PUB ROCK by Mark Wilkerson

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

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

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

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

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

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

MANCHESTER MUST DANCE by Mike Pickering

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

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

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

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

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

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

LONDON FALLING by Patrick Radden Keefe

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

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

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

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

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

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

        Now, back to Mike Pickering. 

THE ROLLING STONES – by Bob Spitz

Led by multimillionaires Sir Michael Philip Jagger and the now abstemious Keith Richards, The Rolling Stones are as solid a fixture in the British psyche as the Royal Family, the Houses of Parliament and 100-year-old naturalist Sir David Attenborough. This was not always the case, however. Indeed, for the first 15 or so years of a career that seems eternal, they were looked upon by the forces of law and order as desperadoes and misfits, a menace to society, a shocking manifestation of undisciplined adolescents whose long hair, scruffy clothes and jungle music was an affront to polite civilisation. “Lock ’em up,” they cried and, by golly, they almost succeeded.

This doorstopper of a biography by US writer Bob Spitz is therefore a timely reminder of those times, essential reading for anyone who became a Stones fan during the last 40 years or so, which I’ll wager is the vast majority of those who during that time have packed stadiums around the world and paid top dollar to watch Jagger and Co strut their stuff on stages large enough to accommodate the many offspring Jagger, Richards (and Brian Jones) have sired between them. For this generation of fans, that tongue and lips logo is as universal as the curvy contours of a Coca-Cola bottle, the cowbell intro to ‘Honky Tonk Women’ as recognisable as any national anthem and The Rolling Stones a byword for a dependable night out of rollicking rock and roll. 

Spitz has worked very hard to document the lives and times of the Stones and, like most biographers of rock performers who’ve stayed the course, his focus is almost exclusively on the early years. By the halfway point of this 690-page book we’re still in the 1960s, on the tour that led up to Altamont, not yet a quarter into the group’s lifespan; 150 pages later, in 1975, Jagger is vainly defending the cover of Black And Blue; 100 pages after that we’ve reached the acknowledgements followed by 90 pages of end matter. All of which demonstrates how Spitz has prudently concluded that once the Stones became rich, touring the world every three or four years – seven such tours are helpfully itemised in one paragraph on page 586 – to amass vast fortunes, their story becomes repetitive, even dull; far better to concentrate on the shenanigans that came before, the naughty years on which their legend was built.

        This, of course, is anything but dull and neither is the book. At its heart are the many chapters that cover the period between 1965 and 1975, which relate the extraordinary highs and lows of the Stones’ saga: fan mania that rivals The Beatles; pissing on garage forecourts; the Redlands and other drug busts; the court appearances; Jagger’s blustery relationship with Marianne Faithfull; the Brian/Anita/Keith love triangle; Jones’ downfall and death; the financial squeeze after falling out with US co-manager Allen Klein; Let It Bleed, Sticky Fingers and Exile On Main Street – the great triumvirate of Stones’ masterworks; the nightmare of Altamont and its repercussions; Richards’ debilitating heroin addiction; tax exile in France; and, finally, back on the road as a stadium-filling juggernaut. 

        Quite how Jagger, firmly in charge after Klein and early manager Andrew Oldham are dismissed, found the reserves of mental stamina to deal with it all while writing songs and fronting the group on stage boggles the mind. Spitz covers all these high jinks in great and often illuminating detail, a roller-coaster ride through the Stones’ devil-may-care years that makes this central section of his book a page-turner of the highest order, most especially when recounting the mischief that occurred at Nellcôte, Richards’ hideaway on the French Riviera that became a flophouse for every ne’er do well for miles around.

        Before and after all this, the momentum isn’t quite as recklessly debauched. Assembling the group from the pool of London’s young blues devotees took time but, unlike The Beatles, there was no Hamburg or Liverpool to hone their chops on stage for three years before fame beckoned. Once the right five had found each other, it happened quite quickly, as did the notoriety stoked by Oldham who was brilliant at PR but out his depth controlling this bunch of strong-willed characters. Bill Wyman and Charlie Watts keep their noses clean for the most part, maintaining a low profile during the mayhem; Jones, acknowledged early on as the best musician in the group, is fragile, losing his way, an accident waiting to happen; and, once they started writing songs together, Jagger and Richards take control, each reliant on the other though no prizes for guessing who was the most unreliable, at least until he weaned himself off heroin following that 1977 Toronto bust. Mick Taylor, who never really fitted in, comes and goes. Ron Wood is a far better fit, musically and mentally. WAGS come and go. 

        An awful lot is crammed into the final two chapters. The penultimate finds Jagger and Richards at loggerheads, the bone of contention the former’s stab at a solo career, and for a while the group’s future is in serious doubt. Meanwhile, they lose Ian Stewart, the Rolling Stone who doesn’t get his photograph taken, Watts goes off the rails, and Wyman hits the headlines through his courtship of 13-year-old Mandy Smith whom he would marry when she turned 18. Exhausted, he leaves the band four years later.

        The final chapter concertinas the period from around 1993 to the present day, 30+years, and closes, rightly, with the death of Charlie Watts and a moving report of the tribute night at Ronnie Scott’s organised by his great friend and fellow jazz enthusiast Dave Green. A brief epilogue finds the author attending a 2024 Stones show in Los Angeles. “Mick and Keith were both eighty years old,” notes Spitz.

        The book’s only flaw is that it is written with an American accent, almost certainly a reflection of its intended market. While the size of America – where in some parts the weekly grocery shop involves a day-long round trip – can perhaps explain how Dartford is described as “around the corner” from Ealing (they’re 65 miles apart), and Cheltenham is “nearby” to Guilford (about 100 miles apart), the vast majority of reviews quoted are from US media, and the UK – the country of the Stones’ birth, after all – doesn’t get much of a look in after the group has decamped to France. As an example, their barnstorming 2013 Glastonbury appearance doesn't merit a mention. Still, this is a minor quibble in what is the most substantial Stones book I’ve read since Keith Richards’ Life in 2010. 

        As stated, the book has 690 pages, plus two 16-page picture sections, includes lengthy source notes and a decent index. The front cover features a magnificent portrait of Jagger and Richards by Norman Seeff, albeit from the era of Mick Taylor, who is on the reverse alongside Wyman and Watts. I think Woody or Jones belong there myself. 

PAUL SIMON – A QUIET CELEBRATION, London Palladium, May 18, 2026

If a top of the range, precision engineered Rolex wristband could sing, play guitar, compose songs, had a sense rhythm and a spoonful of soul, its name would be Paul Simon. He and his band were as precise as a Swiss timepiece at the London Palladium last night, yet there was nothing sterile about the concert. Perhaps acknowledging that at 84 he is on his last lap, Simon brought an element of simple humanity into his performance, a warmth communicated by his hand gestures and introductions to songs, his stature acknowledged by a respectful audience that only once broke out into song themselves, the “lie-la-lie” chorus from ‘The Boxer’, the penultimate song of the evening, and as this well-known, nearly universal melody echoed harmoniously around me, I knew with absolute certainty that there was nowhere else in the world I would rather be last night than seat O42 in the stalls of this 116-year-old theatre. 

The concert was divided into two unequal halves. For the first 33 minutes Simon, soberly dressed in a dark suit, and his band performed Seven Psalms, his 2023 album, in its entirely, seven separate movements uninterrupted with a recurring theme in which Simon defines his view of ‘The Lord’, uncertain at times, elliptical elsewhere, though describing his ‘Lord’ as a “welcome to a stranger” seems to me like a mild rebuke of the anti-immigration policies of the current White House. Although a repeated guitar chord change sounds a bit like the intro to ‘Feeling Groovy’, with the possible exception of ‘My Professional Opinion’, these songs, or psalms, don’t swing, but there’s an intimacy to them that reviewers have rightly compared to David Bowie’s Blackstar, his final statement. In Simon’s case the circumstances are underlined by the knowledge that he is now partially deaf in one ear and in 2019 caught Covid: “Broke me like a twig in a winter gale”, he sings. He, and we, are lucky he’s still here. 

The 11-piece band, of which more later, are rehearsed to fine detail, each note played or percussion tool hit arriving at the precise moment, almost like clockwork, and, as on the record, Simon is joined for two of the pieces by his wife Edie Brickell. When it is over – “It’s time to come home” is the final line – everyone rises and bows. That wouldn’t have been out of place at the Proms, I thought as the house lights came up to announce a 20-minute interval.  

In 2018, in what was billed at his farewell tour, Paul Simon filled London’s Hyde Park, tens of thousands cheering a set that included all the songs, all the hits, that all the people wanted to hear. This time, maybe the last time, he has restricted himself in London to four much smaller shows, two at the Royal Albert Hall and two at the Palladium, and the far more intimate setting enables him to select songs from his vast catalogue with greater care. There are some he can’t leave out (though there was no ‘America’, ‘Mrs Robinson’, ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’, ‘Mother And Child Reunion’ or ‘You Can Call Me Al’) but others performed during the lengthier second set saw a deep dive into his repertoire, a reflection perhaps of the songs he wanted to play as opposed to songs he feels an obligation to play.

Having changed into more casual attire, Simon opened the 17-song second set with ‘Graceland’, followed by ‘Slip Slidin’ Away’, ‘Train In The Distance’ and ‘Homeward Bound’, every one acknowledged after the opening bars. I noted subtle variations in his phrasing, and here and there his band of superb instrumentalists offered fills above and beyond the recorded versions. Simon, mostly seated, played acoustic guitar for almost all the songs, the two guitarists in his band, Mark Stewart and Gyan Riley, deferring to him when necessary, but the reality was that he didn’t need to play at all. When he did, however, it was clear that age has in no way diminished his skills as an instrumentalist. The others in the band – Mick Rossi on piano and percussion, Jamey Haddad on percussion, Matt Chamberlin on drums, Bakithi Kumalo on bass guitar, Andy Snitzer on reeds, Jamey Haddad on percussion, Matt Chamberlin on drums, Nancy Stagnitta on flute, Caleb Burhans on viola and Eugene Friesen on cello – interjected deftly, soloing with brilliance occasionally, though none were introduced by name aside from Kumalo, whom Simon noted was the last surviving member of the group that performed and toured with him during the Graceland era. 

I was charmed by two songs from the often unfairly overlooked Hearts And Bones album: ‘The Late Great Johnny Ace’, on which images of Johnny Ace, JFK and John Lennon were projected onto a screen at the rear, and ‘Renee And Georgette Magritte With Their Dog After The War’, inspired by the caption to a photograph of the French painter and his wife that, as he explained, Paul saw in a book and thought was a good title for a song. I don’t believe this dreamy, slightly surreal song, long a favourite of mine, has been performed live before.

Two selections from Rhythm Of The Saints, ‘Spirit Voices’ and ‘Cool Cool River’, offered plenty of opportunity for the vast array of percussion on stage to be utilised, and Edie Brickell joined Simon for ‘Under African Skies’ from Graceland. ‘Me And Julio’, on which Simon seemed to me to drop an octave here and there, inspired some clapping from the audience that soon petered out, and the first set of encores opened with ‘Darling Lorraine’, another stage first, that traces the arc of a love affair in occasionally graphic detail. The audience sat spellbound until the mood was broken with ‘Something So Right’ and ‘Fifty Ways To Leave Your Lover’. 

After that emotionally draining reading of ‘The Boxer’ everyone left the stage apart from Simon who picked up his acoustic guitar to welcome back his old friend the darkness, his first hit, recorded with Art Garfunkel just over 62 years ago. ‘Sound Of Silence’ conveys the simple message that better communication amongst mankind might create a better world, that human relationships are deteriorating in the era of mass communication, of television and telephones. Written long before the advent of computers and mobile phones, let alone AI, that message seems even more pertinent today. Slow down, Simon seems to be saying, slow down and communicate with one another, and then, only then, will we be saved from unwelcome by-products of the 20th – and now 21st – Century. This whole concert, I felt as I left the theatre, was a triumph of communication. 

(The photograph at the top of this post was lifted from Paul Simon's own website; the bottom one by Lisa Pettibone.) 

BIGGER THAN THE BEATLES: SIXTY YEARS IN SHOWBUSINESS by Richard Ogden

In a month when Paul McCartney releases his first new album since 2021, I have it on good authority that it’s not much fun being his manager. He’s demanding, difficult to please and inclined towards throwing tantrums behind closed doors. He doesn’t like to lose money on tour or be told that, heaven forbid, a new song he’s just written isn’t quite as good as some he’s written in the past. He loves applause but doesn’t like the word no. When Richard Ogden, who managed Paul from 1987 to 1993, suggested he needed a yes-man as a manager, Paul responded by saying that a yes-man was better than a no-man. 

        When Ogden finally threw in the towel his relationship with McCartney had deteriorated to the extent that they were barely speaking. “Dealing with him had become even more difficult than it was when I first started,” he writes in his self-published memoir of a lifetime in the music industry, “and his dissatisfaction with me was affecting Linda who, as everybody who worked at MPL [McCartney Productions Ltd] knew, tended to ‘get it in the neck’ first when the boss was unhappy… it wasn’t unusual for my ‘McCartney hotline’ phone to ring first thing and for a tearful Linda to warn me that all was not well with His Nibs.”

        Richard Ogden began his long career in music as the Press Officer for United Artists Records at the start of the seventies and ended up promoting massive concerts in Brazil, a country where he lives for some of the year today and clearly loves. In the meantime, as head honcho at various record labels his paths crossed professionally with any number of A-list superstars, and his book is unusually honest, truth to power that spares no blushes when it comes to revealing precisely how everyone – including himself – behaves in the music industry, not just the stars but their entourages, their agents and promoters, record company minions and, sometimes, even their romantic partners. Also, and rarely for this kind of book, we get a taste of the money involved, not just what Richard earned but also pretty much everyone else. 

        The four chapters that deal with McCartney are at the heart of the book and, in light of McCartney’s enormous fame, the most interesting. Indeed, the book’s title is a quote from Paul himself, shouted to Ogden after a concert in Brazil that, at the time, attracted the biggest paying audience in the history of rock. The way Ogden tells it, the issues surrounding that concert alone would put anyone off managing a big rock star for life, even if he did meet his future wife from among the local promoter’s staff. 

        Elsewhere, you can read about Ogden’s encounters with The Rolling Stones, Black Oak Arkansas, Black Sabbath, The Motors, that troublesome Michael Jackson statue, Aerosmith, Ricky Martin, eternally unsociable Van Morrison and many more. He has a chatty, informal style of writing and is inclined to veer off at tangents, leaving his readers momentarily wondering quite where they are, but above all there’s an honesty – we learn about his mistakes as well as his achievements – to his writing that is too often lacking in books where the author in disinclined to offend anyone. Richard Ogden evidently doesn’t give a hoot whether or not he upsets people, famous or otherwise, which gives his book a refreshing dose of authenticity. These days, he’d have been asked to sign an NDA and, though most of what Ogden writes about occurred long before celebrities sought to rigorously enforce confidentiality among their employees, it’s perhaps convenient for him that there is no extradition treaty between the UK and Brazil. 

        Finally, I should mention that, like many self-published books, Bigger Than The Beatles suffers from sloppy production, poor photo reproduction and inadequate indexing. Nevertheless, it has 438 pages, making it good value for a tenner, and can be obtained at: https://www.thegreatbritishbookshop.co.uk/products/bigger-than-the-beatles-sixty-years-in-showbusiness?_pos=1&_sid=dbc6035c2&_ss=r

POWER TO THE PEOPLE: JOHN & YOKO LIVE IN NYC

Concert appearances by John following the dissolution of The Beatles can be counted on the fingers of one hand. George was first off the mark with his 1971 show to relieve suffering in Bangladesh, by which he single-handedly invented the concept of the big rock charity show, and Paul wasn’t far behind with Wings, starting small and winding up in arenas. Ringo bided his time before launching his All Starr Band, a good-time supergroup with changing personnel and repertoire that enabled old timers to strut their stuff in the autumn of their years. 

        John, on the other hand, seemed strangely reluctant to set foot on stage, perhaps due to stage fright, perhaps because high profile stage appearance might jeopardise his uncertain immigration status in the US, perhaps because he simply couldn’t be bothered. In August of 1972, however, he topped the bill at what was called the One To One concerts, afternoon and evening shows at Madison Square Garden in New York that attracted 20,000 each, all for charity. 

        Backed by New York rockers Elephant’s Memory – christened for the occasion The Plastic Ono Elephant’s Memory Band and augmented by Yoko, drummer Jim Keltner and a second bass player – John’s sets at these shows were filmed and while various clips of varying length have been shown over the years, the whole show – or most of it – has now been turned into a 90-minute movie, the upgrading process overseen by a team headed by Sean, his son. I watched it last week at the Addlestone Light Cinema near Chertsey, a wonderful picture house where the comfy seats are huge and recline, alongside five others in a screening room that could have housed 100 or more. 

        It was not clear whether I was watching the afternoon or evening performance and it may be that what was up on the occasionally split screen was what the producers considered to be the superior song renditions from both. Either way, it was clear that John meant business. He’d put the Elephant guys through their paces over the preceding days and, in his dirty jeans, military shirt and cowboy boots, he’s the generalissimo at the head of a small revolutionary army intent on getting across an agitprop agenda in line with his soon to be released Some Time In New York City LP. 

        As the world knows, Some Time… was neither an artistic nor a commercial success, its strident lyrics about feminism, racism, Irish troubles and the Attica prison riots set to fairly basic rock and roll that somehow never reached the musical standards we expected from John, this despite production from Phil Spector who was watching over the recording process at the Garden. Nevertheless, Elephant’s Memory played with plenty of heart, especially saxophonist Stan Bronstein, who soloed prodigiously, and, to lesser extent, guitarist Wayne Gabriel. Keltner was no doubt brought on board to ensure that everyone kept proper time. 

        Yoko played an electric piano and gamely sang four songs in her customary shrieking style, a bit squeaky on the top notes, her braless chest leaving little to the imagination behind a white top adding to the rather curious nature of her unorthodox musical approach. “Open your box, open your trousers, open your sex, open your legs,” she yelled during ‘Open Your Box’, the B-side of John’s ‘Power To The People’, adding that it was banned in the USA. Not surprising really. Her other songs were equally uncompromising. 

        But it was John they’d all come to see and he doesn’t disappoint, even if many of the songs he sang from the upcoming Sometime In… were unfamiliar to the enthusiastic audience. For all but one he played a reddish-brown Gibson Melody Maker guitar worn high on his chest, Beatles-style, probably the same one I clocked on the sofa in the house he was occupying in LA in November of 1973, switching to a Gibson Thunderbird to play bottleneck only on ‘Cold Turkey’. He stuck to rhythm throughout, barring up and down his fretboard which, to some extent, he used as a conductor’s baton to marshal the band. He left the trickier guitar parts to Wayne Gabriel. It was the first (and last) band I’d ever seen with two bass players.

        It was telling that ‘Come Together’, from Abbey Road, was rapturously received – before playing it John stated it would be the only nod to his past – and after feeling his disease John sang “over you”, not “over me”. He changed the words in ‘Imagine’, too, referring to the “brotherhood and sisterhood of man”, in keeping with his newfound feminist solidarity. His readings of both ‘Cold Turkey’ and, most especially, ‘Mother’ were incendiary. Before ‘Mother’ he instructed Keltner to “keep it steady” and you could have heard a pin drop in the Garden as John intoned ‘Mother, you had me but I never had you,’ his throat searing vocals screeched as if his life depended on it. I also rather liked ‘New York City’, played at the start as an update to the 1969 Beatle travelogue song ‘Ballad Of John And Yoko’, and he certainly enjoyed himself on ‘Hound Dog’, the penultimate number of his set.  

        The combined cast of thousands – acts who’d played before John for about five hours if contemporary accounts are to be believed – came on stage to join in ‘Give Peace A Chance’, played at John’s insistence with a reggae rhythm. Among them were Stevie Wonder, Melanie, Roberta Flack, members of Sha Na Na, Spector, David Peel, Alan Ginsberg and the girls from a New York band called Teenage Lust whom I would befriend during my New York stint two years later. Realising that the melee was getting out of hand, John and Yoko disappeared from the stage without taking a final bow, their contribution over. 

        At times during the film the camera focuses exclusively on John, his face filling the screen to the extent that you can make out the individual hairs of his sideburns, his slightly pinched nose and the strong lenses in his tinted granny glasses. His command of the stage is absolute and if this footage was scrutinised by Nixon’s henchmen they would have detected the extraordinary intensity of John’s performance, communicated to an adoring crowd that, should he have wished, would have followed him anywhere, not least the Capitol Building in Washington DC, to protest against the iniquities of American’s ruling elite. It’s no wonder they wanted to chuck him out. 

(Screen grabs courtesy of Lisa Pettibone, aka Mrs C.)

THE BRINSLEYS & THE BAND

In September 1974 The Band rehearsed for a Wembley Stadium show at the farmhouse in Beaconsfield owned by Brinsley Schwarz who had lived there together for almost three years. It was keyboard player Bob Andrews who set the wheels in motion, calling a publicist he knew to ask if he could meet The Band’s Garth Hudson. Sure, said the publicist, but do you know anywhere where the Band could rehearse while they’re in the UK. How about our farmhouse, replied Andrews. 

The story of how Brinsley Schwarz hosted their idols is told in Graham Parker’s Howlin Wind by Jay Nachman, published last year by Tangible Press, a copy of which the author mailed to me recently after I helped with his research into UK pub rock. 

“We were wildly excited, if you can be wildly excited and stoned at the same time,” Brinsley Schwarz told Nachman when he heard that The Band were on their way to Beaconsfield.

“The Brinsley Schwarz members were starstruck when their musical idols climbed out of their limo,” writes Nachman. “Using Brinsley Schwarz’s gear, The Band set up in the barn and began to play. The members of Brinsley Schwarz crammed together on the steps outside, and for approximately two hours they were treated to a private concert.”

“They sounded exactly like they did on the records, which is another quite extraordinary thing about them,” said Brinsley. “They sounded just like The Band.”

What’s more Hudson stayed behind after his four fellow Band members left and for about 20 minutes played “every genre under the sun on Andrews’ Lowie organ, from classical music to rock to Southern rock and more. The members of Brinsley Schwarz stood behind him in awe. “He would subtly change the sound he was laying,” said Schwarz. “And then he would change the playing to suit the sound. He would evoke Southern states’ music. He pulled up images of Virginia and the War of Independence and all of that stuff. He would just hold a note or two, he’d just change a few switches and things on the organ and suddenly you’d be into Mozart. It was mind-blowing. His mastery of the instrument was better than sensational.”

“At one point I said to Garth, ‘You’re the best keyboard player in the world’,” Andrews recalled. “And he said, ‘Well, time to go’. I blew it. It was the thrill of lifetime to be that close to somebody who you’d been admiring for years.”

“Schwarz, a devoted fan of The Band to this day, regards Robbie Robertson as a favourite guitarist,” writes Nachman. “After Hudson left, the Brinsleys wandered back into the barn to play ‘The Weight’, ‘The Shape I’m In’, ‘The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down’ and other Band songs. Hoping to capture Robertson’s sound, Schwarz plugged his guitar into his amp, the same one Robertson had played through, using Robertson’s cable, which the guitarist had left behind. Out came nothing but a discouraging lesson.”

“I plugged into my amp,” said Brinsley, “I had a look at the settings, which were almost exactly like mine, and played and it sounded like me, very annoyingly, and not like him at all. I thought, ‘How does he sound so much like himself and I can’t even sound remotely like him?’ That is one of the things about guitar players who are always searching for this magical sound that they have in their heads.” 

Both Brinsley Schwarz and Bob Andrews subsequently joined The Rumour, Graham Parker’s backing band, whose story is told in Howlin’ Wind, alongside that of Parker who was interviewed at length for the book. Here’s a link: https://grahamparkershowlinwind.net/

BOWIE ODYSSEY 76 by Simon Goddard

There was only ever one picture for the front cover of Bowie Odyssey 76, the coolest mug shot ever taken, this one on 21 March in Rochester, NY, after he and others were busted for drugs at the Americana hotel. As is the way with touring musicians, members of his entourage had invited a pair of likely looking girls back to the hotel, perhaps to enjoy a post-gig romp, only to discover they were plain clothes cops out to bust that notorious drug abuser David Bowie who was bound to have a sack of cocaine on his person.

In the event all they found was a bag of marijuana but it was still a pickle that David could do without and it wasn’t the only pickle that David found himself in during 1976. There was a cash-flow problem stemming from his fall out with ex-manager Tony Defries, an ongoing dispute with wife Angie, now largely absent from his life and soon to be shown the door, and an alarming pre-occupation with all things Nazi which, unhappily, coincided with the rise of the English National Front whose cause was championed by a bigoted bus driver called Robert Relf. 

All of this – not least the trials and tribulations of Mr Relf – are covered in forensic detail by Simon Goddard in this most recent episode of his fly-on-the-wall Bowie Odyssey series. As with the previous six books, it’s another eye-opening read, no quarter given as David’s topsy-turvy life is exposed as not quite as wonderful as it might seem to those outside the glass bubble in which he exists. Only two are permitted inside: Coco, his indispensable, devoted handmaiden who tends to his domestic requirements and diary, making sure he’s where and when he’s supposed to be and maybe warming his bed if no other candidates are available, and Jim, aka Iggy, brought on board as a playmate and musical foil, with whom Coco doesn’t necessarily see eye to eye. 

It’s the year of the Thin White Duke, the black and white tour that promoted Station To Station, which is a roaring success and fills empty coffers, and resettlement in Berlin where, having grown an unsightly moustache, David can mingle without being recognised, some of the time anyway. Romy Haag is lurking, England stinks of right wing dung, the punks are waiting in the wings and aside from a pre-occupation with that loathsome Relf fellow, Odyssey 76 is, like 70 to 75, riveting stuff.  

THE WHO: Playhouse Theatre 1967

Still unable to resist the allure of a Who LP I hadn’t seen before, I gave in to temptation the other week and parted with £15 at a record fair in Cranleigh for this 12” vinyl disc on the Expensive Woodlands Recordings label. It comprises 12 tracks purported to have been recorded live in 1967 at the 1,200-capacity Playhouse Theatre on Northumberland Avenue close to the Embankment tube station in Central London. It was probably a mistake. 

        No such gig took place, at least not according to Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere by Andy Neill & Matt Kent and the (almost as reliable) Who Concert File by Joe McMichael and ‘Irish’ Jack Lyons, though the theatre was used by the BBC for recording radio sessions between 1951 and 1976. This led me to believe that the songs that appear on the LP were recorded for shows on Radio One or its predecessor the Light Programme, as confirmed when I played the record which, as it happened, was more than somewhat warped, though by no means all were recorded at the Playhouse Theatre. No details beyond the song’s titles appear on the disc or its sleeve, which is a gatefold featuring this group shot, photographer unknown, on the front cover and photo taken on stage at the Monterey festival across the fold-out interior. 

        From side 1, ‘Run Run Run’, ‘Boris The Spider’, ‘Happy Jack’ and ‘See My Way’, were recorded at the Playhouse (on 17 January, 1967), and are followed by ‘Pictures Of Lily’ and ‘A Quick One (While He’s Away)’, recorded at De Lane Lea Studios on 15 October, 1967. All six tracks are included on the BBC Sessions CD released in 1999. 

        Side 2, however, features six tracks recorded for the BBC not included on the Sessions CD, though one of them, ‘Happy Jack’, is a repeat, albeit a slightly different mix. The remainder I heard before on a cassette tape I was given many years ago by George McManus, then the back catalogue marketing manager at Polydor, who was seeking information from me about The Who’s BBC tracks, and which I wrote about here: https://justbackdated.blogspot.com/2015/07/the-who-bbc-sessions_17.html

        The other five on side 2 are ‘I Can’t Reach You’, ‘I Can See For Miles’, ‘Summertime Blues’, ‘So Sad About Us’ and ‘My Generation’, none of which were included on the Sessions CD, no doubt because – as I reported in that post of 17 July, 2015 – they are virtually identical to the studio recordings. The performances are exemplary, as you would expect, and there are some slight changes to the mix, including a more prominent bass here and there, which suggests John might have been asked to oversee remixing the tracks for BBC use. The reasons for this are explained in my earlier post. 

        I still have the C90 cassette that George, who died in 2014, gave me, and it includes all the tracks on this LP, which means I spent £15 on something I already had – not the first time in regard to The Who. Still, it looks nice alongside my other Who vinyl records of questionable legality.