31-35, more people i find interesting
BILL DRUMMOND
It
seems a bit silly now to say how inspiring I found Bill Drummond’s book ‘33’
with its dry tales of mad stunts and art terrorism – that was a wilder, ruder
me, who had some aspiration to subversion. Still, it’s easy enough to love the music
of the KLF and the silliness, but I mark Bill Drummond above all for his
description of a still landscape a few minutes after a plane crash. One of the
indelible images constantly in my head.
SONNY LISTON
Sonny could lick all them cats. To me, everything about the 20th century, all its anger, its hypocrisy,
its violence and sadness, its failures and successes, its misconceptions and
propaganda, its journey of exploitation, its squalor and glamour, is there in the face and the story of
Sonny Liston.
When I started back trying to write poems a few years ago, one of
the first things I tried to do was, as an exercise, write 6 poems about Sonny Liston.
The first five weren’t good, but the last one, I still really like a couple of
bits of it (it owes something to the Mountain Goats song Love, Love, Love…
I’LL WRITE A BOOK ABOUT SONNY LISTON
Sonny Liston found a way to turn hate into love;
Death did not defeat him like Muhammad’s phantom punch.
He might well not believe it if you told him of the songs,
the books written to save his soul long after he is gone.
I’ll write six poems about him just to tell him someone cares
About the misbegotten, vilified and easily led .
There’s no worthwhile 20th century if Sonny is erased,
The light will shine upon him, though too little and too late.
I’ll write six poems for Sonny Liston, making one for every round
He lasted with Ali on the grim night his life fell down.
History needs it villains, but those villains need a break -
Sonny Liston’s afterlife need not be marked with shame.
Line the streets of Philadelphia ‘cause it’s Sonny Liston Day.
History’s been rewritten and his reputation saved.
All around St Louis I hear crowds of people shout
God save Sonny Liston, you can’t keep a champion down.
JULIE CHRISTIE
Mainly by various coincidences, like studying the source material as a school text and the kind of things they'd show on idle Bank Holiday Mondays, I saw several Julie
Christie films when I was a teenager. Mainly they’re great films. Then there’s
Dr Zhivago, a slightly flawed film which centres itself on her character as a
quasi-mythical romantic figure. So Julie Christie has always been my favourite
film actress, as surely as The Big Lebowski’s been my favourite film.
She also,
emerges, almost uniquely, from the bacchanial expose of 70s Hollywood that was
Peter Biskind’s ‘Easy Riders, Raging Bulls’ as a completely solid and
tremendous character. She has, since being one of the world’s most famous faces
for a few years, just flown over the fray, popping up with the occasional great
performance every few years before disappearing back to her own life.
PAUL NEWMAN
I see Newman as the male Julie
Christie – iconically beautiful in the 60s whilst also making a series of
genuinely excellent films, someone with hinterland and sense, who rose above
the fray of it all. I know there are several other male icons of that era like
Brando, Steve McQueen, James Dean, who you might say have a greater mythology
surrounding them, but I’d take Newman’s life and filmography over all of them.
ZAHA HADID
I wanted to include an architect to indicate that I
love buildings, and that looking at buildings with absolutely no knowledge or expertise is a huge part of what's going on in my head. I know how silly that sounds.
I wouldn’t say Zaha Hadid’s are my absolute favourite
buildings, but she was a good representative of the mad ambition and cost of magnificent
buildings, and how it’s nearly always worth it. I wouldn't say that applies to all vast ambitions. But with great buildings, well, the huge and lasting joy and purpose they bring can really override all negativity about cost.
