THE CRAZY WORLD OF ARTHUR BROWN – "Fire"

Yes, I think it is the “famous” one–on a strange three-DVD set of obscure origin (and legality) of clips taken from British TV from the Springfields in ’61 to Joni Mitchell singing “Big Yellow Taxi” in ’70 (and an amazing variety of stuff in between). The movement of the camera suggests that the cameraman was taken a bit off-guard by the Crazy World and there’s a weird not-as-rehearsed quality to it.

This wasn’t the performance I saw back in the 60s on US TV. Did I actually Arthur Brown on the Tom Jones show? The idea sounds preposterous, but all sorts of weird combinations and contexts were the order of the day back then.

How many things do you love just as much at 44 as you did at 6? This was the first record I ever rooted for to reach number one, and jumped around the room when it did so, and 38 years later it still stands out for me as one of the all-time great Number 1s.

You and the posters are right to point out the camp aspects, as Arthur Brown, like most UK artists who “dabbled”, never did so without a large slice of humour. The first track of his I heard after “Fire” was a 1967 satire on hippydom called “Give Him A Flower”-
“When you’re driving on the M1 in your 1920 Ford / Without tax or MOT or any brakes / And you’re banned from driving, and you reverse into a truck / And the driver is the same eight stone bully who kicked sand in your face in the last verse –
Give him a flower…”

But apart from the theatrics and the classic intro, what strikes me is that whereas many pop songs have visualised heaven, very few (mainstream ones at any rate) have imagined what it’s like to land in hell. Listening to the condemnation of a soul who was unaware that throughout his life he’s been sealing his fate – “You fought hard and you saved and earned, but all of it’s going to burn…you know you’ve really been so blind, you’ve fallen far too far behind…” – you think that if there is a hell, that’s just the kind of taunting the God of Hellfire is going to give you. Mind you, at six years of age my abiding impression was the burning colander on his head.

The first time I ever heard that line was on the Prodigy’s ‘Fire’ which sounded HUGE AND BELLOWING when I first heard it in that context in 1992. I love the original but the ‘gamely bopping goblin’ bit rings a bit hollow to me for that reason.

I’m amazed that AB is still performing. I remember seeing him, live, in Toronto when this album was released .

And looking back it was viewed more of a “novelty act” as we’d never really seen the big pyrotechnic driven all sound & light , touring shows that were about to be launched.

We’d seen the “west-coast” shows with the swirling coloured liquids lightshows ( through an overhead projector ) accompanying The Dead & Jefferson Airplane , but not a guy who was literally burning the house down. In many ways AB was an unwitting harbinger of things to come – both in terms of where live shows were going and what was going to happen otherwise.

At that time I think we were aware that the dream was over and maybe, subconsciously , after all that hedonistic love trip, we were going to pay somehow. Rock was taking a peculiar turn. Even ” Jumpin’ Jack Flash ” is a pretty mean character – not of this earth. And , if my time line is correct, ” Sympathy for the Devil ” The Manson murders and Altamont are just around the corner.

from website Morrison Hotel :

“The whole thing was reduced to a freak show. San Francisco hippies buried the whole thing with a grand procession….But as the “Summer Of Love” concluded nobody had any idea that all hell was going to break loose in just a few months.” –

“Strange days have found us, strange days have tracked us down.” Jim Morrison

Vincent Crane also played keyboards on Dexy’s ‘Don’t Stand Me Down’ alb – there are pictures of him all togged up like the rest of the group, looking very sad.

Good game to play with the intro is to shout over the top of the final word something timid and pedestrian. ho ho.

“I AM THE GOD OF HELLFIRE AND I BRING YOU… BISCUITS (duh-duh duuh)”

or cake, or hamsters. (du-duh duuuuh). i so funny

bloody students !

I always associate this with an anecdote I heard years ago on the radio from somebody whose father had been a fire marshall at some festival or other around this time. Obviously an older man not entirely familiar with the nature of the act, he was hanging about backstage and caught sight of Arthur Brown, flaming headdress and all, being hoisted onto the stage. Distressed by a man with his head on fire, he thought quickly and threw his glass of beer over to extinguish it, leaving Arthur to appear on stage without flames and covered in beer.

As for the song, I always looked upon it as just a typical bit of Sixties silliness. Nothing wrong with that. I suppose in retrospect, the fact that it spent a week at the top before being displaced by its predeccessor gives away what a cult thing it was.
Oh, and one of my books says it was co-produced by Pete Townsend. Can this be true?

It was the talk of Cubs, as we waited for Kaa to roll up on his motorbike and let us into the church hall.

Wasn’t this one of those times where a lead-off single boosted sales of the album to unsustainable levels? The follow-up single ‘floundered’ if not exactly flopped, and no further records hit the charts.

My guess: People bought the album for more of the same, found psychedelic silliness, took it too seriously and never went back!

This used to be on the jukebox in my local in Glasgow, I used to play the same three songs every time I went in, “Fire”, “Louie Louie” and Michael Jackson’s “Ben”. Surprisingly I wasn’t barred. But, “Fire”, GREAT song, I want this played at my cremation!

I, too found this really scary as a child. Still had a bit of apprehension when I saw him the act at the Wicker Man Festival a couple of years ago.

#18 – love that story. I also heard that he kept setting his head on fire, when pissed roadies would pour too much of the flammible stuff over him…

Listening to the accompanying album today, it holds up surprisingly well – Side A is non-stop brilliance, Side B runs out of ideas and is a big let down, but overall it’s well worth a listen.
The odd thing, though, is that not only are two versions of side A present, one in mono and one in stereo, but they seem to be entirely different productions of the same songs – and the mono set comes first, so it goes ‘mono A – stereo A – stereo B’. The mono version of ‘Fire’ is the weedy one everyone knows but the stereo one is significantly beefed up with (amongst other things) a funky brass section, and is a lot better for it.

Adrian Juste would play all those great comedy snippets, then do his own feeble joke and dub in the laffs, usually Basil Brush. (Did those clips cost anything? I can’t imagine yr Jimmy Carr’s being quite as amenable about having bits of their on-stage routines sent out without being directly linked to the source DVD plug)

Arthur Smith, saw him yesterday at Paddington, dressed suitably wacky..

I was pretty sure I was familiar with this song, but I was mostly familiar with the famous introduction. Hearing the whole thing I was a little disappointed to hear it lose some momentum during the slower section in the middle. But listening to it multiple times over the past two days it went from 9/10 down to 6/10 before I’ve settled on 8/10 in the end. After all, what’s not to love about a guy who prances around wearing demonic makeup (by 60’s standards) while setting his head on fire? Awesome to think it took just 16 years to go from Al Martino to this!

btw, hit #2 in the US. Wouldn’t have expected that…

I hear premonitions of Led Zeppelin in ABs willingness to sing nonsense with utter conviction (and the slightest hint of tongue in cheek). It IS preposterous but the full blown commitment and stabbing organ riff (enriched by horns at the end) make it compelling and thrilling.