Tag Archives: stevemcqueen

Shifty: the new Adam Curtis BBC doc

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Those wanting to understand the mess in which Britain finds itself may get some answers from ‘Shifty’, Adam Curtis’s new BBC documentary series. It’s also a classic bit of 1980s reportage.

A rather po-faced press release announced the launch of the show on iPlayer (it’s also on YouTube) – Curtis has now been ‘moved on’ from terrestrial TV, and has alluded to the ‘freedom’ that streaming platforms give him.

But the new series certainly delivers, not a surprise given his track record of superb, unsettling docs such as ‘The Century Of The Self’, ‘The Mayfair Set’ and ‘HyperNormalisation’. Using long- forgotten/lost BBC footage mainly shot during the 1980s, ‘Shifty’ traces the death of Britain’s role as a technological superpower, showing how the decimation/privatisation of national industries ushered in an uncertain era when dark, long-dormant secrets bubbled up to the surface, and the tabloid press ran riot.

We see how Thatcherism (read monetarism) was based on a false belief – that money always acted predictably. Meanwhile the privatisation of state industries (a policy invented by the Nazis) handed fortunes to private capitalists, a system which the Tory government knew would lead to industrial ’empires’ and the creation of huge private fortunes. They were essentially buying the support of the financial elites, and this has been convulsive.

Re-editing the work of those brilliant, groundbreaking (uncredited) TV directors and technicians who plied their trade at the dawn of the 1980s, Curtis uncovers the ‘real’ decade. There are many striking juxtapositions; the death of a commercial airline pilot after a crash on the Isle of Sheppey uncovers tales of wartime mental distress.

We see what the Falklands Islands looked like just before the 1982 invasion, a National Front rally in Brixton, the birth of video dating in London, dub sound systems in Birmingham, a pop lookalike competition of 1981 with hilarious Midge Ure. Freemasonry is debated openly on national terrestrial TV.

We see Thatcher during down time, pottering in the kitchen, schmoozing with Jimmy Savile, discussing her wardrobe, teenagers dancing to Bee Gees in Belfast and Hawkwind’s ‘Silver Machine’ in Kent, sex pests calling mental-health helplines, abject poverty in Bradford, the first known personal surveillance camera in North Kent, Sus operations in West London, Princess Di opening the Broadwater Farm Estate just six months before the deadly riots, Dodi Fayed interviewed about his father and producing movies such as ‘Chariots Of Fire’, Stephen Hawking as an undergraduate at Cambridge University.

All in all, ‘Shifty’ is a fascinating look at a mostly forgotten Britain and a great companion piece to Simon Reynolds’ ‘Rip It Up’ book and Steve McQueen’s ‘Small Axe’ films. So The Beeb is still doing a few things right but it’s a shame the series wasn’t given a cursory showing on terrestrial TV.

Book Review: Absolute Beginner by Kevin Armstrong

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Most fans of 1980s pop and rock will have come across the name Kevin Armstrong, guitarist with Iggy Pop, Morrissey, Sinead O’Connor, John Lydon, Propaganda, Tin Machine, Prefab Sprout, Thomas Dolby and Paul McCartney, and famously part of David Bowie’s band at Live Aid.

His enjoyable new memoir ‘Absolute Beginner’ is that rare thing – a book by a British session player who has borne witness to massive egos, occasional artistic triumphs and typical music biz disappointments, all the while trying to get a reasonable guitar sound.

But the book is anything but a polite/completist career overview – Armstrong knows where the bodies are buried and doesn’t hold back on salacious details. He’s also blatantly honest about his own perceived musical shortcomings and mental health issues.

Finally the book comes over as something like a cross between Giles Smith’s ‘Lost In Music’ and Guy Pratt’s ‘My Bass And Other Animals’, with just as many laughs as both.

We learn about his misspent youth in the relatively salubrious environs of Orpington, Kent, nurturing his increasing interest in the guitar and music of David Bowie, Yes, Zappa and Roxy Music (and ponders whether Eno’s squealing synths caused him some hearing loss issues when watching Roxy supporting Alice Cooper). There are superb passages about the power of listening to a great album while studying the sleeve and indulging in ‘mild hallucinogens’.

The punk era sees Armstrong squatting in Brixton, hanging out with The Slits and recording with Local Heroes (on Charlie Gillett’s record label) and The Passions. There’s a whole chapter on collaborating with Thomas Dolby, lots on laying down Steve McQueen with Prefab (fronted by the ‘emotionally fragile’ and ‘shy’ Paddy McAloon) and some hilarious stories about playing in Jonathan Ross’s house band for ‘The Last Resort’.

But the real meat and drink of the book is the fabulous section on Live Aid, particularly illuminating the strange realities of the music industry when he returns alone to his tiny West London flat soon after performing for two billion people. There are also fascinating, funny stories about recording ‘Absolute Beginners’ and ‘Dancing In The Street’.

His dealings with Bowie during the Tin Machine era are also as intriguing as you might expect (as is his story about being ‘let go’ before the release of that band’s debut album, also nixing the rumour that Bowie gave up booze a long time before 1989…), as are those with the mercurial McCartney, the superstitious, over-sensitive Morrissey and bizarre O’Connor.

There are many revelations too around touring with Iggy Pop, as well as some refreshingly honest opinions on some of his bandmates (especially – and surprisingly – drummer Gavin Harrison…) and a fascinating detour into joining a choir led by Eno.

But Armstrong saves most of his bile for his late entrée into the world of TV advertising: ‘Blind optimism and over-confidence drew me inexorably into the seedy and frightening world of production music…a world so steeped in bullshit and doublethink that it beggars belief’!

‘Absolute Beginner’ is one of the most enjoyable music memoirs movingtheriver has read over the last few years. Just when you think you know where it’s going, it delivers yet another zinger. It’s an absolute must for any fans of Bowie, Iggy, Dolby or Prefab, while offering the casual 1980s and 1990s music fan loads of tasty morsels.

1981: Uprising & Blood Ah Go Run

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40 years ago, I was a young football-and-music-mad whippersnapper living a relative life of Riley out on the South Coast of England, but my hometown of London was catching hell.

Not that I was particularly aware. For most sections of the media, summer 1981 was all about Prince Charles’ marriage to Lady Di and Ian Botham’s Ashes (his crushing 149 not out at Headingley, 40 years ago this month, was the first time I remember being totally gripped by live cricket).

But of course there was a whole other side to 1981, a world brilliantly evoked by The Specials on their epochal #1 ‘Ghost Town’, and by directors Steve McQueen and James Rogan in their important, sadly still-relevant ‘Uprising’ series of new BBC documentaries.

The gripping but shattering films show how the St Pauls riots in Bristol, New Cross Fire tragedy of January 1981 and policing policies during the Black Peoples Day of Action in March (and throughout the late-1970s and early-80s) sparked uprisings all over the country, from Brixton to Toxteth, 35 years before the formation of Black Lives Matter.

Co-opting footage from the late, groundbreaking London filmmaker Menelik Shabazz’s 1981 film ‘Blood Ah Go Run’ and featuring interviews with most of the survivors of the New Cross fire, plus Linton Kwesi Johnson and various activists, ‘Uprising’ is a vital – at times devastating – piece of social history. And of course it’s a brilliant London film.

It’s also a grave warning to governments about the tragic pitfalls of acquiescing to racists. Don’t miss – ‘Uprising’ is on iPlayer until July 2022 if you’re in the UK.