BETWEEN THE STARS and BILLY BLAKE IS FAB

Here are two canvases that I have just completed.  They are, first Between the Stars, and second Billy Blake is Fab.

Between the Stars

Billy Blake is Fab

They're loosely set around the myth of the Cunard Yanks  - the seamen who used to work on the regular  passenger and cargo ships between New York and Liverpool.  The myth has it that in the late 1950s and early 1960s these seamen used to make a few extra bob out of importing rare records and selling them on to musicians on the Liverpool scene, thereby creating the 'Mersey Sound'.   Attractive though the idea is (and you can see a brief reference to the trade in the film Nowhere Boy about Lennon), it has also been authoritatively downplayed by Bill Harry, who was central to the action (see http://www.triumphpc.com/mersey-beat/birth/birth3.shtml).

But these paintings are not trying to be historically accurate.  They set two scenes: one on the dockside where we see a ship with Cunard's colours - which were black (not blue) and red with a white stripe between, and the other on Mathew Street, where the Cavern Club stood.  There is some accuracy in Billy Blake is Fab: it is based loosely on an unpublished photo taken from the door of the Cavern.  The bronze cladding strip was part of the original club's doorway, and is represented here on both paintings to bring both scenes together: the viewer is invited to lean against the doorway - in the first scene waiting to buy songs; in the second scene, waiting to play them.  When seen together, the paintings are about the distance between the two scenes: purchase and playing, or the walk from the docks to the city centre.

The titles are taken from Adrian Henri's seminal poem Mrs Albion You've Got a Lovely Daughter, which explicitly references William Blake.  In one section he writes of -

The daughters of Albion


Arriving by underground at Central Station


Eating hot ecclescakes at the Pierhead


Writing 'Billy Blake is fab' on a wall in Mathew St

My old photo does indeed have reference to someone called Denis being fab, but of course for Adrian Henri, Billy Blake was the Romantic poet himself.

- and, later in the same poem, Henri writes of -

Beautiful boys with bright red guitars


In the spaces between the stars


Now, fifty years after William Blake returned to Mathew Street, it's all one great tourist dive.  There is no longer any tension in the journey between the exchange of money in the docks and the cultural exchange in the club. 

And Adrian Henri died in 2000.  

I will always remember him for writing one of the most wonderful put-down poems ever (to be read to the tune of the Spector song): 

Hate Poem -

'To know know know you

Is to love love love You'

and I don't.