CAN’T STOP WON’T STOP: A History of The Hip-Hop Generation by Jeff Chang

Clever chap that he is, Santa Claus identified an area of ignorance in my music knowledge and delivered this book to me on Christmas Day. I’ve never been particularly fond of rap music – to my mind it lacks melody and most of the time I can’t decipher the words – but I’m always up for investigating the roots of music, be it pop, rock, blues, R&B, jazz or even rap, for that matter, and thanks to Santa and Jeff Chang I now know all about where it came from and how it originated.

        I wasn’t to know it at the time, and even those involved hadn’t a clue how what they were doing would end up, but rap in its original incarnation of hip-hop was being invented a few miles from where I lived in New York in the mid-seventies, up in the Bronx, an area I only ever drove through, a few miles north of Manhattan’s tony East Side where my apartment doubled as Melody Maker’s US office. 

        The sole manifestation I saw of the culture that would produce this multi-million dollar musical phenomenon was graffiti on the exteriors of subway trains. It was a weird and wonderful form of artistic expression enacted mostly by black teenagers with spray cans who daubed the carriages in translucent colours; strangely plump, circular lettering of distinctive design that spelt out their nomes-de-can, or tags as these balloon-like expressions of individuality became known, arrogantly displaying not just the artistic skills of the individual graffiti artist but also their audacity in gaining access to the surfaces on which their work appeared. I loved it and was wryly amused by the city’s largely vain attempts to erase their work, the carriages on which washed out graffiti still poked through. 

        Other manifestations were less obvious, to me anyway. If Can’t Stop Won’t Stop is to be believed, and I have no reason to think otherwise, it all began with an urban renewal plan in the South Bronx that prioritised roads over housing. The resulting displacement created territorial divisions controlled by rival gangs, some of whom looted turntables from hi-fi shops during the electricity blackout that hit New York City during the night of July 13-14, 1977, an event I remember well. Close to where I lived restaurants were giving away food that would otherwise decay through lack of refrigeration, the streets were crowded with revellers and the beer was warm for once. 

        On their looted turntables DJs began to scratch, to make new sounds from old records, at parties held originally in their apartments before they broke out into the streets and, eventually, clubs. DJ Cool Herc (Clive Campbell) noticed that dancers “got wild” during instrumental breaks, and began playing songs with them. Then, in a technique he called “the Merry-Go-Round, he began to work two copies of the same record,” writes Chang, “back-cuing a record to the beginning of the break as the other reached the end, extending a five-second breakdown into a five minutes loop of fury, a makeshift version excursion. Before long he had tossed most of the songs, focusing on the breaks alone.”

        Thus was born a crucial element of rap, alongside the graffiti, DJ-ing and break-dancing – as first seen and heard in the UK via hip-hop pioneer Malcolm McLaren’s 'Buffalo Gals'. Before long DJs were opting to play dub versions of Jamaican reggae singles or only instrumental breaks in songs, and whipping up excitement by talking over them.

        The three pioneers of the genre were Herc, Afrika Bambaataa (Lance Taylor) and Grandmaster Flash (Joseph Sadler) whose backgrounds are covered extensively; their families, how they arrived on the hip-hop scene, their entrepreneurial schemes and their prescience in driving forward new ideas. The former contributes a foreword to this book, Bambaataa was a bringer of peace to warring neighbourhoods and Flash more or less invented scratching by shifting the needle as he spun records on twin turntables. 

        None of this would have happened, however, without the sense of injustice felt amongst the black communities in both the Bronx and Jamaica, from where immigrants to New York brought the influence of reggae. Hip-hop arose from the need of these deprived communities to stamp a culture of their own on society, and Can’t Stop Won’t Stop describes how they succeeded beyond their wildest dreams.

        This is not a new book – it was first published in 2005 – nor, at 560 pages, is it short. I haven’t even finished it yet but I figured what I’d learned so far was worth a post on Just Backdated. In the fullness of time I doubtless will, though other, shorter books waiting for me might grab my attention in the meantime. Can’t Stop Won’t Stop is less about the stars and more about the background, politics and unsung heroes. It’s well indexed, has a useful discography and bibliography and the list of names among author Jeff Chang’s acknowledgements alone reflects the depth of his research.  

JUST BACKDATED – The Top Thirty

The first week of the year seems like a good time to review the performance of my Just Backdated blog, and bring the Posts Chart up to date. In doing so yesterday I discovered that the number of hits in the Top 20 listed in statistics automatically conveyed to me by my Blogspot host differs considerably from the number of hits recorded when I look at each of the 1,041 posts individually, specifically that there are far more hits registered in the individual listings. Computer science baffles me and this discovery of mine surely indicates that it isn’t an exact discipline even though those behind it would like to think it is. Accordingly, I have revised the chart considerably and opted to list the Top 30 this time around, with the result that although posts about The Who still dominate, there are many newcomers. 

        Nevertheless, aside from one remarkable instance, there isn’t that much in the way of changes from the top 10 I wrote about in March 2022, when I last did a survey like this, this one to commemorate notching up 1,250,000 hits. That figure has now risen to 1,810,987, so the two million mark looms, perhaps later this year or early next. Either way, the number of hits Just Backdated gets every month is increasing all the time, probably the result of more readers becoming aware of it. 

        The big surprise is that my synopsis for the abandoned book with Mandy de Wolf, Keith Moon’s daughter, has now clocked up 45,100 hits, still in second place but closing in rapidly on the number one post, my review of The Who’s Live at Fillmore East 1968 CD which has remained pretty much static all year. In 2022, The Fillmore CD had 47.7k hits, with Mandy on 20.3k, so its acceleration is quite remarkable. Barely a week goes by when it doesn’t get between 2-300 hits, and I keep wondering where they all come from. These two posts are streets ahead of all the rest. 

        Many of the 25 comments on the post about this proposed book – which I provisionally titled Moon Girl: My Life in the Shadow of Rock’s Wildest Star – suggest it should be published but for personal reasons Mandy has told me she’s no longer interested in writing the book, with me or anyone else as a ghost writer. Naturally I respect her wishes. 

        As before the chart contains far more Who posts, with 14 of the top 30 all related to the group or its individual members. Posts about Keith and John seem to win out over posts about Pete or Roger, though the last post I wrote – about those dodgy Daltrey books – has racked up over 800 hits in a few days, which is not bad going. Led Zep come second with five. Slade have just one post in the top 30 – my obituary of their much-loved tour manager Graham ‘Swin’ Swinnerton – but lots of posts about the group have clocked up between 1,500 and 2,00 hits. One day, if I could be bothered, I might tot up the number of hits each act has received across all my posts about them, and I’m pretty sure Slade would be third. 

        Non-Who post that have somewhat expectedly racked up well over 2,000 hits include my review of Look Away, the Sky documentary about the exploitation of girls/women in the music industry, my review of the Melody Maker movie largely devoted to our ace photographer Barrie Wentzell, my obituary of Pete Overend Watts of Mott The Hoople, a post about my friend Adrian Boot’s punk photo exhibition review, an obituary of Robert Stigwood, my Steely Dan interview, two close encounters with the odious Jimmy Savile, seeing CSN&Y in Denver in 1974, and my adventures with Lynyrd Skynyrd. 

Here’s the Top 30, with the number of hits and the 2022 placing in brackets

1) The Who Live at Fillmore East CD,  50.7k hits (1)

2) Moon Girl, 45.6k (2)

3) Jimmy Page – Boleskine House, Tower House & More, 18.9k (3)

4) John, Paul & Keith, Santa Monica, 1974, 16.6k (4)

5) Jimi Hendrix at the Isle of Wight, 12.41k (newcomer to chart)

6) Jimmy Page – The Day Jimmy Met Robert, 9.1k (5)

7) Keith Moon’s Living Arrangements, 8.6k (13)

8) Palazzo Dario – The Palace that Tommy Bought, 7.68k (6)

9) Deep Purple – Trouble in Jakarta, 6.99k (11)

10) The North of England Beer Drinking Championship, 6.4k (15)

11) Marianne Faithfull, 1980, Book Extract 6.2k (new)

12) Keith Moon & The Pythons, 6.13k (8)

13) Pete Rudge, Who/Stones tour manager, Interview from MM 1973, 5.3k (new)

14) The Who UK tour 2014 announcement, 5.1k (7)

15) The Who in Hyde Park, London, June 26, 2015, 4.78k (12)

16) Dennis Wilson MM interview, 4.45k, (new)

17) Abba Live At Wembley Arena CD review, 4.4k (new)

18) The Who Live in Ottawa review, 4.4k (new)

19) The Who – My Hidden Gems album, 4.28k (10)

20) Led Zeppelin in Chicago, 1975, 4.21 (new)

21) Launching Dear Boy, 4.15k (9)

22) Eric Clapton On The Road 1974, 4.03 (new) 

23) Jimmy Page Biography review, 4.02 (new)

24) Johnny Ramone’s Mosrite, book extract, 4.0k, (new) 

25) My 70th Birthday Playlist 3.9k, (new)

26) Graham Swinnerton, Slade tour manager obituary, 3.8 (new)

27) My Introduction to Debbie Harry, 3.5k (new)

28) John Entwistle (1944-2002), obituary, 3.4k (14)

29) The Who in Birmingham, December 2014, 3.3k (new)

30) David Cassidy obituary, 3.1 k (new)

An honorary listing ought perhaps to go to my reports of The Who at New Bingley Hall, Staff, 1975, which was in three parts whose combined hits total is 6997. 

Finally, my thanks to all who visit Just Backdated. The number of hits I get makes it all worthwhile and encourages me to keep going.

ROGER DALTREY – FOUR PHANTOM BIOGRAPHIES

Midway through December I came across a “biography” of Roger Daltrey by “James Patterson” on Amazon. What struck me was that the photograph on the cover was not Roger, albeit of a young man with blond curly hair leaning towards a microphone on a stand, and it occurred to me that the image might have been created by AI. Sample text, too, looked suspicious to me, largely because it was insufferably bland and unctuously sycophantic. 

        I drew attention to this book to three friends of mine, all dedicated and knowledgeable Who fans, all of whom agreed with my conclusions. One of them was Ed Hanel whose home on the Hawaiian island Kailua accommodates what might just be the biggest collection of Who records, books and miscellanea anywhere in the world. It is Ed’s custom to obtain absolutely anything and everything Who related – regardless of quality – to add to his collection but it came as a bit of a surprise to me that in buying a copy of this book, he came across no fewer than three further “biographies” of Roger, each of which seemed to him – and me – to be of dubious origin. So, as a service to Who fans everywhere I am posting Ed’s comments here on Just Backdated.

        Over to you Ed. 

 

FOUR ROGER DALTREY BOOKS RELEASED 23 December, 2024.

EACH MERITS ONE STAR

Roger Daltrey Biography: Discovering the Legend of Rock Stage by “Adam Young” 

No publisher, sold on Amazon. Last page Bar Code: 14795988R00085. Amazon indicates that the book was originally published 24 November, 2023.

        Largely direct quotes, sometimes with minor changes, from Roger Daltrey’s autobiography, Thanks A Lot Mr Kibblewhite. For example: Roger’s “Chapter One: The Flannel Shirt” opens with, “On a muggy Florida night in March 2007, Pete and I walked out onto the stage at the Ford Amphitheatre in Tampa.” This becomes “Chapter One: The Flannel Shirt”, opening with “Pete and I walked out onto the stage at the Ford Amphitheatre in Tampa on a hot Florida night in March 2007.”  The text doesn’t get any better or any more original.

        The book’s text ends with excerpts from Chapter 16 of Roger’s book. In effect, the book ends in the mid-1980’s, referencing Live Aid 1985 and noting, incorrectly just as Roger did, “That was the last of The Who for nearly a decade.” Accordingly, the book completely ignores the last 40 years of Roger’s life.

The Legend Of Roger Daltreys (sic): Great Vocals And The Struggle For Self-Expression by “Betty Jo LeClair”

No publisher, sold on Amazon. Last page Bar Code: 14795989R00085.  Amazon indicates the book was originally published on 17 June, 2023.

        Largely direct quotes from Thanks A Lot Mr Kibblewhite, sometimes with minor changes. For example, Roger’s book ends with an acknowledgement, thanking Mr Kibblewhite, “And I really mean that.” This book inexplicably changes Roger’s words to, “Mr. Kibblewhite, I am quite grateful to you.” In Chapter 19 “Brothers”, the text begins by skipping several pages of Roger’s text, then quotes Roger for several pages only to stop mid-page. At the top of the next page, the text repeats several pages (Pp. 128/9). 

The Voice That Changed Music: The Story of Roger Daltrey and His Rock Revolution, by “James Patterson” 

According to Amazon, Mr. Patterson is a published writer. No publisher, sold on Amazon. Last Page Bar Code: 1479203R00049. Amazon indicates the book was originally published on 3 November, 2024.

        The cover picture is not Roger. Additional pictures in the book are dubious at best. The text reads like notes collected for a book project at the initial research stage. For example, “After this, Daltrey’s solo career underwent a major turning point with Rough Mix ( 1977) (sic), a joint project with Pete Townshend.” A little later on, we read, “This release [Under A Raging Moon] contained the smash track ‘Parting Should Be Painless’ and had a more polished rock feel” (Pp. 38/39). Basic editing should have caught both mistakes. Roger had no role on Rough Mix and ‘Parting Should Be Painless’ is found instead on the album of the same name. Because the text is confused about Rough Mix in several references, it may be useful to clarify that Pete’s partner on this project was Ronnie Lane.

        There is a segment that addresses Paul McCartney’s releases, with no relation or connection to Roger (Pp.48-50).

Roger Daltrey Biography For Curious Kids by “Leo Whittaker”

Published by Little Big Giant, sold on Amazon. Last page Bar Code: 14796674R00066. Amazon indicates that the book was originally published 5 August, 2024.

        The cover is an animated figure that looks like a Halloween Mask, with no relationship to Roger’s appearance. Written as a children’s book. Chapters end with a “Key Takeway” such as: “Teamwork can help you achieve success” or, “Don’t be afraid to explore and find new things you love.”

        Unfortunately, there are glaring mistakes. For example, we are told that the first public performance of Tommy took place at a “massive venue” (P. 55). The first public performance is generally considered as occurring at the Institute of Technology, Bolton, UK, on 22 April, 1969. The first widely reported performance took place on 1 May at Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club, on Frith Street in London’s Soho. Neither venue could be remotely considered as massive. 

  Furthermore (P. 75), we read, “In Tommy [the movie], Roger played the role of the ‘Hawker’, a character who sold everything from toys to dreams.” It would be hard to cram more misinformation into one sentence. The only role for Roger in any version of Tommy is, of course, the lead character, Tommy Walker. The hawker is a pimp who offers up a woman as a cure for Tommy’s woes, perhaps not an appropriate aspect to include in a children’s book, albeit rather amusing when reflecting on the chapter’s Key Takeway: “Trying new things can lead to exciting adventures” (P. 79). 

SUMMARY

The plagiarism in two of the books and the lack of proper fact checking or editing in all four are disappointing at best. None should be considered as appropriate reviews of Roger’s career.

        The versions of these four books appear to be run off at the same time, with the same date (“23 December 2024”) and the same last page format. For reference, I received my copies here in Hawaii on 24 December, 2024, after ordering them several weeks earlier.  

JUST BACKDATED ROCK BOOK OF THE YEAR

Since Just Backdated has become a repository for music book reviews I have decided to nominate a Rock Music Book of The Year and the first winner of this prestigious award is WHEN WE WAS FAB – Inside The Beatles Australasian Tour, 1964, by Andy Neill & Greg Armstrong, which I reviewed in July. 

        Regrettably, I was obliged to review the book from a pdf sent to me by Andy, whom I have known for years, and it wasn’t until November that I acquired an actual copy of the book, which was published by Woodslane Press, an Australian company, but is available through Amazon (at £28.95), though you may have to wait until stocks are replenished. As of today, Abe Books are offering it at £38.84, and although it was being sold by Waterstones at £39.99, it now appears to be out of stock there. 

        It’s worth every penny and the difficulty in obtaining it is a crying shame, for When We Was Fab has romped home an easy winner in my book of the year survey. It’s 306 large-format (30cm x 30cm) pages are packed with superbly researched text and hundreds of photographs, many in colour and previously unseen, alongside documents, press clippings and vintage memorabilia. A few can be seen below. 

            In their 20-year investigation to uncover anything relevant, Andy and Greg interviewed scores of people, from the tour’s promoters to many of the fans who saw the shows and waited expectantly on crowded pavements to watch John, Paul, George and Ringo (or stand-in drummer Jimmie Nicol) drive by. Insofar as it covers virtually every hour of The Beatles’ lives from 11 June, 1964, when they landed at Sydney, to 1 July, when they left Brisbane for London, the book ranks alongside Mark Lewisohn’s Beatle books for accurate, comprehensive reportage of what nowadays is regarded as the most intense explosion of Beatlemania anywhere in the world. 

        As I wrote in my review of the book in July, until now the only available reportage of this extraordinary tour has been Beatles Down Under by Glenn A. Baker, Australia’s foremost writer on pop music, a book I’ve owned for years and which is now quite collectable. Baker’s book was very much a fly-on-the-wall account and was fairly eye-opening insofar as when it was published in 1982 it offered hitherto unreported details of JPG&R’s off-stage activities that can best be described as less than saintly. Much of this is downplayed in When We Was Fab, not least because its authors believe those interviewed by Baker were exaggerating the Beatles’ sybaritic urges for effect. The truth is less scandalous but no less sensational, not least how the tour came about in the first place and was almost scuppered through a bureaucratic impasse, and the extent to which the four Beatles coped with the madness that surrounded them, mayhem that continued virtually uninterrupted for the duration of the visit. When The Beatles arrived in Adelaide, a staggering 300,000 fans and curious Australian adults lined the route from the airport to the centre of town to catch a glimpse of the world’s greatest ever pop group, the largest-ever crowd they attracted anywhere in the world. 

It’s all here in When We Was Fab, the chaos, the concerts, the airport scenes, the hotel receptions, the press conferences, the pope-like balcony appearances, the cast and crew, the experience of Jimmie Nicol, drafted in to replace bedridden Ringo at the start, the girls who managed to evade security, the whimsical response to all this madness from the Beatles themselves and even the few who threw eggs at them. In the words of Derek Taylor, their in-house PR who found himself in the midst of it all, “It was the longest-running story since World War II with the advantage that no one died.” 

 

JUST BACKDATED EXTRACT 3

It is the December 1975. In October, after a three-month break in the UK, I resumed my role as Melody Maker’s US Editor, just in time to chase Bob Dylan around New England on his Rolling Thunder Review. Over the next couple of months, I interviewed Nona Hendryx, Paul Simon, Patti Smith, Randy Brecker and Bobby Womack, among others, and also met up with my friends Slade who had just moved to New York on their doomed attempt to conquer America. I vaguely remember a party at the Upper East Side apartment occupied by Jim and Louise Lea and Dave and Janice Hill where their tour manager Graham ‘Swin’ Swinnerton passed around a joint the size of a Cuban cigar. That’s not in the book but what follows is… 

I ended 1975 by interviewing John Hammond, the legendary Columbia A&R man who’d signed many jazz greats to the label, then moved into the rock era by signing Bob Dylan – “Hammond’s Folly”, as he was known at first – and later Bruce Springsteen, among a score of others. A man of wealth and taste, he was a scion of the fabulously wealthy Vanderbilt family that built America’s railroads, and he was as well known for his support of African Americans as he was for his work in music. Back in the 1930s he’d contributed a New York news column to Melody Maker, writing about Duke Ellington and Count Basie. I felt privileged to have followed in his footsteps. 

        For the first time in my life I was alone on a Christmas Day, spending most of it in bed recovering from a seriously late party the night before at my friend Ashley Pandell’s apartment where among the guests was Harry Nilsson who was swigging heartily from a bottle of sake, the Japanese rice wine usually drunk warm. On Boxing Day, which Americans don’t celebrate, I was up bright and early and decided that since no one had bought me any Christmas presents I’d buy one for myself.

      I walked through Central Park, past the Latinos selling loose joints, all the way down to West 48th Street which, like Denmark Street in London, is wall-to-wall guitar shops. I’d already visited Manny’s, the famous music shop where the big acts bought their gear, and even done an MM feature on the place, but I found what I was looking for a few doors down in a shop called We Buy Guitars: a used small-scale Gibson LG1 acoustic, circa 1960, so I paid the asking price of $165 + $13 tax and slipped the receipt into the accessory compartment in its case where it has stayed ever since. Elvis played one just like it in Loving You, his second movie. Two weeks later I enrolled at the Guitar Study Centre, a Manhattan music school run by Eddie Simon, Paul’s younger brother, and over the next few months painstakingly learned how to finger pick. I wrote an MM feature about Eddie’s music school too. 

The receipt for my Gibson guitar, front and back. 

        As 1975 became 1976 there was a nagging doubt in my mind as to what I would do after Melody Maker. This life I was leading wouldn’t last forever. I was still checking out CBGBs, heading down to the Bowery in the scruffiest clothes I had lest someone mug me for the few dollars I had with me. I saw many of the bands that played there, reviewing most of them, the hits and the misses. I saw The Voidoids with Richard Hell in his torn t-shirt before Malcolm McLaren dressed some London lads the same way and that original punk ‘Handsome’ Dick Manitoba with The Dictators. The first time I saw the Ramones their songs were so short – some lasting no more than 30 seconds – that I thought they were a novelty act, but I loved them all the same. I somehow knew Talking Heads were destined for great things, as were Blondie and Television. 

        I also saw Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers at CBGBs but thought they were out of place there. They weren’t a punk band like The Ramones, or a power pop outfit like Blondie, or new wavers like Talking Heads. But they weren’t hard rock either, more a traditional rock band whose music was built on the blues and fifties rock’n’roll, like the early Beatles, Stones and Who. Also, there was none of the slightly under-rehearsed amateurishness about them that – not necessarily in a bad way – characterised groups like The Voidoids, Television and the Patti Smith Group, and they didn’t dress or wear their hair in ways that knowingly contrasted with established rock performers. Equally importantly, they knew their chops, especially guitarist Mike Campbell, and had plenty of drive. I thought they were from the same disciplined domain as Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band or Bob Seger’s crew from Detroit. Then again, Tom’s high voice sounded a bit like Roger McGuinn of The Byrds which, coupled with his Rickenbacker guitar, gave them an added string to their bow. Nowadays it’s called “heartland” music which implies a common bond with the blue-collar American working man and a tendency not to stray too far away from their rudimentary roots.

One night in early 1976 Debbie Harry called and asked me to meet her and Chris Stein in the upstairs bar at Max’s Kansas City. I remember that night very well, not least because just as we began to talk The Who’s ‘I Can See For Miles’ came over the in-house PA system, mighty loud too. Debbie and Chris told me they needed a manager for their new group Blondie. Would I be up for it? I was astounded, incredibly flattered, but had to decline. I didn’t think I knew enough about managing groups and wasn’t up to the job. In any case, there would have been a conflict of interest – how could I write for a music paper and manage a band at the same time? – and, besides, my presence in New York was contingent on my working for MM. My visa precluded doing anything else. Also, there was the same dilemma that discouraged me from forming steady relationships with girlfriends: I could be called back to London at short notice, thereby faced with a very tricky dilemma. 

        I wish now I’d said yes. I wish I’d chucked in the MM job, thrown myself in at the deep end and taken the chance. I think Debbie and Chris thought it would be cool to have a British music writer as their manager, and they were probably right, but I wasn’t ready to make this jump, not yet anyway. Still, Debbie and Chris had given me an idea about life after MM. 

Just Backdated Extract 2

It is 1972 and I have been on the staff of Melody Maker for two years, ingratiated myself into the UK music industry and encountered most of the big rock acts of the day, among them Deep Purple with whom I have become quite friendly. Late that year they invited me to join them on a US tour, my third trip to America. 

In November I visited the US again, flying first class over the Atlantic for the first and only time in my life, my companion John Coletta, Deep Purple’s dapper manager, with whom I was becoming increasingly friendly. John was in advertising before he and two others decided to invest in DP, and he told me he considered managing a rock group “an interesting marketing opportunity”. I always thought he was a bit out of his depth, especially when it came to controlling Ritchie Blackmore, mention of whom invariably caused John to roll his eyes, but he had a partner, Tony Edwards, who took care of admin while John went on the road with the band. I wasn’t to know it until many years later but the third partner in the early management of Purple was a heavy-duty fence who was jailed after police discovered piles of stolen goods in his garage in Brighton. 

        By 1972 Deep Purple was the biggest-selling act on Warner Brothers but the label was more attuned to singer songwriters like Neil Young, James Taylor and Randy Newman or rootsy groovers like Little Feat, Bonnie Raitt and Ry Cooder, and had acquired DP in a fire sale when their previous label, Tetragrammaton, went bust. Although the money was rolling in, especially from DP’s big-selling and cheap to record Made In Japan LP, hard rockers like Deep Purple were an altogether disturbing commodity for them. 

Travelling first class in those days was the ultimate in luxury. The cabin at the front of the plane was on two levels, connected by a spiral staircase that led to a small bar and dining area above the regular seating – more like sofa-bed style arm chairs – on which you could stretch your legs and grab an hour or two’s sleep if you were so inclined. John and I flew to New York and spent the night in the Essex House hotel and the next day flew on to Des Moines, Iowa, to catch up with the group. 

        This was Deep Purple’s sixth and longest US tour of the year. Supported by the pre-Buckingham/Nicks Fleetwood Mac, they concentrated on the West Coast, southern and Midwestern States but I was soon to discover that all was not well within the band. Singer Ian Gillan, whose impending departure was still a closely guarded secret, travelled independently, often staying in separate hotels with his girlfriend Zoe Dean. He had developed a fear of flying and, whenever possible, travelled by road in a black Fleetwood Cadillac. Another reason why he stayed in separate accommodation was that the others weren’t happy that he had chosen to bring along his partner, and were concerned that she might observe post-concert debauchery and report back to wags back home. 

        The rest of the band flew from city to city and Ritchie was persistently late at airport check-ins. The tour stretched into December and I joined the entourage for shows in Des Moines and Indianapolis where they were drawing enormous crowds. When I interviewed Jon Lord in his hotel room he spoke about the need for change and their weariness at the constant touring, so much so that he had difficulty remembering which city he was in. No one was specific about the immediate future which led me to believe they were hiding something from me. Indications seemed to be that the group would disperse for a six-month period the following year and reassemble having had the opportunity to work on individual projects. Ian Gillan’s defection was not mentioned. 

        As candid as ever, Ritchie confided to me that apart from brief discussions before the evening’s set he hadn’t spoken to Gillan on the entire tour. Ritchie didn’t elaborate, probably because although he knew Ian was leaving he was under instructions not to tell the press, but when I subsequently asked Ian if it was true he hadn’t talked to Ritchie he confirmed it was. 

        While the fans at the Veterans Memorial Hall in Des Moines welcomed Deep Purple with open arms, elsewhere the capital of Iowa seemed particularly inhospitable towards them. It was bitterly cold in December; the telephone backstage had a lock on its dial designed to prevent its use; and in the hotel bar those members of the DP entourage enjoying a late night drink after the show were rudely interrupted by a couple of abrasive local cops who insisted that the bar close immediately and that unconsumed drinks remain untouched. Clearly disapproving on our hair, clothes and demeanor, the cops threatened to arrest us all if we demurred. 

        Perhaps this explains why on a plane flight from Des Moines Ritchie indulged in a prank that ranks among his best ever, or worst, depending on your point of view. We were sat together and when the plane reached cruising speed he produced from his hand luggage a fearsomely offensive pornographic magazine with obese women, some dressed as nuns, doing extraordinary things with animals, astride pigs, beneath dogs. Realising that the magazine was of the same dimensions as the in-flight magazine published by Braniff Airways, Ritchie systematically substituted pages from one to the other, carefully replacing the staples before tucking the reconstituted flight brochure back into the pocket provided. “Shame we won’t be here when the next person picks that up,” he said when the mischief was complete. 

I left Deep Purple to their own devices and returned to the UK via New York where I had arranged to meet my MM pal Michael Watts who earlier in the month had taken over from Roy Hollingworth as our US correspondent, a role that I would assume the following year. Michael took me to PJ Clarke’s, a long-established bar and restaurant on the East Side where we ate their famous burgers and drank a lot of beer, so much so that I almost missed my flight back to London that night. Running very late and far from sober, I hailed a yellow cab in pouring rain on Third Avenue to take me to JFK. I really thought I was too late to check in but I hadn’t reckoned with how airport staff treat first-class passengers. “That’s not a problem sir,” said the kind lady at the Pan-Am check-in desk as I produced my ticket and apologised for my tardiness. “Please step this way.” Never again would I be escorted through customs and onto a plane. I collapsed in a large comfy seat and promptly fell asleep. Two hours later I awoke with a start and began to scribble about Deep Purple in a notebook, and when I landed at Heathrow on a Monday morning I went directly to the office and typed up what I had written. 

CC's story about Deep Purple, from MM dated 9 December, 1972

As an aside here it is worth mentioning that to have been flown first-class across the Atlantic at the expense of those with a financial interest in the career of Deep Purple might seem to the untrained eye as if I’d been bribed to write positively about them. This was what was known in the trade as a “facility trip” and it wouldn’t have come about had it not become clear to everyone involved that I liked the band. Nevertheless, it could be construed as an indirect bribe since travel and hospitality doled out in such largesse might make it churlish on the part of the writer not to acknowledge gratitude in the form of favourable coverage. It’s a dilemma MM’s staff faced time and again.

However, this sort of thing was widespread in the music business during the period I worked for MM. I’ll stick my neck out here and state that almost all flights undertaken to see acts overseas by writers from the UK weekly press – not just MM – were paid for by someone else, usually their record label. Indeed, of the hundreds of flights I took during my seven years on MM, many between 1973 and 1977 when I was working from the US, I paid for only two, both private holidays. 

It never occurred to any of us to question this, nor to become curious as to who might have paid for it all in the long term. I suspect now that it was the acts who footed the bill for entertaining us writers, probably not directly but in the form of debits from their royalties or add-ons to whatever debt in the form of an advance they had already accrued with their label. 

        Indirect bribery like this didn’t necessarily take the form of expensive air travel and accommodation. Publicists buying a round in the pub or lunch in a restaurant might feel the gesture warranted a favour in kind, and the only favour they’d be interested in would be mention of their client in the paper. “Lunch? Certainly, and here’s a copy of my client’s new album to review. I recommend the Chablis with the lobster.” The bill for both, in the form of expenses, would arrive at the office of the group’s manager who, after paying it, would add it to whatever expenses were owed them by their client, or their record label. 

        Either way, it’s a pound to a penny that the musicians paid in the end.  

PAUL

How are we to measure the magnitude of Paul? In the number of wonderful songs he’s written, alone or with John; in the number of hits he’s had, with and without The Beatles; in the number of shows he’s performed, with and without The Beatles; in the number of fans who’ve attended those shows; by somehow quantifying the pleasure he’s given to all those fans all over the world over all those years; in the glorious reviews I’ve read of last week’s shows at London’s O2, three hours of nonstop winners, from The Quarrymen to last year’s ‘Now And Then’ no less; for not flaunting his massive wealth, thereby instilling the meaning of integrity in his children; in the dignity he’s shown during 61 years (1963-2024) as a celebrity, perhaps the most celebrated, most enduring, most endearing celebrity on earth; or all of these things put together? 

        I first clapped eyes on him in 1963, on stage in Bradford, playing his violin bass alongside George and John with Ringo at the back, screaming to be heard above 2,000 screamers. The last time was about 15 years ago, on the street just south of Soho Square, close to where I worked in those days. I didn’t recognise him because he wore sunglasses, even though it was almost dark, and he had his collar up, a rudimentary disguise. No one else was around. Paul spotted me first. “Hello Chris,” he said, recognising me from times past, well past in fact. 

        “Paul?” I replied.

        “Yes, it’s me. We can’t talk here. Come to the office.”

        I followed him into the reception area of MPL, his offices on the west side of Soho Square, and we talked for about five minutes, mainly about Mary, his daughter, who once worked for me as a photo researcher, and about my family, of which he knew very little but seemed interested. “How many kids have you got?”

        “Two.”

        “That’s great.” 

        It’s difficult to sustain a casual conversation with the biggest rock star on the planet, even though we were on Christian name terms back in the day and still appeared to be. I met him for the first time in November 1971, at a party to launch Wings, and interviewed him and Linda at length for Melody Maker at Abbey Road the following week. I encountered him a few more times in the seventies, on two occasions backstage after Wings shows, and we had a couple of close encounters when Mary worked for me. Nevertheless, it was astonishing to me that, on the street, he initiated this brief chat. It didn’t last long and within five minutes I was on my way. 

        “Nice to see you again Chris,” he said, or words to that effect as I turned my back on him and left the MPL building. 

        Very few rock and pop performers are recognisable by one name alone and then largely because their names are uncommon: Elvis, Elton, Madonna, Prince and Sting come to mind. Paul is a common name, but how are we to measure his uncommonness? 

        And how do I measure the magnitude of Paul? By that brief conversation and henceforth referring to him only by his Christian name. 

        Happy Christmas Paul. 

JUST BACKDATED EXTRACT 1

This extract is from the first chapter of Just Backdated, set in Skipton, the North Yorkshire town where I was raised. It is 1964 and I am about to leave a school I hated. The thought of becoming a music writer hasn’t yet occurred to me. 

At boarding school in York, the only subject in which I progressed was English and by the time I was 16 – the year my dad took me to see The Beatles in Bradford – I’d decided I wanted to be a newspaper reporter. To my immense relief, I left York a year later, pushed out by a headmaster who thought that playing the guitar and listening to The Beatles and Rolling Stones marked me down as disruptive and unlikely to pass any A-levels. He was probably right. 

        I applied for a job on the local weekly paper, Skipton’s Craven Herald & Pioneer, went for an interview and started work there in September 1964, spending the next three and a half years as a trainee reporter. I made many friends locally, some of them still friends today. Until I discovered the pleasures of the pub, I sat in the nearest coffee bar, drank coke and played my favourite records on the jukebox. I snogged girls, some of whom welcomed exploratory incursions into the mysteries of their underwear. I did a stint as a DJ at a local bar. I lived at home, walked to work at the CH&P offices every morning, and most days mum had lunch waiting for me after the ten-minute stroll back to our house. 

CC as DJ at Anderton's Wine Bar in Skipton, 1968.

        Meanwhile, I swopped my acoustic guitar, 1962’s Christmas present, for a solid electric, a red Futurama III, and played in two local groups, The Pandas, formed by myself and three Skipton friends, and Sandra & The Montanas, a slightly more professional outfit based in nearby Cross Hills that gigged throughout the West Riding, often in Working Men’s Clubs. Both covered songs from the Beat Boom, but neither aspired to progress beyond the local circuit, let alone write their own material. When The Montanas opted to replace me with a keyboard player who owned his own PA system I accepted my fate and swopped my Futurama for a Hofner violin bass like Paul’s for no good reason than that I fancied owning a guitar like one played by a Beatle and this was the cheapest. 

        It was to come in handy. The climax to my casual career as a musician came when I was asked to dep for the absent bass player in The Black Sheep, by common consent Skipton’s top band, a six-piece that specialised in soul and R&B with a few Stones songs like ‘The Last Time’ and  ‘Jumpin’ Jack Flash’ thrown in for good measure. Their speciality was a note-for-note reproduction of Geno Washington & The Ram Jam Band’s Hand Clappin’ Foot Stompin’ Funky-Butt Live! LP, a record I still own, and a slew of Stax and Atlantic hits like ‘Knock On Wood’ and ‘In The Midnight Hour’. First of all, though, I needed to learn The Black Sheep’s repertoire and to this end spent an afternoon in the company of Richard Preston, esteemed not only as the best guitarist in Skipton but the owner of the best guitar in town, an orange Gretsch Tennessean, which he brought to our house. He taught me the bass lines to the songs and I practised them for hours. 

        The gig was the joint 21st birthday party of two friends of mine, one of them the son of my dad’s solicitor who in the fullness of time would become my lawyer too; still is for that matter. It took place in a marquee at his home in Grassington, up in the Dales. What made it all the more motivating was that many of my local friends would be there, among them girls I wanted to impress. I did, too, and one of them stepped out with me for a while afterwards. 

        Nevertheless, I was coming to the realisation that for all my enthusiasm I didn’t have what it took to become a real musician. I could learn the guitar chords to songs, lead parts, fills and even bass lines by rote but that was all. I couldn’t improvise. I was tone deaf and couldn’t sing for toffee. I didn’t have a musical ear which I believe is in the genes, and cannot come simply from practice. But none of this has ever stopped from me loving guitars, treating them as special, objects of desire, and, back in 1968, dreaming of the day when I could afford a Fender or a Gibson.  

* 

Every Friday I went on a day-release course at Bradford Technical College to learn the tradecraft of journalism, how to subedit copy quickly, how to reduce 500 words of copy to 300 and not lose its meaning, how to interview, how to enliven dull press releases, how copyright, criminal courts and government worked. I learned to proof read, write shorthand and type, and there was an English course that took me past A-level standard, the set text Catcher In The Rye by JD Salinger, so I absorbed alienation and anguish. It was drilled into me that the pinnacle of journalism was to work on Fleet Street in London.

        I reported from Skipton Magistrates’ Court where miscreants were fined for shoplifting, fighting or driving carelessly, and I made passing acquaintance with the town’s ne’er-do-wells and the lawyers who defended them. I visited the police station each morning and took down details of crimes committed in the last 24 hours, thefts of cars, break-ins and sheep rustling. I reported on council meetings where decisions were made to grant planning permissions, repair roads or relocate bus stops. I reported on the diamond wedding celebrations of elderly couples who were photographed holding their telegrams from the Queen. Little knowing what the future held, I reported on a concert in nearby Ilkley by the classical guitarist John Williams, my first ever music review.

        I also reported on potholing tragedies in which young men died underground when unexpected rainfall flooded the caverns they were exploring. These headline-grabbing stories attracted the attention of the national press which brought me into contact with reporters from national daily newspapers, usually from offices in Manchester, who arrived in the Dales wearing suits and ties and shiny shoes most unsuitable for trudging over the soggy moors where the Cave Rescue Organisation, among them friends of mine, did their work. In my wellies, sweater and anorak, I sniggered at these daily reporters. It was my first indication that I didn’t want to join them.

         Like everyone else on the course, I sailed through my journalism exams – there was a 90% pass rate so if you failed you were in the wrong job – and graduated to the Telegraph & Argus, the evening paper read by my dad, published in Bradford, commuting daily from Skipton by car, a Ford Escort I was bought on my 19th birthday. This was a big step up, a far more serious platform for my calling. The reporters’ room reeked of cigarette smoke, cheap perfume and deadline anxiety. At its centre was a large table at which we sat facing one another, manual typewriters clicking away amid piles of copy and carbon paper and overflowing ashtrays. Alongside one wall were phone booths to make calls away from the noise of the typing and people shouting. Downstairs in the basement huge printing presses started rumbling around noon and continued until late afternoon. It was exciting, at first anyway, a living thing, even if today’s paper wrapped tomorrow’s fish and chips.

         I worked shifts, sometimes late into the evening, calling the police, fire and ambulance on the hour until 2am and, when necessary, heading out into the night with a photographer to cover an accident or a fire. Once I had to knock on a door and request a photograph of a motorcycle crash victim from a grieving family; perhaps in shock, perhaps needing company, they welcomed me into their home and spoke at length about the teenage son who lay in a mortuary.

         All the while, humming away in the background, my first love was pop music, by 1968 morphing into rock. I had never missed Ready Steady Go! on TV. I switched from NME to Melody Maker. I saw Steam Packet at the Troutbeck in Ilkley, little knowing that their back-up singer, Rod Stewart, would one day become a star. Margaret, my first real girlfriend, the daughter of a Skipton publican, and I danced to ‘Eve Of Destruction’ at the Cow And Calf disco, up the road from the Troutbeck, where ultra violet lighting illuminated her white bra. On Saturday nights we went to Leeds Locarno or the Penny Farthing club in Bradford where we danced to Tamla Motown records, our favourites ‘Walk Away Renee’ by The Four Tops and ‘It Takes Two’ by Marvin Gare and Kim Weston.  

        Not many of my T&A colleagues shared my fondness for pop and I didn’t talk about it much at work, but through a chance conversation I discovered that the chief subeditor, Leon Hickman, was a music lover too. Together we approached the editor of the paper and suggested that the T&A might attract younger readers if half a page a week was devoted to a pop column, perhaps a review of a Bradford concert by a noted group, maybe some record reviews, or news of a local band’s tilt at success. To our delight he agreed. We called it The Swing Section and I began to write about music regularly for the first time.

        The first pop star I ever met was Sandie Shaw. In January 1969, Sandie and her then husband, the clothes designer Jeff Banks, produced a fashion line for Grattons, a big mail order company whose warehouse was in Bradford, and when Sandie visited to promote the clothes I was sent along to write about her, along with Sally Brown, another reporter whose knowledge of dress design was far greater than mine, and a photographer. After Sally talked to her about clothes, I cleared up the issue of her singing bare foot. “I do wear shoes most of the time,” she told me. “I just don’t sing in them.” The story I wrote was simply used to caption a photograph of her with some of the local girls who worked in the warehouse. Sandie was very tall and slim with legs that went on forever, and she wore a minidress that revealed far more thigh than was the norm in Bradford. I thought she was a very exotic creature indeed, like a gazelle or big cat. I was besotted. 

CC's (uncredited) story about Sandie Shaw's visit to Bradford. 

        I wrote off to record companies in London requesting review copies of records but the response was patchy. The first LP I ever reviewed was Shine On Brightly by Procol Harum. I reviewed local shows by Marmalade, Joe Cocker and The Move, speaking briefly to Roy Wood. On the phone from one of those booths in the reporters’ room I interviewed the guitarist Jimmy Page who told me about a new group he’d formed called Led Zeppelin, and John Paul Jones, the bass player, came on the line too. Jimmy told me they wouldn’t release singles or appear on TV. “We’re not like Herman’s Hermits,” he said. I wrote about how big groups often ignored Bradford when they toured the UK. I organised a beat group contest at the Penny Farthing and the winners were given an audition by Polydor Records. It wasn’t much but it was a start.

GILLIAN WELCH & DAVID RAWLINGS – Woodland Studios

I’ve waited a long time for this record, 13 years to be precise. Although there have been diversions in the form of live material, a covers album and multi-CD sets of demos and alternative versions of her older songs, that’s how long it’s been since Gillian Welch released The Harrow And The Harvest, her last album of newly recorded, original material. The Beatles released over 200 songs, the vast majority originals, in less time than that but Welch and her partner David Rawlings were stymied by the storm that seriously damaged their Woodland studio in 2020, and their pursuit of perfection is, of course, legendary. The word is that they recorded something in the region of 100 songs over the last decade, and these have been whittled down to the ten that appear on this album. 

        Furthermore, the lay off – if that’s the right term for it – has brought about a change in their working methods insofar as unlike on previous records by the pair Woodland Studios is not credited to Welch alone but also to Rawlings, and he takes the lead vocal on three tracks. In realty, of course, they’ve always been a duo in all but name. Also, there is a more complete feel to the production on this album, which isn’t to say that Welch’s earlier records were incomplete, just that she had established a rather spartan sound, a homespun, fireside feel that offered a sense of intimacy, as if she and David were singing just for you. On Woodland Studios just half the tracks feature Welch and Rawlings alone, with a full band – bass and drums with added pedal steel – on four and a hefty string section on two.  

        The subject matter hasn’t changed, however, and neither has the spikiness of Rawlings’ guitar, that easily recognisable sharp tonality. The songs remain desolate, the landscape barren, the protagonists in need of comfort. The freight train in the opening song, slowly chugging away, is empty; an analogy for America under its president elect? We can’t be sure but the outlook looks bleak. ‘What We Had’, the following track, highly pitched by David, looks back nostalgically to something lost, perhaps the storm-wrecked studio, its soft cadence enhanced by violins, violas and a cello deep in the mix. ‘Lawman’, the first by the duo alone, opens with a nod to ‘Bring A Little Water, Sylvie’, Lead Belly’s much-covered folk ballad, before mourning a lover’s death at the hands of law enforcement, while ‘The Bells And The Birds’ contrasts birdsong with peeling bells, its fragility lending it an ambience that could sit happily on any of Welch’s earlier albums.

        But for its full band arrangement, the same might be said of ‘North Country’, driven along by exquisitely-plucked guitars, a nagging, lilting figure, and harmony singing of the highest order. ‘Hashtag’, with hints at how covid unsettled our world – ‘Put another good one in the ground, Good lord it’s going ’round’ – is awash with melody, orchestral backing, Rawlings’ vocal lines warm and sympathetic. In contrast to ‘Riverboat song’, a gorgeous song of praise to an unnamed river on the Boots No 1 – The Official Revival Bootleg album, ‘The Day The Mississippi Died’ hints at a time when this mighty river might finally dry up, another touchstone for the state of America as it stands divided by politics, culture and inequality. 

        The remaining three songs, ‘Turf The Gambler’, ‘Here Stands A Woman’ and ‘Howdy Howdy’, revert to their established style, just Welch and Rawlings playing and singing together. The first, about the demise of a poker-playing down-and-out, has the feel of an ancient folk song, with added Dylanesque harmonica; the second, taken at a crawl, sees the protagonist looking into the mirror as she dwells despondently on her past; while the song that closes Woodland Studios is a rather melancholy contemplation on togetherness that belies its chirpy title and features Welch on softly plucked banjo. 

        Other reviewers have remarked at how the wistfulness of Welch and Rawlings’ songs is mixed with compassion, how the characters within them face a stark reality that is not always apparent from the America that advertises itself on television and in the movies, and in their struggle to overcome this reach towards a kind of heroism. I concur with this analysis. On yet another exquisitely crafted, long-awaited album, Welch and Rawlings lay bare some truths within songs of yearning and sorrow, just as they always have done and, I hope, will continue to do. It’s rumoured they’ll be visiting the UK again next year. I’ll be first in line for my tickets. 

ENTWISTLE’S OX, City Hall, Newcastle, December 8, 1974

Fifty years ago this weekend past, on a break from my posting as Melody Maker’s man in New York, I was in the north-east of England to witness the debut of Entwistle’s Ox. It was the only time during the career of the original group that any of its members undertook a full tour away from The Who. John’s bass actually made his band sound a lot like The Who and it brought home to me, and probably other Who fans who were there, how much John actually contributed to the noise The Who made.

Here’s what I wrote for the December 14, 1974, issue of MM, slightly re-edited. 

“This has cost a bomb so a few more quid won’t make any difference,” murmured John Entwistle as he signed a bar bill for slightly over £8 at the Five Bridges Hotel, Gateshead, on Sunday evening. “I mean… what’s money for? You can’t take it with you so I might as well spend it while I can.”

John Entwistle’s money is currently being spent on his latest passion, The Ox. Apart from being his nickname, The Ox is a rock and roll band of four, augmented by a saxophone player and two girl singer, who made their public debut in front of a sparse audience at Newcastle City Hall a few hours before John signed that bar bill and knocked back several large brandies. 

About 300 tickets were sold for the show, one of three warm up gigs planned this year. Next January they’re embarking on a 14-date British tour, mostly universities, and in February – all being well – The Ox are off to America where demand for Entwistle and his music is greater than in his home country.

The fact that so few people bought tickets for his opening concert didn’t appear to worry John in the slightest. In fact, he seemed surprised that 300 had bothered to cough up £1.25. The Ox is, in fact, a very expensive hobby. How much? I asked. “Oh, I dunno. About twenty-five grand,” said John.

As a band they’re pretty hot, though several rough edges need straightening out, and something has got to be done with the volume. For some reason, John chose to completely shatter his audience with the loudest music I’ve heard since Slade played Earls Court.

They were certainly a lot louder than The Who, a fact confirmed by sound man Bob Pridden, The Who’s regular sound mixer who’s just finished a stint with Eric Clapton. Bob is one of the best in the business, and when he grimaces over the volume then something is very wrong. Actually, John chose to use most of the Who’s amplification equipment and most of their crew for his show, so much so that the smallish City Hall stage contained enough gear to equip several bands.

“Next gig, I’m gonna leave some of them speakers behind,” Bob told me back at the hotel. “Bleedin’ daft. I’ve bin arguing with ’im all week over the bleedin’ gear. There’s enough stuff for a band to play Hyde Park and be ’eard in ’Ounslow.”

The Ox played for just over one hour and the material was a mixture of tracks from Entwistle’s solo albums, including one by The Ox due for release shortly, and the songs he has written for The Who. He opened with ‘My Wife’ and guitarist Robert Johnson began the show by cracking out the chords for ‘I Can’t Explain’. Other Who songs featured were ‘Boris The Spider’, ‘Whiskey Man’ and ‘Cousin Kevin’. They’d rehearsed ‘Heaven And Hell’ but didn’t play it as John completely forgot. 

It doesn’t take much to realise that John is an old rocker at heart. The set was liberally spiced with some beefy rock and roll, and he encored – yes, the 300 demanded an encore – with Eddie Cochran’s ‘Somethin’ Else’ and Little Richard’s ‘Keep A Knockin’’. One of the new songs was called ‘Cell No. 7’, apparently written when The Who were arrested in Montreal last December following a hotel fracas. 

The bass was turned up throughout and if the band does nothing else, it enables John to show off his bass technique splendidly. He really is one of the best white bass guitarists in the business. His runs are often stunning and his finger plucking technique is quite breathtaking, unbelievably fast. His lines ripple out like machine gun bullets and, at the volume he chose to use, they had an odd effect on the audience. Shell shock, I guess.

Robert Johnson is good guitarist too, but he was frequently lost in the mix. I kept waiting for him to spin his arm around but he didn’t. The band don’t really need a drummer – Entwistle’s bass is a one-man rhythm section – but Graham Deacon fought manfully on, often unheard.

The Who numbers went down the best but requests for ‘Postcard’ – from Odds And Sods – went ignored. They did a knockout version of ‘Not Fade away’ and a curious instrumental called ‘Jungle Bunny’ which featured backing tapes and appeared to come unstuck towards the end. It was a dull tune, anyway.

‘Cousin Kevin’ – with girl singers – was a highlight but ‘Whiskey Man’ didn’t come off as well as it could have done. John is best doing straight rock and roll: his grating voice suits the 12-bar structure; he’d make a suitable replacement in The Wild Angels or their ilk anytime.

I think they were a little under-rehearsed. In the bar of the hotel before the gig, the saxophone player was busy copying down chords on scraps of paper. “Just to make sure,” he said after thanking me for a mention in the Raver column several years ago when his horn was pinched. 

I enjoyed myself and I think everyone else did, not least the fetching Miss Doreen Chanter (one of the two girl singers) who attracted much attention back at the hotel. Her sister Irene went to bed early as she had a session at Trident Studios in London the following day. 

One final point: it was refreshing that John laid himself open in such an unpretentious fashion. None of that bleating about keeping the press away from the opening concert from The Ox, and all power to John for it.