(c) Chris Walter - Photofeatures Int.
tel: 818-364-8372 - fax: 818-364-8373
Box 3146, Hollywood, CA 90078
(c) Chris Walter - Photofeatures Int.
tel: 818-364-8372 - fax: 818-364-8373
Box 3146, Hollywood, CA 90078
Without the trace of a smile the barman returned with half a Brown ale and two Cokes. "Not half a Brown - Arthur Brown!" I cried, while Arthur muttered "too much."
Arthur offered me a crumpled Gaulloise he rescued from the linings of his coat and offered his thoughts on the Crazy World Of, his beginnings and its beginnings.
"It all started when I was thrown out of London University," said Arthur. "I went to Reading University to study philosophy and this helped me channel a philosophical approach to the music. All words to pop songs are becoming more explicit and articulate anyway."
"Anyway - I went to Paris with a group and did very well. I started doing folk and blues and it became more rocky as I progressed. It was more limited then."
"More lunatic?" I asked, because Arthur was mumbling into his Coke and ice.
"Ha ha! More lunatic! Yeah, put that in. It's much funnier than limited. When I was in Paris they were just starting their Beatnik phase, while England was on the mods and rockers scene. I had better watch my phraseology.
"I was going - as you say - more lunatic. I began wearing make-up and rush around out of my head. I'd come on stage wearing a bucket on my head and carrying a mop, or the other way round, shouting 'Statue de Liberte!'"
"The French really dug anything spontaneous like that. I remember one night an insane character, who would have been in an asylum, unless he had someone to look after him, came on stage with me imitating people. He'd say 'And now - Jerry Lee Lewis!' and he'd make all these wordless sounds. All his imitations sounded the same. I think they were going to make an LP of him in the end.
"We'd get up on stage and I'd say 'I am a policeman, I am going to cut off your hair.' And he'd say 'No you can't, I am a priest.' The manager of the club would say 'We don't pay you for this,' but the audience gave us an ovation. You'd think the manager would have had the business sense to see that.
"I came back from Paris last November and nobody here was doing anything like us. The Pink Floyd were doing their psychedelic thing, and we're both based on audience involvement, but personally I think the Floyd are impersonal and overpowering. I think there is a danger of light shows becoming too powerful and the music too subservient.
"We like to speak to, shock and attack the audience."
How did the Crazy World develop?
"In stages. The first was when we were going down well, but people were saying they couldn't re-book us. Mind you, I admit we weren't playing tunes at all. It was all complete improvisation. Probably we were more accepted after we started doing our own numbers. The other guys (Drachen Theaker on drums and Vincent Crane on organ), are basically very good musicians and they have a lot of scope to open up."
How does Arthur get his audience involved?
"By yelling 'You all stink - raise your armpits.' That's involvement. If you knew your audience they don't take it as an insult, although of course it is an insult. It's like a Zen Buddhist who poses a question and if he doesn't get an answer hits you over the head or bursts out laughing."
But don't the rougher gentlemen who frequent lower class rhythm clubs object to this sort of approach?
"Oh yes. I got one bad reaction in Kingston. Rockers were sitting on the stage becoming obnoxious and I asked them to leave, but they kept coming back. Then one started dancing on the stage, and I thought he was just enjoying himself.
"The next thing I know, I am lying on the organ with blood pouring out of my head. I don't know what happened. I didn't feel a thing, and tried to carry on. Then the yobs realised what I was trying to do and cheered. It was amazing and very gratifying although I was off work for a couple of weeks.
"In the past it has always been the group on stage and the audience separated from them. Now the barriers are being broken and the audience becomes part of the group. The music is very important. I like rock and roll and all sorts of music, we like to put it all in, just to try and please everybody.
Although Arthur has yet to crack the record scene, his sensational stage antics are already sweeping the country.
At Windsor, for example, he arrived on stage lowered by a crane, and he usually starts his act wearing a metal hat with a hoop flaming with secret chemicals.
Did Arthur ever have any embarrassing moments with his incendiary cranium?
"I've had one or two incidents. I usually take it off after a few minutes, but once it set my robes on fire and another time it burned my face. Our props man experimented with meths. One week at Windsor, it poured on my head and caught fire. Fortunately two miraculous blokes poured beer over me."
With a name like Arthur Brown you have to be a pretty sensational entertainer to stand out in a world where weird names are very much the rule, and common, everyday names nearly non-existent.
Not that Arthur need worry. His music is enough to make the most hardened pop cynic stop in his tracks and his act is the most staggering to hit British clubs since the hey-day of Screaming Lord Sutch - or even before.
Given to dressing for his stage act in long robes, head-dresses with real fire shooting from them, gaudy metallic masks or with his face painted in weird colours, his act is a staggering display of aggression spurred on by the two members - organ and drums - of his excellent group, the Crazy World of Arthur Brown.
Born 23 years ago in Whitby, Yorkshire, Arthur has been frightening and entertaining people for three years - for much of the time in France and more recently as the London underground movement's favourite singer. In fact Arthur was recently dubbed "high priest of the hippies" by a national newspaper - something Arthur finds rather frightening.
You would never think it to watch his violent, aggressive act, but offstage he must be one of the quietest - and more intelligent - people in pop.
Although the Crazy World of Arthur Brown must be one of the country's top club acts - they started off at the London hippie's club UFO, have played a lot of clubs around the country and have just started a residency at London's Marquee club - the mundane name of Arthur Brown has never been in the chart.
But he has cut a single with the Who's Pete Townshend, called "The Devil's Grip," released tomorrow (Friday).
After all with a name like Arthur Brown, how can he fail?
Hugh Nolan
Arthur Brown, 23, Reading University and London University, where he read philosophy. In the last year he has risen from Underground UFO gatherings to top commercial billing. He is the Underground's clown, performs daubed in black make-up and during his singing acts sets his head on fire. He is one of the most heavily booked pop personalities at university entertainments; he has also appeared with the Underground dance group The Exploding Galaxy. International Times reviewer wrote: 'He reached the all-time high in erectile music... unfortunately it is impossible to describe the performance without endangering the Galaxy.'
"Well, you'll never get that on record, will you?" was the cry that went up when the Crazy World of Arthur Brown began sending people round the bend at the UFO in London.
But it was done and this week "Fire" enters the NME chart at No. 26. It is a very realistic record which loses little of its stage impact.
I first saw Arthur at the Windsor Jazz Festival last year when he "entered" by swinging down from aloft on a crane with his hair ablaze. Since then, everyone has been talking about the group who were hurriedly signed by Kit Lambert and Chris Stamp for the Track label.
Arthur favours long, flowing robes on stage and shrieks, yells and screams his way through numbers, occasionally stopping to sing. He leaps, crouches, squirms and flings himself to the ground.
According to his publicity handout, Arthur is a cross between Screaming Jay Hawkins, Little Richard, Tom Jones and Maria Callas! Unlikely as that sounds, it does bear some segment of truth.
He was born in Whitby 24 years ago and once spent three weeks teaching at a boys' school in Leytonstone. He left when the headmaster told him to get his hair cut. He is, as you may have guessed, something of a rebel.
Of his music, he says: "Pop music lacks inventiveness and excitement - at least it does in Britain. America has far more talent, but really for its size it as starved as Britain. In my act I want to provide entertainment, both visually and musically, so that people think about what they have seen and heard."
He certainly does that, along with the rest of his Crazy World - Vincent Crane, Nick Greenwood and Drachen Theaker.
We'd arranged a rendezvous in the middle of Soho - a more apt corner of London for a confrontation with the Devil I can't imagine - and there I was sitting like a stood-up Faustus and drinking a cup of tea.
It had been sunshining when I'd gone in, but suddenly it began to rain like mad, and (may I be turned to salt if I'm lying), just as the thunder broke up the streets of nudey rudeys, in pranced Arthur - Arthur of the Crazy World of Arthur Brown.
Can this, I thought, be the man who calls himself the God of Hell Fire, as the thin Rasputin, all brocade and frills, apologised for the tightness of his trousers, the fact that he was so late and, worst of all, that he had only managed to get a Lower Second in Philosophy from Reading University.
"Arthur", said his press agent, "is very intelligent. So don't make him out to be insincere." Perish the thought I said, and turned back to the Devil.
"I would like to call you Nutty Arth," I said, and he laughed and agreed that it was a suitable name, and that even if he didn't he would never dare to take me to court over it because the judge would probably consider it fair comment.
After that Nutty Arth and I got along famously.
"My name is Arthur Brown," said Nutty Arth (which is a half-truth, because his name is actually Arthur Wilton-Brown, but it's a bit nearer the truth than his boast that he was born in Tintagel Castle in 1868). "I live in a dark brown house that smells of death in West Hampstead" (can you imagine meeting him on the stairs in the dark), "and my wife is a drama student who writes fairy stories."
He's obviously very glad to be the Devil. As a prelude to his latest record, Fire, he introduces himself almost pompously with an "I am the God of Hell Fire," and then goes on to tell us all that before we can understand ourselves we must be cleansed of our material desires and system of values - at least I think that's what he means.
"Do you know," he confides, cut to the quick, "someone's written an article in the Occult Gazette, claiming to be the God of Hell Fire. She's pinched the idea from me of course."
His friends describe his act as "the greatest single spectacle since the Rape of the Sabines" (what would his enemies say?), and I know at least one colleague who has never been quite the same since seeing Nutty Arth come swinging on to the stage from a crane, flames shooting from a steel helmet on his head and a mask on his face, at last year's Windsor Jazz Festival.
One of the weirdest devices about his performance is the Arthur Brown cosmeticise. Based on the pattern of a death mask he frames his face in black grease paint which curves in under his cheek bones; describes sharp, evil-looking stabs around his eyes and down his face; discolours and amplifies his beard, and brings out the highlights of his long thin broken nose.
Against the clown-white paint of the rest of his face, and with the painted-in ribs of his body (he wears a cloak but no shirt or vest on stage) he presents a positively terrifying image.
"I'd like to get a rubber mask. All the greasepaint is ruining my complexion," he says - which is a complaint I can't recall Mephistopheles ever making. "But I must shock. When a boy comes on stage singing about the boy next door it's right that he should look like the boy next door. But when I go on singing about putting spells on people, and devils and gods and unseen forces, it's important that I look like a devil and can do the things I claim."
He is 23, was born in Whitby and claims his father developed the first fully-automatic toothbrush.
He (Arthur) went first to London University but failed his first-year exams and was thrown out and spent some time as a sewage farm worker before going to Reading, where he had an undistinguished career as an undergraduate philosopher, but made a great impression as a blues singer.
Then, one night in Paris, after a couple of bottles of wine, the five-man World of Arthur Brown took on the prefix "crazy."
Says Nutty Arth: "Our clothes, our words and our music are all inter-related. None is more or less of a shocking device than the others."
Quite.
"I am the God of Hell Fire," screams Arthur Brown as he sails down from high above the stage, flames streaming from the helmet which rests on his shoulder-length black hair.
The act continues in the same anarchic, violent way. Arthur moves awkwardly, his tall, very lean, apparently hipless body swaying stiffly. He calls his group "The Crazy World of Arthur Brown." Which is fair comment. They are.
But, suddenly, after a year in the wilderness they have achieved commercial success with their current release 'Fire,' which is burning up the charts like the Hell Fire it's all about.
Their music is different, owing little to any tradition of British pop. It creates audience involvement by generating fear, and having created that involvement, relaxes, transferring emphasis to the words rather than the music.
Because Arthur Brown believes he has something to say.
Meeting him after seeing the act is a surprise. Arthur is not wild, or extrovert, or aggressive. The opposites fit him much better.
Arthur is married, has been for four years, and is 24. He's soft-spoken, reflective and concerned. He was studying law at King's College London, but was thrown out at the end of his last year.
"I failed the exams and was rude to my tutors," he said. "I spent the next year doing dozens of odd jobs - everything from dishwashing to sewage work."
Then he decided to go to Reading University to study philosophy, and it was there he saw the light... and the stars and moon as well.
"It was the mystical and religious side of philosophy that I found the most interesting," he said.
"I realised that the sun and the moon and the stars weren't just there; they affect you emotionally. You've got to take them into account.
"Americans have been measuring these rays and it's been proved they affect you."
So, starting with his interest in the occult, Arthur began to think out his own life. And in doing this he came to think more and more about relationships with other people, and other people themselves.
"All religions have got lost," he said. "I tell my fans: 'Know yourself, dare to be yourself, help others and, above all, don't be afraid.' Fear is the most cancerous growth in society."
If you are sceptical of these not wholly original thoughts of Brown, the fans aren't.
"When we were in America," said Arthur, "I had kids coming up to me and asking for my help."
"I told them: 'I can't tell you how to live your lives, but if you want to come along with us and see how we live, you're welcome.' And lots of them did."
Arthur Brown's stage act has developed now so that he includes his message in the performance. He doesn't actually stand up and preach, but the lyrics of the songs, all written by Brown, contain the message.
He doesn't find the violence in the act in conflict with his ideas of peace and fraternity. He is not a hippy.
"There is violence in life," he said. "That's where the San Fransisco people went wrong - they closed their eyes."
His first LP was called "Fire," the next will be "Water." Earth and air will be featured later and the stage act will be modified according to the current theme.
A clever gimmick? Well, yes, but when he's rich Arthur Brown plans to spend the money on his fans.
"I want to build huge fun palaces," he said. "They will be huge spheres with music, films, plays and every kind of entertainment going on inside.
"Now, there's nothing for kids to do."
Fort Lauderdale, Florida, Wednesday - Police here have arrested the British pop group The Crazy World of Arthur Brown.
The seven-man group were held after more than 2000 American students gathered outside a motel from which music blared.
They saw one of the group, 25 year-old Vincent Crane dancing in front of spinning, coloured lights... casting a huge ghostly image on an adjoining building.
Arthur Brown, 26 year-old leader of the group was taken to police headquarters with Crane, Mike Britby, 25, Dennis Taylor, 18, Marvin Syler, 26, Roland Cutler, 27 and Jon Schmitt, 18.
The charges: disorderly conduct and 'creating a diversion'. They were released on 50 dollars (£21) bail each and ordered to appear in court on Saturday.
The motel is at the intersection of Las Olas Boulevard and Atlantic Avenue - a scene made familiar by the film 'Where The Boys Are'.
(c) Chris Walter - Photofeatures Int.
tel: 818-364-8372 - fax: 818-364-8373
Box 3146, Hollywood, CA 90078
Arthur Brown has re-signed a management contract with Kit Lambert and Chris Stamp, co-managers of the Who and Thunderclap Newman. He is this week beginning rehearsals as a solo artist backed by an orchestra. "We will work on a change of image and start recording as soon as possible," a spokesman for Track Records told NME.
Meanwhile, two ex-members of Crazy World of Arthur Brown - which broke up in New York six months ago - have formed a new group to be known as Atomic Rooster. They are organist and part-composer of "Fire," Vincent Crane, and drummer Carl Palmer. Third member of the team is Nick Graham (bass, flute and vocals).
Arthur Brown has returned from the States, without the customary blaze of publicity, without his backing group, but with a developed philosophy and developed aims.
'I want to lay myself bare completely. I used to do it when we started but then I got caught up in pop mechanisms. I tried to fight on their territory but they just contaminate anything that enters their false grounds.'
As far as the split with his old backers, now formed into 'Atomic Rooster' (who have given their side of the story elsewhere), are concerned, he prefers to remain diplomatically quiet. He is more concerned with the future than what is already a dead affair. Lack of mutual understanding, personality clashes and the malaise that seems to be hitting many other groups at the moment, all contributed to their decision to go their own ways. Beyond this he claims one can only descend into abuse, for which there is little point.
His return to the English scene can be regarded as a means of developing his original ideas rather than a complete departure from them and a movement in a new direction. "When we started in Britain the social scene was different. We went through the anti-establishment stage well before anyone else, because that reflected the state of our thinking at the time. Now I've returned, that's over and I want to develop towards something more positive."
"I've come back as a pioneer - to pioneer further, and with the reputation of being one before I left. People will be interested in what I'm doing if only for that reason."
"I want to establish myself as a person, not simply as an image. Above all I want people to know that I'm honest. It is vital that music be what you are - I could easily produce what they want, and what they would automatically buy, but I refuse to do it."
"To find out what you are, to sort yourself out, you must go through a period of self-knowledge, one must learn to properly relate to one's surroundings. The old scientific mechanistic and materialistic philosophy denied the existence of a unity within which one could have this relating: the hippie movement was a reaction against that philosophy. Things have become much simpler now."
He has an LP in preparation, although only the barest outline of the tracks and the feeling behind them exist at the moment. It will reflect Brown's situation and the time of its conception. "The group was at the first stages of collapsing, and many of my beliefs were undergoing a very severe questioning. Many other people were beginning to shed different lights on them."
"It would be false as yet to talk of what I'm trying to do - people will see this for themselves. There is always a problem of making statements that are at variance with what one plays - which is the true reflection of yourself. Perhaps it can best be seen as an attempt to capture a total reaction to every one of all the many stimuli."
As to the future, Brown will doubtless reveal more when the LP is released and he returns to public appearances. For the moment and for the last few months, one can sum up his life in his own words, taken from one of the tracks from that LP - 'You had better find out what you are all about, before you come back again.'
Pop music's latest discovery is that scandalous relic of the '30s, the jungle show. A white man's dream of dusky maidens being dragged before flaming altars, the original jungle show was concocted by sophisticated Negro showmen for the titillation of slumming parties at the Cotton Club. Now the dream has become a nightmare; the dreamer a stoned rocker, his head full of old flicks with Maria Montez and dusty 45s by Screaming Jay Hawkins; and the slummers weekend dropouts from suburbia's kiddieland jammed into Fillmores, West and East. Instead of the artistry of Duke Ellington, this audience gets the fakery of Arthur Brown, a white British university man steeped to the lips in the bizarre and the occult.
Famous for his sensational entrances, Brown does not appear onstage until his band has warmed up the crowd with a raunchy blues overture. Then, with a ritual scream from the back of the house, the magus makes his appearance, seated cross-legged on a peacock feathered palanquin borne by four sturdy, bearded, half naked slaves. Clothed in gorgeous robes, his face a terrifying silver mask, two smoking, flaming horns sprouting from his head, King Arthur approached the stage like a cruel Mayan chieftain, a blasphemous antipope or a great Teutonic devil arriving at a witches' Sabbath on the Brocken.
From the moment his feet touch the boards until the end of his act - when he disappears in a puff of smoke - Brown is in constant motion. He sings in a medley of falsettos (holding the mike like a witch doctor's rattle), performs archaic wobble dances (which have injured his knees and ankles), changes costume six times onstage (peeling one layer off another) and taunts his audience with insults and obscenities until the more audacious are up on the stage winging at him with earnest fists. Fire is his great obsession: fire that burns, cleanses and transforms. Madness is his great resource. Music, alas, he fakes, so that a listener to his album (The Crazy World of Arthur Brown, Track SD8198) gets only a dim idea of his astonishing stage act. Oddly, the record has soared to the top of the charts while Brown's recent tour of the US had to be cancelled for the lack of interest...
Rome, Sunday - British pop star Arthur Brown was being held tonight in a grim, high-walled Sicilian jail - facing a prison sentence of up to five years.
Police in straight-laced Palermo, capital of Sicily, formally charged 28 year-old Brown with committing obscene acts in a public place after he stripped naked on stage in front of 15,000 people at a pop festival.
Tonight the British Consulate in Palermo was trying to help Brown whose group, The Crazy World of Arthur Brown, had an international smash hit with the record Fire.
Brown appeared on stage with a black cloak over his naked chest. Then he took the cloak off and sang bare-chested. He sang Fire and was wildly cheered. But then the applause turned to boos...
For he unzipped his black silk trousers and let them fall to his knees. Then he pulled his underpants down, shocking the 15,000 spectators. And carried on singing.
Girls gasped with horror and covered their faces with their hands. Others screamed.
Many boys hurled shoes, sandals and other objects at Brown and a riot broke out. Angry boys shouted: "Get out, you filthy beast!"
Police ran backstage as soon as Brown finished his act. Three minutes later they took him in a patrol car to Palermo's Ucciardone Prison - one of the worst in Italy.
The programme was suspended for several minutes while officials fought to restore order.
The Crazy World were among the stars appearing on the third night of the festival Palermo Pop 70. On the first two nights Aretha Franklin and Duke Ellington topped the bill.
Tonight a spokesman for the organisers said: "This is the first big pop festival we have staged here and we wanted to avoid any scandal. Now this has happened. It's outrageous."
From Gilbert Lewthwaite in Rome
British singer Arthur Brown has been given a suspended six month jail sentence in Sicily for stripping during a pop festival.
Brown, 28, stripped completely nude as he finished singing Fire at Palermo in July. He was immediately arrested and charged with public obscenity and corruption of minors. He told police: 'I did not intend to offend the public. I have performed this number in many countries without anything unpleasant happening before.'
Brown, who was not in court, sent the magistrates an explanation saying his striptease dance was based on Viking rituals and symbolised the cleansing of the mind.