Alex Chilton

“Children by the million / sing for Alex Chilton
When he comes ’round
They sing “I’m in love. What’s that song?
I’m in love with that song.“
('Alex Chilton' by The Replacements)

Alex Chilton sang about teenage love in ways that no other man managed before or since. He sang about a teenage boy's love. Songs like 'Thirteen', 'September Gurls', ''I'm In Love With A Girl" (all 1 minute 48 seconds of it!)

About a year ago, I posted the lyrics to Thirteen,

Won't you let me
Walk you home from school?
Won't you let me
meet you at the pool?

a song that perfectly expresses that astonishing season when you suddenly discover that girls are interesting (what do you mean? well... just... interesting) in a way that they have never been before. A season when you know nothing about girls, but you suddenly decide that you would quite to be with one of them.

(Be with? What the hell are you going on about?
What kind of wanting is that, wanting to be with someone?)

Alex Chilton died in New Orleans on Wednesday night. He was fifty-nine. Old for a teenager; young for a man. He was a year older than my dad when he died. (Nowadays I know, that is young.) And that song, Thirteen... that's the song about the year I discovered girls, which was also the year I discovered my dad was dying

Important stuff. A great many questions,
and no-one to answer them.

The Alex Chilton aong everybody seems to be turning to right now is 'September Gurls' (love that spelling.) I'll go and find the words, and post them here later today.

I Am The World's Forgotten Boy

I'm a street walking cheetah
With a heart full of napalm
I'm a runaway son of a nuclear A - bomb
I am the world's forgotten boy
The one who searches and destroys

Honey please help me out
Somebody gotta save my soul
Baby please plea for me

Look out honey, cause I'm using technology
Ain't got time to make no apology
Soul radiation in the dead of night
Love in the middle of a fire fight

Honey gotta strike me blind
Somebody gotta save my soul
Baby, please take my mind

I am the world's forgotten boy
The one who's searchin',
Searchin' to destroy



Look out honey,
Cuz I'm using technology
Ain't got time to make no apology
Soul radiation in the dead of night
Love in the middle of a fire fight

Honey please strike me blind
Somebody gotta save my soul
Baby please take my mind

I am the world's forgotten boy
The one who's searchin',
Searchin' to destroy.

A Close Watch

(A Close Watch on the Trains)

Never win and never lose
There’s nothing much to choose
Between the right and wrong.

Nothing lost and nothing gained
Still things aren’t quite the same
Between you and me.

I keep a close watch on this heart of mine
I keep a close watch on this heart of mine




I still hear your voice at night
When I turn out the light
And try to settle down.

But there’s nothing much I can do
Because I can’t live without you
Any way at all.


I keep a close watch on this heart of mine
I keep a close watch on this heart of mine
JOHN CALE


John Cale took the words "I keep a close watch on this heart of mine" from I Walk The Line by Johnny Cash.

The House In Sandy Gate Lane Pt. 2

I had a comment on yesterday's post (from the far from unobservant Z), because I described our house as modern, when it was built in the 1930's. This is worth exploring a little further.

The first house I lived in, Summer Hill, was built for my father on a plot of land he owned, in the 1950's. The second house, the curiously named Cobber's Hill probably dated fromthe mid sixties. So here I am, at thirteen, moving into a house that is older than either of the other homes i've lived in, and yet I call it 'modern'. What's that all about?

I used to collect stamps, and for some reason, I was particularly fascinated by a range of stamp called the King Edward VIII Definitives. Perhaps it was because they were rare and collectable - the King was only on the throne for eleven months - but I was also fascinated by the elegance of their design. They were designed by a man called Eric Gill. I also had a set of books called the New Temple Shakespeare, which was a pocket edition, with a separate book for each of the plays, the same size as Beatrix Potter's Peter books. Every book had an engraving by Eric Gill on the dust jacket, and more engravings inside, to illustrate the plays.

At some point, I matched the name of Eric Gill in Stanley Stamp's Gibbon Catalogue to the name on my Shakespeare books, and was interested enough to look him up in an encyclopedia one day in the local reference library. That, gentle reader, is how I became fascinated by the art and design of the 1930's, and also began to get a wee bit pretentious, and use the word 'modern' in a different context, besides just meaning the most up-to-date.



I was too young to be interested Shakespeare at that age. My parents had just decided to leave a set of his plays in my bedroom, like Desert Island Discs, in the hope that somehow I would find them, and start to become cultured and intelligent.

They did this with another book, too. A sex education manual. That one, I did read, and not just study the pictures. Since it was a book for parents, not children, it wasn't entirely informative. But I did learn that parents can be very confused and embarrassed about sex, and I resolved not to trouble mine any further.

I remember soaking stamps off envelopes in the washbasin in the downstairs bathroom in the house in Sandygate Lane. It was an avocado bathroom, which had apparently very fashionable at some point. My parents had gone out for the evening, and I cleaned up the basin and put the stamps somewhere to dry out, and I sat down to watch - heaven only knows how I come to remember this - The Thomas Crown Affair, which was being repeated on television that night.

It was the Steve McQueen original, not the Pierce Brosnan remake. I remember being quite interested in Faye Dunaway, and fascinated by the split screen photography, but mostly, it was the song about the windmills that stayed with me.

(I know I'm still avoiding writing about Wimbledon, and my raging fever, and the pond at the bottom of the garden. Bear with me, I'll get around to it.)

The House In Sandy Gate Lane Pt. 1

It was a modern 1930's house, and we lived there for only eleven months. Because we only lived there for such a short time, I remember lots of things that happened in my life while I was there, and know that they must all have been happening at exactly the same time.

A single summer, and then a winter. I had just turned thirteen. This is the house where I acquired my demon.

I lost interest in school work. I began to change into jeans as soon as I got home. I remember my school tie coiled on the table, my homework waiting to be done. I started to listen to the radio, instead of watching television with my parents. I remember the portable radio, and the cassette recorder for recording John Peel shows.

I remember my bedroom in that house. The vinyl on the floor. The shiny magazines with pictures of glamorous women. I remember the girlie magazines I bought on the covered market, and hid in the pillars of the railway bridge. I remember half-naked women and diesel trains, and synthesizers and loud guitars.

(The half-naked women were pretend, but the trains were real.)

I remember the garden, too. But I'll tell you about that tomorrow.