How rock’n’Roll can you get?

RIP Kim Fowley, the producer behind this No.1 hit from 1962. Hard to imagine now but back then, the BBC considered banning it. A jaunty version of Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker, it was viewed by some as a disrespectful parody of serious classical music. But then Kim Fowley loved to court controversy. He went on to produce the likes of Kiss, The Runaways and Alice Cooper, none of whom were anywhere near as outrageous as he was. In death, he’s proved to be even more so. His dying wish was to have his corpse abused and mutilated by an assortment of fetish models before having his bones and blood set on fire. So if you’re attending the next service at that particular crematorium, probably best not to arrive too early.