“How it should be”: the American classic rock band Ian Dury stuck his neck out to defend in 1978
It was 1977: the year punk broke. At the very heart of a very serious, snarling scene, surrounded by the likes of the Sex Pistols, The Clash and The Slits, Ian Dury named his debut studio album New Boots and Panties!! What an absolute hero.
Of course, Dury wasn’t new to being the one face smiling in a sea of sneers. His time fronting Kilburn and the High Roads also saw him injecting a much-needed influx of larks into a scene with all the whimsical spirit of a cenotaph. He offered a fractured world a dance inducing rhythm stick.
He was able to escape a reputation of being nothing more than a clown let in with the “real artists”, though. For many, Dury was the rock singer who had his cake and ate it too. To give the nation several ‘Reasons to be Cheerful’ while also retaining a very real degree of punk rock clout. Compare that to the likes of Madness, who, by the time they were releasing some of the best British singles of the 1980s, had all the street cred of Tiswas.
Now, the jury’s out on whether having street cred is that important in the first place, but it is nice to have the respect of your peers. Dury, though, ever the contrarian, was shouting out artists who even the most open-minded of scenesters of the time would be cringing at. Case in point: an interview that the Blockheads’ mainman gave to Sandy Robertson of Sounds in February 1978.
The interview begins with a discussion about whether rock ‘n’ roll should be treated as a job or as fun, with Dury unexpectedly seeing it as the former. He compares his job to several boxers of the day, and Robertson transcribes Dury’s molasses-thick estuary accent to complete the immersion.
Explaining: “It’s like Primo Carnera. The bell goes an’ ‘es out there, but the rest of the time ‘es on a lead. John Conteh is trying to beat that system, workin’ it so ‘e only ‘as to get one set of slaps a year, so ‘is brain isn’t floating around by the time ‘es thirty. And MY manager treats me like a bloke with a bit of choice.”
Robertson goes on to say that rock is a fun place to be, though, derisively pointing to a band like Kiss as a group whose image and theatrics are more important than the music. It’s a statement he’s entirely correct about, by the way. Dury, despite acknowledging that this is his job, does say that it should all be fun.
Adding: “I think Kiss and the Funkadelic and Clinton affair are really and truly remarkable and great and wonderful. It’s what happens that I like…the bloody atmosphere! It’s like a circus. That’s ‘ow it should be… It shouldn’t necessarily be extremely serious. It should be FUN, first of all, be exciting.”
This sense of an explosion of fun is what first attracted Dury to the genre in his youth. As he said of his first exposure to ‘Woman Love’, the B-side to Gene Vincent’s ‘Be-Bop-A-Lula’, “When I was 14 or 15 I went to see a film called The Girl Can’t Help It,” he says.
Adding, “And it was full of rock ‘n’ rollers – Little Richard, Eddie Cochrane…and Gene Vincent singing ‘Be-Bop-A-Lula.’ It’s in the film for about 18 seconds – you can hear it in the background. I couldn’t believe it! What’s that!? The voice, the song and the visuals combined, and my brain exploded. This (‘Woman Love’) is the B-side to that single. I believe it’s quite rude, but nobody knows what he’s talking about!” In some ways, Kiss carried that spirit on into the American classic rock arena.
Like Robertson, Dury is entirely correct about this as well. From Bo Diddley proudly thrashing a rectangular guitar to Fontaines DC making a guttural gasp the hook of the year, rock is at its best when it mixes the profound with the silly. Who better to remind us of that than the man who once proudly extolled the virtues of “being in my nuddy”?
