The Legend of Bert Rizla

You know him only from the cool retro synth noises on The Chancellor Metternich's single Gutted No Hollyoaks. But the legendary figure has a long and illustrious career in the music biz. The Stanley Chronicle pays tribute to a musical pioneer and colossus striding the monitors of history.

Timeline

• 1933: Born Bertoli Vincente Riccio in Akron, Ohio to steelworker Francisco Riccio and Betty-Beth Ponson, ice cream saleswoman and cheerleader

• 1951: Awarded Constitutional Medal of Most Terrific Excellentness for valour and pioneering research in noise reduction during Korean conflict

• 1953: Sets up Jelly Roll Studios for $17, using the repurposed tannoy system from Aircraft carrier USS Saratoga as playback speakers and his standard issue bayonet to cut the records. Records Blind Henry Spiderman's Drinkin' Moonshine Spiddly Bo' Diddly and Delta Hoochie Woman Blues, and Jazz legend Winnie Bagel's That Damn Boy sho' be Messin' My Mind. Henry and Winnie soon hit it off, however, moving to a nice semi with levee damage insurance. The blues hits dry up shortly thereafter.

• 1955: Marries high-school sweetheart Cindy Spenser in a drive-thru chapel in Las Vegas, pursued by IRS officials chasing unpaid taxes from Jelly Roll earnings.

• 1956: Allegedly berates and ejects a young Memphis truck driver from his studio for sneezing while the recording light is on. Rizla has never commented on the identity of the young man and his mood changes alarmingly when the incident is mentioned.

• 1963: Sells out Jelly Roll Recordings after a bidding war between Ahmet Ertegun and Jac Holzman. Rizla's conditions of sale includes a clause to the effect that outsider folk artist and bohemian street entertainer Ned the Frightener's "niche market" back catalogue is never deleted - a pact that stands to this day despite the singer's growing criminal record for lewd behaviour in public places.

• 1965: Moves to New York: sets up Sugar Beat Records and has a string of minor hits in surrounding states with The Centipedes' Yeah Yeah, The Beatroots' Hold my Hand and The Rolling Beats' Hey I'll Be Your Man. A merchandising venture falls through around this time due to a damaged shipment of root vegetables laid waste by leggy furry pests.

• 1966: outsells the Beatles at the zenith of their Stateside dominance with "My God, My Country" by Col. Milton DeGrimston and the Band of the US Marines, at number 1 for 18 weeks.

• 1967: Rebrands as Sugar Lump Records and relocates to Pacific Coast Recorders, San Francisco. Becomes increasingly respected as a hitmaker producer, arranger and all-round hotshot; Picks up the Summer of Love's first Gold-seller with The Sherbert Lemon Foundation's psychedelic breakthrough Mavis Grimble's Incandescent Sweete Shoppe, on which Rizla introduces the Electric Sousaphone, the Gravytron and the Air Sitar to pop music.

• 1969: falls in with the LA in-crowd , including wild child Johnny Tornado, scenester Neville Banghowler and gonzo journalist and hellraiser Harry S. Truman, for whom Rizla produces a double spoken-word LP of hip beat poetry and exhortations to organised peaceful dissent.

• 1971: Manages Laurel Canyon-based singer/songwriter Bobby Sunrise, prior to his cashing in on the supergroup fad as Sunrise, Tubbs, Mitchell and Young. Sunrise would later be famous as the (alleged) target of former lover Hester Slush's hit song You're Such an Asshole (aren't you), coincidentally co-credited with B. Rizla.

• 1973: Court case with rival producer/arranger Dirk Steelfender over plagiarism of his haunting jazz-vibe-rock concerto adaptation of Milton's Paradise Lost. Presiding judge rules in favour of Steelfender as (1) he demonstrated successfully that Rizla had copied the notes and key musical themes of the work (later released on the HubbaBubba label as Slinky Dinner Party Swing Sounds), along with the cover artwork and catalogue number; (2) he has by far the cooler name. This stands as a test case in California law (along with McGuinn vs. McGuinn 1968), which is why it is really important to lose the straight and stuffy nomenclature foisted on you by your square folks, and why personal reinvention is at the heart of the American Dream (Blavatsky, A.J., Why Personal reinvention is at the heart of the American Dream, Revolutionary Spring Press, 1974.)

• 1974: Flops with He ain't Tricky, He's my Brother, sung by anodyne country star Willie Oklahoma in the wake of the Watergate scandal and resignation of Richard Nixon.

  Signs Massachussetts hard-rock quintet Red Lobster to newly-formed Sugar Rush Records after seeing them support Alice Cooper. Masterminds the Lobsters' meteoric rise to fame and stadium-filling excess on albums Metanephrops velutinus (1974), Lobsterificus Priapicoso (1976), triple live set Boiled Alive (1977) and Thermidors of Perception (1978), which Rizla produced from his wheelchair following a booze-fuelled firearm incident in the vocal booth. Animal rights campaigners later protest outside the Grammy Awards ceremony against the carnage and destruction of the band's arthropod-themed stage show.

• 1980: Sugar Rush now bankrupt, Rizla decamps to Berlin by way of London, where he employs his engineering and military radio background to great effect in pioneering the Post-punk new wave futurist boom in England. Robot Mistress (aka Essex-born mime artist and vocoder-dependent sci-fi crooner Winston Mogridge) and Coventry-based electronic trio The Eyeless Twins in Gaza spearhead a new movement away from guitars in the charts: Smash UK hits My Shape is Electric, Integrated Circuit Lust and (eerily) Windows XP Service Pack 2 transform the Top of the Pops landscape seemingly overnight: although Rizla is slow to accept the cross-dressing and cosmetic excess favoured by the new wave, famously leaving hi-NRG one-hit-wonder Fiona Slamming (Swindon-born dandy Alfred "Alfonse" deLille, later comedy writer Alfie Lilburn) with a bloody nose for "turning up in chicks' clothes, like some goddamn commie fruit".

• 1985:Red Lobster fail to attend Live Aid; 11th hour phone calls from messrs Geldof and Ure fail to reach a diplomatic solution to the issues of Rizla's demands for an unpaid fee from 1977, seething in-band acrimony, payment negotiations for the robot choir roadies, and a for a shipment of stage-show-bound sacrificial seafood, with advanced refrigeration facilities for the 4-day haul from Tilbury Docks along the North Circular to Wembley Stadium. Unfortunately a breakdown in communication fails to pass on news of the eventual no-show to the haulage contractor, and a container of 13,500 deteriorating crayfish turn up in an Eddie Stobart 18-wheeler during half-time of the Engand vs. Mozambique under-18 friendly, a full week after the global rock event of the century has packed up and gone home. "You have very strange customs" says the Mozambique manager to Des Lynam on Grandstand. Some of the robots make occasional appearances to this day on e-Bay , as the singing Von Neumann family, and on Cher revival hits. Others are less lucky, collected by down-on-their luck fanatics The Eyeless Twins in Gaza in readiness for their not-very-anticipated comeback single Back to my Place (Let's interface)

• 1988: Survives assassination attempt by Ned the Frightener in Chicago, where the disgruntled and by now borderline psychotic poet genius / raving alcoholic has set up temporary residence near the newstand at 58th and 3rd street, preaching a litany of vitriol against capitalism, the music business and "That lousy schmuck from Starbucks who keeps throwing me out" (hear "Schmuckaccino Massacree", Frights in my Tights: the New York bootlegs, Frosties Records FRF02399-2349). Cornered in a basement in the Windy City with Ned and a plastic spoon and fearing for his life, Rizla thinks quickly, recording a set of impromptu songs , snippets of stories interspersed with shouts and karate kicks on his bacon-saving dictaphone, before treating Ned to a slap-up feed at Subway.

  Retreating back to LA, Rizla manages Sunset Strip punk band The Proctologists, whose ascetic and driven lifestyle is in stark contrast to Rizla's increasingly addictive personality. The year ends with a spell in rehab, where Rizla meets second wife Bambi Mandelson, herself resting after numerous celebrated film roles.

• 1990: Advised to seek higher ground and a quiet life by friends and doctors, Rizla soon finds himself back in the saddle, presenting a late-night round-up of exciting new UK alternative music, such as the "baggy" sound of Rusholme's The Sound Flowers, and Didsbury's Weedmongers. Batteries recharged, he is credited on several hit albums of the period, including Tanked Banked and Titwanked by The Whizzspangles, fronted by controversial shambling, acclaimed poet of the E-generation and chemical pioneer Zeebs Delaney. Rizla's offer to produce Delaney's next album takes them to Riyadh, where Zeebs disappears in a truck marked Dilithium Benzo-Trimethylanelene - Highly Dangerous and Rizla, transporting the band's rider, is forced to draw on his former military experience in distancing himself from the Middle East as quickly as he can at a time of worrying political unrest. The final insult comes when his nighttime flight to freedom is threatened by a knee injury caused by taking a tumble over the outsized hems of his charges' day-glo trousers.
  "frickin' dope chewin' whale-savin' hippy asswipes" he snarls as he hobbles gamely into the desert.
  A stick figure cartoon of the beleagured producer in retreat is hastily drawn by Gus Nobbs, stoned dancer of the WhizzSpangles, and it becomes the best selling t-shirt design of the era. Rizla spends less than 24 hours in the UK before taking the first available flight out again in the interests of the safety of the student population, who have taken to sporting his image en masse.