Author: Adam

Neil Innes has died, aged 75. This has made me feel indescribably sad. Far more so than I would have thought. After all, he was 75. He had a good innings. Marvellous career. Loving family. I realise my sadness is for myself and for the rest of us. Left behind in a world without Neil Innes in it. Neil was a reminder of a kinder time, a merrier England. A sublime melodist, gentle humorist, the man who translated Vivian Stanshall’s insane genius into something approaching pop music, the man who wrote all those songs for the Rutles – the greatest ever Beatles pastiche. A grammar school kid like the ones that went before me and my kind. Art school. A refugee from a time when playing a bit of piano and bashing a bit of guitar in a pub with a bunch of Art school piss artists could lead to albums, hit records, American tours, film appearances with the Beatles, honorary Monty Python status… And through it all Neil retained his self-effacing diffidence. After all, it was nothing special really, was it? Anyone could write a few songs, sing a bit, have a bit of a laugh. Couldn’t they?

Actually, no. Neil Innes’s talent was as remarkable as any of his contemporaries in the 60s and 70s. And as unique. He may have devoted much of it to parody and pastiche but when he wrote in his own voice – “Ready Mades”, “Summer Walks And Summer Talks”, for example – it was as true and as utterly English as Ray Davies or Kevin Ayers – to name but two. Overshadowed in the Bonzos by Stanshall’s inspired lunacy and Roger Ruskin Spear’s (literal) explosions, Neil seemed content to play the straight man. But what would they have been without him? Without him to steer them through the zany antics and dada-ist routines into fame of a sort via their one hit record (“I’m The Urban Spaceman”) and to pepper their records with tunes and lovely music.

I met him a couple of times. As a totally starstruck 15 year old I told him he was wonderful. “I know”, he smiled. End of conversation. Fast forward 30 years or so and I’m ligging in the green room at the Albert Hall at a Bootleg Beatles show where my friends are performing. Neil and I are at the bar. “Wouldn’t it be funny”, I said, all hail-fellow well-met, “if they were to do a Rutles song?” Neil looked appalled. “Absolutely not,” he said. “It would be completely inappropriate.” I realised I had stepped over an invisible line in the sand. I shuffled away.

Earlier this year I went to see a version of The Rutles play a show at The Garage in London. I stood at the front because I wanted to watch Neil’s guitar playing. I love that style of playing. Nick Lowe has it too. It’s a way of playing that is completely economical, without a trace of show-off. Every chord is beautifully in its place. No solos. Not ever. No-one plays like that now. It’s also a particularly English way of playing, from a time when good guitars were hard to come by and you had to make do with cheap Hofners and Futuramas, when a Watkins Rapier was the Les Paul of Harlesden High Street. You had to hold the chords down properly and bar chords would just give you cramp.

Anyway… Neil Innes is gone. We are left in a Britain that gives a knighthood to a cruel, heartless politician but fails to recognise Neil Innes. We are poorer. We are poorer. Thank you, Neil. Thank you for everything.

What did you do when you were eighteen? Me, I played in a rock’n’roll band. As I type that, I’m aware of what an arch cliché it is – but I’m proud of it, nonetheless. Far sadder, in both senses of the word, would be NOT to have been in a rock’n’roll band when I was eighteen. If you didn’t do it, you really missed out. If you ARE eighteen, or even younger, and you DON’T play in a band (these days, it doesn’t have to be rock’n’roll), then what are you waiting for? Go out and join one immediately. Get out from behind that computer and find some like-minded souls, get some instruments and amps together, rehearse up some songs, even write some of your own, get some gigs, have some FUN! Build some memories…

Yes, that’s how easy it was when I was a kid in the late 70s. In autumn 1978, I was already on my second band – I considered myself a professional – and I was eighteen and I thought I was one hotshot guitar player. Punk had just changed everything so that people like me could get in there and PARTICIPATE and we had a singer with a small but plausible profile amongst the In-Crowd of the day and who could therefore get us some reasonable gigs. Thus it was that one day I finished my day’s work at the off-license (liquor store sounds so much more rock’n’roll but I can’t quite bring myself to type it), went home, got changed, picked up my recently acquired blond Gibson SG Standard and put it in its case and headed off to the Moonlight Club in West Hampstead where I was to meet the van carrying all our amps and drums and help unload it before setting up and doing a sound check for the evening’s gig. We were to be the supporting act for a new band called The Pretenders. They were already there when we arrived. They’d been there all afternoon apparently driving the engineers crazy by playing the same song over and over (“Up The Neck”) and NOT being happy with the house PA. Still, they were gracious enough when they saw that we were ready, and relinquished the stage fairly promptly (a lot more promptly than many other bands would have done -“sound check etiquette” remains a much under-discussed area of rock’n’roll folklore). As we had been unloading they had played a version of Sandie Shaw’s “Girl Don’t Come” which immediately made me like them, being the 60s trivia buff that I was (and still am). Their singer was a tough looking American woman named Chrissie Hynde. I knew who she was because I remembered reading her pieces in the New Musical Express and thinking she was a good writer. In those days, the NME was still a very good paper with a very high standard of journalism and I would still read it every week with a close to religious devotion. Chrissie Hynde wrote from the perspective of the bemused American, and it was very effective: even amongst the very best writers in the genre (Nick Kent, Ian MacDonald etc), her voice stood out and her pieces were very memorable. What no one could have guessed was how true that would prove to be of her work as a singer and songwriter. Then, she was just a writer wannabe who had somehow got sidelined by punk, despite having been right in the thick of it from the very beginning. She watched me as I got out my Gibson from its case.

“That’s a nice guitar!” she said, in a loud and friendly voice. She had a blond SG as well. We exchanged guitar talk; it turned out that, while she liked the SG, she liked her blond Telecaster better. The Pretenders lead guitarist joined in the conversation and motioned me over to a large flight case containing several smaller flight cases. He pulled out an Ice Blue Gibson Firebird and handed it to me with a reverential air. I accepted the complimentary camaraderie this gesture represented with some surprise: there was none of the usual petty one-upmanship that bands, and particularly guitarists, are prone to. These people were not trying to be cool, which usually translated as rude and standoffish, they just WERE cool. I handed back the beautiful blue guitar and went up to do the sound check. I reached in my pocket and realized I had forgotten to bring any picks with me. Disaster! I proclaimed the problem to the air. “D’you wanna borrow my pick?” rang out Chrissie’s voice. I gratefully accepted her offer and used the pick until it got lost and went to wherever it is that all lost plectrums go.

“She FAN-cies you”, said my objectionable fourteen year old sister in a blazingly audible and witheringly scornful stage whisper. My sister had only just loaned us £90 to buy a van so we had to put up with her. Still, I chose to ignore this painful intrusion. It was too frightening a prospect to consider. Chrissie Hynde wasn’t like any of the girls I knew. She was older and smarter and infinitely more worldly. Her manner – although very friendly – was frankly intimidating. You knew instinctively at first glance that this was NOT a lady to be trifled with.

We did our set of Chuck Berry and Larry Williams covers to what I thought was an appreciative audience (the place was packed to the rafters with hip cats and trendy’s and NME groupies who had come to see Chrissie Hynde’s debut). I waited eagerly for the glowing review to appear in the next issue. And lo! There it was, written by Nick Kent himself, but he didn’t mention us at all. Life is full of small betrayals. Bastard… “No pretence about this lot”, he wrote, and I remember it to this day.

Back at The Moonlight Club, I watched The Pretenders set from a high vantage point. I was alone, my sister had taken the 159 bus home and the rest of the band had packed up and returned to somewhere called South London. The friendly guitarist was playing lots of loud solos. This seems unremarkable now but at the time it was tantamount to heresy. The bass and drums thumped and rumbled rather than clattered, it was a powerful sound. Not like the neurotic trebly noise of Punk at all. Out front, Chrissie was having problems with the monitors but you could hear this strange vibrato in her voice, this keening sound. It was something old and new. It bruised, and once heard, it stayed with you.

Sometime in the next few days I went down to the Rock On stall in Soho market and bought their single off Shane from The Nips who worked there. In those days Shane McGowan (for it was he) was a friendly jug-eared Irish speed freak that liked to talk records but that day he was a bit subdued. Seems he wasn’t interested in The Pretenders. The single was a cover of an obscure Kinks song – “Stop Your Sobbing”. On the other side was an original called “The Wait”. As a die-hard Kinks fan I knew “Stop Your Sobbing” well; it was one of Ray Davies’s first published songs and was an entirely generic exercise in 1964 Pop filler. Myself, I love things like that but I am always surprised when other people do. Meanwhile The Pretenders, with producer Nick Lowe, had inflated it to epic proportions. The arrangement had been thoroughly re-jigged: Davies’s original throwaway bridge was now a passport to longing. It sounded superficially like Blondie but with a vulnerable catch in the voice that Debbie Harry could never muster. The guitars chimed like lonely Byrds, the thump and rumble was present and correct, and Chrissie – Chrissie would like to break your heart. Nick Lowe had had the brilliant notion of double-tracking her over the long fade, thus she duets with herself until both voices join together in a long cry of joy and pain. I was totally sold. This was Pop music I could dream to. But “The Wait” on the other side was something else entirely. Almost punk, almost heavy rock, unintelligible lyrics, Chrissie doing the tough rock chick routine. It was OK. The guitar solo was a guilty pleasure but it was strictly a ‘B’ side.

Then: nothing. Didn’t hear from The Pretenders again for months and months, which is an eternity when you’re eighteen. Before you know it, you become nineteen. They did a gig at The Lyceum that I couldn’t go to for some reason (probably had a gig myself) that apparently did NOT go well. Badly promoted, poorly attended, bad reviews spoke of the dreadful sound, Chrissie having tantrums. Despite considerable airplay, “Stop Your Sobbing” had only been a very minor hit and it looked like maybe it was all over before it started. But then the second single came out, “Kid”, and I loved it and played it over and over. This was an original song with a tune in the bass strings of the guitar like a love struck Duane Eddy while Chrissie sang a bittersweet song of sympathy to a heartbroken child. Meanwhile, over on the ‘B’ side, Chrissie sang a story song called “Tattoo’d Love Boys” about being the subject of a Hell’s Angels gangbang (“I shot my mouth off and you showed me what that hole was for”) – all in 7-4 time. Captivating, you might say. Then, a month long weekly residency at the Marquee was announced for November 1979.

I can’t remember what night of the week it was but I went to every gig. They would open their set with an instrumental, “Space Invaders”, and then follow it up with “Precious”. They would play a long reggae flavoured track called “Private Life” (that Grace Jones covered and made her own) and of course they would play “Stop Your Sobbing” and “Kid” and “Tattoo’d Love Boys” and “The Wait”. I was sad that “Girl Don’t Come” seemed to have disappeared from their set but another song called “Cuban Slide” was a real compensation. They usually encored with a song with a Spencer Davis Group bass line that I later learned was called “Mystery Achievement”. They were growing into something really special before my eyes and ears. It was such a joy to have something so exciting to look forward to every week. Being the teenage ligger that I was, I would go early and look for them in “The Ship” – the pub in Wardour Street – just a few doors along from the Marquee. I caught up with Chrissie there, asked her if she remembered me. She looked flustered. “No”, she said, “but I’m such an acid casualty I can’t remember anything.” She was friendly and funny and kind. The guitar player, James Honeyman-Scott, was there too. He seemed changed, more aloof, but he was friendly enough to me. I didn’t bother him. It was just a buzz to see him there.

The residency ended and I was in mourning. I wanted so much to join in, to be part of their journey but couldn’t find a way. I wrote a gushing fan letter to Chrissie, telling her how much I had enjoyed the shows, and wondering if there was any chance that my band might ever get to support them again. Their third single, “Brass In Pocket”, was due out any day. I thought if I went along to the record company office in Covent Garden I might be able to buy a copy before it was officially released. I pressed the bell marked Real Records at 39 Floral Street. A window opened above me and there was Chrissie herself poking her head out and looking down. She saw me and nodded. Her head disappeared and a moment later the door buzzed and I was inside. With butterflies in my stomach I climbed the stairs, wondering what I was going to say. When I got to the top I was greeted by Dave Hill, The Pretenders manager. He asked what I wanted. I could see the four members of the band in the next room watching our exchange. I had obviously interrupted a meeting. I stammered with embarrassment. “I am so sorry to bother you”, I said, “I was just hoping to get a copy of the new single”. I could see boxes of them all around the office. “What? Are we supposed to just GIVE you one”, manager man asked with some irritation. “No, no, of course not, I’ll pay for it. Here…” I proffered a pound note. Somewhat mollified, Manager Dave took the money, pulled a single out of an open box and handed it to me. Then he reached into his pocket, pulled out 10p (singles were 90p at the time) and gave it to me. I thanked him, nodded in the direction of the band who were still watching and left quickly, feeling like an unwelcome intruder, like a pushy third former being thrown out of the sixth form common room.

Still, I had the record, and I played it and played it when I got home. I recognized it from their set, “Brass In Pocket”, it wasn’t one of my favourites but it was a grower. It was a song about confidence, about convincing yourself that you were special. But I didn’t feel special. I had overstepped the mark. I was uncool. I was cast out.

But then something marvelous happened…

A couple of days later I awoke with the outro of “Kid” in my head. I remember it distinctly. I went to the kitchen and made some breakfast and then there was a ring at the doorbell. It was the postman. He had a package addressed to me. Inside were copies of the three Pretenders singles. On the copy of “Brass In Pocket” were scrawled the words “90p to you pal” and there was also a letter, hand written on Real Records notepaper that is worth quoting in full:

Nov 22. ‘79

Dear Adam

Wow – your letter makes me want to stay in this completely fucked up business. (I only realized it was you after Dave (manager) sold you a copy of the single.) I felt like a prick.

Your fab.

Love Chrissie

Do you want to support us at The Marquee 22 or 23? Let Dave Hill or myself know. Hope you do.

To say this made me happy would be something of an understatement. It was one of the happiest moments of my life. I phoned and was told that we could support The Pretenders on both nights.

I called the singer of the band I was in to tell him the news. Strangely enough, he wasn’t as ecstatic as I was. He was much more excited about the weeklong residency he had booked for us to play in a nightclub in Paris. We were due to leave on the 23rd to take the overnight ferry in time to play the first gig on Christmas Eve and doing a gig on the night of the 23rd was going to be cutting it fine. I couldn’t believe it. Surely nothing could be more important than playing at The Marquee with The Pretenders? Could it? Somehow, the logistics were worked out. On the first night I brought my newly acquired 1966 Fireglow Rickenbacker 360-12 to show to James Honeyman-Scott – a belated quid pro quo for the blue Firebird. But when I got to the gig, The Pretenders were nowhere to be seen. I left the guitar in the dressing room. We did our sound check and I returned to the dressing room to find Honeyman-Scott playing my guitar and enthusing about a film he had just seen of The Beatles on their first American tour where George Harrison was playing the very same model. “Is this yours?” he asked me loudly. I admitted that it was. “Would you like to borrow it?” I offered, with as much nonchalance as I could muster. “Naaah, thanks mate”, he demurred, smiling. “I’ve got a couple of chorus pedals hooked up to get me that sound if I need it”. At the time I didn’t even know what a chorus pedal was but I nodded with infinite understanding. Suddenly the room was full of Pretenders. “Has anyone seen my fucking gloves?” called out Chrissie. “They were a present from my mother.” She looked at me: “It’s kinda depressing, you know.” I nodded as if I too knew the pain of losing a pair of fingerless black lace gloves that had been a present from my mother.

She must have found them because she was wearing them when she appeared on stage later for The Pretenders set. Our set had gone over well with the audience. We had managed to gather together what fan base we had and had done as good a set as we were capable of. But I was impatient for it to end so that I could watch The Pretenders. It turned out that Chrissie was coming down with the flu so her performance was a bit subdued. By this time, they had outgrown the Marquee and the place was too full for comfort. “It’s just jukebox music!” the voice of our bass player boomed loudly in my ear, full of disdain. I just smiled. Yes, yes, it was, beautiful jukebox music.

After the gig, packing up, the atmosphere in the dressing room was getting a little rowdy. Chrissie had gone home to nurse her flu. Steve Peregrine-Took, the original bongo player from Tyrannosaurus Rex, appeared and warmly greeted Pete Farndon, the Pretenders bassist, and then immediately fell down on the floor in a dead faint. He was a big fellow and he fell heavily and this became the subject of much hilarity. Alarm bells were ringing in my head. It was time to leave.

The next night was an anti-climax. We had virtually none of our people in and our set failed completely to make an impression on The Pretenders audience. We didn’t play so good and Chrissie’s flu was like a pall over The Pretenders set. I never saw them again.

Our week in Paris is another story. When I got back I slept for eighteen hours straight and woke to find that “Brass In Pocket” was number one. Allegedly, this was the result of a frenzied hype campaign on the part of the record company but whatever, it worked. The Pretenders were on their way.

But the rock superstardom that had seemed so inevitable never happened. James Honeyman-Scott died of a heart attack brought on by cocaine abuse in June of 1982, and heroin took out Pete Farndon less than a year later. Prior to this, though, they had continued to knock out some truly great singles. “Talk Of The Town” hadn’t managed to repeat the success of “Brass In Pocket” but I loved it so. “Maybe tomorrow, maybe someday…”, sang Chrissie, and I knew exactly what she meant. And on the ‘B’ side there was “Cuban Slide” which remains the closest to how I remember the way they sounded back then, featuring, as it does, perhaps their best ever recorded ensemble performance with poor doomed Jimmy playing his little heart out through his pair of doubled-up chorus pedals. “Message Of Love” married up a classic one-up one-down punk guitar riff with a mysterious bridge and chorus that seemed to come from somewhere else completely, full of chords sprung from a vintage Brian Wilson fantasy. And then there was “I Go To Sleep”.

Chrissie always talked up her love for Ray Davies in interviews and so it came to pass that they eventually met, fell in love, had a child together, and parted. “How’s your relationship with Ray Davies these days?” asked a rude journalist for the gutter press. “Who the fuck wants to know?” Chrissie snarled straight back – and I fell in love with her all over again. But the journalist only had to listen to the version of Davies’s “I Go To Sleep” that The Pretenders released as a single in 1981 to have his question answered. It’s surely their best ever record. A masterpiece of heartbreak, Davies wrote it when he returned from a tour to find his wife had left him. He never recorded it with The Kinks, preferring to give it to Peggy Lee (of all people).

“I go to sleep, and imagine that you’re there with me…”

In The Pretenders version the line assumes proportions of tragedy rarely hinted at in the Pop charts. But this is what Pop music is for: to express emotions this deep. Isn’t it? With the guitars reined in, a lone horn takes the melody at the beginning and end. The arrangement is as delicate as the mood. Coming when it did, in 1981, it was almost unbearably good.

After Honeyman-Scott died, Chrissie found a temporary replacement and released a song called “Back On The Chain Gang” – not a version of the Sam Cooke song, though it referenced the sound of the men grunting from that record, but a paean to her lost friend.

“Those were the happiest days of my life”, she sang, and once again, I knew exactly what she was talking about.

—————————————————–

As I write it is February 2013. I am 52, I have a daughter older than I was when all this was going on. She is so much more sensible and adult than I was then. Is it just a boy thing? I realise I am eulogizing trivial events that happened 33 years ago. Romanticizing throwaway pop music – “Jukebox music” – from as long ago as that. That would have been like a 52 year old in 1980 remembering the hits of 1947 – unthinkably irrelevant! The modern age of instant information has done strange things to our measurement of time, which is, after all, only a human construct. Noel Coward’s quote: “how potent cheap music is”, is surely his best known because it is an absolute truth. Nothing brings back my youth and invokes nostalgia like the early records of The Pretenders. It all seemed so important then. Rock’n’roll, Pop – whatever you want to call it – it was the most important thing in the world. Everything was done or left undone to its soundtrack. It was the heartbeat of my whole life, and I know I was far from alone. Maybe it’s that monstrously disproportionate emotional investment that my generation made to the music that makes it so hard to forget. Oh, I know, many people do. They get proper jobs, they take on adult responsibilities, they become…indentured. They lose sight of the confused and entranced teenagers they once were. This is as it should be. People who spend their lives constantly refusing to grow up can be tiresome and often, ultimately, pathetic. But I know, as sure as I am alive, that there will be music from that time that would take the sternest adult straight back to when things were strange and confusing, exciting and frightening.

With hindsight, (Hyndesight, hah!) the end of the 70s marked the end of the great experiment of the mid-20th century – the great cultural and artistic renaissance that flowered in the 60s, withered in the 70s and died in the 80s. Thatcher and Reagan were about to unleash their cruel visions. Nothing would ever be the same again. So maybe it’s not just me, not just my fond nostalgia. There was something special about that end time and the music that was its soundtrack. At the time, many people were absolutely messianic about “the death of rock’n’roll” and all that that meant – the posturing of groups like Public Image Ltd and the whole ‘Industrial’ thing of Cabaret Voltaire, Throbbing Gristle etc which all seems so silly now – but the empty rhetoric was tailor made for dramatic teenagers. Add drugs to the mix and stir vigorously. Ultimately though, the commodity of Rock’n’roll proved to be far too durable, too lucrative to be finished off by a bunch of spotty scag heads. The Rolling Stones approach their seventies and play vast stadiums where tickets for admission have a face value of over £400. Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey regularly front a gang of session musicians and have the unmitigated effrontery to call it The Who – and are believed by huge audiences unwilling to admit that they missed out on being there when it mattered. And on and on and on…

“To a place in the past we’ve been cast out of” – Chrissie Hynde, “Back On The Chain Gang”

I would like to thank Chrissie Hynde, James Honeyman-Scott, Pete Farndon and Martin Chambers for all these memories, for providing me with such a dependable soundtrack at such a turbulent time of my life. It was a good choice I made, The Pretenders. The records still sound good. They never depreciated. They have never embarrassed me and I don’t think they ever will. So thank you.

In summer 1984, David Catlin-Birch and I were looking for places where our new band could play. Treatment had split up a year or so previously and the psychedelic madness had temporarily abated. Dave and I had heard about this new psychedelic nightclub in Soho called Alice In Wonderland so we went down to check it out. I vaguely knew the DJ down there from an earlier attempt at a psychedelic nightclub called The Clinic where Treatment had played alongside the likes of Mood Six and Miles Over Matter. The DJ called himself The Doctor (real name Clive) and he also had a band called Dr And The Medics who were a bit of a joke, albeit a good one. Anyway, this new club looked very retro – they were just playing 60s garage music along with The Doors etc – and there weren’t many people there. It seemed like an attempt at a retro fashion thing, rather than a genuinely psychedelic experience. But we left our tape and collected a contact phone number and left. 

Fast-forward about three months and Treatment got together again to play a one-off gig at The Moonlight Club in West Hampstead. It was packed to the rafters with all the people who had been missing us while we were gone. Amongst the people I invited were Clive/Doctor and Christian who ran the club Alice In Wonderland. They turned up with their partners Wendi and Alex and seemed to be very impressed at how many people we had pulled and immediately offered Treatment a gig at Alice In Wonderland. I wanted to do it but the Treatment re-union was supposed to have been a one-time thing and so I had to convince the others it was worthwhile. Thus I went down the following week to have a look at the club again. What a transformation! It was packed with young people dressed up to the nines. The music was louder and more exciting and it was obvious that something was really happening here. It was a mixture of retro styles combining to make something new. 60s garage music, 60s psychedelia, 70s Glamrock, bubblegum pop mixed in with Punk and the dreaded Goth (which I always refused to take seriously). It was DRESSING UP time! It was fun. It felt like a party. What’s more, and very gratifying, I was being treated like visiting royalty as a member and representative of a bona-fide psychedelic band with a bona-fide following. The Alice In Wonderland crowd was friendly and cool – a hard combination to pull off but they managed it. The look was part-hippie, part-Goth: lots of make up – for boys as well as girls, big hair (lots of back-combing), tight trousers, short skirts, brocade jackets, crushed purple velvet, pointy boots, black jade beads, silver trinkets. It was a definite style, and in the 80s – the decade that taste forgot – it was truly glamorous. Properly smitten, I reported back to the rest of the band who were rather more skeptical. (Actually, looking back, I think they were jealous that I had found this thing and not them). Dave was off touring with The Bootleg Beatles so he was out of the picture. I cajoled and persuaded and we did the gig and it was really good. Doctor/Clive gave us the hard sell to what had become a very identifiable Alice In Wonderland crowd; the gig was recorded on a portable 4-track machine and released as a live album on a small edition cassette that was sold at the club. Christian did a beautiful green art deco cover for it (him being an Art School kind of guy) that effectively cemented us as an “Alice band”. I was pleased by this. I could see that this was a real happening thing and that we had lucked out by stumbling into the dead centre of it. I had no problems with Treatment being attached to the mast of Alice’s. I liked Christian and Alex, I liked Clive and Wendi, they were smart and funny. 

Thus my partner Catherine and I became Alice regulars. Every Monday night around 10pm we would turn up and hang out. There were many things that made Alice’s special. Hanging strips of white toilet paper from the ceiling was a masterstroke – so simple but so memorable. There was Lemmy leaning on the bar, spinning yarns to anyone who wanted to listen. Or maybe it was Charlie Harper. Or Captain Sensible. Christian had an obsession for “The Magic Roundabout” and this would be regularly screened on the back wall of the club, along with old episodes of “The Monkees” and “Batman”. Every week there would be a different live band that would do a set around midnight. The bands were unlike any of the acts doing the rounds in the clubs at the time. There was The Herbs, led by Parsley, a tall ungainly fellow with a graveyard stare. He was obsessed with 60s TV, and children’s 60s TV in particular, and the band would play songs like “The Trumpton Rap” and versions of Gerry Anderson theme tunes alongside Parsley’s original songs. The feeling of childhood lost seemed to permeate all Parsley’s music, he was a real talent but it was hard to imagine him fitting in anywhere but at Alice’s – where he fit in perfectly.

There was Ring Of Roses, who everyone thought would be huge but who managed to piss away one the biggest UK record company advances of the 80s without releasing anything. They were built around the twin talents of singer James Vane and saxophonist Dan Carpenter, or Dan Spanner as he called himself – in honour of the eternal spanner in the works. James Vane had it all down: tall, thin, good-looking, perfect clothes, stage presence to burn and a voice to sing with. Unfortunately, he had a Jim Morrison complex and no one had managed to get through to him that Morrison had made it rich and famous BEFORE he started acting like a drunk. His finest moment came when Christian’s younger brother Julian, a classically trained musician, wrote out a series of arrangements of classic pop tunes for string quartet and lead vocal. Leading off with “Somehow I Know It’s My Fault” – Florence’s epic song of self-reproach from “Dougal And The Blue Cat” (that cinematic masterpiece from The Magic Roundabout team) – James found his voice and presence and talent all in one place and continued on through majestic versions of Arthur Brown’s “Fire”, David Bowie’s “When I Live My Dream” and, best of all, The Doors “Light My Fire”. That was about as good as it got. Meanwhile, Dan Spanner played the psychedelic ragamuffin. Apparently permanently spaced on LSD, he would play here, there and everywhere on his magical saxophone (so expertly he caused Christian to give up the instrument!) He was part of a duo with synthesizer player Paul Chousmer in a musical installation named after Brian Eno’s Another Green World which would later osmose into a band called Webcore that played the festival circuit for a couple of years. He also had a band called Spannerman. He spent many years touring with Archaos, the anarchic circus troupe. Dan always looked and acted like an extra from a Fellini movie. Eventually he went on to front his own jazz big band. I saw him for the first time in over 20 years last year. He’s mellowed some. He’s survived. He’s not tripping anymore.

There was The Perfect Disaster who sounded more like the Velvet Underground than any other band I’ve ever heard. I remember them once ending their set at Alice’s with a version of the Velvets’ “Run Run Run” that just ran and ran and ran. When I complimented their guitarist afterwards he just smiled and said he could have played it all night long and I believed him too.

There was The Surfin’ Lungs who I don’t remember anything about.

There was the execrable Jesus And Mary Chain – noisy obnoxious scagheads who went on to become huge for reasons I have never been able to understand. They only played once at Alice’s, after ten minutes or so Christian pulled the plug on them for being so useless.

Jayne County played a couple of times. I saw her terrify a gang of Goth girls with deadly hauteur alone. She seemed a little out of place but Christian loved her.

Nico tried to get a gig too, but she was too messed up. Instead, she took to harassing Christian to get drugs for her.

Later on, there was Zodiac Mindwarp and The Love Reaction who started out as a joke and managed to convince a gullible music press that they were the start of a new movement (grebo) when they were just a bunch of dumb ass rock’n’rollers whose greatest talents were dressing up as cartoon bikers and getting fucked (in all senses of the word). Truth was, in that benighted time of Flock Of Seagulls and Haircut 100 anything that showed any rock’n’roll attitude was going to stick out a mile. (It should be noted that during their brief moment of fame they did make one of the best music videos of the era – “Prime Mover”.)

But primarily, there was Doctor And The Medics, the Alice In Wonderland house band, who went from being a good natured joke to being a No.1 chart topping pop group in less than two years. Whenever they appeared at the club there would be a minor riot as everyone jostled for position to watch THEIR band do the honours. The Medics, as they were universally known, would do their songs like “The Goats Are Trying To Kill Me”, “The Smallness Of The Mustard Pot”, “The Druids Are Here”, “I Don’t Wanna Be Alone With You Tonight”, “Ride The Beetle” (which involved a dance routine that demanded that the audience throw themselves on the floor and wriggle upside down on their hands) and my favourite: “Love, Peace and Bananas”. In addition to Clive cajoling the audience on vocals, there were The Anadin Brothers on backing vocals and dance routines – who were actually two girls, Wendi (Clive’s partner) and Sue (later replaced by Collette). Wendi was responsible for the wigs and costumes, which grew more and more outrageous (and unwearable). The music was basic meat and potatoes fast rock but The Medics were fun and they worked very hard, touring and promoting themselves as loveable freaks. They were wonderfully irreverent. For example, they put out a hand pressed EP called “Live At Alice In Wonderland”, which was NOT live at Alice In Wonderland (or anywhere else) and for which the audience noise was lifted off a U2 record. By the time they finally made it to No.1 on the singles charts (with their cover of “Spirit In The Sky”) they had created a real groundswell of goodwill and a loyal fan base that saw them through the inevitable anti-climax and the jeers of the mainstream music media. It was great to see The Medics get to No.1 but really their finest moment had come with their previous single, the original song “The Miracle Of The Age”, produced by XTC’s Andy Partridge. Everything that was good about The Medics came together in one place with this record, including the brilliant cover design Christian produced for it that harked back to the lavish sleeve productions of the early 70s. It wasn’t cheap. Nothing was done on the cheap (except the toilet rolls). The bands all got £100 for a performance, regardless of how many people they had or hadn’t pulled, and that was good money in those days.   

Doctor And The Medics had an alter ego named Bad Acid And The Spooks that I managed to blag my way into on one memorable night. This spectacle would usually include Roman Jugg, the guitarist from The Damned, and Christian and his brother Julian on saxophones. Bad Acid And The Spooks would play on special occasions (like when the band that had been booked failed to turn up) or, like on the night I played with them, on New Year’s Eve. I remember December 31^st 1984 turning into January 1^st 1985 as I played the opening chords of Van Morrison’s “Gloria” and thinking that this just had to be a good omen for the year (it was). We also played The Rolling Stones “Get Off Of My Cloud”, Motorhead’s “Motorhead”, The Velvet Underground’s “Waiting For My Man” and then they called a song I didn’t know: Hawkwind’s “Quark, Strangeness And Charm”. “I don’t know it!” I cried in panic. “It goes D, C and G,” said Roman, patiently. And so it did (and does).  

Just as memorable as the bands were the characters. There were Emma and Louise, two under age girls who had to be sneaked into the club every week and to whom Christian would give pocket money (he really did). They would be dressed to the nines in what was perceived to be 60s paraphernalia, with flowers painted on their faces. I remember once complimenting Louise on her Flower Child look. “I’m more of a fucking flower child than you’ll ever fucking be, sunshine”, she replied, and this comment, more than anything else, sums up the club. There was Nidge – tall, red haired, Shakespeare spouting speed freak who became my dear friend and who was full of love and life until he unforgivably died of a heroin overdose. There was Izzy, the son of a Tory peer, fastidious and easily offended, trying not to let his roots show too much, who had fallen out with Nidge over Liz. There was James Flea, known as Fleabag, there was Jonee Elwood with his long straight ginger hair and round glasses who played the drums with virtually all the Alice bands at one time or another. There was the formidable Anna, who introduced lust into the Garden of Eden, and her friends glamorous Richard and traitorous Ollie. There was androgynous Glen with his perfect explosion of blond hair. There was Ron, who had the misfortune to be actually gay in a gaggle of straights that liked to camp themselves stupid. And there was Alex, the literary academic, Christian’s partner and the undisputed Queen of the Scene, meticulously arranging the pecking order of coolness even as she read Victorian Gothic novels through her false eyelashes under the admission desk (I would sign in on the guest list as Renfield, or Richard III, and bring Galaxy chocolate bars to stay in her good graces). She ended up an English professor at London University. There was Ian Astbury, who was officially a rock star, even if he was a bit dim. There was Joe, Christian’s elder brother, perpetually lurking by the entrance, always in the same leather jacket, cackling like Sid James at the shenanigans of the punters.

I could go on, but perhaps at this point I should refer interested parties to Christian’s excellent book “A Pretty Smart Way To Catch a Lobster” which details the history of what happened and when far more accurately than I can.

In fact, Christian turned out to be a major entrepreneur. Despite being almost permanently drunk and tripping – and in addition to running the club, DJ-ing every week, co-managing the Medics and designing all the flyers and promo material – Christian realized that he had found himself at the helm of a genuine grassroots movement which was rapidly outgrowing the confines of a Soho nightclub. He and Alex began staging “Magical Mystery Trips” where they would hire buses to take loads of overdressed, tripping people to mystery locations (like Chislehurst caves, or a disused warehouse in Battersea, or a crumbling disused holiday camp in Clacton-On-Sea). There, bands would play (Treatment usually included), DJ’s would spin records, light shows would illuminate and everybody would stagger about until the next day when, somehow, we would try to get home. Christian would organize ‘all-night psychedelic film festivals’, selling out The Scala cinema two nights in a row, where Treatment would play a live set, or The Medics, or Another Green World in between showings of beaten-up prints of “Performance”, or “Blue Sunshine”. There would be Alice In Wonderland picnics in Kew Gardens. Then there was a shop, a 70s style boutique called Planet Alice, in Portobello Road, which codified the Alice look into a brand. Finally, Christian over-reached himself by trying to start a sister Planet Alice shop in Los Angeles with Ringo Starr’s daughter Lee. Christian made the classic mistake of imagining that the children of rich rock stars were familiar with any kind of work ethic.

But that was much later. Back in the heyday of the club, I was having great fun. Christian was my buddy (and he still is), he knew and understood rock’n’roll even better than I, he was as cool as I am fundamentally uncool and we enjoyed hanging out. Treatment were regular performers at the club and, while our audience baiting tactics were sometimes a little misplaced for the occasion, we usually went down well, at least as long as Clive/The Doctor was there to gee up the audience on our behalf. All through 1985 and most of ’86 I would dress up and go clubbing on a Monday night. I was always treated with friendship and I never once had to pay to get in. But, oh! The intrigues, the pecking orders, the jostling for position, the whose boyfriend fucked whose girlfriend (I was safely ensconced with Catherine so I could watch and chuckle at all of this from a safe distance)…

It was a time for dressing up and staying out late: one’s mid-20s. The heyday was probably the end of ‘84/ beginning of ’85. After that it just started to get too damn crowded. The fashion media had caught on and it became fashionable. Thus the club was deluged with rich and famous wasters. Hey-ho… It was a time for drinking too much and ingesting too much and being irresponsible. Central to it all, as always with me, was the music. I always longed to DJ at Alice’s and, on one quietish night, Christian did deign to allot me an early slot. I guess I must have blown it as I never got asked again but, oh what fun it was to play things like Jonathan Richman’s “Roadrunner” next to Curved Air’s “Back Street Luv”, Syd’s Floyd back to back with T.Rex. Christian had found and made explicit a connection between 60s psychedelia and 70s Glamrock (his first and most abiding love), between 60s garage rock and 70s punk and this, when saddled with appropriate noises from the 80s (Siouxsie and The Banshees “Christine”, The Cult’s “She Sells Sanctuary”) proved to be the defining flavour of the club, what made it different to everything else around at the time. But it sparked changes too. I vividly remember one night Christian put on Led Zeppelin’s “Dancing Days”, and the floor filled up with dancers. I wandered over to the DJ booth. “You realize what you’re doing, don’t you?” I asked. “Yep!” said Christian, with a grin. Zeppelin had been total outcasts to hip society since the days of Punk. It was strictly not done to admit to liking them. In one move, the DJ booth at Alice In Wonderland had erased all that and suddenly you heard them everywhere, bands copied them, they became cool again virtually overnight.

In time, the ugly 80s found out what it was that we were doing and put a stop to it but for a couple of years there, we partied and acted like there was no Thatcher, no bad haircuts or bad pop. There were copycat clubs that grew up, inevitably, when the original got so crowded. The Sugar Lump was more a gossip and bitching cellar, a place for those cast out of the Alice’s inner circle to bemoan their fate. The Crypt was for the pot heads (ironically run by two ex-policemen), Club Dog more for the performers (which grew into the hugely successful Megadog), The Pigeon Toed Orange Peel failed to live up to its wonderful name. None of the copycats had the flavour of the original. At its best, Alice In Wonderland was a real family celebration and a celebration that I am very glad to have been part of. So to all the old Alicians left standing, with our beautiful back-combed hair thinning and falling out and our satin and tat threads that no longer fit our bulging bodies, I raise a toast and say: “Love, Peace and Bananas! Because I’m more of a fucking flower child than you’ll ever fucking be, sunshine!”

ALICE’S PLAYLIST:

Off the top of my head, and in no particular order, these are some of the records I definitely remember hearing being played at Alice In Wonderland. The list is very 60s-centric because those were my favourites, and many of them I was hearing for the first time. There were three or four regular DJ’s, Doctor/Clive and Christian among them. The other three just played the records but when Clive got on the decks he would do a whole routine through a primitive echo box, complete with cartoon American accent – like the Wolfman Jack of Plumstead…

Highway 61 – Bob Dylan

Surfing On Heroin – The Hollywood Killers

She’s A Rainbow – The Rolling Stones

Sympathy For The Devil – The Rolling Stones

L A Woman – The Doors

Break On Through – The Doors

20^th Century Boy – T.Rex

Venus – Shocking Blue

Roadrunner – Jonathan Richman

Back Street Luv – Curved Air

I Must Be Mad – The Craig

Are You Gonna Be There? (At The Love In) – The Chocolate Watch Band

Let’s Take A Trip – Kim Fowley

Lucifer Sam – Pink Floyd

Sugar Sugar – The Archies

Paranoid – Black Sabbath

I Can Only Give You Everything – MC5

Devil Gate Drive – Suzi Quatro

All The Way From Memphis – Mott The Hoople

Loose – The Stooges

I Wanna Be Your Dog – The Stooges

Raw Power – The Stooges

Rebel Rebel – David Bowie

Motorhead – Motorhead

Silver Machine – Hawkwind

Quark, Strangeness And Charm – Hawkwind

Virginia Plain – Roxy Music

Waiting For The Man – The Velvet Underground

Foggy Notion – The Velvet Underground

Reputation – Shy Limbs

This Wheels On Fire – Julie Driscoll, Brian Auger and The Trinity

Security – Thane Russell + Three

Floatin’ – The Vamp

You’re Too Much – The Eyes

Grounded – The Syn

Reflections Of Charles Brown – Rupert’s People

I Had Too Much To Dream Last Night – The Electric Prunes

You’re Gonna Miss Me – 13^th Floor Elevators

99^th Floor – ??

Fire – Crazy World Of Arthur Brown

Christine – Siouxsie and The Banshees

She Sells Sanctuary – The Cult

Dancing Days – Led Zeppelin

Blockbuster – The Sweet

Hush – Deep Purple

Voodoo Chile – Jimi Hendrix

All Along The Watchtower – Jimi Hendrix

Day Tripper – The Beatles

Doncha Know – Treatment

Diddy Wah Diddy – Captain Beefheart

Any more for any more?

At the start of September 2005 I moved into a new place: a rather Agatha Christie-esque 1930s apartment block at the posh end of Ladbroke Grove. I was there on a wing and a prayer, and so it has remained to this day but I very nearly got chucked out within the first week and here’s how…

A couple of days after moving in I was walking down Golborne Road with a couple of friends when I saw Ari Up high stepping along towards me. She looked as striking as always. For Ari, there was no separation between the stage and the street. Tall and thin, with her light brown ginger dreadlocks  – some wound round her head, some reaching down to her backside – her freckled, sunburnt face, her clothes a unique mixture of Rasta and high fashion. People stared as she walked by. No changes there, no doubt they always had done. I smiled and waved at her. 

  “Ari!” I called out. I didn’t know her personally but like just about everyone who regularly attended her shows, I felt as if I did as she had dragged me up onstage several times (along with sundry other members of the audience) to sing backups for her. She stopped and smiled and said hello but she looked a bit perplexed. I asked her what she was doing. 

  “I’m waiting for a guitar player to reform The Slits with,” she said, her voice just like on my old Slits records – an insane mixture of accents: hoarse, posh English, precise Bavarian and foul mouthed Rastafarian Jamaican. She said she was supposed to meet this girl somewhere on the corner of Golborne and Portobello but so far she hadn’t been able to find her. It was a lovely late summer Saturday afternoon and I thought how perfect it was to bump into Ari Up looking to reform The Slits at such a time and place. My friends and I wished her luck and we left her there on the corner while we went off to The Lisboa – the Portuguese cafe at the end of Golborne Road. 

Now It so happened that one of the friends I was with was a young female guitarist with dreadlocks of her own, twenty years or so less extended than Ari’s but enough to mark her out as an, um, enthusiast of Jamaican culture. My other friend and I had had the same thought and we were quick to vocalise it: 

  “You should have told her that you played guitar!” But the girl suffered from shyness, which was understandable, given Ari’s commanding presence. How does that old Morrissey lyric go? “Shyness is nice, but shyness can stop you from doing all the things in life you’d like to.” We sat outside the cafe drinking coffee and talking of this and that when suddenly Ari re-appeared with a young woman in tow. The young woman had a guitar case on her back so obviously Ari had made her connection. Ari greeted us warmly and described how Steve Beresford had recommended this girl to her as a good prospect. 

  “Are you looking for a guitarist?” my young friend suddenly piped up. She had obviously made a resolve and fought down her shyness. It was a big deal for her, I knew. Ari beamed at her. 

  “Yes! Do you play guitar?” My friend nodded in thinly disguised terror. “Competition!!” Ari virtually shouted in delight at the prospect. There was a pause you could have cut with a knife. 

  “I don’t do competition”, said the girl with the guitar case on her back, archly. 

  “Cooperation!” I blurted out in an attempt to diffuse the embarrassment. Ari immediately started rhyming something about “cooperation/ ease frustration” and giggled. The moment passed. I saw one last chance to get my friend and Ari together. 

  “Why don’t you come up to my place and have a jam?” I suggested. “I only live round the corner on Ladbroke Grove”. I wrote down the address for Ari and gave it to her. I could sense guitar case girl glaring at my friend. “The posh end”. 

  “The Posh End”, Ari repeated in mock-significant tones as she took the scrap of paper, but made no commitment. They wandered off. Oh well, we all exhaled. At least we’d given it a shot. 

We didn’t suppose they’d turn up but we thought we’d better go back to my place and wait awhile just on the off chance. Sure enough, lo and behold, an hour or so later, there was a ring at the doorbell. I answered it. 

  “The Posh End”, came the same unmistakable mock-significant tones through the intercom. In walked Ari Up along with guitar case girl and a photographer pal she’d picked up along the way. It became immediately obvious that Ari Up in a confined space was a very different proposition to Ari Up on the street. She was far and away the loudest person I have ever met. Larger than life, or thereabouts. She wanted to put a tape on, something she wanted to play us. I obliged. No sooner had I done so than she reached across me and turned my hi-fi amp up louder than I thought it was possible to go. Just as I was certain my speakers would blow she declared my hi-fi system “shit” and turned it off. I didn’t mind. She was right. Besides, Ari Up was in my living room, what was I going to do? Argue with her? 

  “Let’s play”, she said. I sorted out leads and amps for two guitars, a bass (that it seemed I was going to play) and a vocal microphone. I sneakily set my friend up with a better sound than guitar case girl and struck a rudimentary sound balance. “Music teacher at de controls!” mocked Ari, giggling. (How did she know I was a music teacher? Was I wearing tweeds? No, I must have told her.) Then Ari took charge. She sang a reggae bassline to me and instructed me to play it. This I did. She sang it perfectly accurately and in tune about four octaves up. Amazing. Whilst I played it, she instructed the two guitarists in their parts – one skanking chords, one echoing the bassline. They messed up a couple of times and Ari corrected them with the vigour and briskness of a German schoolteacher. Very quickly, the groove took shape. 

  “Are you going to sing, Ari?” I asked, with just a hint of impatience. 

  “Music Teacher! Musi-cal Pimp!” she responded. She laughed one of the most mischievous laughs I’d ever heard. 

  “I’m not sure I want to be your musical pimp, Ari,” I said, in mock indignation, all the while trying to keep the bass part going. 

  “Well if you’re not going to be in The Slits you’ll have to get your share”, she said, reasonably. Before I could respond she started singing: “I’m an Island Girl” – and it sounded so lovely. All the ramshackle doodling noise in the room focused at once. Here was Ari Up – one of the world’s most unique singers, one of my favourite singers in the world, whose voice I had made friends with a quarter century before, that had accompanied my squatting days, my druggy days, a voice that had helped me decide who I was and what I wasn’t – singing in my living room. The reverie was short lived. Ari broke off and demanded another tune. I thought fast and found a little cassette recorder and set it going. Ari seemed pleased at this and repeated all her mock abuse of me for its benefit. But more than this, she seemed over the moon at the prospect of two guitarists working on her material rather than one. Cooperation, I had suggested, and so it was. 

  “Wait till I play it to Tessa!” Ari kept saying, indicating the tape recorder. Tessa Pollitt, The Slits original bass player, the best white reggae bassist I’d ever heard. I had met Tessa at Ari’s shows. She had all but stopped playing in the twenty plus years since The Slits had split. I had expressed incredulity, told her what an inspiration she had been to me when I was trying to learn bass, how much her behind-the-beat style had impressed me and my friends. She would blush and brush off the compliments. She was a martial artist now, a karate instructor; she hadn’t touched the bass in years. But she kept a piano and had transcribed a bit of Bach that she liked, by ear, over the course of a couple of years. Bach, transcribed by ear. It made me laugh to remember how The Slits had been treated in the punk days – as irritating girls at the boys party, irritating girls who couldn’t play. Oh, not by the inner circle, of course, but by the punk audience at large. But I’m getting ahead of myself.   

We played for an hour or so. Ari taught us several songs. Her method was to sing the individual parts to us until we got them down to her satisfaction, then she would sing her lyrics and melodies over the top. I was oblivious to the neighbours complaints. They banged on the floor, they rapped at the door. To hell with them, I thought. I’m not letting them ruin this. Months later, I would realise the cost of this as court proceedings were instigated to try and get me evicted. I fought them off and even made peace with the neighbours in question. In the meantime, the phone rang. I ignored it. 

  “He’s one of us!” exclaimed Ari. “A boy Slit!” I tried and failed to keep cool. My Cheshire cat grin must have been splitting my face in half. Eventually, we stopped and played back the tape. Ari insisted I burn it onto a CD right away. She was staying with Tessa and she couldn’t wait to play it to her that night. We drank tea. My friend rolled herself a well-earned spliff. I realised it was obviously futile to expect Ari to explain anything but she seemed to want to talk. It turned out that, while she liked the American band she had put together to back her up on her solo shows, she really wanted to return to the collaborative atmosphere she used to enjoy with The Slits and had decided that the time was right to attempt a reunion – with Tessa. It seemed that Viv Albertine (The Slits original guitarist) was out of the picture but Ari was confident that she could get Tessa playing again. Armed with the CD of the afternoon’s activities she was sure she could get Tessa excited enough about the two girl guitarists (who, pointedly, had not exchanged a single word throughout the entire proceedings) and the mixture of new and old material to get her playing bass in public again. 

  “YOU must encourage her!” she instructed me, as if there was any room for rebuttal. I had been singing Tessa’s praises all day, after all. Ari unveiled her plan: she was going back to Jamaica, or was it Brooklyn? (She had homes in both places) for three months or so and while she was gone I was to get Tessa playing again, find a suitable drummer, organise a rehearsal space, rehearse the band, work up the arrangements – you know… All the while I would be reporting to Ari daily, if not hourly, by phone, fax, email, carrier pigeon. 

  “You mean you want me to be The Slits Musical Director?” I asked her directly. 

She giggled. “Musi-cal Pimp!” 

It almost worked for a week or two. Maybe even a month. We had one more session with Ari at my place before she went off to wherever she was going. Tessa wouldn’t come, wasn’t ready to play in front of anyone just yet, so I was still on bass. I had spoken to Tessa on the phone and she was all up for it, just not yet. This time I managed to quiz Ari just a little about some of the records I had loved for so long – The New Age Steppers version of “Stormy Weather” for instance. Ari squeaked with joy at hearing this again. It seemed she hadn’t heard it since she’d recorded it and had forgotten all about it. I HAD to burn it for her. Then there was The Slits Y Records “Retrospective” – a bizarre, amateurish, semi-legit compilation that had never been released on CD. How had the extraordinary arrangement for “Vaseline” been arrived at? Where the girls seem to play through the chart in turn and in every combination of instruments before playing it together in unison – like a punk “installation” of dub? Ari just beamed. I HAD to burn it for her. She gave as good as she got, though, festooning me with CD’s and vinyls of this, that and the other. Her solo album, “More Dread Than Dead”, was a welcome addition, so was the Japanese only CD of the great lost Slits second album “Return Of The Giant Slits”, but more often it was a case of:

  “But Ari, I’ve GOT this.” 

She would just shrug. “So have another one”.

We worked out a handshake deal. I would tot up the hours I worked on the Slits project and I would invoice her for the full amount when the record deal was signed and the advance came through. God knows, I’d worked enough on spec in the past for far less exciting projects. I would have done it for nothing but Ari was most insistent on everything being on the up and up. In her own way, she was extremely professional. I wrote charts for the guitars, worked out bass parts from records, went round to see Tessa to pep talk her through them. Reported dutifully back to Ari. Tried to find a drummer but then Ari found one – a German girl named Anna. One small problem: she lived in Germany. Much bigger problem: the girl guitarists couldn’t or wouldn’t work together. I first fell out with guitar case girl over her flat refusal to learn the parts I had written out; then, more disturbingly, I fell out with my friend over her flat refusal to practice anything at all. She had got herself into a blind panic about the whole damn thing, felt that she had been bamboozled (which she had been) and was in sullen mutiny mode. We had a couple of desultory sessions round at my place where Tessa turned up and, like the talented old pro that she is, played her parts perfectly, but the truth was that without Ari’s wild and infectious enthusiasm we were a sorry and (in my case) ridiculous bunch. We needed the lead singer. Without her to take the reins it was going nowhere. 

I sadly tendered my resignation as The Slits Musical Director to Ari over the phone. She took it philosophically. After all, it rather flattered her that we were incapable of getting it together without her. A couple of months later, she returned to the UK, with German drummer lady in attendance, and put it all together herself. She got them a gig at Selfridges’s of all places, a dodgy manager, a dodgy record deal, a dodgy American tour (where the girls all had to pretend to be on holiday to avoid visa hassles) – she was full of energy and purpose. I made up with my friend who (thankfully) saw the wisdom of sticking with it and who subsequently got to see a side of life and a chunk of the world that had hitherto been unknown to her. Ari and I stayed in touch – not exactly mates, not exactly former colleagues, more out of a sort of butterfly curiosity (on her part) and something quite like love (on mine). Of course she could be quite impossible. She had developed the terrible habit of complaining, which, once acquired, is so hard to break. Once she called me up on Christmas Day to complain about my friends behaviour on the road (dodgy boyfriend problems). I took her by surprise by mocking her – hadn’t she called me up to wish me a Merry Christmas? No? Oh let’s have a good old moan about something on Christmas Day then, shall we? To my surprise she changed tack immediately and started chuckling. I had called her bluff. It wasn’t until after the phone call ended that I realised that she must have been calling me from Johnny Rotten’s house (he was referred to as The Wicked Stepfather – a title which he rather enjoyed, apparently). She and Tessa came to one of my gigs once, just a little wine bar gig on Portobello Road. I looked out from the stage and there they were. That was a good feeling. Of course I went to the Selfridges’s gig. What a fiasco! The band was under-rehearsed (hah!) and I was still convinced that guitar case girl couldn’t actually play but what a joy to see Ari fronting a version of The Slits again. You can imagine how she exhorted the audience to take her at her word during an extended version of “Shoplifiting” – or was it just that they played it three times in a row? I can’t remember. What was left of the old Class of ’76 was out in force to see them too, no surprises there, but I couldn’t help noticing how old and used up they looked in comparison to Ari. Yes, she was physically younger but only by four years or so. The difference was more in the eyes. Ari was a perpetual child, a shameless exhibitionist, but she had style, she had spark, she made a difference when she walked into a room or onto a stage. She was special. 

Tessa had given my number to Viv Albertine as a guitar teacher and she had called me up to book a few guitar lessons. That was funny. How do you teach someone as individual, as defiantly self-taught as that? It seemed that when the new Slits were up and running, Ari had finally realised for herself that guitar case girl couldn’t play and while my friend was proving a bit flaky Viv had expressed an interest in maybe, just maybe, joining up again. But she hadn’t played in nearly 25 years. I mean, REALLY hadn’t played in nearly 25 years. She had left it all behind when the original Slits had split in 1983. She had got married, raised a family, started a whole new life. But now? She had bought herself a Telecaster and was itching to get back in the game. My job? Get her playing again, in a sense, do for her what I had tried to do for Tessa. We quickly established a modus operandi: we would pick an old Slits song and I would work out what she had played on it and then teach it back to her. Only problem: Viv’s original guitar parts were almost as opaque as an Antennae Jimmy Semens or Zoot Horn Rollo part from “Trout Mask Replica”. She had originally been instructed, or de-constructed, by Keith Levene of PiL and, my God, it showed. We would chuckle about it but all the while I was sweating my ears off trying to figure out just what she had done. And then to have to teach such idiosyncratic guitar parts to their own creator! It was one of the strangest and most gratifying jobs I have ever had as, after only a few sessions, she started to sound just like – Viv Albertine. Her sense of pride in her own musicianship increased before my very eyes as, just like riding a bicycle, it all started coming back to her. Thus emboldened, she started writing songs again and decided she didn’t want to work under Ari’s leadership after all but would prefer to start her own project under her own name, which she has done. 

When I heard that Ari had died I didn’t believe it. How could someone so completely, so outrageously alive as Ari be dead? She was only 48, after all. It was Viv who confirmed it by texting me. And then Tessa called. Then I had to believe it. Last time I’d seen Ari she was walking down Westbourne Grove with Tessa eating an ice cream. That would have been summer 2009. I hadn’t seen her for a year or more and she looked older. I had no idea (did anyone?) of how ill she was, how little time she had. She smiled that mischievous smile. She and Tessa looked like such naughty girls. I felt so proud to know them, that such dangerous-to-know looking women would stop and say hello to me. I miss Ari. I know I’m not the only one, I know there are others who miss her so much more (like her three children for a start) but I can’t speak for them. I can only say how sad it makes me to think I will never hear that mad voice again. Or hear her sing in person again. Another time, maybe, I or someone else should write of just how much Ari and The Slits meant to my generation, how they entertained us, educated us, made us laugh, dance, think, how they made a difference – making all us blokes think about feminism for a start. But for now I’ll let Ari have the last word:

  “Yeah, you know, sometime in these clubs, you know? It’s like walking into a cigarette box or ashtray and that’s how they’ve been treating music, you know? Under the dumps. But if we just all share music together in meditation instead of frustration ‘cos that’s what these clubs bring, we can open it up in the free again, ‘cos that’s where music go to. Not true?” 

This is 80 minutes of music that documents a revolution in English culture that permanently changed the way that England sounded and felt about itself. I say England rather than Britain because all this music was made by Englishmen – notwithstanding Paul McCartney’s Irish ancestors, or anyone else’s. Some might say that the revolution started earlier with the release of The Beatles first record, “Love Me Do”, in October 1962, but I have chosen “She Loves You” as the starting point because it was such a huge hit – the biggest hit that any English group had ever made up to that time. There could be no going back after that. 

The Rolling Stones appeared next, first with a tentative and unsuccessful cover of a Chuck Berry song (“Come On”) but then with an all-out primal assault on a Beatles song. Then it was 1964 and the revolution began in earnest: Mary Quant, Carnaby Street, the whole Swinging 60s THING that has been documented to death so many times. Instead of that, what I am trying to do here is to go back to the music itself. What does it say about England and how it changed in such a short space of time? Of course these hits are all well known. But that’s why I felt it would be instructive (and fun) to put them all together, in chronological order of release, in their original mono (the way they were produced to be heard) and listen to them back to back. 

Where are the girls you may well ask? Dusty? Sandy? Cilla? Lulu? They were just as important to the revolution of ’64-66 but that is for a different compilation. Restricting ourselves to The Big Four (Beatles, Stones, Kinks, Who) excludes a lot of great music but in almost every case, it is great music that took its cue from one of these groups, from one or more of these records. It’s almost too rich to digest, this script. Over fifty years later its echoes ripple on and on, through every attempt to belittle or over inflate. It was a genuine popular renaissance. There hadn’t really been one before and there hasn’t really been one since – unless you give punk more credit than it deserves. Was it a huge sigh of relief at winning World War Two? “We’re not going back to how it was before.” An economic boom? The result of never having had it so good. The invention of the teenager. All this has been written into the ground. Instead, let’s listen to the music. And let’s listen to the words. What are they saying? How quickly we go from simple romance to lust to…what? To 19 nervous breakdowns, to cries for help, to pleas for universal understanding, to mocking a mannequin? Listen to the tunes. From Brill Building knock offs to blues tributes to…what? Where do these melodies come from? Folksong, Music Hall, India – who are these friends across the river that Ray Davies is so wistfully yearning for? Listen to the way the guitars are being played. The approach to musicianship in general – exclusively and gloriously self-taught, not a trained musician in sight. That in itself would have been unthinkable only a few months before “She Loves You”. Listen to the production, the birth of multitracking in the UK. The idea of the mixing desk as another instrument, pushing the boundaries of what could be achieved with high volume and massive compression. This was entirely new. 

Of the four groups, The Beatles were the most polished, the most obviously talented, the ones most attached to the showbiz values that had gone before. But where did that feedback at the beginning of “I Feel Fine” come from? That strange isolated dominant minor 11th chord at the start of “A Hard Day’s Night”? The harmonium on “We Can Work It Out”? As it became clear that whatever they touched would inevitably turn to gold the temptation might have been to become complacent. But instead they upped their game. Blessed with the most brilliant producer in George Martin, their every release had to show an innovation of some kind. The only limit was their imagination. The Rolling Stones, meanwhile, had their noses most firmly pressed up against the window of Black America – and were rewarded with the only blues record to ever make No.1 in the UK (“Little Red Rooster”). Once they had achieved success they quickly moved their recording operations to America, in the hope that the sound of the music they loved would rub off on their own efforts. But paradoxically they became more English with each release, documenting the frustration and boredom of stardom with a curiously detached rage. The Kinks were, in many ways, the most original and still under-appreciated to this day. They invented hard rock, yes, but no sooner had they done so than they abandoned it. Ray Davies’s songwriting could never be constrained by the limits of heavy riffs and pounding drums (although he always retained a fondness for them). There are so many subtleties in the music he wrote for The Kinks, so many reasons why it stands outside time. The Who began by plagiarising them but then set off an explosion all their own. When the smoke cleared there was wit and intelligence there, and an eccentric anti-romanticism that came to brief fruition just after our little window closes. Yes, this collection covers less than three years. 

I have timed it to fit onto one CD but “Paint It, Black” seems an appropriate place to stop. The Rolling Stones had gone from apeing Bo Diddley to Moroccan furnishings and sitars. From speed and alcohol to marijuana and LSD – yes, the drugs are a whole other story that provides probably the most reliable account of what actually happened in this time. From tough, world weary songs about women (that they didn’t write) to adolescent nihilism; “Paint It, Black” (what is the significance of the comma?!) has proven itself to be remarkably durable. Teaching guitar to teenage boys in the 21st century I have found it is by far the most popularly requested Rolling Stones song. But there was more than adolescent angst going on in these songs, these songs written and played by young men in some cases still in their teens (Dave Davies and Keith Moon). This was the soundtrack to a bloodless coup. That the spoils were wasted and squandered in self-indulgence is a shame. A terrible lost opportunity but perhaps it was inevitable. This will be argued over long after all the fighters in this revolution are dead – and they are inevitably dying off now. But that there were spoils is not in doubt. In amongst the London buses painted like liquorice allsorts, outside a commercial building painted with day-glo murals there was a genuine questioning of the Victorian work ethic, of the value of the Industrial-Military Complex. People trained to rule simply saying: “No”. Once upon a time, these things happened. Of course it couldn’t last. Utopia eventually gets boring and besides, look at all those poor people over there…

But there was a moment there – somewhere between August 1963 and May 1966 – when England really seemed to rule the world, before sinking inexorably into the Atlantic. This music was its soundtrack. 

1. She Loves You – THE BEATLES  (23.8.63 – 1)

2. I Wanna Be Your Man – THE ROLLING STONES  (1.11.63 – 12)

3. I Want To Hold Your Hand – THE BEATLES  (29.11.63 – 1)

4. Not Fade Away – THE ROLLING STONES  (21.2.64 – 3)

5. Can’t Buy Me Love – THE BEATLES  (20.3.64 – 1)

6. It’s All Over Now – THE ROLLING STONES  (23.6.64 – 1)

7.  A Hard Day’s Night – THE BEATLES (10.7.64 – 1)

8. You Really Got Me – THE KINKS (7.8.64 – 1)

9. All Day And All Of The Night – THE KINKS (23.10.64 – 2)

10.Little Red Rooster – THE ROLLING STONES (13.11.64 – 1)

11.I Feel Fine -THE BEATLES (27.11.64 – 1)

12.I Can’t Explain – THE WHO (15.1.65 – 

13.Tired Of Waiting For You – THE KINKS (15.1.65 – 1)

14.The Last Time – THE ROLLING STONES (26.2.65 – 1)

15. Everybody’s Gonna Be Happy – THE KINKS (19.3.65 – 17)

16.Ticket To Ride – THE BEATLES (9.4.65 – 1)

17. Anyway Anyhow Anywhere – THE WHO (21.5.65 – 10)

18.Set Me Free – THE KINKS (21.5.65 – 9)

19.Help! – THE BEATLES (23.7.65 – 1)

20.See My Friend – THE KINKS (30.7.65 – 10)

21.(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction – THE ROLLING STONES (20.8.65 – 1)

22.Get Off Of My Cloud – THE ROLLING STONES (22.10.65 – 1)

23. My Generation – THE WHO (29.10.65 – 2)

24.Till The End Of The Day – THE KINKS (19.11.65 – 

25.Day Tripper – THE BEATLES (3.12.65 – 1)

26.We Can Work It Out – THE BEATLES (3.12.65 – 1)

27.19th Nervous Breakdown – THE ROLLING STONES (4.2.66 – 2)

28.Dedicated Follower Of Fashion – THE KINKS (25.2.66 – 4)

29.Substitute – THE WHO (4.3.66 – 5)

30.Paint It, Black – THE ROLLING STONES (1.5.66 – 1)

All titles taken from original mono 45s. The figures in brackets after the artist name are the record’s original release date and its highest chart position.

(This is a work of imagination)

Fifty years ago today, a scraggy little removal van appeared in the streets of West Hampstead, London. Its driver had been up all night, driving down from Liverpool. In those days there was no proper motorway link between the two cities so the journey took at least eight hours. It was freezing cold and there was no effective heating in the van. The pep pills had worn off just as it began to get light and the sense of fatigue was palpable. In the back of the van were four young men aged between 18 and 21, draped precariously across a selection of battered and primitive amplifiers and instrument cases for guitars and drums, many of which were held together by masking tape. The boys weight, lurching and shifting about with the bends of the road, made it seem almost inevitable that something or someone would be thrown to the floor or the walls of the van and broken or injured. Miraculously, this never seemed to really occur. Perhaps it was the atmosphere of excitement that magnetized solid objects into behaving and occasionally defying the laws of gravity. The boys had not been able to sleep. They were tired, very tired. They had done a long gig the night before in Liverpool and piled straight into the van for the trip to London without time to go home and rest or even change their clothes. They had all (with one exception) taken handfuls of slimming pills to stay awake but even without the amphetamines they would have found it hard to sleep. Discomfort be damned, this was the day The Beatles were going to audition for a recording contract with Decca Records. Their first shot at the big time. Discussions about what to perform had been long and rowdy. Their leader had wanted to stick to the numbers that most pleased their audiences: solid rock’n’roll with a ballad or two from his sidekick. The junior member could do a bit of Buddy Holly and the drummer’s opinion didn’t count and was not solicited. The drummer was the only one who had managed to get any sleep and the others hated him for not being excited enough to stay awake (the fact that he had refused, as usual, any chemical stimulants only added to his pariah status). But then their manager – urbane, older, well versed in showbusiness – had thrown a spanner in the works. He had pointed out that rock’n’roll was all very well for the ballrooms and the pubs but if they wanted a career in showbusiness, as they undoubtedly did, they should set their sights on Light Entertainment. That way they could get regular work on BBC radio and television. What did they have up their sleeves that other provincial rock’n’roll bands didn’t? Original material, yes, but who broke through in Britain with original material, songs that no-one had ever heard? No, it was their eccentric selection of showtunes and obscure standards, jammed roughly into shape to pad out the endless hours of their Hamburg performances that they should concentrate on for their audition. Lennon was aghast. Brian couldn’t be serious. But he could tell from Paul’s reaction that the decision made sense. So a compromise was struck. Grimly putting his shoulder to the wheel, he helped Paul and George put together a list that would include such non-rock’n’roll fare as “September In The Rain” and “The Sheik Of Araby”. They should ham it up, Brian said. They loved The Goons, didn’t they? Let it show. Lennon perked up at that. An opportunity for silly voices always put him in a good mood. He could still do “Money”, just to show how hard they could be, and Paul could do “Searchin’”. Only trouble was, now that they were approaching London, it became clear that both his and Paul’s voices were shot. They had colds, they had sung too long the night before (and the night before that), they were coming down off speed. God… What were they going to do? George would have to sing a lot more than just one number if they were going to get through this. Brian wouldn’t like that. But there was nothing for it. He broke the news to George who just grinned. Lennon chuckled grimly to himself – they were so fuckin’ good it would take more than a couple of colds to ruin their audition…

Mal was asking directions – again. They were running out of time. Where the fuck is West Hampstead anyway? At this rate, they wouldn’t even get any breakfast. Never mind, they weren’t hungry. They finally found the studio. Disgorging themselves from the van, limbs aching, they then had to hump the amplifiers up a flight of rickety stairs. The weather was foul. Frost and rain, freezing wind. Brian appeared, looking indecently rested, having spent the night in a London hotel. Impeccable as ever, camel hair coat, suit and tie, shaved, drenched in cologne. “Where have you been?” he started fretting and fussing. Lennon glared at him and he shut up like a trap. “Got lost”, said Neil. That was all the explanation Brian was going to get and he knew better than to ask for more. The Decca engineers were salty and irritable at having to work on New Year’s Day but when they saw the raggedness of The Beatles a degree of compassion crept into their demeanour and they even found themselves helping to lug the gear. Setting up, however, proved a nightmare. The amplifiers had not enjoyed the trip. The extreme changes of temperature drastically increased their usual rattles and crackles. The engineers were ready to pull the session on the grounds of equipment failure but, once again, looking at The Beatles faces, they found they didn’t have the heart to do it. The first takes were atrocious. Out of tune, out of time, voices ragged, mic technique non-existent. The engineers declared a break for coffee. Brian and The Beatles huddled together in a corner of the studio – as though for warmth. Brian mothered them, cajoled them, scolded them, encouraged them, believed in them. They drank coffee and smoked cigarettes. Brian withdrew to the control room and they resumed. This time things went better. A few usable takes started to appear in the can. They breezed through the tunes they had decided upon. Lennon did his Charles Hawtrey in “The Shiek Of Araby” and Brian laughed out loud. The engineers smiled. The producer looked delighted. It was just beginning to go their way when time ran out. McCartney’s pleas for one more take of “September In The Rain” were ignored. Copies of the tape were made. Brian would get an acetate through the post. One of the Londoners, a Decca staffer, said the words: “We’ll let you know.”

Johnny and the Hurricanes “Rocking Goose” was riding high in the UK charts a couple of months after I was born in July 1960. My parents chose one of their theatre buddies to be my Godmother. Her name was Kristine Howerth and she chose to give me a copy of this record as a present. She disappeared into the sunset not too long after and I have no idea whether she is alive or dead. But her work was done. “Rocking Goose” is a splendid record and a fine introduction to many of the essential aspects of rock’n’roll. Although an instrumental, it contains a wordless vocal refrain – ostensibly sung by the rocking goose itself – following which a violent saxophone duets with a wildly unrestrained electric guitar, all set to an urgent uptempo shuffle over a basic 12 bar blues. It rocks hard and it takes no prisoners. I still have the record after 62 years and it still gets played. In those days, records were pressed to last. I have always been obsessed with records and gramophones. I have no idea why. My parents used to boast to their friends that I could operate their gramophone at the age of 18 months. Around that time I got given a baby battery operated gramophone which came with a little record called “Cha Cha Twist”. It had a yellow label and it played at 78rpm. I still have that one too but it doesn’t get played as often as “Rocking Goose”. Not long after that, another theatre friend of my parents named Derek Hunt gave me a wind up gramophone and a handful of 78s. Bliss. Utter bliss. I still have it and it still works (although you do have to crank the handle for it to get through a complete side of a 78). My idea of heaven as a child was to be given carte blanche to play my parents records. I only ever broke one – an EP containing selections from Roger Livesy’s production of “Perseus & Medusa”. I was utterly mortified and have been looking for a replacement without success ever since. (Debbie Golt, bless her, sent me an mp3 of it as recently as a few months ago but I’m still after the vinyl.) Amongst my parents 78s was a copy of Jerry Lee Lewis’s “Great Balls Of Fire” with “Mean Woman Blues” on the other side. My dad had bought it for a theatre production and kept it when the show was over. I played it a lot. But it was just one of many that I liked. “Come On Baby” by Fred Barnes and his Jelly Babies was very popular too. So was “Cigareets ’n’ Whisky ’n Wild Wild Women”. But the actual act of putting on records, watching them go round, taking them off and putting them back in their sleeves was what I really enjoyed (and still do). The actual music was secondary. If I liked it, that was a bonus. 

All this preamble is to make clear that I grew up with rock’n’roll in my life. It was always there and I always liked it. But I didn’t really differentiate it very much from other music that I liked. I remember seeing The Beatles on television doing “I Want To Hold Your Hand” and being mesmerised. Soon after, I got taken to see “A Hard Day’s Night” which firmly established The Beatles as religion to me (which they more or less still are) but I didn’t think of them as a rock’n’roll band. They were just The Beatles. My dad liked them too. In fact, he would buy most of their records when they came out so I grew up with them in the house. As someone who tends to regard the 1960s as the highpoint of civilisation I think the reason is simply that I was happy then. Everything was in its place. Uncomplicated. I was popular at school, my parents were still together, my sister was manageable, The Beatles were still together. I would periodically cajole my parents into buying me a record like The Who’s “Happy Jack” and Traffic’s “Hole In My Shoe” which I would play over and over. It wasn’t until the beginning of 1971 that pop music in general took over from football as my all consuming passion. I had always enjoyed “Top Of The Pops” on television but now it became a thing of enormous importance. I bought T.Rex’s “Hot Love” *with my own money* and that was that. From then on, pretty much all my spare cash went on records and so, yea, even unto this very day. (Guitars and amplifiers came later but records have always been there.)

In addition to records, I have always been an avid reader and I would read everything I could get my hands on about The Beatles and pop music in general. Thus I absorbed Hunter Davies’s “The Beatles: The Official Biography” and Jann Wenner’s “Lennon Remembers” by the time I was about 11. My dear aunts played a hand in this too. One aunt bought me a copy of Lillian Roxon’s “Rock Encyclopaedia” – which was the first of its kind – and the other bought me (big fanfare) Nik Cohn’s “Awopbopaloobop Alopbamboom”. This last, more than anything, shaped my knowledge and understanding of pop history. It was Cohn, with his flamboyant championing of 50s rock’n’roll (and his iconoclastic rubbishing of just about everything that came after) that made me appreciate that Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, Eddie Cochran, Gene Vincent et al were part of a movement, a wave, and that the music they made in the 1950s had paved the way for everything that mattered most to me. I have always been thorough in my obsessions and so I made it my business to seek out this music wherever I could find it. Nowadays it’s easy. The entire history of recorded music is just a couple of clicks away, but for a kid in his early teens in the early 1970s with very little money it was a different story. Armed with a precious pound, I would look at Hallmark budget editions of Bill Haley and The Comets for 99p but something told me they were dodgy. Besides, I could get three cut-out 45’s for 30p each and still have change for a chocolate bar. My aunts came to the rescue again, they gave me a little portable cassette recorder for Christmas in 1971 which changed the game. Now I could tape things off the radio or TV with the little microphone provided and thereby harvest and curate to my hearts content. A documentary about the early days of Elvis, The Faces live on ‘In Concert’, Alan Freeman running down the chart on a Saturday afternoon, Alexis Korner arguing with Paul Oliver over something called ‘blues’- such possibilities were only limited by how many batteries and cassettes I could afford. I would tape records and sell them in part exchange for other records (oh! the things that slipped through my fingers). Heady days. It was a full time job. I would keep notebooks documenting the contents of all my tapes and records. For my birthday in 1972 I requested a stopwatch so that I could record the length of tracks before entering them into the log. It was my whole life until I got a guitar and started down that road. Everything I did, thought, felt, aspired to, dreamed of was contained within that music. It’s the reason I became a musician. It’s the reason I didn’t go to university (who had time for school work?) It’s the reason I didn’t go into the family business and become an actor. It was everything. 

I could always depend on rock’n’roll. Sometimes when my sister and I are talking about some of the bad stuff that went down with our family I say: “I don’t remember that.” “Well you were in your room listening to records”, she will say. I remember when my first girlfriend dumped me for a Dutch karate expert I stole a half bottle of whisky from my parents and locked myself under the headphones with a tape I’d made of The Beatles and The Rolling Stones cover versions of 1950s rock’n’roll songs. It got me through. It always gets me through. Over the years, the half century or so since it took over my life, I have entertained other things. Films certainly, books. I got married, fathered a child, even did a couple of vaguely responsible things that grown ups do like pay into a pension (that I’m now living off). But rock’n’roll has always been there, in the background, waiting to take centre stage at a moment’s notice. Of course, I never became a rock star myself but, to be honest, I’m quite glad. I would almost certainly have drowned in the syrup of success. Either that, or I would just look ridiculous. What’s at stake in celebrating a music founded on youth now that I’m getting old? I can’t abide old men refusing to acknowledge that they are no longer young. It’s foolish at best and pathetic at worst. Perhaps my hardline on this is partly based on my fear that I am guilty of this myself. The Old Leather Jacket syndrome, sufferers from Keith Richards-itis, the paunch barely contained within a band T shirt – it’s nearly always men and it’s something I really do try to avoid. Most of my favourite musicians wore suits and I do believe that after the age of 50, a decent suit is the only chance a man has of looking good. But that’s just my opinion. Good taste is very subjective, after all. Some people call Kiss a rock’n’roll band. But I don’t want to get into aesthetics here. Was is pop? What is rock’n’roll? What is rock? These are questions for ageing men to argue over while their hair falls out and their wives tap their feet to whatever they happen to like. What is not debatable is that the music made by Elvis, Chuck, Richard, Gene, Eddie, Bo etc etc was the original rock’n’roll and that stuff still sounds like dynamite. I remember one time when I was touring and had money in my pocket I bought a 4 cd box set of 1950s rock’n’roll named “Loud, Fast and Out Of Control” – a marvellous title and a beautiful production. If you see it, snap it up. It’s a real labour of love and there isn’t a duff track on it. See, I’m not sure that it was all about youth. Pretty much everybody involved in it was young, yes, and maybe the qualities it was celebrating were all to do with youth, but I’m always about the music and the music itself is about more than that. It’s about the blend of black and white music, the fast tempos, the polyrhythms, the harnessing of what was then new instrumentation (Nik Cohn theorised that it all boiled down to electric guitars), the open expression of lust in the lyrics, the joy of speed (in every sense), the endless *possibilities*. The toughness of the old blues, the sentimentality of country, the free availability of legal amphetamines, the booming post-war economy of America. This is an exotic mid 20th century combination that will not occur again. If you love it, you will never stop loving it and age is irrelevant. 

Music and me, we are pretty inseparable. I love jazz, blues, Indian classical music, fascinated by Arabic music, African music, old Music Hall, old dance bands from the 1920s and 1930s, psychedelic rock, avant garde wacky stuff that sends people running from the room – I’m there. Plus Bach, Beethoven, all the usual dead white males. But rock’n’roll, ooh my soul! I love it so, and I miss it dearly. Very much I miss it. Being able to go to some grungy pub somewhere, lay out a nominal amount, buy a pint, watch some gang of hopefuls setting up their gear, starting their set, hoping they might do a couple of Chuck Berry tunes, however badly. THAT was my youth. That’s what’s over, never to come again. I wouldn’t have swapped it for the world. But it would be foolish to keep blowing on the embers of a fire that has long gone out. What remains are memories and an abiding love for what started it all. It’s fabulous music, it really is. Frozen in time. Never to grow old. Those old records, some of them nearly 70 years old now, provide proof that once such optimism, such joy was possible. It’s a vision of America that America itself has never matched since. Nor is it likely to. It was a moment. You can analyse the economics, the politics, the sociology – and goodness knows, enough people have made livings from doing precisely that over the last half century – but the music gloriously celebrates itself. And that’s enough.