Snow Mersey Me! A Liverpool Lad On The Loose In The Swingin' 60s

1. Auflage 2012
ISBN: 978-1-62309-322-8
Verlag: BookBaby
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 346 Seiten

'Mersey Me!' will give you a 'fly on the wall' perspective of that unique time in Britain when the birth of the Mersey Beat and British rock 'n' roll caused a musical and social revolution. Partly because of the influx and influence of Liverpool musicians in the early 60s, London became the cultural center of the world, and Michael Snow was in the thick of it all. The music rocked and rolled along with the good times.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Snow, Michael

Leseproben

intro
I made my entrance in September 1944, at the scrag-end of World War II, to a Liverpool that was still being leathered by the last ditch efforts of the Luftwaffe to destroy the port and docks. I was part of an extended, though not overly tight-knit family of first and second generation Irish background, made greener by my mother, who’d emigrated from County Galway at age eighteen, and Auntie May, who was from Youghal in County Cork. We lived scattered around the Catholic parishes of the north side, close enough for family gatherings, but not in each others pockets, working-class, but with an unusually strong musical component. My paternal grandfather, Tom Kellaher, had been a military bandsman; Uncle Jack, May’s husband, now a dock labourer and weekend warrior around the social clubs and dances, had played alto and c-melody saxophones as a touring professional in the 30s and 40s, before May put her foot down, and reeled him in to home and hearth; Uncle Brian, who’d driven tank transports during the war, and now drove a bread truck, was proficient at both clarinet and violin, played in the Territorial Army Band, occasionally subbed in the Liverpool Philharmonic orchestra, and had composed several unpublished classical pieces. My dad could knock out a tune on our parlour piano when in the mood, and his brother Tom, while devoted to poetry and recitation, could deliver a tear-stained ballad, if suitably refreshed. Every year, I’d spend the summer holidays at my grandad’s place in Galway, where I was exposed to the cottage-culture music and song of my mother’s rural area. The sean nos2, fiddle tunes, mouth music, and significantly, the pulsing rhythms of the bodhran, the traditional goatskin frame drum, all returned to my musical life in later years, after burrowing into my childhood consciousness. On Friday and Saturday nights, after a hard week in the fields, the folk of Beagh (pronounced Bay-ock), a little hamlet on the bog-edge, no more than a few farmhouses and cottages, would gather at the largest place, in the flickering glow of oil lamps, as there was still no electricity in such far-country parts. Imagine the low humming, the steady beat of heels on the stone floor, hands on chair arms making the syncopations, and the magic moment when the local traveling fiddle player would come through the door already playing a traditional tune over the home-made rhythm, his bicycle clips in place, murmuring “God save all here” out the side of his mouth. Soon would come the lilt of a sweet female voice, the dancing and the songs, on into the night. Back home in Liverpool, pub culture and family “do’s” formed the basis of our entertainment, along with the steam radio, and as the kids weren’t excluded, I heard some pretty fair music played, and my interest was piqued early. By age seven or eight, the big upright piano in our parlour, mother of pearled, polished, and mostly in tune, had become a magnet for me, and I’d hammer away for hours, trying to figure out songs I’d heard on the air, but also making up little things of my own, which seemed easier, somehow. We lived in a three-up, three-down row house in the Walton district, a step up from the warren like slum of Scotland Road, directly to the south. Walton had been a village since medieval times, and was home to the oldest church and first schoolhouse in the city. It also had a big prison, Walton Gaol, and the nationally renowned Walton Hospital. But more than anything else, our neighbourhood was defined by the presence of Goodison Park, storied home of Everton football club. Across the scraggly green space of Stanley Park lay the equally formidable Anfield, where dwelt the hated “Reds” of Liverpool F.C. In eye and earshot, the two great stadiums loomed at each other like ancient walled cities. In those days, support of either team was almost entirely predicated on sectarian lines, Everton being the “Catholic” team, Liverpool the “Protestant,” like Celtic and Rangers in Glasgow. In our house, my dad wouldn’t tolerate the colour red anywhere, it was that extreme. (I’m an avid Evertonian to this day, although the religious aspect has no bearing for me, and it never did.) The immediate area was still dotted with rubble-strewn bomb sites, like jaggedly extracted teeth in the terraced rows, but Goodison stood unblemished in the heart of it all. Before I was old enough to attend games, I could stand out in the street or back yard, and know how the match was going by the unison voice of a seventy thousand crowd, reflecting down from the slate-grey sky like a voice from heaven itself. I was part of the “mind your car, mister?” brigade, as our street was prime parking on home game Saturdays for the privileged few with motor transportation, and the sixpences we received were probably more perceived by the donors as bribes, so we wouldn’t scratch up their motors, or let the air out of their tires … what, us? A short walk down our local main drag, County Road, would bring you to Epstein and Sons furniture store, which contained a small music department, rather grandly named North End Music Store, and managed by their prodigal son Brian. The corner display window, facing the junction, was his territory, and as 1956 rolled around, it took on a youthful vitality. The student band instruments began losing space to guitars and harmonicas, along with the sleeves of 10 and 12 inch LPs including the fluorescent yellow scream that was “Here’s Little Richard.” The previous summer, while visiting Butlin’s holiday camp in North Wales with my parents, I’d had an epiphany. There was a big Wurlitzer jukebox in the coffee bar and among the lacklustre array of British pop hackery was “Tutti Frutti” by Little Richard, a thunderbolt of a record that hit me like a ton of bricks. I couldn’t get enough of that pile driving, piano-pounding beat, with the thick honking saxes, and the manic, overheated screamer riding atop it all. I’d pump my cadged coins in and punch it up repeatedly, the older jitterbugging youths, would respond by choosing it themselves, and I’d stand there for hours, letting this glory wash over me. Now, I could stand in front of the NEMS window and drink in the display; the tastefully positioned, shiny cheap guitars, a rudimentary drum kit … and the yellow scream - the first record I ever owned (and still have), even though we didn’t possess a record player. Didn’t matter. There were radiograms around in various homes of family and friends, especially the house in Bootle where my parents’ best pals, Bill and Dinah Montague, lived. They had a heavyweight unit, and on Saturday nights, when they made for the pub, I’d have the place to myself, except for old Auntie Kate, my grandma’s sister and Dinah’s mum, who was off in her own room with her telly, so I’d play Richard non-stop until the folks rolled in. That’d be my fix for a few days. But don’t get the idea that I was totally off in a pre-teen rock ‘n’ roll haze. I was hitting the books hard, getting ready for the 11-plus, that draconian exam, your future determined by one day’s performance, designed by the establishment to separate the working-class brains from the brawn, so there would be a supply of lower class pen-pushers to man the desks of a dwindling empire … educational equality be buggered! However, it had been impressed upon me by my dad that this was a ticket out, leading to grammar school, and beyond that the possibility of a university place and scholarship, something no one in our family had ever attained. It sounded like a good idea to me … I didn’t find school a burden, and was usually in the top three in my class. I’d seen enough of labouring men trudging up the street, dog-tired from a hard day’s graft, to know I didn’t want any of that, thank you very much, so I studied with a will. There was also the added incentive of the “prezzie,” a city-wide custom. If you passed the 11 plus, you got to choose a present, often a bike, but your parents couldn’t refuse your choice, if it was reasonably in their financial range. I knew what I wanted … on my frequent window shopping visits to NEMS I’d been taken with an f-hole archtop guitar, with a single cutaway and a DeArmond pickup. It shone warmly with a sunburst varnish, and cost twelve pounds. In retrospect, it was a piece of cheap junk, plywood with an awful neck action, guaranteed to cause bleeding fingers, but at the time it looked beautiful to me. Well, I passed the exam, and duly presented my request. The old man was not a happy camper - he probably saw the writing on the wall - but noblesse oblige, so he reluctantly forked over the twelve quid, and the guitar was mine. The piano took a back seat for a while, as I wrangled with a new instrument, but I got the hang of it pretty quickly, in a rudimentary way, and was soon nagging Uncle Jack into letting me sit in with his little dance band on weekends, “short pants and all.” Jack had already shown me my way around a chord chart, so I got to read and play the band book (number 83, I remember, was “I Got Rhythm”), which covered everything from waltzes and polkas to a little Dixieland and swing. My cousin John, already turned twenty-one, was the drummer, and when Jack, plus the trumpet player, and the gloriously busty pianist Dot Williams, took their breaks, John and I would stay on and grind out some “Guitar Boogie” and other basic instrumentals for the kids who’d been dragged...