Rock 'n' Roll.

Buddy Holly

There is one thing about the Americans which I don't think they appreciate; I don't think they appreciate some of the things they have started, or invented if you like, which have influenced the world.

They think they invented the computer and the Internet – well they didn't.

A British scientist called Donald Davies started the Internet – and with a name like that he was probably Welsh – and the computer was invented by an Englishman called Charles Babbage in the 19^th Century, he was the first to conceptualise and fully programme a computer which he never developed but his son completed and simplified a version of the machine's analytical unit and gave it to the Science Museum in South Kensington where I believe it is still there to this day.

Alan Turing is generally considered to be the father of the modern computer; he was in the news recently as 2012 is his centenary.

But what am getting at?

I am getting at the great things Americans have given to the world; no not cooking or food, unless you like hamburgers and the dreaded Americano coffee, which the Italians think they invented, but the music.

They have given to the world some of the greatest music and they ignore this feat. And I'm not talking classical music either, even though I love Samuel Barber and Philip Glass.

Rock'n'Roll and jazz – that's what they gave us.

I used to attend many of the jazz concerts at the Hollywood Bowl and also the smaller ones at the Hollywood/Highland Centre (or Center) where they hold the Academy Awards.

My favourite, of course, is rock'n'roll. I have seen some great bands over there, in Los Angeles, who were largely ignored by the punters.

I saw The Blasters at The House of Blues but that was because they were the support group for Percy Sledge, and I think they were appreciated by the audience on that night, but a couple of years ago I went to a party at the Peterson Car Museum – well The Peterson Automotive Museum – as the local auctioneers, Bonhams & Butterfields, were selling a collection of Steve McQueen's motor bikes and cars.

There were quite a few motor-bike enthusiasts there who were full of hair and leather and who turned out to be the most gentlest of gentle creatures. These fellas stood around mainly in groups of blokes and some groups had their women and I got the impression, now and again, that they were Hell's Angels but they weren't.

At one time, during the evening, the actor Robert Patrick, who was in Terminator 2, came in with a politician and they stopped the band for a while, whilst he spouted some garbage about 'our boys in the front line' – they stopped the band.

Do you know who was playing?

None other than Ricky Nelson's son. He looked just like Ricky Nelson and sounded like him and he was singing his dad's songs – I'm not sure if he was Gunnar Nelson or Matthew Nelson - I was spellbound as he sang and the guitarist was playing just like his dad's great guitarist, James Burton.

I couldn't believe that they were being treated like background. Some excuse for a guitarist, whom I knew and could only play Bossa Nova, came up to me and said 'rubbish.'

That was enough to put him in my shit list!

Just listen to James Burton's guitar work for Ricky Nelson and later with Elvis Presley and see what I mean; and this guy was up to that standard but because it wasn't jazz he was thought of as 'rubbish.'

One of the songs he sang was his dad's song Garden Party, which his dad wrote in disgust after a Madison Square Garden audience booed him, because, in his mind, he was playing new songs instead of just his old hits; the song was about that Madison Square Garden Concert and was autobiographical; the younger Nelson, at the party, joked about it being autobiographical for him too.

All lost on the crowd that night.

Another time I went to a bar on La Brea, in Hollywood called the Lava Lounge, and the band – or the group – played and sang Buddy Holly songs and Bobby Fuller songs.

Again the crowd didn't even look at them.

I had heard many groups years ago play and sing Buddy Holly songs in fact before The Beatles that's what a lot of groups would do – Holly or The Shadows in Britain. But they couldn't quite get that guitar lick that Buddy played on Peggy Sue.

I asked someone I was with if he knew who the originator of the songs was and he guessed Elvis!!!! Arrrrgghhhhhhhh!!!!

All of them dead, now of course. Buddy Holly and Ricky Nelson in plane crashes and Bobby Fuller died mysteriously in Hollywood right by where we used to live.

He was found in his car dead; there's a bit of a complicated story about his death, which is maybe apocryphal in Wikipedea:

Bobby Fuller

Within months of "I Fought The Law" becoming a top 10 hit, Fuller was found dead in an automobile parked outside his Hollywood apartment. The Los Angeles deputy medical examiner, Jerry Nelson, performed the autopsy. According to Dean Kuipers: "The report states that Bobby's face, chest, and side were covered in “petechial hemorrhages" probably caused by gasoline vapors and the heat. He found no bruises, no broken bones, no cuts. No evidence of beating." Kuipers further explains that boxes for "accident" and "suicide" were ticked, but next to the boxes were question marks. Despite the official cause of death, some commentators believe Fuller was murdered.

Erik Greene, a relative of Sam Cooke, has cited similarities in the deaths of Cooke and Fuller. Fuller bandmate, Jim Reese, suspected that Charles Manson may have had something to do with Fuller's death but never provided credible evidence. A sensationalist crime website has speculated that the LAPD may have been involved because of Bobby's connection to a Mafia-related woman.

Over the street from where Bobby was found, is The Highland Gardens Hotel; Janice Joplin died in there from a drug overdose one night and they still rent out her room. Our kids would stay there when they came out to see us with their families.

So I am asking Americans to appreciate what you have and what you are really famous for overseas; it wasn't Ronald Reagan who brought the Berlin Wall down; it was pop music and another American product – Levi Jeans.

A few months ago I bought my 23^rd pair when I was in Los Angeles; when I was a lot younger I would buy a new pair of 501s, put them on and get into a bath - to shrink them to my shape - I think I had read about it somewhere. I don't do that any more as I don't think it works at all.

After a time, 501s get a bit bigger as you wear them and become 'old person's jeans' – as they are called by some people – but they're not really.

Levi Jeans started out being worn by cowboys and 'blue collar' workers in America so why the 'old person' moniker?

It's because the older you get, the shape of you changes – you can't help it, it isn't a crime or even a vice but and, by the way, I lied about the jeans I bought a few months ago being my 23^rd pair.

Rock On!!

Levi Jeans

worn with boots - as they should be.