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Off to Laugharne today, where I am appearing over the weekend at a festival to celebrate local inebriate Dylan Thomas. To add extra jeopardy Keith Allen is also on at the Festival. Though I have probably gone to sleep in the same town as my old nemesis for the vast majority of nights for the last 25 years, it will rarely if ever have been such a small town and possibly even the same hotel. I doubt he would know who I was or remember his connection to me. I thought if I do bump into him I should invite him on to RHLSTP, if only because I could ask him the brilliant hybrid question, “What would it take for you to suck your own cock?” We’ll see. I didn’t meet him today.
Instead, when I was picked up at Carmarthen railway station I got to share a car with Dexys front man Kevin Rowland (you must pronounce his second name Row-land as if you are on Grange Hill). As I sat behind him in the car I was terrified that I would absent-mindedly hum the opening bars of “Jackie Wilson Says” or sing “Come on Eileen”. Both songs were playing around in my mind and I can’t 100% say that I didn’t vocalise either of them. It must be a strange thing to have an ancient association in so many people’s minds. Row-land was looking extremely dapper, as one might expect and had two gorgeous leather cases, but I was too shy and reserved to talk to him. He and the driver briefly discussed the job of chaffeuring and Ke-vin remembered a time when chauffeurs not only wore hats, but had little badges on them, which stood on tiny masts on the peaks. He asked me if I remembered those too and I said that I did vaguely, but that was the extent of our conversation. Had I been a more confident and less socially awkward man I might have taken the opportunity to chat, perhaps thanking Row-land for briefly helping me to look cool at school when I played the brass part from “Geno” on my trumpet - the only time that being in the school band had any positive effect for me. I suspect Row-land is equally reserved though and I imagined that he’s had enough of talking about a very brief period of time in his career.
But you only get to be driven through the Welsh countryside in a car with Kev-in Row-land once in your life (Didn’t Andy Warhol once say that “In the future everyone will be in a car in the Welsh countryside with Kev-in Row-land for fifteen minutes”? So that was mine) and I cursed whatever it is that makes me so shy in situations when I am not with close friends or standing in front of loads of strangers. Perhaps it’s just over-politeness. I have always hated the idea of imposing myself on anyone. And I bet everyone else makes a dick of themselves with their 15 minutes of Welsh car time with the former Midnight Runners front man. He probably was desperate to talk to me about my stint as Percy the Shepherd in the forgotten TV show Servants, but was equally respectful/idiotic. If you’re ever stuck in a car with me in Wales and you want to ask me about that, then please don’t be shy. I am happy to answer all your Percy-based queries. But NO OTHER QUESTIONS.
Laugharne is a small and quiet town and the festival is equally bijou. We got dropped off at our hotel, one of the bars where Dylan Thomas drank and I had the late afternoon and evening to fill.The woman at reception asking Kev-in Row-land what his name was. That’s show business. She was too young to remember (or probably be alive) Dexys at their height.
I walked down to the castle and had a look around, still as excited as I was when I was 5 to walk up steps in dark and narrow staircases leading up to the top of towers or down into rooms that might once have been dungeons. For a time I was the only visitor in the whole place and could pretend that I was some Welsh lord preparing to repel the bastard English invaders.
I was at a bit of a loose end for the rest of the day with nobody I knew around and not much to do. But at 9 I went along to see Kev-in Row-land’s event. I had expected it to be him playing some of his music, but it was a screening of a film about his last tour show, with a question and answer session at the end. Given that Row-land is in his sixties he is an amazingly youthful and energetic man and though his band is no longer “famous” (only a couple of dozen people were at this screening, though to be fair we are in the middle of nowhere and I am expecting less at my gig tomorrow), he is clearly still being creative and artistic and taking his work in much more interesting directions than Haircut 100 or Bananarama. There was an honesty and sadness to his work which I identified with, and like me he seems to appreciate being in a position where he can continue his work and find more interesting things to do now he’s not aiming for mass appeal. It wasn’t all exactly my cup of tea, but it was cleverer and more thoughtful that most concerts and examined his supposed inability to love and happiness at his freedom. Yet tinged with the melancholy of a man in his middle-age trying to hold on to his youth. I am slightly tired of men sadly observing that they are incapable of love and bemoaning their loneliness (having done the same in my thirties), whilst still pursuing it (or at least pursuing women) and there was a slightly Woody Allen-esque element in that the woman who played his love interest was much younger than him. But I think he was aware of this himself, both trying to cling on to his youth and aware that he is no longer young. And he seems to be trying to convince us (and maybe himself) that he's happier alone, or at least that would be better than being in an unhappy marriage. Like many performers (not me obviously) he seems unable to slay the adolescent inside him. But maybe that's a good thing.
I felt maybe there was probably a bit of an ego on the man from the film, but he seemed humble and charming in the question and answer session (and in the car). He’s quietly getting on with it, feels he’s doing the best work of his life and seems content with his lot (apart from the melancholy underlining it). Much to admire, much to learn from. I wonder if the real test of a career in showbusiness is whether you can get to the end of it and not be batshit crazy. It’s hard to know because no one has managed it yet. But so far so good for me, right?
