My night of Fame with Hendrix, Bowie – and Gunnell.

A friend of mine took me to a Georgie Fame gig the other night. For those of you who weren’t around in the 60s, Georgie was – and still is – one of the coolest guys around. Now 64 and slightly greyer round the edges, Georgie has lost nothing – and I mean nothing – in terms of his ability to please, tease and occasionally mesmerise an audience.  Only a couple of hundred or so gathered together at the somewhat bizarre venue, Hampton open air pool, and for virtually the whole of the evening, rain poured down on the picnicking fans, turning meals mushy, sandwiches soggy, and white wine into spritzer, but there was a whiff of magic in the air as Georgie hunched over his keyboard and belted out his unique blend of jazz, blues and ballads.

As he delighted the faithful with classic hits like, Yeh, Yeh, the Ballad of Bonnie and Clyde and Get Away, what stood out for me was the fact that his voice is as powerful as ever and his enthusiasm and ability to hold an audience – even when they are soaked to their smalls – has not dimmed one iota. And his performance was greatly enhanced by some fascinating story telling between the songs.

There was a never-ending stream of tales based around hanging out with Jimi Hendrix, David Bowie and other giants of the 60s music scene but it was revelations about his late manager, Rik Gunnell, that really made compulsive listening. To say Gunnell was something of a character would be like saying the Pope gets religious now and then. Gunnell was a self-made entrepreneur who gave early breaks to the Rolling Stones, the Who and the Animals, ran trendy clubs, promoted rock festivals, made money his god and mixed with the kind of people who would bury you under the M1 if you looked at them the wrong way.

Georgie makes no secret of the fact that he lived the whole sex ‘n drugs ‘n rock ’n roll thing to the max. In fact when I was at university in Leeds in the 60s I knew a young lady whose claim to Fame was that she and Georgie had crossed more frontiers than Dr Who when they ended up in a phone box together one night. Come to think of it, I’m surprised Georgie never wrote a song about it. But then again maybe he did. Bearing in mind the lady in question bore a close resemblance to one of Gunnell’s gangster buddies, perhaps he based the lyrics of (Gotta) Getaway on that particular close encounter.

What the f… does age have to do with it?

I came across a great acronym the other day. After I had frantically searched for my car keys for ages and then discovered they were in my pocket all the time, I joked to a friend of mine that I had just had a senior moment. ‘More like a “craft” moment’, she replied. When I asked what that signified, she looked surprised. ‘It’s a ruder variation of senior,’ she said. It stands for “Can’t Remember A Fucking Thing!” ‘

Does anyone know any other witty acronyms, not necessarily connected to age? We’re offering a prize of a trip to a Zimmers concert for the best response. Second prize is two trips! (only joking; we love you really, Zimmers)

Is Viagra hardening hearts and minds?

I was fascinated by the fact that The Sunday Times magazine recently devoted its front cover and six inside pages to what it called ‘Viagony and the ecstasy’, an evaluation of the social changes that Viagra has made since it first thrust itself to the forefront of our collective consciousness nine years ago. One of the main themes of the article was the suggestion that modern man’s ability to achieve chemically-induced erections at will is having an adverse effect on heterosexual relationships because of the emphasis on penetration, performance and prolonging the sexual act and the concomitant decrease in communication and the celebration of the human mind as the most erotic part of the body.

To me the debate should be seen in a far wider context which The Sunday Times chose to ignore, namely the medical profession’s drive to offer us a pill for every human ‘defect’, both physical and mental. If you believe what you read in the papers, you will soon be able to pop a pill to cure shyness, baldness, addictions, obsessions, negative thinking, many major illnesses and other faults and imperfections which the test tube brigade are no doubt working on at this very moment. There are those who react instinctively by bracketing such instant cure-alls with genetic engineering and body part replacement, dismissing any positive aspects by suggesting the whole pill therapy business smacks of Frankenstein syndrome.

 There is certainly a danger that the quest for physical and mental perfection is making neurotics of us all, leading us to become compulsive seekers of an impossibly flawless self-image that can never be fulfilled. As against that, anything that can lessen misery and suffering, however trite the problem might seem, can surely not be a bad thing. In the end it is all a question of balance. Being human means living with something less than perfection but more than mediocre acceptance.