A decade after World War Two 
A melancholy nation, 
Awaking like a patient 
From a dodgy operation
In tenements and back-to-backs
In blackened towns with cindertracks 
By bombsite rosebay willowherb 
On hopscotch chalkmark, dog-muck kerb
The smells of cabbage, malting grain
And coal-smoke wafting on the rain
A people, haunted by their past
That beckoned endless, ancient, vast 
Would best-foot forward, as before
March down history's corridor
The half-pint urchins, childhood gone
-- Eclipsed by war -  were quietly glad 
To put their first long trousers on 
Each boy a copy of his dad 
Each girl a model of her mum 
Expecting nothing more than that
With adulthood and peace now come.

By autumn '55, the charts
Gave scarcely any clue at all.
The summer saw a clothing craze
For USA-style jeans, it's true
But nothing in the smoggy air 
Had indicated change was due
The 'hit parade' a few months old 
Its titles on a pegboard wall 
Read Frankie Laine and Johnny Ray
Winnie Atwell, Doris Day
Everything seemed safe and sound
And twenty shillings in the pound

One o'clock, two o'clock, three'clock rock

Avuncular, at thirty-odd
A kiss-curl, honest farmhand face   
Bill Haley and his Comets came
To launch the rocket into space

Ten o'clock, eleven o'clock twelve o'clock rock

A country full of boys and girls
All acned, awkward and repressed 
Came jiving out, one autumn night 
Unrefined and under-dressed     
We're gonna rock

And now the dancehalls caught alight
In northern city, seaside town
The councillors would curse this blight
An edifice of years torn down

Around the clock

The national servicemen returned
From Nicosia, Berlin, Benghazi 
To dark, bronchitic, terraced rows 
The pigeon-loft, an outside khazi.

Tonight!

The winter trees in pea-soup fog 
A country yearning for its spring
And George the old king, three years dead
With skiffle whistling in the wings
Along came Elvis - King of Kings. 

A poor young southern trucker  
Grown hungry with the blues
He'd gone to visit Scotty Moore  
In pink suit and white shoes:
"If I could find a white man
Who had that Negro sound"
Sam Phillips said: 
"I'd make a billion dollars…" 
Presley crowned.
A jukebox was delivered
The records now arrived
The King was in gold lamé
The world stood up and jived.

Take your dad-rags off and try
The brothel-creepers, bootlace tie
The drape,the drainies and the quiff
For Elvis, Tommy, Gene and Cliff
The jukebox flashed, 
The stars came out
The critics glumly stood about
Apprehensive and askance
While Frankenstein began to dance. 

The Papers ( not the media yet)
Would fulminate against this fad
The preacher in his pulpit fumed 
While apoplectic mum and dad
Must go to war on errant son
New café culture had begun:
In Soho -  in Edwardian garb
To the 2 I's or La Macabre
Our embryonic rockers went
Sought refuge from parental storms
Back home in Middlesex or Kent

The peace was broken, rules were bent
In suburbs where the beat craze sent
Its rhizomes spreading underground
As boys sprang up who'd make the sound.
The skiffle strummed in coffee bars
Would sell a thousand cheap guitars
To folkies, bluesers and the rest
Who bleeding-fingered, did their best
With cheesewire fretboards, out-of-tune
To learn Tom Dooley or Blue Moon

And now the groups began to tour 
With red guitars, the glittering drums
A champagne-sparkle on their sides
The splashes, sizzles and the rides
The little clothbound amps - a case 
Of over-driven valves - the bass, 
The heavy upright stands, the boom.
That noise that shook each function room
Became the throbbing heart - the soul
Of early British rock and roll. 

The US stars flew in to play  
The Corn Exchanges, Saturday
In towns whose names were only said
When weekly football scores were read:
Little Richard, coming here?
- To Yorkshire pud and Watneys beer?
Buddy, Chuck and Jerry Lee 
Waking up to Brooke Bond Tea?
Every legend on the road
And only Presley never showed.
Lonely Presley never showed
Where rock'n'roll would bare its teeth
In Swindon, Huddersfield or Neath
The combo was the finest choice
Since Mr Rolls met Mr Royce.             

Though now the businessmen moved in
The shiny suit, the phone, the fin
Came following the jangly noise
The smell of money, witless boys
Pretty, packaged, heaven-sent 
Mister Twenty-five Percent
Would have the know-how and the nous
The penthouse pad, or country house
The aftershave and signet rings
He knew so much about these things
And might protect our guile-less kid
From shyster with a lesser bid 
The boys were taken on and groomed,
The tracts on etiquette consumed 
And  given names with girl-appeal
Like Wilde, Power, Faith or Steele 
Made fodder for the pin-up page
Or pushed out on the West End stage  
As showbiz tried to take control
Of early British rock and roll

The music, like a strain of flu
Now spread its symptoms all around  
Via Luxembourg -which had to do
For swishing torchlight radio sound

Via handsome gypsy fairground boys
Squat jackets checked like marzipan
The joyful, whip and dodgem noise
Our crusty elders tried to ban.

Via television taking wing 
With 6.5 Special and Oh Boy
The sound headmasters hated
Curated by the hoi-polloi

An England ruled by silver spoon
Its pubs that closed all afternoon 
Its labourers who'd learnt to croon
Ga-ding a-dong a-ding Blue Moon  
Its midwives cycling side-by-side
Its men who pottered in their sheds
Threw up their hands at once and cried:
" We'll all be murdered in our beds!"
And yet from church-run, youth-club huts
There came no mayhem - nowhere near 
Not even when a voice piped-up:
" Hey! Why not do the show right here?"     
And so the British beat was born
And then the Sixties start to dawn   


Though looking back along the tracks
A scant five years has passed so far
Since Haley, drummer, keyboard, sax
Accordian, bass and lead guitar
Flew in  flew out, prepared the ground
A place to land the U.F.O
The sound that turned the world around 
By some young guy from Tupelo

In Geordieland and Liverpool
In London, Edinburgh and Leeds
In rooms above the papershops
In backstreet pubs they sow the seeds
That twang which cuts the starry night
The slapback echo in the air
Will change the world from black and white  
The fights will happen over hair
And hems of skirts and pointy shoes 
When elders start a war with kids
Which time dictates that they will lose

In England ruled by silver spoon
With pubs which close all afternoon
The milkmen whistle some old tune:
Bom baba bom   
Ba-bom ba-bom bom 
Baba Bom ba-ba-bom
Ga-dang ga-dang dang
Ga-dinga donga ding…
                                   Blue
                  
                                           Moooon

 /////////////////////////////

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