Welcome to A Breath of French Air with Sandy Kaye. Hello, great to have your company today. Are you enjoying A Breath of French Air? I hope so.
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If you grew up in the same era as me, and I know you most likely did if you’re tuned in here, then you’re sure to remember the name Ian Dury. You do, don’t you? English-born Ian, who’s sadly no longer with us, was a rock and roll vagabond with the wit, humour and intelligence of Noel Coward and Oscar Wilde. He was a brilliant lyric writer who gave the world some of its most famous phrases, reasons to be cheerful, or sex, drugs and rock and roll, for example.
Sex and drugs and rock and roll is all my brain and body need. Sex and drugs and rock and roll is very good indeed. Ian Dury was a talented painter, musician and actor, who left behind a body of work that continues to impress and delight to this day.
Given I had no way of getting to him, I thought I’d have a chat to one of Ian’s friends and band member, Chaz Jankle, who, as it turns out, actually wrote some of those incredible Ian Dury and the Blockheads hits. Chaz shares his story with us now. I was seven years old.
My parents bought me a Spanish guitar. Then I think about a year later, I started piano lesson. I believe you were pretty heavily influenced by Sly and the Family Stone.
Wow, that’s a huge leap there. Just going back before that, as I was growing up, I was into The Shadows and Cliff Richard. When I was about 14, I was on holiday in Spain and this cousin of mine had one of those portable record players and she was playing, amongst other things, soul music.
And she had a record by Lee Dorsey. The A-side was Working Down a Coal Mine. Working down a coal mine, going downtown.
Working in a coal mine, going down, down, down. Working in a coal mine, whoop, about to slip down. Working in a coal mine, going down, down, down.
Working in a coal mine, whoop, about to slip down. Five o’clock in the morning, I’m already up and gone. Lord, I’m so tired.
How long can this go on? Yeah, yeah, working in a coal mine, going down, down, down. The B-side was Get Out My Life Woman, which was this really heavy beat, great soulful beat. Really funky.
I thought, what’s that? That moved me in a different direction from the Beatles. Suddenly I heard this backbeat and I thought, wow, that’s funky. I probably didn’t say funky at the time.
You think you might have said groovy. Groovy, maybe. I probably did.
That was my move towards Afro-American music. And in fact, a lot of people, including a lot of rock musicians, they were doing the same thing, but what they were doing, they were accessing Delta Blues. But I was turning more towards soul and the funkier end of things.
I just loved the sound of it. But I have to say, when I put on Sly, it was just so outrageous and funky and inventive that I was their biggest fan. There is a blue one who can’t accept a green one For living with a fat one, trying to be a skinny one In different strokes for different folks And so on and so on and scooby-dooby-doo You shall die We got to live together At that time, not many people were on the same page as me on this.
I was also, at that point, I was playing with a kind of folk rock band called Byzantium. Prog rock, I should say, prog rock. That was very different, because they were into Jefferson Airplane.
And I think the game was up one day when we turned up at a gig and they were all wearing denims and they all had long hair. And I still had long hair, but I’d been down to a famous street in London called Carnaby Street. And I bought myself this kind of, what to me, I thought, looked like a soul outfit.
So it was sleeveless. I had a waistcoat that had red inserts and then white. Well, it wasn’t red, it was white down the sides.
And it had all that kind of brocade and things sewn onto it. Satin, white satin. Flared trousers, which repeated all that.
And tails. It had long tails at the back, like red satin tails. The problem was, I looked like a member of Shiawada Wadi, or it didn’t look at all soulful, it looked terrible.
But there I was on the same stage as these guys wearing denim. And I think that was my realisation that I don’t know if I should be playing with this band anymore. I mean, I accept the fact I look terrible and it looked awful.
However, I could tell that what they wanted to do musically was so different from where I was coming from. I wanted more soul in the music, I suppose. I’ve got two things to say about that.
Firstly, I could have matched you in that way because my auntie had brought me home this beautiful purple velvet bolero and miniskirt from Carnaby Street. I thought that was just it. We could have been a great pair then.
But also, what did the band say to you when you were on stage looking like that and they were in their denims? Were they all whispering around, what is this weirdo? Who is he? Let’s get rid of him. I think they tried to disown me. I think they tried to pretend they didn’t know me.
You know when you might turn up at an event and you’re wearing totally the wrong outfit? It was like one of those occasions. Was that the last time you played with them? Probably not. I mean, I probably then went back to wearing denim, you know, to kind of please everybody.
What happened then for you? Where did you take your flares to next? Where did I take my flares? I think the flares went back in the wardrobe. And what did I do after that? I know you did some stuff at Long John Baldry. Oh, wow.
Okay. He actually covered my first song, my first cover was a song called Let’s Go. It was just a 12-bar blues, and it was all about me jumping in my Mini.
My dad was very lucky because my dad owned a garage. So he used to lend cars to my brother and my sister and myself. So I had this little red Mini that I drove around in, and my song was all about going out to the country in my little red Mini, which he changed to red Chevy.
Because he was 6’7″, he would have never gotten a Mini, I don’t think, without damaging his neck. So… Chaz, how did it come about that he covered that song? Well, it was to do with our management. Byzantium’s management looked after Rory Gallagher, Rod Stewart, Long John Corddry.
So a lot of people were being managed there. And I think that’s how the connection came about. As a good musician, you went from one band to the next.
I think that was… I like the way people get the good musicians. That’s what good musicians do, don’t they? Yeah, bad musicians just go off into the corner and do their own stuff, I think. Jonathan Kelly’s Outside, was that next? Wow, wow.
Did you ever hear them? No, I don’t think I did. No. Did you ever hear Byzantium? Yes, I know Byzantium.
Jonathan Kelly’s Outside, I’m eager to discover through you now. He was a very politicised, fervent, passionate Irishman. And I played with him for a year or so, two years.
Obviously, it wasn’t striking that soulful kind of chord that you were searching for either, was more ballroom? Well, actually, I think it was. I mean, he really liked Curtis Mayfield, actually. He loved the kind of sentiment in his lyrics.
And he was very passionate. Just move on up, toward your destination, though you may find, from time to time, complication. Bite your lip and take the trip, though there may be wet road ahead and you cannot slip.
Just move on up, for peace you will find, into this people, a beautiful people, where there’s only one kind. Chaz, how did you then meet Ian Jury? I met Ian because when I was about 25, I had sufficient money to buy an electric piano, a Wurlitzer electric piano, which is what I wanted. And I bought one from a place which was a music hire shop where you could buy equipment as well.
And I’m very excited. And I said, listen to the manager, if anybody needs a keyboard player, give them my telephone number. The next day, the guitar player from the Kilburns comes into the shop and he tells him, oh, our keyboard player’s just left, you know.
And Danny just says, well, this chap came in yesterday, bought a piano, left his telephone number, give him a call. And they were playing the next night in a pub. I was invited down.
I went to see them. And I was awestruck because I didn’t know if I liked the music, but Ian was so compelling. He had a red fez on his head and they were crazy.
It looked something like something out of a Fellini movie. It was loud. It was slightly awkward, but compelling.
At the end of the gig, I trotted up onto the stage like I was hypnotized, you know. And I started going down the tunnel that led from the stage to the dressing room. And the roadie, the roadie was on stage and he saw me going down that way and he said, mate, where are you going? He said, if you want to see the band, go around the front way.
So I followed his orders, hopped off the stage, went round the front to the door next to the stage, followed my way through. Then I turned left behind the stage. And then I suddenly saw this dressing room, well, a few feet away.
And it was all steamy. It was like a Turkish bar. They were all taking their jackets off and shirts and stuff.
And Ian was the only one who saw me. As I was approaching, he said, yeah, mate, do I know you? Well, f*** off then. And that was how he introduced himself to me.
He told me to f*** off. So that’s how we met. And I didn’t quite know quite what to do.
So I turned around, I span around and was making my way out the dressing room. And Ed Spade, who was probably the only one who knew I was going to turn up, said, oh, hello, mate. Are you Chaz? And I went, yeah.
Oh, nice to meet you. Right. So that softened the blow somewhat.
And then I got another call saying that they were rehearsing the next day. Would I like to come along? And I did. I did.
I took my piano and I passed the audition. Ain’t no doubt about it She’s a gamey lass Jerking with her elbow Clever with her knee The way she move it over Does the best you please Diction very bad Friction double rich Brazen little hussy Rockin’ rolling bitch When it comes to business Take off like a jet Rocking’s her vocation She’s a very high road deck Young man There ain’t no need To hustle Young man Slow down your heart’s Bustle You can take your time Young man Somehow this is muscle Lightning in her leg Spitfire on her hip Rock and roll’s her habit Guitar write the script Messed up on her history Won the scoring prize Does her hair pick and pull Bristles and defies Never had a teacher Messing with her brain You should see her pupils Music’s in her veins Shifting her transmission Chevrolet Corvette Rock and roll relations With a very high road deck They were known at the time as Kilburn and the High Roads, yeah? Yeah, they had been Kilburn and the High Roads but at this point they were the Kilburns It was the last orientation of or manifestation of that band, yeah And do you know where they’d taken that name from? Good question, well there is a part of London which is called Kilburn and there’s a lot of activity around there there’s loads of, quite a large Irish community there actually It’s very metropolitan It’s a sassy area in some respects I don’t know why I used that word but it is kind of colourful very colourful, Kilburn and so maybe that’s how it came about, I don’t know, do you know? It’s a very good question, I don’t really know the answer No matter, the Kilburns then went on to play the London pub, club and college circuit for the next 18 months
This is a breath of fresh air with Sandy Kaye. It’s a beautiful day. I said to him one time, I said, look, I said, do you fancy writing some songs together? What I was offering up was something quite funky.
Ian’s music up to that point I would say was more rockabilly or kind of a bit more oddball rock. As I was explaining, I mean, I was really more, you know, wanted to play some more soulful music. So he said, yeah, I’d love to write some songs.
So he stopped doing so many gigs and we started writing. And in the course of our first writing sessions, we wrote Sex and Drugs and Rock and Roll. That came up, that song.
What we would do, we would go and demo our songs at that point in a studio called Alvik, run by Al and Vic. So Ian was playing drums and writing the lyrics and singing, and I was doing everything else. I was playing bass, guitar, keys, guitar.
So all that, but maybe the bass playing and the drums could have been better. And Vic said, listen, I know this great bass player and drummer. Why don’t you give him a shot? And we said, great.
Okay. So they came down, it was Charlie Charles and Norman Wattroy came down and we demoed together three songs. Blockheads and there were two others.
And on playback, Charlie Charles looks down at his shoes and as Blockheads is playing, there’s a line, you must have seen Blockheads with shoes like dead pigs noses. And he looks down at his footwear and he says, Ian, that’s me. And Norman says, yeah, we’re the Blockheads.
The high fives all around and the name jumps off the lyric page and then became the name of the band. Now, we went on then, as we wrote more material, we then demoed our first album, which was yet to be called, or was eventually called New Boots and Panties. And that was just Charlie Charles, Norman on bass, Charlie on drums.
And I was playing keys and guitar. So that album was just called Ian Dury. New Boots and Panties, that was the first album.
To this day, we’re still performing a lot of that material, which is incredible really. It has an extraordinary following here. So then having recorded that, we were asked to go on tour and we asked these two musicians, Charlie and Norman, would they come? And they said, only if we can bring the rest of our band.
The four of them had been in a band called Loving Awareness. So Ian brought along a sax player he’d been playing with in the past called Davy Payne. So he came in, got the four of Loving Awareness, now in the Blockheads, Davy Payne, Ian and myself.
And that constituted Ian doing the Blockheads for the next 20 years. That was it. Those guys.
I didn’t realise you were such a huge crew. It was big, yeah. It was a big crew.
That’s an expensive act to tour. Well, you’ve got it. And it’s still seven.
That’s a lot of hotel rooms and that’s a lot of food. But it was a pretty big sound. It was a big sound, yeah.
It’s great because you’ve got two guitars or two keys. I mean, it’s a great sound. The band is, and I have to say, even to this day, it’s an amazing band.
People say it’s one of the tightest bands they’ve ever heard. And also, they think we’re up there. A lot of it down to Ian’s lyrics.
They reach the common man. There’s so much humanity in Ian’s lyrics. Love the humour.
Ian appealed to the working man, and not only that, the disenfranchised, because he was a polio victim. Well, sorry, I said victim. Sorry, he had polio.
Very few successful artists in front of a camera had a disability or even showed it. Gene Vincent also had a disability, and one of our biggest songs, and one of the songs I wrote with Ian was called Sweet Gene Vincent, which we perform. I think I’ve performed it every single gig I’ve ever done with the Blackheads for the last 40 years.
Gene Vincent is well-known through our music, and also he was an icon in his own way. But as I say, I think Ian identified with him. White face, black shirt, white socks, black shoes, black hair, white strap, red white, dark black.
Sweet Gene Vincent. At the start of winter, sweater and a bow tie. Charles, what was Ian like as a person? You’ve given us a bit of an image, and many people listening will remember how Ian Dury performed, what he looked like.
We all know how he sounded. What was he like underneath that all as the man? Who was he? Wow, incredibly passionate, astute, a little schizophrenic, I would say, because if it was one-on-one, if you were one-on-one with him, you’d have one kind of relationship. The moment he had a crowd around him, he’d want to be the top dog.
So that’s where I’d say this kind of paradox entered. And the other thing was, once he’d had a drink, he could lose his inhibitions and it gave him Dutch courage. You probably know people like that.
We all do. Yeah, but what do you think the amount of time we spend, pretty much half our social hours are spent intoxicated or with alcohols, and it affects some people a lot quicker than it does others. So he could be obnoxious when he’d had a drink, and things that he’d had under the surface would come to the surface and he could actually be quite critical of others, let’s put it like that, even strangers he met.
You know, Jesus, it could all go off, let’s put it like that. But then the next day I’d be writing with him or a couple of days later and I never really used to lecture him because he was ten years older than me. So I’d say something like, well, that was an interesting evening the other night, and he’d go, yeah, blimey, yeah, cool, I got a bit out of it, and that would be it, and then we’d carry on until the next time it happened.
So that was it. He was very respectful, and I learned a lot from him. Like he introduced me to jazz, which was great.
We spent a lot of time working together. Because my dad lent me a car, it’s very important, very important for a musician to have a car. It’s probably the most important thing because you take the singer to a gig, you know, they love it, they’ve got a lift home.
So that played a lot into it. The older I get, the more I thank my dad for the car. That little red Mini? Yeah, the little red Mini.
Do you think that Ian had a bit of a chip on his shoulder because of his physical impairment? Good question. I think whilst everyone was running around in their teams, sowing their wild oats or hoping they would, or kind of partying down, because of Ian’s impediment, he couldn’t run around. So he would sit, and I think he would be pondering life and looking at life and working things out, how he could manipulate is too strong a word, but how he could.
Navigate, maybe. Get his way, yeah. And I think that’s what he was working out, and that’s why he was one step ahead.
One thing I used to notice with Ian was he would attract people who, I’ll give you a metaphor or a way I’d describe it, they were like birds with broken wings. And he would help and repair those wings. It sounds awful, but I think at that point they were in his domain, and as a result he’d want or expect something in return.
He would expect their loyalty. It looked like a very generous gift, and he was very avuncular and kind of friendly, but these people were quite vulnerable. Yeah.
And I think he helped build up their self-esteem, but at the same time it was hard for them to get away from Ian after that. Being such a strong character, sometimes I could see them not really flowering as much as they could do. It’s almost like they had a sense of, yeah, I could do this, I could do that, but they needed to go off and then do it, and they sort of hung around Ian for a while and maybe never totally realised their potential until they flew away with their new wings.
What a waste. I could be a lawyer with stratagems and bruises. I could be a doctor with polices and bruises.
I could be a writer with a growing reputation. I could be the ticket man in front of Broadway station. What a waste.
Did he get his fair share of the girls too? Yeah. Yeah, I think he did, actually. Yeah, I think he was an attractive man.
He had charisma. I mean, my God. And every gig I ever did, every gig, people have gone nuts right from the word go.
It’s a hard thing to say, but we’ve never played a gig where there’s been a kind of mediocre response, never, since the first day. You know, it’s been… You know, people got absolutely nuts. There’s something about the content within the songs, which ranges from kind of musical to kind of rock and roll to some serious funk.
When we started, nobody was doing that. Nobody had such a varied palette. You were either blues, rock, this or that country.
Ian never had an issue with genre. In fact, I never heard him use the word genre. And as we were talking about writing, as time went by with the writing, I would often, because he had confidence in me, I would initiate the music and then say, hey, Ian, do you like this? How about, I’ve got an idea, what do you reckon? And he might write then to say something I’d written.
That happened a number of times, but only after he had confidence in me as a composer. To start with, he would start all the writing, and therefore a lot of the early songs were determined by his rhyming couplets. Ian loved rhythm.
And so he was quite happy to sit on the drums and jam with him, and out of that, sometimes some great songs like Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick came out that way. In the deserts of Sudan And the gardens of Japan Hit me with your rhythm stick Hit me, hit me Je t’adore, ich liebe dich Hit me, hit me, hit me Hit me with your rhythm stick Hit me slowly, hit me quick Hit me, hit me, hit me In the wilds of Borneo Of Bodø, Eskimo Of Arapaho Move their body to and fro Hit me with your rhythm stick Hit me, hit me Das ist gut, sehr fantastisch Hit me, hit me, hit me Hit me with your rhythm stick It’s nice to be a lunatic Hit me, hit me, hit me That’s when it really blew up, didn’t it? It did. This was about 78 and 1978 and we were very popular at that point, particularly with the universities.
We were touring all over England. Ian had rented a house outside of London and in his living room he’d put a drum kit and also there was a Fender Rose electric piano and he invited me down there and he just got in the kit and he had a little drum machine and that had little sort of like rhythms and you could set to any tempo and he had a little all those little bossa nova kind of rhythms they have cha-cha, bossa nova, all these kind of it was quite cheesy but very popular rolling drum machines. Musicians, they’ll remember them I remember those CR78 for those who are interested Roland’s CR78 so he had one of those things like in the background and he’s playing along, staying in time and he was playing this kind of very earthy four to the floor is what his favourite kind of rhythm was because rhythm for him was defiance it wasn’t just, hey guys, which tempo should we do it was because of his disability it was his defiance I’ll give you an example so we’ll get on to rhythm stick in a second so there was a movie called Zulu with Michael Caine and Ian said to me one time when we were writing he said, Chas, do you know my idea of rhythm do you know what rhythm is for me and I said, go on, no I don’t what does it mean and he said, well have you seen the movie Zulu and I went, yeah I have seen the movie Zulu and he said, well do you remember Michael Caine he kind of plays some sort of officer in the army and he’s standing on one side of a mountain there’s a Zulu nation on the other side and they’re about to attack him and his regiment and this actually happened in history and all you can hear is them hitting their shields they’re about to attack this is kind of like a ritual it can make you very worried if you’re on the receiving end of that and there’s like 200 people bashing their shields on the other side and you can’t see them you can just hear it he said, that’s rhythm for me that’s rhythm so what it was was the defiance so whenever I sat down to play rhythm with Ian I was aware of that that was the driving force it’s not just, hey guys let’s do the song a bit faster tonight no, this was it helped him get upstairs it helped him get out of bed in the morning it helped him feel good about life well, we all know it’s universal, isn’t it? and it cuts through everything.
This is a breath of fresh air with Sandy Kay3. It’s a beautiful day. So anyway, there he was in 1978, in his living room, on a drum kit, and I’m playing the keys, just jamming along, and I’m going ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.
And it was sweet, it was a nice little groove, but nothing really major. And then we said goodnight, and I went home to where I was living, and I had a piano in the house. Before we’d written Rhythmstick, we’d made this album, New Boots and Panties, that I was talking about.
The opening song on that was a song called Wake Up and Make Love With Me. And I was fascinated, because at the end of the song, I play a piano solo. And I listened, I thought, why do I really like this piano solo at the end? And I thought, I like it, because I suddenly realised, I go… And I thought, it’s that little… You know, if you were to isolate, it’s a little pickup.
And I thought, ooh, if I took that little… And I put it ahead of this little rhythmic motif that I’d been playing the day earlier within. I’d have… I thought, this is killer, this is… Called up Ian, I said, you’ve got to hear this, this is killer. He went, yeah, come down, come down.
So I went down, and he’d written out a lyric. Hit me with the Rhythmstick, three verses, the most succinct thing I’ve ever seen. Because usually there’s pages and pages of lyrics, and one of my roles was to be editor.
I used to have to say, look, we can’t have so many lyric verses, because the song would be 20 minutes long. But on this occasion, it was succinct, it was really succinct, tight. My job was to get the song finished as quick as possible.
I inserted the verses, the choruses. I still had this very funky riff surrounding the whole thing. And that was Rhythmstick.
And then the next day, Ian invited the Blockheads down, and we rehearsed it. And we recorded it. Take two was the one we used.
And I was so excited. I called my mum up after it, and I said, I remember calling her up and saying, Mum, we’ve just recorded Love Verse number one. This is number one.
This is it. I was right. Hit me.
Hit me. Hit me. It wasn’t long after that, though, that you left the band.
Why did you do that? Well, Ian was very controlling, very controlling. My musical interests didn’t always coincide with Ian’s. My influences and my orientation as a musician were different from Ian’s, very different.
And so what I was writing didn’t always necessarily fit into the Blockheads format. I was really into, say, for example, Brazilian music and jazz, and things which were maybe a bit lighter than the kind of more Anglo-Saxon vibes of the Blockheads. So I think at one point, Ian said, look, I understand that you might want your own space.
So how about you have March and October of this year? I went, no, no, that’s not going to work like that. And so I disappeared for a while, yeah. But you came back again a few years later.
I did come back. I’m 86 to 92. I moved to LA, and I lived there.
My sister is a film director called Annabelle. She made a film called Dead on Arrival, which I did the score for. I’ve taken the original cues and re-edited them, because a year after the film was released, the soundtrack was no longer available.
So for 25 years, one couldn’t buy it anywhere. So it’s all kind of original score, just represented so that it’s in edible chunks, already radio-friendly. And there’s one piece which I wrote 25 years after the event, which is a piano sonata, which finishes the album.
And that was me sort of thinking about the different themes that I’d written. It sounds fabulous. It’s out now.
It’s called DOA Reimagined, right? Yes, yes, Sandy, yeah. In 1980, I got my own record deal, and I made four albums. You have a number one hit on the Hot Dance Music charts in 82 with Glad to Know You.
That’s true, yeah. And I Know Corita. The song I Know Corita, I didn’t write the lyric.
It was written by Kenny Young, who also wrote Under the Boardwalk, the famous song Under the Boardwalk. Ah. Under the boardwalk, down by the sea, yeah.
On a blanket with my baby, that’s where I’ll be. Under the boardwalk, have all the sun. Under the boardwalk, we’ll be having some fun.
Under the boardwalk, people walking above. Under the boardwalk, we’ll be making love. Under the boardwalk, boardwalk.
He went to a music festival called Midem. Whilst he was there, he calls me, he says, Chaz, I’ve got a lyric for your melody. And I said, what’s that? And he started singing, I know Corita, that’s where I am.
And I had no idea what he was talking about. And I said, what is it? You know, is this a girl? Corita or something? And he said, no, no, no. He said, there’s a Japanese film that I’ve just seen.
It’s called I Know Corita, In the Realm of the Senses. And it was a film made by Oshima. All I wanted was a kind of lighthearted, like something to go, da, da, da, da, da.
I was talking about this particularly heavyweight sort of, Oh my God, what’s going on? Chaz, your time in LA was up and you end up coming back to live in the UK. Quincy Jones also had a UK chart hit with the cover version of I Know Corita. Yeah, he did, he did.
And the nylons covered it too. It was hugely successful by everybody who’s done it. But you’re still out on your own.
Do you come back to working with Ian before he dies in 2000 again? Or are you doing your own thing? So after I came back from LA, we did get back together and we did write. And then sadly, very sadly, Ian contracted cancer. So we made one album called Mr. Love Pants, which has got some fantastic material on there.
There’s some great songs. We do one song even to this day with the Blockheads called Itinerant Child, which is on that album. Very strong song about travellers being treated badly by the police.
And we very warmly received that song. The windows have been painted black The windshield’s cracked, it’s a bugger to drive It starts making smoke over 35 It’s a psychedelic nightmare with a million leaks It’s home sweet home to some sweet-arse freaks Slow down itinerant child The road is full of danger Slow down itinerant child There’s no more welcome stranger Soon I was rumbling through the morning fog With my long-haired children and my one-eyed dog With the trucks and the buses and the trailer vans My long-throw horns playing Steely Dan Ian found out that he had cancer And then in 2000 he passed away. We were in the middle also of making one last album, Ten More Turnips, from the tip.
But he only managed to write and see five songs finished and then we had to finish the album ourselves. So it was tough, very tough. Wow.
You’ve continued making solo albums since that time too. Tell us a little bit about the latest one. Well, are you referring to Flow? So I haven’t really promoted it that much.
However, one of my favourite songs on there is a song called Bodies Without a Soul. When I look above me And when I look around I tune into a bandwagon And listen to a different sound When I look above me I feel completely free No longer trapped inside my head The streets is just me I’m out of my mind Moving to a different space I’m out of my mind Slow down to a quieter pace I’m out of my mind Emotions go but nothing’s ever here to stay I’ve found an old philosophy That makes a lot of sense to me I know who’s got ears to understand The one who had her own serenity And all this negativity Won’t harm the peace inside of me What happens with me? I live very much in the present. You know, so I give 100% to whatever I’m working at and then I rinse it till I can’t listen to it anymore and then that’s out the way.
But alongside with all of that I write a lot of jazz piano compositions. And you’re still playing with the Blockheads sometimes too? Oh, God, yeah. Yeah, we’re playing about, I’d say, at the moment about twice a month.
Is there one song from your entire back catalogue that means the most to you? Well, that I’ve written? Yeah. Is that the song I’ve written? Yeah. I’m glad to know you was a big one for me.
I love that that song has been very kind to me. Who were you glad to know? Well, Ian wrote the lyric. There’s a huge amount of irony in that lyric.
You wandered in upon my life and haven’t lost me yet Said the turkey to the carving knife What you give is what you get A fresh and lovely summer’s day We thought would never end Said the turkey to the carving knife I thought you were my friend It’s actually about back-stepping. That was just one of the verses from Glad to Know You. You wandered in upon my life and haven’t lost me yet Said the turkey to the carving knife What you give is what you get A fresh and lovely summer’s day We thought as hand-in-hand we wander on Through life’s all wondrous ways Said Robin Hood to Little John There must be other ways It was quite a poem, wasn’t it? It took years for me to understand.
It was actually the irony in it all. I thought it was just nice. Hey, glad to know you, pleased to meet you.
But the more I delved into this lyric, I thought, hang on, this is… It’s a whole lot more to it. Yeah. Got it.
Chas Jenkel, thank you so much for your time today. What an absolute treat to chat with you, get to know you a little bit better and get to know some of the machinations behind all that fabulous music that you’ve had a hand in making. Thank you, Sandy.
It was nice, I enjoyed that. And as Chas mentioned, the Blockheads are still very much alive and well today. They’ve released several albums and look likely to mark the upcoming 50th anniversary of their first offering, New Boots and Panties.
Derek Hussey, also known as Derek the Drawer, who was Ian Durie’s friend and minder, joined the band in 2000. He became the main lyricist and Blockhead storyteller, writing songs with Chas and also singing lead vocals. Unfortunately, he passed away in 2022.
Ian Durie, of course, died in 2000 from colorectal cancer at the age of 57. He left behind him two wives and four kids. Thanks for your time today.
I hope you’ve enjoyed reliving the lifetimes and music of Ian Durie. I’ll see you back again same time next week. Bye now.
It’s a beautiful day. You’ve been listening to A Breath of Fresh Air with Sandy Kaye. Beautiful day.
Bet you’re going away. It’s a beautiful day. It’s a beautiful day.