On the 10th Day of Mavericks ...
... my reader gave to me.
John Otway
as nominated by ‘Challenge 69’ reader Wendy O
First up today, a quick pictorial game of ‘compare and contrast’.
A young musician looking wistfully into the future, wondering what it might bring? …
… but probably never imagining this!
I’m getting ahead of myself though, we should properly have started with Wendy’s nomination rationale:
“Surely the word maverick was meant for John Otway.
I eventually got around to seeing him and Wild Willy Barrett in more recent years, but they had lost nothing in the passing of time.
‘Really Free’ was, of course, a standout, but also ‘Geneve’, which was accompanied by Barrett on an acoustic which he gradually sawed in half as the song progressed!”
Not a gig review you’ve likely heard before!
But let’s carry on our analysis with a question, which of these are genuine Otway quotes?:
On (fleetingly) achieving fame, “there’s no point in success if you don’t let it go to your head, that’s what it’s for.”
To Paula Yates, when breaking up with her, “that’s the last chance you’ll ever get to go out with a rock star.”
On ambition, “I have always wanted to be a big star, and I have always failed.”
After, eventually , getting a second single into the charts, “I’m no longer a ‘one hit wonder’, I’m now a ‘two hit twit’, I’ve finally moved the S from the start of hit to the end!”
The answer to this is as equally likely to be ‘none of the above’ as ‘all of them’, because each of these self-deprecating observations is taken from John’s various memoirs (or manuals on ‘how not to do it’) which are as utterly unreliable as they are entertaining.
Time to see what Stuart makes of Rock’n’Roll’s greatest self confessed incompetent?:
“The mere mention of John Otway makes me smile, there’s just something life affirming about heroic failure.
There’s a Dylan quote I’ve always liked about, “a man is a success if he gets up in the morning and gets to bed at night, and in between he does what he wants to do.” Otway, with (as he readily admits) just a modicum of talent has been doing just that for over fifty years, and made more than five thousand live appearances!
The ‘Dictionary of Contemporary English’ defines a maverick as, “an unusual person who has different ideas and ways of behaving from other people, and is often very successful.” Otway is ‘a shoe in’ on the first part of that, but ‘a car crash’ on the latter; but who cares about success (John clearly doesn’t!), all that remains to say on the matter is, cor baby, he’s in!”
Nicely put, and leaves us with no debate either on which song to add to our playlist.
Remember to look out for our penultimate ‘new maverick’ nomination at the same time tomorrow.