 |
| He's a decent Che... |
The Hit
This is a weird one in that I found nothing about David Essex’s international 1973 hit, the pulsing, sultry slow-jam, “Rock On,” beyond its bare existence. It went gold the following year, it hit either #3 or #5 on the Billboard Hot 100, it gave him his only hit single on the Cash Box Top 40, and that song is probably the only thing any American knows anything about him. I don’t think 99% of Americans don’t know his name, never mind pick him out of a two-person line-up.
Then again, does it matter? He’s a staple of UK pop culture, high and low.
The Rest of the Story
David Essex was born David Albert Cook in 1947 to an East End docker and “a self taught pianist and Irish Traveller” (an Irish subculture similar, but not related, to the Roma). He grew up poor and as an only child, a tough situation made harder when his father, Albert, contracted tuberculosis when he was very young. That made them effectively homeless and dependent on relatives to survive, but they did and eventually found their feet.
Over time, the family gravitated to outer London, first to Canning Town then to Chadwell Heath, where they had a little more room indoors and out, and where young David Cook could indulge his first love, football (which, here, means soccer). He took that love seriously enough to tank the placement exam for secondary school (the Eleven plus exam) so he could attend Shipman County Secondary - a school that took its football seriously - and earned himself a place with the West Ham Juniors (aka, the junior team for English Premier League regulars West Ham United). He walked that path until he discovered a new, second love, music. As he told the Guardian:
“I played football for West Ham Juniors, but when I was 13 I went to Soho and walked into an R&B club called the Flamingo, which was full of black American GIs and I decided that I wanted to be a musician.”
Essex decided on drums as his instrument - as he put it, he could “hide behind the cymbals.” His father hated the drums, but he still let him practice in their modest council house; Essex remembers his dad having a “proper stand-up fight” with a neighbor who complained about the noise. Essex eventually crossed paths with a writer, Derek Bowman, who would become the mentor who started him in show business. According to an outlet called Great British Life, Bowman encouraged David Cook to join a band called Equity; that band already had a David Cook, and that’s when he switched his name to David Essex - a name he chose as an homage to his home county…and here’s where the narrative hiccups.
Somewhere between Equity and 1965, David Essex started performing (based on the name) fronting an outfit called “David Essex and the Mood Indigo.” That act recorded a couple songs in the mid-‘60s - “A Rose” and “Leon and John and Billy and Me” (can’t find ‘em; never released, but the acetates still exist) - plus a few more that go unmentioned in Wikipedia’swrite-up on Essex.
Wikipedia carries the story on from there, and it’s a lot of theater, some music and a little television. After a couple bit parts, Essex landed the lead to Godspell in 1971. He had his golden year in 1973 when he starred in That’ll Be the Day - a movie with a cast that included Ringo Starr and Keith Moon, just to mention - and released “Rock On,” both the single and the album (which included another UK hit “Lamplight”). He continued to release albums, singles and movies - “Gonna Make You a Star” (on his eponymous 1974 album), “Hold Me Close” (from 1975’s All the Fun of the Fair); he played the lead in the 1973 stage version of The Who’s Tommy and starred in Stardust, a sequel to That’ll Be the Day. Essex’s acting credits go on for quite a while - Wikipedia faithfully notes quite a few -but the last one I want to flag was his turn his Che in the original 1978 production of the Tim Rice/Andrew Lloyd Weber’s Evita, a role that gave him yet another UK hit (#3) with “Oh What a Circus,” which he put on his unfortunately titled (for the U.S. market) 1979 album, Imperial Wizard.
Essex was a sex symbol/heart-throb through all that, something he didn’t particularly care for; as he told the Daily Mirror in 2011, “I was never comfortable with the bedroom poster aspect. I just get on with things.” Wikipedia mentions “Beatlemania” levels of enthusiasm, something that’s less surprising after you’ve read about Mungo-Mania and T-Rextasy (the English are enthusiasts), but, across most of what I’ve read, David Essex comes across as…just really likable. And he’s done some decent charitable work as well, including picking up an OBE (Office of the Order of the British Empire…gawd, that’s wordy) for his work as an ambassador Voluntary Service Overseas (which, without investigation, looks like the UK’s answer to the Peace Corps). He has also advocated for Irish Travellers -including a stint “as Patron of Britain's National Gypsy Council, which works for equal rights, education, and services for Romany and Irish Travellers” - a role he had the good sense to drop when he moved to the States for a while.
The most recent material I read has him back in London, a father of four from a succession of three wives, all of whom he reports still get along, and going to West Ham games. The West Ham museum even has an exhibit in his honor, one that includes a recording of him talking about the club and why he loves it. For all his fame and success, David Essex has powerful “regular bloke” vibes. In his reflections to the Guardian, he recalls how his father “put my name down to work in the docks,” but I liked the way he summed it all up for Great British Life:
“I have enjoyed the success, of course, and I have enjoyed the fact that i have been able to go places, ride motorbikes and do the things I enjoy, but I have never taken myself too seriously as a pop star or anything else. If I hear myself on a radio in a shop, I am more likely to turn my collar up and pretend I am someone else.”
About the Sampler
If feels, for lack of a better word, wrong to go too much I struggled with David Essex’s material over the past week, so I’m just going to list a bunch of songs I selected and leave it there. By album (and not listing the songs already linked to above):
Rock On: “Streetfight,” “Turn Me Loose,” “On and On,” and “Tell Him No”
David Essex: “Window,” “There’s Something About You,” and “America"
All the Fun of the Fair: the title track, “If I Could,” and “Watch Out (Carolina)”
Imperial Wizard: “Let It Flow”...which is going to have to be a bonus track; can't find it.
My broad issue with most of that material is that too many of them sound like they came out of a bad musical…of which, if that’s your jam, listen and enjoy, because he sounds like a solid citizen.
This is a weird one in that I found nothing about David Essex’s international 1973 hit, the pulsing, sultry slow-jam, “Rock On,” beyond its bare existence. It went gold the following year, it hit either #3 or #5 on the Billboard Hot 100, it gave him his only hit single on the Cash Box Top 40, and that song is probably the only thing any American knows anything about him. I don’t think 99% of Americans don’t know his name, never mind pick him out of a two-person line-up.
Then again, does it matter? He’s a staple of UK pop culture, high and low.
The Rest of the Story
David Essex was born David Albert Cook in 1947 to an East End docker and “a self taught pianist and Irish Traveller” (an Irish subculture similar, but not related, to the Roma). He grew up poor and as an only child, a tough situation made harder when his father, Albert, contracted tuberculosis when he was very young. That made them effectively homeless and dependent on relatives to survive, but they did and eventually found their feet.
Over time, the family gravitated to outer London, first to Canning Town then to Chadwell Heath, where they had a little more room indoors and out, and where young David Cook could indulge his first love, football (which, here, means soccer). He took that love seriously enough to tank the placement exam for secondary school (the Eleven plus exam) so he could attend Shipman County Secondary - a school that took its football seriously - and earned himself a place with the West Ham Juniors (aka, the junior team for English Premier League regulars West Ham United). He walked that path until he discovered a new, second love, music. As he told the Guardian:
“I played football for West Ham Juniors, but when I was 13 I went to Soho and walked into an R&B club called the Flamingo, which was full of black American GIs and I decided that I wanted to be a musician.”
Essex decided on drums as his instrument - as he put it, he could “hide behind the cymbals.” His father hated the drums, but he still let him practice in their modest council house; Essex remembers his dad having a “proper stand-up fight” with a neighbor who complained about the noise. Essex eventually crossed paths with a writer, Derek Bowman, who would become the mentor who started him in show business. According to an outlet called Great British Life, Bowman encouraged David Cook to join a band called Equity; that band already had a David Cook, and that’s when he switched his name to David Essex - a name he chose as an homage to his home county…and here’s where the narrative hiccups.
Somewhere between Equity and 1965, David Essex started performing (based on the name) fronting an outfit called “David Essex and the Mood Indigo.” That act recorded a couple songs in the mid-‘60s - “A Rose” and “Leon and John and Billy and Me” (can’t find ‘em; never released, but the acetates still exist) - plus a few more that go unmentioned in Wikipedia’swrite-up on Essex.
Wikipedia carries the story on from there, and it’s a lot of theater, some music and a little television. After a couple bit parts, Essex landed the lead to Godspell in 1971. He had his golden year in 1973 when he starred in That’ll Be the Day - a movie with a cast that included Ringo Starr and Keith Moon, just to mention - and released “Rock On,” both the single and the album (which included another UK hit “Lamplight”). He continued to release albums, singles and movies - “Gonna Make You a Star” (on his eponymous 1974 album), “Hold Me Close” (from 1975’s All the Fun of the Fair); he played the lead in the 1973 stage version of The Who’s Tommy and starred in Stardust, a sequel to That’ll Be the Day. Essex’s acting credits go on for quite a while - Wikipedia faithfully notes quite a few -but the last one I want to flag was his turn his Che in the original 1978 production of the Tim Rice/Andrew Lloyd Weber’s Evita, a role that gave him yet another UK hit (#3) with “Oh What a Circus,” which he put on his unfortunately titled (for the U.S. market) 1979 album, Imperial Wizard.
Essex was a sex symbol/heart-throb through all that, something he didn’t particularly care for; as he told the Daily Mirror in 2011, “I was never comfortable with the bedroom poster aspect. I just get on with things.” Wikipedia mentions “Beatlemania” levels of enthusiasm, something that’s less surprising after you’ve read about Mungo-Mania and T-Rextasy (the English are enthusiasts), but, across most of what I’ve read, David Essex comes across as…just really likable. And he’s done some decent charitable work as well, including picking up an OBE (Office of the Order of the British Empire…gawd, that’s wordy) for his work as an ambassador Voluntary Service Overseas (which, without investigation, looks like the UK’s answer to the Peace Corps). He has also advocated for Irish Travellers -including a stint “as Patron of Britain's National Gypsy Council, which works for equal rights, education, and services for Romany and Irish Travellers” - a role he had the good sense to drop when he moved to the States for a while.
The most recent material I read has him back in London, a father of four from a succession of three wives, all of whom he reports still get along, and going to West Ham games. The West Ham museum even has an exhibit in his honor, one that includes a recording of him talking about the club and why he loves it. For all his fame and success, David Essex has powerful “regular bloke” vibes. In his reflections to the Guardian, he recalls how his father “put my name down to work in the docks,” but I liked the way he summed it all up for Great British Life:
“I have enjoyed the success, of course, and I have enjoyed the fact that i have been able to go places, ride motorbikes and do the things I enjoy, but I have never taken myself too seriously as a pop star or anything else. If I hear myself on a radio in a shop, I am more likely to turn my collar up and pretend I am someone else.”
About the Sampler
If feels, for lack of a better word, wrong to go too much I struggled with David Essex’s material over the past week, so I’m just going to list a bunch of songs I selected and leave it there. By album (and not listing the songs already linked to above):
Rock On: “Streetfight,” “Turn Me Loose,” “On and On,” and “Tell Him No”
David Essex: “Window,” “There’s Something About You,” and “America"
All the Fun of the Fair: the title track, “If I Could,” and “Watch Out (Carolina)”
Imperial Wizard: “Let It Flow”...which is going to have to be a bonus track; can't find it.
My broad issue with most of that material is that too many of them sound like they came out of a bad musical…of which, if that’s your jam, listen and enjoy, because he sounds like a solid citizen.
No comments:
Post a Comment