Base Camp Journal: Quadrophenia and Bowie
Robby and I returned to Brighton for several days, and we managed to get the perfect choice of pitch at the CMC site, in a quiet area.
We found more places to go drinking, besides the cluster of bars between the pier and Kemp Town. Between the CMC site and Legends, there are at least half a dozen independent pubs and bars a couple of streets uphill of the promenade.
Just down the road from the Co-Op, there is the Daddy Long Legs bar, which sells nice cocktails, but is relatively expensive. We also came aross the Loose Shirt Brewing Co., operating in a small industrial unit next to the old gas reservoir.
But these days I’m very seldom drunk after 12 glasses of double G+T, or even 12 pints of whatever. I just find alcohol headache-inducing after a few glasses, so the weekly excesses of pub-quality gin aren't as enjoyable as they used to be. Lager definitely isn't my thing, because it's like getting bloated on soft drink. Maybe I'm getting too old for it. Maybe I should drink wine instead.
We spent a night going from bar to bar anyway, watching the drag artists that happened to be performing - it’s not usually my cup of tea. The Ru Paul stuff is too bland and corporate-friendly, though I think it’s a good thing that it’s in the mainstream, and I think the non-corporate scene needs more variety of substance, with a stronger dose of stand-up comedy.
Quadrophenia Alley
You're probably wondering what Quadrophenia and David Bowie have to do with our stay in Brighton. Or perhaps you already know.
Quadrophenia is one of Robby's favourite movies. I, myself, only saw it for the first time some months ago. Some of the iconic scenes of the movie were filmed in Brighton, in places that were instantly recognisable - the fight on the beach and in the street between the mods and the bikers, and the hotel where Sting's character worked.
One of the locations featured several times in the movie came to be known as 'Quadrophenia Alley', a very narrow gap between two buildings. Most people walk past the alley, oblivious to its existence.
The alley is now something of a shrine to Quadrophenia fans, and plastered with graffiti and stickers for various mod groups, bands and Internet radio stations. Unfortunately the alley does reek of piss - maybe it did in 1979 - and a rust-covered steel door, at the end of the alley, replaced the original.
There is actually a small shop adjacent to Quadrophenia Alley, of the same name, which sells Quadrophenia-related merchandise and clothing. One could also buy the same to Damon Albarn wore in the Park Life video.
A five minute walk along the promenade is the Grand Hotel, where it was discovered, near the end of the movie, that Sting's character worked as a hotel attendant (sorry for the spoiler). The lobby appears very much the same as it did then.
Beachy Head
The final scene of Quadrophenia was filmed at Beachy Head, with Phil Daniels' character riding Sting's moped off a cliff, just above a red and white lighthouse. This location is right next to Eastbourne, roughly a 30 minute drive from Brighton. And, yes, the lighthouse is still there, and the exact spot where the scene was filmed is marked, it appears, by a rectangular clearing in the grass.
Roughly a year later after Quadrophenia was filmed, the music video for David Bowie's Ashes to Ashes was filmed on the beach below, maybe within a few hundred metres of the light house. A close friend of a close friend of mine, Steve Strange (of Visage), was one of the people walking in front of the JCB, alongside Bowie. The path down to that beach had long eroded away in the 40-odd years since.
There were quite a few tourists along the two mile stretch Robby and I walked from the car park to the other lighthouse. A few of them were sitting dangerously close to the edge of the cliffs - dangerous not because one might fall (or jump) off, though there's nothing to prevent that, but because large sections of the cliffs occasionally fall away in large sections.