Time was..

Time was- back in the sixties/seventies/eighties you'd put a band together, ring up an agent who would send you off on tour to get tight. The Beatles were packed off to Germany, and many a band followed them, some believing that the same fame and adulation would be theirs by right. Some friends of mine didn't travel that far- just to the North East where it was possible to play every night of the week and never travel more that 30 miles in any direction. After a month of playing every night, you were rehearsed and tight and ready to try your luck in the wide world.

It was also possible to make a living, even at this lowly level. Diesel was a fraction of the price and people went out to see live music every night of the week. When I lived in London back in the late 60s/ early 70s we'd go out most nights to the Greyhound in Fulham Palace Road and watch a professional band. I've no idea how many pro bands were on the road back then. There must have been hundreds if not thousands. Some would go on to greater things, others would fall by the wayside.

As I write this I'm thinking about my own band, now a year old and just starting to get into its stride. We're beginning to play more regularly now- compare that to my band Conspiracy. We played over 500 shows in the five years we were together- and we held down day jobs. We didn't have time or energy to play in other bands, but today my bass player is a member of two other bands and does the occasional dep.
My son Chris has his own band as well as playing with me and guitarist Vince plays in another folk group.I struggled with this a lot because I was only ever in one band at a time throughout my career.

The fact remains that there isn't the work to keep a band playing full time in the UK. There isn't the money. The fees are low to non-existent while the expenses get ever higher. When I played the Patsy Cline theatre tour in 2009 I made money. Last year's Nicki Gillis tour cost me money. I didn't earn enough to make the mortgage payment for that month.

Meanwhile my band makes slow progress. I'm enjoying and grateful that I have a bunch of players who want to play with me, and an audience that likes the songs. But we won't be heading off to the North East or Germany to get into shape. Those days are over. We will get better by staying local. We will build a following by staying local. We will play local shows.

I'm still ambitious. I still have things I want to achieve. I just want to achive them in a different way, in a different pace.

How many times?

Ah the wonders of the interweb. I've been telling everyone for years that I'd seen the Pink Floyd three times in the Syd Barrett era. I was wrong. I checked and I've compiled this list of dates

1967
1 October -Saville Theatre, Shaftesbury Avenue, London,
(second house- I saw John Peel emerging from the theatre as we waited to go in)

I'd heard the Floyd on the radio. I thought "See Emily Play" was a sublime piece of work, so when I turned up at the Savile that night I expected to see an all singing, all dancing, chart topping pop group. What I got was about 45 minutes of instrumentals played by a band in almost darkness, with their coloured shadows projected on to a white screen behind them. This was my first experience of a light show. The audience, myself included, were underwhelmed. No-one clapped. We'd never seen anything like it. To be fair, no-one had.

14 November -The Alchemical Wedding, Royal Albert Hall, Kensington, London, England (Jimi Hendrix tour)
A few weeks later Dave Callaghan and I went to the Albert Hall, to the opening night of a package tour with four bands headlining. It was quite a bill. Pink Floyd, Jimi Hendrix, The Move and Amen Corner(!), plus The Nice and Hendrix' usual opening act Eire Apparent. We had seats in the area usually reserved for the massed choirs- behind the stage. It was strange to see Charlie Watkins and his crew in their customary white lab coats operating the PA which was a couple of 4x12 columns a side and (I think) and Audiomaster mixer. Amen Corner were very popular with the teenage girls who screamed every time Andy Fairweather-Lowe looked their way. Quite what the girls made of Keith Emerson's theatrics involving stabbing daggers into his Hammond Organ while the band flailed away is beyond me, or of Eire Apparent's ear splitting volume. I swear they were the loudest band I ever heard. My ears are ringing just thinking about it. Floyd were the Floyd. Still playing instrumentals like "Interstellar Overdrive" while the lights flashed around and on them. I'd been listening to their first album and was getting used to the sound. The Move were stunningly visual. Imagine a five piece band where everyone believed he was the leader, the front man? Carl Wayne, Ace Kefford, Trevor Burton and Roy Wood stood in a line along the front of the stage. No-one gave ground. Each one sang lead at some point. The harmonies were the best I'd heard. I saw them a few more times in the next couple of years.
This was the second time I'd seen Hendrix that Autumn. I don't recall much except the final few bars of his act when he threw his guitar into the air above the stage. The Albert Hall is a huge space, and I can still see his white strat attached to a curly guitar lead almost levitating before crashing to the ground in a squeal of noise. He'd left the stage by then. What an exit!

6 December -Horror Ball, Royal College of Art, Kensington, London, England
I don't know how we found out about the next show. It was at the ICA just around the corner from the Albert Hall. I think we must have gate crashed. I know I felt out of place. My clothes were so straight! There were two stages in the room. When we arrived, a nifty blues band called Black Cat Bones was on one of the stages. I'm no fan of the blues but they were young and energetic. I was surprised to read a few weeks later that the lead singer Paul Rogers and drummer Simon Kirke had joined up with a boy from the year below mine at St Clement Danes Grammar School- Andy Fraser; and a lad I knew from my days in the 2/31st Kensington Scout Troop where he was known as David Kossoff's son. His name was Paul and together they were known as Free.
Anyway, Black Cat Bones finished and the music carried on from the other stage. I think it was Jimmy James and the Vagabonds, a hard gigging soul/ska band. On the other stage we we soundly entertained by the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band. I saw them a few times before they split up. Great fun!
Back on the other stage and it was a Scottish pop harmony band called Marmalade, who were just about to hit the big time with "Obla Di Obla Da".
Last band on (for me at least) was Pink Floyd. This time we were close to the front of the stage and could see the band clearly. One thing was obvious as the band began to play. Syd wasn't playing much. He sat on the stage making noises with his guitar. It was the beginning of the end.


22 December -Christmas On Earth Continued, Olympia Exhibition Halls, Kensington, (Syd Barrett's last gig in a four piece Floyd lineup.)
This was an all-nighter and I don't recall the Floyd's set. There were two stages set up opposite each other in the Great Hall a huge railway terminus sized space in West London. There was a funfair in one of the other halls and I saw a strobe light for the first time. It may have been similar in size and scale to the event at Alexandra Palace earlier in the year but I didn't go to that.
What do I remember?
The Soft Machine were their usual screechy and impenetrable self. The only song that was in any way accessible was "I did it again"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soft_Machine
The Graham Bond Organisation. I don't remember anything about them. Ditto a lot of bands. Most went on for too long.

(picture from here- http://liberalengland.blogspot.com/2012/01/christmas-on-earth-continued-1967.html)
I recall the Move. Same four-in-a-line across the stage. Great presence. Eric Burdon and the New Animals? Not for me.
Hendrix? He did all his usual tricks. This was the third time I'd seen him in as many months and for most of the set the audience seemed indifferent. Suddenly it was as if a switch was flipped and they came alive. He really won them over. I don't think I saw them again.
Traffic were interesting- if you like organs and sax solos. I'd bought "Paper Sun" and a few other singles and I'm sure they were excellent that night. I just don't remember anything about their performance.
I'd seen Keith West and Tomorrow a couple of times. They never seemed completely together. Their guitarist stood in front of his amp stack hunched over his guitar, used a Vox wah wah pedal and didn't seem to interact with the others. His name? Steve Howe, later to join Yes.

That was it. Did I actually see Syd's final gig with the Floyd? I was there, sure. But it left no memory. Just another gig.

It was to be over a year before I saw the Floyd again.

9 May 1969 Camden Fringe Festival Free Concert, Parliament Hill Fields, Hampstead.
I remember two things about this day. The first was of sitting in a field waiting for the Floyd to appear, listening to interminal bands, only to fall asleep for a hour and waking up after they'd finished. The other was hearing Peter Green remonstrating with the crowd and asking them not to throw bottles at the stage. It was pitch black in the park and we soon cleared off home.

25 May 1969 A Benefit for Fairport Convention, The Roundhouse, Chalk Farm.
I actually got to see the Floyd at the Roundhouse when a bunch of artists put on a benefit for the survivors of the crash that took the life of Fairport Convention's drummer Martin Lamble, and Richard Thompson's girlfriend Jeannie Franklyn and put the others in hospital. I don't recall all the acts. The Edgar Broughton Band were very loud as usual, but Floyd were great. Their new(ish) guitarist had fitted in and the band's musical horizons had widened.

We also went to a concert at the Albert Hall where the band demonstrated their Azimuth Coordinator. basically it was a couple of extra speakers around the hall with a joystick controller so we had the sound of an aeroplane flying around the room. The Floyd website gives the date of the first time it was used as 14th April 1969 at the Festival Hall. I definitely saw them use it at the Albert Hall. We were in the expensive seats (£2/10s and I was earning less that £10 a week) Roger Waters did his egotistical cymbal stealing trick during "Careful with that axe Eugene".

However the only Albert hall concert I can find listed is this one:
7 February 1970 Royal Albert Hall, Kensington, London, England
That was almost a year later. ???

I am sure of this date though. It was the last time I ever saw Pink Floyd play live.
18 July 1970 -Blackhill's Garden Party - Hyde Park Free Concert, Hyde Park, London. The band premiered their new album "Atom Heart Mother".

The day the music died

No not a line from American Pie, in which Don MacLean mourned the death of Buddy Holly, but some thoughts on what happened to the underground music scene back in the late 60s.
I'm an awkward so and so. I've written elsewhere that when everyone else was idolising Elvis and/or Cliff Richard, I professed my admiration for Helen Shapiro.
When the Beatles came along I was gobsmacked. They were unbelievably good. Unbelievably talented. Unbelievably gifted. And outspoken. They turned the world of entertainment on its head. Cliff Richard's career path had been ordained by old hands in the business. Have a few hits, shave off the sideburns, appeal to mums and grans, star in some second rate films followed by summer seasons at the end of the pier somewhere, panto every christmas- forever.

No wonder Pete Townsend wrote "Hope I die before I get old".

What would the younger Townsend have made of an old, stooping, balding, deaf former rock star reading the lyrics from one of his best known songs as the songsheet was perched on a flimsy music stand at one of the interminably annual charity rock concerts held at the Royal Albert Hall last year?

Have we sunk that low?

The Beatles got their MBEs, played their Christmas shows, made a couple of so-so films and joined the establishment. Their place was taken by a so-so r'n b band from West London who were managed by a PR genius. Although the Beatles and Stones were great friends and the Stones recorded a Lennon/McCartney song for their second (I think) single, he persuaded the popular press to paint the bands as enemies, to portray the Beatles as saints and the Stones as dirty. "Would you let your daughter marry a Rolling Stone?" went the headline.

By this time I'd discovered Bob Dylan and the British music business discovery of a hippy busker called Donovan Leitch. His 1967/8 concert at the Albert Hall still ranks as one of my favourite concerts ever, so I'm not against the man, only the business that tried to make him a rival to Dylan.

My tastes evolved, and as each of my idols became houshold names, so I'd switch to an unknown. The Who, the Small Faces, Jimi Hendrix...

By this time I was about to leave school and my circle of friends included Pete Brown, who introduced my to Dylan and Leonard Cohen, Andrew Brazier who came to an Incredible String Band concert with me and became a lifelong fan of their music, and Dave Callaghan who listened to John Peel, first on pirate radio, then on Radio 1. He loved the West Coast bands like Buffalo Springfield and Jefferson Airplane. I got to hear Love's Forever Changes with him, and that album still ranks in my top 5 all time favourites. He also turned me on to Captain Beefheart and with lesser success, The Velvet Underground. I never did get them, although I had an LP by and even wierder New York City band The Fugs in my collection for a time.

Once I'd left school and had some money we started going to concerts. Not to see chart topping bands, but bands that came under the "underground" banner. We'd buy International Times to find out who was playing, and when that was busted, we'd buy the Melody Maker and NME (back when just holding a copy would leave your hands inky black)

So it was that in June 1968 a series of free concerts were put on in Hyde park, in a little natural amphitheatre called the cockpit, down by the Serpentine. I went to quite a few there, but have no memory of the bands who played the first shows.
Did I go to the first one on the 29th June 1968? I can't remember although I did see the bands that played that day- Pink Floyd, Tyrannosaurus Rex (later T Rex),Roy Harper and Jethro Tull.
You can read all about the Hyde park free concerts here-
http://www.ukrockfestivals.com/Hyde-park-Festivals.html

I know I went to the second one in July, and have a strong memory of the third, when Ten Years After, Fleetwood Mac, Fairport Convention,Family, Roy Harper, Stefan Grossman and Peter Sarstedt entertained the ten thousand or so hippy types who sat on the grass, listening to the music and watching the boats on the lake. It was unrecognisable compared to today's festivals. The stage appeared to be the back of a lorry. The PA was a couple of WEM columns strapped to step ladders. No roof, no lights. I understand that the power was obtained by the simple process of unscrewing the light bulb from a nearby streetlamp.
This is Alan Grange's photo of Ten Years After. I think they jammed to a version of "Green Onions" for most of their set.

No merchandise. No catering. There was an ice cream van nearby, and just over the hill an enterprising individual had parked a lorry loaded up with warm cans of fizzy drink which he sold for the extortionate price of two shillings each (probably £2.50 at least today).
The almost shambolic nature of these early underground festivals was a delight to experience. There was no stress, no security, no fuss, no bother.

Indeed, the only time I felt really threatened was at a similar event on Wormwood Scrubs when local bands Hawkwind and Quiver put on a similar free event, once again with the bands on a flat bed lorry. It was a Saturday afternoon, and the orgainisers hadn't reckoned that QPR were playing another London team just down the road, and as Hawkwind were off on one of their musical oddesseys which featured a very primitive synthesiser solo, who should turn up but a couple of hundred skinheads who took great delight in marching through the assembled throng chanting football slogans. Police? What police.
Oh, another time was at a free festival on Parliament Hill Fields. The music started mid afternoon and we sat on the ground and listened to all the usual suspects. I recall looking forward to hearing Pink Floyd play again, but the next thing I remember was waking up just as they were finishing. The festival went on into the night and it was pitch black in the park. There were some lights around the stage but it was a long way away. I recall Fleetwood Mac playing. It was some time after the Hyde Park festival and they'd really tightened up. I couldn't see them but I could hear them and they were really tight. All of a sudden Peter Green started remonstrating with a section of the crowd who'd started kicking off and throwing bottles at the stage. My friend and I decided that it was time to leave...

I went to Hyde Park to see the Stones. To be honest, I wasn't that fussed about going and I left it late. When I arrived the crowd was huge. Too big for the venue. No matter how I tried I couldn't worm my way forward. I couldn't even get to the top of the cockpit and look down. I gave up and walked back to the edge of the crowd and started chatting to a girl. We didn't stay to listen to the Stones. I've seen the film. That's enough for me.

What had been underground had become mainstream. The next free concert in Hyde Park (and my last) was on the 18th July 1969 when Pink Floyd premiered their new album "Atom Heart Mother". The venue had changed. It was now on the flat area near Marble Arch and Park Lane. I was 100 yards away when they began playing. I recall watching Nick Mason's arms going up and down, and after a delay, the sound of drums and cymbals reaching my ears. It was too big. The Music Business had taken over.
The Music had died.

At around the time of the 1968 concerts, another phenomenon was born. The compilation album. Before "The Rock Machine Turns You On" LPs tended to be by a single artist or group. Indeed, prior to the Beatles, LPs were a collection of singles and "B" sides. Bands like the Beatles, The Stones, the Moody Blues and others turned them into something quite different- the concept album. LPs didn't necessarily need a hit single- Led Zep never released a single in the UK.
"The Rock Machine" was something entirely different- 15 tracks by 15 different artists. What's more- it was half the price of the other albums.
I bought a copy and discovered a whole world of bands that I wouldn't have spent monet buying a full album of. The bands/tracks I liked- I bought their album. The others? Thanks but no thanks.
A few years ago I was staying at a friend's house and I noticed something familiar about his CD collection. There was a CD of the "Rock Machine" and next to it, every CD that had been featured on the compliation. I can't imagine anyone buying the latest "Now that's what I call...." doing that could you?

Read more about the first ever compilation album here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rock_Machine_Turns_You_On

So when was the day the music died?
Was it when The Stones muscled in on a little hippy celebration, opening the doors to the rest of the Music Business?
Or was it when Clive Davis released that first compilation, a move that put the record companies in total control of an artist's career?

Left Hand Drive- part one

I moved from London to Northampton in 1974. My firm was relocating and the choice of moving out of a grotty bedsit with a leaking roof and no heating into a brand new three bedroom house with central heating was too good to turn down.

I said my goodbyes to Captain Swing and to my friends Pete and Trevor who I had been working with since about 1971. As well as my acoustic guitar and mandolin, I'd bought a 1964 Telecaster and an H & H combo. Once I'd settled into our new home, I'd look araound for a new band to join or form.

This is me outside the bedsit in Percy Road, Shepherds Bush with my mandolin. Apparently it was all the rage to dress from head to foot in denim and to wear platform soled boots......

This is me with my Telecaster and a Strat. I've no idea why I had that. I'm sure it wasn't mine!

Anyway we settled into our new home and jobs. I hated mine. I wasn't too enamoured of having to commute back to London each day for the first couple of months. Eventually the commuting stopped and as the nights grew lighter, it was time to search for a band or musicians. I answered an ad in the local paper and met with a guitarist called Jack. We hit it off, dumped the others and set about forming our own band. What to call it?
Jack was left-handed. Our first drummer was Robin Waugh. He was left handed. He introduced us to Sean Farmer and the band was born.

The name of the band? It was a no-brainer.
Left Hand Drive.

We quickly put a set together- mostly original songs with me singing, and set out to change the world.

From left to right-
Jack Swann, Sean Farmer, Robin Waugh, Dave Clemo

my own voice?

I grew up in Cornwall in the 1950s. We had no TV, and pop music didn't exist. One incident stands out. In about 1957/8 my friend Roger Blewitt's dad bought a tape recorder. This was the latest must-have gadget and one day he showed me how it worked. He recorded my voice and played it back to me.

Was that really my voice? It sounded so strange. Those were the words I'd spoken but the voice was of a stranger. I couldn't get used to it. I never got used to it.
For the next fifty or so years I'd inwardly shudder when I opened my voice to sing.

I was singing in order to entertain people but I hated the sound of my voice. I thought it was out of tune, and the more I thought that, the more out of tune it became. Eventually it all came to a head when I was recording an album for a Christian record company in late 1995. Just as it had been 30 years earlier when the humiliation brought about by my inability to play the guitar spurred me on to learn to play and eventually to take lessons, so my humiliation in the studio caused me to find a voice coach and learn to sing.

I had six lessons from an operatic tenor, who gave singing lessons at his home. We'd sit in his music room and he allowed, no, encouraged his students to bring a cassette along so the lesson could be recorded. He'd take me through various exercises and scales, all the while encouraging me.
I'd then replay the tape and practice my scales as I drove around East Anglia (I was a delivery driver at the time). After a couple of months my voice was transformed. More importantly. I was transformed. My voice was still a little shaky from time to time, but I no longer inwardly winced. I learned how to warm my voice up, and not blow it out by trying to sing too loudly too soon. I felt comfortable for the first time in fifty years.

Recently my voice has changed again. Whether it was the illness I went through, I don't know, but my voice is different. I sing differently. I choose my songs more carefully. People tell me they like the sound of my voice, which is a surprise to me.

More old tat

Thinking back through the old gear I had I remembered briefly owning a WEM pick-a-back. 15 watts of amp into a single 12" speaker in quite a large enclosure.
The amp was fixed to the cab by two long threaded rods that passed through the amp into the cab. I seem to remember that the cab could be used either way up. The WEM logo looked ok either way and there were threaded holes on two sides.

After I bought the Commodore semi acoustic guitar from Traies he later sold me a Triumph amplifier. These must be quite rare because I can't find a picture of one anywhere on the net. Once again it was a transistor amplifier which meant it was quite light, but once again it wouldn't sustain or distort- great if you were playing lounge music (as I was for a while) but useless for da blooz.
Further internet research has revealed it to be a Triumph Silicon 100 model. I still can't find a photo but the descrption of two bulbs lighting the front panel tallies with my memory.

I used a whole variety of speaker cabinets, mostly home made. My friend Pete Jones played bass and we played together for a few years. He bought a second hand 4x12 speaker cabinet that was absolutely massive- bigger than a marshall cab. It contained 4 Goodmans speakers and sounded great. He used a Vox T60 amp. (see the picture below)
By a process of trial and error we built a number of speaker cabinets using Fane speakers like these

I used a number of home-made and second-hand speaker cabinets in the late 60s/early 70s. Eventually the Triumph amplifier had to go and I bought a Hiwatt 50 Watt amplifier- what a beauty!

It was £85 or so when I bought it from Selmers in Charing Cross Road. I used it with a beaten up old 2x12 cabinet. You can see it in this photo of Pete, Trevor and myself.

These days Hiwatt amplifiers fetch mega-bucks, but alas, when I joined the folk group referred to in another post, I sold to it to my works social club as they needed an amplifier and speakers and a mike for their bingo nights.

How many times have I done that? Sold my kit and then had to go out and buy more within a few months? Too many.

The next step

I'd learned how to play a few chords on the guitar and I had a summer job, so the next step was to get a better guitar. The first couple of guitars were rough old acoustic guitars, the same crap sound as mine, but with a better action. I was hamstrung as ever by the cost of musical equipment. Everything was relatively expensive compared to what you could earn.
My summer job paid 2/6d an hour- £1 a day, £5 a week. This was in 1966. When the Vox AC30 was launched a few years previously it was priced at £89 guineas- that is- £89 pounds and 89 shillings. There were twenty shillings in a pound so that was an extra £4/9s or £93 pounds 9shillings in total. An AC30 amplifier would cost me at least 18 weeks wages back then. Luckily there were cheaper amps around.
I never could afford an AC30- even more so now when good old examples change hands for over £1000.
I eventually saved up enough for a new guitar. It was a Hohner Club40 like this one. It cost me £15. Three weeks wages.

I managed to break the neck on it after a few months, so my next purchase was a Burns Trisonic solid. Like this-

(picture coutesy of the Burns guitar museum)
It came with the thickest most inflexible set of tapewound strings I have ever encountered and what was worse it was very neck heavy. I didn't keep it long.
Norman Traies of Traies Music in Portobello Road persuaded me to buy a new japanese semi acoustic- a Commodore. I can't remember but I think mine was a wierd greeny grey sunburst.

I had to keep this one. My parents signed the HP agreement so I had it for a couple of years until it was paid for. I did however play a few shows with it.

Amplifiers......
As I mentioned, amplifiers were expensive back then. A new AC30 in 1960 was over £90 and the average weekly wage was about £10. My first proper amplifier was a Hohner Orgaphon- an accordion amplifier (as was the AC30 originally) I bought it from Traies second hand. The original speaker had blown and was replaced with a Goodmans Audium 12" ( I think it was one of these)

I first used it with my Hohner Club40. With everything turned up to 11 it sounded awesome. A real fuzzy distorted sound just like (so I thought) Hendrix got. Yeah right.

I blew it up.

My next amplifier was a Burns Sonic 30 like this.

It was one of the first transistorised (solid state) amplifiers. It was so trebly only dogs could fully appreciate the finer nuances of the sound, and try as I might, it never distorted in the same way as the Orgaphon. I went and bought a fuzz box.

I doubt very much if the amp actually delivered 30 watts rms. It might have delivered 30 watts peak music power or some such hyperbole. There was no way that it was as loud as an AC30. For the next few years my mates and I were obsessed with volume (by that I mean loudness). We really thought that louder was better. It probably ruined any chance of me ever becoming a good electric guitar player.

To end this section- when I started working full time in September 1967 I worked for the Westminster Bank (later to become NatWest). As a 17 year old, my wages were a princely £370 a year, plus an extra £150 London allowance, making £520 a year.
My journey to work took me past a music shop in King Street Hammersmith. There in the window was probably the most iconic electric guitar ever made- a Fender Stratocaster. It was brand new and a bright pink in colour. Not the salmon pink you see everywhere, but a bright pink- something like this-

The price? £276. Yes that's right. More than six months wages. At around the same time you begain to see Marshall stacks being used. I saw Hendrix a few times and he used two. I went into a music shop in Kilburn and there were several Marshall stacks comprising an amplifier and two speaker cabinets on display. How much?

That'll be £420 to you sir. £420? Nine or ten months wages!
Imagine having to pay £15,000 for an amplifier stack today.
That's what it was like in the good old 60s.

I couldn't afford a strat, so my friend Pete and I bought a Watkins Rapier, then glued/screwed and extra bit of wood on the back then planed the body down to resemble the strat profile.

It fooled no-one.