Do you realise that these days the careers of rock's key people are con trolled by the fantasies of their wives: Lennon, McCartney, Dylan, Bowie, Bolan, Jagger now I guess. What's wrong with wives isn't their cosiness (Angie and Bianca and Linda and the rest of them are all bone) but their love light, the glint in their eyes. They stand by their men, and exclusively. Don't let anyone touch. No gropies, no groupies, no mates. Bobby can't come out to play and we must stay in our places this side of the lights - to be hectored (Lennon), dazzled (Bowie), played on (Bolan), despised (McCartney), conned (Dylan). I don't like being treated this way and I don't know what these stars and their women are so smug about. Rock's about what we do to them, not what they do to us; without the flair of his fans a rock star flounders, style without content, a athetic fallacv.

It’s been happening here to fifties rock Grease and let the Good Times 4 Roll have been welcomed (“charming youth and vigour”) by the same creeps who sniffed the music as junk fifteen years ago. Rock V roll is charming now, safe and tedious, it s got no audience to do anything but ap-

plaud. Just another good show and the most exciting thing I saw this month was a kid walking round Coventry market with bright green hair..

Otherwise, nobody’s been getting much on or off. Gary Glitter grinds to his fifth week at number one; the New Musical Express is now the world’s biggest selling music paper (and Melody Maker is ageing fast); the Stones are finally going to do their open air concert for Lord Harlech - a year late and twice the price (but ‘Angie’ sounds good, a pop song! strings! whisper who dares Jagger as Andy Williams). The mood of this summer is sobriety. The kids may be alright in green; for musicians it’s short back and sides. As the old (eccentric) groups do their annual suffle — swaps and transfers and nervous breakdowns, the hatred tells - the new groups keep calm. They are craftsmen, tight-assed celts. The Average White Band, Blue, Deke Leonard have made excellent albums: songs, skill and care. Good bldkes, and the best blokes of all are 10 C.C.

10 C.C. are the first really successful anti-stars (pipping Dave Edmunds). Impeccable pasts: Manchester and the Mindbenders, Hot Legs and “Neanderthal Man,” Strawberry studios; Graham Gouldman wrote “Bus Stop” and “For Your Love.” Impeccable career: they sneaked to a number one unnoticed. Their first single, “Donna,” was a fifties teen-weepie, playing with falsettos and Is bass, it appealed to the most soppy

Iony Blackburn) and the most cynical 3hn Peel) pop tastes and made the top three. Most people enjoyed it for a while and assumed (like me) that as 10 C.C. jwere on UK they were a one-off Johnathan King joke. The next single, “Johnny Don’t Do It,” was a motor cycle tragedy and no-one was moved. Then “Rubber Bullets,” a prison drama interpreted by the Beach Boys, Charlie Gillett and I interviewd Johnathan King last April and he assured us that “Rubber Bullets” (just then released) would be an English number one and break 10 C.C. (and UK records) in the U.S. Three months later and somehow the first promise was fulfilled; TO C.C. have never appeared live (or on Top of the Pops till they had to) and the BBC first banned the record (they thought it was about Ireland) and then played it grudgingly and occasionally with a minute cut out. But IQ C.C. did top the charts and their albumT come out to universal critical acclaim. 2 guess they will make it in America.

10 C.C.’s music is pretty and witty and bright. They use a variety of 50s and 60s pop styles to treat a variety of 50s and 60s pop problems; the point is to honour tne banality of their own . musical past by sending it up. Skilled craftsmen, perfect productions - on “Rubber Bullets” it really ^is neat the way each vocalist comes in as the story unfolds. But, under the fun, the words that best suit 10 C.C. are “confidence” and “maturity”; the group they most remind me of (despite utter stylistic differences) is the Band (10 C.C. treat their themes jokingly not seriously -but that’s another story of the differences between English and American rock culture). 10 C.C. are there to admire, respect, laugh at, appreciate, employ as session men (listen to Neil Sedaka’s fine new album) even to love. But they won’t change anyone’s lives. No green hair. Good blokes. Ordinary people.

The theory is (or was - only those wives still believe it) that the star is an extraordinary fellow who brings excitement and glamour into the lives of his fans || ordinary people. In fact, it’s the other way round. Stars, dull people, are made glarourous by the extraordinary behaviour of their fans. I mean, could anyone be more boring than Jim Reeves? And could anything be stranger than his English fans: calling all their children Jim (even the girls); speakers in every room, the velvet tones curling round all the photos; annual trips to the grave; still in black, still in black.

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There are extraordinary stars, guys who’d’ve been there whatever their circumstances. I’d say Dylan and Lennon for artistic reasons, and Keith Richard cos he’s a genuine nutter. But most musicians really are the boy next door. There were thousands of Georges and Pauls in Liverpool (and they’d’ve all settled for God and Linda foo if they’d had the chance), there still are thousands of Noddy Holders in Wolverhampton. There are even people so straight that in the wonderful world of show-biz they go mad: Eric Bur don, geordie lad, found love and peace, dope and blacks, and flipped. And maybe the oddest ball is Derek Taylor, the press men’s press man (Beatles, Byrds, etc.). He’s just published the first fragments of his autobiography {As Time Goes By) and it’s very peculiar: an ordinary provincial journalist (funerals and fines) is flung (for no particular reason) into the middle of the Beatles maelstrom and stays to centre various other storms as time goes by — L.A., Apple, WEA. The PR world is unreal anyway; for a local newspaperman, lacking the art or cynicism to control his situation, it was like being in one of Ali Baba’s pots — murky, hidden from the world, glimpses of gold and silver - ideas, talents, movement. Derek Taylor’s life (and book) are wonder-filled. Cos whereas yer average fan takes risks, deliberately confuses his fantasy with reality, and whereas yer average star avoids risks, quickly adjusting to the reality of fantasy-weaving, Derek Taylor doesn’t know the difference, has ridden his life smoothly, never realised there were risks involved. It’s a remarkable performance and he still loves his wife.

The other possibility is Ian Hunter’s. Mott is the album that All The Young Dudes should have been. Mott the Hoople have always been one of England’s more clodhopping groups — naive, eager to please, full of verve. Honest Joes; bound to their trade by their vision of the perfect combination of Dylan and the Stones, but never at ease in it:

Buffin lost his child-like dreams

and Mick lost his guitar,

And Verden grew a line or two and

Overend’s just a Rock’n’Roll star,

Behind these shades The visions fade

And I learned a thing or two...

For more details see Ian Hunters’ forthcoming book on Life on the American Trail.

Meanwhile, what makes Mott the Hoople important is that they’re the first group to go through the David Bowie look-at-me trip and come out the other side. Not too disgusted, not so proud. They’re seen where they’ve been and they can ha idle it, old values okay:

Yeh it’s a mighty long way down

Rock’n’Roll

Through the Bradford Cities

and the Orioles

N’you look like a star but

you’re really out on parole

(All the way froin Memphis).

The album’s not all right. There’s clumsiness and pretension; they’re still struggling. But, praise be, they now “get their kicks out of guitar licks’’ and that’s something to be thankful for, this dreary summer. ^