Music My Way

So, to start writing you need a theme, and to have a theme you need a trigger to start you off… and right now I have been triggered by no less than three independent and different stimuli… firstly reading Robert Elms great book called “Live”, by reading my good friend Dave’s history of his music making and seeing the new Dylan biopic “A Complete Unknown”… Mr Elms thoughts could be mine, Dave’s thoughts add clarity and the Dylan biopic is superb,

I have pretty wide ranging tastes in music… taking in traditional, punk and opera and all points between… and indeed either side… and music is incredibly important to me.. has been since the outbreak of the 60’s!!

It all started as a lad… with a love of the singing of Adam Faith and one of his earliest singles, “What do you Want” in 1959… and getting that and most of the subsequent singles… I was quite the fan!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q43cTvoXa6M

 
While Adam was doing his poor mans Buddy Holly catch in the voice, another record eased into my conscience… Marty Robbins “El Paso”… and being a lover of cowboy films on TV I was hooked on this as well… 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWm5WErkffQ

There is really no similarity between the works of these two, my first musical heroes…. One was a fairly soppy English pop singer, would-be failed rock’n’roller… the other an American Country and Western Star and I loved both… so right from my first introduction to music, aside from the classics featured on “Uncle Mac” I was interested in two very different genres…

I missed out on the rock’n’roll thing… but of course not long after this we saw the rise off the the first generation of British pop music aimed purely at the youth market, spearheaded by the Beatles and the Merseybeat phenomena…  all smartly suited and booted actually playing catchy jangly pop songs with great hooks…and shortly after by the face of rebellion, based in London, the Rolling Stones and their ilk playing a more bluesy/rocky sort of music… of course I loved it all… was a huge Beatles fan until the Stones arrived, and I actually preferred them… always claimed not to like the Beatles… but actually loved them to bits as well!!.. .although my love of Adam Faith was now a memory (not necessarily a good memory mind you!) My love of Marty Robbins continued, in parallel with the Beatles/Stones et al…

Through various family connections I was exposed to a lot of other country artists, mainly, as I later learned the more commercial poppy sort of country, which stayed with we for some years.

While at school I saw one of the cool kids carry an album, “Rambling Boy” by Tom Paxton… I had never heard of him… but the lad was cool… the album cover looked cool and I went and bought a copy… one play… I was hooked… Tom remains to this day one of my absolute heroes and the key song on the album “The Last Thing on My Mind” remains, for me, one of the greatest songs and recordings ever made… and I still play it often.

This was my exposure to American folk singer//songwriter stylings… and of course lead me to Dylan.. .the first truly great rock poet to come through… of course Bob was a chameleon, constantly changing and evolving and reinventing himself… something I greatly admire. We spent hours analysing his music and with hindsight he signposted us to his evolution from his early days… of course whether that was a conscious ploy or something that maybe hindsight makes us think it was a deliberate signposting.

It goes like this… his eponymous first album was predominantly blues covers, on the advice of the record company and management, to introduce the old country/folk music to a younger hipper audience. The second album was self penned and included a number of the songs that became bona fide Dylan classics, and inspired by the Bay of Pigs and Cuban Missile Crisis featured his earliest (officially released) protest songs, such as “Hard Rain” and “Masters of War”.

Following was “The Times They are a Changing” which was full of social comment and protest, in some ways his strongest album in that respect.. .but yes for Bob the times were changing. He followed it with ”Another Side of Bob Dylan”… and it was certainly that…it contained some quite lyrical songs, some rocky pieces and a couple of quite vitriolic personal attacks… such as “It ain’t me Babe”,  and the poetic gem “Chimes of Freedom”. The album also included two specific lines that pointed a direction… in “To Ramona” we hear

“I’ll forever talk to you but soon my words
will turn to a meaningless ring”

And from what is probably my favourite Dylan song of this period, “My Back Pages”, the chorus is

“Ah but I was so much older then
I’m younger than that now”

Perhaps turning his back on his existing persona.

Then along came “Bringing it all Back Home”… the fifth album which opened with the almost freeform poetic rant, “Subterranean Homesick Blues” which rocks like crazy, and the accompanying video has Allan Ginsberg involved… the rest of the side is rocky and has a variety of electric accompaniment. Side 2 is absolute classic Dylan… opening with the classic freewheeling “Mr Tambourine Man” then “Gates of Eden” the powerful word torrent of “It’s Alright Ma I’m Only Bleeding”

The final track is the wonderful “It’s all Over Now Baby Blue” (a message in itself) with the opening lines

"You must leave, now take what you need

You think will last

But whatever you wish to keep

You better grab it fast

Yonder stands your orphan with his gun

Crying like a fire in the Sun

Look out baby, the saints are comin' through

And it's all over now, baby blue”

And that was that… the next record was a total rock’n’roll classic.. full on electric band and no hint of the acoustic folky days… the evolution complete, and signposted through the preceding albums… perhaps!!.. At least I read that into it now, whether His Bobness was that contriving who knows… it aint impossible!

Anyway, I am now listening to and loving the folky singer/songwriters with a social conscience… the beat boom… the blues/rock sounds and country and western

And now… another format took my ear… I heard the Waterson Family who simply blew my mind… Martin Carthy and Tim Hart & Maddy Prior … and my traditional English music grabbed my heart… 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VyWKwnwxx4A

with all this going on my tastes were widening… and at this stage I was becoming a musical sponge… taking in everything possible.

I went to a few gigs, often with the Family and got the see the Rolling Stones a fair few times, Roy Orbison, Billy Fury, The Springfields and a host of the big pop stars of the day… but not the Beatles!

In 1966 two of the greatest most subliminal albums ever appeared… “Revolver” (Beatles) and “Pet Sounds” (Beach Boys). Both albums took popular music into realms previously unimagined… totally different to each other and to anything that went before… and both magnificent albums that sound fresh and wonderful something more than half a century on… the following year the Beatles pushed the envelope even further with the legendary “Sgt Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band”.

Later that year Stones released their own god-awful attempt to match “Pet Sounds” and “Pepper”… but “Their Satanic Majesties Request” was, and is, dire.

That summer of ’67 the airwaves (for me) were dominated by two singles… “San Francisco (Flowers in your Hair)” by Scott Mckenzie and “White Shade of Pale” by Procol Harum.  The BBC launched an exclusively “pop music” station, Radio 1 which gave rise to a new wave of DJ’s along with the old guard, so we got to know Emperor Rosko, Stuart Henry, Pete Drummond and the definitive groundbreaker John Peel… now musical styles new no horizons… pop music fell into three way split and no-one could of follow more than one of them… we had the disco/dance scene… the pop/bubblegum scene… and what we then called the progressive or underground scene… my choice was the latter… though my love of English traditional and the singer/songwriter genres were up there along with that scene…

Though I loved still the English traditional, the folky singer/songwriters,  and now discovered the nascent psychedelic/adventurous sounds and I was hungry for more and more different musical diversions.. and John Peel, ever the promoter of new and exciting musics, delivered in spades…

the American West Coast bands, such as the Grateful Dead, Country Joe & the Fish, the Byrds and the rest became regulars in my collection… I also fell head over heels into the avant grade with the likes of Captain Beefheart, Frank Zappa and others…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HE32tcojArI

but beyond doubt the most important music to me then, and now I first heard from John Peel…

Joni Mitchell sang songs so painfully personal that you couldn’t fail to be moved…When I first heard Leonard Cohen, Peel played “Suzanne” on his show and it had me moist eyed and besotted… he also renewed my love of country music, not the glitzy pop country former days, but in the form of Buffy Ste Marie…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDCKt-T6-8k

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svitEEpI07E

The list of bands and artists I discovered in the coming two years is astonishing… many I loved and have forgotten (perhaps as well in some cases) many I Iove still and some I worship… in particular Leonard and Joni.

I also heard a guy called David Ackles whose 1968 song “Be My Friend” has remained my constant friend and companion ever since… one I go to in times of stress.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-BVLLVaVVs

And so my musical experiences grew and widened exponentially… my tastes, and indeed knowledge growing by the day… but it was all on record, or radio… I had not experienced the live experience… so in many ways my passions were a bit theoretical

Until…

At this time I had family living on the Isle of Wight and we visited for a few days every Bank Holiday… At the August Bank Holiday in 1969 the Island hosted the first major festival in the country… and we were on the Island that weekend. Among the artists due to play were Tom Paxton, who was and is a hero, and Bob Dylan… at that time an artist that I viewed as a Messiah… but it never occurred to me to attend, it was as though it wasn’t happening at all…

Then on the Sunday night, after a day out sightseeing, we were on a bus back to the family home, and it passed the end of the lane where the festival was… we were just a few miles from home here… and someone suggested we get off and walk down and see what the event was all about… so we got off the bus… walked down the lane and found ourselves with perhaps hundreds of other tourists hanging around in a large open space outside a perimeter fence… just inside the fence was the main stage… and as we arrived records were being played… I recall John’s “Give Peace a Chance” and George’s “Hare Krishna” and maybe a few other appropriate thing when a voice rose and introduced the Band… Bob’s backing band… they started and sounded majestic… then into around the 3rd number with Rick Danko’s high voices sailing on the night breeze we left to catch a bus home… it had been interesting…

Overnight something in my head buzzed… I could have hung around another couple of hours… it wasn’t late… heard the Band’s set and heard Dylans set… maybe for the modest cost of a taxi back… and it hadn’t occurred to me.. I thought I’ve just turned down a chance to hear live possibly the most important artist in my life at that point… and made a vow to myself… I am not going to miss a chance to see another artist I like… and set myself to seek out live music when I got back to Leicester….

So…  next dayI bought tickets to see Terry Rid/Savoy Brown/Jethro Tull, Pentangle, Tom Paxton & John Mayall!

So, hopefully this shows a bit of where my broad tastes came from… and I remain keen to hear more and more new things across all styles… next chapter I hope to detail some of my thoughts and emotions around some of the gigs that have meant the most to me from September 1969 to date….