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Adieu, Sid
The rock and roll world has lost another icon. Sid Glume, also known as ‘NoHand,” has died at the age of 74.
Born Sidney Glumsky to working class parents in the industrial city of Sheffield, England, Glume rose to fame with his backup band, Doomsday, and was briefly the hottest act in the pop world. He topped the charts in 1971 with the single Obliteration and sold five million copies of the album of the same name.
Interviewed in 1990, Glume was modest about his accomplishment. “The Beatles had broken up, Simon and Garfunkel were breaking up, and people were looking for somewhere to park their loyalties: we happened to be in the right place at the right time, I guess. Better us than Grand Funk Railroad “ he told the New Daily Express.
Glume brought an unusual presence to his performances. He was taciturn, barely acknowledging his audiences—a trick he claims to have learned from Miles Davis and Van Morrison. And his guitar playing style was unusual. He played it with only one hand—his right hand. His left hand, never touched the fretboard. He obtained melodic results by holding his instrument next to his amplifier to produce changes in tone, distortion and feedback. As a result of the ‘no frets’ approach, he was tagged with the derivative nickname “NoHand” after Eric Clapton’s “SlowHand.”
But this approach didn’t mean his left hand wasn’t part of his act. He always used it to cradle a prop. Once he held a lighted candle while he played. Once he held a puppet. But then at his infamous Madison Square Gardens concert in September, 1971, he cradled what appeared to be a severed head, smashing it to the floor at the end of the concert as his audience gasped in horror. He later revealed it to be a head of lettuce that had been soaked in beet juice, but the damage was done. Vegetable rights groups had him in their sights. He never received another invitation to play at a major American venue. “I was following the same creative path as Alice Cooper, Ozzy Osborne and Frank Zappa,” he protested at the time. “And the lettuce was given a respectful burial in a compost heap. But it was me who got blacklisted.”
Never much of a vocalist, Glume nevertheless handled all the band’s vocal duties himself. He was unpopular with band members because of his insistence that they play wearing face masks to obscure their identities, and that they not share in profits from their musical enterprise, but instead get paid on an assignment by assignment basis. “He wanted all the attention for himself, but I guess he deserved it,” said one former bass player. Today, of course, his insistence on masking seems prescient.
Glume remained popular through three best selling albums: Obliteration, Glume and Doom, and Live in Luton. Glume claimed his record company wanted him to play mainstream music, but he saw this as their way of parting company with him. I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing is not the sort of material that Sid Glume and Doomsday have in their repertoire” he complained at the time. He was unable to secure a deal with another company.
Fed up with the music business, Glume retired in 1974 to live the sheltered life of an English country squire. He busied himself with his garden and became a successful breeder of roses. He developed a hybrid variety that was officially registered as the “Glumous Maximus” rose.
In recent years, Glume returned to music, developing an opera based on the Thomas the Tank Engine series. He had picked Paul McCartney for the role of Thomas, after having been turned down by both Mick Jagger and Elton John. He was, however, stymied by gender balance issues: most of the meaty roles—Gordon the Big Engine, Percy the Small Engine, James the Red Engine, Edward the Blue Engine and Henry the Green Engine—were for males. Emily the Emerald Engine was too small a part to ask Adele to take on. Coming up with memorable melodies was also a challenge that he had never had to face before.
Sid Glume—NoHand—died from an E. Coli infection traced to greens purchased at a local supermarket. He is survived by his wife Maxine, five ex-wives, 23 children and numerous grandchildren. He will be missed by many. Adieu, Sid.
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