Kepler paffes we know it in the trade
We've got to set off the knowledge at one thirty, right?
And we've got to be there at seven thirty
It's about forty miles
Yeah, I guess six hours
We have a jake miles an hour usually
Because we keep stopping to pick her about the map you say yeah
But at least it's raining and it'll be headwind because he always wants to do really straight reactionary things like look at the map
And I just want to kind of heal it by the legos
What I do with these beans we should get some extra
Push
What do you mean?
We're going to know it so we can play a gig at the university and to promote our record
Right and also to prove that people can
Do rock gigs on bicycles
I recognize that great thank you very much
But it's nice to stay in the places like there's supposed to hotels or
Or sort of outhouses along the road
It's cheaper
Ready then?
Mind the puddle
It could have been a show
So think of her when you wake up on the floor
And your back is feeling so
It could have been a show
Right these these idiots from Essex right are going to be turning up on their bikes
We're going to talk to them do some filming of them
Warbling around on their bikes and then playing a guitar perfect
Anyway, so we did so around the time the brother who's at Liz's album
We did an interview and
I'm never known I mean it was great because he's so he was so engaging but also so
brutally honest and so
I was like he'd back about the whole thing
I mean I'd wanted to work for the music papers since I was 12 13 years old
I couldn't see anything else more exciting than being in the music industry
And it was Martin there
I've never seen a man less in fraud by the music industry
I mean less beguiled unbeguiled by the music industry
That's what he that's that's how he came across
I don't even know if unbeguiled is a word but if it is
Martin right a song called unbeguiled by the music industry and that
That will that will do you they'll end up being the hit
But we did this interview and
brilliantly of course you know might have we talked about the music and just at one point
He just went
You see I'd rather be a gardener
than be a pop star
In a country rich town
I have been to a city
Like it's later now
Like it's been the other day
For the religion
So I was in a bit of a sulk
Everything had collapsed around my ears
Suddenly now that gone I didn't have a band
And I couldn't get arrested
I just thought this all must be worth something
I've been on television for the last three months
I've had all this but no
Nobody wanted to touch me with a barge part
I was just some dick
So I thought so I covered this piano over
I
Put my guitars away
I sold my porcelain and I just thought sod it
I'll just be a gardener then shy
Jerusalem artichokes are sturdy vigorous plants
Easily holding their own when they're forced to compete with trees and shrubs
But even so Martin likes to encourage them with his special cocktail
And what I use is it is nettles soup as well to feed them
What do you mean by nettles?
Well I get a whole lot of old stinging nettles and bung them in a bucket
Preferably with some rainwater
And give them a stir for about 10 days until it's in
It really smells quite foul
But you can either filter it and use it as a folio feed
Or you can put it around the roots because they love that
It's full of nitrogen because nettles are very nitrogen-gruiting
And if you really want to give them a good feed
You get horses doobries in a bag
And spend that on a stick over the bucket
I was miserable as sin for about the first week
And suddenly having cast off all this burden
It's like light came into my life
Not this is what I should be doing
Pruning trees and looking after the land
It's what I'm good at
And London can just, you know, fuck off
You know, the whole, all that pretence, that showbiz shit
What was I thinking of?
Then sometime in September the phone rings
And I'm on it because it's been rained off
And it's someone in London, it's Radio One
And it's Mike Reed reading out my poem
I Hank Marvin on the Steve Wright show
I Hank Marvin's
We all did
We cricket bats in front of a mirror
In our bedrooms, after school
I Hank Marvin, quite regularly
My mother nearly caught me
What were you doing? Nothing, mum
And I became a poet very, very quickly
Within about six months
I'm on Radio Four
The independent of taking me on semi-regular
And I've gone from again nothing straight up to being
Suddenly, instantly well-known pot poet
And very shortly after that
I met John Cooper Clark
In Goldchester
And became sort of very good mates with him
And doing gigs with him as well
And it seemed like from a year
I suddenly was, you know, everybody's favorite on Radio Two
And on Radio One
And I thought, you know, what the hell's happening here
You know, it's like
Whatever the supreme being was
It ripped the guitar in my hand, giving me a tight row
And so you get on with that, I see you all right
And it did
I'm not sure if it's something else
Shanked from the shovel out at the rhythm of the rake
The garden of Eden without the snake
Who did the business for fuck's sake?
Ma'in Nul
Welcome back
Explan Rocker Martin Newell
Now describes himself as a pot poet
I went down to Wivenhoe in ethics to meet him quite a while ago
And he was an absolute riot
And Marie Hughes had the same experience
But more recently
She went down to talk to him about his newly published memoirs
The Little Ziggy
And got rather distracted along the way
When things go wrong with your CD
The vinyl record called juice to be
Called juice to be
With all that jumping up and down
At least the vinyl catches you fit
You've kept you fit
You've kept you fit
Unless you fix the light white
Ah, with first a scene or two baby
You describe yourself as a pot poet
Yeah
Because I want you to be popular as opposed to obscure
This you've seen as a crime
in some sections of the literature business. In fact, I was quoted as somebody said,
ah, but what is the poetry, I didn't know. I said, it's a very poorly paid branch of
the entertainment industry, which I was so horrified by, I was quoted on it. This is an
ideal not to be stripping tools, but I think you should be popular. I think pictures should
be off something and pot songs should have tunes and films should have happy endings. Call
me a Phyllis time, but it works for me.
We've published probably eight or nine books now, and I think it's hard to make a living as an artist,
but it's even harder to make a living as a poet, and by combining our two skills, I can illustrate
the poetry, or I don't like to use the word illustrate, I'd rather say a company, a company
is poetry. It's just great fun to collaborate, and within the small village we've got all these
talented people, and to work together, it just breaks a monotony of working on your own all the
time. I mean, here's genuinely the power of rural Essex, I think. I mean, more poets than you might
imagine, they're nation poets, all they have local roots, something like Philip Larkin was a nation
poet, or despite all his sort of cynical image, he was equally capable of describing the
natural world around him, that's what most of us. He's like, the uncle I never asked for, but I'm very
glad I have, all my poetry dad, he likes to come sub my poetry dad, and he's like my poetry dad,
you know, I have to play my visit at Christmas, and because then the reason he's maybe underrated is
because he doesn't take part in the poetry scene, doesn't care, I think give a fuck about
those cunts in London, he's not going out to London, he hates it, right? He won't go, I keep saying
Martin, you know, you could fill in an arts council application, I give you money to, oh fuck
I don't fucking do that, you know, he won't do any of that stuff, he's entirely his own man,
and he bought his house, right, where he lives, he bought his house with poetry money, he earned all
that money doing poetry, writing three poems a week in national newspapers, right? You know,
the words are John Cooper Clarke, they can't knock success, how can you, you can't knock it,
you know, and that's what Martin's got, he isn't playing anyone's game, he's just written poems in
their beauty, and they touch the hearts of anyone. Beard, bike out, Alex, Victor, all the bees I'd need to know,
leaning from my bedroom window, gazing out at Luton Glow, five miles north, the lights of Luton
hanging in the frosty air might be seen from Harpendon when Harp the town was working there,
sodium lit, the winter skylight over bowers heath below, what's that light I asked my mother,
back my boy is Luton Glow. Two years after that, less, there's a phone call, and it's Andy
Partridge from XTC, who wants my second book, and then I made another record company guy and he
said, look, I think you should do an album and Andy Partridge should produce it, and that became
the greatest living Englishman, which by any terms is regarded as a good album, I don't think
all the British reviewers thought so, but the Yanks certainly did, and back into rock and roll,
I drifted for a bit, but I never let go of Partridge because I didn't trust rock and roll, you know.
I think the greatest living Englishman is the pinnacle of his creativity, and Andy Partridge is,
you know, there's another pretty crazy guy who's given him a unique production.
I first became aware of Martin, I would say in the early 90s, through his a poetry book,
Andy Partridge would ring me up, and he'd say, have a listen to this, I hang Marvin, and he'd read
this poem over, I was in stitches, and he'd say, so where did you get this then? He'd say, was his
fellow Martin Ewell, he sent me this, I assumed he'd been sent these books of poetry by Martin
himself, he was a big XTC fan, and it turned out later, you know, that he was a songwriter as well,
and I think Andy had just set up a recording studio in his garden, in a shed in his garden,
and he'd been equipped with an ADAT digital recorder, one of the first eight track digital recorders,
so Andy was, of course, gung-ho to try out this new device, and coincidentally, Martin came to him
with these demos and said, I want, I'd love you to produce an album, can we work together? So Andy was,
yeah, let's do it, so it was a kind of experiment on two sides, Martin working with Andy to make a record,
and Andy experimenting with his new studio stuff, and it kind of worked, it was, as you know, produced a
great record.
Here she comes, here she comes, right now.
And so your heart turns upside down, and then you lose your precious girl.
This would have been 1994, the summer of 1994, sometime after the album had been released,
and because the songs were so great, it was a joy to learn how to play them, and then we had
other musicians joined up, like Captain Sensible, I've never met before, it was a great bloke,
a good character. It was a fun team, we had Peter Nielsen on bass and Mandolin,
and a guy called Gary Dreadful, who was, I think, Captain Sensible's drummer at the time,
so we all piled into a plane and headed off to Japan, could you believe it? That's what happened.
He's a genius, I think, he really is. He's got the same thing that John Unnan had,
which is he can take apparently crap material and make gold out of it. You know, some of his
songs have got very simple chords, some of them are more complex, but he's just wonderful.
He's been putting up lately on Facebook, he puts track of the week and that sort of thing,
and he puts up, he put up, well, I can't wish song it was, he put up one song,
that I only heard once when he played it as a demo on one of those tours, and I could remember the melody,
the lyrics, everything, from just hearing it once, 25 years ago, and that shows you what a great song
went into years, you know, he really is. So, we learned these jazzy songs I wrote in the end of
Rotemann's Sinatra's Ballad called Grenadine and Blue, which everybody liked. So, this became a
flagship song, which you might be able to play. It's a song, you know, it's grown-up songs because by
now I did 40 something and I'm thinking, well, I've got to, you know, write grown-up songs, I can't
go on writing songs about, I've just met a girl and you've stolen her from me and I'm really cross
about it, so now I'm going off to take some drugs, kind of song. I've got to write something that's a bit
kind of, I'm sorry, I regret the fact that I said those things to you and I've tried to stop drinking
and I can't, but I still love you, maybe in a year, I feel better about all this, which is much
more grown-up, isn't it? So, I wrote Grenadine and Blue and he goes something like this.
There had been anything to say, but what have slipped away on the smoky day of the blue disember,
one before I leave, maybe, well, just another drop. No, I promised I would stop
he's a poet first and foremost, I think, and then I think he puts the chords, but the marriage
between the poetry and the songs, so just, it's just lovely, really lovely. I did a gig with him recently
and he suddenly started playing all these jazz songs on the piano. I mean, I'd never even heard of him
playing the piano before. I said to him, I should learn that. He said, oh, I just listened to a few
records and then I started just kind of playing it. I thought this man's genius. I teach a bit of jazz
now again. I couldn't even play what he was playing. It was brilliant. It was all down the bottom
end with little improvisations.
I remember playing and I think the Hamburg gig, Martin did a solo piece. I was sitting by the
drummer kid just watching him sing and getting goosebumps just how amazing it was. You treasure that
moment. Don't you've been a player. That's why you live for the paycheck. You just
meet some weird people and enjoy the experiences. That's quite something, the fact that
records, I know, I've got a lot of records which were released in the 80s and 90s which I've
probably never listened to again and here's music from the past 30 years which
hasn't dated in its own way because it was his own thing so it's out of place at the time
and it's still probably out of place now but it's still new and it's still fresh and it still works
and more people are finding it. I think that's the best testimonial probably Martin can have.
I was just tired
and you had the right to call me a liar.
In 2011 I was making a solo record in Nashville and we finish every day at about five o'clock
and I was left two weeks and most nights I drive to Madison, Tennessee to see our
Stephen Moore. So we would go there and he would drink wine and I would buy dinner which would be
pizza and we'd go through his tapes and talk about music and we talked about everyone
and his love of Martin Ewell as well.
Yeah, we were pen pals early on I guess early 80s from the UK to me in New Jersey
and we just exchanged letters and tapes. I think it was obvious we had a mutual
association society going on but it never got very much more serious than that
but sure I worshiped him kind of and he
reciprocated. We were underground do it yourself and low five didn't enter into it. That's the
critics speaking but I'm not sure if we were influential on each other we sort of came
at the same time and our aesthetics of fucking the system matched perfectly but I don't know why
and I also proudly recorded a cover and filmed it the session at a friend's house of his great song
I wasn't pranking I was just tired
so yes the kids in America were playing the cassettes in their second hand cars and you know all
this time there was a growing interest in the old cleaners from Venus albums which I really could
not understand why are they so interested in this stuff and round about this time was when I first
got approached by Mike sniper which I thought was not exactly a joke but I was getting a bit fed
up with people saying I would like to release some of your own records I was thinking I'm a grown-up
now why would you want these things? I've got new stuff as well if you're interested in that let's
forget about the old stuff for a bit and I couldn't sort the way out from the chaff so I said no
so in the end I just said no I thought it was pushy and I said no then there was another attempt I thought
this guy's not going away is he so I said no and we got to about a third time he said well I really
want to release these cleaners from Venus and I think I just write about what bits of fucking off do you
not understand you know and I thought well that'll do it and it did it went completely sun I
thought well that's that I had one point I gave up I did I you know at some point it just becomes a
matter of I don't want to put this guy through hell and like keep on cajoling him into trying to do
something he doesn't want to do at some point you have to even though you're even though you're
convinced it's in this person's best interest that you're but you can't force that on someone
and then you just start fine and then Ryan Frost and you currently works at Matador at the time she
worked at capture tracks and without my knowing she sent an email to him that was really well written
really beautifully written it kind of brought him back I'm not as eloquent I guess as she is
and then I was lying in bed up there the only usual morning sort of mood look at the thing I think
I've got a load of oxide up there gradually rusting away in plastic bags
and what's the worst thing it could be happening that I don't get any money what's the best
thing I could have I could turn them into beer vouchers I just wanted the catalog to be taken care of
almost like a custodial a custodial archival kind of thing like we want to get it all together master it
before all these tapes disappear we want to master it as good as we can more and I need you to go
up into your attic and find whatever you can find which was not much if you look at the visual
document we don't have that much you know so we've got everything we possibly could just so that
has some kind of a permanence you can't polish a turd they say but you can roll it in glitter
somehow they cleaned it up but there were people who actually wanted this thing I thought
well am I to argue with popularity in the end and then there was other tapes now we're getting
better and I began to listen and reassess my old stuff as I digitized it using a porter studio
and a fairly good cassette player I've got and I thought actually some of the stuff was pretty good how
old was I 20 something so capture tracks released it and it was popular and then they sent me some money
and I thought well that's good then
and it is kind of like it's like a bit of like a race where it's like oh no I'm gonna get that one
I'm gonna get that reissue yeah so Mike got it and did a great job at the boxes and it's like
it's cool I think a lot of a lot of my contemporaries and like people that I know
have been really inspired by cleaners from Venus probably you know for the same reasons of like
this songwriting being really good and just aesthetically it's it has aligned up with I think a lot of
contemporary independent music how good anyone have for seeing that you know it's just kind of one
of these like round robbing things where it just eventually it's just his music made so much sense to
so many people yeah like years later
as usual when I hear mine's music mainly because the writing is still strong
it still sounds like he's inspired to do it and he's kept hold of that all this time where
other even the greats the Stevie Wonder's the Paul Simons the Stings the the Beatles even
they reach a point where they've got no more juice left it seems you know and they still go through
the process but the spark isn't there anymore but that's not happened to mine and I've done a
wary you know gets that from but he still got that inspiration I don't know how he does it I'm going
to ask him but but another thing that knocks me out about his work still is that it still sounds
like he records in his kitchen and well clearly if it's not the kitchen it's the room next door
I'm going to wait
I'm waiting to wait
I'm going to wait and try to get out of here
there's no time to stay
there's this in his sixties
and there's nothing to lose
I jump in the room
it's saying it moves
I'm sorry sorry
forget this chunk y'all
take it away
if you're bad my way
it's a changing world
I can tell you one thing
time is wasted
time is waiting
right now it's in my way
I remember my train as we did the five-year anniversary for the label I guess I think it's 10
years now so about five years ago yeah and he really wanted to get Martin over and I remember that
where Martin was like I'm not fucking I'm not flying in New York like you fuck off you know
so I said I'm not doing a tour because as I've said many times before I don't want to be one of
these kind of terrible old bison lumbering amnesically around the stage you know and I don't think a
lot of these old guys lumbering around the stage is now
realise how terrible they look and I think the audience if they're the same age look even worse you know
a bunch of sort of elderly people kind of shaking uncertainly you know with their sort of
heart pills and all the rest of it and some of the younger than me
I just don't think it's something that I think it's something you should be enjoyed privately
like so and other things that we we still do when we're older but really don't want to be filmed
doing but I can be as young as I like in the studio so so that's what I do I mean I make nice
songs for people to listen to that's classic cleaners called combination of all you think you have
an auto nightmare you know it's a boy playing children in the woods
some silver or some mourning remember days like these as horses seen through trees
and in forgotten orchards the ochre of the sun and echo of a gum a gale bends the birches the
elders crick and groan the moon is smashed to pieces in the waters of the cone as autumn drags you home
the dead are reacquainted with the living they have known they're half-remembered faces in flowers
muscle stone ashes earth or bone and if I die in early autumn light a fire boy in the woods build
it well and crack a bottle share that's all my worldly goods and on some silver mourning remember days
like these as horses seen through trees thank you
you
and in that great tradition of English lyrical poetry you're exemplified by the likes of A.E.
houseman Sir John Benjamin and more recently Ray Davis of the Kings fame all still getting it
I've always been fascinated by artists who operate on the outskirts of any industry possibly
because I've had to make the move into sell out town a few times and found that it's not all that's
cracked up to be but Martin is one of those people who you know by sheer doggy determination
bloody mindedness and you know a lot of hard graft of carved out a career without needing to
compromise you know now I'm as free as the times let me be no one's the governor apart from me
that's him he's no different than any other famous musician you know there's no difference he's up
there without a doubt you know with Brian Wilson and and McCartney it's just a different way
of looking at things the most exciting part about discovering cleaners from Venus was just that there
is a you know there is a huge body of work and just discovering an artist that has this like
whole world is just like the most exciting thing you know it's it's like when you
find out that one of your favorite artists that your your friend has heard it and it's just like
I wish I was you like the arrangements are so clever the songs are so clever
and you can tell he's not really fussing over the recording too much
which is really cool you know it's like the songs are these absolutely like brilliant brilliant
songs and it seems like the idea is more to just get them out and get it over with so you can move
on to the next one instead of fussing over the you know this one song for ages a few years ago when
I was with my band in England and we had played in the sort of eastern area of like around cold
chester and we had stayed at somebody's house as we often stay at people's houses in this area
with an hoe and we happened to have to wake up really early the next morning for a drive to wherever
we were going the next day it was it's hard to find a long drive in England but I think we had to get
to cornwall on the other end of the country so we we had to wake up really early and we were loading
the car and I'm talking to the guy who's house we stayed at and somehow we start talking about
the cleaners from Venus and he was like Martin Nua lives in this town and uh you know at this point
it's like 7 30 a.m. right and we're like loading up to hit the road and he's like and he always buys his
like morning newspaper at this magazine store like right on the street I you'll find him there he's
he's like you'll find I was like what Martin Nua is going to be like right there you know and um
there he was so I got his autograph you know and there's like newspaper store at what to me was like
a very early hour
that'll do it man