Music of my Life

Please excuse the slight 'play' on a Stevie Wonder album title but I've been pursuaded to write this by someone who for some reason thinks my musical memories of the last 50 years are worth sharing with other people. It is often said that if you remember the sixties you weren't there, but that is not a view I'm prepared to accept. The memories that I'm going to write about may suggest that I'm older than I actually am but that's partly due to research I've done and one or two radio stations that specialised in music that wasn't all straight out the recording studio.

Let's put ourselves at a moment in time and see where we go from there. The transistor radio has just been launched in the UK and Jimmy Saville is broadcasting from Radio Luxembourg. For a time we were quite happy listening to his 'under the bedclothes club' even though the reception was somewhat less than perfect. On the normal radio stations, courtesy of the Beeb, we had some legendary comedy shows like the Goons, and Round The Horne, but the music on the radio wasn't going to stretch the imagination. My parents would wax lyrical about Victor Sylvester and his Orchestra and the music of Gilbert & Sullivan but the closest thing we got to jazz was the Billy Cotton Band Show. Oh and we mustn't forget two way family favourites on Sunday lunchtime.

I got so frustrated with Radio Luxembourg reception quality one evening that I started to play around with the tuning. It didn't take me long to find Voice of America. This was the American Forces radio station in Germany that broadcast big band jazz for about 45 minutes most evenings. The only band I can remember was Oliver Nelson's Band but this was what first aroused my interest in Jazz.

We moved on from this and found ourselves in the 'swinging sixties'. We started off in two camps (sorry the word camp has come to mean something else), the 'Elvis' camp or the 'Cliff' camp, and then we got in to the 'Beatles' or the 'Stones' and then we got into Mods who seemed to like soul and reggae, as well as the Who, and the Rockers, who were mostly in to blues, rock and subsequently heavy metal. Somewhere in between these last two groups were hippies. To be honest it was a bit confusing and there were parts of it that you were better off forgetting, or disappearing into a drug/alcohol induced haze. However, we were all thrown in to the summer of love and a truer split was between those who were in to toleration and living with others, and those who were simply inheriting prejudices from their parents. I once heard it suggested that those who were involved in the hippy culture eventually become bigoted and/or prejudiced like their parents and those who had inherited their parents way of seeing things saw the light and adopted the hippy way of tolerance and love for all. Sorry, brief political commentary, back to the music.

The sixties were my teenage years and my memories were mostly Motown and mainstream pop with groups such as those mentioned above but also the surfng craze with the Beach Boys and Jan and Dean and the Stax artists like Otis Redding and Booker T and the MG's. I briefly remember the Pirate Radio era from when we had a 'family' holiday near Clacton. Somewhere in these years was also exposure to people who are now regarded as Jazz legends, Jimmy Smith and Wes Montgomery. I did see the Who a couple of times and have to confess to getting slightly board with watching Keith Moon destroy a perfectly good drum kit. I also managed to see Stevie Wonder in Bristol in what was then known as the Locarno. I've got definte memories of seeing the Beatles as special guests on someone else's tour and I saw Roy Orbison several times. This was when I was still a bit too young to go to concerts without a parent for company. I also managed to see Oscar Peterson and Errol Garner both of whom left a lasting impression with me and I still marvel at what they played particularly Errol Garner.

At this point the 'british blues boom' was about to begin and as luck would have it I missed the beginning of it. It was one of those strange situations where although the people I mixed with were all about three years older than me so I could get into pubs without any trouble, those same people didn't go into the City of Bristol to the clubs were the live music was happening. Even then the city bars and clubs were mostly inhabited by the University set and those that didn't go to University didn't go into the city bars and clubs where the music was happening. I gradually got into the blues thanks to someone I used to walk home from school with who was a big John Mayall fan and was busy collecting as many blues records as he could get his hands on.

Towards my mid teens we had the late great John Peel on Radio One playing music my mother definitely did not like. She liked it even less when the 'great unwashed', as she called them, would come round and listen to it in my bedroom. We'd spend hours listening to this new blues and rock music to the point at which I was once so tired I slept through a Led Zeppelin concert on the radio. There was also the occasion when I'm trying to wire extra speakers up to get a surround sound feel and cut straight through a live wire with an ordinary pair of scissors. Ouch!

I first got into Neil Young, thanks to JP, and still regard 'Cowgirl In The Sand' as one of the all time great tracks. However, I was mostly into UK groups at this time and was not listening to much from USA. These were the days when many english rock bands could somehow be linked to John Mayall's Bluesbreakers, we all used to try and scibble our own version of Pete Frame's Rock Family Trees on the bedroom wall or at least on the back of an A2 size poster of Che Guevara that most of us had.

There were some terrific bands around and in amongst all the hype and prejudice about what made a good record you'd occasionally get a surprise. As a rule those of us into the Blues/Rock thing didn't listen to 'Pick of the Pops' but you could begin to believe there was a god when things like Fleetwood Mac's 'Albatross' got to number one. In those days we spent quite a few weekends in South Wales. The youth club I belonged to, had a farm house near Crickhowel in the Black Mountains, and we'd all load ourselves into cars and a minibus on a Friday night and disappear for the weekend. Crickhowel was one of those wonderful places that had more pubs than any other type of commercial establishment. One or two people managed to drink their way round the town but you needed to be able to hold your drink well. The reason for going to the farm house was usually so we could go caving, climbing or canoeing but with so many other distractions these worthy pursuits sometimes ended up as just the excuse to get away from parents, and the actuality of what happened on these weekends was often very different. Anyway, there was this one particular weekend that I remember, a bank holiday, when we decided to to go over to Pant Mawr. There are a couple of caves over that way but when it's Spring and the sun is shining and Fleetwood Mac have just released 'Man of The World' the idea of going underground and getting wet and dirty somehow don't appeal. We had found this little area near Ystradfellte where the river wound its way round a beautiful patch of lush green grass. So anway there we all are a mixed bunch of teenagers with time to spare and no discernable adult control...... In true literary style the dots are supposed to allow your imagination to take over, just make sure you've got the appropriate music playing in the background whilst your mind wanders.

These were the years of Cream and Jimi Hendrix and much more. The tours that went round the major concert halls would have two major acts and a number of supporting acts all doing three or four numbers. It was one of these tours where I first saw Hendrix but I need to research who else was also on that tour. Anyway the first big celebration of all this wonderful new music was the Bath Blues Festival. Living in Bristol this was an absolute dream and an event that was too good to miss. Held on the Bath Cricket Ground the lineup included John Mayall and several bands that were derivatives of the Bluesbreakers including Fleetwood Mac. In those days Fleetwood Mac had two ways of playing, there was the normal lineup fronted by Peter Green and supported mostly by Danny Kirwan and then there was the version fronted by Jeremy Spencer doing his Elmore James bit. This latter lineup was occasionnally known as Earl Vince and the Valiants. The other thing that sticks in my mind from that day was Liverpool Scene. Their performance of 'I've got the Fleetwood Mac Chicken Shack John Mayall Can't Fail Blues' was superb and guitarist Andy Roberts was much better than he ever got credit for.