ROGER DALTREY...QUADROPHENIA...AND LIVERPOOL BOUNCERS THROWING PEOPLE OUT OF TOILETS AT A WHO CONCERT IN A TENT!

A certain famous cartoonist who goes by the name of HUNT EMERSON challenged me to draw the whole of the 'ORRIBLE 'OO'...THE WHO. So, eventually i did ,i managed to scribble ,scrape ,and splatter  a rough likeness of the man with the mighty leather lungs...ROGER DALTREY, from a few years ago. He truly did have and ,even now after a few problems ,still has an awsomely powerful voice. I always thought that PETE TOWNSHEND wrote songs in a spirit of spite to make Roger work . Fans only have to think of classics like 'WONT GET FOOLED AGAIN'..'LOVE REIGN OVER ME'...BABA O'REILLY' and on the list goes ,you dont often hear other people singing WHO songs, basically because i dont think they physically could. I met him once and It was a nice experiance to meet a personal hero and he was shorter than me, or the same height, but not taller. I definitly wouldnt like a smack off him, tho...He used to be a sheet metal worker and he's still got the stocky powerful build and shovel hands.

While i spoke to him i had a mobile and asked Roger if he could give my mate Simon a message .Simon meanwhile was in the process of getting thrown out of the toilets by one of Liverpools fine body of security men ,or BOUNCERS...When Simon asked him to give him a second as he was talking to ROGER DALTREY...The bouncer replied with the immortal line, "I dont care if its fuckin' ELVIS PRESLEY!!"....Roger laughed and told Simon to "BE LUCKY!"

He can be a bit bolchy ,but he says what he thinks ,when he did the WHO show in the LIVERPOOL SUMMER POPS he slagged of the LIVERPOOL CITY COUNCIL, all in there front row seats, much to the joy and pleasure of the crowd behind. The concert was in a massive marque and Roger commented how LIVERPOOL 'The home of rock n' roll' "And they put you in a fackin' tent!"This got a bit of grief  in the papers the following day. The following  night of the second show they laughed it off.   PETE TOWNSHEND said maybe next year they'd have a tin shed to play in.."..maybe thats all we fuckin' deserve!" Wonderful characters....Not friends ,brothers ,always fighting and arguing ,but there for each other if anyone piles in. 

PETE TOWNSHEND wrote QUADROPHENIA and had nothing but pain and trouble ,it was way ahead of its time and proved technically way to far ahead of its time that when they tried to perform it ,troubles erupted. TOWNSHEND, enraged would attack his sound engineer and wreck the sound equipment. Out of the smoke and carnage would be back to the old standards. It wasnt for nearly 30 years before they could contemplate playing the whole thing live.

But tonight across the U.S.A. on cinemas theres a special one off documentary about the making of the album...'THE REAL ME!'..With various concert footage etc, but we've got it on BBC4' tonight ,so we dont have to go out ,a nice take away and put the old SKY+ on. Lots of windmilling and leaping about the living room over the next few days ,methinks.

There is a possibility of THE WHO  doing a tour of QUADROPHENIA ,or "QUADRAFFEENNYA!" As those London chaps say. But up until a few months ago PETE TOWNSHENDS tinnitus and shagged out 'lug 'oles' are screwing up the chances of the faithful getting their WHO fix ,for a while . And i was told that DALTREY  and TOWNSHEND  were fighting over the lineup of the band, 50-odd years of totally disagreeing about everything ,i dont s'pose its going to change any day soon.

JOHN ENTWISTLE...'THE OX'...THUNDERFINGERS'....THE GREATEST BASS PLAYER EVER! POPPED HIS CLOGS 10 YEARS AGO TODAY (R.I.P.)

For a long time the wildest loudest rock band bar none was THE WHO....KEITH MOON battering hell out of his drum kit :ROGER DALTRY and his leather lungs screaming out the lyrics of PETE TOWNSHEND, who was hitting and bending notes combining screaming  feedback from his tortured lead guitar....The three of them created a cacopheny of noise and chaos that was beyond comprehension or belief. But ,ironically the far corner ,the left to the fan ,opposite TOWNSHENDS  corner was occupied by the quietest of the band . JOHN ENTWISTLE ,known as 'THE OX'...'THUNDERFINGERS'...and for some odd reason' THE QUIET ONE?'....He plugged his bass guitar into the most powerful amplification system he could find and blew everybody away. He played his bass like a lead guitar ,not the thrumming two finger the way most bass players in most bands tend to do....He had to match KEITH MOON, who went all out to hit every drum ,gong and cymbal in front of him ,so ENTWISTLE played cords at blinding speeds to match and beat 'MOON THE LOON'. And he had to beat the other 3 for noise and he did . DALTRY and him had a few run ins as ENTWISTLE would have the amps so high ,the volume would physically hurt DALTREY. He dealt with power and tune, his fingers moved like a lead guitarist but thunder came out from every touch....He was stunning.

Even though he was a quiet bloke he loved 'life on the road' and him and KEITH MOON were the team that drank and caused the chaos. His death ,on the eve of a WHO tour in a hotel room with a few ladies of the night and the sniffy sniffy white powder wasn't totally suprising. The tour was partly to help ENTWISTLE out financially as he did like the good life. But 10 years have gone ,much to my suprise ,i didnt think it was that long ago ,but when you get to a certain age ,never mind the clock !...The bloody calendars start running faster

THE HANDSHAKE ?

Me and my family are Irish and more than proud and happy to have those roots .I love the country and the people. We all know the 'troubles' which have been  going on for eternity and more. Lots of vicous acts have been committed on both sides and probably will be ,thankfully to a much  lesser extent than once before ,but the land is still full of dangerous nasty bastards who wont give up as far as they're concerned they're all in the right and F**k everybody else ,if you dont agree your the enemy and a target..

The queen god bless her is over in the bomb blastd town of ENISKILLEN over in NORTHERN IRELAND and despite the views of certain people ,she is being given a very warm welcome. Tomorrow she has to shake hands with ex -I.R.A. commander ,or something ,MARTIN MCGUINNESS. He may have wiped the blood off his hands ,moving into politics ,replacing the blood for the usual bullshit. His name is ironical as he's a member of some religous total abstinance and tee-total organisation which wont go near the stuff he's named after. But the queen has to be nice to the man who is said to have blown her uncle LORD MOUNTBATTEN to bits . I wonder wether she'll manage to be polite and charming ,or kick him in the bollocks or butt him in the face....good luck, m'am!

WAS IT THE INVENTION OF THE WHEEL OR THE TOILET HANDLE THAT CHANGED THE WORLD!....

As i was sitting about my abolutions having a dump ,or however you want to refer a natural relaxing and very neccesary ,but deeply frowned upon and ignored bodily function. It is good for the obvious reasons, but one of them in particular , like every cartoonist ,for some reason their toilet is a miniture library with comics and books piled high in the smallest room and so a great deal of time is spent emptying your lower parts while filling your upper parts with knowledge gleaned from whatever comic i am reading. In the old days of the simple flush where the cistern was up above your head you could yank the handle without having to move and carry on with your bog literary pursuits happily with nothing but a slightly wet bum. What also happened as you sat on the bogseat for up to an hour or so at a time ,you could lose the feeling to your legs ,but attain a bright red ring circling your upper buttocks and the back of your legs that would almost glow in the dark. Another danger was if after years of yanking the wooden handle ,it came off, and the chain unless that had snapped and was replaced by a looped piece of wire which i remember yanking on and the wire cutting into the crease of my palm and fingers. So i sat there on the lav with my hand bleeding over X-MEN issue 42. When ,a fter this i became aware of the dangers inherrant in going to the bog i wondered could i be sucked down by the flush vacumn and living in the NORTHERN HEMISPHERE getting sucked CLOCKWISE  down the plug hole....If i was in the SOUTHERN HEMISPHERE, well it would be an ANTI-CLOCKWISE down the Australian plug'ole.

But the time spent sitting improving my mind and toughening my buttocks on the toilet seat where shortened when the toilet cistern was lowered to below shoulder level and the handle was a press one. This entailed actually having to stand and press, so the moment had passed and you may as well wrap up and wait 'till your next visit to see if SPIDERMAN beats DOCTOR OCTOPUS...This lowereing of the flush lever meant that the later generations spent less time on the bog reading and improving their mind then we did in our day, and i propose that is partly the reason the kids of today are as thick as pig shit.  Now the press handle has gone replaced by hi-tech button press flushes on the top of the cistern ,one side is a little flush for pee's n' things the other is for heavier cargoes and loads...Keeps breaking tho' ,like all technological advances the cleverer they are the more can go wrong and the cleverer you have to be to fix them. But i'll leave it to you to decide which has had the greatest effect on the development and evolution of the human psyche ,the wheel or the toilet handle?...Bear in mind have you ever read a book riding a bike?


JAMES BOND IS A BASTARD 'COS HE KILLS PEOPLE...DANIEL CRAIG IS A BASTARD TO DRAW!!..

Through the years ,basically my lifetime i've shared my boyhood and manhood with that secret agent ,that "BOND, JAMES BOND!" chap the worlds most famous secret agent. When i became "LEATHERBARROW, TIM LEATHERBARROW" not quite the worlds most famous caricaturist, i attempted to draw the various JAMES BONDS of which theres been a few. I will show you my attempts on a future post maybe even tomorrow if your very lucky. I did a good job, if i do say so myself. I actually liked all the various Bonds and dont really have favourites as i think the various actors changing helped the JAMES BOND films survive for so long. I love the character on film and book. DANIEL CRAIG took over the reins to much fuss n' bother in the beginning ,but has more than proved himself and is the toughest meanest of them all. JAMES BOND is a bastard 'cos he kills people , but DANIEL CRAIG  is a bastard as he's proving damn near impossible to draw.

DANNY CRAIG is a good looking fellah and isn't handsome in a classical normal way, he has a very distinctive look about him, but even though i can visualise him and his features for some reason which is starting to drive me nuts is ....I CANNOT DRAW THE BASTARD!....DANIEL CRAIG , I HATE YOU!.....

I've doodled his face on beermats ,envelopes and page borders in newspapers and yellow pages and managed to get a likeness, but when i go to draw up my imagined sudden epithany and understanding of the essence of our favourite..'HER MAJESTY'S BLUNT WEAPON!'...

I think it very brave and self -effacing of me to show you the various sad attempts and failures i've spawned over the last year or two. No doubt i'll pull my pencil out of the old pot full of other pencils of various lengths and leads and will try sgain. This last one above ,like many others ,as i was drawing away and 'had it' ,right up until a drawn line was drawn and the spirit of the drawing was suddenly gone in a fraction of a second it took to draw the line, but you still plug on for another couple of hours even though you know you've lost it, but hope always beats eternal for the struggling caricaturist. I'll either have another go ,or they'll have to change JAMES BOND for another JAMES BOND, one easier to draw.

PROFESSOR STANLEY UNWIN, TOTAL GIBBERISH, BUT THE FUNNIEST TOTAL GIBBERISH IN THE SPINEY WORLDIBODE!!1

There was a lot of funny fellahs over the years a few examples ;SPIKE MILLIGAN, PETER COOK. MONTY PYTHON TEAM, JOHN LENNON,(he was quite witty and liked playing with words) ,but they all said at some point one of their inspirations was an ex BBC sound engineer by the name of STANLEY UNWIN.

The ex-BEEB sound engineer was quite simply a total nut!....He developed this way of speaking in total gibberish , which although total gibberish could actually be basically understood. But more importantly was ,in my mind the funniest thing in the world ,i absolutly loved him from the first time i heard him speaking. I found a heap of YOU TUBE footage and have been useless as i've been crying laughing ploughing through interviews and lectures by this nutter!

I worked as an on the spot caricaturist at a function in Liverpool a number of years ago and happened to glance around the dinner table that me n' the LOVELY LYNNE were sat on and i nearly choked 'cos sitting with us was ,the man himself..PROFESSOR STANLEY UNWIN!!!!....I couldnt believe it and had to introduce myself, i was so excited. Lynne sat and talked with him as i had to go and draw the guests. He was amused as Lynne told him that she'd only ever seen me this excited three times. Once when i found a breakfast cereal a few days previous which i thought they'd stopped making years before(Oat Crunchies,lovely!)...Second , when the daughter was born and most importantly meeting STANLEY UNWIN.

He was a really nice old fellah and talked the legs of me ,but only a tiny bit of UNWINESE, just as well as i fell over laughing ,in my posh and only dinner suit, no less. When we left him he wanted to send me a recording. But as he explained in a note he sent a while later ,he'd been ill and sure enough a few weeks later that wonderful old fellah' Springey popped his bootycloggy podes' and died.

He was buried next to his wife who'd died years previously. Typically he had on the tombstone..."REUNITEY IN THE HEAVENLY-BODE....DEEP JOY!"....Without doubt a total one off.

The caption on the cartoon is the opening of his narration of the SMALL FACES classic OGDENS NUT GONE FLAKE album.

THE 'ORRIBLE OO'!.....MY SCRIBBLING HISTORY WITH THE WHO!

As the dreading' screw up' that is the BRITISH OLYMPICS creeps ever closer we are filled with not just trepidation ,but outright fear. It started with the rocketing costs and inferior workmanship and reported scams ;And continued up until the OLYMPIC FLAME landed on our fair shores and....WENT OUT!....A good number of times, a sign of things to come?.....My favourite tho' was inviting KEITH MOON to play at the opening ceremony, only in Britain.

So along with GEORGE MICHAEL (YUK!)...And TAKE THAT ( Oh a'right!)....A blast of sense and class as the 'ORRIBLE 'OO'!....THE WHO ...ROGER DALTREY and PETE TOWNSHEND are coming home to close the whole (possible)travesty ,some might say rescue it. By playing at the closing ceremony.

This is a picture i did of the FEEDBACK KING as he is now. white haired ,whats left that is ,but enjoying his playing and seemingly content.

An American lady friend and mad ,and i do mean mad WHO fan.....Her car number plate is WHOGIRL....The lovely ,nutty PAMELA WOODWARD asked me to do a 1970's PETE TOWNSHEND with the boiler suit ,beard , boots and leaps, then the cheeky cow wanted a 60's UNION JACK JACKET wearing angry young guitar smashing MOD...And being the lovely bloke i am i done it for her. She did offer sexual favours ,but the LOVELY LYNNE wont let me accept.

This was a painting i tried a while ago for this very blog of the wonderful ROGER DALTREY after we'd gone to see them somewhere again(listens for communal groan ,cant hear one so goes back to typing this shit!)....Went to see his TOMMY tour and took the daughter ,i think she quite liked it..He was in fine voice after some work on his throat, so with a bit of luck the boys could be back on the road ,but Roger hasn't sounded better in years . But since then daughter has everything covered in UNION JACKS and MOD / R.A.F. roundels ,even the laces of her DOC MARTENS(13 years old ,its gonna get worse.)

A silly distortion of PETE TOWNSHEND  letting rip, With his peircing blue eyes he can look quite manic, but i quite like it ,not technically brilliant i s'pose, but since when have i been technically brilliant?.....SHUT IT!

The day after watching the LIVERPOOL PHILHARMONIC do the PLANET SUITE ,as it is the LOVELY LYNNES fave peice y'see,,,,Much as i enjoyed it i had to play some real classical music the following day. LIVE AT LEEDS blowing the double glazing out and cracking the house foundations.

This was another blog post recording an evening at the ROUNDHOUSEin LONDON, where ,funnily enough...THE WHO played and played very well.

I was laid up ill when THE WHO played at the half time break at the American football world super bowl or whatever they call it....God bless SKY+...I had to record about 8 hours to get the half time show....It was short, but sweet. I had to laugh later as the Americans had THE WHO and that afternoon closer to home,WARRINGTON RLFC had JEDWARD on at half time, ah us Brits dont do things in halves, eh?

And ,of coure me TOWNSHEND painting, nowhere else to put it so i might as well bung it on here.

FORGET LADY GA-GA !....'COS QUEEN ER-ER IS HERE!

After a week of celebrating all that is great about GREAT BRITAIN, as we are great  whatever everybody else thinks!!!....This was through the celebrating of the QUEENS JUBILLEE, 60 years of waving and shaking fingers with the great ,mighty ,big ,small, pathetic, heroic ,dictators and despots from all over the world on a daily basis, our favourite royal granny is still going strong. And she's a damn site stronger than me after standing in the pissing down rain and hurricane winds for 7-8 hours on a boat on the RIVER THAMES without a break ,(maybe a hip flask and the royal catheter) waving at thousands of well wishers sailing by on hundreds of boats. PRINCE PHILLIP the bosses 'other half broke under the strain ,a mere boy of 90-odd and his bladder couldnt stand the strain ,either too many snifters from the royal hip flask ,or he was trying to avoid the'pop' concert the following day....Which i'm sure isn't true , i'm sure he couldn't wait to see KYLIE MINOGUE, CLIFF RICHARD  n' ELTON JOHN. 'ELT' seems to have developed this severe lisp. We saw him about 10 years ago and i thought he sounded as if he had a bit of a lisp and it seemed to be becoming more pronounced as the 'gig' went on. It was during 'SORRY SEEMS TO BE THE HARDEST WORD' that i fell off my chair laughing as it sounded like DAFFY DUCK singing ELTON JOHN'S greatest hits. But the Royal concert seemed to go well and rounded off with SIR 'MACCA'S' showstopper 'LIVE AND LET DIE', with missles and bombs and basically it looked like SMERSH had finally beaten JAMES BOND and blown the hell out of LONDON.

But now the glory is over we're back to normal ,work n' pissing down rain....And the EUROPEAN CHAMPIONSHIPS footy tournament. ENGLAND v FRANCE this very evening. FRANCE have been in the UKRAINE for weeks acclimatising and training ,while our brave boys have been scattered about on a range of holidays after a hard season. So we being British are just nipping over at the last minute to beat 'JOHNNY FOREIGHNER' and pop back home again without breaking a sweat. Well we just might break more than a sweat. STEVEN GERRARD in a press conference said that the extreme temperatures that they'll be experiencing over there during the game wont be any excuse for any problems or defeat ,but by mentionig it like that it is now the accepted reason, the excuse for ENGLAND getting their arses kicked onto the first flight home. I await to be proved wrong, but i'm not holding my breath.

Going off on an obtuse angle to the football , i was in a footy stadium only last night for the first time in years. Long ago i watched LIVERPOOL play at ANFIELD then years later saw PINK FLOYD at MANCHESTER CITY'S old ground MAINE ROAD , and last night we were at City's new ground ,ironically called the UNITED STADIUM( ouch!)...To see COLDPLAY, as it was a family x mas present so off we went and i have to say it was an impressive show, everybody was given a wristband that lit and flashed through the show and was an amazing site with all the wrists in the capacity crowd , but most important COLDPLAY   were very loud and rocking, i enjoyed it.

As MANCHESTER rumbled and reverberated to the sound of COLDPLAY last night , the fair city of BIRMINGHAM would've been bouncing to the sound of  that god of cartoonists and my very great friend HUNT EMERSON and his band the HOUNDOGS performing amongst tents and caravans at his and his friend Jesse's 60th (lot less as proffessionally organised as Coldplay do) birthday party. I haven't been in touch with the EMERSONMEISTER so i dont know wether he had a good time or wether he even survived to tell the faintly remembered no doubt boozy tale. Sorry we couldn't make it, old son, but again "HAPPY BIRTHDAY,Y'AWL FART, HUNT!"

OUR FAVOURITE SLIMEY BELLY BUSTING ALIENS WITH THE MASSIVE ROWS OF TEETH ARE BACK IN A FILM I CANT SPELL.

                                                                            

                                                                               As my faithful followers and dedicated readers to my finger on the pulse , ear to the ground reports and writings on all whats what on life the universe and everything ,(except for the Queens jubillee.....I'll leave that for another groundbreaking exclusive)...will know theres nothing your leader cant find to shock n' amaze you, dear followers, this is an example...The above image is a rare shot of an early version of one of the most famous and gory special effects ever to be put on film, by the wonderful RIDLEY SCOTT when he made the classic ALIEN. No CGI effects in them long forgotten days ,but still the film is one of the definite certains to have you jumping out of your epidermis, even if you've seen it about 42 times.  JOHN HURT having the worst case of indigestion in the whole of the galaxy is one of the all time classic movie moments. As you can see the special effects have to be worked on and dont always go to plan at first attempts....Who knows how many things had to burst out of JOHN HURT'S guts before they hit upon a design they liked and, for that matter was it always the stomach it was going to burst forth from?

Our favourite razor toothed multi tongued slimey carniverous acid blooded face hugging wee beastie went on to re-appear in a heap of other films , but not getting it all their own way ,oh no! They had their scaley arses well n' truly kicked by the lovely SIGOURNEY WEAVER as RIPLEY she(understandebly) was always getting drooled on by the ALIENS, and who could blame them, most of the fellahs watching the blood n' gore spent a little aside to share with the aliens in a little drool over the heroic SIGOURNEY WEAVER. After the lovely Sigourney you couldnt really compare the  not so lovely Aliens, i'm sure they were sexy in their own slimey face hugging way , beauty is in the compound eyes of the Alien beholder remember. But when Sigourney left the Aliens took on the other bunch of Aliens,these were called predators so you dont get your carniverous invading alien forces mixed up, but these guys  took on ARNOLD SCHWARTZENNEGGAR(Jeez!..I dont know if thats how you spell it!)..And you'll not be too suprised to learn they had the shit kicked outta them..But in a couple of less than wonderful films cashing in,  they had a few 'set too's' without ARNIE or SIGOURNEY to knock the bejabbers outta them. Incidently if i had to choose an opponent to fight between BIG ARNIE and SEXY SIGOURNEY it would be Arnie ,nobody stands a chance against SIGOURNEY.

The fellah that made the two greatest sci-fi films of all time ALIEN and BLADE RUNNER is back to the sci-fi world again for the first time in years. He made ALIEN, which i could spell..The sequel ALIENS....I could spell that too, and ,yes even ALIEN3....But the Alien prequel ,for that apparently is what it is ,so ,sorry chaps prequel means it happened before ...Yes before Alien ,sooo... ,no SIGOURNEY WEAVER!...sob, sniff, snort!!.....But the title is one i may have trouble spelling ,i think, but i'm sure you'll tell me if i screw up ,you seem to enjoy doing that...But the title is....wait for it...' PROMETHEUS!'....There, did i get it right?  So after the CGI  whizz bang that was AVENGERS ASSEMBLE the other day i wonder how RIDLEY SCOTT will handle it all ,he is a true film artist and if he cant make special effects look good again ,nobody can. I watched the AVENGERS and it was ok ,but the cgi effects are so fast that it is murder keeping up with the action ,thats why ages ago on this very blog i moaned about the last JAMES BOND film QUANTUM OF SOLACE as it was so frenetic and impossible to follow ,i'm hoping that the new film SKYFALL will 'just slow down', even if it means getting rid of CGI and blue screen and going back to real stunts and models etc...DANIEL CRAIG is great so lets see what he's doing without having to rewind all the time......F**kin' computers screw up everything!

AND DON'T GET ME STARTED ON F**KIN' 3D!!!!!!.....I WILL SOON ,SO 'TILL THEN...As BIG ARNIE  himself said..(altogether now!)."I'LL BE BACK!"