A Rock&Roll story of my own…

I’ve always loved those great rock and roll stories.

When Mj and I first met way back in the early 70’s we both shared an interest not only in the same bands, but also in the magazines that detailed the lives of the people involved… I’m thinking of the American magazines like “Rock Scene” and “Creem”.. these were really hard to get in those Rock and Roll starved days of 70’s London.  Mj got his sent over by his mother who lived in Michigan in the USA. I had to search out bookshops in London which imported them – Compendium  Books in Camden Town high street was one of the only ones.  I would travel up from home in Twickenham just to get a copy and then pour over the tales of the rock excess and of the cool rock scenes in Detroit and New York, of the Stooges and the N.Y. Dolls. It all seemed a million miles away. Such teenage dreams. It all meant so much back then those papers….

It’s strange looking back on those times how fanatical a fan I was… I loved to read all the stories.  Back in Twickenham and for the rest of the country, my weekly bible NME came out on Thursdays.  But so keen was I to read any mentions of the bands I loved, that every week I was quite happy to make the hour and a half round trip to Oxford Circus in central London on a Wednesday afternoon on my motorbike, just to get the latest issue of NME a day early.  Imagine – it meant that much! There was a paper stand just outside the London Palladium near Regent Street (Its still there – Mj used to go there too he said yesterday), where they had the first issues just after 5 p.m.  I’d get home and read every article written by their star journalists – Nick Kent, Pete Erskine and Charles Shar Murray, their ruthless style was so different from any other paper – it made everything seem exotic.  Aah, the glamorous life of the stars like Bowie and the Stones. I wanted desperately to exist in that world too, but the leap from watching bands at the local college and sitting at home in my bedroom practicing bass seemed impossible. Oh but the stories……. of Keef Richard buying jeans at Granny Takes a Trip, Brian Wilson in the sand box, The Dolls hanging out…… I loved them all.

I never stopped to think for a second that any of it was exaggerated or that it was just myth building by publicists and managers and, now I know better, by the magazines and papers too. Everyone joins in the game – they all want us to buy the dream and the myth….. it makes the money go round. But hey, I love the magic it makes still.

I sometimes wonder when I write these blogs if it is demystifying our world to you too much. Does writing about it so personally take away the imagination?  I try to write about our life in this band as honestly as I can – my thoughts in this rapidly changing world we exist in – and to give a feel for what this life is really like. Especially as someone who was once such an innocent believer and fan of rock and roll and who now has some touch of the world I once only read about. I guess that is one of the wonders of the internet – that as more and more artists write about their lives and fears with such intimacy, you feel a closeness that never existed before – a direct line uncoloured by the papers I once was so influenced by.  Is it better or not?

Sometimes those two worlds collide and you find the fan in you is still there…. thank God.

I started this story because last week I was at Camden market again and found myself standing in a familiar place. I have so many memories of that area, from the Clash rehearsal rooms,( “Rehearsal Rehearsal” they called it), the railway arch where Generation X rehearsed (there’s a clip of us arriving and playing “Kiss me Deadly” there on Youtube) and especially the venue that was once “Dingwalls” where the young Tj saw so many bands. I found myself remembering one evening, long long ago – probably 76 or 7, standing in the queue with Mj to see the singer Robert Gordon. It was the early days of our bands and we definitely were not in the ‘whisked past the velvet rope’ stage.

A voice behind us in the queue suddenly went.. ”Hey man , great jacket”…

There was something about that voice that resonated through us both, something familiar,  nasally..  causing both our heads to jerk round…

Bob Dylan peered at us through the usual dark glasses… pointing at my shiney new white leather… `

“Er , I got it at Kensington market, in Johnsons on the first floor” I stuttered, luckily failing to add the gush “Oh my God I’ve got all your records Mr Dylan…..”

“Cool” he said as he strolled away… leaving us reeling in disbelief at this chance encounter with a legend I’d only ever read about…

Waving  as they walked away to the velvet rope we realised he was with Ellie Smith, the PR from what was then CBS records and the Clash’s publicist. Did she put him up to it? But…… I’ll always have this –  Dylan, no, The Dylan,  thought my jacket was cool. Wow.

Days later she told us that Dylan sent someone for him (I guess he didn’t shop himself) to Johnsons to buy similar jackets… one in each colour and size.

So there it is –  a rock and roll story of my own. Oh and Robert Gordon was great too.

Tony James
6 Oct 2008