Bowie And Hutch

Titre : Bowie And Hutch

Auteur : John "Hutch" Hutchinson

Date de publication : 2014

Editeur : Lulu.com

Type : Essai

John "Hutch" Hutchinson (1944-2021) fut le collaborateur musical, le musicien accompagnateur et l'ami de David Bowie. Leur relation intermittente dura 7 ans, depuis l'époque du Marquee Club jusqu'à la chute de Ziggy Stardust en 1973. Dans son livre, Hutchinson raconte ce parcours aux côtés de Bowie mais aussi leurs vies musicales respectives.

Né à Scarborough en Angleterre, "Hutch" évoque également l'ascension du jeune Alan (Robert) Palmer ainsi que sa participation au concert-hommage d'anciens membres de son premier groupe, The Mandrakes, le 9 avril 2004 au Scarborough Spa Ballroom, devant la famille du chanteur disparu quelques mois auparavant.

16-year-old Alan (Robert) Palmer

EXTRAIT

One of the budding local singers in Scarborough at that same time, an ambitious youngster who would come along to the Tennesseans' gigs to watch and learn from the older boys, was a young Scarborough Evening News typesetter apprentice called Alan Palmer. Alan was quite soon to grow into a great singer and songwriter, and a world famous rock star, having along the way changed his name to Robert Palmer. Robert was Alan's middle name. I never got used to his name change; to me he will always be Alan.

Alan (Robert) and I never really got on too well somehow and I think it was perharps a clash of young musicians' egos. It certainly was not about singing, he had some voice - that was no contest. Maybe I had put him down in some way in the early days; I was a few years older after all, and as arrogant as any young local guitar hero can be. Anyway there was something competitive going on between us and it was never resolved.

Scarborough Evening News 1965 Year Review (2002)

Palmer did call at my flat in London once or twice in the later sixties, to visit one of the girls I shared with. I even introduced him to my friend David Bowie at a Feathers gig, several years before either of them achieved any fame.

After Alan became Robert, some time later in the mid-seventies, he was to take his opportunity to give me the cold shoulder when I visited Island Records at their Basin Street studios. I had been invited there for the day to do some demos for an American A&R man who thought he had found some potential in me and in my songs. Palmer was by chance on that same day mixing something for his next hit album in the label's Mobile Studio which was parked in their back yard. My A&R guy wanted to show me the impressive vehicle, unaware that it was occupied, so Alan (Robert) and I were both surprised to meet up like that. I was pleased to see and old chum from Scarborough (I had been impressed with his rapid musical development and his success) but Palmer apparently was not really interested in what I was doing. He was busy, a little offhand I thought, and so we left him to it. I must have really pissed him off in old days; maybe I had been an arrogant twat too - back in the sixties.

The Mandrakes at the Condor Club in Scarborough (February 1965)

Alan (Robert) Palmer always said in the press that he was from Batley - I guess he was probably born there, but believe me Palmer was from Scarborough. Funny that, David Bowie does the same thing, says he's "from Brixton". In my eyes David is from Bromley. For the record, Palmer was still a teenage apprentice at the Scarborough Evening News when he joined his first decent band, which was called The Mandrakes. Not any kind of Silver or Paddle Steamer sort of Mandrakes as I have seen reported generally, they were just The Mandrakes from Scarborough.

The Mandrakes were a good band, in tune with the times, and were enthusiastically managed by Ron Gillette, a suntanned old rogue who mystified everybody with his talent for pulling young girls (known in those days as birds, chicks, talent - and fanny) and we were permanently amazed that his very pleasant, smiling little wife either didn't seem to notice - or mind at all. Anyway Ron brought the band along nicely and they displaced all others, including my band The Tennesseans, to become the "Top Band in Scarborough". Certainly their lead guitarist Rich Hodgson was playing some good stuff, albeit in what I would have described as a more "widdley" style than my own "rootsy or bluesy", perharps more old-fashioned style. (...)

Guitarists Keith Griffin and Rob Southwick

Alan (Robert) Palmer had developed a distinctive vocal style based on his attempts to sound like Paul Rodgers (Paul incidentally is originally from Middlesbrough, just up the road from Scarborough) who was the singer with the band Free at the time. The young Alan Palmer was "spotted" whilst doing a support gig with The Mandrakes somewhere out of town, and was persuaded to "go professional" with The Alan Bown Set, a full-time travelling band from the south of England somewhere. Near enough to London anyway.

The process of "going pro" would not have been easy for young Alan, he will have had to convince his middle class mum and dad that his new job had better prospects than his old job as a typesetter at the Scarborough Evening News. They knew he was throwing away his pension, so I don't know how he managed it.

Drummer Mick Stephenson

Bandleader Alan Bown was soon to notice that his audiences had the impression that The Alan Bown Set's new singer, "Alan" Palmer was the leader of his band. So came about the transformation from Alan Palmer to Robert Palmer, and somehow it was an altogether more suitable moniker for the very-soon-to-be, very cool and besuited vocalist.

An excellent up and coming band called Vinegar Joe was to be the next transfer move for Robert Palmer. With a young Elkie Brooks alongside and a fine band of some of England's finest behind him, Robert Palmer quickly made a name for himself and went on to a great career, with a worldwide following. He made many great hit records and he sadly died far too young. He smoked and drank too much maybe, but then many of us did, so it's just the life's lottery that decides who will last a little longer. I really hope that Alan (Robert) had been happy with his success and his life, and that it had been great while it lasted. It must have been. It seemed to me in later years that Alan (Robert) had become very intense in his performances when I'd see him on TV, and those tweed suits looked to hot to sing rock and roll in.

Bassist John Standidge

As you can imagine, Robert Palmer had made Scarborough proud. They don't get many local heroes up there, Charles Lawton was born there (his brother ran a pub in the town), and Alan Aykbourne moved to live there so he could try out his plays in a quiet and culturally empty backwater. That's it? Oh no, there was until recently one more: the late charity worker and Disk Jockey Sir Jimmy Saville kept an appartment on the South Cliff for many years. I walked up the main street with posthumously disgraced Sir Jimmy once in the old days as we often use the same coffee bar, the "Tisane".

Another of The Mandrakes was rhythm guitarist Alan Black, and Alan was from the even more faded but relatively unsploit resort of Bridlington, a few miles south of Scarborough. The town has a great big south beach (you can see Bridlington Bay from space) and I walk my dog there these days, but Bridlington too seems to have been perilously short of talented residents over the years. (...)

"Top Band in Scarborough"

The Mandrakes were proud of Robert Palmer's fame; the other band members had each made a life outside of music with careers, wives, kids and mortgages, but they were all talented musicians and had joined and formed other bands, mostly around the Scarborough area, playing with friends, as we do. I had more or less kept in touch with guitarist Rich Hodgson, and it was he who phoned me in the spring of 2004 to ask me if I wanted to play support to The Mandrakes at their forthcoming "Tribute to Robert Palmer" gig at the Scarborough Spa Ballroom on Friday 9th April 2004.

I had been flattered and delighted to accept the gig and the proceeds were to go to a heart charity. I took my mates John Precious (electric upright bass) and Dave Cook (drums) with me, and we set up on the very same stage I had seen Johnny Kidd & The Pirates rock and roll on more than forty years earlier. The old ballroom had not changed a bit and was packed with Scarborough people from all our yesterdays. Some remembered more than others about "the old days" as is the way with reunions, but we were all united in our determination to pay tribute to the memory of our home town's own Alan (Robert) Palmer.

The Spa in Scarborough, North Yorkshire, England (1960s)

My trio played our jazzy-bluesy originals set to a pretty good reception from an audience who mostly sat on the ballroom floor, not dancing. Most Scarborough folk had not seen me play for many years so it was good to get a home town, up to date reaction to my music. I enjoyed the gig and the opportunity to pay my own tribute. I think I mumbled something in the way of tribute into the microphone, very conscious that Alan's mum and dad were in the audience and also that Alan and I had not been particularly good friends. We may have had some small-town rivalry going, or maybe it was something else, but we had certainly known each other well enough. Who knows maybe I was not alone in admiring Alan's (Robert's) creative talent as a performer whilst not finding him easy to get along with.

Never mind that my music might have been a little out of place at the event, as we were after al only a support to the main event The Mandrakes, who had advertised that Alan's younger brother Mark Palmer would be making an appearance onstage with them. I hadn't known that Alan had a brother, but apparently the lad was an officer in the RAF and he played bass in a band of guys from his squadron.

"A good band, in tunes with the times" (John "Hutch" Hutchinson)

I had come offstage at the Spa gig in that hot and elated state that only players know about and was slumped backstage joking with Pete Liley, another talented Mandrake guitarist (they had a lot of guitarists, a rotating squad it seemed) when a ghost walked in and all my hairs stood on end. The ghost of Alan Palmer had walked into the Spa ballroom dressing room dressed in the tweed suit and was smiling at me. It said, "Hi Hutch nice set, good to see you again," and I almost fainted. It was Alan's RAF bass-playing brother Mark Palmer of course, and it turned out that he used to come and watch me play almost every week, years before when he was still at school, and I had spoken to him in the past several times without knowing that he was Alan's brother. Mark is a lovely guy, and I never let on that I thought I'd seen his brother's ghost. He might have wondered why I was so pale though.

Mark went on-stage and sang several of his brother's hits, electrifying the Spa Ballroom that night. The audience saw what I had just seen in the dressing room, the return of Alan Robert Palmer for one night only, an unforgettable spine-tingling experience. I then saw the gig for what it really was, a wake for Alan Robert Palmer, a reminder of his talent, and I was as sad and filled with respect and regrets as any other one of the Scarborians privileged to have been there that evening.