Sounds (a bit) Like...

'Gabrielle Drake and Kelly Monteith'

graphite and putty eraser on Seawhite cartridge paper/42 x 30cm (A3)

Continuing the Seventies project and particularly the drawing aspect of, upon which I most definitely seem to be concentrating, quiet a pleasurable turn of events after largely neglecting this area of practice over the last 3 - 4 years in favour of oil painting.
The subject on this occasion represents what might be considered a curious byway but one that nonetheless forms a distinct recollection from the decade, at its cusp with the following one, and which came to mind from a tenuous word-association with a recently-featured figure. From Kenny Dalglish, the name of Kelly Monteith suggested itself, dredged-up from the idiosyncratic reserves of the memory bank and it is the latter personage who is represented as the right-hand aspect of this double portrait, his female companion being the actress Gabrielle Drake, publicising as they would be in the original photograph from which the drawing was processed the BBC TV series ‘The Kelly Monteith Show’, which was first broadcast in 1979. Kelly Monteith was (is) an American comedian who first appeared on UK screens as a guest on the ‘Des O’Connor Show’, wise-cracking his way through a short stand-up routine, before progressing to playing a fictionalised version of himself, an American comedian living in London, sharing a home with his wife Suzanne (Drake), in the eponymous sitcom, flickering briefly across the British consciousness (or some of ours, at least) before disappearing, in the early Eighties, wherever. I do seem to recall something about the show featuring Monteith addressing the audience directly during the course of the programme, as an observer-commentator of/on the narrative, and although this could have been during stand-up segments of any given episode, research seems to suggest that there was an element of ‘fourth wall’-acknowledging to the production that might well have granted a certain ground-breaking aspect to it. A curiosity all-told, but clearly something registered sufficiently for the name at least to have lodged. At the time, of course, I would have had no idea that Gabrielle Drake had had a brother, Nick, who had passed away five years before her co-starring role in the Monteith show and whose music I would come to discover in the later Eighties and love ever since, or, indeed, did not realise that she had featured as a character in numerous episodes of one of my favourite television shows from the beginning of the 1970s, Gerry Anderson’s ‘UFO’...

Back in Time

The Seventies project continues here with a slight deviation from its course (which is pretty random!) to take into account a suitable period image of a subject who has ‘enjoyed’ recent topicality. Here is represented Neil Warnock – who last Monday mutually agreed to part ways with his most recent employer – as pictured some time between February 1972 and March 1975, when his football playing career took him to Scunthorpe United ( also the first club of recent subject Kevin Keegan) and long before he came to resemble Mrs Doubtfire: note the hairstyle as being particularly du jour.

‘Neil Warnock, Scunthorpe United (c. 1972 – 75)’

graphite and putty eraser on cartridge paper/30 x 21cm (A4)

Kenny Killed Us...

As mentioned at the conclusion of the previous entry, Kevin Keegan‘s replacement in the Liverpool FC team for the 1977-78 football season was Kenny Dalglish, on whose purchase the club didn’t stint in their pursuit of continued success, as might be gleaned from this portrait published within the pages of the match programme for the Wrexham v Liverpool Football League Cup quarter-final tie played at the Racecourse Ground on Tuesday, 17th January 1978.

This was a match at which I was fortunate to be present, a big occasion and distinct memory in a season of much excitement and great days/nights at Wrexham that season, competing that evening against the reigning domestic and European club champions. Alas, Liverpool and Kenny Dalglish in particular, were  to poop Wrexham’s giant-killing party by inflicting a 3 – 1 defeat not least courtesy of Dalglish scoring all three of his team’s goals, and here the Seventies project continues with a representation of the man celebrating one of his hat-trick during the course of the 90 minutes of the match. As Liverpool supporter John Peel‘s favourite player of the era, there’s thus a link between this and a previous subject to be featured in the project. As also mentioned before, Youtube footage of the highlights of the match and the damage done by Dalglish, is available).

‘Kenny Dalglish, Wrexham v Liverpool, 16/01/78’

Graphite and putty eraser on Seawhite cartidge paper/42 x 30cm (A3)

A tangible souvenir of the occasion, a portal to a variety of memories, here’s an image of the front cover of the match programme and also the rear, featuring the team line-ups, both full of fine players: if only Dixie McNeil, goalscorer par excellence, hadn’t been cup-tied and thus unavailable to represent Wrexham, though…(we can still dream of what might have been).

Film and Football

Continuing with the Seventies project and another selection of drawings, the latest to be processed with reference to memories retained from growing up.

First up are a pair of stills from the film (movie) ‘Thunderbolt and Lightfoot’, which I recall seeing on television for the first time (it became what seemed like an annual event for a period of a few early-Eighties’ years) in 1979, sometime around the August Bank Holiday which was also the time John Peel, as featured previously, was mentioning his 40th birthday. I obviously enjoyed the film a great deal, enough to return to watch it numerous times, and can remember in particular its sun-bleached aesthetic and those scenes near the conclusion of the tale featuring a car journey between Clint Eastwood‘s ‘Thunderbolt’ and [spoiler alert] a dying ‘Lightfoot’ (Jeff Bridges, who became a real favourite actor of mine).

'Thunderbolt and Lightfoot #1'

graphite and putty eraser on Seawhite cartridge paper/A3 (42 x 30cm)

'Thunderbolt and Lightfoot #2'

graphite and putty eraser on Seawhite cartridge paper/A3 (42 x 30cm)

Next, a drawing sourced from an original image that graced a number of the front covers of Wrexham FC‘s match programmes towards the latter part of 1977 and which features the central figure of Bobby Shinton celebrating the single goal that defeated Bristol City in a Football League Cup Third Round tie played at the Racecourse Ground on Wednesday 26th October, a match I attended in the company of my father and more than 10,000 other spectators. Shinton, obviously the goalscorer, is accompanied by a couple of teammates, the late Johns Roberts and Lyons, with the dejected opponent being, I think, Gerry Sweeney.

'Bobby Shinton (Wrexham v Bristol City, 26/10/1977)'

graphite and putty eraser on Seawhite cartridge paper/A3 (42 x 30cm)

These were the great days when Third Division Wrexham were bona fide giant killers – Bristol City were enjoying a brief period in the First Division at this time – and would reach the quarter final stage of both the FA and League Cups during the 1977-78 season, the club’s most successful ever when they went on the be crowned champions of Division Three and earn promotion to the heady heights of English football’s second tier for the first and only time in their history before adding the Welsh Cup to the list of honours. The Racecourse became littered with the scalps of the ‘big’ clubs – Bristol City again and then Newcastle United were both treated to 3-goal drubbings in FA Cup tie replays in the new year – and it took the might of European champions Liverpool and a referee-assisted Arsenal to end those glorious cup runs, memories of which remain vivid, welcome as they are in these times of the club plumbing the nadir of their almost 100 years in the national league structure (I could go on…).

The particular significance of the Bobby Shinton drawing is the fact that I made a version of it back in the day, which was published in the art section of the children’s pages of the local (NE Wales) ‘Evening Leader’ newspaper – unfortunately, no tangible evidence of this remains but my parents did retain a cutting of an earlier artistic effort submitted to and published in the same ‘paper, which has subsequently come into my possession and here, accordingly, introduces/precedes the next drawing, one of my then-favourite footballer, Kevin Keegan, pictured here representing Liverpool FC in 1976, when the original drawing was made. Of particular and curious footballing interest, 1976-77 was Keegan’s last season at Liverpool before departing for new continental challenges at SV Hamburg – by the following season, he had been replaced by a player who went on to even greater achievements and legend at Liverpool, Kenny Dalglish, who downed Wrexham with a hat-trick at the Racecourse, another special occasion I was present to witness (and of which there is Youtube footage – never mind the game, look at the state of that vintage Seventies’ pitch!).

(note the Kevin Keegan drawing is credited to a ‘James Roudey’, which is not a misprint but an interpretation by a member of the newspaper staff based on what was obviously my illegible handwriting even then – how typical that I should find a way of taking something of the gloss off a public achievement!)

'Kevin Keegan 1976'

graphite and putty eraser on cartridge paper/A4 (30 x 21cm)