ideological motive in the denial of history. ‘All that life‘s a journey and I live in the moment. The American stuff. that’sjust nonsense. It’s how they get in wars.‘ he says. He then laughs. as he does a lot. for Byrne is excellent company. He adds. more thoughtfully: ‘The past is the one thing we can make sense of. You can't make sense of the present. because you're just passing through it the whole time. It's always going to be the past. If you're alive you learn from the past. whether you want to or not. People say the past is a foreign country; no it’s not. it's the only country we live in. That’s the thing about going back to your old work. It‘s fascinating to put a few more grooves in it. add a few tracks to the album.” And he chuckles again.
I’m reminded of the philosopher Schopenhauer. and one of his most famous quotations. ‘The memory should be specially taxed in youth. since it is then that it is strongest and most tenacious. But in choosing the things that should be committed to memory the utmost care and forethought must be exercised: as lessons well leamt in youth are never forgotten.’
But if Byrne retains this attitude to the past. there's none of the pessimism we commonly associate with the philosopher. Instead. Byme‘s work is realistic. emotionally affecting. funny and often simply too channing to put one out of sorts. Yet the dark side is what we sometimes choose to conceal in our own memories of the TV series. full as it was of comedy and song. There is a melancholy to Tutti I~'rurri. encapsulated by Byrne’s favourite song from the
‘THE PAST IS THE ONE THING WE CAN MAKE SENSE OF '
piece. The Everley Brothers‘ ‘Dream‘. a riff which laments the absence of a presumably past
lover. where. ‘the only trouble is / gee whizz /
l’m dreamin‘ my life away." And so it is that Byrne leans on a long past precedent of classical literature to convey his
narrative. one which portrays a journey. He acknowledges Homer‘s ()dvssey as the basis for ;
the rock bands tour in the piece. ‘It became like
the journey of Odysseus. We got Tony Smith in as a director of the television version. because we saw a number of people. but he was the only one who saw it like a Greek tragedy. It was him that spotted that - all the violence was happening off screen or stage: there was always violence in the oiling. but it only ever happened out of sight. You just saw the consequences. So there‘s that
Seneca influence — think of Francis Seneca
McDade. All that stuff is alive in us. that's why it‘s lasted for more than 20(X) years.‘ And the tour itself was like a joumey of the
imagination. ‘I sent them off on a tour of i
Scotland. to places I'd never been myself. I let my imagination go free. Aside from Glasgow. I‘d never been to any of the places I sent them to. I just kept at the typewriter. wondering where I’d send them next.‘
Byme's work. as ever. was here about history. something dismissed by the ‘death of history' Postmodernist generation. History is about a quest for truth. and. as Schopenhauer attested: ‘All truth passes through three stages. First. it is ridiculed. Second. it is violently opposed. Third. it is accepted as being self-evident.‘ History is back. and so is John Byrne.
Why has the original TV series of Tutti Frutti never been repeated? Steve Cramer looks at some myths and legends.
You’d think that the words ‘A wap bop a loo bop a wap barn boom’ would be difficult to alter into anything other than what they say. The meaning is quite unclear enough. Presumably it’s a verb, along the lines of ‘zigga zig aah’, and ‘Be bop shooba’. These lyrics all seem to euphemise some sexual act or other, of sufficient speciality that it could cause a girl named Daisy to drive you crazy.
Whatever it’s about, it seems that this song played some part in the cult status that Tutti Frutti now assumes. John Byrne himself acknowledges that part of the legend of the television series was that it was seen only once. As to why . . . well, there are a number of conspiracy theories. . .
It was an inside lob Let’s rid ourselves of the least plausible one first. The occasionally floated idea that either the author or some prominent member of the cast acted to prevent a repeat screening by the BBC seems a non- starter. As an acknowledged hit of 1987, there would be no reason artistically to prevent its re- release, while in terms of increasing the profile, and, for that matter, bank balances of those involved, there would be every reason to encourage repeats. The problem with pinning the crime on the participants, in other words, is that they had no motive.
The series can’t be shown for legal reasons There are much stronger reasons to believe that the problem arose from songs and copyright. One version has it that the alteration
of lyrics in one particular song caused copyright infringement, another was that the rights for one song were not properly applied for. The truth about this resides, no doubt, in the memory of some executive at the Beeb, and he or she isn’t telling. But I can reveal that there is indeed a ‘problem song' and it is the one from which Byrne’s classic takes its title. With multiple letters requesting a return showing on 8804 to this day, all hope is not yet lost for a repeat screening once the threat of litigation subsides, and the song concerned will soon be over 50 years old - thus it will no longer be subject to copyright.
Auntie Beeb ls protecting us from a decidedly dark little number Our collective memory of the series is that it was a great comedy drama, but in fact it included many dark and deeply tragic scenes, which may have left BBC executives feeling that it was simply too dark a drama to warrant a repeat. After all, think about what does get repeated and it is almost always the sitcoms and comedy series, rather than the classic dramas. Moreover, the original show’s pacing was, to be honest, rather patchy. Today's televisual vocabularies are very different from the 19805, demanding faster cuts and shorter pauses. And all of this is before we even get into the odd mixture of video and film footage that was used in its creation. It’s a juxtaposition that no director would get away with today . . . Could it be that, above all else, the basic televisual production values of the original series are no longer up to scratch?
I An Artworks documentary devoted to the original TV series and its transformation into a stage play, is screened at 7pm on Sun 1 Oct on 8802.
7-21 880 2006 THE LIST 21