A slice of ‘In Search of Captain Beefheart’ a rock music memoir – the end of the sixties.

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A slow motion crash – In Search of Captain Beefheart: Amazon.co.uk: Goodwin, Opher: 9781502820457: Books

The 1960s came to an end like a slow motion crash. I imagine it as a huge ocean liner serenely piling into an iceberg. Like in some cartoon the front end just crumples up as it sails into the immovable berg and it just keeps going getting shorter and shorter. It left all us 60s freaks floundering around in the icy waters of the second-rate 70s.

We never thought it would and didn’t really believe it had when it did. It took me years to finally accept. All those dreams, alternative societies, camaraderie and ideals seemed to decay into fluff and get blown away.

All around me was death, sell-out and casualties.

Jimi choked on his own vomit in strange circumstances, Jim Morrison mysteriously died in his bath in Paris, and Janis O.D’Ed in her hotel room, Brian Jones was found suspiciously floated face down in his pool. Even Bob Dylan’s motorbike accident a few years earlier was weird. He’d come back as an impostor! If I had a suspicious mind I might have thought someone had organised all this.

Then there were the walking wounded, the acid casualties like Syd Barrett and Peter Green, the heroin victims like Clapton and a whole series of others.

On the personal front one of my good friends, Jeff Evans, had got really fucked up on Hollis Brown cough medicine and then acid and dope. He developed extreme paranoia and ended up jumping off a bridge into an express train.

The last time I saw him was in the so called summer of 1970 when I was working as a road sweeper. Unbeknown to me I was busy sweeping down his road. He had popped out of his flat and bumped into me. It had been a really warm greeting. I hadn’t seen him for a good year or so. We chatted for a couple of minutes. His eyes looked strangely blown and vacuous but he sounded fine. Then Jeff said that he was going to get a newspaper and I’d have to pop up for a coffee. That sounded good to me. I worked my way up the street and noticed Jeff coming back. He was hiding behind trees and peeping round at me and scuttled into his house. It was weird. I figured I wasn’t going to get that coffee after all.

That night I met up with a few friends and mentioned it. They said that he’d been getting all these flash-backs and paranoid stuff. Rooms melted and there were machines in the walls. He thought people were robots sent to spy on him.

A few weeks later he killed himself.

Lanky was another friend who got into heroin. He just dropped out of sight and mouldered.

It was a pattern I’d see on many occasions. Once into the abyss they’d rarely make it back, at least not as the same people.

There is a fine line in all risks, explorations and quests. A life without risk is an empty life but taking risks without engaging the brain is just plain stupidity.

The optimism of the 60s was fractured. The Beatles split, as did the Doors, Country Joe & the Fish, Love, Cream, Jimmy Hendrix Experience, Taste, Free, Fleetwood Mac, Velvet Underground and numerous others. It was carnage.

There was the bad vibes of Altamont and the decay of San Francisco.

Those bands that were left were lacklustre and becoming boring.

At first we were lulled. Out of the ashes there were some notable tours de force. Lennon’s first two albums were vitriolic and brilliant. George Harrison released a great triple album. Even Bad Company did a couple of great tracks, but in general it was over.

Everyone woke up to the fact that all the sharing and idealism was a lot of lip service to most of the two faced bastards. There were all our heroes jet-setting around the globes with huge mansions and limousines, flying hairdressers in to do their hair before a gig, while preaching equality and sharing. At least the Beatles tried a more egalitarian approach with Apple and got their fingers burnt for all their trouble.

I was a little shielded from it. I had my hero Roy Harper to buoy me up.  Strangely as the scene disintegrated he was reaching his apotheosis with one startling creation after another and I was part of it.

A slice of the Rock Music memoir ‘In Search of Captain Beefheart – The Rolling Stones in the Park

Posted on by Opher

A jaunt in the park

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

I had mixed feelings about the Stones in the Park in 1969. It was like they were taking it away from us. We’d grown used to the small crowds of regulars coming along to frolic in the everlasting sunshine, listening to Roy Harper and outing the odd demon or two. The Hyde Park Free concerts were suddenly becoming mass events and that is not really what they were about. It was nowhere near as much fun being part of such a huge crowd. Those small crowds had felt like family.

We got their early and had a paddle in a boat on the serpentine before making our way into the hollow that formed the natural amphitheatre. It was already packed.

 Opher in the Serpentine at the Stones in the Park

We got in as close as we could but were still a little way back to the right of the stage. We had a good view but I really liked being right at the front.

The concert was OK. I thought Alexis Korner was OK but nothing outstanding. Roy Harper did a good set. The Battered Ornaments lacked Pete Brown. Barking College. King Crimson did a great 20th Century Schizoid Man and a good set. Family were fabulous. But everyone was there for the Stones!

It was a strange one. Brian Jones had been kicked out of the band and replaced by Mick Taylor. Then Brian had been found dead in his swimming pool. There have been all sorts of conspiracy theories going round about that one!

The Stones came on and loads of butterflies were released from cardboard boxes. They seemed reluctant to go and the boxes were shaken and banged. A few fluttered up but it was hardly the spectacle hoped for. Most of them seemed dead.

The band came on and looked a bit nervous with Mick in his white frock. They started off with Mick reading a Shelley poem in memory of Brian and then they kicked in. They sounded a bit ragged to me and the texture was not great. It all sounded a bit thin. I liked Mick’s guitar and really like Honky Tonk Women. I also thought the African drummer was looking and sounding the part.

All told it was a bit disappointing though I’ve heard the soundtrack and that sounded OK. Perhaps it was that the equipment back then was rarely adequate for a big outdoor event. Or perhaps it was that the Stones were under rehearsed and hadn’t quite gelled together yet. Or were they just nervous and defensive following what had happened to Brian. Whatever – it was a start! Their time with Mick Taylor was arguably the best and most creative of their whole career.

Every time the film comes on the telly I look for us. I can see where we were but I can’t find us. It would be quite a shock to see us at that time in all our glory. I was so full of life, optimism and energy. I’d love to go back for a day or two just to feel what it was like to be so naïve and happy.

At the end of the gig we were all told that anyone who picked up two bags of litter would get a free Honky Tonk Women single. Liz and I picked up two bags of said litter and duly presented it to the caravan. A grumpy guy told us there were no more singles. I protested and he went off and got me one from somewhere.

I still have it!

More from my Rock Music memoir ‘In Search of Captain Beefheart’ – Sixties Festivals

Posted on by Opher

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

FESTIVALS

I have Hat to thank for organising a lot of these. Hat’s real name was Francis Jacques but because Hattie Jacques was such a household name everyone called him Hattie and that became Hat. When I was sixteen, seventeen and eighteen Hat always knew where it was happening, who was on and how to get there.

Hat was the epitome of cool back then. At fourteen he had this bit quiff and sideburns. His hair was long enough to reach his chin. He wore skin tight jeans and Cuban heeled boots and not only that but he kept trying to nick all my girlfriends.

Hat and Booker had customised these old LD scooters by taking all the fairing off them, dropping the seat, putting a motorbike petrol tank on and ape-hangers. It created a really low-slung oddity. Hat then put a car windscreen washer on so he could go past people and squirt them. It was particularly effective against bus queues.

Hat organised us going down to Brighton camping after our O Levels. We went to the notorious Brighton Shoreline club and got thrown out. There was this big sign saying ‘WAY OUT’ and Oz thought it was an exit and was yanking at this door. Needless to say it was supposedly cool poster and not an exit. A bouncer took a dislike to Oz’s antics and threw us out.

We picked up three girls camping in the tent next to us and almost got to see Heinz and the Wildcats. It was quite a week.

Hat took me and Liz out on our first date in 1967 to see the Dream at Middle Earth. It was very weird and far out with its lightshow.

Hat organised to go to the Windsor Jazz and Blues festival. I think it was the first festival I had ever been to. I was disappointed that Pink Floyd cancelled but it was an incredible line up the Small Faces were great, the Move were incredibly loud, and Tomorrow were very trippy. I don’t remember anything about Marmalade, Zoot Money, Aynsley Dunbar, Amen Corner or Time Box. I should have paid more attention. I certainly paid attention to PP Arnold though. She performed in a white crocheted dress with black undies (or was it a black crotched dress and white undies?) anyway she was the sexiest thing I’d ever seen and was backed by the Nice. The Nice replaced Floyd and did a great show complete with knives and flag burning. I then didn’t remember Arthur Brown.

It was the final day that stood out for me. Not only were there the wonderful Fleetwood Mac but also John Mayall and Chicken Shack. Then there was Jeff Beck. On top of that we had Donovan and Denny Laine, Blossom Toes and Pentangle.

What a line-up. But it wasn’t that which sticks in my memory. Headlining was none other than the great Cream at the very height of their power. But even that was not the thing that made it so special. It was 1967 and I was 18 years old and out with a couple of mates (Hat and Booker). So we got this empty fag packet and ripped it up into oblongs. Then we wrote PRESS on them with black biro and pinned them on our jackets with safety pins. We walked up to the front and presented ourselves to the security heavies who, unbelievably, waved us through. We spent the entire day in the Press enclosure in front of the stage. We popped backstage to grab a bite to eat and take a pee. Hat had a pee next to Ginger Baker. We didn’t dare go out because we knew we’d never get back in. I got to stand right in front of Clapton as Cream did the best set of their entire lives. I watched the sweat on Jack’s brow and every expression on Ginger’s face as he worked those drums. It was the most awesome gig ever, mainly I think, not just because it was such a brilliant gig, which it was, but because we shouldn’t have been there. Stolen fruit always tastes better!

Can you imagine in this day and age of top security that anyone would wave through a few young kids with biroed name tags? Not in a million years!

Festivals were social events. You went there to hang out, meet people, rap all night, smoke and chill out. The music was as much a backdrop as a focus.

Opher circa 1971

Hat organised us to get to loads, Windsor, Bath, Plumpton, Woburn and Hyde Park. I can’t remember how we got there, who we saw, or where we stayed. I can remember meeting loads of people, sitting around talking and sharing and having a great time. The festivals were a great part of the culture of the day. The music was the backdrop, the atmosphere was brilliant and the vibe was all important.

Festivals were our celebrations when we all came together and were invigorated.

Another slice of ‘In Search of Captain Beefheart – This is Hip & Cool & Occasionally hairy

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

This is Hip & Cool & Occasionally hairy

Some time in your life you have to make a decision whether to be hip and cool or straight.

First it helps if you know what being cool is. It is a commitment. Cool is an indefinable quality that some people have. Jack Kerouac had it, Miles Davis, all the black blues guys, the jazz singers and swingers, black culture was hip, white culture was crap. The Stones, Kinks and Prettythings were hip for a while. The Tremolos, Dave Clark Five and Hollies were never cool.

In the present time anything connected with Simon Cowell is shit. All musicals, tribute bands and chart singers are by definition shit. All things connected with the Voice and Britain/America’s got talent is shit. Abba are not cool. The North Mississippi All-stars, Tinariwen and Nick Harper are cool.

Back in the 60s the Beatles and Stones were cool. For a time during his electric period Dylan was the coolest dude on the planet with his polka dot shirt, shades and frizzed out hair complete with snarling lyrics and attitude.

In the late 60s Hendrix, Cream, Floyd and the West Coast bands were the coolest. The Monkees were not cool.

 Magic Band still cool in 2005

Being in the singles chart was not cool unless you were a Soul singer like Otis Redding or Aretha Franklin. They could get away with it.

An ingredient of being Hip is to be outside the normal boring limits of society and be individual, to have style, a philosophy and a way of life that sets you apart. It’s not about being a dork with a million tattoos, piercing and elaborate beard and hair or wearing outrageous costumes that make you stand out like a turd sticking to a white wall. If you have to try it’s wrong. That’s pretentious.

Being cool has to come from what you genuinely feel inside.

It pisses me off to see the 60s being represented on newsreels by the Carnaby Street plastic weekend Hippies.

The 60s was about a counter culture, an alternative that you either bought into a hundred percent or didn’t. You couldn’t dress up at weekends. You had to live it. It was about the rejection of the grey brigade, the 1950s straight-lace, stiff upper lip culture and replacing it with fun, colour and frolics.

Being hip was liberation from boring society without regard to the future. For a while being cool was associated with Rock culture. That is because Rock culture was so creative and out there.

Of course it was still pretentious, idealistic and doomed to fail but it was also creative, fun and produced a great deal of really great stuff. It spawned equality, women’s liberation, Green awareness and greater freedom.

In 1963 we set about, in our own Thames Delta fashion, being hip.

We started growing our hair, sideburns, beards and getting the tightest jeans we could get our legs in. We wore hipsters and Cuban heeled boots or desert boots. I had jean jackets and leather jackets.

The girls skirts got shorter and shorter, their tops tighter and their hair layered.

It caused chaos at school. I was constantly sent home for having trousers too tight, hair over my collar or sideburns below my ears. At one time I was told to go home and shave my beard of. I shaved an inch down the middle of my chin. 

‘I thought I told you not to come back until you’d shaved your beard off?’

‘I have!’ I protested. ‘These are sideburns and this is a moustache!’

On another occasion I was told not to come back until I had shaved and I stayed off. After three weeks the twagman came round to see where I was and I explained – I had been told not to come back until I had shaved and I hadn’t shaved yet!

The girls had to kneel down in assembly and had their skirts measured to see if they were too short. We all applied for that arduous job.

But fashion is not cool. Some cats have an’ some cats ain’t. But we bought in to the black culture. That was cool. They might be exploited but they knew how to let it all hang out, dress up and have fun. Everyone started to adopt this rather phoney American Black slang, man.

By the latter part of the 60s my hair was down my back, my jeans had frayed out tassels, bell-bottoms and I wore an assortment of stuff that was bright and colourful. I felt good. My parents weren’t too keen. They thought it affected my employability. I didn’t give a shit. I was reading Kerouac, Ginsberg, Rubin and Cleaver. It was the revolution, man.

Rock was cool. West Coast and Underground was hip. Careers and straight society was square.

We looked to our hip Rock bands to show us the way. It doesn’t feel as if there’s much hipness left in Rock culture these days. There’s too much money; too much phoniness. The big labels took it over and sanitised it; they overproduced the crap out of it, marketed it and came up with a product designed to make money.

There doesn’t feel to be any hipness left in the world anymore. It’s all fashion, pretension and froth.

All is phoney.

Life was there for the cool and hip to live, discover and enjoy. Life was there for straight culture to endure.

The 1960s rebellion was a revolt against the grey, class-ridden, over-bearing, claustrophobic culture of the 1950s. We wanted fun, exploration, colour, meaning, and a reason why! ‘Because we say so’ was not enough.

Death to the joyless machine! Long live the right to experience! Opher circa 1967

Nowt so weird as Folk – From the Dust bowl to the Thames Delta (Extract from In Search of Captain Beefheart)

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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.

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

In Search of Captain Beefheart – the London 60s Underground

Posted on by Opher

So now you will perhaps indulge me as I ride the beast of nostalgia and shine the spotlight of imperfect memory to illustrate the highlights that come to mind. It is a feeble, melancholic attempt at best for I fear that most is lost in the fog of time, and that which is remembered lacks the colour and intensity of the original. I am aware that whole gigs, bands and episodes are deleted in history for I have no recollection of having seen them at all even though I can confirm that I was there. However these fragments may serve to give you a flavour of those years – years in which I was ridden by a crazy force and filled with a passion that made my eyes gleam and loosened my tongue to fly its imaginative path of ideals faster than my brain could keep up.

We had fun bopping to Edgar Broughton and gleefully chanting to get those demons out. The demons were, in my mind at least, the crazy capitalist war-mongering society that was guiding our exploitative, intolerant, selfish, greedy and cruel society towards extinction (it still is). Edgar growled in his best Beefheart voice as he urged us to drop out and we loved it…….

There was Pink Floyd who I saw quite regularly. Their early shows in Middle Earth with Syd were mind blowing. The later incarnations maintained that imaginative creativity. The light shows and mesmeric sounds were spacey and like nothing I’d heard. The stand out things for me from later was a piercing performance of ‘Careful with that axe Eugene’ at the Fishmonger’s arms where I got an image of the band as silhouettes acting it out. But then that might just have been me. Then there was the Parliament Hills Camden free concert and grooving along to ‘Astronomy Domine’ which was the best I’d ever heard them do. It really drove along. Then there was Eel Pie Island where the floor was bouncing as they played. I got to see most of the other psychedelic bands – Action, Godz, Mandrake Paddle Steamer, Simon Dupree, Moody Blues, Tomorrow etc. but none of them got close to Floyd and later, when Prog Rock took off I saw bands like Genesis and Yes and they could not hold a light. The only band that managed to produce a great heavy spacey sound was Hawkwind.

I really regret not going along to Floyd’s stadium stuff in the 70s and 80s. I took the view that which would I want to go along and pay an exorbitant amount to see a band, who were reduced to distant ants on a stage, when I had seen them up close and personal for free, or at most 25p, on numerous occasions. I had the belief that Rock was best in a small sweaty club – close up! I still think it is but I had failed to realise that it had moved on and that there was a place for stadium rock. The whole thing had become a spectacle and a show rather than a performance. I think I would have enjoyed them.

As a footnote I did get to meet Syd. I was wandering through EMI studio in 1971 with Roy Harper and we bumped into Syd. Roy stopped and had a chat with him while I stood silently by. It was true what they said – he was a quiet pleasant guy, small with dark curly hair and he spoke quite vaguely but his eyes were gone; they were really glistening black holes peering out from some inner void.

 Opher on the beach in Devon 1969

The Incredible String Band were another favourite. Gary Turp had got me into them. He was into Buddhism and meditation and had got himself a job in the park so that he could sit cross-legged in his hut and meditate. It always seemed to me that there was an underlying ploy. It appeared to attract hordes of pretty girls and he wasn’t adverse to a bit of Kundalini awakening! I first saw the Incredibles as a duo at some big festival when they played littered the stage with a vast assortment of instruments which they constantly picked up and put down in the course of every song. They did a great version of ‘Maybe Someday she’ll come along’. I also have fond memories of a great performance in the incongruous London Palladium of all places with the two girls Licorice and Rose. I loved their ‘Very Cellular song’ and was always singing ‘May the long time sun shine upon you’ – very uplifting. I later saw them with the theatrical group performing U at the Roundhouse. It was panned at the time but I loved it. It was great to see them reform and to get backstage at the Bloomsbury Theatre, courtesy of Darren. They then toured as a trio again and I got to meet Clive Palmer at Beverley Playhouse.

I was quite into Buddhism and Eastern philosophy at the time which was a consequence of the whole Jack Kerouac Beat thing. I was extremely turned off by the staid religion I was surrounded with full of Christian hypocrisy and I was looking for meaning and wonder. There seemed to me to be a different level to things. It fitted in with the whole acid culture. I was really into mystical experiences, different dimensions, wisdom of the ancients, infinity and the nature of the universe. We had endless excited discussions about it.

I have since realised that while it was all immensely intellectually stimulating and fulfilling to look for patterns and meaning in the universe around us and the inner realms of the mind it is all just intellectual froth. The ancients had no great wisdom. They were largely a bunch of semi-illiterates trying to understand the bewildering intricacies of life, death, nature and the universe without the benefit of technology and science. Their explanations and intuitive observations were all largely bollocks.

However the Incredible String Band were heavily associated with that naïve innocence of mystical wonder that I now look back on with great nostalgia and a whimsical smile.

If I had to plump for a religion it would be Buddhism – at least you don’t have to believe in puerile anthropomorphic concepts like god!

Ho hum.

Because of Dick Brunning I got to see John Mayall from a very early stage. He was always playing this small club in Sunbury. I got to see him with Clapton who did the most amazing searing guitar runs a la Freddie King, and them Peter Green who I always felt was more lyrical and then with Mick Taylor who was equally as good. I used to get a bit pissed off with John who had a tendency to go off into more jazzy stuff with Dick Heckstall-Smith. At the time I liked my blues raw guitar-based Chicago style and didn’t like it adorned with brass. I wish I’d paid more attention. I have grown to appreciate the saxophone much more. I’d go along with Liz and we were packed in tight and the whole room bopped up and down.

Jethro Tull was like no other. I caught them when they were bursting upon the scene having come down to London from Blackpool. They played the Toby Jug in Tolworth and I was really impressed with Ian Anderson’s flute playing. He looked like a scarecrow crane standing on one leg with his frizzy hair and long overcoat. He’d hide behind speakers and stick a leg out. It was novel to have a flute in a Rock band and it sounded good. I also liked their version of ‘Cat’s squirrel’ featuring Mick Abrahams guitar. It was different and it gelled with its theatrical elements.

Led Zeppelin had broken big in the USA and yet were just starting in England. They did a tour of small clubs and I caught them at the Toby Jug. I paid the princely sum of 25p entrance. I wanted to see what the fuss was about. They were good to dance to, very loud and great to watch.

The Roundhouse was one of my favourite venues. It had a casual, community festival type feel to it with all the stalls all around. It was particularly exciting when the Doors came over and played. I’d always loved the Doors and have a vivid picture in my head of Jim Morrison in his leather trousers throwing himself on the stage during the execution scene in ‘unknown soldier’. The Doors were special. A friend of mine, Hank, had a stall there and used to make leather belts. He sold one to Jim that night.

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

In Search of Captain Beefheart – Mining in the Underground – 60s

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Mining in the Underground – 60s

Being weird was a profession. The 60s Underground was an alternative society, a bunch of brothers and sisters who were readily identifiable; a camaraderie that meant you shared everything; a sense of fun; a tolerance for new ideas, difference, new experience; a different morality; a wish to travel, experience and live; a joie de vivre; a wish to chuck out the old rules and live in a better way. We were naïve and innocent but we were happy.

  Opher & Liz 1968

We’d looked at the boring drab lives of our parents; at the humdrum of suburbia; the class system and soulless prostitution of work; the cycle of war and exploitation; we’d seen the intolerance, bigotry and arrogance and we thought we could do better. You could see the way the chips were stacked that it was impossible to change the system, the establishment was established and as immovable as a mountain. Therefore we would drop out of it and do our own thing.

When you walked round town and saw some dude coming towards you sporting hair and colour you knew you could go across, introduce yourself and have a good chat. There was an energy and camaraderie. We were in the same tribe, unified against the machine, digging the same vibe.

When I was in Boston it was quicker to hitch-hike round town than to get on a tram or bus. A lot of the Freaks were taxi drivers and they would pick you up for free. The creed of the Underground was to share and look after each other.

The problem was that doing your own thing meant scrabbling around for somewhere to live and something to live off. There were numerous little cottage industries in making belts, beads, scarves, clothes, candles and paraphernalia. There was always room for a little dealing, squatting, panhandling and dole. Failing that you could head off into the country and try your hand at self-sufficiency.

Dropping out of the system was fraught with problems unless you were a talented musician and could make it in a band.

Fortunately for me I was exempt from those kinds of concerns. I was a student. All I had to worry about was how to eke out a modest grant (I believe it was £110 a term) to pay rent on a shared room, eat, put petrol in my vehicle (currently a comer cob van hand-painted bright yellow) and still gain me access to three gigs a week and second-hand vinyl. In order to achieve this I worked as a road sweeper in the summer and for a year I worked all Friday night, six pm to six am, in Lyons bakery. It gave me a great deal of freedom though I did have to go in and catch at least half of my lectures or they would throw me out!

I chose my college, out of a very limited choice due to my poor grades at A Level, because when I walked in for interview it had a poster for Roy Harper in the entrance.

 Opher 1967 – University application photo with hair carefully combed back out of the way.

I walked in to the refectory at our induction and made a beeline for a table where I befriended two mad characters in Jules and Pete who became friends for life. Funny how the subconscious works!

Every week we would study the NME for gigs and select what was best. There was at least one mandatory Harper gig and the scope for the others was amazing. Everyone was playing non-stop all the time! At the time we thought it would never end. Unfortunately it did end.

It left me feeling that I wish I had been more organised, selective and systematic. There were so many great acts that I never got to see. It was always that I’d see them next week. Thus Lennon, Howlin’ Wolf, Lightnin’ Hopkins, and Screaming Jay Hawkins slipped through the net. However I did see most and had the pleasure of seeing them in small clubs and getting backstage to have a chat. Security did not exist back then and the bands were still one with the audience. We were all freaks creating an alternative culture. That rapidly went out the window.

So, let me see? What is the best way of explaining this? (If only I’d had a camera, taken notes or something – memories are so febrile).

OK – I’ll ramble because that is pretty much what it was like back then. I’ll go over the whole thing from 1967 to 1971 when the dream was finally over (though we kept pretending for a year or two more!). I’ll mix up venues and bands.

First there was the college circuit. Various universities put on gigs via their entertainment committees. These were usually bunches of Freaks who wanted to get their hands on all the best bands and because the best bands were cheap they could get just about anybody. So my college (Barking – later North East London Poly) put on regular concerts by the likes of Roy Harper, Al Stewart, the Prettythings, Third Ear Band, Slade and the like. I went to most of these although I gave Slade a miss because I considered them lightweight. Entry was usually about 4 shillings – 20p.

Other colleges put on just about everyone so I made a habit of catching Edgar Broughton, Davey Graham, Pink Floyd, Fleetwood Mac, Traffic, Family, Muddy Waters and Jimmy Reed.

Then there were the pubs that put halls aside for concerts. The Fishmongers Arms in Wood Green put on Pink Floyd and Man. The Toby Jug had a regular Blues Night with John Mayall, Chicken Shack, Jethro Tull, Led Zeppelin, Fleetwood Mac, Aynsley Dunbar and the like. Though they were more expensive and charged 5 shillings – 25p.

There was Eel-Pie Island who had bands like Blossom Toes and Pink Floyd.

Then there were venues like the Mecca ballrooms that would put on Family and Arthur Brown.

The Freak venues were the all night clubs like the Marquee, UFO, Middle Earth and Klooks Kleek. They would do everything from Pink Floyd, Hendrix, Cream, to visiting West Coast Bands. An all night gig might have three top bands on such as Traffic, Soft Machine and Pink Floyd and might cost 10 shillings – 50p.

It was non-stop and there was always choice. I find it hard to imagine that back then I was choosing between Pink Floyd, Fleetwood Mac or Lennon playing the Lyceum with a host of other possibilities (many of whom I would now die for) bringing up the rear. There was even the odd occasion when you couldn’t be bothered.

On top of that you had the free gigs, benefits, happenings and such – like a regular Hyde Park hosted by Roy Harper and featuring Edgar Broughton, Deviants, Pink Fairies, Pink Floyd, Action, Third Ear Band, Soft Machine, Family, Jethro Tull, etc etc etc. and then the biggies with Blind Faith and the Stones.

Then there were the weekend festivals. They were really pricey though – a three day festival might set you back thirty shillings – £1.50.

Then there were things like the Electric Cinema, the Lyceum, Les Cousins, the Three Horseshoes Pub on Tottenham Court Road, the Barge at Kingston and various small clubs around like one out near Sunbury where were used to go and catch Mayall regularly.

In between all this you had to hang out with your mates playing each other music, sharing music and talking about music, politics, relevant news issues, social situations, mysticism and the nature of infinity, the universe and life, and reading.

Apart from Kerouac and the Beats there were the Freak activists like Jerry Rubin, Eldridge Cleaver, Bobby Seale, Abbie Hoffman, George Jackson and Angela Davies. There were my Sci-Fi novels and other novels to read. There was OZ and IT to get through. I tell you, man, life was hard! I don’t know how I fitted it all in. No wonder I had to stay up most of the night. Oh, if only I had recorded some of those all-night raps! It’s a wonder I got to college at all! My education was had in my own room.

 Beatific Opher 1971

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

In Search Of Captain Beefheart – Bobbing around

Posted on by Opher

Bobbing around

The discovery of another hero took time. It was like discovering a heap of dirty gold ore. You don’t know what you’ve got until you’ve teased it all out.

If the Beatles were the driving force for Rock then Bob Dylan was the Fulcrum that turned it on its head. The Beatles provided the musical genius but Dylan provided the poetry and substance that enabled it to reach its apotheosis.

I came to Dylan late. It wasn’t until his electric period that I really began to appreciate what a genius he was. For me it was a slow burner.

I was not one of the guys who might have shouted ‘Judas’ in the Albert Hall or Manchester Trade Hall. I loved his electric period and none better than the driving, searing quality that Mike Bloomfield brought to it at Newport.

My friend Mutt first introduced me to Dylan. He played me his first album but it left me cold. I still find that first album a bit of a non-entity. Mutt assured me that if Dylan released singles he’d be in the charts. I pooh-poohed that but sure enough, shortly after Mutt’s prophetic words, Dylan released ‘The times are a changing’, it made the charts and I had to eat my words.

I am sorry to say that I was one of those people who could not get on with his voice. I liked the songs but I preferred them by other people like the Byrds and Manfred Mann. It makes me squirm to say that now because I have got so much into Dylan that I know his voice is just ideal for his songs and everyone else’s arrangements tend to sound Poppy and lightweight in comparison and you don’t get much more unhip than Poppy.

My subconscious quest for Dylan overlooked him for a couple of years. I was aware of his music but I never really listened to it. Then I bought ‘Bringing it all home’ in Kingston arcade and it blew me away. The good thing about this was that it meant that I could now go back and retrospectively absorb three genius albums all at once – ‘The times are a changing’, ‘Another side of’ and ‘Freewheelin’’. What a mind expanding time I had! There was everything! – The anti-war stuff, the civil rights, the songs for the oppressed and down and out. It made you think; it raised your sensitivities; it made you question everything; it was so clever and poetic. I read the poetry on the liner notes and checked out everything I could. Dylan was just what I needed. He’d taken Guthrie’s type songs a stage further into a new dimension. He was singing about the world I lived in and the society we were grappling with and trying to get to change. No wonder everyone was feeding off him!

I adored the snarling Dylan on ‘Positively Fourth Street’ which became my favourite song of all time for a while. But there was also the exceptional ‘Subterranean Homesick Blues’ and ‘It’s alright Ma I’m only bleeding’.

Then there was ‘Highway 61 revisited’ and ‘Blonde on Blonde’ and the poetry exploded with Beat Poet surrealism, like Kerouac, Ginsberg and Rimbaud were recording Rock songs. At the time I was reading Ginsberg’s Howl and Kerouac’s ‘Dharma Bums’ and it just seemed to sit in there.

Unfortunately I’d missed Dylan’s performances at the Albert Hall and around. If only…………..

I did get to see him four times at various gigs. Two were brilliant, one was mediocre and one was absolute shit.

He was a difficult, complex hero to have with a veritable mine of mind expanding concepts to be unearthed. He was also full of contradictions and obfuscations designed to throw you off the scent. But the reward for perseverance was immense.

Dylan’s fabled motorcycle accident in which he supposedly broke his neck was the end of what was an incredible run of six of the universe’s best albums (I am making an assumption here – I am not yet fully conversant with musical input from other regions of our galaxy or any distant Galaxies. Maybe they have even better albums out there? – Far out, man!). But I suppose that had to be. Dylan was freaking out on speed and stress. He looked so jumpy. I guess if he had gone on he would have gone under. Maybe he did go under? Who knows? Perhaps it was just a ploy to break away from the pressure and that tag of being ‘The Voice of a Generation’.

Anyway, the post accident Dylan was very unhip.

I bought ‘John Wesley Harding’ and it was OK. We’d all thought he was easing his way back in. The Underground was going and we needed Dylan’s spark. He was the guy. The next album would be great, right? No, not right. The next album was ‘Nashville Skyline’. I was so disgusted with it, having bought it with such high expectations on the day of release, that I smashed it and threw it in the dustbin (I only ever did that with one other album and that was Neil Young’s ‘Hawks and Doves’). After that there were two more dreadful albums – ‘Dylan’ and ‘Self Portrait’. It looked like he was a brain-dead spent force. The snarling hipster who spat bullets and was the scourge of the establishment was now an awkward geeky country singer.

It was so bad that when Dylan was due to perform at the Isle of Wight I shunned it as I really didn’t want to see someone so good reduced to a sham. I’m glad I didn’t go.

I wish I hadn’t gone to the Earl’s Court in 1981. I did it against my better judgement. I was persuaded by people who’d seen him in 1978 and found him in top form so I decided to chance my arm. They assured me that the real Dylan was back. The trouble was that Dylan in the intervening time had got religion; he was backed by a gospel choir and was utterly dismal. I hated every minute of it. If there’s one thing I can’t stand it is American saccharin evangelical nutcases. The country is full of indoctrination and shoves it down your throat before you can think. I hate primitive medieval superstition. I could not believe Dylan had succumbed. It was embarrassing – from ‘It’s alright ma’ to the trite ‘God gave names to all the animals’. Seemingly he’d burned his brains out and lost his balls at the same time. Ho hum.

Fortunately he worked his way back again and I got to see him a couple more times when he was good and rockin’. But he never hit the heights of that purple patch in the 1960s when he set the pace for both lyrics and musical innovation. He set the trend for everything that followed.

I’m still mining his lyrics, reading his books, listening to his concerts and radio shows and marvelling at the scope of the guy. If only ………

But Dylan helped me grow and develop as a man. He raised my consciousness. Without him I would not have become as good. We all need people who question what society is about. We need people who question our leaders. That is because people who seek power are often the paranoid sociopaths. We are often being led by people who are mentally ill. Time after time we put the Pol Pot’s, Stalin’s, Mao’s, Thatcher’s and Nixon’s in charge and think they have our best interests at heart. It takes a Dylan to point out the absurdities. That’s what he did for me; he helped opened my eyes.

In Search Of Captain Beefheart – Nowt so weird as Folk – From the Dust bowl to the Thames Delta

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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.

In Search of Captain Beefheart – This is Hip & Cool & Occasionally hairy

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This is Hip & Cool & Occasionally hairy

Some time in your life you have to make a decision whether to be hip and cool or straight.

First it helps if you know what being cool is. It is a commitment. Cool is an indefinable quality that some people have. Jack Kerouac had it, Miles Davis, all the black blues guys, the jazz singers and swingers, black culture was hip, white culture was crap. The Stones, Kinks and Prettythings were hip for a while. The Tremolos, Dave Clark Five and Hollies were never cool.

In the present time anything connected with Simon Cowell is shit. All musicals, tribute bands and chart singers are by definition shit. All things connected with the Voice and Britain/America’s got talent is shit. Abba are not cool. The North Mississippi All-stars, Tinariwen and Nick Harper are cool.

Back in the 60s the Beatles and Stones were cool. For a time during his electric period Dylan was the coolest dude on the planet with his polka dot shirt, shades and frizzed out hair complete with snarling lyrics and attitude.

In the late 60s Hendrix, Cream, Floyd and the West Coast bands were the coolest. The Monkees were not cool.

 Magic Band still cool in 2005

Being in the singles chart was not cool unless you were a Soul singer like Otis Redding or Aretha Franklin. They could get away with it.

An ingredient of being Hip is to be outside the normal boring limits of society and be individual, to have style, a philosophy and a way of life that sets you apart. It’s not about being a dork with a million tattoos, piercing and elaborate beard and hair or wearing outrageous costumes that make you stand out like a turd sticking to a white wall. If you have to try it’s wrong. That’s pretentious.

Being cool has to come from what you genuinely feel inside.

It pisses me off to see the 60s being represented on newsreels by the Carnaby Street plastic weekend Hippies.

The 60s was about a counter culture, an alternative that you either bought into a hundred percent or didn’t. You couldn’t dress up at weekends. You had to live it. It was about the rejection of the grey brigade, the 1950s straight-lace, stiff upper lip culture and replacing it with fun, colour and frolics.

Being hip was liberation from boring society without regard to the future. For a while being cool was associated with Rock culture. That is because Rock culture was so creative and out there.

Of course it was still pretentious, idealistic and doomed to fail but it was also creative, fun and produced a great deal of really great stuff. It spawned equality, women’s liberation, Green awareness and greater freedom.

In 1963 we set about, in our own Thames Delta fashion, being hip.

We started growing our hair, sideburns, beards and getting the tightest jeans we could get our legs in. We wore hipsters and Cuban heeled boots or desert boots. I had jean jackets and leather jackets.

The girls skirts got shorter and shorter, their tops tighter and their hair layered.

It caused chaos at school. I was constantly sent home for having trousers too tight, hair over my collar or sideburns below my ears. At one time I was told to go home and shave my beard of. I shaved an inch down the middle of my chin. 

‘I thought I told you not to come back until you’d shaved your beard off?’

‘I have!’ I protested. ‘These are sideburns and this is a moustache!’

On another occasion I was told not to come back until I had shaved and I stayed off. After three weeks the twagman came round to see where I was and I explained – I had been told not to come back until I had shaved and I hadn’t shaved yet!

The girls had to kneel down in assembly and had their skirts measured to see if they were too short. We all applied for that arduous job.

But fashion is not cool. Some cats have an’ some cats ain’t. But we bought in to the black culture. That was cool. They might be exploited but they knew how to let it all hang out, dress up and have fun. Everyone started to adopt this rather phoney American Black slang, man.

By the latter part of the 60s my hair was down my back, my jeans had frayed out tassels, bell-bottoms and I wore an assortment of stuff that was bright and colourful. I felt good. My parents weren’t too keen. They thought it affected my employability. I didn’t give a shit. I was reading Kerouac, Ginsberg, Rubin and Cleaver. It was the revolution, man.

Rock was cool. West Coast and Underground was hip. Careers and straight society was square.

We looked to our hip Rock bands to show us the way. It doesn’t feel as if there’s much hipness left in Rock culture these days. There’s too much money; too much phoniness. The big labels took it over and sanitised it; they overproduced the crap out of it, marketed it and came up with a product designed to make money.

There doesn’t feel to be any hipness left in the world anymore. It’s all fashion, pretension and froth.

All is phoney.

Life was there for the cool and hip to live, discover and enjoy. Life was there for straight culture to endure.

The 1960s rebellion was a revolt against the grey, class-ridden, over-bearing, claustrophobic culture of the 1950s. We wanted fun, exploration, colour, meaning, and a reason why! ‘Because we say so’ was not enough.

Death to the joyless machine! Long live the right to experience!

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