15.3.24

MM's NEW YORK NEWS COLUMN

Newspaper reporters have good memories, not least because they write things down. Still, I needed a bit of help while researching for my upcoming book of Melody Maker memoirs due out later this year and to this end managed to obtain scans of every MM published during the 1970s, which includes the period I worked on the paper, from June of 1970 to February of 1977. We’re working on a design for the cover that uses the same typeface as MM’s 1970s logo, something like you see here. 

Looking through them was like reading the diary I never kept. I’d completely forgotten about 50% of the interviews and show reviews I wrote, but when I re-read them they unlocked memories and most, if not all, came flooding back. You don’t forget your encounters with Beatles, members of The Who and Led Zep, or Bowie and Springsteen and, in any case, I’ve already revisited some of them on this blog, but you do forget the bread and butter stuff. I wrote hundreds of pieces, big and small, for MM, some of them dashed off quickly I’m forced to admit, others – generally the lengthier ones – written with more care. I felt there was a constant need to sustain my output in order to justify my role as MM’s man in America where, on Thursday mornings, I compiled a weekly New York news column, always the last job of the working week which began the previous Friday. 

I compiled these weekly news columns from press releases, anything I could crib from the Village Voice or other NY culture mags and my own wanderings around the city’s music spots. I always tried to cram as many big names  always printed in bold  as I could into them and below is one that appeared in MM just over 50 years ago this week, in the March 2, 1974 issue. I somehow managed to squeeze Sly, Jagger, Dudley Moore, Dusty, Alice, Led Zep, Arlo and Woody Guthrie, Dylan, Purple, Elton, Elvis, Bowie, Leonard Bernstein and Andy Williams and more all into the name column. Shame I couldn’t manage to fit in a Beatle or two! 


Sly & The Family Stone have completed a new album but a release date hasn’t been scheduled yet. Blue Öyster Cult, too, have finished their third album which will be called Secret Treaties. This will be out in about a month.

    Mick Jagger, who went to see Dr John at least twice at the new Bottom Line Club last week, has now left New York for Munich with Keith Richards’ ace guitar maker Elmo Newman Jones III – or Ted to his friends. Ted has made a five string guitar which Richards will be using on sessions in Munich.

    Isis, the eight piece New York girl band, go into the recording studio next month to make an album with Shadow Morton, the New York Dolls’ producer. The band, which includes Ginger Bianca and Carol McDonald from Goldie & The Gingerbreads, have just signed with Buddah.

    Dudley Moore who with Peter Cook is appearing in a revue at the Plymouth Theatre off Broadways, begins an additional engagement in New York next week. He’s appearing in his musical capacity playing jazz at Michael’s Place from February 26. 

    Sha Na Na are recording a new album in New York with Bob Ezrin who produces Alice Cooper and Lou Reed. Like other Sha Na Na albums, it’ll be a mixture of old songs sprinkled with their own compositions.

    Next week Dusty Springfield is expected in town to make her first new album for almost two years for ABC Dunhill.  

    The new Bottom Line Club is to present a mixture of rock and theatre in the future. During the early part of the evening they will present a non-musical type Broadway show and follow with music from around midnight onwards. Also on the club scene, Paul Coleby, who was a partner in the famed Bitter End Club in Greenwich Village, has opened a new club called The Other End. It’s right next door to the Bitter End and, because of its small size, will concentrate on showcasing unknown talent.

    Arlo Guthrie and Pete Seeger are to play four concerts together next month, including a show at New Yok’s Carnegie Hall on March 8 which has already sold out. Seeger used to sing with Arlo’s father Woody Guthrie in the Almanac Singers in the 1940s. The other shows are at Chicago (March 9), Montreal (17) and Boston (30), and Reprise are to record three of the performances for a live album. Meanwhile, Arlo has a new album I’ll Take That Pickle Now out in April or May.

    Deep Purple are the latest band to join the list of élite who have – or will be – using Starship 1, the super-plane that jets rock bands around the USA. The plane has been used by Bob Dylan, Led Zeppelin, Alice Cooper and Elton John up until now and at present Col Tom Parker is jetting his way around the south on Starship 1 fixing up some dates for his only client, Elvis Presley.

Maggie Bell will play three or four nights at the Bottom Line, leading up to her show at Howard Stein’s Academy of Music on March 16. Patti Labelle opens at the Bottom Line this week and others lined up in the coming weeks include Rick Nelson and The Strawbs

March is shaping up to be a busy month at the Academy with appearances by Joe Walsh & Barnstorm (March 8), Rory Gallagher and 10 c.c. (9), Argent and Nazareth (23), Renaissance, Soft Machine and Larry Coryell (23, following the Argent show). West Coast music takes over at the venue during the first week of April with Jefferson Starship and Quicksilver Messenger Service (April 2) and the Starship and Poco (April 3 & 5 respectively).

    Climax Chicago begin recoding in New York this week with Richie Gottherer (correct!) producing. Gottherer, incidentally, produced ‘Hang On Sloopy’ for The McCoys and was also a co-write of ‘Sorrow’, as originally recorded by The McCoys and, more recently, by David Bowie. The band have spent the last two weeks rehearsing in Miami. 

    Jo Jo Gunne have replaced guitar player Matt Andes with a new guitarist who goes by the name of Star.

    Shorts: Wishbone Ash expected to be recording in New York in April… Chicago preparing a one-hour TV special for screening this summer… Leonard Bernstein and Andy Williams to appear at a special dinner honouring CBS boss Goddard Leiberson on March 7… Rick Derringer currently working on final mixing of Edgar Winter’s next album… Loudon Wainwright recorded four new songs at a recent appearance at the New York Philharmonic Hall which will probably be included on his next album… Liza Minelli and Charles Aznavour doing a 60-minute TV special together. 

That’s exactly as printed. I suspect that the ‘correct!’ in brackets after the name Gottherer was an indication from me to the subs desk at MM that the spelling was correct, and someone forget to delete it before it reached the paper.

Details of my book Just Backdated: Melody Maker Seven Years In The Seventies can be obtained from https://spenwoodbooks.com/product/justbackdated/








11.3.24

ROCK BOOKS


I live in a library. There are bookshelves in our front room, dining room, my wife’s study, my daughter’s old bedroom that is now my study and, most notably, the spare bedroom currently occupied by a lodger. Some of these bookshelves are overflowing, with books piled high on top of other books. I have no idea how many books there are in our house in total and, in any case, the number increases on a weekly basis. The last time I counted I had 65 books on The Who alone, and over 50 on The Beatles, but we have lots of art books and fiction too, everything from the Brontës, inherited from my mum, to F. Scott Fitzgerald and Graham Greene, to Ian McEwan and contemporaries; there’s also a shelf full of Sherlock Holmes, another of humour and another of cricket books, among them Beyond A Boundary by CLR James, a 1966 edition that belonged to my dad. 

It will come as no surprise, however, that well over half the books on my shelves deal with the subject of rock music, be they biographies, reference books, encyclopaedias, genre books or picture books. The reason for this, of course, is that for 33 years I was the managing editor of Omnibus Press, a publishing company that specialised in music books, so I didn’t have to buy them and, as was the way in this trade, music books published elsewhere came my way for free too. About 25 years ago, when a cull was necessitated by a house move, I sold about 500 music books through Helter Skelter, the shop on Denmark Street that specialised in rock books whose proprietor was a pal of mine. To some degree I regret this now, or at least regret letting go of some amongst that 500 that I miss and would like to re-read.

        Which brings me to one reason for this post – re-reading. This week I’m re-reading The Restless Generation, Pete’s Frame masterful account of what happened when rock’n’roll first reached the UK in the 1950s. This came about through a conversation I was having with Val Wilmer, the jazz writer and photographer, who to mark her appearance on Desert Island Discs was the guest of honour at last week’s Melody Maker luncheon for old staff members that I and four of my former colleagues organise about twice a year. Val was a regular freelancer on MM. Somehow or other The Restless Generation was mentioned during a conversation I was having with her and this prompted me to get it down off the shelf and give it a second, or maybe a third, read. It’s still as good as it was when I read it for the first time when it was published in 2007. 

 

        The desire to re-read a book is surely the best possible commendation. I’ve read No Surrender, Johnny Rogan’s biog of Van Morrison, at least twice, ditto Ian MacDonald’s Revolution In The Head, his outstanding analysis of The Beatles’ music, and from time to time I still pick it up to check on what he says about this or that Beatles song. Another book of which I never tire is The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock & Roll which contains essays on all the genre’s principal performers (up to around 1975) by America’s best music writers. A very big book (37x27cm, 382 pages) with superb pictures, someone at RS sent me a copy in early 1976, when it was first published, and I’ve held on to it ever since. 

        The first rock biog I ever read, in 1969, was Hunter Davies’ authorised biography of The Beatles but this was supplanted in 1981 by Philip Norman’s Shout!: The True Story Of The Beatles which I’ve also read more than once. This, in turn, has been supplanted to an extent by Mark Lewisohn’s Tune In, the first in his anticipated trilogy of definitive Beatles biographies. I say ‘to an ‘extent’ because the first of Marks books ends as 1962 becomes 1963, and I’ve read the extended two-volume edition of this a couple of times too, all 1,700 pages, a bit of a challenge but worth the effort. 

Amongst the earliest and most read books on my shelves are Nik Cohn’s confrontational Rock From The Beginning, Elvis by Jerry Hopkins, the first serious Presley biog, and Hellfire: The Jerry Lee Lewis Story by Nick Tosches, widely acclaimed as among the finest ever written about a rock’n’roller. Talking of Elvis, I’ve also read Peter Guralnick’s Last Train To Memphis and Careless Love, his two-volume thesis on the life of Elvis, a couple of times too. 

Of all those Who books, the one I consult the most is Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere: The Complete Chronicle of The Who 1958-1978 by Andy Neill & Matt Kent, 300 LP-sized pages of 100% accurate information, and when it comes to The Beatles you can’t beat Mark Lewisohn’s Complete Beatles Chronicle which is equally comprehensive and precise. I use both these books for reference whenever I post about the acts they cover, as I do with Dave Lewis and Mike Tremaglio’s Evenings With Led Zeppelin: The Complete Concert Chronicle (2021 edition) when I need to ensure my Zep facts are correct. For charts I consult the third edition of The Complete Book of the British Charts by Neil Warwick, Jon Kutner and Tony Brown, and for everything else I’m lucky to have copped the 10-volume Encyclopedia of Popular Music (4th Edition), which editor Colin Larkin kindly delivered to me at Omnibus and which I bundled into the boot of my car when I retired. 

        Talking of which, apart from the chart book, I’ve deliberately left out any of those Omnibus books of which I’m particularly proud, but back in 2016 I made up a list of 25 that can be found here: https://justbackdated.blogspot.com/2016/01/omnibus-press-personal-choice.html

And, of course, the books I mention here barely scratch the surface of the true extent of our library, rock or otherwise. I dont often visit houses where there are next to no books on shelves, aside from, maybe, a cookery book or two, but whenever I do I feel desperately sorry for the occupants, and even more so for their children. 


7.3.24

Lou Reed in 1974

Fifty years ago this week I interviewed Lou Reed which wasn’t as onerous a task as I had been led to believe it might be. Lou could be a bit of a curmudgeon at the best of times but apart from when I asked him if he’d been to see Bob Dylan during his recent shows at Madison Square Garden, he was reasonably civil towards me. His response to the Dylan question comes towards the end of the piece I wrote for Melody Maker which I’ve now posted on Just Backdated, link below. 

As it happened I became reasonably friendly with Lou in 1976, as my stint as MM’s man in New York was coming to an end. He was a regular at Ashley's bar & restaurant on Fifth Avenue at 13th Street, often in the company of Jonny Podell, his manager at the time, and Rachel, his girlfriend whose gender was always in doubt. One night, my friend Glen Colson – who was sleeping on my couch at the time – and I got talking to Lou at Ashley’s and I mentioned that I’d reviewed his show at the Palladium, and Glen offered to drop off a copy of that week’s MM at his apartment. 

At Lou’s place on the East Side he was greeted by Rachel. She roused Lou from the bedroom and the MM was handed over. Their living room full to the brim with old black and white RCA TV sets that he’d used as the backdrop to the Palladium show and Lou offered Glen some. Glen called me and when I gave him the thumbs up he relieved Lou of three TVs which he loaded into a cab and brought round to my flat on East 78th Street. I think Lou had got them from a hospital where they were surplus to requirements. They didn’t work that well, probably because we had to use coat hangers from a dry-cleaners as aerials. I wasn’t that bothered. In the four years I spent in New York I never felt the need to watch TV. I liked Robert Stack as Elliot Ness and a news show called 60 Minutes but most US TV was crap and, in any case, I was out and about pretty much every night. 

Over to you Lou. 


Lou Reed: Man Of Few Words

We’re up on the 37th floor of a Park Avenue office block that faces north and thus commands an extensive view of New York’s Central Park and Harlem way out in the distance. Lou Reed sits in a director’s swivel chair and looks uncomfortable.

    It’s not that he doesn’t like doing interviews, it’s just that it usually helps if he has a friend with him to smooth out the atmosphere and encourage conversation. Today no such friend is available and Lou seems a little lost for words, and rather than say something he doesn’t want to say, he doesn’t say anything at all.

    The continuing story of Lou Reed reached another chapter last month with the release of a live album titled Rock And Roll Animal, recorded at New York’s Academy of Music around Christmas It contains familiar Reed material, ‘Heroin’, ‘Sweet Jane’ and ‘Rock And Roll’ and the sound quality is really excellent for a live show.

    And, in keeping with Reed’s persistently changing image, his appearance has changed yet again. Today, and for at least the next few weeks, he has very short hair, almost a crew-cut, dyed black, and without any growth at all descending below the height of his ears. Last week he had Iron Crosses dyed into the black, but they’ve gone today.

    He looks, in fact, rather like a convict or a soldier. He is very thin. His blue denim jacket tends to drop off his shoulders and his jeans would be tight on others if not on him. He talks very quietly. Also very little.

    Thus when I inquired what motivated him to put out a live album of old material at this stage in his career, he replied quite simply that a mobile recording studio was available and he thought he might as well use it. And he was equally vague about the musicians who played with him on the concert and record.

    “There was Steve Hunter and Dick Wagner on guitars, Prakash John on bass, Whitey Glan on drums, Ray Colcord on bass and me on vocals. I don’t know whether I’ll be playing with them again, though. They all have private ambitions of their own.

    “I’ve almost got a band together of my own at the moment, but we haven’t rehearsed yet. It includes Doug Yule, who was in the Velvet Underground, and Steve Katz and I may play acoustic guitars or we may not depending on what happens.”

    It seems that Lou had plans to go over to England to record with this new band during early May, but the power problems have put him off. “I think the English work harder in the studio,” he says, “but I can’t go there if there’s no power. The engineers seem to care more and they do more with less than the Americans do.

    “I’ve written plenty of material recently, more than enough for an album and I like it. I think it’s rock and roll. It has a drum,” he grins.

    I asked whether he preferred to work in the studio or onstage. Again his answer was vague. “I haven’t done either in such a long time that I really don’t know.” So why is it he doesn’t work too often? “My condition.” He was reluctant to amplify.

    I changed direction and mentioned David Bowie. “He’s very clever. We found we had a lot of things in common.”

    I suggested his career took an uplift as a result of this flirtation but he wasnt about to give Bowie any more credit than he felt was due. “David learned how to be hip,” he replied with a glint in his eye. “Associating with me brought his name out to a lot more people, too. He’s very good in the studio. In a manner of speaking he produced an album for me.”

    But certain observers thought it was a step in the wrong direction for Reed. “People think a lot of things,” he replied.

    “I enjoyed those shows I did in London at the Rainbow, but I kept thinking, Frank Zappa fell 17 feet down into that pit. I hate Frank Zappa, and it made me so happy to think about that.

    “I like the direction my career is going right now. It has more direction and cohesiveness. I don’t think I’m a singer, with or without a guitar. I give dramatic readings that are almost my tunes. Did you know that my real voice has never been heard? What they usually do in the studio is to speed up the vocal track and make my voice higher. I scream, when I play live because when you scream your voice goes up...like this – Sweet Jane,” he yelled.

    He paused: “I liked Mott The Hoople’s version of that song,” he went on. “I did a reference vocal for them. The one I really liked was Brownsville Station’s version of that song. I loved that. I hope they release it as a single.

    “I liked ‘Walk On The Wild Side’, too. I found the secret with that one. I was supposed to write a play called The Walk On The Wild Side and I read the book and wrote the song. Nothing came of the play but I wasn’t going to waste the time and energy I put into the song so I put it out.

    “People don’t deserve good lyrics because they never listen to them these days. That’s why the melody has to be good, When I have a lyric that I think everybody will like, I won’t drown it out, though. If it’s a secret lyric I’ll bury it. I don’t print lyrics on record sleeves, except with Berlin and then they wrote them with a quill pen, the stupid fuckers. They wrote them out in longhand because they thought that was chic. I could have killed them.”

    Reed says he listens to very little music other than his own and The Kinks. He is a great admirer of Ray Davies. “I liked the Great Lost Kinks album where Ray stands revealed. I’d love to see them in a nice little cabaret setting singing their nice little songs.”

    Reed says he is continually changing his appearance through boredom. “I found I couldn’t really solve the boredom by changing my appearance but at least I could stop some of the hassle. I don’t have to comb my hair now because there isn’t enough.

    At this stage in the interview, Steve Katz walked into the room. Katz, the former guitarist with Blood, Sweat & Tears, produced Reed’s live album, so I asked how he came to be involved with Reed.

    “I admire him as a person, musician and organiser,” said Reed. “I can’t organise anything. I have a lot of problems when it comes to organisation.”

    For no apparent reason, Reed then launched into a seething criticism of Jefferson Airplane, expressing the view that they represented the worst in everything, both musical and ideally. “I hate everything about them, the way they dress, the way they look, the way they play, the cute name. I despise every San Francisco group except Moby Grape and they broke up.”

    So I asked whether Lou had been to see Bob Dylan on the recent tour. “Are you kidding?” he replied. “I know what Bob Dylan looks like and he’s too short to see anyway. I saw the back of his head once. I didn’t want to go to see him, especially if he is giving his money to Israel. If he gave some to Israel and some to the Arabs it would be different.”

    I mentioned the New York Dolls a band I thought Lou would like. 

    “You know, I tried so hard to like the New York Dolls but I couldn’t. I like the titles of their songs. It’s such a shame. They’re just another glitter trash band.

    “I’m still mad that Fats Domino never made it properly. He could have been a blues artist in the tradition of Bessie Smith.”

    And with that last comment, Reed offered a limp handshake and disappeared into the afternoon.





3.3.24

ROCK & ROLL HALL OF FAME 2024

For the first time since 1992, the year I was first invited to nominate inductees into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, I feel unable to select the required seven artists or groups from the list of nominees for the induction ceremony. This is partly to do with my belief that several of them don’t deserve to be in a Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, this because they have about as much to do with rock & roll as Pat Boone, or my own ignorance of their work, or that the music they produce is not to my taste.

Anyone who’s read any of my earlier posts on the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame will know that over the years I’ve become disillusioned with the quality of the acts inducted and the motivation of those who control this increasingly archaic institution. The former is conditioned by the latter insofar as this annual extravaganza seems to be fuelled by a need to sustain its commercial potential and this can only be done by opening its doors to more and more acts of lesser merit than those that preceded them. The inevitable result is a lowering of standards. 

I apologise if that sounds a bit pompous, a bit ‘it was better in my day’ but that’s the way I feel and I don’t think I’m alone in this. Either way, as it has done for donkeys years, the nomination form landed on my doormat last week. For 2024, I am asked to choose seven acts from the following 15: Mary J. Blige, Mariah Carey, Cher, The Dave Matthews Band, Eric B & Rakim, Foreigner, Peter Frampton, Jane’s Addiction, Kool & The Gang, Lenny Kravitz, Oasis, Sinéad O’Connor, Ozzy Osbourne, Sade and A Tribe Called Quest.

So, let’s begin a process of elimination by ruling out those who don’t belong in the R&R HoF. Eric B & Rakim and A Tribe Called Quest are both successful hip-hop acts who certainly qualify for the Hip-Hop Hall of Fame in New York but not for the R&R HoF (any more than Ozzy would qualify for the Hip-Hop HoF); Mariah Carey and Sade are smooth MoR/pop acts with contrasting voices and Mary J. Blige a smooth soul act (and pretty damn good too). Next come those about whom I am ignorant. I confess to a 100% unfamiliarity with the work of the Dave Matthews Band, whose profile in the UK is limited, to say the least, a 75% unfamiliarity with Lenny Kravitz, and, not much liking heavy metal (at least since my 1970s flirtation with Led Zep and Deep Purple), haven’t bothered much with Foreigner or Ozzy away from Sabbath, not that I was much a fan of them either. 

With nine eliminated I am left with six, one less than the seven I’m supposed to nominate: Cher, Frampton, Jane’s Addiction, Kool & The Gang, Oasis and Sinéad. Cher has been knocking around since 1965 when she and her former husband Sonny Bono topped the charts with ‘I Got You Babe’, sort of entry level Dylan, which I rather liked, and I approve of her association with Abba in the second of their Mama Mia! films, so she’ll get my vote. Peter Frampton, too, has been knocking around for ages, and I happen to know he’s a nice bloke, so that’s vote number two. Jane’s Addiction are nicely alternative and what I’ve heard leads me to believe their hearts are in the right place, so they’ll get my vote. Kool & The Gang are also veterans and I remember seeing them in the US around 1975 or ’6, another of those soul acts with so many members funkin’ it up on stage you didn’t know where to look. They persevered and I can still hum two slightly later songs of theirs, ‘Ladies Night’ and ‘Get Down On It’, so they’ll get my vote.

Which leaves Oasis and Sinéad. To a certain extent I’m swayed by nationalist pride in lending my support to Oasis (not least because the HoF traditionally favours Americans) but the real reason why I’ll vote for them – and the reason why they probably won’t be inducted – is because Noel and Liam are likely to come to blows on the rostrum, which I’d love to see. Also, they’re expected to perform together in their original line-up, which might prove troublesome too.

Finally, Sinéad. Sufficient to say that if I was required to vote for one artist from all 15, she’d be the one I’d pick. Sinéad has, in the vernacular of the constabulary, been a person of interest to me ever since I first heard (and saw the video for) her breath-taking reading of Prince’s ‘Nothing Compares To You’ and I know I’m far from alone in this. Early in her career I went to see her at the Royal Albert Hall and was mesmerised by this waiflike creature, especially when she produced a beat-box and danced a jig to one of her songs, arms straight down her sides, high stepping Riverdance style. Her first two albums, The Lion And The Cobra and I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got, have been favourites of mine for years, and I tried to keep up with her music while her antics made headlines, not always for the right reasons.

But all of this can seem virtually insignificant against her fearlessness, most especially her stance against the ills of the Roman Catholic church in her home country and much else besides. A true heroine for righteous causes galore, Sinéad ought to have been nominated for the R&R HoF in 2012, 25 years after The Lion And The Cobra arrived, this being the length of time required to elapse between the release of an artist’s first record and when they become eligible. Far be it from me to suggest that since Sinéad O’Connor left us in 2023, and is consequently no longer around to be awkward, to say something people might not want to hear on their stage, this is what prompted the R&R HoF to include her amongst the 2024 nominations. 

        Finally, if you go on to the R&R HoFs website you can place a fans vote. Ive already done this for Sinéad but she languishes in 10th place from the 16 nominees. Ozzy is top, Foreigner at number two, Frampton at three and Matthews on four, a bit predictable I suppose. I am given to understand that this vote influences who will be inducted but is by no means conclusive. 


28.2.24

The New York Dolls presented me with a dilemma when I was Melody Maker’s man in America. My predecessor in that role, Roy Hollingworth, adored them, declaring them the future of rock’n’roll, and such was his enthusiasm that it seemed churlish for those that followed not to share it, to some extent anyway. There was much to admire about them, not least their us against the world attitude, a stance that was respected by all music writers who harboured a militant streak, but at the same time they could be very loose, almost to the point of incompetence. 

They were social animals, hanging out in New York bars like Max’s Kansas City and Ashley’s where musicians gathered, and I got to know their singer David Johansen and his girlfriend Cyrinda Foxe, a beautiful blonde who left him for Steve Tyler, the singer with Aerosmith, whom she married. My pal Bob Gruen loved the Dolls too, and this only added to my dilemma when it came to writing about them.  

    Fifty years ago last week I watched them headline over Elliott Murphey at the Academy of Music in New York, and this was my rather orthodox review for MMs Caught In The Act page, dated February 23, 1974. 


A noticeable aspect of the current rock scene here is the number of artists who are very directly influenced by musicians from the sixties. Generally, these fall into two schools – those with Dylan leanings and those with Rolling Stones leanings.

    The Dylan school encompasses a string of “thinking” lyric-writing electric guitar players who front their own bands and seem to be reliving Dylan’s Blond On Blonde era. The Stones school includes hordes of bands who are out to shock and outrage and whose musical ability is far surpassed by their physical appearance and apparent enthusiasm.

    Elliott Murphey belongs to the former school and the New York Dolls to the latter. Both appeared at the Academy of Music on Friday evening, the Dolls headlining in front of a sell-out crowd that was partisan to say the least.

    Enough words have been written about the Dolls in these pages recently to encircle the globe, but it seems only fair to point out that their prowess as musicians does seem to have increased since the last time I saw them – four months ago at the Whiskey in Los Angeles. Nevertheless, of course, there isn’t a shadow of originality about their entire performance, based so obviously on the Rolling Stones that one tends to think that maybe it’s some kind of Mike Yarwood of rock and roll up there on stage.

    The early half of their set – which began with a film of themselves – was surprisingly tight. They’ve obviously been rehearsing recently and taken instant courses on how to play guitars. The latter half, however, descended into a deafening musical abyss, all stemming from David Johansen’s vocal work which gradually lost its pitch amidst his enthusiasm. By the end he was yelling his head off.

    But the Dolls are the Dolls and in New York it doesn’t really matter how well or badly they play.

    Elliott Murphey, on the other hand, had to work hard but even then his music seemed lost on the Dolls aficionados. While Murphey’s band does have its flaws, the man himself has star quality. He plays an electric guitar well, writes some good songs and stands squat about the stage as if he means business. 

    Murphey’s band includes an excellent drummer, his own brother on bass and a keyboard and rhythm guitarist. The second guitar player might as well not have been there – his contribution was a big zero – while the organist, too, seemed held back. Murphey, in white suit and shades, is the obvious star of the proceedings and some of his guitar licks were both tasteful and original.



22.2.24

JOE COCKER, Sheffield, January 1971

Fifty-three years ago last month Melody Maker got word that Joe Cocker, who’d spent most of 1970 on the road with Mad Dogs & Englishmen, had returned to his home town of Sheffield and, unlikely as it might seem, was back living with his mum and dad. Editor Ray Coleman suggested I drive up to Sheffield, find out where ma and pa Cocker lived and pay him a visit. 

Joe was a big star then. In the current era it is unheard of for a music writer to simply roll up at a big star’s home uninvited and knock on the door. It was taking a bit of a liberty even then but Ray liked to subvert convention so I did as he suggested. I drove up the M1 very early on a Saturday morning, discovered his address in the Steel Bank area of Sheffield by inquiring at a music shop where, luckily, someone knew him and knocked on the door. He was still in bed but his mum and dad roused him. While his mum made him breakfast, we spent about an hour chatting before strolling down the street to his local pub and chatting some more. I left him on the corner of the street where he lived and drove to Skipton, spending the night at my dad’s house before driving back down to London. Back in the office on Monday, this is what I wrote for the January 16, 1971, edition of MM. It was trailered on the front page as Joe Cocker: What Can I Do Next? 





Joe Cocker’s turned full circle. Los Angeles, the Mad Dogs & Englishmen, the Woodstock nation and bad trips are a far cry from the backstreets of Sheffield. But Joe’s come back. He’s living at home with his mum and dad and that’s where he’s content to be – for the time being at least.

    Tasker Road is stretch of terraced houses. Mr and Mrs Cocker and their son Joe live at number 38. There’s a brand new Rover 2000TC standing outside. The shiny new motor looks a bit of out of place against the shabbier ’64 models parked around it.

    Joe’s dad answers my knock. He is surprised to see me which isn’t surprising because he didn’t know I was coming. Neither did Joe, who is in bed, and is equally surprised that Melody Maker is visiting him at his Yorkshire home. “He was a bit late in last night,” explains father Cocker. “Went to a friend’s house. Unusual for him. First time he’s been out in a while.”

    Five minutes, a chat with dad about the weather and Joe appears, grinning. He’s grown a beard and his untidy curly hair reaches his shoulders. The pot belly is still there. He seems genuinely pleased to see Melody Maker on home ground. In his red polo neck sweater and blue cords – no familiar tie-dyed vest up here – he confesses he hasn’t much to say. 

    We’re in the small living room, huddled around a gas fire. It’s one of those houses where the front room is reserved for weddings and funerals only. MM interviews aren’t in that class.

    “I came home about three weeks ago,” Joe tells me. “I had been in the States since March. I wanted to come home for Christmas. I don’t know why.”

    “Tell me about Mad Dogs & Englishmen,” I say.

    Joe lights a cigarette, his first of the day. “Well, the reports in the papers about it were pretty true,” he says. “I just went to America to meet Leon Russell with the intention of getting a group together. I met Chris Stainton and Leon and they got all their buddies to join. It finished up with us all going on tour together. Somebody filmed it and they are supposed to be putting this two and a half hour film out. They had 60 hours of film.

    “I don’t know how many cities we visited. We just worked seven days a week and kept going. They kept putting in dates here and there. The band kept changing because nobody could stick it all the down the line. At times there were about 40 of us, musicians, socialisers and choirs going from place to place in a plane. A girl in the choir had a dog that used to come up on stage with us most of the time.

    “After the tour we made the album. Somehow, I can’t think it about now but everyone made a big fuss about it at the time. I liked the idea of getting a big band together to make a living with but everybody got too closed in about it.”

    Joe sits in silence, his mind somewhere far away. It seems he doesn’t really want to talk about the Mad Dogs. It’s over – according to Joe – and it won’t happen again. After Joe’s mum had served us another cup of tea I asked Joe about his plans for the future?

    “I’ll be living in England for a while now,” he says. “I’m looking for a house near London and I’ll be rockin’ on all right. Right now, I’m having a rethink. I seem to have gone the full circle and now I’m back in Sheffield.

    “As far as playing goes, I’m just not there at the moment. These days everyone seems to analyse lyrics and that annoys me. I start singing and people pick up the lyrics and make side-waves (sic) from them. I despair when people are thinking too much about what you are singing. Audiences will say anything, no matter what you are. I’m going to try and sharpen up my diction a bit so people can hear me. I don’t know when I’ll go back on the road again. I’m getting my own things together but there’s a bit of a delay. Just before I came back to England I was in the studio at Muscle Shoals doing some new stuff with Chris. There as Wayne Perkins, a nephew of Carl, on guitar and Jim Keltner on drums. We just composed as we went along.”

    Any chance of you teaming up with Leon on his upcoming British tour?

    “No, there’s not much chance of that. I don’t fancy the idea of just getting up and messing about. He’s touring right across the country and I’m sure to see him somewhere along the line. There was talk at some time that Leon and the whole Mad Dogs crew would all fly to Britain for some shows but it didn’t work out. 

    “The feeling at the end of the tour was entirely different from the start. My attitude changed a lot. If you have a group of five people, they are all on the same thought wave but when you have that many people on stage everybody is thinking different. I mean some people’s heads weren’t on stage at all times. When it was finished I was quite happy it was all over.

    “The change in me will show eventually but I’ve got to sit down and think about it first and I don’t know how long that will take. I know I don’t want to go out and do the same songs again, although the audiences expect me to sing them. I want to write some new stuff. We must have performed some 60 dozen times and that’s too many times for me.”

    By now it was opening time and the pub down the road seemed inviting. Joe is no stranger to the Mason’s Arms. Old men twice his age greet him over the racing pages of the daily papers, puffing at pipes and frowning into the froth on their pints.

    “Now then Joe lad, o’reet?” says the chap behind the bar. 

    “Aye, not so bad,” Joe replies.

    “On ‘oliday Joe lad?” asks another gent.

    “Aye, that’s right,” says Joe.

    We take our pints to a corner table and talk about the current music scene. Joe doesn’t seem to have any favourites at the moment. “Nothing has zonked me out recently,” he says. “Although I saw Procol Harum and they made a big impression on me.”

    We discussed a few bands, the Who, Deep Purple, Beatles and the wave of heavy groups who all seem to sound like Led Zeppelin. Joe doesn’t say much, just nods, grins and smokes cigarettes. After three quick pints he’s ready to go. He used to play in Sheffield pubs like this before the world heard about him.

    I don’t think he’ll ever sing in places like this again. In fact, it may be a long while before he sings anywhere again. But don’t worry about Joe. He’ll get by – with a little help from his friends.




9.2.24

The Last Dinner Party – Prelude To Ecstasy

I am far more than 10 minutes fashionably late for this particular dinner party but until I read about The Last Dinner Party, a quintet of women who perform, dress and behave most extravagantly, I was unfamiliar with the term ‘industry plant’. Turns out it is a derogatory expression meaning an act that has been calculatingly nurtured for instant success by power brokers in the music business, managed by a heavy hitter, signed to a label with clout and given the sort of VIP fast-lane treatment that assured wealthy Tory spivs of lucrative contracts to supply PPE equipment during the 2019 Covid outbreak, the most prominent of whom is the shameless Baroness Michelle Mone. 

    In my day ‘industry plant’ was called hype, and once this label attached itself to an act they had a hard time overcoming it. It took Brinsley Schwartz several years to live down the decision to fly music writers to New York to see them at the Fillmore in 1970, and among others that spring to mind are Sigue Sigue Sputnik, Transvision Vamp and Gay Dad, all of whom fell by the wayside pretty quickly. Then again, when you look at the circumstances surrounding their arrival, Led Zeppelin had all the advantages of an ‘industry plant’: powerful management, Atlantic Records and plenty of publicity. The big difference, of course, was that Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones were seasoned musicians. And they did it the hard way, by gigging like fuck. 

    The members of The Last Dinner Party sound like seasoned musicians too. Their guitar player Emily Roberts paid her dues in a Queen tribute band while keyboard player Aurora Nishevci – and I hope to hell that’s her real Christian name – sounds like no stranger to the conservatoire. The focal point, however, is singer Abigail Morris, a Helena Bonham Carter lookalike, who channels Kate Bush and Florence Welch in athletic grace while reaching for high notes like Dusty, who always seemed to me like she was plucking them from the air above her beehive. 

    They’ve been around since 2021, sensibly putting in the work – and gathering a following – before recording Prelude To Ecstasy, their debut album, which was released to some fanfare earlier this month, and it’s shot into the album charts at number one, hence the ‘industry plant’ allegation. By all accounts, however, they honed their craft during Covid lockdown and emerged as fully-grown birds of a feather, drawing attention to themselves with their flamboyant period dress sense, all flounce and ladylike, Bennet Sisters meet Emma Stone in Poor Things, with added quirkiness.

    The music they produce is as flamboyant as their look, a careful blend of prog rock, sweet(ish) harmonies and songs with unexpected twists and turns, Sparks meets early Roxy Music with Kate Bush taking over from Russ and Bryan. The first time I heard ‘Nothing Matters’, their single rising in the charts, however, I thought it was Abba, or at least Frida, letting loose on a variation of ‘Our Last Summer’, until it reached the chorus, a rip-roaring singalong that’s quite irresistible. “I will fuck you, like nothing matters,” sings Abigail, and I’m still trying to work out whether this means she’ll do so with extreme vigour or without a second thought, or both. Either way, it’s an impressive, seductive debut, and for safety’s sake they deliver a more decorous G-rated version – “I will hold you, like nothing matters” – where appropriate.  

    I first saw TLDP performing ‘Nothing Matters’ on Jools a couple of weeks ago and was struck by their look as well as its hook. I’ve now invested in the album and I’m not disappointed. It opens and closes with dramatic, orchestral fanfares, a bold start, like arriving on stage on a zip wire, which I wouldn’t put past them, or something like that. The songs that follow are produced to an exceptionally high standard of clarity by James Ford, whose CV reads like a Who’s Who of the best of this century’s British pop, and who has injected a dollop of Florence Welch’s melodrama into TLDP. There’s a gothic, slightly tragic quality to the lyrics, plenty of blood, some throat ripping, and while none of the choruses are as immediate as ‘Nothing Matters’, it’s growing on me, especially ‘Our Lady of Mercy’, ‘Burn Alive’ and ‘Beautiful Boy’, with its lilting melody and a touch of Godfather soundtrack in its haunting intro. Gjuda’, sung in Albanian, is a choral wash that leads directly into the pulsating Sinner, another likely stage favourite. 

    A glance at TLDP’s website tells me they’re booked up to October when concerts at what used to be the Hammersmith Odeon (it’s called the Eventim Apollo now and holds 5,000) are already sold out. Before that they’re touring heavily in Europe and the US, all of which leads me to believe that they are approaching their calling by performing anywhere and everywhere. I take my hat off to them for doing it the hard way. As Led Zeppelin and a few of their peers knew, nothing matters beyond gigging like fuck. 


19.1.24

MUIREANN BRADLEY – I Kept These Old Blues

If, like me, you were out on the lash on New Year’s Eve and as a result missed Muireann Bradley on Jools’ hootenanny I can only hope that, like me, you took the trouble to record it in the hope that a gem might be lurking among the more predictable turns. Seems I did the right thing for about half way through, after Rod Stewart and others, the stage was cleared and the lights dimmed for a single spotlight to pick out a shy looking teenage girl sat on a stool, her long dark hair solemnly centre-parted, her acoustic guitar looking way too big for her. 

Moments later she was picking away like a lonesome old blueswoman, midnight on a Mississippi porch with nuttin’ but a jar of moonshine and a hungry bobcat for company. Candyman,’ she sang in a high-pitched, girly voice, ‘salty dog,’ repeating those lines two or three times, shifting up to a higher register now and then, while her fingers did the business. Three and a half minutes later she closed out the song with a nifty little bent note up on the fifth fret. ‘I wish I was in New Orleans, just sittin’ on a candy stand.’ The applause was the loudest of the night.

Muireann turned 17 in December. According to her notes on I Kept These Old Blues, her debut album, which I ordered on January 2, she grew up steeped in old blues thanks to her dad, who played this style of music on his guitar and, starting when she was nine, taught his daughter to play too. She honed her skills during Covid when her preferred pastime of combat sports was curtailed by lockdown. Beyond the health benefits, it’s hard to pinpoint how lockdown advanced lives but Muireann’s accomplished guitar picking is certainly among them. 

Researching ‘Candyman’ I got confused. It’s the title of a song by Mississippi John Hurt (1893-1966) but what Muireann played was ‘Candyman Salty Dog’, a tune by the Rev Gary Davis (1896-1972), a blind bluesman much admired by Bob Dylan and others. It’s the opening song on her record, 12 tracks in all that show off her dexterity and, to an extent, playfulness among blues and ragtime classics by Hurt, Elizabeth Cotton and others, her arrangements inspired by Stefan Grossman, Dave Van Ronk and John Fahey, whose records I’ve savoured since the early seventies when I was given one to review. In an era dominated by bland televised talent shows, there’s something enormously reassuring about how this music has been interpreted so wholeheartedly by a teenage girl from Ballybofey in County Donegal. 

Grossman has evidently given Muireann the nod of approval, which isn’t surprising as her Travis picking style is way up there on the instrumentals ‘Vestapol’ and the quicker ‘Buck Dancer’s Choice’. Also, it’s rather charming to hear one so young sing, “All my life, I’ve been a travelling gal” on ‘Police Sergeant Blues’, while the expressive strength she brings to ‘Delia’, a song about the murder of a 14-year-old girl covered by Bob Dylan and, of all people, Pat Boone, belies her age too. The closing track is a beguiling take on ‘Freight Train’, ever so cleanly picked, which I first heard in 1957, aged ten, by Chas McDevitt’s Skiffle Group, sung by Nancy Whiskey. On the internet, though not on this CD, you can see her tackle ‘When The Levee Breaks’  by Memphis Minnie and Kansas Joe McCoy, famously covered by Led Zeppelin, not that their version sounds remotely like Muireann. 

        While the CD might open Muireann to accusations that her work is little more than an imitation of the musicians that have inspired her, her friskiness suggests otherwise. Here and there she jumps out at you with an unexpected lick or vocal tease. To me, the record is more a tribute, while her skills suggest it won’t be long before she creates her own body of work in this style. If I’m still on the porch with my moonshine I’ll be buying it.


16.1.24

BEE GEES: Children Of The World by Bob Stanley

“The Bee Gees didn’t fit in,” observes Bob Stanley at the start of Children Of The World, his new biography of the Gibb brothers. He’s quite right. In my own dealings with them for Melody Maker in the first half of the seventies I felt they were removed from the mainstream of pop life, in a parallel world but somehow apart, somehow cloistered by their familiarity with one another. This created within them an ‘us against the world’ attitude which, coupled with an adolescent, slightly naïve, arrogance, meant they would never be fashionable, never cool, never given the respect their hit-making track record deserved. “In spite of their great success, they seemed somehow easy to mock,” writes Stanley, drawing attention to a lack of self-awareness that invited cynicism, especially from music press staffers who enjoyed bursting balloons.   

    Bob Stanley knows his pop. A founder member of St Etienne and a dedicated convert to all things indie, he writes about music with the air of someone unafraid to offer judgements unlikely to sit well with accepted theory, ever keen to challenge, ever keen to seek out an undiscovered gem. To write a substantial book about The Bee Gees that analyses their music admiringly, most especially dozens of songs that weren’t hits, might be considered courageous – but for me to say that is to slip into the trap that Stanley identifies early in his book, the back-handed compliment, the suggestion that whatever good reviews the Bee Gees received were “distant”. “No other group has had to consistently defend themselves, their approach and their music,” he writes.

    Children Of The World does its best to rectify this. Stanley is clearly a fan but is unafraid to investigate the fault lines in a musical career that began on a Manchester stage in 1957 when Barry was 11 and twins Robin and Maurice eight, and continued until 2003 when Maurice’s death brought the curtain down. In between times they sold more than 250 million records in all kinds of styles, wrote numerous hits for others, filled the world’s biggest stadia on the road and, until Michael Jackson’s Thriller, were the principal contributors to world’ best-selling LP, the soundtrack to Saturday Night Fever.

    In 2001 I commissioned and edited Tales of The Brothers Gibb, a 730-page doorstopper whose three authors investigated every facet of the Gibb family to produce what I thought was the definitive Bee Gees book that couldn’t be bettered. What it lacked, however, was the critical nous that Stanley brings to Children Of The World, and also his literary ability to compress the endlessly fascinating biographical details of the Gibb’s life into a book just over half that length. Furthermore, his understanding of the bigger picture enables him to place The Bee Gees into context, comparing their fate with fellow-travellers, to which end he opens each chapter with the top ten for that particular moment, and to draw judicious comparisons with that other group of three brothers, The Beach Boys. 

    We follow the Gibb family from extreme poverty – Barry, Maurice and Robin really were juvenile delinquents – to unimagined wealth that enabled them to sue manager Robert Stigwood for $200 million in 1980, only to be countersued for $300 million. (It was settled out of court.) We learn about their nomadic early life, from Manchester – where the family often did a midnight flight to avoid the rent man – to the Isle of Man to Australia and back to the UK, to London, thence to LA and finally Miami. We learn about their lack of education – Maurice and Robin left school at 13, as did tragic younger brother Andy – and how this contributed to the slightly disjointed lyrics in their songs, which – as with Abba – did them no harm at all. We learn about their brotherly intuition, how they were able to finish one another’s sentences, and the occasional fall outs, usually instigated by Robin’s stubborn diva tendencies, or Barry’s oppressive ‘big brother’ controlling manner, with Maurice often in the role of calming arbitrator. 

    But most of all we learn about their resilience, how they were able to mould their songs to the times, to pick themselves up and start again after setbacks and, most importantly, to fall back on their skills as songwriters to see them through periods when it looked like we’d seen the last of them. “We’re durable, persistent little buggers,” says Robin. 

    It’s an epic tale of highs and lows well told, not without the odd error but a book those slightly strange, deeply sensitive, immensely talented Gibb Brothers deserve. It contains 27 pages of discography but no photographs, for which I’d dock it one star, but this is no doubt due to financial constraints on the part of the publisher. 


13.11.23

FLY AWAY PAUL by Lesley-Ann Jones



Earlier this year I reviewed The McCartney Legacy Volume 1 – 1969-73 by Allan Kozinn & Adrian Sinclair, a 700+ page book that covered this period of Paul McCartney’s life in extraordinary detail, perhaps too much so, though I was sure obsessive fans would love it. Now along comes Fly Away Paul which, to a certain extent, covers the same period, albeit in a far more reader-friendly fashion, with less emphasis on the minutiae of recording sessions and more on how events, both past and present, shaped the life and personality of the former Beatle who turned 81 in June, most especially how he coped with losing the group he loved.

Not too well, according to Lesley-Ann Jones, a prolific writer of books about musicians in which she seeks not so much to tell their story as psychoanalyse their characters through scrutinising their past, their loves and their music. Paul McCartney, robbed of his mother at 14, precociously talented, ever anxious to please yet somewhat of a control freak and foil for the caustic jibes of John Lennon, serially promiscuous until he found The One, offers fertile ground for investigation, Jones’ speciality, inherited from her journalist father, a distinguished sports writer, and honed during an ongoing career writing feature articles for national dailies. 

To this end, Jones delves deeper into the personal and domestic life of the McCartney family than is to be found in other McCartney books on my shelves, which serves to make it considerably more interesting than the album/tour/year off and around again cycle that fills page after page of too many duller rock books. Thanks to Jones, I now know all about the history of ownership of High Park Farm, Paul’s Scottish hideaway, a remote and austere abode, its climate unforgiving, where the first Mrs McCartney not only coped with Spartan furnishings, but nursed her man back to life after a nervous breakdown brought on by all the fussing and fighting. 

In Jones’ telling Linda, with whom she was on first name terms, was precisely what the footloose McCartney required, a home-maker unconcerned with outward appearances whose inner strength delivered to Paul the antidote to the madness that surrounded The Beatles, to wit much needed stability in the form of a ready-made family of one daughter, soon to be augmented by two more, followed by a son. For the most part, Fly Away Paul dwells on the closeness that Paul and Linda enjoyed during an unusually long and happy marriage in a business where separations and divorce are all too frequent, and how she faced down negative comments over her role in her husbands post-Beatle group Wings. Linda’s passing, which occurs towards the end of the book, is dealt with sensitively, while Paul’s subsequent ill-fated relationship with Heather Mills, outside of the book’s dateline, is mentioned only briefly, as is the infinitely more suitable wife number three, Nancy Shevell. 

        Clearly a fan, Jones is generous in her appreciation of McCartney and Wings’ music, correctly identifying the song ‘Maybe I’m Amazed’ and 1973 LP Band On The Run as the stand-out items in an ever-lengthening post Beatles catalogue, but she’s generous to other LPs too, citing them as marker points in her teenage life. The formation of Wings, their early concerts and McCartney’s desire that, even with him on board, they could somehow start from scratch offers plenty of opportunity for comment on Paul’s rather naïve optimism. 

Though much of the biographical information in Fly Away Paul can be accessed in Beatle and McCartney literature elsewhere, Jones has a way of conveying it to suit her mission. It’s not communicated chronologically – there are leaps that would stump a pole-vaulter – but it all makes sense in the context of her rather spiritual book. She’s not above bringing herself into the story when her paths cross with the McCartneys and while this might be perceived as a bit of name-dropping, there’s rhyme and reason for these diversions and if nothing else they serve to authenticate her opinions, which are liberally scattered throughout, sometimes in the form of questions she answers herself, at other times left hanging. If there is a flaw, it’s unwieldy detours into areas only tangentially connected with McCartney: among them several pages on the topic of session musicians, Scottish pipe bands and even the fate of Jo Jo Laine, an appealing, high-spirited girl of immodest disposition who set her sights on Paul but ended up marrying Wingman Denny Laine and, before her death in 2006, engaged in a sex act with a transsexual in the Cabinet War Rooms. (Paul wasn’t present.) 

        Oddly, Fly Away Paul opens with a sort of memorial, a list of deceased, beginning with those associated with The Beatles and following on with a random bunch, the purpose of the exercise seemingly to comment on Paul’s longevity. “Why me?” Jones muses, assuming the mind of her subject. Happily, it closes with her wishing him many more years of ‘extraordinary odyssey’. “Long may the Beatle dwell among us,” she concludes.

        The not overlong 265-page book has an eight-page photo section, and a further 73 pages with an up-to-date McCartney timeline, extensive chapter notes, random quotes from interested observers (including this writer) and an index.