It’s just a jump to the left, the protagonist is a scantily clad sweet transvestite and, hot patootie bless my soul, Richard O’Brien’s Rocky Horror Show has now been thrilling audiences around the world for more than 50 years. In fact, right now, Jason Donovan in thrilling audiences as the sassy cross-dressing alien scientist, Dr Frank n Furter, at the Theatre Royal, Sydney, having first donned fishnets and basque to play the role in 1998.
If that has created a bit of a time-warp for the one-time Neighbours’ star and teenage heart-throb, The Rocky Horror Show’s 50th anniversary celebrations, now in their second year, also spurred writer and musician Martin Fitzgibbon to take a trip back in time for his memoir, Behind the Curtain: My Life and Rocky Horror. You see, Fitzgibbon was The Rocky Horror Show’s original drummer and in his book he devotes chapter after chapter to the phenomenon that changed his and so many other lives, sharing, as he does, ‘the essence of being part of a Cult Classic.’
More than half a century on from its London debut in a tiny theatre space no more than a room, Fitzgibbon’s memories and anecdotes are a unique, fascinating and often hilarious insight into the origins of O’Brien’s rock musical, that alone makes it a must read for any fan of Frank n Furter and co, but there’s much more to this book.
Fitzgibbon reveals how he landed the role of lead drummer in The Rocky Horror Show band after a call from musical director, Richard Hartley. He was there in the rehearsal room the first time the now legendary original cast gathered together and there when, in the ballroom of a London Hotel, Tim Curry first sang Sweet Transvestite in front of the full company. He was also there to hear the Time-Warp brought to life and there in the studio when the original cast album was hastily recorded… and he was there when the show premiered at the Royal Court’s Theatre Upstairs on 19 June 1973, after just two preview performances.
He was still there as the production outgrew its 63 seat capacity spiritual home in Sloane Square and flitted to the larger Classic Cinema on King’s Road, and remained on sticks when it settled in its third home, the larger still Essoldo Cinema, just a bit further down the same street.
In his memoir, Fitzgibbon recaptures the excitement and thrill of the opening night as The Rocky Horror Show was unleashed on an unsuspecting world. Acknowledged now as an integral part of the success of the show, his backstage recollections and band’s eye view of that opening night are a valuable and entertaining record of the birth of the musical phenomenon that would see Richard O’Brien, Tim Curry, Patricia Quinn, Little Nell, Julie Covington, Rayner Bourton, Jonathan Adams, Paddy O’Hagan and Chris Malcolm become the hottest cast in town and the show, an overnight success.
Although despite wowing critics and audiences alike, Fitzgibbon reveals it wasn’t everyone’s idea of a great musical – just wait until you read what actor Charles Gray had to say about the show when he saw it, despite later jumping at the chance to play The Narrator in The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
Fitzgibbon’s memories of the show’s early life, of how the staging changed from venue to venue and the way the show evolved to suit each one are priceless, a goldmine of tales and trivia and a peerless peek behind the scenes of O’Brien’s masterpiece that garnered a fair few celebrity fans along the way. The drummer’s tales feature a host of famous names as diverse as Tennessee Williams, David Bowie, Lou Reed, Lauren Bacall, Keith Moon and Mick Jagger, who only got lucky on his second attempt to see the show – on the first occasion, the performance was cancelled when one cast member discovered, painfully, that glitter and genitals don’t mix.
Fitzgibbon also debunks some of the myths to have grown up around that first night and early run of the show and recalls a bomb scare that found band, audience and cast, in full costume, unceremoniously decamping into the cold night air and street outside.
The writer’s time with Rocky is interwoven with chapters in which he paints a vivid picture of growing up working-class in Sixties and Seventies Britain, decades still much influenced by memories of WWII. These autobiographical threads do more than just record his childhood, they provide a sense of the society from which The Rocky Horror Show emerged, defiant and challenging. A time of great change, politically and morally, it was a generational changing of the guard as the free-living baby boomers inherited the world from their parents – in one chapter, Fitzgibbon perfectly captures the trepidation of inviting his always supportive father to see the show. Embarrassingly, he’d be seated beside his son’s then girlfriend during the ‘sexy’ bits? How would he react?
Today, it’s easy to forget just how shocking The Rocky Horror Show was when it first blazed onto the stage of the Theatre Upstairs, but it’s a period that, despite his bittersweet departure, Fitzgibbon recalls warmly, in great detail, and colours brilliantly. What started as a three week gig at £20 a week went on to consume two years of his life and set the drummer on a career that would see him work in almost every musical genre and all over the world. Indeed, he continues to play concerts and record on a regular basis to this very day, abiding by the ethos of Frank N Furter himself, don’t dream it, be it.
Published by Grosvenor House Publishing, Behind the Curtain : My Life and Rocky Horror is available to purchase in paperback priced £12.99 and Kindle format priced £4.99 on Amazon here.
Tickets to see Jason Donovan in Richard O’Brien’s Rocky Horror Show in the Theatre Royal, Sydney can be bought here.
Details and tickets of the UK tour of Richard O’Brien’s Rocky Horror Show can be found here.
