'I am the god of Hell-Fire, and I bring you, Fire...'
Thus Arthur Brown entered the pantheon of Rock and Roll history.
The rest of his debut album was filled with an eclectic assortment of dramatic originals such as 'Child of My Kingdom', as well as a great cover of 'I Put A Spell On You'.
Discovered and produced by Pete Townshend, Arthur Brown had an incredible voice. He was also the first theatrical Rock act out of the UK and his stage performance had a profound effect on Peter Gabriel, David Bowie and Alice Cooper.
The 'Crazy World' was just three performers, Vincent Crane on organ and bass pedals, 18 year-old Carl Palmer on drums and Arthur on vocals. Their live sound was very dense despite the small orchestration.
The show began with Carl and Vincent coming on stage and playing a lot of noise.
From the left side of the stage, under a blast of strobe lights and fog, a huge sphere began rolling across the stage to the centre. Out of the egg-like form came a giant fetus.
It was Arthur.
From this opening stage costume, Arthur proceeded to create other characters. After the egg persona came the following in order; the striped outfit, the Jesus outfit, the Pope outfit and finally the God of Hell-Fire.
The first four costume changes all happened on stage before our eyes. You can see in the photos that all his costumes are underneath one another. He is bulky in the 'egg' and 'stripe' costume and gradually losing density for the Jesus and Pope outfits. Arthur is also wearing a necklace around his neck of consumer packaging such as 'Instant Breakfast' and a small box of Tide detergent. His crown of thorns is actually a bird's nest.
Arthur wasn't making any religious or socio-political statements with his lyrics or music. He just thought the stage images were icons of society and thus fun to play with.
For the finale, he went back stage and came out from the wings with his head on fire.
With a searing vocal introduction, Arthur incanted, 'I am the God of Hell Fire, and I bring you, Fire'. After a few seconds he threw the burning headpiece into the wings and continued with the song that brought down the house.
It was a spectacular and unique performance.
Carl Palmer went on to form Emerson, Lake and Palmer while Vincent Crane created Atomic Rooster. Arthur Brown formed 'Kingdom Come' in 1975 and their LP 'Journey' was the first Rock album to feature a drum machine. Arthur still records and performs live today and will be returning to North America in October 2006.