Hello and welcome! I am Colin Bell, a novelist and poet, previously a TV producer-director of arts programmes, also known as the blogger Wolfie Wolfgang. My novel Stephen Dearsley's Summer Of Love was published in 2013, my next novel Blue Notes, Still Frames will be published in October 2016 - check them out on Amazon. I hope you find something here among my daily blogs. I write about anything that interests me - I hope it interests you too. Let me know.
I've always, well nearly always, liked getting letters and parcels through my letterbox. I do the usual thing and ignore the ones that look like bills or circulars and, sometimes, feel sad when I get postcards addressed to former owners of this house who moved away decades ago. Apart from that, I'm an optimist and every delivery is a potential moment of pleasure. Yesterday was no exception when Lewes' rather classy free magazine arrived. It's delivered through every letterbox in town - bringing loads of pleasure all over Lewes. This month, it was more than usually interesting to me... it has the first review of my new novel, Stephen Dearsley's Summer Of Love. Forgive me if I show you all what their book reviewer, John McGowan, wrote:
Thanks John McGowan and thanks to Viva Lewes for publishing it as well the plug for the poetry evening, First Wednesday Writers, that I run here in Lewes. If you read about it in Viva Lewes and followed the link to this site, here is the poster for the event with all the details. It's always good to meet new writers and new people who come along just to listen.
It's going to be busy next week as I have the London launch for the novel on Tuesday at the Phoenix Artist Club followed by two poetry events on Wednesday and Thursday followed by a celebration dinner on Friday. I'm having a great time but then it will be back to normal. Being a writer is about sitting up here alone with my computer but it's great to have the odd social explosion to liven things up so I'm far from complaining.
This 'self-portrait' photograph was taken by the young Portuguese photographer Luis Alvarenga, who likes to record his travels around the World with images of his feet, the part of the body designed to allow us to travel. Here he is on a rock in the Algarve, Portugal. Feet also 'plant' us on the earth and, if we focus on them, let us feel the spirit of 'place'. Hippie jargon, you might think, but I believe in it, mostly practising my martial arts barefoot at home in my garden or wherever I am on my travels.
In the 1960s, bare feet became a symbol of liberation and freedom from society's restraints. It was for all of this that Luis' photograph became the cover shot for my just published novel, Stephen Dearsley's Summer Of Love.
I love the image and especially, the colours of Luis' photograph which makes a handsome cover for my novel, stylishly designed by my publishers, Ward Wood Publishing. I can feel the heat of that rock but also a certain vulnerability in the feet exposed on such a rough surface. The image is perfect, in my opinion, for Stephen Dearsley's gradual and difficult liberation. Another of Luis' 'self-portraits' shows him standing on an inviting stretch of sandy Portuguese beach at Montegordo. Lovely shot though it is, for me, it is the rock photograph that better expresses the feeling of my novel because, the beach has always been one of the few places feet have always been allowed to go bare.
Here is Luis again, this time in Weston-Super-Mare, Somerset, England, where he first discovered that British beaches can be considerably colder than Portuguese ones.
Here he is in Antigua against a very green lake.
Having spent some time discussing the cover photograph with Ward Wood Publishing, I got to know the picture and, I guess, Luis' feet very well so it was good to finally discover who Luis Santos is and what he looks like above foot level.
He is currently living in Reading, in the UK where he makes his living as a professional photographer most recently specialising in travel and live music photography.
This is one of his favourite music shots taken when he feel in love with this guitar seen at the 2013 Oxjam Reading Festival. I love the colour co-ordination here.
This is Patrick Wolf, the young London singer-songwriter, a musician much admired by Luis. The photograph taken with a vintage 80-200 lens that he had just bought for the occasion marked his debut as a fully accredited music gig job. He tells me that he was nervous when he first had to go on stage at London's Queen Elizabeth Hall "but in the end everything turned out great, even the pictures!"
Here are two of his favourite travel photographs, above, the Monument To The Discoveries, Lisbon, the city where he was at university, and, below, this beautifully textured image of a beach in Maldives.
It was good to see his other work and to say hello to Luis because there is, I've just discovered, a special relationship between a writer and the creator of his book's cover. It was also good to share some of Luis' enthusiasm for his chosen artform - he is obviously a young man with the World, quite literally, at his feet.
Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band cover design by Peter Blake (1967)
One of the many great moments I remember from the summer of 1967, the so-called Summer Of Love, was the release of that pioneering, musically brilliant and era-defining album, The Beatles' monumental Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. I bought it on the day of its release, 1st June 1967, and, without exaggeration, I have to say that I was flabbergasted. There had never been any album like it in my limited experience and it became THE album I played all year and for many years afterwards. It was the first time a non-classical music album made it onto my list of great musical artworks. Yes, I know, I was an opinionated teenager who had all the answers in those days and I hadn't yet discovered jazz.
Moody adolescent teenage Wolf, 1967
My turntable alternated between Sgt Pepper and another album released that year, Pierre Boulez's revelationary recording of Debussy's orchestral masterpiece La Mer. The Debussy performance showed me that Debussy was indeed the exciting genius that I saw in the great Ken Russell film, Debussy.
Oliver Reed as Claude Debussy in Debussy, directed by Ken Russell (BBC Television, 1965)
He was, as that, at his best, most exciting of directors, Ken Russell showed us, a lot more than an atmospheric picture-painter. Both albums are still honoured in my collection but now they are on CD and joined by many other "couldn't-live-without" albums. For me still, The Beatles with Sgt Pepper crossed the line into high art and brought the rock album with them. These were exciting times for a moody teenager - The Beatles, Pierre Boulez and Ken Russell was probably liquor much too strong for the lad.
Twenty years after The Beatles' album debuted - with that famous line 'It was twenty years ago today Sgt Pepper taught the band to play" - I sat back and watched television because the documentary that I had worked on for nearly two years claimed the ITV screen in peak-time for two hours in what was claimed to have been the most expensive television documentary ever made. The Granada Television film was called, appropriately enough, 'It was twenty years ago today" and it was. The programme was then transmitted around the world on the correct anniversary release date for each country. It was one of the highlights of my television career and an extraordinary opportunity for me to relive that 1967 experience in adult life. It was my chance over the preceding months to meet and film many of the heroes of my youth, most of whom are still iconic figures from modern popular culture, from the surviving members of The Beatles, The Byrds and the Mamas and Papas to some of the leaders of the literary avant garde, Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs as well as legendary political activists Dr Timothy Leary, Abbie Hoffman and Dutch provo anarchist Robert Jasper Grootveld. People often ask me about the people I met at that time and I keep promising myself to write about it at more length. Not here though today but I will, I promise, when I find the time. Enough said, maybe, that the film tried to place The Beatles' album into the cultural and political spirit of the time. I'm very happy and proud that it is still used in colleges as an educational tool.
Peter Fonda interviewed for It was 20 Years Ago Today, in Los Angeles, 1986
Looking through some old photographs from the time, I found these shots of me interviewing Hollywood actor Peter Fonda, a leading figure in the Los Angeles demonstrations in 1967 and San Francisco actor Peter Coyote, once a member of the anarchic San Francisco Mime Troop. I have fond memories of my time with both these gentlemen and with many of the others, especially Beatle, George Harrison, Byrd, Roger McGuinn, Beat poet, Allen Ginsberg and anarchist activist, Robert Jasper Grootveld who all took time out to both educate and entertain me.
Peter Coyote interviewed for It Was 20 Years Ago Today in Marin County, San Francisco, 1986
So the year 1967 keeps coming back into my life as a major event and influence. It is therefore no surprise that I should've chosen that year as the setting for my first novel, the recently published Stephen Dearsley's Summer Of Love (see below). I think I shall try to share some other memories of that time over the next few blogs. It was a truly unique epoque.
Here though is a clip showing the opening of that documentary, It Was Twenty Years Ago Today. For me it is the holiday movie of a lifetime.
Sunday 3 November 2013
COLIN BELL - NOVELIST, POET AND BLOGGER
BIOGRAPHY:
Colin Bell was born in a Franciscan convent in Surrey but grew up in Sussex, UK – almost everything he’s done, he did for the first time in Brighton.
His first novel, Stephen Dearsley’s Summer Of Love was published in October 2013 (Ward Wood Publishing) and long listed for the Polari Prize 2014. It is set in Brighton in 1967.
His latest novel, Blue Notes, Still Frames will be published in October 2016 (Ward Wood Publishing). His poetry has been published in the UK (including Cinnamon Press and Soaring Penguin) and the USA (Musepie Press, The Blotter, Every Day Poets). He has been nominated for the 2017 Pushcart Prize. He has also published short stories (Ether Books) and children’s books (Novello).
He was a producer-director and then Executive Producer of music and arts programmes for Granada Television in Manchester and executive producer, EuroArts-Primetime. He’s made programmes for ITV, Channel Four and the BBC as well as for American, Japanese and German broadcasters.
He now lives in Lewes, Sussex where he also writes a daily blog - http://www.wolfiewolfgang.com. His new Brighton novel, Blue Notes, Still Frames will be published in 2016. He is now working on a third Brighton novel.
TELEVISION PROGRAMMES:
His television credits include the Granada arts documentary series, Celebration, the ITV series God Bless America, the Channel Four series, My Generation, the ITV documentary Curves, Contours and Body Horns, the BBC documentary Menuhin's Children, the SDR documentary Szabo Meets Solti and the ITV documentary It Was Twenty Years Ago Today as well as international co-productions of opera galas from San Francisco and Covent Garden and the Tenth Anniversary Concert performance of Les Miserables from the Royal Albert Hall.
God Bless America
It was Twenty Years Ago Today
Celebration 15 - 25 Arts Festival
My Generation
Curves, Contours and Body Horns
Celebration
Menuhin's Children
Szabo meets Solti
Les Miserables 10th Anniversary Gala
The Gold And Silver Gala
The Golden Gate Gala
PUBLICATIONS: FICTION:
STEPHEN DEARSLEY'S SUMMER OF LOVE
Colin Bell's novel, Stephen Dearsley's Summer Of Love, was published on 31 October 2013. It is the story of a young fogey living in Brighton in 1967 who has a lot to learn when the flowering hippie counter culture changes him and the world around him.
It is now available as a paperback or on Kindle (go to your region's Amazon site for Kindle orders)
You can order the book from the publishers, Ward Wood Publishing:
Colin Bell's second novel, Blue Notes, Still Frames, will be published in October 2016 by Ward Wood Publishing. It begins with Joe Edevane, a Brighton street busker with surprizing powers who borrows a towel from well-heeled strangers, Alan and Rachel, for his Goth girlfriend, Victoria, and begins a chain of events that changes all of their lives.
