his eyes, full and enraged like two moons. The smoke from the corner of his mouth slick like Bogart, cool like Bacall the trilby turned down, the moustache and the leer, the raised eyebrow, the flash of the teeth in monochrome endlessly rerun, he is a patchwork of black and white dots, a form twisted...
CINDERELLA UNBOUND As she took the double scotch-on-the-rocks, Diane tried to steady her right hand. The ragged chunks of ice Joe the barman had spooned in from the pineapple cooler rattled around the thick glass. She fumbled for two quid with her left hand. Opening her purse and finding the right change wasn’t too...
Strawberry Fields Forever begins with what sounds like a distorted, distant flute (actually a mellotron) playing an evocative, yearning intro which sets up the melancholic tone of the song. There is a single bass note, and then we hear John’s voice, doctored to sound rather high, emotionally detached, ethereal. The backing is sparse, with...
If only Mummy and Daddy would stop SHOUTING… John stifles the tears that are beginning to well up and counts how many sweeties he has left in his trouser pocket. One humbug, two sherbet lemons, the last bit of rock daddy had bought him yesterday. Everything had been so nice till mummy got here a...
GYPSY BLOOD You must have gypsy blood- The way you sing that song And toss back your hair- The way your body swirls To the pounding throb Of the gypsy drums And the violin… You catch the fiddler’s eye In the candle’s gleam As you take three steps back Into shadowland- As the voices...
Ahab’s leg was ripped away, His manhood ruptured by the rage Of an elemental force of nature, Uncaged Snow-blinded by an icy shadow That slowly terrorised the sky An all embracing whiteness fell Upon his eyes The light of God departed And Ahab stood alone, The sun dropped into the ocean Like a stone Day...
.Sleep is like a temporary death… . “You will perceive that in the breast The germs of many virtues rest, Which, ere they feel a lover’s breath, Lie in a temporary death” Henry Timrod, Two Portraits Workingman’s Blues No. 2 is already the most celebrated, though perhaps the most misunderstood, track on Modern Times....
This is the second extract from my forthcoming book Who Could Ask For More: Reclaiming The Beatles. This extract features what may well be their finest hour, and explores how it focuses on the relationship between Paul and John In 1968 The Beatles, along with the youth culture that they spoke for and symbolised, stood...
andy and marilyn were made for each other: he dressed her, bedecked her in her funeral flowers- he was a weed, she was a doll, in his hands the imprint of her smile, stolen from the mona lisa- across her mouth a smudged, blood-red gash he loved her, he wanted her, so he fed...
The following is an extract from my book Who Could Ask For More: Reclaiming The Beatles. The title is derived from my desire to ‘rescue’ The Beatles from the cultural institutionalism that at times seems to overwhelm the way we see them in a haze of nostalgia for a so-called ‘innocent age’. The book...
