DAVID DEVANT & HIS SPIRIT WIFE

Magic

Gustav Temple meets Graham Carlow, the drummer in the band that took their name from a 19th century magician, to discuss the art and magic of deception

How did David Devant & His Spirit Wife get their name?

Mickey the singer is known in the band as ‘The Vessel’, and when we started he felt he was the vessel for the spirit of the original David Devant, a 19th century magician, to pass through. He’s really into the complexity of the stage persona – wearing a mask and a wig, being another person on stage. If you know him, it’s clear that the person on stage is very different to the person you know, and they’re both quite strange. I used to go and meet him every Wednesday night and eat beans on toast, and then we’d write a few songs. “Mickey was an illustrator and once when I went round there he was working on an illustration showing a woman levitating, titled David Devant & His Spirit Wife. In the band we ended up doing a version of it on stage, using my wife’s nightie on a stick”

After he’d finished eating, Mickey would quietly say, ‘Thank you beans, thank you toast’. And that’s his real character, as opposed to his stage persona. He teaches illustration, he’s an artist and a writer. His various outlets seem increasingly impenetrable.

A bit like the original David Devant?

Yes! I always think of Devant as the partner of John Nevil Maskelyne, who was the engineer side of their act. He created the mechanics of their shows. A lot of their shows were much more ambitious mechanically than anything else from that time. They were huge stage shows with massive props – much more akin to David Copperfield today. Devant was more the charming conjurer of the act. Originally it was Maskelyne and George Alfred Cooke, but then Cooke died and Devant became the new partner.

Mickey was an illustrator and once when I went round there he was working on an illustration showing a woman levitating, titled David Devant & His Spirit Wife. In the band we ended up doing a version of it on stage, using my wife’s nightie on a stick. Each of the early shows we did was an individual show in itself, with a different theme. Our first show was upstairs at the Rock Inn, in Kemp Town. They were always supposed to be more like happenings than just music shows.

Also in the band was Foz, who used to be the guitarist in the Monochrome Set. When Mickey met him in a photocopy shop he was bowled over. Then Foz invited us to come and play him some of our songs, probably thinking we’d bring a tape over. But we took our guitars and sat on his bed to play him the songs.

“Classic illusion – legerdemain. Point people in the wrong direction. Which is what the band was all about. This is why we were fascinated by the Maskelynes, the idea of the deception of illusion”

So you were the guitarist then, but now you’re the drummer?

Yes, I’ve spent most of my musical career trying to get away from playing the drums! Anyway, as soon as I saw that illustration, I thought David Devant & His Spirit Wife was a brilliant name for a band. Especially as all the other bands of the time had single names, like Pulp. Our first single was called Pimlico, where Foz had grown up. We spent two weeks building a set to make a video for it. That got shown on MTV for about a month, and then we were signed to a big record label.

There’s no equivalent to MTV now, is there?

It totally shifted how you marketed music. You could now see what the bands actually looked like.

Nowadays you can be any old weirdo in a room putting a record out.

When you watch old episodes of Top of the Pops from the seventies, you realise how ugly most great bands were! They looked like just a bunch

A WWII tank disguised as a supply truck, of the sort designed by Jasper Maskelyne

“The delusion of illusion was something he felt that people actually craved. That has always informed the band, the idea of the suspension of disbelief. Everyone knew that Mickey was wearing a wig, but they bought into that”

of geezers from the pub. That was the power of MTV. It forced everyone to try and be beautiful. Our next gig at the Rock Inn was at Christmas, and we served a Christmas dinner to 70 people before the gig, cooked by the pub’s owners. Mickey was on stage under one those massive domes you cover plates with, and he sang the first song with his head sticking out of it.

Going back to the Maskelyne influence, I’d only heard of his grandson, Jasper. He worked on decoy construction during the Second World War, building inflatable tanks, disguised tanks and fake harbours in Portsmouth.

There is a lot of confusion about his involvement in the War, on top of what was obscured by the official secrets act. Maskelyne was in some sort of camouflage unit that went to North Africa, claiming it was called ‘The Magic Gang’, but I don’t think that was ever corroborated by anyone else. There was a story about him using Worcestershire Sauce to make camouflage paint. He claimed to have worked on ways to make tanks look like supply trucks, and fake tanks that were painted remarkably like some of our stage props. That kind of quick, illusional painting that is just enough to look convincing from a distance.

Classic illusion – legerdemain. Point people in the wrong direction. Which is what the band was all about. This is why we were fascinated by the Maskelynes, the idea of the deception of illusion. Around John Nevil’s time, there were lots of detractors trying to expose his magic tricks, but he never claimed to have any supernatural powers.

In fact he wrote a book about that, called Sharps and Flats: A Complete Revelation of the Secrets of Cheating at Games of Chance and Skill, the card sharp’s bible, apparently.

Yes, he was more interested in the public’s willingness to be fooled. The delusion of illusion was something he felt that people actually craved. That always informed the band, the idea of the

DEBONAIR MOUSTACHE WAX

Made by Captain Fawcett for The Chap

suspension of disbelief. Everyone knew that Mickey was wearing a wig, but they bought into that.

Is the band still going?

Well Mickey has just written a whole album’s worth of new material, which he was going to release as Mr. Solo. We could have recorded them all as Devant, but because of lockdown it ended up just being me and him recording them remotely. The other members of the band are all busy doing other things. Foz is obsessed with Flamenco, spending as much time in southern Spain as possible.

Are you still thought of as a Brighton band? There always seem to be fewer of those than you’d imagine.

There are more nowadays, like British Sea Power, but Brighton audiences are notoriously fickle. If you start touring and come back to play Brighton, you think of it as a home gig, but there’s very little loyalty. I always put it down to the amount of choice there is. Once you start touring, they flick to something else. Compared to Manchester, for example, or Liverpool. You get a real vivid, vociferous fanbase. I think music, like football, is a more deeply held passion in those cities. n