The Rascuedos Story

The story of the Rascuedos will be forever inter-twined with that of impresario and manager of the group, Brian Lepton. Never one to shy away from controversy, Lepton was already associated with some of the top names in the business before he began assembling the band that would ultimately change the course of popular music in Scronkey forever. A brief look at his upbringing serves to show what turned him into one of the best in the management game.

Born in the East End of London sometime in the late thirties (no one has ever found a birth certificate to verify the date), Lepton never knew his father. An aunt believed the man to be a Russian badger breeder known as Smolenkoff. This should be taken with a pinch of salt as the old woman was in the throes of terminal velocity when she gave her interview. Lepton himself claimed to be the son of a politician “high up in the government, know what I mean”. Again, the truth of the statement cannot be certain as Lepton is a shameless self-publicist – once asserting to be the father of four pandas on show atBeijing zoo. His mother, Edith Lepton, sums it up best by describing the mystery man as part of a band of strolling minstrels that passed through one summer…

Young Lepton had to contend with the Blitz, a disjointed education and a chronic shortage of spangles. TheEast End was no place for a young boy; you had to grow up fast. By his early teens Lepton had already worked as a Barrow Boy dispensing native cockney wit to passers by, a bookie’s runner and a shady link in the famous Whitechapel numbers game. Rumours of a custodial sentence around this time have never been denied by Lepton himself.

1954 saw Lepton working as a doorman at the Pink Pussycat Strip club in the fashionable district of Regent’s Chuff. It was here that he started to rub shoulders with celebrities from the world of show business and theLondon underworld. Lepton also had a short marriage to stripper Foxy Lammar. The relationship ended when he caught her showing her ping pong routine to a group of Japanese businessmen after hours. Some say the couple never divorced, throwing a shadow across Lepton’s subsequent personal life. Lammar, interviewed in her back passage in 1978 said, “Brian was a sweetie, but he got very jealous at times…once you marry Brian he never really leaves you. I knew it was over when he started staying out all night to gamble on the frog fighting down in Snagg End. My old dad went the same way, so I knew it was up.”

A connection at the Pink Pussycat got Lepton the job of tour manager for top American Acts of the day when they visited Britain to cash in on the new phenomenon of Rock and Roll. These acts included Jerry Redneck and Johnny Sinclair and the Kidefidlers. In his auto-biography, Sinclair says that Lepton was most impressive for his punctuality and ability to get chips at any time of the day or night.

By the early sixties Lepton was managing the British Invasion that was heading the other way across theAtlantic. “Once Cliff Richard had kicked the door down the way was clear for the Beatles and the Stones to conquer America,” said Lepton in a rare interview in 1967 with Dick Dickinson of “Yeah, Let’s Rock” magazine. Dickinson remembers Lepton as “one switched on dude, man. He was alive to the deadest beats and melodies you ever pulled down from a trip to the stars on a flying cocktail of booze, beer and alcohol. A scary dude, man; saw him crush a pop can in one big bear-sized fist man. Fist like you never saw here, only on Venus, man. Dude knew a magic carpet ride when saw one, man. He was up there and he was never coming down, man. He was taking everybody higher than that, man. Higher than a magic carpet, man! Can you believe that dude, man? Oh, man!” Dickinson is still receiving the best care available.

However 1965 saw a turn of fortune against Lepton and his aspirations to rule the rock and roll roost. His up and coming act The BirdDogs deserted him on the eve of releasing their monster international hit, “Baby let’s play doctors and nurses (if your mama don’t mind)”. Instead they signed to the Bog Standard label and set off on tour without him.

Unperturbed and denying rumours that he was behind the unsuccessful attempt to blow up the stage at the BirdDogs’ Shea Stadium appearance, Lepton set about putting together a new group that would redefine the boundaries of the rock genre, playing with more broken gear than anyone ever before, tie-dyeing more clothes than ever before and eating more chips than a canteen full of school children with no set menu. Excess would be the key and Lepton would help unpick the lock.

A contact sent Lepton scouting to the Nateby Rhythm and Blues Festival in the scorching summer of 1965, forever immortalized as the Summer of Moderate Affection. His mission was to check out a young guitarslinger with local outfit Billy Higginbottom and the Hi-tones. They were no great shakes a combo, pumping out second division versions of hits like Joey Bugle’s “Where’s my Baby with my drainpipe keks?” or theAnglias 1964 hit “Exhaustpipe Blues”. However, stood to corner of the stage, clad from head to toe in black and sporting trend breaking shoulder length hair was a pipe-cleaner thin youth with a Fender Strat slung against his hip. Lepton knew as soon as he saw the young Vincent Winkle that he’d found what he was looking for. That unquantifiable ingredient was there – the look, the swagger and the self-confidence oozed into the audience. Oh, and did I say that Winkle was ripping licks off his fretboard like Lepton had never heard, not even in the swinging London scene? Firecracker riffs and crisp chord work that could put the Capital’s top session guns to shame lit up the Nateby evening skies. And Winkle meant what he played. “Here was the genuine article,” Lepton was to say in later years. His next task was to persuade Winkle to leave the comfort of Nateby and his steady job as a mashed potato salesman for the promise of.. what? Some rock and roll dream promised by a man with a cigar and a flash car? Would he play ball?

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