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VIDS, PIX, RELEASES

Neil Murray

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VIDS, PIX, RELEASES

70 Years of Rock and roll!

A musical and literary trip with me, writing since 1967.

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EXTRACT (OPENING PAGES)

ROCK AND ROLL 1954-2024
(A WALK-ON PART)

NEIL MURRAY

CONTENTS

THE 50s. “Ya Mustapha!”
The 60s. “Baby Come On.”
The 70s. “Crisis? What Crisis?”
The 80s. “Hello, is it me you’re looking for? Sorry, I’m in a meeting.”
The 90s. First Angel; “Buried Love Alive.”
The Noughties. Second Angel; “It will pass.”
The Teenies. Glam and Third Angel; “Flow.”
The Twenties. Fourth Angel; “Younger Than Yesterday.”
Getting current; Muso talk.
The weight of time.

APPENDICES.

Industry stuff; Future daze.
Rock of ages; artists on the radar.
The rich list.
Neil’s “Golden Era”; the 60s.

INTRODUCTION.

7 September 2024, 8.45pm. Men’s room, pub in Dover, south coast of England.

“Marky, have you got the Vaseline?”

The bloke by the nearest cubicle gives us a funny look and moves on.

“Always smear some on before the glitter,” Mark would say. “Makes it easier to get off after the gig.” Bugger, I’ve just spilt my red glitter all over the place. It’s irretrievable, having combined with the already moist floor to form an alluvial health and safety hazard.

I look in the mirror and pause before adorning my head with my two-tone purple tropical plant, aka Glam wig. As always, the line of mascara is broken by the folds in my eyelids. Christ, I look like a Picasso version of Ru Paul. The usual slew of blokes roll in: “Oh, sorry, Ladies, thought this was the Men’s!” Ho ho.

What the hell am I doing here? I’m 70. I’ve got five grandchildren. I play guitar, someone said I sing like Lennon. I’ve written hundreds of songs. I should have been a Rock and Roll contender and instead I’m in a Beryl Cook postcard full of people trying to relive their “I Love To Boogie” youth. Why did I “sell out, man” and become a lawyer? Mark, the drummer is also 70. He’s also a lawyer. Because it’s what Mum and Dad wanted? We can’t remember, it was over half a century ago. (Actually, we can but don’t want to go there).

I turn to Marky, struggling with his platforms after having slid twice on the sparkling war zone at his feet. “Milly” [for that is his nom de Rock], “What’s going on, man? We were born when Rock and Roll was born! We had a No.2 chart hit when we were 50 years old, I recorded three albums in Nashville, I got a Music Production degree at 63, I even sued my record company!”

Milly adjusts his under-wig hair net and fake tattoo sleeve.

“We’ve lived it, mate, we’re part of Rock and Roll’s history, OK a quark in its firmament, but still a part! I’m going to write it down, everything Rock and Roll did along with everything I did, we did, an interwoven whole, man. A story of psyche and circumstance, a grand confluence of who you are, where you are, what you are and why you are. It must be told!”

“Yeah, right, listen, we’re on in ten minutes, mate. Write it after the gig, ok?”

“Good evening, Dover! Are you ready to Rock and Rollllllll?!”

1. THE 50s. “YA MUSTAPHA!” 8 September 2024, 3 am.

Finally home, feeling like a cheese sandwich left in a steam room. Usual rabble telling us they loved it man; “Great gig! We love that Glam Rock, Sweet, Slade, Marc Bolan. You should do Gary Glitter.” “Yeah we did once and got drink thrown at us”. “I used to play in a band meself, mate.” “Super.” “Can I try the wig on?” “Sure, my kids like to wear it too; careful mind, there’s a bit of lice going round at the school.”

The post-gig two hour drive back had mercifully not been extended by road closures where invariably a ‘Road Closed’ sign greeted you at the end of a fruitless ten-mile drive. “Don’t wake the neighbours” always fell on drunk and/or deaf ears as our guitar player bulldozed the kit into our lock-up miles from home, our gig-tired hands now the colour of freezing fog, that London type that seems to grin malevolently as it consumes you.

I still had to get clean across London to my place. Fortunately, the tubes were still working so I didn’t have to chance the double- decker/public convenience known as the N247 night bus, populated by the wrung and the feckless, the Charles Manson lookalike who challenges you on why the world is all wrong and the Maenad at the back surrounded by bulging shopping bags representing her whole world who would save her last and most desperate wail for the final stop, a world that one no-one in the office the next day would believe. This is my Rock and Roll reality.

I half-heartedly try to rub off the make-up that hadn’t already sweated off or gone with the Vaseline. It’ll be on the pillow in the morning anyway. The wig, boots, flares, velvet tail-coat and guitar are all jettisoned with a flaccid toss of the arm. The Glam platform boots are all very well, except when the gout plays up. Thank God tomorrow’s not a workday. I look across the room and see the T-shirt my now grown-up children, James and Stephie, bought me. There’s an illustration of a burning guitar and the legend: “History of Rock and Roll – I was there!” Yeah, too right I was and that’s my story, where music meets life and life meets music over seven decades.

No-one walks alone if they’re lucky and I’ve been lucky. I’ve thought about all the folk that journeyed with me, friends, lovers, teachers, mentors, those that have made a difference. Who are they? Awesome musicians I rode with over twenty albums? Crack lawyers that catalysed my rise to “City Slicker”? A great band manager? No, it turned out to be five ladies, each of whom has had a part in the play, I mean a proper part, not just a walk-on. My former wife, Patti is the only one I’ll name, added to which there are four individuals, whom I shall term Angels as they all seemed somehow to have been sent on cue and to great effect. Third Angel is big on time being a non-linear construct, which is great because I can start telling the whole story as I drift off and in the morning it’ll be done. Nice.

Is there some deep message in the end? Read on....

Joe Walsh of The Eagles reckoned that it was more fun being 20 in the 70s than being 70 in the 20s. I dunno, Joe, we’ll see. Let’s start at the beginning.

Day 1.

Mum said that Dean Martin singing about a pizza-shaped moon hitting you in the eye was playing on the day she brought me back from the hospital, 25 February 1954, the day Rock and Roll was born. That’s right, I was born when Rock and Roll was born.

OK, settle down, we’ll argue about it in the pub. It’ll take a while because, as Ian Hunter of Mott The Hoople sang, Rock and Roll is a mighty long road. And much as we love Dino, “That’s Amore” (released November 1953) wasn’t Rock and Roll.

I brought the world’s population up to 2.65bn. Churchill was prime minister (we’ve had seventeen since). I was six pounds seven ounces at the time and have as much first-hand knowledge of Rock and Roll’s birth as mine but if you Wiki “Rock and Roll” it will reveal that the genre acquired that name in my year of birth, notwithstanding its formative elements going back to 1920s Blues and 1930s Country. Well, there you have it, all set for Rock and Roll’s and my journey.

We all had to wait until 1989 for the song that covers the 50s, or some key pieces: Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire” which references 118 significant political, cultural, scientific, and sporting events between 1949 (the year of Joel’s birth) and 1989. As it’s copyright B. Joel, and I’m supposed to be a songwriter, here’s my own take on the 50s:

“Joe McCarthy, Castro, Anti-Commie, polio
Hula Hoops, DNA, Charlie Brown and Patti Page Disneyland, Monroe, Little Richard, Domino
Rosa Parks won’t play, Kelly marries Rainier Golden age of TV, Elvis, Chuck and Jerry Lee
Baby boomer, Cold War, Beatniks and Teddy Boys Transistor radio, Jimmy Dean and Brando, Russian satellite flies, on the Day The Music Died.”

Rock and Roll’s birth did not, of course coincide with mine but it was there or thereabouts, though its roots predate me depending on how far back you want to go. A good while if you include people like LaVern Baker, the Ink Spots, Fats Domino, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Jackie Brenston et al. Listen to Wynonie Harris’s “Good Rockin’ Tonight”, Jimmy Preston’s “Rock this Joint” and Wild Bill Moore’s “Rock and Roll”, all of which were narrowly pre-50s. Or try “Tiny’s Boogie” (1946). Then there’s “Rocket 88” (1951), co-written by Ike Turner, but I’m not counting that in view of the way that old rotter treated Tina. RIP, Queen of Rock and Roll.

What I do know is that Bill Haley and The Comets recorded “Rock Around the Clock” two months after I was born and Elvis’s first single, “Thats All Right (Mama)” was first played on Memphis radio in July 1954. That’s good enough for me. Whatever it was, it was something that would ultimately go far beyond the rhythm and blues, that ignited while I was still in nappies, when people like Rock and Roll pioneer Alan Freed aired his Moondog Show which brought it to the attention of youth, white youth.

“The Devil’s Music”.

Because we’re talking about “The Devil’s Music”, through whose vulgarity “the white man and his children would be driven to the level to the level of the nigger.” Yes, that’s what was said. Religious groups, particularly in the US deep South, admonished that white youth would be driven by the music’s hypnotic voodoo rhythm down the Devil’s Road of sin and self-destruction, leading to eternal damnation in the fiery depths of hell. To every action, a reaction, often overblown. I’ll take you back to that when we deal with Cardi B in seven decades time.

There’s racism now but back then it was ensconced, normalised, institutional bigotry. Segregation was the way it was and Rosa Parks hadn’t said “No” yet. “Darkies entrance round the back” was still the order for black performers, generally restricted to the Chitlin circuit. Alan Freed’s show was taken off TV when it showed a young Frankie Lyman dancing with a white girl. Originally, Chuck Berry wrote of a “coloured boy” named Johnny B. Goode, but that was soon changed. Little Richard’s “Tutti Frutti” was apparently about anal sex, Tutti Frutti originally rhyming with “good booty”, Richard going on to say that if it doesn’t fit, best not force it until a nice lyricist lady changed that too.

It’s all pretty ironic since the likes of Elvis, Little Richard and James Brown all worshipped in Southern Pentecostal churches as children and black music ended up doing as much as anything else for equal rights. The white boys were basically hijacking black music and adding it to their own country, bepop, jump-jive tradition. Sam Phillips at Sun Records in Nashville was doing it. Muscle Shoals, Alabama, that famous music hub, was a centre for whites ripping off black music.

The Brits.

For all the beginnings in the USA, I’m a Brit so I have to tell this tale from my perspective, which often boils down to a London/ Southeast-orientation. The journey is mine, so if I big up some things and criminally leave out others, it’s just because it’s my gig. Unfortunately, whilst I’m a proud Brit I seem to have lived through my country’s decline over seventy years. In my B. Joel pastiche I left out Suez, the Great Smog, Windscale, Ruth Ellis, the Mau Mau, Burgess and Maclean and the Manchester United football team Munich air crash.

Was there racism in the UK in the 50s? Massively, but I guess I was sheltered from it in my cosy white existence. At least, as in the US, it never stopped loads of folk liking black music. At a dinner party only the other week, I heard: “Oh, we all grew up listening to Winifred Atwell playing that that jolly Ragtimey piano”. There was no TV so I wonder if everyone knew that she was a large black lady, seriously popular in the UK and the Commonwealth in particular. Soon after I was born, she had a number one with “Let’s have another Party” (1954) and is still the only black musician with a UK number one instrumental hit, respected by Prog Rock greats like Keith Emerson and Rick Wakeman.

We now, finally recognise the Windrush generation (immigrants to the UK who first arrived in 1948 from Jamaica on the ship the Empire Windrush) and we should be grateful for their musical gift. Harry Belafonte happily sang “The Banana Boat Song”, but I couldn’t know then of its black struggle undertones that Belafonte was to champion for most of his life. The UK norm then was “No Blacks, No Irish.” Kids proudly wore their Robertson’s jam Gollywog badges (only dropped in 2001). ……..

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