KARL Dallas reckons he was born a revolutionary. "I was named after Karl Marx and my father was sent to prison for being a communist agitator," he says. With such a family background it's perhaps not surprising that he ended up becoming a musician and writer at a time when rock 'n' roll was supposed to change the world.
Dallas grew up in London and after dabbling in poetry and songwriting got a job as a young reporter for a trade newspaper that just happened to be next door to the offices of Melody Maker. "I used to drink in the same pub and I knew all their guys and one day I heard Lonnie Donegan's song Rock Island Line and I thought it was very important for the future of music and they commissioned me to write an article," he says. It is 50 years since the article, which carried the headline "Skiffle won't die", was published, and to mark the occasion the National Media Museum is hosting a season of music films and documentaries.
During the '60s and '70s, Dallas interviewed many of rock music's icons and his articles regularly appeared in Melody Maker, as well as Rolling Stone magazine. "I would hang out with Pink Floyd, so I would class Roger Waters and Dave Gilmour as friends," he says. "But I didn't like their music very much to begin with so I didn't feel inclined to write about them, that came later.
"I asked them one time why they talked to me but not to anyone else and they said, 'You're not a journalist, Karl, you're a mate'." He claims many of the stars he met were nothing like their popular image. "You can forget everything you think you know about them.
Janis Joplin was lovely but she had such low self-esteem, she would say to me, 'Why do you want to write about me, why don't you write about Bessie Smith?' "I found Jim Morrison very quiet and considered. I asked him once about his persona, I said 'Which is your real persona, the sexy guy on stage wearing the leather trousers, or the guy I'm talking to?
' "And he said: 'It's like when you wake up in a morning and decide what pair of trousers you're going to wear.' "It was a strange thing to say and some might say it's pretentious, but I thought it was profound in a way. Because we all have different personas in the office, with our friends, on the street and at home.
" Sometimes he got lucky, as with Bob Marley. "Everyone had said that he was inaccessible, but I happened to bump into him at a concert and asked him if I could do an interview and he told me to come to his hotel the next day. "We did the interview and people said 'How did you do that?
' and I said, 'I just asked him'." During the 1960s, Dallas was one of the "young Turks" who believed music was going to change the world. "We thought we were part of a revolution and I left the Communist Party because I thought it wasn't going to work, I thought it would happen through rock and roll, which was naive.
" In the 1980s, Dallas developed ME. He became a Christian and moved to Bradford, where his wife was from, and has lived there ever since. The 76 year-old has since recovered and concentrates now on what he calls his own "creative" writing.
In recent years, he hit the headlines for his protests against the war in Iraq. In 2003, he travelled to Baghdad along with 300 anti-war protesters to act as a human shield, in an attempt to prevent Britain and the US from bombing the city. The protesters were heavily criticised and while Dallas admits they achieved little, he believes their cause was a just one.
"When I was in Iraq I could walk down the streets of Baghdad and I never felt frightened. But I wouldn't go there now, not even the Iraqis themselves are safe." Although his anti-war stance remains undiminished, it is music and his belief in its ability to bring people together that remains his greatest passion.
"I have been very fortunate in my life, I have walked with giants and music is still the most wonderful thing in my life." Among the classic music films being shown at the National Media Museum are: The Kids are Alright (Aug 23), Stax Records: 50 Years of Soul (Aug 26 and 29) and Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars (Aug 30). KARL Dallas reckons he was born a revolutionary.
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