I been busy. Watching old music on tv. You can never have too much. Though its not only the old music. For that I’d just watch Top of the Pops 1964 to 1975 and stop watching when the Osmonds or Suzi Quattro comes on. In fact I fast forward until ABBA come on with Waterloo. Voted ‘the best ever Eurovision winner’. Which is an honour akin to being voted ‘the best turd in the bog’. I could replay the special Old Grey Whistle Test, 50th anniversary edition. Some of the musicians are even still alive! Not the good ones obviously, they all died at 27. But its more the stories that I love. The connections.

There was a tribute programme to Peter Greene who died this year. He invented Fleetwood Mac. Which should have been called Peter Greene and others, but he shied away from the limelight so named the band after Mick Fleetwood and John McVie. Even though he was the writer, composer, singer, lead guitarist and main dude. In fact he stole Fleetwood and McVie from John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers, for whom all played. Greene had gone to join Mayall as the ‘new guitarist’ after the old one left. That was Eric Clapton. So, no pressure there then. But Peter Greene did no disservice to the man he replaced and was revered by the fans who initially had called Clapton ‘God’. Though none had ever heard God play blues on a Stratocaster.

Then there’s Laurel Canyon. A short history of the eponymous LA area in the early to mid 60s, produced by Amazon. Because EVERYONE gravitated to the Hollywood Hills at that time. Drawn by a vast and powerful talent-magnet, which just drew them. The Beach Boys were there. The Mamas and the Papas were the first proper settlers. Dave Crosby left the Byrds as Stephen Stills left Buffalo Springfield and the two met up with Graham Nash of the Hollies, ‘just getting stoned by someone’s poolside’, which was what counted as ‘serious work’ back then. Neil Young, another sometime Buffalo, also drifted by on Sunset Boulevard one day and quite literally bumped into Stills. Jackson Brown arrived at some point, Bob Dylan would hang out, Janis Joplin moved round the corner, and from that primordial ‘soup’ of immense talent, music was created. Brilliant music.

None of these bands lasted very long. But their legacy is still going strong. The bands suffered from personality clashes, generally. Or, if there was a/some woman/women in the band, from relationship shit.

I particularly love that these stories represent brilliant and gifted musicians. Not pretty boys (gels or ‘other’) selected by tv audiences to mime to other people’s output. And it was MY music. The soundtrack of my youth. But at the time when ‘pop’ music started. When ‘rock’ music emerged from the Blues. When sex and drugs and rock’n’roll was a massive positive in a one-generation post-war, newly liberated world. When Spurs last won the league…

Happy Sunny Day

A xxxx