In the spring and early summer of 1983 I worked for thirteen weeks at Crown Life Insurance in Woking. In the evenings I used to go out with Debbie and her boyfriend of the time (Jim?). They had a friend who they said I should meet, because he was also a Jon Anderson nut. Sure enough, when we met, we got on like a house on fire, and started a kind of mutual admiration society. He thought it was really smart that I had a job where I could 'commute' by push-bike, and that I was going to study at Cambridge a few months later. I was pretty impressed that he (I can't remember his name, but I think he was 20 years old or so) drove an MG sports car, owned a ten-string guitar just like the one Jon Anderson sometimes played on stage, and, for a major part of his recreational activity, took acid.
As it happened, we never met again. I've never taken acid. The only car I've ever owned is a 1.4 litre Vauxhall Astra. And the only guitar I've ever owned has a regular six strings.
One respect in which this bloke did influence me, however, was that he told me that there was an amazing song on the B-side of the single of Surrender. A year or two later, I found a copy of the single and bought it.
The B-side, Spider, starts with a fair cacophony of guitars, horns, spoken word and chanting from Jon and others (possibly including some of his children) — like Phil Collins on a bad trip. Then about half way through, Jon's voice rings out, riding one of those mountain-spring melodies: "Why do you depict a war of wars so easily? And why do you picture pestilence as starvation's song?" I can't make out much of the rest of the lyrics, and I don't know what he's on about, but the single was worth it just for that ten-second burst.
It's a stark contrast from the A-side which is Jon at his worst hippy-drippy, happy-clappy sermonising, about sending all the rockets up and exploding them above the atmosphere, in some global disarmament party that will just be like one big firework show. "Why don't the United Nations declare a special night celebration?" And later he sings of the "magic mushrooms in the night sky". Oh dear, do you see a theme developing here? "I know it sounds pretty crazy really." Yes, it does.
Comments