by Andy Langer
For better or worse, when The Crazy World of Arthur Brown released “Fire” in
1968 it immediately made Brown familiar worldwide as “The God of Hellfire.” In
the three decades that followed, “Fire”‘s hook, refrain, and the stage show
that accompanied it have been borrowed, appropriated, and outright stolen by
scores of popular musicians – with glowing admissions of larceny coming from
Genesis, Alice Cooper, Deep Purple, Iron Maiden, Kiss, and even George Clinton.
And while “Fire” proved Brown to be the proverbial “one-hit wonder,” the
53-year-old musician can claim an unparalleled radio legacy in the song’s
redefinition of psychedelia. It can also be convincingly argued that without
Brown’s lavish live productions, the concert theatrics that Pink Floyd, Peter
Gabriel, and U2 now deliver as routine might never have been.
In just the last few years, “Fire” has been covered by Pete Townshend, techno
sensation Prodigy, and shock-metal’s Marilyn Manson. And what about the Red Hot
Chili Peppers’ fire-capped Lollapalooza finale? A tip of the hat to Arthur
Brown. “I’ll have to send those folks my address,” quips Brown, who retains a
quarter of “Fire”‘s publishing rights – a business luxury rare for Sixties
hitmakers. And the address where those royalties are sent? Austin, Texas. Had
Brown accepted Jimi Hendrix’s enthusiastic offer to team forces or kept
Townshend’s guitar tracks on the original “Fire,” things may have turned out
different. But at Robert Fripp’s suggestion, Brown decided 15 years ago that
Austin was the best place to concentrate on his family, and find sanity away
from fame. And this year, Brown is preparing for his first real attempt at an
Austin-based return, with a new album, re-issued records, an autobiography,
poetry book, and overseas tour that will take him to Russia and the prestigious
Glastonberry Festival. Given that in 1973, when Brown’s drummer called the
afternoon before a gig to say he was 400 miles away with the bass player’s
wife, Brown pre-impacted hip-hop by becoming the first-ever musician ever to
use a drum machine in a live show, and it seems only fair to paraphrase LL Cool
J: Don’t call it a comeback, the influence has been here for years.
“When we started, there were no books about rock and its history, so we never
considered that people would later look at our work in any context,” says
Brown. “We considered music to be the objective, not fame, so my interest was
always on the next project. But time to time, people will remind me of the
influence of The Crazy World of Arthur Brown. A guy that recently discovered my
music just told me he immediately realized that many of his favorite hard rock
bands got the falsetto thing from me. And it’s odd, because heavy metal
expanded on both the music and the theatrics despite the fact we never had a
guitarist in the Crazy World.”
Brown devotee and ex-Iron Maiden frontman Bruce Dickinson has been so
impressed by Brown’s oft-overlooked influence on his peers that he’s taken it
upon himself to compile a BBC documentary tracking Brown’s legacy. As was the
case with Dickinson, the most direct reminder for Brown of his influence often
comes from the artists themselves. Peter Gabriel once told Brown before a show,
“You’ll see a lot of yourself in me tonight.” With pre-stardom acts like
Genesis and David Bowie supporting both The Crazy World and Brown’s next band,
Kingdom Come, Brown says it’s no surprise they picked up on at least one of
Brown’s musical, mime, performance art, theater, or poetry elements. “With so
much going on, influence was only natural,” Brown says.
Brown’s own story of influences is much the same as that of most British acts
of the Sixties; the discovery of American blues on the BBC. Brown says that
although he kept abreast of early rock pioneers like Fats Domino and Little
Richard via imports, it was the field recordings of blues legends like Robert
Johnson that eventually led him to find Muddy Waters and Champion Jack Dupree
with the informal blues fraternity of his college dorm. By living in a
quadrangle, with sides that only played the Beatles, New Orleans jazz, and Bob
Dylan, Brown was exposed to genre-crossing musicians and their fans before he
had begun to play out himself – let alone settle into a genre. Eventually,
Brown discovered James Brown’s Live at the Apollo, and found inspiration
in just hearing the crowd response. “It was incredible in that the fans and
music put our English music to shame by dealing so heavily in emotion,” says
Arthur Brown.
By 1966, Brown was a struggling musician unable to pay his bills at a Paris
hotel, days away from lowering his possessions out a sixth story window and
skipping out on his bill. But in his last days there, Brown hooked up with a
soundtrack producer working on a project for a Jane Fonda film. “It was
horrible,” Brown says, “My voice comes out from behind her while she’s naked in
the shower. But it paid my debt, got me out of Paris, and sent me back to
England with an idea for the Crazy World.” With a degree in philosophy under
his belt, Brown created the Crazy World as a vehicle to explore social and
political issues within sprawling free-form rants and jams. Track Records, the
British label that discovered Hendrix and rejuvenated The Who, saw potential in
Brown’s ability to complement the jams with the gloomy theatre of the stage
show, and secured the rights to the audio half of Brown’s Crazy World.
“The make-up and fire got people’s attention,” explains Brown, “but I started
to write songs that were pretty weird for the times and we’d be playing to
audiences of stockbrokers accustomed to bluesy lyrics. They wouldn’t listen any
further without a hook so we needed another dimension to communicate the
feelings. At the time it was new subject matter – good and evil and all that
shit, as well as a fair amount of comedy on politics. It wasn’t props and
things just to get people to look, it was us asking ourselves what this is
about and finding the lighting and dance that can match it. Because if you are
going to talk about social commentary, it doesn’t work as well if you’re just
spouting while standing straight up.
“We were able to paint different contexts with different costumes. In a way, I
was rather sad it didn’t develop more. Alice Cooper took it and I think his
early stuff was rather good, only he fell into the same traps we did for a
while. Kiss, as well. It’s dangerous to overly concentrate on the theatrics.
You must start with the music. Too many images are too cumbersome and don’t
work. What works in rock theatre is streamlined image, not so much
impressionist but basic images. The challenge is to get images that are
abstract enough not to be too defining but still able to display a concrete
image.”
Brown’s most influential image/theatric was the “God of Hellfire,” an
extension of “Fire” for which the British press would vilify him, and the
Italian police jail him, considering the routine satanic since the singer would
typically conclude the set by lighting his head on fire. In the never-ending
game of trace-the-influence, Parliament-Funkadelic leader George Clinton says
“Fire” was directly responsible for P-Funk’s own stage circus. “He’d set fire
to his fuckin’ head! That told me a lot. I knew where I was heading from
then on,” Clinton told Soul CD.
And even without a guitarist, Brown’s stage show was confrontational enough to
make a fan out of his touring partner and label-mate, Jimi Hendrix. Brown says
Hendrix eventually got to the point that he wouldn’t allow The Crazy World to
support him for fear of being upstaged. And when the two acts were
inadvertently paired, Hendrix would invariably light his guitar on fire – this
being a full year after Brown had begun his own on-stage flametricks.
“It was partly due to Jimi that `Fire’ was such a big hit,” notes Brown.
“Track had given him the single, he liked it, and gave it to a lot of the black
stations around America and said `play this’. He didn’t tell them I was white.
He used to come down to gigs and we’d occasionally get on stage together in New
York. He’d play the bass and I’d sing. For some reason he liked my singing, and
one day while touring, I’d been called over to Jimi’s hotel. I went and he told
me he thought we should get something together with projection screens and
taped Wagner. He was looking for something radically different to do and never
found it, so he went back to the Band of Gypsies. I told him I would think
about it, but I wasn’t very impressed by him then. It wasn’t until much later
that I listened to a lot more of him and realized it was an honor I couldn’t
have realized at the time.”
Shortly after passing on the Hendrix gig, The Crazy World of Arthur
Brown began to collapse on the road, with one member actually being
institutionalized. With the trappings of instant fame and the pressure to
deliver his show to mainstream audiences, Brown also started to show signs of
mental fatigue. Brown put an end to the Crazy World when he began to believe
his own hype. “It started with theatrics and finding a dynamic word-image fit,
but when I got into dope I began to read things into it,” he recounts. “For a
while, I didn’t necessarily believe I was the devil, but felt as if I was
supposed to lay things open for people to see. Thank goodness that side of
myself disappeared. After a while you think `God, how could I believe this?'”
Because The Crazy World was essentially Brown’s dictatorship, his
next project was a communal experimental band that paid roadies and management
the same cut as the band. Not surprisingly, the band never recorded and lasted
but a year. With a more conventional wage system, the band eventually spilled
over into the modestly successful Kingdom Come. “My visions of reality was at
the center of the Crazy World and I thought I needed to become the opposite,”
Brown says, “But hiding my name on the bill was just the opposite end of the
same crap.”
Brown continued to tour and record throughout the Seventies, appearing briefly
inTommy, and turning in guest studio performances with Cat Stevens,
Alan Parsons, and Hawkwind. At the time, Brown’s modest successes had him so
frustrated with the music business that he defiantly broke Music Biz 101’s
cardinal rule and acted as his own manager and publicist. But without formal
career guidance, Brown gravitated back to school to study dance, discipline,
self-observation, and the correlation of music and movement. Eventually,
Brown’s experimental work in using music to heal, typically through
improvisational songs, took him as far as Israel where he met with wounded
soldiers in the infirmaries.
By 1990, Brown had returned to academia at Southwest Texas State University,
in pursuit of a counseling degree. “In many of the sessions during my
internship, I found it more effective to sing than talk,” says Brown. And thus,
an idea was born: Brown would join local counselor Jim Maxwell for “Healing
Songs Therapy.” Each one-hour session with Maxwell would conclude with a Brown
song that addressed the patient’s problems. By integrating music and therapy,
Brown had managed to combine both his loves. But even today, as the healing and
soul-searching continue professionally, its also reminds him of how much he
enjoyed performing. A 1987 blues record with former Mother of Invention player
Jimmy Carl Black, Brown, Black, and Blues, was both Brown’s
highest-profile Austin outing to date and definitive proof that Brown’s voice
had survived the downtime. Around the same time, Brown would launch a short
bi-coastal tour and appear on Solid Gold with a band of Austin musicians
that featured a pre-Poi Dog Bruce Hughes and Susan Voelz. Yet, even with the
occasional live or recorded action, Brown says his Austin experiences have been
essentially about choosing peace of mind over money.
“At one point, my case necessitated the old Austin standby of going into
construction,” says the singer. “I was a carpenter for a while and had a house
painting company with Jimmy Carl Black that at one point had painters for
keyboards, bass, drums, and guitars. It was funny because around Jimmy Carl
Black, if nobody recognizes you, he’ll tell them `I’m a rock & roll legend
and painting your damn wall.'”
Today, the success of entire Brown-inspired genres like techno, metal, and
industrial music has laid a strong foundation for Brown to return to a younger
audience. And although Brown says he’s a bit embarrassed by chunks of the
mid-Seventies records that will be re-issued one-per-month starting next
January by One-Way Records, they’ll also provide historical perspective for new
fans who can only find The Crazy World of Arthur Brown’s “Fire,” and have
perhaps confused Arthur Brown’s Kingdom Come for the Eighties Zeppelin rip-off.
Additionally, Brown is in pre-production for a new record he hopes to release
in time for next year’s international touring.
“It’s exciting because there’s some African rhythms, experimental funk, and
electronics I’ve been toying with to get as wide of a rhythm base a possible so
there’s more to inspire new dance opportunities. There will also be a little
blues and folk that will place more accent on the lyrics, with an a
cappella track and various degrees of instrumentation.” As for the new
stage show, Brown says he’s got some ideas of his own but is also finding
inspiration from those he’s influenced.
“Sure, I’m influenced by Peter Gabriel,” he says. “I know one artist who won’t
go see certain films in case he’s influenced, but sometimes I hear records I
think I couldn’t do any better than, and I’ll find its influence and something
wonderful can come out of it. When I was young, I’d watch travelogues about
African tribes on British TV and later find that when I did the dancing with
the Crazy World it was a lot of the same movements. I didn’t practice them, all
I’d done was watch it on television. It’s the same way today if you’re
listening to the radio.”
Earlier this year, Brown tested the new material on audiences throughout a small European tour that
culminated in a Russian Festival that also included Joe Cocker and Sheryl Crow.
Putting aside the influence of “Fire,” potential album sales, or even his
work with “Healing Songs,” Brown says the touring reminded him that
returning to the studio and stage is simply the best therapy
for himself.
“I have spent years finding stability in my life and family, and now I’m back
to being the irresponsible artist,” he beams. “And I have a lot more experience
now to put in the music. I’m 53, but it gives me a certain pedigree. I can’t
dance like I could at 23, but I know more about it.
“I remember on the tour last year suddenly finding myself in mid-air,
upside-down with my hand just about to hit the stage and saying to myself, `How
the fuck did I get here?’ It was lovely, music just takes you away and your
body responds.” n
This article appears in August 25 • 1995 and August 25 • 1995 (Cover).