THE EVERLY BROTHERS, June 1970

Continuing in Everly Brothers mode, it just so happens that in the third week of June, 1970, my first week as a staff writer on Melody Maker, I interviewed Don and Phil at London’s Inn On The Park hotel at the southern end of Park Lane. 

        I went up to their suite and when Don answered my knock he proposed we do the interview in the bar downstairs where Phil would join us later. On the way down the elevator stopped at another floor and in walked Dustin Hoffman and an aide. The four of us didn’t speak but on our way to the bar I mentioned Hoffman to Don who had evidently failed to recognise the actor. “Was that really him?” he asked. When I nodded, he told me how much he liked The Graduate. 

        This was the first ever interview I did for MM and it goes without saying that I was a bit star struck at meeting The Everly Brothers, whose records I’d been buying since 1958. I still have the vinyl LP The Fabulous Style of The Everly Brothers from 1960 and a 4-track EP from 1958, both on the London American label with the inscription ‘A Cadence Recording’ on their sleeves. I decorated the inner sleeve of the LP with a cutting of their name, probably cut out from NME, and wrote my name on it too. I was 13 at the time. 

        I wasn’t given a by-line for the MM interview. Reading it back now it seems rather slight – but here it is, exactly as it was published in MM dated June 27, 1970. 

THE DUO WHO INFLUENCED THE BEATLES AND THOUSANDS OF OTHER GROUPS TALK TO MM

THE EVERLYS ROCK ON...

A lot of water has flown down the Thames since Don and Phil Everly stood side by side on stage strumming their guitars and singing songs like ‘Bye Bye Love’, ‘Poor Jenny’ and ‘Bird Dog’.

They were the American prototypes of our own teenybopper idols and their songs spread across the Atlantic, collecting golden records everywhere. Every single was not just a hit but an event.

Don and Phil harmonised their way through a dozen chart successes until their last really big one, ‘Cathy’s Clown’. Then what happened?

They volunteered to join the Army, had their hair cut and got married. Then there was the agonising time in 1962 when elder brother Don was ill – and a courageous Phil had to appear solo. Reports filtered through about the brothers splitting up – accompanied by the usual denials. “Everlys Mystery screamed the headlines.

From then on – silence. Silence to such an extent that many of today’s teenage pop fans could be excused for not knowing who the Everlys are – or were. 

Well, now seems a good time to break the silence. Don and Phil flew into England last week to film a sequence for the Petula Clark TV show which will be screened in December – and talked about their absence from the pop scene in recent years.

The brothers have definitely not split up. They are the best of friends – and they are both fit and well. Gone are the greasy quiffs of the ‘Bye Bye Love’ days, and the identical sharp suits.

“We are staying for just a week in England and it’s really great to be here – especially on election day,” Don told me in the bar of the West End hotel where they are staying.

“It’s more of a holiday than work as we are doing just one television show for ABC and no live shows anywhere at all.” 

Old Everly Brothers songs have recently been recorded by Dylan and Simon & Garfunkel, and I asked Don how he felt about these releases.

“I have heard Dylan singing ‘Take A Message To Mary’ and I liked it,” he said. “I like Dylan and I think he is singing better all the time. The Nashville Skyline album was terrific. 

“I like Simon & Garfunkel’s version of ‘Bye Bye Love’ as well. Those two really write some marvellous songs of their own but they sound very much like us on ‘Bye Bye Love’. The first time I heard it I had to think whether it was us or someone else at first.

“We are using ‘Bye Bye Love’ as a signature tune for a new TV show ten-week series in America. It has taken over from the Johnny Cash Show.”

With the Everly Brothers being in at the start of rock and roll, the inevitable question of the current rock revival was hard to avoid. “I have always liked rock music and I never thought it left us,” said Don. “There has always been someone around keeping it going. I don’t think we will ever return to what was happening 15 years ago. There was a lot of good things around then but I don’t like to see music going backwards. I would much rather go forward.

“New band keep coming on to the scene and breaking up very quickly. I wish they would stay together longer because it is the longer established bands that are the best. I love listening to Hendrix, the Stones and the Beatles. I think it’s terrible that the Beatles are splitting up. Together they were just marvellous.”

There are no plans for new Everly Brothers singles in the near future – and Don is not worried about the prospect. 

“We have not really had time to go into the studio to record singles. Warners are releasing a live album soon called The Everly Brothers Show which is a great conglomeration of different things we do. It will be released in the States to coincide with the start of the TV series and it’s got lots of old hits on it in medleys. 

“We are concentrating strictly on television work and when we get back to the States we are doing a summer season at Las Vegas. Single records are not really the thing at the moment. Unless we really felt we had to do a single we would not bother to record one.

At this point Phil joined us in the bar, only to be told that he couldn’t get a cup of tea – in a luxury hotel at that.

He too thought that rock music had never really left us so it couldn’t be revived.

“People are always going on about a rock and roll revival. They’ve done it before and they are still doing it. As far as new bands go, I’m like Don and prefer the established groups. The Beatles, the Stones and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young are all my favourites.”

Are the brothers worried about their lack of single sales in this country?

Don: “It’s always nice to see your records going up the chart after every release but things are much cooler now. The heat is off and I think I prefer it this way.”

Phil: “I don’t really think about it now and the lack of singles success doesn’t concern me. It seems the logical thing not to do so many singles.”

Both the boys agreed that they would like to do some live concert appearances in this country. “We have to plan ahead quite a bit and it’s very difficult,” said Don. “This TV show we are over here for was planned a long time ago.”

Talk of live shows turned to live groups – and both brothers were full of superlative for The Who, currently touring the States with amazing success.

Phil: “I think rock today is better than it was ten years ago. I don’t know what we’ll be doing in ten years’ time. Probably just about the same as we are now but a lot less of it. Maybe we’ll be going to rock revival concerts then.

“We have played at one New York folk festival and have been invited to some other big festivals but since Woodstock there has been nothing big. Promoters have a difficult time getting it all together.”

Don: “We are more active show-business wise nowadays and have got well past the teenage idol bit. It’s part of history and in New York now the original records of our old hits are fetching about 25 dollars. I heard that someone paid that for a single of ‘Bye Bye Love’ on the old Cadence label. I would pay that just to have it hanging on my wall at home.”

BLOOD HARMONY: The Everly Brothers Story by Barry Mazor

A picture speaks a thousand words. They are not smiling. Phil, on the left, looks apprehensive, his eyes focused on something in the distance that troubles him, an approaching threat. Don, on the right, looks resigned, as if whatever is upsetting his younger brother is to his mind inevitable. Their pompadour quiffs, of course, are immaculate. 

The picture on the cover of Blood Harmony: The Everly Brothers Story by Barry Mazor was taken by an unknown photographer in January of 1965, just as the duo’s career had reached a crossroads. Live, things were fine, even if Don and Phil weren’t getting along too well, not that they ever had, not really. Later that same year, during a tour of the Far East, they would perform eight sold-out shows at a 25,000-seater arena in Manila, the largest audience of their almost 60-year career. Their records, however, had stopped selling regardless of their quality, ingenuity or whatever musical direction they chose to follow. Trouble was indeed ahead.

Somewhat surprisingly in light of their fame, cultural importance and longevity, Blood Harmony is the first substantial, rigorously-researched and objective biography of The Everly Brothers I have read. There have been a handful of others but they were slight. This book is not, largely because, although clearly an admirer of their work, US roots music specialist Mazor doesn’t hold back on the many issues that impacted destructively on their lives and career: sibling rivalry, often intense, business wrangles with management, record labels and song publishers, drug and alcohol addiction, unstable marriages leading to onerous alimony obligations and, perhaps most importantly, that enduring but ultimately exasperating – to them anyway – image of two almost identical brothers, besuited and quiffed, eyeball to eyeball, strumming their matching black acoustic guitars with white pickguards, and singing songs in perfect harmony about teenagers falling in and out of love. 

        As the key bridge, both chronological and musical, between Elvis and The Beatles, Don and Phil Everly found themselves in a trap from which they could never escape. While Elvis, for better or worse, became a film star and Vegas icon, and The Beatles, with safety in numbers, matured every step of the way, The Everly Brothers suffered from an insurmountable image problem: their fans simply wouldn’t allow them to be anything more, or anything less, than the duo that recorded ‘Bye Bye Love’ in 1957, forever locked together, side by side singing that first major hit and all those that followed, a deluge of glorious songs that changed the face of pop music but resolutely prohibited them from ever transforming into anything beyond that illustrious beginning.  

        In a five-year span, between 1957 and 1962, the Everlys had 15 top ten hits in the US (and 12 in the UK), and lesser hits too numerous to mention, all of them hummed on the unconscious breath by everyone who took an interest in popular music during those years. (I still own an Everlys vinyl LP and EP on the London American label.) Furthermore, their sound, an innovative cross between country, rockabilly and R&B, sweetened or soured with keening balladry – Mazor is particularly good at tracing its roots – influenced just about every singing act that followed, from The Beatles, Bob Dylan and Simon & Garfunkel on downwards. What’s more, all who followed in that vein, right up into the 21st century, no matter how famous they became, tipped their hat to them – not that it did Don and Phil much good in the long term.

        In many ways, Blood Harmony is a sad book. The Everly Brothers became pop stars in an era when magazines required them not only to look photogenic but to offer little else but cheerful, fairly anodyne, quotes about themselves. They became adept at maintaining a professional showbiz façade that was unusually successful in hiding the reality of their lives, this despite occasional attempts on their part – most especially by the more outspoken Don – to offer glimpses into it. 

        The veneer began early, with PR suggestions that they were Kentucky born and bred. They weren’t: although Don was born in the Bluegrass State, Phil was born in Chicago where the brothers were raised before the family moved to Shenandoah, Iowa, then Knoxville, Tennessee. It was a musical household, earning its living on stage and local radio as best it could through performing close-harmony country music accompanied for the most part by Ike, their guitar-playing dad. His two sons were apprenticed at an early age and knew nothing else; alienated from schoolfriends and accustomed to a life they could share only with others in the same trade from similar backgrounds. 

        Landing in Nashville in 1954, they tried at first to sell themselves as songwriters but once they were introduced – by the music publisher who became their manager – to the crack songwriting team of Felice and Boudleaux Bryant they entered their imperial phase. Though vastly more talented, during this early stage of their career they found themselves bracketed alongside the vacuous teen idols promoted by a record industry staffed by middle-aged men alienated by rock and roll and bent on suppressing it. This would have long-term negative consequences. 

        There is a lazy assumption that Don was the more spirited, like John in The Beatles, and that Phil was the traditionalist, like Paul. While there’s a scintilla of truth in this, Mazor delves much deeper into the contrasting personalities of the brothers, their likes and dislikes from food, cars and interior decoration to politics, music and where it could be performed: Don liked folksy clubs, Phil preferred Vegas. Both, however, pursued girls enthusiastically but if Phil suffered an inferiority complex through being two years younger, Don often found his senior role a burden. Fights, some physical, were commonplace. With little in common, they didn’t socialise apart from when they were touring which, perhaps regrettably, was most of the time.

        Blood Harmony follows their serpentine career closely and in linear fashion, from the 1950s package show tours with fellow travellers like Buddy Holly, who became a close friend, Paul Anka, Sam Cooke, Chuck Berry and Fats Domino (though not Elvis), to their final show together at the Regent Theatre in Ipswich in November, 2005. The decade long interregnum between July 1973, when they dramatically severed their relationship on stage at Knott’s Berry Farm in California, only to re-emerge triumphantly at London’s Royal Albert Hall ten years later, is covered in two separate chapters, each dealing with a single brother. Thereafter, though shaky, the partnership continues until that final show, and it is pleasing to note that in their final years fraternal harmony was restored. Phil died in 2014. Don was too broken-hearted to attend his funeral. He died in 2021, outliving his younger brother by seven years. 

        Along the way, Barry Mazor delivers all manner of fascinating observations. Among the many are how session guitarist Ray Edenton replaced the wound G-string on his guitar with one an octave higher to play alongside Don and produce the distinctive opening strum on ‘Bye Bye Love’; how the Crickets became the Everly’s backing band after the death of Holly; the input of so many noted musicians, Chet Atkins, James Burton, Jim Gordon, Warren Zevon, Albert Lee and many more; how the drug Ritalin affected Don and how he was weaned off it; how the draft impacted on them (the photo of them shorn for service in the US Marines still has the power to shock); how in the UK they were loved beyond measure; the countless awards bestowed on them but how, apart, they were frustratingly unable to create the magic they could together. Throughout, Mazor analyses their music in depth with great insight. 

        Blood Harmony is 412 pages long, with a 16-page b&w photo section, copious reference notes and an index. Published by Da Capo, now an imprint of Hachette, it costs £22.66 on Amazon; RRP is the US $32. Anyone who, like me, loved the music of The Everly Brothers, needs to read this definitive biography. 

OZZY OSBOURNE (1948-2025)

Like Alice Cooper and, to a lesser extent, Elton John, there was something slightly preposterous about the Ozzy Osbourne that I encountered as a staff writer for Melody Maker during the 1970s. Ozzy, who died yesterday aged 76, struck me as a good-natured showman in those days, his Prince Of Darkness moniker a tongue-in-cheek portrait for a singer who was happy to act out any role if it advanced his career, however outrageous that may be, even one that involved biting the heads off bats, doves or any other small species that came to hand.

        Ozzy spoke with the pronounced Birmingham accent that never left him, no matter where he laid his hat. Hard, thick ‘Brummie’ made his speech rise in tone at the end of every sentence, as if everything he said was a question, and when he and Black Sabbath’s then manager Pat Meehan met me for lunch at a Chinese restaurant in London’s Lyle Street in early 1971, he struck me as utterly hilarious, a prisoner of his own good fortune – he’d arrived for the lunch in Meehan’s pale blue Rolls Royce Corniche – and quite unsure how to respond to the group’s sudden success. “Prince of Darkness?” he might have said to me. “Bugger that for a goime of soildiurs.”

        This was quite early in Black Sabbath’s career and, as I relate in my Just Backdated memoir, arrangements were made at this luncheon for me to accompany the group for a handful of dates on a forthcoming UK tour, during which I would interview them and review the shows. As it happened I opted not to interview Ozzy but, instead, guitarist Tony Iommi who struck me as the most loquacious, earnest and, probably, intelligent member of the group. This may have had something to do with an incident I witnessed in Manchester where, at the hotel in which we stayed, Ozzy over-refreshed himself in the late-night residents’ bar. Someone in the party, noting Ozzy’s comatose state, stuck a bedroom-style ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign around his neck which remained in place until he was helped to bed. “Best interview that Tony on the tour bus tomorrow,” I thought as I observed Ozzy being led unsteadily away.

        Heavy metal was never really my bag, so I wasn’t much of a Black Sabbath fan but I respected their achievements and professionalism, looking on from a journalist’s perspective as their success expanded in America when I worked there as MM’s US editor. I saw them play arena concerts in St Louis, Chicago and New York and acknowledged that they were the foremost performers in the genre they had chosen, an inspiration to a host of others, as can be seen from the many tributes paid today by Ozzy’s peers. I watched Ozzy inspire audiences in their thousands to reciprocate his peace signs and afterwards encountered him backstage or at parties thrown to celebrate the group’s success. He hadn’t changed a bit. He still struck me as a rather guileless innocent, carried along on the crest of a wave without really knowing why or how or where it might lead or, indeed, to care or even think very much about it all either. 

        It might have led to penury – Sabbath were early victims of what I might term “managerial materialism” – and mid-life death from substance abuse, and we have his second wife Sharon to thank for Ozzy’s renaissance in the 1980s and beyond. By this time, I had lost touch with Ozzy but I revisited his story to a certain extent when I commissioned Joel McIver to write Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, an exhaustive biography of the group for Omnibus Press, described by the Sun newspaper as “a brilliant insight into one of the country’s most famous bands”. I was happy to offer Joel my own experiences of the group and its materialistic management during his research. 

Ozzy soilduired on, eventually becoming a solo star and the principal actor in the family reality TV show which, I noted, portrayed the master of the house, that Prince of Darkness I once knew, as the naïve, childlike ingénue I always assumed him to be. 

        But I was probably wrong in this judgement. I read in today’s paper that he and Sharon are jointly worth £145 million. RIP Ozzy. 

ALBERT LEE, Borough Hall, Godalming, July 13, 2025

I have Ritchie Blackmore to thank for turning me into a fan of Albert Lee. Immodest, prickly and mischievous, Ritchie told me in 1971 that the only two guitarists who could play better than him were Jimi Hendrix and Albert. I wasn’t sure whether or not to believe him but I’d seen Ritchie practising scales and arpeggios, with and without a plectrum, backstage at a Deep Purple gig and deduced he was professionally trained and knew what he was talking about, so I made a point of checking out Head Hands & Feet, the band for whom Albert played in those days, for myself. 

        Suitably impressed – an understatement really – I interviewed Albert twice for MM later that year, once for one of those guitar supplements when he talked about his technique and the guitars he preferred, and again in 1975 when he was a member of Emmylou Harris’ Hot Band, having taken over the role occupied by James Burton who’d gone off to back Elvis in Vegas. By now I’d realised that what Burton was to the US, Albert was to the UK, the foremost player in the country rock and rockabilly idiom.

Albert went on to play in one of Eric Clapton’s stage groups and put the band together that backed The Everly Brothers when they reformed in 1983. He also showed up for the recording I attended of a live LP by Chas & Dave (Chas Hodges was a member of HH&F) at Abbey Road’s Studio 2 which had been turned into a pub for the occasion and, if I remember rightly, Eric showed up to jam along too. Since then Albert has made many distinguished guest appearances, notably at the Concert For George (Harrison) at the Royal Albert Hall in 2002, and led his own bands, one of which was called Hogan’s Heroes and recorded a gig at the New Morning club in Paris that was released in 2007 as a 2-CD package I nowadays play a lot.

A few years ago, Albert gave a master class in nearby Guildford, sponsored by Andertons Music, the city’s guitar shop, at which he demonstrated his skills on the signature red Ernie Ball Music Man guitar that he uses these days, having long ago abandoned the 1950s Telecaster that he played for years. 

        Which brings me to last night at the Borough Hall in Godalming where Albert performed as the leader of a quartet alongside brothers Ali (keyboards) and Iain Petrie (bass) and Tim Hilsden (drums). Well, he’s still an absolute wizard on guitar but there’s something strangely disturbing about seeing him play in a hall that held around 300 people – there’s wasn’t an empty seat in the house but that’s not the point – for which tickets cost just £30 a pop. It may be that Godalming was amongst the smallest venues on his current UK tour but that doesn’t alter my view that a musician of Albert’s stature and pedigree ought to be on a much bigger stage with tickets a good deal pricier.

        Much of the show featured tracks from Albert’s 2024 album Lay It Down, with which I am unfamiliar, and elsewhere, as expected, he demonstrated excellent taste, drawing from a well of songwriters like Gram Parsons, Carl Perkins, John Stewart, Jimmy Webb and Richard Thompson. His playing remains extraordinary, all those runs and licks that defy analysis as he zips up and down his fretboard, pulling off and hammering on, often playing what I might call mini-chords, a combination of strings, usually the top two or three, picked simultaneously. He conjures up a gorgeously full tone, especially on the lower strings, fresh and, at times, very sharp, very crisp, very deep. What’s more he makes it look effortless and, as ever, comes across as the humblest of men, giving keyboard player Ali plenty of opportunity to shine and even sounding a bit sheepish when he name-drops. 

        “I was at this party at David Geffen’s house,” he began before performing ‘Highwayman’, a long-time feature of Albert’s repertoire. “I was to talking to Jackson Browne, whose girlfriend at the time was Joni, and Jimmy Webb. We decided the party was dull and headed off to Jimmy’s house in the hills where had two grand pianos, nine-foot long, in his living room. Jimmy played a song, then Jackson, then Joni and then they tuned to me. Crikey! I honestly didn’t know what to play.” It was at moments like this that made me think Albert, and not some parvenu playing a stadium tonight, was our real rock royalty. 

        Albert played piano on this lovely, slightly otherworldly, Jimmy Webb song about reincarnation, but was soon back on guitar for a furious ‘Tear Stained Letter’ that preceded the final song in the set, ‘Country Boy’, the signature song he wrote with Tony Colton and Ray Smith of HH&F that in 1983 was a hit for Ricky Skaggs. It featured the hottest licks of the night and brought the house down, in fact, but Albert returned for a couple of encores: a moving rendition of Glen Campbell’s ‘A Better Place’ and, to send us on our way, an all-out rave up on Jimmy Burnett’s ‘Tear It Up’. 

        The only flaw in an otherwise impeccable show was the sound balance. The drums were on the loud side and at times threatened to drown out Albert’s guitar which, after all, was what we had come to hear. Perhaps in a larger venue there would have been on-stage monitors and a mixing desk out front. 

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The photo above was taken by my friend Jeremy Hamerton whose mobile phone is superior to my own (and who owns 27 guitars). 

JUST BACKDATED HITS THE 2,000,000 MARK

Sometime in the last 24 hours my Just Backdated music blog notched up its two millionth hit. It reached one million in October, 2020, taking seven years to do so, as I launched Just Backdated at the end of 2013. That it’s taken under five years to clock up the second million indicates growth, the be-all-and-end-all of our capitalist society, though I’ve never been convinced that more and more and bigger and bigger is the best way for humanity to survive. 

But I digress. At this rate it’ll hit the three millionth mark towards the end of 2027, assuming I’m still around to keep it going, but lately I’ve been toying with the idea of somehow monetising it. In 12 years of posting on Just Backdated, I’ve given away 1,069 articles on music, the vast majority newly written by me simply because I enjoy writing. A few, probably less than 5%, are extracts from books or reproductions of pieces I wrote previously, mostly for Melody Maker. A tiny handful feature the work of others. I don’t adhere to a fixed quota; sometimes a week or two might go by without a post from me, other weeks I might write two or three. It all depends on what I’ve read, or what I’ve heard, or what I’ve seen, or if there’s something in the air that I feel like writing about. (The next post will probably be about the guitarist Albert Lee, whose concert in Godalming I’m attending this coming Saturday.) Increasingly, I find myself writing about musicians that have passed on whom I knew or whose music I admire. 

I long ago realised that becoming a writer, be it about music or anything else, is a lifetime’s work. Just because writers pass retirement age doesn’t mean they automatically stop writing for a living and take up gardening or bowls. Writers simply carry on because it’s what they do, and, as the years roll by, I for one have come to realise that continuing to write is the best way to keep the brain in decent shape. Freelance editing assignments, however, are becoming thin on the ground these days, an inevitable consequence of advancing years. 

Quite how I might monetise Just Backdated I haven’t a clue and it might well be beyond my technical ability. I’m making inquiries about how it could be done – I’m fortunate to have a computer-savvy daughter whose mind I’ll tap – but in the end I might still abandon the idea if it proves unworkable. Either way, it’ll be cheap. That said, I’ve realised that if each time anyone ever read something on Just Backdated, all two million of them, I was paid just one penny, I’d be £20,000 in credit now. 

But back to the posts on JB and, as before when a landmark has been reached, I’ll list those that are the most popular and comment on any changes amongst them. Firstly, there’s a new number one: my treatment for a proposed book by Mandy Moon, daughter of Keith, which I would ghost-write (but which never happened), takes over at the top (with 52.5k hits) from my review of The Who’s CD of their show at the Fillmore East in 1968 (49.7k). I thought the Fillmore piece would never be surpassed but I was wrong; however, these two posts are streets ahead of anything else. 

        Jimmy Page (17.6k) is at numbers three and seven but, as ever, The Who still dominate the list. Interestingly, posts about John and, especially, Keith, outperform posts about Pete and Roger. Nice to see Marianne Faithfull creeping in at number 20, the first female ever to make the Top 20, no doubt a result of her leaving us, and also my story about the 1968 North Of England Beer Drinking Championships, a rare non-music post, holding its own at number 16. 

MOON GIRL: My Life in the Shadow of Rock’s Wildest Star 52.5k

THE WHO Live At Fillmore East, 1968         49.7k

JIMMY PAGE: Boleskine House, Tower House & More 17.6k

JOHN, PAUL & KEITH, Santa Monica, 1974         14k

JIMI HENDRIX AT THE ISLE OF WIGHT, 1970 8.3k

DEEP PURPLE: Trouble in Jakarta         7.5k

JIMMY PAGE: The Day Jimmy Met Robert 6.71k

KEITH MOON’S LIVING ARRAGEMENTS 5.61k

PALAZZO DARIO” The Palace That Tommy Bought         5.58k

WHO UK TOUR 2014         5.16k

THE WHO: My Hidden Gems Album 4.53k

KEITH MOON & THE PYTHONS         4.29k

LAUNCHING DEAR BOY 4.15k

THE WHO: Hyde Park London, June 16, 2015 3.59k

JOHN ENTWISTLE Obituary (1944-2002) 3.44k

THE NORTH OF ENGLAND BEER DRINKING CHAMPIONSHIPS         3.08k

THE OX: The Last of The Great Rock Stars (Book Review) 2.97k

UNDERTURE: Keith’s Great Triumph         2.85k

PRETEND YOU’RE IN A WAR: Who Book Review 2.84k

MARIANNE FAITHFULL: Saturday Night Live, 1980 2.8k 

BLACK SABBATH DIDN’T INVENT HEAVY METAL

Emotionally charged reviews of Black Sabbath’s Farewell Concert – their third ‘final’ show, following those in 1999 and 2017 – at Birmingham’s Villa Park on Saturday bestow upon them the accolade that they invented heavy metal music. This was further emphasised by members of the distinguished supporting groups, most of whom are headliners in their own right, claiming they owed their careers to the Sabs. 

Bollocks, I say. If heavy metal is characterised by a repetitive, relatively simple guitar riff, often distorted and accentuated on the on beat by bass and drums, then we have The Kinks to thank for its origination. In my biography of Deep Purple, first published in 1983, I attempted to define the genre and explain its origins, writing as follows: “The roots of hard rock, which would come to known as heavy metal, lie in the harsh, riff-based songs recorded by various British bands that emerged in the mid-sixties, groups like The Kinks (‘You Really Got Me’ and ‘All Day And All Of The Night’), The Who (‘I Can’t Explain’ and ‘My Generation’) and, to a lesser degree, The Rolling Stones (‘Satisfaction’) and The Yardbirds (‘Shapes Of Things’ and ‘Evil Hearted You’). Even The Beatles were not immune to the trend, with both ‘Helter Skelter’ and ‘Birthday’ – both Paul McCartney compositions – on their ‘White’ album betraying distinct HM leanings. 

        “It was the sound of a strained electric guitar riff played at great volume through a fuzz-box, a machine that distorted the notes into a blur of sustain that was repeated ad infinitum until sheer repetition dulled the senses into eventual submission. At least that’s what had happened by the time it came to be known as heavy metal. 

        “The riffy groundwork by The Who and Kinks was taken a stage further by Cream and The Jeff Beck Group and further still by Jimmy Page and Led Zeppelin, the group he formed in 1968 after the dissolution of The Yardbirds. Page added the vocal wail of Robert Plant to his own distorted guitar and toughened up the rhythm section so that drums would explode at appropriate breaks. Though Led Zeppelin would vary their stylistic output considerably, ‘Whole Lotta Love’, the song that kicks off their second album, is the perfect example of heavy metal music at its most cohesive and ingenious, the blue print for a type of music that countless groups would follow in the seventies.” 

        Unless I’m mistaken the first use of the phrase “heavy metal” famously occurred in Steppenwolf’s ‘Born To Be Wild’, the lyric of which mentions “heavy metal thunder” in reference to sound of a motor cycle. This was released in 1968, about eight months before Led Zeppelin’s first LP which contained the riff-laden ‘Communication Breakdown’ and a year and bit before Led Zeppelin II which opens, as I wrote above, with ‘Whole Lotta Love’.

The release of Black Sabbath’s first LP in early 1970 occurred after the Steppenwolf and two Led Zeppelin LPs, and although Sabbath became standard bearers for heavy metal by continuing to mine its motherlode throughout their career – unlike Zeppelin who prodigiously developed and varied their output – it is for this reason that is it inaccurate to suggest they invented the HM genre. Indeed, one review of the Villa Park show I read mentioned that an all-star band, including Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler and Rolling Stone Ronnie Wood, actually performed ‘Whole Lotta Love’, thus slyly suggesting Zep were to be commended – or to blame, depending on your point of view – for creating HM. 

None of which is to take away from the Black Sabbath’s achievements or the pleasure they have given their fans over the years. Ozzie can’t really sing any longer and was obliged for health reasons to remain seated during Sabbath’s performance on Saturday but he is to be commended for giving it his all on a day that was packed with emotion. The other three Sabs seem to have lost nothing of their skills, however, but at this stage in the game it would be sacrilege for them to continue with another singer. 

But they didn’t invent heavy metal. 

GLASTONBURY 2025

For a contrast in styles look no further than the oldies on the Pyramid stage at Glastonbury this past weekend. Rod, who turned 80 in January, was as cheesy as it gets but his cheese wheel has been maturing for more than half a century now and while it isn’t as pungent as it once was, it’s certainly as entertaining. Neil, however, though a sprightly 79, never looked likely to arrive at the cheese course, and instead delivered a dour, rather ponderous set, the kind of thing that only diehards could appreciate, even if his closer, ‘Rockin’ In The Free World’ finally lit the kind of fire we expect from Glastonbury headliners. Perhaps Emily Eavis should have switched them around – Rod on Saturday night and Neil on Sunday afternoon might have worked better – but either way, I preferred Pulp, billed as Patchwork, and, most especially, the gorgeous Olivia Rodrigo who wiped the floor with just about everyone I watched from the comfort of our sofa. 

Rod was always a showman, unreconstructed, confident and a bit cocky, and these traits have amplified of late. Accompanied on stage by a bevy of beautiful ladies in short red dresses, all of them singers and/or instrumentalists, most of them his preferred blonde, he worked the crowd well and wisely offered up a greatest hits set lapped up by his fans, especially a group of elderly ladies with a sign that read ‘Nans For Rod’. Clearly affected by the heat, his raspy voice has lost some of the sharpness of tone that I remember from his Faces days, and he wasn’t quite as nimble on stage as he used to be. Still, he’s trooper in the old showbiz style and he didn’t disappoint. 

        After a couple of breaks to change outfits, first a pink suit followed by a green one, he seemed happier as his set drew on. He brought on Michael Eavis, delivered by Emily in his wheel chair, a gesture much appreciated by everyone, then Mick Hucknall for ‘If You Don’t Know Me By Now’ and Ronnie Wood for ‘Stay With Me’. Next to arrive was a sprightly Lulu with tassels on her white pants who joined Rod for ‘Hot Legs’. I’d have preferred it if, instead of the sillier stuff, Rod and Ronnie had sat side by side on stools with acoustic guitars and given us a couple of more introspective songs like ‘Mandolin Wind’ and ‘Reason To Believe’ and I don’t think his fans would have minded too, even if this would have slowed things down. 

        After kicking a few footballs into the crowd, he closed his set with ‘Sailing’, as kitsch as it gets, a mighty arm-waving singalong with Rod centre stage surrounded by his girls who’d changed into Celtic tops with sailor’s caps. Same as it ever was. Now there’s a thought. Perhaps Talking Heads should take the Sunday tea-time spot at the next festival. 

        Neil Young, always untroubled by sartorial concerns, dressed for his set like an armed backwoodsman on the lookout for bears, old jeans, a rumpled check shirt and a peaked cap pulled forward to obscure his face. His band did likewise and the stage lighting was dim. ‘Harvest Moon’ was lovely, and ‘Like A Hurricane’ was fine too, but too many songs plodded along, especially ‘Sun Green’, an endless dirge that I thought might never end. He soloed long and well, occasionally catching fire, but his determination to play down any semblance of razzle-dazzle wasn’t really in the Glastonbury spirit. I went to bed before his set ended and caught up with the climax on Sunday morning. 

        Pulp, however, imbued the spirit of Glastonbury in spades, judiciously opening up with ‘Sorted For Es And Wizz’, mixing new songs with old favourites and closing with a lengthy, crowd-pleasing ‘Common People’. As ever Jarvis, dressed in the kind of stuff you can pick up for a tenner in a charity shop, was all angles and quirks, having the time of his life with his reinvigorated band. Switching Pulp with Neil wouldn’t have been a bad idea either. 

        Finally, Olivia Rodrigo took the festival by storm. Hitherto completely unfamiliar with her songs – aside from when she brought on Robert Smith for ‘Friday I’m In Love’ and ‘Just Like Heaven’ (and a hint of Beauty And The Beast) – I watched in awe as this slip of a girl, just 22, commanded the stage like a veteran, dancing here and here, pirouetting and singing as if her life depended on it, a natural performer, confident, relaxed and somehow bridging the gap between the old and the new. Her band, mostly women, was spot on while clearly rehearsed changes were delivered with panache time and time again.

        Welcome, too, was her spontaneous, unforced chat between songs. That she loved the UK was palpable – she was spotted in the crowd on her boyfriend's shoulders while Pulp were playing – as she delivered song after song, her amplified soprano voice, often double tracked for extra bounce, ringing out across the arena far more clearly than anyone else I watched. Her joy at headlining Glastonbury, her smile, came over as truly genuine, and her fans – thousands of young women – truly appreciated her obvious sincerity. It’s unlikely I’ll rush out to buy her records – her songs are a mix of teen pop with a leaning towards power ballads, the lighter end of indie and the odd dollop of crunchy rock – but it was refreshing to note the lack of those on-stage dancers deemed necessary by artists of her ilk. She does it on her own with the help of a well-drilled rock band, the kind of thing Rod used to do with The Faces. 

SLY STONE (1943-2025)

Oh Sly, you great big mixed up ball of confusion! I loved your records and only The Who could have followed your set at Woodstock, the defining moment of your chequered career. But what a mess you made of things along the way. 

        I have written about meeting Sly before but the death yesterday of this musical-genius-cum-provocateur-extraordinaire prompted me to re-read the three editions of Melody Maker in which I wrote about him and reproduce the second – an interview – pretty much verbatim for the first time. 

        The first time I saw Sly was in November 1973, a show at the Hollywood Palladium. “Will he? Won’t he?” I wrote in my review for MM’s Caught In The Act page. “Sly Stone’s reputation is too firmly etched for those questions not to be asked when he’s advertised to appear anywhere in the USA these days. His tantrums and failures to show for concerts are legendary to the extent that his contracts now contain a clause with a heavy penalty for non-appearance. Well, Sly did show at the Palladium but only just. The Palladium was sold out for the funky guy with the panama hat – but Sly made only a token appearance, leaving the stage after just over half an hour, apparently satisfied that the customers had had their seven dollars’ worth on entertainment. It was as big a rip off as I’ve witnessed since I started reporting on rock’n’roll three years ago.”

        I went on to report that while his band was stage for about an hour Sly was present for only half that time, offering his audience endless choruses of his two best-known songs, ’Dance To The Music’ and ‘I Want To Take You Higher’. “When the house lights went up everyone went home surprisingly peaceably. For what there as of it the music was tight and entertaining but other aspects of this show left me with a bitter taste in my mouth,” I concluded.

        Although I didn’t realise it at the time I caught Sly Stone on a relatively good day when I interviewed him in a basement apartment on New York’s West Side in June of 1974. It was his HQ in New York that week because, I was told by his publicist, he didn’t like hotels but after less than an hour in his company I figured it was more a case of hotels not liking him. Either way, bad days outnumbered good ones at this stage of his career, and would go on to do so for much of his troubled life.

As I recall in my Just Backdated memoir, Sly dressed for his Melody Maker interrogation as he would for the stage: a gleaming all-white leather outfit with tassels and rhinestones topped off with a huge afro, his eyes hidden behind outsized sunglasses. Sat next to him on a couch in this cramped, untidy apartment was his fiancée Kathy Silva whom he would soon marry on the stage at Madison Square Garden. She was decked out in a matching outfit save for the petite mini-skirt that exposed a generous amount of thigh, so much so that shortly after the interview began Sly enticed her into the adjoining bedroom for an intimate tête-à-tête, quite noisily too. In the meantime, the mortified publicist and I made small talk and twiddled our thumbs.

I’d been warned in advance that interviewing Sly Stone might be problematic but I’d come away unscathed from an awkward encounter with Lou Reed earlier that year and fancied my chances. Things got off to a bad start, however. It was scheduled for 3.30pm but when I arrived I was asked to return at 5pm because Sly was having a blood test, a legal requirement for his forthcoming marriage. I did as I was bid but there was no sign of him at 5pm, so I waited for a further hour during which his soon-to-be-released LP Small Talk was played for me. “It was only a rough mix but, again, it’s a departure from previous Sly material,” I reported. “All but the two opening songs on the first side feature a prominent violin and many of them are slow, almost waltz-time, pieces. Despite this, there’s still the pounding bass that has distinguished Sly’s recordings from the early days.” 

The new LP offered me a topic of conversation when Sly finally arrived but before we began I gave him a recent copy of MM that contained a feature on him in our Rock Giants series. This was a mistake as he promptly left the room to read it, evidently on the toilet as his return was accompanied by the sound of plumbing. I tried to sound friendly, smiling openly as I asked my first question, about the use of violins on his new album. 

        “It’s different. It’s unusual. That’s probably why I did it. The strings were around so I used them.”

Have you been wanting to do this for a long time?

“Probably. I don’t need to think about it at all to get it together.”

You seem to be forever changing.

“Time changes me, man.”

Will you be introducing strings on stage?

“I got a violin player in the group now. His name’s Sidney. He’s from Sausalito and I’ve known him just long enough for him to get into the group.”

Did you arrange the strings yourself?

“Part of them.”

There’s a lot of slower material on the album. Are you cutting down on the frantic Sly Stone material?

“There’s a lot of songs so I introduced slow songs also. There’s 11 songs. I don’t count which are slow.”

How big is your group at present?

“Nine people.”

It was at this point that Sly and Kathy retired to the bedroom. They were gone for about 15 minutes and returned together, Sly looking rather pleased with himself. I resumed my questioning as if nothing had happened. 

Tell me something about the bass player.

“That’s me. I play bass on all my records. I play most everything on all my records. I just overdub everything.”

[Later in the year I would interview Larry Graham, the bass player in the Family Stone, who refuted this.]

Wouldn’t the group like to be on the records with you?

“Sometimes they’re on the records also, but they feel good about it [not being on the records]. They like it this way and they’re pretty honest about what they like. I‘ve recorded like this ever since the Stand album, ever since ‘Dance To The Music’ I guess.”

Bass is such an important part of your sound. Have you ever felt like playing bass on stage yourself? 

“Sometimes I do.”

“It’s in his heart,” chipped in Kathy who by now had returned from the bedroom and re-joined Sly on the couch. He plays it so good that he’d like to play everything on stage if he could. He’s only one man but he has a million thoughts.” 

Do you get bored with always playing the very familiar material like ‘Dance’ and ‘Higher’?

“No, they like it and they keep on liking it and you gotta keep telling people you like it too. I love every period of my career.”

Where you do you write?

“My songs come from environments. I just go about my day an as things come to me, I write them down. I write on the toilet ‘cos no one bothers me there.”

Are you trying to change your image by getting married and releasing slower material? Is the image mellowing these days? 

“I’m not trying to. Vibes just leave me. I’m still as crazy as I always was, if crazy is the right word.”

Will you actually turn up for shows?

“I won’t ever be predictable.”

But there have been reports of you not turning up.

“It’s bad promoters, man.”

Your performance in the Woodstock movie helped you enormously in England.

“Sure. I enjoyed playing there. All my gigs are good.”

Are there other highlights of your career that you remember?

“Yeah, but you wouldn’t know about them.”

Because I was the wrong country?

“It’s not the country you’re, it’s the skin you’re in. And it’s not the colour at that. I enjoy myself best on the toilet and I wouldn’t invite you there.”

“This last remark brought the interview to an inevitable conclusion,” I wrote. “Sly’s PR showed me to the door while the man himself curled up on the soda with his fiancée. ‘You know something,’ said his PR girl. ‘He really opened up this afternoon. Usually he just grunts at writers. He’s done a few interviews this week and he’s said more this afternoon than he’s said all week’.”

A triumph, then.

A week later I reported on Sly’s nuptials at the Garden in my New York news column. “The ever-unpredictable Sly Stone married the mother of his nine-month-old son in front of 20,000 fans at Madison Square Garden on Wednesday evening,” I wrote. “Following a set by Eddie Kendricks, Sly’s mother came on to the stage to call for quiet. Then she introduced Sly’s 12-year-old niece who sang a gospel hymn like someone twice her age before the stage filled with friends and relations all dressed in gold costumes.

Sly & Kathy on the MSG stage as they were marred. 

        “A dozen girls holding palm leaves high in the air formed a backdrop as Sly himself loped out last, dressed all in gold with a gold cape. The preacher – brought in specially from San Francisco – called for hush and the service began. Appeals for the audience to keep silent because of the solemnity of the occasion were largely ignored, but the words of the marriage service were clearly audible through the PA system. When the words ‘Do you, Sly Sylvester Stewart, take this woman’ were uttered, a huge cheer went up. The service closed with the traditional ‘Let no man put asunder’ line which prompted the crowd to go crazy.

        “Then everyone trooped off. The whole affair was over in less than 15 minutes. There was another delay before the band came back on, followed by Sly who ripped into a long set, at least by his standards. 

        “The new Family Stone included a violinist and there were several new songs in his repertoire as well as old favourites,” I informed MM’s readers. “‘Dance To The Music’ opened and closed the set. Musically, Sly was as good as ever, alternating between organ, guitar and harp. He seemed to rise to the occasion and actually addressed the audience between numbers instead of merely jumping from one number to the next to hurry the proceedings over as quickly as possible.”

Two years later Sky and Kathy separated. “He beat me, held me captive and wanted me to be in ménages à trois,” Kathy later told People magazine. 

THE WHO ALBUM BY ALBUM by Dante DiCarlo

In the manner of Revolution In The Head, Ian McDonald’s acclaimed book analysing the music of The Beatles, Dante DiCarlo attempts something along similar lines for The Who, and while his writing style falls somewhat short of McDonald, this is a workmanlike effort at evaluating The Who’s 14 studio albums, track by track, 168 songs in all. It helps that DiCarlo is a guitarist himself, thus enabling him to analyse the songs from a musician’s standpoint, recording which keys Pete Townshend plays in, D being his preference as anyone who’s ever essayed ‘Substitute’ surely knows, and chord progressions. 

To a certain extent this book renders my own Complete Guide To The Music Of The Who (1994 & 2004, the update written with Ed Hanel) redundant, though DiCarlo omits live albums and compilations, thus disregarding those singles (like ‘I Can’t Explain’, ‘Anyway Anyhow Anywhere’, ‘Substitute’ and a handful of others) that appear only on collections of hits, tracks on the Ready Steady Who EP and ‘bonus’ tracks that have appeared on certain compilations and reissues. Most, however, get a mention in the text that prefaces each LP, especially those that somehow align with Townshend’s various musical concepts. My Who music guide was one in a series of 46 books designed in the shape of CD cases and, through necessity, was considerably more concise than Album By Album, even it did include live LPs and compilations, of which there are now too many to count. Album By Album contains far more detail, not just in the scrutiny of the actual songs but in the background essays that introduce each LP. 

So, beginning with ‘Out In The Street’ from My Generation (1965) and ending about 200 pages later with ‘She Rocked My World’ from WHO (2019) we get the low down on The Who’s recorded oeuvre, most of it positive though DiCarlo doesn’t shy away from critical assessments, mostly, as might be expected, on tracks from the post-Moon LPs. Those songs that might be regarded as landmarks in the group’s career – ‘My Generation’, ‘Pinball Wizard’ and ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again’, for example – get the five-star treatment, with up to three pages of worthwhile analysis.  

        DiCarlo was born in 1983 and thus missed out on The Who’s classic period and with this in mind he’s written a book aimed at newer fans of The Who, by which I mean those who’ve picked up on the group after Keith left us in 1978 and possibly also John Entwistle in 2002. For such Who fans this is a valuable guide to their legacy and to the way their long career has panned out. Older fans won’t find much here that they don’t already know if they’ve paid attention along the way and read all the books but DiCarlo has done his research well and produced an accurate, interesting summary of the group’s output. 

Of course, 168 songs (plus maybe a dozen or so that don’t make the book) in what is now a 60-year career is by no means prolific. The Beatles recorded 213 songs, 188 of which they wrote themselves, in eight years, a work-rate that exposes The Who as shiftless slackers. But that doesn’t consider The Who’s brilliance as a live act, which is what really attracted me to them towards the end of the 1960s, turned me into a rabid fan during the 1970s and has kept me banging on about them for years. This, for me, is where their true greatness lies. Perhaps, therefore, a follow-up book might consider their live legacy, contrasting and comparing all their many concert releases, even though the songs they perform haven’t changed that much over the last 40 years. 

Album By Album contains 16 pages of colour photos, many taken by the author, the vast majority from the new millennium. It’s 220 pages long with a useful index and costs £25 (£19.85 on Amazon). 

RICK DERRINGER (1947-2025)

Rick Derringer was everywhere in New York when I lived in the city in the 1970s, backstage at gigs, record launch parties thrown by labels, hanging out in the rock’n’roll clubs all over Manhattan. He and his first wife Liz were social animals and good hosts too, throwing parties at their downtown apartment where, one night, Rick showed me a guitar he’d had made that was constructed from granite. It was too heavy to wear on stage, he explained, but the tone was unique. 

        Rick was the main man in The McCoys who had a massive hit in 1965 with a song called ‘Hang On Sloopy’, also covered as ‘My Girl Sloopy’ by Jeff Beck’s Yardbirds, superior bubble-gum I guess you’d call it, but Rick went on to far greater things in the seventies and beyond, both as a session guitarist and record producer. His death last week saddened me, and prompted me to look up a very long interview I did with him for the March 16, 1975 issue of Melody Maker.  

        What follows is the first half of that interview, dealing with the rise and fall of The McCoys. 

The gold disc rests on the mantlepiece, taking pride of place as it justly deserves. There are two more on either side of it, but the gold record is the one that sticks out a mile, the one that’ll be remembered as the classic of its time and the one on which the laminated gold will never fade with age.

It bears the simple inscription: “Presented to Ricky Zehringer. The McCoys. Hang On Sloopy. Number 1 in the Nation.”

Oh, what a record that was! The ultimate pop commercial single out of America in the mid-sixties; the record that every discotheque danced to in 1965, the record that was played at every party and on every transistor radio.

It was so simple but so effective. Three chords repeated over and over again, same as ‘La Bamba’ and ‘Twist And Shout’ but slower and mellower, with vocal harmonies layered on top to produce that good-time feeling that pop was all about nine years ago today.

It’s changed now, of course, Ricky Zehringer is Rick Derringer. The McCoys are all involved with Warner Brothers. The music is hot, heavy, fast and complex. Derringer is now an ace record producer; lessons have been learned, experiences shared and good time spent. Everyone’s a little wiser and a lot richer, Derringer especially.

The first thing you notice about him is how small he is. Rick Derringer is tiny and this, coupled with what could be described as a baby face, gives him the air of a worldly teenager. Actually he’s 25, but he could pass off as 17 or 18 without difficulty. Only the rings below his eyes betray his real age. 

Rick began his musical life with The McCoys and they began as a high school band in Union City, Indiana. “The McCoys started when I was 14 or 15 years old, way before ‘Sloopy’,” he recalls, almost as if it was yesterday. “That was when I was in school. I’d just graduated when the record came out but we’d been together almost four years by then.

“We were playing all the top 40 songs. We just got together to make friends and play the local dances and have the kids come up to us and tell us we were cool. We’d be making a little money so I’d have something extra to spend on clothes but usually I’d save up for a better guitar. At the same time I never really went into it with the attitude that someday I would make records and be in the music business. We were just an ordinary little high school band.”

In 1965 The McCoys made THAT record – almost by accident. 

“One night we were playing with The Strangeloves in Dayton, Ohio. It turned out they were the act on a record called ‘I Want Candy’ and they’d told everyone they were from Australia and were sheep herders. In reality they were three record producers from Brooklyn, and they asked us whether we’d like to go to New York and make a record called ‘Hang On Sloopy’. We said ‘great’. We’d heard the record about a year before by The Vibrations when it was a number one R&B record in the States.”

The next day Rick’s parents packed the band into their car and drove to New York City. “We drove up on Sunday and went into the studio on Monday. We did the music part first and then the producers gave us a disc of the vocal and a portable record player and told us to go out and come back when we’d learned it. We practised it note for note and then went back and did it. The producers jumped up and down in the studio, saying ‘number one, number one’. A few weeks later we heard it on the radio. Two weeks after that it really was number one.”

The McCoys then began an endless series of tours in the United States. “The band hadn’t changed at all,” says Rick. “No one had ever explained anything to us so we just carried on doing exactly what we’d been doing before, which was top 40 material. And we’d throw in ‘Hang On Sloopy’ as the last song.

“In those days having a number one record meant you were like The Beatles, so all the kids would scream and flip out and try to pull our clothes off. It didn’t matter what kind of music you played because no one could hear it anyway.”

The McCoys had two other big singles after ‘Hang On Sloopy’. ‘Fever’ got to number three and ‘Come On Let’s Go’ reached the twenty. They made a total of nine singles but most of them never made the upper reaches of the charts.

“When that first one was number one, it made us think that everything was going to be easy because it was. We just did what we were told, they yelled ‘number one’ and it was number one. The second record was number three and the third was number 40 and that scared us so we made a better one and that reached the twenties. Then the fifth was in the fifties and the sixth was in the sixties and we got worried.”

The group also made two albums, the first of which had a classic introduction during which the band introduced themselves into the music. The second was very similar and the introduction was taken from their stage act when it was the done thing for the guys in the band to introduce themselves on stage. 

After a couple of years, The McCoys realised that their albums didn’t actually contain the music they were playing on stage. They switched to Mercury Records where they made two more albums, this time containing the wide variety of music that they used in their act. They didn’t sell well but Derringer says they are soon to be re-released as a double package. 

“When we went to Mercury we were in high spirits because we were being allowed to do the music we wanted to do, but because we didn’t have anyone to guide us we became entrenched in the whole psychedelic period in what we thought was supposed to be hip. The records weren’t selling and we were naïve enough to believe that if we made what we thought was good music, people would go for it.”

It was Steve Paul who came to the McCoys’ rescue. Paul was managing the Winter Brothers, Johnny and Edgar, and he offered his help to The McCoys. “We met him through playing at his club in New York and we told him that anything he could do would be appreciated. What he did was to give us the chance to stop working in these weird places and go and live in the country and straighten ourselves out. Then we met Johnny and started playing behind him and that’s when The McCoys ended.”

Later, of course, Derringer would join Edgar Winter’s band and go on to play on, or produce, records by countless other artists, among them Steely Dan, Todd Rundgren, Bonnie Tyler, Barbra Streisand and Cyndi Lauper.