Where Automatic and Stick Came From – Part 9
Henry the Hoover and a House That Looks Like Hitler
My granddaughter doesn’t like Henry the hoover. I don’t know if it’s the noise he makes or his smiley cartoon face. She doesn’t like hand dryers or leaf blowers either, but I think it must be Henry’s face, because when the hoover broke, when Henry bit the dust and was thrown in the garden shed, still smiling, even in death, my granddaughter was absolutely fine with his replacement.
There’s a Henry the hoover on the back of the sleeve of Automatic (one of my upcoming two new records (BUY HERE). When I first saw it, I thought of my granddaughter and didn’t want to upset her, so I asked the artwork’s designer, Mark Reynolds, if he could illustratively fuck Henry up a bit, wipe the smile off his face.
I don’t know why there’s a Henry hoover on the sleeve of Automatic. I never thought to ask Mark. There are no mentions of a Henry or of hoovers on any of the songs. There is a song about Arthur (‘Balloon Release For Arthur’) and one about Frank (‘Frank Bought A Drone’). There’s also ‘Victoria Knits The Wars’ and ‘Danny From Nowhere’, and in ‘Can You Hear Us At The Back Of The Hall’ there’s a Kaliesha. In ‘Thank You Driver’, I buy ‘the vehicle from a guy named Rick’, and in ‘Shoefiti’ I sing about ‘Johnny Something Fancy’ and ‘Johnny Something Far More Plain’.
My granddaughter co-wrote ‘Shoefiti’. She was only two at the time. Beat that, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. I sat down with a guitar, watched the short video of my granddaughter playing the piano at a relative’s house, and I played the first thing it led me to. The basic tune and melody of ‘Shoefiti’ were there within ten seconds.
The song ‘Balloon Release For Arthur’ is a nod to The Clash’s ‘(White Man) in Hammersmith Palais’ and ‘Being For The Benefit Of Mr Kite!’ by The Beatles. Songs that were inspired by posters Joe Strummer and John Lennon had seen. (Coincidentally, ‘Being For The Benefit Of Mr Kite’ contains the lyrics “Henry the Horse”. The song was banned by the BBC because Henry and Horse are both slang for heroin. Let’s hope the BBC don’t ban my entire album for a similar reason. Although, how I would notice if they did I’m not sure.)
The lyrics for the Arthur songs on Automatic (‘Balloon Release For Arthur’) are copied verbatim from a handmade poster advertising the memorial in a park for a young boy. Unlike Strummer and Lennon, I had to invent my poster. I did a similar thing when I claimed I’d seen the words ‘Befriend The Police’ graffitied on the wall of a disused factory. Sometimes you have to create your own inspiration.
I presumed there would be lots of other anthropomorphic products like Henry the hoover, but apart from his family members – Hetty, Harry, James, George, Charles, Noel and Liam – the only other examples I could think of are the creepy M&M guys.
People see faces in inanimate objects all the time. It’s called face pareidolia. We see faces on planets and in clouds. We see them on cheese graters, light switches and doorknobs. We see faces in green peppers and fried eggs, pebbles on the beach and the bark of trees. People have seen Jesus’s face on pieces of toast and fascist dictators on the front of houses. On Automatic, there’s a song called ‘Baby On Board’. This is my favourite bit.
‘On our last night in the flats
On Google Maps
I screen-grabbed a picture
Of the street where we’ll soon live
In a house that looks just like Hitler’
I took a vinyl copy of Automatic to my granddaughter’s house the other day. She likes the songs. And not just the two she appears on. Also, it might be something to do with Mark Reynold’s roughing him up a bit, but she really loves the picture of Henry on the sleeve.
