Bob Bell Remembers Guy Stevens
I first knew of him from his letters to the NME, circa 1959, regarding how Jerry Lee Lewis’ latest record should be a hit, and how he would eat his record collection if it didn’t chart. It didn’t, and his subsequent letters demonstrated both a great passion for the music and an equally great sense of humour.
By 1962 his name started appearing on Pye Records’ R & B Series, which licensed recordings from Chess and Checker Records in Chicago, the releases chosen by Guy, along with ads in the music papers advertising him as a DJ at Ronan O’Rahilly’s Scene Club in London’s West End. The Rolling Stones, The Who, Eric Clapton, Georgie Fame, The Beatles and others came to Guy, seeking out material in those early days before they started writing their own material - he had the keys to the highway, the map of the promised land. Guy’s commitment to the music led to Chuck Berry once again becoming a household name, (Guy arranged Chuck’s bail to spring him from jail for his debut UK tour), and artists such as Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Bo Diddley and dozens of others gaining UK recognition, either by way of record releases, tours or both.
Many of those Pye releases were mastered from records in Guy’s own collection. Other record companies followed suit, releasing American blues and R & B. Bands playing those genres were popping up all over the place, their repertoires drawn from the few records that were then on the market. Indeed, one could tell what LPs they owned by the tunes they were playing. Club goers in the United Kingdom were not aware of it, but when they went clubbing, they were dancing to tunes drawn from Guy’s record collection. It was a bit of an odd situation as much of the early Rock ’n Roll was really R & B renamed for the white - pop - market, now these fledgling R & B groups reprised much of the old Rock ’n Roll material - now re-marketed as R & B. The thing was Guy helped much of this come about and just how he did it is central to his character.
It was his enthusiasm, his passion, his total, absolute and completely unwavering conviction that this music, its appeal, its authenticity, its soul and feeling had the potential to change the world, and he acted accordingly.
It was really because of Sue Records that I had called Island initially looking for a job. I owned several Sue singles, the two Elmore James albums, the Huey Smith LP, plus the ‘We Sing The Blues’ and ‘the Dynamite’ collections, and it was very obvious to me that this chap Guy Stevens knew an awful lot about the music I loved. Who else would be hip enough to include a cut like ‘Jack, That Cat Was Clean’ by Doc Horse on an LP, or Jimmy Spruill’s “Hard Grind’? This was obscure and valuable stuff, and proved that Guy had the sensibilities to know which seams to mine, where the gold was …
I got to know him when I joined Island in 1965. He was already a bit of a mythic figure, and I confess I was originally in awe of him, just arriving from the sticks as I had, but we rapidly learned we had much in common. Music obviously, but also a love of modern literature, and especially the works of the Beat Generation. He loved to point out that the famed Six Gallery reading in San Francisco, which introduced Allen Ginsberg (‘Howl’), Michael McClure, Gary Snyder and others to the world took place in October 1955, the same month Little Richard’s ‘Tutti Frutti’ was released.
I remember David Betteridge telling me, not long after Guy had joined Island, he didn’t turn up for work for a week. Where he finally showed and was asked about his absence, he replied, ‘Well, Jerry Lee was here touring’. And that, of course, explained everything.
The world to Guy was an exploding galaxy of revelation, insights, epiphanies and ecstasies, and its soundtrack was the spirit of Rock ’N Roll and its soul the feeling of the blues. All those who came into contact with him were bowled over, blown away by his contagious love of the music. Performance was all.
Always dressed in black, he was in David’s words, ‘An original, he knew a fantastic amount about American music, and always spoke his mind. Plus he had a decent set of ears. Really, he was the bridge between Island’s early West Indian catalogue and the later rock catalogue.’ Indeed, without Sue, it is hard to imagine the evolution of Island Records.
It was his remark, in the company of musicians, that someone ‘was a whiter shade of pale’, that led to the song of that name being written. And it was Guy who named those musicians Procul Harum, after his cat, I believe. And so, echoing in a way David Betteridge’s observation of Guy being a bridge from ethnic Island to pop Island, Guy was also a bridge for UK bands moving from R & B to exploring the sonic possibilities of what became 60’s rock, with all its ultimate international repercussions.
When I rejoined Island in 1968, Guy and I went to several record collector’s meets together, grinning and jabbering to one another as we showed each other our finds. At the close of one meet, we retired to a pub, and I was surprised that he drank only lemonade. At that time I didn’t know about his hassles with booze. That year he gave me his specially designed record box - a huge rectangular box that housed 45s and LPs. It became known as the coffin in the house I shared with my wife Wendy and our three children. He had been in prison during some of 1967 and 1968 on a drug charge, and someone had stolen his record collection - an act akin to ripping out his soul.
He rarely visited Music House up in Willesden - his base being at 155 Oxford Street - but we’d talk on the phone now and then. I remember him calling me the day the news broke about Jack Kerouac’s death. I had already heard about it, and we talked slowly, in a kind of bemused shock. Oddly, we hadn’t talked a few months earlier when Neal Cassady had died in Mexico. I say oddly, because in many ways Cassady could be seen as Guy’s avatar, a speedy-manic-experience-everything-at-once madman saint and angel whose spirit was embodied in that much bandied Kerouac quote “[...]the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centre-light pop and everybody goes “Awww!” And indeed Guy used that very quote in his liner note to Mott The Hoople’s first album, the band he named after the title of a book by Willard Manus, which Guy had read while in prison, the band he pretty much put together and produced.
By this time Guy’s energies were mainly with Island’s emerging rock roster, although he did oversee a budget sampler on Island, ‘This Is Blues’. In fact he asked me to compile it, which I did, and then he neglected to give me a credit for it, which I didn’t really care about at the time - after all, I was compiling LPs all over the place for Trojan - this was just one more in what seemed to be an endless stream.
After I left Island at the end of 1972, I didn’t see Guy again until the winter of 1979 / 1980, at which time I returned to the company for a few months to oversee the restoration of the company’s Jamaican archive, all those releases that had come out in the sixties. By then Island was quartered in Hammersmith, at St. Peter’s Square, and I was given the use of a fairly large office upstairs.
Guy turned up on two or three occasions, staggeringly drunk, clutching a large grocery bag full of bottles of rum, vodka and whiskey. On the first occurrence, it took some time before the frantic folks in reception figured out what to do with him, but once they knew that he and I understood one another, he would be immediately directed up to my office, where he would straight away get on the phone, attempting to call Jerry Lee Lewis in the States, all to no avail of course. The fact was, he could hardly talk, or stand. But he could still enthuse. And that was the thing about Guy, he was a bloody enthusiast. He radiated it, he dispelled it, his world was that of an evangelist, an evangelist of and for Rock ’n Roll, his eyes flashing, spittle flying, his mad hair spiked and crazed, he staggered about the office, bottles clinking, arms waving, his mind beckoned on by great glories until he’d collapse on the long sofa next to the wall, and fall asleep, out to the world for a few hours, until the end of the day when I would gently usher him, quietened and child-like, downstairs and into a cab, and send him home to Herne Hill, where he lived with his mother.
Early in 1980 I left for the USA, and met up with Roomful of Blues, a nine-piece jump blues band who played 1940s and 1950s style R & B with finesse and feeling. The band had a five-piece horn section and were on the road constantly. Towards the end of that summer, they spent three days in the Hit Factory in New York City, recording their third album. Ironically, their first two albums were on Island, but were never released in the UK, which in hindsight and given the influence of the UK market on blues internationally, was a very grave error. I brought the tapes of the new album, ‘Hot Little Mama’ back with me, and secured releases on UK’s Ace Records, and Mercury in France. I called Guy and told him I wanted to play him a cassette of the record, and went down to Herne Hill to meet him.
He had dried out, been sober for several months, and apart from an attack of psoriasis, from which he had suffered all his life, was looking very well. He put the tape into the machine and listened. He snapped his fingers, a huge smile writ across his face, he jumped about the room, clapping his hands. He mimicked looks of astonishment, wide-eyed, flapping his elbows, he stamped his feet and listened intently to all twelve tunes.
Removing the cassette and putting it back into the case, he looked at me and said, ‘It’s the real thing, Rob, it’s the real fucking thing. This is it. What a great sound.’
I returned to America early in 1981, to work with Roomful. I never saw Guy again, as he died on August 28, 1981.
But I think of him often. Ah Guy, dear sweet Guy. The tales about him are legion, just as they are about Cassady. The tales of his causing mayhem when producing ‘London’s Calling’ by The Clash, his lying down in front of CBS boss Mo Oberstein’s Rolls Royce, refusing to move until Oberstein agreed to some hare-brained scheme, of Guy burning down a hotel …. Well, the stories are endless, and god knows how many are really true.
The undeniable fact is that Guy was not just an enthusiast, he was a catalyst, he made things happen through the force of his will, his will became a contagion, an irrepressible force. He lived for the euphoria that great music brings, and he wanted to share that euphoria with the world.
