‘Come on, Daddy O.’

It was the first visit of Jazz legend Lionel Hampton to England and one of his gigs was seemingly at Hanley Town Hall in north Staffordshire, according to G. A. Roberts, who captured the occasion in an article that appeared in the December 1956 issue cum grado, the student magazine of what was soon to become Keele University.

Photo by William Gottlieb

According to Roberts, the band played one number without Hampton and when the great man was introduced to the audience there was a:

Deafening  roar from the audience, deafening noise from the band. A lean light grey suited  negro ran onto the stage acknowledging his reception. With a wealth of gesticulation, he stopped the band and then led them into another hectic number—loud, driving, swinging. We were away---from the beginning, Hampton’s tactics were clear ---he was going to produce such a dynamic, hypnotic, driving, compelling, metronomic beat that the audience would be goaded  into a frenzy of excitement and enthusiasm…but twice on the evening Hampton sacrificed sheer beat for artistry.
He used the vibroharp to produce sounds of real beauty which even the band could not drown ; caressing the instrument so that its strange tones filled the echoing hall. But then, as though ashamed of his lapse of taste, he returned to the repetition of fast mechanical tunes. The audience loved it…

The other John Lennon

A curious find in a box of old poetry -- the completely unknown John Lennon's Rossall Hall. A Poem (Printed for the Author, Preston 1834.) It was bound up with 6 other books including a book of Epicurean Recipes (1832) and Memoirs of Madame Malibran de Beriot by Isaac Nathan author of The Hebrew Melodies. All in a small rust coloured moiré cloth-bound book with a leather label on the spine with the word 'Miscellanies' lettered in gold. Decent condition with some occasional foxing to text. The John Lennon book appears to be, like its author, completely unknown-- no copies at WorldCat, Copac or the vast Karlsruhe database which has the complete catalogues of many worldwide libraries.


It is a mere 36 pages and is mostly devoted to unadulterated praise of the great local landowner and philanthropist Sir Peter Hesketh-Fleetwood (1801 - 1866) who founded the town of Fleetwood, in Lancashire and was squire of Rossall Hall. At the time he also owned most of Southport. The work is dedicated to him and some of the verses may have been used in his election campaign. At the 1832 general election, Fleetwood was elected M.P. for Preston, in the first parliament following the Reform Act. The poem's style is very slightly thumping, far better than McGonagall, but Swinburne he was not: 

Hail Rossall Hall! thou stately dome,

With heavenly virtues blest:

Where learned sages find a home,

And weary traveller's rest.

Lennon, however, was no sycophant, his backing of Fleetwood was based on the politician's promise of work in the reform parliament for the rights of a million hand-loom weavers '...who, for a series of years have been labouring under the most unjust privations ever yet recorded in the annals of England's domestic history.' Lennon was campaigning in his poems for a minimum wage of a pound a week for the weavers. Fleetwood's many good works are recorded in his lengthy Wikipedia entry. He was also responsible for starting the development of the new resort town of Fleetwood built on a rabbit warren at Rossall Point near his stately pile. Initially he had considered naming his new town New Liverpool or Wyreton. There are a few traces of Lennon's campaigning work in transcripts and histories at Google Books but research is hampered by myriad references to the great Beatle. Politically he was on the side of the working man and a dogged campaigner for worker's rights- that and a certain facility for rhyming connect him to his illustrious namesake. 

Other compelling connections appear with a bit of searching online. Rossall Hall later became a private school and was attended by Stan Parkes, John Lennon's cousin. A fan site has this:

Facts on the Fab Four from 'Fabulous' 1965

Trivial info on the Beatles from their 'fab' days. Found in 'Fabulous' 1965.  Surely they were the first 'boy band' and the template for all boy bands since?

John flew to Hong Kong wearing pyjamas.

John is a cat lover.

Ringo spent much of his childhood in a Cheshire hospital.

John used to envy his cousin Stanley's Meccano set.

Brian Epstein hesitated a long time before taking Ringo as a replacement for Pete Best. 

Patti Boyd didn't like the Beatles before she met them on the set of A Hard Day's Night.

John's father was a singer on  prewar Atlantic liners.

George has bought a bow and arrow.

George is afraid of flying.

Ringo's stepfather Harry Graves sings  Beatles songs at family parties.

The Beatles never visit a barber.

John never saw an audience properly until Dundee in Scotland. Then he wore contact lenses.

Paul washes is hair every day.

Ringo cannot swim, except for a brief doggie paddle.

They are never photographed with their hair 'up'.

Paul ate  cornflakes and bacon and eggs at a champagne and caviar luncheon in London. Music publisher Dick James was host.

Their new chauffeur, Alf Bicknell, used to drive for David Niven and Cary Grant.

John has bought his mother-in-law a house near his own in Surrey.

Paul wants to buy a farm.

Moon the Loon

Moon the Loon is one of about a dozen books on The Who (once considered the third biggest group in the world after The Beatles and The Stones). Published in paperback by W.H. Allen (London 1981) and subtitled "The rock and roll life of Keith Moon -- the most spectacular drummer the world has ever seen." There are at least four books on the 'wild man of rock' Keith Moon. The hardest to find is Moon the Loon. Written in present tense 'mockney' (Chelsea/ Cockney) -  legend has it that Dougal Butler ghost wrote it 'to cover some of the debts he incurred working for Moonie'. The remaining members of The Who were furious with the writer - 'seeing the book as an affront to their dear departed drummer, and cut him off for years..' (Quotes from Amazon which has much background on this paperback.)

Another Amazon review notes; 'He appears to have written it in the same cheerful cockney/upper class gent manner in which Keith himself was known to speak.This begins to irritate after about two pages…' Covering the excesses of rock life it is said to have an undertone of pathos or sadness.  There is also Dear Boy: The Life of Keith Moon by Tony Fletcher - a hardback from 1998  which has interviews with Kim, his wife of eight years, and Linda, his sister and Annette Walter-Lax, his main girlfriend of the final years. Also interviewed are Oliver Reed, Larry Hagman, David Putnam, Alice Cooper, Dave Edmunds, Jeff Beck, John Entwistle and many others who worked and partied with him. Myths are exposed.

Sex Pistols last UK concert 1977 - eye witness account

Found in a scarce 1977 punk fanzine Dat Sun which also has a Wyndham Lewis inspired 6 page 'Blast' against current stuff. Anonymous*. It covers the last (or penultimate) appearance of the group on British soil at Cromer, Norfolk on Christmas Eve 1977 (punk's annus mirabilis.)

God rest you merry gentlemen in a quarter of an hour the Sex Pistols will play. We slip into the Links pavilion and buy tickets - easier than the village dance. Due to slippery disputes and reports of cancellation in the East Anglian they had not sold out. Dub Disco falls heavily on country in years, 75% East Anglian punks. Johnny Rotten in fashionably squashed pith pelmet surveys the audience critically from the balcony : Sid Vicious tries on T-shirts. The audience is a bit shy of them, and pretends it hasn't noticed. There is no mystique about the boys arriving in a limo or helicopter at the last big moment - the group are, it seems, actually waiting for everyone to turn up before they play.

The New Bohemianism

Another Jeremy Reed unpublished manuscript in his trademark purple ink. From 2007 when Doherty was much discussed in the media. 'Mais où sont les neiges d'antan?'

The New Bohemianism

 5:30 at Red Snapper Books, 22 Cecil Court, under moodily atmospheric London skies, and the red desk at which I write poetry is the lapidary colour of a dull ruby. When Peter Doherty surges in fedora or top hat angled on his intense fringe, a gun-grey Dior suit, white shirt and square cut Hardy Amies black tie, and a cheap Brick Lane pirate scarf then the reinvented bohemian look comes alive naturally, not as an image, but as the unmodified real thing. We face each other, poet and musician, as two anti-establishment artists, whose lifestyles and social viewpoints go radically wide of convention. When Aaron, the shop's owner comes up the stairs from his basement office, in a wide-brimmed black felt hat, a serpent brooch pinned to his striped blazer, with the offer to Pete, to jam in the basement over a bottle of Jack Daniels, we are three, joined by an inherent bohemian instinct. Pete gives me a Big Purple, turtle-shaped Quality street chocolate, explosive with praline, before taking the steps down to the shop's insulated basement. I carry on writing while the two go through an impromptu version of the Kinks' plaintive 'Tired of Waiting For You.'

3rd Ear Band

This ad was found in a 1971 catalogue from a London 'head' business called 'Alchemical' - The Alchemical Almanac and Handbook of Herbal Highs.

3rd Ear Band

This music is a reflection of the universe as magic/ play/ illusion simply because it could not possibly be anything else.

Words cannot describe this ecstatic dance of sound or explain the alchemical repetition seeking and sometimes finding archetypal forms, elements and rhythms. Contradictions are their energy force, dualities are discarded in favour of the Tao, each piece is as alike or unlike as trees, grass or crickets. This is natural, magical, alchemical music that does not preach but just urges you to take your own trip.

If you can make it into this music you are adrift in fantastic Bosche - like landscapes, a strange acoustical perfume fills the mind, on some occasions a door seems to open, band and audience appear to float in a new dimension, transcending time and space where nothing exists except this very strange and beautiful music.

All the Third Ear band's albums are available from your local platter place or…through Alchemail.