A man NME once declared to be our greatest living songwriter is onstage in a tiny church, playing Cadiz, a song about lovers trying to escape, to be “eternally free”. About 100 or so family, friends and devoted aficionados are arrayed below, neither drinking nor talking; candles flicker and incense burns; occasionally, children scuttle through the aisles.
At the height of a stripped-down older song, Comedy, the man who signed the Strokes grabs his neighbour in a violent bromantic headlock, overcome with emotion. Another august indie label boss is here, despite never having released any of Head’s music, still enthralled by the careworn romance of the singer-songwriter.
Head, a wayward Liverpudlian dreamer, has spent the best part of 30 years not getting famous, despite his wistful 60s pop chops, his fingers’ lyrical way around guitar strings, and the efforts of fans such as Noel Gallagher, who signed Head’s band Shack to his Sour Mash label in the 00s. Head has suffered more false dawns, studio fires, failed labels, mislaid DAT tapes, over-productions, delays, lost years and unfortunate ju-ju than most, all grist to the mill of his myth.
Technically, the faithful are packing the church for one more push: to mark the 31 July reissue of 1997’s The Magical World of the Strands, one of Head’s masterpieces (there is also a companion album of outtakes, The Olde Worlde). But really, the assembled are here because Head’s songs about everyday life, escaping it, love and drug use are still some of the most gently seductive we have ever come across. And many of us really rate Spiritualized.
Being a heroin addict in Liverpool has never had quite the glamour of a habit on New York’s Lower East Side – a major contributory factor to Head’s enduring lack of fame, although to fans, it is perhaps one of the keystones of his myth. Head, now clean, still looks like the sort of guy who regularly hangs around inner-city churches – like the protagonist of his song, Streets of Kenny, say, who combs Liverpool’s Kensington district in search of a fix and transcendence. In some ways, Streets of Kenny is the domestic equivalent of the Velvet Underground’s I’m Waiting For My Man, although its gentle, increasing desperation (“Can’t get shit, get any”) is swathed in gorgeous guitar work, peaking to tonight’s angry strum.
By contrast, X Hits the Spot, off The Magical World of the Strands, wonders, with characteristic understatement, “Say, what’s happened to all my clothes/What’s happened to all my furniture?” Tonight, Head changes the song’s lyric about “something to pass the time” to “some smack to pass the time”.
But if Head has been an embedded observer of the heroin demi-monde, drugs are not his only muse. His love songs are beatific and consolatory, not least Somethin’ Like You, poignant tonight, with so many associates in the room. Head is as much of a bard of Liverpool as any Beatle, peppering his songs with people and landmarks.
Newby Street, one of his most recent songs, released last year under his most current name, Mick Head and the Red Elastic Band, is a jaunty Merseybeat rollick, as in love with seminal 60s band Love as it is with the city.
Arthur Lee’s band has always been the acknowledged source material for Head and his singing guitarist brother John, who has been party to his elder sibling’s musical adventures until relatively recently. John Head is conspicuously absent tonight, with guest spots taken by young up’n’comer John Lennon McCullagh on harmonica, longtime friend Shona Carmen on a duet, and Mick’s sister Joanne.
She is deputised to sing Daniella, off Shack’s HMS Fable album, probably because it’s one of the most quietly devastating of Head’s songs. “Your mama/ She’s not afraid any more/ She’s in the cemetery,” it ends, kicking the legs out from under you. And like many of Head’s finest works, it packs the dread, sorrow and beauty of ancient folk songs into a contemporary tale, culturally specific, but emotionally resonant.
This article was amended on 8 August 2015 to remove a reference to St Mary’s Old Church being “dry”; a bar operates to raise funds for the church
