Sit down! Listen to this!

One day, when I was fifteen, I fell down a kind of rabbit hole into a dank Dickensian cellar and discovered a parallel universe called The Magic Village. The cast of characters I met there became part of my life story. Underground club, underground culture, now buried under the Arndale centre, along with the bag of amazing Thai grass that had travelled all the way from Singapore only to fall through a crack in the floorboards ( or did it? - that could be another story). Days of Arts Labs and David Bowie, International Times and the Oz Trial. Third Ear Band, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, The Groundhogs, Family and Don't Look Back at Holdsworth Hall ( I still have the ticket stub).Al Stewart - who didn't like it when I reminded him I'd seen him there all those years later. 'White Rabbit' on the juke box - and 'Please Crawl Out Your Window' - how I longed to do that from my boarding school bedroom. Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band's 'Electricity' threatening to blow the fuse board. Love's 'Alone Again Or' - my theme song. But this is about Roger Eagle. I have just read Patti Smith describe a friend as larger than life with a delicate touch, and it brought Roger to mind. Such an imposing man, he could have thrown his weight around, but he didn't. He shared his passion for music, introducing several generations of enthusiasts to the real thing. It's hard to believe he was younger than I am now when he died aged 56 in 1999. He could have been intimidating, but he wasn't.Instead he was impressive in every way, and as a fifteen year old fledgling student of English I was equally impressed that his mother worked for the Oxford English Dictionary team. So Bill Sykes' long awaited biography of Roger - Sit Down! Listen to this! is about to be published, and Roger has been a topic of conversation among those of us who knew him. One friend, a former Rockette, remembered him literally picking her up like a child, and what a great feeling that was.Another - Drive In Rock's bass player - was surprised to hear there was a book and he hadn't been approached for his memories of Roger - 'did we mean so little that we don't figure in his story?' As far as I know Roger only managed two bands - Greasy Bear (which featured CP Lee who will speak at the book launch) and Drive In Rock and the Rockettes - and I was a Rockette. Quite an accolade to be managed by Roger. We were a nine piece band and we covered 50's rock n roll in an authentic way. We were surprisingly successful on the college circuit for at least a couple of years.I remember my friend Cathy - another Rockette - making an amazing multilayered multicoloured birthday cake for Roger. It must have been July 15th 1973. That was the same year that we got to join Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band on the Clear Spot tour. Two teenage girls probably did wonders for Roger's reputation, but we didn't think of it like that at the time. We were his musical apprentices, soaking up the atmosphere. Roger and Don Van Vliet could have been related, big imposing men with a passion for the blues. Roger was rumoured to have forever damaged his hearing by listening to Spirit playing live with his head in the speakers. What a way to go! And Roger has appeared in a book before.He was immortalised as Roger Lion in Cathy's father's book 'Anything Goes'. The command'Sit down! Listen to this!'was usually accompanied by a big fat spliff I am reliably told. Just before I ran away to Morocco in 1980 Roger turned up in my life again. He had moved to Liverpool and Eric's was already a legend . But he came over to Manchester every Thursday to run an R&B night ( that's proper rhythm and blues) at Rafters. I did the door, and Roger stayed at my house in Longsight. He often left his vinyl collection with us, and my boyfriend systematically taped many of the rare singles. Does he still have the cassettes? - I wonder. In what I now think of as a short time Roger played a huge role in so many people's lives, introducing music to each generation, multi layered, looking back and forward, from Northern Soul through Captain Beefheart and beyond. Some may have never spoken directly to him, others were lucky enough to hear him say the words, 'Sit down, listen to this'. We can all celebrate him with Bill's book.