Magic Band – 2015 November Tour Dates – The Best Band in the Universe!

Posted on by Opher

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Even without the Captain this band are superb. Rockette Morton on brilliant bass, Denny Walley and Elliott Ingber on guitar and John French on Drums and vocals. Unbelievably good.

The music is spot on; the musicianship outstanding, sound brilliant and music superlative. I’ve not heard better!!!

I’ve been raving about Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band since 1967. Here they are albeit without the Captain. I never believed anybody could take his place but Drumbo (John French) is amazing.

This may be their last tour. Don’t miss it!!  Here’s where they are:

4th Nov – Nottingham – Rescue Rooms

5th Nov – Manchester – Band on the Wall

7th Nov – Preston – Continental

8th Nov – Liverpool – Kazimier

10th Nov – Sheffield – Greystones

11th Nov – Leeds – Brudenell Social Club

16th Nov – Wolverhampton – Robin 2

17th Nov – Bristol – The Fleece

20th Nov – London – Under the Bridge

21st Nov – Aldershot – West End Centre

I’ll be hitting at least two if not four. Sheffield & Leeds are definites. I’m toying with Liverpool and London. We’ll see!!

Be there or be square.

 

It’s worth a trip from Perth!!

Get in with a flight from Berlin!!

Be in the know with a flight from Rio!!

Hear them play with a trip from L.A.!!

Captain Beefheart changed my life and cost me millions!

Posted on by Opher

captain beef

Back in 1967 I had a friend called Mike who went to York University. He had long black hair and was trying to grow it as long as he could. He did not comb or brush it in case it broke the ends off. All he did was run his fingers through it.

I was still doing A Levels and Mike was in his first year at uni. We met at Lyons bakery. We did the night shift on Friday night. It was the 6.00 pm to 6.00 am shift getting the bread out for the weekend.

Mike introduced me to American West Coast Acid Rock. He idolised the Doors, Country Joe and the Fish and Captain Beefheart. I loved them all. That Captain Beefheart first album never left my turntable. Abba Zaba, Electricity and Yellow Brick Road were spellbinding. This was 21st century Blues!! It was Howlin’ Wolf on Lysergic overload.

Then, just before my 19th birthday, Captain Beefheart was due to play at Middle Earth. It was too good to be true!!  I had to see them!!

The trouble was that I lived out at Walton on Thames and I knew that if I went into London I wasn’t going to get back home until three in the morning. But what the hell – it was only school the next day!

Except that ‘only school’ was the middle of my A Level exams. I had a place at Uni in London and I needed to get the grades. I had aspirations to be a doctor. Still, they liked me. They’d offered low grades. I knew I could get them. But I hadn’t done a shred of revision.

Not to worry – the Biology exam was a week away. One night was not going to make a lot of difference. Besides – it was a once in a lifetime gig – Captain Beefheart. The best band in the known universe! I did not have a choice. You would have to be mad to pass that up!

I went to the gig. Unfortunately Rockette Morton was ill and they postponed. They put on Aynsley Dunbar Retaliation instead. I quite liked Aynsley but he wasn’t my favourite Blues Band – and even Fleetwood Mac would fall short of Beefheart!! It was a huge disappointment.

However, all was not lost.

The good news was that they were going to do the gig the following week. The even better news was that it was going to be a double header with John Mayall and he was a firm favourite of mine.

The bad news was that it was the night before my essential Biology exam; the exam that was to determine my whole future; the exam that would determine my career; the exam that would determine my future earning power, where I lived and my standard of life. Everything hung on getting that grade.

I weighed it up. If I went I would not get back until at least 3.00 am and my exam started at nine. It was hardly good preparation. There would be no freshness of mind, last minute revision or period of reflection. I would arrive harassed, tired and ill-prepared.

On the other side of the coin – It was a one-off opportunity to see the incredible Captain Beefheart!!! (With the relatively minor addition of seeing John Mayall with Mick Taylor – I’d seen him with Clapton and Green and I’d heard that Mick was roasting – but I could see them at any time!).

It was no contest.

The concert rates as one of the best I have ever seen. That band was weird. I can still visualise Don with his big stove-pipe hat, weird sunglasses, goatee beard, scarves and long jacket. The band were similarly attired. Nobody dressed like that. It was as if Martians had landed. They were the weirdest outfit on the planet. Outrageous. It sent my heart pounding. Then the music – WOW!!!  Acid drenched blues from the desert of the imagination!!  Nothing came close. The guitars played off each other, the bass was unbelievable, drums scorching. The rhythm was like Bo Diddley on amphetamine through a mincer. Then the voice boomed over the top. Electricity was blasting through your brain and scorching your neurones. I rode that tarrotplane through the Abbas, Zabbas and Candy Korn. They were all yellow, blue, red and green. The Lightshow crashed your senses. This was Howlin’ Wolf in the asteroids!

It was the most astounding body experience I had ever experienced – the gig of a life-time (Only exceeded by their 1973 Rainbow performance and possibly Jimi Hendrix). I was outta my head!!!

I couldn’t even remember the Mayall performance. I didn’t come down for a week.

I got home at 3.30. I was buzzing.

I got up and went in for my exam but I don’t think my mind was quite into it. I was still up there round Saturn and Jupiter.

Needless to say I failed my Biology by one grade and missed out on my uni place. I worked out later that the loss of that one grade could have cost me between £5,000,000 and £7,000,000. But it was one hell of a gig!!!  Worth every last penny!!

Besides, I got in at a poly to study Biology and got to live in London during the sixties Underground, where I completed my education!! But that’s another story.

PS – I chose the poly I ended up at because there was a poster inside the door for a Roy Harper gig that Saturday. I went to that college and that gig was the first gig I went to in the place!  What an initiation. I knew it boded well!!

New definitive book on Rock Music from its roots – Rock Routes – out now in paperback for £9.57.

Posted on by Opher

I spent years writing this and have been holding it back. I decided to release it now. I don’t know why.

If you like Rock Music you will adore this! It gives you my personal take on all the genres and their major exponents and essential tracks. It’s informative and readable. It sheds light and is a great guide. Why not give it a try?

Blurb

This charts the progress of Rock Music from its beginnings in Country Blues, Country& Western, R&B and Gospel through to its Post Punk period of 1980. It tells the tale of each genre and lists all the essential tracks. I was there at the beginning and I’m still there at the front! Keep on Rockin’!!

A Tale Of Harps and Hearts

Posted on by Opher

Trust Ian to simultaneously come up with a great piece on the Captain! Check out his great site https://eeyorntails.wordpress.com
This is a great piece.

A self portrait by Don van Vliet

Art, Avant-garde, Dadaism, Impressionism, Impressionist, Poetry, psychedelia, The 60s, The Blues

A Tale Of Harps and Hearts

Posted on 7 Hours Ago by eeyorn the space donkey

I was up at the crack of dawn, as I often am, a couple of days ago when this old tune from my early teenage years started playing in my head. It continued playing for much of the day as I desperately searched to see if I had the album from which it came. The song had been recorded by a white Californian, but you could have been forgiven for thinking it was a black man singing raw Delta Blues, and the singer was indeed compared very favourably with Howlin Wolf, who was one his main musical heroes.

Donald Glenn Vliet was born in  1941, and was the son of a Dutch American. Don would often claim that one of his ancestors was a close friend of Rembrandt, who was a major inspiration for him. He was a precociously talented artist and sculptor as a young child.

He is said to have begun drawing and sculpting at the age of four. His subjects reflected his obsession with animals, particularly dinosaurs, fish, African mammals and lemurs. At the age of nine he won a children’s sculpting competition organised for the Los Angeles Zoo in Griffith Park by a local sculptor, Agostinho Rodrigues. This led him to become a student of Rodrigues for several years. During this time, Vliet received several offers of sponsorship from local businesses, including one from a local creamery which would have allowed him  to go and study marble sculpture for 6 years in Italy. He is said to have turned all these offers down, largely due to his parents intense disapproval of art in general, which they associated with homosexuality. His relationship with his parents became very strained as a result, and from his early teenage years onwards he would remain locked in his bedroom, only emerging each day to go to school. During this time, he became friends with another boy at school called Francis, who had a similarly strained relationship with his parents, and the two of them would spend hours together locked in Donald’s bedroom listening to old Delta blues records by Robert Johnson and Son House, Chicago blues by the likes of Howlin Wolf and Muddy Waters, along with Jazz records by  Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane and Thelonius Monk.

Francis started to play the drums and studied orchestral drumming for a time and played drums with a few local bands, before switching to electric guitar later. He became interested in avant-garde music after hearing of a local record shop who had boasted of having such a wildly eclectic stock of records, that they had recently even sold a copy of ‘The Complete Works of Edgar Varese, Vol 1′. Francis was so intrigued by the claim that he spent the next year trying to find another copy of the album, which he eventually did, and this led him to eventually discover Stravinsky, Schoenberg and other avant-garde composers all of whom would remain major inspirations to both youngsters in their later musical careers.

Donald had had major difficulties at school, being severely dyslexic throughout his life, and yet he was a prolific poet and largely self-taught artist, and managed to teach himself to play the harmonica, saxophones and clarinets while being unable to read music. And despite his severely withdrawn personality, with Francis’s encouragement,  he eventually overcame his shyness and found that he was in possession of a very powerful 5-octave range singing voice.

Both lads would go on to become acknowledged as major musical creative geniuses.   Francis recorded over 60 albums  and achieved some considerable commercial success, despite his strongly held and forcefully voiced anti-establishment views, his penchant for bitingly satirical lyrics and his off-the-wall Dada-esque stageshows. Donald made just 13 records before retiring from music to devote himself to painting and sculpture and living as a recluse in the Mohave desert where he had lived in his later childhood. His paintings and sculptures command very high prices these days. During his musical career however, he was perpetually broke and notorious for paying his band peanuts if they got paid at all.

Francis would shorten his name to Frank, and form the ‘Mothers of Invention’  before eventually going solo. Donald became Don Van Vliet, but adopted the persona of a character written for him in one of Frank’s early plays as his stage name – Captain Beefheart. He joined a group of accomplished musicians as lead vocalist playing blues covers, before stamping his authority on them and making them his backing band and musical collaborators which played exclusively van Vliet compositions.

Captain Beefheart and the The Magic Band

Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band – Gimme dat Harp, Boy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jFiMh6d-hs

Harp Boogie
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bt70hrY9Fuk

John Peel’s documentary tribute to Beefheart
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBa8bS_vZkM

Wiki entry
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captain_Beefheart

Website
http://www.beefheart.com/

Don van Vliet, artist, composer and singer 1941-2010

Glenn Conley – Glenn Hates Books – In Search of Captain Beefheart by Opher Goodwin – book review:

Posted on by Opher

I guess I made a mistake sending this particular book to Glenn. He hates Rock and detests the sixties. He saw the picture on the front of the book drew some stereotyped conclusions about weed, coke and sex and missed the whole structure of the book.

He got some things right though.

This is not a book about Captain Beefheart. It’s a book about Rock Music from the fifties to now. It’s the story of a quest to find music and the discovery. It is a bit of a journal too but it leads you through a journey in search of the good stuff; the music that sends the blood coursing, adrenalin pumping and brain buzzing. I like my music hot and I like it to feed my head too. I’ve been right at the front for fifty years.

This tells of the start with all that tentative excitement, the quest with all those discoveries that blew the mind, the uncovering of Woody Guthrie, Bob Dylan, Son House, Roy Harper, Captain Beefheart and all those others, and the end, the archeology of the remains and the new blood that still rocks.

It’s a bit of nostalgia that takes you through all those seminal years, reliving the great memories and sharing the times and feelings.

If you love music as much as me you’ll probably identify with all of this. You find a lot of the bands you knew and probably a number that you didn’t. You’ll relive the excitement and idealism with me.

If you detest Rock as much as Glenn you’ll hate it.

This is what Glenn said:

I think I’m too young for this book. Which is funny, because I’m 45 years old, for fuck’s sake. My hair and beard are full-on grey. I’m an old man, as far as I’m concerned. But this book makes me feel I’m a goddamn spring chicken. Because of the 60’s, man.

I fucking hate the 60’s. If the author of this book didn’t send me a copy, and request a review, I would have never read it. If I saw the cover in a book store, I would just keep on walking past. Because they’re hippies, man. Fucking hippies scare me.

This book is about music. From the 60’s, all the way to current music. It’s about being a goddamn groupie. A wanna-be. I would think that it would be easier to be a groupie if you were a hot chick. But the author of this book was up for a challenge. He threw his panties up on the stage, just like the rest of them groupies. That takes balls, man.

It’s the true story of how one groupie dude traveled the world to see all his heroes play great music. And I get that, man. I really do. I’ve just never been that interested in going to concerts. I mean, the music is on the fucking radio, man. Why do you need to go to a concert, and get your fucking ear drums blown the fuck out?

I’ve only been to two concerts in my life, and I fucking hated both of them. They’re too fucking loud. Which is funny, because I’ve been partially deaf my whole fucking life. So when I say they’re too loud, Jesus fucking Christ, they’re TOO GODDAMN LOUD!

Fuck, I sound like an old man. But I’m not. Not compared to this book. it’s just a long, boring, journal entry. It just dragged on and on. I went to this concert. I met this guy. I banged this chick. I snorted this coke. I did so much weed, man, you don’t even know. Fine. You’re a fucking hippy. I get it, man. But seriously, who the fuck cares?

Non-fiction books can be great. But they still need to have a goddamn story. A beginning, middle, and end. And exciting characters, that someone might actually give a fuck about. How about some goddamn development? A character ark. Something, man.

One guy who does this very well is Michael Lewis. He takes real-life events, and turns them into compelling stories. I reviewed his book The New New Thing. It was fucking awesome, because the characters were well developed, and there was an actual story to care about. He also wrote another book you may have heard of, Moneyball.

Don’t get me wrong, this Beefheart book isn’t completely worthless. If you’re really into music, as this author obviously is, I’m sure you’d love this fucking book. I just couldn’t get into it. I mean, music is great, sure. But it’s just music, man. Get over it.

I don’t remember the last time I even listened to the radio, really. I listen to podcasts in my car. Why would I listen to music, when I can listen to Adam Carolla sucking dick for hours on end? That guy can suck a dick, lemme tell ya.

2 of 5 Crazy-Hippy Stars

This is what Curlyview says:

No Slipped Discs Here.

By Curlyview!! on 20 Jan. 2015

Format: Kindle Edition Verified Purchase

The title is a little misleading; as it is not a book about Beefheart , but rather an account of growing up through the 60s and 70s in Britain. For people like myself 60+ year’s of age and like the author, a keen collector of records and tapes, this book will have a deep resonance. It was like living my early years of music all over again, as Mr. Goodwin kept mentioning the recording artists that I knew. An enjoyable read, made for the coach, train, or ‘plane trip.

 

Captain Beefheart – Smithsonian Institute Blues – Lyrics with meaning

Posted on by Opher

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Captain Beefheart is my favourite. His music was so incredible and his poetry so unique. Nobody does it like the Captain. His band truly are magic.

This particular song encapsulates my own view on ecology and the environment. We’re evolved from what went before and we’re merely passing through. Soon we will just be another layer in the sediment, another set of bones to pull out of the tar-pit and wonder at.
The sad part is that we seem to be so determined to speed up our own exit and taking everything else down with us. You wouldn’t think we were intelligent at all, would you?
I went to the tar-pit at La Brea in Los Angeles where they’d pulled out all those fossil dinosaur bones who’d got trapped in the tar.
I think we’re trapped in the tar of our own greed and selfishness
I sure hope we get to put our feet free before we’re sucked down! I’d like my grandchildren to see a wild gorilla and a tree.

Smithsonian Institute Blues (The Big Dig)

Come on down t’ the big dig
Come on down t’ the big dig
Come on t’ the big dig
Singin’ the Smithsonian Institute blues
Singin’ the Smithsonian Institute blues
The way it’s goin’ La Brea tar pits
I know you just can’t lose
The new dinosaur is walkin’ in the old one’s shoes
Come on down t’ the big dig
Can’t get around the big dig
This may be premature but if I’m wrong
You can just say it’s the first time I was happy t’ be confused
Singin’ the Smithsonian Institute blues
Alll you new dinosaurs
Now it’s up t’ you t’ choose
It sure looks funny for a new dinosaur
T’ be in an old dinosaur’s shoes
Dina Shore’s shoes
Dinosaur shoes
C’mon down to the big dig
You can’t get around the big dig
C’mon to the big dig
Ya can’t get around the big dig
Singin’ the Smithsonian Institute blues

537 Essential Rock Albums pt1 – I bet there are a few in here that are brilliant that you’ve never heard of!!

Posted on by Opher

If you like Rock Music then I’m your man!!

I’ve lived through it all!! I’ve seen them all!! I’ve heard them all!!

This book takes you through my choice with my reasons. It’s a book to dip into and enjoy. You’ll find out stuff you didn’t know. It’ll open your eyes to new things to explore and you’ll find out why I love it!

Captain Beefheart – Opher’s World pays tribute to a genius.

Posted on by Opher

IMG_1631I’ve see most of the world’s greatest bands from Pink Floyd, Jimi Hendrix and the Rolling Stones to Stiff Little Fingers and Ian Dury & the Blockheads but right up there with Jimi for excitement and brilliance is Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band.

Don Van Vliet came out of the desert with his acid drenched blues poetry in 1967. I saw them play at Middle Earth and it blew me away. I’d never heard anything like it. The beat was incredible, complex and heavy. The guitars weaved in and out of each other, swapping riffs, spikey and jagged and that voice growled and boomed over the top of it all with such range and intensity. Then we get to the lyrics. You can talk of poetry but there is nobody who plays with words and sounds like Don Van Vliet.

At first hearing the sound is so different to anything you’ve ever heard that it appears discordant. That soon passes when you get into it. The power drives you forward and what appears at first to be clashing guitars rapidly clarifies into complex mesmerising brilliance. There is nothing subtle of simple about it and that is what makes it so interesting. I never grow tired of listening to the music or lyrics because the complexity yields more and more pleasure and insight. This is the classical music of Rock. This is when it all came of age. There is an emotional and intellectual depth to it.

I think one of the problems people sometimes have with Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band is that it is so opaque at first that it is difficult to find a way in. I was fortunate because that first album was less complex and so more accessible and I also got to see them perform live. When you experience the band in a live situation in a small club you cannot help getting sucked into their spell. It is so pulsatingly powerful that it overwhelms you. It is loud, aggressive, raw and yet sophisticated at the same time.

I’d bombarded my youngest son with Beefheart most of his life and he hated it. Then I persuaded him to go to a Magic Band concert and he was as blown away as me. He came out saying that it was the best thing he’d ever heard. It is. It was as exciting as Hendrix!

One of my best concerts ever was seeing Beefheart at the Rainbow around 1973 with Zoot Horn Rollo, Rockette Morton, Drumbo and Alex St Clare. The band was steamin’.

There were lots of stories surrounding Don Van Vliet and the band. It’s all part of the mythology. He supposedly took on a bunch of people who couldn’t play instruments and taught them from scratch. That wasn’t true. He didn’t teach them to play but he certainly taught them to play differently to anyone else. He could neither read or play music and hummed and sang his stuff so that Drumbo (John French) could interpret it and teach it to the band. That is as maybe. You might think that John French was the force behind it all – and there’s no denying the man played a major part – if it wasn’t for the fact that (with the exception of the mediocre Tragic Band of 1974) he took on a series of musicians and got them all to perform in the same extraordinary manner. Don was a genius on many fronts. I even love his saxophone playing which wails and screeches perfectly with the music. He might be an untutored musician but he had an ear for perfection.

While the band did not achieve the commercial recognition it should have done it did gain a huge reputation and has had an influence well beyond their financial success. Many great artists cite Don as a major influence.

Don became ill and stopped producing music in 1981. That was a tragedy. But he left us with a string of outstanding albums, incredible poetry and stupendous sounds. He went on to produce equally impressive art. Fortunately for us John French went and put the Magic Band together with Rockette Morton, Denny Walley and Eric Klerks and it is brilliant. It keeps the music alive.

Check out more at the Radar Station. Which has lots and is run by a good friend of mine!!

http://www.beefheart.com/category/music-info/live-performances/shows/

Or check out my books on Rock. You’ll love ’em! :

Woody Guthrie – Opher’s World pays tribute to a genius!

Posted on by Opher

Woody Guthrie was the first singer/songwriter to use music as a vehicle for his social and political stances. He set out to use his music to bring about progressive change and in so doing inspired generations of other singers.

Woody opened up a world of possibility, a lodestone of gems to be mined by all who came after.

Whenever there were singers harnessing poetic honesty with heartfelt convictions one could follow a line that harked back to Woody.

Woody stood for equality and justice and put his body where his mouth was. He lived the life, made the friends, stood on the picket lines and fought for what he believed. He put his heart and soul into supporting the unions, racial harmony and social justice. In so doing he set himself against the capitalist system that produce the small number of winners and large bulk of losers. He was for the oppressed, downtrodden, destitute and disenfranchised.

Woody Guthrie

The hundreds of songs that Woody wrote in the 1940s and 1950s still echo down the decades with undiminished power to inspire.

Without Woody there would have been no Dylan and my mind would have been all the poorer.

Where are the people of Woody’s stature, passion and talent to stand up against the monolithic establishment that is presently destroying the planet?

It is not beyond the wit of man to create a fair system whereby we do not have the terrible deprivation in the third world, the poverty, disease and pollution. We have the Technology, Science and Economic power to create a world of greater equality without such overpopulation, environmental destruction and ravaging of wild-life.

If Woody was alive today his songs would be full of the greed and selfishness that is leading to our demise. He would not have sat quietly by while the bankers, businessmen and politicians sell our future for a quick buck. He would have been singing it from the rooftops!

Help produce a positive zeitgeist! Build on Woody’s legacy and let’s start putting it right!

Bob Dylan – Opher’s World plays tribute to a genius

Posted on by Opher

There has to be more to Rock Music than trite Pop anthems about teenage love. There is. It is because Bob Dylan single-handedly propelled Rock towards a mature phase with intellectual integrity.

In the early years of Rock ‘n’ Roll in the fifties we had a visceral rebellion driven by the raucous swaggering performances of such as Little Richard, Bo Diddley, the Elvis of Sun Records and Chuck Berry. It was fast loud and explosive. It was the sound of a new post-war generation who wanted something different to the bland lives of their parents. Those early Rock ‘n’ Rollers belted out their brash new philosophy to blow the cobwebs out of the establishment.

A knife came down and cut off the connection. A whole generation was adrift from its roots with a new home-grown philosophy summed up by the Lee Marvin line in response to the question:
‘What are you rebelling against?’
‘What you got?’
That post-war generation wanted excitement, fun and adventure. The idea of following their parents into the blandness of suburbia with its neatly trimmed lawns and the American Dream was death by boredom. They wanted life in the fast lane with all its sex, fast cars and violence. The risk gave it an alluring edge. The colours were brighter; the feelings stronger and the pace full of adrenaline.

It was a revolution for a new age and though short-lived provided the basis for the Beatles and Stones to carry it forward.

There it would probably have been incorporated into the capitalist ethos of the Music Industry and decayed into Pop trivia if Bob Dylan hadn’t crashed into the scene with the force of an H-Bomb. The debris was flung into the air to be imbued with his poetic imagery, social and political content and a world of possibility. Bob had taken the song structure by the scruff and shaken it to pieces. The two and a half minute Rock song, with it’s theme of love and standard middle eight, was blown to bits. Anything was possible. You could tell stories. It could be twenty minutes long. You could have real meaning, real passion and something beyond mere teenage love and angst. It could deal with real issues.

Bob Dylan revived and transformed the rebellious impetus of the youth rebellion and provided it with substance.

Rock Music gained complexity, scope and social importance. It was no longer confined to teenage angst and sexuality. Bob had married its energy to a cerebral dimension that was allied to social and political sensibilities. Grown-up issues such as Civil Rights and the anti-war movement were central to the themes of Rock Music. The words were now of greater importance and value. There was a poetic eloquence that demanded to be taken seriously.

The awareness and sensibilities of an entire generation were stimulated and that led to the birth of an idealistic counter-culture that was to dominate the latter part of the sixties and give rise to a wealth of liberalising elements in the Women’s Movement, Peace groups, Environmental groups and Civil Rights Movements.

The establishment called him ‘The Voice of a Generation’. It was a label and pressure that Bob despised. He was not the voice of a generation. He was much more than that. He did not mirror the thoughts and ideals of sixties youth so much as awaken them and propagate their growth. He planted the seeds into the grey fertile soil of the cortex and fed them with the nutrients of wisdom so that they exploded to illuminate the skulls of a receptive generation. He gave them all freedom beyond his own dreams.

A million minds were awakened and imbued with the freedom of all possibility.

I wonder where the world would now be without him? Would we have had those years of protest through which so many of our civil liberties and liberalised society were wrested from the establishment’s reactionary grasp? For Bob not only reinvigorated Rock Music and propelled it to new dimensions he also fundamentally changed the society we all live in.

Thanks Bob – you were always so much more than a ‘Song and Dance’ man. You opened my mind and horizons.

If you enjoyed reading this why not purchase my books on Rock Music – you might enjoy them.

Or check out all my other books on Amazon