What A Nice Way To Turn 17

A Bunch Of Box Tops Albums And Singles

2012-02-12T00:17:00.000Z

For no good reason other than the fact that I found these on my hard drive, photos, some better than others, of most of the Box Tops records stored up there in the attic room - some nice shots of our hero Alex Chilton.

Big Star's Alex Chilton & Chris Bell in guest starring roles.....

2012-02-11T23:51:00.000Z

A couple of Big Star related singles, one featuring Mr Alex Chilton and one Mr Christopher Bell, the sleeves (including credits) and the YouTube clips of one track from each single. Then a little thing that's gonna please ya, a Big Star (Pete Frame-style) Family Tree from my collection.

Epic Soundtracks & Evan Dando - "Will You Love Me Tomorrow"

2012-02-11T23:01:00.000Z

With a kind of vested interest in the release of, in April 2012, the 2CD set by Epic Soundtracks "Wild Smile" on Troubador Records - honoured to have compiled the second CD of rare and unreleased music and to have scribbled the sleeve notes - as my contribution to promoting its release, here's an imperfect (unreleased, perhaps understandably so.....) gem that doesn't feature on the set.

The Jacobites - "When The Rain Comes"

2012-02-11T22:48:00.000Z

From a Spanish radio session in 1995, a lovely leisurely acoustic version of the classic "When The Rain Comes".

Meanwhile, some seven months later, a Nikki Sudden home movie.....

2012-02-11T22:42:00.001Z

Okay, so there's a danger of this becoming almost exclusively an archive for the works of Nikki Sudden and his brother Epic Soundtracks - not necessarily a bad thing - and to be fair the first two posts of 2012 feature Nikki - but rest assured, we'll deliver a little variety in months to come.

Anyway, I've been planning for some months now to start the process of copying some videos on to DVD and getting them on to YouTube - finally got round to coming up with this half hour extract from a video made back in 1991 by my brother, Nik, and ace photographer Steve Gridley. Brief details of the various locations used appear on the notes with the clip.

Still to come, more of Nikki strumming away in his parents' garden, some live acoustic and band stuff and some cool clips of the '95 version of the Jacobites messing around in the studio.

Kinda good to be up and running again - we'll see how long it lasts this time!

Albion Sunrise by Nikki Sudden - Chapter 12: Johnny Thunders

2011-06-22T23:34:00.000+01:00

Nikki Sudden at the 100 Club, Oxford Street, London - 17th May 1983 - Photo by Nik Coleman

Following the recently posted introduction to Nikki Sudden's unpublished novel "Albion Sunrise" we've dipped into the tale itself and extracted Chapter 12, "Johnny Thunders".

Enjoy.

Albion Sunrise: Chapter 12 - Johnny Thunders

"In the dark-lit surroundings of The Establishment tea-rooms, general bric-a-brac and curio shop, The Bagman has once more taken up the reins and is keenly talking on the same generally much misunderstood subject of pure rock’n’roll. But, we find that he’s veered from the purity, albeit it seldom seen, or indeed rarely, if ever, understood by the general populace, of Jerry Lee Lewis and Memphis rockabilly, to fields further from home. Unfortunately by doing so he loses Mr. Dickens. For Mr. Dickens’ heart, it must be said, mainly resides in rock and roll’s first few timeless years.

“If there’s anything to be said on the general feeling of rock’n’roll these days then the first premise that must be assumed is that Johnny Thunders plays the guitar in the same way that Jerry Lee Lewis plays the piano. The way he throws notes out so that they seem to cut through your soul like a hot knife through butter. It could indeed be said that his guitar playing can send shivers right down your spine in a manner akin to a rusty rock’n’roll avalanche.”

“Johnny Thunders, Sir?” enquired Mr. Dickens somewhat breathlessly.

“Y’know, man, the one time guitarist with the New York Dolls!”

“Pancake make-up, high heels and rock’n’roll guitars.” put in Sukie helpfully.

“No, I’m afraid you’ve lost me there,” answered Mr. Dickens a trifle sadly. “Would I could say I’ve heard of the gentleman but I’m afraid in all honesty I can’t claim that.” He nodded his head, “Different generations that’s all I can say. I’d dearly love to hear the gentleman though, for if he indeed plays the guitar in the same way that Mr. Lewis plays the piano, he must be a wonderful player.”

“He is that,” exclaimed The Bagman wildly searching for metaphors to aid his description. “His guitar playing sounds like heaven in a silver spoon. Indeed one note by Johnny Thunders is enough to slice the top of your head right off.”

Mr Dickens first blanched and then looked a trifle perturbed at this suggestion. He requested meekly. “But, pray tell me more about this Mr. Thunders to whom you refer.”

“Johnny Thunders was the hero of the Dolls and he was the one (along with the drummer, Jerry Nolan) who came back with a band that lived up to all that had gone before. The Heartbreakers were one of the main bands of ‘76 and ‘77 and then they too were gone,” answered The Bagman shortly.

“Would that be Month Seventy Six and Month Seventy Seven of this counting?” asked Mr. Dickens curiously.

“Time often passes very slowly, that I know. It could in fact be,” replied The Bagman, hanging his head in thought for a couple of long seconds, “It could indeed be. Having said which, it’s not necessarily so. May’haps it was. It’s sometimes difficult to recall. It’s often difficult to place the correct age ‘pon anything,” he looked at Sukie, “Isn’t it m’dear?” he asked.^{^*}

“I know what you mean ‘Bags’,” she answered with a smile, “As sure as the King’s flag flies high above the town, I know what you mean.”

“Anyway,” continued The Bagman, “Johnny Thunders continued with a solo career, making some brilliant records, some flawed records albeit intermittently. The best of these was the first album he made, So Alone, but the solo acoustic record from a few years later, Hurt Me is also totally inspired, as indeed is Copy Cats, the album he made with old cohort, Patti Palladin.” He turned to Mr. Dickens who was rummaging around on one of the many black shelves that lined every last inch of the walls of The Establishment tea-rooms and remarked to that gentleman. “I think Copy Cats would be right up your street.”

The Bagman decided that some further elaboration was necessary. Thus he continued:

“The first time I ever met Johnny Thunders was at a club in Birmingham, up on the top edge of Cortirion. This was when he was still playing with the Heartbreakers (or the Junkies, as they almost became known for a while). It was at a club called Rebeccas. Some time in early 1977, it was. I’d gone along to the soundcheck with my two New York Dolls albums in hand. Cheekily asked one of the road crew if he could put me on the guest list. He’d replied that would be no problem. But, he did say that I shouldn’t attempt to get my Dolls albums signed by Johnny or Jerry Nolan as they didn’t like being reminded of the past. So I left the records at home and went along to the gig empty handed. After the show I ended up in the dressing room. Johnny spent most of the evening running around after a very attractive blonde girl. Miss Patti, I think her name was.

“He did, however, pause long enough to say hello to me and remark about the Marc Bolan badge I was wearing: ‘Hey, I really dig that guy.’

He looked at Sukie with a wistful gaze clouding his eyes. “Badges were rather a Seventies fashion,” he said with a sigh.

“I know,” she replied sparkily. “But, what happened next?”

“We exchanged some words. I wandered out into the night leaving Johnny to get to know Miss Patti a little better.”

His face appeared a little clouded with reminiscence as he continued:

“I saw Johnny around London Town from time to time. We didn’t know each other though. I remember one party at this guy’s house. The Doctor, he was known as. He roadied for one of the Heartbreakers’ contemporaries. Johnny, Jerry and Billy Rath, the bass player, turned up and straight away disappeared into the bathroom. They weren’t seen again for most of that evening. I saw the Heartbreakers at the Vortex, at the Music Machine, a bunch of places and loved them each time I saw them.

Picture from the "Pipeline" Pedro Mercedes collection

“If anywhere, it was at the Speakeasy that I came closest to Johnny. The Speakeasy, just round the corner from Portland Place, up on Margaret Street. One night I was in there having a lonely drink. The band on stage were this terrible ‘70’s loser band, name of Slack Alice. One thing this new regime must take the blame for, more than most, is the number of simply appalling bands that it left in it’s wake.”

A semi-wane smile lit up his face. “Anyway, I ignored them and stuck at the bar. All of a sudden from the stage there came this great guitar sound. Johnny had jumped on stage and was jamming away. He carried the show for half an hour or so before jumping off stage. This was customary behaviour for the baseball kid. Most times I’d end up there over the next few months Johnny would also be there and jump up with just about any band going.”

The Bagman paused for a second, and then recommenced his tale: “And then of course there were the legendary Living Dead gigs. I went to most of them. Not all, but most. I remember Johnny coming on with the great Chantays’ instrumental, Pipeline, and me thinking it was an original song.”

Mr. Dickens indulged himself with a slight chuckle at this point. Although the surf era of music was just at the tail end of his interest, he still knew most of the music of that time well enough. “The Chantays, it was, indeed my good sir,” he bubbled enthusiastically.

The Bagman continued, “This was also the first time I was ever to hear Johnny’s great new song, Dead Or Alive.” He let out a slightly nostalgic sigh, “Anyway, one evening I was hanging there from the ceiling, taking photographs. I think it was the night Sid Vicious attempted to play a few songs before realising his bass wasn’t even turned on. Anyway there I am hanging from the ceiling and suddenly big lumps of plaster collapse around my head. I was certain I was about to be thrown out as this angry looking bouncer waded up to me. Luckily he just laughed at the sight before swaggering away again. Leaving me hanging there amid the ruins of what had been a perfectly respectable ceiling before my enthusiasm got the better of me.

“Those gigs by the Living Dead have to be among the best shows I’ve ever seen in my life. Right up there with T.Rex at the Leas Cliffe Hall Pavilion, Folkestone in ‘75. With Page and Plant recording their Unplugged show in a studio on the banks of the Fleet a few short years ago. With the Stones at the Brixton Academy on my birthday a year or so back. With Mott The Hoople at Birmingham Top Rank in ‘72. With David Bowie on the Aladdin Sane Tour.

“Johnny recorded So Alone. Came back to London Town to play a gig at the Lyceum Theatre. I was there at the front same as I was every time he played. I remember being at the Rock On stall in Soho Market a few days later. There I was told a tale of how Johnny had staggered in the day after the Lyceum show with a box of copies of So Alone with him to sell. Realising that he’d just spend the money on drugs the guy from Rock On had refused to buy the albums. Johnny’d been left to stagger on up through Soho to Cheapo Cheapo in Rupert Street to sell the records. Later I went into Cheapo Cheapo and bought quite a few copies for Christmas presents for my brother and friends. Christmas 1978 that was. Cheapo Cheapo had been where I’d first acquired my copies of the New York Dolls albums in 1974. The same copies I have till this day.



“News of Johnny was sparse on the ground through ‘79 and ‘80. One elusive photo cropped up in the New Musical Express, that was it. When the gang temporarily broke^{^*} up I decided, after a few months of hanging round, kicking my heels in Tintagel and Camelot, that it was time for me to re-establish myself in Soho. Business still needed to be attended to, but things had come to some kind of collapse before that eventuality was realised. Arriving there late one evening I looked in Time Out to find that the Heartbreakers were playing that very night at the Marquee. I headed down there straight away. Nothing could go wrong for me that night. For Johnny it was a slightly different story. The band managed to get through about three numbers before Johnny actually made it onto stage. He looked ‘tired’ shall I say. ‘Tired’ definitely. Still it was a good show when all is said and done.

“The next day or so I was sitting in the Two I’s Coffee Bar in Old Compton Street, drinking my first White Russian of the day (my favourite drink in the world and incidentally Johnny’s too). In walks Johnny and sits down at a table. He starts looking at the menu. I think to myself either I can go and talk to him or I can just sit there and pretend that Johnny Thunders isn’t in the building. I decide the former is in order. So up I wander to his table. Johnny is still examining the menu. I ask if it’s okay to sit down. He mumbles, ‘Yea.’ I sit down and start talking. One thing I do remember is when the waitress came to our table she asked Johnny what he’d like. He ordered but said that he was only paying for himself, ‘Not for this guy,’ motioning towards me. Fair enough, I hadn’t started the conversation in order to get a free drink.

“Next night down at the Two I’s I bump into Johnny again. He’s hanging round upstairs by the dressing room door. I don’t think he remembers me from the previous day when he’d been quite stoned. He looks great. 100% rock and roll. Really cool jacket. Kinda striped jacket. That’s the main thing I remember. What I choose to say to him amazes myself. I ask if he’d be up for doing an interview for ZigZag magazine. ‘Yea, Kris Needs,’ he says.^{^*} He said sure, that I should call him the next day and gives me his phone number.

“The following day arrives and I call up. Johnny answers the phone, gives me the address, says come on over. I arrive at the flat where Johnny is listlessly watching the day roll by. He enquires if I have any money. I say sure. He asks for £20. I can’t see a problem so off we troop. Off down to The Wedge to cop. Johnny leaves me in front of a shop while he disappears round the corner with my money in his hand. While I’m waiting I manage to get some kind of duelling pistol pulled on me. I think to myself ‘This is Albion, things like this don’t happen here.’ I walk off. The would be duellist is obviously not used to behaviour like this. He doesn’t follow, shoot me or anything.

Johnny Thunders - Almost Blue (Photo by B P Fallon)

“Johnny reappears. I tell him what happened. He smiles that smile of his. Anyone who ever met him will know exactly what I mean. He says, ‘Things like that happen round here, you should be careful.’ We take a hansom cab back to the rooms he shares with a nice blonde girl. We proceed to get gently stoned. Johnny taking the lion’s share of the smack. Me, I keep on disappearing to the bathroom to throw up. Johnny finds this most amusing. We record some of an interview. If I listen back to it now I sound so young, so naïve. Really I suppose I was. It was also almost the first time I ever interviewed anyone. I can never really think of any questions to ask. With me, an interview becomes more like a conversation.

One thing that struck Johnny about me was my boots. I had this pair of Johnson’s Chelsea boots—white leather they were. Johnny had his eyes on these from the start. So we did what was quite a ritual with Johnny over the years. The clothes swopping session. I gave him my white boots and a red and black striped pyjama jacket that I’d taken to wearing.

He responded by giving me a pair of pony skin shoes, a white dress shirt complete with blood stains on the elbows and a beautiful black jacket. The shoes are beautiful, I still have them and all the other clothes Johnny swopped with me. Where the ones I dealt with him ended up I have no idea. Probably they got traded again somewhere along the way. By the way Johnny and I have the same size feet (eight and a half), as does Marc Bolan and as does Bob Dylan. There must be something in there somewhere.

“I called round to see Johnny the next day to conclude the interview and to get high together again. He wasn’t my introduction to drugs, but, he was always a good person to take them with. Although he asked me to pay for the first lot (and the second and third) he did reciprocate quite a few times over the years.

“Later that day we went up on the roof of Johnny’s apartment building, up above Wardour Street, for a brief photo session. One thing about Johnny, he always did have a great dress sense. He put on this great pair of boots, enwrapped with scarves. Carried a funky old acoustic guitar in his arms. He just looked so cool. Stoned or not. It didn’t seem to matter with him. I’ve always thought that people who are out of it a lot of the time can often have far better dress sense than those who are straight the whole live long day. It’s almost as though they don’t care less about what the world may think of them. They know from themselves that they look cool and everyone else is wrong. And rightly so.”

“The Bagman paused from his monologue. He glanced first at Mr. Dickens and then at Sukie Sundown to see if they were still following him. It was obvious that they were glued to every word coming out of his lips.

“We spent quite a few afternoons together. Johnny trying to explain different chapters of his life to me as we sat together in the apartment. One thing I can always remember is Johnny answering the phone to a friend of his who was planning to come round. ‘Pick us up a pack of Lucky’s on the way over,’ he said down the phone. Lucky Strike cigarettes! I thought it was going to be some strange kind of drug.”^{^*}

Once again The Bagman paused. He took a sip of his cup of tea and lit another one of his smuggled cigarettes before once again telling his gathered listeners some more tales from the life of the greatest rock and roll guitarist of all time:

“Johnny Thunders dropped out of my life for a year or so. Until Spring, ‘82, when he made a concerted comeback with a non-stop 8 or 10 date tour of the capital. I went to every show as did my friend The Twangman (this was just prior to us re-forming the Gang). Those were glorious days. Most every night for two or three weeks you could see Johnny Thunders on stage. Some nights he looked well wrecked. Other nights he looked like a sixteen year old kid. Like the night I trekked to the depths of the East Side to see him play. I walked out of the concert walking on air. It was a totally brilliant performance.

“Around that time I saw Johnny a whole lot. Never got that close except for one night at a hilarious show at the Escape Club in my home town one December evening. That was the night when an old woman insisted on jumping on stage with him. ‘That’s my mother,’ he claimed. Who knows, maybe it was! Arriving at the club I’d wandered into the cold and cheerless dressing room to say hello to Johnny. He quickly pulls me to one side, ‘Hey Bags, you got any drugs?’ he asked. ‘I had, but, they’re all inside me,’ I answered. ‘Fair enough,’ was his well-considered reply, which swept out from his face with a tired looking smile.

“Anyway that was the night I got my photo taken with Johnny. Conditions for taking any picture in the dimly lit dressing room were far from perfect but a photographer friend persevered and got a great shot of the two of us together. We both look pretty ghostly. It sums up some kind of an era.”

The Bagman took another drag of his cigarette and requested a glass of wine. Mr. Dickens scurried off to fetch one for him and for Miss Sundown.

“I take it red wine is all right, Sir,” he asked. The Bagman answered in the affirmative with great alacrity. Their host quickly returned with a bottle and two glasses. The glasses were charged, The Bagman took a sip and then went on:

“Next time I encountered Johnny close up was in Dublin, in Eireann, that is, at the TV Club. The gig was promoted by a good friend of mine, Simon Carmody. Simon had asked if I’d like to come along and see Johnny there and at the next night’s show in Belfast. The following morning we set off on the drive up to Belfast. A long, uncomfortable journey it was, especially for those of us perched on the outside of the coach for hours on end. The horses had to be changed on about three different occasions.

“As we went through the border the Northern Irish border guard muttered in his thick accent: ‘Where are you’se lot from, the Irish Free State?’ Well, Simon and the driver were. Johnny was from the New World. Susanne was from the Scandinavia, the Viking Lands. Terry Chimes the drummer was from Albion. Christopher was from Germania, via Paris or somewhere. And Keith Yon the bass player definitely wasn’t from Eireann, more like from the former slave provinces of the West Indies than anywhere.

“As our carriage trundled into Belfast Johnny was constantly asking questions about the situation there. In his blue mohair sweater, satin frock coat, black leather trousers and boots he looked totally rock and roll that day. At one point an army platoon swung in front of our coach, muskets pointed straight through the windows at us. Susanne was a little bit frightened by this. Johnny took it all in.

“The gig that night was great. Everything Johnny had asked on the journey that day came out on the stage that night. Everything he’d taken in. His between song comments were just so perfect in war-torn Belfast. As Simon Carmody wrote in an article in Eirrann’s Hot Press: ‘Johnny was nearly in tears at the devotion of the few hundred punks at the show, determined to show the bright glittering world of freedom and music to them, five encores of Chinese Rocks and Johnny, beautiful, striding out of the hall, past the ranks of soldiers in a long braided military coat, sailor hat, pointy boots and his girl on his arm, unitimidated, delivering, rockin’, immaculate...’

“After the show Terri Hooley the mad, one-eyed proprietor of Good Vibrations Records who’d promoted the show took us all to a wonderful restaurant for a slap-up meal. Even though he’d lost money on the evening he was generous to an extreme. Everything Johnny wanted was laid on, no problem whatsoever. And Johnny with a gleam in his eyes kept on asking for more. Taking it almost too far and then circling back to let Terri down gently. You could tell that Johnny was most taken by this Irish madman with his one glass and one normal eye. Johnny, Susanne and the band went to sleep that night in a deep guarded compound hotel. The next day we drove back to Eirrann. Went to the harbour, down to the quays, to see Johnny off. ‘See you around, Bags,’ he said to me in parting.’”

He turned to his listeners: “Anyway I’d better finish here, there aren’t enough hours in this, or any day to spend this way. Unfortunately.”

They smiled back at him, sensing the sadness coming from his eyes.

Johnny Thunders 27th December 1983 Stockhom (Photo by Micke Borg)

“Johnny Thunders was four years and four days older than me. Born one July 15th. Both of us Cancer, which apparently means that we don’t much like to share our secrets or cares with the World.

“I’ve always known that Johnny Thunders would out-live each and every one of us.” He thought for a few long seconds before continuing:

“One mistake far too many people make in equating Johnny Thunders with being a junkie is that their understanding of the genre doesn’t extend that far. I’m not claiming to have that great a knowledge myself, but having dabbled at times throughout the years I do know that it takes a certain determination of effort to look and stay cool despite the follies inherent in the lifestyle. For, whatever you may say or think of Johnny Thunders, he always looked cool. So totally fucking cool. And however out of it he may’haps at times be, he most always plays guitar like a dream. He may not play guitar like Segovia, but, you wouldn’t want that anyway, would you? He may be a junkie, but, at least he always keeps it together

“To some people Heroin equals Sex. It’s down of course, to individual interpretation. Therefore just because one of your friend’s chooses to make his own personal doom out of what can be, at times, a positive experience does not mean that all must be so doomed. I personally take the stuff on occasion because I like it. For no other reasons at all. With me there’s no desire to hide behind the opium cloak. And, yes, if you take Keith Richards or Johnny Thunders, Thomas de Quincey, or even William Burroughs as an example heroin can seem very creative indeed. For these were people who despite the inclinations of the drug were able to bend their art around it.

“Unfortunately I have, particularly of late, seen far too many people (including some very close acquaintances) who seem to have given their life over to heroin. Creativity, with them, doesn’t enter into it. All they really seem interested in is the daily purchase of the drug. Which seems to me to be the definition of an addict. Which is why I could never be an addict. I can never be bothered with the travail and traipsing around necessary to maintain a habit. I find it fascinating for a few days. Two or three at the most, then I get bored with the wasted time. For, with most junkies the prime interest in the drug is the knocking out of time. So that the day is telescoped into those brief periods when they have to go and score. That becomes the only important action undertaken each day.

“Too many friends of mine seem to have thrown most of their life, including most of their friendships away over the years of addiction. They have to finally give up the poppy when there was no one left for them to borrow money from! They still owe most of their life away. One just has to accept that the time is probably gone forever.

“Despite all this, Johnny Thunders for me, is the best guitarist who’s ever lived. Technique, who cares? He plays with his whole body, his complete soul and that’s why I say he always keeps it together because no matter how totally and completely lost in his soul he is (and he so often can be), it doesn’t really matter, for he can still play the guitar. Whatever condition he may be in, he can still play the guitar. And, if you’re a guitar player, that’s all that counts in the end, isn’t it?

“If there is a heaven up there then surely, one day, Johnny Thunders, the boy from the New World will end up there playing guitar, smoking cigarettes, drinking white russians, getting high. Amen.”

Turning to Sukie Sundown, The Bagman laughed suddenly and then remarked, “Imagine Jerry Lee and Johnny on stage together. Both of them just knowing that they were the best. Let the audience in and all you’ll end up will be the remains of a few smashed up chairs and tables. Nothing left save for the many and various glories of much famed rock’n’roll. For, with one note, either of them can easily create more pure brilliant and inspirational, nay, soul and heart-rending,” and that’s a term that’s seldom heard these days, “Rock’n’roll than a whole land full of other bands.”

“I’m afraid that these days rock and roll belongs to the young people, my dear sir,” spoke Mr. Dickens sorrowfully. It wasn’t his fault he was getting old, he thought. But, then, his Mr. Lewis was over sixty years of age now and he still played rock and roll with the best of them.

“Who ever tried to con you that rock’n’roll belonged purely to seventeen or eighteen year olds? It surely wasn’t ever a seventeen year old,” continued The Bagman getting completely pulled into his topic now, “If a cat can play when they’re seventeen, they sure as hell should still be able to cut it when they’re twenty, thirty, forty or even eighty. What’s the real difference? Who cares about age. Just because so many bands lose it when they get older... Oh, it’s not the fault of their age. If anything it’s just their sad stupidity,” complained The Bagman sagely enough.

“Thank you, sir, but if the truth is to be told I don’t get out much these days. Save for the occasional concert by Mr. Lewis, I don’t really venture far anymore.” Mr. Dickens sounded quite woebegone now.

The Bagman continued briskly: “Then there’s all this rubbish you keep on reading these days about Jerry Lee Lewis being ‘the Johnny Rotten of his day’,” he was warming to his subject. “All this typical patronising journalese. Jerry Lee Lewis was the Jerry Lee Lewis of his day. Johnny Rotten hadn’t even got enough guts to get married! He never wrote a song like Pumpin’ Piano Rock. He never even wrote a song like Rockin’ Jerry Lee:

They call me Rockin’ Jerry Lee

And I’m the rockingest cat on piano

That you ever did see.

I mean that is poetry. And to think that in ‘54, Jerry Lee Lewis was making music, as he still is nowadays that is more vital and goddammit, more rebellious and licentious, than anything punk ever did.”

“I myself, sir, have heard Mr. Lewis laughing like a madman possessed by the Devil. By whiskey. By the spirit of the Lord. By the light of the moon. As he has sometimes sung himself:

My name is Jerry Lee Lewis

I come from Louisiana

I’m a mean mother-humpa

On this here piano.”

Thus Mr. Dickens with a blush or two half glimpsed through the gloom of the tea-rooms passionately gave vent to his innermost thoughts on the subject of Jerry Lee Lewis. Then he pottered off to look for some things as yet unfound. Feeling the lull of the conversation, The Bagman threw in one final, closing thought.

Nikki Sudden at the 100 Club, Oxford Street, London - 17th May 1983 - Photo by Nik Coleman

“I love the way that Jerry Lee takes any old song and turns it around, spins it on it’s axis, throws it away and pulls it back until all that’s left is the quivering vibrant husk. The piano that once writhed in his hands is left incapable of any other action save for throwing out a thousand desolate and smashed notes. Sending them crashing into your ears. Tearing white and black keys falling to the hands of the Killer.”



Sukie, while the discussion had been coming to a close, had been looking round to see what she could see in the dark lightless chambers of the café. She’d espied one or two things of great interest to herself, and, she thought, to her companion. These included a fire-place with a singularly indistinct blaze going on amidst it’s precincts. Certainly the fire did little to light up the room, but, still is capable of giving out a warmth and also a comfortable aroma. More interestingly, per’haps, assorted boxed sets of record albums were glimpsed amidst the glow. Each and every one on Bear Family Records, the best re-issue label in the World. The only real light in the room still came from the solitary spluttering tallow candle on the table top.

Ending his search amongst the shelves of his premises Mr. Dickens had finally found what he’d been looking for. To the delight of his guests he first produced a stamped-metal tin full of muffins. These were followed in good turn by a jar of potato pancakes, procured from somewhere in the dark gloom. He then put one of the muffins on a toasting fork before proceeding to stoke up the fire to enable it to give out enough heat for the toasting to take place. “Can I offer you,” he began, but, broke off without finishing his sentence for both The Bagman’s and Miss Sundown’s eyes had fully lit up at the prospect of a hot toasted and griddled tea.

“My good fellow,” answered The Bagman, “That is as good a suggestion as any I’ve heard in a month of Mondays. I’m sure Sukie agrees, don’t you m’dear.”

“Indeed yes, Jack,” replied that seeming paragon of virtue, looking as though butter had never even melted in her mouth, as indeed it seldom had.

Mr. Dickens stokes up the fire, piling more coal upon it, and it emits a mild, not in-offensive heat. He places a kettle full of fresh spring-water from the pump in the yard on it to boil.

“One thing I will say in closing,” commented The Bagman before finally laying his subject to rest, “ Is that I truly believe that in fifty years time Johnny Thunders will be seen as being just as important a figure in the history of rock’n’roll, what-have-you as Robert Johnson is today.”

“Well said, Jack,” proclaimed Sukie Sundown before preparing herself for the onslaught of muffins which were at this very second being toasted quite expertly by Mr. Dickens.

The water tumbles from the now boiling kettle quite merrily, sending small clouds of steam jumping and turning through the air. A fresh pot of tea is ready. They sit and drink it whilst waiting for hot food to arrive. Food that has long awaited them for they’d had neither the time, nor indeed the inclination, to eat the day before. Save for that morning’s brief breakfast they hadn’t eaten anything in the past twenty-four hours. Now provisions would be well appreciated.

Hot buttered cinnamon crumpets are being toasted. Potato pancakes are being cooked by the venerable Mr. Dickens. Proprietor, owner, manager and sole employee of The Establishment tea-rooms, nestling deep in the heart of old London Town. Much loved by many, admired by some and respected by most everyone of his acquaintances. For though, as he said, he doesn’t get out so much these days he still retains a large circle of disparate friends. And friendship, like fair play, as he has often been found to hear himself saying, is, whatever any may say, still a jewel.

Then almost too hurriedly, he slipped out of the room, his mind obviously on other things. Miss Sundown and The Bagman were left in the deep languid gloom of the café to touch hands and kiss a couple of times. When Mr. Dickens returned, The Bagman would settle their account and then they would leave. They had business across town that evening and now the Sun was fully down it was time to depart.

And here we must leave this perfect couple, up-at-heel for the moment at least, in this imperfect world. Waiting for the perfect culmination to their late afternoon tea. For it must be remembered that they did not achieve so much as a single second of sleep the previous night due to their assorted, and as yet unrelated exploits. But, before too many pages have passed the tale of those adventures will unfold."

Nikki Sudden

* For further clarification of the restyling of the calendar see page 58. Twelve counts = one year of the old style timespan.

* The Restoration Gang

* Kris Needs was the editor of ZigZag during Johnny’s time in London Town.

* Lucky Strike’s were available on rare occasions from some of the cigarette smugglers who inhabited each and every one of the streets and back alley-ways of London Town. Most types of cigarettes could be purchased, at a price, from these vendors and purveyors of forbidden tobacco. The only cigarettes officially on sale were the ubiquitous Woodbines, Player’s Navy Cut, Black Cat, the revenue from which went directly to the ruling powers. On the East Side of the Wall most everyone smoked Blue Liners, cigarettes made of badly rolled tobacco. It often took a whole box of matches to keep one of these cigarettes alight long enough for a complete smoke.

"Looking At You" by Nikki Sudden

Albion Sunrise - A Novel By Nikki Sudden - Introduction

2011-06-01T22:12:00.000+01:00

Nikki Sudden & Jowe Head at the Epic Soundtracks Tribute at London's The Garage 10th January 1998

In addition to his recently published (excellent) autobiography "The Last Bandit", Nikki seemed to be forever working on one written project or another - be it his history of The Wick, the house on Richmond Hill in London sold by actor John Mills to the Stones' Ronnie Wood, or one of several plays written for, but never taken up by, Radio 4 (including "The Bagman And The Twangman"). I have to admit though that I never saw much of the "Bring Back Ian McLagan" project which he mentions below. By far the biggest of these was "Albion Sunrise", his as yet unpublished novel. I'll post a couple of chapters over months to come, but, for now, here's his introduction.

"This book was begun in Berlin during January, February, March, April & May of 1997. On the computers of Brenda Parkerson & Britta Schenkel, and the lap-top that Melvin Reynolds was borrowing from a chap at Gloucester hospital. It was originally titled, Bagman’s Sundown, but I soon realised that was rather a final title. During those early months, like the first flush of a romance I wrote diligently and earnestly. As with a romance passion began to turn to weariness after time.

During June, 1997 I was on tour throughout Europe So little got done save for some emendation. Throughout July, August, September and October work continued on Biene Olbrich and Katja Klier’s computers—plus a brief spell in Paris on Freddy Lynxx’s machine. Back to Berlin for more work on Katja’s device. To all of the above go out many thanks.

In November of 1997 my brother, Epic Soundtracks, died. This necessitated a return to Albion for Christmas / New Year during which little was added to the book.

Then finally in January, 1998 I purchased my own machine and the book went gradually on. One chapter, “In Praise Of Miss Sundown,” was written during a flight from Berlin to Chicago. Various amendments followed during the next two months which were spent in exile in the Americas. Following on from my eventual return to European soil, work finally re-commenced in earnest. Or, so t’was hoped.

Work, when at last re-started went slowly. Tour followed tour and on the rare occasions I was in Berlin other matters occupied my mind. As is my way, I began work on another book, rather than continue with the one I should have been concentrating on. That book, Bring Back Ian McLagan, went on quite well and by Christmas / New Year 1998 / 99 was well underway. During that time I found myself once again in Blighty. Various books I was reading contributed to the reawakening of my interest in Albion Sunrise. One of them, strangely enough, was a travel book by a fellow named Bill Bryson whose reflections on my own country, though sometimes over-stated are very much along the same ways I choose to see England. It was Bryson’s mention of the Black Death in his book, Neither Here Nor There, which actually got me started again. It doesn’t actually take much to nudge me in any kind of direction, whether it’s the right one is another matter. Being in England I find myself surrounded by different books than I am in Berlin. Much of my library got moved oversea when I departed Albion’s shores at the end of 1996.

One of the reasons I wanted to move to Berlin, was because I felt, truly enough, that I could never write a book while still living in England. Sitting in my flat on the Reichenbergerstrasse one day I picked off my bookshelf an unread copy of John Pearson’s The Life Of Ian Fleming. In the book Fleming had said that he based James Bond on the person he’d always like to have been. That was it, now I knew how to go about writing my book, write about myself as the person I’d like to be. Thus was Albion Sunrise born. January 1999 I started writing once again. This book seems to surge forward in various kinds of swirls and flourishes—many times it veers off at great unnecessary tangents but by some strange twist these always seem to reach for their natural end—which by some rare kind of luck is my ending also."

"And if I say I loved you forever

You know I believe in what’s been said

But sometimes never means forever

Because my heart’s so easily led."^{^*}

* Basement Blues by Nikki Sudden, from the album “TEXAS” (Creation Records, 1986)

Suicide – A Humane Union Of Man And Machines

2011-05-21T22:39:00.009+01:00

There was a good degree of camaraderie between fanzines back when we were "in our pomp" (coughs....) and planned for the issue that never happened was this English translation of an article on Suicide which originally appeared in Finnish magazine Ripple. Whilst it borrows from (uncredited) previously published interviews with Rev and Vega, if you know little of the history of this massively influential New York duo, it remains an excellent introduction to the origins and art of Suicide.

As an introduction to Suicide, a snatch or two of cheap melodrama couldn't be much worse than any other way. So, who could know what Suicide really is?

“Suicide is painless” No, it is a desperate, painful act.

“An act like Suicide is prepared with the silence of heart” (Camus) Pathetic, unverified.

“Suicide interviewed in 1971; “What is your message to the youth of America?” “Shoot up, man. Just shoot up.” Stinking Black Humour.

“Suicide is like coming in off the street and finding the street again.” (Alan Vega)

Alan Vega (human voice) and Martin Rev (electric noise).

Suicide.

A dangerous name – why exactly Suicide?

“I think it has a lot of meanings – you can sort of dig into the name itself and it can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people, and that appealed to us.” (Rev)

“I don't see the name in a bad light; to me, Suicide is re-birth, a life thing...so we could have called the group Life, but it would have been too glib and too dumb. But that's what it felt like and that's what it is. I wanted to say: The world is killing itself! The name Suicide was right on.” (Vega)

And yet, it is so easy to misunderstand. But then, what's to understand or misunderstand? Suicide. It certainly looks as if Messrs. Vega and Rev have not, and will not, let anybody off easily, even themselves.

Suicide started some time at the turn of the sixties and seventies, and it hasn't really stopped ever since. What follows could even be printed using the present tense instead of the past: Suicide has always challenged the concept of time as a linear phenomenon. The location has always been the same, however: New York. It couldn't be any other place.

Alan Bermovitz was born in Brooklyn in the late forties, Martin Rev in the Bronx. They met in the art underworld of SoHo. A typical setting, at least on the lower steps of art hierarchy: Vega ran an alternative art gallery with his friends, held an active interest in visual arts, made neon sculptures, and was involved in various performance and music projects.

Two examples of Alan Vega's artwork

“I was working with light sculpture. I used to get tons of lights and just pile them on the floor. I'd walk into a gallery, throw the lights on the floor and leave. Or I'd tack them up on the wall, and go: “This is my art!”” It was a free thing. Then Marty Rev showed up at this place, this strange looking guy just walking round the place, coming in every couple of days. For a few months he didn't say a word.”

As a matter of fact, Rev was a genuine musician, all the way from rhythm & blues and doo wop. To jazz and avant garde. He was taught piano by be-bop cat Lennie Tristano.

He dug 'Trane, Sun Ra, Ayler and Miles; free-jazz gigs in down town Manhattan clubs, jams with Sam Rivers and Tony Williams. Then he quit the piano and formed a band of his own, Reverend V: an electric keyboard, two or three drummers, a sax, a couple of trumpets and clarinets. Next up, a musical dead end and a solution. Suicide.

“From before the age of ten, I was getting hit by the music I really love, and then when I was a teenager, the rock stuff I was playing – as a musician and craftsman – really didn't challenge me enough. Jazz was the most alive music for me, but after a while I got disenchanted with the tendency of jazz to get more and more cerebral, and distant from its environment. The visual aspect, the way the musicians saw themselves performing, was going back to express African things, which was great. But there were still stories to be told about what we were living through that the jazz musicians just were not telling any more. They had gotten so sophisticated that they were going back to their spiritual roots, the post-Coltrane back-to-the-tribe thing. What Alan and me were living in had still to be expressed, and the only way to express it was through a sound theatre, which meant lyrics, a story, characters.”

“Music is like a visual thing. When you listen to music you visualise like a movie or something. We just decided to build a music around certain characters. The kind of people we ran into on the street and so on” (Vega)

Rev and Vega were certainly not the only artists in New York who decided to unite their creative powers:

“A lot of those artists' bands were terrible but they got around because they had a conceptual framework. Real talents never think about that do they? Pollock never sat around thinking about splashing. One day he woke up and went splash...actually, the whole performance art thing came after we were doing our first gigs. I never thought of it as art, I just thought of I as rock'n'roll. We were just rock'n'rolling. We were just doing what we were doing. It had no framework to it; we were just being who we were” (Vega)

Art farts toying with rock music, a trendy noise? Typical decadence of the New York school. Social rejects playing with hard drugs? No, more like an antidote. Avant garde? Not any more than just rock'n'roll. A two-man group out of social necessity and the irony of rock'n'roll? Maybe.

First there was a guitar player, but finally only the important remained. Vega's singing, talking, screaming, ranting and whispering. Rev's Vox Continental keyboard, rhythm box, space echo and amps.

The first show at Ungano's night club in '71; one half of the audience of 20 run out screaming during the first set. The shows were very free in form, and the sets could last 15 minutes or two hours. Visual psychodrama, monotony, cacophony, urban paranoia, nervous tension released, a promise of catharsis, theatre and rock. Rock?

Apart from Elvis and the Velvets and Iggy, that was it, plus Question Mark, obviously, Hendrix, Seeds, the Silver Apples, a two-man band from the '60's that no-one has heard of, who did this repetitive, almost Kraftwerk type of thing. Incredible. One of them played a thing called a Theremin or something, the other played drums. They were closer to the '80's than the Velvets were.

Silver Apples - Program

"Seeing “96 Tears” on “American Bandstand” was like holy shit for me, these 5 Mexican wet-backs in shades and black leather, junked out of their minds. The keyboard player was, like, 15: he was snorting so much glue he couldn't even move his fingers. That song is like the National Anthem as far as I'm concerned.” (Vega)

Galleries and clubs, the first bigger gig at the Mercer Arts Center in 1972, together with the New York Dolls, Wayne County and Jonathan Richman.

“The Mercer scene was incredible. The whole glitter scene was growing in there. They would have 5 or 6 bands playing in one night in all of the little theatres they had in the building. A typical night at the Mercer would be Wayne County, the Magic Tramps, the New York Dolls, maybe even a blues band.

The Magic Tramps- S & M Leather Queen

Then we came in. We'd do shows the same night as the Dolls. They'd be in one theatre and we'd be in the room next door. It was like putting World War II and the Industrial Revolution in adjacent rooms” (Rev)

Suicide wanted to squeeze a reaction out of its audiences, using force if necessary.

“One night at the Mercer, Marty decided he was going to hold on to one note for the whole night. But what a note! I went crazy as anything, jumping on people. Somebody tried to get me with a bottle on the head. There were more people on stage than there were in the audience: I'm dragging them off and Rev is still holding on to this note for a whole fucking hour! Then after the gig was over, the manager came running up to me with tears in his eyes, embracing me, saying “Alan, is this how you are going to make a living?” He actually felt sorry for me.”

“We both had an incredible need to do something different. Rev was in to the avant-garde jazz trip and I was coming from an art trip. He needed something more visual for his music and I needed something more musical for my art. Before us there was nothing, that's why we did it. We didn't hear that sound in our lives so we had to go out and do it. And they ignored us totally. We played for five years without even getting mentioned in the Village Voice. I used to say “Hey, Marty, did we just do this gig? Are we invisible? Are we dead?”

Gradually, the songs were honed and sharpened, but they never really got finished:

“With Suicide, I never knew what was going to happen. I never knew what Martin is going to play. I'll be ready to go into something and he'll shoot into something else entirely. That makes me do something theatrically and even lyrically” (Vega)

The music of Suicide often starts with a little, single sound, a chord pattern, a rhythm. It's repeated, it grows, revolves, spreads and embraces, with the heartbeat of rock'n'roll at its core.

“It can really get tedious listening to people doodling on keyboards without any rhythm” (Vega)

“It's always tedious to us, too, and that's why it was never our intention to be an experimental band for 30 minutes at a time, and have 20,000 keyboard artists standing at the same time and making a sound that one or two can play.” (Rev)

“It has the beat, but the beat is implicit – as you go round, it still hits a higher measure, a high spot on the curve of sound. It goes under, comes back round on itself. It's like when you walk out on the street, you are hit by 40,000 different sounds, but somewhere within is the New York beat. Suicide has spaces where you can put in your own beat and your own vocal. That was what drove people crazy. Everybody says it was minimal, but it had everything and more, it was very maximal. It's just that there were holes in it. In the early days, people would bring their own instruments, trombones and stuff, and play along. Even when people were throwing bottles and chairs at us, that was just their way of performing” (Vega)

Suicide made several recordings in a home studio, but it took five years before anything was released on vinyl. “Rocket USA”, something of a social protest against a nation feeding its youth to a war machinery, was released in 1976 on the first Max's Kansas City compilation of new wave acts, where it was drowned, as were the brilliant early Pere Ubu, under a heap of musical dross.

Some electro-enthusiasts and new wave fanatics may have felt a vague itch in their ears, but was that all? Surely punk was hip in New York in 76, and so Suicide has always been hip, or vice versa, hadn't it?

“The time was right. We were making New York music and people knew it deep down, but they really didn't want to know. Then what they were living with in the streets got so bad that they began to see Suicide as a form of entertainment....something really happened. We walked off the stage one night, and people applauded. We really didn't know what to do, it was uncomfortable after all that booing. We looked at each other – really stared – what is all this? We thought there was something wrong, were they waiting for another band? Maybe they didn't know it was Suicide? But they just kept applauding and that was the most uncomfortable moment in my life. I had been thrown at with just about everything, kicked and who knows what, and now they were just applauding and I didn't know what to do” (Vega)

An artist was a punk now, and a punk an artist. Vega was not afraid to give vent to his view of the situation:

“A lot of people come to New York with bucks in their pockets. Oh, I'm gonna live in the Bowery. I'm gonna play CBGBs. Oh, I'm poor. I'm therefore a punk. That's a majority of the scene in New York. Nice, comfy people with college degrees, going through the Rimbaud thing: Oh, I'm suffering....I'm suffering”

Suicide got its contract too, but behind it there was Marty Thau, the former New York Dolls manager and the owner of a new, sharp record company called Red Star.

The album “Suicide” from 77 is even today just as impressive as it was at the time of its release: a rough, even brutal, ugly yet beautiful, piece of work that speaks of love, anger, humanity and concern. A clear spoken, almost naïve record which often trips over its almost pathetic moments, but that never ceases to get back on its feet, time and time again. It also tells about those Suicide characters: Frankie Teardrop, a laid-off factory worker who murders his starving family;

Johnny, the eternal cool king rocker;

the mystic Motorcycle Ghost Rider, an American outlaw character if anything; a dying Che Guevara.

The passionate and breath-taking love songs are scattered among violence and suspension.

“Violence. That's what's happening all over the place. Everybody's blowing everybody else away, and who are these people? They're not maniacs. They're just ordinary people gone a little berserk because life got too hard for them....we were really pissed, politically and all ways else. Rev wanted to kill Nixon, bought a ticket to Washington to kill Nixon in the White House. I had to lock him in a room for a week because he'd just flipped, this real quiet guy. Essentially I'm shy and introverted too, but in Brooklyn it's like Cowboyland. You learn your smarts. If you don't have
a gun, man, you better have a rap”.

But now, back to the sound. Rev does thousands of tricks with his equipment, not using high-tech, but using touch. Those electrically amplified sounds reverberate with life. It's easy to find reference points on the album: the beginning and chord pattern of “Cheree” resembles “Stay With Me” by Lorraine Ellison.

Lorraine Ellison - Stay With Me

“Johnny” is structurally pure rock'n'roll, the chromatically descending motif of “Che” was used by Bach to symbolize death. As Rev manipulates a paradoxically laconic but rich sound collage out of his Farfisa and other gadgets, Vega puts the emphasis on intensity, a breathless 50's style rock'n'roll delivery, as well as mannerism, melancholy, and, when telling the story of poor Frankie Teardrop frying in the fiery pit of Hell, TORTURING SCREAMS that make you forget Morrison on “The End” and Iggy's “LA Blues”. “Suicide” is one of THE unforgettable, if not necessarily perfect, New York records.

“The beauty of Suicide was that it was the ultimate pop group, but it could never be pop. It pushed out the potential of what pop can be” (Vega)

Along the years, Suicide has experienced its share of just about everything, but the first European tour was, by all accounts, quite shocking. The year was 1978. The audiences were expecting New York punk. What they got was two cockroaches. Weird creeps who played a strange noise. That's what people seemed to think. First, Suicide guested at the tragi-comic science fiction festival of Metz in France, went on as support to Elvis Costello on his European tour, and finally joined The Clash for their On Parole tour. The punk mobs greeted the duo with spitting, bottles, anything that could be thrown. Some people seemed to think that punk and violence belonged together; Suicide objected strongly to that kind of philosophy.

“That Clash tour was like going to Hell. Talk about crazy audiences. I still wake up screaming sometimes from that one. It was the blood tour; every night we thought we were going to die. The crew would spend three hours during the sound check building a barricade in front of the stage for protection. And in just five minutes, these kids would just pile over on to the stage, ready to kill us. Funny, we thought England and Europe would be a little more hospitable!” (Vega)

The atmosphere, breaking glass, raging audiences, and, despite it all, the excellent music of Suicide can still be heard on a live album, originally meant for promotional use, and on a couple of re-issues.

“There's two things that people do when faced with something new – they either laugh their asses off or they want to beat the shit out of you. We usually got the latter.” (Vega)

All that wasn't anything new, really; embitterment and quitting would have been too easy. Perhaps the thought occurred to them at one point or another?

“A few million times” (Vega)

“No, if there was something else we could have given it up for, but there just never really was” (Rev)

“I still believe in artists; I still think artists are the most important thing in the world. But if they kill of all the artists, they're killing themselves, and that was the message behind Suicide. That's why I called the group Suicide too. I used to say if I'd called it Life, which is what it was, no one would have come to see us at all. You give people knowledge, entertainment, the pure thing, something for your mind, and you're never going to get sick. When people don't have that they live in mental hospitals because there's something wrong. Suicide was really about helping people through music and the theatre. People have actually told me I've helped them off drugs because of what I do on stage. I always thought we were doctors anyway.” (Vega)

Another album, also called “Suicide”, in 1980 was an obvious but enriched continuation of the first one. This time, there are signs of advanced studio technology, more tracks, and the unimpeachable production skills of Ric Ocasek of The Cars. But the substance itself is the same as earlier, and even the song titles reveal a great deal; “Diamonds, Fur Coat, Champagne”, “Mr. Ray”, “Fast Money Music”, “Harlem”, “Be-Bop Kid”, “Las Vegas Man”. The wonderful single “Dream Baby Dream” won't let anybody forget it.

“”Dream Baby Dream” has so much feeling, it could be a gigantic hit song. Probably will be, someday, when we're dead. When they don't have to look at us.” (Vega)

The years 1980-81 brought about a new stage in Suicide. It had now gone on for some 10 years, made 2 precious albums, a couple of singles and played countless gigs. It was time for a change of method, time to divert creative talent elsewhere.

As early as 1980, Rev made a solo album, “Martin Rev”, and another one in 1985, “Clouds Of Glory”. Pretty much like Suicide without Vega.

“It was sort of second and third generation Americana being told through its landscapes. It went beyond the land and way back into a kind of pictorial, biblical, visual representation, like the way Renaissance paintings were basically taking place in the sky, not on land, and you had many forms counter-reacting against each other, while others remained solo, all in their own world whilst also relating to the form next to them.” (Rev)

Vega concentrated on sculpture and had several shows in New York. His works have always been in the shape of a crucifix.

“I always liked it. If there's two infinite lines meet at the one time in their existences. I guess like Suicide, it's two guys, maybe it's two lines, crossing each others lives at a certain point. All phenomenal meetings of people are like that.”

During the 80's, Vega made 4 solo LPs, after incendiary neo-rockabilly (“Alan Vega” and “Collision Drive”), modern urban rock (“Saturn Strip”) and finally hollow techno-rock swollen by the financial calculations of the record company (“Just A Million Dreams”), which was followed by a swift kick in the pants as Vega turned out to be no bonanza sales wise. Ironically, in the 80's, that is to say the age of dead electric pop pap, dumb synth bands whose names don't belong on these pages, have been catapulted into mega-success by utilising the pioneering sound of Suicide. As for Suicide, it has stayed clear of the stardom spotlight. There have been occasional concerts and reunion gigs in 81, 84, 85, 86 and 87. ROIR has released one show on a cassette only album. A new LP produced by Ocasek is in the pipeline, and some lucky folk may have seen the duo on their recent trip to the UK.

“It doesn't matter if we were misunderstood or not, we just did what we did. We took the shit for it, knowing there was a reason why it was happening. We knew we were doing something pretty heavy. I mean, we could empty a whole house in three minutes! I used to be able to empty a house by just walking out on stage before the music started. There had to be a Suicide at that time and place. There might be a Suicide now, the way this music business is going. It's time for another injection of some kind”. (Vega)

“We used to kid each other, we figured if we just quit for five years, we probably wouldn't lose a thing. The fact is we're not making a comeback. We've always been here. It's the audience that's been away.” (Rev)

“I can make sounds with radios that'll still outstrip anything that anybody else could do with a synthesiser. I think it's a joke. I think this whole high-tech thing is just fucking seductive. Rev still doesn't have it, this new technology. He's got a Prophet synth and he makes it sound like a Vox. He turns everything back into a Vox, that $10 Jap keyboard Suicide started with.” (Vega)

“It would be nice to come across something hot, something really new, but that just aint happening. The younger people who have a mind to enter the music business have an attitude problem, an impediment that restricts them from working outside a hit formula. The basic strength to starve, and the insanity of youth is gone, swallowed up by outside pressures and tunnel vision. These kids have no delusions or illusions. Uncharted territory such as Suicide explored just isn't given any thought. It's as if there are no challenges left, everything just gets recycled. It's that kind of world.” (Vega)

There is, however, no need to say goodbye to the subject in an atmosphere of defeat, depression and indifference. Suicide has never really stopped.

“When you hear Suicide, it still sounds like nothing on earth. There is still an anger, still a statement, just crazier than ever. The only problem is that this time around we might get accepted. There's more to fight against now in that sense.” (Vega)

“It's like working on a painting that you've been doing all your life, just changing colours and images. Suicide is becoming clearer to me now. I can hear why it was different and it's now enabling me to go back to the basics. There IS something more to say.” (Rev)

(with a secret handshake to a few gentlemen of the press)

Music That Moves Me by Epic Soundtracks

2011-05-04T22:09:00.002+01:00

Late 1995 and through the post comes a package from Epic including a photocopy of his contribution to Rolling Stone magazine's "Alt-Rock-A-Rama" which was eventually published in 1996, and a note....

"Hey Chris

Here's my piece

Dig it Man!

Epic"

And here is that piece, together with "videos" of the tracks he selects....all bar one. If anybody has a copy of Harold Smith's Majestic Choir - “We Can All Walk A Little Bit Prouder” single from 1968, it would be pretty cool if you could rustle me up an MP3 of it. Thank-you.

And with that, we're back....

Music That Moves Me

by Epic Soundtracks

Epic Soundtracks (aka Paul Godley) began playing music in 1972 and made his first record in 1977 as drummer with the influential Swell Maps, which also included his brother Nikki Sudden. More recently Epic has re-emerged as a singer, songwriter, and piano player, recording solo albums that reflect many of the influences discussed below.

The last time I sat down and wrote about music was in 1984. I interviewed Alex Chilton for the 'zine What A Nice Way To Turn Seventeen and the now defunct Sounds. Before that I wrote a long sprawling article on Brian Wilson and the effect his music had on me.

Trying to put down on paper just exactly why you like a particular piece of music isn't the easiest thing in the world. I was planning to just jot down an enormous list of stuff I liked, but the editors of this book wouldn't let me do that. “You've got to say why you like it!” Okay, I gave in.

I also couldn't mention everything I like, so what you get are just the first things that came into my head. My favourite music changes according to my general state of mind, but hopefully there are a few different areas covered here. And there are other records I could easily have included; “I Just Wasn't Made For These Times” by the Beach Boys, “A Change Is Gonna Come” by Sam Cooke, “Babe I'm Gonna Leave You” by Led Zeppelin, “Gimme Shelter” by the Stones, “There Was A Time” by James Brown, “Let It Rock” by Chuck Berry, “Wailing Wall” by Todd Rundgren and “I'm Only Sleeping” by the Beatles.

Oh yeah, I left out the Kinks, the Impressions, Aretha Franklin, Don Covay, Carole King, the Stooges...I better stop...this is becoming a list.

T Rex - “Baby Strange” (from The Slider) 1972

I first started buying records in 1972. At my school at the time you were either into “serious rock” or “teeny bopper stuff”. Thing is, I liked music from both of these invented categories. I loved Free and Led Zep and I loved T.Rex also. I was either very broad-minded or very confused. I loved the Carpenters...hmmm...”Say You Don't Mind” and “I Don't Believe In Miracles” by Colin Blunstone...there was some logical thread running through my mind at the time I suppose. Another amazing record that sticks in my mind is Kevin Ayers' “Song From The Bottom Of A Well” with its eerie guitar sound that sonically captures the song title so well.

Anyway, I liked a lot of stuff then that sounds more than just a little ridiculous now, but I have certain affection for it in my own muddled way. Now if someone at school had had some Big Star or James Carr to lend me...pretty unlikely though. Whatever, I'm rambling. I mentioned T.Rex. Electric Warrior, The Slider, Bolan Boogie. Classic records with classic sleeves. T.Rex sound as fresh to me today as they did then. An aural melting pot for everything rock & roll had been up till that point, but at the same time nothing like anything else. There were various elements cooked up by Marc Bolan and producer Tony Visconti in this particular musical stew; boogie rhythms, Sun lap-back echo, deep strings, honking saxophones, cool guitar licks, hand-claps, surreal backing voices, ever so slightly altered R & B riffs, and a few bricks borrowed from Phil Spector's Wall Of Sound. On top of this there was Marc Bolan's non macho/macho vocalizing. Big Star had the taste to cover T.Rex's “Baby Strange” in the early seventies. Now that must mean something.

Can - “Pinch” (from Ege Bamyasi) 1972

What is this music? Rock? Jazz? Avant Garde? Who cares? Can never got hung up about labels so why should we? There's so much going on in this track. I must have heard it hundreds ot times but I still hear new things. Can were formed in Germany in 1968, originally with black New Yorker Malcolm Mooney as vocalist, then between 1970 and '73 with Japanese former busker Damo Suzuki with his wonderful scat pidgin English vocalizing. This is my favourite period of Can, the albums Tago Mago, Ege Bamyasi, Future Days...check them out. Unlike anything that had really gone before. Hypnotic, unfolding all the time. Can sure knew how to explore and exploit a good groove.

They soaked up a million different influences. There's bits of James Brown, V.U., musics from every time and every place, ancient and modern, but it all came out sounding like nobody else...except...Can.

Faces - “Ooh La La” (from Ooh La La) 1973

Rod Stewart and the Faces seem to sound better with each passing year. You realise there'll never be another band quite like them. It's almost as if they were so busy having a good time that they didn't even realise just how great and lasting their music really was. There was nothing intellectual about the Faces, but they sure knew how to play it from the heart.

There's something so English about them and yet a lot of their influences were so obviously American, especially Rod's love of Soul legend Sam Cooke. Ron Wood's guitar playing from ths period is so unique, just listen to his work on a track like “Just Another Honky” from Ooh La La. There's so much great music on the Faces and early Rod albums (which usually feature most if not all of the band). The title song of Ooh La La actually has Ron Wood handling the lead vocal and has been one of my favourite songs for a long time. There's something so down home and relaxed (but not laid back) about it. Try finding some bootlegs of Faces live shows. They overflow with good times. May their music live on forever.

MC5 - “Sister Anne” (from High Time) 1971

Total sonic overload. Truly one of the most transcendental moments in rock & roll. If I'm in the mood for a party, this is one of the records I grab for, crank up and kick out the jams to! Can't say much else....

Alex Chilton - “My Rival” (from Like Flies On Sherbert) 1979

One of Alex's best songs from a much-maligned album full of songs dealing in sexual innuendo, jealousy, revenge and so on. The lyrics of “My Rival” are to the point. My rival, I'm gonna stab him on arrival, shoot him dead with my rifle”. The backing by Jim Dickinson and his cohorts is sloppy in the extreme, but raw and alive. The music threatens to fall apart at every moment, just teetering on the edge but somehow hangs together. Most people probably hear this stuff and just hear a chaotic din, but when you're familiar with other records that these guys have made, you'll know there's more to it than that. It takes a lot of talent to play music as badly as this! For those familiar with Big Star's Sister Lovers, I guess the musical missing link between the two albums could well be “Walking Dead”, a controlled piece of mayhem that was recorded in 1975 and eventually surfaced on the Lost Decade album.

Frank Sinatra - “Blues In The Night” (from Frank Sinatra Sings For Only The Lonely) 1958

To me, Sinatra's Only The Lonely album stands above all his other work, with the closest set being In The Wee Small Hours. This is a dark, bluesy, late-night album. The singing is emotional and expressive and Nelson Riddle's arrangements are suitably deep. Sinatra had recorded some of these songs earlier in his career but they never sounded quite like this. Basically he sings as if he's been there...which he no doubt had. “Blues In The Night” is one great performance on a record full of them.

Laura Nyro and Labelle - “Desiree” (from Gonna Take A Miracle) 1971

The essential Laura Nyro albums are her first, originally titled More Than A New Discovery, a self-composed set of pop/soul classics, and Gonna Take A Miracle, a perfect collection of soul covers showing the roots of her style.

Laura's voice harmonises beautifully with those of Labelle, especially on gorgeous cuts like “The Bells” and “Desiree”. We hear an evocative, sparse arrangement – the voices virtually carrying the whole track. A heavenly sound.

Slim Harpo - “Tip On In” (from Tip On In) 1968

Slim Harpo is one of the very best rhythm & blues artists. This is such a cool groove...the way the guitar works with the bass and drums. It's subtle and lazy but funky. I dig this stuff: “Te-Ni-Nee-Ni-Nu”, “Shake Your Hips”. Slim Harpo is an important figure in the scheme of things. Ask Alex Chilton...ask the Stones.

The Replacements - “The Last” (from All Shook Down) 1990

Paul Westerberg is my favourite songwriter from post-punk America. I like the way the Replacements came out of the hardcore scene but wore all their influences on their sleeves; bubblegum pop, R & B, Faces-y rock & roll, Beatles, Led Zep and, of course, a little Big Star. There's not much abut the 'Mats that was new wave, which is why they'll age a lot better than most of their contemporaries. Key songs are “If Only You Were Lonely”, “Swingin' Party” and “Achin' To Be”. This is my favourite, however. From the last 'Mats album (though really the first Westerberg solo album), this song is a real heartbreaker. Right out there on the edge...but subtly so.

Ike and Tina Turner - “Doin' It” (from Come Together) 1970

In the same way that “River Deep, Mountain High” wasn't a smash hit in America because it was too pop for the R & B charts and too R & B for the pop chats, Ike and Tina Turner seem to have been overlooked by a lot of people who should (and probably would) really dig some of their stuff. From 1970, the Come Together album is a red hot mixture of R & B, rock & roll and soul styles. Alternatively rockin' and/or low-down and dirty in all the right places, and always tight. Come Together kicks off great with “It Aint Right (Lovin' tTo Be Lovin')” and ends with “Doin' It”, one of the best sleazy tracks ever recorded (along with “Take It Off” by Groundhog Richardson). It would be nice if Ike Turner could go down in the history books for his contribution to music rather than all that other stuff. Underrated.

Harold Smith's Majestic Choir - “We Can All Walk A Little Bit Prouder” (single) 1968

A totally over-the -top joyous sound; gospel-choir-drenched R & B. It kind of reminds me of the Right On Be Free album by the Voices Of East Harlem from a couple of years later. This is the sort of record you put on really loud first thing in the morning to start the day off on the right track.

Arthur Alexander - “Rainbow Road” (from Arthur Alexander) 1972

Written by the great Dan Penn and his sometime collaborator Donnie Fritts, this classic song is sung by the late Arthur Alexander as only he could have. Alexander had a beautiful country-tinged, soulful voice. It had a certain vulnerability which made it unique. You an feel the bad luck the man had in his life when you hear him sing. Record company rip-offs and bad deals made Alexander shy away from the music industry to the extent that he made relatively few recordings in his over thirty-year recording career. He was an important influence on more than a few, however, as John Lennon would no doubt have testified. Alexander was a great songwriter himself, giving the world classics like “You Better Move On”, “Anna (Go To Him)”, “Everyday I Have To Cry” and “Mr. John”. In 1993 Alexander released his first record for years, and he hadn't lost his magic. Tragically, though, he died soon afterwards. “Rainbow Road” from the early seventies, sounds as achingly beautiful now as it did then. It was never a hit; in fact it was never even a single. But it was, and always will be, a classic.

Gram Parsons - “She” (from GP) 1973

The late Gram Parsons. A walking contradiction. An angel on one shoulder, a devil on the other...sounds like someone I could have related to. Gram's voice hangs on a thread on “She”, a sublime country ballad with lilting melody, subtle rhythmic shifts and gorgeous chord changes. Just hearing the way Gram sings the word “Hallelujah” is enough to make the most fervent unbeliever put their faith in the Lord above. Gram's singing was always so assured and yet so naked and fragile. I once had the honour of meeting Keith Richards and asked him about Gram: “Man, I never been so angry about anyone checkin' out early as that guy...he was totally on the right track.” Keith sounded sad when he said this, thinking of his friend who had slipped away in 1973. I guess Keith was made of stronger stuff than Gram, the visionary Southern boy who was blessed with good looks and charm as well as a burning love of soulful music, particularly of the country variety. He also had a lust for hedonistic excess, but he wouldn't have been Gram if he hadn't. Listen to any number of songs; the good feeling of “Older Guys” or the heartbreakers “A Song For You” or “Brass Buttons”, and you'll know why Gram Parsons is one of the greatest artists ever.

Dion - “Your Own Backyard” (from Born To Be With You) 1970

Such a powerful song. Such a powerful performance. An ex-junkie sings about how good he now feels to have kicked his habit. But nothing about Dion's song is preachy. He's telling you about his own experiences, he's not telling anybody what to do. When Columbia signed Dion DiMucci in 1962, he was still hot property. A seemingly clean-cut teen idol with just a hint of Bronx street suss. The label tried to groom him for the MOR market, but little did they know he was going to veer off down his own idiosyncratic path, experimenting with and absorbing blues and folk forms. Initially Dion continued with the stomping doo-wop sound which had given him smash hits like “The Wanderer” with the Belmonts for Laurie Records. He soon stopped having hits, however, and lost a large percentage of his audience, as his records became more and more “un-Dion”. In 1967 he got back with the Belmonts for the bizarre reunion album Together Again. Sort of like the missing link between the Velvet Underground and doo-wop (amongst other things). The Dion album from 1968 is strange, consisting of sparse, haunting arrangements of mostly other people's songs. “Your Own Backyard” dates from 1970 and was originally available only on a single, but a few years later was added to a bunch of mostly Phil Spector-produced cuts for the underrated Born To Be With You album (1975). I believe this song to be one of the best I've ever heard. The backing includes another of my idols, Jim Dickinson, uncredited, on piano. This is an inspiring record.. It's real. Try and hear it.

A Brief Sojourn

2011-04-09T08:31:00.008+01:00

As I've just started a new job, one which requires a degree of focus, I'm taking a couple of weeks break from the blog.

I think folks will get by without us.

Hank by Adam Turkel

Song Eleven - Mercury Rev - "Silver Street"

2011-03-31T19:17:00.000+01:00

Mercury Rev cover Nikki Sudden's "Silver Street" to exceptional effect.

Johnny Thunders - "Cosa Nostra Never Sleeps" by Nina Antonia

2011-03-31T18:52:00.000+01:00

Johnny Thunders & Jerry Nolan

Back in 1985, I was put in touch with Nina Valez Guidio (aka Nina Antonia) to discuss a proposal that we should do a special issue of what A Nice Way To Turn Seventeen dedicated to Johnny Thunders. Nina was working on what would become “Johnny Thunders; In Cold Blood”, the official biography, that was eventually published in 1987 by Jungle Books. I was a fan of The Heartbreakers especially and held a slightly morbid fascination of the self-destructive tendencies of Johnny Thunders. More importantly, I loved the “Hurt Me” album that had come out in 1983 and I'd been at the Heartbreakers' March 1984 reunion shows in Nottingham (still one of the best live shows I ever saw) and London (as described below – an interesting show shall we say – glad I'd seen them in Nottingham though......).

He'd appeared in issue 1 and issue 2 of WANWTTS with both pieces, “Heartbreaker! Hipshaker! Troublemaker! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!” and “My Guitar Never Sleeps” (originally titled “Diary Of A Motherfucker” but my printers refused to print unless I changed the title....), by Pedro Mercedes. We'd taken a break from him in issue 3 and this special issue would be #4. It seemed like a natural fit so we went for it, printed up 1,000 copies and pretty much sold them in no time at all. I even set up a stall in the foyer of the Marquee at a Thunders show, to sell copies. In walks Johnny and entourage – I'd not previously met him – and he's steered towards the table behind which I nervously waited. Briefest of introductions ensues, I'm tongue tied as usual, I hand him a couple of copies and off he goes to the dressing rooms. My one and only direct encounter with Mr Johnny Thunders.

I've excerpted Part Five from the magazine, the last part.

Johnny Thunders - "Cosa Nostra Never Sleeps" by Nina Antonia

January 1984 is spent in Sweden. Being linked to every kind of sonofabitch baby eating drug craze fiend from Hell hasn't injured Johnny's commercial potential in that country one bit. In fact the opposite holds true, as “Hurt Me” quickly climbs the national charts. 15,000 copies are shifted worldwide in its first two weeks of release.

London February 1984

Tony James mixes Billy Rath's bass line out of its original quicksand on “Pirate Love”. Thunders nods his approval and starts listening to the playback. The pair are in Greenhouse Studios, hunched alternately across the mixing desk or around the heater, trying to restore “L.A.M.F.” to what it should always have sounded like. Thunders chains himself to the tapes, ignoring the early morning chill that has everyone else present huddled into coats or blankets.

The latest in an endless line of cigarettes hanging from his lips, he pounds his fists on his knees, mixing the drum opening to “Born To Lose” “Do it harder. Harder. The first crash has gotta be harder – really bangy!”

Re-mixed "Born To Lose" from "L.A.M.F. Revisited"

Christopher arrives, pleased at the productivity around him. The present situation, for perhaps the first time in almost a decade, allows for a careful optimism.

During 1983, Thunders played 45 concerts, established himself with production work, and now, less than a month distant, a Heartbreakers reunion concert is planned, with a live album and a video due from the results of it.

Christopher Gierke; “They have new openings – films, videos, records...they've got the talent and energy, with more experience....as long as they keep away from drugs...”

The Heartbreakers pull off an unexpected coup on the ears of England when, on March 24^th, Radio One's Richard Skinner plays (the censored) “Get Off The Phone” as a preface to interviewing Johnny on his show. Johnny makes sure to get in a few plugs for “Hurt Me”, until Skinner asks if, in fact, it's true that...

Skinner - “...Walter's working as a commodity broker on Wall Street?”

Johnny - “Believe it or not, yeah.”

Skinner - “He's having a quick vacation with The Heartbreakers?”

Johnny - “He goes back to work on Wednesday.”

The Lyceum. London's Strand.
25^th March 1984 .

The day of the re-united Heartbreakers' London concert.

Walter Lure crosses one leather bound leg over the other in an effort to get comfortable in the dressing room's narrow chair. He hunts through the pockets of his long blue overcoat for a cigarette; mumbles about how he should have washed his hair, and pushes it under his cap before picking up his guitar to pose for a photograph for me. It's a long way back to Wall Street.....

Johnny & Walter

I ask him what he thinks of the re-mixed “L.A.M.F.” and he shrugs;

WL - “I haven't heard it yet. Everyone who has says it's good but I've not heard it.”

NA - “I was there in the studio when they were doing it.”

WL - “Yeah? Did it sound better?”

NA – “It did....but you know, in the studio, you just hear bits and bobs...”

WL - “Yeah, that's the problem. See, even when we did the original, it sounded great in the studio, but as soon as it went on a record, it sounded fucked up. We couldn't get around that; every time we gave them a new tape, it sounded screwed up, so I don't know what went wrong....the pressing or the mixing...I'll have to see when this thing comes out if it really does sound better.”

NA - “Are you looking forward to playing tonight?

WL - “Ummm....that'll be fun. There's so much audience. We got a video tape goin', we got a new live album....if we blow it, it's gonna be a nightmare. But it should be okay. Something might come out of it...deals, tours, something like that. I could quit my job and go back to being a musician again, but....until that time comes....I'll struggle along.

Nightfall.

As the minibus deposits them at the Lyceum's back entrance, Billy cocks an appraising eyebrow at the solid block that winds straight down the Strand, as far as it's possible to see.

Photos of Johnny by Nina Antonia

The addition of a recording and film crew had perhaps un-nerved Thunders slightly. Whatever the reason, he sinks eight large vodkas before leading the band on-stage, to the theme music from “The Man With The Golden Gun”.

The Man With The Golden Gun - Lulu

It's the ultimate rock'n'roll line-up, and the audience, packed in SO tightly, knows it. Before the tumultuous cheering, stamping of feet and hurtling of beer cans has even slowed, the Heartbreakers have launched straight into “Pipeline”, Johnny's unofficial anthem.

The original "Pipeline" by The Chantays

These men breathe style; their chemical reaction with one another is viciously lethal. The unspoken aggravation between Lure and Thunders' guitars provides a sound with a potency as shocking as kissing an electric grill, both taking turns on lead with equal ease and urgency.

At one point during the set, Johnny walks over and kicks out at the bass player's legs. Rath's venomous glare is enough to instantly send Thunders pirouetting to stage front like a demented prima donna.

Jerry Nolan, as ever, ignores the antics of his colleagues and pounds out the beat behind their electric/emotional games, consummating the event; the guitars are in a blistering interplay of steely arrows of noise over Rath's throbbing bass.

There is something dark and hilariously sinister about watching this rabid, sexy pack of debauchees singing “Seven Day Weekend”, gloating like a street gang over a stray freshman tasking them directions.

Thunders cuts short his acoustic spot; “Awwrite....that's enough of this shit....I'll get th' boys back on...”

The Boys

The Heartbreakers are back, gunning from the lower levels; time has made them harder.

Thunders is drunk...

Rath looks annoyed....

Lure looks nonchalantly bored...

Nolan looks as unmoved and unbeatable as ever...

Johnny decides, during a guitar pause in “So Alone” to add a touch of blasphemy to his list of public sins. He tells us a moving tale of the kid on the Lower East Side who gets fucked by “the big black guy in leathers”. Thunders then piously makes the sign of the cross before intoning slowly:

“Our father who art in Heaven, Hallowed be Thy name....fuck you!”

Photo by Nina Antonia

Johnny Thunders. The Heartbreakers. Nobody else even comes close to their shadows, and their souls were pawned long ago.

Nina Guidio

1985

EPILOGUE

by Pedro Mercedes

Following The Heartbreakers' re-union shows, Waldo returned to Wall Street, and Sylvain Sylvain joined Johnny'n'Jerry'n'Billy for J.T.'s “Revenge '84” tour of Sweden. During the tour, new songs were previewed (including “Countdown Love”, “Size Ten Shoes” and “Have Faith”). On completing a tour of Europe and the Soviet Union, Johnny returned triumphant to London for “Thunders Week” at The Marquee, showcasing Thunders at his best.

Sylvain had to return to NYC prior to the London shows due to family matters. Johnny recorded two songs with Patti Palladin, “Crawfish”, an old Elvis number from “King Creole” and an original, “Tie Me Up” (re-titled “Love Not”). After a few dates around the country, Jerry'n'Billy quit Johnny to return to domestic life in Sweden. Johnny had been booked on a double headlining nationwide UK tour with Finnish refugees Hanoi Rocks.

"Crawfish" by Elvis Presley

"Crawfish" by Johnny Thunders & Patti Palladin

A new band was hastily assembled, Terry Chimes (drums), Keith Jon (bass), Dick Trueman (guitar). Next on the schedule were dates in Germany, in December. Only Keith Jon remained. Tony St. Helene (drums) and Henri-Paul (guitar) were drafted in. 1984 ended and Johnny had played a total of 95 concerts during the year.

Song Ten - The Jacobites - "The First Cut Is The Deepest"

2011-03-28T22:22:00.000+01:00

From the Jacobites limited edition "Kiss Of Life" LP, a fairly magical version of the Cat Stevens song.

Song Nine - Swell Maps - "Read About Seymour"

2011-03-28T21:58:00.000+01:00

All over in one minute 26 seconds. It seems 1977 had its moments.....

Nikki Sudden - Mental Punk Rock Diaries

2011-03-26T21:06:00.000Z

Photo: Diptychon:XVI Face A Nikki Sudden Untitled by Robert Maria Quickborn

"Went to bed after finishing at least one bottle of port. Fell asleep to the strangest dreams possible. One of them involved my friend, Dave Burns, who died a few months or so back. He was standing there - wherever it was it wasn't on earth - wearing a beautiful suit from some material I gave him years ago. He told me that he was really enjoying myself. I asked if I could see my brother - to be told that he was busy. I was asked if I'd like to stay, but I said I couldn't. I've had these kind of dreams a few times since Epic died - with him asking me to come with him. I told my mother of this and she said, 'Don't go...' Sometimes it seems that it would be so easy to slip over. But then you leave despair behind... "

This was Nikki in his journal for May 2004. The Dave Burns to whom he refers is none other than Desperate Dave, and it is he I have to thank for this piece (and its title) by Nikki. He'd persuaded him to record some thoughts on the early days of punk for "some kind of posterity". Though initially hesitant to do so, what he came up with ended up appearing in "Gobbing Pogoing And Gratuitous Bad Language", an anthology of punk stories published in 1996 by Spare Change Books, run by Robert Dellar. The collection largely consisted of punk related fiction (contributors also included Mark Perry, Poppy Z Brite and Robert Wyatt) though Nikki's, obviously, was factual.

Thanks to Robert Dellar for letting us reprint.

Before we get to the article, we should add that there is also, of course, the recently published "The Last Bandit - A Rock'n'Roll Life", Nikki's autobiography, available from http://www.easyaction.co.uk/. You might not be surprised to hear that it is a mighty fine and pretty exhaustive memoir from the prolific late 20th century wandering minstrel that was Mr. Adrian Nicholas Godfrey.

Nikki Sudden - Mental Punk Rock Diaries

The first “punk” gig I went to was one of the early Sex Pistols shows – this one being at the Nashville Rooms in West Kensington where they were supporting the 101ers. I remember thinking at the time how old Joe Strummer looked (with his big bushy sideboards) and how dated the 101ers sounded in contrast to the fresher sounds of the Pistols. One thing I remember from the show is thinking of the Pistols; “they sound just the same a we do”. “We” being the nascent Swell Maps who in early 1976 were still in the process of rehearsing in each other's houses much to the chagrin of our respective parents. We had various songs in place by that time which would become staples of the Maps live and recorded set – including “Winter Rainbow”, “Forest Fire” and “City Boys” (later retitled “Dresden Style”).

At the time I was living in London – in Wimbledon – and working at the Vintage Magazine Shop in Earlham Street. Customers in those days ranged from Nik Turner (Hawkwind) to Don Letts (in pre-”Punk Rock Movie” and B.A.D. Days), from Michael Palin (researching for “Ripping Yarns”) to John Thaw (still in his “Sweeney” role), and from Jesse Hector (then in the Hammersmith Gorillas and on the lookout for 60's Beatles magazines) to Stewart Grainger and Denis Norden (though I'm sure the latter would rather not be reminded of his purchases).

It was a heady time in 1975 and '76 and I remember one time after having just seen the film “Cabaret”, wandering up Oxford Street and saying to my friend Frank Posner (son of the Vintage Magazine Shop owner Danny Posner) that I could feel the times were becoming as decadent, in London at the very least, as they were in 1930's Berlin. And so began my fantasy love of Berlin, later to develop into a full term romance in the mid '80's when I visited, and later lived in, the most brilliant city on the world's face. But that's another story.

Anyway, my first Pistols gig (which I'd gone to after reading a review of the band in the New Musical Express) was to open my eyes to the real decadence going down in early 1976. And this was the gig that ended up on the cover of Melody Maker a week later, with Jordan and Vivienne Westwood getting involved in a fracas in front of the stage (I met Vivienne at a Sticky Fingers party in the early '90's and spent much of the evening berating her for Malcolm McLaren's treatment of Johnny Thunders in the mid to late '70's – she insisted it wasn't her fault or indeed her problem, but I was doubly tenacious and refused to give her an inch – still, a very nice lady, when all is said and done). I even took a photo of the band at the Nashville – it being my fashion in those days to - whenever possible – take at least one photo of very band I saw – something that became more and more de rigeur as punk days went on.

So I was left with very distinct impressions of the Sex Pistols from that one show – I later saw another two shows by the band, both at the 100 Club on Oxford Street. So, returning home to the Swell Maps then base of Solihull in Warwickshire, I proceeded to tell my fellow band members of this great influential group I'd seen. To further emphasise the point I arranged a version of Chuck Berry's “Almost Grown” which I proceeded to sing in a Johnny Rotten style for the band. This was the only way I could think of getting across his particular vocal style – meshed-cockney as it was. Though he later disowned the statement, I remember my brother Epic being singularly unimpressed when we first heard “Anarchy In The U.K.” on Radio One's John Peel programme – the first airing it received in Great Britain. He complained it just wasn't powerful enough – or at least not as powerful as he'd been led to believe.

Swell Maps Live in Rotterdam 1979

Swell Maps went on to play their first ever gig on Boxing day 1977 at the so-called “24 Hour Punk All Dayer” at Barbarellas in Birmingham – partially due to the Sex Pistols influence but also due to the example provided by the Desperate Bicycles who showed how anybody could go into a studio to record and release a single. Before being appraised of this we didn't realise that a band could book a studio by themselves and that studio recording wasn't the impenetrable business it had seemed to be. Had we known we would have recorded earlier than September 14^th 1977 when we went into Spaceward Studio in Cambridge to record our first single “Read About Seymour”, which was pressed up just before Christmas 1977 for release in January 1978 – this still though made it one of the first independent singles to be released. Though not early enough to guarantee it the sales in excess of 5,000 that those very first independent singles amassed. At least it went on to sell over 10,000 copies over the next few years, largely due to our first John Peel session (the first of three over the next two years).

Swell Maps - "Read About Seymour"

John Peel had played “Read About Seymour” about 14 times on his Radio One show so I had approached him about a possible session. The answer came back that we should submit a reel to reel ¼ inch tape to the BBC (they had no cassette machines at Radio One in those days). This I managed to do in the days following the reply – I dropped the tape off at Broadcasting House reception – and received a phone call a couple of days later asking us to go into the BBC's Maida Vale Studios to record a session. It was that easy. We recorded the session – it was broadcast and a few days later I walking into the Rough Trade shop on Kensington Park Road, and was asked if I had any further copies of “Read About Seymour” that they could have. We'd managed to shift about 1,000 of the 2,200 we'd had pressed by this date (around end October 1978). Rough Trade asked if they could take the balance to sell. And sell them they did.

"Midget Submarines" - Video compiled by my little brother Nik Coleman

We used the money from our Peel session to record the first half of our first album “A Trip To Marineville” which in due course I played to Geoff Travis from Rough Trade Records, who insisted they be allowed to put up the money for us to complete the album, and for them to be able to release it on their label. This being despite the fact that their first album release, Stiff Little Fingers' “Inflammable Material” had not yet come out and they were in severe financial straits.

The album was duly finished and released in July 1979, preceded by the single “Dresden Style” in March, and met with rave reviews, including “Album Of The Year” in Smash Hits magazine. It went on to sell in excess of 20,000 copies and reach the top of the newly instigated Independent Charts.

All, in a way, due to seeing the Sex Pistols at the Nashville Rooms in May of 1976.

Nikki Sudden

28th February 1995

Nikki Sudden 19th July 1956 - 26th March 2006

Never Forgotten, Always Missed.

Song Eight - Nikki Sudden - "Forest Fire"

2011-03-25T23:19:00.000Z

attack!

Attack!

ATTACK!

Nikki Sudden (19th July 1956 - 26th March 2006) - "America, You Listening?" by Chris Seventeen

2011-03-25T11:31:00.000Z

I write this on the eve of the fifth anniversary of Nikki Sudden's passing on 26th March 2006. I have no doubt I am one of many friends and fans who miss him enormously.

Rest assured the folks in my house will be lifting a glass of port in his memory tomorrow.

Back in the mid to late 1980's I was doing my bit to try and get my friend Nikki Sudden a higher profile in the States. I guess I'd come to the conclusion that the UK was long since a vain errand, that mainland Europe had embraced him already, and that now, the Land Of The Free stood a chance of being more open to what he was doing. To be fair, the obvious interest from, and regard in which he was held by, The Replacements' Paul Westerberg at least served somewhat as a pointer for me.

So at the invitation of Art Black and Monica Dee of (Hoboken, New Jersey) fanzine "Away From The Pulsebeat", I wrote a kind of background and introduction to Nikki. This appeared in their early 1988 edition which also included a four track, four band single featuring Nikki (Redd Kross, feedtime, and Broken Jug were the other three). Here's the song he gave them:

Nikki Sudden & The Jacobites - "Flower Bed Romance"

(from the Away From The Pulsebeat EP)

And here's the article:

About a year ago, those frivolous popsters Sonic Youth visited a glitzy, gaudy and gratingly noisy club in the Midlands city of Leicester, There ensued quite the most thrilling and intense performance this fey spirit ever did witness, made more memorable by the masochistic pain inflicted by the sheer, shrill, razor-sharp edge of the sound on a truly EVIL toothache.

I'd been dragged along not quite unwilling but most certainly uncertain by one Epic Soundtracks, who on a recent tour of America with his band Crime & The City Solution, had met and be-friended the man they call Thurston. And so it was with this link established that prior to the show, and to escape quite the most ear-shattering “alternative” disco you'll ever hear – from the Damned to the Dickies – that we sallied forth with said Thurston, the demurely delectable Kim, Blast First supremo Paul Smith and Lee Ranaldo to sample the delights of Leicester's night-life.

AMERICANS IN LEICESTER CULTURE SHOCK HORROR PROBE

Where are the 24 hour pet shops? What about the late movie shows? And bars, sorry, pubs closing at 10.30? Sheesh!

And so, by this circuitous but quite reasonable route we reach THE POINT. Yes there was rhyme and reason in introducing The Sonic Youth into the scenario. Y'see, starting a few years back, and continuing to this day, Thurston's been a bit of a Swell Maps fan, and he was anxious to obtain a couple of rare singles which young Epic kindly provided for him to take back to New York, and no doubt share the aural delight with another avowed Maps aficionado Mr Jim Foetus.

SO DON'T YOU THINK YOU OUGHT TO KNOW MORE ABOUT THESE SWELL MAPS CHAPS?

Well, there just happens to be readily available starting point out there for you, in the shape of the recently (May 1987) released “Train Out Of It”, a collection of deleted singles and unreleased material, out as part of the Antar Seventies Nostalgia Series. It's a labour of love undertaken by another long-term Maps-head, Cally, manager of yet one more inspired by the magic of the Maps, Mister Julian Cope. Buy this and you'll start to understand the importance, the significance and the influence of Swell Maps.

Together in one form or another from 1972 to 1980, they left behind a clutch of fascinating and incredibly diverse recordings, four singles “Read About Seymour”, “Dresden Style”, “Real Shocks” and the magnificent “Let's Build A Car”) and four albums (“A Trip To Marineville”, “...In Jane From Occupied Europe”, “Whatever happens Next” (a double album) and “Collision Time”) all on Rough Trade Records.

Their live début was on Boxing Day 1977 in Birmingham, sandwiched between the Scent Organs, featuring Duran Duran's Roger Taylor, and TV Eye, featuring Andy Wickett, “original” composer of “Rio” (hey, watch those libel suits flood in....). The first single from the same year “Read About Seymour”, to quote Andy Bean, author of WANWTTS “Consumer Guide To Swell Maps”, was a “90 second burst of light, a two chord thrash, pretty meaningless but exciting....” - a declaration of intent....

Commercially, the Maps weren't in it, making things extremely difficult for themselves. Had they stuck to one style, their popularity would no doubt have been far greater, but they never played things easy. For every Pop song there was an unnerving sound bombardment, for every Grunge Rock track, a sublime piano instrumental. Although Richard Earl (Biggles), David Barrington (Phones) and John Cockrill have bowed out gracefully from music, the three (arguably) main protagonists continue to thrill us in their chosen way.

Epic

Epic Soundtracks, multi-instrumentalist and drummer supreme with the band now plays with both Crime & The City Solution and Rowland S Howard's These Immortal Souls.

Nikki
Nikki Sudden, main song writer and lead guitarist, has been the most active since the Maps split in 1980, recording numerous solo and collaborative LPs and singles. More on him later.
Jowe
Jowe Head, bassist and the man largely responsible for the wacky image that still haunts the band, is a Palooka, a Househunter, a TV Personality and a STAR in West Germany. Many who make up the horribly styled “Anorak” movement, the new wave of British indie bands, cite Swell Maps as an influence, only to serve up a cross-bred sound drawing heavily from the Buzzcocks and the Ramones, with just a tinge of the perverse pop that served the Maps so well.
The attraction for them may be the independent, slightly off-beat approach that made up just a small part of the Swell Maps. They find it impossible to look beyond the band's use of household appliances as instruments, song titles such as “(I Am) The Greatest Plumming” and “Here's The Cupboard (Thrash)”. True, whilst all part of the Maps' charm, for me, more importance should be attached and more attention paid to their Can-influenced rhythmic excursions on the likes of “Full Moon”/”Blam”/”Full Moon (Reprise)” and the aforementioned “Let's Build A Car”, described, again by Andy Bean, as “...3 minutes of glorious noise, from the unrecognisable guitar to the screamed lyrics and the kamikaze piano solo; so much poise and so much recklessness.....”

Toyota Use Swell Maps To Sell Cars - Wrong song, surely?

GIVE ME MORE OF THIS MANIC OFF-THE-WALL BUGSHIT, MAN!

In the end, Swell Maps probably diversified so much that they pulled themselves apart. This very diversity though guarantees that there's something in there for everyone. So now toddle on down you Yankee poppets to your local Tower Records, and get your grubby pop-soiled mitts on a copy of “Train Out Of It” or DIE IGNORANT. Ignore the subjects of this vitriolic rant AT YOUR PERIL.

CHAPTER TWO. “I KNEW (insert name of star) WHEN HE WAS JUST A.....”

Mr Paul Westerberg, guitarist and singer with Fave Teen Rock Combo The Replacements, will you please step forward. And may I say that I too never travel far without a little Big Star, but pray tell us Paul, who among your contemporaries do you most respect and admire?

Faced with that question, yeah, for sure he'll list numerous hot and worthy names, and you can bet your last cent that those hip bods will include The Jacobites, namely Nikki Sudden & Dave Kusworth.

Nikki Sudden, Dave Kusworth & Epic Soundtracks - The Jacobites

A couple of years back this here yawning yobbo received a transatlantic pre-dawn phone call from a moderately pissed Paul Westerberg. Seems he'd just returned from a night on the Minneapolis tiles and was anxious to share with me his admiration for the noble two-some.

And so it came to pass, in time, that in exchange for a Replacements album “Boink!” on the Jacobites then label Glass, there appeared in the States on the Replacements' then label Twin Tone, a compilation LP of some of the Jacobites' finest moments. Although Nikki and Dave have since gone their own ways, this USA only release “The Ragged School”, is likely to be readily available still to you beleaguered compatriots of Oliver North. And it's a fine place to start, containing as it does the cacophony of sheer sound that is the monster electric epic “Big Store”, rearing up to drown out the drivel and dross to which we've all become so accustomed.

"Shame For The Angels" - Nikki Sudden & Dave Kusworth

Truth be told, a lot's changed since then, and Nikki's now with Alan McGee's Creation Records, where he's maintained his now near legendary levels of productivity, whilst simultaneously languishing somewhat, as McGee, to my mind misguidedly, directs his more industrious efforts on the likes of, well, we'll go into that shortly. No offence Alan, just opinion.

Now let's get on to “Texas”. For me, this is the one record that'll put the message across. You listening? I haven't a clue how many it sold in the UK, let alone the States, but you can bet your ass it wasn't enough.

AND THAT'S WRONG AND THAT'S PATHETIC.

I mean, Christ Almighty, stick that bloody Weather Prophets' LP back in the racks, give those Smiths records to your kid sister, and get on the phone to Jim and William Reid to tell 'em that until the Mary Chain get dirty again, their records are consigned to the ever-growing MOR sell pile.

Give it up now.

Buy “Texas”

It's on Creation.

It should be on Warner Brothers.

"If I Could Write Poetry" - Unreleased Instrumental from the "Texas" sessions

And is this gonna change? Well this corruptible but clean living Limey aint no arbiter of American taste, any more than he is of British. Hey, the public in both countries get what they deserve, but I'm not trying to convert the public. I'm here to convert YOU. I'm at least off to a good start as you've at least the sense to lay down your money on the counter for a copy of this noble publication. I'm of the mind that Nikki's efforts would be better placed concentrating on “breaking it in America”. Let me endeavour to explain why I believe this.

NOW

There is on “Texas”, IN “Texas”, all the world and more. Paranoid perversity, pulverising pop and pure sonic power, a range of emotions evidently beyond our island race, yet surely within the grasp you wonderful cosmopolitan Americans. Flattered? You shouldn't be 'cause you aint quite proven yourselves just yet. Get to it.

Nikki doing "The Bible Belt" publicity rounds back in 1983

Coming right up to date, Nikki's most recently been working with Rowland S Howard and I can assure you that “Kissed You Kidnapped Charabanc” will prove worthy of your further investigation. Rowland can get noises out of a guitar that are well beyond the ability of the merely mortal guitarist, and no bull. Nikki's voice, as acquired a taste as any ever was, reaches new heights of pained inflection that perfectly complement the sparseness of the most reflective songs contained hereon.

THE FUTURE. SORT OF.

What to expect next from Nikki? Well, ensconced as he was on a houseboat in West Germany with his beautiful “Dodgy Blonde” girlfriend, surrounded by an audience that respects his talents to a far greater degree than that of his native homeland, he has turned his attentions to Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis and Charlie Feathers. That's not to expect a record of rolling piano trashing prison blues songs, although who'd be disappointed with that?

He's just returned to these shores for a spell in the studio with Rowland and Jeremy Gluck (Barracudas) (whose recent LP with Nikki, Rowland and Jeffrey Lee Pierce (Gun Club) “I Knew Buffalo Bill” you should immediately obtain). Whilst at the same time taking the opportunity of spending a couple of weeks at his parents' country mansion just outside historic Warwick.

When I called on him to gain some further background for this article, I was welcomed into his study, all leather panelled walls, rich oak bookcases lined with first editions of Biggles and Billy Bunter books, and a record collection alongside which my thousand or so albums positively pales into insignificance. We listened intently to Jerry Lee Lewis' “Live At The Star Club, Hamburg” (“the greatest live album ever”), questioned why there were no songs about fucking on Johnny Cash's new LP, and considered the completely unrecognised talent of Charlie Feathers (“You know, he released an album on his own label that he refused to have distributed through the usual outlets, and which was only available if you called in person a his house to buy a copy” - although the more intrigued among you will be pleased to hear that New Rose Records of Paris, France have seen fit to arrange a general release).

Then it was tea and biscuits in front of the television where we witnessed the consummate ease yet manic intensity with which Jerry Lee attacked the keyboard (“You can tell it's a good gig when he starts bashing the piano lid”). It's not easy, even in these truly splendid surroundings and utter relaxation to persuade Nikki to talk about his own music. No, he'd much rather enthuse over someone else, and I gotta say his enthusiasm is infectious – guess who fished out his father's Johnny Cash box set as soon as he got home?

THE END

So what are you gonna do now you've got this far? Well, I'd perhaps be presuming too much to suppose my limited persuasive talents had won you over entirely, for you to turn from the neat manageable haircut of Robyn Hitchcock, to ignore Primal Scream's Bobby Gillespie's pudding-basin trim, and turn instead to the ratted rock'n'roll locks of our hero Nikki Sudden.

But that's what you're gonna do, huh?

To quote Chaucer's Wife Of Bath:

“There is namoore to telle”.

Chris Seventeen

1987

"Wonderful/Whistle In" from the Brian Wilson Tribute album "Smiles, Vibes & Harmony" (1990)

Part Two: James Luther Dickinson - World Boogie Is Coming!

2011-03-23T00:12:00.001Z

A young James Luther Dickinson

(from Jim Dickinson Facebook Photos)

I found a further tape with another (somewhat shorter) section of the Jim Dickinson "interview" on WEVL Memphis which I present to you here, once again with the music he played (with one extra bonus track).

JLD – I stole my arrangement of “John Brown” - anybody who's heard – I had never heard the Dylan version when I cut the song – it doesn't have the chorus in it. Only thing I'd heard was the Staple Singers which is what I copied – which makes mine sound stupid (...PAUSE....) A little song about mama! This is with Dr John and Charley Freeman playing guitar and Memphis's own Charlie Lawing playing clarinet with French embouchure – and T Tommy McClure playing the inside out stereophonic Lesley-ised bass....

James Luther Dickinson - "John Brown"

Another great ending on that one – reminds me of the Lawson & Four More record.

JLD – Well that was, yeah, Terry Manning's synthesizer going down the hole in the centre of the record. And me croaking and choking and sounding silly....but I'm glad Bob (Dylan) likes it.

Your favourite on here is “Casey Jones”

JLD - “Casey Jones" and "Wild Bill Jones”, the Bob Frank (described by Jim as the "southern Bob Dylan") song

James Luther Dickinson - "Casey Jones"

And this is Shelley....

JLD – Shelley Nemitz, Memphis's own Shelley Nemitz – go with “Shotgun”. The other voice on this is the late great John Hurley (co-writer of "Son Of A Preacher Man"), one of the two best white voices I ever heard come over a microphone. He's also the producer of this particular item. It was recorded in San Francisco. Tom Donahue ("beat hipster producer extraordinaire") was the alleged producer – he was fulfilling the Shelby Singleton role. And sitting in two chairs. Now a man who sits in two chairs, let me tell you, is impressive.

When did John Hurley die?

JLD - Died this last year. Died in Nashville. Yeah, went to the big mix down in the sky. He was the first client I ever had as an engineer who requested me specifically. I mean I had worked for other victims but Hurley was my first real client and I learned a lot of stuff from him. Heavy duty. This is a much better record than it appears to be (...laughs heartily...)

Shelley's still active?

JLD – Shelley's definitely still active wherever she is. I'm sure she's active as we speak. Let 'em hear “Shotgun” - the other material on the record is too heavy for family consumption.

Shelley had quite a visual presentation!

Shelley Nemitz - "Shotgun"

Jorge Santana (Carlos Santana's brother) huh?

JLD – That was him. Having a fit there. And Ronnie Wilkin (co-writer with Hurley of "Son Of A Preacher Man") playing, probably my major influence as far as piano is concerned other than my mother, playing piano. I was playing rhythm guitar, laughingly he said, chukka chukka. Various other strange people were singing, Claudia Lennear (Tina Turner backing singer with whom Mick Jagger had an affair and who inspired “Brown Sugar”) among them. It was a fun time back in the real record biz days.

Claudia Lennear - "Casey Jones"

JLD – This next little gem – we're getting serious here as we wind down and approach the end of our little trip here, as we used to say in the sixties. This is the only unsuccessful record Ronnie Milsap ever made. And Dan Penn produced it and we went hither and yon to Nashville and Muscle Shoals and thereabouts, cutting various parts of it. This particular instance was recorded in Muscle Shoals. It has notable performances by Spooner Oldham and, myself, of course. I always have myself in there, and Lightning Wayne Perkins (lead guitarist on the Rolling Stones "Black And Blue" album) and Chris Ethridge (founder member of The Flying Burrito Brothers) and Roger Hawkins (drummer on Aretha Franklin's "Respect") and Milsap himself. This is also an unsuccessful Kris Kristofferson song which I think is very good.

His only unsuccessful record, huh?

JLD – That was it. Very interesting artist Ronnie Milsap – we recorded some of it in American Studios with the American Section and some of it in Nashville with the 615 Band, and that was like middle of the night crazy stuff in Muscle Shoals. The other guitarist on there was Tippy Armstrong – no longer with us.

We got the Lulu “Melody Fair” album.

JLD – Yeah, this is another one of my personal little favourites from Miami.

A Mickey Newbury song.

JLD – Yeah, the thing that people fail to perceive about Lulu is that she's a redneck. Just because she's British, y'know.....

Lulu - "Sweet Memories"

Song Seven - Alex Chilton - "Brown Sugar"

2011-03-18T22:46:00.000Z

A late 70's recording by the late great.

Alex Chilton (28th December 1950 - 17th March 2010) - Here's A Little Thing That's Gonna Please Ya....

2011-03-17T21:00:00.000Z

Photo - deSingel International Arts Campus

On the first anniversary of Alex Chilton's sad death, in addition to pointing you in the direction of the two part interview we ran on this blog earlier this year;

http://whatanicewaytoturn17.blogspot.com/2011/01/alex-chilton-by-epic-soundtracks.html

and

http://whatanicewaytoturn17.blogspot.com/2011/01/part-two-alex-chilton-by-epic.html

here's a piece I ran on another blog I was working on a while back, posted on 21^st July 2009:

"To a generation of 20 and 30 somethings, the name Alex Chilton probably attaches itself more to The Replacements than to the man himself, from their song "Alex Chilton" :

"If he was from Venus, would he feed us with a spoon? If he was from Mars, wouldn't that be cool? Standing right on campus, would he stamp us in a file? Hangin' down in Memphis all the while. (chorus:) Children by the million sing for Alex Chilton when he comes 'round They sing "I'm in love. What's that song? I'm in love with that song. "Cerebral rape and pillage in a village of his choice. Invisible man who can sing in a visible voice. Feeling like a hundred bucks, exchanging good lucks face to face. Checkin' his stash by the trash at St. Mark's place. (chorus) I never travel far, without a little Big Star. Runnin' 'round the house, Mickey Mouse and the Tarot cards. Falling asleep with a flop pop video on. If he was from Venus, would he meet us on the moon? If he died in Memphis, then that'd be cool, babe.(chorus)"

I am pretty sure that most folk who hear that song investigate a little further and have the joy of discovering the wonders of Big Star. There was though, in the late 80's and early 90's, a period of a couple of years when Big Star was the band to name check. Be you Primal Scream, REM, Teenage Fanclub or any number of music writers, "Radio City" was an album of great influence and a useful reference point for anything loosely resembling (hate the term, love the genre) powerpop. Trendsetters as ever, me and my friends were listening to them many years before that, having re-diecovered the early 70's albums in the early 90's. To this day, Alex Chilton and Big Star are constantly on rotation round these parts and I reckon it's about time I did my bit to spread the word a little further afield.

What spurred me into action was Alan Yentob's "Imagine" documentary on the BBC a week or so ago on the Memphis born photographer William Eggleston, whose famous "Red Ceiling" picture adorned the "Radio City" album and whose "Dolls On A Cadillac Hood" was on the cover of Alex's solo album "Like Flies On Sherbert".

"Red Ceiling" by William Eggleston

"Dolls On A Cadillac Hood" by William Eggleston

It was Alec Chilton's 1978 solo single"Bangkok" that I first heard in 1980, and 'twas through the auspices of Mr Epic Soundtracks that I (as many others - Bobby Gillespie and Alan McGee amongst them) was introduced to the wonder of Big Star. Firstly "Radio City", then "#1 Record" and eventually "Third" - as fine and varied (have you heard "Third"?) a trio of albums you could hope to hear.

Weirdly, it was through Tav Falco's Panther Burns, specifically the 1980 "She's The One To Blame" EP (and a still treasured copy of the first release of only 250 copies with 8" silk screened sleeve on Frenzi Records) that I came back upon Alex's solo work. As did much of Tav's considerable output, this featured one LX Chilton on guitar.......but let's talk about the charismatic Tav Falco some other time.

Possibly recognising he'd peaked as a song writer in the late 70's, the larger part of his recordings these past 25 years or so have been covers, and since the mid 90's, aside from the odd Box Tops reunion (did I mention that it was a 16 year old Alex Chilton singing lead on million seller "The Letter" back in 1967?) it's been the new version of Big Star that's been his main focus. With original drummer Jody Stephens, Alex teamed up with the Posies' Jon Auer and Ken Stringfellow to tour as Big Star. Great excitement preceded their London dates in August 1993, not least for myself. I certainly remember seeing Bobby Gillespie in attendance, and the word was that pretty much all the great and good of indie rock at that time gathered at the Clapham Grand. Of course it wasn't Big Star 1973, but there was magic in the air that night, as the Zoo Records release of the live "Columbia" album confirmed.

Anyway, we're hear to reminisce about my encounters with rock's elite, so, when Chris met Alex....it was just the one time, and it was (gulp) nearly 24 years ago. Alex and his band played a (slightly disinterested) show at London's Mean Fiddler on 16th October 1985, we were there and after the show Epic and I approached Alex for Epic to undertake part one of a planned interview which was completed a few days later at the house in Brixton where Alex was staying. A wide-ranging chat, it was the centre-piece of (and cover story - great picture by Bleddyn Butcher - for) issue 6 of What A Nice Way To Turn Seventeen magazine which was published in 1986 (and came with a 17 track compilation (vinyl) album.....copies still available folks).

Notoriously diffident, verging on awkward ("ornery" may be appropriate) he was both these that evening but to be fair, as an interviewee, pretty damned co-operative, and Epic got some mighty fine stuff out of him. I played my usual starstruck role and observed rather than involved, took a couple of photos of him and Epic, got him to sign a couple of original vinyl Big Star albums, my copy of the "Bangkok" single and various solo singles, and wallowed in listening to his lazy southern drawl. The cliche is that you should never meet your heroes lest they disappoint - Alex did nothing but live up to his reputation as rock's outsider, did not in any way disappoint and I loved him all the more for it.

For a fine, thorough telling of the Big Star story, get hold of a copy of Rob Jovanovic's "Big Star - The Story Of Rock's Forgotten Band". Pleased to have played a small role in it's creation, having met up with and lent Rob my and Epic's collection of press cuttings, rare discs and photos (by the way Rob, still waiting for you to return the Jim Dickinson "Dixie Fried" album cover and one or two other bits and pieces....) you can get hold of it here - http://www.amazon.co.uk/Big-Star-Story-Rocks-Forgotten/dp/0007149085"

Song Six - Dave Kusworth & The Bounty Hunters - "Child Of The Moon"

2011-03-16T22:47:00.000Z

From another of the 90's tribute albums, this time "Stoned Again: A Tribute To The Stones" and Dave Kusworth & The Bounty Hunters with "Child Of The Moon".

Song Five - Nikki Sudden & The Mermaids - "Wonderful/Whistle In"

2011-03-16T22:34:00.000Z

Nikki Sudden & The Mermaids - "Wonderful/Whistle In"

The early 90's saw a veritable bevy of tribute albums. "Smiles, Vibes And Harmony: A Tribute To Brian Wilson" was among the better of these and included this rather lovely and pretty faithful rendition of "Wonderful/Whistle In". It features Max Edie (Lizard) on lead vocals alongside Mr Sudden, Anthony Thistlethwaite and producer John Rivers.

Elvis Presley, My Father & "Junior Choice" by Chris Coleman

2011-03-15T14:25:00.000Z

I'm going a bit “off-piste” with this contribution to the blog and it's likely to be a one-off. Fear not, gritty rock'n'roll reports are just around the corner – normal service will be resumed - just thought I'd try this piece and see how it goes.

January 8^th 1935 and Elvis Aron Presley breathes his first breath in Tupelo, Mississippi, USA. The very next day, Ian Laurence Coleman, my father, does the same in Oxford, Oxfordshire, England. This relatively irrelevant coincidence does at least give me the theme for and the opportunity to write, for my father's 60^th birthday in 1995, a pun-heavy Elvis song themed poem to be played at his party.

Then (and now) top BBC Radio One DJ, Annie Nightingale, was generous enough to record it on to cassette, as if it were a radio request, and here it is.

This came to mind as I was re-reading Karen Schoemer's paean to 50's pop stars ("Great Pretenders: My Strange Love Affair With '50's Pop Music") and their role and relevance to her parents relationship as they married in the early 60's. My parents married 1960 and I was born just under a year later. Karen was lucky enough to grow up in a home with the music of the sixties (helped of course by being in the USA) whilst I, when music made an appearance at all, was bred on the sounds of Acker Bilk, Nat King Cole, and the Syd Lawrence and James Last Orchestras, very much the music of the mid 50's, when my parents were teenagers. It's fair to say their tastes did not much develop with the changing of the decade.

Two things “saved” me, musically, both a touch on the bizarre side. First was BBC Radio's “Junior Choice” with Ed “Stewpot” Stewart (author, by the way, of quite probably the very worst autobiography (“Out Of The Stewpot”) ever written), which he hosted from 1968 onwards. The very first time I wrote to a radio station was to Junior Choice in 1973, asking Stewpot to play “School's Out” by Alice Cooper for my Dad's birthday. He didn't, but then this was supposed to be a show where parents, relatives and siblings requested songs for children. The clue was in the title though I guess I chose to ignore it.

The second was my maternal grandmother. She worked in a local electrical goods store, more specifically their record department, so from the very late 60's to the early 70's, she was a source of many a 45 RPM single. Yes, my grandmother rescued me from my parents tastes. Two songs in particular stand out in my memory. One was “Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep” by Middle Of The Road and the other “Rose Garden” by Lynn Anderson. Though there were many others. She also bought me my first album, on pre-recorded cassette, “Sheet Music” by 10CC, in 1973.

In that same year, I was one of many school-children of that era to go on a “School Cruise”, on the SS Uganda (used many years later, in 1982, as a hospital ship in the Falklands War), and my claim to fame was persuading the ship's radio station to play, several mornings in a row, Hawkwind's “Silver Machine” to start the day. If you also take into account that my first album on vinyl was Lou Reed's “Rock'n'Roll Animal” in 1974, you'll see a moderately with it musical taste taking shape at a relatively early age....precocious or what, huh?

Of course, in 1977, punk rock entered the life of an easily influenced 17 year old.

Things changed.

But back to more innocent times and a couple of Junior Choice memories......

Song Four - The Subterranean Hawks - "Kiss Me"

2011-03-10T14:24:00.000Z

Here's the original version of the 1985 Top 10 hit by Stephen Tin Tin Duffy. Wikipedia has this to say about it....

"Kiss Me" is a song originally released in 1982 by the British band Tin Tin. The song was allegedly written within 24 hours after the band had signed a record deal with WEA Records. The single peaked at number 155 on the UK singles chart and was in 1983 released on Sire Records in the U.S., where it made the Billboard dance chart. The lead singer and guitarist in Tin Tin, Stephen Duffy, later re-recorded the song twice and released it as a solo single using the name of Stephen TinTin Duffy. The first re-recording was released as a single only in the West Midlands region in 1984. Another version was recorded in late 1984 and released as a single on 25 February 1985. This version made its debut at number 22 in the UK singles chart and peaked at number 4, selling more than 250,000 copies within three weeks and thus being certified silver.

The chorus is based on a passage from the book Song of Songs.

It was the last song to be played on BBC Radio 1s MW frequency in 1994, before the station became FM only.

A new version was included on "Memory & Desire: 30 years in the wilderness with Stephen Duffy & The Lilac Time" released in 2009 by Universal Records.

"Kiss Me" was later recorded by UK pop singer Robbie Williams for his Rudebox album. The producer of this version was Joey Negro. On 10 October 2006, Williams' version made its debut at number 13 on the Norwegian combined downloads and singles chart on downloads alone^[1]. This version was also once featured as the Free Download of the Week on the American version of iTunes.

As usual with Wikipedia a mixture of truth and fiction.

Creation Records - The First Five Singles 1983-1984

2011-03-08T22:21:00.000Z

The US Première of “Upside Down – The Creation Records Story” next week at the SXSW Festival in Austin, Texas, provides excuse enough, if excuse is needed, to re-run an article that appeared in the second issue of the fanzine.

Long before it became the all-conquering behemoth of a label whence came the monster that was Oasis, Creation Records was a fanzine editor's dream. Alan McGee's background in that field, with his own fanzine Communication Blur, had lead to the establishment of connections with a whole bevy of similar minded souls, not least with What A Nice Way To Turn Seventeen.

Communication Blur #2, Creation Artifact Call Out and Letter from Mr McGee

By Spring of 1984, the label was five releases strong, we'd been sent a copy of each, and the time was right for a feature in issue 2 of WANWTTS. I don't think I was alone in thinking that Creation was a natural successor to Postcard though I make the equally obvious comparison to Factory in the article itself.

We'd featured a pre-Creation Pastels in issue 1 and the Creation connection extended with the inclusion of “Think” by the Jasmine Minks on the LP that accompanied issue 3 of the magazine.

Here, then, is the article, as it appeared in 1984:

“No praise is high enough for Creation. What we are doing is wonderful....” - Alan McGee 1984

The kind of arrogance that's sure to set the fur flying in many quarters; such words often being famous and final, quoth the level-headed voice of reason. Such self-confidence is not totally misplaced, however: there's evidence aplenty of an enthusiasm, of an optimism, that evolved in the swinging sixties, withered in the stagnant seventies and is now rejuvenated in the expectant eighties. Okay, so it's easy to reek self-assured confidence when you're closely and passionately involved in something, as easy as it is to shoot down in flames such heartfelt beliefs. So I won't.

Like the optimism, the music too is strongly bonded to the sixties; bonded to, influenced by, but by no means copied from. There's the raw rough'n'ready pop of the Jasmine Minks jangle. For them it's all a question of attitude – theirs is right and the rest should change; more arrogance of the type that's served the Smiths so well. But will it rub for the Minks? Alan McGee, one of the cats at Creation has this to say of them; “Probably our first band to make the real charts....I/we have great personal faith in them.” Their first single, “Think” should be the start of more widespread acceptance of the label, if not actually its first “real” chart success.

Biff Bang Pow! Adopted their name from a song by Creation, the band. They possess, in Alan's opinion, “direct optimism and a will to ask why”, and their first single, “Fifty Years Of Fun”, dominated by a persistent whining guitar, and “plagued”, it must be said, by poor drumming, questions loyalty and the work ethic.

Revolving Paint Dream are responsible for the label's most successful release to date, namely their first single “Flowers In The Sky” which reproduces that currently most successful of guitar sounds, that of the Byrds, and reproduces it to hypnotic effect. “Andrew is our mystery man; I met him once”.

The Pastels are no newcomers to my ears at least, as their contribution to the record collections of the world (mine included) has already amounted to two (one on Whaam! And one on Rough Trade). A case of imperfection guaranteed, quiet pop with a diamond heart. “So fragile but so hard” as Alan puts it. “Is Stephen gay?”.

Primal Scream I don't know, but I'm advised by my man on the scan, that they've been rehearsing in a garage in Glasgow for four months and that they're lead by a “transvestite called Beattie” - purveyors of clean scrub- faced pop they obviously are not, and more power to them.

The only release that's not been well received at Seventeen HQ is the very first – hardly the promise of greater things to come, merely that things had to improve. Harsh words perhaps from one in no position to judge, and I got the single for free, but The Legend's “73 in 83” struck no chords in my heart.

But we're not about to end on a sour note.

“Creation is more than a record label....clubs, fanzines, clothes, shops, rehearsal studios, photographic studios...it will all come to those who wish/desire it.”

Ambitious aims, close, I would guess, to those of set ups such as Factory, but free of the elitist aura, and with smiles on their faces. One day I may love it, but for now it's enough that I admire it.

All bands and the label itself may be contacted c/o Rough Trade Records, 137 Blenheim Crescent, London W11 2EQ.

Chris Seventeen

James Luther Dickinson - World Boogie Is Coming!

2011-03-05T00:02:00.002Z

Epic Soundtracks had proposed writing a piece on Jim Dickinson for WANWTTS – many obvious reasons for wanting to do this – he'd worked with and produced Alex Chilton/Big Star, The Replacements and Tav Falco, all of whom had featured in the magazine AND he'd played piano on the Stones' “Wild Horses” and was, accordingly, perfect for “Great Misunderstood Rock'n'Roll Legends No.5”. Alas, it was not to be. Then, the other night, I got involved in an interesting Facebook discussion on James Luther Dickinson, and I remembered a cassette I had of him on Memphis' WEVL Radio, talking about and playing many of the tracks he played on during the first stage of his career in music, from the early '60's to the early '70's. So I decided in lieu of a piece from Epic, to transcribe the interview, insert as many clips as I could of the songs played and discussed, and put it up here.

Regrettably, I don't have a name for the principal DJ/interviewer (though he is joined by Ross Johnson) and I don't have a date for the show, though I fancy it's early 1990's and certainly pre-1995, as Robert Gordon quotes, in his 1995 book “It Came From Memphis”, some of the section about Aretha Franklin. I've added a few notes here and there, filling a few gaps and fleshing out some of the references, but have otherwise transcribed it verbatim. I've ended up managing to source versions for all of the (13) tracks played on the hour long section I have on the tape – the quality of one or two isn't perfect, but all are perfectly listenable, and I hope they add to the undoubted eccentric story telling skills of someone of whom Bob Dylan said “If you've got Dickinson, you don't need anybody else.”

Photo by Tom Lonardo (from jimdickinsonslegacy.blogspot.com)

Jim Dickinson & The New Beale Street Sheiks - "You'll Do It All The Time" (1964)

Jim Dickinson & The Catmando Quartet - "Shake 'Em On Down" (1965)

Yeah, The Catmanda Quartet....

JLD - Catmando – we were into pre-Prince spellings....and there were five of us so that made it better.

Always ahead of your time!

JLD - Yeah, that's right! Used to be able to calculate and now it's just random.

Well you had five vowels to choose from!

(Laughs) The Baron (Ross Johnson) has joined us in the studio.

JLD - The mysterious Baron of Love......

When did this “Batman” record come out?

JLD - Right before the TV show – there were 52 different Batman records of which ours was one and they were all “unlicensed” by the comic book people. So there was a universal ban put on the playing of Batman record. You had to be really sneaky to get yours on the air.

Seems like I remember hearing this one on FM100 or something.

JLD – No, it was WHBQ. It was on heavy rotation even though George Klein had his own Batman record that he was pushing, which was Jumpin' Gene Simmons and was totally atrocious. We had the only one with girls. It seemed reasonable to me that it should be girls. (One of them being his wife Mary) So WHBQ played it because it was on Ardent, and Fry....we went and bought this old Buick and took it to a hearse company and had it made into a Batmobile. It had this huge 8 foot fin on the back of it and toy machine guns on the hood that shot sparks, a big bat thing across the grille. Y'know, we drove it to gigs and it was amazing how people would get out of your way when you're in a Batmobile! So WHBQ gave it away – they had a contest to see how many times they could write WHBQ on it, wherever we took it, to the fair or wherever it was. They gave it to some jerk who didn't appreciate it. I wish I had the Batmobile today.

Don't we all.

The Robins - "Batman" (1966)

That's excellent!

JLD – Thank-you, thank-you. I was quite proud of that myself. That's the notrocious (sic) Lee Baker playing lead guitar and I was playing 12 string and the rest of the musicians were Lawson & Four More, or the Goat Dancers, depending on when it was. Actually they were Lawson & Four More.

We'll get to Lawson & Four More in a second

JLD – Or, as they called it on WRAC, “Here's another record by Lost In The Morgue”.....

The Avengers - "Batarang" (1966)

JLD – That's Baker playing lead and the organ solo is Terry Manning, Scary Terry....

We got the Lawson & Four More record here.

JLD – Which one?

Both of 'em actually. We got “If You Want Me You Can Find Me” which has a real Stones kind of sense.

JLD – That is the first one, yeah. That's not them playing on that. That's Charlie Hull, founder of Overton Square playing the guitar which is now Baker's “The Shifter”. And me playing one of the basses and Mike Alexander playing one of the basses. (Jimmy) Crossthwait playing a cardboard box with maracas. It was the first thing I ever “produced”. We cut it in Granny's Sewing Room at (John) Fry's parents house.

The ever innovative Crossthwait on the box....

JLD – That's him.

Lawson & Four More - "If You Want Me You Can Find Me" (1967)

JLD – Yeah! Great ending....”Try to find me....”. Asking the musical question “Is this what I want to do with my life”

That's the beginning?

JLD – Yeah, that was it. I'd done this....the Shelby Singleton Bill Justis record in Nashville and on that session I'd figured – y'know, we were into it like two days and Justis was doing all the work so I figured he was producing the record, right. Well in the middle of the third day the doors swing open and in comes this fat greasy guy all wearing black and sunglasses and smoking little Sherman cigarettes, which back then was strange, y'knoe, '63, and he's talking loud and the session stops. Dead. This was a serious session, had lots of Nashville cats, the Jordanaires, the Anita Kerr singers and all that kinda stuff. I was just a hick singer from Memphis who was there to be authentic right, for Dixieland folk show. And I think ”Who is that fat jerk just walked in?”. So I asked this friend of mine, a trumpet player on the session who'd written all the arrangements. ”Who is this guy? What's the deal? Why don't they throw him out” “Well, that's Shelby Singleton – he's the producer”. So I said “If he's the producer, what is Justis?” “Well Justis is the arranger” And I said “Then what are you?” Because he'd been writing the arrangements in the bathroom the whole time. "Oh, I'm the contractor”. And I thought well, now somewhere in here, there's room for me to fit in.

That's how it works....

JLD – If this guy can produce this record and not be here for three days, surely I could do that. So Lawson & Four More was my first opportunity. Little did I know that “in absentia” production was truly the highest form of the art.

I've got the other Lawson & Four More record here – it's called “Relax Your Mind”. This was written by Cornbread Red

JLD – Actually Lead belly! (Laughs) We just thought we'd get the publishing. Again, we were ahead of our time.

What was he gonna say!

JLD – Yeah, really.

Lawson & Four More - "Relax Your Mind" (1966)

JLD - “What are you gonna do when the light turns blue?” - I didn't even know what that meant then.

I assume you've found out?

JLD – It means what are you gonna do when the cops come? Really took me years to figure that out.

Some people never figure that out.

JLD – I know, too late!

We got the first session you ever played on right here, this album.

JLD – Well it's the first thing where I was the artist which got released. (Bill) Justis was the artist but I was the singer. It's the first thing I did out of town – my first session in Nashville had like, Bill Purcell and Bob Moore and all the cats on it. It was right after Sugarfoot Garland had had his car wreck and he was the only guy who wasn't there. Jerry Kennedy was brand new in Nashville. He's playing electric guitar on what you're about to play. And Bob Randolph, Justis, who else, some other heavy, Buddy Harmon. It was some heavy talent. I went up there and I was supposed to be the folk singer – the album was Dixieland Folkstyle. Fall of '63 – they'd seen publicity on the thing we did at the Shell, the first Annual Memphis Folk Festival and that was what got me the job. I went up there with Colin and Kathleen Heath, who were a local folk act. Used to sing at the Peanut Bar. That lead to my contract with Justis for the other records you played – the Beale Street Sheiks and the Catmondo Quartet.

When did the Beale Street Sheiks come out? '63?

JLD – Must have still been the winter of '63.

I'll find that old Billboard.

JLD - Yeah, I've got a copy of the review somewhere. It's pretty funny.

So from Dixieland Folkstyle, you sing on this yeah?

Yeah, “St James Infirmary”.

JLD – Yeah, we couldn't play. I took instruments up there but we couldn't play 'cause we were non Union. It was the first really tight situation I'd seen. Although there were written charts for the music. They'd hand me the charts though I could barely even read the words. The arranger was a friend of mine and he would change the titles like “Green Green Benzedrine” and things like that. A good time was had by all. I met Fred Carter on that session. That was pretty far out.

A good time was had, they call it.

JLD – Yeah, they had to call it something.

And they called this one “Dixieland Folkstyle” - this is the Bill Justis Dixieland Band & Chorus.

Bill Justis Dixieland Band & Chorus - "St James Infirmary" (1964)

JLD – Sounds like they got Jerry Kennedy down the bottom of a well!

I saw a great Nick Tosches review of a Jerry Lee album one time which started out....it was Jerry Lee's mid period 70's, Jerry Kennedy period.....and it started out “As sure as the Holy Ghost is dealing three card monte in Heaven, Jerry Kennedy will pay for his sins!”

JLD – (Laughs) Right on, right on!

I like Nick

JLD – Nick said the nicest thing about me anybody ever said.

Which was?

JLD – Oh, it's in the Country Music book. He's talking about Dixie Fried and he, what is it, “loud moralless...” - it's really good. I can't quote it out of context but he got the picture anyway. And I've spent 6 months with people I know getting them paid and laid and everything else, trying to get publicity that wasn't as good as that!

(““Dixie Fried” is one of the most bizarrely powerful musics of this century: a loud moralless baptism of rhythm.” Nick Tosches - “Country – Living Legends And Dying Metaphors in America's Biggest Music (1977))

I've got this Jesters thing here.

JLD – Right, “Cadillac Man”.

This is a song that re-surfaced later on for the King.

JLD – Yes, yes, by the King.

A whole lotta people are surprised when they hear this that are used to hearing the Charly record.

JLD – Uh huh, with (Tommy) Minga singing. Well that was another one of those times. Teddy Paige is the guitar player on this record – which I recently heard that he had been at Jonestown (Massacre November 18^th 1978, when 918 members of Jim Jones' People's Temple died). I don't know that I truly believe that but he hadn't been seen in a long time – but the band had a singer that Sam (Phillips) hated – and he knew that Sam would never release a record as long as this guy was singing on it, so he'd call me up and say “You come down and play piano on this demo”. I said sure – I was under contract to Justis at the time – so I went down to the studio and the singer “didn't show up”. So before I knew it, I was singing on the thing and Sam liked it and wanted to put it out. And of course I'm real proud of it now.

You didn't play bass on any of the stuff?

JLD - Oh no, I didn't play on any of the other Jesters records.

You did “My Babe”?

JLD – Yeah, there are 8 sides. We cut 4 sides that night and 4 the night when they called the session in at the union. And Sam actually only produced “My Babe” and the stuff that was cut the second night. The first night was done by Knox (Phillips). Knox actually did “Cadillac Man”. There's one little moment in there, Jerry Phillips is playing maracas and there's one little moment before the guitar solo where the beat turns over and the maracas come up, the limiter brings the maracas up, and it's one of those little things, like around so many Sun records, y'know what I mean? It makes it almost sound real although this was, like, '65. I normally don't tell people that but that's when it was! There are some other sides that are incredible that Paige wrote. Paige wrote this song “Jim Dandy Meets Sweet Sixteen” that was just scurrilous, and another, “Night Train To Chicago” or something like that. I was reading off a notebook paper. We would play another song and I'd sing the words over it. And if you'll notice the intro of this, it's exactly the same as the intro of “Monkey Man”, like my version of the “Woolly Bully” intro.

Maybe Charly will wind up putting that stuff out.

JLD – Well my theory is that when Shelby sold the masters, I think Jerry Phillips held the masters out on The Jesters. There were 4-track tapes and I think Jerry has them. I think he's forgotten that now. If Charly had the masters they would have put them out. I think they got whatever was left which was Tommy Minga, the other singer, singing the song.

I've seen the Sun Sessions files for that stuff and there's like 16 or 18 different songs.

JLD – Oh yes, they cut and cut. The bass player's name was Wolfers, the drummer was Eddie something. He played with me on the first Memphis Blues Festival. That was a long time ago. '65.

'65 and singing about '59!

JLD – Oh, it was '49 in the lyrics. We had to update it.

(in 2008 Big Beat Records released “Cadillac Men” by The Jesters with 13 tracks by the band including “Jim Dandy And Sweet Sixteen”, “Night Train From Chicago” and, of course, “Cadillac Man” - both versions)

The Jesters - "Cadillac Man" (1966)

Yeah, that's a hot one!

JLD – Yeah, that is, I'm proud of that my own self.

Sun Number 400

JLD – Yessir, Yellow Sun 400.

I like the flip side a lot too.

JLD - “My Babe”. I don't know, I have reservations about “My Babe”.

Okay, maybe we'll withhold “My Babe” right now. When did the 1^st Century record come out?

JLD – That's the first thing that I ever “released” that I had produced myself. It must have come out '66 or '67. Don Nix took it to LA and sold it to Al De Lory at Capitol and I'd done it at the old Ardent Studios over on National. Sam The Sham's band without Sam The Sham and the sax player. It's Ray Stenet, Crazy David Martin and Jerry Patterson. Stenet is playing this instrument he made himself out of a hollow cored door with strings or wires basically running across it in both directions and he played it with like a metal nail driver. They had just come back from the Morningstar Commune in San Francisco, so definitely Memphis's first hippy session. We set up a tent in the studio 'cause Stenet said he was used to playing in his tent and he wanted to hear it – I said, well, we're gonna have trouble pegging it down here, Ray, y'know. We kinda tied it off and there were babies crawling around on the floor and uncontrolled controlled substances – it was quite a session. 8.00 in the morning – scared the maid to death! John Fry said “Well, I don't know about this Jim...”

Which side you putting on?

I'm gonna put on “Lookin' Down”

JLD – Oh, they're both the same. They're interchangeable.

I've never heard “Dancing Girl” though.

JLD - “Dancing Girl” was our commercial effort. There was something about a spider – I've forgotten that one. It was a concept album called “Through The Door”.

So a single was as far as it got?

JLD – That was it. (Laughs) I got a killer publicity photo though.

The 1st Century - "Lookin' Down" (1968)

Yeah, the Beatles probably heard that one and decided to go off to India!

JLD – I don't think anybody ever heard that one! That was released into the black hole in space! That's so long ago that we got the front money and Don said, Don told me, we had to kick it back, and I believed him! That's how long ago that was!

When did the Dixie Flyers form as a unit?

JLD – Well, they were....they didn't call us that until we went to Miami and in reality, the three of them, the three being Charlie Freeman, Tommy McClure and Sammy Creeson, had started playing together as a rhythm section in, oh I guess in '67 probably. I came along when they were working at (Stan Kesler's) Sounds Of Memphis (Studio). The first record I worked on with them was Albert Collins' “Trash Talkin'” (1969). That had been nominated for a Grammy and that's the thing that we got our job at Atlantic off of, was that album. We were working Utley, the other keyboard player, in at the time, and some people would hire them with Utley and not me, or them with me and not Utley. Nobody would hire all five of us except Leland Rogers, Kenny Rogers' brother, and we had done, I guess, three records with the five of us playing. James Hooker/Brown's playing organ on the Albert Collins thing, and oddly enough Slammy (sic) had a kidney stone attack on the session and Tarp (Tarrant) played drums, so in reality it was Tarp who got Slammy his job. We called it the Dixie Flyers 'cause we had to have a name and I figured that was too racially offensive for them to use. And they fooled me. The first record it was on was the Aretha Franklin record (“Spirit In The Dark”), which, y'know, took some guts for them to do.

I've got a copy of the Aretha Franklin record here – no cover for it.

JLD – Alright! I don't have that one either!

Yeah, this is a tough album.

JLD – Yeah, oh yeah, killer! Well she hadn't recorded for almost two years when they got her down there and they weren't sure she was gonna show up and they had time booked. (Jerry) Wexler and I were out on the boat and we got the call on the radio that Aretha's in. Slammy was gone – he was off fishing and they had to drag him up from somewhere. And she didn't know, here we were, a bunch of white boys, and we didn't know whether or not she was gonna stay and when we did the first song, y'know, she just moved in. Yeah, it was hot! She was eight months pregnant and nobody knew it – she ended up, she recorded with us for two weeks, and then we had to go on and do Carmen McRae (“Just A Little Lovin'” (1970) so they brought in other musicians – Cornell Dupree and the bass player from the Allman Brothers, and just a strange hodge podge of players who finished the album. She went on until she fell out from exhaustion and ended up in hospital. She's really intense though. They never turned....it was boogie at its highest level....she had an entourage that was like three deep all around her – they never turned the motor off in the limousine, they left the doors open, they parked on the grass, left the lights on and the doors open all the time. She had one of Sam Cooke's brothers with her – at the time it was very hip to know a Sam Cooke brother and she actually had two and one of them stayed through the whole session.

Which should I play?

JLD - “The Thrill Is Gone” is the best one, 'cause of Charlie. They had just done, they were envisioning some kind of guitar solo that was gonna be Clapton-esque or something, and Charlie played his little Wes Montgomery stuff and I thought Wexler was gonna die! He said “Baby, baby! I've had great guitar players before but Charlie Freeman is the only one who can take a real solo!” Which proved Wexler knew what he was talking about.

Aretha Franklin - "The Thrill Is Gone" (1970)

Yeah, that's tough!

JLD – Oh yeah, sweet Reeth.....she drank orange Tommies. She'd get a whole tray of 'em and line 'em up on the piano. Orange Tommy is like a pre-packaged gin drink for those of you who may not know. And eat pigs feet. Like Joe Cuoghi. She was amazing. She could make 14 notes, 7 with each hand.

How did you meet Duane Allman down there?

JLD – Honestly don't know where I first met Duane. On some session in Muscle Shoals? He was like the extra guy on a lot of.....I already knew him on the Ronnie Hawkins session.

Did you guys ever play at all, in any of the clubs?

JLD – The Dixie Flyers? Oh Lord, no, oh no, we never did anything but record. But see, we did 14 albums in the 6 months I was there, so we had very little time to do anything else. But no, there was no concept of playing live. Although when we were working on our solo project, which turned into my record (“Dixie Fried”), sort of, then it was in Atlantic's mind that we were supposed to tour, but it wasn't in anybody else's. 'Cause Sammy and them had been the Bill Black Combo, at least Sammy and Utley, at that point for a long time, and they were trying not to tour. And I'd never been out. I didn't go on the road till Arlo Guthrie.

When d'you go on the road with Arlo?

JLD – Oh, whenever that was, '71 or '72, “City Of New Orleans” (1972) was cut during the tour while we were back laying over in Los Angeles. That was one thing I don't regret. In my, he laughingly referred to as his career. And I don't regret Arlo. I see you're holding up a strange album there. Which cut are you gonna play from Sam The Sham?

Well we were talking about Duane Allman so I figured I'd play “Goin' Upstairs”, a John Lee Hooker tune.

JLD – During this album, McClure, our bass player had broken his hand and this is Hester playing bass on this, Freddy Hester, who was down there on a vacation, literally, and Ed Cole is playing harmonica and Duane playing the other guitar. And Sam The Sham before he saw the light.

Sam Samudio - "Goin' Upstairs" (1971)

JLD – Funny thing about it is people who are listening to it are probably thinking that the guitar I'm playing is Duane Allman 'cause everybody is playing everybody else's parts on that record. Sam The Sham was a difficult session in many ways. Then when it was over Sam didn't want my name on the record 'cause I had the wrong amount of letters in my name. He was a problem.

Sounds like Yoko Ono or something. You never worked with Yoko did you?

JLD – No, I'm innocent of that. Although (Jim) Keltner says she's a real artist. I'm not sure, I'm not sure.

How about Ronnie Hawkins?

JLD – Oh, Hawkins was great man. He was, I went down to his first Atlantic session to ostensibly pitch some songs – I really went down there to meet Wexler 'cause I was cornering him at that point, y'know. Worked like a charm. I'd seen Hawkins with Levon & The Hawks years ago with Fred Carter playing the guitar, before Robbie Robertson. He played till his fingers bled down the neck of his Telecaster. It was an awesome sight. But I halfway knew Hawkins of course – we hit it off real well. Tried to out drink each other for the better part of three days, without realising each one was too old and we were just trying to impress the other one. Hurt me real bad but we got to be good friends. The session we did in Miami with Hawkins, in many ways, at least two of the cuts, are my favourite things I did with the Dixie Flyers, 'cause they were definitive rock'n'roll. And again, they were during the period when Tommy's hand was broken and Duck Dunn is playing on them. The old tension is there and it's hot stuff. “The Treasure Of Love” and “Rooster Blues”, that's the arrangement of “Rooster Blues” that I do, that's where I stole it from, from Ronnie. It happened by accident as we were just all jacked up and we played it fast and it sounded real. But “The Treasure Of Love” I'm real proud of; Freeman's playing the acoustic guitar and Duane is playing the lead. We worked real good hat way. Hawkins is the real thing, there's no doubt about that. He's all wool and a yard wide. And wherever he is tonight, he's rocking! The Hawk! He won't come back south – he stays in Canada and he's a funny dude. But he's one of the real guys, y'know, he's a dinosaur and when you're a dinosaur you've got to watch your tail, y'know? Somewhere out there...I remember posing for a picture of me and Ronnie Hawkins, and I've asked everybody I can think of who was backstage who has the picture? I sure want it.

Here's “The Treasure Of Love” from the Hawk

JLD – Alright!

All request radio!

JLD – Yeah!

Ronnie Hawkins - "The Treasure Of Love" (1971)

You used to say that there was a trilogy of albums...

JLD - “The Hawk”....

Yeah...

JLD - “Hard'n'Heavy” and my album. Big surprise! I don't know exactly why – I never tried to figure it out – but they do represent a trilogy to me anyway, in that probably, if there was one thing that lead to my departure from the Dixie Flyers and Atlantic, it was the Hawkins album. Although after that I did do the Petula Clark record down there which I don't remember a single thing about. I look at it now and I don't remember anything about it except that she and her husband – she had a much younger husband – they spoke to each other in French, over the microphone and earphones, and she would say something to her husband in French, and he would come back with a joint! (Laughs) And that's all I remember about the sessions.....but he didn't give it to me!

Well, we got the “Dixie Fried” album here.

JLD – The inevitable........

I told you before about sitting in The Forum in LA, at this Bob Dylan concert, and I'm waiting for Dylan to come out, and they're playing a tape which I later found out, from our former resident Dylanologist Rob Beaumont, was a tape of Dylan's favourite versions of his songs, and on there was none other than James Luther Dickinson, from “Dixie Fried” doing a version of “John Brown”. Sitting in The Forum where the Lakers play I was in awe.

Jim Dickinson - "John Brown" (1972)

Song Three - Mandra Gora Lightshow Society with Nikki Sudden - "Big Store (orig)"

2011-03-02T22:06:00.001Z

Originally released on a CD that came with issue 27 of Ptolemaic Terrascope magazine in August 1999, this magical version of "Big Store (orig)", the Jacobites classic that appeared on their first self-titled album in 1984, was subsequently included on the Mandra Gora Lighshow Society album "Lucille's Grotesque Diary Of Her Interstellar Journey To The Infamous Paisley Dungeons Of The Psychotic Leathernuns" in 2003.