I came to the guitar in 1968 at the age of 17. My first teacher was John Pearce through his TV series “Hold Down a Chord”. Pretty soon I was listening to all sorts of players and discovered Paul Simon. I loved that fingerpicking style and especially his recording of Anji. Through the sleeve notes I discovered the name of the real genius behind the tune – Davy Graham.
Regular visits to Bunjies Folk Cellar led to many a night at Les Cousins in Greek Street (“Freaky Greek Street” Stefan Grossman used to call it), and I suppose that’s where my initiation into the world of the acoustic guitar really started. I heard many fine players but to me there was just no one to touch Davy Graham. I think I can be forgiven for not realising the true author of Anji a year or so earlier, because as I left London to take up my further education in Plymouth, I hardly met anyone who had heard of Davy, although many people knew the music through his followers, particularly John Renbourn and Bert Jansch, both of whom were of course better known by the early 1970’s, probably because of Pentangle.
Around this time Davy disappeared from the music scene for a few years, and I next saw his name in the “Melody Maker” in early 1975 advertising a gig at the Troubadour in Old Brompton Road. My higher education had finished and my friend Mike Marsh and I were getting going as a guitar duo. Mike was really an electric player and most pieces consisted of me playing rhythm parts to his lead lines. I told Mike that we just had to go and see Davy and so off we went taking our guitars with us.
What a revelation to see my hero again, and this time armed with a whole new repertoire, including classical pieces, Irish pipe tunes and those marvellous interpretations of O’Carolan, which I had never heard played like this on a guitar before.
We played our floor spot and afterwards Davy spoke to us and was very encouraging of our playing – I remember asking him about Anji – to which he said something like “We don’t talk about that anymore”. I also asked him about “Jenra”, which was a great favourite of mine but I had not been able to work out how to play it. Davy explained his use of DADGAD tuning and by breakfast time the next morning I had worked out the tune! More significantly, Davy invited us to come and play a spot at the Half Moon in Putney at his gig on the following Friday. There were to be several more little support slots.
That’s when I asked him about lessons. Davy agreed and so started my regular visits to the flat just off Portobello Road that Davy shared with his mother who was always so kind to me. At first Mike and I both came along, but I guess he didn’t share my passion for the acoustic guitar and so I continued the lessons alone for about a year.
I recall that the first tune I worked on with Davy was “The Preacher”, a Horace Silver tune of which Davy had a great version. We didn’t spend a lot of time on technique, but rather more on interpretation, and Davy introduced me to some great composers and guitarists, many of whom have become favourites since. Somehow he could sense what direction I was going in and so constantly fed my imagination with new influences. For example he showed me a wonderful version of “Wave” by Antonio Carlos Jobim. I used to take along a notebook and there are several pages in Davy’s handwriting, giving advice on chord structures and listening suggestions.
Davy was determined to avoid creating clones of himself, but he would always encourage anything original. I think he was pleased that I had my own ideas about what I wanted to play. I was teaching myself classical guitar and would occasionally play something for him and ask his opinion and advice, and he liked a little Bach minuet that I used to play. Davy’s response was to introduce me to Timothy Walker, certainly one of the finest classical players in London at the time. I thought “wow” this is the Tim Walker who had also influenced John Renbourn!
Davy didn’t usually play his own tunes during our lessons, but on one occasion he did play me a new composition, saying, “I think this is my best tune to date”. It was Lashtall’s Room”, and I felt very privileged to be among the first people to hear the tune.
During my time in Davy’s company we would just talk about all sorts of things, and I was always impressed by his extensive knowledge of many subjects, and his deep respect for musicians from other genres. I am sure that the playing of musicians as diverse as Yehudi Menuhin, Ravi Shankar, and Cleo Lane all added to the style that became unmistakably Davy Graham.
So why, with such an illustrious teacher and some semblance of talent am I still an amateur? With me it has always been a battle between ability and confidence. Recently somebody remarked that I don’t know how good I am. It seemed a strange thing to say and took some thinking about, but in the end that is precisely it – I just didn’t believe I was good enough.
I saw Davy a few years ago, again at the Troubadour almost 30 years later and I felt honoured that he still remembered me saying, “I recall that you got on rather well with the lessons” and we had a long chat about old times. It is all become a treasured memory now and so the best way that I can thank him since his passing last December is to play some of his music from time to time!
Udo Dölz
Double-click to edit text, or drag to move.
Davy Graham as a teacher by Guitarist Udo Dolz.
Revolutionary Road- a film review by Robert Cook.
The film is based on the book by Richard Yates. Yates is one of the finest realists of post-war American fiction and has recently enjoyed a posthumous renaissance. Realism being equated with honesty, Yates inspires excitement because he exposes the disappointments and hypocrisy of the American dream effortlessly and with a devastatingly sure touch. It is a pity that Britain slavishly follows U.S culture about ten years after it has learned and moved on to something else.
Produced in association with BBC films, Revolutionary Road is a masterpiece with lessons for us all trapped in our everyday existence. Boy meets girl is the opening sequence of this look at normal life in the U.S during the early 1950s. We all know that anything is possible and the pursuit of happiness is high on the list of objectives. ‘ What do you want to do with your life?’ Asks the girl, April (played hauntingly by Kate Winslet). Leonardo deCaprio, as Frank Wheeler produces his famous boyish smile from Titanic days. ‘That would take a long time to say and you’d probably get bored.’ He admits that he is currently a Longshoreman, but moving to a better job in a store.
As we learned through the course of the film, young April got bored easily. The next scene shows them married. April wanted to be an actress, but she wasn’t even any good as an amateur. Frank is also a bit bored, though he has the irritating camaraderie of co male co workers at Knox Business Machines to help wile away the day.
April has gone cold on him and farms out the upbringing of her kids onto neighbours in the pleasant green lawn suburb. In the big city, Frank takes a shine to a young girl form the typing pool. Soon after he sets eyes on the young innocent, he consummates the relationship.
This relieves the boredom of his daily commuting to the firm that his father worked for. He is so careless about his job; he has been re writing publicity material for the Knox 500, telling his co-worker he doesn’t even know what it is. Not surprisingly Head Office and his immediate boss are pleased.
The suburb is oddly called Revolutionary Road and is a step up from the little boxes that American plumbers, electricians and mechanics live in next door. The snooty estate agent woman tells them as much. In a flash back we see her tell the young couple that she has a special house for a special young couple.
Failed actress April needs another stage. She looks at a photo of her husband in army days in Paris, just after the war. He had told her how much he liked it there. On a whim she decides they should move there. She can get a secretary’s job with NATO and he can lounge around until he finds what he really wants to do. Frank agrees.
Their next door neighbour friends pretend to be pleased, but call them immature behind their backs. The male of these so-called friends, Jed, knows exactly what he wants in life. He wants sex with April and in one scene we see him ogling her while she is wearing a tight 1950s dress that shows off her womanly curves. Life is simple for Jed, played by David Harbour.
April has the steamship tickets to Europe and Frank writes a rude and cheeky piece of sales blurb about the Knox 500. He doesn’t care. If they sack him it will save him wasting time and resources on a resignation note. When he goes in to find one of the big bosses wants to see him, he smirks. He thinks he knows what’s coming and plans to tell him and his other boss where to go.
The big boss’s big smile and handshake, along with his manager’s praise puzzles him. Turns out they love what he has written and he is offered a promotion into the big nation-wide team selling the Knox 500 super computer to U.S Business.
Frank is torn. At last he has found a purpose. Meanwhile the estate agent lady pops round to tell them that her son, who was once a brilliant mathematician, is now in the county lunatic asylum. Electric shocks have destroyed the maths. He has weekend leave and she thinks it would help if she and her husband brought him around to have tea with the perfect couple.
If anyone ever watched the BBC ‘Brothers’ series in the early 1970s, they might have wondered what happened to them or thought they had all died. It was quiet a surprise to find Brian Hammond, aka Richard Easton. There he was as the mad man’s father.
If you want to know the details, watch the film. In the manner of ‘One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest’ we soon learn that the mad man isn’t mad. He has just cracked up because his mother didn’t think he was perfect enough. Played brilliantly by David Harbour, this giant is bursting out of his grey suit like the Incredible Hulk. Every time he speaks, his mother tells him to be quiet.
He is supposed to be learning from the perfect couple, not the other way around. Easton watches the tension build, saying nothing wonderfully. They just had to get out into the woods away from that terrible mother, played terrifyingly by Kathy Bates. Once in the woods, the couple reveals their dream to escape from the emptiness of suburbia. Harbour admires, but seems to doubt they’ll ever get away. As with a lot of so called lunatics, he is saner than the people who locked him up.
Frank has a meeting with the big boss and is told to sleep on his decision to leave. A man gets very few big chances in life and your success will be a memorial to your father whom he admits he has never heard of at Knox. Frank now has a purpose and gets his wife pregnant so they can’t afford to go. She buys a vacuum device to perform a DIY abortion. Frank is upset and she holds back. At a dance hall, with their neighbours, the frustrated April gets the chance to give Jed what it took to make him happy. When he says he loves her, she says ‘don’t say that.’
After another visit from the madman and his parents, the tension is too much.
The madman tells the Wheelers a few home truths, in particular that Frank is dick less and that he feels sorry for the kid in April’s belly. Bates ushers her boy away, with Easton following like a puppy dog, before Frank hits him.
Frank confesses his affair, but April doesn’t care because she doesn’t love him. She runs off and Frank gets drunk on whisky. Next morning the house is sun filled and spic and span. Frank is relieved. After the perfect breakfast, April shows an interest in Frank’s work for the first time. He draws a little picture of the Knox 500. Her interest is obviously feigned, but Frank believes what he wants to believe and goes off to work. The kids are being looked after by a friend.
April gets her abortion kit, takes it to the bathroom, and lays towels on the floor. Time passes. She walks down the stairs leaking blood on the carpet. She stands looking at the sun shining over the perfect suburb. More blood is hitting the floor and staining her light coloured skirt. She calls an ambulance. We see Frank and Jed waiting at the hospital. Jed goes for coffee. When he comes back, Frank burst back into the room, distraught. April is dead.
Frank goes to live in the city. Jed and his wife are talking about it to their new perfect neighbours. Jed runs out upset and tells his following wife not to talk about them anymore. We see Frank on a seat, watching his kids in the park, looking heartbroken. Then it’s off to the estate agent’s lounge. She is telling her husband about the new perfect couple who have taken over the Wheeler’s house. As Easton turns down his hearing aid, she tells him that she always knew the Wheelers weren’t quite perfect. The film closes with a close up of Easton drifting off into the bliss of deafness.
The film is incredible. It tells us what a lot of British people don’t want to know. The greatest threat to our society is raised expectations, especially of women and the break up of family life. It is a far bigger threat than El CIADA (this is not a spelling mistake It’s just another story). The film has a lot to teach us. If April had really wanted her husband to find something he wanted to do, then she would have realised, and cared, when he had found it. Unfortunately for everyone, especially the kids, in 1950s U.S.A and noughtie Britain, women decide what a man should enjoy doing. There is not enough give and take.
An Existential World- by Robert Cook
‘Just cos you live in hell doesn’t mean there’s a heaven’ according to a song by a famous writer. I think he is right. I took a trip to the great old university town of Oxford last February. With my female companion, I had been invited to watch Oxford University students perform their production of No Exit, based on a play by Jean Paul Satre, at Worcester College..
Whenever I talk to the man or woman in the street about Satre, they usually look bemused. So what is the point of him, his books and plays. I will endeavour to explain.
I have always been an admirer of Satre, since my own undergraduate days. The essence of his existentialism is all about proving your freedom by doing what you don’t want to do.
I guess Bucks County Council is existentialist because they obviously want to mend roads, but they don’t. That must be why the roads between Charndon and Marsh Gibbon have much in common with the lunar landscape.
In case you wonder why I mentioned that, I drove that way en route to Oxford. Now once in Oxford there was the problem of parking. Oxford City Council wants to be environmentally friendly by cutting down car usage. Now, to have used park n’ ride or public transport to get to Oxford would have meant a two day trip - even though it is only about 25 miles away.
Presumably the government demonstrate their existentialism by not opening the Oxford rail link because they know we want us to leave our cars at home, but force us to do what we don’t want to do by making sure we can’t take the train.
On top of that, we would have been seriously at risk of street crime. We know the police don’t want us to be victims of crime, but if we travel by bus or walk about at night too much it is just going to happen. Ergo, the system is existentialist because it does to us what it doesn’t want to do. It wants us to be happy, but it annoys intensely in so many ways.
So back to my Oxford trip, we just had to drive. When we got into the city there was nowhere to park. There just aren’t enough car parking spaces and the street parking is just for people rich enough to live there that can afford parking permits. Consequently, we drove around for 45 minutes, polluting the great old city streetscape with poisonous fumes.
Eventually we spotted someone leaving a space and made a rush, risking life and limb in a car competition worthy of the British Grand Prix heading for a chicane. Now we know the system doesn’t want us to pollute Oxford’s air space or end up in hospital through road rage, but it makes us do this. Ergo the system is existentialist. New Labour is obviously existentialists because they told us we needed so many things. We voted for them (well I didn’t actually) in hope and then they made sure they didn’t give them to us.
All very Satre, but then they are very much part of my student generation. I remember so many of them saying during student protests, how much they hated the system and were not going to be a part of it. Obviously, they just had to do what they didn’t want to do to prove their freedom - their actions had nothing to do with money, ego or power. They not only joined the system, they took over. But I digress.
At last we had parked. It was some walking distance to Worcester College because we had to park so far away. On the way, we were approached by a down at heel young woman who asked me: ‘Please doesn’t get angry with me, but I wondered if you would buy the ‘Big Issue’ so that I can get some money to get somewhere to sleep at night. I have often wondered why these desperate people don’t offer a more interesting magazine for sale, like the ‘Angling Times’. With a good product and so much effort they would soon be living the high life.
Obviously, I bought six copies because I saw her as someone’s daughter. She rushed ahead, in her tatty clothes and scruffy footwear, asking others the same favour. It was a cold night. All the well-dressed folk she asked just looked embarrassed and avoided her eyes. The young woman was crying, but it made no difference. Clearly this woman was an existentialist because she had made herself homeless because she wanted a home. The good people who ignored her cries for money were existentialist because they wanted to help her, but chose to demonstrate their freedom by ignoring her.
Eventually we got to Worcester College. The porter opened the ancient building’s mighty wooden door. Then with the true deference of his portering class, he pointed the way to the chapel where the young Oxford students were performing their existentialist lines, almost as penned by the great Jean Paul Satre.
Now we come to the point of my original reference to hell. A young man, played with force and sensitivity, entrancingly combined by Emile Halpin was vying with the valet, during his introduction to hell. Halpin played Garcin, journalist and wartime soldier, executed for cowardice. The valet told him the lights were always on and the management had never yet turned them off. It was hot, but if the door to his chamber opened it would get even hotter. Garcin expresses his fear through anger. He picks up what he thinks is a dagger. He asks why it is there in the chamber. The valet disappoints Garcin when told that it is only a paper knife for opening letters. ‘Do we get mail?’ Garcin asks hopefully. He is depressed by the answer. His mood worsens when told that he can’t kill himself or anyone else in hell because everyone there is already dead.
There were two chairs in the room and he could watch his Old World through windows. Blinking was no longer an option. For all eternity he would not sleep or close his eyes. Next to enter was Sophie Duker as Inez. She thinks Garcin is the torturer. When the sylph like and sexual Estelle, played by Roseanna Frascona arrives in the chamber, all hell really breaks loose. The tension and hostility has to be seen to be appreciated. Inez doesn’t like men.
Estelle, who has married an old man for money, taken a lover and killed her baby has obviously got what she deserves. Inez has an answer for everything and one is never sure why she is there. She is a sort of moral referee of the damned.
Added to the, they could watch, from, afar, they’re old friends and lovers lives. Time had no meaning in hell. Garcin, Inez and Estelle watched their old worlds disappear, not in the blinking of an eye - they couldn’t blink- but through a series of rapid snapshots. There was not even night and day with which they could measure their misery. Unlike TS Elliot, Alfred Prufrock, they could not even measure out their evenings, mornings and afternoons, and lives, in coffee spoons. Acted out in the timeless environment of Worcester College’s chapel, it was all very disturbing. I realised that we are a stone’s entire throw away from hell.
Garcin spends much time hiding his eyes and blocking up his ears as the two women do combat. Estelle wants his attention, as well as a mirror. Imez offers to be her mirror, but Estelle needs to see her reflection through a man’s eyes. There is only one problem. Garcin needs to feel exonerated of his cowardice.
The flighty spoiled Estelle will tell him anything to get his hands on her breasts or squeezing her neat little buttocks. Garcin’s agony is not so easily assuaged. In erotic embrace, Estelle and Garcin’s approaching fornication is halted by Imez’s mockery. He beats on the chamber door shouting that he will face anything rather than spend an unsleeping eternity with these women. Garcin notices that it is so much hotter outside the chamber. He also feels drawn to finish his argument with Inez.
Suddenly all passion is spent. Imez tells him that they are bound together for all eternity – ‘Together forever’. Garcin smiles for the first time, uttering the closing line ‘So let’s get on with it.’ That takes me back to my quoted songster. On this earth we spend a lot of time in hell, and for many a worse hell is approaching. ‘Just cos we live in hell doesn’t mean there’s a heaven.’ More often than not we have to do what we don’t want to do, just to stay alive. If we do what we want to do, quite often we die. Where does God fit into all this? Maybe he doesn’t. Maybe he doesn’t exist. Maybe he does. Voltaire may well have been right when he wrote: ‘God is a great comedian, but his audience (us) is afraid to laugh. God is clearly in league with the devil.
Satre’s message was simple, ‘Hell is other people.’
Emile Halpin, centre, with female co stars of the disturbing Satre production at Worcester College Oxford- February 2009.
Robert Cook 1988
Robert Cook had his first musical instrument aged six. It was a blue plastic ukulele from Aylesbury Woolworths. He wanted to be like Roy Rogers, the singing cowboy. A year later he got his first six string, a mother of pearl effect, and very decorated Elvis Presley Plastic guitar.
His father also made him a wooden banjo. His father had an accident that left him bedridden and dying in 1960. With little money to spend, Robert’s mother bought him an old over strung piano for £5. Robert also started violin lessons in secondary school.
Robert recalled’ the violin teacher told us that the instrument was no good for playing pop tunes. He said other children would laugh at us carrying our violin cases because the instrument was not cool. “Telstar was top of the charts at the time. I soon worked out how to play it on the fiddle. I couldn’t wait to show my teacher.
‘I wasn’t very big at the time. He was tall from my child viewpoint. I looked up at him, eagerly informing him: “You are wrong Sir.” ‘Wrong about what?” he asked indignantly. “You can play pop tunes on the violin.” “Oh, and what can you play?” And so I showed him what I could do. He looked unimpressed and could not wait to hurry our class of three on to the more serious classical material.
‘It would be some time before I heard the great folk and gypsy violinists because we did not have money for records and my sister’s choice of music dominated the house. My interest in the violin gave way to the guitar,
‘I don’t practice much of anything these days. But lyrics are still important. I have been lucky enough to team up with an experienced musical performer and fellow songwriter. We have written a great deal together. However, I have a thing about writing shocking lyrics to depict the nastiness of modern Britain. I am reasonably accomplished and skilled as a traditional folk singer and Bob Dylan impersonator. But what is the point of singing early twentieth century folk songs and sixties protest when there is so much to protest and expose through songs today. That’s why I wrote ‘Killer Cop’ about how the police killed Ian Tomlinson and covered it up.
I also write about things like prostitution. Leonard Cohen and Sting wrote and sung about them, but they romanticised it. There is outrage that Channel Four want to make a film about the Ipswich prostitute murders. People don’t want to know the ugly truths of modern British life. I think they should know and that folk and pop culture should attack the subject. A smug self-perpetuating upper middle class elite dictates Britain’s culture. They decide what is true- even though truth is relative. This is true of all of what the British call art.’
Two Songs by Robert Cook
Under a Bridge by Robert Cook – January 21st 2008
Under a bridge where the water don’t flow
Are all the best secrets that I don’t know.
Under the bridge there’s a bitch in heat
Looking for monsters her arse to beat.
Beat on her drum, beat her at will,
Take her in madness her cup to fill.
Is she a daughter, maybe a wife,
What gives you the right to take her life?
There in the darkness the lamplight ain’t bright,
You can do what you know ain’t right..
Creepin out of the shaddows to do the bizz
You gotta have that extra fizz
Under ta bridge with the rubbish stacked high
They found the woman that just had to die.
The secret’s unspoken it’s always the same
When women wear makeup and go on the game.
La la la la la la la la la la do I really care
He strangled that girl with her underwear,
La, la, la la, la,la, la la, la drove a great big car
He’s rich sick man and he’s going far..
Under a bridge where dead seeds are sown
Are the darkest secrets that can’t be known.
Copyright Robert Cook January 21st 2008.
Working Girl By Robert Cook.
Working girl flushed red,
out of school
Keen for bed,
Ruddy rugged zest for life,
Eager to become a workman’s wife,
Working girl with rotten teeth,
Tripping over Hampstead Heath,
Tripping down through Camden Town,
Wears more makeup than a circus clown.
Working girl showing all,
Standin’ only five foot tall.
Working girl in pelmet skirt,
Goin’ to get so badly hurt,
Working girl went to school
Where mobs and yobs always rule,
Working girl had education
So she could give good masturbation.
Working girl here in UK
Where real jobs have gone away
Working girl what’s the point
Go and smoke another joint.
Working girl knows the ropes
Thinks men are all such dopes,
Working girl high on drugs,
Looking for other mugs
Working girl are you mad?
Working girl are you sad?
Working girl showing all,
See him rise, see you fall.
Copyright Robert Cook January 23rd 2008
Nude by Robert Cook 1974- male artists have been obsessed with the female body