John Bingley was the world’s least likely DJ, son of a dentist, horribly upper middle-class and with a forehead that was a hazard to shipping. He surprised me once, at a disco at the American College in Ford, West Sussex (now home of the Engine Shed), when he put on ‘If There is Something’ from Roxy Music’s first album. I’d been listening to it for months, inspired by ‘Whsipering’ Bob Harris’s put down of them on The Old Grey Whsitle Test, the best recommendation for a group there was back then. This was from someone who thought Pink Floyd were cool! The US students sat down crossleggedly bemused as Andy Mackay’s sultry sax filled the room.
Now, I can see you gasping, knowing me as being cool as fuck and here I am dropping reminiscences about Bob Harris and alluding to a group best known for fathering the hideous pro-fox hunting communist, ‘Otis’ Ferry. The fact I can even remember the early seventies must be an even greater shock.
Roxy in 1972 were the bastard child of Bowie and the Sweet, knocking out music that drew on fifties rock and roll style and sounds, but subverted by the scarily Richard Slaughter-like Brian Eno on keyboards and synths. (Richard Slaughter was a ballet-dancing friend from Whitelea Road who eventually made it big time after surviving being Keith Hopkins’ victim of a knife throwing act which was the highlight of one of Richard’s back garden fairs in the late sixties). (Keith Hopkins was Whitelea Road’s very own Kray twin, serial arsonist and stealer of fudges from shops and smaller kids. He respected me because I gave him a spectacular nosebleed after he tried to bully me, the fool. Years later, during my musician phase, he rescued my group (Old Harry Rokz) from a severe beating and equipment-mash during a Guide Hut gig, where we’d made the mistake of not going to the local school in Littlehampton on failing our eleven-pluses, but going to the Grammar School in Worthing after passing ‘em).
Anyways, back to Roxy. Cool people soundtrack their lives carefully (and really cool people never refer to themselves as cool of course), and I’d discovered Roxy, which turned me on to sax which led to soul and jazz and other tasty diversions, and it was all this first album for a month or so, upsetting my nan who had to listen to it through the thin ceiling of the lounge. ‘What is that fucking shit you’re playing?’ she’d ask every time and I’d glumly answer ‘music’. ‘That ain’t fucking music you fucker!’ she’d shout, before making me cheese on toast. ‘Yes, it is,’ I’d say to myself before turning it up, ‘fucker yourself with knobs on.’ She was deaf in any case.
Now don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t into dressing up and makeup, though I did Kohl-up my eyes years later for a dare in Leysin, Switzerland. It was always about the music. Ferry’s voice was fun, he used a few words I didn’t know and the songs went all over the place. They tapped into something, perhaps a burgeoning Pagan sensibility or even aided the successful navigation of adolescence? Who knows? Who cares?
Best track always for me was ‘If There is Something’ (how did Bingley get that so right and everything else so wrong?) Ladytron is fun and Sea Breezes touched me. Bitters End was shit. And why oh why put the horrible Virginia Plain on the CD version? It does jar somewhat!
Now, back to Plan B.
Brassey
