Once upon a
time there was a big sensation in the pop world: Cliff Richard and his
backing band The Shadows.
Cliff became big in the 1960s and was marketed
as the clean-cut boy next door with Christian values. He parted company
with the Shadows in the 1970s and went on to solo superstar status.
Annoyingly he would bring out a Christmas record every year which would be
number one on the chart for the duration of the festive season.
As the
seventies became the eighties and then the nineties cliff continued to put out
records, mostly at Christmas. Through the eighties he was a popular guest on
daytime TV and chat shows and maintained a large following of fans. I wonder
now, though, how many youngsters know who he is?
Cliffs
backing group, the Shadows featured one Hank Marvin as lead guitarist.
He may have been in the “shadow” of Cliff but I think that his name will live
on a lot longer thanks to cockney rhyming slang. Even if the man himself
is not remembered his name will live on. For those of you who don’t know, “Hank
Marvin’“ is now a slang term for
starving. For example, someone comes home from work and says to their partner
or parent: “What do we have for a snack,
I’m Hank Marvin’ “.
Hank and the Shadows had a string of hits themselves, the
biggest being “Apache” a number one all over the world. It won’t be his
music or his association with the evergreen Mr. Richard which will keep Hanks
memory alive, however, it will be his name passing in to common parlance. He
has been awarded the greatest of accolades in the pop culture world – his name
is now featuring in an advert for Mattessons “Fridge Raiders”.
This is why
Hank will be immortalised and the memory of him will outlast that of Sir Cliff: youngsters watching the advert are going to think “Who is this Hank Marvin whose
name means starvin’?” They will then go on the internet and look it up, and in
doing so will learn of Hank and his famous Stratocaster Guitar, and will
probably think “oh”. Be that as it may Hank Marvin is immortalised.
Who Knows,
as time goes by perhaps a legend will spring up around him. People will be
saying that long ago there was a guy called Hank Marvin, who had a voracious
appetite and would hide in the shadows beneath a cliff from which he would
pounce on passers-by with snack food.
Well, stranger
things have happened...
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