Alvin Stardust: Goodbye to the Coo Ca Choo man
The pop star who first found fame as Shane Fenton will always be best remembered for his 1970s glam rock persona.
In skintight black leather and with a glowering stare he was once considered too scary for the BBC.
Little did his fans suspect that almost everything about Alvin Stardust wasn’t quite what it seemed.
His name was concocted by a junior record promoter chiefly to disguise the fact that he had already had a pop career as Shane Fenton.
His black quiff was the result of a home dye job carried out in the B&B he stayed in the night before his appearance on Top Of The Pops.
The sideburns were stuck on to hide stains left on his cheeks by the dye and the black gloves covered his stained fingers.
Even the way he held the microphone was a last-minute invention.
The BBC did not provide him with a microphone stand so he simply pretended there was one there.
As an electric guitar strummed the opening strains of My Coo Ca Choo he turned sideways, stared unsmiling into the camera and The Man In Black was born.
The teenyboppers of the 1970s loved the moody image so much that he had no need to promote himself.
He didn’t do interviews or photo-shoots.
After TV appearances he would see no one.
“Which was kind of destructive and lonely at times,” he reflected later.
But the hits kept coming – seven top 10 records over the next decade.
Even the government recognised the power of The Man In Black when they hired him for public information films promoting the Green Cross code.
What was absolutely genuine about Alvin Stardust however was his voice and showmanship, both honed over his years performing as Shane Fenton in the early 1960s and touring with the likes of Billy Fury, Marty Wilde and Joe Brown.
He counted The Beatles among his friends and was described as the godfather of British rock ’n’ roll by no less a figure than Stones guitarist Keith Richards.
When My Coo Ca Choo stormed charts all over Europe, John Lennon congratulated his friend in a live interview from New York, saying: “I’m so glad for Shane.
"He deserves this success.
"He’s a great bloke and performer.”
During the 1990s Stardust reinvented himself again as a musical theatre and TV artist.
He hosted It’s Stardust, a Sunday morning children’s series on ITV, toured in Godspell, played Uriah Heep in David Copperfield – The Musical and starred as the Child Catcher in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang at the London Palladium in 2005.
And after 50 years he was returning to his rock ’n’ roll roots with a new album, his first for 30 years but which he considered his best ever.
Entitled simply Alvin and completed only weeks before his death yesterday from prostate cancer at 72, it will be released as planned next month.
Before Alvin and Shane he was Bernard William Jewry, the only child of a salesman, born on September 27, 1942, in Muswell Hill, North London.
When he was a year old the family moved to Mansfield.
After he badgered them for years his parents finally bought him a three-quarter-sized guitar for £1 when he was 12.
What was absolutely genuine about Alvin Stardust was his voice and showmanship
He took it with him to a Buddy Holly concert in Doncaster in 1958.
The staff at the venue assumed he was a musician and took him backstage where he ended up jamming with Holly and The Crickets.
They also autographed his guitar which would in time be covered with many other famous signatures and become worth more than £1million.
He began playing guitar with a local band Johnny Theakston And The Tremeloes but they broke up when their lead singer died suddenly.
However unbeknown to the others Johnny had sent a tape to the BBC.
A few weeks after his death the BBC offered the group a spot on Saturday Club, a radio show with 25 million listeners.
Johnny’s parents persuaded the band to reform and seize their chance.
There was one condition: Bernard should take over as lead singer and adopt Johnny’s intended stage name Shane Fenton.
With the renamed Fentones, Shane was signed to Parlophone Records, recorded with George Martin and acquired Larry Parnes as manager.
“Suddenly I realised we were in the music business,” said Bernard/Shane.
But after three years their moment had passed.
Also Shane had married Iris Caldwell (sister of Rory Storm, the 1960s rocker who employed Ringo Starr as drummer before The Beatles) and was tired of touring.
But he carried on performing, first in cabaret and then with his own band The Shane Fenton Rock ’n’ Roll Trio and dabbled in management until 1973 when he was asked to record a new song called My Coo Ca Choo.
Marty Wilde and Joe Brown had turned it down and after recording it Shane was convinced that was the last anyone would ever hear of it.
“With a song called My Coo Ca Choo and a name like Alvin Stardust I thought I didn’t stand a chance,” he recalled in 2009.
“How wrong can you be?”
But the record took off and he was booked for Top Of The Pops.
There was one problem: no one must recognise him as former pop singer Shane Fenton.
He needed a new image fast.
He decided on an all-black outfit and bought black hair dye from Woolworths, applying it the night before his TOTP appearance in that B&B near Paddington station.
The black gloves came from a women’s clothes shop across the road.
Glam rock was all the rage so to complete the look he backcombed his new black mane and accessorised with blingy jewellery.
My Coo Ca Choo reached No 2 and his next single Jealous Mind went to No 1. Both are considered 1970s clssics and enabled him to buy a six-bedroom, three-bathroom house in Stanmore, Middlesex.
But apart from a hit with Pretend when he was briefly signed to punk label Stiff Records and I Feel Like Buddy Holly, the chart positions got lower over the next decade.
He met actress Liza Goddard when both were involved in a This Is Your Life for Michael Aspel.
They married in 1981 when their daughter Sophie was three months old but divorced after six years with Goddard blaming religion.
“The final nail in our coffin was when he discovered God on a train to Waterloo,” she said.
“He was converted by a group of people he shared a carriage with.
"The cleaners found them all on their knees praying.”
Stardust found lasting happiness with Julie Paton, a dancer 27 years his junior whom he met on Godspell.
They were married for more than 20 years and have a 14-year-old daughter Millie.
He remained close to Shaun and Adam, his sons from his first marriage and had mended fences with Goddard who yesterday tweeted: “RIP Alvin Stardust.
"Thank you for our beautiful daughter and granddaughter.”
He was diagnosed with prostate cancer earlier this year but kept performing and was due on stage at Butlin’s Skegness next week.
He died at home surrounded by his family.
