Syndicated John's Children with your local pop-picker Alan Jones

July 9, 2024 Peter Stanfield

The Staffordshire Evening Sentinel has the scoop of the day . . . Media manipulator, pop-svengali, orchestrator of outrage, Simon Napier-Bell made his biggest splash as manager of John’s Children in a pop column syndicated in the local press. He was no doubt aiming for Atticus and the Sunday Times but ended up with Alan Jones – pop correspondent for the Potteries and all points east . . .

Staffordshire Evening Sentinel (April 8 1967)

On the verge of joining the Who on a tour of Germany, John’s Children were interviewed by Jones for Staffordshire and Lincolnshire’s regional newspapers. Napier-Bell set out the band’s manifesto:

John’s Children are outrageously arrogant because they find other people ugly, devious and boring. They are grippingly honest because they are not sophisticated enough to be devious. They look naïve because they are young, clean and sweet.

Things got easily out of hand; at one gig, the band explained, ‘“We were yelling Sieg Heil, the German marching cry, and the audience were shouting it back” . . . “They liked the sound of the cry . . . Nothing political. They just liked the sound” . . . Whatever they played they liked it loud,’ wrote Jones.

Would they revive the war cry ‘Sieg Heil’ on the German tour? ‘Definitely,’ replied John. Offensive to the German audience? He gasped: ‘Surely not. People cannot be that thick. It is a fascinating beat, that is all there is to it.’ To show his innocence, John claimed he did not know what Sieg Heil meant. But then, that is part of the pop mystic. With a knowing smile, he tried to explain a new single the group were making. ‘It’s about a man who plays funerals in his backyard.’

A slightly longer version appeared earlier in the Lincolnshire Echo

Because it was a good pop story, Jones willingly played along with Napier-Bell’s game of manufactured outrage; it was good enough anyway for him to construct at least a superficial display of suspended disbelief; certainly seductive enough to have him regularly review the band’s records and to do so positively

Jones would continue to review the new pop releases into the next decade and was always happy to boost Marc Bolan from the early days Tyrannosaurus Rex and into the era of Trextasy:

The glamour is what other people see in it. But there’s not much glamour sitting in a studio being photographed. What is exciting is having the vision to see the end product.

Staffordshire Evening Sentinel (October 2 1971)

‘Owing to illness Wayne Fontana . . . will be unable to appear

‘The first genuine flower power group to visit Nottingham . . ‘

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

June 18, 2024 Peter Stanfield

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’.

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)

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.

Mod RIP: Nik Cohn – Ready Steady Gone.

August 4, 2020 Peter Stanfield

Outside of Pete Townshend and the Who, Nik Cohn’s favourite topic in the 1960s was the Mod phenomenon, so it was a buzz to find this August 1967 article on the death of the youth cult, freshly killed by 10,000 flower-children.

Cohn thought Mod was an entirely new concept of youth, unlike Teds, for example, they owed nothing to past generations; ithey weren’t concerned with adult opinion. Teds revolted against their parents because they wanted to claim a masculinity; boys wanting to be men. Mod wasn’t rebellious in this way, because the boys were ‘unmasculine’. They wore make up, constantly changed their clothes and ‘completely rejected women’. Anyone over the age of 25 wasn’t alive and they weren’t inspired by Hollywood, which is to say America.

They had no heroes but themselves and they produced their whole litany out of nothing. . . They were exquisite, self-involved and undemonstrative.

‘Mod was a ‘very homosexual thing’, a 19 year-old Marc Bolan said of the scene he helped make happen five years earlier:

The music and the dancing and the scooters and pills came later. I’d say that Mod was mentally a very homosexual thing, though not in a physical sense. I was too hung up on myself to be interested in anyone else and, anyhow, I was still very young.

But Cohn doesn’t leave it there, he thinks the homosexual element was a working-class co-option of the old public school attitude to sex . . . ‘Later, it became very fashionable for Mods to go to bed with famous show-business queers and take money for it. . . Homosexuality was accepted, respected and completely assimilated into Mod life.’

Marc Bolan aka Mark Feld was among the prototypes, Chris Covill, 21, from Shepherd’s Bush, is a second generation Mod, (pictured top right). He told Cohn about the Crawdaddy Club and seeing the Stones every week, about money spent on clothes, on going out and on pills. He spoke about the action on Hastings’ beach and the emergence of the false Mod.

You can imagine Covill as a kind of model for Cohn’s hero in Saturday Night Fever:

Mod used to be something serious – now it’s been taken over by a lot of silly children. You see them in their old leather coats, green or red, and they’re all sick. Everything stands still and the point is gone.

Covill said he been working hard and had ‘met a lot of people in pop and I’ve got myself on to a good scene.’ Cohn doesn’t let on who in pop Covill is making out with, nor is there much about Feld’s transformation into Bolan, except to say in passing that he is a singer and songwriter who has made a few records but not had any hits.

By August 1967 Bolan had quit John’s Children and had formed Tyrannosaurus Rex (see Cohn on their first single and Bolan’s history here) . I haven’t found much on Covill, but Andy Ellison, in an interview published on the John’s Children website, says he was one of their roadies and hung out with them. And Cohn once had a ten percent share in John’s Children. The rest was owned by Simon Napier-Bell, or at least a large portion. He is thus the absent-presence in all of this.

A month earlier, in a July 1967 survey of the ‘Love Generation’ in Queen magazine, Napier-Bell had told Cohn:

One lives from day to day trying not to be bored. The things one does to avoid this boredom depend on one’s degree of intelligence. Intelligent and creative people have to do the most extreme things and, therefore they often seem outrageous.

17 year-old Geoff McGill, another Mod from Shepherd’s Bush, stood in for Cohn’s third generation of Mods, he ‘represents the Face at its most bored.’ Meanwhile, no one is listening to Covill’s ‘nostalgic stories about the battles of Brighton and Hastings, the 15-years-olds don’t understand and aren’t interested. Already, the fanatic young days of Mod have become as distant as past wars are always bound to be.’

Boredom, boredom, b’dum b’dum . . .

Marc Bolan – Let Me Sleep Beside You

August 3, 2020 Peter Stanfield

‘All the lunacy and merchandising things going on around me are seldom anything to do with me. I mean, Bolan pillows! Please, people, it’s nothing to do with me.’

Marc Bolan to Keith Altham, NME (September 30, 1972)

I’m guessing then that Bolan didn’t have shares in the Jeepster Jean Co. . . Satin loons. . . and he effectively nixed the release of Simon Napier-Bell’s set of old demos, Hard On Love, for Track. Great poster, however, which uses John’s Children era images. The single, ‘Jasper C. Debussy’ saw the light of day in 1974, along with the album that was subsequently retitled as The Beginning of Doves. Hard On Love was the better title, I reckon . . . I get the double-entendre of the original but I haven’t got a clue what ‘beginning of doves’ means . . .

John's Children on Marc Bolan: Cosmic Dancer (BBC4)

November 3, 2018 Peter Stanfield

The story stays the same, but the tellers of the tale get older. In the decomposing footage of John’s Children - green mould over the ghosts of teenage delinquency - Bolan and band can no longer escape the ravages of time.