Cherry Gilchrist
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My Secret Life as a Folk-Singer

14/4/2016

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 In the mid-sixties, when I was in my teens and living in Birmingham, I discovered folk song, and fell headlong in love with it. My haunts ranged from the Irish folk club ‘The Holy Ground’ to the rather more dubious ‘Grotto’ in Deritend. I sang, played the guitar, and even got paid for it sometimes – much to the displeasure of my head mistress who spotted an ad in the local paper for a forthcoming appearance. And then I came across Charles Parker. Charles was a red-haired, middle-aged but revolutionary radio producer. He and folk singer Ewan McColl were responsible for the innovative series of Radio Ballads, which are the stuff of legend today – Singing the Fishing, The Travelling People and The Big Hewer.
 
Charles ran a weekly folk song workshop, hosted by Pam and Alan Bishop, and I trotted along to this to learn from my elders and betters. He was a passionate man, and cared passionately about the music and the voices, songs and lives of the people he recorded – the Radio Ballads were innovative because they allowed working people and the dispossessed to speak up for themselves. He wanted everything to have the same veracity; he would tell you if your song moved him to tears, or if it just reeked of artificiality. I found him at first annoying and then inspirational – he and Ewan were intensely political, but whereas Ewan was a hard man, Charles was imaginative and compassionate. I invited him to my wedding a few years later, and he gave us a set of the Radio Ballad records as a gift. I was saddened to read of his early death not so long after that.
 
The photo you see here is one that I’ve only recently discovered. It was taken in 1967, when I was doing a post-A level project on folk song collecting. Charles took me on a couple of expeditions to visit Mrs Cecilia Costello in the Jewellery Quarter of Birmingham. Mrs Costello had already been discovered, recorded, and her songs published by earlier collectors – especially the very beautiful ‘Grey Cock’ –but then (according to Charles) neglected and forgotten. He found her again, living in her humble terraced home, full of tales of bygone days in Brum. She sang and talked, and we listened and recorded. Later, I was allowed to ‘borrow’ (strictly against the rules, I gathered!) some of Charles’s BBC equipment and I went on a visit of my own to record her stories and music.
 
At some point this photo must have been taken, perhaps by Pam Bishop who was building up an archive. And, as I say, I had no knowledge of it until it was used at a recent Charles Parker Study Day as their background image for the whole day. People there were, apparently, asking, ‘Who is this woman?’ One person in the audience knew. That was Doc Rowe, an old folk club buddy of mine, and a lifelong folklore scholar. ‘I know who it is!’ he said. He obtained a copy and sent it on to me. Thank you so much, Doc!
 
I am now hoping to get a copy of the complete recordings made of Mrs Costello, which were released a few years ago. I have never forgotten  her or Charles. In fact, I would say that they have helped to shape my approach as a writer. I learned how powerful the voice of an individual human being can be, to sing songs, conjure up the past, and convey messages from the heart. I put much of what I learned, indirectly, into my book, ‘Your Life, Your Story’. So, thank you too, Charles and Cecilia.
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Vintage Verse

19/8/2013

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Vintage verse - the shame and the pride

I feel a little sick as I open the old notebook with its hard marbled covers. Lined paper, page after page of writing. Some carefully inscribed, some scrawled with crossings out, while others are plainly ‘best efforts’ to write the words neatly. Yes, my old poetry book, compiled in my teens.

There’s something disturbing about plunging back into that maelstrom of youthful emotionsthat makes me want to run for shelter. Oh, the melodrama of thwarted desires, the fears of incipient madness, the elegies to nature and the river of life! (I’m quite getting into the mood for metaphor now.)

But, actually, there is good stuff here too. And some poems that are nearly good. My message to fellow writers is, therefore: don’t throw out your poetic babies with the bathwater. Even if some of the phrases make you groan, don’t give up on the whole lot. For every cringe-making expression of love, loss or despair, there is probably quite a good line embedded in your verse. The youthful poet seems to swing between the extremes of cliché and originality, so you’ll probably find both when you go back to the roots of your writing. And, after all, who wasn’t a poet at the age of eighteen?


PicturePoem written under my then name of Cherry Phillips
I boost my flagging confidence by reminding myself that I have proof that I could write well, now and again. One of those poems was accepted by the prestigious Poetry Review and published in the autumn of 1967. The editor, Derek Parker (who later became a good friend, but that’s another story) wrote me an encouraging letter and sent me money. Real money. For writing. Wow! He also suggested I should send him more poems. Did I? No, I was too caught up in the excitement of growing up, and didn’t bother. Been there, done that. 

PictureDoing the folk thing at school - I'm the guitar on the right
And I wrote a kind of 60’s beat poem about a folk club, my favourite haunt of the era. (Think Birmingham, Irish Folk Clubs of the late 1960s. Anyone else out there remember them?) I sent it off to ‘Sing’, an America folk magazine which was, I think, just beginning to be published in the UK. It was 1966. A few days later, the phone rang. Now, a phone call in those days was an event; the black Bakelite phone stood in the chilly hall and access to it was restricted to wartime standards of brevity and necessity.

‘It’s the editor from America on the phone for you!’ they said in tones of wonder.

Eric Winter wasn’t actually calling from America (that would have been equivalent to signalling earth from a space satellite) but from London.

‘Loved your poem!’ he said. ‘I just read it out at the Albert Hall. We’ve been doing a big concert there.’

What? I was both thrilled and embarrassed. The event was so out of keeping with my everyday world that I almost ignored it. And I don’t still have a copy of the magazine where it was subsequently published.

A terrible mix of teenage casualness and lack of confidence is mainly responsible both for losing my copy and abandoning writing poetry, at least as a regular activity. I’ve written poems over the years, sometimes quite frequently, but never with such endeavour or so often.

Perhaps it’s not too late to try again?

And while I’m rooting through the past, I find references to my glorious rise and disgraceful fall as a contributor to Jackie magazine, also in my teenage years. But that story can wait until my next blog post. Till then, here's one of the better poems from my teenage collection, written in 1967.


                                                            May Day

                            All in green and yellow

                            We leap up the dandelion hill

                            where white ponies snort for joy

                            and celandines swim by marsh-lined streams

                           All in singing

                            the breathtaking bound to the top of the hill,

                            Tossing away the spread of the view to watch

                            two bees humming in harmony, and

                            a new swarm begin

                            All in a blow of white

                            the mayflower, the cream and bitter black tree that

                            waits for fetching home by those who do not forget.

                            We have not forgotten, we hug

                            huge spiney armfuls till petals float in our hair

                            All in running

                            down, down the flying grass

                            while hedge birds circle above

                            and the old oak swoops to meet us.

                            It is all now,

                            to swing on its flaking branches

                            and watch the sky upside down


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Marat Sade revisited, with a touch of Downton Abbey

18/1/2013

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(Place cursor over each photo to see caption, and click to enlarge)
It’s been a curious journey, rediscovering the production of Marat Sade that we performed as students in Cambridge in 1968. Since I put up the original blog post with photos, in June, I’ve had conversations both fascinating and slightly disturbing with others who were there at the time.

Did I remember, asked Isabel, the beautiful blonde standing above the crowd of lunatics, that we were dressed in real shrouds? No, I did not.

Did I also know that it was Julian Fellowes, of Downton Abbey fame, who played the asylum’s director? Hah! I was vaguely aware that we were at Cambridge at the same time, and hadn’t been able to remember which one he was.

And ‘she died young’, I was told by Margaret, another friend, pointing at the photo of the Dutch girl who had once described me as ‘very, very untidy’. As Else was some kind of anarchist, it seemed to me ridiculous then that she should notice or care about such things. Now I feel sad that she left us a long time ago.  

In another photo, that features my own non-starring role, I can also see the hand of my future husband (bottom right), placed on the shoulder of the guy next to him. Note the black marks on its knuckles. This was the result of us joining in a student protest in March 1968, against Denis Healey was visiting Cambridge, and whose foreign policy displeased us. According to reports, nearly 1000 students turned out. ‘As he attempted to leave, they surrounded his car and lay down in front of it. As students threw themselves in front of Healey’s car, the police tossed them into the gutter, injuring many.’ (British Student Activism in the Long Sixties - Caroline Hoefferle) Chris wasn’t in the car rocking posse, but was charging down Trumpington Street with the student mob when he tripped, or was knocked down, and had his hand stamped on by a policeman. The marks didn’t go for years. I came away unscathed; I was always a lukewarm protestor, and backed off when there was trouble brewing.

Acting lunatics and joining in tumultuous protests seemed entirely separate activities at the time. Now I am not so sure. Both had an element of wild release, and a bitterness towards the establishment. In Marat Sade, M. Coulmier, ‘the bourgeois director of the hospital’ as played by Julian Fellowes, supervises the performance, accompanied by his wife and daughter. ‘He believes the play he has organised to be an endorsement of his patriotic views. His patients, however, have other ideas, and they make a habit of speaking lines he had attempted to suppress...’ A far cry from Downton, Baron Fellowes, but perhaps there is some strange connecting thread, relating to the aristocracy?

To crown this rather haunting experience of revisiting the time, Isabel sent me extracts from letters she had written to her mother at the time. I’ll paste them here, with her kind permission; they speak for themselves.

On 9 February 1968, she wrote:


“Sunday morning dawned bright and clear and I ventured forth to audition for the part of a mad woman in Marat Sade. I went to a rehearsal on Wednesday and we had to do the most amazing things. Still it was huge fun and like the man said – “What’s the point of a revolution without general copulation?”  

On 14 March  her mood was darker, but triumphant:

“The production of the Marat Sade has been going like a bomb. However, it’s terribly scaring and I spent the whole of Tuesday night having the most vile nightmares. I’m very proud of the fact that a large blow-up of a mad-me is adorning the window of Bowes & Bowes – FAME at last.”


The reference to the bomb is eerily prophetic, since the person acting the herald, was later imprisoned for blowing up the Post Office Tower in London.

I should add that most of us have turned out to be very nice people. Thank you, Isabel, Jill, Dominique, Sue, Chris, Bruce, Jane, Margaret, Tim, Jo, Pippa and all the others whose names I can’t quite remember, but who were great companions.

If you were around at the time, would you like to comment or add your memories?


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Cambridge goes mad for Marat Sade

17/8/2012

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It was in the early spring of 1968 that a bunch of assorted students, friends and townies began to rehearse for a production of Marat Sade in Cambridge . Or, to give it its full title, The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade, written by Peter Weiss. See the following link for plot, if you can work it out. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marat/Sade

We gave our all to the madness and chaos. Bruce Birchall, our alternative-style theatre director extraordinaire, strode around rehearsals thwacking his tall boots with a whip, de Sade style.  It was a stirring, primeval experience, and when we performed at Peterhouse College, one friend in the audience reported, ‘At first I was seeing students acting lunatics. But then you really did become lunatics.’ Praise indeed.

These photos below are the sheets of contact photos for the production which I’ve managed to keep hold of all these years. Spot me looming in the third photo down, top row, third from the left – lots of long dark hair.

One of the poignant aspects of looking at these photos now is to ruminate on what became of those who took part. Here are some of our varied destinies: imprisoned as member of the Angry Brigade, human rights lawyer, initiated as shaman in Siberia, financial journalist, sent down from Cambridge for drug dealing, local radio commentator, advertising executive, writer (that’s me), died young of natural causes, computer scientist. Mixed bag. And now I’m sad, when searching out Bruce Birchall, to find that he died last year (1946-2011). Re the conversation about Bruce’s demise at http://www.ecforum.org.uk/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=3627, I’m afraid the ‘poor personal hygiene’ comment really was true! You didn’t get too close. But he was a talented director, as acknowledged at http://www.unfinishedhistories.com/history/individuals/bruce-birchall/

Right, reminiscing over - who’s for a revival of Marat Sade?

If you have memories of this production, please leave your comments here. For better views of the photos,  contact me via this website and I may be able to email them to you.

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Isle of Wight Festival, 1969

6/4/2012

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My only surviving photo of the Isle of Wight Festival, 1969
Isle of Wight Festival 1969
Or: The Rainbow Years
Were you there? If so, I probably didn’t see you. It was a seething scrum, after all. Did you watch Bob Dylan? Oh, was he that dot on the stage, almost out of sight, literally, even in the days when I didn’t need glasses? And did you enjoy hanging out with the love crowd of ’69? Hmm – in between the hunt to find food and an unpolluted toilet, I can’t say it was my most blissful experience.

But, hey, I do love to remember the festival that I hated! It was a journey of self-discovery, after all. The one where I discovered I didn’t like crowds, rock music and being stuck on small islands. And quite genuinely, my 60s memories are precious to me. I was there – I saw, I did. I am entitled to reminisce, with a groan.

It looked promising, on arrival. A pleasant green field to put up our tiny two-man tent, lots of space around. That didn’t last. My then-boyfriend, later- husband and I relaxed, allowed ourselves to become chilled out, probably spaced out too. Then tents began to spring up all around us, liberally sprinkled with lager-swilling inhabitants. Not the dope-smoking, happy hippies we were used to, or the students of our own normal habitat, but rough tough guys out to make a weekend of it using traditional methods of booze and fighting to enhance the experience. Nearby copses and ditches soon became unusable as green loos, and the excited chattering became a continuous twenty-four hour uproar. Despite my long hair and generally dishevelled appearance, I was actually an early-to-bed, prefers folk to-rock kind of wimp.

I only have short memory clips of the weekend but those that remain are certainly connected with moments of self-awakening. We started to go hungry. The organisers hadn’t expected such huge crowds, around 150,000 it’s estimated. They hadn’t provided enough toilets (‘nuff said already) or food. First basic insight: I don't like to live without loos or sustenance - why pay for the privilege of doing that? Once the local village shop had run dry of groceries, we watched as festival vendors hiked their prices higher and higher. The equivalent of £10 for a slice of fruit pie, for instance. I saw and noted how exploitation and greed flourishes even when the message is freedom, peace and love. That’s two revelations, and the third was more of a confirmation. I couldn’t really be bothered with the speck of Dylan on a faraway stage, droning out music I’d heard already and didn’t particularly like. I should have known that; I had queued overnight on a Birmingham pavement with friends a few years earlier just for the fun of it, to buy Dylan tickets which I didn’t then want to use. (And no, I didn’t sell them on at a profit!) Hmm – so I was a dead loss at a festival then, wasn’t I?


Fourth revelation: I couldn’t leave when I wanted to. When the crowds built up, it became impossible to get where you wanted, even just walking around, let alone trying to get off the island. Besides, my boyfriend was all for staying and he seemed to be enjoying himself. After the festival finished, we had to join a shuffling throng of refugees trying to make their way to the port and onto a ferry boat back to Southampton. It took hours. I remember then driving through Winchester (probably, we’d hitched a lift – though how we managed that with so many others around, I don’t know) and silently intoning the words of the song ‘Winchester Cathedral, you’re bringing me down’ to myself.


I’ve tried the Isle of Wight, festivals and camping since, though separately, never all together again, and have to say that my illuminations on that occasion proved to be correct. I don’t like any of them. I blurted out my antipathy for the Isle recently at a family get-together, only to discover that a certain tribe of in-laws hail from there. We managed to make a joke of it – just. My daughter has done the correct thing though and rebelled against her mother’s preferences. She’s a professional festival organiser. She cut her teeth on illicit entries to Glastonbury – once in a drum box, in a roadie’s van – and has organised music events across Europe and Australia. I’m very proud of her, just as long as I don’t have to go too.


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    Cherry Gilchrist

    Author of books on family history, relationships, alchemy, myths & legends. Life writing tutor teaching for Universities of Oxford & Exeter. Keen on quirky, ancient and mysterious things.

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