Iggy Rose was one of Syd Barrett's girlfriends in 1969.
She is most famous for being the model on the Syd Barrett album: 'The Madcap Laughs'.
Nicknamed Iggy the Eskimo, it was rumoured she was part Inuit.
One day, in 1969, she disappeared out of Syd's life and was not heard of ever since.
Almost four decades later, the Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit started to mess with things.
Its five years mission: to find Iggy and bring her back to the spotlights.
And guess what, with some invaluable help from many, many friends... we did...
Beginning 2017 Iggy Rose decided to leave social media. She died peacefully on the 13th of December 2017,
just before her seventieth birthday. Wishing you good luck, Iggy, wherever you are.
The curry inspector is no more, no more Lord Drainlid either.
RIP Mick Brown, Cambridge music archivist, painter, cartoonist,
satirist and Pink Floyd’s enemy number one, whom we all loved to hate.
There is this thing called Pink Floyd on the Interweb. It is pretty big.
So big that it has intersections between different divisions. There are
many crossroads so to speak. There is this five-lane Pink Floyd motorway
that has a Syd Barrett exit. It leads to an A-road that still is pretty
busy. If you go further down the line you have to take a B-road. I call
it the Cambridge connection. Not a lot of Pink Floyd fans will ever go
there, but those who do are in for a surprise. It takes some effort
though.
Merrydown at The Mill 1964 by Mick Brown.
Beatniks
The Cambridge beatnik scene of the late fifties and early sixties has
been extensively described in several Pink Floyd and Syd Barrett
biographies, but these mostly hover around the three Cantabrigian Floyd
members and their friends: Roger ‘Syd’ Barrett, David Gilmour and Roger
Waters. (Actually, Fred and Roger affectionately called Barrett: Sydney.)
There was a group of youngsters who wanted to find fame and fortune in
London and who stayed in the Pink Floyd slipstream once that band became
famous. David Gilmour jokingly called them The Cambridge Mafia. It is
believed the last hangers-on were surgically removed decades later by
Polly Samson.
Pink Floyd became a successful band by throwing their R&B shackles away
and diving into the swampy London Underground. But they weren’t the only
band with Cambridge roots. Enter Warren Dosanjh and Mick Brown.
Mick Brown edited, did the layout and added plenty of pictures from his
archive for this book. He was also one of the contributors to the
'young’ David Gilmour biography High Hopes, written by
Warren Dosanjh and Glenn Povey (see also: Guitar
Hero). That book describes him as follows:
Mick Brown went to the Perse preparatory and senior schools until 1963
when he was asked to leave. He attended the CCAT until 1965 and then
lived in London between 1967 and 1972. His contribution to the 1960s
counterculture was being jailed for two months in 1968 after the
anti-Vietnam War protest in Grosvenor Square.
While Brown was in London he carefully avoided the psychedelic hippie
and acid scene. Brown worked in the print industry and after his
retirement produced satirical cartoons, movie clips and posters for
local community rock and jazz groups (High Hopes, p. 120).
While Mick Brown is virtually unknown to the average Floyd fan he was
regularly consulted for his encyclopedic knowledge of Cambridge bands.
Yes, even Pink Floyd asked him for information once. He was also the man
who claimed to know who Arnold Layne was.
The real 'Arnold Layne' was John Chambers who came from Sturton Street.
He was well known around Cambridge in the early 1960s and often used to
hang about at the Mill Pond. The Arnold Layne name was simply a
typical Barrett parody of the Beatles' Penny Lane that was recorded at
the same time.
Iggy Rose and Jenny Spires at Mick Brown's house, 2015.Mick
Brown.
Birdie Hop
Mick Brown was a regular at Birdie
Hop where he liked to contravene uncritical Syd Barrett and Pink
Floyd fans. He relentlessly contradicted those self-proclaimed Barrett
specialists begging for the attention of the Syd anoraks. It didn’t
always make him friends, quite the contrary.
When a Syd Barrett and early Pink Floyd event was organised in Cambridge
he described it, pretty accurately, as 'a load of old toffs stuck in a
lava lamp'. He was also the one whispering in my ear that The Syd
Barrett (charity) Fund was conned by 'useless PR men and bullshitters'.
When The City Wakes festival took place they promised to publish a
Cambridge bands coffee-table book, but it never materialised. It may
have pissed him off.
YouTube
Mick Brown made many movies he published on his YouTube
channel. Some are political observations, under the alter ego, Lord
Drainlid. As 'curry inspector' he documented day trips he made with his
friends to the seaside or other places.
He also documented several 'Roots of Cambridge Rock' festivals.
In one of those, there is a jam between Rado Klose and Jack Monck. That
should sound familiar to early Pink Floyd fans.
It was his opinion that a small exclusive group of former students and
public schoolboys claim to have been the sole innovators of alternative
culture in Cambridge since the early 1960s. He was not very happy with
middle-class so-called artists saying to have been Syd Barrett's best
friend. In other words: gold diggers.
To quote him:
The Mill was the place to gather at weekends. Originally the scene of
elite students' merry japes, it was taken over by Mods, Rockers and
'Beats'.
Unfortunately, a hard drug habit spread in the city from
the 1960s onwards, helped inadvertently by a prominent GP with
university connections over-prescribing heroin and cocaine.
The
small elite group who claim to have originated the alternative or
counter-culture in Cambridge – and indeed London – seem not to recognise
the existence of a local community.
Apart from patronising one or
two 'clowns', they ignore the fabric of the city. Their only
contribution to life here has been to hawk their self-published works
with the help of press releases in the local papers.
Mick Brown in the sixties (colourised). Picture: Emo Moore.
Those Without
Mick Brown remembered the gigs Syd Barrett had with Those Without but
was more impressed by a concert from Thelonius Monk, whom he called a
great musical genius of the 20th century. The first album he bought was
from Charlie Parker, at Millers Music Shop. He was a jazz lover for the
rest of his life, pretending that Pink Floyd never happened. But despite
his criticism, he did have a soft spot for Birdie Hop and joined their
2013 and 2015 Cambridge gatherings.
A true one-off and lovely human being. I will remember him often, and
always with a smile on my face. If ever there was a need for a national
day of mourning, this is it.
Abigail Thorne:
Farewell, you absolute legend. ❤ ❤ I am so privileged to have met him.
He wasn't only incredibly polite, but freaking hilarious, a class-A
joker but also disarmingly clever at times and made me proper belly
laugh on more than one occasion!
Mick Brown was a great grumpy man, whose heart was with the local bands.
Mick Brown Self-Portrait.
Many thanks: Warren Dosanjh, Rich Hall, Peter Alex Hoffmann, Lisa
Newman, Glenn Povey, Antonio Jesús Reyes, Eleonora Siatoni, Abigail
Thorne, Lee Wood and the many, many members of Birdie Hop. ♥ Libby ♥
Iggy ♥
Sources (other than the above mentioned links): Dosanjh, Warren &
Povey, Glenn: High Hopes, David Gilmour, Mind Head Publishing,
2020, p. 120. Dosanjh, Warren: The Music Scene of 1960s Cambridge,
Cambridge, 2015.
