Historical British weekly pop/rock music newspaper (1926-2000)
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Content warning: This episode contains discussion of rape (40:37–42:20). In this episode we ask Bob Stanley about his career as a writer and member of the beloved Saint Etienne, whose swansong year this is. We start with Caff, the '80s fanzine which set out the eclectic pop aesthetic that underpinned Saint Etienne, proceeding from there to Bob's memories of life on Melody Maker in the late '80s and early '90s. A clip of our guest's erstwhile MM colleague Simon Reynolds talking about Saint Etienne in 2021 is the cue for a general discussion of the trio's evolution over the last 35 years – and for an explanation of their (very amicable) decision to call it a day after a tour this September. Revisiting the epic "story of pop" that was Bob's 2013 tome Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! leads to clips from Hank Bordowitz's 1997 audio interview with the late Connie Francis, the Jersey girl who in the late '50s and early '60s was arguably the biggest female pop artist in America. After Mark pays a lifelong Deadhead's tribute to the late Bob Weir, he quotes from newly-added library pieces about the Nice (1967), Tom Wolfe (1969) and Paul McCartney (1979). Finally, Jasper sees us out with his thoughts on interviews with Ini Kamoze (1995) and D'Angelo (1998). Many thanks to special guest Bob Stanley. Visit his website at bobstanley.co.uk and find Yeah Yeah Yeah in all good bookshops. Pieces discussed: Saint Etienne, St. Etienne: Holier Than Thou, Saint Etienne: Cats Eyes and Legless, Bill Haley, Bob Stanley: Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! – The Story of Pop Music from Bill Haley to Beyoncé, Connie Francis was a trailblazing pop star haunted by tragedy, Connie Francis audio, The World According to Cliff, Alone again gratefully: Bob Weir proves he's more than Dead, The Nice, Tom Wolfe, Paul McCartney, Ini Kamoze, Voodoo Chile: D'Angelo and Yungblud.
‘January,' a revered pop lyricist once wrote, ‘sick and tired you've been hanging on me.' And if that's the mood down your way, this might help crank up the heat, alighting as it does upon the following … … Guns N'Roses and the imperial age of the pop video: director Nigel Dick remembers the $750,000 budget … ‘lost elfin Scots superstar': missing Incredible String Band member found after 40 years! … comparing the original West End Girls to the re-made worldwide hit: “like a Top Of The Pops album doing the same song” … the three ages of Bowie and why he's becoming a religious cult … gangster-wall-papering the Melody Maker office as an Ian Dury promo stunt ... the magic of stars' childhood bedrooms … “he's got a tinfoil pal and a pedal bin”: Star Wars in a nutshell … Tales of Brave Ulysses: psychedelia in under three minutes …. and has there ever been a fictional band as convincing as McGwyer Mortimer? Andy Miller on Licorice McKecknie here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/incredible-band-146577648 Nigel Dick's wonderful video for God Only Knows here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cXhEkug1G-QHelp us to keep The Longest Conversation In Rock going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
‘January,' a revered pop lyricist once wrote, ‘sick and tired you've been hanging on me.' And if that's the mood down your way, this might help crank up the heat, alighting as it does upon the following … … Guns N'Roses and the imperial age of the pop video: director Nigel Dick remembers the $750,000 budget … ‘lost elfin Scots superstar': missing Incredible String Band member found after 40 years! … comparing the original West End Girls to the re-made worldwide hit: “like a Top Of The Pops album doing the same song” … the three ages of Bowie and why he's becoming a religious cult … gangster-wall-papering the Melody Maker office as an Ian Dury promo stunt ... the magic of stars' childhood bedrooms … “he's got a tinfoil pal and a pedal bin”: Star Wars in a nutshell … Tales of Brave Ulysses: psychedelia in under three minutes …. and has there ever been a fictional band as convincing as McGwyer Mortimer? Andy Miller on Licorice McKecknie here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/incredible-band-146577648 Nigel Dick's wonderful video for God Only Knows here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cXhEkug1G-QHelp us to keep The Longest Conversation In Rock going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
The Big Beatles Sort Out Presents: The Big 60s Sort Out!Yes, for season 4 we have taken a look at the decade that made (or was made?) by The Beatles, by ranking every UK number one, looking for sneaky Beatles links, and generally putting ourselves in the world where they crafted their legacy.However! There is more! We have looked at the NME and Melody Maker unique hits, and now we are turning our attention to the Disc magazine chart in this one off special, covering several songs that haven't yet appeared anywhere else (you'll just have to listen to find out what!). And that's a wrap for Season 4! So have a happy festive period and New Year and we will be back in 2026 with season 5 (at some point)!If you want to view the complete series 4 singles chart plus these new entries, you can do so here! Garry has a new album out which can be found on all major platforms here (or search for 'Garry Abbott Music'):Last Week In LimboAnd here is Paul's band!https://goodgriefliverpool.bandcamp.com/
The Big Beatles Sort Out Presents: The Big 60s Sort Out!Yes, for season 4 we have taken a look at the decade that made (or was made?) by The Beatles, by ranking every UK number one, looking for sneaky Beatles links, and generally putting ourselves in the world where they crafted their legacy.However! There is more! We have looked at the NME unique hits, and now we are turning our attention to the Melody Maker chart in this one off special, covering several songs that haven't yet appeared anywhere else (you'll just have to listen to find out what!). Next week we will do the same with the 'Disc' chart before wrapping up for Xmas.If you want to view the complete series 4 singles chart plus these new entries, you can do so here! Garry has a new album out which can be found on all major platforms here (or search for 'Garry Abbott Music'):Last Week In LimboAnd here is Paul's band!https://goodgriefliverpool.bandcamp.com/
In this episode we're joined by Pete Paphides, former rock critic for the London Times and author of 2020's acclaimed memoir Broken Greek. We start with our guest's unique "'Starman' moment" – seeing the Brotherhood of Man lip-sync to the ghastly 'Save Your Kisses for Me' on Top of the Pops in 1976 – and then plunge straight into a celebration of his favourite pop group ABBA. We hear about his love of the Swedes' countless classic songs; his interviews with Björn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson; and how the quartet was indirectly responsible for his marriage to fellow scribe Caitlin Moran. Pete talks us through his journalistic odyssey from ill-fated pubescent fanzine Pop Scene via the longer-lasting Perturbed to Jim Arundel's mentoring of him at Melody Maker. Talk of his tenures at Time Out and The Times leads to his memory of "falling back in love with music" after years of being glutted with free records. The 60th anniversary of the release of 'Uptight' takes us into clips from Amy Linden's 1995 audio interview with the musical colossus that is Stevie Wonder – and a broad discussion of the Motown legend's creative evolution from 'Uptight' to Songs in the Key of Life. After Mark quotes from a 1963 review of the Beatles' first album Please Please Me, Jasper talks us out with his thoughts on Jaan Uhelszki's 2015 interview with the extraordinary Joanna Newsom.
For this episode — the first to feature RBP's editorial co-ordinator William Pike — we're joined by Melody Maker legend Simon Price for a discussion of his career, his championing of Manic Street Preachers, and Radiohead's first tour since 2018. Beginning in the South Wales town of Barry, we hear about Simon's boyhood, his formative pop passions and the first of his distinctive sartorial metamorphoses. He recalls his late '80s move to London and the years at Melody Maker that took in his first interviews with fellow Welshmen the Manics and his integral involvement in the Neo-glam sub-genre known as Romo. Our guest's review of the first Radiohead album provides the cue for clips from Amy Linden's 1997 audio interview with Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood. We hear Thom talking about the just-released OK Computer and about his beef with Melody Maker itself: this prompts a general discussion of the band's standing as they prepare for the first date of their European tour. After reflecting on the 13 years he spent reviewing gigs for the Independent on Sunday, Simon discusses the gestation of 2021's Curepedia, the "Cure A-Z" he assembled for White Rabbit books. We conclude the episode with tributes to jazz drummer Jack DeJohnette and keyboardist David Ball, phlegmatic foil to Soft Cell frontman Marc Almond. Many thanks to special guest Simon Price. Curepedia: An A–Z of the Cure is published by White Rabbit and available from all good bookshops. Pieces discussed: Articles, interviews and reviews from Simon Price, Manic Street Preachers: Drags to Riches, Radiohead: Pablo Honey, Radiohead audio (1997), Jack DeJohnette: More Than One Way, Soft Cell: Cell Division and The Tainted Life of Soft Cell
EPYSODE 55: "Argus" by Wishbone Ash. Guest: Wishbone Ash band leader Andy Powell. Additional commentary by Uncle Herff. This week we revisit "Argus", the landmark third album by Wishbone Ash. Widely regarded as one of the greatest classic rock albums of all time, it defined the twin-lead guitar sound and blended progressive rock, hard rock, and folk influences into a timeless masterpiece. With exclusive commentary from guitarist Andy Powell, we explore the creative process behind the album, the band's unique dual-guitar harmonies, and how this record earned its place as Melody Maker's Album of the Year in 1972. From “The King Will Come” to “Blowin' Free,” discover the stories and legacy behind one of the most influential rock records of the '70s. I hope you dig "Argus" as much as I do. - Farmer John ===CONNECT & SUPPORT=== Transport yourself into the realm of grooviness by supporting us on Patreon using this link --> patreon.com/FarmerJohnMusic Use this link to follow us on Facebook --> https://www.facebook.com/farmerjohnmusic/ Use this link to follow us on Instagram --> https://www.instagram.com/vinylrelics/ Use this link to follow us on TikTok --> https://www.tiktok.com/@vinylrelicspodcast Use this link to follow us on BlueSky --> https://bsky.app/profile/farmerjohnmusic.bsky.social And find us on X here @VinylRelicsPod Email me here @ farmerjohnmusic@gmail.com ===LINKS=== Check out the Wishbone Ash website for sweet merch, upcoming gigs and more: https://www.wishboneashofficial.com ===THE MUSIC=== Songs used in this Epysode, in order of appearance. Here's a link to a Spotify playlist for all the tracks featured ( *denotes track is not available on Spotify): https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5dvd2t0Lt8pTc0wwjJUVx0?si=96728248d6c24ec7 TROYKA "Dear Margaret" CHUCK BERRY “No Particular Place To Go" THE SHADOWS “Apache” SAM & DAVE “Hold On, I'm Coming” *THE EMPTY VESSELS “My Son John” THE POLICE “Roxanne” FLEETWOOD MAC “Oh Well (Part 1)” THE BEATLES “Martha My Dear” DEEP PURPLE “Hush” ERIC WEISSBERG & STEVE MANDELL “Duelling Banjos” THE WHO “Won't Get Fooled Again” WISHBONE ASH “Errors Of My Way” WISHBONE ASH “Blind Eye” WISHBONE ASH “The Pilgrim” WISHBONE ASH “Valediction” WISHBONE ASH "Time Was" WISHBONE ASH "Sometime World" WISHBONE ASH "Blowin' Free" WISHBONE ASH ''The King Will Come" WISHBONE ASH "Leaf And Stream" WISHBONE ASH "Warrior" WISHBONE ASH "Throw Down The Sword" DAVID BOWIE “Ziggy Stardust” WISHBONE ASH “Jail Bait” (live) WISHBONE ASH “Everybody Needs A Friend” WISHBONE ASH “Sorrel” HOME “Time Passes By” WISHBONE ASH “Persephone” WISHBONE ASH “The Ring” WISHBONE ASH “Back In The Day” ??MYSTERY ARTIST?? Tune in next week to find out... NEWPORT ELECTRIC "El Dorado's Gold" ^That's my band. This is shameless self-promotion!! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
This SPECIAL EPISODE is a tribute to RICK DAVIES, who died this past week at age 81. Rick was the founder of, and one of the two lead singer-songwriters of, Supertramp, one of the greatest bands of the rock era. In 1979 the band hit their zenith with the album “Breakfast In America”, which sold over 20 million records.Rick played keyboards and wrote several of the band's greatest hits. His songs had a blusier, edgier sound to them than those of Roger Hodgson, the other lead songwriter, who wrote more pop oriented songs which he sang in his high tenor voice. Together, however, these two guys provided the yin and yang of Supertramp which defined the band and made them a success.Rick's first band, called Rick's Blues, included Gilbert O'Sullivan on the drums. In August 1969 he placed an ad in Melody Maker seeking to form a new band, and Roger Hodgson auditioned and joined. Supertramp's first successful album was 1974's “Crime Of The Century”. It contained “Bloody Well Right”, Rick's first hit. The band's breakthrough album was “Breakfast In America”, which contained another Davies hit, “Goodbye Stranger”. Like most rock bands, however, creative differences and jealousies eventually split up Supertramp. But for the time that they were together they were a fantastic, creative band - one of the best of the rock era - under the leadership of Rick Davies.------------------------------------------The Follow Your Dream Podcast:Top 1% of all podcasts with Listeners in 200 countries!Click here for All Episodes Click here for Guest List Click here for Guest Groupings Click here for Guest TestimonialsClick here to Subscribe Click here to receive our Email UpdatesClick here to Rate and Review the podcast—----------------------------------------ROBERT'S NEWEST SINGLE:“SUNDAY SLIDE” is Robert's newest single. It's been called “A fun, upbeat, you-gotta-move song”. Featuring 3 World Class guest artists: Laurence Juber on guitar (Wings with Paul McCartney), Paul Hanson on bassoon (Bela Fleck), and Eamon McLoughlin on violin (Grand Ole Opry band).CLICK HERE FOR ALL LINKSCLICK HERE FOR THE OFFICIAL VIDEO—-------------------------------------------ROBERT'S NEWEST ALBUM:“WHAT'S UP!” is Robert's new compilation album. Featuring 10 of his recent singles including all the ones listed below. Instrumentals and vocals. Jazz, Rock, Pop and Fusion. “My best work so far. (Robert)”CLICK HERE FOR THE OFFICIAL VIDEOCLICK HERE FOR ALL LINKS—----------------------------------------Audio production:Jimmy RavenscroftKymera Films Connect with the Follow Your Dream Podcast:Website - www.followyourdreampodcast.comEmail Robert - robert@followyourdreampodcast.com Follow Robert's band, Project Grand Slam, and his music:Website - www.projectgrandslam.comYouTubeSpotify MusicApple MusicEmail - pgs@projectgrandslam.com
Et c'est parti pour une 12ème saison d'Amarok ! Il y comme ça des routines positives, comme celle d'allumer sa radio le jeudi soir ou de se connecter chaque semaine sur cette plateforme ! Et pour illustrer mon propos, rien de tel que ce titre issu de "Hand Cannot Erase" par STEVEN WILSON ! Déjà 10 ans que l'ami anglais nous a pondu cette merveille de fusion entre jazz, pop, rock et électronique... Chapeau bas l'Artiste ! Bien sur on reviendra au cours de la saison sur son dernier opus "The Overview"... Comme à chaque rentrée je croule sous les nouveautés accumulées durant la pause estivale ! Et ça commence avec un nouveau groupe de space rock australien nommé AMBIENT DEN. 1er opus éponyme fort réussi et prometteur. Le concept de cette galette? qui sent bon les 70's, la recherche par l'humanité d'un refuge parmi les étoiles... Jetez y une oreille et vous m'en donnerez des nouvelles ! Également inspiré des 70's (mais plus particulièrement par une formation obscure dont vous avez peut-être entendu parler : Genesis
In this episode Adam speaks with translator Frank Wynne and Argentinian writer Samanta Schweblin about the first-ever English edition of Mafalda, the beloved Argentine comic strip by Quino (Archipelago Books). Together, they explore how this precocious, principled six-year-old girl—who challenged everything from soup to capitalism—shaped generations of readers in Argentina and beyond. Frank discusses the joys and puzzles of translating Mafalda's quick wit and political edge, while Samanta recalls how the strip introduced her to feminism, philosophy, and satire as a child. The conversation touches on cartooning as subversion, and why Mafalda's questions still matter today. Whether you're meeting Mafalda for the first time or grew up with her, this episode is a moving celebration of one of the 20th century's most enduring comic heroines.Buy Mafalda: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/books/mafalda-3*Samanta Schweblin won the 2022 National Book Award for Translated Literature for her story collection, Seven Empty Houses. Her debut novel, Fever Dream, was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize, and her novel Little Eyes and story collection Mouthful of Birds have been longlisted for the same prize. Her books have been translated into more than forty languages, and her stories have appeared in English in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Granta, Harper's Magazine and elsewhere. Originally from Buenos Aires, Schweblin lives in Berlin. Good and Evil and Other Stories is her third collection.Frank Wynne is a writer and award-winning literary translator. Born in Ireland he has lived and worked in Dublin, Paris, Amsterdam, London, Buenos Aires and currently lives in San José, Costa Rica. He has translated more than a dozen major novels, among them the works of Michel Houellebecq, Frédéric Beigbeder, Pierre Mérot and the Ivorian novelist Ahmadou Kourouma. A journalist and broadcaster, he has written for the Sunday Times, the Independent, the Irish Times, Melody Maker, and Time Out.Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company.Listen to Alex Freiman's latest EP, In The Beginning: https://open.spotify.com/album/5iZYPMCUnG7xiCtsFCBlVa?si=h5x3FK1URq6SwH9Kb_SO3w Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
In 1972, David Ackles's third album, American Gothic, was released. The music press declared it the album of the year. Melody Maker called it a classic. The Sunday Times described it as "the Sgt. Pepper of folk", suggesting that it heralded a whole new direction in music. After a fourth and final album in 1973 Ackles vanished. What became of David Ackles? Find out in this episode with author Mark Brend.Purchase a copy of Down River: In Search Of David AcklesFollow Mark Brend on BlueskyFind out more about Mark Brend and Down River at Jawbone Press---------- BookedOnRock.com The Booked On Rock Store The Booked On Rock YouTube Channel Follow The Booked On Rock with Eric Senich:BLUESKYFACEBOOKINSTAGRAMTIKTOKX Find Your Nearest Independent Bookstore Contact The Booked On Rock Podcast: thebookedonrockpodcast@gmail.com The Booked On Rock Music: “Whoosh” by Crowander / “Last Train North” & “No Mercy” by TrackTribe
Brixton Key https://brixtonkey.com/ Brixton Key was born in 1950's London to a party-loving mum and an errant scallywag dad. As a small boy, he fell in love with the sound of his elder brother's Muddy Waters and Howling Wolf's Chess records, Charles Dickens novels, Edith Sitwell poems. causing continual mischief and on the bombsites surrounding his parents central London pub. Now longhaired and Kings Road dressed, Brixton copped a gig at the British music weekly Melody Maker. Writing under the name of Mark Plummer, Brixton wrote features about the likes of Rod Stewart, Paul McCartney, Hawkwind, Rory Gallagher and The Who. Tossing away his raincoat and California dreaming, he jetted to San Francisco where he discovered Chris Isaak, managing the pop idol to his hit record, Wicked Game.
It's Book Nook time again, listener! Patrick takes you into the rock and roll literary world today with two hilarious, sharply written and observed volumes by Allan Jones. Jones wrote for Melody Maker starting in 1974 and went on to have a long career as a music writer and editor. These two volumes collect his best “Rock and Roll War Stories” and are both wonderfully entertaining. Rockin' the Suburbs on Apple Podcasts/iTunes or other podcast platforms, including audioBoom, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Amazon, iHeart,Stitcher and TuneIn. Or listen at SuburbsPod.com. Please rate/review the show on Apple Podcasts and share it with your friends. Visit our website at SuburbsPod.com Email Jim & Patrick at rock@suburbspod.com Follow us on the Threads, Facebook or Instagram @suburbspod If you're glad or sad or high, call the Suburban Party Line — 612-440-1984. Theme music: "Ascension," originally by Quartjar, next covered by Frank Muffin and now re-done in a high-voltage version by Quartjar again! Visit quartjar.bandcamp.com and frankmuffin.bandcamp.com.
Rick Wakeman was onstage from the age of five and looks back with us here on a life of live performance – jazz and blues bands, the Strawbs, Yes – and ahead to this autumn's tour performing King Arthur and the Six Wives of Henry the Eighth. “I wake up every morning, throw off the duvet and – if nothing else has fallen off – have a great day!” There's more … ... how it feels when the rock press call you ‘Tomorrow's Superstar!' at the age of 24. … the contract he once had to sign that said “Mister Wakeman will wear at least one of his capes during the performance”. … seeing the Bonzos in 1965, “Viv Stanshall so paralytic he sang the entire set lying down”. … being on a packed tube to Gants Hill and suddenly realising he was on the cover of the Melody Maker he was reading. … Mrs Symes, his piano teacher, who launched his career (aged five). … his teenage band Atlantic Blues “who ended Wipe Out eight times faster than it started”. … the day his Strawbs' Hammond organ solos were applauded by the Telegraph and Times. … early piano sessions for Cat Stevens, Ralph McTell and Al Stewart. … aspects of touring that prove “financially non-viable”. … and how Wolf Hall rebooted the legend of Henry the Eighth. Plus Atomic Rooster, Charlie Chaplin, Arthur Brown, green PVC trousers and a cape collection that includes “four originals”. Buy tickets here: https://www.rwcc.com/live.php#ere2025Find out more about how to help us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Rick Wakeman was onstage from the age of five and looks back with us here on a life of live performance – jazz and blues bands, the Strawbs, Yes – and ahead to this autumn's tour performing King Arthur and the Six Wives of Henry the Eighth. “I wake up every morning, throw off the duvet and – if nothing else has fallen off – have a great day!” There's more … ... how it feels when the rock press call you ‘Tomorrow's Superstar!' at the age of 24. … the contract he once had to sign that said “Mister Wakeman will wear at least one of his capes during the performance”. … seeing the Bonzos in 1965, “Viv Stanshall so paralytic he sang the entire set lying down”. … being on a packed tube to Gants Hill and suddenly realising he was on the cover of the Melody Maker he was reading. … Mrs Symes, his piano teacher, who launched his career (aged five). … his teenage band Atlantic Blues “who ended Wipe Out eight times faster than it started”. … the day his Strawbs' Hammond organ solos were applauded by the Telegraph and Times. … early piano sessions for Cat Stevens, Ralph McTell and Al Stewart. … aspects of touring that prove “financially non-viable”. … and how Wolf Hall rebooted the legend of Henry the Eighth. Plus Atomic Rooster, Charlie Chaplin, Arthur Brown, green PVC trousers and a cape collection that includes “four originals”. Buy tickets here: https://www.rwcc.com/live.php#ere2025Find out more about how to help us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Rick Wakeman was onstage from the age of five and looks back with us here on a life of live performance – jazz and blues bands, the Strawbs, Yes – and ahead to this autumn's tour performing King Arthur and the Six Wives of Henry the Eighth. “I wake up every morning, throw off the duvet and – if nothing else has fallen off – have a great day!” There's more … ... how it feels when the rock press call you ‘Tomorrow's Superstar!' at the age of 24. … the contract he once had to sign that said “Mister Wakeman will wear at least one of his capes during the performance”. … seeing the Bonzos in 1965, “Viv Stanshall so paralytic he sang the entire set lying down”. … being on a packed tube to Gants Hill and suddenly realising he was on the cover of the Melody Maker he was reading. … Mrs Symes, his piano teacher, who launched his career (aged five). … his teenage band Atlantic Blues “who ended Wipe Out eight times faster than it started”. … the day his Strawbs' Hammond organ solos were applauded by the Telegraph and Times. … early piano sessions for Cat Stevens, Ralph McTell and Al Stewart. … aspects of touring that prove “financially non-viable”. … and how Wolf Hall rebooted the legend of Henry the Eighth. Plus Atomic Rooster, Charlie Chaplin, Arthur Brown, green PVC trousers and a cape collection that includes “four originals”. Buy tickets here: https://www.rwcc.com/live.php#ere2025Find out more about how to help us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
For those who haven't heard the announcement I posted, songs from this point on will sometimes be split among multiple episodes, so this is the second part of a two-episode look at the song “Who Knows Where The Time Goes?” by Fairport Convention, and the intertwining careers of Joe Boyd, Sandy Denny, and Richard Thompson. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a forty-one-minute bonus episode available, on Judy Collins’ version of this song. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by editing, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt's irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ Erratum For about an hour this was uploaded with the wrong Elton John clip in place of “Saturday Sun”. This has now been fixed. Resources Because of the increasing problems with Mixcloud’s restrictions, I have decided to start sharing streaming playlists of the songs used in episodes instead of Mixcloud ones. This Tunemymusic link will let you listen to the playlist I created on your streaming platform of choice — however please note that not all the songs excerpted are currently available on streaming. The songs missing from the Tidal version are “Shanten Bells” by the Ian Campbell Folk Group, “Tom’s Gone to Hilo” by A.L. Lloyd, two by Paul McNeill and Linda Peters, three by Elton John & Linda Peters, “What Will I Do With Tomorrow” by Sandy Denny and “You Never Know” by Charlie Drake, but the other fifty-nine are there. Other songs may be missing from other services. The main books I used on Fairport Convention as a whole were Patrick Humphries' Meet On The Ledge, Clinton Heylin's What We Did Instead of Holidays, and Kevan Furbank's Fairport Convention on Track. Rob Young's Electric Eden is the most important book on the British folk-rock movement. Information on Richard Thompson comes from Patrick Humphries' Richard Thompson: Strange Affair and Thompson's own autobiography Beeswing. Information on Sandy Denny comes from Clinton Heylin's No More Sad Refrains and Mick Houghton's I've Always Kept a Unicorn. I also used Joe Boyd's autobiography White Bicycles and Chris Blackwell's The Islander. And this three-CD set is the best introduction to Fairport's music currently in print. Transcript Before we begin, this episode contains reference to alcohol and cocaine abuse and medical neglect leading to death. It also starts with some discussion of the fatal car accident that ended last episode. There’s also some mention of child neglect and spousal violence. If that’s likely to upset you, you might want to skip this episode or read the transcript. One of the inspirations for this podcast when I started it back in 2018 was a project by Richard Thompson, which appears (like many things in Thompson’s life) to have started out of sheer bloody-mindedness. In 1999 Playboy magazine asked various people to list their “songs of the Millennium”, and most of them, understanding the brief, chose a handful of songs from the latter half of the twentieth century. But Thompson determined that he was going to list his favourite songs *of the millennium*. He didn’t quite manage that, but he did cover seven hundred and forty years, and when Playboy chose not to publish it, he decided to turn it into a touring show, in which he covered all his favourite songs from “Sumer Is Icumen In” from 1260: [Excerpt: Richard Thompson, “Sumer is Icumen In”] Through numerous traditional folk songs, union songs like “Blackleg Miner”, pieces by early-modern composers, Victorian and Edwardian music hall songs, and songs by the Beatles, the Ink Spots, the Kinks, and the Who, all the way to “Oops! I Did It Again”: [Excerpt: Richard Thompson, “Oops! I Did it Again”] And to finish the show, and to show how all this music actually ties together, he would play what he described as a “medieval tune from Brittany”, “Marry, Ageyn Hic Hev Donne Yt”: [Excerpt: Richard Thompson, “Marry, Ageyn Hic Hev Donne Yt”] We have said many times in this podcast that there is no first anything, but there’s a reason that Liege and Lief, Fairport Convention’s third album of 1969, and the album other than Unhalfbricking on which their reputation largely rests, was advertised with the slogan “The first (literally) British folk rock album ever”. Folk-rock, as the term had come to be known, and as it is still usually used today, had very little to do with traditional folk music. Rather, the records of bands like The Byrds or Simon and Garfunkel were essentially taking the sounds of British beat groups of the early sixties, particularly the Searchers, and applying those sounds to material by contemporary singer-songwriters. People like Paul Simon and Bob Dylan had come up through folk clubs, and their songs were called folk music because of that, but they weren’t what folk music had meant up to that point — songs that had been collected after being handed down through the folk process, changed by each individual singer, with no single identifiable author. They were authored songs by very idiosyncratic writers. But over their last few albums, Fairport Convention had done one or two tracks per album that weren’t like that, that were instead recordings of traditional folk songs, but arranged with rock instrumentation. They were not necessarily the first band to try traditional folk music with electric instruments — around the same time that Fairport started experimenting with the idea, so did an Irish band named Sweeney’s Men, who brought in a young electric guitarist named Henry McCullough briefly. But they do seem to have been the first to have fully embraced the idea. They had done so to an extent with “A Sailor’s Life” on Unhalfbricking, but now they were going to go much further: [Excerpt: Fairport Convention, “Matty Groves” (from about 4:30)] There had been some doubt as to whether Fairport Convention would even continue to exist — by the time Unhalfbricking, their second album of the year, was released, they had been through the terrible car accident that had killed Martin Lamble, the band’s drummer, and Jeannie Franklyn, Richard Thompson’s girlfriend. Most of the rest of the band had been seriously injured, and they had made a conscious decision not to discuss the future of the band until they were all out of hospital. Ashley Hutchings was hospitalised the longest, and Simon Nicol, Richard Thompson, and Sandy Denny, the other three surviving members of the band, flew over to LA with their producer and manager, Joe Boyd, to recuperate there and get to know the American music scene. When they came back, the group all met up in the flat belonging to Denny’s boyfriend Trevor Lucas, and decided that they were going to continue the band. They made a few decisions then — they needed a new drummer, and as well as a drummer they wanted to get in Dave Swarbrick. Swarbrick had played violin on several tracks on Unhalfbricking as a session player, and they had all been thrilled to work with him. Swarbrick was one of the most experienced musicians on the British folk circuit. He had started out in the fifties playing guitar with Beryl Marriott’s Ceilidh Band before switching to fiddle, and in 1963, long before Fairport had formed, he had already appeared on TV with the Ian Campbell Folk Group, led by Ian Campbell, the father of Ali and Robin Campbell, later of UB40: [Excerpt: The Ian Campbell Folk Group, “Shanten Bells (medley on Hullaballoo!)”] He’d sung with Ewan MacColl and A.L. Lloyd: [Excerpt: A.L. Lloyd, “Tom’s Gone to Hilo” ] And he’d formed his hugely successful duo with Martin Carthy, releasing records like “Byker Hill” which are often considered among the best British folk music of all time: [Excerpt: Martin Carthy and Dave Swarbrick, “Byker Hill”] By the time Fairport had invited him to play on Unhalfbricking, Swarbrick had already performed on twenty albums as a core band member, plus dozens more EPs, singles, and odd tracks on compilations. They had no reason to think they could actually get him to join their band. But they had three advantages. The first was that Swarbrick was sick of the traditional folk scene at the time, saying later “I didn’t like seven-eighths of the people involved in it, and it was extremely opportune to leave. I was suddenly presented with the possibilities of exploring the dramatic content of the songs to the full.” The second was that he was hugely excited to be playing with Richard Thompson, who was one of the most innovative guitarists of his generation, and Martin Carthy remembers him raving about Thompson after their initial sessions. (Carthy himself was and is no slouch on the guitar of course, and there was even talk of getting him to join the band at this point, though they decided against it — much to the relief of rhythm guitarist Simon Nicol, who is a perfectly fine player himself but didn’t want to be outclassed by *two* of the best guitarists in Britain at the same time). And the third was that Joe Boyd told him that Fairport were doing so well — they had a single just about to hit the charts with “Si Tu Dois Partir” — that he would only have to play a dozen gigs with Fairport in order to retire. As it turned out, Swarbrick would play with the group for a decade, and would never retire — I saw him on his last tour in 2015, only eight months before he died. The drummer the group picked was also a far more experienced musician than any of the rest, though in a very different genre. Dave Mattacks had no knowledge at all of the kind of music they played, having previously been a player in dance bands. When asked by Hutchings if he wanted to join the band, Mattacks’ response was “I don’t know anything about the music. I don’t understand it… I can’t tell one tune from another, they all sound the same… but if you want me to join the group, fine, because I really like it. I’m enjoying myself musically.” Mattacks brought a new level of professionalism to the band, thanks to his different background. Nicol said of him later “He was dilligent, clean, used to taking three white shirts to a gig… The application he could bring to his playing was amazing. With us, you only played well when you were feeling well.” This distinction applied to his playing as well. Nicol would later describe the difference between Mattacks’ drumming and Lamble’s by saying “Martin’s strength was as an imaginative drummer. DM came in with a strongly developed sense of rhythm, through keeping a big band of drunken saxophone players in order. A great time-keeper.” With this new line-up and a new sense of purpose, the group did as many of their contemporaries were doing and “got their heads together in the country”. Joe Boyd rented the group a mansion, Farley House, in Farley Chamberlayne, Hampshire, and they stayed there together for three months. At the start, the group seem to have thought that they were going to make another record like Unhalfbricking, with some originals, some songs by American songwriters, and a few traditional songs. Even after their stay in Farley Chamberlayne, in fact, they recorded a few of the American songs they’d rehearsed at the start of the process, Richard Farina’s “Quiet Joys of Brotherhood” and Bob Dylan and Roger McGuinn’s “Ballad of Easy Rider”: [Excerpt: Fairport Convention, “Ballad of Easy Rider”] Indeed, the whole idea of “getting our heads together in the country” (as the cliche quickly became in the late sixties as half of the bands in Britain went through much the same kind of process as Fairport were doing — but usually for reasons more to do with drug burnout or trend following than recovering from serious life-changing trauma) seems to have been inspired by Bob Dylan and the Band getting together in Big Pink. But very quickly they decided to follow the lead of Ashley Hutchings, who had had something of a Damascene conversion to the cause of traditional English folk music. They were listening mostly to Music From Big Pink by the Band, and to the first album by Sweeney’s Men: [Excerpt: Sweeney’s Men, “The Handsome Cabin Boy”] And they decided that they were going to make something that was as English as those records were North American and Irish (though in the event there were also a few Scottish songs included on the record). Hutchings in particular was becoming something of a scholar of traditional music, regularly visiting Cecil Sharp House and having long conversations with A.L. Lloyd, discovering versions of different traditional songs he’d never encountered before. This was both amusing and bemusing Sandy Denny, who had joined a rock group in part to get away from traditional music; but she was comfortable singing the material, and knew a lot of it and could make a lot of suggestions herself. Swarbrick obviously knew the repertoire intimately, and Nicol was amenable, while Mattacks was utterly clueless about the folk tradition at this point but knew this was the music he wanted to make. Thompson knew very little about traditional music, and of all the band members except Denny he was the one who has shown the least interest in the genre in his subsequent career — but as we heard at the beginning, showing the least interest in the genre is a relative thing, and while Thompson was not hugely familiar with the genre, he *was* able to work with it, and was also more than capable of writing songs that fit in with the genre. Of the eleven songs on the album, which was titled Liege and Lief (which means, roughly, Lord and Loyalty), there were no cover versions of singer-songwriters. Eight were traditional songs, and three were originals, all written in the style of traditional songs. The album opened with “Come All Ye”, an introduction written by Denny and Hutchings (the only time the two would ever write together): [Excerpt: Fairport Convention, “Come All Ye”] The other two originals were songs where Thompson had written new lyrics to traditional melodies. On “Crazy Man Michael”, Swarbrick had said to Thompson that the tune to which he had set his new words was weaker than the lyrics, to which Thompson had replied that if Swarbrick felt that way he should feel free to write a new melody. He did, and it became the first of the small number of Thompson/Swarbrick collaborations: [Excerpt: Fairport Convention, “Crazy Man Michael”] Thompson and Swarbrick would become a brief songwriting team, but as much as anything else it was down to proximity — the two respected each other as musicians, but never got on very well. In 1981 Swarbrick would say “Richard and I never got on in the early days of FC… we thought we did, but we never did. We composed some bloody good songs together, but it was purely on a basis of “you write that and I’ll write this, and we’ll put it together.” But we never sat down and had real good chats.” The third original on the album, and by far the most affecting, is another song where Thompson put lyrics to a traditional tune. In this case he thought he was putting the lyrics to the tune of “Willie O'Winsbury”, but he was basing it on a recording by Sweeney’s Men. The problem was that Sweeney’s Men had accidentally sung the lyrics of “Willie O'Winsbury'” to the tune of a totally different song, “Fause Foodrage”: [Excerpt: Sweeney’s Men, “Willie O’Winsbury”] Thompson took that melody, and set to it lyrics about loss and separation. Thompson has never been one to discuss the meanings of his lyrics in any great detail, and in the case of this one has said “I really don't know what it means. This song came out of a dream, and I pretty much wrote it as I dreamt it (it was the sixties), and didn't spend very long analyzing it. So interpret as you wish – or replace with your own lines.” But in the context of the traffic accident that had killed his tailor girlfriend and a bandmate, and injured most of his other bandmates, the lyrics about lonely travellers, the winding road, bruised and beaten sons, saying goodbye, and never cutting cloth, seem fairly self-explanatory: [Excerpt: Fairport Convention, “Farewell, Farewell”] The rest of the album, though, was taken up by traditional tunes. There was a long medley of four different fiddle reels; a version of “Reynardine” (a song about a seductive man — or is he a fox? Or perhaps both — which had been recorded by Swarbrick and Carthy on their most recent album); a 19th century song about a deserter saved from the firing squad by Prince Albert; and a long take on “Tam Lin”, one of the most famous pieces in the Scottish folk music canon, a song that has been adapted in different ways by everyone from the experimental noise band Current 93 to the dub poet Benjamin Zephaniah to the comics writer Grant Morrison: [Excerpt: Fairport Convention, “Tam Lin”] And “Matty Groves”, a song about a man killing his cheating wife and her lover, which actually has a surprisingly similar story to that of “1921” from another great concept album from that year, the Who’s Tommy. “Matty Groves” became an excuse for long solos and shows of instrumental virtuosity: [Excerpt: Fairport Convention, “Matty Groves”] The album was recorded in September 1969, after their return from their break in the country and a triumphal performance at the Royal Festival Hall, headlining over fellow Witchseason artists John and Beverly Martyn and Nick Drake. It became a classic of the traditional folk genre — arguably *the* classic of the traditional folk genre. In 2007 BBC Radio 2’s Folk Music Awards gave it an award for most influential folk album of all time, and while such things are hard to measure, I doubt there’s anyone with even the most cursory knowledge of British folk and folk-rock music who would not at least consider that a reasonable claim. But once again, by the time the album came out in November, the band had changed lineups yet again. There was a fundamental split in the band – on one side were Sandy Denny and Richard Thompson, whose stance was, roughly, that Liege and Lief was a great experiment and a fun thing to do once, but really the band had two first-rate songwriters in themselves, and that they should be concentrating on their own new material, not doing these old songs, good as they were. They wanted to take the form of the traditional songs and use that form for new material — they wanted to make British folk-rock, but with the emphasis on the rock side of things. Hutchings, on the other hand, was equally sure that he wanted to make traditional music and go further down the rabbit hole of antiquity. With the zeal of the convert he had gone in a couple of years from being the leader of a band who were labelled “the British Jefferson Airplane” to becoming a serious scholar of traditional folk music. Denny was tired of touring, as well — she wanted to spend more time at home with Trevor Lucas, who was sleeping with other women when she was away and making her insecure. When the time came for the group to go on a tour of Denmark, Denny decided she couldn’t make it, and Hutchings was jubilant — he decided he was going to get A.L. Lloyd into the band in her place and become a *real* folk group. Then Denny reconsidered, and Hutchings was crushed. He realised that while he had always been the leader, he wasn’t going to be able to lead the band any further in the traditionalist direction, and quit the group — but not before he was delegated by the other band members to fire Denny. Until the publication of Richard Thompson’s autobiography in 2022, every book on the group or its members said that Denny quit the band again, which was presumably a polite fiction that the band agreed, but according to Thompson “Before we flew home, we decided to fire Sandy. I don't remember who asked her to leave – it was probably Ashley, who usually did the dirty work. She was reportedly shocked that we would take that step. She may have been fragile beneath the confident facade, but she still knew her worth.” Thompson goes on to explain that the reasons for kicking her out were that “I suppose we felt that in her mind she had already left” and that “We were probably suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, though there wasn't a name for it back then.” They had considered inviting Trevor Lucas to join the band to make Denny more comfortable, but came to the (probably correct) conclusion that while he was someone they got on well with personally, he would be another big ego in a band that already had several, and that being around Denny and Lucas’ volatile relationship would, in Thompson’s phrasing, “have not always given one a feeling of peace and stability.” Hutchings originally decided he was going to join Sweeney’s Men, but that group were falling apart, and their first rehearsal with Hutchings would also be their last as a group, with only Hutchings and guitarist and mandolin player Terry Woods left in the band. They added Woods’ wife Gay, and another couple, Tim Hart and Maddy Prior, and formed a group called Steeleye Span, a name given them by Martin Carthy. That group, like Fairport, went to “get their heads together in the country” for three months and recorded an album of electric versions of traditional songs, Hark the Village Wait, on which Mattacks and another drummer, Gerry Conway, guested as Steeleye Span didn’t at the time have their own drummer: [Excerpt: Steeleye Span, “Blackleg Miner”] Steeleye Span would go on to have a moderately successful chart career in the seventies, but by that time most of the original lineup, including Hutchings, had left — Hutchings stayed with them for a few albums, then went on to form the first of a series of bands, all called the Albion Band or variations on that name, which continue to this day. And this is something that needs to be pointed out at this point — it is impossible to follow every single individual in this narrative as they move between bands. There is enough material in the history of the British folk-rock scene that someone could do a 500 Songs-style podcast just on that, and every time someone left Fairport, or Steeleye Span, or the Albion Band, or Matthews’ Southern Comfort, or any of the other bands we have mentioned or will mention, they would go off and form another band which would then fission, and some of its members would often join one of those other bands. There was a point in the mid-1970s where the Albion Band had two original members of Fairport Convention while Fairport Convention had none. So just in order to keep the narrative anything like wieldy, I’m going to keep the narrative concentrated on the two figures from Fairport — Sandy Denny and Richard Thompson — whose work outside the group has had the most influence on the wider world of rock music more broadly, and only deal with the other members when, as they often did, their careers intersected with those two. That doesn’t mean the other members are not themselves hugely important musicians, just that their importance has been primarily to the folk side of the folk-rock genre, and so somewhat outside the scope of this podcast. While Hutchings decided to form a band that would allow him to go deeper and deeper into traditional folk music, Sandy Denny’s next venture was rather different. For a long time she had been writing far more songs than she had ever played for her bandmates, like “Nothing More”, a song that many have suggested is about Thompson: [Excerpt: Fotheringay, “Nothing More”] When Joe Boyd heard that Denny was leaving Fairport Convention, he was at first elated. Fairport’s records were being distributed by A&M in the US at that point, but Island Records was in the process of opening up a new US subsidiary which would then release all future Fairport product — *but*, as far as A&M were concerned, Sandy Denny *was* Fairport Convention. They were only interested in her. Boyd, on the other hand, loved Denny’s work intensely, but from his point of view *Richard Thompson* was Fairport Convention. If he could get Denny signed directly to A&M as a solo artist before Island started its US operations, Witchseason could get a huge advance on her first solo record, while Fairport could continue making records for Island — he’d have two lucrative acts, on different labels. Boyd went over and spoke to A&M and got an agreement in principle that they would give Denny a forty-thousand-dollar advance on her first solo album — twice what they were paying for Fairport albums. The problem was that Denny didn’t want to be a solo act. She wanted to be the lead singer of a band. She gave many reasons for this — the one she gave to many journalists was that she had seen a Judy Collins show and been impressed, but noticed that Collins’ band were definitely a “backing group”, and as she put it “But that's all they were – a backing group. I suddenly thought, If you're playing together on a stage you might as well be TOGETHER.” Most other people in her life, though, say that the main reason for her wanting to be in a band was her desire to be with her boyfriend, Trevor Lucas. Partly this was due to a genuine desire to spend more time with someone with whom she was very much in love, partly it was a fear that he would cheat on her if she was away from him for long periods of time, and part of it seems to have been Lucas’ dislike of being *too* overshadowed by his talented girlfriend — he didn’t mind acknowledging that she was a major talent, but he wanted to be thought of as at least a minor one. So instead of going solo, Denny formed Fotheringay, named after the song she had written for Fairport. This new band consisted at first of Denny on vocals and occasional piano, Lucas on vocals and rhythm guitar, and Lucas’ old Eclection bandmate Gerry Conway on drums. For a lead guitarist, they asked Richard Thompson who the best guitarist in Britain was, and he told them Albert Lee. Lee in turn brought in bass player Pat Donaldson, but this lineup of the band barely survived a fortnight. Lee *was* arguably the best guitarist in Britain, certainly a reasonable candidate if you could ever have a singular best (as indeed was Thompson himself), but he was the best *country* guitarist in Britain, and his style simply didn’t fit with Fotheringay’s folk-influenced songs. He was replaced by American guitarist Jerry Donahue, who was not anything like as proficient as Lee, but who was still very good, and fit the band’s style much better. The new group rehearsed together for a few weeks, did a quick tour, and then went into the recording studio to record their debut, self-titled, album. Joe Boyd produced the album, but admitted himself that he only paid attention to those songs he considered worthwhile — the album contained one song by Lucas, “The Ballad of Ned Kelly”, and two cover versions of American singer-songwriter material with Lucas singing lead. But everyone knew that the songs that actually *mattered* were Sandy Denny’s, and Boyd was far more interested in them, particularly the songs “The Sea” and “The Pond and the Stream”: [Excerpt: Fotheringay, “The Pond and the Stream”] Fotheringay almost immediately hit financial problems, though. While other Witchseason acts were used to touring on the cheap, all packed together in the back of a Transit van with inexpensive equipment, Trevor Lucas had ambitions of being a rock star and wanted to put together a touring production to match, with expensive transport and equipment, including a speaker system that got nicknamed “Stonehenge” — but at the same time, Denny was unhappy being on the road, and didn’t play many gigs. As well as the band itself, the Fotheringay album also featured backing vocals from a couple of other people, including Denny’s friend Linda Peters. Peters was another singer from the folk clubs, and a good one, though less well-known than Denny — at this point she had only released a couple of singles, and those singles seemed to have been as much as anything else released as a novelty. The first of those, a version of Dylan’s “You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere” had been released as by “Paul McNeill and Linda Peters”: [Excerpt: Paul McNeill and Linda Peters, “You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere”] But their second single, a version of John D. Loudermilk’s “You’re Taking My Bag”, was released on the tiny Page One label, owned by Larry Page, and was released under the name “Paul and Linda”, clearly with the intent of confusing particularly gullible members of the record-buying public into thinking this was the McCartneys: [Excerpt: Paul and Linda, “You’re Taking My Bag”] Peters was though more financially successful than almost anyone else in this story, as she was making a great deal of money as a session singer. She actually did another session involving most of Fotheringay around this time. Witchseason had a number of excellent songwriters on its roster, and had had some success getting covers by people like Judy Collins, but Joe Boyd thought that they might possibly do better at getting cover versions if they were performed in less idiosyncratic arrangements. Donahue, Donaldson, and Conway went into the studio to record backing tracks, and vocals were added by Peters and another session singer, who according to some sources also provided piano. They cut songs by Mike Heron of the Incredible String Band: [Excerpt: Linda Peters, “You Get Brighter”] Ed Carter, formerly of The New Nadir but by this time firmly ensconced in the Beach Boys’ touring band where he would remain for the next quarter-century: [Excerpt: Linda Peters, “I Don’t Mind”] John and Beverly Martyn, and Nick Drake: [Excerpt: Elton John, “Saturday Sun”] There are different lineups of musicians credited for those sessions in different sources, but I tend to believe that it’s mostly Fotheringay for the simple reason that Donahue says it was him, Donaldson and Conway who talked Lucas and Denny into the mistake that destroyed Fotheringay because of these sessions. Fotheringay were in financial trouble already, spending far more money than they were bringing in, but their album made the top twenty and they were getting respect both from critics and from the public — in September, Sandy Denny was voted best British female singer by the readers of Melody Maker in their annual poll, which led to shocked headlines in the tabloids about how this “unknown” could have beaten such big names as Dusty Springfield and Cilla Black. Only a couple of weeks after that, they were due to headline at the Albert Hall. It should have been a triumph. But Donahue, Donaldson, and Conway had asked that singing pianist to be their support act. As Donahue said later “That was a terrible miscast. It was our fault. He asked if [he] could do it. Actually Pat, Gerry and I had to talk Sandy and Trevor into [it]… We'd done these demos and the way he was playing – he was a wonderful piano player – he was sensitive enough. We knew very little about his stage-show. We thought he'd be a really good opener for us.” Unfortunately, Elton John was rather *too* good. As Donahue continued “we had no idea what he had in mind, that he was going to do the most incredible rock & roll show ever. He pretty much blew us off the stage before we even got on the stage.” To make matters worse, Fotheringay’s set, which was mostly comprised of new material, was underrehearsed and sloppy, and from that point on no matter what they did people were counting the hours until the band split up. They struggled along for a while though, and started working on a second record, with Boyd again producing, though as Boyd later said “I probably shouldn't have been producing the record. My lack of respect for the group was clear, and couldn't have helped the atmosphere. We'd put out a record that had sold disappointingly, A&M was unhappy. Sandy's tracks on the first record are among the best things she ever did – the rest of it, who cares? And the artwork, Trevor's sister, was terrible. It would have been one thing if I'd been unhappy with it and it sold, and the group was working all the time, making money, but that wasn't the case … I knew what Sandy was capable of, and it was very upsetting to me.” The record would not be released for thirty-eight years: [Excerpt: Fotheringay, “Wild Mountain Thyme”] Witchseason was going badly into debt. Given all the fissioning of bands that we’ve already been talking about, Boyd had been stretched thin — he produced sixteen albums in 1970, and almost all of them lost money for the company. And he was getting more and more disillusioned with the people he was producing. He loved Beverly Martyn’s work, but had little time for her abusive husband John, who was dominating her recording and life more and more and would soon become a solo artist while making her stay at home (and stealing her ideas without giving her songwriting credit). The Incredible String Band were great, but they had recently converted to Scientology, which Boyd found annoying, and while he was working with all sorts of exciting artists like Vashti Bunyan and Nico, he was finding himself less and less important to the artists he mentored. Fairport Convention were a good example of this. After Denny and Hutchings had left the group, they’d decided to carry on as an electric folk group, performing an equal mix of originals by the Swarbrick and Thompson songwriting team and arrangements of traditional songs. The group were now far enough away from the “British Jefferson Airplane” label that they decided they didn’t need a female vocalist — and more realistically, while they’d been able to replace Judy Dyble, nobody was going to replace Sandy Denny. Though it’s rather surprising when one considers Thompson’s subsequent career that nobody seems to have thought of bringing in Denny’s friend Linda Peters, who was dating Joe Boyd at the time (as Denny had been before she met Lucas) as Denny’s replacement. Instead, they decided that Swarbrick and Thompson were going to share the vocals between them. They did, though, need a bass player to replace Hutchings. Swarbrick wanted to bring in Dave Pegg, with whom he had played in the Ian Campbell Folk Group, but the other band members initially thought the idea was a bad one. At the time, while they respected Swarbrick as a musician, they didn’t think he fully understood rock and roll yet, and they thought the idea of getting in a folkie who had played double bass rather than an electric rock bassist ridiculous. But they auditioned him to mollify Swarbrick, and found that he was exactly what they needed. As Joe Boyd later said “All those bass lines were great, Ashley invented them all, but he never could play them that well. He thought of them, but he was technically not a terrific bass player. He was a very inventive, melodic, bass player, but not a very powerful one technically. But having had the part explained to him once, Pegg was playing it better than Ashley had ever played it… In some rock bands, I think, ultimately, the bands that sound great, you can generally trace it to the bass player… it was at that point they became a great band, when they had Pegg.” The new lineup of Fairport decided to move in together, and found a former pub called the Angel, into which all the band members moved, along with their partners and children (Thompson was the only one who was single at this point) and their roadies. The group lived together quite happily, and one gets the impression that this was the period when they were most comfortable with each other, even though by this point they were a disparate group with disparate tastes, in music as in everything else. Several people have said that the only music all the band members could agree they liked at this point was the first two albums by The Band. With the departure of Hutchings from the band, Swarbrick and Thompson, as the strongest personalities and soloists, became in effect the joint leaders of the group, and they became collaborators as songwriters, trying to write new songs that were inspired by traditional music. Thompson described the process as “let’s take one line of this reel and slow it down and move it up a minor third and see what that does to it; let’s take one line of this ballad and make a whole song out of it. Chopping up the tradition to find new things to do… like a collage.” Generally speaking, Swarbrick and Thompson would sit by the fire and Swarbrick would play a melody he’d been working on, the two would work on it for a while, and Thompson would then go away and write the lyrics. This is how the two came up with songs like the nine-minute “Sloth”, a highlight of the next album, Full House, and one that would remain in Fairport’s live set for much of their career: [Excerpt: Fairport Convention, “Sloth”] “Sloth” was titled that way because Thompson and Swarbrick were working on two tunes, a slow one and a fast one, and they jokingly named them “Sloth” and “Fasth”, but the latter got renamed to “Walk Awhile”, while “Sloth” kept its working title. But by this point, Boyd and Thompson were having a lot of conflict in the studio. Boyd was never the most technical of producers — he was one of those producers whose job is to gently guide the artists in the studio and create a space for the music to flourish, rather than the Joe Meek type with an intimate technical knowledge of the studio — and as the artists he was working with gained confidence in their own work they felt they had less and less need of him. During the making of the Full House album, Thompson and Boyd, according to Boyd, clashed on everything — every time Boyd thought Thompson had done a good solo, Thompson would say to erase it and let him have another go, while every time Boyd thought Thompson could do better, Thompson would say that was the take to keep. One of their biggest clashes was over Thompson’s song “Poor Will and the Jolly Hangman”, which was originally intended for release on the album, and is included in current reissues of it: [Excerpt: Fairport Convention, “Poor Will and the Jolly Hangman”] Thompson had written that song inspired by what he thought was the unjust treatment of Alex Bramham, the driver in Fairport’s fatal car crash, by the courts — Bramham had been given a prison sentence of a few months for dangerous driving, while the group members thought he had not been at fault. Boyd thought it was one of the best things recorded for the album, but Thompson wasn’t happy with his vocal — there was one note at the top of the melody that he couldn’t quite hit — and insisted it be kept off the record, even though that meant it would be a shorter album than normal. He did this at such a late stage that early copies of the album actually had the title printed on the sleeve, but then blacked out. He now says in his autobiography “I could have persevered, double-tracked the voice, warmed up for longer – anything. It was a good track, and the record was lacking without it. When the album was re-released, the track was restored with a more confident vocal, and it has stayed there ever since.” During the sessions for Full House the group also recorded one non-album single, Thompson and Swarbrick’s “Now Be Thankful”: [Excerpt, Fairport Convention, “Now Be Thankful”] The B-side to that was a medley of two traditional tunes plus a Swarbrick original, but was given the deliberately ridiculous title “Sir B. McKenzie’s Daughter’s Lament For The 77th Mounted Lancers Retreat From The Straits Of Loch Knombe, In The Year Of Our Lord 1727, On The Occasion Of The Announcement Of Her Marriage To The Laird Of Kinleakie”: [Excerpt: Fairport Convention, “Sir B. McKenzie’s Daughter’s Lament For The 77th Mounted Lancers Retreat From The Straits Of Loch Knombe, In The Year Of Our Lord 1727, On The Occasion Of The Announcement Of Her Marriage To The Laird Of Kinleakie”] The B. McKenzie in the title was a reference to the comic-strip character Barry McKenzie, a stereotype drunk Australian created for Private Eye magazine by the comedian Barry Humphries (later to become better known for his Dame Edna Everage character) but the title was chosen for one reason only — to get into the Guinness Book of Records for the song with the longest title. Which they did, though they were later displaced by the industrial band Test Dept, and their song “Long Live British Democracy Which Flourishes and Is Constantly Perfected Under the Immaculate Guidance of the Great, Honourable, Generous and Correct Margaret Hilda Thatcher. She Is the Blue Sky in the Hearts of All Nations. Our People Pay Homage and Bow in Deep Respect and Gratitude to Her. The Milk of Human Kindness”. Full House got excellent reviews in the music press, with Rolling Stone saying “The music shows that England has finally gotten her own equivalent to The Band… By calling Fairport an English equivalent of the Band, I meant that they have soaked up enough of the tradition of their countryfolk that it begins to show all over, while they maintain their roots in rock.” Off the back of this, the group went on their first US tour, culminating in a series of shows at the Troubadour in LA, on the same bill as Rick Nelson, which were recorded and later released as a live album: [Excerpt: Fairport Convention, “Sloth (live)”] The Troubadour was one of the hippest venues at the time, and over their residency there the group got seen by many celebrities, some of whom joined them on stage. The first was Linda Ronstadt, who initially demurred, saying she didn’t know any of their songs. On being told they knew all of hers, she joined in with a rendition of “Silver Threads and Golden Needles”. Thompson was later asked to join Ronstadt’s backing band, who would go on to become the Eagles, but he said later of this offer “I would have hated it. I’d have hated being on the road with four or five miserable Americans — they always seem miserable. And if you see them now, they still look miserable on stage — like they don’t want to be there and they don’t like each other.” The group were also joined on stage at the Troubadour on one memorable night by some former bandmates of Pegg’s. Before joining the Ian Campbell Folk Group, Pegg had played around the Birmingham beat scene, and had been in bands with John Bonham and Robert Plant, who turned up to the Troubadour with their Led Zeppelin bandmate Jimmy Page (reports differ on whether the fourth member of Zeppelin, John Paul Jones, also came along). They all got up on stage together and jammed on songs like “Hey Joe”, “Louie Louie”, and various old Elvis tunes. The show was recorded, and the tapes are apparently still in the possession of Joe Boyd, who has said he refuses to release them in case he is murdered by the ghost of Peter Grant. According to Thompson, that night ended in a three-way drinking contest between Pegg, Bonham, and Janis Joplin, and it’s testament to how strong the drinking culture is around Fairport and the British folk scene in general that Pegg outdrank both of them. According to Thompson, Bonham was found naked by a swimming pool two days later, having missed two gigs. For all their hard rock image, Led Zeppelin were admirers of a lot of the British folk and folk-rock scene, and a few months later Sandy Denny would become the only outside vocalist ever to appear on a Led Zeppelin record when she duetted with Plant on “The Battle of Evermore” on the group’s fourth album: [Excerpt: Led Zeppelin, “The Battle of Evermore”] Denny would never actually get paid for her appearance on one of the best-selling albums of all time. That was, incidentally, not the only session that Denny was involved in around this time — she also sang on the soundtrack to a soft porn film titled Swedish Fly Girls, whose soundtrack was produced by Manfred Mann: [Excerpt: Sandy Denny, “What Will I Do With Tomorrow?”] Shortly after Fairport’s trip to America, Joe Boyd decided he was giving up on Witchseason. The company was now losing money, and he was finding himself having to produce work for more and more acts as the various bands fissioned. The only ones he really cared about were Richard Thompson, who he was finding it more and more difficult to work with, Nick Drake, who wanted to do his next album with just an acoustic guitar anyway, Sandy Denny, who he felt was wasting her talents in Fotheringay, and Mike Heron of the Incredible String Band, who was more distant since his conversion to Scientology. Boyd did make some attempts to keep the company going. On a trip to Sweden, he negotiated an agreement with the manager and publisher of a Swedish band whose songs he’d found intriguing, the Hep Stars. Boyd was going to publish their songs in the UK, and in return that publisher, Stig Anderson, would get the rights to Witchseason’s catalogue in Scandinavia — a straight swap, with no money changing hands. But before Boyd could get round to signing the paperwork, he got a better offer from Mo Ostin of Warners — Ostin wanted Boyd to come over to LA and head up Warners’ new film music department. Boyd sold Witchseason to Island Records and moved to LA with his fiancee Linda Peters, spending the next few years working on music for films like Deliverance and A Clockwork Orange, as well as making his own documentary about Jimi Hendrix, and thus missed out on getting the UK publishing rights for ABBA, and all the income that would have brought him, for no money. And it was that decision that led to the breakup of Fotheringay. Just before Christmas 1970, Fotheringay were having a difficult session, recording the track “John the Gun”: [Excerpt: Fotheringay, “John the Gun”] Boyd got frustrated and kicked everyone out of the session, and went for a meal and several drinks with Denny. He kept insisting that she should dump the band and just go solo, and then something happened that the two of them would always describe differently. She asked him if he would continue to produce her records if she went solo, and he said he would. According to Boyd’s recollection of the events, he meant that he would fly back from California at some point to produce her records. According to Denny, he told her that if she went solo he would stay in Britain and not take the job in LA. This miscommunication was only discovered after Denny told the rest of Fotheringay after the Christmas break that she was splitting the band. Jerry Donahue has described that as the worst moment of his life, and Denny felt very guilty about breaking up a band with some of her closest friends in — and then when Boyd went over to the US anyway she felt a profound betrayal. Two days before Fotheringay’s final concert, in January 1971, Sandy Denny signed a solo deal with Island records, but her first solo album would not end up produced by Joe Boyd. Instead, The North Star Grassman and the Ravens was co-produced by Denny, John Wood — the engineer who had worked with Boyd on pretty much everything he’d produced, and Richard Thompson, who had just quit Fairport Convention, though he continued living with them at the Angel, at least until a truck crashed into the building in February 1971, destroying its entire front wall and forcing them to relocate. The songs chosen for The North Star Grassman and the Ravens reflected the kind of choices Denny would make on her future albums, and her eclectic taste in music. There was, of course, the obligatory Dylan cover, and the traditional folk ballad “Blackwaterside”, but there was also a cover version of Brenda Lee’s “Let’s Jump the Broomstick”: [Excerpt: Sandy Denny, “Let’s Jump the Broomstick”] Most of the album, though, was made up of originals about various people in Denny’s life, like “Next Time Around”, about her ex-boyfriend Jackson C Frank: [Excerpt: Sandy Denny, “Next Time Around”] The album made the top forty in the UK — Denny’s only solo album to do so — and led to her once again winning the “best female singer” award in Melody Maker’s readers’ poll that year — the male singer award was won by Rod Stewart. Both Stewart and Denny appeared the next year on the London Symphony Orchestra’s all-star version of The Who’s Tommy, which had originally been intended as a vehicle for Stewart before Roger Daltrey got involved. Stewart’s role was reduced to a single song, “Pinball Wizard”, while Denny sang on “It’s a Boy”: [Excerpt: Sandy Denny, “It’s a Boy”] While Fotheringay had split up, all the band members play on The North Star Grassman and the Ravens. Guitarists Donahue and Lucas only play on a couple of the tracks, with Richard Thompson playing most of the guitar on the record. But Fotheringay’s rhythm section of Pat Donaldson and Gerry Conway play on almost every track. Another musician on the album, Ian Whiteman, would possibly have a profound effect on the future direction of Richard Thompson’s career and life. Whiteman was the former keyboard player for the mod band The Action, having joined them just before they became the blues-rock band Mighty Baby. But Mighty Baby had split up when all of the band except the lead singer had converted to Islam. Richard Thompson was on his own spiritual journey at this point, and became a Sufi – the same branch of Islam as Whiteman – soon after the session, though Thompson has said that his conversion was independent of Whiteman’s. The two did become very close and work together a lot in the mid-seventies though. Thompson had supposedly left Fairport because he was writing material that wasn’t suited to the band, but he spent more than a year after quitting the group working on sessions rather than doing anything with his own material, and these sessions tended to involve the same core group of musicians. One of the more unusual was a folk-rock supergroup called The Bunch, put together by Trevor Lucas. Richard Branson had recently bought a recording studio, and wanted a band to test it out before opening it up for commercial customers, so with this free studio time Lucas decided to record a set of fifties rock and roll covers. He gathered together Thompson, Denny, Whiteman, Ashley Hutchings, Dave Mattacks, Pat Donaldson, Gerry Conway, pianist Tony Cox, the horn section that would later form the core of the Average White Band, and Linda Peters, who had now split up with Joe Boyd and returned to the UK, and who had started dating Thompson. They recorded an album of covers of songs by Jerry Lee Lewis, the Everly Brothers, Johnny Otis and others: [Excerpt: The Bunch, “Willie and the Hand Jive”] The early seventies was a hugely productive time for this group of musicians, as they all continued playing on each other’s projects. One notable album was No Roses by Shirley Collins, which featured Thompson, Mattacks, Whiteman, Simon Nicol, Lal and Mike Waterson, and Ashley Hutchings, who was at that point married to Collins, as well as some more unusual musicians like the free jazz saxophonist Lol Coxhill: [Excerpt: Shirley Collins and the Albion Country Band, “Claudy Banks”] Collins was at the time the most respected female singer in British traditional music, and already had a substantial career including a series of important records made with her sister Dolly, work with guitarists like Davey Graham, and time spent in the 1950s collecting folk songs in the Southern US with her then partner Alan Lomax – according to Collins she did much of the actual work, but Lomax only mentioned her in a single sentence in his book on this work. Some of the same group of musicians went on to work on an album of traditional Morris dancing tunes, titled Morris On, credited to “Ashley Hutchings, Richard Thompson, Dave Mattacks, John Kirkpatrick and Barry Dransfield”, with Collins singing lead on two tracks: [Excerpt: Ashley Hutchings, Richard Thompson, Dave Mattacks, John Kirkpatrick and Barry Dransfield with Shirley Collins, “The Willow Tree”] Thompson thought that that album was the best of the various side projects he was involved in at the time, comparing it favourably to Rock On, which he thought was rather slight, saying later “Conceptually, Fairport, Ashley and myself and Sandy were developing a more fragile style of music that nobody else was particularly interested in, a British Folk Rock idea that had a logical development to it, although we all presented it our own way. Morris On was rather more true to what we were doing. Rock On was rather a retro step. I'm not sure it was lasting enough as a record but Sandy did sing really well on the Buddy Holly songs.” Hutchings used the musicians on No Roses and Morris On as the basis for his band the Albion Band, which continues to this day. Simon Nicol and Dave Mattacks both quit Fairport to join the Albion Band, though Mattacks soon returned. Nicol would not return to Fairport for several years, though, and for a long period in the mid-seventies Fairport Convention had no original members. Unfortunately, while Collins was involved in the Albion Band early on, she and Hutchings ended up divorcing, and the stress from the divorce led to Collins developing spasmodic dysphonia, a stress-related illness which makes it impossible for the sufferer to sing. She did eventually regain her vocal ability, but between 1978 and 2016 she was unable to perform at all, and lost decades of her career. Richard Thompson occasionally performed with the Albion Band early on, but he was getting stretched a little thin with all these sessions. Linda Peters said later of him “When I came back from America, he was working in Sandy’s band, and doing sessions by the score. Always with Pat Donaldson and Dave Mattacks. Richard would turn up with his guitar, one day he went along to do a session with one of those folkie lady singers — and there were Pat and DM. They all cracked. Richard smashed his amp and said “Right! No more sessions!” In 1972 he got round to releasing his first solo album, Henry the Human Fly, which featured guest appearances by Linda Peters and Sandy Denny among others: [Excerpt: Richard Thompson, “The Angels Took My Racehorse Away”] Unfortunately, while that album has later become regarded as one of the classics of its genre, at the time it was absolutely slated by the music press. The review in Melody Maker, for example, read in part “Some of Richard Thompson’s ideas sound great – which is really the saving grace of this album, because most of the music doesn’t. The tragedy is that Thompson’s “British rock music” is such an unconvincing concoction… Even the songs that do integrate rock and traditional styles of electric guitar rhythms and accordion and fiddle decoration – and also include explicit, meaningful lyrics are marred by bottle-up vocals, uninspiring guitar phrases and a general lack of conviction in performance.” Henry the Human Fly was released in the US by Warners, who had a reciprocal licensing deal with Island (and for whom Joe Boyd was working at the time, which may have had something to do with that) but according to Thompson it became the lowest-selling record that Warners ever put out (though I’ve also seen that claim made about Van Dyke Parks’ Song Cycle, another album that has later been rediscovered). Thompson was hugely depressed by this reaction, and blamed his own singing. Happily, though, by this point he and Linda had become a couple — they would marry in 1972 — and they started playing folk clubs as a duo, or sometimes in a trio with Simon Nicol. Thompson was also playing with Sandy Denny’s backing band at this point, and played on every track on her second solo album, Sandy. This album was meant to be her big commercial breakthrough, with a glamorous cover photo by David Bailey, and with a more American sound, including steel guitar by Sneaky Pete Kleinow of the Flying Burrito Brothers (whose overdubs were supervised in LA by Joe Boyd): [Excerpt: Sandy Denny, “Tomorrow is a Long Time”] The album was given a big marketing push by Island, and “Listen, Listen” was made single of the week on the Radio 1 Breakfast show: [Excerpt: Sandy Denny, “Listen, Listen”] But it did even worse than the previous album, sending her into something of a depression. Linda Thompson (as the former Linda Peters now was) said of this period “After the Sandy album, it got her down that her popularity didn't suddenly increase in leaps and bounds, and that was the start of her really fretting about the way her career was going. Things only escalated after that. People like me or Martin Carthy or Norma Waterson would think, ‘What are you on about? This is folk music.'” After Sandy’s release, Denny realised she could no longer afford to tour with a band, and so went back to performing just acoustically or on piano. The only new music to be released by either of these ex-members of Fairport Convention in 1973 was, oddly, on an album by the band they were no longer members of. After Thompson had left Fairport, the group had managed to release two whole albums with the same lineup — Swarbrick, Nicol, Pegg, and Mattacks. But then Nicol and Mattacks had both quit the band to join the Albion Band with their former bandmate Ashley Hutchings, leading to a situation where the Albion Band had two original members of Fairport plus their longtime drummer while Fairport Convention itself had no original members and was down to just Swarbrick and Pegg. Needing to fulfil their contracts, they then recruited three former members of Fotheringay — Lucas on vocals and rhythm guitar, Donahue on lead guitar, and Conway on drums. Conway was only a session player at the time, and Mattacks soon returned to the band, but Lucas and Donahue became full-time members. This new lineup of Fairport Convention released two albums in 1973, widely regarded as the group’s most inconsistent records, and on the title track of the first, “Rosie”, Richard Thompson guested on guitar, with Sandy Denny and Linda Thompson on backing vocals: [Excerpt: Fairport Convention, “Rosie”] Neither Sandy Denny nor Richard Thompson released a record themselves in 1973, but in neither case was this through the artists’ choice. The record industry was changing in the early 1970s, as we’ll see in later episodes, and was less inclined to throw good money after bad in the pursuit of art. Island Records prided itself on being a home for great artists, but it was still a business, and needed to make money. We’ll talk about the OPEC oil crisis and its effect on the music industry much more when the podcast gets to 1973, but in brief, the production of oil by the US peaked in 1970 and started to decrease, leading to them importing more and more oil from the Middle East. As a result of this, oil prices rose slowly between 1971 and 1973, then very quickly towards the end of 1973 as a result of the Arab-Israeli conflict that year. As vinyl is made of oil, suddenly producing records became much more expensive, and in this period a lot of labels decided not to release already-completed albums, until what they hoped would be a brief period of shortages passed. Both Denny and Thompson recorded albums at this point that got put to one side by Island. In the case of Thompson, it was the first album by Richard and Linda as a duo, I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight: [Excerpt: Richard and Linda Thompson, “I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight”] Today, I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight is widely regarded as one of the greatest albums of all time, and as one of the two masterpieces that bookended Richard and Linda’s career as a duo and their marriage. But when they recorded the album, full of Richard’s dark songs, it was the opposite of commercial. Even a song that’s more or less a boy-girl song, like “Has He Got a Friend for Me?” has lyrics like “He wouldn’t notice me passing by/I could be in the gutter, or dangling down from a tree” [Excerpt: Richard and Linda Thompson, “Has He got a Friend For Me?”] While something like “The Calvary Cross” is oblique and haunted, and seems to cast a pall over the entire album: [Excerpt: Richard and Linda Thompson, “The Calvary Cross”] The album itself had been cheap to make — it had been recorded in only a week, with Thompson bringing in musicians he knew well and had worked with a lot previously to cut the tracks as-live in only a handful of takes — but Island didn’t think it was worth releasing. The record stayed on the shelf for nearly a year after recording, until Island got a new head of A&R, Richard Williams. Williams said of the album’s release “Muff Winwood had been doing A&R, but he was more interested in production… I had a conversation with Muff as soon as I got there, and he said there are a few hangovers, some outstanding problems. And one of them was Richard Thompson. He said there’s this album we gave him the money to make — which was I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight — and nobody’s very interested in it. Henry the Human Fly had been a bit of a commercial disappointment, and although Island was altruistic and independent and known for only recording good stuff, success was important… Either a record had to do well or somebody had to believe in it a lot. And it seemed as if neither of those things were true at that point of Richard.” Williams, though, was hugely impressed when he listened to the album. He compared Richard Thompson’s guitar playing to John Coltrane’s sax, and called Thompson “the folk poet of the rainy streets”, but also said “Linda brightened it, made it more commercial. and I thought that “Bright Lights” itself seemed a really commercial song.” The rest of the management at Island got caught up in Williams’ enthusiasm, and even decided to release the title track as a single: [Excerpt: Richard and Linda Thompson, “I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight”] Neither single nor album charted — indeed it would not be until 1991 that Richard Thompson would make a record that made the top forty in the UK — but the album got enough critical respect that Richard and Linda released two albums the year after. The first of these, Hokey Pokey, is a much more upbeat record than their previous one — Richard Thompson has called it “quite a music-hall influenced record” and cited the influence of George Formby and Harry Lauder. For once, the claim of music hall influence is audible in the music. Usually when a British musician is claimed to have a music ha
For this episode we're joined in our Hammersmith lair by the highly respected Chris Bohn, known better these days by his alias Biba Kopf (cue a nod to Berlin Alexanderplatz author Alfred Döblin...) The veteran NME contributor and sometime editor-in-chief of The Wire talks about his long career as a Europhile connoisseur of extreme and out-there music. We start by asking our guest about his mother's experience as a teenage refugee fleeing her native Silesia after the advance of the Red Army in 1945 – and her subsequent settling in the English Midlands. We learn about Chris' journalistic training on the Sutton Coldfield News and his subsequent travels around Europe, where he reconnected with relatives in West (and East) Germany. Chris reminisces about his first London job as a press officer for Polydor Records, for whom he chaperoned Siouxsie & the Banshees to tapings of Top of the Pops. He then talks us through his writing career from Melody Maker and NME to decades-long association with The Wire. Among the articles mentioned are his 1979 live review of Joy Division, his groundbreaking 1981 on-the-road piece "Trans-Europe Express", and his interviews with Nina Hagen (1979) and Einstürzende Neubauten (1983). Discussion of The Wire leads us into clips from an audio interview with Wire icon Ornette Coleman … by Wire mainstay David Toop. We conclude the episode by paying heartfelt tribute to two Californian geniuses who left us this week: Family Stone funk pioneer Sly Stone and the Beach Boys' "pocket symphonist" Brian Wilson. We shall not see – or hear – their like again. Many thanks to special guest Chris Bohn a.k.a. Biba Kopf. Visit the Wire's website at thewire.co.uk to subscribe digitally and in print. Pieces discussed: Nina Hagen: West Is Best, Einstürzende Neubauten: Let's Hear It For The Untergang Show, Ornette Coleman (1995), Sly & The Family Stone: Sly Buries Underground And Has Fun!, Not Only Sly, But Sometimes Just Plain Damn Evasive, Sly Stone's Higher Power, Some Producers' Hints From Beach Boy Brian, Brian Wilson, Brian Wilson: Beach Boy, Pop Visionary, Wounded Soul, The Devil and Jerry Lee Lewis and Group Home: Supa Group.
For this episode of Free With This Month's Issue we're joined by Sarah Daniels & Lisa Williams to discuss Melody Maker's New Kids On The Rock cd from October 1999The cd's tracklisting is1 - Feeder - Insomnia2 - Queens Of The Stone Age - If Only3 - Fear Factory - Edgecrusher4 - Coal Chamber - Tragedy5 - Machine Head - From This Day6 - Slipknot - Spit It Out7 - Lit - Quicksand8 - Cyclefly - Crawl Down9 - A - Monkey Kong10 - Clam Abuse - Message To Geri11 - Buckcherry - Dead AgainListen to all available songs on our ongoing Spotify playlist - https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1mzWOWEfQ5LklJyUZkpfs2?si=LbWBi9-oTl-eXjkUJbpx2QYou can buy a copy of the cd from Discogs here - https://www.discogs.com/release/1679730-Various-New-Kids-On-The-RockHosts - Ian Clarke & Colin Jackson-BrownRecorded/Edited/Mixed/Original music by Colin Jackson Brown for We Dig PodcastsBluesky - https://bsky.app/profile/thismonthsissue.bsky.socialTikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@freewiththismonthsissueInstagram - https://www.instagram.com/freewiththismonthsissue/Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/freewiththismonthsissue/Find our other episodes, plus We Dig Music & Pick A Disc at www.wedigpodcasts.com
Tom Sheehan was born in Camberwell, South London. He was an in-house photographer for CBS Records in the 70s, and went on to be the chief photographer for Melody Maker. He enjoyed long-term working relationships with the likes of REM, The Cure, Manic Street Preachers, and Oasis, the subject of a new book of Tom's work entitled “Roll With It: Oasis in Photographs 1994-2002”. I had a great time chatting with Tom about his life and work, and I hope you enjoy it too.
Wendy Robinson in conversation with David Eastaugh https://www.thecalmzone.net/ The band was formed by Wendy Robinson (vocals) and Polly Hancock (vocals, guitar), initially with a drum machine. This line-up recorded the debut "Don't Go Back" EPon Big Cat UK (catalogue number BBA02) in August 1988) achieving "Single of the Week" in Melody Maker. A John Peel session, produced by Dale Griffin and recorded at the BBC studios in Golders Green, London, was first broadcast on 21 September 1988 and repeated on 11 October 1988. It featured four original songs; "Perfect Dream Home", "Fine Lines", "Dr Fell" and "Backward" Daydream. They then recruited Dana Baldinger (born Seattle,), and signed to One Little Indian Records, releasing "Please Let Me Go" as a single in April 1990; this too attained Single of The Week in Melody Maker. Baldinger was eventually replaced by Anne Rogers of The Crowd Scene.
Nights In White Satin - 260 million streams on Spotify - is still the central plank in the set Justin Hayward's touring in October. He talks to us here about the first shows he ever saw and played, the ballroom circuit of the mid-'60s remembered in particularly vivid detail and involving the odd burst of song - “My kind of town, Great Yarmouth is …!”. Along with … … the appeal of “a Moody Blues crowd”. ... “Name Singer seeks guitar player”: the Melody Maker ad that got him into the Marty Wilde band, aged 17. … playing a summer season on the same bill as a water feature – aka the Waltzing Waters. … his early band All Things Bright and their Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly, Coasters setlist. … the “onerous” publishing deal he signed with Lonnie Donegan that siphoned off the profits of Nights In White Satin. … seeing Tommy Cooper at the Bournemouth Pavilion and the Barron Knights at the Locarno in Swindon. … “Terry the Pill” in Eric Burden's office. … toying with the idea of “a rock version of Dvorak”. … the uncertain fate of Nights In White Satin and the plugger who threatened to resign over it. … how Days Of Future Passed was the “Deramic Sound” demo record. … and the highpoint of the Moody Blues story and their Second Coming. Justin Hayward tickets here: https://justinhayward.com/pages/current-tour-dates https://justinhayward.com/Find out more about how to help us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Nights In White Satin - 260 million streams on Spotify - is still the central plank in the set Justin Hayward's touring in October. He talks to us here about the first shows he ever saw and played, the ballroom circuit of the mid-'60s remembered in particularly vivid detail and involving the odd burst of song - “My kind of town, Great Yarmouth is …!”. Along with … … the appeal of “a Moody Blues crowd”. ... “Name Singer seeks guitar player”: the Melody Maker ad that got him into the Marty Wilde band, aged 17. … playing a summer season on the same bill as a water feature – aka the Waltzing Waters. … his early band All Things Bright and their Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly, Coasters setlist. … the “onerous” publishing deal he signed with Lonnie Donegan that siphoned off the profits of Nights In White Satin. … seeing Tommy Cooper at the Bournemouth Pavilion and the Barron Knights at the Locarno in Swindon. … “Terry the Pill” in Eric Burdon's office. … toying with the idea of “a rock version of Dvorak”. … the uncertain fate of Nights In White Satin and the plugger who threatened to resign over it. … how Days Of Future Passed was the “Deramic Sound” demo record. … and the highpoint of the Moody Blues story and their Second Coming. Justin Hayward tickets here: https://justinhayward.com/pages/current-tour-dates https://justinhayward.com/Find out more about how to help us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Nights In White Satin - 260 million streams on Spotify - is still the central plank in the set Justin Hayward's touring in October. He talks to us here about the first shows he ever saw and played, the ballroom circuit of the mid-'60s remembered in particularly vivid detail and involving the odd burst of song - “My kind of town, Great Yarmouth is …!”. Along with … … the appeal of “a Moody Blues crowd”. ... “Name Singer seeks guitar player”: the Melody Maker ad that got him into the Marty Wilde band, aged 17. … playing a summer season on the same bill as a water feature – aka the Waltzing Waters. … his early band All Things Bright and their Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly, Coasters setlist. … the “onerous” publishing deal he signed with Lonnie Donegan that siphoned off the profits of Nights In White Satin. … seeing Tommy Cooper at the Bournemouth Pavilion and the Barron Knights at the Locarno in Swindon. … “Terry the Pill” in Eric Burdon's office. … toying with the idea of “a rock version of Dvorak”. … the uncertain fate of Nights In White Satin and the plugger who threatened to resign over it. … how Days Of Future Passed was the “Deramic Sound” demo record. … and the highpoint of the Moody Blues story and their Second Coming. Justin Hayward tickets here: https://justinhayward.com/pages/current-tour-dates https://justinhayward.com/Find out more about how to help us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Hello and welcome back to the Oasis Podcast. Today I am joined by James AKA @BritpopMemories Support patreon.com/oasispod
Who wants to go on a Blind Date with George Harrison? Millions of girls for sure, but only Hayley Mills and the backpage of the Melody Maker accomplished the feat. Tune in for Twinkle (but not Little Star), Ken Dodd, Elvis, the CND and a little song that just might be "the first record to start with feedback". Support this podcast at the $6/month level on patreon to get extra content! Create your podcast today! #madeonzencastr
For this episode we're joined by Chris Charlesworth, mainstay of Melody Maker in its '70s pomp and subsequently editorial director of music imprint Omnibus Books. Starting out at Skipton's Craven Herald & Pioneer in his native Yorkshire, Chris talks us through key moments in the Maker years he documents in recent memoir Just Backdated. Paying particular attention to his stints as a '70s correspondent from L.A. and New York, we also ask Chris about MM colleagues such as Max Jones, Richard Williams and Roy Hollingworth. Recollections of close encounters with the likes of John Lennon and Debbie Harry are followed by clips from a 1989 audio interview in which Elkie Brooks talks to John Tobler about Vinegar Joe and Leiber & Stoller. After Mark quotes from newly-added library interviews with South African jazz man Dudu Pukwana (1970) and punk icon Jordan (1978), Jasper talks us out with his thoughts on pieces about hip hop pioneer Grandmaster Flash (2009) and Queen legend Freddie Mercury (2023). Many thanks to special guest Chris Charlesworth. Just Backdated: Seven Years in the Seventies is published by Spenwood books and available now. For more Chris, visit his website at justbackdated.blogspot.com. Pieces discussed: John Lennon: Lennon Today, Debbie Harry: Face It, Elkie Brooks audio, Dudu Pukwana, Captain Beefheart & Frank Zappa, Jordan: Love is not easy for a painted lady, Grandmaster Flash, Eagles of Death Metal and A piece of Freddie Mercury.
Sixty years ago, Melody Maker took John Lennon, Ringo Starr and George Harrison out on a blind date. Sixty years later, Marv, Kit and I tag along. All this, and the first half of the UK charts for November of 1964! Support this podcast at the $6/month level on patreon to get extra content! Create your podcast today! #madeonzencastr
Music writer Chris Charlesworth joins us to discuss his new book, Just Backdated, which depicts his years writing for Melody Maker in the seventies. Every music lover would kill for a job like this and Chris was the lucky guy that had it. He befriends his favorite band (the Who), sleeps with groupies, parties with everyone, lives the high life in NYC, goes to concerts every night, and hangs out with all the rock stars of the decade. The book is so fun you won't believe it or put it down. Enjoy! https://www.amazon.com/Just-Backdated-Melody-Maker-Seventies/dp/1915858259 https://www.patreon.com/c/thehustlepod
For this episode we're joined by the Brooklyn-based Andrew Smith, author of the bestselling Moondust, the "dotcom swindle" saga Totally Wired and the brand-new Devil in the Stack. We start by asking Andrew about the peripatetic childhood that took him from Greenwich Village to Hastings via San Francisco's summer of love. A riveting account of auditioning to replace Mick Jones in the Clash leads us to our guest's recollections of writing in the '80s and '90s for Melody Maker and The Face — and eventually becoming chief pop critic at London's Sunday Times. Jumping to Andrew's new book — with its subtitle A Coding Odyssey — we ask him about music's "digital revolution" in the mid-'80s, with particular attention to the ubiquity of Yamaha's DX7 keyboard. From there we revisit his 1995 interview with Björk – an artist who overtly embraced electronic sounds in that decade — and then listen to two audio clips from David Toop's absorbing encounter with the Icelandic maverick six years later. After a fascinating discussion about A.I. – its upsides and its threat not merely to musicians but to humanity at large — we return to the mid-'90s to celebrate the all-too-short life of the Notorious B.I.G., hip hop's "King of New York" in that all-too-violent decade. Mark provides quotes from recently-added library pieces about Captain Beefheart (1969), the Sex Pistols (1978) and oddly Francophobe goths Sisters of Mercy (1987), and Jasper wraps up the episode with his thoughts on articles about pop fanzines (2003) and writer, photographer and recent podcast guest Val Wilmer (2024). Many thanks to special guest Andrew Smith. Devil in the Stack: A Coding Odyssey is published by Grove Press and available now. Visit Andrew's website at andrewsmithauthor.com for more details. Pieces discussed: Andrew Smith on RBP, Björk: An International Word, Sound and Fury: Radiohead, Björk audio, Notorious B.I.G.: B.I.G. Trouble, Biggie, Tupac et al: Hollywood or Bust-up, Black Metropolis: Notorious R.I.P., Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band: Trout Mask Replica, The Sex Pistols: Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols, The Sisters Of Mercy: After The Flood, The Fanzine Editor: Publish And Be Damned and Val Wilmer: Deep Blues 1960–1988 (Café Royal).
Mike Stax talks to Melody Maker writer Chris Charlesworth about his experiences on the front lines of rock journalism in London, LA and New York City in the 1970s. Find Chris' book here: https://www.amazon.com/Just-Backdated-Chris-Charlesworth/dp/1915858224 Read the blog: https://justbackdated.blogspot.com/ Please support the podcast by joining our Patreon at patreon.com/uglythingspod, where you can enjoy special bonus content plus much more. Become a Patreon today! Check out Ugly Things Magazine: https://ugly-things.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Rock journalism as an occupation is rapidly heading in the direction of the watch-mender or lamplighter so Chris Charlesworth's account of life at the Melody Maker in the ‘70s is already starting to feel like an historic document. ‘Just Backdated' covers a time when the rock press set the agenda, sold over half a million copies a week and was courted by attention-seeking musicians of every rank, a lost world remembered in this conversation with Mark Ellen which includes … … the unwritten rules of ‘70s rock journalism and its limitless access. … the “homesick and slightly lost” John Lennon when living with May Pang. … life at Melody Maker's Fleet Street office and staff writer Max Jones's fling with Billie Holiday. … touring with Led Zeppelin alongside the 17 year-old Cameron Crowe (part of the inspiration for Almost Famous). … “Beatles to reform?” and other coverline staples. … the night Frank Zappa was thrown off the Rainbow stage – ‘people thought he'd been killed'. … the first British interview with Steely Dan. … Debbie Harry when she was still in the Stillettos and the day Blondie asked him to manage them. ... why the Bay City Rollers at an airport was “the nearest thing to a nightmare while being awake”. … his time as MM's West and East Coast correspondent aka “the best job in the world”. Order ‘Just Backdated' here:https://www.amazon.co.uk/Just-Backdated-Melody-Maker-Seventies/dp/1915858224Find out more about how to help us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Rock journalism as an occupation is rapidly heading in the direction of the watch-mender or lamplighter so Chris Charlesworth's account of life at the Melody Maker in the ‘70s is already starting to feel like an historic document. ‘Just Backdated' covers a time when the rock press set the agenda, sold over half a million copies a week and was courted by attention-seeking musicians of every rank, a lost world remembered in this conversation with Mark Ellen which includes … … the unwritten rules of ‘70s rock journalism and its limitless access. … the “homesick and slightly lost” John Lennon when living with May Pang. … life at Melody Maker's Fleet Street office and staff writer Max Jones's fling with Billie Holiday. … touring with Led Zeppelin alongside the 17 year-old Cameron Crowe (part of the inspiration for Almost Famous). … “Beatles to reform?” and other coverline staples. … the night Frank Zappa was thrown off the Rainbow stage – ‘people thought he'd been killed'. … the first British interview with Steely Dan. … Debbie Harry when she was still in the Stillettos and the day Blondie asked him to manage them. ... why the Bay City Rollers at an airport was “the nearest thing to a nightmare while being awake”. … his time as MM's West and East Coast correspondent aka “the best job in the world”. Order ‘Just Backdated' here:https://www.amazon.co.uk/Just-Backdated-Melody-Maker-Seventies/dp/1915858224Find out more about how to help us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Rock journalism as an occupation is rapidly heading in the direction of the watch-mender or lamplighter so Chris Charlesworth's account of life at the Melody Maker in the ‘70s is already starting to feel like an historic document. ‘Just Backdated' covers a time when the rock press set the agenda, sold over half a million copies a week and was courted by attention-seeking musicians of every rank, a lost world remembered in this conversation with Mark Ellen which includes … … the unwritten rules of ‘70s rock journalism and its limitless access. … the “homesick and slightly lost” John Lennon when living with May Pang. … life at Melody Maker's Fleet Street office and staff writer Max Jones's fling with Billie Holiday. … touring with Led Zeppelin alongside the 17 year-old Cameron Crowe (part of the inspiration for Almost Famous). … “Beatles to reform?” and other coverline staples. … the night Frank Zappa was thrown off the Rainbow stage – ‘people thought he'd been killed'. … the first British interview with Steely Dan. … Debbie Harry when she was still in the Stillettos and the day Blondie asked him to manage them. ... why the Bay City Rollers at an airport was “the nearest thing to a nightmare while being awake”. … his time as MM's West and East Coast correspondent aka “the best job in the world”. Order ‘Just Backdated' here:https://www.amazon.co.uk/Just-Backdated-Melody-Maker-Seventies/dp/1915858224Find out more about how to help us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
This week on the Pavement Top 50 Countdown, jD is joined by Jessica from Ann Arbor to reveal track 20 and discuss her Pavement origin story.Transcript:Track 2:[0:00] Previously on the Pavement Top 50. Today, we're talking all about number 21, Cut Your Hair. Russell, talk to me about your relationship with this song. I love this song for a few reasons. One, I think because it's ubiquitous. And when I talk about pavement to the rest of the free world, people are like, I don't remember that band. And if I say cut your hair, people are like, yeah, I remember that. Hey, this is Westy from the.Track 3:[0:41] Pavement, and you're listening to The Countdown. hey it's jd here back for another episode of the top 50 countdown for seminal indie rock band, pavement week over week we're going to count down the 50 essential pavement tracks that you selected with your very own top 20 ballots i then tabulated the results using an abacus and speed, just speed how will your favorite song fare in the rankings well you'll have to tune in to find out So there's that. This week I'm joined by Pavement superfan Jessica from Ann Arbor. Jessica, how the fuck are you doing? Super fucking good. I love it. I love it. This is exciting. When people fire back an F shot at me, that's like my favorite thing. It's validation to a degree. I was wondering if you were going to say like, hey, motherfucker, since I heard that maybe you haven't had a lot of ladies yet. I haven't. I said that to, I will promise I will say that in the future. Us ladies can be motherfuckers too. Yeah, yeah. Well, let's get right into it, Jessica from Ann Arbor. Let's hear your Pavement Origins story. Okay. She's opening a tome right now, folks. I know, I didn't want to go back into childhood, but it probably is high school-ish. Okay.Track 3:[2:11] So that would be late 80s, early 90s. And I lived in Michigan, which I do again. And I liked a lot of like alternative music, but it was kind of hard to find out about it. Right. Back in the day before the internets. um so one way was i read a lot of like british music magazines like enemy and melody maker um and i would read little tidbits which comes into the first time i met pavement so um.Track 3:[2:53] Oh, and I loved R.E.M. That was like my number one, probably, favorite band. I like the Replacements and a lot of British shoegazy bands. But the week after high school, my best friend and I decided to move to Athens, Georgia. And we were 17. And we just picked up and left. And we ended up living across the street from Michael Stipe. That's pretty fucking cool. That was like a dream come true. We were 17 for a while.Track 3:[3:24] So it was like this Disney world for music lovers because there were so many cool bands. But it was a little bit hard to get into stuff like bars and things the first few months. But we met a lot of people and that helped. And then we turned 18 and then we could get into more things. things but there was like cool bands playing for four dollars like five or six nights a week it was really cool we go dancing a lot and stuff um but we had tickets to go see u2 that we bought in michigan before we left so we went back for that but then we had to drive back, because we heard pavement was playing at the 40 watt in essence really this was in 92 okay so we went to the u2 show which was pretty awesome and um wayne from uh no guards from wayne's world was like satellite linked into that show and played drums for something on mtv, So that was a random place to be. But we had to drive back to Athens, and it was like 12 or 14 hours. And we went like straight to the show.Track 3:[4:42] And it was crazy and wild and sweaty. And Gary is a band. And he was doing handstands and headstands and hanging from the rafters. And it has since been put on YouTube. So now I can watch my 17-year-old self's view of watching them. But we really wanted to talk to them because we read in Enemy or Melody Maker or that they were going to be on 90210, Beverly Hills 90210, but that they, Stephen got in a fist fight with one of the guys, one of the actors. Oh, my gosh. And so before I even heard what they sounded like, I was like, I like these guys. They beat up somebody on 90210. So that was the first thing I asked them. And it was a rumor that Scott started about Stephen. than, I think, just to fuck with the UK press or something. Which sounded, that was a pretty cool thing, too. And, yeah, that was an awesome show.Track 3:[5:52] And, yeah, I was hooked. I think that summer before that, so right after high school, is I think I got Slandered Enchanted was the first thing I heard. You got that in real time, basically. I think so because we volunteered to work for this local free magazine to review bands, and they gave us a lot of free stuff. And I think that that's where we got that. I don't know if we bought it or not.Track 3:[6:28] And then I moved back to Michigan. and i had we went to high school with jim but we weren't really friends but then we worked at a store together and then we somehow started talking found out we liked a lot of the same music, and then that's jen will be coming up on a future episode just so you know, crazy jen and she's like the super fan uber fan i'm like a robin to a batman i would think because she worked at a super cool record store and so she had all the seven inches before, and cool promo things and she knew like you know label owners and promoters and people who ran clubs and all kinds of stuff so even at you know she was a year older than me so we're still like you know well 18 19 year olds and um.Track 3:[7:27] Oh, she had the inside track. So she would like make me tapes of all her cool seven inches. So I had like, you know, the peel sessions and we had all these weird bootlegs. And then I think I went to England the year before that, but then I went again and got a lot of weird bootlegs, including some pavement ones.Track 3:[7:54] And um then we went to see them together um and she is better remembering this so she had to kind of fill me in we saw them in chicago and we've gone all over the place to see them we've gone on lots of road trips because they're very important to us yeah and um but chicago is was only about four hours away and um um we also somewhere in there i think she she wanted to remind me and i guess i'm filling in some gaps that we um we wrote them some weird fan letters, somewhere in here somewhere in like 93 or 94 which i used to do with a lot of bands and i became friends with a lot of bands from writing really weird fan letters and sending really strange presence um we would just like really exaggerate things like she says that we found a danzig fanzine or something and we just changed the words around to something but we would just pretend we were like insane for them like we would say that we would, crawl a hundred miles over broken glass just to smell their shadows.Track 3:[9:11] Knows just like really over the top weird stuff um we weren't um obviously serious um and we would just put weird toys and um gadgets and odd things and just send gift boxes to bands we liked and it always made an impression um so yeah um it's a good icebreaker if you're shy too. Jen always thinks that I was better at talking to people in bands, but I'm super duper duper duper shy either. I have to overcome like being terrified. But if you have like a funky present or something silly to do or say, then it makes it easier. And they always enjoyed that. And I think that first time we gave them some weird thing we got from a truck stop was a license plate with a Confederate flag on it, which I'm cringing at now, and it said, Ass Kickin' Southern Rock. And Westy put it on his drum kit, and that made us excited.Track 3:[10:22] And then we, I think we saw him in Detroit like the next day or the next week or something. And they let us go to the sound check, and that was very exciting. And yeah, we always tried to be like in the front row, laughing and screaming and dancing. And it was very fun. And um they they gave us cool things too like one time they gave us some stephen keen paintings that were like left over from something um really.Track 3:[11:01] We got some cool stuff um and then once we got through with like kind of like we you know gush a little bit about what songs we liked or um stuff then they would we would just like kind of act like regular people with them and we'd like go out to dinner with them or go walking around with them and it was pretty cool i bet holy crap that's fucking dynamite, it was groovy those were the salad days we made them last for a few years too, talk to me about that after that refreshing sip of water i hope it's not moonshine it's uh just Just agua. I'll try not to slurp too much in the microphone. Let's see. I had to write down some of these things because I have these big blank spaces.Track 3:[11:56] So let's see. And I'm blind because I'm old now. I'm almost 50. Me too. And let's see. Okay. Okay. I had to get some help with Jen and the internet. All right, so let's see. Then we saw him in Detroit. Oh, apparently they did two shows, an early show and a late show. That was in 94.Track 3:[12:21] So we saw him in May and October. So at this point, we'd seen him like five or six times. Then we went to see him in Cincinnati.Track 3:[12:32] And I'm trying to think. We went to this, like, we would just go to the dirtiest, nastiest places that were like out in the middle of nowhere. We could have got killed and we were in jen's like old subaru that backfired all the time and pretty sure we got a flat tire once um and it was mostly like big scary drunk guys at these shows and then it was just us little girl um but um oh i know we made shirts for them i think, i don't know if jen has or will talked about but she wanted me to tell you we made these um homemade shirts and they were on um baseball kind of shirts with like you know three-quarter sleeves they were green they're very kind of 70s retro and um our old gym teacher had a t-shirt shop so we um would go and just make weird collages and then print them out into iron-ons and then he put them on and then we do lettering and i would like sew on sequins stuff and so like yeah they were very 70s looking like they would say like you know pavement rules or pavement is number one and they would have some like album art on it or some pictures of them and or just random stuff and they really liked those and i think they signed our shirts we wore them a couple times and scott really liked him so we made him one.Track 3:[13:59] And, um, there's a picture of us wearing ours in the, um, in the pavement documentary. Oh, really? In slow century? Yeah. Yeah. It's the back of us though. Cause I think, I think, I think Scott took that picture and owned it, but we had our own pictures of our faces, which we still have. Jen has most of them.Track 3:[14:24] Um, but yeah, I made one for, well, we both made it for Scott, but yeah. Yeah, she was, I sewed on like a million like individual sequins on part of his shirt. And he liked that one a lot. And we would still, we'd give him weird presents too. There were these cool stores. There's one in Cincinnati and one in Chicago. They were called Big Fun and Uncle Fun. And they had like really weird retro toys and just weird stuff from Europe. Up like we got these really tiny harmonicas that were the box had made in occupied japan they were so tiny or and we just give them like spark guns or toys or trading cards or just weird stuff that we could find um and then you know they started knowing us every time we'd show up they'd be like hey i'm here um and that was kind of cool because then we'd know like the the sound guys and the tour managers too. So even if it was somewhere, cause I went to see him in England quite a few times. Oh, that was, so yeah, I lived in England for a couple of years in London. Um, and, um, saw him there and that was very different, you know, and then I saw them as they got bigger and bigger cause we saw them in pretty little clubs and then like bigger clubs and some theaters and stuff.Track 3:[15:51] Um, and, But it would be weird, because sometimes in London, there's other people in big, fancy bands back there, backstage.Track 3:[16:01] And I would just kind of sit quietly and be like, this is exciting. And for some reason, this isn't a very musical memory, but I remember I had been in England for a couple of years, and I missed a lot of American stuff. Yeah. Just like the, I don't know, I missed Taco Bell. And weird American stuff. And Bob had some Tic Tacs and for some reason I thought they were American and they were nowhere else. And so I got really excited and I was like, America Tic Tacs! And then we had a Tic Tac fight, um backstage um but.Track 3:[16:42] Mostly we were just i would just kind of rock out love the shows we got very excited if they ever dedicated songs to us which they would every once in a while like you know if it was like our 10th show or our 10th year or something or our 20th show um we went a lot of road trips around america i'm going to see them and um yeah it was always an amazing time i bet they became your buddies yeah do you still talk yes um it's not quite as rock and roll now i play online scrabble with bob pretty much every day you do that's my most rock and roll mom story that i have that's pretty cool that's what nerdy we are that's very cool amazing he is he's like a sweet teddy bear they're all so nice yeah um i've had and i've had a lot of good talks with all of them and um so it's pretty cool when you um well they always I say, like, don't meet your heroes, but almost every band I've met has been awesome, and, um.Track 3:[18:01] Uh i've known a lot of them for 10 20 30 years now that's very cool and so i didn't see him quite a bit during the breakup times i saw um steven and the jicks a couple times, in the early 2000s in preston school industry and that was fun because me and jen had kind of lost touch she had moved out west and i moved to england and it still wasn't really good internet days and so we were like connecting through pavement like scott would say hey yeah she's in colorado now and she has a chihuahua i would be like tell her i said hi if you see her before me.Track 3:[18:51] Um it was they're like um we kind of think of them as our big brothers i bet yeah i mean and the fact that you got to see them and their rise to prominence right like that's that's pretty cool, but i have to say you know since they never got like mega gigantic they never became like stuck-up assholes so no no yeah they've always been the same um and so i didn't see him like a of reunion-y stuff like in the like 2010s thing i think i might have been having a baby somewhere in that time gotcha and being a mom and being kind of boring um, so the last time i saw them um jen came out here and we saw him in detroit, oh that's cool at the masonic temple when was that 20 2022 or yeah yeah okay and so So that had been like basically 30 years of us going to see them off and on. And I got front row for that one, so I was very excited. And she had seen them earlier on in the tour, so she got to tell them that we were going to have our reunion. And it was pretty cool. They dedicated some songs to us, and that always makes you feel like a super fan.Track 3:[20:14] So yeah it was pretty groovy yeah I bet what's your what's your go-to record these days, um Jen and I were kind of talking about this I think I think, Probably Slanted and Crick and Rain are like my comfort records. Yeah. But it was when I was kind of a teenager, so there's kind of like an angsty, whole different world that I was taking them in. But it still feels like my comfort. Those are my comfort albums. albums um but i definitely have like favorites on all the um ones past then plus the cool thing was is we got to hear um songs that ended up coming out like years later earlier on and we had like different names for them because we didn't know what they were called or they would be on, a bootleg or something and yeah we had our own names for them that we had to unlearn.Track 3:[21:23] Um like i think we called grounded i think jen was saying we call it the sedan song okay just because he said something about the sedan in the parking lot maybe i don't know we just pick one word and be like oh that's that one um we may not have even known some earlier song names or we just make up our own we did a lot of singing to the um stuff we liked once where they were like singing back and forth, like call and response, like, yes. Uh, Circus 1762. We love singing that one in the car. So, um, so, um, I can definitely play those first two albums and all the like, uh, pre singles and stuff, um, solidly, but I kind of pick and choose what I listened to on the later albums. Okay. What I'm in the mood for. Yeah, I can see that. Well, what do you say we flip the script here and talk about song number 20? Are you down with that? I'm down with that. Well, let's do that. We'll hit that right after this break. Hey, this is Bob Mustanovich from Pavement. Thanks for listening.Track 2:[22:34] And now on with a countdown. 20!Track 3:[24:49] This week on the show, number 20 on the countdown. I'm pretty excited about this one. It's Blackout. This is the ninth song from Wowie Zowie to make the cut on the top 50. Pretty good showing for Wowie Zowie, I would say. What do you think, Jessica, from Ann Arbor? I think it is a very solid pavement song. Yeah. Like, I think it belongs in the top 20 to 30. Okay. Because, I don't know, it hits all the right pavement beats. It's kind of pretty. It's kind of dirty.Track 3:[25:28] It's got weird lyrics. I'm not sure what it's about. No, it's really tough with us out there. Yes, I mean, sometimes it sounds so like, I don't know. You know, it's, what's it called when you're just saying words? I call it word salad. Word salad. That's what I call it. I'm so lyrical. Yeah, like just, yeah, because sometimes they don't make any sense. You just get little images. That's right. They give you vibes, right? Yeah, or moments. I definitely feel like they have this world and there's some characters in them. You know like loretta's in there somewhere right um um i don't know that one feels like kind of like i don't know a guy in high school or college or starting job or something he's kind of lost, i don't know if there's a real whole story there but i get little snippets right things stream of consciousness that's what i think i was thinking stream of consciousness yes Yes. Or he just gets little, you know, words that rhyme. Little phrases here and there. Or they just sound groovy. Is that the one that has...Track 3:[26:49] I always thought it was Dirty Scots, but then I saw somewhere that maybe it was Sturdy Scots. And I always liked that because I like a lot of Scottish everything and Dirty Scots.Track 3:[27:04] I did, I don't want to ramble on a thing. I just thought of a David Berman thing. Oh, sure. Dirty Scot. I never saw Silver Jews, but love, love, love them. But when I was living in London, David Berman did like a reading at this little dirty bar called Filthy McNasty's. I don't know why Dirty Scott's made me think of that. And that was the one and only time I saw and met him in person. He was very nice and shy. I had tickets for Purple Mountains, but obviously we know how that turned out. Yeah. Yeah, pretty terrible. Yeah.Track 3:[27:48] Back to the song for a moment. I'm sorry. No. What is your relationship with this song? Like, do you have any sort of relationship with this song? You mentioned that Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain, and Planted are your sort of go-tos. Is this a song that you'll pick and choose from Wally's Alley? Or do you pass it up? Or what's the deal? It's a thumbs up for me. Because there are a few that I kind of go like, eh. i'll listen i don't think there's anything i skit really ever um and i kind of like that all the albums have like songs that are like making me feel like i'm gonna cry one minute and they're so slow and sad and then the next minute i'm like jumping up and down and screaming something stupid with them um and that one's more in the like mellow um slow sad thing and i'm yeah i'm I'm a sucker for that kind of song. That's good. I think it's pretty. It is pretty. It's got a great melody. Yeah. It's a good solid one. Yeah. I'd put it on a mixtape for somebody. Okay.Track 3:[29:00] If I was introducing to them a system pavement. That's the highest compliment you can make to somebody, you know? Like, we get that. We get that because of our era. But it is such a high compliment, right? I'm going to make you a mixtape. I remember I burned somebody a CD once, like a mixtape on a CD. And it just wasn't the same. Just wasn't the same. It isn't. It was so hard because you had to fit them into, you know, the side. and I didn't like leaving too much space. I put little parts of movies and shows and like weird little snippets of people talking. Oh, that's badass. I have gotten compliments many years later from many of my high school friends that I did make really good mixtapes. So I kind of need to borrow them from them because they probably were pretty good. People like send me pictures of the track listing and I'm like, ooh, I forgot about too much of those bands. I'm going to go look them up now. Oh, that's great.Track 3:[30:02] Yeah, mixtapes. The children today, they won't know. No, they just really won't. Well, cassettes are starting to come back in a weird way. So maybe they will. Maybe they will. I will say I have a 12-year-old daughter now. And right after we went to see Pavement in 2022, I took a few videos and I was watching a couple on my phone and she came in the room and said, Hey, I know that song. It was Harness Your Hopes. And I was like, I was like, no, you don't. Cause you're 10 and no, you don't. And I don't think I've ever played this around you. And she goes, yeah, I do. And then she like said a couple of lines and I was like, what are you talking about? And then obviously it was TikTok. Yeah. And that blew my mind. And it's made a comeback again. I know. She told me the other day. As we're recording this. She goes, oh, pavement's blowing up on TikTok again. And I'm like, what? Is it the same thing? And she's like, no, it's something with baggy pants and spinning. Yeah. Which she sort of explained to me. Even Mark did it. I saw that. I saw everybody was giving it a little go. Yeah. I'm impressed. Me too. So fun. I kind of love that, though.Track 3:[31:20] Well, it makes sense that they would make a comeback. That was a random song, but it's a random song. It's very odd and quirky and funky. And when you look at its numbers on Spotify, it's incredible. Like the number of downloads or streams it has versus the next song. It's mind-blowing. It is mind-blowing. I hope some of the children explore some more pavement because they would have such a grand old time.Track 3:[31:58] They are obsessed with the 90s right now, so maybe they will. Yes. I have impressed my child with some of this stuff. Yeah. I think she's even impressed about this. Oh, that's cool. Yeah. Well, I've really enjoyed my time with you today. Ditto. Yeah, this has been a lot of fun. It's always good doing this gig right now.Track 3:[32:22] The first time around, I was solo. I did every song in the catalog solo.Track 3:[32:27] Wow. And that was really tough to do because you're sort of talking to an audience that you don't know if they're even there. Uh this time around with the top 50 it's been so great getting to meet people like i've met you know at this point i've met 30 people or 39 people uh-huh yeah 39 people 39 people 29 people whatever anyway you get the point and where are you in the world i'm in toronto canada oh i've been to toronto a bazillion times oh that's great lots of bands there ah any good venues that you can rhyme off um massey hall massey hall is great yeah that's why i saw pavement twice there oh i think i saw damien rice there okay um i think i saw arcade fire there um that would make sense travis okay from scotland um david gray i had a friend i lived with in england and then she lived in glasgow and then she went back to toronto so i would go see her a lot and we go see a lot of the bands that we loved so i love toronto i would live there in a second i wish i could kind of it was a little bit warmer but um uh it's been a spectacular this year we have we had no snow yeah we had three days of snow like through the whole winter so all right And I'm changing my mind, though.Track 3:[33:56] Something awesome. Especially if something happens in November. I said that the last time the creep got in, but...Track 3:[34:06] Yeah, well, you know, you guys have your shit to deal with, for sure. We have our shit up here, too. Yeah. Listen, I will let you know when this episode comes out, because as I mentioned, we are recording this deeply in advance, because I'm a bit of a flake. And I want to make sure I've got all these in the can before I flake out. And that's what I'm trying to do. You sound like you're on top of things, man. I'm impressed. I'm trying. I'm trying. I'm trying. I'm trying. I'm trying. I'm trying. All right. Be well. Stay swell. And wash your goddamn hands.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/meeting-malkmus-a-pavement-podcast/exclusive-contentAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
Peter K. Hogan is an English writer and comics writer, best known for Resident Alien, which he co-created with artist Steve Parkhouse. Hogan began his comics career as editor of cult British comic magazine Revolver in 1990–1991, before working for 2000 AD, American comic book publishers Vertigo, America's Best Comics and Dark Horse Comics Hogan worked as a record company press officer for Rough Trade during the early days of The Smiths, and for IRS Records where he worked for R.E.M., as well as writing about music and film, for magazines like Melody Maker and Sky and Vox, and much later on Uncut. He went on to write books about The Bangles, The Doors, Queen, R.E.M., The Velvet Underground and Nick Drake. He also was a contributing writer to a biography about The Monkees pop group. In the 1990s, Hogan wrote for some titles on DC Comics' Vertigo imprint, including The Dreaming and The Sandman Presents: Love Street. Most recently, his unpublished followup to the latter, The Sandman Presents: Marquee Moon, was published online.[2] Like Love Street, Marquee Moon is a tie-in to Neil Gaiman's The Sandman and offers a look at the early days of John Constantine of Swamp Thing and Hellblazer fame. Since 2011 Hogan has worked on his own Resident Alien series for Dark Horse. This has been adapted by Chris Sheridan into a live action TV show. Want to watch: YouTube Meisterkhan Pod (Please Subscribe)
Episode 538 is is brought to you by... Chase Bliss Stringjoy Use code: HUM to save 10% Support this channel on Patreon Want to send us mail? 60 Cycle Hum #615 9450 Mira Mesa Blvd. San Diego, CA 92126 LINK HERE FOR PHOTOS 00:00 Melody Maker Explorer 9:25 Thanks Patreon! 13:00 Squier Coodercaster 24:10 On July 19th check out the 40 Watt Podcast interview with Terry and Angelo from Meris. Also got mail from ACME TIKI Company (https://acmetiki.com/) 27:35 Steve went to the Murrieta Guitar Center 39:00 If you made a virus infect digital pedals, what would you make it do? 49:15 Pez Guitar 58:00 This week's music was sent by DK & and Mudersheets and is called "Escape from the Morgue" **************************** 60CH on Patreon Buy Something with our affiliate links: Buy a Shirt Sweetwater zZounds Thomann Amazon Perfect Circuit Ebay Reverb Tour Gear Designs Patch Cables +++++++++++++++++++++ Social Media Stuff: Facebook Discord Instagram and Twitter @60cyclehum TikTok Hire us for Demos and other marketing opportunities #60cyclehum #guitar #guitars #shameflute
Ian Birch is "former editorial director of Hearst UK and Emap. He began his magazine career in the late 1970s as a reporter for Melody Maker before moving to Smash Hits where he was assistant editor for three years. His first launch and editorship came in the late 1980s with Sky Magazine. At Hearst UK he was publisher of Company, Esquire and Harper's Bazaar. Prior to working at Hearst, Birch was chief content officer at TV Guide in New York for four years; and before this he was editorial director at Emap for more than 10 years, where he helped to launch Red, Closer, [and] Grazia." His book Uncovered: Revolutionary Magazine Covers: The inside stories told by the people who made them kicks off with covers from the late 1950s, about as far back as you can go [ if you want to interview the people who both created the covers and are still alive to talk about it], and brings us up to 2017; you know, when big-run print magazines died.
“I thought Dave Davies of the Kinks was a girl. When I discovered he was a boy, that's when I got interested.” Jon's an old friend of the podcast and the author of some highly regarded and influential books about pop and its repercussions, ‘England's Dreaming' and ‘1966: the Year The Decade Exploded' among them. His latest is ‘The Secret Public: How LGBTQ Performers Shaped Popular Culture 1955-1979' which looks at five particular moments and the pivotal people in the mix at the time. We couldn't recommend it more highly and cover seven decades in this conversation, stopping off at … … how “homosexuality was a career-killer” until Bowie's spectacular Melody Maker interview in 1972. … new male identities - Valentino, Nureyev, Sinatra and the “subversive” stage act of Johnnie Ray. … does pop drive change or reflect it? … Andrew Loog Oldham, Kit Lambert, Simon Napier-Bell and the supposed “gay managers mafia” and how Oldham used camp as a weapon. … Dusty Springfield and the Gateway Club. … how Brian Epstein invented a new type of manager. ... Andy Warhol at the Factory, pop art, the launch of the Velvet Underground and his jukebox time-capsule of ‘60s gay pop taste. … was Tom Robinson the first out gay British pop star? … Mary Whitehouse v the Gay Times. … the Clash (“hurt, vulnerable boys”), Siouxsie, Poly Styrene, the Slits, Vic Godard and punk's other new stage identities. Order ‘the Secret Public' here …https://www.amazon.co.uk/Secret-Public-Resistance-Popular-1955-1979/dp/0571358373 … and Jon's 2-CD soundtrack here …https://www.roughtrade.com/en-gb/product/various/jon-savages-the-secret-public-how-the-lgbtq-aesthetic-shaped-pop-culture-1955-1979?channable=409d9269640032313931333434ec&gad_source=1&gclid=CjwKCAjwvIWzBhAlEiwAHHWgvQetjeRXO03PVnpFYq75PMG_pmDd42hKBO8VytbDerJqZw3ycIY7pxoCFxIQAvD_BwE#cd-x2Find out more about how you can help us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
“I thought Dave Davies of the Kinks was a girl. When I discovered he was a boy, that's when I got interested.” Jon's an old friend of the podcast and the author of some highly regarded and influential books about pop and its repercussions, ‘England's Dreaming' and ‘1966: the Year The Decade Exploded' among them. His latest is ‘The Secret Public: How LGBTQ Performers Shaped Popular Culture 1955-1979' which looks at five particular moments and the pivotal people in the mix at the time. We couldn't recommend it more highly and cover seven decades in this conversation, stopping off at … … how “homosexuality was a career-killer” until Bowie's spectacular Melody Maker interview in 1972. … new male identities - Valentino, Nureyev, Sinatra and the “subversive” stage act of Johnnie Ray. … does pop drive change or reflect it? … Andrew Loog Oldham, Kit Lambert, Simon Napier-Bell and the supposed “gay managers mafia” and how Oldham used camp as a weapon. … Dusty Springfield and the Gateway Club. … how Brian Epstein invented a new type of manager. ... Andy Warhol at the Factory, pop art, the launch of the Velvet Underground and his jukebox time-capsule of ‘60s gay pop taste. … was Tom Robinson the first out gay British pop star? … Mary Whitehouse v the Gay Times. … the Clash (“hurt, vulnerable boys”), Siouxsie, Poly Styrene, the Slits, Vic Godard and punk's other new stage identities. Order ‘the Secret Public' here …https://www.amazon.co.uk/Secret-Public-Resistance-Popular-1955-1979/dp/0571358373 … and Jon's 2-CD soundtrack here …https://www.roughtrade.com/en-gb/product/various/jon-savages-the-secret-public-how-the-lgbtq-aesthetic-shaped-pop-culture-1955-1979?channable=409d9269640032313931333434ec&gad_source=1&gclid=CjwKCAjwvIWzBhAlEiwAHHWgvQetjeRXO03PVnpFYq75PMG_pmDd42hKBO8VytbDerJqZw3ycIY7pxoCFxIQAvD_BwE#cd-x2Find out more about how you can help us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
“I thought Dave Davies of the Kinks was a girl. When I discovered he was a boy, that's when I got interested.” Jon's an old friend of the podcast and the author of some highly regarded and influential books about pop and its repercussions, ‘England's Dreaming' and ‘1966: the Year The Decade Exploded' among them. His latest is ‘The Secret Public: How LGBTQ Performers Shaped Popular Culture 1955-1979' which looks at five particular moments and the pivotal people in the mix at the time. We couldn't recommend it more highly and cover seven decades in this conversation, stopping off at … … how “homosexuality was a career-killer” until Bowie's spectacular Melody Maker interview in 1972. … new male identities - Valentino, Nureyev, Sinatra and the “subversive” stage act of Johnnie Ray. … does pop drive change or reflect it? … Andrew Loog Oldham, Kit Lambert, Simon Napier-Bell and the supposed “gay managers mafia” and how Oldham used camp as a weapon. … Dusty Springfield and the Gateway Club. … how Brian Epstein invented a new type of manager. ... Andy Warhol at the Factory, pop art, the launch of the Velvet Underground and his jukebox time-capsule of ‘60s gay pop taste. … was Tom Robinson the first out gay British pop star? … Mary Whitehouse v the Gay Times. … the Clash (“hurt, vulnerable boys”), Siouxsie, Poly Styrene, the Slits, Vic Godard and punk's other new stage identities. Order ‘the Secret Public' here …https://www.amazon.co.uk/Secret-Public-Resistance-Popular-1955-1979/dp/0571358373 … and Jon's 2-CD soundtrack here …https://www.roughtrade.com/en-gb/product/various/jon-savages-the-secret-public-how-the-lgbtq-aesthetic-shaped-pop-culture-1955-1979?channable=409d9269640032313931333434ec&gad_source=1&gclid=CjwKCAjwvIWzBhAlEiwAHHWgvQetjeRXO03PVnpFYq75PMG_pmDd42hKBO8VytbDerJqZw3ycIY7pxoCFxIQAvD_BwE#cd-x2Find out more about how you can help us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
In this episode — our first-ever "field recording" — we travel up to North London to interview the legendary writer-photographer Val Wilmer. Val takes us back to her earliest musical memories in Streatham, South London, and her immersion in the capital's '60s jazz and blues scenes. We hear about her first pieces for Jazz Journal and her experiences of interviewing (and photographing) the likes of blues singer Jesse Fuller. We also hear about her remarkable DownBeat interview with Jimi Hendrix from early 1968. Val's classic 1977 book As Serious As Your Life — reissued in 2018 — provides the pretext for asking about her passionate championing of the "free jazz" of John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman and others. We focus on her 1966 Melody Maker encounter with the extraordinary Albert Ayler and the unsolved mystery of his death in 1970. A discussion of Val's deep involvement in the women's movement leads us to clips from Ira Robbins 1994 audio interview with the late Lesley ('It's My Party') Gore — and in particular her startling photo-feminist classic 'You Don't Own Me', six decades young this year. Jasper talks us out with his thoughts on Alan Light's 1991 Rolling Stone interview with Queen Latifah. Many thanks to special guest Val Wilmer. As Serious As Your Life is published by Serpent's Tail and available from all good bookshops. Pieces discussed: Jimi Hendrix: An experience, Once Upon A Time In Williamsburg, Ayler: Mystic tenor with a direct hot line to heaven?, Memories of Hoppy: An interview with Val Wilmer, The New Jazz Gets With It (That Means With Contemporary Art), Tempo: Coltrane, Shankar and All That Rock & Roll, Coltrane, Davis, Monk, Mingus, Lesley Gore audio and Queen Latifah's New Gambit.
Caroline Sullivan is a music journalist and author with bylines in Melody Maker, The Guardian, The New York Times and more. Having previously written about Madonna, Dua Lipa, and the Bay City Rollers, her new book, Taylor Swift: Era by Era: The Unauthorized Biography, is released on June 6th. Show theme by Bis.Want more? Join The James McMahon Music Podcast Patreon. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5jY33R9cXAThankyou to our Patreon members! John Foley.Wilfreda Beehive.Joe Frost.Conor McNicholas.John Earls.Laura Norton.Mike Clewley.Ricky Murray.Danielle Walker.Claire Harris.Dana Landman. Laura Kelly Dunlop. Michael Woods.Billy Reeves.Eric Meredith.Caitlin Moran.Eve Barlow.Nige Tassell. Vicky Granger. Twitter - @jamesjammcmahon Substack - https://spoook.substack.com YouTube - www.youtube.com/channel/UC8Vf_1E1Sza2GUyFNn2zFMA Reddit - https://www.reddit.com/r/jamesmcmahonmusicpod/
Jan Akkerman is a Superstar Dutch guitarist who has been praised by some of the world's greatest guitarists including Brian May, Eric Clapton, Carlos Santana, Steve Vai and Al Di Meola. In 1973 Jan was voted the World's Best Guitarist by the readers of Melody Maker. He first reached international prominence as a member of Focus. He's played with any number of fantastic musicians including Jack Bruce and B.B. King.My featured song is “Lou's Blues”, my new single. Spotify link.---------------------------------------------The Follow Your Dream Podcast:Top 1% of all podcasts with Listeners in 200 countries!For more information and other episodes of the podcast click here. To subscribe to the podcast click here.To subscribe to our weekly Follow Your Dream Podcast email click here.To Rate and Review the podcast click here.“Dream With Robert”. Click here.—----------------------------------------“LOU'S BLUES” is Robert's new single. Called “Fantastic! Great playing and production!” (Mark Egan - Pat Metheny Group/Elements) and “Digging it!” (Peter Erskine - Weather Report)!Click HERE for all links.—----------------------------------------“THE RICH ONES”. Robert's recent single. With guest artist Randy Brecker (Blood Sweat & Tears) on flugelhorn. Click HERE for all links.—---------------------------------------“MILES BEHIND”, Robert's debut album, recorded in 1994, was “lost” for the last 30 years. It's now been released for streaming. Featuring Randy Brecker (Blood Sweat & Tears), Anton Fig (The David Letterman Show), Al Foster (Miles Davis), Tim Ries (The Rolling Stones), Jon Lucien and many more. Called “Hip, Tight and Edgy!” Click here for all links.—--------------------------------------“IT'S ALIVE!” is Robert's latest Project Grand Slam album. Featuring 13 of the band's Greatest Hits performed “live” at festivals in Pennsylvania and Serbia.Reviews:"An instant classic!" (Melody Maker)"Amazing record...Another win for the one and only Robert Miller!" (Hollywood Digest)"Close to perfect!" (Pop Icon)"A Masterpiece!" (Big Celebrity Buzz)"Sterling effort!" (Indie Pulse)"Another fusion wonder for Project Grand Slam!" (MobYorkCity)Click here for all links.Click here for song videos—-----------------------------------------Audio production:Jimmy RavenscroftKymera Films Connect with Jan:www.janakkerman.com Connect with the Follow Your Dream Podcast:Website - www.followyourdreampodcast.comEmail Robert - robert@followyourdreampodcast.com Follow Robert's band, Project Grand Slam, and his music:Website - www.projectgrandslam.comYouTubeSpotify MusicApple MusicEmail - pgs@projectgrandslam.com
It's a big week here on the podcast with lots to celebrate! It's Dark Matter week! Coming off the heels of the film experience, we'll share our instant reaction to listening to the album in that environment including what songs we've gravitated towards, and what we're excited to hear live. Keep in mind that the Live On 4 Legs listening party will happen on Thursday night when the record drops everywhere, if you want to be a part of that round table, please reach out! Although the brand new record is the lead, we don't want to bury the purpose of the episode because it's extremely vital to the history of Pearl Jam. The Paramount Theater show to close out the 1994 tour in the gallows of Madison Square Garden was one of a few fan club shows from this year. It comes a day after their legendary Saturday Night Live performance, a little over the week since the death of Kurt Cobain, and it is the final show involving drummer Dave Abbruzzese. While the fan club crowd was red hot and participated in every song from the hits to the b-sides, this was a night where Ed had a lot on his mind as he was unsure about the future of this band. We share excerpts from an article written in Melody Maker where a frustrated Vedder expresses his anger over Kurt's death and even questions his own mortality. Directly following this show, Pearl Jam would cancel their plans for a summer tour and part with Dave A shortly afterwards. Big storylines aside, this is an electric show with some absolute barnburner performances. Rearviewmirror, Daughter and Not For You all came off the heels of the SNL performance the night prior and proved to be just as powerful as they were on TV, other Vitalogy songs such as Whipping and Satan's Bed are notable moments, Ten b-sides Alone and Footsteps were huge crowd moments and Garden and Blood were huge standouts as well. We'll have a plethora of guests here as Javier's Gear Guru segments will focus in on Dave A's contributions to the band, and we invite Patrick and Brian from our sister podcast, Hallucinogenic Recipe, to come in and discuss the bootleg distribution for this show back in the mid-90's. Visit the Concertpedia - http://liveon4legs.com Contact the Show - liveon4legspodcast@gmail.com Donate to the Show - http://patreon.com/liveon4legs
Robert Sellers and Nick Pendleton in conversation with David Eastaugh http://www.paradiseroad.co.uk/marquee-the-story-of-the-worlds-greatest-music-venue Marquee: The Story of the World's Greatest Music Venue tells the story of both the music club and the festival, from the birth of the club in 1958 and festival in 1961, through to their sale by original owners Harold and Barbara Pendleton thirty years later. Hardback, 320 pages, with 49 black & white illustrations The Marquee is the most famous and iconic music club in the world. Melody Maker called it, ‛The most important venue in the history of pop music.' The story of the Marquee is the story of popular music in Britain. This new book from Paradise Road evokes the hot, sweaty and sticky life and times of the club through the words of the musicians, management, staff and fans who were there to witness music history being made.
Today's specialist guest is Simon Price, a music journalist who has written a very thick A-Z book about The Cure. David's in his element. Joe's feeling a bit anxious as he doesn't know anything about The Cure but has prepared a quiz. David shows Simon his Cure memorabilia and Joe feels left out. He asks Simon if he likes Roachford. They talk about being a music reviewer and Joe confesses he used to buy copies of Melody Maker to appear cool. Simon tells them about his career and early life in the music industry when he used to put on gigs with Ricky Gervais. As expected, the chat turns to The Cure and Simon's book. Simon admits he's never actually met Robert Smith. They swap stories about the music industry. He tells them the artist formerly known as Prince used to be really good at basket ball. Joe asks them his quiz questions about The Cure. It's neck & neck between David and Simon. Find Simon's book 'Curepedia' here & info on his events https://linktr.ee/simonprice Follow Chatabix on Twitter & Instagram: twitter.com/chatabix1 www.instagram.com/chatabixpodcast/ Patreon for early access to our eps: https://www.patreon.com/chatabix Crunchy fresh tees and hoodies: https://chatabixshop.com/ Contact us: chatabix@yahoo.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Episode 166 of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Crossroads", Cream, the myth of Robert Johnson, and whether white men can sing the blues. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a forty-eight-minute bonus episode available, on “Tip-Toe Thru' the Tulips" by Tiny Tim. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt's irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ Errata I talk about an interview with Clapton from 1967, I meant 1968. I mention a Graham Bond live recording from 1953, and of course meant 1963. I say Paul Jones was on vocals in the Powerhouse sessions. Steve Winwood was on vocals, and Jones was on harmonica. Resources As I say at the end, the main resource you need to get if you enjoyed this episode is Brother Robert by Annye Anderson, Robert Johnson's stepsister. There are three Mixcloud mixes this time. As there are so many songs by Cream, Robert Johnson, John Mayall, and Graham Bond excerpted, and Mixcloud won't allow more than four songs by the same artist in any mix, I've had to post the songs not in quite the same order in which they appear in the podcast. But the mixes are here -- one, two, three. This article on Mack McCormick gives a fuller explanation of the problems with his research and behaviour. The other books I used for the Robert Johnson sections were McCormick's Biography of a Phantom; Up Jumped the Devil: The Real Life of Robert Johnson, by Bruce Conforth and Gayle Dean Wardlow; Searching for Robert Johnson by Peter Guralnick; and Escaping the Delta by Elijah Wald. I can recommend all of these subject to the caveats at the end of the episode. The information on the history and prehistory of the Delta blues mostly comes from Before Elvis by Larry Birnbaum, with some coming from Charley Patton by John Fahey. The information on Cream comes mostly from Cream: How Eric Clapton Took the World by Storm by Dave Thompson. I also used Ginger Baker: Hellraiser by Ginger Baker and Ginette Baker, Mr Showbiz by Stephen Dando-Collins, Motherless Child by Paul Scott, and Alexis Korner: The Biography by Harry Shapiro. The best collection of Cream's work is the four-CD set Those Were the Days, which contains every track the group ever released while they were together (though only the stereo mixes of the albums, and a couple of tracks are in slightly different edits from the originals). You can get Johnson's music on many budget compilation records, as it's in the public domain in the EU, but the double CD collection produced by Steve LaVere for Sony in 2011 is, despite the problems that come from it being associated with LaVere, far and away the best option -- the remasters have a clarity that's worlds ahead of even the 1990s CD version it replaced. And for a good single-CD introduction to the Delta blues musicians and songsters who were Johnson's peers and inspirations, Back to the Crossroads: The Roots of Robert Johnson, compiled by Elijah Wald as a companion to his book on Johnson, can't be beaten, and contains many of the tracks excerpted in this episode. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript Before we start, a quick note that this episode contains discussion of racism, drug addiction, and early death. There's also a brief mention of death in childbirth and infant mortality. It's been a while since we looked at the British blues movement, and at the blues in general, so some of you may find some of what follows familiar, as we're going to look at some things we've talked about previously, but from a different angle. In 1968, the Bonzo Dog Band, a comedy musical band that have been described as the missing link between the Beatles and the Monty Python team, released a track called "Can Blue Men Sing the Whites?": [Excerpt: The Bonzo Dog Band, "Can Blue Men Sing the Whites?"] That track was mocking a discussion that was very prominent in Britain's music magazines around that time. 1968 saw the rise of a *lot* of British bands who started out as blues bands, though many of them went on to different styles of music -- Fleetwood Mac, Ten Years After, Jethro Tull, Chicken Shack and others were all becoming popular among the kind of people who read the music magazines, and so the question was being asked -- can white men sing the blues? Of course, the answer to that question was obvious. After all, white men *invented* the blues. Before we get any further at all, I have to make clear that I do *not* mean that white people created blues music. But "the blues" as a category, and particularly the idea of it as a music made largely by solo male performers playing guitar... that was created and shaped by the actions of white male record executives. There is no consensus as to when or how the blues as a genre started -- as we often say in this podcast "there is no first anything", but like every genre it seems to have come from multiple sources. In the case of the blues, there's probably some influence from African music by way of field chants sung by enslaved people, possibly some influence from Arabic music as well, definitely some influence from the Irish and British folk songs that by the late nineteenth century were developing into what we now call country music, a lot from ragtime, and a lot of influence from vaudeville and minstrel songs -- which in turn themselves were all very influenced by all those other things. Probably the first published composition to show any real influence of the blues is from 1904, a ragtime piano piece by James Chapman and Leroy Smith, "One O' Them Things": [Excerpt: "One O' Them Things"] That's not very recognisable as a blues piece yet, but it is more-or-less a twelve-bar blues. But the blues developed, and it developed as a result of a series of commercial waves. The first of these came in 1914, with the success of W.C. Handy's "Memphis Blues", which when it was recorded by the Victor Military Band for a phonograph cylinder became what is generally considered the first blues record proper: [Excerpt: The Victor Military Band, "Memphis Blues"] The famous dancers Vernon and Irene Castle came up with a dance, the foxtrot -- which Vernon Castle later admitted was largely inspired by Black dancers -- to be danced to the "Memphis Blues", and the foxtrot soon overtook the tango, which the Castles had introduced to the US the previous year, to become the most popular dance in America for the best part of three decades. And with that came an explosion in blues in the Handy style, cranked out by every music publisher. While the blues was a style largely created by Black performers and writers, the segregated nature of the American music industry at the time meant that most vocal performances of these early blues that were captured on record were by white performers, Black vocalists at this time only rarely getting the chance to record. The first blues record with a Black vocalist is also technically the first British blues record. A group of Black musicians, apparently mostly American but led by a Jamaican pianist, played at Ciro's Club in London, and recorded many tracks in Britain, under a name which I'm not going to say in full -- it started with Ciro's Club, and continued alliteratively with another word starting with C, a slur for Black people. In 1917 they recorded a vocal version of "St. Louis Blues", another W.C. Handy composition: [Excerpt: Ciro's Club C**n Orchestra, "St. Louis Blues"] The first American Black blues vocal didn't come until two years later, when Bert Williams, a Black minstrel-show performer who like many Black performers of his era performed in blackface even though he was Black, recorded “I'm Sorry I Ain't Got It You Could Have It If I Had It Blues,” [Excerpt: Bert Williams, "I'm Sorry I Ain't Got It You Could Have It If I Had It Blues,”] But it wasn't until 1920 that the second, bigger, wave of popularity started for the blues, and this time it started with the first record of a Black *woman* singing the blues -- Mamie Smith's "Crazy Blues": [Excerpt: Mamie Smith, "Crazy Blues"] You can hear the difference between that and anything we've heard up to that point -- that's the first record that anyone from our perspective, a hundred and three years later, would listen to and say that it bore any resemblance to what we think of as the blues -- so much so that many places still credit it as the first ever blues record. And there's a reason for that. "Crazy Blues" was one of those records that separates the music industry into before and after, like "Rock Around the Clock", "I Want to Hold Your Hand", Sgt Pepper, or "Rapper's Delight". It sold seventy-five thousand copies in its first month -- a massive number by the standards of 1920 -- and purportedly went on to sell over a million copies. Sales figures and market analysis weren't really a thing in the same way in 1920, but even so it became very obvious that "Crazy Blues" was a big hit, and that unlike pretty much any other previous records, it was a big hit among Black listeners, which meant that there was a market for music aimed at Black people that was going untapped. Soon all the major record labels were setting up subsidiaries devoted to what they called "race music", music made by and for Black people. And this sees the birth of what is now known as "classic blues", but at the time (and for decades after) was just what people thought of when they thought of "the blues" as a genre. This was music primarily sung by female vaudeville artists backed by jazz bands, people like Ma Rainey (whose earliest recordings featured Louis Armstrong in her backing band): [Excerpt: Ma Rainey, "See See Rider Blues"] And Bessie Smith, the "Empress of the Blues", who had a massive career in the 1920s before the Great Depression caused many of these "race record" labels to fold, but who carried on performing well into the 1930s -- her last recording was in 1933, produced by John Hammond, with a backing band including Benny Goodman and Jack Teagarden: [Excerpt: Bessie Smith, "Give Me a Pigfoot and a Bottle of Beer"] It wouldn't be until several years after the boom started by Mamie Smith that any record companies turned to recording Black men singing the blues accompanied by guitar or banjo. The first record of this type is probably "Norfolk Blues" by Reese DuPree from 1924: [Excerpt: Reese DuPree, "Norfolk Blues"] And there were occasional other records of this type, like "Airy Man Blues" by Papa Charlie Jackson, who was advertised as the “only man living who sings, self-accompanied, for Blues records.” [Excerpt: Papa Charlie Jackson, "Airy Man Blues"] But contrary to the way these are seen today, at the time they weren't seen as being in some way "authentic", or "folk music". Indeed, there are many quotes from folk-music collectors of the time (sadly all of them using so many slurs that it's impossible for me to accurately quote them) saying that when people sang the blues, that wasn't authentic Black folk music at all but an adulteration from commercial music -- they'd clearly, according to these folk-music scholars, learned the blues style from records and sheet music rather than as part of an oral tradition. Most of these performers were people who recorded blues as part of a wider range of material, like Blind Blake, who recorded some blues music but whose best work was his ragtime guitar instrumentals: [Excerpt: Blind Blake, "Southern Rag"] But it was when Blind Lemon Jefferson started recording for Paramount records in 1926 that the image of the blues as we now think of it took shape. His first record, "Got the Blues", was a massive success: [Excerpt: Blind Lemon Jefferson, "Got the Blues"] And this resulted in many labels, especially Paramount, signing up pretty much every Black man with a guitar they could find in the hopes of finding another Blind Lemon Jefferson. But the thing is, this generation of people making blues records, and the generation that followed them, didn't think of themselves as "blues singers" or "bluesmen". They were songsters. Songsters were entertainers, and their job was to sing and play whatever the audiences would want to hear. That included the blues, of course, but it also included... well, every song anyone would want to hear. They'd perform old folk songs, vaudeville songs, songs that they'd heard on the radio or the jukebox -- whatever the audience wanted. Robert Johnson, for example, was known to particularly love playing polka music, and also adored the records of Jimmie Rodgers, the first country music superstar. In 1941, when Alan Lomax first recorded Muddy Waters, he asked Waters what kind of songs he normally played in performances, and he was given a list that included "Home on the Range", Gene Autry's "I've Got Spurs That Jingle Jangle Jingle", and Glenn Miller's "Chattanooga Choo-Choo". We have few recordings of these people performing this kind of song though. One of the few we have is Big Bill Broonzy, who was just about the only artist of this type not to get pigeonholed as just a blues singer, even though blues is what made him famous, and who later in his career managed to record songs like the Tin Pan Alley standard "The Glory of Love": [Excerpt: Big Bill Broonzy, "The Glory of Love"] But for the most part, the image we have of the blues comes down to one man, Arthur Laibley, a sales manager for the Wisconsin Chair Company. The Wisconsin Chair Company was, as the name would suggest, a company that started out making wooden chairs, but it had branched out into other forms of wooden furniture -- including, for a brief time, large wooden phonographs. And, like several other manufacturers, like the Radio Corporation of America -- RCA -- and the Gramophone Company, which became EMI, they realised that if they were going to sell the hardware it made sense to sell the software as well, and had started up Paramount Records, which bought up a small label, Black Swan, and soon became the biggest manufacturer of records for the Black market, putting out roughly a quarter of all "race records" released between 1922 and 1932. At first, most of these were produced by a Black talent scout, J. Mayo Williams, who had been the first person to record Ma Rainey, Papa Charlie Jackson, and Blind Lemon Jefferson, but in 1927 Williams left Paramount, and the job of supervising sessions went to Arthur Laibley, though according to some sources a lot of the actual production work was done by Aletha Dickerson, Williams' former assistant, who was almost certainly the first Black woman to be what we would now think of as a record producer. Williams had been interested in recording all kinds of music by Black performers, but when Laibley got a solo Black man into the studio, what he wanted more than anything was for him to record the blues, ideally in a style as close as possible to that of Blind Lemon Jefferson. Laibley didn't have a very hands-on approach to recording -- indeed Paramount had very little concern about the quality of their product anyway, and Paramount's records are notorious for having been put out on poor-quality shellac and recorded badly -- and he only occasionally made actual suggestions as to what kind of songs his performers should write -- for example he asked Son House to write something that sounded like Blind Lemon Jefferson, which led to House writing and recording "Mississippi County Farm Blues", which steals the tune of Jefferson's "See That My Grave is Kept Clean": [Excerpt: Son House, "Mississippi County Farm Blues"] When Skip James wanted to record a cover of James Wiggins' "Forty-Four Blues", Laibley suggested that instead he should do a song about a different gun, and so James recorded "Twenty-Two Twenty Blues": [Excerpt: Skip James, "Twenty-Two Twenty Blues"] And Laibley also suggested that James write a song about the Depression, which led to one of the greatest blues records ever, "Hard Time Killing Floor Blues": [Excerpt: Skip James, "Hard Time Killing Floor Blues"] These musicians knew that they were getting paid only for issued sides, and that Laibley wanted only blues from them, and so that's what they gave him. Even when it was a performer like Charlie Patton. (Incidentally, for those reading this as a transcript rather than listening to it, Patton's name is more usually spelled ending in ey, but as far as I can tell ie was his preferred spelling and that's what I'm using). Charlie Patton was best known as an entertainer, first and foremost -- someone who would do song-and-dance routines, joke around, play guitar behind his head. He was a clown on stage, so much so that when Son House finally heard some of Patton's records, in the mid-sixties, decades after the fact, he was astonished that Patton could actually play well. Even though House had been in the room when some of the records were made, his memory of Patton was of someone who acted the fool on stage. That's definitely not the impression you get from the Charlie Patton on record: [Excerpt: Charlie Patton, "Poor Me"] Patton is, as far as can be discerned, the person who was most influential in creating the music that became called the "Delta blues". Not a lot is known about Patton's life, but he was almost certainly the half-brother of the Chatmon brothers, who made hundreds of records, most notably as members of the Mississippi Sheiks: [Excerpt: The Mississippi Sheiks, "Sitting on Top of the World"] In the 1890s, Patton's family moved to Sunflower County, Mississippi, and he lived in and around that county until his death in 1934. Patton learned to play guitar from a musician called Henry Sloan, and then Patton became a mentor figure to a *lot* of other musicians in and around the plantation on which his family lived. Some of the musicians who grew up in the immediate area around Patton included Tommy Johnson: [Excerpt: Tommy Johnson, "Big Road Blues"] Pops Staples: [Excerpt: The Staple Singers, "Will The Circle Be Unbroken"] Robert Johnson: [Excerpt: Robert Johnson, "Crossroads"] Willie Brown, a musician who didn't record much, but who played a lot with Patton, Son House, and Robert Johnson and who we just heard Johnson sing about: [Excerpt: Willie Brown, "M&O Blues"] And Chester Burnett, who went on to become known as Howlin' Wolf, and whose vocal style was equally inspired by Patton and by the country star Jimmie Rodgers: [Excerpt: Howlin' Wolf, "Smokestack Lightnin'"] Once Patton started his own recording career for Paramount, he also started working as a talent scout for them, and it was him who brought Son House to Paramount. Soon after the Depression hit, Paramount stopped recording, and so from 1930 through 1934 Patton didn't make any records. He was tracked down by an A&R man in January 1934 and recorded one final session: [Excerpt, Charlie Patton, "34 Blues"] But he died of heart failure two months later. But his influence spread through his proteges, and they themselves influenced other musicians from the area who came along a little after, like Robert Lockwood and Muddy Waters. This music -- or that portion of it that was considered worth recording by white record producers, only a tiny, unrepresentative, portion of their vast performing repertoires -- became known as the Delta Blues, and when some of these musicians moved to Chicago and started performing with electric instruments, it became Chicago Blues. And as far as people like John Mayall in Britain were concerned, Delta and Chicago Blues *were* the blues: [Excerpt: John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers, "It Ain't Right"] John Mayall was one of the first of the British blues obsessives, and for a long time thought of himself as the only one. While we've looked before at the growth of the London blues scene, Mayall wasn't from London -- he was born in Macclesfield and grew up in Cheadle Hulme, both relatively well-off suburbs of Manchester, and after being conscripted and doing two years in the Army, he had become an art student at Manchester College of Art, what is now Manchester Metropolitan University. Mayall had been a blues fan from the late 1940s, writing off to the US to order records that hadn't been released in the UK, and by most accounts by the late fifties he'd put together the biggest blues collection in Britain by quite some way. Not only that, but he had one of the earliest home tape recorders, and every night he would record radio stations from Continental Europe which were broadcasting for American service personnel, so he'd amassed mountains of recordings, often unlabelled, of obscure blues records that nobody else in the UK knew about. He was also an accomplished pianist and guitar player, and in 1956 he and his drummer friend Peter Ward had put together a band called the Powerhouse Four (the other two members rotated on a regular basis) mostly to play lunchtime jazz sessions at the art college. Mayall also started putting on jam sessions at a youth club in Wythenshawe, where he met another drummer named Hughie Flint. Over the late fifties and into the early sixties, Mayall more or less by himself built up a small blues scene in Manchester. The Manchester blues scene was so enthusiastic, in fact, that when the American Folk Blues Festival, an annual European tour which initially featured Willie Dixon, Memhis Slim, T-Bone Walker, Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee, and John Lee Hooker, first toured Europe, the only UK date it played was at the Manchester Free Trade Hall, and people like Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Brian Jones and Jimmy Page had to travel up from London to see it. But still, the number of blues fans in Manchester, while proportionally large, was objectively small enough that Mayall was captivated by an article in Melody Maker which talked about Alexis Korner and Cyril Davies' new band Blues Incorporated and how it was playing electric blues, the same music he was making in Manchester. He later talked about how the article had made him think that maybe now people would know what he was talking about. He started travelling down to London to play gigs for the London blues scene, and inviting Korner up to Manchester to play shows there. Soon Mayall had moved down to London. Korner introduced Mayall to Davey Graham, the great folk guitarist, with whom Korner had recently recorded as a duo: [Excerpt: Alexis Korner and Davey Graham, "3/4 AD"] Mayall and Graham performed together as a duo for a while, but Graham was a natural solo artist if ever there was one. Slowly Mayall put a band together in London. On drums was his old friend Peter Ward, who'd moved down from Manchester with him. On bass was John McVie, who at the time knew nothing about blues -- he'd been playing in a Shadows-style instrumental group -- but Mayall gave him a stack of blues records to listen to to get the feeling. And on guitar was Bernie Watson, who had previously played with Screaming Lord Sutch and the Savages. In late 1963, Mike Vernon, a blues fan who had previously published a Yardbirds fanzine, got a job working for Decca records, and immediately started signing his favourite acts from the London blues circuit. The first act he signed was John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers, and they recorded a single, "Crawling up a Hill": [Excerpt: John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers, "Crawling up a Hill (45 version)"] Mayall later called that a "clumsy, half-witted attempt at autobiographical comment", and it sold only five hundred copies. It would be the only record the Bluesbreakers would make with Watson, who soon left the band to be replaced by Roger Dean (not the same Roger Dean who later went on to design prog rock album covers). The second group to be signed by Mike Vernon to Decca was the Graham Bond Organisation. We've talked about the Graham Bond Organisation in passing several times, but not for a while and not in any great detail, so it's worth pulling everything we've said about them so far together and going through it in a little more detail. The Graham Bond Organisation, like the Rolling Stones, grew out of Alexis Korner's Blues Incorporated. As we heard in the episode on "I Wanna Be Your Man" a couple of years ago, Blues Incorporated had been started by Alexis Korner and Cyril Davies, and at the time we're joining them in 1962 featured a drummer called Charlie Watts, a pianist called Dave Stevens, and saxophone player Dick Heckstall-Smith, as well as frequent guest performers like a singer who called himself Mike Jagger, and another one, Roderick Stewart. That group finally found themselves the perfect bass player when Dick Heckstall-Smith put together a one-off group of jazz players to play an event at Cambridge University. At the gig, a little Scottish man came up to the group and told them he played bass and asked if he could sit in. They told him to bring along his instrument to their second set, that night, and he did actually bring along a double bass. Their bluff having been called, they decided to play the most complicated, difficult, piece they knew in order to throw the kid off -- the drummer, a trad jazz player named Ginger Baker, didn't like performing with random sit-in guests -- but astonishingly he turned out to be really good. Heckstall-Smith took down the bass player's name and phone number and invited him to a jam session with Blues Incorporated. After that jam session, Jack Bruce quickly became the group's full-time bass player. Bruce had started out as a classical cellist, but had switched to the double bass inspired by Bach, who he referred to as "the guv'nor of all bass players". His playing up to this point had mostly been in trad jazz bands, and he knew nothing of the blues, but he quickly got the hang of the genre. Bruce's first show with Blues Incorporated was a BBC recording: [Excerpt: Blues Incorporated, "Hoochie Coochie Man (BBC session)"] According to at least one source it was not being asked to take part in that session that made young Mike Jagger decide there was no future for him with Blues Incorporated and to spend more time with his other group, the Rollin' Stones. Soon after, Charlie Watts would join him, for almost the opposite reason -- Watts didn't want to be in a band that was getting as big as Blues Incorporated were. They were starting to do more BBC sessions and get more gigs, and having to join the Musicians' Union. That seemed like a lot of work. Far better to join a band like the Rollin' Stones that wasn't going anywhere. Because of Watts' decision to give up on potential stardom to become a Rollin' Stone, they needed a new drummer, and luckily the best drummer on the scene was available. But then the best drummer on the scene was *always* available. Ginger Baker had first played with Dick Heckstall-Smith several years earlier, in a trad group called the Storyville Jazzmen. There Baker had become obsessed with the New Orleans jazz drummer Baby Dodds, who had played with Louis Armstrong in the 1920s. Sadly because of 1920s recording technology, he hadn't been able to play a full kit on the recordings with Armstrong, being limited to percussion on just a woodblock, but you can hear his drumming style much better in this version of "At the Jazz Band Ball" from 1947, with Mugsy Spanier, Jack Teagarden, Cyrus St. Clair and Hank Duncan: [Excerpt: "At the Jazz Band Ball"] Baker had taken Dobbs' style and run with it, and had quickly become known as the single best player, bar none, on the London jazz scene -- he'd become an accomplished player in multiple styles, and was also fluent in reading music and arranging. He'd also, though, become known as the single person on the entire scene who was most difficult to get along with. He resigned from his first band onstage, shouting "You can stick your band up your arse", after the band's leader had had enough of him incorporating bebop influences into their trad style. Another time, when touring with Diz Disley's band, he was dumped in Germany with no money and no way to get home, because the band were so sick of him. Sometimes this was because of his temper and his unwillingness to suffer fools -- and he saw everyone else he ever met as a fool -- and sometimes it was because of his own rigorous musical ideas. He wanted to play music *his* way, and wouldn't listen to anyone who told him different. Both of these things got worse after he fell under the influence of a man named Phil Seaman, one of the only drummers that Baker respected at all. Seaman introduced Baker to African drumming, and Baker started incorporating complex polyrhythms into his playing as a result. Seaman also though introduced Baker to heroin, and while being a heroin addict in the UK in the 1960s was not as difficult as it later became -- both heroin and cocaine were available on prescription to registered addicts, and Baker got both, which meant that many of the problems that come from criminalisation of these drugs didn't affect addicts in the same way -- but it still did not, by all accounts, make him an easier person to get along with. But he *was* a fantastic drummer. As Dick Heckstall-Smith said "With the advent of Ginger, the classic Blues Incorporated line-up, one which I think could not be bettered, was set" But Alexis Korner decided that the group could be bettered, and he had some backers within the band. One of the other bands on the scene was the Don Rendell Quintet, a group that played soul jazz -- that style of jazz that bridged modern jazz and R&B, the kind of music that Ray Charles and Herbie Hancock played: [Excerpt: The Don Rendell Quintet, "Manumission"] The Don Rendell Quintet included a fantastic multi-instrumentalist, Graham Bond, who doubled on keyboards and saxophone, and Bond had been playing occasional experimental gigs with the Johnny Burch Octet -- a group led by another member of the Rendell Quartet featuring Heckstall-Smith, Bruce, Baker, and a few other musicians, doing wholly-improvised music. Heckstall-Smith, Bruce, and Baker all enjoyed playing with Bond, and when Korner decided to bring him into the band, they were all very keen. But Cyril Davies, the co-leader of the band with Korner, was furious at the idea. Davies wanted to play strict Chicago and Delta blues, and had no truck with other forms of music like R&B and jazz. To his mind it was bad enough that they had a sax player. But the idea that they would bring in Bond, who played sax and... *Hammond* organ? Well, that was practically blasphemy. Davies quit the group at the mere suggestion. Bond was soon in the band, and he, Bruce, and Baker were playing together a *lot*. As well as performing with Blues Incorporated, they continued playing in the Johnny Burch Octet, and they also started performing as the Graham Bond Trio. Sometimes the Graham Bond Trio would be Blues Incorporated's opening act, and on more than one occasion the Graham Bond Trio, Blues Incorporated, and the Johnny Burch Octet all had gigs in different parts of London on the same night and they'd have to frantically get from one to the other. The Graham Bond Trio also had fans in Manchester, thanks to the local blues scene there and their connection with Blues Incorporated, and one night in February 1963 the trio played a gig there. They realised afterwards that by playing as a trio they'd made £70, when they were lucky to make £20 from a gig with Blues Incorporated or the Octet, because there were so many members in those bands. Bond wanted to make real money, and at the next rehearsal of Blues Incorporated he announced to Korner that he, Bruce, and Baker were quitting the band -- which was news to Bruce and Baker, who he hadn't bothered consulting. Baker, indeed, was in the toilet when the announcement was made and came out to find it a done deal. He was going to kick up a fuss and say he hadn't been consulted, but Korner's reaction sealed the deal. As Baker later said "‘he said “it's really good you're doing this thing with Graham, and I wish you the best of luck” and all that. And it was a bit difficult to turn round and say, “Well, I don't really want to leave the band, you know.”'" The Graham Bond Trio struggled at first to get the gigs they were expecting, but that started to change when in April 1963 they became the Graham Bond Quartet, with the addition of virtuoso guitarist John McLaughlin. The Quartet soon became one of the hottest bands on the London R&B scene, and when Duffy Power, a Larry Parnes teen idol who wanted to move into R&B, asked his record label to get him a good R&B band to back him on a Beatles cover, it was the Graham Bond Quartet who obliged: [Excerpt: Duffy Power, "I Saw Her Standing There"] The Quartet also backed Power on a package tour with other Parnes acts, but they were also still performing their own blend of hard jazz and blues, as can be heard in this recording of the group live in June 1953: [Excerpt: The Graham Bond Quartet, "Ho Ho Country Kicking Blues (Live at Klooks Kleek)"] But that lineup of the group didn't last very long. According to the way Baker told the story, he fired McLaughlin from the group, after being irritated by McLaughlin complaining about something on a day when Baker was out of cocaine and in no mood to hear anyone else's complaints. As Baker said "We lost a great guitar player and I lost a good friend." But the Trio soon became a Quartet again, as Dick Heckstall-Smith, who Baker had wanted in the band from the start, joined on saxophone to replace McLaughlin's guitar. But they were no longer called the Graham Bond Quartet. Partly because Heckstall-Smith joining allowed Bond to concentrate just on his keyboard playing, but one suspects partly to protect against any future lineup changes, the group were now The Graham Bond ORGANisation -- emphasis on the organ. The new lineup of the group got signed to Decca by Vernon, and were soon recording their first single, "Long Tall Shorty": [Excerpt: The Graham Bond Organisation, "Long Tall Shorty"] They recorded a few other songs which made their way onto an EP and an R&B compilation, and toured intensively in early 1964, as well as backing up Power on his follow-up to "I Saw Her Standing There", his version of "Parchman Farm": [Excerpt: Duffy Power, "Parchman Farm"] They also appeared in a film, just like the Beatles, though it was possibly not quite as artistically successful as "A Hard Day's Night": [Excerpt: Gonks Go Beat trailer] Gonks Go Beat is one of the most bizarre films of the sixties. It's a far-future remake of Romeo and Juliet. where the two star-crossed lovers are from opposing countries -- Beatland and Ballad Isle -- who only communicate once a year in an annual song contest which acts as their version of a war, and is overseen by "Mr. A&R", played by Frank Thornton, who would later star in Are You Being Served? Carry On star Kenneth Connor is sent by aliens to try to bring peace to the two warring countries, on pain of exile to Planet Gonk, a planet inhabited solely by Gonks (a kind of novelty toy for which there was a short-lived craze then). Along the way Connor encounters such luminaries of British light entertainment as Terry Scott and Arthur Mullard, as well as musical performances by Lulu, the Nashville Teens, and of course the Graham Bond Organisation, whose performance gets them a telling-off from a teacher: [Excerpt: Gonks Go Beat!] The group as a group only performed one song in this cinematic masterpiece, but Baker also made an appearance in a "drum battle" sequence where eight drummers played together: [Excerpt: Gonks Go Beat drum battle] The other drummers in that scene included, as well as some lesser-known players, Andy White who had played on the single version of "Love Me Do", Bobby Graham, who played on hits by the Kinks and the Dave Clark Five, and Ronnie Verrell, who did the drumming for Animal in the Muppet Show. Also in summer 1964, the group performed at the Fourth National Jazz & Blues Festival in Richmond -- the festival co-founded by Chris Barber that would evolve into the Reading Festival. The Yardbirds were on the bill, and at the end of their set they invited Bond, Baker, Bruce, Georgie Fame, and Mike Vernon onto the stage with them, making that the first time that Eric Clapton, Ginger Baker, and Jack Bruce were all on stage together. Soon after that, the Graham Bond Organisation got a new manager, Robert Stigwood. Things hadn't been working out for them at Decca, and Stigwood soon got the group signed to EMI, and became their producer as well. Their first single under Stigwood's management was a cover version of the theme tune to the Debbie Reynolds film "Tammy". While that film had given Tamla records its name, the song was hardly an R&B classic: [Excerpt: The Graham Bond Organisation, "Tammy"] That record didn't chart, but Stigwood put the group out on the road as part of the disastrous Chuck Berry tour we heard about in the episode on "All You Need is Love", which led to the bankruptcy of Robert Stigwood Associates. The Organisation moved over to Stigwood's new company, the Robert Stigwood Organisation, and Stigwood continued to be the credited producer of their records, though after the "Tammy" disaster they decided they were going to take charge themselves of the actual music. Their first album, The Sound of 65, was recorded in a single three-hour session, and they mostly ran through their standard set -- a mixture of the same songs everyone else on the circuit was playing, like "Hoochie Coochie Man", "Got My Mojo Working", and "Wade in the Water", and originals like Bruce's "Train Time": [Excerpt: The Graham Bond Organisation, "Train Time"] Through 1965 they kept working. They released a non-album single, "Lease on Love", which is generally considered to be the first pop record to feature a Mellotron: [Excerpt: The Graham Bond Organisation, "Lease on Love"] and Bond and Baker also backed another Stigwood act, Winston G, on his debut single: [Excerpt: Winston G, "Please Don't Say"] But the group were developing severe tensions. Bruce and Baker had started out friendly, but by this time they hated each other. Bruce said he couldn't hear his own playing over Baker's loud drumming, Baker thought that Bruce was far too fussy a player and should try to play simpler lines. They'd both try to throw each other during performances, altering arrangements on the fly and playing things that would trip the other player up. And *neither* of them were particularly keen on Bond's new love of the Mellotron, which was all over their second album, giving it a distinctly proto-prog feel at times: [Excerpt: The Graham Bond Organisation, "Baby Can it Be True?"] Eventually at a gig in Golders Green, Baker started throwing drumsticks at Bruce's head while Bruce was trying to play a bass solo. Bruce retaliated by throwing his bass at Baker, and then jumping on him and starting a fistfight which had to be broken up by the venue security. Baker fired Bruce from the band, but Bruce kept turning up to gigs anyway, arguing that Baker had no right to sack him as it was a democracy. Baker always claimed that in fact Bond had wanted to sack Bruce but hadn't wanted to get his hands dirty, and insisted that Baker do it, but neither Bond nor Heckstall-Smith objected when Bruce turned up for the next couple of gigs. So Baker took matters into his own hands, He pulled out a knife and told Bruce "If you show up at one more gig, this is going in you." Within days, Bruce was playing with John Mayall, whose Bluesbreakers had gone through some lineup changes by this point. Roger Dean had only played with the Bluesbreakers for a short time before Mayall had replaced him. Mayall had not been impressed with Eric Clapton's playing with the Yardbirds at first -- even though graffiti saying "Clapton is God" was already starting to appear around London -- but he had been *very* impressed with Clapton's playing on "Got to Hurry", the B-side to "For Your Love": [Excerpt: The Yardbirds, "Got to Hurry"] When he discovered that Clapton had quit the band, he sprang into action and quickly recruited him to replace Dean. Clapton knew he had made the right choice when a month after he'd joined, the group got the word that Bob Dylan had been so impressed with Mayall's single "Crawling up a Hill" -- the one that nobody liked, not even Mayall himself -- that he wanted to jam with Mayall and his band in the studio. Clapton of course went along: [Excerpt: Bob Dylan and the Bluesbreakers, "If You Gotta Go, Go Now"] That was, of course, the session we've talked about in the Velvet Underground episode and elsewhere of which little other than that survives, and which Nico attended. At this point, Mayall didn't have a record contract, his experience recording with Mike Vernon having been no more successful than the Bond group's had been. But soon he got a one-off deal -- as a solo artist, not with the Bluesbreakers -- with Immediate Records. Clapton was the only member of the group to play on the single, which was produced by Immediate's house producer Jimmy Page: [Excerpt: John Mayall, "I'm Your Witchdoctor"] Page was impressed enough with Clapton's playing that he invited him round to Page's house to jam together. But what Clapton didn't know was that Page was taping their jam sessions, and that he handed those tapes over to Immediate Records -- whether he was forced to by his contract with the label or whether that had been his plan all along depends on whose story you believe, but Clapton never truly forgave him. Page and Clapton's guitar-only jams had overdubs by Bill Wyman, Ian Stewart, and drummer Chris Winter, and have been endlessly repackaged on blues compilations ever since: [Excerpt: Jimmy Page and Eric Clapton, "Draggin' My Tail"] But Mayall was having problems with John McVie, who had started to drink too much, and as soon as he found out that Jack Bruce was sacked by the Graham Bond Organisation, Mayall got in touch with Bruce and got him to join the band in McVie's place. Everyone was agreed that this lineup of the band -- Mayall, Clapton, Bruce, and Hughie Flint -- was going places: [Excerpt: John Mayall's Bluesbreakers with Jack Bruce, "Hoochie Coochie Man"] Unfortunately, it wasn't going to last long. Clapton, while he thought that Bruce was the greatest bass player he'd ever worked with, had other plans. He was going to leave the country and travel the world as a peripatetic busker. He was off on his travels, never to return. Luckily, Mayall had someone even better waiting in the wings. A young man had, according to Mayall, "kept coming down to all the gigs and saying, “Hey, what are you doing with him?” – referring to whichever guitarist was onstage that night – “I'm much better than he is. Why don't you let me play guitar for you?” He got really quite nasty about it, so finally, I let him sit in. And he was brilliant." Peter Green was probably the best blues guitarist in London at that time, but this lineup of the Bluesbreakers only lasted a handful of gigs -- Clapton discovered that busking in Greece wasn't as much fun as being called God in London, and came back very soon after he'd left. Mayall had told him that he could have his old job back when he got back, and so Green was out and Clapton was back in. And soon the Bluesbreakers' revolving door revolved again. Manfred Mann had just had a big hit with "If You Gotta Go, Go Now", the same song we heard Dylan playing earlier: [Excerpt: Manfred Mann, "If You Gotta Go, Go Now"] But their guitarist, Mike Vickers, had quit. Tom McGuinness, their bass player, had taken the opportunity to switch back to guitar -- the instrument he'd played in his first band with his friend Eric Clapton -- but that left them short a bass player. Manfred Mann were essentially the same kind of band as the Graham Bond Organisation -- a Hammond-led group of virtuoso multi-instrumentalists who played everything from hardcore Delta blues to complex modern jazz -- but unlike the Bond group they also had a string of massive pop hits, and so made a lot more money. The combination was irresistible to Bruce, and he joined the band just before they recorded an EP of jazz instrumental versions of recent hits: [Excerpt: Manfred Mann, "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction"] Bruce had also been encouraged by Robert Stigwood to do a solo project, and so at the same time as he joined Manfred Mann, he also put out a solo single, "Drinkin' and Gamblin'" [Excerpt: Jack Bruce, "Drinkin' and Gamblin'"] But of course, the reason Bruce had joined Manfred Mann was that they were having pop hits as well as playing jazz, and soon they did just that, with Bruce playing on their number one hit "Pretty Flamingo": [Excerpt: Manfred Mann, "Pretty Flamingo"] So John McVie was back in the Bluesbreakers, promising to keep his drinking under control. Mike Vernon still thought that Mayall had potential, but the people at Decca didn't agree, so Vernon got Mayall and Clapton -- but not the other band members -- to record a single for a small indie label he ran as a side project: [Excerpt: John Mayall and Eric Clapton, "Bernard Jenkins"] That label normally only released records in print runs of ninety-nine copies, because once you hit a hundred copies you had to pay tax on them, but there was so much demand for that single that they ended up pressing up five hundred copies, making it the label's biggest seller ever. Vernon eventually convinced the heads at Decca that the Bluesbreakers could be truly big, and so he got the OK to record the album that would generally be considered the greatest British blues album of all time -- Blues Breakers, also known as the Beano album because of Clapton reading a copy of the British kids' comic The Beano in the group photo on the front. [Excerpt: John Mayall with Eric Clapton, "Ramblin' On My Mind"] The album was a mixture of originals by Mayall and the standard repertoire of every blues or R&B band on the circuit -- songs like "Parchman Farm" and "What'd I Say" -- but what made the album unique was Clapton's guitar tone. Much to the chagrin of Vernon, and of engineer Gus Dudgeon, Clapton insisted on playing at the same volume that he would on stage. Vernon later said of Dudgeon "I can remember seeing his face the very first time Clapton plugged into the Marshall stack and turned it up and started playing at the sort of volume he was going to play. You could almost see Gus's eyes meet over the middle of his nose, and it was almost like he was just going to fall over from the sheer power of it all. But after an enormous amount of fiddling around and moving amps around, we got a sound that worked." [Excerpt: John Mayall with Eric Clapton, "Hideaway"] But by the time the album cane out. Clapton was no longer with the Bluesbreakers. The Graham Bond Organisation had struggled on for a while after Bruce's departure. They brought in a trumpet player, Mike Falana, and even had a hit record -- or at least, the B-side of a hit record. The Who had just put out a hit single, "Substitute", on Robert Stigwood's record label, Reaction: [Excerpt: The Who, "Substitute"] But, as you'll hear in episode 183, they had moved to Reaction Records after a falling out with their previous label, and with Shel Talmy their previous producer. The problem was, when "Substitute" was released, it had as its B-side a song called "Circles" (also known as "Instant Party -- it's been released under both names). They'd recorded an earlier version of the song for Talmy, and just as "Substitute" was starting to chart, Talmy got an injunction against the record and it had to be pulled. Reaction couldn't afford to lose the big hit record they'd spent money promoting, so they needed to put it out with a new B-side. But the Who hadn't got any unreleased recordings. But the Graham Bond Organisation had, and indeed they had an unreleased *instrumental*. So "Waltz For a Pig" became the B-side to a top-five single, credited to The Who Orchestra: [Excerpt: The Who Orchestra, "Waltz For a Pig"] That record provided the catalyst for the formation of Cream, because Ginger Baker had written the song, and got £1,350 for it, which he used to buy a new car. Baker had, for some time, been wanting to get out of the Graham Bond Organisation. He was trying to get off heroin -- though he would make many efforts to get clean over the decades, with little success -- while Bond was starting to use it far more heavily, and was also using acid and getting heavily into mysticism, which Baker despised. Baker may have had the idea for what he did next from an article in one of the music papers. John Entwistle of the Who would often tell a story about an article in Melody Maker -- though I've not been able to track down the article itself to get the full details -- in which musicians were asked to name which of their peers they'd put into a "super-group". He didn't remember the full details, but he did remember that the consensus choice had had Eric Clapton on lead guitar, himself on bass, and Ginger Baker on drums. As he said later "I don't remember who else was voted in, but a few months later, the Cream came along, and I did wonder if somebody was maybe believing too much of their own press". Incidentally, like The Buffalo Springfield and The Pink Floyd, Cream, the band we are about to meet, had releases both with and without the definite article, and Eric Clapton at least seems always to talk about them as "the Cream" even decades later, but they're primarily known as just Cream these days. Baker, having had enough of the Bond group, decided to drive up to Oxford to see Clapton playing with the Bluesbreakers. Clapton invited him to sit in for a couple of songs, and by all accounts the band sounded far better than they had previously. Clapton and Baker could obviously play well together, and Baker offered Clapton a lift back to London in his new car, and on the drive back asked Clapton if he wanted to form a new band. Clapton was as impressed by Baker's financial skills as he was by his musicianship. He said later "Musicians didn't have cars. You all got in a van." Clearly a musician who was *actually driving a new car he owned* was going places. He agreed to Baker's plan. But of course they needed a bass player, and Clapton thought he had the perfect solution -- "What about Jack?" Clapton knew that Bruce had been a member of the Graham Bond Organisation, but didn't know why he'd left the band -- he wasn't particularly clued in to what the wider music scene was doing, and all he knew was that Bruce had played with both him and Baker, and that he was the best bass player he'd ever played with. And Bruce *was* arguably the best bass player in London at that point, and he was starting to pick up session work as well as his work with Manfred Mann. For example it's him playing on the theme tune to "After The Fox" with Peter Sellers, the Hollies, and the song's composer Burt Bacharach: [Excerpt: The Hollies with Peter Sellers, "After the Fox"] Clapton was insistent. Baker's idea was that the band should be the best musicians around. That meant they needed the *best* musicians around, not the second best. If Jack Bruce wasn't joining, Eric Clapton wasn't joining either. Baker very reluctantly agreed, and went round to see Bruce the next day -- according to Baker it was in a spirit of generosity and giving Bruce one more chance, while according to Bruce he came round to eat humble pie and beg for forgiveness. Either way, Bruce agreed to join the band. The three met up for a rehearsal at Baker's home, and immediately Bruce and Baker started fighting, but also immediately they realised that they were great at playing together -- so great that they named themselves the Cream, as they were the cream of musicians on the scene. They knew they had something, but they didn't know what. At first they considered making their performances into Dada projects, inspired by the early-twentieth-century art movement. They liked a band that had just started to make waves, the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band -- who had originally been called the Bonzo Dog Dada Band -- and they bought some props with the vague idea of using them on stage in the same way the Bonzos did. But as they played together they realised that they needed to do something different from that. At first, they thought they needed a fourth member -- a keyboard player. Graham Bond's name was brought up, but Clapton vetoed him. Clapton wanted Steve Winwood, the keyboard player and vocalist with the Spencer Davis Group. Indeed, Winwood was present at what was originally intended to be the first recording session the trio would play. Joe Boyd had asked Eric Clapton to round up a bunch of players to record some filler tracks for an Elektra blues compilation, and Clapton had asked Bruce and Baker to join him, Paul Jones on vocals, Winwood on Hammond and Clapton's friend Ben Palmer on piano for the session. Indeed, given that none of the original trio were keen on singing, that Paul Jones was just about to leave Manfred Mann, and that we know Clapton wanted Winwood in the band, one has to wonder if Clapton at least half-intended for this to be the eventual lineup of the band. If he did, that plan was foiled by Baker's refusal to take part in the session. Instead, this one-off band, named The Powerhouse, featured Pete York, the drummer from the Spencer Davis Group, on the session, which produced the first recording of Clapton playing on the Robert Johnson song originally titled "Cross Road Blues" but now generally better known just as "Crossroads": [Excerpt: The Powerhouse, "Crossroads"] We talked about Robert Johnson a little back in episode ninety-seven, but other than Bob Dylan, who was inspired by his lyrics, we had seen very little influence from Johnson up to this point, but he's going to be a major influence on rock guitar for the next few years, so we should talk about him a little here. It's often said that nobody knew anything about Robert Johnson, that he was almost a phantom other than his records which existed outside of any context as artefacts of their own. That's... not really the case. Johnson had died a little less than thirty years earlier, at only twenty-seven years old. Most of his half-siblings and step-siblings were alive, as were his son, his stepson, and dozens of musicians he'd played with over the years, women he'd had affairs with, and other assorted friends and relatives. What people mean is that information about Johnson's life was not yet known by people they consider important -- which is to say white blues scholars and musicians. Indeed, almost everything people like that -- people like *me* -- know of the facts of Johnson's life has only become known to us in the last four years. If, as some people had expected, I'd started this series with an episode on Johnson, I'd have had to redo the whole thing because of the information that's made its way to the public since then. But here's what was known -- or thought -- by white blues scholars in 1966. Johnson was, according to them, a field hand from somewhere in Mississippi, who played the guitar in between working on the cotton fields. He had done two recording sessions, in 1936 and 1937. One song from his first session, "Terraplane Blues", had been a very minor hit by blues standards: [Excerpt: Robert Johnson, "Terraplane Blues"] That had sold well -- nobody knows how well, but maybe as many as ten thousand copies, and it was certainly a record people knew in 1937 if they liked the Delta blues, but ten thousand copies total is nowhere near the sales of really successful records, and none of the follow-ups had sold anything like that much -- many of them had sold in the hundreds rather than the thousands. As Elijah Wald, one of Johnson's biographers put it "knowing about Johnson and Muddy Waters but not about Leroy Carr or Dinah Washington was like knowing about, say, the Sir Douglas Quintet but not knowing about the Beatles" -- though *I* would add that the Sir Douglas Quintet were much bigger during the sixties than Johnson was during his lifetime. One of the few white people who had noticed Johnson's existence at all was John Hammond, and he'd written a brief review of Johnson's first two singles under a pseudonym in a Communist newspaper. I'm going to quote it here, but the word he used to talk about Black people was considered correct then but isn't now, so I'll substitute Black for that word: "Before closing we cannot help but call your attention to the greatest [Black] blues singer who has cropped up in recent years, Robert Johnson. Recording them in deepest Mississippi, Vocalion has certainly done right by us and by the tunes "Last Fair Deal Gone Down" and "Terraplane Blues", to name only two of the four sides already released, sung to his own guitar accompaniment. Johnson makes Leadbelly sound like an accomplished poseur" Hammond had tried to get Johnson to perform at the Spirituals to Swing concerts we talked about in the very first episodes of the podcast, but he'd discovered that he'd died shortly before. He got Big Bill Broonzy instead, and played a couple of Johnson's records from a record player on the stage. Hammond introduced those recordings with a speech: "It is tragic that an American audience could not have been found seven or eight years ago for a concert of this kind. Bessie Smith was still at the height of her career and Joe Smith, probably the greatest trumpet player America ever knew, would still have been around to play obbligatos for her...dozens of other artists could have been there in the flesh. But that audience as well as this one would not have been able to hear Robert Johnson sing and play the blues on his guitar, for at that time Johnson was just an unknown hand on a Robinsonville, Mississippi plantation. Robert Johnson was going to be the big surprise of the evening for this audience at Carnegie Hall. I know him only from his Vocalion blues records and from the tall, exciting tales the recording engineers and supervisors used to bring about him from the improvised studios in Dallas and San Antonio. I don't believe Johnson had ever worked as a professional musician anywhere, and it still knocks me over when I think of how lucky it is that a talent like his ever found its way onto phonograph records. We will have to be content with playing two of his records, the old "Walkin' Blues" and the new, unreleased, "Preachin' Blues", because Robert Johnson died last week at the precise moment when Vocalion scouts finally reached him and told him that he was booked to appear at Carnegie Hall on December 23. He was in his middle twenties and nobody seems to know what caused his death." And that was, for the most part, the end of Robert Johnson's impact on the culture for a generation. The Lomaxes went down to Clarksdale, Mississippi a couple of years later -- reports vary as to whether this was to see if they could find Johnson, who they were unaware was dead, or to find information out about him, and they did end up recording a young singer named Muddy Waters for the Library of Congress, including Waters' rendition of "32-20 Blues", Johnson's reworking of Skip James' "Twenty-Two Twenty Blues": [Excerpt: Muddy Waters, "32-20 Blues"] But Johnson's records remained unavailable after their initial release until 1959, when the blues scholar Samuel Charters published the book The Country Blues, which was the first book-length treatment ever of Delta blues. Sixteen years later Charters said "I shouldn't have written The Country Blues when I did; since I really didn't know enough, but I felt I couldn't afford to wait. So The Country Blues was two things. It was a romanticization of certain aspects of black life in an effort to force the white society to reconsider some of its racial attitudes, and on the other hand it was a cry for help. I wanted hundreds of people to go out and interview the surviving blues artists. I wanted people to record them and document their lives, their environment, and their music, not only so that their story would be preserved but also so they'd get a little money and a little recognition in their last years." Charters talked about Johnson in the book, as one of the performers who played "minor roles in the story of the blues", and said that almost nothing was known about his life. He talked about how he had been poisoned by his common-law wife, about how his records were recorded in a pool hall, and said "The finest of Robert Johnson's blues have a brooding sense of torment and despair. The blues has become a personified figure of despondency." Along with Charters' book came a compilation album of the same name, and that included the first ever reissue of one of Johnson's tracks, "Preaching Blues": [Excerpt: Robert Johnson, "Preaching Blues"] Two years later, John Hammond, who had remained an ardent fan of Johnson, had Columbia put out the King of the Delta Blues Singers album. At the time no white blues scholars knew what Johnson looked like and they had no photos of him, so a generic painting of a poor-looking Black man with a guitar was used for the cover. The liner note to King of the Delta Blues Singers talked about how Johnson was seventeen or eighteen when he made his recordings, how he was "dead before he reached his twenty-first birthday, poisoned by a jealous girlfriend", how he had "seldom, if ever, been away from the plantation in Robinsville, Mississippi, where he was born and raised", and how he had had such stage fright that when he was asked to play in front of other musicians, he'd turned to face a wall so he couldn't see them. And that would be all that any of the members of the Powerhouse would know about Johnson. Maybe they'd also heard the rumours that were starting to spread that Johnson had got his guitar-playing skills by selling his soul to the devil at a crossroads at midnight, but that would have been all they knew when they recorded their filler track for Elektra: [Excerpt: The Powerhouse, "Crossroads"] Either way, the Powerhouse lineup only lasted for that one session -- the group eventually decided that a simple trio would be best for the music they wanted to play. Clapton had seen Buddy Guy touring with just a bass player and drummer a year earlier, and had liked the idea of the freedom that gave him as a guitarist. The group soon took on Robert Stigwood as a manager, which caused more arguments between Bruce and Baker. Bruce was convinced that if they were doing an all-for-one one-for-all thing they should also manage themselves, but Baker pointed out that that was a daft idea when they could get one of the biggest managers in the country to look after them. A bigger argument, which almost killed the group before it started, happened when Baker told journalist Chris Welch of the Melody Maker about their plans. In an echo of the way that he and Bruce had been resigned from Blues Incorporated without being consulted, now with no discussion Manfred Mann and John Mayall were reading in the papers that their band members were quitting before those members had bothered to mention it. Mayall was furious, especially since the album Clapton had played on hadn't yet come out. Clapton was supposed to work a month's notice while Mayall found another guitarist, but Mayall spent two weeks begging Peter Green to rejoin the band. Green was less than eager -- after all, he'd been fired pretty much straight away earlier -- but Mayall eventually persuaded him. The second he did, Mayall turned round to Clapton and told him he didn't have to work the rest of his notice -- he'd found another guitar player and Clapton was fired: [Excerpt: John Mayall's Bluesbreakers, "Dust My Blues"] Manfred Mann meanwhile took on the Beatles' friend Klaus Voorman to replace Bruce. Voorman would remain with the band until the end, and like Green was for Mayall, Voorman was in some ways a better fit for Manfred Mann than Bruce was. In particular he could double on flute, as he did for example on their hit version of Bob Dylan's "The Mighty Quinn": [Excerpt: Manfred Mann "The Mighty Quinn"] The new group, The Cream, were of course signed in the UK to Stigwood's Reaction label. Other than the Who, who only stuck around for one album, Reaction was not a very successful label. Its biggest signing was a former keyboard player for Screaming Lord Sutch, who recorded for them under the names Paul Dean and Oscar, but who later became known as Paul Nicholas and had a successful career in musical theatre and sitcom. Nicholas never had any hits for Reaction, but he did release one interesting record, in 1967: [Excerpt: Oscar, "Over the Wall We Go"] That was one of the earliest songwriting attempts by a young man who had recently named himself David Bowie. Now the group were public, they started inviting journalists to their rehearsals, which were mostly spent trying to combine their disparate musical influences --
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