THE BEAT GOES ON

THE BEAT GOES ON

Foot Fondler Takes No Fee

MIDDLETOWN, OHIO Elza Abraham, 78 year-old mailman, Boy Scout leader for half a century, and lifelong Middletown resident, went to trial in municipal court recently for operating what is probably the only massage parlor in this Mayberryesque Ohio burg.

Yet it wasn't the vice squad that busted ol' Elza. Seems the state medical board charged him with practicing medicine without a license.

You see, Elza has this fetish forTeet. He likes to rub them, and he apparently does a decent job because folks have come from all over — Dayton, Cleveland, even Detroit — to have Elza administer this old-time remedy for whatever ails you.

While he has been performing this service for 18 years, Elza had mo trouble until he unknowingly rubbed a state inspector's foot, which resulted in his day in court.

He insisted, however, that his toe-tickling was strictly a hobby and that he charged no fee for his services. He did admit that he receives an occasional tip which he donates to charity.

The judge threw the case out of court.

Thom Rae

Aussie Girls S>hed Pants For Skyhooks

BRISBANE, AUST.-There was a warning in the Australian Sunday Sun recently: "If your daughter arrived home late last Saturday night, don't be alarmed — she might only have been trying to retrieve her knickers backstage at Festival Hall." Knickers indeed. Skyhooks, Australia's number one pop group, are making a name for themselves by urging pubescent girls to relieve themselves of their panties and bras, throw them onstage, and come around fo the dressing room later to collect them. Australian mums are in an uproar.

"It'$ hard enough to get girls to keep their clothes on these days without their being told to 'get it off' by their pop idols," said one. YopTmow, that balmy Australian climate. Girls have to be restrained.

Still, the group isn't universally admired by young Aussie misses. When lead singer "Shirley" Strachan ordered the audience to produce their underwear many walked out. But many more waited patiently at the dressing room door for "Shirley" and the boys (who drape the lingerie around their bodies during the show) to give them back so they could go home to mum.

Although the band has a wide following, six out of 10 tracks on their latest elpee. Living in the Seventies, have been banned by radio stations, including the cuts "Smut" and "You Only Love Me Because I'm Good in Bed."

But that's not all. The Sun also reported that in Adelaide, vice squad police seized one stage pi;op before the group could even drag it onstage. Possibly Skyhooks were countering the Stones' giant phallus with — no, it couldn't be. Well, .maybe they'll; "open" for the next Stones tour... Sue Whitall

Louie, Louie* Amen*

WACO, TEXAS - In the wake of Eric Clapton, Richie Furay, Z Z Top and other rockers who have found the light of Jesus shining within their potential martyr complexes, comes the final blow.

Jim Valley, better known as the toot-rider Harpo from Paul Revere and the Raiders, whose major claim to fame was beeping an old bicycle horn between songs, has joined the roster of Myrrh records, a Southwestern, God-in-Quad Outfit {rumored to have sinister connections with Pat Boone.

Apparently, those Honk If You 'Love Jesus bumper stickers really do get to people.

Rick Johnson

Breaking Up Is Hard To Do?

WASHINGTON, D.C.—In the past year since CSN&Y's last official appearances together, rumor has had it that their union, as well as the album many people had hoped it utoTifd yield, was nulled by personality conflicts within the group. Recently though, in an exclusive interview, C&N disclosed the true reason for the dispersal of the band members and the aborting of the album.

"If was a German U-Boat!" claimed Crosby, himself a noted nautical authority. "It came right up to Neil's ranch and 'BOOM!' We chased the thing for days — called the Coast Guard, called everybody!"

His partner Nash excitedly

Water Babies Run Riot!

SAN ANDREAS—One of the worst side effects of the recent eruption of the Salton i>ea Tidal' Basin in California which drowned the entire citizenry of the state of Arizona wais the sudden appearance of thousands of tiny, wrinkled, rubberskinned water babies crawling up from the saline fissure that some scientists think* may run as deep as Montana. ^Ominously advancing in endless squishsuction wal/es of obscenely wriggling pink vermin, the brine-spuming creatures fanned out in a vast sun-blanched horde of billion-throated whining death lemmingry. Mewling and wetting themselves, they pressed northwestward, taking state capital Sacramento in ' one schlupping collective crawl. Governor Reagan's! mansion was completely engulfed — within ten minutes of the invasion it looked like . a mountain of blubber white backs, bald noggins and brown-edged bumbums. The Governor himself was devoured in toto from gabardine/ to toebone by the ravenous micropestilents. Mrs. Reagan went down under the next onslaught, waving one bony, arm in futile jerks as the tots from hell gorged on her privates (onlookers reported hearing a sound like rats gnawing endlessly at rubber hosing) . Now, as the entire nation flees to the security of our , bomb shelters, we struggle to bring out what may well be the last issue ever of CREEM. And as a public service, we hereby run the first published picture of two of the malevolent minis,,, swollen from feasting on the entire population of a Playboy Club and three Lincoln Continentals, reveling in their tyranny. So keep to your shelters, watch out for flying Pamer-bombs (used and fused) if you must venture out of doors, and remember what Alice said a long time ago about just exactly who can take care of themselves. Abe Horton

5 YEARS AGO

McCartney Splits With Beatles!

Paul MqCartney has left the Beatles, citing "personal differences, business differences, musical differences" and the fact that he has "a better time with my family." McCartney has also been re-* cording his first . solo LP, scheduled for release later this month.

continued: "Blew up the entire thing! We took the camels out of the stables to chase it, but CSN&Y were already unh unh."

When questioned as to their reasons for suspecting the Germans for perpetrating such a heinous act Nash replied. "They were the only ones with a U-Boat off the Coast that day."

But wasn't it possible that perhaps a Russian vessel had snuck up and done the deed?

"Unh unh. The Russians haven't heard our music yet."

In a further discussion of strategy Crosby suggested that the best way to break up a band — the Grateful Dead, say — was to "Drop a Mack Truck on them from 2,000 feet. But with the Dead you gotta be sure and hit them 'cause they're not agoing to panic over a near miss. They'll just write a song about it." Howard Wuelfing

Sit Down, I Think I Love You

ST. LOUIS - While the world still awaits a better mousetrap, if the claims of researchers at the University of Missouri prove true the sexually-saturated American marketplace may soon offer a better contraceptive.

No more hassling with pills, gooey creams, pleasure-numbing condoms and the like. And, you ladies will be pleased to know that this is a male contraceptive. But don't get uptight, dudes, because this method is as easy as sitting down—literally.

It's called the "ultrasonic chair" and works by applying small doses of high-frequency vibrations to the male testicles, rendering a man sterile for an indefinite length of time.

Researchers say that while the chair could be used in a doctor's office, eventually it will become a common „ household fixture — sort of a ,modern-day loveseat.

It does have tinges of chauvinism, though — not exactly a seat you would offer to a lady. Thom Rae

Cream Reform!

Well, not exactly. But It wouldn't be good sleaze |ournalism without misleading headlines, right? Anyway, this group Is better. These are the Sadista Sisters, currently kicking out the jams, all the jams, from the British Empire's pasty old paunch. One's a whipster, one is lumbered, and one's d deaf mute masterful at intimidating stares, you miserable scum. They sing do wop arrangements on Gregorian Chants, and they're the Next Big Sting. Now, fans, start trawling.

Miracle Rejuvenation For Popstar Vocal Chords!

Time was when, if you touchdowned on terminal toxicity, you had to calhthe Respirator Squad to head off a Jimi. No longer. Now, thartks fo the magic of the ffewly founded Chesty Morgan School of Tantric Breath Control (latest rage among pop society), you can call on your favorite star for instant resuscitation. Here we see international heavy metal machodon Englebert Humperdinck performing just such a humanitarian huffnpuff upon q Cheswlck schoolmarm prostrated by unfortuitous synergism of bad acid and Mellaril. Top: ''talking the tripster down." Middle: the Breath of Life, on the beach erf media — kinda reminds ya of Burt 'n' Deborah In From Harm to Ft amity, don't It? Bottom: another OD reclaimed, while Eng catches his own breath, and spits out the plug of Red Chief chawtabacco he sucked up from her gullet. Jerry Lewis, eat your heart out — this is Good Works sans depersonalization!

This maze has no beginning or end, on purpose. It deserves a Motal Machine Music joke. Sorry, we used 'em all up in the records section.

It Comes Out Here

LONDON — You'd think a country that's about to be sold to Walt Disney Productions to pay off its back debts would have something better to do than sit around drawing wiggly lines in adult coloring books. But that's just what the limeys are up to; helpless victims of a "maze craze" that's mainly the work of one Greg Bright.

Bright's Great Maze Book, which sold over 50,000 copies in three weeks, has everyone from nannies to ninnies driving' themselves to the edge of mass-murder trying to solve the fiendishly crafted mazes, one of which is an op-art bender that goes on for four pages'. He's even had an art'show that included a 280-ft. ceilihg-to-floor number that turned dut to be unsolvable, which . was Greg's idea of a joke. He'd probably laugh at a schoolbus stalled in front of a speeding freight train, too.

Bright's current project is a mile and a quarter long epic made up of 6,300 yew trees at the Marquis of Bath's 400year-old home. It includes bridges, underpasses, time warps, and land mines.

Does Greg plan to make a career of maze making? "I don't know," he says, "but at the present I can see no way out." '

Rick Johnson

Where Is Len Barry?

PHILADELPHIA About a year ago, I was sitting innocently in front of the television watching the early Sixties twistploitation pic Don't Knock the Twist. Suddenly a visage appeared on the screen which lifted me off the couch screaming and dancing. Did Chubby Checker do this by singing "Slow twistin''? Or Gene Chandler complete with tux, top hat, and cane offering to be the "Duke of Earl"? Those were bright; moments indeed; but when Len Barry and the Dovells hit the stage with "Bristol Stomp" and "Hey Beautiful" I flipped.

Who cared that the movie was filmed in Philly on a $10,000 budget or that the dance sequences consisted of a guy standing on a ladder aiming a wide angle lens at the twist action. There was Len Barry with his band of street punks gyrating insanely, whistling at the girls, and being as rude as a wet fart at the Ritz.

The next day I started a search through San Francisco's bargain bins and collector's shops for a Dovells record, finally locating You Can't Sit Down for only two bucks at the rear of a bin. Priding myself on my bargain-hunting ability I snapped it on the turntable to be knocked over once again by Dovellmania. Not only is the title cut one of the hottest of all time (ask any bar band), but this disc contained other classics: Len working out with "Miss Daisy DeLite," singing about getting . a "Surhiner Job," and reviving Bobby Bland's sexist masterpiece "36-22-36." Philly produced some outstanding -punks but after listening to this album I decided that Len was the punkiest, most adenoidal-sounding of them all. '

Then my . dreams were shattered: The Dovells were on one of those "In Concerts" where the theme was rock revivalism. Instead of five, however, there were only three, and most upsetting of all, nowhere was Len Barry to be found. All the old Do veil hits were worked through but there was no spark, no'grease — just homogenized, packaged oldies.

So my question is, where is Len? I mean Paul Anka's setting back the zero population movement. Neil Sedaka's back on top. Christ, I even saw Pat Boon£ selling pots and pans on the tube and hyping his Motown contract on the Bandstand 23rd Anniversary Show. Meanwhile these modern day Philadelphians who think they're pupks ain't kidding anyone. Todd Rundgren could dye his armpits purple but he'd still only be a pale comparison of punk mentality nexl to Len. Where is he?

Tom Vickers

John Denver: The Next Eisenhower?

LOS ANGELES - Truth is stranger than we are dept.: in the January issue . of CREEM, Lester Bangs published a piece suggesting, with somewhat less than total sincerity, that John Denver might just be the kind of charismatic leader this country needs, "The Manchurian Candidate." Before ^hat issue ever, hit the stands, in the NovembW 30th, 1975 edition of the Los Angeles Times, pop music critic Robert Hilburn, in a piece called

"A Troubadour Of and For the People" suggested in absolute seriousness that the Democratic Party nominate John Denver for President in 1976: "Denver has become the singer-songwriter who most consistently speaks of America in the way millions would like to think of it — especially in a period when the nation is about to celebrate its 200th birthday."

... If John's candidacy seems too absurd to be possible, remember, there were people that laughed at Reagan too. And if they ehd up running against each other...

Natty Bumppo

Englebert Dandy To The Rescue

Yes, at last a cure has been found for the tonsil-trashings selfinflicted by the likes of George Harrison, David Bowie, Lou Reed —acupuncture. It cured Clapton of funk, Pete Townshend of bursitis, and now it can restore the voices of every Cocker who ever crumbled. As demonstrated here by Chief Boo Tokchok of the Neo-American Church, it merely involves, as depicted in Step One, a needle through the cheeks. Of the face. Step Two: another lance in the Adam's Apple. Three: yet another in the thorax. Pour: one up each nostril, piercing out again at point of Intersection in Third Eye. So far, the treatment has only one minor drawback: it causes all patients to emerge from therapy singing just like Jim Dandy Mangrum.

Won't You Come Home Dave Bowie

LONDON-Mrs. Jones' flat is a curious mixture of the kind of stuff that you'd expect to find in the home of a middle-aged lady living alone — and the unexpected. Like the stack of David Bowie albums over by the TV set mixed in with the movie soundtracks and the better-known classics, the huge, garish 'Bogart poster over the Bahaus table, the display of gold discs propped face-backwards againstthe wall in the hall, the family-size black and white print circa rtjSpace Oddity" David Bowie ranged dead center!on the living room wall, the painting of Bowieas-Ziggy in the coTner.

Mrs. Jones is David Bowie's mother.

She phoned up the New Musical Express in London after their Bowie/Hitler coyer story, and said that she thought that her boy was a "terrible hypocrite" and that she wanted to do an interview and elaborate on same. Halfway up the stairs and Mrs. Jones is waiting in the doorway. Paul McCartney would probably describe her as a sort of mum kind of thing. She's wearing a sleeveless floral dress and sensible shoes, and around the mouth and eyes she looks very much like Mr. Bowie.

In short order, I'm "supplied with a glass of lemonade and an Embassy and! brass tacks !are gotten down to.

What had initially aroused her ire was Bowie's spiel aboyt how morals had become so'disgusting and how it was timeffor a bit of good ol' fashioned fascism etc. etc.

"But he changes so, doesn't he? He's changing his views about everything all the time. He's like a chameleon. There'll never be a dictatorship here, and why he says he'd want one I don't know/'

Uppermost on her mind, though, is her own particular situation. "What about his mother?" she asks rhetorically. "I've been widowed five years, and at the beginning of my widowhood he was very good to me. This"

— she gestures round the flat

— my property, but he furnished it for me..."

Which figures. The furniture definitely bears the stamp of Bowie's taste circa 71.

"...and then he got the contract with that awful man DeFries."

Cue dramatic background music. .

"Then . he seemed to change. I'm a very sensitive person. If it's anything to do with David, it breaks my heart. We sent him to boarding school, he's had a home always, he was always able to go to his father for everything...and since he went to America I've only had one phone call from him, and that was last Christmas . Mind you, he was very good. He sent me a mink coat, something I've never had before. I'll show it to you. I was really chuffed with it, and then I thought, it's lovely to have a mink coat, but where can I go to wear it? I'm an old-age pensioner. I'm living on 11 pounds fifty a week.

"David said in a paper — 1 think it was the Sunday Mirror — that he left home when he was 15. That's a lie. He was, at home until his father died five years ago. His father supported him financially. He and his father were like that, but he ffidn't get on so well with me because I'm a very erratic person."

Mrs. Jones produces a sheaf of letters from Tony ' DeFries, originating out ofx MainMan's New York office, all of which coldly interrogate her for production of receipts and a precise accounting of her expenditure as a prerequisite, for the pay-, ment of any of her bills.

"DeFries rang me up one day and said, 'You must understand that David is under no legal obligation to finance you.'

"And then he said, Why don't you go out to work? My mother did. '

"Don't think," she says, "that I'm a pathetic mother.

I never have been. My husband and I lived for Dayid. We approved of his work.

Gregg & Cher Reunited Again!

Popdom's most paparrozi'd duo have finally found the solution . to their tensions, much aggravated by the constant trailing on the part of feral-nostrlled media wolfpacks. They got facelifts. The big tiriie, total, ultramodern kind that only the jet-set can afford to fly to Palm Springs, Sweden for. Now they bask lasciviously in each other's charms, freed forever from parasitic parajournalists. Here, in the last photograph that anybody will ever bother to publish of them, we see them catching Handsome Dick Manitoba's solo bow at the Copa in their new faces, which as any fool can see have made them look so damn average it's disgusting.

TURN TO PAGE 66.

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 22.

My husband said to me, 'Love, if we don't let David go into this business he'll be frustrated for the rest of his life.' was frustrated. / would have loved to have been a singer. My own father used to play the clarinet. This is where David gets it from. My husband and-1 encouraged him right from the very start, and when his father died David said to me, 'Mum, don't worry. I'll always look after you.' And he did until Mr. DeFries came along.

"I saw Angela in May, and I went to the Ideal Home Exhibition with her. She has always been very kind to me and I think very differently of her than I did at the beginning.

"When I lost my husband I lost my prop. He always used to say to me, 'Don't worry about David, love, he's going to get on and he knows what he's doing.' I don't bearDavid any malice. I can't because I love him too much. He was such a dear little boy. So intelligent.

"When he was at Bromley Technical College he started getting rebellious. He seemed to resent it if I said anything to him, and it hurt(me. I used to burst into tears. If anybody mentions David I cry . I've got all his records 0nd I play them and I sit here howling my eyes out.

"Terry [David's half-brother] is such a loveable chaph He's so loyal to me, and that's what I want David to be. To show a little care and sympathy."

Part of Bowie's progress over the last few years has been dependent on the systematic progressive rejection of his past, the discarding of his old skin, so to speakSo it goes, as Mr. Vonnegut would have it.

As time passes, Mrs. Jones' anguish at her plight begins to dissolve, eroded by motherly pride in her son. She hauls out his school photographs and affectionately recounts his teenage anec; dotes, as if they'd happened just last week, as if David Bowie was still that person.-

"I bought this record [the Decca reissue of Pin - Ups] even though it was all old songs, because it had such a nice picture of him on the cover. One qf my neighbours said to me, 'You must be in love with him.'Of course I'm not. Hove him because he's my son."

As photographer Kate Simon and I prepared to leave, she impulsively says to Kate, "May I kiss you goodbye?" and hugs her. As we say our goodbyes outside, she turns back to us.

l|Td like to thank you both for coming to see me. So few people ever do. I must be the loneliest person on the street. " Charles Shaar Murray