Goodbye, Sodium

An Edward Hopper-esque atmosphere on the packaging for Corgi's lamp standards kit.

I was fascinated by some strange things as a child. Pylons and cooling towers to name but two, and both from an extremely early age. For some reason, I found various aspects of the man-made environment intriguing, and none more so than street lights. I was reminded of this only last week, when, at twilight, I exited the M1 at Junction 24A. Along the sliproad leading up to the roundabout, the streetlights were glowing a soft shade of pink indicating that they had only just come on. Set against the misty pinkish-blue of the twilight, it made for an atmospheric moment, and one which I realised, with a pang of nostalgia, may never happen again. 

The reason for this is quite simple: LPS (Low Pressure Sodium) street lamps – the ubiquitous orange type that have dominated Britain’s major roads since the 1950s – are being phased out. As of 2019, the last factory producing the lantern units closed, and no more will be made. Anyone who has been out after dark on our major roads in the past few years can’t have failed to notice that the old ‘orange’ night time atmosphere is slowly disappearing, with modern LED lamps taking the place of the older units. Presumably this is being done for reasons of cost efficiency as much as anything else, and the improved colour spectrum of LED lights is claimed to bring benefits in road safety. I’m sure this is true, but I still regret the passing of the old sodium vapour lighting columns.

As a child, two aspects of street lights fascinated me: their colour, and the style of the lighting columns themselves. There was one right outside our house in Lichfield, a concrete column with right-angled bracket, on which was mounted a small, rectangular lamp. When first lit at twilight, the lamp glowed a soft pink, gradually acquiring the distinctive orange hue of sodium. The pink glow has a technical explanation: this initial colour comes from what’s known as ‘Penning mixture’, a blend of gases – usually helium or neon with xenon – used as a ‘starter’ to warm the metal sodium inside the lamp. I saw these colours in terms of confectionery: a strawberry Spangle, followed by an orange Spangle.

The original 1950s column was still in place outside our old home when I took this photo in 1980.
Needless to say, it has long since been replaced.

Not all street lamps were orange, though. Our dad provided the explanation: orange street lamps like the one outside our house were ‘sodium vapour’ whilst the greenish-white sort I’d seen elsewhere were ‘mercury vapour’. The latter were more often to be found on smaller suburban streets, typically mounted on distinctive metal columms, often quite ornate in appearance, topped by a ‘swan-neck’ lamp bracket. In the 1960s, however, mercury lamps could still be found on major roads around the country, to which they lent a ghostly greenish-white light (as mentioned by C.P. Snow in his Strangers and Brothers sequence of novels). Eachelhurst Road in Erdington, which we regularly travelled along on visits to our grandparents, was one stretch of highway I recall seeing under mercury vapour, the lamps sitting atop tall metal columns painted green that probably dated from the 1940s or 50s. Increasingly, though, sodium was becoming the norm.

On trips in our dad’s car at night, I would marvel at the sheer variety of lighting columns. On our grandparents’ road, the lanterns had a distinctive ‘witches hat’ or flying saucer appearance, whilst along the major roads leading into Birmingham a curious suspension system was still in use, whereby a single lantern hung over the middle of the carriageway, slung on chains between two columns mounted at the roadside: a configuration which I believe may have been associated with facilities for tram wires. Around Walsall, where there had definitely been ‘column-sharing’ between lighting and tram wires, one could still see examples of lamps on long metal brackets extending from the poles, some of which still had their old electric insulators and even wires attached. Around more prestigious areas, such as civic buildings, a ‘posh’ type of street lamp predominated. In Birmingham, these took the form of fluted metal columns, painted a discrete powder blue, topped with huge lighting units that gave out a white neon light (sodium was evidently too proletarian for such locations). Still further up the scale of prestige were the lamps to be found around the Cathedral and along Colmore Row in Birmingham City Centre, which employed the same pale blue fluted columns, but were topped off by columnar lights which stood upright. These units, known as ‘Festival’, were manufactured by a local company, REVO, based in Tipton. Few if any survive today, with some of the last known examples being the so-called ‘Richardson Candles’ of Cambridge.

Sourced from http://www.simoncornwell.com/lighting/collect/columns/index.htm

If we ever ventured further afield, I would always notice variations in the style of lamp standards, as civic authorities all tended to use different, often local sources of supply. Some of the older survivors were often extremely ornate, with baroque styling, but these struck me as excessive, and I prefered the more minimalist designs that had been introduced in the post-war era. If I had a favourite style of street light, it was surely the twin-lamp column, as seen so often on the central reservations of dual carriageways, on motorways, and at roundabouts and major road junctions.

I even had toy street lights bought for me, partly to add realism to games with toy cars but mostly because I liked them so much. Corgi offered a ‘kit’ of modern sodium lighting columns (to say it was a ‘kit’ was a bit much: all one had to do was to plug the column into a metal baseplate and attach the plastic lantern to the top), whilst Dinky toys had their own equivalent. Lego also provided street lights to enhance its plastic block environment. Needless to say, none of these examples actually worked, although electric versions would later become available for use on model railway layouts.

Toy street lamps: Dinky, far left/ unknown centre/ Corgi far right/ Lego, foreground

Like so many other items of street furniture, street lamps are somewhat ephemeral. Although installations often endure for decades, wear and tear and the failure of lanterns ensures that most will in time be replaced. 1960s columns were still a common sight on most arterial roads until well into the 1990s, and odd survivors can still be found, usually in overlooked corners that have escaped the ravages of modern redevelopment. I live on a major road whose concrete lighting columns date to the early 1980s and are almost certain to be replaced in the not too distant future. The lanterns are still the old LPS type, which lends a rather 1970s orange vibe to the night time environment.

Despite my abiding interest in street lights, it wasn’t until the age of maybe 13 that I became aware of one of the peculiar characteristics of sodium light: it has a very narrow spectrum, which renders all colours in shades of grey. I first noticed this whilst trying to read a TV21 Annual in the back of our dad’s car on an evening in 1974, when I noticed that the colour pictures in the book appeared monochrome under the light from the passing streetlamps. Sodium does present one distinct advantage over lanterns with a wider spectrum, in that it causes less ‘light pollution’. Astronomical observatories are able to filter out sodium light to give them a clearer view of the night sky, but this cannot be done with modern LED units.

It seems a pity that modern designers can’t hold a (Richardson) candle to those of the 50s, 60s and earlier eras, and contemporary lighting columns are unremarkable in appearance. Practicality (and cost, one assumes) has won out over asethetics. Shame.

On Again! On Again!

 

Discovering (and rediscovering) Jake Thackray

That’s Life! was regular viewing in our household. We’d been tuning in since its inception in 1973, so when a new series began on Sunday 2 January 1977, we were in front of the set at 10pm. 

The programme remains in my memory for a very specific reason, as it provided my first ever glimpse of an entertainer who had been established on television for almost a decade without ever impinging onto my consciousness. Jake Thackray, often misleadingly labelled as the ‘Yorkshire Nöel Coward’, had been a regular fixture on Braden’s Week from 1968-1972, a popular late-night entertainment which, like That’s Life!, had focused on consumer issues, alongside topical songs and sketches. In 1972, however, Braden had given the BBC pause for thought by appearing in a margarine commercial. The corporation deemed this unacceptable for a champion of consumer rights, and whilst Braden wasn’t directly sacked, his show was revamped to allow his co-presenter Esther Rantzen to take centre stage in his place. The rest is television history, as was Braden himself when That’s Life! launched without him in the early summer of 1973.

Esther Rantzen had been personally responsible for Thackray getting the gig on the Braden show in 1968, so it’s somewhat surprising he didn’t transfer to the new series. Like Braden’s Week, That’s Life! still featured a topical ‘song of the week’, but it would be nearly four years before the self-styled chansonnier was restored to his erstwhile position on the series. Now, two days into the new year of 1977, here he was at last, performing the title track of his new album, On Again! On Again!, his first release in five years.

I was immediately taken with this charismatic newcomer, but more than anything else, I liked the sound he created. Thackray was backed by a double bass player, Alan Williams, and session guitarist Ike Isaacs (who had previously accompanied him on Braden’s Week), and together they created a laid-back, jazzy sound reminiscent of the 1950s. The song itself was somewhat risqué, its opening line a paen to the hindquarters of the female anatomy. Let’s not bandy words: ‘I love a good bum on a woman, it makes my day’ he sang. In the next line, he used this observation as the basis for an extremely erudite bit of wordplay which I only fully understood many decades later: ‘to me it is palpable proof of God’s existence a posteriori’. The song was well-received, and although its sentiments were hardly in tune with the world view of a naive, uncynical 15-year-old like myself, I was instantly hooked. I began to note down Thackray’s appearances (and even non-appearances) in my diary. Fortunately for his fans, this series of That’s Life! remains intact in the BBC’s archives, and Jake’s performances were recently extracted for inclusion on a definitive DVD collection compiling all known surviving clips of the man during his BBC career, spanning the years 1968-1985. For fans, it is a revelation, for me, remarkable to see those old That’s Life! appearances again for the first time in 47 years.

Thackray was an intriguing, enimatic figure. Self-taught in both singing and guitar playing, and strongly influenced by the French chanson tradtion (as exemplified by Jacques Brel and, more pertinently, Georges Brassens), he had begun his career whilst working as a secondary school teacher in Leeds in the mid-1960s. Gravitating to local radio, his cause was championed by a BBC producer whose influence led to his being picked up on the national network and – almost unbelievably for an artist with no professional engagements to his credit – acquiring a recording contract with EMI. His first LP, The Last Will and Testament of Jake Thackray, was recorded at Abbey Road in 1967 while the Beatles were busy in the adjoining studio working on the soundtrack of their TV film Magical Mystery Tour. The fab four quickly picked up on Thackray’s quirky, humorous songs, and it’s reported that John Lennon took a tape of them with him to Rishikesh in 1968.

Thackray’s style of songwriting actually had more in common with the observational songs of Ray Davies, but it’s safe to say his approach was entirely his own. His primary influence was Georges Brassens, a major figure in his homeland of France but vitually unknown in the UK, and it was Brassens’s style of performance, accompanying himself on a nylon-string guitar, that Jake adopted, ending up with a unique hybrid of bluff northern gallic. Lyrically, his abilities outshone his contemporaries and remain unmatched to this day. A graduate in English language and literature, Thackray’s vocabulary went way beyond that of any other popular songwriter, and his ability to dovetail words together in perfect rhyme and metre remains unsurpassed. Stylistically, he was an acquired taste, with a curious singing voice that veered between bass/baritone in one line and a light near falsetto tenor the next. Words were often spat out or bitten off, in a half-singing-half-talking manner. He was not, technically, a great singer, but he had immense warmth and humanity, his pitching was always accurate and his style sounded like no one else on earth. Bernard Braden, in his sleeve notes for Jake’s second LP, reports that his initial appearances on the show led to a significant number of letters requesting his removal. Viewer reaction soon turned around, however, and within a matter of months, Jake Thackray was a household name. Just not in our household.

1977 was something of a career renaissance for Jake, with the That’s Life! spots cannily lined up ahead of a new record release. After three studio albums and a live collection for EMI, Jake’s career had turned back to performance in the early 70s, although even in this arena, he was a reluctant star, who would baulk at the idea of appearing at a 500-seater venue, preferring the intimacy of small folk clubs and pubs. I soon located the new LP in record shops, along with a couple of others from his rapidly disappearing back catalogue. At my birthday in March ‘77, I was bought the new album, and with birthday money purchased EMI’s Very Best of Jake Thackray compilation, which afforded a useful overview of his career to date. Or, to put it another way, his career in full – very nearly.

During the 1977 run of That’s Life!, Jake appeared more than a dozen times, singing carefully chosen numbers from the new album (not all were suitable for broadcast), alongside some old favourites. Although his songs were frequently intended to amuse, I seldom found them laugh out loud funny (some of the humour went way over my head at the time), but his storytelling was unmatched, and his compositions could just as easily be lyrical and melancholic. I found I liked these songs as much as (if not better) than the more overtly comic numbers. Another aspect of Thackray’s performance that interested me was his guitar technique, a simplified variation of the standard folkie ‘clawhammer’ style, focusing heavily on bass notes. I began to practise playing in this manner, and learned some of his songs. My diary for 31 December 1977 includes the entry: ‘did Jake Thackray impression at party’. At a month or so shy of 17 I was far too young to have carried this off convincingly, and my voice nowhere near deep enough to have been as accurate as it sounded in my head, but I’d discovered a new influence. Over forty years later, the voice is still there, but has matured: I open my mouth, and out comes Thackray. It’s a little unnerving…

Back in 1978 I’m sure I fully expected Jake to be back in harness when That’s Life! returned for a new series on 14 May, but I was disappointed. He would not return to television for another three years when the BBC finally gave him his own short-lived series, Jake Thackray and Songs. It was not for want of asking. Television may have made him a star, but Jake detested appearing on the ‘flickering rectangle’, denouncing TV production types on his final album sleeve as being characterised by headphones, cheesecloth and ‘frig’, qualities which, he was happy to report, had not been present during the filming of this low-key series, shot in the intimate atmosphere of a small club.

I could have seen Jake Thackray perform live many times during the coming decade, but never did: I often spotted his name in the listings for folk clubs not far from where I was living. But by this time in his career, seeing Jake’s name on a concert bill was no guarantee of seeing the man himself, and he was beginning to acquire a reputation as a no-show. Two agents washed their hands of him, tired of the endless (if imaginative) excuses with which he explained his all too frequent non-appearances. His career was self-destructing. The recently published biography ‘Beware of the Bull’ makes for quite harrowing reading in its latter stages. A staunch Catholic, Thackray seems to have been troubled by the idea of taking pride in himself and his work, and since his Jesuit schooldays had signed off all written work with the initials ‘AMDG’: ‘Ad maiorem Dei Gloriam’ (to the Glory of God). Towards the end of his life, when approached by fans enthusing about his work, he insisted that many of his songs were, in his opinion, worthless, citing some particular concert favourites as examples. He was also a committed socialist, and his lyrics often took devastating aim at those in society who lord it over others through entitlement and privilege. His late classic song ‘the Bull’ reads almost like his manifesto as it undermines those who set themselves up in authority only to use their privileged positions to drop ‘bullshite’ on the poor ‘bleeders below’.

Jake’s final years were spent in a council flat in Monmouth, estranged from his wife, suffering from alcoholism and surviving on hand-outs from friends and well-wishers. The last photographs of him, taken close to the end of his life in 2002, depict a man unrecognisable as the chisel-featured Byronic figure of the late 60s and early 70s. In a late flowering of enthusiasm, he had been fired up with the idea of a musical production based on his works when it was put to him late the same year. Tragically, he was found dead in his flat on Christmas Eve, aged only 64.

Since then, his legacy has been kept alive by a dedicated fan network whose efforts culimated last year in the release of the aforementioned DVD. Although TV rarely showed Jake at his best (his nervousness is quite obvious at times), this is a superb overview of his career, beginning with his very first TV spot (Beryl Reid Says Good Evening, 1968) and taking in all known surviving clips from the BBC’s archive until his disappearance from the medium in the mid 1980s.

There are few artists in the world of popular music who are genuine one-offs, but Jake Thackray is one of them. He was nothing less than a genius, extradorinarily original and utterly unrepeatable.