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Question
Is it really true that you won’t watch any film with Meryl Streep in?
Answer
Correct. Except for ‘The Deer Hunter’ – a film too brilliant to be spoilt even by her. And I won’t watch any film with Julia Roberts in. It’s nothing to do with their looks either.
Question
When you used to drink alcohol, what was your favourite tipple – and why did you give up and was it difficult?
Answer
Hmm. Okay. A bit off-topic but hey, why not? My favourite drinks were Grappa when over 40%, Pussers Navy Rum (the 57% issue) and Benedictine – but not all at the same time though. Sometimes Jim Beam, sometimes Wild Turkey.
Was it difficult to give up? No, not at all. I made a decision and that was that. No ‘cold turkey’. No problems whatsoever. I guess I was not addicted.
As to why, well I noticed that the amounts necessary to produce the pleasurable effects were increasing. A half bottle of Benedictine for example. The calories in these, let alone the alcohol is really a problem. That was one reason.
Although I was not aware of feeling drunk or appearing drunk according to others, I was told by my staff at Subjective Audio that sometimes my ‘aura’ was so aggressive that for what they perceived as their personal safety they kept out of my way. At first I thought they were kidding. Well you would wouldn’t you? They weren’t though.
My wife having identified this and supplied the reason in that this unpalatable behaviour of mine occurred the morning after I had been drinking. That was it. decision made. No regrets.
From time to time, out of curiosity I might have a drink. But it never inclines me to have more than one.
Finally, and I don’t wish to expand on this but I believe that the way people abuse alcohol is a menace to civilised behaviour of the very highest order.
Despite the hand-wringing and the weasel-words of politicians of all parties, they are accomplices to the continuance of these evils. After all, they want the tax on alcohol. And that is that on this topic. Next?
Question
If you won’t see films by Meryl Streep, do you have similar prejudices with music?
Answer
Yes I certainly do. Through choice I have absolutely nothing in my collection by Elton John, Elvis Costello, Bjork, Mariah Carey and loads more like that. No hip-hop, gangsta rap, dance or thrash metal either.
Question
Are you really a Who ‘fanatic’?
Answer
Was, rather than is. I still love the music but rarely go to big gigs anymore. When I was a student in Manchester I saw The Who a few of nights before their magnificent Live at Leeds gig. I was broke, as students are sometimes and I could either afford the fare to Leeds, or the 7 shillings and 6 pence entry fee, but not both! The Live at Leeds gig conveys exactly what the Manchester gig was like. The gig of my life.
Question
Are you a vegetarian?
Answer
Although not a veggie, I love Indian vegetarian food. I eat at Bombay Spice in North London. One of the very finest anywhere. They serve superb meat and fish dishes too. Read about them HERE
Question
Where is the worst place you’ve eaten?
Answer
Easy. Here. http://www.london-eating.co.uk/2999.htm
Question
What was the house you grew up in like? Was it filled with music?
Answer
In the early 1950s I lived in the nearest house to The Tower of London. It stood where the Docklands Light Railway is now, at the bottom of The Minories. It survived the blitz – just. It was tall and narrow and not quite a slum. When the trains passed by, the whole house shook. We were surrounded by bomb sites (our playgrounds really), and the breath-sapping smells of the cinnamon warehouses near by. Classical music was always on the radio it seemed to me.
Question
Growing up, who did you want to be?
Answer
A mechanical engineer. Within 24 hours of being at UMIST I realised I’d made a dreadful mistake. It was the first example of the fallacy that there is always a joy in achieving one’s goals. That stupid statement does not take into account the despair when you realise you selected the wrong goal in the first place.
Question
What single event, other than being born has had the most significant impact on you? Something that changed you forever?
Answer
This was the outcome of a séance in my hall of residence in Manchester in the late 1960s using a Ouija board. I realised then that despite having no religious persuasion or belief, there are forces very close to us that we have little appreciation of, let alone understanding. My one and only experience of heart-stopping, pants-filling undiluted terror.
Question
Do you have any heroes outside of the audio world?
Answer
My greatest inspirations were and remain in no particular order, The Rev Martin Luther King, Pete Townshend, Muhammad Ali, Jack Ashley (the MP), Jack Casady (the bass player), Christabel Bielenberg (the author), Bach, Rudyard Kipling, George Smiley – and countless others.
Question
Any real-life villains?
Answer
Josef Mengele. To me he encapsulates the utter futility and mindless irrationality of organised religion and political extremism. He was the face of undiluted and inexplicable pure evil in a human form.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josef_Mengele#Human_experimentation
Question
Any dreams left to fulfil?
Answer
In terms of dreams in my everyday life, these are too personal to reveal. However . . . in my sleeping state, meeting people that interest me (in this I’m usually successful in achieving a dialogue), the cataclysmic end of the human world (varying, but irreversible), being a mute observer of historic events (something akin to remote viewing I believe), tidying my demonstration room (a Sisyphean task) and surreal events that defy my powers of description.
Question
What do you see when you look in the mirror?
Answer
Someone I like to think I know rather well, with a face that reflects the not so good and the good.
Question
Style icons; do you have any?
Answer
When it comes to clothes. I don’t even understand the question, let alone know how to formulate a reasonable answer. With hi-fi though, Mr. A Boothroyd – head and shoulders above all the rest.
Question
Do you have a favourite item of clothing?
Answer
My two black leather jackets, the cashmere coat bought for me by Antony Michaelson, my soft grey scarf, my ex-army green jacket. Clean socks. Clean, warm pants.
Question
Not a follower of fashion then?
Answer
No way. Unfashionable things I like include Malta, tough pub R’nB, the sound of a Gibson EB3 through a Marshall stack, Gillian Anderson, East Wittering, the Forsyte Saga (the original, obviously), Lake Garda, blackbirds singing in my garden.
Question
Three things that people don’t know about you yet please?
Answer
I'm really no good at swimming, playing bridge, chess, team sports, giving up meat.
Question
If you have time to yourself . . .?
Answer
I sit and listen to music, both live and at home, I read books and I gaze out to sea at the Hive Beach Café at Burton Bradstock, Dorset.
Question
What do you ride?
Answer
The London underground.
Question
Your house is, in three words?
Answer
Comfortable, idiosyncratic, unfinished.
Question
What’s your most valuable possession Howard?
Answer
My ability to think.
Question
Movie heaven is?
Answer
Once Upon a Time in America’, ‘Brief Encounter’, ‘The Ipcress File’, ‘The Third Man’, ‘Harold and Maude’. Too many to list.
Question
Books that really changed you for better or for worse?
Answer
‘Irrationality’ by Prof Stuart Sutherland. ‘The Jungle’ by Upton Sinclair. ‘Of Mice and Men’ by John Steinbeck. ‘If This Is A Man’ by Primo Levi.
Question
Are you an art lover?
Answer
Yes, but an ignorant one. I like anything by Canaletto, almost anything by Monet and everything I’ve seen by Turner.
Question
Who really makes you laugh?
Answer
Humorous laughter rather than ironic laughter? Well . . . Tommy Cooper, Ronnie Barker.
Question
Are there any shops you can’t walk past?
Answer
None . . . well . . . possibly Fopp in Shaftesbury Avenue.
Question
What’s the best invention ever in your view?
Answer
Anaesthetics.
Question
Where do you want to be in ten years time?
Question
in the nearest faraway place.