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IN WHICH… JACK WHITE DENIED VINYL WAS DEAD

Kevin Godley, of prolific vinyl hit-makers, 10cc, told Mojo magazine in January 2018, ‘I have a soft spot for vinyl. It reminds me of when music was rare, significant and a work of art…’

He was born in 1945, five years before me, and like most of my contemporaries, grew up with records and music always close at hand and ear. This attitude towards records was the prevailing one for many years – Jack White of The White Stripes, born almost exactly 30 years after Godley, inherited it and defends it to this day, recalling how:

‘I remember in 1999, and 2000, The White Stripes asking television hosts if they could hold up the vinyl record instead of the CD. And at that time they were like, “Why would we do that?” That’s how dead vinyl was.’

Unlike today, of course, there were relatively few competing personal entertainment options in earlier days, and hit records would sell hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of copies. Most of those who bought, or were given these records were, as I was, entirely devoid of any musical talent whatever. I may have had a toot on a recorder as a kid but displayed zero ability and have genuinely never even strummed an electric guitar to this day, other than in an air-guitar way. Yet music has dominated much of my life. But then there are people obsessed by football, golf or horse racing who can’t kick a ball straight or hole a putt from six inches and have never sat on a horse.

Initially, popular, or ‘pop’ records released in the late 1950s and early 1960s were likely to have been heard by eager, young, potential consumers on non-BBC, usually foreign, radio stations like Radio Luxembourg and American Forces Network.

Rock ‘n’ roll music was leading the way then. Guided by usually financially motivated managers and agents (okay, some things never change), Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, Fats Domino, the Everly Brothers and many others first embraced, then pop-ified rock ‘n’ roll’s harsher elements, which emanated from the States, with their roots in the blues.

Their influence quickly spread across the water, but was then somewhat emasculated in Britain when Cliff Richard, Marty Wilde, Billy Fury, Adam Faith, Tommy Steele et al began to move from their imitative, wannabe Yank teen-idol phases, towards a more middle-of-the-road, commercially attractive, yet blander, sound.

Then, though, The Beatles arrived to stop in their tracks the careers of those who had thought they had the mainstream music scene sewn up, and to spark the whole 1960s explosion of pop, psychedelia, rock music and so much more, leading on to prog(ressive) rock, punk, heavy metal and many other hybrid styles of music.

Soul and ska music also became important, particularly to those youngsters who loved to dance. Stax, Tamla Motown and Trojan became go-to labels for those attending and DJ-ing at discos.

In 1964, the massively influential commercial ‘pirate’ radio stations arrived – amongst them Radios Caroline, London, and Sutch. Music was avidly consumed by those of a certain age – mine – almost by osmosis, and a huge proportion of those so affected wanted to own that music for themselves, so that they could play it whenever they wanted, rather than having to wait for it to be played on the radio.

BBC Radio continued broadcasting what was described as ‘light’ music to an indifferent British audience, until 1967 when, under pressure from the ‘pirates’, it launched Radio One, but, as the name suggested, it was largely inoffensive, repetitive, chart-based bland fare, unlikely to appeal to the more musically adventurous.

Nearly everyone of my acquaintance in the mid-1960s soon owned, or had access to, a portable or transistor radio, a record player (often a ‘radiogram’) and/or a portable cassette recorder/player.

Discs, as the presenters invariably called them, spun on the programmes hosted by popular disc jockeys, would enter the collective consciousness by being bought or recorded, then played almost continuously. Some programmes, usually going out late in the day or overnight, became a cult listen for those seeking to dig deeper into the sounds available. Leading the way in this respect was John Peel.

Ageing baby-boomers may today struggle to recall their own names as advancing years take their toll, but will almost invariably still be able to remember the first record bought for, or by, them. It would usually be a 45 rpm single. ‘The 7ʺ single, as an entity is an absolutely powerful, possibly other-worldly object’, guitarist Johnny Marr would perceptively observe.

Singles were really, more accurately, doubles, containing at least two songs – or tracks – one on either side. Although to my schoolfriend, John Maule, they really were singles. Every time he bought one from our local record shop, Carnes in Wealdstone, and brought it home, he’d take it out of its sleeve, play it, then throw it across the room to join the growing pile on the other side. Why? Because, as he told me at the time, ‘There’s never anything any good on the B-side.’

How wrong I felt he was – then, and particularly now – both in his dismissal of the ‘other’ side, and in his cavalier treatment of his vulnerable vinyl. I’m certainly not alone in believing that. In his introduction to his biography, Bowie, Paul Morley writes of how the first singles he bought were ‘carefully chosen and cared for like nothing else in my life’.

My fellow baby-boomers also retain fond memories of the (often small, usually local and frequently independent) shops where they lost their vinyl virginity. Yes, there were places like Woolworths and Boots, as well as department stores, that sold them, but it was much more interesting to build a relationship with the local independent outlet and the person there who would generally be knowledgeable about forthcoming releases and records similar to the one(s) you were about to buy, but which you may never have heard of. They’d tell you what new discs would be appearing shortly and, if there was likely to be high demand, reserve you a copy.

Another of my friends and contemporaries, Martin Wilson, also challenged John’s B-side disdain, when he told me: ‘I invariably played the B-side first – I already knew what the A-side sounded like, but who knew what treasure might be lurking underneath when you flipped it over?’

John, later a ‘£10 Pom’, and I met up for a reunion in New Zealand in 2018. I’d brought with me a late Christmas present for him, which he hastily unwrapped – duly discovering that I was returning to him several of the singles he’d given to me when he fled the country half a century earlier.

Those from better-off families or with well-paying Saturday jobs (something else which my generation experienced almost universally, but which now appears to be heading towards obsolescence) may have bought, or been given LPs. Even John Maule didn’t hurl these pricey behemoths across the room. But he did manage to scratch them, if not in the way that club DJs later started to do, either. So, by the time he moved to the other side of the world allowing me to inherit most of his badly wounded records, few of them remained playable.

One of them that did, was the Small Faces’ LP, Ogdens’ Nut Gone Flake, the ground-breaking psychedelic record Steve Marriott, Ronnie Lane and company created with the help of the gloriously word-mangling comedian, Stanley Unwin. The latter’s crazily hilarious interventions between tracks helped it become one of the iconic records of the period, thus ensuring that the value of a copy in decent condition soared consistently over the years. It also boasted a unique-at-the-time round cover.

For reasons best known to himself – surely he didn’t fancy her? – John had handed his little-played copy of this LP to my sister, Lesley, who resisted every attempt I made, once I learned that she had it, to acquire it from her. Eventually, and only as recently as 2017, I had to shell out a substantial, three-figure sum to do so. Sisterly love, huh…

This raises a question. When did records, initially regarded as disposable items with little intrinsic value, begin to acquire a serious financial worth, which would appreciate with time?

Once records became established as a teenage essential of the 1960s and 1970s, shrewd entrepreneurs spotted a gap in the market. They began to offer the opportunity for those with too many records, or ones which they had grown bored with, to part with them for a modest fee. Whereupon the profit-savvy purchaser could sell them on, a little more expensively, to buyers who did not already have, and wanted to acquire them, but without having to pay the full cost of a brand spanking new version. Thus did the second-hand record market first appear, and rapidly grow, helping committed but impecunious vinyl addicts remain active.

In the States, a gentleman called Jerry Osborne began producing guides to the values of popular records from 1976 onwards. A Facebook acquaintance told me that ‘in 1978 I purchased a book titled The Record Collector’s Guide by O’Sullivan & Woodside.’ A year later, Record Collector magazine appeared.

Suddenly records had a calculable worth. This wasn’t, though, why I was already collecting. I just loved LPs and singles, and the life-enhancing qualities of recorded music, and wanted as many of them as my meagre disposable income would permit.

Today, the collecting world is divided into those who collect for the love of music, and those who collect to profit from collecting, the latter group described by Record Collector editor, Paul Lester as ‘Machiavellian high-end dealers for whom vinyl is a semi-abstract commodity much like stocks and shares.’

Most people’s vinyl love affairs dwindled as real-life responsibilities took over from their party-central teenage years. I was amongst a select few, like-minded, stubborn vinylholics, who continued to acquire, purchase, cadge, borrow, review, and occasionally sell records, for nearly 60 years after Duane Eddy first came to my attention, persisting long after the novelty had worn off amongst most of my friends, most of whom stopped buying records completely once they embarked on permanent relationships.

Music dropped off their radar, probably until their children had grown up, at which point they slowly began to realise that some of the groups whose records they had liked and bought all those years ago were still around and touring. Perhaps they were coming to a local theatre, albeit with some new, some deceased and increasingly few original members – like the ‘Herman’s Hermits’ I saw once, with no Herman (aka Peter Noone), and then again, even later, when only the original drummer remained, who still had the cheek to claim all the credit for the ‘30 million records we’ve sold’.

But as other groups packed it in, fell out with each other, retired and died off they created a gap in the market – soon filled by bands such as the Small Fakers, who replicate the original performances of Steve Marriott, Ronnie Lane, Kenney Jones and Ian McLagan; the Bootleg Beatles and Rollin’ Stoned, who do likewise, resuscitating a heavenly John Lennon, George Harrison and Brian Jones along the way. Obviously, even though these guys quite probably play the original songs more enthusiastically than the ageing ‘real thing’ could do today, they make no claims to being anything other than a pastiche of the band itself.

What does that make a group like the Kast Off Kinks? They play all of the Kinks’ great hits, and initially included two long-serving members of the band in their number, drummer Mick Avory and bassist John Dalton, while another former ‘proper’ Kink, the late Pete Quaife, used to turn up for occasional shows. But they had no one called Davies in the line-up. All the great songs were written by Ray Davies, and brother Dave contributed the slashing guitar riffs to those songs. The KOK clearly had almost no genuine claim to be the original ‘group’.

The current Dr Feelgood, who legally own that name, and who all joined the band as it progressed, while the originals dropped out, or died, contain no original members whatsoever. (In passing, my sister recently told me she had bought tickets to see Dr Feelgood. I told her I was surprised as she was not a ‘rock chick’. ‘No,’ she said. ‘To be truthful, I thought I was booking for Dr Hook!’) So are Dr F the real thing or imposters? Legally the former; morally, perhaps, the latter.

The Drifters, formed in 1953, and a wonderful original band, perhaps set the trend for groups to change over time, effectively becoming brands, with the music taking priority over the individuals in the group. The latest list of one-time members of the group shows 65 different names – including one familiar to baby-boomers – the late Doc Green!

If you delve far enough back into the 1960s there was a phase when anyone attending a gig by, for example, Fleetwood Mac, Moby Grape, The Zombies, might wonder why the band members did not look familiar. It was because rogue promoters were duping concert-goers by deliberately sending out ersatz, fake groups which, unlike today’s tribute acts, were actually pretending to be the real thing.

A conscientious tribute band will have worked very hard to ensure that their sound is almost a precise match, note by note for the original version to which they are paying tribute. When Sunday Express editor, Martin Townsend went to see the Small Fakers in autumn 2017, he was so impressed that he declared their versions of the hits ‘so good they made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.’ I’ve seen the Small Fakers several times and also rate them highly.

But in 2018 the Fakers marked the 50th anniversary of the band they celebrate, by playing their psychedelic masterpiece, Ogdens’ Nut Gone Flake. My local venue, ‘Tropic’ in Ruislip, was packed, so much so that it was difficult to find somewhere to sit. The band announced that Ogdens’ would take up the first section of their performance, and that they would then take a break, returning with a ‘greatest hits’ set. I was particularly looking forward to Ogdens’, and the audience pressed forward eagerly. Gradually, though, the crowd eased as people nipped to the bar, to the toilets, for a fag, realising they didn’t recognise much of this material. As the group moved on to the LP’s surreal second half, interspersed with (to me!) hilarious vocal interventions as contributed by the late, great Stanley Unwin to the fore, the crowd thinned even more – many sat down to chat with friends. But when the hits began the crowd thickened, surged forward and danced with delight. I went home.

The truth is that people who support tribute bands tend to be those who might have bought the original band’s Top 10 singles and ‘greatest hits’ records, but who rarely, if ever, delved into the material they produced outside of these iconic songs. Nothing wrong with that, of course, but probably depressing for the originals, let alone the tributes, when they feel the need to stretch out a little from their tried, trusted and adored golden oldies only to be firmly steered back to familiar, safe territory by the lack of audience appreciation.

To give additional support to the originators of great music worth paying tribute to, I must add that, much though I have enjoyed watching The Counterfeit Stones, Rollin’ Stoned, The Bootleg Beatles, Like The Beatles, Small Fakers, AC/DC UK, Counterfeit Quo, Kast Off Kinks, Absolute Bowie, Roxy Magic, Fleetwood Bac, and the brilliantly named Creedence Clearwater Revival Revival, I have never bought a record by any of these acts.

Many of my contemporaries are astonished that anyone should have retained a love of the original music of their youth into their dotage. They are happy to recall and relive it on occasional nights out, but seem neither to notice nor care that it isn’t as it was, because to them that’s all it ever was – background sound accompaniment to their way of life at the time. But there are still surprisingly many early enthusiasts who have stayed the course and are proudly flying the vinyl banner. Facebook group, Vinyl Hoarders United boasted 24,865 members when I last checked. The site offers the ‘opportunity to share pictures and information of your vinyl collections, ones you want to hunt down, or any interesting vinyl you think the rest of the members should know about.’ Vinyl Records Forever, had attracted 13,449 members, Vinyl Records For Sale & Wanted had another 8,500. These are far from the only ones…

As for that Kevin Godley quote from the beginning of this chapter, it continued: ‘… though I no longer have a record deck.’ D’oh!