PASCAL's KEVIN COYNE HOME PAGE

Kevin Coyne: New London Theatre, Drury Lane

Miles, NME, 1973 (as Tim Penn pointed out: can't be '73, most probably 1975 actually)

Without doubt one of the most powerful presentations I’ve ever attended. When it was over Kevin was drained, his band was drained, the audience was drained. We sat dazed in a sort of silence after he staggered back on stage to say he couldn’t possibly do an encore because he was too shattered.

It was close, a dangerously close brush with reality. Kevin gives it everything he’s got, he throws his whole being into it, working his way there with black humour and some dynamite rock ‘n’ roll.

Some of the audience succumbed; they looked awfully pale at the finish and some crept away to vomit in the middle when he got to the line about "Stamping on his mother’s eyes like they were jellyfish." That was when the guy behind me muttered "Oh Gawd!" And went very quiet.

It opened in darkness. A stream of Kevin’s rambling poetry on tape while he and his wife crept on stage. She sat at a nice little greasy-spoon café-type table ideal for eating egg and chips and stuff, laid with a knife and fork (the former of which she sometimes brandished in his direction) and whiskey and beer.

When he got too loud his lady wife put her hands over her ears.

Kevin shambled about the stage in brothel creepers and wore the band’s outfit of ill-fitting dark grey evening-dress.

His first actual word on stage was "bugger."

He played guitar, using his thumb as barre but strumming the chords in a very sensitive manner. It was very effective. Most of the time he just stood and delivered his lyrics.

He just tells you straight and it’s very heavy stuff. There’s no holding back from reality with Coyne. It’s all there – depression, suicide, the violence of the slums, violence in human relations, the lack of parental love, parents beating up their kids, getting drunk, trying to forget, impossible to forget, booze, scum, snot (which ran down his face), spit (which he did, on the floor), illness… and love.

The kind of guy who might just piss on the audience, if he thought it might help them understand.

The kind of man who can write ‘Sunday Morning Sunrise’, a powerfully stated love song to his wife, sung straight up, no need for strings.

His voice is amazing. It’s like Beefheart singing Oscar Wilde. His range is huge. He cuts up words, even notes sometimes, very subtle, jazz-influenced, but usually singing straight out, with pain and feeling and sweat.

His group are splendid (to borrow a word from Her Majesty). Andy Summers stands like a corpse, playing stark bare-boned licks. Zoot Money, the ol’ Raver, still grinning and pounding the keyboards, and waving his arms around, pirhouetting and sending chords and notes that cut like razor blades scattering into the audience.

Steve Thompson is the original heartbeat bass player – no messing about – and Peter Woolf can depth-charge and roll with unspeakable evil on the drums.

The classic ‘House On The Hill’ was for me the peak of the evening. It was almost too much. Maybe he was really crying. Coyne worked for four years in a psychiatric hospital and knows what it’s really like.

He told the truth and it wiped everyone out.