Rockhunter, Issue 5, September 2003
Greasers Doin’ The Boogie: the best of 1970s Pre-Pub Rockers!—Part 1
Much too much ink has been spilled on the subject of punk rock, freakbeat, mod, psych and underground music over the years—especially in the last five.
In the humble opinion of your scribe, these labels are merely a sign that the marketing bods have won. Bollocks, say I. It’s all rock. That’s right! We like the Tea Company AND Black Flag, Buffalo Springfield AND The Eyes. We like Mickey Newbury, The Monks, Poco AND the Cockney Rejects!!! (Whoa boy, let’s not get TOTALLY carried away!!—Ed.)
Let’s face it, it’s very likely that most of my dear readers will tick the none-of-the-above box for at least some of the bands I like and write about. I’ve been gathering these primordial posers together for around 20 years. It’s probably inevitable.
But what do I care? I don’t agree with much that Bobby Gillespie’s ever said, but he was right about the lack of boogie in modern rock. And very few people have bothered to look into the good time boogie of 1970s pre-pub-rock.
I was talking with a young friend some years ago and he was speaking as if punk had always existed. But I retorted that there was no punk before punk, at least, not as such (and, yes, I have read Lester Bangs and Stewart Home, so don’t bother writing in. . . !!!). That led me to thinking about what came before it.
Naturally, it was pub rock and northern soul that sprang to mind. I haven’t got the patience that northern soul requires, so I had a look at pub rock.
Even right in the middle of the most (self-) righteous musical year ever—I’m talking late-1976 to early 1977 here—there was no such thing as punk in most of the known world. Let alone where I came from.
“So what on earth did you lot do for kicks back then?” I hear massed voices asking in mooing tones from beneath asymmetric haircuts. Do I really have to go into it one more time? Surely everyone’s read Julian Cope’s Head-On by now.
Okay, it was like this…
Let me take you back for a gander at the hits, misses and long-gone-dug 12-bar grunts and wheezes from the old school. These are some of the results of half a life trawling through bargain bins, charity shops, and set sales.
“Doo-adda-doo-adda-doo”: Gimlet’s tale
I first heard about Gimlet back in 1979, when I was making a living selling tapes of gigs I’d been to. (Mind you, it felt like I was dying on my arse at the time!—Ed.) My mate Tony gave me a C60, which boasted three whole tunes of theirs, among a load of other grease-stained nuggets. He’d been in possession of said item for a couple of years.
Gimlet hailed from Leamington Spa. They started in 1974, rising from the ashes of Torbett Longe’s Measuring Bowl, a half-decent very-late-psych outfit that failed to record and certainly didn’t stir the public imagination, even locally. Perhaps it was that name… Anyhow, I digress. Those three songs (“Please let me in”, “Can I get into your heart?” and “Try to get inside your door”) were the key to my interest in the hard rockin’ bands of the mid-70s.
All of those three tunes have (still have—I’m listenin’ to ‘em now) the urge of The Troggs and a sheer, loose love of uptight boogaloo.
Everyone knows about Jesse Hector and Roogalator—and boy are they good—but for my money Gimlet have the bare-faced balls to boogie, which few British acts have ever matched (as do other Rockhunter hard rockers: watch out for later issues!!).
Think Small Faces, Tony Joe White, Sex Pistols (arguably the last of the best boogie bands). Man, I’ve gotta put out a CD of this stuff, and soon!!!
But the star to follow as far as Gimlet are concerned is the impossibly rare “Doo-adda-doo-adda-doo”. Even the band haven’t got copies!! In fact, I may have the only one in existence!!! But more of that later…
The First Ever Gimlet Interview
Undaunted by my failure to locate Colin Fogarty, Phil “Lenny” Burnham, or the mysterious “Kidda” (despite covering enough mileage to wear 50p-sized holes in my shoes), I sallied forth to run the rest of the blighters to ground. Needless to say (for you hold in your hands the evidence) I caught up with the other two band members.
Phil Arrow, Gimlet’s lead guitar and founder member, still occasionally plays in pubs around his local area (he’s now running a successful double-glazing business in Oxfordshire).
Speaking about the early days, he says: “The Measuring Bowl was a bit of a ragbag—an oddity. We were running around playing Motown covers, Quicksilver-style jams and one or two original numbers in the Hendrix mould, but we never gelled as such.”
“Later on, like a lot of small groups in the 70s, we realised people wanted something a bit more gutsy than most of the studenty stuff around—something they could dance to—so we started stripping down some of our old tunes and chucking in some old rockers and blues numbers. You’ve got to realise that a lot of people just wanted to hear rock and roll—not Nick Drake.”
Asked if their change of heart did them any good, Arrow says, “Let’s put it this way, my mum never got that bungalow I promised her!”
Denny Wilson, bass guitar (now an estate agent in the Leamington Spa area) spoke on the phone and offered me a reflection on the whole experience. “I can’t say with my hand on my heart that we changed the world,” he reminisces, “but we had some laughs in Birmingham and London.”
He continued: “I suppose people are more sophisticated now. Back then, all you had to do was pump out a Chuck Berry intro and you’d have the ladies backing up round the block.”
A little bird tells me that there was an incident involving on-stage flashing. What happened there?
Denny: “One night in Birmingham Col (Colin Fogarty) was doing his usual harp solo and broke into a rather impressive duck walk, but his strides couldn’t take the strain and they ripped right open as he jumped up on the bass drum and waggled his arse to the crowd. Now, Col was always up for a bit, so he never wore pants. One minute there’s an empty dance floor, the next thing there’s half the birds in Birmingham cheering his goolies.”
“He knew nothing about it, of course, because he was always half-pissed. So we were trying to do a cover-up job as half the blokes at the dance were making up their minds about kicking our arses back to Leamington Spa. As it happens, they saw the funny side and shook our hands afterwards, so that was all right. There was other times we weren’t so lucky, but that’s life on the road.”
What were your main influences? Phil: “We was all big on all the old rockers—the Vincents, the Richards, the Cochrans and so on—that was my first love in music. And we all loved Big Brother, Quicksilver, Motown, Hendrix—that style of thing. All the Yank psychedelia, maaan.”
Halfway through talking to Phil I caused some consternation when I opened up my bag of tricks and showed him my cassette copy of the 3-song demo from 1975. He even more amazed when I revealed an original, pristine(-ish) one-sided acetate of the blood-racing, rock-a-rollin’, and totally unknown, “Doo-adda-doo-adda-doo”.
Phil: “I’d like to know how you got one of those. I never even got a copy.”
Sensing a mutiny in my interviewee, I hastily promised him multiple copies in any format he desired.
RH: Was there any interest following the demo sessions.
“No,” Phil sighs, “It was all self-produced. We were putting down a tough Doo-Wop bop at that time. We had a few sniffs, but Lenny buggered off just as the demo was doing the rounds.”
“Easily our best tune, that one,” Denny opines. “It took 5 months to get a replacement, what with us trying to hold down jobs and that. By the time Kidda arrived it was all over bar the shouting.”
Any regrets? Phil: “No. None. We did our bit. You can’t rock forever. Look at that prat Jagger! Mind you, I can still fill a pair of jeans, if you know what I mean.”
With that scary thought boring into my synapses, I took my leave of Gimlet and high-tailed it home by National Express, before the precious acetate was wrenched from my clammy grasp.
Gimlet Personnel
Phil Arrow—Lead Guitar/ Vocals
Denny Wilson—Bass Guitar/ Vocals
Phil “Lenny” Burnham—Drums (1974-1975)
“Kidda”—Drums (1975-1976)
Colin Fogarty—Guitar/Vocals/Harp
Gimlet Discography
Unreleased demo, May 1975
“Please let me in” (Arrow/Fogarty)
“Can I get into your heart?” (Arrow/Fogarty)
“Try to get inside your door” (Fogarty/Arrow)
Acetate demo, November 1975
“Doo-adda-doo-adda-doo” (Arrow/Fogarty/Lent/Wilson)
Editorial
I’ve been e-mailed with some sage advice about producing a fanzine.
Without wishing to sound rude, I’d like to cordially invite my correspondent to roll this issue of Rockhunter into a neat tube and insert it up his interfering anus!!!
I go to a lot of time and effort doing all this. And why no pictures? Listen. You do it your way and I’ll do it mine!!!
All the best.
The Editor
Next Time
The next issue will be a stop-gap issue, featuring some modern bands (whoa, boy!) and reviews of some new (-ish) comps.
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