John Perry profile picture

John Perry

THE ONLY ONES

About Me


Played my first shows at 15. At that time the live music scene was jumping and I had enough work by 16 to chuck in school. Played US bases, village halls, rugby clubs, town halls, club circuits and Endless Ballrooms. The Underground was just what I'd been lookin for so when the the festival circuit got into gear (c. '71 Glastonbury) I was out of those ballrooms like a phantom jet. Met a lotta v. funny people & spent several years vagabonding round with the Pink Fairies /Lemmy /Frendz crowd. Played a lot of shows and made a few recordings - most of which, I'm delighted to say, are lost.
That scene melted into the London pubrock circuit which in turn hosted punk. Same venues different haircut. In late 1975 I started work with Peter Perrett on what became The Only Ones. We had about as much fun as its possible to have in a band without getting arrested too often and we made some good records - but by 1981 it was getting stale. Amid acrimonious hassles with CBS, we split.
I formed a band to do Glastonbury then drifted off round the Greek islands for a while. When i got back, London was enjoying the Synth era. Hard to recall now but guitars were supposed to be 'old hat'. Got that? Guitar bad; Synth Good. Kids with dodgy haircuts playing ironing boards. I had a suspicion Guitar might outlast Ironing Board tho & kept on playing live. Sessions too, working mostly with friends, Robert Palmer, Sisters of Mercy, Marianne Faithfull, Robert Hunter, Michael Nyman, Screaming Lord Sutch, Freddie Stevenson and Johnny Thunders.
And now somehow we seem to have gone and resurrected The Only Ones. Details of gigs are here under 'Upcoming Shows'.

My Interests

Music:

Member Since: 3/22/2006
Band Website: theonlyones.biz
Band Members:

SOLE REPRESENTATION: Nigel Kerr at ABS

Tel: +44 (0) 207 289 1160
Fax: +44 (0) 207 289 1162
Email: [email protected]

Influences: BOOKS

In the mid-80's, in Greece, I began writing.

Stories recalled at random from the The Only Ones screwed-up passage thru the latter half of the 1970's. There was no theme, no order, no chronology. Nothing linked the stories beyond the fact that they made me howl with laughter. The few people to whom I read aloud extracts laughed too. It wasn't so much the impressive number, as the breadth and the extraordinary -range, of Disasters the band managed to pack into just four years.

I found the disasters quite funny even as they happened. More so, than others in the band I think, or perhaps just sooner, I came to realise that no matter how good the records we made, or how exciting our live shows, we were never going to enjoy mainstream success. Any detail our record company overlooked, failed to screw up, misjudge or mistime we were more than capable of fucking up for ourselves.

Without ever being able to define them exactly, I began to feel the elements that made the band special were precisely the things that made the record companies so deeply mistrustful. We were never cartoon rock'n'roll 'rowdies', but the company men could smell something volatile in the air around us; they weren't sure what it was but they were certain they didn't like it.

After 18 months jotting down notes & writing passages along those lines I put the MS aside and returned to London where Johnny Thunders and Patti were having trouble getting the COPYCATS album started.

Copycats

When I returned to writing it was with a more definite aim, and with a commission from Schirmer who wanted a book about The Who. Like anyone who saw The Who live between 64-67 I wasn't short of subject matter. Schirmer commissioned a second book on Hendrix. In all I've written 3 books, all on different subjects but all pretetxts to write about the impact I felt on seeing the best live rock'n'roll bands, close-up, between the ages of 14 and 17.

MEATY BEATY - The Who's Singles - Schirmer 1997

EXILE ON MAIN ST. - Schirmer 2001

ELECTRIC LADYLAND - Continuum 2004

Buy it HERE !

Read excerpts Here !
The first two sold out their full print run, and the (c) reverted to me. For the moment, they can only be found 2nd hand. The Spanish and Italian rights have been sold, and I'm looking for publishers In England and America.

Further Info and Reviews:

Wikipedia
Salon Book Review

Anthony Powell Obituary at Salon

---------------------------------FAVOURITE------------------ -------------

WORDS

Waugh, Anthony Powell, Joseph Conrad, Norman Lewis, Paddy Leigh Fermor,Yeats, Blake.

PAINT

Vermeer, Holbein, Chardin, Sickert.

SOUND

Pretty much who you'd expect. Add Davy Graham, Bert Jansch, Joseph Spence, Martha Reeves, Dusty. I love the 'cello so Bach, Elgar. I like those composers who incorporated folk music into orchestral settings be they Vaughan-Williams or Bartok. Anyone who's heard the Rumanian women sing knows those microtones & modes bypass the intellect & cut straight to whichever part of psyche sends shivers down your back.

Sounds Like: LOVE .. or just Confusion...

------------------------------------------------------------ ---------------------------------

PP ARNOLD and Backing Group


The Tower of Song

It's not so much how you come in as how you go out...

Who by Fire

Sonny Rollins towers. Pop Goes The Weasel (4.11).

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Ivory Joe Hunter-Since I Met You Baby

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It's Gonna Work Out Fine

Record Label: Sony
Type of Label: Major

My Blog

Sunday Times -- 10 Great Solos

I see Mick Taylor has included The Sunday Times piece I wrote picking 10 fave guitar solos. Ten is impossible of course -- for the sake of writing, you just pick 10 that come to mind -- but Taylor's '...
Posted by John Perry on Mon, 11 Feb 2008 05:00:00 PST

DVD release

The Official Shep Bush DVD -- multi-camera shoot with glorious stereo sound mixed down from 128 track recording -- will be available by March 22nd, on sale at gigs & thru website. Other distributi...
Posted by John Perry on Mon, 04 Feb 2008 01:19:00 PST

BBC TV Interview

A full six seconds-worth too.  It's visible to the naked eye for the next 4 days using the BBC iPlayer. iPop on Trial snippetiScroll past the 14 second BBC4 intro and then when main program star...
Posted by John Perry on Tue, 29 Jan 2008 04:46:00 PST

Good News

Day 1 of rehearsals for the new album starts in an hour. And last night I saw a rough cut of the finished SBE DVD. Still needs the sound mixed and titles/captions etc. overlayed, but its much nearer c...
Posted by John Perry on Thu, 24 Jan 2008 05:19:00 PST

BOOK THE BAND

We have a new booking Agent -- contact details are in the General Info section, front page here. If you need extra info just google "ABS Nigel Kerr".We'll be announcing several Festival appearances th...
Posted by John Perry on Sat, 19 Jan 2008 02:02:00 PST

Need a lyric?

Near Compleat inventory of PP lyrics can be found at Dan's site hereCOMPLEAT PP LYRICSOr at Steve's, hereOnly Ones lyricwiki...
Posted by John Perry on Sun, 13 Jan 2008 01:43:00 PST

New Pix posted

Some pix of my friend Steve Mann, intrepid teenage cub reporter on the Aldershot News in the mid-sixties, interviewing leading Beat Groups of the day. The pics cover 1965-68, by which time he was invo...
Posted by John Perry on Thu, 17 Jan 2008 01:17:00 PST

Bits and pieces from BBC Radio

Stumbled across this stuff from various BBC sources, internal and broadcast. Dunno if I've posted links before but never mind.Here's part of 'God's Jukebox' -- recorded before the first gig at ATP. St...
Posted by John Perry on Mon, 14 Jan 2008 10:14:00 PST

Monstrous Allegations

Thank you everyone for Xmas, New Year, and gig-appreciation postings. It's great to be able to make people happy just by doing what we most enjoy doing. (Perhaps that should read "among the things" we...
Posted by John Perry on Wed, 02 Jan 2008 07:03:00 PST

New Pics

New pix posted, in various albums here. There's more to come from Hannah Bishop (Shepherds Bush show) and a friend from Scandanavia sent some very early shots of the band playing at the Rock Garden, p...
Posted by John Perry on Mon, 31 Dec 2007 06:23:00 PST