Dave Clemo - Too Young For Rock And Roll

Published Tuesday 28th March 2023
Dave Clemo - Too Young For Rock And Roll
Dave Clemo - Too Young For Rock And Roll

STYLE: Biography and Autobiography
RATING 6 6 6 6 6 6
OUR PRODUCT CODE: 173839-BOK296
LABEL:
FORMAT: Book General book

Reviewed by Tony Cummings

It was historian John Jay Chapman who wrote, "One of the deepest impulses in man is the impulse to record - to scratch a drawing on a tusk or keep a diary, to collect sagas and to heap cairns. This instinct as to the enduring value of the past is, one might say, the basis of civilisation."

There is something of the historian in me and first in my chosen fields of interests - blues music, then soul music and finally Christian music and gospel - I have spent a lot of my time chronicling the enduring value of the past. I've archived, compiled discographies, written hundreds of articles and conducted thousands of interviews with musicians for the simple reason that I believe that music, to quote from the final paragraph of Too Young For Rock And Roll, has a unique quality. It "has the ability to transcend time. It can take you back to the first time you heard it. It can form such bonds of unity despite the years and miles that separate us."

After thousands of concerts and eight or nine albums, in 2016 Dave Clemo set out to write his life story in not one but four books. It's only now that I'm finally getting around to reading them. Down the years I have read hundreds of books written by or about musicians. I am currently reading Surrender by Bono. Some might be surprised that I can find a book by a rock music megastar and a book by a relatively obscure small-gig musician equally interesting. Popularity of the lack of it has nothing whatsoever to do with the aesthetic quality and lasting value of art, even art as unheralded as cartoons, soap operas or pop music. And personally, I simply don't accept the basic assumption by both fans and music critics that popular music only had creative validity if it finds a large appreciative audience. I passionately believe that if a book or a ballet, a song or a symphony connects deeply with one person other than the man or woman who created it, it deserves to be listened to, preserved and maybe even written about.

It took me years of listening to Dave Clemo's music before I finally heard a few recordings I thought were, in my own subjective opinion, good enough to make me want to listen to them again and again. They may not be up there with the "Sunday Bloody Sunday"s and the "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For"s but they still left sufficient stimulus with me to approach the rather daunting task of reading the four autobiographies that Dave has managed to write since he's all but retired from both performing and recording.

One website has even suggested Too Young For Rock And Roll "speaks volumes as a social study. Too Young For Rock And Roll succinctly captures the black and white, ration diet, post-war austerity into which Dave was born. It's hard for those born later to comprehend how popular music went on to colour the world; from the pastel shades of skiffle to the bright splashes of rock 'n' roll to the psychedelic colours of the swinging sixties Dave captures them all and places them in their historical context."

But of course the "historical context" spoken of is Dave Clemo's history, how, born in 1951, his first home was a beach chalet in Cornwall; how he and his family moved to West London in 1962 and how that Christmas he was given a guitar and spent the next 10 years playing it in various amateur and semi-pro bands, moving from pop covers to prog rock to folk roots.

Clemo writes in the first chapter "in the mid-fifties I was too young for rock and roll, by the mid-seventies I was too old for punk." Going to school in Cornwall he notes his favourite singer he heard on the radio was Helen Shapiro. By age 13 he'd moved to London and in 1962 had a guitar for Christmas. By 1967 he, his friend and brother went to see Pink Floyd and Fairport Convention at the Savile Theatre. Dave's book then takes a bit of a left turn, reviewing gigs that made an impression and records that impacted him before returning to a personal account of the formation with friends of would-be proggers Mrs Dale's Diary (a play on radio soap opera Mrs Dale's Diary) and their entrance into a heat of the 1972 Melody Maker Rock And Folk Band of the Year competition. Reminisces Dave, "It was the first time I'd used a big Marshall stack with my Gibson 330 so it was a great buzz to hear myself so clearly." They came second, got to the area final but that's where their chance of success fizzled out.

Dave and his bandmates were hooked on playing loud, sometimes excessively loud, prog-orientated rock every weekend they could manage until an experience at a pub in London's Holland Park. He describes it as "a life changing sight - [folk] music was playing and the pub was packed." Dave instantly became enamoured with acoustic folk music and went and bought a mandolin with the decent money he was earning in the telesales department of a company making meat pies and sausages. Dave's band, now called Captain Swing (named after a semi-mythical character in the agricultural worker riots in the 1830s), got plenty of engagements including folk festivals. For a season the office worker and weekend prog rocker became an out-and-out folkie. As he recounts, "In October 1972 Sandy Denny released a single called 'Listen Listen'. I bought it and played it constantly. It's probably my favourite single of all time. What I didn't realise until I started writing this account was while we were doing our thing in the beer tent at Chelmsford, Sandy Denny was doing her thing on the main stage. Oh well."

Captain Swing landed support slots for sea shanty man Cyril Tawney and Jasper Carrott when he was a folk singer before comedy fame beckoned. They fitted in well with the beer and politics atmosphere of the '70s folk scene. About the latter Dave writes, "Our band used to finish every gig by singing the anthem of the political left wing: 'The Internationale', which gave me a clue of their political leanings. I was fairly apolitical and a lot of what they talked about went right over my head. I didn't object when we regularly played benefit concerts for the Morning Star newspaper in a pub just off Farringdon Road. It was just a gig.'

But then his love of electric guitars began to assert itself. A chance to make a demo tape led him to buy a new instrument. Throughout his books Dave records in detail each amplifier and guitar purchased. Some readers may find these occasional paragraphs as dull as dishwater, but others may find them interesting and even helpful. And as any biographer will tell you, "you record the things that are really important to you." So Mr Clemo tells us, "A quick scan of the adverts in the music press revealed that one of the local shops had a black Fender Telecaster for sale. It was a 1964 model that had recently been refinished in two-pack blue and was eminently playable. Tempo Music in Hanwell sold heavily discounted Fender guitars and was one of the first H&H stockists in West London. I bought myself a brand new H&H combo and a 1964 Telecaster for less than £300."

Dave finishes his book recounting his and his wife's decision to leave London and relocate to Northampton. He writes, "Looking back after 50 years I see the beginning of a pattern emerging. I was changing jobs about every 18 months. I was changing styles almost as frequently. I wanted to try everything, experience everything. If something didn't work out, then I'd try something different."

In Clemo's next volume, Too Old For Punk (which I'll begin reading once I've finished Bono's tome), Dave will take the reader into the era of his two most "successful" bands, Left Hand Drive and Conspiracy. But the harsh music industry's view of success is, of course, very different to how this talented music maker may view it. I'm looking forward to reading it.

The opinions expressed in this article are not necessarily those held by Cross Rhythms. Any expressed views were accurate at the time of publishing but may or may not reflect the views of the individuals concerned at a later date.

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