Steve Cuden: On today’s Story Beat,

Jon Kremer: In Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall, one of the lines he sings, I’ll, uh, know my song. Well, before I start singing, before you write something, know what you’re writing about. Do know what you’re doing. It seems an obvious thing, but if you do that and you are doing this with confidence, that confidence comes across and I think in life, subliminally, at least in all sorts of things. When we’re talking with people, certainly if it’s about anything serious, we want to have confidence in them that they know what they’re talking about.

Announcer: This is Story Beat with Steve Cuden. A podcast for the creative mind. Storybeat explores how masters of creativity develop and produce brilliant works that people everywhere love and admire. So join us as we discover how talented creators find success in the worlds of imagination and entertainment. Here now is your host, Steve Cuden

Steve Cuden: Thanks for joining us on Story Beat. We’re coming to you from the Steel City, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. My guest today, British author and pop culture historian John Creamer is appearing on Story Beat for the second time. He’s best known for his memoirs and books dealing with the 1960s pop and rock music scene. A long standing friendship with Year of the Cat singer songwriter Al Stewart, along with owning his hometown, Bournemouth’s original vintage vinyl shop, led to John experiencing many aspects of the UK music industry. The recently released updated version of John’s book, BOURNEMOUTH A, uh, a 60s memoir features meeting the Beatles in 1963 at the height of Beatlemania in England. John also explores his ringside seat for the journey of his close friend Al Stewart from playing guitar in a local beat group to international success and hit double platinum albums in the 70s. I’ve read the revised version of Bournemouth A Go Go and can tell you it’s a fascinating, fun look at what life was like in England during the heady, music filled 60s and 70s, when everything in the culture was rapidly changing and possibilities abounded. If you’re interested in the beginning of modern rock and pop music in England and the early years of Al Stewart’s career in particular, I highly recommend Bournemouth a Go Go to you in 2024. John also published Chain Rock and Pop’s Magic Moments, which we chatted about during his first appearance on Story Beat. So for all those reasons and many more, I’m delighted to welcome back to Story Beat the author and music historian John Kremer John, so good to see you again.

Jon Kremer: Well, Steve, it’s an absolute delight to be with you again on Story Beat.

Steve Cuden: Well, the pleasure is mine, believe me. It’s a terrific chatting with you. Look, I know you were a young man in the 60s listening to all that incredible music being created all the way around you at all times. What effect do you think all that music ultimately had on you as a person throughout your life? How did it affect you?

Jon Kremer: Well, do you know, it seems to be like having, um, your own personal soundtrack. There’s something about, uh, that kind of musical jukebox we all have in our mind. And it’s like, um, teleporting. It’s like a time machine. What it set in play was something, uh, better than keeping a diary, I would say. I mean, uh, perhaps, uh, back in the Dwardian days, people would keep a diary. Now it’s mainly to keep to admin in place. But somehow what it gave to me was initially just, uh, first of all, I suppose, a defense against the vicissitudes of school days. But then when leaving, it kind of gave, um, I don’t know, a kind of credibility to life that somehow you could tune into. And I’ll say pop music, because I think it delivers in a way that nothing else ever could. Not rock music, not jazz, not anything else, all wonderful. But just pop music can give you that two or three minute sort of endorphin rush of pleasure. And this little soundtrack to life seemed to be there, sort of. Yes. From those days onwards. What it meant now would be decades and decades later, uh, if I want to rush back to some moment in the past, there’s probably a musical soundtrack tune that’s going to come to my mind that would take me there.

Steve Cuden: So songs will absolutely drag you back to those days? Yes.

Jon Kremer: Yeah, I think in an instant. I think, um, I think that works for everyone, to be honest. Um.

Steve Cuden: Did you know back then that music had a hold on you when you were a young man? Did you know it then?

Jon Kremer: Yes. Uh, I started to get affected by this strongly, and we spoke about it in our previous, uh, conversation. Partly because my parents and I always had the kind of relationship that maybe an

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Jon Kremer: only child might have more than maybe, if you have many brothers and sisters in which, um, they used to talk. A thing called the generation gap back then never existed for me because my dad, although he wasn’t a musician, could play a guitar. And though it wasn’t the thing in the 50s, he had quite a record collection. And by the time I’m about 12 and you’re just sliding into that teenage thing, uh, I already had some records from my dad’s collection and I was already getting a buzz from this. So you hit adolescence and it all becomes very important very quickly.

Steve Cuden: Mhm. For sure, for sure. What back in the day were your absolute favorite songs or albums or groups? Who were your favorites back when you were sort of just getting into it?

Jon Kremer: Um, are we talking about the very early part? Uh, in this case we’d be talking about the very late 50s, very early 60s. Uh, we’re talking pre Beatles. In other words.

Steve Cuden: Pre Beatles. Yes.

Jon Kremer: Okay. Um, I had 2M. I very, very much liked from the word go as soon as I heard him. Buddy Hollywood M. Unfortunately this came about probably not long after he sadly demised in the year of 1959, I think in February 59, from the word go, everything he did. And it was extraordinary to me then as time goes on, when you’re that age, a year, two years, five years, well, considerable amounts of time. I realized later, uh, that he did virtually everything in about a 20 month period. All the songs that anyone can remember, and there’s five or six of them that have given their titles to film titles, they still sound totally fresh to me. If you popped on Every Day now on your turntable or Peggy Sue Got Married, it just sounds wonderful. And in England, um, I very much liked Anthony Newley. Something about his voice just took hold of me.

Steve Cuden: I know we talked about Newley in the last show, uh, in regard to uh, uh, his influencing David Bowie.

Jon Kremer: Yes, that’s what I wrote about a chapter in Chain Reaction on. Yes indeed.

Steve Cuden: Correct. So in the book Bournemouth a Go Go, you uh, have pictures of you with a guitar. Were you a musician back then? Were you working that way?

Jon Kremer: Well, this is the thing. If we’re going back to England and the beat group scene, it had developed out of a mid-50s fluke in which something called skiffle music was popular for a couple of years mainly because of a guy called Lonnie Donegan. What this meant was this craze meant you didn’t have to be a musician. People just picked it up, uh, learned three chords, had a cheap Spanish guitar, somebody possibly on a washboard making a noise and a, uh, uh, sort of a bass, something sort of homemade. And then the Beatles start with John Lennon having a group called the Quarry Men, which is a skiffle group. The craze comes and goes and by the late 50s it’s faded. There’s not a ghost of it remains. Out of the 100% of people who tried it, 98% stopped. 2% of them though didn’t. They thought they like this idea, this grecarious game. Of pretending to be performers. They’re not even really even amateur musicians. And they are the forming of British rock and roll groups. That’s what they morph into. They become three or four people on guitars, Somebody pretending to be Elvis Presley up front. And they eventually become the beat groups that one day in 1964 will storm across America and be called the British Invasion. My point here is there was a time where you could do this stuff, really not be a musician. I was never a musician. I picked up electric guitar because, like many people in England my age at the time who were male, you wanted to be Hank Marvin. Hank B. Marvin, the lead guitarist of the Shadows. And he inspired everyone to pick up electric guitar. I soon realized to be any good, you had to practice. I was too lazy. Um, now I remembered that why I wanted to do this was, oh, you look good. Maybe girls will like this. And I found out there were easier ways to maybe spend some time with girls than bothering to become a musician. Then around that time, I think the picture you’re looking at, I’m about 16 then, maybe 15. Um, I’d met Al, and he could play very well then. And then I met Robert Fripp, who was fantastic. And then Andy Summers from the Police. And you think you’re seeing people like this every week, popping in and out of clubs or whatever,

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Jon Kremer: playing guitar. I thought, I’m never going to do this. So, uh, I quite quickly stopped those

Steve Cuden: listeners who don’t know. Robert Fripp is of King Crimson, correct?

Jon Kremer: Yes.

Steve Cuden: Uh, and, uh. So you were meeting, uh, truly seminal artists before they were known, Correct?

Jon Kremer: Yes. In a word, it was extremely. Everywhere in the country had a kind of music scene. Liverpool, of course, was off the scale. Something else. London metropolis doesn’t count. But Bournemouth, for some reason, really tended to kind of punch above its weight. Um, besides Andy Summers, who goes on with the Police, there’s Al Stewart, uh, there’s a number of people.

Steve Cuden: Why do you think that was happening in the 50s, 60s and 70s? Why was Bournemouth such a focal point?

Jon Kremer: It was really in the 60s in Bournemouth and, um, particularly the early 60s. What would tend to happen in England would be. If you wanted to make it, you went to London. When the Beatles are in Liverpool and Epstein is still trying to get them a recording deal, they just tell him over and over again, every record label, every music publisher, you’re wasting your time. You’re in Liverpool. You’ve got to come to London. The same thing would happen in Bournemouth. They would have to go to London. Al Stewart went to London, um, Robert Fripp and his group become the King Crimson. Um, so it starts in Bournemouth, but in the end it has to be from London. It’s just the nature of it.

Steve Cuden: And you had Greg Lake come out of there too. Yeah.

Jon Kremer: Oh, sorry, Greg. Yeah, I was forgetting him. I didn’t know him too well. I mean, I see him because when you’ve got a scene in a relatively small place, a town, everyone will basically know everyone. Some you know better than others. But, um. Yes, yes. Um, he, um. When he first joins Robert Fripp and his character Crimson lineup. And then of course it’s the, uh. The Lake and Emerson. Lake and Palmer, they are.

Steve Cuden: The first rock group I ever saw in concert was Emerson, Lake and Palmer.

Jon Kremer: Oh, really?

Steve Cuden: Yes. I was a young, very young person. I probably was 9 years old, 10 years old, whatever.

Jon Kremer: I was very early into it then.

Steve Cuden: Yeah, that was. Well, yeah, that was. Was big stuff. And I just. I was totally enamored with, uh. With Keith, um, Emerson and the way that he played the keyboard and made those noises. That was unique at the time, all the synth noises. Um, and that all came out of the rock movement. Of course, the Beatles were not synths till much later. They, you know, they were a true band for a long time. Was there something, do you think about it? Was it England in general, that this was happening and it just was partly in Bournemouth? Or was there something special happening in Bournemouth?

Jon Kremer: No, I think the whole thing was England, as you put it. But there was one or two sort of hotspots. I mean, the obvious one is Liverpool. But, um, Bournemouth was, ah, kind of under the radar in a sense with this. In retrospect, people look back. There’s a line I always like to say to people. Um, where did the Beatles perform live in England most times, excluding Liverpool, obviously, and London? Well, the answer is Bournemouth. So this by itself kind of tells the story quite how and why, I don’t. I don’t know.

Steve Cuden: But lots of folks came through Bournemouth to play there, including people like the Stones and Manfred Mann. And, uh, all these folks came through.

Jon Kremer: Yeah, well, Manfred, uh. I know Manfred Mann from. Again, this is covered in my memoir. Before their. Manfred Manna, they were called the Man Hug Blues Brothers, after Manfred Mann and Mike Hug, the drummer who’d formed it. And before they’d even made a record, they would play once a week. I think it was on a Wednesday back in 1963, in a Bournemouth club called Ladiskagogo. Uh, first time they played there. There’s like about 30 people there no one’s taking any notice. Um, Al and I went to see them and thought, this is fantastic. At this point they haven’t even got a guitar in the group. This is how non sellable to the public they would have been. And had a lead singer called Paul Jones. So we would, uh. The next week, there’s more people. Next week, after about a month, there’s about 200 people packed into this little club. You could hardly take it that number. Uh, after a few months they get a record deal. Their first record comes out and Al and I would sort of see them often and, you know, chat and. Well, I say often once a week when they were playing there. And I kind of tell a few stories about them in a go go revisited for America. If anyone remembers back in the 60s, Manfred man had a number one hit with a, ah, Ellie Grinnich song called do what

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Jon Kremer: Diddy Diddy. A decade or so later they split up and Manfred Mann had something called Manfred Mann’s Earth Band. And he had number one in America with a cover of Bruce Springsteen’s Blinded by the Light. So, um, it’s this fantastically weird thing of my life, which is I just happened to come across enough people that I could write a memoir about. Um, it was talking of Paul Jones being the singer. He’d formed this group with Manfred. Manfred man, having a year or so earlier, turned down the chance of being a singer in a group that a friend of his was just putting together. And his friend had the same name, actually, his name was Jones and his friend was Brian Jones, who asked him to be the singer in what would be the Rolling Stones. And he said no.

Steve Cuden: He said no because it’ll never work, you know.

Jon Kremer: So they got this guy from the London School of Economics in his first year called Jagger, I think his name was something like that.

Steve Cuden: Who was Tony Hancock and how did he influence people in Bournemouth?

Jon Kremer: Oh, well, that’s interesting. Um, you can have probably. I’m trying to think of some equivalent. It’s not real equivalent, but if you were to say Sid Caesar, uh, in America, I’m assuming, even though it’s from the 1950s, his heyday, that his name might still mean something. Sure, sure citizes it would. And he was huge. And he was probably the number one early tv.

Steve Cuden: There was nobody bigger. Him and Milton Berle, basically. And that’s it.

Jon Kremer: Absolutely. In England, no one had ever heard of Cid. Caesar. And anyone who will be listening to this, hopefully one day soon in England would think, who am I talking about? No idea. But everybody Whatever their age would know of Tony Hancock, because he was the number one in comedy on television and radio in England from the mid-1950s to the early 1960s. Uh, sadly, he demised in the late 60s. He was somebody quite troubled, shall we say, in the sense that the act he did was a kind of comedic version of himself and it made people very happy. But there was one person it didn’t make happy, which was Tony Hancock. That old joke about, um, somebody who’s very depressed. And he goes to see a psychologist and says, what you need to do is go and see a great comedian, a great clown. Go and see Grimaldi. He’s the greatest clown in the world. And the person says, of course. Well, I am Grimaldi. Um, Tony Hancock was Tony Hancock. And he wasn’t happy with it. And he did this extraordinary thing. He had a radio show and TV show, three or four people around him who kind of fitted as his sort of sitcom family of people, if you like. And he had two script writers who basically with him constructed his thing. Well, bit by bit, he let every person who was in his show go, including his number one foil and friend, a guy, a movie actor actually, called Sid James. He got rid of him and eventually got rid of his script writers. And in the end, he got rid of his career. He just wanted to be not parochial, not just in England. He wanted to be. He made a couple of films. He wanted them to be, you know, international successes. They weren’t. He was looking at a template which was Peter Sellers, who’d been huge in Britain, in a comedy act called the goons in the 50s. And he then goes into movies and he becomes worldwide famous. Tony Hancock wanted that and it didn’t happen. The Bournemouth connection here is that Tony Hancock came from Bournemouth. Um, he, in the 1930s, studied at local college. He first started to perform on stage in a theatre in Bournemouth called the Pavilion. And he originally came from Bournemouth. Um, there’s a, uh, linkage that I will maybe come to later when we talk about Al. Um, with Al’s breakthrough success, he built up to it with a few small hits, but he has a huge hit in the late 70s with the year of the Cat. Well, there’s a connection between Al and Tony Hancock in Year of the Cat, which I tell in a Go Go revisited.

Steve Cuden: Right. And I was just wondering who he was and how influential he was. Eventually he becomes very influential in his own way. Um, but not as a musician, as a comedian.

Jon Kremer: No, it’s as a comedian and it’s basically, uh, for Al who liked him like everyone did back in that day, seeing him perform, not that long, about two years before his sad demise. And by then he’s a very sad character.

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Jon Kremer: And something with Al stays with him. And later, many years later, uh, he decides to write a song about it, uh, called, uh, the Foot of the Stage. His tears ran down like something on the foot of the stage. Anyway, people listening to this might notice that Foot of the Stage scans in the same way as Year of the Cat. And when I was recording the album that would be Year of the Cat, he was going to record this song about Tony Hancock and the American company for him. Uh, at the time, said, uh, record label said, well, look, you know, we did. No one knows who Tony Hancock is. We don’t want this. Forget it. So he scrapped all the lyrics about Tony Hancock and wrote Yoda Cat instead.

Steve Cuden: Well, that’s a big influence. It’s kind of like the famous, uh, story of, um, McCartney coming up with Yesterday. But the first lyrics were scrambled eggs and then becomes Yesterday.

Jon Kremer: Yeah, well, to be fair to him there, he wasn’t ever going to have these as lyrics. He was using it as a kind of mental place thing. Yeah.

Steve Cuden: And the Beatles did that frequently where they would just put in nonsense words just to see if the words would come out of their mouths in some way.

Jon Kremer: Yes, they could find it tune afterwards. Um, I mean, this one that MacArthur likes to tell about how, um, they were finishing off the lyrics to I Saw Her Standing There. Um, and. And originally it was, um, something like I saw her standing there and she’d never been a beauty queen or something. And I thought, well, that sounds awful. Oh, no, she was just 17. You know what I mean? That sounds sexier.

Steve Cuden: Yes. How important were, um, movies, not only from the US but British movies as well, but US movies too. How much influence did that have on the way that the scene was? That. And artists. There were lots of artists happening around then. There were the, uh, the abstract expressionists and so on. How important and influential were those on the music scene? Was it all of a piece or were people being influenced by not realizing they were being influenced? Uh, you know, Bill Haley’s Rock around the Clock came out and all of a sudden the music, the scene explodes in rock and roll. How did that influence the musicians in Bournemouth?

Jon Kremer: Well, it’s an excellent question. I won’t narrow it down just to Bournemouth, but it’s not so much the famed artist of the time, although possibly OP artist Bridget Riley had a big effect on the who, but something else which I’ve always thought to me was obvious, and perhaps it is obvious to a lot of people, but I never hear anyone else say this or write it, because rock and roll comes, as you said, from Bill Haley onwards. And then it goes in America and then the Beatles bring it back to America and it’s rock and roll 2.0. Uh, why did this suddenly happen? How could there be this American almost amnesia in which they drift into a world without Chuck Berry and Jerry Lee Lewis and Little Richard, and suddenly it’s Fabian and Frankie Avalon, and suddenly it’s not only not rock and roll, it’s Hooten Alley. I mean, it’s ridiculous. There is Tamla, but it’s not really major in America. It comes to England first. The first Tamla song ever performed on the radio in Britain is a live performance by the Beatles at the beginning. One of the differences between America and Britain, I’ve always thought, is to do with, in England, art schools. Art schools are like college, university type age group, but specifically for art. And to my mind, there’s no coincidence that what Britain brought to it, that was different to America and built on it and took from America, was an art sensibility. And primarily it comes from the Beatles, because Lennon and McCartney have an art background. Stuart Sutcliffe, who sadly demised just before they make it and had already left the group, is a serious artist. Uh, an artist called Eduardo Palazzi, who’s one of the originators of pop art in England in the late 40s, early 50s. He was a student of his. He was serious potential artist, and he kind of engaged to the Beatles, the fledgling Beatles, his art sensibility. But then after that, if I say there’s at least one member of the following groups who went to art school in England, if not in Bournemouth, the Rolling Stones, the who, the Kinks, Pink Floyd, Queen, Led Zeppelin. And you suddenly think, hang on, there’s a clue here. And I think the question

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Jon Kremer: you asked there is an excellent one. There’s. It was definitely an art influence, but it wasn’t at that elite level of hugely successful artists at the time. It was much more at a sort of grassroots level of studying art. Uh, well, it’s the.

Steve Cuden: You have abstraction and expressionism and all that happening at the same time. And you have this, I think this rebellion that happened in the 50s that led into the 60s in young people came out of. Correct me if you think I’m wrong, came out of the Second World War, where there was, uh, really a very terrible time for people to recover from that, especially in England. And that formed a sort of rebellious attitude in young people. And that bloomed into art and music and everything else.

Jon Kremer: Yes, it’s absolutely true. That’s exactly what happened. Um, coupled with a kind of handy thing that, um.

Steve Cuden: I mean, existentialism will knock people for a sideways loop. And that’s really what it really was, was existentialism.

Jon Kremer: Well, yeah, a lot of people were, you know, reading, I don’t know, Jean Paul Sartre and, uh. Uh, French Parisian, Left bank and Juliet Greco was always very attractive theme. A lot of these things kind of merged together. Plus which, there’s this thing that we call the swinging 60s. It was a retrofit title put in place by time magazine in 19. I think it’s probably 66. I can’t remember exactly when. And they wrote this famed article about when Time magazine meant something about London and swinging in London. But this had come about primarily because of the Beatles, then because of various things to do with art, theater, music, plays, everything. Um. But it kind of started just before music starts. The 60s, inverted corners in England. It starts with art, in a way, but fashion art. Ah. And fashion photography. And a guy called David Bailey. And David Bailey is young, hip, he’s got a beetle haircut. Probably before the Beatles. He has a muse, his girlfriend, who becomes England’s first supermodel. Uh, Jean Shrimpton. And just before the Beatles happen, it’s early 62, maybe late 61. He’s got, amazingly, a job working for Vogue. I say amazing, because he’s from the East End of London and Vogue is very upper class. He’s got a job as a photographer. And they send him and Gene Shrimpton to New York to do some standard photos, you know, sort of mannequins just standing still. And he does street scenes and all sorts of stuff, which now wouldn’t seem like something, but there’s always a before and after moment. And he looks through his lens and he creates what is the beginning of the 60s. In England. It would have been 61 or 62. I should know this. I’ve actually written about, um. Might be early 62.

Steve Cuden: But it was. It was also happening in authorship as well. You had Sam Beckett and you had, uh, Eugenie Enesco and people like that that were also pushing these unusual abstractions in wording as well. Uh, and, uh. So I think that all of this was happening in this cauldron at the end of the 50s and into the 60s. You write in the book about when you feel the 60s really started. Was that it?

Jon Kremer: What you just Said there’s one day in England where I think it starts. Just one day. And it’s October 5th, 1962.

Steve Cuden: Wayne. Let me guess. It’s Love Me Do.

Jon Kremer: That’s one of it. On the same day in London at, uh, the Odeon Leicester Square Cinema, uh, a film premieres on, um, the same day Love Me do is released. And that film enables Sean Connery to say for the first time, my name’s Bond. James Bond. Dr. No premieres on the same day. Now, if anyone like, suddenly was tuning in from Mars and they just, you know, they wanted a few words, uh, to describe what all of this was. What was the biggest thing of the 60s from England. You could just say it in three words. Beatles and Bond.

Steve Cuden: That’s really very, that’s very good. That’s a true cultural dividing line at that moment and nobody knows it. You don’t know those things till much later, do you?

Jon Kremer: That’s the retrospective lens of history.

Steve Cuden: Yeah, I think that that’s really interesting because James Bond is so not what rock and roll is, and yet in a way it is. And then you get this marvelous music that comes out of the Bond world. And some of the famous people that wound up in rock and roll, uh, like John Paul Jones and um, Jimmy Page, they were playing on Bond recordings.

Jon Kremer: Yeah, well, they were both session players, um, originally. Ah, Jimmy Page, at a very young age, about 17, you know, he was,

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Jon Kremer: um, I don’t know, playing three sessions a day sometimes. Uh, yes, they’re very much a part of it. Also, the identifier, the sort of audio identifier for James Bond worldwide is the, obviously the James Bond theme music. Now, uh, uh, it’s almost always associated with John Barry. And to be fair, John Barrie’s arrangement of it is what we all know.

Steve Cuden: Absolutely. So it’s Monty Norman’s theme, but it’s James Barrie’s arrangement. And then, and then he pushes it very hard throughout, I don’t know, eight or nine movies.

Jon Kremer: Yeah. And the original thing that most people know is a very simple few guitar notes, staccato, um, which we could both hum, but we won’t, which introduces James Bond. And the amazing thing is that’s played by the lead guitar player from John Barry’s group. He had, besides being, um, becoming famous as a, huh, composer for movie soundtracks, um, originally he had a group called the John Barry 7. And the lead guitar player from that is the one is on the session for the first James Bond film. And it’s his guitar you hear. And this guy, I thought Had a wonderful name for an electric guitar player. It’s his real name. His name was Vic Flick. And that’s who you hear going, dang, da da, dang, dang, dang. But. So, yes, the connections with music and movies, but the Bond themes, uh, I think there’s two or three that are outstanding. One of them, of course, is Paul McCartney’s Live and Let Die. Um, and it always has kind of personal connection with me because when I met up with him back in 1973, um, it was the month that, uh, Live and Let Die was being released. And it was very interesting because I got to chat with him about writing movie music because he had written before in 1966, a Hayley Mills movie called the Family Way, and he’d written the music for that, which most people never take any notice of at all. In the McCartney story, um, actually, why would. There’s a lot more to look at than that.

Steve Cuden: So you have a marvelous quote in the book that I’m not sure I understand. I want you to. I know what the quote means, but I don’t know where it comes from or how it applies. So I’m curious about it. You write, and I’m quoting. I sometimes wonder what might have been if the relative discoveries of Lord Cardigan and the Earl of Sandwich had been reversed. In a parallel universe, we could be eating Cardigans and wearing sandwiches. I love that.

Jon Kremer: Thank you so much. I think you’re the only person, perhaps. Besides, Al is actually probably like that. That’s actually an example of how, uh, he and I, I don’t know, are on a similar wavelength with humor, probably from when we were in our teens. Um, it just struck me, and I’ve no idea why it was leading on into the fact that Bournemouth is a relatively new town in the sense that if you go back to the mid 19th century, there’s really nothing in Bournemouth. Whereas five miles away, this town called Poole, P O L E, that’s been there since, you know, the year, uh, 1000. You know, it’s just an old sepal. I think I was going to write about a guy called Lewis Tregonwell who first built a house in Bournemouth. And I think I wrote something like, you know, in another universe, instead of being Bournemouth, there’s a river called the Bourne, and it’s at the mouth of it. It’s that prosaic. Um, it could have been called Dragonwellville or something like that. And there’s a lead into it. I wrote that thing. But this is true. Um, we do wear cardigans because of Lord Cardigan. And we do eat sandwiches because of the Earl of Sandw. The story, uh, probably apocryphal to it, was he was playing a card game and it was going on and on and on and he was hungry and he didn’t want to stop. And he got one of his servants or whatever, uh, to come and bring him something. And this is how a sandwich came to be.

Steve Cuden: So why do you call in the book 1963 and 1967 the Lightning Years?

Jon Kremer: Well, I always like the expression the lightning years. And in 1970. No, sorry, it must have been 1980. There’s a series of documentaries in England, um, on one of the channels. And it was about the 60s. And they called this documentary the Lightning Years. And I absolutely loved it. I thought that’s terrific. I thought I’ll steal that. Um, I’ll digress for one moment and try and plug something that doesn’t even exist. The book I’m currently writing is about 20th century songs. Not just songs that were spectacularly popular, ah. And had endured and still do, but songs that somehow, for varying different reasons over a hundred years, became kind of embedded in history itself. They just became something more than just a well known song. So I’m

00:35:00

Jon Kremer: writing about, about these songs. I’ve realized that there were. The 60s is without question the standout year of the 20th century. Not in terms of, uh, conflict or anything, but it just is. If you take it from um, the Beatles at the beginning to um, John Kennedy’s proclamation that we’ll land a man on the moon within a decade coming true, it’s a fantastic decade. If it didn’t exist, I think the Silver Medal would probably be going to. What would be the gold medal decade would be the 1920s. From the cultural point of view, from what happens and what still this stuff pertaining now, half a century or more later than the 60s, from the 20s, well, you know, you go and see a movie and the sound on it, well, that started in the 20s, a huge amount of things did. The idea of um, mass marketing being fueled by a thing called advertising starts in the 20s. In other words, the contemporary world has got to start somewhere. And it struck me that of the great decades of the century, the 60s, there were two years that were particularly outstanding. And I think I could make a case for 1963 and a case for 1967. Having said that in the book, I almost immediately underwrite the one about 67 by saying how, uh, much it needed 66 to run up into it. It didn’t just come out of nowhere.

Steve Cuden: You know, I’m giving my age away, but I lived through the 60s. And it was in retrospect, the dynamic decade, I think, of the 20th century again. I think you’re correct with the exception of the 20s and maybe the 40s with the Second World War. Uh, but the 60s were extraordinary. And what happened there and assassinations of world leaders and, uh, the music industry and then the Vietnam War and everything else. It was a big decade with a lot of things happening. Um, and so the music, I think, at that time reflected all that. And what’s interesting to me is how many where there was a war going on, how the music industry was, uh, part of the protest movement against that war, and how that then sort of disappeared for a long time. Uh, and I think it’s maybe just now starting to come back in our world a little bit. But it’s not like it was in the 60s at all.

Jon Kremer: Well, no, it’s a very good point about conflict. I mean, obviously if we’re Talking about the 1940s or any decade, there are huge important changes that come from it. And of course from warfare. Obvious. And of course the fact that, um, um, Oppenheimer, uh, goes into the Los Alamos, New Mexico desert, um, and in the 1944 and they split the atom. Of course, these are off the scale things, though, I would say for the 60s, because they can claim the moon landing in 69. Um, this to me is an event in human history that you could go back however many tens of thousand years you like. And frankly, since then to now, nothing is the equivalent of that. I know it’s become so unexciting. Space is frankly boring. I can remember very well with the moon landings and I was very taken by something that happened six months before because I think it’s the summer of 69 and around Christmas 68, um, Apollo 10, I suppose it was, went to the moon and didn’t land and came back three astronauts. Lovell, Borman and Anders. I think I’m right. I hope so. Now, to me, the most extraordinary thing I ever remember experiencing up to that point. Forget personal life, of course, is different, but shall we say, being in the moment of, you know, human history, was listening on, um, the radio. I think it was because you could have this feedback from mission Control. People were listening to this when they reached the moon for the first time. They went into orbit a few times, come back, but the first time when they go around the other side of the moon, the dark side, they’re out of Contact with Earth and no one can be sure for about 20, 30 minutes. Have they been flung off into space? Did it make it the orbit and then they come back on and yes, it’s all worked out. And I suddenly had this thought that these three human beings there, they’re on the other side of the moon. They can’t even see this planet. Of all the people who’ve ever lived. And of course there’s tremendous moon landings of Armstrong and Collins and who doesn’t land? And Buzz Aldrin, um, a few months later.

00:40:00

Jon Kremer: But these three guys are the first ones that are out of sight of the planet. I, uh, thought, isn’t that extraordinary? Well, that happens in the 1960s. So besides John, Paul, George and Ringo, there are other things we can look back on and see.

Steve Cuden: Oh, uh, no doubt it was a huge decade. So I want to spend a little time talking about your good friend Al Stewart. How did you actually meet? What was your first meeting?

Jon Kremer: My dad had a small shop in uh, suburb of Bournemouth, um, in which I mentioned before that he had an interest in music and guitars and things. We’d moved to the Bournemouth area in 1961. Lived in uh, London, outskirts of London. And um, my dad had uh, worked for a fairly big company and he decided he didn’t want this anymore and he wanted to open a small little shop doing things like buying and selling guitars and musical instruments. And he opened this shop a year or so later. I just left school. I was helping out in the shop when Al walked in the door. He walked in the door and inquired about, uh. It wasn’t a guitar, it was uh, a reverberation unit, that folk guitar. And he said, oh yeah, okay, I’d like to try that for guitar sign. He said, no, no, I want to get my guitar and try it. So he went off and we thought, okay, we’ll never see you again. And just before our shop was closing, he walks back in with a guitar and a small guitar amplifier to try out this item. Tries it out. He wasn’t very good, didn’t like it, didn’t buy it. But in that time, two things happened. He and I start chatting. I recently started to try and play the guitar, you know, he can play quite well, maybe he can teach me a few chords. And uh, we start chatting. We realise we like a lot of records the same. We even realized there’s a couple of authors we like. Within an hour or so we’ve become friends. He’s not buying this item. Time for the shop to shut. And he’s going to then get on a bus to take all this stuff back to his home. And we realize he lives like, not far away from where we lived. So we said, we’ll give you a lift back. So pop his stuff in the boot of the car. My dad drives us back to his place and he said, well, you know, uh, come and visit, you know, I realized that it just seems an obvious thing now, but it’s not really obvious. We became instant friends and that was that.

Steve Cuden: Uh, that’s how friendship frequently happens. Uh, then what did you do along the way to help him, to support him in his growth as a songwriter and a singer. Prior to him becoming, uh, an international success. What did you do to help him along the way?

Jon Kremer: Well, he had been at a boarding school, which he hated, and left. And while there he started to play guitar. Uh, and he always wrote poems. And he, bit by bit was writing songs. And the very first time, a couple of days later, I popped around his family home, which, uh, was actually very charming cottage with a thatched roof. Um, he showed me basically like a school exercise book full of songs he’d written. And this is back in autumn 62, and we’ve just met. And this was just fascinating.

Steve Cuden: Were they just lyrics or were there actual songs written?

Jon Kremer: No, no, no, he had songs to them. Yeah. Um, I remember one called Stagnation Blues that I quite liked a lot. And, um, some of them had, like, nonsense lyrics and things. Anyway, um, the next thing is his school days are over. Uh, he’s got a job in a department store in Bournemouth. But he’s joined a local beat group to play guitar. Because he’s good enough for that for the first year or two, that’s it. The hope is that he’ll be in a group. They’ll get a recording contract. It all happens from there. Then in, uh, early 1963, something changes. There’s an American that we dimly heard of. We had heard of him because he’d written a song that was a hit for Peter, Paul and Mary. And we realized this guy’s just got a new LP out, his second lp, the freewheeling Bob Dylan. This changes everything. Al starts to get, if you like, tuition from Bob Dylan, if you like. And then by 1965, beat groups are over. Uh, he’s decided he is going to be a singer songwriter. The term didn’t really even exist. Then he went to London, starts playing in the kind of coffee bar scene, if you like. And

00:45:00

Jon Kremer: no one takes any notice at all. Well, during all of that period, the B Group period and whatever. He’s writing songs and, um, no one says to him anything other than nothing. But he will say that I always said, no, no, you’re going to write a hit song, you’re going to make records. This will all be okay. I’m now not sure. It’s so long ago why I said this, but it’s true, I did. Even up to by 1965, 66 he makes his first record. Um, 67 he makes his first LP. Yes, by then there were enough people saying, yeah, but in those first few years, there’s only one person saying to him, I think you’re going to make it. That’s possibly why we’re still friends.

Steve Cuden: So you were giving him your intuition about what you were perceiving, of course, as an artist. Most artists, I wouldn’t say all but a good chunk of artists are self conscious and not sure of themselves. And, uh, they feel like they’re fooling people. And that’s what they call imposter syndrome. He might have had a touch of that back then where he wasn’t sure.

Jon Kremer: Well, the first thing a person wants to do is written a song, is play at somebody. Well, by the time he’s on the London folk club scene and the 65, there’s an audience to play it to, getting some feedback. But even then, um, he’d write a song and he’d play it to me and I would be very often for many years the first person to hear these songs. Because you want some kind of feedback and probably validation as well, if you really please with something. Um, actually it’s very funny because, um, in my book I’ll talk about, um, how I’ll. When he was first in London, he was at one point sharing a flat with an American who had not hit big then, but had written some nice songs. And then suddenly gets a phone call from his American record company, uh, saying, come back. Silence of Silence looks like being a hit record. And he used to share a place with Paul Simon. And the weird thing with this is that Paul Simon, exactly what you’re saying. He wrote Homeward Bound or finished Homeward Bound. And, um, the first person he played it to was Al. He happened to be in the room next to him. A couple of days later, Al’s in Bournemouth, gets his guitar out and says, listen to this. This is something Paul’s just written. And I’m one of the first people who ever hear Homeward Bound because Al Stewart plays it for me. It’s a funny life how coming, um, into my dad’s shop and not buying something leads to, um, him being best man at my wedding, me being best man at his first wedding. Um, it’s strange but true.

Steve Cuden: Do I remember correctly that you write in the book that you were the first person ever to actually record him?

Jon Kremer: Oh, well, yes. Um, I had to tape reel to reel, tape deck, partly again due to my dad and his interests. And people did have such things, but it wasn’t that commonplace. It’s not till you get to the late 60s and cassette tapes and things that people have routinely got some way of recording something. Um, and yes, he’d come out to our family home and he’d, you know, sing a song or two and I’d record them. Um, the interesting thing with these tapes is very weird. About three years ago, um, a company that specializes in making expensive limited edition box sets of an artist’s work put out an, um, Al Stewart box set. Ah. And it’s called, um, the Admiralty Lights. And it’s got.

Steve Cuden: What’s it called?

Jon Kremer: The Admiralty Lights. There’s a reason for this. It’s from one of his songs, um, the Admiralty Lights. This box set was limited to 2,000 copies and it sold for, I suppose, about $500, roughly. And it’s got two books in it and wait for this, 60 CDs.

Steve Cuden: Wow.

Jon Kremer: It’s everything he ever made. And live shows, rarities, outtakes, and the company putting it together were put together with, connected with me. Let’s put it this way. Um, and I licensed to them about eight or 10 things that I’d recorded in the mid-60s before Al made records.

Steve Cuden: Wow.

Jon Kremer: They then digitally reprocessed, made them sound great and put on their rarity CD. So there are now people, I don’t know, uh, 2,000 fans who are enthusiastic and want to spend the money, actually have got these things that I. Yes. Originally recorded for.

Steve Cuden: Is that just him on guitar singing?

Jon Kremer: It’s just him on guitar. Uh. Oh, yeah, yeah.

Steve Cuden: So that must be. Well,

00:50:00

Steve Cuden: that’s extraordinary. So you kept those tapes, so obviously you kept them a long time.

Jon Kremer: Well, this is. Yeah. Yes and no. Um, unfortunately, at one point I switched everything over into cassette tapes and I hadn’t got the originals. But because of what you now know can be done, Steve, with, uh, the digital world, um, and software, they can make these things, these things sound fantastic. Um, but it’s a strange thing of, uh, a time loop.

Steve Cuden: So ultimately you wind up in Los Angeles with Al at some juncture, uh, briefly.

Jon Kremer: Yeah.

Steve Cuden: And I’m just curious, how important was it For Al to finally play the famed Whiskey a Go Go on the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles.

Jon Kremer: Yeah. Um, do you know, I’m assuming he played there. We didn’t see him there. Familiar with Whiskey Go Go, but not seeing Al there.

Steve Cuden: Oh, so Al didn’t play there. Am I misremembering it?

Jon Kremer: Yeah, I’m sure he must have done. He played the Troubadour, which is the, um.

Steve Cuden: Oh, even bigger there, which is the

Jon Kremer: famous breakout thing for that, and the Starwood. And, uh, he probably did play the Whiskey I. Just. Not when we were around there.

Steve Cuden: But he played the Troubadour. Yeah.

Jon Kremer: Oh, yeah, he played the Troubadour. Doug Weston’s Troubadour. Yeah.

Steve Cuden: Oh, well, that was. I mean, so many huge acts came out. The cast through there, Elton John and Linda Ronstadt.

Jon Kremer: Elton John breaks out from the Troubadour. Um, and actually the. The basis of, um, the beginnings of the Eagle start there. Of course, Linda Ronstadt uses a couple of them in her backup band, actually. Frankly, the Eagles should every day sort of say, um, thank you to Linda Ronstadt.

Steve Cuden: I suspect that they do. Um, I have been having the most marvelous conversation with John Creamer, the, uh, author and historian of all things music from England in the 60s and 70s and 50s. Um, and we’re going to wind the show down just a little bit. And I’m just wondering, John, in all of your vast experiences with Al Stewart and in the music business and your time, uh, with your own record shop, uh, can you share with us a story that’s either weird, quirky, offbeat, strange, or just plain funny?

Jon Kremer: There’s a time in the late 60s when Al’s actually making records already. He’s made a couple of LPs. They sold a few thousand copies. He hasn’t got a band. He’s in between managers. He’s got an agent. And there’s a circuit that’s developed in England in the late 60s, which is the kind of university college circuit for music gigs. And it was a time where singer songwriters beginning to happen. There’s psychedelic bands, there’s everything. But besides the normal venues, which are maybe clubs, if they’re not big enough to be on touring theaters and stadiums. Not stadiums, other venues. Um, the college circuit developed, and that would be run by a student at the college or university, usually called the social secretary, who would maybe once a week get in touch with various agencies and book an act. It could be Fleetwood Mac. You know, they’ve got a couple of albums out, but they’re not selling they’re bookable for a couple of hundred pound. It would be things like this. And sometimes it will be just to sing. A songwriter with a guitar. Anyway, Al calls one day and says, oh, um, got a gig in Southampton, Southampton University, which is about 30 miles from Bournemouth. So I said, sure, okay, I’ll meet you there. He was in London, then he drove down from London. I drove over from Bournemouth. I get to Southampton University before Al, uh, and at that point I go in, meet the social secretary who’s organized the whole thing, the people being able to arrive. And I said, is Al here yet? And he said, well, no, why would he be? And, um, I said, well, he’s playing here tonight. He’s performing tonight. He said, no, no, no. He says, we’ve got Michael Chapman now. Michael Chapman was another singer songwriter on the British scene. Then had an LP out called Fully Qualified Survivor. Very good lp. Didn’t really sell much. And he was on the circuit. No, no, Mike Chapman’s book. And then someone turns up. Mike Chapman. Oh, really? I said, no, no, Al Stewart has booked. Al turns up. And I said, um, Mike Chapman’s here. Al knows Mike. Mike knows Al. They say, you’re not booked. And Al says, yes, I am. And because there’s no one in the way of a manager there, it has to be me. And I say to the guys, use at the university, no, Al Stewart’s booked here. What’s now going to happen?

00:55:00

Jon Kremer: Well, they freak out and they go running around the campus saying to loads of people, it’s not just Mike Chapman. We’ve got Al Stewart here as well. And they somehow rustle together enough people. There’s a film club happening that night. They go into that and they drag people out that. And they get enough money together and. And they say, look, can you split it between you? So Al. Mike thinks it’s very funny. And they do this. And Mike plays, Al plays. Everyone goes home. That’s it. Next day, Al phones me and he said, uh, he was talking with his agency and he said, you know, um, that thing we did last night. He said, uh, they had inquired, uh, but they didn’t send a contract through. They didn’t sign it. Made a mistake. I wasn’t booked to play there last night. And we said, but you know something? We joked about this for years afterwards. Ever suddenly need money. The answer is just rock up to a university somewhere in England and demand to play. Because this is what happened.

Steve Cuden: That’s. That’s a marvelous story. He wasn’t supposed to play, but there he Was. And you were insistent. You were so insistent that they bought it.

Jon Kremer: Astray’s, uh, here, you know, I won’t go as far as, say, my artist is here. Do you want to hear from our lawyer? Uh, be on speed dial? No, not quite in the late 60s, but it was a bit like that. And we’d insisted he play and insisted they pay. And they did. I’ll tell you a little coda to that. After that, it went down so well. He did play Southampton University many, many times. Four or five times over the next 18 months, two years. And Southampton University would ring, I suppose, ring or write to me even in those days to make the booking, because they thought it had to go through me, which it absolutely didn’t.

Steve Cuden: I think that, uh, that’s a fine story because it’s funny how life works like that. Sometimes things are. They’re not supposed to happen, but they do, and they turn into bigger things. I think that’s really tremendous. All right, so last question for you today, John. Um, are you able to share with us a piece of advice or a tip that you like to give to people who are maybe starting out as writers or starting out in the music business or whatever, when they ask you, how can I do what is this thing that I want to do?

Jon Kremer: Or.

Steve Cuden: Or maybe they’re in a little bit trying to get to another level.

Jon Kremer: Well, we’re talking a lot about music, and obviously what I write about has a lot to do with it. And a little while back mentioned Bob Dylan’s freewheeling lp, and it had on it a song, Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall, which I think after Don’t Think Twice, it’s all right was his first truly great song. That eventually leads, in 2016, to him winning the Nobel Prize for literature. I know everyone says, well, it starts with Blowing in the Wind, but even Bob Dylan doesn’t think that’s a great song. But, um, in Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall, one of the lines he sings, I’ll know my song well before I start singing. I think it’s a good idea to know your song well before you start singing. Before you write something. Know what you’re writing about. Do know what you’re doing. It seems an obvious thing, but if you do that and you are doing this with confidence, that confidence comes across. And I think in life, subliminally, at least in all sorts of things, when we’re talking with people, certainly if it’s about anything serious, we want to have confidence in them that they know what they’re talking About. I mean, a sidebar to this might be. If you go into an art gallery, whatever you like in your knowledge is paramount when you look at the paintings. But it’s not like someone’s just wandered up to you in the street saying, look at this painting. They’re hanging on a wall. Somebody has already put their credibility into it. Somebody’s already said, the gallery owner or curator, they’ve got the confidence to say this. And I think we’re all looking for confidence subliminally. If you can put that into your writing, because you do know your song well, before you’ve started singing, you do know what you’re writing. I think that that’s a big help. And, uh, a small alternative to that. I’ll reach to my friend Al Stewart in one of his songs called if It Doesn’t Come Naturally, Leave It. And I think if you’re writing and you find something’s worth pursuing and it’s taking some work to make it shiny, well, of course, continue. But if it doesn’t really seem to work, if it doesn’t come naturally, leave it. You’re not going to regret you’ve left it out. You’re never going to think that, make the whole thing better.

Steve Cuden: I think that’s marvelous advice because, uh, the truth of the matter is, uh, you can’t just wing everything. You can wing some things and you can go at some things having no idea what you’re doing at all and trying to find your way. But it’s extremely

01:00:00

Steve Cuden: useful, I think, when you have thought through things, when you actually know what it is you’re trying to achieve, what your goals are, and you go after those, that means that you’ve thought through this process that you want to get through. It doesn’t mean you have all the answers. You, you can find those along the way. But having an idea clearly in your mind’s eye about where you’re trying to head. In other words, you know your song ahead of time, same sort of thing. That’s a really wise piece of advice. Um, I just think that’s terrific. John Kremer This has been an absolutely wonderful episode of Story Beat. And I thank you for all this grand information that you’ve shared with us about, uh, rock and roll and, and Al Stewart in the 50s, 60s, 70s and beyond. And I thank you for your time, your energy, and from all this great

Jon Kremer: wisdom, it’s been an absolute pleasure again, and as, uh, our previous conversation, it just seems to fly by. And that’s all down to your very, very interesting questions. Steve. Thank you.

Steve Cuden: And so we’ve come to the end of today’s Story Beat. If you like this episode, won’t you please take a moment to give us a comment, rating, or review on whatever app or platform you’re listening to? Your support helps us bring more great Story Beat episodes to you. Story Beat is available on all major podcast apps and platforms, including Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Spotify, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, and many others. Until next time, I’m Steve Cuden, and may all your stories be all unforgettable.