In Excelsis - a Personal History of Glam Rock

“In Excelsis” was probably my biggest failure as a creator-performer-producer. That’s not a criticism of the show – you might be a better judge of that. The script’s there to be clicked on, the pictures are here. No, it’s the almighty failure of the show to reach its audience. It was only seen twice, and one of those showings was a disaster. There had always been a Glam Rock twinkle in my eye and I knew that one day I would open up that aspect of my life onstage, so when I got a commission from the Shout! Festival to make a show for them I knew that this was the moment – and when I found out that the performance was going to be in the very West Midlands town where so much of the autobiographical action took place it seemed like a dream come true. My previous solo show, “Stevenage”, had been ambitious technically, with three walls of projections and the audience standing and walking about throughout, but “In Excelsis” was not much less unconventional – with back and floor projections, a lot of original film, and, yes, a live band to appear from behand a gauze for just the last fine minutes of the show. Not forgetting an impossible image change, and some very pin-point lighting. The thing was, it mattered to me, - it told a story of another me, and of a time when, almost more than any other, I became my next incarnation. Major life-events happened during the period covered by the show, and the many layers of co-incidence and happenstance seemed to me – and still seem to me – quite astonishing. They were sexy, risky, remarkable times. But, alas for all of us involved, the premiere was a cursed mess of inadequate tech support and a shambles of venue management. It pains me to think of the things that went wrong that cold winters night in West Bromwich. The following year I got a chance to do it again, properly, in London at the Cockpit Theatre - for that we had filmed the final band number (Meteor and The Mama’s were never to re-form) and the whole show went according to plan, but to a pretty small audience. The moment is long past when “In Excelsis” might be revived, but it is my Great Lost Show and I feel its under-performance dearly, so it deserves its place in this TReasury. What you have is the script, and a set of images which not only show the sheer diversity of its content but may help you to piece together a sense of what most of the world never saw. There may be a video of it out there. There is certainly a rock-video of the final song, https://vimeo.com/845738218?share=copy [added to the site - 23.7.2023] and a recording of it. As they appear they become a part of this collection. But for now, I hope you may get an idea of the sheer amount of personal history and commitment which went into the production.