{"id":47,"date":"2010-11-01T16:35:08","date_gmt":"2010-11-01T16:35:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.johnpidgeon.com\/words\/?p=47"},"modified":"2010-11-01T16:35:08","modified_gmt":"2010-11-01T16:35:08","slug":"rewriting-pop-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.johnpidgeon.com\/words\/?p=47","title":{"rendered":"Rewriting Pop History"},"content":{"rendered":"

In March 2008\u2019s Observer Music Magazine<\/em>, DJ Johnny Walker recalled, \u201cThe impetus for Radio Caroline came when the founder, Ronan O\u2019Rahilly, discovered Georgie Fame.\u201d Were they not dead, Larry Parnes and Rik Gunnell might contest O\u2019Rahilly\u2019s role as Fame\u2019s discoverer: Parnes, since it was he who, having hired pianist Clive Powell to back Billy Fury, renamed him Georgie Fame; Gunnell, because he oversaw Fame\u2019s metamorphosis into the Hammond-playing hipster whose No 1, \u2018Yeh Yeh\u2019, was honed at his Soho club. Walker was repeating a claim aired often enough for it to have transmuted, like the legend of the man who shot Liberty Valance, into truth, his endorsement further enhancing its authenticity.<\/p>\n

A Guardian obituary should engender as much trust as a revered radio veteran. Recently one was headlined: \u201cRock’n’roll pioneer who was a primary influence on Elvis.\u201d Who had died? Little Richard? Chuck Berry? Fats Domino? Jerry Lee Lewis? No, Freddie Bell, leader of the Bellboys, a Las Vegas lounge act given momentary prominence by an appearance in Rock Around The Clock. It may not be the most important chapters in pop history that are being rewritten, but that doesn\u2019t mean they aren\u2019t worth correcting.<\/p>\n

Possibly Kris Kristofferson\u2019s claim that his was the first beard in country music didn\u2019t really warrant a letter pointing out that goateed Burl Ives had recorded country hits while Kristofferson was still a clean-shaven soldier, but that didn\u2019t stop me writing one or this paper printing it, prompting Tom McGuinness to ask me, how could I have overlooked hirsute Gabby Hayes\u2019 even earlier \u2018Who’s Been Spittin’ In My Spittoon?\u2019. Before I promulgate another porky, he was joking.<\/p>\n

The Manfred Mann bassist has his own reasons for mistrusting music history. Watching a BBC documentary, he heard the Shirelles\u2019 Shirley Alston assert that the Manfreds\u2019\u00a0cover\u00a0of \u2018Sha La La\u2019 killed the girl group\u2019s original.\u00a0\u201cAs theirs was a small\u00a0US hit in March 1964 and ours got to No 12 in November,\u201d he notes, \u201cI can only say\u00a0theirs took a long time dying. If my memory doesn\u2019t fail me, it was in a section\u00a0of the programme about black artists being ripped\u00a0off, particularly galling as we always gave credit to those black artists\u00a0who had inspired us.\u201d<\/p>\n

No less an authority than Charlie Gillett, whose The Sound Of The City<\/em> was the first reliable rock history, admits to having promoted a myth by stating that Gene Vincent\u2019s Capitol contract was the prize in a talent contest to find the next Elvis. \u201cI don\u2019t know where I got the notion from,\u201d he says, \u201cbut although there was no such competition, the story has been repeated many times.\u201d<\/p>\n

The most popular myths are less about the music than events: Mama Cass choking to death on a ham sandwich (she didn\u2019t); Keith Richards snorting his father\u2019s ashes (a joke, according to his publicist); Paul McCartney dying in a car crash in 1966 (in which case, his stand-in hasn\u2019t done a bad job protecting the family fortune).<\/p>\n

The long and lively career of a band like The Who inevitably incites ambiguities, which Pete Townshend is happy to dismiss. He didn\u2019t smash Abbie Hoffman over the head with his guitar at Woodstock. \u201cIf I had, he would have been dead.\u201d Keith Moon driving a Rolls Royce into a swimming pool is an erroneous conflation of two incidents. In one, he left the handbrake off, and the car rolled into a pool, which was under construction and waterless. In the other, he charged a new car to the band, who refused to foot the bill, so Moon \u201cdrove into a muddy pond in his garden and called the dealer to pick it up.\u201d Townshend is even willing to share the credit for pioneering feedback with The Kinks\u2019 Dave Davies \u2013 \u201calthough he used quite small Vox amplifiers, so it wasn’t particularly loud.\u201d<\/p>\n

The one fiction that really bothers him is that he had a \u201cserious tiff\u201d with Jimi Hendrix about who went on first at 1967\u2019s Monterey Pop Festival. There was a civil discussion before the running order was settled with the toss of a coin, although \u201cJimi did stand on a chair and start to play guitar before John Phillips tossed his coin. Jimi playing the guitar meant he\u2019d left the room – really rather rude, but understandable.\u201d<\/p>\n

So, if you\u2019re still around to read Sting\u2019s obituary, and it describes him as a reggae pioneer and primary influence on The Sex Pistols, don\u2019t let it go uncorrected.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In March 2008\u2019s Observer Music Magazine, DJ Johnny Walker recalled, \u201cThe impetus for Radio Caroline came when the founder, Ronan O\u2019Rahilly, discovered Georgie Fame.\u201d Were they not dead, Larry Parnes and Rik Gunnell might contest O\u2019Rahilly\u2019s role as Fame\u2019s discoverer: Parnes, since it was he who, having hired pianist Clive Powell to back Billy Fury, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-47","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johnpidgeon.com\/words\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johnpidgeon.com\/words\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johnpidgeon.com\/words\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johnpidgeon.com\/words\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johnpidgeon.com\/words\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=47"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.johnpidgeon.com\/words\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48,"href":"https:\/\/www.johnpidgeon.com\/words\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47\/revisions\/48"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johnpidgeon.com\/words\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=47"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johnpidgeon.com\/words\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=47"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johnpidgeon.com\/words\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=47"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}