MONDAY MORNING SHUFFLE

With 16,635 songs now on the new sound-enhanced iPod, the endless variety is amazing, and as the 8.54 shuffled out of Guildford this morning I was listening to Lester Flatt & Earls Scruggs, The Foggy Mountain Boys, singing ‘Is It Too Late Now?’, a plaintive love-song given the hoe-down treatment, from a Best Of CD I have called Mountain Breakdown. I have a soft spot for hillbilly mountain music and there ain’t no finer practitioners of the art than Flatt & Scruggs, the latter playing fine banjo on this one, the only other accompaniment Flatt’s acoustic guitar and a waltzing-style accordion, player unknown.   

         Derek & The Dominos, aka Eric Clapton and the crack American musicians he recorded with in the early seventies, was up next with ‘One More Chance’, which I think is what Flatt & Scruggs might have sounded like if they’d been born 30 years later: easy-going country rock, with what I think is a dobro and a nice slide acoustic, probably played by Duane Allman. This track wasn’t on the wonderful Layla And Other Assorted Love Songs album released in December 1970, and I think I came by it through buying a new version with bonus tracks from iTunes a few years ago. Far more laid back than its better known tracks, of which ‘Bell Bottom Blues’ and Eric’s Hendrix tribute ‘Little Wing’ remain long-term favourites.

         Eric was followed by Crowded House, ‘Fall At Your Feet’ from a pirate CD called Taking The Weather, recorded live somewhere in America I think. When I discovered CH back in the early nineties, for which I can think Lisa (Mrs C), I bought three live CH albums from a company in Italy where they proliferated unchecked by the industry. All sounded like sound board recordings to me, and this one is superb: lovely harmonies, all the better for being genuinely live with no subsequent tampering, nice song too.

         Next up was ‘Somewhere There’s A Girl’, smooth R&B, by The Valentinos, the group that introduced by Womack Brothers to the world, from a 23-track album called Looking For Love that I bought on the recommendation of my old Melody Maker colleague Richard Williams who extolled its virtues on his terrific Blue Moment blog. Wrote Richard: “What always struck me about the Valentinos was how, at a time when most soul hits gave the impression of having been moulded in a studio, the Womack brothers sounded like a band playing together on stage in front of an audience. There was an R&B-style rawness and immediacy about their records, a sense of rough edges left unpolished. It was probably that quality to which The Rolling Stones were responding when they heard the group’s record of ‘It’s All Over Now’, written by Bobby and Shirley Womack, and swiftly covered it, making it their first UK No 1 in July 1964, only a few weeks after the release of the original version in the US.” Thanks Richard.

         Elvis followed, a segue of a song called ‘This Time’ into the Ray Charles’ hit ‘I Can’t Stop Loving You’, which sounds a like a studio jam, especially as EP starts laughing at the sound of a (very) down-tuned guitar. He stumbles over the lyrics until ‘Can’t Stop…’ explodes with magic as he finds his way, a fabulous voice singing a lovely song. From one of my many Elvis box sets.

         Next up was the Four Seasons with ‘Rag Doll’, from a ‘Best of’ CD I have, which opens with that haunting baion drum sound. Funny to think that back in 1964 Vee-Jay Records in America actually released a two-record set entitled The Beatles v The Four Seasons which had the US album Introducing The Beatles in one side of a gatefold cover and a Four Seasons comp in the other. Pictured below:

         The best part of ‘Quinn The Eskimo’, by Bob Dylan & Band recorded in 1967 and from the fairly recently released new Basement Tapes CD, is Garth Hudson’s swirling, fairground organ. Under the title ‘Mighty Quinn’, this was a hit for Manfred Mann in 1968, but I prefer Bob.

         Next up was Bruce Springsteen singing ’Reason To Believe’, a live recording from the E Street Band 1975-85 album, which I think I bought as a three-LP vinyl set on the day of release, plucking it from a great pile of them just inside the door of the Virgin Megastore on Oxford Street which is now a downmarket clothes shop, a hellish place too. Bruce’s Nebraska album, from which this song is taken, is among his very best though it takes a while to love. When you do, however, you’ll remain faithful for ever.

         ‘I Wanna Be Yours’ by the Arctic Monkey is uncharacteristically laid-back by their standards but I can forgive them anything with lyrics like, ‘I wanna be your vacuum clear, breathing in your dust. I wanna be your Ford Cortina, I won’t ever rust’. Very nice.

         And then it was back to The Band, ‘Endless Highway’ from the Dylan live album Before The Flood, sung – I think – by Richard Manuel, with Robbie contributing a fine guitar solo. The opening line ‘Take a silver dollar and put it in your pocket’, reminds me of a song by Perry Como that my dad liked called ‘Catch A Falling Star’ which Perry also put in his pocket. I probably heard The Band play this in early 1974 when I caught this memorable tour at the Garden in New York. Terrific.

         And then it was back to doo wop, Ricky Nelson singing about ‘A Teenagers Romance’, a bit tame but enlivened by a sax solo. This was the B-side to ‘I’m Walking’, Nelson’s first US hit back in 1957 and my version comes from a massive retrospective I have with no fewer than 55 songs on it. Of course I bought it mainly to hear James Burton’s guitar.

         Finally this morning I was charmed by James Whild Lea, aka Jim Lea of Slade with a lovely song called ‘The Smile Of Elvis’ from his 2007 solo album Therapy. Written, produced and recorded by Lea, it was never promoted which is a crying shame as many of the tracks are gorgeous, including this one, a lovely melody enhanced by orchestral woodwind and a fine chorus. I’ve known Jim for the best part of 45 years and we still meet up from time to time, and on the last occasion he played me some of his own work on the system in his car parked up the street from my office. I believe quite strongly that Jim doesn’t get the credit he deserves for his role in Slade, but there isn’t much he can do about it as he dislikes the limelight, unlike Noddy who nowadays seems to get all the acclaim. Still, you can buy Therapy on Amazon and, if these reviews are anything to do by, I’m not alone in thinking it’s a five star album:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Therapy-James-Whild-Lea/dp/B002RLWW56/ref=sr_1_1?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1450707663&sr=1-1&keywords=Therapy+James+Whild+Lea

BOY, INTERRUPTED by Dale Hibbert

The last two music books I reviewed favourably on Just Backdated had a combined total of over 1,400 pages but it would be wrong to assume that bulk equals quality. This relatively slim memoir, a paperback cheekily (mis)titled after a book and subsequent film about a girl’s experiences in a mental institution, contains only 248 pages but still manages to pack a serious punch, simultaneously evoking the Manchester music scene of the early eighties from which The Smiths and others emerged, paint a fascinating portrait of the young but knowing Morrissey, and offer a compelling account of the characteristically rootless life of an Asperger sufferer who just happened to be a founding member of Morrissey’s group. It is also remarkably literate, for which Dale Hibbert can thank his ghost writer, the Lancashire-based journalist, author and publisher Mark Hodkinson.

          Those who suffer from Asperger syndrome have difficulty reading signals from those with whom they come into contact and, as a result, sometimes react in ways that can confuse and repel them. Often regarded as ‘odd’ by others, they find it difficult to make small talk and do many things that are considered ‘normal’. This can lead to lapses of judgement and rash risk-taking, sometimes catastrophic, sometimes advantageous. So while Hibbert’s brief association with The Smiths provides a hook on which to hang his story – and promote the book – it is by no means the whole of the story. As the back cover blurb informs, Hibbert has been married four times, has eight children, been both penniless and a millionaire, and lived in a car and a mansion. He’s also lived in Australia and the Czech Republic, ran nightclubs and eateries, is an expert on coffee, been a highly paid IT consultant and ‘died’ twice, meaning that when he recovered from two potentially fatal episodes his doctors were as amazed as I was at the life he has led.

          Hibbert’s mother died eight days after he was born, a precursor to a lonely and confused childhood exacerbated by a difficult relationship with his father but eased by closeness to his paternal grandmother. Unable to progress academically, he drifted into music, buying a bass guitar at the age of 14 and teaching himself to play alongside friends. He encountered Johnny Marr through his work as a recording engineer and association with a group called Freak Party. Invited to play bass in Marr’s next group, after a few rehearsals he wound up on stage as a Smith during their debut appearance, supporting Blue Rondo A La Turk at Manchester’s Ritz Club in 1982. He never played with them again and is at pains to correct not only misunderstandings that may have circulated amongst fans with regard to his role in the group but also that this was by no means a life-altering setback. The sincerity of the writing, especially about his own life before and after his brief tenure as a Smith, stamps clear validity on his version of events as presented here.

          Of more interest than this simple twist of fate, however, are Dale’s observations of Morrissey and Marr. This, from his first meeting with them: “Within an hour or so I realised that they each had a very different relationship with silence. Johnny appeared afraid of it, even slight pauses, and was impelled to fill any gaps in the conversation. Steven was comfortable with it, more so than anyone I had known until that point in my life. It was almost as if he had been instructed in how to use it, the empowerment it might offer. If this wasn’t so, and he had an innate understanding of its possible use and effect, he had been shrewd enough to embrace it because I sensed he used it cleverly to alter the space and mood in the room.”

          And again, later: “It was as if he [Morrissey] could see into the future and was able to shape it to fit himself. He knew absolutely what he wanted and the lifestyle to go with it. He had unerring confidence in himself. There was no doubt in his mind that he would become the person he became.”

          Paragraphs like this indicate that although Hibbert’s Asperger handicapped him in many ways, it enabled him to read the mind of this most perverse of rock stars, and reach conclusions other may have failed to grasp. It’s said those who suffer in certain ways develop extraordinary talents in others, that the blind can hear better than most, that dyslexia is a gift not a burden. Aside from the fascinating insights into the origins of the best UK band of the eighties, Boy, Interrupted describes movingly how Hibbert overcame hardship and, somehow, invented a topsy-turvy life for himself that many would envy. Today Dale Hibbert runs a vegan café in Todmorden and if I’m ever in the neighbourhood I’ll call in for a veg samosa. I won’t expect small talk, though. 

JUST BACKDATED REACHES 300,000

In the past 24 hours Just Backdated had its 300,00^th hit, another milestone for my one-man micro music magazine.

In keeping with my custom of putting down a few facts and figures that are available only to the bloggers themselves whenever these landmarks are reached, here are some more statistics. The Top Ten blogs (out of a total of 548) are still all posts about The Who, the leader still that one about Keith Moon being in the last ever photograph taken (by Pete ‘Dougal’ Butler) of John and Paul Beatle, which has a virtually unassailable tally of 13,840 hits now, well ahead of number two, my scoop about The Who Hits 50 tour, on 5,168, with third place still occupied by my post about the launch of Dear Boy, Tony Fletcher’s wonderful biography of Moonie, which now has 4,152 hits. None of these have changed very much, though oddly the Moonie/Beatle chart topper seems to have had five fewer hits than it did when I celebrated my 250,000^th hit back in August. How can that be? I probably got my figures mixed up.

With a total of 548 posts, and the figure creeping up to around 300 hits a day, that’s actually an average of just less than 548 hits per post, which is a bit of a weird coincidence. This figure, of course, is skewed by all my Who posts getting well over 1,000 hits, many of them over 2,000, and they all seem to creep up gradually and, like my tribute to John Entwistle, one of the earliest posts (now on 2,280), getting a boost when an anniversary comes around. Similarly, there’s a gradual exponential rise overall as more fans around the world discover JB, with the result that it has taken far less time to go from 250,000 to 300,000 than it did to go from 200,000 to 250,000 – let alone from zero to 50,000.

Non-Who posts that have topped 1,000 are almost always the result of having been shared on a fans’ Facebook pages or websites, and this also explains why the Who posts have as many hits as they do. It gives me enormous pleasure to report that they include my recent tribute to Slade’s much-loved tour manager Swinn (Graham Swinnerton), which as of this morning had reached 1,432 – extremely heart-warming considering the subject isn’t a rock performer per se. This is far more than any other Slade-related post, a result that really makes the effort worthwhile. In descending order, the only other non-Who posts that have topped the 1,000 mark are the one about Rory Gallagher and his battered old Strat (2,848), Wilko Johnson’s appearance at Louder Than Words last year (2,210), my interview with Little Feat’s Lowell George (1,517), the review of Abba’s Live At Wembley album (1,659), the photos of The Beatles from the Looking Through You book (1,254), the extract from Tony Fletcher’s memoir Boy About Town, which is actually Who-related as it deals with Keith’s death (1,157) and, finally, just edging into four figures fairly recently, my report on Jimmy Page’s live interview in Knightsbridge from October 2014 (1,031).

The sources of all these hits remains pretty much the same with the US (135,224) well ahead on the UK (70,154), and Canada third on (10,325). Thereafter it’s Germany, France, Japan and Australia, followed by Russia and the Ukraine, both of which crept into the top ten fairly recently. In tenth place it’s the Netherlands.

Anyway, thanks again to everyone for visiting Just Backdated. I’ll keep on posting just as long as you folk keep on hitting.

            

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN & THE E STREET BAND – Live at the Agora, Cleveland, August 9, 1978.

Bruce was leading a leaner, meaner E Street Band in 1978, road trained to the nth degree from playing night after night throughout ’76 and ’77 to keep the wolf from the door while lawyers sorted out the messy business with Mike Appel that prevented him from recording with new manager/producer Jon Landau.

It shows, too. I’ve been listening to this recently released three-disc set, recorded live at the 1,800-seater Agora, for the past few days, driving around with it in the car and on the train on the iPod. Much bootlegged, though not one I ever owned or heard until now, it’s taken from a radio broadcast on WMMS. It was an era when Bruce talked a lot during his shows, stories from his past that might have had little more than a grain of truth in them but no one cared. All the tall tales led into songs and while he spoke, often passionately, the E Street men ticked over behind, every so often hitting the beat to emphasise a punch line, ever ready to pounce at the right moment and leap into songs like ‘Factory’, ‘Growin’ Up’ or covers like ‘Pretty Flamingo’ and ‘Rave On’. 

In those days the E Street Band displayed their credentials by playing plenty of immaculate covers, as I noted myself when I saw Bruce a few times in ’74 and ’75 and wrote about this feisty upstart for MM. Although the Darkness songs wouldn’t have been performed at the shows I saw, the chats, the generous acknowledgement of stellar contributions from band members, the covers and – most importantly – the actual sound of the band, unusual for having both organ and piano, reminds me of those shows, three or four in New York, one on a revolving stage out on Long Island and a couple down the East Coast in Norfolk, Va., where ‘Flamingo’ followed a rap about the hottest girl on the block.

The night’s fun at the Agora begins with a rip snorting ‘Summertime Blues’, more Cochran than Who, Clarence taking the vote-hungry congressmen role, which segues via the archetypal ‘1-2-3-4’ into ‘Badlands’, followed by a brief respite and ‘Spirit In The Night’. Despite a 10-minute ‘Prove It All Night’, prefaced by a long, sulky guitar-piano intro, my favourite moment on Disc 1 is ‘Racing In The Street’, as ever a showcase for Roy’s piano which hits just the right note as it echoes Motown in Bruce’s exquisite metaphor for making the most out of life. The riches upon which Bruce could already draw is reflected in the choice of ‘Thunder Road’, introduced by a story about a road trip, and ‘Jungleland’ to close out the first half of the show, a pair of songs most bands would happily use to close out the night.

After Clarence’s showcase ‘Paradise By The C’ and a moody ‘Fire’, the second disc takes off with ‘Sherry Darling’, unrecorded then but clearly intended as the kind of singalong that ‘Hungry Heart’ would become. Bo Diddley is reimagined during ‘Not Fade Away’, a verse or three sung by Steven in what sounds a bit like a London accent, then ‘Gloria’ which segues into ‘She’s The One’. The central section of a 13-minute plus ‘Backstreets’ is given over to the slower, bluesy ‘Drive All Night’, soon to appear on The River, and ‘Rosalita’, almost as long and as lively as ever, includes a snippet of The Village People’s ‘Macho Man’.

         Disc 3 opens with a gorgeous ‘Fourth Of July (Sandy)’, Danny on that swaying accordion, then it’s into a lengthy home straight: ‘Born To Run’, taken at one hell of a lick, followed by three encores, the recently written ‘Because The Night’, prefaced with some spacey high-end guitar descents over Roy’s ominous piano, Eddie Floyd’s fun-filled Stax belter ‘Raise Your Hand’ then, finally, ‘Twist And Shout’, opening in ‘La Bamba’ mode before morphing into something like The Beatles’ version via a mid-section drop away and slow build before finishing with one of those shuddering extended climaxes that’s as easy as 1-2-3 for this crew.

         Bruce and E Street Band detractors have suggested that, at heart, they’re nothing more than a bar band and this live set won’t alter that view. I don’t care. Some of the best rock’n’roll I’ve heard in my life has been in bars and the E Street Band and their leader, brimful of energy and joi de vivre, are and always have been, quite simply, the best bar band in the world.

         

THE BEACH BOYS: Convention Center, Anaheim, California, December 1973

Forty-two years ago, resident in Los Angeles as Melody Maker’s US correspondent, I drove down to the Convention Center in Anaheim in a red Ford Pinto with an English girl called Caroline in the passenger seat, there to see and review The Beach Boys. I refer to this night in a post here (http://justbackdated.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/california-girl.html) and my review appeared in the issue of Melody Maker dated December 8, today. Carried away by seeing the group in their own backyard, it's a bit on the cheesy side but here it is…

Hi gang. Round up Cindi and Patti, Kathy and Debbie, grab a Coke and a taco ‘cos we’re off to see the Beach Boys at Anaheim, California. Pack your surf boards away in daddy’s T-Bird, slip on those whites and let’s get ourselves a headful of good vibrations.

          These Beach Boys get around. They’ve changed a lot since the Wilson Brothers, Alan Jardine and Mike Love wore candy striped shirts and played gala concerts singing about the surf, sea, sand, cars and new girls in school.

          They’re older, probably wiser, and the group’s a whole lot bigger. But the songs remain the same and the only difference in the audience is that their hair is longer, and sweet-smelling roll-your-owns seem to have the edge on popcorn for peripheral enjoyment

          Tonight these Beach Boys – lots of ‘em – are entertaining in Southern California, their home base.

          They don’t go out on the road very often these days, but when they do they’re assured of a warm welcome, especially here, which in turn makes this evening especially interesting to yours truly, an Englishman weaned on The Beach Boys, fascinated by the “surf” music period and expecting a truly genuine Californian evening’s rock and roll.

It was a bit like a fantasy come true.

          Anaheim lies south of Los Angeles, about an hour’s drive down the Santa Anna Freeway, through the industrial belt of LA and towards Disneyland, which is actually only a stone’s throw away from the Convention Centre where the concerts are held in this locality.

          It’s just inside Orange County, an almost all white area which has a reputation for favouring the John Birch life-style. I didn’t see one black face at the concert – just 10,000 kids, mostly with blond hair, tans and tee-shirts. It could almost have been Sweden.

          The Convention Centre is one of those futurisitic buildings, large enough to accommodate an aeroplane, which was primarily designed for basketball.

          It’s full to the brim of eager Beach Boys fans, a 50/50 sex breakdown, most of whom appear very young. There’s youths with slight blond down on their upper lips, hoping their facial growth will impress the scores of nubile girls who have braces on their teeth, very long blonde hair and flat chests.

          Two seats down from me, one guy was asking a girl what grade she was in. That’s tantamount to inquiring one’s age in this country, and age is an important factor in a teenage boy/girl relationship.

          If you do IT under 18, the boy could end up behind bars on a rape charge. With all the bare midriffs floating around, it’s surprising the jails aren’t overcrowded after a Beach Boys show.

          These kids of 14, 15, 16 and 17 are sitting around exchanging their roll-your-owns as casually as I pull on a Marlborough. Even if The Beach Boys did start making records before these kids were old enough to work a turntable, they’re out to enjoy themselves tonight. Local patriotism, I suppose. Incredible though it seems, it’s raining outside – a peculiarly sour note for me as I always associated The Beach Boys with the sun. I tend to play my Pet Sounds and innumerable “greatest hits” or “best of” albums during July and August in England.

          This rain is holding up the concert. It’s a rare thing and, just as snow and ice holds up the world in England, a few drops of rain delay things here in California.

Drivers aren’t used to wet roads and they drive slower, bringing the freeways to a crawling pace. The Beach Boys, so the announcer tells us, are stuck in such a jam, so there’s a long delay between Three Man Army, the British rock trio who opened, and the arrival of the surfing kings.

          The same traffic jam delayed me, so I only caught a snatch of Three Man Army’s closing number. They appeared a competent, if not spectacular bunch of rockers, who were warmly appreciated – especially when they thanked The Beach Boys (who weren’t actually there, of course) for the opportunity to play.

          Any mention of The Beach Boys, and this audience yells and yells.

          But the delay gives me an opportunity to size up the crowd, and the roadies time to plant bunches of flowers around the stage. With the fancy lighting at the back (hundreds of tiny lights stretching from the stage to a bar about 20 feet high, in parallel lines), the stage begins to resemble a tropical garden.

          The lights eventually dim and everybody, but everybody, stands up, cheering, yelling and generally greeting the group’s arrival as if they’d descended from heaven. There’s four girls in front of me who decide a better view is available if they stand on their seats, which they do, thus blocking the view of several hundred people behind, including myself.

          But the initial euphoria dies down as the group open the set with a slow song, ‘Sail On Sailor’ from the Holland album. And it’s obvious from the outset that Mike Love is the front man these days.

          Dressed in a pink creation with matching pants and top, a huge yellow sunflower design over his chest and a straw hat that’s mildly comical in appearance, he takes the role of cheer leader, moving in a Jagger like fashion to most of the numbers and taking care of the introductions.

          The two Wilson brothers, Carl and Dennis, pick guitars in the centre of the stage, while the fourth original, Alan Jardine, adopts his usual pose with one hand over his ear, taking care of the falsetto, apparently contributing the least to the overall sound, but vital to the vocal harmonies that make the Beach Boys what they are.

          There’s a host of others on the stage too.

          The two South Africans, Ricky Fataar and Blondie Chaplin are now really part of the act, singing their songs from the Holland set, almost as well loved as the originals.

Ricky is another drummer, while Blondie is to the fore, guitar at the ready. There’s a brass section, too, an extra bass player and an extra keyboard player. Indeed, there must be about a dozen musicians up there on the stage, some hidden behind the foliage, but all pumping out a very tight background to the songs, which soon come thick and fast.

          ‘Sloop John B’ follows ‘Sailor’ and at the first note of this first “oldie”, the audience are up again, dancing, jumping, yelling and singing along as if these songs were some kind of local national anthem, which they probably are.

          There’s new songs and old, but it’s the old ones that go down the best.

          There’s ‘California Girls’, dedicated to someone’s mother, and while they’re up there chanting about these fine specimens of female flesh from the golden state, the girls themselves are all around me loving every moment of it.

          Well, I gotta admit, most of them are kinda neat.

          “Here’s one of the first songs we ever wrote,” cried Carl in one break. “Our brother Brian wrote it and the words were written in a field in Hawthorne, California.”

          The song was ‘Surfer Girl’, the first time I’d heard this beautiful Wilson composition aired live. Fortunately the audience was respectfully silent as the harmonies filled the auditorium.

          Then there was ‘Darling’, and ‘Surfin’ USA’, which had everyone dancing in the aisles, then ‘Heroes And Villains’, a short version, and ‘Help Me Rhonda’, during which the whole audience sang along.

          They did ‘Wouldn’t It Be Nice’, which Mike Love said was his favourite number of them all, and paused before the opening chords to ‘Good Vibrations’ as if this was to be the climax to the evening’s entertainment.

          The simple syllable “I”, sung to open the song, was the cue for total chaos. Each and every throat opened and sang along, building to a huge climax during the “Gotta keep those loving good, vibrations...” bit. It was the final number, but three encores followed.

          “This is about a girl who was always kinda special to us,” said Love as the group re-appeared. “Ba-ba-ba, Ba-ba-bra Ann.” More chaos. “Here’s one you might know... Round, round, get around.....”

          A great sea of blonde heads was swaying crazily around me by this time. The audience had rushed the front, grabbed the flowers from the stage and hurled them back at the group. You could almost have surfed over the top of them.

          Off again, but back for more....”She took her Daddy’s car, and drove through the hamburger stand now.”

          This was fun, fun, fun in the real meaning of the word. Off again, more yelling, house lights, boos, house lights down, cheers. The group stumbled on. Mike Love removed his shirt and, with the house lights up again, they closed on ‘Jumping Jack Flash’ with Love wiggling in his best Jagger fashion. That was it, they told us afterwards.

Mike Love stammered something about a party on New Year’s Eve to which the whole audience would be invited, and expressed a desire to go on tour and take this whole bunch of Beach Boy maniacs along with them.

          “There’s no place like home,” said one of the Wilsons. Then they were gone.

          And outside it was still raining. It hadn’t mattered a bit.

(The photograph, taken off the internet, is actually The Beach Boys at New York's Madison Square Garden on December 19, so the line up would have been the same.)

GRAHAM SWINNERTON RIP – Slade’s Heroic Tour Manager

First in and last out, they are the unsung heroes of the rock trade and some of them become as important as the lead singer, not that you’d know it or get the group to admit it. The famous ones – Neil Aspinall, Ian Stewart, Richard Cole – get mentioned in biographies but that’s because the groups they worked for became legends and so did they. Most ply their trade conscientiously and stay out of the limelight, often finding themselves without a job when the group breaks up, and often without much to fall back on either.

          One of the best of this hardy breed was Graham ‘Swinn’ Swinnerton, Slade’s tour manager throughout their career, who became a victim of cancer on Monday after a long period of illness. A schoolfriend of Don Powell, Swinn helped hump the gear for The Vendors, Powell and Dave Hill’s first band, beginning in 1964, juggling this with his job at Woden Transformers in Bilston until Chas Chandler took over Slade’s management in 1969 and offered him £18 a week to work full-time for them. Swinn thus took charge of a road crew that supported Slade for the next 15 years and included their sound man Charlie – “Full poke, Charlie!” – Newham, Johnny Jones, known as JJ, Hayden Donovan and Scotsman Robbie Wilson, “whose wilful disregard for conventional behaviour became a constant source of amusement for the touring party”, as I put it in my Slade biography Feel The Noize. Somehow or other Swinn – like all the best roadies a big, genial, unflappable bloke – kept them all in order.

          I interviewed Swinn for that book and he was hilariously indiscreet, recalling tales of life on the road that involved guns, jail, groupies, mad dashes from one gig to another and, of course, rivers of alcohol. A firm believer in the parsimonious economic principles that always kept Slade’s feet firmly on the ground, Swinn drove the band around in an ageing Vauxhall Velox long after they’d topped the UK charts, picking them up from their family homes in the Wolverhampton area and dropping them off in the early hours when the gig was done.

          Slade were amongst the hardest working bands of their era – a key factor in their rise to prominence – and this meant their road crew had to work hard too. Not for them the modern-day routine of an album and a world tour followed by a year off; no, there was no slackening off of the pace in those days, so Swinn and his merry men travelled the world with Slade, from all the points of the compass in the UK to all over Europe, behind what was then known as the Iron Curtain, to America, Canada, Japan and Australia, a relentless grind that lasted until the end of the seventies. Swinn was there when The N’Betweens played to a handful of punters in Walsall pubs, he was there when Slade drew 20,000 fans to Earls Court in 1973 and he was there when Nod, Jim, Dave and Don stole the show at the Reading Festival in 1980, ever watchful, ever dutiful to their needs. The road-weary lyrics to Slade’s 1974 hit ‘The Bangin’ Man’ were inspired by Swinn’s relentless efficiency in waking them up in hotel rooms in time to hit the road for the next show.

          When Slade went to live in New York in 1975 Swinn went with them, taking up residence in an apartment on the East Side, not far from where Jim Lea and Dave Hill lived. Don lived downtown and Noddy became a permanent resident at the Mayflower Hotel and, as he did in Wolverhampton, he picked them up and drove them to gigs, this time all over America. In the doldrums years after they returned to the UK and found themselves disdained by punk rockers Swinn drove them to cabaret shows at Baileys in Leicester and Watford. Nod and Don didn’t mind the cabaret shows but Jim and Dave hated them, and they travelled separately, the former pair in what became known as the Happy Car, the latter two in the Hospital Car. Swinn insisted on driving the Happy Car.

          Swinn stuck with Slade during the eighties, taking on other work when his preferred clients were becalmed. When Slade first cut down on their touring at the end of the seventies, Swinn went to work for Saxon, taking other members of Slade’s crew with him, but his most consistent employers after Slade were Southside Johnny & The Asbury Dukes, Slade fans one and all, which brought him into contact with their pal Bruce Springsteen. “Bruce would come on stage and play with them at the Stone Pony in Asbury Park,” Swinn told Jim Lea, “and he was usually pissed, so I had to lead him off. Southside told Bruce that I used to work for Slade and Bruce said he loved Slade. I reckon Bruce nicked a bit of his showmanship from Nod.”

          He also worked for Ian Matthews and for The Damned and, pressed into service against his better judgement by Chas Chandler, tour managed the reunited Animals in 1983. “Chas was as bad as the rest of them when it came to arguing,” he told me when I interviewed him for Feel The Noize. “He once had Eric Burdon by the scruff of the neck.” Another regular employer was The Fugees, followed by solo stints for both Wyclef Jean and Lauryn Hill. “Swinn said they all had $10,000 Rolex watches but were always late on stage because they couldn’t tell the time,” says Jim. “He was amazed that when Lauryn Hill went over to do German TV she had an entourage of 27. When Slade did it, it was just us and him.”

          The last time I saw Swinn was in November 1996 when Noddy appeared on This Is Your Life, filmed at the Granada TV studios in Manchester. The final guest at this show was always supposed to be the biggest surprise of the night – a long lost relative flown in from Australia or a childhood friend unseen for 30 years – but on Nod’s show it was the Slade road crew, all five or six them, assembled by Swinn who, in later years, became especially close to Nod.

          “Our crew were feared all over the world,” says Jim, who’d alerted me to Swinn’s condition earlier this year. “When we went to Poland, they said we couldn’t go back. So I said, ‘Didn’t you like the group then’, and the promoter said, ‘Group fine. Road crew, no, no, no!’”

          RIP Swinn.