Brighton & Hove Musical Times

spring 2015 launch issue

free

Courtesy of Outside Organisation

“ This town’s got something very, very special creatively going for it. No doubt about that. It always did. Maybe it comes from the past debauchery; you know, the dirty weekend away. When you think about it, it was probably people going away with their muse for the weekend. I think there’s a lot of the muse in Brighton for a lot of musicians.”

- Roger Daltrey

EDITORIAL BRIGHTON & HOVE MUSICAL TIMES Issue One Spring 2015 Cover: Michael Munday

www.brightonmusicaltimes.com info@brightonmusicaltimes.com Editorial/Advertising: 01273 471505 Editor/Producer/Writer: John May Designer: Raphael Whittle Proof Reader: Nick Hockin Transcriptions: Harriet Hart

Welcome to the first issue of a new free music paper for Brighton and Hove, a city that prides itself on its musical scene. We’re on a mission which began in July 2013 when we launched the Lewes Musical Express as an antidote to the Mumford’s ‘Gentlemen of the Road Festival’, to celebrate the local music scene which we felt was more important.

You can read our first four issues here: www.lewesmusicalexpress.com When it came to producing the Brighton & Hove Musical Times we wanted to give it a twist that would make it special.

In fact, the fold-over format is based on the early issues of Rolling Stone. Here’s the cover of the first issue I bought in January 1969 (see right), featuring Rob Tyner of the MC5 – also a pic (below) of the old W.H. Smith news stand at Brighton station where I bought it from.

CONTENTS

KEEP MUSIC LIVE! 2 Hippodrome 4 Swingin’ Dick’s 78 Social 5 Vaseema Hamilton/Bimm 6 The Metway Sessions 7 Mouth of the source 8

Contributors Ben Bailey Jake Kennedy Felix Clement-Parker Chris Moore Steve Clements Michael Munday David Fisher Neeta Pedersen Allan Fowler Jon Savage Stuart Huggett Tony Shamblin Sexton

Big Thank You

@MUSIC VENUE TRUST: Mark Davyd, Beverley Whitrick. @THE MORNING ADVERTISER: Ellie Bothwell @STICKY MIKE’s and THE HOPE & RUIN: Sally Ann Oakenfold @THE PRINCE ALBERT: Will Moore & Chris Steward. @BIMM: Vasseema Hamilton, Jo-Anne King, Katie Waller. @METWAY: Lois. @THE SOURCE: Ben Bailey, Jake Kennedy, Steve Clements, Stuart Huggett. TRACK BY TRACK: Chris Spedding, Stephen Parsons, Kimberley Bright. AQUARIUM MUSIC: Roger Daltrey, Allan Edwards, Trevor Diplock [Brighton Beat: www.brightonbeat.com], Allan Fowler, Gil Tipping, Roy Hatley.

GEORGE HARRISON: Alex Eberhard, Paul Nieman (+Jess).

SIMON D’SOUZA: Susan D’souza, Paul Nieman, Becky Rork. @JUMP THE GUN: Adam Le Roy. @GREAT ESCAPE: Jon Crawley. @DOME: Chris Challis. @BRIGHTHELMSTONE PRODUCTIONS: James Walker. @SOUTHDOWNS FOLK FESTIVAL: Roger Nash. @ZU: Martin+Samira. @HARVEY’S: Bob Trimm, Miles Jenner. @THE LAMB: Alec. @LAPORTES: Tanya+Indianna. @CON CLUB: Charlie+Derek+Cathy. Kevin, Lin, Pete, Manek, Rupert Selby, Andy, Mike Edwards, Alex+Anna, Louis+Kate.

Every effort has been made to gain permission and acknowledge copyright. We apologise for any unintentional oversights and ommissions.

Little did I know that just over 12 months later, us Worthing freaks would be helping build the stage for the legendary free festival Phun City at which the MC5 played their first-ever gig in Britain.

I wrote as Dick Tracy for the NME from 1975-1982 so the BMT’s style is old-school journalism which we hope you appreciate and enjoy.

Our paper is aimed at the widest possible demographic and we are interested in all musical genres [www.everynoise.com have identified 1,374 of these so far]. We champion youth music and investigate and celebrate musical history. We don’t do listings or commercial puffs. We’re interested in the psychogeography of music and we like to get in deep.

Paper is a great alternative to screens and ideally suited for reading in bars and coffee shops. It’s interesting and valuable to explore the virtual digital music world but the local scene is where music means the most because it’s up close and personal. It’s coming from where you live.

Hats off to my compadre Raphael Whittle for his innovative design work. We’re just a two-man team with stars in our eyes and a hunger for print. The next issue will come out when it comes out. We welcome your support and advertising and look forward to your feedback. Ejohn mayB

Track by Track: Chris Spedding

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Aquarium Music Chinese Jazz club Roger Daltrey Exclusive The Who at the Florida Rooms Pete Townshend: The origins of Quadrophenia

14 15 16 18

The Music of George Harrison / Band on the rum Simon D’Souza: A celebration

19

20 22

2 Brighton & hove Musical Times

KEEP MUSIC LIVE! Andrew Roach/www.roachphotography.co.uk

SMALL MUSIC VENUES UNDER THREAT NATIONALLY …BUT NOT IN BRIGHTON?

I

f you like live music then you should be aware: Britain’s informal and somewhat chaotic network of small music venues is in a ‘perilous and precarious state’.

This assessment comes from the findings of a national research programme ‘Understanding Small Music Venues’ conducted by the Institute for Contemporary Music Performance (ICMP) and part-funded by the Arts Council. The full report was presented to Parliament in March this year.

The full quote refers to the ‘national challenge to our live music venue circuit [due to] a sequence of events and developments which have left the network in a perilous and precarious state.’

The ICMP are in partnership with the Music Venue Trust (MVT), a new national charity founded in January 2014, which ‘seeks to preserve, secure and improve the network of small to medium scale, mostly independently run, music venues.’

On the 9th December 2014, MVT staged the first ‘Venues Day’ at the London’s South Bank, which brought together people from 120 venues across Britain, including one from Brighton.

In January 2015, they held a founding event for the MVT Alliance, ‘an association of venues and organisations that have united behind the work of the Trust to engage with the industry, the cultural sector, and politicians’.

Since then, MVT have been appointed to chair a taskforce set up by Boris Johnson to look at the future of music venues in the capital. There were 400 music venues in the city in 2010; down to 344 in 2012.

MVT’s founder and CEO Mark Davyd told us: ‘There’s been massive under-investment in the ‘toilet’ circuit. There are less than 300 world-class small music venues in the UK; in the Netherlands, Gronigen alone has three. It’s an ecosystem which no-one will speak up to defend. That’s where we come in.’

Davyd has an interest because he is the co-owner of Tunbridge Wells Forum, an active music and community arts venue which he says he founded in a toilet over 20 years ago. He is also the CEO of Rhythmix, a music charity that helps young people from ‘challenging circumstances’ to express themselves musically. His company Outstanding Music specialises in recording and promoting alternative Latin music and musicians.

He says that MVT are looking out for what he calls “supportable” venues which are able to provide “spaces for new young bands and new music and to serve as good touring venues.” He hopes that in the future, threatened music venues can be saved by bringing them into charity or community ownership. www.musicvenuetrust.com

A community protest in February 2015 outside The Horse & Groom in Islingword Road, Hanover. The pub has since been closed down and sold to a developer by its owner Enterprise Inns.

Enterprise who own about 4,000 pubs nationally, have also recently sold the London Unity, the Albion Inn and the Rose Hill Tavern for development. The Unity has already been turned into two homes and The Albion may be converted into a four-bedroom house.

As a result of campaign pressure,

MAKE SOME NOISE

“ There’s no database I’m aware of which shows how many music pubs and venues there are [in Britain].

It would be interesting to find out the rate that llie Bothwell, Deputy News they’re closing.

Editor of the pub business Obviously music trade paper The Morning venues up and Advertiser, told us that the down the country reason they started their own ‘Make are dropping Some Noise’ campaign was because like flies.” “anecdotally there were a lot of

E

E llie Bothwell, Deputy News Editor of ‘The Morning Advertiser’

cases where pubs may have been putting on live music in their venue for decades and then new residents come along.

“They choose to live near to a pub, often because pubs are in nice parts of town but when they move in, they complain about the noise. Some Councils only need to have one or two complaints for them to penalise the business, either by introducing onerous conditions on their licences or by taking the pub to Licence Review which means that it could face closure.

“Music can be a big revenue driver for pubs but if they think that they’re going then to face a Review because of noise complaints it puts them in a difficult position.

“Our campaign also sought to look at the root of the problem which is to do with planning. The pressure is on nationally to build more houses.

both the Horse & Groom and the Rose Hill Tavern have been successfully registered as an Asset of Community Value (ACV) under new regulations designed to protect valuable local pubs and to encourage community ownership.

More than 600 pubs nationally have been registered as ACV’s and plans are afoot to triple that number.

Craig Dwyer-Smith, the developer of both these Brighton pubs is appealing against these ACV listings. In the case of the Horse and Groom, he is arguing that he had successful applied for a change of use before the pub was granted ACV status. His initial conversion plans for the Rose Hill Tavern were rejected by the Council. The ACV award means that if the pub is sold in the next five years, there is a six-month delay to enable the community to raise the funds to bring the building into community ownership.

There is a huge shortage of housing in Brighton and many other pubs may be threatened.

Three others – The Cuthbert, The King’s Arms and the Toby Inn - are currently the subject of change-ofuse applications. Nationally, there 48,000 surviving pubs in Britain; CAMRA puts the current closure rate at 29 a week.

“We do hear of a lot of cases of pubs being turned into residential property or supermarkets. At the moment you don’t need planning permission to convert a pub into a supermarket or into offices I don’t think. So it’s very easy for them to sell it on to a developer [who] they can get more money from.”

“New residential blocks without soundproofing are being built near pubs leading to more residents’ complaints.

“Kris Hopkins, the new Community Pubs minister has already introduced an amendment to the Planning Guidance issued to Local Councils to the effect that, when considering new developments, planners should ‘strongly consider the impact that might have on any pubs or music venue in the local area.‘ ‘We are campaigning for the introduction of an Agent of Change principle which has been implemented in Australia. Bristol City Council have also used it so we know it’s something that could work and could be implemented.

“It’s basically saying whoever changes an environment is responsible for managing the impact.” In other words, developers would be responsible for soundproofing their new buildings and paying the cost of that.

“I think getting the Agent of Change principle adopted in Australia may have taken nine years,” says Bothwell, “so it could be quite a long campaign.” We checked. In fact it took the Save Live Australia’s Music (SLAM) 11 years to get the principle enforced.

BRIGHTON: THE STATE OF PLAY “Brighton & Hove has more small music venues than virtually any other similar sized town or city in the UK. Large numbers of them are offering their stages to unknown acts.

‘The music scene here is thriving and is frequently referenced by national radio DJs such as Craig Charles.

‘Live music is a vital part of our cultural and tourism offer, and as such is an important part of the city’s economy.

‘Our licensing policy specifically encourages live music, while safeguarding the right of our residents for privacy and family life as required by national law.”

Statement from Councillor Stephanie Powell, Chair of Brighton & Hove City Council’s licensing committee, e-mailed to the BMT by the Council’s Press Office.

STICKY MIKE’S and THE HOPE & RUIN

“We signed up to the Music Venue Trust campaign because we think it’s really important to save small live music venues.”

Sally Ann Oakenfold

Sally is the creative director and booker at both Sticky Mike’s Frog Bar and the newly-christened and refurbished The Hope & Ruin. To date, Sticky Mike’s is the only venue in Brighton that has signed on to the MVT’s national campaign.

We talked about the set-up at Sticky Mike’s: ‘We’re lucky to have our live music venue in a basement underneath a road and a car park. We have a capacity of 200. We use a noise limiter there because of Health & Safety issues to do with people’s hearing. We also have a noise limiter in the bar upstairs so we can monitor the situation.

“We have a mixed bill of international touring shows and local bands put on by local promoters. We cover a lot of different genres of music and run two regular big nights: Late Night Lingerie which goes on until two in the morning and

I

s this claim about the number of small music venues accurate and how many are there in Brighton & Hove? At the last 2011 Census, the population of Brighton was 273, 369. A similar-sized city which also has a deserved reputation as being a great city for music is Newcastle (pop.

280,177). You can see a long list of the city and district’s music venues to contrast and compare. (www.riffsonline.co.uk/ venuetelnos.htm ) We sat down with Will and Chris at The Albert [see later] and came up with the following list of 21 dedicated small music venues and music pubs with a capacity of 100-300: The Albert, The Hope & Ruin, Sticky Mike’s, The Latest Music Bar, The Haunt, The Green Door, Bleach, The Joker, The

features five or six garage punk bands at a time. Fresh Punk is more pop punk and again we have five or six bands followed by a club night which finishes at 3am. We have a metal all-dayer coming up soon with 11 or 12 bands.”

“We have had noise problems quite regularly over a period. The Council were not helpful initially and haven’t been historically but when we accumulated a dossier of evidence they looked more favourably on us. The complaints came repeatedly from one person. We’re situated on a busy road anyway and it is very difficult to be responsible for people leaving the venue.

This was the noise issue not the music itself,” Sticky Mike’s and The Hope are the only two music pubs in a chain of 45 pubs in Brighton owned by the Laines Pub Company.

At The Hope & Ruin, they’ve given the downstairs a makeover and the upstairs venue has been expanded to give a capacity of 150. The space is largely hired

Komedia’s Studio Bar, The Cowley Club, The Rialto, The Verdict, The Basement, The Gladstone, The World’s End, The Mesmerist, The Ranelagh, The Fitzherbert’s, The Brunswick, The Neptune and The Greys.

Many other pubs in the city may only have music from time to time and will only book cover and tribute bands. Some will host folk or jazz clubs or swing nights.

Acoustic music is popular (no noise problems) and there are many regular open mic nights. One thing is for sure: the number of venues/pubs/bars willing or able to host loud, full-on, in-yer-face music with drums and amps is limited.

The website www.brightonnoise.co.uk lists 40 music promoters based in Brighton.

One of these is James Walker who runs Brighthelmstone Productions and promotes

by big promoters like One Inch Badge and Melting Vinyl, the gigs are ticketed and the venue helps promote the gigs through posters and social media.

The music is varied: indie, punk, new wave, pop punk, folk, hardcore, funk, soul, jazz…

You get the drift.

Sally began putting on parties and club nights when she was a student and also DJ’d for many years. She and her team obviously run a tight ship. They have to as they’re subject to stringent rules and regulations which affect pubs that have a separate function room run as a small venue.

Our conversation turns to what you might call the unintended consequences of the Live Music Act of 2012. This enabled people who wanted to do charity events involving music - at schools, civic centres, community halls and similar premises - to do so without having to apply for a temporary music licence. This was a good thing – cutting red tape and saving time in the Councils and Courts.

But this Bill also replaced the previous legislation governing music in pubs and meant that all licensed premises could have live music without needing a special Music Licence.

This, Sally believes, is having negative effects. “If everyone can put on live acts then that means more room for people to do it badly, with no-one monitoring the sound, which upsets lots of people.

“It also means that a lot more musicians and young bands are being exploited as they have to pay for free. Getting downloads for free is one thing but not even paying for live music now – where’s that going to take us.”

THE PRINCE ALBERT

3 Brighton & hove Musical Times

Americana and Roots music at the Albert, at Bleach (formerly The Hydrant, above the Hare & Hounds in London Road), and at Concorde 2. Eighty per cent of his acts are from the States and are supported by UK acts. He told us: “I don’t think I’ve heard of any venues which haven’t had either one or two nuisance neighbours” So Brighton does appear to have a healthy small venue infrastructure which is not to say that there aren’t problems.

Interestingly, the big gap in music provision is spaces which can hold 300-600 people.

What follows are two formal interviews which give a deeper understanding of the difficulties facing small music venues.

We will be following this story throughout 2015 and look forward to hearing your comments.

You’d be hard pressed to find a more experienced and knowledgeable duo than Will Moore (with his trademark titfer) who books the bands and Chris Steward, who’s been running the Albert for 17 years and also used to run The Concorde when it was just by the Aquarium.

They’ve built the pub into what most people feel is Brighton’s flagship small music venue. The brilliant mural of music heroes which covers the pub’s facade (and also incorporates Banksy’s famous ‘Kissing Coppers’ ) celebrates a great musical legacy that these guys are keeping alive.

Will says they book everything: “Touring bands, BIMM bands, bands from

25 years ago. We get them once on the way up and once on the way down.” Many great bands and artists have appeared there including Wreckless Eric, Neneh Cherry, Wire, The Maccabees, Mumford & Sons, Noah and the Whale to name but a few.

They have a great music policy. If Will books the gig, the band pays for the sound man (£60) but the rest of the ticket money goes straight to the musicians. If a promoter is involved, they take their cut.

They know only too well the problems with noise and have successfully done everything they can to avoid them. They have had complaints from one or two people in the past – the last one about five years ago – but they work hard to ensure they deal with the issue in a responsible manner.

Econtinued overL

4 Brighton & hove Musical Times

LOST PUBS

EwordsLEdavid fisherB

Illustrations by Chris Moore

EcontinuedL

THE BLIND TIGER

The Blind Tiger Club was also closed due to noise issues, in May 2014 after a three year tenancy in a pub that had hosted music for 100 years.

As part of this investigation, we became interested in finding out the reasons Again it seems that there is some that led to the closure of two of the discrepancy between the tenant’s city’s significant small music venues due and the Council’s accounts of to noise problems. the circumstances.

The tenant’s story: ‘In 2013 The Blind Tiger got a new neighbour who rented a small one-bedroom flat on the floor above our venue [which was] about three metres above our stage. Soon after Before Will Moore was booking bands at the Albert, moving in, the neighbour started he was the booker at The Freebutt from 1993-2001. to complain… After a year of For a whole generation, this was the music venue. occasional and informal complaints, Key acts such as The Libertines, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, the neighbour … complained directly Razorlight and Mogwai made their Brighton debut to the police [who] referred the there. Despite the staff’s best efforts, constant noise matter to the council.’ complaints forced the pub to shut down.

The Blind Tiger was then served Will explains what the problem was: “A housing with a Noise Abatement Order. so association built cheap flats all the way around it. that ‘if the neighbour was disturbed Right next to the pub, they also built a home for by noise from the bar after Monday physically and mentally disabled kids. The buildings 19 May 2014, the venue will be were shabby with paper-thin walls.” taken to court, fined £20,000, and In a final statement from the face other sanctions, which would also result in forced Freebutt team, published in The closure.’ Sound-proofing the venue was too expensive Source in 2010, they wrote that the an option. They then tried to re-house the neighbour Council insisted that the volume and rent the apartment themselves without success. limiter installed was reduced to The pub closed that May. a level of just 94 decibels (dB) The Council sent us a statement which reads in ‘rendering it impossible for live part: ‘We supported the live music operation of the unamplified drums or backline Blind Tiger for many years because it fitted well with amplified guitars to perform in the the commitment stated in our licensing policy to building’. They estimated that the support live music. Its decision to cease trading was cost of sound-proofing the venue taken by the management of the venue. We did not would be approx. £20,000. A petition force its closure…Our environmental health team was of 4,000 signatures had no effect forced to serve a noise abatement notice on the venue and the money was never found. In for persistent noise nuisance… The notice followed December 2010, the four co-owners complaints from residents in three nearby streets. staged two final concerts to mark An experienced council officer monitoring one the venue’s demise.

The Council gave us the following property reported the worst noise nuisance they had ever encountered.’ statement: ‘Following a number of complaints from residents and monitoring by council officers we served an abatement notice on The Freebutt in February 2010… The notice allowed the venue time for work to be carried out in order to comply with the notice. The decision to cease operations was taken by the management of the venue. We did not force them to close.’

THE FREEBUTT

B

THE HIPPOdrome

The music room upstairs with a capacity of 100, has a good quality PA and acoustic curtains and drapes.

It’s a Grade 2 listed building so they can’t tamper with the basic structure but they make sure doors and windows are closed. This is more difficult in the summer so they have adopted a policy of booking less noisy bands during that season.

Summarising a long bar-stool conversation, they don’t think the noise regulations - or risk assessments for that matter are handled in a consistent and even-handed manner.

Chris says: “Common sense doesn’t prevail. Pubs are always a first target.” He has had personal problems with the noise from a big air conditioning system across the road and points out that one busker with a noisy amp can drown out the musicians who are playing in the pub itself.

Will was philosophical about the number of music venues and the threat to their survival.

“It’s always changing. Some have closed recently but Circus Circus has become the The Joker with bands.

Then there’s Bleach. The Hope’s been refurbished. I think the numbers stay about equal.”

righton Hippodrome has been dark since 2006 yet it has a remarkable history and still merits the description, given to it by those campaigning to bring it back to life, as ‘the finest unused theatre in the country.’

The building was originally erected in 1897 as an iceskating rink which went out of business two years later.

In August 1901, it reopened as The Hippodrome Theatre and Circus with an interior designed by Frank Matcham, the doyen of Victorian/Edwardian theatre designers. The following September it was bought by the entertainment impresario Tom Barrasford, who employed Mitcham to convert it into a music hall.

The first twice-nightly variety show at the Hippodrome was staged on Christmas Eve 1902 and audiences were entertained there throughout two world wars and into the 1950s.

However variety gradually lost its appeal as television provided similar entertainment with shows like Sunday Night at the London Palladium.

By 1964, the big draw at the Hippodrome was on Sunday nights when music promoters began putting on the top music acts of the day.

These included The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Merseybeat acts like Gerry & The Pacemakers, The Animals, Cliff Richard and the Shadows, Brenda Lee, Bryan Hyland, Sam Cooke, Little Richard, Lonnie Donegan and many others. The very last show on the 22nd November 1964 was headlined

by Chuck Berry and Jerry Lee Lewis.

That same year, Brighton

5 Brighton & hove Musical Times

Swingin’ Dick’s 78 Social Pioneering shellac DJs

C Corporation considered demolishing the building and turning the site into a multistorey car park. Instead it was acquired by the Mecca Group and the building functioned as a bingo hall from 1965 to 2006.

In 2007 the new leaseholder Academy Music Group, working with the concert promoter LiveNation, tried for five years to get planning permission for a £9 million restoration of the Hippodrome as a music venue. This plan was scuppered when they were advised by the Council that they were very unlikely to get a late-night alcohol licence.

Next came an alternative scheme to convert the Hippodrome into a multi-screen cinema with restaurants. Having gained planning approval in November 2014, the owners promptly put the Hippodrome and the adjacent Dukes Lane shopping street on the market and the prospective cinema operator Vue Entertainment dropped out.

Although the planning consent remains in place for three years, it is now most unlikely to go ahead.

The Our Brighton Hippodrome (OBH) campaign began in opposition to these conversion plans which would have destroyed 60 per cent of this Grade II* listed building.

We are now developing a detailed proposal and business plan to restore The Hippodrome as a live performance venue.

The plan is to capitalise on the flexibility of the space, which can be configured in various modes from conventional proscenium theatre to arena. This will enable us to stage big musicals, circuses, opera, ballet and dance shows, to revive pantomime and variety shows and even host snooker and other big events. This will add considerably to the city’s tourist appeal and its economy, a message the council is now beginning to recognise. Watch this space for further developments. www.ourhippodrome.org.uk

A ‘Save Our Hippodrome’ demo in Jan 2015.

Amongst those in attendance were Caroline Lucas MP and Captain Sensible

Tony Shamblin Sexton (left) and Chris Sick spin those grooves

hris Sick and Tony Shamblin Sexton are the unusual handles of an obsessive duo of music enthusiasts who, between them, have racked up over 30 years of experience DJing and promoting a diverse range of cult music nights.

Currently, Chris (in partnership with Neil Sick) runs ‘Stay Sick’ (now in its seventh year) which brings together sleazy garage punk bands with dirty rock ‘n’ roll records; Shamblin Sexton DJs with Senor Mick Hosie at ‘Whiskey Preachin’ (now in its third year), a regular monthly night of bottle-rocking blues, swampy soul, cosmic country and gumbo rock (also now a monthly radio show on 1Brighton FM). Separately, they also both compile albums for the German ‘Stag-O-Lee’ label. In addition, Chris happens to be a talented illustrator and designer, contributing eye-catching graphics for all of the above.

Their latest project grew out of some occasional vinyl jazz sessions at the Saint James in Kemptown, jokily named ‘Swingin’ Dick’s’ after an elderly friend they worked with.

When Dick passed away last August, he bequeathed them his collection of 78s which contained a fair bit of jazz and swing. This led to Chris and Tony taking the idea of DJing with shellac more seriously. Looking for a deeper satisfaction and a way of swerving the cliché of playing vinyl in Brighton, they decided shellac was the way forwards (or have they got that backwards?).

Thus ‘Swingin’ Dick’s 78 Social’, a regular monthly Saturday afternoon gig, alternating between The Great Eastern and The Office, was born.

“It was a crazy idea”, says Chris, “but I liked the perversity of it, playing records that crackle and hiss which might not have been heard for 60 years. We didn’t have many 78s and we needed a lot of them as they are only a couple of minutes long. They are very heavy and easily broken but they are beautiful. The label artwork is often very striking.

The colours they were able to print then cannot be easily replicated with digital printing today.

“There’s something very satisfying about handling shellac 78s,” says Tony, “their weight, the feel of the different composites they are made from. It’s all very appealing, especially in the modern world of intangible music files.

These things are true artefacts of a bygone age. There’s history in there.”

“People of all ages really seem to love the fact that we are playing 78s for them”, says Chris. “They reminisce to us about how their grandparents would play 78s when they visited as kids, or saying how they must bring their father down as he would love it. The music is timeless and infectious and it works across generations.”

The music they play can be broadly described as classic jazz from the ‘30s and ‘40s, leaning more towards swing than bebop or Dixieland (although these styles are touched upon), spiced with dashes of blues, gospel, calypso and western swing.

Amongst their Top Ten 78 sounds are: ‘The Little Goose’ by Rex Stewart’s Big Eight; ‘Krazy Kapers’

by The Chocolate Dandies; ‘In The Barrel’ by Wingy Manone and ‘Jam Man’ by Slim Galliard.

Swingin’ Dick’s is as charming as it is disarming, managing to be both supremely niche and wonderfully inclusive at the same time. Chris and Tony, pioneering shellac DJs, have found good fortune playing music they love and consider themselves lucky enough to live in Brighton, where you can get away with such eccentricities. CF

VASEEMA HAMILTON 6 Brighton & hove Musical Times

Vaseema is the Principal of the BIMM Colleges in Brighton, London, Bristol and now Berlin

Art Schools and I was doing that for nearly 30 years. I used to run the Art & Design department at City College in Brighton and then became the Assistant Principal. That was when I worked with the original founders on the first model for BIMM in Brighton. I got so passionate about what was happening – a musical version of an Art School model which I really believe in – that it was a really natural progression and I love it just as much.

Were you always passionate about music yourself?

A big listener to music, yes.

Living through the punk era and being a person with David Bowie’s signature on their bedroom wall (laughing).

Music and the music business are now very different from the way things used to be. What would you say is the value of having a music degree these days?

What I think we are giving our students the opportunity to do is to have two, three or maybe four years in an environment which is completely populated by people who are as passionate as they are about their practice and about the music industry.

We enable people to become critical practitioners and critical listeners with time to think about and discuss their practice and not be placed in a commercial context too early in their development.

Our tutors, who are still practitioners in the music industry, operate as mentors and guides, both to the academic aspirations of our students, to best practice and to the development of their individual careers. They provide a connection to the rather impenetrable and mystique–filled world of music, which is hard to access unless you’ve got the right friends in the right places.

Can I ask you then if I was to take a guitar course, for instance, what is the balance between playing and academic practice?

Great question. All of the performance students will probably spend 50% of their time-tabled work in classes where they play their instruments, hone their style and technique, developing their relationship with their instrument or their voice. All students also take music business programs which are taught in collaboration with other disciplines.

We also have what we call ‘Artist development and live performance workshops’. These are sessions where guitarists, bass players, drummers and vocalists are taught in small groups together and they get used to working in ensemble situations. They either play their own material or work through the canon of rock and roll into punk and modern music.

If you’re doing a degree, which is awarded by the University of Sussex, students will be doing several pieces of essay work during the course of their studies. They will be supported

jm vh jm

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One of the founders of BIMM said: “Music is the life blood of Brighton and the number of great venues in the city is one of the reasons why we brought BIMM to the city in the first place.”

All of the centres that BIMM is based in — Brighton, Bristol, Dublin, Manchester, and London — have been selected because they’ve got a phenomenal music history and a huge selection of independent venues.

It works for us to be in places that are quite viscerally involved with the music industry and the kind of small venues where people will be playing their first gigs to a small audience. We often like to say to our students that these are places where it is safe to make your first appearances and build your confidence. Hopefully we’ve got them beyond their first cock-ups while they are working with us in the college studios.

It seems that nothing like BIMM existed previously as far as I am aware?

In British education, one of the great models has been the Art School scene. In the art school culture, all the different disciplines within art and design — whether it’s Fine Art, Graphics, Fashion and Textiles, Illustration or Photography —find themselves in a like-minded home together.

In addition, the art schools were one of the foundations of contemporary music. I did my own bit of research a couple of years ago into how many musicians had been to art school, and I got beyond a hundred very quickly: The Kinks, David Bowie, Pink Floyd, Pete Townshend, Eric Clapton etc.

So part of the philosophy of the BIMM colleges is to provide a safe place for like-minded people who are passionate about music and want to work within the music industry and are interested in the wider culture.

This includes: songwriters & performers; musicians who want to take their own practice forward; people who want to collaborate

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and form bands; people who are interested in music technology, writing about gigs, putting on gigs, and helping people to get their music out there. It’s a very active choice for students who don’t necessarily want to go through a mainstream university campus experience. They want to get a degree but prefer to work in a very specialised environment.

I’m interested to find out when people started doing degrees in drumming and other musical instruments.

For more than 100 years, there have been conservatoires and places for people to learn classical instruments and some of these diversified into contemporary instruments.

New specialist music institutions focusing on modern music and practices sprung up around 25-30 years ago. A good example is the Tech Music School, founded in London in 1984, which started with three departments for drums, guitar and vocals. It’s now been rebranded as BIMM London.

I think they emerged partly out of a demand from the music business and also from the example of similar

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foundations in New York, which had diversified from mainstream conservatoire-style classical practice.

That was certainly the case for the Tech Music School. The people who established it had studied at The Collective, a New York school centred round a collective of musicians. We visited it on Valentine’s Day 2014. It was fantastic and we found we had an enormous amount in common with them. Their model is quite similar to what we do. It’s based right in the centre of Manhattan and they have the same philosophy of getting their students out performing as much as possible in small venues. We were able to go to places like the Biscuit Factory which felt very similar to small venues in Brighton.

On a personal level; how did you come to be doing what you are doing?

I have a very musical and artistic family background. I went to Art School when I was 17, studied at Middlesex University and at Winchester School of Art and got a degree in Fine Art. When I was in my late 20’s, I started teaching Fine Art and the history of Art and Design in

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7 Brighton & hove Musical Times

in their ability to think and write because, in the modern world, it is a brilliant thing to be able to present yourself in that way.

You say all the students do something about the music business.

What does that involve?

They do something about the history of the music business that would take them right back to the early days of the NME. They learn about the context of the individual acts and bands and movements within the social and political moments that they occurred. This helps them to understand where we are now.

They also learn about the modes of production and consumption of music and how these have changed and are constantly changing. We are trying to get them to be inquisitive, knowledgeable and fleet of foot.

And the digital revolution?

Yes. This affects all areas of creative practice. Many young people have got access to recording technology. They can be bedroom composers, performers and practitioners. They can put their own work out, which is a very democratic thing.

But obviously there are two sides to it. There is the ease with which anybody can make and record some music but the other side is that because anybody can do it, there is this vast universe of stuff and how on earth do you make yourself distinctive and find your way?

By being exceptionally good and being exceptionally good at promoting yourself. We work on digital press kits, so performing students or bands will leave us with a very strong CV with referees, references and connectivity. They will know how important the image is in all that and how to use social media in a positive way.

When they go out into the world, does a BIMM accreditation significantly help them?

We’ve now got such a large number of alumni working in the business that they naturally and very generously, come back to talk and provide opportunities for our new students. In addition, your peer group at BIMM will never leave you.

In the main, our students are very proud to have studied with us.

Is there an age limit?

The majority of students join us for the first-year degree at the age of 18 or 19 but we do have mature students in their mid-to-late 20s and some in their 40s. We also have a lot of international students.

So are you thinking of spreading BIMM across the world?

Well, it’s a brilliant day to be talking to you because we are launching BIMM in Berlin on the 14th of February. We are working with our musical partner over there called “Noisy Academy”. There are some institutions there who are delivering music technology and recording degrees but, in terms of the Art School model that

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I have described to you, there really isn’t anything like that for young contemporary musicians. So there is a huge sense of excitement about what we can offer over there.

As I understand it, you try and keep the fees as low as you can — under six grand a year. Are there scholarships and bursaries that you can apply for?

Yes. Students who come to us for the degree programs can get a loan to study as they would if going to the University of Sussex or a mainstream Uni. We have kept our fees to under £6,000 for UK and EU students and we are able to do that because we are fairly small and don’t have the overheads that you would have if you were running the University of Sussex campus.

In all our centres we have at least 20 full scholarships for students who have real financial difficulties. Some of these are based on talent and are sponsored by the music industry. EMI, for instance, sponsor a song writing scholarship in Brighton.

During the time you have been Principal at BIMM, what have you noticed about your students and the way the music has evolved?

When I first started here there was a real vogue in Brighton around electronica and metal. In the last few years, there is now a huge range and multiplicity of genres, which I personally find incredibly exciting.

There’s a massive frisson and fusion between different genres and lots of influences coming from Eastern European music.

We’ve got over 250 students on the song-writing degrees at the minute in Brighton, and they are really about origination. They are like the Fine Art department of the Art School.

I wonder how you teach song writing.

You get people to read a lot of poetry, listen to a lot of music, really think about what they want to say, understand about composition and focus on the audience that they are trying to reach.

It’s a slightly alchemic thing as well. Producing a song is partly about being the kind of person who has really got something to say about the modern world or whatever it is that drives them.

We encourage a lot of what we call critical listening, sessions where people will come in and play two or three things that they have been listening to and really deconstruct them. It’s not just about where the middle eight sits, it’s about the whole package that makes a magical song.

Do you have your own rehearsal rooms and recording studios within the institution?

We do but we never have enough. It’s the one thing that students constantly need more of.

As with small venues in Brighton, it’s really hard to get a place where you can play a live drum kit and not piss people off. CF

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THE METWAY SESSIONS

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righton-born band The Levellers have always had the Do It All Yourself ethic which is why they bought a derelict factory in Canning Street in 1995 and converted it first into a rehearsal space and then into the Metway Studios. This attracted artists like Nick Cave, Asian Dub Foundation as well being The Levellers own recording space. The band’s lead singer Mark Chadwick told us: “It’s given us a base so we don’t flounder around.”

The band have always had a sense of community which is why they came up with the idea of offering free demo recordings at Metway to young bands and artists. They were invited to submit tapes of their music to a panel of music professionals who would select the most promising entries.

The project, which began in July 1999 and ran for seven years, was initially funded by the band and developed in conjunction with Festival Radio, the owners of Juice 107.2 and Lisa Lout (Lout Promotions). When

the money ran out, Fat Boy Slim came up with additional funding to run the Metway Sessions for another two years.

In all more than 500 bands and artists took advantage of the scheme including Brighton’s Clearlake, The Electric Soft Parade, The Ordinary Boys and British Sea Power.

Happily the Metway Sessions are being re-launched in May this year.

Bands and artists are once more being invited to submit demos for scrutiny by a judging panel of music industry people.

If selected, the winning band or artist will get an eight-hour recording session with an engineer at Metway for free and a one-off single and publishing deal. The single will be released via iTunes on the Metway Sessions label and the musicians will receive a royalty payment for all downloads. The track will also be broadcast on Juice 107.2’s ‘Totally Wired’ show. CF

Send your demos by post to Metway Studios, 55 Canning Street, Brighton BN2 0EF. Or send via email to lois@ levellers.co.uk.

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www.metwaystudios.co.uk www.juicebrighton.com www.totallyradio.com

8 Brighton & hove Musical Times

We asked the SOURCE writers to pick out a few of their current favourites from the Brighton music scene

EwordsL Ejake kennedyB Esteve clementsB Estuart huggettB

former editor, Marcus O’Dair, went on to form Grasscut and has just released a biography of Robert Wyatt.

Our current team includes journalists from NME, Time Out and Radio Times as well as a couple of authors. It’s insane they still want to write about local bands, but they do.

why do you think source was so well liked?

Besides the professional talent that

went into making it, I think it was the attitude of the magazine. The writing was sassy and informative, as opposed to the press release pap you find in a lot of local things. There were also some crazy features about doing things you’d never done before, like drinking breast milk or going dogging. The internet being what it is, those features are still pretty popular.

Ultimately though, the magazine was liked because it was part of the community. People could pick it up in the pub, plan their weekend and read about their mate’s band. They can still do that, smartphone in hand.

mouth of the SOURCE

has the content changed since you moved online?

Not really. We post previews of

It was Brighton’s longest running and most loved magazine, but at the end of 2013 the team behind Brighton SOURCE decided to call it a day. However, the magazine’s website has made a bit of a comeback this year, returning with the same mix of music news, gig reviews and local features. We checked in with Ben Bailey of the SOURCE crew to find out about life after print.

what happened to the mag? why did it close?

It was a free magazine run on advertising, so it was a combination of things. One was that the internet happened. In the 90s the only way you could promote a night was through flyers or local press. When SOURCE started it was full of ads for club nights – alongside loads of pictures of gurning ravers. Brighton still had a healthy club scene then. I guess it was Big Beat days. All that shifted onto the web when promoters realised they could spam Facebook instead. There were new and cheaper ways to do it. Of course, by 2013 it was more about the effect on local businesses of a five year recession.

And on top of all that printing costs kept going up. I think by the end we worked out that each copy of the mag was costing £1 to print. That’s a lot for something you’re giving away for free.

so you decided to jump ship and go online?

You could say that. There was this crunch point last year when the

hosting on the website ran out. We realised there was years and years of content on there – loads of great stuff about local bands, gigs that had happened in the city and interviews with all these amazing people – and we just couldn’t bring ourselves to pull the plug. Though James and Rosie who used to run the magazine had moved on, a few of us decided to see if we could keep it going.

The website was already in place, it was just a case of getting the momentum back. Luckily, we managed to keep hold of some of the mag’s best contributors.

the best mag in Brighton, but I think it was under James’ tenure that it became known for its smart writing and great photography.

who did you have on the cover in those days?

Brighton’s always punched above

when did the magazine start?

I believe the first issue came out

its weight in terms of music, which meant the magazine did too. SOURCE was well placed to give cover features to some great bands just before they broke big – Rizzle Kicks, The Wytches, Blood Red Shoes and Metronomy to name a few. The Maccabees, Bat For Lashes, The Pipettes and Foals to name a few more. The excellent Kev Mason and Kenny McCracken were responsible for most of those.

in 1998. It was started by Judith Manson who ran it for six years, before Marcus O’Dair took over.

It was picked up by The Argus somewhere along the line, but they dropped it in 2008. James Kendall was the editor by that point and he and his wife Rosie brought it back under their own steam as an independent venture. It was always

broadcaster) used to do some of the covers and Chris T-T (singer songwriter) was a sub. The assistant editor of NME.com, Kevin EG Perry, was a regular for a while as was Lomokev the photographer. Also the

who else has worked on the magazine over the years?

Well, Toby Amies (filmmaker and

upcoming gigs, a bit of local news, interviews with interesting Brighton people and regular gig reviews. Last month we reviewed The Decemberists, Dr John, Alasdair Roberts and Spectres. It’s a mix of local bands and touring bands, different genres and profiles. The focus is still largely music, but we’re covering things like comedy and art and food as well. We’ve got a forthcoming feature about the decline of Brighton’s club scene as well as one about the London Road revamp. There’s new stuff going up every day, more or less.

whats the main difference about publishing on the web?

We used to distribute the bulk of the magazines by hand, so at least we don’t have to cart the fuckers around town anymore. Going online means we can be a lot more responsive and up to date. This has the added bonus of alleviating the dreaded monthly deadline and the need to plan everything a month in advance.

Bands never got their heads around this: “We’re doing a gig tomorrow, can you cover it in the mag?” There’s less advertising to fill now and we can go more in depth. The size of our interviews have increased, not because we like to bang on about stuff (well, maybe that too), but because we figure if something’s interesting to people it’ll be more interesting if there’s more of it. That’s the idea anyway. Still there? Hello?

9 Brighton & hove Musical Times

Soft Walls

Bad Bad Whiskey

@Radio Reverb Studios

Tina Muat of Teardrop Factory

Brainchild of Faux Discx label owner Dan Reeves, Soft Walls are a terrifyingly scorching live proposition.

Affiliated with Hookworms, the band deal in the same kind of seat-of-thepants psych as their northern friends, but 2014’s excellent ‘No Time’ LP also addressed more existential issues that would ring bells with anyone in their mid-30s, like the passing of time and missed opportunities. Such a depth sets Softs Walls well above the ever increasing army of modern pysch heads, emphasizing the ‘head’ as much as the ‘psych’.

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Slum Of Legs

David McNamee

Central to the thriving local rockabilly scene, Brighton’s hard-working skifflebilly trio, Bad Bad Whiskey, have just released ‘Howlin Gumbo’, their third album. Channelling British legends like Lonnie Donegan and Vince Taylor alongside elements of blues and raw rock’n’roll, their regular live shows are a riot. Drummer Gio’s jazz skills add a touch of class to their authentic sound that’s completed by the dapper Moocher’s double bass slaps and the ubiquitous Citizen Lane on vocal and geetar duties.

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Fiery, funny, politicised and poppy, Slum Of Legs hit the ground running two years ago at their debut show, full quiver of tunes and vocalist Tamsin’s audience-flooring attitude intact from the off. Allying themselves with Brighton’s Tuff Enuff Records, a quickie demo tape and two firecracker 7”s (2014’s haunted ‘Begin To Dissolve’ and gender identity anthem ‘Doll Like’) brought the violin and synth-toting punk rock sextet acclaim at home and abroad, where even the venerable Billboard took notice.

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Sticks

Gazelle Twin

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Cover of her album ‘Unflesh’

The Wytches

Ashley Laurence

Elizabeth Bernholz’s Gazelle Twin has produced three albums since 2011, each a step closer to the kind of poetry-come-dancehall fusion you imagined she was aiming for from day one. Having worked with analogue producers including Benge, the feeling on 2014’s ‘Unflesh’ was one with a political bent, the lyrics touching on hot topics close to Bernholz’s heart, often segueing with terms gleaned from her medical studies. The results are chilling and lingering, and leave the listener in a state of unease, yet still scrabbling back for more.

www.upsettherhythm.co.uk

Sticks could be the stereotypical Brighton band, formed from staff at the Green Door Store and Duke Of York’s, playing only sporadically (albeit for nearly a decade), with a DIY attitude that’s virtually impossible to top in the city. They switch between instruments during gigs, debut new songs to often catastrophic effect, and eventually charm any audience – although 2014’s support slot with The Fall at Concorde2 ironically saw their rudimentary musical skills heckled – much to their delight.

If only they’d play more often.

Since signing to Heavenly last year, The Wytches have toured their searing brand of neo-surf psych around the globe. But before that, they were regulars on the Brighton live scene, with barely a week passing without Kristian Bell’s fiery larynx being heard at venues like Audio and even The Mesmerist. Now in the gap between touring and ‘difficult second album’, it feels the trio can produce something compelling, demonic and even more satisfying for their next step.

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10 Brighton & hove Musical Times

TRACK BY TRACK

We’ve arrived in Lin’s red Merecedes with Kevin at the wheel. I’m sitting with Chris in the back room of a bungalow at the dead end of a last road before the Downs in Peacehaven. Chris is sitting in front of a large computer screen with all the accoutrements including a great sound system. Doors open into the garden, sun’s shining and Kevin sits in a deckchair under a tree smoking rollies. We’re listening to and talking about Joyland in a Track-By-Track special. Chris is a legend, considered one of the three greatest session guitarists in Britain, alongside Big Jim Sullivan and Jimmy Page. He has featured on hundreds (if not thousands) of recordings including tracks by Jack Bruce, Elton John, Bryan Ferry, Tom Waits, Paul McCartney, John Cale, Harry Nilsson, Joan Armatrading, Roy Harper et al. In 1975 his single ‘Motorbikin’ made the Top Ten and got him on ‘Top of The Pops’; he had previously appeared on TOTP as one of The Wombles (Wellington). He still tours with Roxy Music and the War of The Worlds show and has had several bands of his own, most notably Sharks and King Mob, both of which also featured Steve Parsons, his long-time collaborator.

He famously turned down an opportunity to tour with the Rolling Stones.

Chrissie Hynde took him to see the Sex Pistols which led him to producing their legendary first demos that got them the EMI deal. He then went to New York, hung out at CBGBs and produced the first demo for The Cramps. He spent 14 years in NYC then 14 years in LA before coming back to the UK in 2006.

He is 70 now and ‘Joyland’ – released on Cleopatra Records – is his 13th solo album. The Power Shakes, his latest band with Steve Parsons, have already played The Albert and will be touring the South Coast strip in the autumn.

JOYLAND

(Spedding/Parsons) Chris Spedding: Guitars/Bass/ Vocals; Andy Newmark: Drums; Voice-Over: IAN McSHANE So Joyland is the exact opposite of its name – it’s the dark side of the fairground or the circus. I love Steve’s words which I understand were written with actor Ian McShane’s speaking voice in mind. There’s a lot of menace there.

Steve has this sort of dark side thing. He can express that really well.

I don’t like disposable pop lyrics. I want another level on it, something different and he comes up with all that. He’s my go-to-guy for all that dark stuff.

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NOW YOU SEE IT

(Spedding) Chris Spedding: Guitars, bass. Andy Newmark: Drums.

Guest Vocal: ARTHUR BROWN For my money that’s one of the great vocal performances by Arthur Brown, The God of Hellfire. As a track

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I think it works beautifully.

We recorded the vocal at the Foundry Studios in Lewes. All I basically did was sit there and say “Yeah! Fantastic.” I was doing the vocal on it originally. I tend to write these songs that I can’t sing as I’ve got about a four note range. So we let Arthur loose on it. He’s really brought it to life. It sounds so natural the way he does it. I always thought those guys like the front-men for AC/DC and Iron Maiden sound so strained when they’re screaming like that. They’re doing it with less charm than Arthur does. He appears to make it work.

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CAFÉ RACER

(Spedding/Parsons) Chris Spedding: Guitars. Parsons & Spedding: Backing vocals. Andy Newmark: Drums Bass: GLEN MATLOCK On this track you’ve got Glen Matlock which is another fabulous part of your history. As well as doing the Sex Pistols original demos,

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‘ The seventies bred guitar heroes like analogies breed clichés. But for anyone with an eye for all that rock’n’roll promised when it first slunk into sight, and an ear for fast girls, faster cars and solos like switchblades in a west side gang fight, there was only one hero who mattered.

Chris Spedding looked like a street tough, and he played like one as well. Tight riffs like drainpipe trousers, he solo’d like Gene Vincent sang, without a wasted breath or misplaced note…’

Joyland liner notes by Dave Thompson

‘ I’m not a virtuoso.

I’m a guy who comes up with short, sharp, tasty licks.’

Chris Spedding talking to Garth Cartwright/Classic Rock

you were also in two bands with him - King Mob and The Band they Couldn’t Hang. This track’s largely instrumental with a big twang. It’s a great sound. Do you use a lot of different guitars on this record? Do you have a huge collection of them?

Yes, I’ve more or less accumulated one. I will use something that suits the track, more to get my head into a certain mood, like an actor putting on a costume. I thought ‘Cafe Racer’ would be more of a surf thing so I used a Stratocaster. I don’t usually use that but I thought it would help with the whole vibe of it because it has that reverb and that extra twang. I use Gibson style guitars and Gibson pickups which don’t give you so much of a twang, They are fuller sounding without that sort of sparkling sound.

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GUN SHAFT CITY (David Ebony) Chris Spedding: Guitars, Bass, Shakers. Charlotte Glasson: viola.

Andy Newmark: Drums Vocal: BRYAN FERRY I didn’t immediately recognise this as Bryan Ferry. It sounds good but slightly uncharacteristic.

Yes. It’s not his usual type of material but I’m so glad he agreed to do it. The original is by David Ebony from a ‘no-wave quintet’ called The Erasers. He was the singer and keyboard player and the bassist was Jody Beach (who became my partner). Ebony later became editor of ‘Art In America’ magazine. They were a CBGB’s band, which is where I was hanging out and playing with John Cale amongst others. They never really did anything with this song which was the highlight of their act.

David’s overjoyed that I’m doing this album and he’s a big Bryan Ferry fan.

You played on two early Ferry albums (1976-77) plus one later one and were then asked to play second guitar on the Roxy Music reunion tour.

That started a long period working for Bryan from 2000 to 2012, either with the band or on Bryan’s solo tours. That’s also what kind of prompted me to come back from the US because I was doing this 11-hours commute from Los Angeles whenever there was a gig, staying in a hotel all the time. I thought maybe something was telling me to come back here so I re-established myself back here in about 2006.

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HEISENBERG

(Spedding) Chris Spedding: Guitar, Bass.

Charlotte Glasson: Saw. Andy Newmark: Drums.

Guitars: CHRIS SPEDDING with JOHNNY MARR You first met Johnny Marr through playing with Bryan Ferry?

Yes, he’s done some stuff with Bryan Ferry every now and then.

Bryan’s got a huge book of guitar players’ numbers.

That’s a great instrumental track – pure spaghetti western, complete with whistling and castanets, with some really tasty guitar licks. What are you playing on that track?

I’m playing a deep strung baritone guitar which is the main instrument and a classical nylon string guitar. Johnny comes in with the electric guitar.

Johnny Marr’s a really interesting guitar player isn’t he?

Famously he never played a solo with The Smiths.

Yes, he’s more of a textures man, isn’t he? I was always more into the textures and using the guitar parts that were interesting and set up the song, so I guess that’s why I got on with him instantly when I met him. We both have that same approach only I end up having to play solos which I don’t always relish. I always try to keep them short when I do.

Why did you call it Heisenberg?

After the business name of the central character in ‘Breaking Bad’ who cooked the crystal meth. He identified with the famous physicist Werner Heisenberg.

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I STILL LOVE YOU

(Spedding/Gordon) Chris Spedding: Guitars, Bass, Organ.

Steve Wrigley: Backing Vocals. Andy Newmark: Drums.

Vocal: ROBERT GORDON That’s lovely. I’m not familiar with Robert Gordon’s work. He’s got a fantastic voice. You’ve known him a long time haven’t you?

Yes. When I first left England to go to New York in 1978, I played with him and we did our first recording together - the ‘Rock Billy Boogie’ album for RCA - back in ’79. Robert came up in the punk era. He first started singing with his group Tuff Darts who used to hang out at CBGB’s which was the place to go.

When I first came to New York, the one guy I did know was John Cale – I’d done two albums and two tours with him in the UK - and he took me round all these places and introduced me to the doormen so that I wouldn’t have to pay (laughing). When I was with him I met Jody, who was to become my wife, who was in a band.

You’ve recently toured with Robert Gordon in Finland.

Finland is like a hold-out for the old Rockabilly crowd. We played for American vintage car clubs. The guys show up with 1950 Cadillac’s and so on. They are really into it, in fact, most Scandinavia is a bit like that. We have a following there.

The notes mention The Gang They Couldn’t Hang. That was the two of you with Glen Matlock and Slim Jim Phantom, the Stray Cats drummer who famously married Britt Ekland.

It ended up being The Band They Couldn’t Book! (laughing). We were a band of four headliners so it became expensive because we didn’t want to work for sideman fees.

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Easy to find, hard to lose They can never go home.

You can never go home.

Lyrics from the Joyland title track.

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Chambers: Drums When we listen to this we’re listening to King Mob with your added vocal track. It’s a big sound.

We had these two King Mob tracks [Also ‘Message For Stella’] which we’d recorded a couple of years ago, which ended up on this album. Instead of wasting them we decided to use them. It’s Steve’s song.

There’s three guitars on there: Steve on rhythm, Sixteen on some lead, with me playing the deep whining solo. Sixteen is an English rockabilly player. He’s not sixteen, he’s older than that, but I think he got called Sixteen by all his neighbours because he lived in an apartment block at number 16.

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SHOCK TREATMENT

(Spedding/Parsons) Chris Spedding: Guitars, keyboards and vocal. Andy Newmark: Drums.

Bass: ANDY FRASER Being a great fan of Free, it’s so great to hear the distinctive bass of Andy Fraser. He was in the Sharks with you but there was a car crash and Andy damaged his hand.

Yes he injured his left hand, I don’t thing we ever forgave him for that (laughing) because he couldn’t play the bass properly.

He’s alright now.

There’d been a long gap since you met him again?

Yes. From time to time I would

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PIED PIPER

(Duboff/Kornfeld) Chris Spedding: Guitars, Bass, Vocal.

Charlotte Glasson: Piccolo. Andy Newmark: Drums Oboe & Sax: ANDY MACKAY That’s a really odd one in the sense that you’ve taken what was a light fluffy pop song – a big hit for Crispian St. Peters in 1966 – and made it dark.

I usually like to do at least one cover and I’d always liked this one. I thought it was a good tune but I always thought it was creepy, even more so now with this Jimmy Saville stuff. In the original it was treated like “Come on let’s have some fun!” I accentuated the dark side by slowing the tempo down a bit and singing it myself. I don’t have a friendly pop voice. Andy Mackay, who I’ve played with in Roxy Music and also on his 2004 solo album ‘Music for the Senses’, is a great player who opened up the song for me. He is the Pied Piper.

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Steve (left) and Chris at Lewes’ Foundry Studios.

Photo John May

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GO DOWN SOUTH

(Parsons) Chris Spedding: Lead vocal. Sixteen, Chris Spedding, Steve Parsons: Guitars.

Steve Parsons & Chris Spedding: Backing vocals. Toshi: Bass. Martin

Steve “Snips” Parsons

“Steve has been my writing collaborator on many of my albums and we’ve been in several bands together including Sharks, King Mob, the Presence LDN and currently The Power Shakes. He is the writer or co-writer with me, of seven of the tracks on the ‘Joyland’ album, as well as co-producing it with me. So I owe a big thanks to Steve – it’s his album as much as mine.”

try and find him and when I moved to California I realized that he was also living there and I tracked him down. I was so into what he was doing musically on the bass that I couldn’t believe that he didn’t recognise that and want to use that. I sort of felt that he was the left hand and I was the right hand.

I know you think of him very highly. What would you say are his great qualities as a bass player?

He’s incredibly musical. He always thinks of the groove and the song and what the song’s doing.

A lot of bass players just find out what chords the guitar player is playing and they play the bottom string. He lets you get on with it and he’ll come up with something else no other bass player would ever have thought of. It’s still pure rhythm and blues. It’s not clever, it’s very smart.

So he’s got all these things that musicians can dig.

I thought “right this guy’s for me” but it’s only recently that I think we’ve got more of a rapport. I was able to ask him to do this and he said yes and I knew exactly what he would do. Then he sent me something of his and I played on it and he loved it.

The deal was if you play on my record I’ll play on yours. We have more of a thing going now. His contribution on this track is just perfecto.”

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I’M YOUR SIN

(Parsons/Spedding) Chris Spedding: Guitars, bass.

Andy Newmark: Drums.

Lisa Abbott: Backing vocals.

Vocals: LANE & CHRIS SPEDDING Lane has got a helluva precocious voice, like the young Helen Shapiro. It sounds like the characters are plotting a crime.

This is really dark. This woman is trying to steer this guy wrong to do something really bad. He sums it up with this line: “I’ve got that bad, bad feeling again” and she says:

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11 Brighton & hove Musical Times

”I’ll bring the van and you bring the gun” (laughing). Lane is 16 and is from Southern California, where she is still in school. These are her first recordings. If she’s got the ambition to do something, we’re here and we’ll work with her. Her mother also has to approve of what’s she’s doing.

MESSAGE FOR STELLA

(Parsons) Chris Spedding and Sixteen: Guitars.

Toshi, Bass. Martin Chambers: Drums.

Vocals: STEVE PARSONS Steve’s got a good vocal on him too and he’s not a big guy. Do you remember when you first met him?

Yes, he came to a Sharks rehearsal. He was recommended. We auditioned him. We liked him and we liked his songs. I don’t think Andy Fraser was prepared for the fact that he wrote songs, I think he wanted to be the main writer or maybe he just didn’t take to him. We had also asked some other singers to join including Leo Sayer before he had done anything and two friends of Steve’s from Hull – Mick Ronson and Robert Palmer.

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BOOM SHAKKA BOOM

(Parsons) Chris Spedding: Guitars, Bass, Vocals, Keyboards. Jody Spedding: Backing vocals. Andy Newmark: Drums.

When I first read the title Boom Shakka Boom it struck a chord.

Was it with something in the past?

Well, Sly and the Family Stone have it in Dance to the Music. It’s one of those soul things from the ‘70s like “sock it to me, sock it to me, sock it to me”. The last lyric, in case you didn’t get it is: ‘Bad bird flying on a plasma screen/Say Howdy Yourself/ Here’s your American dream’ CF

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12 Brighton & hove Musical Times

Chris Spedding’s musical skills and extensive knowledge of recording studios means any information he is prepared to share is of value to wannabe guitarists and bands seeking to learn some of the tricks of the trade.

Recording the first demos with Chris Spedding at Majestic Studios, May 1976. From left Steve Jones, Paul Cook, Glen Matlock, Chris Spedding, Johnny Rotten.

GUITARS

“With guitars, I use something that suits the track. If I go on a session, I’ll just bring one guitar or two guitars maybe. I’ll use different guitars when I’m recording for myself.

“Live, I just use the same guitar because it’s easier; otherwise you’ve got to have a team of guys giving you guitars and tuning them up. I’ll use one guitar for a gig unless there’s a tuning involved. I try and avoid tunings for that very reason. It makes life easier.”

What’s your favourite guitar for live work?

“A Gretsch with Gibson pickups.

I get the Rockabilly look and it sounds like a Gibson. Duane Eddy, Eddie Cochran and all those people used to play a Gretsch.

“The other one is a Trussart, which is like a Les Paul but it’s hollow and metal. He makes them distressed. He puts them in an acid bath until they rust and then he puts something on top to stop them rusting. I end up customising lots of my guitars. When I wanted to change the pickups on the Trussart I had to take them to a tech guy. It’s quite complicated putting those pickups on because the holes had to be re-cut and he also had to cut into the struts. So that was quite a job.”

RECORDING JOYLAND

This segues nicely into a conversation about how Joyland was recorded.

Chris points at his computer: “This is a recording studio now. You don’t even need as much as this. People will send me a WAV or an MP3 of their part. I send them an MP3 and they record to it. When he comes over, my engineer takes it all over on to his laptop which has got all the better plug-ins than mine.”

Do you miss the camaraderie of the studio system that you worked in for so many years?

“Yes, in a way you do, but this album could not have been made using the old system. We couldn’t have afforded getting everybody in the same place, putting people in hotels, flying them over. We don’t have to do that now. So this album is the result of the new way of doing things which has a lot of advantages and many great things about it.

“I know how to make the records the old way and I use the technology to try and make it sound like the old way - because you can. If you do play a wrong note or it’s all out of tune you can fix it.” (laughs) “If you can get a rhythm section

together to play, you can do that as well if you want. The way I did Joyland was I went over to Andy Newmark’s place where he’s got his drums set up in his garage. He gets a guy in with Pro Tools and you pay him so much per day. I’m playing the tracks to Andy’s drums and I come back with all real drum parts - not click tracks and not drum loops. The previous record I made the tracks to drum loops and then went to Andy and he put the drums on last. Not quite as effective but you still end up with real drums.

“Every time I do a record I think: “How can I make it better?” This time I figured it out: drums first. Then I’d be playing a guitar part or a bass part and maybe singing a little bit. Then I’d be able to add another guitar part and put a vocal part on right there and then. So it’s not a million miles away from how we used to work except we don’t have three or four musicians playing together, it’s just two of us.

I’m using the technology instead of letting the technology use me is what I like to say.”

Johnny Marr

them we were going to take anything.

I said “Let’s have a run through” but I didn’t put the red light on and the first take was fantastic. If I had put the red light on they might have been all nervous. So little things like that I was able to help them with.

“We went in there at eleven and came out at five with three songs mixed: ‘Problems’, ‘No Feelings’ and ‘Pretty Vacant’. I think they were a bit surprised. They thought I’d given them short shrift because they’d been hearing stories of people taking weeks to make a record. “ “But that’s not what you do. You get a band who’ve rehearsed their stuff so they know it backwards. You just put the microphones up, switch the tape recorders on and that’s it. If it’s good enough for a gig, it’s good enough for a record and, of course, it was. It took them a while before they got together with producer Chris Thomas, who I actually hooked them up with, and he had that same approach. Then they realized that maybe I knew what I was doing.” CF

KIMBERLEY J. BRIGHT

Chris Spedding masterclass

US-based Kimberley Bright spent four years working on this authoritative 541-page biography ‘Chris Spedding: Reluctant Guitar hero (Universe Inc. 2007) and is currently updating it for a revised edition.

These extracts are taken from a long and interesting Skype interview we did with her.

SEX PISTOLS

This is how Chris recorded the three-track demo for the Sex Pistols in May 1976.

“I brought along a bass amp and a guitar amp and I stood over the drums to make sure there were no rattles.

When a musician gets in a studio for the first time, all those noises that he’s hearing, he tunes them out, but in the studio you hear them. So one of the things I could do for them was to be the guy who said ”Oh you’ve got a bit of a rattle on the snare drum” or “There’s an overtone on the tom-tom” or “A bit of a hum on your amplifier.”

I didn’t want any of that to hold up the session so I brought my gear along and the drum sounded fine.

“We put Rotten in the isolation booth and we cut everything live. One of the things I did was I didn’t tell

ANDY FRASER 3 July 1952 16 March 2015

During the production of this article, Andy Fraser died. Chris paid him this tribute: “I was shocked and saddened to hear of Andy’s passing yesterday.

He has been an inspiration to me for most of my life. I was privileged to work with him briefly on a couple of occasions over the years – I treasure those moments. Wherever you are Andy, I hope you’re All Right Now.”

“Johnny Marr said that Chris was one of the few guitar players who it was cool to like before punk and after punk so he sort of bridged both eras. I consider Johnny to be Chris’s heir apparent in the whole guitar culture. They got on famously when they met playing for Bryan Ferry a year or so ago.

“Johnny contributed a solo for the ‘Joyland’ track but he did it the day after he broke his hand. When Chris sent him the song he was determined to get the solo done so he went and got one of those player’s casts and recorded the solo for him. This was even before he went and got a cast done at the hospital. I just thought that was extraordinary. He tweeted a picture of himself from the emergency room getting the plaster put on and he had a guitar with him.”

GUITAR TECH tricks

“Chris is so good at what he does that he doesn’t quite understand how mere mortal’s brains work when it comes to these sort of things. He’s just a genius about very complex musical things that to him just seems so simple and they’re absolutely not.

“I was sitting in a restaurant with him once and we were talking about inverting triads because I’d always struggled with that. He gets a fork, a knife and a spoon and he lays them flat on the table and says “well you just do this” and he rearranged them and said “Here’s a chord and this is how you invert it.” It was like watching a shell game at a funfair. He says “Do you want me to do it again” and I said “yes go ahead” so he did it again and he said “now you try it”. Three pieces of cutlery, what are the chances I’m going to get it wrong. Of course I got it wrong and he looked at me like he really couldn’t fathom that anyone couldn’t find that to be the simplest thing in the world.

“On another occasion, he was explaining to me how to play Keith Richards’ open tuning without changing the tuning. He might as well have been talking about cold fusion in a lab for all that I understood him.

I said you know what, why don’t you e-mail that to me because then I can read it 20 times and hopefully find out what it is you’re trying to tell me.“CF

Chris Spedding also has a remarkably detailed website, compiled by Toshio, his Japanese admirer. www.chrisspedding.com

14 Brighton & hove Musical Times

Famed in the 19th century for its orchestral concerts and organ recitals, in the ‘20s onwards for its dance bands, brass bands and choirs, it hosted, in the ‘50s, Brighton’s leading trad and modern jazz club that, in the ‘60s, evolved into the legendary r&b, soul and rock venue, the Florida Rooms.

John May reports. Feature illustrations by Michael Munday.

A remarkable 100-year history

Aquarium Music

F

The Aquarium

THE CHINESE JAZZ CLUB ‘The start of the Trad Boom was graphically symbolised by the launching of the Chinese Jazz Club at the Brighton Aquarium Winter Garden late in 1959.

‘The founder and promoter of the club was the colourful Bonaventura “Bonny” Manzi, who had run jazz sessions in Chertsey and Crawley but chose Brighton as an ideal place for his major investment in jazz.

‘The Chinese Jazz Club opened on November 27th, 1959 and continued to operate with various shifts in policy until 1967.

‘From the outset, Trad jazz on Friday nights was the staple attraction and a procession of many of the best known-bands of the day was featured – Ken Colyer, Bob Wallis, Kenny Ball, Dick Charlesworth, Terry Lightfoot, Cy Laurie, Alex Welsh, Humphrey Lyttleton, Chris Barber, Mick Mulligan, George Melly, Monty Sunshine etc.

“Uncle Bonny” marketed the Brighton Jazz Club in a surreal, seemingly chaotic but essentially clever way. Smouldering joss sticks and Chinese lanterns offered a quasi-oriental atmosphere, crocodile sandwiches were advertised (in the confident expectation that they would never be ordered) and Bonny’s handbills and advertisements were irresistible in their lack of sophistication. “I always enjoyed the careless printing and Bonny’s throwaway humour” remembers Michael Baker who attended the club regularly.

‘Nowadays Bonnie’s humour would cause ructions for its lack of political correctness. “Chop Chop Velly Good” was his principal catch phrase when he sought to command attention in print or over the microphone. But smartest of all was his sly encouragement to young patrons to wear “rave gear” – which Bonny helpfully defined as including “bikinis, bowler hats, pyjamas, bear skins, suits of armour, football gear” with prizes offered for the best turn-out.

‘It was of course a recipe for an old-fashioned fancy dress party, re-positioned to encourage a participative, exhibitionist, mildly erotic and camera-friendly role for young audiences as they danced and strutted to the music of the Trad Boom minstrels.

‘In his readable autobiography ‘Owning Up’ published in 1963, George Melly cites Acker Bilk’s bowler hat as the emblematic cult object of the Trad Boom and he credits the “eccentric jazz promoter” Uncle Bonny with coining the expression “rave gear” and for encouraging the wearing of it at his clubs by “ravers”.

Melly, an astute observer of social trends, saw all this as fairly harmless anti-authoritarian behaviour, echoed by previous generations and those to come. He also argued that British Trad signed its own death warrant by reducing the music to a banjo-laden formula and by breaking into the pop world with its demands for repetitive gimmicks, leading to inevitable

“Bonny” Manzi, with boater and pipe, at the Railway Hotel, Crawley c.1959-60

Pic from John Robert

ormally opened to the public on 10 August 1872, the original Aquarium complex was designed and built by Eugenius Birch (1818-1884) at a cost of £133,000. Birch also constructed 14 piers including Brighton’s West Pier. It was the largest building of its type in Europe and its Central Hall contained a 100ft-long tank which held 110,000 gallons of sea water. At various times it was used to display octopuses, manatees and sea lions.

In 1874, a roof terrace was added as was a clock tower, gateway and toll houses. The terrace was extended in June 1876 to include a roller-skating rink- which was a new craze at the time – and a garden, smoking room, café and music conservatory.

Here recitals and orchestral concerts by many famous performers were held under the direction of William Kuhe, a German immigrant who also staged the first Brighton Music Festivals. For thirty years his concerts became an established feature of Brighton’s musical life, rivalling in importance those held at the Dome.

From 1880 organ recitals were held twice daily in the Aquarium’s main hall. [This original organ is now in St Julian’s Church in Shoreham]. Lectures, exhibitions, plays and films were also held at the Aquarium at various times in its history.

In 1901, Brighton Corporation bought the Aquarium for the modest sum of £30,000 and later leased it to a private enterprise. From 1907 until 1918 a municipal orchestra played in the conservatory which was renamed the Winter Garden.

The Aquarium’s fortunes floundered for a period and it was subsequently renovated at a cost of £117,000 and reopened in June 1929. The Winter Garden was transformed into The Prince’s Hall, a modern concert hall seating some 1,250 people. In addition a ballroom, bandstand and other small buildings were added to the Terrace.

During the Second World War the building was requisitioned by the RAF. In the 1950s it hosted chimpanzees’ tea parties and other animal attractions.

In the ‘60s it was home to the Montagu Motor Museum which was replaced by a Dolphinarium that opened in 1967 and closed in 1991. The building currently holds the Sea Life Centre.

Gil Tipping

15 Brighton & hove Musical Times

Gil Tipping was a jazz musician who regularly went to the Chinese Jazz Club and knew “Bonny” Manzi.

He shares some of his memories.

“The Chinese Jazz Club was in the Winter Gardens. It was more like a dance hall. Years and years ago, it was known as The Palais and they held ballroom dancing there.

On a Friday night there was traditional jazz then, after a while, there was also modern jazz on Sunday evenings, with people like Tubby Hayes and the likes of saxophonist Don Rendell and drummer Phil Seaman and many other famous British jazzmen.

I saw all the greats there. Earl Hines

over-exposure. Melly talked of Trad’s three year omnipotence (meaning 1959-62).

‘Jazz clubs closed and promoters and agents fastened quickly on to beat groups cast in the Beatles mould.

The most robust jazz bands survived, so did the Chinese Jazz Club until 1967. Canny as ever, Bonny saw the writing on the wall and switched to rhythm ‘n’ blues as his main offering, but still kept a smattering of jazz going (Bonny flirted with jazz promotion again when he was running the Concorde restaurant on the Aquarium premises in the late 1970s.)’

Text by Keith Samuel, Co-editor with Peter Simkins of ‘The Brighton Jazz Line’ [published by Evergreen Graphics in 2002].

[black US piano player and band leader] played at the Chinese. I remember he was such a humble person. Chris Barber got all these forgotten musicians over from the States. He did a great thing for all the old American jazz musicians I went to the opening night. I don’t know why Bonny called it the Chinese Jazz Club. I never asked him actually.

Perhaps it was something to do with that Miss Suzie Wong musical that was on in Soho at that time. The lead actress came down with her escort on the opening night. We were dancing with her.

I just heard through the grapevine that this club was opening. I used to go to quite a few jazz clubs around Sussex. I went to Chichester quite a lot to see modern jazz on a Tuesday night.

Thursday night was trad jazz at the old Ritz pub. Then there was modern jazz in the barn at the back of the Bull’s Head in Fishbourne and there was Hassocks, Haywards Heath (a Sunday night that was) and Keymer. They were dotted round all over the place. We used to go to Crawley sometimes to see The New City Jazzmen.

The Delta Jazzmen played at Burgess Hill. Jerry Gaydon was the clarinet player in that but he also played banjo for the Panama Jazz Band, led by Jumping Jack Gilbert, who were playing at the King & Queen up until a few years ago.

There were some terrific bands and musicians in Brighton like Bill Polly of Polly and the Parrots, Mick Mounter used to play the old Coney Hill Club in Montpelier Road in the ‘50s. He’s still playing today. Many of the trad jazz bands who played at the Club were not that famous.

I was posted to Germany in 1960 and, while I was there, Bonny moved the club downstairs to the Florida Rooms [Another part of the Aquarium complex] where he continued to stage jazz but also r&b and the big rock stuff – much to my horror at the time. I let Bonny know my feelings. I had a go at him: “It’s supposed to be a bloody jazz club.” He said you’ve got to go with the times and where the money is, which is true I suppose.

I saw Bonny about three or four years ago, just off the Ditchling Road.

He said “Good God, you haven’t changed a bit” and I said “Bloody hell, neither have you.”

Exclusive Interview

ROGER DALTREY In 1964 The Who played in Brighton 17 times

Aquarium Music

16 Brighton & hove Musical Times

jm

I am particularly interested in 1964 when, as you probably know, you did 17 gigs in Brighton in that one year.

17? It seemed like more (laughing) You did 15 at the Florida Rooms Yeah, that’s right.

So can I take you back there briefly?

That bank holiday weekend. I was driving the van.

You’d been mainly in London and you’d had your home gigs at Shepherds Bush and so on.

That was when we were first starting to travel.

I remember we were there, was it the Saturday or the Sunday? I remember we weren’t there on the Monday, we had to drive to another gig, so we weren’t there that night when all the trouble kicked off.

You did the Saturday and the Sunday. An all night rave. Whitsun.

That’s right, and then we left on the Sunday night I’m sure. From what I can remember I was driving late at night on the way back.

You did another bank holiday. Oh yeah, you did Easter Sunday the day after you got married Blimey! It might have been that night that I drove back late to her indoors (laughing). Well there you go.

My friend the music journalist Jon Savage did a long interview with Pete Townsend some while back and he recalls one weekend when you drove back from Brighton after a Florida Rooms gig and he and his mates including Richard Barnes and so on stayed all night under the pier taking Purple Hearts and hanging out with the Mods and he said that was the root of ’Quadrophenia’ basically from those times He probably did. I can’t really remember. I had to drive the van and be responsible for that gear. That was our whole livelihood in the back of that van. I used to guard it with my life.

It was an interesting year because you were The Detours and then you became The Who, then you became The High Numbers, then you became The Who again before the first single had come out. And you developed this big Mod following in Brighton That was down to a guy we met who was involved with The Rolling Stones called Peter Meaden and he recognized the movement. He recognized that there was a big shift going on away from the long-haired kind of bluesy – not the music so much, just the image. Things were getting sharper and Motown was becoming more popular and Soul. That’s what the Mods adopted. Bluebeat was the initial spark.

Initially were you slightly reluctant about the Mod thing?

No, we never fought it, no. You kind of go “Oh what the fuck”. We basically went in as wolves and came out as sheep (laughing) but we were still wolves in sheep’s clothing.

I was a down-and-out rocker. I still am. My roots were Little Richard and all those kinds of people but then I love music so it didn’t matter to me. It was just a haircut as far as I was concerned. But then you get into the clothes and then you start inventing things. When you’re young, acceptance seems to be a lot easier doesn’t it?

Have you got vivid memories of those Brighton gigs?

Yeah. I remember the place very well. You’d have to go through that tunnel, that subway to get in there. Yeah, I remember it very well. They opened it as a mural a few years ago. I went down there to give them support.

All these little things mean a lot to Brighton’s heritage.

This town’s got something very, very special creatively going for it. No doubt about that. It always did. Maybe it comes from the past debauchery; you know, the dirty weekend away. When you think about it, it was probably people going away with their muse for the weekend. I think there’s a lot of the muse in Brighton for a lot of musicians.

I wasn’t clear whether a lot of the Mods had come down to Brighton with you or if they were already there.

They were already here. It was a word-of-mouth scene. Nobody brought anybody anywhere. You just got the word of where it was going to be one particular weekend and it kind of gravitated. The word-of-mouth was every bit as good as the internet. Amazing. I don’t know how we did it but it seemed to work; much more communication, in a real way.

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17 Brighton & hove Musical Times

The Who in Brighton 1964 Efebruary L

Changed their name from The Detours to The Who, as suggested by Richard Barnes.

Emarch 28 L Roger marries his 16-year old girlfriend

Jacqueline Rickman at Wandsworth Registry Office.

Esunday march 29 L

Florida Rooms Easter Sunday “All Night Rave” with the Mark Leeman Five. The first Who gig at “The Scene” – a regular residency at the Aquarium, promoted by Bob Druce.

Eapril 13 L

Drummer Doug Sandon leaves the band. Use session drummer Dave Golding.

Esaturday april 18 L Florida Rooms Esunday may 10 L Florida Rooms Esaturday may 16 L Florida Rooms Bank Holiday Riots

Esunday may 17 L Florida Rooms Bank Holiday. The Who were paid an extra £20 to stay and play the ‘All-Night Rave’.

jm

What is interesting to me was that you came down to guitarist. We struggled along with different drummers and they were all great in their own way but there was Brighton so many times in that particular year. Obviously it something missing in the chemistry. was working for you in terms of building your reputation.

No, we were just on part of the Bob Druce circuit.

In 1964, your previous drummer left (Doug The Florida Rooms in Brighton was one of the gigs as was Sandon had been with the band for two years.

The Oldfield Hotel in Greenford. Bob was an entrepreneur, His last gig was on the13 April at The 100 Club). agent cum manager but he never was a manager for us.

You first met Moony on the 30th April and he played He was just a booking agent and we used to work his his first gig with you on 30th May. ballrooms. He used to pay us Yes. There’s something in cash and it was good. We strange about the rhythms The could pay the bills and we Who work in. All music has could pay for the van and buy its own rhythm and there’s ‘ Harry and Irene got an inkling that his interest in the guitar really would lead our instruments. We never something about the chemistry on to bigger things when they took the really earned much spending that we needed to find. We family to ‘Brighton for a seaside holiday. money out of it, but we were needed a particular drummer Naturally Roger’s beloved home-made doing what we wanted to do and Moon was really the key guitar went with him. One evening his and developing our craft so it to knit us together. You put a parents were taking a leisurely stroll was fantastic. straight drummer in with The along the promenade when they noticed Reading your biography...

Who and it’s a disaster. It’s a commotion on the beach. A sizeable I ain’t got a biography. very weird. Kenny Jones didn’t crowd had gathered and Harry and That’s not mine, it’s somebody work at all and it’s not because Irene immediately thought that maybe else’s (laughing). he’s a bad drummer. In fact someone had been pulled out of the sea You’re first ever gig he’s a fabulous drummer and after getting into difficulties or there had was in Brighton when you a great drummer in The Small been some sort of accident. But as they were a kid and your parents Faces. Keith Moon would have drew nearer they saw it was Roger at found you... been a terrible drummer in The the centre of the hubbub. He was sitting ...playing on the jetty Small Faces but he was a great cross-legged on the beach surrounded by by the Pier. That’s true drummer for The Who. It’s teenagers dancing to his strumming and With a guitar, and just that difference. The edge singing. Eventually, Roger was moved on I was amazed; you’d built your that they need sits in a slightly by the police after a cursory ticking off. own guitar. different spot.

Two years later Harry further encouraged It was made out You also played two gigs Roger to pursue what appeared to be of plywood. It’s all a bit at the Hippodrome in Brighton his main interest in life by buying him an convoluted. The first guitars – one with The Nashville Epiphone, his first proper guitar.’ were all acoustic as the music Teens and another one with was all skiffle. The electric Dusty Springfield.

R oger Daltrey – The Biography’ by Tim Ewbank and Stafford Hildred [Portrait. 2004] guitars came about 18 months I remember the later but you had to know Nashville Teens very well. people in the guitar world, They were a good band and especially people that worked for Burns Guitars. Thank you ‘Tobacco Road’ was a good record. I remember very much very much Burns for the pickups, and the bridges and all watching Dusty. She was phenomenal. She didn’t come out the bits and pieces (laughing) that you need to make an of her dressing room and we only saw her on the stage but electric guitar, that fell out the back door. she was phenomenal.

You were the real driver behind the band.

You were then named, for a short period, The High You were the one who ran The Detours got the gigs and Numbers, you were at the bottom of the bill and you just drove the van as well. did about 10 minutes or so.

I put the band together. John [Entwhistle] Yeah. It was our first time in a theatre as such. joined my band, then he recommended Pete who came We were there to raise the rabble. We were learning to along. Obviously you could spot his talent then as a strut our stuff. CF

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Emay 30 L Keith Moon plays first gig with The Who Esunday june 7 L Florida Rooms Esunday june 28 L Florida Rooms

Ace Face Peter Meaden takes over management and renames the band The High Numbers

Ejuly 3L The High Numbers release their first single: ‘Zoot Suit’ (A side)/ ‘I’m The Face’.

Efriday july 12 L Florida Rooms Efriday july 19 L Florida Rooms Esunday august 2L Florida Rooms

Renamed The Who by new management Kit Lambert & Chris Stamp

Esunday august 9L Hippodrome

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Gerry & The Pacemakers, Nashville Teens, Elkie Brooks.

The High Numbers play a 10-minute set and then reluctantly back Valerie McCullam (2 shows). Promoted

by Arthur Howes & Brian Epstein.

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Esunday august 23 L Hippodrome

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Ewednesday Florida Rooms Ewednesday Florida Rooms Ewednesday Florida Rooms Ewednesday Florida Rooms

Dusty Springfield (2 shows).

november 25 L december 2 L december 9 L december 16 L

The Who play Brighton three times in 1965: [Florida Rooms (April 17/Nov 22) and the New Barn Club (Dec 12).

On April 21st 1967, The Who play Brighton Dome.

Credit: ‘The Complete Chronicle of The Who’ (1958-1978)

by Andy Neill and Matt Kent [Virgin Books. 2007]

THE WHO AT THE FLORIDA ROOMS

EwordsLEallan fowlerB

1964

and outside of London the mod town of Brighton was the second home for the fledgling band The Who. When they released ‘Zoot Suit / I’m the Face’ as the High Numbers the word got round quickly about this great new band and owning a copy was the height of cool. You had the Lambretta or Vespa, the Parka, the mod chick and now you needed that piece of vinyl.

By the time they had reverted back to being The Who and released ‘I Can’t Explain’ they had been adopted as a ‘local’ band by the Brighton mods. Their frequent Wednesday night gig at the Florida Rooms was the place to be seen at.

For the princely entrance fee of one shilling and six pence (15 pence in new money) you got blown away by one of the loudest bands around, heard some the finest British blues/ rock of that era and got to pose about in your latest mod gear.

I was 15 at the time and it wasn’t always easy to get in, although being tall for my age and hanging with some older guys I usually made it. If all else failed then there was always the Aquarium steps where you could sit and hear them and feel Entwistle’s bass patterns vibrating through the entire seafront.

Word spread and their fame grew so that for the Who’s Easter Saturday gig in 1965 the crowd inside was around 1,700 packed in like sardines

with another 500 or so sitting on the Aquarium steps. Imagine what health and safety would make of that now.

The Who were a band for guys – they were loud, didn’t perform pop songs, they brawled amongst themselves and with the audience if they were up for it. The gigs always had a tension about them that matched the edgy music. Would the perfectionist Daltrey be happy with the sound quality, would Townshend be happy with Daltrey, would Moon destroy his kit before the gig ended?

Would someone in the audience take exception to someone spilling their beer or being one step ahead in the fashion stakes? The crowd became part of the band and vice versa – that was the Who’s appeal; they were part of the gang.

There was a lot of preening and posing by the mods in the crowd.

Peacocks strutting their stuff to the sound of their band, their music, the soundtrack to their lives. Some mod girls would venture in; the hardcore fans who wanted a piece of Roger the blonde mod god.

The Who were four very distinct characters and unlike any other band around at the time. Not suited and nicely turned out in matching outfits, no sweet, toothy smiles and cute affectations. This was not 60s pop, all love songs and sing-a-long lyrics; this was gut throbbing British rock at its best with lyrics that dealt with everyday life for a young man.

[Here were] words and music that let you know that they understood what was happening in your world.

It knew all about your insecurities, desires, confusion, anger and fears.

It didn’t offer answers but created a channel for everything so you wanted to kick the shit out of the world. It also provided an identity that could be draped over your shoulders like a uniform to identify your comrades in arms.

The Who were scowling, surly, aggressive, energy-driven and manic, in Moon’s case bordering on insane and dangerous.

Daltrey posed and strutted showing the crowd how looking cool and mod was achieved and at the same time rattling out harsh, powerful vocals and blowing blues harmonica. Townshend wrung the neck of his guitar, squeezed out feedback and smashed his way through windmill chords. Entwistle was just an enigmatic shadow pumping out the bass to drive the whole band along. Moon exploded on the drums, swearing, leering, a grinning wide-eyed demon threatening to wreck his kit, the stage and the entire venue given half a chance.

After a Who gig it would be time to head out and meet your chick so she could have the pleasure of your company. Tell you how good you looked and hang on your arm and your every word. We were hedonistic chauvinists, arrogant narcissistic mods who loved our band. The Who went on to greater heights of originality and we discovered Hendrix, The Floyd and the like and grew into flower children. Brighton lost its Florida Rooms, it gained the Concorde venue as well as some rocking pubs, the big touring bands played the Dome before the stadiums took over.

But the charged atmosphere of a Who gig in the Florida Rooms was a brief glorious moment that will never be replicated. The kids ended up alright. CF

Aquarium Music

18 Brighton & hove Musical Times

EwordsLE roy hatleyB

DJ at the Florida Rooms (Late1963-66)

“I remember seeing Terry Lightfoot’s New Orleans Jazzmen as well as mainstream jazzers like The Tubby Hayes Big Band.

‘At an Easter All-Night Rave, The Chris Barber band played a set followed by seminal blues outfit The Cyril Davies All-Stars (featuring Long John Baldry and a very young Rod Stewart).

On Saturday nights, groups from across the country played before packed crowds eager to see the best bands around.

One band which I never tired of seeing was Screaming Lord Sutch & The Savages. During their time The Savages line-up contained musicians who would become famous in their own right [including] Jeff Beck, Ritchie Blackmore, Matthew Fisher and Paul Nicholas (who later found fame as an actor).

I got the job as DJ at The Florida in late 1963, beginning at the well-established Friday Blues Night, then taking up the Saturday and Sunday night record sessions.

Later on Sunday night record sessions were done by Pirate Radio DJs from Radio Caroline and Radio London such as Kenny Everett, Dave Cash, Earl Richmond and Johnny Moran who alternated each week.

Local bands such as The Sapphires, The Giants, The T-Bones, The Motion and The Web (featuring a 15-year-old drummer Steve Ferrone, later to play with Eric Clapton and Chaka Khan) all played the club.

In the early days, The Who were regular visitors on Wednesday nights, admission 1/6d. The band took 50% of the door money: one evening their share was £17 and 10 shillings. How things were soon to change!

On their Easter Sunday 1965 there was a frightening 1,700 plus crowd. I spent the entire evening wedged in a corner about five feet from John Entwhistle’s bass stack. My teeth ached for a week and I was partially deaf in my left ear for three days.

The Who regularly appeared at The Florida after they began their recording career and were looked on as one of their own by the local kids who packed the club whenever they came to Brighton.

The Animals, Manfred Mann, Georgie Fame and the Graham Bond Organisation, along with John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers were regulars at the Saturday night slots, representing the top bands of the day. John Mayall once gave me a bollocking for banging the piano lid in time, (so I thought) to the band’s music.

The last band I saw at The Florida was The Jeff Beck Band which featured Rod Stewart and Ronnie Wood. CF This original interview also contains information from Trevor Diplock’s excellent website: www.brightonbeat.com Above: An original Florida Room poster from ‘The South Coast Beat Scene of the 1960s’

by Mike Read [Woodfield Publishing. 2010]

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EwordsLEjohn mayB

here are many stories about the origins of Quadrophenia.

Richie Unterberger in his book ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again’, documents in detail the period between Townshend’s failure to realise ‘Lifehouse’ – his intended follow-up to ‘Tommy’ – and the birth of ‘Quadrophenia’. He traces the idea back to 1972 and a track Townshend recorded called ‘Long Live Rock’ which inspired an idea for a concept album called ‘Rock Is Dead – Long Live Rock’ which was meant to be a kind of history of The Who in song.

Two other songs recorded by Glyn Johns at that time - ‘Love Reign Over Me’ and ‘Is It In My Head’ made it into the finished ‘Quadrophenia’ album.

In August 1972, Townshend told Penny Valentine of Sounds about his idea of having ‘a hero who, instead of being schizophrenic, has got a split personality four ways and each side of this is represented by a particular theme and a particular type of song.’ Either before or after that, he had the idea that ‘Quadrophenia’ would reflect the four characteristics of the band.

The album’s sleeve notes end: ‘A tough guy, a helpless dancer [Roger]; A romantic: is it me for a moment [John]; A bloody lunatic. I’ll even carry your bag [Keith]; A beggar,

‘ When we played in Brighton during the riots, Pete and I walked up and down the beach.

It’s quite a trip – the stones and the sand and watching the fights and the kids. I think he got a lot of it from there. The fighting wasn’t what it was all about. It was about the fashion, the dances, the hairstyles and the scooters, not the fighting.

The original mods wouldn’t want to get their trousers dirty, they wouldn’t fight.’

Richard Barnes quoted by Richie Unterberger [2010]

PETE TOWNSHEND: THE ORIGINS OF QUADROPHENIA

a hypocrite, love reigns over me [Pete]. The final line reads: ‘Schizophrenic? I’m Bleeding Quadrophenic’ This says Townshend, in his autobiography ‘Who I Am’, means that ‘the four aspects of Jimmy the Mod’s multiple personality were, in a sense, all to be found in me, and I had always known it.’

According to his long-time friend Richard Barnes it was also designed ‘to celebrate the mod thing that was so important for them in the early days and to get rid of it so that [they] could move on to become whatever.’

Some of these concepts may have come from Townshend’s friendship in 1972 with the legendary rock writer Nik Cohn. The Who’s most fanatical fan Irish Jack Lyons claimed that Jimmy was based on him. It could also have been influenced by Pete Meaden, the Face Mod who managed them briefly. Later Townshend would say that it reflects aspects of all the Who’s fans.

However the real roots of the story lie deeper with an experience that Townshend had in Brighton in 1964 when he was 19. It is eloquently expressed in this extract from a remarkable and lengthy interview with Townshend conducted in 2010 by Jon Savage, one of the greats of British music journalism, author of the definitive punk history ‘England’s Dreaming’ and writer of the remarkable ‘Joy Division’ documentary, directed by Grant Gee. CF

An original ‘Quadrophenia’ film still of Phil Daniels and Pete Townshend sharing a meal between takes at A. Cooke & Sons Café, 48 Goldhawk Road, West London – a traditional pie and mash shop where The Who ate regularly in their early days.

[The Generalist Archive].

EwordsLEjon savageB You have these ideas floating js around about ‘Long Live Rock’, which you’re discussing with Nik Cohn and you remembered this night when you slept under Brighton pier, after a gig as The High Numbers at the Aquarium. Can you describe the gig?

In the latter stages of our time at the Aquarium, Kit was our manager but in the early days it was Pete Meadon. The actual change-over happened at around that time.

‘I’m not sure that I can remember the gig...We partnered another band - an older band, like a Georgie Fame clone – and it was an entirely mod audience, mainly boys, and it mainly seemed to be visiting boys.

I don’t think there was a particularly big mod contingent living in Brighton. What was happening was people were coming from London [so] a lot of them therefore

pt

were on scooters. We would have felt as though we were pulling them in, to some extent, but I’ve got the feeling that they would have been there anyway.

We felt we were entering into their world as we had done very recently at the Scene Club. We were allowed to appear, and that’s where I think my thesis developed... When we were in the early days of our career, I was trying to work out who I was writing the songs for because... I felt I was writing the songs for Roger, who wanted to be an r&b sex symbol, or for Keith and John, who between them were confused about what they wanted to be - the Beatles or the Beach Boys, even Jan & Dean.

Also whether I had a mandate. My mandate was the most confused, I think. I had a finger in the Charlie Mingus pie, the James Brown pie, the Bob Dylan pie. I was all over the place.

19 Brighton & hove Musical Times

Being in front of that audience, at The Scene and the Aquarium, [they] had their particular way of dancing to a particular style of music that had a swing to it always, almost like a jazz swing - Motown obviously but a lot of the New Orleans R&B had that swing as well.

Keith couldn’t do it. Keith couldn’t swing. His physical action meant they had to start the way they did and what would happen [is that] the mod boys would stop dancing and the mod girls would dance about three inches apart, looking at each other. It was all kind of lesbian, and extremely erotic. These boyish girls... ignoring all the boys and, at the end of the day, allowing themselves to be hauled off onto a scooter without a whimper.

The boys would turn towards the stage and there would be this sense that we’d tapped something and that we were being tolerated...accepted and given permission to stand on the stage. There was none of that sense of entitlement that the Kinks or the Stones or the Beatles appeared to have which was: ‘We’re the stars, you’re the audience’. It was the other way round. We’re the stars and you can entertain us for a while if you behave yourselves. That was the tone of it.

It was one of those evenings. For whatever reason, I went down with a couple of my art school buddies Nick Bartlett, probably my friend Barney, the Who biographer Richard Barnes, and a couple of girls, one of whom was Liz Fraser. The fashion at the time with the art school girls was ski pants. She would have melded into the crowd quite well.

We decided not to drive back in the van. At that time, I think Roger was driving the van[and] it was bloody awful [so] I said, let’s take the train [but] we left it too late [and] missed the last train. So we decided to walk along the pier and what we discovered was that under the pier were all these boys in their anoraks.

They weren’t smoking grass but they were all jabbering away at each other on purple hearts so we got together and sat under the pier with this group of boys. I don’t remember any other girls, only Liz. The hours passed. I had a bunch of purple hearts, and we took some of those not many, but enough - and we got through the [night] and, at 5am, we got the milk train which stopped at every single stop.

We were in each other’s arms, and as we were going into London, we got more and more sleepy and just naturally affectionate and that was the nearest I’d come to having a serious relationship at that time.

It took me another year or two to actually commit to a girlfriend.

It was extremely romantic... it wasn’t a cold night, either, but it was wet. [In] that picture on the album sleeve with Jimmy under the pier, the water has gone. On a couple of occasions one or other of the boys did get covered by a wave, but they laughed and they seemed to be okay and after a while [they] seemed to dry off.’ CF

Illustration: Neeta Pedersen

20 Brighton & hove Musical Times

THE MUSIC OF GEORGE HARRISON

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the Vienna Symphonic Orchestra.

On occasions, when they needed more percussionists, they employed students and I got to play with them.

That taught me that this is not the path I want to go down. When you’re a percussionist you play some simple strokes and then you sit there for ages counting bars and rests. It’s not very satisfying “During this period I had been teaching privately on the side and when I left I gained a proper official job as a full-time guitar and drum teacher, which I could have carried on until retirement but I was frustrated because there weren’t any gigs as a jazz drummer.

“So in 2002, I came to England and I was fortunate enough to get into the resident jazz band at The

Lion and Lobster here in Brighton and I played with them twice a week. The band is still going and I think they’re celebrating 15 years this year. That’s how I met a lot of musicians that I’m still working with today.

“The idea for doing this project came after I watched clips of ‘The Concert for George’ at the Albert Hall in 2002 and I thought what a huge sound. I realised I would need a 10-piece band to reproduce that. I wanted to celebrate his music without being a Beatles’ tribute band. None of us are trying to look like George Harrison.”

Paul, a longtime jazz trombonist and Brighton resident, has his own interesting GH connection: he actually

Left to right: Angèle Veltmeijer (saxophone), Marianne Hiller-Brook (drums), Paul Nieman (trombone), Lo Polidoro (vocals), Bernd Rest (guitar), Tony Williams (guitar), Alex Eberhard (guitar, main vocals, band leader), Dave Barnard (bass guitar, backing vocals), Stella Clifford (vocals), Simon Robinson (keyboards).

Photo: Gallit Shaltiel

e’re in the back room of The Nelson with Alex Eberhard, who started ‘The Music of George Harrison’ project two years ago and set up the 10-piece band (below) to play it, and trombonist Paul Nieman, whose connection with GH will be revealed later. Alex’s links to George go way back.

“I am Austrian, born in the small village of Burgau in the southeastern part of the country, where I lived until I was 20. When I was about 13, my grandmother gave me my very first guitar which had a George Harrison sticker on it. I’ve still got that guitar. I pretty soon got a band together and we did some Beatles covers but a lot of George’s music was a bit too complicated for me to play when I started.

“I really got into George Harrison’s first solo album ‘All Things Must Pass’.

In 1981, when George released the track ‘All Those Years Ago’- his tribute to John Lennon, who had been killed the year before – I sent the only fan letter I have ever sent to a rock star asking if he would be kind enough to tell me what chords he used in that song. I never got a reply.

“When I was 16, I studied drums with a private teacher for two years, which prepared me for admission to a music university in Graz. Over an eight or nine year period, I first studied classical percussion, gained a teaching degree and did a Master’s degree; then studied jazz drums and classical guitar.

“My main teacher for many years was the Principal Timpanist for

Band on the rum

played on several tracks on ‘All Things Must Pass’.

“The funny thing is I’m shockingly hazy about the details,” he says. “I was either hired by someone who booked London session musicians at the time or by one of the players themselves. As I recall there were nine brass players.

We were in Abbey Road studios with the producer Phil Spector but George wasn’t there. The track already existed in part so there was enough for us to play to but it was incomplete. They were fairly simple lines. I don’t think we were given music. Instead Phil Spector sang the lines that he wanted us to play.

We were mainly all playing in unison and I do recall thinking it wasn’t a very economical use of nine brass players. Most of the time was actually spent waiting, drinking cups of tea, with nothing to do.

Phil Spector was striking and the thing I remember most about him was his multicoloured glasses, split into a rainbow of about three or four colours.” CF MAY: 6-7th The Brunswick, Hove.

15th Trading Boundaries, Sheffield Green. 21st The Spring Arts & Heritage Centre, Havant.

JUNE: 11th Hawth Theatre, Crawley.

17th Chichester Jazz Club. 20th The Kenton Theatre, Henley-on-Thames.

There will be a further run of gigs in the autumn. www.allthingsmustpass.co.uk

Ewords LEfelix clement-parkerB

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he idea of starting a piratethemed pseudo punk folk band came from a car crash of imaginations. My friend Trevelyan and I had both been playing in metal bands for years before we made a stab at acoustic music. We were playing open mic nights, tanked on rum, wearing dress shirts and singing about pirates and decided to call ourselves The Captain’s Beard.

I picked up a pre-WW1 accordion from Snoopers Paradise with only two weeks to learn it before our first gig. Soon after we were joined by percussionist Adam Mould and later recruited cellist Amy Squirrell as our official cabin boy. We soon discovered that what we had created

was a ridiculous entity that made innocuous insanity entirely necessary for a gig to be successful.

We dressed up in stripy leggings, sang big harmonies, played fast jigs and got people dancing.

Gigging around Brighton over the last three years, I felt we were becoming part of a wave of heavy folk music with other local bands like the Crackling Griffins, Ratbag and Buffo’s Wake. We discovered that lots of people want to hear genuinely alternative music that embodies the noble virtues of drinking too much and dancing your knackers off. Hope to see you at a gig soon lads and lasses. YARRR! CF Felix studied at BIMM and also plays guitar in Iron Tyger, an ‘80s rock cover band.

(Left to right): Felix Clement-Parker, Amy Squirrell, Adam Mould and Trevelyan Harper.

Garden CafĂŠ ~ Produce Store ~ Organic and Fair Trade ~ Chic Shed for hire ~ Hampers for all occasions

Monday to Friday 8.30am-5.30pm Saturday 8.30am-5pm, Sunday & Bank Holiday 10am-4pm ~ 4 Lansdown Place, Lewes, East Sussex, BN7 2JT ~ 01273 478817 ~ www.laportes.co.uk ~ laporteslewes@gmail.com

22 Brighton & hove Musical Times

A celebration of a musical mind

Simon D’Souza 9th December 1963 — 19th May 2014

B

SAXSHOPS

orn in Barnet in North London, his father was from Goa and his mother from Hundested, on the island of Zealand in eastern Denmark.

He was brought up as part of a large multi-cultural, unconventional family as his mother fostered children. It was from his mother that he acquired his music skills as she played the trumpet, the first instrument Simon picked up.

When his family moved to Peterborough in Cambridgeshire, there were a few Indian boys in the neighbourhood but he was the only one at his school. He retreated into his own world, learning how to survive as an outsider rather than as part of the mainstream.

By the time he was 16, the family had moved back to London and, in the Sixth Form of his new school, he started to listen to jazz-funk and early disco. Spurred on by an inspirational music teacher, he was encouraged to take up the alto sax.

He would practice so hard playing Earth, Wind & Fire style funk that his lips would bleed. He also started to play in bands and compose.

At the age of 18, he started a three-year jazz-based course at Leeds College of Music and soon got into a lot of extra-curricular playing with local bands. When he was 20, he met his future wife Susan at The Warehouse in Leeds. She was 16 and was studying textiles at the Jacob Kramer Art College. She vividly remembers her first sight of Simon as his distinctive look at that time was a Mohican haircut, a hat with feathers and Cuban boots.

Simon left college in the second year of his course and made a living through some regular jobs, a lot of busking and by playing with several bands. He started to compose in a damp basement using an Atari computer, combining soul and funk-based 80’s sounds with electronic samples and recording them on a four-track. For Simon, life was something to translate into music. One track called ‘Alice in Wonderland’ was based on his reallife first-hand experience of falling down a lift shaft.

A trip to Paris with a friend, to play and busk in small venues, inspired Simon to want to try living there and, in 1990, on an impulse, Simon suggested to Susan they do it.

The most important result of this trip was his involvement with

Illustration: Michael Munday

Paris

Then in January 2000, he became a founder member and first Project Manager of AudioActive, a spin-off project that became an independent organisation in 2004. Simon ran hiphop, slam poetry, rap and other free arts-based workshops in schools and then became a Trustee and principal fund-raiser, work that was more office-based. He decided to hand over to someone new and return to his jazz roots.

‘He was widely admired as a fantastic musician, inspiring educator and all- round brilliant person, respected by adults and young people alike.’

Tribute on the AudioActive website

La Compagnie OZ, a lively theatre company of actors, singers and dancers from the UK and US, which, to this day, produces musicals in English, for French schools in the suburbs and the provinces. It was a relationship that was to last more than 20 years. Simon was hired to create the songs and musical performances. He would record all the music in advance and would play all the instruments which included saxophone, guitar, bass, keyboards, trumpet, trombone, flute and percussion. He was a true multiinstrumentalist.

On returning to London, Simon found it difficult to break into the competitive jazz music scene.

Then in 1995, he studied an Open University Community Music Course which proved to be a turning point in his life. He immediately went to work for a year with a charitable company called CM, running their music teacher training programme and sax jazz improvisation and rap workshops. Founded in 1983 by John Stevens and Dave O’Donnell, CM is now the longest running community music company in the UK.

BRIGHTON

In 1998/1999 he and Susan felt they had to get out of London and headed for Brighton where he knew there was a good jazz scene and where he hoped to continue his charitable work. He initially worked on an outreach music programme with kids in Hangleton, which involved organising workshops and playing and writing songs.

He started playing his original compositions with a quartet called Souzaphonic and a sextet called Spirit that had added brass.

In 2003, he also started a Saxshop once a week, to which anyone could come along and play together with others. He held regular Saxshop gigs at The Brunswick in Hove and staged a number of events on the lawns by the Angel including Peace Picnic, a Lark in the Park and other fundraising gigs.

In 2004 he staged an event for the Brighton Festival called ‘100 Saxophones’. They performed with Brighton’s Carnival Collective as part of the Carnival Encounter weekend.

In 2005 he staged an audiovisual event called ‘This Beautiful World’ which was staged in the Pavilion Gardens and involved 180 musicians and a much wider variety of instruments.

In 2006, he expanded things further and staged an event called ‘Imperfect Harmony’ on the Level in Brighton. This original composition was played by 200 musicians with percussion, sax, mixed instrumentals and MCs. Further musical adventures ensued. He played with the Studio 9 Orchestra, Ska Toons and The Elevators blues band. He went on to play lead sax with a big band called Straight No Chaser, composed of professional musicians who were good readers of music and could play fast and furious, which Simon enjoyed. He was also a founder member of the Paul Busby Big Band and, inspired by these experiences, he started writing compositions for

To be staged on the steps of Brighton Unitarian Church in New Road @2.00-2.30pm and 3.00-3.30pm

these bigger ensembles.

In 2009, he joined Chichester College as a tutor of jazz and started the HND course there.

The last acts

In August 2012, he and Susan were on holiday in France when he developed serious headaches and began forgetting words. Diagnosed with an aggressive form of brain tumour, he was flown home for immediate surgery. The operation was successful but the ultimate diagnosis was that his condition was terminal.

With little time left to him, he spent as much of it as possible writing music. He created new compositions and re-arranged older ones for the 17 instruments in Straight No Chaser and recorded an album with them called ‘Navigation’.

He also recorded sessions with other musicians including jazz singer Lou Beckerman, pianist Joss Peach and folk singer Elle Osbourne.

In addition, he completed his MA in Composition at the University of Sussex and went on to win an Aggie award for best musical soundtrack, for the computer game ‘The Journey Down’, produced by Swedish computer games company Skygoblin.

His last work was with the Studio 9 Orchestra which was a musical setting for poems by the 13th century Sufi poet Rumi. This composition was performed at the Old Market in Feb 2014 and at the ‘Love Supreme’ festival later that year.

We will never know what Simon would have gone on to do next but he felt a deep love of music and a belief in bringing people together to play it. He inspired many, many people on the Brighton music scene and beyond and packed a lot of energy and joy into his 50 years of life. CF

See: Simon D’souza’s blog on “Only Breath”. Hear Simon’s music at souzamusic.bandcamp.com The digital album sales of ‘Navigation’ and ‘The Journey Down’ go to Simon’s charities and the awards established in his name.

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