Ian Dury
 With
or without his backing band The Blockheads, Ian Dury was a
formidable performer in the early days of punks metamorphosis into
New Wave.
A pub rock veteran who started out as
a member of the much-loved but barely noticed Kilburn
and The High Roads, Dury achieved greater success in the late
70s as a member of the wildly idiosyncratic Stiff
stable of artists (alongside Nick Lowe,
Wreckless Eric and Elvis
Costello).
Dury - a former art teacher at Luton College of Technology -
was a decade or so older than most of his contemporaries and one
of the most endearing of this motley crew.
With a thick cockney accent and a bum leg as the result of a
childhood bout with polio he was an unlikely pop star, but
composed ebulliently sarcastic rock/funk ditties which he rendered
in a deep sing/speak vocal style.
Dury was a gift to journalists, who found him highly
entertaining and always returned to their offices laden down with
colourful quotes from the master of repartee. A veil was drawn
over his days as a pupil at a private boarding school in
Buckinghamshire and he continued to play up his Essex origins.
His debut LP, 1977's New Boots & Panties
is probably his best-known work and contains his most celebrated
anthem, Sex and Drugs and Rock n' Roll. The album was
loaded with tough tracks about a collection of very English
characters, and is as good as anything Stiff released in its
infancy.
In February 1978, a live compilation of songs recorded on the
stiff tour was released entitled Stiffs Live Stiffs. Like
the majority of the shows themselves, the album concluded with
Ian's songs and the raucous finale Sex & Drugs & Rock
n' Roll.
That same month Ian and his excellent band, The Blockheads,
were delivering their intoxicating blend of music hall and funk to
an American audience for the very first time. They had been
invited to take part in a six-week tour supporting former Velvet
Underground legend Lou Reed, and had jumped at the chance.
The Blockheads (which contained at various
times Mickey Gallagher, Chaz Jankel, Norman Watt-Roy and the
legendary Wilko Johnson) could move seamlessly from straight pub
rock to funk to disco without batting an eyelid.
They played 30 cities, travelling in a 12-bed coach, which was
an excellent opportunity for Ian and the band to play large venues
and test the unpredictable American market. Although the band went
down a storm with some of their US audiences, two shows a
night and gruelling coach trips left the band exhausted, and by
the end of the tour, Ian and Lou were trading insults.
In one withering put-down, Reed snarled "that guy sounds
like he's got tongue disease", and on at least one occasion,
when The Blockheads left, they walked right across the stage
waving to the audience from behind Lou Reed while he was playing.
When Ian returned to Britain, the demand for Blockheads shows
was growing and they went straight back on the road. His first
headline tour kicked off on 11 May 1978 and included various
halls, civic buildings and Odeons.
Before the tour started, Stiff released What A Waste b/w
Wake Up and make Love With Me. It entered the Top 75
in April, and as the tour progressed it began to climb. By June it
was Number Nine. His first hit, it would spend 12 weeks in the
charts.
Shifting gears somewhat unexpectedly, his second album Do
It Yourself smoothed out the funky rock for a disco feel.
With Dury's croaking voice and Wilko Johnson's cranking guitar, it
was hardly The Bee Gees, but it was
shocking (at first) to hear Dury and co sounding as if they'd
wandered into a Boz Scaggs recording
session.
By 1984 Dury had stopped recording and didn't make a comeback
until 1989's Apples which was never released in America.
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