I take great pleasure in announcing that my Ian Dury book is now finally available on Amazon and all book shops!
Ian Dury On Track: Every Album, Every Song: Amazon.co.uk: Goodwin, Opher: 9781789523744: Books
I have signed copies is anybody would like one!
Hi everyone, sorry about this. There has been a problem at the printers. The Ian Dury book is delated until 31st December.
I have spoken to Sonibond publishers. It is available on eBook now and out in paperback on the 31st.
Sorry again for the delay. Very frustrating.
Ian Dury On Track: Every Album, Every Song: Amazon.co.uk: Goodwin, Opher: 9781789523744: Books
Fabulous to at last hold in my hands the results of hundreds of hours of research, listening and writing. I write about the musicians and songwriters that I love. Each of these books takes a couple of thousand hours which follow on from a lifetime of playing the music and seeing them live.
I have listened to every album and every single track that Leonard produced as well as countless live performances and bootlegs. Loved every minute of it.
The research is fascinating. Delving into the lives of the people you admire to find what was the grist for the songs is always interesting.
Pulling it all together to create a book is daunting but thoroughly consuming. There is a stomach churning desire to do justice to the work of the singers who you not only greatly admire but who have played such an important part in your life.
Leonard has been part of my life ever since I first discovered him back in 1968. I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed writing it. It was a real pleasure to listen to the whole of Leonard’s output. It feels so sad that he has gone but he has left us an amazing wealth of wonderful music and words.
This book is a companion to that music.
Thank you Leonard!
Leonard Cohen On Track: Every Album, Every Song: Amazon.co.uk: Goodwin, Opher: 9781789523591: Books
(The book is available in both paperback and kindle)
So where did this begin?
Don Vliet was born on January 15th 1941 in Glendale, California but in his early teens the family moved out to the small town of Lancaster way out in the Mojave Desert.
As a boy he had always been precocious, heavily immersed in art and sculpture to the point when, at the age of thirteen, he was offered a scholarship, all expenses paid, to a European college. Don’s father had a low opinion of art and artists and turned it down. This didn’t deter Don from being involved in art projects in his usual obsessive manner. Once, whilst working on a sculpture, he refused to come out of his room and demanded that food and drink be passed in to him. Don had a strange relationship with his parents, calling them by their first names and ordering his mother about as if she were his maid.
Don developed a great liking for blues music which was unusual for a white kid, particularly in a small desert town like Lancaster. He listened avidly to R&B radio stations and DJ Wolfman Jack’s radio station which pumped out the blues greats like Howlin’ Wolf, Jimmy Reed and John Lee Hooker. Don’s own deep voice and great vocal range were perfect for a similar blues delivery.
At school he met up with Frank Zappa, who also had an interest in blues, R&B and doo-wop. They began collaborating.
Frank was similarly eccentric, experimental, rebellious and go-getting. Nothing was impossible. Imagination was the only limitation. The two of them became involved, listening to R&B and doo-wop, playing instruments and singing.
In 1963 Don left the restrictions of small-town Lancaster to team up with Frank in Cucamonga where Frank had set up a simple studio. The two of them began working on a number of ambitious projects. There was a doo-wop opera entitled ‘I Was A Teenage Maltshop’ and a film called ‘Captain Beefheart vs The Grunt People’ (Grunt People being their name for straight people). Some fragments of these pieces still exist and have been released on a number of albums.
Don adopted the persona of Captain Beefheart. He explained that the name came from one of his uncles who used to lewdly expose himself to Don’s girlfriend, boastfully gripping the end of his penis and saying ‘look at that! It’s a beef heart’.
The early collaboration with Frank came to an untimely end when the studio was raided by police and Frank was arrested for producing pornographic material. He had been offered $100 to make a sex tape – a sum he couldn’t refuse. So, Frank made a fake sex tape with one of the go-go dancers in his band. He handed over the tape, complete with grunts, squeals and squeaking bed springs and was immediately arrested. It was a sting. He had to plead guilty, went to jail for a week and the police used this as an excuse to ransack his studio. That signalled the end of their ambitious projects and Don went back to Lancaster.
Every album, every song, all the information, all the views. This was my opportunity to get my teeth into what was a magical period of time for the greatest songwriter and performer of all time.
I greatly enjoyed researching, reminiscing about Dylan and his fabulous songs. Playing every single track again and listening intently to every single note, was fabulous.
To be able to recount Bob’s life and put it into context with the songs was fulfilling.
What came out at the end was this book. Bob has been a big part of my life and being given a contract to write this book was an honour. I loved doing it!
Bob Dylan 1962 to 1970 On Track (Decades) : Opher Goodwin: Amazon.co.uk: Books
Great day today!! I received a parcel through the post with my Bob Dylan books from the publisher!!
If anybody would like to buy one directly from me I can do you a signed copy for £13 (plus postage)!!
Such a delight to thumb through and see how all that work I did so long ago has come together into a final book! It looks great!!
Bob Dylan 1962 to 1970 On Track (Decades) : Opher Goodwin: Amazon.co.uk: Books
I do enjoy reading the reviews for the book. Gives me a boost! Thank you to all who leave reviews on Amazon and Goodreads. Means a lot!!
country: UK
year: 2021
info:
Mark Hughes
Another title in the rapidly growing list of books published by SonicBond, this time featuring original maverick and friend to a guitar rock god or two, Roy Harper.
As a long-standing Harper fan I know that tackling his discography is not a task for the faint-hearted. With albums going in and out of print, reissues, alternative versions and limited editions, there is a lot to get to grips with. Thankfully Goodwin handles everything with aplomb, clarifying where extra tracks on various re-releases originally stemmed from and where they fit into Harper’s recording chronology. It makes it easy to disentangle the frequently messy and confusing slew of releases from a prolific writer.
Of course, it helps that Goodwin has been friends with Harper since 1967, just after the release of Harper’s surprising debut album Sophisticated Beggar; surprising in that it eschewed the folk and blues numbers that Harper had gained a reputation for from his busking and folk club performances and comprised all-original material. Perhaps more startling was that it also featured a full band in places, not what the folk crowd that had primarily been his audience up to that point had been expecting. These were the first signs that Harper would stick to his own plans and not be pushed into doing what others necessarily wanted or expected.
What will be alien to modern bands is the fact that Harper’s first two albums, released on different labels, were both commercial failures. Yet the musical environment of the time meant that it was the music that mattered and the lack of commercial appeal was not considered a black mark against the artist. He found a longer-lasting home on Harvest Records for his third album, Flat Baroque And Berserk, the first of seven essential albums he recorded for the label over the next decade.
Goodwin’s personal memories and analysis of the songs and albums adds a lot to the book and offer insights that keep things interesting, more than some other titles in the series in being a sterile list of songs. Harper was never an artist that was likely to trouble the singles chart but he did consistently release such items. Although a lot of the songs unique to the format, particularly from the earliest years, have been compiled and re-issued, his b-sides remain some of the hardest items to locate for the collector. In that respect this book is a valuable guide to what was released, and in some cases what has not been released, both of which can be quite frustrating for the searching completist!
I would have liked to have seen a bit more on the live Roy Harper as, despite the brilliance of the studio output, it was on stage that Harper excelled. As at least a couple of the official live albums were assembled from a multitude of recorded concerts, there is potentially a lot of recorded material that remains locked in the vaults. However, considering that recording details and locations were omitted from Inbetween Every Line as all the tapes were mixed up and it wasn’t deemed necessary to sort them out, it could be a major task sorting them out if, indeed, they still exist.
Despite his long recording career, there doesn’t appear to be much studio material left languishing in the vaults and it seems increasingly unlikely that Harper will return to the studio to record a new album, despite how well his last album, 2013’s Man And Myth was received. So it is from these putative live archives that any future releases will presumably be drawn.
As such, this volume can be assumed to be as complete a record of the musical legacy of one of Britain’s finest and most idiosyncratic singer-songwriters as you are likely to find. Written in a relaxed and enjoyable style, it is an easy-to-read volume that will introduce, and re-introduce, the reader to the delights of the Harper catalogue. I certainly dug out a few of his lesser-played albums from my collection and listened to them in a new light after reading the book. And if that is not recommendation enough, I don’t know what is.
Now, back to searching for the missing items. Anyone know where I can find Goodbye Ladybird?
