1963. Lounging in a bed-sit in Earls Court; thumbing through a book called Existentialism. Interesting: must be some highly educated and deep thinking scholars involved in this stuff. Surrounded by pseudo intellectuals, I must confess to being somewhat stimulated and intrigued by what, back home in my usual haunts, would be regarded suspiciously as the pursuits of weirdoes. But then I am an interloper.
As the morning sun drags itself above the grey rooftops and condescendingly splashes the dismal slates with just a dash of colour, I sip my first cup of coffee and look out at the dusty green trees lining the street. I think of Keirkegaard. And Sartre. And God. And no God.
The girl with red hair and hazel eyes sits up, raising herself from under the bed clothes. She doesn't say anything: a person of few words and a soulful expression.
I don't say anything either; I am dreaming and reminiscing a little...
We were having a debate on the origins of rock and roll. I knew no more than anyone else about the subject but what I did know was more than I knew about philosophy. Anyway I felt I had to make a point among the pseuds.
We were passing around flagons of cider. The girl I was crazy about was sipping carefully from her mug - just like a woman. She was wearing a smock; all the rage and you didn't have to be pregnant. She had on a black straw boater-type hat. She looked sophisticated and vulnerable at the same time, Like Holly Golightly. Holly - that is Suzie - had no interest in the puerile debate. She sipped her drink and looked faintly disdainful as we talked about the American Deep South Blues and so on. To me she was Audrey Hepburn and this was breakfast at Earls Court as dawn crept in and I thought of sustenance a few hundred yards away at Corillos in the Earls Court Road.
Somebody thought the answer was Fats Domino. Another mentioned Alan Freed coining the phrase. I remembered I'd read that a group in the Forties had used the term Rock and Roll in their song. But just to throw the proverbial spanner in, as you do when you've had a few drinks and the company seems insufferably know-all, I said, 'Johnny Ray.'
I knew that Johnny was a lightweight, idiosyncratic, half deaf, shamelessly emotional performer of the Fifties. Pale and white and child like; singing songs of tears and little white clouds: I liked him.
The others in the bed-sit, three girls and two young men stared at me, saying nothing. Irritably I saw it as a conspiracy of silence; a closing of student ranks against this working class boy. Thinking back, that was wrong since only two were actually in Academe, the others, including Suzie being between jobs, and her friend Pauline, the tenant of the bed-sit, getting her rent paid with National Assistance. But I caught the wave of disdain and I wasn't going to drown. After all I was older than all of them and, I told myself but without conviction, I was wiser by experience. Who cared who invented Rock and Roll? What mattered was a small victory for my side of the river.
Hideous to think of it now...the way I staggered to my feet in that claustrophobic den, gave a heavy breathed performance of 'Such A Night' then expired noisily amongst the scattered cushions and empty bottles. Statement made.
'It was a night; ooh such a night it was, it really was, such a night...Ooh,ooh,ooh...What a night...'
'Do you know,' I said, once Suzie and I had rallied ourselves and were comfortably ensconced in the intimate and trendy ambience of THE breakfast establishment of the Earls Court Road, 'they wanted to ban that record because it was suggestive... you know, the Ooh bits. As I was trying to explain to your friends, Johnny Ray could be said to be the first rock and roll singer, though he probably wouldn't have known it at the time.' |
