Rock History

What an honour

admin — Wed, 16 May 2012 20:47:03 +0000

Today I have found and filmed Roland Rennie, a man whose name has turned up time and time again over the years in books and interviews about the players. So many thanks to Brian Southall and his book of numbers, and we now have on ‘film’ the man who placed the Beatles first releases in America when Capitol (a wholly owned EMI company) did not want to know about anything British!!!

Roland returned to the UK to take over the German label, Polydor just 20 years after WWII where he had success with bands like The Who, the Bee Gees and Slade as well as their Track label and one Jimi Hendrix. The memory for names might be going a bit but the occasional prompt kept the memories flowing – an honour indeed.

America, the first time

admin — Sun, 06 May 2012 07:33:58 +0000

Paul Conroy explains becoming a Stiff person

admin — Sat, 28 Apr 2012 06:07:03 +0000

when your kids are the right age

admin — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 07:16:33 +0000

from a new Clive Selwood interview

admin — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 17:06:30 +0000

There’s that great story of Phil Seamen. He was doing sessions of course, and he was playing in a club at night, late night, and he was working the pit in the orchestra. So he’d take naps, obviously. I think the show was the King and I, and he fell asleep but he heard a cue, and his cue was to bang the big gong. Well, he heard what he thought was his cue, woke up, smashed the gong, and of course it was totally the wrong place; whereupon he turned to the audience, bowed, and said, dinner is served, and sat down.

Well he lived in that square mile of Soho and they had a gig in Stratford Place, which was just by Marble Arch; and they got up there in the cab and he looked around and said, “oh, sod this; let’s get back to town”. They were enormous characters.

CBS and throwing out your catalogue

admin — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 20:01:31 +0000

Ray Russell and a life in transit

admin — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 09:04:07 +0000

making it through the John Barry Seven

some Ronnie Scott-isms

admin — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 16:31:05 +0000

“I really love this place, it has made a happy man very old.”

“The food is great here, a million flies can’t be wrong.”

“Quiet please, you’re not here to enjoy yourselves.”

The Father of LOUD

admin — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 15:39:15 +0000

Dr. Jim Marshall OBE who founded the British amplification company Marshall, has died at the age of 88. Now there was a man who made a difference fifty years ago when he started the company. It just grew and grew, and got louder and louder.

Sadly we did not manage to film him before he went as he had had a stroke and was in a wheelchair, not really able to speak all that well when we went a filming at the factory. But it is an honour to have met him and shaken his hand – we salute his contributions to music worldwide.

This month, I shall mostly be doing ….

admin — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 08:37:28 +0000

This month, I shall mostly be doing – editing. Ah the Fast Show lives on. No interviews scheduled for a while as we try and catch up on the backlog armed only with a bottle of copydex and an old … Continue reading →