[ Post a Response | Lonnie Donegan Discussion Forum ]
Posted by Roger Rettig on November 2, 2009, 11:25 am, in reply to "Re: Spencer Leigh's Book"
76.7.32.186
Erik:
I'm in agreement with you regarding the presesentation and format of Spencer's book, but it was probably done within the strictures of his other 'Brit pop'-related works, and financial restraints may have dictated the somewhat cheap look it had.
My complaint was more to do with the lack of detail about the important period in Lonnie's career - 1956 to 1961 or '62. Sure, he catalogues the series of events and successes, but missed the opportunity to interview the guys who, perhaps, could have told us more than anyone about the musical process and life with Donegan at his peak. I mean, of course, the musicians who were there - Denny Wright, Mickey Ashman, Jimmy Currie, Les Bennetts, Pete Huggett, et al; many of them have now passed away and it won't happen now.
He must have spoken briefly with drummer Nick Nicholls, but perhaps Nick wasn't very forthcoming, because he's hardly quoted at all.
Spencer's book is far too focussed on the later years. It was an easy trap to fall into, because there was no end of opportunity to interview him, but (with all respect to the good musicians who were with him in the '70s onwards) that was not a period when Donegan was 'relevant'. I know how good he still was - no-one could hold an audience like Lonnie, even until his dying day - but I want to know about those epoch-making years when he was, literally, the biggest music star in the country. The rest is a rather sad tale of life on the cabaret circuit.
Paul Pelletier is undoubtedly most appreciative of Lonnie's real significance, and his excellent sleeve-notes on the Castle Reissue CDs will attest to this. They're kind-of hard to read (for me, at least) with the tiny typeface and the fact that some of them are overprinted on colour backgrounds, but there are nuggets of interesting information in them, and I learned much from his writings.
As for the 'official' biography ('All Roads Lead To Lon'), I'm not sure that it'd be worth holding our collective breath for. Getting accurate information out of LD was a tenous business - apart from being a 'document of interest', I wonder if Lonnie's version of events could have been relied upon to actually inform us???
Roger Rettig
17
Message Thread:
« Back to thread