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Musical notes
Jon Wardle’s memoir about his life as Jah Wobble has given him a taste for writing. David Pollock meets the musician and singer
‘I was encouraged to write a book by the people in my band,’ says John Wardle, the English musician and singer who goes by the name Jah Wobble on his tour posters. ‘I’d tell them stories from years ago and have them in stitches, so when they’d tell me I should put it in a book I took that as encouragement. But more than that, it was something I wanted to do for my kids, not just the music and all that, but my childhood, how I grew up, the culture I grew up in. I thought it would be nice to document that for them.’
A born raconteur, Wardle’s character translates easily to last year’s
Memoirs of a Geezer. The book not only documents his youth in Stepney, east London, but his days as the bassist with post-punk pioneers Public Image Limited, time spent fronting his own band Invaders of the Heart, extended periods of alcoholic abandon during his younger days and some mid-fame time spent working on the London Underground, where he once announced over the public address system to a station of bemused commuters, ‘I used to be somebody. I repeat, I used to be somebody.’ Although Wardle has flitted in and out of musical scenes and genres for
the last two and a half decades, his book is filled with warm and funny anecdotes rather than headline-grabbing rock apocrypha. ‘Nah, I didn’t want it to be all about the shock horror stories,’ he says, ‘I wanted it to be something honest and real, and almost quietly observed. I’m lucky in that my life has been quite varied. Of course some things I just couldn’t remember at all, so I had to sit and meditate upon it or ask other people.’
Penning his memoir has given Wobble a real taste for writing and he’s very keen to get another book down. ‘Maybe even a novel next time. I enjoyed it but it was hard work, physically sitting still and concentrating for long periods of time does make you tense. It has its unhealthy side, and I see now why all the writers I know have been just about the maddest people I’ve met. They spend too long locked inside their own head.’ ■ Jah Wobble, 26 Aug, 8.30pm, £10 (£8).
N O S P E J M A H A R G
: O T O H P
19–26 Aug 2010 THE LIST 21
‘IT’S BIZARRE HAVING SOMEONE TRY TO CLEANSE YOU OF YOUR SIN’
and myths and stories, and that’s our way of affirming ourselves and that’s what makes us different from other species.’
Interestingly, Kay decided to mirror this non-linear idea of memory in Red Dust Road within its structure, which is a strange but oddly moving mosaic of passages, written in different registers from different points of view, and out of chronological sequence. ‘Memories are about finding a way of structuring our lives and they show us that our lives are not linear or chronological particularly. One memory might trigger another and yet those things might be years apart, which is why I structured the book the way I did, because we do move in a back-and-forth way, that’s how our mind and memory work.’ One of the upshots of this approach is that the book opens with a marvellous scene in which Kay meets her Nigerian father for the first time in a hotel in Abuja, something that happened several years after Kay had already tracked down her birth mother. To say her birth father is larger than life would be an understatement, as he spends several hours in her hotel room dancing and singing around her in an attempt to rid her of the sin of being born out of wedlock. Kay’s account of this is hilarious but also deeply poignant, like much of the book. ‘He is a real character, you couldn’t make him up,’ she laughs. ‘I’m so glad I met him, but it is bizarre having someone dance and clap around you and try to cleanse you of your sin, and that’s your father. Him being so prurient about my lesbianism as well, asking all these questions about what lesbians did in bed, that was very strange too.’
Kay has skirted around these issues of identity and belonging throughout her esteemed career, ever since her debut poetry collection, The Adoption Papers, was published almost 20 years ago. Through award-winning novels and stories, acclaimed radio and stage plays, it feels like she has been slowly feeling her way towards this book over the years. ‘I feel almost like I’ve lived my life to write this book, that my life has been this book, and the two things are interchangeable. I couldn’t have written it 20 years ago, even if I’d found my parents back then. You have to have a way of looking at things that feels like you’re inside it but also outside it.’
Jackie Kay, 25 Aug, 8pm, £10 (£8).