Culture That Made Me: BP Fallon on Bob Dylan, John Lennon, and David Holmes
BP Fallon. Picture: Paul Bell
Broadcaster, photographer and musician BP Fallon was born in Dublin in 1946. He has shared a stage with John Lennon and worked and toured with artists such as Led Zeppelin, T. Rex and Ian Dury. He toured as a warm-up DJ for bands like U2, My Bloody Valentine and The Kills. In 2009, Jack White produced Fallon’s first single, I Believe In Elvis Presley. His latest album is due soon.
Ronnie Drew is one of the most impressive people I've had the pleasure of calling a friend. We built up a really cool relationship over the years. He told me the first time he saw me I was going into the Shelbourne Hotel with a cloak and buckled shoes, and he said, “Oh, I like that fellow.” He was born ‘on the wrong side of the tracks’. He married into a family ‘above him’. A brilliant, self-taught man.
People talk about Luke Kelly – and Luke was incredible, no doubt – but Ronnie's voice is more distinctive. It sounded like coal being squashed under a pneumatic hammer. And those eyes, like a cat looking out of a manhole.
Astral Weeks is a favourite album. I’ve got a song about it called Van And Gloria on my Live In Texas album. It's like the angels came down and French-kissed Van Morrison. The first time I heard it I was on Dr Timothy Leary's medicine in Notting Hill Gate in London. My friend Simon said, “Don't the strings sound like waterfalls.” And they do. The playing on the record is exemplary. It cushions Van’s voice impeccably. I lent Van £10 in The Coffee Kitchen off Molesworth St when Them had fallen apart finally. He put that towards his plane fare going to New York to sign with Bert Bern of Bang Records.
It started off for me when I was 11 years old, with Cliff Richard’s first record in 1958. You could think, ‘F**king hell what's he on about Cliff Richard, a mumsy cuddly singer? How could that be pivotal?’ It was the first authentic-sounding British rock'n'roll record.
Cliff was then regarded as vulgar. NME wrote: “Cliff should not be on television when young people can see his disgusting behaviour.”
He was aping Elvis. The lyrics on Move It are still cool [sings]: “They say it's gonna die but honey please let's face it/Well, there just ain’t nothin’ that’s a goin' to replace it/Yeah, ballads and calypsos ain’t got nothin' on/Real country music that just drives along/Uh, honey move it…”
John Lennon was like a whole bunch of people. He was a big influence on me. The Beatles were a lifeline. Because pop music had got pretty limp dick. It didn’t have any hard-on. Suddenly these guys came along and it was funky again: “God, they actually sweated, you know?” He was a brilliant songwriter. He had one of the greatest rock'n'roll voices, although he didn't rate it. He was a great rhythm guitar player. At the Cavern, when he played rhythm guitar, it was like a tank commander urging his troops over the top. He drove it, pushed it.
Quintin Crisp bore no grudge against anybody who was hurtful either physically or verbally. He said, “Look, to walk up and down King’s Road with green hair in 1954, I brought it on myself.” He had no anger, which was incredible considering the things he went through. He did a show at the Gate Theatre in Dublin where he lay very camply on a chaise lounge with a lamp beside him. He’d say things like, “You know, in America, everyone who isn't shooting at you is your friend” and “Sex is the last refuge of the truly miserable.” He hated music. We dined together in New York in this place with no music; he didn’t see the purpose of it at all.
Luke Kelly made me go to Bob Dylan at the Adelphi Cinema in Dublin in 1966. It looked like Cape Canaveral – I’d never seen so much equipment in all my life. The players, they just ambled out, backs to the audience, tuning, no mad hurry. Then suddenly, boom: “Well, I see you got your/Brand new leopard-skin pill-box hat.”
It was like being strapped to a rocket. It was loud, soulful. It wasn't necessarily 100 percent in tune. It didn’t matter. It rocked. I haven’t been the same since. The story is that everyone was booing. Well, they weren’t. There was a few idiots booing, but by and large people dug it.
Although he's my dear friend and we make music together I’d single out David Holmes as a DJ. I did the lyrics on a couple of his tracks on the TV series Killing Eve and we made the record Henry McCullough. He lifts your spirit. He makes you feel better than when you started listening to him. If they could pipe that into doctoring and medicine, everyone would be as fit as a fiddle. It elevates you. It’s a wonderful thing to be able to do. He’s very good taste. In his studio in Belfast, he’s got a picture of the Shangri-Las on the wall. That’s not a bad start is it?
Nik Cohn is the chap who wrote the clubland story from which came the movie Saturday Night Fever. He was brought up in Northern Ireland. His book Awopbopaloobop Alopbamboom is about the story of rock'n'roll. It's written so excitedly. It's contagious. It wants you to put on the record. The words dance along the page.
Probably the best rock'n'roll book is written by Nick Tosches. It’s called Hellfire. It’s about The Killer – Jerry Lee Lewis. It’s about a guy who throughout his life battles feelings of guilt for doing the devil's music. He played My God Is Real boogie-woogie style one time at bible college and he was thrown out.
His sister Linda Gayle Lewis is a dear friend of mine. She’s 10 years younger than him. She does the best Jerry Lee show now her brother has gone celestial – and she sings and pumps piano on my next album. Meanwhile, “Welcome home, Jerry Lee.”
The Girl Can't Help It was a film that came out in 1956. The supposed stars were Jayne Mansfield and Tom Ewell, but appearing in the film were Little Richard and his band, Gene Vincent and the Blue Caps, Eddie Cochran, Fats Domino. We got to see these people in colour. Not to mention Jayne Mansfield who was the idea of a jukebox girl.
It was fantastic because America was far away. A film like this was exotic and erotic – to later see Little Richard at a live gig with hair right up to the ceiling, shrieking, banging the piano, saying “This ain’t sweat. This is holy water.”
