An Odyssey in the Second Year of the Plague – Dante's Density

 

 

A German writer seems to have caused a bit of a furore by suggesting that not only do today's Italian students struggle to understand Dante Aligheri but that the 14th-century master poet was left way behind in the immortality stakes by William Shakespeare.

A major difference between the two writers is that Dante was wrapped up in his own times and obsessions, while Shakespeare wrote for all times and left himself out of it.

In my readings of Italian history – inspired by last year's travels on the Odyssean Coast – Dante's Divine Comedy seemed to get so many mentions that I thought I'd better have a go at it.

But, even in Robin Kirkpatrick's slangy translation for Penguin Classics, I have to confess that I've been finding it close to impenetrable – and that's with also reading the footnotes that take up about a quarter of this edition.

Of course, Shakespeare was writing quite a bit later than Dante – things move on. It would, for example, be futile to start comparing the guitar playing of Bert Weedon with that of Eric Clapton.

So let's be honest... Dante's achievement was probably pretty remarkable for its time. But today one wonders if it's really worth the hard work of trying to figure out what he's on about.

Shakespeare can also be hard work... but he's still worth it. 

Winwood Ho

At a time when most rock legends from the Sixties seem to be scarily older than you think – or in many cases, more scarily, dead – one of them still seems remarkably young.

Steve Winwood is still touring and is due in London in July. And though you might think he should be in his seventies by now, he's actually a mere 68.

That makes it more than 50 years since I first saw him on stage – when he was 16 or 17. He was already a veteran performer then, and fronting the Spencer Davis Group.

A precocious guitarist as well as keyboard player, he has had so many incarnations. But his finest hour was with the sadly short-lived Blind Faith, in which the Creamy musical virtuosity of Eric Clapton and Ginger Baker was harnessed to the truly lyrical songwriting and singing of Winwood.

I was fortunate enough to see Winwood and Blind Faith at Hyde Park. And despite all his brilliant work since that time, it is the Blind Faith album that seems perfectly to capture the Winwood essence.

Rich Men's Blues

I love Eric Clapton's guitar playing. He is likely to be the greatest guitarist ever to pass through here... But tickets have just gone on sale for his Albert Hall concerts in May 2017. And the cheapest are £100 each, with a £12 booking fee per ticket.

The £12 booking fee per ticket actually seems more out of order than the £100 for a cheap seat.

So to echo my comments about Buddy Guy recently, I'm sorry but I'm not prepared to pay that much. And how many young blues fans who should see Eric before he goes are going to be able to pay that amount?

I confess I paid over £300 a ticket (from criminal touts) to see Cream's reunion at the Albert Hall (although a lot less to see their first farewell there in 1968). But that was to see Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker as well as Eric.

With Bruce dead and Baker in a bad way, Clapton raking in yet more money seems to stick in the craw – even though he richly deserves to be rich.

Let's not forget that Cream (i.e. Bruce and Baker) made him much bigger than John Mayall's Bluesbreakers ever did. A benefit night for Mr Baker might haver persuaded me to part with £112.

But as it is, I hope all those rich old men enjoy their outing to the Albert Hall.

Buddy, Can You Spare £63?

I love Buddy Guy. He was one of the first truly electric bluesmen that I ever listened to. He was a wild and crazy showman, as well as an amazing guitar player. He was Hendrix before Hendrix. Seeing Buddy in concert, you could see where Jimi got some of his stuff from.

Unlike most of the great bluesmen, he is still alive, still recording and still gigging. But he is as likely these days to be singing about the realities of old age as he is about love and loss.

I was overjoyed when I saw that he would be appearing in London later this year – until I found that the cost of sitting in the stalls would be £63.

I'm sorry but that's too much money. Of course, Clapton and Bonamassa have gone the same way, and it costs a fortune to see these blues masters now. But if you're a young person struggling to live in London on a meagre wage, you'd best not be a blues fan. This music is for the old and well-off.

Those who really have the blues can't afford to go to blues gigs like this.

I'm lucky. I could afford to shell out £63 to see Buddy Guy. But I won't. On principle. Someone somewhere is charging too much

Stuck Outside The Forum With The Hendrix Blues Again... Slight Return

For reasons unknown to me, my post "Stuck Outside The Forum With The Hendrix Blues Again" attracted more readers than anything else on "Words And Music".

In short, it was a complaint about a Facebook group called The Real Blues Forum refusing to allow discussion about Jimi Hendrix being a blues guitarist.

Well, it's happened again. But this time the guitarist whose name cannot be mentioned is Stevie Ray Vaughan.

The latest trouble started when a hapless member of the forum posted a video of Albert King performing with Vaughan. A small discussion started about the playing styles of the two men, but was cut short by a right-thinking member of the forum pointing out that this discussion transgressed the rules. Something like: old black players ok to talk about, but modern white players (or Hendrix) not ok to talk about.

Someone then asked how on earth this video had even been posted in the first place.

When I responded by asking: "Can blue men play the whites?" - a light-hearted reference to the Bonzo Dog Band's classic enquiry - my contribution was almost immediately moderated, ie removed.

So now I've removed myself from The Real Blues Forum. It's funny that Albert King was able to bring himself to play with the likes of Stevie Ray Vaughan and Rory Gallagher, and that BB King could sing the praises of Eric Clapton and Peter Green, but (predominantly white) blues purists don't seem to even want to talk about them.

The Gary Clark Experience

The new Hendrix. It's a bit like the new Dylan. Except Dylan always was - and is - the new Dylan.

Jimi has the disadvantage (and advantage) of having been dead for 40 years or so.

The new Hendrix, they say, is Gary Clark Jr. Well, he is and he ain't.

Some are calling him the new Hendrix because he's black. But Jimi was as white as he was black, and, if anything, his shade of white was rainbow-coloured.

The real question is: is Gary Clark Jr any good. And the answer is: yes.

Like Hendrix, he goes beyond the bounds. He takes the guitar off the track. And he manages to play at tangents to where one might expect him to be.

If Jimi were still alive, he probably would not be playing a million laid-back miles from Eric Clapton's (rather lovely) Old Sock album. But if is a big word.

Forget Jimi for a moment. Check out Gary Clark Jr...

Mr Baker

The real drummer seldom plays the minimum. He seeks to find how far he can go - not for himself but for the sake of the music. 

I got into this game because of Ginger Baker. October 1967. Ginger Baker. At the Saville Theatre, London. In front of the hippest crowd on the planet. With me there too. Ginger Baker. With Cream. Opening with Tales Of Brave Ulysses. Jack Bruce with a voice borrowed from heavy metal angels. Ginger Baker. And Eric Clapton in Hendrix fuzz and granny shades and playing guitar that was not of this earth. Ginger Baker. 

Ginger would tell me to fuck off if I were ever to get close to him. But he changed my life. Fucking Ginger Baker.

On Ginger’s website there’s a video of him playing We’re Going Wrong. When Cream played that song live, Jack Bruce’s vocals went to the limit. And sometimes Clapton’s guitar did the same. But Ginger Baker. Watch that video and you will see how far a drummer can go - for the song. Because he has to. That is real drumming.

The Juice On Johnson

Robert Johnson... He had to get in here sooner or later... If Sleepy John Estes was scary (see previous post), then Robert Johnson was downright terrifying. He became known to me through the composer's credits on Rambling On My Mind (which Eric Clapton slipped onto the Blues Breakers album) and Four Until Late (which Eric Clapton slipped onto the first Cream album, Fresh Cream).

From there it was a short step to hearing pretty much everything that Johnson had ever recorded in his brief but almost unbelievably brilliant blues career.

There's not much to add to all the thousands of words written about Johnson. It's enough to point out that without him, it's difficult to imagine any of the subsequent evolution of blues/rock. Oh, and can we please remember that it was Johnson, not Zeppelin, who coined the immortal line: "You can squeeze my lemon till the juice runs down my leg."

Wrong Is Right

Thoughts of Sleepy John Estes and making a change led on to We're Going Wrong. It has to be a contender for the most perfect song. Okay, there's Like A Rolling Stone and A Day In The Life and Layla... and everyone can add their own contenders.

But We're Going Wrong, which first appeared on Cream's Disraeli Gears album in 1967, is perfect for its simplicity, for its emotion and, of course, for the musicianship.

Ginger Baker's wonderful tom-tom patterns on a 6/8 rhythm could probably hold the song together on their own. Jack Bruce's bass is largely restrained, but his pure voice is increasingly unrestrained as the song unfolds. And then we get Eric Clapton, at the height of his fuzzy-haired, woman-tone period, with sublime notes played in just the right places.

On stage in the Sixties, the song became a tour de force, and still possessed its power when Cream revived it — and themselves — in 2005.

Many listeners, particularly in 1967, took We're Going Wrong to be a political/philosophical/protest kind of a song. Look at the lyrics and you'll see why. But it is documented that Jack Bruce wrote it after a row with his wife, and that it is simply about a fractured relationship.

Whether it's about the failed relationship between two particular people or about all the failed relationships that make up the world we live in, the song works. And if the microcosm and the macrocosm are all one, then it's not even worth differentiating.

Either way Jack Bruce wrote a masterpiece. For him, it might have been personal. For us, it's a perfect and universal call for change.

A Long Road

By chance, I heard that unmistakeable piano intro to A Hard Road by John Mayall last night and got the proverbial shivers. Although his previous album, Bluesbreakers, with Eric Clapton is the one everybody talks about, it was this one, with Peter Green replacing Clapton, that really was the manifesto for Mayall's blues.

The idea of a young white singer openly dedicating and committing his life to the blues may have sounded preposterous in 1967, but Mayall did just that and is still touring, aged 78.

And many of us whom Mayall, Clapton and Green inspired are also still playing. Something we never could have forecast. If Mayall can go to the end of the road, maybe we can too.