MICHAEL TRETOW

There are too many fifth Beatles to count – Brian Epstein, George Martin, Stuart Sutcliffe, Pete Best, Neil Aspinall, Derek Taylor and at least a couple of their wives – but there was only ever one fifth member of Abba, recording engineer Michael Tretow who death at the age of 80 was reported today.

        “You meant more to us four in ABBA than anyone else,” says Benny Andersson. “Our music lives on, it seems, and you are the one who made it timeless.”

        “His significance to Abba cannot be overstated,” added Björn Ulvaeus, and the two Abba singers, Anni-Frid Lyngstad and Agnetha Fältskog, are of the same mind.  

        So, too, is my friend Magnus Palm, the group’s premier archivist and historian and author of several Abba books, among them the definitive Abba biography Bright Lights Dark Shadows, commissioned by me in 2000 and still in print having been revised and updated many times. “Michael Tretow was an endless source of ideas on how to make their recordings more exciting,” Magnus tells me. “He was Benny and Björn’s unofficial co-producer. Just as importantly, he was an empathetic human being who knew how to lighten the mood when spirits sank during the group’s interminable backing track sessions, or when Agnetha and Frida got stuck during the recording of a vocal overdub.”

        It was Magnus’s epic biography that drew my attention to Michael’s contribution to Abba, specifically how keen he was to explore new studio techniques in an era when Sweden’s studios lacked the hi-tech capabilities of those in the UK and US. Like the group, he was ambitious, never one to stand still or abide by outdated procedures that had governed the way records were made for years. And like them, he wanted their records to appeal to an international audience.

        Ever on the hunt for anything that might help his endeavours, Michael found what he wanted in a bookshop. “He found the book he’d been dreaming about,” wrote Magnus in Bright Lights Dark Shadows. “Just published, Out Of His Head: The Sound Of Phil Spector was written by Richard Williams, the assistant editor of the British music paper Melody Maker who’d been present at the recording of John Lennon’s Spector-produced ‘Happy Xmas (War Is Over)’ and seen the legend at work. Michael headed straight for the cashier with this find, eager to secure his copy before anyone else snapped it up.

        “Björn, Benny and Michael were… big fans of the records made by Phil Spector in the early Sixties [but] what Michael wanted to know was how Spector achieved that enormous sound. Although he wasn’t entirely sure, he thought he had a hunch – and now Out Of His Head revealed all the secrets. ‘Then He Kissed Me’ by The Crystals had used ‘a whole gang of guitars’, the book established. On the following page, a section about The Ronettes’ classic ‘Be My Baby’ went into even greater detail. ‘The orchestra, outrageously gigantic, had pianos and basses arrayed in ranks in the studios,’ wrote Williams, ‘and everyone joining in to play the percussion which Spector had arranged with almost militaristic precision.

        “Michael nodded to himself. ‘That explained why it sounded like five guitars,’ he recalled, ‘it was because Spector really did use five guitars.’ But having several guitarists, pianists, bassists and so on in the studio at the same time would have been far too expensive for comparatively low-key Swedish productions. If a similar effect was to be achieved, they would have to do several overdubs of each of the instruments. Michael knew he simply had to try it sometime.

        “Similarly, Björn and Benny were thrilled to be working with an enthusiastic engineer. ‘Right from the first time I met Michael in the studio, I felt that here was a guy who thought this was just as exciting as we did,’ recalled Benny. It didn’t hurt that the engineer wasn’t just a technical boffin, but understood and shared their dream of achieving success outside Scandinavia.”

        The first Abba recording that Michael engineered was ‘People Need Love’, followed by ‘Ring Ring’, initially intended as the group’s entry for the 1973 Eurovision Song Contest but which failed to win sufficient votes. Nevertheless, by Swedish standards it was a breakthrough recording in terms of studio technique, the first song that Abba recorded that didn’t sound clumsy against UK and US recordings. A year later, of course, Abba won Eurovision with ‘Waterloo’, another Tretow engineering job and one clearly influenced by Spector. 

        In 2008 I was asked to write an introduction to a matching folio for Gold, Abba's multimillion-selling hits album. “It was Michael Tretow who discovered Abba’s ‘third’ voice,” I wrote. “This was the sound of Frida and Agnetha singing together, layer upon layer of overdubbed backing vocals creating the rich, all-enveloping choral landscape that became one of Abba’s most distinctive trademarks. Coupled with exemplary musicianship from Björn and Benny and the best Swedish session players available, the result was pop perfection.” 

        Michael worked closely with Abba throughout their entire career, eight studio albums, two live sets and the 4-CD retrospective Thank You For The Music, his final recording ‘The Day Before You Came’, the atmospheric track with a nod towards minimalism and electronica that became Abba’s glorious swan song in 1982. 

        As Magnus’ book makes clear, in the late 1970s, Björn and Benny rewarded Michael generously. From the Voulez-Vous album onwards Tretow received a 0.5 per cent royalty on all Abba recordings as a reward for his loyalty and contributions over the years. “It was kind of unprecedented,” says Michael with some understatement. “And it wasn’t because I asked for it, they were the ones who said, ‘You should have that’. I’ve never heard of anything like it.” This gesture meant that when the three per cent royalty rate allotted to the stars – the Abba members – was split four ways, it amounted to only 0.75 per cent, marginally more than the 0.5 per cent allotted to their recording engineer.

Michael suffered a stroke in 2001, and although he recovered well, he retired from the music business and as a result Abba’s 2021 album Voyage is the only one in their catalogue not to feature a Tretow credit. 

        The last word must go to Abba’s formidable vocal duo: 

        Anni-Frid: “You were the security in our little studio bubble with your never-ending creativity, warmth and joy and no one fit the bill as well as you! For us, you are forever part of the ABBA sound and you will never be forgotten!” 

        Agnetha: “So many memories are preserved, your encouraging words during the recordings meant so much. We are sad now, a talented and unique person has left us. Sleep well Micke, you are in our hearts forever.”

BOWIE ODYSSEY 75 by Simon Goddard

It is January 1975, cold outside, and 61-year-old Mrs Margaret Jones, Peggy to her friends, is shopping in Sainsburys in Beckenham, not displeased to be recognised by fans of her son David but still wishing he’d get in touch more often. The £3,000 mink coat he bought her for Christmas hangs unworn in her wardrobe, and stays that way, even when Angie Bowie accompanies her to the Ideal Home Exhibition at Olympia. She cries when she plays his records. 

        David, meanwhile, is in New York, recording at Electric Ladyland studios with no lesser accompanist than Dr Winston O’Boogie, who having lately duelled with Allen Klein is offering advice on two issues: how David can disentangle himself from manager Tony Defries and how to inject the correct thump into ‘Fame’, the single that will place him at the top of the US Billboard charts later in the year. 

Thus begins Bowie Odyssey ’75, the sixth instalment in Simon Goddard’s series of 10 fly-on-the-wall books, each one dedicated to a single year in the decade that announced Bowie to the world. It’s all here: Young Americans, playing Thomas Newton in The Man Who Fell To Earth, the fall out with Deep Freeze (as we used to call him), the toxic, narcotic-fuelled stay in Los Angeles, Iggy in and out of his life, the Bay City Rollers, Patti Smith and nascent Sex Pistols, and hints of the recording of Station To Station, his masterpiece; all played out against a backdrop that includes the emergence of Thatcher, the Cambridge Rapist and serial killer Patrick Mackay, a trio of villains, the first of whom bears an uncanny similarity to the Thin White Duke, as demonstrated in photos of both, cunningly printed opposite one another on pages 4 and 5 of the photo section. I found that slightly disturbing, which is how I was supposed to find it 

As I pointed out in a review of Bowie Odyssey ’73 elsewhere on this blog, Goddard’s books in this unique series are not biographies in the accepted sense but attempts to get inside Bowie’s head while at the same time place him squarely amidst all that was going on at the same time elsewhere, much of it unpleasant. The language is sharp, forthright, uncontaminated by anything that might ease a troubled mind, so much so that at the start of each book there is a warning that its contents might offend those of tender sensibilities, noting that they depict “prevailing attitudes of the time” and are included “for reasons of historical context in order to accurately describe the period concerned”. 

Well, they ain’t kidding. Like the others in the series I’ve read so far – all of them actually, Odysseys 70, 71, 72, 73 and 74, Bowie Odyssey ’75 spares no blushes, whether it be Bowie’s bonkers behaviour, not least his fixation with Nazi Germany, obscure religious texts and keeping bottles of his wee in the fridge, his nomadic lifestyle and fury at Defries (the legal battle wonderfully depicted as a boxing commentary), all you know about and quite a lot you probably didn’t, right down to the modus operandi of Peter Samuel Cook, aka the Cambridge Rapist. 

After a terrorising ride through the canyons of Los Angeles, skidding through mountains of cocaine, the book closes with a furious row between Angie, queen no more, and Corinne, aka ‘Coco’, David’s trusty girl Friday, who – as Goddard so decorously puts it, does everything but ascend to the top job, “the warmer his bedsheets”. 

        It doesn’t take long to read these books but that’s not the point. They simply home in on their targets with uncanny accuracy even if you do come away thinking it really wasn’t much fun being David Bowie during the 1970s. Recommended. 

LOVE AND FURY: THE EXTRAORDINARY LIFE, DEATH AND LEGACY OF JOE MEEK by Darryl W Bullock

Among the more oddball singles I played endlessly on that juke box in the coffee bar in Skipton when I was 12 was ‘What Do Want To Make Those Eyes At Me For?’ by Emile Ford & The Checkmates. At the time I didn’t know that it was an old song, originally recorded in 1917, only that it caught my ear because of the way it sounded. A number one UK hit in October 1959, it was a perfect little doo-wop pop song with a hint of Caribbean happiness about it, a record that simply sounded great, two minutes of what the best pop should sound like. The singer was from St Lucia and his voice, drenched in echo, rang out ever so clearly, enhanced by a single sharp drum crack that launched a chorus by a choir of backing vocalists doo-wopping away. There was even an upward key change after the first verse to add to its charms.

I long ago lost that 45rpm disc on the Pye Nixa label and had completely forgotten about it until I read Love and Fury: The Extraordinary Life, Death and Legacy of Joe Meek. Well, I should have guessed. Emile Ford’s chart topper was co-produced by Joe Meek, and that’s why it sounded so good on the juke in the coffee car on Mill Bridge. In the UK in 1959 only Joe Meek made records like this. 

        Long referred to as the UK’s Phil Spector, after reading this book I’m more inclined to consider Spector as America’s Joe Meek. Both were innovators and there’s a macabre coincidence in that both fatally shot women who’d evidently displeased them, Meek shooting himself immediately afterwards and Spector spending the rest of his life in jail. 

        Spector’s first hit, ‘To Know Him Is To Love Him’, by his group The Teddy Bears, was in 1958, but to all intents and purposes he and Meek were contemporaries treading the same path. The big difference was in the studio equipment they utilised. In America Spector had the benefit of everything modern technology made available; Meek, on the hand, was a DIY man, cobbling together bits and pieces of equipment he begged, borrowed or stole and wiring them all together in his home, three floors above a leather goods shop at 304 Holloway Road in North London that served as his studio, his control room and bolt-hole. These days there’s a plaque above the door, dedicated to ‘The Telstar Man’, and another one at his birthplace at Newent in Gloucestershire. 

        ‘Telstar’ was Meek’s biggest hit, a UK number one in 1962 and, perhaps more importantly, a US number one as well, only the second UK record to reach top the charts in America after Acker Bilk’s ‘Stranger On The Shore’ earlier the same year. It’s a futuristic instrumental credited to The Tornados, which featured on bass Heinz Burt, the apple of Meek’s eye, on guitar George Bellamy (whose son Matt is the leader of Muse), on drums the venerable Clem Cattini and on keyboards, deputising for Roger Lavern, Meek’s writing partner Geoff Goddard who plays ‘Telstar’’s uplifting, anthemic melody on a clavioline. It opens with a rumble intended to sound like a spaceship taking off that simply explodes out of your speakers, especially on the 7” vinyl single, a remarkable bit of noise previously unheard on phonographic apparatus in the UK up to that time, but this was nothing compared to the sheer exhilaration of the upward key change and a guitar solo that sounds for all the world as if it was recorded on the bottom of a fish tank. 

        Joe Meek led a complicated life that Darryl Bullock carefully outlines in his richly detailed book. He was gay in an era when homosexuality was a crime, eagerly prosecuted by police with nothing better to do, and suffered as a result. He had a short temper and was constantly worried about money, and he almost certainly suffered from mental illness exacerbated by drugs. He believed in the afterlife and through seances tried to contact the dead. He may or may not have displeased the Kray Twins, who fancied muscling in on the record business, and through his erratic behaviour made enemies of powerful people in the record industry, among them Sir Joseph Lockwood, the head of EMI, and Robert Stigwood, then a struggling impresario, both of whom were also gay. 

        Meek was also a workaholic, recording countless singers and groups, many of them no hopers really, in his makeshift studio at all hours of the day and night. Many names soon to be famous, among them Tom Jones, Ritchie Blackmore and Jimmy Page, climbed the stairs at 304 Holloway Road, though the rumour that David Bowie recorded there with The Konrads is probably a myth.  

        Alongside ‘Telstar’ were other hits Meek either produced or engineered, the most notable ‘Johnny Remember Me’ by John Leyton, an eerie masterpiece, and the Honeycombs ‘Have I The Right’ which reached number one in 1964. But this was the tip of the iceberg. “During his career as an independent producer, Meek placed 40 singles in the UK Top 50 charts,” notes Bullock. After his death 1,856 reels of tape from Meek’s studio would eventually find a home at Cherry Red Records.

        Meek was the UK’s first independent record producer at a time when most, like George Martin, were salaried staffmen at record labels, and this alone makes him important, so much so that in 1989 I assisted John Repsch in writing and producing The Legendary Joe Meek: The Telstar Man, the first ever biography of Meek. Oddly, Darryl Bullock fails to mention this in the extensive bibliography which, at the back of his 382-page book, is followed by copious research notes and a good index. There are also two 8-page photo sections in what must now be regarded as the definitive work on this most fascinating music man. 

ROCK & ROLL HALL OF FAME INDUCTEES, 2025

Further shine has been taken off this year’s return of Oasis, already blighted by the ticketing chaos that saw fans paying exorbitant prices to see them perform from a great distance away at football grounds this summer. This is the news that, yet again, their name does not appear in the list of those to be inducted into US Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. I look forward to hearing the reaction to this blow to their esteem from the Gallagher Brothers, Liam especially, who will doubtless respond with an expletive-strewn condemnation of an institution that, admittedly, does seem to be outstaying its welcome. 

I can hear it now: “Wha’ a fuckin’ useless bunch of fuckin’ cunts running this fuckin’ shit show. I ’ope it fuckin’ burns to the fuckin’ ground with them in it.”

Or words to that effect. 

Nevertheless, my poor record in selecting inductees appears to have taken a turn for the better with the list of 2025 inductees, announced yesterday. Earlier in the year, invited to pick seven from the following – Bad Company, Black Crowes, Mariah Carey, Chubby Checker, Joe Cocker, Billy Idol, Joy Division/New Order, Cyndi Lauper, Maná, Oasis, Outkast, Phish, Soundgarden and White Stripes – I chose Bad Co (largely on the basis that Free was a truly great little band, better than Bad Co in my humble opinion, and the two surviving member of Free will get inducted), Chubby Checker (because those Twist singles really were great), Cyndi Lauper (on orders from a mate), Joe Cocker (a Yorkshireman whose heart was always in the right place), Joy Division/New Order (because I wanted to see how Peter Hook would interact his former bandmates, whom he appears to loathe), Oasis (ditto re Noel and Liam, this nomination occurring before they buried the hatchet and announced their 2025 shows, of course) and White Stripes (because I liked them).

Inducted from among that list are Bad Co, Chubby Checker, Joe Cocker, Cyndi Lauper, Outkast, Soundgarden and White Stripes, so I picked five out of seven, which I think is a personal best. 

        Also inducted are Philadelphia soul producer Thom Bell, keyboard session wizard Nicky Hopkins, session bassist and Wrecking Crew member Carol Kaye, rappers Salt’n’Pepa, label exec Lenny Waronker and singer/songwriter Warren Zevon. This last six didn’t appear on the nomination form, and are elected by those who run the HoF. Salt’n’Pepa and Warren Zevon are in as ‘musical influences’, which I think is a new category, perhaps created by the board for those whom they believe deserve to be in but, stubbornly, don’t get the votes, while Bell, Hopkins and Kaye get in under ‘musical excellence’, and Waronker, a former president of Warner Bros Records, gets the Ahmet Ertegun award for influential record label A&R executives.

        I’m mighty pleased to see Nicky Hopkins on that list. I interviewed Nicky for the December 11, 1971, issue of MM, my piece appearing under the heading ‘The sixth Stone who almost became the fifth Who’, a reference to his prodigious session work with all the top names of the sixties. He even appeared on a Beatle track too, ‘Revolution’, the fast version that was a single, for which, on 11 July 1968, he was paid £6.50, according to Beatles mastermind Mark Lewisohn. 

Nicky Hopkins who, alas, died in 1994. 

        None of which takes away from my firm belief that the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame is an anachronism. Conceived in an era when there was little, if any, recognition for the great names in rock, it has now – with a few notable exceptions – recognised all the greats and is perpetuated, for purely commercial reasons, by inducting too many not-so-greats. I would have thought that the notable exceptions, among them Slade, Richard Thompson and Gram Parsons, would, because of their age, probably never get in now but seeing Hopkins on this list gives me a scintilla of hope. 

        Every year I think to myself that I’ll chuck in the towel when the nomination form arrives through my letterbox. Then I think, one more year. I’ll think about it again in 2026 if I’m still around. 

PRISCILLA

Priscilla, directed by Sofia Coppola and shown on network TV this weekend, was a strangely creepy movie that ramped up the general consensus that for all the great records he made during the 1950s, Elvis Presley had some weird ideas about courtship that, perhaps unintentionally, chime with how I imagine our current king might have behaved towards his first wife. Alone in Graceland, teenage Priscilla Beaulieu wanders its lushly carpeted rooms in a manner I imagine Diana Spencer doing in the corridors of Buckingham Palace, whence she was closeted for her own safety in the period between her engagement to Charles and the wedding ceremony in Paul’s Cathedral. Both of these virgin girls were seemingly lost, though perhaps trapped is a better way to describe the predicament in which they found themselves.

Priscilla is based on the book Elvis And Me, written with ghost-writer Sandra Harmon by Priscilla Presley, who is its executive producer, and first published in 1985. I read it while I was researching my Caught In A Trap book, my fictional tale of how Elvis was kidnapped in 1975, its title inadvertently reflective of Priscilla’s dilemma once her parents agreed that she come to live at Graceland, ostensibly chaperoned by Elvis’ witless father Vernon and his second wife. The film, originally released in 2023, follows the book fairly accurately, dwelling on the couple’s private life and how Priscilla shakes off her initial naivety to eventually confront Elvis about his macho attitude and the unrealistic demands he placed upon her. She’s portrayed as a heroine which, as matters eventually played out, is quite fitting. 

Unlike Elvis, the 1922 movie starring Austin Butler in the title role and Tom Hanks as his manipulative manager Colonel Tom Parker – who, tellingly, is absent from Priscilla – this film makes no attempt to hide Priscilla’s age – 14 – when she first met the singer, fatefully, at a party at the house in which he lived in Bad Neuheim in West Germany during his stint with the US Army. Thereafter she’s sucked into his orbit, increasingly moulded by him into the kind of Barbie-doll like woman he requires her to be; clothes, hair, make-up, subservience, keep smiling, the lot. Slightly alarmed, she goes along with this at first, her compliance gradually giving way to incomprehension and, eventually, dissent. 

As far as the bedroom department is concerned, Elvis desires his woman to remain a virgin until they are married, this despite her efforts to persuade him otherwise. He’s not above taking a few saucy Polaroids of her, though. Meanwhile, of course, it is suggested that in Los Angeles Elvis has his merry way with women who co-star in his films, amongst them Nancy Sinatra and Ann-Margret, while Priscilla remains at Graceland, her only companion a fluffy white poodle while she ponders over lurid stories about Elvis and them in movie magazines. When they eventually marry, Priscilla quickly falls pregnant, giving birth to Lisa Marie, and conjugal relations cease, again to Priscilla’s vexation. Along the way we see Elvis briefly engage with the counterculture, which is not to his liking; play with, and encourage Priscilla to use, guns; insult The Beatles; lose his temper and throw tantrums; share an acid trip with Priscilla; and generally behave like a spoilt brat towards everyone, apart from Col Parker to whom he bends the knee, albeit on the telephone. 

Not surprisingly Priscilla gets fed up and leaves, by which time she’s taken up karate, though her subsequent affair with martial arts teacher Mike Stone is not mentioned. Nevertheless, by the close she’s defied Elvis by allowing her hair to return from dyed jet black to its natural auburn, and flow down over her shoulders, and wear tight pants instead of dresses. Driving out of the Graceland gates or the final time, sound-tracked by Dolly Parton singing ‘I Will Always Love You’, she deserves a cheer, female empowerment the message. 

Cailee Spaeny is good as Priscilla, rarely off screen, Jacob Elordi too as Elvis, his accent just right. But overall, I felt the film was strangely unsatisfying, just like the marriage had been. 

DEEP PURPLE RECORD COLLECTOR SPECIAL

In his infinite wisdom, Joel McIver saw fit to interview me about my book on the band for Record Collector’s Deep Purple Special that he edited and which is on sale this week. 

        Joel and I go back to 2000 when he persuaded me that Omnibus ought to publish a book on Extreme Metal, written by him. Not being a particular fan of this genre, I was skeptical at first but decided to give it a shot, and I’m glad I did. Joel went on to become my go-to author for books on the noisier, more confrontational, end of rock, 36 at the last count, and he now contributes obituaries to the Guardian whenever a metal musician bites the dust. 

        Joel’s best-known book is Justice For All: The Truth About Metallica, first published in 2004, which has been translated into nine languages. “Very professional,” said drummer Lars Ulrich. “I get asked to sign copies of this book all over the world.” What’s more, Joel has it on good authority that Lou Reed bought a copy of the book to read before embarking on his collaboration with Metallica that resulted in the 2011 album Lulu.  

        This is a transcript of my interview with Joel for the DP special, which can be bought at:  https://recordcollectormag.com/rc-specials/record-collector-presents-deep-purple. 

How did you first encounter the members of Deep Purple, Chris? 

The first time I saw Deep Purple was at Bedford City’s football ground in the summer of 1970. Until that point, I was unfamiliar from them, apart from the song ‘Hush’, which I’d heard just like everybody had. I met them backstage, and I saw the show, and I thought they were really good. 

Which of them impressed you most? 

Ritchie Blackmore was particularly impressive. I played a bit of guitar myself so I could recognise a good player. It was obvious to me, watching him, that he’d had some formal training. I thought ‘God, what a terrific guitarist – he ought to be in the same league as Clapton, Beck and Page’. Every note he played was perfect. Not long after that I did an interview with Ritchie, and he told me that he’d had lessons from Big Jim Sullivan, the famous 60s session guy who played on everybody’s hit records. It was obvious that Jon Lord had been classically trained as well. 

What happened next? 

I got to know them after that, and I saw them seven or eight times over the next two or three years. I went to Paris with them and on a tour in America, where I learned that Ritchie was a bit of a mischievous character. He played tricks and liked to spook people out with horror stories. I thought he was a really interesting fellow, but he had a chip on his shoulder because he wasn’t regarded in the same league as the Claptons and Becks and Pages. Somehow, he wasn’t quite up there, but he deserved to be. We had dinner one night – him and a girlfriend, and me and my girlfriend – and he told me that the only two guitarists he thought were better than him were Jimi Hendrix and Albert Lee. He knew he was as good as Page and the others, and much better than Pete Townshend, although he didn’t have the rhythmic flair that Townshend had.

Why wasn’t he regarded as up there with the greats? 

It may have had something to do with tastes and fashions. For all their skills, Deep Purple were never particularly fashionable. I recently discussed this aspect of them with Roger Glover, and he said, ‘I know we weren’t fashionable – that’s why we’re still going. If you’re fashionable, you’re in fashion, and then you’re out of fashion’. 

Did you know Purple’s managers? 

I got to know John Coletta quite well. Tony Edwards was the money man, and a stay-at-home guy who did the admin, whereas John went on the road. He was a friendly enough guy, but I always felt he was a bit out of his depth, especially dealing with Blackmore. 

Was Purple basically an investment project by Edwards and Coletta? 

To a certain extent, but it wasn’t until I wrote my book about them that I discovered the truth about how they were financed in the beginning. They needed £15,000 to get off the ground [the equivalent of around £270k today], and Tony Edwards had £5,000 to put in because he had a family clothing business. Coletta didn’t have £5,000, but he had a friend who lived near him in Brighton who was an antique dealer, and he had £10,000 to put in. Unfortunately, it turned out that this antique dealer had a lock-up full of stolen goods, and he was eventually arrested and went to prison. Fortunately, Deep Purple had made some money thanks to ‘Hush’ being a hit in America. They kept this story quiet, as you would imagine, and I didn’t find out about it until I did my book in the 80s. 

How did the first edition of your book come about? 

I got in touch with Coletta, who managed Whitesnake at that time, and I said to him, ‘Would you co-operate with me on a book on Deep Purple?’ We agreed that Purple would receive a royalty on its sales and through Coletta, I managed to interview most of the members of the previous line-ups. The exceptions were Tommy Bolin, who had died; Rod Evans, because no-one knew where he was; and Blackmore, who completely blanked me, which surprised me. Coverdale said he’d do the interview, but then I got a phone call from some very unpleasant tour manager or PA, demanding conditions that I refused to accept. 

Were the others happy to be involved? 

They were. I interviewed Ian Paice at his home, and Gillan in a hotel in London, and Roger Glover and Glenn Hughes – both of whom lived in America at the time – kindly answered my questions into a tape recorder. I couldn’t find Nick Simper, but Simon Robinson at the Deep Purple Appreciation Society had done a long interview with Nick that he let me use in the book. 

And Jon Lord? 

Jon was an unbelievably nice guy – very accommodating, friendly and affable. I spent a night at his house near Henley, and we went out for dinner with his wife Vickie and Ian Paice and his wife Jacky who was the identical twin of Jon’s wife. After that, I did the interview, way into the night: we stayed up until two or three in the morning, drinking whiskey and talking. I really got him to open up about everything, and it was just great, because he didn’t hold back at all. 

That must have been refreshing. 

Well, at that point, no-one knew that there would be a future for the Purps, so there was nothing to lose by telling it like it was. He told me what he liked and what he didn’t like about the band – everything he could remember. It was Jon who told me the story about the investor who went to jail: afterwards I checked the local newspaper in Brighton, where it had happened, and found the guy’s name. 

Lord was a fascinating man, wasn’t he? 

He was. Did you know that after he retired, he used to go on the road with John Mortimer, who was a neighbour of his? Mortimer was the writer of Rumpole Of The Bailey, and he would go on book tours and talk about Rumpole for the audiences. Jon would go with him and tinkle away on the piano while Mortimer was telling a story. I didn’t discover this until after he died. 

Did the band like your book? 

Everybody loved it, I think, apart from Ritchie, because I told a few stories about him in it. There’s a Japanese edition which is very rare, because there was a fire at the printers in Japan and all the plates were destroyed, this being many years before digital publishing. As I say, I did the book on the assumption that Deep Purple would never reform. I had no idea that they would get back together a year after the book came out. That surprised me, but it didn’t make any difference to the book.

Rufus Stone have recently published an updated edition of Deep Purple: The Visual History, available in several luxury versions.

They’ve done a beautiful job of it, with a Standard Edition and a Deluxe Collector’s edition. Both of them are great – I’m really pleased with them. There’s loads more pictures, a completely new design. 

You’re now working with Roger Glover on his autobiography. How’s it going?

I’ve been working with him on it for three years now. We’re up to the reunion in 1984. I’ve learned a hell of a lot of interesting stuff. For example, when he was ousted from the band in 1973, it was devastating, because he’d finally found a great band and he was making good money and really enjoying himself. It came out of the blue, because there’d been no animosity, whereas there had been some animosity with Gillan, so in his case they knew it was coming. Roger told me that, after the last gig he did with Purple, Ritchie came up to him and said, ‘Look, no hard feelings, mate. It’s nothing personal: I did it for the band’. Roger said he accepted that, and he didn’t blame Ritchie, but he did blame Paice and Lord, because they didn’t say anything like that – which is why he went off to work with Rainbow. He still had a great deal of admiration for Ritchie, and he still does.

What are your thoughts on Purple’s current Mark IX line-up?

Simon McBride is really good. I went to see them play at the O2 Arena in London just after he’d taken over from Steve Morse. Ian Gillan charted a boat to take all the wives and families and friends to the O2: we all sailed down the Thames, drinking from an open bar, and when we arrived at the back of the arena they ferried us inside in coaches. We hung out backstage and watched the gig, and then went back on the boat. That’s the kind of band that Purple are.

The interview is followed by an extract from my book about the group’s ill-fated visit to Indonesia in early 1976. 

LEONARD COHEN: The Man Who Saw Angels Fall by Christophe Lebold

If you like your Leonard lyrical, this is the book for you. Christophe Lebold, an associate professor at the University of Strasbourg, teaches literature, performance studies and rock culture, and he’s devoted much of his life to studying the work of Leonard Cohen and also Bob Dylan. It will come as no surprise, therefore, that his book takes the diagnostic approach, digging deep into Cohen’s soul to reveal what he believes to be the inspiration for his work, be it manuscript, music, mystique or merely his multi-faceted imagination. 

Lest this implies Lebold’s book is dryly academic, have no fear. Cohen’s text, poetry and songs are analysed deeply but warmly and, as befitting a literary scholar, his prose is at times poetic. In truth, the book is more of a tribute than a biography, and though the author’s palpable admiration for Cohen rings out from every page it never sinks to hagiography. Were this the case, it’s doubtful that Cohen himself would have given it his tacit approval. “I am deeply respectful of the mind that has produced this book,” he is quoted on its back cover, above a photograph of himself, looking elderly, with the author, both of them languidly smoking cigarettes in an outdoor setting. We can assume, therefore, that Lebold’s interpretations are as accurate as they are penetrating. 

First published in French in 2013, with a revised edition following in 2018, we can also assume that Leonard read it – in French – not long before he passed. I’m pretty sure he’d have been impressed with this latest edition too, translated into English by the author, published last year as a 440-page hardback (with an extra 100 or so of end matter), excluding the 32-page picture section, with more photos scattered throughout, beautifully designed and printed to the highest production standards; a book to savour, to dip into as you listen to any of those 15 studio albums, or contemplate Cohen’s fiction and poetry. Musically speaking, of late my preference is Live In London, a 2-CD set recorded at the Royal Albert Hall in 2009, to which I was alerted by Sylvie Simmons, reviewing Leonard’s catalogue in Mojo, whose own acclaimed book on Cohen, I’m Your Man, I reviewed here in 2017*. 

        The two books complement one another well. While Simmons takes the direct route, skilfully tracking Leonard’s life in linear fashion, creating a bit of a page-turner in the process, Lebold takes the more scenic route, stopping off at places of interest to linger over the view, over arcane details in a manner that makes his book a more leisurely, and marginally more literate, read. 

        Both books are heartfelt and neither miss much but I was surprised that, unlike Simmons, Lebold fails to acknowledge the interview that Cohen gave to my Melody Maker colleague Roy Hollingworth in February 1973, during which, after a discussion on the impiety rife in the music industry, he announced he was quitting. “Make this your last interview,” Cohen told Roy. “And let’s both quit together.” At the time this appeared sensational and, if my memory serves me correctly, caused some consternation in the boardroom at Columbia Records. It’s not even mentioned in Lebold’s extraordinarily extensive (18-page, nine-part) bibliography. 

        Then again, I was startled by a passage, exclusive to Lebold’s book, that concerns singer and songwriter Phil Ochs, once my landlord, whom Leonard had befriended during the period when he lived in New York’s Chelsea Hotel, circa 1966. Ten years later they met again, again in New York. “After several years of decline, the man who had once been Dylan’s rival was now sleeping on the subway and fighting in bars,” writes Lebold. “That evening, over a bowl of soup, he explained to Leonard that he had been murdered the year before at the Chelsea Hotel. Also, that he was a secret FBI leader and, basically, that he was no longer Phil Ochs. On April 9, he hung himself.” 

        Where the two authors harmonise is on those aspects of Cohen’s character that might to some appear less than saintly. He was a ladies’ man who loved, and was loved by, many striking women. He fortified himself with strong drink, hard drugs and good food, and veered from an almost reckless disregard for his well-being to the caution he displayed by spending the six years between 1993 and 1999 in relative seclusion at a monastery in Los Angeles where he was ordained as a Buddhist monk. Lebold is particularly good on this interlude in Cohen’s life, displaying as keen a knowledge of Zen as on the earthier tendencies of his teacher, Kyozan Joshu Sasaki, who became known as Roshi and was linked with sexual misconduct.

All of which adds a touch of spice to Lebold’s book, as does the financial malpractice of his manager Kelley Lynch, whose behaviour he puts down, somewhat subtly, to the “wounded heart of a desperate woman.” He’s quite hard on Lynch, quite rightly so, but, as we all know, this episode led to Leonard being obliged for financial reasons to resume his touring career to wild acclaim in the new millennium. “The very light that Lynch had sought to extinguish would be sent out into the world again and Leonard’s comeback would indeed be an act of light,” Lebold writes eloquently of the silver lining beneath Lynch’s cloud. 

Lebold closes his book with a deeply personal account of his encounters with Leonard, the first of which occurred out of the blue, on a Liverpool Street, the second, pre-arranged, in Los Angeles, and the third – and last – also planned and in LA. He learned a great deal from Cohen’s philosophy, he writes, and the most important he sums up simply as “we should just shine our shoes.” 

        Leonard Cohen: The Man Who Saw Angels Fall is published by Luath Press, an Edinburgh-based independent book publisher, and costs £35 (£26.16 on Amazon). 

_____

*https://justbackdated.blogspot.com/2017/02/im-your-man-life-of-leonard-cohen-by.html

THEIR GENERATION: THE WHO IN AMERICA 1967-69

Because they looked so good on stage, there is no shortage of Who picture books and this latest one – with photographs by Tom Wright and accompanying text by Andy Neill – is a welcome addition to my creaking bookshelf. The first one I bought, in 1973, simply called The Who, with pictures by Jeff Stein & Chris Johnston, has been joined over the years by about a dozen more, and many of them have met with the group’s approval to the extent that they have contributed in some way, as is the case here. “Tom was a chronicler, with an eye for the passing moment,” writes Pete Townshend in his introduction, “and it’s a joy to be able to share all these passing moments with you all today.”

Andy Neill spent an afternoon with Pete last year sifting through Tom’s pictures, and his running commentary, alongside Andy’s typically accurate and info-packed captions, makes for not only a visual feast but also an entertaining read. 

The Who have many reasons to be grateful to Tom Wright. A contemporary of Townshend at Ealing Art College in 1962, Tom introduced him to marijuana and a host of great American R&B and blues artists. Equally importantly, he would go on to become the group’s American tour manager and unofficial photographer, and many of his photographs from The Who’s earliest US tours are seen for the first time in this book. 

It was Tom’s sister Antoinette who put her brother in touch with The Who again. She’d heard on the radio that the group was supporting Herman’s Hermits on a show in Florida and she urged him to call Townshend. “Tom was reluctant to bother Pete, so my best friend and I started calling every hotel in the area until we found one where The Who were staying and left a message for Pete: ‘Call Tom Wright at this number. I’m here in Tampa.’ Pete called back quickly. He told Tom he’d been searching everywhere for him.” 

In 2025, with The Who esteemed as mighty legends of rock, pioneers in the art of performance and superstars both alive and dead, it seems absurd to recall that in the summer of 1967, on their first American tour, they were the support act for the far more popular Herman’s Hermits. With 11 top ten hits behind them when the tour started – The Who had one – Herman and his boys were riding the crest of wave, drawing predominantly female teenagers for whom The Who were distinctly odd, especially when they closed their brief sets by inflicting damage to their guitars, drums and amplifiers. 

         That first tour began on July 13 in Calgary, Canada, and closed on September 9 in Honolulu, Hawaii, a ten-week coast-to-coast jaunt on which they often played two - sometimes three - shows in one day. It was a gruelling experience and probably not worth the effort. “It got us around America,” said Roger Daltrey, “but it did us no good at all.”      

Some shows were in large arenas of major cities while others were booked into theatre-size auditoriums with the occasional outdoor state fair thrown in. The Who played for about 30 to 40 minutes on most dates, concluding their set with smashed guitars and smoke bombs that left audiences either stunned or ecstatic. 

Tom Wright was working as an underwater photographer when he joined The Who at St Petersburg in Florida. “The Who came to Florida and that was the end of my underwater photography career,” he says. “These young kids would be yelling, ‘Where’s Herman, we want Herman’ and then The Who would start playing before the curtain came up,” he told Who biographer Richard Barnes. “When the curtain came up they would be really rocking and everybody was just moving about, like Roger would be running around and Pete would be swinging his arm and hammering the guitar and Moonie would be kicking ass. And people were in shock. The band didn’t stop between numbers or they’d quit playing for just a couple a couple of seconds, but it would be just long enough and BOOM into the next number.”

This was the period in The Who’s career when wrecking their equipment at the end of a set was a regular occurrence. “It was spellbinding,” adds Tom.  “A lot of times there was no clapping whatsoever, just dead silence. People in the front row were just sitting there with their mouths open, stunned.” 

Tom would go on to tour manage The Who in America for the band’s spring 1968 tour – their first as headliners, photographing them along the way, on stage, in recording studios, in their coach and in their hotels. They opened the tour on February 21 in San Jose, California, and while in the Golden State made a madcap, stop-start promotional film for ‘Call Me Lightning’. Tom was on hand to photograph the group in tin helmets and fooling around with an explosive detonator. The tour was extended into the first week of April and visited the new psychedelic ballrooms which were ideal for The Who to present themselves as leaders of the new rock movement.

A second US tour began on June 28, again on the West Coast, before heading east and back again, closing on August 30 after visiting over 30 US cities. Tom was no longer working on the road with The Who, but he did photograph them at a memorable show at the Singer Bowl, where they were co-billed with The Doors. After relocating from Florida to New York, in late 1968 Wright accepted a position as manager of the Grande Ballroom in Detroit, one of the era’s most important rock venues. 

The tours that Tom photographed laid the foundation for The Who’s eventual capture of an American tour circuit they helped create. This didn’t exist during the first British Invasion of America, the one led by The Beatles and Rolling Stones, and it came about as pop became rock, with audiences beginning to listen to groups whose music was no longer aimed at teenage girls who screamed like banshees. During Tom’s tenure as The Who’s tour manager and in-house photographer the group pioneered a new concept of rock performance, ushering in an era that continues to this day. As the music they played became more and more sophisticated their shows became longer and more expressive.

Just as they had done in the UK, The Who blazed a trail in America through the potency of their live shows. There was no run of chart-topping US singles or historic appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show. They didn’t so much crash down Uncle Sam’s doors as slide in through a gap after the doors had been left ajar by those that preceded them, but the hard work they put in meant that in the fullness of time they would become the stadium filling juggernaut whose career continues to this day. 

Wright’s pictures of The Who on stage, in studios where they stopped off to record, in hotel and dressing rooms and in the coach that acted as a home on wheels, capture a fascinating but often forgotten period in the journey of one of the UK’s greatest ever rock bands.  

Published by Omnibus Press, Their Generation has 176 pages, more great Who photographs than you can shake a stick at and costs £30 (£23.55 on Amazon).

CLEM BURKE (1955– 2025)

Clem dressed to impress; Elvis Ramone backstage at the Apollo in Glasgow, Scotland, 

December 31, 1979. 

(Photo by Bob Gruen.)

A PhD is generally awarded to those who have attained the highest academic achievement in a given discipline, be it scholastic or physical. I long ago realised that Clem Burke, whose death from cancer at the age of 70 was announced today, merited one in both. He was Blondie’s powerhouse, a tireless, rock-solid drummer whose energy never flagged – just listen to ‘Dreaming’ – but he was also a friend to anyone and everyone, from the big stars to the up-and-coming hopefuls and all the fans too, a bit of an Anglophile ever eager to share his knowledge or learn from others. In this way he amassed an encyclopaedic wisdom about every record of merit ever released, and every decent rock and roll band too, US and UK and everywhere else, from the fifties right up into the new millennium. What’s more, he did it for the sheer love of it. 

He was also a friend of mine. We first met way back in the 1970s, in New York, when Blondie were learning their trade at CBGBs and I wrote about them for Melody Maker. We bumped into one another again and again over the years, most recently at Blondie shows in London during the 2010s. He always put me on the guest list. It would have been about 15 years ago when he approached me to help him write a book about his life and we went out to lunch at an Italian restaurant on Berners Street. I encouraged him all I could but it never happened, though he did send me some sample text which I edited for him and returned. He requested that I keep it confidential and I complied, and, unfortunately, no longer have any of his text on my computer. 

        The passage I remember most was about his wide-eyed wonder at finding himself in some backstage dressing room somewhere with most of the Travelling Wilburys, Bob Dylan and George Harrison amongst them. He recalled the dialogue which was as droll as Michael Palin’s sleeve notes on the first Wilbury album. Whenever I saw him after that I got on his back about his book, but it never happened and now it never will. 

        But what a book it would have been for aside from playing at every Blondie gig ever, Burke played his drums for, amongst many others, Pete Townshend, Bob Dylan, Eurythmics, Iggy, and once or twice for a sort of Ramones tribute band, calling himself Elvis Ramone. He was also a member of a group called The Empty Hearts that featured others from name bands, and he loved it so much he even played in a Blondie tribute band when the real thing was between tours. 

        Clem sent me a copy of the first Empty Hearts album that I reviewed here on Just Backdated. “The obvious influence is the tougher end of sixties power pop,” I wrote, “those wonderful mid-decade singles by the Stones, Who and Kinks, but I think the Hearts have dug a bit deeper into their record collections and listened again to Beck/Page era Yardbirds and Roy Wood’s Move, and they also tip their hat to Cheap Trick and the garage rock that Lenny Kaye unearthed in 1972 for the first Nuggets compilation. Either way, all four of these grade-A students of rock history must have had a whale of a time writing and playing songs that pay tribute to their formative Brit influences yet at the same bring them into the modern era with crisp production, faultless playing and a rippling feel for the music, passion really, that rocks hard from beginning to end.” 

The Empty Hearts CD, its design a pastiche of The Who's debut LP, with Clem in Op-Art top.

        And in 2017, reviewing a Blondie show at London’s Roundhouse, I wrote. “Burke is still the band’s engine room, unrelenting, staunch and sturdy. I probably wasn’t alone in noticing that Clem wore – no doubt deliberately – a New York City t-shirt in the design favoured by John Lennon that for the encore he had changed to one emblazoned with the logo of CBGBs. Always the Blondie man most respectful of rock’s past, he is a showman drummer in the tradition of Keith Moon, chucking his sticks into the air, tumbling around the kit and at one point adopting one of those Moon poses with one arm high in the air and the other at right angles. He is largely responsible for bringing many of Blondie’s songs to a thumping close, soloing briefly before the final crashing chord, and tireless throughout.”

        Clem looked like a rock star. He wore his hair in a style that recalled The Beatles in their Revolver period, and he always dressed to impress, often like a Mod. Also, finally, he idolised Keith Moon. Blondie were in the midst of a European tour on September 7, 1978, the day Keith died, and two days later, played at the Hammersmith Odeon. “I went downstairs in the hotel and all the British tabloids had the headline ‘Keith Moon Is Dead’, so that day became kind of a dream sequence for me,” he told Blondie biographer Kris Needs later. “We played the Hammersmith Odeon and I wanted to get some gasoline and an axe to use on the drums and no one would give them to me. So I threw my whole drum kit in the audience, not wanting them back, because I wanted to sacrifice them for Keith. And the roadies went and got them back, which I was upset about. It was a real emotional time for me because he had meant so much to me.”

        RIP Clem. 

MELODY MAKER TO BE RELAUNCHED – Iconic Music Paper to Hit the Streets Again!

Rock fans of a certain age are jubilant today following the announcement that Melody Maker, the weekly music paper regarded as the ‘Bible’ during the 1970s, will begin a new life as a monthly music magazine this summer. It will be staffed by some of the writers from the decade that began with Paul McCartney telling the other Beatles he didn’t need any help from his friends any more and ended with a Who tribute band topping the MM singles charts with a song about firearms at the UK’s poshest public school. 

Financing for the relaunched paper is believed to have come from a consortium of anonymous wealthy rock stars whose careers gained momentum by support from Melody Maker between 1970 and 1975. “I’m hoping to get on the front page again,” said one from his moated mansion in Surrey. “When our drummer is released from prison the band might even reform to play the Marquee, which we’ll reopen for the occasion.”

Another was hoping that his investment will result in more favourable LP reviews than was the case in his heyday. “I don’t want MM giving me another slagging,” he said. “If they do there’ll be more unpleasant surprises in the mail like the putrefying offal we sent them in 1971.” 

Chris Welch, who spent a decade and half toiling for MM, will resume his role as Features Editor and contribute his weekly gossip column under his pseudonym ‘The Raver’. “I’ve stayed in touch with Jiving K. Boots and he’s agreed to do an interview with me,” says Chris. “He’s been very busy tending his allotment but many of his fans are hoping the Boots band will record again and maybe even make a live appearance at a pub in Catford, supported by Yes.”

Mrs Welch, the former Marilyne Rangecroft who for many years was secretary to late MM editor Ray Coleman, is unwilling to join the team. “This is an opportunity for me to finally clean my husband’s study as he’ll be out of the house for once,” she says. “There’s 10,000 prog rock LPs on shelves in there that haven’t been dusted for years.” 

Chris Charlesworth, MM’s News Editor from 1970-73, will resume that role early in May when the new look MM will hit the streets. “Unfortunately, the funding isn’t there for me to become the paper’s US correspondent again which is very disappointing,” he says. “But as News Editor I’ll redouble my efforts to reform The Beatles by writing speculative stories that suggest they might, and I’ll call Harvey Goldsmith again so he can tell me he’s offered Colonel Tom Parker half a million quid for Elvis to finally perform concerts in Britain.” 

        Former Assistant Editor Michael Watts, customarily tight-lipped about his activities, has declined to comment but a close friend believes he’s still displeased that David Bowie wasn’t entirely truthful to him during their 1972 interview when Bowie came out as gay. “Michael is weighing up his options,” says a close friend. “He’s hoping a séance can be arranged to finally nail David on that issue.”

Favourite for the position of MM’s Editor is acclaimed music journalist Richard Williams who edited the paper at the close of the decade but, like Watts, he is reticent about his plans. “He might take on the role if he can write a column on motor sport,” says a former colleague. “Fast cars, fast jazz and fast women are still his forte.”

It is believed that Geoff Brown will become Melody Maker’s new Production Editor, a role he served on Mojo magazine for many years until his recent retirement. “I like producing,” says Geoff, father of 11. 

        Melody Maker’s top photographer Barrie Wentzell, now living in Toronto, is unlikely to become involved but says he will make his photo archive available to the new look MM, “at a very competitive rate”.