Rory Stories

Mention of Rory Gallagher (see previous post) seems to have sparked off numerous Gallagher-related stories. The affection that people have for this great musician is typified by the wonderful statue (above) that stands in his birthplace of Ballyshannon.

My barber (and blue/rock aficionado) Chris reminded me of the story that Jimi Hendrix is reputed to have referred to Rory as the greatest guitarist in the world. During my haircut, we also discussed the stories surrounding the Rolling Stones' supposed invitation to Rory to replace Mick Taylor.

Chris reckons that Rory's brother and manager, Donal, told him not to join the Stones – on the basis that Rory would end up upstaging Mick Jagger ("and Mick wouldn't like that"). Rory was certainly a greater musician and, arguably, a greater showman, since he could run and duck-walk all over a stage while continuing to play the most amazing guitar.

It appears that Rory did hang out with the Stones and may have contributed some riffs. But he allegedly grew impatient with waiting for some sort of decision from a comatose Keith Richards, and walked out to meet his own tour commitments.

Whether Keith's bad habits would have accelerated Rory's demise or vice versa will never be known.

Experienced Again

In an age when so many museums and exhibitions seem to feel the need to dumb down and/or succumb to commercial pressures, it was a much more than pleasant surprise to visit the new Hendrix museum in central London.

Based in Jimi's old flat in Brook Street, it has the right balance of information, music and relevant artefacts.

The high points are his old acoustic on which he worked on most of his classics, including his iconoclastic version of Bob Dylan's 'All Along The Watchtower'; audio clips of him in the studio; and the reconstruction of his tastefully exotic bedroom.

Most of the furnishings are brilliantly sourced substitutes, but the mirror over the fireplace is the one that was there originally. And there is something decidedly spooky about looking into a mirror that you know Hendrix also looked into.

Then there is his record collection, perhaps the best mirror of all of the man. Everything he had is catalogued here, and in some cases there are the original album sleeves too. Above all, Hendrix was a blues man – the evidence here is in countless records by Lightning Hopkins, plus Howlin' Wolf, Robert Johnson, and the classic Albert King record 'Live Wire/Blues Power'. He also had, not surprisingly, pretty much everything by Dylan.

I bought my copy of 'Are You Experienced' in Paris in 1967 and so managed to get the psychedelic Barclay sleeve (below), rather than the extremely straight UK version. It was nice to find that Hendrix, too, had the French version in his collection rather than the English one, and that his was here on display.

It was also touching to find that when Jimi discovered that Handel had lived in the same building, he went down to the local record store and got a couple of the man's albums to check him out. The sleeves of those are here too – as is the Handel museum, next door.

Book to see them both - you will not be disappointed.

Between Rock And A Small Place

Talking of Bob Dylan… and there are often not many more interesting things to do… I've been reading 'Small Town Talk' the irresistible account by Barney Hoskins of Woodstock (the town, not the festival) in the era of Dylan and The Band.

The book has, inevitably, a lot of drugs and a reasonable amount of sex… but not so much rock 'n' roll. Hoskins emphasises the point that Dylan, The Band, The Basement Tapes and the music that flowed on from them had little to do with the loud excesses of rock and the prevailing spirit of the time.

They were hip, not hippie, and they were artists, not rock stars. The same applied to Van Morrison, Jimi Hendrix and John Martyn, who also had their Woodstock moments and inspirations.

Every one of these great creative artists gets a flaws-and-all portrait from Hoskins, as does the awesome/awful svengali Albert Grossman, and also the town of Woodstock itself – which went the way of all Edens and ended up as a tourist attraction.

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.

Shirt Shrift

It seems that anyone wearing a Pepsi T-shirt to the Olympics might get the same treatment as someone mentioning Jimi Hendrix on The Real Blues Forum (see previous post).

Although the organisers now appear to have back-pedalled a bit on this.

However, the Olympics is a Coca-Cola event and you'd be wise to keep that in mind. And don't even suggest that the tie-up between Coca-Cola and fitness is kind of odd.

You think Coke might be bad for you? Coca-Cola reassures you that it's "safe for consumption as part of a balanced and varied diet". So that's all right, then.

Stuck Outside The Forum With The Hendrix Blues Again

Was Jimi Hendrix a blues musician? There are some who will think this question in the same league as 'Is the pope a Catholic?' etc...

But for others, it seems, the very idea of Hendrix being thought of as a blues musician is akin to heresy.

A Facebook group called The Real Blues Forum hosts intricate and erudite discussion on the blues, but someone (not me) recently had the temerity to put up some pictures of Hendrix for discussion, because Jimi was seen to be holding actual blues albums in the photos.

When the subsequent discussion (all right, I did play a part in this bit) turned to Jimi being a great blues player, the originator of the strand made it clear that if there was another mention of Jimi's music (rather than the blues albums in the photos), he would remove, i.e. censor, the whole discussion.

A forum is a 'meeting place for open discussion'... but not The Real Blues Forum, it seems.

When I posted a quote from BB King — 'Jimi to me was one of the great explorers of the so-called Delta blues' — toys were thrown out of the pram and the discussion was closed down.

What is so terrible about suggesting that Jimi was part of the great blues tradition? BB hit on something with his reference to the Delta blues... for surely Hendrix was little more than the Robert Johnson of his time.

If Johnson had lived into the electric blues era, there is no telling where he and his playing might have gone. His music might even have been banned from being discussed on The Real Blues Forum.

The Mitch Mitchell Experience

The 1967 album by the Jimi Hendrix Experience, Are You Experienced?, featured a virtuoso musician who changed the way we played rock music. His name was Mitch Mitchell. Yes, Jimi was pretty hot. But he never burned as brightly as he did when Mitch Mitchell was by his side, and in particular on that genuinely iconoclastic recording.

Whatever Hendrix could do on the guitar, Mitchell could match on the drums. And like Ginger Baker, Mitchell brought the skills, the attack and the bravado of jazz music to the rock arena.

Mitchell, the longest-surving member of the Experience, died at the end of a Hendrix tribute tour of America. And why mention him now? Because increasingly I feel his ghost present whenever we go out to play.