The Death of Rock and Roll

by Stephen Deng

Forty Novembers ago, the US president faced nationwide midterm elections in circumstances rather similar to today’s: insisting he would stay in Vietnam until victory, LBJohnson had a quarter million soldiers over there supporting an unpopular client government, and his airforce was bombing major cities. In the homeland too death was in the air : in the middle of a decade that the popular mind associates more with assassinations (murders of political leaders), 1966 was the end date of important figures on the cultural front, including some of the foremost Rock and Roll musicians.

In April of that year the star singer-songwriter Jan Berry crashed his Corvette Stingray and injured his head severely (he was believed dead when the police cut him out of the vehicle). His hit songs were done mainly in the “Surf sound” mode--the nationwide #1 hit Surf City, the top ten hit Dead Man’s Curve (about a tricky losAngeles road), and You Really Know How to Hurt a Guy. But eight years before his near-death, the losAngeles native had sung Jennie Lee, his first record, in a brash, defiant voice that seemed the spitting image* of the steaming, snorting Memphis sound : in one fell swoop* Berry had brought Rock and Roll out to the Pacific coast and stood it up.    

In July, and again in losAngeles, the guitarist-singer Bobby Fuller was murdered. He and his band had just scored a top ten hit with a cover version* of a song by his fellow Texans the Crickets; rock and roll legend has it Fuller heard it on his car radio as he lay dying. Rolling Stone magazine ranks his band’s version of I Fought the Law (and the Law Won) as #175 of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.

And in October, far from the Pacific Ocean--in the UK's England province--but also in a car crash, died Fred Heath [stage name : Johnny Kidd]. He had written the song Shakin' All Over* and with his band The Pirates recorded and released it in 1960. Heath's mournful, ominous singing voice, coupled with the "cigarette lighter" style guitar work, reached #1 on the UK hit parade, the first original (=non-cover) Rock and Roll song from that island nation to do so.  

Now this reporter simply must ask Eddie Cox, singer-guitarist with the occasional Tianlai pub band The Panthers, whether he isn’t terribly proud of his fellow provincial. “Well, yes I am,” he says. “My mum’s second eldest brother Randy was a huge fan of Heath. Randy actually caught his show way way back*—with that first band of his, The Five Nutters? Quite the show, apparently--old Randy never tired of talking about it. 

“Oh right. The Tianlai pub is celebrating ten solid years of being open for business this Wednesday, November 08. So come on by, support the Xiamen scene and get your drinks half price (for once!)

 “Now as to Johnny Kidd & The Pirates,” resumes Cox. “Dude, look, a whole generation of Rock and Roll musicians patterned their stage show after them, not least of whom was The Who. Plus Adam & The Ants, much later, if you count their fashion influence. The Pirates had a wicked guitarist [Alan Caddy]* but they lost him--to the Tornados, I think. Big loss. And they never did get the knack of covering, of making a song their own. It’s funny, because they really rocked, but all their covers were just poo.”*

“Alan Caddy, oh yes,” recalls Hans Fenger, a singer-guitarist who moved to Xiamen last year from Vancouver , in Canada ’s British Colombia province. “The Expressions covered Shakin' All Over and got into the US top forty. They were from Manitoba province. The record company renamed them the Guess Who to fob them off as part of the British Invasion.*

“And later on there was this band from Ontario province, called Teenage Head,” he says. “They got together in maybe '76, ‘77, so you could say they were a punk band--but what they played was a resolutely pre-Beatles style Rock and Roll. They werent anti-British or anything--they got Caddy to come over to produce their first recording. And they loved him so much they named a later album after his band--the instrumental band, not the Johnny Kidd one.”    

“Oh yeah, The Pirates were seminal, absolutely,” agrees Skip Lunch, legendary New York punk guitarist, back in Fujian after ten crazy months in a van. “Even if they hadnt done anything else but that one song, it s just so good! I love that guitar. Didnt that guy do the instrumental song, Telstar? To be honest, I didnt know Heath passed in ’66 too, that s interesting. I guess I’ve come to think of that year as a peculiarly American tragedy—with Rock and Rollers on the receiving end. So okay, maybe we didn’t get all the crap but there was lots of it to go around.

“The Bobby Fuller Four--excellent. They were into Surf when they first came out west, though you could never tell from the recorded stuff unless you know where to listen. I Fought the Law is a Rock and Roll anthem, obviously. RIP, Bobby.* But in a way the Jan Berry crash was even sadder--he was laid up for so long, had to learn to do everything all over again--walk, talk. It’s great he was able to come and do some shows in China , and skateboard on the Great Wall and all that. But think about it : this was twenty years After the Death [Nov 1986], right? I doubt if many people here would have known what a long professional disappearance the old Surf star was emerging out of, much less his dubious commitment to live band performance—which after all is the sine qua non of Rock and Roll.*

“Oh, speak of the devil,”* says Lunch, ominously, “these murders and accidents you mention are Not why we say it all died in ‘66. Rock and Roll was a youth culture wildfire. You’ve got to crash much more than a few cars or planes if you’re going to snuff a whole culture.” 

Oh boy. Culture. That's not so easy to grasp as persons and personas.*  This reporter is going to have to lay his article back onto the drawing board. 

Vocabulary :  

* spitting image = a remarkable semblance, a Doppelganger.

* at onfiltered= completing an action suddenly and surely

* cover version = a performance, recorded or not, of a song perfomed by another artist. A song written by a non bandmember is not a cover version if the band is the first to perform it.  Also (and hereafter) cover.

* shakin’ = shaking. The contraction more closely renders the word as it is spoken by many; and as it is usually sung.

* catch  = attend a performance. Also “take in” : Randy actually took in The five Nutters.

* wicked = magically excellent  

* poo == crap, waste material

* fob off = to cheat by substituting something inferior

* British Invasion = 1.various UK military deployments, beginning in 1775, the better to control the colonies in British North America and prevent their independence. Not really an invasion, since the military was deployed only within its own imperial territory.
2.the tremendously favourable reception in the US , beginning  in 1964, given various UK bands who played a regional style of Rock and Roll. Not everyone welcomed it, though, and  while some musicians adapted the style, others minded how the industry (= music companies) were soon flooding the air- waves with this one product to the exclusion of other home- grown regional styles.  

* RIP = acronym : rest in peace (said of the dead)

* sine qua non = [Latin, literally : without which nope] the one absolutely necessary thing 

* speak of the devil = a coincidence of conversational topic and circum-stantial event 
[in chinese : 说曹操, 曹操到]

* persona = the public image of a person, esp a performer. Also stage name.