Driver 67 is having the time of his life

Thinking about it the other day, it dawned on me that I’m going through a bit of a golden period.

Of course, there are always bloody problems. Stuff doesn’t just happen. First off, you have to get out of bed every morning and put one foot in front of the other. You know what I’m saying, Lucy Joplin? It’s tougher than it sounds, innit?

There’s always another cup of tea to be made. Or maybe you’re compelled to get along to the coffee shop because you need to read a few more pages of your book. And in any case, you haven’t been out of the house for four days.

I can, hand on heart, say that I’ve never fallen into the Jeremy Kyle trap; nor any kind of daytime telly, except for when the Test Match used to be transmitted live by the BBC.

But when the butterfly in my mind flaps its wings, on the other side of the kitchen a piece of bread hits the toaster and the kettle starts boiling.

Still, things do get done. My book on the music industry is nearly finished (with the publishers; doing their thing. Mind you, no predictions from me about publication dates).

I’m also, finally, writing a novel. Again, I wouldn’t hold your breath. It’ll take some time.

And on January 1, 2016, Driver 67 will be 67. So that’s got to be an auspicious year, hasn’t it? I’m waiting for a blocked ear to clear so I can mix my new album, which will be called….

On top of all this, for the first time in my life I’ve been asked to sing someone else’s songs. Not that it’s a done deal (I’m auditioning the songs at the moment). But to be asked alone is worth the price of entry. Apparently my ‘crooning style’ could be well suited to the material.

I’ve never thought of myself as a crooner. But quite quickly, after picking myself up off the floor, I realised it’s probably the most accurate description of my singing ‘style’. I’ve never thought of myself as a singer; but I’m happy to think of myself as a crooner!

Just to add to the load, I’m trying to redesign this blog into a magazine. I may not watch Jeremy Kyle, but I do spend an inordinate amount of time trolling around Facebook baiting the loony left (mostly my own family) and giving the anti-Israel lobby a dose of (my) reality.

So I thought, isn’t it time you put all that effort into something of your own? You could be the anti-Huffington Post, the anti-38 Degrees, or, simply, the anti-Christ – because that’s what it feels like when the online world tips its manure on your head.

Of everything I’m doing, the blog redesign is the hardest. I have no trouble writing (Look! I’m doing it now!); and music is a joy, until it becomes work and you have to finish and release.

Usually, with anything online, you just Google your problem and thousands of posts appear telling you how to do what you want to achieve. I’m a bit of a Noddy to Big Ears type when it comes to online building and design. I need all the help I can get. But I invested in Newspaper 6 before I found out that the usual user videos and forums aren’t out there. Nothing like someone who’s faced the same problem posting their solution. But it’s not happening.

So I asked WordPress and BlueHost to point me at some easy to understand advice. And they did. Except, their idea of step-by-step involves you understanding coding and showing you loads of templates that, despite looking exciting and inviting, all end up looking almost exactly like the blog I’ve been posting for nearly two years.

So if anyone out there can lend a hand, just a few Noddy to Big Ears directions will do.

Once I’m up and running I can usually figure it out. But with Newspaper 6 I can barely get out of the starting blocks.

Still, I’m off to Cuba on December 17, back on January 1. Like I said, Driver 67 is having the time of his life.

Now, I haven’t got all day to chat. The toast is burning, and I haven’t even put the kettle on yet.

Meanwhile, being deaf in one ear, I have no new music of my own this week. So – sticking with the crooner theme – I’ll leave you with one of the greatest of all time (Sinatra, of course, being the greatest. But after Frank how many cigarette papers would you put between Crosby, Bennett, Nat King Cole and Elvis Presley?).

I was a bit horrified when I heard about the latest Elvis project – overdubbed by The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.

But it settles one argument for ever and a day. Elvis was a truly great singer, blessed with a voice of exceptional quality.

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Michael Jackson: a magpie, not a genius.

I’m sitting in my regular coffee bar, reading the latest John Grisham. It’s about massively important issues – strip mining, public health and workers’ welfare.

But that doesn’t stop my brain becoming alert to the music playing in the background.

I can tell it’s Michael Jackson. But it’s also Horse With No Name – the America song that sounds like Neil Young, but Neil Young with glossy makeup and a permanent wave.

I never rated Michael Jackson except as a singer and performer. Ooh, I can hear the multiple intake of breath from here!

But let me ask you, seriously – without Motown’s Corporation (a quartet of writers formed by Berry Gordy to write Jackson 5 material), the Holland brothers, Quincy Jones and Rod Temperton where would Michael Jackson’s reputation be?

And that’s not to mention Don Black and Walter Scharf who wrote the wonderful Ben, which gave MJ his first solo number one.

It was album five of his solo career before MJ even got one of his own songs on one of his own albums.

Off The Wall opens with Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough. I’d hesitate to call it a song. It uses fives notes, in two repeated patterns, over two chords. That’s not a song; it’s a riff.

What Don’t Stop is, though, is a great track. And that’s down to Ben Wright’s thrilling strings and Quincy Jones’s arrangement and production. All those wonderful string and guitar riffs that stick in your head, the driving rhythm and the superb scoring for strings and brass.

Now before you get too far on your high horse and start sticking pins in my effigy, a little perspective.

Elvis Presley was 21 when he recorded Heartbreak Hotel, the same age Jackson was when he made Off The Wall. And, in a world where singers sang and producers produced, Elvis produced Heartbreak Hotel, as he did most of his records from there on. And he did it with musical giants such as Floyd Cramer and Chet Atkins in the room.

If you want to use phrases like ‘revolutionary’ and ‘ground-breaking’ (as have been used about MJ), let’s be sure we give them full meaning. What Elvis did with Hotel, and Blue Suede Shoes, and Teddy Bear, and Don’t Be Cruel, and Paralyzed – that was revolutionary. With only a couple of years studio experience under his belt, Elvis Presley turned the system and popular music on its head.

Mind you, I’ll grant you that Elvis never wrote a song that was worth a damn. So let’s look at another 21 year old and what he’d achieved by the age of consent.

Paul McCartney was born in 1942. Before his 22nd birthday he had recorded three albums with the Beatles, all but 13 of the songs written by him and John Lennon. They’d topped the charts on both sides of the Atlantic and – like Elvis before them – turned the music world upside down.

And every one of those chart toppers, and their B-sides, were written by McCartney and Lennon. In the next six years they wound up the gold standard to heights that have never been equalled, experimenting, pushing boundaries, testing their own abilities, testing their own sanity, and pushing everyone around them to previously unimagined heights of creativity and achievement.

Now – Michael Jackson.

Well, he’d been performing since he was six years old. He was an absurdly talented entertainer and right from the off – when he sang lead on I Want You Back at the age of 12 – you were clearly listening to a natural born singer.

He had his first solo release at the age of 13 and continued to make albums with his brothers.

But it’s eight years, five solo albums and 10 group albums before he gets to record one of his own songs.

You have to ask yourself: was MJ totally unambitious; or was he just a really slow learner?

Or was it the case, as I believe, that he just didn’t write terribly good songs?

Let’s not forget that his Motown stablemate, Stevie Wonder, was 15 when he cowrote his second international chart record, Uptight. He also co-wrote I Was Made To Love Her at the age of 17. Age 21, he wrote the entirety of his Where I’m Coming From album with Syreeta Wright. We know that Stevie had to fight all the way for artistic control with Motown. But he did fight, and he did win.

Go and listen to Never Dreamed You’d Leave In Summer. Did Michael Jackson ever in his life write such a gorgeous, technically accomplished song?

And he also never managed a ‘classic period’ such as Wonder’s, which started with Music Of My Mind (every song by Wonder, one co-write with Syreeta), continued with Talking Book and ended, arguably, seven years and six albums later with The Secret Life Of Plants. During this period, Wonder wrote, arranged and produced everything – with some help, but still …

Can anyone argue that Michael Jackson really ever did anything to match that? While you rage and fulminate, let’s talk about his dancing.

Fact: Michael Jackson was a great dancer. Really? If so, then what were Bill Robinson, Pearl Primus, Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly? There aren’t the superlatives to cover the distance between MJ and their talent.

And, back to Elvis, who personally choreographed the iconic Jailhouse Rock sequence in the film of the same name. Look at that sequence again and tell me it wasn’t the prototype for every classic pop and rock posture.

MJ had about six moves, none of which he invented. Even ‘the moonwalk’ wasn’t his. Watch this clip if you don’t believe me. There’s Bill ‘Bojangles’ Robinson, Cab Calloway, Bill Bailey and a bunch of others, some of whom you will recognise.

Maybe you’ve never seen some of these entertainers; but that doesn’t mean MJ hadn’t. He knew the move existed. He asked dancer Jeffrey Daniels to teach him how to do it.

So my point is, Michael Jackson was a great entertainer. But he was also vastly overrated as a musical artist, as a songwriter and as a dancer. He had a lot of help, and even by the time of Thriller he wasn’t able to fill an album with his own songs. Four songs out of the nine are by MJ. Thriller itself was written by Rod Temperton.

Thriller was released three years after Off The Wall; Bad came nearly five years after Thriller. That’s three albums in eight years. Stevie Wonder managed six classic albums in seven years, all self-written and co-produced.

Which brings me back to my coffee shop and this song that’s nagging in my head. Turns out it’s called A Place With No Name.

Horse With No Name/Place With No Name. I swear it’s even in the same key. By the stuff you leave on the shelf shall you be judged. It is beyond unoriginal, shamelessly filched and completely beneath a supposedly great artist.

And I find another song on the same album called Slave To The Rhythm. But it’s not the Grace Jones song. (I’m gonna write a song called Heartbreak Hotel – why not?!)

He was a magpie, Michael Jackson. He collected other people’s dance moves; other peoples riffs and song titles; he feathered his nest with great songwriters; and with Quincy Jones and, frequently, Rod Temperton. And only when this team had fed, raised and trained a new song was it allowed to leave the nest. At which point, MJ got all the credit.

So let’s celebrate a great entertainer and performer. But let’s cut down a little on the ‘genius’ side of things. And just to illustrate my point about how little of a ‘song’ there is in Don’t Stop Till You Get Enough, have a look at this.

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I’m pompous, sanctimonious and ignorant, and I don’t know jack shit about rock’n’roll. Apparently.

I recently came across a YouTube video titled Old Time Rock’n’Roll – Legends in Concert.

I pressed play expecting some Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, maybe even Fats Domino.

But what I got was a melee of early 60s pop singers mixed in with some Motown and a bit of Brill building r’n’b.

Obviously, I left a comment. I thought you might be entertained by the consequences of my folly.

Me: Don’t want to spoil the party, but with the possible exception of The Crickets, no-one here counts as rock’n’roll. Mostly they are pop or r’n’b acts from the early 60s. Rock’n’roll was Little Richard, Bill Haley, earliest Elvis and Jerry Lee Lewis.

Del Shannon, Bobby Vee, Troy Shondell, Billy J. Kramer, Brian Hyland were all post-1960 pure pop. Martha Reeves and The Contours were on Motown; Spencer Davis was British r’n’b; The Dovells were a 60s doo-wop throwback; Joey Dee (not Vee) is on the Twist bandwagon here. So, where’s the rock’n’roll? Rock’n’roll was over by 1959.

Jon Emery: If you think that Del Shannon isn’t Rock n Roll, all I can say is you don’t know jack shit about Rock n Roll……

Charles C: Clearly, you didn’t grow up during rock’s early years. Here’s a FACT for you, my pompous, sanctimonious, ignorant friend: In the dawn and early years of rock and roll, the term “rock and roll” embraced a wide umbrella of all types of music, including what we now categorize as rhythm & blues, folk, country, blue grass, soul, and even country.

So, the next time you tout an ignorant “opinion” as “fact,” I suggest you do your homework.

Me: I was born at the beginning of January, 1949, Charles. Don’t know whether that qualifies me as ‘growing up during rock’s early years’ for you? But also, you make the mistake of confusing rock with rock ‘n’ roll.

Rock ‘n’ roll was over by the time Elvis came out of the army. Rock started when Bob Dylan plugged in.

Soul music is a 60s category for an offshoot of r’n’b, and there was definitely no bluegrass in rock’n’roll. Those early country artists were horrified by rock’n’roll, given that it came out of ‘race’ music. If you want more, I’ll give you more.

Jon Emery: Believe that if you want to, but you can’t make me believe it. I guess CCR didn’t rock either, right? Del Shannon was the first to write Rock n Roll songs in a minor key. I happen to be a big fan of all those other artists that you named, but, in my opinion, Rock n Roll didn’t stop there……

Me: Rock music is very different from Rock ‘n’ Roll. Rock ‘n’ Roll derived from some very specific riffs and beats that developed in the late 40s. The first Rock ‘n’ Roll record is often cited as Rocket 88 by Jackie Brenston (actually Ike Turner). If you listen to collections like The Black & White Roots of Rock & Roll, you’ll see that even Rocket 88 wasn’t the first. But by the time Elvis came out of the army, Rock ‘n’ Roll was over. From then on it was mainly pop or r’n’b, some of it – for sure – with a decent back beat.

Rock music, on the other hand, started the day Bob Dylan plugged in and turned up to 11. That’s when things started to get loud. Just because you don’t agree with what I’m saying doesn’t mean you can rewrite history. Go and listen to some Big Joe Turner, or Ella Mae Morse or Big Mama Thornton, or That’s Alright Mama by Elvis and tell me what they have to do stylistically with Del Shannon or any of the other artists in this video.

Charles C: You state that rock ‘n’ roll was over by the time Elvis came out of the army and that rock started when Bob Dylan plugged in. I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to call you out: You’ve made dogmatic statements without supporting them with an iota of evidence, reference, or verification. My friend, you may be selling, but I’m not buying. At least, not until you back up your statements with documentation.

Me: First of all, Charles, I’m not ‘selling’ anything that I need you to ‘buy’. But – here goes for a little context.

Rock’n’roll was that wild and exciting music as practised by, among others, Little Richard, Wynonie Harris, Jackie Brenston, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins and, of course, Elvis in his Sun days and his early RCA recordings. This was music rooted in r’n’b, although the white boys brought some country (western swing) to the mix. If you listen to House Of Blue Lights by Ella Mae Morse (there are dozens of other examples) you can hear the roots of rock’n’roll going back to the 40s. But this is still r’n’b, and a little bit more polite.

What Little Richard and Chuck Berry did was take that template, rough it up, add a back beat so the rhythm drove really hard. Jerry Lee’s Whole Lotta Shakin’ is a perfect example. The two things that did for rock ‘n’ roll as a commercial enterprise were Elvis going into the army and the payola scandal.

By the time Elvis came out of the army, the record industry had wrested control of the music back and started feeding white bread pretty boys like Frankie Avalon, Bobby Vinton and Pat Boone to the public. Buddy Holly and The Big Bopper were dead, Jerry Lee was in disgrace for marrying his 13-year-old cousin and Elvis found it easier to hit the number one spot with songs like It’s Now Or Never and Are You Lonesome Tonight rather than A Mess Of Blues.

From there on, Tin Pan Alley dominated (with some admittedly pretty great pop music, but also a lot of dross) until The Beatles came along (in the UK at least) at the end of 1962. The quality and excitement levels went up, but this was still pop music.

And then Bob Dylan plugged in and turned it up LOUD and began to play what we can now recognise as rock music. He influenced The Beatles, they influenced him. By 1968, The Stones had gone back to their roots, The Beatles were recording influential and loud rock music like Helter Skelter, Everybody’s Got Something To Hide and I Want You. Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton threw off their blues roots and we were off on the big rock adventure.

I didn’t set out to write a history of the music industry, Charles! I only came on this thread to say that none of the people in the video above – bar, briefly, The Crickets, and only with Buddy Holly – qualify as rock’n’roll. They are all from the pop era that immediately followed the payola scandal and Elvis’s transition to crooner.

Jon Emery: You think you’re the only rock historian? I know about the history of rock music because I’m a musician who has been playing this music for over 50 years. So tell me that I’m rewriting Rock n Roll if you want to, but I know about Rock History because I’ve been a part of it.

Me: Why don’t you Google me?

Jon Emery (several hours later): Well, I’m impressed with your track record—Looks like we’ve both been around the block—I take back the ‘You don’t know Shit” statement with my apology.

Charles C: I wish to thank you for your most informative information. It was not only enlightening, but interesting and nostalgic as well. Indeed, reviewing and researching your information took me on a pleasant stroll down memory lane. I shall, of course move forward, continuing to enjoy rock, pop, & rock ‘n roll music, but now with a broader and deeper understanding of its history. Take care, my friend. Cheers. And, thanks again.

And we all lived happily ever after…..and no reason not to watch this great line-up of pop legends in concert. Just don’t tell me it’s rock’n’roll.

And now we can get into the really geeky arguments with all the people who actually know something. Bring it on Geoff; bang a gong John; rant and rave, Dave. Let’s Have A Party….

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The Illuminati. Oh Lord, Really? Conspiracy theories are so tiring!

Paul McCartney, as we all know, was killed when he crashed his Aston Martin on his way home from Abbey Road studios late one night in 1966. A very sad night.

His place in the Beatles was taken by William Campbell, a lookalike-soundalike about whom nothing much is known except that he is the singer of every ‘McCartney’ track on every Beatles single and album post-Revolver. Who wrote those songs is not really discussed.

Buddy Holly, on the other hand, didn’t die when his plane crashed in 1957. He was just horribly disfigured and didn’t want his public to see him. So he hid out in a secure house in a remote part of America. He’s never been seen in public since.

Elvis Presley, of course, has often been seen in public since his death was announced in 1977 – in supermarkets and by sightseers around his Memphis home. Well, where else would he be? A real home-boy, our El.

I mention all this because of an increasing belief among young people that the music industry is controlled by the Illuminati.

I say young people. Actually, I know some of their parents also believe this and won’t hear a word of argument. It’s all over the internet, you see. There are videos on YouTube, some of them even showing artists and executives explicitly admitting that, yes, it’s true.

Except, of course, no-one is explicitly saying anything of the sort.

And it’s not true.

I prefer the older conspiracies myself. Paul is Dead is a stonker.

That William Campbell. What a bloody nerve! It was him broke up the Beatles you know. Can you believe the sheer brass neck of the man?

At one point, on the Let It Be sessions, he even tells George Harrison not to play on one of the songs. It’s there, on film! George says to William, “Well, if you don’t want me to play, I won’t play”. And Campbell says, “I seem to have a way of upsetting you”.

Bloody right. Coming in here with your airs and graces, thinking you actually are Paul McCartney.

What an ungrateful sod. He gets the opportunity of a lifetime to step into the shoes of a Pop God. All he has to do is play his part and become stinking rich.g

Instead, he sows discontent, refuses to acknowledge Allen Klein as manager, tears Apple Corps apart and then announces he’s leaving the group. “I’m leaving the group,” he told the Daily Mirror in 1970.

Not long after, he formed a new group, this fake McCartney, and bugger me, Wings became the biggest band in the world!

Lennon, Harrison and Starr must have looked on in wonder and asked themselves: “How the fuck did that happen?”

In the meantime Campbell/McCartney writes a song (Too Many People on the Ram album) in which he tears John Lennon off a strip, saying, “You took your lucky break and broke it in two. Now what can be done for you?“.

That’s just cold, isn’t it? Not to mention a pot, a kettle, and the colour black.

John struck back. In How Do You Sleep? (on the Imagine album) he tells William Campbell: “The only thing you did was Yesterday“.

See what he did there? He took Campbell back to the actual Paul and let him know that he, Campbell, couldn’t write a song as good as anything by Paul.

Anyway, in the immortal words of Jimi Hendrix, “Enough of this rubbish”.

Professor Diane Purkiss, Professor of English Literature at Oxford University, had this to say last week, on the subject of conspiracy theories: “All conspiracy theories are dangerous.”

Her thesis is that the more you feel that they are not listening to you, the more you feel that they are keeping the truth from you. And that’s where conspiracy theories are born. But they’re more dangerous than we might imagine.

“Conspiracy theories excused most of the genocide that took place last century – the idea” (for instance) “that the Jews are conspiring against everybody else.

“Stalin’s purges were part of a conspiracy theory. You take action against the people who are supposedly conspiring against you. If we’re lucky, we end up with a Mark Chapman. If we’re unlucky we end up with a Hitler or a Stalin.

“Conspiracy theories are one of the greatest menaces to democracy. Where it gets dangerous is when you decide that people are deliberately keeping the truth from you, and to resolve that, you have to kill them.”

So come on kids. Listen up. True dat, what the Prof say. Ya feel me?

The Illuminati of legend has been around since 1776. Having, according to rumour, fomented the French Revolution, the Wall Street Crash and the Second World War, wtf do you think they’d be doing messing around with pop music?

The irony is that the original Bavarian Illuminati – which was real – had the aim of opposing superstition and prejudice. They also wanted an end to religious influence and abuses of state power. They even – in 1776 – spoke up for gender equality, starting with the education of women.

So, again: wtf, kids!?

Go in peace and listen to your music, free of superstition and prejudice. And if you want some real fun, I heartily, absolutely and totally recommend you read the Illuminatus! trilogy by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson.

I can think of at least three current conspiracy theories that are a direct result of feeble-minded people actually believing that Shea and Wilson’s satire was, in fact, contemporary history.

And while you’re waiting for that corporate behemoth Amazon – surely bent on global domination of a much more sinister kind – to deliver your books, have a listen to Paul Is Dead on the BBC iPlayer. It’s all sorts of fun, and all sorts of interesting.

And, obviously, it’s also part of a conspiracy to convince us there is no conspiracy. If you meditate on that too long, your head will explode.

So here’s a little fact to calm you and ground you. Paul McCartney’s house in St John’s Wood was less than 10 minutes walk from Abbey Road Studios. Who in their right mind would drive to the studio, smoke pot and drop acid all day and then drive home…….oh……….I see what you’re saying, man.

Yeah. Heavy.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04l0tvb

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Simon Cowell and the 1984 factor

Does anyone believe any more that X Factor isn’t scripted, contrived and edited to produce all those moments of ‘high drama’ and ’emotion’?

I stopped watching the show somewhere during series three, after a truly wonderful girl singer didn’t make it through to bootcamp. She had no backstory, wasn’t living in poverty and wasn’t doing it ‘for my nan’. She was just a beautiful girl with a thrilling voice, and that was clearly no longer enough. So I stepped away and never went back.

This week someone posted a link on my Facebook to one of those X Factor moments – let’s call it The Subo Effect – where we are supposed to feel we’re looking at a no hoper, and Simon Cowell gets tetchy.

The clip shows three nice looking boys, well presented, articulate, all with proper jobs. Which is astonishing since they’ve apparently grown up in the South Central area of LA, drug- and gang-ridden as it is.

It’s clear from the time they run on stage that the judges have been told they are perfect X Factor fodder. So as these three good-looking, sharply dressed and dignified brothers bounce on, Cowell scowls, and the other judges look distinctly uncomfortable – you know they want to smile, but they’ve been told to look sceptical.

During the ‘interview’, Cowell tells them to ‘stop weaving around; it’s like being on a boat; you’re making me feel sick”.

To add insult to injury, after they announce they’re going to sing Valerie, Cowell says: “I hate this song”, and then sits there looking flat-lipped as only he can. The camera lingers on the boys’ faces as they look like rabbits in headlights, because now they’re not so sure.

And then, off they go. Of course, the audience goes wild. Of course the judges faces light up. Of course, Simon Cowell begins to look impressed. It’s absolutely going according to script.

Except, that’s the problem. It’s so obviously, cynically, scripted.

When Paul Potts emerged on the first Britain’s Got Talent, it was a genuinely thrilling moment, that this podgy, shy and self-effacing man had such a surprising voice, and some actual talent to go with it.

Ditto Susan Boyle (although in her case, I wasn’t personally moved; I hate modern musicals, and most of the songs they contain, and she’s no musician’s idea of a great singer).

But of course, once you’ve had a couple of moments like that, you want more of them. So the research assistants have to go looking for unlikely chill-makers, and then the judges are tipped off, and now we’re on a production line of predictable and no longer so thrilling moments.

And the problem with AKNU, these three brothers, is they’re ok, but the singing’s not great, the dancing is sharp but limited and they just don’t have the, erm, X factor.

So the judges getting all misty-eyed and the audience going crazy all seems staged. Apparently, AKNU didn’t make it to boot camp (this was X Factor USA, last winter) and maybe we’ll never hear from them again, which wouldn’t be a tragedy.

But it set me wondering, and not for the first time, how pop music would have panned out if Simon Cowell had turned up in 1961 instead of 2001.

In 1961, pop was dominated by the likes of Cliff Richard, post-army Elvis, and blue-eyed white boys with names like Bobby (Darin, Vinton, Rydell, Vee) and girls who had the word ‘Little’ before their name (Eva, Peggy). In other words, totally unthreatening.

When John Lennon was told Elvis Presley had died, he said, “Elvis died when he joined the army” (in 1958).

Until then, Elvis had cut a genuinely threatening figure, “a national symbol of rebellion and untamed sexuality; a symbol of a new and dangerous way of being young”, in the words of American journalist David Seaton.

And his music seemed other-worldly in an age of Bing and Frank and Tony, David Whitfield, Donald Peers and Guy Mitchell.

But as the 50s turned into the 60s, and Elvis came out of the army and went off the boil, these older crooners were somewhat displaced by younger, prettier versions of themselves: Fabian, Bobby Vinton, Frankie Avalon – still crooners, but crooners your sister would swoon over, as opposed to your mom and your nan.

So imagine Simon Cowell stepping into that arena and playing to the gallery as he does now. How he would have loved Craig Douglas and Susan Maughan. He would have absolutely swooned over Kathy Kirby. Frank Ifield would have been told to “cut out the yodelling; it’s so 1949. Otherwise, good voice, good-looking guy. You’ll go far”.

But The Beatles? No chance – can’t sing, can’t play, hair’s too long. The Rolling Stones? Get the fuck out of here, and take a bath on your way out. Jimi Hendrix, The Doors, Cream? You’re joking, right?

Bob Dylan. Well. Imagine the scene.

“What’s that song you’re playing?”

“It’s a Woody Guthrie song.”

“Woody Guthrie – who’s he? Is he a songwriter? If he is, he should stop now and spend the rest of his life listening to Cole Porter and Irving Berlin. That’s what I call song-writing.”

It really doesn’t bear thinking about, and it makes you wonder how much energy, attention and money Cowell’s empire has sucked out of the marketplace at the expense of genuine creative talent. I’ve no animus against Cowell personally, and I genuinely admire people who build businesses and make a fortune – as long as they’re not Russian oligarchs who’ve stolen all the money in the first place.

But there’s no doubt that X Factor and Got Talent have proved George Orwell’s contention in 1984 that music can be manufactured as a soporific, to keep people amused and occupied in a way that requires no real thought, and doesn’t inspire them to rebellion.

When was the last time you heard a song that made you feel like you did the first time you heard Blowing In The Wind, or Give Peace A Chance, or War (What Is It Good For?). Or, for that matter, Paralyzed by Elvis Presley?

So, you’ll find the AKNU clip here:

http://sfglobe.com/?id=2447&src=share_fb_new_2447

But for me, the most authentic clip of the week was this – 30 seconds long, partially scripted, but rounded off in the most surprising way that had me crying with laughter. It would never have got past Simon Cowell.

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Elvis died of medicine

Well, there’s cheerful, eh?

But I’ve written a new song, and that’s its title.

Yes, you read that right. It’s a song, and its title is Elvis Died of Medicine.

How do I explain? Well, here’s a starting point: there are drug addicts and drug addicts.

One of my favourite images – a perfectly staged piece of post-modern irony – is of Elvis with Richard Nixon.

In 1970 Presley wrote to Nixon, in his own hand, and persuaded the President to appoint him an honorary federal drug enforcement agent. Nixon even had a special Bureau of Narcotics badge struck for the singer.

Which one is The King? Elvis making the President look like a bank clerk.

Elvis, of course, had been taking a cocktail of drugs throughout his adult life, starting during his army service. By the time he met Nixon, he’d already had a full 12 years of increasing dependency on a whole cocktail of medicines.

But because these drugs were initially given to him by his superiors in the army, and later prescribed by doctors, he never thought of himself as a junkie.

When he wrote to Nixon, it was in a spirit of being anti drug-use of the illegal kind. It was the pot smokers, LSD gurus and heroin addicts Presley and Nixon had in their sights. These people were fomenting an anti-American revolution. (Mainly, they just wanted the Vietnam War to end, and their sons and brothers brought home safe. But in the fevered paranoid universe that inhabited Richard Nixon’s head they were all enemies of the state).

The Beatles were top of Elvis’s list. According to him, they had “come to America, made their money, and then gone back to England to promote anti-Americanism”.

Elvis was never the brightest bulb in the chandelier. The Beatles, of course, loved America. In John’s case, so much so that he made his home in New York, even outliving and defeating Nixon’s attempts – with the FBI’s help – to deport him.

As an artist, I bow to no-one in my admiration for Elvis (which I’ll write about in a later post). But he was an emotionally stunted individual for whom his manager Tom Parker, his Memphis Mafia (effectively just a bunch of freeloading hangers-on) and his doctors provided a support system that negated the need for him to grow up.

He wasn’t the first, and he most certainly wasn’t the last to fall prey to this kind of life.

It was common practice in Hollywood to hand out amphetamine pills so that actors could keep working beyond their natural cycle. This is what lead to Judy Garland’s dependence on a variety of drugs, and on the doctors who would prescribe them. Once you’ve taken amphetamine for prolonged periods, the only way you’ll get a good night’s sleep is by using heavy barbiturates. A side effect of all that will be constipation or its opposite, so now you’re going to need another drug to regulate your toilet habits….

All of this came to my mind a couple of weeks ago when I was listening to Joni Mitchell in the car. One of the songs – Sex Kills – has a line about “pills that give you ills”. Straight away, the songwriter part of my brain went into overdrive. The phrase “My mother died of medicine” lodged in my frontal lobe.

The last time I saw my mother functioning on any level at all, was watching her count her pill boxes, 15 in all. More than half of these pills were to counteract the side effects of the ones she really needed. Some of them were to counteract the side effects of the side effects. Even a self-confessed hypochondriac (moi!) should understand when enough is enough.

Within a few weeks, my mother was dead. At the end, it was a close run possibility that she was going to drown in her own bodily fluids. Fortunately, her heart gave out first. She literally died of medicine.

Now there’s a cheerful subject for a song. But let’s face it – legal drugs take their toll just as effectively as illegal ones. Michael Jackson, Elvis, Judy, Marilyn Monroe, Margaux Hemingway, Nick Drake, Brittany Murphy – these are the famous victims.

But I bet you all know someone who never thought of doubting their doctor. We’re hopefully a little wiser now.

So here we go with Elvis Died Of Medicine. It’s not a finished recording; two weeks from start to finish is way too fast a process for The Driver. But I hope it’s in good enough shape that no-one feels the need to prescribe further treatment.

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