davywavy | The majesty of rock, The royalty of roll.

People who've known me for a while might remember Jack Lewis. In fact, I'd be a bit disappointed if they'd forgotten him.

I created Jack about ten years ago as a joke character. An unreconstructed 80's big-hair rocker too stupid to realise that the world had moved on, tastes had changed and his time in the sun was over, he was a good medium for telling off-colour jokes and long, pointless, stream-of-consciousness anecdotes about life on the road.
His dream was to get the band back together and go back on tour. He'd written a comeback album, you see, and it was going to be huge. It was called Back from the dead.*
Of course, he consistently failed in this due to a mixture of his own imbecilic ineptitude and the fact that the rest of the band had moved on and got on with their lives ("Then there was our drummer, Bald Billy. We called him Bald Billy 'cos he had a full head of hair! Heh, we was wild in them days, wild. I looked him up the other day. He's a bank manager now, wiv a wife an' two kids. Oh, and all his hair's fallen out. Funny old world, innit?").
After a few years I got bored of Jack and discarded him, but he's got one of those personae which I can still lapse into if I think it might get a few laughs or someone else to go to the bar.
There were a number of inspirations for him. There was the time I ran into several members of NWOBHM band Saxon in a pub and spent an hour or two being told how they were getting the band back together and going back on the road (this was in 1989. I'm still waiting). There was the time I spent an evening propping up the bar in a Manchester nighclub with Ian Gillan, being told how he was getting the band back together and going back on the road (although to his credit he subsequently did just that). Probably the biggest influence on me in Jack's creation were the grandfathers of spoof-rock, Spinal Tap, who skewered the pomposity, absurdity, optimism and pathos of 80's heavy metal better than anyone else.

As it happens I was reading a piece in the paper on the way home the other night about Spinal Tap's latest reunion and one-night-world-tour. Apparently they've got a new album out.
It's called Back from the dead.

I can't say how much this pleases me.

^{*This is why the title of my bio page is 'Back from the dead'; it's a little hat-tip to Jack.}