Julian Cope, Deaf School and Feargal Sharkey, in aid of Hillsborough
The Big Beat festival, 1989
As we saw in my post back in April, the Liverpool music community rallied round immediately after the Hillsborough disaster in 1989.
After the first, fast benefit gig with the Mission, it didn’t take long for people to get together and organise something a bit more official. The Big Beat festival was launched in May, with support from the city council, and took place in July.
The city’s music promoters had been flooded with offers of help, and put on an impressive line-up for the two-week event: a morale boost for the city as well as contributing to the disaster fund (it raised £15,000, which was a lot back in the 80s).
The event involved venues – and bands – large and small, ranging from Julian Lennon’s first Liverpool gig to an all-dayer of local acts at Liverpool’s Royal Court theatre.
I went to many of the shows including these, reviewed below, from Julian Cope and (appearing in London) Deaf School. Although it doesn’t mention it in the review, Feargal Sharkey (nowadays more famous for campaigning against water companies) sang 20th Century Boy. It suited him.
JULIAN COPE
ROYAL COURT, LIVERPOOL
Melody Maker, July 22 1989
LIVERPOOL'S Big Beat Festival, ostensibly a benefit for the Hillsborough disaster, is becoming a memorial for Pete de Freitas also. The Icicle Works, earlier in the week, dedicated a cover of "Do It Clean" to him. And tonight Julian Cope, introducing 'Read It In Books", is inarticulate enough on the subject to sound sincere.
Anyone who cares enough about a friend can't be all mad. And Cope, tonight, doesn't seem as mad as usual. But he is very good. He starts off as stylised strange as usual, every move a picture, every grimace making you wonder why he was ever considered a beauty.
Julian holds centre stage. The band just get on with being brilliant. A garage band meld into musos: brains in now, hearts in the past: economical with excess. It's thrill with skill: punk rock for the 30 years plus generation.
Julian puts on a guitar and almost looks normal. He stops posing and starts playing, becomes almost just one of the band trying out the subtleties of percussion and many guitars. And then there is gentleness followed by weirdness, quietness by noise, smoke by strobes, and the rapid changes in mood make you think that perhaps Julian Cope and band really are the closest we'll get to Love-the-band after all.
Then there's showbiz. Barry Manilow and Robert Mitchum evoked in turn. You've got to laugh but there's more to it than that. A dance song, a rock song, something psychedelic, all transcend the generic. If Julian Cope is responsible for this band, he's a grand musician. Even if he's not responsible for himself, he's still a grand musician. Even if he's not responsible for himself, he's still a grand old man of Eighties pop.
DEAF SCHOOL
HOLLOWAY STUDIOS, LONDON
Melody Maker, July 22 1989
SO if Tin Machine at the Town & Country Club is weird, how about Tin Machine's guitarist playing what's not much more (and certainly not less) than a party? Reeves Gabrels is on the same stage as Feargal Sharkey, Suggs, Clive Langer and Clive Langer's old band Deaf School, re-forming for the second time in two years in aid of the Big Beat benefit festival.
Logistics mean this one takes place outside Liverpool. Loyalty means most of the 200 odd audience have travelled 200 miles to see what was once the biggest cult band in the Pool. You can still tell why, as Deaf School stomp and shimmy through hardened cult classics. "Capaldi's Cafe" was something to do with nostalgia and dancing a decade ago. Now it's even more so.
Deaf School have done with "Shake Some Action" what the Beatles did with "Twist And Shout": made it their own song. Action is what they deliver. Their songs are three-voice stories full of melody, visuals and surprise. These songs, and every one of these musicians, had a character. So does this night.
A fan sexually harasses Enrico Cadillac, moonlighting from his job as a French pop star. Rev Max Ripple stands resplendent in dog collar, accordion and polka dot boxer shorts, moonlighting from his job as art lecturer. Suggs, singing "My Girl", is introduced and a voice from the audience shouts, "He's married to the woman I love." Bette Bright's appeal after 10 years still persists. Her "Final Act" brings the metaphorical curtain and the house down.