A Brillant wander down memory lane, Opher’s book My 60s is a fantastic journey of what we all may have experienced. It is both humorous and insightful. It jogs one’s memory creates feelings of joy and a little remorse. If you are a lover of great music and musicians, you will enjoy reading this book. I couldn’t put it down. I was going to read on a flight to Thailand however it will now be reread on that flight. Great stories from a bygone age. Love and peace the freaks live on.
My latest book has been out a week now and I know a number of people are reading it. I’m waiting with a degree of trepidation to know what they think of it!
Opher Goodwin has appeared in the pages before with four of his music books on, lets say more prog adjacent, acts. He covered Captain Beefheart, The Beatles, Roy Harper and Bob Dylan, all for Sonicbond. This new one covers the not-at-all prog, Leonard Cohen.
Leonard Cohen is foremost a poet who found an outlet for his work through song. He became the most unlikely star through not playing the typical folk or later rock star. What commends him to his audience is the quality of his song writing. Writing recognized classics like Sisters Of Mercy, So Long, Marianne, Suzanne, and of course Hallelujah. With Cohen’s dour deep baritone voice being an acquired taste moving between the almost wearisome and the hypnotic.
I cannot imagine that Goodwin’s well-written, thoroughly researched On Track… book will appeal to the general readers of this site. Though I myself am a fan, though not a rabid one. I found that this book has encouraged me to investigate his later work following his return to recording and touring. My favourite and most played record of his is the politically charged, and seemingly in these times more relevant that ever, The Future.
Fans of Cohen should snap this book up, as Opher Goodwin’s opinions of the music and lyrics will generate good-hearted debate. For the curious its a good resource to guide the dipping of toes into Cohen’s long, but not intimidatingly so, back catalogue.
The quote on page 46 from Opher Goodwin’s On Track: Captain Beefheart of the track When Big Joan Sets Up, encapsulates what makes Beefheart special, and at the same time why he remains a niche artist.
“… a great melody that carries it through. It’s meaningless but full of insight, so frenzied that it shouldn’t work, yet it does. It hangs together. That’s what is so great about Beefheart’s music – it pulls you in; the music is complex; the lyrics seem full of meaning, but everything is just beyond one’s grasp. You find yourself hooked. It propels you. It’s visceral. It tugs at the cortex. Rewarding.”
This applies across all of Beefheart’s recordings. Not without the odd exception of course, such as the mid-period ‘commercial’-leaning releases and things like Beefheart’s contribution to Frank Zappa‘s Willie The Pimp on Hot Rats. One of the things I find interesting about these two maverick forces of musical nature (Zappa and Beefheart) is that both went to Antelope Valley High School in the small Californian Mohave desert town of Lancaster. They remained friends on and off after leaving Lancaster; when their monumental artistic egos would allow. With Zappa, being more successful, helping the often-broke Beefheart out.
This is a great addition to Sonicbond Publishing’s ever expanding Every Album, Every Track series. This looks at Captain Beefheart’s studio output as well as the plethora of live releases and bootlegs that have followed since his death in 2010.
Comprehensive and critical where required, self-confessed Beefheart obsessive Opher Goodwin, knows his way around an incisive phrase and sets each of the studio albums into a context of time and place, record company and management shenanigans, and contemporary critical reactions. As well as assessing the various incarnations of the Magic Band, and how well they were able to translate the Captain’s ideas into actual music.
After making his brilliant final album, Ice Cream For Crow (1982), he left music-making on a high point, and turned back to painting. Beefheart, under his own name of Don van Vliet became a renowned abstract expressionist painter, gaining the level of success in the US that had eluded him musically. A happy ending of sorts.
This makes an excellent companion to Mike Barnes’ Captain Beefheart: The Biography (Omnibus Press) where neither shy away from Beefheart’s obsessive and bullying behaviour that were part of his artistic makeup. Opher Goodwin’s On Track: Captain Beefheart is a great guide and companion to this often-challenging artist.
If you’re curious, for me the place to start is with 1978’s Shiney Beast (Bat Chain Puller), but every Beefheart fan will have a different gateway release to recommend.
For her ‘Raging Pages’ column, Lisa Torem gives ‘Bob Dylan 1962 to 1970 : Every Album, Every Song’, Opher Goodwin’s new book on Dylan’s studio work high marks.
Opher Goodwin “taught the first ‘History of Rock Music’ class in the UK” and had the good fortune of catching Sixties acts, including Pink Floyd, Jimi Hendrix, The Doors and Captain Beefheart, during his time in London, “the epicentre for the underground explosion of rock music and culture” according to his recent press release. His subject, Bob Dylan, the Hibbing, Minnesota-born troubadour, who has often been championed as North America’s incomparable poet laureate, greatly influenced John Lennon, particularly on the dreamy ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ and literary-minded Suzanne Vega. Goodwin was originally dismissive of Dylan’s work – “We weren’t big on ‘folk’ music,’ he shares about his relationship with a then-friend, in the introduction. That statement, alone, piqued my interest, causing me to ask myself, ‘What, then, turned Goodwin into a super fan?’ But as I pored through the book, I easily discovered how the author’s evolution took place. Dylan’s early inspirations include no-holds-barred storyteller Woody Guthrie, soulful singer/guitarist Odetta, and oddly, “Be Bop a Lula” singer Little Richard. As such, one of Dylan’s chief goals was to befriend Guthrie, and on early albums, he would sharply mirror Guthrie’s talking-blues style. Goodwin also notes that Dylan’s rise to popularity in New York’s Greenwich Village came with a price. Being considered the voice of a generation “irritated him no end” and “heaped tension on his shoulders.” This conundrum would bedevil Dylan throughout his career. Radical French poets Rimbaud, Baudelaire and Verlaine would partially quench Dylan’s desire for dark, sensuous detail, before he embraced Beat poet Allen Ginsberg. Goodwin cites examples of how Dylan would, many times over the course of his career, reimagine himself, to the chagrin of his early fans. At the 1965 Newport Folk Festival he was considered a turncoat when he blasted his electric guitar. Similarly, when on his album ‘John Wesley Harding’ he dared to enter the Americana realm, he tried the patience of the tried-and-true. And again, as the counter-culture gathered steam, Dylan was called upon to lead the flock. He decried such thoughts of attachment. ‘Nashville Skyline’ honoured his new image, or lack thereof, for he had given the boot to corduroy caps and faded jeans. His times were ‘a-changin’, and so was he. Dylan’s discography reveals debut album covers by Jesse Fuller, Blind Willie Johnson, Bukka White and Blind Lemon Johnson, et al, arranged instrumentally with hard-picking plectrum and mournful blues-harp. His sophomore album was a sea-change. His labelmates had turned him on to a roster of trailblazers, and he began to scribe protest-songs oozing with unbridled conviction. ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’ and ‘Masters of War,’ “the ultimate anti-war song,” would become period-pieces. ‘A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall’ “never fails to engage.” The author vehemently states: “No matter how many times you hear it there is always something new to discover or wonder at.” With the same razor-sharp focus, Goodwin ushers us through Dylan’s 1962-1970 discography, I highly recommend this well-researched book. That Dylan has achieved folk-rock royalty status is undisputed, but reading about his climb to studio self-actualisation answers a series of burning questions.
New Eden gets straight to the point. Set sometime in the relatively near future on a disastrously over-populated Earth. How would you address the problem of worsening pollution, ever-scarcer resources, disease, oligarchic war, and the shrinking quality of life? Reduce the population size? In this fast-paced, thumping read, the writer tells the story of one possible scenario. It’s an easy and entertaining read that does not pull punches. People die, and mostly horribly. Yet, to my mind, it’s not a mere horror novel. It’s practically a philosophical treatise, and a glimpse into the psychology of how far some humans will go to achieve ideological ends. Some may find the subject matter a little harrowing. However, all is not macabre melancholy–there is hope in the most unlikely of places. That resides in the book’s title–New Eden. I read the book in one go, and I rarely achieve this. It’s clear the author did his research which adds legitimacy to the science. Such is the perceived accuracy of the technical details, the novel almost feels like a documentary account of what happened. And you are there as a witness. I would have liked the novel to be longer to allow further fleshing out of the final narrative. All in all, a thrilling and scary outline of where humanity is heading.
They engineered extinction. The children inherited the Earth. A genetically tailored virus was meant to cleanse the world. It did. Now, in the ruins of civilisation, a handful of children—immune, innocent, and marked by difference—tend gardens, sing songs, and carry the last flicker of humanity. As the final survivors fall, one scientist must decide whether to save what remains or vanish with the old world. What blooms in the dome is not just survival—it’s something new. New Eden is a haunting, redemptive tale of catastrophe and compassion, where the end of one world becomes the fragile beginning of another.
Roy Harper Review 27.9.2025 – Bridgewater Hall Manchester
It was with some trepidation that Henry and I headed off from Driffield to Manchester in bright Yorkshire sunshine.
He was now 84, was his voice going to hold up?
Could those fingers still pick that guitar?
At the best of times he stumbled over words, would he still be able to remember all those complex poetic lyrics?
Would that sharp wit and spontaneous insightful comments leap off his tongue?
In short, was he still up to the job?
Questions stalked my thoughts like spies.
On the way we played some vintage Harper. I chose Come Out Fighting Ghenghis Smith because it harked back to the times when I first started going to his gigs fifty-eight years ago! We topped it off with Burn The World which seemed to epitomise the present state of the world.
As we approached Manchester it started to rain.
Inside the magnificent Bridgewater Hall, with its 2,341 capacity, I couldn’t help but marvel at how far the lad has come. Les Cousins had a capacity of 200 when rammed!
I looked around at the remnants of the sixties underground (some with eager kids in tow). We come in all shades of bright colour, lengths or absence of hair and assorted sizes – some with sticks, crutches and wheelchairs. It was great to meet up with so many old friends! Hanging on to a fading philosophy? The refugees gather to shelter from the storm. We’re older and wiser, perhaps a shade less idealistic, more realistic! I sat on our plush padded seat and thought back to the hard wooden seats of yesteryear.
Could Roy recreate the vibe?
The lights dimmed and the ageing raver stepped out from the wings. A roar went up? ‘So what’s all this?’ quipped Roy. Roy was back. He made his way to his seat riding on the crest of great affection. Fittingly he informed us that he was heading back to 1969 when he was twenty-eight and dedicated his first song to Lonnie Donnegan, the skiffle King who inspired his first venture into showbiz with his brothers asThe Brothers. How Does It Feel. Well it felt great. The voice, the guitar and the asides, all spot on. All questions answered. It was real!
Nick came out on stage to another rapturous reception. Roy told us how he’d written the next number – Another Day – in a caravan at the Cambridge Folk Festival before having a swipe at US Senators and informing us that the world’s an ass (as if we didn’t know). Immediately Nick and Roy gelled into a glorious, intuitive blend. It’s genetic!
With a kick at Ted Cruz and the barbed quip – ‘Who are these people?’ – we were back in the familiar Harperian social commentary with Hors d’Oeuvres. Took me straight back to the early seventies where Roy would direct the number at the music press drinking at the bar. The two melded guitar runs sure made me think! This was just the starter. The main meal was still to come.
We stayed back in 1968 as Roy recounted his first crossing of the Atlantic and the fabled A and B chords. The haunting 24 Hours of Sunset gave his powerful, controlled vocal full sway. As good as ever.
Roy was enjoying himself. ‘I’m 84,’ he gleefully reminded us, as much astounded by it as we were, ‘It’s amazing!’
The stage was set for an abbreviated epic as Roy told us about an interview in St Antonio, Texas where he first came in contact with the insane US gun culture. The early MAGA cult did not take kindly to I Hate The Whiteman. One of the white men, who he suggested could not be considered human, threatened to come and ‘put you out of your misery’. Seemed that the bare-foot dream of life was not free to laugh and cry its fill! We loved it though.
Roy’s 70’s dream of living together with all of his friends got off to a hesitant start but gained in momentum as it progressed – the delicate melodic Commune providing a great vehicle for duelling guitars.
Roy reiterated his detestation of social sanctioned murder asking ‘Do we need to be savages? Are we savages?’ But the power chords of Hangman suffered from tuning problems with a little wobbly stumbles. None-the-less Roy’s chords and strums provided a sound base for Nick’s lyrical notes and chords to dance across.
The interval seemed to settle him back down.
The warmth resumed as Roy entered from the wings and was made to feel at home with an eruption of joy, the huge hall once again becoming an intimate setting with all the same inane heckling.
The intro for this traditional song didn’t mention Bob Dylan or Paul Simon by name but, for the first time that I’ve heard, sanctioned plagiarism and admitted that ‘borrowing and thieving’ was a valid means for providing inspiration and songs ‘travelled’. His still nimble fingers treated us to a perfect version of North Country.
Nick rejoined him for a brilliant Hallucinating Light which he dedicated to Mocy, Nick’s mum, reflecting poignantly that ‘she was a good girl’. I delighted in a typical Harper moment as he stopped partway in to explain the lyrics. The poetry always meant so much, enough to pause and dissect. We were moved by that familiar laugh as he explained that he was referring to his eyes struggling across a room full of people to fix on the goggle box – where ‘the sick majority infest the myths of doom’. Those guitars intermeshed, the voice soared as the years dropped away.
A new song ‘Man in a Glass Cage?’ had Roy explaining his understanding of Pater Noster. As a lad his father would take him fishing off the North pier at Blackpool. They used a heavy baited five hooks that ‘would take your ear off’ if not cast right. It was called the paternoster
East of The Sun was an absolute triumph. He explained that he had written it for his first girlfriend, Gillian, who was present that evening. He’d lived next door to her when he was 6 and recalled teasing her by not giving her ball back. A most beautiful, heartfelt rendition with Nick beautifully picking out the notes for the first verse in a most poignant manner followed by Roy’s vocals caressing the memories.
When An Old Cricketer Leaves the Crease elicited the story of his grandfather playing for Didsbury and asking his mother if he should pursue it as a career with her replying ‘Nay lad, there’s no money in it’. Once again the two guitars gelled into sublime lyrical phrasing for an immaculate rendition.
Even though we had been treated to some brilliant stuff The Same Old Rock surpassed everything. Roy explained some of the lyrics – the pope always straggling a hundred years behind where society is – the lock being religion. Then they launched into the best version of the song I’ve ever heard. I’ve seen it duetted with Jimmy Page and Any Roberts but never better than this. The power and intermeshing of the two guitars was monumental, the poetic lyrics majestic, the vocal soared in what was a consummate performance. He still has that high register! Those guitars thundered, explosive, incendiary. They burnt the hall down in a feast of synergy.
They made their exit but the crowd went mad. There was no way to escape an encore. A humbled Roy came back to provide us with a new song we’d heard those six years ago. I Loved My Life. He claims to be a simple human and tells us that life is but a moment. Time is short but that he has loved his time here. It was appropriate.
We loved the time he’d spent with us. A chance to once again sample the delights of a legend.
The sophisticated beggar left us with the words: ‘Time is against me – but I hope to be back again.’
We hope so too! What a concert! A sharing. A few stumbles but we forgive them all – once again we had shared a magic evening.
As we drove back through the torrential rain all our questions had been answered!
Thank you Roy (and Nick). A privilege and a treat. ‘Aye Lad, I always knew you had it in you.’
For her ‘Raging Pages’ column, Lisa Torem gives ‘Bob Dylan 1962 to 1970 : Every Album, Every Song’, Opher Goodwin’s new book on Dylan’s studio work high marks.
Opher Goodwin “taught the first ‘History of Rock Music’ class in the UK” and had the good fortune of catching Sixties acts, including Pink Floyd, Jimi Hendrix, The Doors and Captain Beefheart, during his time in London, “the epicentre for the underground explosion of rock music and culture” according to his recent press release. His subject, Bob Dylan, the Hibbing, Minnesota-born troubadour, who has often been championed as North America’s incomparable poet laureate, greatly influenced John Lennon, particularly on the dreamy ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ and literary-minded Suzanne Vega. Goodwin was originally dismissive of Dylan’s work – “We weren’t big on ‘folk’ music,’ he shares about his relationship with a then-friend, in the introduction. That statement, alone, piqued my interest, causing me to ask myself, ‘What, then, turned Goodwin into a super fan?’ But as I pored through the book, I easily discovered how the author’s evolution took place. Dylan’s early inspirations include no-holds-barred storyteller Woody Guthrie, soulful singer/guitarist Odetta, and oddly, “Be Bop a Lula” singer Little Richard. As such, one of Dylan’s chief goals was to befriend Guthrie, and on early albums, he would sharply mirror Guthrie’s talking-blues style. Goodwin also notes that Dylan’s rise to popularity in New York’s Greenwich Village came with a price. Being considered the voice of a generation “irritated him no end” and “heaped tension on his shoulders.” This conundrum would bedevil Dylan throughout his career. Radical French poets Rimbaud, Baudelaire and Verlaine would partially quench Dylan’s desire for dark, sensuous detail, before he embraced Beat poet Allen Ginsberg. Goodwin cites examples of how Dylan would, many times over the course of his career, reimagine himself, to the chagrin of his early fans. At the 1965 Newport Folk Festival he was considered a turncoat when he blasted his electric guitar. Similarly, when on his album ‘John Wesley Harding’ he dared to enter the Americana realm, he tried the patience of the tried-and-true. And again, as the counter-culture gathered steam, Dylan was called upon to lead the flock. He decried such thoughts of attachment. ‘Nashville Skyline’ honoured his new image, or lack thereof, for he had given the boot to corduroy caps and faded jeans. His times were ‘a-changin’, and so was he. Dylan’s discography reveals debut album covers by Jesse Fuller, Blind Willie Johnson, Bukka White and Blind Lemon Johnson, et al, arranged instrumentally with hard-picking plectrum and mournful blues-harp. His sophomore album was a sea-change. His labelmates had turned him on to a roster of trailblazers, and he began to scribe protest-songs oozing with unbridled conviction. ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’ and ‘Masters of War,’ “the ultimate anti-war song,” would become period-pieces. ‘A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall’ “never fails to engage.” The author vehemently states: “No matter how many times you hear it there is always something new to discover or wonder at.” With the same razor-sharp focus, Goodwin ushers us through Dylan’s 1962-1970 discography, I highly recommend this well-researched book. That Dylan has achieved folk-rock royalty status is undisputed, but reading about his climb to studio self-actualisation answers a series of burning questions.
The quote on page 46 from Opher Goodwin’s On Track: Captain Beefheart of the track When Big Joan Sets Up, encapsulates what makes Beefheart special, and at the same time why he remains a niche artist.
“… a great melody that carries it through. It’s meaningless but full of insight, so frenzied that it shouldn’t work, yet it does. It hangs together. That’s what is so great about Beefheart’s music – it pulls you in; the music is complex; the lyrics seem full of meaning, but everything is just beyond one’s grasp. You find yourself hooked. It propels you. It’s visceral. It tugs at the cortex. Rewarding.”
This applies across all of Beefheart’s recordings. Not without the odd exception of course, such as the mid-period ‘commercial’-leaning releases and things like Beefheart’s contribution to Frank Zappa‘s Willie The Pimp on Hot Rats. One of the things I find interesting about these two maverick forces of musical nature (Zappa and Beefheart) is that both went to Antelope Valley High School in the small Californian Mohave desert town of Lancaster. They remained friends on and off after leaving Lancaster; when their monumental artistic egos would allow. With Zappa, being more successful, helping the often-broke Beefheart out.
This is a great addition to Sonicbond Publishing’s ever expanding Every Album, Every Track series. This looks at Captain Beefheart’s studio output as well as the plethora of live releases and bootlegs that have followed since his death in 2010.
Comprehensive and critical where required, self-confessed Beefheart obsessive Opher Goodwin, knows his way around an incisive phrase and sets each of the studio albums into a context of time and place, record company and management shenanigans, and contemporary critical reactions. As well as assessing the various incarnations of the Magic Band, and how well they were able to translate the Captain’s ideas into actual music.
After making his brilliant final album, Ice Cream For Crow (1982), he left music-making on a high point, and turned back to painting. Beefheart, under his own name of Don van Vliet became a renowned abstract expressionist painter, gaining the level of success in the US that had eluded him musically. A happy ending of sorts.
This makes an excellent companion to Mike Barnes’ Captain Beefheart: The Biography (Omnibus Press) where neither shy away from Beefheart’s obsessive and bullying behaviour that were part of his artistic makeup. Opher Goodwin’s On Track: Captain Beefheart is a great guide and companion to this often-challenging artist.
If you’re curious, for me the place to start is with 1978’s Shiney Beast (Bat Chain Puller), but every Beefheart fan will have a different gateway release to recommend.
Another title in the rapidly growing list of books published by SonicBond, this time featuring original maverick and friend to a guitar rock god or two, Roy Harper.
As a long-standing Harper fan I know that tackling his discography is not a task for the faint-hearted. With albums going in and out of print, reissues, alternative versions and limited editions, there is a lot to get to grips with. Thankfully Goodwin handles everything with aplomb, clarifying where extra tracks on various re-releases originally stemmed from and where they fit into Harper’s recording chronology. It makes it easy to disentangle the frequently messy and confusing slew of releases from a prolific writer.
Of course, it helps that Goodwin has been friends with Harper since 1967, just after the release of Harper’s surprising debut album Sophisticated Beggar; surprising in that it eschewed the folk and blues numbers that Harper had gained a reputation for from his busking and folk club performances and comprised all-original material. Perhaps more startling was that it also featured a full band in places, not what the folk crowd that had primarily been his audience up to that point had been expecting. These were the first signs that Harper would stick to his own plans and not be pushed into doing what others necessarily wanted or expected.
What will be alien to modern bands is the fact that Harper’s first two albums, released on different labels, were both commercial failures. Yet the musical environment of the time meant that it was the music that mattered and the lack of commercial appeal was not considered a black mark against the artist. He found a longer-lasting home on Harvest Records for his third album, Flat Baroque And Berserk, the first of seven essential albums he recorded for the label over the next decade.
Goodwin’s personal memories and analysis of the songs and albums adds a lot to the book and offer insights that keep things interesting, more than some other titles in the series in being a sterile list of songs. Harper was never an artist that was likely to trouble the singles chart but he did consistently release such items. Although a lot of the songs unique to the format, particularly from the earliest years, have been compiled and re-issued, his b-sides remain some of the hardest items to locate for the collector. In that respect this book is a valuable guide to what was released, and in some cases what has not been released, both of which can be quite frustrating for the searching completist!
I would have liked to have seen a bit more on the live Roy Harper as, despite the brilliance of the studio output, it was on stage that Harper excelled. As at least a couple of the official live albums were assembled from a multitude of recorded concerts, there is potentially a lot of recorded material that remains locked in the vaults. However, considering that recording details and locations were omitted from Inbetween Every Line as all the tapes were mixed up and it wasn’t deemed necessary to sort them out, it could be a major task sorting them out if, indeed, they still exist.
Despite his long recording career, there doesn’t appear to be much studio material left languishing in the vaults and it seems increasingly unlikely that Harper will return to the studio to record a new album, despite how well his last album, 2013’s Man And Myth was received. So it is from these putative live archives that any future releases will presumably be drawn.
As such, this volume can be assumed to be as complete a record of the musical legacy of one of Britain’s finest and most idiosyncratic singer-songwriters as you are likely to find. Written in a relaxed and enjoyable style, it is an easy-to-read volume that will introduce, and re-introduce, the reader to the delights of the Harper catalogue. I certainly dug out a few of his lesser-played albums from my collection and listened to them in a new light after reading the book. And if that is not recommendation enough, I don’t know what is.
Now, back to searching for the missing items. Anyone know where I can find Goodbye Ladybird?
Martin Burns
