A further section of ‘In Search Of Captain Beefheart’ – A Rock Music memoir.

Posted on by Opher

I have written a memoir based on my life growing up with Rock Music. I’ve tried to describe the times and relate it to what was going on. I lived through it all.

Why not buy the book and see for yourself? Be sure to leave likes and a review on Amazon. Thanks.

In Search of Captain Beefheart: Amazon.co.uk: Goodwin, Opher: 9781502820457: Books

Nowt so weird as Folk – From the Dust bowl to the Thames Delta

1965 was a hell of a year. Ready Stead Go ruled the TV and a non-ending stream of Beat bands took over the charts and the world.

It was the year I turned 16 and got a motorbike which meant I could finally get around and get to gigs.

Donovan appeared as a resident on Ready Steady go complete with his cap and sign on his guitar that said – THIS MACHINE KILLS FASCISTS – both of which he nicked from Woody Guthrie. I liked Donovan and I had this girlfriend Viv who had his album which she later gave to me. I used to go round her place and play the Donovan album.

Viv had an older brother who was in to Big Bill Broonzy and Woody Guthrie. I’d never heard of Woody Guthrie but I was soon getting in to him more than the Donovan. The albums that Viv’s brother liked were Folkways things where Woody is playing fairly safe songs like ‘Springfield Mountain’ with Sonny Terry Brownie McGhee and Leadbelly. There was something about them I liked and I started seeking out other Guthrie stuff and soon found some Guthrie songs that were meatier – ‘The Dustbowl Ballads’

I loved the lyrics they weren’t love songs. Woody Guthrie was writing songs that meant something, that were poetic with an intellectual and political importance. They told stories. They were about people and disasters, organising and putting things right. I loved it. My mind buzzed with them. I soaked them up.

I had discovered someone who I felt sang real songs about real injustice. He was immediately one of my heroes and has never ceased to be.

I bought all his Folkways albums – his ‘Dust Bowl Ballads’ and ‘Columbia River Collection’.

Guthrie was the poet that put balls into the Folk movement. He not only inspired people like Seeger in the 1950s but was the whole basis behind the emergence of Dylan and later influenced Bruce Springsteen, Billy Bragg and a host of others.

Billy Bragg was straight out of the Guthrie mould and burst upon the scene with his rousing political anthems such as Leon Rosselson’s (another singer-songwriter I love) ‘World turned upside down’ and Seeger’s ‘Which side are you on?’ lapsed into more Poppy stuff but re-emerged when he’d been asked to put some Woody Guthrie lyrics to music and record them. He and Wilco recorded the memorable Mermaid Avenue.

Fairly recently I went on pilgrimage to Mermaid Ave in Coney Island New York. The house was no longer there but you could still walk around and pick up the feel of it with its Funfair Park and tackiness. I could feel him there and I breathed his air.

 Coney island 2010

Back in 1965 I’d discovered Woody and I’m still investigating to this day. I always go back to Guthrie. He is a legend.

For Rock to come of age it had to grow out of the love songs and teenage focus of early Rock ‘n’ Roll and start dealing with real issues in a sophisticated manner. The music had to become more sophisticated and complex and the lyrics had to expand. That’s where Woody came in. Almost single-handedly he raised the art of song writing and added humour and a social dimension through a poetry that was insufficiently rewarded.

Woody was a genius. I had found him and been moved by him but my quest was not over.

Woody got me into Folk and Folk, post Dylan, was undergoing a resurgence of interest.

There were two ways it could go. There was the contemporary field with singer songwriters like Bert Jansch and John Renbourn or there was the traditional with the Young Tradition.

It seemed to me that traditional Folk was stilted and set in the past while contemporary Folk was of the moment. Inspired from the roots of Guthrie and then Dylan they were creatively writing songs about the world I was living in. They were telling my stories.

Viv had got me into early Donovan and then two other people got me going into contemporary acoustic Singer-songwriters who were largely masquerading as Folk singers just because they played acoustic guitar.

Firstly Robert Ede leant me the wonderful Jack C Frank album. I immediately bought it and played it to death. It is one of those rare albums that are just perfect with beautifully crafted songs.

I loved Jackson he was a lovely gentle man with a great mind and welcoming smile. I got to meet him in 1969 in Ilford High Road at the Angel pub. It was a great little gig although there were only about twenty people there. Jackson stayed back and we sat and talked with him and told him how great he was.

Jackson had a really tough life. He’d been badly burnt when his school caught fire. Many of his friends had been killed. He’d come to England with the compensation looking to buy classic cars. He’d recorded the one fabled album, performed some gigs, got together with Sandy Denny and then was gone. He later ended up on the streets in New York, got his eye shot out and died penniless of pneumonia.

He didn’t deserve that. He was a lovely talented man.

Supposedly Jackson was meant to be performing with Roy Harper as a guest at Roy’s big break-through gig. He never showed up, never did another concert and faded away.

Then Neil Furby introduced me to Bert Jansch and John Renbourn. I loved Bert’s first and second albums with all the political stuff like ‘Antiapartheid’, ‘Do you hear me now?’ and ‘Needle of Death’. I liked the stuff I could get my teeth into. Folk brought that social bite.

It was the liking of Bert and John that led me to Les Cousins on Greek Street in Soho. Having a motorbike enabled me to get there. It was there that my quest took me to Roy Harper but that’s another story altogether.

Folk changed Rock by adding substance to it. You can see its influence in the Beatles later work. By the end of 1965 I was listening to Beat music that had begun to get more experimental and was getting into Blues and now Folk. The mid 1960s was a nascent period that was about to explode again and I was poised to become more active in my quest. A number of goals were about to be achieved.

Extract from 537 Essential Rock Albums

Posted on by Opher

I thought it was about time I put up a few extracts from some of my books. This one is the first part (I still have to write the second part). I did get a little stick for putting in some ‘best of’ compilations – but in my opinion that is valid. I accept that usually an album is put together with great thought and has a distinctive feel and that a ‘best of’ is often just a random bunch of disparate tracks, but that isn’t always the case. Sometimes I like to listen to a ‘best of’ and find it very satisfying. A matter of taste I guess.

Anyway, here are the next ten of my 537 essential Rock albums – it’s available on Amazon: 537 Essential Rock Albums – Pt. 1 The first 270: Amazon.co.uk: Goodwin, Opher: 9781502787408: Books

Thanks for the ratings and reviews – a writer lives and dies on reviews! Thanks for buying and taking the trouble! I hope you enjoy:

26. Free – The Free Story

This band was so young to be so very good. They were Blues based but the sound they achieved was so much more than that. They had quite a range and repertoire. They are probably best known for ‘Alright now’ with that riff of Kossof’s guitar but they had a range of different sounds that were all equally glorious. I chose this album because it combined a number of the tracks that I adore such as Albert King’s ‘The hunter’, ‘Be my friend’, ‘I’ll be creepin’’ and a host more. They were so good. Paul Rodger’s voice is still one of the best in Rock.

I saw them play once in a tiny pub. There was no stage and they stood there in the corner and did it. There was only a small crowd and I got to stand right at the front. The power shook you. When Paul Kossof stepped forward to do a solo, with feet apart and that anguished look on his face it made you hair jump out of its follicles.

It was a tragedy that they split up and a tragedy that Koss killed himself with his drug taking. We all loved him. He was such a gentle soul.

I remember walking into the dressing room with Roy Harper and him giving me such a welcoming friendly smile. There was none of that Rock Star bullshit.

Another case of what could have been.

But this album shows off some of their best numbers. There were a lot that weren’t included though.

27. Lee Scratch Perry – Time Boom and de Devil Dead

Lee Scratch Perry was responsible for a great deal of quality reggae in the 1960s and 1970s. His Upsetters were renowned and his studios always produced the most experimental sounds. That’s not really surprising when you hear the stories of his prodigious dope smoking.

This album is a one off to me. It was a mixture of spoken intros, great grooves, political and Rasta lyrics, and some brilliant songs and production.

Lee was at his strutting arrogant best. I have heard nothing like it.

I saw Lee last year. He was well in his seventies and still strutting his stuff in the most outrageous costume and a cookin’ band.

This is reggae taken to a different dimension.

28. Rolling Stones – Exile on Mainstreet

The Stones are still one of the greatest Rock bands in the world despite not having produced anything brilliant for years. Their live performances and back catalogue are scintillating and Mick Jagger can still bound about with more energy than your average sixteen year old! Keith Richards guitar riffs (and he wasn’t the main or best guitarist in the original line-up – Brian Jones was) really blast you.

When Brian was ousted in the late sixties it was uncertain how they would go on. They brought in Mick Taylor from John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers and he brought an edge with him. In Mick Taylor’s time with them they went on to produce a great number of tracks that are now considered classics.

They disappeared off to France to escape paying taxes – hence the ‘Exile on Mainstreet’ title. During that time, which was supposedly drug addled and a bit of chaotic mayhem, they managed to record what was probably their greatest achievement. It came out as a double and was pretty much slated as being overblown and uncommercial.

It took time to digest but later when it was in perspective it was possible to see that it was a masterpiece. Mick’s guitar work is searing and the band is raw and aggressive. The sound is seminal and it rocks.

29. Woody Guthrie – Dust Bowl Ballads

Woody was the original social dissident. He wrote the first songs with social content and has influenced everyone from Dylan through to Springsteen and Billy Bragg. Never has there been a social commentator to match him. His ‘This land is your land’ should be the American anthem.

Woody put his heart on his sleeve and his head where it hurts. He believed in equality and took people as he found them. He didn’t care if they were white, black or green. He roamed and rambled, rode the blinds, worked as a merchant seaman, sign writer and labourer and sung his songs on radio shows and picket lines. He was always the same Woody. He believed in the power of the Trade Unions to fight for justice and fair pay and conditions and stood up to the establishment who exploited people for profit. He was a card carrying communist who had a sign painted on his guitar that read: ‘This machine kills fascists!’ He believed you destroyed prejudice, superiority and arrogance through education and not threats.

Woody fought for what he believed in and what he felt to be right and just. He sang his songs on picket lines and in the face of threats and fury. He wasn’t afraid to use his fists or take a blow.

Back in the 1930s the Oklahoma dust bowl was created by over-farming. The farms became unprofitable and the wealthy bankers instead of helping and investing in ways of solving the problem, called in their mortgages and drove the families off the land into destitution. They headed for the land of plenty in California where they were exploited and abused by people who were selfishly out to make a fortune. It was cheaper to buy in goons to break strikes than to pay people a living wage. They were used as cheap labour. The whole story is portrayed by John Steinbeck in his novel ‘The grapes of wrath’. Woody wrote a series of songs about their plight and released them under the title of ‘The dustbowl ballads’. They are some of the best songs ever written and sung with a passion we don’t hear too much of these days.

30. Downliners Sect – Downliners Sect

When the Rolling Stones burst upon the scene heralding the start of the British Beat boom of the 1960s in the wake of Merseybeat they were joined by a host of other R&B bands. The best of these, and sadly the least known, was the wonderful Downliners Sect.

I was fortunate to stumble across their album in a rack at my local record store the week it was released in 1964. There was no means of playing it in the store and I bought it on the strength of the album cover. The long haired band looked just my cup of tea. My instincts were correct. The album was extremely distinctive and utterly brilliant.

Probably because they chose the wrong tracks to release as singles the Downliners Sect did not take off into the charts like the Stones, Animals and Yardbirds did. That might have been OK if they had stuck to their guns and produced a second album of similar material and quality. Unfortunately they panicked, jettisoned their R&B roots and tried to jump on every trend going. The second album was Country – then an E.P. of sick songs – then a Rock album. They lost credibility and merely confused everyone. So we are just left with this one album of driving, highly original R&B. Fortunately it is a classic!

31. Elvis Costello – Armed Forces

One of the brilliant outcomes of the Punk movement of the 1970s was that it enabled a lot of brilliant but overlooked musicians to get a hearing. The Stiff label was set up by Dave Robinson and Jake Rivera to become one of the leading Independent labels. They specialised in recording artists that the industry had rejected. They called themselves ‘Undertakers to the industry’ because of this and had the motto ‘if they’re dead we’ll sign them’.

They were very lucky to get such a good production and great sound with Nick Lowe playing a big part and for a period of time it was as if Stiff could do no wrong. They were exceptionally good at self-promotion with free badges that they gave out with mottoes like ‘If it ain’t Stiff; it ain’t worth a Fuck’.

Declan McManus was one of the brilliant artists that they picked up from the gutter of Rock. He changed his name to Elvis Costello and rewrote history.

There were so many great albums to choose from that it was impossible to select one that I liked best. ‘My aim is true’ the 1977 debut was amazing and I adored songs like ‘Alison’ and ‘Less than zero’ with their clever wordplay. It was followed up with ‘This Year’s Model’ which was equally good with fabulous songs like ‘Pump it up’, ‘This year’s girl’ and ‘I don’t want (to go to Chelsea)’. But in the end I went for ‘Armed Forces’. It had a feel about it that was slightly better and numbers like ‘Goon squad’, ‘Oliver’s Army’ and ‘Sunday’s best’.

Elvis is most definitely one of Britain’s cleverest songwriters. He is a master with lyrics and a number of his albums will feature in my top 400. I saw him live in York a while ago and he still had the whole thing. He had the floor bouncing as he spat out the words and the Attractions stormed.

32. Ian Dury – New Boots and Panties

Another of Stiff’s signings was the incredible wordsmith Ian Dury. He was a one off. Though he is sadly gone the Blockheads are out there keeping his songs alive and doing a great job of it.

‘New boots and panties’ was an incredible debut. I suppose Ian had served his apprenticeship with Kilburn and the Highroads but he seemed to come out of the woodwork fully formed. The album was a masterpiece of varied styles fitting together like a jig-saw. The stand out tracks for me were: ‘Clever Trevor’, ‘Billericay Dickie’, ‘Sweet Gene Vincent’ and ‘Sex and Drugs and Rock ‘n’ Roll’ – though the rest of it weren’t bad neither.

I saw Ian at Bridlington just after the success of this album. He was being managed by Pete Jenner who I knew from his days with Roy Harper and we had a chat.

The show was amazing. The band really rocked but Ian stole the night. It wasn’t so much the great songs or brilliant music – his singing was not so much brilliant as distinctive – but the stage act. He was all dressed up in colourful rags and scarves and jackets and hats and canes with lots of dangly things. He stuffed scarves in his mouth, produced weird things from his pockets, blew whistles and walked about like Charlie Chaplin. Somehow it all fitted together and worked.

33. Eels – Daisies of the Galaxy

The Eels are really Mark Everett with a backing band. I was first aware of the Eels when a friend Dave introduced me to ‘Beautiful Freak’ with its incredible ‘Novocaine for the soul’. I was tempted to chose that or the extremely emotional ‘Electro-Shock Treatment’ but instead I went for ‘Daisies of the city’.

Mark is another incredible song-writer. His life has been one long sad journey which has been well documented in his great autobiography ‘Things the Grandchildren should know’. He has more than his share of death, suicide and cancer and his answer was to pour it all out in song.

The reason I like ‘Daisies of the City’ is that it is a beautifully produced album of nicely constructed songs full of sad optimism. I too like birds and won’t take a single wooden nickel. It puts a tiger in my tank.

34. Billy Bragg – Brewing up with Billy Bragg

Billy Bragg burst upon the scene with his two speakers on a harness on his shoulders and an electric guitar busking in the streets, singing political songs at the height of the miners’ dispute. He was an unlikely Pop Star yet he managed to get a song like ‘Between the wars’ into the top ten and accepted by the ordinary apolitical public.

I like my Billy raw with that distorted guitar and energy. I went off him a bit when he got too refined and the music became sophisticated.

‘Brewing up with Billy Bragg’ sounded like it was sung by a soldier. It had that straightforward style and yet the words were not military; they were more complicated and told the story of class struggle and love.

This was a completely different voice and style to anything I’d heard before. The lyrics were perceptive and distinctive.

I thought ‘It says here’ sums it up. How can you have democracy if you can’t trust the media? The tabloid newspapers control the thoughts of a large percentage of the population. Who owns the media controls the minds of the people. Goebbels knew that. If you told a lie often enough people would believe it.

My faith in the BBC’s objectivity was severely shaken when I saw them deliberately reverse the course of events to misrepresent what had happened at the Orgreave Coke Plant in the miner’s dispute. That was a political decision. They lied to mislead people. It showed that the BBC is not objective. We cannot trust them.

People like Billy Bragg are the voice of reason and integrity. He has my respect.

Brewing up was recorded around the time of the Falklands war. His songs reflected that. We all know that war generates hate.

35. Jackson C Frank – Blues run the game

I was introduced to Jackson C Frank by my friend Robert Ede in 1965. I was lucky enough to see him live in a tiny pub in Ilford High Street with my mate Pete. He was a delight and performed most of the songs on this wonderful album.

Jackson was a warm and friendly man and didn’t deserve all the unpleasant things that happened to him.

This album is a batch of pure delights. The soft lilting songs with great guitar picks and great words are sung with Jackson’s soft and pure voice. It is beautiful and set the scene for all the singer-songwriters who were to follow on in that London scene centred on the Soho club ‘Les Cousins’. These include Roy Harper, Al Stewart and visiting Americans like Paul Simon.

I was knocked out by ‘Dialogue’, ‘Just like anything’ and ‘Blues run the game’.

The tragedy is that he did not really deliver a follow up. His later recordings did not match up to this high standard.