Anecdote – My Arm Around a Rolling Stone

Posted on by Opher

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My Arm Around a Rolling Stone

I used to spend my Saturday afternoons with my arm around a Rolling Stone. Yes it is true. Then later we would strip naked and indulge in a hot bath before imbibing copious amounts of beer.

This was my early life as a hooker.

I used to play rugby. I was good at it. I not only played for my school first team for three years but I was picked to play for Esher Schoolboys. We went on tour and played Saracens, Wasps, Rosslyn Park, Richmond and London Irish. They were tough competitive matches. I played against the England Schoolboy’s hooker.

But for fun, when I was seventeen, I played for a local club called The University Vandals. The emphasis was more on enjoyment rather than winning. We were the rebel club that had broken away from the posh oiks. The games were hard and competitive but there was not the slickness or win-at-all-costs attitude that had pissed me off with Esher. The after match beer was as important as the match.

I was ideal as a hooker. I was small, nippy and quick. I could strike quickly and win that ball. I wasn’t afraid.

To give me the base to work from I needed two sturdy, burly props. They had to be big, solid and build like brick shit-houses. I was lucky. I had two. Ian and Bill. They were as tough as they come and their job was to give me the platform to strike for that ball. They took it seriously. They were twice my size and they looked after me.

Ian had another life. He was an exceptional pianist.

Where his craggy looks and large squat frame did not look the image for Pop Stardom they were ideal as a rugby union prop forward.

Ian Stewart was the pianist with the Rolling Stones. Andrew Loog Oldham had taken one look at him and decided that, with his craggy jaw and short hair, there was no way the teenage girls were going to want to rip his clothes off. He might be a brilliant pianist but he did not suit the image. He was dropped. Except he wasn’t. He did not appear in the credits. He was not officially part of the band, he was not mentioned or photographed with the long-hair, surly crew. The albums were devoid of his image or name. Yet Ian played on those albums. He even accompanied the band, acting as a driver and roadie and playing piano invisibly from the wings.

Perhaps that was just the way he liked it? He was anonymous. He was able to play the music he loved without all the restrictions of fame. He would never have been able to play rugby on Saturday afternoon if he was ‘one of the boys’.

I drifted off to college and left my rugby in my past.

I no longer spent my Saturday afternoons being in a tight clinch with a Rolling Stone.

It wasn’t until a good twenty years later that I noticed that Ian had formed his own band. He was touring and playing the R&B music that he loved. The band were called Rocket 88. They played in Hull and I was going to see them. Not only were they playing that great R&B music I loved but I had hopes of seeing Stu and having a natter about the days of the vandals.

Something came up and I missed it. But that was OK. I’d catch him next time.

Except that sometimes there is no next time. Stu died prematurely of a heart attack. I never got to have that talk and share another beer.

Stu was a great cheerful man with a warm heart. I have fond memories. It is a shame I did not get to see him again.

One lesson to be learnt is that we should always seize our opportunities while we can. We might not get them again.

26 thoughts on “Anecdote – My Arm Around a Rolling Stone”

  3. Hi Opher, I’m a bit confused that a guy of your diminutive height would be a hooker, considering this position’s most important roles are line-outs and scrums. Line-outs need height and the hooker will be about the last guy to get up after a scrum, therefore, not exactly nipping about anywhere. Particularly back in your day, the hooker was a bigger, heavier guy. Doesn’t need to be today with all the rule changes and a bigger guy would now be a waste of a position. However, at your height you should have been a scrum-half.
    I used to help West of Scotland in training where some friends played. I didn’t play – didn’t want to – but I was a very fast runner and the guys would try and catch me tearing up and down the wings.
    Try being the operative word. I wish I had that fitness now.

    1. Me too.
      No. It was OK being little. I was at the front of the line-out. One of our special pieces was for a short throw to the front. I caught it and nipped down the wing. It worked quite often. In the scrum it was an advantage. As I wasn’t bent over so much I could strike easier.
      Hope you had a good solstice!!

      1. Thanks, I’ve had better – been horizontal with a shocker of a chest infection since 23rd. Just managed to get up today. Considering I already suffer from COPD, an infection on the top is a near death experience. A bit like lying at the bottom of a scrum with a 20st prop flopped on top of you. I know what death looks like and it’s overrated.

  5. Oh geez, Opher. That made me all teary… I know exactly what you mean. Exactly. What a shame. Someone once wrote (William Barclay, I believe) that it’s a pity that we wait until death to give the roses we should have given in life. Isn’t that so true? {{{Opher}}}

  6. HNY Opher.
    Just so happens that this has been about the sole topic of conversation these last 2 days as I’m completely housebound and have to stay in the warm until I get rid of this chest infection. So, my younger brother who lives in Germany has popped over for a few days. I think he’d expected a somewhat more active agenda, however, not this time, but he’s been rooting through a lot of albums that neither of us have heard for many years.
    My younger brother Don is a master level acoustic guitar 6 or 12 string player. He stopped playing electric years ago as it held no challenges anymore because of all the effects pedals that can make anybody sound as if they are brilliant. In his spare time when he’s not designing the internal workings of buildings, he jams with all the serious muso’s whom record for the German ECM label. People like Terje Rypdal, John Abercrombie, Pat Metheny, Erberhard Webber etc. If you don’t know ECM, you don’t know anything about technical skill and mastery of an instrument. They don’t make commercial records, hence why nearly nobody knows them as they’re never on any radio station.
    Don jokes that Bert showed people what a guitar looked like as opposed to “teaching” how to play, as that requires more than 3 chords. Don could have easily been lead guitar in some band but he despises most of the plonkers in the rock world as bit-talented poseurs. I think he’s right. He sits and tells me what’s wrong with every player he sees on TV or hears from my records. They’ll all one-trick ponies and this becomes clear after he explains why.
    Don reads the youtube comments, reads a couple of music monthly’s so isn’t entirely switched off from the general consensus of opinion – but he’s fairly certain that joe public really hasn’t got a clue and I find that I have to agree with him.
    As an example, I’d refer to the recent list that you may have seen via the Stormcock list, of the favourite albums of 2015. I don’t think I’d even want to hear one single album on that list never mind buy any of them. It could not be more dull or predictable. All these records were reviewed in Mojo mag, therefore, isn’t that an indication of just how lazy people are that they have to be told what records to listen to? How bloody awful is that? The #1 choice is some young guy that sounds like a cross between John Martyn and Tim Buckley or something. Why would I want to hear that?

    He gives fair criticism of Nick Harper. He is a good player (although personally I’m none too fond of a lot of his terribly “twee” lyrical songs), but Don’s not listening to anything as daft as “lyrics”.
    Nick scores a highly respectable 7, despite repeating himself over and over far too often. Nick is very good at tuning his guitar and he explains why at the first hand to string strike on several of Nick’s records.
    To put this into context, Eric Clapton scores a 2 for his acoustic ability – which I would agree with, he’s nothing special and barely gets off the starting block.
    Roy Harper scores 3.5. Bert Jansch & John Renbourn both score 8. John Martyn a 5. Jimmy Page a 5. Richard Thompson a 7 (could have been higher but he cuts corners to fit in with his lyrics).
    Richard Thompson is probably the very best all-round player ever since the 1960’s. That’s my opinion, whereas, Don reckons it’s some Hungarian person whose name I’ll never be able to spell.

    I’m going to see Robert Plant’s tribute to Bert Jansch show at Celtic Connections in a few weeks time. It’s probably the best idea Plant has ever had.

    1. Hi Andrew,

      Good to hear from you. I hope you are on the mend! Keep warm.
      So where would John Fahey, Stefan Grossman, Leo Kottke, Ry Cooder and Davy Graham score on that scale? Or Blues guys like Robert Johnson, Bo Carter, Son House and even (I know he was usually electric) Elmore James? How does he rate Jimi?
      I’d love to see Robert doing a Bert tribute! Lucky thing!
      For me it is not so much about how technically good someone is but rather how ‘good’ they sound.
      Get well soon!
      Opher

      1. We listened to John Fahey’s Volume 1 Blind Joe Death just yesterday. My 1967 Takoma US mono pressing. Good record, great production. Fahey’s one of these players who never forgot that the bottom end of the guitar is just as important as the top. He’s up there with the top crew.

        Don’s just walked in from a liquid refreshment. Bastard. I’m unable to actually walk as far as the pub. It’s 150 yards too many, too far. My lungs are too full of glue crap as to allow the merriment of a casual saunter for 2 blocks.

        I’m asking him for some scores as I type!

        Fahey gets an 8. Heaps of players have copied him and said nothing as if it was of their very own making. That’s all these Rock poseurs that Don hates. People like the most overrated Black Crowes Chris Robinson (have I got the right brother?), Bon Jovi’s Ritchie Sambora – with Wanted, Dead or Alive and the likes, the Aerosmith arse, whatevershisname.
        Fahey was incredible, pitch perfect and such strength in his fingers. “Sun Gonna Shine In My Back Door Someday Blues” being a great example.

        Grossman & Kottke (who I really don’t like either of them at all – in fact I really don’t like most American players because of that inherent Country infusion thing that they can’t seem to shake off) get a 7. I don’t have any of their records to play. Don’s knows them though and just says “they’re players”, whatever that means!

        Cooder gets a 7.5 for acoustic albums such as Paris – Texas, Alamo, Crossroads etc. His timing is brilliant. Gets a 4.5 for the more commercial records such as Bop Till You Drop and Get Rhythm etc. Lowell George for example was a much better electric slide player than Cooder is on electric.

        Davy Graham, whom we both love, gets an 8.5. His versatility was simply outstanding with these Raga style infusions of east meets west. Hard drugs ruined him in his prime.
        Jimmy Page owes him big time.

        Robert Johnson gets a 4. He wasn’t the best player by a long way, but was the first to be recorded who could give the listener an idea of the future possibilities. His vocal counter melody arrangement with his guitar was quite innovative.

        Bo Carter – neither of us are familiar with him, so no score.

        Son House gets a 2. A rather shambolic approach, poor timing and tuning. Bulk standard on the porch country blues, nothing special except an exuding attitude. He was more a Blues story teller than anything of a proficient guitar player.
        Although, that was actually his objective anyway, so no loss of kudos in that respect.

        Elmore James – one trick pony and quite possibly was eventually upstaged and improved upon by Jeremy Spencer – whom we both like.
        James was good but that was it – the one trick, so a 4.

        Peter Green and Paul Kossoff are 2 of the very best English blues guitar players. Green was exceptional and gets an 8, Kossoff a 7. His performance of Goin’ Down Slow from Free’s debut Tons Of Sobs, gets a 7 anyway, no matter what followed. He was only 18 when he recorded that. Extremely impressive.

        Jimi Hendrix gets a 9.5. Don reckons he was “Phenomenal”.
        And would cite either his Randall’s Island or Isle of Wight `70 shows as prime examples of his ability. Whilst the PA’s are shot to bits and there’s security walkie-talkie leakage coming through the stacks, Jimi (despite being very stoned) is in full concentration pulling out astonishing patterns and rhythms on top of which he’s adding blindingly good lead solo’s. Just one cursory listen to IOW’s Machine Gun tells the listener everything. But the critics have always lambasted these shows because he told the “Purple Haze and Foxy Lady” shouters – probably the same critics – to f-off as he wasn’t interested playing that same old. And that’s seeped down into folk lore, so as we sit in 2016, millions od rock fans have been lead to think that the IOW show was crap. It’s too bloody silly.

        The Hungarian maestro who scores the impossible 10 is/was
        Szabo Gabor Istvan aka Gabor Szabo. Died in 1982 at 45.
        Don worships him whereas I know nothing about him.

        I always thought Marc Bolan sounded great, really great, but as a guitar player he was a joke. So today I could hardly sit down to a Marc Bolan album thinking this guys about to impress me.
        So, no, therefore, today for me anyway and having heard countless thousands of fairly mediocre albums by too many mediocre musicians all using the very same equipment and all sounding the same – I need to hear stuff that’s off that radar. I still have all these verses ‘n choruses albums but they’re on ever decreasing rewards to listen to again these days.
        And I hate, I mean really HATE, all this neo-folky shit that’s being touted around by the media and bought into by fans in their droves. People like this Riley fellow, (he of #1 choice on the Stormcock list) all I can say there is that some folks are terribly easily impressed. Father John Misty, Joanna Newson (utterly ghastly to listen to for more than 30 seconds). The list goes on and it’s all 3rd rate – 3rd hand, re-cycled for the nth time crap. But I’ve never been easily impressed. How could a Roy Harper / Captain Beefheart fan be “easily impressed”. Don Van Vliet would have laughed in my face at the mere suggestion.

        Now playing – quite loudly, too, by sheer coincidence, the “Hot Rats” LP. They don’t make `em like this anymore.
        We both love the drummer on “Willie The Pimp”, John Guerin.
        Oh, and Frank gets an 8. He could jump back and forth into 3 different guitar solo’s all running concurrently at the same time.

        Realistically, you could leave about a dozen players on the stage and all the rest of them could just go home.

      2. That’s brilliant – though I think you underestimate Robert Johnson and I adore Son House and Elmore James. Elmore was a one trick pony but he was so innovative and had such a great sound. I much prefer him to Jeremy Spencer – though I loved Jeremy doing all that stuff – it was about as close as I ever was going to get. Son House is not a great guitarist but to my ears he makes a stupendous noise – so ragged, raw and intense.
        Yeah – I agree with you about the new guys. I never liked Satriani either.
        Jimi’s the best I’ve seen – though I rate Nick highly. Page was very crisp and forceful up close though I’ve heard him sloppy and boring. Davy was like a machine when I saw him though Roy thinks that was probably the result of heroin. I loved both Bert & John. John was a really pleasant guy too.
        What about Jeff Beck and Rory Gallagher? Mick Taylor?
        I’m no musician – which I find is probably good. It stops me getting too analytical and more open to ‘feel’ it. Music doesn’t have to be expert to connect with me. If you want that you probably go classical or Jazz.
        Speaking of which – Django?
        Lyrics are my thing. I love the words!

  7. I’m afraid Robert Johnson did nothing for me. I listened to all 29 songs or however many and was left utterly underwhelmed. My brother is somewhat more forgiving and can accept that the guy was just an alcoholic amateur with a shitty rattly beaten up guitar and recorded in a rush over 2 afternoons, which wouldn’t really be the best time of day anyway to get down home blues’d.
    The score of 4 is Don’s. Left to me, I’d have given him a 2 just for turning up twice.

    Son House – we’ve had a review, sorry, the score and the reason why stand!
    Yea, I know you like him, but that’s only because he was one of the first guys you heard or saw, whatever, and it’s stuck with you.
    Just be thankful I’m over my Marc Bolan trip! He gets a 1.

    Roy was right, Graham was destroyed by hard drugs.
    I knew a former Glasgow booking agent who had worked the 1950’s-70’s. Name of Willie Cuthbertson. When Willie was 68, I was 23, which is when I met him. He knew everybody and anybody in the whole national circuit. I remember him telling me of all those who he wouldn’t take bookings for because they were a “wreck ‘n roll” (his term) high risk. Graham was one of them as he’d take any and all drugs given to him, rendering him utterly incapable of standing up, never mind play a full paying gig.

    Jeff Beck – we’re both of the opinion that Jeff hasn’t made an album of any substantial content since “Wired” in 1976. Don’s bought them all and is still waiting for Nirvana. I gave up at Wired, as brilliant as it was. Jeff gets a 7. He is marvellously skilled, but so bloody boring!

    Rory Gallagher – neither of us liked him, so no score. I’d go as far as to say that Rory sounded like what Tommy Cooper would have sounded like had he not been a comedian instead.

    Now had you asked on Tony McPhee, we’d have to give him a very handsome 6.5. The album “Split” is awaiting it’s turn for a spin.

    Mick Taylor – mmm, difficult one as he was one of these players that went around in circles, up and down the neck and back to where he started from, effectively achieving very little. Skillful player non the less, lovely tone and great control but never the mother of invention. He gets a 5.
    But I’ll play his 1979 solo album again too, as a lot of it is very good.

    We’ve just listened to Steve Hillage’s “Motivation Radio” album. Still sounds so modern, extremely well produced and not a boring second on the whole record. I love that album. I’m giving Steve an 8 because he made so many great albums one after the other. Don rates him at a 4. Bah humbug.

    1. Well Yes – Jeff promises to deceive! I thought that he brought a clear edge to the Yardbirds but failed to deliver. I saw him live with the Jeff Beck group and was unmoved. I liked some of the early albums but they don’t get much turntable action. Yet I really rate his guitar playing.
      I never got into Steve Hillage. I loved Mick with John Mayall and thought he stirred up the Stones into something better.
      I like Rory because he had that raw edge I like – same reason I liked White Stripes and North Mississippi Allstars – they’ve got energy.
      McPhee was good but Groundhogs were variable. I really rate Kossof. Live he was magic – so much power and intensity.
      Robert Johnson – I like a lot but not as much as Son. But Robert was quite a fulcrum point, a precursor. He had influence.
      I like that raw sound of Hooker’s, Muddy and Elmore. I liked Hubert Sumlin’s sound with the Wolf.
      But hey – it wouldn’t do to agree – it’s a question of taste.
      Roy could have been a brilliant, innovative guitarist. He chose not to go down that root and was content to take it where it went. The lyrics were the most important for him. In the early days he had choices.

      1. Of course it’s all about taste. There are other factors at play, as always, but I don’t think you’ve been coloured by popular opinion – and aren’t there a shed load of these people?
        I would have to say though that Jack White is a very poor guitar player. Attitude he’s got loads, but ability? very little.
        He’s absolutely reliant on his equipment – take that away and you got nothin’. You’re listening to $30k of guitars and amps, nothing else. Lenny Kravitz did the same thing 10 years before Jack. He’s like a 2nd wind Johnny Thunders, 10 for attitude, but a 1 for guitar playing skills.
        Of course I liked Hooker, but do I want to hear exactly the same song over and over from 1948 to his death 50 years later? Not really. He took the piss and milked it.
        Both Jr. Kimbrough and R.L. Burnside whipped his ass but got nothing like the plaudits. Kimbrough had blue blood, he knocked 99% of anybody, all the Kings, House’s, James’ into oblivion. Tony Palmer was not wrong when he said this is the real deal. You know who Tony Palmer was, right?

        Incidentally, I never thought Mayall gave Taylor enough space to play properly and had him competing with that damnable brass section that wore a bit thin after a while.
        Taylor was good, a very nice smooth player with a lot of musicality, but terribly dull to watch on stage. Jagger/Richards said much the same thing, too. Plus the fact that he had real trouble ever coming up with any ideas himself. He did write a few bits and pieces but nothing substantial. Jimi Hendrix he could never be.

        I’m not too sure what you mean by saying Groundhogs were “variable”. Or perhaps that’s a good thing in that they didn’t play the same set every night every year. They were one of the UK universities/colleges most successful touring band for many years – so they must have got something right.
        McPhee was one of the most exciting electric players to ever make a record. He owned a hundred and one styles, from steel string slide to searing proto-metal riffs and solos reaching the stratosphere. He was also an extremely good lyricist and another listen to the “Thank Christ For The Bomb” album will prove that. Or his electric powers on “Soldier” as recorded live for BBC radio in 1974.
        He didn’t look guitar hero enough so, therefore, was largely ignored by the thick as shit scheisters that wrote the rock press. Some say that the lowest form of journalism is the music press. I think that’s absolutely correct.
        McPhee just on acoustic could blow Roy off the stage any night. It’s also worth mentioning that for all Roy’s troubadour lifestyle eg, travelling to gigs on the train etc. McPhee would actually bed down for the night – if he could – at the venue he’d just played. He made Roy’s pretentious maverick image look very lame indeed. No hopping off to after gig parties and lording it with girls and a loud mouth like our old poseur Roy was prone to.

        Talking of playing the same set every night, year in year out –
        I think Roy would have liked to have been a better guitar player, trouble is he never got past that Donovan “claw picking” phase and of fundamental importance for Roy, his hands were just a little too small, so he could never have been a master player like Jansch or Renbourn. Neither could Roy ever effectively play guitar properly whilst standing up, so that’s another major deficit.
        In many respects, Roy was his own worst enemy. He blamed Harvest for not breaking him bigger. I think he forgot that he’d stuck atrocious rubbish on his albums, such as “Watford Gap”, it’s unnecessary remake “Breakfast With You” and “Grown Ups Are Just Silly Children” etc. What do you do with that crap? He complained that his single “One Of Those Days In England” was sabotaged. Was it – in the midst of Punk 1977? It was a bad record at the wrong time. It was a clueless stoned hippy stupid choice of a record for that climate. I hated it and so quite rightly did Sex Pistols, too.

        Roy has suffered for years with hot air balloon syndrome. He’s talked consistent shite on too many occasions. He’s been far too obsessed with himself and his art has suffered.
        He never received a good enough classical education to be subsequently wasting his time with his pseudo-musings via the Harper Information Service nonsense that he actively promoted from the 1980’s. He used it as a cheap cover jive shot at Thatcher and the ills of coal miners. Seems he’d missed the day the Labour party shut the entire north of England down with the closure of 2,300 railway stations. He didn’t even manage to write a song about it. That had nothing to do with Thatcher or the Tories, but Roy for all his semi-educated worth utterly failed to ever catch onto that fairly relevant point of absolute social concern. This is where Roy pisses me off no end. I wish he’d made better records. I wish he’d understood that he was a lousy essayist. Seems he was surrounded by arsehole sycophants that either failed to realise this also, or were in fear of never being passed the joint ever again. Roy deserved to get kicked into touch by Punk’s large boot in 1977. He learned not a jot of a lesson.
        Because what did he do come his 2nd wind of a new lease of life and opportunity for Eurospan exposure on multi-channel TV? He stood on stage at Glastonbury in 1982, sporting a fucking cricket jumper, looking like the son of Val Doonigan!
        He looked exactly like the utterly clueless jerk that he’s always pretended he could have been really, if only he’d tried just a little bit harder. If it wasn’t so utterly hopelessly hilarious, one could almost cry at the blind horror of stupidity of such an action. He pissed his best opportunity into the same laundry basket as where his mentality lay. It took years for him to recover from that. Not even Jimmy Page could help. One cannot buy stupidity, but one can certainly try to sell it.

      2. Oh come on! Hooker’s got at least two songs.
        And I like Jack White’s guitar sound. It’s raw and exciting. That’s what I like best.
        Kimbrough and Burnside are amazing.
        I had a chat with TS at Butlin’s Rock and Blues weekend (I know) – he’d had a stroke and couldn’t sing. He had his daughter on vocals and she was atrocious. His guitarwork was still good but she cleared the room in no minutes flat – such a shame. He was very friendly and signed my albums for me. When I say variable – that’s me – I like some and not others.
        Mayall’s horn section used to annoy me too. I like my blues raw guitar. I like Green and Taylor with him. He had some great bands that were always better live than on disc.
        Yeah – you have nailed Roy. He has a big ego. His writing was always a bit too turgid. But his lyrics were superb. His songs were great too.
        He could have done so much more but he kept sabotaging himself, allowing his ego to get the better of him and taking the piss too much. Probably too much dope, partying and pretention.
        He wasn’t like that when I first him – fire and passion!!

  8. Don’t get me wrong – I really liked Hooker and must have discs with more or less all his “sides” under various names for various labels, from 1948 – 60ish. A couple of late 60’s albums and then I bought all his latter albums from The Healer onwards. They were very good indeed.
    By the way – why on earth was Muddy Waters’ 1968 album “Electric Mud” so badly slated by the critics? I thought it was a tremendous piece of really authentic heavy duty modern blues. It had such a dirty live sound.

    I bought Elephant and Get Behind Me Satan just as half the world did too. I do enjoy them but can see through them for what they really are – a bit contrived and forced.

    Basically, and you said it for me, that I didn’t think Roy and dope were very good bed fellows.
    Now considering just how good that last album Man & Myth was, I’m, as I’m very sure you are just as much so too, looking forward to his next project. There wasn’t a wasted second on that album. Perhaps that was because of some editing and production control by the young American (name escapes me now). And I’d like some more of that please!

    I think we’ve been listening to pretty much the very same people for a very long time. Perhaps you stayed true to your love of the blues a lot more than I did.
    I like a lot of Kraut rock stuff, Can, Neu!, Amon Duul II, Faust, Tangerine Dream etc, and the guitar heavies Hawkwind, Help Yourself, Man, Wishbone Ash, Humble Pie etc and stuff stretching into the jazz fields, Brand X, UK, Alphonse Mouzon, Zappa etc.
    And loads of UK 70’s Prog, from Audience through to Yes. Then there’s the hundreds of folk-field albums that are never off my decks – the Fairports, Denny, Richard Thompson, Graham, Martyn, Harper, all Pentangle people, the brilliant Al Stewart. And a couple of lesser known outfits, the Beatles and Stones.
    And some people that are nigh impossible to pigeon-hole, namely Scott Walker. If you havn’t heard the album he made quite recently with Sunn O))), titled “Soused”, do so. You’ll have heard nothing like it before.
    Nick Cave, be it Bad Seeds or Grinderman.
    And the one and only David Bowie. Have you seen his video for “Blackstar” on youtube? Seems to have upset the entire US contingent of the god-squad. Result!
    New album out Jan 8th, his 69th birthday. What a guy. Brilliant mind.

    1. I’d gone off Stripes by Elephant – I liked the first two albums and particularly the live stuff from that time. I agree with you it was too forced – White ran out of ideas.
      I like stuff with great lyrics – lyrics are my thing. Floyd, Beefheart, Drake, Young, Dylan, Ochs ……
      So what do you think of the West Coast Acid Rock guitarists? Melton, Krieger, Cipollina, Zoot, Garcia ……

      1. I have on hard copy, either LP or CD, every single track ever recorded by Floyd, Beefheart, Drake, Young & Dylan.
        My Young & Dylan collections are huge. I never talk about Dylan because he’s so important to me that I don’t feel I ever need to, plus the fact that I’ve come across too many people that tell me that they’re into Dylan, only for me to find out that they know jack shit and only ever heard 4 albums from the mid 60’s. I’ve seen Bob all over the world about 58 times since 1978 at Blackbushe.
        I buy all Neil’s albums, rain or shine. 2012’s “Psychedelic Pill” was very good, but the 3 albums made since that are not so hot.
        I never got around to Ochs much. He kinda fell through the net for me. But I did like Tim Hardin & Buckley, a lot.
        The Doors were one of the very few American bands that I really liked. I have everything they ever recorded. Their “L.A. Woman” album was tremendous. Morrison was such a good singer and as a live performer, simply out there on his own.
        I can’t collect enough live Doors shows.
        The Byrds being another, particularly when the brilliant Clarence White joined them. I have all their albums.
        Spirit being the other US band that were particularly original.
        They continued to make very good albums for many years afterwards and I have all of them. Their “Spirit Of `76” album from 1975 is brilliant.
        So is the later 1981 “Potatoland”, although that was a kinda edited rejig of the unreleased 1972 original. Either version will do.
        Buffalo Springfield were nothing special.
        Moby Grape were quite good but not particularly consistent. Quicksilver, not for me. I could never handle Cipollina’s tendency to sound so out of tune.
        I just never liked The Dead, I just thought they were nothing more than a tripped out country rock band – which is what they were really. Their singing abilities were certainly questionable.
        Basically I didn’t really like very much of that west coast stuff – it was all too samey for me, far too many way out of tune guitars – as heard with both Janis’ bands and the Jefferson Airplane. And some very bad production on their records didn’t help much either.
        I’ve not got much to say for many of the Californian singer-songwriter people either. What an incestuous and overrated bunch they all were. Except for Judee Sill, she cut some good stuff.

        In summary, I thought that in general that the standard of musicianship within UK bands of this period – say 1967 onwards, was so much more further ahead than their US counterparts. The reason being was simply that UK musicians understood jazz, whilst the Americans were mired in basic country music that stuck to them too hard and fast. They couldn’t shake it off and all sounded very similar.
        This made all that stuff far too boring for me.
        Come in Marc Bolan!

      2. Yes – Dylan was the man – a fulcrum point on which music turned. I have so much live stuff that I couldn’t possibly listen to it all!! I never get bored with Dylan (although there are a few periods I dislike – Nashville Skyline I hated).
        I loved the new guitar sound that Barry Melton and Krieger came out with. Then there was Alex St Claire, Zoot Horn, Antennae Jimmy, right up to Denny Walley. I adored all those bands!!
        The Dead, Quicksilver and Grape were largely not my scene. Jefferson had their moments. But Zappa, Captain, Country Joe and Doors blew me away!!

  9. I’m very much with you on all there. No, Nashville Skyline was never a favourite of mine either, nor the follow up, Self Portrait.
    The Captain ran an Academy of brilliant guitar players. He and Zappa had the best muso’s ever. Just Zappa’s list of drummers alone make for astonishing reading. Nobody else ever got a look in.
    It’s also just as incredible that they were childhood friends, too. You couldn’t write the script on that one. It’s too astonishing what these 2 guys brought to the table.
    And all because of a mutual love of Howlin’ Wolf and Johnny ‘Guitar’ Watson.

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