Remember Roger Eagle

Back in January I hit the google button in search of a photo of Roger Eagle to accompany a post by Kevin Pearce on Caught By The River. Kevin had mentioned Roger in issue 2 of his ‘Your Heart Out’ magazine. The search gave up the pic I’ve used above, one of many great shots taken at the Wheel by Roger’s friend and colleague Brian Smith. It was then that I noticed the date of his passing and realised that it was coming up to the tenth anniversary.

I made the decision that on that day, today, the 4th of May 2009, I would remember Roger Eagle. So, with some help from friends I set about contacting people that knew him and sent them a letter asking for a ‘memory’.

For those of you that aren’t familiar with the name, Roger was a DJ and club runner who made a mark in the ‘60’s and ‘70’s. They were pretty big marks as it goes, big enough to have become legacy and certainly big enough for us all to give him some thought today.

In 1964 Roger became the resident DJ at The Twisted Wheel nightclub in Manchester. This was the first time that he had ever been a DJ. When he moved in the club was playing the beat music that was popular at the time but Roger’s love was black American rock ‘n’ roll and Rhythm & Blues. He immediately changed the club’s music policy simply by playing what he loved and before long the Wheel became one of the (two?) most important clubs in the country. But it was more than that. He played great records. Records that you couldn’t hear anywhere else.

He sought them out with a hunger and played them with a passion. He built up a following, of mods, of fanatics, of people who talk of it to this day. He inspired people. He created a ‘scene’, a scene that would eventually (and at that club) become known as ‘Northern Soul’.

But, of course, by then, like all true hipsters, he was gone, on to ‘The Magic Village’, among other places. On to managing Manchester’s first psychedelic band ‘Greasy Bear’ (later to become Albertos Y Lost Trios Paranoias) and eventually on to Liverpool, where he promoted shows at the Liverpool Stadium – Bowie, Beefheart, Lou Reed and, as documented on another of these pages by Bill Drummond, Roogalator.

Then, in 1976, Roger along with mates Ken Testi and Pete Fulwell opened up their own club, Eric’s, in Mathew Street, and before long Roger was once again playing a part in defining other people’s lives. Punk was happening and Britain was entering a period of incredible creativity. In Liverpool Eric’s was the catalyst.

Local heroes Deaf School played the opening night and from then on in the club became the second home for the new Mersey beatniks who would meet and form groups in the hope of getting to play at ‘their’ club on the same stage that they had watched the Ramones, The Pistols, The Clash, the Banshees and the Buzzcocks play.

Among those groups were Big In Japan, Echo & The Bunnymen, The Teardrop Explodes, OMD, The Spitfire Boys and Dead or Alive. Some folk started record labels, most notably Zoo, started by Bill Drummond and Dave Balfe.

That is Roger’s life in a small nutshell. He was much more than that. There are a million more stories, and, put simply, if you give a toss about these things, I think he was an inspiration whether you know it or not. For me he is one of the most important people in British music culture and to the people who have contributed to this he was either a friend or an influence or probably both.

It’s been a joy putting this together. I never even met the man, but, I know that by his actions he made shit happen for me. And probably for you too.

Thanks to everyone included within for opening up to me. I hope you like what we have put together.

I would also like to thank ; Steve Allen and Clive Langer for their introductions in Liverpool.

Bernie Connor for the jukebox selection.

Tony Crean for the loan of the ‘Brutality, Religion and a Dance Beat’ pamphlet and thanks to Bill for allowing us to use it.

Paul Tomlinson for the Magic Garden poster Dave Rofe at the Manchester District Music Archive for getting involved and sharing the ride.

Keith Rylatt and Phil Scott for allowing us to use extracts (chunks) from their great book on the Twisted Wheel, ‘Central 1179’.

CP Lee for responding so positively to my request. I knew then for sure that I wasn’t wrong.

Also thanks to Brian Smith who’s incredible photos are featured within. With best endeavor I could not track down your phone number. Hope you don’t mind us using the pics.

And a massive thank you to Kavel Rafferty. Not just for making this all look so great with her fantastic illustrations and design but for coming on board with a real passion and keeping calm as we realised that what we had taken on was a whole lot bigger than we thought.

Jeff Barrett x

Roger Eagle had a passion for Blues, R&B , & Soul Music that I had never seen in 25 years in the club business.

When The Twisted Wheel Club opened in 1963 it was not long before this tall guy was persuading us to play way out records, very good to listen to, but not always a dancefloor filler. His enthusiastic knowledge on music was very well received by the TW club members. Roger worked with The Abadi brothers, Jack, Philip, and myself during the day, where we ran a R’NB Scene Magazine, and Roger also advised us on which up and coming American Artists to consider bringing over to tour . I was very sorry to hear of Roger passing away, but but he left behind a musical legacy that’s still relevant today.”

Ivor Abadi (Founder & Owner The Twisted Wheel Club) http://www.twistedwheel.net/

This is an extract from an interview carried out by The New Breed at Roger’s home in North Wales in February 1999; “Because of his poor health we decided to conduct the interview in stages over a period of time. This is taken from the first interview, and sadly we didn’t make a second as Roger’s health progressively worsened over the months. This is Roger Eagle’s last interview. At the time we never expected it to be a Tribute” (By Paul Welsby - read the full interview at http://jackthatcatwasclean.blogspot.com/)

I recently met this black American guy who came over to see me. He’s at University in The States and he’s doing a thesis on Northern British Appreciation of Black American Music.

He’d been to see everybody on the Northern Scene...all the Northern DJ’s and so on, they all said ‘go and see Roger Eagle - he started it all’. Eventually he turned up here with a camera and I blew his head off completely. I started playing him tunes...he went away with a cassette - with what you would probably think are fairly obvious tunes on it. His mind was completely wrecked. This guy’s in his 40’s, maybe 50’s and he’s a serious man ....and he’s never heard Ray Charles! I said, if you want to talk about Northern Soul there’s plenty of people better placed than I am to tell you ...but if you want the history about white Northern English appreciation of Black American music you talk to me! I’ll straighten it out for you. I did.

I said: this is where it started in the 50’s. When it was exciting. I don’t want to know about white artists ripping off black artists ...that’s bollocks. Everybody covered everyone else!

Nat King Cole - one of the most successful black entertainers of all time - he would cover white show tunes, pop tunes, blues tunes - across all boundaries. He didn’t care. Ray Charles was one of the first black artists to see the possibilities. I said to this guy ‘have you ever heard “I’m Moving On” by Ray Charles? As far as I know it’s one of the first cases of a black artist covering a Country & Western song - a Hank Snow tune’. I had to put it on tape...he’d never heard it. I love the train rhythm through the track building up towards the end. As far as I’m concerned a tune this strong ought to be played. I bet you’ve heard it so many times without really clocking just how strong a track it is. It’s a head record. Atlantic were starting to experiment with different instrumentation. Moving away from the basic drum, bass, guitar, sax and piano. They put a distorted pedal steel guitar on it. It’s one of my all time favourite records.

The Hideaway Club Roger Eagle Tribute Night at the Deansgate, 321 Deansgate, City Centre Manchester M3 4LQ Saturday 30th May 2009 Special guest DJs : Roger Fairhurst, Barry Tasker and Stan Evans (all regulars at the Twisted Wheel from 1964/65)

photo Brian Smith

I have known Roger since his earlier days in Liverpool when he was promoting Chuck Berry, The Feelgoods, Beefheart and Zappa etc, at the Stadium.

During the 1970’s I supplied the P.A. at Eric’s on numerous occasions for the likes of Queen Ida and Rockin’ Dopsie and the Cajun Twisters.

My last memorable involvement with Roger was in the 1980’s at another of his and Zane Branson’s Rhythm and Blues promotions at Bodelwyddan Castle in North Wales.

On this bill was one of my teenage heroes, a blind New Orleans street singer called Snooks Eaglin.

I had asked Roger if it would be possible to meet Snooks so he could sign a very rare single, ‘Country Boy/Alberta’ on Storyville. A single that I had treasured dearly since my teenage years!

Unfortunately Snooks Eaglin’s wife upon seeing such a rare single declared that ‘I’ve just got to have that!’ and after much jostling and snatching I decided to sign the single from my good-self to the hapless Snooks. He was so pleased with the transaction that he stated that if I ever passed through Baton Rouge (Louisiana), he would gladly put me up at his place! (I just so happened to be in Mississippi and Alabama directly after the funeral, continuing my quest, ‘In Search of the Blues’ and I had hoped to travel further south to Louisiana earlier this year but that was not to be).

It was Roger Eagle’s reaction to this transaction that I will always remember. He held his hands to his head and called me a bloody idiot! ‘Do you know how much that single is worth? It’s rare man! I don’t believe it! I don’t believe it!’

Roger Eagle was first and foremost a ‘Music Man’. His love of music from the R&B, Blues, Rock & Roll, Soul, Reggae and Dub catalogue was his driving force, monetary gain was secondary. He would often be found looking through new and second hand record collections throughout the northwest, searching for previously unreleased tracks or specialist and imported rare releases.

He was so passionate about the music that swamped his living quarters, that on one occasion in his Sefton Park flat, whilst under the influence, I couldn’t help but give him my rare copy of Little Richard and the Buck Ram Orchestra, a 10 inch album on Camden!

His need seemed far greater than mine did at that time!

Where is the equivalent enthusiasm combined with that generosity of spirit found in Liverpool today?

Where are those in the Music Industry whose passion for music is inspirational?

We will miss him! I will miss him! words by Al Willard Peterson. www.groovinrecords.co.uk/

Personal memories & reflections on the great DJ and Promoter Roger Eagle The first time i met Roger Eagle was at the International Club in Manchester in 1985. He booked the bands there and my mate Steve Longden and i had heard his name mentioned and thought we’d take a tape in with a view to getting a gig with our then band Ministers Of The Groove. We were a 7 piece trying to do our version of Northern Soul and we’d heard his name associated in some way with the scene.

As most people remember him at this time he was stood by the small bar on the left hand side just as you walked into the club, he had on a loud Hawaiin shirt and his size struck you straight away. We eventually managed to pluck up courage to hand him the tape which he said he’d listen to. Obviously he wasn’t going to phone an unheard of band and offer them a gig so we made our way down there to catch another gig, probably Zoot & The Roots or something similar a couple of weeks later and sought him out. He didn’t really say what he thought of the music, but he liked the energy.

I think we got offered a Saturday night gig when another band had dropped out. I seem to remember going to the International quite a lot at this time, it was really the only venue in Manchester where you could see a large cross section of bands and styles from local first timers to Internationally famous artists. The Legendary Hacienda, on the other side of town was cold, the sound was shit and no-one went there, until 87/88.

I’d always chat with Roger, and try and tap him up for musical tips, when he knew you were into music he’d give you tapes, carefully put together in a genre crunching manner, with a photocopied front cover and typed sleeve. Tough Rockabilly making way for the Heaviest Dub, then a slice of Doo-Wop segueing into some 60’s Proto-Punk Garage, and then sublime and rare early Soul/ Rhythm & Blues. These tapes made way for a later Roger concept of ‘The 20th Century Jukebox’, a good 20 years before Bob Dylan mumbled “Dreams, Themes & Schemes” on his Themetime Radio Show. This music was my education, you couldn’t and still can’t hear this stuff on the radio, it’s way too dangerous, the innovators, the Terrormen & Women of the 20th Century. If you speak to people now about Roger’s tapes, they will explain how very precious they are to them. Imagine Titles like ‘Bathtime With Beverley’, ‘Giant Tunes Pts 1, 2 & 3’. ‘Heavy Gravity’, That Was The Wheel That Was’, ‘Barefoot Rock’, ‘Blackstar Liner’, ‘Rhythm Of The Rebels’, ‘Iron Leg’ and The Lawnmower . The List is long and Roger’s rules were simple, rare vinyl, and later when Digital technology arrived, Tunes that hadn’t been put onto CD. He also invited me round to his flat above the Manchester Arndale centre a few times, he’d put the kettle on, pass a well loaded spliff and go ‘Right ! Sit Down & Listen to this ! I had no choice but to listen, i was partially incapacitated anyway, strange environment, Hep music Professor, big speakers and Dub, heavyweight Dub. I remember hearing Funkedelic’s first album in his front room for the first time and it totally knocked me sideways. To this day it’s the best album i’ve ever heard. If you haven’t heard it by the way. Go and buy it NOW ! You can almost hear the synapses being frazzled in the Studio. It’s Hendrix, with female Gospel backing singers, deep bass, a massive snare sound and space, loads of space. . . Oh and the must have prerequisite for all great Rock music, a touch of insanity. If you can get to this most modern music will sound like shit’ Roger would come to manage our band a little later on, getting reasonably payed gigs for us around the North-West, and introducing us to music business people he believed could help us. He also helped to get us a small tour with a now Internationally famous group who’d just had there the first number one, the singer is another of Roger’s students.

Just before the International club shut its doors Roger moved to the small town i hail from ,Whaley Bridge in Derbyshire. I think he just wanted away from the City, the air, the hassle at the International from the greed heads and baby gangsters, and the stress which ultimately he thrived on. He was also getting minimal income so he along with an American business partner set up RTR (Rock The Ritz), putting gigs and Club nights on at the Ritz on Whitworth Street in Manchester, probably hoping for a bit of student overspill revenue from the Hacienda which was 2 minutes walk away and very successful at the time.

His dream at this time was to find a country pub with potential for a scene. His proposal was very simple, after finding a place with potential, eg a stage and a kitchen, maybe slightly out of the way and past it’s prime. The Four things that would ensure success were/are 1. Good down home food, local dishes, Stews, Soups etc . . 2. A good Jukebox, with a well chosen and eclectic selection . . .

3 . . Good Beer . . . 4 . . . Live Music . . . . People will travel miles if these simple requirements are met. The first two are essential and so simple it eludes the majority of prospective entrepreneurs . . .

For 6 months maybe more Roger found his pub, great Transport links, a good Chef, and a separate function room with a PA . The Jukebox was there, but ownership by the brewery made it difficult to convert it into the 20th century Jukebox that would no doubt have proved popular and influential to another generation of seekers, and all 2 minutes walk from his front door. The Jodrell Arms in Whaley Bridge was the last venue in the North-West to benefit from the Eagle treatment, he DJ’d most of the nights he put on there, with local and touring bands such as the Bhundu Boys, even Frank Sidebottom made an appearance. . But all to no avail in the end, the woman running the place decided it would be a good idea to do a runner with the weeks bar takings, so it was back to square one. Again.

Around this time i’d see him on a Sunday Morning sat on his doorstep, reading the Times, Coffee at hand, some very heavy Dub on the Turntable, mingling with the American menthol Kools cigarettes being smoked as medication. He’d sometimes call you over “Morning Sykes ! come and have a listen to these Tunes i’ve got from London”. He’d say Tunes in the way it was said on the TV advert, after the effect of the sweets had enabled the sucker to speak in perfect Queen’s English.

Something like Teyoons. Of course you didn’t turn the Eagle down, he’d take you in the house, make a Coffee “Would you like a cup of hot water ?”, hand you the spliff, then he’d drop the needle on the deck, leave it for 30 seconds or so at a tremendous volume and say “Who’s this Sykes ?”

Woe betide you if you got it wrong, “Er, is it Tubby Rog ?” He’d say “Go-od”, then the next tune would commence “Come on, who’s this ?” , well it sounds very similar, he wouldn’t put Tubby on twice, “Is it Sir Niney ?” “No, no ! You fool ! Its Prince Jammy !” - and onwards my education proceeded.

COPYRIGHT BILL SYKES . FROM HIS FORTHCOMING BIOGRAPHY OF ROGER EAGLE. .

from ‘Central 1179’ by Keith Rylatt and Phil Scott. Used by permission.

Roger Eagle and John Lee hooker

Sugar Pie DeSanto

Roger Eagle

Howlin’ Wolf

Yeah, Roger & Erics were a big thing in my teens... here’s a quick story 1978.. my band at the time ‘Dalek I Love You’ were waiting to soundcheck at Erics, Roger put one of his favourite Dub 12” on the PA.. We hadn’t heard anything like it and ask him who it was. He flashed a massive grin at us and said we have to go to his flat later for a bit of ‘echo education’. I didn’t know grown-ups were allowed to have flats like that, piles of records, posters, snacks, and unfortunately, undies.

He pinned all three of us to the couch playing his favourite dub records for hours, scanning our faces for reactions as he cranked up the bass eq on the amp... It was the heaviest stuff I’d ever heard. Scared me shitless but we all loved it. He let us go when it was time to get back to the club. Roger so wanted to pass his love of his music onto people who would ‘get it’. When we did a dub-influenced track in our next gig, the doorman said Roger did a ‘weird 20 second dance’ in celebration. Job done.

Dave Hughes, played with Dalek I Love You, OMD and The Secrets at Eric’s.

He was a great big fella and a little intimidating to me at first cause he could have a right bark at yer if you said anything daft and as he knew more about music than anyone I’d ever met I just listened to him expound. The thing that scared me most though was the giant spliffs he rolled when me and Clive went round to his little flat in Lark Lane or somewhere, wall to wall vinyl it was, I just have vague memories of drifting off to Roger reading bits out of the Illuminatus which I couldn’t make head nor tail of then or now and with his huge dub reggae beats loping around I don’t think I stayed awake once, I wish I had.

Steve Allen starred as Enrico Cadillac in the band Deaf School.

JAYNE CASEY

As a 17 year old venturing into Mathew Street a place drenched in the legend of the merseybeat sixties while at the same time it’s waste ground cobbled street and deserted coffee warehouses reeked of the sad gone to seed seventies Roger Eagle was quite an intimidating figure as he would stomp his six foot plus frame up and down from Erics to Probe records on various errands as if this was his personal domain(which it was).

Later this road took on a magical significance for me, the whole area was charged with the energy that came from the inspired choice of bands that Roger would book to play at his club Erics and the gems that he would dish out sparingly from his legendary record collection of old records from the fifties sixties and seventies alongside his treasured new and old reggae and dub favourites.

His self appointed mission to create a path for the new bands and music while at the same time fostering a respect and appreciation of lost classic records and bands meant that a generation of people in my hometown of Liverpool came to be inspired and influenced in a unique way that changed all of our lives.

Thanks Roger Ian Broudie was a member of Big in Japan.

Jayne Casey was the singer in Big in Japan and later Pink Military Stand Alone.

I was a 18 year old teenage delinquent straight out of a children’s home when Roger Eagle adopted me.

We had a deep shamanic bond, he always introduced me as his daughter and much to the annoyance of his other Eric’s children, I was always his favorite.

After the club I would often go back to his flat where he would feed me curry goat and rice, throw books at me to read, throw records on the decks and teach me the kind of things that every father should teach their 18 year old daughter....

That Black American Jazz is the sound of human survival...... That Miles Davis died for me........ That Gods real name is Clement Seymour Dodd and most importantly...... that the contribution we make to music and culture is ‘as important as life itself’ And some people think it was just a club.....

Six feet four inches and barrel chested, Roger could certainly look imposing but this was no reflection of his nature. During the summer of 1976 many evenings were spent at Rogers “cottage” close to Sefton Park in Liverpool, he and I were conspiring to launch our new music club, Eric’s.

The scant accommodation was dominated by a substantial vinyl collection into which Roger would launch himself, with considerable vigour for such a large man, to extract with childish excitement, exactly the track that would prove conclusively the point he was trying to make about the derivation of a particular artiste’s style.

Roger seemed to know pretty much everything about where every style of music had come from and was currently amassing a collection of Jamaican dub slates which he mail ordered from addresses he found in Black Music Weekly. Evangelical about this new genre, all who called at his home would be treated generously to his donnish treatise of this emerging catalogue. “So you like Reggae ?” Like a hunter sensing prey. “Well listen to this !”

As evenings wore on I would make plans to leave and suggest a pint at The Albert in Lark Lane as it was nearby and on my way home. Roger never accepted this offer and after several refusals I pressed him to find out why. He told me that because of his size,. his short haircut and clipped moustache, it had become his expectation to be mistaken for a plain clothed policeman when visiting pubs. He considered himself a target for any thug who had ever been on the end of the long arm of the law.

On the street he seemed ill at ease, head down, as if seeking cover as he moved towards his destination. Only on gig nights did Roger ever seem fully to inhabit his frame. At shows, Liverpool Stadium, Eric’s or elsewhere, his role was clearly defined and understood by all parties. The artistes and crew knew who he was, the venue operators knew who he was, the audience knew who he was and perhaps more importantly, in his natural habitat, he knew who he was. He was at ease.

You could almost see him inflate.

Ken Testi co founded Eric’s with Roger in 1976.

photo Brian Smith

David Bowker I recall one day he was raving about a Manchester band Hipster Image .. This signalled a change from his purist blues roots ideology.. Roger and Laurence Selcoe managed my band The Gin House .. who backed singer Milton James as the Milton James Band .. WAY back when..1966/67 .. We were good friends .. We did have a bust up at the end tho .. It was all business ! He was a pioneer /hero to us all .. He knew so much about R&B and the blues .. I have many memories of him at the old Wheel on Brazennose St sitting in the tiny booth , playing Rufus Thomas , John Lee Hooker , Otis Redding ,and Slim Harpo records telling us stories about how Sonny Boy shagged some chick in his pad in Chorlton (I think it was) .. A great character , and one of a kind ..He anticipated the change from soul , blues and R&B trends into flower power , and progressive rock; hosting a different kind of music at venues in Manchester as the dawning of Woodstock approached , and as the 60’s were coming to a close ... http://www.davidbooker.com/a/p/fset.html

I first met Roger in 1966 at around the time he was finishing DJ’ing at the Wheel. He lived in a flat opposite my girlfriends house and I used to watch him load and unload a transit van that proudly proclaimed on the side ‘The Milton James Soul Band’, Milton, a Black American singer, being Roger’s latest protégé – Sadly he wasn’t a very good soul singer despite having everything else right and soon Milton and Roger parted company. By then of course it was 1967 and Roger was embracing the ‘alternative’ lifestyle. He noticed that he had young hippies across the road and eventually we were invited in for listening sessions. This was my first experience of the University of |roger eagle. Basically the syllabus consisted of being put in an armchair, fed with cannabis and then being subjected to an intense musical bombardment The music could consist of anything – anything that had passed the Roger Eagle test that is. He was moving on from his solid position that had led to leaving the Wheel – His motto (which was over the door of his Mancunian Wake) ‘Nothing past 63!’ was the cut off date for records to be played– he loathed Motown and what he considered the commercial drek coming out of urban America, but as his drug use now extended to embracing psychedelics (he gave me my first trip around then) so his musical tastes were expanding too and he was wrapping his head and ours around such acts as Jefferson Airplane, who he adored and Captain Beefheart and The Magic Band, who he would have died for.

I fact, in 1968 we all trooped down to Manchester University and stood at the front of the stage to watch the Magic band and Don van Vliet first met Roger.

This meeting was to change the lives of both of them, impacting upon their destinies in a manner which had a knock on effect for so many other people too.

However, It was that year that Roger opened the psychedelic dungeon known as the Magic Village in Manchester’s Cromford Court. It was actually a first rate gig and Roger booked many of the top acts of the time, including his old friend John Mayall, the Third Ear Band, Jethro Tull, Pink Floyd, Ten Years After, Joe Cocker, act after act who are now legendary.

Time and circumstance led to Roger’s leaving the Village and setting off for pastures new which this time meant Liverpool. He’d been managing my band Greasy Bear in the late 60s and although we’d moved on from his tender, loving care, he still booked us to appear on the bill at the Liverpool Stadium, and old wrestling and boxing arena that reeked of blood, sweat and linamnet but strangely became a prime venue for people such as Sha Na Na, Quiver, Cat Stevens, Mott The Hoople – again another roster of early 70s Rock music.

By 1977 I was in a band called the Albertos and Roger was busy pioneering another venue in Liverpool – the mighty Erics Club. As well as still booking me Roger was turning Erics into a giant musical laboratory where the likes of teardrop Explodes and the Mighty Wah were cutting their teeth while watching some of the finest Punk and New Wave acts appearing live on stage.

After Erics Roger didn’t give up but moved back to Manchester to run an old skating rink was called The International – Here he introduced us Mancs to the wonders of World Music as well as the usual roster of first-rate acts from here and the States.

Roger finally moved to Anglesey and his eventual demise – which I’m sure were not linked.

While Roger is no longer here on the planet what remains of Roger is all the people he shoved through his university, all the souls he strapped in the armchair and gave a crash course in essential listening too. I’ve not met one person who wasn’t deeply influenced by Roger’s outlook on life and on music. He was utterly unique – warm hearted and forceful, he was too much of a gentleman to have survived for as long as he did in an industry that is slowly going to hell in a hand-cart.

Bill Drummond said that an apt memorial would be a giant sculpture of Roger’s huge mono speaker cabinet that travelled through the decades with him made out of stone and standing fifty foot high on top of the Pennines – Sealed inside would be all the records he considered great. I agree with Bill.

It was a pleasure, a privilege and an honour to have breathed the same air as that man. http://www.cplee.co.uk/

Dear Jeff, http://www.dominorecordco.us/usa/features/09-09-08/brutality-religion-and-a-dancebeat-a-short-story-by-bill-drummond-/ The above is a link to a story that I wrote in 1999 in response to learning about the death of Roger Eagle. I printed it up as a pamphlet at the time. The pamphlet was part of a bigger thing that I did called Dead White Man, to honour Roger at the first Liverpool Biennial. This was also in 1999. I think I still have some of the pamphlets.

Last year Domino Records wanted to put the text up on their site.

I worked in various capacities at Eric’s, thus Roger was my boss. I did general maintenance, stage security, and humping gear in for the bands. Roger was also the manager of Big In Japan. I do not think I would have ever called him a friend. He was somebody we just looked up to and at times thought was an arrogant twat.

Yours, Bill

October 1975, I was 22 and back in Liverpool, after a two year absence.

Just started a new job, building stage sets at the Everyman Theatre on Hope Street.

I had a room at the top of a rundown house in Fairfield Street off Prescot Road. Shared the kitchen and bathroom with a Karl Terry. Karl Terry had a band called The Cruisers. They also lived in the house. Karl Terry and The Cruisers were also-rans in the Mersey Beat boom of the early sixties. Not only was Karl Terry fuelled with a bitterness that he was not John Lennon, but Karl Terry and The Cruisers were not even The Searchers, The Swinging Blue Jeans or Gerry and the Pacemakers. This meant they were not able to make a lucrative living on the Mersey Beat nostalgia package tours that had been going ever since the genre had outstayed its Hitsville welcome.

Karl Terry and his Cruisers eked out a living playing working-men’s clubs across Merseyside. He also regaled me late into the nights about what an arsehole John Lennon was and what a crap live band The Beatles were.

At 22 I had long since lost any interest I may have had in contemporary pop. It was the arse end of progressive and glam held no interest for me. I was just too old for all that stuff. Each weekday morning I got the number 78 into work. I was still young enough for the top-deck front seat to be my one of choice.

One Monday morning I found a bundle of magazines on the seat next to me. The first thing I noticed about the magazine was the word FREE on the cover. Back then the world was not awash with giveaway papers, magazines and periodicals stuffed with meaningless adverts and column inches full of shit that nobody reads.

Back then for something to be free was a radical statement. Almost like burning the Stars and Stripes or smashing down the gates of the Bastille.

The only other words on the cover other than FREE were ‘Trumpet’, ‘Last’ and ‘The’. If The Last Trumpet was the name of this magazine it was the best name for a magazine I had ever heard. It instantly resonated with something deep and lost. A clarion call from the edge of time.

Looking round first to make sure no fellow travellers thought I was nicking one of these free Last Trumpets, I picked up a copy. On opening it up I was disappointed to find that it was not packed with revolutionary rhetoric, there was no call to arms, it was just stuff about local bands, adverts for record shops and gig lists. Then I turned to the back cover. This was taken up by a black and white photo of a man who looked and dressed like he had just escaped from the high-security ward of a mental hospital. Whatever this man was or did he was my instant hero. The intense and demented stare, the crap haircut, the bad suit all screamed “I am Legend, worship only me.”

And I did. Under the picture was one word WILKO. What this word referred to I had no clear understanding.

On arriving at the Everyman Theatre that Monday morning, I showed one of the actors this Last Trumpet magazine and asked him if he knew who or what Wilko was. The actor was called William Nighy and he knew about such things.

“Where have you been, Bill? That’s Wilko Johnson, the guitarist with Doctor Feelgood.” “What, a British band?” “Yeah, from Canvey Island, Southend. They are playing at the Liverpool Stadium tonight. We’re all going. You wanna come?”

I went, but by myself. I didn’t like going out with other people. The Liverpool Stadium was a pre-war indoor boxing stadium. It was down some backstreets north of the old Exchange Station. Not a residential area: industrial mills, bonded warehouses and a severe lack of street lighting.

The queue to get in was five deep and at least a couple of hundred yards long. I joined the back. Things had obviously changed since I had last been to a rock concert some four years earlier. Gone were the loon pants and waft of patchouli oil. Gone was the pseudo West Coast peace and love vibe.

Punch ups kept erupting in the queue as youths tried to push in or shove those in front. The dress code seemed strict and decidedly downbeat: dark anoraks or tracksuit tops, straight leg jeans, trainers and short haircuts with lank fringes. A large man with a bright red shirt and black trousers appeared on the steps that led up to the doors of the Stadium. He must have been six foot four and he must have been in at least his mid- thirties. He was a figure of natural authority. His mere appearance quelled whatever punch ups were erupting.

“Any more of that and none of you get in and I don’t care if you’ve already got tickets.” Silence fell and order was regained.

Inside the Stadium the atmosphere was equally oppressive. Drab paintwork, little house-lighting. The P.A. and band gear were set up on the boxing ring rise, the back half of the hall was partitioned off. There was a woman selling hot dogs and hamburgers from a kiosk. Everyone seemed to know she was called Doreen. “Go on, Doreen, more mustard than that.” She represented the only ray of femininity in the whole place.

The walls were covered in faded and torn bills advertising past and future fights.

The house lights went down and the support band came on stage. They were fronted by an American in glasses who looked like a chunky Jewish Buddy Holly. His band played a loose, stuttering and jazz kind of boogie.

The crowd didn’t like it, but instead of talking about the football or some bird they almost shagged, they en masse decided to let the Jewish Buddy Holly and his band know how they felt.

The band I learnt were called Roogalator and they were not for giving into the crowd’s displeasure. They carried on with their lazy southern boogie shuffle thing. The crowd took to more radical measures to make their point known. They started to smash up the wooden tip-up seats and hurl them towards the stage. Most didn’t reach that far, but hit the back of the heads of other disgruntled punters. This then caused fighting to erupt between those near the front and those further back. By now, nobody was taking any notice if Roogalator were still grooving on stage.

Then suddenly a great booming voice filled the Stadium. “Right, that’s it.

You can all go home. I’ve had enough of your pathetic behaviour. I bring to Liverpool the best working bands around for you and this is how you show your appreciation. Well, you can forget coming to the Stadium for any further shows because I’m going to cancel them all.” The place fell silent. It was that big man with the red shirt and black trousers again. I asked the lad next to me “Who is that man?”

“You don’t know? That man is Roger Eagle, the greatest man on Merseyside after Bill Shankley.”

Roogalator played three further songs, not a sound from the audience, not a jeer or a clap. After the third, they left the stage to complete silence.

Fifteen minutes later, four ugly convicts sauntered onto the stage, picked up their sticks, Fender Precision, mike and Telecaster respectively, someone counted to four and the place erupted. What I witnessed over the next sixty minutes may have been the greatest rock’n’roll event ever on earth. Fuck all that Woodstock shit, this was the real thing. Wilko, the guitarist, was everything and more his picture on the back of The Last Trumpet had promised.

He was the ultimate guitar hero for a decade that so far had only delivered bollocks like Steve Howe as a blueprint for young hopefuls to follow.

I was one of the last to leave the Stadium. 1 just wanted to stand there, stare at the smashed up seats, the ripped boxing bills and roadies clearing the stage and try to work out what was happening and why I had had to wait since 1969 for whatever it was to start happening.

I went back to my room in Fairfield Street thinking maybe I should start playing guitar again. Karl Terry and his band had just got in from doing a gig up in Bootle. They were chopping out lines of coke on the kitchen table. It was the first time I saw someone sniff cocaine. Suddenly that line about a ten bob note up your nose made sense. I’d led a sheltered life.

I tried to explain to Karl what I had witnessed at the Liverpool Stadium. He didn’t want to know. He was too full of the fact that they might get the opening slot on the upcoming Billy J. Kramer Australian tour.

A thousand rock journalists have tried to define that thing the Feelgoods had for those barren months that led up to the punk onslaught of late ‘76. By the time the onslaught hit, Doctor Feelgood were irrelevant. Their job had been done. Rock’n’roll Lesson Number 7 - all success is on borrowed time.

A year or so after seeing Doctor Feelgood at the Stadium, that man called Roger Eagle opened a club on Mathew Street opposite to where the Cavern had been. The club was called Eric’s. Via Eric’s he turned a Liverpool generation on to a weird and wonderful world of strange records and the possibility of making even stranger ones. But all of that is another story better told by others.

Yesterday afternoon I learnt that Roger Eagle had died of cancer. Plenty of people die but Roger never seemed like he was going to be one of them.

No, Roger don’t die, he wouldn’t allow it. Whatever else may go by the wayside Roger Eagle carries on. There is always another club for him to open, concert to promote, record to buy. My mind filled with a memory. The memory was of me sitting on a chair in a flat off Lark Lane in Liverpool and pacing around the room was a large man in a red shirt and black trousers.

The man exhaled clouds of smoke before taking another toke from the giant spliff in his hand. Behind the man was a wall of shelves stuffed with albums and reggae 12” 45s. It was August 1977. The man was Roger Eagle and he was the manager of the band I was in, Big In Japan.

“But, Roger, why have you called our record ‘Brutality, Religion And A Dance Beat’? That’s got nothing to do with us.” “Bill, if it hasn’t it should have; without those three ingredients pop music is nothing. All great pop music, from John Lee Hooker to the Bay City Rollers, from Captain Beefheart to Augustus Pablo, from the Buzzcocks to Johnny Kidd And The Pirates has it. ‘Brutality, Religion And A Dance Beat’, it’s rock’n’roll; rule number one, and don’t forget it.

“But the cover looks shit, Roger.”

“Fuck off, Bill, I got work to do. Shouldn’t you go and rehearse or something?”

For some, there was rather a quaint notion that the size of a man’s record collection was somehow symbolic of his size in other departments. Whether this was ever openly articulated at the time I’m not sure.

Roger Eagle had the biggest record collection I had ever seen. I’m sitting in my workroom at home.

I’ve just looked up at the clock - 18 minutes past two. The funeral service started at two. They will all be there, the Normans, the Bernies, the Steve Hardstaffs, maybe not the ones that got to the cover of the NME, but the ones that counted. The ones that understood. The ones that had to put up with the pig ignorance, the arrogance and even the bullying of Roger. And, of course, Doreen, she’ll be there.

Roger Eagle was never bothered about being a record producer or going to London and making it big as a wheeler dealer in the music business.

Roger was a record collector first and foremost. What he was driven to do above all was play people records they had never heard before. “Listen to this Bill, Bo Diddley meets Beefheart at the Black Ark produced by Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry, the greatest record ever made” - and it probably would have been if it ever had.

In many senses that record collection was the man, or at least in my head stands as a perfect symbol of the man.

An idea presents itself. Roger’s record collection should not be sold off piecemeal by his executors to pay off funeral bills and whatever debts he may have left behind. I should use some of the cash that came my way and never would have if he had not existed and put an offer in for the collection.

A towering cabinet could be made from iron or oak or concrete or granite, whatever feels right to encase the collection.

It could stand like the monolith at the beginning of Kubrick’s 2001, shelf upon shelf of worn grooves and dog-eared sleeves, a monument to the man. A monument in a public space that we can walk around and admire its size, its girth. Those records’ playing days would be over. No needle should ever touch their grooves again. Without Roger there to play them to you, they would lose their meaning. You may as well just get the CD box set down your local HMV or Virgin. Tonight I will make some phone calls, see what can be done. Of course I could be wrong. Maybe my idea is just me jerking off - “Look at me, Bill Drummond, didn’t I do well for myself” - as I wave my diminishing wad at the thinning crowd.

from www.manchesterbeat.com

MEMORIES OF ROGER EAGLE. It must have been late ’76. My earliest memory of the extraordinary Roger Eagle was probably his black, beady eyes glaring out of Eric’s cramped box-office window. Like a management-training film on how not to treat your customers he blatantly regarded all us nervous, punky teenagers as irritating inconveniences with whom he was annoyingly obliged to gruffly exchange a few blunt words in order to run a club. He seemed permanently on the edge of rage, and I, like all my friends, certainly didn’t want to nudge him over that edge.

Physically, intimidating is the first adjective that comes to mind. He was at least seven foot tall, a coarse ugly face, with sallow, pockmarked, plasticine skin and a moustache like General Melchett’s - a weapon of war. This black, bristling, nicotine-stained, unhealthy outgrowth seemed to psychically embody all the contempt he felt for whatever pathetic human-being he had to waste his next few minutes upon, when he could be listening to his precious music.

He oversaw the queues into Eric’s, and the behaviour within, like a colossus. He wasn’t muscley, like the steroid-enhanced bouncers flexing and glaring at Eric’s door, he was just big, a crude lumpen mass that no-one, surely, would ever even contemplate taking on. And never did, that I witnessed.

Yet still, somehow, he was oddly lovable - a schoolboy, monstrously overgrown. I imagined his pocked skin to be the scars of a painfully spotty adolescence that had driven him out of youthful society and into the comforting, non-judgemental arms of his record collection. Alone in some bedroom, like many others before and since, I guessed he formed the deep attachment to music that would become his vocation. Or maybe not. Maybe he’d spent his teenage years happy, the life and soul of the many parties at which he was the centre of attention, the most popular, the most handsome, the most beloved. But, no, once you’d met Roger, you couldn’t believe such banal childhood pleasures shaped such an awesome countenance; only pain could shape such a man.

We were scared of him - in an admiring kind of way of course. He ran Eric’s, he was its figurehead, its icon, its dictator. Eric’s was precious to us, a new world, and he was the aura hovering behind it all, its music-worshipping, spiritual heart. His high, wide and deep, deep presence authenticated all our feelings of how artistically important and exciting was this dingy, smelly, cheaply-decorated basement.

He was genuinely that now over-used and devalued term, an inspiration, and many of us were being seriously inspired in those days.

Over the coming months and years I got to know him a little better, but never much. The contempt in his eyes lessened but never completely disappeared. I daringly pestered and cajoled him into putting the various bands I was in on the bill for many Erics gigs. Then, when I joined the club’s in-house band, Big In Japan, I found Roger was technically one of my managers. Didn’t seem to make any difference to Roger, he treated me exactly the same. Then Big in Japan split up and he wasn’t again, but nothing changed.

One memory sticks most in my mind, the only time I ever really saw under the surface, the time we ended up back at his flat one night.

Roger and his then business-partner, Pete Fulwell, had decided to make a single for the Eric’s label with my band, Dalek I Love You. After a recording session we gave Roger a lift back to his flat where he surprisingly invited us in – myself, Alan Gill and Dave Hughes. My nineteen year old self felt privileged indeed.

He insisted we must listen to dub, a then still excitingly new sound. So heavy, he threatened, it would undoubtedly damage various parts of our anatomy before taking our heads completely off. He told us this with a vital intensity that was not lessened for being repeated with every record he laid upon the turntable that night.

He proceeded to skin up some ‘Manchester Black’, as he called it, while we leafed through his sexily artistic, sci-fi Metal Hurlant magazines, new to us then and another mind-boggling ingredient to add to an increasingly mind-boggling evening.

Now Roger did have a side to him that previous to that night I’d only glimpsed. On the very rare occasions when he was amused, he giggled like a little girl. It was an extremely off-putting sight, this enormous lump of a man squeaking like a tiny virgin. It wasn’t very long before the Manchester Black and Roger’s crazed giggling had us all tittering like school-children. And all the time, Roger would be jumping up and down to his turntable assuring us that the next dub plate – hardly discernible from the previous, to our addled and unsophisticated ears – was so unbelievably special and heavy it would do all kind of previously unimaginable mischief to our, precisely described, soon to be obliterated, internal organs.

It was an amazing night for all of us. We drove home feeling we’d been allowed into our high priest’s inner sanctum. But the next time we went to Eric’s, Alan, believing himself to be now an intimate, drug-sharing pal of Roger’s presumed it would be quite okay to skin one up within the club. As soon as Roger saw this he physically lifted Alan into the air, with no more care than if he’d just met him that night, and manhandled him out on to the street. He was banned, a tragic sentence which would thankfully always fade within a few weeks, as Roger’s memory of the crime faded.

But still, you didn’t mess with the Eagle.

Way after our too short heyday in Eric’s prime, and the minor fame that many of us experienced in the years that followed, I saw another article about it all. The usual suspects were listed - the bands, the stars, the big hits, the big mouths - and there, under a picture of Roger at his ugly finest, was his quote on the matter - “They all work for me.”

I smiled and thought, yes, we probably do, we always have done, we always will. For a moment I felt like a mere pawn in someone else’s far grander game - and felt proud to be so.

I was a kid and he was undoubtedly a man. He seemed ancient, but was far younger than I am now. I still feel like a kid compared to Roger Eagle. I always will.

March 2009.

Dave Balfe began his career in late-70s Liverpool where he co-founded the Zoo label, played keyboards with The Teardrop Explodes as well as managing, producing and publishing Echo & the Bunnymen. He went on to found the Food label in London in the mid-80s where, most famously, he signed Blur. He now lazes about in his very big house in the country.

Manchester - 1985 Interview ‘The Cat’ Thanks to ‘Jack That Cat Was Clean‘ Back in ’64 in Manchester, the clued-in dudes would be seen every Saturday sweating the night away at the Twisted Wheel club to the latest American black music supplied by their favourite DJ – Roger Eagle.

Over twenty years on, the Twisted Wheel is no more but Mr. Eagle is back in Manchester spinning R&B every Thursday night (9-12) at his club “The International”.

In this short interview Roger Eagle tries to help us revive those Twisted Wheel days…

How did you come to be DJ-ing at the Twisted Wheel?

I walked in there one afternoon when it was the “Left Wing Coffee Bar” with a pile of Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley imports on Chess and Checker and this guy asked me if I knew anything about Rhythm’n’Blues.

Naturally I said yes, so he asked me if I wanted to dj.

I’d never DJ-ed before but I thought I’d take a shot at it and that’s how it started.

How did you cope DJ-ing for the first time?

I didn’t really know what to do, I just put records on and I never used to say much. But the people who used to come down were really fanatical about sounds so if it was a good record they would know what it was within seconds, it was that kind of crowd.

Was you involved with the mod scene at that time?

I suppose I was the dj the mods would listen to if they were going to clubs because the Wheel was the allnighter scene in Manchester. I wasn’t a mod myself but I thought it was fascinating that English kids were getting into American black music.

We started bringing the artists over and it was amazing to see people such as Howlin’ Wolf, Otis Redding, Rufus Thomas, Muddy Waters etc… getting the same sort of reception that normally only big pop stars got.

The only thing I don’t like about the mod scene is that some people are very narrow in their tastes, we were very broadly based when we started at the Wheel. It gradually narrowed down to Northern Soul which I think was a mistake.

Did you have live bands at the Wheel?

Yeah, we used to get American artists over to play, people such as Chuck Berry, Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, T-Bone Walker, John Lee Hooker. Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf didn’t play but they did some live stuff for the local TV station.

We had loads of them down there all the time, Jimmy Reed used to sell out the place.

When Sonny Boy Williamson came over he freaked over English girls wearing mini skirts. He was wandering around looking up all the girls saying ‘Heaven Hath Come Down’.

He was probably the greatest harmonica player of them all, maybe even better than Little Walter, which is saying a lot.

How did you know Guy Stevens?

We knew each other, we knew what we were doing, he used to send up records.

He came up once with Inez and Charlie Foxx. He gave me a Don & Dewey single ‘Stretchin’ Out’ and he mailed me an album by Frank Frost & the Nighthawks which was out on Sam Phillips ‘Phillips International”.

I used to go to the Scene club in Ham Yard before it was the Scene but I moved up to Manchester when the R&B thing started.

Where did you get your records at the time?

Mostly I used to get them from American record companies or from a specialist import shop. I used to get records sent from the Stax label, Stan Axton the owner used to send me records.

I used to get records sent from Tamla Motown, Atlantic, Dual, Duke, Sunset, Songbird, Backbeat and all those kind of labels.

Roughly, what would be the Twisted Wheel top ten in 1964?

The favourite record of all time at the Wheel was ‘It Keeps Raining’ – Fats Domino. That was probably the most played record, then you would go to something like ‘Walking The Dog’ – Rufus Thomas.

Then you could go to any one of a dozen Muddy Waters records, probably something fairly obvious such as ‘Tiger In Your Tank’. The next on the list would be ‘That’s What I Want To Know’ – James Carr, then one of Bobby Blue Bland’s ‘Turn On Your Lovelight’.

Then would come ‘Amen’ by the Reverend Robinson and ‘Long Distance’ by Garnell Cooper and the Kinfolks which was one the rare unknown ones that we played a lot. You could pick on any one of a dozen records by Booker T & The MG’s, probably one of the more up-tempo ones such as ‘Can’t Be Still’ or something like that. There was always plenty of records from the Stax label in the top ten and also there was quite a lot of Tamla Motown floating around in there as well.

But there was not quite so much Tamla Motown as people like to think. I didn’t play that much Motown or Spector stuff just because it was so widely available and the chart stuff.

I was playing gospel stuff, but after 4 years at the Wheel it was down to that one fast Northern Soul dance beat which I though was very boring and that’s why I left in mid ’67.

I only have a few memories of Roger. He was big, often seemed grumpy and frankly I found him a bit intimidating.

However, on the rare occasions that he seemed in a good mood it was very rewarding to be around him. I guess that I only ever met Roger at Eric’s. I did not know him socially even when we were playing the club almost every month, therefore I only saw him at work.. running a club that (in hindsight) was obviously losing money whilst providing a venue for dreams to a whole generation of young musicians.. It is quite simple for me. OMD would not exist if Eric’s did not exist. Paul Humphreys and I specifically invented OMD to play at Eric’s because they would let us.. we could not have asked anyone else...no one else would have let us do what we wanted to do. Not only did Roger and Pete Fullwell let us play on their famous free to members Thursday night, they actually thought that we were interesting enough to send to Manchester to play at their mates new Factory evenings at The Russel club in Moss Side. This is how we met Tony Wilson and Alan Erasmus and ended up signing to their Factory record label. Eric’s was a catalyst for our generation... A real place that it can be said of.. “if you build it, they will come”. I would never have had a career in music without the help of Roger Eagle. The fact that the grumpy bugger actually gave us half a dozen free beers on our third appearance at Eric’s made me realise we had hope!.. if Roger could melt enough to make that gesture then conquering the rest of the world would be a “piece of cake”.

Andy McCluskey is the lead singer and songwriter for the band Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark (OMD)

Eric’s jukebox disc 1 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26

going to a go-go...the miracles the walk…jimmy mccracklin slim jenkin’s place...booker t & the mg’s smokestack lightning...howlin’ wolf el pussycat ska…roland alphonso gates of the west…the clash pretty thing…bo diddley c’mon everybody…eddie cochran massacre…nigger kojak sixteen tons…tennessee ernie ford taxi…deaf school (love is like a) heatwave…martha & the vandellas I chase the devil…max romeo promised land…johnnie allan out of sight…james brown & the famous flames ace of spades…link wray psycho killer…talking heads al capone…prince buster my babe…little walter natty pass him gce…shorty the president sex & drugs & rock ‘n’ roll…ian dury hurt by love…inez & charlie foxx the ‘in’ crowd…dobie gray gangsters…the specials nothin’ shakin’ (but the leaves on the trees)…eddie fontaine armagideon time…willie williams

with thanks to Bernie Connor