Deke Leonard makes his stage debut, 1962! UPDATED

[Mickeyboro]

Scroll through for another 5-minute lockdown read...

 

I was dripping with sweat, my throat was parched, my legs were trembling and I wanted to go to the toilet. I had hot and cold flushes, blurred vision, and pins and needles in my extremities, which I presumed were the initial symptoms of a heart attack. I was petrified and I wasn’t alone. Mike and Geoff were in the same state. We were ‘Lucifer and the Corncrackers’ and this was our first gig.

We sat on a row of chairs at the side of the stage, eyes cast down, like condemned men waiting for the hangman to arrive. I racked my addled brain for an excuse to run. I prayed that somebody would rush in and inform me of a death in the family – unlikely, since I come from a line of long-livers; I longed for a power cut – next to impossible, I would have thought, given that we were playing in a power station; and I yearned for an earthquake – the thought of the earth opening up and swallowing me was curiously comforting but the San Dafydd Fault had been depressingly inert for some years. But nobody rushed in, the lights didn’t flicker, and bloody terra remained bloody firma. There was no escape. Suddenly I understood how Custer must have felt.

It was Saturday, the 17th of March 1962, and we were at the Car Bay Club, the social club of the Carmarthen Bay Power Station in Burry Port, just down the coast from Llanelly. The place was packed and the average age of the audience was about sixty. In the run-up to the gig, ignorance about what was to come had made us somewhat cocky but that cockiness disappeared completely in the face of the public. We took one look at them and had a small, collective nervous breakdown.

It was billed as a talent contest. There were six acts and we were the third on. We were told that there was a big agent in the audience. He was easy to spot. He sat at a table directly in front of the stage. He was a lumpy, balding man in a crumpled suit and he shared the table with his wife, who looked just as you’d expect an agent’s wife to look – like a down-market bookie’s wife. She sat in morose silence while he talked loudly to her about show business, name-dropping furiously. He mentioned Shirley Bassey at least four times. 

The first act was a Cliff Richard look-alike who sang ‘The Young Ones’ in a key far too high for him.

‘He’ll never make the middle-eight,’ I said to Mike.

As expected, he broke down halfway through the song and, red-faced with embarrassment, returned to his seat on a wave of sympathy from his mates. We, who thought Cliff Richard was a disgrace to civilisation, were rather pleased. Much to our delight the agent ignored him and continued talking loudly to his wife, who’d obviously heard it all before.

The second act was a genial, semi-famous, ex-rugby player who sang ‘Do Not Forsake Me, Oh My Darling’ in a tremulous baritone voice. It was excruciating because he was a little sharp all the way through, but it was obvious that the audience had heard him sing it a million times before because he received warm, indulgent applause. He failed, however, to make any impression on the agent, although he clearly affected his wife, who was knocking back gin & tonics at an alarming rate.

Then the compère, an elderly committee-man holding a sheet of paper, shuffled on to the stage. He stood in front of the microphone and blew into it. It whistled derisively. He cleared his throat.

‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he said, ‘it’s their first booking so give them a big hand…’ He rummaged around in his pockets until he found his glasses. Then, holding the sheet of paper at arm’s length, he began to read, ‘…Loose Ivor and the Prawn Crackers.’

My bowels went into spasm. There was no backing out now. We walked on to the stage like pall-bearers. We passed the committee-man coming off.

‘You got our name wrong,’ I hissed. ‘It’s not the Prawn Crackers. It’s the Corncrackers. We’re a group, not a Chinese aperitif. And who the flip is Loose Ivor?’

‘There’s no need for that kind of language.’ he said, ‘and, anyway, I didn’t say that.’

‘Yes, you did,’ I said.

‘No, I bloody didn’t,’ he said.

‘Yes, you bloody did,’ I insisted, with white-knuckled nonchalance.

‘Well, it’s a stupid name for a group, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘You want to get yourself a proper name, boy.’ 

‘It is a proper name,’ I said. ‘Just because…’

I was about to give him a lecture on the lack of imagination exhibited by the musical community in the choosing of band names, when I noticed the audience. Any applause we might have received had long-since died away and they were sitting in deathly silence, waiting for us to start.

‘Get on with it,’ shouted a voice from the back.

So we got on with it. We’d had no rehearsals as such. We’d just played through a few songs in each others’ front rooms. There was no plugging in because we had acoustic guitars – our first mistake, because once we started all you could hear were Geoff’s drums. We opened up with Eddie Cochran’s ‘20 Flight Rock’, which Mike sang. I counted it in. I was rigid with fear. I dared not look at the audience so I looked at my feet and waited for the first bottle to be thrown. I abandoned all hope and gritted my teeth, swearing that I’d never put myself through this kind of ordeal again. I just wasn’t cut out to be a musician. I would have to resign myself to a tedious and unremarkable life in the building trade. Then out of the corner of my eye I saw movement. I risked a glance. It was Mike. He was leaping all over the stage. He’d put down his guitar, grabbed the microphone, and assumed the mantle of front-man. The audience were on their feet, laughing and clapping, and the agent had stopped talking to his wife, which was just as well because she was lying back in her chair, head thrown back, eyes closed and mouth open.

We were going down a storm. Mike got more outrageous as the set progressed. Teetering on the edge of the stage, he swivelled his hips suggestively at a couple of matrons in the front row and they dissolved into giggles. He rubbed the microphone against his groin and the matrons covered their eyes with shame. He finished the set by taking his jacket off and waving it above his head, just like we’d seen Joey Dee and the Starliters do in a recent film. The agent stared at the stage, mesmerised. Everybody stared at the stage. Except, of course, the agent’s wife.

It was then I learnt my first lesson in stagecraft. It didn’t matter if the drums were too loud. It didn’t matter if you couldn’t hear the guitar. It didn’t even matter if you couldn’t hear the vocals. As long as somebody was jumping up and down in the middle of the stage then all was well with the world. 

We left the stage with rapturous applause ringing in our ears. The agent pulled out a notebook and started scribbling. We assumed he was working out how much money he was going to offer us for the forthcoming world tour he was arranging on our behalf. We gathered at the side of the stage and congratulated each other. We were on our way. Success was a foregone conclusion. Fame and fortune were just around the corner. Then the next act came on.

She was a portly woman about sixty years-old dressed in a floral pinafore and carpet-slippers. She was carrying a metal drinks tray. She shuffled to the centre of the stage, took out her false teeth with a flourish and sang ‘She’ll Be Coming Round The Mountain When She Comes’, accenting the off-beat by hitting herself over the head with the tray. And, as a bonus, every time the tray hit her head she went squint; I have no way of knowing whether this was intentional or a bi-product of cerebral pummelling but, by God, it was effective. As the song drew to a close she gave up all pretence of timing and beat herself randomly about the head, ending with a savage skull-crushing staccato. The tray was mangled beyond recognition and she was suffering from severe concussion but she had the audience in the palm of her hand. The agent was on his knees in front of her, begging her to sign a lifetime contract for a million pounds. Even the agent’s wife had woken up, jarred back to consciousness, no doubt, by the sound of unforgiving metal on splintering bone. The agent ignored the last two acts and spent the rest of the evening deep in conversation with his new find. He appeared to have forgotten about us.

At the end of the evening we were paid ten bob each. I remember thinking I could make a living at this. There was a complaint from the committee that some of Mike’s bumping and grinding had been a little on the lewd side, but we brushed it aside. We forgot about being upstaged by a geriatric sado-masochist and remembered the sweet sound of applause.

 

Edited May 5, 2020 by Mickeyboro

[ezbass]

From ‘Maybe I Should’ve Stayed In Bed’, another very well written, laugh out loud read; thoroughly recommended.

[Mickeyboro]

Studio fun with Tony Hatch and Sid James, 1969

We went back into the studio to start recording the new album; same set-up: John Schroeder, Alan Florence and Pye Studios. It was tentatively titled ‘2ozs Of Plastic (With A Hole In The Middle)’. I had, and still have, no idea whether a record weighs two ounces, but it seemed about right.

With our first album under our belts we were more assured in the studio, wallowing in the recording process. There’s nothing quite like total musical freedom and a pocketful of extremely dangerous drugs.

The stars of the Pye stable were Tony Hatch and Jackie Trent. They’d had a few hits but mostly they were famous for soap theme tunes. They had written the Crossroads signature-tune, and would later write the ghastly theme from Neighbours. A few years later, McCartney did a version of ‘Crossroads’ and the TV show delightedly used it from then on. I think that speaks volumes about young Paul.

Quite often, we followed Tony Hatch into the studio. On one occasion we found a harpsichord still set up. I started picking out a tune on it, Raymond added a bass line, and Plug – Jeffrey was late – played the drums. Schroeder arrived, liked it, and suggested we put it down on tape, which we did. As we finished, Tony Hatch came back. When he saw what was going on, he erupted. His voice boomed over the Tannoy.

‘If you haven’t paid for the hire of an instrument, you should not use it. It’s rude. Get off it, now!’

Morally, he was correct, but, artistically, he was being a little petty-minded, I thought. After all, we’re all musicians here. Sort of. But, I had to concede, I was guilty as charged. An apology was in order.

‘How does “F@ck off” sound?’ I enquired.

A bijou argumentette ensued. I got off the harpsichord – the song was in the can, anyway – and he left.

The highlight of the album, for me, came during the mixing of ‘Spunk Rock’. We were listening to a playback. I had my head down on my forearms, leaning against the end of the console. A rustling noise made me look up and there, standing at the other end, was Sid James. My first thought was, ‘Wow, this is good acid’, but there was no denying it, it really was the great man. The playback finished, there was a moment of silence, then the great man spoke.

‘Well, that’s music to move your bowels to.’ He followed it with a cluster of gravelly laughs. He sounded exactly like Sid James. We pumped him, shamelessly, for Hancock stories and he graciously obliged. During the course of the conversation, the reason for his presence emerged. He was there to interview us. Sid James was going to interview me. Well, I didn’t see that one coming. He had a record show on South African radio. It was taped in Britain and sent to the evil republic for transmission. I was so starry-eyed, I ignored the implications of condoning the white boot of oppression that for centuries had been a cancer in the body politic of humanity. I ask not for forgiveness, for there is none. In mitigation, there were extraordinarily extenuating circumstances.

We all sat around a microphone in the studio and he began the interview, introducing us in turn. After he introduced me, he stopped.

‘Deke,’ he said, ‘that’s a funny name, how did you get it?’

I had taken the name from the character Elvis played in Loving You. It sounded cool, and I thought I’d never get to be a rock’n’roll star with a name like Roger. It was hardly riveting radio.

‘It’s a very long and not very interesting story,’ I replied.

‘Oh,’ he said, flatly, looking daggers at me, ‘well, it’s a very long story for a very short name.’ He continued with the interview but it had gone. I had killed it. Suddenly, he clapped his hands.

‘Let’s start again,’ he said, looking pointedly at me, ‘I think we can do better than that.’ I was suitably chastened. He began the interview again. Once more he introduced us. After he introduced me, he stopped again.

‘Deke,’ he said, ‘that’s a funny name. How did you get it?’

I couldn’t believe it and neither could he. He gave a damn-and-blast-it grimace.

‘It’s short for Deacon,’ I said. ‘My mother wanted a preacher.’

It wasn’t quite the Joke Of The Year, but it made him laugh. I had made Sid James laugh. Further proof that I existed. I can’t remember the rest of the interview. As he left we all shook his hand.

‘Goodbye, Deacon,’ he said to me.

‘Goodbye, Mr James,’ I said.

‘Call me Sid, son,’ he said.

It’s all been downhill since then.

[el borracho]

I need to get some more of Deke's books as I always like these snippets. I bought Rhinos when it came out and enjoyed it. I've got an early signed copy (55/109) - why 109 I don't know - there's probably a very good reason!

[Dankology]

Inspired by these snippets I bought two of Deke's books direct from Mickey - and I'm savouring every word. One of my happiest purchases ever - and as someone with a fairly vast library of rock books I can't quite understand why I didn't come across them before.

[Steve Browning]

I bought one on Kindle and was delighted by the words but didn't realise there are no graphics in an eBook. Hugely disappointed but the words more than make up for it.