my life – Page 7 – OZTHOUGHTS

Black Sabbath And Traffic – Worlds Apart!

Back when I was working as what was known as a “Lighting Roadie” – which means I was one of the guys who rigged the lights and then worked on a follow spot during rock tours and Festivals, I toured with a number of very different bands.

Basically in those days we roadies were mainly self-employed and were hired to work on a particular tour or Festival, in other words we did not work for the bands directly, but for the lighting company (in the case of lighting roadies) who employed us for that tour or event. So I found myself working with a pretty wide range of bands, some good, some great and many bloody awful to work with.

At those opposite ends of the spectrum there are two bands who stand out, Black Sabbath at the bloody awful end, and Traffic at the truly great end.

Black Sabbath:

I worked on the European section of their 1974 World Tour, which was the start of that huge tour. So I was involved in the rehearsals for the tour, which took place on the stage of a cinema in London (can’t remember where). This was all rather odd, as we rehearsed during the day there, and the owners of the cinema also rented the auditorium out to all manner of other people, so you had the ridiculous situation of a bunch of Heavy Metal Rockers on the stage, rehearsing their music with the stage curtains closed, and in the auditorium, a bunch of 6 year old kids having a “kiddie’s Disco” or something similar at the same time.

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Michael Flanders, Daniel Barenboim,Stravinsky

Many years ago, just after my period as a remarkably unsuccessful “antique” seller in the Camden Passage market, I joined the Little Angel Puppet Theatre and started out on what would be one of my main careers, that of a theatre technician.

My chief area of work there was as a lighting guy and scenery maker, and John Wright, the wonderful South African Puppeteer who ran the theatre with his wife, Lindy taught me all I needed to know to do that work.

One of the true highlights of my time with them was the version of Stravinsky’s The Soldier’s Tale, which we performed at the Purcell Rooms (part of the Royal Festival Hall complex on the south bank of the Thames).

This was a seriously big undertaking for the Little Angel Theatre crew, who were more used to working on the small and intimate scale of their own theatre in Islington in a setting that was totally set up for puppetry – not a description that you could apply to the Purcell Rooms, which was simply a flat stage at the end of a long and relatively narrow auditorium, and which was, reasonably enough, set up and designed for small scale classical concerts to be performed in.

But, I am happy to say, we pulled it off magnificently.

The basic idea was that we used a whole series of rod puppets (controlled from below and behind by means of rigid rods connected to their moving parts), and the puppeteers were dressed from head to foot in soft, non-reflective – black fabric, and worked on a stage that had a series of steps going across the stage from left to right, so the further upstage you went (away from the audience) the higher you were.

The stage itself was also painted matt black, and the sides and back of the stage were covered with soft black fabric.

The lighting was by means of a series of spot lights on either side of the stage, aimed across the stage horizontally, with very narrow beams. And the idea was that the puppets would be held in one or more of these beams of light, and thus be visible to the audience, and when not held in the light, would be invisible.

The created the effect of the puppets floating in the air, but as often is the case with puppets, one quickly stopped “seeing” them as floating, but sort of invented a ground for them to be walking on.. odd how our minds do that sort of thing.

Most of the puppets were about a meter (3 foot) tall, but as there were no reference points regarding size, the audience quickly saw the puppets as normal human size. So when at the very end of the story, the soldier crosses the frontier to be reunited with his lover, and the Devil comes to claim his soul, we used a Devil puppet which was about 8 feet tall, so it looked enormous when it loomed over the soldier puppet we used in that scene (the soldier puppet we used there was a very small one, about 30 cms tall to make the difference in size even more marked and dramatic).

**John Wright with Devil puppets (thanks to Ronnie le Drew for this photo)**

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Memoires Of An Antique Dealer

I used to have a stall in what was optimistically called Camden Passage Antique Market.

This meant that I had a long table two chairs and a wall with a sort of set of narrow shelves in a long space full of dozens of identical set-ups, and the idea was that we would all sell our “antiques” to the clamouring hordes from these tables.

Well lets get one thing straight to start with, not a one of us was there to sell antiques, even though some of the stuff that was being offered might be called antique if your only definition of that word was “old” and worn out. Real antiques in the sense of very old, but beautiful and well preserved objects, were very, very few and far between in that market. On the very few occasions that one or other of us actually turned up with such a real antique, the fighting among us to buy it before the market opened was terrifying. This was a sort of pre-opening ritual in the market, we all used to walk along inspecting all the other stalls in the hope of finding something that we could sell on our own stalls. We would then bargain like mad, to ensure that we only paid about half the price we reckoned we might be able to sell it to the regular punters for.

It was a strange life, one spent at least half of every week standing beside one’s table, having laid out one’s wares in the hope that someone would buy all of it, or at least a decent proportion of it before the day ended. Given that for the most part, my collection of “antiques” consisted of objects of such dubious attraction as plastic ear-trumpet, broken toys, odd mugs and plates, and occasionally odd bits of militaria this was extremely optimistic.

The other half of my life was spent going hither and thither in an endless hunt for junk to try and sell on my stall. Going to other junk markets, country auctions, especially the sort where the entire contents of a house were sold and anywhere else where I might find yet another plastic ear-trumpet for my stall.

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We Get Arrested In XinJiang – Interesting………

A few years ago while my wife and I were working in China, we went for a long holiday in Xinjiang Province, which is the most westerly and northern province in China, bordering onto Tajikistan, Kazakhstan and several other Stans. By the way, “Stan” is a Farsi word which simply means “place of ……. People” So Pakistan means “Place of the Paki People” and so on.

Anyhow, we had just completed a 36 hour ride in a sleeper bus from Urumji and arrived at a small town near the Kazakh boarder and were sort of standing beside the bus wondering what to do next, when a couple of young Chinese girls and their tiny kid brother who had also been on the same bus as us came over and and started to talk to us.

This resulted in an invitation from them to rejoin them on the bus and head on off to the end point of the bus’s journey where there was apparently a very beautiful area of alpine countryside.

So, having no other pressing appointments, we agreed, clambered back onto the bus and headed off for another 5 or 6 hours driving and duly arrived at the small provincial town near to this especially beautiful landscape.

With their help we booked into a reasonable small hotel and enjoyed an evening in the town with them and their tiny little brother.

The next morning we hired a taxi for the day and headed off with our friendly Chinese girls to explore the famous area of natural beauty.

As we approached it, we ran into a serious Chinese Police road block – machine guns and so on very much in evidence sadly, and here our passports were checked extremely carefully. There seemed to be some sort of problem with our passports, but it wasn’t made clear what the problem was, so we were told to leave them with the cops, and carry on into the hills.

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Teen Working In Lunatic Asylum – Sadness. Part 1

One of the many holiday jobs I had while I was a young student was as a Ward Orderly in a mental hospital, which was without a doubt the most depressing and enlightening jobs I ever had.

I saw an ad asking for students who wanted holiday work to apply to a nearby lunatic asylum, and as the wages were reasonable and they didn’t want any particular skills or experience, I thought it was worth a try.

So I duly went to the hospital, found the relevant official and signed on for the duration of my holidays. All seemed well, but I should perhaps have become a wee bit suspicious on being asked to sign something called The Official Secrets Act, in which I promised – on pain of death apparently – never to discuss or write about anything I saw or heard whilst working in this hospital.

As you will now see, I have decided that I am no longer frightened by what the British Government might do to me if I discuss that job – not that I am aware of doing anything much that could be counted as an “official Secret”.

So, there I was, on the start of my first shift, waiting nervously to be taken to the ward I would be working in for my time at the hospital. The office I had to report to was at the front of the asylum, and all was clean, cheerful colours and paintings on the walls.. nurses wore clean uniforms and all seemed very organised and peaceful. Little did I know!!

I was duly taken in hand by one of the staff, signed that secrets act, given a couple of gigantic cast iron keys and led off to the back section of the asylum. The further back we went, the worse things became. The cheerful colours of the front gave way to a dirty and shiny green colour on all the walls, no more paintings on the walls, and the nurses were much less appealing.. being mostly large and rather fierce looking men in somewhat stained and rumpled uniforms.

Also we went through what I later discovered was the section of the hospital reserved for women patients, numbers of whom were wandering around in the corridors, or curled up in odd positions against the walls. Frankly they terrified me, as they really did look insane. Wild eyes, wild hair and filthy clothes.

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A Modelmaker In Amsterdam

In which we settle down in Amsterdam – I start to make models. Water Rat Models is born.

For many years I had a hobby, which was making model tanks. I have long had a fascination with tanks, not as killing machines, but more as a sort of mechanised dinosaur. There is something curiously animal like about tanks, the way they can go anywhere they want, the way they move, are immensely powerful and when moving in battle order, all buttoned up, there is no indication that they are actually under the control of a human being.. They have a life of their own.

Anyhow, I had made hundreds of models of these beasts, and a friend of mine, Tim knew of this hobby of mine, so when a Dutch architect he worked for ran into problems with his normal model maker, Tim suggested that I might like to have a go at finishing the model house that the model-maker had started but not finished.

As we needed money, I felt that it would at least be worth giving it a go, and so it happened. I was given the half finished model, and set about finishing it.

The model that started it all……..

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I Discover What It Is Like To Be Shelled

Many moons ago, back when I was about 17 years old (I am now 73 to put this in context), I had joined something called the Territorial Army, which was a sort of British version of the National Guard, or to put it another way, a weekend soldier. The Territorial Army, or TA as it is better known, is an ancient and noble British Military Establishment, going back quite a few hundred years I believe and as such is a valiant and important part of the protection of the British Isles against any and all foreign invaders. Well at least that is the idea.

The reality – as is often the case – is rather different. Or at least back then in the 60’s of the last century that was the case. We were supposed to be valiant warriors standing ready to defend Britain with our field artillery pieces (25 pounders for those among you who know about these things) but in fact we were a rather shambolic bunch of very elderly veterans of the second word war, and me, a 17 year old, bearded and long haired kid who had joined simply to be able to ride a military motorbike around the place.

A 25 Pounder Howitzer – This is what was lobbing shells at me – Though there were about 12 of these doing it!!!

Remarkably reminiscent of the British TV series Dad’s Army….. If you have seen that program, I was definitely the one called Pike!

The regiment I belonged to was called, wait for it… Queen Mary’s Surrey Yeomanry, and had been in existence ever since (logically enough) the reign of Queen Mary sometime in the 17th Century, and had a long and illustrious history of killing people on behalf of the British Royal Family.

Every so often we all headed off in an enormous convoy of guns, trucks and other military things to the nearest artillery range to get in a bit of practise with our guns. This was of course our whole reason for existing, and was also a high point in our otherwise drab and dreary lives.

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Soft Ice Cream Seller – Dire Experience!

Long ago, while still a student and still doing what students do, i.e getting a job at the start of the long holiday to garner some money for the obligatory hitch-hike to southern Europe, I landed a job selling soft-icecream from a van.

I thought I had landed in heaven, a job where I was out and about all day long, as much soft-icecream as I could eat and getting paid for all of this pleasure.

To add to this was the fact that I got this job immediately after being fired from my job in a sweet factory (see story here), so I really thought the gods were smiling upon me.

I was right, and also very wrong, as you will see.

I got the job from the labour exchange, and was told to report to the depot the following day early in the morning, which I duly did.

I was given a very friendly reception and I was introduced to my mobile workplace, how it all worked, the cleaning schedule – hygiene was of the highest importance I was told with icecream especially the soft variety, as it bred germs at a rate of knots given half a chance,

My van was really rather impressive, a Ford Transit with a couple of those machines which ooze soft icecream in a rather disgusting manner as well as a large fridge for ice-lollies and other frozen goodies, and most important of all, the set of chimes, which in my case was a rather nasty version of Greensleeves that played only the first couple of bars over and over again – I would come to HATE Greensleeves before I finished this particular job!

This isn’t the van I had (obviously), but it was pretty much the same as this one.

Before they would let me loose on the public, I also had to be taught how to dispense soft icecream properly, to get just the right twiddle on it as it oozed onto the top of the cone, a real skill I discovered, how to ensure that the icecream was the correct temperature to be soft, and not rock hard, or totally liquid. How to give change and all the many arcane skills needed to be both the driver and server of such an icecream van. And last but by no means least, i was shown the route I had to drive every day.

Not only the route, but at what times of the day I should be at any particular spot, as apparently it was of cardinal importance to always arrive at the same time of day every day, so one’s customers could plan their icecream consumption properly. By the way, my route was so designed that I would make two rounds of it every day. The implications of this small fact didn’t occur to me until much later, but turned out to be very worrisome I discovered. More about that later.

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More About My Life In Films

Here is a further instalment of the continuing saga of my relatively brief experience working in the film industry, carrying on from my gazing in wonder at Jeanne Moreau’s feet elegantly clad in battered old gymn shoes as she busily worked away at seducing one of her guards officers in the filming of Catherine the Great. (follow this link to discover what that was all about).

I finished that post by mentioning the fact that I was also on the sound stage of the filming of Half a Sixpence, starring Tommy Steele (now there is a name to conjure with!! Remember him?), and much as with the Catherine film, I spent my days being “on call”, which meant effectively doing nothing all day long…. The only thing worth mentioning about the set of Half A Sixpence was that they had constructed a vast old fashioned Sea-side pier, with a full size, fully functioning roundabout on the end of it, and surrounded all of this with a sort of fabric back drop that went around the end of the pier, was about 40 feet high and consisted of a gigantic colour photo of the sea and clouds… All of this having been built in order for them to be able to film a dance number lasting all of three minutes on the pier…

Exciting stuff I think you will agree..

Money no object

On the topic of expense, I was continually boggled out by the way that money was thrown around in film making. As an example of this, while I was there they were making some film or other about spies, and in it a Rolls Royce has to be blown up (no idea why, or even what the film was called). So rather than doing what you or I would probably do, which is to go out and buy an old non-working Rolls Royce, they instead bought 4 brand new, never driven Rolls Royces, and then one by one, using different camera angles, blew them up on the back lot of the studio…

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I Discover The Reality Of Working In Films

Many year ago I worked for a while in the film industry. Having just left art school I was at something of a loss as to what I should (or could) do to earn a living.. I knew all about making sculptures, but not much about anything else, so I had a problem, obviously.

However, a mate of mine who had left art school a year earlier than I, had found his metier working as a model maker in a film studio, and he kindly offered to see if he could get me a job in his studio. Obviously the idea appealed to me enormously. Working in films??? Me? Wow, I thought, this will be great! Rubbing shoulders with film stars, famous directors and so on…. Wild!

Well I am here to tell you that it wasn’t great. As far as excitement went, it was much the same as the sweet factory I worked in.

The studio I was going to work in was the famous Shepperton Studios, where among other good or lousy films, all the James Bond Films had been made, so as you can imagine, my hopes of having a romantic and exciting time were very high indeed. But it was not to be.

I duly pitched up at the main gates on my first day, and was greeted civilly enough by my new boss, and taken off to what was to be my work place there. A shed at the back of the studio, in which a number of other guys (including my mate) also worked away merrily.

My work was as a Model Maker, which I had imagined meant that I would be making all manner of highly detailed models of cities, space ships or who knows what other amazing objects. Well in fact, what it actually meant was the following…. I had to make extremely accurate short lengths of ceiling mouldings in clay, which were then taken from me, sent to the mould makers shop, where fibre glass moulds were made from my master, and then lengths of the ceiling moulds were produced by the plasterers, sent to the paint shop and painted, and then sent on to the scenery builders, who would fix this ceiling moulding in place at the top of the walls of the set that was being built for a film all about Catherine the Great.

Not really a high degree of involvement in the actual film, sadly.

This was merely the first of a whole string of disappointments I suffered about the world of film making, and the following weeks did nothing to dispel my disappointment about it all.

Every day I worked in that shed was much the same, only the things I made changed a bit… So instead of making ceiling moulding, on another day I would be told to make a section of skirting board, or a length of decorated moulding to go on the door of a cupboard.. and so it went.

One of us got to make a very amazing full size imperial eagle, which I was very jealous about, but he was a guy who had been working there since the days of silent films (I felt), and was thus the senior worker among us modelmakers. As was often the case in Britain in those days, length of service was judged to be more important than skill, so whilst this old fellow was competent enough, he was definitely not the best modelmaker there, but because of his length of service, he got any good jobs that might come along.

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