[This is an excerpt from an article on rock music through the generations]
The Star, Bill TaylorSpecial to the Star, Published on Mon Jun 23 2014
http://www.thestar.com/life/2014/06/...nerations.html
It was Nov. 20, 1970, at Durham University in northeast England.
I had a friend who booked bands for gigs around the region. This was a students’ event. I helped carry their gear and sat in on their sound-check.
Christine McVie had recently joined. She may even have spoken to me. I seem to recall her saying fondly, “Get out of my way!”
The band’s back on tour, featuring the “long-awaited return” of ... Christine McVie. But with the three-figure price of decent tickets, I won’t be at the ACC in October. Let someone else carry their amps.
My hairdresser, a Rolling Stones fanatic, tells of a client saying how pathetic it is that the Stones keep touring.
My stylist retorted, “What’s really pathetic is that there’s no one younger who can do what they do.”
Words to live by. Word to chisel on your tombstone.
It’s not only Fleetwood Mac and the Stones who are still on a roll. This has become a retirement industry. I sent my trainer to see George “Bad to the Bone” Thorogood at Massey Hall last month. It was love at first riff, “and he’s almost as old as you!”
Yeah, thanks for that.
Do audiences still hold up lighters or is that passé? M-m-m-my generation — as The Who’s Roger Daltrey continues, at 70, to sing it — predates even those days.
I have a postcard reproducing the poster for a “happy-go-lucky summer revue” opening in the English resort of Blackpool on June 23, 1961 — 53 years ago today. Top of the bill was crooner Frankie Vaughan.
I saw that show. It wasn’t rock ’n’ roll but I liked it.
I’d just been to my first genuine rock concert: the Shadows, Cliff Richard’s backing group, but stars in their own right. Guitarist Hank Marvin inspired a lot of young wannabes: Neil Young, Jeff Beck, Randy Bachman ...
The Shadows played a one-night stand in Blackpool. I badgered my parents into taking me, though they fretted about riotous teenagers. In fact, the kids behaved better than my mother (who was 43) when we saw Frankie Vaughan.
As sex symbols go, Vaughan was a watered-down Tom Jones but still regarded as risqué, with a high kick that had women old enough to be his grandma shrieking.
He’d don top hat and tails for his “signature” number: “If there’s anyone in doubt who would like to try me out, give me the moonlight, give me the girl and leave the rest (wink) to (leer) me.” Steam rising from the orchestra stalls ...
He made his entrance from the lobby, jogging down the aisle as it dawned on those closest that he was fleetingly within reach.
We weren’t, thank heavens, at the end of the row because my mother leapt to her feet, hollering, “Oh my god, there he is!”
She denied this for the rest of her life, but my dad and I had the evidence of our eyes and ears. The term hadn’t yet been coined but Mom had the makings of a groupie!
Another musical legend (sort of) for the guru to share with his disciple. Too bad I don’t have any Frankie Vaughan vinyl.