Dusty Video Box: 2020

Elvis Presley has a lot to answer for, after him every popstar worth their salt just had to be in a movie and this is one that completely passed me by… although I was in nappies when it was released. Based on Alan Klein’s stage play, it’s similar to Cliff Richard’s films of the time, with a mix of pop and show tunes but at least the latter are rooted in British vernacular and along with the locations and acting, make for a convincing story of London youth.

Both Joe Brown and Marty Wilde took their inspiration from American artists like everyone else but both had more of an edge than Harry Webb and they show it on screen too. Marty Wilde is Herbie Shadbolt and is especially impressive in the early sequences as he leads his gang down Whitecross Street market, which runs between Old Street and the Barbican. He’s a big fella – six feet five inches - and with huge plates of meat (size 12??) – who carries a genuine menace as well as cheeky charm and the boy from Blackheath does not look out of place as he unsettles the stall holders and most of the folk around him.

Don't mess with the big fella on the right! Marty Wilde is tall.

The lads go to the labour exchange to find it full of citizens from other commonwealth countries which leads us into Layabouts Lament, a quite startling song about the impact immigration is having on their waiting time for dole money; things are so bad, they’re going to have to think about getting a proper job. It’s done with humour and you have to remember that the filmmakers anticipated that this would be welcomed by their audience; a reminder of sensibilities shifter albeit perhaps not as much as we’d thought.

Joe Brown can also act and as the banjo-toting Alf Hitchens looks just a little like a young David Bowie (or t’other way round!). He too ain’t working much and this is the cause of constant ranting from his dad, Sam, played by the brilliant Harry H Corbett who runs off his lines in the manner of perfectly practiced guitar solos, slamming his son for laziness and laying about. The long-suffering counter to this is from mother Mary, the equally superb Avis Bunnage, who tries to keep things on an even keel even when Alf’s get up and go seems to have gone and his younger brother, Joey, seems to be taking his lead.

Harry H Corbett lays down the law

Their sister Doris (Grazina Frame) not only has a job but a steady boyfriend, Solly (Monte Landis) who is eminently employed too. Joey and Alf take the mickey but really Sam’s endless ultimatums about putting up of shoving off are not too far from the truth. Cue the song Bruvvers as Doris riffs alongside Joey and Alf about unending sibling grievances.

Alf has a girlfriend, Marylin (Susan Maughan, who had a hit with Bobby’s Girl in 1962) about whom his ambivalence knows no bounds, he’s in a fug, and she knows that he needs to get a hold of himself or disappear in denial. In some ways it’s a well-realised relationship, they’ve run out of steam and either they stay or they go.

Susan Maughan

Michael Carreras directs from a script he co-wrote with Alan Klein, and he brings out the very best from his amateur players with performances of natural exuberance based, not doubt, on characters not unlike themselves. There’s great use of locations, not least Fitzroy Square where Alf duets with Marylin, the north bank at Cleopatra’s Needle and then Denmark Street where Alf tries to hawk his new song to reluctant publishers. It’s his only way forward, he just needs that lucky break…

The youngsters go to concert featuring Freddie and the Dreamers – a band I once saw in Blackpool in 1971 – and showcasing a style of pop music that would soon leave the class of ’58 like Joe and Marty, in the dust. Freddie may have been a loon but his was a Manchester beat group following in the wake of the Liverpudlian style. The Dreamers would have three top three hits in 1963 and a US number one in ’64; Freddie may have been older than Marty and Joe but he was riding the wave.

Dancing to the Dreamers

Here we get the full ridiculous routine of the band in their undies for We Wear Short Shorts as well as Sally Ann dressed in Sally Army uniforms…

Anyway, back to the action, there’s a riot going on at the Dreamers’ gig as Herbie says the right thing to the wrong girl or possibly the other way round and it all kicks off… His team includes Lenny (David Nott), Dave (Barry Bethel) and Jervis (Alan Klein our song and scriptwriter). They prevail and along with Alf sing their victory in Wasn't It A Handsome Punchup. Interesting how fisticuffs are always presented as almost harmless fun from Wayne westerns to rock and pop musicals… “rumbles” sure ain’t what they used to be but there’s no denying the role of violence in youth culture.

The young woman at the heart of the dancefloor dispute... Vivyan Dunbar

Alf gets a job in a music publisher but he’s only biking around sheet music deliveries in the hope of getting a break. Marilyn’s not convinced and just wishes he’d Please Give Me A Chance. But Alf is still to enamoured by the “independence” of Herbie and the gang and they even sing a song about it.

Now, if you’re one of those people expecting success in one aspect to trigger an outbreak of responsible adult thinking about the other, then you may not be far off the mark. But I couldn’t possibly say.

Joe Brown walks down Denmark Street, London's Tin Pan Alley as was...

Dusty verdict: What A Crazy World has much good spirit and the songs are worthy efforts that allow the singers to shine as actors and interpreters.

The supporting cast is very effective, chiefly Avis and ‘arry but there’s also a very interesting device using Michael Ripper to play a variety of characters from street hawking spivs to labour exchange administrators and generic old fellas; every time he quotes the line “bleeding kids” either in condemnation of in affection. It underpins the film’s central concern of generational conflict but also reconciliation as the lads, mostly, grow up.

Alan Klein was only 23 at the time and a bit of a pop star himself, he went on to sing vocals for the New Vaudeville Band under the title of Tristam, Seventh Earl of Cricklewood… a man of many talents!

The film is now available from Network on Blu-ray as well as DVD, details on their website.

It’s 1975 and I’m thirteen, obsessed with tapes of Dark Side of the Moon, Foxtrot and Brain Salad Surgery and eagerly awaiting my pre-order of Wish You Were Here… I loved Slade, T-Rex and Sweet in 73-74 but things move fast when you’re young and within eighteen months I’d be hoarding punk singles and from there onto Magazine, the Banshees and the Bunnymen. So much changed in the seventies and despite reading the NME, Sounds and Record Mirror I have no recollection of this film at all.

A musical comedy celebrating the second wave, and second tier, of glam, Never Too Young to Rock was released in summer ’75 and it missed the boat, certainly in my case but also with much of the record buying public with a soundtrack LP coming out in August – weeks before WYWH - and spending five weeks on the charts peaking at no. 30… All of which is very unfair on the acts involved but pop’s a fickle thing and the majority of these bands are either still touring or, in one case, writing multi-million selling songs for Kylie Minogue, Sophie Ellis Baxter and many more.

The plot’s a load of hooey but it’s just an excuse to let The Glitter Band, The Rubettes, Mud, Slik and Bob Kerr's Whoopee Band (!?) perform some of their hits and, in Mud’s case, to lark about allowing their personalities to shine. Pop music has been banned from TV and our Hero (Please Sir’s Peter Denyer), has invented a device to track bands wherever they may play – just like a TV detector van only for glam. His aim is to gather the forces of glam for a concert to save the future of Rock although I’m not quite sure how.

Freddie Jones and the Group Detector Van

He’s enlisted the help of brass band aficionado Mr. Rockbottom (Freddie Jones), who drives him around the country in search of those lost chords, grumbling under his breath about “real music”. Just as Rockbottom is conflicted so are the forces of anti-rock out to stop Hero from his mission led by Bandsman Milligan (John Clive, always reliably energised for bad deeds) who drives his crew around on a steam engine that would make Fred Dibnah proud.

First act to be located are the mighty Mud who’re performing in a roadside café full of red and blue football fans. Sheila Steafel is the over-stretched Cafe Proprietor and the legendary Nosher Powell is a footie fan encouraged by Mr Rockbottom to start a fight with the opposing fans. Seventies snapshots don’t get more pointed than this one as the food flies into the faces of Donny, Bowie and assorted pop star posters and the great British sport of footie thuggery is celebrated as in a John Wayne western.

Mud enetertain the footie fans before the fists and the flans start flying

Hero gets Les, Rob, Ray and Dave to agree to play in his concert and they also set off on their mud motorbikes to protect him on his quest, stunning the opposition with sucker-tipped darts just when all seems lost. As with the other bands, the songs they perform, Tiger Feet, Dyna-mite and The Cat Crept In are all from 1973-74 and even now my song-sense places them before 1975… That aside, you can see the band’s appeal and the songs remain daft fun.

Next up the van finds Bob Kerr's Whoopee Band singing 5,000 Year Old Rock from the balcony of a stately home which is probably where you’d expect to find them. It’s an odd inclusion in some ways, Kerr was a member of both the Bonzo Dog Doo-dah Band and the New Vaudeville Band, and the jazzy eccentricity is hardly glam but underlines the film’s attempt at surrealist comedy.

Freddie can't watch as Dame Sally James and Peter Denyer groove to the Glitter

Definitely glam are The Glitter Band who are located on a river boat supposedly making a film. Their droning groove, sax and twin drums stands up far more than expected as a continuation of the epic sound of Rock n’ Roll Parts 1 (and 2) with the now disgraced leader of the gang… No Gary here, just glitter and I especially enjoyed the mob chanting of Let’s Get Together Again. Also present on the boat is a young Sally James – later to inspire a million schoolboys on Tiswas – who injects much needed feminine presence on this very male movie.

There’s a glimpse of a new band, Slick, playing their debut "miss", The Boogiest Band In Town in the iconic Marquee Club of all places... and featuring a long-haired pretty boy lead singer called Midge Ure. Within a couple of years, he was in Glen Matlock’s post-Pistol power pop band, Rich Kids before joining Ultravox and co-writing the biggest charity song ever. There’s a wealth of musical history in this film…

The Rubettes were never my cup of tea and yet here they also are proving me a little bit wrong as they are driven through the streets on the back of a truck showcasing their fresh sound and impressive hooks, not just for their number one smash Sugar Baby Love but also Tonight and Juke Box Jive. Glam was For The People, and music that celebrated simple pleasures.

Midge Ure on white guitar; get yer bloody hair cut!!

Hero and Rockbottom end up on an army assault course martialled by army captain Peter Noone (ex-Herman and the Hermits who had an unlikely hit with a version of Bowie’s Oh You Pretty Things…) and just as the nonsense reaches a peak, we finally make it to the big finish. Two songs each from Mud, the Glitter Band and Rubettes leading to a rousing finale as they all sing the title song and My Rockbottom gets to play a few notes on his tuba.

Dusty Verdict: It’s only rock ‘n roll but I liked it.

As directed by Dennis Abey the film’s series of set pieces maintains a pop-tastic pace and in spite of the fact that all of this is just so uncool, it’s still enjoyable… As a snapshot of an era that fell foul to the shifts in trend that undermine almost every attempt at capturing the immediacy of popular culture. By the time a band is big enough to warrant a feature film and by the time you’ve spent filming and producing it, in most cases release comes after the window of success has started to close. The exceptions to the are, of course, The Beatles and Elvis, but even Slade’s excellent In Flame and, er, Spice World… landed after the big bangs for both bands.

All together now: Mud, Glitter Band and Rubettes

But here we can see exactly why the bands were popular and the exuberance of their performance transcends the weakness of the plot device and wacky narrative. You’re never too old to rock is my guess!

You can watch the film on Amazon Prime Video for FREE whilst DVDs are also available. It’s no classic but it is fun and that’s what glam was all about.