MIKE McCARTNEY AND SCAFFOLD
HELLO 1962 GOODBYE APRIL 1977
They began doing New York-style happenings in Liverpool. But did hit singles spoil their chemistry?
I was an 18-year-old junior in André Bernard’s hair salon in Liverpool city centre. One afternoon a hairdresser, Mike Weinblatt, a London boy who was also a painter, said to me, “You’re artistic aren’t you Peter? You’d like what we’re doing at the Hope Hall. All these things are happening, you’d love it!” So I went down and saw John Gorman, Adrian Henri and Roger McGough. They did poetry reading, a bit of folk singing and little sketches. I started going every week, and eventually Gorman said, “Do you want to read one of these [sketches]? ” I said, “I’m a hairdresser, my brother’s in a rock and roll group, he’s the show-off in our family.” Gorman says, “I’m a post office engineer, we just do it for fun.” So he gave me a sketch, Old Folks, about two old men, which I took home and read. When I did it, everyone was laughing. I thought, “Bloody hell that was easy!” So now there were two show-offs in the family. Originally that little group was me, Gorman, McGough, Adrian Henri and Celia Mortimer and Jenny Beattie, who were from art college. It was called The Liverpool One Fat Lady All Electric Show, very Pythonesque. Then, in ’65-ish, the telly came over from Manchester and asked us three to do this new local chat show [Gazette]. They offered us a six-week slot, and we all jacked in our jobs! Insane. The name was too long and no one could remember it, so we decided on Scaffold in my Uncle Bill and Auntie Dil’s Eagle Hotel pub in Paradise Street. At that time, particularly Gorman and McGough, we were into Miles Davis’s Lift To The Scaffold [soundtrack to Louis Malle’s Ascenseur Pour L’Échafaud] and we thought, that’s an interesting name, there’s that construction thing of building, but also the deconstruction thing of hanging people. I changed my name to Mike McGear, there, too. I was nearly Mike Dangerfield and Mike McFab… Scousers have things instilled into us – you don’t cash in on your brother becoming famous, you do something in your own right. Americans could never understand it, that thing of looking at life as it is and taking the piss out of it, mercilessly. They’d say, “Mr McCartney, you are insane!” I’d say, “Oh good, you’re getting it.” We’d been doing universities and theatres for quite some years, doing our satirical comedy thing. Making records was actually the last thing on our list of priorities. When we did do it, the saddest thing about it, and I think I’m the only one that thinks this, is that the Scaffold was taken off on this tangent. It was great, because there you are writing these daft things, Thank U Very Much, which gets to Number 4 [November, 1967] even with lines saying “thank you very much for the napalm bomb” and it becomes Harold Wilson and the Queen Mum’s favourite record. Very weird. But there was that other side which was very strong, very different, with some very good sketches. I was sad that people didn’t see it, they just know the hits. So we’d done the cycle of Scaffold, I’d done my albums, and we did Grimms with the Bonzos, which was magnificent when it started out. We kept trying, but when you’re just reiterating the whole thing, it stops feeling good. They’d pay you a fortune, these working men’s clubs, just to do Thank U Very Much and Lily The Pink, but we got bored. We had a nice run and made a lot of people happy, which I’ll never complain about, but we just thought, that’s it, get out. It ended on April Fools’ Day at the Albert Hall. We had a big show there, a charity thing [Nobody’s Fools, with various Pythons and Bonzos]. It was great, I can’t remember what the hell we did, but that was a good bow out, our exit from show business. After that we just gradually went our different ways. Since then we’d get together for little things for charity, Hillsborough, James Bulger, the real important things. The last one we ever did – and I think it will be the last one – was when we were asked to represent Liverpool at the Shanghai World Expo [in 2010], providing the humorous aspect. We’ve been up and down with relationships, mainly me and McGough, but we went and delivered a very good set. They bloody loved John Gorman! And me and John, we’re still at it. As told to Ian Harrison
Mike McCartney and Roger McGough’s 1968 LP McGough & McGear is out now in expanded form on Esoteric Records.