Arthur Brown (musician)

Arthur Brown

Brown on stage, August 2009
Background information
Birth name Arthur Wilton Brown
Also known as The God of Hellfire
Born (1942-06-24) 24 June 1942
Whitby, North Riding of Yorkshire, England
Genres
Occupation(s) Musician
Instruments Vocals
Years active 1965–present
Labels Track/Polydor
Associated acts Kingdom Come, The Crazy World of Arthur Brown, Instant Flight, Hawkwind, The Alan Parsons Project
Website Official site

Arthur Wilton Brown (born 24 June 1942)[1] is an English rock singer best known for his flamboyant theatrical performances, powerful wide-ranging operatic voice and his number-one hit in the UK Singles Chart and Canada, "Fire", in 1968.[2]

Brown has been lead singer of various groups, most notably The Crazy World of Arthur Brown and Kingdom Come, followed by a varied solo career as well as associations with Hawkwind, The Who, Jimi Hendrix, Klaus Schulze, and Frank Zappa.

Though Brown has had limited commercial success, he has been a significant influence on a wide range of musicians and artists and due to his operatic vocal style, wild stage persona and concepts, he is considered a pioneer of shock rock and progressive rock and influential on heavy metal music.

Following the success of the single "Fire", the press would often refer to Brown as "The God of Hellfire",[3] in reference to the opening shouted line of the song, a moniker that exists to this day.[4]

History

After attending Roundhay Grammar School in Leeds, Yorkshire, Brown attended the University of London and the University of Reading[5] and studied philosophy and law, but he gravitated to music instead, forming his first band, Blues and Brown, while at Reading.[5] After a spell fronting a number of bands in London, Brown then moved to Paris in 1966, where he worked on his theatrical skills.[5] During this period he recorded two songs for the Roger Vadim film of the Émile Zola novel La Curée.[5] Returning to London around the turn of 1966 to 1967 he was a temporary member of a London-based R&B/soul/ska group The Ramong Sound that would soon become the hit-making soul group The Foundations.

The Crazy World of Arthur Brown

By the time the Foundations had been signed to Pye Records Brown had left the group to form his own band, The Crazy World of Arthur Brown.[6] The band included Vincent Crane (Hammond organ and piano), Drachen Theaker (drums), and Nick Greenwood (bass).

Brown quickly earned a reputation for outlandish performances, which included the use of a burning metal helmet, that led to occasional mishaps, such as during an early appearance at the Windsor Festival in 1967, where he wore a colander on his head soaked in methanol. The fuel poured over his head by accident and caught fire; a bystander doused the flames by pouring beer on Brown's head, preventing any serious injury.[7] The flaming head then became an Arthur Brown signature.

On occasion he also stripped naked while performing, most notably at the Palermo Pop 70 Festival in Sicily, Italy, July 1970, where he was arrested and deported.[8] He was also notable for the extreme make-up he wore onstage, which would later be reflected in the stage acts of Alice Cooper and Kiss. He was also famed for his powerful operatic baritone voice and his high pitched screams.

Arthur Brown in 1968 wearing corpse paint and his trademark burning helmet.

By 1968, the debut album, The Crazy World of Arthur Brown became a hit on both sides of the Atlantic. Produced by The Who's manager Kit Lambert, and executive-produced by Pete Townshend on Track Records, the label begun by Lambert and Chris Stamp, it spun off an equally surprising hit single, "Fire", and contained a version of "I Put a Spell on You" by Screaming Jay Hawkins, a similarly bizarre showman. "Fire" sold over one million copies, and was awarded a gold disc.[9] The song has since seen its opening line "I am the God of Hellfire" sampled in numerous other places, most notably in The Prodigy's 1992 rave anthem "Fire".

Brown's incendiary stage act sometimes caused trouble, even getting him kicked off a tour with Jimi Hendrix. On one tour, Brown waited until sunset, when his band was playing, and then he had a winch lower him onto the middle of the stage from above, wearing a suit and helmet welded from sheet metal. Parts of the suit were completely lit in lighter fluid and sparklers. In due course, Brown created the perception that he was always on the verge of setting fire to the stage, leading some concert organizers to demand he post a bond with them, if he could not show he was adequately insured against uncontrollable fire and fire damages.

Theaker was replaced because of his aviophobia in 1968 by drummer Carl Palmer, later of Atomic Rooster and Emerson, Lake & Palmer, for the band's second American tour in 1969, on which keyboardist Vincent Crane also left – although he soon returned.[5] However, Crane and Palmer eventually left in June 1969 to form Atomic Rooster, spelling the end for The Crazy World of Arthur Brown.[5]

Arthur Brown's Kingdom Come

Though Brown never released another recording as commercially successful as "Fire", he worked with a varied group of musicians on projects called Strangelands, Puddletown Express, and (briefly) the Captain Beefheart-influenced Rustic Hinge, before releasing three albums with his new band Kingdom Come in the early 1970s.[5][10][N 1]

The three Kingdom Come albums each have a distinctive character. The first was a highly complex concept album apparently on the theme of humanity living in a zoo and being controlled by cosmic, religious and commercial forces. The second was loosely on the theme of water, which Brown had declared four years earlier would be the subject of the second album by the Crazy World. It was musically more conventional than the first, much less heavy, though stranger in places. The third album featured American synth player Victor Peraino, who replaced the highly talented Goodge Harris (1948-2015). This was a space rock album, with Brown playing an early drum machine and thereby replacing a series of drummers.

The stage acts for all three albums featured a wild mix of special effects, dramatic costumes and colourful theatrics, which were sometimes controversial. Brown had declared when Kingdom Come was formed that the intention was to create a multi-media experience and the band always followed that policy. The concepts, the music and the theatrics proved very popular on the university circuit but proved too way-out for a mainstream audience. The band appeared at the 1971 Glastonbury festival and feature in the Glastonbury Fayre film which was shown in cinemas, but were not included in the associated album.

Later career

In later years, Brown released several solo albums. In 1975 he appeared in The Who's rock opera movie Tommy as "The Priest".[5] Later that year he contributed vocals to the song "The Tell-Tale Heart" on the Poe-based concept album Tales of Mystery and Imagination by The Alan Parsons Project. In 1979 and 1980 he collaborated with German electronic musician Klaus Schulze, and can be heard on the albums Dune, ...Live..., and Time Actor.

In the 1980s, Brown moved to Austin, Texas, and obtained a master's degree in counseling. On 17 January 1987, Brown performed "Fire" on the "Flashback" segment of the television program Solid Gold.[11] Together with former Frank Zappa's Mothers of Invention drummer Jimmy Carl Black, he also became a painter and carpenter for some years,[5] and released an album with him, Brown, Black & Blue, in 1988.

Arthur Brown playing at the Wickerman Festival, 2005

In 1992 Brown and fellow counselor Jim Maxwell founded Healing Songs Therapy, a service that culminated in Brown creating a song for each client about their emotional issues.[12]

Brown returned to England in 1996. In 1997, he re-recorded "Fire" with German band Die Krupps, while in 1998, he provided a spoken-word performance on Bruce Dickinson's The Chemical Wedding album, reading a portion of three poems by William Blake, and appeared as Satan in Dickinson's music video for "Killing Floor". He was narrator for The Pretty Things' live performance of their S. F. Sorrow album at Abbey Road Studios in 1998. He also appeared on TV, guesting on Kula Shaker track "Mystical Machine Gun" several times during 1999.

A further change of musical direction occurred, when he formed an acoustic band and went on tour with Tim Rose in 1999. This band then added Stan Adler (cello and bass) and Malcolm Mortimore (percussion) and produced the Tantric Lover (2000) album. However, the lineup did not last, and Brown put a new band together with guitarist Rikki Patten and multi-instrumentalist Nick Pynn. In 2002 Brown was asked to support Robert Plant on his Dreamland Tour. By now Patten had been replaced by guitarist Chris Bryant.

Brown was getting some more media exposure now. His band was briefly called the Giant Pocket Orchestra, and also Instant Flight. In the middle of this, in 2003, Brown released Vampire Suite (2003), an album with Josh Philips and Mark Brzezicki of the band Big Country, released on Ian Grant's Track Records. Also around this time, Brown's back catalogue was re-released by Sanctuary Records.

Brown reunited the surviving members of Kingdom Come (except Des Fisher) in 2005, for a one-off concert at The Astoria in London, performing material from Kingdom Come's album Galactic Zoo Dossier, with an encore of "Spirit of Joy". This show won Brown the 'Showman of the Year' award from Classic Rock magazine.

In 2007, Brown and Pynn released Voice of Love on the Côte Basque record label, featuring a number of original recordings.

In August 2007, during a concert in Lewes, Sussex, Brown once again set fire to his own hair. While trying to extinguish the flames, Phil Rhodes, a member of the band also caught fire. Brown carried on after the fire was put out; he had however lost a few chunks of hair.[13]

He appeared as a priest in the video for The Darkness song, "Is It Just Me?"

In 2009, a roll-out re-release of Brown's back catalogue was commenced by Cherry Red Records' subsidiary Lemon Recordings and continued from 2010 onwards on their sister label Esoteric Recordings.

In 2010, Brown played a set at the Glastonbury Festival in the Glade, and he also played at Lounge on the Farm (with Lucie Rejchrtova on keyboards). On 10 June 2011, days before his 69th birthday, he played at the Ray Davies Meltdown Festival at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, London where he invited Z-Star to duet with him. Six weeks later, again in London, he played the High Voltage Festival; the gig was recorded and released (on vinyl only) as The Crazy World of Arthur Brown Live at High Voltage.

In 2012, Brown and Rick Patten released The Magic Hat alongside a comic of the same title by Matt Howarth – a curious, cross-dimensional adventure facilitated by a flaming helmet.

In 2013, as the result of a successful pledge campaign on Pledgemusic, Brown released the album "Zim Zam Zim" based on the cosmos having recorded it in his yurt in Lewes.[14]

Influence

Though Brown has had limited commercial success and has never released another recording as commercially successful as "Fire", he has been a significant influence on Alice Cooper,[15] Peter Gabriel,[16] Marilyn Manson, George Clinton,[17] Kiss, King Diamond, and Bruce Dickinson[18] among others, and his songs have been covered or sampled by a range of artists including Ozzy Osbourne, The Prodigy and The Who.

Brown's voice, and in particular his high banshee screams, are a precursor to the banshee screaming of many later heavy metal singers, and his theatrical concepts and stage presence such as the face makeup, voodoo dancing and flaming helmet pioneered a lot of what was to become shock rock and progressive rock. The third and final Kingdom Come album, Journey (1973), is noteworthy for being one of the first rock albums to feature a drum machine, especially on the track "Time Captives".[19]

Hawkwind association

Brown has had a number of associations with Hawkwind. In 1973, he was one of the performers on sometimes Hawkwind vocalist Robert Calvert's album Captain Lockheed and the Starfighters, together with a number of other Hawkwind members.

In 2001 and 2002, Brown made several guest appearances at live Hawkwind concerts, subsequently touring with them as a guest vocalist. On their December 2002 tour, Hawkwind played several songs by Brown from the Kingdom Come era, along with "Song of the Gremlin", which Brown had sung on Captain Lockheed and the Starfighters; this was documented on the Hawkwind DVD Out of the Shadows.

Brown also provided vocals on two of the tracks on Hawkwind's studio album Take Me to Your Leader, released in 2005. One is the spoken-word "A Letter to Robert", where Brown recalls a conversation with Robert Calvert. Brown continued his association with Hawkwind, touring with a support set for them on their 40th anniversary tour in the UK in 2009.

Selected discography

Singles

Studio albums

Live albums

Compilation albums

Soundtrack contribution

Other contributions

References

Notes

  1. ↑ Arthur Brown's Kingdom Come has no link with the American/German hard-rock/glam band of the same name.

Citations

  1. ↑ Marshall 2005, p. 25.
  2. ↑ "Official UK Singles Top 100 – 16th February 2013 | Official UK Top 40 | music charts | Official Singles Chart". Retrieved 16 February 2013.
  3. ↑ Echard 2005, p. 43.
  4. ↑ Unterberger, Richie. Urban Spacemen and Wayfaring Strangers, p. 46.
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Larkin, C., Virgin Encyclopedia of Sixties Music (Muze UK Ltd, 1997), ISBN 0-7535-0149-X, p. 77.
  6. ↑ "Guitarist/Composer". Alan Warner. Retrieved 16 February 2013.
  7. ↑ Marshall 2005, pp. 61-62.
  8. ↑ Marshall 2005, pp. 94-101.
  9. ↑ Murrells, Joseph (1978). The Book of Golden Discs (2nd ed.). London: Barrie and Jenkins. p. 236. ISBN 0-214-20512-6.
  10. ↑ Marshall 2005, pp. 106-111.
  11. ↑ "Solid Gold – Season 7, Episode 16: Solid Gold 87 Show 16 w/ Chicago". TV.com. 5 February 2008. Retrieved 16 February 2013.
  12. ↑ Marshall 2005, pp. 204-206.
  13. ↑ "God of Hellfire Arthur Brown burnt in stage stunt – Local". Sussex Express. 30 August 2007. Retrieved 16 February 2013.
  14. ↑ Whyte, Woodrow (August 29, 2014). "The Life of Arthur Brown and 'Zim Zam Zim'". Drowned in Sound.
  15. ↑ Marshall 2005, pp. 85 and 153.
  16. ↑ Marshall 2005, p. 175.
  17. ↑ Marshall 2005, p. 172.
  18. ↑ Marshall 2005, p. 103.
  19. ↑ Marshall 2005, pp. 121-125.

Bibliography

Marshall, Polly. The God of Hellfire, the Crazy Life and Times of Arthur Brown. SAF Publishing, 2005. ISBN 0-946719-77-2.

External links

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