MARIANNE FAITHFULL (1946-2025)

The obituaries will have been written long ago and filed away with others for whom a long life seemed unlikely. Marianne herself probably didn’t expect to reach 78 either but there was a stubbornness to her character, a resilience that kept her going no matter the bullets that shot her down, even during that dark period in the early 1970s when she lived on Soho streets and begged for change to feed her heroin habit. At the time I was the News Editor of Melody Maker and not once in the three years I held that position was her name mentioned during the editorial meetings we held each Wednesday to decide on the contents of the following week’s paper. No one ever proposed an interview with her, even when Decca Records released a compilation LP called The World Of Marianne Faithfull that landed on my desk for review. Marianne Faithfull? Who wants yesterday’s girl? 

        I was in love with her in 1964, as was every teenage boy I knew and probably a few girls too. Our first sighting of her was on TV, in black and white, singing her two early hits ‘As Tears Go By’ and ‘Come And Stay With Me’. With her long blonde hair, perfectly sculpted nose and shy, angelic smile, she was the girlfriend we all of us wanted but couldn’t hope to have. Descended on her mother’s side from European nobility, she was virginal, prim, untouchable. We learned she was educated in a convent where nuns no doubt impressed upon her the merits of chastity, and she took these lessons to heart, modestly buttoning up her knee-length black dress to its lacy neck so there showed not a trace of cleavage. I would have gathered flowers for her, bought her trinkets and taken off my jacket to place on the ground so that her tiny feet might avoid a puddle beneath them and if, by chance, this gesture was insufficient to save them from the dirt I would willingly have knelt before her to wash those dainty feet and afterwards lovingly dried them with a soft towel. And were she to have rewarded me with a kiss on the back of my hand it would have remained unwashed to this day. Come and stay with me? Just say the word, my dearest. 

        Mick liked trophy girlfriends and when the sister of Britain’s top model proved unable to offer him the satisfaction he craved his eyes landed on Marianne who, by all accounts, had rejected him out of hand when they first met at a party hosted by Stones manager Andrew Oldham. She found him crude, unmannered, insolent, as did most of the UK population over 30. Marianne eventually surrendered and as a couple they became an enduring image of the Swinging Sixties, rivalling John and Yoko, and like Yoko she brought to her lover radical culture he couldn’t find elsewhere, alternative ideas, art, poetry, cinema and theatre, a different way of thinking. Determined to be more than the sparkling jewel on Mick’s arm, she became a promising actor on both stage and film. Blithely, Mick refused for years to give her the credit she deserved. Her life reached some kind of terrible apogee in 1967 when she was discovered wrapped only in a fur rug at Keith’s infamous house party at Redlands, raided by police tipped off by the News Of The World, the cruel injustice of the jail terms imposed on Mick and Keith matched only by the injustice suffered to Marianne’s reputation.

        When the affair with Mick was over there was a miscarriage, followed by a suicide attempt and years of drug dependency. She hurtled downwards. She was now a harlot and it would take the best part of a woeful decade for her to redeem herself. It came with the extraordinary 1979 album Broken English, a record bursting with obscenities. “Why’d you let her suck your cock?” she sang on ‘Why D’Ya Do It’, the song that followed ‘Working Class Hero’, John’s own two-fingered, expletive-littered rebuke. If that’s what you want from me, here it is, in spades, she seemed to be saying. I would still have washed her feet. 

        Thereafter Marianne became a sort of grand dame of British pop. She released many albums and became a cult figure. Her experiences placed her above the rank and file, dignified, cool and rather aloof. She was defiant. You wouldn’t want to tangle with her. Other musicians sought her out for advice and to kneel at those feet. Punks liked her and she chose her collaborators carefully from among her peers: Nick Cave, Damon Albarn, Metallica. Her appearance alongside Johnny Marr singing ‘As Tears Go By’ at the Linda McCartney Memorial Concert at the Royal Albert Hall in 1999 is wonderful. I’d loved to have heard her sing with Dylan or Lou Reed or Tom Waits or anyone else whose voice prized character over mellifluence. Ill health dogged her but she’d done it all, seen it all and survived. 

        In the 1980s, when I became the editor at Omnibus Press, one of the projects I inherited was a biography of Marianne that had been commissioned by my predecessor but remained undelivered by a negligent author. It never was delivered but a year or two later I commissioned another author to write a book about her and when it was published Marianne, who had somehow become aware of its long gestation period, evidently read it and told an interviewer the publishers had been waiting for her to die before publishing it. “But I haven’t died so they published it anyway,” she cackled. I thought it was a hilarious reaction. I’ll laugh and cry and laugh about it all again. So long Marianne. 

A COMPLETE UNKNOWN

Who is Bob Dylan? Having spent a lifetime dodging the question, he’s apparently given the nod to this terrific early-years biopic which might be expected to answer it, but of course it doesn’t, nor would we want it to. The spell remains. 

        Dylan’s elusive nature is the predominant theme of A Complete Unknown, in which Timothée Chalamet offers up a striking, believable and thoughtful depiction of the young Dylan; visiting Woody Guthrie at his hospital bedside, rising up from the clubs of Greenwich Village and somehow juggling two girlfriends, Joan Baez and Sylvie Russo, the latter a fictional character clearly based on Suze Rotolo, with whom the real Dylan was photographed on the sleeve of his 1963 Freewheelin’ LP. Quite why the producers felt it necessary not to give Rotolo her real name – unlike every other real life character in the film – is a mystery*, but then again much of Bob Dylan’s appeal is his mysterious, impulsive nature, and in this respect A Complete Unknown delivers in spades. 

I wasn’t quite prepared for how well Chalamet would handle the music, to somehow replicate the sneering, nasal delivery that elevated Bob Dylan into a class of his own but it was the musical moments, the songs, hit after hit, and very loud too, that kept me gripped to my seat yesterday afternoon at the Guildford Odeon. It didn’t matter where it happened: in the Village clubs before sparse audiences, in concert halls of ever increasing size, in the Columbia Records recording studio or in his apartment as he worked on his songs and their lyrics. For me, the most moving sequence in the entire movie was when he was figuring out ‘Blowin’ In The Wind’ while Baez was making coffee in their tiny kitchen. Having got the chords right, he begins to play and sing, hesitant at first, then with confidence. Beaz hears him, recognises that something of great cultural value is being created right before her eyes and joins him on the bed, leaning over his shoulder to read the words from his notebook. My heart pounded as she began to harmonise on the song that first made its writer’s name. 

If Dylan’s wary, intangible nature is the film’s overriding motif, then other themes intermingle over two hours and 20 minutes that seemed to flash by. Fame is a burden he’s unwilling to shoulder, taking him by surprise, unsettling him. He hides behind his shades and the scene in which fans mob him as he’s driven away in a limousine reminded me of the painting of Dylan wrapped in fur and cradling a cat in the back of a car in Guy Peellaert’s wonderful Rock Dreams book. “Messianic, he need only point his finger and the temples trembled before him,” was Nik Cohn’s caption.

And then there is identity. Dylan and Sylvie/Suze watch Now Voyager, the 1942 movie in which Bette Davis assumes a new self to escape the clutches of her domineering mother. “She just made herself into something different,” says Dylan, pondering on the possibility of doing precisely the same thing himself. Much later Baez challenges his story that he “worked on carnivals”. He just smiles: never apologise, never explain. 

        Similarly, Dylan refuses to be categorised. He moves at speed, often on a motor cycle. This leads to the film’s stirring climax, the now legendary appearance at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival when he defies the organisers, among them father figure Pete Seeger, and performs with an electric band on the closing night. While traditionalists backstage recoil in horror, the crowd jeer as he storms into ‘Maggie’s Farm’, but after a verse or two the music overwhelms them and they begin to cheer, just as in an earlier sequence, at the 1964 Newport, when he performs ‘The Times They Are A-Changin’’ and they join in spontaneously on a chorus they’re hearing for the first time, recognising its significance as a harbinger for a decade unfolding at pace. 

        Other characters in the movie are present, well portrayed and correctly identified: scheming manager Albert Grossman, drunken Johnny Cash, aide-de-camp and sounding-board Bob Neuwirth, long suffering Seeger who, incidentally, pitches in to help tidy away chairs after Newport – a nice touch, infirm Woody Guthrie, unable to speak as Huntington’s disease devours him, ace picker Mike Bloomfield on a Telecaster and even Al Kooper adding his wild mercury Hammond lines to ‘Like A Rolling Stone’ as Columbia A&R chief John Hammond watches on from the studio control room. The street scenes evoke early Sixties Greenwich Village perfectly, the right cars, the right shop fronts, the right clubs, the right buskers. Who knew that Dylan bought the whistle he blows at the start of ‘Highway 61’ from a street vendor on his way to the session? 

        Who is Bob Dylan? We still don’t know. We never will. Even when Sylvie/Suze leaves the apartment she shares with him for a temporary stay in Europe she tells him she doesn’t know who he is. This film is great but as its title implies, the question remains. 

-----

*The mystery has been cleared up for me since I wrote that. Evidently Dylan read the script and felt that Suze Rotolo's privacy ought to be protected, so he requested her name be changed. Nevertheless, anyone who knows anything about Dylan will be able to identify her as the 'Sylvie' character. 

SMiLE: The Rise, Fall and Resurrection of Brian Wilson by David Leaf

David Leaf has risen to a Beach Boys’ role similar to that of Mark Lewisohn with The Beatles and the late Johnny Rogan with The Byrds. He is now the group’s foremost archivist and biographer, though in Leaf’s case his focus is primarily on Brian Wilson, their dominant figure, with whom he has worked in various capacities over the past four decades. This is his third book about the group, though his first, The Beach Boys & The California Myth, originally published in 1978, has been republished, retitled and updated many times, just like Rogan’s Byrds books and, to a lesser extent, Lewisohn’s Beatles books.  

        Leaf’s latest book is an oral history of the making, aborting and re-making of SMiLE, Wilson’s follow-up to Pet Sounds, the Beach Boys’ 1966 album widely acknowledged as his masterpiece, and consists of hundreds of old and new quotes from everyone involved, punctuated by the author’s informed explanations and commentary on a legendary album that never was, not until 2004 anyway, though in the meantime tracks recorded for it had appeared on other Beach Boys LPs and their exemplary 1993 5-CD box set Good Vibrations: 30 Years of The Beach Boys. 

        The book is, in every conceivable way, the last word on a subject as complex as it is fascinating. As the follow-up to Pet Sounds, expectations for SMiLE were off the scale but it was not to be. “Determining how, when and why SMiLE began to fall apart is much more difficult,” writes Leaf after mention of non-musical issues impacting on The Beach Boys in 1966, among them Carl Wilson’s draft notice and an impending lawsuit with Capitol Records. “Actually, it’s impossible.” 

        Nevertheless, Leaf and several others, among them Wilson himself, do their best to explain why SMiLE never happened, drawing attention at some length to the lack of enthusiasm for Brian’s SMiLE songs from other members of the group, most notably Mike Love, who felt he was ‘fucking with the formula’, which sapped Brian’s confidence. “He hated it,” says Brian at one point. “I didn’t know how to deal with it.” Their record company, eager for more big hits in the style of ‘Fun, Fun, Fun’ and ‘I Get Around’, wasn’t too keen on it either. 

        Another factor was what seems today, as I write this, a disturbing omen for Los Angeles. During the recording of a track provisionally titled ‘Fire’, part of an ‘Elements’ suite that would eventually emerge as the freeform, slightly disturbing ‘Mrs O’Leary’s Cow’, a building close to Gold Star Studios, where the album was being recorded, burned to the ground. This spooked Wilson who retreated into his shell, a situation exacerbated by his increasing dependence on mind-altering drugs. Furthermore, Brian felt strong competition from The Beatles and it didn’t help when Paul McCartney arrived in Los Angeles and played him the tender ballad ‘She’s Leaving Home’ from their upcoming Sgt Pepper album. 

        All of these matters take up roughly the first half of the book, with the remainder devoted firstly to Brian’s re-emergence after being sent off the rails by the SMiLE debacle, with the final third detailing how the album was finally re-recorded, and performed live, by Brian with a bunch of newly appointed, highly skilled musicians, all of whom worshipped at his feet. Such flattery is justly warranted, of course, though it does get a bit wearying as the book progresses. We all know that Brian Wilson was great at what he did, probably among the best young composers in the world during his heyday, but the number of times such acclaim is repeatedly expressed by one and all during Leaf’s book is its only flaw.

        SMiLE: The Rise, Fall and Resurrection of Brian Wilson is published by Omnibus Press on 13 March, RRP £25 (£23 on Amazon) and contains 321 pages with an eight-page colour photo section and, in a concluding chapter, contributions from 14 other music writers in thrall to SMiLE and Wilson’s talents. The book lacks an index. 

CAN’T STOP WON’T STOP: A History of The Hip-Hop Generation by Jeff Chang

Clever chap that he is, Santa Claus identified an area of ignorance in my music knowledge and delivered this book to me on Christmas Day. I’ve never been particularly fond of rap music – to my mind it lacks melody and most of the time I can’t decipher the words – but I’m always up for investigating the roots of music, be it pop, rock, blues, R&B, jazz or even rap, for that matter, and thanks to Santa and Jeff Chang I now know all about where it came from and how it originated.

        I wasn’t to know it at the time, and even those involved hadn’t a clue how what they were doing would end up, but rap in its original incarnation of hip-hop was being invented a few miles from where I lived in New York in the mid-seventies, up in the Bronx, an area I only ever drove through, a few miles north of Manhattan’s tony East Side where my apartment doubled as Melody Maker’s US office. 

        The sole manifestation I saw of the culture that would produce this multi-million dollar musical phenomenon was graffiti on the exteriors of subway trains. It was a weird and wonderful form of artistic expression enacted mostly by black teenagers with spray cans who daubed the carriages in translucent colours; strangely plump, circular lettering of distinctive design that spelt out their nomes-de-can, or tags as these balloon-like expressions of individuality became known, arrogantly displaying not just the artistic skills of the individual graffiti artist but also their audacity in gaining access to the surfaces on which their work appeared. I loved it and was wryly amused by the city’s largely vain attempts to erase their work, the carriages on which washed out graffiti still poked through. 

        Other manifestations were less obvious, to me anyway. If Can’t Stop Won’t Stop is to be believed, and I have no reason to think otherwise, it all began with an urban renewal plan in the South Bronx that prioritised roads over housing. The resulting displacement created territorial divisions controlled by rival gangs, some of whom looted turntables from hi-fi shops during the electricity blackout that hit New York City during the night of July 13-14, 1977, an event I remember well. Close to where I lived restaurants were giving away food that would otherwise decay through lack of refrigeration, the streets were crowded with revellers and the beer was warm for once. 

        On their looted turntables DJs began to scratch, to make new sounds from old records, at parties held originally in their apartments before they broke out into the streets and, eventually, clubs. DJ Cool Herc (Clive Campbell) noticed that dancers “got wild” during instrumental breaks, and began playing songs with them. Then, in a technique he called “the Merry-Go-Round, he began to work two copies of the same record,” writes Chang, “back-cuing a record to the beginning of the break as the other reached the end, extending a five-second breakdown into a five minutes loop of fury, a makeshift version excursion. Before long he had tossed most of the songs, focusing on the breaks alone.”

        Thus was born a crucial element of rap, alongside the graffiti, DJ-ing and break-dancing – as first seen and heard in the UK via hip-hop pioneer Malcolm McLaren’s 'Buffalo Gals'. Before long DJs were opting to play dub versions of Jamaican reggae singles or only instrumental breaks in songs, and whipping up excitement by talking over them.

        The three pioneers of the genre were Herc, Afrika Bambaataa (Lance Taylor) and Grandmaster Flash (Joseph Sadler) whose backgrounds are covered extensively; their families, how they arrived on the hip-hop scene, their entrepreneurial schemes and their prescience in driving forward new ideas. The former contributes a foreword to this book, Bambaataa was a bringer of peace to warring neighbourhoods and Flash more or less invented scratching by shifting the needle as he spun records on twin turntables. 

        None of this would have happened, however, without the sense of injustice felt amongst the black communities in both the Bronx and Jamaica, from where immigrants to New York brought the influence of reggae. Hip-hop arose from the need of these deprived communities to stamp a culture of their own on society, and Can’t Stop Won’t Stop describes how they succeeded beyond their wildest dreams.

        This is not a new book – it was first published in 2005 – nor, at 560 pages, is it short. I haven’t even finished it yet but I figured what I’d learned so far was worth a post on Just Backdated. In the fullness of time I doubtless will, though other, shorter books waiting for me might grab my attention in the meantime. Can’t Stop Won’t Stop is less about the stars and more about the background, politics and unsung heroes. It’s well indexed, has a useful discography and bibliography and the list of names among author Jeff Chang’s acknowledgements alone reflects the depth of his research.  

JUST BACKDATED – The Top Thirty

The first week of the year seems like a good time to review the performance of my Just Backdated blog, and bring the Posts Chart up to date. In doing so yesterday I discovered that the number of hits in the Top 20 listed in statistics automatically conveyed to me by my Blogspot host differs considerably from the number of hits recorded when I look at each of the 1,041 posts individually, specifically that there are far more hits registered in the individual listings. Computer science baffles me and this discovery of mine surely indicates that it isn’t an exact discipline even though those behind it would like to think it is. Accordingly, I have revised the chart considerably and opted to list the Top 30 this time around, with the result that although posts about The Who still dominate, there are many newcomers. 

        Nevertheless, aside from one remarkable instance, there isn’t that much in the way of changes from the top 10 I wrote about in March 2022, when I last did a survey like this, this one to commemorate notching up 1,250,000 hits. That figure has now risen to 1,810,987, so the two million mark looms, perhaps later this year or early next. Either way, the number of hits Just Backdated gets every month is increasing all the time, probably the result of more readers becoming aware of it. 

        The big surprise is that my synopsis for the abandoned book with Mandy de Wolf, Keith Moon’s daughter, has now clocked up 45,100 hits, still in second place but closing in rapidly on the number one post, my review of The Who’s Live at Fillmore East 1968 CD which has remained pretty much static all year. In 2022, The Fillmore CD had 47.7k hits, with Mandy on 20.3k, so its acceleration is quite remarkable. Barely a week goes by when it doesn’t get between 2-300 hits, and I keep wondering where they all come from. These two posts are streets ahead of all the rest. 

        Many of the 25 comments on the post about this proposed book – which I provisionally titled Moon Girl: My Life in the Shadow of Rock’s Wildest Star – suggest it should be published but for personal reasons Mandy has told me she’s no longer interested in writing the book, with me or anyone else as a ghost writer. Naturally I respect her wishes. 

        As before the chart contains far more Who posts, with 14 of the top 30 all related to the group or its individual members. Posts about Keith and John seem to win out over posts about Pete or Roger, though the last post I wrote – about those dodgy Daltrey books – has racked up over 800 hits in a few days, which is not bad going. Led Zep come second with five. Slade have just one post in the top 30 – my obituary of their much-loved tour manager Graham ‘Swin’ Swinnerton – but lots of posts about the group have clocked up between 1,500 and 2,00 hits. One day, if I could be bothered, I might tot up the number of hits each act has received across all my posts about them, and I’m pretty sure Slade would be third. 

        Non-Who post that have somewhat expectedly racked up well over 2,000 hits include my review of Look Away, the Sky documentary about the exploitation of girls/women in the music industry, my review of the Melody Maker movie largely devoted to our ace photographer Barrie Wentzell, my obituary of Pete Overend Watts of Mott The Hoople, a post about my friend Adrian Boot’s punk photo exhibition review, an obituary of Robert Stigwood, my Steely Dan interview, two close encounters with the odious Jimmy Savile, seeing CSN&Y in Denver in 1974, and my adventures with Lynyrd Skynyrd. 

Here’s the Top 30, with the number of hits and the 2022 placing in brackets

1) The Who Live at Fillmore East CD,  50.7k hits (1)

2) Moon Girl, 45.6k (2)

3) Jimmy Page – Boleskine House, Tower House & More, 18.9k (3)

4) John, Paul & Keith, Santa Monica, 1974, 16.6k (4)

5) Jimi Hendrix at the Isle of Wight, 12.41k (newcomer to chart)

6) Jimmy Page – The Day Jimmy Met Robert, 9.1k (5)

7) Keith Moon’s Living Arrangements, 8.6k (13)

8) Palazzo Dario – The Palace that Tommy Bought, 7.68k (6)

9) Deep Purple – Trouble in Jakarta, 6.99k (11)

10) The North of England Beer Drinking Championship, 6.4k (15)

11) Marianne Faithfull, 1980, Book Extract 6.2k (new)

12) Keith Moon & The Pythons, 6.13k (8)

13) Pete Rudge, Who/Stones tour manager, Interview from MM 1973, 5.3k (new)

14) The Who UK tour 2014 announcement, 5.1k (7)

15) The Who in Hyde Park, London, June 26, 2015, 4.78k (12)

16) Dennis Wilson MM interview, 4.45k, (new)

17) Abba Live At Wembley Arena CD review, 4.4k (new)

18) The Who Live in Ottawa review, 4.4k (new)

19) The Who – My Hidden Gems album, 4.28k (10)

20) Led Zeppelin in Chicago, 1975, 4.21 (new)

21) Launching Dear Boy, 4.15k (9)

22) Eric Clapton On The Road 1974, 4.03 (new) 

23) Jimmy Page Biography review, 4.02 (new)

24) Johnny Ramone’s Mosrite, book extract, 4.0k, (new) 

25) My 70th Birthday Playlist 3.9k, (new)

26) Graham Swinnerton, Slade tour manager obituary, 3.8 (new)

27) My Introduction to Debbie Harry, 3.5k (new)

28) John Entwistle (1944-2002), obituary, 3.4k (14)

29) The Who in Birmingham, December 2014, 3.3k (new)

30) David Cassidy obituary, 3.1 k (new)

An honorary listing ought perhaps to go to my reports of The Who at New Bingley Hall, Staff, 1975, which was in three parts whose combined hits total is 6997. 

Finally, my thanks to all who visit Just Backdated. The number of hits I get makes it all worthwhile and encourages me to keep going.

ROGER DALTREY – FOUR PHANTOM BIOGRAPHIES

Midway through December I came across a “biography” of Roger Daltrey by “James Patterson” on Amazon. What struck me was that the photograph on the cover was not Roger, albeit of a young man with blond curly hair leaning towards a microphone on a stand, and it occurred to me that the image might have been created by AI. Sample text, too, looked suspicious to me, largely because it was insufferably bland and unctuously sycophantic. 

        I drew attention to this book to three friends of mine, all dedicated and knowledgeable Who fans, all of whom agreed with my conclusions. One of them was Ed Hanel whose home on the Hawaiian island Kailua accommodates what might just be the biggest collection of Who records, books and miscellanea anywhere in the world. It is Ed’s custom to obtain absolutely anything and everything Who related – regardless of quality – to add to his collection but it came as a bit of a surprise to me that in buying a copy of this book, he came across no fewer than three further “biographies” of Roger, each of which seemed to him – and me – to be of dubious origin. So, as a service to Who fans everywhere I am posting Ed’s comments here on Just Backdated.

        Over to you Ed. 

 

FOUR ROGER DALTREY BOOKS RELEASED 23 December, 2024.

EACH MERITS ONE STAR

Roger Daltrey Biography: Discovering the Legend of Rock Stage by “Adam Young” 

No publisher, sold on Amazon. Last page Bar Code: 14795988R00085. Amazon indicates that the book was originally published 24 November, 2023.

        Largely direct quotes, sometimes with minor changes, from Roger Daltrey’s autobiography, Thanks A Lot Mr Kibblewhite. For example: Roger’s “Chapter One: The Flannel Shirt” opens with, “On a muggy Florida night in March 2007, Pete and I walked out onto the stage at the Ford Amphitheatre in Tampa.” This becomes “Chapter One: The Flannel Shirt”, opening with “Pete and I walked out onto the stage at the Ford Amphitheatre in Tampa on a hot Florida night in March 2007.”  The text doesn’t get any better or any more original.

        The book’s text ends with excerpts from Chapter 16 of Roger’s book. In effect, the book ends in the mid-1980’s, referencing Live Aid 1985 and noting, incorrectly just as Roger did, “That was the last of The Who for nearly a decade.” Accordingly, the book completely ignores the last 40 years of Roger’s life.

The Legend Of Roger Daltreys (sic): Great Vocals And The Struggle For Self-Expression by “Betty Jo LeClair”

No publisher, sold on Amazon. Last page Bar Code: 14795989R00085.  Amazon indicates the book was originally published on 17 June, 2023.

        Largely direct quotes from Thanks A Lot Mr Kibblewhite, sometimes with minor changes. For example, Roger’s book ends with an acknowledgement, thanking Mr Kibblewhite, “And I really mean that.” This book inexplicably changes Roger’s words to, “Mr. Kibblewhite, I am quite grateful to you.” In Chapter 19 “Brothers”, the text begins by skipping several pages of Roger’s text, then quotes Roger for several pages only to stop mid-page. At the top of the next page, the text repeats several pages (Pp. 128/9). 

The Voice That Changed Music: The Story of Roger Daltrey and His Rock Revolution, by “James Patterson” 

According to Amazon, Mr. Patterson is a published writer. No publisher, sold on Amazon. Last Page Bar Code: 1479203R00049. Amazon indicates the book was originally published on 3 November, 2024.

        The cover picture is not Roger. Additional pictures in the book are dubious at best. The text reads like notes collected for a book project at the initial research stage. For example, “After this, Daltrey’s solo career underwent a major turning point with Rough Mix ( 1977) (sic), a joint project with Pete Townshend.” A little later on, we read, “This release [Under A Raging Moon] contained the smash track ‘Parting Should Be Painless’ and had a more polished rock feel” (Pp. 38/39). Basic editing should have caught both mistakes. Roger had no role on Rough Mix and ‘Parting Should Be Painless’ is found instead on the album of the same name. Because the text is confused about Rough Mix in several references, it may be useful to clarify that Pete’s partner on this project was Ronnie Lane.

        There is a segment that addresses Paul McCartney’s releases, with no relation or connection to Roger (Pp.48-50).

Roger Daltrey Biography For Curious Kids by “Leo Whittaker”

Published by Little Big Giant, sold on Amazon. Last page Bar Code: 14796674R00066. Amazon indicates that the book was originally published 5 August, 2024.

        The cover is an animated figure that looks like a Halloween Mask, with no relationship to Roger’s appearance. Written as a children’s book. Chapters end with a “Key Takeway” such as: “Teamwork can help you achieve success” or, “Don’t be afraid to explore and find new things you love.”

        Unfortunately, there are glaring mistakes. For example, we are told that the first public performance of Tommy took place at a “massive venue” (P. 55). The first public performance is generally considered as occurring at the Institute of Technology, Bolton, UK, on 22 April, 1969. The first widely reported performance took place on 1 May at Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club, on Frith Street in London’s Soho. Neither venue could be remotely considered as massive. 

  Furthermore (P. 75), we read, “In Tommy [the movie], Roger played the role of the ‘Hawker’, a character who sold everything from toys to dreams.” It would be hard to cram more misinformation into one sentence. The only role for Roger in any version of Tommy is, of course, the lead character, Tommy Walker. The hawker is a pimp who offers up a woman as a cure for Tommy’s woes, perhaps not an appropriate aspect to include in a children’s book, albeit rather amusing when reflecting on the chapter’s Key Takeway: “Trying new things can lead to exciting adventures” (P. 79). 

SUMMARY

The plagiarism in two of the books and the lack of proper fact checking or editing in all four are disappointing at best. None should be considered as appropriate reviews of Roger’s career.

        The versions of these four books appear to be run off at the same time, with the same date (“23 December 2024”) and the same last page format. For reference, I received my copies here in Hawaii on 24 December, 2024, after ordering them several weeks earlier.  

JUST BACKDATED ROCK BOOK OF THE YEAR

Since Just Backdated has become a repository for music book reviews I have decided to nominate a Rock Music Book of The Year and the first winner of this prestigious award is WHEN WE WAS FAB – Inside The Beatles Australasian Tour, 1964, by Andy Neill & Greg Armstrong, which I reviewed in July. 

        Regrettably, I was obliged to review the book from a pdf sent to me by Andy, whom I have known for years, and it wasn’t until November that I acquired an actual copy of the book, which was published by Woodslane Press, an Australian company, but is available through Amazon (at £28.95), though you may have to wait until stocks are replenished. As of today, Abe Books are offering it at £38.84, and although it was being sold by Waterstones at £39.99, it now appears to be out of stock there. 

        It’s worth every penny and the difficulty in obtaining it is a crying shame, for When We Was Fab has romped home an easy winner in my book of the year survey. It’s 306 large-format (30cm x 30cm) pages are packed with superbly researched text and hundreds of photographs, many in colour and previously unseen, alongside documents, press clippings and vintage memorabilia. A few can be seen below. 

            In their 20-year investigation to uncover anything relevant, Andy and Greg interviewed scores of people, from the tour’s promoters to many of the fans who saw the shows and waited expectantly on crowded pavements to watch John, Paul, George and Ringo (or stand-in drummer Jimmie Nicol) drive by. Insofar as it covers virtually every hour of The Beatles’ lives from 11 June, 1964, when they landed at Sydney, to 1 July, when they left Brisbane for London, the book ranks alongside Mark Lewisohn’s Beatle books for accurate, comprehensive reportage of what nowadays is regarded as the most intense explosion of Beatlemania anywhere in the world. 

        As I wrote in my review of the book in July, until now the only available reportage of this extraordinary tour has been Beatles Down Under by Glenn A. Baker, Australia’s foremost writer on pop music, a book I’ve owned for years and which is now quite collectable. Baker’s book was very much a fly-on-the-wall account and was fairly eye-opening insofar as when it was published in 1982 it offered hitherto unreported details of JPG&R’s off-stage activities that can best be described as less than saintly. Much of this is downplayed in When We Was Fab, not least because its authors believe those interviewed by Baker were exaggerating the Beatles’ sybaritic urges for effect. The truth is less scandalous but no less sensational, not least how the tour came about in the first place and was almost scuppered through a bureaucratic impasse, and the extent to which the four Beatles coped with the madness that surrounded them, mayhem that continued virtually uninterrupted for the duration of the visit. When The Beatles arrived in Adelaide, a staggering 300,000 fans and curious Australian adults lined the route from the airport to the centre of town to catch a glimpse of the world’s greatest ever pop group, the largest-ever crowd they attracted anywhere in the world. 

It’s all here in When We Was Fab, the chaos, the concerts, the airport scenes, the hotel receptions, the press conferences, the pope-like balcony appearances, the cast and crew, the experience of Jimmie Nicol, drafted in to replace bedridden Ringo at the start, the girls who managed to evade security, the whimsical response to all this madness from the Beatles themselves and even the few who threw eggs at them. In the words of Derek Taylor, their in-house PR who found himself in the midst of it all, “It was the longest-running story since World War II with the advantage that no one died.” 

 

JUST BACKDATED EXTRACT 3

It is the December 1975. In October, after a three-month break in the UK, I resumed my role as Melody Maker’s US Editor, just in time to chase Bob Dylan around New England on his Rolling Thunder Review. Over the next couple of months, I interviewed Nona Hendryx, Paul Simon, Patti Smith, Randy Brecker and Bobby Womack, among others, and also met up with my friends Slade who had just moved to New York on their doomed attempt to conquer America. I vaguely remember a party at the Upper East Side apartment occupied by Jim and Louise Lea and Dave and Janice Hill where their tour manager Graham ‘Swin’ Swinnerton passed around a joint the size of a Cuban cigar. That’s not in the book but what follows is… 

I ended 1975 by interviewing John Hammond, the legendary Columbia A&R man who’d signed many jazz greats to the label, then moved into the rock era by signing Bob Dylan – “Hammond’s Folly”, as he was known at first – and later Bruce Springsteen, among a score of others. A man of wealth and taste, he was a scion of the fabulously wealthy Vanderbilt family that built America’s railroads, and he was as well known for his support of African Americans as he was for his work in music. Back in the 1930s he’d contributed a New York news column to Melody Maker, writing about Duke Ellington and Count Basie. I felt privileged to have followed in his footsteps. 

        For the first time in my life I was alone on a Christmas Day, spending most of it in bed recovering from a seriously late party the night before at my friend Ashley Pandell’s apartment where among the guests was Harry Nilsson who was swigging heartily from a bottle of sake, the Japanese rice wine usually drunk warm. On Boxing Day, which Americans don’t celebrate, I was up bright and early and decided that since no one had bought me any Christmas presents I’d buy one for myself.

      I walked through Central Park, past the Latinos selling loose joints, all the way down to West 48th Street which, like Denmark Street in London, is wall-to-wall guitar shops. I’d already visited Manny’s, the famous music shop where the big acts bought their gear, and even done an MM feature on the place, but I found what I was looking for a few doors down in a shop called We Buy Guitars: a used small-scale Gibson LG1 acoustic, circa 1960, so I paid the asking price of $165 + $13 tax and slipped the receipt into the accessory compartment in its case where it has stayed ever since. Elvis played one just like it in Loving You, his second movie. Two weeks later I enrolled at the Guitar Study Centre, a Manhattan music school run by Eddie Simon, Paul’s younger brother, and over the next few months painstakingly learned how to finger pick. I wrote an MM feature about Eddie’s music school too. 

The receipt for my Gibson guitar, front and back. 

        As 1975 became 1976 there was a nagging doubt in my mind as to what I would do after Melody Maker. This life I was leading wouldn’t last forever. I was still checking out CBGBs, heading down to the Bowery in the scruffiest clothes I had lest someone mug me for the few dollars I had with me. I saw many of the bands that played there, reviewing most of them, the hits and the misses. I saw The Voidoids with Richard Hell in his torn t-shirt before Malcolm McLaren dressed some London lads the same way and that original punk ‘Handsome’ Dick Manitoba with The Dictators. The first time I saw the Ramones their songs were so short – some lasting no more than 30 seconds – that I thought they were a novelty act, but I loved them all the same. I somehow knew Talking Heads were destined for great things, as were Blondie and Television. 

        I also saw Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers at CBGBs but thought they were out of place there. They weren’t a punk band like The Ramones, or a power pop outfit like Blondie, or new wavers like Talking Heads. But they weren’t hard rock either, more a traditional rock band whose music was built on the blues and fifties rock’n’roll, like the early Beatles, Stones and Who. Also, there was none of the slightly under-rehearsed amateurishness about them that – not necessarily in a bad way – characterised groups like The Voidoids, Television and the Patti Smith Group, and they didn’t dress or wear their hair in ways that knowingly contrasted with established rock performers. Equally importantly, they knew their chops, especially guitarist Mike Campbell, and had plenty of drive. I thought they were from the same disciplined domain as Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band or Bob Seger’s crew from Detroit. Then again, Tom’s high voice sounded a bit like Roger McGuinn of The Byrds which, coupled with his Rickenbacker guitar, gave them an added string to their bow. Nowadays it’s called “heartland” music which implies a common bond with the blue-collar American working man and a tendency not to stray too far away from their rudimentary roots.

One night in early 1976 Debbie Harry called and asked me to meet her and Chris Stein in the upstairs bar at Max’s Kansas City. I remember that night very well, not least because just as we began to talk The Who’s ‘I Can See For Miles’ came over the in-house PA system, mighty loud too. Debbie and Chris told me they needed a manager for their new group Blondie. Would I be up for it? I was astounded, incredibly flattered, but had to decline. I didn’t think I knew enough about managing groups and wasn’t up to the job. In any case, there would have been a conflict of interest – how could I write for a music paper and manage a band at the same time? – and, besides, my presence in New York was contingent on my working for MM. My visa precluded doing anything else. Also, there was the same dilemma that discouraged me from forming steady relationships with girlfriends: I could be called back to London at short notice, thereby faced with a very tricky dilemma. 

        I wish now I’d said yes. I wish I’d chucked in the MM job, thrown myself in at the deep end and taken the chance. I think Debbie and Chris thought it would be cool to have a British music writer as their manager, and they were probably right, but I wasn’t ready to make this jump, not yet anyway. Still, Debbie and Chris had given me an idea about life after MM. 

Just Backdated Extract 2

It is 1972 and I have been on the staff of Melody Maker for two years, ingratiated myself into the UK music industry and encountered most of the big rock acts of the day, among them Deep Purple with whom I have become quite friendly. Late that year they invited me to join them on a US tour, my third trip to America. 

In November I visited the US again, flying first class over the Atlantic for the first and only time in my life, my companion John Coletta, Deep Purple’s dapper manager, with whom I was becoming increasingly friendly. John was in advertising before he and two others decided to invest in DP, and he told me he considered managing a rock group “an interesting marketing opportunity”. I always thought he was a bit out of his depth, especially when it came to controlling Ritchie Blackmore, mention of whom invariably caused John to roll his eyes, but he had a partner, Tony Edwards, who took care of admin while John went on the road with the band. I wasn’t to know it until many years later but the third partner in the early management of Purple was a heavy-duty fence who was jailed after police discovered piles of stolen goods in his garage in Brighton. 

        By 1972 Deep Purple was the biggest-selling act on Warner Brothers but the label was more attuned to singer songwriters like Neil Young, James Taylor and Randy Newman or rootsy groovers like Little Feat, Bonnie Raitt and Ry Cooder, and had acquired DP in a fire sale when their previous label, Tetragrammaton, went bust. Although the money was rolling in, especially from DP’s big-selling and cheap to record Made In Japan LP, hard rockers like Deep Purple were an altogether disturbing commodity for them. 

Travelling first class in those days was the ultimate in luxury. The cabin at the front of the plane was on two levels, connected by a spiral staircase that led to a small bar and dining area above the regular seating – more like sofa-bed style arm chairs – on which you could stretch your legs and grab an hour or two’s sleep if you were so inclined. John and I flew to New York and spent the night in the Essex House hotel and the next day flew on to Des Moines, Iowa, to catch up with the group. 

        This was Deep Purple’s sixth and longest US tour of the year. Supported by the pre-Buckingham/Nicks Fleetwood Mac, they concentrated on the West Coast, southern and Midwestern States but I was soon to discover that all was not well within the band. Singer Ian Gillan, whose impending departure was still a closely guarded secret, travelled independently, often staying in separate hotels with his girlfriend Zoe Dean. He had developed a fear of flying and, whenever possible, travelled by road in a black Fleetwood Cadillac. Another reason why he stayed in separate accommodation was that the others weren’t happy that he had chosen to bring along his partner, and were concerned that she might observe post-concert debauchery and report back to wags back home. 

        The rest of the band flew from city to city and Ritchie was persistently late at airport check-ins. The tour stretched into December and I joined the entourage for shows in Des Moines and Indianapolis where they were drawing enormous crowds. When I interviewed Jon Lord in his hotel room he spoke about the need for change and their weariness at the constant touring, so much so that he had difficulty remembering which city he was in. No one was specific about the immediate future which led me to believe they were hiding something from me. Indications seemed to be that the group would disperse for a six-month period the following year and reassemble having had the opportunity to work on individual projects. Ian Gillan’s defection was not mentioned. 

        As candid as ever, Ritchie confided to me that apart from brief discussions before the evening’s set he hadn’t spoken to Gillan on the entire tour. Ritchie didn’t elaborate, probably because although he knew Ian was leaving he was under instructions not to tell the press, but when I subsequently asked Ian if it was true he hadn’t talked to Ritchie he confirmed it was. 

        While the fans at the Veterans Memorial Hall in Des Moines welcomed Deep Purple with open arms, elsewhere the capital of Iowa seemed particularly inhospitable towards them. It was bitterly cold in December; the telephone backstage had a lock on its dial designed to prevent its use; and in the hotel bar those members of the DP entourage enjoying a late night drink after the show were rudely interrupted by a couple of abrasive local cops who insisted that the bar close immediately and that unconsumed drinks remain untouched. Clearly disapproving on our hair, clothes and demeanor, the cops threatened to arrest us all if we demurred. 

        Perhaps this explains why on a plane flight from Des Moines Ritchie indulged in a prank that ranks among his best ever, or worst, depending on your point of view. We were sat together and when the plane reached cruising speed he produced from his hand luggage a fearsomely offensive pornographic magazine with obese women, some dressed as nuns, doing extraordinary things with animals, astride pigs, beneath dogs. Realising that the magazine was of the same dimensions as the in-flight magazine published by Braniff Airways, Ritchie systematically substituted pages from one to the other, carefully replacing the staples before tucking the reconstituted flight brochure back into the pocket provided. “Shame we won’t be here when the next person picks that up,” he said when the mischief was complete. 

I left Deep Purple to their own devices and returned to the UK via New York where I had arranged to meet my MM pal Michael Watts who earlier in the month had taken over from Roy Hollingworth as our US correspondent, a role that I would assume the following year. Michael took me to PJ Clarke’s, a long-established bar and restaurant on the East Side where we ate their famous burgers and drank a lot of beer, so much so that I almost missed my flight back to London that night. Running very late and far from sober, I hailed a yellow cab in pouring rain on Third Avenue to take me to JFK. I really thought I was too late to check in but I hadn’t reckoned with how airport staff treat first-class passengers. “That’s not a problem sir,” said the kind lady at the Pan-Am check-in desk as I produced my ticket and apologised for my tardiness. “Please step this way.” Never again would I be escorted through customs and onto a plane. I collapsed in a large comfy seat and promptly fell asleep. Two hours later I awoke with a start and began to scribble about Deep Purple in a notebook, and when I landed at Heathrow on a Monday morning I went directly to the office and typed up what I had written. 

CC's story about Deep Purple, from MM dated 9 December, 1972

As an aside here it is worth mentioning that to have been flown first-class across the Atlantic at the expense of those with a financial interest in the career of Deep Purple might seem to the untrained eye as if I’d been bribed to write positively about them. This was what was known in the trade as a “facility trip” and it wouldn’t have come about had it not become clear to everyone involved that I liked the band. Nevertheless, it could be construed as an indirect bribe since travel and hospitality doled out in such largesse might make it churlish on the part of the writer not to acknowledge gratitude in the form of favourable coverage. It’s a dilemma MM’s staff faced time and again.

However, this sort of thing was widespread in the music business during the period I worked for MM. I’ll stick my neck out here and state that almost all flights undertaken to see acts overseas by writers from the UK weekly press – not just MM – were paid for by someone else, usually their record label. Indeed, of the hundreds of flights I took during my seven years on MM, many between 1973 and 1977 when I was working from the US, I paid for only two, both private holidays. 

It never occurred to any of us to question this, nor to become curious as to who might have paid for it all in the long term. I suspect now that it was the acts who footed the bill for entertaining us writers, probably not directly but in the form of debits from their royalties or add-ons to whatever debt in the form of an advance they had already accrued with their label. 

        Indirect bribery like this didn’t necessarily take the form of expensive air travel and accommodation. Publicists buying a round in the pub or lunch in a restaurant might feel the gesture warranted a favour in kind, and the only favour they’d be interested in would be mention of their client in the paper. “Lunch? Certainly, and here’s a copy of my client’s new album to review. I recommend the Chablis with the lobster.” The bill for both, in the form of expenses, would arrive at the office of the group’s manager who, after paying it, would add it to whatever expenses were owed them by their client, or their record label. 

        Either way, it’s a pound to a penny that the musicians paid in the end.  

PAUL

How are we to measure the magnitude of Paul? In the number of wonderful songs he’s written, alone or with John; in the number of hits he’s had, with and without The Beatles; in the number of shows he’s performed, with and without The Beatles; in the number of fans who’ve attended those shows; by somehow quantifying the pleasure he’s given to all those fans all over the world over all those years; in the glorious reviews I’ve read of last week’s shows at London’s O2, three hours of nonstop winners, from The Quarrymen to last year’s ‘Now And Then’ no less; for not flaunting his massive wealth, thereby instilling the meaning of integrity in his children; in the dignity he’s shown during 61 years (1963-2024) as a celebrity, perhaps the most celebrated, most enduring, most endearing celebrity on earth; or all of these things put together? 

        I first clapped eyes on him in 1963, on stage in Bradford, playing his violin bass alongside George and John with Ringo at the back, screaming to be heard above 2,000 screamers. The last time was about 15 years ago, on the street just south of Soho Square, close to where I worked in those days. I didn’t recognise him because he wore sunglasses, even though it was almost dark, and he had his collar up, a rudimentary disguise. No one else was around. Paul spotted me first. “Hello Chris,” he said, recognising me from times past, well past in fact. 

        “Paul?” I replied.

        “Yes, it’s me. We can’t talk here. Come to the office.”

        I followed him into the reception area of MPL, his offices on the west side of Soho Square, and we talked for about five minutes, mainly about Mary, his daughter, who once worked for me as a photo researcher, and about my family, of which he knew very little but seemed interested. “How many kids have you got?”

        “Two.”

        “That’s great.” 

        It’s difficult to sustain a casual conversation with the biggest rock star on the planet, even though we were on Christian name terms back in the day and still appeared to be. I met him for the first time in November 1971, at a party to launch Wings, and interviewed him and Linda at length for Melody Maker at Abbey Road the following week. I encountered him a few more times in the seventies, on two occasions backstage after Wings shows, and we had a couple of close encounters when Mary worked for me. Nevertheless, it was astonishing to me that, on the street, he initiated this brief chat. It didn’t last long and within five minutes I was on my way. 

        “Nice to see you again Chris,” he said, or words to that effect as I turned my back on him and left the MPL building. 

        Very few rock and pop performers are recognisable by one name alone and then largely because their names are uncommon: Elvis, Elton, Madonna, Prince and Sting come to mind. Paul is a common name, but how are we to measure his uncommonness? 

        And how do I measure the magnitude of Paul? By that brief conversation and henceforth referring to him only by his Christian name. 

        Happy Christmas Paul.