The resurrection of Peter Perrett

Back in the day, one of the little thrills of working at Kief’s (it was a record store, eh) was opening the boxes from an import distributor like Jem and rifling through the fresh forty-fives from the U.K. Having seen a listing for a single by a new group called the Only Ones that sounded appealing, I included it on an order in 1977. 

Released on the band’s own Vengeance label, it was a curious packaging, a black sleeve with a grainy black and white photo on one side, depicting a band of mismatched misfits, including guitarist John Perry in a form-fitting, less than flattering fishnet onesie. Front and center in the photo, as he was on stage and in the studio, was a young songwriter named Peter Perrett - tousled hair, dour expression, black sleeveless shirt. 

This is curious, thought I. 

Quickly “Lovers of Today” went to the turntable for audition. 

It was one of those moments. Everything about it was perfect. Great intro, a sinister a-part, decorated by Perry’s Greek chorus guitar squiggles, a b-part that shifted pop, a singalong chorus, a solo that emoted and moved the song forward, smart lyrics, a singer with immediate presence and individuality. Oh, and a classic retarded (hey, no snickering!) ending. Jesus, let’s play that again. Recorded on a budget, self-released, and as a song and a record it wiped the floor with nearly everything being signed to a major label. 

The band’s next single was “Another Girl, Another Planet.” Yeah. That record. 

“Lovers of Today” didn’t go unnoticed by record companies in the U.K. After a bidding war the band signed with CBS, their records eventually being released on Epic in the U.S.  Over three years they released as many albums, each of them excellent. They fit in exactly nowhere. But everyone I knew and whose tastes I admired thought the Only Ones were the shit. 

Too sneering and dark for mainstream pop audiences, too committed to a range of musical and lyric expression for punk. It was conundrum that as a fan and musician I related to. 

“You wanna play Rome and Juliet; I’ll play Peter Perrett” sings Paul Westerberg in a rockin’ little obscurity of his called “Seein’ Her.” The same man who wrote a song called “Alex Chilton.” Paul picks good role models. Not unlike Big Star, the Only Ones became one of those bands that influenced the only ones who mattered. Cool bands covered their songs. Bands like the Replacements. And the Libertines. 

Aside from an underrated release (as ‘the One’) called Woke Up Sticky in 1996, Peter Perrett lived underground, literally at one point, between 1982 and 2007, when the Only Ones reformed for the occasional gig. They also wrote and recorded some new material, but for one reason or another it wasn’t deemed worthy of release. 

Perrett spent most of that time paying little attention to music, a crackhead and a junkie. He’s now unrepentant and a bit matter of fact about it all. He was a junkie. That was his job. He did the best job of it he could, thank you very much. That he should approach the tragedy of his own life with such nonchalance is something no fan of his music should be surprised  by, really. Perrett’s romanticism was always clear-eyed in its sense of doom.

Somewhere, apparently, between the Only Ones reformation in 2007 and 2012, Perrett made the decision to stop using drugs. He describes it as a decision motivated by sheer instinct for survival. His COPD was so bad that if he hadn’t stopped he’d be dead. Full stop. And stop he did. No longer working at being a junkie, the lures of music once again pulled him in. 

Which brings us to today. 

Despite their drug dependence, Perrett and his wife of forty-some years Zena, somehow managed to raise two boys; lads who, as it turns out, are really good musicians. You can hear a very young Jamie, guitarist, and Peter, Jr., bassist, with their father doing a one-off radio session sometime around the turn of the century. 

Haggard, and a poster boy for British Dental, Perrett seems no musically worse for wear. And his teenage kids? Shit, they were good. Jamie reputedly took guitar lessons from the Only One’s John Perry. It shows, but so does the kid’s own big reach and spirit. 

Fifteen or so years forward, Jamie and Peter II are crucial to the brilliant revival of their father’s work, on an album called How the West Was Won. It’s hard to overstate what their musicianship and love bring to this project. But Peter Perrett doesn’t sound like something the cat dragged in from drug addiction. He sounds like an artist at the top of his game. 

How the West was Won is so stunningly good that it made me laugh with surprise the first several times I heard it. Oddly, the title track, an off-hand, witty jab at the myth of American ‘exceptionalism’ is an anomaly on this set, which is mostly concerned with the language of love and addiction that examines their intersections unflinchingly. “Sweet Jane” minus a chord or two, the title song’s lyrics address the holocaust of the American Indian and Kim Kardashian’s ass (Perrett knowingly uses the Anglo-American ambiguity of ‘bum’) all in one song. Jamie Perrett’s guitar solo deftly alludes to Mick Ralph’s solo on Mott’s version of “Sweet Jane.” 

Such references are not uncommon here, these are rock enthusiasts who know what touches to apply; for “Troika,” a bittersweet look at a love triangle, Jamie’s shimmering guitar lines recall James Honeyman-Scott’s playing in the Pretenders, as his old man sings “I’ll always be a part of you” with Baudelaire-like resignation. 

Like his models Bob Dylan and Lou Reed, Perrett knows how to mix anguished ambivalence with the greatest declarations of love. 

Dedicated to Zena, “An Epic Story” immortalizes a love that is partly based on such abilities as “laugh(ing) at the cruelest of things,” that’s marked by being “too late for repentance of sin,” yet in the end is ultimately exalted -  “If I could live my whole life again I’d choose you, every time.” The band, Perrett brothers plus drummer Jake Woodward and violinist  Jenny Maxwell, play with  rock authority that combines the relaxed and the confident in equal measures. A kind of magisterial groove that you rarely hear these days. 

Given his Crowleyesque indulgences, “Hard to Say No” - ‘sometimes I find it hard to say no’ - is a sly understatement that conveys something of the darkness of dependence. The Lou Reed influence shines again on “Sweet Endeavor,” a lovely paean to the outsider life and ultimately life itself. 

Reminiscent of the Only One’s “The Beast,”“Living in my Head” builds from a pounding drone into guitar fireworks from Jamie that remind me of Mick Taylor’s dashes of brilliance on “Sway” or “Time Waits for No One.” Jamie Perrett plays with taste and expression that makes an allowance for guitar heroism, which I usually find tedious. 

“Take Me Home” closes the album like a benediction. 

‘Sometimes I go walkin' in the dark

I'm waitin' for fate to jump out at me

Feels like I'm walkin' in the shoes of another man

Someone who refused to ever follow the plan.’

With resignation and defiance the singer implores those who love him “take me home.” 

Luminously produced by Chris Kimsey, How the West was Won was recorded, much of it tracked live, in two sessions during 2016 and 2017 at Konk Studios, where Perrett bumped into no less than Ray Davies. And laughed to the funny stories Kimsey had about his many sessions with the Rolling Stones. Kimsey has worked with some illustrious company, company in which Peter Perrett belongs. How the West was Won is no less than a resurrection of a man and an artist. It’s a cool thing to behold, isn’t it?