Live It Up!

Live It Up!

1963

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Directed by Lance Comfort
Original story by Lyn Fairhurst
Screenplay by Lynn Fairhurst
Idea by Harold Shampan

Main composer: Joe Meek

CAST:
The Smart Alecs:
David Hemmings- David Martin
John Pike – Phil
Heinz Burt – Ron
Steve Marriott – Ricky

Jennifer Moss – Jill, Dave’s girlfriend
Joan Newell – Margaret Martin, Dave’s mum
Ed Devereaux – Herbert Martin, Dave’s dad
Penny Lambirth, Barbara, Ron’s girlfriend
Peter Glaze – Mike Moss, an agent
David Bauer- Mark Watson, TV producer
Veronica Hurst- Kay, PA to Mark Watson
with

Dave Clark – Recording Man
Kenny Ball & His Jazzmen – Themselves
Trisha Noble – self, as Patsy Ann Noble
Gene Vincent – self
Sounds Incorporated – Themselves
The Outlaws – Themselves
Andy Cavell & The Saints – Themselves
Kim Roberts – self

60s Retrospective Series

SEE ALSO THE SEQUEL: Be My Guest (1965)

Release dates: UK November 1963, USA November 1964 (as Sing and Swing)

You need to see the Joe Meek biopic Telstar in conjunction with this. There you will discover how Heinz who wasn’t a very good singer, bass guitarist or actor got the part in Live It Up! Gene Vincent also appears in the film with his Joe Meek connection. Secondhand record collectors know that anything with Joe Meek’s name, whether engineer, producer or composer, is collectable.

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Heinz Burt as Ron, Penny Lambirth as girlfriend Barbara

The most interesting thing about the film was the pairing of two future major stars in the young band, “The Smart Alecs” … David Hemmings and Steve Marriott. How galling it must have been for Steve Marriott, one of the great British rock voices, pretending to back Heinz, whose claim to fame was being plucked from the role of Tornados bass guitarist to singer because Joe Meek fancied him. In contrast to the story in Telstar, Heinz denied there was a physical relationship. Apparently Joe Meek was not at all backward about coming forward and made a pass at Tom jones:

Tom Jones: I was ready for most aspects of the music industry but when I met the producer Joe Meek, that threw me off a bit. Because he was a homosexual. I thought, wait a minute, is the London scene, the people who run British showbusiness – are there a lot of homosexuals involved here? Because if so, I’m going back to Cardiff.
2015

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David Hemmings as Dave

David Hemmings was in his third role in a music picture in short order after Play It Cool and Some People a year earlier. This was his first lead role, but he’d been acting since he was twelve and says Blow Up was his 48th movie.

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Steve Marriott as Ricky, drummer of The Smart Alecs

Steve Marriott started out as an actor appearing in TV shows as diverse as Mr Pastry’s Progress, Dixon of Dock Green and William. Later he became a Small Face.

Jennifer Moss plays the girlfriend, Jill. She was Lucille Hewitt in Coronation Street from 1960-1974, clocking up appearances in 756 episodes. Her first rock connection was as the dancer on the cover of the 1958 album, Six-Five Special, based on one of the very few TV music programmes. This film was an attempt to launch a singing career, and she made several singles with Joe Meek.

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Jennifer Moss on Six-Five Special (my LP)

The Outlaws included Ritchie Blackmore (Deep Purple) on lead guitar, Chas Hodges (Cliff Bennett & The Rebel Rousers, Head Hands & Feet, Chas & Dave) on bass guitar, Mick Underwood (The Herd, Episode Six, Terry Reid, Gillan among many others) on drums. Mitch Mitchell (Jimi Hendrix Experience) had a minor part listed as ‘Alan Mitchell’.

The film was produced by a division of Top Rank run by Harold Shampan, and its aim was pop exploitation films for kids starved of music on BBC Radio and on TV. BBC Radio’s Light Programme still had strict needle-time agreements with the Musicians Union which meant that much of its schedule was devoted to live cover versions by ballroom dance bands and dance band vocalists. It was hoped the films would sell records and make new pop stars, a venture which was doomed largely to failure.

The budget is summed up by the locations. Dave, as a GPO messenger, has to deliver a letter to Rank’s Pinewood Studios where Mark Watson (David Bauer) is producing pop promotion films. We see the gateway, the corridors, the studios. They didn’t even have to dress the sets. Mark Watson is a wheeler-dealer with a light American accent (Bauer was American but had spent much of his career in Britain after the Hollywood witch hunts). Watson is continually looking for promotion stunts to get his films and pop productions into the press, spouting orders to his long-suffering PA, Kay (Veronica Hurst). Basically Watson is a comic version of Harold Shampan then.

There is a sequel, Be My Guest in 1965 with David Hemmings, Steve Marriott and John Pike together again as Dave, Ricky and Phil.

THE PLOT

Dave (David Hemmings) is a motorbike messenger for the GPO (General Post Office), and all four lads in The Smart Alecs are GPO messengers, delivering telegrams and express deliveries. Dave lives at home with a strict authoritarian 1950s dad (Ed Deveraux). Dad grumbles when the paper boy delivers several music weeklies because of the expenditure .

Dad: You’ve got to have shares in that paper shop!
Dave: You’ve got to keep up with the music world.

Mum (Joan Newell) later hands him the post, which includes mail order stuff … Top Ten Club. I was surprised at the mention of this … mail order cover versions, six to an EP, generally despised by the major labels.

Jill (Jennifer Moss), Mum (Joan Newell), Dad (Ed Deveraux)

Jill (Jennifer Moss) has popped in to ask Dave if he can help with her mum’s telly. She’s been fiddling with it and now that there are TWO channels, BBC and ITV, it can be hard to get back to the other one. Dave, oblivious to her charms says he can’t help, and dad goes to help instead.

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Dave on a Vespa scooter – later a Mod icon

Dave goes to work to meet the lads. This is 1963 and it was a very early Mods v Rockers reference. Dave turns up at work on a Vespa scooter (identical to my sister’s), while the leather clad Ron (Heinz Burt) is on a motorbike.

Ron: At least I’ve got a bike, not an egg whisk!

This was prescient, a year before Mods v Rockers really hit the news. Anyway, at work they all ride GPO small motor bikes. The lads discuss making a demo and suggest names for the band.

Mum (Joan Newell) works in a dry cleaner’s. Mike Moss (Peter Glaze), an old theatrical agent drops off a suit and she recognizes him. He’s in town looking for new acts. I guess “town” will be Slough, the location of Pinewood Studios. Mike knows her from twenty years back when she sang in a duo, and she dropped out of showbiz when her singing partner Bob died. (Ah, I thought- this might explain her husband’s aversion to showbiz!) He gives her his card.

Demo: Live It Up! Dave Clark as ‘recording man.’

The first music number is the lads in a demo studio recording Live It Up. Ron (Heinz) is lead singer with a six string guitar. Dave does an impressive lead guitar solo. Neither David Hemmings as Dave, nor John Pike as bass player Phil look as if their fingers are anywhere near what we are hearing.

Dad is furious to hear that the lads have spent £20 on the demo. The average adult male wage in 1963 was £16. I got £2.15s (2.75) a week that summer. The GPO boys won’t have been on that much more. Dad wants Dave to give up hopes of a pop career and ominously warns him that he has just one month to succeed or get a proper job at the hotel where he is doorman.

Dave has to deliver a package to Mark Watson at a large house (which will not be far from Pinewood!) The housekeeper tells him that Mark Watson is at the studio, fifteen miles away (NOT!). Dave offers to take it for an excess postage charge. Dave rides to Pinewood but his motorbike breaks down and he has to stop and repair it.

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Dave at the famous Pinewood gatehouse.

Dave arrives and insists on giving the package to Mark Watson by hand, blagging that he needs a personal signature. Mark (Dave Bauer) is arguing with his PA (Veronica Hurst) about promotion schemes as his last film, Don’t Touch My Bikini! had been banned.

So Dave gets to watch Kenny Ball and His Jazzmen performing Don’t Give Me That Jazz (a snippet,) The crew are resetting lights on the gallery and a large box falls hitting Dave on the head and knocking him out. Mark sees a promo opportunity and after Dave has recovered, he is allowed to meet the avuncular Kenny for a photo.

Dave with Kenny Ball: the posed photo

This gives Mark an idea. He gets Dave to lie down on the floor again and takes a photo of heroic Kenny Ball helping him to sit up. This will be a press release to promote Kenny’s record.

Kenny Ball & His Jazzmen: Hand Me Down My Walking Shoes

We get a full version of Hand Me Down My Walking Shoes. They’re good, and while I’m sure they’re miming, they look real. The words include a love so gay which I thought innocuous in 1963, but Kenny Ball does a little jokey limp wrist wave on the line which might or might not be an in-joke.

Anyway, the story gets on the front page, and Jill (Jennifer Moss) comes round to the house with a bunch of grapes for the invalid. Dave is distracted and snaps at her:

Dave: Another time, Jill. The boys will be waiting.

Jill goes to her friend Barbara’s shop (Penny Lambirth). Barbara is Ron’s girlfriend. There’s a guitar instrumental in the background, which will be the Outlaws. Her boss, Aldo flounces about putting clothes on models and also snaps at downtrodden Jill.

Barbara: A bit temperamental. You know what they’re like.

I suppose she means effeminate boutique owners by “they” – there seems to be a running in-joke theme. The clothes in the film were early Mary Quant and John Stephens.

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The boys are hanging out on the roof (trying to look very West Side Story) when Jill and Barbara arrive. They clear off, leaving Jill sad and lonely. Cue a solo Please Let It Happen To Me which is not a good song in spite of its Joe Meek provenance.

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Don’t Let It Happen To Me: Jennifer Moss as Jill.

So, Dave is distracted because he’s lost the £20 demo tape, and daren’t tell the boys. He tells Mum.

Mum (Joan Newell) – a very good 1963 boy’s bedroom set

Fortunately, he gets a phone call to do a TV interview following the news photo with Kenny. There is no explanation, but the whole band go and are to do a song after the interview.

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Kim Roberts: For Loving Me This Way

First they watch Kim Roberts performing For Loving Me This Way. In 1963 style she has an almost impossibly “waspied” waist and three shapely backing singers.

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The Smart Alecs waiting to play: David Hemmings (Dave), Heinz Burt (Ron), Steve Marriott (Ricky), John Pike (Phil)

The compere is about to interview Dave while the lads wait behind the curtain to play, but he keeps blabbing on, and Dave doesn’t get a word in. Then their number is cut altogether to make way for a cricket test score report.

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Mick Moss watches.

Still, Mum’s old pal Mick Moss (Peter Glaze) is persuaded to hear them play ~~Up On The Roof~~ up on the roof. This is a guitar instrumental with a Shadows walk. It will be The Outlaws playing I think. Mick Moss is impressed and offers them a gig at the Glasgow Empire… this is a further showbiz in-joke. It was a terrifying venue, known as the comedian’s graveyard because the audience were fast to boo or heckle. They explain that they can’t get off work, and anyway their parents wouldn’t allow them.

Jill visits Dave, and she is wearing a blonde wig (does she fear that he’s attracted to Ron’s blonde barnet?) He doesn’t even notice though everyone else does. He’s phoning round trying to find the tape, and eventually he tells her about the loss, then pauses:

Dave: It’s you. You look different. I don’t know what it is.

Ouch. Then without intro or explanation, except that Dave is dreaming of showbiz success, we switch to Sounds Incorporated, Keep Moving, a Joe Meek sax-led instrumental.

Sounds Incorporated: Keep Moving

I saw them right in November 1963 as the film was released. Saw but not heard. The poor bastards were supporting The Beatles and their entire set was drowned out by boos and WE WANT THE BEATLES!

With a little prompting from Jill, remarkably pleasant after the hair failure, Dave remembers his bike breaking down on the way to the studio, and taking his jacket off to mend it! They can all go out for a country excursion and Dave can look for it without revealing to the lads that it was lost.

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Off they go, Ricky and Phil in a Hillman Minx convertible, and Ron and Barbara on his bike. Dave and Jill on the Vespa. Jill has removed the blonde wig and is now dark again. Eventually Dave notices.

Barbara gets the comic lines. One I haven’t heard since 1963 but I had heard it many times before:

Barbara: My sister bought a book called “Scouting for Boys”. It wasn’t a bit like she imagined!

They can’t find the tape. As they drive off you expect a driving theme music, and you get it, but instead of the car on the road, you see the driving music in the studio with The Outlaws, Law & Disorder. Interesting. They have a Fender pedal steel guitar, 12 string guitar (both most unusual in 1963 in the UK) and 6 string guitar, but there is no bass in view. So what’s that I hear …

The Outlaws: Law and Disorder

At home, Mike Moss has called and the family are gathered round the piano with mum leading a good old sing song. Showbiz is in the blood. Or genes. Or jeans.

Family sing song with Mick Moss and Jill

In the studio, Mark is talking about another movie, Don’t Tamper With My Isotope and we’re into a clip of Accidents Will Happen by Patsy Ann Noble. ‘Could be a hit,’opines Mark. It wasn’t. It was written by EMI Producer Norrie Paramour, who got a dire song into every movie made in that era. Pity. Good singer, good dancer.

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Accidents Will Happen: Patsy Ann Noble

We’re getting through the 70 minutes run time fast and they need to start packing the music in. So after a scene back at the GPO office where Dave is questioned about the tape we get Gene Vincent.

Gene Vincent was in the UK for tax reasons and working with Joe Meek, and touring. He was on TV a lot around then. He sings Temptation Baby and unaccountably starts singing while polishing a vintage traction engine. This was beloved of the era … in Just For You people sang to vintage cars. Weird.

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Temptation Baby, Gene Vincent

“gonna cuddle you close
cos I love you the most
Ooh! temptation Baby!”

Sweet Gene Vincent. At last! A bloke finds the tape! It had been left on a chair in the studio and no one had noticed they’d been sitting on it over several days.

Dave has confessed all and the boys are playing an instrumental on the roof – without him! And without drums. Steve Marriott is on guitar.

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Back at Pinewood, Mark Watson is discussing more publicity scams with his PA when a guy comes in and says he wants Mark to hear a “mystery group” The Smart Alecs. Yes! This is the tape! What a gimmick! A mystery group! (One thinks The Four Seasons masquerading as The Wonder Who a year later, or of Klaatu hoping people might be daft enough to think they were The Beatles).

Mark Watson (David Bauer) and Kay (Veronica Hurst)

Poor Dave has decided to give up music. Surprisingly, Dad, who is a role model being strict but fair and kind, advises him to keep trying. Kenny Ball will be appearing at the Supper Room at the hotel where Dad works and Mark Watson will be watching. They need to get to him!

Rondo: Kenny Ball & His Jazzmen. The musician’s nightmare. Cabaret for supper.

At the hotel, Mark is having dinner watching poor Kenny playing Rondo to a cabaret audience.

The boys are at Jill’s taxi office planning to get Mark Watson.

Dave: Bring him here! Put him on the roof. Give him a show!
One of the others: Oh, dear. You’ve seen too many movies.

Waiter: Your taxi will be here in fifteen minutes.

They decide to use the taxi company’s phone. They will phone and tell Mark his taxi will be there in fifteen minutes. The taxi picks him up, driven by Jill’s boss.

The driver switches on the radio phone and we hear the boys playing Live It Up into the phone at the taxi office. Jill twists in the middle of the band. The radio has remarkably high fidelity through its tiny speaker.

Mark: Driver! Follow that music!

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Heinz: Don’t You Understand.

Then we assume The Smart Alecs have made it, because we end with them performing Don’t You Understand on the studio soundstage. They stick to facial close ups as much as possible to avoid hands on fretboards.

Live It Up gets a third go over the credits.

OVERALL

It’s short … 80 minutes. It would have been shown alongside one of those Edgar Lustgarten Presents detective stories which were mainly used for snogging in the cinema. I thought it surprisingly good- David Hemmings, Jennifer Moss and Steve Marriott all have screen presence. There’s enough story not to be overwhelmed by the music and there is a degree of justification in the plot for seeing most of the clips.

SOUNDTRACK

There was no soundtrack LP, but Heinz released an EP with the title. Heinz has just had his major hit, UK #5 no less, with Just Like Eddie, which is a Guilty Pleasure. I bought it.

Rondo Kenny Ball copy

Rondo by Kenny Ball & His Jazzmen was a UK #26 hit ahead of the film’s release. I love the design of the Pye Jazz label, and keep picking up copies of records – they’re always in the cheapest section in charity shops. Sadly they’re mainly trad jazz, though Bo Diddley did an LP on the Pye Jazz label. Kenny Ball carved out a chart career by taking film music themes and doing them as Trad Jazz. They were much harder to play than most trad jazz, as I found out to my chagrin when asked to sit in with a trad band after their bass player got too drunk. I was OK until they started Green Leaves of Summer, a Kenny Ball hit.

The Outlaws specialized in guitar instrumentals with Wild West titles … Valley of The Sioux, Ambush, Indian Brave. Law and Disorder was a single, but not a hit.

HEINZ_LIVE+IT+UP+EP-211997

SOUNDTRACK LIST:

Law & Disorder (Joe Meek) – The Outlaws
Keep Moving (Joe Meek) – Sounds Incorporated
Loving Me This Way (Joe Meek) – Kim Roberts
Temptation Baby (Joe Meek) – Gene Vincent
Please Let It Happen To Me (Joe Meek) – Jennifer Moss
Accidents Will Happen (Norrie Paramour, Bob Barratt)- Patsy Ann Noble
Live It Up (Joe Meek) – Heinz
Don’t You Understand (Joe Meek) – Heinz
Don’t You Take It From Me (Joe Meek) – Andy Cavell & The Saints
Rondo (Mozart) – Kenny Ball & His Jazzmen
Hand Me Down My Walking Shoes (Arr. Kenny Ball) – Kenny Ball & His Jazzmen

POP EXPLOITATION FILMS ON THIS BLOG

The Six Five Special (1958)
The Young Ones (1962)
Play It Cool (1962)
Summer Holiday (1963)
What A Crazy World (1963)
Live It Up! (1963)
Just For You (1964)
Wonderful Life (1964)
A Hard Day’s Night (1964)
Be My Guest (1965)
Gonks Go Beat (1965)
Catch Us If You Can (1965)
Help! (1965)