Mark Radcliffe - Crossroads: In Search of the Moments That Changed Music

Also by Mark Radcliffe

Non-fiction

Reelin in the Years

Thank You for the Days

Showbusiness

Fiction

Northern Sky

First published in Great Britain in 2019 by Canongate Books Ltd, 14 High Street, Edinburgh EH1 1TE

canongate.co.uk

This digital edition first published in 2019 by Canongate Books

Copyright Mark Radcliffe, 2019

The right of Mark Radcliffe to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders and obtain their permission for the use of copyright material. The publisher apologises for any errors or omissions and would be grateful if notified of any corrections that should be incorporated in future reprints or editions of this book.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available on request from the British Library

ISBN 978 1 78689 815 9
eISBN 978 1 78689 816 6

For Bella, in sickness and in health

F or me, 2018 was an eventful year. I turned sixty. My dad died. So did my faithful companion, Toto the cocker spaniel. Big changes were forced on me at work. And to top it all I was diagnosed with cancer of the tongue and throat, from which, mercifully, I am in remission.

Some good stuff happened too, of course. I had a great sixtieth birthday in Uzs. One of my daughters got engaged, another got into her first-choice university and the third did brilliantly well in her GCSEs. Nice one, girls.

Another highlight was a trip to the USA with two old friends whod also reached the same significant birthday. During this trip I found myself standing at a famous crossroads, which Ill tell you all about in Chapter 1. It felt like a serendipitous place to be as I was already experiencing something of a crossroads year myself, and it called to mind something someone had once said to me.

Years ago, when making a programme about the incendiary and hugely influential Canvey Island rhythm and blues band Dr Feelgood, I talked to the veteran music journalist Charles Shaar Murray about the group. He opined that they had found themselves at a crossroads in British music where a lot of interesting things fed in and a lot of equally interesting things, not least punk, headed out. That idea had always stayed with me and, as I found myself at a turning point both literally and metaphorically I got to thinking about how many musicians had reached crossroads moments of their own where everything changed for them personally, but more crucially how these events reverberated beyond the personal, shifting the course of music and influencing generations of artists to come.

With this in mind, Ive interpreted the concept of the crossroads in several different ways. There are intersections of cultural movements, times when artists experienced a major change in their own lives, where societys mores took a sudden lurch or where a seemingly random turn in musical experimentation created something almost by accident, which would come to be seen as a key moment in the development of popular music.

So, in this book Ive charted a course through some of those moments although I should say that I dont consider whats contained here as a definitive list. You might well think of plenty of others as you read it. Its not intended to be a textbook. Everything here is true as far as Ive been reasonably able to check, but I havent got bogged down in historical detail. Rather, I wanted to take the bones of each story and understand the feelings and emotions that resulted in the creation of records which, when released, changed things for ever. And, perhaps, in some way better to understand the crossroads that I found myself at last year.

Mark Radcliffe. Not at an actual crossroads but in a cul-de-sac in Cheshire. Halloween 2018.

So, have you guys been laid?

W eve all had interesting conversations with taxi drivers in our time but as an opening gambit this still came as a something of a surprise. The cabbie in question was a generously proportioned African American gentleman, memorably kitted out in a white and gold velour track suit, oversized and unlaced Timberland boots and a leather fedora. Its not often you feel under-dressed when being picked up in a minicab, but this was certainly one of those rare occasions.

On the morning in question this voluble, lavishly attired rou was collecting me and my travelling companions Jamie and Phil from a hotel in downtown Memphis, where North Front Street crosses Jefferson Avenue, to take us out to Graceland as per the itinerary for our collective sixtieth birthday road trip. I checked the schedule again just to confirm that getting laid hadnt been slipped in there as an optional extra by our travel agent Shannon. It seemed unlikely even though they do always tell you to read through all documentation, but there didnt appear to be any brothel vouchers in our travel pack.

It was rainy that day in Memphis. The Mississippi river, which in my mind was going to be a glistening mile-wide ribbon peppered with chugging paddle steamers from the decks of which distant straw-hatted relations of Tom Sawyer dispensed cheery waves, was a Lowry-esque Salfordian smudge of turgid grey traversed by weary goods locomotives hauling their endless chains of rusting containers all the way to Arkansas.

Being practical souls, the three of us had dressed for the weather and were sitting in the taxi in our firmly zipped and poppered cagoules, while our charmer of a chauffeur indulged in several minutes of sexually infused badinage and innuendo with the ample receptionist. Once he took the wheel you would have thought that one look at us would have told him that the answer to his question was only ever going to be in the negative. People in Memphis to get laid probably dont pack cagoules, do they? On reflection it occurred to me that his enquiry wasnt actually restricted to the immediate locale. Perhaps he glanced at us and wondered whether wed been laid ever. Again, the way we looked that day, a response in the affirmative was by no means a foregone conclusion.

As longtime buddies since university days, and music nuts our whole lives, Phil, Jamie and I had always planned a trip to some of the key historical sights of the birth of rock and roll and R&B. Memphis has not only Graceland, but also the Sun and Stax studios and the blues joints of Beale Street with their neon hoardings and promise of honest sweaty bands and cheap liquor. Nashville has a similar strip for the cream of country bar bands on Broadway, the Grand Ole Opry and the Country Music Hall of Fame. For the journey between the two cities wed opted to take a scenic route called the Natchez Trace Parkway which rolls through endless miles of woodland, dipping into Tennessee, Alabama and Mississippi and stopping amongst other places at Elviss birthplace in Tupelo where the shotgun shack he was born in still stands on its original footings.

Before heading on the parkway to Tupelo, though, we detoured to Clarksdale, Mississippi. In many ways it is such a classic American small town that at first you wonder if you havent strayed onto a film set. Naturally the streets are on a grid pattern and none of the buildings are above two or three storeys high. Cars park diagonally into the curb, every store and house has a bench on the stoop and puffs of dancing dust swirl with every rare breath of breeze. The walls are painted in bright oranges, pinks and turquoises, or at least they are colours that were bright once. Chipped, faded and heat ravaged, it looks like there hasnt been a reliable painter and decorator in town since the mid-Sixties.