They were now tainted with a vague guilt, like distant elderly relatives I didn’t visit very often…
The first record I bought – or had bought for me – was Telstar, by the Tornados, when I was six. I was fascinated by its raucous, spacy sound. Ownership seemed too good to be true: I asked my Dad how many times I would be able to play it. “You’ll be tired of hearing it before it wears out” he said ruefully. Perhaps he was already tired of hearing it.
When I started paying attention to pop music, singles were 6/8d (33p) and LPs were 32/6d (£1.62p). That was a hefty sum in pocket money, and until my brother and I were old enough to do paper rounds, all albums and most singles we owned were bought with grown-up money as presents. The LPs I remember us playing repeatedly in our shared bedroom include Summer Holiday, With the Beatles, Help!, Peter and the Wolf, and The Sound of Music. We were that cool. We also had an EP of Twist and Shout, and for some reason, two different EPs from Oliver!.
Look at those little nerds
After about 1967 the collection grew rapidly, mostly from Rob’s purchases, and by the time he was due to leave for university six years later, my anxiety at his imminent departure took the form of a frantic attempt to record his entire collection onto cassette, including B-sides and albums which I didn’t even like. “He will be coming back” Mum reminded me.
Over the next few years I discovered rock’n’roll, then soul and 1950s R&B, and my collection broadened and stretched back in time. When it was my turn to go to university, I spent many happy afternoons in the junk shops of Coventry looking for discarded gems. As I’d always been more excited by individual songs than albums, a large part of my collection consisted of greatest hit and multiple artist compilations.
When CDs emerged in the 1980s, I treated myself to a combined CD/record/cassette player and radio, and a CD to play on it: The Whole Story, the Kate Bush hits compilation. I didn’t rush to replace my vinyl with CDs, not at the scandalous price the record industry had set for the new technology, citing “the higher cost of manufacturing CDs”.(Within months they were being given away free with Sunday newspapers). Vinyl, CDs and cassettes coexisted happily in my collection for a few years. The last vinyl record I remember buying was Shaggy’s Oh Carolina in 1993 – so gritty it didn’t seem right in digital perfection.
For the next few years, CDs dominated music sales. Then in 2003 Apple launched the iTunes Store for downloading digital music, and downloads started to take over from CDs: and when Spotify and similar streaming services became popular around 2010, streaming started to take over from downloads. I’ve had the opportunity to pay four times over for Telstar.
Typically I’ve paid a mere three times, duplicating the music I had already bought on vinyl either with CDs or downloads, and now subscribing to Spotify Premium, where I now stream most of my music, supplemented by YouTube. At £9.99 per month (ad-free) to access just about all the music I care about, old and new, this seems extraordinarily good value for customers.
Meanwhile, I haven’t had a working record player for five years, and haven’t troubled to replace it or get it fixed, because even when it did work I have barely used it this century. My record collection has been taking up physical space in my lounge and emotional space in my head. So many records, once so much loved and treasured, each item reminding me of the joy of discovering new music. They spoke of happy times sharing music with loved ones and lonely times when they supported me, but were now tainted with a vague guilt, like distant elderly relatives I didn’t visit very often.
But unpacking these thoughts, I realised that I haven’t played these records for so long because it’s the content – the music – that I love, not the hardware. This was a liberating, if obvious insight, and mentally my record collection shrivelled to a pile of cold plastic and cardboard. I can and do listen to the music anytime. So I resolved to dispose of my collection. The current vogue for vinyl should work in my favour – although presumably the high prices were what the buyers paid, not what the sellers received. Knowing how much music means to me, Debbie was a little shocked at my resolve, and gently tried to protect me from my rash impulse. Perhaps she was worried it was a sign I was somehow growing tired of life. I replied that if I could take it, so could she.
While in Chesham I dropped into a shop specialising in vinyl (and boxing memorabilia) to enquire whether they would be interested in buying my collection. The fellow was straightforward and helpful. He could visit my house and make an offer, aiming to double his money. He would take them all away, whether he wanted all of them or not.
This seemed fair, and after allowing a couple of months to adjust to it, I called him and made an appointment. But then I thought: what about my niece – is she still interested in LPs? She was, so I arranged them in stacks and took photos so she could choose what she wanted by reading the spines: she came back listing the ones she and her boyfriend wanted, and before long they came round to collect them, and to plunder a few more. And I realised that, happily, I wasn’t too bothered about the few hundred pounds I might receive in proceeds: it was more important to me that these records, which had been so much loved, went to good homes, as if I was giving away a much-loved pet I could no longer care for.
So I asked my music-loving family members – which is roughly all of them – whether they still played vinyl, and whether they’d like any. I asked friends and Friends on Facebook, and had a few responses. I farmed out a few selected records on request. Several visitors picked through the collection to choose a few. One or two others expressed initial enthusiasm, but on reflection realised that, actually, they didn’t play much vinyl themselves these days.
Albums by classic acts went quickly: Beatles, Stones, Led Zeppelin, Bowie etc. But there were still plenty left cluttering up our art and music room. It was time to call the man from Chesham.
So today I arranged the records around the lounge for easy browsing and Mike went through them with an experienced eye. “An eclectic collection” he noted, seeing Butcher Baby by The Plasmatics featuring Wendy O. Williams nestling against Snowbird by Anne Murray. Well, I never cared what was cool, just bought the ones I liked. He said there was little demand for singles or for compilation albums, only really for original album releases. We agreed what I thought was a fair price – not high, but it would take time and effort to sell them for a decent profit. I helped him load them all into his car.
I might regret this of course. The digital apocalypse might end streaming, or corrupt my downloads. Or the streaming services might increase their prices dramatically to give artists (or themselves) a better return. And there are gaps on Spotify where original hits have been replaced by inferior re-recordings, or where major artists have withdrawn their music. So I’m hanging on to my CDs, for the time being, at least. But as I write, I feel liberated from the pieces of card and plastic which have gathered dust in my cupboard and attic for most of this century.
Before the giveaways and disposals, I went through and put aside a few which I couldn’t part with. There was In the Red, a quirky 45 rpm “mini album” from my 1980s favourites the Panic Brothers, and One Time, the live album from the wonderful Mint Juleps. Nor was I parting with Ev’ry Time We Say Goodbye by Ella Fitzgerald, which I bought for my Mum, a song we played at her funeral. Or Adeste Fideles, the carols which Dad would play every Christmas morning before breakfast. Or a homemade ten-inch bootleg of Professor Longhair, clearly issued for love not profit, because the records weren’t previously available in England. Or No One’s Gonna Change Our World: “The Stars Sing for the World Wildlife Fund”, where, amid gems like Cuddly Old Koala by Rolf Harris and When I See an Elephant Fly by Bruce Forsyth, sits the first version released of Across the Universe – early access to this Beatles track must have boosted sales hugely.
And there was Rock Lobster by the B-52’s. Jonathan and Gina each owned a copy in the early 1980s, so I asked them please could they get on and marry their fortunes together, so I could have the spare? They did indeed get married and duly gifted me the 45. (Whether they were compatible was not my problem, but they’re still going strong 39 years later). And Telstar? That record is going nowhere.
Thanks to Jonathan, Phil, Robyn, Simon, Mark and Jackie who gave good homes to some of my once treasured vinyl.
A perfect punk hit-and-run on a totalitarian state…
Matt Dangerfield and The Boys at the 100 Club
I first encountered punk rock (unless you count Iggy and the Stooges or Dr Feelgood) at a gig in 1976/77 at the University of Warwick. I don’t recall the headline act – presumably the usual tired prog-rock fare the Students’ Union served up – but I certainly remember the support act. It was Ultravox! in its early incarnation, when the band still sported an exclamation mark, and when John Foxx (not Midge Ure) did the singing. They were sharp, aggressive, fresh and thrilling, everything the headline act was not.
The effect on the audience was startling. Three quarters of the crowd responded with boos or stony silence. The rest of us were on our feet, cheering and dancing. There couldn’t have been a clearer demonstration of the schism about to hit pop and rock music.
I first encountered The Boys one evening in 1977. I was probably working on an essay due the following morning, when I heard them, I guess, on John Peel’s show, which went out between 10 and 12 each weekday night – where else could it have been? No-one else was flying the flag for punk on national radio. It was 1 minute and 53 seconds which burned into my consciousness and has not departed since. Sick on You was vulgar, noisy and completely captivating.
I ain’t sadistic, masochistic You and me are through I`m sick to death of everything you do And if I’m gonna have a puke you bet yer life I’ll puke on you I’m gonna be, gonna be sick on you I’m gonna be, gonna be sick on you I’m gonna be, gonna be sick on you All down your face, your dress, your legs and your shoes… Sick on you
Not exactly Baudelaire is it? Or perhaps it is, I wouldn’t know. Nor did I know at the time that it was a faster and shorter revamp of a 1973 recording by the Hollywood Brats, the Stones-styled glam-rock band in which Boys keyboard player Casino Steel had previously played. In keeping with rock songs of the time the Hollywood Brats version ran for over five minutes.
I met Jana in 1995, when she was recruited to the stockbroking firm I worked for. Bright, efficient, sparky and fun, it was easy to see the spirit of adventure which had led her to leave East Berlin for London in the years after the Wall came down. I was starstruck when she told me that her boyfriend (now her husband) was none other than Matt Dangerfield, who had sung, played guitar and written songs for The Boys. Jana was probably surprised to discover that her rather awkward and sedate colleague remembered the band with such affection, and, of all their records, was especially fixated on Sick on You.
She told a wonderful tale about growing up in East Berlin, concerning the David Bowie song The Bewlay Brothers from Hunky Dory. She and her friends, being Bowie fans, wanted to play his music to the class. The teachers were wary of exposing their pupils to western culture, and like most behind the Iron Curtain were especially suspicious of western pop music. But she was able to get The Bewlay Brothers under the wire because the lines
Lay me place and bake me pie I'm starving for me gravy
enabled her teachers to use the song as evidence that people in the capitalist West didn’t have enough to eat.
My connections to celebrity are few and farbetween, so please excuse me making the most of this tenuous connection to punk royalty. I met Matt Dangerfield at a work event a few months later. I don’t imagine that’s his true surname – other band members had adopted fanciful sounding names like Jack Black(!), Kid Reid, Casino Steel and Honest John Plain. I found Matt thoughtful, articulate and charismatic, like many other punk figureheads. Less typically he was also friendly and approachable.
He had been one of the godfathers of punk. In the mid 1970s he had converted his rented basement flat in Maida Vale into a home recording studio. 47A Warrington Crescent became pivotal in the development of the UK punk scene. Mick Jones, Brian James, Rat Scabies, Sid Vicious and Billy Idol were regular visitors. Amongst others, the Sex Pistols, The Damned, London SS, The Clash, Chelsea, Generation X and of course, The Boys, made their first recordings there.
In September 1975 Dangerfield left Mick Jones and Tony James’s fledgling punk band London SS to form The Boys with ex-Hollywood Brats songwriter and keyboard player Casino Steel. Dangerfield’s art college friend, guitarist Honest John Plain, soon joined. The following year they held auditions for the bass and drum roles with Kid Reid and Jack Black completing the line-up.
The Boys made their debut at London’s Hope and Anchor Pub in September 1976. Mick Jones, Billy Idol, Joe Strummer and Tony James were all present in the packed venue. They became the first punk band to sign an album deal when they were signed by NEMS in January 1977.
Despite an outstanding live reputation, the Boys never breached the UK singles charts, although The Boys was a Top 50 album, just. In a revealing 2019 interview with Brighton and Hove News, Matt offers an explanation for their lack of chart success:
“It was great (being the only UK band at the time with an LP record deal), but in a way we signed too early. We signed to NEMS because they were a very good live agency…The problem was that (they) weren’t a very good record company. After we’d signed for them we were approached by lots of major record labels, and we’d have to tell them that we were already signed.”
In the same interview, Matt explains the band’s breakup in 1982:
“I think that by that time we’d realised that things had moved on in the music business. The days of the Specials, Madness, were upon us, and punk was no longer the leading light that it had been. Punk never died out, it went out of fashion and went underground to an extent. At the same time it was being picked up on all around the world. Internationally, the punk scene now is bigger than it was in the 1970s.”
The band reformed in 1999 to play gigs in Japan. Despite their modest record sales, they have a decent worldwide following and an impressive legacy, and have established themselves as global ambassadors for punk. Die Toten Hosen, a German punk band whose name translates literally as “The Dead Trousers” (but actually means more like “The Deadbeats”) transformed The Boys’ reputation in Germany by championing the band and regularly covering their songs.
In 2015 The Boys embarked on an ambitious trip to China. They arrived in Shanghai for a nine-date national tour to promote their new album Punk Rock Menopause only to find that the tour had been cancelled by the Chinese Ministry of Culture due to “crowd control and security issues” – a few weeks earlier 36 people had died in a stampede at a New Year celebration in Shanghai. The Ministry had contacted each venue on the tour and told them they would be closed if they went ahead with the gigs.
Nevertheless Chinese TV station LETV invited the band to come to the TV studios and record two songs live. The Boys accepted but replied that they would like to play a full 70-minute Boys set to a small live audience. Although The Boys had been banned from playing any live gigs in China by the Ministry of Culture, LETV had the cojones to agree to this. During the TV special, one of Matt’s interview responses seems quite bold, and could easily have been seen as subversive by the Chinese authorities:
” It’s music. It’s just kids having fun. It’s not dangerous, you know, it never was dangerous. There’s no way that Johnny Rotten was going to overthrow the British government. Or change anything really. It was just kids expressing themselves and being rebellious. That’s what kids should do. And there’s not enough of that in this…”
Here he pauses and it seems for one delicious moment that he might say “this country” i.e. China. If so, he thought better of it.
“…modern world…kids rebelling, rebelling against their parents…what older people say how they should behave…every generation is a new generation, they have different things to rebel against.”
At any rate, even the mild suggestion that kids should rebel against their parents was risky enough in view of the hypersensitive Chinese government.
The band set off on a cultural tour of China and managed to play three secret underground gigs promoted entirely by word of mouth, carefully avoiding official Chinese chat rooms and social networks like Weibo. They also recorded a live album, which was released in July 2015. The 55-minute TV special was subsequently aired after the band had safely left the country. A perfect punk hit-and-run on a totalitarian state. I wonder if they’ll ever go back there.
So, during Saturday lunchtime I realised that The Boys were playing a gig at the 100 Club in central London that evening. The 100 Club – so called because its address is 100 Oxford Street – is a historic venue established in 1942 as the Feldman Jazz Club, which over the years has hosted performances by Louis Armstrong, B.B. King, Muddy Waters, The Who, The Kinks, The Rolling Stones, Paul McCartney, and in the heyday of punk, The Sex Pistols, The Clash and Siouxsie & The Banshees.
The Boys’ appearance was part of a ten day punk festival called Resolution ‘23 which offered the chance to see some lesser known but fondly remembered bands, also including The Members, The UK Subs and 999. I’d never seen The Boys, so I seized the opportunity.
I hadn’t been to the 100 Club since I saw Q-Tips and the V.I.P.s there in 1980. It’s a buzzing basement venue with the stage in the middle of a long space, with a bar at each end. It wasn’t full, but there was a good crowd – as you would expect, mostly of a certain age (plenty of bald heads in evidence) but there were also plenty of people young enough to know better.
As I listened to (or at least heard) the support bands, (Continental Lovers and The Vulz) I was reminded that the artists who transcended the first wave of punk were those who had actual talent for composition or melody besides merely energy and attitude – Elvis Costello, The Police/Sting and The Jam/Paul Weller spring to mind. The Vulz played an energetic but for me, uninspiring set. When they kicked into what sounded like the intro to 20th Century Boy and then went into their own song, I was disappointed…a bit of T Rex would have been very welcome.
The Boys came on stage, and the difference in class was immediately apparent. Real songs, pacing, precision and bite. Of course by now they’re Men rather than Boys, and a couple of strategic caps were in evidence, but the original, older band members looked in good nick, hopefully having avoided the worst punk rock excesses in their youth. They were enthusiastically received, although mercifully I didn’t see any gobbing or any ill-advised pogoing.
Their set included all their best known songs: Weekend, Living in the City, their 1977 debut single I Don’t Care followed by the anthemic Brickfield Nights, First Time, and of course Sick on You. I’ve noticed with other punk bands I’ve seen in recent years that decades of gigging since the seventies have made them better, tighter musicians. Naturally today’s gigs lack the edge of danger present in 1976/77, but in compensation the quality of playing has increased hugely, And we lapped it up, of course we did. You don’t get to hear authentic punk rock like that too often these days. You can also find a high quality video of their gig at the same venue, recorded in 2017.
Jana couldn’t be there, as she had just started a new job, and was looking after their young family at home in Berlin. She told me to say Hi to Matt. I didn’t, of course. Gods and mortals should never mix at these occasions – it would spoil the magic.
Some time in 1981, Debbie rang home from her university accommodation. “Hello Mum!” she said. “Trevor bloody Howard!” replied Beryl.
You see, a few weeks earlier, they had been trying to remember the stars of Noel Coward’s classic film Brief Encounter. They had come up with Celia Johnson quickly enough, but they were stumped when it came to the actor playing the charming doctor who so carefully removed the grit from Laura’s eye. With no internet to settle the matter, and no Halliwell’s Film Guide to hand, the question remained unresolved for weeks until Beryl had her light bulb moment. Frustrating, for a while, but imagine the wave of relief and joy when the answer finally came in.
The internet age had still not arrived when Debbie and I, on holiday in the Lake District, found ourselves reaching for the name of, you know, That Woman who starred in all those swimming movies in the 1940s and 50s. Our reference books were out of reach. Phil will know, we thought, he’s a film expert. Nor had the mobile phone era arrived for us, so we paid hotel call charges (remember those?) to phone him. Unfortunately he couldn’t help us. When we got home to our books, we identified the lady as Esther (bloody) Williams. And later we discovered we should instead have called my Auntie Speff – she knew the answer straight away.
And how entertaining those pub arguments were: we could argue all evening about trivial facts, becoming more certain the more we drank, with no ready access to information to settle the matter. Phil (yes, it is he again) once rang me from a pub where he was in dispute with a fellow customer, and put me on the line to explain to this stranger why he was in the wrong about the Honeycombs or Wayne Fontana or something. Whether this persuaded him I cannot say, but it was an interesting diversion, which would not arise in the smartphone era.
The brain is a strange thing, but when it fails us we learn something about it. Those elusive names: Him, in that awful Cadfael. Her, Beattie in the BT adverts, married to Him, who wrote Bar Mitzvah Boy. Her, Room with a View and Bellatrix. Him with the luvvie voice in Never the Twain, mercilessly spoofed on Spitting Image, dropping hints for a knighthood. Him, the first artistic director and frequent actor at Shakespeare’s Globe.
These treacherous names flick on and off in my head like Christmas lights (and have done for many years, so I claim this is not a consequence of ageing), and when they elude me, I try to shun the internet, and discipline myself to locate the answer in my brain’s imperfect filing system. I get better results if I abandon my frenzied pursuit for a while and change the subject: a later approach, as if from a different angle, often brings the answer in as a new pathway is found inside my head.
When the internet arrived, and search engines became efficient, it became easier to find facts and answers, but also easier to spread lies and errors – so the truth is easy to find, but not always easy to identify or confirm. Nevertheless I assumed that these trivial teasers would die out. But at least two more exquisite, tantalising mysteries awaited me.
One had teased us for years, which even the internet had failed to resolve. It was a film we saw at the cinema, in our first year or two together. All we could remember was a gag where an overweight, greasy fellow with a quiff is asked “Have you ever been told you look like Elvis? He takes it as a compliment, and replies “Thank you very much.” But what was the film?
We never saw it on TV, and numerous attempts to Google the answer failed. I posted the question on film message boards without success. Finally in 2010 I grew so frustrated that I resorted to old-fashioned technology, and flipping through my old diaries found in the 1988 volume a scribbled entry naming a film which had left no other trace in my memory:
Armed with the title, Stars and Bars, I soon confirmed from the comments on the IMDb entry that there was indeed a late period Elvis lookalike in the plot. This had to be the one! Debbie had a birthday coming up, so I bought a VHS – the film hadn’t made it to DVD – wrapped it in multiple layers and presented it to her, labelled The last mystery.
When we watched it, two things became clear. Firstly it was indeed the film with the Elvis joke in it, and we duly celebrated solving this ancient riddle. Secondly it was a truly terrible film: no wonder we had forgotten it, no wonder it hadn’t made it to DVD. Daniel Day-Lewis’s performance in this “goofball” “comedy” as a British art expert in pursuit of a Renoir in the US southern states was so dreadful and embarrassing that Hollywood even withheld his customary Oscar.
The last mystery turned out to be the penultimate mystery. Many years ago, no doubt out of consideration for my biographer, I transferred all our old reel-to-reel tapes to cassette. Later Rob kindly digitised them, and among the readings and sketches of our teenaged years, and low quality recordings of One Road by Love Affair and Build Me Up Buttercup I found a song I didn’t recognise. What on earth was it? I thought it rather plodding and dreary. The lyric went:
I am the singer and I will sing a song All about the people and you can sing along
At the end of the muddy recording was the unmistakable sound of Alan “Fluff” Freeman’s voice, tantalisingly cut off before he named the song. So it was presumably recorded from Pick of the Pops one Sunday afternoon: I couldn’t find a likely title which had charted, so most likely it was played as a new release.
Shazam, SoundHound and repeated Googling over a number of years failed to identify the song, until one time – more in hope than expectation – trying yet again, I landed on a lyric site which credited it to Cliff Richard. Well I know what Cliff sounds like, and this certainly wasn’t him, but at last I had a lead, and I soon identified the song and recording as Raymond Froggatt’s The Singer. Case solved. I remember Froggatt being heavily promoted: we used to laugh at his name, and wonder why he hadn’t chosen a new one, as Harry Webb and Reginald Dwight did. He did have some success, scoring top ten hits as a writer with The Dave Clark Five’s The Red Balloon, and Cliff Richard’s Big Ship. But this song never scratched the charts.
That our most teasing riddles were posed by Stars and Bars and The Singer suggests that the most satisfyingly difficult questions are likely to emerge from the mediocre and the downright awful. But I suspect that’s it. There will be no more mysteries, ever.
The days where artists could make a decent living in the second division are probably gone.
Big tech companies, of course, are evil. So it’s unfashionable, if obvious, to point out that, in some ways, they’ve made life better. Anyone who remembers AltaVista has cause to be grateful to Google for the accuracy of their searches. And YouTube can find many interesting videos in seconds.
Amazon may be a horrible place to work, but the experience for customers is superb. You can either spend two hours trawling what’s left of the high street for a Black Labrador calendar, or buy one from Amazon in two minutes. (And when they fully automate their warehouses, those horrible jobs might give way to no jobs.)
Apple make obscene profits, but users are still delighted with the functionality and feel of their iPhones. And social media have undoubtedly helped lies to travel further and faster, and contributed to the increasing polarisation and toxicity of political discourse, but hey, people Like my holiday pics.
Spotify cannot, of course, claim to be in the same league as these giants. Within the music streaming market, it faces serious competition from those same tech giants in the guises of YouTube Music, Amazon Prime and Apple Music. Spotify is my music source of choice: I subscribe to their Premium service. At £9.99 per month (ad-free) to access just about all the music I care about, old and new, this seems extraordinarily good value for customers.
It ain’t perfect, though. Their curated playlists seem designed to avoid strongly flavoured songs which might turn listeners away. This is only an impression, but their algorithm seems tilted towards the inoffensive (Ed Sheeran) at the expense of the passionate (Adele). The result, I fear, might be to push music in the direction of muzak. It may be harder for musicians to get a hearing for songs that some love and some hate.
And it isn’t great for artists trying to break through. (I have taken an interest in this since my daughter has been in a band, The People Versus). Every 1,000 streams get about £3. For a four piece band to each earn just £10,000 annually from streaming – even ignoring their expenses and shares due to their record label, songwriters and music publishers – they need about 13 million streams. Small beer for Lady Gaga or Ed Sheeran, but a huge stretch for up-and-coming artists.
To illustrate, I was recently charmed at a gig by a band called Oi Va Voi singing Through the Maze. Twenty years ago, I would have bought a CD to own the track for about £10, of which perhaps £1 might have found its way to the artist. But now it’s right there on Spotify or YouTube at no extra cost, or if you listen to a few adverts, free. I would need to play the song 300 times on Spotify for the band to get that £1.
The good news for new artists, though, is that they can now keep most of the proceeds of their music. If they can finance their own recordings and videos, then the other main previous functions of record labels – organising the manufacturing and distribution – are largely redundant. The only area left to them is promotion, and the cynic in me suspects that this mostly consists of knowing who and how much to bribe to get your song on to popular playlists, radio shows, TV shows or films, or to get the artist a prestigious award or a key support slot on a big tour.
With the earnings from music now relatively transparent, it is tougher for record labels to get a decent return from their investment in new artists. These changes are reshaping the music industry, perhaps favouring big established artists over new music and middle-ranking acts. I suspect it has raised the stakes, making it harder to break through, but increasing the potential rewards. The days where artists could make a decent living in the second division are probably gone.
But from the customer’s perspective, Spotify is excellent: just about whatever you want to hear, wherever, whenever, however you want it. But the unexpected bonus for me has come from its algorithm. At the end of of a playlist – or even after a single song request – it will keep playing more songs, based on the music other users have played alongside your choices. I thought I knew a lot of music, but over the last few months the algorithm has introduced me to some great records I’d never heard before, as I rattle the pots and pans, clearing up after dinner.
It’s not infallible, of course. Quite often it plays me something over-familiar: I don’t need to hear All Right Now again, thanks. Or something I hate. (No more ELO, please). Or something I remember quite fondly, but don’t really need to hear again (Back Off Boogaloo). Or something I’ve never heard before, which is just awful, or just meh.
But sometimes it finds me a beloved record which I haven’t heard – or even thought of – for years, and I am joyfully reunited with a forgotten classic. Even better, a song I’ve never heard before comes on, and…oh…oh. I stop what I’m doing, and listen. Then I play it again, and maybe three more times: suddenly I’m like a kid again, getting my 45 out of its sleeve, playing it to death. I flatter myself that I know a lot of music, and discoveries are harder to make as I get older and feel more sceptical: how refreshing, then to feel that thrill again. It can make my day.
Here are some of the discoveries Spotify has brought to me over the last few months. Of course, these reflect my own taste. But do try letting Spotify run on once in a while when your playlist is over. Somewhere in there you may find a gem that you will treasure for life. I’ve written about Spotify but the links are to YouTube. Ain’t that the way.
Saunders’ Ferry Lane – Sammi Smith
When this was released in 1970 as the opening track on Smith’s album Help Me Make It Through The Night, I wouldn’t have given it a hearing: I couldn’t have got past that hair, that vocal twang. Country music just wasn’t cool – although Sammi Smith did later join the so-called “outlaw” movement with the likes of Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings, rebelling against the Nashville and Grand Ole Opry establishment.
But cool be damned. Saunders’ Ferry Lane is an exquisite song with a beautiful vocal. It describes, with an aching sense of loss, a visit in winter to the place where she had been with her lover in summer. We fear she might take drastic action at the waterside, but the lyric of the final verse reassures us, as she drives away. Inexplicably the song fades before the narrative is complete – perhaps the producer judged anything over 3 minutes and 3 seconds too long for radio play.
The desolate location is painted in vivid, atmospheric detail. Sentimental, yes, but hear the pain and emptiness in her voice when she drops away on the line “in the way we loved each other”, and the heartbreaking silence after “quietly as the dawn”. Listen only when you’re feeling strong.
Fu Manchu – Desmond Dekker
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, reggae was also not cool – the only white kids in Britain who listened to it were skinheads, whose enthusiasm for black Caribbean music was no barrier to racist attacks on Indian and Pakistani kids. Paul McCartney had made a nod to reggae in Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da in the White Album from 1968, and Led Zeppelin had mystified their fans with D’yer Mak’er in 1973. But it wasn’t until Eric Clapton hit with his version of Bob Marley’s I Shot The Sheriff in 1974, followed by triumphant London gigs by Bob Marley and the Wailers in 1975 that reggae found a mass white audience. By then, we had missed so much.
I listened with fresh ears to hits I had ignored, like Desmond Dekker’s Israelites, It Mek and 007 (Shanty Town). When punk arrived in 1977, it had a strong affinity with reggae, and – with the guidance of my cousin Jon Brockbank, who worked as a reviewer for Echoes magazine – I discovered many more reggae favourites, including Identity by The Mighty Diamonds, Conscious Man by the Jolly Brothers, and Police and Thieves by Junior Murvin.
It was after listening to the likes of these that Spotify proffered Desmond Dekker’s Fu Manchu from 1968. Dekker’s light, fluid vocal and the infectious beat had me hooked from the opening. The lyric may not be quite worthy of the soulfulness with which he sings, but the song is nevertheless irresistible. There is the bonus of some playful scat towards the end.
I Never Dreamed – The Cookies
The Cookies 1962 hit Chains had been covered by the Beatles on their Please Please Me album. But it was the Beatles who caused the Cookies’ I Never Dreamed – the most perfect and lovely of girl group records – to flop.
Gerry Goffin, the longtime collaborator and husband of Carole King, co-wrote this song with producer Russ Titelman. Unfortunately the record was released in 1964, a few months after the Beatles had turned the US music scene upside down. With the exception of Motown’s Supremes, girl groups were finished: no-one was interested in this charming, ecstatic teenage love song.
The Bargain Store – Dolly Parton
Dolly! I have loved Dolly Parton ever since I heard Jolene on the radio in 1973. The song did nothing in England until it reached the top ten in 1976. Despite her status as a global giant of and beloved icon of country music, few people would know more than three songs she has written – Jolene, of course, 9 to 5 and I Will Always Love You, more famous from Whitney Houston’s version.
I had heard The Bargain Store before, but had dismissed it as a lightweight song. On hearing it again a few years later it struck me as a sweet little song. It describes a woman damaged by a relationship, open to new love. When issued it was dropped from a number of country stations’ playlists because programmers thought the line “you can easily afford the price” was a reference to prostitution, when Dolly makes it clear that “Love is all you need to purchase all the merchandise”. Not too bright, those country stations.
Dolly tells the story in her 2020 book Songteller. “When I wrote The Bargain Store, I swear on my life that I was never thinking about love in any vulgar way, I was using the ‘bargain’ as it related to a broken relationship. But every man I know thinks it’s dirty. Somehow, this lyric is a dirty thing to a man. But I never saw it that way.”
The Fool – Sanford Clark
This song wasn’t new to me, but despite loving it when I discovered rockabilly in the 1970s, it had dropped off my radar until Spotify reminded me. It’s a very simple song, with a hypnotic guitar riff – co-written by Lee Hazelwood, who went on to success with Duane Eddy and Nancy Sinatra.
You Don’t Know – Bob Andy
Another reggae gem I’ve only recently discovered. Bob Andy was half of Bob and Marcia, who scored a UK no. 5 in 1970 with Young Gifted and Black. The lyric of You Don’t Know isn’t perfect:
They say you're looking slim
Are you sure to sweat out in a gym?
You even need a trim
but Andy carries it beautifully with his warm expressive voice. Jon Brockbank recalls meeting him at Reggae Sunsplash: “I remember him as a tall friendly dread, very different from his Bob and Marcia afro days.”
Alone again Or – Love
Love were a racially diverse band based in LA: band member Bryan MacLean wrote the song as Alone Again in 1965, inspired by his memory of waiting for a girlfriend. But it was not completed until 1967, when Love frontman Arthur Lee remixed the track to make his own vocals more prominent, and changed the title to Alone Again Or to add a little mystery. Arranger David Angel then added a string section, and a horn part, played by a mariachi band which had recently featured on a Tijuana Brass album.
The lyric treads the line between positivity and desperation:
You know that I could be in love with almost everyone I think that people are The greatest fun And I will be alone again tonight my dear
The song made little impression in the US, and barely scraped into the UK top 30. But over the years it has quietly acquired classic status. An elusive melody, but a haunting song.
When we visited New York City in May 2007, my wife and daughters proposed a shopping trip to Bloomingdale’s. We agreed that everyone would have a better time if I did something else instead, and there was something I very much wanted to do. I’m a huge fan of music, and much of the music I love is by African-American artists. I was thrilled to learn that you could visit and tour the historic Apollo Theater in Harlem, so I took a yellow taxi to West 125th Street.
A charming fellow called Billy Mitchell welcomed the guests on the tour, with shout-outs for those of us who had travelled from overseas. He showed a montage of photos on the wall of many of the stars who had appeared there: the famous names just kept on coming. There was a large party of black schoolchildren, a few adult black Americans, and just one other white person – like me, an Englishman. As we filed in to our seats, I found myself in line behind him. I took my seat in a different row, not wishing to create a tiny white ghetto.
Billy is a fascinating character. One of fourteen children, he had a tough upbringing, spending much time in foster care away from his parents. I suspect, like many other small guys, he learned to live on his wits and his sense of humour. Hard work and a likeable and engaging personality probably helped too. He first got involved with the Apollo in 1965 at the age of 15: his mother had sent him to borrow some money from his aunt, who lived near the theater, and he was waiting outside when owner Frank Schiffman said “Hey kid, you want to make some money?” The job turned out to be running errands for Berry Gordy, who had brought his Motown show to the Apollo.
The show that night featured the Supremes, the Temptations, the Four Tops, Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder. Billy has been associated with the Apollo in some or other capacity ever since, and is now the official Apollo historian and tour guide.
Billy filled us in on the history of the theater. It opened in 1913 as Hurtig & Seamon’s New Burlesque Theater. Surprisingly, in view of the building’s later history, there was a strict “Whites Only” policy: in the past Harlem (formerly New Haarlem) had been largely a Dutch and Jewish quarter. After Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia banned burlesque in New York, the theater reopened as the Apollo in 1934, catering to the black community. In 1983 the theater was protected by the conferral of state and city landmark status.
Billy told the story of the famous Tree of Hope. When this landmark Harlem tree was felled in 1934 as part of the widening of 7th Avenue, the owner of the Apollo bought a piece of the stump and had it set on a pedestal onstage. Performers would touch the tree as they went on stage for good luck, a tradition which continues to this day.
Alice and the Tree of Hope in 2022
Billy’s history with the place was fascinating. “I started meeting all the stars that were performing here. Imagine, I saw Stevie Wonder when he was 15. Eventually, I saw Michael Jackson and his brothers. Michael was nine years old when they first came and performed on the Amateur Night.”
If the Apollo Theater had a king, it was James Brown. He played there more than any other performer, and recorded his legendary, thrilling albumLive at the Apollo there in October 1962. Brown lay in state there after his death in December 2006. Mitchell said that Brown took a keen interest in his schooling:
“I met James Brown who convinced me the importance of getting a good education. He kept asking how my grades were going. He would give me money if the grades were taking off. He convinced me to raise my hand in class if there was a time the teacher was teaching something I didn’t understand.”
That evening was Amateur Night, and a group of the children would be attending. Billy told us how it worked. The audience was famously demanding: if they’d seen enough of an act, they would start booing, and a fellow known as “the executioner” would appear with a broom from the side and sweep them off the stage. Vaudeville tap dancer “Sandman” Sims played this role, from the 1950s until 2000. The unfortunate performer might also be chased offstage by a man with a cap pistol, accompanied by the sound of a siren. Billy explained the rules to the people who would be in the audience that night. “If the act’s no good, you gotta boo. I don’t care if it’s your grandma, if she’s no good, you boo her ass right off that stage!”
Then came the opportunity to sing in our own miniature Amateur Night. I was tempted by the chance to perform on that legendary stage, but lack any talent to do it justice, and stayed in my seat. Billy had a stern warning for young rap artists. “I do not want to hear the N-word on this stage. That word has been used to oppress, hurt and humiliate black people for many years. If I hear it today, I will test your jaw.”
The show was charming. Several of the children sang beautifully, while others recited poetry. My compatriot had a decent stab at Tracks of My Tears.
Billy Mitchell published his entertaining autobiography in 2010
I had enjoyed my visit so much that when we visited NYC again in April 2022, I wanted to repeat it, and this time I persuaded my family to join me. I emailed ahead to request that we could be added to a scheduled tour: a visit was arranged for 11 am on Tuesday, and we took the subway to Harlem.
Billy greeted me like an old friend, although I’m pretty sure I remembered him better than he remembered me. Once again there were introductions and shout-outs for each party. The main group of children were shiny, bright, well-behaved and enthusiastic, putting me in mind of the kids Jack Black leads astray in School of Rock. We were the only British representatives: otherwise there were families from Florida, Ireland, France and Spain.
Once again, I was struck by the absence of white Americans at this special place. Of course, on a Wednesday morning many would be working. But given the history of the Apollo, many of the potential visitors would, like me, be of retirement age – and, New York, like London, has plenty of domestic tourism. Were these Americans nervous of visiting Harlem? Or less interested in celebrating the huge contribution of African-Americans to American music? It recalled for me the British Invasion of the 1960s, when it took bands like The Rolling Stones and The Animals to bring an appreciation of rhythm and blues music to a mainstream American audience.
With “Mr Apollo” Billy Mitchell
After Billy had taken us through the history of the Apollo, he again offered us the opportunity to perform. We were told that you didn’t have to be good, just take to take your chance to be there: and that although booing was part of the deal at Amateur Night, it was not allowed in our little show unless a performer walked past the Tree of Hope without touching it. That disappointed one of the boys who complained “But we want to be booed!” This time I had come prepared, so that when Billy motioned to me that I might like to join the volunteers on stage, I was able to gesture expansively to Alice, who as our talented singer had been delegated to represent the family, and was already up there.
The first man to perform sang some lines of gospel so beautifully that the volunteers waiting their turn suddenly looked twice as nervous. Was this going to be the standard? But Billy helped set their minds at rest by getting him to confirm that he was a professional singer. Everyone did their bit – the French fellow sang us Frère Jacques – and was warmly received. Alice elected to sing Gershwin’s Summertime, a song she had often heard as a lullaby many years ago, and which she sang in a school concert when she was eleven.
Alice Edwards of The People Versus sings Summertime
The word “historic” hardly does the Apollo justice – Billy Mitchell even showed Michelle Obama and her daughters round in 2010. Here is the astonishing list of some of the acts who have performed at the Apollo. While by far the biggest contribution has come from African-American artists, all communities have been part of the story, and the Apollo’s reputation has made it a bucket list venue for leading white performers like Paul McCartney and Taylor Swift. Quite a few acts had their first big break at the Apollo’s legendary Amateur Night:
Aretha Franklin
Art Blakey
B.B. King
Ben E. King
Bill Cosby
Billie Holiday
Bob Marley and The Wailers
Buddy Holly and the Crickets (courted the audience by playing more blues-style material – recreated here for The Buddy Holly Story (1978))
Buddy Rich
Count Basie
Dave Brubeck
Diana Ross & The Supremes
Dionne Warwick (performed and won at Amateur Night)
Dizzy Gillespie
Duane Eddy
Duke Ellington
Ella Fitzgerald (made her singing debut in 1934 aged 17 at the Apollo, and later won the Amateur Night first prize of $25)
Elvis Costello (recorded his excellent TV music series Spectacle at the Apollo)
The Four Tops
Gladys Knight (performed at Amateur Night) and the Pips
Guns N’ Roses
Harry James
The Isley Brothers
James Brown (performed at Amateur Night)
Jimi Hendrix (won an amateur musician contest in 1964)
Lauryn Hill (had to contend with booing after a shaky start in her Amateur Night performance in 1987 at the age of thirteen – but persevered and won the crowd over)
Little Richard
Luther Vandross
Mahalia Jackson
Marvin Gaye
Mary J. Blige
Michael Jackson (performed at nine years old at Amateur Night in 1967 as one of the Jackson Brothers. Jackson played a free concert at the Apollo on April 24, 2002, said to be his final on-stage performance before his death in 2009)
Mick Jagger: “I came to watch James Brown…I was sitting down at the back. He asked me to come onstage and I tried to run out…and they forced me to come onstage.”
Ne-Yo
Otis Redding (here singing Pain in my Heart from 1964 – a woman in the audience calls out “Sing it pretty!” – and he does, he does)
Pearl Bailey (performed at Amateur Night)
Patti LaBelle
Paul McCartney (played there in 2010. He described it as “the Holy Grail”, adding that he “dreamed of playing here for many a year” On arriving at the theater, he asked to see Billy Mitchell, and asked Mitchell to introduce him on stage.)
On many tourist experiences the punters are herded like cattle and milked for cash at every opportunity, and ticking off the big sights can be dispiriting. But our visit to the Apollo was intimate and joyful. Billy Mitchell’s knowledge and enthusiasm was infectious, and it was a privilege to hear those stories and walk on that stage. If you love your music and find yourself in New York City, be sure to visit the Apollo Theater, Harlem.
If I had a pound for every time someone asked me how this cartoon series got started, I’d have, um, about six pounds. Readers of this blog, and anyone who has met me, will know that I’m passionate about music. And that I have a strange sense of humour. My brain frequently puts the two together: it’s wired to constantly search for music related jokes.
For example, I saw a house called Mayfield yesterday, and was immediately seized by the desire to put a sign outside the house on the left saying Curtis. Another called The Hollies? Someone should buy the house next door and call it Herman’s Hermits. What car did Gerry Marsden drive? An Audi Adooit. And I have a plan one day to move to the nearby village of Seer Green, just so I can callmy house Skyer Blue and have the best address in England, maybe plonk a big yellow submarine in the front garden to clarify. And so on.
I can’t switch these thoughts off, and some time about 2007, a cartoon gag idea came into my head which refused to go away:
A very young Elton John is in the JobCentre, looking at job offers. Among the cards offering jobs as warehousemen and sales assistants, we can make out one saying “Wanted: sculptor” and another saying “Can you make up potions?”. Suggested caption: “Key moments in music history”.
I didn’t try to draw it up as I’m hopeless at art. I just wrote the idea on a small piece of paper and left it in a box on my desk, and there it stayed while I got on with my busy life. After four years I had a second idea (they were coming thick and fast), this time not music related:
A boffin-looking (sic) man is in a supermarket scratching his head, in front of a display of cat food.
Caption: Schrödinger in the supermarket.
Now I had two gags, surely I was virtually a professional writer? I wondered whether there were any cartoonists who would consider other people’s ideas – I like to try these things – and found a Q&A forum on the Cartoonists’ Club of Great Britain’s website. In 2011 I proudly posted my gags, asking whether any cartoonists fancied drawing them up, and waited for the stampede.
There was no stampede, but a few politely encouraging responses – it’s a supportive community. Then I had a response from a cartoonist called Wilbur Dawbarn, saying he’d like to draw up the Schrödinger gag. I said yes please! and we agreed terms. He very sensibly suggested that I should remove the idea from my post on the forum, which I did, and the Elton gag was left all alone there – and eleven years later, it’s still standing:
Very soon Will (as Wilbur called himself in normal life) had drawn up the gag. As any cartoonist knows, there’s a big difference between drawing a cartoon and getting it published, and I wasn’t counting any chickens, but when he sent it through I was already thrilled to see my idea rendered by a professional:
And I was even more thrilled when he told me the cartoon had been accepted by Prospect, a British current affairs and general interest magazine. It was published in the July 2011 edition, and of course I bought a copy, spending a fair percentage of my writer’s fee.
Will encouraged me to send him more ideas, and I was grateful for that: not many cartoonists seemed to be open to collaboration. I had nothing else in the locker at the time. But now I had made the contact, I returned to my Elton John idea. Perhaps I could get a series of music gags going?
I realised that I’d never found it difficult to think up the jokes – what I had failed to do was capture them. So I made a point of scribbling them down when I thought of them, and even sat and brainstormed for the odd hour, focusing on quirky performers and songs with lyrics which could be portrayed from an amusing, unexpected angle. I found a moderate intake of alcohol aided this process, although I followed the writer’s maxim “write drunk, edit sober”. The floodgates opened and the ideas came in rapidly. Before long I had about thirty gag ideas, which I tidied up and sent to Will.
Before long he emailed back saying that he thought the idea could work: he would like to draw up five of the gags and try to get a magazine interested in the series. Some of the ideas he found too cryptic or too obscure – reflecting the strange workings of my mind, and my obsessive pop music knowledge respectively – or simply not funny, but he said he really loved a few of them. So after some to-and-fro we settled on the series title Forgotten Moments in Music History, and Will got to work drawing them up. I was the Gilbert, if you will, to his Sullivan. Soon I was thrilled to get his brilliant artwork through – featuring my scruffy little signature:
The days when tabloid newspapers published a whole page of cartoons every day were long gone: there were few potential buyers. Will tried some music magazines without success, and then pitched to the fortnightly satirical magazine Private Eye, who were, and remain, by far Britain’s biggest buyer of cartoons.
After a while, he had a reply saying they were considering it. I say “they” – in fact all main decisions at the Eye are made by the editor Ian Hislop. (At the time of writing he has been editor for 35 years, having done the job since he was 26.). Then it all went quiet for a few months, and we started to assume that it had been, well, forgotten.
But eventually the Eye told us they were going to give the series a trial run, and they published the first in the series in issue no. 1318, 13-26 July 2012:
At the bottom left there
I was so happy. I could come up with all the daft music jokes I liked, and they would be seen by a readership of over 200,000. And even get paid for them. And if Debbie suggested that I should stop making stupid jokes in conversation, I could point out how lucky – privileged – she was to hear them for free, when Britain’s leading (well, only) satirical magazine was happy to pay me for them. This was so much more exciting than the day job. But I started feeling pressure – they had accepted five cartoons, but wouldn’t print the Christmas themed one until December. I would need to come up with more ideas quickly, and the other 25 of my initial pitch to Will had been ruled out.
In the event, I had more time than I expected: early publication was erratic. Some issues carried our series, some didn’t. When it did appear, it kept moving around the magazine. We were slightly discouraged, but I pointed out to Will – rather grandly – that the BBC had moved Monty Python’s Flying Circus around the schedule when it first aired.
Eventually the series found a regular (and, I thought, prestigious) spot on the letters page, and my gag ideas flowed, if not freely, at least adequately to keep it ticking over. From each batch of eight or so, Will knocked back about a third of my gags as either too obscure, too cryptic or just not funny – although he was always fair, and would try one he wasn’t keen on if I really rooted for it. Then he would submit a list of six, of which the Eye would typically go for two or three. This meant typically only about one gag in four made it from conception to publication, so roughly two gag ideas a week were needed to keep the series in play.
From the first, the geeky subject matter attracted contributions to Pedantry Corner, perhaps encouraged by the proximity of the two features. Some were fair enough: the departure board for the midnight train to Tbilisi should indeed have shown 00:00, not 12:00. And Paul McCartney was wrongly shown holding the gun right-handed. (OK, it turns out he’s left-handed – who knew?). Some of it we batted away: in the books and on the TV he’s Great Uncle Bulgaria, but in The Wombling Song he’s plain Uncle Bulgaria.
But the most irritating strand of pedantry insisted on identifying the song with the writer rather than the singer. Should we make the joke about Bernie Taupin instead of Elton John, because he wrote the lyrics? I’m sure Will could draw an excellent likeness of Bernie, but how many readers would recognise it? I tried to shrug off the ill-informed pedantry – it at least showed engagement and raised the profile of our series – but I’m so proud of my nerdy pop knowledge that I found it difficult not to rise to the bait.
There was sometimes creative tension between Will and me about my gags. I tended to embrace the obscure and the cryptic. I was in search of the perfect gag: I would be happy to have just one reader understood it, if they thought it was the funniest thing they’d ever seen. Will was obliged to be more practical: he preferred gags based on song titles, where no knowledge of the lyric was required. And he knew that we had to get it past Ian Hislop.
Ian Hislop is famously not “down with the kids” and he makes no effort to be. I stalked his Desert Island Discs choices from 1994 for some pointers as to what might be well received. I was unable to come up with any rib-ticklers based on Handel’s Zadok the Priest or Monteverdi’s Exulta, filia Sion, although I did manage a Madness joke. Fortunately for us, according to Will’s insider at the Eye, Hislop recognised his cultural blind spot and accepted help from colleagues in choosing between our ideas.
Many of the cartoons were as much puzzle as joke – I have been asked whether we publish the solutions anywhere. With most batches of gags I sent to Will, he would reply seeking explanations of one or two. Usually my replies weren’t enough to save them: he rightly reasoned that if he didn’t get them, nor would the readers. It might be possible to Google the ‘solution’, but no reader wants to work that hard. Will did get this one through, though, after a little nudge – and it is one of my favourites:
As the series approached its first Christmas, once the Eye had run the Roy Wood Christmas gag, Ian Hislop requested another festive themed cartoon. Maybe it’s the Scrooge in me, but I always had trouble thinking of decent Christmas jokes. Luckily Will rode to the rescue with one of his own. I did, however, get to write one of the Private Eye Christmas cards one year:
Initially Will specialised in Christmas gags, but over time he started contributing more of his own ideas. I was rather protective at first, but he is a top cartoonist who regularly comes up with extremely funny jokes – why would he not also come up with first rate music gags? And of course I needed his help to keep the series going – it was becoming a struggle to come up with enough ideas to satisfy the Eye. This is my all-time favourite of Will’s:
There are two ways to tell whose it is. Mine tend to be more oblique, and cryptic than Will’s, sometimes with a reference to the lyrics, not just the title. More obviously, mine carry the “Rik” scribble. In the later years of the series, Will and I were contributing ideas roughly equally.
As I didn’t have any direct contact with the Eye, I didn’t get to go to their occasional cartoonists’ get-togethers, although I did meet Ian Hislop once, at a book launch in December 2012 – even if I had to pay to do so. I attended the launch of Private Eye: A Cartoon History at the Olivier Theatre, no less, in September 2013. After paying my £25 I joined the queue to get the book signed, and when I reached the desk, introduced myself to Ian as the writer of Forgotten Moments. He stood up, shook my hand and said how much he liked the series: earlier that day he had chosen the next three ideas, and he mentioned two of them, confirming to me that he was personally involved in the choice. I mentioned it could be hard work coming up with acceptable ideas. “Well, there’s enough” he replied.
I had other plans for the franchise. Knowing how important pop music is to the boomer generation, I felt it would make a good set of greetings cards, so I touted the idea around a number of companies. Eventually, one called Peartree Heybridge went for it, and published a range of eighteen cards from the series. Sportingly, Ian Hislop raised no objection, provided Private Eye was credited on the back.
Will and I attended the launch at the Progressive Greetings Live trade fair in May 2014. At the Peartree Heybridge stand, our dreams of retiring on the proceeds were already starting to look fragile: there was a buzz around a few of the stands, but not, sadly, at this one. Sales indeed proved very modest: they ran it for a couple of years before pulling the plug. One card from the series outsold the rest by some way: our dark take on Space Oddity.
More ambitiously, I even conceived the idea of a jukebox musical, loosely based on the Forgotten Moments theme. It starts off with the ghosts of Buddy Holly, Jimi Hendrix and a youthful Elvis Presley meeting up by the Dakota building in New York on 8 December 1980, waiting to greet John Lennon. They then form a kind of superhero zombie band who go round having crazy adventures and righting wrongs in chaotic fashion. That’s as far as it got. Just as well probably, I don’t think any producer could have afforded the music rights.
I sometimes sent Will non-music ideas, but the economics of one-off cartoons can be brutal. An artist expends time, skill and effort drawing up ideas to have the great majority knocked back, and revenue sharing with a writer then makes the economics virtually unworkable. The advantage of a series like Forgotten Moments for Will was that the Eye would accept or reject ideas on the basis of a verbal summary, so he knew before starting work on them that he would get paid for it. But he did draw up a few of my non-music ideas, and one was accepted by the Eye:
Towards the end of 2020 (and after quite a few lockdown gags) we got the news we had been fearing: after a run of eight and a half years, and 216 cartoons, Will received the message “Ian thinks this has run its course.” The final cartoon in the series appeared at the end of the year. The last non-Christmas joke was quite apt:
After 35 years in the job, Hislop probably knows what he’s doing. I had felt that the series was becoming a little stale – certainly, my favourite gags tend to come from earlier in the series. Happily, Will was invited to pitch a new series, and his Eco Chamber now dispenses laughs and dire warnings from the same Eye letters page.
Never one to leave a dead horse unflogged, I have started my own Forgotten Moments greetings card shop on Etsy. Sales have once again been modest, but it’s satisfying to run it (except when a card is struck out for image rights infringement – I can’t say which it was for legal confidentiality reasons, but I did find it rather ironic) (oh, and I don’t think I’ll be exploring Wimbledon Common after dark) and I do get a little thrill every time my phone goes ka-ching to announce a sale. The best sellers in the range of eighteen are not only both Bowie gags – they are both based on the same actual song. That man’s fans are so devoted. Neil and Buzz is one of them, of course. This is the other:
But what, you ask, happened to the joke that started it all, Elton John at the JobCentre? It was rejected from the first batch, but I persisted. After a tweak, we sneaked in as fm41:
You can also find a Forgotten Moments in Music History blog, where the cartoons are sporadically released onto the internet – eventually they will all be out there. Fly, my pretties!
At university I never missed a chance to see the V.I.P.s, the home-grown punk pop band managed by fellow Warwick student Clive Solomon. Their future seemed bright. Eventually their single The Quarter Moon reached 55 in 1980 – the only dent they made on the charts.
I went to see them playing the prestigious 100 Club in London, supporting a swingin’ soul band called Q-Tips. I concluded that Q-Tips were a great band, but that their singer was the weak link. Yes, the singer who went on to fame and fortune as Paul Young.
A few years on, I was absolutely certain that the wonderful Mint Juleps would be huge, but they never came closer to world domination than records which peaked at 62 and 58 in the British charts.
Are you seeing a pattern here? Maybe my musical tastes were a little bit too niche. It’s just as well I didn’t work in the business, because my track record at picking winners was hopeless. But perhaps that was about to change.
Early in 1986 my go-to live music was the many retro bands who played fifties and sixties R&B, country music, rock’n’roll and soul in pub venues around Camden like the Dublin Castle – where Madness (previously) and Amy Winehouse (later) made their names. One night I was there breathing the cigarette smoke and enjoying the Cajun R&B of the Balham Alligators, when during their break a couple of young guys came on stage, introduced as the Panic Brothers.
They were a revelation. Their musical influences were pretty obvious – two guys playing acoustic guitars and singing close harmonies inevitably recalled the Everly Brothers – but also taking inspiration from Hank Williams and the roots of contemporary country music. They performed entertaining original songs with a large helping of shrewd observation, humour and sharp social comment – with an edge of left-wing protest, which informed rather than overwhelmed the music – at a time when most country music came from the opposite end of the political spectrum.
I was so impressed that I typed out a review and sent it in to London fanzine Capital M – and they printed it:
Reading this now, I wouldn’t change much, although I’m not sure why I suggested they should do covers when their original songs were so good.
Reg Meuross and Richard Morton. Brothers in spirit.
I banged the drum for them one more time. After attending a gig on 21 September 1986 I sent the fanzine a second review. I justified my enthusiasm in the covering letter:
I’m sorry to bang on about the Panic Brothers again, but if you were at the Dublin Castle last night you would have known it was a very important gig. After all, it’s not so often that a pub-rock act breaks through nationally and I think it can’t be far away for these guys.
If the enclosed review looks like hype – I can only say it’s sincere, and that it takes a lot to impress this cynical old pub-rock veteran.
Panic on Parkway
City Limits be blowed, it was in Capital M back in April that you first read that the Panic Brothers would take the world by storm. To judge from their tumultuous reception at their return gig at the Dublin Castle, they’re over halfway there already.
A large and lively crowd was captivated by the Panic recipe of excellent singing and playing, witty original songs and waggish introductions. There were signs of an act about to break big; a fiercely partisan audience, calling for their favourites, and knowing the words by heart.
The essence of Panic appeal remains their songwriting ability. Like truly great pop, their songs combine economical lyrics with simple, memorable tunes. Some are already Panic classics – “Sober”, “Payoff” and “Bivouac”. “No News” is an indictment of the yellow press on a par with “Pills and Soap”. Best of all though, the new songs – they go on getting better. What a privilege, to attend the birth of these future classics: “Almost as Blue as Hank Williams”, “I Made a Mess of a Dirty Weekend” and the exquisite, wistful “My Friends Don’t Come Drinking Any More.” These won friends immediately, and all three were demanded as encores.
To judge from the rate of increase in Panic popularity, Reg and Richie will not be around the pub circuit for very long. Treat yourself now.
Waggish? Really young Rik? This piece was never published, but for a while they were on a promising trajectory. In 1987 they released In The Red, a “mini album” – a 12-inch vinyl disc containing ten songs which played at 45 rpm. To underline the joke, the first track, Bivouac starts with a glissando to mimic the sound of the record adjusting after mistakenly being started at 33 rpm – as it no doubt often was. They also had a video made for In Debt, but the single was never released.
My favourites were, and remain, the poignant My Friends Don’t Come Drinking Any More, the brilliantly funny I Made a Mess of a Dirty Weekend, (“With my British Rail Red Rover I’m a real Casanova”) another drinking song, I’ve Forgotten What it Was That I Was Drinking To Forget, a not-drinking song, I Feel So Sober I Could Cry, (“But I gave it up! I wonder why? Tonight I feel so sober I could cry”). And there’s Almost as Blue as Hank Williams (“On the bicycle of life I’ve got a spanner in my spokes” – surely up there with Hank’s own “I’m going down in it three times, but Lord I’m only coming up twice”) and No News (“Lying in the gutter press, watching the stars undress”). Their songs are funny or beautiful, or both, and unlike many comedy songs, the quality of the music repays repeated listening.
Over the next five years they were frequently on TV: among other appearances they sang Bivouac and My Sony Walkman Just Walked Out On Me on Channel 4’s Friday Night Live in 1988, and a snippet of them singing Almost as Blue as Hank Williams and commenting on the appeal of Country music in Britain was shown on NBC News. Three of their songs were used for a 1989 BBC Scotland Play On 1. They performed at the Edinburgh Festival, and at Glastonbury.
As you might have guessed, they never made it big. But they both launched successful solo careers. The stage banter was always a big part of their appeal, and for Richard the comedy outgrew the music, and he became a popular stand-up comic – once described as “Newcastle’s answer to Billy Connolly”, rubbing shoulders with the likes of Jack Dee and Jo Brand, and has often featured on the radio.
Meanwhile Reg has become an established act in the folk world. He specialises in telling local stories, sometimes commemorating tragedies. But my personal favourites are the more pop styled songs which could have been drawn from personal experience: Your Face Again, the achingly sad Good with his Hands, and the superbThe Goodbye Hat. The last of these shows that Reg took all of his lyrical bite into his solo career:
Now it doesn’t necessarily follow That she’s been going out with somebody else But it’s starting to look Like she’s found a new book While this one gathers dust on the shelf
Best of all is the marvellous Good Morning Mr. Colston which Reg recorded in 2022 marking the toppling of the slave trader’s statue in 2020: a song which pulls off the rare feat of combining a hard-hitting political and human message with a beautiful and memorable melody.
Reg and Richard c. 2015
In the Red was at last released in CD format in 2015. Richard and Reg have got together for the occasional Panic Brothers reunion in recent years, and when they scheduled a gig at the Dublin Castle in 2017 I was there. I wasn’t disappointed: it was well attended, and the playing, singing and banter were as sharp as ever. They even gave me a shout-out and played my request. I thought I was a superfan, but I saw a fellow there of about my age singing the words to every number, who had brought along his young adult son and daughter. A true apostle. If the Spotify stats are any guide, Panic Brothers fans are now few in number. But we remember, and we are strong in faith.
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You’ll be wondering, given my record of picking winners in the pop music world, who I’m tipping for stardom now. Well, this time, it’s a little closer to home: my daughter’s band, The People Versus. As I always loved music but had zero talent for it, Alice is livin’ the dream for me. I’m bound to get it right eventually, no?
In the 1980s, going to gigs was my default form of entertainment. Living in Kentish Town in north London, it was a short walk down to Camden, where I spent many happy nights in the Dublin Castle on Parkway, and other nearby venues.
But the Mint Juleps home patch was east London: they emerged from youth theatre at the Half Moon on the Mile End Road, where they had all worked as volunteers. So I don’t remember how I first found them – I don’t think it was round my way. But from the minute I saw and heard them, I was under their spell. Their personalities, their vivacity, their banter, but mostly their glorious voices and harmonies, were an irresistible wave of joy, “like a bolt of sunlight breaking through low hanging cloud” as one fan described it. Their gigs were simply the most enjoyable I’ve ever been to.
They were six girls: the four Charles sisters Debbie, Sandra, Lizzie and Marcia, and two of their school friends, Julie Isaac and Debbie Longworth. (“Four of us are sisters, but I bet you can’t tell which four.”) They had no musical training, and it seems they never set out to be stars: they started the journey to become professional singers when they agreed to a gig in a pub, after the owner had heard them singing at the Half Moon.
They sang unaccompanied, or a capella, and each took her turn in the spotlight, stepping across the stage to sing solo. They handled rhythm and blues, pop, soul, reggae and gospel from the fifties and sixties with complete assurance, style, and an infectious sense of fun.
Sandra would win a roar of appreciation for her astonishing extended “We-e-e-e-e-e-e-ll” at the beginning of Shout. Marcia’s resonant bass lines drove the songs along. And when super-cute, sweet-voiced Julie stepped out to sing One Bad Stud, every guy in the audience imagined she was singing just to him. Debbie Longworth and Lizzie were also great singers – Debbie playfully introduced herself as “the token white”. There were no weaknesses – every song was a delight, and you couldn’t keep the smile off your face.
For me the highlight came when Debbie C took a turn to sing gospel, with Jesus Gave Me Water – a number associated with Sam Cooke among others. Her vibrant, warm contralto, and especially her performance on this song was thrilling, and on the video there’s a lovely moment 56 seconds in when she shoots a look at the camera in annoyance after a slight fluff.
And it seemed to me, in my optimistic and naive twenties, to suggest – even in the midst of the Thatcher era – that we were on the dawn of an age where race would become irrelevant, where people would at last be judged on the “content of their character”, and this joyous music would lead the way. Perhaps it was the lager talking, but we seemed to be travelling so fast. How disappointing that thirty-five years later we are no closer to this destination. If I were black, disappointing wouldn’t cover it.
The group had a decent measure of success. They toured with Sister Sledge, Billy Bragg, Kool & the Gang, Lenny Henry, Shalamar, Fine Young Cannibals and provided backing vocals for Bob Geldof, the Belle Stars, Alison Moyet, Al Green, Gabriel and Dr. Feelgood. They worked with artists like Ladysmith Black Mambazo, and appeared in Spike Lee’s 1990 TV production, Do It Acapella.
They were signed by legendary new wave label Stiff Records, who implicitly acknowledged that they were at their best as a live act by recording them live at the Shaw Theatre in London for their 1985 debut album One Time. They broke into the lower end of the charts with a charming version of Neil Young’s Only Love Can Break Your Heart in 1986 and with Robert Palmer’s Every Kinda People in 1987. They provided the final release on Stiff Records before the label folded: the rap-styledGirl to the Power of 6, produced by the highly successful Trevor Horn – celebrating girl power nine years before the Spice Girls came on the scene.
But their single releases abandoned the joyful a capella style. Their production leant towards 1980s fashions, leaving behind the variety which had been the foundation of their shows. They wrote some good numbers – in particular Debbie Longworth’s Don’t Let Your Heart, which I thought of as their signature song – but their studio recordings weren’t distinctive enough to grab the imagination of the record-buying public.
Some of the records sounded like a natural solo number had been hastily rearranged into a group song, to give all the girls a role. The records never quite captured what made them so special live, and some group members sensed that. In a 2013 interview Debbie Charles recalled frustration at Trevor Horn’s approach to production: “We’ve got a sound already, why’s he trying to give us a new one?”
Arguably Stiff Records lacked confidence in the genre: although the Flying Pickets had shown a couple of years before that a capella groups could have big hits in the UK, they had quickly faded from the charts, being seen as a novelty act.
Listening to the vitality and sheer joy of their live performances decades on, it seems incomprehensible and plain wrong that they didn’t take the world by storm. It may be that the lack of a single focal point made the Mint Juleps difficult to promote, but for me that was one of the attractions – the girls clearly had a lot of fun together, and supported each other as a team. As their career progressed, Debbie Charles and Julie Isaac were increasingly assigned lead vocals, and who knows, perhaps they were offered solo contracts (update – see blog comment below, only from DEBBIE CHARLES herself, no less), but the group stayed together.
I should admit to a track record of championing acts which fail to hit the commercial heights their talent merits. I confidently backed The Panic Brothers (who?) for stardom. I saw a swingin’ soul band called Q-Tips, and concluded that they were a great band, but that their singer was the weak link. That’s right, the singer who went on to fame and fortune as Paul Young. So what do I know? Sorry if I jinxed it for you, ladies.
But happily they seem not to dwell on coming so tantalisingly close to stardom, and in this 2013 interview the two Debbies focus on the things they got to do and the fun they had. From Debbie L: “We were like kids, just messing about and having a good time, but we were getting paid for it as well.” From Debbie C: “Absolutely no regrets at all, I would not change anything. People ask me if I miss the Mint Juleps…I miss sitting in our minibus with those five other people, because we used to laugh till we cried.”
There are other fans who refuse to forget the Mint Juleps. Like Niall McMurray, who has written eloquently in praise of their single Docklands. And like American superfan Robert Doyle, who wrote an outstanding blog piece on them in 2014 (see Part 2: The Music), and started the excellent Mint Juleps tribute page on Facebook the following year. He’s done a great job of keeping the flame alive, finding lost video gems from the past and building a fan community. Mint Julep members sometimes make cameo appearances in the comments – as four are sisters, it’s not difficult for them to stay in touch.
I have no doubt they can all still sing beautifully. Unhappily the Half Moon Theatre is now a JD Wetherspoon pub. But if Debbie, Debbie, Julie, Lizzie, Marcia and Sandra ever feel like getting together for a reunion concert in their east London patch, I’ll be first in line for a ticket. Or perhaps second in line. Just after Robert Doyle.
With no qualification besides being an obsessive fan, I was invited to give a sixth form lecture at Watford Grammar School for Boys – my alma mater – on 20th January 1984, on the subject of popular music. The invitation arrived due to the enthusiasm of my cousin Phil, who by coincidence was now teaching Classics at the school – and perhaps due to the credulity of John Holman, the teacher tasked with organising the sixth form lectures.
I was flattered, although initially hesitant. But I had given a best man’s speech the previous year which went down well, so I thought, why not? I prepared a lecture entitled “Songs and Stories”, consisting of ten songs, from the 1950s through to the 1970s, each accompanied by a brief introduction, and arrived at the school at lunchtime. I had left the school in December 1974: nine years later Mr L.K. Turner was still the headmaster. He had always seemed a remote figure, so it was a strange feeling, returning as an adult to sip sherry in his office with a couple of other teachers.
Off duty from enforcing discipline, Mr Turner – or Trog, as I will always think of him – was relaxed. Conversation turned to some CND (Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament) graffiti which had adorned the school wall all through my career there. He mused whether any contemporary issue would arouse the same strength of feeling – this was Margaret Thatcher’s fifth year in power – and I thought he sounded a little wistful that the youth had become apathetic. This surprised me, I remembered him as the embodiment of “The Man”. We concluded that CND at the time was probably still – or rather, again – the issue most likely to stir young people to protest.
I delivered my speech to a fairly passive audience, perhaps tired on a Friday afternoon, perhaps a little surprised and indignant that they were expected to pay attention to a 27-year old’s views on pop music – quite reasonably wary of this sacred youth territory being annexed by the curriculum. Or maybe they found the lecture dull. Certainly it proved a tougher audience than a good natured and slightly tipsy wedding gathering. The talk was enlivened when my final music selection suddenly came on at twice the volume of the previous nine: presumably this was a way for the boys tasked with the audio to show appreciation for their favourite – perhaps the only one they liked.
In the discussion afterwards one boy pointed out that I had omitted so many great artists – what about Hendrix, for instance? Of course, Hendrix was indeed mighty, but being limited to ten records, I couldn’t cover everything. A teacher posed the question: was pop music just a sop to keep youth from protesting or getting involved in politics? I had, and still have little sympathy with this view – the music is real. I responded tartly: “That sounds like the question of a conspiracy theorist who doesn’t like music.” That got a few sniggers at his expense, but I later regretted my sharpness – he had only been trying help me by breathing life into the flagging conversation.
Thirty-seven years later, I have stumbled on my notes. It doesn’t seem like my tastes have changed very much: if called upon now (and I’m not holding my breath) my music choice would be little changed from 1984, although I would phrase a few things differently. And I might omit the Rascals song, which though it still sounds great, doesn’t define a genre as the others do.
With my notes was the programme of sixth form lectures for the Spring Term. I had completely forgotten, if I ever knew, what august company I was keeping. Later that term one speaker was the Rt. Hon. Cecil Parkinson MP – previous holder of two cabinet jobs, later holder of two more – who also served two terms as Chairman of the Conservative Party. Another was Ken Livingstone, leader of the Greater London Council, which was to last just two more years before it was abolished by Thatcher’s government. Livingstone later bounced back to serve two terms as Mayor of London.
I don’t think I was aware of these political heavyweights being on the same bill that term, and just as well: I was nervous enough already. Thankfully I didn’t have to follow them on stage.
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SONGS AND STORIES (20 January 1984)
Good afternoon.
I want to talk to you about various aspects of popular music over the last thirty years. I should say right at the beginning that I won’t be attempting to give a full history of pop music – I couldn’t begin to do justice to the subject in the time available – nor will I attempt to draw a tidy conclusion at the end. All I want to do is to play some records which have been important in the development of pop music, and to talk about each in isolation. This is, I should emphasise, a purely subjective choice.
Some of you probably aren’t interested in pop music; others of you may enjoy it, but may not expect to see it reduced to being a compulsory subject in the school curriculum. To both, I apologise. But if some of you come to discover and enjoy the music played today, I’ll be well satisfied.
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The first record I want to play is by the Robins, later known as the Coasters, recorded in Los Angeles in 1954. America during the 1950s had hundreds of black vocal groups making records, often with very little to distinguish them. But what set the Coasters apart was their hugely talented songwriters and producers, Leiber and Stoller. The Coasters churned out a long string of records, each of which was a miniature opera – a perfectly formed piece of theatre in three minutes.
Their better known records include Charlie Brown and Yakety Yak which both have a flippant teenaged theme. But the song I’m going to play is Riot in Cell Block Number 9 which is possibly the most menacing and hard hitting drama on record. Full use is made of sound effects, while the singer’s voice is tinged with sufficient brutality to be convincing as a man doing time for armed robbery.
Elvis Presley is these days most often recalled as a grossly fat 40-year old crooning ballads to to blue-rinsed matrons in Las Vegas. This image does no justice to the fiery and controversial figure he once was. During the 1950s Presley became a huge star by the violence of his music, his moody good looks and his lithe and suggestive dancing. American television found his stage act so profoundly shocking that they would only show his performances from the waist up.
Presley was born into a very poor family in Mississippi where he grew up surrounded by and enjoying black music. His success came about because he combined in his music the rhythm and mood of black rhythm and blues music with the sharp lyrics and energy of white country music. To understand the impact Presley made in the 1950s it’s important to realise what went before him. The music scene was dominated by soft ballad singers like Frank Sinatra, Johnny Ray and Rosemary Clooney; there was no appreciable teenaged audience. This was partly because teenagers had very little money to spend, and partly because the music scene was too middle aged and sedate to be of interest. But the emergence of rock’n’roll, epitomised by Presley, and the growing affluence of the fifties was to change that. The record which best demonstrates the violence and youthful energy of rock’n’roll is
Doo-wop is the slightly comical term applied to a very popular ballad style of the 1950s. It is so called because nonsense phrases like doo-wop would often be used as harmony against the lead vocal.
Literally hundreds of black American vocal groups used the style, and would actually sing on the street corners of their neighbourhood. They would often sing unaccompanied, sometimes to avoid detracting from their intricate vocal harmonies, but more often for reasons of economy. Recently the unaccompanied, or a capella style has made an unexpected come back with The Flying Pickets.
The proliferation of groups singing in this style meant that thousands of records were made, usually very cheaply and mostly of indifferent quality. Sharp-eyed producers would pull a local group into the studio, set up some beers, press a few dollars into their hands, and ask them to sing. The results were often appalling.
The Five Satins would have been forgotten with the rest of them, had it not been for the extraordinary quality of one of their records, In the Still of the Night.
The first reaction on hearing this song is probably one of amusement at the weird arrangement and the deliberately dumb backing vocals. But if you listen closer you might hear the simplicity and understated power which makes this, in many enthusiasts’ view, the finest record ever made. They say the song hangs in the air over New York City on summer nights. I have no idea what that’s supposed to mean but it’s probably true.
Elvis Presley may have had a shattering effect on the calm of Eisenhower’s America, but he was ultimately assimilable. For all his raucous shouting and obscene gyrations, he loved his mum, he ate mashed banana sandwiches, and he was proud to do his bit for Uncle Sam when he was called up in 1958. He was, in spite of everything, an all-American boy. Little Richard made no such concessions, and no one has ever understood him.
Little Richard would sing and play piano with demonic energy, standing and bashing at the piano as if he was trying to smash it. He had a powerful voice, always on the edge of hysteria; he would sing with a passion and commitment which belied the fact that the lyrics were usually quite meaningless.
From 1956 to 1958 Little Richard had a string of million-selling records. His manager found himself without any new material to promote, and with a typical disregard for commercial considerations, Little Richard refused to go back into the studio. Instead, with casual genius, he sent in a rough demo tape lasting less than a minute, called Keep A-Knockin’. This was dressed up in the studio to a respectable length and became another million seller.
If rock’n’roll was marvellous drivel, Keep A-Knockin’ is a fine example. It is so brash and confrontational that you have to take sides – you either love it or hate it. This was very much the stuff that helped create the generation gap.
Predictably, no performer could keep up this level of energy and commitment for long. While touring Australia in 1957, a fire had broken out in the plane he was travelling in. Convinced that he would die, he got down on his knees and promised that if he was spared he would give up “the devil’s music” and devote himself to the gospel. The plane landed safely, and Little Richard was as good as his word – since when God has never looked back.
In complete contrast to Little Richard, Sam Cooke was the very model of urbane sophistication. Well-groomed, polite and clever, he had frequently sung in American night-clubs, and sang in a smooth, sweet style that owed much to his training as a gospel singer.
From 1960 to 1965 he made many fine soul records. Unfortunately he had to fight a running battle with his record company, who wanted to turn him into a second Sammy Davis Jr. But Cooke’s voice was distinctive and beautiful enough to transform the slightest song or the most sickly arrangement into something worth hearing.
But his finest record is Bring it on Home to Me from 1962, in a straightforward gospel style, making much use of close harmony and call and response with a second vocalist.
Cooke was never popular with the white American establishment; he was too clever, too successful for their taste. Incidentally, he was a close friend of Muhammad Ali (then Cassius Clay) and was among the first into the ring to congratulate him after beating Sonny Liston.
Sam Cooke died in a shooting incident in a hotel in 1964. Some have speculated that this was a CIA set-up.
Listening closely to the slightly hoarse quality of Cooke’s voice, it’s easy to see why Rod Stewart claims Cooke as a major influence. However, it is debatable whether Stewart has ever conveyed such powerful emotion in his singing.
The only record producer ever to acquire the status of legend in his own right is Phil Spector.
After singing, writing and producing a few fairly ordinary hits in the early 60s, Spector slowly developed the production style that was to make his name. Where other producers used a four or five piece rhythm section, Spector used overdubbing to create a multi layered, symphonic effect which he called the “wall of sound”. He took pride in the craftsmanship he lavished on what critics described as trash; he was fond of referring to his “Wagnerian approach to rock’n’roll – little symphonies for the kids”.
By the age of 23 he was a multi-millionaire. Then the problems set in. He put six months work into recording a Christmas album which was released on 22nd of November 1963, the date of president Kennedy’s assassination. Suddenly nobody wanted to hear his version of Frosty the Snowman. Three months later the Beatles arrived in America, crushing all opposition before them. Finally, the enemies he had made by his idiosyncratic behaviour conspired to bring about the failure of what he regarded as his greatest record – Ike and Tina Turner’s River Deep Mountain High.
Humiliated, he went into virtual retirement, an increasingly enigmatic figure in dark glasses surrounded by bodyguards. Always image conscious, he enjoyed this reputation; he was quoted as saying “It isn’t funny when you see your father’s head blown apart by a shotgun.” We have no evidence that anything like this ever happened to him. Either way we can only agree: it isn’t funny to see your father blown apart by a shotgun.
Be My Baby by the Ronettes is probably not Spector’s best recording but it is the one that best illustrates his dictum: symphonies for the kids. A little girl’s voice, singing a lyric of unashamed banality, is surrounded by great waves of sound; one girl and a thousand-piece orchestra. Like it or not you have to agree: it’s way over the top.
John Lennon claimed in 1971 that the Beatles made their best music before they ever signed a recording contract. This remark was probably made to shock rather than to inform. But what he meant was that before the Beatles ever reached the studio, they had a raw pace and excitement which was never quite captured in their more polished studio recordings.
From 1960 to 1963, hundreds of beat groups sprang up in Liverpool, and many of these make the trip to Hamburg, where their rough and ready music was very much in demand at the local night clubs.
Conditions in these night clubs were appalling. The groups had to play for stints up to eight hours; they would consume vast countries of alcohol and drugs, and more than once their performances were interrupted by violence between rival gangs.
The track which I’m about to play comes from the Live at the Star Club album. This was not released until 1976; it was taken from an amateur recording of the Beatles performance. This explains the poor sound quality. But it is difficult to listen to this recording without getting some feeling of how exciting those early performances must have been, and without an intimation of the huge talent that was to take the world by storm in 1963 and 1964.
Listening to this today, it is hard to believe that the man playing bass guitar and singing backing vocals is currently at number one with Pipes of Peace.
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Aretha Franklin with the daughter of a black preacher in Detroit, the Reverend CL Franklin. This man was a wealthy and by all accounts devastating Baptist preacher, who held sway over a huge and devoted congregation, and commanded large fees for his appearances.
The influence of gospel music and the church was the foundation of Aretha’s success, but this success took a long time in coming. From 1960 until 1966, she made scores of records with CBS; but while everyone agreed she was very talented, none of the records were artistically or commercially successful.
1966 saw her move to Atlantic Records. and November of that year saw the historic recording session with Atlantic’s top producer, Jerry Wexler. With the rest of the American music business looking on with interest, Wexler decided to set Aretha loose. Where before she had recorded in a clipped, polished style, Wexler encouraged her to sing her heart out, over a taut, understated backing. The result was definitive soul music; pure, uninhibited and powerful.
The Rascals didn’t just play soul music – they understood it. What made this unusual was that they were white, at a time when for white people to play soul music was virtually unheard of. Blue-eyed soul they called it.
Besides that I have to admit that their story is not particularly interesting. But they left us one monumentally exciting record. The frenetic Good Lovin’ which was a US number one in 1966. In Britain it never did a thing.
They wouldn’t agree, but in many ways the Sex Pistols can be seen as the true successors to Little Richard. Both rely on uncompromising attack; both produce a violent confrontational sound. Significantly, both produced their finest records in a period of less than 12 months; it was simply not possible to maintain the intensity of feeling – in the Sex Pistols case hatred – which inspired their most powerful work.
Their manager Malcolm McLaren has always claimed that he created the group from nothing, that they were totally untalented and owed all their success to his promotion and publicity stunts. This is simply not true; for despite the Sex Pistols indifferent musicianship and unpleasant behaviour, they make uniquely powerful records, which again like Little Richard, forced the listener to take sides.
Sadly, Sid Vicious started to believe his own publicity; he stabbed his girlfriend to death and later killed himself – a born victim carrying on his shoulders the accumulated hang-ups and neuroses of his generation.
When the plans you made are a total dead loss Just take a right on your way to Maple Cross Take a trip to No Dragon Wood Take a trip to No Dragon Wood
They had it checked and they know it’s clean Of dragon dung since 1415 Come and chill in No Dragon Wood Come and chill in No Dragon Wood
Oh they used to call it Bottom Wood A bummer of a name, no it weren’t no good Meet you down at No Dragon Wood Meet you down at No Dragon Wood
They got birds, squirrels and maybe frogs They got fallen trees and mossy logs All to see at No Dragon Wood All to see at No Dragon Wood
There’s lynxes, bears and crocodiles You’ll have to take your chances You’ll prob’ly have to fend off Rhinoceros advances But you don’t have to worry in the least ‘bout incineration by a mythical beast
If we carry on for a couple more miles We can get a ourselves a beer in Chalfont St Giles And you don’t need no more excuses To sample those Creative Juices Come on down to No Dragon Wood Come on down to No Dragon Wood Oh yeah Get your ass down to No Dragon Wood
You lucky, lucky bastard. I used to set my alarm for quarter to six when I commuted to London. I’ve always imagined Matthew and Son as a mucky old factory, probably in the north of England, one that L S Lowry might have painted. Cat took the name from his tailor, Henry Matthews, but the lyric goes on to mention “the files in your head”. Perhaps it’s an office where accountants or lawyers toil. Or maybe a hand tool factory.
In fairness, Steven Demetre Georgiou, known to the world as Cat Stevens – later as Yusuf Islam – was only 18 in 1967 when this song was a big hit in the UK. Perhaps he didn’t experience work drudgery himself before he became a pop star. Although his girlfriend did, according to his later comment:
“I had a girlfriend, and she was working for this big firm, and I didn’t like the way that she had to spend so much of her time working… There was a bit of social comment there about people being slaves to other people.” So this shot across the bows of capitalism was inspired primarily by resentment of his girlfriend’s employer – and only incidentally by a sense of injustice. It is not recorded whether this is the same girlfriend whom he loved no more than his dog.
For Matthew and Son,
Matthew hasn’t called his company Aviva plc or G4S: no, he’s happy to put his name above the door, and be judged on his record by customers and employees. And employees’ boyfriends, it seems. Matthew has put his personal reputation (and his son’s) on the line. Clearly a man of integrity. (Or possibly a narcissistic t*** like Trump.)
he won't wait. Watch them run down to platform one And the eight-thirty train to Matthew and Son.
Well, I used to run down to platform one for the six-forty three train, that’s one hour and forty-seven minutes earlier, matey. And I don’t know how far you live from the station, but I do wonder whether thirty minutes is enough time for you to wake up/go to the loo/shave if applicable/shower/get dressed/have a nutritious breakfast/brush your teeth/make up if applicable/gather your stuff/get to platform one. All the things you should do to arrive at Matthew & Son presentable and ready for work.
Matthew and Son, the work’s never done,
That’s what work is, right? If all the work was done, you wouldn’t have a job any more, would you?
there’s always something new.
Stimulating work then.
The files in your head, you take them to bed, you’re never ever through.
Right, let’s assume it’s not a hand tool factory.
And they’ve been working all day
All day?
All day
No employer would expect less.
There's a five minute break and that's all you take, For a cup of cold coffee and a piece of cake.
Cake? You get cake? Do Amazon delivery drivers get free cake? Luxury!
He’s got people who’ve been working for fifty years
A steady employer. A job for life. Probably a decent pension scheme. How many young people entering the job market in 2021 can expect that sort of loyalty from their employers? Uber pension, anyone?
No one asks for more money ‘cause nobody dares
There’s a whole world out there, guys. Go work on someone else’s files. Retrain. Emigrate.
Even though they’re pretty low and their rent’s in arrears
This doesn’t necessarily mean that Matthew and Son don’t pay a decent salary. Perhaps their employees are profligate.
Matthew and Son, Matthew and Son...etc
Cat was a precocious talent, and this song still sounds fresh. But he couldn’t have imagined how, half a century later, the march of Thatcherism and Reaganomics – followed by the rise of the gig economy – would make the workers at Matthew and Son look like the lucky ones. If they were recruiting today, applicants would be queueing around the block. Or rather, they’d crash the servers.
Matthew, and his Son – or by now his Great Grandchildren – are just trying to run a business. Give them a break. But make it a twenty minute break. And make sure the coffee’s hot.
Why do I sometimes remember things that no-one else does? Do I make these memories up?
When, in January last year, I wrote Teacher’s Pet about my time at Watford Field Junior School, and put the article on a local Facebook group, a former fellow pupil called Andy Skinner commented on the article, and we began a dialogue.
Something then stirred in my memory: something to do with Skinner, a party, my brother Rob, and a Motown single. Eventually it took shape. In about 1970, we – well, Rob – had owned a copy ofthe sublimeTracks of My Tears, by Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, and then he didn’t.
Lamenting its absence from the collection of singles in his collection he had blamed “Skinner” – we used surnames a lot at school, there were too many Johns and Richards – a boy in the year between us. As I recall, Rob had been at a party some time in the early 1970s, and he told me that Andy Skinner had “borrowed” the record to tape it. (Home Taping was Killing Music.)
In my mind this was tentatively associated with another Motown single of lesser status – although still a decent single – that we had in the pile, Do What You Gotta Do by the Four Tops, which peaked outside the top ten in 1969. My recollection was that it was a temporary swap which had become an indefinite one, as Rob and Andy’s paths hadn’t crossed again – at least not when they were carrying these Motown hits. In view of the difference in quality of the two records we felt somewhat cheated.
And here I was, unexpectedly in touch with Andy, someone I remembered from school, but only vaguely, as is the way with kids in a different year. So in a message to him I wrote, tongue in cheek, that Rob would like his copy of Tracks of My Tears back.
Perhaps unsurprisingly after so much time had elapsed, Andy replied that he had no memory of ‘blagging’ the record, nor did he remember Rob from school, and doubted if he owned the record. But when I tentatively suggested that if he found it, he might return it out of the blue to Rob, it appealed to his sense of humour and he readily agreed.
To Andy’s surprise, he did find Tracks of My Tears when he searched in his loft, so he dispatched it to Rob’s address with exactly the message you would send when returning something after 49 years.
I pictured Andy, in the Spotify era, wiring his cassette recorder up to the hi-fi like we all used to. I waited for the joke to find its mark, and in January 2020 Rob received the record and Andy’s note in the post. Rob and I have pranked each other in the past, so I wasn’t surprised that he sensed my hand in this and messaged me “This arrived today, without any address or any other clues. Don’t suppose it rings any bells with you?” I took that as a coded accusation. Well, really.
I tried to nudge his memory by sharing initially ‘vague’ recollections which soon became more specific, but in vain. He knew nothing about it, and the joke had fallen flat. I was prepared to leave it at that, and leave a bit of mystery in his life. But I wrote a follow-up article to Teacher’s Pet which mentioned Andy, and the game was up. Rob wrote “The Andy Skinner you wrote about. He wouldn’t be the same Andy Skinner that mysteriously returned the Tracks of My Tears single to me a couple of weeks ago, would he?” So: no joke, no mystery. Ah well.
So, did I make the whole thing up? Did I unintentionally spoof someone I barely remember from school into going up to his loft, locating a vintage 45 and randomly sending it to my brother? If so I’m actually quite proud. I understand that Picasso’s Girl With a Dove is on anonymous loan to the Courtauld Institute of Art in London. I might ask to have it back, if they don’t know where they got it from.
Perhaps I just remember something they don’t, even though I wasn’t directly involved: where music is involved my memory seems to be sharper. Or possibly, I remember the incident accurately, but have pinned it on the wrong guy. But it seems to be corroborated by Andy finding Tracks of My Tears when he didn’t think he owned it: also to some extent by the confirmed presence of Do What You Gotta Do in Rob’s collection – although Rob doesn’t recall how he acquired it, and Andy doesn’t recall ever owning it, so it hasn’t made a journey in the opposite direction. Most people are just too busy living their life to mentally archive it as they go.
But did you spot that line of marker just under the sleeve window? Perhaps there is writing behind that which might shed light on the mystery. I must ask Rob to take a look.
(To the tune of Cabaret, sung by Liza Minnelli, written by John Kander and Fred Ebb)
What good is sitting Alone in your room? You’re never too old to play. Come join the u3a, old chum, Come join the u3a.
We find that it’s fitting To learn how to Zoom ‘cause now it’s the only way To come to the u3a, old chum, Come to the u3a.
Come taste the tea, Come hear the talk Come sing your song Start educating; Right this way, Your group is waiting.
A friend of mine took Wine
Appreciation
And quickly learned the art of
Degustation
She got to know her
Merlot from her Claret
And now she runs
A winery in Sarratt
A fellow thought he’d go and join The Striders He walked eight miles and then had Seven ciders And when they said “There’s Four more miles you know” He just laughed and told Them where to go
A lady in our road was
Learning Scrabble
But sad to say it soon became
A rabble
They threw her on the street
Because you see
In every single game
She put down "qi"
Another chap joined Politics Discussion But someone started arguing in Russian And though they tried they Couldn’t seem to mute him Then they found his name was Mr Putin
My neighbour went to learn The ukelele But when he tried to sing it was A fail-ee Instead of sounding Confident and warm he Always came out very like George Formby
No use permitting Some prophet of doom To wipe every smile away Come to the u3a old chum Come to the u3a!
Please don’t be quitting We’re gonna resume After this holiday Come join the u3a, old chum Welcome to u3a, old chum, And I love the u3a!
Here are 50 questions: each describes a song. All you have to do is identify the song title – the artist is not required. To help you, I have given the year the song first became popular – the correct answer is a song from that year. As you will see, some of them go back a little way: if you’re under fifty, it might be worth teaming up with somebody who isn’t. The answer may come from the title or the lyrics of the song. Enjoy!
Feel free to contact me for answers if you get stuck.
Which song…
1) …permits triple winter precipitation? (1946)
2) …is sung by a man with remorseful leg-ends? (1984)
3) …is sung by a man admiring a girl on an underground train? (2005)
4) …describes a firm where workers have to get up at eight? (1967)
5) …recommends an osculatory judgement? (1991)
6) …laments the death of a local shopkeeper? (1967)
7) …is sung by a girl made pregnant by a boy she met in Alabama? (1971)
8) …tells the story of a boxer convicted of robbery and murder? (1975)
9) …is sung by a man whose music career has come to grief in Central Valley, California? (1969)
10) …offers the listener an opportunity to stay dry? (2007)
11) …celebrates the end of the scholastic year? (1972)
12) …refers to a sweet smelling missile? (1875)
13) …describes an ill-fated space voyage? (1969)
14) …celebrates surviving a long pop career? (1983)
15) …describes a courtroom murder? (1969)
16) …laments a romance that ended just over a fortnight ago? (1990)
17) …describes how a deceased soldier saved the singer’s life in Vietnam? (1986)
18) …recalls amorous times in NW3? (1985)
19) …takes a boat trip in northwest England? (1964)
20) …invites one of your children to a massacre? (1991)
21) …describes the aftermath of a racially motivated murder? (1939)
22) …asks whether an Italian clown can do a Spanish dance? (1975)
23) …contradicts an Osborne play? (1996)
24) …points out the ineffectiveness of medication? (1997)
25) …is narrated by an unhappy newsboy? (1972)
26) …dictates a letter written too late to save a murder and suicide? (2000)
27) …refers to a feline visual organ? (1982)
28) …is a plea of innocence by a boy accused of killing a girl? (1992)
29) …looks good but lacks content? (1977)
30) …requests ignition? (1967)
31) …mourns a lover lost to Hades by a glance? (1762)
32) …suggests she might serve drinks again? (1981)
33) …celebrates improved visibility? (1972)
34) …boasts of climbing skills? (1970)
35) …complains of paresthesia? (1964)
36) …follows a route between Portman Square and Regents Park? (1978)
37) …includes a request that the biscuits be passed? (1967)
38) …bemoans rotating runners? (1994)
39) …patriotically begins with a conjunction? (1916)
40) …tells of a 3,219 km journey to reach a wet place? (1968)
41) …warns of insomnia? (1926)
42) …displays ignorance of Iberian weather? (1956)
43) …confuses inconvenience with irony? (1996)
44) …describes fortifications on inadequate foundations? (2008)
45) …might refer to Coca-Cola or cherry cola? (1970)
46) …draws strength from borrowing books? (1996)
47) …recounts a nocturnal trip in Egypt? (1979)
48) …tells of an assault on an American mystery writer? (1967)
49) …shows repeated resilience in the face of excessive drinking? (1997)
Tuesday 17 October 2017, Tooting Tram and Social. Her first time on stage since a couple of things at school. She looks good but nervous. The older girl has done a few open mic nights before, and chats with her reassuringly, hugs her, helps her bring the microphone stand down. Finally the nine-piece band has finished tuning up and running sound checks and they launch into their first number, Barefoot. She sings beautifully, but keeps her movements small. The band is enthusiastically received, with help from friends and family in the audience. Apart from the other girl, her bandmates didn’t realise this was her first performance in public – she hadn’t told them so they wouldn’t fuss her.
The following May she came with me to see the Rolling Stones at London Stadium. She has never needed any lessons in stagecraft, but if she had, it was a good one. The support act was Liam Gallagher: as we entered the stadium he was in his default state of aggressive moaning.
We could see him on the big screen of course, but from a distance it took me a full five minutes to locate him in person on stage. He wore dark blue against a dark background, he stood there and barely moved. He didn’t look as if he was enjoying himself. So what chance did we have?
Liam is famously a huge Beatles fan: had he not, then, heard the story of Bruno Koschmider yelling “Mach schau! Mach schau!” (Put on a show!) to enliven the five young lads from Liverpool, passive as they played their instruments in the Kaiserkeller in Hamburg in 1960?
When the Rolling Stones came onstage, the change in mood was immediate and thrilling. Jagger, of course, still appeared a tiny figure, but he wore a shiny silver jacket and moved ceaselessly to every corner of the stage – you couldn’t miss him – and he transmitted an energy belying his 74 years to the whole stadium. When it grew dark he wore a billowing red silk shirt which glowed like a beacon. We had paid for a show, and by god we were going to get one.
That’s how you put on a show, I said, as if she needed telling. The nine-piece band she sang with worked well musically, but its members had very different personalities, and the negativity some brought to group discussions may have inhibited her stage performances. But her confidence was quietly growing with experience and positive feedback. When they played their most prestigious gig yet at a festival, other band members said “It’s 400 people, aren’t you nervous?” She replied “No, 40, 400, 4000, we play for people so we can play to more people, that’s the point. This is why we’re doing this.”
The nine piece evolved into a smaller, more flexible band which had the advantage of not needing such a large stage, and not taking so long to do its sound check. Just as important was the personal chemistry between members: they were also mates. Confident of the band’s support, her performances became freer and more energetic.
The band is finishing its sound checks. She’s chatting to me, quite relaxed, three or four rows back in the crowd. The announcer leaves the stage to a burst of applause, and she has to push her way through. The teasing opening riff of Like I’m Lonely/Driftwood starts up as she climbs on stage smiling and looking at ease. Now she’s on stage the show can start.
She brings down the mic and starts to move to the music. She hasn’t started singing yet and we already know we’re going to have fun. Let’s do this.
History books will tell you that From Me To You was the Beatles first UK number one. That’s not how I remember it. Rob and I were listening to Pick of the Pops on the BBC Light Programme with Alan Freeman on our radiogram in Oxhey, in March 1963. Rob was nine, I was six and a half. Cliff Richard was our hero, and we were not pleased to hear that Cliff’s Summer Holiday had been knocked off the number one spot by a noisy song called Please Please Me by some upstarts called the Beatles.
(The reason for the discrepancy is that the standard reference for chart history, The Guinness Book of Hit Singles, used Record Retailer charts, while the BBC at the time compiled its own averaged chart.)
Mum and Dad were great music lovers. Opera was their thing, but they indulged our enthusiasms. I remember being taken to see Summer Holiday at the cinema. Later Mum made a great sacrifice by taking us to see A Hard Day’s Night: the only tickets available were in the front row, and she had a terrible headache from the frantic unceasing movement. They even took us, early in 1965, to see Aladdin and his Wonderful Lamp – a panto at The London Palladium starring Cliff and the Shadows. (Oh no they didn’t…)
Rob and I were thrilled to see Cliff and the Shadows live. Mum and Dad enjoyed seeing Arthur Askey as the Widow Twankey. Dad was tickled by the gag where Hank Marvin tried and failed to scare someone by wearing a ghost mask – until he gave up and revealed his face, whereupon the victim screamed in horror.
When the Beatles, the Stones and everyone else burst onto the scene in 1963/4, Cliff was able to retain his popularity – if not his relevance – by continuing his trajectory from young rock’n’roller to family entertainer. The low point was Goodbye Sam, Hello Samantha. In doing so, he jettisoned most of the respect he once enjoyed for his early recordings, and all of his cool.
But you don’t forget your first heroes, and I retained a fondness for Cliff Richard long after he became deeply unfashionable. I was thrilled in 1969 when Cliff and Hank made what I thought was a superb record, Throw Down a Line – an apocalyptic song which Hank Marvin has said he wrote with Jimi Hendrix in mind – now that would have been something. His artistic renaissance in the 1970s produced the exquisite Miss You Nights, and his biggest US hit, Devil Woman. He could still pick a song.
*******
I came to Move It late – understandably, as I was two when it was released. Without question, it is the first authentic rock’n’roll song produced outside the USA. Before the arrival of the Beatles, the only other undisputed non-American classic is Shakin’ All Over by Johnny Kidd and the Pirates.
Like Cliff, the Shadows became uncool during the 1960s, but Hank Marvin’s reputation was later burnished as heroes of later musical generations – Pete Townshend, Eric Clapton, Dave Gilmour, Brian May – queued up to pay their respects. Cliff, though, has found such respect harder to come by. Is that fair? When Move It was made, Hank wasn’t even in the Shadows, or the Drifters as they were called at the time.
But just listen to it: the throbbing, angry rhythm, the polite but committed and insistent vocal. Jazz critic Steve Race had written in Melody Maker “So rock’n’roll is dead, is it? All right, then. My funeral oration consists of just two words: good riddance.” He went on to say he didn’t know what the next craze would be. Ian Samwell, an early member of the Drifters, was inspired to write the song as an angry riposte: he really did want to know what could replace it. He composed the song on the top deck of a Green Line bus (the 715) on his way to Cliff’s house in Cheshunt.
It serves still as a passionate war cry and anthem for the music. Move it was first released as the B-side of the insipid Schoolboy Crush, but fortunately TV producer Jack Good heard Move It and insisted that Cliff should sing that one if he wanted to appear on Oh Boy! The record was flipped and reached number two in the charts.
The implication wasn’t lost on British fans. Just as Buddy Holly had shown that ordinary looking guys could become rock’n’roll stars – not just exotic godlike figures such as Elvis Presley and Little Richard – so Cliff proved you didn’t have to be American to make it. There were earlier British attempts at rock’n’roll, of course, but to properly understand the impact of Move It, what it meant to teenagers at the time, it’s worth listening to dire previous offerings like Tommy Steele’s Rock With the Caveman.
Cliff became such a fixture in British life that it’s not always appreciated how desperate he was for success and how hard he worked for it. A story about High Class Baby, his follow up to Move It, is revealing. After recording the song, he went home and cried, believing that his early success had been a fluke. “I thought that was it” he said. “It just didn’t compare in any way to Move It.” He was right about that record, but soon broke through again with Livin’ Doll and never looked back.
Many of Cliff and the Shadows’ early recordings still sound good today: rock ballads like Livin’ Doll, Travellin’ Light and The Next Time, out and out rockers like Please Don’t Tease and We Say Yeah, pop/rock songs like Bachelor Boy, Dancing Shoes and Don’t Talk to Him, and the big film themes The Young Ones, and Summer Holiday. And those two films are cheesy but still fun and full of youthful energy, in a Judy Garland/Mickey Rooney kind of way.
My wife and I had seen Cliff Richard in concert many years before, but when we heard that he was getting back with the Shadows for some 50th anniversary concerts, billed as the Final Reunion Tour, we knew we had to be there: they very rarely played together these days, and having the Shadows along would keep Cliff to his more rocky early material. I invited cousin Phil, nostalgia king and an even longer-standing Cliff fan, to join us.
Known for years as “The Peter Pan of Pop”, it was claimed that Cliff had fans from nine to ninety. In truth, there were few under fifties there. We did spot a nerdy looking 12 year old boy with his parents: I assumed he was there under duress, but later we noticed him mouthing the lyrics like a true fan.
When the lights went down, the years dropped away and we all felt like teenagers again. They opened with a pulsatingWe Say Yeah, and the mood for the evening was set. (A version of which Johnny Hallyday has also used to good effect to open his show). “Please sit down – you’ll only get tired” said Cliff considerately, viewing the frenzy his opening number had unleashed. The Shadows, always consummate musicians, were tight and energetic, and Cliff looked delighted to have them back on stage with him. They were all having a great time.
It was full set, stretching to three hours, and fans would struggle to think of any big hits that were left out. Cliff performed with an energy belying his 68 years. The Shadows had the stage to themselves for a while to play some of their hits, which they did with accuracy and intent – for example the cleanest, sweetest Wonderful Land you could imagine. They even threw in some trademark dance steps.
The audience had a huge helping of exactly what they wanted: it was, without doubt, the best a Cliff Richard and the Shadows gig could be. When I expressed my opinion in that way, it was sometimes greeted with a smirk, but I meant it as a high compliment. We had a wonderful time. When eventually they had run out of hits, Cliff introduced their final number by saying that when, if ever, we met again, we will still be The Young Ones. Not a dry eye in the house.
Cliff Richard has always been polite, and lacked the air of danger which characterises true rock stars. He was never going to be Mick Jagger, Iggy Pop, Freddie Mercury or Ray Davies. But he’s definitely Cliff, and he’s served up some great music over the years, and if, as he’d feared, he’d faded away straight after Move It, his legacy would still be substantial. And for people of a certain age, he’s just always been there, part of the British fabric, like David Attenborough or the Queen. We understand that you’ll never be cool. But we love you, Cliff.
Ramblings 