Peter Bellamy - died 24 Sept 1991

Subject: RE: Peter Bellamy 18 yrs today since he died
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 25 Sep 11 - 01:31 PM

He could also rub people up the wrong way with a misplaced SOH & a sharp tongue ~~ don't think he realised, but perhaps didn't care, how offensive some people could find him. Paradoxically, he had a strong sense of social courtesy: excellent host and appreciative guest.

An example: I had made a new will & mentioned to him I had left him my instruments. "Hurry up and die then," was his rejoinder; "you've got a d-major concertina haven't you!" I laughed, as I thought it funny: but Anthea tole me later that he would make such remarks, and not everyone by any means responded as tolerantly as I had done.

{To finish the story ~ I offered it to him straight away, as he was the hardworking professional and his need greater than mine; but in fact he wouldn't take it ("Didn't really mean that, couldn't possibly" &c.). Valedrie & I did persuade him to take it on long loan, and it was the one on his coffin! Jenny, to whom he was married by then, was unaware of thre history, but of course returned it to me and I have, and play, it still. It is the white-bellowed one on my Youtube channel, on "Rag Fair" e.g., with the decorative fancy-knot tassel [Pete's work & I have kept it there].

Anyhow, there's another example of why, maybe, not everyone would patronise his gigs or buy his records or sympathise with him generally ~~ just maybe, I say again...

~Michael~

Subject: RE: Peter Bellamy 18 yrs today since he died
From: The Sandman
Date: 25 Sep 11 - 03:20 PM

Peter Bellamy was an extraordinary performer.
I cant imagine what he would have been like as a mudcat member, he wasn't someone to tolerate fools gladly.
I remember both him and his singing with fondness.

Subject: RE: Peter Bellamy 18 yrs today since he died
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 25 Sep 11 - 05:46 PM

MtheGM,

I have some sympathy with the concept of assisted suicide in the context of incurable illness and I can appreciate the fact that a person's quality of life can deteriorate so much that a quick, painless death can be a merciful release from suffering.

But depression is also a serious illness and the type which can lead to suicide is the most serious of all. A person in the grip of depression may claim that they are suffering so much that their life isn't worth living but treatment for such a condition is usually available. Once restored to a condition closer to good health, via therapy and/or medication, a depressive patient is likely to see things very differently. Although it's too late for Peter Bellamy I would urge anyone suffering from depression - especially if they are entertaining thoughts of suicide - to seek help as soon as possible.

Subject: RE: Peter Bellamy 18 yrs today since he died
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 25 Sep 11 - 05:53 PM

Indeed, Shimrod. I was not trying to extrapolate any general or catch-all principle from my personal experiences.

Subject: RE: Peter Bellamy 18 yrs today since he died
From: georgeward
Date: 26 Sep 11 - 12:03 AM

It's a sad bit of irony that 'The Transports' has been successfully put on several times times since Peter's death, very successfully here in upstate New York at the Old Songs Festival a few years ago.

But I think, as Bonnie, has suggested that Peter was not always a good judge of his own situation. That's part of what depression is, "looking at one's word through shit-colored glasses." And Peter had that, to a sometimes frightening degree. No need for details, but my late wife Vaughn and I did know him reasonably well and he gave us a hell of a scare during one tour over here.

Of course, life as a self-employed solo artist is really asking for it if one has that tendency. I should know (and do). It's also a way to make a place in one's life for periodic creative outpourings bordering (at least) on mania.

Do I wish that I, or any of his friends, had, had a better handle on PB's complex personality while he lived...had been better placed to help? Sure. Do I think it would have affected the final outcome ?
Probably not likely.

But I do believe he enriched this world more than he imagined. Wish I could believe he really realized that at some point, in a way that wasn't episodic and fleeting. He deserved to.

Subject: RE: Peter Bellamy 18 yrs today since he died
From: Kampervan
Date: 26 Sep 11 - 02:04 AM

I am fortunate to have seen him several times both as part of YT and as a solo act.

With YT producing some of the best close harmony singing I've ever come across and as a solo singer electrifying his audience with his unique interpretation and delivery.

Sad loss but enduring legacy.

Subject: RE: Peter Bellamy 18 yrs today since he died
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 26 Sep 11 - 04:42 AM

I can only guess that true genius comes with its own equally serious depressions. This does not mean that every suicide is an act of genius, nor that every genius must kill themselves, just that those that do, do so for reasons beyond the reach of mere mortal understanding. Great art has its hazzards; part of which has to be the quest for the immortal.

For now anyway, the album I'm playing most is The Maritime England Suite, which ends with one of Bellamy's most poignant settings, that of The China Clipper. Music rarely gets as perfect as that.

Subject: RE: Peter Bellamy 18 yrs today since he died
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 26 Sep 11 - 04:49 AM

Dryden: "Great wits are sure to madness near allied"

Subject: RE: Peter Bellamy 18 yrs today since he died
From: GUEST,Working Radish
Date: 26 Sep 11 - 08:56 AM

This thread has made me both laugh and cry, although in both cases I couldn't entirely say why. I only discovered Bellamy a few years ago - far too late - and it's only sinking in now just how much I missed. (I can't even plead youth - the second band I ever saw live was Steeleye Span, in 1974.)

Some of the stories on last year's thread made me think that he could be quite a prickly customer with his friends, & presumably even more so with those who weren't his friends. I think (and I'm drawing on my own experience here) that a deep-rooted self-doubt can manifest itself, paradoxically, as arrogance: if you dismiss other people's opinions, there's no danger of having them confirm your lurking suspicion that you're useless. I wonder if there was some of that going on for him.

Dick Gaughan said that he thought Bellamy was always looking for the next project, the vehicle that would finally let him find his voice & do what he wanted to do. That could also be a way of warding off self-doubt - OK, maybe that wasn't so great, but wait till they hear the next one... The realisation that there really wasn't anything seriously wrong with his work - he really was good - may have tormented him even more.

Subject: RE: Peter Bellamy 18 yrs today since he died
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 26 Sep 11 - 09:16 AM

Indeed so, Radish. But then he found it, that project ~~ The Transports: it was adulated, critically acclaimed, led to widespread respect for him - see above: and then, inexplicably, to his career going Phhhttt, as he said to me. And he lost heart.

Tragic.

~M~

Subject: RE: Peter Bellamy 18 yrs today since he died
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 26 Sep 11 - 10:14 AM

Lost heart? Where's the evidence for that? The Transports was a vehicle for all sorts of triumphs but it's not his crowning glory even amongst his surviving works. What it is does is underline just how much he'd taken on board of The Traditional Idiom as his creative MO; as a work of Folk-songwriting it is an astonishing piece of work, but its broader appeal is in The Stellar Cast and Company it invariably engenders, rather than The Man himself who seemed content to take a back-seat to other singers in its various productions.

Look at the albums that followed it; no evidence there of losing heart at all. Indeed, one finds in his ongoing collaboration with the ghost of Rudyard Kipling his mastery of melody really taking shape. I find it intersting (& ironic) that the Kipling:Bellamy songs that don't quite work are the onrs for which he found a traditional tune. However, his own melodic genius has furnished many a Tune in the Traditional Idiom that never fail to not only beggar belief but serve to underline the essential inner-beauty of Traditional Melody and the Not-Transferable nature thereof. The Idiom however is something else, and from this point of view alone Keep on Kipling will always be my favourite Bellamy album, with Merlin's Isle running it a very close second.

Anyone who heard Bellamy kick off his set with On Board a '98 will have been in no doubt of the seriousness which PB took his craft, nor yet that he was a creative master of that craft; a true Folk Singer immersed in the glories of a genre who could easily take his place alongside The Coppers, Cox, Larner, Tanner, Stewart - all of whom were idiosyncratic stylists in whose hands The Tradition is at its most vivid. To my ears Bellamy quite simply smoked The Revival on those terms, and his recorded legacy will always stand as a testimony to something a whole lot bigger than Folk because of that. Maybe that's why he couldn't get work; in a scene for whom MOR easy listening was the preferred norm he always came across as a fish out of water somehow. I'd have said the manifest arrogance and flamboyance was not only entirely justified, but inevitable - the man not only had swagger in spades, he'd earned it a thousand fold.

Many true artists are only appreciated long after they're gone. Maybe Bellamy's true audience have yet to be born? Whatever the case, for My Generation, Bellamy shone forth as a beacon in a music where beacons aren't really what you expect to find. Even before I ever heard him sing I remember the time he was doing a booking in Newcastle and wasn't even offered accomodation. Someone suggested to him that I was the sort of person who might put him up, but left it to Bellamy to find me! So imagine that - prior to his performance he was reduced to seeking out a complete strangers and begging them for a doss. That was 1984 I think. It struck me as odd that anyone should be granted humiated bum-status who was a booked guest at The Bridge Folk Club (or whatever it was called back then), but it was at that gig that my friend bought me his self-bootlegged cassette of Merlin's Isle which was the beginning of a far deeper astonishment that I'm still dealing with to this day.

Having worked & lived very close to death & disability all my life, I generally have little time for suicides; in Bellamy's case, however, I might count it a minor miracle that he made it as far as he did. Then, as I say, I think if only he'd hung on another ten years he'd be a National Treasure now - cherished by all but the usual suspects who wouldn't know genius if you sat them in a room full of Van Goghs whilst playing them the collected works of Joy Division.

Subject: RE: Peter Bellamy 18 yrs today since he died
From: GUEST,Working Radish
Date: 26 Sep 11 - 10:14 AM

You can call me Pip. (You can even call me Phil, which is my name - "Pip Radish" started out as an anagram & then stuck.)

Did anyone see the re-scored Transports at Sidmouth? Not so sure about having Henry and Susannah played by a brother and sister - that would never have happened in Bellamy's day...

Subject: RE: Peter Bellamy 18 yrs today since he died
From: GUEST,Brian Peters
Date: 26 Sep 11 - 11:48 AM

Peter was Marmite as far as audiences went. Like the club organisers mentioned above by G-Force, the people in charge of my local club were very resistant to booking him, not because of Kipling or politics or his sharp tongue, but because they "couldn't stand his voice". Eventually my persistent advocacy prevailed, and in our case the organisers did go along to the gig - and were won over by a brilliant performance (this was in his last year when, as Suibhne says, he was consistently on outstanding form).

But I don't buy the idea that Peter was shunned by the Folk Establishment - if such a thing existed. He was booked regularly at Whitby Folk Week, where he edited the daily newsletter in characteristically entertaining and forthright style; I remember seeing him present the Maritime Suite to a full house at Sidmouth; the traditional festival at Redditch loved him to bits, and Folk Roots at one point gave him a regular opinion column (as well as the notorious Karl Dallas interview which did some partly self-inflicted damage).

As for the record companies, he had bad luck with labels that went bankrupt, sure, but he had a good relationship with Fellside (who produced 'Songs & Rummy Conjuring Tricks' as well as some of the Kipling stuff. Peter's habit of turning up at gigs selling bootlegged cassettes of his own albums must have been at least partly his own choice.

Shimrod is dead right: the 1980s and 1990s were a pretty bleak time for traddies on the folk scene. I know, because I was trying to get gigs myself - "We don't like that finger-in-the-ear stuff at our club" was a not uncommon response to enquiries from an artist presenting traditional song in any guise. Peter was utterly uncompromising in everything he did, and the sad fact is that trad songs performed in his wildly idiosyncratic style must have been a hard sell, whoever was doing the selling.

Subject: RE: Peter Bellamy 18 yrs today since he died
From: The Sandman
Date: 26 Sep 11 - 12:34 PM

"We don't like that finger-in-the-ear stuff at our club" was a not uncommon response to enquiries from an artist presenting traditional song in any guise. Peter was utterly uncompromising in everything he did, and the sad fact is that trad songs performed in his wildly idiosyncratic style must have been a hard sell, whoever was doing the selling."
I was doing a lot of gigs singing trad songs in the eighties and nineties,but i was able to supplement gigs with ceilidhs playing my concertina, I also played in a concertina quartet, and played in a duo with Richard Grainger mixing traditional songs with our own contemporary songs., so I suppose on reflection versatilty helped me survive.
I do remember[this was in the eighties] being told at one club not to tell jokes, and at another club that we dont have politics here.
   I encountered a different attitude occasionally, it was more we dont like concertinas, we prefer singer songwriter guitarists.so in PETERS case it may also have been occasional organisers having a dislike of concertinas.

Subject: RE: Peter Bellamy 18 yrs today since he died
From: GUEST,David E.
Date: 26 Sep 11 - 01:09 PM

One of my fondest memories of Peter is of him sitting in our kitchen with his concertina, knocking off song after song... Heaven only knows why I didn't have my tape recorder going...

David E.

Subject: RE: Peter Bellamy 18 yrs today since he died
From: GUEST,raymond greenoaken
Date: 26 Sep 11 - 03:29 PM

"...dislike of concertinas..."

That's the wildest theory yet, but there may be a grain of truth in it. Consider M Carthy: as a singer he's as weird and uncompromising in his own way as PB; indeed there was a time when his singing was so gnarled by mannerism that PB had to tick him off about it. If he'd played an anglo concertina instead of a guitar, would he have achieved the eminence (and made the comfortable living) he's enjoyed these past forty years and more? I think the answer might well be no.

Subject: RE: Peter Bellamy 18 yrs today since he died
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 26 Sep 11 - 03:49 PM

Amuse yourself on a rainy autumn day, my fellow Bellamists of Leisure, by compiling all of his guitar-accompanied songs you can find - Harp Song, Sir Richard, Motherless Child, Devil Got Your Man - and marvel afresh at the genius of the man.

Subject: RE: Peter Bellamy 18 yrs today since he died
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 26 Sep 11 - 03:52 PM

Stones In My Passway!!!!!

Subject: RE: Peter Bellamy 18 yrs today since he died
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 26 Sep 11 - 04:06 PM

I saw him do a sublime You Can't Always Get What You Want at least twice but don't have a recording of it. Does anyone??

Subject: RE: Peter Bellamy 18 yrs today since he died
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 26 Sep 11 - 04:11 PM

"If [M Carthy had] played an anglo concertina instead of a guitar, would he have achieved the eminence (and made the comfortable living) he's enjoyed these past forty years and more? I think the answer might well be no."

Do you know, raymond greenoaken, that's just what I was thinking! I can't help but notice that 'guitar heroes' tend to rule.

Subject: RE: Peter Bellamy 18 yrs today since he died
From: The Sandman
Date: 26 Sep 11 - 04:35 PM

I speak from experience, here is a recent example from my own experience, I had a gig cancelled at Mansfield folk club on the pretext that the previous organiser had booked two concertina players within six weeks, never mind that they would happily book guitarists more regularly.
after much argument,I persuaded the new organiser to give me the booking at a later date [ nearly a year later],In fact I had a great gig at the club,and really enjoyed the club.
but it was an example of the idea that its ok to have x amount of guitarists in a given period but not concertina players.
Peter when he was on song was an exciting and exhilirating performerof his kind, he was an up front in your face performer, I have known other great performers like Roy Harris, who were great perfomers of a different kind ,.
which brings me on the other prejudice that i have witnessed against solo unaccompanied traditional singers

Subject: RE: Peter Bellamy 18 yrs today since he died
From: GUEST
Date: 26 Sep 11 - 05:26 PM

Michael's "Hurry up and die" story is hilarious and sad. It's hard to escape the conclusion that only a humourless prig would fail to find such a remark amusing. It's the sort of thing close friends feel at liberty to say to each other with no fear of misunderstanding. But he didn't, by all accounts, confine such utterances to close friends. In this, he was a sort of Kingsley Amis of folk, using calculated outrage as a means of weighing people up. If you responded priggishly, he was probably unrepentant. If you were on his wavelength, however ("simpatico" was his term), his generosity and warmth were remarkable. Kate and I once stayed the weekend at his house in Keighley. "Bring lots of blank tapes," he counselled in advance. Once there, I was given the freedom of his compendious record collection (by then all converted to cassette). I returned home with so much stuff – all patiently copied by him in real time over two days – that twenty years on there are still two albums I have yet to listen to.

Later that year he dropped a fat, impenetrably written American fantasy novel in my lap. "See if you can get to the end of that," was his challenge. I reached the final page half an hour before Jenny came on the phone with the news of his death. It's one of the most extraordinary books I've ever read.

I suspect many others will have similar tales to tell.

Subject: RE: Peter Bellamy 18 yrs today since he died
From: GUEST,raymond greenoaken
Date: 26 Sep 11 - 05:27 PM

sorry – GUEST was me.

Subject: RE: Peter Bellamy 18 yrs today since he died
From: GUEST,David E.
Date: 26 Sep 11 - 06:28 PM

"a fat, impenetrably written American fantasy novel in my lap."

Okay...own up... what was it?

David E.

Subject: RE: Peter Bellamy 18 yrs today since he died
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 26 Sep 11 - 06:36 PM

the other prejudice that i have witnessed against solo unaccompanied traditional singers

Ha! Carrying a guitar does seem to translate to "reliable all-round entertainer" in some MCs' minds - while singing unaccompanied translates to "awkward squad, handle with care". It's understandable - if the MC's a guitar-playing singer-songwriter him- or herself, any other g.-p. s.-s. is automatically going to look like One Of Us - but it does get annoying.

At 52 Folk Songs, incidentally, I decided to mark PB's birthday rather than the day of his death. Here are three bits of Bellamy. There will be more. (In a couple of weeks' time I'll be uploading "Derwentwater's Farewell", and...)

Subject: RE: Peter Bellamy 18 yrs today since he died
From: lisa null
Date: 26 Sep 11 - 11:06 PM

In many ways Peter and I were two sibling peas in a pod. He would stay for weeks, even months at a time with my sons and me in America, first with Anthea and then with Jenny. Sometimes on his own. My kids adored him, and he shaped their musical tastes considerably. Peter and I would often tour together-- over here at first, and then England with Anthea and Bill Shute. Bill and I would also do our own gigs and come back to his lovely town house in Norwich. We'd find Peter up and waiting for us like an eager parent waiting to be briefed after the prom. Bill and I found him true-hearted, ethical, kind, and endlessly interesting and companionable.

No one was more delicious to introduce America to, and no one was better to share England with than Peter Bellamy. He was an intrepid fan of African-American culture.

I remember him delighting the manager and customers of a St. Louis thrift shops when he tried on a royal blue tuxedo and sashayed down the aisles playing air guitar.

I remember him bursting out with "Gunga Din" in a ferociously authentic waterfront bar Gale Huntington took us to and holding the customers spellbound.

Yes Peter had a savage and tactless humor, but it was humor-- often taken to mean more than he meant. He also had some serious problems, on tour, with taking too many pills to put him to sleep and mixing them with too much beer. His sleep schedule would get screwed up and he'd become simultaneously exhausted and unable to sleep. Once, in Philadelphia, Caryl P. Weiss and I had to take him to the emergency room.

I know he went to the doctor, aware that he was experiencing depression. He was somewhat surprised that they spent so little time with him and merely prescribed pills. He was certainly morose about his career slipping away. He'd achieved prominence in the midst of the folk boom and, like so many revival celebrities of that period, the fall from fame felt very steep. But beyond thinking of himself as a "has been," he was terrified of having no other calling and little preparation or training to follow another occupation.

He created because he had to rather than simply out of a desire to be successful. It was absolutely essential to be true to his muse in his own way, no matter what the public reception.


There was no end to his ideas and his passionate embrace of singers, actors, television shows, books. He was a devote of pop culture, partly because he had had such an isolated childhood. He was fascinated by it but rather like an alien exploring earth for the first time. He often described people and events as boring, but the truth is he could survive on a desert island and never be bored for a minute.

Peter's suicide is something I will never get used to though I certainly saw warning signs on his last visit to my apartment in Washington DC. Unfortunately, those signs only became clear in retrospect.

In any case, his death left a great and unfilled hole in my life, not only because we were friends but because we were such close artistic companions, nearly alter-egos. He was my biggest booster and perhaps vice versa. Because of this, then, it's no wonder that I remember him as the world's best playmate.

Subject: RE: Peter Bellamy 18 yrs today since he died
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 26 Sep 11 - 11:39 PM

Hi Lisa. One thing I will always be grateful to him for was sending you & Bill to call on me at my home in Cambridge when you were over here in the 70s. We met for a couple of hours and had a delightful chat & song session which I recall tho this day as a hilite of my life. Wonder if you remember it?

❤~Michael~❤

Subject: RE: Peter Bellamy 18 yrs today since he died
From: Bonnie Shaljean
Date: 27 Sep 11 - 04:26 AM

Lisa - a beautiful post from a beautiful lady. Thank you so much for sharing your memory of Peter with us. It helps him to live on.

I so wish he had been better grounded to face the tide-going-out (as it always does) of the performing market. I remember what another beautiful lady, Joan Baez, said of this (metaphorically addressing a spoiled young pop star who has indeed faded from sight): Trips to the grocery store will not be easy at first. It's as inevitable as the turning of the world.

It's heartbreaking that Peter didn't find, or couldn't see, enough of an island to remain standing on.

Subject: RE: Peter Bellamy 18 yrs today since he died
From: GUEST,Brian Peters
Date: 27 Sep 11 - 06:07 AM

"If he [Martin Carthy] had played an anglo concertina instead of a guitar, would he have achieved the eminence (and made the comfortable living) he's enjoyed these past forty years and more? I think the answer might well be no."

It's true that there are many more players and afficionados of the guitar than of the concertina, but taking up the anglo doesn't seem to have done John Kirkpatrick any harm. However, Peter's concertina playing - whilst very effective as song accompaniment - was not at a level of virtuosity that would attract hardline fans of the instrument, in the way that guitar wannabees have followed Martin around.

Lovely post from Lisa Null. Hello there!

Subject: RE: Peter Bellamy 18 yrs today since he died
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 27 Sep 11 - 08:18 AM

Its a harrowing tale.

A few years ago I advanced the theory on Mudcat that the rejection suffered by original artists on the English folkscene had led to the living in exile and the premature death of several artists.

Diane Easby and Folkiedave hurled abuse at me for suggesting this. I still think its true.

You can't help wondering how much the economic malaise of England - if not the entire word is due to dull conformists getting the better of, and suppressing originality and creativity.

Subject: RE: Peter Bellamy 18 yrs today since he died
From: lisa null
Date: 27 Sep 11 - 08:56 AM

From Big Al:


"You can't help wondering how much the economic malaise of England - if not the entire word is due to dull conformists getting the better of, and suppressing originality and creativity."

At times when Peter pumped himself up with braggadocio, he would certainly have agreed with this sentiment!"

To MtheGM (Michael): I remember that day too-- a lovely time!

And here's a shout out to Bonnie (I have wonderful memories of you playing (with Packie Byrne) and good conversations.

Brian, yes are exactly the one to talk about how good will out no matter what instrument you work your magic on!

Subject: RE: Peter Bellamy 18 yrs today since he died
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 27 Sep 11 - 12:21 PM

That's very gratifying, Lisa.

If interested, you will find Santa-Fe Trail on my Youtube channel; which I learned from Pete, who, if I have it right, learnt it from you. So turns the world merrily on...

All v best

~Michael~

Subject: RE: Peter Bellamy 18 yrs today since he died
From: The Sandman
Date: 27 Sep 11 - 12:47 PM

in my opinion Peter was an excellent accompanist, he had a good sense of harmony,he never made the mistake that some guitarists make of forcing the vocals to foLlow a rhythym or to follow an interesting guitar riff.
"that would attract hardline fans of the instrument, in the way that guitar wannabees have followed Martin around".
quote, very well put Brian,
but guitar wannabees or carthy clones , just dont seem to understand, that being a clone is not what it is about, what is about is being yourself putting your own individual stamp on a song,which is whatPETER DID
still what would I know I am just a Charlatan,as some mouthie gob iron nasty described me.

Subject: RE: Peter Bellamy 18 yrs today since he died
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 27 Sep 11 - 01:05 PM

forcing vocals to follow a rhythm - thats singing, isn't it?   Be a bit of a mess if you didn't make it follow the rhythm.

Subject: RE: Peter Bellamy 18 yrs today since he died
From: The Sandman
Date: 27 Sep 11 - 01:43 PM

ok, forcing vocals to follow a guitar , is imposing a rhythym rather than the guitar following the singers phrasing that is good accompanying

Subject: RE: Peter Bellamy 18 yrs today since he died
From: The Sandman
Date: 27 Sep 11 - 03:32 PM

You can't help wondering how much the economic malaise of England - if not the entire word is due to dull conformists getting the better of, and suppressing originality and creativity.
absolutely,
I have experienced this in a very minor way,when I have tried to suggest the english concertina, can be played more rhytmically.. by careful thought of bellows movement, its so obvious, but people do not like having their cosy ways challenged.

Subject: RE: Peter Bellamy 18 yrs today since he died
From: pavane
Date: 28 Sep 11 - 01:36 PM

Though when I played Peter's (Luxembourg, 1984, I think), it was an Anglo... as mentioned above. A lovely instrument, too.

Subject: RE: Peter Bellamy 18 yrs today since he died
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 28 Sep 11 - 01:54 PM

Yes ~~ A Shakespeare, IIRC; he had ingeniously unscrewed the ends and lightly muted with patches of silk to give it a beautiful soft tone.

Subject: RE: Peter Bellamy 18 yrs today since he died
From: GUEST,raymond greenoaken
Date: 28 Sep 11 - 04:04 PM

>"a fat, impenetrably written American fantasy novel in my lap."

Okay...own up... what was it?

David E.<

Ya want names, titles? Here they are:

Moonwise by Greer Ilene Gilman (1991)

Not for all tastes, I warn 'ee – it's closer to Finnegan's Wake than to Harry Potter. But at the least you'll enlarge your vocabulary.

I trust this thread isn't thinning to a close: it's been fascinating and moving. Even his concertina is interesting!

Subject: RE: Peter Bellamy 18 yrs today since he died
From: Edthefolkie
Date: 28 Sep 11 - 04:41 PM

I hope the thread carries on too, stories like Lisa Null's are very illuminating. Thanks Lisa, please remember some more! I always remember walking into some club in North London to see Peter - he was sitting near the door and quite definitely checking people out to see if they looked likely to "get it" so to speak. He needn't have worried.

Subject: RE: Peter Bellamy 18 yrs today since he died
From: GUEST,glueman
Date: 29 Sep 11 - 05:35 AM

"I still remember a phrase from the Daily Telegraph obituary of the man, to the effect that people who view the folk scene as jolly people in arran sweaters clutching pints and singing lusty choruses etc. etc. would be surprised by its capacity for 'vituperative intolerance'."

Great quote.

Subject: RE: Peter Bellamy 18 yrs today since he died
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 29 Sep 11 - 05:58 AM

'vituperative intolerance'

Great name for a band...!

Subject: RE: Peter Bellamy 18 yrs today since he died
From: Bonnie Shaljean
Date: 29 Sep 11 - 07:49 AM

... or sung to the tune of Hernando's Hideaway while madly tango-ing (an incongruity I think Peter would appreciate).

Not much has been mentioned about Peter's prose writing - articles for various folky mags and suchlike - but I'm sure I used to read pieces he had written, and always appreciated the sheer intelligence of the man. Does anyone have more detailed memories of any articles by him, or where they were published? I recall being impressed at the time. Wish he were around to have a blog today. I'd sure follow it.

Subject: RE: Peter Bellamy 18 yrs today since he died
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 29 Sep 11 - 08:23 AM

Yes, indeed: he was regular record critic and feature writer for Fred Woods' Folk Review in 70s-80s; and indeed one of the best of the lot of us who wrote regularly for that journal: articulate,stylish, with high critical standards, and a knack for witty & cogent expression Other regulars were Eric Winter, Karl Dallas... I often go back to my collection of FRs and give them another read. Pete's work stands up after all these years as well as any there.

I believe he also went on to do a regular column for fRoots.

~Michael~

Subject: RE: Peter Bellamy 18 yrs today since he died
From: GUEST,raymond greenoaken
Date: 29 Sep 11 - 02:47 PM

And interestingly, in view of his sometimes spiky opinions of fellow performers, he contributed to Folk Review some rather generous albums reviews of The Spinners and The Corries.

Here's a wee follow-up anecdote to my posting about Greer Gilman's Moonwise. The story behind this was that PB picked up the book on his final US tour – the author was a friend of The Watersons - and set about reading it on tour. But, as I hinted earlier, the text bristles with obscure and difficult words. As PB evidently didn't have access to a dictionary on tour, he underlined in pencil all the words he intended to look up when he got back home. As I was reading his own copy, I looked up all the words he underlined. One of them was "belantered". I chased it in vain through all the dictionaries I had to hand. When I consulted the Compact Oxford English Dictionary (the mighty OED compressed into two breeze-block sized volumes with magnifying glass supplied) I couldn't find it there either. But where it should have been, my eye fell on –

"belamy : fair friend, good friend (esp. as form of address)."

Now how weird is that? And how perfectly, painfully apt? Moonwise is unnervingly full of strange, spectral coincidences like that. It's one of the reasons that makes it extraordinary.

Subject: RE: Peter Bellamy 18 yrs today since he died
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 29 Sep 11 - 04:50 PM

There's an interview with Greer Gilman HERE in which the term belantered is explained. It also alludes to Malykorne...

Subject: RE: Peter Bellamy 18 yrs today since he died
From: GUEST,David E.
Date: 29 Sep 11 - 04:53 PM

What a wonderful thread and great memories. I ordered Fair England's Shore and the Moonwise book from Amazon today.

David E.

Subject: RE: Peter Bellamy 18 yrs today since he died
From: Brian Peters
Date: 30 Sep 11 - 06:18 AM

"Greer Gilman's Moonwise. The story behind this was that PB picked up the book on his final US tour – the author was a friend of The Watersons"

I suspect this is the same book that PB was brandishing and enthusing wildly about during a somewhat well lubricated party at Whitby Festival in the last summer of his life. Do the Watersons appear, thinly-disguised, in the book by any chance? I have to say that on an admittedly cursory examination I pronounced the book the most utter tosh, and a spirited discussion ensued.

This was the same occasion at which PB (who had apparently only recently twigged that Ewan MacColl might, just possibly, have tinkered with some of the songs in his repertoire) went into a rant about his discovery that MaColl had composed the tune to his version of 'Sir Patrick Spens'. "That fucking Marxist lied to us!"

Subject: RE: Peter Bellamy 18 yrs today since he died
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 30 Sep 11 - 06:30 AM

There has been another thread, I recall, about the extent to which Ewan composed the tunes he claimed to have got from his parents. Bob Thomson used to point out that Bronson's only tune for Eppie Morrie was the one that Ewan sang! I should have expected Pete to have known all about that, mind. Your anecdote reveals him as unwontedly naive ~ or perhaps not: he was a complex and unpredictable sort...

~M~

Subject: RE: Peter Bellamy 18 yrs today since he died
From: GUEST,raymond greenoaken
Date: 30 Sep 11 - 06:30 AM

Good luck with Moonwise, David E – it's a vast hag-tangle of language, but anyone with a love of George Mackay Brown, Ted Hughes, Bob and Carole Pegg and Lal Waterson will feel at home in it.

Here's a postscript. The year after PB's death I was at Whitby Festival (the year they did The Transports as a memorial), and sitting on the final day in a cafe nattering with Kate. A woman at the next table leaned across and asked me about a story I'd told at a Storytelling open session earlier in the week. We fell to talking and after a minute or two I found myself compelled to ask her the question: "Are you Greer Gilman by any chance?" And indeed she was.

This is not nearly as weird as it sounds. PB had described her to me the previous year, having met her on a couple of occasions, and told me that she was a regular attender of Whitby Fest, despite being based in Massachussets. When I told her how, for me, her novel was intimately woven in with Peter's demise, she was visibly moved. We met several times afterwards, at Whitby and the old National Festival. Suibhne's link will give you a pretty good idea of her writing style, and cast of mind. A very remarkable woman.