Gambon

Usually i don’t give a toss about actors but i just read that Gambon died and it’s worth recording that at a certain age ( around the same time i saw Black flag, read burroughs for the first time, heard the stooges and the velvets, understood what Marianne Faithful was really about etc) I also saw him play Lear.. I still remember it as clear as a bell today .

I must have read the play countless times in the learning process before i saw him in the production and bang it was like an atomic bomb of the senses.. not only did i get my head around the play in the one sitting he helped me think about aging properly for the first time in my life , what betrayal really means, families and so on and so forth. Seeing him as Lear was the same for me as the first time i flipped over the 7″ of Pretty Vacant to listen to some song called No Fun.

To be honest i never engaged with plot of the singing detective but the soundtrack slayed me.. still the best soundtrack ever.. the englishness of the versions chosen lived in my head for years.. i could never find a vinyl version, eventually 15-20 years later icame across a cassette that i played till it literally fell apart . Thankyou Gambon you were one of them that actually mattered