The coffee-table dimensions of Ready Steady Go! (12.5” by 12”) are by themselves indicative of the main thrust of the book, that is, to explicate exactly how big, in how many different ways, was the British TV series subtitled (as is this BMG publication ) The Weekend Starts Here. To be sure, there were other pop music programs in America and Great Britain, but none captured the cultural zeitgeist so fully as RSG! and this heavyweight book of Andy Neill’s follows suit, doing justice to its effect with a kinetic design of text and photos that often leaps from the two-hundred seventy pages.
In the US, American Bandstand, Shindig and The Lloyd Thaxton Show attempted to fairly and equally represent the music and its audience. But, as with England’s own Thank Your Lucky Stars, Top of the Pops and The BBC Sessions, those programs barely scratched the surface of the paradigm shift underway at the time of airing in the late Fifties and early-to-mid Sixties. On the other hand, as is clear in this journalist/author’s rigorous sixteen-year (!) collation of information, Ready Steady Go! not only acknowledged, but spoke directly to the participants in that movement. This substantive collation suggests just how eloquently were those statements, perhaps because they were rooted in the very lingo of the times.
The greatest virtue of this massive print portrait arises from Neill’s pedigree writing/editing books on the Who and the Beatles, among others, combined with his passionate devotion to his subject. The energetic ambiance of Ready Steady Go! pervades the result of his efforts here, whether a reader has seen the program or not. In fact, atmosphere radiates from the pages to the extent this book isn’t one to be read, but to simply become immersed in. And it’s not just its mass, but its density, that nurtures such an approach: the approximately two-foot expanse of the open tome proffers words and pictures plus a variety of other graphic images—reproductions of posters and newspaper/magazine articles among others–that might overwhelm the senses if the very size of the pages didn’t preclude that effect.
That all-encompassing sensation in itself is a direct reflection of the times in which RSG! thrived. As described by Pete Townshend in his customarily effusive written piece, the program quickly evolved into and served as a focal point of a burgeoning community. And yet, oddly (or perhaps not given how it circuitously foreshadowed programming on MTV), little if any of the content in The Weekend Starts Here seems dated. But then Neill’s scrupulously-detailed chronology is one more means of mirroring the progression of the times as captured on the broadcasts. Praised by The Byrds’ Chris Hillman for its lack of contrivance, especially as compared to the more traditional variety shows of the day such as The Ed Sullivan Show, RSG!‘s production style was the successful end result of a creative process devoted to achieving an aura of spontaneity for the duration of the individual episodes while on the air. Host Cathy McGowan and director Michael Lindsay-Hogg (who also filmed the Beatles for Let It Be and The Rolling Stones’ Rock And Roll Circus) are just two of those directly and indirectly involved behind the scenes and Andy Neill’s extensive quotations from those sources, as well as show editor Vicki Wickham’s foreward, confirms the attention to detail in play off-screen, away from the dancers appearing in so many stage photos.
As with, Lawyers Guns & Photos, George Gruel’s recently-reissued ode to the late great Warren Zevon, there are as many ways to absorb this content as there are formats in which it’s presented. Parsing the prose entries like that aforementioned essay of Townshend’s, including others by Mick Jagger, early Stones’ manager Andrew Oldham and The Kinks’ Ray Davies, confirms musicians who appeared on RSG! were no less enamored of the program it than its viewers. And then there’s close inspection of the three-year timeline of the program itself; by the author’s own admission, not fully comprehensive, it is nevertheless replete with dates and names, including lists of guests ranging from icons such as the Beatles, the Who and the Rolling Stones, plus a host of Merseybeat acts, then on to a remarkably eclectic roster featuring Little Walter, Otis Redding and multiple Motown acts.
Needless to say, even before such detailed perusal takes place, Andy Neill’s labor of love clarifies Ready Steady Go! was not simply another half-hearted attempt to appeal to the lowest common denominator of a pop-based demographic. Quite the contrary, in fact, as its overriding sense of inclusion renders appropriate this book’s second subtitle: The Definitive Story of the Show That Changed Pop TV.
