I was haunted by a walk left unfinished along the River Crouch that I’d undertaken in May 2019. Getting off the train a stop too early I ran out of food, water, daylight and stamina just before reaching Burnham-on-Crouch. So the other week I finally embarked on the next leg of my walk along the Crouch and around the Dengie Peninsula, and then inland to Southminster. It was a walk unlike no other. Hours of solitude – then dense clouds of birdsong punctuated by gut trembling booms of artillery fire from across the estuary at Foulness. Long stretches of sea wall with the North Sea (or Sebald’s German Ocean) lapping up over the stones. The long straight road across fields the only sound the peculiar low hum of the wind turbines. It’s a walk I will never forget.
It started in the legendary Roxy rock venue on Sunset Strip Los Angeles as any half-decent story about a film gone wrong should. I was stood on the stage filming Russell Brand’s post gig meet and greet after having recorded the show. A young lady bypassed the clamouring throng around Russell – who’d also finished the show by performing a couple of songs that were filmed for his part of Aldous Snow in the Judd Apatow movie Get Him To The Greek. The lady calmly asked me what camera I was using. Ewan MGregor had just asked to borrow my Sharpie. He was sat on a table with Steve Jones of the Sex Pistols. Morrissey was in the audience of 200 as was Courtney Love. Reading this 14 years later in Leytonstone I’m aware of how nuts this all sounds.
An enquiry about camera equipment seemed oddly out of place. I stopped filming the activity around Russell, which I’d filmed a hundred times before all over the place, and showed her my Sony A1. She then told me she was a Producer working with Oliver Stone and Albert Maysles and they were interested in working with Russell. And that was how it began in May 2008 at the Roxy on Sunset Strip.
to be continued…