THE HEART OF ROCK 'N' ROLL

Gay mating call or not, *AwopBopAlooBopAlopBamBoom" is the original battle hymn of rock 'n' roll. It is also the inspired title of a book that could legitimately be described as the first punk history of rock 'n' roll, a literary switch blade taken to the reputations of many of its most hallowed idols and a French kiss lovingly placed on the lips of others.
Written during a clearly frenetic four week period in 1969 it was, subtitled "Pop from the Beginning", and in it its author Nik Cohn described Dylan as "a bore", delicately adding: "just the noise he makes, his whine and his sneer, he loses me." Commenting on Dylan's status as a poet Cohn - generously allowing for "moments of real vision", - also dismissed the man as "flabby, sentimental and overblown."
Elvis, on the other hand, was where pop begins and ends for Nik Cohn. "He's the great original", he wrote, "the image that makes all the others seem shoddy, the boss. For once the fan club spiel is justified: Elvis is King."
Nearly a quarter of a century later Cohn still speaks as highly of the King but these days he's probably more concerned about Prince, who is rumoured to be interested in appearing in a stage production based on Cohn's latest book, "The Heart of the World".
Ironically, the book itself turns out to be a fictionalised description of a Dylan-esque wander down New York's Desolation Row, from the Killarney Rose bar, in the back streets behind Bowling Green, right up to 42nd St. Along the way Cohn meets, and lives with, a glorious cavalcade of loners and losers and, most impressively of all, a Puerto Rican transvestite called Lush Life. Not surprisingly it is the latter character who holds the greatest allure for Prince.
Yet for Nik Cohn, every journey into pop culture must be traced back to Little Richard's wail at the beginning of "Tutti Frutti": AwopBopAlooBopAlopBamBoom. What's his response to the revisionist view that, although Little Richard added "Ah Rooti" to "Tuttie Frutti" and removed "great booty" - which is black slang for "great ass" - the song remains a mating call for homosexuals?
"The whole point about rock 'n' roll was that it was a fantasy on which you would paint whatever you want," he asserts, laughing. "So if one wants to say 'Tutti Frutti' is a Tibetan chant that's fine by me! And I'm not being facetious! Someone who is very much into world music came around to my house the other night and played me Tibetan chants and I did think to myself: now it's quite obvious, these Tibetan monks were walking through Georgia in 1955 and Little Richard heard them and that's how rock 'n' roll began!"
Cohn's scepticism is fired by the mere mention of revisionist approaches to the history of rock 'n' roll. He may have paved the path later walked by the likes of Greil Marcus but he certainly won't be walking beside them.
"Someone like Griel Marcus is an absolute pest because of his endlessly revising the history of rock," he says. "It goes against the very spirit of the music, which, if I had to describe it in one sentence, would be: if you say it's true, it's true. Who'd have ever thought we'd have to account for every phrase, every semi-colon 25, 30 years later? It's like the academicisation of rock. You and I could go to a university in Memphis and get a degree in Elvis studies which would, presumably, equip us to become President of America! It all strikes me as highly questionable and heretical to say the least."

FOREVER SEXY
When it comes to the question of the truth of what Cohn himself presented in "AwopBopAlooBopAlopBamBoom", things may not be quite as simple now as they once seemed. Did he know, for example, in 1969, that Little Richard was gay or that Elvis was into drugs? And was he forced to suppress such facts for his book?
"I knew Little Richard was gay," he admits, "but in 1969 you couldn't say that without damaging him and his career, which I didn't want to do. And Elvis and drugs in 1969 I knew nothing about".
And what about the gross excesses of P.J. Proby - who was the prototype for the central character in Cohn's fictionalised pop star biography "I Am Still The Greatest Says Johnny Angelo"?
"The point about Johnny Angelo was that he was a generic pop star based very much on the physicality of Proby, but not on his real life. It wasn't my portrait of Jim Proby's life. I went over to see him in that darkened room, as I describe it in 'AwopBopAlooBop', and I did feel this incredible mythic presence which undoubtedly affected my perception of Johnny Angelo. But there is not a single fact in the book that coincides with details in Proby's life."
Cohn's book "I Am Still the Greatest Says Johnny Angelo" has been described as establishing the prototype for fictionalised pop star biographies. Was it his objective with the book, to explore the moral dilemmas any pop star can encounter when they get too much power and begin to indulge to excess, as Proby apparently did?
"It wasn't a moralistic book, as such," he says, pensively. " It was more what I perceived - with some excitement and some dread - to be the Messianic potential that lay inside the cult of rock. Proby just happened to be the one who carried those connotations for me, particularly in terms of the Biblical way he talks. But it could have been Elvis or even Jagger.
"Jagger certainly has flirted with that Messianic stuff throughout his career- and the Satanic. But then that's the thing with rock 'n' roll: Messianic and Satanic walk hand-in-hand. Dylan too has had a go at the role of Messiah, Bruce Springsteen, Bono. It seems to be endemic to the rock condition, that if you get to a certain level in terms of rock stardom you begin to dabble in Messianic and Satanic fantasies about yourself."
But would Nik Cohn have to revise his own tendency to idolise, say, Proby on discovering that he is or was racist, sexist - and as Proby admitted in a notorious Hot Press interview - a paedophile?
"When I met him he had only just arrived in England and at that point he was a sick puppy. The worst excesses probably came later in his career," he says. "Yet although I may now feel repelled by the racism and the child abuse I really can't second-guess my younger self and say how those things would have affected me had I known them at the time. If they are true. When I talked to him on the phone a couple of years ago he was crazy, so I'd prefer to say that these days he's lost in destructive fantasies, rather than in realities.
At the time he was a person who had started out with probably the dullest name in the world - James Smith - yet who had seen himself in mythic proportions and had gone after a creation-of-the-self mythology. And this, in him and in Phil Spector, and in Elvis, to a degree, was what I found incredibly exciting. Being only twenty or so myself, at the time, at that age I really didn't care about the realities behind the myth. Who does at 20? For example, I guessed that Phil Spector wasn't particularly nice to women, but it wasn't that side of him that I was interested in exploring."In "AwopbopAlooBop" Cohn writes glowingly of the love between Elvis and his mother. How did he respond to the recent rumours that Elvis' mother was also his lover. What was his reaction when Elvis died?
"Firstly, I have no doubt that Elvis and his mother were deeply tied into a sexual relationship with all the passion, all the inability to live without each other and all the sentimentality that goes with that, but I would be very surprised to find that their clothing came off at crucial moments and that this love translated into a physical, sexual relationship.
"And in terms of his death, it took a lot out of me to watch Elvis going down that terrible road from 1969, when I was writing the book, to 1977, when he died. Partly because, when I was a young pup I wanted my heroes to have those mythical proportions, to be ageless, timeless, beautiful, forever sexy and so on. But the only mythical element in Elvis final years was that his decline was truly tragic.
"Yet through it all, I found that I loved him even more and felt: I wish there was something anybody in the world could do to help him through what seemed to be a dreadful loneliness and an inevitable decline. He seemed to be filled with self-hatred and clearly ended up as a psychological mess. Obviously he never really did recover from his mother's death."
Nik Cohn falls silent for a minute or so, as if rewinding his memories to the night of August 16th 1977, when Elvis died.
"I'd agree with Paul Simon and Dylan on this," he says, finally. "They said they felt that something essential had been taken out of their lives and that they had to reassess their past. I certainly cried that night, to begin with.The BBC called me up and asked if I'd do a TV show. Obviously I didn't want to do it. But that's how I found out. And I remember walking through the kitchen and really howling out loud. I howled like a baby because of how tragic his death was.
"But also, probably, because it was the end of my own youth. I was mourning myself as well, as I think many of us were that night. And as time went by I realised I needed to re-think things in that context. But on the night. Let's face it, Elvis made life a lot easier for all of us. Certainly most of the good things that have happened to me I owe, indirectly to Elvis in part. So I really did feel that a great chunk of my own life ended the day he died."
Has Nik Cohn changed his views on Dylan? Would he still claim that the song "The Book of Love" means more to him than all of Dylan's lyrics hammered together?
"When I originally made that statement I really was trying to be provocative," he says, laughing. "At the time Dylan was the Messiah and I was saying that (sings) 'oh I wonder, wonder, wonder, wonder who/Who wrote the book of love' was better poetry than he was writing. But I think there also is that tendency to under-rate the poeticism of pre-rock pop by groups like The Monotones. But as for Dylan, I remember having conversations during the late 1960s where people said he was a modern-day Yeats. George Melly's wife said something like that and I had to reply: Momma, it ain't true! And he's not, he never was, no matter what his disciples may say. So as to revising my view of Dylan as a poet, I probably have. I used to think he was the pits but now I realise he's not even that good! "

UNCRUSHABLE SPIRIT
That said, Nik Cohn seriously believes Irish rock critics need to revise their views, in relation to the showband era. He wholeheartedly agrees with commentators who suggest that the post-vaudeville, working class culture represented by early bands such as The Clipper Carlton, from Strabane, was probably more true to Irish life than the false roots rock fans stole from the world of do-wop, R 'n' B - whatever.
"I really want to write about Ireland and the one thing I want to write about is showbands," he says. "And what you say is absolutely true in relation to kids of my generation, in Ireland, who were absolutely formed by that era. It was pop culture in the real sense. But people make the mistake of analysing that culture in terms of just the band or the sound of the music, which was almost incidental to it all.
"I remember that there was a place outside Derry, when I was only thirteen or fourteen so I couldn't get in to the dance. But there was a place round the back where you could build up a stack of boxes and climb in and get in by the side window. Now, even if the window was locked you could hear the music clearer and one night, while I was listening, the boxes collapsed and I fell and landed on a girl and that's when my life really began!
"Forget Little Richard! That, to me, was no less significant than people like Elvis or Jerry Lee Lewis sneaking down alleys to hear the blues. It really was a cultural experience in the widest sense. And in that respect showband culture couldn't have been more important to us growing up - something that is probably true of 90% of Irish lads, and girls, during that period."
Extending this argument across to England, Nik Cohn also believes that early British rockers like Cliff Richard and Tommy Steele were legitimate British entertainers, even if they didn't measure up to the false R'n'B roots litmus test imposed on most British and Irish musicians since at least 1956.
"People, even at the time, pissed on singers like Cliff and Steele and Marty Wilde because they weren't the real thing, as in being authentic American rhythm 'n' blues artists," he says. "But I have to say that I never did, because of the reasons you mention. I've always liked British pop and saw it as authentic, in its own context. I criticise Cliff but that's only because someone like Billy Fury was so much greater. But I certainly never adopted that snobbish attitude that American music is best and all the rest is rubbish."
Nik Cohn claims that during his two year journey through subterranean underworlds for his book on Broadway he encountered many Irish people living in a space far removed from their original culture.
"All the energy and the passion I loved in rock 'n' roll culture originally came from America so I can understand why young people still feel it is a place they have to go to, even once," he says. "And I would still say to them: go. No matter what you think of it, there still is no place on earth like America."
In his book "The Heart of the World", doesn't Cohn describe America as a country that has been brought to its knees by Watergate, Vietnam and OPEC? Why would he recommend such a country to Irish people, particularly those who are young?
"Because I'm not recommending it as a country people can go to to make a fortune, as they could have in the past," he says. "It's a lot more problematic than it was 25 years ago.
"But, if the worst happens and young people go there and have to spend their time dodging emigration inspectors and moving from job to job, they still will have had a cultural experience they can live off for the rest of their lives - in the world of their imaginations."
Cohn should know. He has been doing just that since he first moved to America in the early 1970s and ended up writing the short story on which the movie "Saturday Night Fever" was based. In that story, as with "Heart of the World" his main concern is with losers, though it's a label he despises.
"I really hate this idea of winners and losers because it's so superficial," he says. "And the people in 'Heart of the World' are only losers if one takes life to be, not even two-dimensional but one-dimensional, i.e. as in winners being those who make the most money. That's the only way the people in my book are 'losers' and many lose what they have deliberately, in order to live another form of life.
"A text book for me, while writing this book, was 'The Anatomy of Melancholy' by 17th century philosopher Robert Burton. At one point he's describing what could be a daily newspaper on Broadway now and he writes 'I hear each day tidings of great reputations raised to the skies as another man falls into the gutter . . .' That sentence goes on for a page and a half and he just puts in a dash to end it, saying ' - the misery and the gallantry of the world.'
"To me, my book is about the gallantry of the world, the uncrushable spirit that keeps people reinventing themselves and giving out energy when they know that by American standards and normal Western standards they will be dismissed as 'losers' and that their original dream of stardom, or whatever, will never come true. That, to me, is gallant."
SMUGGLING RING
The most gallant character of all, in "The Heart of the World", is Lush Life. Did Cohn ever have sex with him, or her?
"No, I didn't!," he says, laughing. "But the context in the book was not sexual. She was in trouble and I was consoling her. And at that point I felt a tremendously strong urge towards her/him and learned not to worry whether it was a her or him and just to respond to this incredibly open and generous and amazingly inventive person who could so easily break my heart. When she/he was in pain it hurt me deeply and I felt a tremendous desire to protect her/him. But sex wasn't on the cards. What we liked about each other was that there was no sexual threat in that way."
Cohn claims that the experience of exploring the life of a transvestite on such an intimate level is one he'd recommend to many men in terms of making them look again at their concept of sexual stereotypes.
"The three years I spent walking that street and the two years I spent writing about the experience was certainly one of the most enlightening experiences of my life," he says. "I thought, when I started out, that I was an open-minded figure. But I found out that I wasn't. I was full of prejudices, like everybody else - but maybe more sophisticated prejudices. So it really was liberating in that respect and at the end of the five years I do finally feel I am free of some knee-jerk reflexes in relation to sexual stereotypes and so forth. And I would hope the book serves a similar purpose for readers and makes them look again at their perception of 'winners' and 'losers.'"
During one key passage in "The Heart of the World" Lush Life scores some smack and offers it to Cohn. As a man who indulged in almost every form of drug in his day and who, in 1983, spent two nights in a New York jail having been arrested by the FBI during an investigation of a drug smuggling ring, was Cohn tempted to take Lush Life up on that offer?
"No. I've learned my lesson in relation to drugs," he says. "At that point Lush Life was saying 'we could share this' and I knew she wanted us to do that to be on the same trip. But much as I loved her I couldn't do that because drugs, basically, are a lot of shit. I don't want to get back into all that."
Cohn reflects on the five year period where he was heavily using cocaine and making life hell for people around him: it's not a pattern he ever wants to repeat, he says.
"One thing about drugs which is true for me, though it may not be true for a lot of people," he explains. "And that is that for me it had everything to do with an attitude, with a time and a place. And when it was over it was completely over. It's now ten years since I did drugs and these days I really could be in a room with people doing drugs and it no longer even occurs to me to join them. Because I no longer even like the idea.
"After what I went through you'd want to dislike yourself a hell of a lot to want to go back to doing drugs. I'm trying very hard not to dislike myself these days, not to make life hell for people around me. I achieve all those aims, in part, when I produce a book like 'The Heart of the World' and hear that it may be a play with Prince in it - or whatever. I'm not about to fuck it all up by going back to drugs."

'The Heart of the World' is published in paperback by Vintage at #5.99 sterling.