Rock on, Brian!
One of the prizes at the recent Lady Margaret’s Bingo Nite was a copy of that amazing book about the history of Bath Arts Workshop in the 1970s. In fact, two of the authors were at the event selling the hefty tome, which is still available, folks, on the Tangent Books website!
Several pages in the book are devoted to the amazing spoof rock band which emerged from all the creative chaos of those long-gone days and, despite being a shameless mockery of all things rock and roll, actually toured extensively at home and abroad and appeared at real rock venues alongside the very legends they were mocking! This sometimes ended in fisticuffs but because the music was so good, the performances were generally accepted in good humour.
Its star, one Rocky Rickets, an aging, blow-dried, glitter-smothered rock star in his own right, was played with enormous vigour by my Natural Theatre cohort Brian Popay. A few decades ago, a Naturals team including Brian, me and our colleague Barbara, secured a street theatre gig at an arts festival in Australia. This was a big thing at the time, and one of our directors even threw a leaving party in Walcot Chapel, which was featured in this very newspaper.
Unfortunately, the festival ran into financial difficulties and at the last minute, unable to secure sponsorship for our flights, they cancelled our visit. However, our sassy administrator had built a cancellation fee into our contract. At the time we were paid per gig, and with little prospect of alternative work at short notice, it was decided that the actors involved should share the money.
We got so fed up with people stopping us and asking why we weren’t in Oz, we three decided to go away for a month. We chose to go to Trinidad for the carnival, which in our view was the greatest street theatre extravaganza in the world.
Needless to say, we had a spectacular time and then escaped to the quieter sister island of Tobago. One morning, while waiting for a bus to take us off to a distant beach, Brian decided he’d prefer to visit the busier town beach. He got a bus going in the other direction and making his way to the one empty seat, he found himself sitting next to the only other tourist on board, a young man from Canada.
Naturally they got talking, and on hearing Brian was from Bath, the fellow exclaimed excitedly: “I was in Bath once many years ago, but only for one night. I’ll never forget it, as my friends took me to a field and we saw this incredible rock band called Rocky something!”
“You mean Rocky Rickets, the Jet Pilots of Jive, not forgetting the Lovely Rockettes?” “Yes!”
“Well, I was Rocky!” The guy looked at Brian, with his holiday slacks, sunburnt nose and his little bag of swimming gear and obviously thought: “A rock star of yesteryear this is not!”
I’m unsure if by the time Brian got to his stop he had convinced his fellow passenger or not.
Re my power-saving drive mentioned here last month, I managed to reduce my electricity consumption from 26kwpd to 10kwpd compared to the same period last year!
Ralph Oswick was artistic director of Natural Theatre for 45 years and is now an active patron of Bath Comedy Festival