Vince Leigh’s Single Review: Fifteen Of Fame by The Black Pepper Band

There is something immensely satisfying about a band taking an old song, dragging it back into the light and discovering that the thing has somehow grown bigger muscles. That is what The Black Pepper Band do with Fifteen Of Fame. Charlie Powling wrote the song while undergoing Interferon treatment for Hepatitis C, which means its concerns with mortality, regret, depression and disappearing from the world were never theoretical. The lyrics carry the peculiar weight of somebody trying to make sense of life while life itself is behaving badly. But the remarkable thing is how little the song wallows. This Darwin Sessions version moves.

The rhythm section gives it a tough, rolling blues-rock foundation, Powling sings with the kind of plainspoken conviction that makes overstatement unnecessary, and the whole band plays like they understand that heaviness does not require solemnity. Then there is James Gravy Brown. Brown first played on the original studio version, where producer Lindsay Masters ultimately kept his first take intact. That is the sort of studio anecdote that can become mythology, but the live performance here gives it a proper sequel. Brown does not simply recreate the old part. He re-enters the song. His guitar playing is vivid, melodic and beautifully alive to the mood of the lyric. The solo has bite without bluster, emotion without theatrics. It lifts the track rather than hijacking it, and that distinction matters. The breakdown is equally effective. The arrangement opens up, Powling’s words get more exposed, and the title begins to sound less like a wink at Warhol and more like a serious question about what survives us. That is the great achievement of Fifteen Of Fame. A song written out of illness and uncertainty has become, years later, something unexpectedly affirmative. The people are still here. The song is still here. The band is still playing it. And sometimes that is the only kind of fame worth having.