Eric the robot, then and now: Emerging from the workshop in 1928, left, and today on gleaming display in London’s Science Museum. His former tight-lipped expression has been enlivened with spiky teeth by his builder Giles Walker
◼ MEET ERIC, BRITAIN’S FIRST ROBOT, built in 1928 and reincarnated as this full-size working replica by London’s Science Museum in a preview of next year’s blockbuster exhibition on 500 years of robotics. Within a decade of the word robot being coined in Karel Čapek’s 1920 play R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots), the 6ft-tall Eric toured the world as superstar but four years later he suddenly vanished. More than 800 backers of the museum’s Kickstarter campaign funded an Eric lookalike to be recreated by artist and robot builder Giles Walker. The new Eric has now joined the permanent collection and you can see him on static display until 30 November, though he’s giving three animated demos daily as a sparky mechanical person. Free.
The world’s first robots: in Čapek’s play R.U.R. of 1921
Originally built by Captain W.H. Richards & A.H. Reffell to stand in for the Duke of York and open a model engineers exhibition, Eric was everything we now imagine a robot to be: humanoid, metallic and able to talk, though he moved only in limited ways, standing and sitting and moving his limbs. Giles Walker’s reincarnation maintains Eric’s primitive charm but has added some sleek touches, such as flexible elbows. The original had 35,000 volts sparking through his lips as he spoke. Today Giles has given Eric LEDs flashing across some spiky teeth instead, which is “a lot safer”.
Of the insides, he adds: “I’ve converted what was originally a load of pulleys and electromagnets into a digital system.” This makes Eric a very modern old robot, despite the verdict of TV star John Barrowman when Eric appeared on BBC TV’s One Show last week. He thought Eric looked like “an older-type cyberman”. Actually, John, the truth is probably the exact opposite: that Doctor Who’s cybermen were inspired by the Eric of the 1920s.
Pristine footage: The Beatles play Shea Stadium in August 1965. (Image: SubaFilms)
◼ LAST NIGHT AT A LONDON CINEMA I saw the most exciting live pop concert since the same band played live in the Swinging Sixties. Ron Howard’s new Beatles documentary, Eight Days A Week about the touring years 1963-66, is a sensational feast of long-lost performance footage that confronts us with the Fab Four’s raw onstage energy and pounding tempo – the audio as gorgeously restored as the images. This two-hour celebration of Beatle genius goes behind the clichés of hysteria to give us Access All Areas. It delivers one revelation after another, from Paul’s “Oh-my-God” moment when Ringo joined the band, to the jaw-dropping recording of a top-ten single in 90 minutes of studio time, to their 1964 triumph for civil rights when the band refused to tour in the US until audience segregation was abandoned at their venues.
New interviews from Ringo Starr and Paul McCartney keep dropping gems of insight about this the most commercially successful group in pop history, while vintage footage does as much justice to lippy John Lennon and “quiet” George Harrison who are no longer with us.
Throughout this joyous moptops-into-men odyssey we’re wide-eyed at the sheer cheek of these multimedia superstars, aged between 19 and 22, who created their own interview style by pinging back witty ad-libs to questions from the world’s media. The downside was mass hysteria from teenaged babyboom fans laying siege to hotels and airports where they repeatedly overwhelmed police and security on an often scarifying scale.
Beatle albums sat at No 1 in the charts for 20 to 30 weeks at a time – more No 1 albums than any other musical act. Their 20 No 1 hit singles on the Billboard Hot 100 chart remain unchallenged.
Ron Howard with Paul and Ringo this week: “I love this photo that was taken yesterday at Abbey Road Studios in historic Studio 2 while we were promoting The Beatles: Eight Days a Week”
Everything The Beatles did was without precedent. Among their innovations they launched arena rock and at Shea Stadium Howard’s doc ensures that we hear George’s guitar chords above the screaming audience of 55,000 fans. As a shock reminder of Sixties technology, Vox had built three new amps for the Beatles, each souped up to 100 watts (!!!) specially for touring America, their output being relayed via microphones to feed the stadium’s tinny loudspeaker system!!!
It is a breath-taking source of inspiration to know that during The Beatles’ far from meteoric early years, this Liverpudlian band of brothers had played at least 456 live gigs before signing their recording contract with EMI. Yes, 456 !!! With that amount of practice, it should be no surprise to find that their legacy amounts to 237 original compositions – songs which most people on the planet can hum, while the most radical among them personify the Sixties counterculture. As the best-selling band in history, the Fabs revolutionised all of music for ever.
Howard’s previous reality epics include the wonderful Apollo 13 and the gripping joust, Frost/Nixon. This week he told The Guardian: “I began to think of the Beatles story as like Das Boot: they’re in it together, they have each other, they know what their objective is, but, y’know, it’s a dangerous world out there.”
WHAT THE PRESS ARE SAYING
➢ Ron Howard trashes the idea that there’s nothing new to say about the Beatles – The Guardian: “ This is about the Beatles as live phenomenon, and the fact that their music was all the more remarkable because it had to be heard above the scream – that ambient sound of sex, excitement and modernity, mixed in with a thin chirrup of press envy. The scream was an important part of it. . . an almost unbroken four-year, semi-improvised multimedia performance for which there was no pre-existing template – not simply the music but the giant public spectacle and public scrutiny. ”
➢ 10 Things we learned from Eight Days a Week
– Rolling Stone: “ In February 1964, the band and their entourage occupied nearly the entire 12th floor of the Plaza NYC, including the 10-room presidential suite. But despite the space, the four friends retired to smaller quarters. “The four of us ended up in the bathroom just to get a break from the incredible pressure,” Starr says. ”
➢ “We were force-grown, like rhubarb,” says John Lennon
– Daily Telegraph: “ The film shrewdly draws a line between the Beatles’ mischievous sense of humour and their long-time producer George Martin’s earlier life recording alternative comedy. Martin had worked with the Goons, an enormous influence on the band’s growing lyrical eccentricity in that period, as well as their off-the-cuff ribbing of strait-laced reporters. ”
“ Stories about the Purple One’s generosity are starting to emerge in the days following his death, with his close friend Van Jones lifting the curtain on his humanitarian endeavours in an interview with CNN (which you can watch above).
July 2014: Prince at the #YesWeCode Launch, at Essence Music Festival
As a practising Jehovah’s Witness, Jones says, Prince was “not allowed to speak publicly about any of his good acts” but Jones felt that now was the time people knew more about his charitable giving over the years.
Chief among the projects he helped fund is #YesWeCode, an initiative led by Jones aiming to teach 100,000 low-income, urban youths learn how to code to help them get jobs in the tech world. Jones says 15 major technology companies now work with “kids in the hood” to help them break into Silicon Valley through the project.
According to the L.A. Times, Jones said the inspiration for the idea came following the Trayvon Martin verdict, with Prince saying to Jones: “Every time people see a young black man wearing a hoodie, they think, he’s a thug. But if they see a young white guy wearing a hoodie they think, oh that might be Mark Zuckerberg. That might be a dot-com billionaire” . . . / Continued online
❏ To which Rusty Egan,Steve’s partner in the Blitz Club and other landmark ventures that helped create the Swinging 80s, replies:
“ For 2 years prior to this unfortunate event Steve and I were embroiled in a public feud. Sadly we did not kiss and make up and I like most people was shocked he left us so young. RIP Steve. I have still got a few things I need to do… will sort that biz out later. ”
Jan 2015: Rusty Egan ranting, sorry, lecturing at Aston University
◼ DID ASTON UNIVERSITY KNOW WHAT IT WAS DOING inviting deejay Rusty Egan to talk at an academic conference? The drummer and co-founder of the legendary 80s Blitz Club has dedicated his life to promoting electronic dance music so is uniquely qualified to spout on Germany’s seminal synth band at the world’s first scholarly gathering devoted to Kraftwerk and the Birth of Electronic Music. Conference organiser Dr Uwe Schütte claimed: “They are the most important band in the world in the way they changed music.”
Having been among their early disciples, Rusty was besotted enough to go hunting through Germany in the 70s in search of experiments in synthesised pop. His lifelong mission, he believes today, has shown “how Kraftwerk turned into Planet Rock turned into house music and what we know now as dance music.” He tells how he found the world’s first sampler in a German village called Wächtersbach, spent 12 hours making his first mash-up there and “never got paid for that record, not one dime”.
Sampling in Wächtersbach, 1979: Rusty Egan with Ian Tregoning making Wunderwerk with Franz Aumüller
Rusty made good with bands such as Rich Kids and Visage, in the face of the fat-cat indolence that prevailed in the torpid British music industry of the 70s, so last month’s platform enabled the now 57-year-old Rusty to settle a few scores by naming and shaming the rip-off merchants who, he says, have nicked his arrangements over the years and never paid a penny for them. By his own account, one of the guilty villains Rusty had paid £500 a day responded to his accusation saying: “Yeah but you should have kept the floppy disk.” Another lesson in the school of hard knocks.
The Aston “lecture” is described by one of the 200 delegates as “more of a comedy routine” and by Rusty himself as “Welcome to my insanity”. It’s now on Soundcloud for all to hear, and is typical of many an hour I’ve spent in Rusty’s kitchen trying to follow his uniquely entertaining stream-of-consciousness which randomly leaps from one story to the next while you work out that 20 years separates them. Early in his talk he says “I’m just mad on sound – it wasn’t a case of double paradiddle” illustrating his point with a beatbox break. So you have often to do a bit of Sherlockian deduction to finish his thoughts for him. His splenetic outbursts and ripe language (parental guidance advised) testify both to his indignation at the greed that characterises sections of the pop fraternity and to his own honesty, which even his friends suspect might be charming naivety.
Here’s his first rant:
“ In my experience record companies have never ever had any idea about creating music or creative people… I spent years not having any respect whatsoever for any guy in a satin jacket with Ace written on it with a briefcase with tour passes on it, long sideburns, dark glasses and a handlebar moustache, saying “Hi! I’m from your record label”. He was the last guy in the world you wanted to talk to and you had absolutely nothing you wanted to say to him. ”
VERDICTS BY RUSTY’S FANS AT FACEBOOK
Chi Ming LaiYou will be in stitches.
Mat Mckenzie This is a fantastic listen Rusty!
Clive Pierce Bravo… Absolutely riveting.
Anver Hanif The knowledge and vision are superb.
Derek Quin Rusty, you have been a massive influence on my music heritage. When I heard you speak at Aston it reinvigorated me.
Iris Peters Great fun to listen to.
Jon Lowther You and François Kevorkian defined the evolvement of electronica and the DJ. You have managed to maintain your passion, creativity and faith in an industry that fails.
Mats From I literally LOL’ed many times listening to this.
Kraftwerk’s pioneering drummer Wolfgang Flür: Rusty meets his hero in Dusseldorf more than 30 years after he first went in search of synth. . . “I was 22 when I met Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider and spent the evening explaining that future clubs will be playing music made by machines – what must they have thought!”
➢ Update from Spandau Ballet: Legendary deejay and friend of the band Rusty Egan has been confirmed as the support for all of the Soul Boys of the Western World tour UK & Ireland shows
◆ On Mi-soul radio on 13 Feb 2015, the day after Steve Strange died, deejay Rusty Egan paid musical tribute to his sidekick in founding their legendary Blitz club-night back in 1979: “Music says everything I could ever want to say” ... Catch up at Mixcloud
◆ Chris Sullivan features lesser known versions of Bowie’s music for his first-anniversary tribute at Soho Radio
MORE INTERESTING THAN MOST PEOPLE’S FANTASIES — THE SWINGING EIGHTIES 1978-1984
They didn’t call themselves New Romantics, or the Blitz Kids – but other people did.
“I’d find people at the Blitz who were possible only in my imagination. But they were real” — Stephen Jones, hatmaker, 1983. (Illustration courtesy Iain R Webb, 1983)
“The truth about those Blitz club people was more interesting than most people’s fantasies” — Steve Dagger, pop group manager, 1983
An “invaluable website” — historian Dominic Sandbrook, 2012
A UNIQUE HISTORY
➢ WELCOME to the Swinging 80s ➢ THE BLOG POSTS on this front page report topical updates ➢ ROLL OVER THE MENU AT TOP to go deeper into the past ➢ FOR NEWS & MONTH BY MONTH SEARCH, see the sidebar below
◆ 2013: Out of the 80s frying pan into the 21st-century fire. . . Here’s the true story of how Visage changed the sound of clubland music, as Steve Strange announces his own new version of “Visage”
✱ Matt Bianco’s Mark Reilly and the 8-piece New Cool Collective celebrate their collaboration album The Things You Love with a European tour through the summer. Bianco’s 1984 album Whose Side Are You On? introduced jazz to a chart scene still dominated by British new wave, ska and punk. Hit singles followed
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✱ Join in the Q&A during An Audience with Martin Kemp who is touring the UK all year from Billingham and Bodelwyddan Castle through Blackburn and Cheltenham (you might have to google some venues to discover which town they’re in!)
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✱ George Clinton tops the bill at the 12-15 May Soundcrash Funk & Soul Weekender 2017 starring legends such as Parliament Funkadelic, Soul II Soul full live band, Gilles Peterson, The Hot 8 Brass Band and many more. Chalets are going fast
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✱ Listen now at YouTube to Where’s The Revolution, Depeche Mode’s first new music in four years – the first single from this spring’s 12-track new album, Spirit. More info at www.depechemode.com
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✱ The original Blitz Club deejay's first solo album capturing the spirit of 80s electronica, “Rusty Egan presents. . . Welcome to the Dancefloor” is being published through Pledge Music where you can pre-order the 14-track album and related products... Read a full review here at Shapers of the 80s.
Click on the Soundcloud player below to hear some snippets now:
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✱ Fronting Dazed’s spring issue, Ashton Sanders who stars in Moonlight (above) and Amandla Stenberg are young Hollywood trailblazers said to be inspiring free thought and positive action in the post-Trump era✱ Dazed’s best new tracks mix features Ezra Rubin aka Kingdom’s choice of forward-looking club music
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✱ In the face of difficult times and an uncertain future, i-D's family values issue celebrates tight-knit families, teams, tribes and collectives the world over. No faking. It’s true.✱ i-D’s soundtrack to your weekend:
April’s new releases ft. Four Tet, Murlo and King Krule
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✱ Issue 69 of Soul Survivors magazine features Brit Funk Association, Eddie Piller, Polly Gibbons, Barry King, Wunmi, Ash Selector and all soul music events. Under Fitzroy Facey, the mag celebrated its tenth anniversary with a new compilation on Expansion Records (above).
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✱ Quids In Mons, FCK Thurs, #FRI251, Big Weekender Sats at the legendary Factory Manchester – clubnights, cocktail masterclasses and live bands – chart, dance, EDM, RNB, house, garage, hiphop and indie over three floors designed by Ben Kelly on Princess St, Manchester M1 7EN – @factorymanchester
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✱ Manchester’s Remake Remodel claims to be “The Nation’s Saving Grace of Alternative, Rock’n’Roll” — Mondays at Soup Kitchen M1 1DF & every 1st Saturday at The Ruby Lounge M4 1QB – @RemakeRemodel1
