WORDS BY JACK WATKINS
Punk rock energy: The Polecats live at Camden’s Dingwalls in 1980
© Graham Smith/PYMCA/REX/Shutterstock
Anyone who started listening to music in the 70s will have their own point of entry into the British rockabilly revival. Maybe it was hearing the clanky guitar and muffled, throbbing rhythm of Hank Mizell’s Jungle Rock that did it, as the reissued 1958 rocker soared up the singles chart in the spring of 1976. The retro sound of Billy Swan’s I Can Help, a hit a couple of years earlier in 1974, might also have sown a few seeds. And if you were privy to your father’s collection of 78s, discovering Bill Haley And His Comets’ (We’re Gonna) Rock Around The Clock, with its incredible, reverberating acoustics, was a lifechanging experience. For others, it may have been seeing the movie American Graffiti or That’ll Be The Day.