PREFACE TO ROCKIN DAVE’S AUTOBIOGRAPHY
At the outset, I must say that I am not a novelist, I hardly even write letters these days, and I rarely reply to anonymous letters, So, for anyone picking out grammatical errors or omissions, - tough! Go and find something useful to do. I do like the anomalies of the English language though, and I've always been interested in languages, I appreciate the art and cunning of linguistics, in fact, I've often been called a cunning linguist.
Any resemblance to any person living or dead is purely intentional and any similarity to any person either living or dead is also definitely intended. Should any of the content found in this book be deemed or may be found to be offensive, indecent or otherwise objectionable, well that just means that you're just an old fuddy-duddy.
I certainly don't believe in politics, it clearly doesn't matter who you vote for, the government always gets in. I've always said that Guy Fawkes is the only honest person who entered the Houses of Parliament - and look what happened to him. In my book, Govt. is a four letter word, so I have never voted (except a few times for Screamin' Lord Sutch of the Monster Raving Looney Party). But that's another story...
I am not a religious person and consider myself an atheist (thank God) Although I hear that reincarnation is making a come back. I believe I have abided by most of the 10 commandments (except the one about coveting your neighbours ox) I don't steal, I know how much the government hates competition. I am a person of many convictions, and remember the only way to make crime pay is to become a Lawyer. After all, a lawyer with a briefcase can steal more than a thousand men with guns can, and bear in mind, that lawyers are the only persons in whom ignorance of the law is not punished.
I've never bought a newspaper and read them only infrequently, and only then out of boredom and for entertainment. I'm definitely a self-confessed non-conformist and a firm believer in antiestablishmentarianism. (If there are a few extra letters in there, I'm sorry about that). Even as a kid, I would have an 'after eight mint' at 6 o'clock, just to rebel.
After more than 35 years of entertaining people, I have had the pleasure of visiting all four corners of the earth, I consider myself a citizen of the world. Alas, living on the earth is expensive, but it does include a free trip around the sun every year. After all, there are worse places than prison, and I've played them.
Having been involved in the music business since the early 1970's, I have throughout that time amassed a vast assortment of anecdotes and mareseydotes and little lamseydivey, in conjunction with amusing reminiscences of that period, and I now have the opportunity to pass on these memories in the following pages. I planned to write this book many years ago, but just kept putting off the inevitable. After all, procrastination is the art of keeping up with yesterday, which is another way of saying, don't put off today, what you can avoid doing altogether the day after tomorrow. In any event, if I had written this book several years ago, it wouldn't have been complete.
The wages of sin is death, and the wages for playing rock n roll are not much better, nevertheless, I have always liked rock n roll, not just the music, but the clothes, the people, the way of life and the cars. Where else would you find big imposing cars with massive finns, apart from in a Helsinki police station? Rock & Roll is not just a matter of life and death - it's more important than that. I'm very philosophic about it all, I started out with nothing in life and I've still got most of it left.
In the seedy world of rock n roll, whilst you will certainly meet a lot of fascinating characters, remember that friends may come and go, but enemies tend to accumulate.
Rumours that profits derived from this publication are being donated to a raffle for the policeman's ball are entirely speculative. To all Judges, lawyers, police and immigration officers and the Crown Prosecution Service, the events in this book never happened. For the rest of the world, this is the way it was.
