Family: Family Man

Mike Oldfield: Family Man
[purchase]

Like most people around my age, I was familiar with Mike Oldfield because of Tubular Bells, his 1973 masterpiece that became famous when part of it was used in the movie The Exorcist. But because his music was, for the most part, album side-long instrumentals, it was otherwise rare to hear Oldfield’s music on the radio.

And when I got to college and began working at WPRB, I was able to explore some of Oldfield’s records, although again, even at that college station, it was unusual to throw on a 20 plus minute song. Unless you were alone in the studio and had to run to the bathroom, which was down the hall.

But Oldfield is a remarkable musician, playing most of the instruments on his records and overdubbing wildly—by some count, he has played more than 40 different instruments on his various records, and his music is very much worth listening to. So, I do recall occasionally playing “Part I” of Tubular Bells (which features Viv Stanshall of the Bonzos introducing the instruments, because Oldfield liked this song) on the air, or a few of the shorter songs he began adding to his records as time went on, maybe in hopes of getting radio airplay.

In March, 1982, not long before I graduated from college, Oldfield released Five Miles Out, which included a few shorter, poppier songs, including “Family Man,” sung by Scottish singer Maggie Reilly, that was actually pretty catchy. In fact, the song nudged onto the singles charts in the UK and Canada. It tells the story of a man approached by a sexy prostitute, and his rejection of her—“Leave me alone, I’m a family man,” he sings—although part of his rejection is based on fear that if she continued her seduction, he might succumb. I liked the song, played it a few times on the air, graduated from college and moved on with my life.

A year or so later, I heard a song by Hall & Oates (a band that is not my favorite—although there’s this) called “Family Man,” and it sounded vaguely familiar. Somehow, back in the pre-Internet era, I was able to determine that it was, in fact, the same song. Although to their credit, H&O definitely made it their own. And they added some lyrics that changed the song so that the man decides to take the woman up on her offer, but she had already left, leading to some apparent regret. This version, not surprisingly, did much better commercially, reaching No. 6 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 and No. 15 on the UK and Irish singles charts. Although what a cheesy '80s video...


Reilly also covered it, in 2009, but it is slick, commercial and not that interesting.  Maybe I’m being a music snob (which would not be surprising, would it?), but I prefer the original—although I have to admit that the H&O cover isn’t terrible, so if you like it better, I’m not going to think less of you.

WINE: GIVE BOOZE A CHANCE/BONZO DOG DOO-DAH BAND

I suspect the Bonzo's didn't really translate that well across the pond to the USA, that second of two nations divided by a single language. Indeed, apart from a cult of ageing sex- and septuagenarians, I've never been sure whether they actually meant so much over here, their one slab of chart action being produced by one Paul McCartney, often mistakenly thought to be also written by him. But this glorious parody never fails to make me smile, even as I repeatedly play it to my bemused, and unamused, wife. Nonetheless, it seems, in a fortnight of songs about wine, perhaps to give a thought about the downside. And this is probably best appreciated within the context that Vivian Stanshall, the singer and frontman of this anarchic ensemble, died arguably not indirectly from his giving booze one hell of a chance, in a fire on his houseboat, in no small part contributed to his prodigious alcohol consumption. Details vary.

The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band had no right being a success, but, in a small way, a success they were. Formed in about 1962, the aim was to provide a dada-ist counterpoint to the then trad-jazz revival of its day, which involved the deadpan recreation of the often absurd and very english approach to dixieland. Take "Hunting Tigers out in Indiah", which might be considered one such example, their recreation of an original song dating from the '30s. By this stage they were in transition from an all brass and banjo line-up, beginning to introduce more conventional, for the '60s, instrumentation. Helped in no small part by a resident spot on children's TV programme, "Please Do Not Adjust Your Set", they gradually morphed into a slightly broader parodic approach to all styles of popular music. Should you pursue the clip, it shows also the nascent beginnings of "Monty Python's Flying Circus", with all but John Cleese present. I was a child of that time, and took to this nonsense with ease, able to effortlessly assimilate the Bonzo's into my developing musical palette. (And no surprise that, as I grew older, so could become the peak audience for Python.)

Come 1967 and they had formally ditched most of the jazz, and many of the members who had played that style. A further boost was when Paul McCartney secured them a place in the Beatles' "Magical Mystery Tour". Here's some outtakes of their included song "Death Cab For Cutie", should you wonder where Ben Gibbard came up with the name. It was still hardly rock and roll in any conventional sense, they somehow still finding favour on the gig circuit and, especially, at festivals. They did manage one tour to the US, as support to the Kinks, themselves perhaps on a revers journey from rock to vaudeville. It was a disaster. They lurched on for a few more tours and a few more albums, shedding members, yet retaining a hard core of Stanshall, later Rutles mastermind Neil Innes and tap-dancing drummer, "Legs" Larry Smith, alongside saxophonists Rodney Slater and Roger Ruskin Spear, inventor of ever more Heath Robertson wind instruments. Acclaim did not, however, translate into sales.

After dissolution in 1970 they had a couple of short-lived reunions. Stanshall descended into ever more eccentric behaviours, ricocheting between drunken japes with Keith Moon and writing a body of works around fictitious upper class gentleman explorer, Sir Henry Rawlinson: "Sir Henry at Rawlinson End", initially as spoken word projects, later a series of books and a radio piece, even a film, with Trevor Howard, no less!. He died in 1995. Innes, ahead of the Rutles, went on to be the resident musical go-to for the Monty Python team, often appearing in their live concerts. Between 2006-8 a final official reunion took place, with Stanshall replaced by comedians/actors Phill Jupitus and Ade Edmondson, playing to nostalgia hungry audiences of (very) ageing schoolboys.

I confess I always found the band to be a better idea than a reality. You probably had to be there, recorded material having dated dreadfully. But for that idea I am grateful. And, for a short time, back in the dim and distant, glad also that I was there. Surely that is worth raising a glass to.

Give booze a chance.