'Bill Drammond is a cultural magician, and

THE URGE TO PAINT or Have I Got The Strength To 'Just Say No'?'.

12 November 1998

A bowl of porridge and a pot of tea on the table in front of me. In the background, Radio Three's On Air. Every morning it's the same. While the rest of the house sleeps I sit at this table and stare out of the window.

I have lived here for six years, longer than I have lived any­where else throughout my adult life. I must have stared out of this window (in fact it's a patio door, but I can't bring myself to call it that) for more time than I've stared at any other one thing. The view is a broad sweep across the Vale of Aylesbury, south towards the Chiltern Hills. Field after field, hedgerow on hedgerow, stands and further stands of black poplars and, of course, my beloved pylons. When I first moved here in early '93 it was the nocturnal version of this view that held me entranced. That distant string of orange phosphorus lights that followed the course of the A41 from east to west at the far side of the vale. I had driven that stretch of the A41 a thousand times. Knew every cat's eye, every empty Silk Cut packet on its verge. It's as uninteresting as any other road in the south of England. But at night and viewed from where I'm sitting now, that string of phosphorus lights would have the same effect on me as listening to Scott Walker singing 'The Lights of Cincinnati' or Glen Campbell's 'Wichita Lineman'. All those long-ago songs about a faraway Middle America. I would sit there singing lines like 'See the tree, how big it's grown', will­ing the tears to flow. Of course I was living alone then, which encouraged this melancholic wallowing. If there was any rational thought going on it was along the lines that I should try to write some classic heartbreaking ballads, songs that would make me proud to be a songwriter, a proper one like Burt Bacharach or Jimmy Webb, and of course one particular song that would never stop getting played, thus providing a nice little pension plan.

But now it's different. It's not the lonely nights and the phos­phorus lights that comfort me. It's the early hours. As the first light streaks the sky above where the Chilton cement works must be, the dark grey-blues and almost purple blocks of clouds shift, unmasking pale pinks and ribbons of orange as minute by minute, field by field, the vale reveals itself to the coming day. A damp and low-lying country, it's prone to mists that cling to the ground, waiting for the rising sun to disperse them. It's these mists that do the trick for me most mornings, as they must have done for dawn watchers since man sat at the mouth of his cave. Sometimes it's like the fields of Avalon, sometimes it's a Japanese watercolour. And sometimes it's just me sipping my tea and thinking, 'that bit over there beyond where the canal must be would make a great painting.' Except that that 'sometimes' is happening more and more often. Each time it's a different bit of the sweep. I've begun unwittingly to fantasise about the blocks of colour on the canvas, the texture of the thickly applied paint. That hump of a hill over there, that black silhouette of a dead ash tree. That pylon rising up from the swirl of mist that covers its feet. An endless supply of beckoning prospects, each and every one worth a day at the easel. For twenty-six years I've been able to suppress this urge. To banish

it with reason, to ridicule it with cynicism, to let it wither through years of neglect. But still it must always have been there, biding its time, gnawing at my subconscious. Does there come a time in every artist's life when the urge to capture the emotion generated by an innocent prospect returns?

It began a few months ago. At first it was more that I imag­ined somebody else painting it, not that I was going to track down and persuade a local landscape painter to come round to my place at 6.45 a.m. with a paint box. After a while I realised that in my imagination I wasn't seeing somebody else's inter­pretation of this landscape. It was my own. I had to face the fact that I wanted to paint.

Some mornings I could indulge myself in the fantasy of spending the rest of my life painting different parts, moods, lights, moments of this same landscape. I would sit here, in the exact same spot, with my pot of tea and bowl of porridge by my side. Monet and his lily pond would be nothing compared to this. My soul would blossom across a thousand dark and brooding canvases. The trouble is, I know I'm drawn to a comforting unoriginality. Tens of thousands of paintings of similar scenes have already been painted by men in chunky jumpers.

My mother has a painting hanging on the wall of her hall. Lots of dark greens and thick browns. It's of the back of a run­down house and its overgrown garden in Northampton. It is the last painting I ever painted. I was nineteen. When I was painting it I felt a rush of energy and excitement go through me that I had never felt before. I thought it was brilliant. I thought I was going to have a glorious life painting canvas after canvas, riding the untamed creative force within me. The painting was rubbish. Every time I visit my mum's I'm shocked at how bad it is. Maybe it's time I gave my mum a visit.

Before it's too late.

MICK PHONED.

29 April 1997

Mick phoned me.

Mick Houghton, friend and publicist since '79.

They wanted to know if I'd do some sleeve notes for an Echo and the Bunnymen Greatest Hits package that Warners are putting out coinciding with the reformation of the band.

This is what I wrote:

SLEEVE NOTE

We were in the back of a transit van, careering down a high­way. Nobody was at the wheel and nobody knew where we were going. The journey started in '78; I fell out the back door somewhere in the mid '80s. I picked myself up, dusted myself down and walked away.

If I were to bring myself to listen to the tracks on this record, they would drag up too many memories I would rather remained buried. Memories of lies, deceit, hatred, hotel floors, cocaine dealers, transit vans, acid trips, broken amplifiers, American girls, service stations, loss of innocence, corrupt road crews, missed opportunities, vanity, broken promises, shit gigs, bad sex, crap mixes, late VAT returns, petulance, incompe­tence, petty rivalry and Pete de Freitas dying.

I make myself a pot of tea.

Read the above and remember.

I love Echo and the Bunnymen more than I have loved any band before or since.

And

Not because

Echo and the Bunnymen embodied all the great archetypes of the classic band: a drummer who knew how to have a good time; a bass player who knew how to keep everybody else in

time; a guitarist who was introverted, twisted, bitter and fuck­ing brilliant and a singer who had the lips, hair, voice, words and all that other stuff that you have to have from a Parthenon Drive frontman.

But because

Within the soul of Echo and the Bunnymen there was a pure aspiration that transcended all those would-be dragged up memories. It's as if The Bunnymen were going for some ulti­mate but indefinable glory. A glory beyond all glories, where the gates are flung open and all you can see is this golden light shining down on you, bathing you, cleaning all the grime and shit from the dark corners of your soul. You know what I mean?

Good.

I drink my tea.

TAKE THREE BULLETS

What I didn't write was this:

All bands reform for the wrong reasons

You know the ones

Last year

Or was it the year before

I heard a rumour

'The Beatles' were to re-form

Julian, Paul, George and Ringo

Headlining Woodstock

The Silver Jubilee

The Beatles don't re-form

It's against the rules

Mark Chapman was still in jail

So the job had to be done by me

I would get my gun

Take three bullets

Go to Woodstock

And do the job

The gig never happened

Just a crappy single

A good job

Or I'd have had to face my own futility

Will, Mac, Les,

You gotta

Prove me wrong

And

Do It Clean.

COCAINE DEALERS AND AMERICAN GIRLS

I phoned Mick to find out

If they liked what I wrote

Warners wanted to scrap

All text up until

'I love Echo and the Bunnymen more . . .'

The band wanted 'cocaine dealers'

Changed to 'drug dealers'

And 'American girls'

Got rid of

Altogether.

Like I say Do It Clean.