Herbie Armstrong is not a complete stranger to fame and fortune, having rubbed shoulders with a little of the former and carried upon his shoulders a degree of mis-fortune. Fame has been two-fold; a nodding acquaintanceship courtesy of past incarnations, and more recently as a runner-up on Britain’s Got Talent. Certainly he’s unlikely to have amassed the wealth of his old sparring partner, Van Morrison, with whom he played in classic outfits such as Them.
While others rode the gravy train in the swinging sixties Herbie Armstrong’s gravy was a tad lumpy. Despite being a member of various groups and working alongside the likes of Screaming Lord Sutch et al, Herbie’s star was not so bright. There were tours and albums in the seventies and eighties which skirted along the periphery of greater success but never quite touched the hem of eminence. Latterly his working life has been as a publican in Hampshire, but once a musician then always a musician. He looks a bit like Charlie Watts, but without the ten thousand dollar suits!
However the muses sometimes take a slanted perspective on individuals and like God himself they can move in mysterious ways. It always seems unjust that so many talentless hustlers climb to the dizzy heights while countless others scratch and scrape around in the black hole of anonymity. By the powers invested in reality tv Herbie has another chance at the limelight, and all those years in interstellar wilderness have matured him like a tawny port.
There is pathos in the lines of his face, and wisdom in the silver of his hair. You cannot sing of love and life without having known both. Younger dilettantes merely express the sentiments without imbuing the words with any experience. The voice of Herbie Armstrong hangs heavy in the air with the scent of trophies and troubles. Just as tobacco stained fingers belie a smoker’s habit so too the craquelure in his throat sings of tribulation and jubilation. There is no better example of this than ‘Give me love’ which plucks the heartstrings remorselessly and hangs them with teardrops like an emotional washing line. It’s one of sixteen songs on his generously filled album, Real Real Gone, which in some ways is the distillation of his life. It is a work wrought by the passage of time and weathered by vicissitudes, and accompanied by his not un-noticeable skills with a guitar.
‘Still in my heart’, which he sang on television, is also included and is another exposition of a voice that sounds like crazy paving, and this particular piece is indelibly stamped with the hallmark of lost love. And should you have failed to notice that then a maudlin trumpet comes in at the end to annihilate totally any last vestige of resistance to feelings of sadness.
Generally there is looseness and lassitude In Herbie’s performance that could only have been borne from the payment of dues and the rites of passage. It would be unkind to steal his thunder by saying there are distinct similarities between his own singing style and Van the man himself but it gives an indication. The second track on the album is actually ‘Have I told you lately that I love you’ so it’s not as if he’s going out of his way to put a distance between them. Nevertheless, this is undoubtedly Herbie’s opus.
At 66 he’s a smidgen too old to be a child prodigy and likewise he won’t be able to claim he’s an overnight success. However if some kind of belated fame and fortune does come his way then it seems a just reward for patience and perseverance, and perhaps the squawking young wannabees on the box should take comfort in the fact that there is always tomorrow, and for some people tomorrow does come.
Review by Peter Heydon
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