Photo From the September 24, 1971 issue of LIFE

THE ROCK FAMILY AFFAIR

Photography by
JOHN OLSON

JOE COCKER

Joe Cocker comes from a working class district of Sheffield, and still often visits his parents' gray stone house when he returns to England. On-stage, the 27-year-old blues singer is hyper exuberant. Off it, he is cool and withdrawnÑa temperamental mixture of Harold Cocker, his civil servant father who preferred gardening to posing with his favorite son, and outgoing chatty mother. Mrs. Majorie Cocker works afternoons as a waitress in a local cafŽ, so that she can get out and mix with people."

"When Joe left school at 16, I thought he was going to take up gas fitting as a career," she recalls. "I even got him a lot of books on the subject, and he was interested in gas for a time, but there was always the music. That was what he wanted to do. He told me he didn't' want a job where he worked for years and years and then got presented a gold watch at the end. I don't disapprove of Joe's lifestyle. I used to worry a lot about drugs. I've never had them, but I've always said I enjoy a drinkÑand I think it is just the same as having a drink."

"When my parents realized I was mad keen about music," Joe says, "they handed it all over to me. My mother must get a lot of rubbish slung at her, being the mother of me, because she told me of one instance, it was on a bus. But she just answers them back--that's what she does."

Click on a name below and see these rock legends with their parents back in 1971

FRANK ZAPPA      ELTON JOHN      ERIC CLAPTON

THE JACKSON FIVE      GINGER BAKER      JOE COCKER

GRACE SLICK      DAVID CROSBY      RICHIE HAVENS




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