A Great Drummer – And A Great Man

 

John Marshall – one of the world's greatest drummers – has died. He was not only a great musician – who had played with literally hundreds of the biggest names in jazz and rock, and pioneered the fusion of those two genres into something powerfully new – he was also a great human being. And I am proud to say that he was my friend and teacher.

He was the driving force in Soft Machine – for whom he had played drums for half a century – almost to the end of his life. 

Although I didn't know it at the time, I was at his last gig, with the Softs, at Ronnie Scott's, in 2022. 

And I was also with him at his home, just a few weeks ago, when he picked up the sticks for the very last time – to show me how something easy for him (but not for me) could be done.

His passion for playing the drums was still there then. It never died.

Anything He Can Do...

In my recent post on rhythm sections, I mentioned the love-hate relationship between Ginger Baker and Jack Bruce. Bruce has been quoted as saying that he and Baker were now living on different continents, but he wasn't sure whether that was far enough way; while Baker has publicly blamed Bruce for his misfortunes, including impaired hearing and financial difficulties.

Can the fact that Baker has now announced he will appear at Ronnie Scott's, London, with his latest band have anything to do with the fact that Bruce recently appeared triumphantly at Ronnie's and is due to return there soon with his new band?

Neither of these truly legendary musicians has anything left to prove... do they?

When Rosie Met Gary

So many journalists seem to be musicians too. While attending yet another farewell party in Wapping last night, I reconnected with Rosie Brown, an ex-Sunday Times journalist but, more importantly, a great and original singer-songwriter with three albums to her credit, whom I've seen playing at Ronnie Scott's to a packed house (www.rosiebrown.com).

I was able to introduce Rosie to Sunday Times journalist Gary Cansell, also a great songwriter and leader of the amazing London band Hero & Leander (www.myspace.com/heroandleanderuk), now in the process of being signed to a German label to produce a series of albums.

Perhaps realising that in the greyness of the newspaper office, the colours of music are always waiting to be expressed, News International recently introduced a "music at work" scheme so that journalists could have lunchtime music lessons. But with the latest redundancies, some of these classes are much depleted. So the cutbacks have not been good for journalism — or for music.