Description
Nero & the Gladiators: Emperor Nero’s Musical Legacy, 2000 Years On Carey Fleiner University of Winchester [email protected] This paper takes as its case study the persistent image of the Roman Emperor Nero (reigned 54-68 CE) as musician and discusses the early 1960s instrumental combo, Nero & the Gladiators. This British group fluctuated in its membership between 1961 and 1963 (with a revival in the 1990s), but was anchored by key members Colin Hicks (singer), Mike ‘Nero’ O’Neill (keyboards) and Rod ‘Boots’ Slade (bass player). The band’s distinctive look was a result of singer Colin Hicks and O’Neill’s sojourn to Italy where they were inspired by the music coming from the Cinecitta studios in Rome. Dressed in costumes liberated from the 1951 film Quo Vadis, they returned to Britain and toured as the emperor and his ‘gladiators.’ This paper will first discuss their brief, but memorable recording career, boosted by a hit novelty record (a rock-beat interpretation of ‘Entry of the Gladiators’), several instrumentals, and a rare vocal-based track, ‘That’s a Long Time Ago’ – the latter reflecting on such Roman luminaries as Julius Caesar and Cleopatra. Then this paper considers the band’s Nero-Roman gimmick in the context of Classical reception, in particular in mid-20th-century Britain (the group had no impact in the pre-British Invasion American charts). The group pre-date the Egyptian/Roman revival that dominated early 1960s cinema and television in Britain from 1963 onwards (including Cleopatra, Carry On Cleo, and A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum and a popular costumer from the BBC, The Spread of the Eagle) that would have an impact on both Classical history and popular imagery in the mid-1960s onwards. Nevertheless, ‘Sword and sandal’ films were quite popular at the time (especially those coming out of Italy and Spain featuring Hercules), Ben-Hur (1959), and Spartacus (1960) as well as the popular children’s novel The Eagle of the Ninth (1954). The context for the discussion here will be the curriculum of Classics in British education in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Questions considered include: What would the group’s audience have known about Nero from schooldays and from television and film? How do the lyrics of the Gladiator’s B-side ‘That’s a Long Time Ago’ reflect general or popular knowledge and imagery of the Julio-Claudian era? Why is Nero also the ‘comedy’ emperor – not just by this group, but in other popular media in and around the time of the group’s heyday? How was the group received on tour and at their shows? Just how far could the ‘gladiator’ gimmick be taken – were there similar gimmicks at the time? How might the experiences at Cinecitta provided an edge for the group in terms of sound at a time when many groups and artists were competing in a crowded field (and amongst a fickle crowd of consumers)? Might any comparisons be drawn between the real Nero’s performances (and reception thereof) and the musical Nero and his group’s performances?| Period | 24 Jul 2021 → 26 Jul 2021 |
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| Event type | Conference |
| Location | Krakow, PolandShow on map |