29/01/2011

Welcome to the Isle of Wight


Since the time of the ancient Greeks and the travels of Odysseus, the whole notion of ‘islands’ has drawn people in a romantic fascination. The history of literature is full of novels that reflect this allure: Treasure Island, Coral Island, Robinson Crusoe, Swiss Family Robinson. In real life, the rich, the artistic and the drop-out have sought inspiration or escape on an island. Lawrence Durrell on Corfu, D H Lawrence on Sardinia. Tove Jansson, author of the 'Moomin' books, lived much of her life on a small island, Klovharu, in the Gulf of Finland. John Lennon handed over an Irish island, Dorrinish, to Sid Rawles and his Digger band to start a commune there. Agnetha Faltskog disappeared off for years to the Swedish island of Ekero when Abba broke up.

Songs about islands have generally followed this romanticism. Harry Belafonte sang of an Island in the Sun:”all my days I will sing in praise of your forest waters and shining sand”. Weezer did a song with the same title: “On an island in the sun. We’ll be playing and having fun” . The Beach Boys scored a late career hit with Kokomo, which rattled off a whole load of exotic islands. Blondie went for Island of Lost Souls. The Springfields settled for an Island of Dreams.

The British have tended to look to the Mediterranean or Caribbean islands for their holiday fantasies but it does have plenty of its own, including Jura, where Orwell wrote 1984. The largest off England, however, is the Isle of Wight and its popular image is probably as far away from the exotic fantasies of the above as you can get –definitely more towards the comfy end of the spectrum. There was a short-lived time when the IOW Festivals were the epitome of cool happening. In 1969, Bob Dylan chose to play there over Woodstock. In 1970 a line-up including Jimi Hendrix, the Doors, the Who and Miles Davis attracted an estimated 600,000, more than Woodstock. (Though Joni Mitchell did actually attend this one, it didn’t inspire any songs starting ’By the time I got to Afton Down’...). In 1971 the Isle of Wight Act was passed, preventing unauthorised gatherings of more than 5000 and that was that - the festival baton passed to Glastonbury.

Though annual festivals started again a few years ago, the Isle of Wight is largely known in the popular imagination for two things. The first is as one of the ‘this sounds unbelievable but maybe it is true’ statements that regularly turn up – in this case ,’if all the world’s population stood shoulder to shoulder they could fit on the Isle of Wight’. Statisticians disagree on this one, with the balance towards ‘probably not. ’The second is as the place to go for a trip that goes back to the England of the 1950’s, for a traditional bucket and spade week or two on the beach or the sort of holiday that Enid Blyton’s Famous Five might have had: bicycles, hikes along the cliffs past lighthouses, isolated coves, ice-cream and lashings of ginger beer. There can be simple pleasures – getting glass phials of coloured sand at Alum Bay; seeing an animated Allosaurus singing the Eton Boating Song in the Blackgang Chine amusement park; getting on a bus at Sandown, waiting till a woman gets on and exclaiming, “She’s got a ticket to Ryde”. And there are also little surprises. One might come across island resident Jet Harris, the original bad boy bass player and founder member of the Shadows, who lost their charismatic edge when he left.

Listeners often expect songs to reflect the image of the place they are about, so mandolins and strings for Venice, accordions for Paris, waltz-time for Vienna. New York fits a song like the Lovin Spoonful’s Summer in the City, with its snare drum/pneumatic drill intro and traffic sounds. With this in mind, what sort of song would fit the Isle of Wight? Brass band music or a folk song, or something that would suit the feeling of going back in time a few decades: a Craig Douglas song perhaps? Reggae, even if reggae-lite, probably wouldn’t come to mind. Reggae has, of course, been part of the British music scene since the early 60’s, with Millie Small’s bluebeat My Boy Lollipop probably being the first UK hit in 1964. Over the years it has had its highs and lows. There was Susan Cadogan, a librarian from Kingston (Jamaica) University, taking Millie Jackson’s Hurts So Good into the UK charts in 1975. There was also Paul Nicholas taking Reggae Like It Used To Be into the UK Charts in 1976. See his song and marvel at some dancing that is surely not like anything used to be. ( Trivia note. The 2 women dancers in the clip had appeared as scary blonde twins in the 1960 film Village of the Damned) .



Reggae has done plenty of songs about places - like Steel Pulse’s Handsworth Revolution or Sandra Cross’s Country Living - but rarely about family seaside resorts. However, the 2009 offering by Derek Sandy, Welcome to the Isle of Wight, is just that, with a song that seems destined for use by the Tourist Board with its praise for the place. In some ways it is from the same genre as Taking a Trip Up to Abergavenny in that the place described in song exists more in the imagination or parallel universe than reality. Just as a visitor to Abergavenny might be disappointed by the lack of sunshine forever and paradise people so a visitor to the Isle of Wight should not really expect a tropical paradise after a journey over the sea, on the ferry across the Solent from Southampton or Portsmouth. They may well find it fits the laidback mood of the tune: whether it is the best place they have  ever seen is, of course, up to them.

48 comments:

  1. Cheers for the column Geoff, very insightful!

    Although, Geoff, Abergavenny does exist. Back then there were more paradise people and red dogs than now.

    Only joking! You're right about the imagination part. It is supposed to be wishful thinking. This verse you should hear as though line four is really line 1 (so that the description is what the person wishes for).
    Passing the time with paradise people
    Paradise people are fine by me
    Sunshine forever, lovely weather
    Don't you wish you could be...

    I don't think I'd ever expect paradise people on the Isle of Wight thought. It's more than 96 percent white (unlike the 88 percent of England generally). And 34 percent over 60 (unlike 24 percent of England generally). I just looked that up! Anyway, seems like the Paradise People left around the same time as Dylan......

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  2. There is also The Beatles' song "When I'm Sixty-Four," which I think refers to renting a cottage on the Isle of Wight when one retires!

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  3. We have a song too about the Isle of Wight - The song "Island in the Rain" from our 1988 album "Waiting For Bonaparte". I'll try to put a video up cos there isn't one anywhere online for some reason.

    Stefan Cush, (The Men They Couldn't Hang)

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  4. Thanks for the info on Abergavenny lyrics-and for the stats on the IOW -quite illuminating!

    Island in the Rain sounds a good contrast-but probably less appealing to the IOW Tourist Board.

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  5. With all due respect to Marty Wilde, I feel like one of Geoff's points was to observe the presence of a reggae culture in the Isle of Wight - most obviously with Derek Sandy. So the racial whiteness of the island seems a bit beside the point, doesn't it? While I'm sure those stats are true, Geoff's column revealed that a minority non-white culture becoming the recent face/voice of the Isle of Wight/White.

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  6. holy crap they have hovercrafts in the Isle of Wight? that's it, I'm going.

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  7. Derek is a legend.

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  8. Geoff, I've NEVER heard of the Isle of Wight, and I feel like I'm a somewhat well-traveled person..... And now there is a song about it with 74 thousand views on Youtube?? I suppose I expected to often encounter songs I hadn't heard, in reading your blog every week, but I never thought I'd discover places that I didn't know existed! So, thank you! I was going to go to Florence for my next Europe city trip, in May, but I'm contemplating the Isle of Wight instead now.

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  9. I agree with Belle. Whether people like it or not, Derek Sandy is quite popular and has given the IoW an element of Caribbean credibility. He's well-known in the whole UK Caribbean community actually. And you never know, it might mean that the island gets a little more diverse, if some non-white people head there to live because Derek Sandy has at least desegregated its public image somewhat!

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  10. I haven't been able to listen to this song since the Conservative Parliamentary Candidate for the Isle of Wight, Andrew Turner, used it as his official campaign song last year. And what does it say about Derek Sandy that he gave Turner permission to use the song?

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  11. Wow, according to the BBC, this guy also performs at "Cowes Week, the Old Gaffers Festival and the Garlic Festival" - and Geoff, from an American perspective, all three of those events sound too British too be believed. A cow's week? an Old Gaffer's event? A garlic festival? It sounds like a list of scenes for one of the costume dramas about 19th century England they are always screening over here........!

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  12. Cowes is a place, Martha! ( a cow's week would be really good though)

    Hey, I am not sure about the IOW over Florence Eva!

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  13. I sort of see Marty's point - especially because it's odd to be imagining the IoW as this tropical paradise when really it's very grim there at the moment. According to a report by the Trade Union Congress, the Isle of Wight is the ‘worst in country’ for jobs, with more job seekers per vacant post than any other county. So Derek Sandy can invite us to "stay a while" but in reality people are trying to get out of there.

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  14. I go to the Isle of Wight Festival every summer and definitely recommend it. Coming from the mainland, you can do pleasant drive through the New Forest, a swift crossing on the little-known Lymington to Yarmouth ferry and a half hour jaunt on a deserted festival shuttle-bus, to arrive at the festival settlement. The toilets are not all that bad; the camping is bearable. And of course the music is amazing and makes it all worthwhile.

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  15. :)
    And after all, if they have a garlic festival and an old gaffer's festival, a whole week for cows doesn't even seem that strange.

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  16. Hello there: I enjoy your blog. But a small point, I was not vanishing for four years on the island. Although I am aware that this is what people imagine. At the time they called me a 1980s version of Greta Garbo, isolated and haunted. But I was able to choose to be with my children there in private, to take a break with them. Until 1985 I had not the chance to spend enough time with them. Time passed so quickly. For me I wanted to be with them and say No Thanks to the career for some time. And instead the media created a picture of me as a recluse on an island, comparing me to Greta Garbo, and that was just a picture created as punishment for me not showing myself to them enough. But even when fans asked me for pictures and autographs in Stockholm I was happy and relaxed to give them, it just was not my thing to do interviews.

    And I was and am the same person that I’ve always been – nice, normal, down-to-earth.
    And also, I keep my house there, as much now as then, so it was not a brief vanishing act scenario.

    Thank you for the writing.

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  17. "Island of Lost Souls" is so great - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7gqErYW0K0 - I'm putting in a request for a Blondie song column right now! I know you've done some columns about coastal places, but maybe the Blondie song "Love At The Pier" could be a way to think about songs about piers????

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  18. Hey, thank you for your comments and writing in to put the story straight- great to hear this.

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  19. I was on one of the local council committees in 1970 when we were trying to manage the Isle of Wight festival that year. And there were dozens of residents' associations who opposed the festival, plus even local farmers weren't too keen to rent their land out. Also it is hard to accommodate an extra half million people in a place that had a population of around 90,000 at the time. We were vilified when we passed the Act the next year but even the organisers of the 1970 festival had pretty much decided that it was too hard, logistically, to keep holding the festival there.

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  20. Geoff, there IS an "Afton Down" song. I wrote the song "Afton Belle" with vocals by Ray Brown, to tell the the story of the pregnant hippie on Desolation Hill - inspired by Bob Aylott's iconic image from the 1970 Festival. Here is my song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxmhvJpbHJs

    Cheers for the superb column!

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  21. http://www.rarebeatles.com/photopg4/ryde.htm

    :)

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  22. I remember when the Mayor of Ryde made an idiot of himself by sending the Beatles first class return tickets when the Beatles released Ticket To Ride. John Lennon apparently didn't know where Ryde was. And they didn't use the tickets.

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  23. I always thought the song lyrics were "ticket to Rye". And then when the Beatles came over to the states, the music label they were under made them change the title to Ticket To Ride. And the reason it was a "ticket to Rye" was because Rye was a city in the UK where a woman could get an abortion. Honestly I saw all this on a documentary about the Beatles.

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  24. No, Don Short, who traveled with the Beatles in the '60s, says that John Lennon wrote the phrase "Ticket to Ride" for another meaning - he had been touring in Holland, where prostitution was legal, and the prostitutes had to have a clean bill of health before they could work, so the official documentation verifying one's medical clearance was known as a "ticket to ride".

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  25. Looks like McCartney finally bought a ticket to Ryde last year........ http://www.isleofwightfestival.com/news/news/ticket-to-ryde-110.aspx

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  26. I completely agree, Geoff. The Isle of Wight, plus Dorset, are just the sort of places one would expect to run into Julian, George, Dick, Anne and Timmy the dog having an adventure.

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  27. Paul McCartney also said in an interview in Barry Miles' biography that the idea came from seeing a railway ticket to Ryde.

    Thanks for the Afton Down song and video-it is brilliant.

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  28. I love the background on reggae, plus the Susan Cadogan song, thank you Geoff!

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  29. Geoff!!! The dancing in "Reggae Like it Used to be" is INCREDIBLE!! All those white people doing VERY WHITE DANCING to a song about reggae just made me laugh for a full 20 minutes. To my knowledge, reggae never "used to be" ANYTHING like this ever. Then I forwarded it to all the (Black) people I know. Genius, just genius.

    Also, I was curious so I did some more searching for Paul Nicholas on Youtube - and found this - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qY1LIaAmjqg. WHAT WAS WRONG WITH WHITE GUYS IN ENGLAND IN THE 1970s??????

    :)

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  30. Hi Geoff! Just saying hello and thanks for mentioning my song.Big thanks for the shoutout...One love!..Susan C.

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  31. You're so right Geoff, I had never thought about this way but Lovin' Spoonful - Summer In The City does have a kind of internal soundtrack for New York - cars, horns, maybe even a few fire hydrants exploding and whoosing, it's really great the way it matches! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWXcjYNZais

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  32. Hey Desiree, you might as well see Dancing with the Captain too!

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBPrQ9r52zQ&feature=related

    To be fair, Paul Nicholas is probably best known as an actor now- his pop career was more to the light entertainment end.

    Nice to hear from you, Susan -your music is much appreciated.

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  33. Geoff, only you could write a whole column about the Isle of Wight and music, that manages to give a history of Reggae. !

    Also, I wish someone would write a book about Dorrinish and Sid Rawles and the commune - such a fascinating episode.

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  34. Geoff, I love that both Marty Wilde and Agnetha Faltskog are in your commentators this week!

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  35. Laura, I found this reference to a book on Dorinish:

    Still a dream: Miscellany on hippie commune of Dorinish Island, Co. Mayo with features, photos and essay by James M Moran

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  36. Thank you so much! Although if that is all there is, an out-of-print 24 page book from an unknown publisher in 1995, then I think someone (i.e. you!) needs to write a proper book!

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  37. Laurie Say and the Singing Islanders used to perform at the Sloop Inn at Wooton. Songs like, "It's The Isle of Wight For Me", "The Southern Vectis Bus Song", "UDI For The Isle of Wight", and of course "The Hovercraft Song". In case you want more IoW song references!

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  38. Do you really think that they lost their charismatic edge when I left? that was a nice thing to say (for me, not the rest of 'em!).

    How about writing about the song "San Antonio" from my recent album "THE JOURNEY".

    And I think you should write about Finland too, I went there a couple of years back to play in Helsinki and Nastola, and it is a great place. Although now i come to think of it, are there even any songs about it? Someone should write one.

    Anyway cheers for the nice words. And long live the Isle!

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  39. For all those Americans wondering what happens at the festivals that were mentioned, I took this at the Old Gaffers Festival at Yarmouth a couple of years ago....:) - http://a5.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/photos-ak-snc1/v322/178/88/1423771439/n1423771439_30007293_5747.jpg

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  40. I had no idea what could be meant by "animated Allosaurus singing the Eton Boating Song in the Blackgang Chine amusement park" and there seems to be no video clip of this. Hmmmm. But I did find

    1. The Eton Boating song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=leU1kbtIZUI

    and

    2. The Blackgang Chine park: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I37MNcrWZuQ

    So i guess we can imagine what a combination of the two might look like!:)

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  41. I also found this link, Laura, that looks like an Irish Tv documentary

    http://www.rte.ie/tv/oilean/lennonbearla.html

    Thanks for the suggestions, Jet. I havent been to San Antonio. I have been to Finland but -as you say, there is a lack of songs, at least non-Finnish ones.

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  42. That looks fascinating, I'll try to find that documentary online as a video and will send the link if I find one. But I still think there needs to be a proper book - for whenever you fancy writing it Geoff!!

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  43. Thank you Geoff, glad you liked it, much appreciated!

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  44. WOW! Those sailor dancers are UNBELIEVABLE - this is like one of those prank videos about the 1970s.

    Also, it seems like he did some advertisements for candy bars - here is one very funny one I found: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZqOuM2RoiI - I can't tell if it is full of sexual innuendo or just innocent banter. Very strange!

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  45. He was in an 80's BBC sitcom called Just Good Friends with Jan Francis, the woman in the advert. It is innuendo in a 'Carry On' film sort of way!

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  46. Well, I didn't know what "Carry On" meant, but it turns out it is a lot of British film comedies, with lots of slapstick and innuendo. According to Wikipedia and Youtube! (for other American readers - it is this kind of thing: www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELkWNvwFc7U). I definitely think it's a British humor, that kind of saucy oh-ah banter!!

    Ah the education I get from "Songs About Places"! Thank you Geoff:)

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  47. Yes definitely British humour, from the 50's and 60's!

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