Beware of the Bull: The Enigmatic Genius of Jake Thackray

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In October 1973 he appeared at the Sherman Theatre in Cardiff on the same bill as his hero Georges Brassens, the only time that the chansonnier ever sang on a British stage. It’s part history of the music industry’s changing face, a psychogeographical discussion of Yorkshire, Monmouth, and France, a study of the tension between inherent qualities and learned qualities, the way one’s background, origins, even DNA, continue to exert an influence even when pushed beyond one’s station, woven deftly into the account of one singular man. Growing up in East Grinstead, West Sussex, in the 60s and 70s, the British-born author and Sandman creator had perceived Thackray as a vague voice on the peripheries of childhood, this lugubrious wooly jumpered raptor of a man, his voice a foggy, owlish hoot steeped in dark Yorkshire bitter, who doled out droll topical songs on such lighthearted TV consumer affairs shows as Braden’s Week and That’s Life!

The final chapters are heartbreaking, but - on a very human level - are tempered with a sense of relief at Thackray's (albeit materially ruinous) release from the demands of a working life that he had come to hate and fear. It’s a genuinely moving revelation, and one that throws into sharper relief some of the murkier aspects of his later years. There’s a wonderful photograph on the back of this book, showing him performing in a hotel in 1969, which captures the essence of his informal approach.As well as the unparalleled joy of keeping the publication alive, you'll receive benefits including exclusive editorial, podcasts, and specially-commissioned music by some of our favourite artists. Poet, artist, visionary and author of the unofficial English national anthem 'Jerusalem', William Blake is an archetypal misunderstood genius. Bantam Cock, freed from its maddening keyboard refrain, was out-and-out funny while the Widow Of Bridlington was both sad and wry (a precursor to Richard Thompson’s Beeswing). I think Jake would find it amusing and intriguing that his songs are being valued and enjoyed again,” says McTell.

These things are true, of course, but what becomes evident was that Thackray in fact relished the opportunity to simply be a member of the small Monmouth community in which his one-bedroom council flat was situated, to be ‘Jake’ as opposed to ‘Jake Thackray: performer’. His disarming honesty in this respect caused him to steal the show on one episode of Braden’s Week when, having twice fluffed his guitar intro, he announced, “…and that is a cock-up,” at which the audience roared with laughter. But, perversely enough, you can’t be a singer without having to talk…I’d just prefer to sing the songs one after the other; I sing, you go clap, I sing, you go clap…or not as the case may be. Admired by Neil Gaiman, Jarvis Cocker, Alex Turner and Thea Gilmore, among others, Jake was one of the greatest and most original artists of the twentieth century; a unique talent and master storyteller whose songs are full of wit, poetry, irreverence and humanity. And I remembered and then I started blushing…and there’s nothing worse than blushing to yourself in the dark.The subsequent – and surely inevitable in these cases – outpouring of praise and adoration is cut short when Mavers reminds Macefield that he’s “only a man, la’, just a person”.