A Brief Tribute to Billy Fury.

One of the best gigs I went to in the whole of 2008 (and boy did I ever go to some good ones), and one of my best memories of last summer overall, was Calvin Johnson, playing at a youth club in Finsbury Park.

I won’t talk about the show in great detail, cos that’s not the point of this post, (although if you go to the Upset The Rhythm website and refresh the banner at the top enough times, you’ll be rewarded with a shot of myself and various pals looking rapturous in the audience), but: go see him!

During one of his always entertaining digressions, Calvin started talking about how he’d always wanted to play in Liverpool when touring with the Beat Happening, but had never been able to, until now. “You see, one of my greatest musical heroes came from Liverpool”, he said. Yeah, yeah, yeah, the audience respond with psychic eye-rolling smileys. He kept going on about it though, talking about what a great, musical city Liverpool is, and how dubious UK promoters had always discouraged him from going there for one reason or another…. until finally he exploded; “I mean, BILLY FURY came from Liverpool!”

I think I was still laughing my ass of at this classic reversal-of-expectation, as Calvin – obvious a sincere and very big fan - explained that he’d gone to visit a statue of Billy Fury when in Liverpool a few days previous (and what a statue – see above), and proceeded to rhapsodise about the pure genius of the lyrical phrasing on one of Fury’s b-sides (sadly I forget which one).

If I was familiar with the name Billy Fury at all at this point, it was as one of the memorably nom-de-plumed stable of prefabricated late 50s/early 60s pre-Beatles British pop idols managed by archetypal gay Denmark St. impresario Larry Parnes (also see Johnny Gentle, Marty Wilde etc.). Runners up to Cliff Richard basically, playing watered down rock n’ roll and Tin Pin Alley standards in an ‘all round entertainer’ mould to square seaside theatre crowds.

Count the unfair assumptions in the preceding sentence and despair I guess, but nonetheless, that’s the way canonical rock history has judged these guys: look elsewhere punks, nothing to see here.

Reinforcing this impression, I next came across some references to Fury last month, whilst reading Ray Davies’ superb and bizarre autobiography/paranoid ego fantasy ‘X-Ray’ (read it, read it, read it). Early in their career, Ray relates, The Kinks were assigned a fastidious git of a tour manager, to drill the unruly teenage rockers into a shapely entertainment unit. This guy, it seems, was particularly keen on talking about how he used to work for Billy Fury, and what a consummate entertainer and gentleman Billy used to be, in contrast to the disobedient young thugs he was now forced to deal with.

Reprimanding Dave Davies for absent-mindedly pissing out of the window on one occasion, it seems this tour manager, when challenged, exclaimed that not only did the sainted Billy Fury restrict his pissing to designated toilets like a decent human being, but, IN FACT, Billy Fury was such a professional that he never remembered him going to the toilet AT ALL.

Cue hilarity from The Kinks, as the generation gap widens further, and Billy Fury’s professionalism becomes a running joke amongst them forever more as a procession of grown ups try to tell them how to behave.

But, as a slightly overenthusiastic contributor to Billy’s Wikipedia page puts it, “Fury's fans and contemporaries in music knew he was a rocker and the real thing musically”, and, curiosity suitably piqued by these contrasting references, I’ve recently been listening to ‘Billy Fury: The EP Collection’ on See For Miles records. And I’m afraid to say, I’m going to have to side with Calvin and the Wikipedia guy, because, genital-less anti-rock n’ roller or not, some of these Billy Fury tracks absolutely kick ass!

Ok, there are some lame songs (and a ‘Christmas Prayer’), but, especially compared to the morass of sloppily recorded MOR dreck that comprised much of pre-Beatles commercial British pop, most of these cuts are just extraordinary in their shining, slinky, fulsome awesomeness, comparable to the contemporary work of Sam Cooke, Buddy Holly, Phil Spector, Elvis… etc.

Check it out:

Wondrous Place
Saved
Play It Cool
Don’t Jump

If I don’t hear those gettin’ laid down at the next Upset The Rhythm noise scenester type happening I attend, something’s going wrong.

(Stereo Sanctity does not condone pissing out of windows by the way, even if you are Dave Davies.)

Labels: 1960s, Billy Fury, Calvin Johnson, pop, The Kinks