Ground Zero for me and music was November 1964, when I bought my first single with my own pocketmoney – Little Red Rooster by The Rolling Stones. What I was expecting was Not Fade Away. That driving Bo Diddley beat has still not faded away. I still love that song, those opening
chords of Keith Richards, the wailing harp of Brian Jones and The vocals by Mick of course. But it was out of stock, I was too late, I didn’t understand that records sell out and a whole bunch of new ones took their place. So I got Little Red Rooster, was I disappointed? Let’s just say that at six years old I was opened a door to the blues which has not been shut to this day. I loved that song. I wanted long hair, I wanted jeans and a leather jacket, but being 6 in those days, you got dressed like your dad, short back n sides, and shorts with knee socks. So I started my own little rebellion.
Shortly into 1965 and my older sister had a friend up the road, Pauline Wallwork, how do I remember that? Maybe because she had some amazing records and let me borrow them. The first one was Rolling Stones 2, and their EP 5 x 5, and I’ll never forget putting the needle into the groove and being hit by Somebody To Love right in the chest, in the gut, in the brain. I devoured that album, I read the sleeve notes numerous times, I looked at the photos of the guys and etched their names on my little developing brain. The sleeve notes were like a foreign language, with groobies and malchicks mentioned, but I got the gist. I didn’t realise that Andrew Loog Oldham was plundering Anthony Burgess Clockwork Orange for his own hip talk. And who was this Andrew Loog Oldham I wanted to know, and why has he written the sleeve notes.
I also noticed the names in brackets underneath song titles, or by the side of them, I couldn’t figure out what that was about either, but it all intrigued me, including the cover photo, I studied the hair, the clothes the stance, the surly looks. It wasn’t just music, it was a way of life as Andrew Loog Oldham said on their first album, which I think I also got from Pauline. Out of the two, I preferred No 2, it was more bluesy I guess. What I did get from Pauline Wallwork was a book called The Rolling Stones, which dropped the penny for me, it all slotted into place, Andrew Loog Oldham was joint manager with Eric Easton, and the names in the brackets were the songwriters, so Morganfield was Muddy Waters, Berry was Chuck Berry, Jagger/Richards was The Glimmer Twins and Nanker Phelge? Who was that? Turns out a nanker was a face they pulled, a bit like gurnying, just shows how young and innocent the band was at this time. And Phelge was an old flat mate when they all lived in Edith Grove west London. The combined names was a band composition for publishing and royalties.
Muddy Waters, what a funny name my 7 year old self thought. Having little resources and money I couldn’t check this dude out. At that time I was having a battle with my parents over my appearance, totally instigated by my obsession with The Rolling Stones. I had a total meltdown every time I had to have a hair cut. I hustled day and night for some jeans and a leather jacket.
Eventually I had my own way and my mum took for some jeans to a curious shop, which to my memory sold work clothes for manual workers, like overalls and donkey jackets, but back then jeans were for working in. So cool, I got my jeans, I compromised with a denim jacket, and to complete the look a pair of baseball boots. These are called Converse now, and cost a small fortune, back then they looked the same as today but were called baseball boots and they were the cheapest footwear you could buy.
I hustled for Rolling Stones No 2 for my 8th birthday present. I had started calling my dad Pa at the time, and he said if I quit with the Pa title and called him Dad again then I could have the album. I carried on calling him Pa and didn’t get the album, all part of my increasing rebellion against what I saw as pettiness, and all instigated by my bad boys.
I was never much interested in pop music, I went through a phase of liking Jet Harris and Tony Meehan pre Rolling Stones. My mum was having an affair with the milkman, so cliched, and Arnold the milkman used to bring a pile of singles with him including all the latest Jet Harris and Tony Meeham releases. I stacked them up on our Bush record player, and was left to the music. One of the B sides was called Doing The Hully Gully and I loved this song, my four year old self dancing away thinking I was doing the Hully Gully, and wondering why nobody came in the room to watch, not realizing that they had adult things going on upstairs. Looking back, I liked this song more than the others because it had vocals on it, I’m not mad on instrumentals. My mum also bought me Wild Wind by John Leyton, who I went on to work with many years later. She also bought me a Kingston Trio EP which I really liked, and played often, this I guess was my introduction to country type playing. I also had a EP with Susan Maughn singing Bobby’s Girl, and in my innocence I wanted to be Bobby’s girl too. It also had a Dwayne Eddy song on it, Guitar Man I think, again a little intro to country picking and twang.
My sister was into the Beatles, but they just did not resonate with me, either then or later. I didn’t know what, but I knew there was something very different between The Beatles and The Rolling Stones. The Beatles looked and sounded goofy to me, The Stones looked and sounded moody.
So I carried on getting their singles as they came out, or Pauline Wallwork would lend me hers if I didn’t have it. And then my sister introduced me to a couple of CBS samplers, The Love Machine Turns You On and The Love Machine I Love You. What a great marketing tool, and a great way to get good music cheap. These days I suppose you have Spotify playlists and such but back then, the way to get to listen to a lot of alternative music was to buy a sampler. They would generally have 12 tracks of artists on the label. I got hipped to people like Janis Joplin, Grace Slick And The Big Society, Electric Flag, The Zombies, Leonard Cohen and Bob Dylan, who I was disappointed with at first, because his track was If Not For You, and I was expecting something a bit more robust, rebellious, and not country. But I dug all these new acts and I knew it was different from Alan Freemans pop parade which the family listened to every Sunday during Sunday lunch. I knew I wasn’t a pop picker.
Still having constant battles about hair length and clothes, I turned eleven, left junior school, and started in High School which bought fresh battles over hair length, and I hated my school uniform. Pauline lent me an album by a band called Blind Faith, and boy did I love that album, the sound was just exotic to my developing ears, and it had the same producer as the Stones were now using – Jimmy Miller. And hot on the heels of that was Honky Tonk Women. I was out with my dad one Saturday and wanted to be dropped in Manchester to buy the single, so he dropped me in Piccadilly, a part of town I didn’t really know, but I found a record shop, Piccadilly Records I think, purchased the all-important single and then had to figure out how to get to the other side of town to get the bus home. I spied the department store Lewis’s towering over all the other shops and used it as a landmark to get to where I wanted. Honky Tonk Women was certainly worth getting lost for. Man I swear I had never heard anything like it, it was like I had waited all my life to hear this song. It is still my favourite Stones song.
In the same year The Stones played Hyde Park and the BBC did a documentary of it, which I was watching when my Auntie Joyce came visiting. She could see how enthralled I was with it, and said you should get in touch with our Phil, he likes all this music stuff. Now I had known Phil Watts since I was born. We called his mum and dad Auntie and Uncle but they weren’t really they were just very close friends of my mum and dads, so I used to call him my cousin. We had not seen each other for some time prior to this, but I thought if he is into the Stones he’s my kind of guy. So we hooked up one Saturday, and it was easy, we just went in loads of record shops and browsed the albums, and he told me how his dad had taken him to see The Who recently, and had I heard Tommy. No I hadn’t I just remembered I Can See For Miles. We went back to his place, and he showed me all his clothes. He had what was called Loons which were skin tight pants with a massive flair at the bottom. And T-shirts with stars on them and different sleeves to the body, and Chelsea boots.
But most of all he had an album called Nice Enough To Eat, a sampler from the Island record label, containing such magic and exotic names as Mott The Hoople, Spooky Tooth, Jethro Tull, King Crimson, playing music of the likes I had never heard before, but I loved it all. He also had Tommy, my introduction to The Who.
By now all I was interested in was music, nothing came close, except looking cool. I was still only eleven but very tall for my age, and used to tell people I was fifteen. I had some loons, and a few t-shirts and I had a pair of suede boots with a two inch heel. I sold my bike and bought a faux suede fringed jacket, and I felt the dogs bollocks, at the weekend. The week meant wearing my school uniform which was absolute torture, and I was having a continuous running battle with the school over my length of hair.
One day my dad took me out instead of school. I asked where we were going, he said “we’re going to get your haircut – short back and sides – I am sick of getting letters from the headmaster about the length of your hair, from now on you conform. He had underestimated his adversary, and had to drag me out of the car physically and drag me down the street to the barbers holding my hair while I tried every which to escape, which wasn’t meant to be. I was shorn, but I didn’t conform, the gauntlet was thrown down.
I met up with Phil every weekend and I’d go back to his place or he’d come back to mine. His was preferable as he had an attic bedroom and we could play the records louder. He had a drum kit too. We used to put on records like Get Yer Ya Ya’s Out or The Who Live At Leeds on and mime to songs using tennis rackets for guitars and broom handles for mic stands. He was four years older than me and he was turning me on to loads of new music, like Ten Years After, Taste, Cream, Led Zeppelin.
We went to a party on that New Years Eve, the end of the 60’s decade, and I smoked my first dope, then ended in bed with a 16 year old girl, who told me she was as naked as the day she was born. I didn’t know what to do, so after a bit of fumbling I went back downstairs to be greeted by Jimi Hendrix If Six Was Nine, and I loved it immediately. I got home just before midnight and a show called Pop Goes The 60’s, was on BBC1 and who should come on but The Stones performing Gimmie Shelter. What a way to end 69, dope, naked girls, Jimi Hendrix and The Rolling Stones all in one night. Sex and drugs and rock n roll and still not twelve years old.
The Vietnam war was raging, and I suddenly became aware of it, and realized it was wrong, but I didn’t know kids not much older than myself were being drafted and sent off to the jungles to fight a war they had no interest in. I also became aware of nuclear weapons and thought they were wrong too. So I started drawing CND signs all over my school book covers, as well as names of bands. Love and peace was very much high on my agenda, and music was linked to it. It felt like the younger generation knew better than the older generation and they were coming together with music and a need for love and peace. Hare Krishna followers would chant up and down Market Street in Manchester, and Oxford Street in London. To me it seemed like they knew something I didn’t . Peace and love and CND are still very much part of my agenda.
Let It Bleed had been released in December and I got a copy very quickly. I had missed out on their albums in between No. 2 and Let It Bleed, apart from High Tide And Green Grass, their first greatest hits compilation. Most albums then were thirty seven and six, about £1.86. So I had saved my pocket money, I loved the cover with the booklet of photos inside, and it had my beloved Not Fade Away on it. I took the cover to the counter, the assistant put it in a bag and said that’s forty two and six. That was five shillings or twenty five pence more than I had in my grubby mits. My face must have shown what I was feeling, as the nice assistant said how much have you got? Thirty seven and six says I, ok you can have it for that. I was so grateful. And so started my album collection. I had borrowed Beggars Banquet before I bought Let It Bleed and that lightning bolt hit me again, and a similar thing happened with Let It Bleed.
Like I said Phil and I used to do in all the record shops and just spend hours looking through the sleeves, educating ourselves on new bands or releases we hadn’t seen before, and when I came across Let It Bleed I had to have it. It had the same sort of production as Blind Faith, a sort very dark muddy bass heavy sound, with Jaggers vocals tearing out of the speakers over the music. It sounded forboding and like nothing I had heard before.
Looking at all the record covers was fascinating, Frank Zappa and The Mothers Of Invention just looked totally freaky on Freak Out. Weasels Ripped My Flesh had a fifties type guy having an electric shave but instead of a razor he had a weasel which ripped his face open with its claws. Captain Beefheart with his big trout face on Troutmask Replica, Hendrix with his psychedelic art covers. I would read them too, see what musicians played on them, and it was exciting if I came across someone from another band guesting on an album. And I was always interested in who wrote the songs. I’d read in the music press about a guy called Robert Johnson, who had been covered by Cream and The Stones, so I went back to the sleeve of Let It Bleed and saw underneath Love In Vain, Traditional, arranged Jagger/Richards, and wondered why they hadn’t put his name. Who was this dude Robert Johnson? I wouldn’t find out for a while.
Apart from Top Of The Pops there was very little music on the television, particularly of the type I liked. There was one called Disco 2 with Tommy Vance, which was like the forerunner of The Old Grey Whistle Test, and just featured credible music acts, no top twenty acts. If we weren’t out watching a band Phil and I would sit glued to the TV lapping up new music. My whole life revolved around music, everybody I hung out with was into music in a big way, and people who were into music looked different from normal people. You could tell almost instantly that somebody was part of your tribe by checking their hair and clothes.
One of the bands on Nice Enough To Eat was Fairport Convention. They were playing the Free Trade Hall in Feb 1970 so my parents paid for me and Phil to go as a birthday treat. Nick Drake was supporting them, he was also on the sampler. I was in awe of have real recording artists in front of me playing their music to me. Poor Nick Drake spent more time tuning up than he did playing, and never said a word, but I still loved him. Afterwards I was raving on about the gig to anybody who would listen, and my mum said if you liked it so much why don’t you go and see another band, and I said yeah there is a band called Deep Purple on next week, and I’d love to go.
I hadn’t come across Deep Purple up to then, but the name sounded good. I have to say I sold my soul to rock n roll that night. I was astounded by Ritchie Blackmore’s guitar playing, particularly behind his back, Jon Lord attacking his organ as if his life depended on it, and when they put a strobe light on and Ian Gillan was whirling a conga around in slow motion, it was just mind blowing, it was like magic, it was magic, and I was put in a spell which remained for the rest of my life. When Deep Purple In Rock came out later that year, both Phil and I scored a copy, and nearly wore them out. I was going to every gig I saw at The Free Trade Hall from then on, and we used to go to Manchester University Union building which had some great bands on, including The Pink Fairies, Humble Pie, Fanny and Bob Marley and The Wailers on their first UK tour.
Festivals – when I first went into Phils bedroom, the first thing I saw was a poster for Woodstock the movie. I wasn’t aware of it happening at the time, but I was being educated all the time. I wasn’t aware of Altamont either, until The January edition of Rolling Stone, which was covered in the details. I still have a copy of that.
Festivals were something I dreamed of going to after hearing about them. Isle Of Wight was too far away, Bath, too far away, Pilton, too far away, but suddenly in May 1972 there was a festival in Wigan called Bickershaw. It was on the sight of an old coal mining colliery, and the line up was phenomenal. Being a very young seasoned hippie by this time, I hustled and hustled my mum until she gave in through sheer exhaustion, I couldn’t have been an easy child. Phil was going and a bunch of people we knew.
So many great bands on, I’ll list a few but the whole list is too long – Hawkwind, Wishbone Ash, The Kinks, Captain Beefheart, Donovan, Dr John, The Flamin Groovies and even Cheech and Chong, the American stoner comedic duo, and New Riders Of The Purple Sage who morphed into The Grateful Dead on stage, as they were almost the same band. I was mesmerized by it all even if it did rain a lot. So many bands in one weekend. It started my obsession with Hawkwind and I followed them passionately. I got In Search Of Space and felt that familiar feeling of overwhelming desire to listen to it again and again. And what a cover. I found an old vinyl shopping bag of my mums and copied the design of the cover on to the bag, put a strap on it and used as my school bag. I saw them in Manchester, at the Free Trade Hall, and The Hardrock, a short lived venue in Sale, I went to Wembley to see and all day event, I saw them at the Stoneground, Windsor Free festival in 73 and many other places. I was using acid by this time and was always tripping when I watched them, their music transporting me to cosmos, and not always back again. I saw them recently at The Northern Kin Festival, and it was like meeting up with an old friend, but without the acid.
I had started writing poetry at twelve, I think inspired by Mick Jagger reading Shelleys Adonais, and listening to King Crimson lyrics. Some were more like lyrics, which developed naturally into lyrics when I started writing songs. I wrote loads of them and my English teacher picked up on them and entered me into a few competitions. The only one I remember started with a line – I walk with steel wings stapled to my chest. Deep shit for a young teenager. I think it was about feeling trapped by society’s norms. The only way I could escape was through music. Listening to music just transformed my mind, and I would listen for all the different parts of the songs and things coming in and out. Prog rock was great for this, you could never hear everything in one listen, you needed to be dedicated. Phil Watts bought the first ELP album, and we heard phased drums for the first time and wondered how the hell they did it, again thinking it was magic, but no, just a push of an electronic button in the production stage.
I felt completely at home wandering around in a crowd of denim clad long haired stoners, whether at a festival, or a gig. It just felt natural, like an extended family as my family were becoming more alienated by the week. And then I went to see David Bowie.
Phil and I were persuaded to go this gig, even though we didn’t really know about him, by a guy who had bought the only copy in Manchester of Man Who Sold The World complete with Bowie in a dress on the cover. A lot of people talk about seeing Bowie on Top Of The Pops singing Starman and it changing their lives, but I saw him months previous to this at The Free Trade Hall again, what a venue for music that was. He came on stage as Ziggy and played songs from Ziggy Stardust and Hunky Dory, and walked out on the audience shoulders like Iggy Pop did. He introduced me to Jaques Brel with a cover of Amsterdam and also the Velvet Underground with a cover of White Light/White Heat. I had heard of the Velvet Underground but not checked their music out. It was mind-blowing, the music the costumes the makeup. He threw out posters the size of an album at the end of the gig with the photo of Hunky Dory on them, and we went to the stage door, something we had never thought about doing before, and we waited, and eventually were let in to the dressing room, where he was still in costume as he always was in those days. He took my photo and signed it, pausing to say “sorry my mascara is running.” The rest of the band signed it too. I was hooked to the new kid on the block.
My Biology teacher at school approached me one day and asked if I was going to queue to get ELP tickets for the Free Trade Hall. I had left ELP behind after Pictures At An Exhibition, that wasn’t what I called rock music. Anyway I said no but asked why and he said he wanted to go but couldn’t queue all night as he was otherwise engaged. He said he would buy me a ticket if I got him a ticket. I was game, I liked queueing all night for tickets, I’d done it for The Stones, I’d done it for The Who, there was a camaraderie in the queueing crowd. As I was sat in the queue a guy kept walking past with Alice Cooper painted in white paint down the sleeves of his denim jacket. He intrigued me. I got the tickets, went to the gig and even shared a spliff with the teacher which felt really good. Then I met the guy with the Alice Cooper sleeves, or rather he turned up on my doorstep. He went to St Johns College in Manchester and had met Phil, and it turned out he lived round the corner from me. I went round to his place and he had the biggest record collection I had ever seen. Probably 300 albums, to my thirty. His name was Martin Jackson, and he ended up playing drums for Magazine on their first album, then was in Swing Out Sister, an 80’s synth pop band I didn’t care too much for. But now he was the guy with the best album collection ever. And he was so generous with it. He wanted to turn you on to everything. He was like a DJ. He didn’t play full albums, he just played tracks, unless it was a particularly compelling album like Iggy And The Stooges Raw Power, or The New York Dolls. He’s say have you heard this Budgie track? Have you heard this Bonzo Dog Doodah Band track? Have you heard this Frank Zappa track, have you heard this Blue Oyster Cult track. I started spending every weekday night round at his place, a willing recipient of his music.
It turned out he had been at the Bowie gig and was equally enthralled by it all. I said it would be cool to have a haircut like that and then die it orange, and next thing he had done it, and got a bright orange jump suit type of thing and sprayed his platform boots silver. The first time I heard the term Punk Rock was in his bedroom, when he played the New York Dolls first album. He was totally into the whole glam punk thing, as was I, often borrowing girls makeup and nail varnish in school and adorning myself. I was quite androgynous looking at the time, and the make up heightened it.
So although Bowie was the first UK artist to start wearing very flamboyant clothing and makeup, he had been in the States hanging with Iggy and the Dolls and Lou Reed and taken a little bit of each of them and developed Ziggy Stardust. It was the big bang of glam rock, with Marc Bolan, The Sweet, Slade, on the pop side of glam and Queen, Cockney Rebel,and Roxy Music on the credible side of glam . Even Jagger got in on the act. But there was something different between Bowie and pop acts, once again unable to give a tangible reason apart from, he was edgy and the others just pop acts, lasting the average term of a pop act, with Queen and Roxy Music going on the forge lengthy careers. That’s the way I saw it anyway. And there was me in make up, loons, massive platform boots and a fantastic blue sequined bolero jacket looking pretty as a picture, complete with bangles on my wrist. I also ended up with Martins denim jacket, and washed the Alice Cooper lettering off the sleeves. We talked about getting a band together, but it was just talk.
He introduced me to another person to loom large in my life at the time, Mark Hartley, who was into the same hedonistic delectations as myself. He would bring albums round such as The Doors, The Jefferson Airplane and the Velvet Underground, and Gong with the pot head pixies. I had been pulling away from the glam thing after Bowie ‘retired’ at Hammersmith Odean, and getting back to being a hippie. I had recently got into John Martins Solid Air and turned Mark on to him. I been to see John Martin recently at Bolton Tech, which was more of a rock venue. I saw the likes of The Sensational Alex Harvey Band, Arthur Browns Journey, and Skid Row there. I had been to see Mick Jaggers Performance before I went to John Martin and sat down to watch him. He played three numbers and the crowd were very loud and he didn’t like it, so he said if you don’t shut up I’m going, and they didn’t shut up and he left. I was really disappointed and was walking round the back stage area, when a door opened and a cloud of smoke came out and I could see John sat at the far end of the room playing his guitar. The guy at the door was his road manager and we said what a bummer it was that he left as we were really enjoying it, and he said why don’t you come in. We told John how we felt, he invited us to hang around a while and started playing songs. His man was rolling spliffs and we sat there getting very stoned while John treated us to our very own show for about an hour. One of my best musical hours ever.
A new venue opened up in Gorton near Belle Vue called The Stoneground and Mark and started going every weekend to watch bands. We saw Gong for the first time there, and Hawkwind and Kevin Coyne, and even Leo Sayer who the management had booked before he had his first hit single, I Won’t Let The Show Go On. The place was rammed with people who wouldn’t normally go there, with a massive crush of people outside before they opened the doors. He was part of the glam scene at the time, dressing like Pierrot the clown. I worked in the kitchens some nights when they needed a helping hand.
Mark and I hitched down to Windsor for the free festival in the Queens back garden on the August bank holiday weekend. We went via Oxford where he had some friends from school as he lived there for a while. They only seemed to have one album – Country Joe And the Fish, Electric Music For Mind and Body, and played it for the whole evening.
We saw Hawkwind, who had a guy with them who used to dance naked called Jesus, who also turned up with Gong at Stoneground, still naked. I think Man played too and Magic Micheal, who all featured on a double album called The Greasy Truckers Party, which was recorded during one of the blackouts from the miners strike and there was almost a whole side of silence. I suppose to give you the experience of being there.
Wandering around Windsor, Mark bumped into a girl he knew from Burnley, called Caroline, a strange pixie like waif. She was with a friend who Mark also knew and we hung out for the duration of the festival. We had a massive plastic bag which Mark had obtained from a furniture manufacturer, and whilst it was raining we got comfortable in the bag.
I still had a year to go at school, and was finding it increasingly difficult to deal with. I couldn’t relate to anybody and I had no interest in the curriculum, but I was taking my O’ levels as they were called back then. Luckily, Monday morning was a double biology lesson with the ELP teacher so he turned a blind eye if I fell asleep during class, catching up on sleep missed over the weekends spent at Stonegound.
Mark and I had been to Burnley a couple of times to visit Caroline and then she moved to Didsbury in a flat in a friend of her mums, so we hung out there during the week and started a menage a trois. She was really into folky stuff like Roy Harper, Donovan, The Incredible String Band, Melanie, Keith Christmas, Bob Dylan, and so opened a new chapter in my education. I had rediscovered Dylan with More Bob Dylan Greatest Hits. I put the needle in the groove for Watching The River Flow and was smitten, a passion which stays with me to this day. I embraced Roy Harper and Keith Christmas. The first Roy Harper she turned me on to was Flat Baroque and Berserk, containing the track I Hate The Whiteman, and I could instantly relate to his sentiments, as I was ‘bent out of shape from society’s pliers’ as Bob Dylan said. I got many other Roy Harper albums after this. Donovan had just released Cosmic Wheels a more electric approach than he usually had and I dug it.
Caroline was a real free spirit, a full on hippie chick with flowing Indian clothing and bare feet in the street. She was only 18 months older than me, but she had been round the block more than once. Mark had met her in a hippie commune in Burnley when she was only 15. Her mother was a psychiatrist and Caroline talked constantly about ego and ids and sent me rather loopy over the year we were together, particularly when we tripped together. She was also into the Crosby Stills and Nash album, and Déjà vu with Young added to the three. I thought both albums were awful and still do, Marrakesh Express just drives me nuts with its slightly out of tune organ sound and dippy high register harmonies. And Déjà vu with it’s twee Our House is a very very very fine house, and Teach Your Children Well, which funnily enough are all Graham Nash songs. I much preferred Neil Young or Steve Stills on their own, they added meat to the bone. But Graham Nash and David Crosby never did light my fire. I know I should have liked them as they were real bona fide hippies, but I couldn’t dig where they were coming from musically, and it amazes me that a band which only released two albums or one with all four members are still remembered as the leading lights in the revolution. I always liked a little attitude with my revolution, give me MC5 anyday over CSN&Y. But all this is just my opinion, plenty of people did and still do like them immensely
In November of this year I was persuaded by an old school mate Dan Craigie to go and see Bob Marley and The Wailers at Manchester University. Now I associated reggae with ska, and ska with skinheads and skinheads with being chased down the street by gangs of them shouting “weirdos weirdos”, so it took some persuasion. He had brought Catch A Fire round to my 15th birthday party but I didn’t catch fire. Anyway I went to see them, and soon realised they were singing about ganga and other anti authoritarian messages, and love, and the penny dropped, these guys were brothers, on the same quest, and I grooved to their slow stoner vibrations, much slower than the ska the skinheads danced to. I turned many people on to Bob Marley from then on, and just like everybody else who reached commercial success I dropped them and went in search of something else.
Through Hawkwind I was also getting into the Krautrock of Faust, Amon Duul 11, and Can. Some of it was hard to listen to especially The Faust Tapes which Virgin Records for their first release put out at 50p for a clear vinyl album in a clear plastic sleeve. But I felt it was worth listening to as not many people listened to it. That album almost bankrupted Virgin, and then one day Mark came round with a new album – Tubular Bells. It was like nothing else we had listed to before, and all played by one guy, Mike Oldfield. It just looped round one riff really, but kept building and building with more instruments coming in, and then on side 2 the voice of Viv Stanshall introducing the instruments until he said Tubular Bells, which is round about when the record finished, but it was remarkable at the time, and on everybody’s lips, but I doubt if I listened to it more than twice, it had no vocals. And suddenly Virgin was a major contender in the music business, and Richard Branson made his first million. He had started off advertising cheap records in the ladder ads at the back of the NME, Melody Maker and Sounds, then opened a record shop in London selling cut price records. And now look, Virgin is everywhere, one of the largest corporate companies in the world. Not bad for an old hippie who lived on a canal boat and did business via a public telephone box at the end of the street.
Thanks to Keith Richards I had started wearing my mums silk and satin blouses, and was soon sharing Caroline’s clothes too, exotic cotton and velvet Indian blouses and smocks, along with a pair of jeans covered in leather patches which I had fashioned myself. They were genuinely old and every time new hole appeared I would sew on a new piece of coloured leather. I had another pair which I patched with exotic patterned material such as paisley. I seemed to be winning the fight between my dad and the school over my hair length, and had managed to grow it down to my shoulders and then beyond. Miraculously I managed to get four o’levels in English, English Literature, Art and Woodwork, particularly as I had left home and moved in with Caroline at this point, and had travel to the other side Manchester to take the exams. Then Caroline decided to move back home to Burnley.
I wasn’t going there, so was wondering what to do next when I bumped into Mark who I hadn’t seen for a while and he invited me to move into a flat in Crumpsall which he was sharing with a couple of mates. He was hanging round with all my old crowd from Cheetham Hill and I fit in like a glove. I still had no idea what I wanted to do with my life, so one day I rang a cool record shop on Oxford Rd called Black Sedan. It was like Virgin records in that it sold cut price albums, but it also sold some really tasty bootlegs pressed by Porky Pig. They had been open about two years, and was The go to record shop in Manchester, for the discerning hipster of the day. It was a phone call which irrevocably changed my life. They said they didn’t have any jobs there, but were opening another branch in Rochdale, and was I interested in a job there. Rochdale was the last place I thought I’d end up, all I knew of it was mills and clogs, and couldn’t see why a groovy record shop like Black Sedan was opening a shop there, but I accepted the offer.
On a gloomy November morning I got off the bus at the bottom of Drake Street and found 15 Fleece St. The shop was to be situated on the third floor, and we set about painting the stair wells and shop area black. We then hauled the record racks up the outside of the building and through the windows, and installed them in the room which was to house the sleeves. We then catalogued box after box of albums, and I was in 7th heaven. We had a grand opening on a Saturday and the flotsam and jetsam of Rochdale started to walk up the stairs into the dark mysterious shop with no windows. And they bought albums, lot’s of them albums. And I was the guy behind the counter selling them, just like the guy who knocked five shillings off my first Stones album.
I could play anything I wanted. Check out any band that I wanted. And I did. When the shop want busy, which was most of the week days, I would look through the sleeves, select an album and go and play it. I had even more choice than at Martin Jacksons and I loved it. And I was very quickly getting to know the population of Rochdale, which seemed extraordinarily full of hippies, literally hundreds of them. And they all knew each other with it being a small town. They had grown up together and got into music together.
One quiet day, a guy appeared at the top of the steps and turned right into the sleeve room. He returned to the counter shortly after, hands in his long leather coat pockets. He brushed his hair back with one hand and introduced himself as Dave Smith, said he had a head shop down Oldham Road, wanted to know what was happening with the middle floor, as he would be interested in renting it and relocating his shop. A head shop was a shop which sold hippie clothing and paraphernalia, such as joss sticks and king size rizlas and hash pipes and jewellery. I brokered a deal between him and my bosses and he moved his shop into Black Sedan and it became the shop to go to to hang out, buy hippie shit and an album And Dave Smith became a lifelong friend.
So I had my dream job, and what did I do? I left it after moving to Rochdale to be part of the crazy scene I saw before my eyes. I wanted to hitch hike to Bournemouth with beautiful women I met the day before, I wanted to go to free festivals, like Watchfield, which was offered to the organisers of the Windsor Free Festival as an alternative site, and I wanted to learn to play guitar.
Dave Smith had left his wife and moved into a commune on Oldham Rd, and I moved in too, sharing a room with him, when he was there it was the top floor. One of the guys played drums and another played guitar and we often had musicians coming round, it was an open house, with the door rarely locked. We quite often jammed into the night, which upset the neighbours somewhat. One of them being a butchers shop about three doors down. We were all vegetarians so that was a double whammy. He got up a petition to take to the council, but the old woman next door who we got on well with was pretty deaf and said she couldn’t hear a thing.
One day my friend from Manchester, Mark ,came over and while we were shooting the breeze he told me had been listening to a somebody called Patti Smith and I should check her out as would love her. He wasn’t mistaken. Man that album Horses hit me like a lightning bolt, and I played it on loop for days until Dave Edwards ran up the stairs screaming, “if you don’t take that off I’m going to throw it out of the window.” But I had seen the light, and once again the term punk rock was being bandied about in the music press. It’s still in my top ten albums of all time.
A lot of people from Rochdale spend 75 and 76 travelling round the country going to free festivals. Those two summers, particularly 76 were amazing weather wise and perfect for free festivals. At Stonehenge a sign was seen advertising the next free festival, it said Riddhu in Wales, so Dave Edwards offered to drive four of us there after looking at a map and seeing it was North Wales. We got to the small village and there wasn’t much sign of a festival, Dave said to us as he left, put your own festival on. We found a field and set up camp, waiting for developments.
There was a small stream running through the middle of the field and field and the sun beat down us, so the two girls we were with walked around naked even though we weren’t actually at a festival. We were at the wrong place. In the evening a land rover pulled up and asked if we knew where the festival was, saying they thought they and us were in the wrong place. They looked at a map and saw a place called Rayader in mid Wales and offered us a lift. We arrived in the middle of the night at an obvious festival, with tents and stoned hippies in abundance.
There was no stage but Man turned up with a small PA and played a great set of Welsh rock. I don’t remember any other bands. We went on to Rivington Pike festival near Bolton, and then came home.
Dave Smith was inspired by these festivals and was determined we should put our own festival on. He came running in one day after being out on his BSA Bantam motorbike. “I’ve found it, I’ve found it” he kept saying, “I’ve found the site for the festival, it’s perfect, it’s between Bury and Heywood, it’s called Deeply Vale”.
And so began Deeply Vale festival which has rightly found it’s place in the history of free festivals.
Chris Hewitt owned a music shop further down Oldham Rd called Tractor Music, named after the band he was managing, Tractor. Tractor used to be called The Way We Live, and I had a history with this band way before I moved to Rochdale. They were a two piece band and , recording the guitarist, Jim Milne’s songs in a small bedroom studio in Rochdale, and recorded by John Brierley, a sound engineer from Granada studios. My dad got to know him there as he provided video equipment for Granada studios. He told me about this band, and that they were about to release their first album on John Peels Dandelion label, and he was supplying John Brierley with mics for his studio. and I couldn’t believe it. They came round to my place and I was tongue tied being in the same space as bona fide rock musicians. In 1972 they changed their name to Tractor, and Martin Jackson of course got the album and played it to me They didn’t gig much as they were only a two piece and their albums were the result of multi layered double tracking by John Brierley. I had met Chris Hewitt at St Johns College when he was doing the sound for Tractor, on a rare live performance with Dave Addison, who went on to play bass with me in Accident On The East Lancs. The support band was Kelly, featuring non other than Phil Watts on drums and Phil Cawsey on bass, who now play in my band The Incurable Romantics. Chris Hewitt remains a good friend to this day, he has his own label Ozit/Morpheus and collects and rents out vintage sound equipment with belonged to all the big names in the 70’s.
Chris came round to our commune at the invitation of Dave Smith, and we sat around the kitchen table, with Dave Edwards and Andy Burgoyne, planning the first festival which we proposed would be in three weeks time. There is plenty to said about Deeply Vale on line, and in a book published by Chris Hewitt, so I wont go into detail here, but we managed to put the festival on in three weeks, and again in 77’ 78’ and 79’. I was the DJ at that first one, spinning discs from beneath the stage, the needle jumping every time somebody walked across the stage. Tony Wilson from Granada TV was there, as was Trevor Hyatt also from Granada, and other Manchester luninaries. Tony went on to create Factory Records.
From 77 onwards there was a mix of punk and hippie bands playing, which had never happened before. There were only free festivals happening at this time, there were no commercial festivals apart from Knebworth, Glastonbury had started and floundered in 1971 and wouldn’t be held again until 1982. The first Deeply Vale festival was just locals with local bands, by 79 it was on for nine days with over 20,000 people attending. With bands such as The Fall, The Ruts, Steve Hillage, Misty In Roots, Nik Turners Sphynx.
Did someone mention punk? Punk Rock, The Sex Pistols, The Bill Grundy Show, The media hype, but also a new movement blasting out the cobwebs of the last five years of mediocre rock star excess. I was still only 18 in 76’ and this rallying call got me subscribed. I cut my hair, ditched my exotic Indian clothes, sewed my flared jeans into drainpipes and found a new life as a DJ to start off with. Andy Sharrocks No Crap Disco, read my calling cards, if you want it straight don’t book me, Punk rock and reggae only, it gave me an excuse to buy records en masse and for the first time buying singles as that was what it was about as much as anything.
The first albums I got were The Stranglers and The Damned, but soon followed with everything which was coming out. It was hard to keep up with the new releases. Iggy Pop was hailed as the godfather of punk and released The Idiot and the more up tempo Lust For Life The music press were at fever pitch with all the new bands and Do It Yourself bands, starting with the Buzzcocks Spiral Scratch.
The Electric Circus opened in Manchester or the outskirts, Collyhurst to be precise, and all the punk bands played there, and a fledgling AC/DC, who I saw, along with The Clash, The Damned, The Drones, The Jam, The Boomtown Rats, The Buzzcocks, and so many others I can’t recall.
Tony Wilson had a new show on Granada called So It Goes which featured all the new punk bands. I heard John Brierley was recording a show of Iggy Pops at The Apollo and I got on board as one of his crew. I was by the monitor desk watch the adverts when a felt a tap on my arm. I looked round and it was Iggy Pop holding up a cigarette asking if I had a light. I pulled my matches out, struck one, and the head flew off somewhere, fumbling I pulled another out and it broke in half, boy did I feel like an idiot. The third one I managed to light his cigarette and he walked away, I hadn’t said a word, neither had he.
From its humble beginnings in the kitchen at Oldham Rd, Accident On The East Lancs was gig ready. The first gig we did was at Rochdale college supporting Tony Crabtree. It was a covers band, but it was a start. The name started out as a scratch band which anybody could join or leave, but had developed. Glyn McCorry sang a couple of Patti Smith numbers, and I cavorted around the stage like a cross between Jagger and Iggy. We did a few gigs in that line up, then I wanted to incorporate some of my songs into the set list. The bass player was dead against it, he just wanted to make money playing music, so he formed a duo with the guitarist who was already a seasoned pub performer. I formed a new band, and decided I wanted to make a single, so make a single I did. It was recorded at Cargo studios in Rochdale, owned and run by non other than John Brierley. It was situated over Tractor Music which had relocated to Kenyon St. Cargo studios recorded most of the up and coming alternative bands of that era, including Joy Division then New Order, The Fall , Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark, A Certain Ratio, Vinni Reilly and Durrutti Column, A Teardrop Explodes, and even Nico of Velvet Undergound fame who had relocated to Rochdale in the early 80’s. For a full band list check out the cargo website
I recorded 2 singles there and put them out on my own Roach Records label, then John Brierley asked if we wanted him to manage us (after being disastrously managed by somebody else) to which I agreed. We then recorded an album Shotguns and Hotshots which was only available on cassette which was all the rage at the time. It has been released twice on vinyl since then, once by a German label, and once by Chris Hewitt on his Ozit/Morpheus label with an extra album of live material. The band didn’t get the success I had hoped for and in 1982, fighting a spiralling heroin addiction, I left Rochdale with just a few clothes and an acoustic guitar in the back of my van.
I ended up in mid Wales on the doorstep of the woman who would become my future partner of forty years to date, although I didn’t know that at the time. Once again I was saved by music. Very quickly I befriended a drummer, Tim Hamson who was putting a band together, and I joined as vocalist, and never went back to Rochdale. The whole scene imploded within a couple of years, people being given long prison sentences, people moving out of the area, Cargo closing, Tractor Music closing, Black Sedan closing, people dying, it was a mess.
I had lost everything, my amps, PA system, disco equipment, my records, my Wurlitzer jukebox which I had in the corner of my room, my guitars. So I had to listen to what records my hosts had which included The River by Bruce Springsteen. I had avoided Bruce Springsteen up until then, he just didn’t cut the mustard with me, until The River, and I found that album really resonated with my circumstances, and I played it a lot on my own late at night, and it influenced my songwriting greatly. It inspired me to write in a completely different direction. Within a few weeks, I had written All About You and Tragedy, both on my Dirt album, and Farmyard Blues and Where You Gonna Run To featured recently on my Country Rock n Roll N Durty Blues.
The band was called Paradise Dance, Tim’s name not mine, but in keeping with other names of the day. We played a lot round the area, Ludlow, Knighton, Bishops Castle playing mainly the drummers songs. There was quite a scene in Bishops Castle, it reminded me of Rochdale when I went there with Black Sedan, only much smaller. Ronnie Lane’s ex wife Katie lived in the area and we often ended up back at her farmhouse partying till the wee hours. There were gigs every weekend it was a very healthy live music scene.
Musically for me the early 80’s and where I was living was quite devoid of great music, there were no record shops around, the nearest one being in Shrewsbury over an hours drive. I was listening to the radio for the first time in my life and picking up on stuff played on it like Tears For Fears, Culture Club, The Thompson Twins, The Eurythmics, U2. It was all ok but didn’t get my juices flowing.
Around this time The Sugarhill Gangs Rappers Delight kick started the whole rap movement, hotly followed by Grandmaster Flash’s The Message. on Sugarhill records were the kick-starters of rap music, and I found myself digging both of these records, then White Lines, then they were no more, but a load of rappers came after them, and I had no interest in their egocentric misogynistic gangster glamourising words. It wasn’t my world and I didn’t aspire to it.
I moved to London for 18 months and got back into my old ways. The intention was play and record music with a guitarist I had met called Phil Dobbin at Tim Hampsons place, when he came up for a party. He and Tim used to play in a band together called The Tremors, when they both lived in London. We didn’t do anything except get stoned, but he did turn me on to Tom Waits big style, a passion a still have to this day. Tom has certainly had a big influence on my writing, giving me confidence to try things I might have otherwise not have had the confidence to present to other people.
I moved back to Wales in December 84 and said goodbye for good to heroin. I got a one single deal on the Vibes and Vibes record label which was primarily a reggae label, but wanting to diversify. The Song was called Love Is, but was put out as I Believe In Love as Citizen 88, which featured Phil Dobbin on guitar, who now lived in Rugby and had also cleaned up. The single went nowhere fast with no marketing done on it at all.
I was adrift musically at this point, nothing new floating my boat, and something was telling me to check out a genre of music which I really didn’t like – Country!!! The Midlands had quite a thriving country scene going, probably still has, and I had a vision of forming a country band to play the circuit. As I said there were no record shops so I joined a record club, a mail order club, where you had to buy at least one album a month. As I didn’t know diddly squat about country I thought I could educate myself by buying a few albums by artists I had never heard of like Steve Earle, Lyle Lovett and Dwight Yoakham, who were a part of a genre called new country, later to morph into alt country.
I bought Exit O by Steve Earle and it was one of those familiar lightning bolt moments again. I suddenly got country, and that album really resonated with me. The following year Copperhead Rd came out and I never looked back. He is without doubt one of my favourite artists of all time. He also inspired me to start delving back into the history of country, listening to stuff I would never have touched with a bargepole in the past. Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard, Lefty Frizell, Hank Thompson, Waylon Jennings, Don Williams, and of course Hank Williams. I also discovered Townes Van Zandt, who I adore as a songwriter, he also has one of the haunting voices ever.
The country band didn’t materialise, I couldn’t find anybody else into country. Around this time I started delving back into the blues too, and apropos to a previous statement in this blog , I checked out Muddy Waters for the first time as an artist in his own right instead of listening to covers by The Rolling Stones and Johnny Winter and other such people. I bought old blues avidly, my favourites being Howlin’ Wolf and John Lee Hooker, but so many others out there, many whom just played on street corners or in juke joints. A lot of the names I knew because of The Stones and Canned Heat, Eric Clapton etc. And that was it, I had found my staple diet of music - country and blues, and since then I have never searched for anything new to tickle my fancy.
I stopped listening to mainstream radio in the 90’s, I stopped reading the current music press, I heard of things on the grapevine like Nirvana and I even bought Nevermind. It wasn’t a lightning bolt moment though. I haven’t had one of those since Steve Earle. I educated myself on country and blues, immersed myself in the two genres and excluded all other genres in my quest for knowledge.
I started this blog because I was alive when every new music phenomena fad whatever you want to call it came along and it all helped shape me into the person I became. Music was solely responsible for my philosophy on life, my dress codes, my downfalls my redemption my own songwriting.
Nobody influenced me as much as the bands I worshipped , whether that is good or bad I don’t’ know. But what I do know, is there will never be another time of musical creativity as there was between the early 1960’s and the early 90’s. People can argue there are great current and upcoming bands, but they’ll never help change the social fabric of society or fashions like the bands used to.
It’s all been done and whatever comes now is just an imitation of everything which came in those years. Which isn’t a bad thing, imitation is the greatest form of flattery I think the saying goes. And for the record I now dress like Freewheelin’ Franklin from The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers, I’ve never been a chino and loafer man.
And my last note is, I don’t think a great singer is one who can hold a high note for a minute of so or warble up and down the scales, I don’t think a great guitarist is one who can play a million notes in a second, I think great guitarists and singers are the ones who put feeling into what they play and sing. Miss the note but feel it and convey that feeling.
But that is just my opinion, I expect everybody has an opinion on the subject
My ten lightening bolt moments and favourite albums
Rolling Stones No 2 - The Rolling Stones1964
Beggars Banquet – The Rolling Stones1968
Ssssh Ten Years After 1969
In Search Of Space Hawkwind 1972
Ziggy Stardust David Bowie 1972
Catch A Fire Bob Marley And The Wailers 1973
Horses Patti Smith 1975
Rattus Norvegicus 1977
The River Bruce Springsteen 1980
Exit 0 Steve Earle 1987
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