Book of the Week: In Search Of Captain Beefheart – Pt. 18 – Lost in the smoke of ages

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Lost in the smoke of ages

It’s probably true what they say about the 60s. I was there and there is so little that I remember clearly. What I have is the tip of the iceberg.

I am so envious of all those organised dudes who wrote things down. When I see stuff like Bob Dylan’s Chronicles and read the incredible detail and recollections I am humbled. I used to have a good memory. When I was in primary school we had to memorise a poem each week. If you failed to learn it you were made to sit out the PE session and relearn it. Now PE in my crap school mainly involved standing in a circle and throwing a beach-ball around or doing those silly athletic exercises that were so popular in the Second World War – hands on shoulders, reach up, shoulders, down, star-jumps etc. But even so that was heaps better than sitting in doors and learning bloody Wordsworth (It took me the discovery of Ginsberg’s ‘Howl’ to get me back into poetry after school had successfully destroyed it for me). However, despite this draconian punishment I rarely found time in my crowded life to actually learn the buggering poetry. The teacher called us out to recite the next few lines and somehow my quick glance before the session was usually sufficient to get me through. Later, in secondary school, I rarely did any revision for tests or exams but got through because I could remember the lessons. Seemingly my brain has shed a few brain cells and my sixty four year old cortex is not as biochemically nimble as it once was – probably clogged up with plaques and various residues.

However, thanks to the joy of the internet I have been over the various festivals and marvelled at the incredible line-ups I enjoyed so much. It is a shame I can’t remember a damn bit of it! I know I was there but not a single recollection comes to the surface. This is strange as some of the bands and sets are still as clear as if it were last week (though, as I’ve learnt with Captain Beefheart, that doesn’t necessarily mean it was accurate).

Some of the performances remain as faint memories – I do get a tantalising whiff of Quintessence, for instance – but other, really great stuff is lost forever – no longer does it spin round in my neuronal circuits! It has gone ahead into the great void!

At that amazing gig where me Hat and Booker got into the Press enclosure to see Cream there was also John Mayall, Chicken Shack, and Fleetwood Mac making their debut. I saw them all. I know I saw them all. I can remember the excitement of it but unlike the clarity of Cream all I get is vague hazy memories! I guess I was so high on anticipation that it pushed the other memories out!

There was a cartoon I saw of Homer Simpson where he was trying to remember something by pushing it into one ear and displacing another fact from the other ear. My head’s like that! I’ve only so much room! I need an upgrade!

The other weird thing is one of perspective! I can remember Cream quite clearly. I remember Clapton with his long curly hair standing right in front of me. I can see Ginger, open mouthed, close eyed, playing those drums like a crazy man and Jack plucking his bass, eyes tightly shut and singing his heart out. It was brilliant! Except it is as if I am looking down at it from above! It is as if my sixty four year old self is looking down at my eighteen year old self nodding and jigging away with face aglow and wide eyes gazing up as Clapton and co. stormed away. My big grinning face was in heaven. It looks to me as if it was pretty far out!

The memory of this must have filled up my memory stick or reformatted the rest of my cortex so that the other bands performances were wiped out of existence.

Sadly this is not the only instance. In concert after concert, festival after festival, there are the stand out gigs that are remembered as clear as daylight and the rest that are vague memories at best.

Perhaps there is a drug they will develop that will make all those forgotten memories crystal clear. Wouldn’t that be something? This book would be a thousand times as big!

Book of the Week: In Search Of Captain Beefheart – Pt. 17 – Times is hard when you’s down and out

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Times is hard when you’s down and out

Back in 1969 I went back to college but could not find any digs. Pete and I went into the Student Union to get some help. There wasn’t enough accommodation. People were kipping in telephone boxes. They gave us an address of a squat to try. It was on Ilford High Road.

We were told that it was a disused shop on the High Street. We were to go round the back and do this elaborate knock on the side door then ask for the Colonel. It was like something out of the Goons.

So we went and performed our intricate battering. There was all this rattling and clanging the other side that went on for a minute or two. The door opened a slit and an eye scrutinised us.

‘We were told to ask for the Colonel,’ I ventured.

‘Oh aye?’ A voice with a strong Scottish brogue said suspiciously.

‘The Student Union sent us,’ Pete explained.

The door reluctantly edged open, we’d passed the test and we were allowed in. The mystery of the clanging became apparent. Half a ton of scrap metal was precariously balanced above the door. Anyone forcing their way in was likely to find themselves squashed.

The Colonel introduced himself. Seemingly he was a real Colonel from the Scottish Highlanders who had fallen on hard times. The reasons for his hard times were shortly to become apparent.

 Opher 1970 – At least we had a roof over our heads

We were shown up to our room. It was a large empty room with an exceedingly dirty floor. Seemingly somebody had kindly reconnected the water so the loo flushed and had rigged the electric so we had light but nobody had bothered to clean the place. Pete and I placed all our worldly possessions on the floor (I’d left my record collection and sound system back at home until I got settled somewhere). This consisted of a bag each and a sleeping bag. The floor was hard so I put my new long sheepskin coat under my sleeping bag to cushion it. My coat got so filthy I never got it properly clean again.

Pete and I met the other ‘guests’. There was a traumatised young couple with a baby in the other room. A few days before they had been squatting in another house but that had gone pear-shaped. It seems that he’d lost his job and they couldn’t pay the rent so despite having a baby they’d been kicked out on the street. They’d ended up in a squat while he tried to get another job so that they could get a flat. Ilford council had a new policy for dealing with squatters. They employed a guy called Peter Rackman. He was a developer. He had a deal where he could purchase the properties and do them up to sell or rent out at exorbitant rates to immigrant families. Rackman was a nasty piece of work. He was after making a fortune and didn’t care how he did it. All he had to do was entice the squatters and established tenants to leave so he could ship his other tenants in and charge more. I think the council denied using Rackman to do their dirty work. Whatever – it was a time when fascists walked the street.

The young couple had all their possessions in a room in the squat. According to them the guy had been out looking for a job when a bunch of Rackman’s heavies arrived. They’d waded in threatening everyone, shouting in their faces and waving clubs. They’d smashed all the windows out and chucked everything out of the window, including the baby’s cot, clothes and things. She’d been terrified. They then brought sledge-hammers and smashed the stairs to matchwood. Then they left after making it quite plain that if they came back and found any of them still here there would be some medicine dished out.

In desperation the couple had come here. It was basic but it was safer than anywhere else. They’d salvaged what they could but most of it had been smashed or ripped to pieces, including the baby’s things.

The Colonel received an army pension. On pension day he would, like an alchemist of old in reverse, transform the gold into alcohol. He happily returned to the squat with a carrier bag of scotch whiskey. He then dressed up in his kilt, drank the whiskey from an enamel mug and serenaded us with songs like ‘Wunderbar’. He had quite a talent. He managed to add a ne sound to the end of every single word. Wunderbar went like this:

Wunderbarne minene prettyne wunderbarne.

It was amazing to behold.

On Saturday mornings a very drunk Colonel would clamber out on to the top of the bay overlooking the High Street and serenade the shoppers below. A week or two after we left he got arrested for doing just that. Seemingly he was still wearing his kilt. The shoppers below got a good view and the Colonel got done for indecent exposure.

We’d been there a week when we got rudely awakened on Saturday morning with a great rumpus outside our shop. We peered out of the window to find we were the focus of a demonstration by the National Front. Seemingly they did not approve of squatters. There was a huge mob of them all shouting and waving fists at us. The only thing separating them from us was a small number of cops.

It was very scary. There looked to be hundreds of them with their skinhead bullet heads and bother boots. They looked as if they meant business and didn’t seem too keen on a couple of squatting hippies!

We did our best to defuse the situation by sitting on the window ledge and jeering at them. Strangely it did not seem to calm them down! Eventually they went away but it did somewhat justify the heavy metal booby trap over the door.

After a few weeks of squatting we found a flat and moved out.

Featured Book – In Search Of Captain Beefheart Pt. 16 – A Jaunt In the Park (Hyde Park Rolling Stones 1969)

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A jaunt in the park

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!

Featured Book – In Search Of Captain Beefheart Pt. 14 – Festivals

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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.

Featured Book – In Search Of Captain Beefheart Pt. 12 – Disappointments

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Disappointments

There were a lot of high points and brilliant gigs. There were a lot of alright gigs too. But it wasn’t all brilliant.

Some of the disappointments really stand out.

I loved the West Coast sound and one of my favourite bands was Country Joe and the Fish. Their first album ‘Electric music for the body and mind’ was one of the outstanding albums. Barry Melton had a distinctive guitar sound and I rated Joe’s voice as the best in the business. The songs were straight out of sixties freakdom. We were in the same tribe.

They didn’t get to England much so I was delighted in 1969 that they were coming. I got my tickets for the Royal Albert Hall. We got the cheap ones and were up in the Gods. The concert started well when Country Joe invited us all down to the main section because it was only half full. We rushed down. The RAH is lousy for sound and that didn’t help. However, it was going quite well. I was really in to West Coast Acid Rock sound. Then for some inexplicable reason, Country Joe came out with this stuff about Country music being big in England. As far as I was concerned country music was about as straight, redneck as you could get. Then he launched into a couple of country songs including ‘I’ve got a tiger by the tail’. We were bemused. Was it a piss-take? It seemed it wasn’t a piss-take and that rather sullied the rest of the evening for me. I was looking for some Freak Acid music. I think I’d be a bit more sanguine about it now. But I left feeling a bit let down by my heroes.

Another of my West Coast Acid Rock heroes was Jefferson Airplane and I got to see them twice but each time I found the sound a bit thin and ragged. In hindsight, I suppose that was probably due to the crappy sound systems back then. You couldn’t really expect a great deal from an outdoor concert. Yet Hendrix, Cream and Taste had managed it.

A similar thing happened with Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention. I went to this festival in Bath in 1969 particularly to see Frank and came away hugely disappointed. The band didn’t seem to have any life in them and went through their set like well rehearsed clockwork.

I also saw Johnny Winter at the Bath festival. I’d been looking forward to it as Johnny was a guitar virtuoso but I found his playing intricate and a bit boring.

Another disappointment was Davey Graham. I finally got to see him in this hall in 1970. The chairs were all laid out in lines. Davey came on and sat on his chair and played. The only words spoken were the name of each song. There was no emotion or enthusiasm. He played the numbers faultlessly and it was like watching a robot. I told Roy Harper about this later, he used to be a good friend of Davey’s, indeed they’d talked about becoming a duo, and he was bemused. He’d remembered Davey as an animated, lively player.

I believe I’ve talked about Jimi Hendrix’s rather lacklustre last farewell concert and the flat New Traffic elsewhere.

So I suppose the biggest disappointment of all has to be reserved for Blind Faith. I went to the free concert in Hyde Park with huge expectations. Cream were amazing live and remain one of the most exciting bands I have seen. Traffic were another favourite. I’d loved them on record and live. Rick Grech I considered to be immense and a huge factor in the Family sound. To bring all those elements together in one super-band sounded perfect. I could not wait to hear their hard driving Rock sound. Except that what we got was a dreary uninspiring wash-out. What a letdown.

It seems to me that the main reasons for these disappointments are twofold: Firstly – the expectations were so high that they were impossible to meet and Secondly – the sound systems back then did not do justice to the performance. If you were too far away or in the wrong place it sounded thin, distorted and crap.

I have heard recordings of many of the concerts I did not rate at the time and have found that a number of them sounded quite alright – so it was just me then!

Featured Book – In Search Of Captain Beefheart Pt. 11 – 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

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.

Tyrannosaurus Rex was a great little duo. Marc and Steve used to sit crossed legged on the stage and play these delightful acoustic songs with nice melodies like ‘Salamander Palagander’. There was no inkling of the later Glam Rock.

Jimi Hendrix was immense. To this day nothing comes near to him. I have never seen such an exciting act. He had everything. Somehow I only got to see him three times and the last farewell concert felt sadly low in energy but perhaps that was merely our heightened expectations. I caught him in a small club that I remember as being Klooks Kleek. It was unbelievable. He played the feedback, played the guitar with his elbow, behind his head, through his legs, with his teeth and did all his tricks. The band were all so good. The drumming and bass created a wall of sound that Hendrix powered through. I also saw him at Woburn. We waited all weekend and the excitement was palpable. I had this thing going with my mate Dan that he was the reincarnation of Elmore James (another of my guitar heroes though there were no similarities of style). Geno Washington came on before him and I remember the audience unkindly pelting him to get him off so that Jimi could get on. It was one of the most awesome concerts of my life, though it was panned by the critics and the sound was described as poor and muddy. It sounded good to me! More importantly – the vibe was right! The last time I saw him was his farewell concert at the Royal Albert Hall. We were devastated that the Experience was breaking up. Jules went down to the RAH on his pushbike and queued overnight to get us tickets though I spoke to Jules recently and he had no recollection of this. We spent weeks in raging excitement and came out hugely disappointed. New Traffic were crap and Hendrix appeared lacklustre. He still remains one of the best acts I’ve ever seen and no one gets near to what he did with a guitar!

Traffic were usually mesmerising. I remember dancing holding Liz tightly to me and drifting into some magic trance as they weaved their instruments through ‘Dear Mr Fantasy’ and ‘Feelin’ Alright’. I always felt that they caught ‘Dear Mr Fantasy’ well on record but failed with ‘Feelin’ Alright’. It was absolutely hypnotically brilliant live.

Family were a band who you had to see live. They never captured those live performances on record. They were regulars in the clubs and I’ve got great memories of them doing scintillating performances of ‘Hung up down’, ‘Weavers Answer’ and ‘Observations from a hill’. It was really sad when Rick Grech left to join the lamentable Blind Faith. I remember the band doing a medley of old Rock ‘n’ Roll numbers at a New Year’s do and then later on at another occasion Roger Chapman smashing a bottle of beer by throwing it at the wall in the Mecca ballroom in Ilford as the climax to their act. It exploded. I think the band got banned from all Mecca clubs after that.

The Strawbs played a lot of the pubs around and I caught them a few times with Pete Smith. He loved them. They were really rousing live with songs like ‘The Battle’ and ‘The man who called himself Jesus’.

Tomorrow were trying hard to break into the Psychedelic scene ruled by Floyd. They got this great stage act with all these long flowing robes and a great light show with smoke. It was really trippy. I remember them doing ‘My white bicycle’ with all this stroboscopic effect causing it all to flicker about. They lost all credibility after the ‘Excerpt from a teenage opera’ Keith West Pop fiasco.

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!

Book Of The Week – In Search Of Captain Beefheart – Pt.10 – Mirrors and Venom

Posted on by Opher

Mirrors and Venom

Now we are in the heady days of 1967 and I am seventeen and eighteen and amid the huge experimentations and excitement of the times the quest gathers force. I am intoxicated by the hunt and buzzing with energy. It is driving me on to search in the clubs and second-hand record stores. I am always searching for something that will provide me with all the answers and sate my appetite.

All thoughts of education and careers are relegated to the box marked ‘incidental’. Life’s too full of life to waste. There is so much to be learnt, investigated, found out, appreciated, loved, experienced and enjoyed and you can’t find it in schools, answer it in exams or read about it in textbooks. There were too many people to meet, sights to see and mad conversations to be had. I was a madman. I scorched through life absorbing and burning up energy. It was like a chocoholic being let loose in Willy Wonka’s Chocolate factory!

My hair has grown and is bleached with peroxide. It looks like straw and contrasts with my dark beard. I never went in for hippy beads, keeping myself simple with shirt and jeans. I had met Liz and dragged her around with me. We enjoy dancing and one of our gigs is usually soul based, but we bounce around to Mayall, Floyd and Fleetwood Mac just as happily. We are to be found frolicking in the Marquee, Middle Earth, Toby Jug, Klooks Kleek, UFO or Eel Pie Island and are just as happy with the Psychedelic, Blues or Progressive scene.

I have already discovered Dylan and Guthrie and have gorged myself on their inebriating offerings. They will both continue to inform and sustain me. But still I am not content. I want more. The Underground is a glut that provides me with a happy hunting ground. I am a student and free in London and am about to launch myself headfirst into five years of musical gluttony.

But today is special. This is no ordinary faire but I had no inkling of what was in store for me.

I had made a new friend at college by the name of Mike. He was quiet and shy but extremely cool in his white plastic jacket with long corkscrew black hair. He tells me of this guy he has seen who he thinks I would be mad over. He tells how he is insane and full of energy just like me and that I have to go to see him.

I made a mental note. I stash it away. I forget about it.

I am heading for Soho, for Les Cousins on Greek Street. It is a small club in the basement. You go down these steep steps into an underground cellar where you are packed in among the crowds, seated and focussed towards a small stage in the middle. It was dark and intimate.

Les Cousins was no ordinary folk club in the traditional sense. There were no sing-alongs, no traditional songs with hands behind the ear. It was really a place that showcased the work of the new acoustic singer-songwriters of the day who were loosely termed contemporary folk singers. These included the wondrous Jackson C Frank, Paul Simon and even Dylan had made an appearance. I had gone along to catch Bert Jansch and John Renbourn.

They played and I enjoyed it. I can’t remember too much about it because those memories were blown out of my mind.

In the intermission there was a twenty minute slot and they put this new up-and-coming singer-songwriter on. He played three numbers and talked a lot about the songs and what was in his head.

It was the guy that Mike had been telling me about.

What he was saying was intelligent, sharp, funny and illuminating. More importantly was that it was like I was holding up a mirror and seeing my thoughts projected. There was immediate empathy. It felt to me like I was listening to my own self – except, of course, that this one could actually sing and play an instrument.

I was blown away.

I felt like I had found what I didn’t know I had been looking for. I had stumbled across Roy Harper the greatest British song-writer, social commentator, poet and auto-career sabotager of all time.

That was a meeting that altered my life. Opher 1969

This Week’s Featured Book – In Search of Captain Beefheart – Pt. 9 – 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.  Pointing the way to go!!!

Book Of The Week – In Search Of Captain Beefheart – Pt.8 – 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.