A Classic : "Moontan"

1973 "I been drivin' all night, my hands wet on the wheel..."

Up until that year, Golden Earring were only known to a few people like me who lived in the South East and listened to the Dutch pirate ships. "Radar Love" grabbed the rest of the unsuspecting rock music fraternity and assaulted them with what had become one of the most impressive rhythm sections in the genre, driving a classic song that everyone knows and remembers. But Moontan's five tracks opened up for me   Golden Earring's exciting vision of Continental Europe, a sophisticated world of fast cars and faster, treacherous women. They came to play in Portsmouth one evening; Cesar Zuiderwijk vaulting over his drumkit, Rinus Gerritsen laying down epic driving basslines, George Kooymans, the quiet architect, and Barry Hay, the consummate frontman oozing Dutch self confidence with his flawless English. But even then I would never imagine that this band which started before the Beatles would still be playing its classy European rock in live gigs 50 years after the first pirate ships set sail. True rock and roll resilience!

Return to exotic Istria

1973 I discovered that music was a common bond that could break through even iron curtains.

Teddy and I had decided to return to Rabac for a second holiday in Istria. And this time we felt affluent enough to throw in a hired car. We were amazed by how rapturously we were welcomed back. Music was a big discussion in our developing friendships. The Yugoslav guys had their Deep Purple, Grand Funk and Santana albums, and took us to a live gig of a nationally famous band, playing decent prog rock. The car was important too. In a back to the future moment, we wondered why it attracted catcalls from local guys, and our friends explained that it was because it carried Sarajevo numberplates. They persuaded us to make a trip across the border to Trieste - they wanted to shop. It was an epic journey in the orange Beetle. On the way back we stopped late in Porec to take in a club. It was in a cellar, or perhaps a cave, the people were cool, the drinks intoxicating, and then this track came on, a song I knew and loved, but a wild, chaotic live version, which perfectly captured the mood of the evening and the atmosphere in the club. I play it and in my minds eye, I am back in that club.

Leaving home

1972 University - where you discover new ideas and make the transition from teenage to adult

I met and became friends with people from all over the country. My political view, previously shaped by the One Nation Conservatism of my parents rapidly shifted leftwards. I didn't much like Portsmouth, and often headed home, by train when I could afford it hitch-hiking when not; back to see my parents, school -mates, Charlton; back to the reception area of Radio Nordsee, and the catchment area of the Black Prince. My musical taste wasn't really changing. I'd already taken with me a solid foundation of rock, and in the early days there it was just a case of sampling the LPs of housemates. Portsmouth was at least a seaport, and in the first six months the track that lives in the memory is this haunting sea song.

Exotic holiday - in Istria

1972 Does everybody remember their holidays through music? I certainly do, and none more than my first real foreign holiday

We were entering our final six months at school. Six of us decided to celebrate by going on holiday together. To the sunshine, the beaches, the Med. But somehow we decided that we were not going to go to Spain or Majorca, where most Brits were heading. We decided,  for some reason I cannot recall, on Yugoslavia. There was one company specialising in package holidays there. I took home the Yugotours brochure and came under its spell as I gazed at the endless photos of the glittering blue Adriatic. It appeared though that the more southerly resorts - Dubrovnik, which I had heard of, and others which I had not - were out of our price range. So we settled on what I now know as Istria, and the village of Rabac. We booked it in January. I constantly went back to the brochure as I waited for the winter nights to end, and I was constantly playing this track from the majestic new Yes album. It seemed to speak of the colours and scents and freshness of the exotic country that awaited us.

And the holiday lived up to and surpassed all expectations. The sea was blue, the water crystal clear, the pine trees bewitched with their scent, and mixed with the exotic smells of grilled meats and different tobacco. But most of all it delivered the opportunity to engage with the locals working in the hotels. The guys, bold and macho, who thrashed us at football, and the girls with their devastating Slavic looks, who would hold your gaze the way English girls never would; and the bewildering variety of new alcoholic drinks they would ply us with deep into the night as the crickets kept up their incessant chatter. I was totally, utterly hooked! And so many years later when I fell in love with Istria all over again, "Roundabout' was on the car stereo.

A Classic: "Argus"

1972 Everything about this album was glorious, from the moment I set eyes on the iconic sleeve artwork

Wishbone Ash had already become a favourite with their live performances at the Croydon Greyhound; their big thing was two lead guitarists. They had two solid albums but Argus was on another level, guitar rock music from a sunny summer in a green and pleasant land. The Ash never quite hit the same heights again, and faded off my radar as subsequent albums disappointed. But Argus lives forever. 

Live at the Black Prince - Pub Rock

1971 It was a good year. I had passed my driving test! And there were these places where bands were playing live, bands with reputations, who made LPs, but whose live gigs were affordable.

The Black Prince was big pub by the A2, the main road leading to the coast, just ten minutes from our house. It had a big separate hall for live gigs. Sunday night became an institution. Looking back it is amazing to think that some of those bands went on to the world stage. Mott the Hoople, Wishbone Ash, Uriah Heep, we saw them all at the Prince. And Status Quo, working hard as a straightforward blues and boogie band; and later on Thin Lizzy, making their mark after their first single hit. Those were most definitely the days. But my favourite band from the Black Prince days saw less commercial success than these others....

Stray built a reputation as a live band. They were Londoners, and built a strong following there. But when I moved around the country, I found few people knew them. But their third album remains one of my favourites today. I got it as a Christmas present. I put it on my parents' stereogram, there was short piece of accoustic guitar accompanying Steve Gadd's vocals, and then suddenly..boom...and I knew it was going to be a great Christmas Day. Del Bromham, the band's leader, was a genuinely talented musician, and there isn't a duff track on this album. On this track, Bromham produces a tingling slide guitar solo with Richie Cole driving it along on drums. Get the light'n' bitters in !

From across the North Sea, Europe calls

1971 Yes, this is where it all started, the enduring love affair with Europe, and all that it brought me.

The original pirate stations in the North Sea had been forced off the air - in a way which had instilled a permanent rebel soul in me - and the BBC now broadcast Radio 1. Which was better than what we had before, at least. But a new pirate ship, Radio NordSee International, was broadcasting, and it was partly broadcasting to a Dutch audience. I was quite intrigued. They had their own bands, they were not bad, and they were all singing in English. One of them, Shocking Blue, broke into the UK charts, and their sultry female vocalist Mariska Veres became the stuff of all our teenage fantasies. But on RNI, which could only be received on the south east side of London and down to the coast, there were more interesting bands for me. There was Golden Earring of course, of whom much more later, but also Sandy Coast, and this classy  prog-rock band Earth&Fire. And later there would be Focus. 

And I was already listening to this stuff when that summer, at Eltham Park pool, I met Bea, a savvy and to me, exotic Dutch girl, who was terribly impressed that I liked Earth& Fire. And I decided that Europe was something to be investigated and embraced. 

And why not ...this stuff?

1968-70  There was a completely different musical subculture running at the same time. Soul and especially Motown had always been there but many kids had now embraced reggae and ska. Why didn't I?

Peer groups, I suppose. The skinhead fashion had - for reasons I've never fully understood - embraced reggae, but my parents had moved to a more affluent part of my London suburb, and the school they had sent me to was "posh". Hardly anybody there adopted skinhead culture. But this was London, of course it touched me. You had to go to discos to meet girls, and with the exception of the odd one up at Falconwood, they were playing Desmond Dekker and not The Nice. 

Of course if I'd lived in a more racially mixed suburb such as Brixton, I'd have been more into such music because of the peer group. But reggae and ska is more physical music; its for dancing to rather than listening to. It was already clear that a lack of co-ordination and extreme self -consciousness meant I would never be a natural dancer. So I'd never be getting up offa that thing. But I understand why people do, and I'm quite envious of them.  

West Coast

1970 At school you look up to the kids a year above you, and they look down on you with withering contempt. But at least, in their patronising way, they let you listen to their LPs

At lunchtimes we were allowed to play our own LPs in the music room. The kids above us were bringing in albums by bands which never got near the limited output of  the BBC. Feverishly we started to peruse the US album charts so that we could pretend to have heard of Santana, Jefferson Airplane, Grateful Dead and Quicksilver Messenger Service. Crosby, Stills, Nash &Young were in that crowd too. And I hadn't needed the older kids to help me find The Doors. I never took to The Dead. I claimed to like JA and QMS, but I fear it was more about trying vainly to appear cool. CSN&Y were great for two albums and introduced me to Neil Young. Carlos Santana gets a post of his own. And the Doors...their Absolutely Live album, and LA Woman, with its sultry full version of Riders on the Storm, still sound exciting and atmospheric today. This video featuring Roadhouse Blues is 44 years old, and it still looks and sounds exciting today. But five years back from 1970, and everything looks so naive and low key by comparison with this. What to conclude from this? I'll let you decide, but these were momentous times to be young.

Prog Rock

1970  I was drawn towards bands with a strong keyboard element, which wasn't hard to find in 1970!

The prog rock disco always ended with "America" by Keith Emerson's The Nice. Then there was Deep Purple, with the talented and ambitious Jon Lord, ready to toy with classical influences before Ian Gillan joined on vocals and the monstrous Deep Purple in Rock ditched most of the prog in favour of the rock. But my personal favourite was Argent, led on keyboards by Rod Argent, the classically trained keyboard player who had already found fame with The Zombies, and prolific songwriter Russ Ballard. Enterprising school mates actually persuaded the school to let Argent play live there, which was pretty surreal, but successful, and Caravan followed the following year. I never really liked my school; it was academically strong but socially repressive; or so I thought at the time. In retrospect, having my favourite band playing live in the Great Hall was a pretty liberal gesture by the school authorities.

Getting Heavy

1969  CCR made hit singles. Led Zeppelin most definitely did not. 

They were a dark, complex introduction to an exciting world of sex, drugs and rock'n'roll, most of which I barely understood, let alone experienced. It was the first music I bought into which had blues influences   (somehow I had failed to encounter Cream before they disbanded), and the sophistication and innovation took my breath away. All of their albums contain tracks I listen to today, and when I finally got to see Page and Plant live, many years later in Prague, it was well worth the 30 year wait.

Led Zeppelin II is a rock classic, each track a challenging gem. "Ramble On" is one of the quieter interludes; it taught me a lot about musical dynamics, and with its Lord of the Rings references, fitted very well with my book of the day.

Chooglin' teenagers

1968 Creedence Clearwater Revival were the epitome of teenage years. They arrived from nowhere, rose to dizzying heights, and suddenly, you noticed, they were gone.

What was it about "Proud Mary" that grabbed us, made us want to wear check shirts, and ponder on life on the Bayou with its bullfrogs and hound dogs? CCR was far and away my favourite band, overwhelming us with three album releases in one year. In 1970 they played the Royal Albert Hall. It was my first real live concert, and remarkably it is here on You Tube. There it all is; the immaculate delivery, but with hardly any live improvisation; the check shirt, but no on stage presence, no audience interraction; a complete set of great songs, but lasting less than 50 minutes; and the ecstatic and ultimately bewildered crowd who stay on for five more minutes, bellowing for the encore that never comes. 

By 1972 they were gone. I disowned them before I left for University that year. But in retrospect their music wears well.

Pop with a sharper edge

1966-68. The pirate radio stations on ships in the North Sea are pumping out the music the BBC refuse to play. My favourite bands along side the Who are The Kinks and the Small Faces.

 

Steve Marriott's peerless vocals will be a perennial favourite as his career takes off later with Humble Pie, and then crashes back down to the pub circuit and his untimely death in the mid-1980's. Here in Tin Soldier his voice shows a soulful maturity beyond his years and is perfectly combined with guest vocalist P.P. Arnold

What were the other popular genres? I wasn't so influenced then by American music (but that would soon change). The Beach Boys were OK; soul bored me; and I didn't really get the blues, or Jimi Hendrix. And somehow I didn't appreciate Cream until they had already broken up.

11 years old, I have a choice to make

1965. I've been given money to buy a record. A single of course. I am thinking about on the one hand Herman's Hermits, and on the other hand the new group, The Who. I have a feeling my Mum would prefer I opted for Herman's Hermits. So naturally I choose "Can't Explain", the first hit by a band which will remain forever one of my favourites.

Up until then, like all my classmates I've been mesmerised by the Beatles as they revolutionise pop music with every new release. Like kids up and down the country in the Swinging Sixties, we are debating the rival merits of The Beatles and the Stones, but once I had that Who record, I would start to nominate different groups as my favourites.