Today There Are No Gentlemen excepting The Fallen Leaves

Yellow Socks Are Out

As Eric Joy, the tailor, puts it: 'When I first started cutting, in the early fifties, my biggest seller was the single-breasted, button-three in grey or dark blue; ten years later, it was the same; today it's the same; in 1980, it'll still be the same.' . . .

With this, all the bleatings of revolution may begin to take on meaning. For the first time, male fashion won't be just the rich and the chic, sipping Campari sodas at the Arethusa; it will be dealing in millions.

On that basis, this book comes more into perspective. It isn't about a movement but about the roots of a movement; not about change but about the precursors of change. Simply, it's about a beginning.

 Nik Cohn, Today There Are No Gentlemen (1971)

All the important bands have a manifesto, written or unwritten. These are the rules they live by and the laws that they wilfully break (for a sizable cash advance)

There is poetry in The Fallen Leaves manifesto

 Simple Songs For Complex People.
Punk Rock For Gentlemen.
No Jeans. No t-shirts. No Cover-Versions.
The Fallen Leaves believe in the DIY Punk ethos.
Song, Sound and Performance are all.
Recordings are live, minimal overdubs.
As the self-proclaimed champions of the glorious underachievers The Fallen Leaves ask you to remember … Simple and easy are not the same thing.

 That credo was once shared by Dr. Feelgood; obviously not the embargo on cover versions, but in all other aspects the two bands walk the same line. In 1976 on the Feelgoods first tour of the States, Wilko Johnson explained to an American critic his philosophy:

“we play straightforward . . . We think the simplicity of it IS it . . . If there is no feeling in it, there’s nothing at all.”

photo: Mick Gold

 The Fallen Leaves don’t sound anything like the Feelgoods but they do sound like a good few of your other favourite bands. More importantly they apply Johnson’s ethos with verve and drama and they have in abundance what Nik Cohn loved in certain English bands, flash.

Their latest album is a true testament to that fact, it is the best album since forever (and I bet I’m still humming along with it next year and a good few more after that). Rev. Rob Green sings in a way that tugs at my most romantic inclinations, which is to say I believe him. Sir Robert Symmons plays guitar as if he’d sat a crash course taught by Sterling Morrison along with a few desultory evening classes with Ron Wood at the lectern, circa 1965. The Fallen Leaves also have the best vocal harmonies since The Who in 1966. Their songs are tailored for the ages . . .

Buy the album [HERE] then go see Aki Kaurismaki’s film that shares the band’s name . . . and much of their manifesto.

Mick Gold 'Rock on the Road' 1976

Mick Gold, Rock on the Road (Futura, 1976)

This oversized paperback, 24 x 18 cm, is something of a forgotten book, it collects together Gold’s reportage and photos of bands on tour, Faces, Slade, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, but if for nothing else it should be recalled for his document of the Feelgoods on the Naughty Rhythm tour in the spring of 1975. Iconic just about sums it up

Gold and Brilleaux plot the route to the next gig . . .

Responding to a question about the band backing Heinz at the London Rock and Roll Show, Wilko said:

‘Teddy boys convinced us we didn’t want nothing to do with classical rock ’n’ roll.’ Wilko reminisced. ‘It was so mindless . . . it was based on a fiction . . . they wanted to hear a kind of music that never really existed. They thought if you didn’t wear a drape suit, it wasn’t classical rock ’n’ roll., but no singers ever dressed like that. Chuck Berry never wore a drape suit. I used to love playing the old classics, but after a couple of gigs with teds I didn’t want to know. We shied away from calling our music rock ’n’ roll  . . . we called it rhythm and blues instead.’

London Rock and Roll Show 1972

Looking toward the future and the MC5’s set, Wilko Johnston backs up Heinz on an excruciatingly bad cover of Cochran’s ‘C’Mon Everybody’ at the 1972 London Rock and Roll Show at Wembley.

The BFI really should release a hi-definition disc of this doc . . . band performances are uniformly horrible, all the energy and interest is in and with the audience.