Scrapbook

by Michael White

  “Heads or tails?”

  The only song I didn’t write

  “The only song I didn't write

  is the only song you ever sing

  the only truth I ever told

  is the only truth you never hear…”

  (“The Only Song I didn’t write”

  by

  Johnny Ruskin)

  (A lone note sounds from the guitar, then a flurry of chords and in the background a drumbeat slowly starts, and the note feeds back, the sound of the strings magnified, almost losing the tune and then effortlessly turning into a rush of notes that becomes chords, and the bass kicks in, lazy and round, following the beat and a voice drawls, casually, against the beat though somehow, and the words, “Ain’t no fool like me..” echo about the beat and the riff kicks in and then just for today slowly fades, and the voice talks over the song. It is the DJ.)

  DAVID HART (DJ): Welcome and good evening to Rock Music FM. I am David Hart and this evening we have a very special program for you lucky listeners out there. Nearly forty-seven years ago a boy from the north of England appeared in the charts with what at the time was called “The most talented solo blues guitarist” to appear for years. That was of course Johnny Ruskin and the song, “Plain walking blues” went on to top the charts for four weeks. Now sixteen albums, seven number one singles and a discography that most bands would die for, the legend that is Johnny Ruskin is back with a greatest hits album as well as a few new tracks. Ladies and gentlemen it is a pleasure and an honour to be talking tonight to Johnny himself. Hi Johnny how are you?”

  JOHNNY RUSKIN: I am very good thanks. Nice intro, though I’m not sure about the legend thing. I don’t think I am quite as cool as that.

  DAVID HART: Well. To a boy who grew up listening to your records and dreaming of one day shaking your hand I think legend is exactly the right word.

  JOHNNY RUSKIN: (Chuckles): You’re too kind. Though you do make me feel very old.

  DAVID HART: I think perhaps with age comes experience. I love the new tracks by the way.

  JOHNNY RUSKIN: Yeh. We had a great time doing them. I had kind of forgotten just how much fun it was laying down new stuff. It’s been a while.

  DAVID HART: We will come to that later, but let’s go back to the beginning shall we? I think you said once that rock and blues were the only ways out of the north of England in 1969 if you were no good at football or didn’t come from the right school.

  JOHNNY RUSKIN: It’s true, really. Things were very different back then. Even footballers weren’t earning anything like what they do now. It was a common thing. When you were old enough then your dad would get you a football to kick around. If you were useless at that then you got a guitar for your next birthday.

  DAVID HART: What happened if you were useless at the guitar too?

  JOHNNY RUSKIN: Then it was the pit. Or the car factory. Or an apprenticeship. I don’t think they have them these days really. Perhaps they do. They’ve got rid of everything else.

  DAVID HART: So what made an old dinosaur like you want to come back then, the great Johnny Ruskin who once had the world at his feet disappears and now, lo and behold here you are again. The old classics and I have to say, some great new stuff too.

  JOHNNY RUSKIN (Laughing): You cheeky young sod! Still. No need to stand on ceremony. It’s just Johnny these days.

  DAVID: Okay. Johnny it is then. So why the comeback? I read an interview with you the other day where you said that you had been away so long most people thought you were dead.

  JOHNNY: Haha yes. Well death is a greatly overrated thing now, isn’t it? Besides, my old stuff still stands up. I bet if you were to go into any boozer in this country with a juke box then at least one of my records would be on there somewhere. Plus, I like it. They say that you are as old as you feel, and that’s true. Music keeps me young, and if anyone else gets off on that then that’s cool too. I’d still do it if they told me I had to brush the floor and wash the cups when we were done to tell the truth.

  DAVID: Sounds good. So the new album. We started off with your first hit, “Plain walking blues” which I think it’s fair to say was more rock than blues?

  JOHNNY: I think that’s fair, yes.

  DAVID: So your follow up single, “Roadhouse” had a bit more of a pop feel to it. Was that a conscious choice to widen your audience or what?

  JOHNNY: (Laughing) Really it was the only other song we had ready at the time. It was that or nothing.

  DAVID: Really?

  JOHNNY: Yeh. When the first one hit the charts and just kept climbing there was nobody more surprised than me. Perhaps my record label. They started to treat me a whole lot different once that got into the top ten I can tell you. So “Roadhouse” was all we had recorded. Back then I could whistle you up a song and have it done dusted and ready to be pressed onto vinyl in a day, but the suits at the record company seemed to like the other track and so they released that.

  DAVID: So the first single got to number two in the charts I seem to recall.

  JOHNNY: Yeh.

  DAVID: And the second only number five?

  JOHNNY: Number six. It didn’t do as well for certain. I think if anything it was just a little bit too different from the first one. We could rock it up a bit when we played it live of course, and it was always good for that, but for the radio it was just a little bit too samey as lots of other stuff out there right then.

  DAVID: Then you were back in the studio?

  JOHNNY: We were yes. I had to put a band together. Dave on bass, Mike on drums and Gary on rhythm. Pretty much the lineup I used for years. As I say, I can put down a song so quick that most of the time an album wouldn’t take long to do at all. Bear in mind as well I had all of this going around my head for years. It was like spewing it out onto the platter. It came from the heart really.

  DAVID: “Roadhouse” was the album name taken from the second single. Odd choice given it’s chart performance as a single did the poorest of the two tracks.

  JOHNNY: Yeh. Well the suits liked it so we went with it. Back then I had no track record, and although they were starting to treat me good I had no real clout. I just wanted the music to be out there really.

  DAVID: (Laughing) The album was much rockier though, wasn’t it?

  JOHNNY: Oh yeh. It was more about who I was really. I didn’t want to be Paul McCartney. I always saw myself as John Lennon really. It was much rockier, but it was honest. I think that’s what I have always tried to do really. Just play good honest music. Nothing fancy. I think on a few albums I tried to play it trickier; get a bit fancy. They were usually the ones that did least well. Where I come from it’s all or nothing really. Either kick them in the balls and run or just let them beat you down. Music is no different.

  DAVID: “Roadhouse” was the best-selling album of 1970 I think?

  JOHNNY: Yeh. Beat Led Zeppelin 2 by a whisker. Gave me hell about that, did Robert Plant. I still think it was him who filled my swimming pool with a car or two a few years later. “Let it go, Robert.” I said to him many a time, but he kind of fixated on it, you know?

  DAVID: Okay. So let’s play a track from “Roadhouse” then, shall we? Which one have you chosen?

  JOHNNY: “Steel Town.”

  DAVID: Ah. The one with “that” riff?

  JOHNNY: Yes. That one. To be honest I had the riff in my head for a few weeks before and I thought I had heard it on the radio or something. I just woke up with it in me head one day. I played it to a few people on the guitar in the studio and although they all said that they liked it nobody had heard it before, and so we went with it. I was expecting lawsuits for months after the album was released!

  DAVID: (laughing) Okay. Let's listen to it then. “Steel Town” from the album “Roadhouse”.

  JOHNNY: With that riff.

  DAVID: Yes. THAT one.

  (The music starts with a riff that is so famous these days it is impossible almost not to see Johnny as he was then, young and thin, face cont
orted as the notes resound out in sequence, a crescendo of drums and then the rhythm and bass kick in, driving the song forward like a juggernaut.

  “Release me from this place / Now I cannot face / Steel Town…” growls Johnny and then the guitar stutters and screams into a solo that almost every rock guitarist has tried to replicate ever since. It is rock at its finest; abandoned; dangerous. Loud.

  The chorus starts as the solo ends and repeats then fades, the guitar screaming in the background, a call to arms, a statement of intent. No wonder it made Robert Plant angry.)

  JOHNNY: The funny thing is the record company didn’t want me to put that track on the album at all. They said it was “too rocky”. Whatever that means.

  DAVID: Really?

  JOHNNY: Yeh. Luckily I stuck up for meself for once and they reluctantly put it on.

  DAVID: Unbelievable.

  JOHNNY: Well. You can see their point. Record companies were suspicious of rock those days. It was either prog rock or pop. There was no middle ground. Even soul was marketed as pop.

  DAVID: So take us forward a few years. The singles continued to hit the charts, your first number one was, “Midheaven” I think?

  JOHNNY: It was, yes. Jesus that was a party afterwards. I had a hangover for over a week amongst other things. Then the albums started to chart okay in the USA and so we were off there to do the tours and what have you. I have to be honest with you. Almost all of the rest of the 1970’s is a complete mystery to me. It just went past in a blur.

  DAVID: And not just down to being busy making the albums I think.

  JOHNNY: (laughing) Well yeh. That’s true. The thing is you see, nobody had ever produced a manual for being a rock star. There is nobody to ask for advice other than other rock stars, and most of my peers were just as off their tits on whatever they could get their hands on to either sniff, swig or spark up with as I was.

  DAVID: So when did you realise it was making the music suffer?

  JOHNNY: I don’t think I ever did realise. I can tell now of course. Remember in 1980 things were changing. The best-selling album that year was fucking “Super Trouper” by ABBA for God’s sake. And John of course too.

  DAVID: John Lennon?

  JOHNNY: Yeh. Fucking awful what happened to poor old John. Even now. You know I just don’t get it. It’s why I have never moved to America. All those guns and stuff. Too many weirdos. When you are out front on stage you’re the biggest target there ever could be, and I have upset enough people in me time to make them form an orderly queue to take a pot shot.

  DAVID: Our next track is from “Candy Shop” I think. 1981.

  JOHNNY: That’s right. I think it was when I began to see I was listening perhaps a little too much to my own publicity.

  DAVID: The title of the album has always been construed to be drug related. Is that true?

  JOHNNY: Absolutely, yes. I was the proverbial kid in the candy shop. By then I was uppers to get me awake, downers to calm me down, and during the making of this record I was finally to become acquainted with the big white stuff.

  DAVID: Heroin?

  JOHNNY: Yeh. You know sometimes you look back on your life and think to yourself, “You know Johnny boy, you shouldn’t have”, or maybe even, “I wish I hadn't done that.” I’m not like that. I wouldn’t change a thing.

  DAVID: Not even the drugs?

  JOHNNY: Jesus, no. I mean, how can you appreciate the good things without experiencing the bad? It puts things into perspective. If everything smelt of roses all the time then roses wouldn’t be remarkable at all.

  DAVID: I suppose so.

  JOHNNY: Take it from me Dave old matey, old chum. You got to sniff the shit every now and again to realise that the roses are much, much sweeter.

  DAVID: So our next track is “The Mirror.” from the “Candy Shop” album. Autobiographical?

  JOHNNY: I think it was more the case that I was coming around to the fact that I needed to take a good long hard look at myself in the mirror, but that I didn’t actually do it for several years. (laughs loudly) I still had a few years of being a complete arsehole with myself yet.

  (The song begins, a long single note on what seems to be a church organ; high and reedy. Then a marching sound on drums slowly fades in, Johnny half talking, half singing, “mirror mirror on the wall / who’s the greatest fool of all” and then an acoustic guitar drifts in, strumming slowly, followed by a single note on the bass and the string orchestra swells to fill the absence of a vocal track, the melody floating above the orchestra, drifting through the guitar solo then back to just Johnny singing again, and then silence, interrupted by just a single note from a flute that fades and fades to nothing.)

  DAVID: I just love that song.

  JOHNNY: Thanks. It was the best track on the album. Mind you, some of it I don’t even remember recording.

  DAVID: So to the drugs bust in 1986.

  JOHNNY: Yeh. Not my best year that.

  DAVE: Six weeks in jail and two years suspended wasn’t a great start to the year I imagine.

  JOHNNY: That’s no lie, no. Yet I was lucky really, you know? Giving the amount of skag I was getting through by that point if they had bust me properly then I’d probably still be behind bars. The time inside wasn't that bad either. The cons were real friendly to me, and the open prison they bunged me in was no real hardship. In fact, I wrote my next album when I was in there.

  DAVID: But you didn’t record it for another two years I think.

  JOHNNY: Yeh. I wanted to just go off and find myself really. Bear in mind by this time I had been in the industry full time for nearly seventeen years. It was tour, record, tour, record and so on. I had balls big enough now to say to the suits, “Hang on just a minute. Give me a fucking break will you? I want a rest.” So off I went. The next album, “Voodoo Mama” was 1989.

  DAVID: Even then you were a man out of time almost.

  JOHNNY: Always, yes. This comeback album is no different. Been there a few times, make no mistake. I always bounce back. 1989 was all Jason Donovan and Kylie and Phil bloody Collins. I mean. Jesus. “Voodoo Mama” was like a smack in the teeth because not only did it blow every other piece of Stock Aitken and Waterman pile of crud out of the water, it was also the best thing I ever wrote. My swan song, as such.

  DAVID: Swan song?

  JOHNNY: Yeh. Well. We recorded it in Jamaica. It was handy for the ganja was the only reason I wanted to go there, but you know it kind of made sense. The one thing you have to remember is that music is a business, like any other thing, and I am an asset; a commodity if you like. They wanted me relaxed because it made them more money. Simple as that.

  DAVID: It’s probably your most talked about album, for sure. Especially the title track. American middle of the road rock was just around the corner by now of course, and older artists such as yourself were treated with suspicion by the mid-Atlantic types.

  JOHNNY: Of course, and I can’t say I can blame them. Prog rock had vanished up its own arse, pop music was well and truly dead. Even Bowie was buggering around with Tin Machine. Everyone was kind of experimenting; you know?

  DAVID: Yet the audience didn’t seem to have so much of a problem with you as they did with others. Why do you think that was?

  JOHNNY: Rock and roll music is at its heart two things: it is unpretentious and forgive me for being unpretentious, it was rock. If “Candy shop” had been the last album I recorded before modern rock came along then I would have been dead in the water. “Voodoo Mama”: changed all of that.

  DAVID: Let’s listen to “One little death” then. Probably the most famous track.

  (Drums kick in, tribal almost, the bass following on the mid beat as Johnny screams the opening lyrics, “No soul / Just take me home / No soul / Voodoo mama” The guitar burns and the riff kicks in, the guitars chugging in rhythm, the drums driving it on (One little death / who cares? / No breath / Voodoo Mama) Then the final guitar break rumbles on, lurches up an octave and then stops, a single scream and then
silence.)

  DAVID: That final scream never fails to send shivers up my spine.

  JOHNNY: Mine too, believe you me. Hurt like buggery.

  DAVID: There were rumours at the time that you had received an electric shock from the mike stand, which made the end of the song so real. Sounds like the kind of thing still discussed on forums somewhere probably.

  JOHNNY: Not just rumours, me old son, oh no. Jamaica is a nice place, but their approach to health and safety is at best haphazard.

  DAVID: So you did get an electric shock at the end of the song?

  JOHNNY: Oh yes. A right old shock it was too. Complete game changer. Delayed my next public appearance a little, I should say. Killed me stone dead it did.