Meat Loaf, Tony Mills, Shy, Brian Greenhoff. Rochdale Memories.

Some Rambling Thoughts on the Death of Meatloaf, Tony Mills of Shy and Brian Greenhoff of Manchester Utd

Late 1981 - Driving in the car with my parents and sister listening to Noel Edmonds on Radio 1. Edmonds played Dead Ringer For Love. This was the first time I’d heard it as the single had just been released to the world. Wow! A real swinging rock tune - the drama, the back and forth between him and Cher, the doo-wop coda. Remember; this was the time of synthesisers and New Romantics and so an unabashed rock ‘n’ roll wall of sound of guitars and brass - just blew us all away. It so was good, Noel Edmonds played it again which was practically unheard of on Radio 1.

Mid 80’s - Sixth form. Two LPs dominated the music we played in breaks and lunchtimes - Queen Greatest Hits (there was no volume 1 or 2 in those days, only the original LP up to, but not including, Under Pressure) and Bat Out of Hell. We knew all the words of both albums through ceaseless repetition.

Bat Out of Hell bears repeated plays. Occasionally I remember it and play the familiar tracks for a couple of days and fondly reminisce. Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad, Paradise by the Dashboard Light, You Took the Words Right Out of my Mouth. The title track, of course. I don’t need to tell you how good the LP is. Play it.

Feb 1987 - I saw Meat Loaf at the Brighton Centre as part of his 20/20 World Tour. Great concert, lots of familiar songs, high camp on stage. He was big, he was sweating, his band kicked ass. Meat Loaf was as much an actor as a singer - he always threw himself into performances and Brighton was no different.

He was supported at the Brighton gig by British big haired metallers Shy. Not bad songs but kind of ignored whilst waiting for the main act to come on.

Back at home in Rochdale, I tended bar in the Norden Chimney restaurant bar (called The Highwayman). Not many people would come in - just me, my mates, other members of staff, a karaoke singer at the weekend for entertainment and, bizarrely, ex Man Utd and England footballer Brian Greenhoff. Nights of lager and Limes. Silks Cuts. I played the Yardbirds or REO Speedwagon on the stereo. And into this scene one day walked an exotic Brummie - Tony Mills - lead singer of Shy. He’d moved in with his girlfriend and her parents two doors down to my parents and was looking for a local.

How can I describe Tony? Platinum spiked big hair as was common with rockers in the 80’s. Tight jeans, embroided jacket. Tall, but his hair made him seem bigger. It was as if an ambassador from Planet Rock had just walked in. “Pint of Lowenbrow, Tim” he’d say and have a quiet drink, sometimes with his girlfriend, sometimes not. I recognised him immediately and would prompt him for stories about the rock world and Meat Loaf in particular. Apparently Loaf used to keep an oxygen mask off stage in case he took a turn for the worse out on stage. Tony also said he’d be invited up on the stage to sing Johnny B Goode in the rock n roll medley Meat Loaf finished his set with. Problem was, Tony didn’t know the words!

Tony was in between tours and resting up (in Rochdale of all places). The album they were promoting when supporting Meat Loaf - Excess all Areas (featuring Break Down the Walls and, my favourite, Young Heart) was probably the peak of Shy’s fame. It was a good time.

Into this cosy scene let me introduce Andy, the karaoke ‘singer’ who would, on Friday and Saturday nights, be perched on a bar stool the opposite end of the bar to Greenhoff and entertain the punters with his renditions of Lionel Richie or Diana Ross. He could hold a tune but not much more. He wore a double breasted flecked suit that was, as per the time, somewhat shiny. A few drinks to the worse he’d bemoan his fate: “Rick Astley; talentless fucker! I taught him all he fucking knows. Which isn’t much!” Apparently they were contemporaries on the Northern working men’s circuit. One had a huge hit and the other drank huge Bicardi’s and Cokes from the other side of my bar.

Some good natured banter used to fly around after a few drinks between Andy and Tony. Andy, mike in hand, would challenge the heavy rocker - who apparently was a fucking ‘singer’ - to a sing off. Tony would always demur and stick quietly to his Lowenbrow. He didn’t need to show off.

Not one night though…

I don’t know what it was but Andy’s barbs finally got through to Tony and it was decided that they’d do a karaoke challenge to Lionel Richie’s ballad ‘Hello’ which - in terms of Shy’s output - was pretty incongruous if you come to think about it. I always had a sense of humour! Andy started it off:

“I’ve been alone with you in my mind,” he began “And in my dreams I’ve kissed your lips a thousand times.” He sang the next line and, self satisfied, passed the mike to Tony confident he’d raised the bar too high for this girlie man to compete.

“HELLO, IS IT ME YOU”RE LOOKING FOR?” belted out Tony in full concert voice taking the song and the room to a new level. With just those few words, we were in a presence of rock n roll royalty. I knew it. The room knew it. Greenhoff knew it. Andy knew it. A different class. As the backing track continued, Andy got up off his stool and went and sat at a table among the punters. Rick Astley this wasn’t. He had the humility to realise the difference between an amateur and professional. This being Rochdale, this being the 1980s and this being my story, they made up later and duetted together on some MOR classic.

I’ve seen class up close only a few times but two of them were in Rochdale. Lisa Stansfield in my school musical. And Tony Mills, blowing all away in the late 80’s.

Happy Days.

R.I.P Meat Loaf

R.I.P. Brian Greenhoff

And, sadly, too young, R.I.P. Tony Mills - slayer of mediocre singers, drinker of Lowenbrow and unlikely Lionel Richie interpreter.

A circular Brighton walk - Station, Kemptown, Seafront

“Disenchantment achieved, I buy a packet of cigarettes and go to the next pub up the hill. I used to drink here ... It wasn’t that long ago in the grand scheme of things, but I picture my youth in sepia, with horse drawn carts straining to get up the road as men in strange bowler hats, standing stiffly on corners, scowl back at me.”

— In Between Days - Tim Robson

“What’s with all the reservations on the the tables?” I ask the young barmaid in an empty Kemptown pub.

“Pub quiz tonight. Really popular.”

“So you’re still doing them, then?”

“Yeah, for over a year now.”

“Well, actually thirty,” I say cryptically proving myself both wise and stupid.

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Never go back. Never turn around. Lot’s wife forgot that and see what happened to her (pillar of salt, you ignoramuses). Sequels are inferior to the originals, we all know that. Weekend at Bernies 2 maybe. And returning back to a place? Forget it!

And yet I found myself walking around the backstreets of Brighton the other day. I wrote a short story some years ago about a disillusioned man in the midst of a divorce returning to Brighton, revisiting old haunts. And so, I set out to recreate a recreation. A copy of a copy.

Yeah, makes no sense to me either. Still, I get to write about a walk around some of my favourite parts of Brighton with some added pithy ‘then v now’ comments and ‘it’s all gone downhill’ editorialising. As it happens, it’s taken me so long to write this article, I feel like I should write another where I follow in my summer 21 footsteps and compare the brightness of mask-free August with the gloom of COVID hysteria December. Those brief July to November days were different times.

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Starting Point: Brighton Station (and ending point. It’s all a circle, man)

Let it never be said TR doesn’t do arty photos. See how these two trains converge into the distance? That’s composition, my friends.

Aug 2021: Have you noticed it’s mainly the Millennials that mask up these days? I suppose virtue signalling is ingrained in their souls and so ostentatiously wearing a mask is another opportunity to show how good they are. Question: have charities cottoned onto this fact yet? Started producing their own branded face nappies for the beard and tats generation? Just a thought.

Anyway, out of the station, you need to loop straight down, underneath, and go down one of Brighton’s infamous hills (there are many): Trafalgar Street. Like much of the walk, this street has that curious changed / unchanged vibe from thirty years ago. Back then, it was full of small musty shops selling records and 2nd hand clothes. Now, it bristles with a few new office blocks at the top end and more vegan / plant based cafes and restaurants than even the most enlightened beardy could shake a stick at. Soya milk lattes are most definitely on the menu. Probably obligatory.

Down we go. The Great Eastern pub near the bottom is worth a stop. Like much of Brighton it’s a bit poncified these days but - outside at least - it looks the same as it did when my solo singer/guitarist career crashed to a halt in the early 90’s. And thence to the Steine, central Brighton’s main thoroughfare. Cross over this multi lane highway, St Peter’s church - currently enrobed and refurbishing - is to your left and aim for the Norfolk pub on the other side (scene of one of my 90’s band Shambolic frequent public embarrassments) and climb the hill straight in front of you. Turn right before the tower blocks and we’re walking past 1930’s slum clearing flats. In the distance, and getting closer, are American Express’ new(ish) offices.

Into Kemptown

Ah, Kemptown… My stomping ground for, well, although a definite period of my life - remembered in detail years later - it was, in fact, only a short period of time. Two years? Three addresses? These days whole decades pass without a mark or memory. Back then, each day seemed monumental. Maybe they were.

Cross Edward Street (RIP Amex House), and go down George Street where a brace of royal named pubs flank the entrance onto Kemptown’s main thoroughfare, St James’ Street. We’re going to be following this road leftwards into deepest, darkest Kemptown. Kemptown, named after Thomas Kemp, has historically always been the centre of Brighton’s gay community. Although there are gay pubs the area is very mixed and vibrant and just very ‘Brighton’ - that liberal, carefree vibe you imagine this town to have.

The Saint James (where’s the ‘Tavern’ gone from its name?). Turn left when you see this vista.

Pubs? The St James’ Tavern was always good. I used to hold court here every Friday lunch with my team of reprobates over a couple of pints and a £5 Penang curry back in the early 2000’s. I see it does Lebanese cuisine now.

So we continue, past old haunts, catching glimpses of yesteryear ghosts, and into The Hand in Hand. It was once the home of the Kemptown Brewery and served their various real ale type concoctions, for example, SID - Staggering in the Dark. Might still be a brew pub. They used to sell boiled eggs on the bar which you could scoff with the aid of handily placed salt and pepper pots. The eggs have gone. The decor is still the same - eclectic, old pictures, postcards, random objects. Ties. In my mind this pub always plays Out of Time by REM and I have hair and pretty girlfriends… Drink up Tim, move on, move on.

On a pub theme: There was a pub around here called the Stag. It’s knocked down now. I made the mistake of going in there once with my then girlfriend. Like some B western movie, the music stopped as we entered and all the regulars stared at us. The barman may have made a comment about my drink selection (possibly lager and lime). “Do you want a cherry with that?” Never went back.

Bristol Rd. Curves.

Continuing along, the pace is quieter, the vibe more village-y. There’s a twist in the road (now called Bristol Road) and then we’re into Kemptown proper. You know, small shops and the launderette where I used to pin up adverts for my band’s gigs. Interesting pubs. It feels a community all of itself. I remember an Irish girl with red hair who’s beauty was matched by her capriciousness. She and I lived together in a shared house for a while a little further down the road… I aspired to be a writer and she a better boyfriend. One of us probably achieved our goals.

And then into the Thomas Kemp pub and conversations with the young barmaid about thirty years ago. “Yes, granddad”. The pub is swankier now with more restaurant tables than previously, less sofas. Pubs just can’t be pubs anymore, can they? I suppose people - not me - drink less these days. Lots of preloading going on. Wandering around today, I feel I’ve preloaded but not on cheap booze.

So, your author crosses and sneaks down a little alleyway and into Bloomsbury Place - a past address. Here also was a small basement studio where one of my bands - Tempting Alice - cut four tracks. Although one was played on BBC Radio Sussex, strangely this didn’t lead to a life of rock ‘n’ roll excess. We walk on and down this quiet road until it opens up onto the seafront.

We’re now pivoting back towards our start point. Cross Marine Parade and walk right along the promenade for about half a mile towards the pier. What can you see as you walk? Well, the sea, obvs! To the left, you’ll notice the high rise ghetto that Brighton Marina has latterly become and, in front of you, the pier and all those tourists who neglected to read this blog and so just headed down to the sea front. You’re so wise. You’re so clever. You are me. Literally.

Steve Ovett - Brighton hero

You keep walking along the promenade until you get to the Sea-life Centre and cross at the ridiculously small but congested mini- roundabout that mediates all the traffic on Brighton seafront. We’re going to traverse through Brighton’s famous Lanes so walk on the side of the Albion Hotel and turn left on East Street. Little shops, a gunsmith (?), that alley in Quadraphenia, guide us along to The Sussex Pub. Used to go there. Don’t now. Through a small alleyway past English’s Fish restaurant (apparently quite good but as not a poisson fan, wouldn’t know, mate). Thence into Brighton Square, start of The Lanes, those collection of alleyways with ex fishermen’s cottages that now sell, what? Crap for tourists. Coffee for tourists. Cornish pasties (for the gulls - don’t feed them). You can probably get your stick of Brighton rock here, though, probably not these days.

Navigate your way through the Lanes by always going up and left and you’ll end up on East Street. A shimmy and a shake and you’re on North Street which feels like it should be the main shopping Street but isn’t. Lots of buildings that look like banks - they once were - are now ersatz Italian restaurants and small batch coffee shops. It’s not my Brighton. At the top of North Street is The Clocktower. Back in the day this used to have a loo underneath. Too many public handjobs, too much to maintain means it, along with all Brighton public toilets, is just a full-bladdered memory.

We turn right at the clocktower and walk down the parade of kebab shops and - yes - coffee shops that is Queen’s Rd and we’re back at the station. Now put on your mask like a good boy and bugger off back to London. Don’t forget your soya milk latte.

As your train is delayed through lack of drivers isolating at home, consider what you’ve seen and what you’ve experienced. You - I - have walked a mile or two in the shoes of the younger me. Never turn back, I said. But, as Disney’s Pochahontus said, you can’t dip your hand in the same river twice. And I think, I’ll leave it to a kids’ cartoon to provide my epitaph to this circle (of life? We doing Disney references now, Tim? I remember when you used to quote the Stoics).

Yeah. Enjoy.

Charlie's Good Tonight

“Charlie’s good tonight,” announced Mick Jagger on Get Yer Ya Yas Out live album documenting the Stones 1969 US tour.

And he was. Every night.

Not a flashy drummer, he kept the time and the groove, followed cues from Keith Richard’s backside and provided the skins work for some of the best rock music ever. The Stones aren’t the place to find elongated drum solos. And quite right too. Charlie was the rock steady heartbeat that propelled the Stones from Crawdaddy residences in Richmond pubs to mega tours around the world. From timid Chuck Berry covers to those classics we all know.

From what I’ve seen, and from what I’ve read, Charlie was a shy and modest man, contented with his wife and his passions. Not a diva at all or a hotel wrecker. To him music was its own reward.

Charlie follows Brian Jones (and Ian Stewart if you want to be a completist) of dead Stones. 80 is not a bad innings though.

So, I’ve selected one of my favourite live cuts to be his requiem. The 69 Hyde Park concert was an out of tune mess. New boy Taylor wasn’t fully up to speed yet and the sound was atrocious. But the version of Jumpin’ Jack Flash is a classic. Listen - and watch - how Watts propels the Stones through the song. He was rarely animated but here, well let’s say he leads the band with an almighty energy. Rock on Charlie.

Charlie Watts. RIP.

More Stones appreciation here

Reversion to the Mean

Inevitably things revert to the mean. Over time, and on average, a variable will tend to regress back to its historical average. The term is often used mathematically, or in the study and prediction of the financial markets. We all know, I think, that stocks for example, tend to revert back to trend. It’s the underlying principle behind investments and, specifically, pensions.

Interesting but, I wonder, does this concept also apply to personalities? Stay with me; being at home and not commuting for a year, I had time to ponder abstract concepts, sift the data and make (wild) conclusions. It’s what I do.

My starting point might be relationships. From what I’ve observed, perhaps participated in, personalities tend to move back towards ‘normal’ behavioural characteristics within a relationship. A person may start in the honeymoon period all sweetness and unselfishness - this is natural; we all want to impress. But gradually, through familiarity and, I don’t know, confidence or boredom, a personality will inevitably revert back to its previous default setting.

I think instinctively every parent knows this. Much as educationalists and social theorists may wish environment to be key - the process of socialisation is a real thing after-all - any parent can observe their child’s character from early on. It doesn’t really change. Of course, children become adults, and as they do so, they become more sophisticated and learn to mask their impulses and imperfections, but ultimately, I think, character is formed at birth.

Yes I’m aware I’m treading leadenly where angels fear to tread and my assertion is the sort that only the very clever - or very stupid - would dare to cast out publicly but, there you go, it’s why I get paid the big bucks. My tens of readers would expect nothing less of me.

What about politics and economics? Do they revert to the mean, following a shock, a disruption? There’s some merit in that assertion - a period of correction following a market distortion for example. Expected and priced in. But what if things don’t revert? Or the reversion is delayed beyond reasonable?

Dictators all die. Evil regimes all fall. Good times are followed by bad and worse by better. Interest rates will rise and debt will be inflated away. Or will it? The problem with waiting for a reversion, a correction, is that whilst you live in that time, inhabit the bubble of expectation, the end point is unclear. No one wants to be the soldier shot five minutes before an armistice, the last investor before a price crash.

So, back to the personal.

People acting out of character, following a new fad, a regime, a diet or religion, often come a cropper. Actions following a divorce, maybe. Wild changes suggest and anticipate wild corrections. We can see the anomalous behaviour in real time and await the inevitable reversion to the mean of their lives.

But what about incrementalism? Slow changes, thought through and planned seem to be a positive way to go. A reversion to the mean implies a stability within that mean but what happens if the variables that calculate the stasis change? I think herein lies the answer, less dream big and fail, more baby steps in the right direction. Constantly and with purpose.

I think people tend to be more Fabius Maximus and less Scipio Africanus though that is a gross generalisation and rather insulting to the former. We need both archetypes but I suspect the broad mass of people are incrementalists, not bold strategists. A little movement in the right direction can shift mood and perspective and recalculate the equilibrium so that when a reversion happens - and it will - we’re no longer where we were but perhaps nearer where we want to be.

I used to end articles like these - ones where I feebly grasp at large concepts and often as not grab the air - with the motto ‘Socrates sleeps easy tonight’. You know, how great thinkers may read the abstract and shake their heads at my pretensions and go back to deliberating high thoughts and complex theorems. True enough. But the simple act of coalescing thoughts and putting them down pushes the needle ever so slightly in the right direction.

Barbarians - Netflix Review

Probably about ten years after the rest of the population, I got Netflix last week. So much to watch, so many cultural references to finally understand. But what to watch first?

The first series to grace that special hour between bottles one and two, was not Breaking Bad or The Crown but Barbarians the new(ish) German six parter detailing the road to the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest massacre 9AD where three whole legions were massacred by assorted German tribes under Arminius (see my blog on this battle, and the Roman follow up here).

My overall verdict? About five out of ten. Six maybe.

I thought the Latin for the Romans and German (dubbed English) for the Germans was a good idea. Nice to hear what the Romans actually sounded like. To be fair though, unless they said status quo, vini, vidi, vici or carpe diem, I wouldn’t have a bloody clue what the actors were declaiming. Could have been Tahitian.

The actor playing Arminius - an actor called Laurence Rupp was the major weakness. His idea of showing his character’s conflict at being torn between two cultures was to a) look as though he was going to cry b) imitate a plank of wood. He mainly went for the wooden style. I couldn’t see him rallying a stag party with free booze at the Munich bierfest, let alone coalescing together the internecine hatred of the German tribes to attack the might of Rome.

HIs overlong, intercut and frankly gibberish soliloquy to the severed head of Varus disrupting the climatic battle scene was a particular low point. What should have been the dramatic climax of the series turned into a real life conflict between me fast forwarding and the writer jerking off platitudes.

The armour and period detail looked correct which makes Roman army pedants like myself happy. To be fair, it was hard to get this wrong as, in 9AD, the Roman army looked pretty much exactly as you’d picture them - all lorica segmentata and curved helmets. But it was all so small scale! We’ve been spoilt with the grandeur of movies like Gladiator or even Spartacus as casts of thousands of extras duly trooped back and forth into gigantic battles. Here they were clearly on a budget. Arminius’ auxiliary cavalry command was basically him and six other hairy blokes.

There was the usual Woden, will of the wisp, dress up the shaman in a funny costume, old gods shite that seem to populate these sorts of series (I think it shared some of the same production staff as Amazon’s lamentable Vikings). The main female character, played by Jeanne Goursaud, flipped between naked romps with the two main male leads and wearing a funny sub-Marvel outfit whilst slicing one her eyes out with a stone knife. A ‘wise woman’ apparently.

To summarise: The Romans were bastards. The tribes liked fighting each other. Some of the acting was as wooden as the Teutoburg Forest itself. The period detail looked okay. It was very small scale. Some of the history was off but not annoyingly so. I fell asleep twice and had to spool though the episodes trying to remember where I’d dropped off. Could have been the wine.

Anyway, bring on Germanicus and Tiberius in series two to give these tribes a good kicking in the lesser known, but just as devastating, Roman response to the loss of the eagles at Teutoburg.

Click here, for my review of Sky’s Domina…

For my series on Roman Battles, click here…

Tim's Blog RSS

Domina - TV Series Review

Uncharacteristically for me, I binged watched the first six episodes of Sky Atlantic’s Domina over the course of the last couple of nights.

The main character is Livia, wife of first Roman Emperor Augustus. For students of I, Claudius - the book or series - Livia is well known as the evil manipulating matriarch of the Julio-Claudian imperial family, forever bumping off relatives that stand in her way. Of course, Robert Graves got his dirt from Suetonius in his scurrilous Lives of the 12 Caesars (Published around 100AD).

So she’s a well known literary & TV figure already.

We haven’t had decent Roman historical drama since HBO’s Rome Series 1 and 2, years ago. The BBC did a crap series on the Roman conquest of Britain a while back but that mainly seemed to be the writer and director wanking themselves in a frenzy of self-conscious weirdness. Didn’t watch it.

Domina is a more traditional series - historical characters, rendered historically with a good grasp of the available sources. I’m currently up to about 23BC the year Augustus was very ill and the whole experiment into an imperial system could have ended.

What’s good about the series is that it shows the uncertainty and the potential for missteps as the Roman world transitioned away from the republican form of government. Too many histories tend to gloss over the transitional period of, say, 39-23BC. In retrospect, you might get the impression that Augustus’ 41 year reign was all sweetness with nary a challenge or hiccup along the way. In reality, it was very different to this.

I read Appian’s Civil Wars last year. The transition from Republic through the dictatorship of Caesar, the 2nd Triumphant, Octavian v Anthony, Actium and then the settlements of 27 and 23 BC were not smooth. Augustus could have fallen at anytime; history puts it stamp on the past but the counter factuals could have been just as easy.

So I like this series in that it shows the struggles Augustus faced in this early Imperial era. Nothing was writ in stone. He was a man. Not the god he became. And Livia was right by his side, counselling urging and plotting. She is in many ways a very ahistorical figure, modern perhaps, in that, even at the time, it was acknowledged that she impacted on the great counsels of state. Unusually for this period, Augustus took his wife’s advice.

Like any series that covers a long period of time (the first 6 episodes cover 44-23BC), the casting director faces a choice of what to do about the characters ageing. With Domina, the decision was made to have two separate casts - young actors playing Livia and Augustus, Agrippa etc and then wheeling in the older variants. This is will known and a typical device. It was initially slightly jarring however that not only did Livia change faces between episodes 2 and 3 but she also changed nationality - Kasia Smutniak may be a polygot but the character Livia goes from a posh English accent when young to a weird nondescript European mash up.

I soon got over it.

The series has the bonking and orgies you’d expect as per the HBO Rome formula. The dialogue was replete with fucks and cunts. I suppose people do talk like that but, in places, it was a little overdone and for effect rather than to convey realism (especially in the first couple of episodes). The acting in the main was good, both Livias were convincing - being both attractive (she was meant to be a reputed beauty in her day) and believably strong characters. Young Augustus was perhaps a trifle too crude and boorish. Of course Augustus was arrogant and known for his cunning and playing the long game but the enfant terrible seemed a little trite. The older version of him seems to have got it right.

Best line? Livia to two wedding guests: “I’m younger, prettier and richer than you two. You’re lucky to be invited.”

And now? Well, I face a race to get my Galla Placidia screenplay off the ground. It amazes me that this remarkable woman - 400 years after Livia - who actually held power as regent - has been totally ignored by dramatists. Especially for those looking for strong female characters. Well, tap tap tap.

For further Roman reading, click here. I also reviewed the Netflix series Barbarians about the Teutoburg massacre.

A Circular Walk around the Downs near Burgess Hill

“They still spread their grassy surface to the sun as on that beautiful morning not, historically speaking, so very long ago; but the King and his fifteen thousand men, the horses, the bands of music, the princesses... how entirely they have they all passed and gone! - lying scattered about the world as military and other dust, some at Talvera, Albuera, Salamanca...and Waterloo, some in home churchyards; and a few small handfuls in royal vaults.”

— THOMAS HARDY - THE TRUMPET MAJOR

Thomas Hardy is one of favourite novelists. His bucolic stories, bittersweet, often tragic, tend to be set in the rural parishes of olde Wessex - further to the west than my Sussex home. I’ve been rereading Hardy recently and by necessity, by design, I’ve also been walking the down-lands, woodlands and common lands around Burgess Hill.

Burgess Hill is a pretty nondescript town to be honest. I chose to live here years ago because of two reasons only - one, the houses prices were cheaper than Brighton or Worthing and, secondly, it has two mainline stations with a commute of less than an hour to London. But whilst it doesn’t ring any bells architecturally or culturally, it does sit in a sweet spot sheltering behind the ridges of the South Downs to the south - for example Wolstonbury Hill - and lying in the middle of the Sussex Weald.

So there’s a bucolic charm to found in the surrounding area; mighty oaks, coppiced beech, bluebells, ancient trails. It’s pretty. One of the nicest parts of the country. There’s a superficial certainty about the countryside - the seasons follow in a regular pattern, snowdrops are followed by crocuses, edged out by daffodils, carpet bombed by bluebells, superseded by roses. The common lands here detail brambles, ferns, grazing cows, dieback, desolation, and rebirth all in the correct order.

But to be alive is to be aware of change; sometimes good, often not.

The countryside around me in Sussex is sadly diminishing, year by year, acre by acre, at an increasing pace. New housing estates greedily gobble up those spaces between villages, tearing into the fabric of remembered country walks, disturbing those quiet places where once the busy calls of birds were all you could hear.

And so I frantically carve out new experiences; fashioning walks from footpaths researched or found, splicing together routes known or imagined to meld together that perfect creation, the circular walk. I now have plenty of these to occupy my enforced home captivity. They all tend to be variations on a theme, using and re-using certain pathways only to branch to the left, or through a woodland to the right, a hill in front, a bridge to the side. Constant reputation and adaption means I have options, sometimes taken randomly, often not.

Here is one such walk. It last about an hour or so at a brisk pace, two if you want to do it leisurely. There is no real hardship or rough terrain though the paths do tend to get muddy during the winter and so wellies (not walking boots) are advised at those times… But enough throat clearing, here is a brisk canter through an easy circular walk around the countryside of North Burgess Hill.

START: World’s End Car Park

Park in the recreation ground car park by the playground and head up Valebridge Road, ie away from the park and up the slight incline. After about 5 minutes you meet a small road leading right - Theobalds Road. We’ll be on that private lane for a little while so best to look around a bit. It’s quiet, populated by just the wealthy residents going back and forth and - in the early parts anyway - the ever present dog walkers. (An aside - there’s a lot of dogs around here. It seems fashionable to have more than one; two is a minimum. And are dogs getting smaller?)

Theobalds Road

As you walk up this quiet road, you’ll begin to notice notices pinned to fences and trees. They’re numbered 1 to 8 and detail a history trail. They’re quite informative - apparently Theobald’s Road is an ancient track - perhaps 2000 years old. It’s part of a trail that used to lead between Burgess Hill and Haywards Heath. The notices have a slightly autodidactic tone that hints at something unspoken. And then we have it… One of the notices attacks the ‘new’ houses to the right and the fact that the house-builders destroyed an ancient hedge. Yep, can’t agree more. Stop the bulldozers! Sign me up to a protest.

Of course, wandering further up the lane, where it’s quieter and the homes are older, one can’t help notice that farmers and residents in the older houses have also ‘changed’ the ancient hedges and installed modern fences and barbed wire. Mmm, nothing more bitter than a local dispute about hedges!

Anyway, follow the road for around a mile until, over on the right, you see a stile leading onto a narrow path that skirts a house and leftwards, some fields with horses. The trail leads downhill to another stile and into the woods. You’ll cross a bridge and climb back up to another stile that leads to what us country folk call, ‘a big field’. You’ll see what I mean. A vast area of greenness broken by two incomplete lines of oak trees. Walk around the field or head straight up the hill. There’s a gate at the top directly in front of the stile you’ve just climbed over and follow the track to the left.

You’ll find yourself on a driveway leading to a large house. But stop for a moment. Looking down you have great views over the downs and the distant hills. Worth the odd photo. And then, go through the kissing gate opposite and follow the trail downwards (houses on your left). This leads to a field which you’ll cross diagonally to the left and cross a stile. Follow the farm track at the bottom veering right. This leads - sometimes - to a field of cows. Walk along the right-edge of this field until it leads to the driveway of Ote Hall. This is a big Tudor Manor House that now does weddings. Worth a quick peep!

Head left down the road, passing the farm on your left until you get to Jane’s Road. Cross over and climb the stile directly opposite and head through this field keeping to the left until you reach the stile at the bottom. Turn left and follow the track along the edge of this field until it reaches a makeshift bridge over the stream. Cross this and turn right and, following this path, you’ll end up out of the countryside and on Manor Road. Turn right along Manor Road which very shortly brings you back to World’s End Recreation Ground.

You’ve made it! I hope you enjoyed those 10,00 steps!

As Burgess Hill residents, dog walkers and Nimbies might tell you, there are a thousand variants of this walk. Longer, shorter, less road, more woods, more common land. All true. But this is a logical - and easy - circle and that’s what I tend to look for when I come to a new area with no prior knowledge. For example, my walks centred around the Wey & Arun canal at Loxwood started small after reading about it on the internet. They have grown over the last year so I now incorporate together several bits and pieces of many walks to form an ever changing, ever expanding whole.

I started this piece with a quote from Hardy as he reflected on George III and his army parading on the Wessex Downs as they awaited to repel Napoleon and his vast invasion force. From then to now, Hardy was saying, they are all dead and gone. Use it or lose it people! We’re all in a parade where the flags won’t wave forever.

Come to Burgess Hill (said no one ever). Good walks, two stations. Waitrose.

Is QE the New OPEC: A Return to 70's inflation?

Opinions of decades change over time. I remember back in the 80’s the 1970’s were regarded as, well, a bit shit really. People wore flares, brown suits and spent most of the time on strike or huddled around a candle burning five pound notes to keep warm. The 70’s reputation was one of strife and bad clothes.

Punk, disco, glam, these were antiquated things to be laughed at. I remember Abba being so out of fashion in the 80’s it was an actual crime to own one of their records. Hard to believe that now. But I continued playing them. Yes, I was the person who made Mama Mia possible. Thank you.

The 80’s were shiny and the 70’s were dull. The 80’s were a time of renewal, the 70’s a time of decline. And so went popular opinion.

But as time passes, an inevitable reassessment takes place; distance really does add depth. The 70’s were also the decade when the spirit of the 60’s was democratised into the population as a whole, not just the illuminati. 1976 was a blisteringly hot summer. There are some great films (Dirty Harry, Star Wars, Grease) and some classic music. And the styles themselves, once so derided, seem more in tune with now than the shoulder pads and mullets of the 80’s.

Which is all a long way around to introduce the topic of inflation. Because, one thing that the 70’s really own, really can claim as their ‘thing’, is inflation. And with our government(s) creating money like Robert Mugabe spinning the printing presses of the Weimar Republic, inflation is back on the agenda.

We seem to have forgotten about inflation. Since the early 1980’s when Thatcher’s government set out to conquer it, we’ve not really experienced its effects. This may have bred some complacency - or simple ignorance - amongst our central bankers and politicians. “Inflation?” they might intoned using ill merited superiority, “That’s not going to be a problem. We’ve printed money for more than a decade with no inflation. Theres no inflation around here.”

But, like Voldemort, is it ever really dead? *

Tim flips to the serious bit

What is inflation? Inflation is the rate of price increase in goods and services over a defined period of time. So, if a pen costs £1 in Year 1 and £1.10 in Year 2, the inflation rate (for pens) is 10%. Add in everything else in an economy and you get the aggregate rate. We all know this. But what causes prices to rise?

“Too much money chasing too few goods” - Demand Pull Inflation

If you are a monetarist - Milton Friedman being the most prominent here - inflation is caused by a prior expansion of the money supply. This was a lesson that was drummed into all of us in the 80’s who studied economics (I did). Too much money causes inflation. Why is this? Well, if you you increase the supply of something, the price will fall; the falling price of money being inflation. The obvious landmark event in the 70’s was Nixon coming off the gold standard in 1971 and tearing up Bretton Woods. This de-anchored currencies allowing governments to dabble where angels had previously feared to tread.

Further to this, if there is more demand than the supply of goods, the price of those goods will tend to rise. This is evidenced in the long -form economic seminar we call Jingle All The Way where the lack of supply of the kids’ toy jacks up the price discomforting Arnie’s character.**

True, perhaps. But what about other causes? Some (Binder et al) argue that there were two types of inflation in the 70’s - underlying inflation and price shock inflation. The argument goes that the 70’s was a period of price shocks - oil, of course, but also food and the perverse affects of prices and incomes controls in the Western World. If you hold something back you not only suppress supply but create pent up demand for when those controls are released, creating a surge in inflation. Hello 1974 and, perhaps, rebonjour 2021 as lockdowns are finally lifted.

Yes, 1974 was the big year of inflation. The mother of all inflated years (though inflation peaked in the UK at 24% in 1975). So, the big question on everyone’s lips is; is QE the new OPEC? Or is QE the new decoupling from the gold standard? In other words, are we heading for a short and bracing bout of one time inflation or several years of systemic inflation?

Beyond my pay grade, I’m afraid to say. It’s interesting to note wage pressures. The 70’s were a time of powerful unions, industrial actions and wage increases (which, in turn, led to further inflation). Through Thatcher’s reforms, this seems to have gone away in the UK though the nurses’ recent 12.5% wage increase is perhaps the first salvo in the inflation battle to come. I don’t get the sense of labour shortages (yet).

However, as we all know, although inflation is a bitch to the common, working, person it’s much kinder to those with large debts. The biggest of these debtors is, of course, the government borrowing like crazy at the moment. Talk about a fox being in charge of the hen house!

But what can we do?

How can we adopt some defensive strategies? Well, here’s some I pulled out of my arse:-

• Real assets tend to increase in value as a currency devalues. My numismatic hobby might just turn golden, if you get my drift.***

• Other real assets, land, property tend to do well. When the currency is being flushed down the toilet, possession of tangible stuff is key.

• Is this finally the time for digital currencies?

• if you’re on a variable interest rate mortgage, perhaps this is the moment to consider (or increase) overpayments. Go long in fixing your mortgage payments.

• Savings. Savings. WTF can we do about savings? One would assume that if inflation starts to take off the BoE will need to raise interest rates. It will be interesting to see if this finally triggers a commensurate rise in the savings rates banks offer. It’s been so long since there was a decent rate. Would any potential rise in deposit rates keep pace with inflation however?

• Equities. I’ve not been able to discern much sensible information about stocks and inflation. The twin crashes of the 70’s had different outcomes for the FTSE - 1973/4 a massive crash, 1979/80 a modest increase. There is a theory that value stocks do better in periods of high inflation whereas growth stocks do not. But there’s too much noise to discern any clear pattern. As ever, playing the stock market is a matter of judgement, experience and timing. And luck. But on average, and over time, it tends to increase despite periods of inflation. ****

A parting thought. We’ve never really lived in a time when a government has deliberately crashed an economy and then used massive money printing to foot the inevitable bills. How much supply has been eroded in the last year, to soak up the QE, will soon be put to the test. Inflation is perhaps one outcome. When furlough finishes, unemployment will be another. My discredited Phillips Curve used to suggest there was an inverse relationship between these two evils. I fear we’ll get both again.

And on that sombre note, let’s play Rod and Faces, one of the better memories of the 70’s. It merits a longer entry - which I’ll get around to - but they were sloppy, they were loud, they were drunk but the Faces had swagger and were one of the best live bands ever! Ronnie’s guitar tone. Wow!

NOTES (How pretentious, I am!)

*I know, I know. Harry Potter references now. I’ve slipped. Must up the quotient of better references.

** I’m really going for it now - an Arnie reference no less!

*** Numismatics - collecting coins. UK gold sovereigns are a good - and tax free - way of wealth protection, I’m told. But there again, the guy who told me this was Gordon Brown.

**** The FTSE was 289 in 1970 and 620 in 1980. Go figure.

Whatever happens, happens rightly.

Recently I've been reading my long-neglected copy of Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. For those of you who are not familiar, Marcus Aurelius was the Roman Emperor between AD 161 - 180. He was the last in the series of 'The Five Good Emperors' -  Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, Antoninus Pious and himself. This time (96-180) is often considered the height of the Roman Empire, where the borders reached their fullest extent, the exterior walls were built and the citizens within enjoyed relatively long years of peace and good governance. 

Marcus fitted the Platonic ideal of a philosopher-king. Invested with supreme power he was also a thoughtful and mediative man. He wrote Meditations whilst on the campaign trail fighting the Germanic tribes as a stoic guide to life and as a personal diary to himself. Stripped down, his philosophy was that life is essentially inconsequential, but what determines a worthwhile life is acting rationally and for good and not to be emotional about temporary highs or lows for they are as nothing in the broad sweep of history.

The above quotation - Whatever happens, happens rightly* - piqued my interest. It summarises in just four words, a whole philosophy and is thus a very powerful sentence. It appears on the surface to embrace a form of karma; that we are unwitting actors within a cosmic Fate of which we have no control but I think it goes a little deeper than this.

One has to understand where Marcus was coming from in order to do this full justice. I think the following quotation helps clarify a little more:-

Many grains of incense fall on the same altar: one sooner, another later - it makes no difference.**

Like the wisdom of Solomon I'm so fond of in Ecclesiastes, Marcus details the outward futility of man's actions. In this example, incense falling on the altar being a metaphor for successive waves of human generations, Marcus points out the folly of human vanities. The short term seeking of pleasures, accolades, profit, will be all be forgotten in the grand scheme of things.

A gloomy message, yes? And yet no - a realistic message, for Marcus discerns patterns and repetitions in human drama. Let's look at another quote to demonstrate:-

Reflect often how all the life of today is a repetition of the past; observe that it also presages what is to come. Review the many complete dramas and their settings, all so similar, which you have known in your own experience, or from bygone history... The performance is always the same; it is only the actors who change. ***

Anyone who has lived a few years can see the truth in the above and smile in recognition. This is even more emphatic for students of history. In politics, war, economics, human relations, there is, as I quoted previously in different article, 'nothing new under the sun'.

So far so rational. But what about the 'happens rightly' part? Doesn't this suggest some moral agency in what happens in life? Some 'good' pre-determined outcome? I would be equivocal about this. I suspect Marcus is using the word 'rightly' in a mechanicalistic manner, that universal laws of nature and humanity will always reassert themselves - like some cosmic regression towards the mean. For example, a forest may be cleared but, left to itself, it will grow again. 

However, despite this, Marcus also believes in being rational, humane and good. In fact he believes that this is the only point of life; to live a 'good' life. And whilst one can only control oneself, the more good in the world, the better the outcomes and the higher the level of, temporary, human happiness. Nothing is perfect, everything has to re-won, the lessons of history always have to relearnt but, given a reasonable and sympathetic character, then things can be made better. And, that is what is important in life.

My quibble - if I have one - is that whilst I agree with much of Marcus' gloomy observation about each generation having to relearn the lessons of the past, is that I have a stubborn belief in the Enlightenment's idea of progress. Although each generation does have to relearn history and human relations, it does so not from some ground zero each day but 'standing on the shoulders of giants'.

Knowledge, inventions, the rule of law, democracy, freedom of speech, transparency, capitalism, food production, cheap transport, fast communications, the universalisation of knowledge via the internet, better health, drugs, sanitation; these are things that are spreading at the fastest rate ever in human history. We - pace Marcus - living only in the present - tend to ignore these advances but they are there and they are real. ****

So, what are we left with as base material concerns are stealthily obliterated? How can the sentient person avoid spiritual degradation, a creeping ennui? By doing good. Personal kindnesses. Rationality. Reason. Thoughtfulness. Curiosity.

The real battle, as suggested by Marcus Aurelius and other ancients texts, is, and always has been, individual and internal. And this is a fight that has to be won every day.

Firstly, avoid all actions that are haphazard or purposeless; and secondly, let every action aim solely at the common good. *****

Normal service resumed in the next article where I discuss the latest series of The Voice.

Laters

Tim

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NOTES

* Meditations - Book IV, 10

** Meditations - Book iV, 15

*** Meditations - Book X, 27

**** One of the problems with a 24 hour media and - dare I say it - ignorant journalists with no understanding of history - is that the sensational, the temporary, the critical always wins the battle for attention against the long term, the underlying trend, the comparative. We are, as a world, empirically, more free, richer, healthier, better fed than EVER before. That is not to say that there aren't problems nor that there aren't temporary set-backs but, if you compare the world with 50 years ago, or 100 years ago, let alone 500, there is no comparison that we are better off in so many ways. Whether we are happier or more spiritually fulfilled is a completely separate issue, however.

***** Meditations Book XII, 20

Originally published 2016 

Marcello's Oboe Concerto in D Minor

Nearly twenty years ago I worked in a skyscraper near London’s Victoria Station. I’ve recounted previously how I used to walk over to Harrods via Motcomb Street. Well, apparently, I used to do something else too; I used to ceaselessly hum the melody to Vivaldi’s Winter (Largo) from the Four Seasons.

Now, as luck would have it, I had an Italian colleague sat opposite me. He liked Vivaldi. He told me that the Four Seasons was part of a larger movement, The Contrast Between Harmony and Invention (Opus 8). And thus began my interest in baroque.

Tracking down Vivaldi’s other opus became a hobby. If you haven’t heard La Stravaganza, l’estro armonico or Gloria it’s worth the two seconds of your life it takes to track these down and listen. From Vivaldi I found Teleman, Albinoni, Corelli, Bach (of course), Handel and numerous others.

Baroque music became the only music I listen to at work. It also became the only music I listened to on trains going to and from work. Ah, yes, commuting; how soon we forget! Two hours a day listening to my favourite Vivaldi’s concertii as the rolling hills of Sussex transformed into South London.

Now one of the best things about YouTube (and one of the worst) is that it takes your viewing habits and very quickly recommends other videos of the same ilk. Now this can be worrisome; you can watch a Trump press conference and in a matter of clicks you’re nodding along to Alex Jones ranting about satanic conspiracies. Or you watch Tulsi Gabbard tear Kamala Harris a new one in a Democratic debate and then you’re suddenly marooned watching extreme left propaganda (otherwise known as CNN).

But, to be fair, with music, Youtube comes into its own and I appreciate it recommending music for me. I have found many great songs and artists I otherwise wouldn’t have. Sometimes algorithms work.

Thus, one dreamy afternoon at work, my earphones plugged in to some Vivaldi, I came across - or YouTube recommended for me - Alessandro Marcello’s sublime Oboe Concerto in d Minor.

How can one describe these three movements? The angular musicality of the first, the haunting slow adagio, the playfulness of the third? Something about the key of D minor and the combination of oboes and baroque instruments always succeeds in delivering an impactful punch (see the equally sublime RV 535 from Vivaldi or Albinoni’s stunning Oboe Concerto - also in Dm).

The concerto was clearly popular in the early eighteenth century as Bach reworked it for harpsichord as BMV 974. It’s a good version - dropping to C minor for the occasion - and a good track to add to my piano playlist. However, it lacks some of the formality and evocativeness of the original. Bach’s version sounds like good instrumental music from a French film (nothing wrong with that, of course).

Marcello’s Oboe Concerto in D Minor is one to seek out; but the ultimate proof of a piece of music is to listen for yourself. I hope it is a positive experience for you all.

I love this version and the painting of Piazza Navona, by Caspar Van Wittel 1699, that accompanies it.

Mary Chain, Mascara, Morrissey and Me: SUSSEX UNIversity IN THE 80’s

Natalie. Or Brigitte? My next door neighbour but briefly - East Slope, Sussex University

Natalie lived next door to me. She was years older - at least four. That was an unbridgeable gap in those days. She appeared experienced and sophisticated in a way that I wasn’t then and probably am not now. And she was also French; dark haired, beautiful, sexy. I’d only gone to university and got Brigitte Bardot living next door to me!

And then, mid-term, she moved out. Our juvenile antics must have irked her. Oh - the bottomless pain of separation! The exquisite misery of emptiness! Surrounded by hundreds of eighteen year olds I was alone, so alone.

I played Hatful of Hollow endlessly. Morrissey incongruously spoke to me. ‘Please, please, please let me get what I want’ he sang through my cheap speakers. There was silence from the empty room next door.

East Slope, Sussex University, autumn term 1986.

---

I was driving my daughter around ‘my’ Brighton last weekend. We were stopping off and photographing all my previous addresses throughout Brighton and Hove. Some I stayed at for a matter of weeks, others for several years. Many looked decrepit, a handful were grand, very grand. I had situational memories of all of them. Job. Girlfriend. How cold they were (it was alway cold in Brighton flats).

On the way back to Burgess Hill we stopped off at Sussex University. I’d lived in three campus apartments over two years - East Slope, Kent House and Park Village. Let’s see if I could retrace once familiar steps and show my daughter, well what? Where Natalie left me bereft all those years ago? Mmm, maybe not. But where I lived certainly.

But like most universities since the 80’s, Sussex has got bigger - ‘welcoming’ more and more students in order to meet Tony Blair’s ridiculous 50% target. Add to this to the maniacal drive to recruit loads of fee paying foreign students and you have a university with near four times the number of ‘clients’ it had when I went there.*

So although we drove past many familiar buildings, there was a new feeling about the campus. It seemed very closed in whereas it always seemed spacious when I was there. Tricks of time, perhaps. Sussex was a relatively small university in the 80’s and the student body was split fairly evenly between public school tossers and the brightest and best of the comprehensive system. 4500 students in all - one third living on campus. It felt like a village. A village out in the Downs, ten minutes train ride from Brighton. It sported Sussex red brick and the architect - Basil Spence - had designed the layout so that it nodded vaguely in the direction of a classical Roman forum. (I know this stuff because I used to do campus tours for prospective parents and students in my third year. £3 a pop, I remember.)

Shades at night! TR in his Kent House student room 1988 - alas the call from the Jesus & Mary Chain never came.

There were the bars of course. East Slope bar was notorious because of the cheap drinks, the scrum to get those cheap drinks and the sticky floor caused by said drinks being too difficult for students to navigate the plastic glass of Kronenberg from glass to mouth without spilling. (Pints were 60-70p). Park Village Bar rates a mention as it was the home of the Julie’s Jinx a pint of every spirit going starting from a base of half a cider. These cocktails never lasted long in your stomach.

Sussex has changed since the 80’s. New high rise accommodation blocks bestride and dominate the northern end of campus. All those extra fee paying students have to live somewhere I suppose. Inside, these alien structures are probably very nice with all the mod cons our current flock of students demand. But the village feeling, the uniqueness of the first red brick university, has gone. And so has East Slope, so named because all the student accommodation was in single story flats rising gently up a hill. All gone. And yes, that flat where I met and then mourned the beautiful Natalie, now gone completely.

To be fair the other buildings from then to now, looked tired. Park Village looked in particular on its last legs with rotting woodwork, overgrown green spaces, windswept rubbish piled up in corners. Not how I remembered it at all. But then what I truly remember is the spirit, the ephemeral feeling and not just the concrete. I remember the summer of 87, and every window being open and blasting out the newly released Joshua Tree. I remember late night parties and lying on the grass in the warm June air, talking bollocks about politics and music and gossiping over plastic glasses of cheap red wine. I remember reading Wuthering Heights for the first time out on the fields next to Park Village; fields now covered with blocks of flats and car parks.

It’s the people and the time; the young people interacting, doing stuff, each other, laughing and joking that defines a place, an era. I guess I always knew that.

Park Village party, June 1988. TR lying down in white (with hair!)

So even before further buildings are torn down, as East Slope has been, the transient spirit my cohort possessed has gone. Each successive intake make their own memories, their own version of what a university community means. But that time is heartbreakingly brief and we’re left - if we ever venture to go back - with the mere bones slowly rotting away. The flesh has long gone. The spirit died the very moment we walked out that last day Summer Term ‘88. And maybe that’s correct.

And Natalie? Fuck knows. She shacked up with some professor, moved into a flat behind the station in Brighton and - for all I know - got married, had kids and never thinks about me. But if she does I hope she plays The Smiths.

Tim Robson 17B East Slope 1986.

(I like live versions of songs. This solo version from Morrissey - years later, different lyrics - captures though the wistfulness of time passed. Hence me selecting it. You’re welcome.)

• Fifteen Minutes with You… From Reel Around The Fountain, The Smiths

• Foreign student income. Perhaps that why the British universities whined like bitches when the uneducated population voted for Brexit? Call me old fashioned (puts down pint) but shouldn’t the primary function of UK universities be to educate the children of this land first?

Mick Taylor's Top Studio Tracks

“Ye shall know them by their fruits”

— Matthew 7:16 (KJV)

We all know that in the Mick Taylor Years (1969 / 74) the Rolling Stones were at their live peak. He added a real lead guitar muscle to complement their riff heavy catalogue. They went from being great to being the best. Watching the Stones in this period ranks - with me anyway - alongside watching Elvis 1969-72.  Yeah, two great acts at their peak at the same time. Saw neither. Thank goodness for YouTube.

Apparently Keith Richards once told Mick Taylor he was great live but shit in the studio. There's a ring of truth to this - even if it was overstated. Taylor certainly was less dominant in the Stones albums he played on. Maybe he knew he was being shafted for song writing credits. Maybe Mick and Keef overshadowed MT when it came to controlling who did what and when. They certainly bossed the mixing desk. Playing live they didn't have the same control.

But dig (not too deep) and you have some classic Mick Taylor performances committed to vinyl. 

I've tried to filter out songs where he was just 'one of the band' and purposefully pick songs where it's absolutely all about Mick Taylor. Agree? Disagree? Tell me in the comments.

Mick Taylor appeared on Stones albums between 1969 and 1973*. They are Let It Bleed (just a little) and then Sticky Fingers, Exile on Main Street, Goat's Head Soup and It's Only Rock n Roll plus the live album Get Yer Ya Ya's Out. 

To me, I'd probably rank them Sticky Fingers, Goat's Head Soup, Exile on Main Street, It's Only Rock n Roll. Which is strange as my favourite MT tracks appear on It's Only Rock n Roll. 

Sway - Sticky Fingers (1971)

Keith was absent and so the two Micks fooled around in the studio together, coming up with this gem. A real guitar-heavy rocker, taken at a stately pace, it's one of those Stone tracks that should be better known but it's cult like obscurity makes me feel good I'm in the know. As does my possession of an original Andy Warhol designed jeans zip cover (framed and on my wall next to 8/9 others of similar vintage). This was, for a while, my fav Stones track. Jagger sings exceptionally on this - as demonstrated by his later, pitiful, attempt on the 2013 tour. MT's guitars are hard, the solos fluid - slide and then full on rock solo as the track ends. One to look up if you don't know it.

Winter - Goats Head Soup (1973)

Winter is one of those epic ballads the Stones seemed to just knock off in their sleep in the mid 70's (Angie, Memory Motel, Fool to Cry, Coming Down Again). Just like Sway, it features no Keith Richards. What separates this from the others is the Mick Taylor guitar solo which is both powerful and incendiary. Taylor had a way of complementing Jagger's vocal lines, adding fillers and runs throughout the song. Like he would do when the Stones played live. Many people rate this his best solo. I enjoy it but, no, it would be bettered the following year.

 Can't you Hear Me Knocking - Sticky Fingers (1971)

It starts with a Keef riff and then, according to MT, when everyone was putting their instruments down at the end of the song, the groove just continued - first Bobby Keyes on sax and then, the Master Mick, the God of guitar (virtuosity be his name) started soloing. One take. Not rehearsed. As live as you can get and this is the result. The Stones should have employed this method on their recordings 69-73; just turn Mick Taylor loose. What you get is a classic and a classic because he turns the songs around and pushes it into new directions. That's one of Taylor's strength - his ability to effortlessly improvise.

All Down the Line - Exile on Main Street (1972)

Rock and rolling Stones kicking it back in the South of France, noses in bags of narcotics, dodging tax and playing some of their best music ever! Exile on Main Street was a groove, a feel, the sound of  - to steal a phrase from Sir Paul - a Band on The Run. Mick Taylor adds some sharp, rocking slide guitar, taking the solo. To see how hard MT worked on this track - watch the video below.

Til the Next Goodbye - It's Only Rock n Roll (1974)

Another acoustic ballad, another slide solo. Beautiful song and for some reason completely overlooked. Why?

Honky Tonk Women - Let it Bleed (1969) / Brown Sugar - Sticky Fingers (1971)

Two songs from 1969 (Though Brown Sugar lay in the vaults over a year). Mick Taylor's introduction to the band. Honky Tonk Women - apparently MT made a small but telling contribution. He rocked up the song from the country ballad (Country Honk) to the rock classic we know now. Brown Sugar, is another group ensemble song where MT adds to mix but doesn't stand out. Recording on the sly in 1969 in Muscles Shoals, it was Mick Taylor's suggestion that they play this unreleased song at Altamont when all was falling on the Stones' heads. Didn't make the film Gimme Shelter but the audio of this first ever version is the Stones against the wall, punching back.

Time Waits for No Man - It's Only Rock n Roll (1974)

The boss. The winner. The best track Mick Taylor and the Stones studio track. So beautiful. So wistful. And that solo at the end! An artist at the top of his game in a band throwing in a good performance. In the late 80's I wrote a shit song called 'It's Raining Again' and the only good thing about it was that I grafted a sausage fingered version of this MT's solo in the middle. The song is perfect in every way - Jagger's lyrics, Keef's spine tingling riff, Wyman, Watts, Nicky Hopkins and Ray Cooper all adding to the mix. And then Mick Taylor solos like a bastard for two / three full minutes of magic. He employs Latin influenced runs up and down the fretboard. Wow! This is what the Stones could have been. This is the Stones, timeless, standing out of time, looking at us and beckoning mere mortals forward. 

I'm done.

To read my other Mick Taylor pieces, click here...

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* Yeah - Waiting on A Friend was reused in the 80's.

SPQR by Mary Beard - Review

SPQR ( Senatus PopulusQue Romanus meaning, for the Senate and People of Rome, the indelible banner stamped below the eagle standards of the Roman legions) is a chunky book that traces Rome from its beginnings as a bandit village in the 750’s BC through to the grant of universal citizenship across the empire by Caracalla in 212 AD. A period of nearly a thousand years. Or, as Mary Beard writes, Rome’s first millennium. As we all know, the Western Roman Empire continued for another 250 years whereas the Eastern Roman Empire - popularly now known as the Byzantium Empire - lasted for a further 1200 years until its eventual fall in 1453.

The problem with any book spanning a thousand years of history is that - no matter how large - it can only give a surface presentation of the narrative as it moves along. There’s no in depth analysis of each event. If you want that, then specialist books are what you need and that’s what I usually prefer. I get frustrated that the author is, necessarily, constrained and so has to arbitrarily choose what to include and what to leave out. That applies here (Marius and the Cimbrian War hardly get a mention for instance). However, I was gifted this book and so once I started, I needed to finish!

The first part of SPQR, covering the foundation and growth of the Republic through to its subsequent transformation under Augustus in the latter part of the 1st century BC, is episodic but essentially follows a linear narrative. The following 200 odd years, detailing the period of the ‘Principate’ emperors, feels much more rushed and thematic. The problem with this latter half of the book is the tendency to indulge in what I call ‘magpie’ historicism - selecting random examples from a wide variety of ages to justify an argument. Part of this is due to the periodic lack of sources handed down to us across the ages. Was Rome’s most thrilling period - the fall of the Republic - so famous because it marked a major turning point or because the surviving source material is so rich?

The central question of any book covering a thousand years is why Rome went from being a tribe of brigands in central Italy to a world power. The usual suspects are present in this book - the Romans’ love of adaption - in army tactics, in building, even in gods. Mary Beard advances that Rome was unique in its ability to absorb its defeated enemies, from Veii, to the Sabines, the Samnites etc, in a loose embrace so all might prosper. The Romans weren’t fussy about local gods or systems of government, they co-opted them. What however was sine qua non was the supply of manpower for wars.

As to the question whether the Romans better in battle or just able to muster more men, Mary Beard believes that - with technology the same, the largest army was predisposed to win. It’s an argument and a plausible if obvious one. There is some truth to this. For example, the Second Punic War where Hannibal, clearly the better general, could win the battles but never the war. Rome kept recruiting armies, harassing the Carthaginians and recapturing towns, in order to continue fighting even when all seemed lost. That was, until they found their own master tactician in Scipio Africanus. Another example may be the most famous if only due to the popular adage that it spawned following the Battle of Asculum. Fighting King Pyrrhus in the 270’s BC, the Romans kept losing battles but extracted unsustainable casualties on Pyrrhus, thus giving rise to the popular phrase “Pyrrhic victory”.

I think my major objection to this type of book is that it clearly comes from an academic. Nothing wrong with that, of course. However, there is hair-splitting and ‘on the one hand, but on the other’ isms that can annoy after a while. Much of the book seems to be negative; finding a popular story or commonly held piece of knowledge and then finding issues with it. It’s a tendency I like least in academics, the pursuit of the obscure in preference to the universal. At best this can advance knowledge and provide balance to a flabby prevailing narrative, at worst, it can be obscurantist and distorting. You can lose the big picture by being needlessly pedantic. In broad based books - like this - the approach can lose the narrative thrust in a welter of qualifications.

Maybe it wasn’t the book for me but then I never expected it to be. I’ve long moved beyond large overviews of the Roman world - however scholarly - and into more niche areas like Julian or Aurelian. So, if someone wants to gift me a Roman history then Josephus’ The Jewish War might be a good place to start.

A couple of factoids-

The word rostrum, for a speaker’s platform, comes from the Latin word for a ship’s ram (rostra). After the naval battle of Antium in 338bc, the victorious commander of the Roman fleet, Gaius Maenius, took the rams from six captured enemy ships and placed them on the platform in the Forum. Hence rostrum.

“They make a wasteland and call it peace,” said Calgacus, ancient British leader, as quoted by Roman historian Tacitus. An interesting quote (wasteland can be interrupted as ‘desert’ or ‘desolation’) which shows as much about Roman freedom of thought to write this down as it does a critique of Roman pacification efforts. Rome usually was magnanimous in victory, the exceptions (like Caesar’s massacre of the Tencteri and Usipetes) providing the exceptions to the rule. They wanted money, taxes, slaves, markets and manpower for the army.

ROME: The First Century in Five Battles

(In which Tim maps the Roman Empire in the first century AD through five battles)

“Varus, give me back my legions!”

So the ageing Emperor Augustus is said to have shouted, driven mad by the loss of three legions at The Battle of The Teutoberg Forest in AD 9. Quinctilus Varus was the Roman commander who led those legions into the dark German forests, never to return. This is the first battle of the first century. Rome’s devastating response following the campaigns of the aptly named Germanicus shall be my next focus as exemplified by The Battle of Idistaviso in AD 16.

The invasion of Britain under the Emperor Claudius in AD 43 merits a mention. As does the defeat of Boudicca at the Battle of Watling Street in AD 61 where Rome firmly put down her revolt. The Battle of Mons Graupius in AD 83 finally consolidated Britain (minus Caledonia) into the Empire.

The siege and destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70 is an obvious landmark battle. The Jewish revolt was a major uprising and occurred during one of the few periods of outside instability the Roman Empire faced in the first century. Its impact is probably still felt today.

Whilst Titus was dealing with the Jewish revolt, his father Vespasian had marched on Rome to throw his laurel wreath into the ring to become Emperor. The ‘Year of the Four Emperors’ in AD 69 was the first Roman civil war in 100 years. Previously Emperors had just been assassinated, poisoned or committed suicide. This violent transfer of power though was limited to the unfortunate Emperor and his immediate supporters and didn’t lead to a full-scale civil war as had been the norm in the late Republic. Although, Rome soon came back to normalcy - and indeed the Emperors improved - this respite would be only temporary and civil wars would come back in a big way towards the end of the second century.

A note on the army itself: The Roman army of the 1st Century AD looked exactly like the Roman Army in popular imagination. They wore curved helmets protecting the back of their necks, segmented armour, carried long curved rectangular shields, held short thrusting swords and threw devastating volleys of weighted spears. A legion consisted around 5120 men divided into 10 cohorts (the 1st being double sized). There were 28 legions in Augustus’ time, later increased to 30. Auxiliaries assisted the legions (archers, calvary, skirmishers etc) and their number was around the same. Therefore, a reasonable assessment of the size of the Roman Army of this period is 300,000 men under arms.

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The first century began with Augustus in the 28th year of his principate. Unlike much of the previous century, The Roman world was pretty much at peace with itself. The civil wars were over. Augustus stealthily added nations that were protectorates - like Egypt - to the Empire avoiding outright conquering. However, his sons-in-law - Drusus and Tiberius - added Raetia (modern Switzerland). But this Caesar - unlike his famous uncle - was content to be imperator in name if not in deed.

However, one recurring trouble spot in the Empire was the Germanic tribes beyond Gaul. Could Augustus add Germania to the Empire and, if not, where was the defensive line of the empire to be drawn? It was going to be the river Elbe but - following the loss of the legions in the forests - Rome pulled back to the Rhine where it stayed for the next four hundred years.

The Battle of the Teutoburg Forest was the shock that caused this retrenchment. Three legions (plus assorted auxiliaries and camp followers) operating beyond the Rhine, were betrayed by a supposed friendly German ally, Arminius, and massacred. Arminius led Varus into the dense forest and then sprang his trap. The army was wiped out and their totemic eagles taken.

At this point in time, Rome had just 28 legions. The loss of three meant a sizeable chunk of the available forces had just disappeared. No wonder Augustus was upset. Revenge came slowly and - as was the wont at these times - through a member of the Imperial family.

Germanicus was nephew to the new Emperor Tiberius and was sent to the Rhine to sort out the mess left after Arminius’ triumph. Fighting many battles and chasing many tribes into many forests, Germanicus skirmished and harassed the Germans time after time over three years until he finally tempted them into an open pitched battle. This was at the Weser River and became the Battle of Idistaviso AD 16. The result was a massacre of the German tribes. Arminius survived only to be beaten again that same year at The Battle of the Angrivarian Wall. (He was later killed by members of his own tribe. He is still celebrated as one of the founders of the German nation. His massive 19th has century statue stands above the Teutoburg Forest to this day.)

Rome had won the conflict but Tiberius, ever cautious, withdrew Germanicus to Rome and the Empire’s frontier was settled back at the Rhine.

Julius Caesar had come across the Channel to Britain a couple of times but he never made a serious invasion attempt - he was too busy conquering Gaul. These incursions provoked a few fights, garnered some tributes and alliances, but Caesar didn’t stick around to conquer Britain. One hundred years later though, in AD 43, the unwarlike Emperor Claudius - another nephew of Tiberius - launched the invasion of Britain.

The conquest was a slow process taking over 40 years. The south of the country was relatively passive, having interacted with the Romans for years. However, the North and West and Wales proved much more difficult. Whilst the Romans were distracted subduing the Welsh tribes in AD 60, the Iceni under Boudicca rebelled back in the conquered south. The rebellion was short, violent with the rebels burning and massacring the Roman towns of St Albans, Colchester and a little town called Londinium.

The governor, Seutonius Paulinus, gathered up a force centred around one and a half legions and met Boudicca and her army somewhere along what became known later as Watling Street. He chose his battlefield well, funnelling the Britons into a narrow front. As had happened many times previously in Roman history, well-trained legions overcame a larger but undisciplined horde. The rebels were massacred - hemmed in by their own carriages - and Boudicca committed suicide not long after.

Twenty of so years later, the Romans had turned their attention to the north of Britain. Up in Scotland, the Caledonian tribes were causing problems. However, the usual rules applied; tracking a tribe into an open pitched battle was difficult and whilst traipsing around the wet and cold of Scotland, the Roman army was prey to ambushes and lightning strikes. Governor Agricola finally lured the Caledonians into battle somewhere in the mountains of Scotland (the precise site is unknown). The Battle of Mons Graupius AD 83 was unique in that the Romans won it using only their highly trained Germans auxiliaries with assistance from the cavalry.

Tacitus, who wrote the account of the battle, famously put words into mouth of the Caledonian leader, Calgacus, “They make a desolation and call it peace.” All Britain was conquered. For now.

The Siege and Destruction of Jerusalem, by David Roberts (1850)

Back a few years, and we have the brutal Siege of Jerusalem in AD 70 part of the First Jewish-Roman war. Pompey had added Judea to the empire back in the Republican days. He’d even successfully laid siege to Jerusalem. This time though, the struggle was more bitter as a hardcore sect of rebels within the city - the Zealots - refused to surrender. As Vespasian had left for Rome, his son Titus (later emperor too) led the four legion assault on the city. Starvation, disease and the terrors of war were meted out to the inhabitants of the city, bolstered as they were by hundreds of thousands of refugees escaping the wider war. The end was a massacre:-

“They poured into the street sword in hand, slaughtering indiscriminately all they came across and burning houses with those who had fled there still inside… Since the troops had run out of victims to kill or property to loot, Caesar ordered the army to raze to the ground the whole city and the temple…” Josephus, The Jewish War (Book 6:404 / Book 7:1)

Jerusalem and its population was destroyed. This was quite a consequential siege in history.

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Read more ROME: Five Battles here.

Rome: The 4th Century in Five Battles

(In which Tim discusses the five most important battles within the wider history of the 4th Century Roman Empire)

The fourth century was bookended by two famous ‘Christian’ battles - The Milvian Bridge in 312 and The Frigidus in 394. They mark - apocryphally - both the entry point of Christianity into the Roman Empire and its ultimate victory. Each led to climatic events; The Milvian Bridge led directly to the Nicene Council of 325 which formalised the Christian creed. The Frigidus began the series of events that ended with Alaric’s sack of Rome just sixteen years later.

So we have our beginning and end. What in between? Adrianople, of course. The defeat of Valens and the Eastern Roman Empire’s army at the hands of the Goths in 378 is popularly associated with the eventual downfall of the empire itself. Can’t argue that it’s important.

For me, Julian is the most interesting fourth century Emperor. His metamorphosis from bookish princeling to ass-kickin’ Caesar began in Gaul. The most famous battle in his journey to pacify the province was his victory over the Alamanni in the Battle of Strasbourg 357.

Our fifth battle is The Battle of Mursa 351 where the forces of Constantius II defeated those of the usurper Magnentius in the biggest and bloodiest battle of the century. As an exercise in damaging futility this was the daddy of them all.

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The Empire at the beginning of the fourth century was a very different animal to that ruled over by Septimius Severus one hundred years earlier. The crisis of the third century had brought about chaos, short lived emperors, and the temporary division into three mini empires. The gradual restoration of control was brought about by the Illyrian emperors Claudius Gothicus, Aurelian, Probus and finally Diocletian.

Diocletian instituted the tetrarchy - a system where two senior Augustii and two junior Caesars ruled quadrants of the Empire. It was a neat idea. It didn’t last. Diocletian, who resigned along with his co-Augustus Maximian, lived long enough to see not only his fine cabbages grow in his retirement home in Split, but his system of government fall apart as his successors squabbled amongst themselves to gain and maintain power.

Constantine (The Great), son of one of Diocletian’s successors Constantius I, was chief amongst those squabbling. He was annoyed that he was left out of Diocletian’s succession plans and, on the death of his ailing father in York in 306, declared himself emperor. This led ultimately to the first battle of our series - The Milvian Bridge.

In this battle, Constantine marched into Italy in 312 - then under the rule of one of the many post-Diocletian claimants - Maxentius. With a smaller army, Constantine’s troops feared losing the climatic battle outside Rome the next day. That night Constantine dreamed of a cross in the sky. So the story goes, he had his army paint the Christian symbol on their shields and, with God on their side, they routed Maxentius and his army the next day at The Milvian Bridge.

The Arch of Constantine was completed to mark this famous victory. The fact that it was originally going to be the Arch of Maxentius and repurposed bas reliefs from earlier monuments, is now somewhat forgotten. He who wins writes the history and gets the arches. It still stands today under the shadow of the Colosseum.

The next twelve years were a history of Rome fighting itself as Constantine gradually consolidated his power to become sole emperor in 324 with his defeat of Licinius. Famously, Constantine left three legacies to the Empire when he died - after converting on his deathbed to Christianity - in 337:

• The Council of Nicene which produced a unified - though disputed for many years - Christian doctrine still in use today,

• The founding of Constantinople as the ‘new Rome’ on the site of the Greek city of Byzantium,

• An utterly chaotic carve up of the Empire between his three sons and two nephews which set the scene for nearly twenty years of civil wars.

The intrigues between the three sons of Constantine deserve a blog of all their own. The imaginatively named Constantine, Constans and Constantius battled it out for years until only the latter remained standing as Constantius II. The second of our landmark battles occurs in this period when Constantius - in the East - took on his brother Constans’ murderer, Magnentius at Mursa in 351.

Mursa was a triumph for Constantius but a tragedy for the empire. Crack units of the East and Western Roman armies fought each other in a bloodbath in Pannonia (modern day Croatia). The battle saw the flowering of the late Roman cataphracts - heavily armoured cavalry - as they mowed down Magnentius’ legions. It was a victory but a pyrrhic one.

One of the consequences of Rome turning in on itself was that units were inevitably withdrawn from the Empire’s borders. The tribes living beyond took advantage of this and increasingly began to run amok amongst the frontiers. Constantius proved Diocletian’s theory that the Empire was too big for just one ruler and so appointed first his cousin Gallus, and then his other cousin, Julian, as junior Caesar. Gallus proved himself unfit to rule and so was executed. Julian however, proved himself quite the opposite.

Bookish, sceptical and a lover of philosophy, Julian was an unlikely warrior Caesar. Sent to Gaul to restore order, Julian did just that. And more. Let down by his supporting army (who may have been acting on the orders of Constantius) Julian was left facing a much larger force of Alamanni near Strasbourg in 357. The battle was a complete rout with the Alamanni destroyed by Julian’s infantry and then chased all the way back to the Rhine where many survivors drowned. Over the following years, Julian followed up by a process of forward-defence - raids into enemy territory whilst repairing and reinforcing the border.

Inevitably the two last descendants of Constantine The Great squared off against each other in 361 (see previous blogpost). Luckily for the Empire, Constantius died on the way to confront Julian allowing the latter to become the undisputed ruler of the whole empire. Julian met his ‘spear of destiny’ just two years later fighting the Persians and bringing to an end Constantine’s line and any anti-Christian fight back. Rome was henceforth a Christian empire.

The Empire now fell into the hands of Valentinian who appointed his brother Valens Augustus of the East. This proved a fatal decision as Valens allowed a massive Gothic migration into his lands in 376. The Goths crossed the Danube to escape the growing power of the Huns expanding and terrorising from the east. Stupidity, betrayal and pride (Valens refused to wait for the army of his nephew Gratian - now Emperor of the West) led Valens and the Eastern Roman army to take on the Goths alone at Adrianople (now part of European Turkey) in 378.

Adrianople was a disaster for the Romans. Their army was destroyed by the Goths and the emperor himself allegedly died after been burnt alive in a peasant house while attempting to flee the battlefield. The defeat left the Eastern empire defenceless and leaderless and at the mercy of the Goths who now rampaged at will throughout Thrace and Greece.

Slowly, piece by piece, Roman general and later emperor Theodosius (The Great) put the East back together. He fought defensive actions and eventually made peace with the Goths in 382 allowing them to stay within the empire’s borders. Once inside the Goths became a combustable element, fighting for the Empire when it suited them but, equally likely to go marauding and looting.

Over in the Western half, Valentinian’s younger son Valentinian II - now Emperor - allegedly hanged himself. His all-powerful advisor and military commander Arbogast was more than implicated. Arbogast was a Frank by birth and so ineligible to take the throne himself and so he chose Eugenius, an obscure Roman official to be the new Emperor in the West. Over in the East, Theodosius bided his time. But when Arbogast and Eugenius started to favour the old Roman gods over Christianity, Theodosius reacted. The showdown took place at The Battle of The Frigidus (modern day Slovenia) in 394.

This two day battle was notable for several things.

• Theodosius won the battle becoming the last sole Emperor of East and West. Not for long though as he died in 395.

• The battle marked the final victory of Christianity over paganism. Much is made of the high winds that allegedly blew at Arbogast’s forces on day two of the battle rendering their missiles useless. A divine wind, it was claimed.

• Theodosius’ use of Gothic auxiliaries (foederati) was controversial. He put them in the front line and used them as cheap cannon fodder. It allowed him to win the battle but incensed his surviving allies. One of the Gothic leaders fighting for Theodosius that day was a young noble named Alaric. Sixteen years later, Alaric led the Goths into Italy and sacked Rome for the first time in eight hundred years. It wasn’t the end of the Roman Empire but it marked the beginning of the last stages of the Western half.

The fourth century ends with the young sons of Theodosius - Honorius and Arcadius - in charge of the West and East respectively. Both of them were weak, dominated by advisors and unfit for their times. It was a sad end to such a lively century.

So what have learnt in this brief canter through the years 300-399?

First, and most obvious, the rise and rise of Christianity. A persecuted sect at the start of the century - the worst repression occurred under Diocletian for example - it was the undisputed religion of the Empire by the end.

The Roman military was still powerful throughout much of the century. Although the legions were no longer the primary unit, it still packed a punch. Borrowing from Palmyra and Persia, the military incorporated heavy calvary units alongside smaller vexallations of infantry. When it worked, armies could criss-cross the empire and successfully see off threats. Under strong leaders - Constantine, Julian - the army could be formidable.

The increased use of foederati - allied non Roman troops. By the end of the century, the traditional auxiliary units - trained and led by Romans - had largely been replaced by unincorporated bands of barbarians who fought under their own banners and leaders.

Civil wars were as deadly to the empire as attacks by outside forces. Roman v Roman battles were as common and - pace Mursa - could be much more deadly.

The idea of a single emperor ruling the whole empire was the exception rather than the rule throughout the fourth century. It was a rare period that saw just one ruler.

Read other Rome: In Five Battles here.

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(I attach David Bowie’s Velvet Goldmine. When I was younger, reading about the later Roman Empire, I always associated this song with the heavily armed Cataphracts riding East to West, West to East, protecting the Empire. I misheard a line so it read “I’ll be your faithful prince who will ride for you again and again.” Unfortunately I now know that’s not the lyrics!)

ROME: The First Century BC in Five Battles

Everybody know the first century BC; it is, without doubt, the most well-known period from ancient Rome. Films, TV series and books all tend to focus in on this era*. And usually the timeframe of interest is just the thirty year period between 60-30BC.

The last stages of the fall of the Roman Republic - and its transformation to imperial rule - are well known; Caesar, Pompey, Crassus, Cicero, Cato, Cleopatra, Mark Antony, Octavian / Augustus, Brutus, Agrippa, Cassius… Some pretty big names - well known even now. Rightly so. There’s much to discuss. However, the century is more detailed, nuanced and action packed than just those central years. Lots more happened in the century before Jesus than Caesar crossing The Rubicon. Telling the story in just five battles is going to be difficult!

I’m dividing 100BC - 1BC into three eras. Most of the battles will, of course, come from that climatic middle thirty-year period. Can’t help that.

1) Marius and Sulla, The Social and Mithridatic Wars 100-60BC.

A confrontation between more than just two men, Marius and Sulla, this internecine struggle for the soul and power of the Republic led ultimately to the first Roman invasion of, well, er, Rome. The Battle of the Colline Gate 82BC comes from this period as Sulla marched on the capital and fought a huge battle outside the walls of the city.

Also from this period, Rome fights, defeats and then grants citizenship to its Italian allies in The Social War.

Rome defeats a slave revolt at home (you may have heard of this. Tony Curtis and Kirk Douglas take on the might of the British Empire. Sorry Roman Empire) and Lucullus and Pompey fight King Mithridates over a twenty five year period and add huge swaths of the Levant to the Empire.

2) The Fall of the Republic 60-31BC. Caesar invades and conquers Gaul, returns and fights Pompey and the Senate, wins, establishes himself as dictator, is assassinated, the assassins are caught and killed by Octavian and Antony, who divide up the empire, fall out and square off. Octavian defeats Antony, becomes Emperor and changes his name to Augustus. Bye bye Republic. From this busy period we have The Battle of Carrhae 53BC - Crassus’ disastrous folly taking on the Parthans, Caesar’s triumph over the Gauls at Alesia in 52BC, Caesar defeating Pompey at Pharsalus 48 BC and the climatic battle of Actium 31BC which finishes off the civil wars.

3) The Augustian settlement - 31BC to the end of century. Augustus as primus unter pares. There were wars, there were battles. Large amounts of territory were formally added to the Empire (Egypt & Switzerland for example), but the modus operanti of empire reverted to the old Roman model - bit by bit, as circumstances dictated. Beginning of the German wars. I have selected no battles from this era. The gates of Janus - opened when Rome was at war, and they usually were, were closed three times during this period.

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Civic life in the Republic had been getting progressively worse, and more violent, over the last third of the 2nd century BC. The causes of this degradation were many; paradoxically Rome’s victories abroad - culminating in the twin victories over Carthage and Corinth in 146 BC - sowed the mauvaises herbes back at home. These, and other triumphs over the past half century, brought home too much money and too many slaves. The new funds tended to go to aristocrats who bought up the farmsteads of their countrymen, creating large estates, using slave labour to work them. Rome’s small scale agrarian economy was already disrupted by the demands placed on its citizen army who had to put down their ploughs and serve in the military, sometimes faraway and often for years at a time. So foreign success had tilted the equilibrium in Roman society between the haves and the have nots.

Marius was a nouvo homme who had held the consulship an unprecedented six times whilst fighting off the menace of The Cimbri and the Teutones at the end of the second century BC. He reformed the army, making it a paid profession and not a citizen duty. This had important ramifications for the future of the republic and, perhaps, into the Imperial era. Admittedly, the reforms stabilised and professionalised the army - making it an even more fearsome force. But they also severed a link between the army and the state. From now on, armies fought more for their general and less for Rome, with devastating results to the stability of the state. Throw in class warfare, demagogues, constant wars and the republic’s days were numbered.

Sulla - one of Marius’ ex lieutenants, came to symbolise the reactionary optimates through opposition to land reform and resentment at the increasingly bold populist interventions from the people’s tribunes. This party disdained where Rome was going, the wealth, the lack of morals, the appeal to the masses. The clash has familiar strains with one side wanting to return to the purity and stability of earlier Republican days and the other looking to reform a faltering system.

The wars between these two visions of the republic took place against the backdrop of the First Mithridatic War. Sulla - the consul at the time - was appointed to lead Rome’s army in the near east and, whilst he was away, the forces of Marius took over Rome. This happened twice. The second time provoked a full scale civil war culminating outside the walls of Rome itself at The Battle of The Colline Gate 82 BC.

Though Marius was dead by this point, his son had picked up his causes and factions. Returning from the east, Sulla rushed to Rome where the Marian party - with Etruscan and Samnite allies were holed up. The battle lasted from mid afternoon onwards and into the night. It was a bloody and confused affair taking place in front, and within, Rome. It is said that 50,000 men died that night as gradually Sulla’s forces forced their way into Rome.

The ramifications - proscriptions, the massacre of 8000 Samnite prisoners, dictatorship - were fearful. Sulla was a contradiction as a man. He took dictatorial powers only to resign them - Cincinnatus style - months later before standing himself for election. During that time he reformed the constitution, giving more power to the Senate, less to the Tribunes of the people but also making it harder for people like him to seize control. It didn’t last.

“No friend ever served me, and no enemy ever wronged me, whom I have not repaid in full.” Sulla.

Externally, Rome fought a long running war with Mithridates VI, King of Pontus (in modern day Turkey). The wars - there were three - lasted from 88 BC to 63 BC and took place against a backdrop of increasing violence back in Rome which worked to Mithradates advantage. The conflict started with the massacre of all Romans in the East by Mithradates and ended with his suicide - alone and defeated - as Pompey created a huge Eastern Empire (modern Turkey, Syria and the Levant). This new general-led conquest model spread. When Pompey formed the First Triumvirate with Crassus and Caesar in 59 BC, the other two were eager to replicate his successes. They had - shall we say - variable results.

Crassus first. There are three or four really large and consequential Roman defeats across the thousand or so years of the Empire. Along with Hannibal’s Cannae slaughter and, say, the wipe out of three legions at the Teutoburg Forest or Valens’ defeat at the hands of the Goths at Adrianople 378 AD, Crassus’ defeat at Carrhae 53BC was one of the largest Roman defeats ever. A poor general let his troops down.

Over on the Eastern border of the Empire, the Parthian Empire abutted the expanding Romans. Crassus was eager to take advantage of a proxy dispute with the Parthians over succession within the buffer state of Armenia. He set off to Mesopotamian with seven legions and associated auxiliaries. Many marched out. Hardly any came back. The few survivors of the battle were nearly all captured never to return.**

The legions died hard under a hail of arrows at Carrhae.

It was arrogance and stupidity that caused the Roman army under Crassus to die in such numbers. Foolishly taking a short cut across the desert, where they were vulnerable and with little cavalry support, the legions were attacked by wave after wave of horse archers and heavily armoured cataphracts. They were literally picked off. Crassus himself was killed whilst trying to parlay with the Persians. It was a total disaster and one brought about needlessly by a poor general seeking personal glory. This was not the Roman way.

However, someone else who could also be accused of putting personal aggrandisement ahead of the state’s interests, was one Gaius Julius Caesar. However, unlike Crassus, Caesar was a ruthlessly good general, able to both inspire his troops and be inspirational in battle. After his consulship in 59BC, Caesar’s reward was the Roman province of Cisalpine Gaul. Most governors were happy to grow fat on the taxes of their province but not Caesar! From this springboard he spent the next eight years conquering the whole of Gaul - a massive area consisting of modern day France, Belgium and parts of Germany. He even ventured to Britain a couple of times.

The Gauls had long been a mythical foe to the Romans; they sacked Rome in 390 BC and as recent as 100BC threatened to overwhelm the Italian peninsular before being turned back by Marius. So Caesar’s victories and conquests were astounding to the Roman people. He won victory after victory throughout Gaul, rushing here and there to urge on his spread out forces suffering only the occasional reverse. The Gauls didn’t unite until it was almost too late. Finally they rallied behind Vercingetorix who massed forces and destroyed crops to starve Caesar’s troops.

Caesar pinned down Vercingetorix and 80,000 of his troops in the hilltop fortress of Alesia 52BC. He had around eleven legions under his command plus various allies. Probably around 65,000 men. He built a wall all around the hilltop fortress but, when the relief force of 250,000 Gauls turned up, he then built a second wall facing the other way. He was now besieged himself and fighting on both fronts.***

But the Romans held against frequent double sided attacks. Caesar was everywhere rallying his troops and making sure the defences held. They did. The besieging army was driven off with huge casualties and the starving Gauls in the hilltop fortress had no option but to surrender to Caesar (see main picture). Vercingetorix was sent to Rome and held in prison for five years before taking part in one of Caesar’s triumphal parades. He was then ritually throttled to death.

Gaul was conquered. Alesia was Caesar’s greatest victory.

“Then after a short interval they renewed their charge, threw their javelins and, as ordered by Caesar, quickly drew their swords. Nor indeed did the Pompeians fail to meet the occasion; they stood up to the hail of missiles and bore the onset of the legions; they kept their ranks, threw their javelins, and then resorted to their swords.”

— Caesar - The Civil War describing The Battle of Pharsalus

His term as proconsul in Gaul up, Caesar famously crossed the Rubican River into Italy, muttered something in Greek about dice, and headed off to Rome with his army. His speed and audacity caught his rivals in the Senate and Pompey by surprise. They didn’t have an army to hand and so bolted from the city and crossed the Adriatic in order to gather troops from the East. Civil war had again begun.

Caesar firstly destroyed the Senate’s forces in Spain and then, the following year followed Pompey over the Adriatic. There was an inconclusive battle at Dyrrhachium before the decisive showdown at Pharsalus in Greece. Caesar was outnumbered, his troops were starving and he’d been tactically boxed in. The smart move for the Senate forces would have been to starve him out. But they weren’t smart.

Caesar’s troops were battle hardened veterans from the long Gallic Wars whereas many of Pompey’s were raw recruits. As described by Caesar in the quote above, although outnumbered, his troops charged Pompey’s lines taking the initiative against the larger force. Pompey’s overwhelming calvary charged Caesar’s cavalry as expected but were in turn cut down by a fourth line of infantry Caesar had concealed. From there, Caesar’s forces routed Pompey’s legions and chased them and their general back to their camp. As the camp was in danger, Pompey threw off his general’s cloak and escaped through the rear gate. He crossed to Egypt where he was traitorously beheaded by Ptolemy XIII, Cleopatra’s brother.

Following his victory at Pharsalus, Caesar spent the next couple of years tracking down the remains of the Senate party before returning to Rome as dictator for life. Which is when he was assassinated in 44BC. The next couple of years were a wearying round of civil wars and proscriptions as Antony and Octavian tracked down and defeated the assassins - Brutus and Cassius. With Lepidus, they formed the second triumvirate in 43 BC and carved up the Roman world between the three of them.

The following ten years were relatively peaceful militarily but gradually the two head triumvirs - Octavian and Antony - perhaps inevitably - fell out. They prepared huge armies for war in a winner-takes-all campaign in Greece.

Technically, Actium wasn’t the last battle of the Roman Republic. That honour goes to the Battle of Alexandria the year after in 30 BC where Octavian chased down Antony and Cleopatra. But this decisive victory off the coast of Greece made the ending inevitable and anti-climatic.

Antony was the better general. He’d proved this many times under Gabinius in the East and then Caesar in Gaul and, following the latter’s death, in the wars against the assassins. One shouldn’t get too hung up on his latter day portrayal as a lovestruck drunk who fell for Cleopatra and let her rule him. But certainly the quality of his generalship declined in the years 40-30BC. He received the East in the carve up between himself, Lepidus and Octavian following the Battle of Philippi and, as overlord, attempted without success to avenge the loss of Carrhae against the Persians.

Actium was a sea battle but it was a sea battle only because Octavian’s general, Agrippa, was using his fleet to blockade Antony’s land forces on Western coast of Greece. The Battle of Actium was Antony’s attempt to break this blockade. The forces were evenly matched - Agrippa had more ships, Antony had heavier ships. The battle went back and forth until, inexplicably, the squadron under Cleopatra made a break for it and headed off back to Egypt. Antony, transferring to a lighter and faster ship, followed, leaving his remaining forces to fend for themselves.

Agrippa’s fleet then destroyed Antony’s fleet and Antony’s army of nineteen legions (yes, 19!), left stranded without provisions in Greece, surrendered. Octavian, dealing with some troop mutinies and pirates, only followed up on this success the following year. Landing in Egypt, he easily defeated Antony’s remnants of an army. We know what happened next; Antony committed suicide, and Cleopatra, sensing Octavian wanted her as prize exhibit in a subsequent triumph through Rome, did likewise. The civil wars were over.

Octavian, became Augustus (majestic) and gradually consolidated his powers over the Roman people with the willing help of the Senate - purged, cowed and sick of war. The previous century of civil wars, proscriptions, and turmoil had taken the heart out of the Republic. Although Augustus was careful to keep up the facade of the Republic’s institutions (consuls, senate, pontiffs etc) there was no doubt who was really in charge. Augustus faced no serious challenges to this ascendency or rule.

So the first century BC was a transitional period for Rome as it moved away from hundreds of years of Republican rule to five hundred more years (or fifteen hundred including the Byzantine Empire) of quasi monarchy. Despite the internal turmoil and wars, externally, Rome consolidated her power, grew her Empire and was, by the end, much more powerful than she was at the beginning.

“I found a Rome of bricks; I leave to you one of marble,” said Augustus on his deathbed. Architecturally, he may have been right, certainly many fine public buildings were built during his era. It could also - as has been pointed out - be taken metaphorically; he took chaos and brought order at the expense of liberty.

Read other Rome: In Five Battles here.

NOTES

* Or 180 AD and the hand over from Marcus Aurelius to his son Commodus - The Fall of the Roman Empire & more recently Gladiator.

** Cassius (of Caesar assassin fame) led the few forces not killed or captured back to Roman Syria. There are rumours that some of the survivors left in Mesopotamia were forced marched by the Persians to their Eastern border to man the defences against incursions. There are even stories of Roman prisoners making their way to China.

*** You should always be wary about numbers listed in ancient sources. Caesar, writing in his campaign book - The Civil Wars - probably overestimates. It was a common practice.

Face of Yesterday : The Curious Tale of Renaissance

I knew two things about British folkie prog rock group Renaissance:

1) I loved the rollicking 1978 single Northern Lights. Annie Haslam’s soaring vocals were a great counterpoint to all the punk around at the time. I bought the single.

2) As a big Yardbirds fan at university, I knew after the group broke up, vocalist Keith Relf and drummer Jim McCarty formed Renaissance with Relf’s sister Jane whilst Jimmy Page went off on his own and formed Led Zeppelin.

I’d never been curious enough to link these two facts. I knew Relf electrocuted himself in 1976 so he couldn’t have been part of the Northern Lights set up. And that’s where things stood until Christmas.

---

Occasionally YouTube throws something interesting at you. I was probably down a Yardbirds wormhole a few days ago and then YouTube threw ‘Kings and Queens’ from Renaissance’s first album at me. It shows a hippy-ish Keith Relf playing guitar, with his sister singing, Jim McCarty whacking the skins, some prominent piano work on a long prog-rock type song. Interesting but not really my scene.

Later, whilst I was in the bath, I asked Amazon to shuffle songs by Renaissance. Again, diverting but not really my scene. Until one song came on - Face of Yesterday - which I thought was interesting enough to put on a playlist. A playlist I listened to whilst walking up Wolstonbury Hill. Yes, this confirmed it, Face of Yesterday was my new favourite song!

It’s a dreamy ballad with classical influences and some excellent scat vocalism

And this is where things get a little murky.

The album Illusion. One group created it, another toured it and then disappeared to be replaced by another group with the same name. Confused?

Face of Yesterday was recorded in 1970 for the album Illusion. It’s Jane Relf singing. But YouTube threw another curve ball at me; the video of the band shows quite a different lady singing the song. She has a completely different voice - lower, maybe more timorous but compelling nethertheless. And this lady is an absolute stunner! And also, she’s not Annie Haslam. A third female vocalist…

Well, it appears the vocalist on the video is Binky Cullom. And the band? They’re all new guys too and none of the original five appear in the video. How’s that even possible? Well, it seems that Relf, Relf, McCarty et al one by one dropped out during 1970 during the recording of Illusion. Relf and McCarty remained interested enough to recruit new musicians to replace them. And they did. Five times.

So, the six members of Renaissance on the video of 1970 touring the Illusion album are not the original five. Clear?

Not finished yet.

Over the next year, next month for Binky, five of the six also left. New members, came and went until 1972/1973 when the Renaissance that I knew, the Northern Lights Renaissance with Annie Haslam, came into being. This lineup was stable and lasted for years and produced a certain sound built around Annie’s vocals. But it was different sound. And a different group.

Final plot twist, four of the original five, minus Keith Relf, as he was dead, got together again in 1977. But as another group had the Renaissance name, they called themselves Illusion, yes, after that chaotic second album where they all walked out first time.

And what Renaissance song did Illusion re-record? Face of Yesterday!

A Walk Up Wolstonbury Hill in Winter

A bracing December walk on the Downs, up an ancient hill, trudging above the rainclouds, looking down on the misty haze of the Sussex weald, listening to my Desert Island playlist, remembering the times I met Margaret Thatcher.

What’s that last thing, Tim?

Margaret Thatcher? Random thoughts you get as you hike on your own. I looked into those cold blue eyes once - doltishly described by Mitterand as akin to Caligula’s. Piercing, soul searching, intimidating perhaps; you could see she took no shit from anyone. If only she - a trained scientist - were in charge now instead of the blundering third raters we have today.

Such thoughts I have, ascending, and descending Wolstonbury Hill, Clayton, West Sussex.

Getting out, hiking, exploring, invigorates the mind, stimulates the memory and shakes the box of possibilities. If there has been one good thing to take from this awful 2020, it’s that I’m deliberately walking more around my beautiful county. I say deliberately; before this en-cagement, I used to do 10,000 - 12,000 steps a day naturally, just getting to and from work. (You think my lithe and toned frame occurs naturally?). Once the lockdown began in March, I realised that if I didn’t consciously go on walks, I’d quickly morph into a supersized Tim.

So, I began walking, firstly around Burgess Hill. I think I know the streets and pathways and countryside around my town pretty well now nine months on. How have I lived here so long and not known anything about where I lived? Embarrassing really. But, seek and you shall find, and I have been seeking a lot recently. I’ll share some of these discoveries here over the coming days.

Wolstonbury Hill is part of the defensive screen of rises that separates the Sussex weald from the coast. It lies above the parish of Clayton, famous for the Jack and Jill windmills but also the castle folly bestriding the railway tunnel that takes the London trains under the hills to Brighton beyond.

The Clayton Tunnel takes the London to Brighton trains under this remarkable 19th Century castle folly.

I followed the National Trust map for my walk. The instructions were clear until I hit the environs of Danny Hall - a large country house used by Churchill and his war cabinet. Instead of walking around the hill and climbing obliquely, I went too early and ended up clambering up the steep slope directly. I puffed and panted up the hill aware that an attractive, and much younger lady, was coming up fast behind me.

So I increased my pace and hit the top red faced and wheezing, all ready to smile benignly at my pursuer. I mean, how does anyone meet anyone these days? Perhaps a real-life ‘hello’ is better than being ghosted on a dating app? Probably, maybe, dunno; the lady - quite rightly - ghosted me in real-life and whizzed past and onwards into the flock of bell wearing sheep. Yes, like Switzerland.

It’s a racy blog I write.

The view from the hill : Danny House in the foreground

The views down to the coast or across to the Jack and Jill windmills were obscured by the mist. Still, what I could see - Hassocks, Burgess Hill, Hurstpierpoint - was well worth the climb. This being December, the pathways through the various woods were clogged with mud. I suppose, that’s what you expect in winter, out on the Downs. I think next time, I’ll don the wellies and sacrifice looking good for remaining dry. Spring and summer will bring their own delights.

My route down was milder, more winding, more reflective. The rain came down slightly and that, combined with my playlist and the bells of the sheep, made this more Christmas-y than I expected. I don’t need snow or twinkling lights. Just bleakness and the dark trunks of lifeless trees. Yes, I’m more Corelli than Carey.

Christmas is a time of memory - lost family Christmases, departed relatives, forgotten friends, little children now grown up. Memories of Margaret Thatcher... In the mist, in the rain, walking the chalk scarred hilltops of Sussex, you can think of these things.

I’ll be back.

The return from Wolstonbury Hill.

Playlist

• Sixpence None The Wiser - Kiss Me

• Everything but the Girl - On My Mind

• Van Morrison - Beside You

• Eurythmics - Here Comes the Rain Again

• Frank Sinatra - You’re Sensational

• The Rolling Stones - Time Waits for No-One

• Abba - The Winner Takes it All

Shake The Magic Money Tree!

There comes a time, sometimes later, sometimes sooner, when you realise that much of what underpins the modern world exists because we choose to believe it exists. Primarily, but not solely, I’m thinking about money here. (1)

You see, money may be experiencing an existentialist crisis.

This year, the Bank of England has created, almost unremarked upon, £450B of new money. This is in addition to the £445B already created in the last ten or so years. Printing money has become increasingly the go-to policy for government / BoE financing. (2)

But what the hell is the Bank of England - and other central banks - doing printing money? We all thought - until recently anyway - that printing money was the preserve of failed states where a richly embroidered President for Life might fire up the state money machine to pay for his next golden toilet whilst his people ate shit from garbage heaps?

In other words, what is the difference between the infamous hyper inflation of the Weimar Republic or Zimbabwe, and a modern, oh so sophisticated, economy like the UK?

One hundred years and a new terminology frankly.

We don’t print money anymore, we ‘quantitively ease’ (QE). Lofty economists hide money creation behind high sounding phrases designed to obfuscate. They distain the commonly held view that printing money is generally a bad thing. “Don’t you know,” they will pontificate - probably with half moon spectacles sliding down their nose in the manner of clever people everywhere - “Commercial banks create money all the time? What do you think fractional reserve banking is?”

Good point. We all know, via the credit crunch of 2008, that banks - sometimes recklessly - take a pound and lend out ten. Hence fractional reserve banking. The argument for QE is that, in bad times, banks lend less and so the creation of money is tightened. Hence the need for quantitive easing, i.e. creating money to persuade banks and others to lend money to get the economy moving. At some theoretical date in the future - never defined or realised - central banks will unwind their position and pass back their holdings from their balance sheet. This is to avoid the perils of hyper inflation.

And what are those centrally held holdings on the BoE’s balance sheet? What do they buy with all this new money? Well - since you ask - mainly government debt.

Oh.

So, this is quantitive easing; a government wants to inject money into the economy, they issue debt, the banks and insurance companies buy the debt, the central bank buys it back, the markets make a small ‘turn’ on this as the price is rising due to demand, meaning the yield falls on those bonds so servicing the debt is now cheaper for the government. Happy days! Doubles all round. Some corporate bonds are bought, but, not so much. Mainly government gilts. (3)

Well, that’s ‘vintage’ quantitive easing.. We’ve progressed since the good old days of the credit crunch. Now, in 2020, the central banks and government can’t be arsed in issuing and re-purchasing gilts and so just think - ‘fuck it’ - and go route 1 and cut out the middle man. So the BoE directly buys government debt with their newly created money.

Think about that for a moment; the government spends like a pissed up sailor on leave with a stolen credit card and, fearing the usual methods of raising income - boring stuff like raising taxes, borrowing or, here’s a novel one - growth - just prints the money it needs.

It’s a bold strategy, an ‘unconventional monetary approach’ in the jargon. These are unprecedented times, okay? But, erm, tap tap on the shoulder, is this right? Legal? Even moral?

Personally, I don’t like short cuts. We all know state fiat currency is make believe - it exists because we choose to believe it exists. But you like to comfort yourself that behind the mist there are real things dimly in view - productivity, innovation, balance of payments, demand. You know, the stuff of the actual economy. It’s why we get up in the morning and work.

But what’s the point if you can just fire up the printing presses and create money? It’s easier than actually earning the money. And who doesn’t like free stuff? This is a shortcut that undermines the real economy. As we all trade in the same currency (money) the actions of the government must surely degrade the productive part of the economy.

The classical economic view is that if you increase the supply of something, the price will drop. For money, we call this inflation. Inflation is a tax that we all pay. Print loads of money and you get hyper inflation and we all have to get out the wheelbarrows to buy a loaf of bread. The economy falls apart causing real and sustained damage.

So I’ll end with two scenarios and a comment:-

1) We have entered a new norm. Inflation has been conquered. The masters of the universe have defied the economic gravity and are floating above what used to be held as a truism; that printing money is bad and will cause hyper inflation and crash the economy. We are truly living an age of giant economists who shame those pygmies Keynes, Friedman and Hayek.

2) We are living on borrowed time. The poison is acting slowly but will eventually start to work. It’s only a matter of time before the inflation kicks in and then we’re all screwed.

2020, we all appear to be living through scenario one. But I fear scenario two is our ultimate destination. QE, printing money, is a fool’s shortcut. Intrinsically, we all know this. Why don’t our political and financial masters know it too?

NOTES

1) Big Tech, Elections, Fractional Reserve Banking, MSM News

2) UK Government / Bank of England. I use the terms interchangeably. They are, in effect, one and the same thing.

3) Governments - and oppositions - have been talking up the advantages of cheap interest rates on state debt for a good ten years. The argument seems to go, it would be irresponsible not to borrow when money is so cheap. These typically tend to be same people who say, governments can run large debts because a country is not like a household. Said with a sneer. We shall see.

Mick Taylor and that Guitar Solo

They say the Devil has all the good tunes (except when he goes down to Georgia, of course!). But perhaps just sympathising with Old Nick also conjures up a decent tune too.

I remember the first Stones album I bought myself. I was 15. Coming off the back of a couple of Greatest Hits compilations, I went and bought the live album Get Yer Ya Ya's Out. Live albums can often be a mistake as they tend to offer thin, over-emoting, out-of-tune and unnecessarily long versions of well-loved – and crafted - studio songs.

But not so Get Yer Ya Ya's Out...

It's a tour album commemorating the infamous 1969 US Tour - yes the one that ended with the screw up that was Altamont. I come back to this album frequently. I can safely say; I learnt to play guitar strumming along with this album. Recorded at Madison Square Garden, it captures the Stones as they transitioned away from Brian Jones and into the demi-god led outfit that included Mick Taylor. Finally, the Stones had some serious lead guitar muscle to complement the Human Riff, Keef. They would get better in the next couple of years, but this is the only official live album of the Stones Mark 2 line up.

My fav track was Track 1 / Side 2: Sympathy for the Devil. (“Paint It Black you devils! Do Paint It Black!”) E-D-A verses dropping to B for the chorus. Brilliant to play along with and attempt the extended guitar solo at the end of the track. Yes, I learnt my pitiful lead axeman skills from this track. Well at least for the first minutes of the solo anyway! Because suddenly the solo gets hard - real hard. What is a rhythm guitarist's best ever solo morphs into a shit-hot guitar hero work-out. You can hear the change about 4:30 into the track. It’s almost as though Keef took a snort half way through and felt emboldened to shout "Oi! Hendrix, Clapton - come and have a go if you think you’re hard enough!"

But YouTube and the internet have revealed the mystery behind the split personality on Sympathy for the Devil’s guitar solo. For of course – Keef plays the first half and then hands over to Mick Taylor. In less than two minutes, Mick Taylor pisses on Richards and - in the cock-measuring contest that was the Stones – for the next five years, never again would Keith attempt to challenge Taylor. There has only ever been one lead guitarist in the Stones and his name was Mick Taylor.

I’ll write in due course more about this golden era of the Stones. When they really deserved the moniker ‘The Greatest Rock n Roll Band in the World’. But for now, listen to this audio and you’ll see what I mean. Keef starts soloing at 3:18. Mick Taylor takes over the baton at 4:30 and from 5:20 streaks down the back straight to take both the tape and the Gold Medal.

As I said, the Stones would get better after 1969. Taylor would get more confident – aware that his fluid, melodic soloing would propel songs like Midnight Rambler, Gimme Shelter, Street Fighting Man to ever higher levels. But Get Your Ya Ya’s Out is where it began and, on Sympathy for the Devil, you can hear him shyly but definitely, take over the band’s sound.

Enjoy.

To read other Mick Taylor related articles, click here...

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Mick Taylor’s greatest Stone song? Try this!

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