Or perhaps the Shadows were just pissed off at being roped in to be the grinning backing group for a conveniently clean and polite one-man British pop tapestry-to-be. Perhaps it’s little wonder that he declined the OBE offered to him, for he has lived in Australia for some considerable time, and presumably finds life there far more congenital and accommodating. How else to explain the impossible exoticism of a name like Hank Marvin (as opposed to the distinctly unglamorous name of Brian Rankine with which he was blessed at the wartime font) – the extra “B” was added at the same time as the Shadows walk was invented, but had anyone worked out that the B in Hank B Marvin stood for Brian, they would all have down the Evacuees’ walk from the theatre. The tall, blonde, enigmatic six-string bass player who was also to be the group’s second victim for the group was driven by two vaguely pissed off Geordies (one of whom, Bruce Welch, was actually born in Bognor Regis), pissed off at not being Americans. It might have been a more appropriate name for them – refugees drifting back from the apocalypse of World War II, trying to find their own home or build a new one – but then we tend to forget that it was the forgotten Shadow, Jet Harris, who suggested that the group be called the Shadows. They couldn’t just drift through the Soho drains which the late Gordon Burn irrigated so intensely in his novel The North Of England Home Service, mainly because they were legally compelled to change their name from the Drifters.
In a sixth sense, the Shadows lived out their entire career in a series of shadows – the shadows of a richer and brighter post-war America, the suffocating shadow of ration(alis)ed post-war Britain, the blinding shadow of pre-war British showbiz under which the Shadows were forced to dwell. In the book he says: “…a group called the Shadows should have been better and stranger than the group called the Shadows actually were.” Actually the Shadows were one of the strangest groups there ever has been, but then my definition of strangeness has been defined and tempered by parameters which take the business of British politeness into deep account, much as my tastes in music and views of the world gradually change and develop the more I learn about both. As much as I admire Paul Morley’s 2003 book Words And Music, I do wish that his views weren’t so firmly set, or hadn’t been so firmly formed, in 1976 and Manchester. Track listing: Apache/Man Of Mystery/The Frightened City/Guitar Tango/Kon-Tiki/Foot Tapper/Genie With The Light Brown Lamp/The Warlord/A Place In The Sun/Atlantis/Wonderful Land/FBI/The Savage/Geronimo/Shindig/Stingray/Theme For Young Lovers/The Rise And Fall Of Flingel Bunt/Maroc 7/Dance OnĪuthor’s Note: This piece is to some extent adapted from a previous piece I wrote about the Shadows in July 2004, but it is by no means the same piece, nor does it come to the same conclusion the reader should allow for the lapse in time and the author’s changing views if they wish to read the original see the link to The Clothed Maja on my list of links should you desire to do so, but I’d much rather you read this one.
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