Playlist for Book Musik's "The Velvet Mafia" Featuring Joe Meek, Tommy Steele, Billy Fury, etc.

 

We put together a playlist to go with the Book Musik episode on "The Velvet Mafia: The Gay Men Who Ran The Swinging Sixties." We interviewed the author Darryl W. Bullock for this podcast. The Playlist is very detailed and indepth. Everything from Tommy Steele's "Rock With The Caveman" to Lionel Bart to classic Joe Meek, including the amazing "Do You Come Here Often?" by The Tornados. And some Brian Epstein related tracks as well. Enjoy!

Spotify: The Velvet Mafia Playlist for Spotify

Apple Music: The Velvet Mafia Playlist for Apple Music

THE VELVET MAFIA: The Gay Men Who Ran The Swinging Sixties” by Darryl W. Bullock (Omnibus Press) 2021

 

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.

August 1, 2014

August 1, 2014

My earliest memory is being in a crib, and facing my bedroom window.  In the darkness, the light outside the window was still on, but muted, or perhaps yellow, so it wasn’t bright.  Just enough to see outside the window if one needs to check something.  What I did see was a hand coming from the bottom of the window pane and grasping the side, as it slowly moves upward.  A face appeared as well, and it was bloody and distorted.  As a baby I screamed and either my father or mother heard me and they came in to comfort me.  There was a party at the time, taking place in the living room, and it seems the bloodstained face outside my bedroom window had a name.  Ramblin' Jack Elliot.

Jack was and remains a well-known folk singer, who somehow ended up at my parents’ party that night.  I think what happened was because he was drunk,  he fell down outside my bedroom window, and tried to either obtain his balance, or pick himself up by holding onto the window pane.  Nevertheless this is the first time image that I can remember.  To this day, I pretty much avoid sleeping facing a window.  Also it was the first time that I was introduced to fear.  Also being isolated from the noise I heard in the next room, made the experience even more terrifying to me.   But what child is not afraid of the dark and even more important what is outside their window.   I remember my mother telling me a story about her and my uncle, who is a couple of years older, and he was taking care of my mom at their family home, while the parents were out.  At the time, they were in the bedroom upstairs, and my uncle kept telling my mom that there is someone outside the window wanting to get in.  He was only trying to scare her, because that is what big brothers do to little sisters.  The window in question had a gigantic curtain, and my uncle kept teasing her that he will open the window to let in whoever is outside.  While my mom was petrified, and at the exact moment my uncle quickly clears the curtain.  As the curtain opened, it exposed a man attempting to break into their bedroom.  My uncle fainted, the man outside was surprised and he fell off the second floor window ledge, and my mom just stood there looking at my uncle on the floor and at the now-vacant window.

It wasn’t till many years later that I saw the film “Cape Fear” with Robert Mitchum playing Max Cady, that I re-lived the fear I had when I saw Ramblin’ Jack Elliot outside my window.   The presence of Cady just showing up as the family that he’s stalking, is having their low moments. It is just like if the spirit is down, then the evil spirit will come in.  I’m one of those people who can affect a room with my bad mood.  It seems to come out of my pours of my skin, and if I don’t hide it, then it becomes a concern from the people around me.  I just have to keep this in mind, especially if I’m in a work environment, where one has to keep people’s spirits up.  But the strain of having a phony smile on my face, or to laugh off idiotic gestures, is a deep concern of mine.   There is positive and negative energy, and one can totally dwell into either of those two definite landscapes.  I try to avoid the negative feelings, because it tends to overwhelm me, and therefore leads me to make bad decisions, when in actuality, I need to make something good out of the bad.

I often think the world of people like Yves Saint Laurent, because I knew he had a traumatic experience when he was in the military, and suffered under the cruelty of his fellow soldiers.  While he was in the military hospital, he heard the news that he was fired by Christian Dior due to the poor reception of a collection showing.    What happened was Saint Laurent was to be conscripted to serve in the French military during the Algerian war, but Marcel Boussac, the owner of the House of Dior put pressure on the government not to do so.  But once Saint Laurent had savaged reviews of his collection in the French press, Boussac asked that the designer to be conscripted.  So he did go, suffered from a breakdown, and ended up getting electroshock therapy and psychoactive drugs.   This caused a consistent problem for Saint Laurent throughout his life.  Nevertheless he did become successful, and in his own terms as well.   Sometimes the negative can inspire one to over come whatever ills them.  Often they just suffer in silence and do the best that they can be.  I have a tendency to go with fate, but with a whistle through my lips: Cliff Richard’s “Living Doll. ”