PUB ROCK by Mark Wilkerson

Compact but packed with all you really need to know, Pub Rock by Pete Townshend and Thunderclap Newman biographer Mark Wilkerson is one of 18 similarly-sized titles in Bloomsbury’s Genre 33 1/3 series, all of them handy guides designed to educate the curious, probably those too young to have been around when the particular genre emerged, often briefly, into the mainstream.

Oddly for a trend that was unambiguously British, the first group to be identified in the music press as pub rockers came from San Francisco and were named after an American breakfast staple served in US diners: Eggs Over Easy. The British connection was enabled by their manager Peter Kauff who just happened to be the US partner of Chas Chander, the man who discovered Jimi Hendrix and who in 1971 was riding high on the success of his next clients Slade. Arriving in London in the spring of that year to record an album produced by Chandler, Eggs Over Easy took lodgings in Alma Street in Kentish Town, a short walk away from the Tally Ho, a pub that featured jazz most nights of the week. 

An element of subterfuge thus surrounded what Mark Wilkerson identifies as the first ever pub rock gig, Eggs Over Easy at the Tally Ho on Monday, May 3, 1971. They’d told the landlord they were a jazz band and the well-connected Chandler rounded up a decent crowd for what was traditionally the slowest night of the week. “Doubtless surprised by the distinct lack of even the slightest hint of jazz in the set but nonetheless pleased with the turnout and unmistakable quality of the Eggs’ performance, the Tally Ho’s owners gave the band a weekly residency,” writes Wilkerson. “The first domino had fallen. By October, Eggs Over Esy were performing four sets a week at the Tally Ho, with jazz relegated to just one night. By sheer accident, Eggs had tapped into a glaring need in the London music scene: accessible, direct roots rock – the anti-prog.”

The rest is history and Wilkerson’s book goes on to relate how other bands, initially Bees Make Honey, Brinsley Schwarz and Ducks DeLuxe, took up the baton, and how among the genre’s fans were Declan MacManus (17) and John “Woody” Mellor (19), soon to change their names as punk pushed pub rock aside. 

It helped that the music press was on the side of the pub rockers, and that before long a host of belting bands found themselves loosely connected to the genre, among them Dr Feelgood, Graham Parker & The Rumour and Kilburn & The High Roads who featured Ian Dury on vocals. Within a year the scene had shifted to the Hope & Anchor in Islington where promoter Dave Robinson, Brinsley’s manager, became the genre’s leading promoter. Soon he and Jake Riviera would launch Stiff Records, by which time pub rock was becoming a memory. 

Pub rock wasn’t really a style of music, just a scene, and it encompassed many actual genres, country, R&B, roots Americana, soul and even rock’n’roll fifties style, but it was the key bridge, both musically and chronologically, between before and after punk. Mark Wilkerson’s pocket book, 142 pages long, might not be the last word on the subject but it’s a more than useful guide, easy to digest and – like pub rock itself – utterly without airs and graces. 

MANCHESTER MUST DANCE by Mike Pickering

Mad about Manchester, Man City and dance music, not necessarily in that order, Mike Pickering carved a life for himself that wasn’t in line with what his dad expected from him. He hit the jackpot eventually with M People, having learned how the music business worked the hard way, moving on up through Factory Records and the Hacienda nightclub from gopher to DJ to golden boy. Along the way he got into a few scrapes, befriended just about everyone who mattered in Manchester music and observed it all from a position slightly left of centre, enabling him to offer a refreshingly honest appraisal of the scene that produced Joy Division, New Order and Happy Mondays and, hovering just outside of his orbit, The Smiths, Stone Roses and Oasis. 

Though uncredited on the front cover, the writer Paul Morley had a hand in fashioning Pickering’s story onto the page, presumably acting as a ghost-writer for the credited author who, as he readily admits, left school at the earliest opportunity with little in the way of academic credentials. Thankfully, Pickering’s down-to-earth temperament and highly-tuned bullshit antenna has reined in Morley’s tendency to bedazzle with words, and the result is a good-hearted book that rings true in every way. 

        Pickering was only nine when he saw The Beatles in Stockport on November 20, 1963, one month before I, aged 16, saw them, in Bradford but, like me, the sight and sound of the Fab Four at the height of Beatlemania, sound-tracked by screaming girls, seems to have done something to the wiring in his brain. Thereafter, conventional life wasn’t for him and, much to the regret of his conformist dad, he ingratiated himself amongst the Factory crowd, tagging along with his great pal Rob Gretton, who managed Joy Division and subsequently New Order, wryly observing the antics of visionary oddball Tony Wilson who introduced Manchester to the Sex Pistols. Punk liberated Pickering and, although he seems allergic to guitar groups, there was no turning back, nine-to-five jobs were off the agenda, travel – to Holland and Greece – beckoned and when he discovered dance music a new and better life was within his grasp.

        Much of his book focuses on the inner workings of Factory Records and the Hacienda, all fascinating stuff, especially the idiosyncratic way in which Wilson runs his shop and the ways in which those who work for him react to his oddball decisions. The rise and fall of the Hacienda is a story in itself and up in his DJ booth, hands aloft, Pickering plays ‘Ride On Time’ by Black Box and sees it all, the joy of dancing, the lure of ecstasy, the gangland violence that accompanies it and the ham-fisted approach of Manchester’s police. It all makes for grim, albeit riveting, reading, not least the consequences when his fame as a DJ leads to his name being used to promote “illegal” raves of which he is completely unaware.

        Woven throughout the book is Pickering’s long, close and occasionally combative relationship with fellow Man City fan Rob Gretton, which makes chapter 47 – A Rob By Any Other Name – a tribute to his great pal that tugs at the heart strings. The fortunes of Man City are similarly treated, their current standing as one of the world’s great football clubs treated with a measure of incredulity after the disappointments of earlier times. It ends, as you would expect, with the formation of M People and the discovery of Calvin Harris, by which time Pickering has become a roving A&R man for Sony, a role for which he is singularly well qualified, not that he’s really comfortable working for a major label. He’s left Manchester behind but his heart still belongs there. 

        Manchester Must Dance has 51 shortish chapters over 376 pages, and forewords from Martin Fry, Johnny Marr, Noel Gallagher and Calvin Harris, with additional chapters from Marr and Gallagher that extol Pickering’s integrity, 16  pages of colour photographs, playlists and a good index. It’s a must for anyone who was there and an illuminating read for those, like me, who weren’t. 

LONDON FALLING by Patrick Radden Keefe

Regular visitors to my Just Backdated blog will have noticed that these days many of my posts are reviews of music books, and as a result the impression is probably given that I read nothing else. Although two soon-to-be-read music books – one about Barrowlands, the Glasgow music venue, and another about pub rock – sit on the coffee table in our front room right now and I’ve just started another, Manchester Must Dance by Mike Pickering, which is well promising, I have read two non-music books in past month too. 

        The first was London Falling, an engrossing account of the death of 19-year-old Zac Brettler who either fell or was pushed from the balcony of Riverwalk House, a luxury apartment building that just happened to be opposite MI6’s HQ by the Thames in Central London whose cameras caught his fall. Zac led a double life and had somehow convinced various persons of doubtful morality that he was the immensely wealthy son of a Russian oligarch, and when his story began to unravel he found himself between a rock and a hard place. The book’s author, Patrick Radden Keefe, originally wrote the story for New Yorker magazine, and has turned it into a book with the help of Zak’s grieving mum and dad. 

        London Falling is a gripping tale of corruption, greed and criminality, that the Met seem curiously unwilling to investigate deeply. Keefe also wrote Empire Of Pain, an award winning investigation into the behaviour of the billionaire Sackler family whose Purdue Pharma company was largely responsible for America’s opioid epidemic. I read that three years ago and can recommend it as another fact-that-reads-like fiction tale that exposes immense greed and corruption. 

        The other non-music book I have just read – for the second time – is Memoirs Of An Invisible Man, by HF Saint, and second time around was equally as enjoyable as the first. That was almost 40 years ago now, picked up as a paperback at Gatwick airport when my plane to Spain was seriously delayed and read superfast over the next 12 hours. I think I gave that copy away. I had more time to savour the novel this time around and laughed just as hard at the droll humour, especially a sex scene, initially occurring in pitch darkness. When someone wanders in and switches on the light, however, the girl involved freaks out since the man to whom she has been making love appears not to be on top of her after all. Or anywhere else. Meanwhile, she lying there, legs apart. Think about it. 

        The hero of the story, name of Nick, is in the wrong place at the wrong time when a scientific experiment in a laboratory goes wrong and when the US forces of law and order realise what’s happened he becomes a fugitive. As before, I found myself willing Nick on against the nasties who are out to capture him and turn him into a government spy. It’s a terrific thriller, dripping with suspense, and at the same time a useful practical guide on how to survive in New York if by some stroke of ill-luck you are rendered invisible. Unlikely I know, but this time – just in case – I won’t give it away.

        Memoirs Of An Invisible Man was turned into a dodgy film starring Chevy Chase and Daryl Hannah, but the book is far better. Its author, HF Saint, earned plenty of money from it and became a recluse, writing no further books.        

        Now, back to Mike Pickering.