Released in 1975, Crazy Cavan And The Rhythm Rockers dedicated their first LP to their Teddy Boy followers. Entirely composed of originals, over half of them now classics, it’s one of the greatest straight rock’n’roll albums of all time.
When Cavan Grogan died in February 2020, the British rock’n’roll scene lost one of its mainstays. His band Crazy Cavan And The Rhythm Rockers had a unique sound which they’d kept faithful to since day one. Although their heroes were the American rockers of the 50s, in interviews Cavan insisted that they were not a revival band.
They certainly concocted a tough and uncompromising mixture of rock’n’roll and rockabilly and were completely of their time, which was basically the 1970s. The band wrote most of their own songs, many now viewed as classics. In live shows their style was loud, boisterous and menacing.
Branded with their own identity, it is hard to imagine such a sound or attitude emerging in the sanitised 2020s.
Teddy Boy Rock’n’Roll
It’s true that the band never made a crossover hit, and never got on a record label bigger than Charly, although for a time there was talk of hooking up with the leading new wave indie label of the day, Stiff Records. That doesn’t seem to have bothered the band too much. They had their own way of rockin’ and built their own special fanbase. But album-wise they never surpassed their first effort, Crazy Rhythm, recorded in Holland in 1975.
They were already a tight unit by the time they arrived in Amsterdam. Cavan Grogan had moved from Ireland to South Wales in the early 60s. Living on a caravan site, he introduced himself to a couple of fellow young rock’n’roll enthusiasts, Lyndon Needs and his cousin Terry Walley, who practised guitar playing on the site, and suggested they form a band in 1964. By 1970, this had become Crazy Cavan And The Rhythm Rockers, with the line-up that was still intact five years later for the Crazy Rhythm sessions, namely Cavan on vocals, Lyndon on lead guitar, Terry on rhythm guitar, Don Kinsella on electric bass and Mike Coffey, brother of the influential Welsh Ted record collector, ‘Breathless’ Dan Coffey, on drums.
Wildest Cat In Town
As Lyndon says, Cavan was always a big fan as well as a performer of rock’n’roll and this was significant. At a time when most budding musicians were into Merseybeat sounds, Cavan was digging into a back catalogue of 50s rock’n’roll that had never really got its proper exposure in Britain. Whatever some rockabilly purists might say, it gave their work great credibility. “Cavan was the heart of the band,” explains Lyndon. “If I hadn’t met him I don’t know what road I would have taken. First time I met him, he came up to me and started talking about Bo Diddley and Carl Perkins. I’m saying, ‘Who’? I was 13 years old and was learning to play The Shadows. That’s all I knew until I met Cavan.”
For years they were one of a select group of British bands staying true to the early spirit of rock’n’roll, but instead of just performing the standards, they’d also throw in hillbilly bop obscurities by the likes of Charlie Feathers and Eddie Bond, which was unusual at the time. “We were Teddy Boys with very little equipment and when we performed at the Fishmongers Arms in Wood Green, London, in 1971, we did Hank Swatley’s Oakie Boogie,” says Lyndon. “People were saying, ‘This isn’t Eddie Cochran or Gene Vincent, this is more like a country band’ – a bit quiet.”
Raw & Primitive
It didn’t take long for audiences to realise they weren’t quiet at all. In addition, they were already coming up with their own material, and the success of a single released on their own Crazy Rhythm label in 1973 – having been knocked back by record companies – and then a four-track EP which got played by John Peel on the radio, saw their reputation spreading beyond the British scene to the continent.
An invitation from the Dutch Rockhouse label to travel over and record their debut long-player coincided with their first overseas dates, at Copenhagen’s Hard Rock Café. Lyndon’s Hard Rock Café, one of the album tracks, was written while they were in Denmark recounting the experience of performing there, nailing their colours to the Teds’ mast with the line: “Don’t wanna hear no funky soul/ I wanna hear some rock’n’roll.”
“We did like to drink and didn’t like getting up early,” the guitarist remembers. “So when it came to recording day, they woke us up with a crate of Grolsch to get us up for the studio. We recorded it live, just banged it out.” The basic approach suited the material. The five-piece played on all tracks, with no added accompaniment, and did all the vocals, the only enhancement being occasional use of echo.
In fact, it got even more basic as they went along. “It was done on four tracks, but something went wrong halfway through, so they had to go to two tracks,” says Lyndon. “Very different to our first Charly album, Rockability, done at the Olympic Studio in London, with producer John Schroeder, where we had to record all the parts separately. We didn’t like that.” Rockability is a fine album, but it’s unsurprising that most fans love the directness of Crazy Rhythm.
Rockabilly Stars
Few albums in history have kicked off so excitingly and in a way which captured the essence of a band in a matter of a few chords. The Grogan-penned She’s The One To Blame starts with that immediately recognisable killer rhythm and tough beat. Cavan’s first verse ends with a scream, and Lyndon going into a short, snappy solo, which he returns to in longer style after another verse from Cavan. Some might quibble that Don Kinsella’s electric bass is inauthentic, but it’s actually a key element in the song’s hard-booting sound. Next up, was a revisit to a song from their first EP.
The mid-tempo Teddy Boy Rock’n’Roll, with a big echo, leant more towards rockabilly. Again, the rhythm was mesmeric. This had been one of the songs DJ Geoff Barker had in mind when he called the Rhythm Rockers’ music “rockabilly folk songs,” because of the way some of them celebrated the Teds’ lifestyle – their hopes and dreams. At this time the slapping string bass was something of a lost art, so the effect on the track was achieved by the combination of Mike’s drum rimshots and Don playing guitar bass notes.
Maximum Impact
Although the Rhythm Rockers looked and sounded as hard as nails, they knew how to vary the tempo, loved country and sometimes got quite lyrical; never better demonstrated than by Sadie, a countrified love song with poetic references to “a lonely weeping willow in the early morning meadow”. Lyndon sang harmony with Cavan on the chorus while Terry’s guitar had a touch of Luther Perkins about it. Track four, Bop Little Baby, redone after its appearance on their first single, was echo heaven, allowing Cavan to give vent to his love of Elvis with his “Well-a-bop-a-bop-a-bop pretty baby-baby.” This hypnotically syncopated track also gave the LP’s first hint of the devastating Cavan Grogan hiccup.
Cross My Heart sounds like the band had been listening to the infectious rhythms of Marvin Rainwater, and drew some lovely pure licks from Lyndon. Caroline was a brooding mid-pacer with a classic Cavan vocal. Buddy Holly hiccupped brilliantly but sounded like an excited teen, while Cavan’s hiccup had a kind of leering, threatening feel that was never bettered, not even by Charlie Feathers. He achieved maximum impact while seeming to do very little. Lyndon’s solo was out of the same box, and Mike, Terry and Don mapped out the ominous beat with clockwork precision.
Crazy Rhythm
Wildest Cat In Town, another EP revisit, had one of the best remembered Cavan lyrics: “Hey Mister tailor don’t get cute/ Well I want me a Teddy Boy suit/ Powder blue jacket with a velvet cuff/ You better work fast or I might get rough.” Lyndon’s guitar takes off like a scalded cat and, at just one minute and 37 seconds long, the LP’s shortest track was a total ripper.
After the average Got A Date With Sally, Side One concluded with another gem: express rocker Fancy Nancy is the sort of thing the band could knock out in their sleep, with a touch of Buddy Holly about it.
Side Two begins with another staple, Rockabilly Star, which dripped with echo. With Lyndon at his most Scotty Moore-like, Cavan sang about how “I know I can’t play piano like Jerry Lee/ Well I can’t wail like Elvis Pres-er-ley.” But who cared? His voice was fine just as it was. Lyndon stayed in Scotty Moore vein for the hiccuppy Why Can’t We Be, and for variety there was a likeable vocal effort from Don on Rita, inspired by a girl he’d met in Copenhagen, before the rapid instrumental Crazy Boogie and Hard Rock Café got pulses racing again.
Teddy Boy Boogie
‘Leaping Lyndon’, with his antics on stage, never lacked attention, but he got his moment in the vocal spotlight on Marilyn. He sounds quite boyish – more Rick Nelson than Elvis. After another Lyndon-penned song, Going Down The Road, the final tracks are Teddy Boy Boogie and Crazy Rhythm. On the latter, Cavan calls out the names of the band, effectively rounding up the show in scintillating style, but the previous number – a re-recording of the first single – had already ensured the band a place in rock’n’roll folklore.
The lines about standing on the corner, swinging a chain and whipping out a razor to slit a copper’s throat were actually picked up by Cavan from an older Ted song, though nobody is certain of the origin. Whatever it was, it would forever be associated with a band whose crazy rhythms were danger-tinged. “We were really chuffed with the album,” says Lyndon. “It was so raw and primitive.”
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