PUNK AT 50

Dear Mojo Editor

PUNK AT 50 – HOW IT CHANGED EVERYTHING screams the strap line on the cover of last issue of Mojo, with Johnny Rotten, eyes ablaze, alongside. Well did it? 

In 1976, the year the Pistols began to make waves, over 100,000 fans turned up to watch the Stones at Knebworth. Bowie played six nights at Wembley Empire Pool, Paul McCartney’s Wings three. In 1977, Pink Floyd played five nights at the same venue. Heavens only knows how many fans turned up at Knebworth in 1979 to watch Led Zep, well over 200,000 anyway. And that same year The Who played Wembley Stadium, around 80,000 I guess. A glance at the best-selling LPs for those years – step forward Abba, Rod Stewart, Floyd, Zep, Queen, Fleetwood Mac, Bee Gees, etc – reveals a remarkable dearth of punk acts. And let’s not even bother with the situation in America. 

All of which leads me to conclude that the ‘punk revolution’ was created largely by staff writers from the hawkish weekly music press baying for the blood of the dinosaurs and not by the overwhelming majority of fans. To a degree, this is reflected on pages 26 and 27 of this same issue of Mojo where an in-house ad features 24 covers, only one of which – the current Sex Pistols issue – can be said to feature a ‘punk’ act, unless you count Paul Weller who wouldn’t be seen dead in a torn tee-shirt. 14 of those covers feature acts that predate punk, most of whom released their first records in the 1960s. 

This would seem to confirm the view that, try as they might, the idea that the punks slaughtered the dinosaurs is a myth. 

This is not to say that punk didn’t blow away a few cobwebs that needed blowing away, or that several acts carried along in the same momentum didn’t produce some great records. But let’s not get carried away. Punk didn’t change everything. Nothing much changed in the long term. It just created a new(ish) rock genre.

Great Miles Davis CD, by the way.

Regards

Chris Charlesworth

EPiC: Elvis Presley In Concert

Baz Luhrmann caught the Elvis bug while directing his 2022 blockbuster biopic that starred Austin Butler as the star and Tom Hanks as Col Tom Parker, his scheming manager. In the course of his research for that film – reviewed here (https://justbackdated.blogspot.com/2022/06/elvis-movie.html) on Just Backdated – he discovered a cache of largely unseen concert and rehearsal footage of Elvis that he’s brought to the big screen for what is not just the most impressive screen presentation of Elvis on stage but also, in newly discovered interview footage and voice-overs, the most revealing.

It’s now over 70 years since Elvis exploded out of Memphis which no doubt explains why Luhrmann felt it necessary to preface the on-stage material with an express train ride through his early career for those too young to know, but anyone who’s taken an interest in Elvis will already be familiar with the footage from his early B&W TV appearances and movies, as well as conscription into the army which shaped his career thereafter. Once that’s through we see Elvis rehearsing with his core band, location unknown, during which he sings ‘You Don’t Have To Say You Love Me’, ‘Runaway’, ‘Yesterday’ and ‘Something’, quite beautifully too, at least when he concentrates. 

Although the precise date is not made clear, these preliminaries lead up to a show at the Las Vegas Hilton, presumably one of the earliest, probably in 1970. We see him in his all-white jumpsuit lingering at the side of the stage as the band begin. He looks a tad nervous, his leg twitching. Then someone draws the curtain aside for him and he steps out… BOOM. This is what we’re here for. Elvis grins, then zips into a fast-paced ‘That’s all Right’, and he sounds marvellous, as does the band, fat and punchy with enormous drive, and in the cinema it’s very loud, deep thumping bass and crackling lead guitar. 

        This is Elvis before the fried banana and bacon sandwiches took their toll and he looks and sounds terrific, the most handsome, sexiest man on the planet who can sing like no one else. No wonder those watching – we see them all in the crescent-shaped supper room, tier after tier, row on row of elegantly dressed customers, mostly female – go potty. Then he’s into ‘Hound Dog’, ‘Polk Salad Annie’, ‘You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling’ and a phenomenal segue back and forth between ‘Little Sister’ and The Beatles’ ‘Get Back’.

        Elvis entertains as well as sings – in one of the interviews he describes himself as “an entertainer”, which I thought was revealing – and he can be cheesy. He enjoys fooling around with the women at the front, kissing them, touching them, and at one point completes a song with what looks like a dark blue bra on his head. Some of this tom-foolery might be designed to show that he’s human after all, and not the godlike superstar his fans adore, but it detracts from the act, even if it amuses the band and his back-up singers.        

        The concert footage is cleverly interspersed with rehearsal footage of the same songs – they switch back and forth – and though from time to time there’s an issue with the lip-synching, it doesn’t really matter. In between we get the interviews, some from a 1970 press conference at the Houston Astrodome – the first venue outside of Vegas where Elvis performed after his 1969 comeback – and some from the 1972 conference in New York prior to his Madison Square Garden shows that year. Still more, as voice-overs between songs, have evidently been sourced from hitherto unreleased interviews suppressed by Parker who was notoriously reluctant to allow Elvis ever to speak to the press. Parker, incidentally, is seen occasionally throughout, invariably in unflattering situations, occasionally flogging tat. 

        Among other things Elvis disparages his movies from the Sixties, sounding almost apologetic, talks about his background in gospel music and expresses a desire to perform in Europe. He sounds humble, as if the direction his life has taken still puzzles him, and he sometimes seems to have difficulty explaining himself.

        But it’s the music that matters and although later footage in the second half of the movie – probably from 1972 when he was beginning to tire – doesn’t quite hit the spot as much as the earlier material, we get an all too brief ‘I Shall Be Released’, from a rehearsal, ‘Burnin’ Love’, ‘Love Me’, ‘I Can’t Stop Loving You’, ‘Are You Lonesome Tonight’, ‘You Were Always On My Mind’, ‘Oh Happy Day’, the hymn ‘How Great Though Art’, ‘Big Hunk Of Love’, ‘In The Ghetto’, ‘Walk A Mile In My Shoes’ and a stupendous ‘Suspicious Minds’. The curtain comes down after ‘Can’t Help Falling In Love With You’. 

        No review of this movie would be complete without showering praise on Elvis’ superb band, mostly notably James Burton on lead guitar, Jerry Scheff on Fender bass and Ronnie Tutt on drums. All of them play as if their lives depend on it. Shamefully, they are not even mentioned in the closing credits. 

SLADE & STEELY DAN – AN UNLIKELY PAIRING

For reasons that continue to baffle their fans, Slade and America were uneasy bedfellows during the period when they achieved their greatest success in the UK. My theory is that it was simply bad timing. In 1973, the year they first visited the US, the counry wasn’t prepared for Noddy Holder’s showmanship, the ‘audience as part of the show’ style that subsequent rock acts, most notably Bruce Springsteen, employed, or, quite simply, the clothes they wore. Instead of being too little too late, they were too much too soon.  

        Reading my Just Backdated memoir not so long ago, Don Powell, Slade’s indefatigable drummer, came across a quote from Steely Dan’s Walter Becker that implied Slade weren’t among his group’s favourite acts. “How they ever managed to get enough money together to come here and tour is a miracle,” Becker told me when I interviewed him and his partner Donald Fagen in April of 1974. 

Slade, of course, were pals of mine in those days and I’d done my best to promote their interests in the columns of Melody Maker, mostly on the strength of their live shows. Now MM’s man in America, I had waited ages for an opportunity to interview the notoriously reticent Steely Dan men, and thought it best not to come to Slade’s defence lest Donald and Walter walk out on me. 

        “Steely Dan doesn’t have a, nice word to say about us, do they?” Don emailed me earlier this week. “I remember when they supported us. I think, they experienced the wrath of our notorious road crew.”

        In the event Slade were amongst a host of acts Becker and Fagen didn’t much like, among them Deep Purple and Black Sabbath. They described Black Oak Arkansas and “absolute trash” and grudgingly admitted that Yes and ELP were skilled musicians, even though their music was not to their taste. “I will grudgingly admit that English bands are more polished performers,” said Becker. “Their recordings are more carefully made… but I can’t understand how that is.”

        My email exchange with Don on this matter prompted him to do a bit of research that unearthed the promotional advert at the top of this post and also that on May 5 & 6, 1973 Slade appeared on a three-act show, in between bill toppers Humble Pie and openers Steely Dan, at the Winterland Arena in San Francisco. Although Humble Pie and Slade seems like a reasonable mix to me – both boasted fantastic guitar playing singers – whoever though it was a good idea to have Steely Dan open up this show needed their head examined. Clearly this would have been the Slade gig at which Becker and Fagen watched from the wings, horrified at the antics of Noddy and his boys. 

        Slade’s American adventure, especially the period when they lived in New York, roughly between 1975 and 1977, is generally dismissed as a something they’d prefer to forget. They slogged their guts out on the road for scant pickings, failed to generate much in the way of record sales, lost a good deal of money and returned to the UK with their tail between their legs. 

But America wasn’t entirely indifferent to Slade, as the advertisement above – albeit it a concert from before they went to live in the US – demonstrates. In those days the Philadelphia Spectrum held around 18,000, and Slade topped the bill there over the Eagles and others “quite a few times”, according to Don. It's interesting to note that Lou Reed, of all people, opened the show. Another city where Slade drew big crowds was St Louis where I saw them twice, and you can find my report on an early 1974 show here: https://justbackdated.blogspot.com/2014/08/slade-ambassador-theater-st-louis-mo.html