THE VELVET MAFIA: The Gay Men Who Ran The Swinging Sixties” by Darryl W. Bullock (Omnibus Press) 2021
If I had my own record shop, I would name the shop after Darryl W. Bullock’s book “The Velvet Mafia.” In my shop, instead of having sections or categories on artists, I would have Larry Parnes, Brian Epstein, Joe Meek, Robert Stigwood, Simon Napier-Bell, and Andrew Loog Oldham sections. Since these gentlemen are not recording artists but managers and producers, it will focus on their pop music view. Mostly gay, when being gay was illegal in England up until 1967, these figures articulate and sold generations music that was essential and sometimes bad. Here, bad is a sign of genius. All above are strong visionaries in how they sold a product - usually good-looking males, with occasionally questionable music talents, and artists of great importance and brilliance.
Due to the laws and the straight world, LGBT professionals had to work publicly and secretively. Managers like Larry Parents and Brian Epstein came from Jewish working-class families who had retail shops. Both tried to enter the show biz world as entertainers or actors but realized that they could go into showbiz through promoter and manager. For Parnes, his ‘yes’ moment was seeing the teenage Tommy Steele in a Solo coffee house and Epstein visiting the Liverpool Cavern to see the future Fab Four. Both saw the future, and especially Parnes invented homegrown British orientated rock n’ roll. The Beatles, of course, became a planet to themselves.
The book covers many grounds, but the focus is on Parnes, Epstein, Meek, Stigwood, and songwriter Lionel Bart. Each figure has other personalities circling them, and eventually, they mixed with the others. There are other managers/visionaries such as Andrew Loog Oldham and Simon Napier-Bell. Still, they will get their own book, or there will be a sequel to this perfect volume. I love pop music because it must be part of a more extensive culture or society. The Gay world so secretive, even with their own language at times, Polari, which is traced back to the 19th-century, and possibly to the 16th. It is a form of can’t slang that only insiders can understand. Here the Managers/Promoters made marketing decisions to create a product that appeals to the Gay’s sensibility and the screaming female fan market. Parnes is not a music person, but he realized that Rock n’ Roll needed its own platform in England and not shared with clowns, jugglers, and comedians. The roots of music hall culture will not disappear but transform into British rock n’ roll packaged tours. At times even great American artists such as Gene Vincent, Eddie Cochran, and Buddy Holly would be part of the big show. This cross-continental programming fueled the imagination and desires of British youth. Many of the musicians from the British Invasion have seen Buddy, Eddie, and Gene.
At the beginning of his career, who would have thought Robert Stigwood would end up being the king of showbiz. Managing Cream and Bee Gees, or the talented Lionel Bart, would lose all his dough. Parnes rarely made financial mistakes, and at times Epstein was overwhelmed with problems of narcotics, a hard love life, and finances that went totally out of his control. The 1960s was in consistent motion. I think this was the force that led these gentlemen to use their desires to make money (always the concern) and forge a new liberating culture.
Darryl W. Bullock’s “The Velvet Mafia” is a well-documented look at that decade. With the skill of a historian/journalist, he captures these figures in motion and all the byproducts of that landscape. Here you get the Kray Twins and the voices of the young British artists as their lives being changed by these business and social visionaries. Joe Meek’s sad narration is told here as well. It’s a fantastic story of a man struggling with his place in society and being a genius in his field of record production. Kimley and I discuss and interview Bullock on his book on our podcast Book Musik. It will be up on March 15, 2021.
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