January 2016 | Punk, Rattle 'n' Roll

Did I meet Lemmy once?

I’m not all that sure truth be told, it may just be a half remembered fevered imagining from a confusing time in my past where alcohol consumption played a pretty big part. I speak of course of the heady days of the Mid-2000s, a time which was still enjoying full blown media interest and success after its post Grunge late 1990s ‘Nu-Metal’ led boon in many areas of ‘Alternative Music’ and in our case it was no different. For we were Psychobillies and our time had come once again. Thanks to the ‘Big Three’ American Label bands- The Horrorpops, Nekromantix and Tiger Army reviving an interest in all things Cowpunk/Billy based the scene was enjoying what some dubbed its ‘3rd Wave’ (and others its ‘4th’ confusing enough). Kids were dumping their skate punk and Emo fashions to adopt an off the peg American punk meets Rockabilly image, this was the start of the cliche fad for all those young Roller Derby women donning the head scarves, retro rocker hair and striking the famous American war effort poster ‘We Can Do It!’ pose in countless selfies today…

Anyway, the long and short of it was that all this interest had encouraged the band I was nominally roading for to pack up their bags and head abroad to play a new American festival and for the next few weeks slob about California preying upon the kindness of other bands there to blag a few gigs. A busman’s holiday of sorts. So off we jetted to play a hurriedly organised festival dedicated to all things Billy… Things did not go well, on arrival it became obvious there was no festival yet bands and fans were arriving from across the globe only to discover the venue was closed up and hurriedly hand scrawled note apologising for the cancelation was pinned on the doors. To this day I’m not sure what happened there, did the promoter leg it with the cash or was he let down by the venue? Anyway, instead of breaking it big to a new legion of fans the band and I had to dust ourselves off and make the best of a bad situation. This seemed to involved no more planning than hiring a car and setting off across the great state of California armed with a few contact numbers and addresses. Thankfully it seemed to pay off and we had enough gigs booked to warrant heading to that nest of vipers, the home of the rock cliché and paradise of the tasteless- Los Angeles. Once there we made a visit of many watering holes and of course the famous Rainbow Bar & Grill – well, it would have been rude not to.

I’m almost certain he was in residence at the Bar & Grill on the week we were propping up the bar attempting to look oh so cool and nonchalant as though we did this sort of thing all the time and hadn’t arrived from Lancashire all giddy with the excitement of being in America and California to boot. All these old ‘Roadie era’ stories start to wear thin and increasingly seem to the desperate ramblings of a man all too aware his youth is well behind him now and an admission that since that time I probably haven’t done enough or I’d have a collection of really cringe worthy, ribald stories about my life since. I think everyone’s getting bored of them, not just me.

That night I know we met and briefly chatted to legendary blue movie monster, the human hedgehog himself Ron Jeremy but he seemed more keen on filling his doggy bags with other diner’s unwanted food than talking to yet another group of excitedly gibbering and rather immature men in a band from another country.

The Rainbow is an odd venue; it’s pokey and large and seems to offer many hiding places for all manner of also rans and nearly famous faces… not just ours. There, like other such bars, exists an unwritten set of rules to save the celebs form the overly excited fans who have wandered into the holy of holies and the staff are ever observant as to who might be pushing their luck with a valued regular.

As we drunk with a mix of jet lag and expensive booze wandered aimlessly around the place we picked up a posse of the similarly lost with no agenda, including the drummer of Hanoi Rocks oddly enough who seemed rather chuffed he’d been recognised and so stuck to us like glue.

If he had been there, and he very well probably was, I probably muttered something daft but intended to be flattering his way, probably offered to buy him a drink but then I would have slunk away to peer at the great man from a curtained corner. I seem to remember he was there but memories a funny bugger with the benefit of 15years past and the added problem of seeing things through a drunken fug.

Tragic to hear the heart breaking news about David Bowie, suddenly all the apocalyptic, end of days imagery from the new video makes much more sense…. I just wish I hadn’t given the videos I’d seen such a public bashing on Facebook now.

I think I’m not alone here, like most fans of rock & pop I could take some of his albums more than others but that was the simple joy of the man in a world of increasingly vapid homogenised pap he’d be always relied upon to offer up something different, at times challenging, even esoteric… sometimes woefully so. But boy weren’t we glad he was there doing it, a real artist and each release was an event which was bound to offer up hours of geeky muso chatter in the pub. Like a lot of people I’m utterly unoriginal in favouring his more pre-Glam swagger years of Hunky Dory and the Ziggy/ Diamond Dog years.

Some artists you can always forgive their indiscretions such as the infamous time he pulled up in Neo-Fascist themed black shirted imagery and gave a pseudo Roman salute to the gathered press and crowd. A few people still held that against him but that’s to forget he was (although off his tits whilst doing so) attempting to tap into the current theme of playing around with shock factor imagery and particularly that associated with the 1930s Fascist movements which punk would then run with right up until rock against racism and was later adopted by certain Industrial groups (only our Morrissey’s still playing with that sort of thing).

Of course he was no more a genuine fascist that Russell Brand is a firebrand Left wing revolutionary but it was still possibly his biggest mistake and sin with the musos and commentators for many years after often cropping up in critical media appraisals until the 00s

…. Think we all agree we could have done without ‘Dancing in the street’ though, that came a close second to toying with Fascistic imagery for the offence it caused.

It’s really pretty amazing when you ponder the origins of the man who would become the quintessential music chameleon quite happy to arrive on the scene once the ground work had already been done and acquire a bit of the cool around it for himself as he did so brazenly with New Romanticism, of course some might argue that without Bowie there would never have been both Punk or New Romantic movement so he was simply reclaiming his own. But going from the evidence of his early 1960s work and failures it really is shocking he could eventually reach such dizzying heights as pop’s grand old man and near demigod. He certainly put the hours in, sad to think that there are a fair few modern pop stars with record contracts and all manner of commercial enterprises going who (and seemingly take pride in) doing the least amount of work for their creativity and status. Bowie did it the hard way at a time when looking a bit ‘different’ or even having long hair as a man could earn you a sound kicking on the street. At the height of his Glam years he had inspired an army of young lads (and more oddly young women) to adopt similar gender bending fashion, andcrazy colour hair as their own and run the gauntlet of judgmental and hostile 1970s British mainstream attitude. That sort of thing would bleed into punk’s dress up box and from there we get plenty of pretty diverse offshoots.

Each generation has ‘their own’ Bowie incarnation, some had the good era and some the …well, less so, but each could lay claim to distinct look, feel, tone for their decade and for me it was his ‘Earthling’ and Nomad Soul era. I loved it at the time although the album has had very little play time on the stereo since the mid-2000s so I think this is as good a time as any to have another listen.

God bless you sir you were a true mensch of the music world.