I want you to picture, just for a second, the
absolute loudest, grimiest recording studio in
1970s London. You know, the air is just thick,
the amps are pushed way past their breaking point.
Oh yeah, pure chaos. Exactly, pure chaos. A heavy
metal band is just absolutely destroying the
room with sheer volume. So hold that image in
your head. And now, try to instantly picture
a slick... perfectly polished, incredibly mellow
stage featuring a world -famous, smooth jazz
saxophonist. Right, I mean it's the ultimate
musical whiplash. You're looking at two entirely
different universes there. Completely different,
but what if I told you that the connective tissue
between those two universes was one guy? Wait,
really? One person? One person. I mean, how many
people do you know who can claim to have been
a driver for a rock god, scored a culturally
defining number one hit single, produced a foundational,
blood and guts heavy metal album, and then just
to keep things interesting, casually played session
music for Kenny G? That is, I mean, it honestly
sounds like the resume of four completely different
people. Right. Or... You know, someone who just
wandered into the background of historical events
like some kind of time traveler. Yeah, totally.
But today, we are talking about just one guy.
We're doing a deep dive into the fascinating,
totally chameleonic life of English musician
John David Percy Keen, better known to the universe
simply as Speedy Keen. Speedy Keen. Such a great
nickname. It really is. So looking through our
stack of sources today, we've got biographical
data, historical records, some really extensive
session. notes, our mission here is to map out
the ultimate zeal of rock and roll. I love that
comparison. We really want to understand how
one behind -the -scenes facilitator managed to
quietly, almost invisibly, shape the trajectory
of multiple, vastly distinct musical genres.
So, okay, let's unpack this. Yeah, let's do it.
We really have to start at the foundation, I
think, to understand how proximity to greatness
often sparks opportunity. Right. So Speedy Keene
was born in Ealing, London on March 29th, 1945.
He was educated at Acton County Grammar School.
And right from the jump, he is just immersing
himself in the local music scene. Right. But
he's not an overnight sensation, is he? Oh, no,
not at all. He's grinding it out in these early
working class bands with those fantastic, very
1960s names like... The Crusaders. Yeah, with
a K. Right, the Crusaders, the Eccentrics. He
was in a group called The Second Thoughts around,
what, 1964 and 1965. Yep, 64 to 65, playing alongside
guys like Patrick Campbell Lyons and Chris Thomas.
Which is just classic dues pay. Exactly. You
don't just emerge fully formed as a rock star,
you know, you spend years in these formative
groups and these sweaty little clubs. Learning
the ropes. Yeah, learning how to collaborate,
how to write, and honestly, how to survive the
brutal economics of the music business. because
it's not easy. Definitely not. So his first actual
recorded song comes in 1966. It was a track called
Club of Lights and it was recorded for reaction
records by an artist named Oscar. Who is actually
the actor and singer Paul Nicholas? Yes, exactly,
Paul Nicholas. So, okay, he's got a foot in the
door, he's got a writing credit, but, you know,
a writing credit for an obscure pop track doesn't
exactly pay the London rent in the mid -1960s.
No, it really doesn't. You still need a day job.
And this is where the story takes this incredible,
almost cinematic turn, because his day job ends
up being a driver for Pete Townsend of The Who.
which is wild, and not just his driver, actually.
They shared a flat. They shared a flat, which
is just, it's wild to think about. I want to
frame this for you, the listener. Think of this
like an unpaid intern carpooling to work with
the CEO of a massive, industry -defining tech
company. That's a great way to look at it. Like,
let's say you're driving Steve Jobs around in
1979. Right. You're literally just there to steer
the vehicle and make sure the boss gets to the
office. But you're in the car. You're in the
room. You have their ear. And somehow, casually,
you pitch an idea that becomes the Macintosh.
Wow. Because Keen ends up getting a writing credit
on a legendary album by The Who. But I have to
push back here a little bit. OK, go ahead. Pete
Townsend was notoriously brilliant, highly demanding,
and fiercely protective of his band's sound.
I mean, why on earth would he give the keys to
the castle to his driver? Well, what's fascinating
here is that Keen's proximity wasn't just a stroke
of dumb luck. It's exactly your point about Townsend
being protective. Townsend didn't just hand out
favors to his buddies. Right. That's not how
the Who operated. Not at all. Yeah. If Keen didn't
have innate, undeniable top -tier talent, Townsend
would never have given him the time of day musically,
let alone precious album space. So what happened?
Well, Keen was constantly playing around the
flat, you know, writing music, working on ideas.
And Townsend heard something that literally stopped
him his tracks. Wow. And it wasn't just any album
space either. Keane writes a song called Armenia
City in the Sky and it gets included on the 1967
album The Who Sellout. Which is just a masterpiece
of a concept album. It really is. And here is
the crucial detail about that track which really
answers your question about how he pulled this
off. Armenia City in the Sky is the only song
The Who ever performed that was specifically
written for the group. by a non -member. The
only one. Wait, let that sink in. Yeah. The only
one. One of the greatest, most fiercely independent
rock bands of all time. A band driven by one
of the most prolific songwriters in British history.
Exactly. And the only time they ever say, yeah,
let's record a track written entirely for us
by an outsider, it's from the guy who steers
the van. I mean, it speaks volumes about Keane's
mechanical understanding of music, doesn't it?
He didn't just write a good song, he wrote a
good song specifically for the Who. Right, tailored
to them. He completely understood the architecture
of their sound. You know, the phonetic energy,
the weirdness, those psychedelic elements that
were brewing at the time. Though it wasn't without
its comedic misunderstandings once they actually
recorded it, right? Oh, right. The Who's bassist,
John Entwistle, used to joke about that. He said,
people thought the heavily processed vocals on
Armenia City in the sky were actually singing,
I'm an ear sitting in the sky. I mean, to be
fair, that sounds exactly like a deeply profound
psychedelic 1960s lyric. It really does. I'm
an ear sitting in the sky. It makes perfect sense
for 1967. Oh, absolutely. But jokes aside, having
a writing credit on the Who sellout completely
shifts your trajectory. It totally validates
you to the entire industry. Oh, for sure. So,
having written for a massive band, the natural
next step for Keane was stepping out from the
shadows of the flat and stepping up to the microphone
himself. Right. The driver becomes the front
man. Keane forms the rock band Thunderclap Newman.
And he isn't just the singer. He's the singer
and the drummer. Which is where we have to talk
about his staggering versatility. Because doing
both of those things simultaneously is incredibly
rare. Yeah, it is. Speedy Keane was a true multi
-instrumentalist. Over his career, he handled
vocals, drums, guitar, Hammond organ, which is
a massive, complex dual -keyboard electronic
organ that requires serious chops. And he played
various other keyboards, too. I really want to
pause on the singing drummer aspect, though,
because I think people underestimate how difficult
that is mechanically. Oh, it's incredibly hard.
When you play the drums, your brain is actively
splitting its processing power to control four
limbs independently, all while acting as the
metronome for the entire band. Right, you are
the anger. Your physical movements naturally
want to dictate your breathing. But singing lid
vocals requires immense breath control and the
ability to float a melody over the rhythm not
locked strictly to every single snare hit. Exactly.
To anchor the tempo of a rock band while simultaneously
delivering the emotional core of the song as
a vocalist, it is a neurological high wire act.
That's a brilliant way to put it. And he didn't
just pull it off technically. He did it while
delivering an absolute cultural touchstone. In
1969, Keen writes Thunderclap Newman's defining
track, Something in the Air. And it doesn't just
do well. It hits number one in the UK singles
chart. A monumental achievement. I mean, a number
one hit in 1969 places you squarely in the middle
of a global cultural revolution. Totally. It
was everywhere. It captured the optimism, the
defiance, the sheer energy of that specific moment
in history. But you know, here's where it gets
really interesting. Reaching number one in the
UK chart usually defines a musician's entire
life. Oh, yeah. For 99 % of artists, that is
the peak of the mountain. That's the first line
of your obituary. You ride that wave, playing
that one song at festivals for the next 40 years.
Exactly. Yet for Speedy Keen, it was just one
early chapter. I mean, imagine you're in your
mid -20s, you've climbed the mountain, the whole
country is singing your lyrics, but then... the
initial fame subsides. Right. The optimism of
the 60s turns into the grittier, colder reality
of the 1970s. How do you pivot when the world
moves on? Well, initially, he tries to maintain
that solo momentum, which is the logical step.
Sure. He records two solo albums. The first,
released in 1973 on track records, was called
Previous Convictions. And the second, released
in 1975 on island records, was called You Know
What I Mean. I love those album titles, by the
way. They are so remarkably unpretentious, very
conversational, very working class British. Yeah.
Tells you a lot about his lack of ego, right?
Very much so. And, you know, while they didn't
capture the meteoric lightning in a bottle commercial
heights of something in the air, they had real
artistic staying power. Did they? Yeah. Both
of those albums were later released on CD by
Esoteric, which is a cherry red label. That proves
there was a dedicated, hungry audience for his
songwriting. decades later. The music really
had legs. That's awesome. In fact, years later,
a track called I Promise You from that second
album found a whole new life when it was used
in the American TV series The Big C. Oh, wow.
I didn't know that. Which is proof that genuine
songwriting craft always finds a home eventually.
Exactly. But still, the mid -70s are approaching.
The breezy pop rock sound of the 60s is fading
fast. The culture is getting angry. It's getting
heavy and distorted. So what do you do after
you've conquered the charts as a pop rock frontman?
Well, you go behind the glass. You become a record
producer. And you help birth some of the heaviest,
grimiest, most visceral sounds of the entire
decade. Okay, I have to stop you here because
as I was going through the source material, I
experienced genuine cognitive dissonance. Really?
How so? I'm reading this timeline, right? And
I'm looking at the guy who wrote Something in
the Air. A song so culturally optimistic and
breezy, it literally defined 60s pop magic. And
then I look at his producing credits in the late
70s. And what do you see? He produced the eponymous
first album for Motorhead. Yes! Motorhead. The
loudest, dirtiest, most relentlessly aggressive
heavy metal band on the planet. I just picture
him walking into a studio with Lemmy Kilmister
and I genuinely don't understand how Lemmy didn't
eat him a lot. I know, it's such a funny image.
And if that wasn't enough, he also produced the
protopunk classic L .A .M .F. for the heartbreakers.
That is staggering genre whiplash. It really
is a massive shift. Help me understand the mechanism
here. How does the 60s pop guy translate the
raw, chaotic, drug -filled energy of proto -punk
and early metal? It feels like two completely
incompatible species of music. You know, this
raises an important question about what a great
record producer actually does. A lot of people
think a producer is like a dictator who imposes
their own signature sound on an artist. Think
of like Phil Spector in his Wall of Sound. Right.
They make the band sound like the producer. Exactly.
But the truly great adaptable producers don't
do that at all. Keen's incredible value in the
studio was exactly what you pointed out earlier,
his total lack of a rigid ego. Oh, because he
had already been the front man. Yes. He had already
experienced the number one hit. He didn't need
to make Motorhead sound like Speedy Keen. He
was already satisfied. Exactly. He had absolutely
nothing to prove. He could sit behind the mixing
desk and act as a mirror or like a focusing lens
for the band's own chaotic energy. That makes
a lot of sense. And musically, because he played
so many instruments, especially the drums, he
deeply understood the mechanical architecture
of songwriting. Let's drill into that. How does
being a drummer specifically help you produce
heavy metal? Well, heavy metal and protopunk,
which is that fast, aggressive, stripped down
precursor to the punk rock explosion, they are
incredibly difficult to record well. Really?
Why is that? When a band plays that loud and
that fast in a room, The microphones usually
just capture a wall of muddy static. The frequencies
just bleed into each other. You lose the punch
entirely. Oh, I see. But Keane knew exactly how
a song was built from the floorboards up. He
knew where to place the microphones on a drum
kit to capture the physical impact of the kick
drum without it turning to mush. So when he's
working with Motorhead, he isn't trying to polish
them up into a pop act? Not at all. He's using
his technical knowledge to capture their relentless
driving rhythm so it actually translates to vinyl?
Precisely. He was a translator. When he worked
with the Heartbreakers on LAMF, he understood
that the raw guitar aggression was the entire
point of the band. You can't smooth that out.
No, you'd ruin it. He took the visceral anti
-establishment anger of the 1970s underground
and put it onto tape in a way that made structural
musical sense. And he did it completely without
stripping away the danger. That requires a profound
musical empathy. You really have to climb inside
the band's head and help them become the best
version of themselves. It really does. It's brilliant.
He moves from being the pop star into being the
architect for these massive icons of counterculture
and heavy metal. But the story still doesn't
end in the producer's chair. No, it doesn't.
Because as he moves into the later stages of
his career, Keane proves that a true working
musician's life is defined by adaptability, not
just the pursuit of fame. Yeah, he becomes a
highly sought after session musician. Now for
anyone unfamiliar, a session musician is essentially
a hired gun. Right. You're brought into a studio,
often with very little rehearsal time, handed
sheet music or just given a basic chord progression,
and you are expected to play flawlessly, perfectly
matching the style of whatever artist hired you.
It is pure musical utility. You leave your ego
at the door entirely. And again, the sure diversity
of the artists he played for as a session man
is mind boggling. It's crazy. We're talking about
playing for rock legend Rod Stewart. OK, that
makes sense. Classic rock, bluesy, British. Sure.
But then he's playing for the Gothic rock band
The Mission, which is a completely different
sonic landscape. Right. Gothic rock is atmospheric.
It's dark, swirling, heavily reliant on complex
keyboard textures and mood. Totally different
vibe. And then, the absolute wild card of his
entire resume, he plays alongside smooth jazz
saxophonist Kenny G. Which is just, I mean, that's
the furthest end of the spectrum from producing
Motorhead that a human being could possibly travel.
It really is. Smooth Jazz is pristine, it's slick,
corporate and entirely focused on melodic perfection.
So what does this all mean? When you look at
the modern world we live in right now, we are
culturally obsessed with sticking to one brand
or one lane. Oh, absolutely. You go on social
media and the first rule of success is to define
exactly what your highly specific niche is. Stay
in your lane. Speedy Keen's career is an absolute
master class in refusing to be boxed in. His
brand was simply, I make music work. Whatever
the room required, he provided. If you needed
a driving, thunderous rock beat, he had it. If
you needed a dark, gothic keyboard texture, he
had it. Amazing. If you needed a polished, smooth
jazz accompaniment, he was there, ready to play.
And you know, he didn't limit himself to just
backing up. famous rock stars or jazz icons either.
He took that exact same work ethic into the commercial
sphere. What did he do there? He wrote music
for television advertisements. He wrote for TV
programs like a show called Zoo. He also continued
writing actual pop and rock songs for other groups
totally outside of his own spotlight. He penned
a track called Something's Coming Along for the
Swinging Blue Deans and a track called Your Love
for a Group Called Crocodile Tears. He was just
a relentless working professional. He really
was. He treated music as a trade, a craft to
be practiced every single day. Which is the reality
of the industry that rarely gets romanticized
in the movies. You know, the music business isn't
just about the people on the massive stadium
posters. Right. It's a fragile ecosystem sustained
by people like Keen, musicians who wake up every
day and just do the work, whatever the work happens
to be, constantly adapting to keep the whole
machine running. Unfortunately that incredible
work ethic and uniquely varied life was cut short.
We do have to note from the sources, somberly
and respectfully, that Speedy Keen died of heart
failure on March 12, 2002. He was only 56 years
old. It is far too young. You always wonder what
else someone with that level of adaptability
might have done as the industry shifted into
the digital age. Oh man, he would have been fascinating
in the digital era. But the sheer volume of life,
the sheer tonnage of diverse music he packed
into those 56 years, is just astounding. It really
is. When you pull back and look at the entire
timeline we've mapped out today, this 1966 to
2002 journey is just a dizzying zigzag that defies
all conventional logic. It really does. You start
by driving Pete Townsend's van and casually writing
a psychedelic track for The Who. And you step
up to the mic, front thunderclap Newman, and
capture the cultural zeitgeist by hitting number
one with something in the air. Then you pivot
entirely. sitting behind the glass to produce
the grimiest, heaviest, most aggressive debuts
for Motorhead and the Heartbreakers. And then
you finish it all out by sitting in as a session
man for Kenny G providing textures for gothic
rock bands and writing television jingles. I
mean, if you wrote a Hollywood script like that,
a producer would reject it for being too unrealistic.
They definitely would. They'd say the character
was completely unbelievable. It leaves you with
a really fascinating thought to mull over, especially
when we consider how we consume culture today.
Oh, like what? Well. We spend so much time putting
music history into these neat, highly protected
little boxes. The 60s pop box, the 70s punk box,
the heavy metal box, the smooth jazz box. We
absolutely love our categories. It makes us feel
organized. We want to believe that the people
who make heavy metal have absolutely nothing
in common with the people who make pop music.
But if Speedy Keen could seamlessly slip between
the psychedelic world of The Who, the gritty
punk underground, the pop charts, and mainstream
television jingles, how much of our neatly categorized
music history is actually just an illusion? Oh,
wow. That's a heavy thought. What if the distinct
hard boundaries between 60s pop, 70s punk, and
heavy metal are entirely artificial? What if
the whole structure of modern music is just held
together by unsung invisible musical shapeshifters
like Speedy Keen quietly working in the background
sharing the exact same musical DNA across every
genre we think is so entirely different. That
is a brilliant point. The boundaries aren't real.
The musicians are. And Speedy Keen was as real
and as beautifully adaptable as they come. We
want to thank you for joining us on this deep
dive. Yeah, thanks for listening. Do yourself
a favor today. Go find something in the air.
Put on your headphones and listen to it with
entirely fresh ears. Think about the driver,
the brilliant producer, the humble session man
and the legend all wrapped into one incredible
life. Keep questioning the boundaries. See you
next time.