Happy 70th Birthday to Mr Bryan Ferry! In the top five of my all time best male vocalists, Ferry has of course found fame through his solo career, but it’s Roxy Music that we all know and love him for really. Ferry started many bands in his art school years (in fact, it may have been him that once said that was the only reason anyone went to art school - I’m willing to be corrected on that!), but in November 1970 he formed Roxy Music, first with his friend Graham Simpson and then expanding to include Andy Mackay and of course Brian Eno. Apparently Ferry originally auditioned for the lead of King Crimson, and although the band members thought his voice unsuitable for them, they helped Roxy Music gain a contract with E.G. Records. The line up of Roxy Music was to change several times over the years, and it wasn’t until 1972 that they had their first hit with Virginia Plain. By the following year Ferry had also started his solo career, but that didn’t stop the hits flowing for him on both sides. The song I decided to cover for this post was Roxy Music’s most successful and most covered track, Love Is The Drug. Originally intended to be an Andy Mackay instrumental, it includes a fantastic baseline, a catchy, powerful chorus and in true Roxy Music style, sleek and sexy lyrics and vocals. It’s so popular that this track has been played at every Bryan Ferry and Roxy Music tour since it was released in 1975. Roxy Music and Bryan in particular were an influence on many, not only for their sound, but their style too. It ran through their fashion, their music videos and their promotional materials and album covers. Got to love a bit of 70s glitter, haven’t you? Ferry is still going strong and performing, both alone and in recent years as part of a reformed Roxy Music. Sharp suits, silky voice and a glamorous girl on his arm, he’s a sort of Bond of the music industry. Have a wonderful day, Bryan!
"The Genius" as he is known in some musical circles, would have been 85 years old today. It's not only his songs that make Ray Charles such a predominant figure in music history but his story too, and a driving passion for music which pushed him to overcome poverty, discrimination and disability.
Charles (or Ray Charles Robinson, as he was born), began to lose his sight at the age of four due to glaucoma, and was completely blind by the time he turned seven. Before this, he was taught to play an upright piano by Wylie Pitman, a boogie woogie pianist who owned the Red Wing Cafe. Charles and his mother were regulars here, and also lived at the venue after falling on financial difficult times. He continued studying piano at school, but was more interested jazz and blues than the classical pieces they were trying to teach him. Learning to play when blind is quite a feat, especially for a young child. It involves learning the left hand movements by reading braille with the right hand and learning the right hand movements by reading braille with the left hand, and then synthesizing the two parts. After his mother's death he moved to Jacksonville and played in bands, and then onto the bigger city of Orlando, but work was still scarce at this time, just as World War II was ending. It wasn't until 1948 when he moved to Washington and formed his own band that Charles began to find success. In 1953 he signed with Atlantic Records and produced his song Mess Around, then the following year he hit the big time with I've Got A Woman. This was to mark the beginning of Charles' sound - a mix of RnB, gospel, jazz and blues. 1956 saw the birth of the Raelettes, previously the Cookies, who became Charles' backing singers. One of the original Raelettes Margie Hendricks was Charles' mistress for six years, and mother to his fifth child (in total, Charles had twelve children, by ten different women!). What I'd Say was Charles biggest hit at Atlantic, which he later claimed was composed spontaneously on stage. It was banned from several radio stations due to its suggestive lyrics, but despite that became Charles' first entry into the top ten. Charles changed over to ABC-Paramount and soon after produced Georgia On My Mind and Hit The Road Jack. By the late 1960s however, things began to change. The genre that Charles represented was falling out of favour, and despite a move over to country, he had very little success compared to the fame he had known in previous decades. Ray Charles passed away in 2004 with an acute liver disease. Even after his death, his name lives on as an artist full of talent, who provided us with some incredible songs. "Music's been around a long time," Charles once said, "and there's going to be music long after Ray Charles is dead. I just want to make my mark, leave something musically good behind. If it's a big record, that's the frosting on the cake, but music's the main meal." Well, hallelujah to that!
45 years ago today, news swept across London, and the world,
that the legend Jimi Hendrix had died in the Samarkhand Hotel in Notting Hill.
The circumstances, like so many deaths of this kind, have been widely disputed,
but it seems most likely that it was the 9 sleeping pills consumed (18 times
the recommended dose) that ended the life and career of (let’s just say it) the
greatest guitarist ever to have lived. As well as covering his classic The Wind
Cries Mary, I wanted to share some facts that you may not have known about the
great man…
Born in Seattle in 1942, he was named John Allen Hendrix,
but after his father’s return from fighting in World War II, he renamed him
James Marshall. It wasn’t until he arrived in London in 1966 that Animals
bassist Chas Candler suggested he swap to Jimi.
As a school boy, before getting his hands on an actual
guitar, Hendrix practiced on a broom and also tried his hand at a one-stringed
ukelele!
His first band was called the Velvetones, but after three
months of them playing only on acoustic guitar, Hendrix realised electric was
the way forward.
Hendrix was caught twice riding in stolen cars at the age of
19, and was given the choice of going to prison or joining the army. He spent
two years as a paratrooper, but went straight back into his music when he was
discharged in 1963.
As mentioned in previous blog posts, he started his musical
career as a session musician, playing back up for the likes of Ike and Tina
Turner, Sam Cooke and Little Richard.
Hendrix became famous for all the tricks he could perform
with his guitar: playing with his teeth, behind his head, and, as all
left-handed guitarists like myself will appreciate, playing a right-handed
guitar upside-down.
After this, Hendrix went from strength to strength; The
Experience had a string of hits, sell-out tours, as well as a number of
controversial performances, including Monterey Pop Festival where he not only
destroyed his guitar, but set fire to it. By the time he was headlining
Woodstock in 1969, The Experience had ended and Hendrix was the world’s
highest-paid rock musician.
The Wind Cries Mary was written by Hendrix in 1967 and
inspired by his then girlfriend, Kathy Mary Etchingham. As she told Q magazine
in 2013, "We'd
had a row over food. Jimi didn't like lumpy mashed potato. There were thrown
plates and I ran off. When I came back the next day, he'd written that song
about me. It's incredibly flattering." Despite being about Hendrix having
a tantrum at the dinner table, I thought the song was a very poignant choice
for today’s anniversary. The man achieved so very much in his 27 years, and I doubt there's a rock musician out there today who hasn't been influenced by him. “Will the wind ever remember the names it has blown in the past”? In Hendrix’s case, how could we possibly forget?
This post is rather special, as we are in fact celebrating two Pink Floyd anniversaries. Not only is it 40 years to the day that Pink Floyd’s album Wish You Were Here was released, but it is 50 years this year since the band formed. Despite going their separate ways in 1994 and only performing once together since then for Live 8 in 2005, Floyd still manage to bring in fans from all ages, and remain unmatched by any other band in creating such a distinctive psychedelic sound. Despite forming in 1965, it’s probably their 1973 concept album Dark Side of The Moon that Pink Floyd are most famed for. Tracks like Money and its 7/8 rhythm, and Great Gig In The Sky and the astonishing improvised solo from Clare Torry are what make the record one of rock’s most commercially successful albums of all time. However, our focus today is on Floyd’s possibly lesser known next album, Wish You Were Here.
At first, recording this ninth album seemed difficult for the band, after the success of Dark Side and the tour they’d just finished had left them all emotionally drained. Roger Waters became lead writer of the album, although it could be argued that the album is more famous for Gilmour’s four note riff in the opening track than it is any of Waters’ lyrics. It is well-known that Shine On You Crazy Diamond, a track split into two 13-minute sections at the beginning and end of the album, is a tribute to the now late Syd Barrett, who at the time that the album was being composed had left the band, and was in a downward spiral of mental health. Each track is heavily instrumental, and one flows seamlessly into another, and the theme of Barrett’s condition with it. Just like Dark Side, any modern-day fan will know that Wish You Were Here is absolutely infuriating to listen to on a CD, iPod or other device that shuffles. You’ll be fully engrossed, about to launch into the opening chords of the next track and then BAM! You’re cut dead as if rudely awoken from a dream. The best way to listen to Floyd, I have found from experience, is in a darkened room with a vinyl copy.
I’ve always been fascinated by the album’s cover, and I in fact have a poster of it hanging on my bedroom wall. There is so much to read into with the cover design, which I have only realised myself whilst researching now. The image itself brings to life the album’s messages about the brutality of the music industry; the handshake, an often empty gesture, and a reflection on the phrase “getting burned”, used by musicians of the time when artists were denied royalty payments. A fun fact for you: When first taking the photograph, the wind was blowing in the wrong direction, so much so that one stuntman lost his moustache! They therefore changed positions and the image was later reversed. The overall theme of the album is “absence” which again was reflected in the the album being sold in a dark-coloured shrink-wrap, concealing the artwork. Like so many of Floyd’s albums, the cover was conceived by the great visionary Storm Thorgerson, who I had the pleasure of meeting shortly before he died in 2013.
It may not have the stand-alone hits like Dark Side does but as an album, Wish You Were Here was just as successful and impactful. It’s also said to be both David Gilmour and Richard Wright’s favourite Floyd album. The song I decided to cover, for practical reasons as much as anything, is the title track, a rare example of the balanced writing collaboration between Waters and Gilmour. It speaks not only of Barrett’s schizophrenia, but of human loneliness as a whole, and the image of "two lost souls swimming in a fishbowl" brings tears to my eyes nearly every time. Fading in from Have a Cigar, the track is supposed to sound like a radio tuning in from one station to another, the effect captured by Gilmour recording from his car radio. Unfortunately I am no multi-instrumentalist, so all the backing tracks that I use for this blog are downloaded. I have to hand it to the person who composed this backing, however, for their incredibly skilled playing. It was a delight to record with! So here it is, as it should be, instrumental and all. I hope you enjoy it...
