LETTER FROM BRITAIN

LETTER FROM BRITAIN

STAYIN’ HUNGRY

by

Cynthia Rose

Soaked to the skin, I was shivering on a grandiose Mayfair doorstep in deepening gloom, about to ring the bell leading to David Bowie’s press showing of his horror film The Hunger—when a gigantic thunderclap ripped through the unseasonably slate-colored skies. After two weeks of saturation Bowie-sell, for a moment it seemed spookily possible that DB’s PR machine might actually have got some Gothic grip on the meteorology of the city. Safe inside the screening theatre, however, what emerged as The Hunger was merely a lengthy likeness of those stylish TV ads for cigarettes, Cointreau, and Maxell tapes we face every evening on Channel 4.'

The film turns out to be a frank little Bmovie where erotic vampirism of the sort popularized in Anne Rice’s Interview With The-Vampire becomes a metaphor for drug addiction and general “animal instincts.” Its heroine is the suave Catherine Deneuve (who ends up, like Candy Clark before her, catting a collapsed Bowie about in elevators), a fact which simply adds to one’s dismayed sense that this project was somehow orchestrated by a consortium of interior decorators.

The Hunger does have things to sayaddiction necessitates dishonesty, aging creates crises (particularly resonant in the case of aging rock stars and aging actresses), and decadence may sell but it’s not supposed to pay. It’s just that none of the things it says are particularly news—and it was more amusing than amoral when the assembled press corps twigged that, though the scene is set in Manhattan, most of the action was taking place in a mansion about fifty familiar yards from the preview site.

The Hunger was the final move in two weeks’ worth of mega-press engineered by Bowie to promote his forthcpming pair of films (the other one is Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence), his cassingle and LP, and the “Serious Moonlight” tour. The latter was announced at a press conference where the Tan One told us all how his new work was “more positive and down-to-earth” than previously, how his current obsessions were for “South America and the South Pacific”; how he still has “nothing to say, really” about politics; and how he goes to bed at ten p.m. and gets up at six. Uh-huh.

Later he took a Chosen Few aside to chat more informally about his “lack of pure instinct” about life—something,, he confided, his friend Iggy Pop had in such abundance that he was constantly amazed people could “pass such work by.” Not that Bowie himself can bear to: under the guise, I expect, of adding needed shekels to the Osterberg bank reserves, The Hunger contains perhaps the most insidiously envious use of Pop’s “Funtime” since Bebe Buell’s cover version (ironically a “Virgin Special Offer” this week in high street shops).

The really interesting thing about Bowie and Britain, however, is what they bring out in one another. The poor chap’s simply a god here and, on the evidence of the past fortnight, one reluctantly reduced to the role of parodying those who parody him. (In a scene shot at Heaven, London’s “official” gay disco, Peter Murphy of Bauhaus contributes credit sequences for The Hunger, and not only is Bowie made up to resemble his imitator but the sequence virtually recreates a Maxell tape commercial Murphy made last year for television).

The frisson of Bowie’s actual presence swept across town, though—even down to clubs like Skin 2, the “genuine fetishist’s spot” run by former Bowie clone (and expuppeteer!) David Claridge. Bowie is rarely if ever off the turntable at this disco, which attracts mostly very very suburban couples seriously “into” rubberwear—as well as the odd celeb such as Marc Almond—to rented basement premises. And its clientele really do dress strictly to order; corsets and suspender-belts mix with chains, buckles, strings, electrician’s tape, studs and zips galore.. .all in leather, rubber, or shiny PVC. (You could upholster an entire chain of Greek restaurants with the acres of fishnet). Even Bowie may have to move over later this month, though, when the sound system’s sure to feature Cherry Red’s planned re-release of “Kinky Boots.” That’s the novelty number once cut by Avengers Patrick MacNee and Honor Blackman, of late-night TV cult fame. Its rather pointed lyrics should go over nicely with the Bowieloving “decadents” who frequent the likes of Skin 2: “There are 20 million women wearing kinky boots, Kinky boots! Footwear manufacturers are garnering the fruits!”

One female fetishist I selected at random disputed my observation that the. club’s incessant film clips seem to dish out a lot more humiliation to the female sex than to their opposite number. “When I started wearing kinky gear,” claimed this telly-sales specialist from Portsmouth, “It gave me a lot more confidence. Right away!”

One gent whom threads of another ilk have definitely given corresponding confidence for some while now is Paul Weller—who seems to be making rather a surprising bid for sheer idolatry Bowie-style. His Style Council video, notorious before screening on account of its rumored expense, is now notorious due to the amount of ego it showcases from the ferret-faced One. Yet it’s as an entrepreneur Weller seeks real kudos, claiming he now wants his Respond label to work “like Stax or Motown or even Invictus—the kind of logo everyone rushes out to buy regardless of what is on it, just because of its reputation.”

It’s interesting to note that a deluge of ink has greeted these pronouncements now that Respond has deserted Polydor for A&M (Respond has actually been around long enough to have released totally unremarkable 45s by Dolly Mixture and Urban Shakedown), while journalist Paul Morley and producer Trevor Horn go much more quietly about the founding of their new label Zang Tumb Tumm. For real suss, I. suspect ZTT may actually edge ahead: they intend to concentrate on “European bands, because that’s where the real action is now.’ Given the stirring performances and rapturous receptions outfits like Einsturzende Neubauten have given London of late, ZTT’s duo are at least talking about Responding to real and exciting new energies.

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Weller’s big product, of course, is new signing Tracie—the ambitious, chainsmoking 18-year-old white-soul girl from Chelmsford. What little Tracie has to say at this moment in time is audible (at the prodding of Svengali Paul) on the flip side of her 12” as “Tracie Talks.” Its inanity is meant as some sort of pisstake of that music biz promo Weller curses as he courts it, but Tracie’s song—“The House That Jack Built”—is much better bop value. Lots of sweetening in string form over naked ambition; soulstyle, and the song’s ambiguous lyrics even soft-pedal a soupcon of the politics Weller announced he’s now eschewing for style. (“Let’s leave that to Bono,” he remarked several times last week, when U2 hit Number One with their impressive War VP.)

It’s no surprise U2 were the group Springsteen made a special pilgrimage to catch last year at Hammersmith Odeon: in Bono Vox they have one of the UK’s most beloved frontmen and in The Edge one of its most romantic but accomplished guitarists. Even Bono’s hairdresser thinks he’s great (“for a guy who’s really into oldstyle rock, y’know?”), and Vox himself is trenchant but modest. “We try not to be either sort of caricature Irish group,” he says. “But it’s hard when you’re expected to deliberately riot write about them. I write about what happens around me every day; I don’t care if that’s fashionable, or old or whatever. I do think here’s a backlash against this pure-pop girl-meets-boy setup; I think kids want to be able to believe in whoever’s up there singing the songs.”

“Up there,” planted between the knitted brows of a blow-up of their beautiful Belfast Boy (Peter Rowan), Bono looks like a Celtic chieftain calling his troops to battle. He introduces “New Years’s Day” (“I’m speaking to you so we can be one”) and the famous “Sunday Bloody Sunday” (always prefaced with “this is not a rebel song”) with a heartfelt and tenacious evangelism that does recall Springsteen. Not since Verlaine’s “Words From The Front” has guitarpowered pacificism been rendered so passionately’ on the final episode of TV’s The Tube, U2 bring down the house as Bono dismantles one of the three rippling white flags above them and passes it to his jubilant audience. Ten minutes later, we get what the show’s producers consider a proper finale, though: David Bowie in a “rare” interview. Bowie’s big revelation is that if he could chose his own epitaph, he!d prefer it to be “Good Conversationalist.”

Actually, Bowie’s not the only rock figure his thespian skills in the UK this week. The ever-ambitious Toyah has taken to the boards as female wrestler Trafford Tanzi in the play of the same name, where each round of her life is rendered as a bout in the ring—and lively stuff it is too. Lora Logic has also just had her film debut screened, in a British indie flick called, Crystal Gazing. But it seems unlikely that either the awkward punk saxophonist/personality or the ponderously pedantic film will ever see the light again after a brief run in the tiny ICA Cinematheque.

The liveliest thing in Crystal Gazing is a turn by “alternative comic” Keith Allen, who plays an amphetamine-keen punter bothering Lora in a late-night taxi queue. Allen can’t save what might have done for London’s dole queues and Ladbroke Grove sector what Smithereens did for Manhattan’s post-punk East Village; its anti-plot is far too plodding and didactic. But he does provide a great glimpse of that amorphous area known as “alternative comedy” or “cabaret art” which is mushrooming as the latest way to become a hip personality without having to actually resort to rock.

In this post-Nof the Nine O’Clock News period, comics with names.like Andy de la Tour, Chris Barrie, Claire Dowie, Tony Allen, the Brothers Bleak,' Oscar McLennan and George Nobody jostle one another on the pub-club-benefit circuit, hoping to soar into the stratosphere of radio or TV slots as did Lennie Henry, Kevin Turvey, and Alexei Sayle before them. These comics manifest a total love/hatred relationship with the role of rock star epitomized by Bowie as England perceives him; despite jibes, many of them record on LP or cassette as well as undertaking regular tours and support slots on rock schedules.

But unlike Bowie, their texts are often drawn explicitly from politics. It can’t be a bad sign when those pining after their 15 minutes at least plan to use it amusing everyone, but the best of the new comics can be just as abusive or explosive as they can be incisive. And do they long to be remembered as “good conversationalists”? I asked Pamela Stephenson, notorious doyenne of the dames-for-a-laugh and exNot The Nine O’Clock News player. “Not exactly,” she smiles from under a massively teased and streaked punk mane of hair. “It’s outrage, really. It’s wanting to confront people with things they don’t want to deal with; in essence, to.confront them with their own mortality as well as make them laugh at it. And that’s not really a cozy conversational thing.”