Humphrey Astley meets the eccentric, pyromaniac 60s legend Arthur Brown

Singer, rocker, raconteur, performance artist, collaborator extraordinaire – they don’t make them like Arthur Brown anymore.

The good news is that the self-styled ‘God of Hellfire’ – known for his bands The Crazy World of Arthur Brown and Kingdom Come, and his links to Hawkwind, The Who and Frank Zappa – is still going strong after 50 years. And now he’s bringing his brand new show to Oxford’s Cellar club.

An Evening with Arthur Brown is the first part of an autobiographical multimedia tour-de-force telling Brown’s story via music, dance, puppetry and animation, and promises to feature exactly the kind of bizarre and outrageous anecdotes that have made him a legend.

Indeed, considering that interviews with Arthur regularly run to six pages, this unique and intimate show is guaranteed to be very popular with hardcore fans – and to blow the minds of newcomers.

The narrative arc of the show is a rite-of-passage odyssey based on a hitch-hiking trip Brown undertook at the tender age of 17. In it he encounters demons, soldiers, police, beatniks, bishops and musicians. It is, says Brown, “a true story where events from the past and the future are interwoven and populated with figures from different realms.”

And while we can’t reveal too many details at this stage, we're given to understand that story highlights may include the time Brown’s band torched the French Mafia's club in Spain, and the night he spent with Jimi Hendrix's girlfriend.

Brown will be joined on stage by the extravagant Angel Fallon, who assists in telling the story by singing, dancing and putting on costumes and roles.

It sounds like a truly genre-defying spectacle, and I wonder if audiences are ready for it.

One of the first things I put to Brown, then, is that his fans are clearly up to a challenge – but are they up to this?

“The kind of shows that are not just straightforward gigs can be challenging,” he says down the phone with the wind whistling in the background, “But although it is challenging, it's entertainment!

“Everybody loves stories,” he continues, “and you kind of tell yourself your own story – that's how you become who you are.”

Is this a story he’s been wanting to tell for a long time? He does, after all, have decades to draw on. His answer is suitably enigmatic: “It’s a story that a lot of people suggested I might begin to tell. Such wonderful and strange things have happened. I didn’t really want to write it in the normal way yet, though I probably will in the end.”

So it sounds like Arthur Brown may one day add ‘author’ to his list of expertise. Were there any books that inspired him when writing the new show? Turns out I get more than I bargained for when asking about his literary influences, as he reels off quite a list: “Oh yes . . . Ulysses . . . Herman Hesse’s great spiritual epic, Siddartha . . . all the English poets: Keats, Yeats, Coleridge . . . Dylan Thomas, of course . . . Terry Pratchett’s Discworld . . .’ He even throws in The Goon Show.

But enough about the classics – does he pay any attention to the modern pop world, and if so what does he think of it?

“I have myself a fairly young band, so I’m kept up to date with a lot of what’s going on.

“It’s a difficult period because if you’re a musician trying to make a living off it, it’s very hard. The records are not making the money they used to.”

He’s no pessimist, though, and neither is he a Luddite: “At the same time, you can’t stop people being creative. There’s a lot of exciting stuff going on – a lot of new electronica is really good, and hip-hop’s divided into 70,000 different wonderful styles. Then there’s the uptaking of all the new folk.”

I agree there’s a lot of inspiring stuff around at the moment, but the next name he mentions is not necessarily one I’m expecting: “I was even listening to Taylor Swift the other day, and I thought some of her lyrics were reasonably penetrating,” he says. “I was quite surprised!”

But we needn’t live in fear of an Arthur Brown cover of Shake It Off – in fact the show sounds like it includes just the right mix of Brown classics, old and new. “There are some that are original to the show, and one or two from albums I’ve done. Some rousing ones, and some gentle ones too, and one new one about a political situation.”

A political situation? “I’m down here in Lewes trying to stop them from tearing down all the old warehouses where the artists work – so there’s a song about that.”

Sounds like we can add ‘activist’ to that list as well...

CHECK IT OUT
An Evening with Arthur Brown is at The Cellar, Oxford, on Saturday.
Tickets from arthurbrownmusic.com