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In Search of Captain Beefheart: Amazon.co.uk: Goodwin, Opher: 9781502820457: Books
On the acoustic front there were a bunch of guitar specialists, such as Davey Graham, Bert Jansch and John Renbourn, who seemed to be vying with each other over technique. They were joined by American exponents such as John Fahey and Stefan Grossman. I enjoyed them all but preferred it when there were vocals as with the mighty Jackson C Frank and Roy Harper and to a lesser extent Al Stewart. I got along a couple of times to the Horseshoe Pub in Tottenham Court road. They played in the basement for free. It was a lovely atmosphere like friends in a front room. I followed all of them round but never really got into John Martyn or Michael Chapman or on the American side Tim Buckley but I adored Arlo Guthrie, Phil Ochs, Buffy St Marie, Joni Mitchell and Joan Baez. My regret is that I never got to see Buffy, Phil or Nick Drake. It’s always the ones that get away isn’t it?
A highlight of acoustic stuff has always got to be Roy Harper with Jimmy Page doing ‘Male Chauvinist Pig Blues’ at the Royal Albert Hall. It was in a different league.
The Blues bands featured loads at the Toby Jug and I got to see them all from Aynsley Dunbar’s retaliation to Keef Hartley. They all seemed to be off-shoots from John Mayall. But my two favourites were Chicken Shack and Fleetwood Mac. Chicken Shack with Christine Perfect on piano and Stan Webb on guitar always did a faultless version of ‘I’d rather go blind’ and some great guitar work from Stan. But Fleetwood Mac were the stars and I saw them regularly. They had such a good time on stage and got the audience rocking. They were really always three bands in one and later with the addition of Danny Kirwin became four. As an Elmore James lover I was knocked out by Jeremy Spencer’s slide guitar renditions. They rollicked! Then there was Pete Green’s beautifully phrased blues on stuff like ‘I need your love so bad’. Then there was the progressive dimension when they went off into stuff like ‘The green Manalishi’. Utterly incredible. I really enjoyed Jeremy’s Rock ‘n’ Roll contributions and then Danny’s guitar and songs. What a brilliant band. And what a tragedy that Peter got fucked up on acid and Jeremy cracked up and got sucked into that stupid religious cult. They should have gone on forever. Now all we have is the Pop Stadium stuff of that later incarnation and it wasn’t a patch. You couldn’t beat the original Fleetwood Mac rocking away in a small sweaty club with Pete’s brilliant blues licks and Jeremy’s rousing Elmore slide riffs.
I have great memories of Arthur Brown. He’d hit the charts with ‘Fire’ and was due to top the bill at what I remember as being the 1968 Kempton Festival. We had this build up all weekend with the announcer’s telling us how great it was going to be and how we wouldn’t believe it. Well we all knew about the flaming headdress and Arthur being lowered on to the stage from a crane so we were expecting something absolutely spectacular. By the time he came on there was fever pitch. As it happened he was once again lowered on to the stage from a crane which was a bit of an anticlimax. But then there was this great crashing noise and shouts from behind which we all thought was part of the act. Wow!! We were saying, looking round to see what was going on. Arthur had hit the stage running and launched into ‘Fire’. He’d only got a verse in and stopped – shouted ‘Oh Shit!’ and stalked off. What had happened was that a lot of people had climbed into a lighting gantry. It had toppled over on to a series of old corrugated iron sheds which had people on or under. They had collapsed like a pack of cards and a lot of people were injured. On another occasion I saw Arthur and his Crazy World perform at Klooks Kleek. There were only eight of us in the audience but he gave it his all complete with costumes and flames. It was awesome if a little strange. I last saw Arthur in 1999 touring with Cheryl Beer and Tim Rose. He came in with long gown carrying a lantern on a pole while his two accompanists drummed a rhythm on the backs of their guitars and launched into a brilliant version of Dylan’s ‘A Hard Rains-a-gonna fall’.
Tim Rose came over in the late 60s and I caught him doing a great set that included ‘Come away Melinda’ and ‘Morning Dew’.
All those interminable twenty minute drum solos could be a bit hard on the patience but occasionally things went well. A stand out was hearing Ginger Baker and Phil Seaman battle it out in a battle of the drums to see who was king. Another stand out was Keith Moon at Roy Harper’s Rainbow concert. I was there at the rehearsal and got to meet Keith. He was a really friendly, bubbly guy. I also met Bonzo who was a bit crazy, Ronnie Lane who was quiet and the rest of Led Zep.
The Deviants were never musically brilliant but they were really political and anarchic and I loved that. They used to play with the Pink Fairies a lot and I remember once seeing them at a free concert in Hyde Park when Twink got up ion the Gantry and dived twenty feet headfirst into the crowd. I was sure he’d break his neck but he got right back up, on stage and playing – nuts!
Another one of my favourite bands was Free. They were amazing to watch live. There wasn’t a weakness. The drumming and bass were consistently amazing. Paul Rodger’s voice was probably among the very best in Rock and Koss was out of this world. I saw them once in a small pub. They were playing in the corner with no stage and the crowd stood all around. They were so powerful. Koss stood in the back playing chords as Paul sang his heart out. Then it was time for a solo and he strode forward out of the shadows with his hair like a lion’s mane, his face screwed up and the power exploding, placing one foot down, and leaning back with a grimace on his face straining every note out of his whole body. He blew you away. I met them all in the backstage changing room at another pub gig. They were actually supporting Roy Harper and I carried Roy’s stuff in, namely one guitar. I was roadie for the day. They were all most friendly and welcoming and I can still picture Koss’s big grin.
There were other various highlights like King Crimson at what was supposed to have been their first ever gig doing a brilliant ‘20th Century Schizoid Man’ and ‘In the court of the Crimson King’. Then there was Black Sabbath doing their whole sacrificial act and Deep Purple at the start of all that heavy riffed heavy metal stuff. Steppenwolf came over, with John Kaye in leather pants, strutting around doing ‘The Pusher’ and ‘Born to be Wild’. I always loved the guitar sound on ‘The Pusher’.
I was also lucky enough to catch Taste with Rory Gallagher’s amazing high-powered guitar.
The Nice was always a good show. I used to enjoy their act with the burning of the American flag as they played ‘America’ and Keith Emerson symbolically killing his electric organ by stabbing it with knives and getting all these electronic squeals out of it. It was a wonder he didn’t electrocute himself. I remember them playing the Fairfield Halls in Croydon and doing a storming version of Tim Hardin’s ‘How can you hang on to a dream’.
It’s a wonder I’ve got any hearing left at all after seeing the Move. They were so loud that I swear you couldn’t actually hear the songs, they just reverberated through you. You felt yourself physically shaking with the force of it.
Duster Bennet was a great solo bluesman. He had such a great voice and managed to hold a festival audience with his one man blues act. What a loss. He died having fallen asleep at the wheel coming back from a gig.
Crosby Stills Nash and Young gave a scintillating performance with exceptional harmonies. The tour de force was Neil Young’s ‘Ohio’. It was quite a statement. Neil Young himself was awesome the power of songs like ‘Cinnamon girl’ was phenomenal. He was always a rival to Dylan.
I caught Joni Mitchell a bit later. She was amazing but I wish I’d seen her earlier. I saw her with Tom Scott. I never liked her jazzier stuff as much but what a voice and what a song writer.
The Band were brilliant musicians and I loved their stuff and their live performance was spot on but in many ways they were the cause of the end of that great period of time with the Psychedelic and Progressive Rock explosion. After Hendrix and Cream split up it seemed to drift. The musicians were seduced by the Band’s Americana and Country. It would never be as good.
I’m not quite sure how I managed to get a degree. I was never there and when I was I was not in a fit state to learn anything. I don’t think I slept for four years!
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