John Otway to bring his Christmas knees up to Reading’s Face Bar

A Christmas knees up is coming to The Face Bar, courtesy of John Otway.

The star always makes a festive stop in Reading, and this year is no exception.

Teaming up with Club Velocity and New Mind, the singer-songwriter will bring his surreal sense of humour and self-depreciation to appreciative audiences, with a bit of help from support act Damien A Passmore.

John says that from the age of nine he knew he wanted to be a pop star.

But even at that young age, having listened to his sister’s Beatles and Stones records, he knew he would never be able to do what they do.

His outlook changed when his sister bought home a Bob Dylan album … and he learnt how to play the guitar.

Another seminal moment came when a fortune teller gazed into a crystal ball and said he would indeed be a star and enjoy success with a blond-haired musician. So, he teamed up with Wild Willy Barrett and, in 1972, released their first single, Gypsy/Misty Mountain. It was in dedication to the fortune teller who had assured Otway that fame and stardom was just around the corner.

The single would be the first of a string of flops, but it did capture the attention of The Who’s Pete Townshend who offered to produce several tracks for the duo.

Despite Townshend’s involvement, the duo remained on the fringes of the music scene but continued to gain a live following with their frenetic, raucous and often chaotic performances in the pubs and clubs around the UK.

Otway had to wait until 1977 and the rise of punk before his dream of fame and fortune would finally become a reality with an appearance on The Old Grey Whistle Test, a BBC music programme.

Ever the showman, decided to jump on to the amplifier of his colleague during a performance of Bob Lind’s Cheryl’s Going Home. But, his misjudged his aim and the amp crashed down and Otway became the talk of the town.  

It led to his sixth single, Really Free, reaching 27 in the charts and an appearance on Top of the Pops. In turn, that led to a meeting with Elton John.

By 1990, his musical career had flatlined and acting work had all but dried up, Otway tried his hand at writing his autobiography Cor Baby, That’s Really Me (subtitled Rock and Roll’s Greatest Failure). It was an honest, heart-on-sleeve appraisal of his career so far and this study in self-deprecation soon found him climbing his way back to the top as the book quickly outsold all of his albums.

First, he teamed up with Attila the Stockbroker touring as Headbutts and Halibuts with whom he wrote a surreal rock opera called Cheryl.

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With Richard Holgarth, they formed a band, featuring Murray Torkildsen, Adam Batterbee and Seymour, and played their first gig in the Concorde, Brighton. By the end of the year, Otway celebrated his 2,000th gig with an electrifying performance with his band in a sold out show at London’s Astoria.

In 1995, he released the album Premature Adulation, his first album of new material in more than 10 years and then, in 1998, after a concerted publicity campaign, packed over 4,000 fans into the Royal Albert Hall. The show also saw him re-united with his first ever band The Aylesbury Youth Orchestra.

Realising he could use his fanbase, Otway began to engage in minor publicity stunts. In 2000, a grassroots campaign saw his Beware of the Flowers Cause I’m Sure They’re Going to Get You, Yeah beat the likes of Paul Simon and Bob Dylan in a BBC poll to find the greatest lyrics of all time. Voted in at number seven, Q Magazine declared the result a fix and questioned the integrity of the Otway fans.

With the fans help, he decided to release a new single, Bunsen Burner, which featured more than 900 of his fans on backing vocals, each one listed on the single’s sleeve.

It reached number nine in the charts and led to another appearance on Top of the Pops, and the ability to launch a Greatest Hits album.  

He continues to tour, sometimes with Wild Willy Barrett, sometimes at Glastonbury and sometimes at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

Now in his 70s, he continues to visit Reading as part of his festive shenanigans, helped by Damien and his band, The Loveable Fraudsters. They are described as the greatest, the tallest and the best cowpunk-country band in all the land.

How can I get tickets to John Otway at The Face Bar?

The show will take place at The Face Bar in Chatham Street, Reading from 8pm on Thursday, December 5.

Tickets cost £16.50 including a booking fee. For more details, log on to: https://wegottickets.com/event/603142