Free Dear Boy: The life of Keith Moon by Tony Fletcher Page B

all too willing to go the Elvis Presley route and submerge themselves in pop and pantomime, as if their teen rebellion had been just a pose to get themselves a foothold in the world of entertainment. Even worse for British audiences was the conveyor belt of interchangeable teen idols from the Larry Parnés stable, with their pathetically titillating invented names like Johnny Gentle, Vince Eager and Dickie Pride. Come 1961 and things had got so bad that trad jazz was considered hip once again. Carlo Little had left the army – and Keith Moon school – just in time for the most fallow years of rock music’s history.
    But the flame had been passed on to a new generation before the original fire could be extinguished. Too many teenagers of the late Fifties – like Carlo Little – had been too burned by the excitement to give up now, and standing in the shadows of the new decade they formed a handful of groups who set out to perform the rock’n’roll classics the way they knew they were meant to be. It involved a lot of one-night stands, a lot of cheap bed and breakfasts, a lot of travelling back from the middle and the north of England overnight in run-down old vans never designed for such wear and tear, but it sure beat working in an office, and the rewards were, emotionally at least, if not always financially, tangible.
    “There were a handful of acts, maybe half a dozen,” says Little. “Nobody had big hit records, but you knew that if you went to see them you’d be entertained. It would be a good night out. There was nobody to follow or copy. You had all your records that you got your act from – Little Richard, Elvis, Chuck Berry – and then you worked your act around that.”
    Topping this circuit were Johnny Kidd and the Pirates who, unable to follow up commercially on ‘Shakin’ All Over’, instead hardened themselves musically and intensified their live show, complete with pirate outfits and strobe lights; in this form they would go on to have a dramatic effect on a then unknown young west London band called the Detours who opened for them one night. On a separate tier beneath the Pirates were Joe Brown and the Bruvvers, Shane Fenton and the Fentones (both of whom went on to considerable commercial success), Nero and the Gladiators, Neil Christian and the Crusaders and Cliff Bennett and the Rebel Rousers, all of whose merits are still argued over in late night pub sessions by veterans of the era but none of whom, almost all agree, could hold a candle to the voluminous show that was Screaming Lord Sutch and the Savages. And much of the Savages’ excitement emanated from the back of the stage where, as if by divine intervention, there now sat a British drummer who understood what it took to play rock’n’roll.
    Over the years the line-up of the Savages would include some of the key musicians of the Sixties and Seventies, and their galvanising effect on others can only truly be garnered by talking to those who saw them. Among these hard-core fans were Keith Moon and his new-found friends in the Escorts. While the Mill Hill group was building a set around Cliff Richard and the Shadows tunes – with seven British number ones between 1959 and 1962, there was no one else to compare for popularity – their real passion was for this local band who played rock’n’roll in a way they had never heard it before. “They were the equivalent of a hard rock band today,” says the Escorts’ bass player Colin Haines. “They would grab you by the scruff of the neck and thrash it out. They were very dynamic and loud.”
    Rob Lemon, who like Tony Marsh would eventually realise a personal dream by playing in the Savages, had no doubt where that on-stage energy was derived from. “Carlo Little played drums in the UK like no one else. He was original like you can’t believe. And it was all to do with the bass drum.”
    “He was a fantastic heavyweight rock’n’roll drummer,” said Gerry Evans, “and we were in