FRIDAY, MARCH 30, 2007
From Derek Hayden, London, UK
Hi Simon. When all is said and done, and you're at home... is living in Thailand really that different from living in England? Apart from the good weather.
Living in a house in Thailand is in itself a full time occupation. There’s no shutting the door and retiring into your own home the European way. A house involves people - lots of them. Usually I’m up at 6am. If possible I like to be at my desk writing. By 7am people will start arriving.
First every morning is the gardener, Mr Wit.
Mr Wit has a game that amuses him, though to me it’s pretty damned annoying. He rings the bell at 7am. The door in the outside wall into the garden is never locked. If he wanted to, he could walk right in. Somewhere in the early days of his working for us I made a little English protest about the fact that he (and about fifty other people a day) always walked right in without letting us know they'd arrived, so I told him, “When you arrive at our house please ring. Having done so, by all means come on in without waiting for us to open the door, but at least we will have been warned of your arrival".
Mr Wit took this talk very much to heart but interpreted it in his own way. Every morning at 7am he rings the bell. At that moment it’s quite likely that I’ll be in the middle of an excellent bit of writing, something that has been trapped constipation-like inside my brain for several days but now is finally starting to run smoothly onto paper. I don’t want to break off and rush to open the front gate, so I don’t. So Mr Wit rings again.
If on the other hand I do break off and go to the front gate, Mr Wit, who will have been peeping through the crack in the big double doors, will see me coming and before I get there will come in anyway. But if I don’t, he’ll ring again.
This way honour is served. He is not being made to suffer the indignity of not being allowed in unless I open the door for him. (Thais simply don’t live that way). But he’s not offending me by coming in before he’s totally sure that I’ve heard his arrival.
And try as I might, I can never get to the front gate before he is through it and inside.
At 8am the maid comes and repeats the same bell-ringing process. Her name is Miss Redbox. (In Thai it's Glongdang, which sounds a trifle less odd, though not much). She usually brings her husband too so she can get the work done quicker. He seems more of a slave than a husband, but that’s not my business. He does as he’s told and it’s his wife who tells him. Actually, there's a touch of the same trait in our own domestic set-up. If Miss Redbox's work needs to be criticised, it’s Yo who has to do it. I'm not allowed to.
At 9am, when the pool girl comes, there’ll be more bell ringing of the same type. (Mr Wit, you see, took it upon himself to train all the others in the art of how to ring the bell.)
In between these times, and from thereon all day, there’ll be plenty more rings. Everyday a continuous stream of workmen pass through the house fixing things that need doing. Sometimes they make banging noises then leave with a promise to return and finish the job later (never kept). Other times they say, “Reeup roy laaw” which translates as, “All ship-shape now.” Unfortunately this only means they've finished for the moment, because for sure, whatever it is they’ve just shipshaped will be found in need of further shipshaping in a few days time.
THURSDAY, MARCH 29, 2007
From Simon White, London, UK
Simon, I see in your blog parents are bewailing the fate of their off-spring in leaving his legal studies for a possible recording career. I remembered Jack Barrie's story about a guy who used to help set up the Marquee Club for gigs (we had chairs in the auditorium then - do you remember?). He told Jack he'd had an offer to join a band but his parents wanted him to go on to further education. Jack said that they were perfectly correct - he could always go back to drumming after he had finished his education. The guy ignored him... he was Phil Collins and the band Genesis.
Hi Simon. That's a much better answer for those parents than my flippant comment. Let him do it - he's probably the next Phil Collins. (My God! Even duller than a lawyer!!)
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 28, 2007
From Gwyneth Reece, Bristol, UK
Dear Simon, I want your help. My son Tim is determined to be a pop singer and composer; my husband and I want him to be a lawyer. Tim is halfway through his legal training and wants to give it up. He's had some interest from a record company and having read all your books he's always quoting your words of wisdom.
We really don't care what he chooses to do once he's finished his studies because he can always fall back on the law if he needs to. He says he doesn't want to have something to fall back on because it will take away his determination to succeed in music. Any chance of wisdom-wording him into sticking with his studies?
Stop worrying! It's only life, for goodness sake. Surely you don't want me to behave like a responsible adult and tell him to do as you say? If he's that bored with the law having got halfway through it, he's hardly likely to make much of a lawyer. And if he's left it this late to have the confrontation with you about throwing up his studies in order to be a pop star, he probably won't be much good at that either. Seems like he's lacking dedication in both directions. Are you sure he's drinking enough and taking the right drugs?
TUESDAY, MARCH 27, 2007
From Gregory Gray, Hertfordshire, UK
hi simon. here's some fun writing from a friend of mine who gives me midnight post pub phone calls... you may have already read some of mark's pieces in the broadsheets and gayer rags. i think he's proper bright and entertaining. 'The fascinating science of Sporno' - Mark Simpson on how ‘eyetracking’ has revealed men’s interest in other men’s packets.
I don't buy it. When your friend Mark says it proves all men are interested in other men's naughty bits, he's stretching the facts. Look at the scans for yourself. The men's crotch glances seem to be about a fifth of their face glances. That figures! Ten per cent of men are gay, probably another ten per cent are bisexual. So there you have it - if all men were looking the colours would be of equal intensity. Still, let people see Mark's blog for themselves. Amusing, but a load of old cobblers.
MONDAY, MARCH 26, 2007
From Danny Lee, Barabdos
On the plane from Mexico as I type.
This will make you laugh..... such language problems at dinner. After insisting a waiter replace 3 steak dinners that were served only warm and on cold plates, I spoke to the chef and made a suggestion. "We have a saying at my company which is very important to us - 'Today is an opportunity to do better than yesterday'. After some thought the Mexican chef replied, "I wasn't working yesterday."
Unanswerable!
You're being in Barbados reminds me of the last time I was in that area. I was staying for the weekend on a small island owned by a friend, with several other house guests, most of them friends of both of us. The cook spent too long preparing dinner and it arrived three hours late, by which time we were all mightily pissed on island cocktails. Over dinner I said something that insulted one of the guests. "I've never been so insulted in my life," he cried indignantly. "Oh for Christ's sake - you must have been," I told him. The host jumped to the guest's defence and said I must leave the island at once - at 1am in the morning!! They phoned for an air taxi but couldn't get one till daylight - 6am. And dammit - the next morning they actually did it - escorted me to the airstrip and threw me off the island. Two weeks later we were all back in London and couldn't even remember what the argument was about. All still best friends!
SUNDAY, MARCH 25, 2007
From Paul French, Shanghai, China
It's a good job you didn't tell Jiz he was treating heterosexuality as a lifestyle choice - you could be shacked up with him now in Southampton and perhaps even preparing for leading the hymns at morning service rather than sunning yourself in Thailand. Scary thought.
No way! You never saw him. He had owlish glasses, poor skin, lank hair and rubbery lips which blew spit bubbles when he spoke - perfect for the church, imperfect for a gay relationship. I suspect his passion to preach covered all sorts of sexual guilt, as it does in most people. Anyway, I'm pleased he took my advice. Religion can only be weakened by such additions.
The ugly and mentally wanting are always best directed to the church.
SATURDAY, MARCH 24, 2007
From Jiz Sidhu, Southampton, UK
Hi Simon, we met ages ago, 3 years at least, when you were on Granada TV's religious programme in Manchester. I talked to you afterwards and told you I was a member of my college's atheist society. When I told you about the things we did you said I was treating atheism like a religion and might just as well be a Christian or Moslem. I thought about what you said and decided you were right, so I became a Christian. I have you to thank for that. And now I want to ask you a question. Is there honestly nothing that has ever happened in your life you could thank religion for?
Jiz, you obviously have an intellect of steel. I shall say nothing futher about religion in case it prompts you to switch again and fall for Zorastria, or become an Aspidestra, or even a Lupin. Re your second question.
When I was in my mid-twenties I had an emergency operation for peritonitus and ended up in a public ward of about thirty at Wembley Hospital. For nearly two weeks I dozed and slept and didn't eat and felt most unwell. I was sufficiently conscious to notice that almost every day someone left the ward, and not because they'd got better. The last three beds on my side of the room seemed to be where they shoved the beds of those about to die, and as time went by I vaguely realised my bed was heading in that direction. One afternoon my mind returned from wherever it had been wandering to see a priest at the end of my bed moving his hands around in that dotty Catholic way. I was incensed. Wherever my brain had been for the last two weeks it came back with a jolt. "Fuck off," I yelled at him. And he went. Then for the first time in two weeks I managed to get out of bed and get to the bathroom. What I saw in the mirror was quite a shock - two weeks without washing, shaving or eating - and after that I began to take an interest in things. But I can't thank the priest for that. He was just trying to notch me up as one of his before the local vicar got to me. Creeps, the both of them!
FRIDAY, MARCH 23, 2007
From Reg Stains, London, UK
hi simon. as something of a gourmet what do you think about all these american resataurants banning foie gras? i see the latest person to get on the bandwagon is wolfgang puck, who is THE celeb chef in hollywood... he has spagos in beverly hills, spagos in la, and he just did all the catering for the oscars... he says it's cruel to force feed geese. but that's ridiculous... just look americans, all force-fed the lot of them... even at spagos the portions are gross.
Hi Reg. Since I myself am American size I won't comment. Instead I'll tell you about the best foie gras I ever ate. It was in 1986 and I was with John Riseley-Prichard driving from Cannes to Bordeaux to watch Andrew Ridgeley race in Formula Ford. At Eugenie-les-Bains we decided to stop overnight at a one star Michelin restaurant/hotel. We had the foie gras menu which meant foie gras was incorporated into every course - first as a pate, then grilled with rasberries, then as part of a duck confit, then with beef in pastry and finally as a mousse with a plate of fruit. I can't remember now what any of it tasted like but I do remember we both decided it was the best meal we'd ever had - well, at least since lunch, which we'd eaten at ''Le Clos de la Violette" in Aix.
THURSDAY, MARCH 22, 2007
From Bibi Espedes, New York, NY, USA
Simon: your response to the American issue truly unnerved me today. Little Black Sambo!!!!!! Holy Cannoli, I was in that play in the first grade. My best friend Oscar Munoz who was the darkest Mexican in the class got the honor of playing Black Sambo. Us brown ones were just honored to be spoken too. The year was 1963 and we also killed our President. The Belch who wrote you has a lot of nerve removing racist images from books and cruising the internet for intellectual porn and writing you to be bitch slapped via email.
The furore about 'Little Black Sambo' typifies what these tossers get up to. It was a children's book about a dark-skinned boy in India - a charming story about how four tigers waylay Sambo on the way home and only let him go when he gives them his new red coat, his new blue trousers and his new purple shoes, which one of the tigers then wears on its ears. Sambo outwits the tigers and gets home safely where he eats 169 pancakes for his supper. For fifty years it was one of the world's best-selling books; then the race-eradicators struck and had it banned. The story contained no racist overtones whatsoever and the original illustrations were clearly of an Indian boy not an Afro-American. In 2003 a new version called 'Sam and the Tigers' was published which took away Sambo's dark-skin. Even more racist if you ask me. Now you have to be a clever white kid if you want to outwit tigers.
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 21, 2007
From Jan Dagger, Brussels, Belgium
Hello Mr. Napier-Bell. I have been working for some years now in conjunction with various government agencies to try and co-ordinate the removal of unnecessary stereotypical images from books used in primary and secondary education in both North America and the EEC. Regarding your comment yesterday about Americans, which I presume you considered amusing, I wish I could impress on you and people like you the damage done by this sort of trivial racist (so-called) humour.
You stupid donk!
Firstly, Americans aren't a race, they're a religion. What makes them American is believing in a set of ideals to which they swear allegiance. One of them is - Thou shalt always shout thy head off in restaurants.
Secondly, my first favourite children's book, when I was about 3 years old, was Little Black Sambo. I think it was one of the things that led me to like jazz so much in my teens, and then to go to America and play and live with black jazz musicians, and later to have a black lover and never in my life to have one inkling of what race prejudice is about. But you people had the book banned.
Thirdly, stereotypes are wonderful things - the British understate emergencies, Americans think everyone will love them if they talk loud and brash, Mexicans sleep sitting against walls with big hats on, Jews screw you for your last cent, gays are shirt-lifting effeminate hand-wavers and the French smell of garlic. Nothing wrong with any of those - all great starting points on which to build your own character and prove the stereotype right or wrong. Better than ending up a politcally correct nerd, like you.
TUESDAY, MARCH 20, 2007
From Jodie Ilverson, New Jersey, USA
Re....
“I'm an American living in London”
Lucky wanker!
“love the place and the people”
Of course he does
“and the people seem to like me”
An American Delusional living in London
“sometimes you seem anti-American”
Even the Americans are anti-american!
Hi Simon Just having my say. It’s icy freezing in New Jersey, not too cheerful today. I just enjoy the mere fact that I can do this. Please never publish my emails to you, as they are private between you and me. Hope you've recovered and resumed your full life. Big Kiss.
Sorry Jodie, I can’t agree with that. I really can’t be doing with any of this ‘private between you and me’ stuff. I don't go through a hundred or so emails every day just to be told I can't use them. Emails sent to me go on this website if I want them to. If it’s protecting your privacy you want, send it under a false name. If it’s protecting your copyright, don't send it. If you’re after an intimate relationship, look elsewhere.
MONDAY, MARCH 19, 2007
From Ed deVries, London, UK
Hey Simon. I'm an American living in London. I love the place and the people, and the people seem to like me. I also like your website, but sometimes you seem to come across as rather anti-American. This doesn't fit well with your generally tolerant attitude to things. I don't get it.
Me tolerant? I hope not. Tolerance is something I have no truck with. I always make a point of letting people know what annoys me. Perhaps you're muddling 'tolerance' with 'not giving a toss' (a completely different matter). As for being anti-American, that's ridiculous. I have no objection at all to Americans; only to people who behave like them.
SUNDAY, MARCH 18, 2007
From Shirley Lavell, Perth, Australia
Hi Simon. In your CV section there's a photo of you and Yo, apparently in a plane cockpit, labelled 'High in Hawaii'. Were you in an aerolight or what? It looks fun. My boyfriend and I are going to Hawaii next month on our honeymoon. Any suggestions?
An aerolight - with me? That's a joke. It was a glider, as you can see in the picture above. When we called to book it they told us the maximum weight was my weight plus about ten more pounds. We didn't fancy going separately, and Yo isn't exactly a lightweight, so it looked unpromising. "Come along on anyway," the girl on the phone said, "we have one pilot who sometimes bends the rules."
Bend them - he positively wrenched them asunder.
Together we were 100 pounds over the maximum. But he was really helpful - a navy pilot who flew planes off an aircraft carrier but flew gliders as extra work at the weekend. It was brilliant - an amazing way to see the terrain below - way better than a small plane. He flew us way out to sea until we were over a schoool of whales. Then said he shouldn't have come so far, our weight might bring the plane down before he got back again. We arrived back over land at almost ground level but suddenly he found an upwards draft and we shot up another thousand feet. Best holiday thing we ever did.
Well, apart from about a hundred other things. Whenever we go on holiday Yo and I behave like regular tourists. Totally uncool.
SATURDAY, MARCH 17, 2007
From Kevin Atkinson, Auckland, NZ
Hi Simon, I am writing this on behalf of Irvine Black of New Zealand who bought a 1935 Chrysler Imperial Airflow from you in 1974. He has asked me to say that he still has the car but hasn't used it for some years. Last year he went to the National Meet in Nevada for Airflows & has seen another similar car being restored. he would love to write to you direct - do you have a postal address he could use?
Hi Kevin. The whole Airflow story was so sad. Towards the end of my 60s good fortune as a pop manager/producer I came across this old Airflow and bought it for a thousand pounds or so (I don’t remember now). Then I had Chrysler in London completely rebuild it as a modern car - new engine, automatic gear box, restored bodywork, electric windows, black glass chaufeur's partition, best hide upholstery, aircon, the lot. They took for ever, five years to be precise. Finally it was finished and looked magnificent. The perfect car for some young 60s Al Capone type pop manager. But by the time it was finished the world had moved on and so had I. Still, I paid the bill - a lot, I seem to remember around 4,500 pounds (about 60,000 in today's money, allowing for inflation). I thought I might use the car for a bit and looked around for a driver, but then the oil crisis came along. I had a car which did 7 miles to the gallon and people were trading in their Austin Allegros to get minis instead. To have been driven a hundred yards down the road in it would have been enough to get me lynched. Then Irving turned up. He wanted to buy the car and restore it - i.e. undo all the work I'd just spent five years (and all that money) doing. I'd love to hear from him, so if he's not the emailing type, please give him my postal address.
FRIDAY, MARCH 16, 2007
From Jenny Selhurst, Boston, Mass, USA
Hi Simon. Me again! Suddenly got the urge to write. It's 'cos I've just been made mad. Funny isn't it how something you can usually manage to be cool about can suddenly drive you into a fury. I was just watching Larry King interview that presidential candidate who's a moron - well, a Mormon actually, but to me, anyone religious is a moron, so I guess he's both. Larry asked him if he would be able to vote for someone who was an atheist and the moron replied he would only ever be able to vote someone who saw the world as a family, that we're all human beings and should love one another, and thus would only be able to vote for someone of faith, though it wouldn't matter to him what faith (which he had to add since he's trying to get elected as a member of an even wonkier faith than all the others). Anyway, it just left me feeling angry and somewhat ashamed of being American so I thought I'd let you know.
Hi Jenny. Sorry you're angry, but I don't know what I'm supposed to do about it. It's your own fault really for getting yourself born in such a stupid country. You should have thought of that before you popped out. Anyway, I'm in a particularly good mood today so if you don't mind I'll get on with my happy day and leave you to your sour one.
THURSDAY, MARCH 15, 2007
From Gregory Gray, Hertfordshire, UK
....religion has always given me a sign on the road for me to walk and cut willfully in the opposite direction... even so, i'm arriving at a fun place where i'm beginning to arbitrate the bad and the good fruit of its tree. there's the obvious bad fruit, but then there's the good fruit too... i love the religious fervour in really hot rock and roll
and gospel singers like al green...
No no no no no - there's no good fruit on the religion tree! Rethink!
Fervour of all sorts is suspect. Very interchangeable - fervy people simply
need to ferve - you can often swtich them from 'for' to 'against', but once
they're there they'll simply ferve away as usual. We should at least try to
make them direct their fervour towards benign causes. As for Al Green's lyrics… Gay's have always had to get off on straight passion - had to, because it's all we've been given to listen to - all those love songs directed only at the opposite sex. We've learnt to listen to the passion and feeling in a singer’s voice rather than the actual
meaning of the words. That's why you find it easy to overlook the object of Al Green's affection. It's the way we've always listened to every other singer.
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 14, 2007
From Deborah James, Fort Worth, Texas, USA
Hi Simon. I came across your website some months ago when I was googling 'Thailand' with a view to a short holiday later this year. You probaby won't remember, but way back in the 80s we had a bit of a thing together - more than a one-night-stand, less than a relationship - (Tel Aviv, 1985). I'm sure you've long forgotten but I never have, even though I've since been through two marriages and four kids. While I'm on holiday in Thailand could we meet and say hello? Seems you call yourself gay these days but that's not what I remember your dick telling me that wekend in Tel Aviv.
My dick and I have a very good relationship. I've always given it freedom to make its own decisions. It jumps up for no-one other than it decides for itself and I've only ever applauded its freedom of thought. Sometimes it's suprised me, sometimes it's shocked me, but whenever it's been up there in front of me, probing, leading me on, I've always gone along with it, because that's the deal we made together some fifty years ago. We've been together a long time now and by any standards it's a pretty good old knob. I give it credit for most of the good things that ever happend in my life. (That, and me doing my bit, feeding it a decent amount of alcohol). It's getting on a bit now and I have to let it take things easy. Poor old thing. These days if I followed in blind faith wherever it pointed I'd spend most of the time with my head in the sand like an ostrich, so I take it's proposals with a pinch of salt. But on a good day it can still spring into action and lead me a bit of a dance.
I'm concerned, though, that it might be suffering from dementia or alzheimers - it keeps pointing unexpectedly at things it never used to glance at before, ladies with big boobs, for instance. Who knows, if you were to turn up here for a weeekend you might find yourself subject to one of its more unexpected calls to arms. But don't expect me to have the energy to follow it.
TUESDAY, MARCH 13, 2007
From Trevor Aston, London, Ontario, Canada
Simon, I enjoy your website, especially your often scathing put-downs of the religious freaks who bother you. Have you ever thought of subscribing to one of the principal atheist organisations? Do a search on 'atheism' in Google and you'll turn up most of them. All have good forums to which you would be a perfect contributor.
I don't believe in God so I have to join an organisaton? What utter piffle. I don't believe in kicking old ladies, peeling potatos, living in cardboard boxes, licking dogs' bottoms or eating Nestles disgusting ice cream. This list could get awfully long, several billion items I should think, which is an awful lot of organisations to join. As far as I'm concerned proselytising atheists are just religionists in another guise.
Couldn't you find something more worthwhile to obsess about - like sadism or self-mutilation or American Idol?
MONDAY, MARCH 12, 2007
From Archie Sax, Sacremento, California, USA
I was just reading that when Janis Joplin finalised her contract with CBS she proposed to Clive Davis, the head of CBS at that time, that they consummate her signing by having sex together. But he declined. Simon, were you ever offered any similar delights by your artists? Did you ever accept? Any regrets?
Offers: a few. Acceptances: a few. Regrets? Only when the people I fancied didn’t make the offer - Francoise Hardy, for instance. I was crazy about her when she was 18 and looked like a boy. I wasted months producing a record with her and never even got a peck on the cheek. Then my publishers sent me off to Paris to make a record with Amanda Lear, someone I’d known years before as a young Asian-looking guy called Peki who hung out in the Gigolo, a gay bar in London in the 60s.
Now that Peki had become Amanda, I wasn't interested anymore, but other people were - Amanda's new companion was Salvador Dali. From there she went on to have several disco hits, had an affair with David Bowie, got engaged to Bryan Ferry of Roxy Music (and appeared on the cover of their album, For Your Pleasure), then married a French aristocrat, Alain-Philippe Malagnac d'Argens de Villele, who had been the teenage lover of writer Roger Peyrefitte. Her husband died in 2000, so at 60-years-old Amanda has now gone back to making records. Talk about never give up. All together she's released 56 singles and 18 albums. She's always denied her sex-change past and says she just happened to be born with a baritone voice. Never mind - she still looks brilliant – probably due to her Chinese mother (she was born in Hong Kong). But I still prefer to remember her as Peki from the Gigolo. There you are! That’s today’s three minutes of trivia.
SUNDAY, MARCH 11, 2007
From Elizabeth Ashton, Terre Haute, Indiana, USA
Dear Simon, you seem to be in such a bad mood these last few days yet you have all those uplifting songs that Wendy and I sent which would change everything for you if you'd just give them a chance. Never forget, please, that God is patient. When you're ready, he'll be there. If you like we could send you some new recordings. MP3s OK?
Elizabeth, fancy an email from you putting me in a good mood, but somehow it has. It's amazing how tenacious you and Wendy are in pursuing my conversion. To be honest, I'm not sure if the conversion you're after is for me to find God, or for me (or anyone else for that matter) to find talent in your songs. Both equally unlikely I'd have thought. I don't know what it is about Terre Haute, I had another email from there a few days discussing Anne Coulter. It's sounds a challenging place to live, the more so for you two being there. Don't bother with the MP3s, you've sent enough already. Salvation Rock isn't my scene, but if God one day decides to be merciful and turn you into junkie lesbians I promise to give your music another listen.
SATURDAY, MARCH 10, 2007
From Jig D, London, UK
the kaiser chiefs are number one and UR nowhere... go back to the 60s you fat meg
Hi Jig. Your arguments in favour of the Kaiser Chiefs are impressive. It's always good to have eloquence and intellect brought to bear on these matters, especially when coupled with brevity. Have you thought of a career in PR?
FRIDAY, MARCH 9, 2007
From Steve Berenson, Vancouver, Canada
Hi Simon. Just yesterday I was listening to the Kaiser Chiefs who are currently number one in the UK – and I was thinking, they’re so big, and everyone says their lyrics are so good and all that, but really there’s nothing about their sound that’s NEW. Nor about their lyrics. Nor about anything in all the other pop and rock records I hear these days. And I started thinking – was there ever anything really new?
There was! What Elvis did, what the Beatles did, what the Rolling Stones did. All of them new both musically and image-wise.
Also, big stadium rock in the 70s was new – huge rock tours in processions of limousines, hotel wrecking and massive drug taking, living in groupie paradise.
I’m not sure it’s possible to be truly new again, not as a pop or rock group, not as a recording in any format we know. If anything really new happens in music it's going to be video based, or ringtone based, or perhaps consumer based. Maybe everyone will have their own Personal Surroundsound Hologram Walkman – projecting their own choice of images and music in the air above their heads as they walk round town.
Maybe there'll be gang hologram clashes - like break dancing contests - intimidating each other with an ever more incredible flow of image and music in combination. Gang members co-ordinating to blank out their rivals with a hundred holograms in sync.
Beats the Kaiser Chief's pathetic lyrics, doesn't it - "due to lack of interest, tomorrow is cancelled." Oh, please! Hopefully so is their next album
THURSDAY, MARCH 8, 2007
From Gregory Gray, Hertfordshire, UK
hi simon… its funny how the rudest people with the most vitriol are often the kindest souls at the end of the day. i had a christmas dinner with marcia faulkender once… it was round at the late stewart stevens’ house in chiswick… an ex-editor of the mail on sunday... i was alone in london and they took pity on me and invited me over for food... marcia sat beside me all evening just talking about northern ireland… full of questions with no airs or graces... a really cool lady... and yet you could meet people who'd never use the word cunt in their whole lives and actually be that very thing.
All the more so, I would suggest, for their failure to use such a splendid word.
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 7, 2007
From Jon Lindsay, Sydney, Australia
Simon, re all those stories about dear old Jack Wolfe. I stayed with him for weeks at a time in Chenye Walk and had to drive Jack everywhere as he was always being banned for DUI. Once at one of his court apearances we had to drag him out of the next court where he had gone to watch the head of the National Front up on some charge because he fancied all the skinheads who accompanied the bloke. Another time he had a dinner party with the charming Mark McCormack who brought a handsome young German boy who upset Jack with some anti-Semetic remark and Jack hurled his shoe at him which hit me in the head. Jack then picked up a poker and chased the boy down the staircase screaming obscenities at the poor lad who cowered on the first landing. At that moment a door opened and Jack's neighbour Lord Weidenfeld ushered out his dinner guest, ex-PM Harold Wilson. "Good evening Jack," he said calmly and they both just walked down the stairs. It was never dull with Jack Wolfe.
Pleasant man, Lord Weidenfeld; I bumped into him several times during my stay at Jack's flat. I can't say I liked Harold Wilson though - pompous, self-important and humourless. Wilson's private secretary, Joe Haines (the Alistair Campbell of that time) recalled the extraordinary way the Prime Minister put up with abuse from his personal secretary. In front of other people, she called him both "you silly little man" and "you little cunt!"
He then promoted her to the house of Lords, making her Lady Faulkender.
TUESDAY, MARCH 6, 2007
From Joey Sanden, Terre Haute, Indiana, USA
Hi Simon. What do you think of all this fuss about journalist Anne Coulter calling Democratic presidential candidtate John Edwards a fag? Amazing really – everyone from leftish Democrats to rightish Republicans have denounced it as a hateful thing to say. Aren’t they being homophobic?
You’re dead right they are. If I thought John Edwards was a fag, I’d be behind him becoming the Democratic candidate. If Anne Coulter had said he was black, no-one would have said she was hateful, they’d have just said she was nuts. Everyone who has denounced Anne Coulter for insulting John Edwards should go on the homophobes register. Calling someone a fag isn’t hateful. It’s not even insulting. It’s either true or false.
MONDAY, MARCH 5, 2007
From Alan Burstein, Santa Monica, California, USA
hey simon... seems weve at last found something that upsets you as much as religion... record companies... but listen man enoughs enough... three days of ranting on and were all bored... so can you please get back to sex or food or even religion
OK, I'll go for religion. My friend Bobbi Marchini sent me an article about the moron Christian Right in opposing vaccinaton against cervical cancer. A quote...
If as a parent you're so obsessed with abstinence you'd risk your kid's health, there's a word for what you are. It's not "follower of Christ." It's not "moral." It's not "Christian." Just admit it - you hate sex. The Family Research Council says giving girls the vaccine is bad, because the girls "may see it as a license to engage in premarital sex." Which is really a stretch. People don't get the vaccine for typhoid and say, "Great, now I can drink the sewer water in Bombay."
Full piece is here: http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2007/03/02/hpv/
SUNDAY, MARCH 4, 2007
From Shaun Deedes, Manchester, UK
Hi Simon. I read Tom Robinson's piece about the amount record companies are taking from their artists for downloaded singles. It does seem high but surely it's in line with the proportion of the total income that they've always taken? Anyway, you must admit its a big improvement that the Top Fifty can now include legal downloads.
The Top 50 will never mean anything while it's just a tool of the record companies. It should stop being the Top 50 best-selling songs and become the Top 50 most popular songs. At the moment, if a singer puts a track on his website that can be downloaded free, and it becomes the most popular song in the world bar none, it won't he listed in the Top 50 unless he agrees to make people pay for it. 'Legal downloads' doesn't really mean what it says, it simply means all downloads commercially approved by those who run the record business, the BPI (the British Phonograph Industry). The same people who for fifty years have made a killing selling vinyl at distorted prices now want to control downloads.
It's like oil companies being given a monopoly on selling electricity for electric cars.
SATURDAY, MARCH 3, 2007
From Aidan Elliot, London, UK
Hi Simon. Seems from yesterday’s posting you still hate record companies. What on earth is it about them that gets you so upset? Surely every success you’ve had in your career has been through forging a good relationship with one or another of them and getting promotion from them to make your act a success. Can’t you even credit them with that?
Not really! I still stand by what I said in 1982 when I wrote You Don’t Have To Say You Love Me..........
“Whether you’re a record producer or an artist or a manager, record companies are the enemy. They’re the voice of gloom. A barrier between enthusiastic creativity and the waiting public. Record companies always play safe, lose faith, change their minds and hesitate. They’re rest homes for the mentally sluggish. They’re over-staffed. They’re out to lunch. They’re in a meeting. Beating about the bush. Avoiding decisions, and deadlines, and phone calls. Ninety-thousand-a-year executives asking the messenger boy his opinion because, after all, it’s the kids in the street who buy the records, isn’t it?”
All the major record companies are still the same, even in this download age. Still stealing money from everyone in the industry who is creative. See Tom Robinson’s great piece in the Guardian today. But soon they’ll be gone. Like the end of segregation in America’s southern states, like the end of apartheid in South Africa, like the peace settlement in Northern Ireland, like marriage rights for gays – another of the great things that will have happened during my lifetime. No more record companies!
FRIDAY, MARCH 2, 2007
From James Addison, London, UK
Hi Simon. I got my monthly copy of Record Collector this month and found an excerpt – a huge excerpt, more than a 100 pages – from your book Black Vinyl White Powder. I can’t think why I never bought it before. It's SO good. I whizzed through the 100 pages they gave in the magazine then whizzed down to Waterstones to buy the real thing. One thing I want to ask. In the last chapter you forecast (quite correctly it seems) that everything will go electronic and digital and records will die out, but that drugs will stick around. The phrase you use is – “Black vinyl may have gone. White powder seems here to stay.” Do you still stand by that?
In both Britain and America CD sales this year are down 20% on last year which was 25% down on the year before which was 18% down on the year before that. In Britain HM Customs & Excise estimated cocaine usage to have doubled in the last year with an eight-fold increase in the number of cocaine related deaths. In the USA the figures are similar. So there you are… prophet Napier-Bell. Next thing will be the complete demise and obliteration of all the major record companies. Wonderful! The great things that happen in one’s lifetime!!
THURSDAY, MARCH 1, 2007
From Sir Harry Cowell, Kingston, Surrey, UK
Sorry to tell you that one of your old haunts from the 60’s just burnt down....Chez Victor...is no longer. Hope you are feeling better. Pissing down here.
Chez Victor! I first ate there with my dad and Karel Reisz when I was sixteen. It was the first time I'd ever had snails, a little stew of them done in Pernod. Ever since the 30s it had been THE place for film people to eat, the one true French bistro in Soho. And it had that wonderful sign on the door which gave it Parisienne credibility, 'Le Patron Mange Ici'. Grumpy old sod he was too, always sat behind the door, scowling. At some time or other every well-known British film person ate there - stars, directors, producers, the lot - but however famous they were they could never get a smile out of old Victor. If they got one they talked about it for weeks - it was better than a rave review from Alexander Walker in the Evening Standard. Last time I went there was a couple of years ago. It had become Italian and Le Patron had long been six feet under. But despite pizza and pasta and tirimasu they still called the place Chez Victor. Ridiculous! Would a French restaurant call itself Trattoria Vittorio?
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 28, 2007
From Jon Lindsay, Sydney, NSW, Australia
Hope you have recovered from your operation! We are now looking at May (if you are available) and the Bobby Goldsmith people are very excited and relieved we held off from the Mardi Gras as they unebelievably flat out. I caught up with Rupert Everett last night (see pic below) and passed on you regards as I know you would have wanted. "How amusing," he said with an odd look on his face! He's going to be the ‘Mardi Gras Ambassador’ and ride in an open limo at the head of the parade. Or as he puts it… "like JFK without the assassination". What fun!
Hi Jon. I'm almost recovered, thanks, and May should be fine.
Looks like Rupert was having a pretty good time, and so he should. He’s the perfect ‘Mardi Gras Ambassador'. Still the only Hollywood leading man ever with the courage to come out. I hope you fill his limo with booze and boys in equal quantity. But the comment having been made, you’d better not drive him past any deserted wharehouses.
TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 27, 2007
From Andrew Loog Oldham, Bogota, Columbia
lou adler said to me a few years ago, "how on earth did we think we knew anything?” were we that stupid? he fell for david platz with the mamas & papas. freddy b at least said i'll only do a 50/50 deal. platz agreed to an 80/20 with 15% abroad, except on covers where we allowed him 50/50, as we (mick, keith and i) felt like benevolent publishers. what we did not know , and platz did, was that once he had one cover he had 50% of the copyright including 50% on the stones’ version. so he had a little studio in paris churning out covers on the stones and thereby got the lot. the last of the manicured, pipe smoking makeovers. died an awful vegetative death.
David Platz? He screwed everybody. He probably didn’t know he was screwing people, he just thought that’s what music publishing was about. He always did it with a smarmy smile. He spoke like a vicar - one of those soft leary voices - you almost expected to feel a creepy hand descend on your thigh. Freddy B was certainly no vicar, but I never had one of his lunches. The thing was, all those creepy publishers had a head start on us managers and all the other new record people - they'd been at it for a hundred years already - stealing with great panache. I later did a deal with Dick James. Worse than either of the other two. But the REALLY bad people where in the States. The likes of Mike Stewart and Murray Deutsch at United Artists - the epitome of everything that was wrong with the old-fashioned American publishing business from where the likes of David Platz learnt their thieving craft.
Us young managers knew nothing about publishing and we were led to believe it was a huge complicated maize of knowledge which required us to put it in other people's hands, when the truth was, a week's good tuition would have given us all there was to know. But we were sloppy. Anti-detail, all of us. Still am, to be honest. I don't really care about being fucked by people, if that's what they want to do. Most of them come to a bad end anyway, so there's no point wasting time being vindictive. Like David Katz's 'slow vegetative death'. I'm glad about that. He deserved it. And he got it without me having to use a lawyer. Excellent.
MONDAY, FEBRUARY 26, 2007
From Steve Ellis, London, UK
Hi Simon. I just caught up with your last week’s emails and saw the bit about masturbating Jack Wolfe’s two cats before guests arrived for dinner. Funnily enough, I once rented Jack’s flat on the same basis – my friend and I had to walk the dogs and look after the cats. (Jack rented his flat most summers and spent the proceeds going to the races at Longchamps in Paris). Anyway… here is a picture of those two rampant sex-mad cats during the three weeks of each month when they calmed down. Difficult to believe it’s the same animals, isn’t it?
Hi Steve. All I can remember of them is two backwards-walking felines, tails in the air, festering with vaginal wetness, searching for human legs to rub up against. They were insatiable and I don’t remember any quiet part of the month. To get them looking so docile you must have used a kilo of cucumbers on each.
SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 2007
From Bob Wellings, Dover, UK
hello simon napier bell... i bashed into your car last year in twickenham... remember??? it was probably my fault but you didnt seem too worried... i thought what a bit of luck bashing into someone who dont make too much fuss... quite a nice bloke i thought... but recently i came across your website and learnt youre just a big poofter windbag....
Well thanks, Mr Wellings. Just the sort of email one wants to receive first thing on a nice sunny morning. Sort of sets the day up just right, doesn’t it! You'll be pleased to know that since you sound such a nice chap I’ve forwarded your email address to a dozen major spammers each of whom guarantee to get around a thousand email ads a day through all known spam blockades and into your actual inbox.
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 2007
From Sealie Jones, Trenton, New Jersey, USA
hi simon. i’m in a new band called ‘god sucks’… we love your website and read it often… we’re atheists but we're activists too and notice you never touch on politics… in particular you never mention the war on terror and all that stuff… i mean… you must have a point of view… you can’t just talk about sex and music and food all the time… what about torture? what about all the bombings in baghdad? what about iran?
Iran? I haven’t been there for a while. The last time was in the 60s when it was run by Shah Pahlavi. Tehran had the prettiest belly dancers, the best boy brothels and the only good French restaurants in the Middle East. I suspect these days it’s not up to the same standard.
Besides, gays get hung, so it seems best to stay clear.
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 23, 2007
From Sammy Nguyen, Paris, France
Hello Mister Simon. I read your Eating Out column and find a review of Brasserie Lipp which you say you eat there with Fred LeClerc. Now I introduce myself, I was good friend of Mister Fred too. Unfortunate he die last year which probably you were not inform. Here is the good story of Fred dying. He was cancer for two years and in the end they come to take him to hospital but Fred refuse, he want to stay home. He was go downhill fast so we took him for one last lunch, not at Lipp but at Gard du Nord brasserie which is Fred's another favourite place. With lunch he drunk too much then come home and take four Viagra. He said he want to die with an erection but one hour later he die with a heart attack. Before he die he wrote a letter “put me in my best suit with flies buttons open and hard dick sticking out”. We can not find the funeral shop who will do this so Fred’s last wish is cancel. Afterwards everyone has a good party for him so I thought you like to know.
Hi Sammy. There's not much I can add to that. Thanks for such a beautiful story. It’s good to know Fred died amongst friends.
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 2007
From Charlie Shoals, London, UK
Simon - re your deliberately provocative comment the other day opting for the melting of polar ice-caps and resulting worldwide flooding here's a map that shows what the result of a complete meltdown would be… it would mean a rise in the world’s oceans of 100 metres…
Looks good to me. Less land, less people, but all on a healthy diet of fish from the bigger oceans. And it appears to get rid of the religious right in the southern US. I’m getting quite excited about the idea. Any chance of moving the date forward?
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 21, 2007
From Janie Sayer, Birmingham, UK
How can someone like you, who is such fun and so much likes good living, be so negative about doing something positive for the world? Surely you must be able to see how man continually makes progress despite all the obstacles. For one thing look at the current acceptance of gays - or blacks, or Jews. When you were born that sort of acceptance was unthinkable. Doesn’t that at least please you?
Not particularly. I preferred being an outsider. I’m comfortable with gay-bashing. And when the law’s not intervening it still goes on. People either have that particular prejudice or they don’t. It’s true that gays and Jews and blacks are now seen as part of mainstream society but once they’ve finally been fully assimilated life won’t change one jot. Do-gooders will look for new minorities on the fringes of society to incorporate into the respectable mainstream - prostitutes, perhaps, or paedophiles - strange people from other planets, robots or the higher apes. Similarly, the do-badders will protest vehemently against their incorporation and say it means the end of civilized society as we know it. That’s the requirement for happy living - plenty of good, a bit of bad, nothing perfect, always a problem to keep our minds busy. You can work hard for it or against it, but I prefer to sit and watch the world go by like a good movie. Preferably with some good wine and someone nice to snuggle with.
TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 20, 2007
From Dan Starr, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
man… that was such a silly reply… simplistic and bad-tempered… like some sort of gay facist.
Bad-tempered and simplistic, maybe, but not wrong. Whatever we do, the world is going to outlive us. One hundred million years from now it will just be a big uninhabitable rock with mankind long gone. This whole ‘save the world’ thing is a totally straight thing - it's so man-egotistical. What these people really mean is ‘save me’ (and my precious children). Why can't they accept melting icecaps, rising oceans and massive flooding? If there’s a billion or so deaths, what’s the big deal? Change is exciting. The people who are left will soon adjust and propser. They may even give up overbreeding. Great! Away with the icecaps and roll on the flooding.
MONDAY, FEBRUARY 19, 2007
Archie Symonds, Rhode Island, USA
Listen Simon, I like your style and I like your openess about being gay and not giving a shit about living the way you want, but I’d like to ask you just one thing about gay people. I look at all the people in the world today doing something positive about pollution or making the world more eco-friendly or working for Greenpeace or a new Kyoto agreement, and there seem to be no known gays involved in these things. If gays want to be totally accepted by straights, shouldn’t they be doing their equal share in helping make the world a better, cleaner place? Like you for instance, for all your big opinions, I've never heard you mention a word about it.
Dumbest question I ever heard. And anyone gay would agree. There’s only one problem with the world that causes the problems you’re talking about and it’s not too many cars, or too much heavy industry, or too many gas-emitting sheep and cattle in New Zealand and Wyoming and Texas. It’s too many people. Without them none these things would exist. So…
Until you stupid, dumb, blind, ignorant, selfish, straight bastards start putting condoms on the end of your willies whenever you fuck, the world will continue to deteriorate.
SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 18, 2007
From Phil Whelan, RTHK radio, Hong Kong
Hiya Simon. Just sitting here, on air, pissing myself laughing at the wanking cat story. So funny, the mental image of you and Allan whacking off your friend's felines. Just read out the link to your site on air... bit of culture for the crusties on a Friday morning. I'm going to be 40 today and not quite sure how to deal with it. Any pearls of wisdom?
In order of importance – alcohol, dinner with someone worth talking to, and sex. I can’t remember my 20th birthday, but from my 30th through to my 60th that was the order of the day. And with regards to sex… the period from 30 to 40 (when, as you've now learnt, I was reduced to masturbating cats) was not nearly as good from 40 to 50 which were the years I had the most and enjoyed it the best - so you’ve got it all in front of you. (Whatever you do, though, don’t have your dinner at that dreadful Indian place you took me to last time I was in Hong Kong.) Happy birthday.
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 17, 2007
From Jackie Sales, Birmingham, UK
Hello Simon. I just got back from a business trip to the Far East with my boyfriend. Before we went we’d been reading your ‘eating out’ section and decided to stay at the Oriental Hotel which you seem to like so much. We were disappointed. We got a very good discount price from our tour operator, but still it didn’t seem good value compared with say, the Hyatt in Hong Kong where we stayed a few days later.
You silly cow. The Oriental’s not for staying in cheap rooms at package tour rates. You’re meant to be in the Somerset Maugham suite in the author’s wing, or one of one of the special suites on the 16th floor of the new wing, or my favourite, the Barbara Cartland suite, done out in lilac. If you think the hotel isn’t much good, try calling down to reception at three in the morning - explain you’ve got a few of friends with you and you’d like a late night snack in your suite - foie gras, pheasant-under-the-glass, a saddle of lamb, Crystal Champagne, Mouton Rothschild 95, “and a couple of butlers to serve us, please.” Then you’ll find out if you’re in a good hotel or not.
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 16, 2007
From Jules Esteve, Oakland, California, USA
Hi Simon. I was looking through your CV and saw a pitcture of you with a large dog on a bridge, entitled, “Me with Jack Wolfe’s dog.” I knew Jack Wolfe in the 70s. Was that the dog which could count?
It certainly was. In the days when we were living in Paris, Allan Soh and I came to London for three months one summer and rented Jack's flat from him. The deal was, we would pay half the current rental but look after his two dogs and two cats. One of the dogs was the Great Dane in the picture. And it could count. Jack demonstrated this to me before he left us with it. Anything from one to ten, plus or minus. I thought Jack was doing it by blinking at the dog, telling it when to bark, but not so. I looked after the dog for three months and anytime I sat it down and asked “two plus seven” or “eight minus three”, it barked out the right answer. Amazing. But a difficult dog nevertheless. It liked to jump on top of pillar boxes and then terrify the next passer-by by barking from above his head. The dog wasn’t malicious. It just liked a good laugh.
More problematic were Jack’s two cats, both females. They were wildly oversexed and whenever we had guests they would back up on their legs and wank themselves off leaving slimy deposits on the guests trousers. To avoid this happening, whenever we gave dinner parties, Allan and I would sculpt slithers of cucumber into small penises and offer the cats masturbation in the kitchen before the guests came.
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 15, 2007
From Andrew Loog Oldham, Bogota, Columbia
looked over your site and was surprised to learn that you too had an early innings of rich schools, poor schools.... my darkest moment was being caught in the loo at marylebone grammer school and being forced to sing "the man from laramie". the jimmy young version, i'm afraid, not the one that appeared in the film. a joyous moment last year was going back to the farmer's public school i attended (wellingborough ) to open the new music wing. plaque and everything. as the grounds are intact regardless of the school having shifted from boys, to mixed to just day school, esther thought she was at buckingham palace. hoots of former prettiness as old codgers shook my hand and told me they'd been in the chorus with me in HMS pinnafore. in any event i have my plaque, fuck the blue one.
Rich schools - poor schools - the lot. At 5 I was sent to a posh prep school and at 7 to the toughest local primary where I got beaten up for speaking with the wrong accent. At 9 I was sent back to another posh prep school and got bulllied all over again for sounding common. At 11 I was sent to grammar school where I first got teased for sounding to posh, then (when I reverted to the common accent I'd learnt at primary school) for sounding too common. (This was Harrow County grammar where Michael Portillo went later.) I had to sort out a new middle-ground accent but just as I’d got it right I was shipped off to public shool (Bryanston) where my voice sounded wrong all over again.
For years after I left school I could never speak to anyone without immediately assimilating their accent - just self-defence I suppose.
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 14, 2007
From Alex Michaelides, Singapore
Simon. Give Amyra a break. She is who she is and nothing worse than that. God knows, as her brother I’ve been annoyed by her often enough, as we all have, but she doesn’t deserve such excessive abuse.
Yes she does. But since half your family and most of Amyra's ex-husbands have written to me complaining I shall solve the problem by adding her to my spam list so that in future her emails will be automatically deleted. As she herself ought to be.
TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 13, 2007
From Amyra Michaelides, Hong Kong
Hello Simon. I noticed on your website that you were recently about to have surgery so I thought this would be a good moment to let you know that although you have written to me dismissively in the past I really do believe you did so in haste and without intending your words to be hurtful. Your friend Amyra.
You STUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUPID WOMAN !! You're NOT my friend. You're an insufferable intruder.
I knew you’d eventually find some way of persuading yourself that the contents of my last email were not meant. But they were. I didn’t write to you in haste but with careful consideration. Here - read it again...
You're the most suffocating, intrusive, interfering, fag-hagging hussey in the world.
MONDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 2007
From Dennis Sheer, Seoul, Korea
Hi Simon. Sitting round the Lotte hotel here in Seoul with far too much spare time between meetings, I found some books in English in the bar. One was a biography of Margaret Duchess of Argyle. Not very exciting - I mean not as exciting as it should have been for someone who's divorce involved the jury being shown pictures of the aristocracy having sex with dogs. But there was one great photo in the book, and it was of you. With her! Strange thing is, it said you were someone else, can’t remember who, but the photo was you in a white suit arm-in-arm with the Duchess. You can imagine how bored I am if that’s the most exciting thing I’ve got to report after five days.
Hi Dennis. No-one can pretend that Seoul in winter is anything but boring, except of course cold. But I bet it warmed you right through to come across such a lovely picture. Me in a white suit with the duchess – I remember it well - we were coming out of the Caprice on a summer’s evening in the 80s and the idiot photographer who snapped it thought I was an American banker and filed it under the wrong name. For months afterwards, everytime the banker pulled off some sharp new deal, my picture (carefully parted down the middle to leave out the duchess) kept turning up in the financial pages. My friends thought I’d taken on an alias and was scamming the city of millions so in the end I took legal action to stop the picture being used. The banker (as ugly as a wart-hog) was disappointed. He’d been enjoying his new good-looking image.
SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 2007
From Angie Sandrieu, Paris, France
Hi Simon. We met in Morocco when you were there on holiday many many years ago. I was working as a production secretary with a French film unit in a small town at the edge of the Sahara and you turned up in a big American convertible with an English film director and joined us for dinner. Remember? Well probably not. After all, it was 1964 – but you gave me your name card. Now I’m retired and I’ve got boxes and boxes of name cards going back forty years so I bought a computer programme which scans the cards and searches the names on the web. Your name came up - isn’t that amazing. Do you remember any of this?
I’m sorry Angie, I don’t remember you at all. But I remember the event. Clive Donner had just finished directing ‘What’s New Pussycat’ on which I worked as music editor. Midway through December we took off together for a holiday in Morroco. In Tangier, we persuaded Peter Churchill to rent us his white Buick convertible. We put the hood down and drove all the way south - stopped for two days at the Mamounia in Marakech, then went over the Atlas mountains and into the desert. Finally (very sunburnt indeed), we arrived at the last little town before the Sahara. And having come all that way to get away from a year of film-making, there was a film crew. You lot! With Omar Sharif starring, I seem to remember.
The next day, like complete idiots Clive and I drove off into the Sahara (in an American convertible for goodness sake, with the hood down) and got hopelessly stuck. We were quite fortunate to be rescued and only managed to stay out of the sun because in the middle of endless sand we came across a concrete pill box from the 2nd World War. Inside we found graffiti in both German and English the most memorable inscription being “Fatima’s a good fuck!”
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 10, 2007
From Iain Cooper, Dubai
Hi Simon. Did you hear about that poor Malay Chinese guy who found out that he had been handed to the wrong parents at birth. They were Muslim. His real family are not. He has now found his real parents and is applying through Sharia court in KL to be allowed to leave the faith. What hope for democracy in the Muslim world if a court has to decide for you which god you can worship! God is, indeed, great.
When potential expats look at the tempting financial plan the Malaysian government offers retirees (seemingly a good deal compared, for instance, with what Thailand offers), let's hope they realise they’re simply being bribed to support a facist theocracy. In the northern Malay state of Kelantan, apostasy (changing you religion), is punished by death. The strange thing is, since Muslims believe in ‘life after death’, changing their religion to something else should logically lead to ‘death after death’, which you’d have thought (providing they really believed in all this crap) would be punishment enough.
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 9, 2007
From Tim Gee, London, UK
Hello Simon! As our post lady battled through the snow to deliver to-day's mail I thought you ought to have it as soon as possible. Such envelopes as have arrived for you and Yo recently have been singularly uninteresting. It seemed this one might contain a cheque but no such luck. Just a bill (scanned and attached). No mowing of corn to-day.
Incidentally an American friend (straight, so he maintains) has asked if he can have the use of my spare room between March 25th and April 2nd. I have said yes provided you do not need it. I hope this is OK.
Hi Tim. Thanks for your prompt forwarding of my accountant's bill. Of course your American friend can use your spare room. I suspect I shall not be over for a while. This weekend I'm off to hospital in Bangkok to have my prostate removed. Last weekend I had my eyes lasered. Next weekend, who knows, probably coffin-measurement. I shall keep you informed.
THURSDAY, FEBURARY 8, 2007
From Susan Allerton, Plymouth, Devon
simon, my dear, we’re looking for rock memorabilia to auction for a local charity… the money goes to under-priviledged children… have you got things we could use? did any of your artists ever leave you with anything?
Legal aggravations, unwanted bills, occasionally a little affection, sometimes a few royalties, but nothing you could auction. Anyway I never keep ‘things’. Not even things I ought to keep. I even erase computer files for no other reason than I hate accumulation. Which is probably why I write – throw it all out of my brain like spring cleaning. I'll autograph some books for you if it will help.
WEDNESDAY, FEBURARY 7, 2007
From Richard Cranford-Brooke, Toronto, Canada
Hello Simon. You'll remember I wrote to you a year ago explaining that at the ripe old age of 67 I was embarking on a career in show-business - political stand-up in drag - Angela Merkel, Cherie Blair, that sort of thing. You asked me to let you know how things went so I'm here to tell you that as a comedian I was was no great success. However I now have excellent work as a financial consultant. The funny thing is, how I got the job. I was doing a sketch as Hillary Clinton talking about the cost of keeping house for her and Bill. Afterwards someone in the audience approached me and said it sounded like I knew what I was talking about when it came to fiscal matters. Turned out he was a closet drag queen working in the finance department of a major plc. He needed advice on the very things in which I was most experienced - so there you are - I'm back in work.
Hi Richard. You've not made yourself clear. Are you advising him on make-up or on finance? Or is it perhaps the cost of make-up? Anyway, whatever it is, it's good to know you're back working.
TUESDAY, FEBURARY 6, 2007
From Eric Sellens, Manchester, UK
Hi Simon. How are you today? Warm I hope. It's frrrrrreeeeeeeeeeeeeezing here!!
I read in the local paper that someone from Manchester Grammar (4 years above me when I was there eight years ago) has just auditioned for and been put through to the next round of American Idol! He's called Tom Lowe. He just recently graduated from Harvard which explains why he's in the States. Also, he’s gay.
It'll be interesting to see if he keeps it quiet!
Well, he might, but obviously you won’t. Which is a good thing really. It would be nice to see Americans choose someone they actually knew was gay. But it won’t happen. America just isn’t ready for a gay idol, though in the past they’ve had many – James Dean, James Cagney, Burt Lancaster, Rock Hudson, etc. But never knowingly - and these days American stars seem more coy than ever about coming out. Anyway, now you’ve let everyone know he’s gay, let’s see if America goes for it. Good luck Tom!
MONDAY, FEBURARY 5, 2007
From Tracy, DirtE Records, London, UK
bloody hell simon... just logged on to your blog. all this anti london music vitriol. whats a young lady to think? and yes you deserve a good mauling... russ (who is neither strange or boring) has got 4 monitor mixes for you of paul's (chauffeur driven aviator) new songs so feedback on those would be great. just got a very big radio plugger on board for the the 'strap it on' so shall be interesting to see how the single does in this nasty little dead end of a country!! will keep you posted. lots of love and cold kisses. xx
Hi Tracy. I knew I'd be in trouble with you as soon as I'd written it. But there was Bee complaining about a cold damp winter in London - and here was me having lunch on the terrace of the Royal Cliff Hotel overlooking a sparkling blue sea under a cloudless sky, temperature in the mid-70s - and all I could think of was those awful people at the major record companies who prevaricate and play-safe and go back on their promises. Everything I've ever done in the British music business that's given me a real kick has been through small companies but what tends to stick in mind is the awful negativity you meet every time you have to deal with a major record company. I should have prefaced the whole thing by defining who I was talking about, and of course it was NOT YOU. If only I could do British music business summers only and never through the majors. (By the way, d'you mind if I forego the cold kisses and wait for some hot ones later in the year?)
SUNDAY, FEBURARY 4, 2007
From Beee Futon, Singapore ( home to Bangkok tomorrow
Hiya !!!! You are gonna love Russ (Junkscientist) he's a complete darling! In fact lunch in Patty with you both
would be such a pleasure that I am gonna be presumptuous and gatecrash!
UK shows were a blast but that country is too cold to live in unless you're into flakey-pastry-skin and furs! Futon album mixes are cooking nicely... sent you a track about torture (add your own victim and enjoy). Hugzzzzzz XX
Back already? Only last week I read a full page article in the Bangkok Post saying Futon had taken over the world and would never be seen in Thailand again. About the last part, I wasn't too happy; about the first, delighted. But then I read another piece that told the truth - you'd simply played a few of those seedy London clubs where groups who want to make it in the UK are officially required to test their mettle (like having to spend a year in those awful immigrant camps in the outback if you want to live in Australia). You know my feelings when it comes to the UK music business - give it a big miss. Nowadays it's become a nasty little dead-end. Futon should blossom first in France and Tokyo, then straight to California, each stage giving its own reward - good food, good clothes, good weather. In the UK all you'll get is a good mauling from a bunch of snooty critics.
Oh dear, now I'm going to get my own personal mauling from Tracy at DirtE, but it's difficult not to tell the truth. Just thinking of the British music business is as depressing as... Well actually, I can't think of anything else as depressing!
By all means gatecrash my lunch with your strange Junk Scientist person.
I'll think of it as lunch with you, with him doing the gatecrashing.
SATURDAY, FEBURARY 3, 2007
From Tracy, DirtE Records, London
hello simon, hope this finds you fighting fit. couple of things... firstly futon single 'strap it on' gonna be released mar 19... secondly our lovely producer russ (junkscientist) is gonna be in pattaya from 5th - 14th feb (he's then returning to bangkok to finish mixing the futon album). he says he'd love to meet up with you for a drink. he's a very sweet guy so can i give him you're email?
i appreciate if you're not up for it (but he is cute!!) xx
Tracy, surely you know - one man's cute is another man's poison. It's not for everyone I'll undertake these social drinking duties, but for you...
I hope he's amusing. If not, I have someone unbelievably boring in mind to dump on you by way of reciprocation.
FRIDAY, FEBURARY 2, 2007
From Jim Lynford, Manchester, UK
hi simon... got a question… which of the artists you ever managed, if he turned up on your doorstep and said let’s go and have dinner together, would you most enjoy chatting with??
Difficult. If you take away the business element artists become less interesting to spend time with. The trouble is, they’re mostly self-obsessed, which makes them a trifle boring. The only artist I ever managed and still stay friends with is Duncan Millar from Blue Mercedes.
Jeff Beck is always a pleasure to bump into but eventually gets round to the mind-numbing subject of cars. Jeff Downes of Asia has a broader view of things than most artists, and so does Chris Townson who played drums with John’s Children, or if I felt like discussing the world from a more esoteric viewpoint, perhaps David Sylvian.
Marc Bolan might be amusing, but because he’s been dead so long he wouldn’t know much about what’s going on, which could prove a bit of a downer. Any chance I could side-step this dinner altogether?
If not, perhaps we could change it to managers. Now there’s an interesting bunch of people! Worth dining out with, every one of them.
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 1, 2007
From Richard Macauley, Norfolk, UK
Hello my dear. Re ‘The Scotch of St James’, not a lot to report I'm afraid. My current pursuits (excluding olde tyme hand-jiving at Fakenham Bingo Club) are… accumulating vast quantities of books and "Record Mirrors"… trying to trace the manager of the club at the time… e-mailing infamous people as well as ex-managers to glean bits and pieces or even more. I suppose this accumulating of stuff will end at some point and then I can begin to shape it. I'm still trying to think of some intelligent questions to ask you. Any ideas?
What a strange obsession you’ve got hooked on. On the other hand, with old-people’s hand-dancing at the Bingo Club as your best other option, I suppose I understand. You never quite explained what you were going to turn all this information into once you’d got hold of it. A TV documentary? A magazine article? A blockbuster novel? As for questions to ask me…
Well obviously you want to know good Scotch of St James stories. There were so many. With me, many revolved around Robert Stigwood. We had a volatile relationship. We would have dinner with each other three days in a row, then have a blazing quarrel. One night at the Scotch, with both of us blind drunk, I said something that offended him dreadfully – I’m not sure what, probably about his awful hairstyle or the inferior quality of the boy he’d just picked up. He flew into a pompous rage and called Louis Brown, the owner of the club, and insisted I was thrown out. Poor Louis – two of his best-spending customers.
Stiggy somehow got the upper hand and Louis took me aside and suggested I leave. It was around 1.30am and I was double-plastered. The week before I’d been threatened by a thug working for a rival manager so I’d bought myself a mace-gun by mail order from America. It had arrived just that day and as I staggered home down St James Street and along The Mall towards Victoria where I lived I pulled it out of my pocket and pretended I was shooting Stiggy. “You fuckin’ pompous tosser. You loud-mouth Aussie git. You ancient balding bastard.” And with each muttered phrase I pointed it left and right and pretended to fire it. All of a sudden a huge figure stepped out of the shadows and without meaning to I flipped my hand up and fired the mace gun in the bloke’s face. Then realised it was a policeman.
Fuck me, did I ever run home fast - down the Mall, across the park, over the main road (almost crushed by a speeding lorry), through the lobby of my building and plonk into the lift. I must have done half a mile in ninety seconds. Eat your heart out Sebastian Coe.
The next morning I wouldn’t leave the flat till a friend had bought me all the newspapers and I’d scoured them from end to end. There were no reports of a policeman having been maced so eventually I got up enough courage to go to the office. As soon as I got there the phone rang and it was Stiggy. “What happened to you last night. I thought we were going on to the 21 club but you disappeared.” “You had me thrown out, you bastard,” I shouted at him. But he couldn’t remember a single thing about it. “Dinner tonight, then?” he asked. “How about the Connaught?”
Strange relationship. But I suppose we quite liked each other.
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 31, 2007
From Chris Mosey, London, UK
Hey Simon – what d’you think of poor old Michael Levy getting arrested again? Looks like they’ve really got it in for him. I remember the days when he used to sit up at Magnet Records and harang anyone who took in a demo tape as if he was the biggest mogul in the world. I can’t say I feel sorry for him. What about you?
No feeling either way. When Michael was spouting off, it could be thirty minutes or so before anyone else could get a word in edgeways, but whether that’s grounds for arrest or not, I’m not sure. Still, it’s the same old thing we saw with Watergate, with Monica Lewinsky, and now with Tony Blair. If, when he’d been asked about an affair with Lewinsky, Bill Clinton had said, “Sure, we’re having an affair, but it’s none of your business,” he would never have been impeached. And if Tony Blair had said to the police - “everyone in Britain knows that honours are given for donating to political parties, that’s how it’s always been and that’s what we’re doing too” - the police case would have closed the next day, replaced by a debate on the subject in Parliament.
These people just love lying. And look at them - religionists every one. ‘Cos they think they’ve got God on their side they try to bluff their way out of it. If they knew they hadn’t, perhaps they’d act more sensibly.
TUESDAY, JANUARY 30, 2007
From Alan Geraint, Boston, Mass, USA
Simon! Do you really believe what you said, that “anyone who believes in God is a brain-dead moron”? What about your Prime Minister Tony Blair? What about four great liberal thinking Americans, Jimmy Carter, Barack Obama, Al Gore, Bill Gates?
I never said they were. I said I reserved the right to call them that. However I certainly believe that anyone who believes in God has a large part of their brain permanently malfunctioning.
As to the extraordinarily unbalanced bunch of people you picked out, I would say without doubt the first four suffer permanent brain malfunction. They all have those religious bullshit frowns on their faces. But there’s no way you'll persuade me Bill Gates believes in God. Unlike the others he has intelligence written all over him.
MONDAY, JANUARY 29, 2007
From Jamie Sander, London, UK
Hi Simon. I’m been a Marc Bolan fan dating back forever. I thought I’d read every book there was about him but recently I found one in a second hand book store by you and a journalist called Chris Welch. In the forward to the book you wrote that in the 60s Marc used to come round to your flat in Belgravia early every morning, make you both a cup of tea and 'get into bed with you’. Was that a way of saying that you were having a sexual relationship with him? Or was it really just to talk and drink tea? Is the time right yet for us to be told?
I guess in all the things I’ve written or said about Marc I’ve rather danced around this subject. Marc and I had a very good relationship. But although it was sometimes more than just manager/artist you couldn’t call us lovers. This was the sixties. Getting into bed with people was the thing to do. And if a little sex resulted, all well and good. Nothing more than that. (I doubt if I was the only person he made tea for.)
SUNDAY, JANUARY 28, 2007
From Archie James, Seattle, Washington, USA
Hi Simon. How come you're always able to put the town in which your correspondents live? I get loads of emails every day. No-one ever tells me where they're writing from.
First and simplest method - write back and ask them. Second method - read the details of their internet header. You'll find out their originating server and the time they sent their email and the local time zone they sent it from. If you deduce it's from within the USA or Canada you can use a variety of programmes (easily available online) to find their current address, previous addresses, every parking ticket they ever had and probably their religion and voting pereference too. If they're from outside the USA there's a quite hard-to-come-by, rather nasty, CIA derived people-finder programme which is quite shocking in its thoroughness. I don't have it but I've seen it in action. Starting with just an email address and a received email, it can track down everything there is to know about almost anyone in the world who has ever done anything in an official capacity - i.e. got born (with a birth certificate), got married (with a marriage certificate), applied for a driving license, been to school, been in court, been in prison, written a letter to a newspaper, etc. Personally, I go for the write back and ask method.
SATURDAY, JANUARY 27, 2007
From Anthony Shearn, Liverpool, UK
Hi Simon. Meandering through your website I came across a lot from you about your dislike of religion and your lack of belief in God. Here is a question I would like to ask of you. You live with your boyfriend and claim to love him but surely ‘love’ is just as abstract and personally invented a conception as ‘God’. If I am to be laughed at for saying I believe in God, why should you not be laughed at for saying you love your boyfriend? Prove it to me. You cannot! Tell me what it means in clear logical language. You cannot!
I have a Chambers dictionary next to my desk. Its primary definition of love is, ‘an affection of the mind caused by that which delights’.
I’ll settle for that. And on good days I’d say it’s how I feel about Yo. On bad days you might find something under 'hate' which would be nearer to how I feel about him. But together they seem to average out to someone I enjoy sharing my life with.
However, in regard to the actual word 'love', even if you go through my website from end to end you won't find me using the word in relation to anyone I've ever lived with or cared for. It's just too imprecise and indefinable - an easy, one-syllable, cop-out way of expressing something much more complex. So I avoid it.
Now then! Having given up my right to use the word 'love', I'd like to reclaim my right to say that anyone who believes in God is a brain-dead moron.
FRIDAY, JANUARY 26, 2007
From D'Andre Michael, London, UK
Hello Mr Bell. I'm a singer song writer. I would really like you to Manager me all the way to the TOP. Just listen to my song and take it from their. You are the ONE. I can get my music to you anyway you want just let me know. Come on Mr Bell!!!!
I get so many annoying emails from people who think they’re potential superstars it’s difficult to know why one should stand out as more annoying than the others. Yet in today's bunch yours certainly does. Re getting your song to me – you already have – by telepathy. It’s ghastly.
THURSDAY, JANUARY 25, 2007
From Sarah Heisler, Norfolk, Virginia
Dear Mr. Napier-Bell,
I just wanted to write and tell you how much I adore you. A friend of mine is a journalist in London and recommended your 3 books to me. Thank goodness I heeded his advice because they provided hours of pure entertainment. For all the joy you've brought to the world through the bands you managed and the brilliant books, I'd sent over a coterie of shirtless, Latino 15-year old boys to feed you peeled grapes and regular intervals if I could (after I'd auditioned them myself, you see).
Once, I took my dad to chemotherapy (he unfortunately has lung cancer from decades of too many cigarettes) and was seated beside him in a room full of other cancer patients, all quietly hooked up to IVs. Because his treatment takes 4 hours, I had brought along 'You Don't Have To Say You Love Me' to help pass the time. I can't even recall what the story was, but your book had me laughing hysterically. The more I tried to shut myself up (because, really, getting chemo isn't a particularly hilarious experience), the harder my body convulsed in giggles. I finally had to excuse myself and sit in the lobby alone. That only solidifies my place in Hell.
By the way, because you and I share the same opinion on Christians (I'm hoping the Rapture hurries up and happens so we can have the planet to ourselves), I thought you'd enjoy this: http://lovegodsway.org/GayBands Beware the gay menace! (The best bit is where it says "Elton John (really gay)". Ha!
Hi Sarah. I'm not sure I've ever been adored before - it feels rather nice. I'm glad my book made you laugh, I hope you gave it to your dad and got him laughing too. As for your link... Extraordinary! I never saw Oscar Wilde called a 'reformed homosexual' before. Just because they wanted to use something he'd written, I suppose.
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 24, 2007
From Gregory Gray, Herts, UK
hey simon... that was an amazing post yesterday... i clicked on michelle's webpage and listened to her little show reel... she's a real fine drummer, all groove and full of restraint... on the photos you can see she plays one of those little gretch kits too, which is the height of taste.
i think the fact she gets rejected simply for being a transexual shows just how and why rock n roll has lost all its cultural force. rock and roll started out with people like little richard who wasn't in spirit that far removed from michelle... elvis with his dark eye shadow and limp wrist... all the great people weren't afraid of sex... now it's just a clusterfuck of conformists who get nervous when confronted with the likes of michelle. any band worth its salt should kill to have that kind of character in its ranks... someone who is above the mediocrity could easily clock michelle and take her way above the people who try and marginalise her. i fancy the new york dolls should fire their hired drummer on their comeback trail and recruit this talented soul. she's really rather 'charlie watts' in her style.
Your dead right. If I was putting together a credible rock band Michelle would be abolutely first choice. Great drumming; great personal character. What's so strange, living in Thailand, is observing these prejudices in a country which is so tolerant of gays - i.e. Canada. In Thailand, transvestites and transexuals, if anything, are more accepted than gays. I suppose, because they so openly state their case. One of the top beauty-care celebrities in Thailand is a transexual and is constantly on TV, taken seriously as a beauty expert, doing TV commercials, appearing on chat shows. And the number one teacher of the Thai language to Thai children is a transexual. She has one of the most popular programmes on TV and teaches kids in the 10 to 18 year old bracket to enjoy and investigate their own language. These are things I've never seen in the UK or the USA. The head cashier at the local hospital is a transexual (could be a transvestite, I'm not sure), so is one of the receptionists at the local Toyota repair shop, the manager of a local hardware shop, the staff supervisor at my nearby supermarket and many shop assistants around town. If Michelle lived in Thailand, without doubt she would be a top session drummer. Only her drum playing ability would be considered, nothing else.
TUESDAY, JANUARY 23, 2007
From Michelle Josef, Toronto, Canada
Hello Simon. It seems that we have a fan in common - a fellow from New Jersey who sent us both the same email, lauding us as the best ever and requesting an email. I don't know about you, but I don't usually get this kind of attention from fans. Here’s my situation....
I live in Toronto and am a professional drummer. Jeff Brown sent me an email stating that I am the best drummer ever and that he has many records that I have played on. Very flattering to hear, but I am not the best drummer ever although I have established a reputable career in Canada and I have played on a lot of records. Although Toronto is a big, vibrant and incredibly multi-cultural city, the music industry here is like a little village, and like any little village it is full of gossip and long term prejudices. I have been an established drummer in Toronto for many years and then about 7 years ago I announced to my world that I was transsexual and underwent gender transition from male to female. My gender identity has been a hidden struggle since I was a small child and I simply couldn't keep up the charade any more.
In many ways my "coming out" improved my life and my musicianship, but it seriously impacted my career in a negative way. Too many people in the music business here have small, narrow minds and unfortunately for me, the issue of what I am seems to be more important than the kind of person that I am or the quality of my musicianship. Even people that I don't know or haven't met seem to have strong opinions about me and I'm tired of trying to rise above it all here in Toronto. Despite my talent and experience, it is difficult for me to jump the hurdles of politics and gossip and get quality work. So, while searching the internet to find what I can about Jeffrey Brown, I stumbled upon your website. You certainly have had an interesting life and have many, many contacts. This email may be a complete waste of your and my time, but what the heck, what do I have to lose in pitching you. I need to find a place where I can overcome my history and get on with the business of making great music with cool people. If, in your many adventures you hear of someone auditioning or needing a drummer I would be deeply appreciative if you were to pass my name along or direct someone to me. Check out my website: www.michellejosef.com (just to let you know that I am for real). All the best.
Hi Michelle. Looking through your website brought back memories of when I was 18, just arrived in Toronto, wanting to be a musician (trumpet) but couldn’t get in the union for a year. It was 1957. I got a job selling magazines door-to-door and played jazz wherever I could in the evenings - there used to be a pub at Dundas and Bloor where musos could sit in. There were also the Town Tavern, where top jazz stars came from the states. I watched Oscar Peterson there everynight for a week which left me no money to eat with, the only time in my life I got truly thin. After a while I deserted Toronto for Montreal where there was work to be had in non-union bars and clubs. Funnily enough the best non-union joint in town had a band fronted by Chuck Peterson, Oscar’s brother, a trumpet player. He was the spitting image of his brother but only had one arm. He was most welcoming and I often sat in with the band. (Sadly, though, Oscar never did.)
Since then I’ve been back to Toronto many times as the manager of groups playing gigs there - Japan, Asia, Wham!, etc. Hasn’t the place changed! Good clubs, good restaurants, truly cosmopolitan, yet I can see how village-like it is, and jazz musicians are the straightest bunch, which is why I gave up being one. It must have been amazingly difficult for you to annouce to your musician friends you were about to change sex. In the UK in the 60s and 70s there was a composer called Wally Stott, much liked by everybody. Wally wrote and conducted for BBC shows like Hancock's Half Hour and The Goon Show. In the 1970s he became Angela Morley. One Monday he conducted the band for his current show as Wally and turned up the next Monday to conduct them as Angela. Some nerve - yet nobody blinked an eyelid. (Except for a trombonist who asked for a date.)
I’ve no idea who might be looking for a drummer but at least you now have a bit of a story on this website (which a lot of music biz people look at). I hope it helps. Cheers.
MONDAY, JANUARY 22, 2007
From David Valla-Dury, Lyon, France
As a student of Lyon University of Economics, I'm in charge of collecting information regarding the role of English agents working in the field of live concerts. I need this to compare the main differences between the French agent & the English agent. Please help me find official information about the job - law, rules & regulations, responsibility, commission.
Well thank-you darling David, what a lovely little project for me. And once I’ve rounded up all this information, how would you like it delivered? As a PDF file? On a CD? Or perhaps I can arrange for someone to deliver it to you personally as a hard copy - printed matter in a large cardboard tube suppository.
SUNDAY, JANUARY 21, 2007
From Andrew Borden, Bridgetown, Barbados
Simon... long time no see... just found your website... marvelous... like bumping into an old friend in a pub and catching up over a stream of beers... gosh you've done a lot since we last spoke. I know when we last spoke we were a bit at loggerheads but they say time heals and that's what I felt when I read your website. Drop me a line and we'll talk further.
Time only heals when you want it to. With you I'd rather it didn't. You destroyed trust, stole ideas and lied endlessly. I heard from a mutual acquaintance you were terminally ill. I wasn't sorry.
But it seems he was mistaken, which is a pity.
SATURDAY, JANUARY 20, 2007
From Jeff Shipley, London, UK
Hello Simon. I once was a tape operator at Olympic Studios and happene
