More on... The Otway Experience

Some of my correspondents have asked me, "Well, what exactly happens in a John Otway show?"

It's kind of hard to explain. Really, you have to be there.

Most of the time, he plays alone. Sometimes, he has a more proficient guitarist along to beef up his sound (in recent years, often a shambling heavy metal dude called Richard). Occasionally, he puts together a 'big band' - a full four-piece rock'n'roll outfit. For the Albert Hall gig, he had an orchestra and a children's choir. Very occasionally, he even reunites with his early '80s collaborator (and creator of his infamous signature tune, 'Headbutts'), Wild Willy Barrett. Once, he teamed up with another of my favourite eccentric British entertainers, Attila The Stockbroker (whose albums include titles of such twisted genius as 'Libyan Students From Hell' and '667: Neighbour of the Beast').

However he is accompanied, every show is almost exactly the same.... but that doesn't matter: familiarity breeds contentment for his many fans. He plays mostly covers, some relatively straight, but most with a jokey twist: Bowie's 'Space Oddity', for example, is always delivered in a broad Yorkshire accent ("Ey-oop, Planet Earth's blue, an' there's nowt ah can do..."). He sometimes offers a killer parody of Bob Dylan as well. Other songs strangely acquire more emotional power than the versions we are used to: 'Two Little Boys' (known in the UK mainly from a kids' version done in the '60s or '70s by the very middle-of-the-road Australian entertainer, Rolf Harris), and even 'Billy, Don't Be A Hero' (a cheesy '70s pop hit from a soon forgotten, two-hit-wonder band called Paper Lace), are reclaimed - despite a few moments of comic mugging - as moving anti-war ballads; 'Green, Green Grass of Home', mainly spoken, but with the chorus exploding into a rousing punk thrash, is somehow much more affecting than the syrupy Tom Jones original (Otway is big on Tom Jones: his greatest earnings to date probably came from the Weetabix TV commercial which used his rendition of 'Delilah' - "She saw the spoon in my hand and she laughed no more...").

The inevitable highlight of the show - for me, at least - is 'House of the Rising Sun', which, by tradition (a tradition whose origins are lost in the mists of time), is always done as a kind of call-and-response with the crowd. Members of the audience interrupt every half-line or so, prompting the next lyric with a facetious question:
"Tell us about yer mum!"
"My mother was a tailor..." "
What did she ever do for you?"
"Well, she sewed my new blue jeans."
"Oh, that's nice. And what about yer dad?"
"My father was a gambling man..."
"Where was that?"
"Down in New Orleans."

And then there's the physicality of the show. The increasingly extravagant forward rolls across the stage (while still playing the guitar), usually culminating with a dramatic series of leap-into-forward-rolls from the top of the speaker stacks - or from teetering towers of beer crates erected for the purpose. The reckless self-beating-up that happens during 'Body Talk'. The moment when he tears off his sweat-soaked shirt, showering the front row of the audience with popped buttons. And, of course, the grand finale of 'Headbutts' - where each headbutt mentioned in the song ("Walking on the beach in a Force 10 gale, when I saw three hippies - saving a whale. Well, I hate bleedin' hippies, so I give 'em all a headbutt.") is accompanied by a vigorous headbutt of the microphone (which invariably ends up beaten badly out of shape; Otway usually ends up with his forehead bruised, sometimes bleeding).

Like I said, you really have to be there.