Proclaimers city hall end of May - wouldn’t mind Sunshine on Leith as our song . I’ll get my tin hat !!!
Great song. Just nothing to do with us (unless there’s something I don’t know?) and already very successful as someone else’s song. To me there needs to be some link, rather than just stealing someone else’s because it happens to sound good sung by a crowd. That’s all
I've seen Rumours at Scarboro a couple of years ago. Excellent cover band, If you close your eyes and just listen you would think you were listening to Fleetwood Mac. Seriously good with their own following.
Didn’t go to City last night (don’t worry, my seat was taken) as already had tickets for Social before the game got moved. Should have been Tony Fox who played bass on Iggy Pop’s Lust for Life album with a band doing that album. Anyway he is poorly so ex Pistols Glen Matlock replaced him, Clem Burke (Blondie) on drums, guitarists who toured with Bowie and Sparks, keyboard player from Heaven 17 and Katie Puckrick (ex The Word) singing. They did the whole Lust for Life album, and then loads of other stuff from their bands…like the video below. wasn’t expecting that much tbh but they were brilliant and Katie Puckrick was superb. Kept tabs on the score (few other pass holders there I was with) but no regrets missing City for it. In Harrogate now for a few days, including Frankie Boyle tomorrow night.
I also missed the game buying a ticket not knowing we had a game at home that night, i would have to disagree DBT i thought Puckrick was poor and the band would of being much better with a stronger sounding vocalist, they sounded so much better for the 3 songs towards the end that she didn't sing when Matlock took over. Reminded me of City in that it was a good night out despite the band.
Not a bad career Andy Fairweather Low: ‘Jimi Hendrix sidled over and politely told me: you’re in the wrong key’ Dave Simpson please log in to view this image At the age of 74, Andy Fairweather Low didn’t expect to see in 2023 as a viral sensation. He was on Jools’ Annual Hootenanny, performing his new song Got Me a Party and his old band Amen Corner’s 1969 chart-topper (If Paradise Is) Half As Nice. His appearance was so well received that he trended on Twitter. On New Year’s Day, his Wikipedia page was the second most trending in the UK. “I was oblivious,” he chuckles, “because I don’t do Twitter and all that.” The broadcast had been filmed in mid-December. Low had appeared on Later … With Jools Holland before, with Eric Clapton, but never on his own. “I said to Jools: ‘It’s taken me 74 years to get here.’” It is just another chapter in a remarkable musical life. Low has topped the charts twice with Amen Corner and became a solo star in the 1970s with Wide Eyed and Legless. Since then, he has become the ultimate musicians’ musician, playing with the likes of Clapton, George Harrison, Stevie Nicks, two Pink Floyd legends, various Rolling Stones and many, many more. He has played the Royal Albert Hall 116 times, played football with George Best, snooker with Alex “Hurricane” Higgins at Phil Lynott’s house and even jammed with Jimi Hendrix. “He sidled over and politely told me: ‘You’re in the wrong key.’” The amiable Welshman carries all this very lightly. He turns up for our interview in a Cardiff City top and is fantastic company, which is why musicians like him. “I know I’m good, but there are better players than I am,” he says. “But on a world tour whoever you’re working for doesn’t want to be looking after you and they’ve got to like your company. Most of the people I’ve played with have become my friends.” Low’s gregarious but quietly determined good nature shines through Flang Dang, his first solo album in 17 years. He plays everything apart from drums and sings soulful R&B about how he is “trying to make the most of what I’ve got before I die”. He wrote the songs during lockdown and recorded in Rockfield, Monmouthshire, where he previously recorded in 1965. Countryfile came down to speak to me,” he grins. “Afterwards people kept saying, ‘I saw you on Countryfile. I thought you were dead.’” please log in to view this image Andy Fairweather Low performs on Jools’ Annual Hootenanny, broadcast on New Year’s Eve 2022.Photograph: Michael Leckie/BBC Low grew up in Ystrad Mynach, Glamorgan, in a council house with no heating and an outside loo: “So when it was cold you had to really need to go.” His life changed when he saw the Rolling Stones at Cardiff’s Sophia Gardens in 1964, aged 15. “From that moment, my education was finished. I stopped revising, everything.” A job in a music shop gave him access to guitars and he formed the Taff Beats, the Firebrands and the Sect Maniacs before becoming a teenage idol with psychedelic era popsters Amen Corner. “Our house had the curtains closed because [the fans] were all outside camping on the lawn,” he says. Amen Corner played themselves in horror film Scream and Scream Again alongside Peter Cushing, Vincent Price and Christopher Lee and experienced the dark side of the music business for real. “We never saw any royalties and ended up £12,000 in debt. Our manager, Terry the Pill, was threatened with a sword stick. The only way out of it was to break up the band.” He formed Fair Weather, clearing the debt with the 1970 smash hit Natural Sinner before they split in more Spinal Tap fashion. “There were five of us and it took four to carry the Hammond organ, so one got a free pass. Then one night in Scarborough there was this huge argument about whose turn it was to carry it. I thought: ‘I’m done with this.’” please log in to view this image Amen Corner, pictured in the 1960s in Australia: (from left) Alan Jones, Dennis Bryon, Clive Taylor (top), Neil Jones (below), Low, Blue Weaver and Mike Smith.Photograph: GAB Archive/Redferns He went back to live with his mum, then reached No 6 with 1975’s Wide Eyed and Legless, one of the great pop songs about drinking. “But I started living my own record,” he sighs. “I became wide-eyed and legless.” The turning point was the birth of his son. “I was on the baby shift, drinking vodka, watching the tennis and went: ‘Yeahhhh!’ Broken glass everywhere. I thought: ‘I can’t keep doing this.’” He had already stopped smoking in 1971 after coughing up blood. “You need the moment to be bad enough that you remember it.” After his career was derailed by punk (“they spat at me in the street”), he glimpsed a different sort of musical career when the Who invited him to sing on the 1978 album Who Are You. “Keith Moon was fabulous,” Low grins. “He came to one of my gigs with Lionel Bart. ‘Dear boy!’ I never got involved in the madness, but witnessing Pete Townshend in full flow was magical. I felt the same as when I saw them as a teenager in Porthcawl … I’ve never lost that.” please log in to view this image Low (left) playing with Eric Clapton at the Crossroads festival at Madison Square Garden, New York, in April 2013. Photograph: Greg Allen/Shutterstock Stars feel kindly towards him. When Low was on his uppers, Clapton sent a telegram of encouragement before a chance meeting in a studio led to a 30-plus year working relationship. Low played with Roger Waters for 23 years. “A lot of people don’t take to Roger for many reasons, but he treated me unbelievably well,” he says. In the 80s, Low turned up to audition at George Harrison’s mansion in a VW Polo. He puts on a dry Scouse accent. “He went: ‘Do you have to drive that?’ But we got on. After we toured Japan, George stood up and said: ‘Andy, you weren’t my first choice. You were my seventh choice.’ Then he went: ‘But you were the right choice.’” Low adored the late Beatle. “He made me feel really, really good.” When Kate Bush rang to ask him to sing on 50 Words for Snow, he thought it was a joke. “Because one of my mates once rang up pretending to be John McEnroe, and I fell for it, but she said she liked my voice.” Paul Weller sent him the song Testify to work on for 2021’s Fat Pop and then met him with a cheeky: “Where’s your hair gone?” please log in to view this image In an all-star lineup at a charity concert for Action into Research for Multiple Sclerosis, at the Royal Albert Hall in 1983: (from left) Steve Winwood (keyboards), Low (standing in front of Jimmy Page), Kenney Jones (drums), Eric Clapton, Charlie Watts (drums), Bill Wyman and Jeff Beck. Photograph: Michael Putland/Getty Images He played in Bob Dylan’s band for a charity gig at Madison Square Garden in 1999. “Bob was fabulous and talkative,” he remembers. “He wanted to know about a particular chord I played on Malted Milk, on Eric Clapton’s Unplugged album – a favourite song. He knew who I was.” On stage for the gig, Low says that Dylan would shout, “God – go,” at his band, leaving Low and the other musicians thinking: “Which one? He’s got three songs with God in the title!” Low has loved every minute, although he stopped world touring in 2006 after consecutive final outings with Waters and Clapton. “I left two of the best-paying gigs. People thought I was mad.” But he had grown tired of the “boom-crunch” of arenas and wanted to perform his own material: “I wanted to get back to playing.” Having once performed The Wall in Berlin with Waters to 450,000 people, his first gig with his own band the Low Riders in 2007 was to 20 people in a 2,000-seater in Rhyl. Gradually, though, they built it up to “300 to 400 people every night, which is great at my age”. Lately, he has been off the road to become primary carer to Barbara, his wife of 50 years, who has terminal motor neurone disease. It is a task he is no doubt undertaking as gracefully and diligently as all the others. “I got to where I dreamed,” he says, “but I’m not finished yet.” Flang Dang is out now via Last Music Company
Here we go... '83 R.A.H. ARMS concert... Ronnie Lane presents a gathering of musical beasts . Cosy up to the beer/wine fridge NY MSG edition maybe improved audio?
Saw them before they were big. A bloke from Brid who had a nightclub down the slipway to the harbour had seen them earlier in the year and booked them for a ridiculously small fee for July 1967. They then went on TV and kept getting voted winners in some talent show and he thought I can make more of this so he booked Londesborough Barracks in Hull. A double decker and two single deckers of us, most from one pub in Brid, went through.Even luckier for him Gin House was released at beginning of July and attracted more attention. Great show, nearly all blues and soul orientated. Remember at the end they invited people on stage to join in then Low said any girl fancying me come up here and there was a stampede. Still see a couple of them around town, a bit older than me must be 75 or 76 now, one can hardly walk. Young ones will be thinking old dodderers. If only they could have seen them back then. Saw Amen Corner twice at Brid Spa between 1968 and 1969. Wish I could see the lass I was going out with at the time who was mad about Andy Fairweather Low. I could say he’s aged about as well as me. At Londesborough they were doing stuff like this. Their record company released and withdrew it as they wanted them to go down a more pop route. Years later he was still good. More than good in fact.
Never heard of him Sounds like his life would make a good film ‘He was central to music history’: the forgotten legacy of Leon Russell In an illuminating new book, the incredible highs and devastating lows of the influential musician are remembered Jim Farber please log in to view this image Over a decade before he died, Leon Russell began writing a never-completed memoir that highlighted a story of deep humiliation. Upon noticing, at age four, that his genitals looked different from those of his female cousin, the two began to examine each other in a secluded playhouse. That is, until a stern aunt discovered them and, instead of recognizing their play as innocent exploration, proceeded to parade Russell in front of his entire family while accusing him of any number of high crimes and heinous acts. “That incident affected me for my whole life,” wrote Russell, who died in 2016. “I tend to freeze up around any situation that involves people watching me.” How ironic, then, that such a man would wind up, for a certain time, in rock music’s spotlight. During the core years of classic rock – between 1969 and 1973 – Russell was music’s North Star, pioneering a distinctly American sound that changed the career paths of stars, including Eric Clapton, George Harrison and Elton John. In that timeframe, he created a band that became one of music’s most legendary live acts; made Mad Dogs & Englishmen, for Joe Cocker; stole the show from a white hot lineup of artists at the Concert for Bangladesh; became a star in his own right with solo albums that featured songs that became standards, including Song for You and This Masquerade; and inspired the icon Willie Nelson to create his enduring outlaw country persona. Even before he became widely known, Russell had an esteemed career as a first call session pianist, performing with the Wrecking Crew on recordings by everyone from Frank Sinatra to The Beach Boys to the rococo productions of Phil Spector. Remarkably, he accomplished all this while suffering from what has alternately been described by friends, and by himself, as either bipolar depression, paranoia or Asperger’s syndrome, contributing to crippling bouts of stage fright. “Leon was a deeply insecure guy,” said Bill Janovitz, author of a new book that offers the first holistic study of the musician, titled Leon Russell: The Master of Space and Time’s Journey Through Rock & Roll History. “He struggled with his depressive side his whole life.” “The way Leon’s mind worked was not like other people’s,” said singer Rita Coolidge, who performed with him on some key projects and who was romantically involved with him for a while. “In every way, Leon was different.” please log in to view this image Claude Russell Bridges (AKA Leon Russell), piano prodigy, circa 1946. Photograph: Courtesy of the OKPOP Museum The darker side of that difference, along with a clutch of other factors, contributed to a fall in Russell’s career as swift and steep as his rise. By his own description, that fall left him “in a ditch by the side of the highway of life”. The hardships in Russell’s life go back to its very start. He was born with cerebral palsy, causing some paralysis to his right side which resulted in a limp. It made him the target of bullies while growing up in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in the 1950s. “He wasn’t a sports guy in this jock-y southern town,” Janovitz said. “He was this nerdy guy with a limp, and big horn-rimmed glasses.” His father was yet another bully who eventually abandoned the family. At the same time, Russell showed a remarkable facility for music from toddlerhood. By 14, he was playing in local clubs where his band was discovered by Jerry Lee Lewis, who declared him the better piano player and, so, took him and his group on the road. Because of the nerve damage to his right side, Russell had developed a unique playing style that relied on his powerful left hand, helping him create his own rhythms. Other musicians recognized it right away, leading to offers to come to Los Angeles to join its rich session scene. Russell’s piano work held such distinction, it even managed to stand out amid Phil Spector’s cacophonous Wall of Sound productions. According to Janovitz, Russell’s strength as a session guy was “that he could always find a place in the music. Herb Alpert once said that when Leon played, the whole rhythm section would start coming to him,” the author said. “He could change the entire direction or arrangement of a song.” By 1969, Russell had become a musical octopus with tentacles spreading to his own record company (Shelter Records), a duo he formed called the Asylum Choir, and, most importantly, key contributions to albums by Delaney & Bonnie, the only white act signed to Stax. Their rollicking second album, Accept No Substitute, didn’t sell well yet it became, in Janovitz’s words, “a secret handshake. It was the album where all the major musicians said to each other, ‘You have to hear this.’” The buzz on Delaney & Bonnie’s record was so intense, it inspired Eric Clapton, Dave Mason and George Harrison to join the group – which also included Rita Coolidge – for a UK tour. A then unknown Elton John found himself equally besotted. “Elton once said to me, ‘I would not be where I am today without Leon Russell and Delaney & Bonnie, and the music you all made,’” Coolidge said. According to her, the top line of British stars were transfixed by them because, “we had something they didn’t – a mix of southern gospel, rock’n’roll and blues”. If Russell’s style idealized it, his abilities as an arranger, band leader and songwriter made him the sound’s chief ambassador. “Everybody understood that Leon knew more about music and about the direction we all wanted to go in than we did ourselves,” Coolidge said. please log in to view this image Leon Russell and Elton John, soon after they first met in Los Angeles, 1970. Photograph: Photo by Don Nix, courtesy of the OKPOP Museum She found herself physically attracted to him as well: “He was such an extraordinary-looking man, with those piercing eyes.” Once they got involved, however, she discovered eccentricities as deep as his talent. “Leon was the most paranoid person I ever met,” she said. When the pair took the long drive from Memphis to their new home in LA, “he wouldn’t get out of the car. He was so afraid of people looking at him,” he said. When Coolidge told him she didn’t want to have a baby with him, he insisted on getting a monkey instead. “That monkey terrorized the whole house,” she said, with a laugh. “It was totally untamable.” As much as Russell flinched from the gaze of outsiders, he loved to create large musical families that he kept close. “As soon as he had any money, he bought a big house and had a bunch of dudes living there,” Janovitz said. “They dubbed it ‘the home for unwed musicians’.” The most significant family he created was on the Mad Dogs & Englishmen tour, which included nearly 50 singers, players and hangers-on. As musically thrilling as the tour was, it began in panic and ended in chaos. Cocker was fresh off a star-making performance at Woodstock but he didn’t have a band. Hellbent on exploiting his new fame, his mob-connected manager demanded that he tour, threatening physical harm if he didn’t. It fell to Russell to pull together a band pronto, which he did, in part, by taking the players who’d worked with Delaney & Bonnie. Russell didn’t just form the band and write its ecstatic arrangements, he also forged a persona for the show as the ringleader of the circus, decked out in a top hat and Captain America shirt. His look, sound and shtick made him “the ultimate Pentecostal cosmic preacher of rock’n’roll”, said Jesse Lauter, who directed a film, Learning to Live Together, that covered the Mad Dogs’ tour as well as a 2015 tribute concert to it that featured Russell’s final performance. “He was larger-than-life,” Lauter said. Russell, and the rest of the band, were living large backstage, too. Drugs were a constant, as were orgies, the latter a favorite activity of the band leader’s. Coolidge broke up with him, in part, because of his invitation to have a threesome with him and the famed bassist Carl Radle. The sex at Mad Dogs became so incestuous, said Coolidge, that she would see the band lined up in the hotel lobby in the morning “to get shots because they got VD from all the orgies”. Fed up with such behavior, Coolidge said she only saw the tour through in deference to Cocker. Another incentive was a solo showcase she had on the tour performing Superstar (The Groupie Song), which she co-wrote with Bonnie Bramlett and Russell. Yet, when the song came out, Russell cut her from the credits. “That was just a deliberate ‘gotcha’ because I’d left him,” she said. Cocker was even angrier at Russell, who he felt upstaged him. In October 1970, it was Russell who appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone, not Cocker. Worse, due to the cost of the event, Coolidge said Cocker came out of it broke. “He didn’t have a place to live, he didn’t have a guitar. He didn’t have ****,” she said. Neither Coolidge nor Janovitz believe that Russell intended to hurt Cocker. “To his dying day, Leon was wounded by the accusation of career profiteering from the tour,” Janovitz said. “The fact is Joe needed a band and Leon gave him a great one.” In fact, Mad Dogs became the template for all the large-scale family bands to come, including Bob Dylan’s sprawling Rolling Thunder tour of 1975, Bruce Springsteen’s big band and the modern Americana group Tedeschi Trucks, who created the Mad Dogs tribute show captured in Lauter’s film. Meanwhile, Russell’s star soared, powered by the pop smash Tightrope, and a hit triple-album concert set, Leon Live that certified him as the biggest concert draw of 1972. please log in to view this image Singer Claudia Lennear, Leon Russell and Rita Coolidge at the Mad Dogs & Englishmen reunion concert at the 2015 Lockn’ Festival. Photograph: Photo Linda Wolf Within three years, however, Russell’s star was on the wane. His music veered from the style that made him popular by moving further into country music and by using drum machines. Also, he had a tendency to believe the wrong people. “If Leon was presented with a good opinion and a bad one, he always went with the bad one,” Janovitz said. At the same time, his acolyte, Elton John, soared way past him. One of the choices Russell made wound up revealing something profoundly ugly in parts of his audience. He released two pop albums that billed him equally with his new wife, the gifted singer Mary McCreary, who is Black. When the pair toured, hundreds of fans threw nooses on to the stage; some yelled the N-word, which wounded them both. In subsequent years, the pair endured a bitter divorce and while Russell remained productive in the studio, he became ever more remote onstage, reverting to his core insecurities. Finally, in 2010 Elton came to his rescue, creating a stirring collaboration album with him, The Union, followed by a sold-out arena tour for the two. More, Elton lobbied successfully to get Russell into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Regardless, Russell’s music seldom turns up on classic rock stations today. “Even when I ask active music fans about him, they say, ‘Is that Leon Redbone?’” Janovitz said. “They’re not even sure who he was.” To the author, that’s a glaring hole. “People love Elton, the Beatles and Clapton but many of them don’t know how important Leon was to all of them,” said Janovitz. “People need to know that Leon was someone central to musical history.” Leon Russell: The Master of Space and Time’s Journey Through Rock & Roll History is out on 10 March
