Odd times as we turn and face the strange
I SETTLED down contentedly on the sofa to watch the late, great David Bowie’s superb Glastonbury set from the year 2000 on Sunday evening.
I was lucky enough to have seen The Thin White Duke live a couple of times, most notably when he headlined the opening night at the Phoenix Festival in Stratford-upon-Avon in 1996, part of an incredible feast of music that also included the likes of The Prodigy, Neil Young, Bjork and Massive Attack, all for the princely sum of £65 for four days.
Speaking of ’96, I also managed to squeeze on to Hill 16 in Croke Park that year to see my beloved Wexford crowned All-Ireland hurling champions for the first time in 28 years.
Watching Bowie belt out the classics at Glastonbury, a festival I also had the privilege of attending way back in 1995, it really made me yearn to be part of a heaving, excited crowd, whether it be at a concert or a massive sporting occasion.
This time last year, myself and the family watched Wexford win Minor and Senior Leinster crowns among the hordes in GAA headquarters, but twelve months on we have to be content with Gaelic games re-runs and classic Glastonbury performances.
Of course, there is now light at the end of a once overbearing tunnel, but it may still be quite a while before we can turn the particular corner where tens of thousands can pack into a venue.
Although it was certainly sweet for long-suffering Liverpool fans to end a painful 30-year wait, they must have craved a normality that would have allowed them to roar their ‘Heroes’ on to the field at their next home game and get out in bars and nightclubs and celebrate in style. As Bowie might have said, ‘Let’s Dance’.
The one consolation is that at least they got to do it on the field of play, rather than have an asterisk forever attached to it.
However, let’s be honest, behind closed doors football really is a steaming pile of dung.
No atmosphere, no sense of occasion, and no real joy. Just professionals getting the job done and that’s exactly what Liverpool have impressively achieved during a groundbreaking season.
They may have been ‘Under Pressure’ to perform, but fair play to Klopp and co. for realising their dream of bringing the Premier League title back to Anfield, particularly after what transpired last year.
To play so well and still get pipped at the post could have ripped the heart and soul out of lesser men, but it seems to have galvanised them and they look like they’re going to be a force for many seasons to come and are in the midst of ‘Golden Years’ for the club.
There was also muted celebrations for yours truly in recent times as my own team of choice across the water, Swindon Town, were crowned League Two champions, and they were presented with the trophy during the week.
Although I was obviously delighted, asterisk and all, how different it could have been.
I was planning on bringing the young lad over to see ‘Starman’ Eoin Doyle banging in a few goals when the season was reaching its climax, even though he’s definitely not going to follow in his father’s footsteps as a Robins fan.
He’ll just have to wait to see the Ginger Pele in the flesh. Our time will come.
Twenty years ago the inimitable David Bowie ended his Glastonbury gig with ‘I’m Afraid of Americans’ and, given the sorry state of that country at present, who could blame him?
The world has really gone to shite since the man who brought us Ziggy Stardust passed to eternal reward early in 2016.
We’ve had to endure Trump, Brexit, Boris Johnson, Covid-19 and so much more.
Maybe the great man bowed out and exited stage left at exactly the right time. If there is ‘Life on Mars’ it might be a far better bet than what planet earth has to offer us at the moment.
However, despite all of the faults with the world, once live sport and music are back on the scene, things will become a hell of a lot more bearable.
The present is certainly a stark reminder of what we’ve been missing out on and, after a difficult few months, we could all do with a few ‘Ch-ch-changes’.
‘The story of his [Barnum’s] life we choose to tell is in part the story we choose to tell about American culture,’ said author Benjamin Reiss. ‘We can choose to erase things, or dance around touchy subjects and present a kind of feel good story...’
Take the way ‘The Greatest Showman’ treats the character Jenny Lind. Lind was a Swedish operatic soprano of outstanding talent, revered all over Europe for 14 years before Barnum ever even heard of her. Known as ‘The Swedish Nightingale’, Lind was no lipsticked beauty, had mousy brown hair which she pinned up in a plain non-glamorous style, and for her concert performances preferred simple white dresses.
She referred to herself as having ‘a potato nose’, and she was known for her kindness and charity. Her friends included the great European classical composers Felix Mendelssohn and Giacomo Meyerbeer. Like Barnum, she came from a humble background, but unlike Barnum, as an adult she lived in a rarefied social atmosphere. She had never been to America.
P. T. Barnum, feeling that most society people saw him as little more than an uncultured boor, had begun to attend operas. Inevitably he learnt about this ‘Swedish Nightingale’ and the enormous crowds that packed her concerts. ‘Nothing draws a crowd quite like a crowd,’ he would say. ‘Every crowd has a silver lining.’
What if he could persuade Lind to come to America? He’d make money, she’d make money, and he’d be praised for importing a slice of true European culture. ‘If I shoot at the moon, I may hit a star.’
Barnum’s offer to Lind was: $1,000 per concert (for 150 concerts in a year), plus expenses. Before accepting, Lind insisted in having the world’s best musicians, plus the famous German pianist, conductor and composer Julius Benedict as her accompanist. He held out for, and got, $25,000 for the tour.
All of the money had to be paid up front and deposited with a London bank. It was. Lind signed the contract.
She left Liverpool for New
York on the four-masted sailand-steam-engined White Star liner ‘Atlantic’ (built by Harland and Wolf of Belfast), and landed in New York on 1 September 1850. She was welcomed by a crowd of between 30,000 and 40,000 well-wishers.
The Jackman film more than implies that Barnum and Lind began a romantic relationship. That was far from the truth. She had little personal regard for him. She performed 93 concerts for him, earned $350,000, and gave most of it away — some to charities, the remainder to her free schools in Sweden. The tour was a colossal success.
Barnum pocketed at least half a million dollars from the Jenny Lind tour, which was a cultural as well as a financial success. But a close look at his career reveals that he conned people over the course of his life, and he exploited marginalised groups, playing upon his audiences’ racist prejudices to draw crowds.
No blacks were allowed into his American Museum, and yet blackface minstrels were among the entertainers for the 4,000 white visitors a day who poured into the building, paying 25 cents each for the privilege. Blackface minstrels were themselves white but who blackened their faces.
One of the exhibits was a man described as ‘a creature found in the wilds of Africa, supposed to be a mixture of the wild native African and the orang otang, a kind of man monkey.’ In fact he was African-American William Henry Johnson.
There were many instances of Barnum exhibiting none-white people in degrading ways: ‘Zip the Pinhead’, William Henry Johnson, from a family of former slaves, mentally challenged and put into a cage as the missing link between apes and humans; from Guyana an armless and legless man who could do tricks; Chang Yu Sing the Chinese Giant, over eight feet tall, and Chang and Eng, the original Siamese Twins.
A hoax called ‘The Feejee Mermaid’ was a preserved monkey’s head sewn onto the preserved tail of a fish.
Barnum had discovered not so much how easy it was to deceive the public, but how much the public enjoyed being deceived. He was indefatigable. It was said of him that no single person — including the big thinkers of the 19th century, people like Emerson, Lincoln, Longfellow and Nathaniel Hawthorne — had an influence like Phineas T. Barnum of Bridgeport, Connecticut.
As The History Hour put it: ‘The truth is that Barnum was a great man and a visionary who shaped the country he loved.’
It was the same visionary who said, ‘I am indebted to the press of the United States for almost every dollar I possess.’
This article first appeared in Ireland’s Own Magazine
A CLOSE LOOK AT HIS CAREER REVEALS THAT HE CONNED PEOPLE OVER THE COURSE OF HIS LIFE, AND HE EXPLOITED MARGINALISED GROUPS