Excerpt from – Bob Dylan 1962 to 1970 On Track (Decades) – Paperback

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  Bob Dylan 1962 to 1970 On Track (Decades) Paperback

Life for a musician was cutthroat. Most fell by the wayside. Talent was not the only criterion necessary. Having the correct image, credentials, friends, disposition, drive and luck were also a necessity. What Robert Allan Zimmerman lacked he created for himself out of thin air.

   Looking back to the early John Bucklen tapes, recorded in 1958 on a portable reel to reel tape recorder, of a young Robert Zimmerman, seventeen years old, still at school pounding out his homage to his idol Little Richard, there was no inkling of the folk legend he was shortly to become. He wanted to become a rock star. That teenage Dylan was a rebel, assuming an image based on James Dean and Marlon Brando. He formed a number of loud rock ’n’ roll bands, the Golden Chords and Shadow Blasters being two, in which he pounded the piano oblivious to audience response. In the first of his chameleonic changes he assumed the name and wild persona of Elston Gunnn. Despite the enthusiasm the bands didn’t take off, indeed, had nowhere to go, but they did bring him some local notoriety and attract the girls. This increasing rebellious led to increasing fractious relationships with school, the tight-knit Jewish community and his father.

   By the age of eighteen, he’d wrung the little Minnesotan iron ore town of Hibbing dry. He’d learnt the rudiments of guitar and piano, formed a number of bands, and absorbed a huge range of musical styles and traditions from rock ‘n’ roll, r&b to country music and standards – the mainstay of the local radio station, all of which were going to contribute and inform his progressions over the course of the ensuing years. Groundwork was being laid. His first musical heroes being Hank Williams and Little Richard.

   Here we have to start to unravel the man from the myth. Robert Zimmerman was already outgrowing the little mining town of Hibbing in Minnesota. As soon as he was able, he looked for a way out of there. A fresh-faced boy, looking younger than his years, not yet needing to shave, set off on the start of his adventure.

   He did not exactly run away from home as seek out an excuse to leave. No, he hadn’t already run away from home seven times (at the age of 10, 12, 13, 15, 15 and a half, 17 and 18). No, he hadn’t spent six years with a travelling carnival. No, he hadn’t ridden the freights as a hobo from Gallop New Mexico to New Orleans. No, he wasn’t an orphan. It was all much less colourful than that. He’d been brought up in a Jewish family with a middle-class upbringing and led rather an uneventful life in a small town. But he was obsessed with music and determined to have a life in music. It was all he cared about. He had managed to secure a gig or three backing Bobby Vee on the piano when he’d appeared in the local area. That must have been a real buzz for a young kid. In 1959, looking for a way of getting into the music business, he persuaded his mother to help him out. Using a course at Minnesota University as an excuse to leave he gained the help of his mother (his relationship with his more conservative father being difficult). She arranged for him to go to Minnesota by organising with his cousin Chucky to put him up. Chucky sorted him a room in the frat house at the university where he could stay for free in the summer. Not exactly as exciting as riding freights and touring with carnivals, but it did set him on the road. On arriving on the greyhound bus he immediately swapped his electric guitar for an acoustic Martin Double O so that he could set about playing in the local coffee houses. It was the start. What he did next was to seek out like-minded people, hang out with musicians, and have the time to develop, learn and evolve. The liberal arts course at the University of Minnesota was not scintillating enough. Bob focussed more on his music, staying up late to play, listen, drink and party. For the young Robert girls, dope and booze were more interesting than study and he soon dropped out.

Extract – In Search of Captain Beefheart – A Rock Music Memoir – teaching the next generation

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teaching the next generation

Somehow in life you have to leave a legacy. There comes a time when you have to leave off doing things and pass them along to the next generation. I’ve just come in from cutting down a big broken branch on our large cherry tree. It involved climbing up to the top of the tree with a saw and cutting through the large split bough that was dangerously dangling. I couldn’t help but notice that at approaching the age of sixty five I was not quite as nimble as I had been as a young cub-scout. It did give me a brief moment of pleasure to find that I can get just as dirty with green lichen as ever. Liz will have a moan about me being in my best jumper and jeans. What the hell. Things don’t change.

Yet they do.

We get old and cease to function as well. The eyes go. The ears deteriorate and the words and memories do not flow as easily as they once did.

Soon I won’t be heading for the front.

Soon I won’t be heading anywhere at all.

My kids had it tough. They found it quite hard to rebel during those troublesome teenage years – though they all seemed to manage in their own sweet way. Whatever music they might want to get to like their old man had it in spades. My collection was extensive.

Hester responded by not really getting into music at all.

The two older boys got into Hip-Hop and break-dancing. It was all the trend when they were little. They carried a little square of rolled up lino around with them and practiced doing robot dancing, moon-walking, turtles and spinning on their head. I think they thought the back-streets of Hull were synonymous with the Bronx. They also figured that as I hated all the post-punk synthesiser crap it was good to get into the pretty-boy Pop of Duran Duran.

Dylan did go on to appreciate Harper and a range of decent music and Barnaby really got into the Madchester sound of Stone Roses, Ian Brown and then the grunge of Nirvana. Sadly I was sceptical of all of those but later began to really appreciate them. He didn’t have such bad taste after all.

Henry, probably because he was the youngest, was the one who appreciated my tastes the most. I took him to his first Roy Harper gig at the age of six and he has grown up with both Roy and Nick Harper. When he was in his late teens I started to try to give him a sound education.

I took him to the Love gigs which he thought were brilliant. He actually ended up going back to the hotel room with Arthur Lee and spending time with him. I took Henry to see the Magic Band and he pronounced that they were the best live band ever. He went to loads of their gigs and took all his friends along. After long years of driving them crazy in the car with endless tapes of Beefheart he had finally come to see the genius of it.

I then took him along to see some good old Rock ‘n’ Roll before all the old guys died off. We went to see Chuck and Jerry Lee in Bradford. They were both still great in their seventies. Chuck was still duck-walking and doing his stances. Jerry wasn’t quite so flamboyant. He no longer climbed on his piano or stood and shook his hair so violently but he did kick his piano stool away in one number and was still pounding those keys.

The strangest one of all was taking Henry to a Little Richard gig again in Bradford. It was a weird one. Little Richard looked as if he was showing his years. He shuffled more than rocked, but he still had the voice and did do some great Rock ‘n’ Roll. He was the master when he got going. The weird stuff was all the evangelical Christianity. I really don’t get this American fanaticism with Jesus. They must have cottoned on that there isn’t going to be any second coming – it was all just another Middle Eastern sect – one of many. Little Richard dispensed these books on Christianity to everyone. I think I threw mine away. The other strange aspect was all the very camp gay bit. Somehow it did not quite all gel together. What a strange mix that was – bawdy Rock – cloying Christianity – and camp gay posturing. We then went round the corner for the capitalist bit and paid a princely sum to get a poster signed. But hey – we got to see a legend!

Phil Ochs – On Track – excerpt

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   There were a number of factors that helped form Phil’s personality, the pacifism, sense of compassion and. desire for equality and justice.

   The first of these was his father’s health. Jack was a physician, which should have been the basis for a very stable, prosperous family situation. That was far from the case. He had worked for the military in the Second World War and had to treat horrific injuries following the Battle of the Bulge. The experience traumatised him. He was discharged from the army and came back home severely depressed and suffering a debilitating bipolar condition. Despite trying to operate as a local physician he had episodes where he could not function and ended up hospitalised. His regular struggles with mental illness meant that he had to take appointments on the lowest rung in the medical profession – working in TB clinics. Although they were a middle-class family things were not as financially secure as they might have been.

   The effect of his father’s condition on Phil was enormous. The first impact was financial. Due to regular bouts of hospitalisation and inability to work the family was thrown into a degree of poverty. That was going to have unexpected consequences. Secondly, there was the psychologically delicate nature of his father who had to be tip-toed around and was usually very withdrawn, so his mother took on the responsibility of running things. Thirdly, the family moved around a lot chasing new positions for his father whenever his condition improved.

   This resulted in Phil retreating into himself, becoming a daydreamer and making very few friends.

   It also meant that they lived in interesting settings, first in New York, in Queens at Far Rockaway beach, and then Columbus Ohio. Both places left him with deep impressions that came out later in songs.

   Being part of a non-practicing Jewish family also had an effect. Being Jewish provided the insight of an immigrant outside that probably fed into his politics. Phil was obviously affected. As a child he had a thing about his big nose and actually had an operation to reduce its size which had the effect of boosting his confidence.

   Another unusual consequence of his family situation came to the fore in the realm of child-minding. Because of the need to keep the children quiet because of their father’s nerves, Phil’s mother used an unusual method of providing child-minding for Sonny, Phil and his younger brother Michael; instead of paying for baby-sitting she sent them to the cinema. They spent huge amounts of time watching every film going, staying on to sit through film after film, lapping it up. When it wasn’t the cinema it was TV. Phil became an absolute film nut. He knew all the minor actors and collecting anything to do with film, magazines, leaflets, posters. He loved westerns and his big hero was big bad John Wayne, the tough guy who dished it out to the baddies; somehow, not the kind of hero that you naturally associate with a left-wing topical singer-songwriter. He did rectify this later with his love of more rebellious heroes in Marlon Brando and James Dean.

Excerpt – Bob Dylan Bringing It All Back Home: Rock Classics – Paperback 

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The new, polka-dotted, shade-wearing, long, curly-haired, skinny-trousered, booted pop star, with a white strat hanging around his neck, cut a mean figure. Just like James Dean or Marlon Brando, he oozed charisma – confident, articulate and uncompromising. Rock music had a new rebel, and this time, he had a cause.

   This wasn’t just a new sound; it was a new genre, a new style, a new vibe and a new culture. Bob Dylan was matchless. He put poetic lyrics to a novel kind of rock music and coupled that with style and attitude. The result was devastating. In the process, he blew both worlds apart, sent the music media into a spin and broke through into the world of serious academic consideration. The sober world of the adult mainstream media was beginning to take note. What had been considered a juvenile entertainment of no intrinsic worth was now being written about, reviewed and discussed in pillars of the establishment, such as The Times. Rock music had come of age. His poetry was analysed in universities. His views were taken seriously.

   Where Robert Johnson was fabled to have stood at the crossroads at midnight, selling his soul to the devil in exchange for becoming the best blues musician on the planet, Bob Dylan chose to stand on a motorway intersection in the stark noon sun daring all the gods and devils in the universe to take him on. He required no divine intervention.

In Search of Captain Beefheart – Kindle, Paperback, Hardback – A Rock Music memoir

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The sixties raged. I was young, crazy, full of hormones and wanting to snatch life by the balls. There was a life out there for the grabbing and it had to be wrestled into submission. There was a society full of boring amoral crap and a life to be had in the face of the boring, comforting vision of slow death on offer. Rock music vented all that passion. This book is a memoir of a life spent immersed in Rock Music. I was born in 1949 and so lived through the whole gamut of Rock. Rock music formed the background to momentous world events – the Civil Rights Movement, Vietnam War, Iraq war, Watergate, the miners’ strike and Thatcher years, CND, the Green Movement, Mao and the Cultural Revolution, Women’s Liberation and the Cold War. I see this as the Rock Era. I was immersed in Rock music. It was fused into my personality. It informed me, transformed me and inspired me. My heroes were musicians. I am who I am because of them. Without Rock Music I would not have the same sensibilities, optimism or ideals. They woke me up! This tells that story.

Phil Ochs On Track: Every Album, Every Song – Paperback – Extract

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Introduction

Phil Ochs was a most unlikely hero of the left. A country boy from Ohio from a middle class Jewish family, brought up in an apolitical environment, attending, by choice, a military academy and a huge fan of the redneck John Wayne. In his late teens he had an awakening. Attending Ohio State University, following an epiphany in a Florida jail, he changed courses to study politics and journalism, became embroiled in the US policies on Cuba and met Jim Glover and his Marxist father. Like a switch had been flicked. His life became a political debate. Seized by idealistic fervour he morphed into a staunch socialist mainstay of the early sixties Greenwich Village folk scene and then a radical leader of the extreme YIPPIE movement. Putting an end to the war in Vietnam and making the world a fairer place became his obsession.

   His idealistic bubble burst in the bloody streets of Chicago. Like a sun that burned too bright, his light burned fiercely before, doused in alcoholic fumes and disillusionment, it sputtered, faded and, all too soon was extinguished.

   Dylan’s much reported scathing put-down: ‘You’re not a Folk Singer; you’re a journalist’ was far from the truth. Phil was a folk singer, and so much more. He was a singer-songwriter of remarkable skill. He shone the light of his crystal mind on to the issues of the day and illuminated them for everyone to see. His songs, now sixty years old, still resonate down the decades and touch the ears, hearts and consciences of people today. As he himself stated: he did not write protest songs so much as songs of social concern. Those issues are still pertinent and those songs still relevant. Whenever singer songwriters are talked about Phil Ochs has a seat at the top table.

   I was fifteen years-old in 1964 when Phil Ochs first came to my attention. Daphne Pescoe was a full-blown, black turtle-neck wearing beatnik Joan Baez obsessive. She was a couple of years older than me and that’s a yawning chasm at that age. She looked incredibly mature and sophisticated with her long dark hair, not unlike a cross between Joan Baez and her sister Mimi Farina. Even so she took me under her wing and did her best to turn me on by playing me early Joan Baez albums on her dansette player. I don’t remember her playing anything other than Joan Baez. We would sit on the floor in her bedroom with our backs to the bed and listen intently to Joan.

   Thus it was in 1964 she had purchased the single ‘There But For Fortune’, Baez singing a Phil Ochs number. I remember spending the whole afternoon listening to that one single, fascinated, alternating with the B-side ‘Plaisir D’Amour’. By the end of the afternoon I knew the track inside out and Phil Ochs had made his entrance into my life. He never left. I went out and bought his debut album.  I was hooked from the start! Even then, as a young lad, I was a word man, a socialist anti-war equal rights kind of guy, and the energy of those early topical songs knocked me out! Then we had that voice!  – a clear, expressive instrument that he deployed in many guises, back then it was used to illustrate causes.

   The background to that discovery of Phil Ochs came through a circuitous route involving a lot of friends. They laid the groundwork that opened my mind to the appreciation of all types of music, a facility that enabled me to listen and evaluate for myself. Without that openness I might have brushed it aside. After all, this was the age of the Beatles, Stones and a thousand brilliant new bands.

   It went on from there. Phil Ochs was in the mix. He had found his place in the pantheon of my many idols.

      The story of Phil Ochs started back in El Paso, Texas, on December 19th 1940, when Phil arrived as an early Christmas present for his father, Jacob ‘Jack’ Ochs, (of Polish descent) Scottish mother Gertrude Phin Ochs and elder sister Sonny (Sonia).

   There were a number of factors that helped form Phil’s personality, the pacifism, sense of compassion and. desire for equality and justice.

Phil Ochs speaks to us from long ago!

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‘It’s not enough to be right. It’s not enough to be intelligent. Woodstock could have been roped off and everyone sent to the gas chambers. They will in fact kill you all without a second’s hesitation. Merle Haggard is a man who on the right-wing level has come to terms with Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs and the others. I’ll do a Merle Haggard song, just as he did it. To show you what’s going on the other side of the world.’ – Phil Ochs Carnegie Hall 1968

‘A  lot of people say my songs sound alike. What I’m trying to do is write one endless song called truth. Painting the world exactly how I see it without compromise; always questioning!’ Phil Ochs from ‘The Life of Phil Ochs’ by Michael Schumacher.

Phil foresaw the rise of the right-wing MAGA philosophy right back in the late sixties. It sure wasn’t peace and love. Merle Haggard represented the views of those early rednecks. Phil was trying to wake people up!

Anecdote – Hyde Park free concerts in the sixties

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Hyde Park free concerts in the sixties

It was Blackhill Enterprises who organised the free concerts in the park. Pete Jenner was an instigator. Pete had been involved with ‘happenings’ like the Pink Floyd thing – ‘Games for May’. The sixties were full of it. There was an anti-capitalist theme. The music was part of the community, for the community and of the community. This was the sixties underground. It was the culture that we shared with the San Francisco scene with their ‘Human Be-ins’ and free concerts in Golden Gate Park. This really was the gathering of the tribes to party and meet up.

There was no exploitation in it. It had no ulterior motive. It was fun in the park.

I went to them from the very beginning. They were small affairs. Roy Harper would play and compere. Bands like Pink Floyd, Edgar Broughton, the Deviants, Pink Fairies and Battered Ornaments would play.

We sat around in the sun. Met new friends, shared everything and there was a great atmosphere.

Word soon travelled around. Soon they were gaining in popularity. Instead of a couple of hundred, there were hundreds. The atmosphere started to change. The scene had too many pretend hippies who diluted the vibe.

They changed from being small gatherings of like-minded people to huge crowds. By the end, with the Stones and Blind Faith, they were enormous oceans of humanity. I couldn’t get near the stage and Roy Harper was not even allowed on.

The vibe had gone. I preferred it when they were little.

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Anecdotes – paperback just £6.95  Kindle – just £1.99 or free on Kindle Unlimited

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A Rock Music Memoir – In Search of Captain Beefheart – Paperback 

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Opher Goodwin (Author)

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The sixties raged. I was young, crazy, full of hormones and wanting to snatch life by the balls. There was a life out there for the grabbing and it had to be wrestled into submission. There was a society full of boring amoral crap and a life to be had in the face of the boring, comforting vision of slow death on offer. Rock music vented all that passion. This book is a memoir of a life spent immersed in Rock Music. I was born in 1949 and so lived through the whole gamut of Rock. Rock music formed the background to momentous world events – the Civil Rights Movement, Vietnam War, Iraq war, Watergate, the miners’ strike and Thatcher years, CND, the Green Movement, Mao and the Cultural Revolution, Women’s Liberation and the Cold War. I see this as the Rock Era. I was immersed in Rock music. It was fused into my personality. It informed me, transformed me and inspired me. My heroes were musicians. I am who I am because of them. Without Rock Music I would not have the same sensibilities, optimism or ideals. They woke me up! This tells that story.

Mirrors and Venom, Extract from ‘In Search of Captain Beefheart’ – A Rock Memoir

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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.