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PART ONE: Foreword. |
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This page contains an extract from Tom Lodge's new book. It is completely revised and expanded
from the earlier version, is in a hard cover and contains more photos from Tom's time with Radio Caroline, with more
tales of life aboard, more insights into the music and more stories of the musicians who made the sixties such a special
era. The new book is entitled The Ship that Rocked the World: How Radio Caroline Defied the Establishment, Launched
the British Invasion and Made the Planet Safe for Rock and Roll and is available from
The Radio Caroline Society,
Amazon and good book
shops.
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This is an adventure story, so let's get that
straight right up front.
What Ronan and his gang of rogues, renegades, and roustabouts pulled off had little intention
of making history and every intention of making trouble. Of course they ended up doing both. And along the way incurring
the class-conscious self-righteous and occasionally dangerously irrational wrath of Her Majesty's Government
which considered everything from illegally sinking them (it did) to immorally assassinating them (which,
incredibly, it almost did). And for what high crimes against the Empire was all this wrath in defense of, you ask?
Nuclear threat?
Economic subversion?
Spreading the Plague perhaps?
No, sorry. Radio Caroline performed the singularly treasonous act of playing Rock and Roll records to an audience that
couldn't hear them anywhere else.
So in other words, the British government's response was only a bit more extreme than
most of our parents!
We were lucky in America.
We had great radio from the mid-fifties on. Our horrified unsuspecting long suffering
hard working mothers and fathers witnessed the birth of a new species - the Teenager - who came in such numbers
that they couldn't be exterminated quick enough and took over. And they brought their own soundtrack with them.
And by the way destiny would play a role in the flourishing of that soundtrack in two big
ways. When William Paley and CBS introduced the 33 1/3 RPM 12 inch Long Player (LP) in 1948, whose more
durable Vinylite plastic would ultimately replace the 78 RPMs very breakable shellac, his chief rival General David Sarnoff
at RCA had to invent something to compete. It would be the 45RPM 7 inch single (6 7/8 actually) introduced
in 1949. This would coincide with a musician's strike (they assumed records would put them out of business!)
which forced record companies to produce more children's records and - here's the thing - tiny portable
phonograph machines to go with them. Thusly enabling kids, soon to be teenagers, the ability to play the records they wanted,
when they wanted, in the privacy of their own rooms, as opposed to the colossal console in the middle of the living room
which was closely policed by one's parents.
This teenage technology came along just in time because their sound track turned out to be an
unholy combination of hillbilly trash, blues shouters, and gospel fugitives that some lunatic DJ named Alan Freed was
calling Rock and Roll (“wasn't that what black people called sex?!”). Which surely would
never have survived (or seen the light of day) in adultsville.
And then, as if by Satanic wizardry - and maybe the reference to the Plague was accurate
after all - it hit the Mother Country like a wayward tsunami.
And boy were you ready for it.
A country full of the same frustrated teenagers waiting for a post-World War
black-and-white life to explode into widescreen Technicolor. Loudly.
And just in case you think frustrated is too strong a word keep in mind it was those
conservative, well behaved English teenagers that upon witnessing Bill Haley and the Comets ‘Rock Around The Clock’
as it opened the classic film Blackboard Jungle, literally ripped the seats out of the theater. They did so for one
simple reason. No one had ever heard rock and roll at the proper volume before, you know, loud. And out of those gigantic
speakers spilled liberation.
Freedom baby!
That's what this music was all about. And the explosion of liberation came from the
unlikely barrels of the cannons aboard Radio Caroline's Danish passenger ferry, the MV Fredericia, anchored three and
a half miles out to sea in International waters. It broadcast the British Invasion back to Britain and gave it the strength
it would need to cross the ocean.
Every ocean.
And without them ... well unless ‘How Much Is That Doggie In The Window’ turns you
on, you don't even want to think about it.
So settle back me hearties and let old Tom spin you a tale about a band of pirates that never
made it to the Caribbean, but against all odds made it to New Jersey.
And accidentally saved my life.
Stevie Van Zandt
