The Sludge Desk

The first album I ever bought, of anyone's, was Bat Out of Hell II. I got it on cassette tape from Our Price in Margate high street. At that point I didn't even have my own system on which to listen to it. I would load it into my dad's JVC hi-fi, insert the impossibly long headphone cable and lie back on the sofa, my eyes closed and mind alive to whatever imagery the music and lyrics conjured in the soft darkness. Some of what Mr Loaf sang went above my head. (I was a lot shorter then.) Some of it was interpreted in theatrical set pieces involving Harley Davidson motorcycles, long hair and creaking leathers. In these little private dramas I felt powerful, something I couldn't feel with my eyes open, staring down the frightening, blaring world.   So it is with misty eyes and heart heavier than the man himself I sit here tonight, listening to his repertoire of croon and growl, whimper and crow, wondering what broke him so completely, so long ago, that the fiend of artistr

“So, you had the stroke in 1999?” “Yeah. February ‘99, yeah. I was born with an aneurysm in the brain and it burst in 1999.” “And you’d had no idea about the aneurysm?” “Absolutely. No signs there was anything wrong until it actually happened. Totally out of the blue. Unexpected.” “Were you at home, or…” “I was living with my wife at the time in Nottingham and went out with a couple of friends and I bent over to stroke the cat and passed out because the force of bending down brought the blood flow through the aneurysm and it burst. And that was it,” he adds simply. Nut roasticism - dining the insalubrious From the kitchen across the hall of Ken Owen’s well-heated bungalow (one of the health issues he has been left with is the inability to properly self-regulate his body temperature), the sounds of a roast dinner coming together can be heard. We have been invited round for Hallowe’en Sunday lunch. Ken’s long-serving friend, Sally, and the Good Doctor are busily working on the last stage