In 1969 we were bothered, bewildered, but still bewitched by
the Beatles. John had embarked on his
dead-end solo career, Paul was on a desperately controlling mission to keep the
dream alive, Ringo was, as always, going with the flow… The only one who seems now to have had any
forward-pointing focus was George Harrison.
I was marooned, geographically and musically. My band had broken up but was contractually
obliged to go through the death throes in Italy. I’d entered into a mistaken marriage which
left me, I suppose, emotionally marooned too.
Records seemed my route to salvation.
Just then, Paul invented Apple Records, launching it with
Mary Hopkins’ delightfully charming ‘Those Were The Days’ and then following up
with two superb albums: James Taylor’s first, about which I’ve previously
blogged, and this one by Jackie Lomax, produced by George, with a stellar cast of backing musicians. It’s
probably available online if you want to have a listen, I can’t be bothered to
find a link. If you can’t either, you’ll
just have to take my word for it: this is interregnum pop at its very
best. I’ll have to explain that.
Popular music has always been an industry, and as such
governed by the laws of industrial economics, which operate to drive quality
down to the lowest common denominator.
It happened to jazz, swing, rock’n’roll, disco … the best was forced out
by the worst. Of course, there’ve always been swerves around
the outside curve, which I’ve kept an ear open for; but ‘the best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate
intensity.’ But there was that brief
break when nobody knew what was going on or who was in charge – and some
wonderful things popped up out of the vacuum.
We’d been playing the ‘random record’ game, whereby you point at a CD or an LP in the stack, eyes closed, and have to listen to it. Last night Z came up with Gill Scott-Heron’s last CD; tonight I fished this out. Not my original vinyl – when my bandmate Andy returned from Italy a few months after me, penniless and with a family in tow, he had hardly any music, so, having got a job in the meantime, I gave him my copy and bought another.
We’d been playing the ‘random record’ game, whereby you point at a CD or an LP in the stack, eyes closed, and have to listen to it. Last night Z came up with Gill Scott-Heron’s last CD; tonight I fished this out. Not my original vinyl – when my bandmate Andy returned from Italy a few months after me, penniless and with a family in tow, he had hardly any music, so, having got a job in the meantime, I gave him my copy and bought another.
That’s probably why I count it as influential.
