When I was making plans for Six Things in 2026, it occurred to me that it might be quite fun to do a podcast version. So once a month, instead of the regular Six Things newsletter, I’ll invite a guest to chat about six things of interest to them – things they find joyful, amusing, fascinating, comforting, magnificent, or just downright bizarre.
My fifth guest is Mark Diacono, award-winning food and gardening writer, walker and photographer. Mark’s Abundance: Eating and Living With The Seasons, is one of the more delightful offerings on here.
You should have the option of downloading the podcast or copying and pasting the RSS link to play it in your usual podcast app (click the three dots to the right of the 30-second button above).
The music for the podcast was written and recorded by Oliver Parikian.
Lev Parikian: Hello and welcome to Six Things, a podcast for the curious. I’m Lev Parikian and every month I invite a guest to bring six things that they find joyful, amusing, fascinating, comforting, magnificent or just downright bizarre. My guest this month is Mark Diakono. Mark is an award-winning food and gardening writer with over a dozen books to his name. He’s a regular columnist for the Sunday Times and Country Life magazines, and he writes beautifully about food and gardening and nature and life in general on Substack, where his most recent book, Abundance, was mostly written. He also teaches writing, hosts the Cafe Murano Book Club with Angela Hartnett, and started the groundbreaking Otter Farm, where he grows an incredibly diverse range of edible stuff. Mark, thanks so much for joining me on Six Things. Food and gardening, your two main loves, possibly? Or two main professional directions. Which one came first for you?
Mark Diacono: That’s a really good question because I think I didn’t mean to, you know, I kind of accidentally fell into writing about anything really. I came to all of it quite late. I’ve always been a greedy guts, but then that’s most people, isn’t it? And it wasn’t until I met my wife and we got together around the kind of turn of the millennium that I had any inclination that growing anything might be quite interesting or fun, you know, and she found me deeply attractive because I had a garden and she didn’t, you know. Quickly, she moved in, in all senses, and I realised I ought to do something out there that was not just listening to the football while she was gardening. I planted a few things and they kind of grew and they were all edible things, you know, because I’m a bloke from the southwest, and they they were a real pleasure. And really it sort of accidentally spiraled out of control from there, with a few things that… had you caught me on a slightly different point one of my Six Things might have been mulberries… you know, because I remember tasting mulberries for the first time and it being life-changing, you know?
Lev: yeah…
Mark: … and I accidentally started writing… well, no, I started a blog writing about what I was planting and growing just as a record for me, you know, I would remember because you do stuff and you think “I’ll remember that, what variety it is”, and you don’t… and it sort of, I don’t know, quietly took over.
Lev: Interesting. What I’ve noticed about your writing – obviously there’s lots of people writing about food and there’s quite a few people nowadays writing about food and gardening together, which I think is more than when I first got interested in food and cooking in the 80s. That was when supermarkets had really begun to properly take off, so it was just… well, you just go down to Sainsbury’s, and the amazing stuff you can get that’s been flown in from all over the world, and isn’t that miraculous? You can have asparagus in December, and isn’t that wonderful?
Mark: …from Cuba! Or wherever it is…
Lev: … and of course things have gone in a different direction, certainly for a lot of people these days. And I’ve noticed that you have a very curious palate, if I may say – in terms of curious as in seeking things out. You may have a very curious palate, I don’t know, but you seem to seek out ingredients and tastes that other people maybe aren’t covering. Has that just been a natural product of your natural curiosity?
Mark: Certainly some of that. When I started growing things I realized I had the very clear thought of “why grow, like many people do, the cheapest, most widely available, most disease-prone food, that’s most susceptible to drought or deluge, you know… why don’t I leave other people to do that, and buy that stuff, you know, grow some of it, but there must be a million other things that we can grow here, and sure enough there are, you know, and the more I looked into it the more I realized that perennial kind of growing of food was a really lovely way of providing yourself with a kind of really resilient gorgeous garden with lots of brilliant flavors coming out of it, that include things that everyone knows, like, I don’t know… pears and artichokes and asparagus but also the more I kind of nosed around the more I became aware of these other things that were… that we just didn’t grow, just out of habit. We didn’t grow Szechuan pepper, you know… and all this stuff, and there were eemingly endless fruit, vegetables and herbs that people weren’t growing, that I thought “well maybe it’s because they’re crap”, but very often it wasn’t, and you know, that mulberry I talked about – most of us haven’t eaten a mulberry, and it’s just because they’re hard enough to get from the tree into your hand…
Lev: …before they fall apart and go mush…
Mark: … yeah because they’re just… that’s the point you want them, so they’re never going to fall into the supermarket system, which is how we tend to eat and feed ourselves. So I think that’s what a lot of it is, you know, and I love a potato like the next person, but I was wanting to have lots of fun of growing things that were… and discovering that some of these things are crap, but many of them are really delicious and perfectly possible even in the smallest of gardens, you know?
Lev: That’s really, really interesting. So, if anybody is not familiar with Mark’s writing, obviously there’ll be links galore to discover it, and it’s a wonderful thing. The first piece of yours that I read on Substack was your terrific piece about the guy at Glastonbury. It was a very wet Glastonbury…
Mark: It was 1985. I still give deep thanks to the fact that I knew someone who had a camper van that year, because... you know getting in and out of a camper van even when you’re leaving your shoes behind in the slurry outside is enough of a game, but getting in and out of a tent, you’re on that slurry and separated by, you know, a millimetre of failing fabric. It was truly an experience, but, you know, there were some great… I saw a lot of good bands that year. I saw them through, you know, a veil of rain and thunder and all sorts. But yes, there was a tale from there that is best read.
Lev: It’s a beautifully written horror story, and I shall link to it without saying anything further. So, on to the things, the six things which you’ve chosen.
Thing 1 – Woodpeckers
Thing one is chosen, I think, as so often… quite a few of my guests have chosen things that quite blatantly pander to the tastes of the host. Thing one is woodpeckers. Tell me all about you and woodpeckers.
Mark: It’s a funny thing. I mean, growing up, I was never interested in birds at all, other than in that kind of… a lot of kids are almost dinosaur-like… you’re going “oh, bird of prey – good!” You know, they do interesting things
Lev: Violence.
Mark: … yeah, yeah, you know… wingspan… there’s a top trumpiness about birds of prey that appeals greatly, but I I think the sort of beginning of my eyes opening to the potential of the joy of bird life was when we moved to a couple of fields that I turned into Otter Farm with my wife. When I was planting things, I would hear the squawk of what I knew to be a buzzard. Because, you know, they were the most visible and obvious bird that was circling around. I became aware that, you know, oh, it’s four o’clock, they’re making that noise again. And it became more obvious that it wasn’t a they, it was a particular bird that had particular habits. And even that little thing kind of personalised the connection with bird life. And there were a lot of kingfishers, and they’re not hard to love, are they? You know, they’re the sort of Beatles of the bird world. You know, it’s like, yes, yes, we all love the kingfisher.
Lev: So you’re about to liken the woodpeckers to the Stones, are you?
Mark: Well, the thing I like about the Stones… who would I liken the woodpecker to? I’ll try and get to that before the end of this, because one of the things I love about woodpeckers is that they look a bit homemade. You know, the wings are set just a little bit further back than you think they should. I have this feeling that they’re constantly in a battle to kind of stop the nose dipping, you know?
Lev: Yeah, and the flight is a little bit off kilter and a bit bouncy and... oh he’s still doing it, go on, you can do it…
Mark: … yeah definitely that, so there definitely needs to be a bit of home-made… I mean maybe that is the Stones, because, you know Keith Richards shouldn’t really be able to play
Lev: … he shouldn’t really be able to breathe…
Mark: … no he shouldn’t… so let’s go with them. I love that about them. I love the way they fly, you know…
Lev: … that kind of bouncing gait…
Mark: yeah, they look like… they make me feel like that’s how I would be if I was a bird. I’d be a bit shit at it.
Lev: It’s interesting – I’m about to get all ornithological on your arse here, because the way a great spotted woodpecker flies ,and the green one as well, is they do that bouncing flight because it’s more economical. It saves energy because they’ll do a burst of flapping and then they’ll allow themselves to descend just to the point where they’re probably about to fall out of the sky, and then they do another burst of flapping which gives them another 10 yards, or whatever it is, and in between the bursts, to make themselves more aerodynamic – a lot of small birds do this – is that they hold their wings tight against their body, which is one of those marginal gains that of course, the British cycling team, Team GB, became very famous for under Dave Brailsford, these marginal gains, and it’s one of these things that’s evolved in birds – these sort of flap-glide patterns, completely different from the buzzard, which is making the most of rising warm air, which is also economical. So that’s just a bit of science there for you.
Mark: Wow. I love that because that reminds me of my journey to school where, you know, you would sort of I would pedal like crazy and then see how far I could glide without… you know, with a Parka on, not likely to be getting any marginal gains, but see how far I could go wiggling the handlebars, and then I pedaled some more so it kind of you know… that they’re very… they feel very understandable that’s the one… they feel, I don’t want to humanise them as such, but they feel kind of like relatable. And then you get the Professor Yaffle from Bagpuss, you get Woody Woodpecker, kind of back from when I was a kid, and they just, they feel like something’s turned up, you know?
Lev: Yeah, and there’s something that sets them apart from other birds. It’s partly that, I think there’s a slightly mad look about them, I always think, especially the green woodpecker – they’ve got the kind of staring eye, but even even then with the great spotted one there’s partly the, you know, that black and white plumage, which is great, but the little red bits that you get on the… underneath the belly, and also on the back of the head. I think also because of the drumming, we all love a drummer – and later on we’re going to talk about a bassist – but the fact that their song isn’t a song, it’s non-vocal, and it’s a very recognisable sound. Again, you’re walking through the cemetery and even people who don’t know about – I say cemetery, that’s my local walk – even people who don’t know about birds, when it first happens in… usually January and February nowadays, somebody will go, oh, where’s that? What’s it coming from? You know, what is it? It’s not your average bird song.
Mark:It’s not.
And I don’t know, I just, I feel like, I feel like they’re a special... I can hear them every day and it still feels like a special thing that’s been part of the day, and like anybody I’m increasingly interested in bird life and I’m so envious of those like yourself who have a kind of a greater and deeper understanding, and I remember a great friend worked at Slimbridge and I remember saying to her, you know, “how the hell do you know?”, and she was like “how do you know with the footballers?” You know, you can tell it’s Messi without a name on the back of the thing. You just have to, it’s just familiarity.
Lev: It’s so tedious, isn’t it? I mean, that kind of boring Malcolm Gladwell thing of 10,000 hours. How do you know how to? Well, of course, I’ve made one… I’ve done that every day for the last 20 years. I’d be really annoyed if I was not good at it. When I was studying conducting, which I came to in my sort of late 20s, early 30s, having been an orchestral musician for about 10 years, I went and studied in St Petersburg in Russia with a great pedagogue, Ilya Musin, who was 92 when I went to study with him. And he was once asked, how do you know so much about conducting? And he just looked with pity at the interviewer and said, “I haven’t thought about anything else for 70 years.” It’s like... obviously…
Mark: oh honestly I get this all the time from my daughter about music, she’s like “dad, how the hell do you know so much about 1978-9 to 87?” It’s like, because I just listen and go and see music, and it’s interesting because it is the woodpecker that has got me into being more inquisitive about the other bird, you know, something sticks, something… you go out and…
Lev: you write about it quite often in Abundance, you’ll mention – and you write beautifully about it, I should say – you say you don’t know much about it but you’re always… it’s observation, I think, which comes across. Do you use Merlin, the app?
Mark: yeah I do yeah.
Lev: do you find that helpful and useful?
Mark: I’ll tell you who got me into it, it was Adam Nicholson of all people. He was really enthusing about it… last time… I haven’t seen him for a couple of years… and he was really enthusing about it and how it builds knowledge rather than the reverse, and what I found with it is, increasingly, is that I’m going, okay, I’ve got some closed off here. I know that’s a wren. I know that’s a chiffchaff. I know that’s a blackbird. I know that’s that. And then there’s this kind of world, like, I tell you where I am now, I’m going, is that a blackcap or a whitethroat? To you, you’ll be like, that’s like saying...
Lev: No, it’s not. They’re very similar. They’re the same family. They’re both warblers and they’ve both got a kind of... you can’t sing their songs. They’re very scrabbly. They’re very scrabbly and yeah, I absolutely get that.
Mark: But this is the lovely thing is that... repeatedly going, “now I think that’s the blackcap because of this” to yourself or the person you’re with, and being able to verify what it is is it does just tighten the nuts and the bolts that allow you to just expand on this knowledge, and honestly the joy of it, at any point in life you have a whole wall of things that you’d love to be interested in but you don’t have the time to, or maybe the feeling of “I can make any progress” and I really think Merlin is one of those things along with… and I’m not just saying this because you’re the host… people who write brilliantly about birds in a way that makes you see the magic and it makes you want to follow the magic… I love that, you know, because there is that thing of, like, why does a blackbird even… I remember waking to the sound of… “what the fuck is that singing at this time of the morning?”
Lev: … and why is it singing…
Mark: yeah, all of that, and why does it stop, and why does it come back at another time, and those sorts of things are such quality of life lifters, and for once I feel, I would say borderline grateful that I’ve got so much more to discover about it because it’s such a pleasure to discover more about it.
Lev: Absolutely. Yeah, I certainly think that, god, I’ve come to it late as well, although I came to it early and late because I was very keen birder when I was a kid, and then other things got in the way for about 30 years, and then middle age onset, and it all came sort of trickling back, and then I found myself writing about it. It was actually when I… it coincided with… I needed an idea for a book, and it just, the two meshed perfectly. And I’m now what I’ve described as an accidental nature writer. I never intended it, but it just seems to be something I love doing. But with Merlin, I find it’s been so transformative for many people’s lives. People, not even like you, who have had no interest, really, but they go for a walk with their dog, so, you know, somebody’s put them onto it and they go “well this has just changed everything” and they’ve… it’s led them to observe, even if they’re not questioning it in the same way as I think you do, which
is… you know, this is a learning tool… they’ll just go “god, I never knew there were eight different species of a bird singing right now. The game I like to play with it is, firstly it’ll hear something that I haven’t heard, and I’ll go “okay, right, stop, listen for that goldcrest” or whatever it is… and then, you know, I do hear it but then I also quite like to sort of look at it and… going “are you going to actually acknowledge that nuthatch, the one that’s been going for the last minute… are you going to… ah there it is, well done, jolly good.” So it’s a kind of two way thing, I like to be the winner as well – I like to one-up it
Mark: It’s crucial, it’s crucial… it is a real pleasure…
Thing 2 – Balls
Lev: I try and do little links between the things. I’m struggling here with linking woodpeckers, number one, and thing number two. So thing number two, you’ve said balls. Just in case I get the wrong idea, you’ve said specifically in the realm of sport. So go ahead.
Mark: I was thinking about sort of spheres the other day, because I think if we didn’t have them, we would find them really hard to imagine, because there’s not really... a reference point, there’s no edge, there’s no… they just kind of are, and I think we’ve grown used to seeing and imagining the sun and the moon as round, you know, as in spherical rather than round, but it’s quite a concept to get our heads around, and the fact that this thing is consistent, you can hold it in whatever way, you know, pick up a snooker ball, and you can hold it… it’s the same, and there’s something really magical about that, you know, it’s just one – there’s no extra lengths, there’s no other, it’s all one, it’s all of itself, and the reason I love that in particular with the sporting thing, and love… I tend to, when the Olympics are on I couldn’t care less. You know I could… I literally couldn’t care less… I’m not interested, and I’ll pretend to… it’s like why are you not interested, it’s, like, there’s no ball. The reason I love a ball is that because of its spherical nature… when I’m saying this and it becomes clear maybe why I’m less interested in rugby… is that it’s an object of expression. What you would do with a ball at your feet, in your hand, coming towards you, is very different to what I would, but under the same conditions, same stresses, same whatever else, it has a consistency that I love that about it… it’s a revealer of personality… you know, as we were talking about with birds a minute ago, you know, 20 years ago I could go that’s Maradona – you can put a coat on and I’ll tell you that’s Maradona. And I wasn’t able to do that about any birds and it was because they do… just people generally will express the personality, it’s a vehicle for personality, and I I really love that about it. I love it with football, and I have two or three favourite goals. The joy of those goals never wears off because they’re to do with somebody knowing that that ball is going to behave in a certain way, if they can only execute this feeling, this emotion, this sense of artistry that they might have in themselves. And when it happens, it feels like... This is quite an odd analogy, but let me follow it, and I’m not sure if it will get a bit thin. When the old man died, I felt like this was essential time. This was life with all the fluff and nonsense and the stuff we... create to organize and complicate things. All of it was removed. I felt like I was really alive. I was aware of the passing of the day, the air, the everything about it. And those moments, they share something in common. There’s a particular goal. I’ll send you a link to it because it makes more sense. There’s a particular goal that a guy called Paolo Di Canio scored 10 or 15 years ago, and it was impossible. Nobody else I know could have done it… who’s ever played could have done it.
Lev: Amazing footballer. Slightly dodgy politics…
Mark: No, exactly. This is the awful thing, isn’t it? Let’s not mention Morrissey as we go. And the whole subject of separating the art from the artist. But the most extraordinary... Just a moment. I remember when I saw it, I stood up and I actually cried. It was ridiculous. Because it felt like a delivery from the universe of something... that could have only have happened in those circumstances. Somebody in a perfect moment and something, and the essential ingredient, yes, was this person who had whatever it is, but the fact that the ball had to be a ball, had to be read. The fact that we can all understand that Ronnie O’Sullivan, Alex Higgins, they are made of something different to the next snooker player.
Lev: with football there’s obviously there’s always the variables of the other people on the team, the goal that… when you said two or three goals, the one that instantly came into my head was Dennis Bergkamp
Mark: yeah yeah, I mean, that…
Lev: you know the goal I mean?
Mark: I do.
Lev: because he gets… it comes to him from 50 fucking miles away, and he touches it once, touches it again, and it’s in the goal
Mark: And nobody else in history could have scored that goal. You could never do it. I wish you’d link to that one as well.
Lev: And I’m sure there’s going to be people who are listening to this who have turned off at the mention of football. So I’m just going to describe it as ballet. So maybe that’ll get them switched on to it because this is an extraordinary feat of not just athleticism, but the way you describe it is creative art.
Mark: One of the reasons I think I love those moments so much is that it’s beyond the actual thing. You know, it’s beyond... it doesn’t matter if you like football or not it’s the same with it and it’s the same with… we’ll be talking about a musician later… when you see somebody doing something they were made to do in a way that is so unique to them, and the moment, and that moment there’s something just transcendent about it I think, and at its core beautiful… and it’s the same with music, it’s this… of the same material that is unusual and beyond… You talk about ballet. I mean, the gorgeousness of a Federer backhand… You can hate tennis and just watch that and go, oh my God. There’s nobody who can play a shot like that. It’s just graceful gorgeousness.
Lev: I noticed two things. Firstly, that you’ve talked about football and footballers, but we haven’t mentioned a team yet, which I think is really telling. Do you have a team?
Mark: I do. I do. Well, I’m from the South West and absolutely no connection to Liverpool other than… as a kid… other than I watched the 1974 FA Cup Final on the telly and I saw Kevin Keegan… I was like “who the hell is this little guy doing the most brilliant things?” And it’s been Liverpool since that day and I… so much in my young life was just watching Liverpool, you know on the telly and Match Of The Day and The Big Match and you know Keegan went and I was bereft and then Kenny, and… do you have time for a quick Kenny story?
Lev: Go on then. I’d love to hear it. I can cut it out if necessary.
Mark: Yeah, if it’s that dull. Anyway, so, and I love Liverpool, I love the music of Liverpool, I love the football of Liverpool, I love all of that. And I’ve had increasing opportunities to go for various reasons, been to see Liverpool play a few times. Anyway, about four years ago, I was invited to become an honorary professor at the University of Liverpool.
Lev: Ooh.
Mark: Yeah, I know, I know.
Lev: That’s fancy.
Mark: Yeah, and the difficulty with that is, the thing you most want to say is the thing that it’s quite hard to say, which is... what the hell have I done to become…? Anyway so I get off the train, wander around Liverpool and thinking… you know, you’ve got to go and do that thing of going to Eric’s, which is where a lot of bands played in the 80s which is really close to The Cavern, just do that and then go and check in your hotel. So I got to my hotel slightly later than I meant to. Nobody around. Big foyer, and a young woman appears, and she was like “hello, I’ve just started here, my boss has just gone to the loo, she’ll be back… can you fill out this form, name, address…” I do all of that, and a figure appeared next to me and I kind of looked up and carried on writing the thing out, and I went “oh god it’s Kenny Dalgleish, it’s Kenny Dalgleish, it’s Kenny Dalgleish, the actual Kenny Dalgleish
Lev: it’s like that Half Man Half Biscuit song, “Fuckin’ ‘ell it’s Fred Titmus”…
Mark: yes yes exactly and my immediate… and I’m writing this thing… and he’s like I don’t know, three yards away in a big foyer, so this big room, two people. The young woman has gone off to get some photocopying or something while I’m filling this thing out, just me and Kenny in this massive room, and I’ve immediately gone, “I can’t talk to him. I can’t say anything. What do you say? I can’t say anything. It’s Kenny bloody Dalgleish.” And then kind of future me has gone, “it’s Kenny Dalgleish. You’ve got to say something.” And I looked up, and I looked at him, and I was like three meters between us or something and I went, “Kenny, I don’t want to disturb you”, because you know he’s quite a private kind of guy in that way, I said “but I just need to say thank you for all the years of, you know, watching you play and the way you replaced Keegan and then…” The man, you know, as a manager, and then, you know, he went to all but every funeral after Hillsborough and really led the city in its response to Hillsborough. And I kept my distance, didn’t reach for my phone, anything like that, and he walked towards me and sort of put his hand out, and he was like “you know I should be thanking you for all the years of support that you’ve given me”. And I had to take a… you know, it gets me a bit now… I had to sort of… I didn’t ask for his picture, I didn’t take any more of his time, and just… I had to sit down with a whisky afterwards and go “I just spoke to Kenny Dalgleish, a man who has given me…”
Lev: … and he thanked you
Mark: I know! If he… if it… was possible for a man to outgrow all of the expectations I had of a complete hero anyway, he totally did that in a couple of minutes of just chatting with him. And I just literally had to sit down and compose myself. And also then just because I hadn’t taken a picture with him – I didn’t want to intrude and I didn’t want to break the moment of being with him – it was that thing of going, did that just happen?
Lev: Nobody’s going to believe me.
Mark: No one’s going to believe me. And then I saw him, he came out of a meeting that he was having in the hotel. So I was able to go, yeah, I just had a chat with the actual… he’s a real person. He’s not just a fantasy figure who makes other people’s dreams come true.
Thing 3 – James Jamerson
Lev: That has provided me with a really nice link, actually, to thing number three, because I’m going to ask you what you would have done if you had ever met James Jamerson.
Mark: Oh, my God. So if anybody’s not familiar with James Jamerson...
Lev: Yes, we should explain who he is, because part of the appeal, I think, is almost because a lot of people don’t necessarily know who he was.
Mark: I mean, for most people, he had... like a huge guiding hand in the pleasure of much of the music that many of us have listened to over the years. He was in the… kind of… the Motown house band that was behind everything from Marvin to Four Tops to the Jacksons to Stevie Wonder to… literally hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of really wonderful songs, you know, things from Bernadette to I Was Made to Love Her and...
Lev: I mean, there’s a list.
Mark: It’s just... River, Deep, Mountain...
Lev: Through the Grapevine, Ain’t No Mountain High Enough, Papa Was A Rolling Stone, My Girl, and on and on and on and on.
Mark: That’s just literally... what do you think of when you’re thinking of My Girl… it’s that the beginning… and then away he goes, and he just was the heartbeat, but the gorgeous… you know, he played bass guitar, but he played it in a way that nobody had ever played before. The way he rolled around the melody, the way he rolled around the rhythm the way he made a song sing. And I came… I remember I came to him… When would it have been? It would have been in the late-ish, the mid-late 80s. I was living in Exeter with a friend and I went to this brilliant record shop in Exeter, a second-hand record shop called Caterpillar. And you’d go in there with nothing that you’re particularly after and you’d scuffle about and you’d always come out with something. And I found a tape of Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On album, which... you’d always see and you still always see as one of the greatest five albums of all time and whatever list it there it will be. I’m going “Marvin Gaye? Are you sure…?” Because what did I know? I knew Heard It Through The Grapevine and that’s about it, you know, and I thought “well it’s 49p this cassette, I’m gonna get it, yeah”. And I bought it and took it home and I listened to it and this was not the music I was listening to at the time, you know, and it was 15-20 years after it had come out, I think it’s 1970. It’s just an extraordinary album of kind of love and activism and...
Lev: …and anger and frustration at the state of the world.
Mark: All of that.
Lev: 1971, I think, because it was Vietnam, wasn’t it? So it was near the end of Vietnam, but it was... Yeah, yeah.
Mark: And very different for Marvin. You know, it wasn’t singly. It was... But there were incredible songs.
Lev: And singles off it, but...
Mark: Yeah, but it sort of ran as a whole. It was a proper album, you know. And there was this incredible bass playing. There was this incredible bass player.
Lev: I think there’s a lot of people will, as you say, they will know the songs, but they will not know the musicians behind it, the Funk Brothers, who are the, as you say, the house band. It wasn’t just... I was trying to think about why this is. Partly it’s because they’re... they weren’t credited on any of the records until until that one, I think until, it was 1971… that, so these are these nameless people and the people that… the names that people remembered were the Marvin Gayes and the Temptations and the Four Tops and all those bands that came out of Hitsville, and this… the production line of extraordinary creativity, and there were about… I think there’s officially…there’s an official roster of the Funk Brothers and there’s 13 of them in total but I was interested that you chose James Jamerson above them all. Funnily enough, it’s one of those things… I watched… when you sent this thing through, I rewatched for the first time in ages the documentary about him, Standing in the Shadows of Motown, which is amazing. It’s just a moving... amazing story, and at the beginning of that documentary they go into a record store… it was made in 2002, and they go into a record store and they talk to the punters and say “so do you know your music?” “yeah”, “do you know the music of Motown? Can you name some bands?” “yeah of course, sure”, “and some artists?” “sure, Marvin Gaye Smokey Robinson, blah blah blah” and then “can you name any of the musicians behind them?” “oh… uh… no…” Of course since then I think they’ve been more widely recognised and individuals have been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and all of that and when I mentioned your list of six things to my son, who’s a young musician, who actually wrote the music for this podcast, and is well versed… and I said James Jamerson he said “fucking excellent”
Mark: It is one of those people… and once you hear it, it’s like “oh my god there it is, there it is, and it’s the magic, isn’t it?”
Lev: I also watched a brilliant nerdy half hour YouTube between two bassists taking apart his most legendary moments and explaining to the uninitiated and the initiated, those who are interested, exactly what it was about his playing that made it different. The creativity, the absolutely centred rhythmic impetus that just, you know, that whole rhythm section just makes you want to... I don’t dance, but it always makes me want to get up and dance. And the melodic creativity of bass lines and the changing of rhythms... that people wouldn’t, you know, I think bass playing until he came along was pretty foursquare.
Mark: Yeah.
Lev: Both harmonically and rhythmically. Walking bass lines. A good swing, you know, and he had a background in jazz, you know, grew up in the 50s playing, being a brilliant upright bassist before switching to the famous Fender. That came, he just, yeah, he changed things.
Mark: Everything that came after owed so much to him. And the thing I find incredible is that the other bass player, Bob Babbitt, it’s extraordinary. You know, he’s just a wonderful, wonderful bass player too, you know, so there’s two in this kind of house band. But there’s something about James Jamerson’s playing that is... It feels like a ribbon that’s been sewn through the song that is aware of the melody, the rhythm, the vocals, everything... but in such a gorgeously perfect way. Again, I’ll put it so that if you want to post it, you can… there’s a gorgeous thing on YouTube where somebody’s made a... I don’t know if you...
Lev: Yes, I saw that.
Mark: It’s almost like a graph.
Lev: It’s fantastic. Ain’t No Mountain High Enough.
Mark: It’s wonderful. But the one that I feel is even better than that is the I Was Made to Love Her, the Stevie Wonder song, where... you can see this… it’s like a mountain range of what he’s playing you know it goes up when he goes up and comes down when he comes down, against Stevie being incredible, and from… I play bass… and from that day to this it has the same feeling… all his playing has the same feeling… it makes me want to put mine away as a kind of, you know, a pathetic thing of, like, how can you… how can you pick up a bass if you’re not going to do something as beautiful as that, but also makes me want to play, yeah, even more… so it’s this lovely kind of balance. But if you’re not familiar with him it’s so worth investigating, because he you can see how he has made what those brilliant Motown singers and other musicians were doing so much better but also how that has rolled on into the music that we love now, you know…
Lev: …and sort of surreptitiously as well because there’s something about a bassist that is sort of under the radar, so…
Mark: I think it’s probably been applied to a drummer as well, but you can get a T-shirt that says, you know, no one wants to shag the bass player. If you’re not the guitarist or the singer, you know, you’re actually stuck at the back anyway, you know.
Lev: And it’s also sad, I mean his story is very sad because of how his life went in the end, after the great hits of Motown, and as we said, he was uncredited – he was paid well enough, but when it came to the move from Detroit to LA in the early 70s, I think he was the only one of The Funk Brothers who actually went there with the label and tried to make a go of it. But his style of playing became quite unfashionable quite soon after that.
Mark: Which is quite hard to imagine really.
Lev: He got… people playing slap bass, which he wasn’t interested in, and there was a whole load of disco coming up, which… I love disco, but it was much more, again, more foursquare in a way.
Mark: A bit driven.
Lev: A bit driven, yeah. And he would drive music, but in such subtle ways. And so much of that is all absolutely under the bonnet. You have to listen quite hard, I think, to really... It’s like observing the blackcap and the whitethroat. Why is this song so good? Yeah, all because… it’s all the elements are in perfect perfect sync… and it’s all been driven by this, this elite motor…. and he descended really into alcoholism – I mean he’d always had a… not surprising in that world… and he eventually died in the early 80s of cirrhosis which is just… I mean he…
Mark: Which is awful. And he’s since been… unusually for someone who’s tucked away like that… has been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, as he rightly should be, but it always feels sad when people get their recognition afterwards. They’re not around to enjoy it
Lev: And all the bassists who will cite him as their biggest influence. A list as long as your arm of great musicians, but as you say It would be nice to have the true recognition while you’re still alive
Mark: Wouldn’t it?
Thing 4 – Stem Ginger
Lev: I can’t think of a link from James Jamerson to stem ginger, so I’m just going to go straight in. Thing number four is stem ginger.
Mark: If you kind of, get a stem ginger out of a jar, you’re going to use one finger, which is all that James Jamerson… he never played with two fingers on the plucking hand, as it were. So it’s a terrible link…
Lev: … but it’s good enough, because actually we didn’t mention that… we should have said that he’s doing all this stuff and some really really incredibly nimble… and again on this video that I’ll link to, they talk about how they need three fingers to play that… just one finger… so you’re going to get your stem ginger out of the jar with one finger. Why stem ginger, not just ginger?
Mark: Stem ginger. So we won’t need to talk a long time about stem ginger, I’m sure, but it has sort of crept up on me that there are several ingredients that I think really elevate, that… I’m extremely fond of tarragon – I’d happily move to the country with tarragon, and it’s kind of a herb that classically I use all the time. Rhubarb is another ingredient I use all the time, and to the point where an editor will go, “listen I think 14 rhubarb recipes for this book is probably enough.” Stem ginger… I just couldn’t love it more, and the thing… one of the things that I can’t quite get over is that I love the two elements of stem ginger. I like the testicles, as I call them, of the stem ginger, and the syrup in which they’re held. If there was a jar only of each I’d buy both jars really equally happily. I love regular fresh ginger, you know that’s totally fine, but use stem ginger in so many cakes and crumbles, and it just brings a kind of sweetness, but it’s quite bold, you know, it’s the kind of… it’s the Extra Strong Mint of the world it’s a…
Lev: it’s a pungent thing, and that’s probably its appeal, isn’t it? That marriage of the sweet – we all love something sweet but something that’s too sweet is… what you want to say, undercut by that…
Mark: yeah and it… it’s soft and enjoyable on the tongue and teeth, but also the syrup… I mean it’s… usually I’ve got two jars in the fridge and one is maybe… got half of it is left with the kind of… the actual stem ginger, but it’s dry of syrup because I use the syrup a lot. I use the syrup, especially kind of now, when we’re in maybe the latter stages of the rhubarb season… if you get really fresh rhubarb and it’s kind of… you know, you could put it between two chairs and walk on it, you know, nice and soft and taut… and that just dipped in stem ginger syrup and nibbled is one of the great – you know, uncooked – is one of the great pleasures. It’s big, ginger: big sweet, big sour. Yeah, it’s just a pleasure. But I use the syrup in a very good Tom Collins. So ginger syrup. Stem ginger syrup, lots and lots of lemon juice and gin in relatively equal quantities is just a very, very fine drink.
Lev: You do like a cocktail, don’t you?
Mark: Do you know what? I like making them. I drink very little these days.
Lev: Right.
Mark: If I’m going to drink anything, I want it to be excellent. And I think this is maybe one of the moves through middle age that I quite like is that my... enthusiasm for small excellent things that are repeated in life becomes more of… a conviction, you know, so I’ll have fewer lovely coffees. If I’m going to have a cocktail I’m going to have a drink I’m just going to be… it’s going to be a beer I really love
Lev: Is that to do with mortality and thinking “I’ve got less time left to enjoy things, to experience things, so actually I’m not going to have the crap now because I want as many of these experiences to be things I take with me”…
Mark: possibly…
Lev: … to the inevitable grave”, I mean I’m sorry…
Mark: not a bit, not a bit, I hope to defy that… but no I think it’s a bit that, but I think it’s a realisation that for all… I’ve never been particularly ambitious in terms of “I’ve got this life plan or I want to live like this or whatever”, you know my ambitions are to be as content and untroubled doing things that I enjoy, and I think it’s the realization for me that if you’re fortunate enough to be able to do something that you really love, to spend most of your time and earn a living, that’s magic. After that, assuming everybody’s healthy, then what have you got? You’ve got the simple stuff that you love every day that doesn’t need striving after. It doesn’t need anyone else’s permission. It doesn’t need a great wodge of money. It doesn’t need you to climb a mountain of whatever to get to the Holy Grail. It’s just not having... shit bread, let’s say, or whatever… the small pleasure is just that is where my pleasure…
Lev: … sometimes shit bread can be fantastic…
Mark: I know exactly what you mean I meant shit as in, it’s not what you want. And I think very much now if you said to me, “right you’ve got three weeks in Mauritius and you just eat bog standard whatever and you’ll just have whatever beers in the fridge”, the last thing you’ll ever hear from me is “as it comes”, you know, about a drink, or “oh no you decide”. I, you know, have an opinion, for fuck’s sake, and then if it doesn’t cause anyone else any harm pursue it, and that is how I feel I want… the everyday pleasures are much more of a joy for me than a three week in Mauritius once a year or something…
Thing 5 – The Jerk
Lev: Right. Thing number five. And I’m interested in this one. When you mentioned it, I rewatched it. Thing number five is The Jerk, which is a film starring Steve Martin, made in 1979 and directed by Carl Reiner. And it’s the first of four films that they collaborated in. The others being Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid, The Man With Two Brains and All of Me. And I’m interested to know why you chose The Jerk, if you were going to choose a Steve Martin, Carl Reiner movie.
Mark: Yeah, it’s interesting, isn’t it? Because I could have... It’s interesting, this, because I don’t... If you’ve got something that’s quite on the edge, comedically, it’s quite easy to imagine. We can look at, say, Vic and Bob, you know. And what you get with it is an awful lot of hit and an awful lot of miss. And what you don’t get is sort of six and a half out of ten. it’s nine out of ten or it’s one out of ten and I feel that a little bit about how Steve Martin was moving with his comedy. I’m not that interested in his stand-up, especially watching back at it, but it was a vehicle to get somewhere and I love Dead Man Don’t Wear Plaid, I love the idea of it, I love the way it was executed, I like the way it was delivered, and as you say the other three all have their brilliances. You know I can watcg The Man With Two Brains at least once a year because again everything about it… and he has more than anyone a gift for naming people excellently… Hfuhruhurr.
Lev: Uumellmahaye. What we’re going to do now is we’re just going to quote lines this is the worst thing… it’s two blokes quoting lines from movies. Sorry.
Mark: Let’s stop there, but The Jerk… the thing I love about The Jerk is it could be awful… this perfect film seemed to arrive at the point that everybody was ready for it. I love that you know the whole idea of the film… and it seems to be quite a few films within films, as the great films often are…
Lev: Actually the element of it that makes it is Bernadette Peters.
Mark: Yes!
Lev: She plays off him so perfectly… the way she plays the cornet… all these little things that are so sweet, and there’s a sweet love story at the heart of it and it’s a brilliant… it’s the rags to riches to rags to riches story, which is a lovely take on the normal trope. The way he makes his money is ridiculous, the way he loses it is even more ridiculous and as you say it could be awful… and I think there are going to be people who are going, yeah, no, it’s just not for me. And if you’re not into Steve Martin’s physical comedy, then probably not.
Mark: I think one of the things I love about The Jerk, as you sort of touched upon, this kind of love story and the warmth, but also it speaks to every one of us who’s been a jerk in the quiet ways, in the small ways.
Lev: Oh, God, no, that could be me.
Mark: No, exactly. And there’s something really... with something really warm about it while there’s all of this stuff going on. If I was listening to this and I hadn’t watched The Jerk, I’d be like, you know what, I’m not going to bother. It sounds like it’s great, but I’m not going to bother because of whatever. Give it a go because it’s perfect it’s a perfect film…
Lev: I think it’s worth watching at least the first five, six minutes, because in that original… the first thing to camera is fine, but then there’s the set up of… he’s this very obviously white guy who is you know, being… living with a black family as their child… and there’s a beautifully executed gag, which I think most musicians will get because he’s… they’ve got blues music on, and he has no rhythm at all, and he does that hysterically and then one morning he wakes up listening to an old white dance band which is on the radio, and you see him discovering he has rhythm for that kind of music, and it’s a lovely gag in and of itself, but the beautiful bit of it for me, as one who’s railed against this for many years, is that when he discovers he’s got rhythm, he starts snapping his fingers on one and three.
Mark: That’s really interesting.
Lev: The way everybody does when they’re watching Strictly. It’s like, oh yeah, ONE, two, THREE, four. And I’m saying, no, it’s about the backbeat. You’ve got to do it on two and four.
Mark: Two and four.
Lev: …and after 15 seconds of him clapping on one and three he stops and then he switches to two and four which is just… I don’t know whether he did that I’m sure he did it deliberately but it’s just a beautiful little moment… oh yeah they do get it, yeah…
Mark: it’s a film that bears re-watching because you you might notice something like that, that you’ve never noticed before, or they’re a little throwaway the lines that in other films are made huge… I remember when, you know, without giving too much away, there’s a bit where they tell him that he was adopted and he just says quietly, “you mean I’m going to stay this colour?” And, you know, it’s like, it’s just such a great line delivered, you know, without the fanfare and everything. There’s a lot of that that goes on in that film.
Lev: It also has another thing that I think makes it is Jackie Mason.
Mark: Oh, Jackie Mason.
Lev: Inexplicably Armenian name for somebody who’s quite clearly Jewish.
Mark: I’ve no idea why he would be called Mr Hartunian. And again, perfectly cast. Around then, everyone was cast so well. I mean, there was David Warner, wasn’t there In The Man With Two Brains.
Lev: Yes.
Mark: All of it, Bernadette Peters again, just this perfect casting. Jackie Mason, again, at that point where he was, it was just a joy.
Lev: And again, not having to sell it big.
Mark: oh it’s a joy, I mean it’s genuinely… I think it’s a perfect film, and there aren’t many of them… it has the spirit of films that are not like it… oddly I think of it as a pair with Stand By Me.. there’s a warmth and a humanity about it that is beyond what you’re actually just seeing, and I think it’s a very special thing.
Thing 6 – Propelling Pencils
Lev: Final thing. Propelling Pencils
Mark: Propelling pencils.
Lev: Go on then.
Mark: I love pencils. I always have one all the time with me and it’s interesting because you know when you sort of have a quiet companion that you almost don’t… you ignore until… when I was a kid I used to, you know, draw these cars, you know, and I thought I’d like to design cars when I’m older. I think part of it might have been… now I’ve literally just made this leap… it might have been Bond-related. I remember being given a propelling pencil as a kid and I would draw these cars, but like I’d have rulers and the tools with which to do it very simple ones and I remember kind of going into secondary school and doing technical drawing and really loving all of that… there are many things I love about a propelling pencil as opposed to a pencil… I love a pencil of all kinds including the propelling pencil because it feels like I’m free to write what I want because it’s kind of…
Lev: you can change it…
Mark: yeah it’s temporary, and that feels quite freeing and nice and light and enjoyable. I like the consistency of it… never gets blunt, you know, the line is always the same quality and you know physicality… it doesn’t get fatter and wider, it doesn’t do any of that stuff, it’s always the same. I really love the clicky button, you know it’s like I’m being creative, you know, it feels like a reintroduction of that. I’m setting myself up. I’m writing some more.
Lev: Starting again.
Mark: Yeah. So it feels like an injection of fuel.
Lev: I am a writer, honestly.
Mark: I am a writer. Which, again, you really need to keep telling yourself if you’re trying to, because it does vanish very quickly. The rubber it, it occurred to me the other day that no matter how long I have a propelling pencil... I never run out of the rubber bit, the eraser.
Lev: That’s because everything that comes out of it is perfect. You don’t need to erase it.
Mark: You would think, but no. You can see that I use it a bit, but I don’t use it much. And I think it is because I’m freed enough by the fact that it’s a pencil that I’m allowing myself to be more squiggly and more kind of temporary in the way I write. But also that lets stuff out. I remember having a chat with the guy who designs my books. When we’re trying to think of something to do with it maybe a subtitle or a title… he’s like, “you’ve got to let everything come out, all the crap ideas, you can’t hold them in, you actually have to vocalize them for the others to follow, because they’re like in a queue, and you get to that one by doing this one…”
Lev: …and there’s no shortcut…
Mark: there’s no shortcut…
Lev: it’s so annoying
Mark: it’s really boring, isn’t it, because you think “why didn’t I just think of that at the beginning rather than all these crap things in between?”, and I think that’s one of the things I love about the pencil it’s the crap yeah but I’m happy to keep the crap because it feels like part of the journey and I do really love them and I think they become a friend. I think that’s the other thing. I really love a pencil, a regular wooden leaded pencil. I really do love them, but I don’t like the fact that they go. I’m a bit sentimental about odd things.
Lev: Yeah, I love pencils. I don’t love propelling pencils in the same way, but I have a different sort of fetish in my conducting work. The way I mark up scores... is part of the preparation of things. I’ll get it and I’ll make these pencil markings, whatever it is, it’s speeds or dynamics or just which instruments are coming in where. And that has to be minimum 3B softness, 4B probably.
Mark: That’s really interesting.
Lev: Simply just because an HB, god no, that’ll cut up the paper. That makes an indentation. 3B and 4B are the ones and then you get into absolute sort of pencil wanker stuff, which is “it’s got to be Faber-Castell” or “it’s got to be Palomino Blackwing”, you know, just grab anything, but there are, you know, there are good ones and there are bad ones and the same thing with the eraser, you have to have the right one which actually erases somebody else’s pencil marks
Mark: Rather than dilute across a big area.
Lev: That’s not what we want.
Mark: Yeah, exactly. Not what we want.
Lev: And then when it comes to writing, I do a mixture of note-taking on voice notes occasionally, mostly little things scribbled, not scribbled, but tapped on my phone, but also the endless, inevitable notebooks. And I enjoy a pencil for that as well, because the pens that I also enjoy, they feel like fair copy. That’s got to be good. That’s really...
Mark: There’s definitely something... freeing about a pencil, it really is, and I think I might… I hate to say this but I think I might come around to using a wooden pencil again at some point, it’s just not right now, and I think – I’m not quite sure why that is – and…
Lev: You’re not ready for it, Mark… you’re not ready…
Mark: I’m not ready. I’m not mature enough to handle a pencil…
Lev: it’s a sign of personal growth and maturity… it comes to some of us
Mark: yeah maybe it’ll come to me. The only pencil I do possess funnily, enough is one of my dad’s. And it’s, I think I could probably use it for the rest of my life, even if I greatly outlived his age, because it’s a 6H.
(Short, appalled silence)
Lev: Oh, bloody hell.
Mark: Yeah, no, honestly, it’s like a ghost has written something, you know.
Lev: In the bin, straight away, sorry.
Mark: No, exactly.
Lev: Obviously, it’s sentimental value and everything, but still in the bin.
Mark: Yeah, no, quite. To you, that’s a stick, rather than a pencil.
Lev: It’s just a pointless stick. Yeah.
Mark: Yeah, and it’s interesting because I literally, I think I could use it for the rest of my life, even if I lived to 100.
Lev: Well, certainly you’ll never actually make a dent in it.
Mark: No, literally not. I’m not even sure it actually writes. As you said, I think it maybe just leaves the indentation of the letters on the page.
Lev: Tearing out bits of paper left, right and centre.
Mark: I hate to say it, but I think it could be something that I become a wanker about if I got into the wooden pencil where I’d be going, “oh no, it’s got to be one of those.” Having explored the full range of the best ones.
Lev: I think in time you will come to embrace wankerdom and it’s a happy place.
Mark: I’m already there on so many subjects.
Lev: We’re doing no harm to anybody at all.
Mark: No, no, no. If we’re quietly scribbling away with our own pencils, who’s come to harm?
Lev: Thank you, Mark. It’s been an absolute joy talking to you, really. There’s so many things that you’re interesting on and funny and your six things were just terrific.
Mark: Well you’re very kind.
Lev: I’m sure everyone will agree. You can find out more about this episode’s featured things in the show notes with links where appropriate, and there should be quite a few links, I think, and I hope they bring you as much pleasure as they’ve brought me. Thanks for listening and see you next month for six more excellent and fascinating things.
