SATURDAY NIGHT -PHRENIA

See Also: CARNABY STREET; NIGHTCLUBS, DISAPPEARED; POP & ROCK

In the early 1960s The Detours were an ambitious, musically literate West London band that decided that the best way to advance their career would be to identify themselves with the vibrant Mod movement. The group's association with it was aided by Pete Meaden, who was generally regarded as being the archetypal mod. He tweaked a number of their songs, notably I m The Face, and renamed the unit The High Numbers. The mods appreciated their vitality and took to watching them perform.

Kit Lambert and his business partner Chris Stamp were working in the film industry but decided to break into the music business as band managers. Evening after evening the pair drove along the streets of London looking for pubs and clubs outside which motor scooters had been parked. Lambrettas and Vespas were the mods vehicles of choice. Where there were dozens of them the tyros would go in and scrutinise any groups that might be playing. During the summer of 1964 this approach led to Lambert watching The Numbers perform at The Railway Tavern in Harrow & Wealdstone.

Lambert and Stamp took the band under their guidance and renamed it The Who. The pair had organisational skills that Meaden lacked, not least of which had been signing the quartet to a binding contract. The duo was attuned to the importance of cultivating a strong visual image for the group. To help garner press attention, Lambert and Stamp indulged the youths habit of destroying their instruments during their performances. This trope ran the band and their managers into deep debt, however, it enabled them to generate stories in the media. These became one of the foundations upon which their subsequent international success was based.

The two managers created a situation in which The Who went on to enjoy, in Stamp s words, profitless prosperity . The musicians personal affluence came from income that was generated by their performances rather than by the considerable sales of their recordings. In 1972 the singer Roger Daltrey tired of this condition and had the group's accounts audited. Lambert and Stamp's slipshod conduct was revealed. The pair's services were dispensed with the following year.¹

The Who had numerous links to Shepherd's Bush, not least of which was that the vocalist was a native of the district. In 1973 the band released the album of their rock opera Quadrophenia.² This was adapted into a movie of the same title that was premiered six years later. As an acknowledgement of the Goldhawk Road mods of the 1960s, the film contained a sequence that was shot in the A. Cookes eel pie shop.

The literary precocity of Nik Cohn led to his being taken on by the New Music Express weekly paper. For several years he was one of the most influential rock journalists in Britain. He had a degree of involvement in The Who. In the mid-1970s he moved to the United States.

New York Magazine hired Mr Cohn to pen a piece about an obscure underground music scene that was beginning to appear in the city. It was called disco. The nightclubs in which the phenomenon was emerging were located in remote, impoverished districts of the metropolis. Therefore, the publication furnished the writer with a driver.

The pair eventually found the particular club that they were looking for in a down-at-heel portion of Brooklyn. The car drew to a halt. The journalist sat in it for a while so that he could collect his thoughts. While he was doing so, the establishment s doors burst open, its bouncers frogmarched a man out onto the street and there they beat him up. The writer looked on in horror. When he had recovered from the shock of what he had just witnessed, he instructed his driver to take them back to Manhattan. He had not even stepped outside of the vehicle.

There remained the matter of writing the article. Cohn's response to this situation was to compose a short work of fiction. A dozen years previously, he had spent a lot of time in the company of the Goldhawk Road mods. He drew upon his memories of them. He adapted the details of their scene to make it fit contemporary New York. The preoccupations of working-class youths with clothes and music proved to be able to cross the Atlantic Ocean seamlessly; 1960s Cockneys metamorphosed into being 1970s Italian Americans living in Brooklyn. Tribal Rites of The New Saturday Night, upon its publication, was heralded as being an insightful study of American popular culture. Its movie rights were sold. The film Saturday Night Fever (1977) was based upon them.³

Location: 84 Eaton Place, SW1X 8LN. Lambert and Stamp shared a flat. (blue, brown)

113 Ivor Court, Gloucester Place, NW1 6BP. Lambert and Stamp shared a flat. (blue, brown)

The Goldhawk Social Club, 205 Goldhawk Road, W12 8EP. Mr Daltrey was a native of Shepherd's Bush and a member of the Club. The band played the venue on a number of occasions.

33 Wardour Street, W1D 6PT (purple, blue)

¹. Subsequently, Stamp and The Who re-established a cordial relationship.

². Mr Meaden believed that he had inspired the creation of Jimmy, the central character in Quadrophenia.

³. Meaden also came to form the view that Tony Manero had been based upon him.

David Backhouse 2024