Sweet Gene Vincent - Ian Dury and Gene Vincent

Ian Dury and Gene Vincent

Ian Dury was a fan of Gene Vincent since his early to mid teens and claims to have bought every single Vincent produced. In an interview reprinted in Sex And Drugs And Rock And Roll: The Life of Ian Dury, Dury says that he first heard of Vincent via Be-Bop-A-Lula's inclusion in film The Girl Can't Help It and admitted to being reduced to tears by the single as an adolescent. For his whole career Dury would talk very sentimentally, sometimes poetically about Gene Vincent.

It was Vincent's death in 1971 that was a major prompt for Dury to make Kilburn & The Highroads a serious endeavour and his stage clothes of the time often reflected Vincent's influence, notably black leather gloves. He also namechecked the singer in one of his earliest original songs "Upminster Kid", albeit under the singer's 'full' name Gene Vincent Craddock.

Curiously Dury constantly denied that identification with the singer, also crippled and forced to wear a leg brace, was in any way an attraction. He apparently hadn't even known Vincent was crippled when he first became a fan. What drew Dury's attention to the singer was his voice and his look.

Dury chose Vincent's first single, "Woman Love" as one of his 8 songs when he appeared on BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs show.