Richard Allen - Teeny Bopper Idol (NEL, May 1973)
The exploited kids were his passport to fameBobby Sharp is the newest star in a growth of youthful worship. His records sell in their millions and with the largest fan-club of any pop star he can - and does - command fantastic sums for each personal appearance.
But show-business expertise and talent are not enough: a star like Bobby needs a manager who doesn't know the meaning of ethics and when it comes to exploitation the Teeny Boppers are a gift of the kind he knows how to manipulate.
This is the story of a week in the life of Bobby Sharp, pop star extraordinary, feted by millions and dreamed of in a way that defies the reality of an ordinary day. It is also a story of back-stage life and the gulf between the idolised and the idolisers.I've left those sickly sweet Partridge Walton's in Limbo for a while as their all-American non-shagging niceness is getting too much for me. Time to return to grimmer pastures and a paperback I almost didn't buy, such was it's grotty condition. Let's see if this is any better than the, frankly, putrid
Punk Rock.
What a promising start!
Not two pages into the action and "top notch publicity man" Steve Morash is already at it!
"He poured a drink - examined the label.
Hundred Pipers! He sampled it. 'Not bad' he told the amber liquid. A change from Rye or sweetish American liquor."
It's those bastards at
World Pops magazine who've set him off, moaning as they are about the heavy handed security arrangements for US pop fireball Bobby Sharp's gig at the London Discodrome (stellar line up - Sharp, The Frogmen, Scrambled, Bacon and Rind, Anne Merrill and Rock Rolls). Don't these bastards realise that even thick pop fans might start to figure 'that's a trifle out of order!" if some fool reporter points it out to them? God knows what all those screaming girls see in his meal-ticket, anyhow. Bleedin' conceited Teeny-bopper bastard! Can't even sing a note, the creep! He pours himself a fresh
Hundred Pipers, careful to add a splash of
Canada Dry this time. Time to get on the phone to all his on-side contacts in music biz, see what can be done about this outrage. Bastards!
Morash gathers his "arousers", the three beautiful young women he will let loose on likely target area's London and Bristol to indoctrinate the teeny's into the church of Bobby Sharp. Canadian Jasmyn Ragg, 18, despises Sharp almost as much as she does the lecherous Morash, but she's a top plugger with a neat line in irresistible Bobby big-ups - "He's way out, the tops ... Gorr! what a dish!" - and has a thing about wearing school uniform at all times. Drink of choice
Captain Morgans. Carole, her fellow countrywoman, is fairly nondescript in comparison so Allen doesn't bother beyond leaving us in no doubt that she's cut from the same bitchy cloth. Finally, there's the new girl, Becky, 17. She's English, patriotic and detests the cynicism of her colleagues. She's going right to the very top, you can tell.
Meanwhile, in sunny Acton, West London, the green-eyed monster has got a hold on fifteen year old wannabe Johnny Holland and his eighteen year old girlfriend Gloria Derrick. Gloria, a working class dole-ite with regulation alkie mother, dreams of the day Johnny hits the 'big time', better known as
Opportunity Knocks. It was she who, taking inspiration from a can of peas, provided his band with their name - the Jolly Green Men. When they're not rehearsing their cover of Bobby Sharp's cover,
Virginia's Love, to death, Johnny and his boys are somehow QPR and Brentford fans at the same time, always up for agro with away supporters. Inspired by the
Skinhead novel they'd cropped their hair, then they went
Suedehead, then
Bootboys before finally settling on an identity of their own - 'Roundheads' on account of what sound like basin haircuts. Their natural enemies are "long-hairs, hippies and drop-outs".
Jasmyn and Becky have just hit their rehearsal and sweet-talked them into attending the Bobby Sharp concert ....
(To be continued after I've had a few shots of lovely
Seagrams 100 Pipers)