We asked Daryl Easlea, author of Whatever Happened to Slade? to write about the song which definitively immortalised Slade in Britain.
For many, there is but one image of Slade, whether it is a genuine image or imagined. It was captured in a television studio in West London in 1973, and it involves balloons, fake snow and four men in their late 20s stomping around singing a modern folk song.
The performers look like a very seventies take on something quite Dickensian: frontman Noddy Holder as an ebullient be-mutton-chopped gang leader, with guitarist Dave Hill as an Artful Dodger and bass player Jim Lea and drummer Don Powell lurking behind them, like two malevolent street urchins primed to mete out retribution.
The song they are playing is called ‘Merry Xmas Everybody’, and its beguiling blend of hope, nostalgia and cheer, struck a chord with the people of Great Britain who propelled it to that year’s Christmas number one, and in many respects, it began the modern – and uniquely British – obsession with the record that tops the charts at the festive season and all its attendant ballyhoo.
Slade fans gathering outside Earls Court ahead of a Slade concert there in the Summer before their Christmas hit. 'We were real big time now,' Jim Lea said. MIRRORPIX
Although producer and songwriter Phil Spector had (uncommercially, at the time) trailblazed within the festive pop genre in 1963 with his album A Christmas Gift for You, it was not until John Lennon and Yoko Ono recorded ‘Happy Xmas (War Is Over)’ in 1971 with, ironically, Spector as producer, that the concept of a modern, contemporary, yuletide song with gravitas was entertained. Although Elvis Presley had offered ‘Blue Christmas’ in 1957, and several Christmas albums, The Beatles – who enjoyed four festive chart-toppers – thought so little of the form, they had honoured the holidays only by making flexi-discs of skits and song snatches strictly for their fan club between 1963 and 1969.
From ‘Happy Xmas (War Is Over)’ onwards, an open (festive?) season began. As an ex-Beatle was experimenting with the form, all the acts that looked up to Lennon clamoured to get their own yuletide sound.
That was one factor in Slade’s festivity: another was simply proving family wrong. Kathleen Ganner, the mother-in-law-to-be of Slade bassist, violinist and co-writer, Jim Lea, thought that Slade should write their own Christmas hit. When she teased Lea at the breakfast table that ‘White Christmas’ had sold more than any Slade hit, he was disgruntled, stating that Slade were a rock band, not a Christmas band, but she planted a seed within him. Slade’s manager Chas Chandler, too, had the idea for the group to make a Christmas record. With all these factors at play, the band’s songwriters Noddy Holder and Jim Lea went to work.
‘Merry Xmas Everybody’ was an amalgam of melodies and songs they had written and discarded several years before. Lea wrote the majority of the melody and came up with the ‘so here it is’ refrain. Holder’s part was based on a song he had toyed with since 1967 called ‘Buy Me a Rocking Chair’.
The special ingredient, of course, is Holder’s lyrics. Written one night after a heavy session at the band’s Bilston local, The Trumpet, Holder went back to his mum and dad’s house and sat in the kitchen and jotted down a list of all the obvious things people associate with Christmas. It is an accessible, everyman celebration of the festive season. So simple, it was akin to a nursery rhyme. With lines about the anticipation, families arriving, dismissive yet jiving grannies, references to ‘Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer’, ‘I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus’, snow, and the overall optimism, ‘Merry Xmas Everybody’ is undoubtedly Holder’s greatest lyric.
Because of schedules, the group couldn’t record the song in London, so, in September 1973 – during a freak heatwave – Slade went into the Record Plant studios on 321 West 44th Street, New York, and recorded their contribution to the festive canon. The initial version committed to tape was rejected by the group; another was recorded not in the studio itself, but in the adjacent hallway, to get the suitable acoustics. A harmonium that was being used by John Lennon, who’d been in another studio in the complex recording his Mind Games album, was utilised at the suggestion of Lea, giving the song its most distinctive introduction.
Released three months later, on 7 December 1973, ‘Merry Xmas Everybody’ was to become Slade’s biggest hit single, and the one for which they will forever be remembered. It crowned 1973 for them, a year of the highest highs and plummeting lows, selling over a million copies, with 300,000 copies shifted on its day of release alone, and becoming the first Christmas record to enter the UK chart at number one. ‘Merry Xmas Everybody’ was the absolute view from the summit, their crowning glory. Since its initial twenty-five-week run in the charts as 1973 became 1974, it has been reissued frequently. In the era of downloading and subsequently, streaming, it has revisited the Top 75 each year since 2007.
REPUPROSED WITH FESTIVE AFFECTION BY DARYL EASLEA FROM WHATEVER HAPPENED TO SLADE? WHEN THE WHOLE WORLD WENT CRAZEE
Blog cover image is by Michelle 8bitnorthxstitch. You can find Slade mugs here!
But more importantly, we’ve lost a great friend at Omnibus. David was wonderful company, always enthusiastic and witty (as befits someone who was also an excellent comedy writer), and he will be greatly missed by everyone here."
]]>An evening with Pauline Murray at The Holy Grale
Leeds - 11th September
Book signing at Jumbo Records
Manchester - 11th September
An evening with Pauline Murray at YES
Glasgow - 13th September
An evening with Pauline Murray at the Garage
Preston - 14th September
Book signing at Action Records, 1pm
Liverpool - 14th September
Book signing at 81 Renshaw, 6pm
Bristol - 15th September
An evening with Pauline Murray at Bristol Rough Trade
London - 17th September
An evening with Pauline Murray at Stereo
Portsmouth - 18th September
An evening with Pauline Murray at Wedgewood Rooms
Nottingham - 19th September
Book signing at Nottingham Rough Trade, 1pm
Birmingham - 19th September
An evening with Pauline Murray at Kitchen Garden Café
Newcastle - 21st September
An evening with Pauline Murray at The Great North
Manchester - 11th November
Louder Than Words festival
We are very excited to be publishing So It Started There, the memoir of Nick Banks from British band Pulp. Nick is going on a book tour in September and October, with a series of 'In conversation' events featuring very special guest interviewers.
Brighton - The Space (Sold out)
12th September
Manchester - Deansgate Waterstones (Sold out)
22nd September
Nick Banks in conversation with Amazing Radio DJ Shell Zenner.
Sheffield - Bear Tree Records
23rd September
Book signing
Glasgow - Monorail Music
25th September
Nick Banks in conversation with journalist Alan Woodhouse.
Leeds - Jumbo Records
26th September
Nick Banks in conversation with Guardian journalist Dave Simpson.
Birmingham - Waterstones
27th September
Nick Banks in conversation.
Liverpool - Oh Me Oh My, with Waterstones
28th September
Nick Banks in conversation with Roy Boulter of The Farm.
Nottingham - Rough Trade
1st October
Nick Banks in conversation with journalist Matt Mead.
London - Rough Trade East
5th October
Nick Banks in conversation with author and journalist Sylvia Patterson.
Bristol - The Trinity Centre
10th October
Nick Banks in conversation with Duncan Steer.
Bath - Widcombe Social Club
11th October
Nick Banks in conversation with Duncan Steer.
Sheffield - Off The Shelf Festival
19th October
Nick Banks in conversation.
Lincoln - Lincoln Book Festival
20th October
Nick Banks in conversation with Guy Mankowski
Manchester - Louder Than Words festival
12th November
We are starting with a limited selection of bands and line-ups, on Mugs, T-Shirts and Phone Cases.
Pete Frame's Rock Family Trees are a vast resource, so we can make merch for all kinds of bands.
We have launched with a small number of bands. The books are huge, so we are missing many.
You can pitch a band and line-up for inclusion! You will be subscribed to our newsletter and we will do our best to tell you when it is available. You can browse a list of bands included in the books here.
]]>
Queer Blues is about the musicians - many massive stars in their day - who performed and recorded blues in the 1920s and 1930s. It is an enthralling work of history and music writing, with an extraordinary cast of characters including Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith and Porter Grainger. They combined soulful blues with vibrant performance and direct and explicit lyrics, often with LGBTQ themes and stories. If you haven't read one of Darryl's books before, prepare to be amazed by the level of research and vivid storytelling.
I can't hope to communicate the book's many nuanced and interconnecting stories and themes in a blog but narrowing my focus to Britain helps to introduce some of them. While North America is the setting for the main action in Queer Blues, Britain plays an important role.
In 1923 Blues hopped across the pond in the form of a dance; at first the Brits understood the blues primarily as a dance comparable to the fox-trot. Dance teacher Morry M. Blake left his New York studio and decamped to London to introduce the moves, penning a few instructional paragraphs on it in the press. The dance had staying power perhaps in part because it found royal favour, with the Prince of Wales and his brother the Duke of Kent, both bisexual men, said to be 'so fond of it that they make special requests for it at every ball they attend'.
Prominent Blues artists too were soon taking hold in Britain. American Blues singer Sophie Tucker proved to be a big hit when she performed in London in 1922. She was such a success that in 1926 she sold over a million copies of her recording of 'Some of These Days', an unprecedented number at the time. Indeed, Tucker made such an impression that Paul McCartney's reference to her during the Beatles' Royal Variety Performance in 1963 provoked a perceptive response from the crowd.
American singer and actress Ethel Waters was also a hit. She toured the world in 1929, 'singing the low-down blues... in all the gay capitals of the old world'. She scored big at the London Palladium and at the Cafe de Paris near to Leicester Square; The Reporter described how she 'immediately captivated palladium audiences....'
Darryl explores how the fashion for effeminacy travelled alongside blues and jazz music to Britain, often recorded for posterity through dissaproving voices in the press... One Harley Street physician complained that the British male was now 'a soft, degenerate, spat-wearing, cigarette-smoking mollycoddle...' The 'Pansy Craze' was surging in America at the time, particularly in urban centres like Harlem and San Francisco.
Queer Blues explores the hostility that Black American artists faced at times in Britain, particularly after World War One, including concerns over 'Black artists fraternising with white patrons'. Indeed, Darryl records the shocking fact that the Empire venue announced that it would erect a rail to stop Black musicians leaving the stage.
Staying on the theme of Blues in Britain, check out this wonderful video of American Blues guitarist and singer Sister Rosetta Tharpe performing at a disused railway station in Manchester in 1964.
And why not have a listen to Darryl's playlist for the book.
BOOK LAUNCH INFO
The penultimate song of the show was the heart-rending, eponymous 'Both Sides, Now'. In the book Joni tells Malka about her inspirations for the song, which she describes as a 'meditation on fantasy and reality'. Joni Mitchell was 23 when she wrote it and she describes the ridicule she received from people who dismissed it as somehow beyond her years. She muses, 'It was a song that I think I had to grow into'.
Watching her incredible 1969 performance on The Johnny Cash Show, it is clear that those detractors were totally wrong. Nonetheless, her recent Newport Folk Festival rendition is very moving and poignant. In the YouTube comments, someone reflects: 'A 23 year old wrote a song for her 78 year old self to sing.'
The story of that song is one of many candid insights in the book. We learn lots about her childhood, including about night-time dreams of composing music on keyboards ('And I also dreamed I could drive a car') and the "Fads and Fashion" column she penned in a school paper in which, as you might guess, she started fads and stopped them.
There are many such stories. I loved her account of seeing Elvis' show in Vegas and admiring his boyish, playful, goofy behaviour, noting how he made fun of himself. Or her pleasure in sitting down late at night and tuning her guitar into an unfamiliar tuning, passing her fingers up and down the neck in a sort of mathematical fashion, messing around and exploring.
They are wide-ranging and deep conversations, touching on mythology and creativity. There are stories about poetry, Love Actually, crop rotation. The interviews are set alongside lyrics and a selection of Joni Mitchell’s paintings. Now available in paperback.
You can preview the first few pages of the book online here.
Only time will tell whether Metallica's 72 Seasons promotion, which seems like an original concept to me, will have a similar effect. If you go to the box office and get a seat, let us know how you find it!
]]>You can find the mix as a playlist on Spotify by clicking here and on YouTube by clicking here.
SPIN Magazine recently published an article about Listening to the Music the Machines Make, describing it as follows:
I think the manual is both timely and over-due. The language around mental health and our understanding have dramatically changed recently, but struggles with poor mental health have been present in the music books we have published throughout the last fifty years.
Perhaps the most obvious and explicit way mental health has traditionally featured in music books is in the form of stage fright. A quick trawl through our catalogue brings up hundreds of references to it.
Musicians have traditionally been without recourse to professional help when dealing with stage fright, relying on coping strategies discovered through the school of hard knocks.
In the first part of his autobiography, Salad Daze, Wayne Hussey has a clear-eyed view of this:
'For most musicians playing live is our life-blood, our pulse, as essential to us as air, but we all suffer with stage fright to varying degrees and all have our own idiosyncratic and sometimes peculiar ways of dealing with it.'
Wayne goes on to note that some have sadly not been able to continue to perform.
Jimmy Webb vividly described the feeling of stress and anxiety he experienced performing on television in his memoir:
'One reaches the point where the nerves are trying to climb up through the skin and escape the body. This is stage fright.'
Sifting through our books, it seems like stage fright can be hugely impactful in the early stages of a career. The terror of facing an audience for the first time could be too much - both Jim Morrison and Robert Johnson at times chose to perform facing away from the audience. In his autobiography Loudon Wainwright III reveals that while performing in coffee shops his anxiety ultimately influenced his performing style:
'I physicalised my fear into strange, jerky body gyrations, replete with leg lifts, facial grimaces, and lots of tongue wagging'.
Musicians' attempts at self-medication through drugs and alcohol are, of course, also present.
There are examples of artists overcoming stage fright due to increased self-confidence or some change in group personnel. In his biography of ABBA Carl Magnus Palm notes that Frida, for instance, enjoyed 'a sudden and quite dramatic release from her stage fright' during a particularly fulfilling 30-date cabaret tour in 1972. Frida is quoted as saying that 'all of a sudden I just felt, "now the pieces have fallen into place", and that made me feel secure for the first time'.
Touring and Mental Health: The Music Industry Manual sets out to offer solid guidance and resources for dealing with mental health struggles, including tools, artist testimonies and clinical expertise.
The manual includes a chapter dealing directly stage fright, or Music Performance Anxiety (MPA) as it is known clinically. Written by Professor Dianna T. Kenny (PhD, FAPsS), the chapter is a thorough examination of MPA. It offers guidance and advice, as well as an engaging examination of The Band's 1970 song 'Stage Fright', which paints a vivid picture of the emotional difficulties experienced by popular musicians in the practice of their craft.
The artists that benefitted from Harvey's guidance include Tim Rice, Andrew Lloyd Webber and 10cc, Tony Christie, Barclay James Harvest, Sad Café and The Chameleons.
Harvey's career also took in managing the snooker legends Alex 'Hurricane' Higgins and Jimmy 'Whirlwind' White.
I'm Into Something Good is a hilarious, moving and page-turning account of an extraordinary life.
How did you get into photography?
My parents couldn't afford to buy me a motocross bike. The next best thing was to take photographs of them. We lived near an army base, which also served as a great place for meets and I would go on Fridays and Saturdays.
My first camera, which my parents bought me for £40, was a Russian Zenit. It was built like a tank. To take good motocross photos you have to be quick, in the moment and creative with focus and perspective - like photographing at a gig.
Around that time I entered a photographic contest put on by Shell, where my father worked. I went in for the children's category, but was chosen as runner-up in the adults category. One of the judges was David English of the Daily Mail, and he gave me a nice quote. It was really encouraging and I started to get some confidence.
In 1975 and 1976 the punk thing was just starting and I used to go and take photos at gigs at my local venue, the Guilford Civic Hall. I saw lots of different groups, from UFO to Dr Feelgood and the first Police tour.
How did you become the Jam's photographer in 1982?
I met Rick Buckler in 1979 through his twin Pete, who had a band called STATIC that I took photographed. I was living in Woking, where Rick is from, developing photos in a Kodak lab.
Rick was very interested in photography and so I started to develop his films. We became really good mates and I spent a lot of time around at his place. Bruce Foxton and Paul Weller also wanted to develop their films.
In December 1981 Paul had asked Rick whether he thought I would do an cover shoot for The Gift. Rick rang me up and told me to come up to AIR Studios at Oxford Circus in London to take some pictures. That was the start of my role as the Jam's photographer in 1982, which included taking pictures for fanzines and other publications. I was told by the band that my remit was 'fly on the wall'.
Tell us about shooting the cover of The Gift
Paul Weller thought that the cover could feature them running, inspired by the album track Running on the Spot. At first I wanted to take photos from a pick-up truck driving ahead. But that wasn't feasible, so I took photos of them running on the spot. Whilst scouting locations I found the studio roof.
I thought the designers would cut around their outlines, so that the background wouldn't matter. Instead they put three bands of colour and things on top, so you can see scaffolding and things behind them!
They were all interested in the shoot. I remember showing contact strips to Paul that day and he liked how they looked.
What was it like being a 'fly on the wall'?
Once you were in the band's bubble, you got complete access. I would travel on the tour bus and would often share a room with Rick. It was a great honour to have that kind of relationship with the band.
They were great company and a laugh. I only remember overhearing a few really serious conversation between the three of them, and I would walk away because I felt it wasn't right to listen in on that.
The band all loved having their pictures taken and they were very interested in photography, which was really lucky. We even formed a Jam Camera Club. You could spot a member by these little oil button badges that changed colour when you pressed them, which I think we got in Amsterdam.
I was only 21 at the time and had a lot of responsibility. I remember telling the tour bus driver where to stop whilst driving over the Snake Pass in the Peaks so that we could do an impromptu shoot.
Rick was very supportive of my photography and he even put down a deposit for a medium format camera for me. I remember taking photos at a Jam gig in Brixton in early 1982 when there was talk of the National Front turning up to disrupt the gig. Rick looked nervous when he saw me going into the middle of the crowd with the expensive new camera... so he asked Big Joe, one of the Jam's minders, to accompany me!
How was life on the road?
The back of the tour bus was the party area, with a stereo and TV. We played a lot of music. Buckler had been given a Sony Pressman, which you could record music onto. Soon everyone had one and we were all making mixtapes.
I remember Paul saying, 'Has anyone got any Clint Eastwood and General Saint?'. After it finished, the next song on that cassette was 'Homeward Bound' by Simon & Garfunkel... I remember Weller saying 'Get that shit off!'
Travelling with the Jam was amazing because the band was so big. Music felt rationed in society at the time and so the big bands became huge. The Jam were very benevolent and loyal towards their fans. They used to let people in during the soundcheck. Even though things got more difficult as the band got bigger - they would find fans in broom cupboards! - they still let people in early. The gigs were phenomenal. There was so much heat, you would see sweat flying off the band.
Can you tell us about the print that is included in the Jam 1982 special edition?
The photo was taken late February 1982 in Hammersmith, London. Someone from Polydor told us that they wanted a new photo for a folder/poster thing for the magazine Number One.
The band were recording at the Red Bus Studios, which was overlooked by these flats which I thought looked great as a backdrop. It would have been very amusing to onlookers with me shouting directions "Paul can you move up one flight, along three spaces, oh Bruce could you move three three, two along, etc. Bearing in mind that at the time these guys had been number one in the UK chart for the last three weeks.
However, the editor thought that the shot which had the yellow door as the backdrop had more impact. He was right, the poster publication did great numbers.
Thank you to Twink for speaking with us! Leave a comment if you have questions or suggestions.
Thursday 15th December 2022 - Dundee
The Jam Q&A - Featuring Rick Buckler & a documentary screening of 'The Story of The Jam: About the Young Idea' at Beat Generator Live
70 North Lindsay Street, Dundee, DD1 1PS
Doors 7.30pm
Tickets can be found here.
The End Of The Game, Albatross, Man Of The World, Then Play On & Blues Jam At Chess
This blog highlights contrasting perspectives from Peter Green and Mick Fleetwood about The End Of The Game album. It then features extracts from interviews with Peter from different eras, referencing Albatross, Man Of The World, Then Play On and Blues Jam At Chess.
Not only did the two bandmates’ perspectives differ, but their own views and recollections also changed markedly over time. So, deciding which scenario was the likeliest back then sometimes is down to guesswork.
Peter Green Founder of Fleetwood Mac devotes a chapter to Peter Green's The End Of The Game project, detailing the June-July 1970 De Lane Lea Studios sessions for Peter’s first solo album after leaving Mac.
Much that is new has come to light thanks to invaluable input from Nick Buck, keyboardist on the sessions. The edited jams selected for The End of the Game album took place towards the end of July. Zoot Money on piano joined Peter, Nick on Hammond organ, bassist Alex Dmochowski and drummer Godfrey MacLean on the penultimate July 25th into-the-night session.
For the first edition of my book Peter Green – The Biography, Zoot was the main source of information about the recording: “So I arrived at the studio at ten in the evening and just played for three or four hours. There was no structure, just an exchange of ideas, and when we finished I put on my coat and said ‘See you on vinyl.’ and left.” Zoot played on two of the album’s six tracks – 'Descending Scale' and 'Hidden Depth'.
Photographer Bruno Ducourant was also there earlier on July 25th, and remembers Peter being focused and enjoying himself. And the fact that he had asked guitarists John Moorshead and then Danny Kirwan to sit in on that same day does suggest that it might have been a somewhat different record if some of their playing had been included.
What’s more, when work on the album began in early June, Peter seemingly had an Afro-Rock percussion-led project in mind judging by the first group of musicians – and the last as it turned out – which he invited along to jam, Ginger Johnson’s African Drummers.
When released in November 1970, the album was an often wah-wah guitar-led instrumental and it received a mixed reaction. Sales were disappointing. And yet, since then some critics have come to regard it as a free-form improvisational masterpiece.
Not only have critics changed their opinions over time, so too have Peter Green and Mick Fleetwood.
For instance, in his autobiographies Fleetwood – My Life and Adventures with Fleetwood Mac (1990) and Play On (2014), he expressed rather different views about The End Of The Game.
In 1990 he recalled that the Kiln House Fleetwood Mac line-up was saddened and mystified when they first listened to the album’s weaving, meandering jams. The drummer was left wondering just what had gone wrong with his old friend. And yet in 2014 he said that on first hearing he felt bewildered and hurt.
Why hurt? Because before leaving, Mac’s leader had given him the impression that he was going to head in a radically new direction; but then on hearing the album the drummer thought that - different though it undoubtedly was - its free-form style was not that far from what Mac was playing shortly before he left.
He now felt that the band would have been quite willing to do the tracks on the album and he didn’t understand why their leader hadn’t tried to do that.
This is a perplexing viewpoint in that the tracks on the album were, of course, the outcome of spontaneous jamming between the musicians involved: the jamming bedrock often was laid down by drummer Godfrey MacLean and bassist Alex Dmochowski whose playing styles are quite different to those of Mick Fleetwood and John McVie.
Peter has since said that he didn’t feel that Mac’s hearts were in jamming and free form and, as Dennis Keane pointed out in the first edition, the crucial editing of the Madge session was all done by the leader.
This assertion about the band not really being into free-form is reinforced by the drummer himself in 1990’s Fleetwood when he recalls the six weeks in February and March 1971 when Peter replaced departed Jeremy Spencer on Mac’s US tour.
In 1990, the drummer remembered the set consisting of 'Black Magic Woman' and ninety minutes of free-form jamming which, he wrote, left the band bored stiff, even though their ex-leader’s playing was brilliant. Scared stiff was how John McVie remembered the band sometimes felt before going on stage, not knowing what they were going to play.
But talking to the NME June 16 1973 Mick recalled: “When Jeremy left, Pete played the American tour with us, it did us a lot of good. Pete didn’t want to play any set numbers so we’d just jam. Pete would force us into whatever style he wanted us to play and it jolted us out of our music. A whole set of jamming is quite difficult; with an audience there you’ve got to be entertaining and not simply self-indulgent.”
In 1998 Peter told 20th Century Guitar Magazine: “I did not insist on jamming it just happened.”
A bootleg tape of the first gig with Peter at the Swing Auditorium San Bernardino on February 19th has a set including numbers like Danny Kirwan’s 'Station Man', 'Tell Me All The Things You Do', 'Dragonfly', and Christine McVie’s rendition of 'I’d Rather Go Blind' and 'Get Like You Used To Be', plus the band’s 'Purple Dancer'.. On 'Tell Me All The Things You Do' in places Mac’s calling card twin-guitars are back, and some nice Greeny phrases are there in the Etta James classic. The set ends with a percussion-driven jam.
Below, are photos taken on that tour at three gigs. One at Eastown Theatre, Detroit, 12 March, shows Peter singing. The song in question may have been ‘Black Magic Woman’ or perhaps a rock’n’roll finale to the show.
Eastown Theatre Detroit March 12 1971 Credit: Diane Cornelius
Eastown Theatre Detroit March 12 1971 Credit: Diane Cornelius
Feb/March 1971 Credit: Rick Gage
The February 10 concert was at the start of the Kiln House tour at Vancouver’s Gardens Auditorium, and recordings of which are featured on the Preaching The Blues and Madison Blues Mac CDs.
Ironically, Jeremy is on top form and the interplay between him and Danny is especially impressive on the extended intro to Mac’s high energy electric cover of Big Joe Turner’s Honey Hush.
At one point Rick McGrath referenced The End Of The Game. The whole interview was later published in local news and entertainment weekly paper The Georgia Straight (18.4.71). Here is the transcript of The End Of The Game extract of the interview:
RM: Peter’s new album, have you heard it?
MF: It’s a jam.
RM: Yeah, the whole thing.
MF: It’s not a bad jam, though.
RM: Yeah, but jams are limited. You have to have more than one imagination working.
MF: They’re not sparking off properly.
RM: There’s a couple of cuts that are highly suggestive, but there’s a few that don’t do anything for me.
JS: As far as Peter is concerned, the guitar playing is good, and some of the cuts sound like wild animals.
RM: Yeah, especially the first cut. And it’s done with a wah-wah.
MF: The whole thing is wah-wah isn’t it?
JS: Yeah, it seems that wah-wahs aren’t very popular these days.
MF: Well, Jimi Hendrix played it so well that I thought people were scared to use it after him because he played it the best. If you’re not going to do anything different, what’s the point?
So, over some forty-three years, the drummer’s perspective on the album shifted from initial qualified praise …. ‘It’s not a bad jam, though … They’re not sparking off properly’ (1971) …. to sadness about the guitarist’s playing and his misjudged free-form project (1990) …. to feeling hurt about a missed opportunity for the original band to stay together by following their leader in his new musical direction and playing on a free-form album (2014).
The guitarist’s own views about the album have also changed a great deal.
In 1994 for the first edition of Peter Green – The Biography he recalled: “There wasn’t enough there. When I was editing it, I found out that there wasn’t enough to make up a record. It was only free-form.”
Subsequently, he told journalist Cliff Jones [The Guitar Magazine January 1997] : "End Of The Game” helped a little. It taught me what was and what wasn’t possible. I made it as an experiment because I felt restricted. I’m still restricted and I can’t learn fast enough to say what I have inside .. but I’m learning again. That was the problem in the beginning, I couldn’t play the things I heard in my head. It makes you want to give up sometimes. I thought maybe I could get closer to it by doing it that way. I don’t think it worked too well.”
But in 1981 when interviewed by Serbian journalist, Dragan Kremer, for the May 1981 issue of Yugoslavian rock magazine Dzuboks [Jukebox - this insightful interview was recently translated by Misa Drezgic for his Peter Green Blues Society Facebook group] when asked for his opinion ten years after The End Of The Game’s release, the guitarist said: “I love it! It’s a superb album. The jam was incredible, the bass player [Alex Dmochowski] was excellent, you know. Recordings were great … it was recorded in England.”
Surprisingly, he also remarked that the album to him did not seem that different compared to what came before, and when asked again if he was pleased with it he said: ”Yes, pretty much. Of all albums I have recorded, I am most pleased with The End Of The Game. But, had I kept recording, I doubt that I would have made more stuff like that. [The] Album really wasn’t popular – it was a genuine underground record. There’s not many people who love it … there was no singing and all that. But I love it. Outstanding LP.”
Peter Green – Founder of Fleetwood Mac also devotes a chapter to the guitarist’s gigging during that summer 1970 at free festivals and charity events. Sometimes this was as a duo with Nick Buck on electric piano but more often it was as Peter Green & Friends with more musicians joining them.
In 1981 Dragan Kremer asked him if he didn’t want to be recognised as Peter Green at those small gigs : “Yes … it didn’t matter to me, it didn’t mean anything to me. I just didn’t care. And after a while, I made sure that no one was coming because of me, that they didn’t recognise me anymore. I saw that was possible after all.”
Asked about who played with him he said: "Alex Dmochowsky on bass. Nick Buck on electric piano. And everyone else who wanted to play, you know. That was unofficial, more like jamming.”
Guitar Player November 1994 features a wide-ranging interview with Peter by Ben Fisher which references his summer 1970 free festivals and gigs, free-form era. “…. I played a tour with just myself and Nick Buck an American guy who played electric piano. That’s when I was playing at my best. When you’re getting paid there’s too much pressure”
Some of his views about 'Albatross' and 'Man Of The World' also changed over time.
In 1981 Kremer asked if Mac’s singles were a means of exploring something new: “Yes, singles were different since they originated at the beginning of the recording process. I would say, ‘This thing ‘Albatross’, will be on the album’ but no! They would nag and nag, and then release it as a single! ‘Man Of The World’ was a track for Then Play On – but they would say this and this has to be a follow-up and then it would end up as a single. But I didn’t want to make new versions of ‘Albatross’. And then, when we finished Then Play On, the studio jams had to be added afterwards. Nevertheless it is a very good album. We loved it, we had a lot of good will for it but it did not turn out so great.”
However, Peter Green Founder of Fleetwood Mac references an interview in 1969 with Rick Sanders for Rolling Stone (14.6.1969) in which Peter said: “What I am after is atmosphere ….well… and I’ve had ideas in me for a long time that are starting to really come out now …stuff like Albatross. When we recorded that I knew it had to be a single, though the others needed a bit of persuading.”
His serene composition was one of seven tracks taped on October 6th 1968: four were Danny Kirwan songs which would be re-recorded or re-mixed for Then Play On: 'Coming Your Way', 'One Sunny Day', 'Like Crying' and 'Without You' plus 'Something Inside Of Me' and ‘Jigsaw Puzzle Blues’. 'Albatross' may have had more work done on it during the week Oct 14 -18th.
Then, interestingly, Rave magazine’s Kate Joseph interviewed the band after their October 28th 1968 Shakespeare Hotel gig in Woolwich.
She reported that they were halfway through the new album which would be very different. Peter made no specific mention of 'Albatross' as the next single. But ‘The Albatross’ was mentioned in his November Beat Instrumental column and compared to classics from his hero Hank Marvin – such as 'Apache' and 'F.B.I.' The single was released on November 22nd.
An interesting point arising from the 1981 interview is that when the guitarist said ‘And then, when we finished Then Play On, the studio jams had to be added afterwards’ did he mean that the ‘Madge’ studio jams were an afterthought and solution to fill the gap originally intended for 'Albatross' and 'Man Of The World'?
Mick Fleetwood, interviewed by David Fricke for the 2013 remastered Then Play On liner notes seemed to suggest that the Madge jams were more intrinsic to plans for the album: “Before that [i.e. experiencing and hearing West Coast influences and bands like the Grateful Dead, The Byrds, and Creedence Clearwater Revival] our version of jamming was Peter saying, ‘I’ve got some ideas. I’ll come ‘round to your living room. Let’s get a snare drum and do some stuff before we go into the studio.’ But for Then Play On we allocated time, lots of it, specifically to jam. Those pieces on the album – the ensemble rave-ups ‘Fighting for Madge’ and ‘Searching for Madge’ were off the top of even Peter’s head.”
Christopher Hjort’s Strange Brew reports that those two ‘ensemble rave-ups’ and the serene edited jam ‘Underway’ were taped in one day – June 8 1969 – plus an eerily atmospheric instrumental duet by Danny and Peter – titled ‘Danny’s Instrumental’ on the tape box.
Sadly, this Kirwan gem was not released back then. But the June 8 recording (and unabridged ‘Madge’ jams) features on The Vaudeville Years double CD and is given the title ‘The Madge Sessions – 2’. It is on YouTube as Fleetwood Mac – The Madge Session , no 2.
Lastly, the 1981 Kremer interview reveals another interesting shift relating to that well-known topic - ‘can white boys truly play the blues?’ - a perspective which differs from that which the guitarist expressed in the first edition of Peter Green – The Biography.
In 1994, the author asked Peter about the Blues Jam At Chess session – produced by Mike Vernon and Marshall Chess. This resulted in a brilliant double-album blues timepiece on Blue Horizon first released in late 1969; and a soon-to-be-published photographic book Fleetwood Mac in Chicago: The Legendary Chess Blues Session, January 4 1969 co-authored by session photographer Jeff Lowenthal and Robert Schaffner, The book features forewords by Mike Vernon and Marshall Chess, a new interview with Buddy Guy, and includes recollections from Kim Simmonds, Aynsley Dunbar and Martin Barre.
On the session Mac played with Chicago blues greats Willie Dixon, Buddy Guy, Otis Spann, Walter ‘Shakey’ Horton, J.T. Brown, David ‘Honeyboy’ Edwards and S.P. Leary.
Looking back in 1994 Peter’s perspective about the session was surprising: “Those black guys knew that you can’t get the hang of it -they knew that whatever a white guy tries to do is not gonna be the blues of coloured people. It’s a pose all along. In Chicago that time, I played too forcefully – too much and too loud – because my experience in life didn’t match up to theirs. Perhaps white folks should’ve left those coloured tunes alone and stuck to singing hymns! At those Chess sessions my voice sounds like I’ve been drinking ginger beer, or am singing down the toilet.”
Asked by Kremer in 1981 how the session went, he said: ”There were no special preparations. We just came there and played with them, depending on who happened to be there. Buddy Guy was there, Willie Dixon too…… But I wasn’t quite pleased – it could have been better….”
But importantly, in that 1981 interview Peter identified as Jewish, not white, when Kremer asked him: “Were you, and others like you, obsessed with the idea to live the blues, trying to prove that white man has a right to his blues?”
Peter replied: “No we weren’t. And, actually, I am not white, I am Jewish. That’s why I don’t consider myself so-called “White Man” – that would rather refer to an Englishman. I also come from an ethnic group that has suffered a lot in its history, you know. There has to be a reason for the blues. Slavery, for instance. Of course, not in every particular case, but white man was – because of slavery – the reason for black man’s blues.”
Then Kremer asked: “Playing the blues, how did you feel in comparison to original performers? Don’t you think you were imitating them?” He replied: “No, no! I’d rather say I agreed with them. At that time doors were opening for that kind of music and I considered it mine. After all, we all play that same basic rhythm.”
Kremer also asked if there is something analogous to the blues to be found in Jewish music and, if so, why doesn’t he play it: “I think that Jewish music has a lot in common with Afro-American music, but that was usually a rigid reserved folk music. It seems to me that my song “Supernatural” has that Jewish feeling, that specific sort of feelings, you know.”
So, for both Peter Green and Mick Fleetwood it would appear that, over time, recollections about important events can change and sometimes can become somewhat negative and downcast.
That being so, the natural conclusion is that those opinions expressed soonest after the event come closest to the truth of the matter.
]]>
Manchester, Saturday 2 November, 18:00
In conversation with Leah Kardos.
At INNSIDE Hotel, Deansgate.
Part of the Louder Than Words festival.
Leeds, Sunday 13 November, 12:30
Signing at Crash Records
35 The Headrow, Leeds, LS1 6PU
Manchester, Monday 14 November, 14:00
Signing at Eastern Bloc Records (Northern Quarter)
5a Stevenson Square, Manchester, M1 1DN
Liverpool, Monday 14 November, 19:00
In conversation with Gary Ryan
At Leaf
65-67 Bold Street, Liverpool, L1 4EZ
Organised by Waterstones.
Cover photo: Orbital live - Mirrorpix, used in Richard Evans' new book Listening to the Music the Machines Make.
With dark autumnal days and nights threatening to close in, we'd prescribe you a visit to one of the many excellent music exhibitions, screenings and events coming up. Here is a small selection. If you have any events to add, please let us know via the comments!
What
'A journey through the power of healing with the enigmatic former lead singer of Krautrock legends CAN. We follow Damo over five years of his life in Germany and the UK as he confronts cancer while on a never ending global tour.'
Uncut described I Am Damo Suzuki, which Omnibus published in 2019, as 'The story of 'a psychedelic Paddington bear'. You can find a special edition here.
Where & When
London Rio Cinema, UK
30 October 16:00
+ Director Q&A
Tickets & More Info
What
An afternoon of electronic music conversation featuring the legendary musicians Andy Bell of Erasure and Martyn Ware (The Human League, B.E.F., Heaven 17) in conversation with Richard Evans. There will be opportunity to get copies of Richard Evans' new book Listening to the Music the Machines Make and Martyn Ware's book Electronically Yours Vol 1 signed.
Where & When
Queen's Gate House, London, UK
Sunday 6 November
Tickets & More Info
What
The brilliant Louder Than Words music book festival, which we are proud to be a sponsor of, is returning to Manchester this year for what will be its 10th anniversary. The festival features a packed schedule of talks, interviews and panels with authors and musicians. Omnibus authors represented at this year's festival include Rick Buckler launching The Jam 1982 and Karl Bartos talking about The Sound of the Machine.
Where & When
Innside Hotel, Manchester, UK
11-13 November
Tickets & More Info
What
'A cutting-edge, mixed reality exhibition featuring the world’s first Immersive SingleTM installation designed to take users on an omni-sensory, fully-immersive VR experience inside one of The Who’s all time classic tracks, Baba O’Riley.'
Where & When
St Andrews Mews, Hastings, UK
October-November
Where & When
Somerset House, London, UK
27 Oct 2022 - 19 Feb 2023
What
'This autumn Somerset House presents a major exhibition celebrating our greatest cultural provocateurs and visionaries, examining how ideas rooted in horror have informed the last 50 years of creative rebellion in Britain.
The exhibition offers a heady ride through the disruption of 1970s punk to the revolutionary potential of modern witchcraft, showing how the anarchic alchemy of horror – its subversion, transgression and the supernatural – can help make sense of the world around us. Horror not only allows us to express our deepest fears; it gives a powerful voice to the marginalised and society’s outliers, providing us with tools to overcome our anxieties and imagine a radically different future.'
Where & When
The Social, London, UK
1 Dec 2022
What
Our friends at the New Cue newsletter are hosting a 'music books of the year' jamboree! Omnibus' own Simon Goddard will be doing a reading of his Bowie Odyssey 72
Tickets & More Info
Manchester, Saturday 2 November, 18:00
In conversation with Leah Kardos.
At INNSIDE Hotel, Deansgate.
Part of the Louder Than Words festival.
Leeds, Sunday 13 November, 12:30
Signing at Crash Records
35 The Headrow, Leeds, LS1 6PU
Manchester, Monday 14 November, 14:00
Signing at Eastern Bloc Records (Northern Quarter)
5a Stevenson Square, Manchester, M1 1DN
Liverpool, Monday 14 November, 19:00
In conversation with Gary Ryan
At Leaf, 65-67 Bold Street, Liverpool, L1 4EZ
Organised by Waterstones.
The Mythic Munich chapter in Peter Green Founder of Fleetwood Mac partly was prompted by the incongruity that such a truth-lite story was included in some tributes alongside proven truths about the unusual life and rich legacy of a great artist.
The general story has it that after a March 22 1970 gig in Munich, Mac’s leader was invited – some even say abducted for three days – to an out-of-town acid party by Ursula ‘Uschi’ Obermaier, a famous model, and communard Rainer Langhans. There, at a mansion in a forest owned by rich hippies, Peter Green and roadie Dennis Keane each were supposedly given a glass of wine spiked with LSD – according to Dennis.
Peter Green then jammed with local musicians in the basement. In 1994, Dennis described the sounds being made as “this kind of freaky electronic droning noise. It wasn’t music as I knew it”. John McVie, Mick Fleetwood, and others remain convinced that the acid damaged their leader and he was never the same again.
But for Peter, the jam proved to be inspiring. Munich was a lightbulb moment both musically and in terms of lifestyle. What’s more, he always said that he willingly took the acid on offer.
The musical inspiration is covered in some detail in the updated book, but this blog contains more background information about Munich’s Highfish commune and about how and why communes appeared in Germany in the 1960s and early 1970s, and why they might have interested Peter.
One reason why German anti-establishment, counterculture communes emerged can be found in incidents that took place at Mac’s Munich concert at the Circus Krone-Bau on Sunday evening 22nd March 1970, as reported in a 25th March review in Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ)..
Here is the concert review, translated by Highfish founding communard, Margret Greenman, who was at the party and basement jam session:
‘Pop-Music with Security Bullies’
“I am ashamed that something like this can happen during our concert.” said Peter Green of Fleetwood Mac, after two Circus Krone security controllers roughly manhandled an audience member, who had sat down at the side of the arena, and then pushed him through the crowd and threw him onto an unoccupied seat.
Another concert-goer who sat down in front of the band was saved from the same treatment thanks to the quick-wittedness of two Fleetwood Mac sound technicians. They forcefully waved aside three more security staff who arrived to haul away the “disruptor”. After that, the organisers requested that the circus director should allow some of the audience to enter the arena. The clearly displeased security controllers, who were now out of a job, watched what then happened.
First hesitantly - understandably so because of the sense of terror that the security staff had created, but then really fast and willingly – about one hundred people accepted the invitation to quietly come down into the arena.
At once there was tacit understanding and empathy between the band and audience members, quite in the spirit of the happy and unquestionably optimistic music of Fleetwood Mac, a group which had begun years ago playing the serous London-Blues of John Mayall, but now without hesitation pays homage to the eclecticism of pop music, to sure applause from their audience.
Illuminated by colourful rays from the spotlights, the young audience moved freely and relaxed on the arena’s sand-covered ground.. Some danced, others sat down and listened silently to the music, others surrounded the five musicians, who were at ease about this. Soon, the fearful atmosphere at the beginning of the concert had turned into a joyful party.
But towards the end Peter Green, the band’s leader, had another reason for feeling ashamed. Because the bullying security controllers - who form a fist when they see young people with long hair - put themselves into gear; it was as if they could not bear the fact that just one of the concerts in Circus Krone could be peaceful and harmonious..... as if they would like to show those who partied peacefully, what they were able to do.
A young man who was sat in an upper balcony, immersed in listening to the music and smoking even though that was prohibited, was ordered to put out the cigarette. He did not do so immediately and before he even knew what it was about and dared to resist, four men took him by his arms and feet and dragged him like a piece of slaughtered cattle out of the hall, some hundred metres through the corridors and locked him in a room. After that they called the police and reported that bodily harm had been done to them.
It is unbearable that things like that happen again and again at pop-concerts in Circus Krone, and that obviously nobody considers it necessary to intervene in such cases , and that the management of Circus Krone, a renowned enterprise, knows that their employees repeatedly commit bodily harm and deprivation of liberty for concert-goers (and not at all vice versa as the controllers, camouflaged thugs, described it).
Employing security controllers like this should not be tolerated if Circus Krone wants to continue to promote and stage pop-concerts there. For sure there are other venues in Munich where pop-concerts could take place, for example the tram depot in Schwabing or the exhibition halls on Theresienhöhe. One should realise that the above mentioned incidents do not take place anymore for example in Essen, or probably never happened at all.”
Photos in Mick Fleetwood’s 2017 impressive large-format photographic retrospective Love That Burns show some of the audience around the band: Peter especially had some fans literally sat at his feet.
But long-hair and rock culture was despised and resented by right-wing Germans old and young, and far more forcefully so than elsewhere in Europe at that time, except perhaps Italy. Bavaria was especially right-wing.
Part of the Munich myth has always been that Highfish commune were rich bourgeois hippies – ’The Munich Jet Set’ as Mick Fleetwood dubbed them in his 1990 autobiography. In fact, German communes were anything but bourgeois.
The communes
Kommune 1 [aka K1] was based in West Berlin and rose out of the 1960s left-wing movements APO [Extra-parliamentary opposition] and the student-body, SDS, and was formed in January 1967 by nine adults and one child.
K1 was determined to break free from German bourgeois concepts. K1’s ideology included the idea that fascism has its roots in the conservative nuclear family which is restrictive because men and women are dependent on each other and therefore can’t develop freely. Rainer Langhans joined K1 in March 1967.
K1 stayed at several Berlin residences and adopted different lifestyles: initially Langhans said that no sex was allowed because they didn’t acknowledge gender. They shared one large bedroom and there was no privacy – not even a bathroom door. Phone conversations were piped through a loudspeaker.
K1’s political provocation often took the form of satirical publicity stunts rather than violence, although they were accused of militancy. Communard Fritz Teufel was imprisoned for treason after a protest against the visit of the Shah of Iran on June 2 1967 during which one student, Benno Ohnesorg was shot dead by police. But then K1 eventually expelled Teufel.
In some ways the commune was inspired by the Situationist movement which made political and social statements by organising surreal happenings. For instance, some K1 members threw down hundreds of Chairman Mao’s Little Red Books from the tower of the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial church.
Meanwhile in Herrsching near Munich in 1967 a political art commune was formed by about a dozen musicians and artists calling themselves Amon Duul, after the Egyptian sun god, Amon.
Uschi Obermaier joined later and two experimental bands emerged from the commune: Amon Duul which included Uschi playing maracas, and the more musically advanced Amon Duul II featuring guitarist John Weinzierl and Peter Leopold – whose drumming inspired Peter at the acid-party basement jam.
Uschi met Rainer when Amon Duul and Amon Duul II played at the International Essen Song Days festival in September 1968 and she then left the Amon Duul commune and joined Rainer in K1.
Uschi’s arrival on the Berlin scene soon raised K1’s profile even more. Jimi Hendrix visited Uschi and K1 in early 1969. Reportedly,, the magazine Stern had paid her 20,000 marks for an interview and nude shots – that was the price of a Porsche 911 at the time.
Such sudden wealth, some said, proved to bring about the end of K1. In 1969 Rainer had asked three rockers to evict some unwanted people from the commune. The rockers reportedly returned in November demanding a share of the big money and then smashed up the rooms.
Kommune 2 was formed a little later in 1967 in Berlin . It folded in 1968 and one of its members, Jan-Carl Raspe, later became a member of the violent urban guerilla group, Red Army Faction [RAF] aka Baader-Meinhof Gang. Kommune 2 folded in 1968.
After K1 dissolved the by now top celebrity-status couple went back to Munich and joined Highfisch Kommune also known as Highfish and High-Fish – Hai-fisch means shark fish in German. The commune was based in a large flat in Munich’s Giselastrasse 12. Highfish was a ’pop media’ creative commune rather than political.
Highfish wrote controversial articles, and created all kinds of photography and short films: Margret Greenman once posed naked and decorated with food. As she remembers it, that initial Highfish creative vibe didn’t last too long and its founder, Thomas Althoff, eventually took his own life.
But Rainer has said that Highfish continued until 1972 whereas Margret Greenman recalls that the commune was short lived, lasting less than a year from late 1969 onwards.
This isn’t the only difference of opinion about what happened back then. For example, Rainer still maintains that the mansion in Kronwinkl (a 26-room former restaurant nearly 40 miles from Munich) was rented by Highfish, whereas Margret is certain that it was prog/acid rock band Amon Duul II’s rented home and rehearsal space. The band recorded a song Kronwinkl 12 for its 1972 album Carnival In Babylon. To Highfish the mansion was known as The Castle. Confusingly, nearby the mansion is an actual white castle with a turret known as Schloss Kronwinkl.
Margret Greenman, Rainer Langhans and Uschi Obermaier Highfish Giselastrasse
Highfish photo shoot; far left commune founder, Thomas Althoff
Film and TV director, author and curator of K1, Christa Ritter, kindly supplied the Munich/Kronwinkl photographs for Peter Green Founder of Fleetwood Mac taken by a photographer, the late Lu Pachotta. Christa came into the Munich story later in the 1970s. Subsequently, she wanted to document the Kronwinkl acid party including Peter’s recollections. Reportedly, she met him by chance at London airport but he showed no interest in the project.
One photograph in Peter Green features a Munich street scene showing a slightly blurred close-up image of Rainer on the left with Peter, right, in the background with some young people. This photo has been previously published in Mick Fleetwood’s Love That Burns book but without a caption, and above text referencing the acid party which says that the whole band went.
Christa has described this photo as a ‘double image’ taken in Munich the day after the party, Monday 23rd March. Whether double image means a double exposure or photomontage - one image superimposed on the other – has not been verified.
In 1994 Dennis recalled phoning Mac’s manager Clifford Davis at the band’s hotel the morning after, and that Davis, Mick and sound engineer Dinky Dawson drove out to collect them. But Rainer remembers driving Peter back to the hotel the next day in his old BMW V-8.
Another photo in the updated book shows his car parked outside the mansion in Kronwinkl. An embellishment adding dark mystery to the Munich myth is that it was situated in a forest. The photo reveals that this was not the case.
Indoors at Kronwinkl 12
Both Rainer and Christa maintain that Mac played a second Munich concert that Monday evening at the Deutches Museum. If this was so, it could have been a re-booking because a planned 18th January 1970 gig there had to be cancelled because the band were on tour in America. Commemorative posters for this cancelled concert are still available on the internet but no reviews of the supposed March 23rd gig have been traced so far.
-------
POSTSCRIPT
Mats Jarl, a Peter Green expert and researcher, pointed out on the Then Play On … Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac Facebook group the following interesting discrepancy concerning the dates given in this poster.
“But I have a problem with that poster from 18.1.1970. The poster says ‘Donnerstag’ (Thursday) but January 18th 1970 was a Sunday. Isn’t this a fake poster?”
The author first came across the poster on an internet auction site. That particular one was signed by Mick Fleetwood, John McVie and Christine McVie and reportedly gifted in 1990 to John Courage, Mac’s tour manager from 1973 through to the 1980 Tusk world tour era.
Below is an official poster for Mac’s Circus-Krone Bau concert – as with other posters for that tour that feature the Mick Fleetwood wild ‘rag doll’ image (designed by Gunther Kieser), the date is also on the right, but this is missing from the 18.1.70 poster.
Mats Jarl first spotted the days discrepancy a few years ago. This casts further doubt over the March 23rd Deutches Museum Fleetwood Mac concert as a re-booking of a supposed 18.1.1970 date.
-------
Christa also supplied a blurred photo of Peter in his long brown coat onstage at a sound check playing his Fender VI bass. She was familiar with the Deutches Museum concert hall décor and said that she recognises it in that photo.
Interestingly though, Christopher Hjort, writer, researcher and author of the indispensable Strange Brew: Eric Clapton & The British Blues Boom 1965-1970, earlier this year posted on Facebook. He has sourced a preview of a March 23rd Mac concert at Jahrhunderthalle, Frankfurt-am-Main published in Frankfurt Allgemeine Zeitung on the 23rd.
But it is 100% confirmed that Mac played at the Meistersingerhalle, Nurnberg on Tuesday, March 24th. However, a photo of this concert hall also posted on Facebook by Mats Jarl shows décor similar to the photo above.
At the next gig after the acid party Mac’s leader was especially surprised by and pleased with his fresh style of playing and sounds, whereas Mick Fleetwood thought that it sounded like Peter was mad.
And it is this clash of opinions that is the most significant truth underpinning the whole Munich saga. Why? Because from then on, the writing was on the wall – musical differences and the strain of long tours would prise apart the leader from his band. These cracks were already beginning to show during the making of Then Play On in 1969.
In his 1990 autobiography, Mick Fleetwood described the album’s poignant finale 'Before The Beginning' as a doomy blues dirge. In fact, as Peter Green Founder of Fleetwood Mac explains in detail, partly it is a song about Buddhism.
Both Mick and John McVie then gave a thumbs-down for 'Oh Well' as the follow-up single to 'Man Of The World'.
But thanks to the many bootleg concert recordings available on YouTube there is solid proof that, after Munich, Peter was on top form for the remaining European and Scandinavian dates and also at UK gigs throughout April and May. And there were noticeable changes in the mood and style of some of his playing which augured the acid-rock, wah-wah pedal feel of his first solo album The End Of The Game.
In Love That Burns Mick Fleetwood said that he felt that Highfish had recruited their leader.
In an interview which Peter gave to Serbian journalist, Dragan Kremer for the former Yugoslav rock magazine Dzuboks (Jukebox) published in May 1981 [and recently translated by Misa Drezgic for the Facebook ‘Peter Green Blues Society’ group] he gave the following reason for leaving: “…. I left the band after that thing with a commune in Germany. I wanted to go back and live with those people. And I also wanted to do more things like those we did on Then Play On with more jamming – but we lost that … The rest of Mac didn’t want that, they preferred more commercial stuff.”
But at the time he said that the commune and basement jam had given him the idea of buying his parents another house and turning their New Malden home into a musicians’ commune with a studio where like-minded players could come and stay and jam together. He planned to remain in England.
Will the accepted, negative narrative about Munich – abduction … spiking etc - ever be modified into something resembling the truth? That is partly down to future documentary makers and magazine feature writers and how much focus they give to the music that Peter Green made after he left Fleetwood Mac.
Many of those who still buy into the Munich myth maintain that he was never the same afterwards. Ironically and unwittingly, in a sense they are right: from then on his music changed as he did – Peter Green always thrived on change.
]]>‘Black Magic Woman’, ‘Albatross’, ‘Man Of The World’, ‘Oh Well’, ‘The Green Manalishi (with the Two Prong Crown)’ … all are now timeless classics. So too, album tracks like ‘Love That Burns’ and ‘Before The Beginning’. Visionary modern blues.
Then after leaving Mac in May 1970, he directed his vision far left-field to acid-rock instrumental jamming with his first solo album The End Of The Game. This received a mixed reaction at the time but is now regarded by some as a free-form masterpiece. The 2022 revised and updated edition devotes a chapter to the making of that album with much new information from the sessions’ keyboardist/organist, Nick Buck.
Then in the years between his first comeback in 1979 with the In The Skies album, up until when he stopped performing in 2010, his gigging bands – White Sky, Kolors, Peter Green Splinter Group and Peter Green and Friends - covered a wide range of styles, plus he made guest appearances on other artists’ albums. The book includes new interviews with band members from his 1981-85 White Sky/Kolors era who tell a rather different story to that told in the 1st edition.
This selection of ten post-Mac tracks showcase an artist who thrived on change throughout his career, a guitarist who liked searching for new sounds, an interpretative singer gifted with unique timing, and a soulful blues harp player.
Descending Scale
The most radically free-form track on The End Of The Game album. On live extended versions of ‘The Green Manalishi’ with Fleetwood Mac, his Fender VI 6-string bass wah-wah pedal playing is innovative and spooky at times. On Descending Scale his wah-pedal sonics go to the next level – towards the end, he makes his ’59 Gibson Les Paul sound like a wounded animal crying out in pain.
Seven Stars
From 1979’s In The Skies album which also features Snowy White and Peter Bardens, the words for Seven Stars are from the New Testament’s Book of Revelation adapted in parts by Peter’s then wife, Jane Samuels. He was especially pleased with the end-of-verse turnaround riff. Classic mystical, spiritual Peter Green.
A Fool No More
Also from 1979’s In The Skies, this slow blues written by Peter was first recorded in November 1967 by the original Fleetwood Mac. Some ten years later this version comes from a musician who had paid the cost out there – illness, hospitalisation and lost love. And so when he picked up the guitar again in 1977 his blues and singing were as deep if not deeper than ever.
Little Dreamer
Title track of the1980 Little Dreamer album, the guitar playing echoes the serene mood of Albatross, Underway (fromThen Play On) and Timeless Time (from The End Of The Game). Written after his return from Los Angeles, it is also his swansong as a songwriter.
Give Me Back My Freedom
From the 1981 Whatcha gonna do? album, which features songs written by his brother Michael Green, as does Little Dreamer. Here he might well be writing about Peter’s mid-1970s saddest times spent in hospitals and a prison ward for a while.
He much admired Jamaican reggae ‘toasting’ pioneer U-Roy (aka The Originator, and Daddy U-Roy ). In 1981, just before the start of the White Sky/Kolors era he was thinking about joining a reggae band. Here, he delivers some unusual, intricate and percussive solos that really fit the reggae beat.
Last Train To San Antone
Also from Whatcha gonna do?, good bluesy lyrics and melody by Michael Green and neat strings arrangement by Peter Vernon-Kell and Roy Shipston. His voice and timing are strong and the guitar solo in the outro slowly builds and then ends with some unmistakably Greeny phrases.
Just Another Guy
From the 1982 White Sky album and playing in a laid-back, jazzy style through a Marshall amp hooked up to a Leslie speaker, creating a new sound.
Who’s That Knocking
Taken from the 1985 album Katmandu - A Case For The Blues
with Ray Dorset, Vincent Crane, Len Surtees, Jeff Whittaker and Greg Terry-Short who joined Kolors on drums. In the 1990s he wanted this included in Splinter Group’s live set. Here he takes a different sounding vocal approach.
Help Me
From the Peter Green Splinter Group live first album – Peter’s take on Sonny Boy Williamson’s harmonica blues hit, recorded in 1963 and co-written by Williamson, Willie Dixon and Ralph Bass.
Big Change Is Gonna Come
Taken from Peter Green Splinter Group’s 1999 debut studio album Destiny Road and written by Hammond organist/keyboardist/guitarist, Roger Cotton. This made it onto the BBC Radio 2 playlist.
Playlist
You can listen to a playlist of these tracks. 'Who's That Knocking' and 'Help Me' are not currently available to stream on Spotify.
Martin Celmins
8.8.2022
]]>An Overture from Sir Paul McCartney
God Only Knows: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWPo5SC3zik
“Words” By Sir Barry Gibb
In My Room: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LFRMfImstc
Welcome
John Cale: Mr. Wilson: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jlOaRmnDZ58
Billy Joel: Don’t Worry Baby: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zSbHADm32o
My California Myth Begins and Is Renewed
‘Til I Die https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXZ_L6zJn1c
Surf’s Up (the 1971 version) https://youtu.be/v75f5W6LgLM
“All I Know”: An Introduction from Jimmy Webb
David Crosby, Jimmy Webb and Carly Simon -- In My Room: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKj6309Gx_o
Vince Gill, David Crosby, Jimmy Webb -- Surf’s Up live at Radio City Music Hall, March 29, 2001
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uU-4AkDimt8
Chapter 1: Rhapsody in Blue
Bonnie Lou -- *TRIBUTE* -- Two Step - Side Step (1953): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grQzSVo1jS0
The Beach Boys Their Hearts Were Full of Spring 1966: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPf4_WeCMDE
(NOTE: Date of appearance incorrect. Their appearance on the Andy Williams Show was October 22, 1965.)
Chapter 2: Five Freshmen
Kenny and the Cadets + Barbie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjC28ldqvC0
Bob and Sheri - The Surfer Moon (original 1962): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQ5QcYbfnz0
Surfin’ recording session: you can hear Brian producing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjMrJu8i-n4
The Beach Boys Surfin 1961. Their first commercial release. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jIdYAAO7cM
Chapter 3: Let’s Go Surfin’
Surfin’ Safari: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KrPDLxmfWPM
Chapter 4: If Everybody Had an Ocean
Surfin’ USA: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sT8FTWrYG6A
Jan & Dean Surf City: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERrwjR4ZlfI
The Lonely Sea: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06B_1t6-WKM
In My Room: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LFRMfImstc
Chapter 5: Don’t Worry Baby
The Lord’s Prayer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pn6g8uAv0UU
Don’t Worry Baby: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9E1by7PocE
I Get Around: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3n_d64lD5c
When I Grow Up (To Be a Man): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gcK-en0EAJ0
Don’t Back Down: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5RwgqaazSs
Chapter 6: Please Let Me Wonder
Please Let Me Wonder https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOQ-tn5OmPQ
California Girls https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DR2lvcdKSdU
Guess I’m Dumb https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4L15-ImCyE
The Little Girl I Once Knew https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7juNXVYtRtc
Barbara Ann https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzcTlnZx8tE
Chapter 7: Pet Sounds
Pet Sounds, the entire album: https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=Mh_yhTyae08
On the 1997 box set, The Pet Sounds Sessions, you can hear the entire album in several different ways, including “vocals only” and “instrumental tracks only.”
Listen to these four “vocals only” versions of key songs from the album, and you get a sense as to the heart and feeling on the record. And why many think of this as almost a Brian Wilson solo album.
Don’t Talk (Put Your Head On My Shoulder) https://youtu.be/kRmxeQ_2oTE
God Only Knows https://youtu.be/_pO1xeRh0Ro (Carl Wilson lead vocal)
I Just Wasn’t Made for These Times https://youtu.be/K9bcgSHfeOk
Caroline, No https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcUIFjmnr4g
Chapter 8: Good Vibrations and SMiLE
Good Vibrations-The Lost Studio Footage https://youtu.be/uVlSVkzbJDA?t=2
Cabinessence https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZOAUroLJnRc
Vega-Tables https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LECquYcMFUw
This is an example of the kind of chanting that Brian loved to do with the Beach Boys or with any group he had gathered.
You’re Welcome (Sessions/2011 Smile Version) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8zfmLIAi90
Brian Wilson on the Leonard Bernstein hosted CBS TV special, “Inside Pop: The Rock Revolution” https://youtu.be/sTifX3mpnV4
Chapter 9: Heroes, Villains and No Smiles
Heroes and Villains https://youtu.be/v3GPRIZw_J0
Surf’s Up (Brian Wilson Solo, Autumn 1967) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3TRns_zssM
The Beach Boys “Fire” from The Elements Suite https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTDNiJl1Awo
Wonderful https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSTJJKffsPI
Wind Chimes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ususRR09u8A
Chapter 10: Beached
Darlin’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3KH9e80tyZQ
Busy Doin’ Nothin’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=saQBsEROkFM
Time To Get Alone https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WtglCfo27bo
I Went To Sleep https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-59yjCqtIE
Break Away https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gqvxjU1spw
This Whole World https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPe78FgI9ro
Chapter 11: Surf’s Up
‘Til I Die https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXZ_L6zJn1c
A Day in the Life of a Tree https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBAhT-_dLes
Surf’s Up (the 1971 version) https://youtu.be/v75f5W6LgLM
Marcella https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8HPg1DUreM
Sail on Sailor https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATVjYH7dURY
Murry Wilson
I'm Bugged at My Old Man https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2nG5lujg3E8
Chapter 12: Endless Summer
Brian Wilson -- Jim Pewter Interview 1974 (audio only) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=379l_T3MRpE&t=13s
Chapter 13: Brian Is Back
California Feelin’ (Demo) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4DJDwD7CvrM
Brian Wilson -- Mike Douglas -- Full Appearance -- 1976 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bPWjB8R9-xk&t=4s
You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62kqMWccwDY
The Night Was So Young https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBt7TPM7puk
Ding Dang https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nw3JBwfJP-s
It’s Over Now (piano demo) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vh4c9fJvrao
Still I Dream of It (demo) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKEsehvPOvM
Solar System https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlwOouOHqc0
(While this song is not mentioned in the 1978 edition, it is mentioned a in the 2022 update. It’s here both as an example of Brian’s singing at the time, as well as his interest in astrology and astronomy.)
Chapter 14: Codetta, 1977-1985
She’s Got Rhythm https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgZs-sWVpPs
Good Timin’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZactwwLkIqc
The following bootleg recording is included as it’s a tape I heard in the early 1980s and includes what, to me were/are great Brian Wilson songs as “works in progress.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4MPwsWTsDE
50th Presidential Inauguration Ball for President Ronald Reagan (1/19/1985) - Part 2: The Beach Boys https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfn2Afflmn8
Getcha Back https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Ywn3Dr_luE
Requiem for the Beach Boy
Dennis Wilson’s Pacific Ocean Blue album is a great album, and one song is included here as an example of his talent and artistic gifts.
River Song https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YiZoSHVQXm
Chapter 15: Retrospective, 1985
My Solution, Version 1 (1970) & Version 2 (1980) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6YhT1sj5uc
Shades of Grey
Wonderful (Version 2 “Rock With Me, Henry”/2011 SMiLE Version): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxNWY1W-_0g
(Note: This isn’t exactly what the book refers to, but it is charming enough to be included on this list.)
Can’t Wait Too Long https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9vOOqyQGDs
The Author’s Note
Walkin’ Down The Path Of Life https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQnlMQ538IA
Chapter 16: ‘Til I DIe
Brian Wilson Live ’86 (Brian had appeared solo at a benefit in 1985, but this is the first video I could find of him as a “solo” artist in the 1980s). https://youtu.be/aG9luwmrOAk
The Buddy Rich rant that Andy Paley refers to https://youtu.be/t8-uoTD4fMQ
Brian Wilson’s First Solo Album
Melt Away https://youtu.be/XmgmRS465fE
Baby Let Your Hair Grow Long https://youtu.be/MSL75J0pikQ
There’s So Many https://youtu.be/DiAeZoNFyPk
Walkin’ The Line https://youtu.be/FsuDXTUJV-A
Walkin’ With My Angel https://youtu.be/U38b7aDVm5k
Blue Christmas https://youtu.be/kYTM-ectV7E
Surfer Moon https://youtu.be/XczR89edyBU
Guess I’m Dumb https://youtu.be/a83wrXtcgqE
Love and Mercy https://youtu.be/1k_ffl3ZM2s
Rio Grande https://youtu.be/irN2QMaXJl4
The Spirit of Rock and Roll (featuring Bob Dylan) https://youtu.be/WE8vPvIoyJo
Brian Wilson video from first solo album https://youtu.be/2y3J46DhoL0
The Beach Boys induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame https://youtu.be/oZSAQX2uuUY
Dylan’s comment after the Beach Boys induction, 1988 https://youtu.be/TyqFL9m2odg
Bad Vibrations + L.A. Times https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1988-06-26-tm-8498-story.html
The Lost Brian Wilson interview/Bent by Nature KCRW/Date is June 28, 1988 https://www.kcrw.com/music/shows/bent-by-nature/brian-wilson
Brian on The New Leave It To Beaver; Brian Wilson + Mr. Hawthorne https://youtu.be/eImp73s3FXM
Diane Sawyer + Brian Wilson https://youtu.be/dVP7pNjJd30
CHAPTER 17/Melt Away
The Don Was film, I Just Wasn’t Made For These Times https://youtu.be/QNBWmiNygww
Still I Dream Of It https://youtu.be/_noQOzwvAaE
It’s Over Now https://youtu.be/CSaH8yton4E
Orange Crate Art https://youtu.be/0qbQcmK72bo
Still No Vibrations + Washington Post http://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1996/07/03/still-no-vibrations/c23fdf2a-c535-42df-8399-e69c43fa4fff/?tid=ss_mail
Brian Wilson inducts the Bee Gees into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame https://youtu.be/VXm7SJCksks?t=130
Imagination documentary https://youtu.be/zudwOAzR6ig
Brian Wilson + George Martin dissects the Beach Boys https://fb.watch/dYAHmceflk/
Paul McCartney inducts Brian into the Songwriters Hall of Fame https://youtu.be/LYR327oEdY8
Paul/Brian perform at Landmine benefit
God Only Knows https://youtu.be/n5UqaBfolcc
Let It Be https://youtu.be/GcshKIQn1mw
Paul talks about singing with Brian https://youtu.be/0F7AlIHyeCk
Paul talks about the Beach Boys https://youtu.be/TK51TYP7I5A
News report https://youtu.be/CxFrlV_9c5c
A Friend Like You (This song is not available on the internet)
Brian Wilson “Wanderlust” https://youtu.be/LQQiVT4Y5kE
Chapter 18/Brian Hits The Road!?
To get a sense of what Brian’s early tours were like you can listen to his
2000 release, Live at the Roxy Theatre, which includes these two new songs.
This Isn’t Love https://youtu.be/GpMQ3DVfXEo
The First Time https://youtu.be/HF-SbCEG7I4
Here’s Brian performing Pet Sounds live https://youtu.be/GpMQ3DVfXEo
Chapter 19/The Tribute and the Queen
From 2001’s An All Star Tribute To Brian Wilson at Radio City Music Hall in New York.
Paul Simon sings Surfer Girl https://youtu.be/sXHsARkfDbw
David Crosby, Carly Simon and Jimmy Webb sing In My Room https://youtu.be/dKj6309Gx_o
Darius Rucker and Matthew Sweet sing Sail on Sailor https://youtu.be/cnZK1zFFyKI
Wilson Phillips You’re So Good To Me https://youtu.be/jJBgoFH6AG4
Aimee Mann/Michael Penn “I Just Wasn’t For These Times” https://youtu.be/2vyy8mi995I
George Martin + Brian Wilson tribute https://youtu.be/sJTLu4UiJ7o
Vince Gill sings The Warmth of the Sun https://youtu.be/b_mHu9uT52k
Vince Gill, David Crosby and Jimmy Webb perform “Surf’s Up” https://youtu.be/uU-4AkDimt8
Chapter 20/Beautiful Dreams and Beautiful Dreamer
From Brian Wilson Presents SMiLE, here’s the first track from the studio recording. https://youtu.be/3wWBV3QCbGE This will then take you through the entire album.
You can find an audio recording of the world premiere from February, 2004 on the web too, but the audio quality isn’t ideal.
Brian Wilson and David Leaf on Charlie Rose to discuss Beautiful Dreamer: https://charlierose.com/videos/10736
Chapter 21/That Lucky Old Sun
Kennedy Center Honors https://youtu.be/lr5Pkz7rFKk
That Lucky Old Sun https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjNDWYGBJDg&list=PLRt2mqRzCrANGYnV5jrEwDnWAgoThmkqD&index=1
Midnight’s Another Day - Demo https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=midnight%27s+another+day+demo
Chapter 22/An Epilogue
Linda Ronstadt “Adios” studio recording https://youtu.be/GjCqTI2TxRo
I Get Around/Don’t Worry Baby picture sleeve https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/81YXFV7mm+L._SX522_.jpg
Time To Get Alone by Redwood https://youtu.be/cqBvxvE5SNo
Bruce’s Beach https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-06-28/county-officials-approve-transfer-of-bruces-beach-property
Eisenhower’s “Beware the Military Industrial complex” speech https://youtu.be/Gg-jvHynP9Y
Help Me Murry tape https://youtu.be/DATadl9seGc
Murry Wilson’s Poison Pen Letter https://www.theguardian.com/music/2010/jan/07/brian-wilson-murry?CMP=share_btn_link
Good Vibrations + Lost footage https://youtu.be/uVlSVkzbJDA
God Only Knows + BBC Music https://youtu.be/XqLTe8h0-jo
]]>Sheila Rock's book of punk photographs, Young Punks, is available now.
]]>
'There are inherent contradictions: she likes people yet craves solitude; she is proud of her work and wants people to hear it, yet hates selling it; her music is both candid confession and armour-plated shield... Her career has never been about fame or fortune. Everything has been concerned with keeping alive the initial, terribly fragile surge of wonder and possibility she first glimpsed as a young girl. Against fearsome odds, she has succeeded. "It comes from a quiet place," she said of her music. And the world is so loud. Perhaps that's all we really need to know.' - from Under the Ivy: The Life and Music of Kate Bush
For a discussion of the growing role of TikTok and viral surges in the music ecosystem check out a new episode of the excellent Switched On Pop podcast, which is entitled 'So your song went viral on TikTok. What's next?'
LONDON SOHO 21, SOHO SQUARE 16 JUNE
50 YEARS TO THE DAY ZIGGY STARDUST WAS RELEASED
Launch event with Walthamstow Rock N Roll Book Club
Simon Goddard in conversation with Miranda Sawyer
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/bowie-odyssey-72-simon-goddard-miranda-sawyer-in-conversation-tickets-328920779907
CARDIFF CHAPTER ARTS CENTRE 19 JUNE
Simon Goddard in conversation with David Owens
as part of New Sound Wales Ziggy Stardust weekend
https://www.chapter.org/whats-on/performance/newsoundwales-bowie-weekend-simon-goddard-in-conversation/8658