Bert Weedon

Bert Weedon, the guitarist, who has died aged 91, inspired and influenced the first generation of British post-war pop musicians and, through his bestselling Play In A Day manual, showed them how to strum a tune, thus setting them on the road to stardom.

Bert Weedon in 1965 

An unassuming musician of the old school, Weedon played the guitar with great technical accomplishment but — in the view of some — with all the individuality of a speak-your-weight machine. Consequently not everyone was a fan of the Weedon way, John Lennon, in particular, taking a dim view of his twangy guitar sound.

Nevertheless, many famous figures in rock music — including Keith Richards of The Rolling Stones, Pete Townshend of The Who and Eric Clapton — honed their guitar skills by studying Weedon’s teach-yourself method.

Through his skimpy manual, which first appeared in 1957, Weedon introduced aspiring musicians to the three basic chords that underpinned most of the simple rock and roll hits of the Elvis era, and explained what to do next. As Clapton acknowledged: “I’d never have felt the urge to press on without the tips and encouragement that Play In A Day gave me.” With its red cover, illustrated with a photograph of Weedon with his big white Hofner guitar, Play In A Day sold some two million copies. Its sequel Play Every Day, and updated video and DVD versions continued to provide Weedon with a handsome income well into his old age.

As a television performer in the late 1950s, when he was in his thirties, Weedon cut a curious figure, looking more like a bank manager than a guitar hero. He had crinkly hair, beady eyes, a blob of a nose and a roguish smile, and invariably appeared in a dark suit and white shirt.

In the recording studio, Weedon provided the guitar intros, riffs and solos that punctuated many of the hits of the early stars of British rock and roll, such as Tommy Steele, Adam Faith and Marty Wilde.

Classically trained by a music teacher in the East End of London, Weedon could sight-read, which meant that he was regularly called in to provide guitar backing for many clueless young stars. He also owned one of the few electric guitars in Britain, having imported a heavy custom-made model that had cost him £40 in the late 1940s. In 1959 he had his own first chart success with Guitar Boogie Shuffle, which launched him on a life of touring with singers and groups a generation his junior, many of whom came to regard him as a father figure.

Rejecting their offers to share the drink and drugs lifestyle, the mild-mannered Weedon spent his free time visiting historical sites and scouring local markets to add to his collection of antique silver spoons.

Herbert Maurice Weedon was born on May 10 1920 at East Ham, London. His father, a tube train driver on the District Line, performed an amateur song-and-dance act with the guard of his train, under the name of Weedon and Walmisley. When Bert was 12 his father bought him his first guitar, from Petticoat Lane Market, for 15 shillings .

Having started playing the instrument in the classical style, he converted to the popular repertoire of the 1930s, forming his first dance band with a group of friends in 1934. Because it featured the local butcher’s son on drums, the band was named after the contents of the shop’s deep freeze, playing as Butch Townsend and the Cold Shoulders.

Weedon made his first solo appearance in public at East Ham town hall in 1939. During the Second World War he volunteered for the rescue services and served with them through the worst of the London Blitz. Fumes from German bombs are said to have given him lung problems , which he cured by sitting at the end of Southend Pier and breathing the beneficial vapours from the mud below.

His big musical break came after the war, when he joined Stephane Grapelli’s group as a replacement for Django Reinhardt, then progressed through the rhythm sections of various popular dance bands of the day, including those of Harry Leader, Lou Praeger and Harry Gold. By the early Fifties, Weedon was resident guitarist with the BBC Showband under Cyril Stapleton and worked on regular radio sessions.

Signed to EMI’s Parlophone label as a solo artist, Weedon’s first record, Stranger Than Fiction, was released as a 78rpm single in 1956. As the recording industry expanded, he was much in demand as a session guitarist, backing such stars as David Whitfield and Alma Cogan, as well as visiting American artists including Frank Sinatra, Nat “King” Cole and Judy Garland.

With the coming of rock and roll, Weedon also recorded with Laurie London, Marty Wilde and Cliff Richard. Although Parlophone released a further five of Weedon’s solo guitar singles during 1957 and 1958, none reached the charts.

His fortunes improved when he switched to EMI’s new Top Rank record label in 1959, his cover version of the American hit Guitar Boogie Shuffle reaching No 7 in the British charts in June that year. Further releases fared less well until, in August 1960, Weedon’s version of The Shadows’ chart-topping hit Apache reached No 24. The Shadows acknowledged their debt to Weedon by writing Mr Guitar for him. It entered the charts at No 47 in May 1961 and was Weedon’s last singles chart entry.

Throughout the 1960s Weedon released 14 further singles on EMI’s HMV label, and although two of them, Some Other Love and South Of The Border, came close in 1962, neither was a hit.

At the same time Weedon became a prolific broadcaster, appearing regularly on children’s television shows such as Tuesday Rendezvous and Five O’Clock Club, as well as on radio and fronting his own long-running ITV series. He continued to give live shows at theatres across Britain, and in February 1963 performed in the window of a garage showroom at Salisbury, Wiltshire, for the children of two mechanics who had repaired his broken car windscreen.

Abandoning the singles market, in 1970 Weedon signed to the Contour budget label, for which he recorded a series of themed albums ranging from The Romantic Guitar of Bert Weedon to The Gentle Guitar of Bert Weedon and Bert Weedon Remembers. These comprised cover versions of hits by middle-of-the-road artists such as Nat “King” Cole and Jim Reeves, and sold a quarter of a million copies apiece. In 1971, following a successful live appearance at a rock and roll revival concert, his album Rockin’ At The Roundhouse also proved a bestseller but, as a budget release, was excluded from the British album charts.

In the mid-1970s Weedon’s album on the Warwick label, 22 Golden Guitar Greats, struck a nostalgic chord with British audiences. Heavily promoted through a television advertising campaign, it topped the British album chart for one week in November 1976 and became the bestselling recording of Weedon’s career, earning him a gold and then a platinum disc and selling more than a million copies.

As a middle-aged grandfather, he continued to sell steadily in the nostalgia market, with the occasional backward glance to his rock and roll heyday, as in Rockin’ Guitars, his 1977 single featuring a medley of six rock classics. He continued to release an average of two albums a year well into the 1980s.

For many years Weedon was an active member of the Grand Order of Water Rats, the entertainment business’s charity, and was King Rat in 1992. He was appointed OBE in 2001.

He had two sons from his first marriage, and lived in Buckinghamshire with his second wife, Maggie.

Bert Weedon, born May 10 1920, died April 20 2012

Dick Clark

Dick Clark, who has died aged 82, hosted American Bandstand, the first US television show to feature rock and roll and which became a central cultural reference for two generations of post-war Americans.

Dick Clark surrounded by fans on American Bandstand Photo: AP

6:29PM BST 19 Apr 2012

Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, scarcely any newly-released pop record would chart in the USA without it having been featured on Clark’s peak-time show. Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis and Buddy Holly were among the stars who received their first national exposure on American Bandstand.

Clark invariably favoured the kind of pop that teenagers could dance to over the hairier manifestations of rock, prompting charges of blandness. He promoted a clean-cut image of himself — one critic likened him to “an all-American choirboy” — and always kept proceedings wholesome : girls were not allowed to wear slacks or tight sweaters, boys dressed in jackets and ties, and smoking and chewing gum were banned.

Under Clark’s stewardship, American Bandstand became a national institution. It ran for 30 years from 1957 until the late 1980s, making it the longest-running music show in American television history.

Initially running five days a week in the afternoon before switching to a prime time Saturday night slot in the 1960s, a typical show would feature one or two guest artists who would lip-synch their current hits, chat with Clark about their careers and sign autographs. Shrewdly, Clark kept tapes of their appearances with permission to use them in the future, assembling a valuable archive of early pop history.

Such was the show’s influence in promoting chart success for the songs it featured that in 1959 Clark attracted the attention of a US Senate subcommittee investigating corrupt business practices in the music business, including bribery and payola. They discovered that he owned partial copyrights to 150 songs, including many played on American Bandstand, and had links to music-related companies.

In the end they found that Clark had done nothing illegal, but ABC ordered him to give up his outside businesses or the show. He kept the show, a decision that he estimated cost him $8 million. His holdings included partial ownership of Swan Records, which later released the first American version of the Beatles’ 1963 hit She Loves You.

Curiously Clark never booked the Beatles or the Rolling Stones for American Bandstand. Elvis Presley also never appeared, although Clark did manage an on-air telephone interview while Presley was serving in the US Army.

But no one doubted his entrepreneurial acumen, for Clark was one of America’s most successful media moguls: Dick Clark Productions supplied films, game shows and even beauty contests to the television networks. For some 40 years Clark also hosted a live New Year’s Eve televised outside broadcast from Times Square in New York. For a time during the 1980s Clark had shows on all three US networks and was listed among the Forbes 400 of the wealthiest Americans.

Richard Wagstaff Clark was born on November 30 1929 in Bronxville, New York, the son of a radio sales manager. At the AB Davis high school in nearby Mount Vernon, he joined the drama club and was voted “The Man Most Likely To Sell The Brooklyn Bridge”, on account of his extrovert and persuasive personality. He graduated from Syracuse University in 1951.

Having taken holiday jobs in various radio stations as a student, Clark moved to Philadelphia in 1952 to host a weekday record radio show on WFIL called Dick Clark’s Caravan Of Music. Shortly afterwards, the station’s local television affiliate launched a successful afternoon programme called Bandstand, and when in 1956 the resident host was fired for drink-driving, Clark took over.

The show went coast-to-coast the following year, attracting daily weekday audiences of six million for its simple format, summed up by Clark himself with characteristic brevity: “I played records, the kids danced, and America watched.” Many black entertainers received their first television airing on the programme, now renamed American Bandstand, and it helped to popularise a succession of 1960s dance crazes including the Twist, the Watusi and the Harlem Shuffle.

To supplement his earnings, Clark became a partner in several music-related companies, bought a record-pressing business and a share of a management agency. By the age of 30 he was a millionaire. His company, Dick Clark Productions, went public in 1986.

His image as “the world’s oldest teenager” became strained after Clark was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes in 1994. He suffered a stroke in 2004 .

Twice divorced, Dick Clark had a son with his first wife, Barbara Mallery, and a son and daughter with his second wife, Loretta Martin. He married his business partner Kari Wigton in 1977.

Dick Clark, born November 30 1929, died April 18 2012

Bingu wa Mutharika

Bingu wa Mutharika, who has died aged 78, was an eccentric and wayward president of Malawi who threw away a reputation for being modestly successful and began leading his bewildered country to ruin.

A brittle and mercurial man, Mutharika’s behaviour grew so erratic that some Malawians would question his sanity. He abandoned his presidential palace in Lilongwe not out of shame over inhabiting its 300 luxurious rooms, built for $100 million in a country suffering abject poverty, but because he declared it to be haunted and claimed that invisible rodents were running all over him at night.

Exorcists were duly summoned to this vast residence, set in 1,300 acres of grounds (constructed, in fairness, not by Mutharika himself but by Malawi’s equally eccentric first president, Hastings Kamuzu Banda). A sleepless and terrified Mutharika went to stay elsewhere while his aide for religious affairs urged sympathetic priests to “pray for the New State House to exorcise evil spirits”.

That incident in 2005 might have been put down to a heartfelt belief in the supernatural that remains almost universal in Africa. But Mutharika proceeded to fling rationality to the winds and cast Malawi into an economic and social crisis that blighted many lives.

He began the path to national self-destruction in familiar fashion by condoning the harassment of critics and of the independent press, passing a law that allowed the closure of any publication deemed to threaten the public interest.

Last April, Fergus Cochrane-Dyet, the British High Commissioner in Lilongwe, noted in a cable to London that Mutharika was becoming “ever more autocratic and intolerant of criticism”. Unfortunately for the diplomat, this missive was leaked and promptly appeared in a local newspaper, causing Mutharika to fly into a rage. The best way to disprove the charge of intolerance was, he decided, to expel the envoy for daring to voice private criticism.

This was an unprecedented decision: no African leader in recent memory had thrown out a British High Commissioner. President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe might have revelled in his poisonous relations with London, but even he had never expelled a British envoy, preferring instead to keep them in Harare where they could be lectured on the errors of their ways.

Britain, Malawi’s largest bilateral aid donor, could hardly refrain from responding to Mutharika’s decision. Malawi’s High Commissioner was duly ordered out of London; William Hague, the Foreign Secretary, noted a “worrying sign that the Malawian government is expending its energies in this way, rather than focusing on the real and substantial challenges”.

Foremost among these was a burgeoning economic crisis, which saw inflation reach triple figures . When this led to street protests in Blantyre and Lilongwe last July, Mutharika responded ruthlessly. He banned any gatherings and sent masked members of the youth wing of his Democratic Progressive Party to assault and threaten key organisers. When marches took place anyway, on July 20 and 21 last year, soldiers and police used live rounds and tear gas, killing about 18 demonstrators. Mutharika, utterly unrepentant, threatened to “use any measure I can think of” against his opponents.

This bloody episode was an indelible stain on Mutharika’s reputation. Led by Britain, international donors cancelled their aid, causing the economic crisis to worsen.

Earlier, Mutharika had fallen out with his vice-president, Joyce Banda, who proved to have an awkward willingness to question his decisions. After the biggest demonstrations, she issued a remarkable public statement, on July 23, deploring the bloodshed and sympathising with the protesters, saying: “I hear the voices of the people and I relate to the issues being raised.”

Mutharika promptly blamed her and the opposition leaders for all the violence. “The blood of these people who have died is on you,” he said. “Let their spirits haunt you at night. This time I’ll go after you! Even if you hide in holes I’ll smoke you out!” The protesters, he added, were “led by Satan”.

When national strikes were called two months later, Mutharika’s belligerence was undimmed. “You can’t bully me into submission. Government can’t be taken to ransom by a few disgruntled individuals hiding in the name of civil society,” he said. “If you stop people from going to work, I will deal with you!”

Bingu wa Mutharika was born with the name Brighton Webster Ryson Thom on February 24 1934 in the British Crown Colony of Nyasaland. The son of a teacher, he excelled at school and won a scholarship to read Economics at the University of Delhi, India, shortly after Nyasaland achieved independence as Malawi in 1964. In keeping with the anti-colonial spirit of the era, he changed his name to one that carried a more African ring.

Mutharika joined the Malawian civil service and later the World Bank, taking a doctorate in Development Economics from Pacific Western University in Los Angeles. Given his academic training and his habit of referring to himself as Malawi’s “economist-in-chief”, it was bitterly ironic that economic collapse was the most salient feature of Mutharika’s presidency.

He began his rise in politics in 2002 when he was appointed minister of economic planning and national development in the administration of President Bakili Muluzi. A portly, pompous and cosmically vain main, Muluzi could not come to terms with the fact that the end of his second term was approaching and that Malawi’s constitution forbade him from seeking a third.

Deciding that his country could not manage without his leadership, Muluzi resolved to rewrite the constitution to expunge term limits and allow him to seek re-election. But this gambit failed when Malawi’s parliament admirably refused to pass the necessary amendments.

Muluzi’s “plan B” was to install a pliant and malleable successor – and his eye fell on the studious, technocratic figure of Mutharika. Lacking a power base and viewed primarily as an academic economist, he seemed to fit the bill as a president whom the canny Muluzi could control from behind the scenes.

Accordingly, Mutharika was elected president in May 2004 with the blessing of his predecessor. But Muluzi’s gamble failed in spectacular fashion. Mutharika denounced his patron for trying to be a “back seat driver”, accused Muluzi of corruption and allowed him to be harassed and briefly jailed.

Mutharika walked out of the United Democratic Front, which Muluzi still led, and set up his own Democratic Progressive Party.

Many Malawians despised Muluzi and quietly cheered these displays of independence by his determined successor. Mutharika’s first term as president was generally successful: he managed to increase Malawi’s agricultural output by dramatically improving the provision of seed, tools and fertiliser. This ended Malawi’s dependence on food aid and restored the country’s self-sufficiency, even allowing a surplus for export.

Buoyed by this achievement, Mutharika won re-election for a second term in 2008. Free of the shadow of his predecessor and intoxicated by the acclaim that his agricultural policy had brought, Mutharika’s autocratic and eccentric streak began to show through.

Dissatisfied with Vice-President Banda for her independence, he installed his own brother, Peter, as foreign minister and groomed him for the succession. In a fit of pique last year, Mutharika briefly sacked his entire cabinet and took all their portfolios for himself. Although most ministers were reappointed, this episode showed his liking for keeping his colleagues permanently on edge.

When Mutharika suffered a cardiac arrest in Lilongwe on April 5, his government had no idea who would take over the presidency. Would it be his legal successor, Joyce Banda, or the usurper-in-waiting, Peter Mutharika?

Although Mutharika probably died instantly, his demise was not officially confirmed for two days while his colleagues worked out what to do and the inevitable backroom intrigue took place. During this time, the president’s inert body was flown to a South African hospital, where officials kept up the pretence that he was undergoing treatment.

Britain, America and the African Union all made clear that constitutional proprieties must be observed – and Banda was confirmed as the new president after this unseemly interval.

Bingu wa Mutharika married, first, Ethel Zvauya, a Zimbabwean who predeceased him in 2007. He then married his minister of tourism, Callista Chimombo, in 2010. Mutharika is survived by his second wife and by four children from his first marriage.

Bingu wa Mutharika, born February 24 1934, died April 5 2012