The Ned Wood Archive

Let me take you to the empty place

on my fire engine

13th Floor Elevators

The first thing I did when I got back to Southampton after the Gabriel gig was roll into the coffee bar. I’d got lucky and found a salesman to drop me off along the avenue, so I’d walked over to the Union building to get a cup of tea and some chocolate. And, excellently, Bernie and Chris were there. Bernie had Anarchy or something on the Juke Box and was clearly trying to get Chris to meditate to it. Bernie was sat on the low benches we had in there, with his legs in the untidy mess that was his best attempt at a lotus position, his arms poised as elegantly as he could manage in front of his stomach, and his eyes closed, trying to look serene. You could see his lips moving and his misshapen teeth flashing as he tried, no doubt, to explain some subtlety to Chris. Chris, I think from his benign expression, was humouring him.

I put my cup down on the table, and Chris smiled, saying, “Ahh, we now begin the renowned tea ceremony”. He lifted my cup with both of his hands as if saluting it and then handed it to me. Bernie forgot his Zazen sitting and fired a barrage of questions at me “Where’ve you been, who did you see, what were they like…” The thing with Bernie is that he doesn’t always listen cos he knew who I was going to see. I’d told him before I’d left. And another thing is that when he’s in one of his moods his attention span gets shorter and shorter and he changes subject more quickly than the tracks on a Ramones album. Within a minute he was back to meditation

“I’m teaching Chris how to meditate,” he announced.

“Bernie,” I replied, “do you not think that, perhaps, he knows?”

“Yes, of course he knows how to meditate the old fashioned way, but this is 1977. You’ve got to move with the times. If we’re going to be Zen punks, we’re going to have to meditate to the Pistols.” And then with a sudden insight he added “you have to free your mind of all the trappings of everyday consciousness, and what better way to empty your mind than to fill it with Anarchy in the UK?”

Chris smiled. When he listened to the discussions Bernie and me had, he kept quiet for most of the time and then with one simple phrase brought us both back to earth. This time he told us that we should find somewhere peaceful and beautiful to meditate. We should all go and sit on the side of a hill somewhere and free our minds.

“Riff, Bernie,” he said, “you two have gotta climb a mountain with me soon.”

After he said that, there was a serene moment while Bernie and I both silently imagined the beauty of climbing our favourite hill, before Bernie smashed it saying: “Go away, Raworth, there are no mountains in southern England.”

But the idea had been sown in his head, because Bernie immediately asked me about the mapping, which is the rite of passage that you go through at the end of your second year on a Geology course. You spend 6 weeks or more on a piece of land ten kilometres square. You have to visit every single piece of rock in those ten square kilometres and produce a map showing what they all are. My mapping was coming up that summer. Bernie, being a first year, had to wait another 15 months. If you go to an exotic University, you end up mapping in the Pyrenees or the Swiss Alps. I was going to map in Derbyshire.

So Bernie asked me all about it, but, apart from telling him I was mapping in Derbyshire, I really wasn’t able to tell him much.

“Sorry, Bernie, mate, but I have no idea what you’re supposed to do apart from just walk round the fields. Maybe I’ll find out when I get there.”

“Pity,” he said, “you haven’t even got a mountain then.”

Chris didn’t have field trips or such, so we used to pull his leg a bit and tell him when we were off to all of these exotic locations. It all started when Bernie went on his first year day trip to the Isle of Wight. It was something everyone on the geology course did – like an initiation. Bernie had said: “I’m away to the Isle of Wight this weekend” and Chris had said, in all seriousness: “You’re a bit late aren’t you. Bob Dylan will have left by now.”

Meanwhile, Bernie had changed the subject back again. “You shouldn’t just go and watch old folk like Gabriel and Reed. You should check out the new bands.” And then he started harping on about Television, which was a band he’d heard about from his brother, or some mate of his, or the NME. A couple of days later when we were down in Virgin records, Bernie said to buy the Television album, because it was like nothing else he’d ever heard. He said it was so good, I’d kick myself if I waited any longer. He said if I didn’t like it, he’d give me my two pound fifty back.

“Two pound forty nine,” shouts Bernie. “I’ll give you what you paid for it, not a penny more.”

I’d gone down to get Helen of Troy and this new single by the Jam that the whole world was raving about. So I grabbed the Television album as well. Well I must admit, he was right. Even though I was so excited about Paul Weller’s riff on In the City and played it five times before I got to listen to Marquee Moon, even though I played the Jam on and on those next few weeks, and even though I became known as Jam fan, now, years later I listen to Marquee Moon more than I do Helen of Troy or In the City. It was like nothing else I’d heard. Nothing remotely like the Faces or the Stones or Roxy or Bowie. Nothing like the Clash or the Ramones. Not even like Patti Smith.

It starts with this insistent nagging rushing ringing guitar, chiming like the Byrds never did. Verlaine and Lloyd at each other’s throats throughout the entire eight tracks, two guitars not giving each other any peace. Rushing through the first track like they’ll never keep it up. All destructive urges.

“Venus”: more chiming, but slower. Do you feel low? Not at all. “Marquee Moon”: another highlight with its guitar ringing like freedom. This is New York Calling. Some of it soulful, some of it soulless. Some of it harsh, some of it delicate. “Elevation”, “Prove It”, “Torn Curtain”. They’re all masterpieces. They deconstruct their songs, stopping, pausing, and then building the web of sound up piece by piece. First guitar for two or three bars, then bass, then second guitar, then drums. Or maybe bass first, then second guitar. Or every way, as on the title track. Deliberately showing off the structure. Or they explode into invention, soaring away, burning down the house.

All of which is why, a month or so later, the two of us head up to London town to see this great band.