Oxford English Dictionary - "career" (noun) one's advancement through life esp. in a profession
 
  "career" (verb) move or swerve about wildly, eg "to career out of control."

from this   to this to this

 "All my life I been waiting, tonight there'll be no hesitating."

 Rock 'n' Roll discovered him at the age of nine. Previously unexplained
and unexplored neck hairs were stiffening to the alien sounds of "Western
 Movies" by The Olympics and Buddy Holly's "Oh Boy." During his 11th and 12th
 years, while his classmates were twanging the rulers in their desks to Craig
 Douglas and Helen Shapiro, he was getting a taste for Bunk Johnson, Kid Ory
and all that Dixieland jazz.

This, then, is the story of his fall from grace: a life-long addiction to music.

He would fix it whenever, wherever and whatever the format:
Vinyl - 7" and 12" - tapes carbon particles and digital. Hell, the guy'd
even mainlined shellac. It was starting to look dangerous and soon he'd be
 doing it openly in public booths, sometimes sharing his headphones with strangers.
 He coulda been a contender: Doctor of Doo Wop, Professor of Pop or even
 Bachelor of The Blues. But no. He was just another schmuck; a no-hope user
on the street.

 "Ain't That A Shame, Shame , Shame...... Shame, Shame the way you do"

 Right up to his 15th birthday he had his habit under control. Even his folks
 never suspected. It was them who scored him his first acoustic guitar and
within weeks he was cooking up his own stuff. The real thing: Bo Diddley's
 'Road Runner' and - it had to happen - "House of the Rising Sun."

At age nineteen he was hawking his homegrown to audiences in seaside towns
 like Torquay and Lowestoft in "The Corsairs" - a name probably aimed at
the pirate stations. They were a backing band for three 'girl' singers "The
 Chantelles" and opening variety shows for Tom Jones, Englebert Humperdinck
 and Scott Walker on their own then accompanying 'the girls.'
This led to a rigourous tour of US bases in Germany where he would swap
some of his shit with the black GI's.

 "Planet Earth is blue and there's nothing I can do..."

He took a job wrapping blocks for a provincial newspaper company which paid for his rent but not much else and met amiable stringbean Ken from accounts who introduced him to the happening South London music scene.

The Beckenham Arts Lab was set up and hosted by David Bowie, a nice kid with perma-frost blond curls who had a more than half-decent way with a song. “Daddy Stovepipe” was Tony’s chosen soubriquet and a ukulele and acoustic guitar his armoury. Bowie’s “Space Oddity” was sniffing around the Top Twenty’s ass like a bitch on heat but didn’t rise above the lower ‘teens’ and Tony remembers Bowie playing an acoustic set – plus he brought his own WEM pa system! – for two hours one mad night in the Downham Tavern and saw him amply rewarded with three crisp fivers for the privilege.

“Hey, man, that was copasetic!” enthused our hero who was a long way from home (Enfield to the Deep South: don’t even think about it!!)

“Why doncha get yourself a kick-arse band together and go all the way?”

Bowie held him in his blue/green gaze and said: “well, I dunno. You just can’t trust this business.”

 Musta took it on board tho’ cos eighteen months later at the Croydon Star Tony’s new combo Ugly Room with its pig-stabbing feedback howl was playing starters to David Bowie & Hype’s main course.

When things started to go stellar for Bowie (and the re-named Spiders From Mars) Tony got kinda miffed for a while that David didn’t write or call to thank him for his  helping to create Glam Rock but by now it was time to move on.

It was by now the fag end of the 60s when bead and bell was turning into
tank-top. He soon found himself institutionalised. At the Tate Gallery he
did 'art.' - two years with remission - selling posters and cards in the
 Stanley Spencer Correction Wing with all the other deadbeat cons: the Dali
'soft-watches' and the Mark Rothko 'miserybags,' but on the morning of his
release, with the bright Spring sunshine screwing up his eyes, he knew he
was ready to deal again.
 No sooner had his monkeyboots hit the tarmac than he was getting calls:
songwriters wanting to do a line or two with him. Then came the Big One.
He was gonna start his own business.

The Fabulous Poodles ran his habit, first around London, then all across
 Britain and soon he was peddling to 1000s of kids throughout Europe and America.
"Mirror Stars" their album had just entered the Billboard chart and his face
 was plastered on a billboard over Sunset Boulevard.
'Thinking Pink.' All the time. 'Thinking Pink.'
 It was shifting 150,000 units; respectable enough for a debut album.
 They mimed - badly - on Dick Clark's "American Bandstand" TV show.
Every major radio station wanted to chew the fat but our kid wasn't looking
over his shoulder and soon he was taking it up the ass from the big boys.
 It was time for laying the ghost and, to be frank, that was about all the
laying that went down. These boys hadn't done their homework and read their guidebooks. The beefcakes they'd hired to put up the backline were so hot that I think it was the first time in rock history that the groupies fucked
the band to get to the road crew. Even Marty the tour manager was an
unstable cocaine-hoover and had to be restrained from throwing the contents
of his hotel room into the great blue beyond.
"YOU are supposed to stop US doing this kind of shit," cried the bewildered
guitarist/singer.

It finally all went off on the second night at “The Whisky” on Sunset. At the first night’s show there were no CBS execs anywhere in sight and nobody’d told the Poos that it was “Superbowl” night when those who aren’t fortunate enough to get tickets stayed glued to their tv sets  to cheer on the Dallas Cowboys or whoever. They all turned up the following night expecting to feature in some jolly, toothsome backstage shots with the band but Bryn, who’d been pounding his beat-up Eddie Rogers drumkit for three months solid in a faked-up boxing ring under a HUGE pair of pink glasses, started to live up to his stage image and spat the dummy big time. He gave the photo-call a body-swerve and the rest of the band refused to be shot without him so Epic had a bug up their ass which is probably still there to this day. You play the game THEIR way or you’re out of the frame, buddy. End of story, and it was game over for them Stateside.

Drained physically and mentally they returned to Blighty with their tails between their legs. A string of dates were lined up around the country and the band and their management met up to discuss tour support.

“What about Ronnie Golden?” offered up Tony. “Who he?” said the band. “Oh, he’s great. Just one guy with his guitar and a few songs and gags. It’s me!” 

Nobody was convinced but the tour went ahead with, hilariously, some places not having realised that the forty minute opening act in straw fedora and shades was the same singer / guitarist as the one in the headline act! At The Limit in Sheffield they’d worked it out though and refused to pay up and a fight nearly broke out before “Ronnie” grudgingly renounced his promised forty quid. Bastards.

A few songs were written and co-produced by the band– “Talkin’Trash,” “I’ve Had It” and “Stomping On The Cat” - but by now even Blueprint in England had lost the plot and, like their American counterparts, seemed keen to dispose of the cast.

A three-track 45rpm escaped with no options of promotion so Tony organized live acoustic performances in central London record stores as a middle-finger gesture to the label.

After The States and The Big Superbowl Freezeout it was time to recap, sit back and take stock when the dates for Holland came in, and this tour proved to be the swan song for the gang. Tony did “Ronnie” on all the shows and the act was getting stronger but The Poos seemed tired and a lot of the old fire had all but gone. 

On the boat back from Vlissingen they all partook of some very dubious powders and Tony had what can only be termed as a ‘speed psychosis.’ A few days later his girlfriend found him maniacally digging up the back garden at four o’clock in the morning screaming:  “It’s got to be done! It’s got to be done!”

The crazed, paranoid monologues  which were taped sobbing over a cassette recorder should be made available in every rehab centre in Britain. He eventually called his kennelmates and pronounced that ‘it was all over.’ That was it. No big screamouts and no flouncing just total burnout.

“CRAWLING FROM THE WRECKAGE, CRAWLING FROM THE WRECKAGE INTO A BRAND NEW CAR”

Re-named and re-branded he was bumming ‘round for a sorry couple of months when he bumped into saxophonist Ian Trimmer, who played Soho’s “Comic Strip” with demented guitar-slinger Billy Jenkins. “Why don’t you try it?” he said so “Ronnie” auditioned the following Tuesday afternoon and got the gig. Tenner a throw, seven shows a week. Small potatoes but he was back on the chain gang.

This led to “The Comedy Store” late night Saturday shows playing novelty songs with patter to a bear-pit of braying drunks bent on terminal character assassination. This didn’t much worry a man who’d signed the death warrant on his own many years before.

Alexei Sayle was the fearless bullet-headed ringmaster and “20^th Century Coyote,” “The Outer Limits” and French & Saunders all seemed so young and fresh you could almost smell the placenta on them.

Stan Lynch, drummer with Tom Petty’s Heartbreakers turns up to The Comedy Store late show with keyboard wizard Benmont Tench and sees for himself the ‘animal house’ Ronnie’s working to. “Man, you gotta have some balls to do this shit,” he says.

Five years later  bopping to the’ GoGo’ groove of Washington’s finest Chuck Brown & The Soul Searchers in The Astoria, when who should tap our boy on the shoulder but Stan The Man who’s over working with Dylan and Roger McGuinn at Wembley.

“Come down and see us. Last show tomorrow night.” 

“Sorry, man, no-can-do, I’m deejaying over in South London.”

“Shit!” he retorts. “Stand-up comic, rock ‘n’ roller and now deejay – you truly are the Swiss Army knife of entertainment!!”

“I’ll use that on my business card,” laughs Ronnie. And he does.    

Ronnie gets asked to play a ‘kamikaze’ Buddy Holly in breakthrough new BBC 2 series “The Young Ones,” then come two shows titled after his song “Stomping On The Cat.” Some cameos in The Lenny Henry Shows and playing Tracey Ullman’s ‘son’ in first Friday Night Live start to get him back some of the ‘brio’ he’d lost somewhere along the line.

 “I SHOULD GET MY HEAD EXAMINED (SCOODY WOP WOP DOODY WOP WOP”)

 The Dialtones came about from hanging with twisted genius Andrew Bailey and the fine physical comic and actor Mac McDonald when they were playing around all the North London comedy coconut shys. They say about certain special cases “Hey, they broke the mould after they made that guy!” but in Andrew’s case they did it BEFORE! One time after a string of ‘penny geggies’ on the rain-swept streets of Glasgow, Andrew pinned Ronnie against a dressing room wall and threatened to kill him with a coat-hanger.

“C’mon, man, the worst you can do with that thing is hang me up!”

Ronnie dug around amongst his vinyl treasures and soon they were crooning Shangri Las’ songs alongside The Cadillacs’ doo wop meat ‘n’ potatoes. They even worked up a classic operatic version of “My Boyfriend’s Back.” DooWopera. Cool.

THE NEXT INSTALLMENT IS COMING SOON...WATCH THIS SPACE

Click here for the alarming 1965 picture of Tony De Meur in his first band "The Circus"