Death Tripping w/ Michael S. Begnal

Death Trip: Iggy and the Stooges 1972-74 (Reaktion Books), the second volume of Michael S. Begnal’s study of the band, is now available (in the UK, at least. North American in July where it is distributed by Chicago University Press) .

If you want to know why the Stooges mattered, and still matter, then this is your tour guide of choice. Outstanding scholarship, meticulously researched, sublime choice of illustrations – dig the cover photograph by Byron Newman. “Death Trip” sits comfortably alongside the best chronicles of rock n’ roll’s third-generation – Mark Paytress on Marc Bolan, Paul Trynka on Iggy and Bowie, Michael Bracewell on Roxy Music. The Stooges deserve no less.

Comes with top ranking endorsements to boot

A Bizzarre History of Punk

In the Spring of 1976 Rock On and Bizzarre record shops started advertising in the Record Mart section of Sounds. Back in the day, what caught my attention was the listing of Flamin’ Groovies discs. I’d not heard of them but here they were getting lumped in with the Stooges, the MC5 and, most importantly to me at the time, Eddie and the Hot Rods, so it didn’t take much prodding to jump on board

As May turned into June, armed with their debut single and some effusive write ups in the music press, Eddie and the Hot Rods were fast becoming an obsession. I’d already made one trip into to London to see them, but failed to find the venue. I finally got lucky on June 12 when they played a University College, London, ‘Superball’, which advertised the band alongside a Punch and Judy show and Morris dancers. I can’t recall seeing either of those attractions but watching the Hot Rods was like looking into a mirror: same age, same dress-style, same class, same aspirations – all of us out for a real good time. For this 18 year-old, the Hot Rods were the ultimate pent-up energy release valve. For real, 1976 began here – blast off!

Giovanni Dadomo, Sounds, (May 1 1976). Michael Beal pic

Writers like Giovanni Dadomo made the links and connections between bands like the Groovies and the Hot Rods, but the adverts by Rock On and Bizzarre amplified them and, I reckon, set something of the agenda. Chiswick’s Count Bishops EP, Gorillas and 101’ers releases were an important part of the story and in the ads for the two shops they got linked to rock n’ roll revivalists, British R&B groups and American psychedelic punk, all of which I punched straight into my mainline. A connoisseur’s taste for the rarified was fast being acquired and these two shops fed my growing appetite for the sound of speed.

Mid-June 1976

Mid-June 1976

Dadomo A-Z of Punk (July 17 1976)

Dadomo\s Punks Rool! singles column; four pieces of vinyl perfection

It wasn’t just about the music, it was also about the stance you took and the clothes your wore — the fad for well-dressed singles began here. Copies of ‘Blitzkrieg Bop’ and French Hot Rod’s debut, purchased for a premium price and maximum credibility at Rock On, were among my highest acts of discerning consumption in those penniless days.

The arrival of Stiff in the Summer took things altogether to another level with Nick Lowe’s ‘So It Goes’, followed by Lew Lewis’ mighty ‘Boogie on the Street’ starting a run that culminated in ‘76 with the Damned’s ‘New Rose’.

Whatever the impact these shops did have on the scene, one thing is for certain, they helped turn record buyers into record collectors – pic sleeve singles a pop equivalent of Panini football stickers or Batman and Monkees bubblegum cards. There would be no going back . . . Hello RSD

August 21 1976 and the French Flamin’ Groovies 45s still holding their own even at double the cost of a standard UK release

For a couple of weeks in October Bizzarre placed quarter page ads in Sounds. They were obviously feeling more confident about things.

December 4 1976

December 4 1976

The Sex Pistols finally appeared in Bizzarre’s inventory just as Chiswick hit snags with supplying demand. Meanwhile, Rough Trade, who had imported around a hundred copies of the Saints’ 45, are now acting as promotion agents for its UK release

December 25 1976

If this is where the year ends with the Saints and Rough Trade, here’s where it began with a profile of the Count Bishops in Sounds (January 10 1976). Bizzarre’s mainman, Larry Debay, was their manager at this point. He was someone with major connections back into France, the Open Market, Skydog records and Marc Zermati who, at this point in time, was, without doubt, the hippest man in the world [HERE] and [HERE}

The stories of Stiff, Chiswick/Rock On and Rough Trade are all well known, but Larry Debay’s contribution to the nascent punk scene with his Bizzarre shop, distribution and mail order business, still flies under the radar, just like the records he once hawked.

Glitter and Glue – Dave Twist's Trove of Treasures

A tome, not a tomb, filled with relics, revenants, remnants first acquired in the hot fleeting minutes of teen fandom and then added to and curated in the cool age of later years. It’s an extraordinary assemblage that Dave Twist first amassed for himself and then shared on his ever wonderful Instagram page [HERE].

When the platform messed with his layout grids he went back to a print culture, which is how these images are best consumed. We should be thankful to Meta (and for not much else) that Dave turned away from the screen and back to paper and paste

Others might have a larger collection of third-generation rock n’ roll ephemera than Dave Twist, but I doubt they could pull it together to tell quite such an aesthetically compelling story. Tumbling out of the plan chest, portfolio, attic and basement, Dave Twist puts his heart and soul on open display in Glitter and Glue, a gallery of splendid delights.

The book acts like a tripwire that causes you to fall over memories of things owned, lost, gifted and stolen. Surprisingly, nostalgia doesn’t feel part of the equation. What pours out is rather a sense of awe at the sheer creative achievements of musicians, designers and everyone else involved in the glorious conspiracy to attract the eye of the ever fickle teenage consumer.

So much of the memorabilia of the prepunk era, Alice, Roxy, Slade, SAHB, I just let go, but as I moved out of my teens I held fast to records bought on the day of release, the Pistols, Damned and Clash and all the post-Dr. Feelgood bands I still love, the Count Bishops, 101’ers, Gorillas, Eddie and the Hot Rods, Lew Lewis. They are still with me and still played. Meanwhile, I’ve restocked the lost records from 1972–76 and added those I could not then afford or had no awareness of, the Streak, the Jook and all the rest. But when I flick through this book it is Alice Cooper that has me pause the longest. For a hot moment he really was what mattered the most in my fevered teen brain and when you see what Dave Twist has amassed you’ll know why he had that effect.

You got to ask how many unique pressings of the Heartbreakers LAMF do you need? Dave has six and I hope the answer he’d give is ‘one more’. A completed collection is a dead collection. What’s on display here is an archive, a map of times past, but one that still connects. Its vitality can’t be ignored or its impact go unrecognised.

This is not a horde to be locked away and guarded but a trove spilling out its treasure for all to admire. Dave Twist gets my vote for curator of the year, what an achievement, what a gift he has given to us.

It’s a beautifully produced book and has been printed in very limited numbers so grab one quick [HERE]

Flamin' Groovies – Teenage Grease 1972

Ugly Things #71 (April 2026)

My 16 page account of the Flamin’ Groovies in Britain in 1972 is now published in what must be one of Mike Stax’s best ever issues of Ugly Things. Alongside my piece you’ll find the final part of the real Dave Laing’s monumental and utterly brilliant history of The Saints and Frank Uhle’s stupendous interview with the one and only Danny Fields. Laurent Bigot & Phillippe Migrenne’s story of les Lou’s is equally wonderful. There’s a whole lot more to dive into, so, as Mick Farren would have said, ‘get some’.

Music Now, 1970 . . . introducing T. Rex

‘The gods have been very kind. Everything has fallen into place beautifully’

– Marc Bolan

Music Now was a weekly paper that ran for 50 issues between March 21 1970 and February 21 1971. It was edited by Jim Watson, formerly of Record Mirror and used a small staff of correspondents – Derek Boltwood, Tony Norman, Karen de Groot and Dai Davies formed the core of operations. Columnists included Simon Stable, their man about town in Manchester and Ladbroke Grove, Max ‘Waxie Maxie’ Needham’s fusillades on rock n’ roll, Sapphire’s superior Reggae Page and Pete Senoff’s America Now.

With its emphasis on progressive rock, Music Now’s most obvious competitor was the recently launched Sounds (October 1970), which it differentiated itself from with its use of colour photographs on the cover and in some of its editorial content.

Rarely referenced, Music Now is something of a small, untouched, treasure trove. Here are the key pieces that covered T. Rex’s move from the underground into the light in those heady, mercurial days.

T. Rex made their first appearance in the September 26 issue with a front page announcement that the maximum ticket price for dates on their upcoming tour would be 10/-. Marc said: 

Tour prices in general are inflated. We can afford to do it for less. We don’t have truck-loads of equipment. It’s more help to the kids that we do it as cheaply as possible.

The ploy of making themselves affordable and therefore accessible to a younger audience, something that was carried over with their record releases, was both admirable and a canny bit of marketing that would pay out unbelievable dividends in the new year.

There’s also a fascinating bit of ephemera too with the postscript on Marc’s relationship with Mark Volman and Howard Kaylan and the apocryphal news, I presume, that they had produced a cover of his ‘Mustang Ford’ with Freddie ‘Talahassie Lassie’ Cannon . . . Now, that I would have loved to have heard . . .

Tony Norman interviewed Marc for the October 24 issue with the emphasis on the moves he was making from the margins to the centre, from acoustic to electric, from the underground to the charts, with credibility still, as yet intact. The transition marked by his new, younger, audience of ‘Teenybop Heads’ – third-generation rock n’ rollers.

And for those who still had a bit of spare pocket money, Marc said his new label, Fly, are planning to issue not one but two best-of collections selling at the low price of 15/- 

When things started to fall into place with the release of ‘Ride a White Swan’, TOTP exposure and the forthcoming album, Music Now put T. Rex on the cover (December 12) – the transition from the underground now all but complete (and in colour).

I have always wanted a hit record more than anything. What could be better than for something that has been genuinely produced by one human being to reach another. Our record is not computerised music like some of the other things in the chart. All the musicians know make sure their singles are good quality, in stereo and with nice sleeves. wonder if Herman's Hermits do that? I wonder if they even know about these things?

Marc then took aim at Tin Pan Alley songwriters, like Tony Macaulay, dismissing them as ‘business men’. 

Look at that Vanity Fare record 'Carolina's Coming’. They just kept repeating that line and when I heard it the title just got in my head and in the end I thought l was going insane. They just kept repeating it and repeating it. I'm sure that record must have put a couple of hundred people in mental homes. That's a big responsibility to undertake, driving someone insane.

Marc’s sense of humour as sharp and as funny as ever, though Tony Macaulay didn’t appreciate it. He had his say in the following week’s issue: 

T. Rex feel they can spout off about all this through having one hit to their credit. I'm only the songwriter, but I can go on ten times longer than any group because I can encompass every style or change as it comes. I have to think to myself, do I want instant recognition, which will probably last for a matter of weeks only, or alternatively, do I prefer to be always vaguely known to the public, but for ten times longer. . . I've never had to stoop to copying Mungo Jerry for ideas, and never resorted to two chords and thin microscopic voices. I don't need to put things in slots like T. Rex. All they produce is synthetic pop that's trying to be encompassed under an Underground roof. . . Anyway, T. Rex really were a little silly saying that . . . we manage them, or at least my company does!

Marc continued the ‘dialogue’ on following week’s front page of Music Now:

I would like to enlighten Tony Macaulay on two matters which seem to by giving some confusion. Firstly, neither T. Rex nor our managers, David Enthoven or John Gaydon are connected in any way with Mr. Macaulay or his company. Secondly, I don't really think that anybody with any musical awareness of the last three years could seriously accuse us of copying Mungo Jerry. It's obvious from Tony Macaulay's comments that he knows little about T. Rex or our music, but don't Blame it On the Pony Express. Love Grows, Marc Bolan 

See what I mean about his sense of humour . . . Love Grows

Summertime Blues in December

There was some confusion by Simon Stable over just which number on T. Rex’s bargain 3 track single was the lead number, ‘White Swan’, ‘Is It Love’ or ‘Summertime Blues’. Karen de Groot’s review of the single downplays, in fact doesn’t even mention, ‘White Swan’. A month earlier she had reviewed Dib Cochran and the Earwigs, though she didn’t much like it and had figured the band’s name was an alias – Beatles in drag – it did, however, all fit in with the current fascination with Eddie Cochran and the booming rock n’ roll revival. You can ask Pete Townshend if you don’t believe me . . . or Waxie Maxie even

Simon Stable, October 17 1970

September 26 1970

Waxie Maxie gets lyrical . . .

‘cos there ain’t no cure . . . .

. . . hard to beat.

Mike Jahn – Making The Scene with Iggy and Lori

First published in August 1970, The Scene is subtitled a ‘documentary novel’ that cuts between the fictitious story of starfucker Lori Thomas and interviews with anonymous real-life players. The book exploits the same prurient material on groupies as Jenny Fabian’s 1969 tale, Rolling Stone’s cover story on electric ladies from the same year and the film Groupies (1970). The title refers to the rock scene, the groupie scene, making the scene and to Steve Paul’s Scene club, New York, where Lori works the angles with touring British groups, sucking and fucking her way to oblivion. Before she makes the ultimate scene Jahn chucks in a deux ex machina and resets her sights not on bedding the next superstar but on becoming one herself.

         Before her debut performance, Lori reflects back on seeing The Stooges making their scene at The Pavilion, Flushing Meadow Park a year earlier:

Lori lay in bed thinking. Last summer she spent one weekend out at The Pavilion, which is in the middle of the 1965 World's Fair site in New York. It was beautiful – rock and roll and beautiful – and she had never seen anything like this kid, this kid Iggy, the lead singer for The Stooges, formerly The Psychedelic Stooges. Iggy had acquired a reputation as an oddity. A beautiful, strange oddity from Ann Arbor, Michigan. She had heard of him from a lot of people and saw ads in The Village Voice that showed Iggy lying on stage with the microphone stuck in his mouth like a Tootsie Roll Pop. He was lying on his stomach eating the microphone and behind him the bassist was smiling and pushing the tip of his bass into Iggy's ass. Or at least that's the way it looked. She had flipped, she remembered, really flipped!

The show was their New York debut, one of two sets the Stooges played in support of the MC5. Jahn had covered the gig for the New York Times where he emphasised the band’s performance art credentials: ‘The Stooges probably belong Off Broadway more than to the world of rock ’n’ roll . . . They are best classified as a ‘psychedelic’ group. Their loud droning sound is spiced with the slippery notes of Ron Asheton, a guitarist, and the guttural howlings of a singer, known only as Iggy. . . He goes through simple but tortured gymnastics built around a Midas-like ability to turn everything he touches into a phallic object. He caresses himself, he rolls and squirms’.

In his novel, Jahn’s three column inches are amplified and expanded – Iggy’s embodiment of carnal expression now pushed to the fore:

There were maybe 2500 people sitting on the flat concrete in front of the stage. The floor of the pavilion— the old New York State Pavilion from the fair—is a hundred-foot map of New York State. The stage is set at about Canada. The bathrooms are just south of Long Island. The group was introduced to all these people sitting on the ground on a cool, windy night. The drummer, guitarist, and bassist took the stage and tuned and Iggy walked up a ramp and onto the stage. He was wearing tennis sneakers and dungarees cut down to make shorts. Nothing else. He is about five-foot-eight and very wiry. He walked on the stage and right as he did somebody yelled, ’Iggy sucks off Jim Morrison’. Iggy reacted like a psychedelic spring. ‘Suck my asshole’, he screamed. He walked on stage and the set began. The music was all one—all one big clap of sound that sort of rumbled and droned ominously. No part, save an occasional guitar riff of merit, was separable from any other. All attention was on Iggy, and the group provided his soundtrack.

Per Nilsen and Carlton Sandercock, The Stooges: The Truth Is In The Sound We Make (2022)

He held the microphone and moved. He moved like no other performer she had ever seen. I mean, Lori thought, I have seen unusual performers. Peter Townshend is pretty strange in the way he moves. Jim Morrison is weird in a camp way. Frankie Gadler of NRBQ is strange. But this kid Iggy Stooge, this former high school valedictorian and most-likely-to-succeed was like nothing else. He held the mike with all this droning, cataclysmic noise behind him, and he bent at the waist. He bent over backwards and he nearly touched his head to the floor. He massaged the mike stand. A photographer standing there remarked that Iggy was incredible because everything he touched turned into a cock! He jerked off the mike stand. He was on his back writhing on the stage, he was on his feet leaning to gravitationally impossible angles, holding the mike stand and singing about not having any fun. No fun. He represents the sexual boredom of the seventeen-year-old radical, it seemed. This is his thing; the thing that made him popular with the New York rock and hip literati. He went to the drummer and took a drum stick and scratched his chest and stomach until he began to bleed! No fun! He is turned off by society and so he is totally turned inward, to himself. Autoerotic rock and roll! He can't get it outside so he gets it inside, by turning everything he touches into a cock! Fantastic, Lori thought that night. Iggy scratched his chest and belly with a drum stick and then with his fingernails, and then he was singing right by the edge of the stage. He was singing about fucking you, and doing this to you, and he was pointing at a girl sitting a few feet from the stage, sitting with her gorgeous blonde ass on top of Syracuse! Then, a kid a few feet behind her gives Iggy the finger! This kid with short hair and a college jacket gives Iggy Stooge the finger. Iggy stops singing, crouches. Gets down on all fours. Then he springs, he springs into the audience, and lands on all fours a little bit in front of the kid, who now is wondering why he is here. Iggy is on all fours, and he has this very bad expression on his face, and from the stage behind him this music is pounding and crushing across Flushing Meadow Park. Iggy is on all fours, with this very bad expression. He is staring at the kid who gave him the finger, and slowly he begins to walk, on all fours toward the kid. The kid begins to sweat and look around for friends. There is a noise. The audience stands up, and Lori cannot see. There is shouting and much pushing and all 2,500 people are standing, straining to see. Iggy is in the middle of the crowd for another minute or so. Then you see him crawl back on stage, out of the crowd. The crowd is aflame, for reasons they do not know. Iggy is challenging everything they have come to accept about concert relationships, and about male sexuality. He is so goddamn sensual. The males with the short hair and the Corvettes feel it and they don't know what to do with the feeling. Some of them are throwing containers of orange drink at him. Iggy is back on stage. Still on his hands and knees he crawls across stage and grabs the guitarist. Instantly, the Midas touch; the guitarist turns into a phallic totem. Iggy drags him down, still playing; the guitarist is still playing. Iggy hugs his legs for a time, then lets him go and crawls off.

Iggy crawls off behind the bank of amplifiers that rim the back of the stage. He is behind there for a few minutes, the music crashing, and then the spotlight picks him up crawling out from behind the amps on the other side. Rock and roll! What is going on? Iggy can be seen at the far right corner of the stage. He gets into a racing start position. He stands like a sprinter ready for the race. Then he sprints wildly across stage at full speed and does a perfect racing dive into the audience, which is still standing! Head first, hands first! He makes it all the way to Albany, feet together, hands together in front of him, and crashes onto the milling heads, taking out about twenty-five people! There is more screaming and pushing. Everyone is trying to see, jumping to see. You can't see. Lori couldn't see. A minute goes by and Iggy crawls back out of the audience and onto the stage. He stands and finishes the song and the group walks off. They have been onstage only about fifteen minutes.

A month or so after the book’s publication in October 1970, using the release of the Stooges’ second album Fun House as an excuse, Jahn returned once more to the Flushing Meadow Park performance; this time in his widely syndicated column ‘Sounds of the 70s’:

Peter Townshend of The Who used to destroy guitars at the end of a set. On those occasions, the audience would be drawn, transfixed, to the scene of the destruction like the traditional moth to a flame. With Iggy it is the same thing. He writhes. He moans. He seems totally self-involved. He rubs his body, he con-torts, bending over backwards until his head nearly touches the floor. He rolls his tongue around. He makes grotesque shapes with his lips. He is very ugly and precociously sexual. The audiences love it. They don't understand it. Neither does he, most likely. But they are drawn to watch him with mouths agape.

Watch the freak! It’s great fun.

Consider this episode from the Stooges' concert of last year at the Pavilion in New York. The Pavilion is the former New York State Pavilion at the 1964-65 World's Fair. The ground is a giant map of New York State. For this occasion, the stage was set up along the Canadian border. The other end, the men's rooms, were just south of Long Island. The audience was seated on the floor, on top of New York State.

Iggy did his normal writhing, then spotted a blonde sitting on Syracuse. He stared at her a long moment until a kid behind her made an obscene gesture in his direction. Iggy sprang into the audience. He landed on all fours and began crawling toward the kid, slowly. Just as he reached him, the audience stood up. Much pushing and screaming for a few min-utes, then Iggy crawled back out of the audience. He crawled to the guitarist, pulled him down on the floor, mauled him for a few minutes, then let him go. Then Iggy disappeared behind a bank of amplifiers, emerging on the other side a few minutes later. He got to a racing start position, sprinted across stage, and made a perfect head-first racing dive into the audience, knocking down about 25 people in the vicinity of Albany.

Earlier in the show, he took a drumstick and raked it across his chest until he started to bleed. After another concert he was heard to lament the fact that he hadn't bled enough. While the previous routine was going on, the band never let up for a second on its wall-of-music. A full-color, four-part-harmony version of this episode is included in my just -published novel, The Scene.

Everybody has something to sell.

         Six months later Jahn once more brought up the subject of Iggy this time because artist Richard Bernstein also had something to sell: nude portraits of the Beatles, Jim Morrison, Candy Darling and Iggy; the latter one of ‘the new toys of New York pop society’. Jahn thought the Iggy picture was a ‘masterpiece. It’s an actual photo, of the real Iggy, shot by fashion photographer Bill King and turned into prints by Bernstein. “I’ve been selling it from my studio to a lot of people in the music scene”, he says. “Everybody has one”. This edition is only 100 copies. The print shows Iggy leaning slightly to one side, absent-mindedly scratching one arm’.

One proud owner of a print, Lillian Roxon, had it prominently displayed in her apartment [HERE] – giving her no small pleasure

For more on the Stooges’ Flushing Meadow Park sets see Michael S. Begnal, The Music and Noise of the Stooges, 1967–71: Lost in the Future (2022)

The Stooges – Rock Beyond Woodstock

It was cheap so took a punt, flicking past the usual boring 60s into 70s acts – Joe Cocker, Jethro Tull, Grateful Dead, Blood, Sweat and Tears – I pulled up short when the VU caught my pop-eye. The unimaginative use of the 3rd album sleeve is given a bit of a boost by the editor spinning the William Faulkner quote Jean-Luc Godard had used in Breathless (À bout de souffle). He topped that with the best downer of a recommendation for the band I’ve read:

Everything in a Velvet Underground song is gray, agonized, drab and inexorable. But what they lack in hope and passion, they make up for in chilly perfection and basic rock, a good reason to accompany them down the razor-blade of life.

The book is organised into ten thematically arranged sections, the Velvets located in ‘Songs of Innocence and Experience’. Further on toward the end is the Marshall McLuhan influenced ‘The Medium Is The Message’ chapter which is where, good lord, the Stooges are found; all three pages of ‘em and all new to me . . . Photographed by James Roark at the Fun House sessions by the look of things – sax man Steve McKay is front and centre. The image of Dave Alexander might just be my favourite pic of him; the one of Iggy Stooge is none too shoddy either. Scott Asheton is MIA.

Rock is sex and violence. . . Rock is revolution. Rock is ceremony. It is the Stooges. . . It is Iggy Stooge, the latest high-energy uni-sex symbol, a second generation Jagger and Morrison.

The Stooges are what rock is about – stuck-up, overbearing, formless, insane, driving, intense

The Stooges: they’re wiggy.

The book ends with a dedication to John Cage and to noise and silence while Little Richard looks on – Nik Cohn would approve . . . Awopbobaloobopalopbamboom!

Unintentional, no doubt, but finding the Stooges in this context, among all the dross acts, is, I think, akin to unsuspecting record buyers discovering the band in the cut-out racks just a few years later; a chance encounter that turned the mundane into the marvellous.

Written by Michael Ross and with original photography by James Roark – the book was published by the Los Angeles based Petersen Publishing Company in 1970, which would make the Stooges pix of the moment. If I’ve got the right man, Roark was best known for his sports photography. Ross I know nothing about.

MC5’s ‘Miss X’: Tales of Wanton Nudity (and Other Acts of Depravity) in London W1

Following the baptism in the fire of love delivered by ‘Sister Anne’ and ‘Baby Won’t Ya’ on Side One of High Time comes Wayne Kramer’s paean to love’s healing power, ‘Miss X’ –  the Five’s most affecting trip into the arms of carnal romance. But who was Kramer’s amour fou, his mystery woman, his Miss X?  The Seth Man has gleaned the righteous dope on this tale of passion unwound, or what he calls  – ‘an exercise in capturing the spirit of sexual abandon and outright helpless rutting (“Sensations rollin’, turnin’ from me to you / Causing this aura of heat to swirl, yeah”)’.

Here ’Tis; his story:

Miss X, MC5 & Pink Fairies At The Speakeasy August 4, 1970 (Tuesday night) and aftermath (Wednesday morning)

In August, the International Times ran with a parody of a sensational tabloid-styled headline that it splashed across its front page: ‘NUDE WOMAN, LONDON PIGS & REBEL MUSICIAN’. Above and below the headline, in equally bold san serif type: ‘TITS, ASS & HOT REVOLUTION! / MULTIPLE L.S.D. – RAPE SUICIDE BID’. The main story was sub-headed ‘Lovely New Zealander’s night of drama’ and delivered in scandalous detail the events that had unfolded one night at the Speakeasy club. The piece, by Mick Farren, satirised newspaper shock and sensation stories of the underground freak scene, and referred to the ‘nude woman’ in question as ‘auburn-haired Miss X’, whose name we are unable to reveal’. Since Wayne Kramer was already fast friends with Farren, could it be that he took the anonymous appellation of said woman and used it as both title and subject of one of his most uncharacteristic songs? As told in IT, the story follows closely the first-hand account of the night’s events that was much later told to me by Joly McFie, a member of The Pink Fairies road crew at the time.

***

A little more than a fortnight after their televised appearance at a free concert staged at Wayne State University in Detroit on Tartar Field, the MC5 were in the UK for the legendary Phun City Festival, held near Worthing in West Sussex. Promoted and assembled by ex-Deviants vocalist Mick Farren, it would become known as a highwater mark of 1970 Rock Music in the UK courtesy of The MC5’s high energy performance as well as that of The Pink Fairies whose two drummers, Twink and Russell Hunter, stripped naked at one point during their set in a show of zapped-out freak power.

Following Phun City, on August 4, The MC5 were scheduled to appear at the Speakeasy club, located at 48 Margaret Street in London’s busy West End. Earlier that day, MC5 guitarist Wayne Kramer encountered a young woman from New Zealand who expressed a desire to get high. Always obliging, he passed the young woman some speed along with an invitation to see his band that night.

Supporting the MC5 were the Pink Fairies, who shared their gear with the headliners. Twink, however, was banned from the Speakeasy, so had to be secretly transported into the club hidden inside a bass drum case. Let loose, and dressed, once more, only in his birthday suit, he invaded the stage during the MC5’s set, which led to him being, yet again, ejected from the club.

MC5 Kicking it out at the Speakeasy, photograph by Noel Shearer

After the MC5 finished their set, the young woman had begun to exhibit the effects of not only the speed but of several alcoholic drinks and a dose of LSD from an unknown donor. Acting in an irrational and agitated manner, in the ladies’ room she began blocking the sinks and turning on all the taps before, like Twink, stripping off all her clothing. The manager of the club insisted the scene cease at once or law enforcement officials would be summoned. Swift steps were then taken by Pink Fairies bass player, Duncan ‘Sandy’ Sanderson and Roderick ‘Noddy’ Mackenzie of White Trash, who ushered the young woman into a waiting Morris 1100 automobile driven by Pink Fairies roadie, Joly McFie. Once on the road, the young woman, still naked, still freaking out, was now repeatedly screaming: ‘I NEED A FUCK!! CAN NONE OF YOU GIVE ME A FUCK?!’ While doing so, she was positioned on her back, lodged in-between the front seats with her head blocking the gear stick, causing Joly to make the short journey stuck in third gear. As he recalled later: ‘every light seemed to be red, and I was having to crawl away using the clutch’.

As the woman repeatedly yelled out for ‘A PROPER FUCK!’, Sandy attempted to oblige her while the automobile wended its way through the early morning hours to Regent’s Park where Joly found a quiet spot to pull over and park the car, where upon he got out. Those left inside kept ‘sensations rollin’ until Miss X changed position and popped out the windscreen with her feet, which Joly, standing nearby, caught whole. Coitus interruptus, Miss X then ran off in the direction of the nearby Regent’s Canal into which she jumped.

Sandy and Joly kept an eye on the intoxicated woman while she swam and continued her vocal dissatisfactions for several minutes before the police showed up. While the police cars were converging, Joly procured a blanket to cover her up. She was then escorted by Metropolitan police to a nearby hospital. Her condition improved with daylight and, according to Joly, ‘she was feeling much better and graciously sent thanks for our efforts’ on her behalf.

Whether or not Kramer just swiped his title from the story or from elsewhere, or even if ‘Miss X’ was more profoundly influenced by the ‘lovely New Zealander’s night of drama’, is perhaps neither here nor there. However compelling the coincidences, keeping true to convention the subject of ‘Miss X’ must remain as much a mystery as Miss X herself.

– The Seth Man

The tale of Miss X’s night of misadventure has also been retold in Rich Deakin’s inestimable biography of The Deviants and Pink Fairies, Keep It Together, with further collaboration from Sandy Sanderson, but the potential link to Kramer’s composition is all The Seth Man’s. Farren didn’t re-live that night in his autobiography, he does, however, give over a fair few pages to the Speakeasy and the sexual politics of the time:

The Speakeasy was not only the place for late booze. It was also where the girls were; one of the city's high temples of the groupie culture that would so fascinate the media. The lipstick killer parade of assumed boredom, platform shoes, scarlet talons, transparent chiffon, fishnets, false eyelashes, appliqué glitter, hotpants, short-short dresses and attitudes of superiority would continue for more than a decade. Much has been made of the oppression of women in rock & roll. Was the groupie a brainwashed victim craving a second-hand and illusionary contact high, or an independent woman making her own choices, fully in control of her own body and sexuality? Germaine [Greer] appeared to cleave to the former in both word and deed when I knew her, but in later life I understand she has recanted her former hedonism.

Tracking back only a few years and ‘Miss X’ was the nom de plume used by the press for Christine Keeler in the Profumo Affair . . . West End Stories on repeat with a Cha Cha Cha rhythm as scored by John Barry [click on the image below]

The Seth Man’s outstanding webpage The Book of Seth on Julian Cope’s Head Heritage can be read HERE His Fuz magazine from the end-of-the-twentieth-century is equally essential reading.

The Love Bug Pink Fairie style

Penny Valentine and Simon Napier-Bell in a tête-à-tête about John’s Children

Of all the weekly music press critics who took a turn at reviewing the latest singles, Penny Valentine was by far the most astute, witty and all around entertaining. You can get endlessly and delightfully lost browsing her column in Disc, which she wrote between 1964-1970. She could be equally enthused about the latest from regular chart toppers or a debut offer from complete unknowns. She didn’t work on a grace or favour basis, her recommendation had to be earned. Her style is intimate, personal, reflective. She will explain what she wants from a record and why it does or does not meet with her expectations. She is without cupidity in her love of pop: never curtly dismissive, patronising or elitist.

She filled the role of an interlocutor mediating between the pop machine and the pop consumer; her endorsement of a record genuine, honest, her critique considered. Most importantly she made her reader feel part of an ongoing conversation about pop, she was inclusive – writing in the same temper as the records she so clearly loved.

You can see how this played out across her reviews of records produced by Simon Napier -Bell in 1966–1967 in which she engaged with him as if he, the reader and her were sharing the same space.

Her column would highlight half a dozen releases but she also dealt with twice that number in the ‘Quick Spins’ section, which is where she reviewed John’s Children’s second 45:

A gentleman phoned me last week and accused me of being very anti the musical works of Simon Napier-Bell. I wish to disagree – while admitting that I have so far remained unimpressed with the odd sounds Mr Bell has produced. Now to ‘Just What You want’ by John’s Children which is odd weird peculiar and disturbing but some tricks work and the overall is effective. Do I see the light? (February 4 1967)

It doesn’t appear that she reviewed the band’s debut – ‘The Love I Thought I’d Found’ aka ‘Smashed Blocked’ –  back in October 1966 so that accusation of being antithetical to SNB productions was most likely in response to the discs by The Yardbirds and Keith Relf:

 Keith Relf – ‘Mr Zero’ (Columbia)

I'm very fond of dear Keith Relf with his starved face, and I too thought that this would have been just the sort of sad song cut out for him. BUT. . . I hate to make comparisons but if people will do songs that other people have already made then they must be prepared. It's been done much faster than Bob Lind's, and consequently you lose a lot of the of impact of loneliness. I'm not at all sure about this record at all. Other side is "Knowing." (May 14 1966)

Two weeks later, beneath the headline ‘Now Yardbirds go Russian and Arabic!’, she reviewed ‘Over Under Sideways Down’ (Columbia):

 I can only suppose that on their next record the Yardies will have the entire Dagenham Girl Pipers playing pick and shovels . . things have got to quite а pitch in their search for new sounds. On this they have great clapping and Russian-type "Heys, Indian rave-ups and a part that sounds like the Arabic call to prayer. Fact, I think it's fascinating and all very splendid. So there! (May 28 1966)

Hardly dismissive in either case but the idea of engaging with SNB must have appealed to her. Whatever, she definitely refused to continence their next single. As she explained:

 Yardbirds – ‘Happenings Ten Years Time Ago (Columbia)

The time has come, the walrus said, to have a go. Well, he didn’t actually say that, but I am going to have a go.

I have always thought that a record should give, to each individually it should impart something musically nice. This does not give. It takes. I have had enough of this sort of excuse for music. It is not clever, it is not entertaining, it is not informative. It is boring and pretentious. I am tired of people like the Yardbirds thinking this sort of thing is clever when people like the Spoonful and the Beach Boys are putting real thought into their music. And if I hear the word psychedelic mentioned I will go nuts. (October 22 1966)

Being dull and condescending was a grave sin, while hiding behind the mask of psychedelia was no excuse for pretension. She was, however, ready to make amends with Relf’s second solo disc, ‘Shapes in my Mind’, which she reviewed under the title  ‘Make Me Break This Spell’ (Columbia), even if she still felt ‘Happenings’ was a ‘monstrosity’:

 I have a strange feeling that Simon Napier-Bell has been groping around in the dark – In the musical sense for a long time and may at last be coming out into the light.

This is as strange and weird as some of his other efforts (that includes the last Yardbirds’ monstrosity) but unlike the others this actually works. Here then we have Keith's off-beat, sad, echoey voice in a desperate state at losing his girl. Once you've got over the shock of everything stopping and starting and feeling that somewhere lurks the phantom of the opera at his organ keyboard, you'll like it. It may even move you. It did me. (November 26 1966)

Napier-Bell had cut the backing for Relf’s single in Los Angeles at the same time as he had the city’s top session men record John’s Children’s debut, musically and thematically the two singles make good companion pieces.

‘Marc explained about their stage act “We don’t just do a musical performance . . . it’s a 45-minute happening . . .”’Record Mirror (June 10, 1967)

It would have been a fair exchange . . . . Velvets for John’s Children Melody Maker (July 15 1967)

The third release by John’s Children was also placed in the ‘Quick Spins’ section:

Some have said that ‘Desdemona’ is a very dodgy song indeed, and JOHN'S CHILDREN say no, it's not. So be it. But even to my uncontaminated mind the words don't seem to leave much to the imagination. All very weird, with Marc Boland's [sic] odd black magic voice coming through well. (May 13 1967)

Valentine had reviewed Bolan’s debut The Wizard and had rather liked it:

On the strength of this strange young man's looks and weird background, I suspect we'll hear more of this odd record about meeting a wizard in the woods who knew all.

I prefer the other side, 'Beyond the Rising Sun' which has more tune. Jim Economides, ace producer, does lovely things on this. I'm a bit put off by the way this boy sings with Dylan phrasing, but that’s all. (November 19, 1965)

She missed (or avoided) reviewing ‘The Third Degree’ and ‘Hippy Gumbo’.

Melody Maker (June 10 1967)

Napier-Bell’s pursuit of the sensational, however phoney, had made its mark with ‘Desdemona’, how then to follow that line of provocation?

John’s Children – ‘Come and Play With Me in the Garden’ (Track)

Some people, including Simon Napier-Bell himself, think I have a "down" on Simon Napier-Bell's productions. Well, I haven't. I do try to be fair – really. But so often it strikes me that all he and his groups агe after is a controversial lyric and such a way-out production that nobody would be any the wiser if they were all playing and singing on their heads. Perhaps they are. Down here, mother, where the air is clean and your children are innocent, I couldn't understand what was going on. In fact, I couldn't even follow the tune.

John's Children sound as though they have been recorded suspended from crystal balloons. All disconcerting. But see "Emily Play" and look how wrong I was about THAT. (July 22 1967)

The admission of error when it came to predicting hit records was one of the traits that enhanced her appeal. The previous month she had written off Syd and the boys:

Pink Floyd – ‘See Emily Play’ (Columbia), didn't really go mad over this group's last record, and I' can't in all honesty say I like this much either. It's another of those songs which appear childishly innocent on the surface but actually carry messages of doomy evilness. (June 17 1967)

With the next John Children’s effort,was Napier-Bell replying in kind to her commentary about his charges?

 John’s Children – Go Go Girl (Track)

The clever thing about this group is that their records are always so outrageous they always manage to get a big review. This one, I understand, was made in desperation after continual harsh words from me. It sounds like it. I will accept no responsibility for this extraordinary send-up. It's chronic and a joke. But then, of course, it's meant to be. Haha. Ignored it will surely not be. Goodnight Simon. (October 7 1967)

Was Penny Valentine – all put together with chocolate n’ feathers – the subject of ‘Go Go Girl’? Undoubtedly not, but it kept the conversation rolling on though that was the last of the John’s Children 45s. Valentine did, however, review two of Andy Ellison’s solo singles:

 Quick Spins:

From ‘Round the Mulberry Bush’ a pretty song of lost summer love, sea and sand, called ‘It’s Been A Long Time’ by Andy Ellison (January 6 1968)

Andy Ellison, who has stunned many by recent TV appearances, makes Beatles’ ‘You Can’t Do That’ into a pretty evil-sounding proposition. (June 8 1968)

Had others heard the evil masquerading as innocence in ‘See Emily Play’ and Ellison’s version of the ‘You Can’t Do That’? While her dialogue with Napier-Bell faded, his replacement was waiting in the wings:

Tyrannosaurus Rex ‘Deborah’ (Regal Zonophone)

Once you've staggered over that name this is a very interesting record. Apparently this is John Peel's favourite record at the moment but don't be feared doesn't mean it's that incredibly obtuse. What it is, is a very interesting record. By that I mean it's a new weird sound from Marc Bolan's highly distinctive vocal. Few words, lots of sounds, and it's pretty in a strange way too. Unexpectedly nice. (April 27 1968)

Tyrannosaurus Rex ‘One Inch Rock’ (Regal Zonophone)

I dig you now, Tyrannosaurus! It has taken me much longer than all those hip people who have been digging them for ages to appreciate this group. I now admit I find their sound rather endearing, certainly very individual, and totally fascinating. I have also met Marc Bolan in my lift, and he’s much smaller and delicate looking close to than I had suspected. I’m glad they put a title on this because I couldn’t understand a thing he was singing about. But there’s power in those vocal cords, by jove! And they do get a very good sound. (August 23 1968)

Tyrannosaurus Rex ‘Power Suitor’ [sic] (Regal Zonophone)

After having owned up to liking the overall sound these two put over, I must now admit to being rather confused as to why all their singles have this hard tight chanting vocal but very little lyric. It's okay if you just want to leap about in a white hat making the floorboards shake, but to sit and listen to – unless you're in a mystic mood– it's a bit mind-boggling. (January 25 1969)

Tyrannosaurus Rex ‘King of The Rumbling Spires’ (Regal Zonophone)

Penny was on holiday for this release so the paper asked pop star Clodagh Rodgers to review the week’s singles

I can't follow it at all, I can't find any definite tune in it. I like Marc Bolan's voice because it's very distinctive ‘Deborah’ was great. But on this they've got too much backing —it's overloaded. It's messy and the only words you can hear is the title.

Penny Valentine, Sounds (March 26 1972)

Most of Penny Valentine’s reviews of Bolan’s records have been quoted in There was A Time – Marc Bolan: a Chronology (2024). I can think of no better way to idle away the hours than tracking with Cliff McLenehan the traces Bolan left behind.

'No Dress Restrictions' – MC5 UK Gig List 1970 & 1972

In anticipation of my 13 page epic tale of the MC5 in Britain 1972 — Ugly Things #66 (Summer 2024) — here’s a list of the gigs the band played in the UK as they neared the end of their tumultuous career: 4 shows in 1970 and circa 36 in 1972

The Five’s second visit to the UK was chaotic and without record company support. Gigs were announced and then cancelled. Sometimes the band turned up late and played only one number, sometimes they didn’t even get past the soundcheck. Not every date listed here is confirmed though for most shows I have at least two or three pieces of evidence that they did take place. I expect there are some omissions, ad hoc appearances, but as of today it is the most comprehensive list we have. A fair few of the shows were reviewed in the weekly music press and I quote from these and a good number of news stories and interviews in ‘MC5 Live On Saturn, London 1972’, which is fully referenced.

Melody Maker (August 8, 1970)

1970

Zigzag (August 1970)

Disc and Music Echo (August 8 1970)

July 25 Phun City, Sussex

July 26 Roundhouse, London

July 31 Marquee, London

August 4 Speakeasy, London

The Speakeasy, London photo: Noel Shearer

Music Now (August 15 1970)

1972

February 5  (Sat) London School of Economics, London

"When we go out on stage everybody knows how to get it up there, how to reach a climax, how to go, go, go and climax again.It's been said we're the only band in America that can make an audience come. If we make English audiences come then we've done what we want to do."

February 11 (Fri) Friars, Aylesbury

February 13 (Sun) The Greyhound, Croydon (Michael Davis’ last performance)

Croydon’s White Panther Party UK get disgruntled . . . full account HERE

February 17–22 France

 February 24 (Thur) Corn Exchange, Cambridge

February 25 (Fri) Lanchester Poly, Coventry

February 27 (Sun) Barbarella’s Birmingham

February 29 (Tue) Flamingo, Redruth

March 1 (Wed) Plymouth Polytechnic

March 3 (Fri) Seymour Hall, London

March 4 (Sat) Odeon, Canterbury

 March 8–23 France/Germany

 March 23 (Thur) Speakeasy, London

Sounds gig list

 April/May USA

 June 1 (Thur) City Hall, Leeds

June 3 (Sat) Clitheroe Festival, Clitheroe

Manchester Evening News

June 5 (Mon) Magee University, Derry

NME gig list

June 7 (Wed) The Stadium, Liverpool (unconfirmed and unlikely as the Five are not listed in adverts the Stadium ran in the Liverpool Echo)

June 9 (Fri) Guild Hall, Northampton

NME

June 10 (Sat) Kings Cross Cinema, London

June 11 (Sun) Letchworth Youth Centre, Letchworth

Time Out listing

June 12 (Mon) Trinity College, Cambridge

Sounds

June 16 (Fri) Edgehill Rag Ball, Top Rank, Liverpool

Liverpool Echo

June 18 (Sun) Wake Arms, Epping

June 19 (Mon) York City Rowing Club, Lendal Bridge, York

Melody Maker

June 23 (Fri) Penthouse, Scarborough

June 24 (Sat) Hornsea Rock, Hull

June 27 (Tues) Merton College, Oxford

June 28 (Wed) Greyhound, Fulham Palace Road, London

June 29 (Thur) Kingston Polytechnic, London

Time Out

June 30 (Fri) Bedford College, London

July  1 (Sat) St Albans City Hall, St Albans

July  3-9 (Monday thru Sunday inc.) Bumpers, Coventry St. London

Nick Kent . . . NME October 21 1972

Bumpers Club hostesses . . . promo photograph circa late 1971

July 12–22 Holland/Belgium

Rob Tyner glams it up in Wembley

August 5 Rock ’n’ Roll Show, Wembley

Though listed/advertised/rumoured the MC5 didn’t appear at

February 10 Corn Exchange, Cambridge

February 12 Mardi Gras Club, Liverpool

March 5 Implosion, Roundhouse, London

September 16 Pier Pavilion, Felixstowe

September 23 Windsor Arts Festival, Windsor

November 16 Sundown, Mile End, London

December 2 Epsom Baths Hall, Epsom

December 9 LSE, London

One More Questionnaire: Carm Deleff aka Marc Bolan

AMBITION: to make the transition . . . How many questionnaires did Bolan complete over the years? By 1975 he was a past master at the game and this must be among the best (NME August 30, 1975). OCCUPATION: interior mental decorator. That’ll do me . . . HOBBY: Snurding. Yeah, mine too! And he was always THE Mod – CRIMINAL CONVICTIONS: Stealing a G.S (scooter). Go ahead and dig in while you chew on some alligator steak

Riding the Circle Line to Ladbroke Grove with Alice Cooper

Before Alice Cooper became the big thing and media darlings with ‘School’s Out’ their core appeal in Britain was to freaks and rockers. What you have here is a few choice cuts from before the deluge that mostly focus on the underground press, Frendz and IT in particular. Here’s what Mick Farren and Nick Kent, among others, had to say about the band who ‘act as a mirror – people see themselves through us’.

Alice Cooper’s CBS distributed Straight label UK releases

‘a rock and roll band made up of mean Hollywood drag queens who disembowl chickens and beat each other on stage, and are really the kind of band that I’d like to play in’ – Mick Farren

Greg Shaw, Jukebox Jury Creem

Greg Shaw thinks it is all about the Stooges, he wouldn’t be the last

You wanna know all about third generation rock n roll then look no further . . . . Alice with Steve Mann in Frendz

. . . some more third generation proselytising with Jamie Mandelkau in IT

“Got me so hot I could scream . . .”

‘Alice Cooper are supreme pooff rock . . .’ Mick Farren at his most lazy, touting the consensus.

John Peel, Singles: Disc and Music Echo (March 25, 1972)

‘This really is an odd group to come to terms with . . .’ – John Peel

All change and mind the gap: ‘The sight of rocking hordes of 12+ boppers at Alice Cooper’s Wembley concert would seem to prove that his efforts in the direction of bizzaro teen appeal are paying dividends’. – Mick Farren

Below, Myles Palmer, on the eve of the Wembley concert, gives a perfect summation of where things then stood . . . a worthy quote line in every paragraph, but the conclusion will do: ‘As music it’s not half bad, as showbiz it’s riveting and as trash it is absolutely incomparable’.

Dave “Boss” Goodman arrives late to the party . . . While Nick Kent gets the scoop on the Coop after Wembley (July 1972):

While America sinks in a mass debauch of drugs, sex andviolence, the Coopers just keep on getting bigger and bigger. They are the first of the third-generation rock bands to really make it big, while others like Lou Reed and the Velvets and the Stooges were perhaps too wild and dangerous to catch on The Coopers act, while it is extremely entertaining, is in reality not half as powerful as some would have us imagine.

The Final Fall Into Depravity – New York Dolls Play Warwick

“Yes dahhhlings they’re here. Divinely decadent, superbly sexy, long, lean and licentious – dig this if you can”

Two great plugs for the Dolls in the Warwick Boar, University of Warwick’s student rag, for their show on November 22, 1973 . . .

Given that the text mentions Billy I’d bet it is cribbed from somewhere or other, but it is great advertising copy regardless . . . Below, an editorial from the the same issue draws a parallel between the Dolls and George Melly, which I for one full approve of. . . an encouragement to moral laxity. Let the debauchery begin

Well, did Bert Jansch turn up?

Lesson #2: How to piss off progressive rock fans

Its Inmates Absurd: The Velvet Underground at the University of Kent 1971

“After about the first two years we got talking. . .”

– Maureen Tucker on rehearsing with the Velvet Underground

As a live proposition, The Velvet Underground, sans Lou Reed, existed for an improbable 2 ½ years, which included two tours of Europe in 1971 and 1972. In England, Autumn 1971, most of their gigs were on the burgeoning university and college circuit. On November 4, they made an appearance at the University of Kent. The big recent attractions on campus had been The Who, Eliot Dining Hall, May 1970 and in March 1971, in the Sports Hall, Led Zeppelin. More generally, student entertainment was provided by middle-ranking progressive rock bands – Mick Abrahams, Colosseum, Blodwyn Pig and local heroes Caravan. Kent alumni Spirogyra were an ever present feature. In all likelihood, the bookers thought the Velvet Underground would fit right into this scene. For their drummer, Maureen Tucker, the VU were always the exception to such trends.

The Velvets performed in the Rutherford Dining Hall to a positive response, if the reviewer for the student paper InCant was any indicator. He or she considered them to be a ‘genuine rock and roll band in the American sense, as opposed to the likes of Deep Purple, Black Sabbath’. The reviewer delighted in their choice of covers ­ – Dixie Cups’ ‘Chapel of Love’ and standards ‘Turn On Your Love Light’ and ‘Spare Change’. Lou Reed songs ‘Sweet Nuthin’, ‘Sister Ray’, ‘After Hours’ and, the ‘beautifully corny’ (!?!), ‘White Light/White Heat’ were highlights, with the latter described as ‘funky’ by Doug Yule. InCant’s critic agreed.

The interview with the only original member of the band, Maureen Tucker, is a peach. Asked about the shifts in the line-up, she said:

It’s been such a gradual change that to me anyway there’s been no apparent effect. After about the first two years we got talking . . . it was a mutual agreement that we were kind of getting sick of going on stage playing 30 minute songs. It’s just not original after a while, so Lou (Reed) started writing more four minute songs, rock and roll songs. Now it’s even more regular rock and roll than it ever was.

What happened to Nico? She wanted to go off on her own and be a big star

Like most of the events held by the Student’s Union, The Velvet Underground gig lost money; the organisers putting lack of interest, it was suggested, down to the fact the band’s line-up had changed. On that basis they had tried to cancel but were unable to break the contract. Steeleye Span proved to be a bigger draw.

Back in April 1971, student Helen Chastel had provided InCant with a review of Loaded, soon to be released in the UK. It is one the best summaries of the VU I’ve read.

Proposition: for consistent and versatile genius in rock the Velvet Underground (or V.U.s to the cognoscenti) are equalled only to Dylan and the Stones. Don't ask questions if you dispute it, write your own review. If you deny it, you are a Quintessence or Andy Williams fan and not worth bothering with.

Helen clearly didn’t think they belonged with the progressive mediocrities. She was a total fan, she’d bought her copy of Loaded in Washington last Christmas while on an exchange to the States and she knew someone who knew Lou Reed – ‘virtuoso extraordinaire, ex-child prodigy, now repudiator of drugs and hippies, mythical recluse . . . Sainthood is all in the mind.’

How many recognise themselves in the line ‘The deep sleep of a suburban upbringing can be shattered by sudden exposure to such a group’? Faced with VU & Nico, Helen ‘saw darkness of which I knew nothing, saw an extreme weariness, people born to die. Eliot (her college at Kent) life became petty, its inmates absurd.’ Reed, she wrote, had a ‘clear and cliché-less view of modern city life’, White Light/White Heat extended even further ‘into a chaos of light, blood, heat and noise . . . The third album is a surfacing, a return to verbal precision’. . . Lou Reed, Saint of the City. Helen Chastel, Saint of VU fans. . .

On that same tour of British Universities, the VU entertained Warwick University’s student cohort. COMUS providing support (they also played at Kent in May 1972). Ad and review from the Warwick Boar student paper

‘The Velvet Underground from whom great things were expected . . .’ Like at Kent, attendance fell below expectations.

Disc and Music Echo (November 6 1971)

Black to Comm – Review Pin-Ups 1972

Really pleased by this review from Black to Comm’s Chris Stigliano on his Blog to Comm pages: here (January 3, 2024):

“You like your old rock papers and mags with all of those flipped out "gonzo" writers who either made you glad or mad? Still have those T. Rex singles snuggled in your collection? Did you get your fashion tips from Lisa Robinson's "Eleganza" column (or, if you were a Clevelander, Charlotte Pressler's "Pizzaz")? Well, this one one book, and perhaps one of the ONLY ones extant, that will tell you the plain and simple truth that you were right all along!”

Teenage R 'n' R: The Shakin' Street Gazette

Launched in October 1973, the in-house SUNY Buffalo State student paper, The Shakin’ Street Gazette, (initially part of Strait) opened with an observation and a statement of intent – a manifesto almost, from editor Gary Sperrazza: teenage music, the punk muse, was back.

Sperrazza summarised what has been lost since The Beatles asked to hold your hand and second-generation rock ’n’ rollers edged into middle-age. Things had got baggy and elastic, the sound of ever longer guitar solos . . . commerce, sell-out, musical redundancy were all in play. But . . .

‘slowly but surely, there has been a trend developing concerning a rekindling of interest in pop consciousness/Teenage music in the 70s. A whole new generation has been weaned on the Beatles and the 60’s, as the Beatles were with Berry and the 50’s . . . There’s hope’.

In Part 2 Sperrazza surveyed the group scene, Brownsville Station, The Sweet (he loved The Sweet), Aerosmith and Slade were the tub thumpers, Badfinger, Raspberries and Blue Ash proffered pastiche, while Wackers and Big Star satirised and Blue, Curt Boetcher and David Beaver (who?) got mellow.

That list is hardly inspiring, but as the paper went through its 18 editions some of those names were dropped and a good many others, now very familiar, would be added.

Part 3 opens with the lyrics of Big Star’s ‘Thirteen’, a pitch perfect introduction. Alex Chilton’s band ‘suppressed masters of pop/rock and Teenage music. No matter how I fight the album always ends up on my turntable’.

Others interested in teenage music are sent off to read Greg Shaw (Lester Bangs would later climb on board)

‘Teenage music is based on a feeling: a feeling you can’t get from any other forms of music. It’s young, enthusiastic, fresh, vibrant, it makes you feel . . .  well, it just makes you feel. . . figure it out for yourselves’

One of the journal’s better, more amusing, writers, who went for that teenage feel, was Joe Fernbacher

Though the review dismisses the Dolls second album, the image of David Johanson on his arse is too good to pass by, fits so well with Fernbacher’s take on Too Much Too Soon’s shortcomings. Obviously a little enthralled by Richard Meltzer, Fernbacher is nevertheless a total pleasure to read, a lexicon of corporeal profanities:

That first LP was good. Real teenage rectal-mucous stuff . . .it kinda left you in the throes of impending formication horripilation . . . it was male dysmenorrehea . . . it was achromatic sonic devolution . . . it was so rock hard that it went nova, and slipped into anaphrodisiac . . . molah gay . . . coin operated hiney-rimmers. . . They were that and much more.

Fernbacher’s take on Silverhead’s 16 and Savaged is equally swamped in bodily exudations. . .

Some of Fernbacher’s later writings for Creem are archived (here)

Bowie's Pinups: Punkoid Wimpasilic Adulation

From Buffalo State University’s student paper, Strait, in its Shakin’ Street Gazette subsection, November 1973, comes Andy Cutler’s veracious take on Bowie’s Pinups and third-generation rock ’n’ roll.

‘the new saluting the old. What more could we ask for to paint an accurate picture of the current trend in pop music’.

On the way to that conclusion, Cutler sputters out a near half-a-dozen uses of ‘punk’ to describe what Bowie was delineating.

1964–67 British beat is labelled as the ‘English punk scene’, which might well be the first time the term for second-generation American suburban teenage delinquent rock ’n’ roll was rowed across the Atlantic to depict Britain’s most blueswailing.

Bowie’s retrospective take on his formative years is figured by Cutler as ‘neo-punk’, which leaves, even before the fact, the 1976/77 version as post-punk.

Signed 'Iggy Pop' – a fan's scapbook

A fan’s photobook of snaps, taken at the Whisky A-Go-Go, up for auction (October 2023) at Bonhams . . . starting price $800 but doesn’t appear to have reached its reserve . . . not sure which of the three runs they had at the venue in 1973 these are from

Billboard (November 3, 1973)

The Actionist – Iggy Stooge in Vogue (August 1970)

On all fours – the full shot: photo Jack Robinson

New York Dolls: Looking For . . . New Stages in England, 1972

There can’t be much on the Dolls in their heyday that hasn’t been excavated, but I don’t recall seeing this photograph or piece from Lisa Robinson before . . . Disc (November 4, 1972). The band are on verge of heading to England for their ill-planned and ill-fated first trip out of New York. Robinson had a regular column, dispatches from NYC, in the paper.

Robinson rehearses the standard line on the band in their early days – “they almost make you believe in Rock ‘n’ Roll again” but that qualification, ‘almost’, grates. She still needs to put in some practice time . . . Still, she very graciously gives a quote to her friend Lillian Roxon . . . See Here . . . though I’m not sure of its actual source.

Johansen was always on form with the killer quote back then:

When those record people come and see us I think we turn them on. Their wives get drunk and start dancing and they go crazy. But then they think about their kids . . . y’know . . .and that’s what stops them. They start thinking about their kids.

Still feels something of a tragedy that they didn’t deliver on the much made promise to be a great singles band . . .

Seven months later Lisa Robinson is back with a report on the NYC underground, the children of The Velvet Underground . . . Suicide are there in the mix with Wayne County the new star of the scene . . .

One year after Lisa Robinson’s report the Dolls make the paper’s front cover