Alan George Heywood Melly (17 August 1926 – 5 July 2007) was an English jazz and blues singer, critic, writer and lecturer. From 1965 to 1973 he was a film and television critic for The Observer and lectured on art history, with an emphasis on surrealism.
He was born in Liverpool, Lancashire, and was educated at Stowe School, where he discovered his interest in modern art, jazz and blues, and started coming to terms with his sexuality.
Melly once stated that he may have been drawn to surrealism by a particular experience he had during his teenage years. A frequent visitor to Liverpool's Sefton Park near his home, he often entered its tropical Palm House and there chatted to wounded soldiers from a nearby military hospital. It was the incongruity of this sight, men smoking among the exotic plants, dressed in their hospital uniforms and usually deficient a limb, that he felt he later recognised in the work of the Surrealists.
He joined the Royal Navy at the end of the Second World War because, as he quipped to the recruiting officer, the uniforms were "so much nicer". As he related in his autobiography Rum, Bum and Concertina, he was crestfallen to discover that he would not be sent to a ship and was thus denied the "bell-bottom" uniform he desired. Instead he received desk duty and wore the other Navy uniform, described as "the dreaded fore-and-aft". Later, however, he did see ship duty. He never saw active combat, but was almost court-martialled for distributing anarchist literature.
Melly can refer to:-
New York City's got a colder winter
Than where I live this time of year.
I wouldn't know cuz I missed my flight
And went out instead.
Handful of friends with some dynamite
Set to explode if you do it right.
Right off a cliff on a Saturday night.
Should have stayed at home.
I never would have met her there.
OH! OH NO!
She's my biggest mistake.
I never knew about her.
OH! OH NO!
She's my biggest mistake.
I should have listened to the first time
Mitch Ryder warned me
About the psycho with the blue dress on.
I tried to run but she's so so good at keeping up.
I had it coming or so they said.
Right off the pages of a gossip thread.
If only I had just stayed in bed.
Gonna sue Jet Blue for everything they put me through.
OH! OH NO!
She's my biggest mistake.
I never knew about her.
OH! OH NO!
She's my biggest mistake.
OH! OH NO!
She's my biggest mistake.
(Biggest mistake, biggest mistake)
I never knew about her.
OH! OH NO!
She's my biggest mistake.
Wake me up from the nightmare I'm in.
She's a certified psycho and she's pulling me in.
Wake me up from the nightmare I'm in.
She's a certified psycho.
Can anybody help me out?
OH! OH NO!
She's my biggest mistake.
I never knew about her.
OH! OH NO!
She's my biggest mistake.
[x2]
OH! OH NO!
She's my biggest mistake.