LITMIR.BIZ

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A folk guitarist first suggested I should listen to BB King. The folk player had a really good fingerstyle and liked the way I played, saying it was a very different approach. I was lucky to get a UK Ember label 45-record by mail order of ‘Rock Me Baby’, BB King’s great song. When that Ember record arrived, that was really it. I later found King’s UK Stateside releases, the European versions of the early BluesWay/ABC. Live at the Regal is the one liked by most guitarists, but for me it was Blues is King. Both were recorded in Chicago in the mid-1960s with a small band, and BB is on great form vocally and his guitar playing still motivates and inspires me.

If asked today, I might most often say that the music of The Beatles was the source of my musical career. But, if I am really honest, the blues music went on to inspire and motivate me most of my life. I had already been aware of Big Bill Broonzy, his name fascinated me, but I never really knew what blues music was. But, once I had heard the Yardbirds and John Mayall I was looking for their source material. I searched for BB King, Leadbelly, Big Bill, Brownie McGhee and Sonny Terry, which led me to Freddy and Albert King. I was given a Louisiana Red album when I was about 14 called Low Down Back Porch Blues. I liked it a lot, although I didn’t really understand what it was about.

      At around that same age, I saw Lightnin’ Hopkins, Sister Rosetta Tharpe and Muddy Waters on TV. I was mesmerised. There is some quite phenomenal footage from 1964 of Rosetta Tharpe tearing it up with a white Gibson SG Custom at a railway station platform in Cheshire. It sounds crazy but it is a fact. Try and find it! This was the music I wanted to play. I bought a 45 of Howlin’ Wolf, ‘Smokestack Lightning’, which featured a fantastic guitar player on B-side ‘Goin’ Down Slow’– this was Hubert Sumlin. Hubert played with both of the great Chicago blues players, Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf.

      I was soaking up all this music. Gone were all my records of UK artists, even The Beatles and The Hollies were at the back of the pack when it came to the bluesmen. ‘Boogie Chillen’ by Hooker fascinated me, and still does. The guitar part is so weird, but I loved it and tried to play it. I didn’t know about capos or tunings then, but I loved the sound. I found that I could reproduce some of Sonny Boy’s harmonica parts on the guitar. That inspired me a lot. Just a tiny fraction of this music was developing my own style and, even though I was fully aware that Eric Clapton and Peter Green had already got it down, I did persevere.

When Cream themselves played Aylesbury in February 1967 there was nothing that would stop me seeing them. My pal Alan Clarke and I hitchhiked to a venue which was heaving with the largest number of people I had ever seen in one space. And then Cream were there: Jack Bruce, Ginger Baker, and ‘God’ himself, Clapton. Their Marshall amps towered on the small stage, Eric playing his Gibson SG Standard and I heard the ‘woman tone’ in person. I watched in a kind of dream state as they opened with ‘N. S. U.’, and played ‘Sleepy Time Time’, ‘Sweet Wine’, ‘Born Under a Bad Sign’, ‘Cat’s Squirrel’, and a devastating ‘I’m So Glad’. They were magnificent.

      I was jolted into the real world in a surprising way. I felt a sharp prod in my back, and turned around to see Elizabeth Rees, the new French teacher. She was in a very good mood, looking really good, and had a definite twinkle in her eye. She straight away said she would take us back to Buckingham after the show. She was with a friend, a nasty little piece of work named Drew, who taught history. How pissed off Drew must have been to take us back on his date. Alan and I were just grateful not to walk back the sixteen miles.

      Outside Buckingham town hall I thanked Drew for the lift, he eyed me with some contempt, and I got out of the car. To my surprise – and Drew’s shock – Elizabeth also said ‘Thanks’ and ‘Goodnight’ to him. Man, he must have been livid. Alan walked back home while Liz invited me back for a coffee at her flat in Well Street, a minute’s walk away.

      I was still filled with the excitement of the Cream gig, until it slowly dawned on me that I was alone with my French teacher in her flat. She was calm and chatty, and we discussed the show and our musical interests: all very grown-up stuff. Liz had liked that I played ‘Hoochie Coochie Man’ at the pub. She went to her bedroom and came back with an album to play on her Dansette record player. It was The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan. I had never bothered with acoustic music, unless played by black musicians. The only folk music I was aware of was by the likes of Wally Whyton and the King Brothers on the radio show Family Favourites. Bob Dylan was so radical. I was quite stunned.

      ‘Listen to his words,’ she said. I still listen to them today.

She told me I could be like my heroes and that if I practised, worked hard and, above all, dedicated myself to being a musician I could make it a career. She pointed that neither Bob Dylan nor Eric Clapton had ever seen the inside of a university, and that the old USA blues players that I worshipped were lucky to get any schooling at all. I really listened to her. Academically, I was way behind, but in learning about life I was taking a huge step forward.

      I spent a lot of time at school with Liz Rees, and rumours were rampant, particularly as my French was not improving. Liz was a bohemian free spirit, just the person a young lad of fifteen years of age should stay away from. I was infatuated, of course: she did exactly as she pleased and didn’t give a damn about authority.

      Something had to give and, halfway through my fifth year, it did. I was called for a meeting with headmaster Gerald Banks. I expected a loud barrage of abuse, but he was very cool and professional. Mr Banks was a good man, and I now see how he turned out to be more of an influence than I realised. Miss Rees was not mentioned by name, but we both knew what the talk was about. He was astute enough to realise and could see that I was a very grown-up fifteen-year-old. I knew what I wanted and I think he knew I would get it. I had no fears about the future, exam results were of no real interest to me and I certainly didn’t give a toss about other people’s perception of my relationships.

      As the summer of 1967 approached it was obvious that my French exams were never going to happen. Liz even rang me at my home telling me to stay away from the oral examination, given that I couldn’t really speak a word of French.

There were rumours that Liz been asked to leave at the end of the year or that she might have been sacked. I think she would have resigned long before they could have fired her. I went to her flat to be greeted by a bloke of about 22. She introduced me to him, he was in a band from Birmingham called the Ugly’s. She had met him at a gig that weekend. Liz Rees was with a man, I was mortified, but didn’t really know why. Now I know, of course, that I was jealous. She was spending time with him and not me. She could sense my distress, smiled and put her arm around me. He made us all some coffee.

      After a few days sulking, I went to see her again but her housemate Eileen Marner told me that she was gone for good. I must have looked terrible because Eileen was extra nice and told me I needed to get over her. Liz had been my guru and I as a young boy I was totally smitten. Her outlook on the importance of enjoying life and take-it-while-you-can attitude struck a chord deep within me. She said that I could do it. She was right, wasn’t she? Thanks, Liz, wherever you may be.

      I did glimpse her briefly once more, years later. It was the early summer of 1974 and I was on my way to play with Wild Turkey at the Marquee Club. I waited for a tube, dressed in my four-inch, wooden-heeled platform boots – black-and-white stars and stripes all over the leather – orange-and-yellow loon pants with twelve-inch flared hems, a psychedelic tie-dye shirt, accessorised with long necklaces, rings and my hair long and very curly. I also had a long, off-white Afghan coat – well, it was 1974. I spotted an attractive woman in her thirties, reading a book. She smiled back at me and as the train pulled out, she mouthed, ‘Bernard?’ Liz! But she was gone, and I have never seen or heard anything of her since. I thought again about those long discussions we had – not for the last time.

After that brief summer of love, the guitar always came first. I was dumped by girls many times, but I never gave it a second thought. In any case, I struggled with girls my own age, having discovered older women. A lot of the venues the Originals played had female managers who would ask the guys to ‘send that young one that plays the guitar for the cash’. The band would giggle as I would often be met by a buxom, mid-thirties stunner in seamed stockings,

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