Lewes Musical Express

Issue Three Spring 2014

mark Chadwick 25 years of

free

the levellers

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LEWES musical express

CARRIE TREE The power of THE whisper

THE MOVE Play Lewes Town Hall October 13TH 1967

PopTastic Gigging The 60s in Lewes

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LME PEOPLE: Rooster Cole MICHI’S NYCKELHARPA Find a performer THE PURPLE PUDDING CLAUSE

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Festival round-up

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Union News LME Reviews Sword of freedom Starfish music club for adults

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back in the 60s

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The Guitar Makers of Lewes 20 Carrie Tree

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Mark Chadwick 20 years of the levellers

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Jukebox jive

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Last Words

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Editorial

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news Steve Arch

Steve and Zulu

18 July 1952 26 January 2014

Like many others in Lewes, the LME was shocked by the news that Steve Arch had died in his sleep of a heart attack at the age of 61. It was Steve who took the picture of Leonard Cohen reading the LME that graced the cover of our last issue. The last time we bumped into each other I was able to thank him and we planned to sit down and talk in detail about his 30-year career on the road working as a lighting technician and running lighting teams for major artists, gigs and events. Sadly, it was not to be but one of the things he left behind was a huge collection of backstage passes which his friend Owen Ridley has photographed for us, with the permission of Steve’s sons Jack and George. A tribute to Steve by Peter Messer forms the Last Words for this issue on page 30. CF

LEWES musical express Issue Three Spring 2014 2

EimageLEedward reeves photography

News: Steve Arch Managing the cuts Lewes community orchestra Economic impacts ESAM Zu Studios

EAST SUSSEX MUSIC SERVICE

Exclusive

Contents

Lewes Musical Express

MANAGING THE CUTS EwordsLEsarah bayliss

The story so far: In 2011 Education Secretary Michael Gove announced a new national plan for music education, putting the Arts Council in charge of managing funds instead of local authorities, administering the service through a series of regional ‘hubs’ and, in the process, slashing the national budget from £75m to £58m.

Our local ‘hub’, created last year, consists of four partners – Glyndebourne Opera House, Rhythmix (an independent music charity), local schools and colleges, and the lead body - the existing East Sussex Music Service (ESMS), whose previous annual budget of £1.027m is to be cut by more than 50 per cent by the year 2014-2015.

In an exclusive LME story last June, Sarah Bayliss highlighted deep concern about the effects these cuts and uncertainties would have on the future of the ESMS, which is highly regarded by parents and which has been judged ‘outstanding’ by the Federation of Music Services.

In this second exclusive story, she reveals final proposals being put forward to manage the financial shortfall.

The details remain confidential to the hub’s management committee, ESMS staff and councillors from East Sussex County Council, who are their employers. or ESMS students and their parents the Spring term has been business as usual, with thousands of enthusiastic children singing and playing instruments in lessons, concerts and exams.

Plans have been finalised for a 35th anniversary tour of Europe by the 70-strong East Sussex Youth Orchestra and the programme for the annual ESMS Summer School fortnight has been published, listing 46 courses, including new ones for pop vocals and musical theatre.

But behind the scenes a major restructuring and efficiency exercise has been under way to save £500,000 by 2015 and to prepare for future cuts. Final proposals, drawn up last month, are under wraps until May while staff redundancies are negotiated. However, the LME has seen details of the plans which are revealed here for the first time.

First in line are the 100 staff, including Richard Sigsworth, the acting head of the ESMS, who have all had to reapply for jobs in what is being described as a new ‘commercially sustainable music service’.

Jobs cost 86 per cent of the total ESMS budget and

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between 12 and 18 full-time posts are expected to disappear. But many ESMS teachers work part-time, so the number of teachers made redundant could be higher. In addition, the management team will lose two posts, saving almost £100,000.

One insider told the LME. “It’s hard and it’s sad because we love our jobs. There do need to be some efficiencies but you can’t help wishing that the music service could be free and that bankers paid more tax. We know music has the power to transform children’s lives and we witness that every day as they progress and develop.”

COVERING COSTS Behind the job cuts is a remodelling of the complex timetable of lessons in the belief that the same level of service can be delivered with fewer teaching staff and that the average group size for a lesson should cover the costs of a teacher. New timetables will assume that every teacher is teaching six children per hour. These changes will mean new conditions for teachers with some ‘twilight teaching’ after school and ‘cluster’

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arrangements between schools.

Fees for musical instrument lessons will not rise in September when the package of changes begins to be implemented, as parents already pay more than in other parts of the country, but they could pay a new ‘premium fee’ to buy smaller group lessons. There has already been a 16 per cent fall in demand for lessons over the past five years, believed to be due to the economic recession.

Merit awards, which subsidise one-to-one lessons for talented youngsters, have been preserved.

Saturday Schools, which encourage group and ensemble work from an early age, will continue but the prestigious Summer School is shrinking from two weeks to one week from 2015 with a possible ‘voluntary’ week.

For low income groups, the current fee subsidies of up to 85 per cent are under review.

Last year the LME estimated that in East Sussex the cost of learning an instrument, including instrument hire, attending Saturday School and belonging to orchestras and ensembles, was more than £500 per year.

By law, schools must deliver a national curriculum for music and the support of head teachers and school governors is clearly vital to the future survival of the ESMS. In the past many services have been free but, under the new plan, the burden of cost is shifting to schools.

Whole-class ‘first access’ lessons for primary schools – such as 30 children being taught the recorder together – will be charged at 45 per cent of the cost.

PARENTS’ REACTIONS

LEWES COMMUNITY ORCHESTRA he Lewes Concert Orchestra was formed in 1993 by Russell Morgan at the request of Lewes Town Council, to perform concerts of popular classical music for the people of Lewes.

The 50-member Orchestra has performed three concerts a year at the Lewes Town Hall ever since. The current conductor is Ian McCrae and the orchestra’s leader is Lisa Wigmore.

This beautiful poster for Handel’s ‘Fireworks Suite’ was produced

by Pixeldot, a prize-winning branding agency who have recently arrived in Lewes.

Up-coming concerts are: Friday 23 May, 7.30pm Lewes Town Hall; ‘The Planets Suite’ by Gustav Holst, movements 1, 4, 3 and 2 from

ECONOMIC IMPACTs

2014 independent research report designed to calculate the economic impact of Glyndebourne on the local economy was commissioned and funded by Glyndebourne and East Sussex County Council (ESCC), with additional funding from Arts Council England and the East Sussex Arts Partnership.

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“I love the ESMS. I’m a huge fan of the brilliant teachers and the variety of experiences. I understand why they don’t want to give out uncertain messages and worry everyone before decisions are made. Actually, I think the fees are very good value so I would assume they may have to charge more. Many other children’s activities are a lot more expensive.”

A third parent who did not wish to be named said: “For those of us in the ‘squeezed middle’ we can only pay the fees with the support of grandparents.”

A new survey of parents, teachers and students has been conducted by Amanda Carpenter of Achill Management to establish where there might be ‘gaps’ in provision and to help shape the Arts Council bid for funding 2015-18 which is the next priority for the service. It does not explain what is changing from September. More than 1000 replies have come in from youth clubs, parents’ groups and schools and the results will be published soon.

Asked to comment on our story, a spokeswoman for ESCC said: “ESMS is tackling the challenge of a reduction in funding from the Arts Council through a range of measures to reduce costs and increase income.

The service is confident that it will be able to continue to provide a full range of services and that young people across the county will have access to singing and instrumental lessons and the opportunity to perform in choirs, ensembles and orchestras.”

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the ‘Swan Lake Suite’ by Tchaikovsky and Cimarossa’s ‘Concerto for two flutes’, with Anne Hodgson and Sue Gregg.Sunday 15 June, 2.30pm Lewes Town Hall; Celebration Concert in memory of Adrian Shepherd, jointly with Buxted Symphony Orchestra.

Dvorzak’s ‘Cello Concerto’ (soloist Rachel Sanders-Hewett); Mendelsson ‘Scottish Symphony’.

stop press NEW THREAT TO MUSIC EDUCATION everything… Without music, life would be an error.”

The ISM campaign estimates that national funds worth £21.3m a year could be lost. If East Sussex County Council adopted the policy wholesale, LME estimates a cut of £500,000 would be implemented leaving parents, charities, schools and other sources to fill the gap.

The LME alerted Norman Baker, Lib-Dem MP for Lewes and minister at the Home Office to this new development. He said “I was not aware of the DfE move which on the face of it is concerning. I will be taking matters up directly with the DfE and also talking to our own local music service to get their take on this.”

In an earlier interview, he described the ESMS as “a great asset” and said: “I have previously raised concerns, as far back as 2010, with East Sussex County Council about the uncertain future the ESMS has had hanging over it. It is important for the stability of the service to be assured a definite structure of delivery.”

Independent councillor Ruth O’Keefe said: “I hope that East Sussex will continue to make great efforts to preserve the wonderful music service...

I am personally willing to fight very hard for music opportunities in schools and in the wider community and will be continuing to do so."

There is now a national campaign against the proposed cuts. See: www.protectmusic education.org

s the LME went to press a fresh blow to music education was delivered in the form of a ‘consultation’ paper from the Department for Education advising local authorities like East Sussex County Council to stop funding music services altogether.

The DfE paper headed ‘Savings to the Education Services Grant 2015-16’, proposes that in the search for cuts worth £200m in the next spending round, music service costs should be devolved to the music hubs that administer them under the Arts Council.

The document, which is seeking councils’ views by June 19, says: ‘Our expectation is that music services should now be funded through music education hubs (which can cover one or more local authority area) and from school budgets, not from the ESG.’ In response, the Incorporated Society of Musicians (ISM) has stepped up its ‘Protect Music Education’ campaign, saying that the DfE advice risks derailing the National Plan for Music Education announced in 2011 by Michael Gove, which contained an ‘unswerving commitment’ to giving all children a music education ‘of the highest quality’.

The National Plan even quoted Plato: “Music is a moral law. It gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, and life to

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Key findings include: Annually Glyndebourne generates a gross economic impact of £16.2m in East Sussex and attracts a large audience, who spend over £11m at local hotels, restaurants, shops and attractions. In 2013, 86% of the 98,000 Festival visitors came from outside East Sussex.

Half of Glyndebourne’s economic impact occurs within nearby Lewes for which it generates a gross economic impact of £8.6m and a Gross Value Added (GVA) of £5.4m; the equivalent of supporting 354 jobs in the town.

Glyndebourne spends over £1m with Lewes-based suppliers and a further £0.3million with suppliers in the rest of East Sussex. It also attracts artists and jobs and specialist businesses.

Download the full report here: http://glyndebourne.com/ glyndebourne-economic-impact-report-2014 In November 2013, Lewes District Council published a report [GOTR Festival – July 2013] analysing many aspects of the Mumford & Sons event. The economic study, carried out by Tourism South East, calculated that the Festival brought in £2,039,724 net to the local economy.

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Some parents contacted by the LME have expressed surprise at the absence of consultation. Clare O’Donoghue whose daughter Caitlin (13) learns the flute and receives a merit award said: “We should be forewarned if there are changes to the fee structure or to staffing. I'd want to give all my support because morale and enthusiasm could be affected.”

Jackie Honey has two daughters Katie (15) and Natalie (12) who learn the flute and cello respectively, belong to special ensembles and attend Saturday School.

She said:

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Ewords and photosLEsarah bayliss

EAST SUSSEX ACADEMY OF MUSIC

A CAMPUS for CLASSICAL & ROCK

he Academy at Sussex Downs College in Lewes offers a uniquely specialist sixth-form education with 100 students taking A-level music and music technology courses plus BTEC vocational qualifications, including a new Level 3 contemporary music course.

Facilities have been boosted recently with 15 new Apple Mac computers running industrystandard software - Logic Pro and Sibelius for composing and editing.

Nick Houghton, head of the Academy says: “Basically, we have broadened the offering from classical music A-level to a pop BTEC and that has certainly strengthened our base.”

According to ESAM’s administrator Jess Ainsworth, the numbers applying for the new BTEC level 3 course, which started last autumn, have outstripped expectations.

“Our intake for September looks really strong and we shall continue auditioning through the summer,” says Jess, who is a former student herself. “In previous years we were turning down students who didn’t have Grade 5 music theory and who may have been self-taught but, at a BTEC audition, you can see they excel in performing.”

The BTEC is billed as a two-year preparation for working in the music industry. It has two pathways in composing and performance with modules like ‘pop music in practice’, ‘aural perception skills’ and ‘developing as a musical ensemble’. Music theory and harmony have a firm place on the composing pathway.

John Evans, who has been appointed the BTEC course leader, first came to Lewes as a

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Vocalist Elliot Windsor fronts the ESAM Session Orchestra, conducted by John Evans

guitar teacher and ‘Rock School’ tutor at Priory School. Before teaching, John toured the world with the band Divine Comedy and still plays as a session musician.

At the Academy’s Easter concert he conducted the newly-founded session orchestra with songs by The Jacksons, Adele and George Michael and solos by four lead vocalists. Next term a new BTEC choir starts up and there’s a first end-of-term gig for BTEC songwriters and performers at the Con Club.

“Now we can offer something that gives the best possible chance of a job in the industry,” says John. “One of the big benefits is the mix you get here - people start working together and soon they’re playing and recording. It’s very fluid.”

SDC’s principal Sherry Russell is delighted to offer a high quality music education through the Academy and the on-site ESMS with its peripatetic teacher base.

“What other further education or sixthform college in the South-East - perhaps even nationally - can boast a 60-plus strong choir or a full orchestra performing every week,” she asks, “ not to mention all the other music ensembles and bands?”

The Academy has around 16 staff, all employed by the ESMS, but they have been spared the restructuring process that is affecting the rest of the service. “We are very lucky to have this special status,” says Nick Houghton. “I absolutely hope that the music service survives with its fine traditions.

That is what educates our students before they come here and they are at the core of our business.” CF

PAOLO SURACE Amongst the international students is Paolo Surace (20) who came to SDC from Italy last year to improve his English and discovered he could also take piano lessons at the Academy.

“That was my hobby in Milan and now I’ve found the BTEC Level 3 and an A level in music technology.”

Paolo’s family are delighted because he’s working hard and has set his sights on a music course at Surrey University. His course fees at SDC are £7,500 per year. Last month he performed solo at the BTEC Easter concert: “I got applause and I was very happy with that.”

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RIAH KNIGHT

GEORGE NICOLA

Riah (17) is a singer/ songwriter whose ambition is to work in the creative arts. She’s chosen the new BTEC Level 3 pathway in music composition and is also taking a pre-professional certificate in music performance, alongside A-levels in theatre studies, English literature and Spanish. She pays tribute to the Starfish charity in Lewes, which she joined as a singer at the age of 10 and which took her to Spain with her band – The Officials – when she was 14. She has since mentored other bands for Starfish and all these experiences help with her BTEC studies.

George (17) has been playing guitar since he was six. He started lessons with the ESMS at his primary school in Hastings and then attended William Parker Sports College where he took GCSE music. His guitar teacher Paul Theaker recommended the Academy, where he has chosen A- level music plus the performing pathway in BTEC Level 3 and the ‘pre-pro’ course. He sings bass in Academy Voices and in the general choir, led by John Hancorn, ESAM’s choral director. He’s set his sights on studying for a degree at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester.

“Sussex Downs College is definitely the best place for me. It’s amazing here. There are eight practice rooms with amps and mikes, I’m taught by semiprofessional musicians, sing with everyone in the big choir – which can be so rousing and beautiful – meet people in the common room and definitely feel I’ve joined a musical community.”

“I want to be a session musician.

That’s what comes naturally to me – composing, arranging and coming up with ideas. I’ve been earning money by playing since I was 15, playing in a function band for weddings and a pit band for shows. But I didn’t realise how much there is to learn until I came here.”

Winning Places Eight students from Susses Downs College have won places at top conservatoires this year, a record for the Academy.

They are: Becca Leggett to study voice [Trinity Laban Conervatoire of Music and Dance]; Nic Hughes to study violin [Royal College of Music]; Zac West, to study voice, [Guildhall School of Music and Drama]; Tom Cooper to study piano [Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama], Rachel Knights to study piano [Trinity Laban]; John Sturt to study composition [Trinity Laban]; Waimay Yau (pictured above) from Hong Kong, to study voice [Royal Academy of Music]; Juan Pablo Hinojosa from Mexico, to study piano [Royal College of Music].

BUY CONCERT TICKETS Thursday 22 May BTEC Level 2 and 3 gig for songwriters and performers Lewes Con Club 7pm Wednesday 25 June ESAM Summer Concert, including choirs and orchestras Lewes Town Hall 7.30pm Contact Jessica.ainsworth@ eastsussex.gov.uk

MusicalSpaces

ZU STUDIOS

Singer Becca Leggett has a CV that reveals her progress through the ESMS, Glyndebourne Youth Opera and the ESAM. “It’s been seamless really, all of a piece, with one thing leading to another,” says her mother, Elaine Leggett. “It’s very family-oriented and there’s this strong common thread of music which is amazing.”

Becca started violin lessons with ESMS aged seven and worked her way up through Saturday School, learning classical guitar and clarinet on the way. As a teenager she joined the Glyndebourne Youth Opera and the Sussex Downs Youth Orchestra. At the Academy she studies A level music and a BTEC in performing arts which, for her, is a perfect fit. “When I’m singing, I’m acting; the two go hand in hand. You’re conveying a message to the audience and being in character helps me to commit to what I’m singing.” She has violin and voice lessons, has achieved Grade 8 in both specialisms, and is an active member of Academy Voices plus the choir, orchestra and session orchestra. Becca sang in ‘Knight Crew’ at Glyndebourne and in ‘Imago’ the community opera, directed by Susannah Waters. “I loved everything about that and the age range from 15 to 75 was so amazing.”

Recently she successfully auditioned for the role of Flora in ‘The Turn of the Screw’ for the Glyndebourne tour this autumn. “She is one of the most musical and responsive students I have ever had the pleasure to teach,” says John Hancorn, director of voice at ESAM. Violinist Nic Hughes was a pupil at the independent school Lancing College until he chose to study A levels in music, French and English literature at Sussex Downs College. He says he has benefited greatly from all the opportunities at the Academy to practice, play and perform in front of an audience.

“I would recommend it to anyone who wants to try for conservatoire because of the variety of ensembles, and the regular and numerous performance opportunities offered. The most important thing I found in my development in recent years is playing to an audience as often as possible.” Through joining the Academy, he discovered the ESMS’ Sussex Downs Youth Orchestra and became leader of the first violins. “The support I’ve received at the music service has been amazing”, he says. At the Academy’s recent Easter concert Nic played solo in the ‘Brandenburg Concerto No. 4’, supported by two flute soloists, then conducted the orchestra playing ‘Jig’ from ‘St Paul’s Suite’

by Gustav Holst. He sings tenor with Academy Voices. CF

ne of the most successful developments over the past five years on the Phoenix site has been Zu Studios, the creation and brain child of Martin Thomas and Samira Harris. A multi-purpose, multi-level former industrial unit of 7,500 sq ft, fronted by the original fascia of the Phoenix Iron works, it has provided studios for artists and artisans working in many fields and offers performance and music space for a wide range of more than 200 events a year.

On the musical front, there is a 200capacity space with a stage and a bar which has been used for music from many disparate styles and genres. Some of the biggest events have featured electronic dance music pioneers Basement Jaxx, Canadian world music group Delhi 2 Dublin, who fuse bhangra and celtic music, the psychedelic soul-funksters Z-Star and cult luminaries like Arthur Brown and Daevid Allen. They currently stage one big music event a month.

In addition, quite a few albums have

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been recorded in Zu’s cinema space and several bands have used Zu’s unique and eclectic surroundings for video shoots. A new development is the Zu Choir, which holds irregular sessions and is open to anyone who would like to sing.

Genres mentioned are gospel, folk, African, soul, Eastern European and more.

Contact: Sophie Efthimiou on 07960 936390 / Zu Choir on Facebook Most of the work to transform the space into its present form has been carried out

by Martin himself. He is an artist/sculptor/ furniture maker and co-organiser of Zu with Samira, an artist, teacher and author.

They are both sanguine about the prospects for the site. Martin says: “We have put a lot of work into this building which is beautiful and serves its purpose. If the development goes ahead, we will have a new incarnation within that or we will move in another direction to create a community Zu in the country and live close to nature.” CF www.zustudios.com

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LME

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MICHI’S NYCKELHARPA

people

Rooster Cole

By day, Mark S. Aaron works in Lewes and will be familiar to many of you. But at night, Rooster Cole comes out to play. Mark writes all his own material and was until fairly recently in a band called Black Black Hills who, amongst other things, supported The Vaccines and got on the Radio 1 playlist.

The eponymous Rooster

Cole album, which the LME has had a privileged advanced aural experience of, is worthy of Nick Cave and is a natural for a Quentin Tarentino soundtrack. His dark, rich voice explores original lyrical songs that are deep but also celebratory and uplifting.

Rooster is a character strongly influenced by

One of the most unusual folk instruments and one that is becoming steadily more popular in the UK is the strange and remarkable nyckelharpa, a traditional Swedish instrument dating back to the 1400’s, that provides a rich haunting sound unlike any other instrument.

Michi Mathias, a third-generation half-Japanese American, who has lived in Lewes for more than 30 years, and has become well-known on the local folk scene for her fiddle and banjo playing in various bands including the So Last Century String Band with Dan Edwards, Jaime Regan and Ben McGuire, has recently purchased a nyckelharpa and brought it to LME HQ to show off its attributes.

In the flesh it looks like a combination of an elongated violin with a box of accordion stops on top – a kind of duckbilled platypus of the music world.

In brief, it has two sets of steel strings – 12 sympathetic resonant strings which you can’t play directly and, above those, four playing strings, one of which is a drone. The boxlike structure on top contains three levels of stops that look a bit like golf tees, which you press in to raise the pitch of the string. The instrument is played using a small horsehair bow.

Michi first got interested when Vicki Swan, an advocate and teacher of the instrument who is half-Swedish, came to the Royal Folk Club some two years ago and later came back to conduct a workshop with three of Michi’s friends in her living room. Subsequently, Michi tried to hire one before eventually hearing about a second-hand instrument, probably built in an evening class in Sweden in the 1970s for £750. A nyckelharpa by a known maker can cost £2000 upwards.

It’s a difficult instrument to master but one can get interesting sounds out of it along the way to

Howlin’ Wolf and Bo Diddley – playful but definitely of the night. The album is home-recorded and Mark plays everything. You can hear some great sample tracks here: www.facebook.com/rooste rcolemusic Cock-a-doodle-doo! CF

FIND A PERFORMER

An essential ingredient of those important family events – significant birthdays and weddings in particular – is music which creates the right ambience and energy for the occasion. Many settle for a DJ and recorded sound but there is nothing like having some live music. The question is how to find the right person or band at the right price. Fortunately, the LME can point you to the go-to-man Geoff Robb

and his soon-to-be-completed overarching website: www.findaperformer.co.uk. Geoff lives in Ringmer with his wife and three kids and how he came to be running this highly successful business is an interesting story Geoff comes from a musical family. His dad was a conductor and violinist and his mum was a flautist. From the age of 6 to 10 he learned the violin and then, from 10-17, studied the classical guitar, mainly playing music from Spain and Latin America.

He started travelling at the age of 18 and began busking in Amsterdam and playing classical pieces in city squares, at farmer’s markets and in restaurants. Encouraged by his ability to survive by playing music in this first year, he then got a street amp, fitted out a big horse-box as a mobile home and, for the next twelve years, busked all over the UK and mainland Europe including Switzerland, Italy, France, Spain and Ireland, playing a wider range of music, selling CDs and making up to £200 a day.

When his first kid came along, he based himself in Brighton and travelled across the UK – farmer’s markets being a prime target – and at some point in this period he was asked to do a wedding for which he was offered £150 – a lot better

rate than restaurants.

Whilst living in Nottingham in 1995, his flatmate bought the domain name www.classicalguitarist.co.uk and Geoff began making contacts with other classical guitarists across the country.

By 1999 he had a small agency with 15 guitarists which he has subsequently built into the largest specialist guitar agency in the country with a database of 350 players.

Geoff offers a range of music including classical

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proficiency. Michi says it helps to have a fiddle background for the bowing technique but the string intervals and the fingering patterns are different. Some people get over this by retuning something like standard fiddle tuning so it’s easier to learn.

Since last summer, Michi has used it to good improvisational effect in a ceilidh band and in Small Shipwrecks, a band set up to play the original songs of Matthew Bird, another talented Lewes musician.

After a handful of successful gigs in Lewes and Brighton, the band is currently playing as Swell Park Schism (an anagram of their previous name), featuring Matthew and Michi with songwriter Charlie Peverett on vocals, guitar, melodic, percussion, banjo guitar, harmonic and bicycle pump. Keep your eyes peeled for their upcoming gigs.

Michi found her nyckelharpa through Jeff Swann, a luthier who also builds and repairs other Swedish instruments like the Hardanger and the Tråskofiol. See: www.scandistrings.com If you want to see Väsen, one of the very best Swedish bands, which features a nyckelharpa maestro, they are playing at the Ropetackle in Shoreham on August 28th ropetacklecentre.co.uk/ events/vasen Check them on YouTube. CF

pieces, folk tunes and pop songs. He says typically people like some music at various points in the wedding – before the ceremony, on the bride’s entrance, during the signing and afterwards when food is served. He prides himself on running an extremely reliable service, with fall-back musicians on hand and says that he’s only had four people not turn up in the last 15 years.

Not content with the success of that site, he then also created a similar service for harpists, for string quartets and more recently for function bands. The new Find A Performer site will bring all those together under one digital umbrella and he now has 900 acts on his database including magicians. He is always looking for musicians who have professional demos and photos and advises them to contact him via the website.

Geoff’s current sites: www.findaguitarist.co.uk / www.findaharpist.co.uk / www.findastringquartet.co.uk / www.findafunctionband.co.uk CF

THE PURPLE PUDDING CLAUSE

The Lewes music scene is full of surprises and delights. It’s a sunny Wednesday afternoon and the LME is sitting in the former HQ Gallery in St John Street, now the HQ of IEKO, a natural paint company run by Steve Lovell and Rachel Bor, who have previous musical form and are now into stress-free recording.

‘The Purple Pudding Clause’ is the Edward Learish name of their family band which also contains their 12-year-old son David on guitar and bass. In keeping with their DIY ethic, they record using cheap downloadable apps on an IPad – ‘if you want a mellotron sound, the app costs £7.99’ – and shoot their videos on an I-phone, which gives them a kind of dreamy fuzzy feel that complements their music.

Having worked in big studios with 48-track desks and 40-piece orchestras, Steve relishes the relaxed music-making process he now employs en famille.

Steve and Rachel with their son David

In his past life, Steve was a successful record producer for more than 20 years. He came from the same Liverpool streets and generation as Holly Johnson of Frankie Goes to Hollywood and Echo and the Bunnymen. He started out playing guitar and was busking in London’s Bond Street tube station when his old friend Julian Cope went by and asked him to play on his album. Steve ended up not only playing guitar and sitar but also arranging and producing Cope’s first two solo albums –‘World Shut Your Mouth’ and ‘Fried’. He and Steve Power produced two tracks on Blur’s debut album ‘Leisure’; and Steve L produced solo four other Blur tracks including ‘Popscene’, considered one of the first Britpop singles released. He co-produced Holly’s solo hits and also produced A Flock of Seagull’s third album ‘The Story of A Young Heart’. You can find his full discography on www. allmusic.com Rachel Bor is from a family of classical musicians, learnt cello and played guitar and sang with a successful all-girl post-punk/new wave band from Cambridge named Dolly Mixture (1978-1984).

They combined girlie dresses and DM boots with great ‘60s flecked pop. Dolly Mixture supported the Undertones, The Fall and Bad Manners and were supported by U2 in autumn 1981; John Peel wrote them up for Sounds and recorded a Radio 1 session. They toured extensively and also became a backing band for Captain Sensible, including on his No 1 hit ‘Happy Talk’. Rachel was Captain Sensible’s partner for 14 years.

Steve and Rachel both now enjoy recording whenever or wherever they want. Steve says son David keeps them in line “with helpful comments like “Dad, isn’t that a bit too ‘80s”. Their first album is due out soon and you can check out videos and tracks here: thepurplepuddingclause.wordpress.com CF

~ Monday to Friday 8.30am – 5.30pm ~ ~ Saturday 8.30am – 5pm, Sunday & Bank Holiday 10am – 4pm ~ Café and Produce Store selling Organic and Fair Trade products. ~ 4 Lansdown Place, Lewes, East Sussex, BN7 2JT ~ 01273 478817 ~ ~ www.laportes.co.uk ~ laporteslewes@gmail.com ~ 7

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Efestival round-up festival Eprepare for battle 16-18 May Lewes Railway Land Nature Reserve Free to anyone under 25. Ticket prices for over 25's: £8 (Friday), £10 Saturday or Sunday, £25 for 3-day pass.

This remarkable project, devised by young people for young people, is one of many events in the town being held to mark the 750th anniversary of the Battle of Lewes, when the barons, led by Simon de Montfort, defeated King Henry III’s army. The King was forced to sign a document known as the Mise of Lewes which, for the first time, restricted the authority of the king, a first step towards the creation of Parliamentary democracy in Britain.

This event is being staged by Lewes Youth Theatre, led by Philip Rhodes and funded mainly through the Heritage Lottery Fund.

The central focus of the event is the recreation of a medieval village, constructed by Theatre members, where more than 150 young people are going to camp in medieval conditions. Over the three days, politicians, media figures and political commentators will explain the importance of democracy and lobby for votes. These speeches will be filmed and screened live to the web and the on-site ‘Democracy Den’. The event will conclude with a mock election.

John Agard has written a new play ‘Carry On Magna Carta’ especially for this event.

Music plays an important part in the festival. There are two resident bands for the whole festival: Kalamus, led by Dirk Campbell, who play a wide variety of early musical instruments www.dirkcampbell.co.uk/ Dirk_Campbell/Kalamus.html and the Stix Drummers from Eastbourne www.stix-drummers.co.uk Groups on the main music stage will include Folky Fish (the Starfish Folk Group), Angels of Attitude and others.

Headline acts for the three nights are: Friday 16 May Circulus www.circulus.org; Saturday 17 May Serpentyne www.serpentyne.com; Sunday 18 May The Moulettes www.moulettes.co.uk

Eelderflower fields 23-26 May Pippingford Park, nr Nutley Billed as ‘The Family Festival’ and now in its third year and in a new location in the heart of the Ashdown Forest, Elderflower Fields advertises itself as: ‘A magical weekend of fun activities, eclectic music and great local food, designed especially for families with young children in mind.’

The four principals behind Elderflower Fields are Nigel Greenwood and his Swedish wife Maria, Dax Debice and Stuart Balkham. Nigel and Maria run So Sussex, an organisation that offers a range of outdoor activities, events and challenges for families, tourists, schools and companies. As such, the festival fits under their umbrella. Nigel founded the festival and acts as one of the event managers. Maria concentrates on sourcing organic food locally. Dax is a director of photography and cameraman working professionally within the music industry (most recently on Stones in The Park and The Who’s Quadrophenia concert).

He books the bands and looks after the on-site art. Stuart’s background is in architecture and he’s employed to work out the site plan, deal with many of the practicalities involved and build and run the website.

The festival as a whole is designed to cater for kids up to the age of 13.

There’s a range of activities run by tutors including: sports like kayaking, skateboarding and climbing; art camps; urban woods activities; wildlife and environmental projects; science activities; theatre, dance and music.

Once you’ve paid for your ticket, everything on-site is free apart from the food and drink. There are also no big commercial brands or stalls selling tat. Parents can relax in a woodland spa, safe in the knowledge that their kids are in good hands.

On the music side there are two stages – a main stage and a smaller more acoustic stage. Dax describes the music on the first as being ‘good-time’ festival music – a mixture of rock, ska, reggae and folk but no hip-hop or cover bands.

The smaller Woodland Stage is designed to be quite magical and has a variety of young singers and players and acoustic artists. This year the music here is being curated by Michele Stodart of The Magic Numbers. She has booked the following: Duke Special, The Miserable Rich, Goldheart Assembly, David Ford, Morrissey and Marshall, Trevor Moss & Hannah Lou, Troubadour Rose, Midnight Tender, Sugar Magnolia and Jack Day. Overall, the performers are a mix of local bands, more experienced semipro outfits (both playing for expenses) alongside four or five bigger working bands who have made a name for themselves.

Last year some 40 performers and

At Elderflower Fields this year (from top): Will and the People, Lloyd Yates, Emerald Armada, Recks, Shanty

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bands strutted their stuff and this year some of the highlight artists are Lloyd Yates, Will and the People, Abi Wade, The Goat Roper Rodeo Band, The Fontanas and Gus Robertson of Razorlight with his band Carnival of Souls.

On Sunday, Maria orchestrates a massive picnic for everyone, which is eaten to the accompaniment of music by a swing band.

Elderflower Fields was based for the first two years at Bentley Wildfowl Centre near Halland, and attracted around 1,000 people first time round and 2,500 the second year.

This time they hope to reach 3,000.

There is an under-18 youth band competition on Facebook, the winners of which get to play on the main stage.

All the rest of the details you need to know are on the main site: www.elderflowerfields.co.uk

Eleweslive 11-12 July north of Lewes, off the A26, heading towards Uckfield Rock In The Bog, Lewes’ only homegrown festival, run by the Cliffe Bonfire Society, celebrates its 10th year by rebranding itself as LewesLive. Ten bands in all will be featured over the two days, with top billing of the Festival going to the American Rockgrass band Hayseed Dixie (below) on Saturday night. This popular band last played in Lewes at the Lewes Guitar Festival in 2006. Other acts confirmed at time of going to press are Voodoo Vegas, Scott Free, John Crampton and Along Came Shifty. The festival will also feature family attractions, food providers, licensed bars, and free weekend camping for all ticket holders. www.leweslive.com

round-up festival round-up Elove supreme 4-6 July Glynde Place One of the most welcome additions to the festival scene in Britain is the Love Supreme Festival, which debuted last year to universal approval and this year is back with another marvellous line-up. Visitors praised not only the music but all the facilities which were considered first-rate and we are very fortunate to have such a prestige festival on our doorstep.

The festival was hatched by Ciro Romano, a former City lawyer and Vice President of Universal Music who now runs Neapolitan – a company that specialises in artist management, live events and recorded music – working in partnership with Jazz FM and Ingenious Media, an investment and asset management group, who specialise in funding festivals.

Jazz is the genre at the Gregory Porter forefront but the festival also embraces funk, soul, blues and fusion music.

There have been longestablished jazz festivals in London and Cheltenham for many years but Love Supreme is the first greenfield jazz festival since the granddaddy of all British festivals – the Beaulieu Jazz Festival – which ran from 1956-1961.

According to Wikipedia that ‘quickly expanded to

become a significant event in the burgeoning jazz and youth pop music scene of the period. Camping overnight, a rural invasion, eccentric dress, wild music and sometimes wilder behaviour...happened at Beaulieu each summer, culminating in the so-called 'Battle of Beaulieu' at the 1960 festival, when rival gangs of modern and traditional jazz fans indulged in a spot of what sociologists went on to call 'subcultural contestation'. ‘ The LME gained an exclusive interview with Ciro Romano who explained the genesis and intentions of the festival: “There are jazz festivals Iike the London Jazz Festival [held in November] and the Cheltenham Jazz Festival [late April/early May] which are great festivals but they’re really a series of concerts in a concentrated period of time. You buy a ticket for the

De La Soul

Courtney Pine Jamie Cullum

Echiddfest July 19 Jazz, Blues, Rock & Beer Festival Nash Street, Chiddingly 12 Noon – 11pm

concert and then go home so there’s not really a communal classic British festival experience. I guess our festival does go back to Beaulieu and the fights between the trads and the more modern fans. I’m not sure you would get that fight now.

“The genesis of it was that I had a relationship with Richard Wheatley at the radio station Jazz FM and we ended up having a discussion about the fact that there was no outdoor weekend jazz festival and that there was one for folk music – the Cambridge Folk Festival – and Womad for world music. Jazz sells more records and tickets in this country than folk music so we felt there might be an opportunity to do something. We discussed it and developed it together and found somebody to raise the money, the guys at Ingenious. The genesis was that nobody else was doing it and I thought why is that. When I did some research originally people said that jazz fans don’t camp but it turns out that they do.

In aid of St Wilfrid’s Hospice Chiddfest looks like it provides all the fun of the fair – hog roast, ice creams, food stalls, face painting, posh loos and camping facilities – alongside music on a main stage and an acoustic stage. At press time the line-up included: The Quireboys, Rosco Levee & The Southern Slide, La Vendore Rogue, The Clowns, Fat 45, City of Ashes, Hot Club, Jamicka (from Spain), Fcuk (from France), Ben ‘Blue’ Waters and Robert Brown. www.chiddfest.co.uk

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“We’ve tried to make it wide enough so that genuine music fans will come to the festival. The whole idea of it is that we try and book the best jazz acts that we can and we hang the festival on that but we also book artists that really have broader appeal and whose heart and soul has a link to jazz, blues and soul. That’s really the criteria. Last year we booked Nile Rogers and Bryan Ferry and his Jazz Orchestra. This year we’ve booked Jamie Cullum, Soul II Soul, Gregory Porter, De La Soul, Imelda May and other artists that we feel have those roots.

“There are four stages. The Main Stage is really for those artists who have a broad audience appeal. Then you have the Big Top which is really for the core classic jazz artists.

Last year we had people like Bradford Marsalis, Terence Blanchard and Melody Gardot. Then you have the Arena which is more cutting edge and up-and-coming stuff.

This year we have Laura Jurd who is an amazing young artist. Then there’s the Bandstand for local Sussex jazz artists. We really wanted to put something back in so we came to an arrangement with the Verdict jazz club in Brighton and they helped us programme this stage.

“We absolutely see this as a long-term project. We want to be there as long as we can. We love Glynde. It’s such a great place and we really like Francis Hampden who owns the house. He’s a good guy to work with. It’s just so beautiful. There are certain places on the site where you can see the stage, the South Downs and the house.

“Last year we got 8,000 people on Saturday and 7,000 on Sunday which is not bad for jazz (laughs). We hope to do a bit more this year. If we can go up 10-20% we’ll be really happy. We don’t want to make it too big, just increase it a bit.

“Our real intention comes from the fact that we just think that more people like jazz than think they like jazz. If you’re not a big jazz fan or only quite like jazz it can be quite challenging sometimes to go and watch something for two hours at the Royal Festival Hall. The thing about a greenfield festival is that you can watch 10 minutes of this and 10 minutes of something else and just absorb it in a different way. So we want to bring jazz to the masses.” www.lovesupremefestival.com

LME

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News

ince our feature on the Union Music store in our first issue, the LME asked Stevie Freeman to bring us up-to date about forthcoming events and activities in the rest of 2014.

The full list of their In-store shows is too numerous to mention but a couple of standouts are: (May 9th/3pm) when the legendary record producer Ethan Johns (below) will be promoting his new album ‘The Reckoning’, produced

by Ryan Adams; (May 31st/1pm) Liz Green, Manchester-based singersongwriter promoting her new album ‘Haul Away’.

reviews Duncan

EphotoLEbob russell

Three great shows at the All Saints are: An Audience with Sam Baker (June 1st): American singer-songwriter who was almost killed by a Peruvian train bombing in 1986 and had to relearn to user his body and brain. He has made a trilogy of highly acclaimed albums since. See: sambakermusic.com; Nic & Joe Jones supported by The Long Hill Ramblers (Oct 19th): Nic Jones is another survivor – of a car accident in 1982. He is an acknowledged legend of the 1970s folk revival with a large recorded back catalogue. He now tours occasionally with his son.

See: www.nicjones.net; (4th Sept) The Lucy Ward Band. Nominated for Folk Singer of the Year, she is one of the hottest names on the folk circuit. See: www.lucywardsings.com Union Music store is staging monthly gigs at the Con Club which include: The Dreaming Spires (June 14th) a great country rock band www.thedreamingspires. co.uk and Rob Heron & The Teapad Orchestra (8th Nov), from Newcastle playing ragtime, hokum blues and western swing. www.teapadorchestra.co.uk

Disorderly & The Scallywags/ Smile

On the Union Music Store label, they will be releasing: the new Hatful of Rain album (launch gig 23rd May/All Saints); an album by Lucas & King (late summer), a female country-folk duo from Brighton (above); and an album by the UK band Police Dog Hogan (below), led by Tim Dowling (launch gig 3rd Oct All Saints).

‘Smile’ is the debut album by the fun-filled Sussex hippies Duncan Disorderly & The Scallywags, recorded and produced by themselves in their own home-built Lewes studio.

Formed in 2010, the music of this six-piece band combines a diverse selection of world music genres such as gypsy swing, reggae and jazz. The brass and percussion add Spanish tones and African rhythms to their full and rich sound which radiates energy and sunshine. They are well-established on the festival circuits in the UK and Europe and are known for getting everyone up and dancing with their charismatic performances.

The band’s members provide a variety of musical settings and beautiful harmonies that weave around Duncan’s charismatic influence. He is an extremely talented songwriter, conveying a positive message. He also has a unique, quirky, percussive flamenco guitar style which lies at the heart of the band’s beats and rhythms.

This style is demonstrated in the fastpaced, brass-heavy, reggae-hop track ‘Itchy Gypsy Feet’, written while the band was travelling through France and Spain and the calypso-style of ‘Beautiful Day’ which will uplift any situation. The album balances out such frenetic tracks with softer, chilled reggae like the hypnotic ‘Waterfall’.

The album is available from their website: www.the-scallywags.co.uk

Union will be curating a night of music (18th May) in the Spiegeltent for the Brighton Fringe festival which will feature Martha Tilston & The Scientists supported by Union label bands Lucas & King and The Self Help Group.

Stevie is now a member of the board of the Americana Music Association UK, which will be holding a conference this year at the Maverick Festival in Suffolk. She and partner Jamie will also be going over to the AMA conference in Nashville in September. CF www.unionmusicstore.com

sword of freedom ewes Town Council, in partnership with Sussex Past, has planned a festival from 3-18th May 2014 to mark the 750th anniversary of the Battle of Lewes.

The main musical aspect of this is a performance of ‘The Sword of Freedom’, a specially commissioned piece by composer Helen Glavin to be performed at the Town Hall on the evening of the 13th May. It will be performed by The Everyman Ensemble, a 26-man strong community choir, conducted by John Hancorn. They will be accompanied by troubadours including guitarist Lee Westwood and Emily Askew (below), who plays a range of early instruments including the medieval harp, vielle, shawm, hurdy

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EwordsLEannie edwards

gurdy and pipes.

Helen Glavin (right) told the LME: “The singers represent the soldiers who fought in the battle. It doesn’t glorify the battle but there are war chants. The piece is quite percussive and creates a strong atmosphere and spirit.”

The 25-minute piece will be performed at the end of a musical evening which also features a number of solo performers including Oliver Hicks.

A choir in the town of Lewes, Delaware will also perform part of the composition with the aim of producing a simulcast via the web with Lewes East Sussex.

This free event starts at 7.30pm at the Town Hall. Advance tickets are available from the Lewes Tourist Information Centre. There will be a collection for charity. www.sussexpast.co.uk/ battle-of-lewes-main/ battle-of-lewes-750-may-2014

Hatful Of Rain/The Morning Key

Following their wellreceived debut album ‘Way Up On The Hill’ – described as “hauntingly beautiful” by BBC Radio 2’s Bob Harris – Hatful Of Rain’s second album ‘The Morning Key’ will not disappoint.

Members Chloe Overton, Phil Jones, Fred

Gregory and James Shenton chose their band name from a line in the Tom Waits song Our guest reviewer ‘Long Way Home’. They is Annie Edwards are influenced by (16) who has traditional, old-time ambitions to be a Americana and they professional music offer authentic journalist. This bluegrass arrangements is her first time and harmonies whilst in print. also maintaining their British folk roots.

They are all multi-instrumentalists, switching between banjo, mandolin, double bass and fiddle, occasionally supplemented by additional musicians.

Claiming to take inspiration from the likes of Alison Krauss and Gillian Welch, Chloe demonstrates her vocal qualities in standout songs like ‘These Streets’, ‘Cannot Be The One’ and ‘Evangeline’ – – a particularly beautiful melody despite its implicit themes of unrequited love and murder. Phil takes over the lead vocal part in ‘Superman’, a different retelling of the comic book myth.

The band recorded their album in a barn in Fulking, Sussex and are signed to Lewes indie record company Union Music Store’s label, www.hatfulofrain.co.uk

Stella Homewood/ The Wild Places

Growing up in Lancashire with a family of musicians and artists, Stella Homewood became interested in poetry and music from a young age and has now been writing and recording her own songs for twenty years. After being in a few bands such as The Spacegoats and Stella By Starlight, she is now a solo artist and ‘The Wild Places’ is the second of the two albums she has co-produced and released on her own independent record label Harmony Records whilst living in Lewes. Her main inspiration is nature which is reflected in track titles like ‘Wild Geese Are Flying’, ‘Butterfly’ and the title track ‘The Wild Places’. Stella uses a variety of instruments on the songs she creates such as guitar, harp, recorder and percussion and has employed contributions from many other musicians to create an album that stands out as a homage and celebration of the natural world around us. www.stellahomewood.com CF

Starfish music club for adults Do you play an instrument and have you ever thought of getting together with like-minded musicians to jam and write songs? Starfish Studios are now offering anyone aged 25 or over the chance to stop playing to the fridge and get out and practice your chops with like-minded musos. It’s a great idea that could and should catch on. Sessions are held on Tuesday evenings at the Starfish Studios from 8-10pm.

The six-week course costs £40 including band tuition.

For more details see: www.starfish-studios.co.uk CF

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MUSIC STORE “Sometimes I am two people.

Johnny is the nice one.

Cash causes all the trouble. ”

FOR MUSIC LOVERS

LIVE MUSIC IN-STORES COMPACT DISCS VINYL, NEW & USED PRINTS & POSTERS BOOKS AND CARDS COWBOY BOOTS T’s & WESTERN SHIRTS

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AND SO MUCH MORE...

WwordsLEjohn may

Poptastic memories of Lewes’ musical roots For decades rumours have swarmed through the Lewes grapevine about a time when the town played host to some top pop groups in the Town Hall as a way of raising money to help buy new floodlights for Lewes football club.

Now, for the first time, thanks to a lengthy LME investigation, we have a much fuller and more satisfying account of what went on and who played when.

It’s a great story with lots of dangling threads and holes waiting to be linked up and filled in with your help.

Back in

He had a big incentive. The Football Club needed new floodlights and other bits and pieces but how were they going to find the money?

Unfortunately the Club has no record of how much money was needed and how much was raised.

Norman was not the only person putting on bands at the Town Hall in the ‘60s, says Michael. “Winshaw Wrestling, an outfit run by the Winter family, not only put on wrestling bouts but also local groups and Dad realised that there was money to be made getting chart groups. Winshaw wrestlers later helped Dad as 'bouncers' but were rarely needed.”

So what was the music scene like in Lewes at that time: “The town didn’t really have a cosmopolitan feel like it does now. As a teenager, I would have gone to coffee bars like the Polar Bear, run by Keith Austin who died recently, which had a jukebox and there was another one on School Hill. which later became a Russian restaurant. You had to go down some winding stairs.

“The pubs tended to be very busy.

There were local bands in The Lamb but I don’t remember much else going on so it was bit different to have people you’d seen in the charts all of a sudden appearing in your town.

One of the main local bands was my mate’s group Temple. They started out as Satanic Temple but decided to change their name after Black Sabbath appeared. They were Phil Light (guitar), Kev Purdy (lead vocals), André Wicks (bass and vocals) and Paul Stonehouse (drums). They also played at St Mary’s Hall.

I remember another band called Hieronymous Bosch. Roger Lacey was their lead man and I think he had something to do with the Sussex Express.”

the 60s he man responsible for it all is Norman Ashdown who will be 88 years old this year. Born and bred in Lewes, he has always lived on the Neville Estate. He served in the Army in Malaya and Singapore and latterly was stationed in Germany where he was a wireless operator doing Morse code. He worked for a time at the Phoenix Iron and Steel Works, established in Lewes by John Every in1832, before joining the Inland Revenue where he spent the majority of his working life.

His son Michael is telling me this as Norman prefers to stay out of the limelight. Born in 1951 and now living in Felixstowe in Suffolk, Michael drives down most weeks on a Saturday to see his Dad, particularly now that his Mum has recently died. When Lewes are playing at home, that’s where you will find them both. As a teenager, Michael was introduced to the club by his dad, who had been a supporter since he was a child and had always followed The Rooks to as many away

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games as he was able.

He always also had an interest in music and, says Michael, “a decent record collection, always quite varied, from classical to Frank Sinatra to Leonard Cohen; quite a mixture.” He also loved going to live gigs, another major interest of his that he shared with his son.

“In the early ‘60s, we often used to go to watch bands in Brighton at places like the Dome, The Hippodrome – where we saw The Beatles and The Stones – and the Essoldo cinema by the clock tower (later the Top Rank Suite and Virgin Records; now Boots).

They were package tours organised by promoters like Larry Parnes and Robert Stigwood. We saw people like Billy Fury, Marty Wilde, Mike Sarne and Karl Denver – people who generally did the rounds a lot. That’s where he first saw the Nashville Teens, who became one of his prime objectives to have play in Lewes. This was all part of the build-up, a time when he started thinking perhaps I could do something like that.”

MAKING IT HAPPEN The gigs Norman organised started at the end of 1965 and, with some notable breaks, continued until January 1968. All the posters for these are reproduced here together for the first time.

Michael says: “My Dad had no graphic design background but I can remember him designing the posters

“He had talks regarding getting Simon & Garfunkel and Otis Redding but the costs were a bit too high.”

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and the adverts that were going into the paper and spending a lot of time over it. He spent ages trying to come up with the correct wording – ‘All Night Rave’ for instance. He would keep changing it until he was absolutely satisfied that it was right.

They were printed at W.E. Baxters where his father and quite a few of his family worked. I would help him put them out around the town.

“He found the whole process of organising the gigs quite fascinating and interesting and he enjoyed working with an agent called Terry Blood who he used a lot.”

More importantly, Norman also got advice from Charlie Watts, the Rolling Stones drummer, who was living in Lewes for a number of years in the mid to late ‘60s. “I don’t know how it started,” says Michael, “but they were big mates and certainly on first name terms. Dad visited him at his house, opposite The Swan in Southover, on several occasions. I know Dad used to consult him quite a bit and Charlie would give him information about producers, managers and agents – who to avoid as well as who to go with and suggest people that were reliable.

He’s got a lot of good words to say about Charlie Watts.”

On the actual nights, the bands would arrive with their own equipment and would play in the Main Hall. The bar – run by Bill Ryall from the Elephant & Castle – was in the Corn Exchange.

“The main band would set up on a little stage at the front of the room and the support bands would set up at the back of the hall.” says Michael. “I used to get there early and watch them set up. It was quite exciting to be involved.

“One of the things Dad said to me was that he was always keen at all of his concerts to make a point of it being non-stop so there was no half-anhour interval. So there was always a band playing which, for those days, was quite a novel concept. Dad’s view was that if there was a break, people would just go to the bar and drink and they wouldn’t come out again.

“The caretaker was a very handy guy called Chester Crouch who I know my Dad was very keen to have on his side because he was a big guy who could handle himself. He also knew a lot of the wrestlers who would be on the door and just be around generally to make sure there wasn’t any trouble. In fact there was never any trouble. The only fight I can remember was between two girls in the ladies toilets when a mirror got smashed. Lewes wasn’t a violent town.

I don’t remember ever feeling intimidated even.”

So much for the background: thanks to Norman and Michael’s generosity we are now proud to present an exclusive show of rock memorabilia that will, we hope, entertain and delight. We have worked hard to try and identify all the bands in general and to ascertain where each one was in their career and which of their various line-ups played in Lewes. There is much more to discover.

1965 Christmas Eve THE SHADES Lewes group The Shades began playing in the Brighton area in 1961. Having chosen a name that sounded as much like The Shadows as possible, the group initially existed on a mainly instrumental diet.

Lead guitarist Barrie Ellis, having taken up violin and guitar after leaving Lewes Grammar School, was one of the founders of the group with rhythm guitarist Trevor Gale who’d started to play whilst at school.

Ellis was a budding civil engineer and apprentice plumber. Gale brought in Barcombe singer and former rhythm guitarist with the Rebels, Bob Lewry six months later, who proceeded to go off and join the Merchant Navy. Tiring of a life at sea and feeling that he was in a rut, Lewry re-joined in 1963, with drummer Dave Charlwood and bass player Ray Lloyd completing the line-up.

Charlwood heard that their previous drummer, Jimmy’s, highlight during the set was to play Brian Bennett’s solo ‘Little B’ from The Shadows second album: ‘I told them “If you want me to play ‘Little B’ you can find another drummer!” I wasn’t a fancy drummer at all ... more of a steady player, but I did love harmony material and was keen to join in on vocals. Fortunately they were happy with that.’

Although they didn’t have an agent and mainly played in the Lewes area, by 1963 they’d begun to extend their territory, performing at Glyndebourne parties and later performing at the holiday camp at Selsey. By 1964 they were appearing at the Richmond Hotel alongside The Faraways and by 1965 were regulars at the Starlite Rooms.

They also played at Lewes Town Hall and supported many major acts at the Downs at Hassocks, including the Zombies, the Yardbirds and the Graham Bond Organisation.

At the very beginning of 1966, Ray was replaced by the young Pete Cramer just as the group were getting into harmony: ‘I’d previously played with

The Shades at Lewes Priory ruins in Spring 1966. New member Pete Cramer at top right.

another group called Indigo and then joined just as The Shades were learning songs like the Beach Boys’ ‘Barbara Ann’ and Jan and Dean’s ‘Surf City.’ As well as the harmony numbers, they also did stuff by the Kinks and R&B material like Howlin’ Wolf’s ‘Smokestack Lightnin’.’

The first commitment for Cramer was a photo shoot at Lewes Priory, as any new member joining a group invalidates their current pictures. As the group’s popularity increased, they came to the attention of independent record producer Joe Meek. A friend of Meek’s was acquainted with one of The Shades and came to see them play. Joe duly received a good report and asked them to go to London for an audition at Joe’s studio in the Upper Holloway Road.

Pete Cramer played bass on the session: “Joe gave us three songs to do. One of them, ‘Don’t Let It Rain On Sunday,’ he’d written himself, but ‘She Comforts My Sorrow’ was the best of the three. That was slated to be the single. He put some really weird effect on my bass, but I didn’t say anything as it was the first time that I’d been in a recording studio.

It was a strange set up though, recording in what was supposed to be a bedroom, with Joe and all his gadgets and equipment out of sight in another room.

“I seem to remember Joe taking rather a shine to Barrie our lead guitarist! He was obviously a good

that way.”

We thought he might lose interest after that, but he still recorded us. He was very expressive when it came to explaining the sound he wanted ... there was one particular beat he was after and came into the studio stamping wildly on the floor ... “like that” he said ... “like that” ... if you can’t do it I’ll get some Spanish dancers in to dance on the floor! In the end I used two wooden blocks to get the right effect.’

Any hope of getting the material released was dashed in the February when Joe Meek blew himself away with a shotgun — the exact reason for which has never been absolutely identified.

Like the rest of the group, Pete Cramer was shocked: “We read about it in the paper but couldn’t believe it. It was just so difficult to take in when you’d been working that closely with someone.

We never heard of or saw our three tracks again.”

Disheartened by Meek’s death and the subsequent problems, The Shades folded at the end of 1966.

Extract from ‘The South Coast Beat Scene of the 1960s’ © Mike Read / Woodfield Publishing Ltd 2001/2010.

All rights reserved.

producer, but was very erratic at the time and kept ranting on about how the lead singer with The Honeycombs rated himself rather highly. It was very exciting to be having a single coming out produced by someone who’d had so much chart success and No.1 Hits.”

Whilst Pete remembered Meek being keen on Barrie, Dave Charlwood recalls him having a bit of a crush on vocalist Bob Lewry: ‘Joe definitely got Bob up there by himself on some pretext and was rather forthcoming, but Bob said something like: “Look Joe, I’ve been in the Merchant Navy, but I’m not

JOHNNY FINE AND THE RAMBLERS

The Shades at Laughton Village Hall (1965), From left: Ray Lloyd, Trevor Gale, Dave Charlwood, Bob Lowry and Barry Ellis.

Johnny Fine and The Ramblers

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Johnny Fine and The Ramblers were a rock band from the Lingfield area in Surrey, who in the ‘60s played regularly at the Wiremill Club in that area. The band also played in Lewes as a support for Pink Floyd in January 1968 [see page 18]. By a long chain of chance, we eventually located Graham ‘Bris’ Coombes who played lead/rhythm guitar with the band. The other members were Johnny Fine (Denton) on vocals (now deceased), Les Humphrey (guitar), Alan Stone (bass) and Ray Winter (drums). Graham also supplied us with photos. He believes the band played at least four gigs at the Town Hall, at one of which they supported Brian Poole and the Tremeloes. This suggests that there were other promoters putting on bands at the Town Hall at that time.

The Nashville Teens with Cathy McGowan

1966 September 16th THE NASHVILLE TEENS Formed in Weybridge, Surrey in 1962, the band were best known for their 1964 single ‘Tobacco Road, which was a Top 10 hit in the UK and Top 20 hit in the US. Their line-up at this time was Arthur Sharp and Ray Phillips (vocals), John Allen (guitar), Barry Jenkins (drums), Pete Shannon Harris (guitar) and John Hawken (piano). Their name was derived from the Everly Brothers’ song ‘Nashville Blues’. They had one further Top 10 hit with ‘Google Eye’ and three Top 50 hits in 1965 and early 1966 but three further singles that year failed to chart. Ray Phillips is still touring with a version of the Teens to this day.

TONY JACKSON & THE VIBRATIONS Tony Jackson (vocalist, bass guitar) was one of the original members of ‘60s pop sensation The Searchers. After signing a contract with Pye, this Liverpool band’s first single ‘Sweets For My Sweet’ reached No.1, knocking The Beatles off the top spot. Their second single ‘Sugar

and Spice’ reached Number 2 and their third ‘Needles and Pins’ also made No 1. It was Tony’s vocals on their first two hits but Mike Pender’s on the third. In the summer of 1964 at the peak of their success, Tony Jackson left to form his own group (or was kicked out of the band). The Vibrations consisted of Paul Francis (drums) Martin Raymond (organ) and Ian Buisel (guitar).

According to the band’s biography ‘Drumming Up Vibrations’ by Paul Francis: “Tony was highly-talented with a great sense of humour, but could also be very difficult and confrontational, sometimes offering to fight anyone in an audience who upset him!”

Poster signed by the whole band.

1966 November 19th THE PAUL BUTTERFIELD BLUES BAND The Paul Butterfield Blues Band from Chicago were a pioneering American blues band of the period. They arrived in England for their first and only British tour in October 1966 to promote their newly-released Elektra album ‘East-West’, widely considered their masterpiece. The band had not one but

THE TEEN TEEM This local band played at several of the gigs Norman put on. The band’s name is variously spelt as Teen Teem or Teen Team on the posters. The drummer for the band was Derek Billet who used to work at the tax office with Norman. Michael believes they came from Seaford.

two impressive guitarists – Michael Bloomfield and Elvin Bishop – with Paul Butterfield on vocals and harmonica, Jerome Arnold on bass, Billy Davenport on drums and Mark Naftalin on keyboards.

The Butterfield band arrived on October 17th and gave a press conference at Ronnie Scott’s jazz club during which Bloomfield praised Eric Clapton. The band jammed with Cream at either The Cromwellian Club or The Scotch of St James in London two days later. The band went on to tour England and Scotland as part of a 16-date Georgie Fame package tour, which was promoted by the pirate station Radio London in association with Harold Davison, Rik Gunnell and Tito Burns.

Also on the bill were Eric Burdon and the New Animals, Chris Farlowe and the Thunderbirds, Geno Washington and the Ram Jam Band and Eyes of Blue from Wales, who had just won the Melody Maker national Battle of the Bands competition.

Butterfield and the band decided to stay on in the UK for two more weeks and played in Manchester, Birmingham and a number of clubs in London including The Flamingo, the Ram Jam Club and Eel Pie Island and also appeared on the tv pop show ‘Ready Steady Go’.

Their gig at Lewes Town Hall was to be their last ever performance in Britain.

According to the Sussex Express (25th January 1968): ‘Lewes did not rate the Butterfield Blues Band, who left the

Poster signed by Tony Jackson & The Vibrations

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EphotoLEmick gold getty pictures

Left to right: Paul Butterfield, Mike Bloomfield, Elvin Bishop at Lewes Town Hall

THE ZOMBIES The Zombies formed in 1961 in St Albans, Hertfordshire while the members were at school. The original line-up from 1962-1967 was Colin Blunstone (lead vocals), Rod Argent (organ, vocals), Paul Atkinson (guitar,

The Zombies

town hall near empty to fly back to a jam-packed session at the City Hall, New York.’

According to Michael: “I can remember there was not very many people there and you could wander round quite easily. Everybody who was there enjoyed it. I was absolutely captivated by them. They were brilliant and they seemed to play for a long time. We were so used in the ‘60s to having two or three-minute pop singles but they played songs that went on for 10 minutes or more which was unusual.

I remember my Dad talking to a US serviceman who was a big fan. He was stationed in Germany and he’d seen them play over there so he came over to the Town Hall, watched them and then flew back.

vocals), Chris White (bass, vocals) and Hugh Grundy (drums). After winning a beat-group competition sponsored by the London Evening News they signed to Decca and recorded their first hit ‘She’s Not There’, produced by a young Gus Dudgeon. Released in mid-1964 it reached No.12 in the UK single charts.

First aired in the US in August 1964, it reached No.1 by December. A second single ‘Tell Her No’ reached No.6 in the US in March 1965. Subsequent singles failed to achieve chart success. Their first album ‘Begin Here’ came out the same year. In 1967, the Zombies signed to CBS Records and recorded the album ‘Odessey [sic] and Oracle’ after which the band broke up. The album sold poorly but one of the tracks ‘Time of The Season’ was subsequently released as a single and became a nationwide hit, reaching No.3 in the Billboard Hot 100.

The album is now ranked 80 in Rolling Stone magazine’s list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.

Michael comments: “Dad thought they were very good but it certainly

THE MIKE STUART SPAN

1967 March 4th SWINGING BLUE JEANS Originally a jazz-influenced skiffle band called The Bluegenes, this Liverpool band played The Cavern and the Star Club in Hamburg (like The Beatles) before they went electric and changed their name to The Swinging Blue Jeans.

As a result, they got a recording contract with HMV Records. Their debut single ‘It's Too Late Now’ in 1963 just crept into the British charts at No.30. At that time the band consisted of Ray Ennis (rhythm guitar, vocals), Les Braid (bass, keyboards), Ralph Ellis (lead guitar), Paul Moss (guitar and vocals) and Norman Kuhlke

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(drums). Moss left the band soon after.

It was their third single "Hippy Hippy Shake", released that December, which broke through to the No. 2 chart spot in the British charts and became a Top 30 hit in the US. They appeared on the first-ever broadcast of ‘Top of the Pops’ where, says Wikipedia: ‘they famously engaged in a punch- up with the Rolling Stones at the BBC studios during the recording of that first show, as a result of an argument over a ballpoint pen for signing autographs.’

Other minor hits followed. Ralph Ellis left the band in early 1966 and by the time they played in Lewes, he had been replaced by Terry Sylvester of The Escorts.

THE MOJOS The Mojos were another beat band from Liverpool, best known for their hit UK single ‘Everything’s Alright’, which was covered by David Bowie on his ‘Pin-Ups’ album. Released in October 1964, it reached Number 9 in the UK that winter, stayed in the charts for 11 weeks and also earned a US release.

Originally known as The Nomads, a duo of Keith Karlson (bass) and John “Bob” Conrad, they added, in September 1962, Stu James (vocals, harmonica)

wasn’t one of his favourite gigs. I think they were a little bit aloof, a little bit ‘We’re in the Charts’ sort of thing.”

HEDGEHOPPERS ANONYMOUS Hedgehoppers Anonymous were a ‘60s beat band mainly made up of Royal Air Force personnel based at RAF Wittering near Peterborough. The original line-up was Mike Tinsley (lead singer), John Stewart (lead guitar), Alan Laud, (rhythm guitar), Ray Honeyball (bass), and Les Dash (drums). Alan Laud was the only civilian. The other band members all had specialist ground trades supporting the Nuclear ‘V’ Bomber Force. Mike Tinsley was an Air Radar Fitter working on bombing and navigation systems. They adopted the name Hedgehoppers from the low-flying techniques adopted by the Vulcan and Victor bombers to get to targets under enemy radar. Their only hit, ‘It’s Good News Week’ was written and produced by Jonathan King.

This protest song reached No.5 in September/October 1965. The band released four other singles but none of them reached the charts and the group broke up.

The Mojos

This Brighton band played mainly American-derived soul music with some original songs. Formerly The Atoms, then the Extremes, the Span originally consisted of Stuart Hobday (vocals), Roger McCabe (bass), Nigel Langham (guitar), Ashley Potter (played organ; later replaced by Jon Poulter) and teenage drummer Gary 'Roscoe' Murphy, plus an added horn section of two trumpets and two saxophones.

They played their debut gig at the Chatsfield Hotel in Brighton in Spring 1966 but, shortly afterwards, their guitarist Nigel Langham jumped from an upstairs window to his death whilst tripping on LSD. The band continued as a six-piece, without a guitarist and with Gary Parsley (trumpet) and Dave Plumb (saxophone). This would be the line-up that played in Lewes. In November 1966 they were promoting their debut single on Columbia EMI – ‘Come On Over to My Place’ (a Drifters’ number) on the A-side, with Stuart’s composition ‘Still Nights’, described as ‘a groovy slice of mod-soul-pop’, on the flip.

Hedgehoppers Anonymous

1966 December 23rd

and Adrian Lord (rhythm guitar) and were joined in August 1963 by Terry O’Toole (piano) who had been recommended to them by George Harrison. Lord left the group soon after and was replaced by Nicky Crouch. This line-up recorded five further singles and an EP before Conrad, Karlson and O’Toole left in October 1964. Stu James and Nicky Crouch then recruited Lewis Collins on bass (the son of their road manager, later to find fame as an actor in the tv series The Professionals) and the great drummer Aynsley Dunbar, who went on to play with the likes of David Bowie, John Mayall and Frank Zappa.

Wikipedia claims this band changed their name to Stu James & The Mojos and that they split up in September 1966 so it’s not clear which line-up appeared in Lewes.

1967 April 8th THE ACTION

1967 APRIL 15TH PETER JAY & THE JAYWALKERS (Featuring Terry Reid) Peter Jay & The Jaywalkers were a British instrumental beat group founded around 1960 by drummer Peter Jay who was studying at Norwich College at the time. Other band members were: Pete "Buzz" Miller (lead guitar), Tony Webster (rhythm guitar), Mac McIntyre (tenor sax, flute), Lloyd Baker (piano, baritone sax) and two bass guitarists: Geoff Moss and Johnny Larke. The band signed with Decca Records in 1962 and their first record ‘Can Can ‘62’- a rocked-up version of

Powerhouse Six as the band became known played a set list featuring numbers by James Brown, Bobby Bland, Little Richard, Otis Redding, Sam and Dave and Wilson Pickett. They turned pro and gigged in Britain and Germany and were offered a residency at The Scotch of St James Club where The Beatles, the Stones and most of the top groups of the time hung out. They jammed with many greats including Jose Feliciano and, after one performance, John Lennon commented “Great set, lads”. They also supported The Cream and Jimi Hendrix.

The band was considered one of the premier soul bands in the country; on a par with Geno Washington and the Ram Jam Band and Jimmy James and the Vagabonds.

EphotoLEwww.manchesterbeat.com

This band, made up of genuine mods, formed in Kentish Town, north London as The Boys during 1963. The band consisted of Reg King (vocals), Alan King (guitar), Mike Evans (bass) and Roger Powell (drums). In 1965 they changed their name to The Action and added guitarist Pete Watson to the line-up. They were signed to George Martin’s own label AIR that year and went on to release five singles on Parlophone, none of which reached the charts. Then and now this remains a mystery as they had a serious following amongst the Mods and at the time were considered as competitors of their contemporaries The Who and The Small Faces.

Pete Watson left the band in

1966 after arguments with their manager Rikki Farr (who later became more infamous as the promoter of the Isle of Wight festival in the early 1970s). The band continued as a fourpiece for a while and this is the line-up that most likely played in Lewes in 1967, the year they were dropped by their record company. Later in 1967 they hired in Ian Whiteman (keyboards, flute) and Martin Stone, formerly of the Savoy Brown Blues Band (their early, original name – before just being ‘Savoy Brown’), joined sometime later on lead guitar and they recorded a whole album of original songs as demos which was never released at the time but is now available as ‘Rolled Gold’.

Phil Collins played live with the reunited band in 2000. He said: “For me it was like playing with The Beatles.”

T D BACKUS & THE POWERHOUSE Originally formed in Manchester as The Backbeats, The

played this gig in Lewes. The single flopped and a number of personnel changes followed to the point where Reid got fed up and left to form his own band.

Michael comments: “Terry Reid was quite a character. He arrived wearing a big Fedora hat with lots of bling including a gold chain. He was a real sort of show-off kind of character. I seem to remember him going into the bar and standing on a chair and performing.”

The ROBB STORME GROUP This band began life as a Lutonbased quintet called Robb Storme & The Whispers. In 1960 they won a recording contract with Decca in a competition, recorded several singles with no commercial success but had a busy career as a live band. The Whispers recorded five singles for Decca, Pye, Piccadilly & Columbia in 1961-65. In 1964 they became the first rock/pop band to play behind the Iron Curtain when they toured Poland with Helen Shapiro. As fashions changed they morphed into The Robb Storme Group – which in late August 1966 released a cover of the Beach Boys track ‘Here Today’. Lewis Collins, who later starred in the TV series ‘The Professionals’, joined them on bass for about eight months and he may have been in the line-up that played in Lewes. During the psychedelic years, the band renamed themselves Orange Bicycle, and their first single ‘Hyacinth Threads’ became a No.1 hit in France. In 1968 they performed at the first Isle of Wight Festival and in 1969 appeared in the BBC2 tv programme ‘Colour Me Pop.’

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THE ATTACK (Hi-Ho Silver Lining) The Attack were a freakbeat/psychedelic rock band formed in 1966 around singer Richard Shirman. The line-up featured: drummer Alan ‘Noddy’ Whitehead (later of Marmalade), guitarist David O'List (later of The Nice), Bob Hodges (Hammond organ), and Gerry Henderson (clarinet). They are perhaps now best known for their recording of 'Hi Ho Silver Lining'. which came out in March 1967, a few days before Jeff Beck’s version. According to Shirman: "Our manager and record company man, Don Arden, got an acetate of the song and told us that this was to be our single. Don had all the pirates [pirate radio stations] lined up but (this is unsubstantiated) Mickie Most had someone at Decca studio in his pocket and they passed him the song/demo.

Our first pressing went out and – due to the Stones, Tom Jones and Engelbert Humperdinck all having singles out – they ...didn't press The Attack, though demand was there. Two weeks later, Jeff [Beck’s] version came out, he got ‘Top of the Pops’ and the rest is, as they say, HISTORY !"

According to AllMusic: ‘The Attack (thanks to an ever growing legion of collectors dedicated to the vibrant sound of midto late-'60s Swinging London) have a far larger fan base now than they ever did during their existence. Indeed, their unique brand of guitarheavy, mod-rock qualifies them as one of the finest examples of (the over used term) freakbeat.

The Attack

Peter Jay & The Jaywalkers

the can-can music from Offenbach's Orpheus in the Underworld – was produced by the legendary Joe Meek. It made No.31 in the charts. Several further singles made no impression but the band were a popular live act. They supported The Beatles on their Nov/Dec 1963 tour and also appeared on tv shows ‘Ready Steady Go’ and ‘Thank Your Lucky Stars’.

In 1964 they moved to Piccadilly Records and released several more singles which also failed to chart. By 1965 they had begun to incorporate Motown and R&B material into their shows and when Miller left that year, Jay recruited a young 15-year old as the band’s new guitarist and vocalist – the great Terry Reid. Reid was in bands from the age of 12 and had a remarkable voice. Before Robert Plant, he was first choice for Led Zeppelin. Reid says: “When I joined Peter Jay he was trying to change his style from the showband thing he’d been doing into more of a soul thing.”

Throughout ’65 and ’66 the band gigged hard and they were hot enough to get a support slot on a two-week UK tour in September 1966 with the Rolling Stones and Ike & Tina Turner. Terry, who was 16 at the time, recalled: “The first tour with The Rolling Stones was the worst. Jesus I’m still getting over that one. You try to get IN with your life and then, after the girls had screamed themselves silly, you had to try and get OUT with your life.” On the strength of their success on that tour they recorded several tracks for EMI producer John Burgess of which only one single was released – ‘The Hand Don’t Fit the Glove’ which came out on Columbia in April 1967 – the same month the band

1967 June 24th

1967 October 7th SOUL TRINITY The LOOT

This is the one gig where we have no information on any of the bands that played that night. All we do have is this great signed picture of The Loot.

The Loot

Chris Gates (vocals), Jeff Glover (bass), Roger Pope (drums), Bruce Turner (lead guitar), and Dave Wright (rhythm guitar).

Signed photo of The Move: Left to Right: Bev Bevan, Carl Wayne, Roy Wood, Trevor Burton, Ace Kefford.

1967 October 13TH

The original contract for the gig signed by Tony Secunda

THE MOVE This was one of the greatest pop gigs in Lewes and the one that drew the biggest crowds. At the time they played, The Move’s single ‘Flowers In The Rain’ was at Number 2 in the UK charts. Just a fortnight before, Radio 1 was launched at 7:00 am on Saturday 30th September with Tony Blackburn playing this single, which was produced by Tony Visconti.

The Move hailed from Birmingham and formed in December 1965. They originally played covers until Roy Wood began writing original material but they came to fame in the early days largely as a result of the anarchic stunts dreamed up by their then manager Tony Secunda.

Having secured them a residency at London’s Marquee Club, he dressed them as gangsters and got them to use an axe to smash up tv sets and busts of Hitler on stage. They signed a record production contract on the back of topless models in front of the press.

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However, one of his many stunts, designed to promote ‘Flowers in the Rain’, backfired badly. Without consulting the band, he produced a cartoon postcard depicting the then Prime Minister Harold Wilson in bed with his secretary Marcia Williams.

William sued the band for libel, won the case and The Move had to not only pay all the costs but to also assign all the song’s royalties to charities of Wilson’s choice – a ruling that remained in force even after Wilson’s death in1995.

Michael comments: “It was the fullest gig I can remember. I’ve heard there were 700 plus in there. People were standing on the radiators.”

EphotoLEwww.chrisbarber.net The Chris Barber Band, May 1967 to June 1968. Left to right: Ian Wheeler, Pat Halcox, Jackie Flavelle, Graham Burbidge, Stu Morrison, John Slaughter, Chris Barber

EsinglesLEklaus hiltscher - flickr

1967 December 15th ALAN PRICE SET Keyboard maestro Alan Price formed The Animals in 1962 but left the band in 1965 to form the Alan Price Set. The line-up consisted of Price with Clive Burrows (baritone saxophone), Steve Gregory (tenor saxophone), John Walters (trumpet), Peter Kirtley (guitar), Rod "Boots" Slade (bass), and "Little" Roy Mills (drums). Burrows was replaced in spring 1967 by Terry Childs.

In 1962, Price made an appearance in ‘Don’t Look Back’, the now legendary movie by D.A. Pennebaker of Bob Dylan’s tour of the UK. From 1966 until end of the decade, he had a string of hit singles and a tv show ‘Price to Play’ whose guests included Jimi Hendrix. In 1967 when he played in Lewes, his fame was at its height. He had had two of his biggest hits to date with Randy Newman’s ‘Simon Smith And The Amazing Dancing Bear’ (which reached No. 4 in April) and his own satirical composition ‘The House That Jack Built’

1967 December 30th CHRIS BARBER BAND The legendary Chris Barber, still playing to this day, is one of the most important figures in the evolution of British music. He is a world-class trombonist and a bandleader par excellence whose music has ranged across number of genres including trad jazz, ragtime, swing, skiffle and folk.

He is well known for bringing a

number of significant US performers to Britain and establishing their reputations. Lonnie Donegan’s appearances with the Barber band triggered off the skiffle craze and earnt Donegan a huge transatlantic hit with ‘Rock Island Line’. He also encouraged and found an audience for Alexis Korner and became an important figure in the nurturing of a British rhythm and blues scene which led to the “beat boom” of the 1960s.

J.J. BENDOL AND THE S.O.S. The name of this band was mispelt on the poster. They were in fact named J.J. Bender & The SOS and were a seven-piece soul band from Northampton.

Michael comments: “Dad’s always said that it didn’t really work because the two bands were so different.

People who came to see Chris Barber weren’t interested in the other band and vice versa. I don’t think it did too badly financially but as a concert it didn’t fit the bill.”

(which also reached No.4 in August). He also got rave reviews for his second album, ‘A Price On His Head’, a set of songs which concentrated on contemporary songwriters like Dylan and featured seven songs by Randy Newman.

Michael comments: “One of the reasons Dad wanted them was quite self indulgent because he was a great fan of Alan Price. Charlie Watts was there. I remember him coming in with a bottle of scotch and going in the dressing room.”

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EphotoLE wikipedia

1968 January 19th PINK FLOYD The most important pop gig in Lewes was this appearance by the Pink Floyd who apparently played two 45-minute sets despite the fact that there were two support bands. The significance and importance of this gig rests with the fact that it was one of only four gigs when Syd Barrett and David Gilmour were on stage at the same time.

The events leading up to this are well documented. Syd was an enthusiastic user of LSD but also suffered from depression. The band had just undertaken a gruelling tour of Britain as part of a package tour of 31 shows in 16 cities which starred the remarkable Jimi Hendrix Experience.

It ran from the 14th November to the 5th December and featured, in addition to Hendrix and the Floyd, Amen Corner, The Nice, Outer Limit and Eire Apparent. One of the gigs (2nd December) was at Brighton Dome (attended by the young Michael Ashdown).

The Floyd were in crisis as Syd’s behaviour deteriorated and in December 1967, the group recruited David Gilmour at a salary of £30 a week. He was announced to the press as the band’s newest member in January and Gilmour rehearsed with the band for the first time on Jan 8th and 9th. The following two days they spent in Abbey Road recording the album ‘A Saucerful of Secrets’. The following day (12th), the five-piece band played a gig at the University of Aston in Birmingham and another gig at the Winter Gardens Pavilion in

Weston-Super-Mare on the 13th (where, incidentally, they were supported by The Ken Birch Band and the 3 of Spades Plus). More rehearsals followed (15th/16th) and more recording (17th/18th), and then the two final gigs – the Town Hall in Lewes (19th) and a gig on Hastings Pier the following night – the last time Syd Barrett performed on stage with the band.

According to Wikipedia: ‘Working with Barrett eventually proved too difficult, and matters came to a head in January, while en route to a performance in Southampton, when a band member asked if they should collect Barrett.

According to Gilmour, the answer was "Nah, let's not bother", signalling the end of Barrett's tenure with Pink Floyd.

Waters later admitted, "He was our friend, but most of the time we now wanted to strangle him". In early March 1968, Pink Floyd met with business partners Jenner and King to discuss the band's future; Barrett agreed to leave.’

Michael comments: My claim to fame

Only known photo-shoot of the Floyd with five members in Jan 1968.

David Gilmour at bottom.

is I played the piano with Rick Wright. I can remember going in to the dressing room. There was a nice sweet smell going around shall we say and they were quite sort of friendly and Rick was sitting at the piano and he said come over and sit as well and we played Chopsticks together. I’ve always had that as my abiding memory: I played piano with Pink Floyd.

GRANNY’S INTENTIONS Granny’s Intentions were Ireland’s leading beat group of the 1960s. They began life as an R&B group formed by schoolfriends in Limerick in 1965. Following many lineup changes, the band became The Intentions and by that time had added soul and Motown influences into their R&B. In 1967 they relocated to London and became Granny’s Intentions. Within a short time they had signed with the Deram label and recorded four singles and an album. They played top clubs like the Marquee, Pink Flamingo and the Speakeasy. They returned to Ireland in Dec 1967 and did a two-week tour of Germany in early 1968, either before or after the Lewes gig. They returned to Sussex in August 1970 when they played the second Plumpton Festival as Granny’s ‘New’ Intentions, the same month they were playing a residency at the Marquee.

The band split in 1972. CF

Great photo of the Floyd signed by all five members. David Gilmour is not pictured. Left to right: Rich Wright, Roger Waters, Syd Barrett, Nick Mason.

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EwordsLEjohn may EphotosLEbob russell and carlotta luke Amongst the important aspects of Lewes and district’s musical heritage is the cluster of guitar-makers (also known as luthiers) centred at the Star Brewery and elsewhere in the town and surrounds.

THE GUITAR MAKERS OF LEWES

mongst the important aspects of Lewes and district’s musical heritage is the cluster of guitar-makers (also known as luthiers) centred at the Star Brewery and elsewhere in the town and surrounds.

The roots of guitar-making in the town stem from Stephen Hill who first of all taught himself to make guitars and then passed on the skills to many of the current makers, some of whom, in turn, now teach as well as make. He is currently based in Spain’s Granada province, home to 50 or more guitar makers, and not only continues to make and teach but also runs the European Institute of Guitar Making,.

In an exclusive interview he tells the LME how this all happened and how, together with his brother Laurence, they created the now sadly-missed annual Lewes Guitar Festival which attracted fantastic guitar players from many parts of the globe and the musical world to Lewes.

Born in London, Stephen, Laurence and the Hill family moved to Boathouse Farm in Isfield in 1976 when Stephen was nine years old, by which time he’d already started playing around with the guitar. After three years at Priory School he left at 16 and learnt woodworking skills for six months on the job from Paul Clapworthy who was running a small furniture workshop in Lewes which, unfortunately, burnt down. Stephen then started his own workshop on the family farm, making cupboards, dressers and the like.

But whilst working, he also began seriously playing and studying Spanish classical guitars.

“Then things started happening very fast after I went to see an amazing lute concert by Stephen Stubbs in Grange Gardens. The sound was very intimate and it struck me intensely; it totally resonated with me. I began having lessons with Konrad Adamczewski and he had a very nice guitar by an English guitar maker. It struck me that this guitar was a one-off, a unique signed, dated and numbered instrument partly made with some beautiful woods from Brazil and that literally rang a bell in my head – the idea that one guy could make guitars. That’s

A

Stephen hill when I started to try and work out how you actually could do it.

In 1985, at the age of 18, he made his first instrument – assembling a lute from a kit on his kitchen table.

According to his website ‘his second instrument was a classical guitar that was made in about five different locations and as many countries, as he travelled around Europe working in Italy and Germany and touring Spanish guitar workshops to get a better understanding of Spanish guitarmaking traditions.’

On his return, in 1989 he moved from Isfield to Lewes and set up his first proper little workshop making guitars in North Street. For six years he worked in isolation in what was basically a garden shed, building instruments and improving his guitar skills.

“After that I really did start to get cabin fever and I moved out and ended up in the Star Brewery workshops. I had to support a higher rent in this workshop so when one guy asked me – if he could build a guitar with me, I thought I’m a bit busy in the day

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building guitars but why don’t I start an evening class, which I did on a Tuesday from 6 to 9. I ended up with three students in there so my evening class was off and running.

“To cut a long story short, I ended up teaching lots of people from Lewes and Brighton and the countryside around including Nick Benjamin, Richard Osborne and Rohan Lowe, who then set up their own workshops in Lewes. Also Chippy Mobbs, who, when he was really young, built a tiny little miniature guitar in my original workshop, and is now a fantastic guitar player and maker in his own right and who this year is also opening his own studio.”

“Other guitar makers like Alexander “Sasha” Batov were attracted over from Brighton and we decided, as a group, to set ourselves up as the Lewes Guitar Makers and set up a website. We would often meet each other and talk about the work and then I began to invite the players of my guitars to come and perform an evening concert, I would give tapas and wine in the interval, and we had a good amount of people

Chippy Mobbs

coming to these flamenco concerts in the Star Gallery space initially and later in the basement. And then talking with my brother Laurence one day, he came up with the idea of expanding this and the Lewes International Guitar Festival was born.

“The first festival was in 1999 and we had six days of concerts – free lunchtime concerts in the Castle grounds or the Grange and an afternoon concert in the Star Gallery which also doubled as an exhibition space for the Lewes Guitar Makers. We managed to get some very famous important guitars which were displayed in glass cabinets. We also gave talks, lectures and demonstrations and we began referring to Lewes as the English Granada of Guitar Making.

“As the Festival developed over eight years, we had concerts in all these venues and bigger ones in first the All Saints Centre and, eventually, in a giant Big Top on Mountfield Road playing fields, featuring major artists like Richard Thompson, Loudon Wainwright III and Hayseed Dixie.

“The festival became known for its great diversity and high quality music performances, featuring bands and players that have become very well known since, such as Emilio Maya (Spain), Gary Ryan (UK), and John Fleeley (Ireland).” CF

Stephen Hill www.spanishguitars.co.uk www.europeaninstituteof guitarmaking.com Laurence Hill promotes live music events in Brighton and Sussex through his company Zaza Music: http://zazamusic.co.uk/

Nick Benjamin

Nick Benjamin has been building guitars in Lewes for almost 25 years and his hand-made steel-string acoustic guitars have proved so popular with professional guitarists in the UK, Europe, US and Japan that he now has a minimum two-year waiting list. Ray Davis, Eric Roche, Newton Faulkner, Nick Pym and Richard Durrant are among his most prominent clients.

He has become well known for his special designs which include the 'Benjamin Scoop' cutaway. The style of acoustic guitar playing that Eric Roche and Newton Faulkner helped popularize, which includes using the guitar body as a percussion instrument and plucking

Richard Osborne

and tapping notes with both hands, has become synonymous with Nick's instruments. Nick built his first guitars as a teenager at home on a table in his bedroom using a couple of books on guitar-making and then, after university, took formal guitar-making courses with Jeff Chapman in Brighton and Stephen Hill.

He has a studio in the Star Brewery and sometime this year he will be celebrating the building of his 150th guitar. www.benjaminguitars.co.uk

Richard came to Lewes in 1998 to learn with Stephen Hill and then began building his own mandolins and other instruments and also undertaking repair work for Stephen. In 2002 he went full-time and two years later started building steel string acoustics and expanding the repair and set-up business in a new workshop in the Star Brewery. Over the next few years, he started

teaching guitar making, first as evening classes and then as one-month intensive courses. He was also a director and co-organiser of Lewes Guitar Festival from 2004-2007.

He currently runs an extremely busy workshop, concentrating solely on his guitar-building order book and his one -month guitar building courses for which he has a national and international customer base.

Clients have included: Chris Difford (Squeeze) Sam Carter (his first guitar on the Jools Holland show!), Bonobo, Bellowhead, Calum McColl plus local talents such as Lee Westwood.

At the end of the year he is moving with his family to Mid Wales where he aims to continue making guitars and mandolins and his guitar building courses.

He will be sadly missed. www.osborneguitars.co.uk Rohan and Pablo photos

by Carlotta Luke

Chippy Mobbs

Cameron Jack Mobbs aka Chippy is a fine guitarist and double bass player in his own right. He built his first guitar at the age of fourteen under the tutelage of Stephen Hill and then worked alongside Richard Osborne for seven years.

He has now established his own workshop at the Star Brewery, has taken over Richard’s guitar repair business and is also building his own guitars. www.cjmluthier.moonfruit. com

Rohan Lowe

Rob was born in Malta of English parents. He started making classical and flamenco guitars in London in 1993 and moved to Lewes two years later, initially sharing a studio with Stephen Hill before getting his own workshop. He

Pablo Requena

writes: ‘Music was my first love and making musical instruments provided me with the ideal space for bringing together my talents and interests, and satisfying my strong aural and visual senses.’ www.loweguitars.co.uk

Pablo was born in Malaga, Spain and first came to England in 1997 where he studied guitar-making with Stephen Hill. Falling in love with an English lady led him to settle in England and open up a workshop, first in Lewes and later in Plumpton Green where he now lives.

Pablo’s guitars are made from fine materials and well-seasoned timbers, such as German Spruce, Canadian Cedar, Indian Rosewood and Maple. Most of his guitars are built in a very traditional way, following the designs of well-known makers like

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Torres and Hauser, but he also builds lattice guitars which follow a more modern approach. Some well-known artists that have played his guitars include the late Amy Winehouse, John Mills, Jorge Cardoso and Paul Gregory.

In the past 10 years Pablo has also taught guitarmaking and runs courses from his Sussex workshop as well as Cordoba, where he gives his students the chance to fully immerse themselves in Spanish culture whilst building their own Spanish guitar. www.spanishguitar.org.uk www.guitarmakingcourse.org

Stephen Eden

Stephen built his first guitar with the help of both Stephen Hill and Pablo Reguena, in whose workshop he apprenticed for two years. Until recently he had his own workshop in Ringmer but is now based in Bexhill, where he builds Spanish classical and flamenco guitars and is just starting to run his own guitar-making courses, He says his ultimate aim is to make truly expressive guitars. www.edenguitars.co.uk

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CARRIE TREE

arrie Tree has left her wooden house, walked through the forest and caught a train from Plumpton to be here, in the front room of LME HQ, to explain how she found such a distinctive voice, how she came to be called Carrie Tree, why her brand-new album is called ‘Home to the Invisible’ and to tell me the story of her life.

Let’s talk about the voice first. Having a distinctive voice is one of the keys to success in music and, in a world of guitar playing female singer/ songwriters, a difficult thing to achieve.

Carrie has got many voices in one -a lovely vibrato, a breathy voice, suddenly a clear strong voice, then a whisper. A voice that can carry passion, pain, longing, deep concern, wonder, exultation and in ‘Water Song’ can deliver, subtly, a powerful ecological message. She says: “I just found it but it happened really gradually.

You learn by copying other people’s accents and sounds, things you really love. The only difference I think for me from lots of other people who love to sing is that I never got told to shut up and loads of people get told to shut up. I was just given some support and freedom to express myself and I’m really lucky with that.”

She grew up in a musical environment in Kingston-upon-Thames and was always known to the family as Carrie. The right brain members of her family were her musical grandfather, who played classical piano and violin, and her twin brother, who is an A-Level maths teacher. Dad (who has played bass in cover bands since he was 14) an aunt (who plays piano and accordion for fun) and Carrie are all left-brainers. Only she was mad enough to turn professional. She learnt classical piano then the guitar. “I always knew”, she says, “I wanted to travel and I couldn’t carry a piano around with me.”

In 2000, the day after her 18th birthday, she went to Australia for

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The Power of the Whisper

a year and busked her way up the East coast. Named Caroline Woodward (warden of the woods), it was on the Aussie trip that she became Carrie Tree, as she travelled through lands where the giant smooth-barked karri eucalyptus are the signature trees and are the third tallest hardwood trees in the world.

“Once you taste that freedom of being able to live like that and make a living, it’s hard to go back. It was so hot and lovely out there and I learnt the magic of music. You always meet gorgeous people and get offered places to stay and opportunities just come – which is, I guess, the old Bardic way.

“When I went to Australia, I promised my parents it would be a gap year and then I’d come back and go to university. I tried that for one day! I was going to do media studies at London’s South Bank University but when I arrived I found myself with all these people with clipboards and I just knew I couldn’t do it. The year I’d been in Australia, I’d been pretty much outside for the entire time. So I went travelling backwards and forwards to Greece and India over the next two to three years.”

Cut to 2003 and the Glastonbury Festival. Fate takes a hand. “I met Damien Rice (the hugely successful Irish singer/songwriter), which was a really amazing gift. He liked what I was doing. He was on his way to a gig and he asked me to join him. I hadn’t heard him before and suddenly I was sitting next to this

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person playing exquisite music.”

As a result, she ended up supporting him and his band on their 11-date UK tour, travelling with them on a big tour bus and doing a 30-40min opening set in front of the biggest audience that she ever played for in her life.

“That really took me up a level. There was more adrenalin in my body than I’ve ever had in my life. I was literally shaking. I didn’t go down that well at the opening gig in Glasgow but at the next gig in Leeds I stood up on stage and just gave it everything. I started with a much braver song and the people were just pin-drop silent. I sold all my CDs for the whole tour after that gig. I realised I’d just figured something out.”

Fate took a hand once more when, two years later she met up with Ben Taylor, son of Carly Simon and James Taylor, who was in London to record an album. By now she was on the showcase circuit along with Rumer [a Pakistani-born British singer/songwriter] and David Saw [an American singer/songwriter who played with Ben and wrote songs with Carly].

“We’d go to the studio and we’d play songs to each other all night. Then we’d just start gate-crashing each other’s gigs and jumping on stage and singing harmonies together and we became a little family which felt good for us all.

“Ben told his mum Carly Simon about what was going on and she said it sounds just like the old days with Cat Stevens and flew us all out to Martha’s Vineyard in the States. Carly was a real free spirit and very supportive to all of us. I went and sung harmonies with her at gigs and things like that. She’s very down to earth and still gets stage fright

and has the same insecurities that any of us do.” Carly on Carrie: “She’s a phenomenal singer/songwriter.”

Crunching space and time, Carrie struggled over a long period to capture her signature sound on an album but, after many false starts, she hooked up with producer Matt Tweed (who also produces Martha Tilston – who, like Carrie, grew up in Kingstonupon-Thames).

“He was a breath of fresh air to work with because he’s completely just there to guide you in how you want to do it.

The album’s called ‘The Kitchen Table’ because it was recorded using Matt’s portable studio in loads of people’s kitchens because they always have such a good sound and a homely feel. We ended up with a patchwork quilt of different recordings and the album came out at the end of 2009/early 2010.”

They employed a similar technique on the new album ‘Home to the Invisible’ which consists mainly of songs written in the last four years.

Carrie explains the title, the inspiration and the process of bringing it to fruition.

“This record is a home for the invisible spirits of the songs which float around in the ether. Each has its own character. I write songs at times when I need to explore my feelings or find clarity in confusion. These spirits are medicine for me and I feel I owe them a lot. The focus of the recording process was to give these spirits space to grow and breathe and fly so that they’re not suffocated, by working with very light and delicate tones and arrangements.

“I’m influenced by the ethereal folk of John Martyn and Nick Drake but I’m also massively into African music, which to me is natural trance music with so much depth. It’s music that has always made me drop everything and dance. It’s not filled in, it’s not loud, it’s often not electric but it’s got fluidity to it and a different syncopation. In my head, I’ve always heard so much syncopation in my songs. I love playing percussion and cyclical rhythm is something I always want to explore.

“My partner is from South Africa and when I wrote the track ‘Mama Kita’, I immediately had the feeling that there was a little bit of Africa in there. I could just see the red earth land and I imagined that the chorus would have loads of voices on it. We ended up in the Headroom Studios in Durban, which are owned by the singer Lu Dlamini, working with singers from Ladysmith Black Mombaza and Zamo Zamo Mbutho who was musical arranger for Miriam Makeba’s band.

“I believe in the power of the whisper. My music is always very quiet and intimate. People may only hear about fifty per cent of the many things that are going on in the song but I want to invite people into this quieter space to give them a break from the Western world where everything is going louder and faster.”

Carrie asked me: “Do you find it really annoying, the whisper thing?”.

No I don’t. Nor will you. In this noisy world, the whisper has power. CF http://carrietree.co.uk

Dinner by Candlelight

Our dinner menu is a mix of classics, each with a Bill’s twist. From burgers and our take on mac ‘n’ cheese, to duck pie, risotto and salads, all our food is freshly prepared by our chefs, using seasonal ingredients. Plus, delectable puddings, a new wine list and a selection of craft beers.

lewes@bills-email.co.uk / 01273 476918 www.bills-website.co.uk @BillsRestaurant

o tell the story (or even a story) of The Levellers – who last year celebrated their 25th Anniversary – is not a simple affair. Not simple at all.

The Levellers, who many people have dismissed over the years as a bunch of squatty ‘crusties’, have proved to be highly resilient and resourceful, have held on to their beliefs and roots, have sustained a substantial loyal audience, have their own recording and rehearsal studios, have been running their own successful ‘Beautiful Days’ festival in Devon for 12 years, and are all still talking to each other. They scored six gold records and were, at several points, one of the biggest live bands in Britain – all this without any, or very little, media support. They have also fairly recently been the recipients of a Radio 2 Folk Award; yet lesser bands have been lauded a lot louder by the music press and feted in the culture pages of the national press.

Their body of work stands up in its own right but as important was, and is, their involvement in the

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political and social movements of the day. From their formation in 1988 to their apex ten years later, the Levellers not only pursued success but also stood up for issues they cared about. They were also the band who the Special Branch was most interested in – according that is to their biographer George Berger (who has also just moved to Lewes).

His 1998 book Dance Before The Storm is the best single source of information on the band up to that time. Word is that writer John Robb is currently working on what will be the definitive book on the band – which is an exciting prospect.

Mark Chadwick, the band’s lead singer and main songwriter, has been in and out of Lewes for years and currently lives here with his partner Lois, who works at the band’s Metway studios, and their lovely young lad, who Mark does his share of minding of. Already a lively spark, the boy chattered through our first attempt at doing a taped interview so we’re now in my front room for a second attempt.

In person, Mark seems very

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much at ease in his own skin, is happy to talk and laughs readily.

His answers are concise and to the point with few digressions.

Physically he looks solid: roadhardened. There’s a tremendous feeling of determination about him and the feeling that here is someone who’s in control, who is not going to suffer fools gladly and, in flashes, someone who is not to be messed with. So let’s begin at the beginning.

MARK CHADWICK 25 YEARS OF THE LEVELLERS ARMY DAYS

Mark was born on the 23rd June 1966 in a British Army hospital in Germany.

His father Geoff, was an English Catholic soldier who joined the army in 1955 at the age of 15 and played the cornet with the military band of an infantry regiment which amalgamated with another in 1970 and became known as the Worcestershire and Sherwood Foresters. His mum Hazel, an Irish Protestant, loved music but was more political than musical, being a ‘dyed-in-the-wool’ Labour supporter, whose family was from Belfast. Geoff and the family were stationed there later, in 1966, and Mark says he “lived there off and on throughout my career as a child”. (Laughs). The family also followed Geoff when he was posted to Cyprus, Hong Kong and various locations in Germany including Berlin.

Due to the limited number of military bands, Geoff and his fellow musicians were constantly on call for short-term postings, either for marching training, for morale boosting or purely for entertaining regiments and their guests. Young Mark often went on the road with his dad to some

of these engagements. Unsurprisingly he was into music early on and got his first guitar at the age of 12 in 1978.

[A piece of rock trivia: Mark and Graham Coxon (of Blur fame) grew up together as kids, as Geoff Chadwick and Bob Coxon were best friends].

Growing up in a military environment did you develop a rebellious streak as a result?

“I think I did later. At the time it’s all you know. As a child that’s the way you think the world works. All three services and the police recruit heavily from Forces’ schools because they know that you know how the system works.

It’s very obvious there’s a class system.

In the Army you really notice that. It’s sort of expected that you will join up.

When they all came to our school to recruit, we all lined up and went and did the interviews. We had preferences over what we wanted to do. My preference was the Navy because in the video they had people playing instruments on the boat. If I had passed I would probably have joined up but I failed all of the interviews because of my psychological tests. They look for deference to authority. I had none and

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it was clear I just didn’t fit in. It wasn’t what I wanted to do at that point.

I wanted to make music.

So I went to see the careers officer.

This was 1982 and there was a massive recession at that point. He said you do realise there aren’t any jobs out there and asked whether I was going to go into higher education. I told him I didn’t really want to so he flicked through his rolodex and came up with busking as a career option (Laughs).

At the age of 16, Geoff gave Mark the option of returning to Blighty and living wherever he wanted. His dad had to work out his posting before he retired. Mark felt closest to Brighton because his grandfather came from there and still lived there, as did his sister, who Mark went to live with in Hollingdean. On their return, his parents moved to Peacehaven where they still live today.

Mark went to school at Varndean where he got good results at O-Level but, he says: “I didn’t want to do the A-Levels because I was taking too much acid. I was into the counter-culture. The anti-Thatcher thing had started then. It was very politicised and I ate it up.

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THE REBEL ARMY So that was the point you joined jm the rebel army.

“That was the time I discovered mc how the alternative world worked.

A rare copy of a 1982 Crass book, issued on the band’s own Existencil Press imprint. [The Generalist Archive]

I was just fascinated. It was so different to what I’d been led to believe. I didn’t know there were people sitting around smoking pot, listening to proper tunes and being excited about politics and music. I didn’t know that existed before.

“The punk anarchist band Crass were very important for everybody at that point but I was probably more into Roy Harper. Just one man and a guitar with very much an outsider view. He was an anarchist and was interesting, charismatic and freaky. I saw him play all the time. I was a massive fan which nobody else was. I used to walk round with Roy Harper written on the back of my jacket. I did meet him and have got to know him recently but as you probably know, he’s in a spot of bother at the moment.” (Harper, now 72, has recently been charged with nine child sex offences over claims he abused a 12-year old girl in the 1970s.)

In 1983 you went to the first

jm

‘Elephant Fayre’ festival in Cornwall and you’ve said of that experience: “All of a sudden my Roy Harper records came true; all my Crass records made sense.”

“I was 17 and there was a tribe of us from Kemptown. Most of their parents were dope-smoking academics, who had moved to Brighton when Sussex University opened in 1961.

We went to as many festivals as we could during that period: Stonehenge, Glastonbury, Suffolk – all over the place. I got immersed in it and just loved it. It was the time of the Peace Convoy when a real counter-culture existed. There was more peace and love then – before the Battle of the Beanfield (1st June 1985). Things really changed after that. The Convoy changed because people living on council estates saw it on television and they thought fuck this and they went on the road. Their sensibilities mixing in with the existing Convoy made the atmosphere much more hedonistic.

“Back in Brighton we went busking and I formed my first band The Soup Dragons. We were just kids and we thought let’s dress up and go out and play music and do gigs. We were quite glam, all ridiculous clothes and mascara, which was quite popular at that time in Brighton and we were probably influenced more by the New York Dolls than the Sex Pistols.

“I’d started writing songs with my friend Bucky [David Buckmeister].

I realised I wasn’t a great guitarist but I was a good rhythm player and I really liked song-writing which I got into quite quickly. From the off, our songs were focused on social commentary rather than love songs. It was the end of the ‘80s and even pop music was political then because of Thatcher.

You had Red Wedge, the Smiths, U2.

It was much more political than people could possibly even remember now or imagine.”

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THE BIRTH OF THE LEVELLERS: 1988 “At that time in Brighton, the music we were really interested in came from local bands and one band in particular – The Bliffs who later became McDermotts Two Hours and were totally influential and really important to us. They were a generation older. The main guy Nick Burbridge was like a hippy in the ‘60s, went to all the festivals and he had this thing going on in Brighton. He didn’t claim to have a good singing voice but he actually came to me and said do you think it would be alright , do you think people would like it and I said yeah Nick they’ll love it. It really did work. It was very fast drum, fiddle, bass. The songs had good structures and it was essentially folk music. No-one else was doing it.

We just thought, hang on a minute, we can actually sing songs with a consciousness that wasn’t punk rock, it wasn’t The Clash, or early ‘80s postpunk stuff. We liked accessible music.

We liked Neil Young and Led Zeppelin stuff like that as kids.”

So we’ve now reached that rock ‘n’ roll moment in 1988 when you’re in The Eagle in Brighton and you meet Jeremy Cunningham for the first time.

jm

What were your first impressions of him?

“First and foremost he was really intelligent and had come to the same conclusions I had about the very selfindulgent music scene in Brighton at that time. A lot of Brighton bands said they’d gone on tour when they’d only done six gigs in Brighton itself, not even any in Sussex. We just felt that this was stupid and if you really wanted to put together a band you should do it with a slightly more macro approach.

Jeremy was an eccentric with very developed political opinions about society. He was a painter who’d been to Art College and understood outsider art. He’d tried to make it in the commercial art world but wasn’t getting anywhere because his sort of passion was quite scary and unusable.

He very quickly was able to express himself artistically with The Levellers and he got his teeth into something verging on the commercial through creating an identity for the band and producing posters and t-shirts. He was also very good at writing lyrics and we worked together very well.

Charlie [Heather] the drummer came with Jeremy, who played bass, so there was our rhythm section. Bucky didn’t stay around but Jon [Sevink] turned up.

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We wanted a lead instrument and thought it would be good idea to have a fiddle player because, at that point, guitar solos were very out and didn’t come back in until The Stone Roses and Oasis appeared.

Both Charlie and Jon were totally like-minded with us [Jon’s parents were Quakers and both his grandfathers were conscientious objectors]. At that point in Brighton there was a big squat community all over the town and lots of squat gigs. There was definitely that culture round and about The Eagle, The Green Dragon, The George and The Albert with lots of art school and college dropouts and people on the dole. Everyone was of a similar mind.

When we got together as a band things moved really quickly. Within two weeks of being together we played our first gig in the basement of the Art School. We had seven songs and we got a fantastic reaction from the very beginning.

By the following year, 1989, you’d made some recordings, recruited Alan Miles (harmonica, guitar and mandolin) to the band and are soon touring.

“We picked up an agent Charlie Myatt really quickly. We were his first signing and he’s now one of the most successful agents in the country. He got us on to the university circuit and

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NAMING THE BAND

they paid well. Shame the university entertainment departments don’t exist anymore. Most of the big people in the music business started off there, Did you immediately find an audience wherever you went?

“Yes. It doesn’t happen to every band but it happened to us. People instantly got it and got excited by it because we caught the spirit of the times. We chimed in to what people were generally thinking.”

jm mc

THE LAST BUS SHELTER Now around this time you jm relocate to a new base in Amsterdam where you hang out for a couple of years, playing some European dates and coming back to the UK for gigs.

As I understand it was called The Last Bus Shelter and was situated on an artificial island in the North Sea canal about three miles east of Amsterdam’s central railway station. Here was a big anarchist/traveller’s community – a bit like the better-known Christiania in Copenhagen – made up of 1,000 occupied vehicles. Why did you first go out there?

We went out because a lot of people from Brighton and from all over Europe had gone there. It was a 24-hour non-stop community of hundreds of different people from all

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I studied history at 6th form and when I came across The Levellers they were so obviously a dynamic and historically important political force. I liked what they said and what they did and I thought that they felt like us and would understand how we felt in our time. It’s a good name to pick, it suited us, so we used it. It gave us a strong identity from the very beginning. We are The Levellers. That’s it. Let’s go.You’re instantly associating yourselves with the Levellers from history so you’re linked very strongly with issues to do with freedom of expression, political freedom.

Obviously there is a difference of more than 300 years. At that time they wanted to rip down the Church and State. They wanted votes for all, universal enfranchisement. It was really radical thinking, much more radical than people ever give them credit for. We used their old pamphlets, their language and their fonts for our posters. CF

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AMERIKA

over, with a 24-hour bar, communal cooking, events, politicising and just really working it. It was kind of the anarchist outsider dream really. It was an extraordinary place. We became one of the house bands alongside a number of others who were big on the travellers/crusty scene.

Everybody’s music was different. We were the punky/folky ones but others did dub, ska or dub ska with a bit of folk – festival music basically.

We didn’t leave the UK because we were being harassed although it was getting difficult. Some of the squat scenes were getting eggy and it wasn’t so eggy in Holland. The people on the island were a real crosssection, a lot of different tribes, including some of the Provos and the ‘68ers, and the whole scene was respected at that time by the Dutch intellectuals who later regretted shutting it down.

It became our second home really.

We survived by doing gigs and busking in Amsterdam and the north of Holland to earn the money to stay longer. It didn’t cost much to live there. Life was cheap.

TAKING OFF But then things began to happen for us. Gigs were getting bigger in the UK and all the work we’d done with the students began to pay off because they were coming to see our gigs and we became very active. Around this time Alan got fed up and left the band and Simon Fields joined. Alan just didn’t take to touring. It was too much for him. It’s not for everybody.

Simon had supported us as a solo artist and his songs are brilliant. He plays a few instruments as well and was willing to give it a go. He’s still with us to this day.

We were also discovered by Derek Green who’d signed the Sex Pistols to A&M. They poured a pot of boiling water over his head when he unsigned them. He fucking lost it. The first time he met us he got a black eye from Jeremy’s dreadlocks.

He came over to Amsterdam actually and he just didn’t know what he’d walked into. He got quite freaked

out. He was like what the fuck is this Brueghel scene I find myself in and who is this band that’s coming out of it. He made the decision that he felt we would be culturally important somewhere along the line and was prepared to go for it and put his money where his mouth is. He’s a great guy, a proper East End barrow-boy music fan, an old-school music director.

We’d put out our first album ‘A Weapon Called the Word’ on Musidisc, a French label who had an office in London. The album got off to a really good start and did go gold eventually.

It was such a good start that we realised the record company were just not up to it. We knew that they really couldn’t cope. They were just too small.

So we signed with Derek’s China Records and put out the second album ‘Levelling The Land’ which was an immediate success, stayed in the charts for a long time and went gold. It also

DO IT ALL YOURSELF

I think we were always quite ambitious but from the beginning we decided as a band to try and be in charge of every aspect of our business as much as possible. We came out of the DIY-culture and we’d learnt from Crass: Do It All Yourself.

In the UK we made our own tour bus. We actually built two.

We printed our own T-shirts. We did our own posters. We did our own cassettes. We did our own everything.You need money and that’s what record companies provide but all our record contracts were written very much in the artist’s favour, which was quite unique at that point. We wouldn’t sign them

generated a chart single ‘One Way.’ It was a kind of word-of-mouth success not a marketing success.

We succeeded with minimal help from the music press.

It all happened gradually and felt right at the time. We had people queuing round the block to see us and it felt good. When we became mainstream we played less of the squat bars and more of the town venues.

You first played Glastonbury the year before, at the Travellers’ Field at 4am in the morning, but the following year you had another chart hit with the EP ’15 Years’ and you played on the Pyramid Stage just before Lou Reed.

It was just mad because there were so many people. We were not headlining but we might as well have been. We went on early evening as the light was going down and literally everybody had got a Levellers t-shirt on. That shocked us. It was like WOW!

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We went to the States for the first time right after that. The next day we got on a plane and flew to play to two men and a dog in New Orleans. The day after that we went on tour out there for a month-and-a-half.

We were on an Eagle tour bus and it was fun to see the small clubs across the States but the distances are massive. When you’ve been playing for thousands and you go back to playing to three or four people it’s weird.

All our ethics and principles meant nothing out there. We came from the UK and the UK political system.

You can imagine. They liked the music.

They liked the fact of what we did but they didn’t really get what we were on about.

We really wanted as many people as possible to hear the music. That was always the impetus and it’s never changed – to gain as big an audience as possible. We were looking at the chance of real success but everything was so corporate. We’d signed with Elektra. And their offices were three floors on Times Square. It was fucking nuts. We were fine as a band. We always have been. But was that what we really wanted? Ambitious we are; stupid we’re not. We thought we could do this but it would probably kill us, as it has so many bands. We’d have to go over there two or three times a year which we weren’t really keen to do, particularly at that time when British bands were making no impact out there at all.

FAME, POLITICS, DRUGS & MONEY So when you came back from jm the States, you were very successful.

Yeah. Everything we released mc was going into the charts. We had the recognition. We were selling out big 5000 to 12000 capacity venues everywhere. Production rolled into our shows with big lights, big amps.

Then all the stuff that came with that: TV, Press, ‘Top of the Pops’.

We also became more difficult, quite a handful really. There was a lot of money being generated round the band at that time. We were very

otherwise. Derek Green was quite powerless and often frustrated trying to control the band. He couldn’t.

We also bought a derelict factory in Brighton and established our own base there: Metway Studios. That was part of our ethos. Why spend a fortune hiring spaces to rehearse in when you need to do anything. There was nowhere in Brighton that was big enough to cope with the production numbers that we needed to rehearse so we thought let’s buy somewhere.

It’s been there a long time now and it’s given us a base so we don’t flounder around. CF

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POLITICS

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On the 30th April 1994 you were on the cover of the NME tearing up a copy of the Criminal Justice Bill of that year and you brought a lot of people together.

It did and we made a positive decision to become the focus for it all because a lot of people were pissed off with it. We became more political as a reaction to our success. We decided that we’d organise everybody else. So we provided the platform for meetings which we funded and got everybody together from the Hunt Sabs to sound systems to environmental groups, to people like Justice and the Law Society.

We got a lot of press and made a lot of noise. Obviously it didn’t change the law but we raised a lot of awareness.

The Bill was never truly enacted and was never used against the population but it created a lot of discussion in the broadsheet media and Radio 4 as it was actually an infringement of human rights. We were proud of the part we played in that. We paid for big billboards outside MI5. Tony Benn also suggested I come down to Burford in Oxfordshire and give a speech on the Criminal Justice Bill for Leveller’s Day. Do you think your music makes more sense once you put it into the social context of what was happening at the time?

It should make sense anyway because we try not to generalise in our lyric writing. Maybe one song is placespecific, like ‘Battle of the Beanfield’, but, other than that, they’re always intended to be outside of time.

mc

jm

mc

GETTING OUT OF HAND

jm

So in 1995 you’re still recording, you’ve got another big album and single, you make your first and only appearance on ‘Top of the Pops’, wearing tuxedos and being introduced

by Garry Glitter. Joe Strummer plays piano on one of your tracks. It says here, you were partying very seriously and that your ‘Total Chaos’ tour took on a double meaning. You were arrested for stealing a rowboat whilst drunk in Switzerland and for throwing a TV out of a hotel window in Amsterdam.

mc

Yeah. Things definitely got out of hand. I personally discovered excessive hedonism but that’s half the reason you do it as a rock ‘n’ roll band because you want all that to happen as well.

We managed to do some good records at that point. We’re too sensible really.

The bottom line is we look after each other and keep an eye out for each other so no one gets too crazy.

At that point Jeremy went into rehab when we came back from Japan. He obviously couldn’t get any smack out there so he became very ill. In 1999 we virtually had a year off. The record company was being fucked about with and Derek Green lost his record label.

We were pretty exhausted and we wanted to get on with a bit of a more normal life with families and stuff. It was a kind of natural conclusion after ten years.

Mark is releasing his second solo album ‘Moment’ on June 16th and will be playing a number of live shows, including The Prince Albert in Brighton (May 23rd) and London’s 12 Bar Club (3rd June).

The 10-track album, recorded live at MetwayFOOTNOTE studios, features Alex and Tom White from Electric Soft parade alongside Ben Paley on violin and Graeme Ross on double bass. According to the album’s press release, it’s 'an honest look at drink, life and love and how his relationship with the former has affected the latter two’.

25 YEARS ON

EphotoLEchristian banfield

cautious and very wary about people promoting the band for their own commercial ends and we tried to maintain the integrity of the band.

But with success came all the pressure, the stresses and strains, and suddenly we had more money and that’s when drugs and drink started to enter the frame.

Jeremy picked up a heroin habit on the travellers’ sites where he lived and where it became a big problem. At that time, it killed off that world if you like. We were quite shocked by it really. It wasn’t what we thought someone like him should be doing because it’s a very negative drug. We didn’t like it as a band. He knew that.

He was aware of that but you know it was an ongoing problem for quite a time. We didn’t make it an issue.

We could have done. When we were touring and performing he maintained it. He was a functioning smack head. He did okay but occasionally there’d be fuckups on his part. You noticed he’d overegged the pudding sometimes or he couldn’t get any pudding at all and that would be bad. It was just very unpleasant. It became seedy. In fact the whole thing became quite seedy: Success, Girls.

Drugs, Blah blah. There was a lot more of that than we’d thought we’d ever see. We survived.

And of course the following year 1994 you played on the Pyramid Stage and pulled the biggest upfront crowd Glastonbury had ever seen at that point. You became part of the Glastonbury myth and your performance of ‘One Way’ was selected as one of Glastonbury’s finest moments. In retrospect, do you see that as the apex of the band’s career.

You’d have to really. I mean we were offered to headline the Reading Festival that same year and we turned it down. They offered us ridiculous money and we were quite scared by the money they were offering us. It was like £250,000 for one show. We said no.

We didn’t want that much money.

We were finding it hard enough to cope with what we’d got. We knew it would destroy the band.

You’ve just finished your 25th jm anniversary tour. What was that like?

I see some bands from our era mc and their audience is bald. Our audiences are not like that. They’re very mixed and made up of the people who came originally along with their kids or their younger brothers and sisters.

Something happened in the Noughties where we’d show up and everybody in the town would come and see The Levellers because for some reason, we chimed in with them even if they live the most normal of lives. We are kind of the people’s band. That’s what attracts them, without being force-fed by the media. CF

MEDIA WARS It says in the Berger biography that jm you’re a band ‘who find it nigh on

impossible to deal with media attention’.

You’ve had this running battle with the musical press over the years and in retrospect one can see why. Obviously sending a shit in an envelope to Andrew Collins [then Features Editor of the NME] was not a good move at the time.

It started way before then. The point that we became involved with the NME in the late ‘80s to early ‘90s, they were vicious, very snide, very aggressive young Tories. The media doesn’t get us even to this day. The last time we employed a Press Officer, we decided to throw some money at it and get the best man in the business. He came back and said that he’s never seen anything like it. He said I’m not doing this anymore. Mojo won’t touch you with a bargepole. Jools Holland won’t put you on. It’s like a wall out there for you guys. I just can’t get anywhere.” CF

mc

27

Plans are afoot for a further ‘Greatest Hits’ Levellers tour of Britain and Europe in the Autumn.

Ewords and photosLEmanek dubash

jukebox jive S ay ‘jukebox’ to anyone over a certain age and watch happy memories light up their face.

These shiny boxes made music for millions: drop in a coin, push a few buttons and out came your favourite tunes.

Today, while they still exist as anonymous boxes on the wall, they’ve mainly been supplanted by MP3 players and phones which can play music for weeks without breaking into a sweat. What they don’t offer though, and which jukeboxes do, is that visual experience.

So if jukeboxes jiggle your memories, you’re not alone. Lewes-based graphic designer Andy Gammon has one in his living room – a 1959 Wurlitzer 2400D 110play to be precise – and he waxes lyrical about it.

“They’re beautiful things, with those lovely injection-moulded buttons and those lights behind coloured acetates. They started off as organs that came out of the floor at the cinema, I remember someone playing one at Saturday morning pictures,” he told me, as Marvin Gaye’s ‘When A Man Loves A Woman’ blasted out of its mighty speakers.

“I first remember seeing one in a coffee bar when I was little, in Canterbury," Andy said. “We’d go in and order frothy coffee, so years later when I saw one – the same model – for sale just down the road I just had to buy it. It’s the first stereo Wurlitzer and I’ve owned it since 1975.

“I like things that remind me of my past and it wasn’t expensive. It’s about the machinery, its retroness, and it works too. It’s great to put it on when the children come round and I like to listen to it too. It’s a fun thing to have and it looks great when it’s all switched on.”

Jukeboxes are quite complex though and need regular servicing, so Andy gets his serviced annually by Tony Rolf, also a Lewes man, who runs – or rather, is – The American Jukebox Company.

Tony was bitten by the jukebox bug in 1962 and hasn’t managed to shake it off yet. His current box is a 1958 Seeburg 200, redolent of its period with dazzling, chrome-plated jet exhausts and fins. “It was a box of bits when I got it,” he said.

Tony’s memory is a mine of stories about the characters he’s met and some

slightly dodgy places his vocation has taken him to.

One tale about a Brighton club owner will illustrate the point: “Freda was always drunk," he said. “I went into the club at about midday, and I was told I had to go up to her bedroom to talk to her. So there I was in my mid-20s being told what to do by a woman in bed with a fag in one hand and a glass of Scotch in the other. You don’t meet people like that any more."

He’s just as knowledgeable about the machines and their history too. “Jukeboxes have been around since 1928, they played 78s and they were very delicate then. I have one of those with 12 plays.

“Visual mechanisms started to disappear in 1962 as a move to make the jukebox respectable. They were mostly in bars and downtown establishments but the companies wanted to sell them into lounges – a bit more upmarket. So Seeburg introduced the LPC1 which was almost completely solid state.

“Seeburg were first to use electronic equipment and, for memory, they used ferrite beads, which were ideal for a jukebox. So in 1956, Seeburg brought out the V200 – the first 200-play jukebox, more than Wurlitzer which had two stacks of 48. That was a model 2000 Wurlitzer which would be worth £2,000 or more, but way more in London, maybe £15,000 to £16,000,” he said.

Tony’s knowledge is more than theoretical of course: his workshop is full of machines in varying states of disassembly, so he knows what’s inside them and what goes wrong.

“They’re machines and most faults can be sorted out.

Resistors can go high which stops it selecting but much of it is mechanical faults, down to age. Certain things wear out like turntable motor bearings,” he said. “Also levers break, and solenoids burn out.”

Sometimes the owner is the problem: “People sometimes forget to turn them off at the wall which leaves things live – you can get quite a shock if you stick your hand in.

Sometimes they forget they’ve switched the machine off and call me out for £60 to turn on the switch at the back. Also people break the keys in the lock, and I have to drill them out.”

If you’re thinking of acquiring a jukebox – there are still some around; and now you know who to go to to keep it in tiptop condition! CF americanjukeboxcompany.co.uk

Andy Gammon

Tony Rolf

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handmade acoustic guitars repairs, set-ups & restoration 07895 179 281 cameronjackmobbsluthier@gmail.com

www.benjaminguitars.co.uk

Ewords /Epeter messer Ephoto /Eedward reeves tephen George Arch died in January this year. He was a good, long-standing friend of mine, and of so many others. His funeral was packed with other friends from his long-adopted home of Lewes, swelled by comrades from his decades working at the sharp end of the touring music industry. At the end of the service, they played Otis Redding’s ‘That’s How Strong My Love is’.

It was Steve who took the photograph of Leonard Cohen on the front of the last issue of the LME. Like so many people whose working life is in music, he was a fan, first and foremost, of all that was serious and passionate. He loved working with Leonard and often said that he couldn’t believe that he, who used to listen to ‘So Long, Marianne’ in his Watford bedroom as a teenager, would end up being namechecked at the end of every gig on the last tour.

But, although a fan, he was seldom starstruck. He was dismissive of Madonna (OK, he was dismissed by Madonna for sharing a few concerns with her accountant, with characteristic candour) but completely delighted to meet and work with the great PP Arnold, or Pat as he referred to her, when she was a backing singer with Roger Waters. Her classic version of ‘The First Cut Is The Deepest’ was one of his all-time favourite records.

I never met anyone with more all-time favourite records.

When the music for his wake was compiled it ran to about fifteen hours worth. He would probably have complained that we left a lot off.

Steve was a man who attracted the usual clichés like ‘larger than life’, but clichés become overused for other reasons than laziness. He was loud, funny, direct and outrageous, as would be expected from the man to whom Alice Cooper once said ‘Man, you’re weird’.

You knew when Steve entered a room. He could be swashbucklingly rude and provocative, disconcertingly physical in demonstrating his affection for his friends (‘No tongues, Steve, no tongues!’ with an unspoken ‘For pity’s sake’). Alcohol trashed his volume controls and his excesslimiting gear but it was always infectiously clear that here was someone really enjoying himself.

It is also a cliché, and again true, that there was a contradictory, reflective side to Steve. He could be disciplined and meticulous to the point of fastidiousness. He was, paradoxically, easily hurt and would be mortified if he found he’d upset someone he genuinely cared for. He was generous and considerate, literally willing to give you the shirt off his

S

He was loud, funny, direct and outrageous, as would be expected from the man to whom Alice Cooper once said ‘Man, you’re weird’. back, as my own original black ‘Gibson’ T shirt will testify. I’d admired it and the next day he presented it to me, neatly laundered, pressed and folded.

He had that strangely domestic quality which you often find in old navy men and folk who spend a lot of time on the road. His idea of a great afternoon was to put some music on and make a batch of marmalade.

Steve was a good singer and guested with our band, The Contenders, on several occasions, usually on soul classics like ‘Hard To Handle’ and ‘In The Midnight Hour’. He prepared for these meticulously and admitted to pre-gig nerves, which surprised people who had only encountered the full-on, barnstorming Steve. The thing was that he was determined to do it right, and he did.

Two days before he died, I met him in the Black Horse. We ended up, as so often, talking about music. We were talking about Booker T and William Bell and how they wrote Albert King’s song ‘Born Under A Bad Sign’.

‘I saw Albert King in Chicago when I was on the Police’s

30

Steve’s legendary tattooed legs with Zulu

Last Words

Synchronicity tour’, he said. ‘After the show, Sting asked me if I wanted to go downtown and hear some blues. We piled into the stretch limo with Andy and Stewart and their American handler who was a (………… insert expletive of your choice here) and saw Albert King at a little club. Met him afterwards’.

‘You never told me that before’, I said. ‘Well it never really came up till now’, he replied.

I can’t help thinking that, had that been me, I would still be stopping strangers in the street to tell them about it.

Steve’s life was a full one, packed with incidents and anecdotes any one of which I would have dined out on. As they say, ’when a man dies, a library burns down’.

I left the pub after arranging that he’d meet me at my studio on Sunday morning and we’d go for a lunchtime pint.

Half an hour after the appointed time he hadn’t arrived. He never did. Because Steve spent so many weeks of the year on the road, you were never sure when he would turn up and you made the most of him when he did. I’m just thinking of him now as being on a never-ending tour. CF

Ephoto /Ejohn may

Richard Thomspon at Lewes Guitar Festival 2007

LEWES musical express Issue Three Spring 2014 www.lewesmusicalexpress.com info@lewesmusicalexpress.com Editorial/Advertising: 01273 471505

Editor/Producer/Writer: John May Designer: Raphael Whittle Sub Editor: Helen Durrant Proof Reader: Nick Hockin Contributors Sarah Bayliss

Editorial

Manek Dubash Annie Edwards

Ever since I came to Lewes I had heard the rumours of the town’s rock ‘n’ roll history – a whisper here, a chance remark there – which makes me very happy to be publishing the most detailed history to date about a legendary series of gigs, staged at the Town Hall by Norman Ashdown in the 1960s. We are most grateful to him and to his son Michael for their generosity in sharing their personal archive of posters, photos and memories.

Our thanks also go to Nick and Linda Sheppard of Woodfield Publishing for allowing us to publish the profile of The Shades, from former Radio 1 DJ Mike Read’s remarkable book ‘The South Coast Beat Scene of the 1960s.’

Having spent a profitable six months on this rock archaeological expedition, we did uncover a great deal about most of the bands who played, including local beat group Johnny Fine and the Ramblers, thanks to Graham ‘Bris’ Coombes.

We also made contact with Mick Gold, rock photographer and now BAFTA award-winning filmmaker, who back in 1966, hitch-hiked from Sussex University and took a set of pics of the Paul Butterfield Blues Band at the Town Hall – the last gig they would ever play in Britain. Gold was a huge fan and writes that they ‘played brilliantly ... It’s unfortunate that Bloomfield and Butterfield had brief lives and sadly curtailed careers.’

Mick went on to make a couple of films on the history of the blues for BBC4 in which the band is featured.

We now need your help and memories as the picture is not complete. We would welcome your memories and memorabilia about the gigs mentioned and information

on the other bands that we have yet to identify. These include the Teen Team, The Individuals, The Beachcombers, Soul Trinity, Loot, Precisely This, Herb of Grace and Downline Chasers, and J.J. Bender and the SOS. We are also privileged this issue to celebrate and investigate the long and successful career of The Levellers through the reminiscences of singer Mark Chadwick, now a Lewes resident. We also feature the Guitar Makers of Lewes, a diaspora that stems from the pioneering work of Stephen Hill, whose brother Laurence came up with the idea of the Lewes Guitar Festival. The picture above is an abstracted portrait of Richard Thompson that I took when he headlined the Festival at the Big Top in 2007, by which time it had become the biggest guitar festival in the UK. Lewes needs its own annual music festival, a townwide circle of events perhaps rather than a Mumford and Son-style mega gig – although that was very successful and enjoyed by all. No word from the District Council as to whether such an event will be repeated next year. Happily there’s some very cool festivals happening in and around Lewes in 2014 that we can all celebrate and enjoy.

It’s hardly credible to us that it’s only one short year since we hatched this paper, in which time so much has happened. It has been the proverbial long, strange trip and shows no sign of slackening off. We have been energised and encouraged to continue by so many people who have taken the paper to their hearts. We thank you all.

Many thanks also to our hi-donors and advertisers without whom...

Expect Issue Four sometime in the autumn.

Have a great summer. CF John May, Editor

Carolotta Luke Peter Messer Tom Reeves Owen Ridley Bob Russell Print: The Newspaper Club

The 100 Club Mike Marten Andy Banks Russell Beck Ed Mawby Mich & Dawn Mike Sullivan

Issues One & Two: 100 Club

Andy Banks, Nick Davies, Ed Mawby, Simon Smewing, Tony Norman, Manek Dubash, Pelham House/David Anderson, Colin Lloyd, Charlie Dobres, Nigel Atkinson, Phil Pickett, Pete Mobbs, Caroline Dorling, Martin Leeburn, Andy Thomas, Mich & Dawn, Magnified Learning, Stephen George Arch, Alexander & Bernadette, Jane Whitaker.

Big thank you Lindsey Shakoori, Andy How, Luke Taylor, Helen Glavin, Tom & Tanya Reeves, Jessica Ainsworth, Charlie Dobres, Andy Gammon, Dax Debics, Joe Baxter, Stuart Balkham, Hyder Khalil, Lois, Mark S. Aaron, Stevie Freeman, Paul Mlynarz, Andrew Mellor, Cathy Oldale, Miles Jenner, Sheridan McCoid, Alec Swinburn.

Our Banner: Paul Harrison 31