In an occasional series focusing on unlikely names that have finally become cool, JON ‘MOJO’ MILLS talks with PETE ATKIN about 1971 and Driving Through Mythical America, his second album and a true lost classic if ever there was one.


E


ven today there are a number of artists that don’t want to fit in the box. Their choice of clothing and general demeanour may not equate to


everybody’s ideal notion of rock star. When guitars are loud they favour the piano, when hair is generally worn long, they wear it short. Indeed, these are the ladies and gents and singers and groups that by default don’t really want to conform. Perhaps there’s more of a place for them in 2009 with the ironic “nerdy cool” brigade, but in 1970 if you didn’t conform you just weren’t the norm! Pete Atkin is one such character – a rather


nerdish, bespectacled, gifted academic who teamed up with fellow student Clive James (yes, that one) to write skittish songs whilst at Cambridge University in the mid-60s. As members of The Cambridge Footlights the pair rubbed shoulders with many future luminaries, including The Monty Python boys, and entertained like-minded people with their wit, wisdom and humour. By 1970, with James’ challenging lyrics and Atkin’s melodies, which


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borrowed liberally from show tunes, jazz, folk and rock, the unlikely duo recorded debut album Beware Of The Beautiful Stranger for Fontana. Kenny Everett at Radio One loved it and gave the opening track plenty of airplay, but the record buying public were less forthcoming. 1971 gave birth to a second album Driving


Through Mythical America, which this writer rates as their best due to its timeless quality, and conversely how well it sits in with time pieces Forever Changes, Happy Sad and Bryter Later. The wealth of UK session heavies, primarily consisting of members of Blue Mink and star players like Chris Spedding, gave the literary lyrics and Atkin’s doleful vocals a dose of incredibly subtle hipness. In fact, in 2009 this might just sound like the “coolest record ever” ticking all of the right boxes for bearded crate diggers to have an epiphany… funky drumming, tick; far out fuzzy guitar parts, tick; quintessentially mannered English vocals, tick; a touch of the barouque, tick; a cinematic feel, tick… but who really got it other than music journos at the time of its release? Very few.


I’m sure I wished I was trendy, but I had no idea of how to do


anything about it


So what does the inimitable Pete Atkin


have to say about the assumption of being “too cool to be square”? “I think I always felt I was uncool, or at least


I never felt that I was actually cool – a subtle but important distinction, if such distinctions can ever be said to be important. In practice ‘trendy’ or ‘untrendy’ is probably the distinction we would have made at the time, although I guess that’s not really the same thing. Maybe the difference is that ‘trendiness’ is something you can aspire to, while ‘cool’ is something you either have or don’t. You can certainly be both ‘trendy’ and ‘uncool’, as many surviving photos of people from the late ’60s and early ’70s bear witness. “Either way, if I was ever going to be


thought of as ‘cool’ it was going to have to be via a route other than fashion. As one of the ones who was not naturally sporty at school, I used to hope to ingratiate myself with my peers and avoid being beaten up by the sporty ones by a reputation for ‘mucking about’ with pop music. (‘Pop music’ in the early ’60s was an all- embracing term that had not yet separated off


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