.jpeg)
Martin Metcalfe invited me to join his band Goodbye Mr. Mackenzie in the early 1980s as backing vocalist and keyboard player. We remained bandmates for over
a decade.
It wasn't me who was supposed to get famous. It was Martin. He was the one with all the talent, the vision, and the ambition. But the eighties were a nutty, reckless time and Martin got side-tracked with a myriad of other distractions, as I began to nurse some ambitions of my own.
Someone as shamelessly talented as Martin should be recognized for it, but the world isn't a fair place. He remains relatively undiscovered outside his homeland of Scotland, where he is very much respected and beloved. Meanwhile it looks as though he also happens to enjoy some considerable talent as a visual artist, the lucky bugger, and so Martin's story is far from over.
In Istanbul, attending an arts and culture festival, I recently met with London-based, Scottish artist Robert Montgomery, who passionately referenced Martin as a major influence in his own development as an artist. It seems fitting, then, that Martin has stepped into the visual arts himself, as a natural extension of his music.
This book is the result of a collaboration with his long-term bromancer, the poet Paul Hullah. Like myself, Paul is also a former bandmate of Martin's. Pre-dating Goodbye Mr. Mackenzie, they both performed together in a band called Teenage Dog Orgy. I don't believe they have ever been lovers but they have remained friends for four decades now.
So what to say about Paul Hullah? People are never what they seem. You can meet a cocky northern lad in the mid-eighties who upon first introduction tells you to go get yourself checked out at the local VD clinic because
your boyfriend is known to have been sleeping around.
I hated him for his honesty then. It's what I love most about him now.
Fast-forward some 25 years and Paul Hullah and I are now backstage at Fuji-Fest in Japan. That same aforementioned cocky northern lad tells me he is now a published, award-winning poet, and he seems softer than he once did. Maybe even fragile.
That same shocking honesty he once used with brute force has been reigned in ever so slightly. He now exercises that honesty in his poems, but with control, considerable skill, and surprising tenderness.
It is rare these days to encounter people who are willing
to pursue art for the joy of it. Rarer still to see people pushing themselves out of their comfort zones and challenging preconceptions of who they are and what they are capable of.
So it is the courage being executed here in this endeavour I find so compelling: two old warriors still banging at the gates, challenging kings and fighting monsters.
This is why as artists they remain exciting. And why we should take the time to look. And to listen.
SCENES BOOK OF POETRY,IMAGES & MUSIC |
