He crossed paths with William Burroughs, Terry Gilliam and Spitting Image while whipping up almighty grooves with his band Blurt. Now 82, he’s back on tour – and bracing for a warts-and-all documentary made by his many children
T
he big bloke in the khaki suit speaks quietly these days. We are nestled in the corner of Ted Milton’s studio above a rehearsal space in Deptford, London, cocooned by record boxes, poetry books, plus a single big, bright suitcase, and I have to nudge the recorder closer to pick up his voice. Milton – a saxophonist, poet, countercultural survivor and one-time avant garde puppeteer – is 82, and uses a couple of sticks to get around, yet he is once again going on the road across Europe with his long-running band Blurt, as well as releasing a new album with his duo the Odes.
Today, he is making record covers destined for the tour merch table with the help of his old woodblock setup. “That orange suitcase?” he points across the desk. “I just bought it.” He booms out a massive laugh, as if to prove he still has the lung power to command a room. “I’m a fetishist about luggage. I know how to survive touring. Haha!”
At many gamechanging moments in British postwar culture, Milton was skulking in the background somewhere, with mischief not far away. He recalls sharing taxis with William S Burroughs when the Beat godfather came to London in the early 1960s; he was described as a visionary by old drinking buddy Eric Clapton; his puppet show crashed its way into the Monty Python universe by being featured in Terry Gilliam’s 1977 film Jabberwocky; a legendary lost promotional film for Pink Floyd’s 1967 song Scream Thy Last Scream is rumoured to feature Milton’s overcoat in a leading role via the wonder of animatronics. And there is no band quite like Blurt, a bass-less trio of drums, guitar and Milton’s horns and vocals throwing down raucous, jazzy blowouts. “The groove they had was utterly fabulous,” says long-term fan Graham Lewis, of post-punks Wire.
