Edwyn Collins

Backstage Mayfair Club, Newcastle 1982, Kensal Green 1986, Kilburn 1994

Tonight came wrapped in trepidation. It's been over a decade since I last saw Edwyn(Collins). Back then he was savouring every moment of his long overdue fame. Our families were tight and times were too. We were old friends and Nova Londoners living a block apart. It took almost two decades for Ed to become an overnight success and his wife/manager Grace made sure that all the rewards were duly collected.

 It was shortly after I moved back to Scotland that this chapter was emphatically shut. Their lives had been derailed when Edwyn suffered a double aneurysm. His remarkable road to recovery is best left for Grace to tell in her moving and inspirational account 'Falling and Laughing: The Restoration of Edwyn Collins'. Time slips through your fingers, some times it's necessary to get a grip. Tonight is one of those times- time to rip it up...

  Edwyn is playing his last performance of the Festival and it's his birthday to boot. 50 is the Magic Number. On stage is an elective mix of friends and colleagues. Guest guitar performances by Romeo(Magic Numbers), Ryan(Cribbs) and leggendario Malcolm Ross turned the night into a truly memorable event. Edwyn held the audience in the palm of his hand, the all acoustic set seemed to give new resonance to his amazing body of work.

 Filing out of the venue Grace appeared from the wings and with one embrace dissolved the years of intractable guilt, tonight we were going to party.

 The birthday party was consummated at a quay-side hotel in the port of Leith. Ed's a vision; a garland of flowers around his neck and a glint in his eye. He's lost none of the charisma. With the throng of well-wishers and party-goers this wasn't the time to be re-building bridges, that would have to wait.

Anyone who can call Grace a friend is blessed. Her open heart, selfless generosity and unquestioned loyalty is matched only by her Weegie pit-bull tenacity- she'd be falling and laughing if she were reading this. We make a pact that the next time I'm in London I'll stay with them and we'll make a start on lost time.

 My parting image of William(Collins) was of a nine-year old who blushed like a tickled squid and buzzed with more energy than the Hadron Collider. My memory was standing in front of me, transposed by time into a confident young man- blush tamed but still intact.

 Seb(Sebastian Lewsley), Edwyn's stoic compadre, music programmer and re-programmer used my hand as an ashtray when asked to do 'touch'. I like his style.

 Malcolm (Ross), Ed's stalwart supporter, oozing with champagne charm.

 Ryan from the Cribs was trying his hardest not be so enigmatic, with little success.

And Romeo! I spent much of the night drawn to him like a moth to a flame. It's impossible not to warm to Romeo.

At 7.30am I pull over the covers over my sweetheart and me. It's been a wonderful night of heart lifting.

  At the time of writing this Grace is locked into a battle with MySpace over the rights to show the video "A Girl Like You". Grace begged, borrowed and pawned to get enough together to see it made. I racked up a heap of IOU's from friends only too glad to tear up the check. The video was a testimony to creative ingenuity, dogged determination and a belief that we were part of something very special. Necessity became the mother of a monster- over 2.5 million hits and still counting.

Screening

10am Sunday morning and I'm dragging myself along Lothian Road as the bin men lug the soiled waste from the strip-joints. I'm accompanying my compañero Don Bernardo to a private screening at The Filmhouse and I'm running late, comme bloody d'habitude.
 

Bernardo's been invited to the preview of a debut movie by Dianne Bell (above) and I'm here for immoral support. The film is set in Arizona and follows the journey of an obsessive librarian and a free spirited Scot. It is beautifully shot and has a confident inertia. In my half-awake state I couldn't stop puzzling over the title "Obselidia". For a first movie it's a testament to Dianne’s ingenuity, dedication and creativity- bravo!
 

After the screening we headed 100 yards to the Sheraton hotel for post match analysis and refreshments. Gaynor (Howe), the girl with curaçao eyes and co-star of the film, is here with husband Liam (Howe).

Liam, music producer and former member of Sneaker Pimps, is from my neck of the woods and tells me he has been working on new material with a mutual friend Edwyn (Collins)- small world.

Jules (Duncan) renowned for his creative debauchery can't stop effusing about the film.
 

I entrap the illusive songstress Jerry (Burns) who cranes her neck to talk to me, her four-inch heels bringing her chin in line with my naval. Jerry's voice of honey-glazed gravel is so voluminous it's unfathomable how she compresses it into her diminutive frame. 1pm and Lothian Road is waking as I make my way home, au bloody lit.

Dylan Moran- What It Is

 Got the comps, joined the queue and we were funneled into the Playhouse, flanked by my photograph of tonights act - Dylan Moran. The 3,000 seater is a sell-out, packed to it's claret rafters. Projected behind him loomed my shot. This came as a surprise; I hadn't realised my photograph was going to become part of the set.
 Tonight he's playing to his adopted home town of Edinburgh. Performing to locals and family is a mixed bag of excitement and pant-soiling fear. Dylan defiantly surmounted his nerves and left the audience with withdrawal symptoms.

Stewart Lee- Taking a Stand

 At The Stand Comedy Club the walls are perspiring and the heat is fanned by laughter. Stoking the flames is Stewart Lee, Britain's one-time 41st Funniest Man and satirical thorn in the backside of mediaocrity. 

 I've been called in to try and resolve his identity crisis. Stewart is often confused with "Terry Christian, Todd Carty, Morrissey, Edwyn Collins, Leonardo DiCaprio, Ray Liotta, Roland Gift, Ali Campbell, Mark Lamarr and a 1930's drawing of Tarzan."  It was a tall order but after a couple of sessions I could now offer him a selection of Stewart Lee impressions. From the shoot there wasn't a single image he'd censor. Stewart was a great subject and impeccably unkempt company.

 

Edinburgh Festival 2009
 
  I was urban somnambulating, on my way to the college art shop, Hypocanthus at the controls. My co-pilot was hijacked by a cacophony of power tools and generators coming from the college grounds. Perfect timing: city is under excavation and it appears the college isn’t exempt.
A look behind the tarpaulin and my simmering rage was taken off the heat. Inside a sculptor was mercilessly attacking a slab of rock. This was to be a stage for a month long performance.
Eleven shelters, each housing a sculptor and a block of stone, was the setting of Milestone- brainchild of Scottish sculptor Jake Harvey. He had the inspired vision to display 10 international sculptors (and a graduate) at work in the grounds of Edinburgh College of Art. Artists from Japan, the USA, Spain, Germany, Switzerland and the UK were assembled, each demonstrating their mastery and differing styles. Over the next month they would create a finished sculpture from scratch. Through gritted goggles they assaulted, smashed, gouged and beat their hapless victim into submission. The creative fallout covered everything in a blanket of white.
In sculpture evidence of the trauma and struggle between creator and creation is usually polished away before put on display. Here was a visceral demonstration of destruction in the quest for beauty - for art. Quarrying sculptors remorselessly destroyed in order to create: they are not art nihilists. Superficially their acts appear as wanton destruction, yet are demonstrations of a fevered desire to consummate their relationship. The rock never submits without a fight. The two find their way together with psychometry and ardor. The course is set in stone, dictated by the flow of the petrified veins and mille-feuilles. Milestone was an insight and a revelation. It helped me to better understand my processes and draw some analogies. My subject, like the sculptors stone, is defined by the light of it's surroundings. It too is impassive and acquiescent to its environmental conditions until I start to reveal with my light. With light I can obscure, hew and expose with surgical precision.
 Once a week, for the span of the event, I made my pilgrimage and kept a record of the consequent acts on this stage.

 
Priest paying homage to Jake Harvey Scott's creation.

Hayashi Takeshi Japan

Joel Fisher USA

Sibylle Pasche Switzerland

Gerard Mas Spain

Susanne Specht Germany

Peter Randall-Page and David Brompton-Greene

Jessica Harrison Scotland

Atsuo Okamoto Japan

Daniel Silver Israel/UK

Carlos Lizariturry Moro Spain

 The Edinburgh Festival is about to kick off and Mark (Borkowski) is already here casing the joint. I first met Mark 23 years ago when he was promoting chain-saw juggling clowns from French circus troupe Archaos.

  For many years we were creatively conjoined and intent on creatively twisting the public's melon. We share a kindred Carney spirit and appetite for subversion. Mark is now a legend in his field and a published authority on the art of the publicist.
  One of his many clients, James "Tappy" Wright is in Edinburgh promoting his new book 'Rock Roadie'. Tappy, a former roadie, claims in his book that Jimi Hendrix was murdered by his manager. My uncle Terry, a porter in the London morgue at the time of Hendrix's death, joked he had trouble screwing the casket shut due to the size of his legendary member. Terry was the final nail in the coffin.

The Cactus Gardener

The usual story- I met Kamikaze in a disused abattoir in the l'aisselle de Marseilles where the fetid stench of rendered carcasses clung to the walls. The site was trailer trashed; strewn with crippled and cannibalised caravans. The Kamikaze Plaza was an oasis of land-mine cacti in the slaughter-house's Esquina Latina. Tin baths, oil cans, pre-mulched toilets and piss-pots provided shelter from the bonemeal mistral.

 I had flown a thousand miles to discover that when he wasn't travelling he stayed just 2 miles from my door. Kamikaze reigns from the Principality of Pilton. His pathological impulse to bring laughter courses through his galvanised veins. Kamikaze's motto is 'C'est la Fuckin Vie' and his métier is cracking smiles in granite. We are each others star-gate.

 That was 7 years ago and now he's come knocking. Kamikaze's got a present for me hidden up his sleeve. He's been waiting to surprise me since returning from Peru and now he's inching-up his shirt cuff. There amongst the hallowed tapestry of tattoos stood the syringe-spined silhouette of the Cactus Gardener. My work is now indelibly mortalised.

Next week he's off to India for three months of laughter making and tea tasting- La Dolce Vita!

Century Club

 Tonight I'm in London accompanied by nervous excitement. I've been invited to the unveiling of 2 new rooms in Century Club. Century is a refuge of tranquility conveniently located in the heart of London's Theatreland. This oasis of calm is crowned with a roof-garden, a surviving bastion of tobacco camaraderie.

  I'm apprehensive because the rooms have been designed around my photographs and tonight is the first time I'll see them. Sophie (manager) commissioned two sets of prints- Cabaret for the new games-room and Fuerzabruta for the restaurant. The Cabaret photographs set a seductive and heady tone. All the details have been precisely worked out by interior designer Louise Begley, right down to the red felt cover of the pool-table.

The adjourning restaurant is in contrast light and airy. The suspended Fuerza dancers look down on the diners like sirens from a basilica fresco. To celebrate the occasion Sophie has laid on food and drinks. I've invited some friends on the condition that they're on their best behaviour.

Javier is already here, lounging resplendent under one of the Cabaret prints, cocktail in hand. He's talking to Josephine (Darvill Mills), cast member of Cabaret and subject of one of the photographs. Everyone is gobsmacked by the floor-to-ceiling print of Clemmie Sveaas and James Dreyfus that greets them.

Ralph (Brown), the only friend I know to be immortalised on celluloid and in cellulose, has turned up with that glint in his eye. We met when I was shooting the NT Auditions and hit it off like on-coming mail trains.

Ralph's a gifted pianist and saxophonist, you can find his recordings on CD and vinyl. He's about to perform at the Brighton Fringe Festival in the tribute band The Brighton Beach Boys and revels in the story of when I met Brian Wilson. As a side-line he's also an author, director, screenwriter, producer and prize-winning playwright. He is a polymath who just won't let go of his infatuation with acting.

Gerry (Cottle Jnr) arrived brandishing his Aussie amour, Sue. He's going through his Mungo-Gerry-fro-phase - the dude's a walking Van De Graaff de-generator. Hair apparent to the throne of the Cottle Dynasty, Gerry was born in a side-show, weened on midget's milk and has an incurable case of congenital showmanship. Gerry's the Philippe Petit of these occasions. When a party slackens and sides split Gerry gets out his metaphorical unicycle and stitches the void with a tightrope act of death-defying wit.

Rebecca (Daly) came up to me and took my arm for support. She'd been star struck and was still reeling. This involuntary reaction had never happened before. Bex, Avid Master and doyenne of the edit suite regularly rubs shoulders with the glitterati. Being confronted by her hero from adolescence 'Danny' (Withnail and I) was a disorienting experience. He'd obviously made a deeper impression on her than she'd realised. Ralph has that effect on people, beware!

As Abigail would agree "a party's not a party without vol-au-vents". Patrica (Lima) was that missing patisserie. She took the party up a gear and homed in on Iffat, the two of them committed social reformers.

 By day Iffat fights social injustice with a rolled copy of British Vogue under her arm. Tonight she was keeping a watchful, little-sisterly eye over me, making sure I was distributing myself equally. 
 

 Brother-in-arms Ed Webster (photographic producer at 4Creative) was casting a critical eye over the images. Ed's commitment to getting me representation is now taking it's toll. My photographs meet with his approval and he promises that the quest will not end until an agent sees sense.
 

Michael (Hulls) is a luminary in the world of theatre lighting design. The last time I spoke to him was to tell him his epitaph had just been read out on the radio. A panel of Saturday Review critics had savaged a performance he'd just worked on - 'in-i' by Juliette Binoche and Akram Khan. The critics agreed that the only saving grace was the lighting genius of Michael Hulls who eclipsed the show by turning 'Kapor into Rothko.' Michael was modestly horrified by this news; Anish Kapoor had designed the set!

When the final daiquiri was demolished we retreated to the roof-top garden and whiled away the night under the stars and smoke.

  Today our presence is graced by Karen (Lamond). Back in 1990 she winged it with me on an assignment to Romania. She had me under false pretenses, she said she was going to be my assistant. Karen brought her unique qualities to the role. Duties that jeopardised feminine poise, such as pushing and lifting, were the privilege of the photographer. I'd been commission by LIFT to travel to Romania by invitation of their Ministry of Culture and Religious Affairs. The assignment was to photograph 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' by the ironically titled 'Comedy Theatre of Bucharest'. The artists were now free of censorship and the prescriptive humour they were forced to perform under the dictatorship.
 By the time we got there the population had been served Nicolae and Elena Caecescu for Christmas. Whilst their son Nicu was banged away we had the run of his pad and the sheets were still warm. This was the caotically assembled headquarters of the newly formed Ministry of Culture and we were their first guests. Nicu had led the playboy life-style and his vulgar pretensions spewed over everything. The bedroom was circular, the bed was round too. When the door was shut it disappeared in a vacuum into the gold flock wallpaper. Above the bed a chandelier of crystal stalactites threatened to impale it's occupants at the flick of a switch. On arrival we were met by the night-porter, a gnarled curmudgeon coming to terms with the seismic upheaval to his life. With a chalk finger he drew our attention to the lampshade. He could swear it quivered. 'Bucharest has a terrible history of earthquakes'.
  Before we could give our hosts the gifts we bore from Scotland, it dawned on us that these perishables were to become our stable rations. At the International Hotel, the only place to eat, the vegetation had been wrestled from a mollusk- gastropod gastronomy. Karen was going through her pescetarian phase. The dishes on offer were a smorgasbord of grey, meat-based gelatinous knackerbrod. Anything would be better than this. So, Karen attempted to barter a tin of caviar from a waiter- Klass. These were the unique qualities she brought to the role of assistant. At night the city lights were extinguished to conserve power. The demonised gypsy population flooded the streets, besieging Bucharest until day-break. Curfew in Bucharest with Karen was a diet of smoked salmon, Drambuie and laughter. The things we brought fi hame.

  The shoot was grueling but an invaluable education in the healing properties of laughter. On our last night I had a kilogram of banknotes and no possible way of spending it. I offered the cash to the theatre but they refused it, preferring to democratically blow the lot on a party- fair do's. Two of the staff were elected to get the drinks: one to carry, the other to make sure he didn't take off with the money. They returned peering over stacks of crates. The party took place in the committee room at the rear of the theatre. A beige cell lit by a bank of migraine inducing fluorescent tubes segregated by a monolithic table. At one end of the room an exhausted upright piano slumped against the wall. Karen asked for a change of lighting- good call. Moments later the lights were killed and a chicane of gold candelabras lined the length of the table. Her next request- some music. They happily obliged with a pair of guitars and the full Beatles back catalogue. An official with an uncanny resemblance to Adolf Hitler frisked the piano and played "Boowgee Woowgie". "Does madam require anything more?" they gleefully pressed. "Two Pink Elephants" she replied, hurling the gauntlet squarely back at their feet. They came pirouetting back from the props department, trussed in pink hobby (horse) elephants. What a party!
In the intervening years she has become a successful and sought after beauty director and photographer. Karen learnt an important lesson; she'd need to change out of her Manolo's if she was going to travel down my path.