T
he figure dressed in black has
tangled hair and looks directly
at the camera. For all it looks
like a mizzly day, he wears
dark glasses. Behind him lies a
juxtaposition of old and new. Beyond
a car with lines to suggest it could
have been built in the 50s or earlier, a
suspension bridge soars. It’s May 1966,
the scarecrow-skinny figure is Bob Dylan
and the photo, taken on the tour when
Dylan’s electrified performances with
the nascent Band outraged folk purists,
speaks of a world still emerging from
post-war austerity yet encountering, in
Harold Wilson’s words, the “white heat”
of technological change.
More prosaically, considering it’s
the Severn Bridge we can see, then
still under construction, it’s a reminder
of just what a pain in the arse it could
be to travel to and from South Wales.
In an image later used to promote
Martin Scorsese’s No Direction Home
documentary, Dylan is shown waiting
at the Aust ferry terminal on the muddy
banks of the Severn estuary for a slow
boat to the Principality. Even after the
bridge opened, the local motorway
infrastructure remained shonky for
years, with the Welsh section of the M4
completed as late as 1993.
“We need to remember that in the
days when we [first] went to London
there were no services at all,” recallsWales
POP^HERITA
G
EP
O
P
HERITAGESO MUCH TO
ANSWER FOR
THE MUSIC OF THE PRINCIPALITY
CAN DRAW ON A RICH AND
ROOTSY HERITAGE WHEN IT NEEDS
TO REINVENT ITSELF
JONATHAN WRIGHT57media-savvy cheerleader for the city,
and his own Factory Records and
the Hacienda nightclub. In contrast,
the story of Welsh music is often told
through a list of apparently disparate
names: Shirley Bassey, Tom Jones,
Amen Corner, Mary Hopkin, Shakey,
Badfinger, Budgie and more.
If there’s a unifying narrative in this
version of the Principality’s rich musical
history, and it’s by no means the only
version as we’ll see, it’s more around
style than a particular figure or club.
South Wales in particular is a place
where rock’n’roll laid down deep roots.
Tom Jones, Shakey and Cardiff-born
Dave Edmunds, who enjoyed a No.4
UK hit in 1979 with the Elvis Costello-
penned Girls Talk and performed with
Nick Lowe in Rockpile, were all born
in the 1940s, and grew up steeped in
the music of Elvis, Little Richard and
Chuck Berry.
“I don’t think any A&R people, scouts,
came down to Cardiff,” remembers
Shakey of starting out. “I certainly
wasn’t aware of it, but it was great
for music. There were lots and lots
of bands.”
Paying that forward, rock and heavy
metal thrived in the Welsh Valleys in
the 70s and 80s. This was music for
Saturday nights in the pub and it clearly
had an effect on local musicians. When
husky-voiced Bonnie Tyler, hithertoMichael Barratt, better known as
Shakin’ Stevens, the most successful
British singles artist of the 1980s. “There
were plenty of transport cafes, trucker
places, but there was no motorway as
such, and so we had to go from Cardiff
to Chepstow and up to London. It would
take three, three-and-a-half to four hours
to get there.”INTO THE VALLEYS
Perhaps because of this comparative
geographic isolation, Wales can seem
like a place set apart in terms of its
pop history. Think of Manchester, for
instance, and there’s the galvanising
presence of the late Tony Wilson, theHusky-voiced
Bonnie
Tyler was
holding out
for a hero
growing up
in Neath© Getty ImagesCP30.SoMuch_Wales.print.indd 57 07/06/2017 17:23