The only time I went to Eric’s Club in Liverpool was in early 1978, when I was press officer for Stiff Records. I travelled up there with Devo, who were red hot at the time and looking for a big-money deal on the heels of their short-term Stiff contract. Henry Priestman from local band The Yachts (another Stiff act) was disc jockey that night and credited every record he played to Paul Conroy, the label’s general manager, who had also made the journey. Everyone in the audience was too gone to notice.

   At one point, Mark from Devo came up and asked me if I could throw any light upon a cheque which had been thrust upon him by a large, shaven-headed man purporting to be an important record company mogul. It was made out for a million pounds and bore the signature of the great Supercharge saxplayer and prankster Albie Donnelly, who probably had about ten bob in his bank account at the time. I told Mark that it might be wiser to accept Richard Branson’s offer.   

   I spent much of the evening talking to club owner Roger Eagle, who I’d known for years – great stories about rock ’n’ roll singer Larry Williams showing everybody his gun at The Twisted Wheel, hanky panky with tripped-out hippie bands at the Magic Village, and how Liverpool finally seemed to be coming alive again, buzzing and fizzing, following visits by the Ramones, the Pistols and the Clash. Roger had seemingly become mentor to a new generation of questers.

   In the months that followed, he phoned several times, brimming with excitement about a surge of new bands that were incubating at Eric’s – but by the time I found an opportunity to go up there and investigate, the club had been closed down by over-zealous cops and Roger had gone back to Manchester.

   Sensing that I might be able to link many of these new bands into one big family tree, I made three visits to Liverpool (always my favourite UK city), enlisting Bill Drummond as my guide. The former leader of seminal lunatic punksters Big In Japan, he was now running Zoo Records with Dave Balfe and guiding the careers of Echo & the Bunnymen and The Teardrop Explodes. Thanks to Bill’s tentacular connections, I was able to interview every scene-shifter from Pete Wylie to Pete Burns, Ian Broudie to Budgie, Ian McCulloch to Andy McCluskey, dozens more – hardly any of them known outside Liverpool at the time. An animated Holly Johnson told me that he had, that very morning, decided to change the name of his band from Hollycaust to Frankie Goes To Hollywood.

   Between interviews, Bill gave me a guided tour of the city’s cafés and coffee bars, in each of which he was welcomed as a regular.

   A few years later, he moved down to Aylesbury, not far from where I was living at the time – and again, he familiarised himself with all the local cafés . . . so much so that he devoted several pages of his fin de siècle book ‘45’ to discussing them and his coffee addiction. “I’m now at the point,” he wrote, ”where I can’t lift a pen without first feeling the caffeine shaking down my arms and banging in my head.” 

   It came as something of a shock, therefore, when I recently read in The Independent that he had given up coffee, which he now regarded as “poison”. Strangely, the date is forever inscribed on his memory, remembered in the same way as someone who has renounced the devil and accepted Christ into his life. “Not one sip of coffee has passed my lips since that last double espresso at an alfresco café in Sauchiehall Street, Glasgow, on 3 October 2002.”  

   Jeez – he obviously knows something I don’t. 

   It seems that Bill can’t shake his addiction to tea, however. In his most recent memoir, ‘17’ – one of the most fascinating rock books ever written – he reveals that he consumes several pots of tea every day. A cup of coffee contains 100-150 mg of caffeine and a cup of tea contains 50-60 mg – so that can’t be the poison.

   According to my Textbook of Pharmacology, excessive chronic consumption of caffeine causes headaches, restlessness, anxiety, insomnia and confusion – but some drugs don’t seem to affect me in the same way as they affect others. I drink strong back coffee by the bucketful – always have. Can anybody enlighten me on the perils of this practice? 

Editor’s note: Pete’s investigations, as described above, gave rise to two family trees . . . Liverpool 1980: Eric’s Progeny and The Liverpool Renaissance – a modified version, drawn up for the BBC Television series. He has also drawn several family trees detailing the first Merseybeat explosion of the early 1960s. 

To view Liverpool 1980: Eric’s Progency click here, and to see if you, your mates, or your heroes are in it, click here.

Damn, missed the first one – Fleetwood Mac – but just found out that BBC4 is showing repeats of some of the programmes. Watch or set the video as they are not available on iPlayer. Next one Black Sabbath at midnight on Friday night/Saturday morning. Had to be.

And as a special bonus, look at this. We mean it, man.

Osibisa, the brilliant band who define the title category of  this post , are 40 years old – and in blisteringly feel good, musically astute and astounding form on a joyful event Saturday night , 270209 in the foyer, beside the Purcell Rooms on The South Bank.

Vile rumours emanating from the very bowels of government talk of plans afoot to sell off great swathes of the publically owned South Bank complex, including The Purcell Rooms and the foyer.

This would be yet another scandal against any ‘real art for the people’ policy our failed public servants may aspire to.

Pete may have not done an Osibisa, who collaborated with Tree stalwart Ginger Baker in the 70s, Tree but they gave Frame a perfect credo onstage when they said.

“Every village has a big tree people gather round. Its where the vibes come from.”

And where the Griot spins his tales, Frames them vibes.

This Our Culture, Our Joy.

TBC  (To Be Cherished)

September 1972. Your older brother, back from college, is showing off his record collection to his old school friends. Listening very intently they all agree: King Crimson’s In the Court of the Crimson King is still unsurpassed, even though it is a couple of years old now.

Downstairs your little sister is watching Top of the Pops, drooling over Bryan Ferry, singing Virginia Plain.

You scoff at the makeup, the odd vocals and Brian Eno’s hair, ridiculous even by 1972 standards. You question how there can be a pop band containing two Bryan/Brians. But though you try to resist, still the song gets under your skin.

Later at supper your brother and sister have a heated debate. He sneers, ‘Yeah, you might think they’re good now, but who do you think people will still be listening to in 2010?’.

Enjoy the Crimson and Roxy Rock Family Tree in Deep Zoom here (available to view in Deep Zoom for the first time today).

Find out who’s in it here.

Delving into the names in the Deep Purple tree yields some unexpected riches.

Reggie McBride, who shows up in the sadly shortlived Tommy Bolin Band in 1976 played on Billy Preston’s album ‘It’s My Pleasure’, released in ‘75, also featuring Stevie Wonder on harmonica on a couple of tracks.

Billy Preston, best known, probably, for his incredible performance of ‘That’s The Way God Planned It’ in the concert for Bangladesh, and the collaboration ‘With You I’m Born Again’ with Syreeta, about which, well, opinions may differ, also of course, worked with the Stones, where he overlapped for a year with Ronnie Wood (read about it here in Rock’s Back Pages, and view the Kinks, Stones, Pretties tree here – Ronnie is right at the bottom).    

Ronnie Wood is the brother of singer Art Wood, and they played together, with Rod Stewart, Kenny Lane, Kenney Jones and Ian MacLagan in Quiet Melon, which, when Art left to take up graphic design, would evolve through the Small Faces into the Faces. But before that, Art Wood was founder of the modestly titled Artwoods, a band with Jon Lord on keyboards, which is where the Deep Purple tree begins. Got all that?

We are working on an interactive version of the Rock Family Trees that will do all this for you in a few clicks. Not there yet, but one day …

Henrys Gigs on MixCloud are now running the interview by Henry Scott Irvine  with Gavin Martin  on Rock Family Trees.

Click  the link here to listen.

We just posted the list of the amazing bunch of people who feature in the Flowers of Romance tree. My family moved to Bromley in 1973 and I was there until the end of 1979 and so if there was any tree I ever had a chance of being in, it would be this one. Unfortunately the schoolboy bands I was in at the time played Rocky Mountain Way and our own songs with piano parts in the style of Elton John, so it wasn’t to be.

But one of the most memorable gigs I went to was The Slits and Siouxise and the Banshees at Croydon Greyhound. Not sure which year. Earlier that night I’d called a friend to see if he wanted to go for a drink and his mother said that he had gone to a gig in Croydon. I looked at the paper and saw that there were two on that night: Barclay James Harvest at the Fairfield Halls and the Slits and the Banshees over the road. Reasoning that he couldn’t possibly want to see BJH I went to the Greyhound.

Well, he wasn’t there. It turned out that a girl he fancied had offered him her second ticket and he wasn’t going to refuse. So I was at the Greyhound on my own, wearing, I still remember, flared jeans and a pink sweater, while everyone else – literally everyone else – was in punk gear. An alarming sight. I stood there hoping people would think I was from a record company or music paper, and wasn’t just a prat. 

At first I was very snotty about the musicianship, and I couldn’t quite believe that they were allowed to get away with it. It was hard to work out if they were, well, you know, serious. But the energy was unbelievable, and although not completely convinced,  I came out thinking that maybe it was time, at last, to go and get some straight leg jeans. Well, one step at a time.

I was impressed enough to buy The Slits’ first album, Cut when it came out, and not only for cover picture. The Flowers of Romance tree brought it all flooding back. Thank you Pete.

So what are you planning on doing on Valentine’s day afternoon, this Sunday? Don’t answer. Here’s what you should be doing. Listening to Family of Rock’s own Gavin Martin on Resonance FM 104.4. in an interview by Henry Scott-Irvine going out between 3.00 and 4.00. Here’s the blurb:

Gavin Martin (formerly Feature Writer & Film Critic at The NME, and now The Daily Mirror’s Music Editor) discusses ‘The Family Of Rock’ aka Pete Frame’s (legendary) ‘Rock FamilyTrees’, which were hand drawn, written, and researched by former ZigZag ‘Rock Journalist’ Pete Frame. Gavin and Henry Scott-Irvine discuss, the followiing ‘Trees’: ‘London’s 60’s Ryhthm & Blues Scene’, ‘Birmingham’s 60’s Beatsters’, ‘CBGB’s & New York’s New Wave’, ‘Creation Records’ Tree’, ‘Madchester’s Music Scene’, ‘Belfast’s 60’s Scene’, and more.

THere's gold in them thar Trees as Gavin Martin is mining it at Resonance Thought this beautiful rendering of Pete's Flowers Of Romance Tree, gold inlaid with Will Self's text, for our St Martins Exhibition last year, seemed appropriate

I can’t help myself adding that I did a talk on Resonance last year about the American political philosopher John Rawls. It is now available to download as a 43 minute ringtone.

The Captivating Judith Owen her new album THe Beautiful Damage Collection (Of cover versions, released 19th Feb) has a remarkable version of Deep Purple's Smoke On The Water...

I do love em.

Machined Head 72 that was great big hairy mofo of a record.

I mean who doesn’t get Smoke on The Water?

C’mon , I mean really. It IS Rock n fucking roll.

Just ask Peter Hook or anyone who ever rocked a joint.

Or jointed up in rock.

Love looking at the Tree names and doing a where are they now thing.

Like Glenn Hughes? He is now “The Voice of Rock”, according to his official site, where a notifier thing flashes up, soon as you hit it, for a new Live in Wolverhampton CD, the hometown of Slade legend Dave Hill and Led Zep singer Robert Plant.

So quite some rock history to be mined there.

Mind I am not sure how to put links so you will have to Google and see more about Glenn if you care or dare.

Tell Glenn we sent cha.

N You all come back now, y’hear?

I cantbut wonder , genealogically  : is there a way of drawing a family tree tracing a link between Glenn and Howard?

This is the first of an occasional new service to our extended family:
revealing the names of the band members listed in the tree, from Tony Ashton (Paice, Ashton and Lord) and Pete Barnacle (Gillan) to Art Wood (Artwoods) and Bernie Woodman (Roundabout).

Others appear in text and margins. Maybe one day we’ll do something about that too.

If you prefer you can view the tree in amazing deep zoom here or visit the shop.