Mojo #183

I like Mojo magazine. I know it has an unhealthy obsession with the Beatles, but still it’s the best music journal there’s ever been. Which is why I have all 183 issues, filed away neatly in boxes in my library. And why I’m always so pleased when I get a mention in there.

So, many thanks to Ian Harrison for the splendid coverage in the current issue of my book Halfway to Paradise, containing the wondrous photographs of Harry Hammond:

Magic Gardens

I’m somewhat slow off the mark, I know, but I feel I ought to mention the publication of Magic Gardens: The Underwater Art of Susan Williams-Ellis, a book for which I wrote an introduction and, together with Thamasin Marsh, selected and shaped the images.

Susan was the daughter of Clough Williams-Ellis, the man who built Portmeirion, and in her own right she was a fine designer. Her best known designs came with Portmeirion Potteries (most famously with their Botanic Garden range), but she had a long and varied career with a fantastic body of work.

There was a particular interest in the world of the sea. Back in the 1940s she learnt how to scuba dive and developed the tools that enabled her to sketch underwater. On her return to land, she would then work these sketches up as paintings. The same technique was employed in later life as she and her husband, Euan, travelled around the tropical waters of the world (though by then she preferred snorkelling to scuba diving), and it this work that is represented in Magic Gardens.

The book is available from the Portmeirion online shop, and this is a selection of images from it (the music is Trepanning by loungecore gods, the Gentle People):

Remembering Ruby Flipper

Things I wish I’d know when I was writing…

In my book Crisis? What Crisis?, I quote an entry in Michael Palin’s diary from 1978 in which he acknowledges the poor state of the economy, but concludes that, despite everything: ‘I’m better disposed to letting the present Labour government run my country for me than any other group – apart, perhaps, from Pan’s People.’

And, purely as an aside, I point out that sadly he was behind the times, that ‘the five-woman dance troupe Pan’s People had recently retired, after ten years of providing visual relief for dads obliged by their children to watch Top of the Pops. They were replaced by the short-lived and barely remembered Ruby Flipper, whose mixed-gender line-up failed to console a bereaved audience.’

It was, of course, an entirely gratuitous reference to Ruby Flipper, included only because they so often fail to get a mention, lost between memories of Pan’s People and Legs and Co. But I’ve always had a bit of a soft spot for them after their inexplicable performance to the sounds of David Bowie’s TVC15 in 1976.

And the reason this turns up now is that I’ve been reading Ian Gittins’ excellent history of Top of the Pops – Mishaps, Miming and Music: True Adventures of TV’s No. 1 Pop Show (BBC Books, 2007) – in which he reveals that Ruby Flipper were removed from the show on the direct instructions of Bill Cotton, then Controller of BBC.

This is the story as told by Flick Colby, the resident choreographer on the series: ‘Bill Cotton called me in to the BBC and said the British public didn’t want to see black men dancing with white women. I argued, but he told me to form another all-girl group or I was out.’ And so Legs and Co were born.

I didn’t know that until yesterday, which is a shame since I would certainly have included it in the section on the BBC’s attitude towards race. It would have fitted in well in the discussion about The Black and White Minstrel Show (which, let us never forget, ran on television from 1958 right through to 1978 – that is, it was still on after Ruby Flipper had been axed), particularly since I make explicit reference to the issue that so troubled Mr Cotton:

‘Initially the blackface make-up was worn by all the singers, but early on it was decided to restrict it to the men only, presenting the culturally curious spectacle of white women dancing with caricatures of black men, as though such a depiction might inoculate the nation against the possibility of miscegenation.’

In the years that followed the eventual (belated) cancellation of the televised version of The Black and White Minstrel Show, there were loud and repeated complaints that the viewing millions were being deprived of a harmless bit of entertainment. Even if there were some kind of racism, it was argued, it was unconscious and certainly not intentional. But Mr Cotton clearly knew what he was doing.

Vince Eager

Back in the 1950s, at the dawn of British rock and roll, the premier manager in the country was Larry Parnes. He had been involved in the early career of Tommy Steele, the country’s first rock star, and when he began to build a roster of artists, he decided to rename his charges in the same manner: homely first name, dynamic surname. So were born Marty Wilde, Billy Fury, Duffy Power and Georgie Fame.

And so too did a young kid from Grantham, previously known as Roy Taylor, find himself rebranded as Vince Eager.

Vince was a popular live act and a big star on television, but – hampered, as were so many at the time, by unsympathetic material and production – his records didn’t really do him justice. Consequently his career hasn’t been defined simply by a hit or two from his teenage years.

And that career has been, and remains, hugely impressive. He’s still working, and his voice is still one of the best in the business.

Vince provided invaluable help when I was working on my book, Halfway to Paradise, and his own memoirs, The Rock ’n’ Roll Files, proved a wonderful source of information (as well as being a romping good read). Since publication, he has also been helping to promote the book.

We shall be appearing together on John Holmes’ afternoon show on BBC Radio Nottingham on Tuesday, 18th November, to which you should be able to listen online, even if you’re unfortunate enough not to live in Brian Clough country.

Meanwhile visit Vince’s own site and buy his book:

The Aftermath of Aberfan

My memories are inevitably vague, but I think the Aberfan disaster of 1966 was the first news story that I noticed. I was then just starting school, and it would have been difficult to miss the coverage of the landslide of coal-waste avalanching down on a small village. For the first buildings to be hit were the schools, and when the final death toll was reckoned up, it turned out that 116 of the 144 victims were children.

What I obviously didn’t register at the time was the full scandal – the fact that the disaster could have been avoided, had the National Coal Board heeded the warnings that the slurry tip was on a stream that made it structurally unsound.

Nor did I know anything about the continuing story, the second tragedy that engulfed the survivors and the bereaved. As money poured in from around the world, a disaster relief fund was set up, with around £1.8 million contributed (nearer £25 million at today’s prices), most of it from individuals wanting to help out.

But the money didn’t make it through to the intended recipients. Instead it sat in the bank, accumulating interest for the local council.

Which is where my late friend, John Summers, entered the story. Writing then for the Sunday Telegraph, he was the one Fleet Street journalist who wouldn’t let go of the story. He returned repeatedly to Aberfan (just five miles from Rhymni where he grew up), wrote about the families in the Telegraph and in Harpers Bazaar and Queen magazines, and even issued himself the High Court writ that released some of the funds.

All of which is much in my mind because I have today been reading through some of those articles by John and putting them on the site dedicated to him (scroll down to the bottom of the page).

For John himself, it was a turning-point in his life. He began his campaigning as a journalist and emerged as a novelist, the whole tragic story having been incorporated into his first novel, Edge of Disaster. For those interested in his work, it’s worth comparing his articles with the published, and slightly fictionalized, account from that book.

Oh, and for anyone intrigued by the mention in the Daily Telegraph’s obituary of a feud between John and his former lecturer, Kingsley ‘Bopa’ Amis, I recently put the relevant material online as well.

John’s Return Home

John Summers left instructions that he wanted his remains to be interred in the family plot in Rhymni Cemetery, and today a small group of friends and family gathered to see his wishes honoured.

Amongst many other things, John was probably the most travelled man I’ve ever met, bringing back tales from all over the world. But wherever he went, and in whatever he wrote, he kept a part of his heart for the valleys of South Wales where he grew up, and particularly for Rhymni.

That background formed the basis of his finest novel, The Raging Summer, named in honour of Rhymni’s greatest poet Idris Davies, whose long poem The Angry Summer had depicted the town in the days of the Depression.

So, in memory of John, and in commemoration of the return of his mortal remains to his hometown, here are some lines from The Angry Summer:

And one by one the lights shall go out
in all the valleys, leaving isolated lamps, silver pins,
sticking into the inverted velvet of the midnight air.
And you shall listen then to the silence
that is not silence, to the murmur
of the uneasy centuries among the ancient hills and valleys
as here you stand with the mountain breeze on your brow.

Paperback Crisis

One of the benefits of the Internet is that it saves one’s publishers having to communicate directly.

I knew that Aurum Press were thinking of bringing out my book from earlier this year, Crisis? What Crisis?, as a paperback, but it wasn’t till I was idly surfing through Amazon that I got to see the cover and to learn the details.

So for those of you already planning your beach reading for next year, can I recommend this fine piece of work, available for only £9 and published on 19 March 2009:


And in the meantime, of course, the hardback is still available and would make a splendid Christmas gift.

Halfway to Paradise

My latest book was published on Monday. It kind of passed me by a little, since there was no big party to celebrate this momentous occasion, but then I’m not quite sure whether such things as launch parties actually exist – certainly I’ve never seen one.

Anyway, whingeing aside, the book is completely wonderful. Published by the V&A and titled Halfway to Paradise: The Birth of British Rock, it contains around 250 photos by the great Harry Hammond, accompanied by my own fine text. It tells the story of the early days of rock and roll, covering roughly the decade of 1954-64, from skiffle to the Beatles, or – in media shorthand – from Austerity Britain to Swinging London.

Yours for a mere £25, or for an even more mere £17-50 from Amazon, it’s about as perfect a Christmas gift as you could ever hope for. There are some extracts and images available if you click on this link.

A Spoonful of Sugar

I’ve been getting fascinated by a blog titled The Hospital Shop, and feel I ought to draw it to your attention.

There are these two women, Sylvie and Joyce, who are volunteers working in a hospital shop in Lancashire. And their boss appears to have sent them on a course of evening classes to learn how to use computers. They don’t seem to have quite got the hang of it, but they’re great value for money, as they take turns to gossip and snipe at each other – genuinely very funny, though I don’t know how much of the humour is intentional.

I’d say they reminded me of Alan Bennett characters, except they’re the wrong side of the Pennines.

Much recommended. However odd it sounds.

Failed Gods

‘Depressions can be seen as what happens when inequality gets out of hand in a market system. At one end of the scale there is a growth in poverty, which in turn leads to high debt as people struggle to maintain their living standards. They either borrow or consume less. At the other end inequality encourages bouts of wild speculation as the rich find themselves with piles of spare cash. Speculation leads to bubbles, and bubbles lead to crashes...’

That was Larry Elliott and Dan Atkinson in their classic (if slightly neglected) book, The Age of Insecurity, back in 1998.

At the time, of course, they were wildly out-of-step with the times – off-message, as it was then known. Certainly no one in the triumphalist Blairite camp wanted to hear their warning that New Labour was ultimately headed for disaster, and that it was a mistake to abandon time-honoured social democratic values of egalitarianism in favour of the fantasy of the free market.

For ten years the Cassandra warnings have continued to pour forth. And, like Cassandra, it turns out that Elliott and Atkinson were right all along. Their devastating summary of the Blair years, Fantasy Island, came out in Spring 2007 and rained all over Gordon Brown’s parade just as the band was striking up.

Their most recent book, The Gods That Failed, dissects the roots of the current crisis. Its sales figures suggest that maybe people are listening: ‘Markets are not Magic. Debt is not Freedom.’

Whether the Labour Party has the courage to return to its egalitarian traditions is another matter.

John Summers’ funeral

The funeral was held on Tuesday, 7 October 2008 of John Summers at Swansea Crematorium.

It was a sad occasion, obviously, but also a real honour and pleasure to meet many of John’s friends and family, almost all of them for the first time. He was a very special man and will be much missed.

There was a reading from one of John’s novels, The Raging Summer, and - for those new to his work - this passage is probably as good a place to start as any. It contains so many of the elements that are found in his work: sensually descriptive writing that touches on nature, on his Welsh roots, on politics and on why anyone would want to be a writer:

‘To write books. Just words. So that afterwards the reader would feel, yes, that it had all happened to him and to her. Then each book would no longer belong to me but belong to them too and they would, with even more than my own small determination, fight for it and protect it because it was for ever theirs now.’

As one of those readers, I do indeed feel the need to fight for and protect John’s work. The Raging Summer is out of print at present (though copies can be found at abebooks.co.uk), but a couple of years back, when John was in hospital, I promised him that it would one day be republished.

I intend to honour that promise.

Scotland in Crisis

With the American and British financial system in near-terminal decline, threatening a potential collapse in the western economy such as we haven’t seen in generations, no corner of the British Isles is unaffected.

The Evening News in Edinburgh isn’t the only paper to have dusted off one of the all-time great headlines, but it is perhaps the only one to identify the real issue at stake – the state of play at Heart of Midlothian Football Club:

My thanks to Michelle Coomber for sending me a copy of this blatant plug for my current book.