The London Palladium: 9.10pm, Sunday February 6, 2000.
Through the fine gauze curtain, six dimly lit figures can be seen emerging on to the stage. A huge roar goes up in the theatre and, as the house lights go down, The Blockheads start tuning up for the anthem which has opened every one of their live shows for more than 22 years – ‘Wake Up And Make Love With Me’. The screen rises, revealing large vases of cut flowers along the front of the stage and a shimmering silvery backdrop. Above the band hangs a banner with the boxer dog in boxer shorts from the cover of the band’s latest album Mr Love Pants. Suddenly, the warm-up comes to a halt and the song’s unmistakable opening notes pour out from Chaz Jankel’s piano. A heavy funk rhythm cascades through the speakers, cueing the entrance on stage of one of Britain’s most charismatic performers.
From the wings, Ian Dury takes to the stage with the aid of a walking stick and two towering chaperones. He is dressed for the show – billed ‘New Boots and Panto’ – in a pale blue jacket, black trousers, dark red Dr Martens boots, his trademark white scarf and a grey Trilby hat. Noise swirls around the dark, Edwardian venue and the audience jump to their feet to salute their hero. Looking thin and gaunt, Ian is helped onto a large box and gazes out on the sea of faces through a pair of dark glasses. Smiling sardonically, he raises his hat, his acknowledgement to the crowd; slow, measured, every inch the seasoned performer. Pulling the microphone towards him, he sings in his trademark croaky voice: “I come awake, with the gift for womankind/You’re still asleep, but the gift don’t seem to mind,” and the gig bursts into life.
But tonight the evening is tinged with sadness. In the bars, the stalls and galleries of the Palladium is a collective sense that this may be the last time Ian Dury will ever publicly perform this great sex anthem. Tonight, you can’t help feeling, a great English showman is bowing out.
Ian Dury’s very own ‘Sunday Night At The Palladium’ would be a fitting finale. As a teenager, his mother had brought him here to see Fifties crooner Johnnie Ray and he had watched in amazement as women flocked to the stage with huge bouquets of flowers. Later, he returned to the famous theatre on assignment for London Life magazine for which he did some illustrations. The young art graduate sketched the faces of the stars at the 1965 Royal Variety Show including Peter Cook, Dudley Moore, Dusty Springfield, Peter Sellers, Spike Milligan and – topping the bill – Tony Bennett. The Palladium, which first opened as a theatre in 1910, has played home to the kind of music hall acts who so influenced Ian’s songwriting and performing. In line with the venue’s variety show traditions, several acts are performing tonight, but this time it is Ian Dury’s turn to top the bill in the theatre where he has seen the greats perform.
It is an emotional occasion, but above all, pure entertainment. In a box beside the stage, Government minister Mo Mowlam is jiving and singing along to ‘Billericay Dickie’; in another, Ian’s five-year-old son Billy is jumping up and down excitedly and drumming his hands on the ledge. Behind him, Ian’s eldest son Baxter, his daughter Jemima and wife Sophy look on, full of smiles. Everyone here can feel the significance of the occasion – even The Blockheads have dressed smarter than usual in keeping with the venue. Ian, too, is aware of his surroundings, but is unimpressed. “I want to bring a bit of low-life into these walls. Oi Oi!” he yells. “Danny Kaye is listening, Bing is listening,” he jokes to roars of laughter from the crowd.
Many of his friends, including former managers and musicians, are in the audience. Tonight, they are party to a classic Dury performance of songs old and new: ‘Wake Up And Make Love To Me’, ‘Clevor Trever’, ‘The Passing Show’, ‘What A Waste’, ‘Billericay Dickie’, ‘Itinerant Child’, ‘Mash It Up Harry’, ‘Spasticus Autisticus’, ‘Bed ’O’ Roses No 9’, ‘Reasons To Be Cheerful (Part 3)’, ‘Sweet Gene Vincent’, ‘Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick’. His two escorts return to the stage, standing one each side of Ian and yelling ‘Hit Me’ into the microphone. But as the song thunders triumphantly to a close, Ian and the band are greeted by a barrage of calls for an encore and his minders leave the stage without him. “We’re not into going off for a cup of tea and then coming back again. We’d rather sit out here and soak it all up,” Ian says. Then, from Chaz’s guitar, comes the first few notes of one of Ian’s most famous songs. He stops, and then restarts the instantly recognisable tune, teasing the audience, before launching into the entire opening sequence of ‘Sex & Drugs & Rock’n’Roll’ and sending his fans delirious. When it finishes, Ian thanks the crowd, his voice cracking with emotion, but the evening ends on a light note. As Ian is led slowly away, ‘I’ve Got A Lovely Bunch Of Coconuts’ plays over the speakers, while The Blockheads throw flowers into the stalls. And then, he is gone.
It was in 1977 – the Queen’s Silver Jubilee Year – that Ian Dury first blended his music-hall mannerisms and Cockney rhyming slang with the American funk rhythms of Chaz Jankel. In doing so, the pair created a look and sound that was unique. Even as punk raged around him, New Boots And Panties – Ian’s audacious debut album – left listeners open-mouthed in shock. His chart topper, ‘Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick’, sold in excess of one million copies and has been described as “the first British funk record”.
Rarely has an artist moulded a persona as engaging as that created by Ian Dury or written lyrics as distinctive and devoid of cliché. Tellingly, his popularity with the British public remained undimmed over 20 years. The London Palladium holds more than 2,000 people, but Ian Dury and The Blockheads’ one-off show sold out weeks in advance, as fans clamoured to see him for what would prove to be the last time. Even when his profile in the UK’s fickle pop scene waned during the early Eighties, Ian and the band continued to pack out venues and headline international festivals. He maintained a cult following that spanned the entire social spectrum and cut across all age groups.
Ian Dury’s relevance to pop is far greater than his chart record of three Top Ten hits, including one number one, might suggest. He wore a razor-blade in his ear and scared the pants off people long before pasty-faced punks were gobbed on by pogoing mobs. Kilburn & The High Roads – his alarming group of misfits – were breaking all the rules of conventional performance in the early Seventies when the first shoots of US punk were just showing through in the shape of The Stooges and The New York Dolls. Johnny Rotten had studied Ian’s hobgoblin stance from the sticky floors of London pubs long before he appeared as the green-toothed, snarling vocalist in The Sex Pistols. The Kilburns’ strange music and eccentric appearance also inspired the formation of Madness, one of the English success stories of the Eighties.
Ian’s unforgettable first solo record – ‘Sex & Drugs & Rock’n’Roll’ – became an anthem in a Britain which was falling apart at the seams and its title has become generic. ‘Reasons To Be Cheerful’ also found its way into the modern language and is further proof that Ian Dury’s contribution has been as an originator, rather than a copyist. As an artist, he had a keen eye for image and was alert to the importance of presentation before pop videos ever played a marketing role. He saw himself, not as a singer or ‘pop star’, but as an all-round entertainer.
Ian Dury was as British as the flag he once embossed on his teeth. Not surprisingly, he never cracked the American market. It was always on home ground that Ian Dury would be a ‘household name’.
So polished was his performance, that it was hard to imagine that it was just that. Cockney wide-boy, diamond geezer – man of the people. He looked tough and, like many of his characters, spoke in rhyming slang – “I’ve forgotten me lemon curds [words]” – he laughed at The London Palladium. But his roots did not lie in working-class England at all. Ian Dury had a privileged post-war upbringing and his rough facade was born not out of his home life, but rather his experiences in hospitals and schools as a polio sufferer. From the age of seven, he had to build up physical and mental defences just to survive and this resilience helped him in his battle with cancer. Behind the prickly exterior, however, was a kind, caring and emotional man, as close friends testify.
Having been raised in a strongly matriarchal household, the women in Ian’s life shared that single-mindedness that he knew as a child. His treatment of women was not always exemplary and no one would ever have described him as a feminist, but his charm always endeared him to women.
More than anything, his disability shaped the person he later became. As one of his aides once said: “Whatever is wrong with Ian happened 45 years ago and we aren’t going to solve it now.” Many of those close to him were of the same mind. Far from attempting to exaggerate his physical disabilities, Ian originally tried to hide them on stage. But inevitably his pronounced limp and his need for a helping hand going on and off stage became an integral part of his public image – he was as synonymous with polio as he was with a cloth cap, tangled white scarf and Essex laddism. The release of ‘Spasticus Autisticus’ – his protest against the International Year Of The Disabled – was a brave move, but he took few risks when it came to his carefully crafted persona. From the bowler-hatted magician who made his solo debut at High Wycombe Town Hall in 1977 to the singer in the hat and shades who walked out at the London Palladium in 2000, the concept never changed. Journalists loved the ‘loveable rogue’, who unlike other more pretentious rock stars, spoke the ‘language of the street’. He became the darling of the quality broadsheet press that his early fans grew up to read.
But it was not just in the music papers and live music venues that the name of Ian Dury was written large. The anti-establishment rebel had his ego massaged in the company of some of Britain’s most revered actors and he continued to command respect among the cream of society. His acting work, his missions for the children’s charity UNICEF and his television commercials introduced him to a new generation of fans. From New Boots And Panties to Mr Love Pants, Ian Dury became one of our most endearing and inventive performers.
For a crippled youngster with the odds stacked against him, his life was one of achievement born out of adversity. But like all life’s ‘clever bastards’, as Ian would have agreed, he “probably had help from his mum”.