Screaming Lord Sutch

[glampunk]

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

[weirdmonger]

I often listened to Radio Sutch in the Sixties:
www.offshoreechos.com/forts/radio_sutch.htm
This 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...

[Craig Herbertson]

"Lord Sutch turns back the Navy"

What a headline

[Craig Herbertson]

In fact what a story. I had no idea people were shot and killed over pirate radios.

[pulphack]

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.

[weirdmonger]

Apr 10, 2008 8:52:01 GMT Craig Herbertson said:

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.........

[carolinec]

Apr 10, 2008 8:07:44 GMT weirdmonger said:

Anyone else listen to Radio Sutch broadcasting from a North Sea redoubt?

Apr 10, 2008 13:52:03 GMT weirdmonger said:

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.

[weirdmonger]

Apr 11, 2008 10:55:33 GMT carolinec said:

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.

[dem bones]

Apr 11, 2008 10:55:33 GMT carolinec said:

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"

Apr 10, 2008 9:05:34 GMT pulphack said:

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.

[franklinmarsh]

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!

[dem bones]

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.

[helrunar]

Great early Sutch track in the first relay of this Halloween show from last year:

wdet.org/posts/2018/10/29/87468-jon-moshiers-annual-halloween-radio-spook-show/

And lots of other delectable horror goodies--lots of Sixties stuff, which feeds the beast.

H.