CLUB SANDWICH 72

"A BA (HONS) IN JOHN HAMMEL, PLEASE"

Less than 12 months from now the word LIPA will be on everyone's lips, because, following years of planning, the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts, Paul McCartney's brainchild to nurture new talent, will be open for tuition. You may have read the facts about LIPA in previous issues of Club Sandwich, so, for a change, here's Geoff Baker with one man's personal view of LIPA's strengths

            I know this bloke who is brilliant. This guy, whom we'll call John Hammel (because that's his name), is the rock and roll equivalent of a Swiss Army knife.
            He can tune guitars with his ears shut. He can re-string a guitar while the guitarist is still playing. He can set up all the amps and speakers for a show, can quite probably light it and run the sound desk too. He can drive you anywhere you want in any vehicle from a bus to a limo. He knows the best Chinese restaurant in any town, he knows the nefarious places too, and he watches over you better than Clarence, the angel in It's A Wonderful life.
            He is the complete roadie. And to be John Hammel you'd need to spend somewhere in the region of 10,000 nights on the road.
            Alternatively, you can register for a course at the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts.
            "Paul's Fame School", as LIPA is perhaps better known, is now auditioning would-be students for its first classes, due to begin just nine months from now in September 1995. As the prospectus offers courses in such subjects as dance, music and acting, you could easily labour under the impression that LIPA's aim is to solely produce a load of leaping Leroys and graduates with long legs who spin like Dervishes and sing "I wanna live forever".
            But what intrigues me about LIPA is that besides unearthing the next Eric Clapton or a class of leaping Leroys, LIPA also aims to be the world's first school for roadies. Tell me this: where else are you going to learn how to roadie? Sure, you can spend most of your young adult life hunched in a heater-less van humping (gear, of course) but there's much more to the job than that - your top roadie of today is called upon to be a diplomat, rally driver, musician, human tuning-fork, counsellor, travel agent, security monitor and oracle of common sense, he has to be an electrician capable of rewiring the national grid, has to know how to run a 4000 bulb lighting system from a laptop computer and be familiar with the workings of 80-foot video monitors.
            None of this can be ascertained in the back of a van with Rosie and Sally from Newcastle.
            Perhaps I hear you mutter "Fine, LIPA is doing all these classes in roadie science, lighting engineering, video production, and so on, but how is some Wally of a lecturer actually going to teach me these things?" Well, this brings me to the other unique thing about LIPA. You know that old adage about teachers - the one that goes "Those who can, do; those who can't, teach"? Well, LIPA is going to change all that. At LIPA, those who can will do and teach.
            Paul's idea is that students looking for careers in the entertainment industry should get instruction from those who have already done so. Barrie Marshall - the promoter of Paul's concerts, profiled in CS66 - has agreed to lecture at LIPA on the logistic nightmare that is his job. Aubrey Powell, in charge of the video system on Paul's last two tours and who has also made videos and designed album sleeves for Macca and others, will also lecture at LIPA, as will Bernard Doherty, Paul's publicist. With this "visiting experts" system, LIPA will provide every student with the opportunity to an apprenticeship in the realities of the industry, something that would otherwise take years of job-switching to achieve.
            And because of the myriad of talent working around Paul, the extent of this hands-on tuition is greater than any other performing arts school could offer. It's feasible that Blair Cunningham will give a drum class, that Brian Clarke will lecture on art and stage design, that Tony Wigens will talk about tour management, that Julian Mendelsohn will hold seminars on record production, that Mike Cirigliano will lecture on video cameramanship and lighting, and that Gerry Stickells might pop in to explain how, when building a gig in a hurricane in Rio de Janeiro, you cope with flash floods, bent rigging and a soaked sound-deck and turn it around so that the gig sets a world record. As Paul has said, "We took about 140 crew members with us on the New World Tour, 140 people just to put six of us on the stage. Playing a show isn't simply a matter of setting up an amp and pointing a spotlight anymore."
            But the talent pool available to LIPA runs even deeper. Among the many luminaries of the entertainment industry backing the school are Mark Knopfler, Joan Armatrading, Carly Simon, Alan Parker, David Puttnam, Eddie Murphy, Paul Simon, Jane Fonda and Chevy Chase. What price a masterclass with them? OK, it may be a touch premature to announce for certain that Eddie Murphy is actually going to a hold a comedy class, but the big names are lining up to pass on their skills. Elvis Costello has told Paul that he'll do it.
            And Paul is also going to take a class. As he told the London Times, "It may be that I'll take a class in songwriting, although I certainly wouldn't dictate a method to the students because there isn't one accepted method of composing. I'm not particularly interested in students learning how to write a song in the style of somebody else - I'll tell them that I'm interested in their style, and the excitement for me will be if / can learn while they are learning."
            This writer is especially interested in Paul's statement because I consider the art of songwriting to be pretty non-existent these days. Rock, pop or whatever the sub-strand flavour of the minute has become is so slothfully dependent on the rhythm box and the drum machine that songs are no longer crafted, they are computer-programmed. (Which probably accounts for the lack of melody, as a computer doesn't have a soul.)
            So unless somebody like Paul or Elvis Costello actually does get in there and show tomorrow's performers the way to tap into the magic lying behind the rhythm box, the days of songs that can shape the world are numbered.
            I remember Paul saying, a little while back, that when he made Off The Ground he asked the co-producer, Julian Mendelsohn, what sort of kids were coming to see him. Julian replied that, although kids would come in with a song, they couldn't sing it, they had to play the cassette; they couldn't perform it, they had to get their computer to play it; and they couldn't even drum it, they had to get their rhythm box to do it. Whereas what Julian was looking for, as a producer, was for a kid to come in with a song and be able to sing it to him.
            As Paul says of LIPA, "I hope that my students will get up and sing a song instead of saying 'I've got to consult my computer'. The basic skill is perhaps to be able to do it in front of anyone - handmade music."
            Perhaps, through this and the other tutelage of "those who do", LIPA may stimulate a new generation of heartmade music. If so then its existence will be a blessing for us all, not just for the entertainment industry, because I believe that there is a crying need for the elegance and craftsmanship that marked the compositions of Lennon-McCartney, Gershwin or Porter. The current obsession with techno-pop isn't going to produce it.
            As Beatles record producer George Martin said when the idea of LIPA was launched in Liverpool in June 1990, "I believe in human music and I believe that we have to master our technology because people are relying too heavily on all the little mechanical aids that can make an idiot into a genius. And that isn't really true music. Music comes from the heart, it comes from the soul, and we must use our technology as a tool. We mustn't let it use us.
            "By running a school for the performing arts we're going to provide the right environment for convincing people that music is like love, that it's a human emotion. And the best of love and the best of music will come from people here best equipped to provide it."
            A couple of months ago this writer was in Liverpool to attend the press launch for LIPA's prospectus. The event began with a performance by a young Liverpool band called Roadside Prophets, who had landed a recording deal after working on a LIPA pilot course. "The only reason we're here today is because LIPA helped us through," the singer, Hannah Black, told the audience before starting the set.
            The band -was the first example of the calibre of young talent that LIPA will nurture. Judging by what I heard, they and LIPA's potential to put a heart back into the performing arts are excellent.

To apply to become a LIPA student write to
THE LIVERPOOL INSTITUTE FOR PERFORMING ARTS, MOUNT STREET, LIVERPOOL LI 9HF, ENGLAND.

For previous Club Sandwich coverage of LIPA refer to issues 60 and 64.