John Otway & Wild Willy Barrett @ the Cluny, Newcastle

Friday 9th May 2008

We are delighted to bring back to Newcastle one of the UK's leading musicians, but this time with Wild Willy Barrett.

Info on Willy Barrett soon, but here is the Otway background

The Nation's 7th Most Popular Lyricist

John Otway first achieved notoriety, with Wild Willy Barrett, twenty years ago live on The Old Grey Whistle Test . He leapt six foot astride an amplifier with no protection between the very hard object he was descending towards and the most delicate parts of his anatomy. A fascinated public rewarded this very daring, stupid act with a hit record Cor Baby That's Really Free and a sizable live audience.

Polydor Records, desperate to capitalise on the new punk hit acts of the day and mistaking Otway's unusual gymnastics for talent, seized the opportunity. They signed him to a deal that these days would be worth close to a million. True to form and with acts just as daring, stupid and equally fascinating and painful as the TV one, the vast fortune was reduced to an overdraft the size of several houses in a mere nine months.

This sort of behaviour generally tends to herald the end of young promising careers, but  a heady mix of blind ambition and rank incompetence was to keep this microstar shining for almost two decades. His optimism never faltered and over time, only the word "young" had to be dropped from that "promising career".

Otway's attempts at achieving further chart success are interesting to say the least. Amongst the copies of his album Frightened and Scared, three just had the backing track on them. If the copy you purchased did not have John's voice on it, he would come around your house, stand between your stereo speakers and add the vocals live. However, although his particularly wild act was often admired in the atmosphere of a punk rock venue, the thought of having this wild loony leaping up and down on your living room furniture and swinging from the curtains was too much even for many avid Otway fans. As they preferred the idea of going to see him rather than him coming to see them this scheme produced one of his many flops.
 
John tried cheating, with a very imaginative attempt at hyping the charts. In order to force his live audience into buying his single he embarked on a nationwide tour allowing punters into the shows only if they had a copy of the his new single. This was a surprisingly popular move as the cost of the single was less than the price of a ticket. Unfortunately it became apparent just how much more popular the live show was than this single when most of the audience arrived with the records neatly folded up in their pocket.  

The most audacious attempt at singles success was John's signing of the mighty WEA records. Having heard that they quite liked his version of Jerusalem, John encouraged them to release it simply and effectively by pressing his own records with the Warner Brothers label.     

Upon realising that the only consistently successful area of his work was his live show, Otway concluded that  it was probably the visual aspects of his show that should be concentrated on if he was to achieve his ambition and become a major star. "If I can't get a gold record then I'll go for an Oscar" he announced and set about becoming an actor.

He teamed up with Paul Bradley (Nigel in Eastenders) and together they wrote and produced a play, Verbal Diary.  It was a great idea.  John wrote a part for himself as a rather uncoordinated, unsuccessful wally, which he played brilliantly, in fact, he was that uncoordinated, unsuccessful wally.

Both agents and casting directors were very impressed with this convincing performance and Otway was soon to be seen playing this part in things like Supergran, The Chronic Crooner, Forever Green and Heartbeat as well as in commercials for products including R Whites Lemonade, Bradford and Bingley Building Society and Irn Bru.
 
During one of the many downs in his life, when he was not having much luck at being a rock star or an actor, he decided to write his autobiography and become an author. Instead of concentrating on the achievements of his past, "Cor Baby That's Really Me (Rock N' Roll"s Greatest Failure)", he rather sensibly concentrates its attention on the more fertile ground of cock-ups, disasters and how certain  people, like Otway, have an ability to turn any situation to their own disadvantage.

This was what his audience wanted and within weeks it had out sold, by a factor of ten, all the records he had released since his hit. Otway was good at promoting himself as a great failure and in a many ways his career prospects improved in direct proportion to how badly those prospects were perceived to be.  By 1993, when John decided to celebrate his 2,000th gig at the Astoria Theatre in London an astonishing 2,500 people turned up and there were actually ticket touts outside the theatre!

This all looked dangerously like success to one who was beginning to enjoy the fruits of failure and so Otway did the one thing that had guaranteed losses in the past. He spent two and a half years in the recording studio. With his guitarist and producer Richard Holgarth, they produced the first album of new songs for twelve years, the recently released Premature Adulation .

Having re-established himself with a sizable overdraft, John surprised a number of people by choosing the Royal Albert Hall as the venue for the climax of last years Autumn tour. He also did another thing that is usually associated with those endowed with more hits, he found himself a major sponsor for the event. Viz realised that Otway was a crying, walking, sleeping, talking, living character from the pages of their comic and blessed him with the sort of support that soft drink corporations give to Michael Jackson.

There were 4,000 punter's and the touts were back for Otway at the Royal Albert Hall.  More success was to follow. As a run up to the Millennium, the BBC ran a poll to find the nations favourite song lyric. Otway was as shocked as many others to discover that “Beware Of The Flowers Cause I'm Sure They're Going To Get You Yeh”, the B Side to his one hit was voted No 7. It came above artists like Leonard Cohen, Paul Simon and even Bob Dylan.

"I remember writing that song," say's Otway, "and I remember thinking at the time it was good. I didn't realise that I was writing the 7th greatest lyric in the past thousand years though."

After the gig .....

It was a rare, warm night. No wind, no cold, no rain, just good weather. That proved the finishing touch to what was yet another tremendous gig from hit making machine, John Otway.

It was an extra special gig however with the return of the Barrett. The near capacity crowd were jammed into the deliciously hot Cluny to laugh and clap their way through a couple of hours of five star entertainment.

Otway fans will know what was served up - everything except the twin guitars and there wasn't any room for the ladders. Both Otway and Barrett were on top form and worked extremely well together.

If you have not enjoyed the Otway experience, give yourself a break and go to one of his gigs, relax and get into it.