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In my desperate attempts at being an ‘adult’ I was losing sight of being a teenager. Then for Christmas 1963 my aunty Pat gave me a copy of Freddie and The Dreamers’ first album – signed by the group! It turned out that the drummer, Bernie Dwyer (who died in January this year) was my second cousin, as, I was to find out years later, was Morrissey, a fact that I still haven’t quite come to terms with. At last I had a
bona fide connection to the world of Pop. Now at last girls might like
me! But possession of one long playing record was an unlikely passport
to sexual pleasure, whatever sexual pleasure may have been. I might be
hornier than a three-balled tomcat, but I had no idea of the mechanics
of the damn thing! This was the early 60s after all. Taking the album to
school and clutching it under my arm like a magickal talisman had
absolutely no effect on girls whatsoever. Perhaps it was my insistence
on dressing like my father in tweed jacket, cavalry twill trousers and a
cravat while all my contemporaries were wearing Chelsea boots and Beatle
jackets that was holding me back? Whatever, learning how to be hip was a
painful business. It wasn’t that
I disliked Top Of The Pops or Thank Your Lucky Stars. It
was simply that a lot of Pop didn’t make any connection with me. When
we got a radiogram in the 1950s, instead of buying soundtrack albums
like South Pacific and The King And I
like all my friends’ mothers did, my mum bought albums by
people like Josh White and Big Bill Broonzy. And so it was that the
Blues and R’n’B emerging from the early Beat movement wasn’t
strange or exotic to me. Further, I’d been brought up to the sound of
my mother’s voice singing me songs about fishermen and gypsies and
soldiers who went wooing, and oddly, it never occurred to me until later
that my mother was singing Folk songs. To us they were simply songs
she’d learned from her mother when she was a little girl and she was
repeating the process by handing them down to me. I became aware
of a thing called ‘Folk Music’ because it was being taught to me at
school. Our music teacher was a big bearded bear of a man whose name
I’ve sadly forgotten. He only lasted a year and went off to have a
breakdown (not connected to us I hope). He veered away from the standard
‘music appreciation’ format of sitting down at your desks and
listening to a piece of classical music, by having us sit down at our
desks and listen to LPs by people like Pete Seeger and then sing songs
from a publication entitled Something To Sing, that had been
compiled for schools by Ewan McColl.
Then one day I inherited an elder brother’s Dansette C30
portable record player and I would take the school LPs home and listen
to them in the privacy of my own bedroom. There, surrounded by plastic
Dorniers and Stuka dive bombers, I learned to sing songs like The
Titanic, Pretty Polly, and the haunting Willie Moore.
This, combined with the public face of the Folk Revival as it was
beginning to appear on TV unleashed a passion for Folk that’s still
with me today. I also fell for Denise. Denise was a
willowy blonde who was in the sixth form. She wore a duffel coat and a
CND badge. To my eyes, she appeared tremendously sophisticated. I was in
the fourth year, wore a blue raincoat and a blue Alpine hat with a
feather in it. Occasionally I sported a pipe to make myself more mature
than my fourteen years of age. I was definitely not sophisticated. When
I discovered that she went to Folk Clubs and that one of them wasn’t
too far from where I lived, I was thrilled. Surely the Gods had
contrived to bring us together? All I had to do was turn up there one
night and impress her. And, I decided, I would do that by becoming a
Folk singer. One major
obstacle to my attending a Folk Club was my age, but with steely resolve
and the cunning deployment of my pipe, I considered I might pass for
sixteen. Actually, I was a big bugger and figured I could pass for
eighteen on a dark night and a judicious application of Old Spice
aftershave to add a veneer of maturity. The next obstacle was becoming a
Folk singer. Just exactly how did one do that? I’d read in a
local Folk rag that the only true Folk singing was performed
unaccompanied, so not having an instrument, let alone being able to play
one would be no problem. I would rely on my voice. The purchase of an Alex
Campbell Live LP in Woolworth’s bargain range provided several
more songs for my growing repertoire and I retired to my bedroom to
practise. Whenever Alex had an instrumental break in one of his songs, I
would simply leave a gap – God, it was so simple! Soon Denise would be
mine. The Friday
evening of my triumph arrived. I walked up the steps of an old Victorian
mansion in south Manchester, enquired if it was a ‘singer’s night’
and paid 1s-6d to a bearded beatnik at the door. So far, so good.
Jauntily cocking my Alpine hat with feather onto the back of my head and
clutching a glass of brown ale, I strode manfully down into the cellar
to make my world debut. After negotiating the stairs I arrived in the
basement where the club took place. About twenty feet long it had eight
or nine rows of benches facing what essentially looked like an open
space on the floor. Indeed, it was an open space on the floor. The
phrase ‘floor singers’ which I’d read about in Folk magazines now
took on a more literal meaning. Half a dozen or so members of the
audience were dotted hither and yon. Denise was not amongst them. It was time to
take stock of the situation and ready myself for my debut. Nothing was
happening yet except for the quiet murmuring of the audience, so I
decided to mentally run through my set. It was then that I realised my
mind had gone completely blank. In my youthful naivety I hadn’t even
written down a set list, so I had no idea what numbers I was going to
sing anyway. As I pathetically tried to recall just one line, or even
the title of any of the five or six tunes I’d been working on I became
aware of an argument going on behind me. “Dylan’s a
bastard! He’s a stinking sell-out bastard!” An intense young man
with a guitar case was entering the cellar and talking loudly to another
young man who was with him. I’d hardly ever seen such passion roused
in anybody before (people tended to be very polite back then), and as
they walked to the front of the basement their conversation continued,
“Aw, come on, man. He’s a great song writer”, exclaimed the second
guy. “He was!” shouted the first one excitedly, “until he
went commercial! – Look, Folk doesn’t sell out to the top ten and
that’s all he’s doing on his new album – writing shit for the top
ten! If he wants to be in the top ten all very well and good for him,
but he doesn’t have to drag us there with him! Dylan’s sold out!” I forgot about my set problem and tried to tune in. Who was this Dylan they were arguing about? Before I could
find out anything more, the beatnik from upstairs came to the front and
announced the evening was about to begin. “Good evening ladies and
gentlemen And welcome to the Ladybarn Folk Club. We’ll open in a
couple of minutes with a set from an old friend of ours, Glyn Hughes,
then it’s open-floor time for anybody who wants to get up and do a few
numbers. After that we’ll have a short intermission and then Barry and
Les will be inviting us to join in on some shanties before our main
guest of the evening, Ryan Harris. But first of all – Glyn Hughes.” To my surprise,
the young man who’d been arguing got up and took his guitar out of its
case. After tuning his guitar he introduced his first song, The Dirty
Black Leg Miner, which he explained was about ‘scabs’, those
‘bastards who’d sell out their kith and kin’ while their fellow
miners were on strike. He sang it with gusto and despite his guitar, I
warmed to him. Then he sang a song about the IRA and we all laughed at
the ‘Oirish’ whimsy of it all. Finally he sang a song about
‘washer lads’ who got paid fourpence a day and he had me totally won
over. By the time he finished the space had filled up quite a lot, and I
noticed with a quickening of the heart, there was Denise. She was sat at
the back with a group of girl friends. I decided to play it cool by
remaining totally rigid with fear. The beatnik came
back and announced that now was open-floor time and did anybody want to
get up and sing. I sat quietly, hoping that he’d forgotten me. Nobody
said anything. The beatnik spoke – “You said you’d like to do a
couple of numbers. Ladies and gentlemen, a new face here tonight. Come
on up and sing us a song.” I looked around
and then the growing realisation that I was the object of his
introduction settled over me like a blanket of diarrhoea. I
automatically stood up, as if in a dream – or a nightmare. I was - to
use the vernacular - totally fucked and if I didn’t sing I’d look
like an idiot, and if I did sing I’d look like a complete idiot. I
plumped for complete idiot. I stumbled
towards the ‘stage area’ and blinked out over the rows of benches.
There seemed to be enough people there to fill Maine Road football
ground, and they were all looking at me … in fact, they were all
looking at me expectantly. I undid my raincoat and shot a glance over at
Denise who was, given the circumstances, looking rather more puzzled
than shocked. “And what’s your name?” asked the beatnik. “Chris
Lee”, I answered weakly. “Ladies and gentlemen – Our first floor
singer for the evening – Chris Lee” I started rather well, I thought – “Thank you”, I said. Then I descended into gibberish. “I’d like to do a traditional song by, er, well, it’s traditional, so it isn’t by anybody that I know of, and tonight I’d like to do it by myself – thank you – It was written by the eighteenth century.” I then lurched
into an indefensible version of Oh Rare Turpin Hero stolen from
the school’s Something To Sing book, possibly marred only by
the fact that after the first couple of lines my mouth began to dry up,
and as I croaked out ‘kind sir, said he’, I had to stop and have a
sip of beer. This momentary pause led me to forget what key I was in and
my pitch began to vary slightly to accommodate all the possible ones at
my disposal. Crucially, I reached the end of the song and at the same
time my knowledge of the lyrics ran out. It was over. All in all, I
thought to myself, not bad. To several
bewildered looks and a faint smattering of polite applause my first ever
gig came to an end. I lurched back to my seat quite pleased with myself,
and when I sat down I re-ran it all over again in my head and felt even
more elated. In the meantime, some pathetic no-hoper took the floor and
sang a couple of tunes properly but without what I felt was the right
level of commitment. Then came the intermission and I went to look for
Denise. I was slightly disturbed to find her in deep conversation with
Glyn. They were holding albums and looking intently at the covers. I
wandered closer as casually as I could manage. “I
didn’t know you sang,” said Denise looking up for a moment.
“Yeah, well, you know. I’ve always been into Folk,” I replied. “Right then,
give us your opinion of Dylan,” snapped Glyn. “You’re obviously a
traditional singer. I can’t see you having much time for him.” Having never heard of Dylan before I walked into the club
that evening, I was obviously at a certain disadvantage, but, I thought
Glyn’s set had been good, plus he was older than me and therefore
presumably knew what he was talking about, so in order to further
impress Denise it seemed a good idea to agree with the outburst I’d
heard him give when he arrived in the club. “Well he’s obviously
sold out, I mean, he was quite good once, but now… well, he’s gone
commercial hasn’t he?” I answered waving my pipe around for
authority. “I totally
disagree, said Denise looking a tad too feisty for my liking. “I think
he’s brilliant.” What!!?? This wasn’t supposed to happen! What was
going on?! “What about Times They Are A Changing?” Said
Denise testily. “Oh well, that was a good one,” replied Glyn.
“Definitely,” I added weakly. “Don’t Think Twice!”
snapped Denise. “I didn’t,” I defended myself. “A great song
I’ll admit, but what’s it got to do with the ‘people’?” argued
Glyn, completely ignoring the idiocy of my comment and putting an
emphatic intonation on the word ‘people’ that eluded me. “I
don’t think we’d find Chris singing it.” “Too commercial? I
smiled vaguely, “but a very good song.” “Oh, you two are hopeless,” shrugged Denise and wandered
off to find her friends. And so it was
that I entered the Manchester Folk scene. It didn’t take me longer
than 24 hours to track someone down at school who had a Bob Dylan
record. I recognised Blowin’ In The Wind, but had been totally
unaware that it had been written by someone other than Peter, Paul and
Mary. The first album I heard was Times, followed the next day by
Freewheeelin’. I immersed myself in a crash appreciation
course. Bloody Hell! There was his first album too! How prolific was
this guy? Thirty nine years later, I’m still wondering. All this new
music led me to other artists. Soon I realised I’d have to get a
guitar. This put me in an invidious position. The Folk scene was
definitely polarised into two camps – the Traditionalists, who saw
themselves as defenders and propagators of some kind of ‘People’s
Art’, pure and aloof, untainted by commercial considerations – and
on the other hand, for want of a better phrase, the modernists who were
more eclectic in their tastes and seemed to me to be broader in their
genre likes and dislikes. Within a couple of months I was an
enthusiastic flag bearer for the latter, with Dylan as my guru and my
guide. As for Denise – she went off with Glyn, but by that time I was too busy burning bridges to care.
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