Ivor Cutler
Mar. 7th, 2006 08:28 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
imomusIvor Cutler, Scotland's greatest poet, has died. He died on March 3rd, aged 83. I am very sad.
I met Cutler just once, on March 3rd 1999, during the recording of my Stars Forever album. He was sitting in the Photographer's Gallery, near London's Chinatown (he had learned Chinese, and apparently liked to spend time in Chinatown practicing his skills). He gave me some little gold stickers covered in proverbs of his own provenance. I might still have them somewhere. I told him we had been released by the same record label (his records were being released by Creation at the time). "Oh, is that what it was?" he asked, pointedly.
I first heard of Ivor Cutler when I was a schoolboy in Scotland. For some reason, he was a cult in our seventh form rooms on Henderson Row, Edinburgh. Johnny Glenn and Puckle Stewart would bump into each other in the corridor, shout "Ivor!" and collapse into hysterics. We circulated postcards printed by Virgin, Cutler's label at the time, showing a chest-bare Ivor, already looking like an eighty-year-old man (although he must only have been in his mid-50s at the time) striking a pathetic pose, cupped hands held in a sort of mute appeal to the viewer. The photograph was captioned (on the back) "Ivor Cutler: the North face".
What I didn't realize until later was that this laughing stock, this eccentric, was a mountain of talent. I bought Cutler's "Life in a Scotch Sitting Room Vol. 2", a long-playing album of a live performance at the Third Eye Centre, Sauchiehall Street -- an unreliable surrealist autobiography sprinkled with useful "Jungle Tips". It was a record my parents (who had quite similar lower middle-class upbringings to Cutler) could enjoy as much as we children did. Like Cutler, the record combined the childish and the ancient.
I first saw Cutler perform in about 1978, at the Aberdeen University student union. I reviewed his show of poems and songs in the student paper, The Gaudie, headlining my review "Priceless Cutlery". Like a cross between Franz Kafka (his favourite writer, and a fellow Jew) and Nico (for the harmonium, of course), Cutler pumped out songs and stories that, while whimsical and very old-fashioned, nevertheless bore traces of the "lucy in the sky with diamonds" 1960s, recalling the psychedelia of the Beatles' "Magical Mystery Tour" (which Cutler appears in) and even some of the spirit of that other great Scot, R.D. Laing. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that the Beatles had Cutler in mind when they wrote "Sgt. Pepper".
Rather like that other traditionalist eccentric, Robert Crumb, Cutler was more marked by the radical counter-culture of the 1960s than he seemed. A teacher by profession (he was also in the RAF, and a graduate of Glasgow School of Art), he spent a happy and productive few years teaching (and living) at A.S. Neill's radical alternative school Summerhill. I think the connection with Lennon and McCartney (Cutler even recorded an album with George Martin, Ludo) reminds us that the 1960s in Britain contains that valuable cultural moment: the collision of surrealism with music hall. Acid, of course, had something to do with it, but I suspect Cutler was a bit like Obelix, dipped in hallucogenics at birth. Rather than chemicals, he reached his astonishingly original images and scenarios by writing very late at night, when very sleepy. (This is something else he shares with Kafka.)
Cutler's influence over my own work reached its peak only in the last few years. He's a notable presence on my "Oskar Tennis Champion" album, in the sleevenotes of which I offer "a bearhug to Scotland's greatest living poet, Ivor Cutler" and direct listeners to his poem A Land of Penguin, the inspiration behind the song A Lapdog. I think you can also hear a song like "Lovely Tree" as Cutleresque. His influence also surfaced in the stories I told last year during my performance in "I'll Speak, You Sing" at the LFL Gallery in New York.
Just this week I considered doing a Click Opera entry about Cutler "while he's still alive" (because he's always appeared so ancient, his death, though shocking, has often seemed even more of a foregone conclusion than it is for the rest of us). Yesterday, without knowing he'd died, I chatted about Cutler with a London friend, mentioning how I'd been listening to a lovely song of his called "Lemon Flower" and urging her to listen to it too.
I was delighted to discover that my name appears right next to Cutler's in Wikipedia's List of People Widely Considered to be Eccentric:
• Nick "Momus" Currie, Berlin-based Scottish "folktronica" musician, design critic, orientalist and "emotional communist".
• Ivor Cutler, Scottish poet, musician and comic.
I hope posterity will be eccentric enough to consider Cutler, as I do, a "star forever".
Some Ivor Cutler resources:
Biography on Benbecula Records site.
Obituary in The Guardian.
Feature in The Guardian, "Cutler's Drawers"
Website about Cutler.
Audio clips of Cutler performances.
Ivor Cutler's radio sessions.
YouTube video of Cutler performing "Shoplifters" on The Old Grey Whistle Test.
A BBC Radio Scotland documentary about Cutler (broadcast 2002).
Glasgow Dreamer, a tribute programme by fellow comedian Arnold Brown broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2003.
I met Cutler just once, on March 3rd 1999, during the recording of my Stars Forever album. He was sitting in the Photographer's Gallery, near London's Chinatown (he had learned Chinese, and apparently liked to spend time in Chinatown practicing his skills). He gave me some little gold stickers covered in proverbs of his own provenance. I might still have them somewhere. I told him we had been released by the same record label (his records were being released by Creation at the time). "Oh, is that what it was?" he asked, pointedly.
I first heard of Ivor Cutler when I was a schoolboy in Scotland. For some reason, he was a cult in our seventh form rooms on Henderson Row, Edinburgh. Johnny Glenn and Puckle Stewart would bump into each other in the corridor, shout "Ivor!" and collapse into hysterics. We circulated postcards printed by Virgin, Cutler's label at the time, showing a chest-bare Ivor, already looking like an eighty-year-old man (although he must only have been in his mid-50s at the time) striking a pathetic pose, cupped hands held in a sort of mute appeal to the viewer. The photograph was captioned (on the back) "Ivor Cutler: the North face".What I didn't realize until later was that this laughing stock, this eccentric, was a mountain of talent. I bought Cutler's "Life in a Scotch Sitting Room Vol. 2", a long-playing album of a live performance at the Third Eye Centre, Sauchiehall Street -- an unreliable surrealist autobiography sprinkled with useful "Jungle Tips". It was a record my parents (who had quite similar lower middle-class upbringings to Cutler) could enjoy as much as we children did. Like Cutler, the record combined the childish and the ancient.
I first saw Cutler perform in about 1978, at the Aberdeen University student union. I reviewed his show of poems and songs in the student paper, The Gaudie, headlining my review "Priceless Cutlery". Like a cross between Franz Kafka (his favourite writer, and a fellow Jew) and Nico (for the harmonium, of course), Cutler pumped out songs and stories that, while whimsical and very old-fashioned, nevertheless bore traces of the "lucy in the sky with diamonds" 1960s, recalling the psychedelia of the Beatles' "Magical Mystery Tour" (which Cutler appears in) and even some of the spirit of that other great Scot, R.D. Laing. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that the Beatles had Cutler in mind when they wrote "Sgt. Pepper".
Rather like that other traditionalist eccentric, Robert Crumb, Cutler was more marked by the radical counter-culture of the 1960s than he seemed. A teacher by profession (he was also in the RAF, and a graduate of Glasgow School of Art), he spent a happy and productive few years teaching (and living) at A.S. Neill's radical alternative school Summerhill. I think the connection with Lennon and McCartney (Cutler even recorded an album with George Martin, Ludo) reminds us that the 1960s in Britain contains that valuable cultural moment: the collision of surrealism with music hall. Acid, of course, had something to do with it, but I suspect Cutler was a bit like Obelix, dipped in hallucogenics at birth. Rather than chemicals, he reached his astonishingly original images and scenarios by writing very late at night, when very sleepy. (This is something else he shares with Kafka.)
Cutler's influence over my own work reached its peak only in the last few years. He's a notable presence on my "Oskar Tennis Champion" album, in the sleevenotes of which I offer "a bearhug to Scotland's greatest living poet, Ivor Cutler" and direct listeners to his poem A Land of Penguin, the inspiration behind the song A Lapdog. I think you can also hear a song like "Lovely Tree" as Cutleresque. His influence also surfaced in the stories I told last year during my performance in "I'll Speak, You Sing" at the LFL Gallery in New York.
Just this week I considered doing a Click Opera entry about Cutler "while he's still alive" (because he's always appeared so ancient, his death, though shocking, has often seemed even more of a foregone conclusion than it is for the rest of us). Yesterday, without knowing he'd died, I chatted about Cutler with a London friend, mentioning how I'd been listening to a lovely song of his called "Lemon Flower" and urging her to listen to it too.
I was delighted to discover that my name appears right next to Cutler's in Wikipedia's List of People Widely Considered to be Eccentric:
• Nick "Momus" Currie, Berlin-based Scottish "folktronica" musician, design critic, orientalist and "emotional communist".
• Ivor Cutler, Scottish poet, musician and comic.
I hope posterity will be eccentric enough to consider Cutler, as I do, a "star forever".
Some Ivor Cutler resources:
Biography on Benbecula Records site.
Obituary in The Guardian.
Feature in The Guardian, "Cutler's Drawers"
Website about Cutler.
Audio clips of Cutler performances.
Ivor Cutler's radio sessions.
YouTube video of Cutler performing "Shoplifters" on The Old Grey Whistle Test.
A BBC Radio Scotland documentary about Cutler (broadcast 2002).
Glasgow Dreamer, a tribute programme by fellow comedian Arnold Brown broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2003.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-07 01:37 pm (UTC)But I am surprised you don't think that Edwin Morgan (http://www.edwinmorgan.com/) is Scotland's greatest poet. Perhaps he is now. I think you share certain sensibilities.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-07 01:47 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-07 01:53 pm (UTC)I'd just discovered him. I had no idea he passed away.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-07 02:07 pm (UTC)very sad indeed
(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-07 02:09 pm (UTC)i must admit i am amazed with his material, hence utterly regretful that i've only chanced upon him around last year.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-07 02:17 pm (UTC)I was delighted to discover that my name appears right next to Cutler's in Wikipedia's List of People Widely Considered to be Eccentric
I was browsing this list last week and was disturbed to find in it neither Quentin Crisp nor Leigh Bowery.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-07 02:30 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-07 05:14 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-08 06:07 am (UTC)Or perhaps he might be too busy cataloging his bananas in order of stem length.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-07 07:16 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-07 09:16 pm (UTC)Ivor memories:
"...when I got to 17 I went through a stage of drinking hot water at people's houses instead of tea or coffee, and I'd try to savour the difference between one cup of hot water and another".
"He converted to atheism and then, in his early twenties, having explored astronomy, he decided to become an agnostic."
(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-08 12:55 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-07 02:19 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-07 02:30 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-07 02:52 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-07 03:30 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-07 03:44 pm (UTC)think i'll go put on "jammy smears" now...
(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-07 04:03 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-07 04:15 pm (UTC)Sour grapes
Date: 2006-03-07 04:22 pm (UTC)I have never heard of him. From the post and the comments, he may have been great; I would have no idea, and had I bumped into any show he was doing, I would have avoided it, searching instead for actual entertainment.
This is no indictement on the person; just a factual summary of his impression on the world in general.
Re: Sour grapes
Date: 2006-03-07 07:25 pm (UTC)You'd have avoided it without knowing if you liked him or not? If I were you in this hypothetical scenario, I'd have listened for a few minutes outside and bought a ticket if I enjoyed it. Spontaneity pays big dividends where entertainment is concerned. Safety is for KISS fans.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-07 04:50 pm (UTC)Thanks for sharing this about Cutler...
(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-07 07:26 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-07 07:35 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-07 08:36 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-07 08:40 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-07 08:54 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2006-03-07 09:09 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-07 09:14 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-07 09:29 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-07 09:30 pm (UTC)Sad news indeed
Date: 2006-03-07 11:42 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-08 12:15 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-08 12:23 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-08 01:05 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-08 04:59 am (UTC)bobruisk news
Date: 2006-03-08 07:30 am (UTC),/<ft4>
Date: 2006-03-08 07:45 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-08 09:36 am (UTC)When I was 14/15 John Peel used to play his sessions "Life in a Scotch Sitting Room" inbetween Nils Lofgren and U, Roy records, Robin Trower and The Bothy Band.
Later on in the 80's I always used to see him in The Compendium bookshop in Camden Town. He'd always be wearing Ban The Bomb badges.
They never did, did they?
They never did ban the bomb.
_Times_ obit
Date: 2006-03-08 02:18 pm (UTC)I kept his obit from yesterday's _Times_ and can send a PDF
(other formats by request) file scan of it to your Gmail acct
tomorrow if you like.
Looking forward to GDrive...
Re: _Times_ obit
Date: 2006-03-08 02:34 pm (UTC)Re: _Times_ obit
Date: 2006-03-08 07:23 pm (UTC)I feel his being characterized as "anti-intellectual" to be uncharitable, if not more than a little misleading. "Despised" seems a bit odd, as well; if that is how people actually felt about such an openly playful man, it was incredibly misplaced. There's a nasty streak in the British temperament that seems to rise when it comes to people like Ivor. I've given up trying to understand it.
Re: _Times_ obit
Date: 2006-03-08 08:04 pm (UTC)Re: _Times_ obit
Date: 2006-03-09 05:54 pm (UTC)ah, it is now. I had this problem with the _Anansi Boys_ review
for Neil Gaiman. By the time he'd read the email and replied, the
previous day's content had been made available on the website...
I'm glad they put the pic in the online version: that was part of
the point of the scan offer. They're better at including pics where
they illustrate the point (e.g. the Ulas family of scuttlers) rather
than making most online content text-only.
& the Torygraph does the best obits, anyway.