Little red roosters and hound dogs on my trail—they never did fit comfortably into my view of things. A life whose perimeters encompassed Piccadilly on the one side to Kings Cross on the other—a West End urban kid who could hear and understand the universal appeal from the juke box of “Reach Out” or “I’ve Been Loving You Too Long,” had more trouble as she became older in those sweaty clubs identifying with that male rural scenario, no matter how many John Steinbecks she read. White books.

And mainly, white bands. De rigeur harmonicas wheezing in the white heat, undulating suggestiveness of those white boys’ drawl. By the time Mick Jagger was using his mike stand as a phallic symbol I’d only got a whiff of those early days with Alex Korner and the years spent at school listening to Willie Dixon and Fred McDowall while I was deep into the pervasive romantic propaganda of Bobby Vee. So R&B, white musicians, the first wave of rock ’n’ roll, filtered in but never addicted