Held after girl’s rapes
HE may have found fame with the hit ’70s song I Hear You Knocking, but Dave Edmunds admits he never saw it coming when Bruce Springsteen unexpectedly jumped on stage at one of his gigs.
The 73-year-old Cardiff rocker, who announced his retirement from showbiz last week, reveals that, back in the early ’80s, ‘The Boss’ turned up “unannounced and alone, but for his Fender Esquire” at his concert at Manhattan’s Peppermint Lounge.
“He waited patiently in the dressing room until the end of my set, and then – the audience knew something was cooking – he sauntered on stage and we played a load of Chuck Berry songs.”
Edmunds added that the set finished with the pair performing From Small Things (Big Things One Day Come), a song which Springsteen had penned and donated to Edmunds six months earlier in London.
It had been the Fourth of July and Bruce was playing a sold-out gig at Wembley Stadium and Edmunds had decided to go along with Roger Scott, a DJ friend of his.
“I wasn’t on the guest list or anything, but, shuffling our way towards the exit after the show among thousands of exhausted Bruce-worshippers, I felt a firm grip on my shoulder. ‘Bruce wants to see you,’ said a massive, heavily tattooed security guy with an intense New Jersey accent. Then he yelled into his CB radio, ‘I’ve found him.’”
Edmunds had never met Springsteen at that point and had no idea how he even knew he was at the show, but the US singer was keen to serenade him with the new song he’d written.
“He played Small Things from beginning to end and said ‘It’s yours, man.’ He then promised he’d lay down a rough version of the track on a cassette for me, telling me to give him a couple of weeks – after which I could pick it up from his manager’s office in New York.
“With such encounters, promises like that usually evaporate before you leave the room, but a few weeks later I happened to find myself in New York and swung by Bruce’s manager’s office.
“Sure enough, there was a cassette of Bruce’s song, with my name on it, awaiting me. That’s class.”
It’s just one of many anecdotes from Edmunds’ long and successful career, one which has seen him rub shoulders with everyone from Chuck Berry and Ray Charles to Jerry Lee Lewis.
In the case of the former, the Welshman recalls being joined by the Johnny B. Goode legend when he played in his home state of Missouri in the ’80s.
“I was 15 years old when I first heard Johnny B. Goode on Radio Luxembourg – the same year I got my first guitar. I was determined to learn the opening guitar riff and the solo,” says Edmunds, who was amazed when he got word that Berry was in the audience and wanted to join him for a jam.
“At the end of the final song he grabbed my arm and hauled me centrestage,” he adds.
“He held my hand aloft and shouted into the microphone to the screaming audience: ‘Who said a white man can’t play the blues?’
“It was my proudest moment.” TWO men have been arrested after a 14-year-old girl was allegedly raped twice on the same night.
Detectives said the teenager was first assaulted in a secluded part of Birmingham’s Witton railway station, near the Aston Villa football ground, between 8pm on Tuesday and 2am the following morning.
Shortly after that attack, the girl walked out of the station and flagged down a passing vehicle to ask for help, but was allegedly raped a second time after getting into the car.
Police said the arrests of two men, aged 35 and 27, on suspicion of rape on Saturday morning both relate to the first attack. The pair are in police custody.
Detectives are still searching for another man, who is described as about 5ft 6in, thick set and with large biceps, in connection with the second alleged rape.
Detective Chief Inspector Tony Fitzpatrick, from British Transport Police, said: “Our investigation into the second incident continues.”