Foot Tapper - the Shadows
While many musicians have acknowledged Duane Eddy's influence, few carried the torch of his musical legacy more proudly and overtly than Hank Marvin of the Shadows, who in turn inspired a generation of would-be British guitarists. While having no US hits at all, the Shadows are the most successful instrumental UK group ever (20 Top twenty hits in the six years 1960 - 1965 including 5 number ones!)
Given that Hendrix was American, Marvin might even be the surprise winner of a poll on who was the best British guitarist, especially if the voting was confidential given his decidedly uncool appearance to modern eyes. Okay, okay, you'd have Beck, Page, Clapton and Peter Green, but he'd be up there.
Among many terrific and underrated Shadows' tracks from the early sixties, "Foot Tapper" most feels like the soundtrack to the movie of my childhood. Marvin's fluent guitar jauntily embraces the day-to-day bustle of life and Brian Bennett's driving yet relaxed drums lend the track a carefree optimism that raises your spirits and makes you feel like dancing.
Small wonder then that the song was written at the request of genius filmmaker Jacques Tati for the soundtrack of his movie masterpiece "Playtime". Tati requested they write a song for him after seeing the Shadows in concert in 1961, but after waiting two years, they released it in 1963, shooting for the film having been delayed indefinitely due to shortfalls in funding. "Foot Tapper" reached number one.
The brilliant and hilarious "Playtime" began filming in 1965 and finally came out in 1967. Around 1980 I happened to hear Spike Milligan being interviewed on a local radio station. The interviewer introduced him as a "comedy genius" but Milligan demurred, saying he wasn't a genius, and that the word should be kept only for the very best and should not be used lightly. When asked who he therefore thought WAS a comedy genius, he said he could only think of one living example and that was Jacques Tati. Amusingly the interviewer had never heard of Tati.
Another very funny man is poet and performer Martin Newell who I was lucky enough to programme a couple of times in the nineties and who nailed the great influence of Hank Marvin to his bedroom door in his confessional poem "I Hank Marvin", simultaneously a paean to lost youth and the poetical equivalent of the Who's "Pictures of Lilly".
I Hank Marvin
I Hank Marvinned
We all did
With cricket bats
In front of a mirror
In our bedrooms
After school
I Hank Marvinned
Quite regularly
My mother nearly caught me
What were you doing?
Nothing Mum
Cricket bat still warm
I Hank Marvinned
Unashamedly
On the bed sometimes
Standing up
I knew the dance steps
I thought I'd grow out of it
When I got married
But the other day
When she was out
They played Apache
On the radio
And I Hank Marvinned
In the living room
I straightened the place out
Afterwards
But somehow she found out
I'd been seen
You Hank Marvinned
At your age?
She made me burn my cricket bat
And see a psychiatrist
I go to special group now
Once a week
They give us all cricket bats
And blackframed spectacles
And we have to do it
Hank Marvin
In front of everybody
It's pathetic
Half a dozen men
In their late thirties
Cricket bats in hands
Spectacles on
Doing the dance steps
Grinning inanely
Shadows
Of our former selves
-Martin Newell, The Independent 18/12/90.
Comentarios