Remembering 2018

Being a rock music lover, I try to take a moment to remember some of the greats that passed last year and for that thanks go to the website Ultimate Classic Rock dot com for helping me out here. As time goes by more and more rockers pass as well so that the list seems to be getting smaller over the years. I will remember each of those that I knew well in turn. Also gives me a chance to watch them strut their stuff in their prime. They were great!!

Marty Balin

Marty started Jefferson Airplane and was THE singer of the late 1960's. Never a Frank Sinatra but he and Grace Slick out in front always made me tingle. They were so good together that it surprised me to read (in both Grace's and Marty's) autobiographies that they'd never well you know had relations together. Grace had apparently had relations with everyone in the band.... except Marty. Maybe that's why he quit after Volunteers, maybe not. He was a great though and I will miss him.... and in fact I will probably put on a JA record onto my newly acquired turntable right now.

Danny Kirwan

Danny was one of the awesome guitar lineup that was the original Fleetwood Mac. Or rather to give it it's full name Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac Featuring Jeremy Spencer. Danny was a Peter Green protege and PG wanted him in the band for when he wanted to just stretch out and jam. Jeremy Spencer mostly played slide and loved the old blues guys and didn't want any of that so Peter got Danny in and they were just awesome together. He wrote a lot of Mac's tunes of the times when he arrived, still a teenager. And that is how I will remember him for he had a sad life later on.

Just listen to him and Peter Green go though. Just electric.

Otis Rush

What a guitarist. Not much more that I can add for although I loved how he played I sadly don't know much about him other than from what I picked up listening to his work on tunes I'd first heard from mainly English blues players.

Fast Eddie Clarke

Is it fashionable to like Motorhead? Not sure as people sneer at their down and dirty heavy metal but the metal heads love them. Why? Well of course who doesn't like Lemmy? He was dirty, drunk, fun and funny. He could play too and he wanted to play loud and fast. So he needed a loud and fast guitarist and who better than Fast Eddie? I don't care what people think, I love them!!

Ed King

I think I've written about Lynyrd Skynyrd's visit to my home town Southend on Sea supporting Golden Earring and playing their first album. That must have been in 1974. They were brilliant of course but I was more fazed about a really cute girl that I had been trying to meet whom I saw backstage with one of the cuter guitarists than Ed King. Talk about devastated. Mind you as I said the band were brilliant. Ed quit reasonably early so avoided the plane crash which wiped out the early band, as he didnt like touring apparently. Can't imagine why. That girl was really cute.

Ed wrote a lot of the tunes including Sweet Home Alabama where he played lead, and truly fantastic lead solos they were. In fact I recently watched a YouTube video of an early Skynyrd show and it was all Ed playing solos. Not the other two so much. Here's a 1974 video from You Tube from a show in Germany promoting the tune as their new single. Fantastic playing by Ed.

RIP all you guys.

Winding Down...

I mentioned towards the end of my previous blog post that many old rockers are dying out bit by bit.  Being 61 myself, I suppose that's about right seeing as most of the guys I grew up with and loved were older than me so are just about starting to hit that 3 score and 10 number quoted in the Bible as being man's lot.  It doesn't help though when it happens.

This year so far we've seen Lemmy, David Bowie and most recently Paul Kantner and Signe Anderson from Jefferson Airplane on the same day of all coincidences.

I wasn't that hit by Lemmy's passing as he'd had a notoriously high profile life of supreme excess.  But he still made it past 70 and I've been a fan from long hair and greatcoat days in the late 1960's.  I first came across him as bass player and sometime singer for space rock band Hawkwind whom I loved to distraction.  He was the guy in long greasy black hair pounding away on one side of the stage banging his head up and down.  

Not a mind picture that my mum would have appreciated for sure but I didn't care.  When asked about whether any girls liked the band, Lemmy's response was that the audience was 'just a bunch of scruffy geezers in greatcoats'.  That's what I remember about the time too.  Audiences were pretty much all scruffy geezers in greatcoats, me too. Virtually no girls.  

RIP Lemmy.

David Bowie to my mind was OK.  I wasn't a huge fan really.  I'd seen him in the late 1960's when he was called David Jones at an open air concert next to Southend Airport where Edgar Broughton headlined (and produced the wonder single 'Out Demons Out').  He had long blond hair back then and sang folk songs of dubious quality.  

Something must have happened for the next time I heard of him was on Top of the Pops when he showed up in full glamour gear and make up.  I can't remember what song he sang, Star Man maybe, but I didn't think much of him although my friends said his band were awesome.  Certainly the late Mick Ronson was a fantastic guitarist.  

Fast forward 20 years and a lot of those ho-hum bands sounded a lot better when compared to the current batch (this must be something everyone goes through.  The bands you love as a young person stay with you forever.  All else afterwards pales by comparison).  So I picked up on Bowie and found that a lot of his stuff was really, really good.  So Viv and I went to see him during his final, farewell tour when Ziggy Stardust would be forever put to rest (he wasn't of course!) in the late 1980's.  It was at Nassau Colliseum on Long Island.  Great show.  We were 5 rows back in the middle too (thanks Patrick for getting us the tickets).

No glam nor glitter either.  RIP David Bowie.

Jefferson Airplane was my band.  I just loved them to bits.  From the dopey folky beginnings to the more rocky, popular times.  They broke up in 1972 at the peak of their powers when the various groupings within the group went in different directions.  Hot Tuna and Jefferson Starship.  Both new bands were great too at the start.  

The JA tunes that were the best were the band collaborations which meant that in the main they were written or co-written by Paul Kantner.  He wasn't a great singer or guitarist but he wrote great rabble rousing tunes.  Jan followed PK's aging band around in recent years and got to know some of them which was nice.  

Of all these aging rockers it was PK and Signe Anderson going on the same day that most got to me.  Signe pre-dated Grace Slick and left because she was going to have a baby and didn't want to tour.  Perhaps that adds to the allure.  She sang a lot of great duets with Marty Balin in the early days and I think gave the band their shape and sound that they kept forever.

RIP Paul Kantner and Signe Anderson.