I don’t know for sure whether or not Hoyt Axton had ever been to Spain before he authored Never Been To Spain, but I do know that I had never been to England before I was there a few months ago in order to produce this document regarding my experiences there. Although I spent most of the flight over the Atlantic thinking of Roger Miller’s “England Swings” while watching John Wayne in The Shootist with earphones tuned to an interview with Chicago’s Robert Lamm (all of this intoxicating media mix helped along by a sublime drowziness induced by the Valium which one of my flying companions had been kind enough, in her realization of our shared fear of flying, to donate to me), after a week’s time, as I flew back watching Mel Brooks’ Silent Movie (this time I had the sense to not purchase the earphones), my impressions were more embodied by Merle Haggard’s “If We Make It Through December.” Yes, times are as hard as they can be in Merrie Olde and even a veteran pauper like myself realized that after converting the d’s and c’s into l’s and p’s that a little scratch goes a long way in the grim economic world of today’s London. Prices are way down, mainly because everyone has so little money and to keep prices high would mean no sales on just about everything. Including food.

Like one day the young woman from Capitol Records (that nice outfit who, besides 1) giving us the Beatles, 2) allowing Brian Wilson to produce the Beach Boys himself at a very tender age, 3) letting Kim Fowley sucker them for two ridiculously brilliant albums, 4) being patient with Steve Miller through about seven years of bad times until the investment finally paid off and 5) giving me the nicest piece of record promo clothing ever received by yours truly— a sweater, blue, with the old Capitol logo—have flown me to London for a week of fun in the fog to see one of

their more talented hopefuls, noted maniac Steve Harley) decides to take a bunch ofus out for a proper English afternoon tea. Leo, our chauffeur, has taken us far outside of London into the suburbs where, after winding our way up this hill, we park the car and enter the establishment. The entrance of our party of five doubles the population of the joint. There’s two old women at separate tables savorin’ their brew and perusin’ the evenin’ papers and two cheery women doing the baking and waitressing. Midway through our repasts a middle-aged gent in a well-worn coat and tom sweater comes in heartily greeting the old ladies and the two waitresses and I figure he’s either the janitor or a neighborhood bum but it turns out he owns the place. After having sampled just about everything they had to offer, including homemade pastries, breads, cakes, scrumptous jams and jellies and even the notorious buttered scones, everything I may eat—burp—we find that it’s time to go. The whole thing came to about five pounds, or less than ten beanos which, to a lad who has to shell out 50^ just to get a crummy black and white cookie around the corner, makes this place look like heaven on earth.

Of course, being in a foreign country for the first time is always rather exciting. I’ve been to Canada a lot but that’s not foreign, that’s alien; ask anybody in Toronto how to get somewhere and they just stare at you like you’re crazy with this “If you don’t know where you are, why are you here in the first place?” look, and since they speak English it’s easy getting around. And I mean they speak ENGLISH. Here in the States we’re now at the point where most high school graduates can’t even read at the eighth grade level and it’s so bad that they’re

putting back the essay question on the College Board Test; yet the dumbest bozo on the street in London has a bigger vocabulary than the entire population of Topeka. And polite, too. Get lost here and . the strangers earnestly attempt to help you find your way. And that’s important to a fool like me who doesn’t know east from west and gets mixed up walking out of elevators in strange buildings. Since the traffic runs opposite of U.S. roads, and since there are so many turistas scurrying about all the time, most of the intersections in the main drags of town have little reminders written by the curb (look left, look right), though in all honesty I found myself getting dizzy with all this look this way, look that way stuff and it was much easier to ignore lights and signs and just keep parking myself in the middle of moving throngs whenever possible.

Visitors’ highlights included sightseeing (Tower of London at 11 in the morning with grey skies overhead, the wind howling, gulls flying all around and the old Beefeater giving a flock of Germans the poop on Anne Boleyn’s head shop) and culinary treats (you always hear that the food’s awful in England but everything I handed over to my enzymes tasted fine—had this great lousy pizza in Soho after I’d done a little browsin’ in some record stores, the best one being a little stand in this open market that had nothing but Elvis records. Must have been thousands of them augmented by a batch of Elvis collectibles. Up on the wall was a handwritten sign—“Elvis Presley has a Cadillac car, swimming pools, mansions, fame. I have a wife and daughter and I spent all my money on Elvis and now I’m out of work and in debt. I’m sick and I’m disgusted. Please help me.” I was gonna buy something but then I felt hot breath on my shoulder and it was the guy and his daughter looking like they’d stepped out of The Night Of the Living Dead and I got spooked and ran. Now said pizza is served uncut and you eat it with a knife and fork and the place I was in had 30 different kinds of pizza and the place was packed and each pizza that passed by looked exactly the same as mine did and probably tasted just as bad. Kinda soggy Pizza Hut. I loved it. Not to mention the illustrious Wimpy Burger, and in one restaurant where I ordered a burger wouldn’t you know, they know they can’t make ’em right so they give you a fried egg on top and a big piece of sausage on the side and it don’t cost any more than a Whopper with cheese, so it was OK by me).

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I met Steve Harley at this great restaurant in a big back room which brought to mind visions of the Stones’ Beggars Banquet inside cover art. The table was so huge that everyone had to shout across the table to be heard, and after finding out that leeks are very tasty vegetables even if they do have a lousy name, the interview was conducted. Harley is a very intense young man and at first it seems that all I’m going to get out of him are a few terse comments. After a while, though, as the drinks start rolling by (I’m sticking to coffee—never mess around when I’s workin’) Harley begins to ease up. The man is not particularly fond of rock writers, especially English ones, so his manner is understandable. His press notices in England have in the past run a course generally from mediumly antagonistic to downright vicious, this in spite of plenty of hit singles and sold-out tours over the past few years. “My reputation in Britain and Europe is that of a ruthless, arrogant bastard, at least as far as the press is concerned,” says Harley, with eyes leveled. “I’ve done things that could be constructed that way, like firing a band en masse. No one cared that I might have quite

valid reasons for it, that my own career was at stake if I didn’t do it. They’d rather just build up the myth.

“It’s a pity that the people who chronicle rock’s history in England, the alleged journalists, are of an extremely poor quality. They are not as dedicated or as serious as the American reporters that I’ve met. Here they’re just 21-yearold failed drummers or guitarists, very subjective and very immature. I get upset when I do something contrary to my public image and they ignore it completely. It’s a shame, the things they write about me here. I could sue those mothers for libel every day of the week. Businessmen would say go ahead and sue ’em but we don’t. They get away with genocide and we have to let it go by. Why? ’Cause it isn’t the rock ’n’ roll thing to do.”

Harley asks me how many concerts I go to per week. I tell him on the average about one or two. He shakes his head. “Yeah, well, I go to see about three a year and when I go, I enjoy myself thoroughly, get really excited. But I know that in the audience there’s some young schmuck and this is the fourth one he’s seen this week and he’s going to tear it apart because he’s bored. The average punter sees 10, maybe 12 concerts a year and for him it’s a real show. And he’s impressed and that’s important. In America, the writers and the audiences take it much more seriously. You people have some respect for the bugger who’s up there, going to hotel after hotel, taking plane after plane. Here they’re blase, nauseating, insufferable bastards.”

Pretty strong stuff, huh? Harley’s got plenty of reason to be bitter, though. Ever since he and his band, Cockney Rebel, took off in the early ’70s, he’s been accused of ripping off attitudes and poses from whatever was happening at the moment. Yet Love Is A Prima Donna, his fifth album, is a curious collection of different styles that add up very nicely, if completely illogically. To Harley, it’s the ’70s that make him and his music what they are. “Everyone says to me, from the greatest fan to the record company to the people who work for me, that my music jumps around in terms of atmosphere and moods. Well, the ’70s are a strange time to be alive. Things just don’t add up. Britain is one of the weakest forces in Europe, if not the world. We live with Belfast every day, with that fear, that genuine fear. Yet, there are magnificent developments in science and technology...”

4 asked Harley about any concept working on the album Love Is A Prima Donna and he waited a long time before answering. “I have no idea, really, what my albums are about until after I’m through and I have time to lookback at them. Ideally, I release my albums the day that they’re finished, because I’m always changing. A record captures a moment, that’s all. This album, after working day and night on it for months, I look at it and it looks like I’m really screwed up for love, and yet I’m not. I see this giant mother fixation all over the album, disgracefully huge as it is, and what does it say about a guy who’s 25? I think of some songs onstage and I’m thinking to myself, ‘Well, what the fuck is that all about?’ So there you go.”

No confusion whatsoever in seeing just what a hold Harley has on his

audience, though. Metallic cabaret is about the best way to describe his performance a few nights later at a medium-sized hall in London. The set, which includes tunes from throughout his career, is done for an audience who knows all of his work backwards and forwards. One tune in particular, with just Harley accompanying himself on acoustic guitar, brings the house down as the entire crowd sings along (shades of 1962!). The next minute he’s doing “Innocence and Guilt,” turning a tour de force mime act as the enraptured audience makes nary a sound. Harley keeps picking them up and easing them down; the guy simply knows what to do on the stage and he is a malleable, protean performer jumping into the characters of his different personae as the songs so dictate. Being at his highest point of popularity in Britain, the shot at America seems just around the corner. Whether he makes it here or not is anybody’s guess, but he’s got plenty to say and he says it pretty well (both on stage and off), so keep yer eyes open.

Now my eyes were repeatedly opened almost every morning of the trip by a certain Ethan Browne, son of Jackson B., who is staying next door at the hotel and was running up and down the hall at 7:00 a.m. in search of a banana— kid obviously doesn’t know about England and fruit. Someday I’ll write up my exclusive interview with Ethan, but I’ll spare you for now. Likewise for my cab ride with a driver who is very concerned about the artistic future of the Chieftains and my moment of ecstasy bundling myself up in the back seat of a limo underneath Rod Stewart and Britt Ekland’s very own blanket. Look for me in about 40 years in Hyde Park on a Sunday on top of a soap box—I’ll tell ya all about it.

What’s for tea, love?