Regular readers will know I'm always fascinated by the behind-the-scenes process of films, especially special effects work with miniatures (which I've blogged about here), matte paintings (which I've blogged about here) and making-of books. I also love Raiders Of The Lost Ark (and wrote a retrospective piece on it, which you can read here) which, unbelievably, turns 40 this week (released on 31st July 1981 here in the UK). So while this isn't the most up-to-date review I've ever posted, it was the perfect book for me this week.
Already a fan of George Lucas and Steven Spielberg then, I went to see it that summer with my best friend Nick and loved it. We both did, though it took him a long time to stop making fun of me because I got scared when the pretty ghost turned into a monster after the Ark had been opened.
To help celebrate the anniversary, I’ve been on a bit of a Raiders jag and one element was this making of. First published in paperback in 1981, it includes a batch (32 pages) of “spectacular behind-the-scenes photos” (all black and white) and is a real old school making-of, the kind that’s almost as much a memoir as anything else. It’s also the kind that doesn’t get published these days.
Richard Amsel's iconic poster, which adorned my bedroom wall for a long time.
Derek Taylor writes well and he really is our guide, explaining the situation (in laymans terms), the script as he sees it, the troubles with the locations and the pace of the production. As if you were sitting together as he caught you up on news, he relates chatting with various actors and crew members and they all come across as being really lovely - Harrison Ford remembers him from the Monterey pop festival, he goes for a walk with Karen Allen and Ronald Lacey befriends holidaymakers at the Tunisian hotel where the main crew and cast (but not the writer) are staying.
Karen Allen, George Lucas, Steven Spielberg and Harrison Ford on location in Tunisia
Taylor interviewed a lot of people and most of the twenty-three chapters (there’s also a prologue and epilogue) contain at least one with Spielberg and Lucas themselves, as unguarded in interview as I think I’ve ever read. Chapters are devoted to interviewing (in order) Howard Kazanjian (the co-executive producer), Frank Marshall (producer), Norman Reynolds (production designer, who Spielberg is particularly enamored of due to his work on Star Wars) and Tom Smith (the make-up designer). The stand-ins get their say and interviews continue with Robert Watts (producer), Harrison Ford, David Tomblin (assistant director, who’s a big presence in the behind-the-scenes documentaries for both this and Return Of The Jedi), Terry Leonard (stunt man), Martin Grace and Wendy Leach (the stunt doubles in England - Leach would go on to marry Vic Armstrong, who also did some of the stunts for Indy here and took over completely for the next two films), Karen Allen, Roy Charman (sound man), Kit West (special effects) and Douglas Slocombe (the director of photography). Taylor also visited ILM (and clearly didn’t really understand any of the processes Richard Edlund talks about) and attended some of the scoring with John Williams.
The amount of detail that comes across is impressive, some of it amusing forty years down the line. Kit West, for example, talks about creating black smoke cheaply by buying tyres “for pennies” and setting fire to them, rather than using more expensive (but more environmentally friendly) smoke pots - different times indeed.
Filming on Norman Reynolds' island set at Elstree Studios
Hugely comprehensive and yet still chatty, this is a terrific read, faithfully following a huge crew with one aim who seemed to get on very well together and, as we know, produced a fantastic film. If you’re used to the modern coffee-table style of making of book (which I also love, except those that feature page after page of technicians sitting in front of computer monitors), this might not be to your taste, but for a proper old-school approach, celebrating a proper, old-school action movie where pretty much everything you see actually happened, I don’t think you could do much better. Highly recommended - the book and film (and, if you can get hold of it - as I did, to satisfy my Raiders thirst - I’d also recommend the 180g vinyl re-issue soundtrack double album).
Lunch in Tunisia, with executive producer Howard Kazanjian on the far left
Derek Taylor (7th May 1932 - 8th September 1997) was an English journalist, writer, publicist and record producer. The Beatles press officer (he was sometimes called ‘the Fifth Beatle’), he also worked as a publicist for the Byrds, the Beach Boys, the Mamas and Papas, helped organise the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival and headed up publicity for Apple Corps from 1968. After working for Warner Brothers during the 1970s he then moved to Handmade Films with his close friend George Harrison (while editing Harrison’s 1980 autobiography I, Me, Mine) and wrote several books, including the Raiders making of. Returning to Apple Corps in the 90s, he was working on the Beatles anthology book at the time of his death.
This iconic shot features in the narrative, a lucky accident that Spielberg saw the sunset and decided to incorporate it
Taylor is surprised at the size of the Tunisian dig set - and at how the extras are treated. After he informs Spielberg (who wasn't aware), changes are quickly made.
The final sequence, with the "complicated" ILM work included
To mark the publication of their new novel, Ragnarok Rising, I hand over the blog to a guest post from my friends Benedict Jones and Anthony Watson.
As the fires of conflict engulf the globe and empires vie
for dominance, a secondary shadow war is being fought for control of the worlds
occult treasures, among them the keys to the prisons of long forgotten,
sleeping gods. Allied academics join forces with soldiers in a desperate race
to halt the machinations of the Axis powers and shadowy cults with their own
agendas.
Welcome to the world of Damocles.
BJJ: What started out as an attempt to write a joint
collection of horror stories themed around the second world war quickly
escalated into something bigger. Why don’t we link all the stories in some
way? An overarching narrative perhaps… Well, I do have this one idea… The
next thing we knew we were well on our way to 110,000 words and found ourselves
building a whole world. In creating this world we knew from the off that we
wanted to anchor the dark fantastic in the real history of the second world
war; major events still occur when they did, units and regiments are where they
were at a specific time. But, behind these real events other, darker, things
are occurring.
In drawing up the characters who make up the Damocles
organisation and populate the world around them we wanted to make sure that
they were all too human with all the fragility which that brings. These are
people plucked from the worlds of academia and the military and thrust into life
or death conflicts with forces they can barely comprehend. Soldiers and
scholars are dispatched to be used as cannon fodder for “the greater good”,
mirroring the sacrifices made in the actual war, and we wanted to try and
showcase the effects that this would have upon our protagonists. The true facts
of the conflict are hidden from some of those involved, the truth being simply
too terrible. Scholars, book hounds, assassins and occultists mix with
bureaucrats, hobbyists, criminals and squaddies. It was important to us that
their stories, with an eye to realism, were told as well as that of the epic
struggle to prevent Ragnarok.
Location. Location. Location. Whether it is musty libraries
in London, the streets of Istanbul, the desert wastes of north Africa, cave
systems in the outer Hebrides, the barren arctic, or war-ravaged Berlin we
wanted to imbue each tale with a real sense of place. This was done to try and
illustrate the scope and range of the second world war. It truly was a global
event that touched almost every corner of the world in one way or another.
The influences that we drew upon in developing the world of
Damocles were wide ranging, drawing upon spy literature, historical sources,
action and adventure pulps, Lovecraftian cosmic horror, and Norse mythology to
name but a few. The Hellboy universe provided some touch points of inspiration
as did various other works that involve “weird world war two”. Structure wise
we aimed for a fractured narrative with characters coming into and out of the
story at various points. The steampunk novel The Difference Engine
helped with this in some ways, being an example of where this had been done
before. Stories within stories and tales within tales. There is a heroic
undercurrent to many of the stories but we tried to temper this by showing the
real, often damaging, results of such heroism. One of the wonderful things
about creating our world from scratch meant that we were able to draw upon a
multitude of sources for influence as well as providing us with ample scope for
the freedom to create and add our own inventions.
The act of writing is generally a solitary one. Writing with
someone else can be a very different experience. The act of creation became a
shared one in which we could both act as a sounding board for the other and in
turn add our own ideas to the mix. These “idea sessions” really allowed for us
to spark off each other’s creativity. It allowed us to avoid dead ends and
cul-de-sacs of imagination and planning which not only allowed us to speed up the
writing process but to create and develop the world around the characters very
efficiently and fully. It also made it easier to overcome those writer’s block
moments which can stall a work. Particularly difficult scenes for one writer
could be passed to the other for completion and we utilised that at several
points. The whole process has been one that was, and continues to be,
thoroughly enjoyed by us both.
We produced Wings in the Darkness, an expansion on
one of the shorter pieces in the novel, as an introduction and access point to
the world of Damocles. The novella works well to lay out a lot of the themes
and ideas which are expanded upon in the novel, Ragnarok Rising. A
second novel, Volume Two, is close to completion (this time turning to the war in
the Far East) and various other works set in the same world are also in
development.
AW: When Ben first approached me with the idea of
co-writing a collection of war/horror stories, agreeing to it was one of the
easiest decisions I’d ever had to make. It’s not like we hadn’t worked together
before, having already produced two volumes of our horror western novellas
series Dark Frontiers so it was a real no-brainer. I set to work thinking of
some ideas and had a couple lined up when Ben contacted me again and suggested
that we based the stores around a secret organisation he’d thought up, there to
investigate and combat occult and supernatural forces…
Cool, I thought, putting my kaiju and ghost stories back on
the shelf, that’s a really good idea – and began plotting some new stories. I
think we ‘d finished a story each when he came up with the “Let’s make this a
novel with an overarching narrative” idea. Thus the Damocles Files were born.
I have to say, I’ve never enjoyed writing something as much
as I have The Damocles Files. Once we had the main narrative in place, we could
tailor the new stories to fit and retrofit the ones we’d already completed. On
the whole, we would write individual stories on our own but one of the stories
in the book is a collaboration, as is the novella Last Rites which makes up the
novel’s conclusion. It’ll be interesting to see whether readers can tell which
of us wrote which story – and whether they can tell which was the co-written
one.
Part of the joy of writing these stories was spending time
with the characters we’d created. I think Ben is a master at this particular
art but it’s something I’m not always that confident about so it was good to be
able to take his creations and use them in the stories I was working on. It’s
no real spoiler to say that not all of them survive until the end credits and
it was actually quite emotional writing the scenes where they meet their fates.
Of course, a huge benefit of writing the novel as a fractured narrative
spanning many years is that there are big gaps between the stories, gaps which
are there to be filled, so characters who might not have made it to the end of
Volume One can always be resurrected – which is precisely what we’re doing in
Volume Two, and all the standalone stories and novellas we have planned.
Whilst the novel is grounded in reality and historical fact,
a huge influence on it personally were the war films I watched as a kid (and
continue to watch and enjoy, it has to be said). I’ve a huge affection for those
films and the unironic way they portrayed the heroism and valour of their
heroes. I’d like to think that that gung-ho spirit is reflected in The Damocles
Files; there’s certainly plenty of unapologetic heroic sacrifice and bravery
above and beyond the call of duty featured within its pages. It’s a love letter
to those films of my youth.
I had a great time writing this book and will be forever
grateful to Ben for inviting me along for the ride. I hope everyone gets as much
enjoyment from reading it as I had in writing it.
Wings in the Darkness was released on Kindle on the 21st
May 2021 and can be purchased here.
The Damocles Files Volume 1: Raganarok Rising is being
released in paperback and ebook on 23rd July 2021 and the Kindle
edition can be pre-ordered here.
Following the huge international success of their album Kick, INXS toured it extensively starting in August 1987 and running through to November 1988 (including five UK dates during June). Understandably burned out by the end, the band took a year off during which most members started musical side projects, before reconvening to record X, which was released in September 1990.
INXS, 1991 from left - Jon Farriss (drums/keyboards), Garry Gary Beers (bass), Tim Farriss (guitar), Michael Hutchence (vocals), Andrew Farriss (keyboards, guitar, harmonica), Kirk Pengilly (guitar, saxophone, vocals)
On the strength of Kick, the profile of the band had been steadily rising and it’s perhaps difficult now to remember just how big INXS were at that time. Kick peaked at number 2 in Australia, number 9 in the UK and number 3 in the US album charts and was certified Platinum in Australia (x7), the UK, the US and Switzerland, was a Gold record in France, Germany and Hong Kong and Diamond in Canada (a category Tim Farris later admitted he didn’t even know existed - it apparently represents sales of 1m). Total sales to date are approximately 12.8m copies.
X had a lot to live up to and opened well, reaching number 2 in the UK and number 5 in the US charts, racking up plenty of sales along the way - Platinum in Australia (x2), the US (x2) and the UK, hitting Gold in Germany and France. Combined with the X Tour, it managed to spend an aggregate of eight months on the UK chart, returning to the Top 40 in July 1991.
In 1988, Michael Hutchence met soap-opera star and singer Kylie Minogue and when they ran away together in 1989, it brought the band to a whole new audience and level of publicity. In 1991, INXS received a Grammy nomination for 'Best Rock Performance by a Group', whilst USA Today reported they were tied for second place as 'musical artists with the most videos played on MTV' (at the time, they had 37 different clips). At the 1991 Brit Awards in March, INXS won 'Best International Group' (having previously been nominated in 1989) and Hutchence won 'Best International Male'. They were also recognised as 'Best International Band' at the first Australian Music Awards.
The X Tour kicked off in October 1990 at the Mackay Entertainment Centre in North Queensland. It hit the UK on November 25th with two nights at London Docklands Arena, a four night run at Wembley Arena, four nights at Birmingham NEC (where Alison & I would see them in 1997 as part of the Elegantly Wasted Tour), one night each at SECC in Glasgow (should have been two but the first was cancelled by weather), Manchester GMEX, Brigton (The Brighton Centre) and Bournemouth (Bournemouth International Centre) before two nights at The Point Theatre in Dublin. The UK dates ended in January and, in all, the tour played to 1.2m fans through 80 cities over four continents.
After a successful ‘homecoming’ leg in Australia during April and May, INXS returned to Europe for a series of headlining festival shows from 28th June through to 16th July, the highpoint of which (according to most band members) was the 13th July sold-out show at Wembley Stadium.
So the stage was set, with Summer XS taking place six years to the day after Live Aid had been staged at Wembley Stadium, as INXS continued to enjoy rock giant status both in the UK and around the world. And I was there.
My now slightly sun-bleached ticket - look at that price!
Saturday 13th July 1991 was warm but overcast. I’d stayed up late the night before to watch the excellent Dogs In Space, which starred Michael Hutchence and was written & directed by Richard Lowenstein, who directed a lot of INXS videos from Burn For You onwards (his latest was Suicide Blonde, from the X album). I was quite excited, since my then-girlfriend Liz (who had seen INXS at one of their Wembley Arena gigs in late 1990) had talked me into going to see the show and raved about them - slightly older, she was a fan of long-standing. I knew of them, of course - I started going to nightclubs in 1986 so I was around as Kick broke out - and I bought X on vinyl a couple of weeks before the gig and really enjoyed it.
Me & Liz, 1991 - I wore that t-shirt a lot!
I picked up Liz and then her friends teenaged daughter (who took her friend), we piled into my Fiat Panda and took off down the M1, listening to an INXS mix-tape Liz had made. By the time we reached the North Circular, we were all singing along as the signs for Jellyfish, one of the supporting bands, started to appear. In fact, they were on pretty much every lamp-post we passed.
We parked in the multi-storey next to the stadium, crossed the bridge, found our gate and settled down as we waited to be let in. The girls were chatty, Liz & I talked and watched the world go by, we went on memorabilia buying sprees and ate our lunch. Finally the gates opened and we legged it - it was the first time I’d ever been to Wembley so of course I took the opportunity to run onto the (covered over pitch) and pretend I was representing England. As did so many other blokes my age it became silly.
The four of us made our way towards the front and found some seats to the left of the stage, close enough that we could see people up there (if not clearly), though the huge video monitors would also come in handy as the day wore on. The festival feel was maintained by having a whole host of bands on the programme which started in the early afternoon (INXS came onstage at about 8.45). Another of my main reasons to go was the fact that Debbie Harry was playing and I’d been a Blondie fan since the late 70s, though I'd been too young to get to any of their concerts.
The Summer XS line-up was:
Jellyfish - don’t remember anything of their set at all, though they were apparently “a melodic San Francisco rock band” (and got in trouble for plastering their posters everywhere)
Roachford - who were excellent, I went onto the pitch for a dance when they played
Jesus Jones - didn’t like them before I went, didn’t like them any better when I left
Deborah Harry - who I adored. I left the girls in the seats and pushed my way as far to the front as I could possibly get and then rocked out with the best of them. She played 11 songs and ended her set with the superb “Atomic”. Fantastic.
Hothouse Flowers - who were better live, I thought, than when I’d heard them on the radio
The INXS show was being recorded as part of the Live Baby Live project, under the supervision of Mark Optiz and the band’s manager, Chris Murphy decided it should be filmed as well. In an interview at the time, he said that although he thought X was good “the band had grown lazy, the new songs were too slick and too much like Kick. I was worried. I knew I had to do something to bring it back to the basics, back to the strengths of the band. Doing the film and releasing the live record accomplished that. It was a way to remind the public of how powerful INXS was live, in case they’d written them off as a band who only released pop songs.”
INXS spent £250,000 filming the concert whilst Murphy convinced Polygram, their European record label, to stump up the rest. On the night, the fact the band was barely breaking even on the show weighed heavily on Andrew Farriss, though he has since revised his opinion. “I am so glad we did it,” he said in interview with Anthony Bozza. “Thank God we did, that same band is not here any more. Michael is not here any more.” Andrew was so overcome with expectation of the event, he famously escaped to a bathroom where he spent ten minutes alone, enjoying a beer and smoking a cigarette. In documentary footage, Michael Hutchence comments that the gig is making £1m and he was only getting £5k of that.
Murphy hired David Mallet to film the concert and he used sixteen 35mm cameras, including two on roving helicopters, to capture everything. At the time, Mallet was an up-and-coming talent who’d cut his teeth on promo videos for Queen (Bicyle Race in 1978 and I Want To Break Free in 1984, which Brian May credits with the band losing US fans), Blondie (Hanging On The Telephone in 1978), a host of Bowie videos (including the iconic Ashes To Ashes in 1980) and many more. His work on Bowie’s Glass Spider tour in 1988 and Madonna’s Blond Ambition in 1990 convinced Murphy he was their man. Mallet also shot the video for Shining Star in 1991 and has since gone on to a strong career in concert films.
By the time INXS came on stage, I was ready. Opening with two big songs from Kick got me into it straight away and they followed up with a few songs from X that were fresh in my mind but it was Original Sin that locked it for me, vibrant and alive with the all-out jam session at the end. I do remember loving the rest of the gig, I remember being invigorated by the whole thing though I must confess that most of my memory of the show itself now comes from the DVD. But no matter - as Mark Opitz said in interview, the band were incredible on the night and they were. In fact, watching the film again (as I did when I wrote this post), they were clearly on fire and for a first gig by a band relatively new to me, I couldn’t have asked for anything better!
Lately (with a beautiful sax part opening from Kirk Pengilly) followed Original Sin in real life but it was never filmed (it’s an extra on the DVD). Then came The Loved One, which remains one of my all-time favourite songs and it was launched with an introduction from Hutchence. “This is a big gig. Really happy to be here, la-di-da-di-dah - this is the biggest pub we’ve ever played. Is this what they call a fucking rave or what?”
The show is superb - in sound and vision - and Mallet’s cameras catch it well, with plenty of highlights to savour. During the opening to Mystify, the crowd sing along so Hutchence stops and holds out the microphone towards them and they bounce around once the band kicks in. How cool must it be to see an audience do that for one of your songs? There’s the moshpit run during Wild Life, the crowd going mad for Suicide Blonde, Hutchence kissing Andrew Farriss at the start of What You Need (which also includes the "play the fucking riff, Timmy!” incident). Kick, Need You Tonight and Never Tear Us Apart sound huge and the set concludes with the best version I’ve ever heard of Devil Inside - the band always used to close on Don’t Change and whilst that would have been good, it really works well as it is.
“We had already headlined at plenty of stadiums and festivals, but this was different. Wembley is the most prestigious stadium in Europe - if not the world - and it was going to be magical. There were 16 cameras, 72,000 extremely psyched people and some great opening bands and we were ready to turn Wembley Stadium into the biggest pub on the planet.”
- Kirk Pengilly
“For us as Australians, Wembley was always thought of as one of those places you knew you that you wanted to play - if you were lucky. To even have the opportunity to perform there was a dream. There were something like 200 people backstage which was a bigger crowd than some of the pubs we'd played in! It was nuts and I couldn't really take it all in.”
- Andrew Farriss
“This gig was a prize; it meant that all those years of touring, playing gigs the world over paid off this one night. We had played many concerts that were bigger but selling out Wembley Stadium was a prestigious hallmark for us, especially considering England’s affection towards INXS took years to develop.”
- Jon Farriss
“When we took part in Live Aid in 1985 it was made all the more special knowing that our performance was being projected onto the large screens at Wembley Stadium. Wembley was the pinnacle of venues around the world, the place you read about in music magazines growing up in the 60’s and 70’s. To sell out Wembley Stadium was certainly a dream come true.”
- Garry Gary Beers
“It was INXS Day on BBC Radio, MTV, you name it, we were everywhere you looked or listened, it was kind of surreal, which is always a good thing. The whole gig was kind of like a big pressure cooker of 'let's see just how nervous we can make the band', but the tension had the opposite effect on me. I had to struggle to keep the smile off my face.”
- Tim Farriss
Selling out Wembley Stadium was a big deal - AC/DC are the only other Australian band to do the same. INXS had played the venue before, supporting Queen during the “Kind Of Magic” tour in July 1986 (which I didn't see, though had the opportunity to - really wish I had done now).
According to Billboard magazine, the concert grossed £1,426,617 and the audience was a sell-out capacity of 73,791.
The day after arguably one of their biggest gigs ever, the band and Mark Opitz recorded Shining Star (which Andrew Farriss had written on the road) at London’s Metropolis Studios.
* * * * * Live Baby Live, the live CD and concert film video, were both released on 11th November 1991 (when I bought my copies). The film, which looks glorious but isn't in widescreen (presumably since TV's weren't set up for that then) is well-edited and perfectly captures the scale of the event (shots of the crowd and stadium) without missing any of the intimate bits - such as the little nods between Kirk Pengilly and Tim Farriss (plus the fabulous ear signals during What You Need as Hutchence sings “Hey you, don’t you listen” and Kirk gestures to Tim, who had screwed up his riff). It also captures the sheer energy of the show, the tightness of the musicianship and the real sense of camaraderie amongst the band. For me, watching it on VHS back in the day was a revelation - I thought I’d picked up a lot from the video monitors (and I thought Kirk was the coolest thing ever in his red suit and black shades) - but I clearly hadn't. I'm happy to say that even now I still find new bits every time I watch it.
Track Listing:
"Guns in the Sky" "New Sensation" "I Send a Message" "The Stairs" "Know the Difference" "Disappear" "By My Side" "Hear That Sound" "Original Sin" "The Loved One" "Wildlife" "Mystify" "Bitter Tears" "Suicide Blonde" "What You Need" "Kick" "Need You Tonight" "Mediate" "Never Tear Us Apart" "Who Pays the Price" "Devil Inside"
On the re-issue, there’s an excellent 40 minute behind-the-scenes documentary which shows the band in preparation for the gig with a real sense of nervous excitement about them all, which is refreshing to see.
The Live Baby Live album reached number 8 in the UK, number 3 in Australia and number 72 in the US (though it sold over 1m copies there). Shining Star, the single recorded directly after the concert and the only new material on the album (it’s heard over the closing credits of the DVD), was released on 2nd November. It reached number 31 in the UK, number 21 in Australia and 14 in the US Billboard Mainstream Rock Tracks chart. The CD single was backed with live versions of Send A Message (from Summer XS), Faith In Each Other (Sydney 1990) and Bitter Tears (Paris 1991).
The album - produced by INXS and Mark Opitz - featured several songs recorded at Wembley, as well as highlights from gigs in Paris, Dublin, Glasgow, Rio de Janeiro (“Hey, hey Rio?” before launching into Suicide Blonde), Montreal, Spain, Switzerland, Melbourne, Sydney, New York, Chicago, Philadelphia and Las Vegas.
Track Listing:
"New Sensation" "Guns in the Sky" "Mystify" "By My Side" “Shining Star” "Need You Tonight" "Mediate" “One X One” “Burn For You” “The One Thing” “This Time” "The Stairs" "Suicide Blonde" "Hear That Sound" "Never Tear Us Apart" "What You Need"
Summer XS memorabilia - taken from the DVD insert
Part of the DVD documentary, showing the audience gathering. I wonder if I'm in one of those shots?
An excellent gig and an excellent memory, a great band at the top of their game and I'm chuffed to have been there.
* * *
The show (with Lately now included) was released on vinyl in 2019 and so was the film, re-edited in HD from the original negative to give a proper widescreen presentation. Alison & I went to see if at the Northampton Filmhouse and it was bloody brilliant (I wrote about it here).
“We were just six blokes from Australia that treated Wembley Stadium like just another pub gig,” Tim Farriss wrote in the liner notes. “We went in with a PA and a few lights and played our asses off. No ego ramps, no back-up singers, no props, no grand pianos, just the six of us – and the audience went nuts! That’s all we needed!”
sources:
band interviews from the Live Baby Live DVD re-issue liner notes, no credit (released by Sanctuary Visual Entertainment) INXS: The Official Inside Story Of A Band On The Road, text by Ed St. John
Gig information from Billboard Magazine Story To Story: The Official INXS Autobiography, by INXS and Anthony Bozza
A couple of years ago I had a conversation with Dude where he expressed amusement over what I had to put up with when I was his age, namely (but not limited to) very few video games, cameras that were only cameras and phones that were wired to the walls in your house. This led to me blogging about one terrific thing I had that he didn't, the Summer Special!
1979
As I explained then (you can read the 2018 entry here and the 2020 one here), children’s comics now aren’t a patch on what they were back in the 70s and 80s (and before that, even). Modern titles, sealed in plastic bags and littered with free gifts, have very little in the way of comic strips or stories (in fact, most seem to consist of quizzes) but back in the day the likes of IPC and DC Thomson produced a raft of weeklies that catered for most tastes (published on newsprint with a splash of colour).
Those weeklies, in turn, gave us the Summer Special to look forward to. A one-off, thicker and more colourful edition of our favourite title, it was the perfect reading accompaniment to a long car journey or a lazy afternoon in the back garden.
Comics historian Lew Stringer suggests (on his blog) that “today’s retailers dislike them because they occupy valuable shelf space for too many months” which didn’t bother newsagents in the 70s - Summer Specials were especially popular at seaside towns because they were pretty much guaranteed sellers, with a new batch of kids every week who’d need entertaining.
Here are a few more from my golden-era of reading them (the late 70s into the early 80s) - what were your favourites?
1976
1976
1976
1976
1977
1977
1978
1979 - the "seven-penny" nightmare, Action ceased publication in November 1977
1979 - Tornado (which I wrote about here) only lasted for 22 issues in 1979 but, luckily, that timing fell into the Summer Special period!
The amount of detail that comes across is impressive, some of it amusing forty years down the line. Kit West, for example, talks about creating black smoke cheaply by buying tyres “for pennies” and setting fire to them, rather than using more expensive (but more environmentally friendly) smoke pots - different times indeed.
