DREAMS – THE MANY LIVES OF FLEETWOOD MAC by Mark Blake

Had William Shakespeare lived in the 20th Century he’d have written plays about the UK’s great rock groups instead of kings, queens and ill-fated lovers who communicate from balconies. All the elements are there: feuds, deceit, romance, jealously, madness, death, and nothing personifies these plot lines more than the epic saga of Fleetwood Mac, whose 18 participants are helpfully itemised by Mark Blake whose cast of characters resembles dramatis personae in a theatre programme.  

Only two of those 18, Mick Fleetwood and John McVie, are on stage throughout the performance, which lasts for 55 years, assuming the death of Christine McVie in 2022 brings down the final curtain. These characters are listed alphabetically, with the first, Bekka Bramlett, ‘fired by fax’, and the last, Bob Weston, ‘fired for adultery’. In between we find unlikely actors like Dave Mason and Neil Finn, respectively better known for their roles in Traffic and Crowded House, but topping the bill alongside Mick, John and Christine are Peter Green, their original guitarist, and Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks whose arrival in 1975 brought about the renaissance that propelled Fleetwood Mac to the stratosphere, guaranteeing them lines around the block (and on mirrors), bulging bank accounts and fantasy lifestyles in line with midsummer night’s dreams.

It’s a complicated plot, a daunting task for any playwright, and Mark Blake presents it in seven acts, each containing many scenes, 108 in total, some quite brief, others far longer, individually dealing with an aspect of FM, a musician, a song, an LP or an event, in roughly chronological sequence, albeit skewed slightly by Blake’s decision, probably wise, to bring almost everyone’s story up to date at the earliest opportunity. By this means he steers a steady passage through the choppy waters of FM’s story, a turbulent stream that has been navigated before, albeit not quite so methodically. Lest methodical suggests dry, fear not however: some scenes, mostly the shorter ones, are as quirky as you’ll find anywhere, which is entirely in keeping with the comedy and drama that has visited Fleetwood Mac over the years, much of it – but by no means all – of their own making. 

        Act I opens with Peter Green, legendary blues guitar hero whose greatest skill, unlike many of his peers, was always knowing what not to play, but who was once cautioned by police for hitting a neighbour with a loaf of bread. “It made me very sad,” says John McVie, which sums up the general attitude towards the founding FM father’s mental decline. The final Act closes with the death of Christine, FM’s secret weapon, a discreet team player, forever unobtrusive yet crucial to their pop success, which I’m sure made everyone who’s ever owned an FM record very sad too.

        Green is followed by Bob Brunning, their earliest bass player, who lasted just two months and left FM to become a schoolteacher. He’s one of several whose roles are somewhere between supporting actors and extras in the story; his stay was the shortest. Next, we leap to Mick, the joint longest in terms of years and by far the longest in terms of feet and inches, and here we’re into the meat of the book where the depth of research is selective but admirable, by which I mean Blake omits the dull stuff but focuses on the eccentricity, not least his pre-occupation with genitalia and wildly fluctuating bank account. 

        There’s lots more weird stuff as we progress through this complex tale. Next up is Jeremy Spencer who, like Green, was deranged by religion, rather more so in fact, quitting without telling anyone in the band to join The Children of God, and, in later years, returning to music with the sect’s approval. Next up is John, Mick’s loyal but boozy partner, who is as dull as dishwater compared to just about everyone else. 

        There’s diversions, among them a meditation on ‘Albatross’ and the identity of the black magic woman, before we arrive at the fate of FM’s third troubled guitarist, Danny Kirwan, writer of ‘Dragonfly’, who, in 1980, was sleeping on a park bench. “I couldn’t handle the lifestyle and the women and the travelling,” he says. Danny died from pneumonia, aged 68, in a care home in south London. Then, in what is becoming an almost predictable tradition, another guitarist, American Bob Welch, comes and goes, his great contribution persuading the others to move to California where, it turns out, a pot of gold awaits at the end of Sunset Boulevard. 

        Before this happens, however, Christine has married John, they’ve all moved into a country house in Hampshire, a singer called Dave Walker and another guitarist, Bob Weston, have been and gone, the latter axed for embarking on an affair with Mick Fleetwood’s wife Jenny, sister of Pattie Boyd-Harrison-Clapton. This leaves the group in disarray, not for the first time, stranded in California with nothing on the horizon, which prompts manager Clifford Davis to recruit five random musicians, call them Fleetwood Mac and send them on an American tour, an episode curiously mirrored in attempts by phoneys to impersonate Jeremy Spencer and Peter Green. Around the same time Christine starts an affair with studio engineer Martin Birch. Could the unrelenting drama get any worse? 

        It does, but not before things get better and better. By now we’ve reached Act III in Blake’s book, the arrival of Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks who turn the group’s fortunes around and within two years they’re one of the best-selling bands of all time. Having abandoned their blues roots they embrace AOR and, rightly, the ‘white’ album and Rumours get fulsome coverage, not that everyone’s amorous exploits take a back seat. In fact, it is almost de rigour for everyone in the group’s inner circle to leap in and out of bed with colleagues, employees or friends; Mick with Stevie, Christine with a lighting guy, Stevie with an Eagle, Lindsey with a costume designer called Carol, to whom Rod Stewart took a fancy and who, as a result, is swiftly escorted from her midst. 

        Act IV deals with Rumours and takes us to Tusk, the era when FM’s spending knew no bounds, mostly on drugs. I was relieved to learn that stories about Stevie having cocaine blown up her backside have no basis in fact. Act V features Mirage and Tango In The Night, and includes a detour about Christine’s ill-considered romance with doomed Beach Boy Dennis Wilson who spent lavishly on her, albeit with her own money, and others about Billy Burnette and Rick Vito, dual understudies for Buckingham when he went awol, as he was prone to do. Much the same applies to Dave Mason and Bekka Bramlett who understudied for Christine, though the Rumours quintet regrouped – not entirely amicably – for Bill Clinton’s presidential inauguration ball in 1993. 

        With two acts to go, I was beginning to admire Mark Blake’s stamina. Act VI opens by dissecting The Dance, FM’s live album, and closes with a scene about penguins that reveals how John McVie, who has one tattooed on his right forearm, can tell the difference between an Adélie, a Gentoo, a rockhopper and a Humboldt. Act VII covers the recruitment of two further Buckingham understudies, Neil Finn and Tom Petty guitarist Mike Campbell, whose solos went on too long for Stevie. “She would get exhausted playing tambourine,” says Mike. “And say, ‘Fucking hell, Lindsey only did twelve bars.’”

Fittingly, Blake devotes the closing scene of Act VII to Christine, her life and legacy. After all the craziness that’s gone before, it’s somehow reassuring to learn how she escaped from the madness, sensibly retiring to a country house in Kent, became bored, then overcame her fear of flying to rejoin FM for the final tour with Finn and Campbell. “She’s a lovely, lovely lady, even though she told me to fuck off,” adds her bass playing ex-husband, not a line you’ll find in Shakespeare’s oeuvre. 

        Published by Nine Eight Books, an imprint on Bonnier, in September, Dreams has 408 pages but, according to the author, lacks a photo section and index, which is sub-standard for a book of this scope and ambition. It is priced at £15.45 on Amazon. 

FIELDFEST - ASTROMODA

 

Around about the time Bruce Springsteen was half an hour into his 30-song set in front of 90,000 fans at Wembley Stadium last night, I was enjoying AstroModa at Fieldfest, the now annual music festival in the village of Gomshall where I live. There were maybe 200 people alongside me, some dancing, some drinking, some chasing children and at least two dressed in cumbersome, inflatable outfits tailored to resemble potatoes.

Fieldfest is a modest affair, designed for all the family, with face painting and a bouncy castle for kids, pizza and hot dogs and a cash bar staffed by one of the blokes from my local pub. All profits go to good causes, a brain tumour charity and the infants school in nearby Shere. 

When I checked the internet a few weeks ago, tickets for Bruce that might have afforded me the same close-up view as I had of AstroModa would have set me back about £800 for a pair, and the cost of travel to Wembley, together with refreshments, would probably add a further £100 to the outing; around 27 times more than the £33 I paid for Fieldfest, two tickets at £15 each and an additional £3 for charity. Also, my wife and I bought two or three beers at £3 each too, no doubt considerably less than the price of beers at concessions stands inside Wembley.

I have no doubt whatsoever that Bruce offered a great show, as he did on every occasion I saw him, 11 concerts over the years, some small, some huge, albeit not recently, the reason the cost and travel. A glance at his setlist for last night tells me he played songs from every era of his career, the earliest from Born To Run in 1975, the most recent from his soul album Only The Strong Survive two years ago. I hope everyone at Wembley had a great time.

I had a great time at Fieldfest too; especially watching AstroModa, sisters Veronica (guitar) and Jessica (bass) Pal belting out rock and roll with the same passion I saw in Bruce at all those shows way back when. First and forecast, it was the sound of enthusiasm, an imprecise but crucial quality that all rock bands need if they are to progress. Supremely confident and backed by a tireless, shirtless (male) drummer, their set was a mixture of originals that I didn’t recognise and covers, among them The Cranberries ‘Zombie’, Kings of Leon’s ‘Sex On Fire’ and, as a closer, Lady Ga Ga’s ‘Bad Romance’. They put every ounce of effort into playing these songs, sang well and handled their guitars with great skill. It was apparent to all those watching that they knew their business and were loving what they did; undeterred by the sparse crowd, it seemed to me that Veronica and Jessica were playing as if 90,000 fans were cheering them on, a bit like like Bruce at Wembley, as if their lives depended on it. When they’d finished I cheered for more but it wasn’t forthcoming. Just like every other festival everywhere, big and small, it was running late.

AstroModa on stage last night. 

When they’d packed up their gear I was tempted to wander backstage and ask Veronica and Jessica about themselves, just as I did with a largely undiscovered Elton John at a festival 54 years ago this summer. Then I decided against it. After all, I don’t write for a music paper that sells 200,000 copies a week these days, and it’s unlikely I’ll get many hits on this post because no one who reads Just Backdated will have a clue who AstroModa are.  

We stayed for the final act, American Brad Henshaw who was very professional but whose country-style rock was a bit slick for my taste, the exception being a lovely interpretation of ‘Wichita Lineman’. Afterwards I collared the organiser of the festival, local builder Rob Arrow, a good friend of mine these days, who told me that AstroModa have just been signed, whatever that means these days. According to their website, Veronica and Jessica are teenagers and they’re based in Portsmouth. With the wind in their sails and a bit of luck they could go far. You read it here first. 

WHO KNOWS – THE MAKING OF A ROCK MOVIE by Tony Klinger

Who fans that take an interest in such matters may have read elsewhere that certain issues clouded the production of The Kids Are Alright, the documentary film on the group that was released to cinemas and on video in 1979. With impeccable timing but perhaps inadvertently, this well-received biopic served as a tribute to drummer Keith Moon whose death the previous year brought closure to what many look upon as The Who’s classic period. These issues are hinted at in the introduction to this book which suggests, heaven forbid, that raised voices could be heard at TKAA-related meetings in the offices of Trinifold, The Who’s Soho-based management company, and one of them, heaven forbid, may have belonged to Bill Curbishley, the group’s manager, not a man to react kindly to anything that affronts his pro-active, protective and occasionally combative nature. Another raised voice was no doubt that of Tony Klinger, the author of this book, the much put-upon film-maker brought in by Curbishley and The Who to help make their movie. 

        Disagreements between all those involved in TKAA take centre stage in a rather unsettling but nevertheless insightful book. On the DVD and video I own, Klinger is credited as TKAA’s producer, as is Curbishley, and was therefore privy to everything that went down before and during its creation. Luckily for us, he didn’t sign an NDA, so he chose to bare his soul, initially in a book titled, for some absurd reason, Twilight Of The Gods, published in 2009, republished as The Who And I in 2017. This is the third edition of the same book, much revised, published now by the author, the implication being that for the first time here is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, some of which may have been withheld from earlier editions.* 

        Klinger is an experienced film-maker whose credits go back to working on the original Avengers TV series and several excellent movies, among them Get Carter, an all-time favourite of mine. His first brush with The Who came in late 1976 when he was commissioned to produce a promotional video for Roger Daltrey’s solo single ‘One Of The Boys’, which brought him to the attention of Curbishley who was seeking someone to produce and/or direct the documentary on The Who that became TKAA. To his misfortune, Klinger’s arrival in Who central in early 1977 coincided with a period of unrest and uncertainty surrounding the group. Having toured prodigiously during 1975 and ’76, they were now idle, collectively at least, with no immediate plans for the future. Pete Townshend had begun to compose songs that would appear on Who Are You, which wouldn’t be released until 1978, Daltrey was keen to pursue a career as an actor, John Entwistle was moodily weighing up his options and Moon was living in California, adrift in an ocean of alcohol. On behalf of the group, Curbishley had just completed the purchase of Shepperton film studios south west of London, his intention to broaden The Who’s interest in films and utilise them as a storage and rehearsal space.                                                                                                                                                      Klinger’s first move was to bring in his film-maker friend Sydney Rose to assist with production. This didn’t sit well with Curbishley, which might explain why Rose’s Christian name is misspelt with an i in the credits, a rather shabby slight. Curbishley drew Klinger’s attention to Jeff Stein, an American Who fan who’d already researched archive film footage of the band for no other reason than his enthusiasm for and love of The Who. Stein’s photographs of the group, along with those by his collaborator Chris Johnson, appeared in a delightful photo-study they published 1973, to my knowledge only the second ever Who book (which I treasure), and this no doubt helped him establish his friendly rapport with Townshend. Stein demanded that his friend Ed Rothkowitz be appointed TKAA’s editor, which didn’t sit well with Klinger. And herein lies the problem: too many cooks, each with their own agenda and unwilling or unable to communicate openly with one another, spoiling the broth.

        In the end, of course, the broth turned out to be very tasty indeed but not before Klinger experienced the stuff of nightmares in his dealings with the band, Curbishley and Stein, all of whom seemed at times to be operating at cross purposes. In a nutshell, having found himself more or less at odds with everyone over staffing, budgeting and how the film should look, Klinger believed, perhaps justifiably in light of his greater experience in film-making, that he was right and they were wrong, so he screamed and shouted and, eventually, walked. Only at the very end was he brought back into the fold and then under a cloud that lingers to this day. 

        Along the way, we get heaps of fly-on-the-wall reports of ‘difficult’ meetings, in which Curbishley comes across as a bit of a bully, and finely drawn but far from flattering pen portraits of Townshend, Daltrey, Entwistle and Moon; respectively duplicitous, hot-headed, broody and nuts. We visit Malibu where Klinger and his men get a full-on dose of Moon at his most obdurate, alternately blind drunk or rabidly libidinous with girls galore, clearly not long for this world, and a cameo appearance by his next door neighbours, tough guy actor Steve McQueen and wife Ali MacGraw. We visit Stow-on-the-Wold where a sulky Entwistle is also uncooperative – “Extracting conversation from him was like drawing teeth” – and Burwash on the Kent-Sussex border where Daltrey occupies the local manor house but declines to be filmed with his private helicopter lest it damage his working-man-made-good image. 

        Despite its tongue-in-cheek cover – the author sat on paving stones, draped in a Union Jack in emulation of the Who photo used to promote TKAA, its sub-title set in the same typeface – I found the book’s brutal honesty enlightening but a bit depressing. Much as Klinger strongly admires the Who’s music and the power they radiate on stage, he feels they let him down. “We needed one hundred percent of The Who’s artistic involvement and moral commitment, not purely monetary support; I never felt we had it,” he writes towards the end of his book. “If Pete wanted to go for something, Roger would be pulling in the other direction and the opposite held true. … the band’s commitment to each other, let alone the film, was stretched paper-thin… [they] didn’t know what came next either, nor did their management, lawyers or record company. It had evolved in a way that none of us could have desired or foreseen except in our darkest nightmares.” 

        Biographical details of The Who throughout are sketchy and not always 100% accurate, and the author’s jaundiced opinions on the members of The Who are, of course, coloured by his own regrettable experiences. To a certain extent I know what he’s getting at – I too have experienced The Who at close quarters and had business dealings with them** – but I can’t help but think that at times he’s overegging the pudding. Nevertheless, the book’s original publisher showed the manuscript to them and “got the all clear”, according to the author. If so, it speaks wonders for The Who’s lifelong commitment to letting it all hang out, as evidenced in so many other Who-related books. 

        Who Knows – The Making Of A Rock Movie is illustrated with photographs by Danny Clifford, many taken during the production of TKAA, has 250 pages, no index and costs £14.99 on Amazon. 

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* I can neither confirm nor refute this as I am unfamiliar with the two previous editions.

** I found Pete, Roger and John strangely indifferent to the project when I worked with them on the 1994 4-CD box set 30 Years Of Maximum R&B and several subsequent upgraded CDs. Bill Curbishley, on the other hand, was always helpful and as keen as mustard, and no client has ever paid me more generously or promptly than Bill did for these records. 

ZZ TOP IN NEW YORK’S CENTRAL PARK, July 1974

In the summer months in New York I was once a regular visitor to the Wolman Ice Skating rink in Central Park, not to skate as ice froze only in winter, but to see rock shows at the Schaefer Music Festival, a series of open-air concerts held there during June, July and August. Long before Eliminator cemented their image and reputation as razor-sharp, synthesiser-enhanced, video-friendly purveyors of infectious, fast-paced, tongue-in-cheek boogie, 50 years ago this week I was there to watch ZZ Top for the first time. 

They were an unknown quantity in the UK in 1974, and it wasn’t until a year later that I decided they were worthy of a Melody Maker feature and interviewed guitarist Billy Gibbons. Oddly, as I point out in the review below, they built up a huge following in their home state of Texas before venturing further afield, so much so that they could attract huge crowds in Houston and Dallas but the ice rink in Central Park, which held about 6,000, was only half full. It was the same with Bob Seger, for years a big draw in Detroit but largely unknown elsewhere in the US until ‘Night Moves’ was a hit in 1976. 

It’s highly likely that this was the first ever mention of ZZ Top in the UK music press and for the benefit of our readers I felt it necessary to point out in my review, reproduced verbatim below from MM’s Caught In The Act page, dated July 20, 1974, that ZZ Top was pronounced Zee Zee Top and not Zed Zed Top! 

Such is the size of the North American continent that it’s possible for a band to be idolised in one part of the States but relatively unknown in another. Many acts, both English and American, are well aware of this and plan their tours accordingly, making sure to book the big halls in their best areas and lying low elsewhere. 

ZZ Top (pronounced Zee Zee) are a classic example of this peculiar trait. They come from Texas and down there they can pull in thousands of fans with no trouble. With the possible exception of the Allman Brothers, Zee Zee are the hottest act in the south.

But in New York, Zee Zee are pretty much newcomers to the circuit. Their album Tres Hombres is shooting up the Top 30 and that’s based almost entirely on southern sales. If the great North East conurbations catch on as well, it could be number one in days.

Zee Zee are a powerhouse trio, fronted by a lanky cowpoke called Billy Gibbons who wears a low slung Les Paul, very tight jeans and ten gallon hat, and likes to boogie a lot. Sharing the vocal work with him is a chubby blond bassist with matted beard called Dusty Hill who also wears a big hat, and a skinny bespectacled drummer called Frank Beard who looks rather too fragile to be in among dudes like Zee Zee. 

Basically, they’re a hot boogie band with nothing particularly unusual to offer other than a never-ending supply of energy and riffs to whip up excitement and keep it at a peak for an hour and a half. They’re another case of providing their fans with what they want, simple and without frills.

Last week they played in New York’s Central Park in another of the Schaeffer series of concerts and drew a half-capacity audience on a sultry, hot evening when it was an effort to walk, let alone dance to rock and roll. Below St Louis, of course, they’d have packed in a capacity crowd.

The set took a while to warm up after a somewhat unsympathetic audience had given openers Brownsville Station a less than enthusiastic reception, but Zee Zee reacted strongly to the challenge and basted forth with all the energy of a rocket launch. 

There’s nothing too original about their music and neither did any particular break stand out. Their forte is an unqualified ability to get it on with no messing around at attempts to display individual instrumental ability. Thus, we have Gibbons and Hill, standing side by side, rocking up and down in a timed sequence with all the fury of a pair of Texan stallions.

They won the battle, played three encores which included a medley of 12-bar rockers from the ages, and left everyone dripping with sweat, not least themselves. 

TIME HAS COME TODAY by Harold Bronson

For those unfamiliar with Harold Bronson, he’s a dedicated American music lover who caught the bug as a teenager in the 1960s and was never cured, not that he ever wanted to be. Every penny he earned doing chores at the family home was spent at the local record store and when he left college he immersed himself in what he loved, playing in a band, writing record reviews for magazines and, eventually, working at a store called Rhino Records, the name he chose for the much-respected reissue label that he and his partner Richard Foos launched in 1978. By the mid-1980s it was the leading repackaging label in the US, noted not only for its good taste but the care and precision its owners devoted to each and every release. Rhino was eventually bought out by Warner Bros who, it’s safe to say, weren’t quite as conscientious as those from whom they bought it.

This is Harold’s third book, following on from his Rhino Records Story (2013) and My British Invasion (2017), whose subtitle might well have been Confessions Of An Anglophile. It differs from those in that its format is a series of diary entries, utterly candid and without pretension or hindsight. What we read in this laconic, day-to-day style is precisely what happened and when, recollected in a very matter of fact fashion, complete with forthright impressions of those he met and casual observations on personal traits. As such, it’s very enlightening, a snapshot of how operators like Harold do their business, the characters they meet, among them several noted rock and pop stars, and what’s said at the meetings. It’s also very moreish in that once you start reading you want to keep reading, not that the structure of the book makes it a page-turner, more that items of interest keep jumping off the page, some amusing, some edifying, and, of course, once you’ve got the hang of the way Harold lays it all down, you can jump in anywhere, pick and choose a few pages without concern for losing a thread, simply because there isn’t one, apart from the sense of being a fly-on-the-wall eavesdropper to an interesting life in music. 

Let’s take a few examples. Among the many acts with whom Harold became close was the Monkees, several of whose LPs were reissued by Rhino. Harold met Michael Nesmith for the first time on Monday, June 1, 1970, at the offices of his music publisher, Screen Gems, on Sunset Boulevard, interviewing him for an unnamed magazine. “Mike was smart, thoughtful and surprisingly candid, especially when I asked him why he hadn’t formed a band with Peter Tork after they left the Monkees,” writes Harold. “Mike and Peter were considered the serious musicians of the four Monkees. His response was unsettling: ‘I don’t like Peter Tork, never have liked him. I have to qualify that, because me not liking somebody doesn’t mean that they’re particularly bad people. He could do a lot of wonderful things for me. The first visceral gut reaction to Peter was one of dislike. I never have liked him. I don’t want to play in a band with Peter. I didn’t want to play in a band with Peter. And I didn’t like playing in a band with Peter.’ To provide perspective, he also said, ‘I don’t like my mother. She happens to be an awfully nice lady and has never done anything to me to make me not like her’.”

Six year later Harold met Davy Jones: “Davy was serious throughout the interview, focused on financial matters even though I didn’t ask about that…. He said he was fine with the money [the group] made from royalties on the records but believed Screen Gems had cheated the group on the merchandising. ‘Our contract said we were supposed to split five percent. All we got were checks for $3,000 apiece. We sued them for $20 million, but eventually settled for $50,000.’ It left a bad taste in Davy’s mouth: ‘I will never sue anybody as long as I live. It’s heartache, it’s boring and it’s unfriendly. If anybody crosses me up now, I’ll cut their balls off and stick them in their mouth. Nobody will ever fuck me again, that’s for sure.’ Afterward, Davy and I walked to our cars parked on a side street. I was disconcerted to discover that, even though he had made over a million dollars as a Monkee, five years after the group dissolved he was driving a battered yellow Volkswagen Bug.”

Here’s an entry for Tuesday, June 12, 1990: “Earlier this year, I wrote to Apple Records head Neil Aspinall, offering an advance (against royalties) of $500,000 to license the U.S. rights to Apple’s non-Beatles masters. Despite the hefty amount, I received no reply. As it’s likely Apple will someday issue a Best of Badfinger, I wanted to compile their post-Apple masters. The Best of Badfinger Volume II, released today, took over two years from when I initiated the project. Even before the group’s fourth and final album for Apple was released in November 1973, the label was falling apart, and interest in Badfinger had diminished. They had made money for Apple and were still capable of making good records. Bill Collins, their aged and overwhelmed dance band manager, had brought in a sharpie to handle their affairs. Stan Polley, their new co-manager, made a good deal with Warner Bros. Records. He negotiated an advance of $225,000 per album, which meant there was much more for him when he absconded with the funds.” 

Another artist that Harold befriended was Peter Noone, aka Herman of Herman’s Hermits. The book recounts many meetings between them including this one on Wednesday, November 30, 2005: “I met Peter Noone for lunch at Trilussa in Beverly Hills. We don’t usually reminisce about the old days when we get together, but today we did. I had read somewhere that he coined the term ‘groupies.’ I was surprised, because he didn’t seem the promiscuous type. He explained he was late to the concept that young women wanted to have sex with him (for whatever reason: status, bragging rights, glamor). Peter: ‘We were Roman Catholic boys, we were moral, we didn’t steal, we were nice guys. Most guys kept score of how many girls they’d had, but I didn’t, because I was looking for Miss Right. I only dated one girl at a time. It wasn’t until I was 20 that I realized they all weren’t in love with me. I phoned a girlfriend in New York, and she had Jimi Hendrix over.”

On Tuesday, October 22, 1996, Harold attended a Who concert at the LA Forum with his friend Martin Lewis: “Martin and I went backstage after the show. Martin and Pete [Townshend] are old friends; I had met Pete only briefly, but we had exchanged letters regarding possible Rhino projects. In his response to one of my lesser ideas, he accused me of attempting to ‘exploit the jackdaw mentality of US record collectors.’ (I had to look up the unfamiliar term: it means ‘hoarder.’) I chatted briefly with Pete but didn’t want to intrude on Martin and Pete’s social time. The Who’s manager, Bill Curbishley, was friendly and introduced me to John Entwistle, reminding him that Rhino had issued a compilation of his solo work. I told him I was a fan, but he didn’t seem interested. As he drifted away, Bill explained that John is hard of hearing and only interested in meeting women.” 

Rhino issued the LP recorded by The Rutles, the Beatle-spoof band masterminded as a Monty Python spin-off by Eric Idle and former Bonzo Dog Neil Innes, with whom he breakfasted on Saturday, September 10, 1994, at the Sunset Marquis Hotel where other Pythons were staying during a promotional blitz in LA: “Neil’s been friends with George Harrison since 1967. (George has a cameo in The Rutles.) Because Neil’s wife was George’s landscape and garden designer, he could have become a closer member of George’s inner circle of friends, but Neil respected his wife’s professional relationship and didn’t push it. On one occasion, he and Eric Idle visited George when Ringo was there. George and Ringo spontaneously sang the Rutles’ ‘Ouch!’ Carol Cleveland stopped by our table to say hello; Neil introduced me. She appeared in most Python productions, usually as the blond sexpot. Now, she’s a much more mature 52.”

Finally, how about this one from Friday May 10, 1974: “I was among 250 guests at a launch party for Led Zeppelin’s Swan Song Records at Hotel Bel-Air. Michele Phillips, Bill Wyman, Bryan Ferry, Dr. John, Billy Preston, Lloyd Bridges, Micky Dolenz and members of ELO were among the celebrity guests. I introduced myself to Jimmy Page, who was dressed smartly in a black blazer and shirt, his avalanche of wavy hair recalling Tiny Tim’s… Heidi, my date, had a meltdown. It sometimes happens when she smokes pot; she becomes paranoid. I escorted her to my car and sat with her trying to calm her down. Here I was, at a fancy Led Zeppelin party, and I had to deal with her poor judgment. I dreaded having to leave. After a while, she calmed down and we returned to savor a dinner of Beef Wellington and Lobster Quenelles Americaine. I would have liked to meet Groucho Marx, but I stayed away because I heard he was cranky. The 84-year-old probably didn’t know why he was with such an unfamiliar crowd. Maggie Bell, the first artist signed to Swan Song, introduced herself to Groucho, telling him what an honor it is to meet him. He responded, ‘Fuck that, show us your tits!’”

That’s just a tiny fraction of the contents of Time Has Come Today – titled after a Chambers Brothers’ song by the way – which is published by Trouser Press Books. It costs £20, give or take a pound or two depending on the supplier, has 435 pages, a useful index and is illustrated with judiciously chosen photographs of the author with some of the people he writes about. 

WHO'S THAT GIRL? Melody Maker 50 Years Ago This Week

Fifty years ago this week I wrote my first piece for Melody Maker on the bands that played in downtown New York, in places like CBGBs and Club 82. The photographer Bob Gruen was my guide and in Club 82 he introduced me to a beautiful girl called Debbie, one of three singers with a group called The Stilettos. 

I visited both CBGBs and Club 82 several times before I wrote the piece and it mentions many acts, the Stilettos among them. I now realise that this was the first ever mention of Debbie Harry in a British newspaper, music or otherwise, and Chris Stein graciously confirms this is in his recent memoir Under A Rock. A Bob Gruen photo accompanied the piece and when I got my hands on a copy I called Debbie at the beauty salon where she worked in those days and we arranged to meet so I could give her that issue of MM. She was very excited to have her picture in a paper, any paper, for the first time. I found the picture below, which was probably taken by Bob, on the internet and if my memory serves me correctly, this is the dress she was wearing on the night I first saw her, so the chances are it was taken that night.

This is the unedited piece I wrote for MM, issue dated July 6, 1974. 

“HEY MAN, what’s happening?” The inevitable hip American greeting is accompanied with “gimme five” (an invitation to shake hands) and responded to with: “Hey man, what’s happening with you?”

    The cynics who say that nothing’s happening in New York today are very wrong. There are dozens of immature young bands playing in scruffy late night places in Greenwich Village and the Bowery every evening, creating a similar atmosphere to that which existed in London in the early sixties.

    Excitement, sweat, crude and simple music and a “take-it-or-leave-it” attitude mingle together in this new generation of bands.

    Cynics dismiss them as trash. They will point out, quite correctly, that they’re not as good as so-and-so who can fill Madison Square Garden, but it’s a lame attitude. Rock must always look towards the future.

    In these seedy clubs inhabited by barely competent musicians lies that future. Somewhere, in among them, is the next generation equivalent of The Rolling Stones or The Who.

    In the same way that the Stones and The Who began their careers as brash and exciting clashes with the accepted music business establishment, so these New York bands clash with their superiors in rock. Through the passage of time the Stones and the Who and countless others have become the establishment they once clashed with so fiercely: the new young bands are railing against this establishment in the same way.

    While record companies promote their newly signed artists with expensive parties for press and radio jocks at established clubs, the new bands just play for the kids. They might not be very good technically but then so were all of today’s rock giants in their formative years. A parallel could easily be drawn between London’s pub rock and these brash new Manhattan bands and their shameless punk rock, overtones of bisexuality and happy untogetherness.

    Two similarities stand out immediately: both types of bands are young musicians from a different generation than the accepted heavies and their followers, and in both cases many of the groups have yet to sign record contracts if, indeed, they will ever be offered one.

    Both types are doing it for love.

    But here the lines draw apart. In the case of the British pub rockers, it seems to be a desire on their part to return to basics, to pull away from the accepted course that rock has taken over the past five years (all original numbers, masses of equipment, blistering guitar solos demonstrating the instrumental ability of the lead guitarist) and simply display general good taste in repertoire culled from the last ten years.

    The music is all important and the band takes second place.

    With the New Yorkers the opposite occurs. The effect is paramount to the music. Shock and outrage is the name of the game: the more freakish, the more outlandish the fetishes of the personnel and the more bizarre their clothes the better. It’s not much more than grabbing a guitar, learning a few chords, applying lipstick, and bingo!

    In general, the music is pretty duff, crash bang repeated riffs coupled with an amateurishness that smacks of taking the plunge before they’re ready. They seem to thrive on tuneless singing and have little concept of sound balance. Good PA systems are probably out of their financial reach, anyway.

    Nevertheless, these misgivings are lost in the atmosphere they create from a mixed bag of influences from rock over the past eight years. They’ve taken ideas from the Stones’ lawlessness, the Who’s punk, Bowie’s bisexuality and Zeppelin’s riffs.

    Who are they? Starting at the top we have the New York Dolls, who are no newcomers nowadays. Regardless of musical merit, they cannot be accused of jumping on the bandwagon as they set it rolling in the first place.

    The Dolls are really outside the confines of underground New York by now: they’ve released a couple of albums and toured on a countrywide basis. They’ve even been over to England.

    In the wake of the Dolls are scores more, too numerous to mention and chances are I’m missing some here and now. In no particular order we have Teenage Lust, the Fast, Jet Black, Television, the Stilettos, the Miamis, Palace, the Harlots of 42nd St., Star Theatre, Wayne County, Another Pretty Face and the Brats. At the time of writing some may be splitting, some may no longer exist and personnel from two or more may have formed a new band.

    They play at places like the 82 Club (far and away the most popular), the Coventry in Queens, CBGBs in the Bowery, Upstairs at Max’s (occasionally) and the Mushroom in the Village. Without exception, they’re seedy low-spots in a city that has managed to encompass the best of the best and the worst of the worst.

    ‘Phone up the 82 Club any time of the day or night and you receive a recorded message: “Dance, dance, dance,” says an oldish-sounding man. “Dance the night away. This is where the Stars hang out. David Bowie, John Lennon. Free roast buffet on Sundays and live music every Wednesday. This Wednesday...”

    Almost all of the above bands have played the 82 Club and even if they haven’t, the musicians who comprise them can be found down there. I’ve seen Bowie there once, and Lennon reportedly once paid a ten minute visit but left after being surrounded by kids.

    It costs anything between two and five dollars to get inside, depending on the night of the week or whether there’s a band. It’s more like an English discotheque than a club, but the premises (and name) have a long history. From the 1940s up to the end of the sixties it was one of New York’s most glamorous drag theatres.

    Female impersonators, transvestites and their ilk made the 82 their home, and even today the element of bi-sexuality runs strong. On the door and behind the bar are some of New York’s more celebrated butch women.

    But back to the bands. They play on Wednesdays and generally pack the place. Never had I seen the 82 more crowded than about three weeks back when Wayne County topped the bill over the Stilettos. Wayne came out in full drag which was pretty stunning, but the music was overly loud and under inspired for my tastes. He went down a bomb though.

    The Stilettos, who opened up, had more potential but less rehearsal. Fronted by a cuddly platinum blonde called Debbi [sic], they’re a girl vocal trio with a male guitar/bass/drums back-up band.

    The three chicks take turns to sing solo while the other two chant away behind, and some of the songs were well worth putting on vinyl. Ninety-five per cent were original, but the style was taken from the late ‘fifties era of vocal groups.

    In the same vein, but slicker and with an added male singer, are Teenage Lust who’ve been going the rounds for over two years now. Again there’s three girls aptly titled the Lustettes who are the focal point of the group. The girls have carefully choreographed routines which they stick to with rigid discipline.

    Their singer wears a white tail suit and white topper, and jumps around a lot, easing himself from the stage on to any piece of furniture available that will stand his weight. They were loud and visually exciting, but I felt the material let them down, especially when the girls weren’t on stage.

    Television are another whose expertise is overshadowed by their enthusiasm: I saw them a few months back when they were woefully under-rehearsed and little more than a joke. Last weekend at CBGBs (far less populated than the 82), they did better.

    They’re crude but young and the bass player needs a crash course in fundamentals before they’ll get any better. The second time I saw them they reminded me of The Searchers with their unison vocal work and ringing, trebly guitars. Again, they did all original material.

    Another Pretty Face are a five piece band who don’t rely entirely on their own material, but pick intelligently from British material which never caught on in America. They plunder savagely from Roxy Music and T. Rex and put over excellent cover versions.

    Though their initial impact is with the gay rock liberation movement, and the singer imitates David Bowie depressingly well, there’s talent beneath the make-up that’s gotta show through sooner or later. I think it will. Star Theatre actually drove me out of CBGBs the other night when I’d gone along to catch the Stilettos for a second time. They feature Eric “Love” Emerson on vocals, a one-time protégé of Andy Warhol who comes on rather like Arthur Brown, lighting candles and squatting like a Russian folk dancer to sing his songs.

    It was the volume that drove me away rather than the actual show as they’re as tight a band than any around. After the happy untogetherness of the Stilettos it was too much to take: miking up drums in a place no larger than the average living room is surely going too far.

    There are the Miamis who everyone assures me are “better than so and so,” and the Fast are forever filling my letter box with invitations to go and see them. 

WHEN WE WAS FAB – Inside The Beatles Australasian Tour 1964, by Andy Neill & Greg Armstrong

Sixty years ago today, on July 2, 1964, The Beatles arrived home at London Airport – it became Heathrow in 1966 – at 11.10am having flown over 10,000 miles, all the way from Brisbane in Australia via Sydney, Djakarta, Singapore, Cairo and Frankfurt. They left behind them two shell-shocked nations that would never be quite the same whose teenagers had been part of a life-changing experience. “They welcomed us like liberators,” was the headline that Derek Taylor, Brian Epstein's PA and de facto PR on the tour, wrote from Adelaide for George Harrison's ghosted column for the Daily Express in London. “I’ve seen films of de Gaulle re-entering Paris after the recapture of France and the allies marching up Italy. Without wishing to draw comparisons, the expressions on the faces today were similar to the expressions on the faces of people freed from captivity.”

He wasn’t kidding. The Beatles tour of Australia and New Zealand during the second half of June 1964 saw the… “most hysterical scenes of mass adulation neither country had witnessed before, nor have they experienced since,” write Andy Neill and Greg Armstrong in the introduction to their forthcoming, utterly fab, 308-page large format book on the tour. “If the experience the four Beatles were sharing took on a surreal quality as their career skyrocketed, it was to become even more unimaginable when they arrived in Australia.

“None of the fan scenes displayed in Britain or the United States ever came close to the staggering display of affection that greeted the Beatles in Australia, particularly in Adelaide and Melbourne. To the Beatles utter disbelief, it appeared the entire population of these far-flung cities were turning out to catch a glimpse of the young men with ‘strange’ haircuts who played a new kind of pop music. In staid Adelaide fans camped out for 65 hours for concert tickets. When the Beatles arrived there two months later, a staggering 300,000 people lined the streets [to see them].”

The Adelaide Beatles motorcade arrives in King William Street and, below, fans on the street. 

(Photos by Vic Grimmett)

Until now the only available reportage of this extraordinary explosion of Beatlemania has been The 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. It’s very much a fly-on-the-wall account and was fairly eye-opening insofar as when it was published in 1982 it offered hitherto unmentionable details of JPG&R’s off-stage activities that can best 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 the extent to which the Beatles coped with the madness that surrounded them, and continued virtually uninterrupted for the duration of the visit. 

It’s all here, 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 mayhem from the Beatles themselves and even the few nay-sayers who threw eggs at them. 

Neill, a New Zealander long based in the UK, and Armstrong, who lives in Melbourne, have spent almost 25 years putting their book together. They have gone to enormous lengths to cover every imaginable detail of this hectic tour, interviewing all those still living that were in any way connected with it, and researching every possible line of inquiry from contemporaneous reports in the Australasian press. It corrects hitherto unreliable accounts and is illustrated with hundreds of pictures, many previously unseen, and scans of relevant documents, press accounts and mementos from the period. It is the definitive account of a major highlight in the early career of the world’s greatest pop group and a key milestone in Australian popular culture.

“As a schoolboy in England, I’d been at the Coronation, standing among crowds of people by the roadside, but this was way beyond anything I’d ever seen,” says David Glyde, saxophone player with Sounds Incorporated who opened for the Beatles on the tour. “When we caught up with the Beatles they were just as incredulous as we were. ‘What’s going on in this place? Where have all these people come from?’”

When We Was Fab is published by Woodslane Press in Australia, and is available in the UK from most book outlets.