Hey Now, Hey Now Now, Burn This Corrosion To Me: “Fire” by The Crazy World Of Arthur Brown

More so than “Born To Be Wild,” “Fire” marks the dividing line, where pop turns into rock, where psychedelia mutates into progressive, between fun for all the family and parents keep the hell out. Number one in Britain when I was four years old, it scared the shit out of me at the time. Even in a year which could already have been classified as pop in extremis – Dave Dee’s whip on “Legend Of Xanadu,” Jagger’s sympathetic Devil make-up on “Jumping Jack Flash” – Arthur Brown’s flaming colander crown and a Top Of The Pops performance of the song which appeared to show the band burning in forests of flame gave me genuine nightmares; not to mention the moment in the long-gone Vale Café in Tollcross when I accidentally pressed the wrong button on the jukebox and “I AM THE GOD OF HELLFIRE!” roared out.

Now I already had cause enough to have nightmares in 1968, for reasons with which I shan’t bore you here. It wasn’t that pleasant a year, even from my juvenile perspective. But there was enough evidence of genuine madness in that year’s mucis, or at least a delicate cutting loose of the dummy connecting some musicians to "reality." Listen to the stumbling but never less than compelling and diverting likes of 1968 records such as Syd Barrett's The Madcap Laughs or Skip Spence's Oar and you'll soon realise that, if the rhythms and cadences seem elliptical to the point of randomness, if (as appears to occur at least twice in the latter stages of Oar) the artist even seems to have fallen asleep, it's because that's how they hear the music in their head; for them the flow is smooth and logical. Listen even to the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band's 1968 album The Doughnut In Granny's Greenhouse and the aura of the genuinely unhinged which erupts through Vivian Stanshall's declamatory climax to "My Pink Half Of The Drainpipe." I could go on.

Then there was the proud tradition of pop’s showmen. It is probably significant that on the second side of the eponymous debut album by Brown’s Crazy World there are covers of Screamin’ Jay Hawkins (“I Put A Spell On You”) and his neighbour on our sixties shelves, James Brown (“I’ve Got Money”). But there was also Screaming Lord Sutch – I am certain that, had he lived, “Fire” would have been a Joe Meek production – while Alice Cooper and Iggy Pop were about to happen. Straddling the perilous line between madness and showmanship was Arthur Brown, by 1968 already a fixture at the UFO Club, who somehow got a number one single in Britain (and Canada) and a number two hit in the States, seemingly without even trying; indeed, the success of “Fire” horrified Brown so much that he never released another single.

With the benefit of hindsight, of course, I see that the TOTP performance was actually an early example of the promotional video – no doubt health and safety fears precluded Brown actually coming into the studio to do the song – that Brown’s crown was a colander with a couple of candles sticking out of the top, the flames were primitive '60s superimposed visual effects, and that his moves oddly but logically must have struck a chord with the young Freddie Mercury.

But how does any of this explain the song’s American impact? It is logical that Brown should have been signed to Track Records and that “Fire”’s Kit Lambert production and Pete Townshend executive production squares a particularly awkward commercial circle. But, in a year which looked like everything everybody cared for was going to be, or was being, destroyed, “Fire” must have seemed like nothing less than a declaration of war, Townshend’s auto-destructive art school training come to socio-political realisation. On the album the song is preceded by a nervy “Prelude” and a solemn/squeaking poem recitation in which Brown observes the world, and ultimately himself, starting to burn. Does the song speak of revolution in the year of attempted revolution ("You fought hard and you saved and earned/But all of it's going to burn"), or is he singing about nuclear annihilation, or is it simply a sexual metaphor? As Brown attains his climactic howl over Vincent Crane's Phantom Of The Locarno ascending organ and suddenly invents Deep Purple (even if, remarkably, there are no guitars on the record), we realise that this most awkward Pandora’s box called The Seventies has just been opened up. His is the howl of dreaded triumph.

Coming from Whitby, as Brown did, “Fire” clearly presages Goth. But it is also one of many expressions of the subtext of 1968 music, namely to go to extremes as and how it can. Think of Barry Ryan’s hysterical “Eloise” (of which “Fire” reminds me greatly), of Julie Driscoll and Brian Auger’s equally frightening “This Wheel’s On Fire,” of that other Dylan mutation, Hendrix’s “All Along The Watchtower,” of the explosive extremes in which 1968 free jazz indulged (just a little down our sixties shelf from Arthur Brown is Peter Brötzmann’s Machine Gun, while saxophonist George Khan, a pivot of Westbrook’s Release, would appear prominently on the second Crazy World album, not to mention in Brown’s subsequent group Kingdom Come. And then there was Michael Mantler and the Jazz Composer’s Orchestra with their May 1968 manifesto for revolution – play the majestic “Communication #10,” featuring the late Roswell Rudd, for confirmation). In the meantime, Family’s Music In A Doll’s House was a subtler and possibly more radical take on the Brown/”Fire” template.

Ultimately, of course, it took The Prodigy, with "Firestarter," to resuscitate Brown’s showbiz duende. Unlike so many of these recent number two hits, however, there is no way in which “Fire” could be enjoyed by people of all ages. Much, much more than a Dr Demento-friendly novelty, it is cackling while it tells the silent majority to go screw itself.

Date Record Made Number Two: 19 October 1968

Number Of Weeks At Number Two: 1

Record At Number One: “Hey Jude” by The Beatles

UK Chart Position: 1

Other Information: Ronnie Wood reckons that he played bass on "Fire" but while he certainly appeared on a Crazy World BBC Radio One session, there is no bass guitar on the actual record - it's Brown on vocals, Vincent Crane on organ/bass pedals/R&B showband brass arrangement and Drachen Theaker at the drums (who was presently replaced by Carl Palmer).

In 1966-7 Brown was temporarily a member of a group called The Ramong Sound who eventually mutated into The Foundations. "Build Me Up, Buttercup" indeed.