Morden Tower, Newcastle, 1920
Hearing of a budding poetry scene in the far north of England,
Andrew and I hitchhiked together from Cambridge to Newcastle, a bleak, gray
city then economically devastated by the decline of its traditional
shipbuilding industry. There we found a
little enclave of youthful working-class poets led by a dashing blond-mopped
teenager named Tom Pickard, who on his miniscule weekly dole stipend was not
only raising a family but running a poetry-reading series in the Morden Tower
on the city’s old medieval wall. (This
enterprising youth had single-handedly spurred back into verse-writing the
long-silent Basil Bunting, former Objectivist colleague of Pound and Louis
Zukofsky, and though totally disregarded at that time, still one of England’s
finest living poets.) The lack of
electric lights at our reading in the medieval tower was not for quaintness’
sake but because impoverished young entrepreneur Pickard hadn’t been able to
foot the bill that month. We went ahead
anyway with candles, and it felt like poetry was meant to be read that
way. To college boys Andrew and me this
trip was an altogether marvelous adventure.
We were invited to read our poems on local television – certainly a
first for both of us. We drank dark
brown ale with young Geordi poets in Tyneside pubs rocking with a life and
atmosphere that defied the gloom of the
streets outside, and went dancing in a subterranean club filled by long-haired
boys with the throbbing din of Marshall amps and flashing with the pulse of
black-light strobes. This, too—so far
from our world of Oxbridge and London—was England, perhaps much closer to the “real” England
circa 1964.
Tom Pickard reading at Morden Tower, 1973
Basil Bunting, Morden Tower, 1977
Eric
Burdon’s then-popular song “We Gotta Get Out of This Place” made a particular
kind of poetic sense in that context.
Obvious differences in scale notwithstanding, the tiny underground
poetry movement and the exploding electric rock minstrelsy of the period were
essentially linked, the former as it were standing on the latter’s
shoulders; both constituted expressions
of a generalized resistance against England’s dead-end prospects.
From: Tom Clark, Like Real
People, Santa Rosa, Black Sparrow Press, 1995
The Animals, Newcastle Castle Keep, 1964 (l-r:, Eric Burdon,
Alan Price, Chas Chandler, Hilton Valentine, John Steel)
NOTE:
Reading this section of Tom Clark’s Like Real People
a couple of nights ago knocked me a little bit sideways and cocked my head,
giving new perspective on an era I’ve
thought about a lot (my wife thinks far too much), but never in quite this
way.
As a young British Invasion music fan, I remember when my father bought me a book called The
Liverpool Poets, featuring the work of Roger McGough, Adrian Henri and Brian
Patten (who, as I recall, later joined Mike McGear né Michael McCartney and
some ex-Bonzo Dog Band musicians in GRIMMS). The poems didn’t grip me then and for some reason the
photos got under my skin in a bad way.
Reading here about Clark’s journey north and slightly west (and remembering
unforgettable Newcastle accents I’ve heard) , however, made it irresistible to
essay some photo research and it was terrific to find the scene Clark describes
(including photographs of Morden Tower, dashing Tom Pickard and Basil Bunting)
documented in some considerable volume in glorious black & white.
I was struck by the reference to the great Mann-Weill song We
Gotta Get Out Of This Place, which The Animals
immortalized. For the same reason
Steppenwolf singer John Kay once said that Born To Be Wild
claimed its bright permanent place in the rock
song firmament (Kay said that everyone feels
they were born to be wild), I think We Gotta Get Out Of This Place
resonates deep in the heart of anyone with a heart who has ever heard it.
Ray Davies of The Kinks (among others properly credentialed to speak on this subject) said that it’s the best record ever
made. I once read a moving interview
with Newcastle boy made good Bryan Ferry confirming exactly the poetic sense
Clark describes and the song’s effect on him seeing The Animals performing
in situ when he was a teenager on the verge.
The rest of Like Real People, a
book of poetry and prose, is also excellent.
I highly recommend it.
Eric Burdon’s Corvette (courtesy The House of the Rising Sun, It’s
My Life, We Gotta Get Out Of This Place, Please Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood,
etc., etc.)
