Читать книгу Chas and Dave - Chas Hodges - Страница 19
ОглавлениеThe new Outlaws had fire. Me, Ken, Mick Underwood and Ritchie were a Rock ’n’ Roll band to be reckoned with. Right. All we need is gigs to prove ourselves and we’re away. Someone saw in one of the music papers that Gene Vincent was looking for a backing group. Ken got on the phone. Don Arden came down with Gene Vincent to have a look at us, liked us, and we got the job. The tour that was coming up was a tour with Jerry Lee. Fantastic! On the same bill as Jerry Lee! I’ll get to meet the bloke. But the best was yet to come. Don Arden called us into his office a couple of days before the tour.
‘Fellas, you’ve got a choice. Jerry Lee needs a backing group. You can back Gene Vincent or Jerry Lee.’
Got a choice? There was only one. Gene Vincent was one of my Rock ’n’ Roll heroes, but Jerry Lee was God! It was too good to be true. Something had to happen to take the edge off it, and it did. Joe Meek called us into his office to announce that Heinz had now left the Tornados to become a star in his own right.
‘Oh, great. Good luck to him.’
‘He is going to be added to the Jerry Lee tour.’
Mistake, I thought, but it wasn’t none of my business. I should have guessed what he was leading up to, though.
‘He needs a backing group and I would like The Outlaws to back him.’
Hold up a minute. I had nothing personal against Heinz but in my book he just wasn’t any good. Jerry Lee and Gene Vincent were. Also, his image was all wrong for the show, he was too flash and slimy.
The greasy, lary Jerry Lee and Gene Vincent followers were not gonna take kindly to the ‘White Tornado’. He was a dumb cluck crumpet Rock ’n’ Roller. His image was fashioned to the ‘pin up a wanker on your bedroom wall’ dozy tart brigade. The audience we were gonna get would be 90 per cent herberts and I didn’t wanna be associated with him. No, sod that. Not under any circumstances can we back Heinz.
But they say everyone has his price, and on this occasion we were skint. On top of all that our gear was falling apart. Amps held together with gaffer tape, bass strings that had been boiled for the tenth time (a cheap way of puttin’ a bit of life back in ’em), and the arses were hangin’ out of our trousers.
‘Look,’ said Joe, sensing not a lot of enthusiasm, ‘before you turn it down I would like you to meet someone.’ In comes this geezer, a typical hard-nosed businessman. He was introduced to us and we waited to see what he had to say. It was like something out of a Rock ’n’ Roll film. And it’s the scene where you laugh and say, ‘That don’t happen in real life!’
‘Boys, I’ll come straight to the point. I am a millionaire and I am to become Heinz’s manager. I would like you to back Heinz on this tour. If you accept, you will each be given an open cheque book, and providing everything you spend is to the benefit of the band, you may spend as much as you like. New amplifiers, guitars, basses, drums, clothes, new van, whatever. Just make sure I get a bill for everything. You will be on a retainer of £30 a week for your food, etc. In return I shall expect 50 per cent commission on your earnings when you become famous.’
Famous! He could have said 200 per cent of our earnings, it wouldn’t have made any difference. We never had no plans to become famous. We just wanted to enjoy ourselves, play good music and fuck about and that. Good music! I pulled myself together to ask an important question, my compromise.
‘If we back Heinz, does it affect us backin’ Jerry Lee?’ Even all this I would’ve turned down if he’d have said it did. ‘No, I see no reason why you shouldn’t back Jerry Lee too.’
Great!
The next minute there we were, hoppin’ up and down Charing Cross Road like we’d just been let out of a nut house. We’ve gone mad! Gibson guitars! Epiphone bass! Twelve string guitar! Drumkit, strings, cases, Gibson amps, Fender amps! We bought the lot. Ken took time off to ring his local garage to order a new van. Every now and then it crossed my mind that the price we had to pay was having to back Heinz. But that won’t be too bad. We were still backing Jerry Lee – and we had all this new gear! New amps, new guitars! It’s gonna be great! I can cope.
Or could I?
The show opened in Birmingham Town Hall. We’d been filming in the morning, a film called ‘Live It Up’ in which Heinz was starring. We arrived in Birmingham just in time for a quick run-through with Jerry Lee. We did ‘Great Balls of Fire’ and a couple of others, and I could tell Jerry Lee was impressed with our band. I swelled with pride!
The show started. We were to open, then Heinz, then Gene Vincent, and Jerry Lee was to close. Off we went with a few Outlaws Rock ’n’ Roll tunes. We went down great. It was Heinz’s turn. We announced him to the backing of ‘C’mon Everybody’. The crowd waited, and so did we. Then, from off stage (this was his idea for his entrance) Heinz started singin’ ‘Well come on everybody’. I say singin’, it sounded more like an old blow-lamp that kept goin’ out. The crowd showed no emotion but waited expectantly wondering what they were about to witness. Then a white head appeared around the corner by a body movin’ sort of like Elvis having just shit himself.
He just about got to the centre of the stage, the crowd still quiet. Then one lone voice in the audience hollered, ‘Fuck off you cunt!’
The place erupted. A hail of ice-cream cartons, beer cans and anything they could get their hands on flew towards the stage from all directions. I gotta admit I didn’t help things. I sort of tried to pretend I wasn’t with him. It wasn’t very professional of me but I couldn’t help it. You see, when I was in the role of the punter I was as bad as them and I’d holler and hoot if I didn’t think the band was any good. Mind you, it was only the poser-type bands I did it to. The flash bands that had no talent. Now I was thinkin’, ‘If I was out there, would I look upon me as being part of a flash band?’ I squirmed at the thought. I backed away from Heinz like he had the plague and joined in with the crowd. Like I said, it wasn’t very professional of me and I wasn’t proud of myself but I couldn’t help it.
I must say he had guts. He didn’t let up. He went through the whole of his act, layin’ on the floor and all that, but it didn’t work. He was simply booked on the wrong show. He was a ‘dumb cluck tarts’ act. On some other tour he might have been passable. But not this one. Gene Vincent and Jerry Lee fans were hardly the most polite bunch, even to the best support bands.
Backing Jerry Lee on tour was fantastic. It was made up for backing Heinz. We finished off at the Star Club in Hamburg, Jerry Lee only, thank fuck.
Richie fell in love at the Star Club. Her name was Margret. I remember him saying, ‘Who’s that bird down the front who looks like Doris Day?’ And our tour manager, Henry Henroid, saying, ‘Blimey! He’s well hooked, ain’t he?’ He was right.
Ritchie bought her an engagement ring and brought her back to England like a lot of musicians did who went to Hamburg. They all got hooked up with German birds. I think she was in the puddin’ club, though I can’t be certain (I don’t wanna get sued), but I remember the day they married alright!
It wasn’t long after we all got back from Hamburg. We all went to the wedding and had to rush away to a gig in Salisbury. It had been a sort of unusual affair. Not the kind of wedding atmosphere I had been brought up with. I’d seen a few weddings in my time too. What with Great-grandfather’s and Mum’s. Richie got married and perhaps he felt different, but we all felt we’d been to a court case. Something that was our duty to do. We done it, and that was it. Now we had to get to the gig.
We were second on the bill. This new band were topping the bill. They’d just got a record in the charts. A scruffy load of jumped-up Skifflers called The Rolling Stones. The place was packed. Mostly teenage girls who were there to see The Rolling Stones. We came on to do our set which normally went down a bomb, but they weren’t there to see us.
Some of ’em gave us the time of day, but there was a bunch of girls down the front who, after every number started chanting, ‘We want The Rolling Stones!’ and all that.
One of the girls at the front, who was directly in line with Ritchie, was drinking a bottle of Coke through a straw. She decided it was a good idea to suck up Coke through the straw and blow it over Ritchie’s trousers. Every time she hit the target her mates fell about. She was having a great time. Little did she know that Margret was in the wings watching all this.
Now I could see what Ritchie meant when he likened Margret to Doris Day, but Margret was the German version of Doris Day. She was just a bit bigger all round, and I don’t mean fat, she had muscles. I don’t mean that unkindly. She told me once that a woman should take pride in the physical condition of her body. She should be fit and strong. Margret was. The girl who was blowing Coke over Ritchie’s trousers (and her mates) were about to find out.
The girl was sucking down her straw for the fifth go at squirting Ritchie’s trousers when Margret’s run onto the stage, grabbed the girl and give her a punch that sent her sprawling among her mates. She stood there as the girl’s mates got up from the floor. Then one of ’em made a grab for Margret. She caught hold of Margret’s skirt. The rest joined in but all they succeeded in doing was pulling her skirt off. Margret, now stood there in her drawers, dived off the stage in among the lot of ’em.
And she laid into ’em!
A big circle was formed and the girls who weren’t flattened just run for it. The band kept playing, by the way, and though I was motioning to Ritchie to get down there and help her, he just gave me a wide-eyed and dumbstruck look. I suppose he thought, ‘I’ll carry on doing what I do best. She don’t look as though she needs any help from me or anybody.’ She didn’t, either. ‘I spend ze morning pressing my Reechie’s trousers,’ she said later. ‘I have no one spoilin’ zem.’ Quite right too.
That girl’s eyes (and her mates’!) must water to this day everytime they hear a Rolling Stones record. Those around her must think she is weeping through nostalgia. But those who know, know better.
Coming home from the Star club also meant Jerry Lee going home to America. The end of a heavenly tour. What now? Post Rock ’n’ Roll depression again. Like coming home from Butlins.
But the next best thing was only just around the corner!
Don Arden said Gene Vincent loves your band and wants you on the road with him. That don’t sound bad to me!
