Mixing it with the legends of rock ’n’ roll

Mar 11 2008 by David Charters, Liverpool Daily Post

He was almost forgotten, but the musician who stepped out with the gods of rock and roll is returning to the big stage to pay tribute to his hero. David Charters reports

THE man in the thick-lensed glasses, who once looked like Buddy Holly, sits beneath the smoke from his finger-rolled cigarette and smiles like an old-timer in a cowboy saloon, as he prepares to tell a little parable about his career in rock and roll.

Years back, when his name drew crowds and people remembered that many rock gods had knocked on his door, Jimmy Stevens was booked to appear in a club in an old seaside town, where memories were carried in the salt of the wind.

The chef made him a lovely steak meal each night before he went on stage. After a while, Jimmy noticed that the meal with onion rings and all the trimmings had been reduced to a steak sandwich, but that was fine. Then one evening, he arrived to perform as usual and there was nothing on the plate.

Maybe he should write a song about that.

But, wise and prophetic as he surely is, the man didn’t know that the cassette tape onto which he was meant to talk had been lost in the chaos of this interviewer’s bag.

In fact, the only tape to be found amid the bag’s clutter contained Elvis Presley’s greatest hits.

So it was that stories of high times and low times from Jimmy of Birkenhead rumbled over those mellifluous songs, which have given the King of Rock and Roll a kind of immortality.

But before he begins talking, Jimmy looks quizzically at the tape-recorder balanced on the edge of his armchair.

“Has it been in the family long?” he asks, humour flowing through his blood like an old blues melody. “Perhaps you should have it dated and valued.”

Everyone laughs.

Here is a chap who has kept up with technology, even though 36 years have gone since experts predicted he would be the next sensation in rock music.

A fine singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, Jimmy had been signed up by Robert Stigwood, an Australian-born impresario, then one of the biggest in the business, through his management of Cream, The Bee Gees and other acts, as well as the theatrical shows, Hair and Jesus Christ Superstar. His film productions would later include Saturday Night Fever.

In 1972, through Stigwood, Jimmy released an album of his own compositions on the Atlantic label. In Britain and Europe, it was called Don’t Freak Me Out and in the USA, Paid My Dues. Peter Frampton, the guitarist who featured on George Harrison’s epic, All Things Must Pass, was one of the musicians backing Jimmy, as was the late Maurice Gibb of The Bee Gees, who also produced the album. John Bonham, of Led Zeppelin, was a drummer.

By then, Jimmy had toured with Emerson, Lake and Palmer, progressive rockers whose soaring solos were not popular with people conscious of passing time, who, nevertheless, tickled the astral sensibilities of hippies – selling 31m albums and starring at massive concerts, where people said, “Yeah, man” a lot.

He followed that by touring the USA, Canada and Japan with The Bee Gees. When he was topping the bill himself, he received telegrams from the other stars – one from Maurice Gibb and his first wife, Lulu.

His album, now re-cut on CD, is wonderful – a superb selection of songs. Sweet Child of Mine, about a father’s pride and sorrow seeing his little daughter growing into a woman, is deeply moving and beautifully performed, as is the romantic, You’re The Lady I Want To Grow Old With.

It is, therefore, a little incongruous to find him standing for photographs under a sign saying “no ball games” by his red-brick house in suburban Birkenhead, overlooking the gnomes and wishing-wells which decorate a neighbour’s garden. There’s not a rock chick in sight, though his son Jimmy pops in for a cuppa and a gab about the previous night’s match between Liverpool and West Ham United.

Well, life has its twists and turns. “Just let me put my teeth in,” says Jimmy, 65, as he poses for a close-up shot. This is not a pompous man, but he is a good man and a great survivor.

The LP wasn’t the predicted success – somehow lost with all the world’s unhung paintings and unread poems. Why?