[A portion of the Tough on Crime CD sales will be donated to the AMERICAN RED CROSS]
The well-read person with whom I like to share my life turned me on to Mary Elizabeth Braddon, one of the first Victorian “sensation” novelists. (Divorce, incest, bastardy, adultery etc.) Like her contemporary, Wilkie Collins, she was writing weird, wonderful, absolutely un-put-downable, “sensation” fiction.
Collins is known as the “father of the detective novel,” Braddon is similar except perhaps more gothic and less detective.
These two writers can actually have one screaming at the book, “Oh god no!” And then, “Oh no no no no no!!!” At which point one has to pace around the room, make a soothing cup of tea, take a deep breath, and then resume in a more philosophical frame of mind, more able to accept the certain doom which is imminent in the next couple of pages.
I once spent a whole day on set in my trailer in the company of M.E.B. having arrived for a six am call time, and was not needed on set until six pm, and didn’t mind a bit, for I had been in another world entirely, and I can’t remember the last time I spent a whole day reading a good novel.
One of her books starts with a chapter about a rich aristocrat who falls in love with a poor -yet rich in personal assets- actress. He falls under her spell, and must marry her immediately (of course), and bring her back to his aristocratic world, where he and she are rejected and scorned, because she is an actress (!)
She is a “woman of ill repute” because she works on the stage,
a mysterious outsider from a bohemian world, threatening to the status quo, and unacceptable in his respectable social sphere.
As it is only the first chapter of the book that deals with this part of the story, she does not work her way into the hearts of the cruel and cold gentry using her guileless charms and innate intelligence, but lives forever on the outside of that daunting circle, happily married, and mixing with a dowdier, more friendly crew.
The rest of the novel is about her daughter.
It was the idea of the infatuation of the upstanding man for the alluring outsider that caught my fancy.
I am interested in outsiders. I suppose I have always felt like one
myself. I have always understood that realm, that point of view, and it is the other side, the stolid, big, respectable, clean, that feels daunting to me.
(Scratch the surface of that society, and you always seem to find the biggest messes)
No, give me a room full of outsiders any day, and then I feel like and insider.
Hence my attraction to my profession - the theatre. Then a little later on, to music, and film. These are all professions where outsiders collect and feel at home. In film for example, there are the enthusiastic prop guys with all their weird stuff, the costume department, (my other half, in conference with a designer about a film we were making, was talking about the muted shades he desired. “And brown- what do you think of brown?” “ Brown is ESSENTIAL!” she adorably responded), the master lighting/camera man with the obligatory unpronounceable name, the camera crew, the gaffers, the grips, the experts in their field consulting on bizarre aspects of the story, the trained chimp. It’s all there folks. What could be more fun? Nothing.
And so when I read this book of Braddon’s, I felt a kinship with the actress in the story. I felt the horror of leaving that eclectic world of hers, where the outsiders lived, to go to the cold, cold arctic zone, the lofty peaks of Victorian High Society.
A few years ago, I had decided to write a bunch of songs, in the hope of recording them one day with Larry Klein (the producer of Joni Mitchell among many others), and the song that is downloadable this week on feisty “Huffpost”, is called “Tangerine,”and was the first one I wrote. It was inspired by the first chapter of “Aurora Floyd”, by Mary Elizabeth Braddon. It is about an actress warning her respectable lover of the perils of an entanglement with her. I made a demo of it, and a few others, and sent it to Larry, and he gamely asked, “when do we start?”
We started a little while after, and over the course of a year or so of doing sporadic recordings on an independent budget, we made a record. Larry brought in a bunch of the greatest musicians I’ve ever had the pleasure to play with. On this track they are, Larry Klein on bass and keyboards, Dean Parks on guitar, Scott Amendola on drums, Albert Wing on alto sax.
Hope you enjoy it.