RICHARD THOMPSON – Guitar Player Extraordinaire

Nimble of finger, droll of wit and bereted of head, Richard Thompson has long been a favourite of mine and this month’s ‘new’ album Acoustic Classics is providing the soundtrack for a few commutes this week. It’s not really new insofar as it features acoustic arrangements of well-known Thompson songs, and to be honest the new versions don’t add much to the old but Thompson’s finger picking is so good that as with just about everything else he’s ever recorded, the album is a joy.

         A few years ago Lisa and I went to see Thompson at the Brighton Dome and on the drive home, smarting from having had to shell out £10.40 to park the car for three hours, I was thinking of the right word to describe his guitar playing, and the best one I came up with was ‘meticulous’. And he makes it look so easy too, totally effortless, all those trills and hammer-ons and pull-offs, and twiddly bits, and walking bass parts while he plays a melody on the top strings, and to all intents and purposes sounds like at least two and sometimes three guitarists all playing at once when all he has, like the rest of us, is eight fingers and two thumbs. God knows how he does it.

That show in Brighton wasn’t a rock concert, although towards the end there was plenty of fizz. It was a history lesson in music – 1,000 Years Of Popular Music – in two halves, beginning with ancient songs played by Thompson on the hurdy-gurdy and moving through medieval music, songs of praise, operettas, music hall, jazz & swing, folk, Americana, rock’n’roll and pop and finally a touch of modern dance. He was accompanied on this journey by the compellingly charming Judith Owen on keyboards and vocals and Debra Dobkin on percussion.

The songs ranged from a ballad called ‘Ja Nuls Hom Pris’, written (and sung by RT) in medieval French by King Richard I in 1190 to Nelly Furtado’s ‘Maneater’ which, in spirit of the evening, included a passage sung (in Latin) in the style of medieval church music. The very early music was followed by Purcell and Gilbert & Sullivan, a carol, a sea shanty (‘Shenandoah’ – the only song in the set that I have on record by Thompson), a labour song (‘Blackleg Miner’), music hall (‘I Live In Trafalgar Square’ – loved the line: “If it’s good enough for Nelson, it’s good enough for me”), and that was just the first half.

In the second half Owen and Dobkin added a striking dash of personality to the performance, Owen’s version of Julie London’s ‘Cry Me a River’ a definite highlight, but the key to the show was how one man, armed with nothing more than an acoustic guitar and a black beret, was able to master so many strikingly different and often difficult idioms and shape the results into such a coherent and thoroughly entertaining tour de force. Maintaining a brisk running commentary on the provenance of the songs as he reached the 20th century, Thompson offered up numbers by Cole Porter and The Inkspots before giving way to the more uptempo rhythms of fifties rock’n’roll and country music. Then came hits from the sixties, including a poignant version of The Kinks’ ‘See My Friends’ and the urgent, day-counting whirl of The Easybeats’ ‘Friday On My Mind’. Abba’s ‘Money, Money, Money’ was played for cheap laughs, doubtless because Abba won Eurovision in this same venue back in 1974, while a passage of Nelly Furtado’s ‘Maneater’ was rendered in the fashion of medieval church music and sung in Latin. The thread from past to present thus remained miraculously unbroken.

  But back to Acoustic Classics. Thompson varies his solos in several of the songs, notably ‘Walking On A Wire’ which now contains a newly conceived ascending chord flourish, and ‘1958 Vincent Black Lightning’, an all-time Thompson favourite, whose solo after the second verse just seems even more challenging this time around. The same applies to ‘Down Where The Drunkards Roll’ and ‘Valeri’ too for that matter. ‘From Galway To Graceland’, Thompson’s moving song about the devotion of an Irish Elvis fan, is as lovely as ever, ditto ‘Beeswing’. On the negative side I prefer hearing Linda sing ‘Dimming Of The Day’ and ‘Keep Your Distance’ would have been a welcome addition.

Thompson, of course, does a nifty line in Who covers and in amongst all the RT tracks on my iPod are terrific versions of ‘Substitute’, ‘Legal Matter’ and a medley of ‘My Generation’ and ‘I Can’t Explain’, all delivered live on chiming acoustic guitar with plenty of punch, as might be expected from someone who saw The Who at the Marquee in 1965, or so I once read. Finally, if you fancy a work out worthy of Usain Bolt, check out ‘Mother Knows Best’ (from his 1991 album Rumour And Sigh) on which, electric in hand, Thompson really catches fire, playing so fast that, like James Adey on his motor bike, he eventually runs out of road and the song sort of crashes into an oncoming bus. 

BOY ABOUT TOWN - Tony Fletcher's Memoir

Tony Fletcher’s memoir Boy About Town is published in paperback this week. I read it when it first came out and, remarkably, it deals only with his life between the ages of about 11 and 16. I’ve known Tony since the mid-eighties, when he wrote his first book for Omnibus (on Echo & the Bunnymen) and he went on to do several more including, of course, his superb Keith Moon biography Dear Boy, so naturally I’m a bit biased, not least because along the way we’ve become very good friends. Tony began his life in music journalism by publishing his own fanzine, Jamming, in 1977 when he was a 13-year-old at school. Amazingly, at that age he talked his way into getting interviews with musicians, most notably Paul Weller and Pete Townshend. Here’s an extract from the e-mail I sent to Tony about it. It speaks for itself really.

         “Tony: I love the sense of discovery that permeates almost every page – and not just music but the way you interact with the friends you make, the opening up of London, the increasing awareness of everything around you and how adolescence can be pretty scary. Re the music, I like the way you write about bands and singers from the point of view of a 12 or 13 or whatever year old and not from the point of view of your present age with the wealth of hindsight that all your experience will have brought in the meantime or the reconstructed opinions that you and I probably have about the less fashionable bands of the early seventies.

         “I marvelled at your enterprise in placing yourself in the midst of the music industry through your own efforts in the way you did at such a young age and envied the fact that you lived in London and were thus in a position to do as you did while I grew up in North Yorkshire where the only gig was the semi-pro covers band at the weekly dance at Skipton’s Clifford Hall which usually ended up in a fight.

         “Anyway, it was a great read… also an easy read, short chapters, a page turner in its own way. Lovely job mate.”

        

Those visitors to Just Backdated who have read Tony’s biography of Keith Moon will know that this book closes with an Epilogue in which he describes his visit to the 1978 Who Exhibition at the ICA in London. It was here that he met Keith who signed a copy of Tony’s Jamming fanzine and promised to grant him an interview if he came round to the flat in Curzon Place the following week. Tony did so but no one was home. Two weeks later Keith died in that same flat.

         For me the most moving passage in Boy About Town is Tony’s meditation on Keith’s death. In many ways it explains his motivation for writing Dear Boy, which he accomplished exactly 20 years later. Here it is:

I heard the news from Nicky Horne, at the start of his show, at 9 p.m. on a Thursday night. Keith Moon had died at home, in Curzon Place, earlier that day. Whether it was a heart attack or something else – a drug overdose, perhaps – was yet to be determined. But the circumstances didn’t change the reality. Keith Moon was dead.

         My grandfather had died when I was four or five years old. (For reasons I had never figured out, my brother and I had not been told about it until after his funeral.) Other than that, I’d never known anyone who had died. Death was always something that happened to other people.

         But this death happened to me. It hit me in the gut, like a bully had punched me there, and I felt myself go weak inside, the stuffing knocked out of me. Barely a month ago, I had introduced myself to one of my favourite people in the world – one of the most famous people in the world – and he had been nice to me. He had been sweet, gentle and kind. He had written down his home address and invited me to come round and see him. In the process, he had shown that I needed not be scared of, or awed by, rock stars, that they were human, like the rest of us. He hadn’t responded to the letter I’d slid under his door in Mayfair, and whether he had ever intended to (indeed, whether he’d ever read it), I would now never know. But I felt like I knew him all the same, and I reacted to his death like it was a member of my own family. I bawled my eyes out.

         Keith was all over the newspapers the next day. He dominated the front pages of the tabloids the same way the Sex Pistols had done after they swore at Bill Grundy. The Daily Mirror ran the headline ‘Drugs Death Drama of Pop Wild Man Moon’ and the other papers offered their own speculative accounts of his demise. He had been Moon the Loon, infamous for drinking and drugging his way across the world, leaving a trail of damaged hotels and ravaged women behind him, and now, they seemed to be suggesting, he had got his just reward.

         They had no idea. Thousands of us looked up to Keith Moon, felt kinship with him for the way he had lived his life, free of convention, of expectations. For the example he had set to those of us who derided the nine-to-five life, who shivered at the prospect of ending up in a suburban semi-detached with 2.4 children and a dog, who decried that businessmen in Britain all wore pinstripe suits, that secondary-age schoolchildren were forced to wear uniforms, that the teachers had long stopped caring, that bullies ran rampant, that the streets were full of violence, that the buses never ran on time, that the country shut down at 11 p.m. – with the national anthem as a reminder of our pervasive monarchy – and that the sky was perpetually overcast and the air permanently damp, that the older generation clung to an Empire that no longer existed and had been built on violent conquest to begin with, that they genuinely believed that the return of National Service and beating with the birch would solve all the problems of us youth, that fascism was gaining ground, that skinheads were increasing in numbers, and that, by their very design, with their endless rows of terraced streets and parades of small-time shops, our towns and cities promoted anonymity and servitude.

         Keith Moon, a working-class boy from Wembley, had emerged from all of this and shown that you could rise above it, that you didn’t have to sacrifice your dreams for the security of normality, that you could, by your talents and your determination – and yes, your lunacy – take control of your own destiny to live your life in the stratosphere, far above the miserable majority of the human race, like a comet streaking through the night sky. In his case that flame had burned out already, and I didn’t know enough to fully understand why or how. I just knew, at this moment in time, while he was being slandered and libelled and pilloried in death, that I would do anything to set the record straight. 

Here's a link to the book on the web: boyabouttown.net

KENNY EVERETT - Book Extract

An extract from Cupid Stunts, The Life And Radio Times Of Kenny Everett, by David & Caroline Stafford, published by Omnibus in 2013.

         For the benefit of US readers who might never have heard of him, Everett was once the nation’s favourite DJ, a zany, carefree, anarchic wit who transferred his talents to television in risqué comedy shows that were funnier and filthier than anything else on TV. Simultaneously he became the nation’s most popular entertainer and its self-appointed moral watchdog Mary Whitehouse’s worst nightmare. 

         This extract focuses on what was probably his most controversial ever appearance – at the UK Tory Party Convention in 1983. He was their unlikeliest supporter but the truth is Kenny didn’t really know what the hell he was doing.

         On September 2 David Stafford will be on a panel discussing Kenny at the National Film Theatre.

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It was Margaret Thatcher’s fault. Or Michael Foot’s. Or Lynsey de Paul’s. Or Michael Winner’s. One of them. Or more likely still it was Kenny’s fault.

         Margaret Thatcher had been swept into power in the 1979 general election with a Conservative majority of 44 to become Britain’s first woman Prime Minister. A hard-line right-wing monetarist Tory, her first term of office saw manufacturing output cut by 30% with closure of factories, mines and shipyards. Unemployment rose to its highest level since the Great Depression of the 1930s and there were riots it Liverpool, London, Birmingham and Leeds.

         Michael Foot was the Labour leader of the opposition; a left-wing intellectual and chronic asthmatic who often used a walking stick to support a tricky leg he’d acquired in a car accident some years earlier.

         Lynsey de Paul was a pioneering female singer-songwriter, whose hits like ‘Sugar Me’, ‘No Honestly’ and ‘Rock Bottom’ brought a rueful moment to those who had nurtured a fond belief in pop as a great liberator that would free the human spirit and let it soar. She had been ‘romantically linked’ with Ringo Starr, George Best and Sean Connery, among many others.

         Michael Winner was a well-respected film director, producer and restaurant critic responsible for such notable works as Death Wish, I’ll Never Forget What’s’isname and the lesser known Won Ton Ton: The Dog Who Saved Hollywood.

         In May 1983, Kenny and Cleo Rocos went to a party at Lynsey de Paul’s house. Michael Winner gave them a lift home. On the way Michael, a Tory in those days, asked Kenny whether he’d mind getting up on stage at a Young Conservatives’ Pre-General Election Rally at Wembley. Bob Monkhouse and Jimmy Tarbuck would be acting as Masters of Ceremony, Lynsey would be singing a song, wrestler Mick McManus, swimmer Sharon Davies, cricketer Freddie Trueman and a bunch of other celebs would be up on stage, too – so no pressure. Although he was never keen appearing in front of a live audience, Kenny agreed and didn’t give it much further thought.

         He turned up at Wembley Conference Centre on June 5 with a borrowed costume and the big pair of big foam hands that he used for the evangelist preacher, Brother Lee Love. Everything was last minute. His agent, Jo Gurnett, had been asked to fetch the hands from his flat. “He lived on the top floor and it was a long way, carrying two bloody big hands for him.”

         In Evelyn Waugh’s novel Decline And Fall, the hero sits in his rooms at Oxford while outside the aristocratic vandals of some dining club, drunk, roam in search of havoc to wreak. All at once the shouts acquire a “shriller note” and “any who have heard that sound will shrink from the recollection of it; it is the sound of the English country families baying for broken glass.”

         That night, in the Wembley Conference Centre, although representatives of the English country families would have been far outnumbered by rat-faced trainee estate agents and blubbery business-studies graduates, that same, unmistakable, “shrill note” could be heard.

         Lynsey de Paul sang the song she’d specially composed for the occasion.

         “Vote Tory, Tory, Tory

         For election glory

         We don’t want U turns

         So we’ll vote for Maggie T”

Kenny took the stage wearing his giant foam hands, no script, nothing planned, but an audience to please. He had their measure. He gave satisfaction.

         “Let’s bomb Russia!” he shouted.

         There were wild cheers.

         “Let’s kick Michael Foot’s stick away!”

         The crowd went crazy.

         Seeing he was on a roll, he leaned into the microphone and confided: “Do you, know I was talking to Maggie the other day – we were having one of our little teas together and I said to her, I said ‘Maggie’, I said ‘You’re rolling that joint all wrong…’”

         The audience laughed and snorted and bayed themselves hoarse. They were in the palm of his huge foam hand.

         If he had taken a dollop of actual shit and thrown it at an actual fan the effect could not have been more dramatic. Obviously Kenny was ‘joking’ but what, in this context, does ‘joking’ actually mean? Was bombing Russia and kicking Michael Foot’s stick away official Conservative Party policy, people wondered, and if not why were Kenny’s proposals so enthusiastically cheered? Did Kenny want to bomb Russia and kick Michael Foot’s stick away? Did Margaret Thatcher smoke dope?

         The Prime Minister found it necessary to issue a statement insisting that, “No one is talking politically about bombing the Russians. Every single thing I do is to deter any hostilities of any kind of breaking out. No one was seriously suggesting anything to the contrary at the time.”

         Representations were made to the Russian Embassy to explain that Kenny Everett had no control over Britain’s nuclear arsenal, and neither were his views representative of Britain’s foreign policy.

         Barry Cryer has no doubts about what Kenny was up to. “He was taking the piss out of the whole audience,” he says. “He thought it was like a Nuremberg rally.”

         The Nuremberg theme was picked by the press, too. But Kenny, rather than being applauded for exposing some great horror about Young Conservatives, was cast as something closer to the Hitler role.

         The News of the World went with: “Not funny, Kenny.”

         The People voted him “Wally of the Week.”

         “When Mr Kenny Everett bounced onto the stage at a Conservative youth rally and shrieked ‘Lets bomb Russia, Let’s kick Michael Foot’s stick away,’” said the Daily Mirror, “he was being himself. He is a fool by profession. Mr Everett may be the foolish face of Toryism.  But his audience was an ugly one. Mr David Steele described their type yesterday, ‘I find there is a breed of Conservative candidate,’ he said, ‘which is frankly unpleasant. There is an abrasive quality, an uncaring quality, a very right-wing quality about many of the Tory candidates.’”

         Billy Connolly, who had turned out in support of a Labour candidate, rushed to his friend’s defence. “I know Kenny and there’s not an ounce of bigotry in him. It is the donkeys at the back of the hall who were bawling support that I worry about. I abhor what he said but I didn’t take it seriously.”

         Barry Cryer had a possible solution. “I said to him, ‘You must go to every party meeting – Tory, Labour, SDP to confuse them. Just turn up everywhere!’ That would have been perfect.” Kenny didn’t take the advice.

         “That was when the press turned,” says Barry. “It’s the old story. It’s a cliché – you can praise people and build them up and knock them down. They had something to beat Ev up with now and that hurt him. I was with him a lot through the years subsequently when he was being interviewed and every single journalist brought it up. And he’d look at me and go ‘Oh here we go.’”

         As if to atone for his gaffe, subsequently Kenny never missed an opportunity to have a go at Thatcher.

         One of his great treats for a while was to be taken by his friend Francis Butler, a restaurateur, to Francis’ parent’s house in Gerard’s Cross for Sunday lunch. He adored Mr and Mrs Butler and embroidered them a little sampler, intertwining their names, framed in a pink frame. They hung it in their downstairs toilet. Their daughter, Francis’ sister, had married Ben Cross, the actor. And thereby hangs a tale.

         “Margaret Thatcher, in the early eighties, threw a party at 10 Downing Street for television celebrities and stars,” says Francis. “My brother-in-law, Ben Cross, was invited. My sister went along and she bumped into Kenny there and Kenny clung on to my sister because he was feeling a bit inadequate. Anyway, he was sitting on a sofa with my sister and Margaret Thatcher stalked by with this white gaunt face with the dash of purple lipstick. And as she strode past Kenny said, ‘Oh waitress, could we have two cups of tea, please?’”

         Later, in his TV show, he did a sketch in which Sid Snot spots a picture of Margaret Thatcher in the pub and remarks that she looks like a pig. A fellow drinker takes offence and lays into Kenny with a starting-handle. They roll about fighting until Sid manages to blurt out an apology, saying he didn’t realise his assailant was a Conservative. “I’m not,” says the thug, “I’m a pig farmer.”

         The best came in November 1983 when – this is the way he told the story anyway – at the end of his Radio 2 programme his producer handed him a joke on a bit of paper. Without scanning the contents first, Kenny read it out on air. “When Britain was an empire,” he said, “it was ruled by an emperor. When we were a kingdom, we had a king. Now we are a country, we’re ruled by Margaret Thatcher.”

         The following March the BBC did not exercise its option to renew his Radio 2 contract. “His programme is not scheduled for this quarter,” they said. “Kenny does a short term series. And it hasn’t been decided what the next schedule is to be.”

         Kenny was convinced he’d been sacked for the Thatcher crack. “The whole affair is over one joke. But talk to the BBC and they’ll tell you we had artistic differences.”

         Kenny never did another regular show for BBC Radio. He should worry. Capital welcomed him back with open arms and he took over a Saturday morning slot.

THE WHO LIVE AT KILBURN

It seems logical to follow yesterday’s post with this piece, also from my archives. My comment about the Coliseum 1969 show in the Amazing Journey review seemed to have been acted upon, though I suspect it was just a coincidence. I can’t for the life of me remember for whom I wrote this; maybe I just did it for my own amusement because, as readers of Just Backdated might have figured by now, I do enjoy writing about The Who.

        

Last week [November, 2008] saw the release of the new Who DVD, Live At Kilburn, which is actually a double package featuring the entire December 15, 1977, Kilburn show and, on a separate disc, incomplete but still substantial footage from the December 14, 1969, London Coliseum show. I picked one up at HMV on Oxford Street on the way home on Friday and, nicely wined and dined, watched the lot on Saturday night in a great big Who blitz that was immensely satisfying. If, like me, you found Amazing Journey lacking in performance footage, then this is what you're looking for.

I wasn’t at either of these shows and reports from Kilburn in the book The Who Concert File, which I edited, and elsewhere indicate the lads weren’t at their best during a concert that was performed and filmed specifically to obtain footage that could be used in The Kids Are Alright. It was subsequently deemed unworthy for this purpose, thus necessitating a second show at Shepperton Studios the following May from which ‘Baba O’Riley’ and ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again’ form the climax to Kids….

At Kilburn The Who were under-rehearsed, a bit drunk and a tad belligerent towards one another. Their on-stage comments indicate a lack of cohesion with Pete commenting that the show was a waste of film, at one point sneering at the audience: “There's a guitar up here if any big mouth little git wants to come up and fucking take it off me!” (dialogue that was retained for Kids…). At one point before 'Won't Get Fooled Again' either Keith or John yell at Pete: “Play the fucking song, Townshend!”

That said, to my mind the show on this DVD isn’t anywhere near as bad as these reports suggest. As I’ve noted many times before, The Who was so good that even on a bad night they’re better than most, if not all, and as I’ve also observed before, often when they were wound up about something it brought out the best in them, especially their occasionally truculent guitarist. So here we have Pete a tad inconsistent, inspired one moment, sloppy the next, but never less than watchable. Roger and John are as professional as ever, of course, and though Keith is a bit overweight he works hard, not wanting to let the side down. For this show he wore that truly dreadful purple spangled outfit, a costume that looks suspiciously as though he'd nicked it from Abba.

However, the real gem for Who connoisseurs in this package is the 1969 Coliseum show. The set was similar to Leeds but some songs are missing, and both ‘Young Man Blues’ and ‘Happy Jack’ from here have already been available in The Kids Are Alright and the Thirty Years of Maximum R&B films respectively. For me, ‘Happy Jack’ was a jewel in the crown of Thirty Years..., concentrating as it did on the way Keith propels the song forward.  

Though the footage isn’t as sharp as the Kilburn show, The Who give a towering performance, truly extraordinary, and after a while the fact that it isn’t sufficiently well lit doesn’t seem to matter as the sound has been remixed and the band is on tip-top form, staggering really, with white boiler-suited Pete leaping around in that wonderfully graceful – almost balletic – way he had in those days, Roger coming into his own in his fringed coat, John thundering away stage left and Keith an absolute dynamo, hitting everything everywhere. Of all the many phases that The Who have gone through over the years, this vintage, with Pete on a Gibson SG, is the one I consider the best and as I watched them ripping up the stage on my TV on Saturday night, I was amazed – yet again – that any band could really be this good.                               
          Although I had a stack of Who records by then, it was seeing this edition of the band, playing like this, looking like this, six times between 1969 and 1970 (Plumpton Festival, Dunstable Civic [x2], IOW, Hammersmith Palais, Roundhouse) that turned me into the Who fanatic I became and still am, and reliving it is still a blast.

AMAZING JOURNEY - Film Review

Another Who review from my archives, written originally for Tony Fletcher’s ijamming website, now upgraded a bit.

Last week [a Monday in September 2007] I was lucky enough to cop a ticket to the premiere of Amazing Journey at London’s Kensington Odeon, after which there was a Q&A session with Pete’n’Roger and the film makers, Nigel Sinclair and Paul Crowder, conducted by Jeremy Clarkson of the TV motoring show Top Gear, who’s evidently a fan of The Who.

         This film is not like The Kids Are Alright or 30 Years of Maximum R&B Live, nor – I suppose – is it meant to be. It is intended as a linear bio-pic of The Who, beginning with their births at the end of WW2 and ending with Pete & Roger’s Who in 2007. Clips of The Who performing at various stages in their career and hundreds of still photographs are linked by scores of sound bites, principally from Roger and Pete, and, thankfully, 85% of the movie deals with the original band.

         Who fans interested principally in seeing film of the group in concert will be disappointed, though there is some fantastic, hitherto unseen, footage from the Railway Hotel in Wealdstone (August 11, 1964), about eight minutes of The Who as The High Numbers shot by Kit Lambert; as far as I’m aware the earliest ever footage of the group performing live. There’s also newly uncovered live footage of Tommy material from their London Coliseum concert (December 14, 1969); the first ever film from Leeds University (February 14, 1970), albeit only a few minutes of b&w footage from the crowd over which the music is dubbed; and ‘Who Are You’ from Kilburn (December 15, 1977). Outtakes from footage filmed specially for The Kids Are Alright feature Keith on the beach near his Malibu home and at his ribald 31^st birthday party at a nearby restaurant.

         It seemed to me that much of the concert footage has had the music overdubbed, but with choppy editing, camera angles constantly changing and the camera zooming in and out all the time, it’s difficult to tell what is genuinely being played live and what isn’t. Personally, I’ve always felt that The Who onstage was exciting enough without the need for fancy camerawork which, to my mind, distracts from the tension created by what they played and how they played it. Nevertheless, the music sounds fantastic, especially in the cinema where Surroundsound pumped it out at mega volume. However, throughout the entire movie I don’t recall seeing The Who perform one complete song uninterrupted from beginning to end.

         Aside from Pete’n’Rog we hear from John (old interviews, including an extract from the one I did for the 30 Years video) and Keith (filmed at Tara in 1973 by the BBC while he’s playing a pinball machine), plus Chris Stamp, Bill Curbishley, Mike Shaw, Glyn Johns, Richard Barnes, Shel Talmy, Dougal Butler, Keith’s mum Kitty and sister Leslie, John’s mum Queenie and son Chris, Roger’s wife Heather, John’s first wife Alison, promoter Harvey Goldsmith, Mike McInnerney (fellow Baba lover and Tommy sleeve designer), Kenney Jones and Bob Pridden. All have fascinating things to say. The same cannot be said of Sting, the Edge, Eddie Vedder, Steve Jones and Noel Gallagher, none of whom have anything particular enlightening to say other than how much they like The Who, and I couldn’t help but wonder how many of them actually saw the group with Keith on drums. Jones’ recollection of Pete turning up drunk at the Speakeasy in 1977 was a nice touch, Gallagher’s down-to-earthiness raised a laugh and, predictably enough, Sting was especially vacuous. "The Who wouldn't have been The Who without John." Well, you don't say! 

         Naturally I’d have preferred less chat and more music, especially as it went on for two hours which was about 30 minutes too long. The new interviews with Roger could have done with editing a bit, and Pete – as ever – was more articulate and candid but hardly revelatory, though both spoke frankly about John’s dodgy financial affairs and both paid handsome tribute to their fallen colleagues. Much of the rest of the live footage had already appeared in Kids… and 30 Years (or live at the Isle of Wight 1970), though it has been cleaned up for Amazing Journey.

         I enjoyed it, but then again it would difficult for someone like me not to enjoy a Who movie at first viewing, but the fact is I shall probably not watch it repeatedly as I have with Kids and 30 Years (and my Tanglewood and other ‘unofficial’ DVDs), simply because I much prefer continuous live footage over talking heads. I will somehow acquire the DVD which promises some interesting extras on a second DVD. What I would really like, of course, is the complete show from the Coliseum 1969 but I’m not going to get it this time.

         [The second DVD, which I didn’t see on night but acquired later, features the footage from the Railway Arms in 1964 uninterrupted. The High Numbers play ‘Ooh Poo Pah Do’, a hit for New Orleans pianist Jessie Hill in 1960, and ‘I Gotta Dance To Keep From Crying’, a 1963 hit for The Miracles. And what a band they were! Elsewhere, in a feature provocatively titled Six Quick Ones – which suggests our lusty friend Ivor was more proactive than originally thought – there are profiles of each individual Who member, a piece entitled Who Art Thou which places the group in the context of their time and place, and a look at the present day, ie 2007, band. Much of these are made up of outtakes from the film itself.]

         After the movie Pete and Roger came on to the stage (Townshend arrived via the cinema’s back entrance as the film finished and left the same way to avoid waiting paparazzi). Clarkson read out questions that had been e-mailed in from fans but all were fairly trivial and the duo batted them off with practiced ease, especially those about future plans (there aren’t any!). Pete was eloquent in his defence of old bands getting back together, specifically Led Zeppelin, but the most interesting exchange occurred when a fan asked about whether they still went back to Acton. In the course of the answer, Pete confessed to having once kissed one of Roger’s sisters while Roger revealed that back in the early sixties when The Who were first starting, he offered refuge at the Daltrey family home to a local villain who was on the run from the law!

         Afterwards there was a knees-up at a local restaurant which Roger and Heather Daltrey attended but Pete went home, as he generally does. I ended up chatting with Dougal Butler who’s always good company at these affairs, while Richard ‘Barney’ Barnes, Alan Rogan, Mike McInnerney and Richard Evans were among the other Who faces present.

THE ALLMAN BROTHERS BAND - January 1974 Interview with Greg Allman, Part 3

Thinking it was perhaps wise to change the subject, I remarked that there was a similarity between the Brothers and the Grateful Dead in some respects, and he agreed but said there was never any intention of copying them. He loved the Dead, and respected Garcia a lot.

          “We always have an interval during the sets now,” said Gregg, starting on another tack. We do that mostly for the drummers. Jamoe [Jai Johanny Johanson] has got a bad back and he plays all the time and it’s a strain for him on stage. He’s ridiculous man, he never ever stops playing anywhere. On the bus, in a bar, everywhere he goes he keeps tapping away. Now he wears a brace around his back.

          “He’s the most different, strange and lovable boy I’ve ever met in my life, and I’ve met a lot of people.

          “So we take a break for a smoke and a drink. Usually we put the mellower stuff in the first half of the show and start kicking later on. It’s the best way.”

          I mentioned that Gregg tucked himself away from view.

          “I’ve always been a pacifist,” he said. “I sing a lot of songs. It’s a good job I do. Y’know I never played a Hammond before I got into this band. When I got the damn thing I didn’t know what the hell to do with it. I looked at the pedals and got hip to taking them off... and I still don’t know what to do with them.

          “Remember I was the last in this band. Duane called me and said he was putting a band together and going into the studio. I was on a strange, starving trip out in LA at the time, and I told him I needed some time to get to play the organ. He said you don’t have to play an organ, just look great, and that’s what it was. And I had to sing.

          “I remember seeing Traffic in Jacksonville once and saw Steve Winwood. That cat is incredible, man. He can do everything. He wrote ‘Gimme Some Lovin’’ when he was fifteen-years-old.

          “Wow. I love that cat next to Ray Charles. You know, my brother always had a very high regard for Cat Stevens. There’s three people who have never made a song I didn’t like – Traffic, Cat Stevens and Van Morrison.

          “I wish to hell I could work with Winwood but I’ve never met the cat.”

          I asked whether Gregg could offer his own explanation for the band’s current immense popularity. He didn’t seem to be able to. “It could be that Betts has finally started writing. Had that song ‘Ramblin’ Man’ for ages and he comes up to me and plays it for me and says he’s thinking of doing a country album and sticking it on that. Hell, that song cooked. Anything cooks if you get the right people.

          “Also, the kind of organisation we have had together is such that if anybody has an idea we all listen to it and that’s good.

          “You know, I have tapes here in the house of songs that Duane made and they’ve never been recorded or performed on stage ever. And some of those are so good.”

          Again he stopped, seemingly unwilling to talk further on this subject, so I asked whether the band saw a great deal of each other off-stage and whether the stories about them frequently turning up at local clubs for a blow together were true.

          “I can go for two months without seeing Richard Betts or Butch Trucks, but I see a lot of Chuck Leavell and the other two,” he said candidly, almost ignoring the real question.

          So I asked whether the band was closer when they were struggling than they were today.

          “It had nothing to do with struggling,” said Gregg. “It had to do with working our asses off for so long together. It was the programmed sets that we didn’t enjoy.

          “I’ve always enjoyed playing every concert we’ve ever done unless it was out in the rain and we might have got electrocuted. In 1970 we worked 256 dates and neither one of us made 1,600 dollars.

          “I remember we did three nights at Ungano’s in New York with an English band called Fat Mattress, and one of them came up and wanted to jam with us, and Duane looked at this cat and told him to get the hell out of it.

          “But I don’t wanna say much about other bands. Everybody’s got their own little scene man. Alice [Cooper] is a nice guy but I’d walk out of one of his shows. Iggy’s a fine cat but on stage he’s another person. Everybody’s to their own hit though.”

          So I asked who Gregg would choose to go and watch. His answer surprised me.

“The Moody Blues,” he said without any hesitation whatsoever. “They blew my head off the last time they played in Chicago. It was the first stereo show I’d seen and the cat that played that Mellotron knocked me out.

          “Taj Mahal is another. We had to follow that cat one night and there were heel marks all over the stage. There was Howard Johnson once and man, he came up with a rusty old dobro and blew us off that stage before we knew it. Little Richard too, he blew us off stage.”

          But Gregg listed Chuck Berry as his first major influence.

          “I was 12 years old and the first guitar I ever got was in 1960. Duane got one a little later. It was in Florida, where the white cats surfed and the black cats made music.

          “Y’know, I was going to be a dentist, fixing teeth?” He opened his mouth wide and pointed to a back tooth and grinned.

          The success had changed the band? “Not a damn bit,” he said suddenly.

          “Off the set, maybe, but on the set we’re the same as we’ve always been. I’ve never thought about the bread. In fact, I feel a little guilty about the bread at times.”

          It was at Watkins Glen earlier this year that the Allmans – and the Grateful Dead – attracted an audience of 600,000, the largest gathering of rock fans ever.

          “I was kinda sick with the heat that day,” said Gregg. “And I was petrified, ’cos we had to go in a helicopter and I’d rather travel by camel than a helicopter. The high point of that scene was The Band. They got the right name: THE Band, ‘cos that’s what they are.”

          I wondered whether Gregg enjoyed being on the road.

          “My last few tours have been pretty eventful. It’s very strange going back on the road after being at home for a while. The throat needs some action so I’ll maybe sit here and bellow for a while before setting out.

          “Alternatively, I’ll stay up whole days before the first gig which means I’m going on stage not having slept for 48 hours. I work best when I’m totally beat.”

          I mentioned Eric Clapton, and Gregg recalled the sessions when Duane played on the Layla album. “I wish he’d come over here and play with me. Gawd, I’d love to play with that cat. If you come across him tell him that. He’s been a recluse too long, and if the boogie is in the boy it’s got to come out.”

          And Hendrix? “Now there was one of a kind. I think everybody in the world should have been into Hendrix. There never has been and never will be one like him. That first album... wow, nobody’s ever cut an album like that.”

          The Brothers have just been awarded various Playboy awards, including a posthumous one for Duane as the musician of the year. They’re also the top vocal group, an award which Gregg shrugs off easily.

          “Listen, I can’t get any of those asses to sing. Print that. It could be a great vocal band. They all sing but they don’t want to. Duane could sing good, too. “I have some tapes of him you wouldn’t believe. I’ve written songs for the band with vocals that have been turned down.

          “Listen,” he said. “Turn that recorder off and I’ll play you something....”

Then Gregg shouldered the acoustic Gibson and began to play. I wish now I’d left the recorder running. 

THE ALLMAN BROTHER'S BAND - January 1974 Interview with Greg Allman, Part 2

Gregg Allman’s house, in which he has now lived for six months, lies in an exclusive estate about 15 minutes’ drive from the centre of Macon. It is the only house on his street, lying at the bottom of a slight incline completely surrounded by tall trees. Parked outside was a white Lincoln Continental.

          The doorbell didn’t work and it took a few minutes of knocking before Jan Allman answered the door. She led us [me and a PR from Capricorn Records’ office] into a room to the right with a bar in one corner and a grand piano in another.

          Gregg was playing some rock/blues on the piano and singing, accompanied by a bass player who turned out to be his brother-in-law and had worked on the Laid Back sessions. For about ten minutes Gregg failed to acknowledge our arrival, continuing to pound out the piano riff and make sure the bassist had his part right.

          Actually the music had been clearly audible as I walked up the path to the front door; I learned that music almost always can be heard around this particular household.

          When he came over to greet me, it turned out he had forgotten I was coming. He took me through into another room, only partially lit, which served as the living room and housed hi-fi equipment, albums and several basket chairs.

          He produced his “little white wine, from Fraynse,” poured a couple of paper cups full and explained in no uncertain terms that I was lucky to be there, that he rarely gave interviews, and did not particularly like being interviewed at that particular moment, anyway.

          He grimaced when I produced a Sony tape player and spent 15 minutes telling me about how American rock papers had printed a great deal of things recently that he did not enjoy reading one little bit. Once bitten, twice shy I suppose. Then he remembered I was from London and thawed somewhat, becoming almost humble.

          A telephone repair man came to fix the ’phones, so I tried for a second time to get Gregg in one place for a chat. This time I was slightly more successful, though there were many times during the ensuing hour when his mannerisms indicated he was talking with a great deal of reluctance, his Southern drawl was difficult to understand and his mind wandered to topics foreign to me. He also explained that he hadn’t been to bed for the past 48 hours, but that was nothing unusual.

          I opened on the cancellation of the British tour. I told him British fans were disappointed, even seething about the decision to cancel.

          “We’re seething here in Georgia, too,” he replied quickly. “This is the fifth time we’ve been about to go over there and the fifth time it’s been cancelled. Sometimes it was cancelled because of a death in the family, sometimes other reasons.

          “One time we were gonna go and an intense American tour came up. In England we might have been lucky to get a gig, but I really want to go. We ain’t ever been out of America. Went to Jamaica once,” he grinned.

          I moved on to his Laid Back album and his reasons for making a record outside the close confines of the Allman Brothers Band.

          “Now wait a minute,” he jumps in sharp again. “I’ve been three years making that album, so there was no idea of mine to break away from the Brothers. The Brothers had hardly started when I started on that album, and I cut it and mastered it three times before I released it.

          “I worked with a band called Cowboy on the album, and a guy called Paul Hornsby who was in Hour-Glass. I skipped around a lot and used some very good bass players. It took so long because I was working my ass off with the Brothers Band. The only reason I got heavily into it at the end was because I wanted it out before last Christmas. It was really just a side-line thing.

          “It would be ready to go and I’d decide to put another vocal track on until I finally gave it up and said ‘put it out’.

          “When it came out there were only two things that I’d like to have changed. It turned out I really liked the album in the end.”

         

In February and March Gregg is undertaking a solo tour, using session musicians and an orchestra without the regular members of the Allman Brothers. Although this move could be re-construed as a sign of a split, he firmly emphasises this is not so. It’s the first time he’s done such a thing, and he admits he’s scared stiff at the prospect.

          “There’s 46 instruments on the album and there’ll be 30 pieces behind me on the tour. The first show is in New York and we’re trying to get everybody from the album there, the chick singers and even down to the six black dudes from here, The Georgia All-Stars. They’re dynamite.”

          The solo tour has been rushed ahead slightly because of the cancellation of the European tour, but even then the Brothers apparently had decided to take a rest from each other until May, a period away from each other which Greg considers to be too long and which has aroused further speculation about their future.

          “It wasn’t my vote,” said Gregg emphatically. “I’ll say that because I think the band needs that. I’m itching to play now and taking that long a break could be risky for the band. I’ll say no more.”

          The conversation was steered quickly back to the solo tour and Gregg revealed that he would be playing acoustic guitar instead of keyboards. The only other time he ever did that was after a show at the Academy of Music in New York. A friend bet him $1,000 that he wouldn’t go back on alone at the end of the set and play by himself.

          “I forgot about the bet during the set and when it was over the roadies, started setting up mike stands around a stool for me. I remembered soon enough.

          “I wanna tell ya,” he looked me in the eye. “I got the same response, as the Brothers. I couldn’t believe it. I never collected the $1,000 and I haven’t done that since.

          “There was one time at the Mercer Arts centre in New York when Jackson Browne wanted me to go up and pick with him and when I got there he split and left me up there alone. I decided to play ‘Melissa’ and you know what, I forgot the chords. My mother was in the audience, and when I got to the bridge I stopped.

          “I started again and stopped and started again and worked it out and got away with it. Phew.”

          Next I asked whether Gregg looked on himself as a keyboard player or guitarist.

          “Neither,” he replied. “I look on myself as a rehearser. I rehearse piano and guitar.”

          He seemed disinclined to enlarge on that. I asked whether the band always played such long sets as the one I’d seen in Los Angeles.

          “That started with Duane,” he replied, bringing his brother into the conversation for the first time.

          “Duane would stay up six days at a time. It was nothing for him. He was an amazing cat. He had the strongest hands, like vices. He bit his finger nails all the way down to the bone. He would not wash his hands all day before a show in case the water made his fingers soft.

          “Duane started it?” I repeated.

          “Duane started everything man,” said Gregg. He grinned, looked at my tape recorder and said no more.

THE ALLMAN BROTHERS BAND - January 1974 Interview, Part 1

In January of 1974 I found myself in Macon, Georgia, the guest of Capricorn Records, interviewing The Marshall Tucker Band, Wet Willie and label chief Phil Walden, who also happened to have been Otis Redding’s manager. But the cherry on the cake was spending an afternoon at the sprawling ranch style house of Greg Allman, and talking to him at length about the misfortunes that had befallen the Allman Brothers Band.

          The ABB was probably the biggest band in America at the time and Greg was suitably rock star-rish in that laid-back southern way that’s a bit disconcerting to us Brits. What I didn’t mention in this piece was that on the coffee table in his large living was a sugar bowl full of cocaine and that from time to time Greg leaned forward and scooped a spoonful up his nose. I also remember that his fridge in the adjoining kitchen was packed with bottles of Dom Perignon champagne which he referred to as ‘white wine from Fraynse’. The interview got off to a bad start for no other reason than Greg simply disliked giving interviews but he warmed up eventually and in the end we talked for over an hour. He also had a guitar or two to hand which he played, singing as he did. Indeed, he performed a short impromptu solo concert for me which was staggering really, and this was how I began the piece I subsequently wrote for MM. Here it is, slightly reworked, in three parts.  

Gregg Allman picked up an old Gibson acoustic guitar and his nimble fingers to slid over the six new strings. He tuned it and cursed and tuned it again. It was a 1920 model that had once belonged to his brother Duane. Soon he was picking out notes as crisp and clear as the Georgia countryside surrounding his small estate.

          He played ‘Come And Go Blues’ from his solo album, Laid Back, and told me it had been rejected by the Allman Brothers’ Band. Then he re-tuned it and his picking became familiar. He played and sang Paul McCartney’s ‘Blackbird’ perfectly. “That McCartney... shee-it!” he said.

          Then he swopped guitars, choosing a 1942 blond Martin. More tuning and into the chords for ‘Long Black Veil’, the old tear-jerker about an innocent man who, at the time of a killing was ‘in the arms of his best friend’s wife’, and gets hung for it. I knew this from The Band’s first album, and Greg sung it beautifully. When he finished silence hung in the Allman living room like the tragedies that had befallen his group.

          There was another brief pause, another tuning adjustment and Gregg played a solo rendering of ‘Will The Circle Be Unbroken’, the song the Brothers sang at Duane Allman’s funeral two years ago. It seemed I was sharing a moment of reflection, a very private moment I had no right to.

          I wondered what exactly he was thinking, but I never really found out, even after speaking with him for over an hour. I don’t think anyone in the world knows what’s going on inside Gregg Allman’s head. He gives out his music and keeps the rest to himself.

          He stopped and broke the atmosphere with a warm smile and a flick of the super-long blonde hair which habitually got in the way of his fingers on the fretboard.

A bunch of musicians were expected soon. I stood up and finished the glass of Dom Perignon champagne which Gregg had earlier described to me as “a little white wine from Fraynse.”

          Then he was standing at the doorway of his luxury bungalow, one arm around his wife and the other waving goodbye.

          “Mind y’all come back soon now,” he said in the way that Southerners always do.

The first time I saw Gregg Allman was on stage at the Los Angeles Forum last September. The Brothers were playing an Indian benefit concert and their set lasted almost four hours.

          It was an incredible performance, the sort of show that has been turning American fans wild with delight for two years now.

          The star of the show was that impeccable Southern gentleman Mr Richard Betts. His flowing guitar lines, his licks and his leadership, were the highlights of the evening and his new hit songs like ‘Ramblin’ Man’ and ‘Jessica’ sent the crowd into delirium.

          The Allman Brothers today are the American Band, no matter what Grand Funk may claim to be; as different from the English superstars as anything can be. No American band will ever sound like Zeppelin or The Who; no English band will ever sound like the Allmans.

          That night at the Forum they played until 2am and could happily have carried on all night; they have been known to do it. Gregg was hardly seen, though. He doesn’t believe in pushing forward, preferring to hide behind a Hammond than stand in the spotlight beside Betts. Despite his prowess as a guitar player, he did only a few numbers, playing a white Stratocaster.

          He was, after all, the last musician to join the original Allman Brothers Band way back in 1969.

          Gregg, like the rest of the group lives in Macon (pronounced May-kin) Georgia, which is also the base of Capricorn Records.

          It’s a sleepy Southern town, population 120,000, with a lot of churches, three rock clubs and a white population who have still to reach complete integration with the blacks. It’s Dixie country, supposedly the land of cotton which inspired Stephen Foster to compose that music of the American heritage.

          It’s been the home of the Allman Brothers for the past five years. When they first moved here they all lived in the same small house, and today they’re local heroes.

          Phil Walden, the group’s manager, who also runs Capricorn Records and has a rock and roll track record stretching back to the early sixties, owns one of the rock clubs, a liquor store, the local travel agency, parking lots, the Capricorn Studio and sundry other properties. In Macon, a friend of Mr Walden is made very welcome.

          Capricorn is a tightly knit family, drawn closer by the success and tragedy that has followed the Allmans all their lives.

          It is the stuff story books are made of. The Allmans’ father was shot by a hitch-hiker before his two sons were old enough to know him. How any rock band could carry on – and become even more successful – after two key members died, seems beyond the realms of credibility.

          Imagine the Beatles without George and Paul, the Stones without Mick and Keith or the Who without Pete and John.

          The story is almost folklore by now. The band had finally managed to catch some success when the first tragedy struck. On October 29, 1971, Duane the leader and star guitar player, was killed when his motorcycle collided with a bus in Macon. They went back to work almost immediately, reaching higher goals to rub out the memory.

          Then, a year and two weeks after Duane’s accident, bass player Berry Oakley was killed in similar circumstances. The accident occurred within a stone’s throw of the spot where Duane was hit.

          It was a crushing, biting blow but they carried on regardless and have now attained the pinnacle of rock success. Today the Allman Brothers Band are the biggest, most successful rock band in the USA. But the riches and fame seem an embarrassment to Gregg Allman. He feels guilty that his bank account enables him to purchase Roll-Royce cars on a whim and seems perplexed that three years ago, when he worked twice as hard, he earned but a fraction of what he earns today.