In the spirit of reviving the age of austerity, I was reading a copy of Housewife magazine from July 1948, and found some wise words from the government of the time:
If You Believe in Britain
Let's be blunt about it. Today you can betray your country by spending your money or cashing your savings unwisely.
The nation is at work, fighting a war against want. If we lose it we shall be little better off than if we had lost the war against Hitler. Until we win it our greatness as a nation and the security of our children's future cannot be established.
Every time we save less and spend more we are striking a blow against that future. Spending hampers the production drive by taking goods off the export market - and it encourages inflation.
If you believe in Britain, if you want to secure the peace we fought to win, save more, spend less.
Issued by the National Savings Committee.
Friday, 25 June 2010
Thursday, 29 April 2010
Daily Mail
Roger Lewis's very generous review of Rejoice! Rejoice! has now been posted on the Daily Mail website. Looks very good.
Wednesday, 28 April 2010
Phone-in
As I was on my way to bed last night, I turned on Radio Five Live to hear Tony Livesey hosting a phone-in about whether pop music was better in the 1970s than it is now.
I got a little thrill when I realized that this discussion was prompted by the forthcoming V&A exhibition My Generation: The Glory Years of British Rock. Mr Livesey, it appeared, was querying whether the subtitle was accurate: were those really the glory years?
Since it was me who wrote that subtitle, for the book which accompanies the exhibition, I was somewhat surprised to find that it was in any way controversial. The phrase 'glory years of British rock' (apart from echoing the subtitle of our previous book Halfway to Paradise: The Birth of British Rock) seemed to me a fairly straightforward factual description: the decade we cover with Harry Goodwin's photos (1964-74) was self-evidently the era when British pop music had its greatest influence on the world.
It wasn't intended as a value judgement. Though as it happens, and just for the record, the decade was also quite clearly the time when most of the best British rock was produced. It won't ever be that good again.
I got a little thrill when I realized that this discussion was prompted by the forthcoming V&A exhibition My Generation: The Glory Years of British Rock. Mr Livesey, it appeared, was querying whether the subtitle was accurate: were those really the glory years?
Since it was me who wrote that subtitle, for the book which accompanies the exhibition, I was somewhat surprised to find that it was in any way controversial. The phrase 'glory years of British rock' (apart from echoing the subtitle of our previous book Halfway to Paradise: The Birth of British Rock) seemed to me a fairly straightforward factual description: the decade we cover with Harry Goodwin's photos (1964-74) was self-evidently the era when British pop music had its greatest influence on the world.
It wasn't intended as a value judgement. Though as it happens, and just for the record, the decade was also quite clearly the time when most of the best British rock was produced. It won't ever be that good again.
Friday, 23 April 2010
St George's Day
This year I'm celebrating St George's Day with the help of a splendid review of Rejoice! Rejoice! by Roger Lewis in the Daily Mail. It's an 'entertaining, insightful and wide-ranging survey,' he writes. My thanks to him and to the Mail for the kind words and the splendid presentation.
Also today, my copies of the book turned up, and very fine it looks too. Should be in the shops next week.
Also today, my copies of the book turned up, and very fine it looks too. Should be in the shops next week.
Sunday, 11 April 2010
Must Read
I've never been in the Must Read column of the Sunday Times before. So I'm dead pleased with today's paper:
Friday, 9 April 2010
Talcy Malcy RIP
What can anyone add to the millions of words that have spoken about Malcolm McLaren (most of them by himself)?
Well, maybe the one thing that doesn't get sufficient emphasis is pop music. As opposed to rock. The reason I fell in love with punk back in 1976 was nothing to do with, say, Iggy & the Stooges, of whom I knew nothing. Instead I came from a position of liking the Bay City Rollers. (Incidentally, I still reckon their fourth album is a bit of a powerpop classic, with fine production by Jimmy Ienner, who'd earlier shaped the sound of the Raspberries.)
To get back to McLaren, he was a bit fond of the Rollers as well. Indeed that was his concept of what a pop group should be, how he envisaged the Sex Pistols would turn out. Admittedly they evolved into something a bit different, thanks to the genius of Johnny Rotten, but still they made damn fine pop records: the same handful of chords you'd hear on Shang-a-Lang, the same attraction to big catchy choruses. Never really got the hang of bridges, though.
One of the joys that came with listening to the Rollers, Mud, Showaddywaddy and the rest of the post-glam pop bands of 1974-75 was that, being an ignorant kid at the time, I found it provided me with an education. They were covering songs by people like Buddy Holly and Eddie Cochran, so I went back to the 1950s to listen to the originals. And I haven't stopped since. The sounds of the first wave of rock and roll remain my favourite music.
And again, when punk erupted, we found that McLaren was similarly enchanted by the '50s. His favourite reference point was the great British entrepreneur Larry Parnes, who brought us Billy Fury, Marty Wilde, Vince Eager and more. I know he dressed it all up in art school attitudes, talked about cash-from-chaos, spouted bollocks about situationism (has there ever been a sillier adolescent disorder than situationism?), but ultimately you knew that he was at heart a genuine fan of the music, that the elegant simplicity of rock and roll was as fascinating to him as the Machiavellian machinations of the industry.
At least, I think he was. But who knows? Maybe he was just a lucky bastard. After all, he was the manager of the New York Dolls who managed to split them up. He looked at Adam and the Ants, decided that he could do better than that, and sacked the singer so that he could launch Bow Wow Wow - just before Adam became the biggest pop star in the country. In between those two episodes, he lucked into discovering Johnny Rotten, who turned out to be one of the great artists of his generation, for a short while at least.
But my suspicion was that behind all the bullshit, beyond the wind-ups and gimmicks, he had a simple love of pure pop music. And so, in honour of the late Malcolm McLaren, here's a Harry Hammond photo of one of his favourite pop stars, Billy Fury:
Well, maybe the one thing that doesn't get sufficient emphasis is pop music. As opposed to rock. The reason I fell in love with punk back in 1976 was nothing to do with, say, Iggy & the Stooges, of whom I knew nothing. Instead I came from a position of liking the Bay City Rollers. (Incidentally, I still reckon their fourth album is a bit of a powerpop classic, with fine production by Jimmy Ienner, who'd earlier shaped the sound of the Raspberries.)
To get back to McLaren, he was a bit fond of the Rollers as well. Indeed that was his concept of what a pop group should be, how he envisaged the Sex Pistols would turn out. Admittedly they evolved into something a bit different, thanks to the genius of Johnny Rotten, but still they made damn fine pop records: the same handful of chords you'd hear on Shang-a-Lang, the same attraction to big catchy choruses. Never really got the hang of bridges, though.
One of the joys that came with listening to the Rollers, Mud, Showaddywaddy and the rest of the post-glam pop bands of 1974-75 was that, being an ignorant kid at the time, I found it provided me with an education. They were covering songs by people like Buddy Holly and Eddie Cochran, so I went back to the 1950s to listen to the originals. And I haven't stopped since. The sounds of the first wave of rock and roll remain my favourite music.
And again, when punk erupted, we found that McLaren was similarly enchanted by the '50s. His favourite reference point was the great British entrepreneur Larry Parnes, who brought us Billy Fury, Marty Wilde, Vince Eager and more. I know he dressed it all up in art school attitudes, talked about cash-from-chaos, spouted bollocks about situationism (has there ever been a sillier adolescent disorder than situationism?), but ultimately you knew that he was at heart a genuine fan of the music, that the elegant simplicity of rock and roll was as fascinating to him as the Machiavellian machinations of the industry.
At least, I think he was. But who knows? Maybe he was just a lucky bastard. After all, he was the manager of the New York Dolls who managed to split them up. He looked at Adam and the Ants, decided that he could do better than that, and sacked the singer so that he could launch Bow Wow Wow - just before Adam became the biggest pop star in the country. In between those two episodes, he lucked into discovering Johnny Rotten, who turned out to be one of the great artists of his generation, for a short while at least.
But my suspicion was that behind all the bullshit, beyond the wind-ups and gimmicks, he had a simple love of pure pop music. And so, in honour of the late Malcolm McLaren, here's a Harry Hammond photo of one of his favourite pop stars, Billy Fury:
Monday, 5 April 2010
New titles
April is the kindest month. Or rather, this April's pretty good, since I have two new books due to be published.
And so I've added new subsections to my website for each of them: Rejoice! Rejoice! Britain in the 1980s (Aurum Press), which is the sequel to Crisis? What Crisis?, and My Generation: The Glory Years of British Rock (V&A Publishing), which is the sequel to Halfway to Paradise. Both should be in the shops in the next couple of weeks or so, but - for anyone who really can't wait - bits of them are now available for online viewing.
And so I've added new subsections to my website for each of them: Rejoice! Rejoice! Britain in the 1980s (Aurum Press), which is the sequel to Crisis? What Crisis?, and My Generation: The Glory Years of British Rock (V&A Publishing), which is the sequel to Halfway to Paradise. Both should be in the shops in the next couple of weeks or so, but - for anyone who really can't wait - bits of them are now available for online viewing.
Saturday, 3 April 2010
More Rejoicing
It pretty much goes without saying, of course, that Dominic Sandbrook is a very fine social historian (Never Had It So Good, White Heat &c.), so I'm hugely flattered by his review in the Sunday Times of my forthcoming book, Rejoice! Rejoice!
Here's just a few words:
'Turner’s book on the 1970s was for my money the most enjoyable of the recent crop on that turbulent decade, and he is on equally entertaining form here. The tone is that of a wildly enthusiastic guide leading us on a breakneck tour through politics, sport and culture, bursting with weird nuggets of knowledge gleaned everywhere from semi-forgotten John Mortimer novels to Wham! singles, football matches and episodes of Doctor Who.'
Here's just a few words:
'Turner’s book on the 1970s was for my money the most enjoyable of the recent crop on that turbulent decade, and he is on equally entertaining form here. The tone is that of a wildly enthusiastic guide leading us on a breakneck tour through politics, sport and culture, bursting with weird nuggets of knowledge gleaned everywhere from semi-forgotten John Mortimer novels to Wham! singles, football matches and episodes of Doctor Who.'
Friday, 26 March 2010
Rejoice! Rejoice!
My deep thanks to the very insightful Victoria Segal of the ever-wonderful Mojo magazine for reviewing my forthcoming book Rejoice! Rejoice! Britain in the 1980s. It's a 'dazzling overview of a demonised decade' apparently, and worth four stars of anyone's money.
The book is scheduled for publication by Aurum Press in April.
The book is scheduled for publication by Aurum Press in April.
Tuesday, 2 March 2010
The Birth of British Rock
The touring exhibition of Harry Hammond photos is up and running at the City Museum in Portsmouth, and very splendid it looks too. Not just the photos...
... but also the staging of the show. I'm particularly taken with the heap of flight cases, with a TV screen showing more photos and an interactive quiz:
And the Museum has added to the material coming from the V&A with four cases of memorabilia from the Portsmouth music scene of the time, curated by Dr Dave Allen, which are fabulous:
The exhibition runs through to 6 June 2010, before moving to Leamington Spa, so if you get a chance, do go and see it. And don't forget to stop in the bookshop, which has a fine collection of titles:
... but also the staging of the show. I'm particularly taken with the heap of flight cases, with a TV screen showing more photos and an interactive quiz:And the Museum has added to the material coming from the V&A with four cases of memorabilia from the Portsmouth music scene of the time, curated by Dr Dave Allen, which are fabulous:The exhibition runs through to 6 June 2010, before moving to Leamington Spa, so if you get a chance, do go and see it. And don't forget to stop in the bookshop, which has a fine collection of titles:
Thursday, 11 February 2010
My Generation - the video
As is my wont, I've made a slideshow of images from my forthcoming book, My Generation: The Glory Years of British Rock, which is scheduled for publication in April 2010. And here it is:
All photographs copyright Harry Goodwin.
All photographs copyright Harry Goodwin.
Tuesday, 9 February 2010
Voting Rites
As the government forces through a proposed referendum on the voting system (in the most cynical bit of politicking I can remember), I'm reminded of a scene in Auf Wiedersehen, Pet back in the early-1980s.
The ex-pat British builders decide that it's time to paint their hut, to brighten the place up a bit. Trying to come to a consensus on what colour to use, Barry, who is later to join the SDP, insists on using the single transferable vote system - as advocated today by the Liberal Democrats - and they end up with a colour that was no one's first choice.
'That's a smashing system, Barry,' moans Dennis. 'Everybody gets what nobody wants.'
And Barry has to put him straight: 'That's democracy, Dennis.'
The ex-pat British builders decide that it's time to paint their hut, to brighten the place up a bit. Trying to come to a consensus on what colour to use, Barry, who is later to join the SDP, insists on using the single transferable vote system - as advocated today by the Liberal Democrats - and they end up with a colour that was no one's first choice.
'That's a smashing system, Barry,' moans Dennis. 'Everybody gets what nobody wants.'
And Barry has to put him straight: 'That's democracy, Dennis.'
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