FLOPS ON 45: The Ones That Got Away 1965-1979 by Richard Lysons

This is the book that no established rock or pop star will want in their Christmas stocking. With very few exceptions, everyone who has enjoyed a hit record or two has also had a few flops, which they doubtless hope the world has forgotten. Now, along comes Richard Lysons to remind them of their flops, and while his motive is surely not to rub their faces in it, his diligence makes sure that none escape his merciless gaze. 

The truth is, of course that most acts, especially newcomers, record more flops than hits and the ratio of hits to misses across the board is anyone’s guess. Statistics aren’t available – doubtless because the record industry doesn’t want to talk about its failures – but I’m inclined to think that less than one in 30 actual releases became hits. Those that remain unsold might even have been melted down so the vinyl could be used again, a terrible fate. 

Flops On 45 is restricted to UK acts within the period denoted by its subtitle. By and large, it limits itself to acts who have, or had, enjoyed a measure of success along the way, which means that flops by hopefuls who never made the charts are ignored, otherwise the book would be about ten times its length. As it is, it’s 350 pages, including a substantial index and source notes, but no pictures, thus relieving its publishers, Empire Publications of Manchester, of substantial clearance fees. 

“Flops On 45 makes an important contribution to popular music history: it honours a forgotten workforce,” writes the eminent critic and sociologist Simon Frith in his introduction, referring to the detail – the chronicling by Lysons of all those involved, hundreds of names, in a record’s production – that is at the heart of his book. Indeed, I’m hard pressed to think of any pop book, not even those that record the hits, as opposed to the misses, with so much trivial information. As it happens, in 2005, to mark the 1000th UK Number One hit, I commissioned and edited 1000 UK Number One Hits for Omnibus Press, which in many ways is the antithesis of Flops On 45, and though authors Jon Kutner and Spencer Leigh did a sterling job, they didn’t pack anywhere near as much information into the generous 600 pages of this large format, illustrated book as Lysons does into Flops On 45.

Faced with a proposal for a book on records that flopped, a commissioning editor such as myself might reasonably be excused for assuming that the book would flop too, for who would want to read about records few people bought? That’s not the point, of course. The point is to contrast the misses with the hits, and explain why an act with plenty of big hits somehow stumbles along the way. More specifically, and Lysons doesn’t hold back in this regard, he explains why he believes a record was a flop, usually because he thinks it’s pretty awful, but other factors such as taste, timing and promotion, or lack thereof, impact on a record's chances too. At the same time, though, he sheds a tear over those records that in his opinion deserved to be hits but weren’t.

Let’s take a random example. Only two acts – The Beatles and The Bee Gees – get a chapter to themselves. The Beatles didn’t have any flops collectively but the same cannot be said for the individuals after they’d split up. The Bees Gees, on the other hand, both top the charts and plumb the depths, and one of their biggest flops was ‘Fanny (Be Tender With My Love)’, to my mind the equal of ‘How Deep Is Your Love’ which reached number three, unlike ‘Fanny’ which didn’t chart at all in the UK. “Without doubt, one of the best R&B songs we ever wrote,” Lysons quotes Maurice Gib. “I love Arif Mardin’s production…” while Lysons adds, “It is one of the group’s finest songs and deserved to be a hit. Perhaps the title – inspired by the housekeeper at 461 Ocean Boulevard named Fanny Cummings – was the problem. As British-born, surely the writers knew the problems of using this word? But for me, ‘Fanny’ is in a class of its own.” I agree.

Flops On 45 is divided into 17 chapters, each of which deals with a particular strain of pop – Teen Angels, Underground, Ladies, London Boys, Glam, Punk etc etc – and is a trivia fans delight, well worth the £14.95 rrp. 

PINK FLOYD – SHINE ON: The Definitive Oral History by Mark Blake

“If you’re in a room, as I was at Live 8, with David, Nick, Rick and Roger Waters, nobody speaks,” says Polly Samson, wife of David Gilmour since 1994. “There is nothing but awkward silences. They have no small talk with each other. They have no big talk with each other. They just do not speak. And then they get on stage and suddenly they’re so eloquent, and the way they communicate is beautiful.”

Time was when the concept of an Oral History of Pink Floyd was about as likely as Van Morrison inviting journalists to spend an evening drinking with him while he regaled them with stories about his days in Them. Not only didn’t they speak to each other, they didn’t speak to the press much either. What’s more, pretty much everyone around them was tight-lipped too. They were an enigma, a “faceless obelisk” as more than one of their accomplices comment in Mark Blake’s second book about the group, following on from Pigs Might Fly, his definitive biography, now in its third edition. 

Now, of course, everything’s out in the open. Indeed, it took the squabbling between Roger Waters and David Gilmour, over the latter’s decision to reform the group to record and tour without Waters, that set off a time-bomb, opening the floodgates for all manner of grievances to be aired in public. The air of mystery was dispelled and, suddenly, Pink Floyd was an open book. 

        That element of mystery is most often explained by the strange story of Syd Barrett, Pink Floyd’s founder, once its leading light, whose withdrawal from renown and eccentric behaviour was an ongoing source of invasive, sometimes salacious, speculation. But there was more to it than that, however; a detachment hinted at in the Dark Side song ‘Us And Them’: ”Who knows which is which and who is who?” 

        They didn’t like doing interviews, or having their photographs taken. On stage, they wore black and hid behind lights, screens and props. Their LP sleeves featured surreal, baffling imagery. It seemed as if they didn’t want their fans to know how they created their work, what they thought about it or even what they looked like. They were a conundrum, appealing to the curious, to problem-solvers, to those who believed – rightly or wrongly – that liking their music demonstrated a higher level of perception than, say, fans of Status Quo. 

Gradually, however, as the inner workings of Pink Floyd became exposed, what we saw wasn’t very nice. Beneath that aloof veneer, that inscrutable façade, lingered dysfunction and bitterness, rivalry and vanity, arrogance and greed – all of which Mark Blake reveals in spades this engrossing oral history.

Mark begins at the beginning, with Syd Barrett, or Roger as he was always known to his sister Rosemary, who speaks at length about the brother she tried hard to understand but never really did, and who cared for him later in life. We move on to how the group was assembled from among friends in Cambridge, with Syd as the central figure, soon to be joined in London by drummer Nick Mason and keyboard player Richard Wright. At this point Waters was the least musical, requiring Wright, the only trained musician, to tune his bass. For whatever reason, Waters looked down on Wright thereafter. 

Plenty of people talk about this era, when Pink Floyd was a pop group pure and simple, in frilly shirts, loon pants and kicking their legs in the air for photographers. The inscrutability came later, after Syd was abandoned to whatever was going on inside his head, which no one could understand, and with Gilmour as his replacement an element of professionalism is introduced, along with the walls erected to keep outsiders at bay.

Nevertheless, Mark Blake has unearthed plenty of bystanders to take us through the story, among them a surprising number of former girlfriends – they got married and divorced a lot, leaving a pool of embittered ex-wives who, no doubt, hoovered up a decent chunk of their earnings – road crew, some of whom were retained even when their services were no longer required, record producers and studio hands, management staff, flatmates, collaborators, photographers, journalists and, most especially, Aubrey “Po” Powell who, with the late Storm Thorgerson, made up the design team Hipgnosis, creators of Floydian artwork. Some 92 voices are credited in the acknowledgements, the interviews conducted between 1992 and 2025, which speaks for itself as far as Blake’s diligence is concerned.

The quotes are linked with Mark’s text to explain the background, much of it setting the scene for when and where he interviewed the members of the group and, in his own idiosyncratic way, comments on how they behave. We hear how Waters’ domination of the group tore it apart, how he bullied Wright and alienated Gilmour. For years Mason acted as a go-between but in the end opted for the Gilmour faction, a wise move. Waters’ incomprehension at how Pink Floyd could exist without him is at the heart of the tale. 

“You are antisemitic to your rotten core,” wrote Samson, never one to mince words, to Waters in 2023, “… a lying, thieving, hypocritical, tax-avoiding, lip-synching, misogynistic, sick-with-envy, megalomaniac.”

“Imagine waking up to [her] every morning,” responded Waters.

And if the band you’re in starts playing a different tune… 

THE COLONEL AND THE KING by Peter Guralnick

Every great story needs a great villain, and in The Elvis Presley Story the villain has always been Colonel Tom Parker, his manager. Just look at the evidence: he conned poor old Elvis out of 50% of his earnings, maybe more; he was a bully, unsophisticated and uncultured, steering Elvis away from his R&B roots towards MOR and innumerable schlock films, neutering his sexuality in the process; he bartered Elvis’ health-sapping Las Vegas appearances to pay off his gambling debts; and, finally, to hammer the nail into the coffin, he wasn’t even who he said he was, concealing his real identity as – wait for it – an illegal immigrant.   

That, at least, is the commonly held narrative, and also the theme of the “authorised” 1922 biopic Elvis The Movie, with Tom Hanks as, to quote my own review, the “scheming, Machiavellian Parker, thoroughly dislikable, overweight, lumbering, ugly and speaking with a nasty quasi-Boer accent born of his Dutch ancestry, of which Elvis was forever ignorant.”

        Peter Guranlick, Elvis’ premier biographer, however, believes otherwise. The only minor criticism of his magnificent, definitive two-volume Presley biography, Last Train To Memphis (1994) and Carless Love (1999), was that he was too easy on Parker. In this third book – a coda if you like – Guralnick goes out of his way to fully redeem Parker’s reputation, painting a portrait that is the complete opposite of his (un)popular image, an avuncular, wise and witty man who was kind to animals, stood by his friends, always kept his word and was scrupulously honest. Indeed, so robust is the author’s defence of Parker, so persuasive his tone, that I’m inclined to believe him. 

        The story is told in two parts. The first, subtitled How Much Does It Cost If It’s Free? – the proposed title for a book Parker intended to write but never did – is a 300+ page biography that avoids focusing on Presley and instead offers fascinating details on aspects of Parker’s life hitherto unexplored, many of them heart-warming. The second, occupying the final 250 pages, tells his story through a selection from the “tens of thousands” of letters he wrote (and a handful he received); to Elvis and his family, business associates, friends and foes, the earliest eulogising Elvis before he managed him, the majority pushing his point of view with regard to Elvis’ career, many of them illustrating Parker’s quirky sense of the absurd. Some of these letters are alluded to in the biographical section of the book. 

Parker’s upbringing in his native Breda in Holland had been explored before but never in such detail, and the same goes for his early life in the US as a “carney”, a general labourer on travelling fairgrounds and circuses where he was always willing to turn his hand to any task, no matter how unpleasant, and learnt show business from the ground up. He was particularly adept at working as an “advance man”, arriving a week or two in a town before the carnival, setting up deals with local businesses and making absolutely sure its entire population was aware of the coming attraction, thus maximising profits, a skill he maintained with Elvis. I found these pre-Elvis chapters absorbing – there was a likeable streak of eccentricity in Parker’s character, a restlessness, a need to make up his own rules as he went along and not to accept the status quo. Above all, he got things done.

Introduced to the music world through a fairly brief relationship with crooner Gene Austin, he quickly became known as a mover and shaker, moving on to manage Eddy Arnold and, later, Hank Snow. Elvis – a “promising new singer” – was drawn to his attention early in 1955 and after watching him on the Louisiana Hayride Colonel booked him onto a Snow tour that opened in Roswell, New Mexico, on February 14. He stole the show, just as he did on two tours of Florida that followed. The reaction from teenage girls was explosive, and when Mae Boren Axton, a former school teacher (and co-author of ‘Heartbreak Hotel’) who was working for Parker, spotted a former student in the audience, she inquired what was it about Elvis that she liked so much. “Awww Miz Axton,” she replied, “he’s just one great big beautiful hunk of forbidden fruit.” 

Parker moved swiftly. By the end of the year, flying by the seat of his pants, he had edged out Presley’s manager, won over Elvis’ sceptical parents, negotiated a release from Sun Records and transfer to RCA, overseen more chaotic concerts, arranged more TV appearances and set the wheels in motion for Elvis’ first movie which turned out to be Love Me Tender. He worked 16 hours a day, every day, and Elvis sure appreciated it: “You are the best and most wonderful person I could ever hope to work with,” wrote Elvis in a letter addressed to Parker on November 21, 1956. “I will stick with you thru thick and thin… I love you like a father.”

Which pretty much sums up the relationship from then on, though Guralnick is at pains to point out that, creatively, Elvis was in charge, while when it came to business Parker ruled the roost. In amongst what follows are details of complex royalty and advance deals with RCA and various film companies in which Parker, forever astute, invariably comes out on top. He never forces Elvis into doing anything he doesn’t want to do – thus contradicting the widely held belief that Parker stifled Elvis’ artistic ambitions, and reveals how the spendthrift in Elvis was most often to blame for placing earnings before art. 

        Furthermore, according to Guralnick, Parker did not interfere with the production of Elvis’s Comeback Special in 1968 (though he hated the word ‘comeback’, insisting Elvis never went away), the reason why Elvis never toured outside of the US was not Parker’s lack of a US passport but the customs risk to whoever was assigned to carry his drugs, and the impetus behind the notorious sell-out of his back catalogue to RCA in 1973 came from Elvis and his father, not Parker. And the 50/50 income split applied only to joint ventures agreed upon late in Elvis’ career. 

The story gets darker towards the end as Elvis’ weight and health problems interfere with Parker’s innate sense of responsibility towards the paying public. The hopelessness of the situation, the breakdown of the marriage if you like, may have led Parker to become addicted to gambling, squandering his fortune on Vegas roulette wheels, an inexplicable reversal of type for a serial winner. He’s stoic when Elvis dies and bitter when the Estate seeks to free itself from his clutches. Towards the end he’s on speaking terms with its CEO and in the end even Priscilla comes around to appreciating all that he did for her late husband. By this time, too, he and Guralnick have become friends, insofar as Parker could ever befriend a journalist. 

It’s not easy to come to terms with the idea that Colonel Tom Parker was a saint but Elvis And The Colonel succeeds. The book is illustrated throughout with photos, many I’d not seen before, and beautifully written, as you would expect from Peter Guralnick. 

THE WHO: Live At The Oval

September 18, 1971, a Saturday, was a lovely autumn day, perfect in every way. At lunchtime in Kennington, just south of the River Thames, the sun shone down on a vast horde of rock fans streaming from Oval Underground Station and making their way along Harleyford Street to the cricket ground that since 1845 has been the home of Surrey CCC. Some were running, hurrying along to secure a spot near the front; for that evening, as dusk fell, the greatest live rock group in the world would perform on a rickety stand long since demolished. Like the game of cricket itself, with its many formats and multi-coloured strips, the Oval is much redeveloped since that night but it remains the traditional venue for the final, often deciding, Test Match in five-game series involving England and one of the cricket-playing nations that take turns to visit our shores each summer. For this reason, it is often the scene of noisy celebrations. 

The group who played at the Oval that night certainly provoked a noisy celebration and, it could be said, is much redeveloped too, this imposed upon them by the passing of two members. Furthermore, the music they play, both at the Oval and currently on what is likely to be their final American tour, is somehow traditional too. Their best-known songs have joined the body of work that is the cornerstone of rock music, just as the sonatas and symphonies by the great composers are the cornerstone of its classical equivalent. Nine songs performed that night at the Oval were performed last week when the two surviving members of the group, along with six others, opened their ‘Song Is Over’ tour in Florida. 

It was and is, of course, The Who: Pete Townshend, Roger Daltrey, John Entwistle and Keith Moon, Londoners all, and in 1971 they were at the peak of their powers. The previous month had seen the release of Who’s Next, regarded by many as their finest achievement, and it’s likely that the 40,000 who turned out that autumn day remains the largest crowd ever seen at the Oval, for sponsorship reasons now known as the Kia Oval. It’s official capacity, even today, is only 27,500. At the time it was the biggest crowd ever assembled to watch The Who in their home town. 

I was among them, covering the event for Melody Maker. In the 16 months since I’d joined the paper I’d done my best to ingratiate myself with The Who and their support team for the simple reason that I thought they were the best live band in the world, and by the time of this concert I was sufficiently friendly with their acting manager Peter Rudge that he’d given me an on-stage pass so I could stand alongside the band, on John’s side, with my plus one which happened that day to be my sister. I watched and reviewed the show from this privileged position but, being so close, the music didn’t sound as clear as it would have done from out front. It never does. Still, it sounded a lot better than The Faces who preceded The Who on stage, this because The Who used a brand-new and very expensive PA system that wasn’t made available to the other acts on the bill. On hearing how The Who sounded, Rod Stewart left early, muttering indignantly to himself. 

My 'priority' pass for The Who's Oval show. 

 

I was aware that the concert was being recorded. The Pye mobile studio truck was parked at the rear of the stand where the temporary stage had been built, cables were everywhere and recording engineers were scurrying about, but I was told later – much later, in fact, not until I was involved in selecting tracks for the 4-CD Who box set 30 Years Of Maximum R&B in 1993 – that the tapes were unusable, evidently something to do with the positioning of microphones. Modern technology is a wonderful thing, however, and the tapes have been resurrected, so, for the past 48 hours I’ve been listening to The Who at the Oval as if I’d been one of those scurrying from the tube station to get close to the band. And it’s a damn near flawless performance, a perfect snapshot of The Who in their prime, spurred on by that reckless spirit of adventure that characterised them in this, their imperial phase. 

The Who had spent most of the previous month touring America, playing mostly arenas, so they were at Olympic fitness. Still, they rehearsed with their new PA and lighting rig at the Granada Cinema in Wandsworth during early September, concentrating on the newer songs from Who’s Next, and the set they played at the Oval was almost identical to those performed on the US tour, a judicious mix of old and new, the kind of set they would perform until the new became the old much later in their career. 

Because of the need to switch sound systems there was a long delay before The Who arrived on stage, and when they did they opened up with a spontaneous jam, probably to test the PA, its assumed title ‘So Glad To See Ya’, taken from Roger’s improvised lyric. Satisfied with the sound, they launched into ‘Summertime Blues’, a safe starter, to get themselves in the mood, John and Roger already displaying top form, Keith warming up and Pete a bit reckless, as he was wont to be. John’s song ‘My Wife’ followed, a steamroller, chockfull of power chords, Keith steady, John in good voice, Pete more disciplined, switching from block chords to lead runs as the song cruised towards its end; Roger, underused, hanging grimly on, keepin’ on movin’ as he sings when John steps back. “The Ox,” he announces at the close.

The tempo yielded for the more melodic ‘Love Ain’t For Keepin’’, another new song, shorter than most, with unforeseen harmonies in mid song, before a couple of trusted favourites ‘I Can’t Explain’ and ‘Substitute’, the former’s quick solo a blistering assault, the latter a tight, brief showcase for The Who’s harmonic flair. Roger introduced ‘Bargain’, a relatively complex song performed with ease, before the more melodious ‘Behind Blue Eyes’, equally assured, arpeggios cleanly picked. 

‘Won’t Get Fooled Again’, the fifth Who’s Next song of the night, followed, a lengthy, tight reading that was edited for their recent single, accompanied by the pre-recorded synthesiser track that reins the group in to a certain extent and heralds its dramatic climax. The semi-public Young Vic rehearsals aside, this would have been the first occasion on which fans could hear this latest, up-to-the-minute addition to The Who’s instrumental arsenal. The other, equally famous, synthesiser-based Who’s Next song, ‘Baba O’Riley’, would not be introduced into The Who’s set until later in the year.  

‘Baby Don’t You Do It’, a power-driven take on a Marvin Gaye Motown song, allows John and Keith to display their chops, punctuated by Pete’s improvised guitar licks. It was no secret that at this time of their evolution their guitarist smoothed his passage with gulps from a brandy bottle – as John would do later from ‘water’ bottles attached to his microphone stand – and it’s my contention that this enabled both to ride roughshod at times, freeing themselves to play as flexibly as they chose, to leap into the unknown, on numbers like ‘Baby Don’t You Do It’ and, later in this show, ‘Naked Eye’ and ‘Magic Bus’. Because today’s audiences invariably demand to hear only what they recognise, such spontaneity is rarely heard now. This indulgence might also explain Pete’s rather undisciplined comments during the show, with references to silly mid-on, his smart new white outfit and how he’d give his guitar away at the close, sounding a bit like intemperate rants.

Two selections from Tommy, ‘Pinball Wizard’ and ‘See Me Feel Me’/’Listening To You’, followed, both crowd pleasers, the latter especially electric as the Tommy hymn doubles back on itself, gaining momentum as it charges forward. At this point in the show the huge Klieg spotlights behind the back line were switched on, their beams illuminating the scene – and what a glorious sight it was from the stage: 40,000 delirious Who fans waving ecstatically as Roger sang about how listening to them inspires the music they hear. 

Seconds after it ended Pete yelled ‘My Generation’, and they launched into a brisk take on their rabble-rousing statement of independence, a brutal riposte to Tommy’s fanciful optimism. This segues into ‘Naked Eye’, heard no doubt for the first time by many present, a long, undulating, dramatic piece of highs and lows, and finally ‘Magic Bus’, another lengthy, bouncy crowd-pleaser, the group’s take on Bo Diddley, that ends with a traditional Who smash up. “Inevitably Townshend’s guitar – a brand new Gibson bought for the day – was sacrificed to the crowd,” I wrote in the following week’s Melody Maker. “He hammered it to pieces with the mic stand and took a flying leap into his stack. The wreckage was thrown to the crowd as Moon stood up and literally walked through his drum kit.”

The Melody Maker headline on my show review. 

It was a fitting climax to one of The Who’s greatest ever shows, now available for all to hear; shame movie cameras weren’t covering it too. 

Unusually, The Who Live At The Oval is released by Universal Music, The Who’s US label, and for this reason is a tad more expensive than their releases on Polydor. The package contains a 20-page booklet with top notch sleeve notes by Andy Neill, lots of pictures taken on the day and an explanation of how and why the recording was finally upgraded for public consumption. 

THE EVERLY BROTHERS, June 1970

Continuing in Everly Brothers mode, it just so happens that in the third week of June, 1970, my first week as a staff writer on Melody Maker, I interviewed Don and Phil at London’s Inn On The Park hotel at the southern end of Park Lane. 

        I went up to their suite and when Don answered my knock he proposed we do the interview in the bar downstairs where Phil would join us later. On the way down the elevator stopped at another floor and in walked Dustin Hoffman and an aide. The four of us didn’t speak but on our way to the bar I mentioned Hoffman to Don who had evidently failed to recognise the actor. “Was that really him?” he asked. When I nodded, he told me how much he liked The Graduate. 

        This was the first ever interview I did for MM and it goes without saying that I was a bit star struck at meeting The Everly Brothers, whose records I’d been buying since 1958. I still have the vinyl LP The Fabulous Style of The Everly Brothers from 1960 and a 4-track EP from 1958, both on the London American label with the inscription ‘A Cadence Recording’ on their sleeves. I decorated the inner sleeve of the LP with a cutting of their name, probably cut out from NME, and wrote my name on it too. I was 13 at the time. 

        I wasn’t given a by-line for the MM interview. Reading it back now it seems rather slight – but here it is, exactly as it was published in MM dated June 27, 1970. 

THE DUO WHO INFLUENCED THE BEATLES AND THOUSANDS OF OTHER GROUPS TALK TO MM

THE EVERLYS ROCK ON...

A lot of water has flown down the Thames since Don and Phil Everly stood side by side on stage strumming their guitars and singing songs like ‘Bye Bye Love’, ‘Poor Jenny’ and ‘Bird Dog’.

They were the American prototypes of our own teenybopper idols and their songs spread across the Atlantic, collecting golden records everywhere. Every single was not just a hit but an event.

Don and Phil harmonised their way through a dozen chart successes until their last really big one, ‘Cathy’s Clown’. Then what happened?

They volunteered to join the Army, had their hair cut and got married. Then there was the agonising time in 1962 when elder brother Don was ill – and a courageous Phil had to appear solo. Reports filtered through about the brothers splitting up – accompanied by the usual denials. “Everlys Mystery screamed the headlines.

From then on – silence. Silence to such an extent that many of today’s teenage pop fans could be excused for not knowing who the Everlys are – or were. 

Well, now seems a good time to break the silence. Don and Phil flew into England last week to film a sequence for the Petula Clark TV show which will be screened in December – and talked about their absence from the pop scene in recent years.

The brothers have definitely not split up. They are the best of friends – and they are both fit and well. Gone are the greasy quiffs of the ‘Bye Bye Love’ days, and the identical sharp suits.

“We are staying for just a week in England and it’s really great to be here – especially on election day,” Don told me in the bar of the West End hotel where they are staying.

“It’s more of a holiday than work as we are doing just one television show for ABC and no live shows anywhere at all.” 

Old Everly Brothers songs have recently been recorded by Dylan and Simon & Garfunkel, and I asked Don how he felt about these releases.

“I have heard Dylan singing ‘Take A Message To Mary’ and I liked it,” he said. “I like Dylan and I think he is singing better all the time. The Nashville Skyline album was terrific. 

“I like Simon & Garfunkel’s version of ‘Bye Bye Love’ as well. Those two really write some marvellous songs of their own but they sound very much like us on ‘Bye Bye Love’. The first time I heard it I had to think whether it was us or someone else at first.

“We are using ‘Bye Bye Love’ as a signature tune for a new TV show ten-week series in America. It has taken over from the Johnny Cash Show.”

With the Everly Brothers being in at the start of rock and roll, the inevitable question of the current rock revival was hard to avoid. “I have always liked rock music and I never thought it left us,” said Don. “There has always been someone around keeping it going. I don’t think we will ever return to what was happening 15 years ago. There was a lot of good things around then but I don’t like to see music going backwards. I would much rather go forward.

“New band keep coming on to the scene and breaking up very quickly. I wish they would stay together longer because it is the longer established bands that are the best. I love listening to Hendrix, the Stones and the Beatles. I think it’s terrible that the Beatles are splitting up. Together they were just marvellous.”

There are no plans for new Everly Brothers singles in the near future – and Don is not worried about the prospect. 

“We have not really had time to go into the studio to record singles. Warners are releasing a live album soon called The Everly Brothers Show which is a great conglomeration of different things we do. It will be released in the States to coincide with the start of the TV series and it’s got lots of old hits on it in medleys. 

“We are concentrating strictly on television work and when we get back to the States we are doing a summer season at Las Vegas. Single records are not really the thing at the moment. Unless we really felt we had to do a single we would not bother to record one.

At this point Phil joined us in the bar, only to be told that he couldn’t get a cup of tea – in a luxury hotel at that.

He too thought that rock music had never really left us so it couldn’t be revived.

“People are always going on about a rock and roll revival. They’ve done it before and they are still doing it. As far as new bands go, I’m like Don and prefer the established groups. The Beatles, the Stones and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young are all my favourites.”

Are the brothers worried about their lack of single sales in this country?

Don: “It’s always nice to see your records going up the chart after every release but things are much cooler now. The heat is off and I think I prefer it this way.”

Phil: “I don’t really think about it now and the lack of singles success doesn’t concern me. It seems the logical thing not to do so many singles.”

Both the boys agreed that they would like to do some live concert appearances in this country. “We have to plan ahead quite a bit and it’s very difficult,” said Don. “This TV show we are over here for was planned a long time ago.”

Talk of live shows turned to live groups – and both brothers were full of superlative for The Who, currently touring the States with amazing success.

Phil: “I think rock today is better than it was ten years ago. I don’t know what we’ll be doing in ten years’ time. Probably just about the same as we are now but a lot less of it. Maybe we’ll be going to rock revival concerts then.

“We have played at one New York folk festival and have been invited to some other big festivals but since Woodstock there has been nothing big. Promoters have a difficult time getting it all together.”

Don: “We are more active show-business wise nowadays and have got well past the teenage idol bit. It’s part of history and in New York now the original records of our old hits are fetching about 25 dollars. I heard that someone paid that for a single of ‘Bye Bye Love’ on the old Cadence label. I would pay that just to have it hanging on my wall at home.”

BLOOD HARMONY: The Everly Brothers Story by Barry Mazor

A picture speaks a thousand words. They are not smiling. Phil, on the left, looks apprehensive, his eyes focused on something in the distance that troubles him, an approaching threat. Don, on the right, looks resigned, as if whatever is upsetting his younger brother is to his mind inevitable. Their pompadour quiffs, of course, are immaculate. 

The picture on the cover of Blood Harmony: The Everly Brothers Story by Barry Mazor was taken by an unknown photographer in January of 1965, just as the duo’s career had reached a crossroads. Live, things were fine, even if Don and Phil weren’t getting along too well, not that they ever had, not really. Later that same year, during a tour of the Far East, they would perform eight sold-out shows at a 25,000-seater arena in Manila, the largest audience of their almost 60-year career. Their records, however, had stopped selling regardless of their quality, ingenuity or whatever musical direction they chose to follow. Trouble was indeed ahead.

Somewhat surprisingly in light of their fame, cultural importance and longevity, Blood Harmony is the first substantial, rigorously-researched and objective biography of The Everly Brothers I have read. There have been a handful of others but they were slight. This book is not, largely because, although clearly an admirer of their work, US roots music specialist Mazor doesn’t hold back on the many issues that impacted destructively on their lives and career: sibling rivalry, often intense, business wrangles with management, record labels and song publishers, drug and alcohol addiction, unstable marriages leading to onerous alimony obligations and, perhaps most importantly, that enduring but ultimately exasperating – to them anyway – image of two almost identical brothers, besuited and quiffed, eyeball to eyeball, strumming their matching black acoustic guitars with white pickguards, and singing songs in perfect harmony about teenagers falling in and out of love. 

        As the key bridge, both chronological and musical, between Elvis and The Beatles, Don and Phil Everly found themselves in a trap from which they could never escape. While Elvis, for better or worse, became a film star and Vegas icon, and The Beatles, with safety in numbers, matured every step of the way, The Everly Brothers suffered from an insurmountable image problem: their fans simply wouldn’t allow them to be anything more, or anything less, than the duo that recorded ‘Bye Bye Love’ in 1957, forever locked together, side by side singing that first major hit and all those that followed, a deluge of glorious songs that changed the face of pop music but resolutely prohibited them from ever transforming into anything beyond that illustrious beginning.  

        In a five-year span, between 1957 and 1962, the Everlys had 15 top ten hits in the US (and 12 in the UK), and lesser hits too numerous to mention, all of them hummed on the unconscious breath by everyone who took an interest in popular music during those years. (I still own an Everlys vinyl LP and EP on the London American label.) Furthermore, their sound, an innovative cross between country, rockabilly and R&B, sweetened or soured with keening balladry – Mazor is particularly good at tracing its roots – influenced just about every singing act that followed, from The Beatles, Bob Dylan and Simon & Garfunkel on downwards. What’s more, all who followed in that vein, right up into the 21st century, no matter how famous they became, tipped their hat to them – not that it did Don and Phil much good in the long term.

        In many ways, Blood Harmony is a sad book. The Everly Brothers became pop stars in an era when magazines required them not only to look photogenic but to offer little else but cheerful, fairly anodyne, quotes about themselves. They became adept at maintaining a professional showbiz façade that was unusually successful in hiding the reality of their lives, this despite occasional attempts on their part – most especially by the more outspoken Don – to offer glimpses into it. 

        The veneer began early, with PR suggestions that they were Kentucky born and bred. They weren’t: although Don was born in the Bluegrass State, Phil was born in Chicago where the brothers were raised before the family moved to Shenandoah, Iowa, then Knoxville, Tennessee. It was a musical household, earning its living on stage and local radio as best it could through performing close-harmony country music accompanied for the most part by Ike, their guitar-playing dad. His two sons were apprenticed at an early age and knew nothing else; alienated from schoolfriends and accustomed to a life they could share only with others in the same trade from similar backgrounds. 

        Landing in Nashville in 1954, they tried at first to sell themselves as songwriters but once they were introduced – by the music publisher who became their manager – to the crack songwriting team of Felice and Boudleaux Bryant they entered their imperial phase. Though vastly more talented, during this early stage of their career they found themselves bracketed alongside the vacuous teen idols promoted by a record industry staffed by middle-aged men alienated by rock and roll and bent on suppressing it. This would have long-term negative consequences. 

        There is a lazy assumption that Don was the more spirited, like John in The Beatles, and that Phil was the traditionalist, like Paul. While there’s a scintilla of truth in this, Mazor delves much deeper into the contrasting personalities of the brothers, their likes and dislikes from food, cars and interior decoration to politics, music and where it could be performed: Don liked folksy clubs, Phil preferred Vegas. Both, however, pursued girls enthusiastically but if Phil suffered an inferiority complex through being two years younger, Don often found his senior role a burden. Fights, some physical, were commonplace. With little in common, they didn’t socialise apart from when they were touring which, perhaps regrettably, was most of the time.

        Blood Harmony follows their serpentine career closely and in linear fashion, from the 1950s package show tours with fellow travellers like Buddy Holly, who became a close friend, Paul Anka, Sam Cooke, Chuck Berry and Fats Domino (though not Elvis), to their final show together at the Regent Theatre in Ipswich in November, 2005. The decade long interregnum between July 1973, when they dramatically severed their relationship on stage at Knott’s Berry Farm in California, only to re-emerge triumphantly at London’s Royal Albert Hall ten years later, is covered in two separate chapters, each dealing with a single brother. Thereafter, though shaky, the partnership continues until that final show, and it is pleasing to note that in their final years fraternal harmony was restored. Phil died in 2014. Don was too broken-hearted to attend his funeral. He died in 2021, outliving his younger brother by seven years. 

        Along the way, Barry Mazor delivers all manner of fascinating observations. Among the many are how session guitarist Ray Edenton replaced the wound G-string on his guitar with one an octave higher to play alongside Don and produce the distinctive opening strum on ‘Bye Bye Love’; how the Crickets became the Everly’s backing band after the death of Holly; the input of so many noted musicians, Chet Atkins, James Burton, Jim Gordon, Warren Zevon, Albert Lee and many more; how the drug Ritalin affected Don and how he was weaned off it; how the draft impacted on them (the photo of them shorn for service in the US Marines still has the power to shock); how in the UK they were loved beyond measure; the countless awards bestowed on them but how, apart, they were frustratingly unable to create the magic they could together. Throughout, Mazor analyses their music in depth with great insight. 

        Blood Harmony is 412 pages long, with a 16-page b&w photo section, copious reference notes and an index. Published by Da Capo, now an imprint of Hachette, it costs £22.66 on Amazon; RRP is the US $32. Anyone who, like me, loved the music of The Everly Brothers, needs to read this definitive biography. 

OZZY OSBOURNE (1948-2025)

Like Alice Cooper and, to a lesser extent, Elton John, there was something slightly preposterous about the Ozzy Osbourne that I encountered as a staff writer for Melody Maker during the 1970s. Ozzy, who died yesterday aged 76, struck me as a good-natured showman in those days, his Prince Of Darkness moniker a tongue-in-cheek portrait for a singer who was happy to act out any role if it advanced his career, however outrageous that may be, even one that involved biting the heads off bats, doves or any other small species that came to hand.

        Ozzy spoke with the pronounced Birmingham accent that never left him, no matter where he laid his hat. Hard, thick ‘Brummie’ made his speech rise in tone at the end of every sentence, as if everything he said was a question, and when he and Black Sabbath’s then manager Pat Meehan met me for lunch at a Chinese restaurant in London’s Lyle Street in early 1971, he struck me as utterly hilarious, a prisoner of his own good fortune – he’d arrived for the lunch in Meehan’s pale blue Rolls Royce Corniche – and quite unsure how to respond to the group’s sudden success. “Prince of Darkness?” he might have said to me. “Bugger that for a goime of soildiurs.”

        This was quite early in Black Sabbath’s career and, as I relate in my Just Backdated memoir, arrangements were made at this luncheon for me to accompany the group for a handful of dates on a forthcoming UK tour, during which I would interview them and review the shows. As it happened I opted not to interview Ozzy but, instead, guitarist Tony Iommi who struck me as the most loquacious, earnest and, probably, intelligent member of the group. This may have had something to do with an incident I witnessed in Manchester where, at the hotel in which we stayed, Ozzy over-refreshed himself in the late-night residents’ bar. Someone in the party, noting Ozzy’s comatose state, stuck a bedroom-style ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign around his neck which remained in place until he was helped to bed. “Best interview that Tony on the tour bus tomorrow,” I thought as I observed Ozzy being led unsteadily away.

        Heavy metal was never really my bag, so I wasn’t much of a Black Sabbath fan but I respected their achievements and professionalism, looking on from a journalist’s perspective as their success expanded in America when I worked there as MM’s US editor. I saw them play arena concerts in St Louis, Chicago and New York and acknowledged that they were the foremost performers in the genre they had chosen, an inspiration to a host of others, as can be seen from the many tributes paid today by Ozzy’s peers. I watched Ozzy inspire audiences in their thousands to reciprocate his peace signs and afterwards encountered him backstage or at parties thrown to celebrate the group’s success. He hadn’t changed a bit. He still struck me as a rather guileless innocent, carried along on the crest of a wave without really knowing why or how or where it might lead or, indeed, to care or even think very much about it all either. 

        It might have led to penury – Sabbath were early victims of what I might term “managerial materialism” – and mid-life death from substance abuse, and we have his second wife Sharon to thank for Ozzy’s renaissance in the 1980s and beyond. By this time, I had lost touch with Ozzy but I revisited his story to a certain extent when I commissioned Joel McIver to write Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, an exhaustive biography of the group for Omnibus Press, described by the Sun newspaper as “a brilliant insight into one of the country’s most famous bands”. I was happy to offer Joel my own experiences of the group and its materialistic management during his research. 

Ozzy soilduired on, eventually becoming a solo star and the principal actor in the family reality TV show which, I noted, portrayed the master of the house, that Prince of Darkness I once knew, as the naïve, childlike ingénue I always assumed him to be. 

        But I was probably wrong in this judgement. I read in today’s paper that he and Sharon are jointly worth £145 million. RIP Ozzy. 

ALBERT LEE, Borough Hall, Godalming, July 13, 2025

I have Ritchie Blackmore to thank for turning me into a fan of Albert Lee. Immodest, prickly and mischievous, Ritchie told me in 1971 that the only two guitarists who could play better than him were Jimi Hendrix and Albert. I wasn’t sure whether or not to believe him but I’d seen Ritchie practising scales and arpeggios, with and without a plectrum, backstage at a Deep Purple gig and deduced he was professionally trained and knew what he was talking about, so I made a point of checking out Head Hands & Feet, the band for whom Albert played in those days, for myself. 

        Suitably impressed – an understatement really – I interviewed Albert twice for MM later that year, once for one of those guitar supplements when he talked about his technique and the guitars he preferred, and again in 1975 when he was a member of Emmylou Harris’ Hot Band, having taken over the role occupied by James Burton who’d gone off to back Elvis in Vegas. By now I’d realised that what Burton was to the US, Albert was to the UK, the foremost player in the country rock and rockabilly idiom.

Albert went on to play in one of Eric Clapton’s stage groups and put the band together that backed The Everly Brothers when they reformed in 1983. He also showed up for the recording I attended of a live LP by Chas & Dave (Chas Hodges was a member of HH&F) at Abbey Road’s Studio 2 which had been turned into a pub for the occasion and, if I remember rightly, Eric showed up to jam along too. Since then Albert has made many distinguished guest appearances, notably at the Concert For George (Harrison) at the Royal Albert Hall in 2002, and led his own bands, one of which was called Hogan’s Heroes and recorded a gig at the New Morning club in Paris that was released in 2007 as a 2-CD package I nowadays play a lot.

A few years ago, Albert gave a master class in nearby Guildford, sponsored by Andertons Music, the city’s guitar shop, at which he demonstrated his skills on the signature red Ernie Ball Music Man guitar that he uses these days, having long ago abandoned the 1950s Telecaster that he played for years. 

        Which brings me to last night at the Borough Hall in Godalming where Albert performed as the leader of a quartet alongside brothers Ali (keyboards) and Iain Petrie (bass) and Tim Hilsden (drums). Well, he’s still an absolute wizard on guitar but there’s something strangely disturbing about seeing him play in a hall that held around 300 people – there’s wasn’t an empty seat in the house but that’s not the point – for which tickets cost just £30 a pop. It may be that Godalming was amongst the smallest venues on his current UK tour but that doesn’t alter my view that a musician of Albert’s stature and pedigree ought to be on a much bigger stage with tickets a good deal pricier.

        Much of the show featured tracks from Albert’s 2024 album Lay It Down, with which I am unfamiliar, and elsewhere, as expected, he demonstrated excellent taste, drawing from a well of songwriters like Gram Parsons, Carl Perkins, John Stewart, Jimmy Webb and Richard Thompson. His playing remains extraordinary, all those runs and licks that defy analysis as he zips up and down his fretboard, pulling off and hammering on, often playing what I might call mini-chords, a combination of strings, usually the top two or three, picked simultaneously. He conjures up a gorgeously full tone, especially on the lower strings, fresh and, at times, very sharp, very crisp, very deep. What’s more he makes it look effortless and, as ever, comes across as the humblest of men, giving keyboard player Ali plenty of opportunity to shine and even sounding a bit sheepish when he name-drops. 

        “I was at this party at David Geffen’s house,” he began before performing ‘Highwayman’, a long-time feature of Albert’s repertoire. “I was to talking to Jackson Browne, whose girlfriend at the time was Joni, and Jimmy Webb. We decided the party was dull and headed off to Jimmy’s house in the hills where had two grand pianos, nine-foot long, in his living room. Jimmy played a song, then Jackson, then Joni and then they tuned to me. Crikey! I honestly didn’t know what to play.” It was at moments like this that made me think Albert, and not some parvenu playing a stadium tonight, was our real rock royalty. 

        Albert played piano on this lovely, slightly otherworldly, Jimmy Webb song about reincarnation, but was soon back on guitar for a furious ‘Tear Stained Letter’ that preceded the final song in the set, ‘Country Boy’, the signature song he wrote with Tony Colton and Ray Smith of HH&F that in 1983 was a hit for Ricky Skaggs. It featured the hottest licks of the night and brought the house down, in fact, but Albert returned for a couple of encores: a moving rendition of Glen Campbell’s ‘A Better Place’ and, to send us on our way, an all-out rave up on Jimmy Burnett’s ‘Tear It Up’. 

        The only flaw in an otherwise impeccable show was the sound balance. The drums were on the loud side and at times threatened to drown out Albert’s guitar which, after all, was what we had come to hear. Perhaps in a larger venue there would have been on-stage monitors and a mixing desk out front. 

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The photo above was taken by my friend Jeremy Hamerton whose mobile phone is superior to my own (and who owns 27 guitars). 

JUST BACKDATED HITS THE 2,000,000 MARK

Sometime in the last 24 hours my Just Backdated music blog notched up its two millionth hit. It reached one million in October, 2020, taking seven years to do so, as I launched Just Backdated at the end of 2013. That it’s taken under five years to clock up the second million indicates growth, the be-all-and-end-all of our capitalist society, though I’ve never been convinced that more and more and bigger and bigger is the best way for humanity to survive. 

But I digress. At this rate it’ll hit the three millionth mark towards the end of 2027, assuming I’m still around to keep it going, but lately I’ve been toying with the idea of somehow monetising it. In 12 years of posting on Just Backdated, I’ve given away 1,069 articles on music, the vast majority newly written by me simply because I enjoy writing. A few, probably less than 5%, are extracts from books or reproductions of pieces I wrote previously, mostly for Melody Maker. A tiny handful feature the work of others. I don’t adhere to a fixed quota; sometimes a week or two might go by without a post from me, other weeks I might write two or three. It all depends on what I’ve read, or what I’ve heard, or what I’ve seen, or if there’s something in the air that I feel like writing about. (The next post will probably be about the guitarist Albert Lee, whose concert in Godalming I’m attending this coming Saturday.) Increasingly, I find myself writing about musicians that have passed on whom I knew or whose music I admire. 

I long ago realised that becoming a writer, be it about music or anything else, is a lifetime’s work. Just because writers pass retirement age doesn’t mean they automatically stop writing for a living and take up gardening or bowls. Writers simply carry on because it’s what they do, and, as the years roll by, I for one have come to realise that continuing to write is the best way to keep the brain in decent shape. Freelance editing assignments, however, are becoming thin on the ground these days, an inevitable consequence of advancing years. 

Quite how I might monetise Just Backdated I haven’t a clue and it might well be beyond my technical ability. I’m making inquiries about how it could be done – I’m fortunate to have a computer-savvy daughter whose mind I’ll tap – but in the end I might still abandon the idea if it proves unworkable. Either way, it’ll be cheap. That said, I’ve realised that if each time anyone ever read something on Just Backdated, all two million of them, I was paid just one penny, I’d be £20,000 in credit now. 

But back to the posts on JB and, as before when a landmark has been reached, I’ll list those that are the most popular and comment on any changes amongst them. Firstly, there’s a new number one: my treatment for a proposed book by Mandy Moon, daughter of Keith, which I would ghost-write (but which never happened), takes over at the top (with 52.5k hits) from my review of The Who’s CD of their show at the Fillmore East in 1968 (49.7k). I thought the Fillmore piece would never be surpassed but I was wrong; however, these two posts are streets ahead of anything else. 

        Jimmy Page (17.6k) is at numbers three and seven but, as ever, The Who still dominate the list. Interestingly, posts about John and, especially, Keith, outperform posts about Pete and Roger. Nice to see Marianne Faithfull creeping in at number 20, the first female ever to make the Top 20, no doubt a result of her leaving us, and also my story about the 1968 North Of England Beer Drinking Championships, a rare non-music post, holding its own at number 16. 

MOON GIRL: My Life in the Shadow of Rock’s Wildest Star 52.5k

THE WHO Live At Fillmore East, 1968         49.7k

JIMMY PAGE: Boleskine House, Tower House & More 17.6k

JOHN, PAUL & KEITH, Santa Monica, 1974         14k

JIMI HENDRIX AT THE ISLE OF WIGHT, 1970 8.3k

DEEP PURPLE: Trouble in Jakarta         7.5k

JIMMY PAGE: The Day Jimmy Met Robert 6.71k

KEITH MOON’S LIVING ARRAGEMENTS 5.61k

PALAZZO DARIO” The Palace That Tommy Bought         5.58k

WHO UK TOUR 2014         5.16k

THE WHO: My Hidden Gems Album 4.53k

KEITH MOON & THE PYTHONS         4.29k

LAUNCHING DEAR BOY 4.15k

THE WHO: Hyde Park London, June 16, 2015 3.59k

JOHN ENTWISTLE Obituary (1944-2002) 3.44k

THE NORTH OF ENGLAND BEER DRINKING CHAMPIONSHIPS         3.08k

THE OX: The Last of The Great Rock Stars (Book Review) 2.97k

UNDERTURE: Keith’s Great Triumph         2.85k

PRETEND YOU’RE IN A WAR: Who Book Review 2.84k

MARIANNE FAITHFULL: Saturday Night Live, 1980 2.8k 

BLACK SABBATH DIDN’T INVENT HEAVY METAL

Emotionally charged reviews of Black Sabbath’s Farewell Concert – their third ‘final’ show, following those in 1999 and 2017 – at Birmingham’s Villa Park on Saturday bestow upon them the accolade that they invented heavy metal music. This was further emphasised by members of the distinguished supporting groups, most of whom are headliners in their own right, claiming they owed their careers to the Sabs. 

Bollocks, I say. If heavy metal is characterised by a repetitive, relatively simple guitar riff, often distorted and accentuated on the on beat by bass and drums, then we have The Kinks to thank for its origination. In my biography of Deep Purple, first published in 1983, I attempted to define the genre and explain its origins, writing as follows: “The roots of hard rock, which would come to known as heavy metal, lie in the harsh, riff-based songs recorded by various British bands that emerged in the mid-sixties, groups like The Kinks (‘You Really Got Me’ and ‘All Day And All Of The Night’), The Who (‘I Can’t Explain’ and ‘My Generation’) and, to a lesser degree, The Rolling Stones (‘Satisfaction’) and The Yardbirds (‘Shapes Of Things’ and ‘Evil Hearted You’). Even The Beatles were not immune to the trend, with both ‘Helter Skelter’ and ‘Birthday’ – both Paul McCartney compositions – on their ‘White’ album betraying distinct HM leanings. 

        “It was the sound of a strained electric guitar riff played at great volume through a fuzz-box, a machine that distorted the notes into a blur of sustain that was repeated ad infinitum until sheer repetition dulled the senses into eventual submission. At least that’s what had happened by the time it came to be known as heavy metal. 

        “The riffy groundwork by The Who and Kinks was taken a stage further by Cream and The Jeff Beck Group and further still by Jimmy Page and Led Zeppelin, the group he formed in 1968 after the dissolution of The Yardbirds. Page added the vocal wail of Robert Plant to his own distorted guitar and toughened up the rhythm section so that drums would explode at appropriate breaks. Though Led Zeppelin would vary their stylistic output considerably, ‘Whole Lotta Love’, the song that kicks off their second album, is the perfect example of heavy metal music at its most cohesive and ingenious, the blue print for a type of music that countless groups would follow in the seventies.” 

        Unless I’m mistaken the first use of the phrase “heavy metal” famously occurred in Steppenwolf’s ‘Born To Be Wild’, the lyric of which mentions “heavy metal thunder” in reference to sound of a motor cycle. This was released in 1968, about eight months before Led Zeppelin’s first LP which contained the riff-laden ‘Communication Breakdown’ and a year and bit before Led Zeppelin II which opens, as I wrote above, with ‘Whole Lotta Love’.

The release of Black Sabbath’s first LP in early 1970 occurred after the Steppenwolf and two Led Zeppelin LPs, and although Sabbath became standard bearers for heavy metal by continuing to mine its motherlode throughout their career – unlike Zeppelin who prodigiously developed and varied their output – it is for this reason that is it inaccurate to suggest they invented the HM genre. Indeed, one review of the Villa Park show I read mentioned that an all-star band, including Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler and Rolling Stone Ronnie Wood, actually performed ‘Whole Lotta Love’, thus slyly suggesting Zep were to be commended – or to blame, depending on your point of view – for creating HM. 

None of which is to take away from the Black Sabbath’s achievements or the pleasure they have given their fans over the years. Ozzie can’t really sing any longer and was obliged for health reasons to remain seated during Sabbath’s performance on Saturday but he is to be commended for giving it his all on a day that was packed with emotion. The other three Sabs seem to have lost nothing of their skills, however, but at this stage in the game it would be sacrilege for them to continue with another singer. 

But they didn’t invent heavy metal.