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)

Overdue Update

Continuing with the Seventies’ project, a selection of nostalgic subject matter represented in the form of graphite drawings, another process of which I’m fond and harks back in particular to the decade in question, when drawing was my creative activity and pencil or felt pen was my medium of choice.

The first drawing features an action shot from the FA Cup Final of 1974, played at Wembley Stadium in London and contested between Liverpool and Newcastle United, the former running out convincing 3 – 0 winners over opponents who failed to live up to expectations and hype (‘Supermac’ amongst others who proved to be rather ordinary on the day). This in fact was the first live televised football match I watched or took any interest in, the latter to the extent that I made a drawing at the time, in the moment, in felt pen, being also the first drawing  I have any recollection of making, in felt pen and concentrating particularly on rendering the thousands of faces/heads in the crowd (the attendance was 100,000 – the capacity of the ground), which obviously impressed/amazed my then 9-year-old self to the exclusion of much else, something borne out by a memory of my father, when appraising my efforts later, enquiring whether perhaps Newcastle didn’t sport vertically-striped shirts rather than the hoops I’d represented!

Anyway, here we observe Liverpool’s Kevin Keegan, probably the star of the match, hurdling a tackle by Newcastle’s number 3 Alan Kennedy (who later played for Liverpool with considerable distinction, including the scoring of two European Cup-winning goals), with the latter’s teammate Terry Hibbitt also in attendance. Admire, if nothing else, the luxuriousness of those sideburns, very much the facial hair du jour.

‘1974 FA Cup Final’

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

Next is (re)presented the mighty John Peel, the late night Radio One DJ who brought punk, post-punk and so much other music to our eager young ears, desperate for inspiration, in the late Seventies and then for a further 25 years until his untimely death in 2004 (this very day marking the anniversary of, indeed, so here’s a personal tribute). I recall I started listening to Peel in the summer of 1979, very probably at a school friend’s insistent recommendation, and could write at great length about  the influence he had, in not just musical but broader cultural and philosophical terms, but for now here’s the drawing, of the man at a mixing desk.

‘John Peel c.1979’

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

Finally for this update, another figure from the world of broadcasting, and ITV’s Saturday afternoon ‘World of Sport’, the iconic and legendary Dickie Davies, at his dapper and groomed finest. ‘World of Sport’ was something I remember being on TV at my paternal grandparents’ home even before I started watching it myself once I’d quickly developed an obsession with football (see above), beginning as it did with the preview magazine ‘On the Ball’ and covering the afternoon until the final scores were in – as something of a more louche relation to the BBC’s ‘Grandstand’, all manner of more obscure sports were featured, most iconically perhaps wrestling, and these are the memories that resonate down the years, with Dickie the genial host. Of course, many of us British viewers will also recall Benny Hill’s spoofs of Dickie Davies, but here’s the man himself, seated at ‘home’ in the World of Sport studio with its also iconic logo.

‘Dickie Davies: World of Sport’

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

Seventies Style

Today the Opposite of Tomato is 'Automatically Yours'

graphite & putty eraser/30x20cm

Considering what a nigglingly slow month September has been here at TOoT, following a pleasingly productive few months’ practice, it’s something of a relief to be able to present this latest drawing, processed from the source of an enlarged photocopy taken from a photograph as printed in the ‘Official Football League Yearbook 1972 – 73’ of a delightful image, circa 1971, the subject of which features a young Kevin Keegan, pictured quite possibly just after having joined Liverpool during the May of that year, in the company of his manager Bill Shankly: Shankly had achieved something of iconic status with his achievements with Liverpool over the course of the previous decade, & Keegan was then on the cusp of doing similarly in the Seventies, transcending the confines of football/sport in the process to the extent of indulging in singing & advertising 'careers'.
Coincidentally, Kevin Keegan also played a central role in the first football match in which I ever took an interest, scoring twice for Liverpool in their comprehensive 3 - 0 victory over Newcastle United in the 1974 FA Cup Final, which televisual experience I immediately processed into drawing, as mentioned previously when I began this year's sequence of football-themed drawings back in February.
As ever, the magical attraction of the original image is to be found in the charm of its period details, which now seem to provide an undeniable sense of comfort: Keegan’s fashionable hairstyle, extravagant sideburns & tank top in particular, but also Shanks’s macintosh raincoat, which any number of managers (& the Prime Minister Harold Wilson) seemed to sport back in the day.

Subsequent pictorial research has led to the discovery online of another image from the photo-shoot that produced the source for the drawing, but this one in colour, adding substance to one’s imaginings based upon the monochrome ‘original’: interesting to observe that Kev was sporting a most harmonious & rather fetching ensemble of various hues & tones of blue (slightly disappointingly, as one dreams of the tank top’s stripes being multi-coloured, in the manner of Paul McCartney’s psychedelic number from The Beatles’ ‘Magical Mystery Tour’ film, as disinterred for reappraisal in Tuesday’s ‘Guardian’), along with – oh yes – those classic heels, & also that Shanks’s shirt (rather than pony) is a surprisingly dandyish pale pink – not necessarily unusual for the man, though, as one seems to recall him wearing shirts of various colours, such as orange, & red, on other occasions, an old school figure who could still swing with the times.

[www.liverpoolecho.co.uk]

[www.guardian.co.uk]

Soundtrack:

The ‘should have been’ is obviously Kevin Keegan’s "Head Over Heels in Love" (blimey, those weren’t necessarily the days) & The Smiths’ wonderful, mordant ‘Frankly, Mr Shankly’, but, in actuality, we instead indulged in the mellow sounds of Lambchop’s ‘Is a Woman’ & then, by way of variety, The Pastels’ equally enduringly-wonderful ‘Up For a Bit With…’, before, continuing, a late night session devoted to the drawing process was accompanied by Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds' ‘The Boatman’s Call’, returning to a more reflective mood appropriate to the hour.