John Lennon

 

 

To mark the 42nd  anniversary of John Lennon's death, extracts from two earlier posts, both written in 2010. Links to the full versions can be found at the end.
 

One incident remembered from childhood bears out the "semi-religious" tag being applied to pop music for myself and my brothers. My father was advising a priest who was staying overnight, and we, the children, had a lot of opportunity to talk to him. I think (and this sounds like a lousy joke but isn't) he may have needed time off to reflect on his calling, as a later article in the Daily Express - evidently a class act even then - dignified his dark night of the soul with the heading:

VOCATION? NO - VACATION!

Anyway, the wide-ranging conversation came round to the subject of pop music, and this man of God shocked us by claiming that the Beatles regularly laughed themselves silly at the "cripples and hunchbacks" who would be waiting to greet them at airports; it was all there in the biography, he said, if we didn't believe it.

I can barely remember the incident, let alone the timescale; all I recall is at some point later my eldest brother proclaiming: "It doesn't matter - JL still is King."

Whether that meant he did or didn't believe it, I'm not sure; but I think on some level he'd worked out that that the priest's words were a salvo in a religious war, firing from the same side as our father. Our collective faith did not waiver - and later, reading Hunter Davies' biography, I could see that the claim was , at best, a mischievously distorted one.

Jerry Lee Lewis

 

It has now been confirmed that Jerry Lee Lewis has died. 

There can't be any doubt that he was the last of the true greats from the golden age of rock'n'roll; I can still recall the excitement of first hearing Whole Lotta Shakin' Going On, different from the frenzy of Little Richard's recordings but every bit as potent. In The Sound of the City Charlie Gillett had especial praise for his ability to sing, as it were, in inverted commas, never wholly abandoned like Richard but "almost always" with "an edge of detachment or even cynical derision", as though not quite buying into this "love" business:

 This detachment enabled Lewis to pace his records, and control his audiences at live performances, with a finesse few rock'n'roll singers showed. He would have needed only Chuck Berry's flair for writing songs to be a comparably important figure.

These I Have Loved (and Learnt off of)

 

A few years ago I wrote a series of pieces about the radio broadcasters who had contributed the most to my musical education over the years. Not all of these figures were attached to the BBC, but most were; and to celebrate that institution's 100th anniversary I've condensed those memories into one handy single post - no strenuous clicking required. 

"Broadcaster" seems more a appropriate term than DJ in this context, as I'm not including representatives of Radio 1 in this happy band, even though the station was regular listening for me in the early seventies. This is because John Peel and others were, in effect, building on enthusiasms already learnt from my brothers or through music papers or watching Top of the Pops or The Old Grey Whistle Test. My siblings were immune, however, to the delights of doo wop and rock'n'roll, which were largely my own discoveries, made by a process of trial and error whenever a likely-looking LP in a record shop or newsagent's seemed cheap enough to take a chance on. 

In the late seventies and early eighties, however, I became keenly aware that alternatives were available, that another style of music was available and had, in fact, been around for quite a while.

Emmerdale

 

  "Amos is a character." 

That was my entree.

Jake Thackray biography Beware of the Bull now available

 

The Jake Thackray biography having arrived, I couldn't resist devouring it immediately, even though it's the kind of work which ought to be savoured at leisure. What follows is more by way of a few initial thoughts than a comprehensive review, but based on my frantic run at the thing the good news is that the book is all that might have been hoped for and can be recommended without reservation to thoroughgoing Thackrayites and the Jake-curious alike.

25 Glorious Years of Pizza

Today marks 25 years since a play of mine about a pizza delivery man and his determinedly awkward customer was first performed. It was part of a writers' showcase based around food - the theatre producing it had recently moved to new premises in an area associated with eateries. The building's transformation from its previous use had not yet been completed, however, and perhaps because this event took place before the official opening there is little mention of it online. Which seems a pity to me - and I daresay five others might feel the same, though they will have to tell their own stories in their own doo wop-related blogs.

Jake Thackray biography

 

A biography of Jake Thackray, written with the cooperation of friends and family, is due to be published by Leeds-based company Scratching Shed this August. I don't think anyone will be disappointed.

Paul Thompson, cowriter with John "Fake Thackray" Watterson, recently posted the above image of its cover design on social media advance orders are already being taken - the Scratching Shed website is here. Publication date is August 11th. The hardback book, running to 464 pages, is £20 and post-free in the UK, which sounds like a pretty good deal to me. I read a short sample in draft form and can't wait for the whole thing.

Here's part of the description on the Scratching Shed website:

The book reveals a life as extraordinary his writing: the hard childhood in the terraces of Leeds, remarkable Catholic education and formative years in France and war-torn Algeria; the first career as an inspirational, unorthodox, highly creative teacher; the meteoric development as a writer and performer, and discovery by the BBC; the Abbey Road recordings and impact on The Beatles; the fame and fortune brought by a remarkable television career... and Jake’s rejection of it all.  It is the story of a charismatic, complex, self-effacing man who remained an enigma even to his friends.

 

 Other posts about Jake Thackray:

 On Again! On Again! or Strangers on a Train

 Ralph, William and Jake (and Davey) or Act As Known

14 Karat Soul's first TV appearance

 

I had despaired of ever seeing it but 14 Karat Soul's first ever TV appearance, on Saturday Night Live on January 24th, 1981, can now be viewed online at the Internet Archive website, which is cause for celebration if you care for this sort of thing.

I saw this line-up around a year or two later in the UK, and for me this will forever be the group. They appeared in the original modest workshop-type production of The Gospel at Colonus and Sister Suzie Cinema at the Edinburgh Fringe, and I saw their normal stage act quite a few times over the next few years in Scotland and England. 

I've written about this experience several times, so I won't rehash it - links below if you care to explore - but the most important point, which I never tire of repeating, is that their subsequent studio recordings were but a pale shadow of the excitement of seeing the group, propelled by the bass voice of Reginald "Briz" Bisbon, performing in theatres. Even now I can't find the words to describe adequately how I felt over the nights of seeing them during a week's residency at the Mitchell Theatre in Glasgow in the early eighties: there was a moment of what I can only term rough magic during their opening number, Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy, when the blending of their voices produced ... well, I don't know what. Their acapella single of that song doesn't have the studio effects of later recordings, so ought to be close to that experience, but isn't, at least according to my memory.

Repeat of Juke in the Back show about the Flamingos

For anyone who doesn't know, Matt the Cat's shows about the Flamingos in his Juke in the Back series are currently being repeated via his website and can be recommended: he plays most of their records and provides a potted version of their story along the way. At present it's Episode One, which covers the group's time on Art Sheridan's Chance Records, their first label (1953-1954);

Outside Soap: the sad case of the "Eden-ender"

 

When a young soap actor who originates a role is replaced does he or she have any legal recourse? That's the question posed in a new book, Outside Soap, by Charles Hamm, to be published tomorrow. The timing couldn't be better, as a case may soon be going to court: this week a former star has announced his intention to sue for loss of earnings, based on the number of years in which his successor played the role. And if the action is successful that may prove quite a tidy sum, so alarm bells must be ringing in the offices of television companies up and down the land. 

For viewers of British soaps it's a familiar story: a young actor plays a character for ten or fifteen years, often right from the moment of his or her onscreen birth, only to be replaced by - well, not even a lookie-likey in many cases.

Monkey Bar Business: three Depression-era songs

 

I've already paid tribute to Hubert Gregg but this footnote has become necessary because I've just discovered the details about a record he played on his radio show Thanks for the Memory which had been eluding me for - ohhh, only around the last four decades or so.