glampunk
Crab On The Rampage
gloompunk; glitter goth: disciple of Rikki Nadir: demonik in disguise, etc.
Posts: 61 
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Post by glampunk on Apr 10, 2008 7:07:45 GMT
Screaming Lord Sutch: Jack The Ripper " ... a promotional film found its way onto the short-lived 'Scorpitone', a video-jukebox prevalent in the early nineteen-sixties. I was present in Macari's Cafe in Aldershot when two bus conductors spent their entire lunch hour and half a satchel of silver watching Jack The Ripper repeatedly, their faces alight with the vacant ecstasy once reserved for public hangings." - Adam Clayson, from his excellent Death Discs (Gollancz, 1992). Murkey quality, but brilliant! Jack The Ripper: direct link |
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Post by weirdmonger on Apr 10, 2008 8:07:44 GMT
I often listened to Radio Sutch in the Sixties: www.offshoreechos.com/forts/radio_sutch.htmThis record was often played on there, or maybe it wasn't. I forget. I'm not admitting anything.  Anyone else listen to Radio Sutch broadcasting from a North Sea redoubt? I was in Harwich yesterday. Plenty of derelict redoubts around there and even tripods stepping nto the sea... |
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Post by Craig Herbertson on Apr 10, 2008 8:46:41 GMT
"Lord Sutch turns back the Navy"
What a headline
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Post by Craig Herbertson on Apr 10, 2008 8:52:01 GMT
In fact what a story. I had no idea people were shot and killed over pirate radios.
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Post by pulphack on Apr 10, 2008 9:05:34 GMT
oh they were, and how! if you get the chance, read johnny rogan's 'starmakers and svengalis', a brief history-cum-biographies of rock managers from the early days to the around the eighties - it has the usual suspects, but also one reg calvert, who was pivotal in a lot of early rock and roll and beat adventures, and also - if i remember this riht as the book went walkabout many years back - was killed in just such an altercation. it's a great book anyway, but very eye-opening about this period of british beat history.
rogan and clayson are the best rock writers because they're just as interested in the fringe figures as the movers and shakers, and realise that it's sometimes the fringe figures who have better stories, and whose activities caused the ripples that allowed the movers to make it.
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Post by weirdmonger on Apr 10, 2008 13:52:03 GMT
In fact what a story. I had no idea people were shot and killed over pirate radios. Pirate Radio in the Sixties was pretty big on the Essex Coast and I listened to it a lot and consider myself to be a semi-expert on it (eg the early careers of Tony Blackburn, Kenny Everitt, John Peel etc etc). There was one station at a certain point that you could only hear in Walton-on-Naze! Whilst, in contrast, there was BIG L and Radio Caroline which you could hear even beyond London......... |
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Post by carolinec on Apr 11, 2008 10:55:33 GMT
Anyone else listen to Radio Sutch broadcasting from a North Sea redoubt? Whilst, in contrast, there was BIG L and Radio Caroline which you could hear even beyond London......... Sadly, where I was (Wiltshire), reception was so poor for the smaller stations I never got the chance to listen to them. I didn't even know there was a Radio Such! I tried my namesake - Radio Caroline - but reception was so "hit and miss" I ended up sticking to "Fab 208" Radio Luxembourg. Ah, those were the days, though - carrying the trannie around everywhere so that we could listen to Kid Jensen, Tony Prince, et al. BTW, "trannie" - for the younger members - was what we used to call the old transistor radios.  |
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Post by weirdmonger on Apr 11, 2008 13:11:08 GMT
I ended up sticking to "Fab 208" Radio Luxembourg. Well, I could have a lot to say about that station (mainly listening to it 1961/63 till Caroline started), if anyone is interested! E.g. I heard the Beatles for the first time on Luxembourg (Love Me DO) in 1962. |
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Post by dem on Apr 13, 2008 9:16:44 GMT
Ah, those were the days, though - carrying the trannie around everywhere The bride sends her heartfelt commiserations. She reckons she knows a bit about "carrying the trannie around"  oh they were, and how! if you get the chance, read johnny rogan's 'starmakers and svengalis', a brief history-cum-biographies of rock managers from the early days to the around the eighties - it has the usual suspects, but also one reg calvert, who was pivotal in a lot of early rock and roll and beat adventures, and also - if i remember this riht as the book went walkabout many years back - was killed in just such an altercation. it's a great book anyway, but very eye-opening about this period of british beat history. I remember being very impressed by this when I loaned it from the library, notably the chapter on Sutch but I seem to recall Rogan had an unusually sympathetic perspective on the downfall of Bay City Rollers' supremo, Tam Patton. I'm with you on Adam Clayson, too, even if I've only read Death Discs! Terrific books. |
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Post by franklinmarsh on Oct 18, 2017 20:17:55 GMT
Currently enjoying 'The Man Who Was Screaming Lord Sutch' by Graham Sharpe - picked up from the hospital 2nd hand book stall. Sutch was always a bit of a hero of mine - managed to see the old reprorbate live a couple of times. Ultimately a tragedy (like so many British rock'n'roll stories - having watched the films Telstar, Stoned and Sex'n'Drugs'n'Rock'n'Roll - no matter what good times they have on the way up, they (and their loved ones) are really gonna suffer on the way down), Sutch (never a singer) was seen as quite the innovator in the late 50s and early 60s but unfortunately became stuck in a Groundhog Day loop after that, with the politics keeping up his insatiable desire for publicity. I think I've something like about three versions of Jack The Ripper and so far the only specific mention of a particular horror film is (surprise!) the 1958 version of Jack The Ripper - apparently an influence on the ten minute The Hands Of Jack The Ripper via use of the name Mary Clark(e?) rather than Mary Kelly. Some weird (if not apocryphal) tales of his Lordship falling foul of the public taste in the late 70s/ early 80s because of the song - including a bizarre description of him supporting The Cramps (courtesy of one Alwyn W Turner) and getting bottled off, but risking life and limb returning to introduce the headliners. Sterling stuff re the London Rock'N'Roll Show (the old Wembley Stadium's first brush with non brass band music). Some unfortunate horror via a description of Sutch starting one chapter by (ahem) D J Jimmy Savile, and the B&W photo section, despite featuring Dave with Muhammad Ali, Harold Wilson and Little Richard, also has Gary Glitter and Rolf Harris. Ulp!
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Post by dem on Oct 18, 2017 22:24:47 GMT
Groan. Another to look out for. Have you read his auto-biog, Life As Sutch? Used to know Graham Sharpe and his bro when I was a kid. Graham was another Wealdstone FC fan, though think he fell out with club at some point. Sutch was a local legend, used to perform fairly regularly at The Railway Hotel (now, like him, sadly RIP). Regret never having seen him play live, though think I met him once (sans make up, top hat & Co.) in the Lord Nelson on Holloway Rd. at some Joe Meek Appreciation Society function even if he denied he was him. Not sure if there was much fuss when Sutch released a terrible disco version of 'Jack The Ripper' in 1977, but there was an almighty kerfuffle eleven years later when his Lordship announced that he was shooting a promo video of him chasing women around Whitechapel to accompany the reissue of the original, in "celebration" of the the Ripper Centenary. This went down particularly badly with feminist campaigners already incensed at the tasteless opportunism of the Jack The Ripper Pub's then landlord and the glut of books rush-released to cash in on publicity. There's a terrific article about it all, John Bennett's The Centenary Backlash, in Ripperologist 120. |
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Post by helrunar on Oct 18, 2019 21:06:07 GMT
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Post by dem on Jan 19, 2022 7:17:45 GMT
Currently enjoying 'The Man Who Was Screaming Lord Sutch' by Graham Sharpe - picked up from the hospital 2nd hand book stall. Sutch was always a bit of a hero of mine - managed to see the old reprorbate live a couple of times. Ultimately a tragedy (like so many British rock'n'roll stories - having watched the films Telstar, Stoned and Sex'n'Drugs'n'Rock'n'Roll - no matter what good times they have on the way up, they (and their loved ones) are really gonna suffer on the way down), Sutch (never a singer) was seen as quite the innovator in the late 50s and early 60s but unfortunately became stuck in a Groundhog Day loop after that, with the politics keeping up his insatiable desire for publicity. I think I've something like about three versions of Jack The Ripper and so far the only specific mention of a particular horror film is (surprise!) the 1958 version of Jack The Ripper - apparently an influence on the ten minute The Hands Of Jack The Ripper via use of the name Mary Clark(e?) rather than Mary Kelly. Some weird (if not apocryphal) tales of his Lordship falling foul of the public taste in the late 70s/ early 80s because of the song - including a bizarre description of him supporting The Cramps (courtesy of one Alwyn W Turner) and getting bottled off, but risking life and limb returning to introduce the headliners. Sterling stuff re the London Rock'N'Roll Show (the old Wembley Stadium's first brush with non brass band music). Some unfortunate horror via a description of Sutch starting one chapter by (ahem) D J Jimmy Savile, and the B&W photo section, despite featuring Dave with Muhammad Ali, Harold Wilson and Little Richard, also has Gary Glitter and Rolf Harris. Ulp! Just about to make a start on it. Think you might be interested in this one, Smashed Guitars and Burnt Down Bars: The Railway Hotel, Wealdstone (Sutch's home turf). Graham Sharpe - The Man Who Was Screaming Lord Sutch (Aurum, 2005) Blurb: Everyone has heard of Screaming Lord Sutch. In the early sixties he was one of the fathers of British rock and roll - recording with Joe Meek, growing his hair shockingly long for the time and pioneering an outrageous and fearsomely over-the-top stage act before the Beatles and the Stones were even in polo-neck sweaters. Emerging from a coffin with his hat on fire and brandishing a very large axe, he invented glam-rock and shock-horror theatricality years before Alice Cooper and Ozzy Osbourne. Top musicians like Ritchie Blackmore and Jeff Beck had their first break in Sutch's band the Savages. His trademark number, 'Jack the Ripper', is now covered by the coolest band of the moment, the White Stripes.
By the eighties he had become the most ubiquitous figure on the British political scene, regularly upstaging prime ministers at general elections in his Monster Raving Loony Party garb of top hat, leopard-skin coat and loudhailer, whose manifesto of lowering the voting age, all-day pub opening and passports for pets was seen as a silly joke at the time but has proved strangely prescient. And he was the Great British Eccentric always available for talk shows, charity appearances and jolly publicity stunts.
But in 1999, approaching sixty lonely, exhausted and depressed, still grinding the motorways to crummy gigs, his private life in confusion, David Sutch died by his own hand. Graham Sharpe, who got to know Sutch well over nearly thirty years, has now written the first biography of this zany, enigmatic and singular man - an odd Zelig-figure who cropped up in everyone's life, but only as a larky bit-part, and who eventually found his own stalled in a Groundhog Day of superficiality and display. By turns hilarious and deeply poignant, The Man Who Was Screaming Lord Sutch tells the story of someone everyone has heard of but hardly anyone knew. |
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