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Eddy Says
Eddy Says: An open love letter to Tom Bellamy (via John Farnham)
By Eddy Temple-Morris | Published on Monday 15 February 2010
This week, I mostly lied. It didn’t feel good, but I was forced into a position where I had to. My other half, professionally, Tom Bellamy will be 30 years of age this week. In order to mark this unprecedented event in his life, several members of his family had organised a surprise party last weekend, at his parent’s home, the legendary ‘Bellamy Towers’ in Winnersh, Berkshire.
This is where Tom and his sister grew up, since his dad moved down the M4 from Wales and didn’t make it as far as London. Wise, I think. It’s the venue for untold post-gig parties and drinking sessions. It has a ‘booze fridge’. It also has a pool table. And a TV the size of an average London studio apartment.
My job was to DJ at the party, which meant planning a set of ‘Tom Tunes’ – 80s Mullet metal, 90s indie and dance – without letting on to Tom himself about the upcoming surprise. I’m really awful at lying, so if I do it there has to be a bloody good reason. And there must be an element of truth to it, or it just doesn’t work… I fracture, visibly, under the pressure.
So, there I was, last week, getting texts from ex-Cooper Temple Clause band members, Tom’s old friends, downloading all the ‘Tom tunes’, and it was so much fun, despite having to keep it all hidden. I told Tom I was downloading hair metal and 90s classics for a friend’s wedding I’d been booked to play, in Ireland. (I don’t know why I said Ireland; the randomness of that lie just seemed appropriate to throw him off the scent of a surprise party).
The 90s doesn’t seem like that far back, but bugger me, time has flown by so fast that it’s seriously retro now. I was downloading tunes that kids today have never heard of, and probably never will. Dodgy, Shed 7, Blueboy; Toms weaknesses are many and varied.
One of the many things I love Tom for is his boundless optimism and resoluteness. His workmanlike, Welsh sense of ‘keep calm and carry on’. This is embodied by one tune: John Farnham’s ‘You’re The Voice’. I know nothing about John Farnham. I know he had a mullet. I know he was Australian, and that this song is practically the Aussie national anthem. The aussies reflect Tom’s and my upbeatness, that’s why I’ve always loved them so much. They are an insanely optimistic race and this power ballad really sums that all up for me.
I had to relocate my studio set up, decks and mixer to Berkshire, but it was worth it. When he walked into his sitting room, expecting nothing but a bowl of salty snacks and some smiles from his immediate family, but instead got all his nearest and dearest friends, family from Wales, balloons, one of his favourite DJs playing the Welsh National Anthem mixed with John Farnham, it was quite a moment. A priceless mixture of shock, love and anger.
The evening went well, from my point of view, although the carpet, or its owners, may have reservations. It was especially great seeing Tom’s face light up as I played, with help from Kieron and Ben from Coopers and a few friends who stepped into the breach, hit after hit from Tom’s mental All Time Top 100: Deftones, Six By Seven, Bill Withers, Cypress Hill and many more.
Fuzz-E – the visuals Loser – put together a visual montage of Tom’s life. It was hilarious, moving, revealing, cute, and knee-wobblingly sexy. Seeing some of the shots of Tom when he was in full flow in Cooper Temple Clause was quite knee-trembling. He’s up there with the most beautiful men in rock, ever – the Jim Morrisons, the Peter Murphys, the Taylor Hawkins’s of this world. The ones whose faces, on posters, trigger the release of gazillions of hormones from London to Tokyo.
What a night. You’d think people averaging 30+ years would have a greater sense of propriety and decorum. No. They don’t. They are just mucky kids in hairier bodies. The carnage by 5am was quite spectacular. Not one surface in this enormous open plan party area was untainted by cans, bottles, streamers, food, or the contents of Tom’s welsh cousin’s stomach.
I played the last three tunes to half a dozen totally unconscious men. Tom, Kieron, mutual mate Ben and Tom’s dad, the legendary Mike Bellamy, were the last men standing, and still bellowing “Tuuuuune” from the kitchen each time a new one wobbled the domestic woofers of the family surround sound cinema speakers. Funbar, one of Tom’s childhood friends, was swaying through the house, mine-sweeping for dregs from cans of lager and cider, so focussed on his task that he wouldn’t have noticed it I’d played ‘Killing In The Name’.
Ben meandered over to me, and from behind red eyes asked: “What’s the tune you keep talking about…? Farnham, or something?”
“‘You’re The Voice’ by John Farnham”, I replied. “The pinnacle of mullet rock. How good is that tune?”
“I’ve never heard it before”, he said, without a hint of irony, or regret.
“Whaaaat?”
I was incredulous. This was a 30 year old MUSICIAN claiming to have never heard the greatest guilty pleasure that ever existed. The one tune you could drop at a wedding, bar mitzvah, festival, superclub, pub, party, gig or funeral and get the crowd going OFF, at each and every one.
In my view, you haven’t lived until you have heard this tune. You have not been born. You cannot understand what drives men like Tom and me forward.
So, on that night, a 30 year old man was born. Not re-born, actually born. And now he knows that what drives us forward, what keeps us going, what gets us to sleep at night and up the next morning. It’s, like Dumbedore said to Harry Potter when asked what saved him from Voldemort, Love.
“It’s love, Harry…”
I love you Tom. Always have. Always will. Happy birthday, you beautiful man.
eddy X
Eddy Says from this edition of the CMU Remix Update.
