(Colin Irwin visits the strange world of TYMON DOGG, former Paul McCartney protégé, Clash sidekick, and enemy of Safeway People. Pic by Tom Sheehan.)
Tymon bounces towards the pub with the all the uninhibited eagerness of a puppy dog off on its first encounter with Barbara Woodhouse. He's full of wide-eyed excitement and curiosity, gleefully observing everything around him; he waves across the road at a house where he once lived as a squatter and recounts one bizarre anecdote after another at bewildering speed, regaling me with a huge infectious grin whenever I look totally baffled.
At best he's regarded as a likeable eccentric; at worst a totally incomprehensible weirdo. Typically Tymon just shrugs and sees nothing weird or eccentric in the mirror – the rest of the world's just out of sync, that's all.
Nobody can pin him down. He's been compared to Bowie, Iggy Pop, Tom Verlaine, The Incredible String Band, Jonathon Richman, and Yes (!), a motley enough assortment to prove that the man's a one-off, grooving with blissful individuality along a path beyond the realms of fantasy of most pop musicians. It hasn't made him rich or famous, and I can't honestly see that it will ever do, but it makes the scene a radically more colourful place and in an age of unprecedented musical complacency, that makes him priceless.
"Whenever I've been to record companies in the last six years", he says in wonder, "they've just kind of scratched their heads and said 'you must be joking… we're here to make money, not music, sonny'".
Clearly he gave up trying to fathom the vagaries of the record industry long ago.
Yet Tymon Dogg has made an LP. It's called "Battle of Wills", it's on Dick O' Dell's Y label, and you are unconditionally recommended to make its acquaintance. Certainly it's unusual – Tymon wails in a totally unique vibrato frenzy while scraping fiddle with the kind of spirit that Custer employed at Little Big Horn.
Around him the percussion charges around him like rampaging redskins, a volley of tables giving the whole thing an incongruous Indian flavour that makes the LP wilder than ever.
But… beyond the initially disconcerting waywardness of the performance hover songs of rare depth and beauty. Songs like the entrancing "Once You Know" and the heartbreaking "Sirens"; the jauntily vicious "Safeway People" and "Legal Thief"; the intriguingly captivating "Locks & Bolts & Hinges".
They're not easy songs – and while his direct attack on society's apathy in "Safeway People" is pretty self-evident, his other targets are shrouded in an odd poetic allusion that even Tymon himself finds difficult to explain.
What motivates you to write Tymon?
"You mean what gives me the audacity to think that somebody else might be interested in what I'm doing?"
Well, I wouldn't put it quite like that.
"I would. There's no such grabbing at people's time and attention that I do feel very conscious of what I'm supposed to grabbing their attention for. Obvious everything is dispensable because time by its nature is dispensable, and I'm very aware that everybody's time is important. I don't want them to spend time unraveling some hype that's there for the sake of putting them nearer to the poverty line.
"You probably get most of your records sent to you but it's quite a thing when you run out and buy a record, a big thing. And then you get it home and you get the idea that this person has treated you like you're some kind of unit… you're sitting in your house and realize this person has compromised their ideals for the purpose of grabbing more status from you…"
He shakes his head sadly and takes a rare breath. You get the picture of the sort of character we're dealing with here?
I first met Tymon a couple of years ago when he played an astonishing set at a sweaty folk club, at a time when he felt the folk scene offered a genuine alternative. He specifically asked that our subsequent interview be featured on the MM's folk page (now deceased) not because he felt he was in any way a folk musician (the fact that he's acoustically orientated and plays fiddle is purely coincidental) but more out of a natural empathy with the underdog. He actively admired the folk scene because it had become so unfashionable and detached from rock circles. He also calmly dropped the fact that he'd bumped into the Clash (old chums of his) on a recent excursion to New York, had played his fiddle for Mick Jones in his hotel room, and a couple days later found himself installed in a studio playing with the Clash. He even played me a tape of one of the songs from that session – "Lose This Skin".
A little later that song – with Tymon singing – turned up on the Clash's "Sandinista" album, and a couple more of his songs were subsequently covered by Ellen Foley. This, I thought triumphantly, must be the big one for Tymon. He'd had other shots before (including a time, long ago, when he was a protégé of Paul McCartney, but he doesn't like to talk about it – personal history is a no go area as far as he's concerned). But with the Clash connection? Surely he'd be signed up for a huge fee by some bright A & R chappie and it would be country mansions all the way. No?
"No. There were one or two offers, but record companies were still very suspicious of me, which in a way is quite healthy because it didn't shift any emphasis from my own band and I didn't want to make it on somebody's else name.
"There are a lot of Clash fans who like the Clash for a lot of different reasons and one of them isn't so they can hear Tymon Dogg. And when I worked with them it was at a time when they were looking for other influences. Mick and Joe particularly liked that song on a personal level – in a way I think as a counterpoint for the kind of songs they're known for".
He subsequently recorded an eight-minute version of "Once You Know" with the Clash and put out a single of his own version of "Lose This Skin", but didn't bother to court the fame which should logically have followed his little enterprise with Joe and the boys.
In fact he drifted off to the States for a while again (where he supported among others, The Cramps) and returned to work on his solo album – basically his first, although there was one modest home-produced effort he made several years ago when he was a hippie (or at least looked like one).
Not that he's got a downer on being a star…
"It's just that I feel I'm harnessed to a vision of… I suppose of being able to be myself in an industry where I'm constantly told you can't do it. But I'm the one I've got to be with.
"I listened to the Top 40 the other day on the radio – I'm not some elitist who only gets records out of a record library, I'm very interested in the common denominator of what excites people – and I kinda noticed this whole approach… the highly suggestive lyric and all that. And I thought, 'Well, if people are looking for that sort of thing they must be very disappointed with my stuff'.
"And people have top struggle to keep up with this dynamic image being thrown at them in these phony four-minute videos. Obviously I get quite a lot of support because of that and that outweighs the glory that can be achieved by doing it the other way."
It sounds like the perfect case for the radical underground hero, but Tymon disagrees. He feels his musical approach is perfectly natural and isn't consciously perverse or idiosyncratic in his style at all.
"I don't want to seem like some sort of alternative. I'm doing it in what seems to be the most sane way of being a songwriter. It's a lot more sane than harnessing myself to a flagging rock 'n' roll blast.
"Of course, there's the whole money thing as well. You know, when I reach in my pocket and it's empty and I've got to think about eating, you know? I can understand what causes people to compromise the way they do and I don't particularly want to impose restrictions or judge anybody.
"So much of my work has been… well, as far as the pop machine is concerned it's been suppressed. But that also means it's been able to grow at it's own pace out of inspiration. I've never had to churn it out to meet a contractual demand. That's probably why the songs sound weird.
"I don't want to assume more integrity than anybody but I sure hope that when it came to a point where the situation was happening then I would have the honesty to see what was going on and stop at that point."
I ask if he hopes to influence anybody with his renegade music and his questioning lyrics.
"At most I hope to remind them of something they already know. I think that's one of the points of any artistic expression.
"It's also to find your limitations. That's why I respect a band like the Clash because they expose their limitations all the time so that when they've possibly failed they haven't withdrawn."
It should also be noted that Tymon Dogg thinks Boy George has a "pleasant, warm voice", thinks Randy Crawford has a "beautiful voice" and claims a fondness for the music of Duran Duran.
"I try not to be bigoted", he says, and disappears into the sunset grinning widely.
January 8th, 1983 - Tymon Time Again - By Colin Irwin
