A gratuitous plug

I assume that we all start from the position of seeing Danny Boyle's national pageant as a work of genius, an evening of terrific, mood-altering entertainment that cost around £27 million and, coincidentally, attracted a TV audience of around 27 million. For a quid a head, this is great value.* And the BBC are even good enough to offer a version on iPlayer without commentary.

It would be churlish to find fault with anything that was included (that's what we have backbench Tories for) and absurd to imagine that it could cover anything more than a tiny fraction of its potential subject-matter. Having said which...

My only regret is that the section celebrating British music, movies and television seemed to reinforce what's becoming a default position in the media: that popular culture started in 1963, 'between the end of the Chatterley ban and the Beatles' first LP'.

And that's rather late for me. Just in terms of rock and roll, I'd have loved to have seen an acknowledgement of British pop in the pre-Beatles years: Rock Island Line, Move It, Maybe Tomorrow, Shakin' All Over, Telstar: that would have been sufficient.

Happily, the artists who made those records - and many, many more - will feature in the exhibition of Harry Hammond's photographs, Halfway to Paradise, which finally reaches the V&A in London this October, after touring the country for two years. And it will be accompanied by a reissue of the book of the same name.

Just thought I should take the opportunity to plug one of my own books.

*Just by way of comparison: Liverpool paid £35 million for Andy Carroll and are currently trying to off-load him for £20 million, after just 56 appearances for the club. Assuming they get that figure (which they probably won't), and assuming that half those appearances were at the 45,000-capacity Anfield, that works out at £11 a head. (There is another way of evaluating his contribution: since Carroll's job is to score goals, and he's scored eleven times for the club, perhaps one should see the return as being somewhere around £1.3 million per goal.)

Harry Hammond

I’m very saddened to hear that Harry Hammond died yesterday.

Harry was, of course, the first great rock photographer in Britain, responsible for so many of the iconic images of the late-1950s and early-1960s, from Bill Haley to the Beatles.

I had the privilege of working with Harry on a book of his rock and roll photos, published last year as Halfway to Paradise. It was an extraordinary experience, going through the vast archive of his work that is held at the Victoria & Albert Museum – we barely scraped the surface with the images we were able to include.

In the course of researching the book, I spoke to a number of people about Harry and no one had a bad word to say about him. His enthusiasm, the respect he showed his subjects, and his long years of experience (he had started his career back in the 1930s) won him many, many friends.

Andrew Loog Oldham: ‘Of course we remember Harry. He always stood out a way from the other snappers who loathed us, wished us no good and could not wait to get back to snapping Vera Lynn.’

Cliff Richard: ‘Today’s paparazzi seem intent to present their subjects in the worst possible light. In the days of Harry Hammond, photographers only wanted to show the best of you. I guess that’s why it was always such a pleasure to have Harry around.’

Despite the upsetting news, I’m pleased that the book came out while Harry was alive – he was very happy with the wonderful reproduction and the high quality of the printing, and said that his work has never been better represented. Our thoughts now are with his widow, Peggy.

This is a shot of Harry reflected in a mirror, while taking a picture of Alma Cogan (© V&A Images):

Move It

Today is the fiftieth anniversary of the release of Move It, the debut single by Cliff Richard and the Drifters. A grateful nation offers its congratulations to him and the boys, and its thanks for realizing the concept of British rock and roll.

Move It wasn’t actually the first British rock and roll record (that honour belonged to Tony Crombie and his Rockets with Teach You to Rock nearly two years earlier). Nor even was it the first great one: a couple of months before Cliff, Marty Wilde had released his version of Endless Sleep, a track that was actually better than the Jody Reynolds original.

But Move It was the first classic rock and roll performance to originate here – a song written by the Drifters’ guitarist Ian Samwell, not a cover of an American record.

It was an epoch-making moment in popular culture. ‘An exciting number with throbbing beat,’ enthused the NME reviewer. ‘If you’re an addict of the big beat, then this is a “must” for your collection.’

In later years Cliff was to say of the ‘50s: ‘We British never really competed.’ But he was being unduly modest; Move It proved that a rock record made in a London studio was capable of rivalling anything coming out of America, setting the tone for the next decade’s domination of the genre by Britain.

The following year, 1959, demonstrated that the track wasn’t a mere flash-in-the-pan, with a handful of classic records: Cliff and the Drifters released Livin’ Lovin’ Doll, Mean Streak and Dynamite; Wilde hit new heights on his self-penned Bad Boy; Vince Taylor and the Playboys launched a cult reputation with Brand New Cadillac; and Billy Fury debuted with his own song Maybe Tomorrow, while Johnnie Kidd and the Pirates did the same with Please Don’t Touch.

The originator, however, wasn’t an instant success, and it wasn’t until October 1958 that Move It finally broke into the top five, peaking at #2.

To celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of that event, I’ve got a book coming out this October. Titled Halfway To Paradise: The Birth of British Rock, it’s being published by the V&A, and it’s centred on the fabulous photographs taken during the period by British showbiz legend, Harry Hammond.

For those who can’t wait for publication, the slide-show at the beginning of this blog entry shows some of the photos of Cliff used in the book.

While this one shows some of the other images from the book: