New "Backstage" podcast featuring Clive James and Pete Atkin on their forty-year songwriting partnership
Pete Atkin and Clive James began writing songs together at Cambridge in the mid-60s. In the first half of the 70s they made a series of albums for RCA that were the definition of cult success. That means they didn't pay enough money to feed anyone but nonetheless endeared themselves to a small constituency vocal enough to make sure they weren't entirely forgotten. In the late 70s they pursued individual careers - Atkin as a radio producer, James as TV's licenced jester – but remained in touch.
In this latest podcast from our Backstage series, they talk to David Hepworth about the career they almost had and the digital miracle that brought it all back.Their newest release is called "Clive & Pete - Live In Australia" because that's what it is. This conversation also includes a dilation on the iambic pentameter in popular song, the powerful pull of live performance, the bizarre way the record business operates and the lavatory joke that has sustained James's career for the best part of forty years. You can stream the podcast below or, even better, subscribe directly or via iTunes for free so that future podcasts from our "Backstage" stream wing their way to your desktop.
I could listen...
to Clive James talk for a week solid. A very different Backstage Podcast... I'm not terribly impressed by the music they make, but that's neither here nor there because their recollections were so interesting.
I used to download the podcasts from Divshare
but they seem to be stream only now - why is this (perhaps to do with a iTunes ratings?)
Gal Costa
At 63, Gal Costa is still alive and recording. http://www.galcosta.com.br/
Charlie Gillett included one of her most recent tracks on his 2006 World compilation.
Ohmigod
Holy hell. That is the very worst music I have ever heard I think. The aural equivalent of your dad dancing at a wedding. What were you thinking? The words sounded like a third-form poetry competition entry and the signing sounded like a civil servant auditioning for the X Factor for a bet. Approach with lashings of caution.
I know what you mean
Clive James is one of my favourite writers and has been for 35 years or so, but I saw him in the Seventies reciting those cod Reformation things he used to do and it was pretty painful, to be honest. And I steered well clear of his stuff with Pete Atkin, simply because a few seconds was enough to make it clear that the bloke sang like a sealion.
And I agree, some of the lyric-writing in those samples was strangely klutzy for someone with such a sharp ear for metre and rhythm - back when he was the telly reviewer on the Obbo he frequently complained about modern productions of Shakespeare that failed to bring out the music in the Bard's words.
Mr H might have served us better by just nattering to CJ about The Wire for 45 minutes. I'd definitely be up for that.
I couldn't hear any signing...
..were they using a quill pen? Anyway, made me want to dig out my copies of Clive James' memoirs and re-read.
The reason they didn't make any money
Was Pete Atkin. He'd write very creditable tunes for James's very dense lyrics, set them appositely using the cream of British session men, then sing them in such a dull and earnest way that it took too much getting round for most folks. It didn't help that he looked like a downtrodden History teacher at a failing comprehensive. That said, A King At Nightfall is still one of my favourite records.
The art that lies concealed in artlessness
Thought this piece in the Times about James and Atkin actually put them in context rather well:
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/music/...
Personally I enjoyed the Podcast, and would be happy to hear from more latter day chansonniers (and interpreters of songs)-in particular I'd like to hear an interview with Barb Jungr one of these days-she did a good promotional Podcast for Linn a few months ago that may still be around.
Grateful to that Times piece for alerting me to CJ's writing for Creem-his 1972 piece (http://theband.hiof.no/articles/robbie_robertson_in_the_shadow_of_the_ba...) on Robbie Robertson had me falling out of my chair at this:
"The rock culture's tribute to the Band reached its logical culmination in the Joan Baez hit version of 'The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down'. There was something heroic about the casual violence of her assault on the lyric, which would probably have received more reverential treatment from Lulu.
[...]
We should be able to deduce from this piquant little scene -- if we can't deduce it from larger and often catastrophic events -- that the rock culture is a mass audience and that the individual talent if it wishes to preserve itself, must in part treat acceptance by this mass audience as hostile."
Also liked this:
"My chief reason for trying to dissect such a living thing is not to kill it off, but to begin the work of showing what art may lie concealed in artlessness. In the rock culture as in any other culture, if the artlessness that conceals art goes unappreciated, not only does art tend to be discouraged, but the posturing that conceals artlessness is encouraged, usually to a fatal degree"