Brief 65: Big men

This is just a weird little thought I recently had. There was a point 15-20 years ago, a few years after rugby union had turned professional and the players had been able to devote more time to fitness and gym work, when I looked at the players on the pitch and just thought "Something's wrong here ... they're too big". Where rugby players had, in the amateur, pre-expert nutrition, era been a bit of a ragtag mixture, from the rotund to the relatively skinny, they were all now varying degrees of built, even naturally normal-sized men like Brian O'Driscoll and naturally little men like Shane Williams.

And it was wrong. And it was dangerous. And so it proved. Rugby is a concussion time bomb just starting to explode. Massive men like that shouldn't have all be thudding into each other all the time without the right protocols in place.

And what's this got to do with anything else?

Well, I've had the same thought nagging about young Hollywood male stars - they've all got these professional rugby physiques. Not enough of them look normal.

Sure, in the past you had your Stallones and Schwarzeneggers. but they were "muscle men", that was their calling card. Even Cruise was a normal shape, even Willis, let alone Hanks, Ford, Clooney etc.

Now it's all of them, all doing their groundwork in the gym, playing their superheroes and their occasional "look, I'm sensitive and can really act" role, then going on the chat show circuit trying to make out they're normal, or a bit kooky.

Naming no names, shit is weird with some of them. However they got those physiques, whatever. It's not healthy.

Brief 64: Bee Gees (and Fleetwood Mac)

I've watched documentaries, recently, about Fleetwood Mac and the Bee Gees, two bands with pretty similar trajectories, from considerable, but relatively local, success in the late 60s, to turmoil and a fallow period in the early 70s, to unimaginable hugeness in the mid-70s, 80s comeback, bitterness, bit of tragedy, and, above all, inescapable songs.

Both docs also ended with the bearded founder/survivors (Mick Fleetwood and John McVie, Barry Gibb) staring out on water in their paradise US homes (the former live near each other in Hawaii, the latter in Miami) but while Fleetwood and McVie had an air of contentedness and smugness, the oldest Gibb, naturally enough, exudes a sense of loss and sadness.

The final line he says is heartbreaking; "What I wanted to say earlier is that I'd rather have them all back and no hits at all" - the framing of it, because he is naturally bullish and proud of what he's achieved, talks quite matter-of-factly about chronology, detail... and in all that, you could see that he felt the truth of his grief might have been missed.

The Gibb brothers died in reverse order - the youngest, Andy, first (a solo artist who had 3 US Number 1s, all co-written by Barry, of whom he was the spitting image), in 1988, then Maurice, the younger twin, then Robin, the older twin.

And Barry remains. It is clear he was the driving force, the greatest talent, and, for all that, is not entirely revered in his own right like eg George Michael, Elton John, Ray Davies, let alone McCartney, Brian Wilson, Bowie, Freddie Mercury.

I don't think it's true to say the Bee Gees never got respect - for all that they were perceived as, superficially, a bit silly, with their looks and their dress sense and the infamous Clive Anderson interviewed, I think even people like me always knew the Bee Gees did some great songs ...

The documentary certainly reminds you of how many truly beautiful songs he wrote, from To Love Somebody to How Deep is Your Love, and equally impressive is that, in his "writing for other people" phase, he came up with four bona fide standards, in Woman in Love, Heartbreaker, Islands in the Stream and Chain Reaction.

Anyway, amongst other things, I guess the story, for me, is that there's always interest and surprising detail and poignancy in the mainstream and in what I'd previously held at a distance.

Brief 63: Professional footballers are good at what they do

I'm going to shock you. Footballers are good at football. But, really. More than you think. Every single one of them, even the ones who look like they're a bit rubbish.

And football (the playing side, only, of course) is arguably the world's greatest meritocracy. Imagine, an actual meritocracy.

Here's one way to understand it - I was probably the best player in my school year when I was 11, and it was the prep school of a prestigious private school, and then, throughout my school life, going forward, I loved football, played football, more than anything else, to the detriment of my education, socialisation, any other sport. I played all the way through as many lunch breaks as i could till red, muddy and exhausted, played in teams, did keepy-ups and shooting practice at home - I was utterly obsessed with football. I would have given everything, or thought I would, to be a professional footballer.

And I never got within a million miles of getting anywhere. Nowhere near a trial, not even for Brentford or Barnet or Charlton or any club people think is not "the top level". Because I was only doing what everyone else was doing, and lots of them were better and prepared to do even more to prove it. Not just everyone else at my school, some of whom got better than me as the years went on, though they never got near it, either. Ever other half-talented kid in every school in almost every country in the world. 

You don't play at being a professional footballer. You don't toy with it while you try something else. You don't take a gap year then come back to it. The ones that have made it have been utterly, punishingly committed to it since long before their voices broke. And not just the ones who made it to Chelsea and Man Utd but also the ones who made it to Crawley and Salford. And not just the ones who made it, but also the ones who didn't quite make it, who were in the youth team but didn't make the first team squad.

They have all been through a fiercely competitive, professional system and any one who plays one game of professional football has, relatively triumphed.

Doesn't this apply to every sport? No, not to the same extent. Nowhere near. No game is anywhere so universal, so sought after, and many sports are nowhere near so precisely skilled. Sometimes rowers become cyclists. Basketball players become boxers.

Every sport requires skill and tactics, some more than others. Football requires each individual to make countless high-pressure decisions every minute. It is physically and mentally exhausting.

Another, minor, anecdote about the level of fitness required to play football well. Most of my adult football, from uni to the leg-breaking end at 30, was played in a state of vague disrepair, relying on ever-decreasing levels of natural fitness. But one summer, after one football season had ended around April, I got properly fit, was running about 40 miles a week, had lost a stone or two, felt sharp and fresh.

The  first football friendly of the new season, in a park in August, just a friendly, and I remember collapsing pretty much being sick 15 minutes before the end. The point - football is hard. Harder, aerobically, to play at full tilt, than almost anything else. They're all superb athletes..

They all make several complex calculations every minutes, and getting any one of those wrong could result in disaster for themselves and their team.

The best are irreplaceable. Literally, no amount of money could replace Lionel Messi in his prime. The worst are still near the top of the mot substantial, competitive pyramid in the world.

Song 92: Doll Parts

'Top of the Pops' was, at its best, ok - a passable and peculiar weekly ritual which culture outgrew, but not for the better.

I occasionally enjoy watching old episodes on BBC4 of a Friday evening - they're currently halfway through 1990. Sometimes I know that I will have watched the episodes that are being reshown. Yet I wouldn't say, for all that I count myself as having a good "memory", that I remember them.

I was going to write, a few months ago, a list of most memorable Top of the Pops performances, but was surprised at how little I could think of. 

Sure, I can think of the first time I saw Blur and Damon wearing a Penguin t-shirt, I remember Michael Jackson videos, and New Order on the beach in LA, I remember people talking about Pulp the next day at school, I remember Tears for Fears doing 'Shout', I remember happenings and numbers, but in terms of a performance, a connection, something true and real, which broke beyond that businesslike, sterile yet winning format, I kept on returning to just one, really just one, which was this, Hole performing their Top 20 smash 'Doll Parts' in early 1995.

This is not what 'Top of the Pops' was mainly like. Mostly people mimed, and mostly there were backing tracks. And mostly people mimed along to "I want you cos I'm Mr Vain" and the camera panned around to people dancing awkwardly and trying to pretend like they were having more fun than they were.

But this was this - a recent widow looking at camera and howling "some day you will ache like I ache" ...

Timing-wise, I think that's precisely when I started getting into music heavily, started buying NME and Vox, hitched my wagon to the Britpop horse.

For all the impression that 'Doll Parts' made, for all that this was so much more than everything else on a Thursday night at 7pm,  I never bought it or any other Hole album.

Courtney Love is something of a testcase for misogyny in popular culture. The answers aren't obvious.

The question is, I suppose, is she a) a person of great talent and charisma held back and not given her due by perceptions of how a famous woman ought to behave, or b) is she someone who knew how to play the press to use her outrageousness to grab every bit of fame she could get?

Bit of both, innit? She had to put up with a lot, not even counting the main, unthinkably awful event itself ... people thinking her husband wrote her songs, people thinking she was in some way to blame, people (not least cos of the Nick Broomfield doc, which I'm afraid I lapped up, tenuous as it was) thinking she was actually to blame, insinuation and gossip, rumour and insult.

My university flatmate was a big Courtney Love champion, and I'm pretty sure I wasn't really having it, probably made immature and presumptuous moral judgements. I did think she was good at acting though - her performances in 'The Man in the Moon' and, particularly, 'The People Vs Larry Flynt' generated some acclaim and one might have thought a significant movie career would ensue. 

It didn't really happen, and I expect there were a variety of reasons why. But, yes, there'd surely have been more good parts for her if she was a man.

I wouldn't say it's entirely true that she was mistreated by the music press. That's not quite how I remember it. They loved to interview her, and clearly some of them thought she was fantastic, spoke up for her smartness, talent and charisma. And Hole were successful, selling millions of records, by any reckoning.

So, I guess, I'm mainly asking of myself ... why, when I responded to 'Doll Parts' viscerally as a 16 year old boy on the cusp of a lifelong obsession with rock'n'roll music, did I not pursue it, more likely in the coming years to buy an Embrace album than a Hole album?

Brief 62: Forgotten sportspeople of the 1990s

Here is a brief, niche, post, which is actually what it appears to be. It is more interesting to me than to anyone else.

I just think there's something in who from the crossover, somewhat terrestrial but somewhat satellite, distant yet tangible, era of the 90s is still completely in the national conscious and who is, relatively speaking, somewhat forgotten.

The criteria would be that they would have to have been very very good at what they did, and, for a while, a regular part of British life, so not just people who were very good but not too well known at the time (eg. say, squash player Peter Nicol), and not people who were not that great but briefly flashed across our screens (eg Nil Lamptey).

1. Rory Underwood - I mean, like i say, "forgotten" is relative, but compared to other rugby players like Guscott, Dallaglio, Brian Moore etc ... Rory Underwood has done very little media, has a very small wikipedia entry, and he was probably one of Britain's greatest ever sportspeople, a try-scoring record holder by a vast margin and entirely central to a consistent, long period of success in English rugby. I noticed that, after his first two matches, England won every five-nations match in which he scored ...

2. Sally Gunnell - three times in the Top 3 of Sports Personality of the Year, an Olympic champion, a world champion, a world record holder, but, I'd say, not that highly remembered these days.

3. Robin Smith - was, alongside Graham Gooch, England's best batsman for half a decade, and incredibly entertaining, then it all came to an end pretty quickly.

4. Monica Seles - won three Grand Slams in a year, two years in a row. Perhaps she is not forgotten, as people remember the terrible thing that happened to her (being stabbed on court in her prime, putting her out of the game for two years) but I'm not sure it's remembered how dominant she'd become when that happened.

5. Andy Townsend (and to a lesser extent, Gary McAllister) - again, it's not so much that people wouldn't know who Andy Townsend is, as he's done lots of punditry, but I think, because his prime straddles the Football League and Premier League eras, because he's not English, people forget how good he was. He was one of the very best footballers in Britain for a decent chunk of time. This is also true of McAllister, but that's probably fairly well remembered in his case.

6. Simon Geoghegan - this is my main one, who I've banged on about before. Just missed the era of high-profile professionalism, had his career ended by injury, was bafflingly not picked for the Lions. Was utterly electrifying, if it had happened a few years later, would have been a massive star of rugby.

7. Tony Jarrett - because Colin Jackson was usually a bit better and has had a full media career, I think a top athlete like Tony Jarrett, who won two World Championship silvers and ran 13.00, has been pretty much forgotten. This could apply to quite a lot of very good athletes of that era, but I think he's the most consistently successful one.

8. Garry Schofield - I used to love the rugby league, and they'd show it all the time on the BBC, and while some of those stars, like Offiah and Shaun Edwards, are still pretty well known, Garry Schofield, who is the record appearance holder for Great Britain, is a name I haven't heard in a couple of decades.

9. Alton Byrd - they also used to show basketball lot, and this was a little American guy who played for Great Britain and for Kingston who seemed to dominate every game.

I thought of a few more, but it's a long way from a full list ...