There is (well, there was) a very British tradition of musicians and music biz types - finding creative inspiration and influence while working though an academic stretch at Art School - Lennon, Townshend, Keef, Jimmy Page, Bowie, Bryan Ferry, Eno and of course later - the class of 76: McLaren, Matlock, Poly Styrene, Adam Ant.
Punk, as a movement, was almost a sonic blast of Pop Art shock with it's Warhol pallet of out-of-register graphics, dayglo spray and droptone trim.
Continuing this - Gaye Advert launches her latest expo at the Signal Gallery, Shoreditch - Punk and Beyond. A collection of new, or of-the-time art from first generation punks and new wavers. Heavy-hitting contributors to the current installation include...Marco Pirroni,
Thurston Moore,
Paul Simonon,
Jamie Reid and Jill Furmanovsky.
Punk and Beyond runs from 25th of November to December 17th with live music performances on Saturdays from several of the artists on show - ..
A few of the sights to see include pieces from...
Jamie Reid screen print from '76
Gaye Advert
Marco Pirroni self portrait from 76
A top rocking night was had by all who attended last night's preview - with a punk ledge count that included: Gaye Advert, Don Letts, Andy Czezowski, Shanne Bradley, Knox, Barry Cain and Billy Childish...
How's Your Luck? Are you a superstitious sort - a ladder-dodger who says "hello" to Magpies and treads stealthily to avoid pesky pavement cracks? What's your take on black cats - good or bad luck? More importantly will you be taking time off and keeping yourself cocooned indoors, reducing the probability of pitfalls, pratfalls or possible hospitalization.
Wherever you are, whatever condition you're in - why not lend an ear bruised, bandaged or otherwise to these Friday the 13th anthems...
Sounding for all the world like a Beatles For Sale outtake - I say BFS, as Lies takes the sugar rush and bubbly buzz of Beatlemania and tempers it with an early twist of bitter Lennon.
And a nugget of hi-randomness, originally employed as a backing track by Burlesque Dancers...
Do you remember Dayvilles Ice Cream Parlours? Oh those flavours.... apple strudel, cherry cola, and some minty-blue sorbet all dished up in coloured sugar cones - not the re-shaped wafer style..
Until it finally closed a few years ago, my favourite local, second-hand record and bookshop (and the only place you'd get a fair price for your hand-me-down albums) was run by a genial 'Mr Pleasant' type, that would give a welcoming tap on the window whenever I passed by holding up items of interest, and keeping Beatles bits 'n' bobs back for me .
His shop was perma-stocked with an unusually healthy amount of quality goodies - framed sheet music, retro posters and promo CDs. So a bit of surpise then, when I heard the local BBC radio station dropping a reference to Mr Pleasant's shop - turns out he was none other than the Abbey Road/Decca legend Peter Eden, who'd discovered and signed Donovan after catching one of his early gigs in Southend..
He never managed a Donovan sized strike again, but had his fingers in several sixties pies - musician, manager, songwriter, A&R man and producer. A selection of which were collected for a limited edition (1000 copies) anthology of Pete Eden productions released last year - appropriately titled 'Nice'
Two of the many sixties band's to get the Eden treatment were also fellow Southenders - Crocheted Donut Ring - (whaddya mean you've never heard of them?), whose 'Get Out Your Rock and Roll Shoes' was/is one of my most played nuggets..
His shop may have gone, but Peter Eden is still alive, well and living in the Southend area with an active interest in music - in fact the last time I spotted him, he was bustling around catching some acts at the Leigh Folk Festival.
As footnote of Hi-randomness - Peter also devised,drummed (as Bongo),wrote the theme and a few songs for seventies Kiddy-cult show Animal Kwackers
Remember the 1972 smasher 'Popcorn' by Hot Butter - a track that galloped along at the speed of the space race, sounding like Donna Summer on Skylab, Cosmonaut pop and the future unfolding around your very ears.
Well, did you know it was actually a cover? A cover of a track already three years old, and taken from Gershon Kingsley's 1969 album 'Music To Moog By'...
Never one to miss a contemporary pop-trick (like the local Marching Militaire, or Brass Band that screech out refits of cinematic hits) Herp Alpert, had himself a wallop at Popcorn
Goodbye to bubbling, fat analogue sounds, sine waves and Moogadoodledoo . Hello to the soothing muted toot of the Tijuana Brass, the tropical lapping of steel drums and the soft plod of xylophonic pop...
Both varieties are below - so, why not try a taste test and see which you flavour you favour...
You can build a wall to stop people, but eventually, the music, it'll cross that wall.That's the beautiful thing about music - there's no defense against it. I mean look at Joshua and Jericho - made mincemeat of that joint. A few trumpets, you know? -Keith Richards
We've covered vocals, guitars, drums, keyboards and even a bit of bass - but so far, not a sniff of the ol' bugle tooters. I think it's Keef who holds the theory that over-amped electric, rhythm guitars were the beginning of the end for horn sections (in the same way synth's replicated, but never replaced strings) And in fact the 'Satisfaction' riff was originally heard - in his head anyway - as a riff written for horns..
Now as fine and funky as this selection of stompers is, they clearly wouldn't have the same weight or wallop without the brass giving it plenty o' honk Barry Stoller - Funky Spider
Funky drums, even funkier hooting and a' tooting
Blood Sweat and Tears - Go Down Gambling I think Boys Wonder may have re-riffed this guitar part for What Makes You So Good - which, I'm hoping Piley will get round to ripping and posting some day soonish
Please to lend an ear to the giddy fiddle fingering bass work, and the Zarathusa/2001 horns (a motif that was close to overuse during the seventies)
Otis Redding - Satisfaction (with brass instead of guitars, and Duck Dunn's piledriving bass runs)
The riff was in essence not meant for the guitar. Otis Redding got it right when he later recorded it because it's actually a horn riff. I never thought that was song was commercial anyway. Shows how wrong you can be. Keith Richards
Hairy-headed, heavy-loaded, underground funk is the mood of today's FF,three walloping slabs of post-psych-freak-rock, where you can almost waft away the patchouli and incense, smell the embers slow-burning the rug, and watch the Robert Crumb or Che poster a'peeling from the smoke stained walls.
I know nothing about Colosseum apart from...
Sometimes they are classified as Jazz Rock At other times they are classified as Art Rock Fatboy Slim sampled The Kettle for something or other
And Aphrodite's Child featuring the monumental man-mass and heavyweight of light enterainment Demis Roussos and Prog-God Vangelis hammering the Hammond
If you're in the mood for more fuggy-fruggery then check out Andy Votel's Vertigo Mixed.A comp of head spinning mixing and artful editing, swirling with rocking oddities and obscurities, so good, I've never quite got to the end - it's like a guitar version of Too Many DJs
Or, why not lend an ear to Marco Pirroni's hand picked Glam Prog favourite, and a tune that inspired his signature guitar twang - it's right here...
And finally something for your third eye.. 'Tonite Let's All Make Love In London'
For a full list of 'Letraset Super Action Transfers' click here
While sprouting from tot-to-teen during the seventies, I was a terror for TV Detectives - both the US variety covered (here), and the Brit-Cop shows that employed an almost off-the-peg parade of villainy..
Rough stuff street toughs Hi-Tech International Terrorism Corrupt Senior Civil Servants Crooked Aristocrats in country houses and/or golf clubs (usually Stoke Park - a Goldfinger location)
I've still got my pick 'n 'mix library of original crimebusting Annuals stored in the loft, collecting together - The Persuaders,The Protectors,The Professionals, The Sweeney (surely The Sweeney were a bit too rough and ready for an Annual readers catchment audience) and The New Avengers..
Laurie Johnson's New Avengers (a flared and swishy refit of his sixties original), is surely the template tune for almost every Acid Jazz track, and gets worked over here by Southend's very own Snowboy...
Another Laurie Johnson anthem, and perhaps the greatest car-crashing-glass-smashing action theme ever.. - shouldn't Lewis Collins really have been the follow-on-Bond from Roger Moore?
Finally, can you decode this mystery title tune - and work out which show it's from??
The inner spread of The New Avengers Transfer set seems to be based on Heatherden Hall, part of the Pinewood Film Studios - which appears in The New Avengers, The Professionals, The Persuaders, UFO and Space 1999
Hats off and Happy New Year - but, ho-hum what a heavy effort lumbering yourself back to the same ol', same ol' after a full two weeks of naught but loafing, lazing and lie-ins - however there is a way of lightening the load - simply soak yourself in the blue eyed soaraway soul of Bobby Sansom, who, has fine eye for a barnet, and the look of one of those rug-u-like photos used in Gent's barbers..
Popular opinion would have you believe 'Young Americans' was a calculated attempt by Bowie to attract the attention of, a so far, apathetic American audience by dropping the glam rags and reinventing himelf as a seventies soul boy. Realistically it was more of a revert to type. Ziggy only lasted 18 months, and snappily suited dance fan rather than outsider-outfits has been Bowie's default career setting (Mod, Young Americans, The Thin White Duke, Lets Dance, Tin Machine...).
Dig a little deeper and you'll also find he'd started dabbling with Disco a year earlier - alongside pet projects and helping hands for Lou Reed, Iggy and The Stooges, Mott The Hoople during 1973, Bowie had also found time to write and produce one full album 'People From Good Homes' (recognise that line from a later song) for his backing vocalists The Astronettes which was dressed in a disco trim...
During the Young Americans sessions, Luthor Vandross (in pink above and blue below) had become an almost honorary member of the Astronettes - joining them at recording sessions, and for an appearance on the Dick Cavett show
Bowie remodeled one of Vandross's tunes 'Funky Music' as 'Fascination' for inclusion on the Young Americans album (with Vandross getting a composer credit)..
During his Dick Cavett set, Bowie also covered The Flares 'Footstompin', which had been given a seventies style re-riffing by Carlos Alomar. A riff, which one month later became worked up into 'Fame' by Bowie and Lennon (with Alomar getting a composer credit for his contribution).
The Flares - Foot Stompin
As well as having a magpie's eye for bright ideas and what's hot - Bowie also clonked out some cracking compositions of his own - an unreleased original being...
I will get the Bowie-handbrake on soon, it's just that I've been ploughing through the Tony Visconti biog' this week, and have just hit the 'Young Americans' chapter you see.
However, if you fancy more Bowie business an excellent companion to his mid-seventies period is the excellent Golden Years website
I found a load of old scraps and cuttings like this in the loft recently
There's a gallery of grotesques to choose from when you get to glam related rocky horrors...
Alice Cooper - The New York Dolls 'Frankenstein' - Iggy's 'Death Trip' and 'Your Pretty Face Is Going To Hell' - Suzi Q's 'Devil Gate Drive'- Bolan's 'Mystic Lady', 'Demon Queen' (or his earlier John's Children tune ''Desdemona'' banned because of it's "lift up your skirt and fly" line)- Bowie's 'Width Of A Circle', 'Please Mr Gravedigger', 'Beauty And The Beast' - Roxy's 'Bogus Man' or Eno's 'Spirit's Drifting' and 'Everything Merges With The Night' are just a handful of the Halloween themed hits and howlers available from the spangle age..but I thought these few tunes could do with being reanimated as pre-season of the witch friendly..
Blockbuster could well have been inspired by the Batman bruiser Blockbuster(DC's answer to The Hulk) Which brings us back to Bowie who referenced Batman in Uncle Arthur
"Uncle Arthur still reads comics Uncle Arthur follows Batman"
Better know as 'Grotbags' from the Rod Hull and Emu show.
Carol was something of a cabaret legend before crossing over to TV, working with stars like Max Wall, Arthur Askey, Morecambe & Wise, Ella Fitzgerald and Tommy Cooper - there's an cabtastic interview with her here - on the Licorice Soul website. I first picked up on this tune via the mighty Licorice Soul Working Mans Soul album, a cracking comp' of classic cabaret turns.
Well Pop pickers - it’s something a bit diff’ for this week’s Funky Friday..
Can you work out who’s who on this tricky trio of mystery tunes? Can You do it? Of course you can. The prize of an exclusive ‘Tronik Youth’ shredit of a Northern Soul Classic will go to first past the post(ish)
I ran these three nugg's past Marmite when I bumped into him on the Fenchurch Flyer earlier this week - he managed a healthy crack at it and was certainly in the right territory for all tracks...so I reckon it's doable, but will give one clue for starters. All artists are British
Now, you could go a’Googling for clues – but do you really want to live with the head-a'hanging shame of knowing you’ve had a dodgy ace up your internetty.
* see also Lord Of The Lungbusters, The Prince Of Wails, The Sultan of Boomei
I remember seeing someone (can't remember who) that had once duetted with Tom saying how they'd been blown away by the pure blockbusting bellow of his voice and although it projects well on TV ( and it does), not in any way can it capture the raw ear-quaking experience of having 'the Jones' belting out his full pelt decibel yell just a few feet away. Which is possibly why in duets like these with CSNY and with EMF - Tom seems to be sharing a stage with giddy gurners and grinners as he lets rip.
So, ladies and gentleman 'This Is Tom Jones....' Treat Her Right - with some spectacular frugging and a'flailing
Show Me
See Saw
And some early seventies shakedowns including the tricky to track down 'Sugar Sugar'
Like John Peel I can remember my first earful of The Undertones 'Teenage Kicks'. I was off school on a not-strictly-legit' 'sickie' - and applying my trusty 'convalesence' technique of staying firmly tucked up in bed until middayish with a pile of comics (Whizzer and Chips, Krazy and anything Marvel or DC), a packet of chocolate digestives and my trusty tranny radio (with mono earplug).
It was during one of these recovery bed-ins that Paul Burnett cranked 'Teenage Kicks'. Burnett, or his producer, always had healthily punky playlist - Sham 69, The Strangers, Ian Dury album tracks and the Sex Pistols/Tenpole Tudor 'Rock Around The Clock' (with it's discreet effing and jeffing) were all fed to his lunchtime listeners.
However the first Undertones single I paid a few pocket money pence for was the Power-Pop meets Parka-Punk 'You've Got My Number', heard by way of Radio Luxembourg's Thursday night New Wave chart rundown.. It's a sizzling piece of guitar riffery that I still clonk out on my SG today -so after picking up the recent Undertones Anthology (loaded with one full disc of rarities and demos), being the cheeky blogger I am, thought I'd get in touch and fire off a few questions, and Tone me I only got a reply didn't I ....from Mr Damian O'Neill himself....
Was there one song, album or artist that made you pick up a guitar and go from passive listener to active learner? Quite a few actually...Van Morrison and Them doing Bob Dylan’s ‘It’s All Over Now Baby Blue’, John Foggerty’s solo on ‘I Put A Spell On You’, Keith Richards piercing guitars on Beggars Banquet, Johnny Thunders on ‘Babylon’, Wilco Johnson.
How did you first become aware of the growing punk scene, and if being Undertone hadn't worked out, where would you have ended up? I remember reading Neil Spencer’s review of the Sex Pistols at the Marquee in the NME in early ‘76. People forget how provocative it was then to call your group ‘The Sex Pistols’. We then heard the brilliant ‘New Rose’ by the Damned, followed by Anarchy in the U.K and I also remember cutting out an Observer article from Dec. ‘76 which talked about the English punk scene.
Was there a long term plan with the band - and did you expect to still be going in 2008? Are you kidding! You couldn’t plan anything in the Undertones as usually someone would quit every couple of weeks/months (except me of course)
No and neither do I expect to be going in 2058
Are you listening to any albums or artists in 2008 that you wouldn't have expected to (or admitted to) back in the seventies? Plenty! Joni Mitchell, Fairport Convention, The Incredible String Band, Faust, Can, Brian Eno, Free (are all these people hairy enough for you?)
I can hear The Undertones influence in a ton of other bands from seventies new wavers to noughties US punks - is there anyone you've ever heard and recognised an echo of The Undertones tone in? Supergrass, Blur, Ash, Sigur Ros (only joking)
Any plans for a complete album gig? No.
Excepting That Petrol Emotion, have you ever been tempted to do an album or selection of acoustic tracks, covers or dance tunes? No.
What's the breakdown of an Undertones audience? Supermodels, wags, A-list celebs and fat baldy old fellas with beer bellies slam dancing at the front.
The first Undertones single I bought was ‘You've Got My Number’ which features a blistering riff (and great cover on the B-side too) - do you feel other 'Tones tunes get overshadowed by ‘Teenage Kicks’? Absolutely and it’s all John Peel’s fault!
Do you know how often 'Teenage kicks' gets aired per day on radio or TV, and if so what's an average day’s play? No, maybe you should ask my brother’s accountant!
Given a second chance is there anything you'd do differently - or any advice you'd give to aspiring groups or songwriters? Well, I wish that I gave my tuppence worth in all those dreaded group meetings I’ve had over the years instead of nodding my head in silent agreement.
What’s your most pinch-yourself rock ‘n’ roll moment? Just recently, playing on stage again with That Petrol Emotion at the Electric Picnic festival in Ireland....amazing cos I never thought it would happen again.
The Undertones - 'You've Got My Number'
The B-side of 'Number' was 'Lets Talk About Girls' - a cover of a Chocolate Watch Band tune featured on Lenny Kaye's legendary Nuggets comp'
The Sex Pistols lastpre -Bill Grundy'Filth and Fury'- interview, was by Barry Cain for Record Mirror - click on the photo to supersize the original article....
If Nick Cohn'sAwopbopaloobopAlopbamboom is Ye Olde Testament of Rock, the New (Wave) Testament being Jon Savage'sEnglands Dreaming, then Barry Cain's 77 Sulphate Strip is surely the Dead Sea Scrolls revived and risen again from the russet coloured copies of his Record Mirror reports, reviews and interviews, scrapbooked against a lip-smacking-ace-tasting-page-turning-eye-bulging micro dot-to-dot diary of '77's key moments and movers, groovers and shakers. The year when groups of grey-faced, straight-laced politicians and hair flare bunches of prog and pop stars went twelve rounds against a fistful of prickly punks. 365 days with more dynamics, dramatics and duality than any year since pop records began.
After his stretch at Record Mirror, Barry went on to launch Flexipop, one the snappiest music mag’s ever published, I found a few copies in the loft recently and had forgotten how they crackle with facts, fun and features - including a genius parody of The Face's famous '82 'Hard Times' cover - 'Really Hard Times' starring two turps glugging tramps which perfectly burst The Face's snoot-nosed, yell and bellow bubble .
So, some questions for Barry Cain then.... 77 Sulphate Strip is one of only a handful of rock books I've read without any acknowledgment or nod to The Beatles - it's like they never existed. Was this the mood at the time No. The Beatles meant everything to me and most my mates throughout the sixties. They were my teenage idols and helped take the sting out of those years. There’s an unsubtle homage in the names of the characters in StreathamLocarno at the beginning of Strip. I stopped dancing to The Beatles after Rubber Soul because that’s when they started inviting me back to their place – via the Pye Black Box in my bedroom – where I could listen to their darkest thoughts. They changed the way I thought, simple as that. And thank you, for your very kind words. They mean so much. Incidentally, one of the ‘Hard Times’ tramps in the picture is my dad who will be 91 this year and was, I guess, my fifth Beatle. I was an only child and my parents (my mum is 81) have had four dogs all dying tragically and leaving my mum and dad desperate and bewildered. The last one, Bobby, a cute black poodle, died a week ago in my dad’s arms, and it’s eating them both alive. I buried Bobby in my back garden alongside the previous two and that nearly fucking killed me. I felt like some canine-killing version of Fred West.
Sorry to veer off the path , it’s just worrying me right now. Pray, continue. How did you go from being part of a Motown loving Boot Boy and Suede head set to becoming Record Mirror journalist Pure genius! If you came from a council estate in London at the time, you became either a straight, a skinhead or, if you took a lot of hallucinatory drugs, a working class hippy. It got interesting when the skinheads got into hallucinatory drugs in the late sixties, but that’s another tale. It was rare to stay on at school after 16 but I went to a grammar and emerged, at 18, with two low grade A Levels. I always kept my school friends and my flats’ friends far apart. As a result, I became, around 15, two people – schoolboy and coolboy. Two heads are better than one, and after a bit of luck and a lot of graft, I went from trainee court reporter to indentured journalist on a local paper to entertainments’ editor to Record Mirror. That’s a Yellowbrick Road a lot less travelled these days.
Your first meeting with Rotten reads like a snake charmer being hypnotised by the snake – have you met any other performers with a similar charisma Malcolm McLaren. He and Rotten both possess the ability to paint stark pictures with barrages of meticulously chosen words that give delight and hurt not. They’re in a class of their own. Joe Strummer was a little boy lost who dug his way out of his nightmare with remarkable songs and a hunk of devotion that swept me away. Paul Weller was hopelessly devoted to rue - the secret behind his genius. Hugh Cornwell and Jean Jacques-Burnel were deep sea divers in the psyche and there was nowt more challenging than a Stranglers interview. The Damned had collective charisma – they were the Commie punk band. Who else? Barry White, Bob Marley, Paul McCartney? Heaps of charisma. But not a patch on Malcolm and Johnny.
In 77 the Pistols were possibly the most hated band in history. It wasn't just the older generation or other youth movements that were anti-Punk, but politicians, musicians, record exec's, DJs and almost everyone who wasn't directly involved with the Pistols (or Punk) that seemed to despise them. Do you think it's possible we'll ever see such international outrage caused by a single rock act again Impossible. Music has popped its cork. It’s no longer the force of nature it was (what an old git). Outside the X Factor comfort zone, records just don’t sell that much anymore. That’s why TOTP was dumped. That’s why Smash Hits, RM, Sounds, Melody Maker all fell by the wayside. How many generations to go before music is just a bowl of cherries? Before life gets in the way? Before its portability and a few billion options make it futile, obvious, an easy lay? I give it twenty years, tops. My kids’ kids will give the odd flying fuck for a stunning song. Their kids? Different world. Different ballgame. Different tune.
For a movement that was all momentum and 'of the moment', Punk styles, sounds, designs and influences are still with us and everywhere from US metal to Top Shop clobber. What do you think has kept Punk (and New Wave) enduring without dating Punk was all about bright minds in bondage who wanted to fuck off out of old Durham Town. Sleepy time girls and the boys of summer dancing to a ’77 beat. Punk’s callous, disruptive demands – an anathema to Joe Public – could dislodge reality in exciting minds and create innovation. Originality breeds contempt and contempt breeds originality. It was a vicious circle that has continued to spin unabated like a flaming Catherine wheel shooting flames in every direction. And you didn’t need a voice like Sinatra’s to make the punters sway. Lapsed punks haunt the corridors of power.
I loved the piece about your mum and dad and the pub scene with the piano players, costermongers and comedians having a sing-a-long. Do you think the real seventies get overlooked with all the novelty nostalgia and ‘Abbafication’ of that decade I don’t think there ever was a real seventies. It was the itsy-bitsy-no-focus post Beatles decade kicking off with dross, glam, Philly, dross, New York disco, dross and ABBA. It welcomed punk with open arms, shook hands with high-street ska, gave birth to the New Romantics and invented Freddie Mercury. If you were in your late twenties in 1970 the next ten years meant fuck all really. You wouldn’t get it. The seventies had to be ‘Abbafied’ because the sixties were too sad.
Caining It - Barry with beard and Buzzcocks
Malcolm McLaren once said “I have brought you many things in my time” which included breaking Punk, World Music and Hip Hop, but equally there’s a trail of broken relationships and bad blood.” What's your take on him – genius or jinx
Genius. I mentioned in the book that Malcolm asked me to ‘ghost’ write his autobiography in 1979. I got to know him as well as anyone after countless interview sessions in my living room over a three-month period. He made me dance all night and still beg for more. He’s the Brian Clough of pop who should’ve managed England. Knowing Malcolm, I think love got in the way – he’s an incurable romantic. But we should all be thankful he turned the world dayglo.
In the book, the music press seem just as hardcore and heavy living as the bands - almost like The Sweeney with press passes rather than police badges. Were there a few juicy nuggets, tear ups and tales you couldn't include
Yes.
If you could beam back to 1977 and take someone aside for a word of advice - who would it be, and what would you say?
It would be me, I’m afraid, and I’d say, ‘Don’t get married, keep your finger on your trigger and put all your money on Man Utd winning the FA Cup, Red Rum winning the Grand National and The Minstrel winning the Derby’. Oh, and to Sid Vicious I’d say, ‘Go for it’.
The Damned, The Buzzcocks, The Stranglers, The Wolfmen (Marco from The Models and Adam and The Ants new band), Carbon Silicon (Tony James and Mick Jones) have all released new albums over the last few years. Have you heard any of the original Punk players’ new songs
I saw Hugh Cornwell play live a year or so back – great show at Scala – and downloaded his impressive Hoover Dam album, but that’s about it. I don’t listen to much music these days and when I do it tends to be through headphones attached to my laptop as I write. Usually, it’s Michael McDonald’s tribute to Motown, which is just wonderful, interspersed with Steely Dan. I’m a dude. Hey dude, don’t make it bad. Just let it out and let it in.
You were involved with Flexipop, are there any plans for an 80s sequel to 77 SS using Flexipop as source material?
Writing it now. Starts in 1978 when I resigned from Record Mirror, teamed up with then PR guru now PR mogul, Alan Edwards, running a punk PR company out of a Covent Garden squat, discovered I wasn’t cut out for a career as a publicist, became a freelance writer and spent the next two years travelling the world with rock stars, doing big, fat, hairy interviews. It ends 20 years later with the death of pop. Don’t worry, there’s not much to tell after ’84. I launched Flexipop together with my ex-partner Tim Lott (now, of course, a hugely successful novelist) in 1980, and after three bizarre years I found myself alone, publishing mainly one shot poster mags on pop’s latest flames which I continued to do for the next decade and a half. Got myself a family, a house, a Porsche. Cost myself contacts, desire, drive. Naturally, I blamed everyone but myself for those sad losses – complacency is a cancer of the spirit. But if you catch it early, the prognosis is good. Life can be groovy again Oh, and there’s a few twists and a fucking shitload of watusis. The book should be available this time next year, if anyone has any money by then….
If you were a Record Mirror reporter in 2008 - what would get you picking up your pen and pad, and who would you be trying to interview or avoid
The song Distant Dreamer made popular by Duffy, who rocked my boat when I saw her perform it at Glastonbury. The version by MC Almont & Butler is a work of art. Pop music at its finest. I think Leona Lewis has an incredible voice. I’d love to interview her. And Duffy. Shit, I sound like an old perv. Who else? Paul Weller, for old times’ sake; Eminem., for Pete’s sake; Alex from Big Brother, for fucksake. That’s five cracking interviews.
Never avoided an interview in my life.
And finally, are there two tunes one Pop, one Punk that sum up 1977 for you Anarchy In The UK and Anarchy In The UK.
Anarchy In The UK - from the Filth and Fury
Anarchy In The UK - Early version, slightly rowdier than the single, but possibly my fave take.
