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Review: The Crazy World of Arthur Brown, Fleece
What’s your earliest pop memory? Thanks to a magnificently negligent babysitter, I have several. Chief among them is watching Arthur Brown perform Fire on Top of the Pops. I’d defy anyone exposed to the God of Hellfire as a tot not to grow to become a dissolute rock-loving adult.
Crazy Arthur’s first Bristol show in more than a decade was billed as including a DJ set by a fella from Pilton who calls himself Patmandu. Probably fearing that he’d be making those horrible whacka-whacka noises and ‘beats’ for an hour or so, most punters delayed their arrival accordingly. But Mr. Patmandu turned out to be quite a pleasant surprise. A disc jockey of the old school, he simply spins the discs – all on crackly old vinyl. When we turned up, he was playing Steppenwolf’s The Pusher, followed by (the original) Fleetwood Mac’s version of Need Your Love So Bad. What a joy to hear Peter Green’s distinctive vocals and guitar tone echoing round the Fleece.
Arthur Brown has experimented with various styles of music since The Hit, but his talented current Crazy World hit the right note by celebrating the hard-rockin’ psychedelia that we all crave. Sure, these guys aren’t Vincent Crane and Carl Palmer, and they all seem to be around 40 years younger than their leader, but they’re exceptionally well rehearsed and are more than happy to join in with the dressing-up box fun on a mannequin-adorned stage. Arthur himself enjoys more costume changes than Madonna, including multiple hats, masks, capes, a set of transluscent wings adorned with fairy lights (which prove rather difficult to manoeuvre) and a huge silvery garment that looks as though you could roast a turkey in it. Late in the show, it is revealed that Mrs Arthur was hiding behind a screen to peel his lanky frame in and out of all this gear.
It’s quite likely that several punters present saw him when he first played in Bristol 55 years ago (and indeed at the second Glastonbury Festival three years later, where he so terrified the hippies that he wasn’t invited back for 40 years), but he draws a mixed audience for this career-spanning show whose highlights are from the Kingdom Come era (notably a magnificent rendition of Sunrise).
Remarkably, his multi-octave vocals – which proved so influential on everyone from Ian Gillan to Bruce Dickinson – remain undiminished by the ravages of time. He’s also impressively nimble on his feet for a man of 81, though when he drops to his knees at the end of Fire Poem, one does wonder briefly whether he’ll be able to get up again. Health and safety has presumably put the kibosh on the fiery helmet so Fire itself is performed without traditional conflagratory embellishment. But by the time he gets to Time Captives, Arthur is positively bouncing around the stage, like a youngster in his sixties.
Read more: Metal & Prog Picks: November 2023
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