{"id":12649,"date":"2017-05-04T05:30:00","date_gmt":"2017-05-04T09:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=12649"},"modified":"2019-07-18T09:25:39","modified_gmt":"2019-07-18T13:25:39","slug":"arthur-browns-fire-still-burns-part-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2017\/05\/04\/arthur-browns-fire-still-burns-part-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Arthur Brown’s “Fire” Still Burns (Part 1)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"One of the most remarkable singles in a year full of remarkable music, 1968’s \u201cFire\u201d was unlike most anything else on the radio. Backed with malevolent swirls of organ and brass punctuating a hard-driving arrangement, the operatic vocals of Arthur Brown made quite an impression on listeners. Opening with the memorable spoken (well, shouted<\/i>) introduction \u2013 \u201cI am the god of hellfire! And I bring you \u2026\u201d \u2013 The Crazy World of Arthur Brown figuratively set the pop music world alight. The single hit #1 in Brown’s native U.K. as well as Canada, and made it all the way to #2 in the USA, no mean feat for an unknown artist.<\/p>\n

The Crazy World of Arthur Brown would release but one (self-titled) album, but its members would go onto subsequent success in other bands. And Brown himself would continue on a critically-acclaimed career, one filled with innovative stylistic twists and turns. Today at 74, Brown remains vital and active; he recently completed a short North American tour with his current-day lineup of The Crazy World of Arthur Brown, and took the time to speak with me about his life of music, then and now.<\/p>\n

In the mid 1960s, Arthur Brown’s original idea wasn’t even to have a band. \u201cMy career started in Paris,\u201d he recalls, \u201cand I went down to Spain playing as well. I came across a lot of surreal clubs, with stalactites coming down from the ceiling, all kinds of strange objects.\u201d He decided he would do something similar back in London.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cI wanted to open a club with art and statues and theatre, but I couldn’t get the money,\u201d Brown says, \u201cso I decided to put [those ideas] in a band.\u201d His goal was to create a group that \u201cshock[ed] people into thinking in or looking at things in a different way.\u201d He teamed up with Vincent Crane \u2013 a classically-trained organist on a par with jazz-rock great Brian Auger. \u201cVincent could conduct an orchestra, he could arrange, and he was an accomplished improviser indeed,\u201d Brown says. One thing Crane was not interested in, however \u2013 and this set him apart from other major keyboardists of the era such as Keith Emerson \u2013 was playing synthesizers. Instead, his Hammond organ would form the musical centerpiece of the new group.<\/p>\n

Brown’s background was in rock, soul and jazz. \u201cI had my own jazz quartet,\u201d he says. \u201cI was bass player.\u201d But for The Crazy World of Arthur Brown, he would fold in elements of soul, jazz, rock and \u2013 thanks to Crane \u2013 classical music as well. Brown’s astounding vocal range \u2013 four and a half octaves, he says \u2013 was all but unknown in pop music. The group’s original, guitar-less lineup \u2013 the one that would make the band’s sole album \u2013 also included drummer Drachen Theaker and bassist Nick Greenwood (billing himself as Sean Nicholas).<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The band’s singles and LP were released on Track Records, the label formed by Chris Stamp and Kit Lambert, managers of The Who. Brown and his band were discovered by Who guitarist Pete Townshend. \u201cPete was talent spotting for Track in the period when the underground was the big thing,\u201d Brown recalls. \u201cHe decided that \u2013 in order to persuade the record company \u2013 he took us into the studio to cut some demo recordings.\u201d<\/p>\n

Townshend felt that demos were essential; he had already failed at convincing Lambert and Stamp to sign another band he had his eye on. The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band was a quirky comedy outfit fronted by the inimitable Viv Stanshall; that band wold go on to a sort of underground fame, appearing in the Beatles’ television special Magical Mystery Tour<\/i>, singing an original tune called \u201cDeath Cab for Cutie.\u201d (Yes, that’s where the Pacific Northwest-based band got its name.)<\/p>\n

\u201cThey missed out\u201d on the Bonzos, says Brown, \u201cand Pete decided that he wouldn’t let that happen with us.\u201d Brown had only been in a recording studio once before, so the experience was quite unfamiliar to him. But he had ready songs and\/or concepts. \u201cThat was ’67,\u201d Brown says, \u201cand we were already into the story of a guy going on his inward journey.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

One of the songs Brown brought to the demo studio was \u201cSpontaneous Apple Creation,\u201d an unfinished tune. \u201cI was working on it, developing the melody for all of the verses,\u201d Brown says. \u201cI said to Pete, ‘This one we can’t really finish, because all I’ve got is the spoken parts.’ So he said, ‘Well, do the spoken part.’\u201d The band did exactly that, and Townshend liked what he heard. \u201cWhy don’t we just keep that?” he said.<\/p>\n

Brown credits Townshend with helping to ‘form’ that and other songs. \u201cHe was able to move us in a certain direction because of the sounds in the studio, which we didn’t have the experience with.\u201d Somewhere there exists \u2013 or did exist \u2013 a demo from those sessions featuring Pete on rhythm guitar. \u201cThat would be interesting,\u201d Brown admits. \u201cBut I’ve never seen those since.\u201d<\/p>\n

Once the band was signed to Track, they would return to a studio, but this time the producer would be Kit Lambert. Brown says that \u201cKit’s father was a great composer, so he had extraordinary creative ideas about how to do the sound. He had no compunction about overloading the sliders, which later became popular.\u201d Lambert would add distortion into the mix in a subtle way, Brown says, \u201cSo that you couldn’t even tell what you were listening to. We tried later to remake that sound, and we couldn’t do it, even with modern technology.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brown says that Townshend was, however, \u201cinvolved with all the major decisions. They were deciding which tune would become the single.\u201d The choices were \u201cFire\u201d and a sort of comedy track called \u201cGive Him a Flower.\u201d Brown notes that \u201cFire\u201d provided \u201ca much darker image, one they felt they could make register.\u201d So \u201cFire\u201d it was, the band’s second single. (\u201cGive Him a Flower\u201d was in fact the b-side of \u201cDevil’s Grip,\u201d the first single by The Crazy World of Arthur Brown.)<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The first side of The Crazy World’s album was thematically unified, but Brown is uncomfortable with calling it a \u201crock opera.\u201d He’s long looked a bit suspiciously at the idea, and not without reason. When The Who’s Tommy<\/i> was about to come out, Lambert confided in Brown. \u201cHe said to me, ‘I’m going to con the bastards, the general public.’\u201d Brown says he had no idea what Lambert was on about. \u201cI’m going to appeal to the audience’s snobbery,\u201d Lambert continued. \u201cThis thing that Townshend’s writing, I’m going to call it an opera, which it isn’t<\/i>. But you’ll see: They will take<\/i> it as an opera, and it will become something they have to see, because there’s a move to make pop music very serious.\u201d<\/p>\n

Arthur Brown says that Townshend’s original idea for Tommy<\/i> was to feature Brown as the story’s lead figure, but Lambert overruled him: \u201cNo, let’s keep it for The Who.\u201d<\/p>\n

Click here to continue<\/a> \u2026<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the most remarkable singles in a year full of remarkable music, 1968’s \u201cFire\u201d was unlike most anything else on the radio. Backed with malevolent swirls of organ and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12652,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[41,57],"tags":[3035],"class_list":["post-12649","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interview","category-psych","tag-arthur-brown","cat-41-id","cat-57-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12649","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12649"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12649\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17186,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12649\/revisions\/17186"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12652"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12649"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12649"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12649"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}