This is the land of knee-tremblers and wee bastards

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Hot and loud and vulgar music, non-stop for five hours

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To the older generation rock 'n' roll came to mean Teds and violence. There was a riot in Berlin. Some countries banned rock 'n' roll altogether. In Singapore police were called in to stop British soldiers jiving in a cinema foyer after a midnight premiere of Rock Around The Clock. The Rev. Albert Carter of Nottingham denounced rock 'n' roll from his pulpit: 'The effect of rock 'n' roll on young people is to turn them into devil-worshippers; to stimulate self-expression through sex; to provoke lawlessness, impair nervous stability, and destroy the sanctity of marriage.' In Miami, Florida, the head of the local censorship board described rock 'n' roll dancing as 'nothing more than shoving boys and girls around' and 'vile gyrations'! Racialist Asa Carter of the North Alabama White Citizens' Council was scared too: 'Rock 'n' roll is a means of pulling down the white man to the level of the 'Negro'. It is part of a plot to undermine the morals of the youth of our nation. It is sexualistic, unmoralistic, and the best way to bring people of both races together.' Many older musicians hated rock 'n' roll: 'Viewed as a social phenomenon, the current craze for rock 'n' roll material is one of the most terrifying things ever to have happened to popular music ... Musically speaking of course, the whole thing is laughable ... Let us oppose it to the end.'

“The thing about him is that Elvis doesn’t care. He doesn’t give a fuck."

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Between 1963 and 1965, the chimpanzee was very much a part of the Memphis Mafia. Elvis bought him for a couple of hundred bucks. He was a funny little dude. He learned how to dress himself and we had these little suits and ties for him. He learned to do a lot of other things, with Presley’s patient training. He had a dreadful habit of molesting himself in front of ladies, particularly when he had a few drinks. Man, old Scatter was a damn alcoholic. Never stopped drinking. He would get drunk and start going crazy, doing flips all over the house and yelling like a madman. One day when he had had too much to drink, he completely ruined the entire telephone system in the house. It took the telephone repairman three days to fix it. Presley had another little prank, He would dress the chimp in his Sunday best and then put him in the back seat of the Rolls-Royce. A chauffeur-driven rock ’n’ roll singer was bad enough, but a chauffeur-driven monkey? Disgraceful!

Most rockabilly lyrics freely express sex as a positive thing

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ANDY STARR started out saying things like, "Yeah, we had a good time. It was the era of Elvis Presley . . . " - it sounded like I was talking to Eisenhower. Next time I talked to him he said, "You know, Bill, I didn't tell you, but I had sex with over 5000 women! ... Did I tell you about the time this guy was shooting at my car - his wife was hiding in the back seat while I had two blondes in the front!" He called me up and said, "Billy, I'm doing these big shows now - I'll send you photos." Then he sent these pictures, and he's singing in front of a potato chip rack.

In New York, no one knew diddly fuck about Sun Records

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Oh, yessuh, good people, this is ol’ Daddy-O-Dewey comin’ atcha for the next three hours with the hottest cotton-picking records in town—(aside: Ain’t that right, Diz? “That’s right, pahd’ner.”). Yessir, we got the hottest show in the whole country—Red, Hot and Blue coming atcha from W H Bar B Q right here in Memphis, Tennessee, located in the Chisca Hotel, right on the magazine floor—I mean mezzanine floor (aside to himself: Aw’ Phillips, there you go again, you’re always messin’ up!).

this whole slew of crude recordings on shoestring labels.

pdf (190 pages / 135MB)

I had a friend who lived in this flat in west London - a really vile, scruffy, horrible, bloke's flat - but the one thing pristine in this mess was a Dansette in mint condition and a bunch of records on the auto changer. And they were all vintage London records, which he'd bought the first time round. And he wouldn't have parted with them, even though he was dirt poor. So I told him about Ted's stall, less than a minute's walk away. I remember the famous Elvis wallpaper and all these other stalls with their thin dividing walls, selling hippyish jewellery, retro clothing - and there, at the end of the row was a smelly, greasy caff - you'd go past the caff, and Ted had the whole back space, in an L-shape, with the stock behind the counter, belting out rock'n'roll and R&B at full blast.

the dirtiest sound you could ever imagine

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“Sputnik” Rock Monroe was a professional wrestler of considerable renown who had gone through a number of names (“Pretty Boy Rock” “Elvis ‘Rock’ Monroe”) and territories before finally arriving in Memphis as “Sputnik.” He was prone to describing himself in a voice several decibels above the normal range as “220 pounds of twisted steel and sex appeal with the body that women love and men fear.” In looking for a way to distinguish himself that was consonant with both character and commerciality, Sputnik hit upon race. He was a hero to the black man, a villain to the white—he liked to boast that he practically desegregated Memphis’ Ellis Auditorium single-handed, calling up to his colored fans in the “crow’s nest,” with a seating capacity of less than one hundred, “Let my people go.” Every time he threw an opponent down, he would raise up his hands to his fans, and they would just call back, “Sweet man!” When the promoters objected, he said, “Hey, if their money’s no good, just give it to me, and I’ll give it back to them,” and gradually “colored” seating capacity was expanded until the auditorium was de facto integrated. He and Dewey walked a goose down Beale Street on a leash—“Dewey came up with the goose, I came up with the Chihuahua collar and the leash. The people would holler and hug me and jump up and down. I knocked a white guy out on the corner of Third and Beale one time for calling me a nigger-lover, and a little black guy says, ‘Sputnik Monroe, you a mean motherfucker when you drinking, and I believe you drinking a little bit all the damn time.’”

torso twistings described in the burlesque trade as "bumps and grinds"

pdf (237 pages / 184 MB)

Elvis sat in the Shalimar Room in the hotel with his three musicians, when 19-year-old Louis John Balint approached Elvis. "Hey you," he said, "my wife carries a picture of you in her wallet, but she doesn't carry one of me. Let us step out-side." He then tried to land a punch on Elvis, but missed. When the police arrived Balint was trying to shove Scotty Moore over a 4-foot-high terrace railing. "Presley is no slouch," police said. "He was really working over that guy. He knows how to handle himself real fine. He threw several good punches." Before pleading guilty to disorderly conduct Balint told the police that he resented having his wife, from whom he was separated, carry Elvis' picture instead of his own. Balint was unable to pay a fine of $10 and $6.90 in costs and he was taken to the Workhouse to serve seven days.

THE MAGAZINE THAT DOESN’T KNOW WHEN TO QUIT!

pdfs of all issues - 1GB! - here

Slash: Tell us about the clubs in N.Y.

Lux: CBGB's is really the only club.

Slash: What about the "downtown bands"?

Lux: My personal opinion is, I think it's a good thing to keep those damned art-rock bands separated some place where they can drop out of art school and work out their neuroses! They don't know anything about rock 'n' roll. You can't dance to their music and I couldn't care less about it. I'm not interested in music you can't dance to. Get them out of the bars and put them in a loft!

Ivy: There are a lot of bands trying to get in at CBGBs but the art bands are keeping them out, they're cluttering up the place. They should call their music what it is. They should play for the artists in Soho. 

Lux: This "new wave," I don't know what it is. When rock 'n' roll changed to rock, it became acceptable. When punk rock changed to new wave it became acceptable and all these muck people started moving in.  Robert Christgau from the Village Voice despises us, so he won't write anything about us except snotty remarks and put-downs. He does not understand a goddam thing on what this band is about in the least. A hundred people told me the show we did at CBGB's was the best they'd ever seen and the review in the Village Voice called it "calculated ... sterile ... boring ... "