Bowie: A Biography - JFK247

course, lost in translation. “When a downtrodden
black southerner sang ‘I’m a man’ he meant ‘I’m a
human being,’” says Napier-Bell. “When Mick
Jagger or Eric Burdon sang it, they meant ‘I’ve got a
hard-on.’”
The other foundation of the mod sound was the
Stax and Tamla Motown hits that were played on
“pirate,” or non-BBC-regulated, radio stations that
were broadcast in the early sixties with strong
enough frequencies to pick up a clear sound and a
beat. English kids would go out of their way to
become pen pals with American kids in order to get
the latest to play live at parties. Soul music,
unabashedly emotional, hit a chord with the
mannered but incredibly frustrated British youth. Soul
songs about unrequited love or blues men singing
about oppression and a hidden voodoo was the right
message at the right time, and the new youth were
feverish.
By 1963, George and the Dragons had mutated
into a more professional outfit known as the Konrads,
augmented by Dave Hadfield on bass, Rocky
Shanahan on guitar and Robert Allen on drums. They
eventually added background singers Stella and
Christine Patton for local gigs. Their new name was
derived from one of these performances. The group,
used to any pickup work, was backing up a local pop
singer named Jesse Conrad. According to legend,
he introduced them as “my Conrads,” as a play on
“comrades,” and the name stuck. The hyphen was
added as a pure flourish. One of Bromley’s go-to