For the past four hundred years on the last Thursday in November, America has played host to the biggest harvest festival in the world. The celebration is of course Thanksgiving and it ranks as the country’s foremost holiday. It’s a time when the Patriots gather together to pontificate and to hail the Home of the Brave. Quite naturally, in New York everything is mega-proportioned during this fascinating time. Picture if you will Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade along with the bulging sugared hams and pumpkins pies that mitigate the multitudes. But what about the centrepiece on the Thanksgiving table? Well here’s the skinny, folks. When it comes to turkeys, the U.S. can’t hold a candle to the U.K. Having just arrived back from a flying visit to the old country, I now know that the biggest turkeys in the world are roosting in the U.K. Bearing in mind the time-honoured idiom, ‘man bites dog’, these turkeys are gobbling up the nation’s rationale. That’s because the province responsible for producing such a staggering amount of poultry is none other than the “X-Factor.”

Not being partial to forcible indoctrination, I set out to avoid the x-perience for as long as possible. That remained true until just recently. Without so much as a by-your-leave or ‘what’s on Sky?’, a simple stroke of bad luck subjected me to the programme that we’re told has transfixed the nation. Midway through a family visit I walked into the parlour just as the Sony Watchman was being tuned into Psycho - sorry, SYCO-TV. Never expecting to witness much in the way of talent, I proceeded to sit there open-mouthed as a string of chimera-driven candidates attempted to win the hearts of Mr and Mrs Joe Public. The resulting ordinariness was compounded by the fact that each and every one of the hopefuls was surrounded by a covey of leaden-footed dancers who terped around a set that resembled a launch pad for Standard Fireworks. The most glaring thing of all was the producer’s consensus that pre-owned material was the order of the day rather anything that remotely sounded original. Surely it’s obvious that a watered-down rendering of an Elton John hit, a Motown classic or a Freddie Mercury standard belongs at the very far end of the pier.

It was all too much for a caring soul who sees no good reason why music should be so demeaned. An instant antidote had to be found. The answer lay in a visit to youtube where I dialed up the clip from “The Girl Can’t Help It” where Eddie Cochran cuts loose with ‘Twenty Flight Rock.’ It struck me rightaway that here was another seventeen year-old kid who’d once faced a camera in the name of pop music. The glaring difference with what I’d just seen was that Eddie had been filmed without the benefit of dry ice, or any superfluous hoofers who insisted on prancing through an armoury of pyrotechnics. Back-dropped by a solitary curtain and with just a guitar and an amp to hand, the street smart son-of-a-gun placed his brand on a song that he’d not only co-written, he’d produced the recording as well. Eddie simply exuded confidence, and with a hefty chunk of rock & roll attitude thrown in for good measure he’d unwittingly created the benchmark by which a pop wannabe would forever be judged.

The question is, would Simon Cowell, the beat farmer from Max Factor, have given Eddie Cochran a record deal back in 1956? I doubt it very much. That’s because Simon has never understood and therefore doesn’t appreciate rock & roll. How can I say this with any kind of authority? Well, when I first began producing hit records with Shakin’ Stevens, a young Simon Phillip used to visit the studio where I worked every Monday morning. At the time he was plugging for a newly-launched music publishing company and he would arrive armed with a briefcase full of demos. Unfortunately there was never anything worth cutting in amongst the stash, and he had to turn around and go away empty-handed. Steadfast Simon as we now know ended up a very wealthy turkey farmer, so the rest is mystery. What care he at this stage of the game?

Happy Thanksgiving Pilgrims.