It was only a song, but after it was released, nothing was the same.
On this date in 1954, Bill Haley and the Comets recorded Rock Around the Clock, sparking a revolution. Rock’n’roll changed our lives.
It wasn’t just the loud, startling and defiant music. It was the glorious sense of freedom for young people.
Amid dreary post-war restraint, we had something that was ours, not something our parents handed down, like Mantovani and his Strings or Bing Crosby .
I went to see the film of Rock Around the Clock in 1956, at the Empire Cinema, Normanton. It was a ball. They really did dance in the aisles, though they didn’t rip up the seats.
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I didn’t know how to dance, and was too gauche to realise that it wasn’t dancing like they taught you at school but just flinging yourself around in close proximity to a girl until you were both too hot to keep going.
Heaven!
And this guitar-strumming American singer in a snazzy jacket who got those youngsters jiving, this icon of youth, was actually more than 30 years old, with a double chin and a ridiculous kiss curl on his sweaty brow!
He looked like somebody your dad might meet in t’club for a Sunday pint, but his lyrics were sensational.
They spoke of dancing around the clock – staying out all night – still taboo for teenagers in the fifties.
The message of Bill’s music was “do your own thing” and we grasped the opportunity with open arms, much to the dismay of a parental generation that couldn’t cope with this alien cultural invasion.
The tabloid Daily Sketch warned: “Don’t just say ‘tut-tut’ and ‘disgraceful’ and turn away.
This affects YOU! It could easily be your son or daughter or niece, or the nice boy next door, who gets caught up in the maelstrom of this jazz.”
The dear old Sketch is no longer with us, but rock’n’roll lives on, and so does the exhilarating emancipation it brought.
