Motörhead – { feuilleton }

Weekend links 401

TIME, June 21st 1968. Cover by Roy Lichtenstein.

• “Forget the democratic processes, the judicial system and the talent for organization that have long been the distinctive marks of the US. Forget, too, the affluence (vast, if still not general enough) and the fundamental respect for law by most Americans. Remember, instead, the Gun. That is how much of the world beyond its borders feels about the US today. All too widely, the country is regarded as a blood-drenched, continent-wide shooting range where toddlers blast off with real rifles, housewives pack pearl-handled revolvers, and political assassins stalk their victims at will.” The TIME magazine feature with the famous Roy Lichtenstein cover (prompted by the assassination of Robert Kennedy) will be fifty years old in June.

• “Where do we feel at home? What do our cities look like? How do we see? In 1908, architect and theorist August Endell set out to answer these deceptively simple questions.” Endell’s The Beauty of the Metropolis is coming from Rixdorf Editions in May.

• Beardsley 120: The Death of Pierrot is a series of events in Aubrey Beardsley’s birthplace, Brighton, taking place throughout the month of March.

Like the Bloomsbury Group and the Beats, the Surrealists could be incestuous, choosing lovers from inside the circle and often remaining close to their exes. When [Max] Ernst and [Leonora] Carrington reached Paris, he introduced her to Leonor Fini, his friend and former lover. Tall, dazzling, and bejeweled, Fini cultivated a baroque theatricality; every day with her was a masked ball. Recognizing Carrington as “a revolutionary,” she claimed her as an astrological twin—a feat possible only because Fini lied about her age. “This chronological charade, combined with later cosmetic surgeries, sustained the image of youth and beauty that remained vital to Leonor’s self-image, the sexuality and her sense of her place in the world,” writes Chadwick:

Imperious and mercurial, she was also generous, loving and happy to share her rich intellectual life with the younger woman she considered her double. Like Leonora, she believed that cats possessed highly developed psychic powers, that horses had mythological powers that identified them with the feminine, and that painting was an alchemical process.

Regina Marler reviewing three new books about Leonora Carrington and the women artists of the Surrealist movement

• As Serious As Your Life: Black Music and the Free Jazz Revolution, 1957–1977 by Val Wilmer receives a welcome republication next month.

• At Dangerous Minds: Occultism, cinema and architecture: How a ouija board built the Bradbury Building.

• When Books Read You, a Defence of Bibliomancy by Ed Simon.

• Ä Brïëf Hïstöry Öf Mëtäl Umläüts by Mike Rampton.

• Joey Zone Illustration – Art from The joey Zone.

• At Dennis Cooper’s: Brad Dourif Day.

• Alva Noto‘s favourite albums.

• Eddie Campbell, Dammit!

• Metropolis (1978) by Edgar Froese | Metropolis (1979) by Motörhead | Under The Gun (Metropolis Mix) (1993) by The Sisters Of Mercy

All About Being Loud

Photo by Motorcycle Irene.

It was very loud. The crowd roared and some yelled “It’s not loud enough!” Lemmy said “Oh” and turned his amp up more, before they went into Keep Us On The Road which was very loud until Lemmy’s amp gave up its internal struggle and was replaced on the run while Eddie (Clarke, the guitarist) played the riff over and over. At the end of the number earlier complaints bellowed “Turn it up, it’s not loud enough!” to which Lemmy rejoined—”I can’t get it no damn louder, shut your trap”. Never the less, the new amp was miked up thru the P.A., so Lost Johnny was very, very loud and The Watcher was louder still. At the end of it Lemmy apologized for being so quiet and said the band were as disappointed as everyone else about not being louder. Then they played Iron Horse, which was as loud as a Tube train running through your inner ear or as loud as the First World War if they crammed the whole thing together and held it in a phone booth.

Paul Sutcliffe, gig review, Sounds

Paul Sutcliffe’s quote is on the back page of a Motörhead tour programme from 1978, a publication that’s also the source of the moody signed portrait above. Despite hanging around with metal-heads and bikers in my idle youth I never got to see Motörhead live, the tour programme—signed by all three band members, and aptly titled All About Being Loud—was a gift from a friend. Years ago I scanned the whole thing and turned it into a PDF to send to another friend so I’ve uploaded it here. Most tour programmes are rather pedestrian affairs but the Motörhead one shows the band’s sense of humour, being a collection of quotes testifying to the loudness of their shows with the page backgrounds filled out by ads for hearing aids. The Q&A notes for each band member are also revealing for mentioning three songs from the psychedelic 60s. Lemmy always spoke of his fondness for classic rock’n’roll (Motörhead covered Louie Louie in their early days) but it’s a surprise seeing him list Sour Milk Sea by Jackie Lomax as his favourite single. His album choice—Back In The USA by The MC5—is more the kind of thing you’d expect. Eddie Clarke’s favourite single is Purple Haze, while the late Phil Taylor has Itchycoo Park by The Small Faces listed with Anarchy In The UK.

Art by Joe Petagno.

So I never got to see Motörhead play but in 1984 I did provide the cover art for Hawkwind’s Night Of The Hawks EP, a 12-inch single that featured Lemmy as guest bassist and vocalist on his first recording with the group after being sacked following a drug bust in 1975. I may no longer like the artwork but the EP was also dedicated to Barney Bubbles so it was a good thing to be involved with. As for Lemmy, everyone will be (and is) linking to Ace Of Spades but I’d offer Capricorn from the Overkill album as a memorial number. I always liked Jimmy Miller’s reverberant production, and the lyrics make it a musical self-portrait.

Weekend links 66

A design by Emma Kunz (1892–1963).

• Following the news this week it’s worth reminding people of a great post put together by Adam Curtis back in January, Rupert Murdoch—A portrait of Satan. One detail there concerns the death of chat show host Russell Harty in 1988. This week the London Review of Books posted an extract from Alan Bennett’s diaries referring to the Harty episode where he notes how the tabloid practice of getting private phone numbers from the police was common and widespread, not simply the actions of a single newspaper. For more about the deathbed hounding of Russell Harty (and Bennett’s loathing of Murdoch) see Writing Home. Related: Dennis Potter shortly before his death discussing his desire to kill Rupert Murdoch.

• Don’t get mad, get even: Hakim Bey’s Black Djinn Curse: “How to invoke a terrible curse on a malign institution.” See also: Black magic as revolutionary action.

• Village Voice talks to Linda Manz about her experience as a young actor in Days of Heaven, The Wanderers and Out of the Blue.

• Truth Wins Out infiltrates the “ex-gay” clinic run by Michelle Bachmann’s husband.

• Free Situationist booklets by Larry Law. Related: films by Guy Debord at Ubuweb.

• Have tea with Doctor Dee in Mortlake, London, next Wednesday.

• Publisher Peter Owen: Sixty years of innovation.

• Wilhelm Reich: the man who invented free love.

• A conversation with Brian Eno by Ben Sisario.

• The mysterious minaret of Jam, Afghanistan.

• Stereolab cover designs at Hardformat.

• Orgone Accumulator (1973) by Hawkwind | Cloudbusting (1985) by Kate Bush | Orgasmatron (1986) by Motörhead | Orgasmatron (1993) by Sandoz | Orgone Donor (2004) by Deathprod.

Metropolis!

Design by Boris Bilinsky (1927).

The restored version of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927) was released in the UK this week by Eureka Video and my head is still spinning from having finally seen the missing scenes I’ve read about for years. There’s little I can say about the film itself that hasn’t already been said at length elsewhere, dramatically it’s not Lang’s best—M (1931) is a superior work on that score—but it’s still essential viewing for anyone interested in cinema history.

Brigitte Helm as cinema’s greatest robot: a screen grab from the Blu-ray edition at the Eureka site. Click for full-size.

The 25 minutes of restored footage add as much to the film as was claimed, especially in the longer sections, the removal of which rendered the motivations of several characters nonsensical, as well as creating disjunctions in the story. The plot thread concerning the dead woman Hel, wife of the master of Metropolis, Joh Fredersen, and idée fixe of the inventor Rotwang, was excised when it was felt that American audiences would laugh at the woman’s name; distributors allowing their low opinion of an audience’s intellect to ruin a work of art is nothing new. That cut at least had an excuse, however misguided. What’s more surprising about the restored version is seeing the minor cuts which were made throughout, many of them occurring in places which makes it appear that the negative had been attacked at random and for no good reason. The new material suffers next to the old which has better photography than many films made years later but the disparity isn’t so jarring once you’re used to it. A short but crucial scene is still missing but intertitles are used to describe the action. For now this is the most complete version of Lang’s film to date, with far more returned to it than I ever hoped to see.

• Watch the trailer
• The film restoration site
• Metropolis Robot: The Maschinenmensch Project
• Metropolis Film Archive: A Bibliography and Checklist of Resources
• Metropolis (1978) by Kraftwerk | Metropolis (1979) by Motörhead (apparently written after Lemmy had watched the film)

Previously on { feuilleton }
• A Secret Wish by Propaganda
• Metropolis posters

William Rimmer’s Evening Swan Song

Evening: Fall of Day by William Rimmer (1869–70).

This curiously sexless figure is a good example of a work by an artist whose reputation may not have been as elevated as many of his contemporaries but who nonetheless created an image which speaks to future generations. Rimmer (1816–1879) was an American artist who produced a number of pictures along these pre-Symbolist lines. This particular drawing (a blend of crayon, oil and graphite on canvas) became hugely familiar in the Seventies when it was chosen by Led Zeppelin as the basis for their Swan Song label logo (below).

Continue reading “William Rimmer’s Evening Swan Song”