The Scottish Power theatre in Charlotte Square Gardens is fit to busting with gentlemen of a certain age who wear their grizzly old punk visage as a mantle of honour. They’re here tonight to pay homage to one of their very own, the once-named John Wardle who was re-christened Jah Wobble by Sid Vicious at the height of punk’s blaze and went on to wield his dub inflected bass in John Lydon’s PIL. Here to publicize his autobiography, Memoirs of a Geezer (a title, riffing on the past Geisha, which he cheerfully admits wasn’t his idea and which he loathes: “It’s the only bit I didn’t write, though!”), Wobble in person is an affable, if occasionally spiky, personality who frequently has the audience in stitches with his “cockney geezer” wit and wisdom.
Much of the evening’s focus is on Wobble’s early years in PIL, which he recalls with hysterical frankness. His loathing of guitarist Keith Levene’s heroin addiction, which resulted in London dealers being flown out to supply him in New York (“…probably costing more than I got paid for the whole US tour.”), and of becoming embroiled in what he describes as a “Blue Velvet moment” in America, as he inadvertently becomes friendly with a gun-toting gangster. Since leaving PIL following their legendary second album, “Metal Box”, Wobble has carved out a wildly prodigious solo career transplanting his unique bass sound to a variety of rock, pop and world music genres and is justifiably insulted at the fact that he was offered a measly £1,000 per week to rejoin Lydon in the current PIL “reunion”.
Wobble also speaks about how much music has taught him through life and how his key is to keep it simple (“…no jazz players.”). Musicians should be able to record and mix an album in no more than six days, and this is the approach which has led to such varied and extensive output over the years. However, despite his spiritual and meditative routines, Wobble is pessimistic as to the future of Britain, a country he regards as “unravelling, and past its sell by date", and can also be an archetypal Grumpy Old Man, bewildered and perplexed by the intimate rudeness of the 21st century and the parasites of the music business.
Wobble’s definition of a geezer is that of “… an honourable man”, and he wears that virtue with distinction. A countercultural traveller from a slightly earlier time is Barry Miles, a shaper and mover in sixties London where he ran the Indica Gallery, co-published International Times and, perhaps most famously, introduced John Lennon to Yoko Ono. In recent years, Miles has focused more on writing biographies of the likes of Frank Zappa and Allen Ginsberg. His latest book, however, is of a slightly more personal nature. London Calling is a weighty tome which details the various counterculture movements in the UK capital since World War 2, including Miles’ own contributions to these far-out times and happenings.
In person, Miles seems a quiet, reserved silver-haired gent in black. It’s hard to imagine him carousing through the bars of Soho, fired up on radical poetry and rock ‘n’ roll, but this is a man who truly lived the sixties dream. Hence, despite his book covering the past 60 years, it is that epochal decade which dominates his afternoon session. He discusses his introduction to Soho following a secluded childhood in the Cotswolds, helping to organise the notorious Albert Hall poetry reading with Ginsberg, the interwoven relationship between fashion and music and how these were times when it genuinely felt like barriers were being broken down. Unlike Wobble, Miles seems optimistic about possible futures, even for countercultures, and declares Wikileaks to be proof of the remaining possibility to radicalise and revolutionise societal viewpoints.
Finally, a smoking hot ticket over the book festival’s final weekend was to see New York’s enfant terrible of the kitchen, Anthony Bourdain. A packed RBS Main Theatre welcomed the ever so slightly mellowed ex-chef turned food writer. It’s ten years since Kitchen Confidential transformed Bourdain’s life and indeed cookery writing in general, as it exposed for the first time the restaurant industry’s backstage mayhem, fuelled by alcohol, illicit substances and explosive egos. Since then, we’ve become used to culinary bad boy exploits, but Bourdain has long since hung up his apron, burned out by it all, and now focuses full time on writing and television.
Reading from his new book, Medium Raw, Bourdain launches into an unrestrained tirade against fast food outlets (“The King, The Clown and The Colonel”, as he names them), and of how they explicitly target children such as his three-year old daughter. Much of his ire is targeted towards McDonalds, with such delicious venom that I’d better not go into detail in case their ever alert lawyers are sniffing around.
Bourdain also recalls his previous visit to the festival ten years earlier for the launch of Kitchen Confidential, and of being treated by Iain Rankin with a visit to the Mermaid chippie in Leith for a King Rib Supper (“If you don’t like that shit, you’re just not drunk enough.”). In fairness, he balances out that statement by endorsing Tom Kitchin’s restaurant when asked about his favourite Edinburgh restaurants. While he roguishly applauds Scotland’s “…indiscriminate deep-fat frying”, Bourdain is full of hatred for fast food producers and the revelation that meat intended for a ground-up burger has been previously soaked in ammonia clearly disturbs him, as indeed it should everyone.
Bourdain also puts forward intriguing theories as to the immediate future of gastronomy which, he feels, evolves rapidly during periods of poverty. As he puts it, the only reason anyone ate a snail or came up with the idea of a duck confit or haggis was because they were hungry and there was just nothing else around. As meat becomes increasingly expensive in the years ahead, Bourdain considers, it will be used in dishes more as a flavouring or side. The concept of a meal being dominated by a big slab of meat will, for many people, be unfeasible.
It’s fair to say, however, that Bourdain doesn’t have much time for vegetarians or vegans, or for people who travel to foreign countries and disrespect their hosts by refusing to eat certain local delicacies. “It’s like visiting the Louvre and saying you only want to see pictures painted in blue”. After all, as he says, how is putting a bug or grub or insect in your mouth any more bizarre and unpalatable as eating Chicken McNuggets?