Becoming Whyte August
Gandalf 2 were still doing little, except forming a fantasy Gandalf.
Phil End claimed he was going to learn to play the flute, join the band, and
become the manager. However,
he then left for Devon, aborting this particular incarnation before he had
even bought his flute.
A little time later, with Gandalf 2 still becalmed, Steve befriended
Dave Butcher, little knowing that Dave was a budding guitarist. When Steve did
ascertain this, Dave was instantly mooted as a member of the band. About the
same time, John decided to give up the guitar, and take up Phil's imaginary
flute. This led to
Gandalf 3. This version of Gandalf soon exploded, however, as Steve's
drums were as imaginary as John's flute. Sensing Gandalf 3's inability
to perform, Dave left to form his own band.
At this point, the ever-gregarious Steve met Martin Hollands while playing
football with Will "Hard" Townsend. As luck would have it, Martin also played
guitar. This gave the band a firm foundation, offering a rhythm guitarist. John
and Steve still dreamed of a multi-talented prog-rock-fusion ensemble, however,
and soon created a new, imaginary
Gandalf 4
which involved everyone who had said yes to, or had contemplated,
being in Gandalf. Martin was into the concept anyway; but the imaginary
additions would have enabled the imaginary Gandalf 4 to kick ass. Gandalf 4 lasted about five minutes, given that Steve didn't yet have a
drum kit, John still didn't have a flute, there was no sign of a bassist, Dave
B was theoretically in another band, and Step Jones had never officially said
yes.
Chris, managing
Chris: Go away you paparrazi gobshites, can't you see
I'm encouraging this little bastard to write some lyrics?
John: [between
sips] I'll write once I've found inspiration at the bottom of this bottle.
[A few gulps later]
Chris: You better have something good, you
useless hippie.
John: [hiccups and then sings - tunelessly] "Horner
and Alfrater...
Glass manufacturer"
Steve did eventually get a drum-kit, Dave rejoined, John gave up the flute
idea for a year or two, and stuck to writing lyrics, and Martin remained in
the band. Chris gave up the keyboards entirely, and became the band's manager.
This version of the band was the first real band. At a meeting in the
pub, the band was renamed
Whyte August.
All the band now needed was a bassist. But Steve's
luck had run out, and he never met another free musician in the life-time of
Whyte August.
This was the era before cheap musical instruments, and the only incomes these
erstwhile musicians had was that garnered from paper rounds and other odd-jobs.
Steve's parents had bought him a second-hand drum-kit for £25, which he
was paying back at a pound a week. The kit – the infamous Rhythm King – consisted
of a snare, a mounted tom, a bass drum, and a cheap and nasty cymbal.
Martin's equipment consisted of an acoustic guitar with an acoustic pick-up
attached, and a cheap amplifier. Dave's equipment consisted of an Audition single
pick-up Fender Stratocaster copy, modified with an additional acoustic pick-up.
The leads from this contraption went to a suspicious looking box that served
as his amplifier and speaker, and which seemed to have been salvaged from a
radiogram. John's equipment consisted of a pen and his mighty rhyming brain.
Whyte August – who were the first mighty WA –
began to rehearse and write songs, and even, despite the lack of a bassist, to gig. In lieu of
a bassist, Martin would pick out (not very) bass lines on his guitar.
Martin was the first band member to go crazy and splash out some of his money
on new guitar, buying himself a black Gibson Les Paul (copy), and a new combo
amp. Of course, had the begging letter to the hippie Wessex regionalist, Lord
Weymouth (now Lord Bath) been successful, the whole band could have had shiny new musical instruments.
So the band continued practising, gigging at friends' parties, and looking
for a bassist. However, Chris and John made a discovery that was to change the sound
of WA. They met Mary at a Christmas party in Trowbridge at Christmas '74, where
she had impressed them – and caused temporary hearing-loss – by doing
Ian Gillan-type screams in their ears.
The Decadent Aesthetes of the Eighties were John Ries, Phil End, and
Steve Dewey, three modernist, post-romantic poets. Interestingly, they weren't
really that decadent. The name was applied to this group by Steve Dewey, as it
amused him. Steve Dewey was actually influenced in his choice of this
soubriquet by
John's
famous brown cape, which somehow reminded him of Victorian decadents.
The Decadent Aesthetes of the Eighties had been preceded by the
Warminster Art Nouveau Circle, which consisted entirely of people uninterested
in art nouveau, but who were nonetheless tickled by the acronym that could be
formed from that name.
[hide]
John's cape was to become a constant source of amusement to Steve and
Phil after it turned into the magical brown cape. When Phil moved to
Devon, Steve, Chris and Phil wrote letters to each other, containing fantastic
stories based upon their friends. John's cape originally became magical in a
story Phil wrote to Steve in about 1977. John's cape has remained magical ever
since. This example, from a fantasy that Steve wrote for Phil in 1996,
encapsulates most of the magic of the cape:
[Tucks pops his head around the corner of the
door]
Tucks: Yukoi!
Steve and Phil [in unison]: Yukoi!
Ali [mumbles, and retreats towing her ball of wool]: Try and keep
the noise down out here...
Phil [muttering]: We're only listening to
the cricket!
Steve: What are you doing here Tucks?
Tucks:
Fulfilling my role as indolent country bumpkin, while you two lord it over me
with your imperious wits and sharp intellects.
Phil: Hold on. You
don't normally talk like that!
Tucks: Indeed. you see, I've now
bettered myself. I finally have that degree I never took, and I've hung up my
apron. I'm now a fully-fledged Decadent Aesthete of the Eighties.
Phil: Woah!
Hold on there, boy. It's the nineties now. We're no longer decadent. In fact,
we have been toying with the idea of some new nomenclature to describe us.
Tucks: Like what? Dull, balding wasters of the Nineties?
Steve: I don't know. The Decadent Aesthetes of the Eighties had a
ring to it.
Tucks [sighs]: Anyway, I'm sorry to hear that we're no
longer decadent aesthetes. You see, I've got the cape...
Steve:
What? You mean a decadent aesthetes' cape? A brown velvet one with a clasp
at the neck?
Tucks: Yes, just like John's. Only longer of course...
Steve: Can you do that thing with it?
Tucks: What, you
mean the vanishing and reappearing stuff? Seems plausible. Here let me try.
[Tucks stands and clasps the cape at his neck. Grabbing a corner, he
whirls it about him. For a moment, time seems to stand still, and Thorpe once
again takes guard to Warne. Is it a different ball in the same over? Is it a
later over? Is it the same ball we heard bowled earlier? Once again,
Christopher Martin-Jenkins gasps in surprise as Thorpe is bowled a googly, and
once again Boycott groans at the naivety of an English batsman. Yet, this is
all of a oneness, and time could indeed be standing still. The cape whirls, and
wrapped in such negation, Tucks disappears].
Phil: Crikey! He's
gorn!
[But almost in that instant, as the cape begins to sag to the
floor, it reforms again, but this time...]
Steve: Crikey! It's
John!
John: Crikey! What am I doing here?
Steve: Well, it
was Tucks's cape. He wrapped it about himself...
Phil: ... and
wrapped in such negation, disappeared...
Steve: ...and you appeared
instead.
John: Far out! I must be a freak!
Steve: Do the
business again! Go on! Let's see if Tucks reappears.
John: Hold
on... While I'm here I might as well give you my new play...
Phil:
You don't write plays!
John: Ah, well, I thought I'd branch out.
[He takes a wad of paper from inside his jacket.] Here... [So saying
he wraps his cape about him with a flourish. Tucks reappears.]
Tucks: [Looks disoriented] John never mentioned how dizzy this makes
you.[hide]
| Whyte August 1 |
|
John Ries |
Steve Dewey |
Dave Butcher |
Martin Hollands |
|
Lyrics |
Drums/Vocals |
Guitar/Vocals |
Rhythm guitar |
Whyte August! What a hippy name! Yet - somehow radical. It was
antithetical, you see, to Black September, the name of the terrorist
organisation. White/black, dark/light, yin/yang. But Whyte with a "y"? Why? It
was at one with the spirit of the times. Which were, of course, a-changing. Had
WA existed another two years, it would have had to change its name anyway, to
something like, well, Black September.
But! Of course, the sign is polysemous! Not only was "Whyte August"
antithetical to "Black September", but it was also a play on the title of the
legendary Led Zeppelin song White Summer.
[hide]
