Whistling Clarabella...

Heather Mills really will do anything, won't she? Even if her accusations (including that Paul beat Linda) are true... wouldn't it have been best to keep it in the courtroom and not everywhere else?

Still, he wouldn't be the only Beatle to have suffered from a giant ego or beaten his wife. He has taken all manner of drugs and quite openly said so. He does drink, sometimes to excess. He does surround himself with people too willing to do exactly what he wants. Still, I find it hard to believe his children would adore him so much if he'd beaten their mother. I don't know. I hope that it's all false- I'd rather believe her a mental fantasist than reconcile myself to another of my heroes being a total cunt. Mind you, he'd be in populous company.

Anyway, I scribbled this a few weeks ago and thought I'd share it with you:

So, you might know that I met a guy called Scott Gorham the other day. I am not here to brag a bit more, in fact, I am here to talk about something more serious.

It was, when I actually think about it, a very odd experience. Brilliant because I got his autograph and exchanged a question with him. Sad because he chose to stop posing for pictures just as I was about to step up. Elating because this is a real rock hero and deflating because it was only an autograph and a moment.

Because like every other fan, I have this feeling that I am different to all the others. More important. Special. Something that separates me from the yelling morons with their faded Bad Reputation t-shirts. Something that makes me a bigger, better fan than anyone else. This isn't something limited to Thin Lizzy or even music. It's the same with everything that has fans. The football fans who claim to have been to thousands of games or the baseball fans in possession of certain baseballs. The fans of Certain Sci-Fi Films That Shall Remain Nameless who queued for tickets earlier than anyone else and saw it more times than anyone else. The Elvis fans who claim to have bought more over-priced tat than the others, the Marilyn Monroe fans who dress up. The Jim Morrison fans who make pilgrimage to Pere-Lachaise. The caravanners who have the biggest caravans or who've visited more sites. The hikers who walk further. The monarchists who own more tea towels or who have been in the hallowed presence of the most royals. The Buffy fans who can remember the most trivia. The Harry Potter fans who bitch loudest/know exactly what an Irish Phoenix is/wrote the OMGmostpopularficevar/I'll stop here cos of who I'm writing to right now.

You get the idea. Part of being a fan isn't just loving something/someone, it's about being seen to do so and being seen to do so more than anyone else. Rock fans are infamous for it. Remember Barry in High Fidelity? The guy who despises you for not knowing as much as him about music and tears you down for knowing as much/more. Fans are funny, funny people.

Part of this came to me while watching The Perfect Catch earlier, but most of this ran through my head on Friday, the Day After Meeting Scott Gorham. Now, I've met Philomena Lynott, Philip's mother. I've met Brian Robertson and I've met Eric Bell, two of the other guitarists. All in the space of one heady afternoon in which I realised a few things:

-There are many, many more Thin Lizzy fans than I ever really believed still existed.
-A lot of them are, outwardly at least, 'bigger' fans than I am. The woman with the tattoo of Philip's face on her arm. The guys who took their collections of Lizzy records to be signed. I realised there's actually a real community going on there.
-I am not even close to being as obsessed as a lot of other people, and I am of the opinion that love and obsession are not quite the same things.
-I also realised that I did not want to meet these people as a fan, I wanted much more to meet them on a more equal footing, as a fellow musician if possible. That I didn't want to just be a fan, grinning ridiculously into the camera as they stand beside me with a sort of strained grin on their face. I wanted to be able to converse with them on important subjects (music, obviously) and for them to be interested in what I had to say because they had some sort of respect for me in turn.

On Thursday, I met Scott Gorham. While fans of things may claim to never choose favourites, they always do. In Lizzy terms, the Prettiest Guitarist That Ever Was ranks below only Philip Lynott as far as I'm concerned. Not for being pretty, but for being consistently cool and decent in the face of overwhelming odds, for being willing to be 'the guy on the left' when the guy on the right was showboating his arse off. So it stands to reason that I should've been over the fucking moon to see him grasping my shiny purple notebook and asking how I spelled my name.

Sure, it was cool, but at the same time I was very 'blah'. Now as you know, I'm very blah about most things in the universe. Birth, life, death all flash past me with barely a quirk of an eyebrow. And although I rushed around a little trying to find a pen (he had his own) and trying to sort out my camera (fallen to the bottom of my bag)... I was remarkably cool in the face of Gorham. Then, as I stepped up to have my picture taken with him and he moved away...

And I didn't really mind. I mean sure, I was a little disappointed that I wouldn't have that small proof of the moment, but I didn't really mind. Honestly, I'd just spent a couple of hours of my life squashed against an amp on the stage (still got a bit of ringing in my ears) staring up at him and John Sykes, ripping my throat out trying to hear myself screeching the lyrics along with them over the sound of said amp. He'd acknowledged me when he was on stage, smiled at me a couple of times. More than that, he'd played a great gig. Why the hell shouldn't he piss off? He had the decency to come over and talk to us despite the cold and slight rain. Some of the fans had been yelling at him to come over even after he'd waved that he going to come over. Smoe of them, from hearing them talk, had been at the show the nights before and had hung around outside then. Why should he waste his night talking to people he talked to the night before and the night before? Perhaps I'm still sane enough to have an inkling as to what it's like for him. John Sykes didn't bother doing anything but get into the car and get chauffeured away... and even that's not entirely unreasonable. They're human beings who get tired and pissed off and hungry and whatever it is you humans do. 

More than that, I didn't like very much the feeling of hanging around outside the stage door. Mostly because I feel like I should be the one coming out of the stage door, but that's a different drama for another day. I felt alternately like a groupie (must've been the fact I was wearing a dress for once) or like an insane fan. I know it seems like it, but my entire life is not Thin Lizzy. My entire life may be rock and roll, but not just my boys. I would never buy a guitar just so it could get signed by Scott Gorham, even if it was a cheap Les Paul copy. The whole thing seemed wrong, somehow, somehow predatory. Perhaps it never used to be like this in the old days, but if anyone knows the old days are gone, it's me. 

Do I yet make sense? While I can laugh and joke about having Scott Gorham's autograph, while I can feel glad that I've at least exchanged words with him, it's not really the point. Because I am different to all the other fans. I am special. I am not like all the other fans. I'm not saying that they should see it that way, but I don't want to be just another fan with a trophy autograph. I want to be a musician and have great conversations with my heroes. I want to see that my heroes are the same as me and yet also great. I was not disappointed by my hero, which is more than many heartbroken fans can say. He wasn't a bad guy. He was thoroughly cool to the gaggle of people there. He answered my question with the same evasive non-answer he always gives, and the same for everyone else. Can you blame him? He's been doing this since 1974 for Lizzy. He's been answering the same questions about Philip since 1986. 

It must be the most infuriating thing to be a hero, or a legend, or a basic celebrity in many ways. In ways that riches do not make up for. We treat them like public property or like old friends, when they are neither. We know something of their lives, so we think we know them, when we do not. Knowing what a person eats for breakfast, having seen them come out of Starbucks or filling a car with petrol, or hearing them speak about their addiction/adultery/new movie does not give us any insight into their real selves. It just feels like it does. I don't know Scott Gorham any better than you know Jake/Tom/Heath/Whoever. Or in fact, any better than I know Jim Morrison or Errol Flynn or Philip Lynott or John Lennon. I have always known that the more I learn about these guys, the less I truly know them. I know enough to know that I don't know them at all. We are given fragments of their lives. Fragments that they let us see and which even when added all together do not create a true or full picture of a person.

This is something I know. I also know this: it is still possible to love them. Even when you're in possession of some of the bad fragments too. They are always distant and sometimes it's not a bad thing if we can accept it as the way it is.

It was cool to meet Scott Gorham, to share a few words with him. Should we meet again, it'll be cool. If he should recall "C L A R E, like the county" then I should likely be pleased as the proverbial Punch. But meeting Scott Gorham did not change my life. It did not bring stars falling from the sky, fairies were not resurrected, my heart did not stop. It was cool, but if you think it even compares to the way the music makes me feel... you have no concept of what it truly means to be a fan. Real fans? Proper ones? They know that it's the music that really counts. That while the people who made it are important, they still don't compare to the music.

So funnily enough, the concert itself was more elating than the moment Scott Gorham asked how I spell my name. God love you Scott, and your hair and the California drawl, but it was always the guitar I cared about.

Question: Guess who just met Scott Gorham and got his autograph, complete with own name spelled correctly by aforementioned guitar hero but did not get photograph because he appeared to get bored just before it was said person's turn?*

Answer: If you can't guess, what the scuff are you doing on my journal?

*skips triumphantly away*

*Said person also got grinned at, winked at by aforementioned guitar hero while on stage (him not me) and also grinned at and stared at by Other Lizzy Guitar Hero, John Sykes.

I rock the world. So ner.

This is my second attempt at writing this in a manner that is articulate, intelligent and succinct. Not sure how it's going to work out, given that I'm still in the "OMG!" stage. I'll leave my other stuff in the old post, cos I'm sure that most people reading this aren't going to give a flying one about my wander through St Stephen's Green and Dublin Castle.

I might as well just cut to the chase.

( Friday Afternoon: Philo. VERY NOT DIALUP FRIENDLY. MANY PICTURES )

( Saturday )

( The Concert )

To borrow a phrase from Bernard Cribbins: And then we went home. PS. Don't nick my photographs. I doubt any of you would want to, but a vague disclaimer is nobody's friend.

From the BBC:

Thin Lizzy's Lynott Back In Town

And I was there. I spoke to that beautiful, classy lady not so long after that picture was taken.

I was there.

Also, Dr Moog died. The 80s wouldn't have been the same without you, sir.

I've said it before and I know I'll say it again: I'd love to love Paul McCartney. I'd love to worship the very ground upon which he places his no-doubt gold-plated feet, but he makes it so hard.

I've said for many years now, being the sort that cares, that Paul is coolest when he's absolutely not trying to be cool. When he is trying (which is most of the time), he comes across as a desperate, middle-aged man with a terrible dye job who is intent on making us all think he's the coolest man who ever lived.

And we all know the coolest man who ever lived was Dean Martin.

Seriously, man! What is The Mac's problem? We've done so much for him. We tolerated Wings. Hell, some of us even LIKED Wings! We accepted Linda (only eventually, in some cases) because it was clear she was a Cool Chick who he adored. Couldn't play keyboards really, but she was cool nonetheless, and I liked the Linda McCartney's Ploughman's Pie before they changed to Definitely No GM Food Here recipies and it tasted foul.

I'm getting off the subject again. Paul McCartney is not an overtly cool man. He has always been too much of An Entertainer. If he had Astaire feet, he would've been a Song and Dance Man. If he'd been born seventy years before he was, he'd have been one of Music Hall's greatest. If he'd have been born in the seventies, he'd either be Robbiefuckingwilliams or Will Young. Only good. Paul McCartney has always been too much of a "Love me, please love me!" kind of man, and that's not a bad thing really. We do love him. But he's not cool like He Who Shall Not Be Named But Got Gunned Down On His Own Doorstep Nearly Twenty Five Years Ago.

Paul McCartney is not cool, but we love him and I so wish he'd understand that and just relax. I wish he could accept the hand he's been dealt. I mean, let's think about this logically:

1. He's a Beatle. OK, ex-Beatle.
2. He's the closest thing pop music has to an actual saint (fuck off Bono. Try harder next time)
3. He's actually a good guy. A hard-nosed businessman when it comes down to it, but a good guy.
4. If he had any more money, he'd have to buy that big vault Scrooge McDuck had in Duck Tales just to hold it all.
5. He's an ex-Beatle.
6. He's an ex-Beatle that wasn't gunned down or stabbed.
7. He got knighted before it became de rigeur to have a pop star in the list each time and Mick Jagger proved what a farcical concept giving these things to rock stars is.
8. He is, let's face it, one of the greatest composers ever to have bothered spanking a piano or strumming a guitar.

So, you're Paul McCartney. You have these Eight Fabulous Things in your life. Are you happy? Are you buggery.

I've got so caught up in ranting about Paul (who, don't get me wrong, I do love) that I've forgotten to mention the inspiration for today's festival of Maccabashing. Maccachiding, really.

Paul says George helped him write his new song.

The album the song is on isn't even out until September. He likes to get his publicity machine in gear early, I guess.

Don't get me wrong, I have little doubt that Paul was devastated by George's death. These guys were friends. Friends. Only friends who care about each other snipe like they did back in the day so memorably during Let It Be. I don't know that we could go so far as to call them brothers, but they were comrades-in-arms, the only ones who knew what it was like to be the others. Beatles-in-arms, I guess. If George's death destroyed me, as it felt like it did, I can only imagine it did something far worse to Paul.

If George did help Paul write the song (and the lyrics mentioned in the article do sound very Harrisonian), then that's fucking fantastic. Whether it's really George, helping from On High, or the shadow of a memory of George in Paul's own mind, it doesn't matter. I can't wait to hear the song now personally- I was always more a George girl than a Paul one.

But does this have to be turned around and twisted into news? Does it have to be used to kick-start the publicity for Another McCartney Moneyspinner. Boy has enough money and enough gold discs. I know he wants to remain popular and thus, relevant, but please.

There are some things you can use to sell your product. Your divorce, your separation, your drug habit, your new, much younger girlfriend/fiancee, someone else's drug habit, your stint in rehab, how you feel now you're clean, etc etc etc...

But please don't use the death of someone you loved to do it. It smacks of desperation and nastiness. I have no doubt that George's death hurt Paul a great deal, but can he not use it to sell records? Can he do it quietly? Because George's death hurt us a great deal too, Paulie, and some of us find it disheartening and distasteful that you'd use it to sell records.

Philomena Lynott is one of the classiest ladies ever.

I can't wait for 'The Boy Is Back In Town' on Philip's birthday. Not because I'll be there or because it's every other member of Thin Lizzy.

It's because if lots of us are there, perhaps we can prove to Philomena how much we love her son.

Someone asked me at work today how I got into Thin Lizzy. He was an Irishman of the right age to have been a teen in 70s Ireland, so it's not like he had to ask who I was talking about. You should've seen the look on his face when I told him why I was so excited to be going to Dublin again. He asked how someone like me, of my age, got into Thin Lizzy. I just made a generic 'well, I'm weird' answer because...

how do you explain to someone who is essentially a stranger, that it's something that's been in your soul for your entire life? How do you explain that it feels like the music chose me, not the other way around? How do I explain the gnawing ache in my soul that I missed out on dear, sweet, somewhat tragic Philip? How do I explain the deep desire to fuck off back to 1974, attach myself to Thin Lizzy as a drug tsar and make sure he lives to see 1987 and beyond?

If I don't entirely understand it meself, how am I supposed to explain to anyone else?

But someone, I rather suspect Philomena would understand. For all the gnawing ache I feel, she lost her son and that is the tragedy of Philip's life, not that I've got another dead man to love.

You know how I ranted about the article the other day that called Pamela Courson Jim Morrison's 'late wife'?

Well, I wasn't about to let it lie easily, so I found the correct page on BBC News Online to point out mistakes. I wrote the following:

In the article referring to the Doors losing the right to the name, you say that Pamela Courson was Jim Morrison's wife. She was not. They were not married, although she claimed to be his wife in the wake of his death. Jim Morrison did not get married to anyone in his lifetime- the closest he came was a pagan ceremony to an entirely different redheaded woman.
Clare Worley, UK

I got an email (mostly automated, but whatever) today to say thisL

Thanks for spotting that mistake, it's much appreciated.

Best wishes
BBC News website

AND if you go to the page now, it says 'late girlfriend'. OMG, the BBC NOTICED AND DID WHAT I TOLD THEM TO! MY LICENCE FEE JUST MADE SENSE!

*skips away happily*

Casting Call

I think it's inevitable that as we read each other's journals we create mental pictures of each other. Post this on your own  journal to find out who your friends see when they read about your life.

Two Rules:
1. The person must be in the movies or on TV (but doesn't have to be an actor/actress). The person can be specific to a role (e.g. Jennifer Elhe's Elizabeth Bennet) or just the person themself.
2. You have to post a link to a picture of said person in the comments.

These castings can be based on things in the person's personality or on physical traits you know they have.

Last seen with a few people I think, but most recently lady_carrie.

It’s taken me nearly a week to summon up the necessary to write this post. You can’t say I haven’t warned you it was coming. I imagine it will end up part DVD review and part fan ramblings. A fanview, if you will.

Thin Lizzy - Greatest Hits

was released on DVD on Monday. I forgot about it until that afternoon. My dad took me straight to the big Tesco near where I work to see about getting it. They didn’t have it and the manager man I asked didn’t seem aware of a band called Thin Lizzy at all. Fuckwit.

Anyway, my dad procured it at Luton’s branch of HMV and I was literally hopping around waiting for him to get home that night. I already knew what was going to be on it, and I knew that it would include videos for some of my favourite songs. Not just my favourite Lizzy songs, but favourite songs full stop.

It’s at this point that I’ll tell you that my love for Thin Lizzy grew like no other love before. Slowly, quietly and yet very suddenly and without warning. I can’t remember the first time I heard of the band or of their lanky black Irish singerman. I can’t remember, because it was much too long ago. Much too long ago and perhaps in a different life. I should be so lucky.

My love for Lizzy was helped along by Never Mind The Buzzcocks, which has included them as questions a couple of times. But I already knew them. I even knew of them enough to recognise the joke in ‘The Toys Are Back In Town’ tagline for Toy Story. That was 1995, when I was a shrimp of a thirteen-year-old. It may well turn out that Philip Lynott has been lurking in my life even longer than a Mr Morrison of Los Angeles, CA.

I don’t remember Philip dying. Some of you will say that this is probably because I was four years old at the time. But things I remember from 1986 are many in number. I remember being ritually humiliated at my school or being scared to go too far on the same school’s playing field. Perhaps I had different priorities then, but I knew who Elvis was, who Buddy Holly was, who the Beatles were. Maybe I just didn’t read the tabloid press in January 1986. Maybe I wouldn’t have handled my boy dying back then, just as I can barely manage it now.

I was always meant to find Philip and his beloved band, just as I was always meant to find Jim and his. I know they’ve been there, lurking in the dark corners of my mind, waiting for the moment I was able to accept them. I had to wait until I was seventeen or eighteen to really embrace my Jim, and Philip in his entirety came a little later, just at the time I was searching for my Irishness and was able to accept that sometimes my heroes really can’t stand up to the crushing weight of expectation, could not hold themselves to the same standards I hold myself to. When I was fourteen and in love with a little band from Liverpool, I believed that they must be perfect, unstoppable creatures. When I was eighteen, I knew that my boys had a dark side. When I got my Philip, I was ready to accept that those same boys couldn’t always win the fight against the dark.

But that’s not really what this is about at all. It’s about a DVD full of music videos made before the dawn of MTV.

These are not great videos. Don’t get me wrong, I love things about each and every one of them, but they’re not great. They’re primitive, cheaply-made and in some instances really badly done. Perhaps it’s best we go through them one by one.

( Video By Video. Will Be Quite Lengthy )

So, what have I learned? That I’m utterly, utterly in love with Thin Lizzy? Yes. That their videos were very much a product of their time? Yes. That they’re videos only a fan could really love? Certainly all in one go. This is something to dip into. Watching them all in one go doesn’t work- many of the videos are from the same shoot or are simply too similar. Scott Gorham’s guitar-shagging act is perfectly fine for the three minutes of a video, but man does it get boring over the course of an hour and a half. The songs, which are why we’re really here, are without exception excellent, even the paint-by-numbers stuff.

And I’ve never wanted so much to go back in time and look after them. I was watching the other day and started crying, because I’m a bit of a sap when it comes to them. I couldn’t work out why they weren’t TOTALLY MASSIVE because they’re almost perfect. I mean, Philip’s the perfect rock star. Scott’s so pretty that he should’ve been a teen pin-up to rival DonnyfuckingOsmond or DavidsoddingCassidy. I was sat there, the occasional tear streaking down my face, missing the shit out of them and wondering why they weren’t the biggest band of the 70s (behind Zep, of course. Nothing compares to that phenomenon). And I realised. It’s not that the music’s bad, because it’s great. It’s not that they’re ugly or otherwise inferior, because they’re really not. They did get famous... and then they cocked it up for themselves. This band were... I think Scott himself said that they were the unluckiest band or something, but I don’t think it WAS bad luck. It was themselves. They cocked it up for themselves. How did Philip get hepatitis just before their meant-to-be-world-conquering American tour? Was it from sitting in his hotel room reading Enid Blyton books? I know I’m starting to sound harsh, but a lot of it was their own damn fault! I hate that.

You know something? I don’t know what heroin addicts ‘look like’, but surely they don’t look like Philip Lynott? According to Philomena Lynott, someone told her as Philip was dying that he’d been taking it for ten years. Does that make Philip a junkie? Because he doesn’t look like the heroin addicts you see in the media. He doesn’t look strung out. He doesn’t look like an emaciated wreck in any of these videos. He doesn’t look like he’s dying, not even in the later videos. And you know, my current wallpaper is of a picture of him in May 1985, less than a year before he died. He doesn’t look like whatever it is addicts are meant to look like. I can absolutely understand why it never occurred to Philomena that her son might be on heroin. I mean, how are you supposed to know if there are no outward signs? How are you supposed to see it? I don’t know... so how are you supposed to try and help someone if you don’t know they need help and if they don’t ask for it?

You know, I’ve probably just spent like, six pages going on about how pretty Scott Gorham was/is. He was a heroin addict too. He left the band just before the end in order to seek help. He’s nothing less than very pretty in any of this. How are you meant to tell? I guess it’s true that if someone really wants to hide their secrets, they’ll manage it. Which I guess means that even if God in his infinite wisdom and grooviness sent me back in time before the end of today, I’d still have no help of looking after my boys, or helping them or saving them. Because if they couldn’t do, how could I? Am I meant to go back and beat the shit out of them? Beat the shit out of anyone who tries to deal to them? Lock them away? Watch them every second of every day?

I really just got totally off the point (which was Thin Lizzy ROCK!) didn’t I? I think this DVD just helped break my heart a little bit more. That boy died and there’s absolutely fuck all I can do about it. Might be nice to go back in time and try, anyway.

So yes, to conclude and try not to be some insane fangirl, I’d recommend this DVD to any friend. It’s something a casual fan might enjoy dipping into occasionally and is, I will admit, an excellent account of their career. I mean, I’d recommend the Greatest Hits CD that came out a year ago (this accompanies it) first, but the videos all have a lot of charm. And you know, I’m not sure a single member of the band took any of it seriously at all. Cool.