{"id":3270,"date":"2019-11-28T15:43:52","date_gmt":"2019-11-28T15:43:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shindig-magazine.com\/?p=3270"},"modified":"2019-11-28T16:19:35","modified_gmt":"2019-11-28T16:19:35","slug":"rip-clive-james-musical-partner-pete-atkin-remembers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shindig-magazine.com\/?p=3270","title":{"rendered":"RIP Clive James… musical partner Pete Atkin remembers"},"content":{"rendered":"
Back in 2009, we\u00a0interviewed PETE ATKIN on the back of the CD reissues of the albums he made in the early \u201970s. The sadly deceased CLIVE JAMES, who\u00a0subsequently became a well-known and much-loved face on British TV, penned the lyrics. Here Atkin remembers making those records\u00a0with his dear friend. RIP Clive<\/strong><\/div>\n
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Shindig!<\/strong><\/em>:\u00a0In the early ’70s you were never really uncool. You wore borderline hippy attire with lots of denim, wacky jumpers, stack heels and had a gypsyish demeanour… at least judging\u00a0from the photographs. Led Zep etc may have had long hair and looked wild, but your “geography teacher” look probably did not muster for “cool” with the teenagers back then. And I guess that really was not something you were aiming for. However at the tail end of the last century with Jarvis Cocker types giving the ’70s style a new found fashion your dress\/appearance attitude now\u00a0looks very cool.<\/p>\n

Pete Atkin:\u00a0<\/b>I think I always felt I was uncool, or at least I never felt that I was actually cool \u2013 a subtle but important distinction, if such distinctions can ever be said to be important.\u00a0 In practice “trendy” or “untrendy” is probably the distinction we would have made at the time, although I guess that\u2019s not really the same thing. \u00a0Maybe the difference is that “trendiness” is something you can aspire to, while “cool” is something you either have or don\u2019t. \u00a0You can certainly be both trendy\u2019 and “uncool”, as many surviving photos of people from the late \u201960s and early \u201970s bear witness.<\/p>\n

Either way, if I was ever going to be thought of as “cool” it was going to have to be via a route other than fashion.\u00a0 As one of the ones who was not naturally sporty at school,\u00a0 I used to hope to ingratiate myself with my peers and avoid being beaten up by the sporty ones by a reputation for “mucking about” and with pop music.\u00a0 (“Pop music” in the early \u201960s was an all-embracing term that had not yet separated off from rock \u2019n\u2019 roll and all the sub-categories which now have their own distinct definitions).<\/p>\n

Even by the time I started recording in 1970 I never felt completely comfortable with the world of fashionable image.\u00a0 I\u2019m sure I wished I was trendy, but I had no idea of how to do anything about it.\u00a0 Don Paul, my producer at Essex Music, made some attempts to trendy me up when they got a release deal for my first recordings.\u00a0 He sent me to a smart hairdressers\u2019 in Beauchamp Place near Harrods who wanted to give me an afro (now there<\/em> would have been some good pics).\u00a0 I persuaded them not to, but since I didn\u2019t have any idea at all of what I did<\/em> want him to do, I ended up with a haircut pretty much exactly the same as I could have got from my usual local joint for a tenth of the pre-decimal price.<\/p>\n

It was Don, too, who lent me the velvet suit for the cover shoot for that first album, Beware Of The Beautiful Stranger <\/em>\u2013 the one with me leaning against the tree with the gypsy caravan in the background and the out-of-focus girl sitting on its step (it\u2019s her hairdresser who was credited on the sleeve, by the way, not mine). \u00a0It was a Mr. Fish suit, which apparently was pretty damn smart. \u00a0Don tells me he still has it. \u00a0It would be fun to think its history might make a fortune for him on Ebay, but I don\u2019t think he\u2019s holding his breath on that.<\/p>\n

So, no, I wasn\u2019t really aiming at anything at all in the way of an image, I\u2019m afraid. \u00a0I certainly wasn\u2019t trying to look like my old geography teacher, which would have been even more bizarre and have consigned me to the uncool bin for ever.\u00a0 Any resemblance to anyone else\u2019s geography teacher is entirely unintentional.<\/p>\n

SD!:<\/strong><\/em> The big question. How did you perceive yourself in 1971? Which musicians did you feel a kinship with, who did you aspire to be like? Was your music beyond fashion? Did you want to be contemporary? I guess, this also has something to do with attire.<\/p>\n

PA:\u00a0<\/strong>Image unquestionably mattered in \u201970, but it didn\u2019t seem to matter quite so much as it does now. \u00a0I think I\u2019d managed to convince myself that if the music was successful, then the image thing wouldn\u2019t matter much at all.\u00a0\u00a0 Such an attitude these days would seem almost laughably irresponsible.\u00a0\u00a0 Of course, it\u2019s always possible that I\u2019m simply raising something I couldn\u2019t help about myself into a principle which I then congratulate myself on practising.<\/p>\n

What I wanted, I suppose, was enough success to allow me to go on making music for a living.\u00a0 And at the start back then\u00a0 that meant writing.\u00a0 I had always enjoyed performing (the years have proved that the show-off gene is dominant and persistent)\u00a0 but the ambition originally was that Clive and I would make a living from writing songs.\u00a0\u00a0 That\u2019s why I started out by approaching publishers rather than record companies.\u00a0 And that\u2019s how it came to be that it was a publisher (Essex Music) who funded the demos that ended up being released commercially as Beware Of The Beautiful Stranger<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Musically, I always assumed (naively, I now realise) that the more original my stuff was, the more likely its success.\u00a0 And more than that, I thought that it would always be a mistake to\u00a0 set out deliberately to imitate the people I admired most.\u00a0 I\u2019d be sure to be caught out.\u00a0 So if I came up with an idea that sounded to me a bit like something else, I\u2019d always change it to avoid the accusation of having nicked it.\u00a0\u00a0 In practice, of course, there\u2019s no way I could ever have sounded like Elvis or the Band or The Mamas & The Papas or Buddy Holly or The Beach Boys or any of the great Motown artists, so I was probably once again trying to make a virtue out of the inevitable, and making myself sound just too<\/em> different for big commercial success.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s possible, I suppose, that if I had indeed tried to make my songs and the recordings more self-consciously contemporary \u2013 trendy at the time \u2013 then they might sound more dated now than they perhaps do. I don\u2019t know.\u00a0 That\u2019s not really for me to say.<\/p>\n

But anyway, no, I wasn\u2019t trying to write or to perform in any particular style.\u00a0 Clive and I have often said that we always wanted to try to incorporate ideas from the whole range of 20th Century popular songs into our stuff \u2013 still do, in fact \u2013 including most especially the great Tin Pan Alley songwriters: Rodgers & Hart, Cole Porter, the Gershwins, Irving Berlin, Noel Coward, Johnny Mercer \u2013 the list goes on. If we have ended up with any distinctiveness, maybe that element is what provides at least a part of it.<\/p>\n

SD!:<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0Having moved to London where did you hang out? Did you embrace a “rock ‘n’ roll style lifestyle”? Where did you go (clubs etc)? What current bands did you enjoy, whether as inspiration or just as entertainment?<\/p>\n

That\u2019s easy: the pub. That was as far as “hanging out” went.\u00a0\u00a0 The “scene” (whatever that was) was always far away.\u00a0 Whenever I happened to find myself in the context of any manifestation of the “scene”, I would quickly be wishing I was somewhere else, and put my best efforts into removing myself to that somewhere else as soon as possible.\u00a0\u00a0 So no, I was about as un-rock-and-roll as you could get.<\/p>\n

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SD!:<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0The live feel of the recording and production is sheer class… the session players are excellent and there is a groove throughout. I can hear similarities to Nick Drake and American artists like Love and Tim Buckley… was this something you were aiming for?<\/p>\n

PA:<\/strong>\u00a0Nick Drake I knew about, mainly thanks to my younger brother, but I was never into him as deeply as he was. Love and Tim Buckley I was scarcely aware of at all, I\u2019m afraid. The very early Joni Mitchell impressed us, but there were several good reasons why she didn\u2019t constitute a role model for either of us.<\/p>\n

However, I\u2019m sure there is always a kind of stylistic osmosis in any era, something that somehow permeates everything that everyone\u2019s doing at a given time. I suppose that\u2019s how it\u2019s possible to tell from the playing roughly when any recording was made.<\/p>\n

The “liveness” of the recording of my \u201970s albums was partly preference on my part, but mainly practicality \u2013 financial\u00a0 practicality.\u00a0\u00a0 There simply wasn\u2019t the budget for the kind of studio time which might allow me to try to build up a complex created sound in the way the Beatles had pioneered.\u00a0 I might have enjoyed that, but apart from a bit of judicious over-dubbing now and then, it was a non-starter.\u00a0 And besides, I did like the \u2018live\u2019 feel \u2013 still do..<\/p>\n

On Driving Through Mythical America<\/em> it really was live, though.\u00a0 Those tracks with brass on were recorded absolutely live, as you hear them, rhythm, brass, vocals and all.\u00a0 What you hear is what happened.\u00a0\u00a0 It\u2019s not really ideal from a sound balancing point of view but, as I say, it was a matter of budgets.<\/p>\n

SD!<\/i>:<\/strong>\u00a0 What are your favourite songs on the LP and why!<\/p>\n

PA:\u00a0<\/strong>I never listen to my own stuff for pleasure \u2013 does anyone? \u2013 so there are long gaps between listenings for me, and that means that when I do I\u2019m usually surprised by something or other, something I\u2019d forgotten about, often a tiny detail, small nuggets of pleasure amongst the cringing embarrassment of wishing I\u2019d done things differently, done that vocal one more time, relaxed on that tempo a bit more, taken that key down a couple of semitones, added a bit of this or that, taken a bit of this or that away.<\/p>\n

But since I was keen to include all of these songs on the album \u2013 and we always had far more songs on the possibles pile than we could fit in\u00a0 \u2013 I suppose they are all favourites in a way.\u00a0 There are some of them I\u2019ve continued to perform many times over the years since, so they\u2019ve kind of carried on with a life of their own, and with hindsight I perhaps feel most fondly towards some of the ones I\u2019ve performed much less often, and some of the ones which have attracted less attention generally. ‘\u00a0The Pearl-Driller’, maybe, or ‘Lady Of A Day’. \u00a0But that\u2019s not because I think they\u2019re somehow better than the others. \u00a0Nanci Griffith once said that every album has at least one song on it which ends up never being requested, and that that song ends up being her favourite.<\/p>\n

SD!<\/i>:<\/strong>\u00a0Why do you think Driving Through Mythical America<\/em> gets the most attention now from your ’70s albums?<\/p>\n

PA:<\/strong>, I don\u2019t know \u2013 does it? \u00a0It\u2019s the one which overall sold the least well of all the albums in the \u201970s.\u00a0 It encompasses a very wide range of styles and approaches, so I\u2019m specially glad to know you think it hangs together stylistically.\u00a0 At the time I think I worried that it didn\u2019t. It may be down to the particular songs.\u00a0 Again, that\u2019s probably not for me to say \u2013 not because I don\u2019t want to, just because I don\u2019t know how.<\/p>\n

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SD!<\/i>:\u00a0<\/strong>How integral was Clive beyond lyricist? Did he lend you records: rock, jazz or otherwise that helped form the music?<\/p>\n

PA:\u00a0<\/strong>Well, for a start, Clive\u2019s influence on me simply as lyricist went beyond straightforwardly providing the words.\u00a0 Lyrics as original and effective as his were bound to have an effect in themselves on the music I was writing, if only because the ideas they were trying to communicate were often not the usual kind of thing.\u00a0 He was familiar of course with the classic Tin Pan Alley songs and with \u201960s stuff, but generally it was more likely that I\u2019d be introducing him to interesting new stuff than the other way around.<\/p>\n

SD!<\/i>:<\/strong>\u00a0Did the wonderful musicians (Chris Spedding etc)\u00a0have strict rules to follow or were they free to let rip when needed?<\/p>\n

PA:\u00a0<\/strong>I\u2019m afraid I don\u2019t think I ever gave them the opportunity exactly to “let rip”, but the real answer to that is somewhere down the middle. The time constraints in the studio meant that it\u00a0 just wasn\u2019t possible to spend time teaching the songs to the musicians. It wasn\u2019t necessary anyway, because they were all such great musicians, and all so good at sightreading, that having provided them with a reasonably detailed written-out part, once I\u2019d set the tempo they\u2019d just be able to play it pretty much straight off \u2013 that includes the drummers, of course. Some of the finished tracks are literally just the second or even the first time they\u2019d played the whole song through. So I\u2019d always let them know that the written part wasn\u2019t necessarily meant to be stuck to rigidly, it was more a substitute for having to teach them the song, a way of quickly giving them an idea of the kind<\/em> of thing I wanted them to play.<\/p>\n

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The Masters Of The Revels<\/p>\n

Shindig!<\/em> salutes the unique songwriting skills of Pete Atkin and Clive James with 11 selections from Pete\u2019s own half century of albums and a few choice interpretations by colleagues and admirers.<\/strong><\/p>\n

‘Girl On The Train’ \u2013 Pete Atkin
\n(from Beware Of The Beautiful Stranger<\/em>, Fontana, 1970)<\/p>\n