RECORD COLLECTION

Bringing his ‘Viv’ to Liverpool, the actor-comedian and I’m A Celebrity voiceover man reveals his prog faves – and how Sir Henry At Rawlinson End changed his life.

Actor and comedian Michael Livesley has recently been starring in a version of Sir Henry At Rawlinson End. His record collection’s pretty cool, too…

Prog captures a mood for me, growing up in the 70s with things like [TV show] Children Of The Stones, Dennis Wheatley, and Hammer Horror.

The 70s was a junction between old England and modern times and

I’d always been struck by Merrie England and history. For me, it’s in this junction where prog resides.

I would’ve been about three or four when I first saw Rick Wakeman on TV. He was doing some of King Arthur. Later my obsession with keyboards and synth would start, but what he was doing chimed with my interest in history. Where I lived, among farmers’ fields in Haydock, it still felt like the 19th century.

My background was steeped in Catholicism – morality and tradition – and also my mum’s record collection of T. Rex, Bowie and Motown. I got really into The Beatles when I was 14. By 16, we were living in Widnes and I left school and started hanging about with a bunch of ne’er-do-wells [laughs] who wanted to be in bands. One guy, Si, had a massive detached Victorian house. His dad was working in Saudi Arabia, so he had the house to himself and access to his dad’s record collection – crates of 747 rock cassettes; Saudi pirate tapes of albums. The first one I remember hearing was The Yes Album backed with Close To The Edge. I remember thinking ‘I’m home.’ That’s how I first heard Alan Parsons Project, Pink Floyd, Genesis, Gong… I’m looking at the 747 edition of Fragile right now, it’s my favourite Yes album. That had so many amazing tunes on there. Rick’s overflowing with creativity and it’s his chance to shine. I went to see Rick play; I’d found a secondhand shop called Simms Cross Curios and they had racks of cheap records. I got all the Yes albums and took them to Rick to be signed. I was so green, he’s signing away and gets to Relayer and goes ‘I’m not even on that one!’

My next big discovery was Jethro Tull’s Songs From The Wood. That crystallised the whole 70s crossover of English folklore and paganism viewed through the prism of a 20th-century human being. I was obsessed with Tolkien and medieval music, so to hear it all brought together was so appealing.

The crate threw up Nursery Cryme next and it was around the same time that the BBC put on a docu about Genesis. That starts with them jumping on the helicopter to do the Knebworth gig, then it’s got all the footage of Gabriel as the flower, and so on. It was like, ‘Wow!’ Because of the synth sound I knew Solsbury Hill, but this was all new. Drama had been in my mind; when I was 11 I’d said to my teacher, Mrs Berry, ‘I’d like to go to drama school.’ She looked up from her book, took her glasses off and said, ‘People who speak like you don’t go to drama school.’ Getting into prog showed me there was a combination of the dramatic and the musical. I kept that in the back of my mind. Meanwhile, my mum had met a man called Barry who was up on his music. He passed the house on his way to work and one day, in an effort to curry favour with her, he dropped a bag of records into our coal hole for me. Inside was Recycled by Nektar. It had a huge warp on the first centimetre of vinyl – I needed a lot of 2p pieces on the tone arm to play it. It was one glorious continuous track, and I heard it at half five in the morning. It still feels like dawn breaking now when I listen to it.

I was into The Smiths, Doors and the Inspiral Carpets so I had a quiff, 20-inch-bottomed jeans, a small synth under my arm and a Yes T-shirt. It confused the hell out of everyone, including the police who thought I was up to no good. Si called me Jim Morrissey.

When I was on the dole I took part in a government scheme called The Musicians’ Workshop. You got your dole money and you attended this centre where you jammed all day and they put gigs on. That’s how I first heard Ozric Tentacles’ Pungent Effulgent. With them as inspiration me and my friends started a dancey, festivally band called Urm. That took me in a different musical direction, listening to underground bands such as Poisoned Electrick Head. On May Day 1993 we went to a free festival in Sefton Park and I heard this sound wafting across the park of trumpets and things. I ran over to the stage and that’s when I first saw Wizards Of Twiddly. I bought Independent Legs that day. The Twids took Magical Mystery Tour’s music hall rock’n’roll, jazz, Motown, 80s alt and classic prog, and brought it all together. A fantastic album, and quite anarchic. Even though I didn’t know about them yet, it’s very close to the spirit of the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band.

By now I was a student with my own radio show, Hulton FM. I met a guy called Alistair on the Rock And Pop course and he was a musical guru for us. He played us Egg, Hatfield & The North and Caravan’s amazing In The Land Of Grey And Pink. One thing he played, and I could immediately hear the Twids, was the Cardiacs’ A Little Man And A House And The Whole World Window. Suddenly, we were going to London to see them. They were like the Twids but with organ and piano in, hooray! My obsession with keyboards was sated. I managed to interview Tim Smith in Manchester for the radio show. He was obsessed with Yes and

I gave him a DVD of the QPR gig.

Often, in the pub, older friends would have reminiscences of

Viv Stanshall’s Sir Henry At Rawlinson End. One day, at a party, someone put it on. It was like, ‘Wow, this is even more amazing than the recitations!’ I thought no more about it, then, four years later and living in Vancouver, I found myself thinking about Sherbet Dip Dabs, baked beans, Viv Stanshall and this album.

I came back to Liverpool and I decided to pursue acting. I’d lacked the bottle, thanks to Mrs Berry’s admonishment. I was 34 and started to get fit, cycling down the waterfront in Liverpool every day. On my journey I found myself listening to one album more than others: Sir Henry. I thought about Rik Mayall reading George’s Marvellous Medicine on TV and I pondered, ‘Imagine if Viv was still alive and they got him to do a Jackanory of this.’ I presumed someone would be doing a stage show and I looked all over the internet. They weren’t. I felt like a dhobi wallah in a Kipling story who’d been sent to do the washing by the river and found a ruby. So I washed off the ruby with my loin cloth and thought ‘This will do me.’ The Sir Henry Show began.

I’m now writing a new biographical show, hopefully for Edinburgh, called Half The Man, about losing five stone. Working out to prog songs such as Nine Feet Underground certainly helps!”

Find Michael at www.sirhenrylives.com and hear his podcast, The Livo Lounge, at www.livo.co.uk.