The Stand-In Star: Alvin Stardust: "My Coo Ca Choo"

As the year draws to a close, this is a good time to recall how split this year has been between the US and UK charts - there was only one common #1, the unremittingly awful "Tie A Yellow Ribbon" by Tony Orlando & Dawn.  The Glam Slam, outside of Bowie (and at one remove, Roxy Music) was not getting anywhere fast in the US, and even then was, I'd guess, something of a cult for the teenagers hanging out at Rodney Bingenheimer's English Disco in Los Angeles, for instance.  For me Alvin Stardust is a purely UK-understood phenomena, someone whose whole persona is "rock 'n' roll" at a glance, all the odd signifiers of "danger" without any of said danger really there whatsoever.

He was born in London, was Bernard William Jewry, and grew up in Mansfield, Nottinghamshire (a town a few miles just north of Nottingham itself).  He was working as a roadie for Shane Fenton and the Fentones when Fenton got ill and died; Fenton's mom wanted the band to continue in his honor, and so they did, with Jewry taking Fenton's name and leading the band to some chart success in the early 60s.  The group broke up, leaving Jewry on his own, and by the early 70s he was given a new name by his label boss Michael Levy, and that was Alvin Stardust.  It's a bit more complicated than that, however; "My Coo Ca Choo" was written by Peter Shelley and recorded by him as well - but he didn't want to "be" Alvin Stardust, so Jewry once again stepped in and took on the task of looking moody, dressing in black leather, and generally being a rock star - a role I feel he acted as much as really was.  The song is pure glam stomp, seductive-style (though "Tom Cat! Y'know where it's at/Come on! Lets go to my flat/Lay down 'n' groove on the mat" is not exactly Bryan Ferry singing to his siren).  There is something reassuring about something so inherently safe and unthreatening appearing at this time (and how reassuring as well, that this public service ad featuring two girls can be viewed with a clear conscience even now, thank goodness.)  Perhaps the long years working in obscurity gave Jewry a sense of responsibility and perspective that others have sadly shown to have lacked; to take on someone else's part or role is in itself a situation that works best with some modesty and determination.  Stardust (and yes his name was a take on one Gary Glitter) remains one of those beacons in The Fog, a man who was pure showbusiness but somehow humble about it in a way that showed the Glam Slam to be the people's music.  How could it ever go?

Next up:  Every day?  Really?   

The Man Can't Stop Our Music: The Rolling Stones: "Let's Spend The Night Together"

"Nineteen sixty-seven was the watershed year, the year the seams gave way...There was a tension in the air. It's like negative and positive ions before a storm, you get that breathlessness that something's got to break."

Keith Richards, Life


Though technically we are now in mid-February '67, I want to go back a month, specifically to January 15th. On that night this song was performed live on the Ed Sullivan Show with an altered title - the more modest "Let's Spend Some Time Together" - with Mick rolling his eyes every time he had to sing the bowdlerized lyric. Afterwards the band then went backstage and changed into Nazi uniforms (not sure where those came from, the episode is not mentioned in Life) and Sullivan told them to change back into their regular stage clothes; the band refused and left and never appeared on the show again. For any other band this would have been a disaster, but for The Rolling Stones this more or less cemented their bad-boy status. The rest of the year for them included the "stitch-up" bust, trial, imprisonment, bail, a psychedelic album that was "flimflam" to Richards. But back to the song...

The song (an NME-only #2, by the way) is about as straightforward as the Stones ever get, both musically and lyrically; it's simply a demand/request from the hard-of-dancing Mick to his new love, Marianne Faithfull, who he had met not long ago. That she was a mom and wife didn't seem to matter to him (nor to her) and I wonder if Sullivan knew this was about more than just a mere lusty crush. It is shameless, in all senses of the word, and just changing the title barely disguises what is going on - "I'm going red and my tongue's getting tied/I'm off my head and my mouth's getting dry" - put that together with the pumping music and the way the words and music seem to be coupling themselves and there you have it.

However far-out music is getting, here are the Stones to kindly remind everyone what rock 'n' roll actually means and if Mick is a bit of a clown here, well, all for the better. That they get sidetracked by psychedelia just shows what purists they are, or perhaps how what they want to do (and do best) has very little to do with fashion, and more with an obsession over sounds, textures, moods. Here it's heart-pounding, nearly unbearable excitement, pure and simple. (It was banned when they went to China a few years back, but having matured as a band, they simply played other hits instead.)

The day after the Rolling Stones were banned from Ed Sullivan's show, I was born. It was also the day after the weekend of the Human Be-In in San Francisco, where some of the hipper people already had copies of The Doors' first album. The Rolling Stones, whether they knew it or not, were now a part of the counterculture, the ones who said 'no' to straight society and would thereafter have to deal with the outside world at increasingly desperate ways. When a lusty song is enough to rile the Establishment, you know they must be scared of something much bigger - namely, the breakdown of society altogether. The tensions Richards mentions are growing, this song is a (hapless) symbol of one generation's attempted censorship of another.

What comes next was not what anyone expected; it made the Stones look old-fashioned, practically Teds in context. The crossroads are going to become startlingly clear.

Simon Cowell Ain't No Dick Clark: Duane Eddy: "Because They're Young"

Lately I have been thinking about this odd transitional period a lot, and how those who were just infants at the time - I am thinking of one man in particular here - would love nothing more than to go back to it - in essence, to return to a time when the 60s weren't "the sixties, man." It was a time of sharp suits, of short haircuts, of business and commerce, an utter squareness that was at the same time vastly ambitious and, while willing to nod towards the idea of a generation gap, didn't think it was anything that couldn't be remedied through some careful grooming, etiquette lessons and practice, practice, practice. In short, this is showbiz - the hot spotlight, the gloved-and-pearled upper level seats, the big orchestra in the pit, the works. (The show Mad Men starts in this time, and its popularity alongside the X Factor and various Idols may or may not be a coincidence.)

You might think Duane Eddy is a long ways away from all this, and in his utterly committed way he makes showbiz look a little...flashy. (Have Twangy Guitar Will Travel speaks more of his country background and Arizona pal/producer Lee Hazelwood than his actual New York City roots.) Even if this, the theme song to the movie Because They're Young is relatively slick, it still has that pioneering what-the-hell rock 'n' roll vibe to it, Eddy's guitar as ever the sonic equivalent of that long, cool look - of interest? of provocation? - that made him so popular in the first place. Music for people who are getting down to do something, as opposed to music that is merely about presenting something in order to...present something. Who knows how many people listened to this and his other songs and were not just interested but compelled to find a guitar and learn how to play it? In the field of music, it is the artistry that lasts, far beyond anything else; it is the heart, for lack of a better word, that gives young people courage. Not the businessman's idle pleasure, as he plots an even bigger version of something that is, in itself, already exaggerated.