by Dave Haslam
‘Stank of disinfectant’; Gerry Marsden, quoted in Spencer Leigh’s obituary of Alan Sytner, the Independent, 13 January 2006. Alan Sytner’s assertion, ‘I had terrible advice’, from the same source.
‘People know about the Cavern, but the Casbah was the place where all that started’ and ‘We were sitting with a cup of cappuccino trying to persuade Stuart to get this bass’; both McCartney quotes from The Beatles Monthly, September 2002.
‘I rang him up from the Jacaranda’; Bob Wooler, quoted in Philip Norman, Shout! The True Story of the Beatles (Elm Tree Books, 1981), p.105.
‘They thought we were from Hamburg’; John Lennon interview in Playboy, 28 October 1964.
Newspaper cutting related to the theft of ‘Bern’ Burnell’s stage gear appears here: http://sladestory.blogspot.co.uk/2008/11/memphis-cutouts.html.
‘A group of teddy boys started throwing coins’; McCartney quoted in the Gloucester Citizen, 27 November 2009.
‘Ealing is obviously the foundation’; John Mayall in Classic Blues magazine, October 2012.
‘Elite clique’; Chris Dreja in Uncut magazine, April 2013.
‘We weren’t a pop band’ (Bill Wyman) and ‘They were playing with guts and conviction’ (Giorgio Gomelsky); see Ian McPherson’s website www.timeisonourside.com.
‘Thin and waistless’; Andrew Loog Oldham in Stoned: A Memoir of London in the 1960s (St Martin’s Press, 2000), p.186.
‘We were mesmerised by it all’; Brian Hoggetts writes here: http://www.brumbeat.net/letters.htm.
‘The best-looking girls in Newcastle, quite tarty’; Bryan Ferry quoted in Michael Bracewell, Roxy: The Band that Invented an Era (Faber, 2007) p.49.
‘People were leaving the theatre singing it’; Eric Burdon interview in Uncut magazine, May 2009.
‘I remember thinking, “This is going to be a Number One record”’; Hilton Valentine interview in Uncut magazine, May 2009.
One of the songs Van Morrison wrote and recorded after Them, once he’d gone solo, was ‘Joe Harper Saturday Morning’, which namechecks the caretaker at the Maritime.
‘Robert Plant would jump up’; John Crutchley, quoted in Barney Hoskyns, Led Zeppelin: The Oral History of the World’s Greatest Rock Band (John Wiley & Sons, 2012), p.44.
Chapter Five
‘A symbol of Britain’s recovery after the Second World War’; Coventry Telegraph, 9 April 2013.
‘It’s a supposedly enlightened age’; Edinburgh Plaza’s dress-code debacle is reported in Elizabeth Casciani, Oh, How We Danced! The History of Ballroom Dancing in Scotland (Mercat Press, 1994), p.119.
‘For the last dance of the evening the lights would go down’; Fred Fielder, quoted in the Manchester Evening News, 9 July 2007.
‘City-lights eroticism’; Howard Jacobson, No More Mr Nice Guy (Jonathan Cape, 1998), p.160.
For much more on Guy Stevens, his time at the Scene and subsequently at Island Records, and also as a producer, see Dave Haslam, Adventures on the Wheels of Steel (Fourth Estate, 2001).
‘It’s already been done to perfection’; Roger Eagle, quoted in Sykes, Sit Down! Listen to This! The Roger Eagle Story (Empire, 2012), p.22.
‘They wore a hybrid of American Ivy League and the Italian look’; Eric Clapton, Clapton: The Autobiography (Broadway Books, 2007), p.61.
‘The Scene was really where it was at’; Pete Townshend quote in Geoffrey Giuliano, Behind Blue Eyes: The Life of Pete Townshend (Cooper Square, 2002), p.49.
‘At that time in London there were only a tiny, tiny number of people who were into r&b’; O’Rahilly, quoted in Mojo magazine, August 1994.
For more on drug use among jazz (and other) musicians see Harry Shapiro, Waiting for the Man: Story of Drugs and Popular Music (Quartet, 1989).
‘The greatest records you can imagine were being played’; Pete Meaden interview by Steve Turner, reproduced in Paolo Hewitt (ed.), The Sharper Word: A Mod Anthology (Helter Skelter, 1999), p.166.
There are a number of promoters and/or venues who have also run record labels. Count Suckle founded a record label, Q Records (a subsidiary of Trojan Records).
‘There was nothing else I’d rather be doing’; Pete Townshend, Who I Am (HarperCollins, 2002), p.77.
‘All these boys want to be DJs and they will do anything for a break’; Tom Wolfe, ‘The Noonday Underground’ in The Pump House Gang (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1968), p.108.
For more on the Esquire in Sheffield see Don Hale with Terry Thornton, Club 60 & the Esquire: Sheffield Sounds in the 60s (ALD, 2007).
‘No, mate. We’re beatniks’; Mick Farren, Give the Anarchist a Cigarette (Jonathan Cape, 2001), p.42.
‘Weird breaks’; Pete Jenner in ZigZag, October 1972.
A photograph of the Railway Hotel in Harrow appears on the inside sleeve of the 1971 Who compilation album Meaty Beaty Big and Bouncy. Andy Neill & Matt Kent, The Complete Chronicle of the Who (Virgin, 2005) is full of useful Who-related material.
‘For a few chaotic and historic years, the Marquee was the most important venue in Britain’; Uncut, May 2013.
Chapter Six
‘The best club in Britain’; John Peel writing in the introduction to Kevin Duffy, Mothers 1968–1971: the Home of Good Sounds (Birmingham Library Services, 1977).
‘In the appropriate circles it is famed throughout the land’; Evening Mail, 12 March 1970.
‘Drug addicts and peddlers, degenerates who specialise in obscene orgies’; the People, 24 July 1960.
‘The rebel intelligentsia’; Mick Farren, Give the Anarchist a Cigarette (Johnathan Cape, 2005) p.18.
‘Dylan is the darling of the sweet young things now’; Melody Maker, 22 May 1965.
‘In a small country [he means England], excitement was like steam in a kettle’; Robert Shelton in No Direction Home (Penguin, 1986), p.288.
‘The moment at which the nascent underground stood up to be counted’; Jonathon Green, All Dressed Up: The Sixties and the Counterculture (Jonathan Cape, 1998), p.128.
‘Cosmonauts of inner space’; a phrase picked out by Burroughs in his introduction to Trocchi’s Man of Leisure (Calder & Boyars, 1972), p.9.
Ginsberg imagined a better world: ‘Everybody lost in a dream world of their own making’, quoted in Barry Miles, Allen Ginsberg: Beat Poet (Virgin Publishing, 2000), p.63.
‘People with whom I could empathise and identify’; Farren, p.61.
‘Our weapons, our challenges, our visible insults’; Angela Carter in ‘Notes for a Theory of Sixties Style’, in New Society (1967), collected in Angela Carter, Nothing Sacred: Selected Writings (Virago, 1982).
Paul McCartney’s recollections of LSD in coffee quoted in Green, p.195. Lennon’s ‘growing infatuation’ with LSD also in Green, p.196.
‘The wisest, holiest, most effective avatars the human race has ever produced’; Timothy Leary, quoted in Philip Norman, Shout! The True Story of the Beatles (Elm Tree Books, 1981), p.287.
‘An aggressively commercial scene’; International Times, 2 June 1967.
‘STP was like a quadruple-strength dose of acid’; Eric Clapton in an interview with Nigel Williamson quoted in Christopher Hjort and Charles Horton, Strange Brew: Eric Clapton and the British Blues Boom 1965–1970 (Jawbone, 2007).
‘A weird atonal cacophony’; Farren, p.120.
‘At least half the audience were doing acid. I was doing acid’; Peter Jenner, quoted in Jonathon Green, Days In The Life: Voices from the English Underground, 1961–1971 (Pimlico, 1998).
‘A grass named Joe, thick-set, with large head’; International Times, 2 June 1967.
David Stringer in International Times, 31 May 1968.
‘Safe refuge for psychedelic people’; Brian Jackson, quoted in Bill Sykes, Sit Down! Listen to This! The Roger Eagle Story (Empire, 2012), p.106.
‘No one else had suits on at all’; C.J. Stone, Fierce Dancing: Adventures in the Underground. (Faber & Faber, 1996).
‘That was the first club outside London that meant anything at all
’; Roy Harper, quoted here: http://www.birminghammusicarchive.com/carlton-ballroom/.
‘I was learning all kinds of things about the nature of performance’; Willy Russell, writing here: http://www.willyrussell.com/music.html.
Andor Gomme, quoted in Andrew Foyle, Bristol (Pevsner Architectural Guides: City Guides, Yale University Press, 2004), p.155.
‘A long, narrow, live-music and drinking joint’; Farren, p.358.
Chapter Seven
For more on the Twisted Wheel and Northern Soul, see David Nowell, Too Darn Soulful – the Story of Northern Soul (Robson Books, 1999).
‘Such scarcity of illumination tends to have a widening effect on the pupils of the eyes’; Dave Godin, Blues & Soul, issue 50 (January 1971).
‘We could have hardly called a nightclub “Shut That Door”’; George Best, Blessed: The Autobiography (Ebury, 2002), p.221.
Clubship Landfall in Liverpool was moored first at Canning Half-Tide Dock, and then the Collingwood on Regent Road. It then became a favoured lunchtime haunt, before evolving into a club with an over-25s policy. After a brief time as a club, it was left to rot for two decades before sinking at its berth in Birkenhead in 2010. In November 2014 it was refloated as part of a plan to take it to a museum in Portsmouth.
‘A celebrity haunt helping build Newcastle’s reputation as a party city’; Newcastle’s Evening Chronicle, 7 December 2007.
‘Soul music has become the only true “underground” music in the country now’; Dave Godin, Blues & Soul, issue 67 (September 1971).
‘Very faggy indeed’; Bertie Marshall, Berlin Bromley (SAF, 2006), p.99.
‘A great big party’; Terri Hooley, quoted here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/northern_ireland/7797071.stm.
‘The closest I have ever got to a religious experience’; Don Letts, Culture Clash: Dread Meets Punk Rockers (SAF, 2007), p.74.
More on Crackers in Roberts Elms, The Way We Wore (Picador, 2005).
For more on jazz, jazz funk etc. see Mark ‘Snowboy’ Cotgrove, From Jazz Funk & Fusion to Acid Jazz: the History of the UK Jazz Dance Scene (Chaser Publications, 2009).
Chapter Eight
‘The classic definition of a fleapit, all peeling paint and stained seats’; Kris Needs in ZigZag magazine, June 1977.
‘Something seems to be happening’; Mick Farren in NME, 19 June 1976.
‘The problem with those bands was that they left you as they found you’; Uncut magazine, October 2004.
‘A front parlour affair’; Morrissey, quoted in Jon Savage, England’s Dreaming The Sex Pistols & Punk Rock (Faber & Faber, 1991), p.176.
‘The seventies incarnation’; Richard Boon, quoted in Johnny Rogan, Morrissey and Marr: The Severed Alliance (Omnibus, 1992), p.126.
‘When they played Nottingham, alas, everybody went out to the chip shop’; claim made online: http://www.left lion.co.uk, 1 May 2005.
Chris Charlesworth in Melody Maker, 20 July 1974.
Charles Shaar Murray, NME, 7 June 1975.
‘It’s the story of the travelling nonsense’; John Lydon, quoted in the sleevenotes for Sex Pistols, SexBox 1 (3 CD box set, Virgin Records, 2002).
The book in which there’s a chapter discussing the Sex Pistols gig at Didsbury College which didn’t happen is Ian Inglis (ed.), Performance & Popular Music: History, Place & Time (Ashgate, 2006).
‘I’m normally a very slow person and it made me more intense’; John Lydon, quoted in Jon Savage, ibid. p.191.
‘We used to take acid at Louise’s’; John Lydon, quoted in Jon Savage, ibid, p.187.
‘Absolutely nobody else looked like that’; Neil Spencer, quoted: http://www.geocities.ws/kutie_jones/earlygigs.html.
‘They were light years ahead of us’; Strummer, quoted: http://www.geocities.ws/kutie_jones/earlygigs.html.
For more about Jayne Casey, Cut Above the Rest and her gang of friends, see Dave Haslam, Not Abba: the Real Story of the 1970s (Fourth Estate, 2005).
‘Where they’re going to next is anyone’s guess!’; Buzzcocks review in NME, 27 November 1976.
‘There were no other places like the early Roxy’; quote from an interview with Shanne Bradley on the website http://www.punk77.co.uk/. In the Leveller magazine in March 1978 Poly Styrene of X-Ray Spex had this to say about the Roxy: ‘When the Roxy opened it was somewhere any new band could play. If it hadn’t been for the Roxy, we probably wouldn’t have formed the band.’
‘The punks couldn’t roll their own spliffs’; Don Letts, Culture Clash (SAF, 2007), p.95.
‘The post-Grundy tabloid punk circus’; Letts, p.96.
‘A supergroup with a difference – its members only became super after they left’; Paddy Shennan, Liverpool Echo, 20 September 2003.
Chapter Nine
The ‘Only After Dark’ events are monthly, and have taken place at various venues in Birmingham. At the time of writing they take place at the Apres Bar, Summer Row.
‘Eddie Fewtrell tells a different tale in his memoirs’; Eddie Fewtrell with Shirley Thompson, King of Clubs: The Eddie Fewtrell Story (Brewin Books, 2007).
Jenny Clarke’s memories of the Kray Twins at the Club A Go Go were reported in 1992 in the local Chronicle newspaper. The article is posted on Roger Smith’s excellent website documenting venues in the Northeast through the 1960s; http://www.readysteadygone.co.uk.
‘In the words of Ray’s son Paul’; in an email to the author.
Report on Studio 54’s aborted plans to open a London venue in NME, 17 June 1978.
Robert Elms recalls his ‘Chinese space-Cossack attire’ in Robert Elms, The Way We Wore: A Life in Threads (Picador, 2005), p.183.
‘Invent yourself. Entertain’; Nicola Tyson, quoted in the Guardian (online), 25 January 2013.
‘I had queued’; Steve Strange, in an interview carried on the website www.theblitzkids.com.
Confirmation of the details of the Geno Washington gig from Kevin Rowland in an email to the author.
Fingered, film by Richard Kern, 1986.
‘Attentive audiences’; Eric Haydock, quoted in Simon Frith et al., The History of live music in Britain, Volume I: 1950–1967 (Ashgale, 2013), p.181.
Chapter Ten
‘He rammed his guitar upwards, not necessarily intending to do any damage’; Sandie’s words are quoted on a website dedicated to documenting Hendrix’s visits to the Northeast: http://www.hen-drixnortheast.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/hendrix/.
Jimmy Nail told his Hendrix story in January 1999 on the occasion of the release of the film Still Crazy.
‘I remember Hendrix creating a hole in the plaster ceiling’; Sting, Broken Music: A Memoir (Dial Press, 2003), p.85.
Ian Vargeson was in the audience at the Wellington and discusses Hendrix ‘getting bored in the middle of one song’ here: http://norfolksamericanconnections.com/people-g-m/jimi-hendrix/.
‘The old, conventional way of making music would never be the same’; Pete Townshend, Who I Am (HarperCollins, 2002),p.4.
The Jimi Hendrix and George Best in Majorca story by Keith Altham appears in NME, 27 July 1968.
‘Crawling with women’; George Best, Blessed (Edbury, 2002), p.199.
‘The punks were my heroes’; Terri Hooley interview in Sydney Morning Herald, 3 June 2014.
For more on the Limit, Human League, Cabaret Voltaire etc. see Martin Lilleker, Beats Working for a Living: the Story of Popular Music in Sheffield 1973–1984 (Juma, 2005).
Steve Fisher recounts his Sandpiper memories here: http://www.smfpics.com/backcat/sandpiper/.
‘It was a place of great depression because of all the factory closures’; Martyn Ware, quoted in Lilleker, p.94.
‘To be fair, we did incite a lot of people’; Chris Watson, quoted in Lilleker, p.23.
‘They whack the shit out of NY’s overrated Suicide’; Charles Shaar Murray in NME, 29 August 1978.
‘The whole punk explosion came along and it showed anybody could do anything’; Stephen Singleton, quoted in Lilleker, p.94.
‘Iggy i
mitators acting out their sons-of-World-War-Two histrionics’ and the quote from Rob Gretton (‘smart, punky, but not scruffy’) are from James Nice, Shadowplayers: the Rise and Fall of Factory Records (Aurum, 2010), pp.33–4.
‘There was a big sign’; Alan Erasmus is quoted in FAC 229, a Music Week supplement, 15 July 1989.
‘Because it was a West Indian club they also had a great sound system’; Chris Watson, quoted in Nice, p.38.
‘We’d like to stay on the outside’; Ian Curtis in NME, 13 January 1979.
‘Do you want to buy one of these records?’; Stephen Singleton quote from http://www.sheffieldvision.com.
‘Remarkably boring’; Morrissey in Record Mirror, 22 August 1981.
‘The best set of haircuts I’ve ever seen’; Paul Morley, The Face, August 1981.
‘It was a proper little backdoor club which, at the time, had been unchanged since the 1970s, so it was all flock wallpaper’; DJ Parrot quoted here: http://www.djhistory.com/interviews/dj-parrot.
‘A place that you want to be living in’; Richard Boon in Sublime: Manchester Music and Design 1976–1992 (Cornerhouse, 1992).
Chapter Eleven
For more on the Bristol scene in the 1980s see Phil Johnson, Straight Outa Bristol (Hodder & Stoughton, 1996).
‘I didn’t think being a DJ was a career back then’; Milo interview in Chris Burton and Gary Thompson, Art and Sound of the Bristol Underground (Tangent Books, 2009) p.94.
‘People who went to the Dug Out found their own sense of belonging’; Karl Harrington comment here: www.electricpavilion.org/dugout/blog.
For more on clubs including the Dirtbox see Sheryl Garratt, Adventures in Wonderland: A Decade of Club Culture (Headline, 1998). For more on all forms of DJing and club nights from the early 1960s onwards see Bill Brewster and Frank Broughton, Last Night a DJ Saved My Life (Headline, 1999).
‘I remember walking into this stark, industrial space’; DJ Justin Robertson is quoted in Richard Norris, Paul Oakenfold: The Authorised Biography (Bantam, 2007), p.156.
‘Then we started getting black kids coming down’; DJ Parrot quoted here: http://www.djhistory.com/interviews/dj-parrot.
‘I loved the energy’; Carl Cox in Garratt, p.107.