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Dickie Rock: From Cabra to cabaret…
 DICKIE
ROCK is the first to admit that he was never one of music’s pretty
boys at a time when Elvis, Cliff Richard and Tom Jones had hordes of adulating
women flinging underwear on to world stages.
Following the release of his autobiography the Dubliner chats to Martin
Doyle about dangerous liaisons with promiscuity and sin.Dickie Rock might
have a great name for a singer but he would be the first to admit that
he has a great face for radio.
He may have been blessed with a great voice and stage presence but, like
his hero Frank Sinatra, he wasn’t at the front of the queue when
it came to looks.
When United Artists wanted to turn him into a star like Tom Jones in the
late ’60s, they didn’t just want him to move to Britain, they
wanted to pin back his ears too.
But when Rock took to the stage, a transformation occurred which he likens
to Dr David Banner turning into the Incredible Hulk, except the only ones
turning green were the boyfriends as their girls swarmed around the star.
It is hard to conceive, more than 40 years later, how big a star Dickie
Rock was in Ireland in the ’60s but one famous phrase captures the
fervent yet innocent hysteria of his female fans in his heyday: Spit on
me, Dickie.
Most people would associate spitting with punk music, where it symbolised
the audience’s rejection of hero-worshipping the band but long before
most punks were born, a girl in the audience in the Boom Boom Rooms in
Belfast cried out: “Spit on me, Dickie”.
Everyone laughed because it was such an unusual thing to say and it took
on cult status.
A catchphrase was born.
Many people might find the association as mortifying as an unflattering
nickname but Rock claims he doesn’t find it a bit embarrassing.
He said: “It’s a great compliment, it’s saying I don’t
care if you spit on me, I just want a bit of you. Of course I wouldn’t
dare.”
Rock, who described himself as “ordinary looking, tall and skinny
with sticky-out ears”, is happy to report then that looks are not
everything, though he admits to giving Mother Nature a helping hand by
wearing a wig from his late 20s.
He said: “Nobody is interested in seeing a baldy man on stage
“If you look like Elvis or Cliff it doesn’t matter what you
wear, you’re still handsome.
“Sinatra wasn’t, he was a skinny little fellow with sticky-out
ears but he had this amazing talent.
“Look at Sammy Davis junior, probably one of the greatest entertainers
of his time but he was a black, one-eyed Jew.”
Rock was born in Cabra, a working-class part of Dublin, in 1940.
His father was a blacksmith and a champion boxer, who was so in love with
the woman who would become his wife that when she left for Liverpool after
a family row he took the next boat over to propose, a desperately romantic
act in those undemonstrative days.
“I think my parents’ rock-solid marriage brought out the romantic
side of me in later life,” Rock said.
Richard Rock was eight when he discovered he could sing, becoming a boy
soprano in the church choir and later joining a variety group, the Casino
Players.
He describes himself as an immature teenager, a bit of a loner, who didn’t
kiss a girl until he was 21 and even then it was during a game of Spin
the Bottle.
He got a job as an apprentice welder in Manchester when he was 16 and
used to sing inside the giant metal tanks he was working on when he discovered
how good the acoustics were. He was so homesick however, that he used
to go to the airport just to listen for the flight to Dublin to be called.
Back in Dublin, he replaced Butch Moore in the Melochords when he left
to join the Capitol Showband, introducing his favourites, slower Sinatra
numbers, to the mix.
His big break was playing support to Cliff Richard at the National Stadium,
and despite playing without rehearsing with a band he didn’t know,
he was a hit, jumping on the piano to get the crowd going.
While he thought Cliff was too much of a pretty boy, more style than substance,
80 per cent image to 20 per cent talent, he still remembers the advice
Cliff gave him after the show: Always give the audience more than they
expect.
The promoter Phil Solomon invited him to come to England and promised
he would make him the next Cliff Richard, but he turned it down, just
as he would years later turn down United Artists who wanted to make him
the next Tom Jones.
He was a home bird.
When Rock was invited to join the Miami Showband, one of the most successful
on the circuit, he admits he had his doubts.
He thought of himself as a rock singer, and thought the showbands were
more like a variety show.
He said: “In my innocence, I thought I would be becoming something
I couldn’t respect.”
Rock and the Miami might have been famous but the showband scene’s
glamour was tinsel-thin.
There were no roadies so the band lugged their own gear.
He said: “It killed the image.
“I had a No.1 hit with Always Me and we’d arrive at the gig
with a queue outside carrying the gear.”
The changing rooms were often freezing cold with breezeblock walls or,
if it was a marquee, a patch of grass behind the stage.
When Rock put his foot down and demanded better facilities, he got the
reputation for being high maintenance.
Still, 1964 started with the Miami’s first Irish No.1, There’s
Always Me, followed by I’m Yours and From The Candy Store On The
Corner.
Yet Rock never made a penny from the recordings and although he was on
£50 a week, four times what his dad was earning, the manager and
founders of the band were on more.
Still, they were good times.
The year ended with a guest slot at the London Palladium, and 1965, a
year in which they were seen by 500,000 fans, began with Every Step Of
The Way becoming the first Irish record to go straight to No.1.
Rock acknowledges his reputation for being mean but denies that it’s
true.
An old colleague Murty Quinn claimed that after a gig the band would buy
sweets but Dickie bought an apple because you can’t share an apple.
Rock claims that because he never drank and so never bought a round he
got a bad name.
He said: “I’m not obsessed with money, other people are obsessed
with my money.
“I’m not mean, I’m very careful with my money, I owe
no-one, I pay my taxes.”
Rock continued to have success, but the showband scene was dying as the
rise of live music in pubs and hotels left the ballrooms without a drink
licence high and dry.
He made the successful transition to the cabaret circuit and is still
going strong today, with a new album out of covers of contemporary Irish
hits by everyone from Van Morrison to Snow Patrol.
He said: “People say do you never get fed up singing them, but never
forget what they liked you for in the first place.
“I remember going to see Johnny Mathis, the place was packed because
they wanted to hear Moon River but he ended up doing all new stuff from
an album nobody knew.
“To me that’s a bad performer no matter how famous they are.”
The singer still feels working-class, drives a five-year old car and goes
down the shops for bread and milk.
He said: “You wouldn’t see Elvis or Cliff Richard doing that
but I think they pay a price for that, are they real?”
If Rock’s professional career has been marked by triumph, his personal
life has been littered with tragedy.
A younger brother was knocked off his bike and killed as a child and his
first child was born severely brain-damaged.
When Joseph was 24, Rock and his wife were told he had had an accident
in his care home, but they only found out their son was dead when they
walked into his room and saw the sheet over his body — “our
6ft 3in baby” as Rock poignantly describes him.
His other son Richard followed him into showbusiness, and was famously
kicked out of the first Boyzone line-up for missing meetings.
He became a heroin addict and Rock broke down in court as he pleaded with
the judge for leniency — happily he is now clean.
In 1975, three members of his former band, the Miami, were murdered by
Loyalist paramilitaries in an ambush in Co. Down.
Like the whole country, Rock was shocked to the core, but he also knew
it could so easily have been him.
He didn’t play the North for two years afterwards.
And then there was the daughter he never knew he had until she was 15,
product of a one-night stand after a gig in Co. Wexford.
In his autobiography Rock makes much beforehand of his opposition to promiscuity
and avoidance of occasions of sin, such as not letting female fans onto
the tour bus, even if it was raining and they wanted to hitch a lift back
to Dublin.
He agrees that it was his sexual immaturity that helped lead him astray.
He said: “Definitely. You can be attracted to another woman physically,
I was always conscious of not putting myself in the position of possibly
being tempted.
“But when it’s handed to you on a plate, it is nearly impossible
as a man to say no.”
Always Me is published by Merlin, priced €24.99.
Dickie Rock the album is out now.
"I’m not obsessed with money, other people are obsessed with
my money.
I’m not mean, I’m very careful with my money, I owe no-one,
I pay my taxes."
"Definitely. You can be attracted to another woman physically, I
was always conscious of not putting myself in the position of possibly
being tempted.
But when it’s handed to you on a plate, it is nearly impossible
as a man to say no." |
