Issue 2024-085

10

Béla Alabástrom

By way of a preface, full and immediate disclosure (as you may already have intuited from the rating): Cocoon is one of my favourite albums of all time, a status that the passage of time has only cemented, not diminished.

I first had the privilege of seeing Peter Jones play live at Summer's End in Chepstow in 2016. I had purchased the tickets for the weekend solely for the sake of IQ (in my fledgling days as a festival-goer focusing on a single band). One of my friends urged me not to miss Tiger Moth Tales. I am so glad I followed her advice. Peter is quite simply a breathtakingly gifted musician and songwriter, a virtuoso keyboard player, guitarist and saxophonist. I doubt an instrument has been devised by humankind, which he could not excel at playing. He also has an exceptionally beautiful singing voice. With such manifold and manifest talents, Peter is in great demand and has collaborated and performed with a huge number of bands, from Magenta and Big Big Train to Forgotten Gods.

There is a small number of bands I will travel great distances to see and who could with some justification regard me as their own private videographer. Tiger Moth Tales was the first of these. It took me until they played at The Northcourt in Abingdon in October 2023 for me to muster the courage to actually speak to Peter, but I am delighted that I did, as he is so kind-hearted. I had filmed him singing Ripples at Loreley earlier in the year when he had been playing with Cyan, covering for a technical glitch, his impromptu performance entrancing the crowd. It remains one of the most popular videos on my YouTube channel and I wanted to let him know how well viewed it was and how much I appreciated his wonderful music.

At the recent appearance at De Boerderij (like many prog fans in Europe, I consider it my second home), Peter consulted the audience as to their favourite album by Tiger Moth Tales. "Cocoon!" came the predictable reply. "Why did I bother writing the other seven?" he quipped. Yet, as Return To Chigwick, the new song on the 10th anniversary edition demonstrates, Peter has positively embraced the album's position in the prog pantheon (unlike Ridley Scott's attitude towards Blade Runner, where he seems to harbour resentment that one of his earlier works is considered his most ground-breaking). He celebrates the fact that A Visit To Chigwick opened so many doors and brought him so many fans who have loyally followed him over the past decade. Listening to it transports me instantly to the many venues I have seen him play in either with the solo version of the Tiger Moth Tales repertoire or with the full band (or indeed with Camel and with Cyan at Loreley).

What makes Tiger Moth Tales so very special is Peter's ability to take the simplest and seemingly most ordinary aspects of everyday life, such as the song of a blackbird, things we often barely notice or take completely for granted, and reveal their innate beauty and how miraculous and precious they truly are. Nobody in prog does uplifting better than Peter Jones. He is the light contrasting with IQ's shade (and, for the record, I love both).

Cocoon opens with the sound of a cassette being inserted into a player and the button pressed to start the tape spooling. This is just one instance of how deftly and evocatively soundscapes are used throughout, particularly in the quartet of short tracks named after the seasons, with bleating sheep, birdsong and the buzzing of bees encapsulating spring, the chimes of an ice cream van (and the tune we Brits will always associate with the Cornetto advert), more birdsong, the sound of waves breaking on the shore and seagulls for summer, firework displays, the crowds at Bonfire Night, a brass band, geese migrating and leaves being scuffed for autumn and the gentle tinkling of sleigh bells, carols (Silent Night), the crunch of walking through deep snow, children playing and the pealing of church bells to call the faithful to Midnight Mass. This is pure prog genius.

In a series of videos on the defining characteristics of prog, Andy Edwards (formerly of IQ and a large number of other projects, including Rain) lists certain features, many of which are epitomised by 'Cocoon'. It is replete with what Andy terms "the English aesthetic". The abridged version, as applied to Cocoon: non-love song subject, drawing on the literary tradition of England, including the limericks of Edward Lear. Although there are no direct literary allusions on the album, the whimsical, humorous and slightly eccentric qualities of Lear are definitely present. Cocoon evokes the England not of the sprawling anonymous and hostile housing estates, abandoned supermarket trolleys upended in canals, the inequality and deprivation which blight so many lives, but the green and pleasant land of the collective cultural imagination. A safe and comforting environment steeped in a warm glow of nostalgia. Indeed, the original title Peter had for the album (as he explains in the companion piece to the 10th anniversary edition, Inside The Cocoon) was Progressive Childhood. Whereas it does not have the same ring to it as Cocoon, it does convey something of the essence of the album. Cocoon has connotations of something spectacular about to emerge, something in the process of development, enfolded safe and warm within a protective casing as it mutates. Progressive Childhood encompasses the autobiographical elements (and I recall reading somewhere that many prog fans use Cocoon to introduce their children and grandchildren to the genre) and some of the contents, but it is slightly misleading in that it suggests that the appeal might be restricted to children, or that it might be childish in some way, whereas it is child-like in the best sense of the word: not viewing the world through jaded, cynical eyes, but with the fresh open-mindedness and innocence of a child. This goes a long way to accounting for its timeless quality and the lasting love it inspires.

What could be more quintessentially British (I use this advisedly, as it was also woven into the fabric of the childhoods of those of us belonging to one of the other nations in the UK) than the immortal phrase: "Are you sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin", first uttered on the airwaves on January 16th 1950 in Listen With Mother courtesy of that most British of institutions, the BBC? Peter's voice as he delivers it at the beginning of The Isle Of Witches is far less soothing, deliberately so given the cautionary tale which subsequently unfolds. Inside The Cocoon includes an excerpt from the original recording of the song, written by Peter when he was 11 or 12. It is perhaps the proggiest version of all and demonstrates beyond doubt that prog has always been in his musical DNA.

When I first heard Tiger Moth Tales in Chepstow, The First Lament was the piece that had the greatest emotional impact, with one of what surely must rank among the ultimate guitar solos tugging at my heartstrings. My partner was blown away by Tigers In The Butter, with the sitar and the tiger's muffled growling conjuring up exotic faraway landscapes in the mind's eye with the same almost magical power as books, precisely as intended.

In common with many other Mothingtons, one of my favourites on the album is The Merry Vicar, a rollicking prog classic guaranteed to stir even the most apathetic audience to sing along. Peter shows off another of his talents with great relish in the live version: he has the best manic laugh in the business. The swelling grandeur of the church organ coupled with the infectious drum beat, the jazzy keyboards interlude, the glorious combination of the self-deprecatingly grandiloquent, deliberately parodying prog's excesses, and the cosy coalesce into a unique and uniquely appealing masterpiece.

The Merry Vicar also showcases Peter's gifts as a lyricist. Many years ago, I read extravagant praise of the rhyme in The Police's Wrapped Around Your Finger: "I will listen hard to your tuition, You will see it come to its fruition". For me, this is easily surpassed by: "But is it right for a vicar to use a word like wazzock? And spend his time in stitches, When he should be in his cassock!" Pure genius! And in the lines which immediately follow, Peter so elegantly and subtly captures that most English of traits: grumbling in private while showing deference in public: "Is it right and proper for a gentleman of the cloth? One day he'll come a cropper, But until that day our hats we'll doff".

And so to A Visit to Chigwick. Even if this had been the only song Peter had ever written, I would have ranked him among the greats of prog on the strength of it. The beautiful simplicity of the lyrics is deceptive in that it deals with complex and timeless themes, the painful transition from childhood to the responsibilities of adulthood and the accompanying sense of loss (and often of feeling lost). A yearning which can often be unbearable when the demands of the daily grind fill us with stress and overwhelm us with helplessness and bleakness. It evokes nostalgia without wallowing self-pityingly in the past, speaking powerfully to the soul, harking back to the days when we only had three TV channels, no internet, no video games, no social media, when we collectively bonded through Watch with Mother.

Musical quotations from the trilogy of children's programmes, Trumpton, Chigley and Camberwick Green, of which both Peter and the Mothingtons have fond memories, effortlessly transport us back to more carefree days when we did not have to worry about final reminders dropping through the letterbox. What Peter shows with the utmost clarity is something that, as children, we would not have grasped: this was an idealised (some would say sanitised) depiction of an orderly and decent society, with no poverty or exclusion, no outcasts, everyone knowing their place and co-existing in harmony. No disruption, no vandalism, no discontent, a pristine vision of pastoral perfection, ducks swimming in the park, the simple pleasures which make living worthwhile. This truly is a child's view of the world, uncorrupted, but oh, how bitter that it can never be recaptured!

As Peter puts it: "I never knew that place, Born much too late, in a different time, Why does it make me sad? How can you miss what you never had? Was there ever such a place? Is there a way we can go back in time to the quiet little town in my mind?" Although it is a definite reach-for-the-paper-tissues song, it is not depressing, quite the opposite, as the ending makes clear: "One day, we'll ride that train, One day we'll go, walking in the green, Troubles seldom seen, Sleep safe and warm until another fine day". Ultimately, through our many choices and small acts of kindness, we as adults have the power to transform that childhood ideal into a reality rather than eternally mourning the loss of what never existed. Utterly sublime.

Given the reception enjoyed by A Visit To Chigwick, it seems only fitting that the 10th anniversary edition of the album should contain the bonus track, Return To Chigwick, as a postscript (but no mere afterthought), chronicling the incredible trajectory Peter has subsequently experienced as a result of the fierce affection Chigwick has inspired amongst Mothingtons. Very wisely, he did not attempt to write a sequel in the traditional sense, but focused on the song's phenomenal and life-changing impact. Cocoon's resounding success and status as a beloved and cherished modern classic has dispelled Peter's initial trepidation about writing a prog album being "an exercise in pointlessness". All lovers of prog can be thankful that the pop songs did not flow and that Peter had the courage to be true to himself.