Batley Variety Club is situated slightly off at a tangent from Leeds, deep in the bowels of England’s roast beef and puppy-fat hinterlands. People still call it the Las Vegas of the North, but in reality it’s little more than a sophisticated workingman’s club which happens to pay top dollar for its artistes. The “future attractions” billboard boasts such luminaries as Lulu and Neil Sedaka — “Gilbert O’Sullivan is the real favorite here,” mutters the waitress, who looks like she might’ve stepped out of Five Easy Pieces.

It’s somehow fitting, therefore, that the “1974 English Rock ’n’ Roll Revival Show” should terminate its marginally successful stint around the concert halls of Britain here at Batley. Revival packages have always been pretty much the exclusive property of American impresarios like Richard Nader; despite the existence of something like That’ll Be The Day, the English have, on the whole, no real desire to swoop back into their not-so-lustrous rock past. Particularly when you consider the murky pap that held sway on British airwaves just prior to the first sprputing of Merseymania and the Beatle dream. And why should they, for what was witnessed for two nights at Batley can only be described as an exercise in English lowcamp.

Organizer Hal Carter, a chubby-faced lad from the 50s who (like Led Zep’s Peter Grant) had worked his way up from being a roadie to actually managing the performers he once hauled equipment for, had dragged together a bunch of late-50s minor-league deadbeats from their jobs on garage lots or wearisome stints in fifth-grade cabaret and heaped them on one bill. His exuberant hope was that at least two would go on to bigger things a la Gary Glitter and Alvin Stardust: senile, failed old English rockers regurgitated into the form of stumbling, buffoon-like androgynoids who are reaching a high premium on the English pop market at the moment.

The most likely prospects for such an ascension were, by Carter’s reckoning, one Carl Simmons, a gawky-looking rock pianist of average capabilities who used to have a residency in a London clip joint, and Billy Fury, the only bonafide “star” on the whole bill and more blonde and beautiful than ever.

Meanwhile the audience has to contend with oddities like Tommy Bruce, who made his reputation by ripping off the Big Bopper (his vocal timbre is such that it makes Jim Dandy Mangrum sound like Smokey Robinson) and covers his obvious paucity of talent with a continual flow of ye olde English lavatorial humor. Or Heinz, who built his career on apeing Eddie Cochran badly. He performs like an epileptic in a knife fight; sweating and desperately vamping on a guitar that isn’t even plugged in. Or even Marty Wilde, who once hosted a Jack “Shindig” Good 1965 special, and now offers a suburban paunch and the charisma of a chartered accountant dressed up in sequins. Wilde’s piece de resistance comes when he brings on his wife and kid to croon their way through a medley of gooey teen angst ballads from the forgotten 50s.

So you dig away lethargically at your hamburger and wait for Billy Fury, who eventually swans into the spotlight in androgynous pink leather to sleep-walk through his numerous hits, all of which sound to this day like muz’ak for awkward petting sessions. Fury has his looks, mind you, but I still can’t remember ever having witnessed a more tired, uninspired performance. As he leaves the stage, Carter rants enthusiastically about the future: “Billy’s not enthusiastic, that’s his problem. His health, y’know... all those years in ^cabaret take their toll. But I’ve found him this great B.J. Thomas .song and...” And vintage English rock flashes its roots, goes* to the Gents and then dolefully returns to its semi-detached somewhere in suburbia.

TURN TO PAGE 78.

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 53.

The critics took it all with a benevolent pinch of salt, though, which is more than can be said for their treatment of Mick Ronson when he dared to go solo for two days of concerts at London’s Rainbow Theatre. Most of the critical buckshot was fired at Mainman, the David Bowie/ Tony DeFries direction firm that may well be the most despised (by critics) organization in English show business. Their gross miscalculations with regard to Ronson’s solo excursions were seized upon like raw meat placed in front of starved dogs, but it was all still slightly sad and not a little pelty.

Ronson is of course the blithe talent who played chief sorceror’s apprentice to Bowie’s musical master-structures; a dab hand at marking out string arrangements and coming up with the right chord progression at the right time. Even onstage, Ronson’s bluff charm was the perfect complementary farce to Bowie’s hardened electronic sexuality. But as a solo performer, Ronson has his problems, though not as many as the numerous Rainbow concert postmortems might lead one to believe.

His band, for example (mostly exSpiders with Genghis Kahn lookalike Richie Dharma on drums), make all the right noises and possess a sterling sense of dynamics. But Ronson cannot project, at least at this juncture in the proceedings, an aura that can transform his aforestated charms into anything beyond irritating innocuousness when he’s fixed permanently at center stage. Throughout the show, he swaggered around the stage like a man trying to avoid his own spotlight. His choice of material, too, is so absurdly random that it becomes almost endearing. From Annette Peacock (“I’m The One”) to David Crosby (“Page 43”) to David Bowie (“Moonage Daydream”) to Elvis Presley (“Jailhouse Rock”) to Rogers & Hammerstein (“Slaughter on 10th Avenue”) to (gulp!) Joe Cocker (“Something to Say”). No constrictively thematic visions from this boy. He just likes to play music.

It’s an awkward marriage to say the least: the Mainman star machine and Ronson, amiable, easy-going Northern lad. After the first show, Tony DeFries appears momentarily to bestow his papal blessings on those gathered together at an informal press reception, muttering a facile “I think Mick has remarkable potential and is destined for a great future.” And Ronson? Well he just shrugs it off and drives back to his suburban nirvana in Beckenham. He may be in trouble right now, but in two month’s time he has to go back into the studio to attempt some sort of production job for Wayne County. And you thought Bowie was the one with problems! ^