Andrew Weatherall and the Vibrant Beauty of Being Unique

In this feature, originally written by DJ, musician and record producer Andrew Weatherall and Jo Phillips in the second issue ‘The Andrew Weatherall Issue – against the grain’ in November 2004, they explored the world of alternative cultures through personal memories, music references and artistic reflections. This piece explores the beauty of those who choose to live against the grain. Against a world of increasing homogenisation, Weatherall presents creativity not as performance, but as a way of living.  Rather than following society’s expectations, the people described in the article choose to live according to their own rules, embracing eccentricity and artistic passion. Some people simply exist within the world; others create their own alongside it, and this article testifies to this. Find out more in Andrew Weatherall and the Vibrant Beauty of Being Unique here. Image on left, Andrew Weatherall at Rough Trade East, London, for Record Store Day 2009.

Mr Rock and Roll Love Songs

Jo Phillips: It was Thursday night, an alternative night at Jackson’s nightclub, Staines. We were busy dancing the night away, he and his friend, propped up the wall, thinking they were too cool to grace the establishment. I enquired after them. They were Cymon Eckel and Andrew Weatherall.

Rock and Roll Man

Several weeks later, at The Court Jester pub, Windsor, we met in the flesh. Cymon and I became an item; Andrew and I shook hands. My best friend Sally came to Windsor for a night out; she and Andrew became an item; Andrew and I shook hands. Andrew cooked salmon for Sally for dinner; Cymon asked how to cook a tin of potatoes.

Labour Party

I finished my A-levels, Sally worked at the Labour Party, Cymon was a chippie, and Andrew worked in Raphael, a designer clothes store, on Windsor High Street. Andrew ran a sideline in mix tapes, which he gave to his friends, unwittingly starting his musical career.

Tape Player Cassette

Twenty years later, as I dig out the tape, I smile at the selection of songs from Buddy Holly to the Rolling Stones. Entitled Rock and Roll Love Songs, it spans the extremes of Andrew, from Mr Rock and Roll excess to Mr Mild Mannered romantic. I will always think of Andrew in terms of rock and roll love songs.

Image Graeme Montgomery

John Peel

From the Against the Grain issue, words by Andrew Weatherall for .Cent Magazine London.

Andrew Weatherall: ‘It was a wet Wednesday in Newcastle. Check-out time, if the maid’s impatient knocking was anything to go by. Walking down the monument to faded glory that was the Railway Hotel’s sweeping staircase, I could see two people going through the ‘Anything from the mini bar?’ ritual. The back view was interesting enough: one was over six feet tall, the other shorter; one with fiery red curls, the other raven-black and feather-cut. Both were wearing fur coats, PVC drainpipe trousers and six-inch stilettos. As they turned to leave, I got the front view. It was Lux and Ivy. Interior and Poison. (The Cramps).

Andrew Weatherall on 9 Aug 2006, at We Are… Electric, Cabaret Voltaire, Edinburgh

What made the whole picture doubly pleasing was that they had recently been quoted as saying that the B-52s were no good because it was an act. Their trash ‘shtick’ went back in the dressing-up box when the costumes came off, and the house lights went up. The Cramps had no costumes, and the house lights were always off. Here in front of me, illuminating the drab interior of a northern hotel lobby, was living proof that a group I loved walked the walk. Touch me, baby, and I go hog wild.

This picture rushes to the frontal lobes as I make notes in my guise as .Cent’s creative host, pages of scribbled names, individuals driven to make their own rules, create their own systems, inhabit their own parallel universes untouched by irony, in a world of homogenisation often disguised as eccentricity. This behaviour is a life force to me, in a world of ever-increasing careerism, this behaviour goes ‘Against the Grain’. In a world of ‘Rock Lobster’, this is ‘Human Fly’.’

Stay sick.

Andrew Weatherall, October 2004

Andrew Weatherall: Unyielding Weathermen.

Coming back from a shopping trip (tea bags, milk, processed peas and a Fray Bentos meat pie), I went for a quick gander in the Stuckist gallery. Gracing the walls were pin-hole camera photographs by Mr Wolf Howard. I had spent time earlier that day looking at digital images, finding them flat, lifeless, un evocative beyond belief. I felt poisoned. Here in front of me was the antidote. Fifteen minutes later, I had the groceries in one hand, a picture entitled ‘Billy in his Garden’ and a volume of poetry (Journals of a Jobseeker) in the other.

With headcoat removed in honour and clasped to my breast, I would like to thank Mr Howard for contributing some of said photography and poetry. Punk Rock Ist Nicht Tot.

I would also like to thank a member of the regiment, Mr Richard ‘Rico’ Simpson, for giving me a compilation tape featuring In My Mind’s Eye by Ramases and Selket. Asking questions about the tune and its creators, a bizarre story began to unfold, and I needed more information. A call was made to Mr Richard Norris, an expert in things both psyche and delia, who furnished the magazine with the Ramases and Selket story. Thank you, Mr Norris.

Illicit listening to John Peel during my formative years (under the bedclothes via a hearing aid-like device) introduced me to the likes of Igor Cutler, Vivian Stanshall, and, featured here, Nervous Norvus. Sure, he played a whole heap of music incendiary to young ears, but for some reason, these are the people who stand out. Genuinely eccentric, darkly funny, and inhabiting their own world created from the odd-shaped objects discarded by ours. So all hail the skewed majesty of Jimmy Drake, aka Nervous Norvus, creator of Transfusion, a ‘buzzing Litany of the Vehicular Catastrophes and Bloodshed’ (Phil Milstein).

Finally, I would like to present the work of Mr Justin ‘Rusty’ Taylor, designer, DJ and market stall nut vendor, a man of strength of character who, for a while, had, to get up at a time he was used to going to bed and man the family stall on Chapel Market, when many in his orbit may have lazily relied on handouts and poncing from ‘Mater’ and ‘Pater,’ he had the fortitude to go against the grain by eschewing the closed curtain world of the eternal now and embracing the world of grafting daybreak.

More than a portrait of Andrew Weatherall, the article becomes a quiet manifesto for individuality. Through music, art and underground culture, the text shows that authenticity and originality still matter in a world that often encourages conformity and in celebrating these outsiders, the piece reminds us that originality often survives quietly, in those who continue to create, feel and live against the grain. And creativity, here, is not simply an aesthetic choice, but a way of resisting homogenisation and preserving individuality.

Andrew Weatherall, DJ imdb.com

If you enjoyed reading Andrew Weatherall and the Vibrant Beauty of Being Unique, then why not read Fearless: Love Letters Straight From Your Heart here

.Cent Magazine, London. Luxury Mindset