Latest / Booked On Rock with Eric Senich / [EP 385] Pub Rock: The Forgotten Scene That Created Punk with Mark Wilkerson

Transcript

[EP 385] Pub Rock: The Forgotten Scene That Created Punk with Mark Wilkerson · Booked On Rock with Eric Senich

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: It has to have a personal connection. I don't listen
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: to music as just entertainment or anything. It has to
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: mean more. That's why club rock and all this crap
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: that was going on in the seventies in the UK.
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: It just brought it all back to the people were
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: totally rock and roll. I mean, I'll leave you. You're
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: reading Little Hands says it's time.
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: To rock and roll, roll out. I totally booked. Welcome
• 0:30
  Speaker 2: back to book down Rock, the podcast for those about
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: to read and rock em Eric Senach. Before we get started,
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: a big thank you to Aaron Steelman for becoming a
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: new backstage past member. If you want to support the
• 0:42
  Speaker 2: podcast get episodes commercial free, sign up for the Backstage
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: Pass from Patreon. It's just five dollars a month and
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: it goes to support the podcast. The link in the
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: show notes sorry can go to bookdown rock dot com.
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: So thank you again. Erin Now onto our guest Mark Wilkerson,
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: the author of pub Rock. It's part of Bloomsbury Publishing's
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: thirty three and a third series Genre Mark. Welcome to
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: the podcast.
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: Thanks for having me on. Eric appreciate it.
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: So let's start with that term pub rock. So for
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: people who've heard the term but maybe not exactly sure
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: what it means. How would you define pub rock?
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's you know, I stated right at the
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: beginning of the in the little intro at the beginning
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: of the book, that it's you can't really define it
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: by which thinking about this while I'm saying it, it's
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: part of the genre series, But you can't define it
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: by a certain type of music, because there was a
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: wide variety of musical kind of kind of mini or
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: or like overarching genres. There was country, there was soul,
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: there was R and B, there was rock. The thing
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: that kind of united all of it was a return
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: to roots, like a stripped down DIY kind of sensibility
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: about it and intimacy. And what we're talking about here
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: specifically when I talk about pub rock is London in
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: the seventies. The chapters of the book are seventy one
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: all the way to seventy seven. That's the arc of
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: pub rock that I'm talking about. And really the key
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: is and the thing that makes pub rock so important
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: is that it was a critical bridge basically from kind
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: of what I call rock's kind of baroque period in
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: the early seventies, the Prague and glam to music that
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: is much more immediate and much more accessible. I think
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: those are probably the two best words to describe it.
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: So pub rock kind of helped facilitated the transition from
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: Prague and glam to punk and new wave and and
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: and power pop.
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: And you describe pub rock as more of a scene
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: than a defined musical style. Was that part of what
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: made it special?
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: Yes, exactly that Again, that intimacy, kind of bringing it
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: back to what we all or in my experience certainly
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: we all love about music. Is that intimacy, that personal connection, uh,
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: feeling it, you know, to just kind of to be
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: able to just relate closely to it. That distance had
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: kind of increased with with Prague in particular. And and
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: and it's I have to be careful because Prague was
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: enormously popular, and it's it's you know, it's easy to
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: make fun of it or pick on it for certain things,
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: but it was enormously popular, uh and you know, sold
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: tens of millions of albums. But for the average kid
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: that wanted to start a band, trying to figure out
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: how to start like a prog band would be really
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: quite something. And in my mind that made it, you know,
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: pretty inaccessible to the average joe with a guitar in
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: his basement or whatever. But you know, the pub rock
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: scene got it back to that. Man, I could do that,
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: or I could try.
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: That, you know, sure, sure.
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: The immediacy and also the and also the subject matter
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: started to kind of come back down from fantasy. And
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: I guess it was, you know, come back down from
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: fantasy and escape down again to immediacy and what's going
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: on and this is my life and you know, speaking
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: to you on an intimate level again.
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: And I love that it structured year by year seventy
• 4:54
  Speaker 2: one through seventy seven. Did laying the book out chronologically
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: help highlight how quickly pub rock evolved into punk and
• 5:01
  Speaker 2: new wave?
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: I think so. And also these genre books are they're short,
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: you know, like the thirty three and a third series books.
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: The album books are little pocket books. I was actually
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: surprised when I got the first copy of this, and
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: it's bigger than I expected, you know, dimension wise, but
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: it's a small book. The last book I did was
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: one hundred and twenty thousand words. This is forty thousand,
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: so it's much more compact, which is great because pub
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: rock kind of in essence is more compact. Again, like
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: I said, stripped down DIY approach, and I wanted the
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: chapter or the way I set it up to be
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: no BS two, you know, So I just thought, Okay,
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: I'm just going to tell the straight story. There's not
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: enough time to you know, go off on tangents and
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: just keep it to just tell it year by year,
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: seventy one, seventy two, all the way to seventy seven,
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: to kind of just get in, tell you what happened,
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: and get out.
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's an enjoyable reason. It goes by even
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: quicker because it's great, it's compact. But the pubs themselves
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: they play a pivotal role as well, just as much
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: as the band's more important than any Probably the tally Ho.
• 6:15
  Speaker 2: So tell us about that pub and why it's so
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: pivotal to the birth of pub rock.
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, The tally Ho was a pub in North London
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: that kind of facilitated or was the location for the
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: birth of pub rock. A band called Eggs Over Easy,
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: American band that were used to kind of gigging around
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: New York around Greenwich Village, came over to the UK
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: in the early seventies to record an album that kind
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: of fell apart. Their plans didn't work out. But while
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: they were in the process of recording that album, they
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: wanted to kind of replicate what they had been doing
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: in New York and looked for a pub or you know,
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: a location close by that they could play their music.
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: And they found the tally Ho, which at the time
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: was only doing jazz. Was the big thing in pubs
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: in the evenings and on weekends, so they had to
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: kind of fudge it a little bit by kind of
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: implying that there was some jazz in there in their set.
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: And they, uh, they got a they got a gig
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: at this pub just right down the street from his
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: house they were renting, and it was the tally Ho,
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: and uh Chas Chandler was was kind of their manager
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: at the time, and uh so you know, he had
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: he knew enough people where there was you know, they
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: got a decent audience and it and it and it worked.
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: So they were the ones that kind of got the
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: foot in the door. And the thing about them was
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: their chops. They were a really good, well rehearsed band,
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: which really you have to be in that close quarters
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: environment there's no room to to, you know, to deceive people.
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: You're either good or you're not. So they were the
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: ones that kind of got it going. The other thing
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: I think that was that was a new kind of
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: concept at the time for bands playing in close quarters
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: like that was they did a lot of covers, and
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: they did they they had a large repertoire of material
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: and again they were really good musicians, so they pulled
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: it off and they were so they were booked for
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: more nights, and eventually it grew and grew and grew,
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: and they were booked for a couple of nights a week,
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: and then jazz started to kind of get forced out
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: a little bit. But yeah, that happened at the tally Ho.
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: So it was the first, uh kind of the first domino.
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well you said that jazz got forced out. That's
• 8:55
  Speaker 2: what I found fascinating about these pubs were they weren't
• 8:58
  Speaker 2: rock venues at all. They were mostly hosting jazz acts.
• 9:02
  Speaker 2: That the lineup you include from nineteen seventy is almost
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: entirely jazz artists. How difficult was it to convince pubs
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: to take a chance on rock bands you mentioned they did?
• 9:12
  Speaker 2: They did tell tell these clubs, hey, we play some jazz.
• 9:15
  Speaker 2: I guess that was a way in.
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think, you know, like I said in
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: the book, it was music, jazz, the jazz. I wonder
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: if it was kind of like background music, you know
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: what I mean, it's music you could like incidental, you
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: could you could drink to it, you could sit there
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: and listen to it and drink and still a whole
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: conversation or whatever. And in my mind, that's that's why
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: the proprietors of you know, pubs at the time were
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: comfortable with it because it brought in paying customers. I
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: think as soon as they saw a need or you know, yeah,
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: a need for a different kind of music, they're more
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: than happy to facilitate it. As long as you're you know,
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: buying some beer. Sure, and you know, as long as
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: you're coming through the door and paying some and at
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: the time, again making it this very accessible scene. It
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: they didn't charge a cover, they would. You know, what
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: the pubs kind of got into was just maybe adding
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: a little kind of extra fee for the band on
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: top of a for the price of a pint.
• 10:18
  Speaker 2: So all the money came from the bar.
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. So I think you know, if if whatever
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: music your band plays is bringing people in. You know,
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: we're going to be happy to facilitate it.
• 10:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you're writ in the book quote. As with all stories,
• 10:35
  Speaker 2: the history of pub rock is rife with chance and coincidence,
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: luck and misfortune. The tally Ho just happened to be
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: the nearest pub to Alma Street, a ten minute walk
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: down at Kentistown Road, where the oddly named American band
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: Eggs over Easy had rented a house in late in
• 10:50
  Speaker 2: eighteen seventy. Eggs over Easy an interesting starting point for
• 10:53
  Speaker 2: this story. Talk about that band, why they became the
• 10:56
  Speaker 2: spark that ignited the scene.
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, again, I think the you know, the the problem
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: with a lot of this pub rock stuff is that
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: you kind of had to be there and I wasn't.
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: I was born in the UK in nineteen sixty nine.
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: This is the music. The reason this kind of fascinated
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: me and I wanted to look into it and write
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: about it was this is the music that formed the
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: music that I love. Like, you know, being born in
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: the UK in nineteen sixty nine and growing up over
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: there late seventies is the music that really hit me
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: and that formed you know, or that stuck with me.
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: This is the genre that that formed all of that.
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: This very first band, Eggs Over Easy Again. They were American,
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: but they were really and they were just a trio.
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: They swapped instruments, they alternated vocals on songs. They weren't
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: super loud. They were much more interested in craft. They were,
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: like I said earlier, they had chops. They were very
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: impressive musicians, and there was no frills to what they
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: were doing. It was just straight up, you know, very
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: kind of country tinged, laid back kind of rock and roll.
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: But it was really well done. I think that was
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: their thing. And again, you know, they were trying to
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: replicate what they had already done. They'd played a ton
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: of shows over in the States already, and they were
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: trying to just do that. And I'm sure they were
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: you know, they were in the process of recording this album,
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: and I'm sure they just wanted to try out material
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: and also just kind of you know, tighten things up
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: by by playing live.
• 12:56
  Speaker 2: And Nick Lowe emerges as a major figure in your book.
• 12:59
  Speaker 2: He's it in the book talking about seeing Eggs Overreasy
• 13:02
  Speaker 2: at a pub in North London and getting turned on
• 13:05
  Speaker 2: to pub rock. What made him such an important songwriter
• 13:08
  Speaker 2: during this era.
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so this this band right at this formative time
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: called Brinsley Schwartz recruited Nick low Nick Lowe was a
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: school friend of Brinsley Schwartz, the guitarist and some of
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: the other guys. They, like you said, saw Eggs Over
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: Easy and were immediately kind of struck by them, and
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: actually their manager at the time invited Eggs Over Easy
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: to come to so Brinsley Schwartz were all living in
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: this communal house very much that they really emulate. They
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: had been to see the band, the band who came
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: to the UK in nineteen seventy one and played two
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: sold out shows at the Royal Abberhole. Brinsley Swartz had
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: been there and they were and again the and were
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: very like low volume. They swapped instruments, they you know,
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: they took turns and the focus again was it was
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: very stripped down, rootsy, The focus was on the craft.
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: Brinsley Schwartz were very much affected by the band, and
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: they saw some of those elements in Eggs Over Easy
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: and they wanted to emulate that. So they actually, after
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: seeing Eggs Over Easy kind of stepped back for about
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: six months and rehearsed to improve their kind of musicianship
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: and also increase their repertoire, and they started playing out
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: at pubs, you know, once they felt they were ready.
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: So yeah, and Nick Lowe was their bass player, and
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: you know, started writing songs and over those years, Nick
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: low is one of these It's really fascinating during this
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: pub rock story, there are threads that run almost the
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: entire length through Nick Lowe is a thread that runs
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: the entire length through the the the entire pub rock arc.
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: And then you've got another pub that comes up here
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: in another year or so that runs the entire rest
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: of the thread, and you can see how their you know,
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: career kind of like everything followed, uh nick Lowe's career
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: or the Hope and Anchor, which was like the Key pub.
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: So I'm really fascinated by all those little, you know, connections.
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: The threads that run the length of this story.
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: Was Brinsley Schwartz, the band who the intentionally turned the
• 15:41
  Speaker 2: volume down. Yeah, well everybody else was was going bigger
• 15:45
  Speaker 2: and louder.
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, everybody else was getting louder, and you know, and
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: and you know, in a pub that's easy to do.
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: And Brinsley Schwartz were they were turning down and again
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: they wanted that the feel of the band they really
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: emulated the So so yeah, that that focus on craft.
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: And again you're in a pub in a in a
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: and these are small, you know, small rooms, and you
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: can't get away with trying to mask any kind of
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: lack of musicianship. You know.
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it didn't impress just Nick Lowe. We're talking about
• 16:22
  Speaker 2: punk rockers too. It resonated very strongly with future punk
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: musicians like Joe Strummer, like Elvis Costello. Why do you
• 16:29
  Speaker 2: think it resonated so strongly with those guys?
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: I think, again, it's that immediacy. So so I don't
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: want to go off on a tangent, but but the
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: the punk rock like that or sorry, the pub rock.
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: The arc of this thing you're starting in the in
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: the uh in in the early seventies, and again it's
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: the it's you know, Prague is kind of dominating the landscape.
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: There's a societal and economical factors that are going on.
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: I guess there's a word for that. So show economic
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: going on at the beginning of the seventies that run
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: all the way through the seventies that almost make in
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: my mind, like things like progue kind of ridiculous or
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: it makes it understandable that it's kind of an escape.
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: Inflation started to rise, Unemployment started to rise, and this
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: is like significantly to levels that hadn't been seen since
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: the Second World War. There was a lot of labor
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: unrest during the seventies, a lot of strikes. And because
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: of that, and because most of the electricity in the
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: UK was coal fired, there were power cuts and scheduled
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: power outages, there was violence the IRA, the Northern Ireland.
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: Violence in Northern Ireland picked up in sixty nine to
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: seventy and in the early seventies it came over over
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: to mainland UK into England. There were you know, bombings.
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: So so as the seventies are progressing, life is getting harder.
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: It's individual families and people's lives are getting much more
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: directly affected by what's going on. And I think that
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: kind of intensified or facilitated, like a need for a
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: person to want something that spoke to them when they're
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: going when they're listening to music. And I think, you know,
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: so as the seventies progress, I think that is what
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: that's that's how punk was born. And in the meantime,
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: the pub rock scene is going, is stripping away all
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: the kind of frills and adornments that kind of were
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: the trademarks of prague and glam and brought it back
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: to just no be you know here we are. A
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: lot of it was, you know, just stripped down guitar, bassed, drums,
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: and as the as as the years progressed, it got
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: a little bit harder edged, like like I said, eggs
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: over easy word, pretty laid back kind of Eagles, the
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: sounding Country five, you know, American rock band. When you
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: get into the middle of the seventies, you got Joe
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: Strummer popping up, you got Doctor feel Good popping up.
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: These are not laid back bands at all. They're intense.
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: There was an air of menace when Ian Dury you know,
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: popped up early to mid seventies. These are people that
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: didn't smile at you when they got on stage, and
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: and and you know, they played pretty hard music, but
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: the subject matter in many cases reflected what was going
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: on in society at the time, and it was much
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: more immediate and spoke to you, and and and from that,
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: as the mid seventies grew into the to the later
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: part of the decade that's when punk you know, really
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: kind of literally exploded. But they direct connections to punk. Punk,
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: especially Ian Dury was a key, you know connection. The
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: reason the Sex Pistols chose Chris Thomas as their producer
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: was because of the work he had done. Well he
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: had apparently I think it was Steve Jones that was
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: a Roxy Music fan, which is kind of interesting for
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: a punk guy. Chris Thomas had produced several Roxy Music
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: albums by this point. But also, uh, the guys in
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: the Sex Pistols liked what Chris Thomas had done with
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: Ian Dury, especially on the on the Rough Kids single,
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: which was run of only two songs that Chris Thomas
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: worked on with them. But so there's that direct connection.
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: And then of course when you get into when the
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: Damned came out with what's called the first punk single,
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: New Rose, Low and Behold, the producer is Nick Low
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: and he became and he produced their first album.
• 21:15
  Speaker 2: You know, so you're right, he's he's got a straight
• 21:18
  Speaker 2: line right through the whole story from.
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he really really does. It's it's phenomenal, you know,
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: it's it's such a cool just the whole arc of
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: the thing, the music change, society changed, and you can
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: still see and hear the remnants of it today and
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: that's why that's what really kind of sealed it for
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: me as far as I want to learn more about
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: this and write about it.
• 21:46
  Speaker 2: You know, we haven't talked about Ducks Deluxe yet. They're important,
• 21:49
  Speaker 2: right because they they injected that roffered louder energy into
• 21:53
  Speaker 2: pub rock. Did they help pave the way towards punk
• 21:55
  Speaker 2: as well?
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: They were more, in my mind, kind of americanized rock
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: and roll, but they were much certainly much harder than
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: than anything else that had come across at the time.
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: You know, Eggs Over Easy were the first ones Bees
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: Make Honey, which is another So these first two bands
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: were kind of like, I'm like, where did these names
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: come from? You know, these are not names, but but
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: they were very much pretty laid back, really good musicians.
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: Uh uh, pretty laid back approach. When you get to
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: Duck's Deluxe, they were straight up just kind of rip
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: roaring like rock and roll, like stone zy kind of
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: you know stuff. So they introduced that element of it
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: and and you know, kind of throwback to fifties. You know,
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: there's a there's a lot of the pub rock bands
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: that did covers of fifties American rock and roll, which
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: again was like in their mind and in history when
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: you're looking at music, the fifties rock and roll was
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: stripped down, nobs, same approach, sure you know so Yeah,
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: Dux Deluxe introduced that and they had a real charismatic
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: front man two, which was another kind of Paul Mark
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: of a good pub band.
• 23:20
  Speaker 2: Mark Wilkerson, the author of pub Rock, part of Bloomsbury
• 23:23
  Speaker 2: Publishing is thirty three and a third series Genre. How
• 23:26
  Speaker 2: crucial was the UK music press? How important was the
• 23:29
  Speaker 2: UK DJ John Peel in helping Paul Rock grow.
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: The music press? You know, this is one of those
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: things like I talked to, like we talked about at
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: the beginning, where there's always a lot of luck and
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: chance and coincidence and stuff and all stories. The UK
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: music press was, you know, it blew up in the
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: early seventies. It really exploded, So Record Mirror, Melody Maker, nme,
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: these these sounds, as the as the as the seven,
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: these progressed these uh UK music weekly magazines were a
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: phenomenon that was particular to the UK. There wasn't a
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: specifically music you know, national magazine in the in the
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: in the US at the time. So the London Music
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: Press was sold hundreds of thousands of copies. I talk
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: about it a little bit in the book. And you know,
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: they started to latch onto the pub rock thing and help,
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: you know, get the word out and covered these these bands.
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: And then John Peel really you know, influential, uh British
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: DJ legendary. Yeah, And part of the part of what
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: made him legendary was he wasn't in any way like
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: a snob, you know, or you know, he'd listen to
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: anything and if he you know, if it, if it
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: hit him just right, then he'd run with it. And
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: so he was uh kind of prone to just fall
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: into like convention, you know, he would he would take
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: something that that he liked and champion it. So so yeah,
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: radio picked up because of the power cuts and because
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: the fact that TV often wasn't avail or sometimes wasn't available,
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: your battery powered radio could could keep you going, and
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: print media as well. So so yeah, both of those
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: were big, you know, facilitators of the of the pub
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: rock scene.
• 25:36
  Speaker 2: Talk about another band, Doctor Feel Good, one of the
• 25:39
  Speaker 2: defining pub rock bands. What separated them from everybody else.
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and there's some you know as you as you
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: read the stories, and I always tell people like like
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: when I was a kid, you know, when the pub
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: rock thing was going on, I was like five six seven,
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: so I wasn't going to pubs and checking out pub
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: rock bands. But I will never forget seeing Ian Durry
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: on the TV on TV for the first time. Uh.
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: You don't forget seeing Wilko Johnson uh performing on on
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: TV or or hourview see him. So the I think
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: one of the main things that stood out that separated
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: Doctor Feel Good was these characters in the band. I mean,
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: they were a phenomenal band too, and they were one
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: of those that, like I talked about, these bands weren't
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: smiling at people. Wilco would glare you know, would stare
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: you down and machine gun you with his guitar. Uh.
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: And they would compare like they would kind of liken
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: Lee Brillo, who was the lead singer and harmonica player
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: for Doctor Feel Good and Wilko, who's the guitarist to
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: like a like like a mob boss and his and
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: his machine gunner, you know, Like Wilco would kind of
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: lean in and like machine gun people while Lee Brillo
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: is sneering at you. So they had attitude. Their songs
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: had some serious bite to him. And this character Wilco Johnson,
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: I mean he moved across the stage like if Julian
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: Temple did a fantastic documentary about about well, about Doctor
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: feel Good called Oil City Confidential, and you see this
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: like footage of Lee Brillo standing up on stage singing,
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: and all of a sudden you'll see like Willcocke just
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: go across the screen room quick, and this is like
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: that's how he moved. He would just kind of like
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: go It's like he was on a track. He would
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: like go forward, he'd go across, he'd go back. I
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: remember somebody who described him it as a broken dollic.
• 27:35
  Speaker 2: But he's also influential as a guitarist, right, he had
• 27:38
  Speaker 2: a yes.
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: Really interestanial guitarist. He's another one of those guys that
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: that that was. I think he was right handed. He
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: played it is off. He played his wrong hand guitar.
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: I think he was a lefty and he and he
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: learned to play right because he couldn't, you know, find
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: the correct guitar, and that made his approach very kind
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: of idiosyncratic. Uh, he had a real percussive way about playing.
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: He didn't use a pick, he would just he would
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: just kind of flick the strings with his fingernails. And
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: you know, I was just listening to to rock Sette
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: just just before I got on here their first single,
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: and his guitar is just so unique. He's just one
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: of those guys. He was a really endearing, interesting character.
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: But he was also just a unforgettable uh stage presence,
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: and and yeah, his his his technique on the guitar.
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: So yeah, that's what Doctor Fieldger were one of the most,
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: if not the most successful and popular pub rock band.
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: They really, you know, blew up and and made a
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: mark and they were very influential. Well, there's in that
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: Oil City Confidential documentary, there's a they talked to Clem Burke,
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: the drummer from Blondie, and he talks about how the
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: guys from the Ramones were in the UK. Well, no,
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: he was, he was in the UK. Sorry, in the
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: mid seventies. I think it was though one of the
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: guys from the Ramones. Somebody took a Doctor Field Good
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: album back to New York and he said he was
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: at a party and the Ramones were there and Richard
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: Hell and the guys from the Blondies and all that,
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: and they were they loved Doctor Field good. They were
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: into it, you know. So it was starting to kind
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: of spread. And that's that's another fascinating thing about the
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: pub rock this time frame. You've got these American bands
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: that are influencing what's going on too, and you know
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: it's it's works both ways. They're being influenced as well.
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: You got the New York Dolls coming over, the Ramones
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: coming over, the Flaming Groovies coming over, lou Reed, Iggy Pop,
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: the Stooges. You know. So it's just a crazy time
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: to be in that, you know, in that environment.
• 30:05
  Speaker 2: And there's so many pub rock records that were overlooked
• 30:09
  Speaker 2: compared to the punk and new wave albums of the time.
• 30:11
  Speaker 2: Which forgotten pub rock album do you think deserves a
• 30:14
  Speaker 2: major rediscovery today?
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: It's hard to make, you know. The thirty three and
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: the third guys asked me to do a playlist. Well,
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: it's got to be songs that are on like Spotify. Well,
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: if you look for so Bees make Honey did an
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: album called Music Every Night that's really really good, but
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: good luck finding it. I mean you can get it
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: on you know, discogs or eBay or whatever on vinyl,
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: which is what I did. But so that that one
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: is the one that stands out to me that you
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: can't find, you know, streaming or anything else. There were
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: a lot of songs that were recorded. The Hope and Anchor,
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: which was the main pub rock pub from seventy three onwards,
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: had a studio upstairs. They built a studio upstairs and
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: recorded a ton of great stuff, but a lot of
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: that never saw the light of day. That'd be a
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: cool album too, but it doesn't exist. Unfortunately.
• 31:14
  Speaker 2: Where's a good starting point If somebody only knows pub
• 31:17
  Speaker 2: rock through names like Elvis Costella or Nick Lowe, where
• 31:20
  Speaker 2: where should they begin exploring the genre?
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: I think Brinsley Schwartz is a great excuse me, it's
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: a great kind of avenue. And Brinsley Schwartz, you know,
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: speaking of speaking of albums that could really, you know,
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: see the light of day again. If you look up
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: Brinsley Schwartz on Spotify, for example, you'll see like the
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: Greatest Hits kind of album, but it's all scattered. The
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: songs are selected from from all over the place. If
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: you actually listen to. There were five or six Brinsley
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: Schwartz albums during the pub rock era. They kicked out
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: an album, you know, pretty regularly, routinely. You can hear
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: their evolution from being kind of really influenced by like
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: Crosby Stills and Nash and Young and and just progressing
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: from and and even on their first album there's a
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: little bit of prog kind of influence there too, which
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: is almost like a sin, you know, for them, right.
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: But but as it progresses, Nick Lowe kind of takes
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: over a little bit more on the songwriting, and you
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: start to hear the songs are getting shorter, the the
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: the kind of adornments, and the guest musicians start to dwindle,
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: and it becomes much more focused, poppy, immediate music, and
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: you know, and and then you hear like Surrender to
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: the Rhythm or What's so Funny about Peace, Love and Understanding,
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: which was done by Brinsley Schwartz first and written by Yeah,
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: written by Nick Lowe and Ian Gom It was a
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: Brinsley Schwartz song. You start to you start to, you know,
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: and I talk about that as I as I visit
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: each one of those Brinsley Schwartz albums, things start to
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: get more compact and more to the point, which was
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: exactly you know the pub rock thing. You know, So
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: I think Brinsley Schwartz is a is A is a
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: cool kind of if you're gonna kind of get in
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: a car and go through this journey, Brinsley Schwartz is
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: the car you should get in and go through it.
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: And and uh, Doctor feel Good is another one. But
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: they didn't start putting albums out until, you know, kind
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: of in the middle of this thing. Yeah, the the
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: the the Nick Low thing with you know where he
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: started off in Brinsley Schwartz and went through that and
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: then he kind of then he left Brinsley, Brinsley Schwartz
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: broke up and Nick low started his solo career and
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: he was also producing. Like I said, he produced the Damns,
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: the Damn's first single and he produce their first album.
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: He also produced Elvis Costello's first album, uh and his
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: first actually five albums in a row were all produced
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: by Nick low And of course, this legendary record label
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: called Stiff came out in the late seventies as pub
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: rock was winding down and punk was exploding, and Nick
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: Lowe was the basically the house producer for Stiff. He
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: produced all kinds of stuff from them, and of course
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: he put out his own solo you know, some amazing
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: solo singles and albums himself. So he's a he's he's
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: a pretty you know, amazing thread through this whole thing.
• 34:42
  Speaker 2: Well, I'll set up the last question with a quote
• 34:44
  Speaker 2: from the book, which is what all of these pub
• 34:47
  Speaker 2: rock bands had in common was a yearning for what
• 34:50
  Speaker 2: the scene offered a direct connection with the audience. Do
• 34:53
  Speaker 2: you think pub rock's greatest legacy may actually be the
• 34:56
  Speaker 2: reminder that rock music works best when it feels per.
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: To me, yes, absolutely like the music. Uh and and
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: again my my, my perception, my observation from my own
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: experience has been that music that really hit me during
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: my like adolescence, which for me personally was also the
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: period when we moved my family uprooted and moved from
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: the UK to the US when I was fourteen. The
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: music I was listening to at the time like helped
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: me through that period. Uh So for me, the stuff
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: that's that that that I will always it always stays
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: with me is you know, it has to have a
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: personal connection. I don't listen to music is just like
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: entertainment or anything. It's like a you know, it's a
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: it has to mean more for It's hard to explain,
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: I guess, but oh no, I'm.
• 35:57
  Speaker 2: With you, and the people listening and watching that now
• 35:59
  Speaker 2: they I'll get.
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: It, so okay, Well yeah, yeah.
• 36:03
  Speaker 2: Music is more than just a passing sad.
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's you know, I think that's why, you know,
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: pub rock kind of brought it off. Pub rock and
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: this the all this crap that was going on in
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: the seventies in the UK, it just brought it all
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: back to to to the people, you know what I mean.
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: That's I think that's probably the best way to sum
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: it up, and that these unique individuals that that kind
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: of popped up and all these influences again I mentioned
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: the New York Dolls, and New York Dolls had a
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: huge influence on you know, what was going on at
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: the time. These like interesting personalities and interesting kind of
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: new ways of doing things started to pop up, and
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: it's still you know, rippling through music. You know, like
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: the bands that came up in the late seventies, the Clash,
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: the Sex Pistols, the Damned Madness, the Jam, all of these,
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: like you know a lot of those bands that just
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: made my head explode. Oh like huge debts to the
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: to the pub rock period, Like that's where that's where
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: some of the some of the fashions were formed. That's
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: where some of the like odd approaches or interesting new
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: approaches to to recording or performing, or you know like
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: Ian Dury doing this like music hall piano and on
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: on his Handsome album and on Rough Kids. That's that's
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: so madness, you know. So I love all of that,
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: and I yeah, I think that's the key about pub
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: rock is it brought it all back to the personal level.
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: It stripped away all this excess adornment and just brought
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: it all back to back to base.
• 38:00
  Speaker 2: And this book's important because I don't know how many
• 38:02
  Speaker 2: people are aware of the roots of punk really that
• 38:07
  Speaker 2: come from this genre. So this is the book to read.
• 38:10
  Speaker 2: Pub Rock, part of Bloomsbury Publishing is thirty three and
• 38:13
  Speaker 2: a third series Genre out Now. Find out wherever books
• 38:15
  Speaker 2: are sold. You can find it at your nearest bookstore.
• 38:18
  Speaker 2: Go to bookdown rock dot com to find your nearest
• 38:20
  Speaker 2: independent bookstore and mark where can people find you online?
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: I'm on Instagram. I think it's m I Wilkers. I'm
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: not very good at that. I was on Twitter for
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: a long time and I got off after just you know, elon,
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: make my head explode. I'm on Facebook and I'm on Instagram.
• 38:42
  Speaker 2: Okay, I'll look for those two and put the links
• 38:45
  Speaker 2: in the show notes so people can reach out to
• 38:48
  Speaker 2: you if they like Mark Wilkerson. Thank you so much.
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: Thank you, Eric, appreciate it. That's it. It's in the books.