01/02/07
And it will not say goodbye just like it didn't say hello... -
Categories: News -
Ray Peacock
@ 01:37:54 am
It's been a very emotional week really.
The last seven days have been highly transitional in my life, I was already feeling as though things would never be the same, and that certainly culminated today. I've found on several occasions that I have been experiencing a lump in my throat, triggered by different yet consistent things.
The first time it happened was in St Helens on Saturday, at the rugby game that was rearranged from the other week.
St Helens RLFC, as previously mentioned on here are one of a few things that I would consider to be a fundamental part of my life. I know there are people that don't get the passion that can be stirred by supporting a sports team (and I only follow one sport - rugby league - exclusively), but watching Saints and fucking (not at the same time - that would be weird) are about the only times in my life that I will ever externally show any excitement.
The older I have got, the more pronounced the passion has become - no doubt due to the fact that over the years myself and St Helens rugby league club have accumulated a history (and a turbulent one on occasion too). There have been major highs and major lows, I have loved them for the joy of success and hated them for the dissapointment of failure, but I have stuck with them and always will.
The game on Saturday was a testimonial game for a player named Sean Long who has been at the club for ten years now. He is a genuine individual, a star player who every now and then does something foolish or controversial (one year he was banned for a few months after being caught betting against an understrength Saints team), but for all his misdemeanors he has also been the key player that has pulled it out of the bag for the team in the big games, winning us many trophies (sometimes almost single-handedly). A loveable rogue I guess would be the easiest and laziest way of describing him, you simply can't stay mad at him for long.
But, the celebration of his career aside, the thing that got to me at the game on Saturday was the fact that three of the substitutes in the game were former star players from years gone by. They are all 35 now, been retired for quite a few years, consigned to history and very fondly remembered. Whenever I have watched an old Saints game on dvd and they are playing, it has always brought a tinge of nostalgia and perhaps sadness that I would never see them play again. Yet on Saturday they were back on the pitch, in front of me, wearing the Red Vee of St Helens. It was impossible not to be touched by it, especially when - despite the obvious physical restraint of age - there were glimpses now and then of what had been.
My emotion wasn't helped by the fact that I'd watched Rocky Balboa earlier in the week, and been surprised by how much it had moved me. As Tommy Martyn, Chris Joynt and Paul Newlove got stuck into the game, I found myself thinking about the idea that every great person has one fight left in them...I so wanted at least one of them to have a moment of glory. I thought about the history we had together, under the umbrella of St Helens rlfc, and what had been going on in my life at the times of different games, different moments in time, defined by the pass of a ball or the sight of a lifted or denied piece of silverware.
It was pretty powerful stuff really, but there was no glorious ending, the final hooter went.
I know this might seem a bit wanky but I mean this. If you don't get it, that is totally cool - just stop reading it and come back tomorrow when I'll do you a blog about how I rocked at XS Malarkey's last night and felt a ladies new bosoms after the gig. If you do get it though...well...you know exactly what I am talking about.
Another fundamental part of my life are The Beautiful South.
Well...were.
They split up today, citing "musical similarities" as the reason (which raised a smile through the tears).
People talk about having a soundtrack to your life. I've had stupid quizzes come through on MySpace that ask you what song was playing when you did such-and-such. My answers, should I ever lower myself to complete one, would have all been songs by The Beautiful South and to be honest, I don't really know what I am going to do without them.
Many years ago, 1999 I think it was (or it might have been early 2000, around then anyway), I was in the process of a very nasty relationship break up. For reasons still to this day unknown, I had moved in with a girl who simply wasn't right for me (nor I for her if you can even begin to imagine such a ridiculous notion). The last time we ever went out together before I fucking ran out of that house for the very last time, was to a Beautiful South concert at Brixton Academy. We weren't even on speaking terms and she had no interest in them - fuck knows why she was with me that night...in fact, fuck knows why she was with me any night but let's not get distracted by irrelevance.
At the beginning of the gig, Paul Heaton and Dave Rotheray (the songwriters of the group) came out onto the stage alone without the rest of the band. With Paul on vocals and Dave on an accoustic guitar they performed "Prettiest Eyes".
Now, as I have explained, I was in a highly emotional situation anyway, but during that song I was moved like I have never been moved before, nor - I am sure - will be again. Just as with the Saints match at the weekend, I thought back over my life, over the highs and lows, of how I had got to that unhappy point and - more importantly - how I had been brought through unhappy points safely in my life before, more often than not with the accompanying music created by the two men performing in front of me at that point. I'd been so worried about what was happening in my life, but I trusted at that moment that I would get through and be all right again. I felt like the song was being performed just for me and I was just fucking grateful.
Today I feel like a friend has died. No word of a lie, I don't even consider that to be an overly dramatic statement. And I know that there is a trend to be dismissive of The Beautiful South, but if you subsribe to the notion of them being middle-of-the-road music then you've clearly never listened properly to their work...or legacy as I now have to accept it as. There is anger, love, tension, passion, betrayal, simultaneous hopelessness and hope...fucking everything is in there...but nothing more so than soul in it's purest form.
There was no concession made to chart position, no following trends or conforming to what was expected, no "I need you baby" - just a credibility that can only truly be achieved by trusting yourself to know what is the right thing for you to do in your art - the honest thing for you to do, the chase of self-truth rather than the chase of the pound.
It may have ultimately destroyed them, made their existence untenable for the corporate music industy to further indulge, but they can hold their heads high forever - just like those three former Saints players that had one last run out at the weekend.
The legs may be gone, they may be no longer painting it red, but the fact that they will be held in the hearts and memories of the people whose lives they truly touched, and always appreciated simply for being who they were, means they will always, always be glorious.
Comments:
· http://www.istianity.co.uk purely on the grounds that a lot of people liked them.
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01/02/07 @ 13:16 The tour you mention was December 2000 as I recall and the acoustic start before the curtain dropped to reveal the rest of the band as "Pretenders To The Throne"
kicked in has to be the best moment of any South gig I went to. That and any peformance of 36D which was always fantastic.
Long live the South.
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02/02/07 @ 21:30 · http://www.myspace.com/raypeacock Permalink
03/02/07 @ 02:21 This post has 8 feedbacks awaiting moderation...
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