THE SOUND OF MUSIC HAPPENING THINGS: Big Star – September Gurls.

eh mate, do you do requests?
not really, but now that you ask,
what was it you wanted to hear?

Many years ago, probably in the late Nineties, Mick Head and I went out for a few on a Thursday evening. As was the case in those far off days, Thursday turned into Friday, which turned into a spectacular weekend. The children were at their grandmother’s in another city. I had nothing to do but nothing itself. The
weekend consisted of forays into town, getting thoroughly smashed, then repairing back to mine for minor recovery, before the urge to start all over again. On the Friday night, we kept Robin Jackson company while he played music to the masses in MelloMello, (which was…) then Cream’s pre-party bar and hangout. When he played “Cindy Incidentally” by The Faces, I thought Mick was gonna die on the spot. Here’s something I’ve noticed about Mick Head over the years – he has survived on the bare minimum of music. There have been times when I’ve played him some of the brightest lights of the last sixty years of pop music, and he has been blissfully unaware of its existence. I can recall us being nailed to my sofa, in a pharmaceutical haze of some huge proportions, being dazzled by the performance and complex arrangements on David Cassidy’s “Could It Be Forever?”. It was one of those joyous occasions when the music and the
chemicals and the overall camaraderie swept the whole evening along into a rapturous event. At one point, Mick noticed our Joe’s broken electric guitar, with four strings. He picked it up and tried to play it. Then he tried to tune it. Then he tried to work out the chords to Boston’s “More Than A Feeling” on four strings. I was amazed – the guitar was fucked, his perseverance was colossal. When he realised that this was never gonna happen, he peered up at me and said, “Bern, play me something that’ll blow me mind.” Knowing that pretty much anything would have blown his mind at that point, I could have played anything at all and had the desired effect. Me being me, I chose “September Gurls” by Big Star. It’s one of those soul wrenching tunes, tearing at your heartstrings, melancholic and triumphant at the same time. When you first hear it, it can have a devastating effect, like all the particles being redirected and channelled into this gorgeous balm, sent from above to make whatever maybe wrong at that moment, right. Of course, Mick said he’d never heard the song before and I wasn’t surprised. When it was over, he asked me to play it again. Then again. And again. This went on for about half an hour, and with every listen Mick became more vociferous in his adoration. As the dawn began to descend, I began to tell Mick how gorgeous Ben and Jerry’s Phish Food ice cream was – like “September Gurls”, he’d never heard of it. I told him there was a coffee shop on Bold Street where we could get some. So at around 7am, we set off on a mission to score ice-cream. On Aigburth Road we encountered two

German tourists waiting by a bus stop with suitcases. We convinced them that we should share their taxi into town, which we did. Withhindsight, it was clear we frightened the living shit out of these people. Two rambling weekend casualties, babbling at high speed about ice cream, whilst on a cocktail of recreational party drugs. When we got to Bold Street, the shop that sold the ice cream hadn’t even opened yet. In true hedonistic fashion, we repaired to Marks and Spencers, which was open, and spent £45 on a giant bottle of champagne which we drank from the bottle in St John’s Gardens.
And that would have been that, except Mick then wrote a song for Shack’s LP “Here’s Tom With The Weather”. In “As Long As I’ve Got You”, he eludes to our triumphalist lost weekend. There’s a reference to “September Gurls” and the profound effect it had on him. He mentions me in the lyrics – “I heard this song in Bernie’s on the lane, so beautiful, so true.” It still surprises me every time I hear it. As far as I’m aware, nobody else ever did that. I feel dead proud to have inspired – even in a minuscule way – one of the greatest songwriters this country has ever produced. Somebody once said to me that I talk and write about the people that I know as if everybody knows them, which I think is dead lovely. Mick Head is a great social documenter of the people and places of Liverpool. He uses people and places that he knows as wonderful devices in his lyrics and songs and they are beautiful and touching every time. Mick is a true genius. His new album, “Adios Senor Pussycat” has once again proved that like none of his peers, and despite his darker moments, he can write the most elevating, uplifting music imaginable, and even in the tiniest of ways, I feel honoured to have been a tiny part of that. VIVA MICK HEAD! HE’S THE BOY, MAN. THANKS. X

Big Star – September Gurls. (from) Radio City. Ardent ADS-1501. January 1974.