Ain't Bad for a Pink

by Sandra Gibson

  There are still a few lads who want the music passionately – of course there are – but far fewer than I remember.

  I’d never heard of the blues guitar and then the electric guitar introduced me to the blues. I wanted to hear more of it. One of my friends was into Hendrix – that introduced me to the blues, really.

  I would always choose electric guitar over everything, really. It’s just the feeling; it gives you a really good feeling. It’s just a way of expressing yourself; it’s a way of getting your noise out and your noise is only something you know, and only you can express it in your way.

  Dec Higgins. (12)

  I’m into blues but I started off into heavy metal, then acoustic, jazz and swing: Hendrix, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Rory Gallagher, Tommy Emmanuel, Frank Sinatra and Metallica still. I find Nirvana depressing. I think you grow out of it. You think the swearing’s cool at that age then you learn music isn’t just that. It’s about good music.

  Our band, The Riffs, plays blues. We have written blues-inspired and acoustic songs. We try to bring in keyboard, harmonica and percussion. I’m looking for a musical career. Dec wants to be a dentist who plays guitar.

  Josh Bailey. (13)

  To be fair, the venue situation is against them. Kids don’t go to youth clubs to play their music so where’s the audience coming from? The pub scene is now largely dominated by old lags playing Sixties, Seventies and (some) Eighties music, proficiently and as well as the original artists. Essentially it’s a closed shop. No publican is going to risk putting on something new when his customers expect the familiar bands. How can young innovative musicians compete against musical conservatism and the reign of the cover band?

  And one by one the pubs are closing down!

  Synchronised Holidays

  At one time you could do a gig every night because there were so many working men’s clubs. So many have closed over the years that now you’re lucky to get two gigs a month. In the Sixties and Seventies a band could make £100 a night. Bands were so much in demand that you had to tell the agents in advance when you were going on holiday – and the whole band had to go at the same time! These days a soloist can only get £80. I got £30 the other night: not enough to cover drinks and petrol. Now pubs are closing one by one.

  Phil Doody. (14)

  Though it seems you can’t entirely keep the music down.

  As far as the local music scene goes, although The Limelight has closed – it took a dive when Ray & Karen Bispham left – in one way it’s been good for the local pubs such as The Imp, The Brunswick, The Express, The Box, as they have bands on every week. It seems to be going well for them, when you hear how many pubs are closing. The Box is good for original material / young bands. There is a very good music scene in Crewe as there always has been, since I came to Crewe in the mid Eighties – then it was all happening at the Leisure Club in Edleston Road.

  Andy Smith. (15)

  Style And Substance

  There’s a guitar in the shop that somebody’s ruined by sticking three dice on it. I can’t get them off and anyway someone will like them. They won’t depress the price like they depress me. When I look in the accessories catalogues I despair – am I going to start stocking pink knobs? I’m so far out of touch that what I would call bits of plastic are called Demon Plectrums worn as a fashion statement round your neck.

  It’s symptomatic of a general trivialization, a substitution of style for substance. We’ve gone through the good, creative times and now everything is on a decadent slide. Look at what has become of the musical: we had Gershwin and Rogers and Hammerstein – now we’ve got Lloyd Webber.

  I’ve been looking at Blueridge Guitars in the Gremlin catalogue. They’re getting a good write-up but the Historic Series has cutaway. As far as I know cutaway isn’t historic. There’s also some brash abalone work on the machine heads. That isn’t historic either. When it was done it was done by hand and all over. Blueridge has established itself as the leading guitar brand in the US after Martin and Taylor. Why is it offering tradition but not following it?

  The hype of the guitar world offers much more than a musical instrument: it offers technology and adventure, status and power, limitless variety, a wide price range and sensuous experiences. Like the food in some restaurants, guitars are described as if they will guarantee an orgasm. Directed at young people, they offer a fantasy far removed from the reality of hard work and continual practice. But today’s young people can afford them – or their parents can. And I’m not saying that style and fantasy and fun have no place in musical performance; of course it does – the Skunk Band demonstrated that – so I don’t want to be too scathing about this. Owning a beautiful object is important and everyone has a different idea of beauty.

  My guitar is a BC Rich Beast. It’s black and white and it has two spikes going up like horns at the top and one big spike on the left at the bottom and a smaller one on the right. It’s off a website from a guitar shop in Surrey.

  I just saw it. It looked really nice. Straight away it was the one I wanted. When I first picked it up I just felt surprised that I had it because it was such a nice guitar. It’s got sharp notes; it’s really nice to play.

  It cost £240 including an amp and a limited edition BC Rich plectrum and a guitar strap. With it I also bought a stand because with such points to a guitar you need a stand because they might get chipped.

  Sam Molony. (16)

  It’s great to have abundance of choice. There was so little in the Fifties and early Sixties, it was expensive and had to be ordered. You had to wait! Nowadays guitars are abundant and absolutely dynamite quality for the price: a decent guitar for a hundred pounds made by the Chinese ready for you to take away.

  But sometimes I just despair when it’s nothing but faux leopard skin guitar straps and guitars with annoying embellishments. Stylistic razzmatazz can’t replace musical substance.

  I was recently shocked that Radio Four pundits had narrowed down the field of ‘great’ guitarists to two: Clapton and Hendrix! I was surprised by the narrowness and ignorance of the discussion. One panellist had selected Jimi’s “Red House” as his best. This is nonsense. It’s his worst track: twelve bar blues in the easiest key. Trite with no surprises. What is this obsession with the most popular?

  Discussion about style over substance would have to include the tribute band. A tribute band allows time to stand still at the point when the group in question was at its height. The popular songs are reproduced as faithfully as possible without deviation and it has to be admitted that some tribute bands are very good and do their work with respect, paralleling their originals without even waiting for them to retire! Everybody covers songs but it’s so deadening to slavishly copy a song without adding something of your own. But this is very popular as a swift glance at local venues will confirm. Crewe’s Limelight Club was the subject of a BBC 2 Arena tribute to the tribute band filmed in December 2006. Free At Last, Limehouse Lizzie, Cobain, T-Rextasy, Stairway To Zeppelin, Demon, Pink Fraud, Are You Experienced, Fred Zeppelin, AB/CD and Purple Snake were all on offer.

  The Australian Pink Floyd sent me tickets and a backstage pass to see them at the National Indoor Arena in Birmingham: a stunning performance. Stunning. In terms of virtuosity and theatricality it transcended the original Pink Floyd. Of course, these days the technology is more sophisticated but I liked the touches of humour reflecting the Australian theme. It’s much more than a tribute band and anyone who loves this style of music would have been transported to another world. APF are now so popular they’re considering assembling an Australian Pink Floyd Two with another set of musicians. It was good to see Gareth Darlington – he’s the sound man – and Damien Darlington (guitar, vocals, keyboard) backstage, though I must say the post-gig socialising was sober compared to my old Jack Daniels days.

  Pink Floyd and the Australian Pink Floyd parallel one another. They’re both still communicating something across the generations; we’re going to see them and our sons
and daughters are going to see them as well. The two bands work together: Pink Floyd have sanctioned what the Australian Pink Floyd does and APF have played at Pink Floyd’s parties. They have the Pink Floyd pig and some of the Pink Floyd road crew working with them but they are also acclaimed in their own right – APF did two nights at the Royal Albert Hall.

  A mere tribute band can’t continue to communicate like this; there has to be true feeling. Pink Floyd have asked APF to lay off a few high profile venues to give them a chance! So it’s all good-humoured and has life in it.

  Substance.

  Talking Of Age

  In terms of my musical prospects things are not looking too good. Through my damaged hands there’s a physical impairment to my performance and a psychological issue regarding confidence. I’m never going to be able to say I’m too old to play the blues; lack of eyesight, lack of digits, lack of sobriety, lack of an instrument, lack of liberty, lack of sanity has never been an excuse for any of the old men of blues. But I’ve had to come to terms with the fact that my right hand probably won’t stand up to sustained playing though it is healing slowly. I’m back doing a few gigs with Des: it’s gentle and it’s fun. I also went solo at Square One recently. I was pleased with my performance that was partly fuelled by anger at some unjustified criticism.

  Talking of age, as well as the epidemic of tribute bands there’s been a recent trend for the resurrection of famous groups from the Sixties or Seventies – some look as if they’ve come from beyond the grave. “Codger Rock” or “Zimmer Frame Rock” has been very successful and what emerges is that fans want to remember their favourite groups exactly as they were. One of the claims regarding Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin was that he had not diminished: he was exactly the same as he ever was. At a fairly recent Bob Dylan gig a fan – domed head and a long straggly curtain of hair – was beside himself because Dylan had changed his early songs out of all recognition. The fan couldn’t tolerate the change; he wanted things as he remembered them. I’m with Dylan.

  Heavy Metal is back: I saw Whitesnake – still good, David Coverdale – originally with Deep Purple, a band called The Answer – got the essence of the music – not just covers – bang on. It’s because their parents are into it. My lad Jordan is a brilliant guitarist. He plays Seventies rock; he’s never listened to anything else.

  Wayne Davies (Slim). (17)

  Always Something New To Learn

  There are positives to counterbalance the down sides. A musician always has something new to learn. Why be repetitive? Complacency is the enemy. During the summer of 2006 I spent some time learning new chords with Andy Boote. I felt enthusiastic. I’m a non-musician; I have to relate everything back to a keyboard because that’s the instrument I did have formal training in. But when someone presents you with a jazz turnaround that can be repeated up the neck as you can with barre chords, then it opens up a whole new field of Django Reinhardt /Charlie Christian style music. They evolved it in the first place so that they could play guitar with jazz ensembles and change key easily by using the chords in different positions on the neck, rather than changing chord shapes. Changing the finger configuration rather than moving the hand up and down the neck enhanced the speed of playing.

  It led me to think about Lonnie Johnson and Scrapper Blackwell and the jazz influence in their blues – Leroy Carr obviously being a link – and I decided I wanted to extend my playing by learning Andy’s jazz and rockabilly chords, which in time I’ll be able to embellish by finger-style playing. Hopefully it’ll enable me to play more complex blues as well as doing this thing with Andy on the jazz side.

  I Saw The Line From Tampa Red

  I made an important discovery about the provenance of jazz: I saw the line from Tampa Red – the pioneers of jazz were there in the blues men. I started talking to Pete Johnson about this – common ground had opened up through my interest in jazz and historical musical development generally which we both shared. I can easily transcribe music through listening to it and Pete asked me to do the introduction to “Shine”. I listened to the whole number and made another important discovery: it had a jazz chord sequence; it was not straight twelve bar blues. I realized that I, in my own music, had been playing rock ‘n’ roll in a jazz style. Eight chords in it rather than three. The chord sequence moves out of key; jazz goes out of the key centre. Jazz players negotiate key changes. I love that. The twelve bar blues is a very simple structure over which to improvise.

  On the strength of this musical understanding of the jazz sequences in “Shine” and another number Pete Whittingham had played in which I praised his brilliance, the friendship between Pete and I was finally forged. Studying Pete Whit’s improvisational musicianship led me, via Charlie Christian, further along the jazz path and Pete Johnson was able to provide another pioneer: Scrapper Blackwell. My appreciation of jazz guitar continued and continues to grow.

  Andy Boote. (18)

  So – I’m still keeping faith with the music I first heard when I was thirteen. It has sustained me and I hope I have done what I can to sustain it.

  Non-sustaining Opiate

  The thing that hasn’t sustained me is religious belief.

  Being Human

  But not believing I’ll be rewarded or punished after death doesn’t mean I’ve lived without values nor have I allowed my hedonism to dominate. I think most of the Ten Commandments are sound but I don’t want to associate this with religion. I’m a humanist and I’ve been sustained by friendship and by my music and by challenging bullying in all its forms. I’ve helped people in a musical sense and in an economic sense; although I can be physically threatening I’ve tried only to use violence in self-defence or in defending others, or I’ve deflected it into objects to make my point. It’s true I’ve done some wheeling and dealing that was a bit on the edge and some sexual philandering, and then there’s some illegal substances to be taken into account but on the whole I sleep at night. I hold the conviction that human life has worth and that you should react in a simple way to the needs of others. At a party once a woman came and asked me to dance. “Put your hand right on my arse,” she said. Afterwards she said, “My mother died; that’s the best I’ve felt since.”

  As far as I’m concerned we’re just animals that evolved into the human race – and into a mess. We have the capacity to get ourselves out of the mess; we don’t need God: we just have to stop being so greedy. The science I’ve read seems more logical than any religion – no matter which religion. In more frivolous moments my rational mind has wondered about daft things like how would there be room for everybody in heaven and could I play a guitar instead of a harp. On an emotional level I also think I’ve had enough once round; I don’t want there to be any more! And if I’m wrong and I do meet God, I’m going to headbutt him for getting so much wrong!

  Religion

  It’s easy to see why religions evolved though. The human mind can’t accept that at death the consciousness stops and that’s it. It can’t accept the unfairness that involves some people having long happy lives and others having short tortured lives. It offends our sense of fair play! Religion illustrates man’s inability to face his own stopping. It gives a better ending to the story, as long as you’re good. The old spirituals gave comfort to people with wretched lives, promising a better life after death. Religion: “the opiate of the people” according to Marx, made the unacceptable acceptable.

  I believe heaven and hell is what you leave behind, not what you aspire to. It’s something to do with how you feel at your demise. With your last breath your conscience is what you die with. If you have led a horrible life you know and perhaps regret that in the moment of dying. Other people inherit your little footprint: heaven, hell, a bit of both, some shared laughter, some recognition, some musical togetherness. If you’ve spent your life trying to do your best there will be fewer regrets. Besides, it’s easier to be nice to people but the evidence for religion encouraging this is not convincing.

  None of my expe
riences of religion have done anything to convince me. Each religion believes it has the correct world view, the only way to live your life. To me all religions are clubs and I don’t like clubs. If there is anything at the end of the day, who’s to say which club is right? In my view a man from Papua New Guinea, who has a collection of skulls – people he’s eaten out of respect and because of his beliefs – has as much right to heaven as anyone else, if God is magnanimous. Differing beliefs have led to horrific practices such as witch-hunting, torture, and wars – all with ‘god on our side’. Religion has too many conflicts about a similar story and people are prepared to die – and kill – for their own version.

  I was brought up in a family with strong religious beliefs – though never pressurised to sign up – so I was able to observe closely the effects on people’s lives of believing in an afterlife. I was neither tempted by my father’s self-blaming puritanical faith nor my mother’s cheerful belief that we would all meet again in heaven. Anticipating this celestial reunion made my mother happy and confident in spite of her difficulties and able to die with a joyful conviction. On the other hand, my father felt God had dealt him a bum card and didn’t believe he deserved to go to heaven. His experiences must have tested his belief in a compassionate god. He was extremely poor and fatherless in his childhood; he felt disappointed with himself: a conscientious objector who went in the army and although his war experiences were hardly mentioned at home, I know he had the harrowing job of liberating concentration camps. When my mother became an invalid and he himself faced an early death from cancer, his faith and sense of justice were further tried. The awfulness of his experiences communicated itself to me and I still carry it around. His death has affected me in a different way than that of my mother. She was positive and accepting and although I was sad I didn’t feel that her life had been lacking in joy and hope. I wasn’t sad for her; I was sad for me. But I absorbed my father’s suffering and it’s part of me. I still suffer in a very raw, unresolved way because of the tragedies of my father’s life.