Johnny Kidd & The Pirates
Johnny Kidd & The Pirates were an English rock 'n' roll group led by singer/songwriter Johnny Kidd. They scored numerous hit songs from the late 1950s to the early 1960s, including the rock & roll classics 'Shakin' All Over' and 'Please Don't Touch', but their influence far outshines their chart performance.
Their stage act was theatrical in a way which anticipated theatrical rockers of the 1970s such as Alice Cooper (while echoing that of their contemporaries Screaming Lord Sutch & The Savages) and included full pirate costumes, complete with eye-patches and cutlasses.
More importantly, and unusually for bands of the time, they had only one guitarist (not two), alongside a bassist and a drummer. Kidd did not play any instruments on stage. This was very influential on the rock bands of the 1970s — Led Zeppelin had such a line-up and tapes exist of them covering many Johnny Kidd songs in rehearsal, and it was after seeing Johnny Kidd & the Pirates that The Who decided that their singer Roger Daltrey should abandon playing guitar on stage.
Read more about Johnny Kidd & The Pirates: Early Days, Shakin' All Over, The Later Days, Post Kidd, Legacy, Former Members
Famous quotes containing the words johnny and/or pirates:
“Have Johnny fix him a sandwich or something. Any man running for the Senate has to wantsomething. Right, Bud?
Okay, start the bus then. And drive them over a cliff.”
—Jeremy Larner, U.S. screenwriter, and Michael Ritchie. John J. McKay (Melvin Douglas)
“Well, you Yankees and your holy principle about savin’ the Union. You’re plunderin’ pirates that’s what. Well, you think there’s no Confederate army where you’re goin’. You think our boys are asleep down here. Well, they’ll catch up to you and they’ll cut you to pieces you, you nameless, fatherless scum. I wish I could be there to see it.”
—John Lee Mahin (1902–1984)